WUH: Anatomy of a fall

Wake Up Heavy is a weirdy Way media podcast. Welcome to Wake Up Heavy, the world's greatest horror movie podcast. In this episode, my weird dad will be talking about. Hello and welcome to Wake Up Heavy recollections of horror. This is Mark Begley, your host.

It is the twelfth of February twenty twenty five, and I'm doing look back at the last year, talk about crap that's been going on with me and whatever else pops into my head type of episode. Run through some watches from last year, new stuff, family stuff, best of for favorites for me, I guess, talk about some news in my life. Had a major life event that some of you may already know about. And then I'm not going to lay anything out for twenty twenty five because who knows what's going to happen. All right, let's get started on this, so as you all know, if you listened to the episode, follow me on social media.

My father passed away back in August of twenty twenty four. We had his memorial service in October at the assisted living facility where my parents live lived my mom still lives. It was very nice, it was very well done by then them man and the people that spoke about my dad just had a lot of amazing things to say, and I kind of a lot of stuff that I had sort of forgotten about. The surprising thing for me was I was the only one that lost it during this. I thought for sure my sister was going to I didn't think I was going to lose it at all.

But I walked in and I saw the setup and a couple of personal items of his that were up that my mom had kept over the years, and I thought, oh crap, I'm done for Yeah. I ended up being pretty emotional for me, and it was a very lovely service. I wanted to say thanks again to the friends of mine and my wives and my families that showed up. Thank you to Courtney and Juni for showing up, and thanks Steve and Rebecca for showing up. Greatly appreciate it.

So it was a lot of our first holidays without my dad. Towards the end of the year, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's I can't believe it's been six months already. So in a way, twenty twenty four was a pretty shitty year, but we still had twenty twenty five to look forward to and isn't this a lot of fun? I may be looking back on twenty twenty four as the golden days, who knows, but twenty twenty five has started it out as a shit burger. For one thing, one of my personal film I don't want to say hero, but maybe Hero David Lynch passed away and kind of was prepared for it or expected it when he announced, and I think this was back in August two of last year, that he was battling with a very bad case of emphysema, and I kind of thought, oh boy, here we go.

And it happened, and it actually really shook me. One of my all time favorite film directors. I could listen to that man talk for hours and hours and hours, as I know I've mentioned on the show and even on Cambridge and with Sean. You know, sometimes I just throw on the eraser Head stories, not even the film. I just watched that quote unquote behind the scenes part of it that's included with that old DBD.

I have just to hear him talk and tell stories. So that was a real bummer, even. Or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film. Shortly after that, Yours truly had himself a little accident. So again, if you follow me on social media, particularly.

That doesn't sound right. Particularly Instagram, you know that I took a nasty spill off of a very tall ladder while I was limbing the tree in my front yard, which I know I've talked about at some point last year, because I did a good portion of it last year with the help of my brother in law, my nephew, and my daughter, and this year it was just my daughter and I worked on it one day, got a bunch done, had just a little bit left to do. My dumb ass decided to finish it off on Mlkday on my own. I don't remember anything about what happened, but apparently from what I've heard and can kind of suss out, I got knocked off of the ladder by one of the that I was cutting. Took about a fifteen foot fall.

I broke my femur, I broke some ribs, I broke my scapula, I had some hairline fractions. I believe MARKMNT fractures. In lumbar in my back, punctured my lung and. Was treated to a lovely chest tube. And spent five days in the hospital.

So that Monday through that Friday, and then I was transported to a local rehab facility to rehab my leg and the rest of my body. Not a fun experience, although I have to say, as bad as all of that sounds, I did not suffer much pain. Like I said, I don't remember the accident itself. I remember seeing the EMTs show up. Of course, my wife was horrified and terrified and traumatized, and I think that's probably the worst part of all of this.

My daughter was off with friends, so she kind of found out later. I don't remember much. I remember showing up at the hospital and then very hazy after that, and then I remember being in the er and then being taken up to my room, and you know, family came and visited. The only non family member that came and visited was my co host for Cambridge on Mashawn Ronald Zuriggian. He brought me some cool toys.

Go check out Cambridge on mashan if you're not already listening. I got back home after two weeks of being in those facilities, and again, really not a lot of pain. I mean I was pumped full of meds in the hospital. At rehab, I was just getting gabapenton for the pain, some blood thinners and other miscellaneous stuff, but surprisingly pain free for the most part, I must say, and kind of relearning how to walk, not again. I can motor around pretty good.

I am currently in a wheelchair, but I can use a walker and even a cane to a certain extent. And so I'm going through PT at home now and getting myself all situated and hopefully back to normal. I got a real fucking nasty scar on my leg. Man, I shouldn't say nasty, but it's pretty damn long. They did a nice job of sewing it up or gluing it up, or whatever the heck they do these days, and so I'll have that fun thing to talk about for the rest of my life.

That and the twelve inch long metal rod that is now in my leg from my femur to my knee. The funny thing or the ironic. Man, maybe it's neither of those things. It's neither funny nor ironic. The shitty thing is is I was almost done with the job.

There's one long branch left, and my anger at myself and the situation made me think, oh, somebody needs to cut that fucking thing down. For me, and then by the time I got to rehab, I started to rethink it a little bit, and I thought, you know what, No, I'm leaving that thing up there for as long as I can, and screw it. It's going to be the reminder. This one long finger looks like the death finger of the ghost in a Christmas Carol, is going to remind me of the idiotic thing that I did. So it'll be up there for a while.

I hope my neighbor doesn't take it upon himself to just cut it down without talking to me, but that is a possibility. Now. If you're playing the movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You'll think you have experienced it, but you will be cheated. It's just such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your fucking telephone to get real.

So, yeah, that was kind of my shitty start of the year. Glad to be on the mend and back home, and I started looking at stuff and thought, you know what, let's get an episode out, Let's talk about this stuff, let's talk about movies, gosh darn it, and try to get twenty twenty five off to a decent start and hope to God Almighty that the next four years just don't absolutely kill all of us. As you all have heard me say throughout last year, watching movies has been tough. I'm not sure exactly what the reasons are. I know that my attention span last year was nearly non existent.

Watching movies with Cleo even became harder, and it was more family watches than individual watches with her, although we did do a number of the as well. I can tell by looking at my list here and what I've gone through. But I can tell you this lowest total watches of the year by far. Since I started with Letterboxed. I logged one hundred and fifty three movies and or one hundred and forty five since there were some duplicate watches throughout there.

That's I mean, considering I was close to five hundred a couple of years ago. That's a big, huge difference. I've been whiling away the hours watching a bunch of crap on YouTube, looking at stuff that doesn't require a great deal of thought and I can forget about immediately. So if you can believe it, I only released five episodes of Wake Upebi last year, and I looked at that and I thought, I can't be right, but oh, it sure is. And if you can believe it.

So I kind of turned it into a bi monthly show, which doesn't even pan out, because I'm sure that wasn't every couple of months that I released something. But you know, I'm still keeping this place. I'm still planning on doing stuff. There are some movies I like to watch with Cleo and talk about. There are some movies i'd like to maybe have Christashu or somebody else come on and talk about.

It's just finding the time to get around to it anymore has become a real struggle for me for whatever reason. Maybe it's self imposed, I don't know, but there you have it. Regardless of all that, It's been a while since I've done one of these look back episodes, but the basic structure is the same. Here. I'm going to talk about the family and or Cleo watches first, and then my individual watches, and a lot of this will be rewatches.

I'll note the new watches. Apologies on some of this that may have been in past episodes. I did also have a subdural hematoma and I was unconscious when I fell obviously, since I don't remember any thing about it, and so there is a little bit of brain loss going on here, and I don't particularly remember every little instance of stuff that we already talked about, So forgive me for that. I tried to suss that out as I was making my list and going, Okay, you don't really need to bring that up again. You and Cleo and Carlita talked about that, or you and Cleo talked about that.

Forgive the repeats as a family. In twenty twenty four, we started out the year with a Lord of the Rings trilogy rewatch. We have the extended edition DVDs that were released pretty much, you know, first thing after the films came out on physical media, and they are the two disc versions, so they couldn't even fit the full movies back then on one disc for a DVD. And I believe that Cleo also watched them. She went over to a friend's house for a sleepover and they watched them again.

You know, she likes them. She actually likes the Hobbit movies, which you know, whatever kind of count for taste sometimes, but great way to start the year. That was probably a push, you know, the holiday type stuff which I'll get into here that seems to crop up every year. I rewatched every which way but Loose, a childhood favorite of mine. Kind of bring that up because of my dad.

I know that he really enjoyed that film, probably talked about it on that Dad episode that I did Cleon and I watched Donnie Darko. That was her first time. She amazes me. She catches on to stuff so much more quickly than I do. I always have a little bit of trouble with that time loop aspect of the film.

But she got it right away and got the clues and the connections and all that junk. And I'm kind of like, oh yeah, I am right. And I've seen it three or four times. Probably I introduced her to a an absolute favorite film of mine, Harold and Maud. Was it you want to sing Out, Seeing Out and if you want to be Free?

The Free? And I am proud and happy to say that she got it and really liked it. It's something that we have almost watched again a couple of times, and I think would like to watch with my wife. I mean, it's just one of those movies it's just such a joyful experience, even with the sad sadness of the ending. It's a beautiful film.

I'm so happy she liked it. And the next film, though I don't think she enjoyed or they enjoyed. I watch this with Cleo and Carlita as much as that was All That Jazz And we watched that because we had done a rewatch of Chicago. I'm like, well, you guys got to watch All that jazz Man and I think it's just a little you know, it's a little it's a little rough. It's about a really awful per and I've always liked that film since I saw it as a kid on TV.

Cleon and I did a lot of poking around the A twenty four catalog, and in a pretty quick succession of time, we watched The Witch. I believe that was Khleio's first time. Have we watched it together again. I don't know. Go back and listen to episode Let's see if I've already talked about that.

A Hole on the Ground, which I have watched two or three times and have really enjoyed. And Lamb, which is just a heck of a lot of fun and I think kind of weirded her out a little bit. But she loved that little baby lamb child thing. I mean, who doesn't, And I guess I kind of. As I'm reading through my list here, I mixed this up with family watches, Kleo watches, and my own watches, so ignore what I said earlier.

Blame it on the brain damage. I watched a bunch of the original Planet of the Apes films and that was in prep for an episode of Camber Joe, Maashan or Ronnie. I knew Ronnie was going to be talking about his obsession with those domes. That led to finally watching the new versions, which I really liked, and then watched again. I watched again with the family and they really enjoyed as well, and we still haven't watched the new one yet though, need to do that.

I introduced Cleo first time watches for her with The Exorcist three and The Dead Zone, which I believe she liked. I know the Dead Zone she kind of feels the way I do about it. It's a very melancholy and sad film, but so well done, one of the best Stephen King adaptations and a heck of a Cronenberg movie. We watched, of course, because we did an episode on this, the Blues Brothers and sleep Away Camp. Go check out the Skamad's episode of Wake Up Heavy for our discussion about that and a bunch of other movies we watched, and then I think this was Cleo's idea.

We watched pretty much all of the Jurassic Park slash Jurassic World slash Jurassic A Kingdom, whatever the fuck they're called films, other than the first one, which I still really love. They're all kind of hit and miss with me, but enjoyable schlock. I guess I caught one of those perennial favorites of mine three Days of the Condor. I think a couple of times it was playing on maybe MGM or something, and I'll pretty much sit through it if I catch it, so I know, I caught it a couple of different times in different spots and ended up rounding it out, finishing it off much like and Cleo kind to watch this with me. It was on MGM again.

I believe I caught it the near the beginning, and she was in the room, and I thought, Okay, I'm gonna make her sort of watch this, and that is the taking of Pelham one two three. I don't know that she was paying real close attention, but I know that shortly thereafter I put part of the score, which I just freaking love on my phone and so's it's come up a couple of times in my car and we've looked it up in relation to you know, that's David Schier, Tallya Shire, Jason Schwartzman, what the connection was with all of them, and but she sorted that all out for me in the car. It was kind of fun. Another perennial gosh, almost bi monthly. I think we ended up watching Silence of the Lambs about four or five times last year.

It just kept I think it was on showtime or something, and it just kept popping up, and we would be in the room and we would jokingly say, oh, let's watch it again, and the joke became a reality and we would click on it and just kind of sit through it again. And that was even a lot of the time, my wife's suggestion or joke that became reality, and I was like, you know, I'll freaking watch that movie just about any time. So we went through that a bunch. Nobody comes out of the water lots of times. There's leaves and things.

Who knows, Let's see what we can do in twenty twenty five with that film. And I know we talked about this on our Long Legs episode. We watched the whole Mad Max slash Furiosa franchise. Really enjoyed that experience. And I'm not sure if I talked about this or not.

Finally getting Cleo to watch Blue Ruin, and this was I think, did we watch Green Room or we talked about watching Green Room and I kept saying, you need to watch Blue Ruin. You know, it's a lot more low key, but it's still really amazing my dude making Blairs in it. And part of it was in prep for me knowing that Jeremy Sonier had a new movie coming out on Netflix, which I'll talk about in a little bit. And so we did watch it, and she did enjoy it. You know, I may not overtake Green Room kind of as our favorite together to watch, but man, I love that movie and I love making Blair in it.

It's such a great revenge flick. I think around that same time or even that same day, we watched Color out of Space, which Cleo really enjoyed. I think my wife came home about midway through and was like, what in the world are you guys watching? That is one of those really well done Nick Cage performances that fits the role and man the effects and that are just crazy. Let's put it that way.

I rewatched again. This was on the Long Legs episode. I rewatched all of Oz Good Prickins films. Cleo got to see pretty much all of them, mainly for the first time. We talked about that and still haven't gone back.

I haven't watched Long Legs a second time yet. Need to do that. I need to get my wife to see his other films and even the Twilight Zone episode, which is pretty fun. Another movie that we watched multiple times and watched I believe before right before my accident is Game Night. You cannot go wrong with Game Night?

How can that be profitable for Freedom La. I've probably said this, but I'm beginning to believe that that is my favorite comedy film of the last twenty something years, again because of camberd jem with Shan. Something that my co host Ronnie brought up was James Bond the books I think in particular, but maybe also the movies. He hasn't discussed it in full yet, but he brought it up as an as an obsession of his and I kind of poop pooed it. I remember watching them on TV when I was a kid and just never really it never sunk its claws into me as a franchise or as anything.

I don't know. I think, particularly with the Roger Moore stuff, the campiness of it didn't really work for me as a kid. But I decided, Okay, I'm going to watch the ones with Richard Keel and this relates to Cambridge and with Shawn as well. I have met Richard Keel when I was younger, probably have talked about that on this show as well. So I watched The Spy Who Loved Me, which has for me the best Bond theme ever.

I wasn't looking, so now you found me. I found it hard roun. My heaven am. Spy Steve and all you said, dude, and I relish any chance to insert a little clip of that on my show. So I probably just did that right then and Moonraker and enjoyed them.

And so when Ronnie gets to that, I will probably go through the Roger Moore films in total and watch them and Cleo and Carlida were kind of around when I was watching them, and so they sort of got interested and hooked, and I think we watched Moonraker together. They caught a little bit of the spy who loved me, and so maybe they'll watch a bunch of them with me as well. And it had been so long since I had seen any of those films. As the holidays rolled around, we did our Cleo and my annual Rewatch a Trick or Treat and Crampis and we watched that one with my wife. So we get those Michael Doherty films in every year, love them both.

I'm not sure how much my wife likes watching Crampis every year, but we're probably gonna keep doing it. And then with Thanksgiving, so Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, I was really in the mood for watching holiday themed stuff, movies, specials, whatever, so we watched all of the Charlie Brown specials, those into the Year specials. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. We watched multiple versions of a Christmas Carol, including the Muppet Christmas Carol, including the Jim Carrey one. We watched that almost every year and really enjoy it.

You know, the rotoscoping stuff doesn't bother me so much in that one because of the way that the characters look. They're not super super realistic human characters. We also watched multiple versions of The Grinch. My daughter has a thing for the again the Jim Carrey live action version of that, so we watched that violent night has become an annual staple home alone. We watched the Christmas Chronicles, Good Old Kurt Russell, Netflix Films, and what else did we watch?

Not Christmas related? But we watched Fargo again on my daughter's behalf the heck do you mean? She kept talking about it and my wife and I had caught a little bit of it or most of it on kle and then we went ahead and watched it in full with Cleo. I watched Diehard, which is a Christmas movie as far as I'm concerned. I got a hankering, and I think this happens almost every year at that time of year.

I watched the original Star Wars trilogy and ended up watching them twice actually, and the family joined me for most of that, not the second watch necessarily, but definitely the first watch. Our final rewatches of the year were the first two Guardians of the Galaxy. Films, Locator, Mama, Papa, Common for You, I'm a Space, I'll. Be around, and Big Monkey Bird for the Worst. Onto at least my first time watches.

We started out the year with a couple of interesting Hulu entries Quiz Lady and Self Reliance. Check those out, they're interesting. We watched a couple of crazy movies early on Swiss Army Man, which I had been meaning to catch for a long time, a twenty four film, and that was because of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which we had watched I don't know how much before that, but knowing that that was their other the Daniels Daniels, is that the Daniels or the David's Daniels, I believe other film prior film, and yeah, it's a little bit darker than I expected, but very interesting. And then we watched Poor Things Your Ghosts Lanthemo's film, which we all really enjoyed, and the much different are You There, God, It's Me Margaret, which was cute.

Cleio and I watched Lisa Frankenstein and Abigail, which were new to both of us, and I believe that was rounded out with Freaky so it was like a Catherine Newton Triple feature. I think we may have talked about that on one of our episodes together. I believe we did. That's sort of starting to ring a bell in my baddled brain. My wife and I watched Killers of the Flower Moon and really enjoyed it.

Again one of the man rough rough stuff and Scorsese's still killing it man. But wow, yeah, hard to watch. I know we talked about this, I believe on the Long Legs episode. The Noughty Nun films that we watched Immaculate and the first Omen that shared some DNA. Those were a hoot to say the least.

Need to watch that first Omen again. I believe I had an appearance on the Projection booth last year for a British film called Radio On, So I watched that. Very interesting. Check out that episode if you haven't, I may try and link that here for you. If I remember, my memory ain't so great.

We watched m Night Shyamalan's Trap with Josh Hartnet and we're be mused, be fuddled, and at least I was highly entertained by that craziness. This is like the happening kind of Shyamalan, just bizarre. But I think on purpose, I think it's a comedy. I think he thinks it's a comedy, or it was supposed to be a comedy. I don't know, but something tells me because Josh Hartnett is cuckoo in that.

I mentioned Blue Ruin earlier. Jeremy Solnier, I was really looking forward to Rebel Ridge looked very interesting, always happy to watch a new film of his, and I kept pushing to watch that with Cleo and Carlita. They were kind of himmed and hot about it. So one night they were in the bedroom watching I don't know, maybe an award show or something else, and I'm like, gosh, darn it, I'm gonna just watch this my darn self. So I did, and really really liked it.

I don't know if I talked about that at all on an episode, but man, oh man, was that good, very very great lead performance. And of course I didn't write the actor's name down, darn it. I'll have my AI helper insert that here. The actor's name is Aaron Pierre. He played mid sized sedan and old.

Don Johnson was great in it. Was great in it, just a really interesting I know this comparison gets tossed around a lot, but a kind of first blood scenario done in such a fascinating way. Yeah, I do believe I did talk about it, but yeah, good stuff, watch it. Watch all of that guy's movies, Jeremy Sonier that is, or the actor too. I've only seen him in a couple things.

We caught new flicks when they became available on streaming, Deadpool and Wolverine and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Yeah, you know they are what they are, sequels to Tint Poll. I don't know. I don't know what you would call beetle Juice beetlejuice. That was a bit of a mess, way too many storylines going on, but I believe we all enjoyed it to a certain extent.

I watched To the Devil a Daughter. I know I talked about that at some point, I remember, I think because of drf Fan. Maybe I didn't, did I, or maybe I mentioned because of Dr Fan and the underage nudity, and so yes, I ended up watching To the Devil a Daughter, which I enjoyed. It kind of reminded me a little bit of the weirdness in Blood on Satan's Claw on some of those other folk horror films from that era. Cleo and I watched The New Salem's Lot.

I actually kind of enjoyed it. I had heard the negative comments about it and how it's pretty truncated, which it definitely is very simplified story, but there were a lot of really cool creepysual vigils visuals in that movie that worked for me. I'd actually kind of like to watch it again, just to compare and contrast in my head. Cleon and I had watched the original mini series earlier in the year. I don't think she was paying all that much attention to it.

I mean, it's a lot, you know, it's three plus hours long. It's a TV movie, so it's not super duper exciting, but again, very very creepy visuals in that. I was surprised that they used the same Barlow makeup for this. I'm not sure why they went with the Nosferatu look for the vampire in this one, if only, I guess as a nod to the original mini series, but it doesn't make any sense because that is not how the character is written in the book, So I don't know. That's a head scratcher for me as a family.

We watched Will and Herper on Netflix and really really enjoyed it. Yeah, I mean, can I suggest it to everybody? I would like to. I know that some people are just not going to be up for that kind of thing, and that's sad, but it was a very interesting and very touching story. We also watched Woman of the Hour, and I don't know, I'm not sure how I felt about that we had just watched something about that true story.

I think because of the movie coming out, they were replaying stuff on you know, dateline and whatever, and the liberties that the movie took were unnecessary, I think, and just I sort of ended up rubbing me the wrong way and the way that it was a nonlinear story also, I don't know, it didn't quite work for this kind of true crime thing to me at least, so that was sort of a bit of a miss. And we also watched the latest iteration of the Ghostbusters franchise, which was a big fat eh for me. Cleon and I watched Alien Romulus, which was fine. I like Fiddie Albarez. I would definitely be up for watching this again, and the next one I'm kind of I'm not gonna say I'm all in on alien stuff, but it's intriguing enough to me.

The ash recreation business aside, it was decent enough. We rounded out the year on a religious note, finished up with Heretic with Hugh Grant and Sophie Thatcher Oh gosh, and I forgot the other girl's name, as well as Conclave. Both were great. I would watch both again. Really enjoyed the the religious aspect of both.

Actually, that Latter day Saints thing and Heretic is always fascinating to me, and watching a bunch of pissy old priests run around and trying to pick a pope was just fun as all. Heck, they say there's just enough religion in the world to make men hate one another, but not enough to make them love. Oh is that what they say? For my top watches of the year, I'm gonna go with every which way but loose, even though that's a rewatch. I really enjoyed seeing that again for the first time in decades and would definitely watch again and maybe try to get Cleota watch.

And it's kind an orangutang in it. Come on, poor things. Killers of the Flower Moon, the first omen of the two noughty Nun movies. That was my preferred film, Furiosa Radio on, very low key film, but lots of fun. To the devil a Daughter, I'd add to that because of that Blood on Satan's Claw parison.

Heretic and Conclave would be tops for last year and the two top and I didn't even mention, well, I guess I kind of have been passing two top watches for me last year. Favorite films of last year, Long Legs and Rebel Ridge. So if you haven't seen any of those films and are curious, track them down and watch them. Most of them are probably streaming somewhere. Actually I don't know is Long leg streaming right now?

Has it come out? It was? What neon? So which if it is, it should be on Hulu. So if you got Hulu, check it out.

Rebel Ridge is on Netflix, Uh believe first, omen is Hulu. I don't go find them, do your homework and find them all right until next time, which shoo knows when that'll be. I've got a few things, like I said on my list, that I'd like to watch with Cleo. Probably getting her to record is going to be even harder now because she's seventeen and she's hanging out with her friends on the weekends, and I'm losing my little baby girl. But we'll see.

Hopefully I can get us all to watch a couple of things and her and I to talk about something, which is always fun. Until then, maybe by the next time I talk to you, I'm completely held up and walking on my own and without a limp or who knows what, who knows what this pet will will get me. But here's to hoping that to twenty five, good lord, twenty twenty five isn't an unmitigated disaster, and that we all make it through the year. I don't know, We'll see how that pounds out the next time I talk to y'all. Have a great day, have a great month, have a great however long it is until I see you next, And thank you so much for listening.

And don't forget anything can happen when you wake up heavy, fucked up. Wow, this has just been such a pleasure. I'm such a lucky boy. I can't wait to go home. Wake Up Heavy is a weirding Way Media podcast