Blank Check with Griffin & David - Assault on Precinct 13 with April Wolfe

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

John Carpenter puts his own spin on Howard Hawks’ iconic western RIO BRAVO and Griffin learns about “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” - it’s our ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 episode! Screenwriter and film critic April Wolfe (2019’s BLACK CHRISTMAS) joins us as we discuss the most dramatic vanilla ice cream cone of all time. Is this one of Carpenter’s best musical scores? Gonna go ahead and say YES. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

you want to be a podcast your first night out, Lieutenant? Yes, sir. There are no podcasts anymore, Bishop. Just men who follow orders. That was worth it. Right? That was worth it. I had to do some digging because IMDb only had the first line, so then I had to scrub through the movie with captions on

to figure out getting the lead-in line right. I thought that was worth it. This movie has a lot of great lines but a lot of them don't make sense it's got a lot of good cram the word podcast in them yes yes but like uh you look like someone spit in your sock that's a good line but how do you put podcasts i'm not gonna say you look like someone spit in your podcast that doesn't mean anything you take the specifics out of that line you've done so many stupid openings to this show. I think you're not above doing that.

I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. I think every opening I've ever done has been very, very smart. That's what I would say. Very smart and very clever and very natural. Because this is a podcast.

You see, that's what I, when I put the word podcast in the line from the movie, it was because I wanted people to know that the thing they're listening to is a podcast. You see, that's what I, when I put the word podcast in the line from the movie, it was because I wanted people to know that the thing they're listening to is a podcast. It's called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. And it is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. And sometimes they execute an assault on Precinct 13, baby.

And this is a miniseries on the films of John Carpenter. It's called... They Podcast. It's called They Podcast. Yep. Ben made the decision. I know Ben made the decision. He swung in.

The right decision. It just still hurts me every time. It's a little too raw for me to say it. So I let David made the decision. He swung in. The right decision. It just still hurts me every time. It's a little too raw for me to say it, so I let David say it instead. Ben should say it. Define Ben, say it. They podcast. Producer Ben, say it. They podcast.

Ben-do-ser, say it. No, we're not going to do this for like 10 hours. We're talking about his second film today. In some ways, sort of his first proper film. But Dark Star counts. I know he's sometimes sort of shrugged it off because it was like, well, it was a short and it was stressed into a feature

and it never should have been a feature and all that sort of stuff. But this is the movie that becomes a calling card for him. And then the next film makes him a legend. It's kind of your standard, like, one, two, three punch kind of thing. You know, where it's like, a lot of directors recover. Their first movie is like, maybe it's a kind of half-formed idea. Or just some weird thing they leapt on just to make something, right?

Right. They're trying to be scrappy with very limited resources or, you know, you have your Piranha 2s where someone, like, has their for hire job that drives them crazy

and they, like, it forms them. They become committed to never making a movie like that ever again. But this is kind of your standard, like, okay, it's a student film that pops a little bit. He wants to direct.

No one is hiring him to direct. So he writes two spec scripts. There's this one, and there's a film called Eyes, which John Peters and Barbra Streisand buy for her to star in. That does not happen. It later becomes The Eyes of Laura Mars. And then they decide to let him direct this movie with a $100 million budget.

And this is the thing that... $100,000 budget. Jesus Christ. Yes. $100,000. A scrappy $100 million budget. If he spent $100 million in this money,

I might, you know, investigate him. I would criticize it. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Correction department, because I got a book for this dang ass miniseries.

Most sources cite 150K, but an interview included on second site, Joseph Kaufman is adamant is somewhere between 200 and 250 grand. But then I saw some Carpenter interviews where he disputed that. He disputed the fact that now the story has gone up to 200,000. But this is what happens with movies that were made like 40, 50 years ago.

It's like no one really remembers anymore. Everyone's old and everyone's like, no, no, it wasn't that much. It was this. It was also the 70s. So everybody was probably kind of a little fucked up. Oh, yeah. There's another factor this too, which is like when you make a hundred thousand dollar movie

and 40 years later, people are still buying it on Blu-ray and droves and the streaming rights are still expensive. Then they go like, well, I don't, maybe it costs $15 million

because I don't think they're actually profits to go around. Well, sure. That's like, I think that's a thing too. I guess guess by the way just show so she knows can start talking at any time uh this show is bad and unstructured uh and we love it when people talk before we introduce them yeah just swing on in i i mean

i'm i think it i think it has more to do with the fact that the post-production costs actually probably brought up the budget to 200 and 250,000 because what will end up happening so often is the posted um budget will be what was projected and then the final budget is your pickups and and all of your post and and there was a quite a bit of um money spent on um mixing and um effects and things on on this that happened post shoot. So I can see it being up to that. And it's like at that point, it's like, we need the money. Look, come on.

What are you going to do? Not finish the movie? Like, come on, get us more. Get us more cash. Yeah. I think he probably held them hostage to it because he was like really adamant about making sure that this looked and sounded good for what its budget was. So it probably could have started off as 100 to 150 and then got brought up to it.

The sound was like a huge thing I was reading about that he spent like a disproportionate amount of money in post getting really, really top level sound, despite the fact that the film had been so bootstrappy. And it's smart. It makes a difference. I do think that sound is often the element that early filmmakers working on a low budget prioritize the least. And it really does give you more production value than a lot of other things like sound can make an okay image more impactful but the reverse is not true i would argue i think sound can cover up for a lot of visual mistakes and and sell them as legitimate um uh auteurship so i think that's absolutely true but that's i mean that's the thing with carpenter is the fact that like, he is, you know, a sonic artist as well. Like he's, he's working in, um, the sound space and

he's really experienced with that. And he doesn't have to pay himself for those things. He can just shit out a score and figure it out. Although the score for this one, um, I know that he said it took a pretty long time to create a lot of the sounds that he was looking for just because of their limited equipment. What I was seeing is it sounded like it took him three days to actually write it and it took him a very long time to figure out on like a technical level how to execute it. Yeah. Like I think creatively it was pretty simple. how to execute it. Yeah.

Like, I think creatively it was pretty simple. He does seem to be one of these guys who, as you said, can kind of shit these things out and just immediately be like, I don't know, it sounds like this

and just put it down. And then you just have, you know, like, I mean, this movie's probably 15 minutes of music that he repeats over and over and over again. I think he wrote, like,

three different themes, all of which are really impactful. But he was kind of revolutionizing some of the technology in terms of at least using this for a film score. I guess he knows what she's talking about. Sure does.

Butting in with very insightful comments because she is a former film critic and a current screenwriter specializing in horror films. This is kind of your ballywick. This is your world that you love. Also previously the host of the Switchblade Sisters podcast, but writer of the Black Christmas remake.

April Wolf, thank you so much for being on the show. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be part of the John Carpenter series. Hell yeah. Big podcast. Yes. You know, every time we commit to a new director

and we look at the list of all the movies we have and David loves nothing more in the world than scheduling. Truly, I cannot overstate this. It gives him such a rush anytime he's able to type anything into a spreadsheet

and feel like he's organized. I mean, John Carpenter won and there were already names like two minutes later in that spread. He hesitates, not even a moment before jumping on that spreadsheet. And, you know, we look at it and sometimes it's like we know certain people have reached out and said, if you ever do this, I'd want to cover this movie. Sometimes it's like we know certain people have reached out and said, if you ever do this, I'd want to cover this movie. Sometimes we have our friends who have been frequent guests on the show and we go, let's throw out to them and see. But then we always have this space where we look at the list and we go like, who are some fun people to bring in that we've never talked to before? Who would be a good match for this?

And it was like a big aha moment of just like, oh, April would be excellent. This feels like an exciting time to bring her on. Oh, man. Fun is like, we'll see. I'm having fun. I'm having fun. I got numbers wrong. I said this movie costs 100 million. I'm just I'm ready to just like get really dark and just sad. That's it. Just so sad. Very into that. I also feel like i mean alex ross perry is going to be on halloween next week spoiler alert and he has been spending the last couple months writing like a dissertation to try to correct david and i and our limited understanding of like the the history of the slasher movie because of a wanton comment that we made in some previous episode.

Wait, really? What's the wanton? It doesn't. Well, you know what? He'll tell us. He'll tell us. I just know that he's got like some master document.

He's ready to school us. But the original Black Christmas is one of the movies that kind of gets credit for helping to formalize the slasher job right right yeah that's that's like the original slasher movie yeah it is i mean for north america but i i have a i have a feel like i have a more global sense of of what i think a slasher is that isn't necessarily accepted it's just like when the when the term is coined, because we can go back into earlier horror films too

and say that they have the markings of a slasher. But I think also that Jollos have slasher roots too. That's what I was going to say. Yes. Right. Black Christmas feels like that's the sort of breakthrough for American slashers. And then Halloween is the explosion moment.

Mm hmm. Yeah. And, you know, there's like rumors, too, of the fact that John Carpenter was inspired by Bob Clark and was just like, oh, do you want to you want to do a Halloween version of this? Like you already did a Christmas one. And so he makes a Halloween movie with Deborah. It is so funny that like Sean Carpenter

makes Halloween and is like, yep, I'm a master of horror. Here's who I am for the rest of my career. For the last 15 years, my movies will all be called John Carpenter's Blank because that's the brand name. And Bob Clark makes this like breakthrough American slasher movie. And I was like, cool,

I'll go do like... I say North American because he's like, he's been drafted into American culture so deeply. North American slasher film and then the rest of his career is like Porky's and Baby Geniuses and A Christmas Story.

He invented a bunch of other genres, sort of. Yeah, Rhinestone. I forgot he did Rhinestone. Yeah. Fascinating guy. I forgot he did Rhinestone. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating guy. I mean, we'll talk about Halloween next week. But like, yeah, Black Christmas, it's just Carpenter adds a villain.

Like Black Christmas, the villain is so obscure. Yeah, he's nebulous kind of thing. That's the Jalo tradition, yeah. Carpenter makes the avatar, right? Like this big guy. The icon. Right. But this, yes, this movie is Carpenter working in more of an action thriller vein, doing his sort of modern Western.

But you see, you know, because, I mean, Dark Star has the fucking beach ball with claws sequence, right? Which almost plays like a parody of a horror sequence. But you can see the bones of a guy who understands how to structure and build a sequence around tension, even if it's kind of done mockingly. You can see the bones of Escape from New York in this is what I think though. To me, those are the, that's the, the line that I,

that I draw. Hardcore. But I, but I also think he's doing some really interesting stuff with like tension, build and release in this movie, or even though it is not a horror film, you understand why he was then like able to just totally hit the ground running on Halloween.

Can I tell you guys a secret? Anything. Any secrets, please. When I watched this movie and every time I've watched it, I have always imagined that the gang is vampires. And there's like an extra layer for me that they are these like kind of undead or... Zombies. Yeah, right.

Well, you know, I had a kind of a breakthrough or zombies. Yeah. Right. Well, you know, I had a kind of a breakthrough in watching this. I had a similar kind of take, but I was like, this is like a video where they're like computer generated bad guys that don't like, you know what I mean? That don't really have like a life. They're just kind of have like their one goal of killing all of them.

Do you know what I mean? It really feels like almost like a video game setup. It is interesting since, of course, Carpenter has ostensibly retired from directing because he wants to focus on being the best of the world on Xbox. That's a thing he talks about a lot, that he just plays video games all the time

and that's his priority in life. He loves Fortnite. It does feel like video games have sort of become Carpenter movies like it's one of those things i mean i feel like we were talking about this when we were doing like the star wars commentary maybe for the original film where you're like oh there's so much of the language of video games in like the the trench run in the original star wars and i feel like there's a lot in modern video games that is taken from the sort of storytelling tropes

and the aesthetics and all of that of what Carpenter did. And the sort of very primal conflicts, you know? I don't play video games, so I'm not sure I can speak to it. I don't either. This is why I'm looking for David. I only play games featuring Lego bricks or Mickey Mouse. I need you to tell me whether or not I'm right.

I feel like games have evolved a little past this, but I mean, like this is a tower defense movie, right? Sure. Sure. You are stuck in the place and there is this seemingly endless horde that's sort of spilling in and you have to

write, you know, figure out a way to survive and limited resources. And yeah, yes. I mean, I do think gaming is, but I can't,

I need to read more about Carpenter's gaming fixations because I know that he is a gamer and he talks about it now, but I actually want to dig into what it is that he, like what he likes, because I don't, apart from seeing once that he likes Fortnite, I have not really gotten into his

gaming tastes. I would love it if he only played that video game that is just like controlling the paper that blows in the wind. He only plays the game where the duck honks at people or the goose or whatever

i think he plays like big block but like he plays like assassin's creed and fallout and stuff you know what i mean like he likes like you know what do you what they call triple a games which is great i totally i totally support there's one i'm forgetting which I'm going to find where he was talking about just kind of how committed he was to it. He also famously was like a humongous Sonic the Hedgehog fan. He was really big

on Sonic from the inception and wanted to make a Sonic movie for a while. It's just what I don't understand about Carpenter sometimes where I'm like, and like with this movie, obviously like this movie is so great

in how stripped down it is, but all the interviews you read and all the retrospection he does, he's always like, I wanted to make it bigger, you know? And it's like, is he just constantly at war with the fact that he is best doing something like this?

And like the idea of him doing a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, obviously I'd love to see it, but would it be good? Like, is that really, would that really be his speed? I don't know. Yeah, well, it's a very fast speed. I don't know if he could run as fast as Sonic. You set me up for that.

Yes. No, it is an interesting kind of push and pull with him because he does not have that tension that I feel like a lot of genre directors do, where once they're successful, they're like, but I want to be taken seriously. You know, he is he's pretty comfortable. And I think like, I don't want to make prestige movies. I don't want to jump over and do like austere dramas. I like being in these worlds, but I wish people gave me more money to play in them. That having been said, he's the best at this. And even like to April's point, it's like, well, he saves money by shitting out a score himself. But like, would any of these films be improved by him being able to hire a real composer?

He always says he wishes he could, but I'm like 25% of the success of this movie is the theme over the opening credits like it just sets the tone so incredibly well i cannot imagine him hiring jerry goldsmith to do something that would be more impactful than this yeah but the thing is that like that most of us just constantly overlook the fact that one of the reasons why he doesn't want to that he doesn't do those big movies is because he hates people he doesn't want to deal with fucking executives like he's not hiring he wants to hire another composer but is he going to get along with that person probably not right right hey give me that i'll show you what to do yeah he's just like he famously dislikes people and that's one of the reasons why it's just like you you know, the new Halloween stuff. He's just like, whatever, give me all the money.

Here's a score, you know? And he like just doesn't care. It's a control thing for him. He doesn't trust anyone else. He doesn't want to have to collaborate with anyone else as much of it as he can do on his own. I guess, well, I'm sort of waiting for, and we obviously haven't

reached it yet like what the breaking point is going to be where he is working on a bigger scale and realizes like oh i can't fucking well i hate these people yeah but i don't know i mean it's like the thing is the movie where he gets a shot at a bigger scale for the first time and it's arguably his masterpiece and it's a flop and Universal's like, well, no more studio films for you. Yeah. April, how do you feel about Carpenter in general? Like, is Carpenter one of your guys

or like, is it more of a mixed bag for you? Like, is this your, this is the movie you picked when I threw his sort of filmography at you. Is this a favorite for you? And we asked you early. So, I mean, like the majority of the films were open. Yeah this a favorite for you? And we asked you early. So, I mean, like the majority

of the films were open. Yeah, you had a lot of choice. Yeah, no one talks about it. So I was just like, fuck it, you know, like no one's going to talk about this.

I think for me, I love his kind of scrappy resourcefulness. And I sometimes am just like, oh man, you know, Carpenter's overrated or whatever.

But the thing is, he's not. And sometimes the things the things you know when people kind of reach back into horror stuff and they just want to try to imitate i think that you know so often they go for carpenter and sometimes i think they're just imitating the wrong things from him that like kind of made him so different from other filmmakers like it's it's like kind of hard him so different from other filmmakers. Like it's, it's like kind of hard for people to identify and imitate, even if they're like trying to do like a score like is or something like that.

There's just some kind of piece of him that is partially like his attitude of just like, he kind of hates people. His morality is really fucked up because of that. And I, I'm constantly, I love morality tales, which I think is probably

one of the reasons why i gravitate towards you know horror and genre because there's just so much of that um and it's just really hard to pick apart exactly how he feels about things other than that like you can't really trust people and um like there's going to be a lot of sins of the past. And like, it's just a lot of kind of random violence that feels fairly realistic, even if it's like in his weird heightened, surreal sense late sensationalist kind of tone. I just feel like he has such a great handle on humanity that other filmmakers just miss because they're like they're

so obsessed with trying to get like the halloween killer and i'm like that's that's not what makes him special it's these other things that people just they don't pay attention to as much so i'm i'm a pretty big fan and in fact prince of darkness was a really really big influence on our black christmas remake which is of, one of the things that, like, people don't really, like, talk about Prince of Darkness, and they're not really... But also, like, I think it's a great movie. Maybe not a lot of other people do.

We both have not seen it, and it's, like, one of the exciting things about the series is getting to that one, yeah. It is ridiculous. There are so many monologues and so much strange um shit happening in this church that like uh with like this totem kind of thing that is essentially like the the antichrist that's in a green goo in the in a church basement you know and that's like pleasance as the lead right that's like going wild too like later plus yes yeah late later yeah you're you so many monologues you guys

i fucking love it where you just get like actors who know how to act and oh that's so exciting is it halloween four or five where daniel harris was like he was a really nice man but like he stank of bourbon and like so much of it was him which is right around the same time as prince of the dark like so much of his performance is him like leading in and yelling at like this little girl and she's like he was totally pleasant to me he just i realized later like oh that's like bourbon on his breath yeah i'm just thinking about like he had the darkest eyes the devil's eyes where it's like he had the foulest breath the bourbon's breath

yeah like just staring off into the distance haunted describing pleasance's breath we'll have we'll have time to talk pleasance uh right as we go we'll go to pleasanceville uh yeah two things i want to say off of what you said april uh One is which, these are two quotes on the Wikipedia. One is from, what's it called? Shock Value, the Jason Zineman book. About when Dan O'Bannon saw the film, he thought it was disgusting. And he told Carpenter that he thought

that the kind of coolness through which he depicted the cruelty and the violence of the movie was uh reflective of his casual disregard for humanity and and vice vice versa his disregard for humanity had been reflected in how carpenter had treated oban and during dark star sure sure there's an axis grinding at this in that criticism right and his uh oban's quote was his disdain for human beings would be serviced if he could make a film without people in it damn i mean i think dan's got i think dan's being because like i feel like carpenter's answer to most of that would be like yeah yeah I do have a bit of a right yeah

and then and then O'Bannon's like and it's because you're a jerk give me my you know give me my 50% of you know like I don't know like God love Dan O'Bannon

he's just he's just a crank but it's two cranks it's two cranks right too much crank energy when they're when they're together that's right

that's why they could never work again and we're not talking about Jason Statham shit no no no although it is high voltage when the two of them are in the same room yeah or were when they're together. That's right. That's why they could never work again. And we're not talking about Jason Statham shit. No. No. No, although it is high voltage when the two of them

are in the same room. Yeah. Or were, RIP. The other thing here was, and I don't direct quote here, but it's apparently in one of the commentary tracks the Carpenter's done

for some release of this. But he explicitly said, like, my whole conceptualization for the gang is to code them more as, like, zombies or conceptualization for the gang is to code them more as, like, zombies or vampires or ghouls. That I didn't want them to behave like humans,

I wanted them to have a bare minimum of dialogue, and even their, like, very slow methodical but kind of stilted movements, I want them to feel weirdly supernatural. And whether or not it's to be literally interpreted that way, he wants them to make, he wants to make them feel inhuman

and closer to some sort of mindless horde of monsters that we're used to seeing in these movies. Yeah. It reminded me, actually, of, like, that British movie, Psychomania, of, like, the motorcycle gang who, um, they kill themselves

to live forever. And they just like, they torment the small British village on their motorcycles with their leather jackets. They're just a gang that won't die. And it just reminded me of that. So in my head too, it's like they're either vampires

or they're like this like psycho gang. Psychomania? Psychomania. Is George Sanders' last film? Yeah, I think so. That is bizarre. It's a beautiful film. Wow, I need to see this.

Do not watch it when you've like gotten far too stoned. I can tell you that. Noted. Noted. Yeah, it's interesting because like, talking about Carpenter, right, and his necessary scrappy resourcefulness, right? Because, you know, he said like, I thought Dark Star was going to be a calling card. No one called.

The only thing I could get hired to do was write spec scripts. I wrote scripts that were small. I talked them into letting me direct one, but I was going to get a bare minimum budget. And most of the financing through this was like acquired through like parents of friends. Like he was like, I got very lucky that I knew rich kids in college and was able to sort of talk them into giving me a very limited amount of money for this movie. But when he started writing this, it was a straight Western. He was like, I want to make my Hawks Western. I want to make my Rio Bravo homage. It's going to take place in the Old West.

This movie would not be as good if it took place in the Old West. It would feel, in my mind, more like just an obvious Hawks pastiche. Right, it would feel like a total remake-y kind of thing. Right, rather than him

turning into his own thing in the same way where it's like the fact that he probably, not that I'm implying he wanted to, but that he probably couldn't have afforded to make this gang literal monsters, but instead has human beings act like zombies gives it so much more power, you know? You know? Well, I mean, I think that's, I think he, it could have been good and different if it was Old West, if he kept the kind of like nighttime aspect and made them some kind of monsters. Oh, sure. It reminds me of that movie Gargoyle, which is a TV movie that came out in the late 70s. a TV movie that came out in the late seventies. And it has some kind,

there's like a, it's contemporary, but you're in a kind of like old West desert kind of thing feeling. And there's like these gargoyles that are attacking, trying to get the, the, the, the skeleton of one of their own back from this like roadside museum. But that's like 500 the thing he was never going to get the budget to do which is like oh it's the old west

and it has makeup yeah that would yeah that's just not possible unfortunately but yeah we can always imagine that they're vampires like that's great right i like that uh The design of gargoyles looks insane. Stan Winston did this. Yeah. This is a, are you looking at this creature, David? I am.

Yeah. It's fun. It's like almost a friendly kid character. If that, if you know, you know what I mean? Cause it's got like these kind of like eyes and this, the big, big brow.

Uh, I could almost see liking the gargoyle well the gargoyle is played by bernie casey i do like him then yeah he's great he's actually i mean he turns out to be like a kind of character you're just like yeah absolutely give back the skeleton of the gargoyle why would you do that the scripts he writes post dark star eyes which becomes eyes of Laura Mars blood river which almost got made with John Wayne and Elvis

Presley I think we talked about this but then that movie never comes to fruition black moon rising which becomes a Tommy Lee Jones vehicle much later escape from New York City which then becomes escape from New York city, which then becomes escape from New York. And,

uh, and this, uh, are sort of that initial burst where he's just really prolific writing stuff, hoping someone will let him direct one of them. Yes. This was called siege. Uh,

obviously the movie takes place in precinct nine, but I guess they just thought 13 sounded cooler. It does movie. It sounded cooler. It does. In the movie, it's 9. It was Precinct 9, District 13. Right. I think they may have tagged that on to be like, uh. I mean, Assault on Precinct 13 is a great title.

Like, I'm not. I am not. Assault on Precinct 9 sounds like a fucking bag of dog shit. I don't want to watch that movie. Can I tell you guys another secret? Please. Of course. like a fucking bag of dog shit i don't want to watch that movie can i tell you guys another secret please of course so i have a problem like seeing and comprehending um numbers sometimes is like i had a hard time writing threes and fives for a long time like numbers are just like

hard for me to comprehend in a way that other people can like on a page or something or just in my head so assault on precinct i have never not had to look up what number it is. I can't remember numbers. I can't like, there's like a, it's almost like a blank spot in my head. So I've always had to look up which number it is, even though I love this movie,

which is wild because I'll be like in the middle of like talking to someone like you and just be like assault on precinct. And then I just have to pause. And then I have to Google. I have a little of that, but I don't know if I have it to that degree. I'd just be like, assault on precinct, and then I just have to pause, and then I have to Google. I have a little of that, but I don't know if I have it to that degree. I mean, I obsessively remember box office numbers, but then we'll

flip basic numbers all the time in anything. Sure. Like, most times I have... Like your bank account. My bank account, certainly, but also most times I have moved into a new apartment, i sign up for stuff with the wrong apartment number because i can't remember where i live like that's an ongoing issue with me sure you just have to get like write it on your hand i think for a while yeah yeah i

do memento i had an apartment i lived in for two years where all my mail went to my next door neighbor and she had to keep on bringing it over to me. That sounds like a real Griffin move. Yeah, it does. And I was also, I was very confused because I think I was living in apartment 22 and I was like, well, do I live in 22

or 23? Which one is me and which one's the B? I'm not joking here. I was genuinely getting confused as to which apartment I lived in as opposed to the B in I'm not joking here. I was genuinely getting confused as to which apartment I lived in as opposed to the B in 23. That's how my brain works. I'm reading some quotes here from Carpenter where he's grumpy about, like,

look, of course it's Rio Bravo, but it's not I'm not copying Rio Bravo. The only shot I copy is the shotgun being tossed, which is from Red River not real Bravo and then but then he's like monologue these quotes that are that JJ and Nick

are digging up are so good where where he just kind of monologues and then he's like a lot of directors like well De Palma virtually copy movie like you know he's like a lot of directors that he clearly is like you know what I'm just going to say Brian De Palma. Yeah.

Bogdanovich. He was ragging on Bogdanovich. It's like, right. De Palma's just straight up doing Hitchcock. Bogdanovich is doing like Wells and shit, you know?

And Hitchcock and John Ford and like all, you know, all these guys obviously are the sort of worshipping the the old auteurs and all that.

This is such a brutal quote. He says, Bogdanovich copies too. He wants to make movies about old movies to say, hey, look at me. I have good taste. I love Hawks. I love Ford.

I love Hitchcock. Isn't that great? Look, this is the best thing about covering Carpenter. He's a salty old bitch, even in 1978, when he's a salty young bitch. But he kind of hated all of his contemporaries. Right. He's grumpy about everyone.

And then he's like, why doesn't anyone want to work with me? Give me $40 million. Like, you know, it's like, but I think I agree with you, Griffin,

that like the, it's better that this isn't a Western because it just reflects his view of like late seventies society. Yeah. In a way that must've just been insanely resonant even though obviously this movie's so over the top but it's the same with halloween like halloween is a movie about like feeling unsafe in the suburbs right like how like right you think you know everything is fine here because here we all are in the suburbs right and we all fled here and then it's

like well yeah except anyone can just open the fucking door and like this too just kind of feels like yeah there's just people out there who are soulless monsters will shoot a child through her ice cream cone. It's the first death. It's so good. It's so good. It's so bananas. And I it's like I knew that this movie had a child getting shot before I saw it. Like that was like, I think the first thing I ever knew.

That's the famous thing. That's this movie's legacy is like he shot a girl in the chest and thus John Carpenter's career was made. But it is like, it's one of those things where, you know, it's coming. And then when it happens,

you're like, Mike, that's like, God, that's, I can't believe he did that. It also, you watch it and you're like,

I still feel like you're not allowed to do that. Like, no, it feels totally right not right jarring embracing and aggressive uh so something i read about that was that he got an x rating yeah he got an x rating and then the rumor is right he took it out and then just put it back in right is that yeah yeah yeah but just so crazy like i mean he pulled it off and i guess at this point whatever it's fine right like well it feels like nothing was centralized back then right like movies are still coming out like in dribs and

drabs and the mpa exists but it's maybe not cracking the whip as much i don't know i again all this stuff feels i I mean, April, what do you think of the first kill? I mean, there's the kill, there's the action scene. Yeah, the opening sort of assault. But this crazy sort of death sequence. Or should we talk about earlier stuff? I don't know.

Well, I was just going to say, one of the things I guess before we sort of get into it is like, you know, in his crankiness, he was like, well, you know, my vision for this was it was going to cost five million dollars. I was going to have big stars in it. April, you were talking about just sort of like the interplay and the character dynamics and how much you want to kind of like live in the interpersonal stuff in a Carpenter movie. And it is a thing that I think doesn't make him unique, but is like such a an advantage he has over a lot of other genre filmmakers where a lot of them you can tell they actually don't really care about the human characters that much.

Right. I don't want to paint with a broad brush here, but I feel like there are a lot of even well liked. And certainly this goes even more so for a lot of the crappier genre films of the time, where it's like, well, what they really want is this. They're thinking about the set pieces, they're thinking about the monsters, they're thinking about their clever conceit, and this is like the chuff, a killing time, whatever. You know? And you watch a movie like this

where he's not dealing with any movie stars, you know, and the actors in this go on to varying levels of success, but it's not like he discovers a jamie lee curtis in this cast who then becomes of course we knew you know she was going to be around for decades but every performance is so good every dialogue exchange is interesting you know it feels like it works just on like a dramatic and comedic level on its own without the sort of like um i don't know mousetrap construction of this whole thing around it and he got that like the ultimate production

value is having a good performance in frame like that's going to make your movie feel more expensive than anything else and likewise a crappy performance can derail whatever production value you do have on screen behind it. I mean, the thing is, like, he's not dealing with big movie stars, but he is dealing with stage actors. These are trained stage actors. If you look at the guy who plays Wells, who tries to escape through the tunnel to help them, like the convict, he's played by Tony Burton. And Tony Burton was, you know, you can hear it in his enunciation. You can hear it in the kind of like projection of his voice

and the way that he's like, he's a trained theater actor. He was also just like the perfect person to cast because he had actually spent three years in prison prior to this and found acting through that. Right. And he also spends time as a heavyweight boxer so he's like got that physicality he famously then becomes duke in all the rocky movies that's like his legacy is uh right he's apollo's corner man who then kind of becomes part of rocky's corner as well yeah but this was like his big break essentially yeah this movie so it's

it's a really great thing to see he's also really good you actually feel his death kind of yes yeah i and so i do think that you know there are even though we're they're not like breakout stars i do think that there's a kind of showcasing of these actors who didn't get um a lot of chance to to have much dialogue or screen time because they're, you know, they're day players on TV shows and things. And so I just really like that he got to just work with actors who want to act like they're not there to be the starring vehicle, you know. And also, it doesn't feel like anyone is looking down on this material, you know, because sometimes

I find that, too, is like I'll watch some 70s horror genre movie and there's a performance that feels kind of like sloppy and then you look the person up and you're like, they were classically trained? Is it just that they didn't give a shit that they think this thing's beneath them?

Right, this is like a tossed off. Right, yeah. Right, and I think partly it's that Carpenter had more respect for his actors than a lot of those directors did. And he's giving them better material. And I think he's finding the right people. And I don't say the fact that no one in this went on to become a movie star in a derisive way, because I think

you watch this, you're like, everyone in this movie should have had a much better career after this. Like everyone's kind of giving a movie star performance. And it's more impressive to see this in a film that didn't have a $5 million budget where he was able to plug in pre-existing stars and then would have had to reckon with their personas.

He's like taking people who are largely unknown to you and making them feel like iconic stars before your very eyes. But they feel like real people too, which probably is partly that I, their faces that I mostly associate with this movie.

So obviously that's part of it. But like, it helps. But like Darwin Jostin, that's a fucking movie star performance. You're like, this guy fucking rules. He's so,

he's right. He's terrific. And I mean, this is also a movie where the last two minutes, you almost like tack on an extra star. Cause you're like, holy shit, it ends so perfectly.

And he's got that line and like, yeah, but yeah, but you know what I mean? Griff, like he, it is a movie star performance, but like this,

the whole Motley crew element of the plot is very helped by that. It really does feel like these are just like a bunch of, you know, guys off the street, like who are getting thrown together. You don't have preconceived notions about these people. It's not going to skew your understanding

of who wins, who makes it out of this movie alive. You know? If Darwin Justin was Kurt Russell, I'd be like, okay, okay,

so this is the guy I have to lock in with or whatever. Right. Not that, no offense to Kurt Russell. No, but I do think it's to this movie's advantage,

especially just because this movie is so nasty. And when you get to the Kim Richards, currently a housewife, a real housewife, I believe. Do you know this, David? The girl who gets shot is on one of the Real Housewives shows. The little girl? Yes. That's crazy. Beverly Hills.

She was on for several seasons of the real house okay yes so she was also the kid and escaped to which mountain and returned from which mountain oh that's how i recognize her okay right and and she is uh half sisters with Kathy Hilton? She is. Paris Hilton is her niece. Yes. Bizarre. Okay, cool. Yeah, she married a supermarket franchise heir. And then, I don't know,

it looks like she's had a pretty insane life outside of also being shot through an ice cream cone in Assault on Precinct 13. Look, I don't watch the Housewives show. I just cannot imagine if I were watching episodes being like, and this woman is like the source of one of the most

transgressive images in 70s Hollywood cinema. Yeah. She's like, hey, this isn't Vanilla Twist. It's so wild. Carpenter's take on that seems to just be like, I wanted them to be evil. Right.

You know, like it's, let me find the actual line from it. It's the most absurd death I could think of. I wanted the bad guys to be bad. And if they could kill that little girl, then you can't sympathize with them. Like there's, there's, they are. Frank Doubleday is so good in that role of like he is the white warlord dude yeah he's a warlord right that's how he's uh uh he's got the crazy he's in escape from new york right he's got the crazy hair and escape from new york um love that guy but uh yeah he's he's he's unsettling yeah did you guys know that there's a documentary about laurie zimmer and how she disappeared no the woman who plays lee

right she who i like she's very like you know frosty in a way wait would she disappear oh my god it's called do you remember laurie zimmer and it's wait but it seems like the answer is she just fucking like stopped working and married a guy and as a teacher like we just left hollywood but i think we don't know why okay i think it's the the why she left that might be the drama i've never seen it but i remember hearing about it before was curious because she to me strikes me as like such a large figure in this movie despite the fact that she gets like the least

dialogue right he cut a lot of her performance out which is weird and I'm not sure he said like she you know he didn't like her line deliveries or something but like she is very striking in this movie I mean I don't he didn't really do her a disservice in a way because I do, you know, her performance lingered with me. But it is weird that she's sort of in and out.

She also weirdly, like, she has the energy of, like, a high-status dame from, like, a Howard Hawks comedy, you know? Like, Lauren McCall is is what I was right. I was getting, I mean, her, her look is so striking because she has these kind of like permanently arched eyebrows and then these very heavy eyes and all this eyeshadow. So it kind of just looks like she's constantly like dismissive of everything

happening around her. She's a little bit above it, looking a little askance at everything. And every time she does talk, it's impactful. Like, I like her line readings, but it also, there is more power in the fact that she is kind of silent for a lot of the movie. You're just sort of trying to read her.

Yeah, she has, like, three other credits, one of which is a French short film. And the last, her last acting job is 1979. She has like a three-year career. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. Yeah, it's odd. I am curious.

I do want to know. I am curious, Laurie. Well, like, Doran Jostin, I was like, how did this guy not become at the very least like a cult figure? You know, how was he not in like 20 more movies like this? He largely became a teamster. He was working as an actor and then he was taking teamster jobs as like transpo captain in between jobs to keep getting paid. And then he was like, I don't know, this Teamster thing is kind of working out for me

I'm going to turn down acting jobs because this is like steady work and they just stopped going up for shit and he has like scattered credits for the remaining 20 years he dies in 1998 but he's got like steady credits for two decades just as like

transpo captain and driver and shit he just became a full time Teamster who would occasionally moonlight as an actor he's just he's funny which is crucial without like you know trying to be funny or you know he doesn't feel like he's giving this sort of arch performance at all but he's just he's natural he's earthy he like he he's like he reminds me of like a greaser version of Lee Van Cleef. Like he's got that kind of odd steeliness, but there's sort of this like sardonic humor to him. Yeah, everything's so casual. He's got the sort of like narrow eyes and the pinched face and all of that.

Right. He does this. He's in a racer head the following year, which is famously a long shoot. Right. He's got a small part in the fog. And then it's like, he pretty much starts being a transpo guy and does some occasional TV appearances after that.

But like, he's a driver for the buddy Holly story two years after this movie. And then it's like, oh, he's transpo captain for down and out in Beverly Hills. Like April, I'm sure you've experienced this as well. His last credit was as a driver for the American president, the Rob Reiner movie.

Yeah. April, I'm sure you've experienced this. You work on a movie set. There are actors. There are cool. There are people who are movie stars. But I feel like there's always on every single set some crew person who is somehow more charismatic and elusive and movie star-esque

than any of the people who've actually been hired to be movie stars. Like, there's some old grip with, like, a leather face who's constantly got a cigarette dangling from his mouth

where you're like, this is the most compelling guy I've ever seen. I want to know his life story. Can you imagine if you're on the set of the American president and you're like,

this guy is so fucking compelling. Why isn't he a movie star? And then you realize he was the star of John Carpenter's breakout movie. He was. He caught a fucking shotgun without flinching and shot in a half second. And now he's fucking driving Annette Bening around. I mean, honestly, you should always look for the quiet old people on crew. Absolutely.

The coolest people I've ever witnessed in my life are quiet old people on film crews. I mean, they've seen some shit and they're there to get the paycheck, you know? Yes. Yeah, they're all business. They're like this character where they're like, I don't know, do you have a smoke? You need me to shoot my way out of this? Fine. As long as the check clears.

Like, everything's like, it's a living. They have like custom gloves that they've made. Tattoos that you cannot decipher. That's like the, I mean, when we were talking to our New Zealand crew on Black Christmas, like the line producer that we brought in, she's retired. Then I went out to lunch with her and she's like, she's Jane Campion's producer. She literally only

comes out of retirement unless she really needs it or if Jane Campion's making something. That's who she is. You're just like, oh, okay. She's like, also I did all of Xena. I was like, of course you did all of Xena. That is wild! She's just Jane Campion's right hand woman for everything that she does. And I was just like, OK, that's I mean, like, that's a huge thing.

That's that's very big. And you're doing this movie. Why? And you're doing this movie. Why? This is like my strongest advice for anyone who listens to this show and wants to work in like film and TV production. If you are lucky enough to ever find yourself on a set, talk to fucking everybody. Like you just meet the most interesting people.

And that person who's quiet off in the corner, you're just like, that's what you fucking did. Those are your credits or that's what your life was before you suddenly at the age of 50 became this? Like, there's this weird high-level carny aspect to film production. Especially with movies like this, like sort of weird, scrappy genre movies

where, like, just fascinating people convene in the middle of the woods to make a thing for six weeks. Right. And also there's something sort of ghostly and creepy about how this movie takes place in the middle of nowhere. Where is this? Like what police precinct is just like out, you know, sort of beyond civilization or wherever this is supposed to be like I I love how vague everything is in that

regard yeah that's great it's just so great as a setup to have it be like here's this guy who fashions himself as some kind of good cop hero he's been on the job for four hours and they're like here's your promotion you gotta like take the night shift in

a place that's closing tomorrow morning. Like, it's just the crappiest job, but also the perfect setup for this kind of film, you know? Like, the remake, which I did not rewatch, although it's also on HBO Max right now, and I saw it when it came

out and I remember liking okay. But I feel like that's very much set up on the, there's a snowstorm they're locked in the roads are closed like it's it's that kind of like it's almost a cabin in the woods kind of element to like you're lost in the middle of nowhere this just feels like no one gives a shit this place is like a void but that was los angeles like los Los Angeles at a certain time was still just the Wild West that was undeveloped or places where it was pretty easy to dump dead bodies just all over. I read this book about Los Angeles' geography based upon where you could dump dead bodies because of certain things. Neighbor neighborhoods were just better for it because there was just so, it was so much space. There are tar pits.

Like there were just, there are places you could utilize. Yeah. So there's, there, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of stuff around here where,

uh, God, even when I first moved out here in 2004, I just remember being like, there's still just a lot of open space here now it's all developed like it yeah it was it's very different even just from like 2004 but like uh i just can't imagine in the 1970s just like how much desolation there was within the city which made this place extremely special of like you could be be alone with yourself and your thoughts

and, like, kind of scary, but also inside one of the biggest major cities of, you know, the world. Well, L.A. is also just so fucking big that it's, like, kind of a misnomer treating it as a city because it's really, like, 20 different cities. Yeah, that we've swallowed up, yeah. Right, right. There's just been this sort of

acquisitions and mergers where it's like each neighborhood in L.A. is kind of a city on its own that you're just like, no, it's just that's part of the same thing here. But you also think about like the time this movie is made and new Hollywood is rising

and you've had decades of well la is where most of the american films are made but they're made on sound stages and if they're shooting exteriors there are very set places where exteriors happen you know you're either controlled in a built set or you're going to monument valley or whatever it it is, you know? But it's like, in this period of time, filmmakers are going like, why don't we just shoot on that block? That's not a block that anyone has filmed before. And the fact that it is underdeveloped

does give it some weird cinematic quality, because we're not trying to dress it up as something else or use it as a generic backdrop that can fill in for anything. You're kind of owning the eeriness of the of what is or isn't there and like showing it he carpenter i think showed a lot of what la was in this in a weird way and in the bus scene for instance when they're transporting the bus is driving it's not being towed um and you can tell because of the the patching of the sound um when they cut to a close-up from um from a mid two shot the bus is driving they have no control of the sound or the

background or anything and you know like when the guy is driving the car like the cop in the beginning there's like someone who keeps looking over like a like this person that keeps catching up with him on the street and she keeps looking over into the like this person that keeps catching up with him on the street. And she keeps looking over into the window, like being like, what are they shooting a movie? Like you can tell like that's not controlled. There's like I can't there's like not permits happening here is what I'm saying. They're just showing people driving around in Los Angeles and the streets and all of that. Well, yeah, there's another thing from the commentary where he said, like, my philosophy for this movie, which I believe I'm paraphrasing here, but he was like, my philosophy for Assault, which I believe you can apply to any low budget film, is to shoot as little footage as possible and extend the scenes for as long as you can. And there is sort of that weird power to like, you're watching this movie.

And for a lot of those sequences, like the bus thing you were saying, you're like, he maybe had one take of this, you know, like maybe two. These scenes do not have complicated coverage, even when you're getting into like the bigger shootouts with a lot of characters. and part of this is resourcefulness but i also think it is that he like considers himself a classicist you know in terms of filmmaking and he was thinking that all these guys like the palm were too flashy we're doing too much we're cutting too quick that like the sequence that i find eeriest in this movie is when it's the gang just very quietly in the car all loading their guns yes well the theme plays and it goes on for like a minute but all those weird scene like the blood scene right at the start to where you're like yes so much is

like like that is the most blood oath I've ever seen drop no it's a bowl yeah and they have this nice crystal bowl but even before the grandma's bowl exactly they were like let's use this i guess i love that they like never talk right right but that's like even

before they take the bowl out i feel like there is a full minute of just a master shot of four guys sitting around a room sticking knives into their arms and you're like what's happening why is this not being explained to me why are they not acknowledging each other it's on the poster right it says like the gang that swore a blood oath to destroy like every cop in precinct 13 or like you know that's

that's part of the the cell is that these guys are going to do whatever they can the other tagline this movie yeah what is it the other tagline on this movie which is incredible is a white hot night of hate. Hey, that is pretty good. But yeah, I mean, the opening of this movie is like a classic kind of drawn out Carpenter credit sequence where it's just kind of very striking, big, colorful letters with this ominous score that the longer it goes on, the more unsettling it becomes. It's just kind of incredibly repetitive and quietly building and increasingly unnerving.

And then, right, from there you go to the first sort of ambush, right? Like, where it's like pitch black, so dark, hard to make out anything that's happening. Another thing I've appreciated watching all these Carpenter movies is like, now I feel like things are fucked with digitally so much. There's such a heavy digital intermediate on most movies.

And I think to some degree now, even more so, they like, well, often color time films and such so that they play OK on phones and shittier devices. And then you watch the thing like this and you're like, this has like actual blacks in it. It doesn't have sort of like milky grays like there's just like darkness in the shadows of the movie, like a real density there. In the swapping sequence, you just, it's hard to orient yourself

around what's going on, but not because it's sloppy, because it's sort of, I don't know, mysterious. Yeah, it was processed correctly. Right. Which is something that he knew

from the beginning is that you spend the money on the camera and the processing. Again, the same thing with sound. And that's what you get when you like certain things. Like when I watch the fog again, the fog has the best kind of blacks. Same thing with Halloween, the best blacks. He just knew how to do that. And very few people, and especially when you're working with digital, very few people actually know how to shoot these things correctly, which is really frustrating if you're in the horror genre. We've recorded our episode of The Fog already, but I want to bring this up here because I forgot to say it in that episode. The thing that blows my mind about the cinematography in The Fog is that he has these really, really dark, pure blacks. He's using shadows a lot, right? But every actor's face is always incredibly well lit. And it somehow doesn't come off as some overly stylized like Morticia Adams. Oh, we put a key light here, but the rest of it's in shadow.

There's something somehow organic about it. I mean, it's Dean Cundey who's like a genius and arguably had a greater influence on the next 30 years of popular cinema and their look than anyone else. But it's like a magic trick, that movie, where you're like, every face is perfectly lit,

so you're seeing the expressiveness of the actor, and the rest of the shot is cloaked in mystery. I mean, some of it is a magic trick, you know, like when the priest kind of comes out of the shadows, that's like. Yes, that's actually a plate, you know, like that's like, you know, editing technique of just like they couldn't hide him. So they they made their own blacks, you know, like they they did their own, you know, effects on it. But, you know, Dean Cundy's work on that. God, I kind of wish that he was shooting this you know what i mean yeah i wish he'd done like 10 movies with carpenter but whatever i mean he obviously

his legacy is so extraordinary even like his work going back to like i'm obsessed with the witch who came from the sea partially he's because he's like this uncredited dp it, but it's like, you know, you start to see his genius pretty early on of his framing and sense of light and darkness that is just, you know, unmatched. I'm seeing here on his IMDb, and who knows if this is

true or not, that he's shooting the Boba Fett TV show? It does say that. I don't know. I mean, he has become... Very exciting for me. It would be exciting.

He's in this weird kind of like, still works, but mostly on things you've kind of never heard of. And his last two major movies were Home Again and Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill and Home Again, yeah. It's just odd that he's found himself

in this weird like kind of mild comedy corridor and he like did a couple west wings you know what i mean like it feels like right it's just sort of like what do you want like i'll do it which is crazy because the first half of his career is so loaded maybe he just doesn't want to do anything though yeah he might just want to vibe we We were talking about vibing earlier. But he does still work a lot. Like, he has credits every year. A lot of them are short films, though,

or it's things you haven't heard of. I also think there's this thing. I mean, it's like, typecasting is such an issue throughout the industry, even when you get to people behind the camera, you know, and above the line crew

where you look at him and you're like, oh, he shoots Who Framed Roger Rabbit, right? And that's this like absolutely astonishing masterwork of cinematography. And he's like redefining all of these sort of tricks and tools for how you integrate two different elements in the same shot. And then like after that, obviously, he does the Back to the Future sequels.

He does hook like he's he's doing other things. But then it's sort of like, oh, he's become the default guy if you want to put an animated character in a movie. So interspersed with like Apollo 13 and shit, Death Becomes Her. Then it's like, well, Jurassic Park, of course, Spielberg's bringing him on because he's going to be sort of pioneering all this new CGI stuff. And then he does Casper. Then he does Flubber.

Then he does Looney Tunes back in action and Garfield, you know? And now you're at this point where he's made Garfield and it's like, well, I don't know. He's the guy who made Garfield. Why would he hire him to make our big movie? Because he made fucking Jurassic Park. Get out of here. But I'm talking about the stupidity of this industry where they're like well what's he done lately if he did garfield then i guess we should

hire him to do jack and jill and it's like no he did garfield because he did jurassic park you lunatics well who knows right i don't know i mean then maybe that's why john favreau or whoever is like where what's Dean Cundey doing? You know, call him up. I don't know. Right. But you're like 2010. He's doing a Scooby Doo made for TV movie.

Jesus. I'm going to try to hire him for my next thing. Yeah, absolutely. What are you doing, Dean? Scooby Doo Curse of the Lake Monster. And you just have to imagine they're like, oh, there's this guy who's good at filming movies with CGI characters. I mean, Dean Cundey? He seems like, uh i don't know he looks like a friendly fella he looks really friendly i find him kind of adorable yeah yeah he's got kind of a yeah sort of lovable uncle vibe big white beer nice though like he actually does very nice with him. He seems like a very kind, unpretentious man.

He's not like a Sonnenfeld. You know what I mean? Like, yes. Right. He's not like a showboat. This one is well shot though. Yeah.

This is, it's shot by Douglas Snap. Who's we talked about on the dark star episode. This is basically. Who is sort of his early guy. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the only two.

He also did the first nudie musical. That's it. Uh, those are the only movies he worked on and then as we mentioned he weirdly has like a bunch of Star Trek Voyager credits and stuff like that he's a camera operator for most good for him

yeah make the paycheck you know like not deal with asshole shit yeah yeah but this movie is great I mean like I watched the shout factory you know, you know, the nice Blu-ray that they have, and it looks fantastic,

you know, obviously. But, you know, so it's emphasizing it, but this is a great-looking movie. I would like to see it in a theater, you know, on, like, a grimy old print.

Like, it does feel like that'd be fun, but, you know, their restoration is very nice. It's also one of those movies where you feel like if you saw this at a rep theater, it would still get gasps at several moments. You know, you're not watching it as like a curio or like, oh, this is an interesting time capsule of an early career.

It's a movie that still feels very visceral. I mean, you go from, right, the opening sort of ambush, right, to then I think right after that is the weird blood scene, the blood bowl scene. So then when you get to the first scene with, um, what's his name? Our main hero, uh,

the good Lieutenant, uh, Austin Stoker, Ethan Bishop is the character. Yeah, that's right. And that's in daylight. He's driving a car at that point.

You're unnerved by that. Like you've gotten so used to the darkness and the silence and the eeriness of this movie that to see like a normal guy being like yeah i think i'm a hero you're like something's gonna go horribly wrong here um it's sort of a slow build after that i mean apart from the ice cream scene like it's sort of a i like it it's a sort of contemplative 45 minutes until the siege really kicks off but that also is is, I think, I mean, Halloween's different because it's relentless, right?

Once it really gets going. But I feel like a Carpenter thing that you'll read like reviews of the time, sometimes people stupidly are dismissive of him because of this, where it's like, well, he got like a million dollars or $100,000 to shoot the movie and he puts like 25% of the budget into one sequence.

And the movie is 75 percent build up to that one sequence, you know. But I think he is kind of a master of the slow build. He doesn't make you feel like he's stalling or delaying. Everything feels cumulative, you know. And at the point where that money does end up on screen and things break, you get to a massive shootout, whatever it is, it's such a release valve, you know? He's

built it up. He's blown everything up so successfully to a breaking point. You guys gotta see Prince of Darkness because it is like the... I can't wait. Oh, yeah. Like, everything that you're saying is just kind of like the apotheosis of that um that uh kind of type of filmmaking which is like there's so much talking and so much build up but then like the scene that happens you're just like oh my god

she went through a mirror it's it's like fucking yeah the times when it hits, you're like, oh, thank God I waited for this, you know? Well, our friend, a friend of the podcast, J.D. Amato, was telling me that when he was a child and he would obsessively watch like making of specials on TV or I'm forgetting the names, but there were like some shows. I feel like they were often like syndicated weekend shows that were just like the magic of movies. And every episode would just have like, we went to this effects house and they showed us how they built this robot or this makeup. As a kid, you maybe haven't heard of most of these movies. They're not doing segments on the biggest films. They're doing segments on movies that didn't really pan out, you know, where they got that much freedom to cover this thing behind the scenes and then the movie sort of doesn't make an impact. And he had this visceral memory as a child of watching one of these and seeing like these incredibly bizarre, giant, incredibly detailed, gory animatronics and going like, what is this? And he didn't remember the name as a kid. And he spent like 25 years trying to, you know, every couple of months be like, what can I try Googling for to figure out what this is? And then someone posted it on like social media, the photo of it. And he was like, what is this? And he realized it was in the mouth of madness. And the characters are on screen for like five seconds.

characters are on screen for like five seconds. Like he couldn't find any paper trail of this because the footage of this behind the scenes is so much more comprehensive than anything you see these creatures do in the movie. And he was just kind of astounded of like, how much money did John Carpenter spend to build these humongous, like 20 foot, incredibly detailed, expressive animatronics

that appear largely in shadow for one shot but he just picks where to put the money i think fairly wisely yes yes i agree with that right and yeah and i mean he also i mean like he'll just kind of ask his friends to do double duty on certain things like even though deborah hill is uncredited as a producer she was certainly producing this movie and she is credited as the assistant editor uh she was editing this movie it's sort of all hands on deck early on right like that's kind of the vibe right yeah i mean like she was she was uh shooting second unit for the fog you know like she was doing second unit on most everything that he was doing in those early days when they were working together because it was just so like

run and gun but for for how much carpenter is a known crank i do think there's something telling in the fact that like he and deborah hill dated and then remained such close collaborators for years after that yeah until she was like you know what i don't need this right right but it was like he was married you know like and they were still working together and very sort of creatively simpatico yeah yeah um i i'm just happy they found each other at that point in time in their lives you know developing their own skills individually isn't it isn't it right it's partly it's like eventually being in the carpenter world it's just it's a lot of crankiness and a lot of like elbow grease even

after great success right like it's a lot of like you're you're never you're never comfortable i feel like in carpenter world yeah it kind of felt like she wanted to get the budgets she wanted to get yeah she was like come on like she doesn't want to shoot second unit anymore she wants to produce right and a lot of these people like right like dean cundy go on to that it's like oh carpenter's a springboard to him getting to work with spielberg and make like the biggest movies you know with unlimited resources but this is the i guess this is the thing we're gonna keep going back to and it's, I already am sort of repeating myself, but right. Like, but is that just part of the magic?

And I'm like, I'm sorry you guys didn't get your proper budget, but it kind of worked out for the best that you had to, you know, earn every second of film. Like, I don't know. I also think in terms of Carpenter,

like getting so few opportunities to paint on that bigger canvas, we were talking about like well that's probably tied to him being a crank but i think it's the two-pronged thing of like a he probably doesn't kiss enough ass he doesn't know how to sort of like schmooze his way into assuring the executives that he's not going to burn their money he's not going to mince words he's such a straight shooter he's so unsentimental about this shit. But I also think it's that there is that kind of innate nastiness

to his films that you can only get away with under a certain budget level. Because above that, people start to go like, can someone be more likable? Can something funnier happen here? Can they have a really earnest romance?

You know? I love how unlikable everyone is. I love it. It's not very nice to each other either. You know, it's grudging respect is about as good as it gets here. And he's so unconcerned with backstory.

He doesn't over explain things. He doesn't give people these obvious sort of arcs and payoffs. You know, these things that a studio has to be like, come come on give us the razzle right and it's also but like he was like and the villains i don't want you to be going on about like oh well they're poor or there's some societal he's like no no i don't i don't want this to be a message about how they've been forced into villainy or whatever. They're just villains. They're

ghouls. They're like a cosmic ape. I mean, he talked a lot about how much Night of the Living Dead was an influence for him. And obviously, even the setup of this of like, they're stuck in the house. This is notable along with Night of the Living Dead for being one of the only like non-blacksploitation films to have a black lead in this era.

You know? And, you know, there are like metatextual powers that come from that, but he's not overtly making any big statement by it, much like Night of the Living Dead. It's like, hire a good actor, put him in there. It's something different than what you've seen before. And the gang feels very Romero-ish.

I mean, I think I read a quote where Romero was at con with Martin the same year as this. And he knew that this guy was like influenced by his work. And he went to see the Assault on Precinct 13 screening. And then when Kim Richards gets shot, he was like, well, I'm fucked. This guy's he's the dude now. Like he just went so much further than I ever thought you could then that's the story of Carpenter so often is he makes Halloween and then he's like watches some new movie he's like wait they can do this now I gotta beat this like yeah right there's there's a sort of one-upsmanship in horror in

particular that I find really fun you know sure I think that it can become meaningless at some point. Yeah, exactly. Well, I think, yes, it has to be done with meaning and intent. I don't think it's just the gore, the scale, or the shock factor, because then it becomes white noise. But I think guys like Romero and Carpenter obviously understand the semiotics of what they're doing. Yeah.

And when that gets one-upped and they're playing with the form and audience expectations in that kind of way, not just sort of how many gallons of blood you can dump, that is exciting to kind of chart. Although if we're talking about Sam Raimi, I do think, because I will defend him till the day I die in every single movie that he's made, that gallons of blood can be a great one-upsmanship uh move if done correctly yes

he's smart he knows what he's doing it's not being done wantonly yeah it's like as a kid when i was obsessed with movies and i would read about scary movies and i would imagine usually i imagined worse than what's in the movie right usually the movies actually have a lot more restraint when you actually watch halloween and sit down you know you're like oh this is not the gore fest i imagine when i was 10 years old you talked about right as a kid that you thought these movies were literally just 90 minutes of stabbing like there was no plot no dialogue it was just blood for an entire running time but then there is the occasional like you see day of the dead or whatever and you're like oh my god i

didn't actually like sam raimi is probably a good example to write you like i didn't actually know it was going to go this hard like there there is the occasional reversal of that where it's actually worse than you imagine not usually but but this is kind of one i mean that's that's the fucking little girl shot moment is this movie like throwing down the the gauntlet and going like we're going harder than you expect like it's not going to be gory, but it's going to be more intense and more ruthless than you expect. Yes. I mean, we're not talking about plot much here, but I mean, the plot insofar much as there is one. Three threads, you know, unite at this precinct and then they have to fight everyone off i mean this gang wants revenge for

their members killed in the opening uh ambush uh they're gonna take it out on this precinct where this new cop is uh stuck manning it for its final night of operation well that what's they're led there because the father of the daughter shoots one of the gang members and leads them sort of there so uh which and his character it's weird because i kind of understand that he is just fainted or is in some kind of state but it is weird the whole time that he's like not passed out but like what i'm like i guess emotionally he, like, he's so overwhelmed that he's just, like, catatonic now, more or less. Yeah, it's, like, just outright trauma. Yeah.

And then I guess the, oh, sorry, go. like Carpenter's steady hand with performance versus a lot of other directors in this genre where like you're kind of taken aback by the stillness of he gets off the phone, he looks over, he sees this bizarre image in a wide shot. Here's a truck. There's a body next to it. What's that other body? Is that my daughter? And you sort of just hold on his face as like the recognition takes

over versus a lot of movies like this. I think it's the second the gunshot goes off, the guy whips his head around and then falls to his knees and screams no. And this is that thing where at first he's not even upset. He just looks confused, you know, and then it's like denial and getting slowly closer into it, realizing it's real. And then he's just sort of silently heaving on top of her body. You know, he's not wailing. It's not guttural. It's not like yelling at the gods. It is just like he's his brain is short circuiting.

It feels like a more realistic representation of how someone would react to this than we're used to seeing. Not to as a father of daughter here here but as a father daughter this scene freaked me out a lot even though my daughter is a baby not a child well i have good advice for you david never let your daughter get ice cream i won't of course not i'll show her this movie yeah no never she can never make the house not even really psychologically healthy she'll be really strong and good and normal that way and anytime she complains I'll just

show her Assault on Precinct 13 that'll be a good idea right right and then other kids will ask her like and ask her of course through like a tin can radio or paper notes because she doesn't leave her home they'll ask her what's your favorite movie and she goes movie I thought there was only one movie it's

Assault on Precinct 13, and I've seen it 800 times. Right. Yeah, no, it's a freaky scene. Obviously, the shock of her getting shot, but also what you're talking about, just that he doesn't let the aftermath, he doesn't cheap on that.

He lingers in it. It's cheaper, though. It's cheaper to shoot. It's cheaper to shoot. It's cheaper to shoot the actor doing all the work. You don't have to move the camera. You don't have to do setups. You don't have to do anything else. It's just like if you just keep that shot wide for a little bit longer and then hold on this actor like, yeah, you're good to go. It's it's his advice. It's like the key to low budget filmmaking. I also think always letting these scenes or these shots or both play out a little bit longer than you're used to does create this odd sense of dread. You're watching everything going like anyone else would have cut 15 seconds ago.

Right. I've seen enough movies that I feel like this should we should be moving on and we're not yes definitely that's yeah any studio would have forced you to get coverage so that you could cut 10 times within that space we cut too much honestly i way too we cut too much it drives me insane you can't stop it it feels like unless you do independent film and just kind of keep in tight control of it. But yeah, we cut far too much in this country. He doesn't seem to entirely regret the scene,

but like, he does say like, look, I was young and stupid. I probably wouldn't do, which is like exactly how Spielberg talks about the kid dying in jaws where there are these young filmmakers where they're like, yeah,

I mean, I thought I was being a smart ass almost like killing a kid in act one like you know how are you gonna top that and now i watch it and i'm like all right you know you sort of win set it but i i think it's super crucial to this movie like i don't think i don't think it's it's this movie's mission state they did that it's the mission state and then the fact that they're using silencers which is so obviously there's like plot reason for it obviously but it's so eerie too that people are just like silently essentially like toppling over like exploding in blood is i is yeah that the bizarre imagery in that shootout sequence is where like you know you're hearing the silencer shots

everyone's sort of ducked or has already been shot or died and you're hearing the silencer shots. Everyone's sort of ducked or has already been shot or died. And you're mostly looking at this barren wide shot of the precinct and like letters and papers are just flying up. Like you're just seeing

kind of the ricochet of things like propelling into the air. But it's just sort of this like sound of someone blowing through a straw. It's very odd wait i just found this quote from carpenter about um frank double day where he said i discussed the character with the actor and he gave me the best explanation he said i don't want to play this as

a man with a gun i want it to play as a man who is a gun damn and so he was like that's what i that's what i wanted these people to be like just trigger gun like that's all they are they're just killing machines literally it's pretty cool yeah that rules actors are fun yeah actors are what especially like i mean i'm griffin you're the actor like just like you're coming in yeah shut up and and and it's like you know what's your role and you know you've read the script and you're like yeah well I kill a kid and now you have to sit there and think about like

okay what do I want it like how do I want to be like I'm you know the action is here but like who am I how am I going to convey a person who would do this it's a weird job grip I will say when I when I think about whether I ever want to act again if

that's like uh or at least act on camera like when i go back and forth on the idea now uh coming out of a pandemic um i like i have no career ambitions anymore there's nothing like oh i'd like to be this or have this level of success i just think about experiential shit like that where I'm just like that might be a cool thing to do on camera not that I'm saying killing a girl on camera is cool but you're just like that's a weird scene that's a weird day to spend what's that like to spend a day

figuring out how to do that that's sort of the appeal to me what's again I want to restate the appeal to me is not specifically the idea of killing girls it is just an example of a bizarre scene but you could even you could spend a day learning how to whip a chain

and tie it around a guy's legs and pull him out from underneath him that seems like that for me that's a big day yeah that's cool well now you're just pitching Ghost Rider 3. That would be the best to hear. Hell yeah. There's like a chain expert on set. Like, he's, you know,

giving you tips. I do like, April, as you said, like, everyone in this movie is kind of unpleasant and nasty, right? And Ethan is like, Bishop is the closest we have to, like, a hero in this movie.

But the movie kind of mocks the idea that he wants to be seen as a hero. There's a very cynical view of law enforcement. And his sort of defining move as a hero in a way, at least in terms of moral integrity, is just that he refuses to give up Lawson. integrity is just that he refuses to give up lawson that uh nancy loomis's character has the moment where she's like well it's just him right we can give him up and this is over like it's a trolley cart problem yeah let them kill the one guy so eight of us don't die and he's just like not gonna happen not gonna happen he came here he's having a really bad day i told him he'd be safe. I got,

I'm going to do it. Yeah. That's, I mean, they could have just given him up. Honestly, they could have more lives. Right.

But it's, it's just like, this is his moral code, which is like, this guy came to me. He asked me for help. And I said, yes,

I'm not going to go back on that. And then, and then also, obviously the ending is so fantastic where he's you know he's you know walk out with me to to wilson the bishop and wilson walking out together in the smoke and stuff and that really just that fucking is so cool yeah wow it's so cool so cool and so quiet and not over the top. This is weirdly not. No part of this movie is over the top, even though a child gets shot.

Does that make sense? Am I out of line saying that? Like, there's no melodrama to it. No. And Wilson has all these weirdly profound lines, but all of them are like tossed off under his breath. I mean, in my situation, days are like women. Each one's so damn precious, but they all end up leaving you. And you're like, 99 out of 100 actors would have put too much mustard on that.

They would have been too aware of the fact that they are saying cool guy dialogue. Right. And we got a smoke, obviously, him saying that over and over again. But like, he says everything like he's annoyed that he even has to say it, you know? Okay. But wait, that, when he finally gets a cigarette, that scene, that scene as someone who's been a smoker, and I feel like Carpenter too, right, is a smoker,

that scene is so like full of just sexual tension. Like I felt like my tongue was going to roll out and steam was going to come out of my ears and my eyes are going to bug out of my head. It was just so charged. Woo! Man, it really got me. I'm just looking at other...

Napoleon Wilson, which also, what a fucking good name, but looking at other lines of his, where all of these on paper read so purple and he makes everyone sound like the coolest fucking thing you've ever heard. When Lee says, the very least of our problems is that we're out of time. And he says,

it's an old story with me. I was born at a time. It's very hoaxy. I mean, you can tell what he's sort of inspired by. Right. I did think of one over the top scene when they play potato. Right.

That was a little, that was a little, it was fun. I don't know if i'm using the right phrase when i say over the top i i guess it's it's more what griff saying where it's like it could be so goofy and not in a bad way like i enjoy goofy i enjoy pulpy like i love goofy and goofy griff they call me right griff for you're a very goofy griff yes but like but it doesn't and it's the same

thing with it you know not being a Western and instead just being set in this kind of like concrete dusty ass building like you know it the realism in heavy quotes is is part of what makes it feel

spookier it's good this is a good movie. Yeah. I'm just taking a fucking warm bath in this quotes page. Ben, the chain moment you talk about, right? Yeah. The warden says, you know, Wilson, I'm going to miss you.

Wilson says, that's not the truth, warden. You should always tell the truth. Even a little lie can sometimes trip a man up. Then he trips him with a chain. I know. And his comeback is, he don't stand up as good as he used to. Yeah, because he kicked him out of his chair earlier.

So he gets him back. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, I don't sit in chairs as well as I used to. It's also just an incredible statement in a vacuum. I love it. It's so cool. Is there anything else we want to talk about before we do the box office game?

Just so you know, it's obviously that the final sequence is very dense and involving. It's, I mean, one of the things that I like is the kind of quietness of the end. Because it's weird because it's intense. But there's, he's, his control again, his mastery of sound is, he's like more master of sound than horror honestly he's just he can john carpenter master of sound yes um he just knows from the twisted ears of john carpenter because you can hear like them stepping on like the the kind of like spent shells and just like stuff. And it's just like, it's just really eerie and quiet. And then there's also the scenes of, you can make out the shadows or sense of the gangs

and in the kind of alley and there's just kind of smoke filling the air. So it's just like this fog. And I was just like, ah, shit. Conquistadors. This is going to be like the fog. This is like the. Right.

You're going to have cutlasses. Yeah. So, yeah, that's just something I really liked. It's really fucking great. And it's, it's also interesting that like this movie came out and didn't really make much of an impression.

Critics weren't really standing for it. It didn't get much of an audience. And then it goes to Europe and people lose their fucking minds. And then I feel like it was very shortly thereafter kind of reclaimed by an American genre audience. I think Carpenter's thing is like in America, they sold it as like a blood and guts movie,

which it's not good enough on that regard, right? Like it's not, that's not really what, that's not the way he was like, it should have been sold as like suspense film. Like it's not really going for, for hyper gore. And so maybe that was part of the problem, but I don't know.

Obviously it's a low budget movie. It was sort of being distributed that way. But, but yeah, I mean it, you know, it went to con and then UK critics really started championing it and it and championing the idea of like, this is a filmmaker here. What's his big quote? You know, come on. Here, I'm going to look it up. You know, the famous way in France, I'm an auteur. In Germany, I'm a filmmaker. In Britain, I'm a genre film director. And in the US, I'm a bum. Right. Like, that's his big joke. It's like about, you know, how Europe always sort of took him more seriously.

Yeah. Five comedy points. Yeah. Are you guys seeing the remake? I saw the remake in theaters and I remember it being like solid. I don't remember it very well. I do too. And I will say,

I think it is probably the most successful of the Carpenter remakes because it is the one that kind of just uses his movie as a starting point. Like, the characters are entirely different in that. The setup is pretty fundamentally changed. It really just is the idea of, like, here's the worst precinct that's about to shut down, right, and a standoff happening there. But, like, because from what I remember,

Lawrence Fishburne is sort of taking the Wilson role, but he's like a crime boss. And obviously Fishburne is going to give you a very different performance. But the character as written is also entirely different. Ethan Hawke is kind of the squirrelly former undercover cop who's sort of haunted and trying to get over an accidental death. I think that he was responsible for. It's a very different movie, and so it stands better on its own because it's not just a shittier version of Carpenter with more money felled into it, which a lot of the other remakes are. April, have you seen it? Do you care about Jean-Francois Richer?

I haven't seen it, but it doesn't mean that I don't want to because I love that cast. It's a great cast. Yeah, and the basic premise is something that can obviously be retooled again and again for starting off with Rio Bravo or whatever it was. Yeah. I just think that it's one of those timeless things, so I'd be interested in it. That's the other thing.

John Hawks himself remade Rio Bravo. We used to be a lot less precious with these concepts. And whether they were literal remakes or kind of spiritual remakes or inspired by or whatever, it's better to approach things that way than be like, we have to go beat by beat. Sorry, Howard Hawks. What did I say? Howard Hughes? You said John Hawks. I think.

He's a fine actor. We like him, yeah. We do like him. The remake stinks, right? I have seen the remix. The said John Hawks. I think he's a fine actor. We like him. Yeah, we do. We make stinks. Right. I have seen the remix, the one with Dean Martin. And John. Oh, yes.

I have not seen the remake. Yes, it's it's stinky. Yeah. What's called Rio. It's Rio Bravo. No, no, no. Right. But no, but there's there's another movie that's almost identical to Rio Bravo that Hawks made that I'm forgetting now.

Hmm, okay. I mean, most filmmakers just remake the same movie again and again. Yes, this is my point. Yes, I just know there's like an explicit, because I love the original. Yeah, I'm trying to remember now. But anyway, look, anyway, beyond that,

it's like, as you you guys said it's it's it's a you can always you can transmute this to anyone you could do it in space you could do it under the sea i don't know like you know like it wouldn't be hard it's a tower defense movie good good movie good director well it's gonna be like that with these early carpenters we're gonna be like you know what it's Like a lot of these were like, yeah, it fucking works. Halloween delivers.

Escape from New York. A lot of fun. Howard Hawks did El Dorado with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. And then he remade it a third time with John Wayne called Real Lobo. That's what, yes, that's the shitty one. I think.

Right. The Dean Martin one's the good one. Yeah. Okay. This is a wild box office. And, you know, which is part of the fun of these old box offices you know before the heyday of opening weekend sorry so this is uh this movie came out uh november 1976 okay number one at the box office is a rare woody allen movie that he did not direct? Play it again, Sam? Nope. The Front? The Front is number one at the box office.

That is bizarre. Hollywood blacklist drama. I don't like this world. That's weird. It's especially weird because none of the movies he directed were especially huge hits at this time. Like, that's bigger than most of his films performed. The next three movies are what you would consider you know big hits of the year or whatever and i was just like what is the

front doing number one it like you know in november at like a pretty big deal time anyway zero must sell is great in that movie zero must sell has like an incredible supportive i've never seen the front i it's martin ritt right? Sort of like a, you know? Yeah, it's a blacklist movie. Right, but it's, you know, it's an intelligent, sober drama type thing,

right? No, it's like a sad comedy, I would say, about a difficult subject. But Woody Allen plays the guy who's serving as the front

for Zero Mostel, who's like the Trumbo-esque screenwriter who can no longer work. And Mastel's pretty heartbreaking, and he's really fucking good. All right, so the front number one. Number two, it's...

By the way, April, we're guessing the top five. I forgot. We didn't. You may not. This is what I was talking about. I remember these numbers. I mean, I don't remember these ones. I don't have this memorized, but very often I remember every box office weekend I don't remember these ones I don't have this memorized but very often I remember every box office weekend I've lived through

because my brain is broken number two it's a big hit thriller of the year it's an adaptation of a big book by a heavyweight screenwriter pretty heavyweight director big star above the title and then a big star

below the title getting an marathon man marathon man yeah yeah yeah yeah uh great great tagline what's the tagline griffin oh this is why i don't like going to the dentist the tagline is literally a thriller well that is a great tagline and maybe we should bring that back movies are saying too much too much. Just tell me what you are. It's a thriller. All right. Yeah. Marathon Man is half a good movie. It's one of those things you watch it.

You're like, right. This could do with a little tightening. This could do with a little more sexiness. Honestly, like it's a it's a little too sober, but it's pretty good. I don't know. Olivier is having fun. April, do you care about Marathon Man? I think it's OK.

I don't remember it much. Yeah. I mean, apart from the dentist scene, it's okay. I don't remember it much. Yeah. I mean, apart from the dentist scene, it's got a good ending to them in that weird, like they're in like a dam or something right there. Anyway. David, do you know what time of day is best to watch Marathon Man?

No. What time of day? 2.30. Why? 2.30. Okay. Because Jesus Christ. The dentist scene. Yeah. Yeah. why 2.30 okay because all right Jesus Christ the dentist scene

yeah yeah all right all right April has flipped over her computer and setting her microphone on fire

number three at the box office a comedy one of my dad's favorite comedies he loved this movie so I owned it on Vhs or he did or like it was in the house sort of an ensemble movie it's like a musical that's not actually

a musical sure um it's got you know a bunch of sort of character actors and stars it's it the cast is mostly black it's got a famous screenwriter. Is it Car Wash? It's Car Wash. Car Wash was one of your dad's favorite movies. He fucking loved Car Wash. Written by Joel Schumacher as you were alluding to.

Yeah. Right. My dad was a big Richard Pryor guy in general and that's probably why Richard Pryor doesn't have a huge part in Car Wash. He kind of.

No. Yeah. But so I don't know. I mean, it's like it's that early era where they would like bring richard pryor in for three scenes and advertise the movie as richard pryor finally busting loose on the screen and you're like he's in it for 10 minutes and there's some boring plot i don't care about the rest of the time right him sitting me

down being like we gotta watch car wash it's it rules and me being like this is okay like i think you know i i don't think i get half of this but you know anyway i saw uh blue collar has been playing at film forum recently i went to see it i'd seen it before but i hadn't seen on a big screen i wish prior had done like 10 of those right like i'm not saying i wish he did less comedies but i wish he had done more dramas he was such a fucking good actor. Yeah, and just compelling. Just the camera loves him. And one of those people where it's a little bit like Sandler

where you could put him in a drama with like a heavy duty director and he wouldn't dull himself. Like he'll still be very funny in a drama. He's just tapping into more of a darkness and an anger that was always underneath the surface with him. Number four at the box office, Griffin.

New this week. A definitive horror film of the 70s. Made by a man that John Carpenter thinks is a Hitchcock copying hack. So it's a diploma. Yeah. 76. It would be Carrie

it's Carrie yeah wow good movie whatever Carpenter wants to say I enjoy Carrie April Carrie

fan I'm a huge De Palma fan I love all me too I love Brian De Palma just like

make it make it sicker and weirder and I I love I love all of his stuff holy mack. Holy mackerel.

Holy mackerel. But Carrie rules. Carrie is one of those things where you go in knowing the eight things about Carrie, right? Like you can't escape, you know, hearing about all the but the stuff in between is so good. It's so fucking good. It's so banana. I love Carrie. All right. Carrie's great, but that's new

this week. So if we ever do to Paul McGriff, we'll have done this box office. Wow. We'll come back to this and I'll run the table. All right. Carrie's great, but that's new this week. So if we ever do DePaul McGriff, we'll have done this box office. Wow. We'll come back to this and I'll run the table. All right. Number five is a movie I do not know. So I'm going to look it up. Let's see.

It is a British American comedy farce based on a play. Well, how would you know that? He just looked it up. Okay. One of those posters that's like drawn by Al Hirschfeld. You know what I mean? Where you're like, oh, this is up. Okay. One of those posters that's like drawn by Al Hirschfeld.

You know what I mean? Oh, this is classy. Yeah. You got Jack Weston, Rita Moreno, Jerry Stiller, F. Murray Abraham. It's a madcap farce. It's directed by Richard Lester of A Hard Day's Night. Fuck. Its title is that of a...

April, if you know, please also jump in. Its title is that of a hotel. I think it's one of those things where it's like we're moving... Oh, wow. It's set in a gay bathhouse in 1976. Huh. What? And we're like moving from room to room and there's like sort of various

skits. It's based on a Terrence McNally play. I don't think I know what... It's not Hot Ale Baltimore, right? No, it's called The Ritz. Jesus, I never even heard of The Ritz. Wow, that cast. It's a good cast. It's a gay bathhouse.

Wow, okay. Fuck, and this poster. I think it's like a wild sort of, you know, screwball comedy kind of thing with this, right? sort of transgressive again terence mcnally so there i mean this is what i love about these old box office games you're like these you know these sort of forgotten movies i mean i say forgotten someone will probably yell at me yeah some of it like there's a movie number six the uh the red fox movie norman is that you oh yeah uh the one way i think which we talked about right which is just him grumbling about how his whole family is uh uh you know he's

like well women's lib and everyone's gay or whatever like that's the he's the he's the grumpy dad yeah i've not seen it um uh it's called uh at mentions the movie uh there's a movie called shout at the devil which is like a a big war movie starring lee marvin set in like zanzibar in the turn of the century okay yeah okay is it the thing no i'm sorry i'm just trying to remember why norman is that you came up in a previous episode in one of our old box office games. I know, but wasn't the thing, the weird thing with it,

that the play was about a Jewish family or something. There was like, yes, the film version changes the locale from New York city to Los Angeles and substitutes an African American family for a Jewish family in the original play. And Dennis Dugan plays the third lead. Everything about this is weird.

Okay. Sorry. I was just trying to remember why this was in my brain. Okay. Yeah, that's it. I mean, we're done. We, that's, you know, there's that Allison,

there's that horny Allison Wonderland movie. Remember that one? We talked about that too. Like I could ever forget. Right. Title that now haunts me. Lingering down there. And another one,

something called The Slipper and The Rose. I want to look up, is this also... No, this is just a classic retelling of The Cinderella Tale, starring Richard Chamberlain. Okay. Chamberlain. Looks pretty... It's like a musical. It's got lots and lots of songs.

It's based on Cinderella. It's Cinderella. It's one of those things I feel like whenever we do an earlier box office game, by earlier I mean anything before 1980, right? And sometimes this is a thing in the 80s as well. But I feel like people talk about this, and not enough, that every time we have switched to a different home media format, more movies get lost, right? media format, more movies get lost, right? Where they were like, there will never be as many movies released on DVD as there were on VHS and less so on Blu-ray and less so on 4K. And now it feels like in the streaming era, less and less of these films are getting remastered and put up on streaming services other than, you know, some of these boutique things that curate. And thank God,

HBO Max seems to have a little bit of a cultural history to it. But you're just like, all right, Norman, is that you? Is there any way to watch that movie? You know, even if there is, is it in any sort of like public consciousness? I'm not saying that's a film that needs to be preserved, but also all movies should be preserved. No, but the real problem with streaming is more like maybe it is available, but like, would Amazon even bother to tell you? No, but you can rent norman is that you on apple for two dollars if you really want to so yeah i want to and i'm gonna do it i'm canceling my plans i'm staying home tonight and asking the key question the big question norman is that you

like slipper in the rose it doesn't that just feel weird that there's some big live action Cinderella musical that all of us are like, huh? Really? Yeah. It's available to watch on Hoopla with subs. Hoopla? There's a lot of stuff that I just don't even know about. These streaming things. I refuse to know what Hoopla is.

I won't find out. I'm going to force you, David. David, I'm going to sneak into your home in the middle of the night wake you up with an iPad in front of your face and hoopla is gonna be playing you're gonna be looking at the fucking hoopla main page the interface and there's nothing there's nothing you

can do to stop me David it's gonna be when you least expect I'm gonna make you look at hoopla you can't I won't do it all right we're done thank you so much April oh I mean take us out no no I want to thank April you rule long All right, we're done. Thank you so much, April. Oh, thank you for having me. No, no, I want to thank April. You rule long overdue, but I think this was a great one to have you on for.

I hope so. I really appreciate it. It's great to, fun to talk about John Carpenter and his lesser known or lesser loved works that are all still good. And you were talking facetiously before we started recording about how you're working on stuff that you can't talk about yet.

So it just seems like all you're doing is chilling on Twitter. Yeah, just assume that I get paid to be on Twitter. Right, you're getting paid to be on Twitter. You're part of the blue checkmark agenda. Yeah, I am. Pushing Brigade being paid by big government to perpetuate lies. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I am. Pushing Brigade being paid by big government to perpetuate lies.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's like a lot of hippies who are paying me right now along with Soros. Yes. So I'm actually doing quite well on that front.

And I never have to work again. So, yeah, that's it. Well, congratulations on that. You've cracked the code. You're a great follow. People should follow you. And I look forward to you having new work that we can see in theaters or on screens soon. But at a wolf full on Twitter.

Yeah, I made it difficult. Well, thanks, guys. Thank you. Our pleasure. And thank you all for listening see I shifted the you I'm thinking

you did the you shifted you now the people listening I tried to give that to you because I liked it when people would say that and I could be like

and thank you for listening I appreciate it and the thing with me is I'm so clumsy that I never take a straight slide like that when someone gives me

the runway I then have to stop and explain exactly what I was doing because I lack confidence in all areas. But thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Thank you to JJ Borsh and Nick Lariano for our research, Lane Montgomery and the Great American for our theme song, Pat Bowen and Joe Reynolds for our artwork.

Did I flip that? Yeah, you flipped those. I said, Jesus Christ. I've been, we were not recording that much because David had a baby and I was sick and Ben rode a dang horse. And since then, I got out of the loop of having to repeat the intro and outro every week

and I have not been able to get back into the flow of things. You'll get back into it. No, I never will. All right, fine. Thank you to Pat Reynolds and Joe Bowen

for our artwork. Well, I really, I think the next group of names, our editors, would like it if you did, in fact,

get it together, Griffin. No, here's the challenge I'm going to do. I'm going to say their names backwards and they have to edit it into the proper order. You are wow. Thank you to AJ McKeon and Alex Barron

for our editing. Such an asshole. Yeah, come on. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit and you can go to patreon. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit and you can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features. We do commentaries

and we're currently deep in the tomb with the fucking mummy. We're hanging out with Imhotep, right? I can't remember. Probably. Yeah. Or we're doing Riddick. I don't know. Either way. I think we're doing Riddick right now, but whatever. We announced all of it. We're doing Riddick I don't know either way we're doing one of those right now but whatever well you announced all of it we're doing Riddick

right now we're doing Riddick right now okay we're chilling in the dark with Riddick so put on your goggles and and join our patreon tune in next week for as I already spoiled Halloween with Alex Ross Perry where he apparently choose us a new one I got that wrong it's tears us a new one what is choose us a new one I I got that wrong. It's tears us a new one. What is chews us a new one?

I guess, I guess it's... He's just chewing on your asshole. Yeah. He's chewing on her asshole. Chewing out an asshole into another part of your body for you. Tune in next week when acclaimed filmmaker Alex Ross Perry comes on the show

and with his teeth creates a new asshole on a different part of my body. As we discuss the landmark film, Halloween. And as always, I want to end this episode by just reading a couple more Napoleon Wilson quotes.

Ahem. Lieutenant Ethan Bishop says, looks pretty good to me. Napoleon Wilson says, looks like hell. It's all we got. That's cool. Pretty me. Napoleon Wilson says looks like hell. It's all we got. That's cool. Pretty good.

Napoleon Wilson chains is all I've got to look forward to. That's a Ben quote. Yeah, I mean, that's a fucking delightful quote. I get it.

Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, your final lines. I'll end with this. His final lines. You're pretty fancy, Wilson. Napoleon Wilson. I have moments. It's fucking cool such a good ending