Blank Check with Griffin & David - Big Trouble in Little China with Jason Mantzoukas & Paul Scheer

Episode Date: October 3, 2021

You know what ol’ Jack Burton would do on an episode like this? Bring back Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer, of course! The HOW DID THIS GET MADE? guys make their triumphant return to Blank Check to discuss yet another Kurt Russell masterpiece, and lament the lack of Russell-esque stars in today’s Hollywood landscape. There’s some John Landis slander and a shout-out to Kit Fisto - this episode TRULY has everything! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Just remember what old Jack Burton does when the earthquakes and the poison arrows fall from the sky and the pillars of heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big old storm right square in the eye and he says, give me your best podcast, pal. I can take it. Pretty good. Pretty good. You know what I realized finally cracked once watching watching this movie uh re-watching this movie for for today's episode you cracked your kurt well i i think i cracked kurt a little bit and he's obviously got a couple different modes but this mode which becomes almost a default for

him well this is he's doing john wayne thank you. He's specifically doing John Wayne. I finally figured it out. Well, you know this was written as, the original script was a Western. It was about the formation of Chinatown in San Francisco set in the 1800s, yes. Yes, and Kurt Russell comes in and is actively doing a John Wayne impression who he worked with, I believe, as a child.

Yes, and this feels like the genesis of that being one of the three main Kurt Russell modes. Like, anytime he has to be mildly funny guy, I feel like he's doing the John Wayne rhythms. I want to throw something into the mix here because I also felt this was a little bit of Kurt Russell

throwing some shade at Harrison Ford as Indy. Not in cadence, but in story and attitude like there is a version of this yes there is a version of this character this is definitely an answer to indy and and kurt russell's attempt at come came close to being Han Solo. Yes. Yeah. You know, and he's one of the other choices at that time to play Han Solo. And this is also a, a riff on that, except that,

and what Kurt Russell is so exceptional at doing. And I know we're in where we're just doing it, but like, unlike Harrison Ford's characters, Jack Burton is an absolute failure at every stage he he has no wins he has no wins until he kills lopin he has every time he loses and he takes two shots at lopin too it's not even yeah which is like like or like the one where he's like all right let's go and he shoots into the ceiling and knocks himself unconscious.

Yeah. He has so many heroic lines that are then upended by failure. And that's what Harrison Ford never does. Well, I think that what is so interesting about this movie, I'm going back and watching this film. I was a little bit nervous because I haven't seen it in a while. And I know that this is a movie that people absolutely love. I love or I like this movie a lot. I don't think it's my go to John Carpenter movie, but I know there's people out there that they have the poster on the wall.

It's all in on this movie. I think I've appreciated it the most this time. But I would say that I was a little bit nervous. Oh, is this going to be be like a weird like kind of racist movie where I'm going to feel like oh this didn't age well and conversely I think this movie ages so well because you look at it and you go the white savior myth is completely upended because he is an idiot

and everyone around him is smarter more you know not more interesting but yeah they are more capable more capable more interesting more interesting, but, but yeah, they are more capable, more capable, more interesting, more prepared. He is a visitor in the movie that's happening. This is a movie where the, the, the lead character is a guest. He does.

He, he's not the inciting person. He's not the stakes. Don't lie with him. He is a trucker delivering meat to a restaurant and gets sucked into like a supernatural war. Not only does he get sucked into it, but he barely affects it. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Little impact. And anyone else, he's replacement level. Right. Someone else could probably do the same job. In many respects, and I don't mean this to be, I don't want anyone to take this in the wrong way, but he is playing the damsel in distress. Yes.

Who doesn't know that they are the damsel in distress. It's like, because he does all the moves that you would see in these movies where like, you know, the woman runs into the room. Oh my gosh, they saw me. Like, he does it all. It's really kind of, it's so kind of subversive in that way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, he's all bluff and bluster, but every time he's called on it, he's like, whoa, what?

You know, it's, he's, he's constantly stepping into a fight for the heroic moment. But then when, like, he's like, like when he steps up to the guys and he's like, now, hang on a second, whatever he says. Now, hang on a second there, guy. And then the guy pulls out a knife and he goes, whoa. And then the other guy pulls out like a blade and he goes, where'd you get that? He's like truly, truly like constantly being undercut.

His masculinity and his capability is constantly being undercut at every stage of the movie. But it's also fundamentally not a fish out of water movie because it's also defined by the fact that this guy absolutely thinks he is the lead character and the hero of this story. Like, that's the interesting balance of it.

It's not guy in over his head, ill-equipped. That's where the comedy comes from. It's the comedy comes from, this guy thinks this is a movie entirely about him. And you could, Garfield minus Garfield, almost every scene, and fundamentally none of the action really changes that much.

He also is staying in circumstances that he has no reason to stay for. You know what I mean? He's got no skin in the game. He just wants that double or nothing. He's got no skin in the game. And it's like, as opposed to like, let's say Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone. He's constantly trying to shake Kathleen Turner for like, right. For like the beginning of act two, he's like trying to

get rid of her. You know, he doesn't want to be part of this. He doesn't want to get dragged into whatever he is. She is. But the minute trouble starts, Jack Burton is like, I'm here and I'm in the lead and I'm don't worry. I've got this. And then he's like, I don't got this. We're trapped. He literally, yeah. He literally is asking, he's like, follow me. And then turns to somebody else and says, where do we go? I love that. And there is something that's so fun about that character. And one of the things that they do that I think that is really interesting. And I read this, uh, after I watched the movie last night was that opening sequence where it's sort of this interrogation or,

or this, it, who even knows what this is, where they really build up his character was something that the studio wanted them to add because they wanted to make this movie a Kurt Russell movie. Yeah. And,

and it seemed like John Carpenter and you guys probably know this more than I do, like was okay with it because he felt it further subverted the audience's expectations of it like it was interesting because you lead with this three-minute scene like don't talk bad about Jack Burton he's a goddamn hero and then you realize that it's funny at the end of the movie like oh he's even lying to that like like he's keeping it all quiet like they're blaming him in a weird way or they're putting him at the front. So their organization and their society stays quiet secret. It's,

it's, it's genius. It works. It's kind of crazy. Cause Carpenter took the studio note and found a way to have it play both ways. Yeah, exactly what they want,

but, but heighten his own bit. I was just gonna say, it's very telling that like, so that's the studio note you know reshoot opening added later in terms of how this movie was originally planned the the opening and closing are jack burton into the cb radio right in his truck essentially mythologizing himself oh yeah basically a trucker bukowski kind of monologue. But all this like Jack Burton isn't the kind of guy who does this, you know, like explaining it.

Then you watch this movie where when they call his bluff and go like, congratulations, you're in the middle of an action movie. He's like, well, of course I am. I'm Jack Burton. Then he fucks everything up and the movie ends with him being like, let me tell you another thing about Jack. Like he just views it as an absolute success. Well, what I love is how often he refers to himself as Jack Burt. Right. Like he's constantly self-mythologizing himself around and narrating. He's almost narrating the movie because he's also having to.

And again, it's this is something that I feel like that Indiana Jones or Han Solo would never do, which is he's constantly admitting he doesn't know what's going on. Like, he's asking questions in every scene. Where are we going? Where is this? What's this? His skills are he has a knife. He wins an obvious bet.

He can drive a truck. That's it, right? I'm done, right? He can get your movie financed that's that's his biggest skill he's green lightable look you guys were on for another kurt russell movie i only realized this after i booked that you guys have done two kurt russell movies i have a thing for this which i i'm going to admit here on the pod, which is the first time I saw Big Trouble in Little China was after we did Used Cars. Oh, wow. Interesting. Wow.

Okay. Carpenter is a blind spot for me. Wow. Oh, I love Carpenter. Mostly because I am not a horror person. I did not grow up liking horror, being a horror fan. And to me, Carpenter was synonymous with horror. So his movies were set aside for me. They weren't ones I pursued unless they were like Escape from New York, which I knew was not a horror movie, which

I saw. The Thing, which was like, but I also didn't see The Thing until like probably my 30s. But I also didn't see the thing until probably my 30s. And this I never saw. And then we watched Used Cars. And then after Used Cars just went on a Kurt Russell jag of all the Kurt Russell movies I'd either never seen or I had forgotten. And this was one of them. And I was so mad when I watched it because I was like i could have been watching this right for years i loved this movie well like it's it this movie is unlike anything really when you watch it now or and watching it now and not having this allegiance to it where i'm like this is one

of my favorite movies i was able to i think really appreciate it more and be surprised by some moments that i had forgotten about and the turns this movie takes even now are so bold for a mainstream movie and i think when i was a kid this is a movie that played i grew up in new york it grew like there was a channel 11 which was like they played that's where they played all their movies right yeah exactly that like i feel like I was watching gung ho enter the draft, not enter the dragon. Um, Barry Gordy's the last dragon, uh, the golden child. There was a lot of like obsession with Asian culture. And it was like, and it was, and this was the one that I was like, oh yeah, but I like those other ones that were basically doing the straight down the middle thing as a kid I was like I want to see that I don't want to see this thing that's

kind of subverting it so I feel like I really got a chance to like just appreciate it for it how insane I mean the the creature with the eye as a tongue is just like you're like wait and this isn't the like and none of it gets explained nothing ever gets no matter how many exposition dumps there are none of it gets explained to a satisfying degree which is so delightful because we are following in the movie the people who are kind of on the outside of the actual story. Like, there's that great alleyway fight that is between the two gangs and the storms arrive. And just as the storms arrive and the fight really escalates, Jack and his friend leave.

And we follow them away from the action. So we're following people who are not part of the central action, which is fascinating and such an interesting move. There's also that scene when Jack and what's Kim Cattrall's character's name? Law, Gracie Law.

Gracie Law. When they're finally reunited and he goes like, so what's going on here exactly? And she tries to give him a plot synopsis, but kind of shrugs it off she's like i don't know like lopin wants to marry me because i have green eyes and then she's like she like takes the shit off she's like whatever like i was kind of into it for a second

and now i'm realizing it sounds silly that's sort of her vibe she's similarly kind of a shitty lois lane where she like throws herself in the center of this and is like, I need to crack this case and then ends up becoming like part of the problem. And what I love is that she partners up with him like he doesn't fall in love with the green eyed girl who is coming from overseas like the two idiots fall in love. Yes, it really is. And I love her friend, whoever that colonizing this movie. Yes. Kate Burton, the reporter. Yes.

Yes. Kate Burton. When I realized that was Kate Burton, that blew my mind. I didn't realize that. Oh, my God. But I loved it. Like, they'll do stuff like Gracie Law will be like, oh, Lo Pan, the godfather of Little China. Mr. David Lopan. And then Kate Burton goes, you mean the David Lopan that's chairman of National Orient Bank and owns the wing long import export trading company, but who's so

reclusive that no one's even laid eyes on this guy in years. Like Kate Burton delivers that whole line. And, and, and Carpenter puts in shots of like Kim Cattrall rolling her eyes. She's like, they're like over, they're commenting on the exposition in the movie. But Kate Burton is also like, she's the Wang Chi where she's actually the one who knows everything and then Kim Cattrall's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously so here's what I'm gonna do.

But also, the scene with most of the exposition, Jack Burton is on the phone trying to like get insurance for his truck truck which you know like five seconds after and it's like what are you guys even talking about come on you know like that's that's the that's it's the perfect tone griffin introduced the show i'm giving you an opportunity you got to do it now quick oh this is a podcast called blank check with david i'm i'm david ha ha it's a podcast about filmography's directors

who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby! This is a mini-series on the films of John Carpenter. It is called They Podcast. Today we're talking Big Trouble in Little China. I mean, how did you not call it

Big Trouble in Little Podcast? Well, my... This was... Griff likes to often split pod and cast. So my pitch was... And then I think he will... He'll go far down a road

and then... Right. Your pitch was... I said... Or Big Pod in Little Cast. That's what I wanted to... Okay. So David was saying,

what if we do Big Trouble in Little Podcast? And I said, I want Big Poddle in Little Casta, which he hated. Yeah, you see, I'm on your page, but I also, I'm on your page in the want to do that, but I'm on David's side that it was wrong. Right. Like, that's where I walk.

You're right that probably going, splitting the difference, Big Pod and Little Cast would have worked. Why did you, why did you, why, Why did you? So you're not replacing. You're just replacing the first half of Trouble with pod. Correct. That's crazy. Once you're breaking it down like that, I think that's insanity. It's sick. As someone who has to do openings a lot for How Did This Get Made,

and you do a bunch of these episodes, your brain starts to break and you start to find patterns and different things. We're Good Will Hunting over here trying to make these opens work. You know, sometimes it just, you know, we're on the next level. We're trying to find the juice anymore. A regular open doesn't give it to us anymore. You guys, you don't get it. The one I really wanted was podscape from newcast i like i like the portmanteau words and and poddle i mean a big

trouble i mean here's the thing they podcast is just it's just it's just literally text that's what we're doing i agree they podcast you know i'm a truthful artist i tell the truth i think some people like that. Some people like when there is a message in the title, like when we did Jonathan Demme and it was Stop Making Podcasts. I like that. Sure. Absolutely.

Right. And I like it as sweaty as possible. I want fucking Satchimo blowing on that horn, dabbing off his forehead. This is our Big Trouble in little china episode our guest today from how did this get made and most importantly from the used cars episode a blank check which was the longest episode yes that's what we're here to do ross perry broke the record with halloween that's what we're here to do we've got the our our target is set on alex ross perry

halloween damn halloween episode jason manzoukas and paul sheer here thank you for being on the Our target is set on Alex Ross Perry. Halloween. Damn Halloween episode. Jason Manzoukas and Paul Scheer here. Thank you for being on the show again. Hello, Fennell. Wow. Wow. Quite an endorsement.

Big shout out to producer Ben. That's for Ben. That's for the Purdueer Ben. Hell yeah. We're so excited to be here. Whenever you do Kurt Russell movies now, please call us That is the only way we can do this Yes, I will only come in for Kurt Russell movies

It's Kurt and only Kurt Can I just throw, because I think we're going to be very Positive about this movie And rightly so Yeah, because it's a good movie It is a good movie I just want to call out something that I think I was wrestling with And i wanted to get your take on it as we discuss it because i feel like it's better served to top than later on the movie is uneven in the sense of performances and i would

say even from scene to scene like there are certain moments where i'm like wow this feels like somebody's audition sides and then later on i'm like this person feels like somebody's audition sides and then later on I'm like this person feels like a lived in fully done character and then I'm like are you are we playing into genre here sometimes Kim Cattrall feels like she's playing into genre sometimes I'm like I don't know like that's the one if I was to take give you like the one big note for me besides Kurt Russell who is clean down the middle uh like he's getting it and i would actually say lopan is uh i mean i love that guy uh james yeah one of the and yeah um there are some there are some uh people that obviously are not but that

was the that was the one thing that every now and then made me feel a little bit like and i could understand that maybe that turned people off because this was not a successful this is films yeah it was not successful it's a discombobulating energy this film i would say i think the first time i saw it i was a teenager and i was pretty baffled by it i didn't get what it was doing at all yeah and i do think that was a common experience. I was going to say, this movie is, I think one of the reasons that I liked it so much is kind of because I found it as an adult.

And it's one of my favorite kind of movies, which is that it's a shaggy movie. It's like, this is like Lebowski. This is like, this is a movie in which the core plot of the movie

wasn't meant to include the lead character the dude the dude isn't supposed to be inside of the the kidnapping plot of the big lebowski he is there by accident by mistaken identity right and his presence absolutely upends the whole thing. And the same thing is happening here in the sense that like this is a martial arts movie that has supernatural elements between warring factions inside of this community that is closed off to the rest of the world that has all of this mythos and lore and all of this stuff going on. And just because he happened to be delivering meat to the restaurant that day, Jack Burton gets sucked into this and is now our audience surrogate. And it's confusing.

By the way, I'm going to argue that it's even worse. It's not that he's just delivering meat. It's like he gambled and then he's just being greedy. Like, not greedy. He won the bet. And then he's just being greedy. Like, not greedy. He won the bet. But the only reason why he goes forward is because, like, it's like the hero's journey by, like, attachment.

Right? Because it's like he's not making a choice to go forward. The only reason why he's going forward with the journey on some level is to maybe get laid with, maybe, like, that's a part of it. Well, I think the first step is he wants the money that uh yeah he's owed and he's like all right i'll bring you to that place it's the equivalent of han solo being like i'll help you do this but i better get paid but i guess like his two like his his two steps forward in the hero's journey are for uh selfish reasons i need to get paid the money and i like that and i'm attracted to this girl there's nothing like I need to get paid the money and I liked it. And I'm attracted to this girl. There's nothing like I need to save this person ultimately. Well, well, here's the thing that's

true. I think about this movie is Jack Burton is not, there is no call to adventure. No, right. There is, he is not a chosen one. He's not chosen. He's, he's in fact being told over and over and over again, you are not important in this story and you don't even need to know the specifics. We're not even going to tell you the specifics until later. You're not, the restaurant

guy, the uncle in the restaurant, Wang, any of these people are like don't worry Jack, don't worry Jack. Jack is like constantly being like, what's going on? Who's that guy? What's this? And they're like you wouldn't believe me if I told you, don't worry jack don't worry jack jack is like constantly being like what's going on who's that guy what's this and they're like you wouldn't believe me if i told you don't worry about it and that kind of shaggy energy that no one's saying go away everyone's sort of happy to have him around he's he's the cheerleader he's the cheerleader like you know like he's he's providing a service that i think even though everyone in this movie is incredibly capable, incredibly smart,

and knows what's going on, they use him just like the opening scene. They use him to accomplish certain things. Like he was the only, uh, you know, Nixon's the only one who could go to China. Jack Burton's the only one go to that, uh, that house of, uh, ill repute, you know, like they needed, they needed him as a patsy and he willingly falls into that role this is my mission thing on this this is a john carpenter film like jason said suggests something darker it stars kurt russell it's an action movie about a big bicep guy with a gun who fights you know elemental warriors a man explodes in this movie there There's, you know, insane violence. It's kind of sexy. You know, it's got a complicated plot.

It's a game called The Lords of Death. I mean, it's got fucking everything. With Back to the Future level, Back to the Future 2 level glasses going on, I mean, it's really beautiful. There are characters who control the elements. Yes. Who are perhaps themselves the elements there's right exactly there's scenes

in you know brothels there's all kinds of underworld stuff the big word i would describe for this big word i would use to describe this movie is like cute this is a really cute sweet movie despite everything i just told you i don't think this would have worked in any other form. Like, and I do think Carpenter's crucial, obviously, but I do think Kurt Russell is so, so crucial to that. Any other,

you read, we're going to tell you, like you read up, oh, they want to Clint Eastwood. They want to Jack Nicholson. It would probably be a disaster. Terrible movie. You know,

terrible movie. That movie would be racist. That movie would be racist. Well, we saw that movie, El Torino. I mean, great. Yeah. No, movie that movie would be racist that movie would be racist well we saw that movie el torino yeah i mean no no it's so true because and and you guys have talked about this on the in other episodes of the carpenter series but this this movie is suffused with not just the kind of martial arts

jackie chan kind of style stuff that is present at the time, but also Howard Hawks, like straight up banter, kind of screwball comedy. This is a screwball comedy inside of a martial arts movie. And that's what's interesting. Like Gracie Law and Jack Burton are, have the rat-a-tat-tat dialogue of like a bogey and Bacall or any of those kind of screwball comedy, his girl Friday type of stuff. That's what this movie, at the heart of it is what's going on.

And then all the externals are this wild adventure story. But without that kind of banter at the heart of it, it wouldn't work at all. And that is I agree with you, David. That banter is which which Kurt Russell has with everybody is cute. That's what I love where you're like Jack Burton could lift out of this movie. But without Jack Burton, this movie would probably not be very watchable. Like, right. That's pretty crazy to get that balance right. It's bizarre. This movie is like six movies in one that fundamentally feel like they shouldn't work. And even when it doesn't work, it works.

Like, it works in spite of being an overstuffed mess. It's interesting, Jay, Paul, that you brought up, like, discovering this movie on WPIX. Because that was my local channel as well. And I felt like the best channel in terms of because it was like a lesser network they would play more movies especially on the weekends because they had less programming yeah i remember like sunday after dinner it was the best time to go down and watch movies but i also feel like there'd be like a sunday afternoon oh yeah yeah there i i mean i that's i feel like sunday afternoon yeah like that like going over someone else's house and like do you can i just run down to your basement and watch this TV?

Like, I remember that distinctly being on shag carpet. Right. Yeah. WB 11. And like you said, this movie made less sense to you as a kid. Cause you were watching it in relation to more earnest,

straight faced, modern martial arts movies. I remember discovering this movie in a line, perhaps within the same year as like Wb11 sunday afternoon movie with total recall and robocop which like this movie was contextualized for me within those two verhoeven movies where i was like what is this spectrum of things that get made in the 80s that seem to be parodying themselves and have these like bug nuts, practical effects, this odd sense of humor, this like weird aggression.

That was where this movie came into focus for me. But I also feel like I discovered it when I was like 15 and I was like, why didn't I see this movie when I was 10? As opposed to Robocop in Total Recall. I don't know. I don't know. In a certain way, this movie feels like a little boy just free associating

and making up a story as he goes along. Well, it's interesting because Jack never gets hurt. You know what I mean? Like Jack has take so many hits, has so much like physical injury done to himself and to his truck, but both he and the truck drive away at the end unscathed completely you know i mean like there's something about he never gets uh he never really

takes any damage you know which is concrete and he's fine like he just wakes up that's the other weird element of this is that like this movie he's kind of charmed yeah it's kind of an alice in wonderland like on top of it being a martial arts movie a's kind of charmed yeah it's kind of an alice in wonderland like on top of it being a martial arts movie a comedy a sci-fi it's a fantasy film to your point he's kind of a kid he's kind of a kid in a make-believe story this is this make this reminds me of axe cop it's like because the story is free associating oh now there's a monster that's this now there's like this beast that comes out you know the the beast that's behind the the wall like what they never explained never never

explained beast that nobody ever has a final showdown with you know it's great also like the the motivation like ax cop being like why are you in this because i hate bad guys right now i am good and these bad guys are bad and i have to stop them i mean you were talking about how like the the you know refusal of the call thing that is so overused in sort of hero's journey screenplays and like not only is jack not have a hero's journey but but he, he never refuses a call. He accepts a call that was never placed. Yes. You know, he thinks he's a hero.

He thinks that's it. He's not on a hero's journey, but he thinks he is. Because finally the first Jack Burton movie, I've been waiting forever for this. Oh, it's, it's that scene where he's like,

comes to the lead where they're all, they're leading everybody out. And he's like, okay, from here on, it's easy going. It's that scene where he's like, comes to the lead where they're all, they're leading everybody out. And he's like, okay, from here on, it's easy going. It's just some, some storage rooms, some office space, a storefront, and then we're out. And then he opened, we're ready. One, two, three. He opens the door and there's a million bad guys on the other side. He closes the door slowly and he goes, okay, we may be then goes then goes you guys run they only saw me right and then which is such a great dumb thing and then what i love and going back to what we started talking about in the beginning about how he barely affects this movie they bust through that

door and he essentially runs off camera and the other guy does the entire fights and he kind of comes back in like oh hey like everyone like it's like he he leaves the screen like that to me was the like it's so well done in that way that he is has no part of the battle but but but is never but is never framed as a coward is never framed as, you know, ineffectual. He's ineffectual in the sense that, like, he runs out of bullets, or when he throws his knife, it misses. But he's not, like, hiding.

He's not, like, he's not running away, which is, I think, really important. Yeah, exactly. It's really important that he feels as though and acts as though and sounds like he's John Wayne. He's giving John Wayne level declarations and then undercutting it. Either he or the movie undercuts it instantaneously. That you guys might be trapped moment is so crucial because it's like he's his most confident proclamation of him having this under control.

He opens the door. He sees them. He doesn't panic. He doesn't scream. They don't cut to a wide-eyed close-up. He just calmly closes the door, goes through three locks, right? Takes his time, takes a breath, and then turns around and says, you guys might be trapped.

And it's like Bugs Bunny timing where he's like weirdly unaffected by the escalation of danger. Oh, yeah. And here's another one. This was another alt that I thought you could use for the beginning. Please. What's in the flask? Egg.

Magic potion. Yeah. Thought so. Good. What do we do? Drink it. Yeah. Good.

Thought so. Good. That's my favorite exchange. He has many incredible exchanges with egg. Egg is so great. And I love that guy. That's Victor Wong, right? Victor Wong.

Yes. Victor Wong, who is also in Prince of Darkness, which he rules in as well. So good. He had three ninjas. This movie's full. Al Leung is in this movie just killing it. Just like being an absolute monster out there.

He's just the best. But just like Al Leung kind of runs the table on the 80s. He's one of Hans Gruber's henchmen. He's Genghis Khan in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Yeah. He's in... And he's also in... Isn't he in Beverly Hills Cop?

Yes, I think he is. Yes. He's in so much. Lethal Weapon. Lethal Weapon. Yes, he's the one who shocks Mel Gibson. Although apparently he is in Beverly Hills Cop Freak. Oh boy, of course. Oh man, that one hurts me.

Carter Wong was the guy that I was very excited by in this movie. He's the guy who blows up. I loved him, too. He's, like, what a great, uh, just a great bad guy in this whole movie. Really, really fun. He has an incredible smile. His sort of, like,

you know, his, like, sort of evil grin. I was just gonna say, if the movie was framed correctly, it would be a movie about Wang. You know, Wang, whose fiancé is kidnapped, and he has to go on an adventure. The call to action is, am I going to go and rescue my fiance from these from Lopan, from the forces of mystical evil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's Wang's movie. But we don't we're and he's absolutely as as as incapable as Jack Burton is.

Wang is excessively capable. He fights lightning. He fights thunder. He fights all the bad guys. He does backflips. Yes. He's incredibly adept and capable. But what's so funny is because we pivot and are with Jack Burton,

the movie just becomes inherently comedic or more comedic than as if it was just an intense martial arts kind of adventure story, you know? But another thing, it feels impossible that this movie is able to pull off is that that entire Wang movie you described does happen and happens on screen. It's not even like the joke is oh it's happening over here and you're not seeing it true yes you're right you're right but it's not we're given so little access to wang's interiority you know i mean like yeah i guess i think the other thing

that i'm i don't i mean this kind of goes hand in hand with it i i believe what's so interesting about this movie, though, too, is how it avoids all the stereotypes of what was going on in cinema for these types of movies, but yet plays into all the stereotypes of genre, which it's like it's a very interesting line because, you know, I just I'm kind of like blown away by that deft hand. And John Carpenter, I never think of him as someone, I think of him as understanding genre really well, but this take on this and playing this out in this way was really interesting because he is, he's giving you everything that he wants. If you took Jack Bauer out, this movie works. If you put Jack Bauer in, it works on a different level. Jack Bauer?

I would love it if it was Jack Bauer. I don't think it works with Jack Bauer. I want to throw out, I don't think it would. Jack Bauer in, it works on a different level. Jack Bauer? I would love it if it was Jack Bauer. I don't think it works with Jack Bauer. I want to throw out. Jack Bauer would be, yeah. I mean, to be fair, this movie probably takes place in 24 hours. I mean, less. I mean, yeah, they're out in the morning. It seems like, yeah.

But like, I mean, David, I want you to walk us through the development of this. But you think about just because we're doing this chronologically, right? The thing is like his blank check movie after making all these films that over deliver on a very limited budget. Everyone hates it. America revolts. It's a fucking flop. It's despised by critics. OK, I'm like back on my heels. What do I do to recover? Right. He retreats to Christine and Starman, which are more sort of like, you know, one's a Stephen King work. One's, you know,

you know, more family friendly. Those two, okay. So he's kind of like, Right. It's a proven franchise in King. It's a teen horror movie. It's supernatural. It's like, that's an easier film

for him to just kind of get done and put out and turn a little profit and then Starman is like look I'm branching out I'm going like more emotional more heartfelt it's barely a genre movie and then this is the most genre anyone could put into anything

but it's also pre they live it's the first time that he's sort of going overtly comedic, which is a big swing. And the only reason this movie gets made, I think with this, I don't want to say this little oversight, but with this many chances taken and this many big swings and weird

directions is because of this movie being in a bizarre arms race with the golden child, an equally bizarre movie that they were terrified of getting beaten by. Not only did Fox, of course, was Fox living in fear of the Golden Child, it was just living in fear of Paramount. Paramount had become this sort of unstoppable juggernaut

in the 80s with Eddie Murphy as their number one star. And so they're like, fuck! Eddie's like the last of like the traditional movie star contracts where it was like you have 10 movies at paramount and paramount's like god damn it we have a hit every year now yeah and they're like shit he's making a movie that's kind of sort of sounds like this movie like and eddie murphy's in it the guy who did just just did 48 hours trading places beverly hills cop. We're screwed. John, you got to make this thing fast. And we, right, we won't really check in.

Like that is definitely part of it. And he has for him a big budget, like $25 million. And yeah, pretty big budget for the time, I guess. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. And this is the end of Jon Stewart as a studio filmmaker for a long time.

Jon Carpenter. You said Jon Stewart? No, but Jon Stewart as a studio filmmaker for a long time. Jon Carpenter. You said Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart and Jack Bauer together are one of the best. Thousands. They're just alive again. Big trouble in Little Rosewater. When I think of Jon Frankenheimer, I think of a filmmaker who. He's a good filmmaker.

What I like about Jon Bon Jovi's movies the most is that he has such a deft control of tone David talk us through the development of this screenplay because it's weird right it's credited to Gary Goldman and David Weinstein as you guys said it was a wild west story it's set in Chinatown in 1899

he's not a truck driver he's like a meat delivery man for Chinese workers. Graphic novel or novel novel? No, no, no. The script. Original screenplay. The script that was floating around.

Okay. It's got this weird adapted by credit because the whole screenplay was rewritten and WGA wouldn't give the credit. It's adapted from a different screenplay. It's like a page one rewrite, basically. But it's a bizarre format of credit that they almost never do they don't do it that often right and carpenter complained about it as he did about uh what's the is it the thing no a starman starman starman

is credited to the original writers and not the guy who actually wrote it but at least this time wd richter the director of buckaroo bonsai uh you know a very interesting guy in his own right uh he rewrites it because at a certain point walter hill i think was gonna make it as a western or whatever and that fell apart who's one of the most frequently recurring uh figures on this podcast in this exact section of any episode where you go, Walter Hill almost directed this script. Like, I feel like all the time, Walter Hill is the guy who almost made the thing and made the weirder version of the thing

that everyone got scared of. Does Walter Hill just have too many movies to be put into the bracket? I would, no, I would like to do Walter Hill. We've considered it. We've talked about Walter Hill. You have?

It's doable. And it's interesting. Guys, I'm just, I'm sorry for one second I have to get my car keys from my wife Just give me one quick second I'm so sorry It's okay

I'm playing checkers on Via text message with my friend During our episode? What? No, but Ben, keep this in Okay By the way, also, David

Checkers? By the way, with friends of the show shirley lee sorry uh well okay so we've gotten addicted to this really janky app in in iMessage where you can play stupid games with each other and we're trying to one-up each other and how bad the game can be essentially so i try checkers okay i i am the absolute worst at staying in regular communication with people j Jason, especially over like digital devices and platforms and stuff. Ben and I were just marveling the other day that for as many different things David is on top of in his life and how thoroughly well versed he is

in what's going on in television, movies, music, literature, all of that. He also at any given time is like upholding 80 different group texts, including... That? Yeah. I don't get that. I'm with you. I'm like, that is... He's on top of it. That is shocking to me. And playing 15 different games with friends and has a baby. I have a baby.

I do have a baby. She's great. Yeah, I love to text. I love to talk to people. But when you have a kid you have to that's where you get a lot of your time out I mean honestly truthfully I'm doing a lot of

that work that's where I'm doing most of my work I have to I think you and I are linked here afraid of the internet don't want to leave our homes correct you are right on with that, Griff. Speaking of how, how is, before we get back into it very briefly, how is your health? It is good. Thank you very much for asking. I'm, I'm totally in the clear. The very short

version of it is. Did they give you, did they give you your gallbladder to take home? No, my friend Pat called dibs on it. And it turns out now that they do everything, what's it called? Endoscopically or like, yeah, right. They have to like mush it up before they pull it out. Yeah. Um, yeah, no, the fucking problem was that my surgery got delayed for two additional months because they got really worried that something was wrong with my liver. And so they didn't want to put me under because they couldn't run the anesthesia through it. So I was in increasing pain. Absolutely. All this is in. I don't know. I don't know, though. I don't know. Keep it at home. Ben?

Alright. Alright. My surgery, which had already taken two plus months to get to the date it was supposed to happen, then got canceled because in the blood work they had to do the day before the surgery, they were like, your liver's out of control. We think you might have a serious illness.

We can't run anesthesia through your liver, which is where it goes, because then it could cause permanent damage if we put you under for the gallbladder surgery. So I had like two more months of rigamarole and tests and getting sent to different people and whatever before I finally got to see a liver specialist. And she was like, get that thing out of you immediately. I don't

know what they're waiting for. I'm going to have you do 20 blood tests to rule out every worst case scenario. And if you don't test positive for any of these, it's worth the risk to get the thing out of your body because we'll get a better sense of what's wrong with your liver. If we go in, we take a biopsy, we do an x-ray, this and that. And what ended up becoming clear a couple of weeks after the surgery was done, gallbladder removal went great. All problems solved. Everyone's wondering, is the liver going to return to normal? come clear a couple weeks after the surgery was done gallbladder removal went great all problems

solved everyone's wondering is the liver going to return to normal and she's like yeah liver numbers totally down to normal it turned out what happened was it took so goddamn long for the gallbladder surgery to happen your gallbladder ruptured and started leaking onto your liver oh my god wow so the longer they delayed it, the worse it got. The worse it looked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like, it was purely like just a weird, it did not affect function at all. There was no permanent damage,

but every time they looked, they were like, your level should be in the 20s and they're a thousand. We're going to push back your surgery another two weeks. I see why that's awful, but okay. I'm glad you're on the mend. I am in the clear. I'm doing well. Oh, so glad to hear it.

The Walter Hill version of the movie sounds a little more like Shanghai Noon. It was sort of like comedic, right? But the idea is sort of doing like an East meets West kind of thing. This sort of like... Set in the past. Set in like an east meets west kind of thing this sort of like uh set in the past set in like frontier era you know um san francisco that's the other thing they were very interested in being somewhat historically accurate like mapping it onto the development of chinatown

in san francisco at the beginning and then putting this fantastical myth, mystical stuff in it, but also putting this sort of like not con artists, but like blowhard meat truck. I don't know, meat wagon delivery guy who like fashions himself as a cowboy who rides into town. And he's got like I felt like and I don't know because I'm, you know, just the little I do know. And I will give shouts to the, um, the, uh, action boys podcast, which is, uh, past past and future guests, John Gabrus, um, Ben Rogers and, uh, Ryan Stanger have a show called action boys and they did an episode on this as well. Um, and so I, I, I feel like I've gotten bits and pieces of stuff like that. Cause I think that's where I originally heard that they wanted it to be a Western.

But this idea that Kurt Russell is doing all of these Western elements like a John Wayne vocal cadence. I feel like his Baja thing is the equivalent of a Clint Eastwood poncho man with no name. Totally. You know, he's got like the Baja. That's his poncho. You know, like all got like the, the Baja. That's his poncho. You know, like all of these reference points at the end of the movie,

he leaves with saddlebags, like horse saddlebags. You know, like that's, his money is in saddlebags and he climbs into a big rig truck. Like, it's crazy. It's also funny that it's like, okay, let's take this thing that everyone said

like has interesting ideas in it, but the script is essentially indecipherable. Like, everyone was like, this is insane. It's too dense. There's no entry point. It was very dense. Right. W.D. Richter, who had just written Buckaroo Banzai, which is a classic of the 80s that was a huge flop on release, is basically like, I needed

to do something to get my foot back in the door. No one was going to hire me to direct. Yeah. Can I ask a question? I'm sorry, because I'm only on the podcast to derail and make longer. Go right ahead.

Correct me if I'm wrong. You guys have never done Buckaroo Banzai, right? We have not. We have not. I have a very important question to ask. Ben, have you seen Buckaroo Bonsai? No, I have not. I've never heard of it.

Doesn't that feel like a Ben movie? Like a fastball straight down the middle? Absolutely. Ben, you would love Buckaroo Bonsai. I've never seen it either. I highly recommend it. It's kind of got Big Trouble in Little China Energy. I guess not surprisingly.

It was written by the same guy. I think it's it's kind of got big trouble a little china energy i guess not surprisingly it was written by the same guy um well i think it's credited somewhere but it's wd rector um how did peter weller weller is no kurt russell i will say that no he's not i mean there's i i think that's a reason why perhaps buckaroo bonsai remains even more niche than this film, because Weller is playing it 100 percent straight and earnest versus Russell being able to sort of wink and let the audience in. But Buckaroo Banzai is like this with sci fi, you know, it's a it's a similar sort of exercise. It is fascinating that he's like, because his screenwriting career before Buckaroo Banzai was strong, right? Then that movie kind of perplexes people.

He's in director jail. He's like, I need to make something that gets me back in studio good graces. And he makes something equally weird and unsuccessful, like on a bigger scale. But he does get the job essentially because he reads this script and is like, this should be contemporary.

And Fox is like, good, we're glad you agree. Get to work. And John Carpenter had the same take where he was like, I found the script unreadable, but it just had a good title and a lot of ideas. And W.D. Richter turned it into a movie I wanted to make. Carpenter had read it years earlier as sort of just and W.D. Richter turned it into a movie I wanted to make. Carpenter had read it years earlier as sort of just a thing

floating around. There's stuff here. I wouldn't know what to do with this. And then Richter's whole thing was like the buy-in is so big on this movie, it has to start in a world that people recognize. So that you can then uncover the sort of rabbit hole underneath

it all. And not only a world you recognize, but a contemporary world to such a degree that it's capitalizing on the brief popularity of trucker CB movies. True. You know what I mean? Yeah. a trucker, you are really identifying this period of like five years where we are obsessed with, you know, trucker movies, trucker life, CB radios, all of these kind of things. And that kind of like just puts him squarely in modernity. And that intro, you know, they drive around, you know, they have a car chase and he's in the big rig. Then he pulls the big rig into the alleyway.

It switches to a soundstage. And then the fight happens. The entirety of the fight in Act 1, they are spectators of. Inside the truck. They don't get involved. They're useless. They're not helpful. Yeah.

Jack Burton and Wang are literally just sitting in the cab of the truck watching one of the biggest fight scenes in the movie occur around them. They are spectators. And that's what's interesting. And once you're in that alleyway, you're inside the Chinatown, or the little China, I guess, version of this world, and contemporary world ceases to exist, right? Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, I think that you get a little bit of a sense of what I like about it too, is like after that scene, they go back to the independently owned like family Chinese restaurant. Right. Which feels again, like based in the real world and even like the,

the, the brothel house, like that feels again, like they're in, they're out, like, like it's there. Like that feels again, like they're in, they're out. Like, like it's there. There's a moment,

but that's like the entry point of there's something much bigger at play in this world, right? That's our first moment. It's a quote from Richter that speaks exactly to what you're talking about. He said his biggest inspiration was Rosemary's baby. And he said like, what that movie does is it presents the foreground story in a familiar

context, not San Francisco at the turn of the century, which is going to distance the audience immediately. And then you have some one simple remove the world underground. So he's basically like, if you set in a contemporary setting that people will understand, right? Like a world that everyone knows. And then you're like, and then there's this supernatural layer beneath it. They can get on board.

That's his pitch. Of course, this movie baffled audiences when it came out, but he was eventually proven right. I think I do think. Well, I think that the staying power of this movie and the cult status of this movie and the fact that there's a lot of movies that you have to go back to the 80s. You can go with John Hughes all the way, you know, like big directors where you kind of have that like cringe element like, oh, well, that doesn't age well.

Or that that joke is a little bit like even like, you know, these Eddie Murphy movies that we've talked about. There are some things like, oh, this movie has not only aged well, but it really has like this was as enjoyable as if this came out this week. Like that's how I felt about it because it's it's kind of stuck in a unique time it doesn't feel it doesn't feel of any time oddly enough like you know like it just it feels like it's just like we have all the variables that we need you know i don't know that that's the way i like looking at it i was like oh this is so interesting like that i mean and like the simple sort of visual metaphor of like every elevator they get in is going down right it has just like level you know that's that's that's all you need to understand now did you guys ever read the article that is i think it was new york magazine or maybe it was the new york times magazine this

is probably 15 years ago about the subterranean marketplace in new york chinatown that exists, that is like a gray market area of, you know, there's the exterior stalls that are selling like knockoff Prada bags or whatever. But if you go through the back doors, you go into like a behind the scenes marketplace that exists underneath Chinatown, essentially. And there was a great article when I still lived in New York. So we got to be more than 12 years ago. That was about like them going into this world. And it was fascinating. Wow. I love that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to figure out what that is, but yeah, back to be a big trouble. Lawrence Gordon, president of Fox. Now this is the thing that I feel like he is wrong

about, but you want him to be right about is he's saying like I'd had enough of kiddie movies, right? There were all these films sort of in the back to the future mold that he was like enough like I want to stop making movies for children. I want to hire John Carpenter. Yeah.

To make a martial arts movie and he you know the craziest thing about this movie is that when it came out at the time the critical reaction was bad and so many of the reviews are like

so many special effects god Hollywood's just gone crazy with the special effects they've forgotten we need characters all over you watch this movie now and you're like every special effect feels so loving and beautiful yes and like well crafted and now we all complain about that at the time he also thought yes he thought that legacy effects phoned it in which is insane legacy. Legacy effects who were defectors from ILM, which was really like the only visual effects studio

of note for a while. Then a bunch of people leave that, or I'm getting this wrong, was it Boss Film at the time? It was Richard Edlund. This was the big thing is that when Ghostbusters was made in 1984, ILm was the only company that had the manpower to handle a movie like that but they were already committed to something else i'm forgetting okay so they had to sony had to start columbia had to

start a new special effects company on their own just to make Ghostbusters, which is boss film, Richard Edlund. He brings in a bunch of other people. And this is then one of their immediate followups to Ghostbusters. Edlund worked on this movie. Yes, absolutely. I do think,

I think some things were rushed because this movie was rushed. And I think Carpenter complained about that, but the special effects in this movie rule obviously like uh but it's just the same thing with the kiddie movie thing it's just funny to think about like how this movie at the time was representing something but didn't you know watch it in 2021 and you're like i would kill for hollywood to make a movie like i also think we in 2021 or we in the last 10 to 15 years have so much more experience knowledge and understanding of the tropes of the martial arts movie that this movie

is trading in wire work all this kind of stuff that at the time probably felt like in like the stuff of b movie kind of just martial arts movies you, and that what's it doing here or what's this like this? I can see that this would have been easy to dismiss from a critical standpoint, not recognizing that it is in fact like an incredible story with, I think, fantastic fight scenes that I'm like that are super original and super that are super fun as fight scenes, but also have jokes inside of them. Also have like original, weird, special effects inside of them. Story beats and character moments. Yeah.

I mean, a thing I find fascinating is like, to your point, Jason, Jackie Chan almost played Wang Shi in this. Or at least it was in conversation. Right, and he couldn't he his English wasn't good enough to do it essentially right he had also only done two American films at this point and both of them bombed that's interesting the protector the protector was he in Cannonball Run

yes yes but that doesn't count two leading roles two attempts to launch him but by the way Cannonball Run was a big misfire because they made him do his big stunt scene on a beach and he couldn't get the lift from the sand so he didn't even look impressive in that movie.

Right. So they give him two bites at the apple in terms of being an American leading man. Neither of them really work and he goes like I shouldn't play this game anymore. I don't like the way they make movies there. I'm going back doing things my way again. But that, for example,

is another thing where it's like the frame of reference is perhaps not there. We're sort of 10 years past Bruce Lee at this point. You know, no one has taken over that spot in American cinema. Jackie Chan has not fully crossed over yet.

The thing I find fascinating that I made this connection about halfway through the movie is this is such a flop when it comes made this connection about halfway through the movie is this is such a flop when it comes out and people just go like, what is this? This is intercipherable. What is this tone? The effects, the fantasy, the action, the

comedy, all that. Is this for kids? Is this for grownups? It's too dark for one. It's too silly for the other. This is like three years or less before Ninja Turtles becomes the biggest thing on the fucking planet which is sort of riffing on all of the exact same shit with a similar even more aggro mashup of tones right in a way right but i was fascinated by trying to get the timeline but it also what

it has that this doesn't is like a very declared mythology yes you know what i mean like it's like here's what happened here's where the the magic is here's how the magic works and here we and now adventures go well let me can i just throw one thing at you to see where you all fall on this because i did some research and i but i don't i don't know some of it here's what I'll say when watching this is like you know they're they made these like weird movies at this time this feels very much like labyrinth to me yeah um and labyrinth comes out the same year another kind of big flop a big flop and it was like so interesting and then you know then I started looking at the movies in of 86 and it like, there were some like crazy swings,

labyrinth, Howard, the duck, also a big flop. Right. So there were these chances here in the 80s Marvel movie. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Where, where you essentially are, people are bucking the trend because at the other, the other scope of 86 is stand by me, pretty in pink, mosquito coast, gung ho, like, you know, it's like top gun you know it's like it's very like so this is kind of i don't want to say like but this feels to me like this weird middle ground where directors are trying to do something interesting but the audience like no no no no we want like we want what we're gonna rebel against yeah well we're yeah we're tipping into like tony scott big spectacle glossy sweaty kind of like gigantic scope movie you know and this feels homemade in a lot of very fun cool ways i think but that that sort of amblin-y vibe the chris columbus stuff movies as weird as

gremlins and Ghostbusters becoming like so huge. I think that weighs in two years later with all these studios taking big swings with very qualified, proven people. I mean, the three movies you just listed, Paul, are John Carpenter, Jim Henson, and the third one you said was George Lucas. I mean, George Lucas. Yeah, it's Lucas Carpenter and Henson all being like, I guess people like weird movies.

We can make these weird, semi-comedic, semi-serious, effects-driven films. The Ninja Turtles timeline I was just really fascinated by, if I can run through this quick. Please. Is 84 the comic starts, right? And at that time, it is primarily a parody of Frank Miller. Then the cartoon show- This movie comes out in 86. The Ninja Turtles cartoon starts like 88, but really starts 89. And then the live action.

Yeah, the movie's 90. I'm sorry, cartoons 87 starts really in 88. The movie's 90. And it's like they've built up the mythology three steps in that sort of way. But everyone, when those things were fucking pitch, like what is you're saying so many words. I can't reconcile what you're what you're telling me. But there was this thing of just the clarity of as absurd as it sounds. It's four turtles and they get hit with radioactive ooze and they turn into teenagers who live underground like pizza, martial arts. Like there was just something to that that people got.

But it is bizarre that like, you know, when the comic comes out, it's an underground thing for adults. Then they make it a kid's show, which everyone thinks is like, how do you do that transition? And it's huge. And then the movie comes out and they go, well, you're making a movie off of a kid's cartoon show. How big is that going to be? It's the biggest independent film of all time. It makes $100 million. It's like huge. It's a massive crossover thing. And that's only four years removed from this movie, which no one can make sense of.

Well, you know, but I mean, look, you could also say that two years later, Beetlejuice comes out and is also a big, giant hit. That's also weird in another world in a dark world and a thing and like it's just i think at the end of the day it's a cast that people don't know right it's it is john like and i think that kurt russell is a b movie star ultimately like i think that that's where he kind of lives in this kind of thing and it's not these big name people uh and so i feel like that's not drawing it over the line there's like you're not going to see a kim cattrall movie and maybe you're not even going to see a kurt russell movie ultimately um you know as part of but i think like when you see michael keaton movie you'll see it and then for ninja turtles if your kids want to go see it it

will become big not saying that that means it's i think that kids pitch right at grown-ups not yeah yeah yes this is not a kid's movie. So it's sort of like you can have more of a success driving right there. Now, why didn't labyrinth work? Because I think labyrinth and dark crystal are trying to walk that weird line to where it's like, what is this?

I like the Muppets. I like this, but it's not really the thing. I remember being so upset with Willow when I saw, I mean, that's another one in that, you know, when I saw,

you know, all those kind of Tolkien inspired fantasy fantasy stories almost none of which worked you know like very few of those actually made it into something that was whether it's labyrinth uh willow um never ending story dark crystal legend right yeah oh big flop yeah Of course. Like, these are all, these all eat shit, you know? Right. And are hugely expensive. And have huge people behind them. And I think, but those, I believe, are movies that are primarily geared towards children.

Or geared towards a younger audience, let's say. Versus this, I feel like, I didn't, I remember cause I'm older than all of you guys. So I remember these movies cause all of this stuff happened when I was like 14, 15, 16 years old. Right. I wasn't like a kid watching these on cable because when I was younger, other things like this was never on cable when I was a younger kid. So these movies all seemed like either this to me felt like, I don't know, that's going to be some horror martial arts movie. I don't know.

I don't think I'm into that. You know, like it didn't seem like something I was that interested in. In the same way that Ninja Turtles, I was like, I remember the black and white comics because those came out when I was younger. And I was like, I'm not into the kid version of it. Sure. They watered it down. Yeah. Yeah. And so like oh no no ninja turtles no thanks not for me ha ha i'm already watching jim jarmusch movies or whatever cool thing i thought i was doing you know

yeah um so you know there is this this movie i think what we're all kind of going around is like this movie falls through all the cracks everything you know it's it's neither a fish nor fowl. Like it's it's like stuck in between everything. And Kurt is in such a bizarre place in his career now. I mean, there's this thing where like Carpenter. Much in the same way that Lebowski falls through all of the cracks when it comes out. Another another atypical another atypical movie for that direct for those directors um that is that is shaggy and and kind of ramshackle and

and it it it's a failure but i would argue two things with lebowski like one i think raising arizona is just as like shaggy as Big Lebowski at least and but these are independent movies and I feel like on some level right this is like a but Raising Arizona comes out at the beginning Lebowski comes out after Fargo is that right right right they are like now Oscar not they are Oscar caliber creators they create Fargo and then they give you Lebowski and everybody's like, no, no, no. That's not what we want from you.

Right, we want you to do another crime. We want you to do a perfect crime or whatever that movie was. Yeah. But I agree with you, Paul. Yeah. Not to disagree with you, Paul. I agree.

Raising Arizona, very shaggy movie. Absolutely. But I hear what you're saying though. It's like in the, right. I forgot the Fargo part of it. The Fargo part is like, this is the problem, I think. And this is obviously the brilliance of your podcast is that. Now, what does the audience puff them up?

It's not like, come on, let's not get crazy here. But it is. What does the audience expect when the audience is introduced to somebody? Yeah. And that is, yeah, they don't know about the rest the other thing i'll say about raising arizona is it does have a very clear like this is a couple who wants a baby we do get that emotional thing whereas the big lebowski's like the fuck is this movie about it's about a guy who doesn't want to do anything but he's you know like it's a little tougher to sell the big lebowski yeah and this movie yeah you know the one thing in the script they retained is there's a 2000

year old like warlock dude who's trapped and he has to marry a green that's the only thing wd richter kept but you don't really know what this it's like we got to rescue the girl but not really that's not really like actually a goal for much of the movie i don't i don't know what what you say to your friends when you come out of big trouble in little china i guess it would be very hard to sell i agree it's very hard to sell and i think mostly because there's a line in the movie that i feel like kind of completely synthesizes why this movie is both incredibly special and also incredibly difficult to penetrate or explain or whatever, which it's a real throwaway line. But at one point, Jack Burton says, I'm feeling a little bit like an outsider. And Gracie Law says, you are.

And that's it. He's an outsider in the movie's plot you know and that's that's what's interesting about it that's what gives it its tension and what's interesting about it but it's also what makes it hard i think for if i had seen it when i was younger or something like that it makes it hard to kind of access it in a way you know i think you look at like to look at the fargo comparison right or the coen brothers comparison when you look at the reviews of like fargo and miller's crossing and barton fink to a lesser degree because that one's still heightened but was so critically well regarded they all have this tone of like finally these guys grew up right there was this attitude

of like the early coen brothers movies these guys they got all the tricks and the bells and whistles and they're technically impressive what does it all mean where's the heart cartoon hijinks and like fargo is like the full like anointment of like you get the oscar congratulations thank you for making a grown-up movie and they're like cool we're making like a stoner philip marlowe riff about. And then people go like, how fucking dare you? Whereas I think Carpenter was seen as going into like more and more sort of heightened genre stuff,

bleaker and bleaker, right? More and more grotesque and sparing. And then the thing, there's like this revulsion. So then like Christine is like, just do a simple movie. Starman's the only film of his that gets any Oscar nomination, right?

And it's like you told a human story. It had feelings. It had emotions. This guy is back on the rails. And then Carpenter getting onto this movie is like, he reads the script earlier. He thinks it's incomprehensible. He's finally starting to win back, like, his reputation as a pro who can just make a solid movie for a studio with no fuss.

He reads the script for Golden Child. They offer it to him. He goes, nah, I don't like it. Right. Then they get Eddie Murphy on Golden Child. That thing is off to the races. That's going to be their big movie. Eddie Murphy has passed on Star Trek four.

He's passed on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He's passed on all these big movies coming off of the run of 48 Hours Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, each one bigger than the last. Whatever his next movie is, is going to be humongous. And he, by the way, a giant Star Trek fan who doesn't understand that

Star Trek 4, that would have been the best move for his career. I mean, this is, I'm a big Eddie Murphy guy. It would have been huge. It was the wrong move. It was the wrong move, and it's so bizarre yeah it did it and that was that's the joke of this is that golden child comes out it makes a shitload of money people hate it but it like i mean but yeah i mean huh yeah i've never i've never seen it i've never seen golden it's weird i want the knife it's a worse version of this it's it's a worse version of this. It's a worse version of this. And there's a really,

the Eddie Murphy riffing comedy does not gel well with the universe of the film at all. They always feels like one is overpowering the other. What was the thing you want to get in there, David? I have to tell the Ackroyd story. So John Cranston is going, is attached to Armed and Danger and dangerous the 1986 film that eventually comes out with john candy the movie is gonna star john candy and dan akroyd dan akroyd uh like he

meets him when he's making spies like us and he's like i love you john carpenter that's you know john carpenter's like great like i'm excited to make this movie. And this is quoting from an interview with John Carpenter. A month passed and Ackroyd began saying strange things like, I'm not sure about Carpenter. Then suddenly he announced, I refuse to work with Carpenter. All of this happened without my having any further conversations with him. John Carpenter had a pay or play contract, so Columbia paid him out to not make the movie

because Ackroyd was being such a pain in the ass and they wanted him to be in ghostbusters 2 and so like carpenter has basically like i don't know what happened there then akroyd leaves armed and dangerous eugene levy plays his role and carpenter basically in this interview is like i hold very few grudges against people in the film industry after this after the battle's over the smoke clears i'm usually willing to overlook what happened but in dan akroyd's case no way if i can ever return the favor to him i certainly will dan akroyd is like the one man who is like john carpenter is like i will mother fuck that guy like if i can like screw him for what the hell has have any of you seen armed and dangerous yes by the way my

dad my dad my dad had a uh a thing that he did and i god bless him uh where he would edit out the nudity in certain movies and armed and dangerous is a pg-13 movie and i believe i don't even know if there's nudity but at one point uh they're looking at john candy and eugene levy are looking through like a peephole at like meg rying in a bra and uh and underwear and is like trying to like see her whatever it was i just know that my dad edited out a little sequence in that scene that film so i could enjoy it to its fullness and uh i watched arm and danger like about 12 15 times that dragnet all those terrible uh but there's never any there's never any clarity. There is a follow up quote here that Carpenter in 87 says in an interview.

I don't know for an absolute fact what went on, but I have a theory. I believe someone persuaded Ackroyd away from me. I think I know who it was. I think it was someone he was working with at the time. But I'm just guessing it may have been Aykroyd all on his own. Now,

somebody was working with him at the time. He's working on Spies Like Us. He's working with Cocaine heavily. Cocaine has EP credit on Spies Like Us.

But, one has to imagine it's not Chevy Chase because Chevy Chase does a movie with Carpenter only like four years later. I was going to say, is anybody else in Spies Like Us in spies like us in a brand that has to be landis thank you oh it's gotta be land that theory yeah it has to be landis i don't know why but it has to be landis other

than landis being a prick i don't know what the specific beef would be i think carpenter had kind of called him a hack i mean remember when we watched that video griff uh where it's landis carpenter and cronenberg and you could just tell the cronenberg and carpenter both don't have any patience for land they're intellectual especially as a clown yeah right especially as like a horror filmmakers right like landis is not in their kind of league in that way so yeah maybe landis wasis was just like, fuck that guy. Yeah, yeah, he won't get it. He won't be able to do comedy. It just feels like a very Landis thing for me. I think that's absolutely true.

Yes, absolutely. But it is also a crucial entry in just the Dan Aykroyd chaotic, you know, canon. Like Dan Aykroyd, it just, there's a lot of like very chaotic stories about him as a celebrity i feel like uh anyway so john carpenter hates dan akroyd he comes around to this movie he loves kung fu movies though he says i'm not a big bruce lee fan i like the guy but his

movies are not that good he likes the the epics he didn't like that he likes more mythology his favorite thing is a Wuxia movie called Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain by Sui Hark, which I've never seen. He calls it the biggest influence on Big Trouble, so I kind of want to see it now. He calls it like Chinese Star Wars. So, like, he's not coming to this

as like a total kind of, you know, jobber. Like, he definitely is like, I love these kinds of movies and I want to make a John Carpenter version of them. But the pressure on him is Golden Child has a release date. Whether or not Fox

has thoroughly thought through how well Big Trouble and Little China will do, they know if they're ever going to make it, it has to come out before Golden Child or else it's going to get

wildly overshadowed. And the reason they hire. By the way, can I say one thing, too, that James Hong, James Hong in both movies. Oh, absolutely. Double dipping coming out. And Victor Wong in both movies, both lead actors in the same. I mean, that to me speaks to so many issues, but hilarious that two movies that are competing each other have the same core cast.

We were looking also that like they also, two actors shared from You're the Dragon. Like it speaks to the myopic view of Hollywood that they're like, there are five Asian character actors we will cast. But You're the Dragon, right? That was a movie that had just come out. That's chimeno movie where like at the time you watch that movie now it is so racist but even at the time people were like this thing is fucking this is not okay

protested you know and so there was a lot of energy around this movie uh people worried that it would have a similarly kind of you you know, whatever, offensive vibe. Anyway. But the thing is, no, no, Fox wants Carpenter for this movie because they go like, he's proven himself once again as a guy who can play by the rules and deliver the movie. And above all else, we know that Carpenter is comfortable, familiar

with these sorts of genre things with special effects and works fast. That's the big thing they're like because you're gonna get 10 weeks of prep you're gonna get 12 weeks to shoot you're gonna get 12 10 weeks of post like we want this whole movie done in six months and you're gonna record all the music for two right you are good score great great score great score but they're wisely i think things concern like this movie could be a money pit. You got to build all these sets. You got to have all these complicated action sequences.

Like, this could go over budget. It could run long. You know. Anyway, it's the classic Carpenter thing where he does exactly what you need and more. Right? Yeah. Like, he brings it in under budget. He stretches every dollar.

The movie comes out and everyone's like yeah fuck this and the golden child eats at lunch anyway like and the studio's like how dare you how could you do this to us carpenter but by the way oh yeah i mean i guess the only thing that he really won with is the act the actors right because they didn't want it to be a kurt russell movie right but then he was able to convince them and i think they didn't want it to be a Kurt Russell movie, right? But then he was able to convince them. And I think they didn't want it to be Kim Cattrall either. But he just kind of got in there and just was like, I'm going to just keep on saying it until they let me do it. Carpenter said they wanted a rock star.

I don't know. Yes, right. Like Cindy Lauper? I don't know. Yeah, maybe a Cindy Lauper type. Debbie Harry? That must be it. And Carpenter's clearly like, fuck that.

You know, I want an actress. Like, get out of here. Well, he wanted her because he knew she had the comedy chops, but their thing was, you talk about the sort of like typecasting that, as much as Hollywood still is limited in their view, it, I feel like, doesn't happen

to this degree. Where Kim Cattrall at this point has done... I bet you it was Madonna, by the way. Oh, ooh. Total sense. Makes total sense. Good call. Good call. Especially at this point, young Madonna. Like, you know, new-ish Madonna. Madonna feels perfect for this. Yes. But Control at this

point has done Mannequin, has done Police Academy, has done Porky's. All three are big hits. And they're like, yeah, but they're big hits in the wrong genre. Those credits don't transfer. Like, they were just like... And people aren't going to see like, yeah, but they're big hits in the wrong genre. Those credits don't transfer. Like they were just like, and people aren't going to see her.

Sure. But it's, yeah, it's like success by association should help her out here. And they're like, no, but those are like body sex comedies. It doesn't matter.

We don't want her. And I think Carpenter knew like you want someone who could do rat attack. And also, but she's desperate to get out of that, you know, pigeonholing, right? Like, she's also like, yeah, I want to do this. I will throw myself at this because I don't want to be the Porky's Police Academy girl. Right. And their strategy at first is we need a star who can rival Eddie Murphy.

Let's go to Eastwood Nicholson. Carpenter always wants to work with Eastwood. It never happens. And we, you know, we touched on this earlier this that is oil and water to me absolutely pairing is never gonna work that no because what he wants is he wants the freedom of directing the spaghetti western uh you know Clint Eastwood which he would not in this time he's's not going to get that. I don't think the other thing he wants is he wants the sort of like immediate movie star casting where the character development is done the second the guy's on the poster. The audience knows what this guy's thing is, what type of genre it is.

Right. You get it. Whereas like Kurt Russell, he has to build him out of dirt every time to come up with some new archetype, you know? Well, that's the thing. Russell is, we don't know, really. Right. He is, like, you put him on the poster and you're not sure.

Versus if you see Clint Eastwood on the poster for Big Trouble in Little China, you're like, okay, I'm going to this Clint Eastwood movie. He's going to be the fish out of water in this movie, whatever that is, you know? And I get that. It's funny. This is actually kind of a fallow you know and i get that it's funny this is actually kind of a fallow period for clint eastwood because he it's like his movies around here like tightrope city heat pale rider heartbreak ridge like and then he does a final dirty harry movie like he's clearly eastwood is sort of trying to figure out like he hasn't yet made unforgiven and

unforgiven in 92 that's him being okay, I acknowledge I'm an old guy. You know, I, I'm going to pass into my next sort of phase as an actor. I'll do in the line of fire and movies like that, right where I'm the older guy, but he might have almost been gettable at this point, but also like legendary,

like tightrope. That's a movie made around it. Like he basically ghost directed that movie. Cause he was, I feel like he's kind of a pain. Like he gonna kind of take over your all those movies i mean i i was looking was i texting with you about this david one of our many late night texts that uh the conversations david and i have off mic and over text are just things that happen on the podcast like sometimes people like meet us or hang out with us in person they just go like oh so you

guys it's literally just these conversations all the time. But we were running into how by and large for a 30 year period, Clint Eastwood only worked with three other directors if he wasn't directing himself. And almost all of them were guys who were like his stunt guys or his second unit directors who like graduated and sort of became his Kevin Reynolds, where it's like this is a guy where Clint doesn't have to take on the full responsibility of directing, but he's also going to direct it a little bit. I don't think he would be able to play backseat to Carpenter. I don't think he would relinquish control. There's nothing in his career that suggests that, that he could really step into another auteur's space and let them use his image, right?

You know, like in a different way. Like, no, no. Once he leaves, once he leaves like those iconic people, once he leaves like Sergio Leone, once he leaves those people, he like, once he's doing, once he's directing High Plains Drifter

or his movies, it's done. You know, it's like, that's it from then on. Dare I say, and I know that you can combat me with Pink Cadillac or any which way but loose, but I don't think that Clint Eastwood has much of a sense of humor. And I don't think that he, you know, I don't think that he would be able to even navigate the genre tightrope of this. Yeah. You're forgetting about that chair bit though i mean yeah well that's older and that's what you get that's when he's got his voice yeah yeah

it's insane he didn't get snl that year yeah the only way you can get away with it is you have him play it straight the movie is bouncing off of him right and that's the right he's the guy what the hell yeah yeah and i mean that's a funny movie too but like pink cadillac is a fucking bizarre movie because he's basically playing like gene parmesan from arrested develop yeah because he's like this guy who's like i'll get you guy i'm a master of disguise and then he like puts on a baseball cap he's like see i'm a janitor now like and you're like what who is this guy but he plays it so straight like well and city here was something that was supposed to be more of an out-and-out comedy and was developed by Blake Edwards. And then Richard Benjamin takes over at the last second and they make it like 75% more serious.

And it's a big fucking flop. I think like that's the fundamental problem is I think Nicholson could have handled all of the comedy of this movie. But you never would have bought him as a straight hero. No. Eastwood would have sold the hero and he would have fucked up the comedy. Like Nicholson does only works as a parody of a leading man. Yes. There's a version where there's a Harrison Ford play or there's somebody like a,

a, somebody who kind of exists more in that middle ground who can handle who has a lighter touch can i well can i can i we have to talk about the elephant in the room then because i guess that the issue is the rock has been attached the remake of this yeah and and like and to me i feel like if we're talking about that i could see chris pratt playing this part very well it's what he's doing in guardians that's what he's doing as star lord yeah yeah but pratt is basically and that's why kurt russell as his father in guardians 2 is perfect casting because pratt is essentially

doing a riff on kurt russell from the 80s and kurt russell has said that's why he took guardians 2 like he did not see that movie when it came out. They offered him the role. He watched the first one and was like, oh, this guy's doing me and it's a hit now.

Like he felt kind of vindicated that it was like they're getting this thing that everyone was weirded out by at the time. And when Pratt doesn't work as well as a movie star, it's when he steps away

from the Kurt Russell zone. It's when he becomes serious like he did in Jurassic World, which was not that. I didn't buy. I didn't sign up for that. And I'm a from the Kurt Russell zone. It's when he becomes serious like he did in Jurassic World, which was not, I didn't sign up for that. And I'm a big Chris Pratt friend. It's just like, I felt like he was misdirected.

Not that he can't do it. You're taking away his fastball. But yeah, like, yeah. Right, yeah. The best moment in Guardians of the Galaxy is when he's, you know, like Star-Lord and they're like, who?

And it's just a beat from Big Trouble. Yeah. The Jack Burton being like, where they're like, who? What? You know, the joke where he's all he's all bluff and bluster and nobody cares and it's always being undercut by him either getting his ass kicked or him being like just like reduced to looking a fool and that's what's happening over and over and over again in this movie. Delightfully so. I think there is this key to you talk about the link between Pratt and Russell, right? It is the fact that Pratt was just a comedy guy, right? And like a schlubby comedy guy for so long that when

he made the transition to action star, there was not an ego there, right? There was not that sense of self-preservation of image. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I tried to avoid it. Boo. But Russell has the fact that he was fucking 10 years in the Disney trenches plus, right? And that Carpenter's the guy who pulls him out of it. And he is so desperate to play an adult and to be in a grown up movie that he's willing

to be super malleable. And you look at the three Carpenter-Russell protagonists, right? If we discount Elvis, which is its own thing, and you go, like, Thing, Escape From, and Big Trouble.

Like, they're three very different characters. Yes. At different ends of the spectrum. I mean, like, the thing he's playing totally straight, totally serious. But all Kurt Russell, all uniquely Kurt Russell, you know, all things other people couldn't do and all risky in the sense that like in the thing he is pulling back so much of his charisma in a way that I think other movie stars would not surrender. Right. In Escape from New York, he's going so self-serious

that it goes all the way back around to parody. And in this, he's playing like a fucking dolt. And I don't think, for as much as people talk about, like, well, Nicholson, like the thing that made him such a great movie star was this lack of vanity. He'll do anything.

I don't think you can sell him as the high-functioning version of Jack Burton or the version of Jack Burton that thinks he's high functioning. You know, I think he's a little too snide. He's a little too side eyed or whatever. And then Clint is just going to want to be so straight, so down the middle, or he's going to go too light with it. Like, you'll just be goofy in every which way you can, any which way Baloo... I always get those fucking titles confused. Sort of way. Any which way Baloo

is the first one, right? Yeah. And then the other one, yeah. Hey, Clint, I love the man. I got no beef with him. It's just, it wouldn't have worked. But it's... What you want is, and I think that speaks to the genre of it, that's the subversive of it.

What if Clint Eastwood, this American cinema classic badass, is in a world where he cannot do anything effectively? It's a funny premise. I mean, that's the joke of this movie. But he'd never let himself. Of course. That's the thing. He is this totem of masculinity and the American male. And to undercut that would be impossible. And what's so funny about Kurt Russell's performance is he's doing it as John Wayne. He's undercutting arguably like the biggest American male archetype, you know, this, this kind of totem of masculinity from the, from, from the era that

he grew up in. And he's using that cadence and that bluff and bluster of, of John Wayne to kind of show you a, a, um, a loser, you know, a guy who's always losing. He loses every fight. He loses everything he says is immediately undercut. He cannot catch a break, but it doesn't matter. He just keeps moving forward with the bluff and the bluster of that, of the hero of the Western or the whatever, you know? I should read the Trump quote. Richter's do it.

Yeah. In 2016 is like, he's a lovable loudmouth. I was thinking the other day that he's maybe a likable Donald Trump. You know, if Donald Trump wasn't reprehensible and he didn't happen to become a billionaire because of his father, he might be a fucking truck driver driving pigs into San Francisco. It's not beyond my imagination. He'd be unqualified for every challenge thrown in front of him, but he wouldn't get that. And he might persevere after out of sheer ignorance and sense of I can do anything.

That's what you're talking about. And he might persevere after out of sheer ignorance and sense of I can do anything. That's what you're talking about. He's saying this is the sort of lovable version of that kind of dopey American who's like, well, what's the problem here? I'll roll up my sleeves like, well, come on, guys. What's going on? That's great. That's great. Yeah, I love it.

It is. It's really funny. The other fascinating thing is that Fox were the ones who wanted Kurt Russell, not Carpenter. Like Carpenter wanted a bigger star. He thought it needed a bigger star to work. I'm sure Fox would not have complained. But when those guys turned it down, they were like, what about Kurt Russell? And he was like, I don't think this is what Kurt does.

Like, I don't know if that's a good fit. Then they sort of like he comes around to it, sees a version of it, goes to Kurt. Kurt's like, I don't know if I'm the guy for this. I don't know if that's wow then they sort of like he comes around to it sees a version of it goes to Kurt Kurt's like I don't know if I'm the guy for this I don't know if this works like neither one was innately into the combination despite the fact that they were very very good friends and it worked together well at this point I think Fox knowing that this movie is going to cost a fair amount in effects and everything else, sees Kurt Russell as a bargain because they're still viewing him as, quote unquote, a rising star. Which is bizarre when you think about the fact that he has starred in movies for 15 full years at this point. Right. Oh, yeah.

Like putting aside his child career, he is the star of Disney movies starting in 1971 with the Barefoot Executive. He has multiple films like that. Then he does Elvis in 79. Right. And then we sort of went over this timeline in the used cars episode. We've been going over it here as well. But it's like Elvis 79. Then the 80s are when he's like, I'm a grown up now. 1980 used cars. 1981 escape from New York. Same weekend, 1981, The Voice and Fox and the Hound. That's his last relic of the Disney era, right? Then 1982, The Thing. Well, the last

relic of the Disney era is Walt Disney's dying words being Kurt Russell. Yes! Wait, is that true? That's true. Is that true? That is the last Disney moment of Kurt Russell's life. It's on the lips of his frozen head.

I mean, arguably, Jason, I would say it's the last Kurt Russell moment of Disney's life. That's actually, you're right. You're right. But Kurt Russell was Disney's. Yes. No, that's what I was going to say. Silkwood's swing Shift are like, I'm going to go serious now. The thing has blown up in my face a little bit.

I want to be a dramatic actor. I'm going to be a grown-up man actor. And The Mean Season, which is a nobody-nothing movie, but those three things, that's him. I want to do serious movies, contemporary movies. I'll play a supporting role. I don't care. I just want to work with big directors.

Obviously, Jonathan Demme, you know, Mike Nichols. Like, I want to work with big actors. You know, I want to elevate. He's with Goldie Hawn now. That's, like, upped his profile even more. But he's still a guy. Wait, when is Overboard?

When in this run? Overboard's 87. It's right after this. The next movie. It's right after this. Okay, got it. Right. Okay, cool. But that was a flop on release too like that's the thing people yeah anyway yeah he's

he's never an a-lister because his movies flop all the time and then five years later everyone's like yeah movie kind of rules kurt russell's got great energy right that's the thing is it's it's like he really is he really is appreciated only later because he's making choices that i understand make total sense to him in the moment and he i can only imagine he must have just been like what the fuck is going on yeah yeah right yeah what come on what look at what like the i mean you look at the thing you look at this you look at overboard you look at these movies we're talking about and these are iconic movies by iconic like you just said movies we're talking about and these are iconic movies by iconic like you just said mike nichols jonathan demi these are these are it is a

murderer's row and he just happens to be in all of the movies of theirs that don't hit you know and that's crazy i guess there's a part of me that says like there are and i think we're there is something to be said for like a b actor in the sense that like i would put gerard butler in this camp right he's owning that lane right and it's like in there and and and there is me jerry butler day and night a hundred percent and and i think that there is something up where there's a a lack like i think that gerard butler is doing great stuff in that zone i think that liam neeson can lean into that for all of his things but he's not as i don't think liam neeson is as charismatic as gerard butler is i think that like well can then turn around and give you kinsey

like right yeah neeson's a quality actor who will do quality movies in between movies but yeah you're saying liam neeson's movies are tend to be tightly bound to his one like old action performance like he's giving the same performance every time butler does weird movies gerard butler is giving something to den of thieves that is making it a must watch movie versus versus a just another kind of uh you know b movie shoot him up he's got kind of a nicholas a sort of cut rate nicholas cage thing where you're kind of like oh that's the choice he's making here like you know just a little bit yeah i will say not to not to i i say this only because i was up close at it what i find fascinating about nicholas cage and working with him is that man gives a shit like and i and i mean that in a way where he's like

nothing that you see on screen or at least in my experience with him was phoned in it was a a slavish commitment to the words the character there was thought behind it and look it goes all over the board but and he's such an interesting guy in general you know there are those i don't know if it's vanity fair or gq one of those magazines does like a you know an actor yeah an actor goes through and talks okay there's one for nich Nicolas Cage that's like 20 minutes long and it goes through every movie from the, you know, the incredible,

from Moonstruck and the movies that you love, Adaptation, that are incredible, Cage performances, all the way to the bonkers Bananas ones. But the way he talks about

crafting performances is so fascinating and so interesting and so dense and deep for roles that you know are straight bananas you know that you're like oh wait a minute this is what you were thinking about when you were making this movie and that's it's so interesting i guess i rarely get to see him talk so thoughtfully and cogently about his craft. And it's great. It's worth tracking down.

All I'm saying is I think that there is something that happens when a Harrison Ford makes a movie, even if it's a like the Fugitive is a great movie, like hands down a great movie. But if Kurt Russell made the Fugitive, I think it would be like, oh yeah, you know, he's all right. He's like, you know, but there's like, there's a stature, like with an A-list celebrity doing a, uh, a very simple film and, and it just never received the right way there. And I think it was definitely more like this in the eighties where there were like these levels of actors, like you are a movie star, you are somebody who is not as big as these like 10 stars that we have i don't know but you're approved as a leading man you're not a star you can't sell it but you look right on a poster you're known enough there's like this period where and what's the um what's

the kurt russell movie where the bad guy is jt walsh and it's the same thing Kurt Russell's wife which fucking break down that movie rules so that that structurally is the same movie as a Harrison Ford movie what's the the hair it's uh uh missing right yeah yeah yeah yeah it's exactly is that what it's called yeah yeah well there's a frantic presumed in frantic frantic I'm sorry I'm sorry yes frantic missing Jack jack lemon right okay that okay so so so anyway so i mean like that's but the version is like um the kurt russell jt walsh version is a pulpy messy dark movie and all the harrison ford iterations of those movies are elevated in that way they have like a patina that that the kurt russell movies don't have i agree with that i agree with even the trashy um uh harrison ford movies like frantic or presumed

innocent which are movies i like by and large they have like an oscar movie well i mean like they're like they're they're sydney lamette they're they're yeah i Lumet. They're, they're, yeah, I mean, these are like, you know, all these guys. Yeah. I mean, Ford just plays it so straight. You know, it's interesting.

You think about how close Kurt Russell came to being Han Solo, and it seems like an awesome idea in your mind, but you're like, he might've tipped over the apple. He might've played more in the genre than playing, which is what I think you might have played more in the genre than playing yeah which is what i think you need or more of the there is a wink to him there might have been too much of a wink too much of a wink because here's the thing han so i mean harrison ford's harrison ford's wink

harrison ford's wink is hey i'm gonna fuck you and kurt russell's wink is, hey, I'm going to fuck you. And Kurt Russell's wink is like, this is all crazy, right? This is silly. I don't know what I'm doing. Get a load of this nonsense. And that's the thing is Han Solo, you have to believe he's going to fuck you. And if it was Kurt Russell, you might be like, oh, no, him and the Millennium Falcon, they're just going to blow up. This guy's not capable. You need to feel like Kim Cattrall.

You need to feel like Kim Cattrall. When he tries to flirt with her, she's like, get away from me. Where Willie, the female character in the second Indiana Jones movie, I forget her last name, that played by Kid Capshaw. Yes. Yeah, where Willie looks at him and she's like, I guess you can tell like you, like,

like her look at him is you sure you're attractive, but I'm not into you. Whereas like Kim Cattrall is like, you smell like fucking beer. You're not like, I'm not like you buy it. Like he looks, and that's what I was saying about the Indiana Jones.

Like, I feel like there's an element of this character that is very indie in the real world. Like what would this guy be who's eating dates with Sala with a monkey around? What would that real guy be?

And that's Kurt Russell. The movie version is Indiana Jones. The immediate call out of how bad he smells. It is funny that, like, this movie is able to sell that Kurt Russell

at his absolute hottest could be that easily turned down by women. You know, where you're just like yeah no this woman's smart enough to know this is a bad when he when he kisses her when they're in like the underwater subway or not subway sewer tunnel or whatever they're in the water filled tunnel and they kiss and she's like ew what are you doing she's like yeah like there's no like there's no like even though they're sparking so much, she's like not into it.

And then at the end of the movie, when they're like, aren't you going to kiss her? And he's like, nope. And he just walks out. Yeah. I mean, but I love that where he finally tries to have, he gets sort of a cool moment where he's like, I'm out of here, gets into his truck that has like a giant monkey inside of it. That's probably going to like beat him up.

That's my favorite. Yeah. Like I just love imagining him driving away and the beast just comes out and like steals his truck five minutes later that's sort of jack burton to me this is another quote from the movie that i feel like kind of perfectly illustrates the jack burton character as it exists and how it's different from a lot of the other characters that we're talking about harrison ford, all the other characters, even like other Hawks characters, which is Jack Burton at one point goes, I don't get it.

And Lopan says, shut up, Mr. Burton. You were not brought upon this world to get it. And that's so important. You, the main character of the movie, are not deserving of understanding the movie's plot. Yeah. That's crazy. I love that.

We got to give James Hong a couple minutes. I want to. Incredible. Incredible. This line he has, and this is from a recent interview, I think it's from a normal history or something, where he's like, I've been in the industry for 63 years. And the first 50 i was doing like 10 feature or tv appearances a year like he was just like a character actor who would do anything obviously james hunk for reference people is currently 92 years old and still

working as much as ever and if you are trying to remember who he is, he is he is in the Seinfeld episode, the Chinese restaurant. He is the host who is constantly turning them away. You might know him from that as well as the other 500 things. He's probably right. He's a definitive that guy where you're like, oh, my God. Right. That guy. What?

So much so that, like I said, he was in both of the movies in this year. I will say that there's a great and I don't know if you'll be able to find it but uh you know tmz just got him like walking around the grove one day like about like three or four years ago and it was so great he was like he was effervescent and just lovely but just like i love that like seeing him like trying to answer questions casually walking around the grove was uh really uh what a treat james hong tmz his whole take is like i was so ready for this to play both you know old man low pan young low pan and like fantasy low pan right like because i had done it all like i had been working in this industry for so long doing every morsel of a role that they would give me so I can do everything.

And like Carpenter was just very much like came in and read and like got the part, like was just brilliant. Like I had not, not a guy I would have ever thought about. And he was, you know, just the obvious choice.

He's so, it's not a big role. Like, you know, he has to project so much authority in every single seed, like, and match the humor. Right.

He has to work through all these, this makeup and work around all these effects. Like it's a very technically complicated performance. He has no easy scenes. Uh, James Hong's career is so robust. He has 21 video game credits. Wow.

Alone. Wow. Alone. Wow. He, I mean, I love an actor like that who is, you know, who is always working, but also in a lot of great stuff. Like, it's not like, you know, he's like, you know, just like that working actor is a great, I don't know. It's, I get warm when I see him. He's a part of my childhood. Here's a defining characteristic of someone like James Hong, though, for me. Like, Jason, you mentioned for those who don't know, he's the guy in the Chinese food restaurant episode of Seinfeld. Some other actors in his exact position who have already been working in the industry for

40 years and had been in big movies would have gone why will i take a one episode guest starring role in season two of a sitcom that's not a sensation season one of which was like not watched at all right right right you know that is like the first great episode of that show he happens to be in the episode where that show finally crystallizes, but a lot of people would have overplayed their hand and made their quote too high or whatever. He's just a guy who just fucking works

and does everything. That's the Danny Trejo school of being an actor, which is sort of like Danny was like, I've heard him say it. If you just tell me when and I'll show up. As long as there's no conflict, he is there and it gives him this like crazy high low insane you know body of work but I think in the grand scheme of things

you don't you don't lose respect for him and I feel like there's a moment where Snoop Dogg fought with that it was like is Snoop Dogg cool is he not and now I feel like Snoop Dogg has like gone to the other side like it's like yeah fuck it he does a show with martha stewart he's in aol commercials he was a legitimate rapper he's making reggae albums now like but there's something about like leaning into it and just being like i'm going through this wall and and and people come with them like there's no disrespect for him anymore but that like you know but it's i think it's hard to do well and also what's most important that you are a fucking professional like james hung is clearly a guy who's like i can't control how any of this shit's gonna turn out i don't know what's gonna help my career or hurt it like you have to imagine he doesn't think that fucking

kung fu panda is gonna become one of the defining roles of his career but that like ended up being a huge thing that revived him for like another 10 years and he just knows like you just do your absolute best you give everything the exact same amount of effort and it shakes out whoever it shakes out and he's and and in each of each of the versions of lopin that he's playing he's giving a different interesting great performance you know there's nuance to all of them yeah all of them are full of unique funny fun cool moments whether it's seven foot tall mystical ghost lopin or like all of the old age makeup in the wheelchair lopin like there's all of this stuff that he's doing he's he's makes this element of the movie so like grounded even though it is deeply fantastical you know and can i just maybe talk about one thing

that i just googled because it's like man james hong must have a lot of money i wonder you know what kind of house does he like live in this gigantic palatial estate the article that just came up when i typed in james hong house was that, that he bought a condo for $700,000, a two bedroom condo. And, and I'm not saying, I'm not saying that like, I'm not saying that like he doesn't have enough money to buy a house,

but I just almost love that. Like he's just like, yeah, I live in this nice little, uh, condo. And, uh,

that's all I need. That's like a two bedrooms is all, all I need. He has said that the production, like he's an autograph convention guy, obviously having put in so many fucking things. And he says the stills that people buy the most are Big Trouble Little China

more than all others combined. Blade Runner. Blade Runner, Seinfeld. He says Balls of Fury is one, apparently. He's got a big ass hole in that. Yeah, he's big in that. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Can I just go back to one thing that I brought up earlier? The Rock taking on the Jack Burton role. Yeah, so I just want to clarify. They announced that they, you know, have gotten the rights, seven bucks productions. Dwayne Johnson and his ex-wife

slash producing partner, Hiram Garcia, get the rights with Fox to do big trouble in Little China. And every year or so, in particular when she does interviews more than when he does interviews, it comes up and her answer is always like, look, we're not going to remake it. He's not going to play Jack Burton. We're trying to figure out something in that universe. We haven't found our in yet, but it feels like a universe for him

to be in i think fundamentally a i don't know there's been a run of comics that uh john carpenter largely co-wrote and did with eric powell of the goon who's like a genius i've heard those comics are good and they've expanded this mythology i know they read that i read the first like yeah volume of the okay like collection and it picks up basically wait that you're saying that are inside of this story that are that are big trouble okay got it go ahead continuations yeah got it go ahead like david was even asking like earlier what like picturing what happens after it cuts from the the ape being or whatever the beast being at the back of the truck yeah that's where the comic pick up and it's really

great and it dives in a lot to the lore of the universe into uh burton they like they do a lot of like cutaways to like his like previous like marriages it's just got to like it really expands on the comedy it's really great i would recommend it i feel like i had a great time going through it i answer it i know they also more recently i mean they've done a couple series now and more recently they did an old man jack that was sort of like what if you did a sequel present day with current Kurt Russell. That much time passing. That's, I wonder if Carpenter could be coaxed out of his, whatever this retirement is, to come back and do that.

If that would be, if he could cancel one of his tours where he's playing all of his music hits in order to make a sequel to this movie that is exactly that. A sequel with Kurt Russell, contemporary, going back into this story. That would be electric. Well, this is my big thing.

As much as we're joking about the fact that the whole point of the movie is that he's not the point of the movie, and as interesting as this universe is, I do think it's telling that the comics never stray away from Jack Burton. And I don't really have an interest in seeing this movie of any continuation in this universe of Kurt Russell's not in it. And I think fundamentally, we know for a fact at this point that Dwayne Johnson is never going to let himself lose

this much on screen. And beyond that, even though Kurt Russell got into good shape for this movie, if The Rock walks on screen in a Big Trouble in Little China movie, you know immediately, well, this guy has to be the fucker. He's got to win. He's got to win again. Unless he does something that's more akin to The Getaway, or what's that movie with Sean William Scott? The Rundown.

The Rundown. The Rundown. He hasn't done something like that in 20 plus years. That's the very beginning of his career. That's just at the beginning when he will do that kind of thing. But he does do Jumanji. I will say Jumanji is... It's the closest.

Super fun. Where he's sort of playing on his... I would like to come on the patreon and do jumanji 2 now do you mean welcome to the jungle or or the next level the the welcome to the jungle the third the the second uh right uh rock and kevin hart movie that oh no that's the next level that's the next level that's next level okay technically jumanji 3 sorry sorry we're talking about the jumanji trilogy i'm sorry yes you're right you're right the third one then because that movie is straight up bananas it's bananas the one where they keep body swapping

and two of the people are danny devito and danny glover and so for a large portion of the movie the rock and kevin hart are just doing old man voices. It's straight crazy. Now we have to do it on Patreon. Now we have to, Griffin. Oh, no. We're opening the game. We're going to take it to the next level. We do the three Jumanji's in Zathura. That's a good little Patreon series.

That's not bad. By the way, that's not bad. I so enjoyed the second one. I just loved it. And then the third one i was like i feel like this is a prank i feel like they that this is a i feel like this is like i almost feel like they like kevin hart and the rock were doing these old man voices on set and we're like wouldn't it be funny if that's what we did for the next movie? And they were like, yeah, okay, we'll do it. All right.

Yeah. Whatever you want, guys. I also feel like there was an issue with that movie. And this is my hot take is that I don't think Kevin Hart picked a character in the first movie. And then he went, oh, sorry, in the second movie. And then I think he decided to go really hard in the third movie. Because when you watch that movie, Karen Gillan, Jack Black, and The Rock are all doing,

I think, arguably fantastic performances of these kids. And Kevin Hart is doing Kevin Hart. Exactly. Which is not bad. Which is not bad. Oh, yeah. But it's enjoyable. But it's not the level.

I'm so short. Yeah. You know, like a lot of that. And counter to that, I think Hart plays Glover far more successfully and specifically than Rock plays DeVito,

where he's just sort of doing generic old man. I want to say, after my recent surgery, when they kept me in the hospital and I had morphine surging through my veins and was watching the TV system they had at the hospital. The two movies I watched immediately while I drugged out of my mind were Wild Mountain Time and Jumanji The Next Level. And both of them, I just sat there going, yes, of course, correct.

Like they're both movies that make perfect sense. This, this is, this is on my level right now. Yes. Yes. When you're literally hooked up to the drip. Um,

I, I just think, I think aside from the fact that the rock perhaps does not let himself lose that much. And the, the rock is, uh, I'm sorry, not the rock, but, but... It just becomes a movie about a capable guy who's getting the job done.

That's my thing. Visually, the second he enters a frame, he is incapable of being low status, even if he's a little kid in his body. We know this from our love of the Fast and Furious movies. Contractually, The Rock cannot lose a fight. Well, in that world. I believe that if he's producing his own movies...

In that, yes, you're right. But I think what we'd have to do is, and this is kind of what we were talking about when you and I, you know, when we did our... Griff, when we did our Galaxy Quest thing. Yes. Like, you'd have to really... It would have to be meta in some way.

Like he'd really have to commit to being like, it would have to be one of these things. Like I don't have powers in this world. I am just this other. Yes. Like, like, and they'd have to figure out some way to comedically make him that,

because I don't, again, I think it's a hard needle to thread. I think the only person I can think of is Chris Pratt. That can really do it. I think Ryan Reynolds could be fun, but he's almost too slick. You need somebody who's a little bit more lumpy. I don't know a better term than that.

Like, you know, it's like, but if you don't, but this movie isn't, this movie is only interesting because, well, not only. This movie is interesting because it subverts White's savior. And they know Rock is not a White savior, but it's like, yeah. Here's who I'll take in this part. I'll take Wyatt Russell in this part. Yes. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I love Wyatt Russell's energy. I'll take Lodge 49 era Wyatt Russell. You know, not Falcon and Winter Soldier Wyatt Russell. You know, like he gets he gets that same shaggy vibe or you know the um the uh richard linkletter movie the name of which i can never remember uh everybody wants everybody wants them thank you yes so funny in that movie like i'll take that version of it you know the rock problem is if he wants to remake or reboot one of the flops of this time period that then gained a cult following, the one he would fit into really well, which I would also argue is more worthy of a reboot because it is a less successful film creatively. Can I say what I think you're going to say?

Yeah. I could be wrong. Logan's Run? No, but that's an interesting idea. All right. Last action hero. Last action. Oh, last action.

Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The rock and last action here. If they announce that tomorrow, I would go money in the fucking bank. That's so smart.

Part of that is you need to lean into this guy is unreal, right? There is nothing real world about this dude. Looking at this guy is a cinematic experience. Right, right. And I think like you look at Central Intelligence and Jumanji, the two Jumanji movies he did, where both times he's playing lower status in terms of playing insecure people, right?

Like an awkward teen in this insane body. I think he's very good at that. That's probably the mode I think he does best these days. But both of those, he remains so high status just because of his physical power. The joke is like, this is a kid controlling a robot. It doesn't know what it's doing. It is the Arnold problem.

It is the Arnold problem when you put Arnold into... It's clearly stand-along. Unless it is, you know, Predator or Total Recall or these kind of, like, iconic T-Terminator movies, when you put him into Twins and Kindergarten Cop

and all these other movies, he just... The tension between his physicality and his his his accent in this in this in service of what is supposed to be just a regular guy scientist or a regular guy it makes no sense and that's where the rock is right now he he starts playing that tension too much to the point where it goes from being very funny, very successful to ultimately defanging him in every genre simultaneously. Now, the comedies are less impactful and he can't go back to action. Well, I guess what I would also say, too, is, you know, we're the rock.

I think it'll be interesting to see Black Adam. I'm not the biggest Black Adam fan. Not that I'm not a fan of Black Adam. I just don't know much about Black Adam. I'm curious about that movie, though. But Shazam is the better casting. For me, seeing The Rock do what The Rock is actually good at, The Rock doing Shazam is interesting to me.

Because it's big meets body. And Zach Levi, great. Very good in that movie. But that, to me, is a way more fun role as a superhero i agree i agree because i think he has the right he also has the right kind of um his persona uh aligns with shazam you know i mean the whole thing and 2003 the rock would have been perfect for shazam 2019 the rock he would have taken over the movie. The whole way the Shazam works is they kind of snuck it through where I feel

like, you know, it didn't cost that much for a superhero movie in DC was kind of just like, yeah, you're doing the comedy who care. And like that movie is, you know, funny,

profound, kind of actually scary. Like it actually is good for, because no one less people have their eyes on it. Yeah. But it's a little bit like these Carpenter movies where, right,

they snuck through one way or the other. I just want to run through quickly as we're going through like sort of mythologies of action stars of this era and whatever to recenter back to Kurt, right?

So we're talking about like the 80s. It's like he's doing all this great work and none of the stuff is as successful or as well regarded at the time as it should be and he gets into this zone where it's sort of like well he's like a movie star but he can't be the only movie star you put him in a movie with a bigger movie star and he's a good like secondary name right after this uh he does Best of Times

with Robin Williams right before this. Oh, interesting. And then after this, it's Overboard. Now he's re-teamed with Goldie. They're trying to build a movie from the ground up that fits into their chemistry rather than swing shift

that they sort of tried to change midway into more of a romantic comedy. Then he does Tequila Sunrise with Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer, two people who are bigger movie stars on their own. Then Winter People with Kelly McGillis.

In 1930s Appalachia, a widowed city clockmaker falls in love with an unwed mother and finds himself in the middle of a long-standing feud between two clans. That is how he closes out. That one didn't go. That wasn't a hit.

Now, his next movie is arguably his first down-the-middle hit, which is Tango and Cash. Tango and Cash with Stallone. And he's riding Stallone's back, but that's the first time he has something that actually plays as a hit when it came out,

and he's sort of you know playing the wild man to stallone straight man the bigger star there then after that it's backdraft he's top bill but the movie's got so many people in the right he's playing the fire is really top fire but that movie was a hit that's a hit you know that's a yeah but then it's you know unlawful entry and captain ron which don't hit. Tombstone, I mean, obviously Tombstone rules. I guess Tombstone did pretty well. It did pretty well.

It did do, like, amazing. Right. And also, I think Tombstone benefited him from the kind of word of mouth that he really directed it. You know, like that, the story, the behind-the-scenes story of Tombstone. You know, it was his movie. He kind of shadow directed it you know like that the story the behind the scenes story of tombstone you know it was his movie he kind of shadow directed it all that kind of stuff i mean i will i will say that tombstone to me is like one of my is a is one of my favorites it's such a great it's such a great western it's so good but i remember it being big so i guess it wasn't but i mean i remember it being big and it was big yeah because it was wide open it was big

but it wider was the flop but what was interesting was i feel like the person who popped out of tombstone was unquestionably val kilmer yeah um and just for a brief moment i will say the val kilmer documentary if people have not watched it yet is absolutely incredible um it's just called Val. I don't, I think it's on Amazon Prime or I don't remember where it is, but it's on one of the streaming services. It is fantastic. And subsequently I watched it

and then rewatched Top Gun, MacGruber, Real Genius. He like, you just watch his filmography, Tombstone I watched earlier in the pandemic. And it's, he's just an incredible actor. What Kilmer can do, I would like a Val Kilmer miniseries. David, you would not have to sell David Hart on that. Yeah.

I love Val Kilmer so much. I'm a big, you know, it's interesting. I need to watch it. Oh, I'm shocked that you haven't watched the documentary. It's almost as if having a child is distracting you from your job. Yeah, some stupid excuse like that. How dare. Griff, I feel like your overall point about Kurt is his biggest hits are usually where he's tying together with something else, right?

Like Tango and Cash, Stargate. Absolutely. Well, the other thing, this is the other point I sort of want to make is like, Well, the other thing this is this is the other point I sort of want to make is like by the time you get into the 90s, the 80s Carpenter movies have sort of been reclaimed. He's a bigger star because the movies that flopped the first time around have now sort of elevated him to mild icon status. And he's not quite elder statesman. But you get something like Stargate where he's more just kind of plugged into that, right? Like executive decision breakdown is great. But at this point, he's not doing the Kurt Russell Carpenter thing. He's not doing the wink. He doesn't have the mischievous energy. He's playing very well in largely good movies, pretty straight down the middle. And Escape from

L.A. happens in that period. And that one's a flop. Like that's the one that sort of blows up in his face. And I will say that executive decision, I think is a very underrated, good action movie. And, uh, and Steven Seagal, one of his best performances,

cause it's a great twist and there's so much good stuff there. Uh, that one, I feel like is his closest to being, I mean, I think backdraft and that are his like that really is his Harrison those are his Harrison Ford swings right but but he's what's interesting is like he never achieves leading man status he really is at the top end of character actor status yeah I I

think you know like he's always he's or or he's a leading man. But in B movie versions of the he's in the movies that I feel like Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas are turning down. Right. And he's playing back up to a bigger star. He should have been in Black Rain. Black Rain would have been funny. Another fish out of water in. I mean, that that movie is actually Set in Japan But you know but anyway

That movie's I watched When you do Ridley Scott that movie is I watched that movie like three months ago it's Nuts I want to do I want to do A Patreon of Black Rain and what's the other Rising Sun the Wesley Snipes Sean Connery

That one right and that one in Year of the Dragon if you really just want to do like mid 80s well that's early 90s but Hollywood movies that are straight up afraid of Asia just like afraid the Jared Leto Netflix one that's maybe the fourth in the series The Outsider is the name

of that movie oh I didn't know that one didn't really go anywhere. Yes. That was, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a similar vibe, similar vibe. Yes. He really is, he is a single, it really, you mentioned Pratt, or we can probably come up with a couple others,

but Kurt Russell really, especially this iteration of Kurt Russell, is such a unique Hollywood voice that really doesn't exist that much. You can say that Jeff Bridges can do it sometimes. Yeah. You know, there are people who can access it, but very few people are, is it their kind of,

their most kind of realized voice. And Kurt Russell is that. Kurt Russell is the only person who can, in a serious movie, make you laugh and have a sly wink going on without letting the tension out of the movie, without letting the foot off the gas. You know what I mean? Absolutely. I think what I'm realizing in this conversation ultimately is we have spent such a long time, not we in this podcast,

but in general in cinema, looking for the next Harrison Ford. And I think that that's a misnomer. I think we're looking for the next Kurt Russell because our movies now are blend. I think we give a lot to Harrison Ford to say, well, he could be charming and he could be funny and he's an action star. But in many ways, what happens is like well we're having like the reboot of tron and we went through all these male actors it's like who's the next one who's and it was just like no no no

and then when chris headland right all these guys yeah yeah we come in and we go that's what we want and what we wanted and maybe what i think we're saying is like kurt russell is what we what is needed now harrison ford was like back then and we're like because i do feel like that was a search that we were really looking for and i think that what's his face the guy who plays thor chris hemsworth also even travels a little bit in this world of right he turns out to be a secret kurt yeah yeah we Yeah. We thought he was a Lundgren, but he's a secret Kurt. He definitely has some of that energy, which is very fun and makes him interesting. And I think we're also getting to see some of that from people like Chris Pine or other people who previous to this have been stuck inside of very rigid structures about what is, what is, what is a, what is a leading man's kind of, uh, voice, you know, by the way I did, I did, um, it's a movie

where they hire a best man. I think Josh Gad and Kevin Hart. Oh yeah. Oh, the wedding ringer, the wedding ringer. I did that when it was Chris pine's pet project that he was i did a table read for that i did it i was at that table read okay yeah so chris pine was trying to be that guy like like but that was his one chris pine's a phenomenal actor i've seen him on stage i've seen yeah the best like i just love that like he was like oh i want to i want to like scratch this vince vaughn itch i can do this and he very, very capable in that role. Like he like he could do that. It's him in fucking into the woods.

Yeah, that's a great Paul Vince. A young Vince Vaughn was trafficking in Kurt Russell esque vibe. Yeah, I think, you know, when we meet Vince Vaughn, I think you don't think so, Griff. No, no. I was going to say our buddy Connor Ratliff always talks about this, that like he thinks the single biggest issue with Phantom Menace is that Vince Vaughn isn't in it. And he uses Vince Vaughn as a stand in. But he's like, that's the guy who would have given you in 1999 the energy that Harrison

Ford was giving you in 1977 and would have been able to like be in the movie just enough, but also sort of say to the audience, like, let's not take this too seriously. The person that I'm always like whenever I watch a movie that I'm like, oh, this was so almost good, but I think it was casting the person that I always say, I think it would have been better if this person was in that role is always sam rockwell oh interesting oh interesting yeah see my my take on that i always go to oscar isaac because oscar isaac's a guy who like has the heft but i also think is always funny and can play that's how i feel about rockwell. Right. I feel like Rockwell has a light touch, but he's such a good dramatic actor,

but he can sell. He can, I would watch Sam Rockwell try and fail and enjoy it so much the way that I enjoy Kurt Russell trying and failing. Well, I think that Sam Rockwell is able to really like, he has a real cocksureness to his characters. And I think,

I think that he has like, he, he is like the acting version of bill murray like he's got that looseness but i think it is very studied and that's not an insult i think that he really works these characters where bill murray is that guy i don't know if sam rockwell is that guy but he can become that guy and that's really interesting i yeah you know what's weird i guess he did the fossy show but sam rockwell won an oscar yeah and since then i feel like he's like where is sam rockwell what i want received another oscar nomination for playing george w

bush for four minutes you're forgetting about that i know i'm not forgetting about that and i liked him in jojo rabbit i think you're right it's those few supporting parts it's it's fossy verdon and then it's covid shuts everything down you know i know that he i know that him and ben schwartz are going to do a movie together right right right it's wild that i have not gotten the like sort of like hey sam rockwell you want an oscar is there a movie you really want to fucking make? You know, like at least one of those. But it is weird that like the following year, he gets another supporting actor nomination.

And the year after that, he is one of the flashy supporting roles in a Best Picture nominee. He's in Jojo Rabbit. And then that same year, he's in Richard Jewell, which he fucking rules in. He's great in Richard Jewell, and I don't really like Jojo Rabbit,

but I think he's actually really funny in Jojo Rabbit. Yeah, he's great in Richard Jewell and I don't really like Jojo Rabbit but I think he's actually really funny he's great he's great in everything even in movies that are not good or unsuccessful or whatever he is always great you know what I want I want Sam Rockwell in a Shane Black movie

you know what I mean I want Sam Rockwell and this is like no shade to either of the leads of in a Shane Black movie. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I want Sam Rockwell, and this is, like, no shade to either of the leads of the nice guys, but, like, I want Sam Rockwell in that movie. You know what I mean? Like, I want that. Again, he's shaggier than Ryan Gosling is.

You know, like, he's more inept. He doesn't feel capable, but while still feeling like he belongs there. Like in, what's the Ridley Scott movie that he's in with? Oh, Bastik Man, which is so good. Good movie. Great, great movie. Great Sam Rock going toe-to-toe with Nicolas Cage.

It's great. I was just going to say very briefly that, you know, people were predicting that you guys were going to come on this miniseries at some point, right? Our Reddit likes to blow up the second miniseries as announced and try to game

where they think past guests or people they've seen us interacting with on Twitter would fit in. And everyone was sort of going like... So I guess that counts as real nerdy stuff.

Oh, real nerdy shit. But they were all trying to math out, like, well, the Used Cars episode, the reason that worked is it becomes two hours of them talking about the state of comedy movies. What Carpenter movie has the same potential for them to go off on a similar state of the industry diatribe? And they were like, I don't none of them really fit.

What would it be? You guys just want to do big trouble. We were happy to acquiesce. And then you come on and suddenly we've now started deconstructing the entire last 50 years of the American leading man. Well, I mean, it's really true because like we are in a period without movie stars and without leading men. We have now had two generations of no leading men, really. You know, like, maybe you could argue, I feel like, David, your favorite, Adam Driver, is, like, the leading man of right now.

And I love Adam Driver. All I want to do is talk about Annette. Oh, my God. Annette is the, like, Annette gave me a panic attack. Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm trying to convince Amy to do a special on Spool. I'm like, I just need to talk about it for two hours.

Holy shit, that movie was so crazy. And really captured what it is to be a comedian. Anyway. What were you going to say, Paul? No, I don't know. I don't even know. I like Adam Driver. I think that what we're finding is, back to this thing, not to reiterate my own point, I think that what we want in a leading man or what we want in a leading man now is a vulnerability and an openness. And I

would even argue that, yes, The Rock is a big hulking mass, but the fact that he could tone himself down for Jumanji, do these other things, shows that even our leading men at this point have to be a little bit more vulnerable. And I know we've done that before with like Schwarzenegger and even Stallone. They've had their one-offs. But I do believe now like the best leading man has to be able to do it all and a little bit make fun of themselves. But I think that that's what Kurt Russell's bread and butter was. And I think back then in the 80s, that was not what people wanted. There is some.

No, and I agree with you guys that everyone doesn't know what to make of it at the time. And then he really does become the model that everyone's trying to fulfill, even if they like to say we're looking for Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford. Like they cite the guys who were running the table in the box office at the time. But Russell is sort of the platonic ideal. I would say even just in terms of what types of movies get made now, the attitude and the energy of our biggest blockbuster films, the Marvel movies all have this sort of Kurt Russell tone to them where they need that deafness, that lightness of touch, right?

The ones that people like the most, the ones that were the best, right? It's Downey Jr. it's Chris Pratt, it's Hemsworth when he starts getting funny. You know, that's when people start to go like- And it's really, if you look at it, if you look at it, it's not just Downey Jr., it's Downey Jr. with Shane Black. Yeah.

Because Shane Black has an uncredited rewrite on Iron Man 1 and does Iron Man 3. And then you've got Taika, and then you've got Gunn. And then Fab guys are well is a shaggy dog comedy guy who's throwing things off the hump yeah totally but the rest of the Marvel movies don't have that exactly in our and the the DC movies are are lacking in any sense of humor or any sense of shagginess they are dour and And as you guys came on our show and talked about the Snyder Cut, like, they are so gray

and lifeless to me in a way that right now what we want is there to be a... We don't have movies right now, or big movies, I guess, that have fallible people in them. Like, Vin Diesel and The Rock can't lose a fight

in Fast and Furious movies. And so we have movies in which everybody is essentially invincible to both emotional and impervious to physical harm, which is very bizarre. It's a two-pronged problem

of I think so many of these stars being unwilling to lose any status and the executives thinking what people want to see is people who are fucking awesome winning at everything all the time and you get these movies that are just two and a half hours of guitar solo you know with like no melody well but i would also argue that this is also what some of our greats have transformed into and i say greats by saying like Robert Downey Jr. I don't think plays that anymore and won't play that anymore.

I think Vince Vaughn won't play that anymore. And I think all of a sudden people don't want to play the thing. I was going to say, I absolutely agree with you, Paul. A hundred percent. Both of those are people that are in their mid fifties to early sixties. Right. That generation. Both of those are people that are in their mid-50s to early 60s. I agree. That generation.

What I'm saying is, where are the 35-year-old versions of that? And that's where we have this huge problem where we're continuing to talk about, we, a group of people in our, I mean, I'm the oldest at 48 and the rest of you are late 30s, 40s, right? Is my assumption, except for 25, 25. But that's cool. Yeah. But yeah. So the reality is it's so hard to point to anybody in the younger generation, even our contemporary generation that has Ryan Reynolds ability.

It's I guess it's it is it's Ryan Reynolds. But even he's the one who's figured out the most of anybody Even he is approaching 50 And it took so long For him to crack it Like two swings The other thing that is frustrating about him Is what he's figured out

Is he has really figured out how to sell a movie online In a way that I find kind of like Headachy and depressing But then I watch how he gets a movie like free guy where i was like oh no one's interested in this like you can barely you know explain the plot like who cares gets that movie over the sort of box office hump in a pandemic and i was kind of like i kind of have to hand it to his insane kind of workaholic online presence, right?

Where he's just like, guys, guys, you got to come. You got to, you know, like his super enthusiasm kind of sold everyone on that movie. But it's also the way he cracked the code is that everything's become Deadpool. Like not only has he reverse engineered how he works in other movies around Deadpool, but the marketing feels like it's written by Deadpool. Everything. Yeah. Everything feels like it's a dead, it's an extension of Deadpool.

Right. Like he, he is the Deadpool extended universe. I think that, I think that somebody tried to crack it a little bit with, uh, the, let's just call it the horrible boss.

Triple head, right? Bateman, Charlie day and Sudeikis, right? Like at that point, I think that that was the attempt to be like, these are the guys, these are our new guys, these are our new people. But immediately, like even Charlie Day has like, was in the big Pacific Rim. It's like, I feel like it's weird because you almost have to have enough sway to control the whole movie around

you it's not enough to be even be in it anymore you have to like you have to almost steer the ship which is i think the reason why vince vaughn even came into the play because of swingers it's like they had enough control there i don't know am i making sense i don't maybe i'm maybe i'm talking about i i don't yeah because even you you look at early Bill Murray when it's like people like Reitman being like, just show up and do your thing. You know, yeah. The things that make comedy stars are movies where the stakes are low enough and you have a director who really understands and trusts the person and gives them space to figure the thing out. Beverly Hills Cop. I mean, all your Eddie Murphy movies at the beginning of his career were like that, too, where it was like, we're hiring you to do your thing and we're going to take the pressure off of you and just give you the circumstances to shine.

I think the really the only person who is, I think, currently exists inside of this space, but is now also getting older is Seth Rogen. You know, like, oh, my God, of course. I think Rogen is in a position to write and direct, and also to write and direct movies that he is in. He also is in a position to make and produce other stuff, whether it's The Boys or whether it's Sausage Party. He's got his fingers in stuff that is very interesting, very current, and feels very relevant,

and is one of the only comedic voices that I understand currently what his point of view is. Yes. You know, and that that is, like, I don't know what anybody else's point of view is comedically other than just, you know, this movie, you know, but also, yes, but he's become a little bit more of a mogul than a movie star in a way that's impressive. And I do think there's a point of view that's consistent.

He has quality control, whatever. But you look at like Neighbors to 2016, then he arguably doesn't do another like Seth Rogen vehicle until long shot 2019. And then American Pickle goes to HBO Max and sort of falls into the pandemic memory hole. And he's got tons of credits in between all of those things, but they're either

him doing extended cameos or voiceover roles or TV stuff that he's producing. But here's the thing. Maybe we're getting off track because I may have pulled us in the wrong direction. Oh, wait, what? Are we? You're kidding me. I get, you know, I think the difference

is this. Seth Rogen is a leading man, but he's not an action star. And I think that that and that's, and that is the subtle

kind of difference. Like, but, but, but, but you know what I'm saying? Like he,

like he did Green Hornet, but I think where Seth, Seth is just, is putting out like Eddie Murphy. And this is somebody we haven't talked about is the perfect mix of this guy

who is also very funny very likable you buy him as being sexy you buy him as being like he kind of walks this different line where he could kind of go all over the map more than most of other people that was in an era where action stars didn't

actually need to be able to like clear a room with like brute force era where action stars didn't actually need to be able to like clear a room with like brute force right where action scenes could be a little smaller a little goofier where bodies didn't have to be quite as sort of imposed you know what i mean like and now i feel like it's harder like seth rogan doing the green hornet is kind of him trying to find like how do i do an action movie right like and that movie wasn't even a flop. Like, you know, it's a decent movie. But his takeaway from that was we had an idea of what we wanted to do.

When your movie goes over a certain budget level, the amount of people who have to weigh in on every single decision becomes such a headache. We lost control that after that, I mean, he said as much directly in interviews. After that, every time we come up with a movie, we go to the studio and we go, what is the number, the budget number, that if we keep it under that, you'll let us do whatever we want?

And for every one of his movies, he's like, if I can deliver Neighbors at $26 million and we all defer our salaries, can we get no notes? You know? This is the end of the movie

with set pieces and effects, but they figure out how to keep that under a certain budget level. Like, that's the thing he does now is I would rather defer my payday and have more control of the thing in the moment rather than having to level up to the bigger thing where I then have to politic around all these people. And what an incredible thing to figure out at that early stage to be able to pivot and then just from then till now grow exponentially. Because he was like, I have no interest in trying to do Green Hornet ever again. And if I need to be in a bigger movie, I will take the offer to be Pumbaa and Lion King. And while not all of his

movies have been absolute hits, he's never had another Green Hornet no you know i mean like he's he's really like had a run of good to great movies that have been under his control to a degree to some degree or another yeah and these are some of what i think of as the best comedies of the last 15 years you know i think he i think that he is behind a lot of great comedy i think one of the things that is really interesting about seth and evan as a duo and again this is getting further away but they also are doing they also do something really interesting which is like they are really good directors who elevate some simpler comedic like i think in the past we've seen very simple comedy like as far as directing is gone you know like and i think that like when they actually they they actually, they actually, I mean, they directed the pilot for Black Monday. It looked phenomenal.

I mean, they've also directed a lot of other stuff too, but they really elevate, they're doing a lot of stuff, but I do think in comedy, yes, there's a bunch of people in comedy, but who is that person that can do comedy and be a leading man in the sense of a sex symbol, which I think Kurtsell kind of is i think when you think about kurt russell you don't go comedian i think you think of him as uh he's a he's a leading man he's a leading man in a different way like a i don't know i mean i know it's a subtle difference like it's almost like and this person i think is not this but if zach efron had that yes kind of that swagger and that wink, which he

doesn't have, he can do what he does and he does it very well, I think, but he doesn't have that Kurt Russell other gear. I mean, the Kurt thing to get things slightly back on track is that he's able to do both simultaneously in equal measure without sacrificing one to the other like that's the thing that i feel like so few guys have pulled off and someone like pratt pulls it off and then doesn't always recognize what the right application of that is again too less and less i would say right but like the kurt thing where he's just kind of equally good at everything, but he never becomes a joke, but he lands every joke. You know? Yeah.

And he's never quite a comedian, but he's a comedy star. But he can sell a joke. But he can sell a joke. You know, he understands what the joke is and can sell it. And you would be very hard-pressed, I think. I wrote it down every time

in this movie in my notes he does not win a single fight until the very end when he catches the knife and throws it at low pan or like when when they burst through and they have the first shootout and you can and he's wild firing he's never shot a gun before yeah and he kills that guy and the guy he's with two guys who work at a restaurant and the other guy goes what you've never plugged someone before i love what are you talking about you work at a restaurant you guys are you guys are a restaurant employees why have you why do you have a facility with guns why are you like and he the leading the swaggery leading man has to kind of save face and be like well of course you know or whatever but he's clearly he clearly hasn't he's never shot a

gun my my favorite thing is when kim cattrall's like you know how are you gonna and he's like i got a knife you know he says it proudly as if she's gonna be like oh well you have a knife okay and then he actually gets to have the moment where he throws the knife triumphantly totally misses cut back to kurt rosser going like ah god damn it you're just stuck in a wall it's that moment where he climbs in it's the moment where he climbs in where every all the women are in cages in like the in the underground layer and he climbs in and he's on the roof of um what's wait who is it what's uh not uh kim cattrall but who did we um kate burton he's on kate burton's

thing and he goes uh uh don't worry and she goes how are you gonna spring us and he goes i have no idea you know yeah he really you know he really no idea. He's not even faking it. He's not even saying I'll come up with something or I've got a plan or any of those things that a capable lead would say. He literally is like, I have no idea. I'm winging it here. You know, I think what we all want is that moment from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where the swordsman comes out with the sword, flipping it around, and then he goes to...

Yeah, he goes to... Yeah. That's what we want. That is... Or at least the people I think that are our age, we love that energy. And that's Indiana Jones winning,

but it's also cheating. And there's something really fun about that. There's personality. Yes. And that's what we want. Yes. And that's what we want. What's kind of wonderful about Kurt Russell is that scene would happen and he would miss. Yes.

And the guy would come after him and he would have to run away. He would run away. He would have to flee. And that's the difference between harrison ford and kurt russell is harrison ford's characters are 25 degrees more capable right 25 percent more capable and kurt russell is not he shoots a gun and he misses and he has to then figure out a new plan you know and that there's just that wobbliness makes him so fun in this movie. At least that's what I was delighted by while watching it. Agreed. Can I share something related to the end? Ben!

Jesus! Like, talk so much in this episode. Yak, yak, yak. Yak, yak, yak. Well, you know, come on. We've got a lot of people on mic, but I just wanted to jump in because the fact

that yeah the only time he wins a fight is when he you know basically like on a lark throws the knife and hits lopin so in the book series um something that's like a detail i don't think we've really touched upon uh that they really explore is that there's all these different variations of hell this is like kind of a running joke you're gonna go to the the the hell where they rip your skin off or whatever right exactly so this is this recurring trope throughout the the book where it's just like they keep going to all these different funny versions of hell and they're like really specific and really like abstract and absurd but

Lopin goes to hell the version of hell he goes to is the hell for people who were killed by idiots oh that's really funny that's amazing that's amazing yeah and it's like so even like again

that triumphant moment the way that they're really looking at it is that even again it's like he's such an idiot that like it was just fucking dumb luck that that even like connected well the other the other one was when he successfully kills the guy in heavy armor but then gets trapped underneath him oh with the with the knife and the boot while the fight rages around him he Oh, with the knife and the boot. While the fight rages around him, he's trapped under the weight of the armor-clad man that he just killed. That's, again, so funny.

And by the way, that's the one move he does after waking up, after knocking himself out by shooting the pillar above him. Like, it's like, it's a fight where he increasingly keeps on getting himself stuck into fucking jams. That that moment is so good.

I mean, this is like talking about the shit that these fucking movies don't recognize where it's just like seeing a guy doing something cool at a certain point doesn't really register, especially if your movie

is just a two hours of a guy doing something cool. But a moment like that where the guy's attacking Kurt Russell, he's just knocked himself out. He's coming to. He's arguably concussed. Right. All he knows is I got to get this knife out of my boot because that's all I have going for me. And then struggling to get the knife out of the boot, he by accident recognizes it's easier to push the knife through the boot than get it out.

I can't even do the thing I was trying to do. And it's like, Oh, an accidental win. He stabs the guy. No, nevermind. Now you're caught up in fucking like plates of armor. Yeah. Oh, there's a great moment again.

We're in the third act of the movie. And he goes, do you know what Jack Burton says at a time like this? And somebody goes, who just such a good joke. But when, when is that not funny? It's he's the lead. he's the hero in his own mind

and people the people around him are like why are you here yeah yeah it's a great movie it's fun man it's fucking fun can you tell i'm trying to bring this episode into to landing i'm trying to try trying to you know put the flaps down and bring out the landing gear and maybe play the box office game. Although, Griffin, we've actually played this box office game before. I don't know if you remember. Fuck. It's 4th of July weekend, 1986. Yeah, and this movie opened number 12 at the box office, which is crazy.

Jesus. Crazy. This movie makes 11 in total off a budget of 25. Yikes. Jesus. This movie makes 11 in total off a budget of 25. Yikes. Yeah. And like nothing internationally reported.

Although I guess, I think international numbers for the 80s are just kind of not as available. So that's probably, you know. Can I just read this quote quickly? Sorry, it was from a Kurt Russell career

retrospective Entertainment Weekly did in 2016. He said a lot of people on the junket said, how does it feel to be in a movie that you know is going to be a massive hit? This is fascinating. And I would falsely humble say, hey, well, you never know. You just got to see how it does. But inside I was going, yeah, I'm so happy. And then it came out like this was the first time. He's thinking this is it. I finally got it right yeah yeah we've nailed the persona it's the perfect thing everyone was like so bullish on this here are the new movies none of which are in the top five

it's opening behind psycho 3 the one i think that Anthony Perkins directed The Great Mouse Detective Which Griffin is why we've done this before About Last Night And Under the Cherry Moon The legendary Prince movie Which we did on our show So all of these movies are in the bottom half of the 10 Yeah that's 8, 9, 10, 11

And then Big Trouble is 12 None of those movies can crack the top seven. So this is kind of like a legendary flop weekend. Yeah. Where like a lot of shit is being thrown at audiences and audiences are mostly like, eh, no thanks. Like obviously, the great mouse detective, you know, had long legs. The others, not so much.

Well, I mean, to be fair, the great mouse detective had short legs. They were only like an inch wide. He did. He has tiny little mouse legs. Tiny mouse legs. What are you talking about? Number one of the box office is a sequel that is just a colossal hit. Not a great movie, but just... Is it Rambo 2?

No. I always guess Rambo 2. More family focused, colossal focused. Colossal hit. 1986. Not a great movie. Is it Spielberg or Jason at all? No. Jason, what's your question?

Is it a vacation movie? No, not a vacation. It's an action, kids action movie. Paul? Oh, I was going to say, look who's talking too. Four kids starring kids or both? It stars a kid and an older guy. It's a sequel.

Kids getting a little older. Kids getting older. This one, you know what, Griffin? This one always stumps you. Yeah. It always stumps you. It's from an Oscar winning director, although he may not actually win. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

This one always stumps me me because it's one of these things where when you when you describe the elements of it it sounds like what could possibly fill all this but no i know exactly what it is don't say anymore it's karate kid part two oh i always get stumped by the karate kid franchise because when you describe it in pieces it sounds like no movie fulfills all of that. Yeah. And it was a hit. It was a huge, like, world-beating phenomenon, even the second one, which, like, isn't that good? And by the way, another movie that takes place

and leans more into this fascination with culture overseas. I mean, yeah, culture, yeah. Yeah. No, it's a big thing at the time, like, undoubtedly. Number two at the box office is a comedy, Griffin, that we've, again, of course, we've done this box office game.

It's kind of the launch of a fascinating star career. My brain is motion now. 1986. A fascinating comic star career. We were just talking about a movie he was in. Right. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I got something on this one as well, because I went, what leading man could this possibly describe? And the answer is, of course, it's Rodney. Oh, is it? Is it Back to School? Yeah. It is not Rodney. What?

But Back to School. Griffin is number three. Okay. Okay. You did get it. Okay. You did get it. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. But this is a different fascinating. No, this is a different fascinating A more diminutive Dudley Moore Not Dudley Moore Even more diminutive than Dudley Moore

Tinnier than Dudley? I think so Now I want to do a height comparison This guy's small Is he young? This guy's really small Is he young? No

This guy is I want to tell you I know what it is I know what it is Twins Ruthless people? It's neither It's Ruthless People

There you go Oh wow I was going to say You know what I thought It was going to be First Buellers But then when I heard small I was like okay

No we're talking small Dudley Moore towers over 4'10 Danny DeVito At 5'3 So You know Number three is back to school which is doing great which is

kicking ass which made ten times as much money as fucking big trouble little china yeah like back to school was a huge hit number four is the biggest movie of the year maybe or second you know one of the giant hits of the year yeah 1986

biggest movie of 1986 would be... Is it a franchise movie? Well, there's a sequel coming one day, maybe. Oh, it is, of course, the movie Top Gun. Top Gun.

Oh, wow. One day we'll get the sequel, right, guys? Maybe someday. With the way the water levels are rising who knows number five of the box office it's a comedy it has one of America's most iconic stars leaning on a desk wearing a nice sweater

this is the it's I always get the name mixed up it's League of Legals League of Legals Redford Winger Hannah yeah and Ivan Reitman films and I haven't written mixed up. It's League of Legals. League of Legals. Redford, Winger, Hannah. Yeah. And Ivan Reitman films, speaking of twins. And Ivan Reitman films. Twins is two years later.

Funny. Wow. That's your top five. And then number six, Paul, Running Scared. Running Scared. So we've done this weekend twice before. And number seven, no, Running Scared was new last week And number seven, Ferris Bueller

Wow Oh, there we are Did it open at seven? Or how long, where is it? It's been out for a month It's made 33 of its 70 million dollars So it's going to be around for a while That movie was massive to me yeah that was

massive uh paul labyrinth is also out right now just to speak of you know other oh yeah yeah and as is gung-ho oh wow look at this oh wow it is interesting no you were saying this but just this really was the peak of uh western fascination with the east and you know they got all kinds of countries over there yeah you heard of these guys like it truly is that energy i feel like the things like gung-ho is a movie that's hard to watch now like something like big trouble is more like what is complicated about its legacy is only that it was following in such a trend of like every asian person is magical in some way or another in this movie it's literally magical and something like mr miyagi it's like you are the wisest most profound most talented i think

you know you have these character actors who suddenly are getting elevated to like a higher level there's more representation but the representation is so limited in terms of like, you have to be this kind of perfect, angelic, saintly, or demon like character. At least this, the thing about this movie is at least it lets it's,

it's Asian American actors. You know, it's big cast. Yeah. Talk like normal people. You know what I mean? Like, they're not accented in a way that is like,

there's nothing demeaning about these people. Not just dispense, like, you know, sort of fortune cookie wisdom or all that shit. The complaint is obviously you're siloing them

into the only two things they're allowed to do. But they're doing those two things in a way where they're given a lot more humanity and respect than they were in any other movies

of this time. You also just have to acknowledge the fact that the movie has essentially two caucasian speaking roles like it really is just in terms of how many people got work off of this fucking movie and got work in primary positions you know and i will yeah i mean i know we're saying it and saying it but it's like they're not they're not the butt of the joke it's not like there's no like how do you use these chopsticks or like it's almost like the butts of the joke the white people are the morons yeah i was just gonna say if anything kurt russell is the butt of the joke over and over and over again and then control to a secondary degree yeah yes so look i mean my wife just sent me a picture of

my child nodding off i just would love to be done, guys. I know you want the record. Every episode now is like a ticking clock. No, no, no. We got to do it naturally. We got to do it naturally. I'm not going to, we don't need to force a record. And listen,

I thought Alex's episode was fantastic and deserved its runtime. So I'm not trying to challenge a great episode. Yeah, we don't want to beat it for no reason. If you want to like, you know, jump in on an ad read or maybe Griffin can really just

go to town, you know, on like a Brooklyn and read, we might get there. We could really beef up the ad reads. This episode has three half hour long ad reads. Oh my god. No, no, it's incentive for you guys to come back. That's three half hour long ad reads. Oh my God. No, no.

It's incentive for you guys to come back. For those of us who, when I hear ring, ring, and I hit the fast forward button, people just fast forwarding for minutes and minutes and being like, what the fuck is going on? This commercial is still going? I heard people who hate how long the ad reads are also go and he does that thing where every ad read starts with either bring bring or david and i'm like yeah motherfuckers i do that for you i start that warning one of two ways so you get the warning and you can skip

skip ahead if you want by the way i was doing something this week on twitch uh for the doordash channel uh on twitch i was hosting an e-gaming competition and some of the the notes in the chat were like oh man i can't believe you guys are this is just a big ad for doordash i'm like you're on the doordash channel on twitch so let's just like matter with you like let's just like just like look at what let's look at the specifics here you clicked the link you went here of your own volition what did you what did you think this would be yeah this is and by the way it was very light on the ads but we just mentioned it you know whatever we have to mention it it wasn't over but it's like you are literally on when you're looking at me there's a logo for doordash underneath me like yeah like the note that i've sold out on some level it's like i'm not hiding it i'm here on the doordash channel

helping them do a very cool event that they were doing and uh that was it but uh it was so funny like people really feel like this is starting to feel like an ad for DoorDash. No, here's the thing. Not just convenience stores, not just restaurants anymore. Now convenience stores. I look, I'm not going to accept this joke because we're, we're not going to just,

you know, interrupt this ad with more company plugs because of course we know this episode was brought to you by Mubi, 3C and Purple. They are the only sponsors of this episode. Congratulations. You check the spreadsheet. I did.

I'm so proud. I got that link open. Very well done. Very well done. Uh, Paul, Jason, uh, do you have any of the 10,000 things either of you are working on any given moment to plug? When will this come out? This will come out very soon. It's coming out October 3rd. Oh, nice. Okay, great. Next week. So, um, so if you are, uh, interested, please check out obviously the, the podcast that Paul and I do with, uh, June Diane Raphael called how did this get made? Um, if you like this show, uh, I think you will like our show. It's a, it's a, it's a show about bad movies and it's us. Uh, and usually I guess talking about bad movies. I'm also a voice in a new Star Trek animated show called Prodigy.

Hell yeah. That is coming out on Nickelodeon and is absolutely stunningly gorgeous and really fun to be in the Star Trek world. As much fun, Griff, as it seemed like you were having in the He-Man world. I loved seeing you in there as Orko. Great work.

Oh, it's like, it's great. It's just everyone is so nice and normal to you online. I loved doing it. Yeah, it's bizarre. Not to go off on a tangent here, but Jason, do you find that when you do things like this, you immediately feel like, well, this isn't real. Like this doesn't count.

If I'm in it, then this franchise no longer has legitimacy. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the, why would I want to be part of a club that would have me as a member, you know? Right. Yeah. Right. I'm like, I have single-handedly made this expensive fan fiction.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, but I'm so, it delights me. So I'm like, oh, good. I hope nobody notices,'m I get to be in in Star Trek great let's do it rules I'll be orca forever if they oh you know what I want except I can't he's dead too bad what here's here's how we could break the record but I'm not even going to introduce it have you seen Star Wars Visions oh well this I haven't yet I need to watch it I

haven't watched it Jason Jason this is the thing we haven't seen Star Wars Visions we need to watch it. I haven't watched it. Jason, Jason, this is the thing. We haven't. Have you seen Star Wars Visions? We need to talk about Visions. Bonus content. David and I have not watched an episode between us. I want to watch it. Bonus content. We put it somewhere.

I'm in. I want to talk about it a lot. Me too. Would you be surprised to hear that every single episode has Kid Fisto in it? Oh, my fucking God. I'm just kidding. Damn. Get ready.

I was briefly very jazzed. TC-14. I'm excited. There is an erotic TC-14 episode. What? All right. All right. Just pushing our button.

There's a hentai episode that stars TC-14. Do you know who is in the cast of Star Wars Visions? James Hong. Wow. Of course he is. Of course he is. Of course he is. I really can't recommend Star Wars Visions enough. I know a lot of people on this fandom love Star Wars.

So it's exceptional. We'll watch it and we'll do a three hour bonus episode on it. Well, I mean, I'm just basically going to basically do the same pitch that Jason did. Yes, you can listen to How It's Getting Made, which I think your audience will like. I also will say that I think

you'll like the other show that I do called Unspooled, where we talk about great movies. We just are in the middle of our horror series right now. We're called scare Tober. Uh, we starting off with the exorcist. We're going into the cabinet of Dr. Calgary.

Uh, and, when we get our a hundred best films, we were going to blast them into outer space. Uh, Griff has been on that show. Uh, a pleasure.

Uh, and I'm also on star Trek. I'm on star Trek, lower decks, the, uh The comedic one Which is quite funny And there was a great episode That just recently came

I've been keeping it secret for a while But my character's mother Is played by June Diane Raphael And I won't tell you the larger Premise of it Which is actually very funny and more disturbing But check it out. I play Lieutenant Billups on all those

episodes. And just to be clear, June is your wife and is playing your mother. Yes. Just to be clear. Yes. Cool. Check all that out. Cool. I appreciate your guys' modesty,

but it is funny to hear you trying to pitch how did this get made and unspooled to our listeners as if they could somehow have skipped over those shows and gotten to ours first. You guys, you guys are, you guys have got the goods. I mean, we were, we were just talking about your show the other day. Yeah. I feel like there's probably a pretty weird big separation that I love. This has been one of my pandemic shows.

One of my pandemic listens has been this show because it allowed me to do also concurrent film watches. So I could do the Elaine May movies. I could do, I go backwards. I listened to all of the first Star Wars episodes because when I found you guys, when I found you guys, it was years ago, but it still was years after that. But I was like, oh, I never listened to those first.

I can't believe you listened to that. I can't believe that. Griffin and David present. Yes. I remember that. You're a present head now. That's what our fans used to call themselves. Exactly. So it's been really fun to listen to

and then have a reason to watch. This is what I love about, I think what people like about our show and what I've enjoyed about your show, especially during the pandemic, is dialing in a filmography and watching along and getting to then have, tune into your conversations

because I like hearing you guys. The same way that I, like I said, Action Boys is a Patreon podcast that I also love and have done a similar thing with that have really given me a reason to both watch movies,

re-watch movies, and then hear people that I love talk about them, you know? Well, I will then hear people that I love talk about them. You know? Well, I will say this, that I was recently getting into a thing on my Discord because Amy and I have been picking movies to go to space, 100 movies to go to space,

and we've had a very strong agreement that one movie from one director. And that has really made people furious, right? Because how can you just make Spielberg have one movie? How can you have, you know, or someone else have one movie? And what's been fun about it is, well, it's the exercise. The exercise is simply that. And that's not, you know, this is all for debate.

And I said, you know, people are like, well, how can you decide that that's the movie when they have a body of work? I said, well, that's why you need to listen to Blank Check because they will determine, you can listen to, you can listen to a body of work i said well that's why you need to listen to blank check because they will they will determine you can listen to you can listen to the body of work you can really see the full picture right now like we have the wes anderson on our list with a movie we're not sure that that's the one that's going to stay but we know he's earned a spot on the list we just don't know what yeah we don't know fun that way and i know what my pick is for that but

other people probably have different picks for that. Yeah. For like the Wes Anderson. For Wes Anderson? Yeah. Let's go around the horn. What's your Wes Anderson? Grand Budapest for me. That to me is his magnum opus.

That is, that's Amy Nicholson's point of view as well. Yeah. Amy and I are two really smart, interesting, really beautiful people. I split between Rushmore and Budapest, but I maybe lean towards Rushmore for personal reasons,

but also because it's got the lightning in a bottle solidification of a voice energy. Yeah. Royal Tenenbaums, baby. I mean, not a bad movie. Not too bad, that one. But I think it's what hits you when, you know? And that movie just hit me right at the right time.

I kind of feel like Grand budapest encapsulates everything that is great about wes anderson in one film it's like it's everything perfectly done not overdone royal tenenbaums gets me in an emotional way i love that cast i love the look i love the feel but then i i also lean towards rushmore as being the introduction, which was so definitively defining of the future of the way that people like the way that Quentin Tarantino entered in, like even the Reservoir Dogs first. But I think Pulp Fiction has a longer lasting effect on the film world. I think that Rushmore does, too. So I go back and forth right between Rushmore and Tenenbaums. It's tricky.

But yeah, it's a hard one. It's hard. It's a fun exercise, and this is a good reason to listen to Unspooled. And can I give you guys one more around the horn? This is why we talked about it. One more around the horn, because this is one that I don't have an answer to. Your Coen brothers. What's your one Coen brothers?

Miller's Crossing. Wow. Okay. That one's harder. I don't know, Griff. Who do you... Mine's Bart's barton think which is one of my favorite all-time movies but i know that would be a tougher sell for everyone i watched it a month ago it's so good i love that movie so it's so good i i shift on this a lot because my personal

favorite by a fair distance is hudsucker roxy, which I could never ever argue is their best movie. Tougher to argue is the space movie. That is one of your craziest takes. Oh, I love it. I love it so much. I'm saying personal preference. I would never objectively argue it's the best one. I wouldn't even dare make that argument. For a while, I

felt like Llewyn Davis was sort of like the best encapsulation of their whole worldview and everything. It's a basic ass opinion, but I've watched Fargo like twice in the last year. And I've maybe come around to that being just like the perfect movie. There's nothing wrong with that opinion. Yeah, that movie is incredible. That and No Country are just absolutely incredible masterpieces yeah but um

for me miller's crossing is just exceptional i just that's but again it's the movie that it came out like when i was i think either just leaving high school or just starting college so i watched it constantly you, I was obsessed with it. I need to give. David is like, please let this stop. He knows. He's either going to make it or not. You can run.

Do you want to check on the baby, David? I love you guys, to be clear. David is crumbling. Go for it. Go for it. Get out of here. Yeah, that's good. All right. You know what?

That's a great call. You guys chat. Maybe you'll hit the record. David, I'm good. All right. You know what? That's a great call. You guys chat. Maybe you'll hit the record. David, I'm going to try to wrap up the episode. I ask one thing of you. Leave your chair where you're recording. Go check to see if your baby is still awake. If she is still awake, you have to run back in and just give us a thumbs up to let us

know that you made it in time. And then you can run back to her. Okay. Bye, guys. Okay. Thank you guys. Okay. Bye. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Thank you to AJ McKeon and Alex Barron for editing. Oh, you know what we didn't talk about? Oh, what? I just am looking at my notes. Yeah, producer Ben, what's up? When they drink the potion and they go in the elevator

and then they all have that moment where they're like, I feel pretty good. That's some fucking king shit. That shit fucking rules. It lasts for like 30 seconds. It lasts for a long time. But that, by the way,

that's with the elevator. Two thumbs up! Sims! We got the thumbs up! He did it! We got the thumbs up! He did it! We got the thumbs up! And he logged off. Wrap it up!

Smell you later, fart heads! Shut it down, Ben! Thank you to Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork! Go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit! Go to patreon.com slash blankcheck for blank check special features where we're doing the mummy movies. Brendan Fraser arguably comes closer to pulling off the Kurt Russell split in the first mummy than anyone has since, or at least until Chris Pratt.

Tune in next week for Prince of Darkness with Keep Phipps. And as always, I've just sent to the chat. If everyone wants to open the link, it is a photo from Kate Hudson's annual Halloween party where Zach Braff dressed up as Jack Burton and took a photo with Kurt Russell not wearing a Halloween costume. Ben, shut up. Just keep it in.