Blank Check with Griffin & David - Christine with Scott Wampler & Eric Vespe

Episode Date: September 19, 2021

It’s the Blank Check / Kingcast crossover event you’ve all been waiting for! Scott Wampler and Eric Vespe join us to discuss John Carpenter’s “Christine” - the first Stephen King adaptation we’ve covered. What is more terrifying - a sexy vintage car that kills people? Or Barbra Streisand’s basement mall? A difficult question, we know. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

My asshole brother bought her back in September 57. That's when you got your new model year in September. Brand new she was. She had the smell of a brand new car. It's just about the finest smell in the world. Except maybe for podcast. They smell so good. I mean, I knew that was what I was going to do.

The variation was obviously, oh man, there is nothing finer than being behind the wheel of your own car. Except maybe for podcast. But I like that that one's more drawn out. It smells. Smell is funny. Smell is funny. Roberts Blossom, right? That's his name.

Who we've covered before because he was the dad in what's it called? Citizens Band. Correct. Handle with Care, a.k.a. because he was the dad in uh what's it called citizens band correct uh handle with care aka handle right care yes but he's also he's he's the kind old man who seems scary right in in in home alone that's how i know he's the nice old man old man marley i believe old man marley correct Marley, I believe. Old Man Marley, correct. But a great name, just a great sort of salty old character actor. The addition of the back brace in this movie, whatever

this thing is that he's wearing. Yep. It's like a scoliosis brace or whatever. Yeah, it really completes the look. Roberts Blossom, we love him. We love him. Not as much as we love of course one of our favorite people to talk about in this podcast thank god back in the pocket robert prosky he's your virtual background today for today's recording one of our ultimate dudes

stupid virtual background i was trying to cup his head he's so i just, I didn't know. His face, I didn't know about his face in this movie. He is, he's got sour lemon face the entire movie. He's so gross. Is he not one of the finest junkyard actors of our time? Yes. A do-it-yourself garage? Yeah. Oh,

he is just the looks that he is throwing in. This are incredible. Yeah. Oh, a very quick, a parallel side tangent before I introduce this podcast or our show, the premise itself. Yes.

Yeah. Or a guess. the, uh, when i was re-watching the thing for last week's episode uh kurt russell keeps on saying fuchs over and over again right uh because one of the guys on the base is fuchs and i was like why does this like why am i getting such a deja vu from kurt russell saying fuchs over and over again what other movie has a character named Fuchs that I'm confusing this with? And then I realized it's fucking used cars where both of the Jack Warden characters are named Fuchs.

And it's literally Kurt Russell saying Fuchs in two different movies over and over again. Two different movies a couple of years apart, too. Yeah. Yeah, I just something was hitting my ear about russell saying fuchs in that exasperated tone uh but that's this isn't a fuchs cast it's not it's not we thought about it and jack warden is not robert prosky but you know but they're similar that's the thing that linked them in my mind right i would have i would have loved to seen a Prosky versus Warden movie. Like Freddy versus Jake?

They're just two grumpy junkyard owners who won't talk to each other? Yes. Because of some perceived slight from like 30. I don't like that guy. He gave me, I don't know, he gave me a bad look in 82. I don't like that guy. He gave me what for? Uh-huh. No, like, was there ever a movie with Robert Prosky

And Jack Warden together It feels like there should have been I don't know Would have been too grumpy Folks this is Blank check with Griffin and David I'm Griffin I'm David

And I did a collaboration search And no Prosky and Warden crossover ever Wow Dan St. Germain the comedian David. And I did a collaboration search and no Prosky and Warden crossover ever. Wow. Yeah. Dan St. Germain, the comedian, had a great bit about Ides of March being Freddy vs. Jason for

Depressed Men because it had Giamatti and PSH as rival campaigners. People should look it up. He does really good impressions of both of those guys comparing who is more depressed about their life circumstances. But this is a podcast

about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear

and sometimes they bounce. Baby! And this is a post bounce. Have we come up ever with a good term? Because the guarantor is the thing that gives you the blank check. Right. We have not come up with a post bounce. This isn't a bounce.

Credit recovery. Right. I don't know what this is. Is this a mortgage? Is this a messing up term? You know, it's like. Is it a credit report maybe? Yeah.

Rebound? Rebound? Yeah. He's like in arre credit report maybe yeah he's like rebound yeah he's like in arrears right now right right it's a it's a rebound movie it's a i gotta prove to them that i can get the thing done again yes uh kind of movie uh because we're talking about the films of john carpenter who certainly fits that description uh it's a mini series called they podcast and uh this is uh his only Stephen King adaptation, which doesn't sound like an odd stat,

except for the fact that this is a man who was working in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, primarily in the horror genre. And it feels like that was 30% of what got produced in the studio system at that point in time. Yeah, George Romero hogged all the other ones. Right.

It is kind of wild, though, that it's like pretty much all the canonical studio horror guys of this era did at least one king you had to do a king at some point and carpenter almost did fire starter right yeah right it was just like you're gonna have to do it at some point and um you know coming off of the thing which you know bizarrely the most detested movie of all time at its release in this huge commercial flop. For Carpenter taking on a King movie probably was like, well, I guess I got to do a Marvel movie just to prove. Right. Like, I just need a surefire.

Something super popular. Right. It was like he was the one of the most preeminent sort of genres in film, certainly commercially. I was reading in the dossier of research prep for this episode that like to put context, it was just like Clancy wasn't a thing yet. Grissom wasn't a thing yet. was the one kind of novelist who was a brand in in and of himself in a way sort of we talked about uh the weird neil simon mega franchise of the 70s through 80s yeah no i mean there's no no question even with those guys at the height of their power maybe jk rowling it kind of hit the status that stephen king did but like even michael cron or Dean Kuntz outsells King. Right. Believe it or not.

But nobody knows who the fuck Dean Kuntz is, you know, outside of popular. It doesn't. Right. Yeah. Yeah. King Stephen King did a really great job of making himself a brand because, I mean, he did an American Express commercial in the 80s, you know, for God's sakes, like he was on talk shows and, you know, he's kind of this weird guy with a weird voice and he had thick, you know, Coke bottle glasses, you know, there was just

something, you know, like perfectly fitting. He has the perfect name to be a horror icon right off the top of it. Stephen King, of course he's writing horror, horror books. Uh, and then he looks like, you know, especially at the time he kind of looked like a weirdo. So, you know, it's, you know, but he, he's writing horror, horror books. And then he looks like, you know, especially at the time, he kind of looked like a weirdo. So, you know, it's when he had, you know, but he had that. Yeah, he had the enthusiasm and all that stuff. So he made himself a brand in an era where like that just wasn't done by authors. You know, Peter Straub wasn't a known face, you know, by people, even though Ghost Story probably sold more than anything that King, you know, had written up to that point.

So if you folks can't already tell, we brought in some experts this week. Hell yeah. This is Christine. We're talking about the killer car movie. And we have Scott Wampler and Eric Bespie from the King cast to help put this in perspective for us. Give us the context. I don't know because this was I mean, maybe this is a stat.

It's hard to double check. I won't point out because this was, I mean, maybe this is a stat it's hard to double check. But someone I know jokingly referred recently to Maximum Overdrive being one of the only movie posters featuring the director primarily. Like visually. That's Dino De Laurentiis, man. Right, but like. Hitchcock had done that before. Hitchcock was like featured on his movie posters.

But he's not even in it. Like, I'm just looking at this one here that is Stephen King's masterpiece of terror directed by the master himself. And the primary image is Stephen King ripping through the truck with a cross. To be fair, he is in the movie. He has a cam. Oh,

he is. Yeah. Right up front. He's the guy that gets hit in the, in the beanbag with a, uh, uh, like a can of soda out of a machine. No, he, he is? Yeah, right up front. He's the guy that gets hit in the beanbag with a can of soda out of a machine. No, he's at an ATM.

He's at an ATM, remember? Oh, that's right. That's right. I'm thinking of the baseball coach. Yeah, the baseball coach. I just think this poster treats him as if he's Tom Cruise. Everyone else on the poster is a centimeter tall. Including Emilio Estevez, like, posted at Breakfast Club.

Yes, who's a big scene. Have you seen the trailer? The trailer is him. Yes. Just talking to the screen showing off for like half of the trailer. Right. Yeah. Which which, by the way, yes, that was like a Hitchcock thing, obviously, like Hitchcock had trailers like that where he would just explain his movie to you.

But it does speak to Hitchcock was also on TV on a weekly basis. You know, his film career had gone on for decades. He had directed a Best Picture winner, like all this shit. And Stephen King, just within a decade, went from being like novelist to film franchise to kind of the name himself, you know? Right. Yeah. And and and again, that's like Dino playing the the full huckster thing to the to the hilt. You know, he knew that I have no doubt that Dino knew that that movie wasn't great, but he knew that Stephen King was a star more so than anything else.

And so that's what he sold it on for sure. And that trailer is fucking hilarious. Like, that's just one of the best trailers ever. I'm going to scare the hell out of you. He's not wearing his glasses. So he's kind of cross eyed as he's talking. Yeah. It's iconic.

I love it. It's just always funny when you have the things like because I guess I mean, what shining doesn't have Stephen King's The Shining. Right. It's not until he remakes it. It still gets to primarily be. Let's see. Stanley Kubrick. Definitely Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Yeah. Yeah. It still gets to primarily be. Let's see. Stanley Kubrick. Definitely Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Yeah. Yeah. He's credited, of course, but. Yeah. No, but he's not like on the poster. On the market. That famous poster. Yeah.

No, it's just a masterpiece of modern horror. I'm thinking of like O-Tour directors who have done Stephen King movies and like Dead Zone is Stephen King's The Dead Zone. Mm hmm. Right. But Carpenter gets John Carpenter's Christine, even though the movie is obviously being sold on King as well. Well, that's a John Carpenter thing like that. It's John Carpenter's everything.

That's just his thing. David Cronenberg doesn't have like David Cronenberg's The Fly. You know, it's like I don't know. Maybe it's an ego thing. Maybe it's a name brand thing i have no idea why that is oh sure i mean i know i know it's like carpenter had just sort of established that as the as the precedent at that point but it's like when you see that the movie is called stephen king's dead zone you're almost surprised when you're like carpenter directed this and they're not even

mentioning that they're still sort of framing it as Stephen King's thing you know I'm trying to figure I'm trying to figure this out like when the first yeah we'll see the dead zone is definitely Stephen King's the dead zone yeah I don't know I don't know that might be it yeah that might be I mean there's also the variation and like whether they use that in the title for the movie or on the poster in the marketing or neither. Right. I mean, I honestly think that it really just happens to be because Stephen King and adaptations of his work, which is why we started a whole podcast about it, are just so intertwined. It's the reason why I think he's such a pop culture icon is because everybody, even if they've never read a Stephen King book, they ingested a dozen Stephen King stories just through osmosis

everybody's seen misery you know everybody's seen stand by me everybody's seen Shawshank Redemption everybody's seen Carrie you know so like people know his his work just through the adaptation so you know the shining blah blah if you watch nothing but the Simpsons and Saturday Night Live you would pick up on plenty of King you know material right there's there's so much uh there and it's also just the fact that the guy was so fucking prolific worked so fucking fast pumping him out these fucking long ass books right we're like christine is what like 600 pages right well no no it's too long i just want to be clear that had nothing to do with the mountains of cocaine he was he was skiing down i mean well yeah i i look

i have not read as much stephen king as you guys but yes sometimes you're reading a book and there's like a whole hundred pages for you like was this just like an evening for him love like just like busting you know so much coke and being like yeah and then this happened and you know it just that's how it always feels read read the tommy knockers and you'll feel like you just got out of a three day bender in Vegas. It's it's that novel sweats when you hold it in your hand. There are books that he admits to having no memory of writing. Right. Right.

For sure. Like the actual act of writing it is a blur for him. He just knows that it could go in the Tommy knockers specifically. Right. Right. And Dreamcatcher, he was pretty much in a haze on from, you he got he got hit by that that's the pain med one right that's getting hit by the car yeah he was on oxy yeah right he wanted to call that what did you know he wanted to call that book cancer and his wife talked him out of it wow yeah uh i don't know it's that book and

movie very legible and very, very obvious and formulaic. Yeah, it definitely doesn't scream. I am on goofballs and in great pain. Oh, God, I need to write anything to distract me from the horrible pain of my bones stitching themselves back together. And he wrote that thing longhand. He wrote that like just on legal pads. That book is like 900 pages long or some crazy shit. That book is like 900 pages long or some crazy shit.

It's kind of wild how much him getting hit by that car was like a news story, considering that it wasn't the kind of thing that often happens now where like someone's injured and all of Twitter is doing like prayer hands and candle circle and going like, we can't lose you. It was just like everyone thought it was so funny. And I think it has to do with the idea that he like reads to people as this weird supernatural figure more than a man, even down to just like, yes, how goofy he looks and how big he is. I just remember it was like immediately people were making like the fucking late night talk shows were doing monologue jokes about it that showed no

consideration for this guy's pain. It was just like, what a weird curio. This giant, scary novelist was hiking through the woods in the middle of the night. Like, it's a spooky thing, you know? Like a chupacabra jumped in front of your car. Well, and it's a guy that's written about a lot. I mean, we're talking about one of the stories he's written, you know, about a car that runs

people over. Right. Like Gage Creed in Pet Sematary gets hit. Maximum Overdrive is all about cars running people over. So there is a weird irony to it. It just felt like the beginning of a Stephen King book. Yeah, yeah. That's the inciting incident.

Mr. Mercedes, another one that opens. He's got a weird thing with cars. I recently came to the realization that King also has a weird thing with corn. You know? We were just talking about this. No, no, no. He's a big freak on the leash guy. Producer Ben,

incredible contribution. Thank you. No, but like, you know, there's, corn on the cob is like a recurring motif in a lot of Stephen King stuff.

And if I ever get to corner that guy on our show, corn on the cob is like a recurring motif in a lot of Stephen King stuff. And, uh, if I ever get to corner that guy on our show, uh, one of my first questions is going to be like, all right, what's the deal with the corn? And we've got to talk about the corn now. Why is there's children in it?

The it's used to stab people in a lot of Stephen King stuff. Sleepwalkers, a cop gets stabbed by an ear of corn. Johnny Depp eats corn at the end of secret window. While wearing braces, I would like to point out. Yeah. What a weird fucking movie. See, when you obsess over this and you do a podcast about a single author, you start picking up on really random bullshit. And as you'll see as this conversation goes on, I'm sure. A friend and I interviewed Nicholas Cage once for a magazine that didn't really exist when he was doing Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance press.

And we had tried to watch all of his movies in like the two weeks leading up to that. And I watched like 80 percent of them right before the sort of Avi Lerner red box boon of him doing eight movies a month. learner red box boon of him doing eight movies a month um but we were like trying to chart weird you know repetitive elements in his movies and see how much of them were conscious did he was he attracted the material because of these things did he put these things in them and we were like why are there so many wolves in your movies and he's like i don't think i've ever done a movie with a wolf and then we were like here are 12 instances of films in which you come face to face with a wolf and have a profound moment. And he's like, oh, yeah, I guess so. I don't know. I guess I just think wolves are cool. They are cool. There was no interiority there. You know, I wonder if King

could tell you, like, my dad used to yell at me to finish my corn and so it's like a figure of menace or if you bring it up to him and he'd be like i don't know is there corn in my work i don't know it's that it's it's gonna be the second version because we had steven weber on the show once and he he was the he played jack torrance in the miniseries version of the shining and uh unlike the kubrick one uh stephen king was there on set for every minute of that he was super hands-on and like weber told us a story about how um like there's this turn of phrase right in their scout where it's talking about some sort of pattern of a carpet it's like a stanza's worth of poetry in the middle of the book yeah right and he was like oh this is the perfect thing and he and she's like i interpret it because this is the way jack torrance is feeling in this moment and all that. And he's like, I'm going to guy to write that many books he has to be just

existing in some kind of like flow state you know oh yeah well he regularly brings in people to you know um well i don't know about regularly but he has on several occasions like brought in people that are that basically act as historians for him and will correct, um, you know, mistakes that he's made with things that he's written. You know, yeah, he did that on the dark tower to keep the lore clean. And he,

um, his own mythology, his own mythology, you know, and he's been, he's been piecing that own mythology together since he was in college. So it's like 40 years worth of stuff. So he'll just forget things.

Yeah. That's wild. I wait, I had a point and i forgot i keep talking guys i just think well i guess my favorite king book is path cemetery which is an obvious choice and i have not read every king book by by any means there's a lot of them um i don't know if you guys know that um i mean why is that my My, it just, it's so boring, but like, you know, I read it when I was probably a late teenager somewhere in there, somewhere in there.

And it's like, just that, that, you know, that early part of the book where he wakes up and he's got the dirt all over his feet. Yeah. Was, it's just one of those like seminal moments reading a book where I was like, holy shit, I can't go to sleep now. You know what i mean like like uh and you know i like a lot of i like basically any stephen king that i pick up i feel like i've read like a dozen of them or whatever but i was just thinking pet cemetery

this is right this is a thought from 10 minutes ago but like that has the trucks rumbling down the road he's really freaked out by vehicles that's all that's all and that's what that's the same year as christine he cranked that shit out it's the same year right same novel it's not well i think it was published the same the same year same year yeah yeah he he wrote it much earlier that's one of like a very infamous thing because that was one he had said he was never going to publish because it was too disturbing even for him because he was working out as a you know father of a bunch of young kids he was working out a lot of his own fears in that and uh like wait because when you ask stephen king he gets that question all the time what scares stephen king and he'll go like the dark or spiders or whatever the hell but like when you can when he

doesn't answer it as a with a joke and he answers seriously it is you know it's he's like it is walking in to check on my kids and they're not breathing. You know, it's like that. That is the real fear. That's the thing. You know, be down or. Yeah. So, you know, every once in a while, then he'll he'll pull out the serious version of that.

But that's what you know, that book was disturbing for him. It was disturbing for his wife. It was disturbing for Tabitha. And they were like, he essentially said he was going to shelve it. And he talked for years about. Yes, that's right. I remember the prologue. Right. And he talks about all this. Yeah. And then he essentially had a book deal he was trying to get out of. Was it he was moving on the Viking, I think, or he was leaving Viking, one of the two.

And he owed one more book and he didn't want to give him the new one that he was writing. So he just pulled Pet Sematary off the shelf, said, all right, you can have this one. And it turned out to be like legit one of his most scary books. Like there's not there's not a whole lot of Stephen King. And as somebody who's read everything he's written, you know, obsessively and examined it. I'm not really scared that often by Stephen King stuff. Like I love reading it. I'm entertained by it. I love his characters.

There's moments in it that really get under my skin. There's moments in the show. Does it for me? Yeah, there's a couple of things. Yeah. And the shining specifically, there's a couple of moments. But Pet Sematary is almost from beginning to end, just a bleak, dark, get under your skin and stay there. It feels meaner than most King stuff does.

Revivals is a recent one that he wrote that kind of hits those same notes by the end. But even that one, it's not as bleak the entire way through. There's like a sense of doom throughout Pet Sematary that you just you just can't shake. There is no really easy respite, you know, to find in that in that book. Oh, yeah, that's yeah, I guess that's right. But I have not read Christine. And I do think of that as one of those sort of big, hefty ones that I never got around to. Well, that was right. I mean, the process of adaptation for this movie was pretty much just we're only going to make a fourth of this. Right. Like, there's just too much. This is in this state where he's churning them out. I mean, because this the movie comes out like three months after the book comes out or within the same year. Certainly. Yeah. It was optioned as a manuscript. year certainly yeah it was optioned as a manuscript and that and kujo kind of were presented at the same time and there was such a feeding frenzy for his movies i mean ironically enough david did you

see who the producer is who put this movie together and brought carpenter on uh well uh i'm now i'm not sure tell me because i mean we have our dossier obviously i'm looking at is it richard kobritz oh it's richard kobritz? Oh, it's Richard Kobritz. Who we were just joking about. Yeah. Yes. Well, we watched Someone's Watching Me. Guys, I don't know if you guys ever seen Someone's Watching Me,

the TV movie John Carpenter made. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which is a good movie. But because it's a TV movie, it ends on a freeze frame of the main character's face. And then it just goes, Executive Producer Richard Kobritz. And he's this kind of like kind of jarring right kind of jarring like say next up

on nbc it's the local news like you know and uh so that's funny richard and then i was making fun of richard cobert's but clearly tj hooker episode or something yeah exactly but he must be well but he's not i know he is he's a producer i looked into it yes he was a warner brothers tv guy then he did the salem lot miniseries and then he went on his own as an independent producer because he had the relationship with king from salem's lot he gets offered kujo and christine as the next two things he has his new manuscripts he picks christine and then he knows that Carpenter is a little bit down and out post thing,

and that the Firestarter adaptation that he was close to going on had been shit-canned, and so he goes straight to Carpenter and offers it to him. It's entirely because of his experience on Someone's Watching Me. Right.

Do you guys like Cujo? Are you Cujo fans? Yeah. I've seen the movie i've never read the book the books the book's good and the movie the movie i think is the most interesting uh of the two um i hadn't seen it since i was a kid until we did an episode on it like sometime within the last year oh we had fucking who was it um mark danieluski the guy that wrote house of leaves he came on and did kujo and and we had d wall who was it? Mark Danielewski, the guy that wrote House of Leaves. He came on and did Cujo.

And we had Dee Wallace before him. Oh, yeah. We interviewed Dee Wallace about it. But, you know, before one of those, I revisited it for the first time since I was a kid. And my memory of it was that it was just, you know, two people trapped in a car with a dog. But on revisitation and with a you know a more developed

uh cinematic palette i found it way more satisfying and now i'm kind of like that movie's undervalued i i really really like it and particularly you know in the universe of uh king adaptations where where does christine rank for you guys next question right not not specific numerically but like in the sort of larger canon as dudes who are uh such experts on the films and the books where where is christine in the pack i i might be a little bit uh atypical in that like listen uh talking just as a because i'm a film geek first and foremost that's kind of what i started started as i came to king through the movies like most you know people i think did at least in my generation and you know and i'm a huge john carpenter fan like massive i

think the run that he makes between assault on precinct 13 to they live is all timer stuff. Uh, I think this is one of the weakest of, of that group. Um, and I think that there are moments in this movie that are fucking great. Um, the show me moment, you know,

with, um, uh, Keith Gordon, you know, kind of in Christine reassembling herself is amazing. The imagery of the car on fire, you know,

chasing people down is really rad um and i also am very nostalgic for that time period where you can you know just the film grain of this era and the character actors that pop up and all this stuff like i'm very nostalgic for it but i still i probably value this less than most people who um who, who love King and King's stuff, uh, do. I don't think it's a bad movie. I just think it's,

to me, it's a little forgettable. Yeah. I think it's mid tier. I think it's like mid tier overall. And it's just not one. If, if I wanted to sit down and pick a random Stephen King movie and watch it,

uh, Christine would not be one of the first that, that comes to mind you know I would go with Cujo or I would go with The Shining or I would go with you know there's plenty I would get to before before Christine yeah Shawshank

I'm inclined to agree with you Eric but it really is like you look at his 70s 80s run right he doesn't really miss until the 90s. It's like this sort of by default has to be his weakest movie. Yes. But the fact that this is the weakest movie in that run, A, speaks to how much the dude

was just on fire for like 16 years and B, the fact that he hit the ground running so hard because this feels like it's maybe like the first movie of a director who then goes on to really get his shit down. You know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, this is definitely, you can tell that there's a one for them mentality here.

And we've touched on that a little bit already. Yeah. And it's fascinating, just as you mentioned, this is him working within the studio going, okay, I made this movie. I thought it was great. Nobody liked it. Studio didn't like it.

Audiences didn't like it. It turns out to be like one of the most, you know, long term successful movies of his career. But at the time, huge flop. And this is him going, OK, I can make a dependable, bankable thing. And and it's really interesting when you look at especially when you consider that Firestarter was what he was originally going to do when he dove into Stephen King's world. He wanted to make that a road movie is my understanding is like his script was a father daughter, you know, tale on the road. And he it's funnily enough, you look at Starman. Starman. Yes, absolutely. Funnily enough, you look at Starman.

Starman. Yes, absolutely. And you go, this is the Amblin version of Firestarter, his version of Firestarter. It's the nice alien version of Firestarter. It's his road movie. People on the run being chased by government agents or whatnot. He was doing interesting things around here, but then he was still able to pop off. Like, I think one of Carpenter's most underrated movies is Prince of Darkness. Like, I love Prince of Darkness. I think it's it's it is both weird and gets bogged down in scientific

gobbledygook. But it's also one of the scariest things he's ever made. Like, I think that Prince of Darkness is scarier than Halloween, personally. Like, I just think that the Tony he sets and like, you know, almost the cosmic horror that he almost dips into with with that thing is is just in the madness. It's really, really terrifying. And, you know, that was kind of a miss, too. And Big Trouble in Little China, one of my all time favorites of his huge. It was another big miss. But like, those are all the ones that seem to survive. You know, Christine doesn't seem to be it definitely when you talk about carpenter christine very

rarely gets brought up you know in front of escape from new york or you know or big trouble or you know it'll pop up before prince of darkness for most people but not for me i mean the quote that i think is really telling about this movie, let me just get this directly. This was, I guess, some sort of career retrospective interview he did for Variety in 2019. And he said, I needed a job after the thing because nobody would hire me. So this came along and I took the job. And it turned out better than it had any right to. That's that's the line that I think is really telling that, like, he very much says this was the first time in his career that he was sort of for hire, that it wasn't a medium and too much contempt for the amount of

like lazy, arrogant, sloppy assholes working to ruin shit in the industry at the time that he like cannot shit out a movie at this point, you know, like as much as he's like, I just got to show up, make my days, get it done, have a respectable hit. He's like, I guess I cared more than I thought I did. You know, it's just a little bit better in every sense than it has any right to be. Yeah, it's a testament to his ability as a craftsman. As you said, if this is him doing something without his heart in it, it's better than most people who are trying really hard to make make a good thing right and the movies it pales in comparison to our films where you're just like i cannot believe how much he put into this like he's just putting a herculean amount into every single aspect um well just about christine it's like like you said about like now it would be oh geez i guess i make

a marvel a superhero movie we're like this is also i have to imagine at the time kind of an eye-rolling project for you know uh hoity-toity critics right it's like oh he's doing a stephen king movie what's it about oh it's the one about the killer car okay right like isn't that you know this is probably a movie people look down their nose at a little bit in 1983 especially when you consider that 83 is like kujo and christine these are the two manuscripts that are up for grabs to make into a king movie and it's like wait so one's like a car and one's a dog like i guess it writes itself you know all i need to hear is stephen king makes the bad dog movie stephen king makes the right the bad car book you know whatever and then just like okay one it's about teenagers the other

it's a mother son okay what yeah sure I get it I get it I get it you know it just almost maybe feels like formula on its face Firestarter he was going to do with Lancaster who wrote the thing and then in fact ended up never making another

movie ever again. That was going to be about $30 million. It was going to be a bigger budget thing, sort of at the same level of as The Thing. And Richard Dreyfuss was going to be he was going to have a big proven at this point Academy Award winning movie star in it. And then when The thing underperforms, they bring in, what's his name? The eventual writer of this movie, Bill Phillips.

Because I think their thing was everyone was freaked out by how fucking cold and cynical and bleak the thing was. Is that Carpenter's tendency? If we let him go all the way, we need to bring someone in who's more cuddly. And Bill Phillips by his own admission was like a very cheery kind of blue sky screenwriter. And the studio's calculation was split the difference, end up with something in the middle. Carpenter can make it scary. Bill Phillips can't write scary. But Bill Phillips

can put emotion in the thing and Carpenter can't. So they assign him to rewrite and redevelop Firestarter with Dreyfus. Carpenter, you know, pre the thing had negotiated this deal. He had been on a big hit run. Stephen King's a big deal. He's got Richard Dreyfus. So Universal agrees to pay or play for the movie, which means that whether or not the film gets made, John Carpenter is going to get his full salary. It was

arguably the one time in his career where he had that kind of clout. Pretty much the only time, right. But Universal was increasingly dubious about making the film and certainly giving him that much creative freedom, so they like slash the budget in half. They go like

you wanted 27, we'll give you 14. And Carpenter's very known for, he writes to the specific dollar amount. He knows how much everything's gonna cost. He understands

the production logistics. He plans out a movie to that scope. He could not cut his idea in half. And it was either, I don't make the movie and I get paid,

or I make the movie this way and it's gonna suck. I'd rather just not make the movie. So he walks, which I think perhaps even fucks up his reputation a little bit more, uh, which then just gets saved by,

uh, what's his name? Koblitz having the, the Christine brights and wanting him, um, the, uh, stat.

I think he's got a, he's got a view Christine though, in that, in that context is kind of a consolation prize, right? yeah yeah you know like he's he's definitely like we've established he's he's working for hire on it but elevating the material in the process just because of his natural talents as a filmmaker but also if i'm him i'm like well i really wanted to do this one but i guess this is sort of it it's

also a stephen king and you know i can make it scary and blah blah blah blah you know yeah and i don't think he's like right he's desperate to do just any stephen king thing right like he's interested in firestarter for specific reasons that's sort of the same zip code you know yeah exactly and like firestarter is it's sort of a movie so i don't know if drew barrymore was going to be in it when he made it i i don't know i don't know how much so there was anyone attached to it yet but like in christine it's like well the movie star is the car and then we'll cast a bunch of you know smaller names am i crazy or did i hear that um uh we were talking we had phil nobile jr the editor-in-chief of fangoria and he he has like did a deep dive on the fire

started that almost was and we had him on the the show and i think he said that um how what's her heather auror caroline from poltergeist was oh that makes sense yeah there you go another right another uh child girl star little blonde girl blessed by Spielberg right yeah right yeah um when I like find the the quotes about why Carpenter took the movie aside from just the like

I needed a job I was unhirable they were the only people willing to hire me I was tired of not making a movie I was a you know feeling antsy

all that sort of stuff he's just like look I like high school movies I thought that's a fun genre I haven't worked in that they showed me the car the car The car looked nice. It was a beautiful car. I thought I could do a lot with the car and it's a rock and roll movie. And that was cool. Like it was like three isolated elements. He was like, this story didn't really appeal to me in the way that

Firestarter did. I didn't find some thematic depth in it. I just like these are fun elements to play around with. Why not? The not the milieu right of the right i get to do a greaser movie with like a rock and roll soundtrack is definitely a big big way for him to talk himself into it right like he he wants to do one of those yeah and he also had the freedom to like cast all these great like old character actors that you can tell he just wanted to work with like robert prosky good old bob prosky uh harry dean stanton um you mentioned robert's blossom uh yeah i mean there's all over the the this guy named stewart charno who's like it was the a nerd that popped up in every 80s movie uh at that time oh who's he

who does he play wait stewart charno don vandenberg is what IMDb is. Oh, yeah. But if you look at his face, it's like, oh, yeah, he's literally in every high school, you know, movie of that era. Well, there's also Stephen Tash, who is one of, like, the bully kids with the real angular sideburns is the guy that Bill Murray fucks

with at the beginning of Ghostbusters. I couldn't figure out why he looks so familiar, especially in the scenes where he's scared. It's because he's the guy getting electrocuted when he guesses the wrong card. I never put that together. Yeah. Holy shit.

Exactly. Yeah. Which, by the way, that's such a great fucking joke. I know that this isn't about Ghostbusters, but that opening always cracks me up every single time I watch it. And the cherry on top isn't that he's just, like, Venkman's being horny for the the cute

college girl it's the fact that the other kid is actually showing psychic prowess getting it right and he's totally ignoring it for you know uh there's no reason for him to punish that guy no like they could both be right uh he's electrocuting the dude. Yes, able to cast a lot of good actors. But I think, you know, the biggest change he makes that feels very Carpenter to me from the book, which I admittedly haven't read, is the car is just bad. The car is evil. Like the car is like the shape, right? It is a manifestation of evil it was always evil it will always be evil with king he sort of like straddles the line between is the car itself the thing or is the car possessed by bad owners does it have the spirit or is it the thing that makes the people

bad and this is like he adds this prologue which apparently king didn't really like as much as he gave him freedom to do whatever he wanted and make those choices where it's just like the adds this prologue, which apparently King didn't really like as much as he gave him freedom to do whatever he wanted and make those choices where it's just like the second this car comes off the assembly line, it's killing people. You look at the poster for this movie and the tagline is huge letters. How do you kill something that can't possibly be alive? And then smaller font, massive block of text that says she was born bad, plain and simple. Somewhere deep on a darkened assembly line. Christine.

Like, I just love that. It's so good. The whole poster is so good. But I do love that idea where it's like, you know, once in a while, there's just a car born bad. That's just how it is. We don't need to explain this anymore. It just wants to chomp you up. You guys get it.

You know, you buy a new car and it's evil and your wife chokes in it. You know, this happens all the time. It happens all the time. But yeah, you're right. The whole marketing on this is great. The poster is great. The trailer. I don't know if you've seen the trailer recently, but the teaser for it is it's just all these

I think it might be Percyuez or somebody like with a good early 80s trailer voice is talking about christine but as if she's a woman and you're just seeing like curves either her curves and you don't realize it at the beginning you think it's like a james bond kind of you know you're seeing a woman's hip lying down or something and it's the it ends up being the car and i'm watching this this is hilarious this is god imagine seeing this in the theater yeah i have that trailer on 35 i yeah i sought that out yeah it is it's a great teaser um the marketing is great uh on this whole thing and you can tell that they had a lot of good trailers good stuff to market i mean i think the movie itself is

is good it's it's good solid it's a solid it's solid it's solid it's good i don't think it's it's amazing i don't think it's the best king i don't think it's the best carpenter i don't think it's even the best of that era but you know the you see why this was very attractive to him because it had to carpenter because like look at how easy of a sell it was you know like as long as he didn't you know just turn in uh just unwatchable garbage like he he had kind of a surefire hit there it's also a hell of a lot better than the fucking fire starter movie they made that's true yeah so i'm sure i'm sure that was satisfying well fire starter looks so cheap in comparison man maybe that's the reason

why terminable like i cannot stand watching that movie fire starter is uh mark lester correct who is the director of um fuck what's the terrible movie that he made that i know well now now i gotta look it up i can't remember anyway i do remember fire starter being boring as shit it's sort of like one of those classic where you're like i'm in for a stephen king movie baby give me the thrills and and being yeah and then there's like three minutes at the end where fireballs are destroying people and launching him into trees and you're like why isn't the rest of the movie like this i found this uh uh cobritz uh quote uh the producer because you know like king's tendency is to mythologize things

right and like this evil is the stem of a curse of a wrong done generations ago and it has seeped in and survived you know it's sins of the past shit and carpenter just loves this idea that like some things are just bad there are just actual pure forces of evil in this world they are evil because that's what they were placed on this earth to do and that is all they will ever do. Nothing traumatized them. You know, nothing went wrong. It's evil going right. And Kobritz was talking about them picking like right off the bat.

The car is just bad. That's just what we're doing. The car is just bad. It's always been bad. There's no backstory. And then he said months later, after they made that decision, King mentioned a comic essay by James Thurber that he read about objects that had simply been born bad, like a can opener that was just meant to cut your finger.

In a sense, that's what we're saying about this car. It's not the ghost of a dead owner. It's not a skeleton rattling in the backseat. It's just that this car has a way of adopting weak people, capturing their minds, and giving them a sense of security and a sense of power. In exchange, it rules the owner. Yeah. What about that movie, The Mangler? people capturing their minds and giving them a sense of security and a sense of power in exchange it rules the owner yeah what about that movie the mangler that's stephen king right the the

haunted laundry machine yeah right that is wait i'm sorry that's what that movie is about yeah that literally folds you like laundry like that's actually what it does it's not yeah it's not like a washing machine it's like an industrial laundry that right like a big washer yeah it's like the length of you know a warehouse floor and it looks like something you know tim burton designed when he was like particularly depressed or something you know it's all like rusted and got these like fanciful swirls on it and shit and gears and shit so he really would just pick a thing yeah the mangler is like so expanded from the source material though and that's that's just one of those movies that's like you could sit and talk about the mangler for a couple hours no problem there's a lot to

chew on in that movie and it'll be a very fun conversation but the the process of actually watching uh fucking the mangler is real rough as we found out wow there's there's a mangler two and three mangler two yeah mangler 2.0 uh is like the the spirit of the mangler is somehow like uploaded into the computer system at this, um, like prep school that has been shut down for, I don't know, the holidays or some shit. And there's some, uh,

students that are remaining on campus, I think, cause they're being punished for something. We, uh, we haven't done that one yet, but I've watched it. Um,

the, the mangler reborn, my buddy, Scott Spizer is in from the tick, which was meant to be a hard reboot of the mangler reborn my buddy scott spicer is in from the tick which was meant to be a hard reboot of the mangler only three years after mangler 2.0 they just wouldn't let the mangler lie dormant that mangler franchise that all the public demanded yeah right it's odd that they were so persistent on the mangler well you know that's the kind of shit that like was just all

over the shelves at blockbuster and was probably getting you know rented left and right and you know there was enough to justify sort of like children of the corn you know if there's enough business in that ancillary market to um to justify keep making them and they're making them very cheap you know why not it's like it's a name. And yeah, but I defy you to find someone who's watched all three mangler movies. Like, I don't think I've ever met one. The mangler was one of those movies that like a kid in high school told me about.

It was like, I, the scariest fucking movie I ever saw was this movie called the mangler battle, a fucking washing machine. And I, that's why I watched it. And I just remember it being,

it's a Toby Hooper, right? Like late Toby Hooper. It's got Robert England in it. Like, yeah. It's a Toby Hooper right It's got Robert Englund in it Yeah It's like a crazy factory owner The whole thing is very It's hard to pinpoint

The tone of it It's really strange Eric what's the name of the lead guy We love this guy Ted Levine Ted Levine Ted Levine's in it and he's like the lead and he is so it's like a rare lead performance from ted levine and he's just like

one of his eyeballs is always bulging out and he's like wearing this bizarre jacket through the whole goddamn thing even though it's like he's in a shane movie. Yeah. He'd fit in a kiss, kiss, bang, bang kind of. So he's investigating this laundry press. But meanwhile, Robert Englund is like the owner of the laundry factory or whatever the fuck you would call it. Sure. He's like running around. Laundry factory? Yeah, laundry factory.

Don't ask questions. It's a factory space and a laundry is inside of it so it counts and okay but he's running around in like a three-piece suit but he and with like a robot leg or some shit and like sexually harassing every woman in sight he's got like those forrest gump uh leg braces on yeah yeah it's it's so fucking weird again this is this is good shit to talk about but but in practice, it's rough. I don't know. Maybe we should do the Mangler Trilogy on Patreon.

We might have to. We might have to. Robert Englund delivers every line as if he's Yosemite Sam as well. Oh. Yes. It is the most bonkers, and he's got a dead eye contact lens.

Those 90s Englund performances where he's like, oh, I know what people want from me. Right. He doesn't need to worry. How come this doesn't work without the Freddie makeup? Yeah. Yeah. Wishmaster.

I'm trying to think of another Robert Anglin at that time. He's in Urban Legend. Right. The opera he did. That Phantom. Yeah. Did he direct that one? Yes, I think he did. The Phantom of the Opera one.? That Phantom of the Opera movie? Did he direct that one? Yes, I think he did.

The Phantom of the Opera one? Yeah. He sure did. He also directed a movie called Killer Pad. I mean... Anyway. That sounds kind of cool. Sounds kind of fun, right?

Yeah. He's in that movie. What is it? 10,000 Maniacs or something? Right, right. With the Eli Roth one. Yeah. Yeah.

And his character in that is sort of along the lines of the mangler but like more of a more of a colonel sanders type whereas in you know uh the mangler he's he's just more put together which is just really weird to see him in that outfit in the midst of this like dirty ass factory that's you know the centerpiece of which is this you know house size laundry press that's like literally folding people in half if they get too close to it folds people like laundry it that's what it does it does straight up again this is the most fun shit to talk about but when you if you guys do watch that shit for your patreon uh you are going to be in pain like it is it is a real tough to get through

but it is super fun to talk about yeah yeah it looks on for it's unforgivably long i mean i haven't seen it but it's in a long time but it's like 106 minutes like what are we doing here that thing should be 80 minutes long and christine is christine's kind of surprisingly long too for car because carpenter carpenter is such a 90 minute movie maker like in the in this like killer runny's on and then this and starman they're a little you know they have a little more room to breathe like i feel like christine kind of doesn't get to the scares for a while like it's it's a lot of know, scene setting and characterization and stuff like that. I just want to quickly correct.

I was wrong. Robert Englund did not direct Phantom of the Opera, but I did in trying to confirm that find the poster for this movie, which is incredibly bizarre because the poster for Phantom of the Opera is Freddy Krueger. And it says Robert Englund was Freddy. Now he's the Phantom of the Opera. And it's Freddy holding up a little Phantom of the Opera mask. What other instances are there of one character being used to promote an entirely different movie that that character does not appear in? This is more egregious than Stephen

King appearing on the. This is wild. This is like the most insane. This makes you think that Freddy Krueger is going to be haunting the opera. Right. It's like a Deadpool promoting free guy. Yes. The tagline is an all new nightmare. Well, that's all they had to work with on that one. Apparently illegal. I hope everyone went to jail who was involved in that.

Christine, he gets this manuscript. Kobritz brings it to him. They write a script. They're like, great. You film in eight weeks. It comes out that year. It was also a very, very quick movie.

What, like in terms of the shoot? Yes. Yeah, and just the entire development process. It was just like the book comes out while they're filming. It's blowing up the charts.

The movie's in theaters like four or five months later. Everyone's trying to recapture that fucking box office gold from Carrie at that point. Yeah, yeah. He wants to cast Kevin Bacon very badly. A thing that repeats itself in Starman. Bacon auditioned for this. They were going to cast him. Correct.

And then he gets offered Footloose and takes that instead. I don't buy him as a nerd. I could buy him as Dennis. I don't either. Yeah, he would have been a really good Dennis. And it's a thing I like about Keith Gordon in this movie is he is actually a loser

at the beginning of the film. And yet he pulls off the transformation to creep at the end. The thing that's impressive is the transformation, right? You're looking at you're like, I don't think I can buy this. I'm going to be able to buy this guy's anything but a dork. Those glasses really

do a lot of work. A lot. Yeah. This was the original he's all that. Yes. Oh yeah, for sure. That leather vest, though, is not a great look. It's a terrible look. It's a terrible look. That's pretty rough. But I just feel like most often they will do the Kevin Bacon version of the casting where it is like the first 45 minutes.

Kevin Bacon is slouching and using like nasa necks and he has the taped up glasses and you're not buying it. And then he becomes what you knew he always was meant to be. Whereas there's more tension to, as you said, David, you're watching the first half of this movie. You go like, well, this is just going to be embarrassing

when this guy tries to act tough. It's going to be like Bully Maguire and Spider-Man 3. And it really, it works. It makes, it's one of the more unnerving aspects of the movie the fact that he actually does become so sociopathic and that he underplays it you know well it's because he's not trying to play cool i think that's where a lot of instinct would be that okay yes i'm now the cool

guy you know the because the whole thing's an allegory you know or you could read it as an allegory any way of you know, this guy losing his virginity. Right. And he's becoming a man and, you know, he's not going to be as nervous and as awkward cause he's not nervous about all that stuff. And he's found a woman,

you know, the woman just happens to be a car. Um, he's horny for that car though. He loves that car. He's super, super far hornier than for his extremely attractive girlfriend. Yeah.

Yes. But yeah. But like the fact that that the turn isn't into a cool greaser or whatever right it is it is a guy that is instantly creepy like he's got confidence and you can see how that that works out for him in certain ways but like it is a legit like kind of disturbing performance i wouldn't quite put it in the same category as nicholson in The Shining, you know, when he's doing like that dead eye stare,

you know, out. But it's kind of in that same ballpark where it's like you, this guy, you wouldn't trust to be in, if he was in the same room with you, it's like being in the room with a loaded gun. I agree. And I think watching all these Carpenter movies

so close together, it is a thing I noticed throughout his filmography. He is really good at whether it's just that know, they experience some sort of trauma or shock and they lose their joie de vivre or they turn evil or whatever it is, something like Starman, where he's learning how to be a person gradually. These movies always have these transformations that have to be sold not through prosthetics, but by a shift in energy from the actor. And they're always done pretty specifically, but also in a believable and understated manner. It is also interesting that this is Keith Gordon and John Stockwell, both of who go on to become directors after this.

Yeah, Keith Gordon, did he make the Singing Detective remake or the movie version of it? Yeah, right. And what's it called? Waking the Dead? Is that the movie? of it yeah right and what's what's it called waking the dead is that the movie yeah which is not a bad movie i that i haven't seen it in 20 years but i remember that being like a pretty solid moody drama right yeah and he like directs prestige television now he does homeland and fargo leftovers Um, and then John Stockwell kind of went in the opposite direction.

Uh, John Stockwell, who, you know, handsome guy, uh, did, what did he do?

Uh, let's see. I'm taking a look. Well, he's also, well, he did blue crush, right.

And crazy, beautiful. Fuck. And did he also do it? I love crazy. Beautiful. He did blue crush and into the blue black back to back. That's the,

he shouldn't have done into the blue, that into the blue, that, that was, he shouldn't have done into the blue that into the blue that that was that was uh you know uh a hat on a hat or whatever god into the blue is truly like these people look good in swimsuits the movie right like that i don't even know what the plot of that thing is that's the full plot alvin walker they're not wearing a lot, okay? Yeah, Josh Brolin's the villain. Josh Brolin sure is. Scott Conn's in that one, apparently. Who knew?

Blue Crush is the one with Kate Bosworth, right? Correct, and Michelle Rodriguez. And then a third person on the poster who never made another movie again. I have an interesting story about that because I met Kate Bosworth on the set of Rules of Attraction. I went to I was on Rules of Attraction for two days doing set visit for Enid Cool News, which I was writing for at the time. And in it back then, she was just that was like one of her first things.

And of course, I remember just being struck by, you know, the different colored eyes and she was super sweet and and all that. And then I saw her in Blue Crush and I wrote a review of it. And I think I like, I don't remember what the review said. It's probably super cringy. Look at it now. Cause I was like, you know, 20 writing it, but I wrote a review for it. And then I went to, I was invited to the premiere of rules of attraction and, and I get like tackled by Kate Bosworth at the premiere. And she gives me a big kiss on the cheek and thanks me for my review of blue crush so that is my blue crush anecdote i don't remember anything about the movie but it did get earned me a kiss on the cheek from kate bosworth both of you guys have read the christine book correct yes

sure the book there is like the a presence of the previous owner, right? The Robert Blossom character's brother? Roland LeBay. Yeah, and in the movie, essentially that scene is Roland's scene. In the movie, Roland sells the kid the car. It's not his brother. Got it. So essentially, Robert Blossom is playing Roland LeBay. He's playing the guy that dies.

His brother is in the book, but he's a normal guy. He comes in and essentially give is there to give um arnie's some backs or arnie and dennis some backstory on you know the history of the car um so they i don't know why the decision was made because he is playing the creep old creep that on the car it feels like they're just streamlining it and they're also you know nodding to the fact that christina is just born bad versus the backstory of the book where it's a little more complicated than that's what i read was that a they wanted christine to have like no backstory in that sort of sense uh more just kind of set up the trail of bodies of other people she's you know taken

but be that um they didn't want i guess this sort of like ghostly specter of the previous owner because they thought it was too similar to American Werewolf in London. That was a specific thing where they were trying to avoid the Griffin Dunn character of like, oh, and this past guy who didn't make it is haunting the kid. I don't mind the idea of the car just being bad.

I love it. And I wanted to ask you guys this earlier, like, do you care? Like, I know you haven't mind the idea of the car just being bad. I love it. And I wanted to ask you guys this earlier. Like, do you care? Like, I know you haven't read the book, but like in general, in a movie where it's like if it just it just is that way or it has a whole backstory. Like. I don't need a whole fucking backstory on everything. You know, I know. I think it's bad car.

Yeah, it can. It can depend case by case. But like, by and large, I kind of prefer if you just go, look, you're seeing the bad car movie. You've already bought into the idea that this is a movie about a bad car. Why do we need to explain it? What are we going to gain from that? Or if it's as simple as Cujo, where it's like, well, it got bit by a bat. Don't worry about it.

Right. You know, that's it. I just think, yeah, it's usually a waste of time and energy and i i do think there is more mythic power like i got amped i'd never seen this movie before and i got amped at the realization of oh shit they're starting with the factory line and she's already taken down people like i just i just i was so all in two right and i. Right. And I was just like, great, great. This is exactly how Christine the Killer Car movie should start. I hope they never circle back and dig in deeper. And they don't.

And I was very, very pleased. Well, one thing that I'm curious about, because George Labey, as portrayed in this movie, like he wears the back brace. You made mention of the weird back brace he's wearing. In the book, there's a reason for that because uh he dies and then arnie starts picking up his mannerisms we have him in the movie where he called starts calling people shitters and and all that and and he starts you know almost being possessed not just by the car but by roland labey himself this old creepy dude um and by the end of it, Arnie is wearing that back brace

that he's hurt himself during the process. And so he's like, he's just more physically transforming into this, you know, old crotchety bastard that you could see him in some alternate universe. You know, if he had survived the story, some alternate universe of him, like, selling Christine to the next kid, you know, of being that guy.

I like the thing that Koblet said of just like, the idea is that the car can identify weak, insecure people, you know, and then becomes this corrupting force rather than it being about the legacy of one guy. And I also like that, like, once again, unexplained, but you can extrapolate from the Blossom thing and the level of contempt he had for this car and trying to get his brother to quit it and watching his like daughter and his niece and his sister in law both die at the hand of this thing that he at some point got injured in the car you know yeah like himself that this is you know he fucking tried in vain and he made it out alive but the car still

got something out of him um i i just i i i don't know i prefer it not being about any one person and that's a thing i like a lot about having the prologue on the factory line, you know? It's just like, even if we're mostly going to be haunted by the most recent previous owner, we also recognize, as David said, you take two guys

out in the very beginning of the movie. And creatively. Creative kills. I like both kills. Yes. But in both cases, you just go like, okay, she's just like a homing beacon, you know?

Right. Yeah. I think that the you're, you're right. I buy that. And I also think that there is a, an element to the book where the book, it's really creepy is with the ghost of Roland stuff,

but you, you don't really need that for the, the movie so much, but there is a moment towards the end that i really wish was in the movie and it would have still spoke to this where the car uh picks off um arnie's dad like aren't it she essentially tent the car attempts arnie's dad into the car and kills him and then during the whole finale where she's you know trying to run down you know dennis and and uh the girlfriend i'm sorry for blinking on on lee lee's her name and she like that during that whole section the car is trying to kill these guys

in the uh in the movie it's arnie is is there. In the book, Arnie is not there. Matter of fact, they set up this whole thing to kill the car while Arnie's out of town because they're trying to save their friend. And but there is somebody in the car and that somebody is the fucking rotting corpse of his father who is dead in that car. And there becomes a certain moment and it reminds me a little bit of Anaconda. But there comes a certain moment where during the fight, it just regurgitates. It spits out the body of the father and it is the most like fucking out of left field gross thing and the way it affects the characters i was just like man i would love to see that maybe brian fuller will will uh do that part when he does the uh the adaptation right it's fuller fuller's doing it for Blum now, right? In theory? Yeah.

Well, no, it's Sony. It's Sony. But I think Blum's producing it. I think Blum is producing it. Yeah. Oh, okay. He'll do a Sony thing once in a while. But is that actually happening? Because like Brian Fuller, no offense to that. He just often is attached to things that never

take off. It was announced only in June. So it's a pretty fresh thing. Okay, so it's recent. It's recent. Okay, that's cool. He's a friend of our show, and he kind of kept us up to date on that. Last I heard, he's working on it.

I think right now he's done with it and waiting to hear what happens next. But I do know that he he told us that he he got the personal go ahead from King to do it. That King had, you know, held off on signing off on any further Christine stuff since since Carpenter that that one. It's interesting. Do you think that's because King thinks this movie is good? Or why?

I wonder why. Because I know Stephen King can be a little changeable on his opinions on adaptations. You know what? If I had to guess, I'd say Stephen King's a big Hannibal fan. That's probably true. That makes sense.

Yeah. And knows Fuller, uh, just from, from that. And I don't know, maybe here, you know,

we had a big episode with Fuller where he came on and, and, you know, basically deconstructed Christine through the lens of being a trans allegory. And, and that, uh, it's really interesting.

Every time he's on the show, it's like, he's coming at these things from an angle you would never expect. And it's just, it's really fantastic to listen to how that guy's brain works. You know, I don't always understand what he's saying, but,

but I, you know, it's fascinating to listen to. And, you know, um, you listen to that stuff and you understand why Brian Fuller gets every job that he wants whether or not it comes to fruition like

that guy could go into a room and sell anybody anything sure he could talk you into eating your own hand like no problem yeah it's like he his enthusiasm is infectious. His, his point of view is always very smart and educated and deeper than you'd imagine it being. So if it does happen, then I think it, it could be something special. I don't know, you know,

anything could happen. You know, the, we're in an industry where, where, you know, all the surefire hits can still die on the vine. If the right or the wrong person is at the wrong spot in the wrong time so and i do think if he does it it will be the it will be more faithful to the source material

so you're gonna you're gonna get it's not gonna just be it's a bad car you're gonna get the the ghost dad right yeah right and in that case i you know i'm fine with that i i'd love to see that two versions of this exist and you know we get that version of it and it it makes sense if that's the version of the movie he's making that's just not the version of christine that carpenter was interested in making i don't think i've got this quote that our researcher dug up that i love from uh like 2014 not from that long ago where they asked carpenter like does stephen king like the movie and he said i don't know stephen king loves everything then he hates it he's a weird ass guy just weird started. Started out as a teacher. What the hell do you want? I don't know

what that last part is, but I liked the way he said it. I loved crotchety John Carpenter. It's the best. And I do think, you know, King often will turn on adaptations of his work, but I don't, I have no sense of what he thinks of this movie. He probably values that it's a John Carpenter movie. I mean, that's, you know, it's obviously a major person. The impression I've gotten just talking to Fuller about it is that he holds it in pretty high regard. But I could be reading too much into, you know, the anecdotes that he shared.

So I don't know. It sounds like he's maybe flipped on and off with it. anecdotes that he shared so i don't know it sounds like he's maybe flipped on and off with it uh i found some quote somewhere about where he was carpenter was talking about that uh uh king was upset that they had changed a lot of the deaths and how they played out right obviously like the prologue stuff is invented but then when to get into the main body of the film and carpenter's response was like yeah well like one of the bullies in the book, it's like he chases him down and he runs over him. And then it just says in the book that he like turned into a puddle of grease. And I was like, that's not very cinematic. I'll have him

like catch on fire and like run over the guy like he was like thinking visually about stuff, which I think King can sometimes I feel be very literal minded in his adaptations. And he goes back and forth on whether like what is a necessary reinvention for the medium versus when he's like, well, why didn't they just do it the way I wrote it? I wrote it this way. The Shining being the prime example. And Lisey and Lisey story being another recent example because that is like you know straight up the book he wrote every episode of it and i like that to begin with and then the tone of it just started wearing me down where it was like so depressing and so just grim

you know watching julianne moore's character you know just get fucking dogpiled by life and this in you know dane dahan no one wants to see anyone get dogpiled by and you know like and and eventually the the tone of that one wore me down and i i didn't finish it it was on a technical level it was like um beautifully made and other than saying maybe clive owen was a little one note in that role like julian moore was great in it dahan uh despite being he's just a very slappable looking guy you know um but works for that character yeah it works for the character and he like brings a weird kind of menace to it that's interesting that i hadn't seen him do before before where it's less reliant on like ticks and, and shit like that. And it's, it's more a steady staring and like, you know, holding a gaze and, and, and kind of physically imposing.

A little Keith Gordon creepiness, late Christine Keith Gordon creepiness. Yeah. But again, the tone, which would, I would, I would argue matches the tone of the book. It just wasn't a thing I wanted to watch an hour of every week. And it's, it's, this is a, you know, going back to what you were saying, Griffin, about, you know, the necessities in, in the art of adaptation and making something cinematic. Right.

It doesn't just cause it was great on the page does not mean that it's going to be great, you know, filmed. Right. Yeah. And I, I, you know, Carpenter is just a very cinematically minded person, and I think for him, you know, like, Fuller doing a more drawn-out version of this, digging into all the

mythology, makes sense for what he does well as a writer. And for Carpenter, it makes so much more sense to get to the meat and potatoes version of this and just deal with it. And I like the fact that he's turning it into also a little bit more of a like meek shall inherit thing. You know, it speaks to like, here's this guy who is so put upon at the beginning of his film, right? Like he's got this one friend, but otherwise, like people are fucking stabbing his yogurt.

You know, his parents keep on giving him the business and he just sort of takes it all in the chin. Like he's like kind of infuriatingly refuses to stand up for himself.

And I say this as a deeply beta person. You're looking at this guy and going like, come on, like push back a little bit. Have a little more respect yeah you want to just wedgie the shit out of him right right like and he's one of those guys who

is just a target because you're just like come on dude like give me some like a walking swirling basically right yeah right yeah and the second he gets lured into christine it's like he has such a power trip you know it's not that he becomes cool it's like he has such a power trip, you know? It's not that he becomes cool. It's that he becomes this very dark asshole because he now has sort of the confidence he lacked before and that immediately sort of curdles and turns into something that he points at other people. Like even the scenes where it does not feel like he's directly being controlled by Christine, it is clear that he just kind of loves now being able to be a creep, you know, and not give a shit and everything, you know,

and I also like that in so many ways, Christine really feels like she is the main character of this thing, especially because it will jump between the three young leads, Arnie and Dennis and Lee. But, you know, for long stretches, you might not see one of them. And a lot of the transformation that Arnie goes through happens like in between scenes, you know, you're not seeing a gradual step by step. You're not watching every scene. He comes into his power a little bit more. They'll just sort of be a jump. And then everyone goes like, whoa, Arnie, what happened to you? You know, and as you also watch Stockwell like mellow out more and Lee's concern increase. It's I like the way it all plays out.

Right. I mean, at the end of the day, this this is a story about addiction. Yeah. this this is a story about addiction yeah so this is right you know you you could uh make the case very easily that christine's drugs you know a drug drugs and crime and all that stuff and that's why the parents are so adamant that he stays away from it but the more they demand he stay away from it the more appealing it is for him to to do and it also, for him, it represents freedom, you know, independence that he doesn't have. And all that stuff is,

is just so rich stuff to, to mine that it can like live in the subtext. And I think that's why there are moments in the movie that really do like strike you. Like the, the, the show I keep mentioning, but the show me moment is like my favorite moment in the movie because it because that is the the moment that like he

just fully embraces um you know being horniness for the car his horniness for the car but being in control of of his life and and you know he makes a demand essentially instead of he's not passive you know he's actually stepping up and not blinking in the face of this unbelievable thing. Also, that he is fully accepted that the car is magical at that point. Like up until that scene, people talk about the car like, I don't know, this is going to sound crazy, but it's almost like the car has a mind of its own. And then like, here's a scene where he stands in front of a car and issues a command and

the car does the thing and he's not surprised at all you know yeah well he's under it i mean he's so in its sway by that point right right but he also wouldn't he right right um that that scene is also just on a technical level it's like you know they're just playing footage in reverse but it still feels like such a fucking magical special effect for real right it's stunning to watch the car inflate it's just like it's still unreal imagery it's real movie magic and that's something that like i really hope brian when he attacks his version of it doesn't forget because the one thing you don't want is for christine to turn into transformers you know well that's the thing if you if you overdo it like then it won't the whole the simplicity of it is what makes it

work so well here i mean if there's a reason why when you like watch the lord of the rings like the most impressive shit is how they use force perspective and in-camera tricks and stuff you know and it it just that works so much better than you know pumping people in and and all that stuff which they had to do in the hobbits and stuff and it's even that like the amount of compositing that does exist in lord of the rings is largely compositing actors into models yeah real elements yeah you know they were filming two real elements separately and putting them together um i mean this car just fucking looks incredible, which Carpenter said was one of the

things that got him on board, was like, oh, this is the model? This looks great. I can shoot the shit out of this thing. Like, it looks so fucking cinematic, and they bought 14 of them, and just, like, buffed them all up. And set them on fire. Right! So it's like, A,

the level of destruction they do to the car is so severe i mean there's the scene where he's chasing the guy and the guy runs down the alleyway and the alleyway is too narrow and christine starts crushing herself right yeah and you're just like the fact that you're seeing that actual sort of slow destruction of the car over and over and over again and then able to see it magically come back to life. And just, you know, the reflective quality of like a really nice vintage sports car from a director who knows how to light stuff really well. You would have to be you would have to be trying to make that car look bad. You know, it's so right. I just don't know if there are other things you can do with this material on a story

level but i question if you lose a lot of power the second you put one iota of cgi onto that car or make it a tesla sure sure well the scariest make it the cyber truck yeah the the weird cyber truck they do they do uh run over people without somebody driving so they're right exactly yes yes perfect update cars just looked very good i wish i knew more about vintage cars which i truly do not because i see this car and i'm like this isn't a you know unbelievable looking machine but also you see a lot of cars from the late 50s and you're like this thing looks like did all the cars that everyone was driving around looked unbelievable someone explain this to me yeah i only know one thing about vintage cars triples is best that's all i know triples is good triples is best it's it's just it's so good looking

i know if you got in like one accident in this thing, the car would just actually kill you. I mean, like, you know, not even a haunted car, but if your body just like hit the dashboard, it would basically just impale you. Non-safety glass, everything, the whole thing weighs like 5,000 pounds. You're going to get stabbed by the hood somehow.

Yeah. I'm like very much not a car guy. And I feel like when cars jump out to me in movies, they usually are very much movie cars and do not look like anything that would ever be driven in the real world. Right. Like concept cars. Right.

Right. Right. Like goofball, banana concept. Like I like the Homer, you know, to me, I'm like,

Oh, that's an elegant, classy car. Right. Oh yeah. You like that one? Yeah. Right.

Just simple, clean I'm like, oh, that's an elegant, classy car, right? Oh, yeah. You like that one? Yeah, right. Just simple, clean. But like this is an example of me seeing a real world classic car in a movie and going like, holy shit, that's the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen. And my virtual background is like a little like Hot Wheels style set with tiny Keith Gordon and John Stockwell figures. But I was like Googling while watching this movie, like what is the best like Hot Wheels scale die cast Christine I could get? Like, I'm just like, I want a fucking Christine on my desk. What's out there? There's there's a good variety. I mean, Hot Wheels

themselves had it at one point and there are two other companies that have had it. They're larger scale ones, but they also throughout the years have produced them in the like junked up for sale version and then the classic shiny version and the evil version while the the windows are blacked out you can find them pretty cheap i think the one i want there's one that comes with a little diorama of the pratsky garage no pratsky but that feels it'll make me think of robert i saw just like on twitter just a couple of weeks ago somebody had made made one of like exactly what you're talking about it was like it's a cube and around the car was the garage and the car is sitting in

the center of it but it was it was gorgeous this little fucking thing this guy had put together i was like god i would love to have that just i'm not even a big christine fan and i would love to have that it's just a good looking thing gorgeous yeah yeah gorgeous. Yeah, it is. It's bewitching us, guys. This car wants to run us over. We have to be careful. I say we do whatever Christine tells us to do. It's going to play an ironic song and then it's going to get us. The proto-Bumblebee.

I'm wearing a back brace right now. I'm well on my way. The Robert Blossom scene, just like a great version of the Friday the 13th, like Guy at the Gas Station. Don't go in there. You don't want to go down that road.

Right, exactly. Crazy Ralph. I also, I love that the car looks so bad. Like it's truly... It's so bad. Right, it's so bad. Because you expect that it's like, well, of course the kids, I'm watching the movie for the first time.

I'm like, how is he going to fall in love with this evil car? Because the car looks so nice. Right. Then you have this massive chime jump. I'm like, oh, the eerie thing is that the car is still going to be in pristine condition. No, it looks worse than any cars ever looked. And it's overpriced. Like, it's not even like, oh, he wins the car.

He doesn't want it. But it is that siren song thing of like, stop the car, back up. I need to go see this thing. And everyone around him is like, what are you talking about? What are you doing? Yeah, right. But it's preying on the vulnerability of this guy, knowing that he could be corrupted. Yeah.

I also this is this movie is right. I mean, Happy Days is still kind of on top, right? Like, yes. this is this movie is right around i mean happy days is still kind of on top right like yes is that are we still talking like are we still into happy days in 83 or is it kind of uncool at this point it's jumped the shark it's still on the air but it has officially jumped the shark i don't know just like this because this movie is kind of i know it's not set in the 50s but it's sort of got that sort of interesting repudiation of the whole kind of grew you know hyper masculine greaser thing like it's kind of the nasty you know side of that yeah bullies are very much greaser inspired even in the modern day they're like crude and like awful like they're just like nasty they poop on the car and almost to the person like 35 years old yes oh yes yes and also i'm

like wait are we in high school here or are we in like you know industrial college like what is this like especially the guy yeah buddy repperton is just like that they pulled that guy out of a gold gym you know and william ostrander uh it is incredible how old he looks. I mean, the movie takes this shift in the last hour where it becomes like Harry Dean Stanton is the fourth lead. And now, you know, you've got this American psycho style like cat and mouse, you know, on the trail. He's convinced that Keith Gordon's wrong. But I do like the angle of like, Keith Gordon is not there for most of this, right? Like he knows the car is evil

and he knows that the car has corrupted him. But when Herod Dean Stanton is asking about these things, he's not covering up for specific incidents. Because even though he hates these fucking guys,

and at this point, he's purely happy that they're dead. He also like doesn't know that this happened necessarily right he has a real alibi the car is actually doing the murder there right and there's that like when harry dean stanton's sniffing around it's not like harry dean stanton's like you know i just got a hunch that this car is unilaterally committing crime but i i just i love that turn because like when he's complaining about the guys fucking with him, and I think it's when he's yelling at his parents about the car being destroyed before the show me scene.

And he, like, he's, like, crying about the fact that they shit on the hood, right? Yeah. Like, it's just, like, the indignity of these people. Right. The final straw. Right. They have no humanity. This is not something you brush off, right?

And then, like, he's gotten his revenge the car has gotten its revenge he's now acting more low-key about everything he's fucking started big dogging his parents like he doesn't give a shit anymore harry dean stan comes sniffing around and he's like you know it's interesting your girlfriend came to me said you were really upset about uh this these guys attacking your car uh you know, you're really proud of this restoration job you did. This one in a million job where you're able to replace every part

without any color differentiation in like under a week. It's weird. People usually report these kinds of things to the police and show photos. And he's like, I don't know. It wasn't a big deal. I can forgive those guys.

And there's just that really cutting line delivery where Harry Dean Stanton looks at And he's like, I don't know. It wasn't a big deal. I can forgive those guys. And there's just that really cutting line delivery where Harry Dean Stanton looks at him and goes like, they defecated on the hood of your car. Like the guy's gotten over it. And Harry Dean Stanton

is trying to remind him like they really disrespected you. There was poo poo on your hood. A guy named Moochie did doodoo's on your car this is not something a man forgives i really love this is what this is a year before repo man i love harry dean stanton just playing a pretty normal guy like when he shows up in a movie and you're like oh what's sinister sort of like or odd or kind of quirky thing is about to happen it's like

he's kind of just a detective on the case in this one. At the end, he's just kind of like, good job getting rid of the car. Yeah. That thing was bad. Speaking of, we should probably like talk about the button on this movie as well.

That, that whole, uh, is the car still alive even though it's crushed into a block, uh, thing. Yeah. Well,

the whole final standoff is great between christine and the forklift yes because you do you do get to a point i i think which is necessary for movies like this building an actual sense of dread of how could you possibly stop this thing is there any way to destroy it right uh and the forklift is just like okay i guess the approach is relentlessness just attack it from every angle non-stop until it stops don't let it recharge right exactly don't give it room to reinflate and then you have the hard cut to the block now it's in the perfect compact wally trash block right and then they give that that great fake out where the the oldies start playing and they're like oh my god the guy walks by with the boombox or whatever that is so cheesy but i i

gotta admit i fucking love it i mean is i hate rock and roll the last proper line of dialogue in the movie i think so and then there's the um it like holds on the thing and then like one of the little metal pieces Like plings out right That's the final shot of the movie Yes Christine's coming back baby Not to spoil But in the book

Christine is Sort of maybe still alive right Like he hears about a car accident And he's like could that be Christine The people that survived this story kind of scatter and you know and then he like i think it's a different it's like the one dude right um yeah i think it is i think it's is it i think i think that the christine car itself in the book is like dead but like whatever evil spirit is now maybe going into other it's transferred right

right i thought the car that like blows through the wall of the fucking drive-in and takes out the guy i thought that like matched the description of christine but i could be misremembering that wasn't my impression but that doesn't mean that uh that i read it any in any great detail and retain that so you might be right uh i just read here because I was digging into this, that when they do the show me sequence, that was a car they had partially destroyed and then replaced most of the metal shell with a softer plastic.

And then they had hydraulic pumps inside sucking it in so that it was able to sort of compress and retract more cleanly than metal obviously which would like without leaving like dents and stuff right shatter and everything yeah and then it's obviously played backwards uh 15% of the budget was just the cars

yeah no shit that is funny though they really shelled out on these cars my god it's the star that's there Tom Cruise yeah you gotta get that right this and blues brothers 2000 have the biggest you know car that is what a waste no shit what a waste in general yeah just all around for everything um they only uh only two cars remained intact at the end of the movie, which, uh, Columbia, uh, requested so that they could, um, use them for promotional stuff, uh, send

them around and, and things like that. And then immediately, immediately destroyed them while transporting them by crashing. So then I went, I was looking for stuff on IMDb, right? And I searched for Christine. And I mostly get results of actresses with Christine as their first name. Of course. A weirdly un-Google-able movie. Yes.

It's a problem. Christine Taylor messing up search optimization. But one of the top results is Christine Movie Car, which has its own credit on IMDb as an actress. No shit. It's alive. Born October 31st, 1957. So I went, oh, this is kind of cool. Someone took the car in the movie and gave it a performer page.

No, Christine Movie Car has zero credits. This is not the car that was in the movie. This is a fan built car that someone put on IMDb listed as an actress. Bill Gibson's Christine movie car is the most expansive, immersive Christine experience traveling today. Now, with over a decade of thrilling fans under her wheels. Yeah, we need to get the Christine car and the Green Goblin truck from Maximum Overdrive together, I think. We need to bring them. Get them on the show.

Interview the cars. It's just lots of brooms. There's events. They'll drive it to you, maybe. Do you think you can book? It's like a children's birthday party. You can book the car.

Yes, but I just want to circle back to a key point. This car is not an actor. This car has never been in a movie. The car in Christine is an actor. She gives a very good performance in the movie. Technically, it's 14 actors, but all of them are good. This car has never been in anything.

This car just goes to fucking birthday parties. You go fucking around on IMDb, son, and you're going to find all kinds of weird shit people have done. Incredibly bizarre. Look at the trivia section on literally any movie on imdb and you will see like the most useless fucking knowledge you've ever seen like just plastered 80 000 people found it helpful or some shit i am looking at the slideshows on the christine the movie car website and they're here here here she is at the playboy mansion my favorite thing though is like the pictures say like you know stew bill and me dot jpg me being the car car so the car is like

as if the car has uploaded these photos herself like from her digital camera like when somebody sets up like a an account for their dog on twitter yes Yes, exactly. I just love going to Colorado this weekend. Let me ask you this. Like when I was first thinking about, uh, you know, this traveling living car, who is an actor that was not actually in Christine,

I'm thinking like, you know, thrilling fans. Like, what is it doing? It's just sitting there. Surely in a showroom. I don't think people get to drive it.

I can't imagine they do unless they pay extra but if if you had the opportunity like if you knew within a 20 minute drive or something you could go like take a picture with a 58 plymouth fury you know i think i might do that i'd like to see one i've never seen one in person so i don't know if i would be thrilled by it per se, but I would I would spend a couple hours doing I think I would go to a movie car show. I think if there was specifically a car show that was like, here are like 10 fan made recreations. They don't even have to be the original screen used. Right. But if it was like, here's the Ecto one and the V8 Interceptor and Christine and I get to see all of I would make the trip for several i just also want

to quickly refute something you said scott that uh imdb trivia is filled with useless information that no one finds interesting uh if not for imdb i would not have known that quote keith gordon was nervous about kissing alexandra paul so he asked her to practice first and 81 out of 86 people find that interesting that's the oldest trick in the book keith jesus christ we've all heard about that very nervous just as an actor is there no follow-up there is there did she say yes no further information i don't know he i just know that he asked weirdly robert prosky had tried the same thing with her. But he said Keith's really worried about kissing you.

He said I could give it a shot. I want to make sure you're ready. He told me to report back. For my boy Keith. We're slandering Robert Prosky here. Of course, a hero of community theater. Absolutely. That was the one time he didn't have Lemon Face on that set. The only other interesting thing

here on the IMDb trivia is that the movie was not violent enough to get an R. But because there was no PG-13 at this time, they were very worried

about being caught in PG territory. Because especially with a premise as potentially goofy as kid with an evil car. They thought it would get written off. So they put a couple of fucks in there just to get the R rating.

Yeah. Cause it's not a gory movie at all. Really. It's not. Yeah. It's the scares are not too intense in Christine. No, it's,

it's really more just fun. It's unnerving and it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. But like it's really more just fun. It's unnerving and it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. But like, it's walking that goofy line, especially with the radio, you know,

the radio gags always going. I mean, Ebert put it perfectly. His review, he gave it three out of four stars and his review was, by the end of the movie, Christine has developed

such a formidable personality that we are actually taking sides during its duel with a bulldozer this is the kind of movie where you walk out with a silly grin get in your car and lay rubber halfway down the eisenhower yeah i kind of agree with that you're kind of on christine's side yeah yeah she's just so beautiful you know so you're just and also like i guess so many of the bad guys she's taken out are are such dick that you, you know, right. There's some collateral damage, of course, and we have to forgive Christine for that.

But we can because she's pretty and also because, you know, yeah, he's killing all those other bitches. The lead choking on a hamburger scene is really good, just to go backwards. But I just think that's the movie, the moment where I think the movie is playing with the most sort of like interesting supernatural vibes because it's, it's not the violence inflicted by the car. It's this weird level of control of like her body, right? It's locking him out.

It's turning the lights on blaring the music just for spite. And then somehow it's able to make her choke. It is such a great, um, a great moment for her as a character, Christine, as a character, like that so much of the success of this movie and, you know, and I'm still saying this as somebody,

you know, who thinks it's, it's pretty good, you know, not, not all timer, but one of the great successes is the personality that Carpenter is able to give that car.

Yes. You, you feel the vengefulness, the vindictiveness, the jealousy of an inanimate object, which is, you know, kind of bad shit to hear me actually say that and hear those words coming out of my mouth. No, but watching the movie, there were multiple moments where I could feel myself projecting facial expressions onto Christine. Like going like, Christine looks angry, you know? And it's like, I'm adding like fucking Pixar car eyes to it or whatever, but it is just a, he knows how to shoot it and be that he's developed the story beats of it

enough that you actually do start sensing intent. Yeah. Well, and so like you said, it really is. I think the most of it is, is, isn't how Carpenter shoots it.

It's the angles he's picking. It's the editing choices he's making in those moments where in the Lee choking scene, it becomes frantic, becomes a fight scene. Yeah. You know, it is. Right. He starts shit with the guy trying to do the Heimlich on her. Like. Yeah.

Right. So like he is possessed. The car is evil. This guy's a good Samaritan. Lee has somehow lost control of her autonomy like there's so many things going on at once and it's all underscored by uh classic rock music i mean that's another thing this movie has in its favor is just i will always find bad to the bone funny yeah yeah impossible to take that song seriously but this is the exact correct use of it, you know? Absolutely.

And isn't that what they kind of like sold Carpenter on the whole idea with, was with that song? Because that song is well, let's see. Like twice? Yeah. Yeah, but that song is new, right? Like at the time, right? That's like, and here wait there's let me

i think we found it i think it's in the um dossier their pitch to carpenter was we have the rights to bad for the bum right bill phillips uh basically was like like i just found this song and he sang it he did the bad and they were like yeah that sounds good and they bought the song that that was where he sang the saying that the sort of the the chorus them and they were like yeah that sounds good and they bought the song that that was where he sang the saying that the sort of the the chorus them and they were like perfect yeah wow that's amazing yeah um but then but the yeah the carpenter score is really good though i like the carpenter score i mean unsurprised with with with uh alan harworth obviously but also i mean it's nestled in between two movies that he famously didn't score. Yeah. With really different, you know, with, of course, Starman and The Thing, you know, have these wonderful scores.

But the thing is, I guess, a little more carpentry. It's more moody. But Starman's score is so expansive, which I love. Yeah, that's definitely more Marconi doing Carpenter. But it's more it's more orchestral and then the star man score is a lot more emotional than he usually goes right right let's talk box office this movie when did this movie come out griffin this movie came out do you know no november december 9th 1983 christmas movie movie, of course. Of course.

Yeah, that's the thing. It's not exactly where I'd be... I would either put this in the summer or Halloween. Yeah, I'd put September. The summer, I could almost... It's a summer movie, I think. Yeah, because... Exactly. It's got the back-to-school thing going on.

It's got a lot of... It's not actually that dark a movie aesthetically. But whatever. They chunked it out in christmas against two big movies so it's opening number four uh to three million dollars and it's making how much total it's making 21 domestic like ironically kind of made the things final right like what did the thing end up with you know as much as like the thing was a huge bomb for him and this was kind of a recovery like another thing made 13 i guess guess that was pretty bad. Okay. You have it in front of you,

what it opened against. Oh yeah. We're about to play the box office game, my friends. All right. So number one at the box office Griff is okay. And this is one of those things where I always have to look this movie up because I don't remember it's, it's, it's the fourth in a series of popular films. Okay. But the fact that you have to look't remember it's it's in it's the fourth in a series of popular films okay but the fact that you have to look up that it's fourth tells me the no numbers it's the fourth this is the movie that has the second most famous catchphrase of this character and everyone always remembers that it's like thinks that it's in the first movie but it's actually in the fourth it's so it's dirty harry it's right and this is but it's actually in the fourth so it's Dirty Harry

it's right and this is the movie that's directed by Clint Eastwood but what's it called the Enforcer I always get this wrong is it Magnum Force that's why I always like this one nope that's the second one you now named the third and second okay and then Deadpool's the last one it's not the Deadpool

so now you are you are out of it's not the dead pool so now you are you are out of it's sudden impact this is the movie where he says go ahead make my day it's the it's the one Clint made I've never seen sudden impact it's actually on my watch list what do you guys

do you guys have dirty Harry takes you guys care about dirty Harry I've seen the first I've seen the first one and I and like a like a little chunk of the deadpool but um yeah that's about the extent of my knowledge on that i i watched the later ones a lot as a kid because they were always on um hbo right um so i probably have seen the fourth one the deadpool is the one with like sandra lock in it right like there's i know this is the one with okay then I've probably seen this one yeah this one the most yeah yeah and there's like a shootout like on a boardwalk or like an amusement park boardwalk or something yes like there's a carousel

scene I think a big carousel set piece yeah so now there's this one then that I must have watched over and over again I really like the first one because of the just we're gonna take the zodiac you know or whatever yeah yeah yeah and make that the first is good they're all pretty good yeah it's like i i do remember really liking that yeah there's like good stupid movies it is wild that the first one's a zodiac movie and they were like huh what if this is a franchise right i mean i think the first one was not even like the we think it was so it was a huge hit obviously right it's like you know it made 36 million it's not like one of these things where it demands force sure it wasn't rocky right but i think it became just such this cultural touch

point you know i mean and that the first one 71 and this is what 83 so i guess just once in a while clint would be like let's do another one i think that's the other thing i think clint was obviously such a big star and the western was going increasingly out of fashion and he was like i should figure out another thing i can pick up and put down whenever i want another tough ass character with a gun what can i do cop right right right just stick with it why not make them all the same guy yeah Yeah. Now, number two, The Box Office is a seismic movie. Very big deal movie. I think it's sort of greeted with some kind of like with some with critical jeers. But it's a big hit.

It's a major star. Is it sort of? No, Footloose is the same year as Starman. Right. OK. Right. It's a crime movie. It's sort of the moment this star is switching from

acclaimed, brilliant theater guy who's like the master of 70s acting to the guy he, the more over-the-top actor that he becomes. This is kind of the hinge point. This is a Pacino movie? It's an Al Pacino movie. Of course.

It's a big one. It's a big... Oh, oh, oh, oh. It is the movie entitled Scarface, another Christmas classic. I'm right, right? Like, that's kind of... That's the moment where he's

unlocked the new thing. Right, yeah. Because you see, like, even, like, Bobby Deerfield, like, those movies he made before this that weren't hits, he's still doing the brooding, internal kind of, you know. And then Scarface, he's just, yeah, he never quite... Maximalism.

It's Pringles. He couldn't stop. He popped. He turns into Walken, right? This becomes his thing. Yeah. Scarface. Griff, do you have a star? Do you care about Scarface?

I feel like we've never talked Scarface. Yeah, do you have a star Do you care about Scarface? I feel like we've never Talked Scarface Yeah, I kind of I mean, it's like It's one of those movies where I feel like people are either Evangelical about it or they're like That movie is garbage, everyone is insane For liking it, and I kind of Respect both opinions

Yeah, I kind of agree with that It's kind of undeniable when you watch it You know, it's hard to Not now have a little fun with it. Absolutely. But there is that thing of just like, I've seen De Palma movies and I've seen Pacino movies and I know what these guys can do. Right. Do you guys like Scarface? I think my big issue with Scarface is that I tend to associate Scarface with people like dudes who had Scarface posters in their dorm rooms.

I mean, it's a, it's a Lebowski issue. It's a fight club issue. It's a boondock saints issue. Well, that's the biggest issue. It is.

It is. It's all fair. Right. And so we need some distance from that. Like I've sort of come back around to some of those movies, not the boondocks. I think I've only seen Scarface like twice. I saw it as a teenager.

And then a few years ago I revisited it. And it's like, I'm kind of like, that's, that's fine. I can't imagine being fanatical about that movie. Uh, I think it's a good movie,

but I'm also imagining now like an Italian actor being like, I'm Cupid. Can you tell? Like, you know, if that happened today, how furious everyone would get it's definitely not my favorite flavor of diploma like uh i blow out is like one of my all-time

favorite movies and well that's my favorite and you know phantom of the paradise and and carrie and untouchables you know that that is that is my diploma like i i think scarface i'm glad people love it but it's not mine guadagnino is still supposed to do that right in theory he is but he was addicted to announcing that he was going to remake iconic movies for a while he was always attaching himself to these remakes of movies we were like luca wasn't the scarface we didn't one of the coens write the scarface both of them did it was maybe one of the last scripts that both of them worked on yeah

I mean that alone that alone sells a ticket to me and I think it's supposed to be Diego Luna he was supposed to do it with Anton Fuqua I don't know if he's still on board but there were there were competing Scarface projects there was ones that were like supposed to be an updated version

of the De Palma like cheese fest one and then there were other ones were like supposed to be uh an updated version of the diploma like cheese fest one and then there were other ones that were supposed to be like more of an adaptation of the old the paul mooney yeah a gangster the howard hawks movie right yeah right and then i also think they're i've at times it seemed like their approach has been like just do another one it's like it's star is born just what is the new Scarface For this generation This guy just needs to have a scar on his face To anything else from the two previous movies As long as there's a mountain of cocaine Somewhere we're gonna be happy

Number three Griff Is the best picture winner For 1983 it's a film we've covered on this podcast It's a huge film Terms of Endearment Right the number two movie at the box office for that year behind return of the jedi that's correct i just i will always call out that kind of fact that like it used to be the best picture winner was the highest grossing film of the year and if it wasn't it was because there was a star wars and the best

picture winner was still number two it's the only other movie in 83 to crack a hundo. Yeah. Return of Jedi makes $250 million over. Terms of Endearment makes $108 million. Number four is Christine, opening to $3 million on a thousand screens. And number five is a musical. I feel like we're going to cover it on this podcast one day

It's a director Barbara Streisand's Yentl I know you want to cover Yentl You can't slip that one by me She's an easy three movie We probably might have to do her Star is Born, I guess Because that's like, you know There's a couple movies with her where she didn't direct them

But you kind of have to toss them in, I feel like. But I feel like, yes. Didn't you also bring up Prince of Tides the other day in a very similar way where you were like Prince of Tides, which we will, of course, someday cover on this podcast. We gotta do Streisand. Why not? Yeah, that's what the people demand. Let's we could do Streisand. And as you said, it's like it's only really three movies but

we could also do a bonus episode on her basement mall can you explain that's the weirdest shit ever it's one of the greatest blank checks in history do you not know this no tell me tell me i don't know what you're talking about her huge uh uh mansion compound that she lives in with james brolin she's, I love shopping more than anything, but I'm so famous. I can't go to normal people stores anymore. More so her entire basement is like a shopping mall with stores and employees who work at cash registers. And she walks into like her fake Banana Republic and looks at the stack of seven sweaters and goes like do you have one in small and they're like we'll check in the back it's role play she's

already bought all the inventory they buy things in the wrong size so that she has to look for the right thing i swear to you someone else wants to go maybe like what if i wanted to go she'd be like oh maybe they have your size i don't know when i when i read i forget where i read about that but i got the distinct impression that only barb is allowed to shop that's exactly i don't think james is allowed you don't think i could knock on the door and be like hey i heard you have a banana republic is there a sale going on this weekend she comes in and finds you sitting in her rainforest cafe and is like what the fuck that was the there was the off-broadway play buyer and seller which was about an employee in barbara streisand's cellar waiting all day for

her to come in and buy something i don't think anyone else goes in there i get it that's funny imagine imagine clocking in every morning and thinking i might just be here for nine hours yeah it's a fascinating idea yeah like we would have to go we'd have to try and go we'd have to go that'd be the best fucking job ever are you kidding me you'd just be sitting there all fucking watching tv and shit all day and then there'd be like a motion sensor activated or the ding of an elevator or something and then suddenly you just like what if what what if like one of the stores though is like everyone has you know i'm sure we all do has like a problem store for every time you go in there, something goes horribly wrong. Right. But you still have to go in there from time to time.

Absolutely. So maybe Streisand has the equivalent of that. So imagine being the employee at that store where it's like not only may you be sitting around all day, but if you know Barbara's coming in, she's looking for something to get mad about because that's her imaginary problems. That's that's the store where she Karen's out. Yes. Right. Exactly. The manager. Right.

That's her. She's the worst customer. What do you mean? You're at a small like and they're like, you told us to order all mediums. And she's like, what do you mean? You're at a small like play along. I'm trying to be right. You can't break the fourth wall. You're not allowed allowed i'm trying to find pictures of this but it is like

a main street it's like a fake cobble street that then has different storefronts that sell different items so it's like an outlet mall yes it's like it's like one one main hallway in a like a shopping mall that you would go to. If you had, you know, Streisand level, I would absolutely do this. I would do this. Are you kidding me? I would do this. Well, my question is, is there something, like, would you rebuild Mars 2112

in your basement? Is there some closed-themed restaurant or store that you would resurrect? Is there something like that? That's a good idea. Mars 2112. The Rainforest Cafe made me think of it. It would be cool to have a Suncoast.

That would be a cool thing to poke around in. You build something that doesn't exist anymore? Right. My version of this would probably be a Virgin Megastore. That'd be neat. I would like a Sega World maybe. I don't think there are any sega worlds anymore but i used to go to sega world all the time you know what i would love

love to imagine exists in barbara streisand's little mall is a shoe store with al bundy as the the shoe salesman like just married that's what fucking uh ed o'neill just does now when he's not ed o'neill just does like one shift a week yeah he comes in and he's still as al bundy yeah as al bundy and i mean yeah that's like the ultimate rich guy thing is i'm gonna hire hire somebody to to play their fucking role all the time i posted the link in the chat but there's like a bizarre magazine slideshow of this And one of them is like One store has a gift wrapping Table so she can make employees Wrap gifts that she Just bought from her own

Inventory of her own Store it's so fucking Bizarre it's so bizarre as well That this is in Harper's Bazaar and is Being presented as like you know Barbra Streisand's fashionable life and not like Barbra Streisand's insanity further confirmed by her insane fake store. Right.

Barbra Streisand had a disassociative episode and built a mall. Do you think the employees are hourly or do you think their salary? I don't know. And I wonder this constantly. I would, I would, I would pay money to have just a conversation, like just sit and have a beer with someone that works at Barbara's mall. I don't know how much it was based on reality because I think a lot of this is like secretive, right?

To some degree, like even her doing this bizarre photo shoot was kind of a big deal 10 years ago because she had sort of like kept it a little bit low key for a while but that play oh absolutely i wouldn't tell anybody about this shit no i think that play is about like he's like a struggling actor who worked at disneyland and when he gets fired he picks up the job here like it's like that kind of circuit of like she wants to hire performers because they have to play their role. You know, I like how this this photo, this photo thing is all like this. Not subtext, but like the whole thing's built around like, oh, it's not real stores.

This is just how I display my stuff. But it's it's stores. And there's also I might add a nightmare photo of her cradling a porcelain doll. Yes, yes. True nightmare shit. Outside outside bees doll shop where do you think the the line of weirdness begins because for me the demarcation line is the employees if she just had like a play mall to set up like set up that she could walk around in and pull shit off shelves that's one level of psychosis but like to actually go to the effort of hiring human beings and having them work there

correct that's where it crosses into like you need to talk to somebody about this and it's like michael jackson you know neverland ranch obviously there's a bunch of uh stuff about neverland ranch that we don't want to talk about but like just even on the surface even if it was all good clean fun he just decided i'm gonna build an amusement park you know in my in my thing and have you know fucking this is different because even right even though it was for salacious ends part of it was like i want other people to be able to ride yes exactly he was bringing like scores of children through there and their parents and who fucking knows who else but this is just barbara it's just it's it's i want to be able to shop without anyone recognizing me it's it's like right this is all evidence of why we should

do barbara streisand on the podcast so it's gotta happen sometime yeah i guess so and speaking of michael jackson he would just he would just shut stores down and go in and shop by himself i don't know why she would she just wouldn't't do that. And point at things. That was his thing, right? He would just be like, that, that, that, right? And then, yeah, people are just running around

bagging everything. The last photo I posted in the chat is the underground Main Street mall made over for Christmas. Hey! Look at festive! Now, do you think, do you think that she organizes this or it's someone's

job to redecorate everything for christmas to surprise her here's my question maybe it's just happening all by itself and no one knows what's going on it's a magical mall it's got a life of its own yeah we got a night at the museum situation going on here. I think I think it's somewhere up the middle, Griff. I think it's like she has she has someone whose job it is to redecorate the mall for Christmas every year. But she doesn't know what it will look like. Right. So that part is the surprise. But she knows it's coming.

There is that nice feeling of like, oh, New York City in November. Oh, the Christmas decorations have gone up. Like it just happens overnight one day and you're a little surprised by it you know i'm sure she wants to replicate that feeling of being like oh already uh pods of cast mini series coming 2022 i guess yeah it's gonna happen just go store by store just ignore the movie side of things just go store by store y'all need to break into that mall and record an episode in there before she finds out I really want to that would be

sick to wrap up we would all get arrested some of the other things fake police she has a yes and we would be dragged in front of dry sand court you know god knows prison Yes. And we would be dragged in front of dry sand court. You know, God knows it.

Go to strike said prison. Does she have Barbara bucks? You think instead of using regular currency, probably Steve Gutenberg is playing Mahoney and he's the security guard in the mall. Um, a Christmas story. You got the big chill.

You got, uh, the James Bond knockoff. Never seen ever again. You got all the right moves with Tom Cruise The other one is The Smurfs and the Magic Flute Which is apparently

Some sort of Belgian Smurf movie That came out in the States like many years after It had premiered In Europe And though the Smurfs play a major part They do not appear until 35 minutes the States like many years after it had premiered in, uh, Europe. Right. Okay.

Smurfs play a major part. They do not appear until 35 minutes into the film. And the film is 74 minutes long. Wow. Sounds pretty bad. That's the jaws of Smurfs movies. Because, okay.

Cause this, this movie was made by pay. Oh, who is the creator of the Smurfs. And then in the eighties, Hanna-Barbera get the rights to the Smurfs and make the American cartoon. And this has no association with that cartoon,

but was released then in theaters to capitalize on the cartoon show that kids knew. Weird. That's just, that's the only reason I mentioned it. It just seemed like a weird little, you know, made a few million bucks. They did that a lot in the 80s, by the way. I know it's a whole other topic, but like I they they put like trick children well yeah well they put like

the he-man they like put two he-man episodes together and release those secret of the sword baby yeah yeah i remember that that very vividly i was a big he-man kid and i liked he-man this is bizarre though uh hey me too uh this is bizarre because it's not it's it's like if you went to the theater it was different than the thing you were watching gargamel's not in this smurfette's not in this no gargamel no gargamel that was an american creation yeah yeah so was smurfette right yeah i know huge problem yeah um anyway we're done christine we did a great job guys i think we talked more about barbara streisand's mall by the end of it. But, you know, that's how it goes.

Frankly, it's more fascinating than Christine. And scarier. Yes, that picture of her with the porcelain doll is scarier than anything John Carpenter's ever done. And that's saying something. Absolutely. Guys, KingCast, obviously, people should listen to. We agree. You've certainly done a good job of selling the,

the fuller episodes, which I need to queue up now. I, I want to dig deep into all, uh, the things he was teasing about his Christine. And you'll hear, you'll hear some,

uh, some indications of kind of what drives him about the story. And so what I think that, uh, I mean, he, he, he,

his angle. And that was very clearly a, um, he wanted to give us a queer reading of Christine. I don't know if that's necessarily going to be what the movie is, but it just kind of shows what's appealing to him on a character level and on

a subtext level with that story. So I think you'll have a really good understanding of at least how he's going to approach the material listening to that episode. That sounds good. Anything else you guys want to plug? Not really. Just our show. We've got...

When is this airing? This is dropping. It's in a few weeks. October... No, September 19th. This is recent. This is closer. September 19th. Okay, well, right after this

airs, we've got some amazing guests lined up between now and the end of the year. And, of course, we've got the Patreon. It's patreon.com backslash the KingCast. And we've just got some surprises up our sleeves. It's a

fun show, and if you're even remotely a Stephen King fan, I would, I would recommend new episodes drop every Wednesday and you can find us on Twitter at King cast 19. Uh, awesome. Thank you guys so much for coming on, extending your knowledge.

No, we need to get you guys on for something now. Please. I love Stephen King. I'm just a dork. I'm just a, you know, I'm,

I'm, I'm no expert. I just, but I love the guy. Griffin, where are you at and you're steven have you have you read a lot of king you have not i don't think i've read a single king i've seen a good number of the movies but now that i may be like the idea of reading something

specifically to come on the show using that as an idea your people call yeah let's talk we'll figure it out well thank you so much for having us. This is great. Hey, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you all for listening. And please remember. Listening. Listening.

Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Thank you to Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. And people should check out their new album, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Online. You can find it wherever music's found. Apple Music, Bandcamp, Spotify,

what have you. Thank you to Joe Bone and Pat Browns for our artwork. JJ Birch, Nick Lariano for our research. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. And you can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where we are, uh,

uh, trekking into, uh, the tombs of the mummy. That's right. That's right. We're in the middle of that. We're getting wrapped up in the mummy as I would call it.

It's mummy in the bank. It's mummy in the bank it's mummy in the bank thank you for that a joke you'll hear me make several times over the next couple months yep i will not quit it uh and tune in next week for our episode on starman with returning guest Returning guest, Katie Rich. That's right. And as always, my fundamental question is, does Barbra Streisand's mall have a food court? It's just a Sparrow. And do they give out samples?