Blank Check with Griffin & David - Crimewave with Brendan Hines

Episode Date: March 27, 2022

Sam Raimi directed a movie between “The Evil Dead” and “Evil Dead II” that was written by the Coen Brothers and no one ever talks about it…until NOW! Actor Brendan Hines (“The Tick”, “Locke and Key”) joins us to make sense of this early career oddity - a tonal mishmash of slapstick and film noir that we’d later see more successfully executed in films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and “The Mask”. Topics discussed include: the difficulties in scaling up the indie production model; Bruce Campbell’s evolving star persona; whether or not you can actually wash dishes in lieu of paying for your meal; and more! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

I'm not that kind of podcast. Well, with a little practice, you could learn to be. There you go. There we go. I was remarking upon how anemic the quotes page was for this movie, and our guest volunteered that he still has lines memorized from this movie from 25 years ago. So I pimped him out, as it were, the comedic term, that probably should not be used anymore.

I immediately regret saying saying hello, everybody. Hi. Hi. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a blank check with Griffin and David. I don't know. I'm flipping it around.

Sure. Yeah, do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's just introduce the movie. I mean, the podcast, whatever it is we do. It's a podcast about filmographies, filmographies which are made up of movies. So we can introduce both at the same time, David.

Of course. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a real bounce after a clear that led to a bigger clear.

There was a lot of back and forth with this man at the beginning of his career the man we're talking about of course is Sam Raimi yes that is right we are talking about Sam Raimi the podcast is called Podcast Me to Hell and the movie we're talking about

his second film his second proper do you want to acknowledge this here because people have been yeah angry people are like are you going to talk about that movie it's murder which was like a full length movie it was never really released yeah uh but his super 8 movie and the answer was like no we're not sorry i mean i think it is you can watch it right like is it like an extra on a dvd or something like is it kicking around somewhere? Because there's this sort of question of like,

Edgar Wright has that movie A Fistful of Fingers. That one counts. That one really came out as much as he is, I think, a little embarrassed by it. That did have a release. He said it came out in literally one theater. Well, you know. But it still is.

You know, it has a poster. Anyway, look, Crime Wave is Sam Raimi's second movie, really, I would say. Yeah, I'm seeing its murder split into parts in a very low transfer

on Daily Motion. That's what I saw, so I was kind of like, yeah, thank God we didn't do that. This movie is called Crime Wave. Do you want to know something griff i want to know everything david okay well i don't know if i can do that but this movie came out in america you know it was sort of sprinkled around had like a little european release or whatever but campbell's famous line was this movie wasn't released it escaped right right right right. But its US release was the day after my birth.

What? The 25th of April, 1986. Just isn't that funny to think one day into my life, maybe my parents had the New York Times delivered and there was like a little ad for Crime Wave in there or something. And they were like, yeah, that looks bad. Yeah, it is funny.

It is funny to imagine one day after your birth your parents frantically calling anyone they trusted to watch you so they could rush out to theaters to see crime wave this guy i mean he just has he understands how to use the camera like this has got to be good right yes a very bizarre film that is largely forgotten in part because the people involved in it have sort of largely disowned it. I feel like Bruce Campbell's the only one who will still speak on the record about

this movie and the three other main creative forces, four if we include Rob Tapper here, still seem to be so traumatized by this production that they never even want to acknowledge it. And that's the thing that is wildest about this movie. The thing that for me as a young Sam Raimi fan, I just went like, what are you talking about? How does this exist?

And how does no one talk about it? It is impossible that it's as bad as you're saying it is, because this is a movie directed by Sam Raimi and written by the Coen brothers. Sounds amazing. Right. Sam Raimi and written by the Coen brothers. Sounds, sounds amazing.

Right. In the time between evil dead and evil dead two for Raimi and in between blood simple and raising Arizona for the Coens. And you're just like, how could those three guys together in that moment with that momentum do something that is unwatchable? Do you think this movie is unwatchable? I don't, I don't know.

I don't, I think it's, I think it's a, it's a difficult film to watch. What's hard about it? It is, like, I mean, I want to bring our guest in because... Yeah, bring our guest in.

Bring our guest in. I may have to do the quote at the beginning, but our guest, first of all, primary credit, a dear friend. Number one credit with a bullet. Top of the resume, dear friend of Griffin Newman. That's the best one.

He's a dear friend. But he's also a fine actor, musician in his own right. And recently, I don't know if you've experienced this, David, but I feel like maybe it was a pandemic thing or maybe it was just that the show's been going on long enough. I feel like in the last 18 months, I've had a number of close friends be like, I finally started listening to your podcast.

Yeah, no, for sure. The weird thing of remember those first couple months in the pandemic where the take was podcasts are in trouble. No one's commuting. And then suddenly it became actually everyone's kind of catching up on podcasts because they're bored. And then, yes, I did get a lot of. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I've been I've been listening to Blank Check, having a good time. And that's nice. So this dear friend of mine, whenever it was 18 months ago, started texting me about that he was now listening to the show. And then when I told him we were doing Sam Raimi, he said, I'm just going to put out there Bruce Campbell and his work in Sam Raimi movies is pretty much the thing that made

me become an actor. If there's anything, any opening you have for me to talk about this. And I asked him about Crime Wave and your line, Brendan, if I can quote it directly. Yes. I said, have you ever seen Crime Wave? And Brendan, your response was the old Raimi film. Yes. Paid a ridiculous amount of money for the backordered VHS

circa 1994 while working at Blockbuster. Yeah, I love that slapsticky mess. I do. I think that's fair. And then your text was, or did you mean another one? Our guest today is Brandon Hines. Hi. From

a little Amazon series called The Tick. Lock and Key. Yeah. The Middleman, Lie to Me. What other credits do we want to put in there, Brandon? We don't want to put any other credits in after Dear Friend. Okay. Dear Friend's the most important one.

Yeah. As you can see, I was I was I was I was waiting for that text from you for and I was just ready to jump at the opportunity to talk about it. I think actually now that I think about it, it was it was more it may have actually been closer to 1993. I don't want to lead you astray. Wow. It was 1993. OK, wow. The point here is, it sounds much like what I was talking about. You hear about this movie existing and you go, how is that possible? And how is that not readily watchable? Yeah.

Well, I came to a lot of the Raimi stuff the same way you did too. Going to comic book stores and I did a play with this guy in high school and he turned me on to a lot of, um, a lot of the stuff that I, uh, first of all, he turned me on to evil dead too, was the first,

actually, that's not true. The first Raimi film I saw was dark man. Well, that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. In the theater,

because I was going to this comic book store called cards, comics, and collectibles in Reisterstown, Maryland. Cool. I believe it's still there. And I was I was always going in there and was too shy to talk to anybody. But I would just go in and kind of soak up the vibe. And they had a poster for Darkman.

And I thought that's the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. And I still think that and uh got my parents to allow me to go see this film and it was the that was the first ramey film i ever saw and i and i knew that it was made by someone great and and made in a way that was unique for those sorts of movies yeah that's a movie where like if you see that poster as a kid you go oh this looks cool and if you watch that movie you go why is this different from other movies right right yeah exactly and it was one of the first things where i was like oh this is what it feels like to have a directorial stamp on something or an off like

an authorial take on something i didn't i wasn't thinking in terms of the word auteur but like that is what i was thinking uh that is what i was finally becoming uh hip to at that point and then this guy did a play with introduced me to evil dead 2 which was the greatest movie i'd ever seen at that point in my life and it just spoke to where I was at that time in my life and all the things that I thought were hilarious and the things that I, you know, and the gore felt, you know, transgressive, but also funny. And then I was working at Blockbuster. I was assistant manager.

Also cool. Blockbuster video, Owings Mills. This is Brendan speaking. Can i help you yep and i had access to this massive you know bible this this this vhs bible that we had uh at blockbuster no imdb or anything at this point so i would just go through it looking for actors that i loved and at that point point, Bruce Campbell was, you know, top of the list. And I saw Crime Wave and I cross referenced it, realized that it was directed by Sam Raimi. And just like you're saying, I was I couldn't believe that no one had brought that up. Yeah.

Everyone talks about Evil Dead 2 and Evil Dead and even Darkman but no one had ever mentioned crime so I go on to the computer base the the database at Blockbuster not available of course right but you know back then you could like there was always like a copy that was just available if you wanted to back order it for like you know 90 90 bucks 100 bucks it felt like more money than even existed in the world at that point and anyway i ordered it through uh through the offices of blockbuster video and paid for it myself that's how that's how intent you were on seeing crime wave yeah i mean i was just such a i was uh yeah i was an obsessive you know i also like it reminded me thinking about watching crime wave and then just thinking about

talking about it i was reminded i went so deep down i went into all of like the ramey um collaborators the becker josh becker who did this thing called Lunatics, a love story with Ted Raimi. And because Bruce Campbell's in that and this thing called Sundown, the vampire in retreat. I don't know if you've seen this movie. No, it was directed by Anthony Hickox, who did the waxwork movies. Oh, which Campbell is also in. I'm looking. Sorry.

I mean, Lunatics, a love story. I'm seeing Ted Raimi is the star. The star. A tinfoil suit on the poster. Yeah. Okay, this is cool. It's similar to Crime Wave in the sort of like, you know, like nebbishy, dorky guy

trying to get the girl. That old chestnut. But Sundown was the one where I was just like, oh God, nobody knows about this movie and it's got all the coolest people in the world in it i mean caridin is in it david caridin is in it and bruce campbell plays van helsing oh here it is yeah yeah damn these these video covers are really fun i had them all on my shelf and i watched them repeatedly m emmett walsh playing a character called mort bisbee that's pretty good that's when i started to really like make those

connections you know between you know the the cinematic universe of ramey and the coens you know overlapping so much you know um with the people they used and the character names. And, you know, this movie starts off at the Hudsucker prison and you just start to see that. And then over the years, when then you're getting into you being me is getting into the Coen brothers. And I'm picking up on all of these references that i don't think anybody else is noticing so it makes me feel very special but also makes me feel very protective of these things i wasn't one of the ones who wanted to share them with everybody i wanted to like keep them did you ever see i just love this title thou shalt not kill dot dot dot except yes except yes uh which is another josh be Written with Bruce Campbell

And Scott Spiegel of course who wrote Evil Dead 2 And starring Sam and Ted Raimi Sam Raimi plays a cult leader In this movie Yeah that one I could not find a copy of Well according To Wikipedia

Some of the fans of the film hail it as one of the great Works in American filmography. Wow. No, no, nothing cited there. But that's crazy. This what you're describing to when you say like, oh, I didn't really want to share it. But right. Let's like before the Internet, it's just some person at a video store being like, hey, check this out, right? Like, you know, that's the only... Here, I'm going to make this picture of Sam Raimi

as a Charles Manson figure, my background one second. Right, it was that thing where, like, record stores, video stores, and comic book stores had to function as an analog version of the internet, right? Where you heard about things from people, where people downloaded trivia into your brain, and where you could maybe exchange or acquire these things. That is a look.

We're looking at Sam Raimi in Thou Shalt Not Kill. This is the top tri- Except, sorry. I was just taking a long pause. The top trivia fact on Thou Shalt Not Kill, except, is the movie was mostly shot in the garage and on the lawn of the house where bruce campbell grew up gotta go back home and that's the other thing i used to do like we my friends and i when if we had a snow day i mean everyone did this but we would you know

make these camcorder films and i would replicate entire sequences from Sam Raimi films with the camcorder and with like one or two friends. I mean, the only friends I had guys, one or two. I also I don't I don't want to embarrass you, Brandon, but I feel like I just need to state this up front because this is an audio medium. OK, you're an incredibly handsome tall well-built and charming man wow and when you just put it out there you hate it when people say this but but when you were telling me how like important and impactful campbell and the ramey films were for you growing up i was like that makes a ton of sense. And even when I said to David, David went like, oh, that makes a ton of sense.

Because you do just sort of have that Bruce Campbell spirit where it's like, you genuinely are just such a dork for these things, despite the fact that perhaps from outside perception, you do not seem like the person who would be that kind of a dork for these things. And you're just very passionate and collaborative and knowledgeable about all of this. I like on the tick, you played a very Bruce Campbell-y part. And you seem to really relish that.

And when I hear you tell me about frustrations you have in your acting career, they are often you getting handed sort of like generic dude roles. career, they are often you getting handed sort of like generic dude roles. Yeah. When people want you to play like the nice guy version of the thing rather than the smug asshole version of the thing. Yeah. Or the thing with any sense of or with the thing that has any unique spin on it whatsoever, you know?

Right. Doesn't necessarily have to be smug, but just something other than, you know, nice and well lit. Right, right. I feel that thing shared between you and Bruce Campbell of just the like, I want to use the body I'm in in a subversive way rather than just get plugged into a frame. I always found when I was watching, because I would, you know, I would watch any film if I knew Bruce Campbell had even the smallest part.

I mean, it's fair to say I had a massive crush on the guy. And I would get annoyed when they cast him as just the generic good-looking guy who just shows up for like five lines and then walks away. You know, and they didn't let him.

You could see also when they're telling him to turn it down, when they're telling him to bury that natural thing he has. Not just the cockiness, not just the humor, but just the I mean, like he's just he's a he's a collaborator and he could bring so much to anything, I think. Absolutely.

It's not to front load here, but it's one of the wildest things like digging into the history of this movie was they wrote this as a vehicle for him they wanted him to play the reed bernie part they made him screen test because for the first time they're working with like other producers and financiers and we'll dig into the deeper version of all this but um all the money people said like bruce campbell cannot be the lead of this movie they take the role of ronal the heel, which was smaller and expand it so that his character runs throughout the entire length of the movie specifically so that not only he could have a big enough role in the film,

but also they were like, we need to convince them to pay Bruce to be here for run of production because they did not understand. Like he is the third collaborator, right? He's, he's alchemical here, right? But also he's going third collaborator. Right, he's alchemical here. Right, but also he's going to produce shit,

he's going to shoot second unit, he's going to be, like, talent coordinator, he's going to do all this fucking shit. He's editing on the fly, too, I think. Right, and they wouldn't pay to let him work or stay there during post-production. They were like, the movie's done. He's an actor, he's wrapped. You don't need him anymore.

And it was like a big fight. It's weird that they did not gravitate to Bruce Campbell, who is handsome and charming. And I do not say that to, I mean, no offense to Reed Burney, who obviously has gone on to have a great career

and gave one of the most moving theater performances I ever saw in Circle Mirror Transformation. And obviously he was, you know, he's a working actor. He's doing great. great career and gave one of the most moving theater performances i ever saw in circle mirror transformation and obviously he was you know he's a he's a working actor he's doing great but but why did they then like bring in this basically unknown guy and go like well this is the guy like that's what i don't really understand i i feel i feel the same way i'm i'm always surprised when i read that they they didn't want campbell. Maybe they just found maybe he couldn't be the loser. Maybe they felt like he couldn't be the loser.

It's insane. Creatively, that's the only version of that decision that makes sense to me. But there is the thing, Connor Ratliff, friend of the show and his Dead Eyes podcast, often talks about when he's talking to people about like theories on why he got fired from Band of Brothers, that that part of it was like casting made this decision without Tom Hanks, the director of the episode. And when the director comes in, maybe they want to exert their control. Right. Or they think there's something wrong. Right. And they're like, well, this can be the fix or what? I don't know. But not even that, David. I mean, that's that's a fair enough thing. But I also think sometimes

when people get involved at that kind of level and they're like, I need to think that I'm more valuable than just being the person who writes the check. I have to put my foot down somewhere or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And on paper, you go if this guy is saying, look, here's my friend who I made home movies with in our backyards and he's my leading man. You go like red alert, red alert, red alert, have to hire a real actor. But then if you make this guy do a screen test and he's Bruce Campbell and he looks like this and he's this good and this funny, I cannot imagine him going like, well, this guy's unusable. He is fundamentally not a leading man. I think you're right. And they also, it's the, it's the control thing

too. Reed Burney, they can pluck out of, I assume obscurity at this point and he will be grateful theater, right? Well, probably first respect to theater acting. Yeah, for sure. But leading role in a, in a, in a big budget film they, and then he will be just grateful and he'll he'll do the job he'll be a jobber but campbell will be collaborating with and as the producers will be seeing it conspiring with right ramey yes yes yeah i mean that that makes a lot of sense that you don't want the whatever the chickens running the hen house or what right i don't know you know. You know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially cause it's just like evil dead is such an amazing calling card movie.

You're in this catch 22 where like, if you're the people writing the checks for this movie, you go, holy shit, these guys did what on what budget they pulled that off. That's impressive. They know what they're doing, but simultaneously you're probably scared where you're like,

they did that all on their own. There was no oversight. I'm not going to be able to control them at all. If you let all three of them retain their key creative positions, then we're not going to be able to get a word in edgewise.

Versus if you force a different leading man in there, how much can we sort of like elbow out Bruce Campbell? Well, we'll talk about the strange production of this film in a sec. But I do just want to get on the record. Ben Hosley, our producer's opinion of this film. Ten stars?

Because when I was watching it, I did have that. It did occur to me. I was like, I think Ben will appreciate the energy of this film if nothing else and i log on this morning or log on this afternoon and ben uh ben ben proved me right i give it 10 bonks like clanks and a couple of uh for good measures a couple has right that that makes sense yes it's just it's about crime uh as as you pointed out griffin there's a wave ben there's a way ben loves water and uh you know it's just a big old loony tune of a movie whether you know whether or not sam was happy with the end result it's uh it's just jumping from here to movie whether you know whether or not sam ramey was happy with the end result it's uh

it's just jumping from here to there like you know you do you know the whole time like it never lets up yeah see david i mean you you recently logged this on letterbox as two and a half stars and your review was not the most coherent movie i've ever seen not the most now i agree with that but i probably give it three stars yeah maybe i'm being a little rude it's not the most now i agree with that but i probably give it three stars yeah maybe i'm being a little rude it's not the most incoherent movie i've ever seen it's not it's not it's absolutely not and i have to say it's in the middle of incoherence and coherence no i agree with you but but it is just like it i i am fascinated it's hard to even imagine what the sort of undisturbed version of this movie would look like, right? Like you read about, there were multiple steps in this.

The production itself was like a nightmare. Reading the anecdotes about the production of this movie, which we will get into, I'm like, this sounds as intense as like the Hurt Locker. Like the most extreme apocalypse now, like the most chaotic shoots of all time. Right. Like they're in the jungle somewhere, except they're not. They're like in Detroit or whatever. Right. You're like, how did this go this wrong? But then, you know, control is wrestled away during post-production.

They force reshoots, edits. They make him hire a new, uh, um, composer, all these sorts of things. But it, it, it, it, it,

it, it, it, Ramey makes his movies so deliberately that it's not like you can easily recut them and take the Ramey DNA out of them. Right? So you don't watch this movie. It doesn't feel like other movies we've covered before that were sort of

pulled away from directors where you're like, it's just lost in here. I don't know what it is. And the energy of this thing is just so fucking infectious. I am now just looking at my Letterboxd review, which you reminded me of, and the comments are very

indicative, I guess, of how polarizing Crime Wave is. Like, it's wacky, but not in a fun way. I think it's wacky in a fun way. couldn't finish it david please reconsider 1.5 stars too many king or really two stars too little it's not good and i hope the writers never work again i think that's a joke about the coen brothers yeah uh it's extremely bad i was kind of blown away by this movie you know just just uh love and hate doing battle. This movie provokes a reaction if nothing else.

I feel that within me, I feel those two sides at war within me. When I watched this movie, I was reminded of how I felt when I watched it as a kid because there's so much of it that I love. So many

shots that work, so many set pieces that are just oversized, shouldn't work, and yet kind of do. Even when she's dangling out the window and the flower pot is falling, and then he catches the pot, and then the soil comes out. Little bits like

that, which are very Coen Brothers-y too. For me, the big thing that i hated when i was watching this as a kid was the jokes that don't work you know the the the big broad slapsticky three stooges stuff that that doesn't work that's i get mad at that because this movie could have been perfect yeah this movie could have been perfect and for me the biggest thing i think if i think this movie for you david goes from a two and a half well i'm not gonna i'm not gonna presume to speak for you no for me this movie would go to a to a five five boinks on the head yeah if

if you if you take that the fucking adr of what's his name crush what's uh yeah the paul l smith character the paul smith if you if you if you take that adr out with whoever there's a wrestler or something that they yes yeah the adr is tough it's it's it's not the most seamless yeah it's egregious too like it's in all these places where they clearly are just like adding it in post where he's adding like wow what do you think you're doing here and there and oh i'll show you here and there it's like okay guys just let it breathe for one second and that is where you start to that's where i think i can see the the hand prints of the studio and these producers you know just trying to fill every single fucking hole well it was the whole wraparound a mandated reshoot?

The electric chair? I was reading they made them reshoot bookends. Oh, I don't know. Because the movie was incomprehensible to people. Or at least they thought it was. That makes sense. I mean, it is pretty incomprehensible to people.

And it's pretty expository with those bookends but but i agree with you brendan that at moments i'm watching this movie and thinking wait is this my favorite movie of all time is this the most perfect movie i've ever seen and then the next scene will happen and i'll like drift a little bit right right it's sort of weird how you can zone out watching a very very manic movie because right sometimes you're like this is such a cleverly executed sequence this is so visually interesting and then other times you're kind of like what's i lost it what's going on where are we like who is this and all three evil

dead movies are movies where things just stack on top of each other in this way right where it's like instead of taking an hour for the crazy shit to happen and it happens for 20 minutes and then there's a resolution, it's like, what if the shit happens for 70 out of 85 minutes? But those movies have the benefit of being kind of focused

in the stories they're telling. Army of Darkness, I guess a little bit less so. And then I think, because this and Hudsucker are sort of written around the same time. They're written in concert with each other. And it's only when the Coens are coming off of Barton Fink and have that success that they're able to get Hudsucker made. So who knows what work is done further on the script between then and now and probably a lot of work done from the lessons they learned on working crime wave. But like Hudsucker,

which I love and I think is a masterpiece is a movie where they figure out the emotional spine of the thing. And it's weird because when that movie came out, all the reviews are like the Coen brothers are so cynical. They think all these characters are fucking idiots. The movie is so mean spirited. And I think that movie is like incredibly sincere and earnest and I

think they have a lot of love for this big like galoof at the center whereas this movie you kind of feel like all three of them are like what if we make a movie where

everyone's an idiot and that's funny like it is funny but I do think they realized a decade later like it helps if you have a couple characters at the center that you

can actually kind of care about yeah you want to root for something i guess or if you're gonna make a real movie and crime wave feels like like something that escaped from a film canister like to to to paraphrase bruce campbell right like it's like so you know some guy was delivering a bunch of movies to a theater and then there there's one case that's sort of clattering around, and the guy's like, what's that one? And he's like, oh, no, you wouldn't want to deal with that one.

No, no, no, no. I was just hauling that off to the dump. And the guy's like, oh, no, come on! He knocks it over, and then the film escapes. Black smoke seeps out. Yeah. Okay, let me give you some context About Crime Wave

Sam Raimi makes the Evil Dead famously long Torturous shoot no money Back in Tennessee he goes to Michigan And then he goes to New York Looking for post production And Edna Paul edits that movie And she's got a young assistant Named Joel Cohn

And Joel is watching evil dead get assembled and he's like this guy is talented like that's that's you know they've got the and these two midwestern boys bond over this right joel joel sort of immediately recognizes like this is real shit like he's watching this footage he bonds with them he and and she says to Rami you should read the scripts that the Coen brothers write and Rami is like there's two of them they're like yeah the second one works

as a statistical accountant at Macy's yep and Rami's reaction is like look I think Joel's a nice guy I'm not gonna read these fucking scripts that sounds like a disaster right he's he's like oh god this is gonna be embarrassing and then he reads i think blood simple yeah correct which i think is what they had written with the thinking of like that'll be our calling card movie it's

small right you know like and he's like oh shit this is you know these guys know how to write scripts that's the quote he's like this is like a hitchcock level script like this is like a Hitchcock level script Like this is an actual perfect screenplay Yeah There's not much detail That JJ could find about the writing of Crime Wave Because they hate talking about it They don't want to talk about it It is obviously

They're working on Hudsucker at the same time At least some early version of Hudsucker And obviously they use the word Hudsucker In Crime Wave right Like it's sort of you know it's on their minds and it was called uh relentless then it was called the xyz murders no one could ever come up come up with a good title for this movie crime wave is not a good title but it's fine like it's yeah it's kind of the best of the options they had i agree and yet

it was forced on them right yeah xyz murders i read it was that one of the producers said you'll have an easier time selling this movie if there's an x or murder in the title like that always tracks really well and they were like we can put both in the title so they get money from embassy pictures classic sort of low budget you know they did scanners they did escape from new york they did the fog you know, they did Scanners. They did Escape from New York. They did The Fog. You know, they give them they give them a little money basically off the back of Evil Dead

and Norman Lear. Wait, Norman Lear? Yeah, this is what's wild, David. So I think he's the one who suggested Crime Wave as the title. Right. Robert Remy was the head of Avco Embassy. He sells it to Norman Lear. He goes to take over. He becomes the head of Avco Embassy. He sells it to Norman Lear.

He goes to take over. He becomes the head of production at Universal, I think, and is the guy who, like, greenlights E.T. and shit. And Norman Lear buys Avco Embassy for $20 million, chops the Avco off the top of the name.

His two big things are kind of getting Rob Reiner's career off the ground in that he supports This is Spinal Tap and Princess Bride. And then within four years, the company is sold to Coca-Cola and folded into bigger Sony.

So there's this four-year run where Norman Lear's in charge. He makes two totemic Rob Reiner movies and this is one of the weird other experiments in that time. This is also why Louise Lasser is in it, I think. Because of Norman Lear. Because he produced Mary Hartman. Right.

Broken Hearts and Noses. That's another suggested title. Terrible title. Crime Wave is finally decided upon. And as we said bruce campbell um was it was intended to be the star and embassy pictures would not bite reed bernie he's good i like reed bernie yeah pro reed bernie he makes sense for this movie yeah i always like him and he is good in this and you you do wonder if Bruce is a little too cool to play the guy. I mean, I obviously think he would have done it well.

But Reed Burney is like so squirrely in this. And Bruce, you would have had the added level in a movie that's already really manic of a guy with matinee idol looks pretending to play a nerd. Right. I will tell you that Cherie J. Wilson who plays Nancy in this movie, this is her first movie. She'd actually been cut out of Tootsie, but my thing that I like is when she was

cast, she told Sam Raimi, I don't really like horror movies. I haven't seen your horror movie. And he was like, don't watch it. It's going to freak you out. I don't want you to dislike me, basically. You'll quit the movie. Yeah, exactly.

I don't want you to think less of me. And she, wow, she went on to do 200 episodes, basically, of Walker, Texas Ranger. Yeah, and Dallas as well. She was on Dallas as well, right? But like, that's, yeah, damn. She was a lead on Walker Texas Ranger That's you know That's money in the bank

That's money Louise Lasser obviously specifically wanted to work with Sam Raimi She loved Evil Dead She had worked with Lear and Mary Hartman And she is great in this movie I think She is so much fun I don't know What do you guys think she is she have you guys seen this movie blood rage no i don't think there's a movie that she did i think

around this time maybe a couple years earlier about a pair of twins one of whom is a serial killer and the other is not and uh she's the mom. And it's basically the same performance. She looks exactly the same. Her makeup is the same. Her wardrobe is the same. And she has a ton of scenes just to herself on the phone. I highly recommend people watch Blood Rage because it's a really good slasher film. But also it has these long scenes of Louise Lasser just calling the cops. And I swear these scenes are like eight minutes long with her on the phone, having a meltdown. There's no cutaway. And it's just, it's crazy. It's batshit crazy stuff. And I don't know what, apparently she was... Apparently she had some addiction issues,

according to Bruce Campbell. She spent a long, wild life, Louise Lasser. And a lot of the thing with her... Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was a... Norman Lear doing a satire of soap operas that ran at the same schedule as soap operas. So it was 325 episodes. They did five episodes a week it was this

incredibly ambitious thing and it was sort of an american housewife having like a mental breakdown in the style of a soap opera and then she hosted snl right very famous snl story right right and her monologue was her having like a mary hartman mary hartman-esque breakdown right and the cast having to coax her out of the dressing room and whatever and there are all these questions as to whether like because she was apparently like the first person banned from coming back to the show right supposedly it was like it's a bit but also they were like but she was actually that difficult right and michael o'donohue a famously chill person called her clinically berserk right uh and whatever but then she later said like chevy chase sucked which also seems true look

the whole thing is everyone was doing four billion pounds of cocaine a second and they were all probably the most insufferable people in the world as much as every as much as every snl oral history is like man we were inventing comedy It was the comedy lab back there. I'm like, you guys were all just out of your minds. Absolutely. No, I think just I mean, because even to the blood rage point, like Louise Lasseter is fascinating because she was someone who was so good at playing women on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

And then some of the people who work with her, like she was impossible. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown the entire time. Yeah. And they just have to point the camera at her And they get that and then they turn it off And she's still that But like an incredibly effective performer Oh great

I mean the scene with the You know when she's running down the hallway The doors You know in Crime Wave Am I skipping ahead? No that's kind of the most perverse sequence You can't skip ahead in Crime Wave? Yeah, yes. Am I skipping ahead? No, that's kind of the most perverse sequence of the movie. You can't skip ahead in Crime Wave. There's not like a narrative thread

that we're picking up and dropping. Right, right, that's true. So the doors, the door ballet, like I don't know who else commits as heavily to that as Louise Lasser, or really the whole thing in the apartment when Crush is chasing her around um apparently according to bruce campbell she applied her own makeup this is the whole thing right she fired her makeup person and said she didn't know what

she was doing i know how to do my own makeup and showed up with like a version of what we see in this movie but 40 more more extreme right and part of their job every day was to like let her do her own makeup and then take it down but i think the amount of like eyeshadow and lipstick and rouge on her face was not part of raimi's design that was a compromise but if you see blood rage you'll see that it's the same thing yes it's and in fact i don't think anyone took it down the 40 i think they uh they just they added more obviously she's a real name at this point so i get that she's the biggest name they have right you would tolerate more uh unusual behavior from her but it is again funny where

they're like we're not putting up with this bruce campbell who does lots of work and helps out on the set you can't cast him we we see through your lies anyway here's louise lasser don't talk to her like don't don't look her in the eyes right bruce campbell's like carrying around apple boxes and they're like this fucking guy trying to disrupt our production gotta get you a cup of coffee? Get the fuck out of here, asshole. Fucking asshole, you bottleneck. There's this Louise Lasser quote here that's very nice. I mean, you were sort of alluding to this, David, but she said the appeal to me was not in the role. The appeal was that it was so clear to me that it was a director's picture.

I was willing to put myself in his hands. I like to be around people like that and then seem to only be a hassle and a nightmare for them after that. But you're talking about how hard she committed to like that doorway sequence, which is the type of Raimi thing that must be so impossibly complicated to shoot that it is so wearing on an actor.

And to her credit, she does fucking go for it so goddamn hard. Yes, she does, which is good, which is right. Which is, right, exactly. Like, that is the upside. You're getting someone who has genuine chaotic energy on screen and that works for this film very, very well. Brian James, another, who plays Arthur,

another erratic person. Bruce Campbell said that he tore his hotel room to shreds and said that the ghost of his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend was in the light fixtures. I love this story so much. It's not even a story. I love that sentence so much. I don't know anything beyond it. But the implication.

Ghost of my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend was in the light fixtures. I love the implication is that maybe he killed his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. This is OK. There's two. Is it one, right, he's haunted by something, or two, is he having sex with his girlfriend in his hotel room, and maybe a light turns on or off,

and he's like, it's your ex-boyfriend. Oh, yes. I'm throwing this lamp out the window. That's what I view. I view it almost as like he's afraid of the competition, that it's not like I murdered this guy and now he's coming back for me. It's like, fuck, if he's back in ghost form, I might not stand a chance. Well, I tell you, I guess maybe the reason I felt it was the former was because of it's Brian James.

Oh, sure. Sure. Sure. The guy who like haunted me as a kid. Every time I would look at a VHS tape cover in the video store that had him on it i would just be like no i'm not going anywhere near that movie right he's he's he's a guy you hire for just immediate physical intensity i think a lot of people probably know him best from blade runner right uh-huh 48 hours great in 48 hours great in um the fifth element great a lot of stuff red yeah yeah didn't wasn't he in shocker the guy who gets electrocuted but then comes back to life is that a west craven film that is a west craven film it's not brian james though who is it he's in future shock yeah it's something about shock electricity i'm getting confused yeah

it's it's michael murphy who's in shock right but michael murphy he's not right mitch pelegi is the is the man who has been he is the he is the shocky right michael murphy is like the cop or whatever yeah uh he's a cabin boy i mean he had a very very odd career and was a very intense frightening man and then and then paul. Smith, there's like I am not seeing specifics on it. And I dug a little deeper, but they said like part of why they redubbed all of his dialogue was because he was, quote, not the most collaborative, that they had a very hard time getting stuff out of him. Paul L. Smith at this point is probably best known for playing Bluto in Popeye, which is incredibly funny because the style of the dubbing in this movie

feels like something out of a Popeye cartoon. A hundred percent. He can only be dubbed. Right, where Bluto would just like have his teeth gritted at all times in the old cartoons. His lips would never move and then words would just come out. That felt very disconnected from his body.

I'll bet he wouldn't do the cartoon voices. Brian James commits to the cartoon voices. Brian James commits to the cartoon voice. Yes. And I bet Raimi, this is just conjecture, but I bet Raimi wanted him to do a similarly goofy voice

and he wouldn't do it. He did a tough guy voice or whatever. He's a tough guy? Right, yeah. But then they dubbed him with a tough guy voice, so maybe I'm crazy.

But they dubbed him with a tough guy doing a cartoon voice. Like, when I heard his voice, I was like, who did they get to do this was it like you know was this an early tom kenny job was this like you imagine they got a cartoon guy to do the voiceover and they're like no they hired a professional wrestler to do a silly voice francis mcdormand plays a silent nun in this movie along with bridget hoffman and's, yeah, that's about it.

Is there, you know, the Coen brothers are the photographers in the execution. Yes. So the execution, I think it's called. Yes. Yes.

Um, Ted Raimi pops up, obviously Paul L. Smith. It is funny. He's one of those guys where you're like, well, of course he played Bluto.

They probably saw him on the street and they were like, here he is Bluto in real life. Uh, he's also beast Rabban in Dune he's actually really good in in david lynch's dune but but the other thing with him do you know this wild thing about his i'm pulling this up because i want to get the specifics right so it was terrence hill and bud sp Spencer were like the big Italian comedy duo in the 70s. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Terrence Hill from Superfuzz. Yes.

And there was a guy named Antonio Cantafora who went by Michael Kobe, who was a Terrence Hill lookalike. who was a Terrence Hill lookalike. And he cast Paul L. Smith, who was from Massachusetts, to be like his burly cohort. And they essentially did like rip-off buddy movies trying to trick the audience into thinking they were seeing

Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer movies. Like he built this odd career in the 70s, sort of running concurrent with the end of the Spaghetti Western shit where he did like 10 Italian buddy comedies and then Midnight Express and then he becomes Bluto, The In-Laws. Like then he becomes an American comedy guy weirdly.

That's interesting because Superfuzz is how I know Terrence Hill and this movie has real Superfuzz vibes. If you've ever seen it starts with an elect starts with a guy in an electric chair um but if that's the case it's funny because why why am i saying this oh ernest borg nine is the um is the is the second banana in super fuzz who he could also have been you know doubling for at some point Ernest Borgnine would fit right in in Crime Wave

by the way there was some burly bearded Italian guy who Paul Smith became the poor man's option of for like eight years with misleading posters that would make people think they were seeing that guy's beard so a production starts

in 1983 Halloween 1983 ends in January 1984. They shot it in Detroit. Sam Raimi thought like this is perfect. You know, it's got kind of an out of time feel. You can, you know, shoot in these like old Motor City, you know, vintage hotels. Right. Like that have kind of like a throwback.

He cry me feel, I guess. Right. You know, just the kind of place where you'd imagine like a throwback-y, crime-y feel, I guess, right? You know, just the kind of place where you'd imagine like a bellhop is getting a drink and then a mobster shows up or whatever, you know, all that shit. And what I guess everyone just says

this movie was an absolute nightmare to make. It's partly that they shot it all at night, obviously, and I think it was freezing cold. Like Detroit in the winter is not exactly like summery um but i don't know like it just seems like as much as the evil dead was also a nightmare to make everyone on the evil dead was like in the club right like everyone's like we're doing this together it's collaborative blood sweat, and tears. And this seems like Sam Raimi being confronted with a real movie set

and having to adjust to all that weird ego stuff. Well, there's a sentence in the notes that JJ put together of like, he got them to approve a budget of $2.5 million. But the thing that he didn't factor in

when he budgeted it was like union costs and like five other things that he had skirted on the evil dead because he was making a small movie with his friends and all the money just went on screen. So immediately they realized, like, we have not given ourselves the budget necessary for this film. Everything immediately costs like 30 percent more than they thought it would. And then on top of that, Raimi could not rein in his ambition. So when things were difficult and they were running over schedule, he refused to compromise and simplify his ideas.

This is unattributed from the Iron to be trivia, which is notoriously trustworthy. But I just want to read this because this feels like there are a lot of anecdotes like this about the making of the film. The crew spent a week filming on a Detroit street after dark directly under a nursing home with huge wind machines blowing for long hours. One evening, a glass bottle with a note in it crashed to the ground from an upper floor. The note inside read, the noise is keeping me awake all night long and I'm getting sick. I am dying because of you oh no damn every story feels like that where they're like they want to film this thing in

the water but the water had frozen over with ice so they're using dynamite to blow up the water and you're like how is that a story about the making of the movie and not a thing that happens in the movie that's sick who yeah also like what's that conversation where it's like fuck what do we do it's frozen over and one guy's like i'll call my dynamite guy like is that a thing yeah uh okay so uh let's see um wait yeah the cinematographer is Robert Primes, who had just worked with Francis Ford Coppola on Rumble Fish, but he was like second unit on that.

So whatever. But he and Rami seem to vibe. But I guess Rami would make demands such as, I want to zoom into this guy's mouth and see a tongue and two teeth. And then the actor will say the line. And Primes would be like, what are you talking about? How the fuck am I supposed to do that? You know what I mean?

It's like that Sam Raimi thing of like, he, he knows what he wants in his head. And then he's, you know, trying to explain it to crew members. And they're like, I've never done anything like that before.

Like, which God bless him. Like, you know, it's good. Like, I love that Sam Raimi does this shit,

but it must have been crazy. There's this Prime quote I like here, Prime's quote. He said, I couldn't understand why would you do this? Why would you zoom

into somebody's mouth? I'm a little older now, and I understand it's incredibly entertaining. It's an exaggeration. It's a different style. It doesn't have to allude to the classical tradition of filmmakers. It's his worldviewation. It's a different style. It doesn't have to allude to the classical tradition

of filmmakers. It's his worldview. He also said, like, Sam would read the script and he'd go, and was, like, acting it out. The big impression I got was a comic book.

It didn't deal with the subtleties of human consciousness. It didn't deal with indecision and gray tones. It was almost like, this was a bad guy and he's really, really bad. It almost seemed like

caricatures of two-dimensional people caricatures of two-dimensional people is a really good way describe the energy of this movie right he takes uh something like a one one line description of a character and he's like but let's strip that down like Like, let's... Right, right, right. And also, at the same time, amp that up. You know, Sam Raimi, he's ambitious. He works really, really hard. A lot of people say it was a little exhausting. He was maybe moving too slowly for the studio's comfort. He was maybe not going to hit his budget target or whatever.

I am, you know, like, it's one of those things where when you hear about it, I'm like, I imagine making this movie, I would be pissed off. And then of course this happens with movies where you read these stories and you're like, yeah, but the final product, holy shit. Like, you know, you read about freaking Mad Max Fury Road and you're like, but it ended

up being worth it, right? Like that's something to be proud of for the rest of your life. And then instead when it's Crime Wave and no one sees it and it becomes like the forgotten Sam Raimi movie, I'm sure that your life. Yes. And then instead, when it's Crime Wave and no one sees it and it becomes like the forgotten Sam Raimi movie, I'm sure that's frustrating. Yeah, when it was that difficult to make and it was sort of taken away from you

and most people dislike it. It's like, the Coens, I feel like, just don't talk about it, period. And Raimi, whenever he's asked about it, will offer like a one-sentence quote, which is just like, just a miserable, miserable episode of my life. Will just like say one thing like that. Part of me thinks that that's because

for the rate for the Coen brothers in particular, that they are, it's so clearly like the nascent stage of their bag of tricks and not that they're, it's a limited bag, but it's, it's so clearly in the formative stages. And I think that's embarrassing for them. And they don't, you know, because there's like, this movie feels like Fargo. This movie feels like Hudsucker Proxy, even a little No Country for Old Men. It does, right? So they don't want people to go back and see how, like, unformed they were at that point.

Same with Raimi, probably, too. But for, you know, all the other reasons. But he's also making this after Evil Dead. It's like you've nailed this kind of once already. But not with this budget. I mean, the money, like you're saying, the budget of this movie kind of ruined it. I mean, doomed it, I would say.

Absolutely. And that's why, like, they had all control wrestled from them, because it was like this movie is a mess and the money people are on set and they're going like, Sam, we've watched you do 30 takes of this thing with the fan. Why aren't you moving on? It's freezing. It's four o'clock in the morning. And he'd be like, I don't have it yet. And there was just like he just speaks very purely about like, I have a lot of respect for this.

I treat my crew with respect, but we're like paying respect to the tradition of this thing and we have to get it right. I know what it is in my mind's eye. Can I read this? Um, prime's quote here about the car. Did you see this one,

David? Yeah, that was the quote we should read. I think, yes, this is, this is the best summation of what it's like to work with young Sam Raimi. Yes.

So Robert Primes, the DP, says, My little joke I used to make about this is that to Sam Raimi, when the script says the car pulls off the road, that actually means that the car is in the right-hand lane of a busy freeway when suddenly the driver jerks the wheel left, goes into traffic, causing cars to spin out and tractor trailers to jackknife. The car then jumps the divider turning into oncoming traffic which swerves around and then the car pulls off

the road six lanes over on the other side that's what the car pulls off the road means to sam ray me and he never would you agree griffin he never loses that except i mean we'll talk about it in a while like a simple plan is kind of famous for the studio basically had someone on set being like make sure he doesn't fucking move the camera like a crazy person but it like takes that long for and I think by the time he's making that movie he's more mature

and he understands like yeah I don't need the camera to go into anyone's mouth he's also talked about on that movie that he was like I know I have this reputation I want to challenge myself to move the camera as little as possible. Yeah. But like, by and large, that is the Sam Raimi thing where he's like, why should one thing happen when eight things could happen really quickly?

And it would like, you know, it'll be this like little overload of joy for the viewer. And I like it. I was never happy when I was a teenage Sam Ra raimi fan until i saw the uh you know the zoom the the the zoom in pull back that's when you know right i needed it i needed it at least once for a movie and i appreciate him for doing it as much as he did look the week we're recording this there has been a lot of twitter piling on a real underdog movie, a movie that has not gotten a fair shake called Spider-Man No Way Home. This movie has been embarrassed so roundly.

It was snubbed by the Oscars. No one's giving it any respect. Snubbed, you say? Snubbed. Snubbed. Snubbed. Snubbed. Snubbed.

Do they not understand? It's so rude of them to not nominate it because people like that movie. But the last week or two, there's been a lot of people because there was a video that went out breaking down the effects of the movie and sort of like revealing how hermetically that movie was constructed and all this shit and saying like, why does this look so

bad? Why does a movie this expensive look so bad? And I don't mean to add onto this pileup, but when this movie was coming out, the director did interviews where he said, like, because we're bringing Molina and Defoe in,

we were like, we need to have a Raimi cam. We had a Raimi cam. We established the language of the Raimi cam and we try to shoot certain scenes with the Raimi cam sensibility

and get into the head of, like, how Raimi would move his camera around this. And it's not even that I feel like the movie fails to emulate that style. It does not even feel like they are attempting it. And who knows if all of that ended up on the cutting room floor or it's chopped to ribbons and it's little pieces that are unrecognizable. But to that point, when you're watching a Raimi movie, like you say, Brennan, they're within the first 10 minutes will

be one of those moves where you go like, okay, it's him. Yeah, I feel at home now. Right, and kind of no one else really knows how to pull it off the same way. I have not seen that film, but in fact, I had never heard of it. It's a small little underdog film. The way you describe it,

it sounds like something I should probably check out. You know, something that may improve my soul a bit. Absolutely. David, can you read this thing about the Luma Crane? Oh, for crying out loud. Yeah, of course. I mean. Paraphrase it.

But I just think this is a very important story relative to what we're talking about right now. They wanted a Luma Crane, a classic, you know's it's sort of the crane with the counterweight right you know you guys know movies better than me you guys have been on sets um you put the camera at the top you can pan and zoom with the remote control you don't need a 200 pound person holding a camera right it's all lighter right and the studio's like no. You're playing with gadgets too much. You can't have a luma cream. They're like halfway through production at this point. They're already getting another fucking, you know,

new invented camera. No, we're not doing this. And so Sam had used that shaky cam in Evil Dead where they had like put the camera on a two by four and you have people running around with it, right? Like that's how they made all those crazy camera shots work in Evil Dead dead but it's literally like two guys running holding either side of a wooden plank with a camera like nailed to it correct and so uh with this shaky

cam we went running down a block we had someone get out of a car she started running we run after her and there was nothing that looked like it then the bad guy Paul Smith comes out and we turn around and we do 180 degree move and we loop around and we run in the other direction it's all this crazy flashy stuff that they do you know basically for no money the studio sees the dailies calls him on the

phone and says how the fuck you were told no lumicraine like they assumed like you must have slipped this by us. Who gave you a lumicraine? And they were like, we literally did that for 75 cents. It's a piece of wood. Yeah.

Right. Which is great. Like, I love that. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's the stuff in this movie that remains so infectious. I mean, I guess we should try to run through the offense.

Yeah. Give it a shot. Yeah. Brendan is the person who's seen this the most. And Ben is the person who gave this 10 bonks. Do you want to attempt to guide us? Yeah, sure. I mean, it makes perfect sense to me.

So I'm happy to walk you through it. A man is about to be executed. Oh, no. He's in the chair. He's being taken from is about to be executed. Oh, no. He's in the chair. He's being taken from his cell to the chair, and he uses this time. Does he seem, though, like that he is, you know,

sort of accepting of this? No. He's still trying to get out of it. He's having fun. He is fighting it tooth and nail. He is against this. It's not a solemn sort of John Coffey walk to the big chair. No, he claims that he is innocent. And so he's going to take this time, this walk, this drag, if you will, to the chair.

He's going to take this time to tell us his story. And we've also like intercut the very beginning of this movie, these nuns silently driving in a fury listening to the radio listening to the radio which is imminent execution yeah the the radio announcer is giving us all the particulars and i didn't look it up i don't know who this guy is and i have forgotten about it's one of the things that made me love this movie the guy dusting off the electric chair in slow motion and then grinning and presenting the chair as he comes through the door. That's just, I mean, that's just golden shit.

That's very Hudsucker, too. You know, it's just it's just like you get this old guy with this face from from from wherever it's from. There's the guy in Hudsucker who paints the names on the door and scrapes them off. Yes. Right. It's that beat. It's that beat. And it's from there's the guy in hud sucker who paints the names on the door and scrapes them off yes right it's that beat it's that beat and it's so good and it's in slow motion in in this or or he's just doing it very slowly i couldn't tell but um it's so good and just these sort of haunted character actors with like easter island head faces where you're just like, what is this guy's, what is this guy's life? And why does he seem to get so much perverse glee out of doing this horrible

thing? Yes, they all do. I mean, they're all just hard for it. All of the, you know, the,

the, the governor wants this to happen. Everyone behind the glass wants it to happen. The Coen brothers who were taking the pictures, they, they, everyone wants this guy dead. It's like an outing though, too. You know, that's what's so fucked up is that people were just going to

executions like that yeah and doesn't even seem like it's family members who have some you know who want to see some sort of some sense of closure or justice uh they they just are you know having a nice evening no the public hates the idea of this guy and they want to see him cry. And it's funny too how public the crime wave actually was once you see it in flashback because to anyone who was witnessing it, it's very clear who was doing it. Yeah, it's not easily mistaken.

But he's seated in the chair, and he finally gets to tell his story, basically to us. They're not listening. And we find that he is tech guy. He's the guy installing the surveillance cameras for these security consultants, these guys who own a security company.

They're sort of having a Salino and Barnes moment where they're splitting up, having been partners for many years. Oh, right, because Bruce Campbell is going to turn it into... The one partner is going to sell it out from the other guy,

and Bruce Campbell, Rinaldo, is going to turn it into a burlesque house of sorts, it would seem. And the one guy here, Mr. Trend, who is the husband of Louise Lasser, is played by Edward Pressman, who also produced this movie, was like a humongous producer. He was the heir to the Pressman toy riches, like the board game and marble company. And he grew up a movie nerd. He was kind of like an

original Megan Ellis, where he was like, I'm going to use my money to make good movies. And he produced like Sisters, Badlands, Phantom of the Paradise, Das Boot, Conan the Barbarian. This is sort of coming at the end of his maybe original good run.

After this, I mean, he produces True Stories, but he also does the He-Man movie. He does some Morgan movies after this, but this is like his only real acting credit. Was he one of the um producers that campbell didn't get along with i believe so it's very bizarre it's bizarre that he has this large of a role in the movie as an actor when that's not a thing he ever did and that it was this contentious apparently he played a lonely cook in Street Fighter. That is the only other acting credit I can find.

Which he also produced like a decade after this. That must have been like his last, the last film he produced, no? No, he's still producing. Well, not still. But he did do like Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call, New Orleans, and Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps. Like he, you know, he's done movies in recent years those are both

because he produced the original movies he might have gotten grandfathered in but he produced like for the Diane Arbus movie uh Never Die Alone yeah Party Monster the Cooler he's a wild career if you dig into it uh Ben Ben he produced

the entire uh Crow franchise oh wow that's wait crow franchise you're saying the crow sure the movie the crow right and i guess there is yeah right there's a bunch of other movies just that threw me off for a second like franchise but i guess you're there's like a decent amount of like like straight to kind of video. Lots of straight to video. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I've never seen any of those. Are they good? The sequels?

Never seen them. The original is a special movie, I would say. But the others, not so much. Anyway. Crime Wave.

Yeah. So what's happening in Crime Wave? Can you guys explain? I honestly, you guys are doing a great job. I don't remember

anything about the plot of this movie and I watched it two days ago. So Bruce Campbell's trying to break up the company. He is buying the company out from the one guy selling out the other guy.

And the guy, Pressman, the guy who Pressman is playing, Mr. Trend, finds out and hires these two exterminators to kill him. Which, by the way, I love the I love the the the machine that that Brian James uses, that he has a dial that he turns for rats or men. And then later

on in the movie, heroes. Come on. That's a great bit. That's a fucking great bit. Their look is incredible. The look is incredible. Goddamn. If they had just gotten if they had just let him speak as he uses actual voice but then also the amount of sound effects every time they're on screen like there's that like extended minute it's very busy right where where brian james is waiting for the elevator chewing gum and he won't stop cracking his neck and like clicking his teeth and shit every time i think that's why it feels incomprehensible in so many ways because every time they're on screen like david said it's busy and it's busy to the point where it's like it

didn't have to be a five minute wacky walkie wookie section this could have been fucking three this could have been two and a half minutes we got it but they did not want to cut those guys. No, all the Evil Dead movies have, for how manic and how fast moving they are, they have like these moments where Raimi will allow things to breathe or reset for a moment. And this movie is like operating at this energy at all times.

And there's so much stimuli at every single moment. It's like the little ashes in Army of Darkness. It's like, it's an entire movie just populated with mini ashes. Right. And it's like the music is crazy and he's putting sound effects on it and the camera's doing crazy things and the actors are doing crazy things and the plot is dense. So these guys get hired to kill the one partner. Louise Lasser plays the wife of trend and they live across the street from the office and she witnesses them going in and uh trend goes across the street to show her that it's no big deal nothing's wrong to make sure i guess right to i don't quite understand why he

he does that so she says oh he's in dangerren goes across the street to just to allay her fears so that she doesn't call the cops. And while he's there, he sees that Odegaard is dead. Great shot cut there. Then Brian James pops up and kills him too. Now, everything you're saying makes no sense. Just FYI. As I'm saying it

i'm getting confused right i mean like again there are specific scenes that are very interesting to watch yes but right but like when you lay it out all end to end i do wonder it's like was this the plan or is this more like the the sort of the butchered thing they ended up with and at certain point they were just like i don't't know, just put it out. Like, let's stop worrying about everything flowing very logically together. I mean, I can read about post-production. It's hard to tell, because I mean, I feel like

when they do talk about it, like when Brainy talks about it and Campbell talks about it, they don't talk about it as if like we have this perfect movie and it was taken away from us they sort of talk about like the production was a nightmare we didn't totally know how to execute what

we were doing and then they took it away from us and made it worse right I think they like learn some lessons and clarity from this movie it's right but this is not a situation where they're like there is a perfect cut of that movie that exists right right okay we should talk about meeting the nerd kid dorky kid oh yes meeting the nerd kid well he's installing Installing video cameras in Trend's hallway.

Uh-huh. Because he works for Trend. And Trend gives him a big speech at the door where he basically says, you've got to get yourself a girl. It's a sort of quality of life priorities speech. Yeah. Exactly.

And then he goes downstairs. This guy, Vic, who is our hero, goes downstairs, sees a beautiful woman almost get run over by an exterminator truck. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. And saves her.

Or does he save her or just pick her up? He just picks her up. Yeah. He just picks her up He just picks her up But she's not that interested in him She's not interested And then Bruce Campbell playing the role of Rinaldo the heel

Shows up and asks her out To a date that night Jesus this is exhausting movie to summarize I mean And we're not even that far into the movie and like after this is the first four minutes yeah a bunch of murders start to happen that vick is the like you know being blamed for or whatever like also all these things happen uh everything happens on a corner everything happens caddy corner to uh the other thing you know so like the the apartment building is catty corner from the

uh security yeah from the nightclub and from the security office uh from the um that so everything is taking place in this one not even a block radius just like one corner or three you know three corner intersection basically and that is very confusing that is never very well established geographically no which also it's the camera's moving around so fucking yeah there is no consistent there's no continuity no one is there for all the money they they definitely i don't think had a script supervisor who was paying much attention yeah because there's like some moment where she drops a pot from the window but then the way that the camera moves it's like just so confusing and like it's like she was across the street and now she's on this side of the street yeah yeah there's some stuff like that

yeah you don't realize that he's actually directly below her window at that time it seems like he's yeah across the street exactly yeah it's. Yeah. It's a fucking mess. It's a fucking mess. It's kind of a mess. I mean, I think we could even just say, like, they basically, though, go on some kind of date, or, like, we should just talk about the nightclub section, maybe, before we get to the hijinks.

This is where my wife goes, oh, the mask. She's like, you know, because... Oh, sure. It's really interesting. That's a good call. So much like the mask Yeah And especially with Bruce Campbell

And they're doing that you know that Character Yeah that makes the mask also Takes place in kind of a World of gangsters That is not quite like our Right like in that weird sort of heightened reality beyond the fact that the the mask is there of course yeah exactly all the gangsters in the mask

operate like 1940s gangsters and it takes place in this odd brightly colored metropolis at night right yeah but they're like playing swing music it It's like what? Like, yeah. And dancing. It's weird. You are making me realize, yeah, how much the mask is kind of executing what they were trying to do with this movie in a way that was palatable to audiences by going like, well, there's a crazy supernatural explanation for everything. That's the thing. And that's why the that's why the normal Raimi camera stuff and absurdity doesn't work

because there is no supernatural, right? There's no supernatural element. There's no demons flying or anything like that. And there's no initial grounding element. None whatsoever. I will say also it reminded me so much also of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was only, what, two, three years later? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like four three years later? Because it's got...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like four years later, maybe? Right, yeah. It's that same tone, that same leaning into the slapsticky, the cartoon elements of it. And the throwback. Yeah, and the throwback gangsters

and the throwback... Yeah, that's all that sort of... We feel that a lot in the once we get to the nightclub. The Rialto, is it called? A lot of the quotes you read. Very good, Brendan. Five memory points. A lot of the quotes you read from like Campbell talking about this movie is just sort of like we all maybe were too ambitious and too in love with the idea of like, what if we put together all these different genres that we like? And what if you had like a 40s noir film that had the energy of a Three Stooges comedy, but also like the shock of like a horror movie and all that sort of shit?

And like a 30s Warner Brothers gangster picture, you know? Right. Everything just smushed together but the comedy is very contemporary and very like um what's what's the like where you believe in nothing god i can't think of the the phrase like it's very nihilistic yeah it's like it's it feels very though of the moment or like i don't know why like the the style of comedy is very like well like everyone in this movie is kind of either stupid or bad right like all the good people are dumb they don't really understand what they're doing and all the bad people are like really bad and and yes unlike roger rabbit mask which like would become huge

hits but had like a clean explanation for why the world is like this right this movie just expects you to go like and you're on the same wavelength as these guys right and it does feel like a movie that was written by them at like three o'clock in the morning just like riffing off each other with their common reference base if it worked it would work there are movies like this that grab you by the hand and race you through all kinds of mania and you go with it because you're on board for whatever you know because like you say griffin maybe because there's one character you can identify with or one sort of emotional through line crime wave might even work i think if the mystery of like so why is this guy

in the chair was a little more specific but instead it's kind of not like it's kind of the framing device is kind of irrelevant. But I agree with you that it doesn't feel like an ill-begotten movie. It does feel like you understand what they were trying to do, and what they were trying to do was so ambitious and so alchemical

that it was really hard to pull off before all these... It would have been hard to execute just on an artistic, creative basis before all these other would have been hard to execute just on artistic creative basis before all these other factors come into play uh yes right so should we talk though about um just basically meeting bruce campbell's character and like the heel and just all of the great fucking lines he is delivering like as this character i just feel in very safe hands when he's on screen yeah so do i exactly and that's the that's the struggle with this movie is just like wanting him to be there

more my favorite line he says at the bar after he leaves her uh after after he punches out vick he's talking to that other woman at the bar and we zoom in on him from a distance and you hear him say oh the cab oh no no sorry that's uh. That's later when he's walking past the storefront window and he says, the cab? You'll pay for that. I don't want to break a hundred. Which, I mean, it's a line and you barely hear it and it's great.

The cab? You'll pay for that. I haven't seen you before. I love that in a woman. I like that in a woman. Yeah. Great line. It's a good line. It's it's so funny that Rami was like, well, this guy's clearly my leading man. I'm going to write the leading man part for him. Right. And they write this part that like from a modern perspective,

you're like, it would have been weird to have Bruce Campbell play that part. But I'm even just thinking back to a couple weeks or months ago, whenever we recorded our fucking Evil Dead one episode, where he is so innocent and sweet and like soft and delicate in that movie relative to the sort of very self-aware Bruce Campbell we know today. And here they like throw him this consolation role and try to beef it up to get him on set and in the process accidentally create what then will become the dominant Bruce Campbell archetype. Right. Like what he plays in this kind of becomes his main stock and trade for the next couple of decades, whether it's done well or poorly. But like like this is what they're casting him to do in Congo. You know, like this is the arched eyebrow, smug, punchable, but still funny, kind of like glib, arrogant macho dude. And then like Ash even turns into this more and more. It is funny that there's this sort of like secret gift here and how hard Campbell kills this role that both like helps Raimi know how to use him even

better going forward and also becomes the thing that people typecast him for such a good point yeah but he is yes you're watching a guy who's just like so in the fucking pocket not only that but is understands the tone of this movie perfectly perhaps because he's

got a really established relationship with Raimi and can tap into what Raimi wants in a way that maybe others can't I don't know and they're giving him all the best lines for that reason yeah a lot of the best stuff happens in the in the in the nightclub um setup I will say that I'm gonna segue into my favorite bit by getting back to the plot for a second. Rinaldo the heel and what's her name? Nancy, right? Nancy, Nancy, Rinaldo the heel and Nancy are on a date. It's not going well as we, as evidenced by the first thing we hear, she says, I'm not that kind of girl. And he says, well, with a little practice, you can learn to be yeah um there's

never a good sign that your date is going well uh and then vick shows up and basically crashes the date well isn't it i've seen this uh uh 29 times less than you but is it sort of that he was motivated by trend's speech to be like, I have to chase after that woman. I need to. Yeah, he's got to. Yeah, exactly. He's got to that. He's got to take the bull by the horns and he's right.

Go get the gal. This was like another weird budget thing was the cabin in the first Evil Dead cost them two thousand dollars to rent for the entire duration of the production. And this set for the Rialto cost them $30,000. Oh, whoa. And his whole budgeting of the movie was based on him knowing what things cost on Evil Dead. And then it's like, here's a location we need just for 10 minutes of the film. Their first offer is 10, and then they start upping the number and eventually gets to 30 and everything just kind of escalated like that.

And that's why they have to spend so much time in the nightclub, I imagine. Yes. And there's another thing where the person who owned the building demanded that all the extras be like members of his club. Is that right? A building. It had previously been a hotel. It was going to be turned into a retirement home.

The first two offers from production were $10,000 and $20,000, both of which were rejected. Then they agreed to $30,000 on the condition that the building's owners would be extras drinking martinis in the hotel ballroom. Literally the story of every

shitty little movie I've ever made. Right. Why are the producers here yeah right the gift is that they didn't demand fucking dialogue that's the worst version of that set which you and i have both been on my son here he wants to be an actor right some guy in suspenders come on you know my son jimmy He loves the movies. He's funny. He's funny. He's funny. Tell him the joke, you tell me, Jimmy.

Come on, look at that face. Make it a frame with your fingers. Anyway. What happens later? I really like the sequence with the doors or the how whatever you would just the walls the doors is great but the the sequence in the in the dance contest because ronaldo leaves her stiffs her with the check she has no interest in vic but she says can you loan me what is it 36 yeah and he says i would love to but i don't have the money and

then the announcer says there's a dance contest about to happen they art cut to them doing starting the dance contest you think there's going to be this whole number and then there's a whip pan into the kitchen where they're just doing dishes while still dancing that's my second favorite bit in this movie it's one of the better i mean you saying where this movie fails is often with like the setup punchline verbal jokes. That whole exchange of $36, I wish I never carry that amount of money around with me on my person to then the announcer saying that the prize money for the contest is exactly $36. Right. Like that's a pretty fun cartoon logic run of lines. It's so good. And then to get into the you know to take it all the way to the

kitchen where they're washing dishes is great follow through. Okay. I have a question about this trope of washing dishes because you can't pay the check. Yeah. Has anyone ever actually done that? Truly tell me one person that you have ever met in your

fucking life. That is like, I don't have any money. What am I going to, what am I going to do? Put me to work now. Yeah. You're the dishwasher. All your paperwork. Do you have an I nine? Here's my question. Where is the dishwasher? Does he get off the night? Like, are they, why? I mean, did they just plan on always having someone not being able to pay the check on certain nights? Are they always one dishwasher short in order to accommodate for dine-and-dashers, attempted dine-and-dashers?

Well, the dishwasher can always hold out hope that someone will come to dine-and-dash can always hold out hope that there's that someone will come to dine and to dine and dash and then he'll get off early you know that's one perk i used to be a dishwasher and that's something we thought about all the time really you were always waiting always waiting maybe some maybe somebody will come and not have their $36. I wonder if it's a reference to some, you know, silent film or some, you know, very famous bit in a film from so long ago we don't remember. Right, right. Like it never actually happened in society, but it happened once as a punchline and now it gets perpetuated as if we're riffing on the actual real world occurrence. Yeah. And it was so it was such a huge thing.

This movie was so big and whatever in 1929 that everyone talked about it for two years, but we don't remember the original. I say what we should do, listeners, is go to a restaurant. No money, no cash, nothing. Then when, you know, it's time to pay the check, be like, all right, I'll head in the back i'm ready to do some dishes you know roll up your sleeves and see how that goes you probably will end up being arrested ben i agree you absolutely should try this yeah if not at least start getting it going make it more pervasive so it makes sense. You want to at least get the ball rolling so that when someone else asks

for that, the restaurants will be like, yeah, sure. We know about this. We've heard of this. Yeah. I found a what's it called? Cura? The question answer website? Sure, of course. Do restaurants allow someone to wash dishes

as compensation if they cannot pay top answer no they won't are you sure if you don't have the money to pay for a meal that you've eaten one of three things will happen one the restaurant will ask you to leave something that you'll return for when you've retrieved the funds to pay them two depending upon the mood of the owner the amount of the bill and the reasons that you have forgotten your method of payment they may simply say forget it and comp your meal. This will rarely happen and no one should expect this to occur when they dine out. Option number three, they will call the police and have you cited or arrested for fraud. Oh, that's fraud. That's not theft.

Defrauding an innkeeper is a serious offense in a number of states. So you may find that your meal costs you far more than you had simply than if you had simply paid for it in the first place. I would love to go to jail for defrauding an innkeeper, as long as they phrase it that way. Right. DFI. It's another DFI

from Heinze over here. I agree that Ben should absolutely try this. But you should go in and order the menu and be like, I'll give you a week of dishes. Like, you know, you go in there, you eat 18 courses and then you're like, sorry. How many dishes would

the fettuccine Alfredo cost? Yeah, right. I negotiate it. I'm like, alright, so if I want to get a dessert, can I maybe come like on Wednesday to do dishes for a couple hours? If we add that on. It's basically your interview.

It's your job interview is stealing a delicious meal. I'd like to work for this restaurant. I have no money. I want to leave a good tip. So can I clean some cutlery as well? How many knives would it take to equal 20%? Okay. clean some cutlery as well. How many knives would it take to equal 20%? Uh, okay.

Uh, so is there, yeah. Anything else about crime? Well, yeah. Explain that the doors falling, the most Looney Tunes kind of text Avery sequence of this movie.

Like what, why is that happening? She, at some point she runs, she gets away from him. She, he's come up to God. I keep having to that happening? She, at some point, she runs, she gets away from him. He's come up to, God, I keep having to go back. She gets away from Crush, who's trying to kill her because he witnessed, she saw him kill someone. And she gets away from him after a whole series.

I'm amazed you want to skip the rug pulling sequence. No, we can talk about the rug. I cannot order these things in my brain. is the problem i do not remember what happens when it's not that we don't want to talk about them it's you're the only one who understands them right she gets away from crush she runs to the office where she thinks her husband is maybe still there which is i mean she's delusional at this point. That guy's dead. And she gets away from him. She gets into the back where apparently they have a demo of, I don't remember what it's called, Ben. Do you remember the hallway, the most secure hallway

in the world or something like that? Yeah. The most secure hallway in the world, something to that effect. Where, which she clearly knew about because it's her husband's company. And it's a series of doors that really it's just a door that leads to another door. It feels like the Get Smart opening. Like the idea of this location is so secure, you have to go through 18 different types of doors to get to the heart of the thing. But only the last one has a lock on it. Right.

Of course. And uh yeah it's just a great and then some sort of balletic music starts playing and it becomes a just a very bugs bunny i love that sequence i love that too and the doors are all different colors and they all start falling on him as he's chasing her and so really to just tie it all together because i think it this plot is like whatever confusing is the wife gets away but then fall it goes into a box she gets away from like these basically two maniacs but she goes into a box that's like you know gonna be mailed to abu dhabi or something like it's that joke and then really we have the the two the couple right we can call them a couple i guess like whatever though vick and the girl

after being done with dishwashing they kind of run into these maniacs and then it's basically the sequence a couple of sequences of them just like kind of fighting each other more or less right is that kind of how to structure it huge freeway car chase that that that is 19 minutes too long probably but but is very technically impressive and when you read the reviews of the movie at the time everyone sort of spotlights like even the most dismissive ones are like this and car chase kind of implies that this guy might have some talent yeah exactly this guy isn't an idiot behind the camera or anything it's that's like that's like when a new president bombs a new country and people say this is the day he became president that's that's what a car chase well a relatively

well executed car chase is for for film critics sorry david no it's true that's that's what a car chase, a relatively well-executed car chase is for film critics. Sorry, David. No, it's true. That's what we're like. I love when Vic goes up to the old guy, right? And he's like, I need your car. He starts explaining something, and the old guy just goes, do you love her?

Do you love her? That's such a fucking solid joke. I think that's so funny. It is. And it should also crush at that point. I should be cheering. That's my only issue. But yeah. This is Vincent Camby's quote from the New York Times.

His review of this movie. He said, It's full of film knowledge and is amazingly elaborate for a low-budget movie. The only problem is that it's not funny. One smiles at the inspiration of the jokes, though not at their execution. The chase that ends the movie is something of a technical defeat,

but it remains as dimly humorless as a smart film student's essay on how to shoot a chase. And that's like sort of the most positive review it got. Right. It's kind of the reaction that 1941 got. Obviously, 1941 was on a much more massive scale,

but that was the thing where the reviews were kind of like, this guy's obviously very technically accomplished. Why isn't this movie funny they the reviews were kind of like this guy's obviously very technically accomplished why isn't this movie funny why is it kind of right like you know like why is it yelling at me why is it a little too and you know and that's it's just hard to hit that that carefree tone i guess but also some people love 1941 some people love crime wave yeah and i support them look here's some post-production stuff uh they the studio didn't like the movie they said it should be told flashbacks uh they made them go to la and do

extensive reshoots all the hutt sucker penitentiary stuff all of the bookends right they're like you that'll make it make more sense which i think that was a good call i think it does make the movie make a lot more sense it gives a little more of a spine right yes yes um they they basically were like it needs uh we need a beginning and an ending that explains the middle aka the movie you presented um uh bruce campbell says you know this is it was horrible it was like it was a very depressing time because i guess the what and this isn't you know this is it was horrible It was like it was a very depressing Time because I guess The what and this isn't you know This is what had not happened to them on evil Dead they're presenting a rough cut to the studio

And the studio is like well this doesn't work And Rami and Campbell are thinking like well we'll Figure it out you know give us a minute And they're like no you've no no no Yeah like yeah exactly get out of the way we're gonna Deal with this that was the one test You had right and you failed it. They don't let Joe DeLuca, who does the incredible score for The Evil Dead, work on this movie.

The studio hires a different composer. And I hate the music. The music is kind of annoying. Yeah. Yeah. The thing DeLuca said was that when he was... Loduca. I'm sorry. The thing Loduca said when he was pitching the producers on

his take for it was like with these sorts of parody films like Airplane, they play the music really straight. Like they're not doing a comedy score. They're doing a score that sounds like it's out of an Irwin Allen film and I think you need to do the same with this. And they got scared off by

him saying, I'm going to play the music really straight. He did say that Rainey brought him back to do like the final reel or two of the movie. So the car chases his music again. They ended up letting him do a little bit of it sort of away from watchful eyes.

But yes, the score is not great. It's a little too much. The movie kind of was taken to film festivals around the world. It opened in Britain like a year before it came out in America. It just came out in like dribs and drabs. Bruce Campbell said they did a very nice screening at the Seattle Film Festival where the host came on stage before the movie and was like, this movie is silly.

Prepare to watch a silly movie. And Campbell's like, that was the only good reaction we got and i think it's because the audience was well prepared for what they were about to watch it is wild i mean when we talk about movies that have like bad marketing or things like that it does really affect the way people perceive movies the frame that they're like put within where a guy can get up on stage and use the word silly 30 seconds before the movie starts and it will play okay uh and bruce camp also said that was the screening that his mom was at yes so that's right so that she likes the movie and he is like grateful that she saw the only time it ever played well with a crowd right what's it called embassy

dumped the movie uh they did not give it a proper release they had a deal with hbo so it needed to get a perfunctory number of days in theaters in different cities in order for it to get whatever the pre-agreed hbo amount was so they released it in like random cities they released it in kansas and alaska uh which is funny it did do a run it screened in seven theaters total apparently it did do a two-day run in new york city two days two days can't even give it a whole weekend no and the two days were wednesday and thursday but with all this said like you said like the reviews were not like cruel like they were all basically like this thing is funny in way you know in moments and interesting it just doesn't totally work like it was like kind of a

like it's funny the um the can be review you quoted griff uh references eating raul the paul bartell movie which is one of the greatest movies of the 80s and he's like there's a guy who knows how to make a cartoon on screen that's funny like that guy understands how to present the aesthetic and present the jokes and all that and like he's like and ramey's kind of going for that but he's not getting it right and campy's like bartell's the only one who knows how to do this everyone else is failing and they're also a lot of the reviews have the exact same tone you see in like Raising Arizona reviews a year or two later than this, where you're like, we get it. It's impressive. Do you have anything to say?

You know, they're sort of like this movie is more storyboarded than it is directed. Look at all your references. We get it. You're very smart. You're very clever. You have a lot of energy. Is there any perspective here? Yeah.

David Edelstein kind of liked it in The Village Boys. That's called it a Jerry Lewis extravaganza about serial killers you know you know some people kind of got it yeah yeah yeah but uh obviously like we say it's the movie that nobody wants to talk about they it burns ramey so badly that he's like i guess i'll make the evil dead again like i get that's the only thing I can do the thing he actively resisted the first time but I having seen this now and we recorded these episodes

out of order we did the three evil deads first weirdly not not intentionally but we just did the one two three no we did all three evil deads in a row for whatever weird reason are now the filling in the gaps of the movies in between the evil deads but it does

this movie in between really helps clarify the leap in Raimi's style between evil dead one and two not just I think the confidence and the sort of like focus of it of knowing he cannot let the thing get ripped out of his hands again but also that he is incorporating more of the manic comedy of this movie into Evil Dead 2.

Like it feels like he wants to prove that he can make the cartoon movie work. And not just do another, you know, horror movie again. I'm happy it exists. I guess that's my take on crime. And I'm happy Ben loved it. And obviously that Brendan has such a soft spot for it. Here's my genuine takeaway from this movie. I want to watch it again.

Like I want to, for as much as I think it's flawed, watching it the first time, I was like, this sucks that I'm only watching this for the first time. And I'm not going to have as good of an understanding of this as Brendan does. Like I want to, I want to dig through this movie enough that I can sort of make sense of it

as opposed to now where I'm just like, I'm really carried over by the energy and the style of this thing. I'd like to see it in a theater. I know that's not something that happens often, but that might be fun to try and lock in with it more in a dark room. It was like a little you know,

it wasn't perfect to watch this at like 10 a.m. one morning when i'm just kind of like sitting down with my coffee i don't know uh brendan are there any larger raimi thoughts you want to share here since this is the one episode you get to appear on lrts i get to have an lrt if you want to throw out an lrt um larger raimi thoughts i think i don't know i think we i think we use dark man still your favorite like is that or no that was your entree but like what's your what's your top ramey that was my entree i still love dark man i watched dark man as recently as you know eight years ago

and i think it's still fucks yeah it fucks um pretty darn hard bruce it does at the very end last shot of the movie no it's not my it's not my favorite ramey anymore and and when i stopped watching sam ramey films you know i i did i did it with the vengeance i'm interested in in what happens when you guys get to uh jesus the oz movie i i never i never even saw it brennan it's the only movie he's made in the last 10 years right but i and i never i i couldn't even bring myself to to to watch it so there is something about the ramey with unlimited resource that felt to me like a with like such a huge budget movie and that that i just didn't see it being good having seen all of these films and i don't know it's like this is an interesting film to talk about because it's the first time he had to work with you know a budget and producers who

didn't give a shit about his passion and his and and his particular vision and then you know once he gets into the the spider-man the spider-mans of it all that's kind of the world he lives in yeah but what's weird about it is it like you go like well and then of course he had this transformation to being this big blockbuster filmmaker. And you're like, he made three Spider-Man movies, two of which he's, like, proud of, one of which he kind of is always apologizing for. He did one sort of throwback, smaller horror movie, and then one more big blockbuster.

And that's been the last 20 years of his career. And now he's returning for the first time in 10 years to make another Marvel superhero movie. Like, you almost expect that, oh, he got sucked into the Spider-Man thing. And then he made like four more big movies like that. Right? No drag me to hell is great.

It dragged me to hell. You either expect that he would make more small movies like that or that he would make three more movies like Oz. And it's sort of the classic, like Burton, like he just got sucked into this system and swallowed full. And instead he just seems a little heartbroken and has been sitting on the sidelines.

But that's why Drag Me to Hell is so frustrating, where I'm like you literally did the thing that we ask these big shots who then get kind of sucked into Blockbuster World to do, which is basically like you know, sure, make the giant movies, work in the top echelons of the studio system, but then

use that clout to occasionally you know go off you make a mid-budget movie it makes everyone some money it's good no one's mad he did that it worked like it was we'll talk about this later it was successful yeah he didn't do it again and not no one else does it like it's it's just odd i mean i know he produced and he you know gives the spotlight to other directors like when he's doing that. And that's that's like that is defensible like that. That's a real thing. Yeah. But you think about within all those ghost house deals, it's like they're producing two or three movies a year. You could just imagine he goes like, and I'm going to direct one of them. And no one would object to that. And what's more surprising about it is in all the different types

of sort of blank check career narratives that we've covered on this show, Drag Me to Hell is like this very rare example of a filmmaker who successfully goes home again, right? Like goes to the upper echelons and then it's like, I'm going to make a smaller movie like I did at the beginning of my career. And almost always that doesn't work. They can't go backwards, you know? And you either get the Peter Jackson thing where it's like, I don't know how to make something for under $150 million anymore. Anything I adapt

is going to become huge and unwieldy. Or they try to, like, roll back and act like they're a younger, less knowledgeable filmmaker and the movie feels like it has artificial breaks on it

or something. But Drag Me Out totally fucking works. And it's like, you did that, that worked. You did Oz, that didn't't work and then he just spent a decade going like i don't really know what to do anymore well yeah let's should we play the box office game griffin i have some final thoughts oh ben kickoff damn because we we birthdayed we birthday card the shit out of that fucking plot it's all right though whatever i just feel like we birthday card the shit out you you mean birthday sign right like

whatever yeah baby and then it's like we fucking are just trailing off i like i like this term of like making something so quick it could fit inside a birthday card all right it's funny when after they have this terrible i guess date or whatever she's just yelling at him no bright side no bright side i felt that i also felt when you know the little rat guy is like sadly you broke my shocker like he really whoever did that in the vo booth crushed you know what that reminded me brian james hiding in her apartment while reed bernie has his eyes closed and he's literally right next to him like taking the coat from him and going don't come in yet yeah that bit crushes. That bit crushes.

It's a bit crusher. It's a bit crusher. Speaking of bit crushers, the rat guy rides the big rat that's on top of their truck that fucking rips. Big rat in general. Everything with the big rat.

The overextended wind up too for the fact that the guy's going to get knocked out by the, uh, the bridge, like how long they belabor that is really. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I'll just say lastly, cause I think, um, the end is such a funny button that it's got to get shouted out. Oh, Oh, it's maybe the best joke in the entire movie.

I truly, I think it was like the, maybe the one time where I really like like really lulled. You're talking the newspaper. Yeah. Newspaper is like I was just I wanted to shout out because to me it's like maybe one of the funnier ways of I've seen using that like gag. It's a very Preston Sturges thing. I feel like he does gags like this a number of times, but all the nuns show up in time

right before the switch is going to get flipped. They're all freaking out. They hold the information to exonerate him, but they've taken this vow of silence so they don't know

whether to speak or not. And then the guy sort of, like the governor goes like, too bad. The guy's ready to switch the flip

and then it cuts to like spinning newspaper as the flip goes down flip the switch what am I saying hero executed and you're like that's a bleak ending and then the camera goes down dot dot dot almost none for a 40 year vow of silence that's a perfect

joke yeah yes but did you stay tuned for the post post credit sequence no what's the post credit sequence yeah it's a louise louise lasser But did you stay tuned for the post-credit sequence? No, what's the post-credit sequence? Yeah, it's Louise Lasser in a box in wherever she got shipped to, Sri Lanka or something? Uruguay. I'm looking at this right now. Wow.

And you don't even see her. You just see the box on a mountaintop shaking and her going, hey, let me out of here. I like this this is the post-credit sequence it doesn't really like t us up for a sequel so but uh but maybe it does maybe do it now maybe what if ramie was like a back crime wave two baby right and the cones were like we're on board and reed bernie was like i'm hotter than ever i'm swinging in bernie's crime wave two but it's a horror movie it It's a horror version of Crime Wave.

Right, right. They go in the opposite direction of Evil Dead. Yes. This time it's brutal. Well, I want to play the box office game mostly. And shout out, of course, to Mark Yuvari. We're going to keep shouting him out. Blanky, who programmed boxoffice.me,

the website where there is now a Wordle-style box office game that you can play along with every day. That's incredible. Right. So I'm just very excited about this one because it is literally the box office game of my birth. This is it. We've never done it before.

I will probably never do it again looking at the new movies this week. Army of Darkness was my birthday weekend, but not of the year I was born. I don't think we've done that Right, you haven't done that one yet Totally random, but here we go Of course, Crime Wave opening number 24 At the box office for $3,000

So let's not talk about that It's not bad, actually All considering, actually It's better than any movie I've been in Well, same, unfortunately Right, we've got number one. It's a fantasy film. Okay.

I would say it's a film. I think I'm going to triple check this. Yeah, it was a disappointment. Like this, because this was a pretty spectacular movie from a very big director. And it didn't actually do that well. Is it Willow? It's not willow it's the other one legend it's legend it's ridley scott's legend which is not an entirely successful movie but it is one of the fucking coolest looking movies you'll ever see yes yes it's it's just kind

of incredible that's like the one time cruise like fundamentally put his chips down in the wrong place. You know, like he's obviously made worse movies. It's a good movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was a bad career decision for him. But on paper, it wasn't at all. It was, you know, Ridley Scott coming off of Blade Runner is making a fucking fantasy action movie. Like you're the star with a big sword. Like it,

it should be, it should work. But he's like weirdly bad casting for that movie. I would say like, it doesn't play to his strengths. He doesn't totally, he makes sense in that he's very pretty and like, that's sort of the vibe,

but no, he's, he's not well cast. Tim Curry, obviously sort of the main event of legend have you seen legend brendan oh yeah that was a big uh hbo movie for me when i was a kid yeah exactly good hbo movie i i gotta clarify i it feels like him putting his chips on the wrong place only because it's maybe the only movie tom cruise was in post risky business that doesn't feel like a

tom cruise movie where you're just like, oh, and he's in it as an actor. It's the year before Top Gun. It's the one in between risky business and Top Gun. It's wild. Top Gun is the thing that makes him Tom Cruise. A hundred percent. It's it's in between those early Tom Cruise appearances like risky business and all the right moves and the outsiders where you're like, oh, it's like Baby Cruise and Top Gun where you're like, Tom Cruise, the movie star. Like, it's the one in between. He needed to go to

the brother. He needed to go to the brother to get it done. He picked the wrong Scott the first time. The wrong brother. So, look, I like Legend, but it's number two in its second week, but it's only made $8 million. Wait, I have a procedural question.

Are these just for Griffin? No, you are allowed to jump the swing. Swing in if you want. Okay, copy that. Number two at the box office is a comedy that, again, I thought of as kind of a flop, but it wasn't. It was a very solid hit starring one of the sort of major flop, but it wasn't. It was a very solid hit starring one of the sort of

major comedy stars of the 80s who is, you know, is going to... In the 80s, he was a comedy star. It's not Fletch. I'm calling him a comedy star of the 80s,

but that's a little deceptive in that he leaps to much more of a mainstream... So is it a Robin Williams? Not Robin Williams. Huh. He makes a bigger leap to mainstream in the 90s. Is it an SNL guy?

No. Although he is a famous SNL host. Tom Hanks? Is it Splash? It's not Splash. Is it Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party? It is Tom Hanks. It's not Bachelor Party. Is it Joe vs. the Vol Party? It is Tom Hanks. It's not Bachelor Party.

Is it Joe versus the Volcano? It's not Joe versus the Volcano. That was a flop, I believe. That's too late. That one actually did badly. Huh. Is it the dog movie? No, it's not Turner and Hooch.

It's too early for Turner and Hooch. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Where is it in his career? It's not... It's not big, is it? Not big. This is the year before big, I believe.

Okay. This movie is a hit, though. This movie made $37 million. A totally solid $10 million budget. And it's not Splash. It's not Splash. He's starring alongside a sitcom star. Oh, is it the Shelley Long movie?

It is. Oh, The Money Pit? The Money Pit! The Money Pit. They bought this house! And they gotta refurbish it, guys. If I can do a second shout out to a friend of the show, Connor Ratliff.

When I was in the hospital recovering from my organ surgery, he FaceTimed me with, he had ordered a promotional money pit greeting card that was like a baby announcement card to announce the arrival of this summer's funniest hit or whatever the fuck, which Connor reading that was so funny to me

that I was truly like I had stitches and was trying not to laugh and I had to hang up on him and then he sent me it uh like two weeks later so i now have in my bathroom just taped to the wall this fucking money pit promotional we're announcing a new hit comedy card and i still didn't get the name of the movie right have any of you seen the money pit i have never seen the money pit i know the money pit as an expression i know that it's a movie about them trying to refurbish a house, but I've never seen it.

I've never seen it either. No, I've seen it. I saw the trailer a lot as a kid, but no, I've never saw it. I know people who defend it. I know people who are very pro money pit.

I think it's, it's Shelly long, like right off of leaving cheers, right? Like she's still in the sort of like the, the she's bouncing out of cheers. People are like, Oh,

is Shey long going to be the thing right you know like she she hasn't quite uh started to fall off um and you know tom hanks charming well tom hanks very charming it is interesting how much shelly long is framed as one of those great examples of like an actor who didn't know how good they had it and they were on this hit show and they left and look what they got for it but she had like a pretty good run of hits right off of cheers it didn't last but she had like three or four successful movies in a row right off of cheers yeah well outrageous fortunes that was like a successful enough movie with that middler yeah no she had a little run there okay it's a funny movie i watched it uh not all the way through is on tv i just want to say there's a funny bit where Tom Hanks, he gets kind of stuck inside a rug that goes through a hole in a ceiling so that he doesn't fall through and he gets stuck suspended there.

And then he's there for hours and hours and hours. And then later they're fighting the couple, you know, she comes home and she's like oh you really want me to help you get out of this and then he falls all the way down really far and hurts himself classic because it's a money pit that sounds money pity no it does it's very classic money pit all right number three is not a movie i'm initially i'm immediately recognizing nobody Immediately recognizing Nobody yell at me about that please Okay It is a Okay it's an action thriller It's from a famous kind of You know notorious 80s 70s 80s

You know genre film company So you know not one of the major studios It's a canon movie? It's a canon film And it's got you know a very canon film star sort of on the back end of his career and a title that is like a famous expression uh it's not a chuck norris no is it a um is it a charles bronson it's a charles brons Okay. And the title is an expression. It's called You Win Some, You Lose Some.

Look, what can I tell you about this movie? It's from J. Lee Thompson, who I think did a Planet of the Apes. He obviously did the original. I think he did the last one. Yeah. It's got Kathleen Wilhoyt, who we all know, of course, from her work in ER and Gilmore Girls. Okay.

It's, look, Charles Bronson is playing an antisocial LAPD detective. Can you give us a hint about the saying? What kind of saying it is? It's not a saying exactly. It's like a phrase that means things will always turn out like the worst possible way. Live and let live. All right.

The movie is called Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law. Well, David, that was the hint you were trying to give. But doesn't fucking Interstellar, your most beloved movie of all correct that interpretation of murphy's law not saying the most the worst thing that could happen will happen but that anything that could happen will happen that in interstellar is him being nice to his daughter murphy's law is anything that can go wrong will go wrong that is the classic uh thing of course it is only a christopher nolan movie where a character would be upset about being named uh after a phrase or whatever that storytelling device is i love interstellar to be clear uh murphy's law look murphy's law

seems like a blast i gotta say yeah let's you know charles bronson he's a hard-bitten cop his ex-wife has become a stripper and he's mad about it um his career is going nowhere by drinking and then he is framed by an ex-con so he starts killing people uh to deal with that i'm not gonna yeah okay so there you go okay um also could have just said you know like murphy's law was like a ska band you could have just said murphy's law was like we all could have said that We all could have said that and actually we failed you Ben I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm just looking here but Murphy's Law is one of Three Charles Bronson thrillers

That comes out in the year in between Death Wish 3 and Death Wish 4 The man was churning them out And it's a Death Wish plot Right absolutely Also Charles Bronson is a punk band We all knew that ben didn't seem like it i didn't hear anyone else bring it up number four at the box office is a

comedy sequel a comedy sequel in 1985 in this economy in this economy okay was the sequel a flop i feel like a lot of comedy sequels were at this time. Huge success. $12 million budget. $107 million worldwide. Whoa. This was a part of a hugely popular series of comedies. Okay.

That did fall off over the years. Is it Police Academy 2? It's not Police Academy 2, but it is Police Academy something. Oh, okay. police Academy something. Oh, okay. Academy three. And what's the subtitle on that one? Fuck.

Okay. So I always feel patrol. No. So this is not patrol. Of course is police Academy four. Okay. Is, is this their first assignment?

No, that is of course two. He's got to be two. So three. What happens in between a first assignment and being on patrol? It's back to training. They had to go back in training. You gotta go back to training, guys.

You gotta go back in training. Yes, this film directed by Jerry Paris. Never get it right. As many times as I try, I always fuck up. It's a Gare Pair pick. Police Academy 3 huge hit everything's still going great

for Police Academy at this point that is one of those things where if you look at 80s or 70s comedies it's like the first one huge hit 100 million dollars the second one moderate hit 20 million dollars like there'd be this huge drop off Police Academy stayed strong until like 4

yes exactly I like that guy where he does sound effects you there's a guy in police academy does sound effects yeah no david it's crazy so he'll be thinking of a different movie ben if this happened in police academy i'd remember it no no it definitely happens trust me it comes up i'm pretty sure a lot but david he'll be like you'll you know like it's like if you close your eyes it's like wow is he going up in an elevator but he's not no no one could do that no one could do that with just the human

mouth and throat no one could do that not only that Ben if it were in the movie I assume it would just be a cameo certainly you could not build a major character across all the films whose primary characteristic is making sound effects like he's in an elevator it's in the movie and it's seamless that's not

true every time seamless every time all right look number five of the box office is not a film I know okay um it is a it's a romantic drama starring two pretty major stars two oscar winners yeah here's the more interesting

thing it's directed by the husband of the lead actress. And this guy, you'll know him, Griff, but he's not known as a director. He's more known for his work in another cinematic field. His craft. Is he a writer? No.

Is this a Caleb Deschanel movie? No. No. I'm trying to think. Married to the Oscar winning star. But that type of person you're saying. Right. He was a production designer mostly.

He directed movies. Okay. Okay. So is it a Jack Fisk movie? It's a Jack Fisk movie. Cool. Okay. So it's Spacek?

Famously, you know, worked with, yes, Sissy Spacek is in the film. Yeah. You know, works with Thomas Malick. Right. Brian De Palma, a lot of, okay. Okay.

So Jack, I was saying later in life, Sissy Spacek, you don't know it. The other, the male lead is also an Academy Award winner recently. Uh, like recently in 1986.

Let's see. When did he, yes. Uh, Oh, you know what? He hasn't won his Oscar yet. He wins an oscar in 1988

is it hoffman no is it hackman no great he won for he already won right for french connection 88 who wins in 88 i'll tell you this he won for best supporting actor in a comic film oh it's a klein movie kevin Klein. It's Klein and Spacek. In a Fisk picture? A Fisk-ture? About two people. Oh, no, I'm sorry. About a famous photographer played by Sissy Spacek

who has been traveling around the world in a sailboat, I think. And then she comes home to Maryland. Brendan. Hello. The Maryland coast. And meets she comes home to Maryland. Brendan. Hello. The Maryland coast and meets her high school sweetheart, Kevin Klein, who's married,

but romance ensues. So it's clear that none of us know what this movie is. Looks like Bonnie Bedelia plays the third wheel. That's why I'm just telling you. Of course. Bonnie Bedelia. Yeah. Bonnie Bedelia.

The movie is called Violets Are Blue. Yep. Absolutely never heard of this. Never heard of it. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it went over very well. It doesn't look like

it got any Oscar nominations or any nominations at all. I'm a Kleine and I never heard of this film. You call yourself, Brendan refers to himself as a mountain Kleiner. Oopsie daisy.

Some other films in the top 10. You got Gung Ho, the very popular Michael Keaton, Ron Howard comedy that is now unwatchable. Aged perfectly, like a fine wine. Tastes even better. You go put it back in there for another 10 years. Japanese people are so random.

Which is one of two Lowell Gans and Babalu Mandel scripts in the top 10 because they also wrote The Money Pit. You've got Critters, a new line classic, right? A fun little horror movie. Yep. You've got Wise Guys. That's a De Palma movie, right? Yes, with Piscopo

I've never seen it That is one of the few De Palmas I've never seen Yes, Joe Piscopo and Danny DeVito I mean, sounds fun They're wise guys You know Dennis Farina's in that too Just somewhere Kytel's in it

Kytel is in it Come on, give me Farina Dan Hedaya is in it The wildest one is that Captain Lou Albano is in it. Oh, nice. Frank Vincent, Ray Sharkey, Patti LuPone. I'm not seeing any Farina. We could dig deeper.

It's also written by George Gallo of fucking Midnight Run. Yes. Wise guys. So that's in the top. Pretty in Pink, the John Hughes film. The Color Purple, Steven Spielberg's You know, we got some Oscar leftovers here

Color Purple, Hannah and Her Sisters The only other thing I want to point out Is this was also the first week In America for Three Men and a Cradle A.K.A. Trois Hommes et une Coupes Femmes Wow Which of course is the French movie that was remade as Three Men and a Baby.

The next year, maybe? Yeah. Yeah. Directed by Leonard Nimoy. It is directed by Leonard Nimoy. I'm digging into the Wise Guys cast just to definitively prove that Farina isn't in it. Although it does feel like a movie Farina would be in. Both of Scorsese's parents

are in it. That's fun. That's, you know, right, those guys having fun. Charles and Catherine Scorsese are in it as birthday guests. We love it. I should see Wise Guys. That's truly like the only De Palma I've never seen.

I haven't seen the last one he did. The one with Nikolai Kostor-Waldau. Domino. I never saw that. I should see that. Oh, geez. Yeah. You know, the thing just came out the minute it was released. He was like, I just owe this film. Which is just his vibe these days. You haven't played Domino

yet. I haven't played Domino yet. But yeah, so that's, I think, a very fun box office game. A lot of weird stuff. A police academy. A Tom Cruise movie. It's got it all. It's got it all. Heinze.

Sir. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It was a goddamn delight. Is there anything specific you want to plug? I know you've been doing more music recently. You're unlocking Key. But you also have music stuff coming up, right?

I'm just playing shows around town and writing new songs. So, you know, nothing to plug yet, really. New record soon, probably. I don't know. Well, but let's see if Brendan Hines is coming to a town near you. He's probably not. How do you feel about Christmas music, Brendan? Oh, that's a big question. Okay. Christmas music, I'm fine with, provided it was recorded prior to, I don't know,

I'm going to arbitrarily pick a date. Let's say prior to 1965. Well, here's a question for you, Brendan. Do you have any feelings on the speed of Christmas music? The speed? The tempo? Yeah, sure. I like a waltz. I like a Christmas waltz. Okay, we're getting in the right territory. I got this

whole little thing going. I've been putting out a slow Christmas album every year. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's Christmas music, music but slow i love it like like slow like sexy no no slow like really slow throttle down baby right year one was just taking christmas tracks and like chopping and screwing them. Year two was hiring people to record new tracks at an incredibly drawn out pace. I love this. Okay.

All right. We'll talk more offline. Yeah. Okay. You're the best, Brandon. Thank you guys. You're a river to your people. I appreciate you letting me be on this.

God, I've been waiting for someone to say that to me. You're the coolest. And this was a blast. And thank you for helping me understand the movie crime wave to be honest i i thank you for helping me understand i've never been able to talk about it out loud before to be honest like i never had anyone to talk about this movie with and that's that's true i do just want to restate you are an incredibly cool person and i feel like whenever we hang out, you're trying to convince me how much of a dork you are, which you simultaneously are. Both things are true.

Uh-huh. But it's a surprising fact. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. You are, though, despite how hard you try to not be cool. Okay. You are very cool. Not cool.

Okay. Thank you all for listening. I'm pretty cool, too. You're very cool. Yeah. Yeah, you're very cool, Ben. Yeah. Take us out. Thank you all for listening. Please remember. I'm pretty cool too. You're very cool. Yeah. Yeah, you're very cool, Ben. Yeah. Take us out.

Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. David texted this morning about the fact that subscribe is permanently banned from Apple Podcasts and they wanted to say follow, but I'm going to keep on

saying subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media helping make the show. JJ Birch, Nick Loriano for our research.

Alex Barron and AJ McKeon for editing. Lane Montgomery, the great American novel for a theme song. Joe Bone, Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Go to blankcheckpod.com for all the stuff. That's where all the stuff is now. I don't have to plug it separately. Yep, you don't have to.

Tune in next week for Evil Dead 2, Dead by Dawn with special guest John Hodgman. We can say who the guest is because we banked that episode up. We got it in the can.

Back to back episodes. And you can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where we're returning

to the Matrix and doing Matrix commentaries. Yep yep and as always i spent the last like 10 minutes googling to see if i could find a picture of this money pit card so i could read it without going to my bathroom but you just have to take my word for it it's so fucking fun it's fucked up what's fucked up that I didn't do that that you fucking failed me you guys

I don't know ska bands Ben you're barking up the wrong tree well isn't that convenient for you David