Blank Check with Griffin & David - Full Metal Jacket with Jon Gabrus

Episode Date: November 6, 2022

Alright, maggots, listen up! We’ve got the Action Boy himself - Jon Gabrus - back on the podcast to talk about Kubrick’s bifurcated Vietnam War classic FULL METAL JACKET. We’re retiring the “retired bit” in order to talk about Matthew Modine as Private Joker. We’re getting into the etymology of “poontang.” We’re attempting to articulate what makes a movie feel like an “80s movie” and why this film absolutely doesn’t.  And - we’re gonna end up on a very long tangent about the talking head comedy shows of the mid-aughts. Do we make ourselves clear? SIR, YES, SIR. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

freedom you better flush out your head new guy this isn't about freedom this is a slaughter if i'm gonna get my balls blown off for a word my word is podcast he really waits to say poontang though he he like he really takes a beat before he says poontang and you're like ha poontang i didn't think i was gonna say that right yeah you're not surprised that's the concept you're surprised that's the word he chose to describe it poontang okay sure yeah here we are in vietnam thanks for saying poontang to me like we talked about just to front load this we talked about this in a previous episode our guest was on in uh in heat where al pacino talks about the concept of balling his wife. And it's like, that's never a term

you should use to define what you do with your wife, right? And similarly, it's like, if you're talking about dying for something, I don't think you should call it poontang. I think you want to pick one or the other. You know what? That shows you're not ready to die for pussy

if you're calling it poontang. You're just not ready. You're not ready. You're not mature enough. enough right a real man dies for pussy and this is a film of course about defining what a real man is something we will litigate for the next two hours on this podcast as four experts on masculinity but i think that's a great point and i think let's uh let's let's get this uh engraved above uh our door uh real men die for pussy boys die for poontang finally my lower back tattoo makes sense the context has been created uh you guys are the connoisseurs i appreciate it connoisseurs of

context one could say this is a podcast called called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Did you know that Puntang is a corruption of the French word poutine, which means prostitute? Oh, no. I just looked that up. Wow. Well, now your lower back tattoo makes sense, David.

Yeah, exactly. Probably originated in new orleans is the thinking and putin's also just used as like an exclamation uh yes yeah yeah right you can say it as a kind of used like as like a french fuck yeah those guys are crazy the french yeah the uh the french don't get me started. Ah, the French. The French. Look, this is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

And sometimes those checks clear. And sometimes they bounce. Maggots. Hell yeah. Ben, right before we started recording, producer Ben was like griffin you might want to back up from the mic because he was assuming i was going to uh balderize one of the uh early army quotes for the opening i don't want to have to do the work necessary to recite that the the dense level of word replacement well that a delivery wise it's why you bring that guy in yeah right it's tough but b i might have to use podcast interchangeably for like 12 different

words he uses right right yeah yeah where do you put it yeah right oh man better unfuck yourself or i will unscrew your head and shit down your podcast yeah you could take a pretty good but i'm like if i take one line it feels like i'm half-assing it the whole beauty of this performance is that every time he talks he talks for like 600 interrupted minutes he he keeps going and you're like i'm still transsex yeah i guess griff you could have done the gun mantra, you know, and replaced that with podcast. There are a lot of things I could have done. This movie has a lot of iconic lines.

I just liked saying that I would die for podcast. Look, it's a miniseries on the films of Stanley Kubrick. Our guest has something to say. I thought it could have been, remember, this was all just a bad podcast, fat boy. Well, that's what we'll say at the end of the episode. Yeah, yeah. That's what you'll say to me. That's what I'll say to you.

Gee, thanks, guys. You have the thousand mile stare, and I just go, hey, fat boy, remember this is just a bad podcast. It's a miniseries on the films of Stanley Kubrick. It's called Pods Widecast. Today, we've gotten to the last film released in his lifetime true sad but true just a wild thing to think about yeah that's that's fair

yeah this is it it's his penultimate film he does not live to see the release of the final film this is uh the first film in a three picturepicture deal he signed with Warner Brothers that would remain incomplete. Yes, that's funny to think about as well, but yes. And it was a hit, and it's an iconic film. It's an incredibly iconic film. I'm not saying that in some argumentative way. It's just when you watch it, even though this has a reputation that I'm sure we're all about to talk about. When you watch it, you're like, God, no one has imitated this better.

Or like no one has evolved what this movie does. The first half of this movie does like we'll talk about it. There's that Kubrick argument that sometimes comes up, certainly from his biggest fans, that like he made the single best film in every genre he worked in, right? That's a thing that Kubrick fans like to push forward as a notion. And it's not like I think this is thought of as the best modern war film,

but I do think every war film after it is somehow defined by the shadow of this movie. You talk about how iconic it is. It is just like every shadow of this movie. You talk about how iconic it is. It is just like every element of this movie, you're sort of like, are you doing the full metal jacket thing or are you moving in the opposite direction of full metal jacket, right?

Just introduce the, say the movie's name and introduce our guest in the next one. Full metal jacket, our guest returning to the show of High and Mighty, of Action Boys, pumping two guns, looking looking fit let me say wow yeah yeah he's got a tv bod now i mean come on he's leaving us in the dust he's a tv star uh john gabrus back on the show feeling fit as i drink my second coffee of the morning i want to

i want to say griff i was going to do the background you're doing and i was just like well griff's gonna do that i have to let him have that yeah you have the army man voiced by arlie army right this film is this is uh arlie army's uh third fourth best performance on film as a as a sergeant how many toy stories is he in he's in a lot of them three i mean one it's it's the smallest role he's sort of got the d3 the mighty ducks bombay i'll show up at the very beginning of the very end thing is he not a military guy in saving silverman because that would bump full metal jacket down a whole nother one right you know i was debating in my head i was trying to remember what his status is and

saving silverman he is incredible and so good he when he rolls he like rolls out of i've been i'm realizing i have i remember so little about that movie except how much i love it so now i want to re-watch it but i remember him tucking and rolling out of a van as like a surprising moment in the movie when i saw it his character name is coach norton i cannot remember if the bit is that he's a vet who then became their coach or it's just a coach who acts like a hyper intense military man. Right, right. I can't remember which version of it is.

It's one of his best performances. I remember him taking a, I think he takes a shit on a lawn in that movie. And there's like a wide shot of Arlie Armey with his pants down, like sort of smiling and waving as he's taking a shit. And seeing that with my father and him just saying, I can't believe they got him to do this. Yeah. Well, it's, it's so weird that his career,

like every time you watch him, you it's understood that creatively you've seen full metal jacket. That's the, you know what I mean? Like it's like, it's such a weird thing where anyone who uses him in a movie is like, well, you've seen full metal jacket.

So we're either doing an homage to that or kind of pulling the rug out from that. Yeah, exactly. But that's part of the weird legacy of this movie. Yes, right. Every time he's cast, it is like I was looking through his Wikipedia and there's stuff like, right, like several TV shows using the reveal of, oh, and our lead character's father is arlie ermie and you understand what that means in shorthand it's like this explains why this guy's such a nervous nelly his dad is a fucking is this guy and everyone's like oh the dude from full metal jacket right season five you reveal that he's house's dad and you're like well that's the final piece of the puzzle you

don't even need to write this anymore there's another one where he played someone's dad that's what i'm trying i was trying to think of this like i'm trying to think because he popped up in so many things over the years like oh and he's in seven you know yes which is great but that's a really interesting use of him uh uh briscoe county junior the uh right on scrubs i think yes he is you're right yes uh and it's like he was tough on him yeah or right is he again is he on prison break does he play someone's dad in prison break no uh no i'm sorry he plays prison warden on spongebob squarepants that's what the whole the whole map of the prison was tattooed on him and no one thought to check. They checked his butt.

They didn't check his. They did. His tattoo. It's a wild career he has. And it is a career that's just like, well, you exist as like a permanent piece of like the tapestry of American pop culture in perpetuity. And everyone will now hire you to redo that, riff on that, or subvert that. If you watch this movie for the first time now or recently,

you could retroactively understand everything about Arlie. You know what I mean? Yes. It's like watching American Gigolo now, and then you're like, I see why everyone was obsessed with him. Right. It comes to you where you're like, oh, I never understood why everyone was obsessed with this person.

Then you see the movie that makes everyone upset, and you're like, oh, shit, yeah. I'm on board. Hopkins and Silence of the Lambs is like a similar thing. Dude, we just watched it for Action Boys. It's so funny you choose that. Right. And Jodie Foster, even, arguably, in that movie. You watch it, and you go, well, this explains. I mean, mean jodie foster that's like your 70th movie at that point but you're like oh

of course anthony hopkins should get to do whatever the fuck he wants i'm gonna start calling him sir anthony hopkins but there's also just that thing of like with with this too where you're like this character is so parodied he has so many times done the parody himself you imagine going back and watching the original thing it will be devalued right instead it's like no it strengthens it yeah i feel like star wars uh not to activate you fucking dorks but star wars suffers from like the parrot the over parodying like when you go back and watch the original trilogy you're like this is cut like uh it's hard not to see a mob instead of a bookie, but a full metal jacket.

You don't watch this and go like, oh, you just do it like this. You're like, oh, this is the fucking nexus point of the creation of the idea of a drill sergeant in a movie. Yes.

This is my thing. I just watched a movie at TIFF this year called the inspection. Uh, that is an eight, eight 24 movie. it's coming out this year that's a debut from this guy called elegance bratton which is one of the best names i've ever heard just incredible yeah elegance bratton and it's him telling his true story of his life he was kicked out of his house when he was a teenager by his mom for being gay he joined the marines and he served in the Marines for years, but it's like set only in basic training, right? It's only, it's a, you know, it's a drill sergeant movie. It's set in basic and, or bootcamp, whatever you want to call it. And it's a good movie. And it does lots of interesting things with being like a gay guy in the two thousands in the Marines.

it does lots of interesting things with being like a gay guy in the 2000s in the marines but i think it knows because every movie knows that it's like it's everyone knows full metal jacket yeah like let's not try to mess with that we everyone knows the structure of being in basic training or a big boot camp in the military and being barked at by a guy with a hat with like a circular brim like we just know no one's gonna fuck with that like bokeem woodbine plays the the drill sergeant and he's good yeah good casting uh and it's a different character i'm not saying the movie is some full middle jacket ripoff i'm just saying like i've never seen anyone try to subvert this movie's presentation of that you know and because you can't really no

you can't you can't and it was like they would just get our early army to do this again like you know to his credit he was not one of those guys who was like look i've already done the definitive i'm not gonna try it again right like you could just pay him and get him to do this again and it would work uh not a movie i like particularly but like hacksaw ridge is one of the only movies i think to get around this where it's like oh get vince vaughn he's like a different type of motor mouth he's scary in odd ways he has so much baggage himself as a movie star it's just inherently different enough from arlie ernie that you're not saying oh they got the cheap arlie ernie which i feel like so often you do so often you watch a movie

where the drill sergeant shows up and you're like you really weren't willing to pay arlie ernie the extra forty thousand dollars right come on the guy does stuff he's not hard to book right just to jump to hacks stay on hacks our range for one second yeah my experience with that movie was watching it the whole time going what the fuck is andrew garfield doing vocally here this is insane oh my god this movie's a fucking cartoon blah blah blah the whole time i'm bugging out like two hours they do the classic credits biopic thing where we see real footage of the guy and the real guy sounds crazier than garfield and i'm like oh my god oh my god it's true it's like rounding the edges on how crazy this dude sounds the real

guy was a talking stick of cord like he genuinely was yes he was like it's true he was like actual gomer pile like jim neighbors and i'm'm going, wow, actually, Garfield brought this character to life in a digestible way now. So thank God they put that. They were like, just so you know, he wasn't just off the fucking reservation doing this. Take a look. Yeah. I feel like we're forgetting something. What are we forgetting?

That's major pain. Okay. Because that answers your question, David. Subverting. How to subvert it. Yeah. Uh-huh. And do it well.

Which your answer is do it to children. Major Pain, which was, of course, directed by Nick Castle, right? Directed by Michael Myers himself. The shape? Yeah, the shape himself. The shape? Yeah, the shape himself. I've never seen it, but it's Damon Wayans screaming at a bunch of children, right? That's the idea? Yeah.

Yes, okay. What is that genre? It's so recurring in our lives. I'm a little bit older than you guys, but everyone was like, okay, they're a crazy action star or a total badass. It's like, all right, now they're a nanny. Now they live in the suburbs. Now they're a house cleaner. Now they're a crazy action star or a total badass it's like all right now they're a nanny now they live in the suburbs now they're a house cleaner now they're a babysitter it's like they just get like it's like let's just let's give one of these alpha dudes a chick's job and watch how fucking funny it is it's like it's truly one of those things where uh like twins was

schwarzenegger's highest grossing film up until that point in time and then I think Kindergarten Cop might have been number two and if it wasn't it was so big and it immediately like expanded his audience base like I think there was the like you need one of these that was the idea

right even if it's not going to be your biggest hit you need that it was the quantifiable thing of like look at how much bigger Terminator 2 got because now kids like him. And now every guy has to go through that. There's the point where it's like you start out being a badass, then you go back down to the kids, and then you make the badass movies that are a little more family friendly. Right. You know, the classic Matthew Modine arc. Very similar to that, right? This is the kind of movie the kids love yeah um but we're talking about how how iconic this movie is uh how iconic uh arlie ermy's role is all this shit how iconic

d'onofrio's the pile yeah absolutely that's half the movie less it's 45 minutes now i feel bad because i'm coming on this podcast where people just love to hear my really interesting and insightful opinions and my take on full metal jacket is the first part's the best part and the second part isn't as good aka everyone's opinion on full metal check like i'm not coming on here but it's most the first part is in my opinion like knife perfect some of the most incredible stuff kubrick ever did i think it's amazing it yeah go on john talk john i'm saying this is one of those movies that when you see it i saw it young i was like i i was into clockwork orange my i got like the kubrick box set was like the first dvds i bought and i watched this and i was like i

fucking love this movie and then like three years go by i watch it again and you're like oh right they do go to war in the second half of the movie like Like, sometimes you remember this movie and you forget about the rest of the movie. It all takes place in the barracks in your mind, at Basic. It's Paris Island, yeah. It's a little bit like Stripes, except the difference is, I do think the rest of this movie is good.

Like, Stripes is a movie where you don't remember anything that happens after Basic training because it's kind of bullshit. It's not good. Yeah. And it's a little misogynistic. Right. Every time I watch this, I am like, huh, the rest of this is better than I remember it being like that.

Yes. That's the part of the very obvious take we're going to have here is it's like on one hand, inarguably, the first first 45 minutes are the best part. On one hand, inarguably, the first 45 minutes are the best part. But also, the rest of the movie is underrated, but also it can never come out from the shadow of the first 45 minutes. It's a crazy dynamic to land in, in that the second half of the movie isn't as strong as the first half of the movie and is still maybe the strongest representation of war ever recorded on film. You know what I mean? It's just like one of those experiences where you're like oh man and like on this rewatch uh tiff came home during a post basic training and sat down and she was like god this movie is so fucking good it's so fucking beautiful and i was

like right and you didn't even watch the first so you're not going like oh now we're here like you have none of that if you just sat down at the first uh uh you know boku uh bucks scene if you sit down at that point you're like fuck this movie is magnificent it's intense and disgusting and magnificent but the first half of the movie prepares you for all that shit too like it's a weird thing yes where if the entire film was one half of the movie it would probably have a better reputation like even if the films they cut all of the paris island stuff out and they added 20 minutes on with boku bucks as the starting point as you said gabrus i think this movie would have a better reputation because it wouldn't be fighting against the idea that it's a disappointment to the standards it sets up for itself. I found some quote that like Billy Wilder said that he thought the first 45 minutes were the best movie ever made.

I think there's an argument for it. Like, I was watching it again. I threw it on. I've seen Full Metal Jacket a few times, but I'm like, all right, time to watch Full Metal Jacket. I put it on. Steelbook? Exactly. Yes, my Steelbook. For the first time, I'm really

thinking about it because I'm watching for the podcast. This is a movie that my dad had told me all about before I'd even seen it. He described Vincent D'Onofrio killing himself. All of it. I think this movie just really buried into his brain.

Relatable as fuck, David, thank you. And the first 20 minutes, you don't even see anyone talk to each other. It's just Arlie Ermey yelling at them and then marching in formation the first time anyone even speaks to each other is modine finally helping you know gomer pile denofrio like load his uh gun uh and at that point it feels like the greatest act of compassion you have ever seen exactly exactly it's so powerful for that very reason and like i was just thinking about how i love military movies i love war movies like but you know you just get a lot of the sort of like the guys hanging out and one of them's like,

yeah, well, hell I'm from, I'm from, you know, South Carolina and this is what I do. And the other guy's like, Oh,

I'm a nerd. And I'm from, you know, New Hampshire, you know, like the little, the little sort of privates talking to each other stuff. And like,

we're just not given anything like that. We're not given any humanity because the whole point is that this guy is shaving their humanity away like they're not allowed to be humans they have to be you know living guns and it's amazing it's amazing and along the to establish that but also to get us to be able to differentiate the bald white people in the movie yes he that this is like this is corny but it's like an improv opening he like runs around each character and is like you are joker you are the funny one you are smart you are a cowboy you are the texas one you're the black guy you're the fat idiot that's gonna ruin this for us and it's like he just runs around and labels everyone and i this is talked about uh a

lot but everyone is in focus inside the back there's no there's no blurriness like it just is uh focus all full focal length so it's just like everyone is on the same level quote unquote but arlie ermy is running around explaining to us who we need to know to watch the rest of the movie and none of these characters have backstory there's not a lot of conventional characterization even as the movie goes on so basically especially with this starting group it's like he's telling you what everyone's game is and the level of characterization you get is like the most obvious joke that the world's biggest asshole would latch on to upon seeing someone and hearing their voice right it's like, you're a gay intellectual because you have like a smart ass answer.

Oh, you are a giant slow person because it took you a second to answer. Oh, you're from Texas. So you're a gay cowboy. Oh, you're black. So I have awful things to say to you. You just crystallize it. There's like that standup thing,

how most standups like starting out, you know, I'd say up until someone has like their first special and has really like built an hour that has been out there in the world. Most people open their sets with like, I know what you're thinking, right? This is what I look like. I chose this outfit, but I have a joke for it. This is what I sound like, you know? And it's like, he's essentially doing that to them. It's like, I'm going to make the joke so the audience gets on my side before they think it about me.

And he's doing that to pinpoint characters you need to remember. It's crazy how little we know about everyone. Nothing. And then how much it affects you later on in the movie. And you're like, holy shit. You are heartbroken when Cowboy dies. Yeah. Like, shit like you are heartbroken when cowboy dies yeah like spoiler you are heartbroken when a character who you only know their nickname and haven't even seen

for like 20 minutes in the movie but like because you're following joker and he's looking for him you get like in the same level of attachment and like then you realize oh of course they're totally friends they had like their drill sergeant and one of their like squad mates die in front of one of them and like in in a room that the two of them were just cleaning the day before like there's so much going on with still so little info like we don't even know joker's real name until you like see if you catch his crew neck sweatshirt at one right right and ben ben for the sake of this episode, we're going to retire, retire a bit.

Otherwise, it'd just be too much of an editing hassle. We will call him Private Joker by name. Oh, yeah, no, we're not going to do that. Yeah, it's a different Joker. This guy actually does not find crime funny. We know why he's so serious. We actually have a very good sense. Full Metal Jacket.

Stanley Kubrick's film. 1987. Based on the novel The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford. Gustav Hasford. This is a fucking 80s movie. This is an 80s movie. I know. It's crazy that this movie came out in the late 80s.

Imagine someone's like, we're having 80s night, and you put on full metal jacket. Or like, oh, it's 80s night at the club, and you dress like Arlie Ermey or something. And you're like, it's in 80s. It's so not indicative of the... Even because Kubrick's style, of course, too, it's not modern in any way.

So it feels like when you're watching it between the music and the footage and the subject matter you're like when was this movie fucking made and then when you realize it came out in 87 you're like I was 5 what the fuck was

20 year olds thinking when this movie came out that must have been crazy it is well I was just going to talk about 20-year-olds thinking when this movie came out. That must have been crazy. It is. No more you can say, David. Well, I was just going to talk about this is the time when Vietnam movies are suddenly everywhere. Because obviously there's the deer hunter

and apocalypse now in the late 70s that are sort of the twin masterpieces. But those are very big, operatic, unrealistic movies. But we're in the realm of Platoon, Rambo, The War. In 1986 comes Platoon. Yeah. Right.

And then in 87, you have Gardens of Stone, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, Good Morning Vietnam. You have four more, this is what it was like in Vietnam movies. Uncommon Valor, a weirdly big hit that everyone thinks is shitty. Yeah, Uncommon Valor. Right. Casualties of War, the least rewatchable movie ever made. valor like a weirdly big hit that everyone thinks is yeah uncommon valor right casualties of war the on least rewatchable movie ever made casualties of war is uh one of the most upsetting movies ever

made but like that's what i mean like and born on the 4th of july obviously 89 as well like there's that this whole realm of late 80s movies about vietnam where they're like okay we're going to depict the war in its utter like foolishness and pointlessness and bleakness like there's you know these are not going to be uh like what you've seen before and like we haven't really had that for like the iraq war i guess we sort of we've had a few sort of major movies about that like jarhead feels like it's very much trying to be the full metal jacket yes of its generation yeah have you seen on netflix that there's like five jarheads and they've completely abolished the idea of like any like it's just like jarhead to marine revenge it's just like killing i think we've talked about this before but i think one of them is called

circle of fire or something like that let me look it up i think it's the cole hauser one cole hauser now does a lot of the char movies does he really jar jarhead to field of fire field of fire right and that's uh then jarhead three the siege uh-huh uh was there a jarhead four uh jarhead three has scott atkins okay uh jarhead four has devin sawa um i mean jarhead obviously just a slang term for a soldier you know a marine so i guess it's pretty it's a pretty fungible title you can use it however you like jarhead to field of fire bokeem woodbine i'm sorry i just had i mean the guy works the guy works i will do a good job for you if you ask him to that is a classic guy who will do a good job no matter what the project yeah how far away are we from full metal jacket colon hartman rising or some shit shit where like the origin story of Arlo's revenge

what man they should cast fucking Modine in retired bit to folio de they should they should bring all the jokers together they should do a full metal jacket sequel they bring back D'Onofrio inexplicably they're just like he's back

he's the right size he should cross over with other vietnam movies you know apocalypse now meets full metal jack we need a non-verse it would be awesome if joker was on robin williams talk show well jumping back to what david said about all these vietnam movies come out but every one of the ones you mentioned felt like a modern movie when they came out, too. Even though it's taking place like 10 plus years ago, they still felt modern. Like the platoon felt like a modern movie.

This somehow feels like, and I think it's because of all the basic training, the parasailing stuff feels a bit like a documentary like like like it feels more in the moment and i know we're just you know we're talking craft like it's kubrick as well the godfather of realism but like he he it there's something different about this i mean obviously the tone of good morning vietnam is different but there's something about this movie that all the other movies are like war is hell, man. And this one just fucking feels does. It feels anachronistic, I guess. No, it feels totally out of time.

You look at Ebert's review for this movie when it came out and he says it's one of the best looking war movies ever made on sets and stage, which is like a real backhanded compliment because then he follows it up by saying it's not enough to compete with the quote, awesome reality of Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and The Deer Hunter. Like a lot of the sentiment at the time, even more than the, oh, the first 45 minutes are the best part.

When you read reviews from this movie's release is like, well, the rules have changed. We have movies like platoon that feel so visceral and real like the way we're like able to actually depict combat on screen kubrick doing this on sound stages isn't the same like this movie is not as harrowing look in in its viscerality or whatever you know i agree i mean i think again i know i be i hate being basic about this movie but i do think it's weird that it was shot in london like not even fucking northern england or whatever they just shot it in london how do you know that david well two reasons one

i did grow up there but two i read the dossier as well uh which explains it it's crazy when you see this movie as a young person and don't know that there are parts of vietnam that are in a jungle like i'm not like yes yes that's fair right we all have one image of it yeah i'm grown i'm a grown-up now and i understand how countries look and isn't always represented in our movies but at the time just seeing like a city like uh and it felt so and then that kind of felt like one of those powers of the limitations of wanting to only shoot in london it does thing i mean it's it's like a stylistic choice but at the time people were sort of dinging him by saying like that's not how it works anymore we've seen platoon you can't do

this now and he's like he's like I shot fucking 2001 here I think we can handle I showed you Mars here I think we can handle Vietnam it's funny to your point about this not feeling like an 80s movie it's like he only made two films in the 80s you know one at the top of the decade one at the end it's The Shining and this

and he worked within two genres that were running wild in the 80s. And the two movies feel so disconnected from all of the trends that were happening in those genres and yet were like big hits. Like the fact that The Shining comes out in the same decade

as like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, most of the Halloween franchise, you know? Texas Chainsaw sequels, Child's Play, like all this shit, right? Not to mention just like the endless barrage of Stephen King movies in that decade. And as we're saying, like Vietnam was like a fertile fucking subgenre in this period. And he's making this movie that feels totally out of time and place with this.

and he's making this movie that feels totally out of time and place with this i think about you know they'll do like studios will will like reissue all of their dvds for walmart with like the slip covers trying to rebrand them in some way and they'll do like totally totally 80s collection right do you know what i'm talking about to like make it seem like a party i just remember seeing one of those once where it was like paramount had their like totally 80s collection where they redid the cover art to make it all look like the inside of the max from saved by the bell or whatever and then including that collection was the accused god love love the 80s and this i heart the 80s it feels like what you're saying gay research like you can't file this in your mind as an 80s movie yeah i like forget like i like when i just looked it up i was like where this fall in his and i was like his second to last movie oh my god this king this movie is a couple

years a couple it's on video in the early 90s like that's just so crazy to imagine like and i was a lot like that was my childhood and it feels insane to and like full metal jacket was just like in the culture like you just knew about it even though it's like the most adult movie ever you knew about it as like a child like instantly fucking yeah that you could use it as fucking shorthand and toy story right let me tell you a little context about full metal jacket okay please uh there's seven years in between the shining and full metal jacket and uh obviously kubrick's career slows down a lot which we've talked about like he you know he takes longer to make movies um but it isn't just like persnicketyness or laziness or whatever it's or his like you know attention

to detail or whatever kubrick myth you want to run it's that he's exploring tons of stuff that he can't make you know his ambitions are so massive i feel like that he's trying to you know in the 70s he's trying to make the napoleon movie happen and it's just such a huge ask and in the 80s he's trying to make artificial intelligence happen. That's sort of his biggest unrealized project. And again, he's just running into the technology isn't there yet, right? Like that's the sort of big problem with AI, which obviously Steven Spielberg eventually makes. And then apart from that, he just reads books all the fucking time and is waiting for a book to capture his interest. And he reads the short timers.

I'm assuming nobody's read the short timers. I have not read. I have not read the short timers. I will cop to having seen this movie 10 times and on this viewing notice that it's based on a story. So the thing I've never read it. It's very short. I should have maybe thought about reading it it's just like not even 200 pages long it it has the exact same structure as this movie

it's three sections it's like uh you know uh boot camp and then journalism him as him as a journalist and then the sort of the whole sequence with this with the sniper like and so he's taking the book and obviously he he co-wrote the movie with gustav hasford who uh wrote the book well but there was a lot of fighting over that there's a lot of but he has a credit he has a credit he does it way i i think they wanted very badly for it to be obviously based on the book by an additional material and there was an ongoing arbitration fight kubrick apparently only met him once but he certainly likes the book uh and i do like his take on it which is basically like it's not

pro-war or anti-war it seemed only concerned with the way things are which feels like a very kubrick uh like something that would appeal to him right where? Where he's like, this is trying to present this in all its frightening realism. Like, and then we can decide what we do with that information. Yeah. Like it's a polemical thing. The other thing I saw was that

this period of time, he was kind of looking to make a Holocaust film and he is such an adapter. He never generates his own material that he kind of was constantly on the hunt to try to find the right starting point and then in that hunt he finds this instead and just shifts over i think that energy to this um right but we've talked about i mean war is the thing he goes back to most in his goes back to the most right 100 right uh michael hare who's the

other co-writer other listed co-writer he wrote that book dispatches which is about uh his life as a war correspondent in vietnam uh that's like a classic of new journalism and that's like another thing that kubrick wanted to adapt right so he's kind of he's kind of got both those things floating around and when they um find the short timers they're like well there's a story here right so why don't we make this the movie right you can work on it with me uh because dispatches obviously does not really have like a narrative to it it's just it's journalism it's yeah so he sort of absorbs the writer from one piece of material to help him adapt a different piece of material hair apparently said to him like don't meet hasford you're not gonna like this guy and kubrick was like what are you talking about i have to meet

him and then he met him it was like you were right i shouldn't have met him i don't like that i mean i think i think you're if you're gonna say kubrick i don't know if you're gonna like that stanley i don't know if you're gonna like this guy you're gonna be right 70 of the time like just rolling the dice why yeah i think a lot of people people get into Kubrick's orbit that he's like, now this guy I like. Yeah, he fought for his credit beyond just additional dialogue or story or whatever. He fought for his screenplay credit.

He won. The quote from him is, as a little Canuck friend of mine would say, I kicked a butt. I don't know what that's a reference to, I'm going to be honest. I think maybe Terrence and Phillip? Is that a Terrence and Phillip? Yes, of course. know what that's a reference to me either be honest yeah my hair's reaction is terrence and philip is that a terrence and philip yes yes of course no that's what it is yes yeah there's a little canadian friend of mine would say very little just a fart noise here

so i said to stanley shut your fucking face uncle fucker um hair's reaction is like he deserved the credit it was not that complicated like he doesn't seem too beat up about it so i don't know like hasford seems to have this take of like i had to fight tooth and nail and hair's take is like i don't know i guess so i don't mind and kubrick's take is like you know cut to a gravestone because he's dead so we don't know what And Kubrick's take is like, you know, cut to a gravestone because he's dead. So we don't know what he said. It's funny you say that because on this watch, I was most attracted to or most drawn in by the journalism stuff. Like the middle chunk. And it's not just because of how attractive Lieutenant Lockhart is. But like in the rear with the gear

quoted by Starcraft Marines. Yeah. Hell yeah, Gabrus. All right. Maybe we played each other on Battle.net sometime in the 90s. Yeah.

Let me know if you ever went up against Uncle Meatman on Battle.net. I've been playing an unsurprising choice of username. I've been playing Starcraft too for 20 of username I've been playing Starcraft 2 for 20 years

I just played the campaigns over the pandemic just to stay alive but the journalism shit drew me in so much more than previously and that's because in my age since watching this I went from being like a warhead to being like a podcaster

to being a podcaster to being into journalism and you know having left this point of view and it's like all sudden now i'm like intrigued by joker's kind of rebellious attitude and like his like intellect appeals to me more than like when you're a kid you like animal mother because he's like such, such a badass. Right. And you, like, lose all the content. And then when you watch it again, you're like, I can't believe I like that guy. Like, that guy has way too many bullets on his person. Way too many. Way too many.

You don't think he needs that many? No. I don't know. Based on how he's going, I don't think he has enough based on his behavior in the back. He does shoot them a lot. I'll say that. He doesn't just hold on to them. He's not wasting them.

He's wasting them. He's not wasting them carrying them. Yeah, yeah. Right, he uses them all. He does use them. I found the bit on the Hasford Kubrick thing I was looking for.

So Michael Herr wrote a book about Kubrick. Dispatches. Oh, about Kubrick. Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And this is his... Called My Buddy Stan. stan no i think it was called kubrick by her yeah yeah yeah yeah um i'll just read this uh verbatim hasford was by her own description a scary man this is a guardian

piece when the book was coming out okay hasford was by her own description a scary man a big haunted marine whom kubrick was determined to meet i advised him against it recalls her i told stanley i didn't think they'd get on kubrick insisted hasford duly came over to britain and there was a dinner during which kubrick passed her a note saying i can't deal with this man from then on hasford was dismissed from the mastro's presence i can't i know kubrick does just seem like the fussiest little fella sometimes it's just so funny you can't even say it he has to pass a note stanley this guy's an intense marine you're not gonna like him don't tell me who i'm gonna fucking like invite him over for dinner comes over for dinner immediately writes a note please get rid of this guy did you guys uh did you guys read the uh the making of uh

space odyssey that book uh uh it's no we awesome it has a lot of like perspective a lot of perspective on kubrick it's really fucking uh you're like you hear a lot of these weird fickle things where he's like well get back in the ape suit you know and like you like guys are like fainting and shit like his energy towards everyone is so and even just hearing interview like reading snippets of interviews from d'onofrio and joker uh and modine and all that you're like man it must have been one of those things where if you didn't know in the moment like like you would be like i fucking hate this guy like it would be so easy to hate kubrick if you like if you don't have the zoom if you don't have the vision which i wouldn't have had if I was cast in Full Metal Jacket.

But I think even if you do have the vision, like, Modine, you know, who so much of his life since this movie has been defined by this movie, can continue to talk about this movie, releasing his diaries on it. Wrote a book about it, made an app. Yes, exactly. He has that attitude. I feel malcolm mcdowell talks out the same way where it's just like i knew this guy was a genius i put myself in his hands i submitted myself to the process you know yeah but even if you do have that perspective i do think it takes a certain kind of person to be able to like detach in that way while also staying invested in your work even if you go into this being like

it's kubrick he's a genius by day 200 you're probably like i don't fucking care there's no you know like the two casting stories on this movie i find really interesting that the sort of almost stories are that he really wanted anthony michael hall to play joker sure yeah that was his first choice. He saw 16 Candles. He was like, this guy's an incredible actor, which I think he's right about. I think he's right.

I think he's right. With hindsight, I think they crushed it with Modine. I think Modine works well. Modine's incredible in this movie. It's one of those things where you wish there just had been an Anthony Michael michael hall kubrick collaboration especially kubrick did recognize in him that thing and it's like the soft era of anthony michael hall before he over corrects and feels like he needs to be a tough guy to prove that he's not a dork anymore

for the remaining 40 years of his career um so small but but he is like incredible in those hughes movies and you're like he's good no one else really kind of got how to use him in that uh era but there were like eight months of negotiations until it finally broke down and it's always very unclear and when anthony mccall does interviews about it they're like did you ask for too much money was it like a creative thing was it like the length of shoot and he's always kind of like vague about what it was but you can almost imagine just his reps at the time being like anthony is making like hand over foot being the nerd in these comedies that we can shoot four of a year yeah and we've got 12 offers taking us through the mid-80s right where it ends with you having six homes right michael hall how do you feel like you know and it's like this guy like

who knows what comes of it yeah i yeah i mean he was like 18 years old as well like i mean he would have been striking in that movie and in his way he would have been the the other one is rico ross who plays uh frost in aliens uh was an american actor who went to england because he felt like uh in america and hollywood he was only getting uh offers to play gang members so he like went to england uh went to drama school and became like an american actor that english productions could use and then mostly became kind of a military guy instead. He got offered a part in this. I don't know which character he was supposed to play.

I guess would be Payback? Not Payback. Hardball? Is that what his character's name is? Eightball, unfortunately. It's not that character. The character name I saw was a different one who I don't know if the character

was mostly cut out or the role is so small i didn't observe it i want to say like cleveland is who he's supposed to play um but he got offered the part and then he got offered the part in aliens and it was like this coin toss thing for him it came down to kubrick had an eight week hold on him and there was one week of overlap between uh aliens and full metal jacket and they were trying to negotiate the two and eventually it was just like you're dealing with two different tyrannical control freaks neither one is going to give an inch to the other one you have to pick one he picks aliens and he was like coin to imagine having a coin toss in your life where it's like which iconic film do you want to be a part of which iconic film directed by someone who is a proven master would you like to be in ideally

both it's like a lunatic it's going to be like an incredibly difficult production but the thing was kubrick was like we can't give you up a week early but but we need eight weeks and then he said that when aliens came out in theaters in 86 full metal jacket was still filming right it was one of those things where it was like he thought he could do both maybe and he went through it's legendary that like modine got engaged married, and had their kid and like celebrated the kid's first birthday all while shooting Full Metal Jacket. Yeah, it was like two years. I mean, another crazy stat I saw was that R. Lee Ermey got in a really bad car accident and couldn't film anything for four and a half months. But it happened at the point in production where they had filmed everything but R. Lee Ermey's footage.

Yeah, he got hurt like after they shot vietnam yeah it massively delayed production yes we i mean he he also yeah it's crazy that he survived that apparently like he should have died he kept himself alive like flashing brights in the jeep like in in the yes the account i read he's just like yes over turned over on the side of the road broken ribs and broken arm or whatever and he's just flashing the brights on his car trying to stay away on the jeep staying away broken ribs puncturing organs yeah yeah uh in epping forest which is not like a place that anyone is in in the nighttime like that's what the fuck was he doing out there? We don't even have to get into that.

But I think you were about to say that's why he doesn't move his arm in the movie. Yeah, there's a whole chunk where he's not moving one of his arms. And it plays into the character because he doesn't really move a lot, without the exception of walking and jogging. Man, talk about this long-ass production.

What if you're not Arliss howard matthew modine or vincent d'onofrio you are fucking guy number 10 who's just got to do push-ups and jog all day i think that's basically what rika ross's thing was gonna be i mean i my understanding is rika ross auditioned for like uh drake uh in aliens yeah yeah and then they cast the other guy and they were like we'd like you to play one of the marines and he's like i got an offer from kubrick and cameron was like i will promise you have dialogue in this right he's like i will create frost i will give you the arthurian poontang joke i will give you beats i assure you you will not just be the guy in the background but yeah these guys just had to fucking be here for 18 months or whatever well but also come on

i mean like just think about how he hasn't made a movie in seven years yeah and it's like hey stanley kubrick is making a war movie it's like oh shit a war movie he's made war movies before and he needs like every you know young actor below the age of 28 to to like everyone must have wanted oh yeah full metal jacket right it must have been one of those things where it's like holy shit you know you only get so many bites at that apple they this was an early case of letting people submit auditions through videotape like having a pretty open audition because they needed young people and they got 3 000 submissions which yeah this created one of my favorite early viral videos is that dude and i'll send it to you guys if you haven't seen it or don't remember it

it's a dude's audition tape for uh full metal jacket and he's like at a Sears, like with a ladder and his like leg is up on. He's like, hello, Mr. Kubrick. It's like how it begins. And then he like talks about all his acting training and it's, it's like pure,

like unsheathed, like actor ego stuff. And it was just, I remember watching it in like, Oh seven. And everyone just like cackling about it. So I'll track it down hello mr kubrick yeah you also have to think like at this point the leon vitali stuff has sort of

already happened so any young actor is viewing this partially as like this is an education you know right like it's not just that i want this opportunity as an actor i understand that what i'm signing up for here is the idea of like studying under this guy uh leon vitale is like uh filmmaker or whatever that that documentary is about yeah film worker yeah film worker ah right fucking love that that was so good who plays like barry lyndon's stepson and was uh like a young actor who then gave up his entire acting career to be stanley kubrick's executive assistant for the rest of his life you know was just like i'm so enamored of this man's process i just want to serve him this man that's a fucking the sign of a true artist like all right completely switched mediums to just like right carry just to be around talent just to be around

genius like it's so fucking crazy right i think more dean talks about this movie that way too not that he wasn't like in it as an actor but that it was like well the main thing was me studying stanley kubrick for two years right so fucking cool yeah it's probably pretty cool i mean probably a good time i don't know i mean i have a lot of stories i mean the you know he's sitting there he's playing chess he's still stanley kubrick he's the same you know grumpy genius griffin do you think it was a union like a sag movie because that's this is what i was thinking the whole time about it going over is like yeah these getting a fucking weekly rate for two years is sad and i get a lot of these people have other movement in their career but for me if i accidentally got locked off in london for two years working on a war movie i think it would be the best thing

that's happened to my career oh i'm in great shape absolutely running around a lot of job you know because i know that's the reason that um lucas kept filming in london for as long as he could yeah he probably does not have to abide by the unions i just know people were like crazy underpaid on on the star wars movies up through like phantom menace and that the unions are more fungible there at least were at this point in time yoda was living out of his car yeah crazy i just think there's a difference between if like someone comes to you and they're like you booked a movie you are guaranteed two years of work and you're like hell yeah here we go steady paycheck versus like right the rico raw story is so telling that they're like oh we'll

shoot you out in eight weeks you know that no one here thought they were signing up for this long and if you're saying someone's gonna be shot out in eight weeks that is there's two halves to the movie that are or you know three halves to the movie that are, or three parts to the movie where it's three fully different casts. Like Joker jumps around. First and third has Joker and Cowboy. The middle one has Joker and

Rafterman. The third one, like Rafterman's in two and three. But you're right. It mostly switches up. Yeah. So if you were like, if you're stuck there for two years and you're in one third of the movie, that's also crazy too. Yeah.

And it's like, he's already had several movies run this long and yet he, by all accounts, is still going into it being like, no, we're going to do like a normal shoot. None of that Kubrick shit. This war movie of mine.

Okay. Let me give you more context here. I like this quote. I like Kubrick shit. This war movie of mine. Okay. Let me give you more context here. I like this quote. I like Kubrick talking. You can hear kind of the exasperated sigh. If I'm forced to suggest something about the deeper meaning of the story, I would have to say that it has a lot to do

with the Jungian idea of the duality of man, altruism and cooperation on one hand, aggression and xenophobia on the other so i guess this is his thing he's like i don't want to make a war movie about good and evil i want to make it about good and evil right in the same person right rather than like the interplay between the two yeah right the line the line when whoever's i think it's 8-Ball, who Animal Mother is very racist towards the entire section of that movie. But 8-Ball is the one who defends Animal Mother to Joker and says, when shit hits the fan, that's the guy you want. And that's like a weird duality of man moment, too.

It's like, this guy, oh, yeah, legendary piece of shit, actually treats me personally awful. It's like this guy, oh, yeah, legendary piece of shit, actually treats me personally awful. But I now need to hold two thoughts about this person in my head because he is good and may be the reason I stay alive. And does later try to save him to the detriment of the rest of his platoon. But there is something about like every single person, like even Pyle is bad. Everyone hates him and he's bad at everything except shooting. And so all of a sudden, drill sergeant's like, hey, okay, maybe there's a side of this guy I like. And we see that so frequently throughout. And obviously there's a straight up monologue about the Jungian duality of man, which fucking rules as well.

duality of man which uh yes which fucking rules as well just randomly dropped in the middle of the movie a fucking intense backdrop of like bodies under lie and fucking the monologue about the theme of the movie happening in the foreground fucking great moment which i never really hit hit me before i always thought the peace thing was funny and now on this viewing i'm like fuck that's heavy we we just recorded the episode this week and i know gabriel you've seen this movie as well so i mean i'm just putting these two films together because i've seen them within the same seven days but it's the thing that like woman King goes into a lot as well of like how much you have to break your brain to survive in an environment like this. Right. Like, you know, the the pile suicide is like shocking. But then it's almost more shocking that more people don't kill themselves in this environment.

The way this film depicts. Why would anyone like this right yes like thriving in this environment is a weird human human failure as well like it's like there's something like if you did well in at paris island that's like a bad sign as much as uh killing yourself but that's why joker is such a fascinating character yeah like joker is clearly smart right and he is clearly an intellectual and we don't know that because he says anything in the first chunk of the movie except for that he doesn't believe in god right except for that moment but like you just know it because it's matthew modine and you can just tell and he seems to be able to let the basic you know basic training

just kind of pass through him like for whatever reason like he's just turning off his brain and he's just like okay fine i'll just do whatever this guy tells me to do and emerge on the other side of a capable journalist of sorts like and then that's how he's perceiving vietnam for so much of it he's just sort of like yeah i don't know this is i don't think this is good but also i'm unmoved by it in a weird way well i assume which is very powerful to watch he got drafted he's like there against his will a lot of people assumes they're against their will so right him choosing to be a journalist is also like i am not gonna die on the front lines if i can prevent it but he's not like

oh my god this is is horrible. He's watching it just somewhat dispassionately for most of the movie. And it's the whole having the peace sign button and born to kill on the helmet, you know? And the more he's pressed on it, the more he's like, I don't know. I mean, what you're saying, Gabriel, is just like, Animal Mother

is the example of someone who is built to succeed within this system. And the takeaway is bad this guy's terrifying but also the guy he's most racist to is like i mean in this environment he kind of needs to be my best friend i mean one of my favorite war movies is is blackhawk down ridley blackhawk down and and yes incredible movie i've seen it a million times um and eric bonner's character is sort of similar where everyone's like, look, that guy freaks me out,

but he's very helpful when a million people are shooting guns because he seems to be really suited to that atmosphere. That is when that guy locks the fuck down and starts doing stuff that I'm too afraid to do. What's the thing they say when they're worried about the guys being mentally unbalanced, class eight or whatever they say? You talking about the guy who jerks off too much but they say this they have the story about the guy who jerks off 10 times a day his name's hand job no they say this about a pile too though early on in the movie when he's like i

caught him talking to his gun right right it's this thing of like how funny it is to frame anyone as like, oh, this guy might- It is Section 8. Okay, okay. So it's both public housing and psychiatric discharge in the Marines. But yeah, they say- Sorry, go on, Griff. No, it is that thing where you're just like, well, but the entire exercise of boot camp is essentially trying to break people's brains. Right?

Sure. We are going to remove your personhood. And to rebuild them in what we need in a soldier. Right. And then the people who acquit themselves best in this environment are the people who seem to be perhaps a little deranged going into it, that their temperament is already a better fit to this, where there's less rewiring. Yeah, well, it's chicken or egg.

Right. Like, if that person was just drafted into the Peace Corps, would they end up being, like, you know, close to godly? You know what I mean? It's just funny to be like... What if they did the Peace Corps the same way, though? That'd be funny. If they had Arlie Ermey screams at you,

you maggots, you're going to build houses all over the world. I've said before, and I don't know anything about the actual, but there should be a non-military service you could join that has all the same perks as the military, but they send you to Wyoming to help put solar panels in or whatever. And it's service. You get some home loan like some you get some home loan benefits you get some college payoff benefits it's like it's a way for poor people

to get out without having to murder on behalf of imperial right that's the thing we're really looking for yeah it's like that's the shit that needs to come around is that you get set to like you know like all right now everyone we're going to bozeman and we're gonna get water to the native people you know like yes i just find it funny that it's like the section eight threat looming of like this guy jerks off too much he might be a problem piles talking to his gun animal mother that's a good soldier and you're like no you've like made him the right kind of crazy versus the kind of crazy that scares them. You know, the apparently the animal mother backstory is that he was like a criminal who got like it's not in the movie, but he's a criminal who got arrested and was like jail. The classic jailer jailer army choice.

Yes. Yeah. And this is a big thing in the inspection which is just on my mind because i just saw it but you know the way you can't say i you have to say this marine right sure you you're literally not allowed to have be individualistic it's you know this this marine needs information is how you ask a question essentially uh which i love uh what a crazy thing to train people to shoot guns at other people there's the moment that i find so fascinating where i i forget what the thing is that they're fighting over but where our early army calls modine out and modine refuses to like change

his opinion and says like sir i think you'll respect this marine do you believe in god oh yes it's a yes, yes, yes. And it's like this Marine believes that Drill Sergeant will be unhappy with whatever answer for cowardice of changing the answer or whatever. And that's when he gets promoted to squad leader. Right, and that's the thing

where Ernie does not warm up at all, but it's the only time he respects anyone the entire movie where he has to call over other guys and go like, you've just been demoted. I think this guy's a piece of shit, but he's got fucking integrity.

He's got balls. One other time we see the drill sergeant supportive, and it's when Pyle is hitting targets. Oh, sure. It's the only other, which is very distinctive in that. He's a good job. Yeah, it's the only two times. It's like when he's like oh this big dumb idiot i

have i'm saddled with at least could maybe be a killer and i'm happy for that unbeknownst to who he may end up being killing in the next couple of days i mean just the dynamics of that that joker or me scene are so fascinating to me because it's like this entire operation is designed to knock all individuality out of these fucking guys. Right. And to just like turn them into weapons. This thing we talked about a lot in the Woman King episode where it's just like your job is just to hone every single part of your being into being the most efficient weapon possible. And yet it's like Modine is displaying the kind of intelligence he knows is of value within a

battlefield yeah he can't actively encourage it right but it's like oh this guy has some level of strategic thinking that is good even though he's going against what i'm asking him to do but he's not exactly going against what the drill sergeant taught him. He's playing within the rules of the Marines, but keeping his opinion. So that's like a very specific needle thread that he does that. I don't think in that moment, the drill sergeant Ernie is even real.

Like didn't think of that as a possible answer. And when he says that, it's like, Oh fuck. Okay. Tough guy. You're right. Hey. And he's like, you know, like me you beat my i'm the sphinx you beat my logic puzzle and it's like this guy's got upper management potential like that's essentially what he's

recognizing so kubrick considered a number of actors to play gunner sergeant hartman robert de niro uh which is interesting to imagine ed harris who probably would be good yes uh but had just decided to take a year off of acting because he had made a little film called the abyss which broke his brain into a million pieces life's abyss and then you die exactly uh arlie ernie had been a technical advisor in apocalypse now purple hearts boys and company see a lot of these Vietnam movies. He was working at a factory as a quality controller. I'm sure he was very chill.

He was like a very fun co-worker. And he was brought along to interviews with these British soldiers and the stuff he would scream in their faces. Kubrick was like, all right, yeah, you should. Apparently he initially thought he wouldn't be vicious enough, but then realized, no, obviously this guy is perfect and would write down everything he said because all the insults came right from him. All these like elaborate essay length sort of, you know,

treatises on what a piece of shit somebody was like it's it is like improv like you guys are saying like it's like this incredible you know there's no way he's writing this stuff down right he just has some sort of ability to generate but that having been said there is the misconception that his monologues in this movie are improvised which belies like that's not how film production works they would just be like arlie give us a run and like leo vitale would be there like a fucking yeah and like and like riffing and rehearse like it's rehearsals and it's like just go and also i think a lot of it was in like uh test footage there's like this legend that there's this video of arlie ermie uh that kubrick saw of him rattling off all these like insults and screams while being like

pelted with tennis balls and oranges and never and never breaking and then something to the effect of like someone transcribed it and it's three minutes of video but it's like 70 pages of writing or something like there's like all these legends of like what he the output he was putting out and you believe it i also you saying it gr Griffin, I had never heard that, but I believe if you look at Arlie Ermey or interact with him when he's not fully in Hartman mode, you're going, I don't know, this guy seems kind of like cute and nice, right? Gabrus, that story is even wilder than what you heard. They hired first this guy, Tim Colseri, who ends up playing the door gunner in this movie, the get some guy. You don't need him as much.

Get some. Right. That line is very chilling. Yes. So he was supposed to play Hartman. Right. And Arlie Remy was mostly supposed to be a technical consultant. He starts doing all these riffs.

They're like, fuck, we should just do this. But his whole fear was that he was going to like clam up on camera. Aside from not being vicious enough, it's like, well, basic, the fact that you have this background doesn't mean it will play on screen. Right. You know, things don't translate. So like they would do these sessions where Liam Vitale was the one who was pelting him with oranges or they'd be like, we're going to film you.

You have to do all your dialogue while playing soccer. Like they'd essentially say the one I heard about the oranges thing was that Liam Vitale was pelting him with oranges and he had to catch each one and throw it back without missing a word of his dialogue. And if he either dropped an orange or fucked up a line, they had to

start over again from the beginning. And Kubrick was like, he can't shoot until he's able to do the whole thing perfectly. Like he wanted to make sure this guy who didn't have a lot of on-camera experience would not get not only stage fright but would be able to like withstand the technical demands of the thing so they just made him run his dialogue while playing sports and shit that allegedly uh colseri the door gunner guy who was maybe going to play hartman at first had spent like six weeks getting off book on all the crazy monologues too and then had his role changed oh that's a fucking

ball buster it sucked i mean look at least they give him like a good moment like he has an iconic moment in the film it is funny to imagine you hear all these stories of like kubrick calling cut and being like um arlie what's, what is a reach around? Right. And then Arlie explaining it and then Kubrick going, good, leave that in. Well, sir. But also like the Arlie Armey stuff is apparently like two, three takes. Like this was where Kubrick was like, he was so precise.

Yes. We actually didn't have to do it the normal amount. Yeah. This is a Kuba quote that i like acting is amazing part crazy part magical gift an actor's power rests in the ability to create emotion himself and thus in the audience the ability to cry at the clack of a clapboard is a strange and rare talent of course drill instructors can do it naturally because they're performers and liars can do it because lying is important to the liar

um but basically he was just like you know i guess realized like you are an actor already like i hadn't considered this but what you're doing is acting um and ermy basically said like what he thought was realistic about full metal jacket which is what i just remarked on actually i hadn't put this together is that no one's talking everyone is just silent yeah and he says most films about boot camp have too much gabbing that's why they're unreal um right because they wouldn't be like they would be scared you gotta be quiet the other guy's fucking talking he's in charge of you shut up don't speak he will cram you into your locker and that that's our introduction to Joker, Private.

You know, like we get, like, Joker chatting is when we learn the rules of, like, he's the weird one. He's the intellectual. He's making a wisecrack here. And Arlie Ermey's about to kill him for it. He becomes Joker. That's the other thing about this movie. This movie fucking starts. Yeah.

This movie just fucking starts. Yeah. Oh, it sure does. This movie just fucking starts, dude. I paused it. At one minute and 21 seconds, you're in the barracks. And he's calling them maggots. Yes. At nine seconds, their heads are being shaved. It's like MGM into head shaving.

You're just fucking plowed into it. Sorry. Go, David. I was watching this with a friend of the show, Emma Stefanski, and we were just like, wouldn't that be satisfying to be the guy who shaves everyone's head? It just looks satisfying to just get all the hair off. Doesn't it? Right? Doesn't it seem good?

Activate some OCD. The floor is a little gross. The floor sucks. No. I guess you need another guyd and the floor is a little gross the floor sucks yeah i guess you need another guy to deal with the floor you want to you want to get that but uh the thing i read is that obviously when they were filming they had to shave the guy's heads every single day like you shave it again every single day for continuity the opening of all of their heads being shaved was shot like four months after they thought they had wrapped he brought them back and was like i need a new opening so everyone had grown their hair out and it's and that's allegedly why everyone is

miserable exactly it sells how they look really sad because they genuinely thought they were out of this thing they thought they were finally done and he's like one last reshoot oh god what a fucking monster so griff obviously earlier me was not nominated for an oscar for i was just about which i would say yeah a surprising snub now i have two things to say about it one we're going to talk about that category briefly i just wanted to because it is loaded as fuck okay okay you can see why he didn't get the nomination yeah two and i'm thinking i hadn't thought about this lou gossett jr had just won an oscar a couple years oh gentlemen so maybe it was kind of like a drill sergeant we've seen that even though obviously this is a more realistic you know this is not like a bigger

character do you want to know who the five nominees were griffin yeah i i just want to say two other points there one i think there was a little bit of d'onofrio ermie split i mean ermie got a golden globe nomination and i think ermie got a golden globe nomination and he got i was looking at this here hold on he won a critics award but d'onofrio won a different one. Ernie won Boston Society of Film Critics. Sure. And then D'Onofrio was nominated by New York. Sure. But there's also just the thing,

I feel like actors are at a real disadvantage if their part is front-loaded in a movie. If you look at supporting winners, very often they are people who end the film more than they are people who are at the opening section this is one of the 10 most iconic screen performances in history right yeah it's one of those situations where like it's we no one could know at the time that this how iconic this role like you know what i mean but if you're like acting wise you're like oh this guy's just screaming at people and it's the first half of the movie and he doesn't

have a clip he doesn't have an oscar clip sure and when also and also it's like it was his job so like he's just being himself right like it was possibly just odd to me because yeah i feel like in the 80s i mean they're obviously they're like wins like Hayeng Esnagor for like the Killing Fields, you know, where it's like, oh, this guy wasn't even really an actor. And there are also things like, you know, like Round Midnight and like Baryshnikov getting nominated and stuff like that, where it's like sometimes you have someone who's acting isn't their main thing. But there is this incredible film document of their work, you know? Right. And it's a fun nom I like those usually like fun but here are the five

the Oscar went to Sean Connery for The Untouchables a sort of combo career win and big meaty role just like a day go to bring a knife to a gun fight sorry gotta do that the one slur i'm

allowed to do the one you get the pass on uh and then you've got i mean griffin i want to it is a it is category fraud but one of your favorite performances ever i would say albert brooks and broadcast news oh yeah i disagree on it being category fraud maybe but that's a tough one i well i i'm not sure how i feel it's sort of it's a you know it's kind of a three lead movie he's sort of a lead sort of supporting it's one of those things the part that's weird is that he's supporting and hurt is lead you feel like either they're both lead or they're both supporting but exactly but obviously for politics sake sure they put the you know marquee idol as the lead and him as the supporting actor anyway certainly deserves a nomination then you have vincent gardenia in moonstruck now this is maybe the most vulnerable

of these five picks sure but your favorite i love that performance yeah and he's also kind of there for like all the fucking guys in Moonstruck. Danny Aiello, John Mahoney. Yeah. Nicholas Cage is kind of the lead, obviously. But like, you know, there's just a lot of big, watery eyed Italian guys in that movie who we love. Right. Sure.

You're saying he's nominated on behalf of the cast. Yes. The over 50 cast. Yeah. He's nominated on behalf of the cast. Yes. He's there for them. The over 50 cast. Yeah.

And then the other two nominees are iconic actors getting their first nomination. So Denzel Washington in Cry Freedom and Morgan Freeman in Street Smart. Huh. Yeah. You know what I mean? Where it's like those actors actually both went on to do better work. Of course. Although those are both good performances.

But at the time, it's like, well, holy shit. Welcome to the club nominations. right right and the golden globes are very different it's connery and morgan freeman but then they have richard dreyfus in nuts oh boy and rob lowe in square dance uh and then arlie ermy you so four. Four of the movies you've mentioned in the last minute I have not even heard of. Which have you not heard of? Cry Freedom, the one Morgan Freeman was nominated for. Street Smart. No, sorry.

Cry Freedom. And what was the last one you just said? Square Dance. Square Dance. Square Dance and Nuts. What the fuck is that? Yeah. All right.

Well, so Nuts is the movie where Barbraara streisand goes nuts it's got a great poster it does she looks real nuts on it i gotta tell you i think it's a movie about her trying to be declared mentally incompetent in some kind of a murder trial it's like a very serious movie um street smart is this like christopher reeve goes he's a reporter who goes undercover in like the world of hustling and morgan freeman plays um a pimp called fast black smalls uh who's like taking him around time square in the 80s and obviously like he's the thing that is good about that movie i think it's a jerry shatsburg cry freedom and street smart both sort of have that thing of like here's a vehicle for a beloved leading man and then the supporting guy just

completely steals the movie right like denzel stealing cry freedom from kevin klein and like that was supposed to be christopher reeve doing like i'm gonna go a little darker i'm gonna move away from superman everyone was like we only want to talk about morgan freeman no one is paying attention to what you're doing in this movie. Now, I have never seen Square Dance. It is from Daniel Petrie, who directed a zillion movies back in the day. But I don't really know anything about it. I think it's set in Texas.

We know her writer. Jason Robards, Jane Alexander. Coming of age drama. I think Rory, sorry, Rob Lowe plays a character called Rory, who I think has an intellectual disability. Oh, great. So I'm not sure how that plays today.

But I could see that being the kind of thing where in the 80s they were like, oh, Rob, good job. Very brave performance or whatever. Maybe it's good, but I doubt it. My guess is no. Yeah. I'm just going to go with him here. So that's the vibe. Yeah.

My guess is no. Yeah. I'm just going to go a little in here. So that's the vibe. Yeah. But it's, that's, you know,

so it's kind of, it is a stacked year, but Arlie Remy is good in this movie, as is, as you say, Griff, Vincent D'Onofrio.

Yeah, I'd say it's pretty great. I think they might have split, I think, the first half of the movie. Like, I was thinking about Mark Rylance,

Bridge of Spies, right? Like, an incredible performance and similarly a thing where he just kind of owns the first 45 minutes of the movie i'm like i don't know if it should have been alone should have been well for that one well i will i will fight i will fight that i think that should have been stallone the stallone performance in creed is incredible but my my point is arguably one of his only good ones in his entire career we could have definitely just been hooked him up at that he wouldn't be doing samaritan now but but if rylance doesn't come back at the end of bridge of spies i don't know if he wins the oscar you know

what i'm saying like the fact that he comes back at the end for like five minutes after being missing for like an hour yeah you're right he gets the one knockout punch at the end right just so you don't forget about it so you don't forget about him. So you don't forget. I get that. Do you think Ernie should come back in this movie and be like, you guys are good now. Great job, everybody. If he showed up in the clouds and just started yelling, that would rule.

I've whipped heaven into shape. St. Peter's a maggot. That would be good. That would be good. That's what they they should do you know what's a funny use of arlie i mean it's what we're talking about but he plays the ghost version of this and the frighteners uh that's funny yes that's right he plays like spooky ghost real sergeant we should do peter jackson i want to re-watch the frighteners i haven't seen that since i was like 12 years yeah ripped yeah i remember it ripping um vincent d'onofrio as we said he was a bouncer right at the hard rock cafe i think uh my favorite fact i've been dying to like throw that out but yeah

sorry ben sorry throw it out um and he uh taped the audition himself and mailed it to, uh, all the way to Stanley in England and then put on something like 70 pounds. Right. Like he put on an incredible amount of weight. Modine was the one who tipped him off. They were buddies. Yes. And, and Modine had already gotten the part and was like, you really should get your name in the mix for this. Um, and yeah, I mean, it's one of these things that's like hard to verify,

but it has long stood as like the claim of the most weight an actor has gained for a role. Sure. There was sort of the victory lap of like, he gained 10 more pounds than De Niro in Raging Bull. It also speaks to just like, he's got a very different body type. Yeah, I mean, D'Onofrio is like seven inches taller than De Niro

or something crazy like that. Yes, yes. Right. De Niro's very short. It lends piles size in this movie. I really, like I was saying earlier, I got really connected to the journalism section in the middle

because I felt the most scene, like I was like, oh, this would be like my energy there. But the fucking pile, his size makes him so sympathetic and scary at the same time. And the shaved head. Yeah. Yeah. giant evil baby look which just works so powerfully for the role of lawrence or uh of pile where you're like you're like i want to help this guy but also i don't want this guy anywhere fucking near me denafrio talks about he he said that when he was filming this movie for whatever

16 years of his life where he had to maintain this look, that people would talk to him more slowly. Right. I believe it. That just with this size and this shaved head and when he still got the sort of baby face thing, there is that odd quality of something about him seeming simultaneously very, very innocent and deeply cursed and deranged at the same time.

It's also wild to be like, when does Adventures in Babysitting come out adventures in babysitting is 1987 same year okay so same year as this who knows you know probably shot like two years later or whatever right yeah but but for those who have not seen it or have not seen it recently the bit in adventures of babysitting is he is like a guy who works at a parking lot but the little girl in that movie is obsessed with thor marvel's thor and she thinks he looks like thor and it's it's d'nafrio as like presented as the ultimate beef cake here is like a golden god d'nafrio with long blonde hair ripped it's it's wild how like fundamentally different he feels in these two films and it's not just a difference of 70 pounds it's like his aura is different yeah

fuck he's really a great act like this is one of those movies one of those moments i think i talk about every time i'm on this podcast and i think i even already said it this time this is one of those movies where you're like that's why this guy worked forever you know what i mean like you're like yeah he does some great work down the road too but nothing that you're like yeah men in black is maybe his second best role behind pile uh it's you know like when you're growing up you're like this guy's in everything and he's just like fine and then when you're like oh i see like i always think and he's just fine. And then when you're like, oh, I see. I always think about that the Sopranos will do that to you or the Wire will do that to you.

When you rewatch those shows, you're like, now I know why everyone likes this guy. He did this cool thing. If you're coming onto someone's career late and then catch one of their early roles, it really explains everything to you. Absolutely. one of their early roles it really explains everything to you absolutely i mean the thing is like d'onofrio is uh has done like a tremendous amount of great work over decades as we've said but this is truly one of those lifetime past performances yes and you even feel it where it's like he's gone through varying levels of like bankability but he never stops working because it's just like well everyone knows he's got this in him. Isn't this insane, Ben? I just sent you the picture.

He's hot. Right? Damn. Yeah. This is really surprising. You just don't think that D'Onofrio could be positioned in the same category as Chris Hemsworth,

but you're like, he was essentially the first guy to play Thor in a movie. He's so statuesque. He's so tall. I guess that's what he's working with. And you forget, I forget personally because I just watched

Full Metal Jacket two nights ago, but you forget that he has a chiseled leading man jawline. And in David's background, it's most apparent. The open mouth pile face. Not the crazy Kubrick face, which he also succeeds at greatly, apparent the open mouth pile face not that's the thing not the crazy kubrick face which he also succeeds at greatly but the open mouth big dumb baby face that's in the real has on is

unreal it's like to live like yes and like his eyes are just dead i i you know the whole movie it's that thing where you're talking to someone and you can't figure out if they understand what you're saying or not just his introduction with ermie trying to get him to stop smiling and he cannot it's so it's genuinely really funny you immediately start giggling because you understand the feeling of like the more this guy screams at me to stop laughing the funnier it would get like it would be inescapable we were asked to leave easter sunday mass one time because me and my brothers could not my dad my dad wasn't there the real disciplinarian my mom was there and my littlest brother farted and the three of us could

not stop laughing about it and like other people and like we're in church so it's even harder not to not laugh you know what i mean like it's that same energy and my mom's going knock it off and then like an old lady's coming over and it's like could you please have your boys be quiet and we're like well if jason wouldn't have farted like we can't stop that night my dad gets home from work at midnight this is like uh too dramatic for real life but like we all have to get up and stand in the living room like drill sergeant style and get yelled at by my dad uh because he's an angry alcoholic and the punishment guy uh but he's doing that and me and my brothers are locked exactly back into we can't

laugh and now it's even more scary and it's like twice in one day we have to live the whole like you're trying to lock it up and it's impossible so i relate day we have to live the whole like you're trying to lock it up and it's impossible so i relate hard to pile in that moment and not just because i'm fat and soft you have to imagine that like if you're seeing this in a theater as a new release the audience is laughing up until that point right like what he's doing is so over the top so extreme so relentless that like the whole audience is cackling uncomfortably but when you cut to d'onofrio and he's laughing now he's the first person on screen who also recognizes the absurdity of this it feels like cathartic like

not only like i understand that's what i would be doing in this situation but it's like this is what i'm doing now watching this. How is everyone else able to maintain their composure? And then there's the tension of like, even when he's being choked, he can't stop. You know, it's like,

it's impossible for him to stop. And I do love that. Ernie is like, I'm not going to choke you. You're going to choke yourself on me. So I am not culpable for what is happening. It's great. Right. Right. Right. the shift of choke

yourself reaches for his hands you fucking idiot my hands then he reaches for ermie's hands he's like don't fucking pull my arms towards you no you will you will get that yes yes you will do all the work the bag of oranges thing is like so brutal you know it's just because as you said you have this moment of compassion between uh pile and joker and then just that hazing moment you mean the the soap party oh yeah sorry sorry yeah yes blanket they call it a blanket party right yeah oranges are famously the ones that if in a towel wouldn't leave a bruise. I know that. That's why I assumed.

Yeah. But I don't think they have a lot of oranges on hand. Well, Liam Vitale was fucking throwing them at early army. They're all smashed. They're all on the floor. Well, let's see.

He used them all. Exactly. He fucked up. Yeah. That sequence hit me so fucking hard on this. Yeah. It was horrible. Like his, his acting of being in pain after the fact. And like, exactly you fucked up yeah that sequence hit me so fucking hard on this yeah horrible like his his acting of being in pain after the fact and like this whole time you're kind of viewing pile as a baby in the pity way and the like annoying way of like oh this bit and then when he's like

literally in his underwear on top of a bunk bed. Yeah. Literally crying like a baby. And you're like, Oh my fucking God. Like he's been dehumanized, like back to zero. You know what I mean? Like he's been brought back to being a newborn and he's reborn as an absolute fucking psychopath.

Right. Right. Yes. You know, a he's in a tremendous amount of pain. Right. But, but B it also just feels like he's finally releasing all of the abuse he's been suffering for who knows how long and i think the joker thing is like and joker even feels that like right that's like final straw yeah it's the final

straw of like shit everyone because he said earlier everyone hates me you hate me oh man is is private piles uh voice up there with uh buffalo bill's voice from silence of lambs of like voices you kind of want to do and are iconically weird for some reason actually he'd be great he would he could be a great rafter man here's a good yeah he would be yeah there you go uh here's a good to know for you a quote apparently before one scene kubrick said i want you to be big lawn chaney big they shot three takes and then they sat down and watched the tape and they were sitting next to each other and after the third take stanley took his fist and gently rubbed it against Vincent D'Onofrio. Vincent has never forgotten that. It was the approval from Kubrick. That's all he would do. He would just give you a little. And the other thing D'Onofrio says is like,

he was very supportive. We used to have conversations in the trailer. We never talked about the project. We just talked about boxing or football or whatever. Like that was the vibe. The other thing I saw is that d'onofrio was like studying lon chaney the entire time like that was the guy he was sort of trying to build his performance off of and and had never expressed that to kubrick so when kubrick gave him that direction it was like okay it's working hell yeah right yeah yeah that kind of rules another thing that stood out for me a long time ago i watched the director's commentary i can barely remember oh it's not even director's commentary i watched the commentary with the screenwriter d'onofrio and i forget who else is in there uh and d'onofrio says he's listening to

no woman no cry a lot in between takes wow on his headphones which is just like interesting choice but then you sort of get it like weirdly like and maybe i'm just like you know want to get it so i'm pretending i get it but it like it makes total sense it does yeah it's like soft it's it's like soft it's upsetting but it's also very gentle like there's something about it i don't know yeah yeah um kiprick says matthew modine is as if gary cooper and henry fonda had a baby high praise um modine three of his brothers and one of his sisters served in vietnam so he said like i told i just grew up with vietnam like jesus we'd listen to the radio we'd listen to the body count is how he puts it i was you know old enough to understand what was going on i was probably interested in the role because i grew up

with it um he uh, he has this long... Did you read the thing where he tells the joke to Kubrick, Griffin? No. In the dossier? All right. Well, he goes over to Kubrick and he's like, I'm going to tell you a joke. You're dead and you're up in heaven and Steven Spielberg has just died and he's being greeted at the gate by Gabriel and Gabriel says,

God likes a lot of your movies and he wants to make sure you're comfortable with anything you need. And Steven says, well, I always wanted to meet Stanley Kubrick. Could I arrange that? And Gabriel says, you know, Steven, why would you ask me that?

You know, Stanley Kubrick doesn't take meetings. And that's the joke. And then the second part of the joke is that they go around heaven and steven sees a guy wearing an army jacket with a beard and he says look there's stanley kubrick can i say hello and gabriel says that's not stanley kubrick that's god he just thinks he's stanley kubrick and and and modine says stanley liked that joke so there you go stanley had a sense of humor about him being god no he's obviously he has a riley funny guy i think yeah that's

something that picked up i picked up on this uh viewing too it's and besides the obvious humor in uh someone berating someone else besides that humor the back half of the movie it has like the wise-ass humor in the second act with the journalism stuff. You get a lot of the cheeky, because now it's the smart guys hanging out in the back, and there's humor in that. Being funny to John Terry, who's the editor-in-chief.

Absolute fucking hunk. Absolute fucking hunk. John Terry hot. Very hot. Objectively, when he's on screen, I like jesus christ that's what movie stars look like jack's dad from lost right he's best known as jack's dad from lost to our generation has aged beautifully fucking silver fox yeah he did he did age very nicely it's true he also he's in er for first er super fans, and he would often play like really dark guys,

much like, you know, like Jack's dad on loss. Yeah. And you see him in this and you're just like, why wasn't this guy a huge movie star? He's so handsome. Right.

Like totally like, you know, cut chin, you know, perfect face kind of thing. I don't know. I think he's the drunk absentee father in, uh,

the big green as well that's right he is yes a soccer movie yeah yeah with gutenberg yeah yeah um no he incredibly good humor in the third part in in in the shit rafter man on like i never picked up on how funny of and an evolution that this character has and it's so it's so fucking i mean we have the we have the funny scene in the bunks where it's like you never saw action that we set up the thousand yard stare that we've already seen a couple of times and now we have named it and then we will get to see it again from other characters but rafter man kind of being like a soft weird photographer you know kind of not and then when they're doing the documentary and he's all of a sudden super he's like you know i'll

you know when shit hits the fan i'll put the camera down and go to the gun and you're like you fucking lie and then later on he's literally like kills a fucking young he has to it's not like he's a murderer but he kills a young woman and like that's his evolution is that he kills a 15 year old girl and is a hero for it but he goes from like everyone's like good camera guy barfing in the helicopter to like and that that character that's such a rich funny character that you just meet as dumb photo friend of joker and by the end of the movie he's like indicative of what the war can do to a person in a different way than we see in on the other people yeah this actor retired from acting has not appeared anything since 1999 is now referred to as the king of hollywood headshots became a

photographer and is apparently the best headshot photographer around well he has a lot of experience he has nine cameras on him in this movie i know he must have and and you and you heard it's a 200 day shoot so homie got some practice with the with the cannon yeah you can uh headshotphotography.com is his website he now wow wow early url grabber the ongoing sort of like discourse of like did kubrick have a sense of humor was he funny this and that sort of shit i do feel like now having watched all the movies re-watched for you know this mini-series and everything i i i rank strange love lower in the pack of movies i find funny by him like i i i know you're saying barry lyndon this shining uh even eyes wide shut clockwork orange to a degree like i think that run uh is all incredibly mordant funny yeah yeah and maybe just more my sense of humor but i find myself actually laughing at these movies more than strange love where i watch and i'm like this is funny you know but you have people giving

comedic performances you have more conventional jokes and all the other movies you described the comedy comes as tension cutters in a way that would hit and make them hit a little harder and him like weaponizing his status as kubrick like How much of the comedy in this movie comes from song choices? Yeah, the song choices. Where he cuts and what he cuts to. Ending on the Mickey Mouse march, stuff like that. But I feel like what you're saying, Griff, you're not saying, you know what, Dr. Strangelove is mid-humor-wise.

You're more saying Kubrick's sense of humor makes the most sense when he is directing a horror film or war film. That is where it just perfectly matches with the kind of very, very dark humor that he obviously has within him. I mean, Dr. Strangelove is a great comedy. It's a great film. It's very funny. But I think it is sort of unsettling in its trying to be a comedy or whatever. Yeah, and it's also, I think by his own admission admission it's like uh this isn't my kind of comedy i will let peter sellers figure

this part of the movie out sure whereas the comedy he is able to exert as a director and the other five movies i just cited is like putting very earnest impassioned committed performances that are not winking at all in the center of the film and then building the humor of contrast around them. A little bit of context on something we've already talked about. Kubrick told Ken Adam, his famous production designer, you need to find every location within a 20 mile radius of my home, which was basically the same thing he told him for Barry Lyndon. But but i think you know with lyndon they did eventually go to ireland and stuff but uh they almost entirely uh used

london and its suburbs to be south carolina to be vietnam to be you know they have fucking helicopter shots where they're going over the jungle that's like i assume the freaking lake district or whatever all of the battlefield sequences were shot in kubrick's kitchen uh he just set it on fire light it up like his backyard is fully on fire all right action i just didn't want to have to commute um the boot camp they use like a british territorial army base uh so that makes it you know it's it's a boot camp like you know you don't really need too much there uh the most interesting part is all the ted offensive stuff they shot in beckton which is basically like in the docklands uh which is like at the time in the 80s this like abandoned industrial area like a

very depressed industrial area and all that that does when you're watching you know the the stuff where they're like it's dark and they're shooting and it's just this like crazy bombed out kind of like urban landscape it does work but as you were saying it's very it's it's a very urban war environment versus almost every vietnam movie we see that's like obviously been shot in like the philippines or whatever and it's like taking advantage of like a jungle but that is weirdly what works to its advantage is like the the actual vietnam city stuff in the movie is really good and the other movies don't really try for that as much yeah it's all it's all jungles and hoochies and all that stuff right this uh there's a sequence

where when they throw the smoke to hide from the sniper i don't mean to jump around too much but when they throw the smoke to hide from the sniper and they sprint into vanishing horizon like that shit you don't like the follow shot of these guys just disappearing into it's so real so ham-fistedly metaphorical but like also at the same time hits you where you're like shit these guys are like running into not existing anymore and then a handful of them will no longer exist after this moment the moment they send eight ball out and you're just watching him get smaller and smaller in the frame going in and you're just like i know what's gonna happen here well also also it's like unspoken there's a lot of spoken racism in this movie

and then a lot of unspoken racism like the idea first of all the name eight ball is a classic racial uh uh term and then also sending him out like it, it feels so fucked up. And the other cool thing about that, and this has nothing to do with the race stuff, but I'm just, while it's on my mind, watching Cowboy climb the ranks within 16 minutes of the movie, he goes from, like, fifth in command

to fully squad leader. Right. And over the course of the movie, apparently, I don't know this, I only read it in my dossier, Private Joker is a sergeant by, like, the end of the movie, apparently, I don't know this. I only read it in my dossier. Private Joker is a sergeant by the end of the movie. He's going up in ranks. And it's sort of that failing upwards of the military, but then you see it nakedly displayed where it's not failing upwards.

There are vacancies. Yeah, the people are dying. People be dying. Or leaving or getting wounded and all that, yeah. Cowboy's kind of like fully unremarkable too, you know? Yes. Right, he's not good or bad. There's nothing about him except that he's Joker's friend.

Right. And he's only Joker's friend because he stood next to him on day one. Right, because they got stuck in the same shit together. Yeah. And the fucking DI and one of their guys in their platoon fucking died on the last day. Yeah, and he was jerking off just so much to get out of it, and he still, yeah.

Adam Baldwin. I'm like, if that could have gotten you discharged from the military, I wouldn't have had to worry that much in this era, you know? Wait a second. I would have been like. Day one, I'm gone. You know what I'm saying, guys?

Right, yeah. Let me just bring National Lampoon's Christmas vacation with me. Wait a second. Day one, I'm gone. You know what I'm saying, guys? Let me just bring National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with me. I got flat arches and hairy palms. Discharge me immediately. We got a Sears catalog. Does everyone know what I'm saying? They're shooting at what's called the Becton Gas Works, which was

the largest gas plant in the world and was basically scheduled for demolition. And so British gas the company that owned it was just like do what you want you want to blow shit up fine like who cares and all the actors in retrospect are like we were probably breathing in the most like insane fumes like this was like an abandoned gas factory the fact that there's so much concrete on fire makes no sense like it's like this concrete is just burning the entire time like 12 different buildings it looks so good but you're right it feels like that would be like lethal for and and you know that this uh eight, the actor describes his, they took like six weeks to shoot that portion where they're creeping up.

And 8-Ball describes, he's like, I literally laid on the ground for six weeks. I was like, I didn't even think of that as an actor. It's like, we can't even put a mannequin out there because he is kind of alive. The last 20 minutes of the movie are just orange. Yes. Yes, yes. of alive you know the last 20 minutes of the movie are just orange yes yes yes um david we were joking about this with the the doughboys over text i don't think we've said this on mike but the thing of like we're almost surprised that universal didn't let uh christopher nolan drop an actual

nuke for oppenheimer right just let him blow one up come on right just one just one right at this point where you're just like if the master wants it and he claims the first space out hey everyone get out of here no he's gonna drop a tactical nuke in van nuys and they're gonna get it you know they're gonna use 12 cameras on it right don't worry folks they are shooting it on imax we're We're going to get really good footage. All right. Adam Baldwin, famously chill guy. I actually don't know what he's up to lately, but I feel like he was the first celebrity when you were like, oh, I'll follow him on Twitter. Oh, this is fun. An actor I like has a Twitter account. And then like 10 minutes in, you're like, oh, Jesus Christ, I have to follow this guy. of my experience oh yeah absolutely one of my favorite types of uh

imdb trivia fact is of course uh imdb user comes to conclusion on their own presents it to everyone to show how smart and perceptive they are right uh where's the one here it's essentially i want to try to get the wording right here, but it's essentially like Matthew Modine plays a liberal character in the movie, which is funny because he is also liberal in life, whereas Adam Baldwin is more conservative and plays a conservative character.

That's a pretty reductive way of looking at Full Metal Jacket, I'll say. I don't know if I would call Adam a conservative. That's such a modern look at it where it's like, well, there's a classic delineation between people in America, liberals and conservatives. It's like, whoa, that's only recently a battleground. I found it. I have to read this verbatim just because the wording of this is incredible.

The casting of Joker in Animal Mother can be seen as a case of art imitating life, colon. Matthew Modine is an outspoken liberal Democrat, not too dissimilar to Joker, who is clearly more of a dove and may not have any religious preference. He tells Sergeant Hartman he does not believe in the Virgin Mary. Meanwhile, Animal Mother's hawkish instinct can be somewhat of a parallel to Adam Baldwin's conservatism. He's really hawkish. can be somewhat of a parallel to adam baldwin's conservative he's really hawkish yeah that's how i would describe the guy with 80 bandoliers of fucking giant bullets around a very hawk and dove yes uh i would say adam baldwin is excellent in this movie he's generally a great actor uh i really like adam baldwin as an actor he's good at playing this type of a guy yeah he's he's

sort of the anti uh denafrio what you're talking about gabrus where it's like you watch him in this you're like how did this guy not get roles this good for the rest of his career and that's like oh he's a nightmare to work with but uh he does have one good story which is that he would play chess with kiprick all the time which i feel like there's a story from every movie or some guy playing with chess with him all the time and he said uh you know we'd lay out the board and he would kind of waddle over and wipe you out in 15 moves and one time i do like him saying that he would waddle and you can picture it for some the classic kubrick waddle and wipe out uh one time i actually got him to blunder and i won the game big deal one

out of 50 but i said hey i got you i got you you have to resign and he said to me the only reason you won adam is because i have so little respect for your game that i made a blunder now get back to work and then he had a little wry grin and he walked away walk away uh do i do like that though that he was just an absolutely sore loser yeah well a scene I wanted to spotlight that really disturbed me this time around, this viewing, is when we're meeting in the third part, the platoon. I don't remember the character's name, but he reveals the dead soldier. The guy whose birthday party it is? Oh, yes. Dude. Yes. Who you think is just like

a sleeping guy like a dude taking indiana jones style nap and obviously it's disturbing it's a dead person but i like really listened to like what he's saying in that monologue yeah and it it's like um it's kind of this thing where we're, like, talking about how the comedy really works in this movie because of the context of what's happening. It's war. This is, like, a comedy bit, right? Or, like, it's, like, he's trying to be funny. It's the opposite. And it's so fucking terrifying.

But that's pretty much anytime anyone in this movie tries to be funny, it's upsetting. Yeah. And anytime people are serious, it's upsetting yeah anytime people are serious it's kind of funny like it's like he's doing this bit and you're like this person is never gonna be the same right like this person has lost their mind yeah that's the thing i mean that's i it's so much what you got a ball defending animal mother you You got fucking, what's his name, Touchdown, who we meet briefly, like Ed O'Ross. Yeah, Ed O'Ross. Love Ed O'Ross.

Big, look, coming from Action Boys, where Ed O'Ross is. Wait, you're telling me that you like Ed O'Ross? I mean, The Hidden, I assume you guys have done The Hidden on Action Boys. We have not yet. It's one of my favorite 80s movies. What? Oh, God. Can I come on from The Hidden, please? Of course. on Action Boys. We have not yet. It's one of my favorite 80s movies. What? Oh, God. Can I come on from The Hidden, please?

Of course. Okay, great. Love that movie. Great Ed O'Ross performance. Ed O'Ross plays a different nationality in like 12 movies. He's like a Russian bad guy. He's like a Latino bad guy. He's like...

I mean, he owns the flower shop on Six Feet Under, right? He's so good in that. Yeah. That's like a later in life role for him where he is really good. And I feel like, right, because he dates Francis Conroy for a while. And his like dating style is like, you, you should date me. Hey, why don't we go out? You know, like he's just doing that the whole time.

It's great. Man, do you want to hear a weird Ed O'Neill credit? Ed O'Ross. Ed O'Ross credit. You want to hear a weird Ed O'Neill credit? He was on Married with Children. no one talks about it no weird ed o'ross uh credit he was the voice of agent k on the men in black cartoon show huh he did tlj he was doing tlj i guess i could see him being a diet tlj he's also he's itchy in dick tracy and he's kind of unrecognizable in that but he's really

good wait a second i'm sorry you're telling me someone is unrecognizable in dick tracy but like it in red heat he plays a russian in lethal weapon he plays a latino and then in universal soldier he plays an american like colonel like he can he could do like a cigar chomping thing too and then in this this, he's a Notre Dame football player. Like there's not much more American. And then that kicks off the, we meet someone, they die. We meet someone, they die. We meet someone or Joker meets someone, they die.

However you want to look at it. And it's so realistic. They're like, hey, where's Cowboy? We're coming to me. Oh, Cowboy's up there. And then it's just like everyone that they meet along the way dies and it's just like if you mapped it out outline wise you'd be like this is so cartoonish it's like the leader dies then the next leader dies then the next leader dies and it's like it seems cartoonish on the page but watching in this movie it feels so

realistic how a guy like cowboy who is just a random banana from fucking a platoon, is now leading a squad in like an anti sniper mission and shit. It's fucking I never picked up on all of that stuff. Like the war is hell elements that aren't said out loud. Like like I I'm more like Boku books. You know, when I first watched this, like I'm embarrassed by how many times I watch this and Clockwork Orange as sort of like, sick. Hit him with a giant concrete dick. Don't be embarrassed. It's okay.

All right? You're in good company. Haas and I can go in on this. I think it's like recovering dirtbags. Yeah. I feel like we can speak to that ex-dirtbag life but on this and now I'm crazy

an anti-war person, anti-military and watching it I'm like holy shit, oh man this movie is so rich and real and has such a strong take on war that I had previously just been like drip down to crack your ass and end up staying on the mattress is the coolest thing anyone could ever say.

I do love good quotes. Remember when on Facebook we would all have our favorite quotes? Yeah. What an era. Instant Messenger, Away Messenger. Look, again, I know I like to be the 40-year-old in the room, but I used to make mix CDs, burn CDs with movie quotes

in between songs. Oh, I would do the same. Adorable. Think about the time I spent assembling mix CDs, sending them out in the mail, handwriting liner notes, and being like, how many skits can I fit on before it's too many?

What's the balance between comedy and spoken word and actual music? By the way, Gabrus, I'm about to be 37. You're not that much older than me. No, I know. You grand old man over here. And my bar mitzvah is next week, so I'm about to be a man. You're about to be a man.

Meeting Griffin when he's like an 11-year-old in your improv class just kind of establishes a dynamic that never goes away. Sure. Even once you've now seen him be like a 35-year-old with health issues, you're like, oh, you're an old man, right? Yeah, it happens fast. You meet him when he's a 16-year-old child actor, wide-eyed, you're like,

this kid is a fucking baby for life. I'm old. I'm 20 years older than when I met you, and I don't put that on you at all. Right, I've stayed the same. Yeah. It is, you know, like the strike that people have against this movie of it just being kind of like formless or like incidental, anecdotal kind of, you know, like, oh, they just took

the book and it's these three sections and shit just kind of happens. All the stuff we're talking about where it's like when you get to that moment of the guy taking the head off the dead guy and just being like, oh, he's just here and they're all making jokes about it and everything. That makes sense to you if you've watched 45 minutes of like boot camp of dehumanization. Yeah, right. You know, in the same way that it's like the speed at which people die. I mean, all this stuff. the speed at which people die.

I mean, all this stuff. It's like, I do think the odd structure of this movie benefits it in a lot of ways of really placing you into each of the three spaces. It wants you to consider psychologically as aspects of war and how they interact with each other

to get to the point where these guys are just sort of like weird, dead, broken inside. Yeah. Along those lines, like the middle chunk is that is the 12 intellectuals drinking coffee talking about what's wrong with the vietnam war or whatever like that middle chunk gives you that other perspective of like uh intelligence

whatever you want to call those people like hipsters like like we get to see that perspective for a brief moment and then see joker's perspective shattered from like the ted offensive through him chasing down his his old buddy like you see him destroy himself at paris island but survive and him is now he's still got this personality but by the end of the movie he will have the thousand yard stare like he's given the thousand yard stare he's given the the choice of something he has to do that will fuck him up for life or he's already fucked up for life he's got to do one more like it's it's thinking about it from like that perspective like like you're saying the three different movies each one makes them make the other ones hit harder right that's

the thing and like the middle section is him feeling like he like pretty cocky that he has figured out the exact amount of healthy distance he can have from this incredibly unhealthy thing to not have it destroy him right it's psychologically literally kill him all of that there's something too that he they're working for stars and stripes that never really hit me in past viewings of that they're they're journalists but they're part of the military yeah yeah right right i'm gonna stick up for stars and stripes it's not propaganda at all i know people who work for stars and stripes and it is much more complicated than that to call it than calling it propaganda but back in the day they certainly

you know they certainly especially in vietnam had their limitations well yeah i think they shaded a little bit here like they shaded a little bit from him of like uh from uh the hunk uh explaining to us lockhart is his name in the movie but like uh he kind of is like we don't want people don't want to hear that people don't want to hear the real shit right now. Right. And whenever he's like around other sort of like grunts or superiors or whatever, they're like, well, you're going to do the right kind of piece. Right. Even if it's not, he's being told those are the marching orders from his editor as much. There is that assumption of like, you're not one of these fucking lefty outside

journalists coming in and writing some judgment on us. I love also in the third act every time he meets someone they change they get excited yes like the energy of these people who are in the absolute hell are like oh wait i could be famous oh wait hold on what's my character story like who am i what's my bit yeah what's who how do i convey my myself? That run when they're doing the documentary, Kubrick shooting someone shooting a fucking war movie, a war doc, is a wild fucking zoom out moment. But everyone changing their POV or their attitude once they're rolling on themselves. Like Rafterman, I brought it up earlier, but we hear it from a lot of these guys. Like they're posturing, they're creating of their character

or they're creating of their belief in war. It's like they're actors in a movie, you know? Whoa, war is hell. Making movies is harder. Yeah, that's the main takeaway from this movie. The only Oscar nomination this gets is screenplay did you get a sound nomination maybe or is it just screenplay it's just screen wild even if this is wild hit in the major categories you're like you don't give this cinematography you don't

give this sound yeah it is let's well hell let's look at cinemat cinematography. While we're on the subject of cinematography, I talked about that beautiful shot of everyone running into the smoke. Another great one is from Paris Island when they're all covered in mud and running at camera. And in the director's commentary, I remember hearing D'Onofrio saying when they watched that clip back, everyone was really impressed. Like Kubrick wanted to seem like a stampede of buffaloes.

And like when you watch it, really, they're filling the frame coming right at them with covered in mud. And you see like everyone is now like becoming the the killer vert the marine version of themselves it's a fucking great great storytelling in one frame it's like if we're gassing up cinematographer the nominees were last emperor which is like the big winner of 1987 on every like technical award right yeah and then empire of the sun and Hope and Glory, which are similarly big, epic movies. And then Meituan, which is Haskell Wexler in his old age, absolutely fucking crushing it. And then Broadcast News, which is sort of a surprise nominee. It's Michael Ballhouse, but that movie does have great cinematography.

But I guess... Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, they're not bad nominees, is what I'm saying. but i guess yes yeah i mean i don't know i mean they're not bad nominees is what i'm saying and then sound you know it's losing out to like empire of the sun lethal weapon robocop witches of eastwick and last emperor i'm surprised too yeah maybe there was griff some internal resistance to kubrick the king of england right like this sort of like hey man you don't want to work in hollywood because like these are trade you know voters essentially maybe, man, you don't want to work in Hollywood? Because like these are trade, you know, voters, essentially. Maybe that was it.

I don't know. I don't. I genuinely don't know. But obviously, the shining full metal jacket and eyes wide shut are all basically ignored by the Oscars after, you know, a run of his movies getting lots of Oscar attention. I know the one that's wild is that Clockwork Orange got Best Picture. Yeah, totally. Yeah. You feel like that's the one that would have totally turned them off.

Right. But that's, I guess, such an exciting time for the Oscars. And they make mostly good choices. But it does feel like, starting with The Shining, for whatever reason, the Oscar game is... And I'm sure Kubrick did not really play it may and i'm sure kubrick did not really play it either right like i'm sure he did not you think this guy didn't do the campaign yeah dude i i remember reading an interview with pacino or hearing it somewhere where he was like talking about the oscars like i don't want to go to that bullshit and it's like it felt

like imagine an actor with that attitude now how much like like we got like our legendary actors are selling fucking like content like online you know and this was like things have evolved so much you have to be so much more than just like you used to be able to be like a freak actor just be like oh yeah that guy's just like a freak and he's so good and stuff but the the amount of press about florence pew not doing press it's insane the amount we're talking about this movie uh don't worry darling right you're referencing the amount we're talking about this movie like i i wish we didn't know this much but that the cornerstone of it is like she's only done six interviews for the movie clearly there's a big problem here and i'm like yeah the problem is that marketing is

insane on all these fucking things the problem is that she's expected to do 60 right and it's like why it is it's a fucking i can't speak to the inner workings of all this dynamic but it's like the idea that it's like she's doing nothing for this film she hasn't been putting out the hashtags that that makes me want to go into the latrine with my fucking with charlene and fucking paint the fucking tile with my brain oh full metal jacket um what one thing i want to shout out is of course the score is credited to abigail mead but that is kubrick's daughter right vivian kubrick uh who did not want to be judged by her last name so she had the pseudonym and it's like this weird sort of synthesizer score

uh it's very cool it was disqualified from oscar consideration um because i think because it was too short like literally there's not a lot of it yeah yeah it's like 22 minutes long yeah yeah the soundtrack is so iconic in this movie that you think about that when you think about the entire movie and right and the music but on watching it you're like and that i mean soundscapey synthy music is like my dream in movies like you know what i mean like i love you know michael man carpenter right yeah yeah that's all my wheelhouse and then i really picked up on it this time and then the juxtaposition of that to like these boots are made for walking is such a fucking fun rich uh dynamic as well. Surf and Bird. Yeah.

Best song, best novelty song, hands down, ever made. Yeah. Fucking the Trashmen. I got to see them, actually, at a WFMU record fair. Oh, sure. They were all in their 60s. Did they do Surf and Bird? Of course they did. No, they didn't.

And they fucking crushed. It was so incredible. Like 60-year-old men with black dyed hair, still wearing skin tight black jeans, black shirt, and they fucking ripped. I mean, bless them. The Trashmen, also a great name for a band. We should change the bit from screaming free bird at concerts

to screaming surfer bird at concerts. Surf and burn! the the bit from screaming free bird at concerts to screaming surfer bird i first fell in love with that song uh in uh frankie and annette's back to the beach uh the humonga oh yeah from down under peewee herman dances to bird bird bird is the word um this is vivian kubrick did a score for eyes wide shut that wasn't used right this is her only used score she was sort of right yeah because the protege of his daughter jocelyn pook right who does the uh eyes wide shut score but vivian was the one who was working on all the sets did the shining documentary obviously um and she i believe she did one for full metal jacket as well that's

called like shooting full metal jacket i've never seen it but i just kubrick said he just wanted no recognizable instruments he wanted like a score that sounded different and was harder to place and it's coming off of like wendy carlos delivering two of the best electronic scores ever yeah it's so interesting how kubrick it's like he has so much iconic his movies are iconic musically obviously right like this the soundtracks the the music that he picks and then they always have these idiosyncratic actual scores or often have right like like like the wendy carlos stuff like this i love it he's a cool guy i actually think he's a good director guys i i think the thing he's good at doing is making films making making films film making uh this film made 38 million dollars against a 17 million dollar budget okay in its first 50 days of

release it ultimately grossed 46 domestic and 120 worldwide it was a hit that got mixed reviews played really well overseas always yeah look at them yeah but like i also feel like much like the shining it's like it actually did well despite the big investment of time and money yeah and the reviews were very like you know like on release that's what like both these and then of course they endure these are enduring films but it's funny i know there's inflation because i'm on twitter but uh there is 17 million for a movie that went like 150 days over and it's like legend and it's like that's what like uh ryan reynolds hair guy got on like red red scare 2 or red alert whatever the fuck that right the red zone whatever the fuck that movie's called but But it's like, 17 million seems like,

people are like, if you could make Full Metal Jacket for $17 million, what the fuck is Doctor Strange 2, guys? Like, come on. No, because even if you adjust for inflation, and you're like, this costs $50 or $60 million, I'm like, over two years? Yeah. It sounds like over two years. It sounds like a bargain to me.

Should we play the box office game? Yes. Is there a, yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Let's do, do we want to do the first weekend or the first wide weekend?

They're very different. One is full of iconic movies and one is full of trash. Well, not trash that's too strong um i want to you know what i'm gonna do the wide weekend griffin because okay you'll see all right so it's first weekend wide it's limited for the first couple weekends then it goes wide so it's number two at the box office full metal jacket this is july 10th 1987 okay okay 1987. Okay. Number one is a comedy sequel. Number one is a comedy sequel in

1987. Not a good one. Is it Beverly Hills Cop 2? No. I actually like that movie. That is number seven at the box office. That's a good one. This is not a good comedy sequel. Is it a 2? It's a 2. Not a good comedy franchise. Oh, it's not

a good comedy franchise. Is it Police Academy good comedy is it very very 80s no but you know close i was gonna say arthur too on the rocks i mean good guesses no it's a similar franchise where it's like not the last franchise in the 80s i believe it's the last may it's the last that's not made for tv there are two more that are made for tv interesting okay yeah two more that are oh oh oh is it revenge of the nerds too and what's the subtitle on that baby fuck is it uh uh nerds in paradise that's right that's right the nerds were in paradise right because i think three is nerds in love but no that's four that's four three is the next generation oh boy uh do you know do you know that like 10 15 years ago they started filming revenge of the nerds remake and like a week into filming

we're just like what are we doing here and they just shut it down and never finished it i did not know that that whoever said what are we doing here should get the palm door yes like i just get like whoever said that deserves the highest uh award you can have in cinema because thank you you did more for movie making than kubrick did by just not making that movie yeah they right this was it they shot i think for like a week on some campus and then the campus the college read the script and was like leave immediately we do not approve you guys don't even have the third act raped by the hero and we don't even want to watch this movie that's one reason this franchise should be left for dead uh and then fox watched the dailies and was like you

know what guys forget it we don't we don't need to restart this i'm trying to remember who it is but it was like some current film producer executive who worked there at the time. No, I think Howard Stern was involved in it and Adam Brody maybe as well. Adam Brody was in it. Yeah, he was in it. But one of the executives, when they were at that point where they had lost their location and they were deciding whether or not to put it back up, they watched the footage and they were like, wait, nerds aren't like this anymore. That was apparently the big point they made the meeting they were like the rest of our fox film slate is superhero films they have

won they don't act like this they don't look like this there's nothing for them to overcome anymore and that was they run the world that was such 15 years ago like they weren't even aware of how much worse it was going to become um number one is revenge of the nerds 2 nonetheless number two is full metal jacket number three for sure who are these nerds um number three is a a very sort of well-known uh film take on a hit tv show that is bad yes so it's okay so it's not the untouchables no no it's a comedy version of you know along those car 54 where are you no but very close i'm close i'm close there you go there we go dragnet with dan akroyd and tom hanks just the facts these days i feel

like mostly famous for its bizarre city of crime yes uh rap video that you can google anytime you want but also what a bizarre high concept premise for that movie of like the bit is we're taking dragnet a deadly serious show making as a comedy where the joke is one guy acts like he's in dragnet and everyone else does not because it's akroyd is he's joe friday jr or whatever right like he's the new joe friday and he just acts like like Joe Friday, but it's the 80s now. Right. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Dragnet.

Never seen it. Number four is a high concept sci-fi comedy that we will cover on this podcast one day. Huh. We will cover it on this podcast one day. In 1987 is a high concept sci-fi dramedy. It's not a McTiernan. I would call it a comedy. It's not a McTiernan. No. Just thinking of people in the Somamedy. It's not a McTiernan. I would call it a comedy. It's not a McTiernan, no.

Just thinking of people in the Someday file. It's not a Joe Dante. It is a Joe Dante. It is a Joe Dante. Fuck, okay. 89 is the Burbs. 89 is the Burbs, that's right. Is it the Explorers?

That's 85. It's the movie in between those two. Interspace? Interspace! There we go. Martin Short. Yeah. Dennis Quaid, obviously.

Meg Ryan. I love that movie. Yeah. I haven't seen it in a long time. It's that run post-Gremlins where Dante has these movies that score through the roof in test screenings, and everyone's like, it's another hit for you, Joe, and all of them underperform. Yeah. They're mostly all good right he's working with like good actors good premises is explorers good explorers is the one where it's like one of those truly unfinished movies where

they like didn't let him shoot the last act of it and he's kind of disowned it because he's like i just fundamentally did not get to finish shooting the script i remember liking it as a kid because a real like wish fulfillment shit but i i never it there's nothing that stands out to me about loving it you know it is good it just is very much a movie marred by being like there's clearly a version of this that wasn't made that was just unfinished right there that we'll never get to see and it's ethan hawk and river phoenix as kids dude look if if dante never makes another movie griffin i know he you want him to and he he may well make another movie but do we just do him and just do the whole and bearing the x as one episode like we just try to limit the the badness because pretty much everything else is good i don't really

have a problem with the whole you don't have a problem but like but does it need its own episode or can we just kind of tack it on to the bad i i just truly don't want to end on him i know you don't this is this is why we've never done dante that's your thing you don't like him to make another yeah we'll see uh i hope he does i hope i hope so too um that's number four number five griffin and this is why i wanted to do this weekend is a film you've mentioned on this episode robocop nope but that is this summer right yeah robocop is maybe later this summer because it's not here maybe that comes out in july july okay it comes out next week oh baby number one at the

box office that's right it is it's a film i mentioned in this episode is it a war film no we mentioned it uh in the context of one of the actors it's a teen comedy it's the debut of another director who we could i suppose do on blank check i think he was on the march madness once it what's not an Anthony Michael Hall movie No Teen actor director we could Cover he's not a Teen actor it's a

Teen comedy you're saying yes Yes yes yes adventures in babysitting It's adventures in babysitting Wow I was like wait it can't be that one that we really Talked about an extended That's crazy, right? D'Onofrio is on

different screens in your multiplex in completely different bodies Wait, who directed Chris Columbus It's Chris Columbus' first film It's his director because he wrote Gremlins, obviously It's his directorial debut

and he wrote The Goonies, yeah yeah yeah damn he really kind of damn geez chris columbus one of the nicest people i've ever met chris columbus everyone's sweetheart total sweetheart um number six is the witches of eastwick which obviously we've covered on this podcast number seven beverly hills cop two number eight the untouchables which you mentioned of course number nine is space balls uh which just came out a couple weeks ago and then number 10 is Hills Cop 2. Number 8, The Untouchables, which you mentioned, of course. Number 9 is Spaceballs, which just came out a couple weeks ago. And then number 10 is Roxanne. It's, you know,

some good movies. It's quite a summer. Look, just to go back to a previous thesis I made, the other 9 movies on that list all are 80s movies. Right in the middle. Number two is Full Metal Jacket,

which does not feel like an 80s. Every other movie is just like, oh, we're having 80s movie night at the local cinema. You could play any, but if you threw Full Metal Jacket up there, people would be like, really? We love the 80s.

We heart 80s. Michael Ian Black would love to chat about full metal jack you know my my college internship was on i love the 90s part do do you i mean did you ever do any of the best week ever reboots no i was a pa on the og best week right and then you were obviously in the guy code circuit, but it truly feels like you missed the I love thee and the best thee by that much. You were there on set.

Yeah, if I would have started my career like three years. It's funny how much talking head comedy is in the first eight years of my career, including my three years of my survivor job was working at VH1 on talking head shows. And then my big, quote unquote, break, my first acting gigs were being a talking head on a different MTV network.

It's humiliating. That was the industry. It was so indicative of the time. It's like living in New York and you want to work in comedy. It's like if you can't get The Daily Show or SNL, that's what you have left. And I was an extra on 30 Rock. I literally hit all of the New York jobs you could have at the time. Did you do that show?

It was a pilot that didn't go, but I think it was for VH1 that was like 20s versus 30s. No. Do you remember this? No. There's a chance you maybe did this and don't remember it because it was just like everyone got fucking called in for it um but it was like a panel show it very much maybe you know what if you weren't on it it was probably because guy code was already running and there was a non-compete thing but it was like this is what your 20s are like versus this is what your 30s are like. And they'd pick some subject and you'd fucking talk about it. And they had like comedians in their 20s and comedians in their 30s.

Years later, when she fucking did the podcast, put together that fucking Nia DaCosta, now director of the Marvels, was the person who like fucking was prompting me off camera for that. That is so fucking funny. Because we started emailing about doing the podcast and I was like, and I think we met at like trivia once and she was like,

you wouldn't remember this, but I did that stupid fucking thing. And I was the person saying like, so what's it like buying groceries in your 20s? They were just the only thing that people wanted to make for like 10 years there in comedy. They're kind of dead now, right? Like they don't exist anymore, I feel like.

No, because like TikTok, IG, front facing camera, it's all just social media. Just kill that. And it can't happen fast enough. No. Best Week Ever was insane because it was a weekly turnaround. Like that was what was crazy about at the time now if

you had to wait four days to like watch comedy about something that happened in the news you'd be furious with your weight because we get it in six seconds it felt astonishing they could get an entire segment out on friday night about something that happened on wednesday right it was crazy and we were like we thought we were like fucking the newsroom, you know what I mean? Like we were like, we got to get the bachelorette package in for this week's episode. It's like,

we got to transcribe the Chuck nice interview. There's like, there's just always some dumb fucking shit. And of course, every job you're in is like the highest stakes. Of course you can possibly have. I'm 22 being like, need to find

turkey baster footage but now you're just like twitter has rung dry adam levine's uh uh fucking dms within 12 hours there's no way you could get it on air fast enough you would have to like by the time like if you had a weekly comedy show like that rounds this shit up you would have to like have the sixth take on levine yes like you know this shit up, you would have to have the sixth take on Levine. You know what I mean? You'd have to have some sort of galaxy brain take that is like somehow no one has gotten to. And that's just embarrassing.

Yeah. You literally cannot upload the files fast enough. John, always a pleasure. Please. I was trying to do the the take account of the episodes you've been on heat well road warrior full metal jacket like three beyond canonical movies no i know i know oh i see i see right right you're saying that one's a bit of an outlier yeah but like you got got Heat, Road Warrior, Full Metal Jacket,

arguably all classics within their genres at the top, top tier. Of course. No, I feel fucking blessed. Also, you bring me in for action shit, which I've watched thousands. All the movies you've described are movies I watched when I was 14 and 40

and had two completely different takes and opinions on them. And it feels so rich to get to talk about it at that level rather than my nor my normal like comedy riffing on jokes about uh neil's love of neil mccauley's love of metal books like getting to fucking analyze it from uh with with the connoisseurs of context themselves tensile strengths yeah speaking of though people should subscribe to action Yeah, actionboys.biz. We have some free episodes.

If you just want to listen, get a little sniff, get you hooked. You can find free episodes wherever you get podcasts, but we're on Patreon at actionboys.biz. Putting out weekly episodes for over five years in the blank check mold of nothing has been under two hours ever. As a matter of fact, we are famously, we have a three hour and 40 minute episode about the movie The Program. That's humiliating.

Perfect. And 101 places to party before you die. Yes. TruTV, use your parents, log in, watch it at the dentist's office or wherever the fuck you can get TruTV. Get hit by a car, wake up in a hospital, and finally get to watch it.

Be like, TruTV, please. It's the only interaction. And they put it on, it's like, oh man, the Jokers. Oh, it's the practical Jokers for six hours. What were you expecting? You put on TruTV. It's either fucking playoff hockey or the Jokers.

But in between, we got 101 places to party before you die. Buy it on Amazon or whatever. I don't know. We're trying to get a second season. We'll see. Corporate mergers are thrilling for shareholders and brutal for creators. But also, let's say also bad for consumers. Yeah.

It's truly only good for the investment class so absolutely again if you have discovery fucking shares yeah um thank you for being here and thank you for having me this was a fucking blast oh hair by leonard this is the one thing i meant to talk about what an insane title card at the end of the movie it just says hair by leonard because he does like the classic kubrick end of credit shit where it's like everyone and he and there's just hair by leonard i'll send you guys the pic i could not fucking get over it is he the guy who's shaved all the heads i'll say he's just the name of the guy with the buzzer his name is leonard lewis he was the world's first celebrity hairdresser he famously had a salon in swinging london and stanley kubrick always used him and that's why it says hair by leonard on many a kubrick movie this is just such a great

fucking credit to see something like that. Especially for this one where this is like almost the least hair in any movie we've covered since THX 1138. Leonard phoned it in for this one. He just threw someone a razor. It was like, come on, you know what to do. Here's some clippers. Ernie in the commentary says they use animal shears because they needed

it to get like the bigger, cinematically get bigger chunks of hair in like one. So he's got these guys fucking coming back to shoot like four bigger, cinematically get bigger chunks of hair in like one. So he's got these guys fucking coming back to shoot like four weeks after and then hitting them with animal shears on the head. That shit hurts, dog.

Wild. Thank you again, Gabrus. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show.

Thank you to A.J. McKee and Alex Barron for our editing. Lee Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork.

J.J. Birch for our research. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, where we're currently doing the Roger Moore Bond movies. Have you guys watched those for Action Boys?

I think the one we've done, the Chris Walken one. I'm not a big Bond head. Okay. That's not Moore, though. That's a Dalton? The Chris Walken one is a Moore. No, no, no. Oh, it is?

It's Moore being super old. That's the last one, right? We haven't gotten to that yet. Next on the feed is Octopussy and then, you know, Vito Kill shortly after that. Wild fucking movies. So crazy.

Low-key wild. Hosley, I'll see you in the trashman fan forums uh that's where we keep up uh and tune in next week for eyes wide shut our final stanley kubrick episode that's right and then we should say uh well we'll announce whatever at the end of the episode that's the next week people figured it out anyway thank you all for listening uh huh and as always

uh huh now I got myself now you're like stop laughing you baguette I can't I have to use David's hands to choke myself Now you're like, stop laughing! You baguette! I can't. I have to use David's hands to choke myself.