Blank Check with Griffin & David - In the Mouth of Madness with Angelica Jade Bastién

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

Just in time for Halloween - it’s the conclusion of Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy” and one of the best Lovecraftian horrors ever to grace the silver screen! Vulture’s Angelica Jade Bastién joins us to chat “In the Mouth of Madness,” and we wonder - is Sam Neill a “dang ass freak”? Should this movie take place in a more “airport paperback” environment, like a beach town? What would you do if you saw the head of production at New Line getting…uh… “serviced” in public at an Oscar party? Grab your Sutter Cane book and listen up! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Every species can smell its own extinction. Last ones left won't have a pretty time with it. In ten years, maybe less, the human race will just become a bedtime story for their children. A podcast. Nothing more. Yeah. I mean, that's good.

I think, unfortunately, those words might be true. The world probably ends with a podcast now, right? Oh, that's good. I think, unfortunately, those words might be true. The world probably ends with a podcast now, right? Oh, that's it? It's just a few episodes of people being like, all right, wrapping up. Yeah. In one way or another, I'm saying either a podcast is directly responsible

for our extinction, or the final thing put out there is a podcast episode. They get the final word maybe both i don't know look if we're lucky it's us right we cause we'll be the ones who finish it off right yeah and then we also get to do a recap podcast explaining how we ended humanity that's the hope people people start listening to blank check and then they go around axe murdering people that's what you're hoping for? That's the kind of breakthrough success

that I think has eluded us so far. I think... Word of mouth. Word of mouth. That's a viral sensation. You create an epidemic of mental instability. All right. All right.

You shouldn't have started us on this road. I started it. I picked the quote. World's ended, David. I don't know if you know about it. And this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I started it. I picked the quote. World's ended, David. I don't know if you know about it. And this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

And it's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. And sometimes they bounce, baby. And this is a miniseries on the films of John Carpenter. Today we're talking about In the Mouth of Madness. Now, I don't know if you had the same sort of feeling as me, David.

What's that? But neither of us had seen this or Prince of Darkness before before starting this series correct right and i feel like those are the two that people were kind of telling us like get ready get ready for that one the the other apocalypse trilogy movies yes right we're sort of seen as the hidden gems i think are the ones that have been reclaimed more only in the last couple of years a couple whatever yeah whatever you know what i'm saying yeah um but i uh these were the two i was really looking forward to and i i i think i prefer this to prince of darkness not that needs to be a competition but i i know it seems like you liked prince of darkness more than i did and people in general

seem to be really jamming on prince of Darkness right now. This was my shit. This movie is my shit. I like this more than Prince of Darkness, but I loved it more. Wow. This movie is incredible. This movie rules. Our guest is silently giving thumbs up because she agrees

with the analysis so far. She could talk. Just weigh in. You can say anything you want. She could talk. She could talk. Just weigh in. You can say anything you want. And then we introduce you. This is the weird backwards way in which we do things. Yeah, yeah. Fuck yeah, is what I say towards In the Mouth of Madness.

This is like top two Carpenter for me. Like, I really love this movie. And I just had, you you know sometimes you're really lucky you have like a great first watch experience yeah i had the luck of seeing this at music box here in chicago a lovely incredible theater lovely amazing theater my favorite in chicago and they showed this a couple years ago for their music box of horrors they're like overnight marathon of horror movies i tapped out at like 4 a.m though i was like i'm going home but i was lucky enough to get to see in the mouth of madness for the first time there and like i

didn't really know much about it i knew it was carpenter and i was like oh i'll probably enjoy it but this isn't one much you know many people have talked about and i was like holy shit this is so up my alley this is so i agree for moi have you have you seen prince of like do you like prince of darkness i do this is good it's good vibes but yes this is so wait in this marathon where did it fall like yeah that's my question it was very it was later in the evening if i'm remembering like it may have been even like a midnight screening so your brain's already a little scrambled which is good i feel like i feel like the right context for this movie is your hours into questioning what horror is right yeah right and and fighting uh you know uh consciousness trying to stay awake yeah um our guest today uh from from vulture is angelica jade bastian

uh who who very i mean you very passionately and quickly i feel like we reached out to you very early on i was like you got a carpenter and you you you had a carpenter right away you're like i wanted about the madness my point is just that we gave you a pretty complete list of the movies like very early on when carpenter won our march madness thing we were like angelica this feels like a great uh opportunity to get her on long overdue and and you picked this immediately without a backup yeah i mean i know's probably Carpenter films that are more precise in certain ways, like The Thing. Sure. Right.

And have a more, a different sort of fun energy like They Live. But like this one just really hits the spot for me because it's doing a few things that i really find interesting also doing the whole a writer as god thing kind of great for my ego it's like yes we are aren't we we are the center of the universe okay we think it and it happens in that in that canon and it's obviously a film that i and very few others defend, this is a more successful, let's say conventionally successful. Are you going to say Lady in the Water? Correct. I knew it was going to be Lady in the Water.

But it is. I mean, they're very different movies in practice, but they're stemming from similar ideas. Okay. Well, all right. In a very broad sense. this is obviously a more successful movie leaps and bounds yeah but just movies about like the the the power of artistry positive and negative like it's just it's a great subgenre but it it certainly has the risk of being in in a lady the waterway like you can feel back patty or you know kind of you know up its own ass

or you know like maybe a good choice that john carpenter didn't cast himself to play sutter kane that would be a that'd be a good choice oh that's right yeah um but you know uh for carpenter as well like i mean we'll talk about it but yeah like a guy who is at the center of like you know horror like halloween like mixing like sex and violence and shocking people and people being like is this allowed you know for like so many years to make a movie where it's like yeah maybe, maybe I'm, you know, maybe horror movies or horror art is going to end the world and drive you all insane. Like, I love that. I love him being into this. Like, that was on such a rise in the 90s, this sort of like hand-wringing about, you know, the things we consume making children violent and all that

sort of thing right i remember those days because i was a kiddo and i loved horror and i was like yeah look how it paid off i'm hot smart accomplished let your kids watch horror people start them early but start them early mouth of madness yeah put them in front of the mouth of madness before they're 10 let them know what true cinema is i saw hellraiser at 10 for the first time and uh that's definitely affected some of my taste in certain places i'll just say that have fun with that kids but i'm actually good friends with pinhead Yeah Ben knows pinhead But you're just buds We're pen pals but

In the sense that we send each other nails In the mail Yeah it's pen pals I love that for you Ben is that the second or third time You've made that exact joke On our podcast I'm gonna go with second

It's good The third time it's gonna be great i can't wait it's gonna be even better yeah so it's funny griff here's what i knew about in the mouth of madness i because especially once i knew we were doing carpenter i'm like i'm gonna you know i want to go into anyone i haven't seen fairly cold i knew sam neill was in it yeah it's got that it's got that very oblique poster with the book opening and you know sort of screaming faces coming out of it so that doesn't really do you any good it's a very specific type of 90s poster where i look at and i go you're not doing this movie any favors are you like it is impossible not only does it not successfully convey what the movie is but you're like i don't even know what i'm looking at i don't even know what this is supposed to be if you see it from afar you're

like that's just jumbled shapes but here's the other funny thing griff the the one image from this movie that i knew is turns out is pretty much the last image in the movie like i feel like i've seen the picture of sam neill sitting in the movie theater a thousand times. I feel like that gets memed a lot these days. Yes, yes. I don't know why. I had forgotten it was from this. Yeah, what I knew was pretty much what you said, but I knew Ben's background now,

the wall of monsters, as it's called. I knew about that because our friend JD had talked about that, how he had seen this special effects making of TV special when he was a child and was very taken with how those monsters looked and could never remember what movie it was from. And it was largely because they are so briefly on screen and so obscured that they weren't like visually recognizable. like visually recognizable and he just had these memories of watching full daylight in a special effects warehouse people working on them in great detail and how good they look so i knew that i knew it was sam neill as you said and i knew it was like lovecraft inspired and that it was about some i knew that too sure blending of reality and fiction i did not really know it played out i think i assumed that well sam neill must play lovecraft or a lovecraft-esque figure yeah i didn't know how the author unfurled yeah i just said he seems like a man of letters um but yes i i knew i knew

very little other than that just the base elements what a fucking guy sam neill is. I love him. I love him. I feel like we just got to go right into explaining how Sam Neill gets to this point. Run. I mean, the fact that he had just... Of course, he's in Jurassic Park the year before. I mean, I love him in the piano. He's not the standout of the piano. He has the toughest role in the piano. But that he had that the same year as Jurassic Park is special. Everyone always talks about how Spielberg had Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in the piano but like that he had that the same year as yes jurassic park is special everyone always talks about how spielberg had jurassic park and schindler's list in the same

year but sam neill's quietly doing the same thing in the same year where it's like king of art house king of blockbusters you know oscars and possession this is a good one because it rules right possession is so that Love that movie. You know, and it's funny because that came out the same year as Omen 3, which is sort of his like Hollywood breakout. It's kind of the same thing. Right.

It's kind of the mocked horror movie, whereas that Possession, I feel like, was sort of a cult thing when it came out and now has become... I feel like that's become a very hot movie in the last again it's sort of revived and people have rediscovered it's so good that's funny he's and he just seems like a chill dude like to this day like he seems like someone who never really chased the dollar no nothing you know you can chase the dollar if you want to i get it but like

he kind of you know he was in jurassic park and he was like cool i'm gonna do whatever i want like i'm not gonna be in you know anything i don't want to be like he's such yeah go ahead no i was just gonna say like this movie is a pretty wild cash-in of your post-jurassic park leading man status you know totally which it really is if you look at his other films in the immediate wake of jurassic park this is like the closest to him doing a studio film until event horizon which is also fucking bug nuts i love event horizon freak city me too it fucking rules but he just made some dang ass freak movies yeah oh i bet he a freak. Oh, Sam Neill's a freak.

Can I put him on my time travel fuck list? I think. I think. I'm talking. I'd fuck him now. I'd fuck him now. He's got a big beard. He's like on a farm in Australia or whatever.

He owns a vineyard. Have you seen his fucking. That's what it is. He's got wine. His vineyard's incredible. And I went down the rabbit hole of his social media for his vineyard. And it's fucking great. He just posted videos of him just saying what he thinks and feels started by a bunch of grapes but that's what angelica that's what i'm kind of talking around here like doesn't he

seem quietly like a little bit of a freak you know right in a good way yeah i'm usually good at sniffing that out in a man it's a great skill to have as a woman who dates men and i think he is i agree with you david i now really want to fuck sam neill from this but like 1993 early 90s yeah early 90s time travel fuckless everybody should have it it's funny and griff yes we can talk a little neil it's funny but like he's obviously he's from is he from new zealand he's from new zealand well he was born in born in ireland but he moved to new zealand correct uh but so obviously he he works down there and he somehow oh what he broke into european productions with the help of james mason correct how did he know james mason i don't know okay i did a deep dive on him recently i have to re-familiarize

myself here apparently james mason sort of brought him into hollywood and got him the omen role and he's in possession this but then he's in this tv show called riley ace of spies right that was what helped him almost get Bond. He was almost Bond and Timothy Dalton got it instead, which I feel like it probably breaks out okay for Sam Neill. You know, like, I don't know if Sam Neill would have been a perfect Bond,

you know, and he might've gotten boxed in by it. Like a lot of people do. Like, I don't know. I'm going to find this quote here that jj our researcher pulled up um sam neill i will read this quote while you look around griff like he liked playing villains he said i like playing bad guys characters with mario ambiguity they're

easier to play uh good guys often amorphous not well delineated bad guys have psychological defects you know like he he obviously just he comes to hollywood he's happy to work here but he's drawn to stranger parts uh and it's i feel like even in jurassic park where he's playing a good-hearted guy he kind of makes alan grant you know he tries to make alan grant as weird as he can i guess because like there's that scene where he kind of harasses the kid with the uh the raptor claw right you know yeah there's this sort of weird ambiguity of his relationship with um with with laura durn where you're like are these two together like what's the vibe it's a very unconventional leading man for a movie like that where you're like essentially he is the one with

the emotional arc the emotional arc is he hates kids and he learns to tolerate them right he's not married right he does not really have romantic interests it's not like he has to learn how to be a better father or learn to settle down and be a man right it's just like i kids fucking bug me i'm terrorizing a kid at a dig site at the beginning and by the end i've gotten a little bit protective of these two kids who i decided to not let die yeah yeah i mean i get it fuck them kids okay you've got the the michael jordan meme take on kids fuck them kids um there was a quote i had my mind's eye that i couldn't find now i'm wondering if i combine things from just i've been reading sam neill stuff for the last couple weeks but that his thing of just like look obviously i did jurassic park and i was in the mix for bond but

that's not really what I'm interested in. And like, as you said, he's like, I tend to prefer to play villains because they're more interestingly written than having to be the bland leading man. And it is interesting that the couple of times in larger, this is small budget, but let's say studio films that he played leading man in the wake of Jurassic Park. that he played leading man in the wake of jurassic park it was like this and event horizon and other movies where the whole premise is ostensibly normal guy starts losing his grip on sanity you know and he's using his handsomeness to his advantage you know to portray the freakiness of a seemingly sort of regular dude right that he wants to break that facade down as quickly as possible he is also very handsome i agree he belongs on the time travel fuck list but i keep on going back to like it makes so much sense to cast him as adult damien there is something just a little menacing even just even totally. Just even in neutral state.

I've never seen that movie. I don't think it's, like, very well regarded or anything, but yes, like, on paper, he is wisecasting for someone who is both possibly going to be president and, like, is the devil. Right?

He's the devil, right? Son of the devil, whatever he is. Yeah, right. At that point, he's like, I mean, the devil whatever yeah right at that point he's like i mean what it's uh my brilliant career right that that appears to be the movie that james mason liked him in that seems to be from my googling what james mason took an interest in uh the jillian armstrong movie sleeping dogs is like his his first leading man movie and then brilliant career i guess is the one that crosses over a little more i think uh i mean right you have the possession omen three in the

same year and then i think uh crying the dark is big for him uh even though the uh merrill dingo ate my baby movie right just because it's like well that's it's a legitimate merrill movie and he held his own against her like it feels like from that moment on that's when there's a shift of hollywood taking him seriously and then it's like he's a dead calm for red october right even still it is surprising that he gets picked for jurassic park, he's not a guy who it feels like, certainly if you think about today, when there's like the pipeline of like, you're, yeah, you know, the leading man,

and it's like, here's Jai Courtney. We've decided Jai Courtney's gonna be a movie star. He's gonna screen test for 15 things, and he'll get three of them, and the public doesn't really know what to do with him. You know, that he was like, the story is famously that Spielberg, I think, originally wanted it to be Harrison Ford and Sean Connery as Alan Grant and why am I forgetting the character's name? Attenborough's character. Hammond.

Yes, right. But there was the idea of like, here's this huge book, here's Spielberg, this massive bidding war, get the two biggest movie stars to play the parts. And then he had that realization of like, the star of this is going to be the dinosaurs. And we're going to spend so much money on the effects, just get good actors. Yeah. Right. But he is an odd choice. No, I mean, what you're saying, Griff, and like Angelica's uh sigh i'm you know like think about how the

latest jurassic park had chris pratt in it and like i i don't know how angelica feels don't even get me started on these motherfuckers who are quote unquote leading men today i was kind of trying to get you started we're trying to get you started we're attempting to get you started angela okay can i just say something anything is on my spirit as many things john david washington is like the best example of this terrible state we're in for leading men where it's like he's so fucking boring on screen i'm'm like, how is your father Denzel Washington? Like, you don't, where's the charisma, baby? Where's the, you know, the raw sort of intimacy that you can have with a leading man? We don't really get that these days.

There's not really many of the younger crop of actors I'm at all interested in. At least the ones who are actually getting roles, are like boring as shit. And they feel neutered sexually too. Like I can imagine Sam Neill fucking a bitch. Absolutely. I can't imagine half of these motherfuckers out here have any sort of good stroke game. They don't.

I have a better stroke game than these motherfuckers. I would say this is the problem, and it may not even be the actors it's the material is often like yeah you know is often kind of sexless i mean right there was that but that piece about like what was the title but i i forget who wrote it but the like everyone is beautiful no one has sex about how sexless our blockbusters are these days yeah they are sex i mean american cinema as a whole is not great like has chris pratt has he ever had sex i'm literally thinking passengers oh my god that movie what the fuck was that movie y'all that was a that was something and that was

like jennifer lawrence's first sex scene too. I remember her like talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. You know, and like Guardians of the Galaxy, he has like. No, he doesn't though. Right.

Exactly. He has one night stands. Yeah. Yeah, but you never really know about it. It's just sort of like, this guy's a playboy. And you're like, I guess you're telling me that he's a playboy. His relationship with Gamora is very chaste. And there's the thing at the beginning of the first movie where he's like driving the ship he's got a lady in the ship

but like yeah that's right it's very uh whatever they're just trying not to piss anyone off i guess i don't know i prefer sam neill's wild horn dog energy that we are now kind of projecting on him a little bit but he is really cute yeah now now we're like oh yeah he's like fucking all these broads yeah no he's down for anything it's like sam neill seems like a nice guy with his vineyard but this is a freaky movie it's not like this one is obviously it's it's less uh sex focused or whatever like you know i just i just generally like see him as someone who's happy to roll up his sleeves with strange interesting material and i i appreciate that about him yeah there's also this thing have you ever seen uh memoirs invisible man angelica no i have not so it's very bizarre and not a successful movie, but it's like there's four years between They Live and that. That's his sort of big return. That's his biggest budget movie ever, working with an established A-list star, and it sucks, I don't know, the CIA agent chasing him, right? It's not a very nuanced part, but he does it well. And there's this moment in the film that

I spotlighted when we did that episode where the idea is that the invisible man is holding a gun to his head, that he's being held at gunpoint. And the way the gag is achieved is very clearly that they have just glued a gun to the side of Sam Neill's head. And so he has to do the whole thing himself. And there's this scene where like in a wide shot, he runs out of his office and down like the hallway of the offices and he's playing like the invisible man has like, you know, him in a chokehold with the gun against him. And he it's it's like he's levitating, like he somehow walks as if someone is carrying him and he it's it's like he's levitating like he somehow walks as if someone is carrying him and it's clearly just him it's not wire work it's just a very physically physically committed thing of like that's a guy who's just here and is ready to get you the best results and

has no protectiveness over his star image is ready to like the fucking work. And similarly, this movie opens with him going so fucking hog wild with these guns, right? Oh, yeah. I love that. I think it's actually his first line is, I'm sorry about the balls. It was a lucky shot. That's all. Like after the first time you see his face after five minutes like he spends the first five minutes of the movie just kicking and screaming and flailing with his head down yeah been there

been there uh and he's drawn all over himself he's uh crosses yeah he's got crosses and so on all over himself drawn over his room over his, over his skin, over his gown. Yeah. It's the classic Lovecraft setup. You are introduced to an insane person and they're like, so what happened to you? And he's like, well, let me start at the beginning. You know, and like, I used to be a regular guy.

Insurance adjuster, you know, and then we're off. Ring, ring, ring. You know, we have a saying in our family. Use sports. Don't let sports use you. Hi, it's Jeff Merrick from 32 Thoughts to Podcast. Are you a sports parent, rep sports, travel sports, whatever you call it? If you're like me, you know that one of the great joys of having your kid or kids play sports is travel. You know, our families use sports to see different parts of the world, meet new people, and stay in a number of different places.

Recently, we've started using Airbnb. The kids love it because it feels like a sleepover at a new friend's house, while my wife and I enjoy more space, a proper bed, and mostly a washing machine. That really comes in handy for baseball trips. Trust me. In fact, it was on a baseball trip last summer when my wife sent me a text after the first night saying, do you think we could do this? Look, if you've ever stayed at an Airbnb, you've probably wondered the same thing. Could our place be an Airbnb? And now that our kids have also discovered the joys of skiing, in addition to travel hockey and travel baseball, we're on the move even more. Well, our house just sits there. Why not make a little extra money to cover some costs, right? We have friends who travel south every winter and

they Airbnb their place. Why not? Look, if you want to make a little extra cash, and who doesn't need that these days, maybe your home could be the way to make it happen. Find out how at Airbnb.com. Should I get a little into the context of this movie, Griff? Michael DeLuca? Can we talk Mike DeLuca? The DeLuca thing is fascinating because we're coming off a couple uh carpenter movies i mean not uh invisible man obviously but like a couple movies in a row where

he um wrote it under a pseudonym and right they live he he wrote himself prince of darkness right he's credited as uh quater mass right i guess those are the two right and there were a couple movies in between there where he was heavily involved in the script but he uh you know didn't technically write it but he does right martin quartermass and frank armadage are his two and it's like both a case of him saying like well those two movies have so many influences that it felt weird putting my own name on it so i create a fake name that's an homage to some of my influences. But he also sort of said, like,

I was just fucking tired of seeing my name so many times on every movie. Like, I felt like an evil maniac. Right, right. Written, directed, edited, scored by, catering by. Right. What you're saying, Griff, this is different. This is just him picking up a script

and being like, I like this script, you know? Right. I'm sure he'm sure he he said like i made it my own like i'm sure he wrote but like this is mike deluca wrote this script when he was like 22 years old yeah and was basically just like what if i made like a modern lovecrafty kind of tale about you know creepy beatings from another dimension trying to take over but it's like sat in the present 22 22 years old are you serious he gets hired onto new line in development when he's 19 he writes the script when he's 22 he had already at that time like he wrote some episodes of the freddy krueger tv show freddy's nightmares and then he ended up writing a couple other horror films he wrote freddy five or six he wrote freddy six freddy's dead yeah which is probably the worst freddy

i think so if you're excluding the remake um it's uh and he wrote um i believe he may have worked on he didn't he doesn't have a writing card. Oh, no, he produced Texas Chainsaw 3. Right, right. So he's been working in the world of low budget, you know, new line horror. Development guy and new line who's also creatively interested in horror and is writing and producing some of this stuff himself. More hands on. He writes Mouth of Madness. He wants Carpenter to see it first. That's his top choice. Carpenter's like, this stuff himself. More hands-on. He writes Mouth of Madness. He wants Carpenter to see it first.

That's his top choice. Carpenter's like, this is interesting. I don't know. There are ideas here. I wouldn't know how to do the work. I have some other things I have boiling right now. Maybe I'll come back to this later. Then they go to, what's her name,

who directed Pet Sematary. They go to Mary Lam lambert who made pet cemetery they also offered it to tony randall who made hellraiser 2 speaking of hellraiser um that doesn't happen and then after memoirs and body bags carpenter is like all right i'm i'm around right i want to work on that script the five years between when he first reads the script and when he agrees to do it essentially he has a big flop the other things he tried to do don't come to fruition they've developed two versions of this movie with different directors that don't go but also in those five years deluca goes from being like a development executive to the head

of new line so he's like you want to do my script? He's 27 years old and now he can make it a top priority. The script I wrote when I was 22, I really want to see this get made. I will green light my own script, essentially. I am still stuck on the 22-year-old thing. It's bizarre. Like, what?

The impression I get is that New new line in the 80s, and similar with Paramount, right, with Friday the 13th, like, those little horror movies, like, no one was minding the store. It was truly kind of like old-fashioned 30s Hollywood, where it was like, hey, I know this kid who likes horror flicks. Let's get him in. Let an intern write it. No one's checking on anyone.

Right. That sounds fun. Yeah, it was probably fun. There's probably some bad behavior. An early model. Well, notorious bad behavior with DeLuca. But he's like. Well, we'll get to that.

Right. He's sort of infamous as sort of. I feel like the prototype for this thing that has now flooded Hollywood, which is like movie dork who comes in full of like piss and vinegar as a teenager and it's like i know how to do this stuff and it's like i watch movies it's someone who like genuinely loves genre shit and then at some point has figured out how to like create the veneer of like a big swinging dick hollywood asshole despite being very young so that the other big swinging dick hollywood assholes hire them because they're like, well, you're not a dork.

You seem to be like a wheeler dealer player, but you say you like this stuff and you know it. So they just go like, I don't know, make your fucking horror shit. And then DeLuca becomes this notorious like he wears leather and he's fucking like, quote unquote, bad boy. And he's sort of like acting out all the fantasies of who he wished he thought he'd been in high school and then his his new line tenure essentially ends because he gets a blow job in public at an oscar party in the late 90s he sure did at arnold rifkin's house in 1998 uh he got his dick sucked while quote several guests looked on end quote that's from a hollywood reporter they're in like a general room of a mansion and he just takes his pants off and that starts

happening and everyone slowly moves away and then arnold rifkin has this amazing quote where he was like yeah i mean i have to take that chair out back and burn it i'm not gonna invite someone over to my house and tell them to sit in that fucking chair and the wildest thing or maybe it's not well given the hollywood is like he just sort of successfully he like leaves new line and reinvents himself as like kind of a you know prestige prestige producer like he's the guy who did freaking social network and uh what's it go money ball right he has three best picture nominations in a row he goes over to dreamworks for four years kind of belly flops there and it goes over to sony amy

pascal takes a man and fucking hits it out of the park at sony and does social network money ball and captain phillips three years in a row he has like 10 years at sony and then he leaves sony to independently produce uh 50 Shades of Grey. He like buys the Fifty Shades of Grey rights himself a little bit ahead of the curve and made a fucking killing on that, too. Now he's in charge of MGM. Now he's in charge of MGM. That's right. Yeah.

I'm sorry, but, you know, these Hollywood motherfuckers, especially these men, be wild. You're literally getting your dick sucked at a party that is like a that is rude it was not a blowjob party it was not it was it was an oscar party it was not it was not a party where it was like please come bring your penis like we will be getting them sucked later no this was just was just, we're going to watch the Oscars. It was going to have some canapes. It was not a BYOP party to clarify. Um, I, but like, it's,

it's, it is funny Griff or it is, you know, like new line in the nineties is this kind of, I don't, it's not quite as disruptive as like some, but like he greenlit seven and boogie nights and like, uh, the wedding singer singer dumb and dumb or

like you know he was austin powers austin powers like he was clearly like fairly good at picking projects yeah or in the case of like a boogie nights or a seven being like look do whatever it is you want to do you know like i you know like here's a fair amount of money like i i imagine it'll work out no and like boogie, he gets a lot of credit for. I mean, it's why the licorice pizza's at MGM now. Because it's like he has this relationship where he kind of made PTA. Yeah, no, I mean, his run at New Line pretty much ends right before Lord of the Rings, which is obviously this, like, huge transitional moment for them.

But also a thing they cannot sustain. And within like 10 years of Lord of the Rings coming out, new line no longer exists really other than as a label. It's like bizarre history, but he's jumping in there at a time where it's like the Freddie movies have been huge and the first Ninja turtles have been huge. And they've kind of gotten minted as like, Oh,

you're not, you're not in the film ghetto anymore. You don't have any prestige, but you've had crossover success. And he simultaneously like continues to make money doing the things that they did before, but also adds like five new sort of tentacles for them. And they're like getting Oscar nominations. They're having hit comedies horror movies action movies rush hour like just uh uh he just he fucking had a lot of success it is bizarre that he also wrote this movie yeah i am i i'm having some sort of dissonance with all i know about him and then this movie it's hard to reconcile i think I think Tark Carpenter, you know, took his pass at it or whatever. Oh, yeah, totally.

You know, Carpenter in 93 basically was like, I like that it's a Lovecraft thing. There's never been like a good Lovecraft movie. I like that it's got kind of old sci-fi. I like that it's got like a Stephen King vibe. I thought it would be fun. Like, he's good at... He's... Griff, he's so good at picking stuff off the pile that i feel like people would probably dismiss his trash right like i just feel like so many of his projects are the kinds of things that

in the hands of a lesser director people are like yeah this is like a six out of ten genre even if carpenter refined this script greatly and it you know he makes it sound like the reason he passed on it the first time earlier in the 90s is because he felt like the ideas weren't perfectly executed by all accounts all of the ideas were there from deluca like it is still wild that he at such a young age came up with this concept and all the facets of it. Even if Carpenter sort of polished it, you know? Yeah, totally. It's not like Carpenter takes credit for like, well, that wasn't in the script and I added that whole thing.

That wasn't a theme. No, it's right. It's in there. You're right. You're right. I want to say a brief aside, though, about the age thing. Please. I think it's very easy to get caught up in seeing like

very young people do like cool shit and whatever and obviously he continued to do other cool shit by everything he was producing and some uncool shit at oscar and some really uncool shit and i mean if we heard this imagine the stuff we haven't heard in my mind you know what i mean 100 that's what he did right yes in public yeah but it's like easy to kind of um as i get older i i've just become more aware and i think for women at you know you hit your 30s and it's a whole different ball game but it's very easy to fetishize youth in a way and i don't want to do that so i just i am saying this to the audience. Don't fetishize youth. Life is bold and beautiful. It's something Hollywood loves to do.

I focus on it less as like an accomplishment. I'm talking this specific case, but also in general and more just it is bizarre that someone of that age could have this sort of presence of mind to conceive of this film. Yeah, I agree because the ideas are really strong and they had to have been there to at least caught carpenter's eye uh and led him to direct and and they're they're fairly profound ideas and it's an interesting mixture of ideas i mean he's pulling together a couple disparate things in a very interesting way i agree and i i'm really

curious to hear from you guys your relationship to lovecraft because i have some spicy things to say about lovecraft but probably not surprising because i'm black as hell and that motherfucker was racist very racist one of the worst racist i've never really read any lovecraft perhaps that is embarrassing to admit or something but i i think partly because you know he's someone where people like i will read the stories i don't like for some reason i basically only read like a couple short stories i've never delved into him and yeah he has this reputation obviously where it's like enormously influential you know basically sort of a sub-genre onto himself but yeah also a huge racist that i have never wanted to delve deeper i guess maybe i don't know that's my exact same thing it's like i

i greatly enjoy lovecraftian things and i i love big beasts Right. People going crazy you know I like all you know a thing you see and you cannot comprehend like I love that idea. Right. I think I just largely stayed away because it's like well other people do Lovecraft stuff or they adapt it or they sort of are inspired by it and I can watch that stuff

which isn't as tinged by his fucking horrible thoughts. Cause it's not just like oh he was a bad person who wrote good things. His fucking worldviews are inextricably tied to his work. And when other people adapt it or homage it, they can sometimes separate those things a little more successfully. Have you read much yourself, Angelica? Yeah, I've read a little bit of Lovecraft as a teenager

just because I read a lot of horror and sci-fi and fantasy and i still do um and yeah you can clock that this motherfucker is racist and it's like i get really annoyed when people are like but i mean look at the time he lived in i'm like no he was even really racist for his i mean also who gives a shit i'm sorry white people are still racist. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me. You know what I mean? Right.

You know, but he was right. It's not one of those things where you're like, well, you know, there were, you know, he was,

that's how people thought of it. So I was like, no, no, no, no. He wrote shit down. Like he was like,

this is a good idea that I want to be remembered with. Like, let me put this in my work. Not to be dismissive. Cause I do know people like Lovecraft, and I'm sure there's lots, but he's also always felt to me like someone where it's like, have you read a couple Lovecraft stories? You kind of got the picture with him.

Yeah. He would kind of go to the same well over and over. Right, yeah. Yeah, I did a jerk-off motion. This is obviously not video. This is a podcast, but I want everybody to know I did a jerk off motion it's one of my favorite things to do but yeah like with lovecraft i yeah i'm definitely with

you griffin like there's a lot of lovecraft shit like lovecraftian shit shit that like took some of his ideas and then kind of go in a different direction with it that I really did. Because I like that whole old ones, dark shit, yawning abysses. Oh, existential crises as a human being looking at something beyond our understanding. I love all that shit. I don't love something like Lovecraft Country. I think that's something that... God, I hated that show. Can I just say that?

I fucking hated that show. You can. I didn't watch lovecraft neither um partly because the buzz on it kind of curdled so fast you're fine yes i think i'm fine what the fuck was lovecraft country about my other reason i didn't watch is like no one could succinctly define for me like what the premise of that show was because Because it's kind of a mess. I mean, it's like the through line is, what is Jonathan Major's character, Tick, kind of has some strange inheritance.

And like, there's so many different storylines. So like, Jurnee Smollett has everything with her sister. Her sister gets in with the main villain who can take other forms. Like, there's some magic they do. And you get to see the sister. One of the weirdest storylines is the sister becoming a white woman and, like, reckoning with that. This all sounds crazy. Yeah.

It sounds bizarre. It's so. But the thing is, it's, but it's but the thing is it's like stupid also a lot of you know colorism issues in the show where it's like journey smolett's light-skinned self is kind of exalted in a way while her sister who's a or half sister in the show is a darker skinned bigger woman and the things they do with that character i was like like do y'all not see how you're replicating the same problems that we critique white directors for no one just me i mean okay that show kind of got you know people i don't know it seems like people turned on that show because it kind of got yeah as they should but i i i don't even understand why they liked it at first i

remember watching the you know like a screener early on and i was like i see what this is doing with the lovecraft shit but it doesn't have a strong enough perspective on it and it's so slapdash taking so many influences from elsewhere that it doesn't really feel like its own thing uh fuck that show sincerely anybody who thinks it deserved a second season needs jesus and needs to watch better things in my opinion that like i look i did not watch it i have no i have no creative opinion on it uh i i did not watch it mostly because the vibes i got from it were what you were saying in addition to just sort of like uh a peak prestige tv messiness of just like there's way too much fucking going on here uh and they don't know what they're actually trying to do but it is

bizarre the arc of that show of just like all this buzz it comes out it's very divisive it seems to do pretty well a year later it gets a ton of emmy, is canceled two days later, and then loses every Emmy. It's like a very weird... Yeah. Yeah. Very weird. Very weird. But that's why I feel like the approach here is better.

The sort of like, let's do a Lovecraft-y thing. Yes. Like, let's get the vibes, but we can make it contemporary. We can kind of do whatever we want with it. And like, we do not have to be indebted to his particular type of storytelling. What's so wild too,

is that this movie is essentially combining like Lovecraft, Stephen King, and L. Ron Hubbard. Yeah. Right. Like Lovecraft is the thing that influences it most in terms of the vibe and the look and the mythology and all that sort of stuff but you're saying like what if there was a present

day author who had the the the uh the excuse me the lovecraft sensibility with the success and public visibility of stephen king but the effect on its readers was that of L. Ron Hubbard. And also, who do you obviously cast to play the composite of those three people? Juergen Prochow. He's good. That guy's got fucking gravitas out the ass. He does. Intense casting choice.

Is that his real hair? I believe so. I hope so, because that would be cool if it was. Because he looks great. Yeah, he looks great. When the doors of that black, demonic church open, and he's just like, hey, bitches, that's right. I got your kids. I got you.

And I'm like, yeah, you do, Sutter Kane. You do. I mean, you look at his Wikipedia picture, which is from two years ago. He's still got quite a mane on him. Nice head of hair. Oh, good for him. Nice head of hair. I think that's nice.

Nice head of gray hair. I mean, I associate him with Dust Boot, obviously. Right. Right. And Dune, which he's. Beverly Hills Cop, too. You know, like a guy who's stoic, kind of, like I said, a lot of

gravitas, right? Tough German guy. I like how wild and funny he is in this, and kind of weird and playful. He's going a little Klaus Kinski with it. Yeah, a little bit, and I

like it. I think everybody's really bringing it. Like, even small bit players, like, in this movie, it just seems like, I don't know, everyone got on the right wavelength with what this movie needed from them in terms of performance. And it, like, really works for me

how they all play off each other and just the energy. I love Julie Carman, who is not. She's really good. I know well. What do I know her? She's in like one other thing, I think. She's the mother in Gloria.

I mean, that's the thing that I know. That's what it is. Right. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah. Which is.

So she's got the big scene at the beginning of the movie. At the beginning. Right. Right. And she. Yeah. I mean, she's just like she's kind of she's super hot she's kind of different like you know like for a hollywood leading lady right she's got this sort

of like you know spanish cute the dark hair and like she's styled really well and she's just she's just cool in this movie like she's not trying hard in you know or she doesn't seem like she's trying hard at all right like she just sort of seems very very chill opposite all the all the sort of like intensity i don't know i don't know how to lay my finger on this do you know about her whole career in therapy there no i don't know about her career in therapy what's her career in therapy uh she's a master's degree in clinical psychology then she became a licensed marriage family therapist. Then she became a licensed yoga therapist.

Cool. She works as a drama therapist now in prisons. Wow. That's really fascinating. Does drama therapy and yoga therapy at, like, rehab centers. Wow. Yoga therapy at eating disorder centers, school district programs. I mean, she's, like, I think she was doing it simultaneous,

but has shifted to doing it more. I mean, she still acts. Yeah, but less so these days. But I think that speaks a little bit to her interesting energy. Yeah, totally. I mean, what I love about her performance is its physicality. Like, you know, when you're introduced to her, you know, as Cedric Kane's editor, she has a very precise professional woman physicality. Like, this is a woman who's had to, like, you can immediately tell this is a woman who's had to move through predominantly male spaces, and she knows how to hold her own.

to move through predominantly male spaces and she knows how to hold her own so when you see like later in the film as things go left there's a sort of like looseness to her physicality i noticed and like she just kind of like like she could just fall apart at any moment that i thought was really fascinating it makes sense that she has spent this much time like on on yoga and dance and physical theater and all this sort of stuff yeah and then you got charlton heston swinging in for for five seasons he's good charlton heston's 90s are so weird this is right around wayne's world too right right and you have like true lies you know you you kind of end the decade with him narrating armageddon like it is bizarre for how kind of like iconic and legendary he was and the 90s are when he starts becoming mostly thought of as a gun nut right like this transition

is happening he did a lot of you can hire me to give you weight and gravitas shit we're right wayne's world 2 tombstone true lies all of these are either like small supporting parts or like uncredited cameos mouth of madness hamlet he's the narrator of hercules and then the narrator of armageddon and then the commissioner in any given sunday right yeah instant gravitas that's his thing he's like i'll come in yeah i'll give you i'll give you some gravitas and then he's like done because he right he has alzheimer's like it's yeah it's over right then his 2000s are town and country the main dog uh like the boss dog and cats and dogs like the commissioner of dogs he's the

voice of that he has his one scene to play on the apes that i contend is great is i think we all agreed was the best part of that movie maybe kind of the best part of the movie yes but yeah uh he's i i kind of he's a he's a surprise but i enjoyed him i just think this movie's kind of loaded with those guys like you're gonna pronounce one but like david warner john bernie casey bernie k you know these guys are just gonna give you a couple you know fun wild scenes you also have uh what's his name um uh wilhelm vine von let me get his name right here but wilhelm von homberg right who is vigo the carpathian in ghostbusters 2 right right and is one of the the henchmen in uh diehard was a former boxer and is another guy who just like is so unbelievably intense on screen at any given moment uh he's the guy who who shoots

himself in the bar yeah right right yeah and he was dropping knowledge on our poor John Trent character played by Sam Neill, and yet... This is just... It's an arc that I love so much. The guy who's all swagger, who knows what he's doing, is unflappable. Someone tries to murder him with an axe 20 minutes into this movie,

and he's a little miffed, but he dusts himself off and gets back to his day so his setup is he like busts bullshit for a living and he's the best at it this guy fucking sees through everything absolutely he knows if you're cheating on your wife you know you know like he he thinks everyone is full of shit uh he's obviously the hope the plot is that he's investigating this author of jesus what's the author's name uh sutter cane baby read his work um who is supposed his work is supposedly driving people mad and he assumes that this is a ploy by the publishers to just gin up some

publicity but he's gonna look into it But I just love the sort of like, you know, big dick guy gets thrown into a world, like a nightmare world beyond his, like, you know, his greatest fears. Like the whole journey into the unknown thing in this movie is so well represented.

Like the creepiness of their drive up and the weird shit that they see and the way it like goes from day to night. I love that all so much. I dramatically love movies about people having their perception of the world destroyed, right? in horror movies or anything where you have this sort of like super high functioning unflappable character played by some degree of movie star who slowly realized that they have no idea what the fuck is going on and they have no control over their universe i also there is nothing i find more effective in horror than the am i losing my mind or am I the only sane person trope? Because it is the thing that scares me the most

personally with my tenuous grasp on my own mental health at all times. Anything that's playing with that juice of am I the only person who knows what's actually going on anymore or am I slowly

breaking down? I'm so glad you brought that up because it was something that was really on my mind watching it uh today i watched it earlier in the morning um which is a funny thing to like get up before dawn and watch in the mouth of madness but you know what that's a great start to your day. You did it for us, and I appreciate that. We did a cup of coffee and mouth of madness. Yeah, I was like, oh, let me get my tea and watch Sam Neill lose his mind and think about my own not strong grip on my own sanity. Same.

Throughout this miniseries, I've been watching Carpenter really early in the morning, almost consistently. I love it. series i've been watching carpenter really early in the morning almost consistently and it's been kind of a it's a it's an interesting way to start your day for sure rise and carp yeah but you know my whole thing is as someone who is bipolar and has anxiety and has been in a few mental hospitals i'm like usually hypersensitive to depictions of madness especially in horror yeah and not because i need it to necessarily look like reality i'm not interested in that sort of realism necessarily but i wanted to be able to at least get across that feeling of, you know, psychosis. Like I've been in moments where I get really upset over depictions of mental stuff.

And I agree with you that it's, it's more about, I want there to be some sort of aesthetic truth. Yes. Aesthetic and emotional truth. Right. And a static truth. Yeah.

Which I think this movie gets very well. Yeah. Yeah. Because like the depiction of the, the asylum in this movie is obviously sort of yeah because like the depiction of the the asylum in this movie is obviously sort of like hilariously stereotypical right he's like thrown in a padded cell it's all john glover is giving a performance that is more over the top than his performance in batman and robin exactly his hair is sticking up and he's like another one you know like and

yet like you say right there is sort of i mean carpenter is a very empathetic filmmaker he always has been so like that's why he's not that i don't mind trashy genre director but like you know that's why he's on another level like that's i mean that's my other thing too obviously is when it when it comes to depictions of mental illness of like easy demonization versus some sense of empathy and i think you can tell from the way this movie starts of just like here he is his face is, he's kicking and screaming, he's knocking a guy in the nuts, right? Like he's playing stereotypical, especially sort of like, Val Luton institutional horror movie, quote unquote, crazy person, right? And then the second David Warner goes back to

privately talk to him. Now he lifts his head up. Now you're looking this guy in the eyes for the first time. He's a real person, right? He's not just a lunatic. You're having to actually have a conversation with this guy and engage with him and question whether you could so easily put him into that box. And very notably, once this conversation starts, he gets very quiet. He gets very focused, you know? Yeah. You know, he is not behaving like a maniac. He's sort of, you know, there's a mild twitchiness to him. There is that manic energy. But he is really locking in with David Warner and sort of knowing, like, I've been through this. You're probably going to think I'm crazy.

Let me just tell you what I've gone through. But that central balance of the thing, of just, like, how people people see you your awareness of how people see you are you doing this on purpose have you given up trying to maintain some sense of control of how you're perceived in society versus just like here's this guy he's fucking broken you know and he's like excited that someone excited but you know willing to open up to someone to see if he can break through to them but there's also this guardedness of just like it's probably done i don't assume anyone's really gonna buy what i have to say yeah he's covered in plus signs like he's very positive

is what you're saying ben yeah he's positive all positive energy um then you go to the story within the story. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we have a saying in our family. Use sports. Don't let sports use you. Hi, it's Jeff Merrick from 32 Thoughts to Podcast. Are you a sports parent, rep sports, travel sports, whatever you call it?

If you're like me, you know that one of the great joys of having your kid or kids play sports is travel. You know, our families use sports to see different parts of the world, meet new people, and stay in a number of different places. Recently, we've started using Airbnb. The kids love it because it feels like a sleepover at a new friend's house, while my wife and I enjoy more space, a proper bed, and mostly a washing machine. That really comes in handy for baseball trips. Trust me. In fact, it was on a baseball trip last summer when my wife sent me a text after the first night saying, do you think we could do this? Look, if you've ever stayed at an Airbnb, you've probably wondered the same thing. Could our place be an Airbnb? And now that our kids have also discovered the joys of skiing, in addition to travel hockey and travel baseball, we're on the move even more. Well, our house just sits there. Why not make a little

extra money to cover some costs, right? We have friends who travel south every winter and they Airbnb their place. Why not? Look, if you want to make a little extra cash, and who doesn't need that these days, maybe your home could be the way to make it happen. Find out how at Airbnb.com. So you're introduced to Sam Neill. Obviously, we talked about that, his sort of big swinging energy and all that. But I know it's partly that the movie had a smaller budget and they had to deploy the sort of nightmarish imagery carefully and quickly and

kind of subtly like you know they could not linger on it for too long it's 10 million dollars memoirs was 40 his movies before that were all closer to three that runny had but we're in the mid 90s now it's changed not only have budgets changed but standards have changed yeah um but like i just like how he's folding in the nightmarish stuff very sort of like obliquely and like not trying to explain anything at all the guy's weird eyes you know the the cop that he has the vision of being like this monster and all that like no no effort to really explain beyond like i just i like all of the early build-up in this movie it keeps me so interested yeah i appreciate that i guess the opening of the movie is so kind of you know amped up that

that's supposed to hook us but like i just like that carpenter always takes his time before getting to the bananas stuff like carpenter really is sort of like the third act is where it's going to go bananas like don't worry like i'll give you what you want later like but like please stay with me while i get you involved they said that was the main reason to luca was so fixated on getting him to direct this movie over five years is that like no one gets away with more through the power of suggestion than this guy. People in their minds, I always think that Carpenter shows a lot more than he does. And that he really saves the big visuals, you know, the sort of chaos for the third act. But he's able to dole things out slowly and methodically enough that it does keep you hooked in. And so once this little group goes on a road trip,

the road trip is sort of my favorite part of the movie. Is that, Griff, is Hayden Christensen the boy on the bike? At the end. Yeah. At the end. Okay. Because I love that boy on the bike in the middle who turns into a weird old man.

Yeah. Oh, my God. That is so scary to me for some reason. It's so scary. really is i think that's kevin zeiger's maybe i think it might be i know he's in it too kevin zieger's whatever kevin zieger's name is yes but hayden's definitely the one at the end real quick though we skipped over there's that brief moment before they go on the road trip where they're in the elevator bank and he's hitting on her really hard that is so creepy he is so horny and creepy

in that scene I mean he's a dang ass freak they keep on coming back to the central point he's over on a space station be careful yeah and he's obviously like he's not just hitting on her he's also trying to get information from her so it like, it's kind of a weird mix of impulses on making sure that no one has the better of him

and you know wants to have that upper hand on everyone around him but also wants to control how people feel about him and can manipulate his own charisma to get what he wants out of other people it's just talking about this is like a fucking trope but like the uh uh whatchamacallit uh uh edge of tomorrow is like another movie that does the same thing where it's like here's a guy who's so good at fucking talking and lying to people and being able to like get in a boardroom and and spin things however he wants and then he's just thrown to a universe where he does not understand anything anymore and is completely falling apart at the lack of power he wields. Yeah, and this film really consider is broadly also about control

because isn't that sanity in a way? The idea that you think you have some control over how you view reality and you're in touch with whatever, you know, quote unquote reality is. And I think beyond that, how other people see you. It's both. My understanding of both exactly my understanding of reality and my understanding of how I'm perceived. Exactly. Which is just super fascinating kind of, you know, watching Sam Neill fall apart in the film, because it kind of leads to

really interesting considerations about what is real you know how are we actually properly probably improperly perceiving the world around us what are we missing what's behind the veil ideas i just oh it gets me hot i love it well that scene where they go to the hotel and he's arguing with styles about reality because she's calling out like look this is the town this is the town from the book there's the church all of this and he does that thing where he knocks on the desk and goes like reality this is reality hear this with the irony being he's knocking on a desk in a town from a book like his argument is real things are tangible things that i can hit that i can prove that i can touch that are tactile but it's, but you're saying this in

a fantasy world right now. You are already trapped in the thing that isn't real. And your perception of this disc is more real than what you're saying to me is already totally out of whack. Like, would you, sorry, Sam Neill,

his performance, just his whole entitled king of the universe vibe, that's what I love about oh sorry sorry um the sam neill like his performance like just his whole uh entitled you know king of the universe vibe that's what i love about like the paper the uh hubris of it where he's just like no i figured the puzzle out it's not what you guys are trying to sell me on it's just a weird old town and i figure you know like i as i always do i'm gonna pierce you know the the lie here and emerge the number one smarty pants once again like that there's so much delight it's kind of like you know when you're watching a bunch of camp counselors have sex and you're like jason's gonna get these guys you know like that same hubris where the audience is kind of rooting for the villainy like but just in this more elaborate supernatural

metaphorical way i love that yeah me too yeah it's great this movie rules and then everything goes insane everything goes completely wild another thing that rules is the cutout stuff where they figure out it's new hampshire i love that shit you like the map yeah i do too it's like look at this it's really like solidifying oh this is one smart bitch okay this insurance investigator he can figure shit the fuck out and so you kind of go into this weird town and story with that in mind like this is someone who thinks he can kind of perceive things that others don't and kind of look through the bullshit and put the puzzle pieces together. But what if the puzzle comes together and it's an image you can't even, you know, comprehend? A pretty ingenious storytelling decision in this movie is that he is asleep and Stiles is driving the car when they go through the tunnel and shit starts

getting really fucking weird so he doesn't see that nightmarish imagery she enters the town and sees that sign already fairly broken so that when he's now seeing oh that's weird this town's supposed to not exist i talked to the old lady at the front desk of the hotel she's never heard of sutter kane he has no reason to question reality at this point she's viewing it through the prism of weird shit has already happened and he just immediately goes to this is absolutely a promotional event i mean i just love that he's so confident that's like this is some weird fucking augmented reality like launch for the book that you fuckers are doing these people are cosplaying they're acting yeah yeah right and and he just

hasn't seen the sort of terrors at the edges of reality yet yeah and even when he does start to see them it takes a little bit it has to heighten to a certain level for him to be like, okay, wait a minute. Like the fuck is this? Especially with the old lady and like, you know, him coming downstairs and like looking at the painting has changed,

which is so effectively creepy to me. Like if I kept turning around and a painting was just changing and people were mutating in the painting i would just be like you know what fuck it this is the point where i i either try to get out of this town or i need to kill myself because this ain't gonna work out for me i don't want to look like some hideous creep and to me the right well you don't want to look like a no one wants to look no one wants to look but to me to i i love the that scene is not really in this movie but like you know i guess it sort of is but like if he gets in his car and tries to drive through the covered bridge again and just can't leave that yeah is such a good ultimate nightmare

to me right where you're like no the thing from across the barrier and there's no way back right right if you try to walk back to the cave and, you just get a headache and you wake up back on the beach again. What was the thing I was going to say? Oh, another thing I think this movie does very smartly is the case that he is telling Bernie Casey about at the beginning is like, you know, husband hires me to spy on wife who he thinks is having an affair with him. And then I realized they're both running a con on me. an affair with him. And then I realized they're both running a con on me. So, you know, this guy is very dubious of the fact that I don't necessarily even trust who hires me to do this. Right. They could just as likely be in on it. They're not trying to get me to solve a problem for them. They might be looping me into their sham. So, you know, he gets brought in with Charlton Heston and, and, and with styles

and whatever the whole time he's wary of like, this would be a pretty perfect way to promote the new book that the guy goes missing, that there's some mystery around it. Right. I wake up, I'm now in a town that's named after the town from the book. Look, they've built the church, all of this. He's just like anything weird that starts happening. It is so easy for him in his arrogance to write it off as well i don't know this is what the fucking publishing company's

doing a built a church though i know it's wild for promotional purposes i'm not sure they would that's why i'm saying it's it's his arrogance that he's willing to accept any of it is their shit so if the painting changes he's like would be a perfect thing for a publishing house to do change the paintings yeah and he touched the painting when he realized it had changed to kind of see if there was fresh paint i'm like dude come on now like think about it also you know everything with the the old lady and like her poor poor husband shackled to her ankle and then her like you don't obviouslyled to her ankle. And then her, like,

you don't obviously with all the monstrous things in the film, you don't see them directly, directly, but you kind of see her in shadow and the tentacles, tentacles, really all that sort of shit. Tentacles are all, it's so effectively gross to me.

Like I'm like, what the fuck? And all of it has the same kind of like sliminess as the the thing animatronics he's working with the same color palette as well where everything's this odd sort of like bruised flesh um it's very scary it's very scary but yeah like in that in that scene where they're arguing about reality and he's knocking on the desk and and she admits to him like okay 20 of this was a scam right that's my favorite part that that only yeah okay you had the basic idea right sure we were making up the whole crazy people thing right a little bit you know but i did not plan any of this like what do you think i am like right we wanted him

to disappear but then we actually can't find him the agent wasn't supposed to go crazy you know like all this shit but but even her admitting that like the last 80 of this has been really fucking real and is scaring me only like confirms his bias even more to be less trusting yeah and this is obviously a character so committed to their own view of the world and their centrality in the world that it's like for me if that i mean even the beginning the agent and the weird eyes and the acts like come on like that's already like what what the fuck that motherfucker got shot he's dead that's not promotional. Right. No. Right, but he's so unfazed by it and everyone around him is like,

don't you think that's weird that you happen to be the guy sitting at the window of this restaurant when a dude comes in with an axe and tries to murder you and then you get hired to work for his publishing company to find the guy?

Not to sound like Griffin please please that's how it speaks so well to the current moment where it's like it sounds like griff you know everything is sort of quietly so skewed and strange and society seems to be crumbling but the way to get through it for so many people is just to be like, I don't know. Things seem normal mostly. So I guess I'll just sort of ignore the weird stuff, right? Right. Like, that's the only way to make it through the day. And, like, that's why this is such a good depiction of apocalypse.

Such a good, like, current, like, depiction of apocalypse. I love that all the early looks of sort of affected people are different, too. Like someone like the agent is like, okay, this looks like someone, you know, who's in like the grip of psychosis, you know, hasn't slept, is not taking care of themselves. And some people look like they are, you know, have been infected with a zombie virus. You have people bleeding out of their eyes. There's a range of, I don't know, of visual triggers of people who are in some way being touched by this thing. So it's all just generally disorienting. Well, one thought I was having about the people who are possessed, they have to have read the books, right? But I feel like I know the kind of audiences

that read those paperbacks, and I feel like way more people should have looked like they were on vacation. Do you know what I mean? Like, it should have been more, like, retired people. Do you know what I'm saying? That was, like, I feel like one misstep. You're saying the biggest outbreak

should be happening at the airport. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Or just, yeah, and, like, beach towns. saying the biggest outbreak should be happening at the airport yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah or just yeah and like beach towns that to me feels like the vibe but i mean setter kane's bigger than stephen king so i mean i think just like everybody is reading his shit right like he's just that bitch he's bigger than the holy bible it is funny that they bring they mention stephen king they actually make him a little bit it's a successful version of the the studio 60 things studio 60 insisting that snl also exists right right in this one it works as you're like oh fuck he's bigger than that

and studio 60 they're like yeah we keep on getting beaten by snl in the ratings it's like beaten motherfucker you'd be canceled this show's not still on the air there's only room for one of these dumb things there's definitely not room for two um yeah it's because like it'd be one thing if studio 60 was like about making a mad tv style show where it's like yeah this is a piece of shit what we're all idiots but they is what 30 Rock's about. I know, but in Studio 60, they all acted like they invented humor. Like,

they're all pulling down, like, leather-bound books and talking about, like, Comedia Del Arte and shit. Right. Like, the whole thing is,

you know, shot by fucking, looks like, you know, Janusz Kaminski is like, you know, it's ridiculous. That show is blowing up its own ass.

Blowing the dust off of vinyl records of cavemen doing the first who's on first routine i truly am dreading the aaron sorkin i love lucy thing because it's going to be the same it's going to be monologues about how important it is that they are making comedy that people see or something right like it's just going to be so much of that. I have to imagine. I think it's going to be the best horror film of 2021. I'm sort of, I may be in the opposite boat from you in that I'm eagerly anticipating it, but with a sort of, like, gleeful menace. Yeah, Sorkin is just, I am not on Sorkin's wavelength.

Look, I love him when I love him. This feels like a horrible, horrible match of subject for him. And I also think the casting is fully demented. Yeah, that's going to be a clunker. I just keep imagining Javier Bardem playing Desi Arnaz as Salazar from Pirates of the Caribbean. Okay. Oh, my God. Angelica, please take us back on topic.

Say anything. Say anything. Say anything at all. I was like, what the fuck are you? Where the fuck is this road going? But I wanted to kind of go back to something about like the effective use of like different people who become sort of possessed and start changing i think one of the most striking examples is one of those little kids when um styles is like going to the black church and she turns around because the ball kind of hits her ankles and she sees these little gross looking kids around her car and the one who talks has like these really fucked up pointy teeth and blood covering her mouth and says something

like it's mommy's day like bitch get the fuck away from me okay see kids love love that freaky little kid love that the other kids aren't fucked up looking they're just kids but you kind of think they're all fucked up looking because of it you You know what I mean? You're like, kids are weird looking. Yeah, they can be. Some children are ugly also and we need to be honest about that. Some babies are not cute. We have to tell them. Right. My baby

is cute and I know that she's cute because some babies are not cute. And that is something we have to talk about. There's another reason we know your baby is cute. Why? Because she looks like the boss baby and the boss baby was cute enough to sell movie tickets yeah there you go angelica his baby looks just like the boss baby okay my baby looks like the boss baby i'll send you a picture privately i'll have you respond live on air i i i look david you you fucking you brush it off but every single person

who meets her goes like it is true she looks like the boss baby she's a baby she's a white baby with a round head she looks like the boss baby she looks exactly like the boss more so than any other baby looks like the boss baby i'm so eagerly anticipating seeing this real life boss baby but let's go back to in the mouth of madness is greatness yes please what you're saying is true and the same with the old lady with her husband tied to her handcuffed to her ankle like you know just weaponizing small town cuteness and making it the creepiest thing in the world is always gonna work on me like i i love you know i love uh the menace of you know a bread and breakfast town basically love that um what else is going on in hobbs end too much there's just it just seems like a mess i know we sort of alluded to this earlier but the when sam neill is trying to escape and is

able to you know get into the car um and like keeps trying to escape and going over the bridge but then he ends up right back in front of the town's mutated townspeople i would be so annoyed i mean he did that a few times i would be like you know what okay can you just move me on to some other part of the story, Sutter Cain? Because this, fuck this shit. Yeah, I'm just, you know, this movie, every time I watch it, I kind of discover something new or kind of hone in on a different aspect. And one thing I really dug about it, especially after seeing a not good horror movie soon after at a press screening, is its texture. It's so textured visually. There's like the slimy drippiness of the monsters and tentacles that you see.

But then there's also like the cracked skin of certain other characters. I'm, you know, the softness of the pad itself it just feels so dynamic um in terms of texture visually that kind of that even more brings you into this world in a really fascinating way a hard agree um i i movies look often look very flat now they do too glossy too very glossy i appreciate that you can make a cheap movie these days and you know get it online and people can watch it and i know there's advantages to that but i do often feel like they have this kind of anonymous flatness to them that can be a little depressing and yeah man this is a this is a fucking rich movie like you know visually i'm it i i miss it i miss it too did you see the fucking trailer for the new home alone griff yes i did uh home sweet home alone or

whatever it's called the disney plus home alone angelica let me tell you the premise is they leave the kid home alone and some burglars come it's the exact same thing um but the thing about it is it's got that kind of flatness uh that you know the sort of straight to streaming flatness and then you think about home alone which is like that's a movie that was a it's a chris columbus movie that was really just kind of like a down the middle kind of family movie and now you watch that and you're like god this thing is it looks so good like the grain on this is beautiful like it looks like lawrence it is bizarre yes oh it has texture and again like practical it's beautiful the weather looks great the location filming is great

uh anyway that's that's that's how sick things have gotten that's all okay now angelica's laughing because i i sent in into the uh private chat the picture of the boss baby but that's for comparison okay okay i was like this is just the boss baby is his my child is not a cartoon she's flesh and blood she is i. I will give her that. I will actually, I will give her that. Now, hold on one second. I'm sending the second photo here. Give me one moment. It is absurd, though. And it's like, I don't know.

Especially considering how cheap most Carpenter movies were. Exactly. It is amazing how much he just understood how to get the most out of images, you know? Totally. I mean, visually dynamic in terms of framing, how characters are blocked. I mean, it's just every level visually is just kind of firing on all cylinders,

especially here. And, you know, one of my favorite moments comes in the end visually and is the background of both of y'all's Zoom, where, you know, it's ripped pages from what we can assume is Sutter Cain's manuscript. And it's like he rips, I sutter cane rips himself apart and then that reveals like oh these are pages and it's almost like he's opening it up to this other world and

you don't even see what sam neill is looking at through this um torn um sort of it almost looks like a cave opening in a weird way and you you don't know what he sees but you see his facial expression and you're like oh yeah we're in we're in for some shit y'all that that's that lovecraft magic where it's like you know it's better to see how how it makes someone look to look at something than just show it like you know you're gonna get more out of their reaction um and the shot you're talking about the rift page thing just that's just classic carpenter i feel like where he's like when when i'm going to deploy visual effects i'm gonna make sure oh there she is baby they do look little boss baby. Timed out perfectly, David.

I got the right comparison. Did I not? Well, you got her in a boss baby pose. She's on her. I didn't get in that pose. You got her in that pose. And I've just saved it. She gets herself in that pose.

You put her on her back. She rolls under her tummy in one second. Can we also say how well that timed out? That Angelica responding to how much your daughter looks like the boss baby coincided with you saying how much more effective it is to see someone react to seeing something. Yeah, totally. horror films where, you know, they have these CGI, mostly CGI monsters, and it's just like ugly. It's not engaging visually. And it's better a lot. You guys are right. It's better a lot of times to not see something fully and let the audience's imagination sort of fill in the blanks because what they can fill in the blanks with is, you know, personally scary to them. So it's more effective.

What is most wild to me is that Carpenter, like, you read the interviews at the time, sort of bemoaned the fact that he couldn't use CGI. Because this is post-Jurassic Park and T2. And he was like, yeah, the budge isn't big enough, so I'm back to using rubber again. Like, he was sort of very dismissive of it and you know outside of like those two examples and some other very very high level cutting edge movies so many of the movies 90s films without massive budgets that use cgi it has aged so horribly like they did not have the skill and the artistry to know how to execute it and this movie has one big cgi effect i would say which is when like sutter kane starts ripping himself and it is so effective and it is so scary

it's clearly a very simple cheap trick but the fact that that's the one thing that is digital rather than practical and it is a an effect that feels like you are ripping at the seams of reality, like you are tearing the movie in half. You transition from that into the more practical thing that we both have as the background of like the pages and Sam Neill walking into it and whatever. But I find that image so scary. To like see a man sort of like cut the fabric of time and space around him and just start peeling it back yeah and

then i really like how you see setter kane a little bit later and one of sam neill's dreams after he's able to quote unquote well he doesn't really escape the town he's more like let out right um so he can bring uh setter kane's manuscript to the rest of the world and starting with his publishing company um but i love that moment with between uh setter kane and john trent on the bus and setter kane's whole i'm god now i'm like every writer wants to be able to say that like why yes my creations are real and i am god now and and then when he like thinks he would he he's like did i ever tell you my favorite color was blue and he thinks he wakes up and then every the hair of the old woman sitting next to him everything everything everybody's wearing the way the light is blue filter right it's like yeah oh yeah it's

and then he wakes up again and then he's you know screaming on the bus which is probably what i would do absolutely well it's such a scary concept that it's like this guy can just keep on popping up in your head and going like rewrite i've decided to add this and your reality is that quickly changed around you or is it like you wake up the second time and you're like well now i don't fucking know what to make of anything um i i you know i maybe prefer i probably prefer the thing to this but i feel like the thing gets so much credit for how bleak its ending is you know when people talk about that movie this feels to me like far and away the bleakest ending is you know when people talk about that movie this feels

to me like far and away the bleakest ending he's ever had any of his films yeah i think that's why i like it so much it is insane how relentless the last 25 minutes of this movie are because you have this sort of oh he breaks through the page the town is letting him free right and we're used to either in movies like this everything returns to some state of normalcy and at the end there's some like shrug look to the camera question of like or is it or the guy actually finds a way to defeat the thing right and in this it's like no as you said they sort of just let him go but he infects everyone with him and things just get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and then you cut back to him in the cell explaining all of this

david warner and it's like yeah well you're right that is a pretty bad story and then things get worse they get worse out of the story he's telling right and he's just like yeah so is the world ended yet and david warner's like i don't want to talk about it let's get back to you and then like the fucking hospital blows up he's trying he wanders the streets like i am legend he goes to watch his own movie and he's like right i am a character in a fictional universe and he laughs because yeah how how how could you not do the best ending of all time i mean that's the best ending imaginable it's incredible yeah it's an incredible ending the blue scare is so good i just want to just again i just want to it's incredible yeah it's an incredible ending the blue scare is so good i just

want to just again i just want to it's so simple it's sort of lynchian like you know yeah exactly yeah right just like one unsettling thing is is all you need to do to completely discombobulate the audience it's so good yeah like i think this movie obviously is really good at the like super weird shit, tentacles, whatever. But there's also, yeah, like just really simple scares that lingers with me the most and is not graphic you know it is is not gory but it's just so bizarre it is like lynching in and it's upsetting and there's there's something unnerving to how casual she is about it yeah and just kicking him right her conversation with samuel before that her temperament is so weird because they've established her as this sort of like you know archetypal nice old lady in a small town and then she starts like cursing at sam neill right like saying like i don't know some shit or whatever yeah because he i think asked if she did the painting and he's like and she's like hell no

and i'm like okay oh wait and then she's like oh her husband's just suffering by her side like yeah shackled together weird a lot of the i mean the town everything in hobbs end is very effective with you know something uh david said earlier with regards to using a small town and then sort of you know moving things a few spaces to the left like even when they first arrived there's like no one around which is creepy there's no one it's empty streets except for when she sees the kids and then doesn't see the kids which is another super creepy thing like okay hat what you know like destabilizing he pulls that trick so many times and it always works where it's like she looks out the car window for a second and they're like in the sky and she's

like huh and she looks again and they're not like that always works that the kid with the like we said the kid on the bike who turns into an old man he's got the weird joker cards in the spokes like that the focus on the little details like that that's that's awesome uh and then yeah i mean the build-up in this movie is so cool and then it delivers like you know like you're like okay but it actually better be unsettling when you finally peel back the veil right like when you you know get to the mouth of madness and uh and he pulls that off too. Yeah. His lair rules. Oh, yeah. He's got a good lair.

That red lair, like that writing room of his would, like, you know, David, you guys, Angelica, as writers, would you want to work in that kind of room, in that kind of space? Would that be helpful for you? I mean, I do have a typewriter, so I like to fix typewriters. So if you kind of just had a lava vibe yeah i love that maybe i'll get a lava lamp and sort of approximate that sort of okay vibe i or you know put blood on my walls or whatever the hell else he was doing up in there i i was very envious of him like quickly typing out a page and being like finished i was like yeah all right you know i was like fuck you dude i definitely ain't writing like that i that actually um brings up something that only popped into my head this watch which was you know having a character reading a book is usually boring as shit right and so like the

way this movie kind of approaches the reading by having like sam neill fall asleep and then like you know it's almost like what he's reading infects his mind and like his perspective like when he um kept having the dream of you know seeing, seeing the alleyway, the cop, the cop turns around, face gnarled. But I was like, that's a smart way of like getting across the vibe of the book without, you know, hearing voiceover of Sam Neill reading what Sutter Cain wrote. Although we do hear Stiles at one point reading from a passage, which worked though. I'm confused. Angelica, are you saying that nocturnal animals is not a compelling structure for a movie to have a two hour film where a woman reads a book and every 15

minutes puts the book down, calls someone, gets their voicemail, goes back to reading the book, takes a bath, reads the book some more, thinks about some other shit. I legit forgot about that movie.

Of course you did. And I've seen it. I've seen it before. I went to a press screening. I remember seeing this movie. I saw that shit. It's self-defense. We all had to forget about that movie.

We can't have it in our heads. I just, every four months, I think, did he really do that? Is the movie really just her reading the book? And then she like goes oh what a bad chapter well back to reading does she read it out loud no no no what you just watch her read yeah and then you see the book and then you also see some other memories she's having don't watch it it. It's just. No, I mean, I'm not.

I was just like, they just show her reading for like five minutes. Yeah. And then like a cannibal husband comes home. He's like, how are you doing? She's like, OK, I'm reading this book. And it's like back to the other parallel storyline, which is the book. It's so fuck. That's why I'm like, you know, this movie is smart about what it needs to get across with understanding who Sutter Cain is and how his work looms large over the world.

And it doesn't need to do like a fucking 10 minute sequence where you see one of the books acted out. Like you understand the hallmarks you need to understand without having to spend that much time. Exactly. Which I think it's just good shit i feel like this is the our takeaways good shit good shit this is good shit yeah it's just like and it's also just so much fun to feel like challenged by a movie that's not necessarily like trying to be some super highbrow whatever the fuck that even means these days um piece of work it's just it's it's kind of luring you into something it's challenging what

you think is real it's fucking with your brain a little bit and then it ends bleak as hell as a reminder of hey the world sucks it's all going to shit it's it's the like the drag me to hell thing that i love where it's like you're you're fulfilling the promise on on the on the can you know this movie is about like the fucking apocalypse and reality tearing apart they're gonna fucking do it they're they're gonna show you exactly what they say the threat of the movie is yeah exactly and it's just like yeah drag me to hell wow good ending you know good endings are hard to like it's you know especially with genre works sometimes like you know you remember a lot of other things from from a work but maybe not its ending but carpenter has some really dope endings um as a filmmaker

you're you're right yeah he kind of is the ending killer. Yeah. The fog ending rules. Obviously, the thing has a very same setting. Even Prince of Darkness, I like the ending. Escape from New York is such a fucking super cool ending. Yeah, him just walking off. He gets out so quickly.

Right. That's the other thing. It's the same with Big Trouble in Little China, where he's like, I'm not going to kiss you. And then he leaves, and he's got a monster in his truck uh they live what's the ending of they live they live ends with the fucking alien couple fucking yes it's the alien right so that's great yeah what are you looking at yeah oh my god if that happened to me lord jesus have mercy i don't know how i would react i don't know that's maybe the kind of freaky shit i'm into oh maybe maybe i'm working through it

i'm working through it sex uh yeah no it's good it's good it's just a bunch of yeah he he's a punchy it's his sort of howard hoxie thing right he's like i'm not gonna let the you know send the audience out unsatisfied like he you know i'm an old-fashioned filmmaker uh i want to you know i want to nail it and this might be my favorite of his endings though like i just love the whole recursive it's one of the best endings ever yeah same yeah yeah it's funny because um vulture was is a lot of packages got moved around that we do because of the because of the pandemic and feeling like certain things 50 best type packages like this yeah yeah it was doing like a really big package on best endings and i remember that came out yeah yeah i think it eventually came out but like you know we were like

in the conversations amongst the critics and other people at vulture who were working on it we were like we'll only do like one ending from a filmmaker. We're not going to do multiple, like we can't list every wilder ending or, and I, I was like, I know everybody wants, you know,

the thing for Carpenter and I get it, but in the mouth of madness is, is like, to me such an evocative gut punch of an ending and then you know Sam Neill laughing until he's crying

just really gets across like wow this person is like truly and deeply fucked I wholeheartedly agree I'm trying to find here Angelica because you were sort of even evoking this but like jj our researcher pulled up some quotes where carpenter was just throwing shade at this idea of people trying to and it's now what i feel like gets called elevated horror

and he had a different term here he used but that even at this point in the 90s. Upscale horror is the term that Michael DeLuca. Yeah, so Michael DeLuca basically talked about, like there's two kinds of horror films. There's the sort of low budget stuff that's more direct to video. And then there's a movie market for interesting high concept upscale horror films.

He's talking about at the time, Interview with the Vampire and Wolf. He's citing his examples, which is funny because right, those are movies like Interview with the Vampire is kind of trying to be like an epic period drama. Wolf is sort of a satire. Like they're not leading with horror.

No. And they asked Carpenter about it and he's like, that's a terrible word. Right. I hate this. And he was just sort of like i like monsters and aliens and i don't feel the need to try to impress upon people that i'm doing it in a more serious way i mean he said carpenter like specifically um invoked uh coppola's dracula as like that was sort of seen as maybe this is a transition point to horror being a slightly more legitimate genre and that everyone was sort of trying to copy that for a while in the 90s and it didn't really take hold. You know, the fact that Wolf and Interviewing a Vampire, like the two things that DeLuca is throwing out there is like these are the two tracks of this. Yeah, that that's really fascinating hearing Carpenter's perspective on that, just because I feel like we're in a really weird time for horror where, you know, the way horror is talked about is still strange, especially amongst critics.

Like, I think there's a lot of critics who just don't fuck with horror and it shows whenever they do a horror review yeah but it's also like i think sometimes i get this sense from certain filmmakers who dipped into who are dipping into horror now that they're almost embarrassed they're doing horror so they have to make things like trauma exploration like the guiding thrust of the work rather than you know actually effectively scaring people and like getting under your skin and doing fascinating things visually i don't know i'm kind of depressed with modern horror um from hollywood it it's just it is very interesting to me that carpenter was complaining about sort of the exact same things that are being debated right now, almost 30 years ago. Because everything's cyclical. Like, I'm working on a really big piece,

probably the biggest in my career that will be out before the end of the year. And I'm not going to spoil what it's about. It's about a big red dog, right? Oh, total big red dog. The fact that you said big several times makes me think it has to be a cliffhanger. You said big several times. Makes me think it has to be a cliffhanger. But one thing it kind of led me to do was to read a lot of criticism from Black critics from, like, you know, decades and decades prior. And I'm like, we're still talking about the same shit with representation, with colorism, with, you know, Black filmmakers being used by the Hollywood system to give the veneer of progress.

All these things are like so cyclical. And it's really, I think, important, you know, to understand history in order to even understand the moment we're in. You know what I mean? Thank you for reminding me of this thing that now is slightly on subject that I can bring up that I was going down this rabbit hole last night and was pretty fascinated by. is slightly on subject that i can bring up that i was going down this route all last night was pretty fascinated by uh i i was thinking you know in another uh insomniac night being uh tortured by my thoughts unable to sleep uh about uh roosevelt franklin who was like a very early sesame street character who was sort of like the early breakout character of that show or at least one of them and then got phased out by the 70s he was maybe kind of

the the or the elmo of his moment where he was sort of the closer child analog character and he was like a little boy with a striped shirt and he had a little bit of a mischievous attitude and sesame street was so specifically catered towards like we are trying to create a show that can promote literacy within inner city children who perhaps don't have the educational support that they need, right? So Sesame Street was really designed to represent that kind of city and have that kind of diversity and not just be a show for like small white children. And Franklin Roosevelt was supposed to sort of be like a black Muppet in theory, right? Is kind of coded that way. And most of his segments took place within his school. And I was reading articles written in like 1972 debating whether Franklin

Roosevelt is a good stereotype or not. And they feel so similar to the types of things. Now, these articles were mostly being written by Black journalists in Black journals, right? of things now these articles were mostly being written by black journalists in black journals right but it's the kind of think pieces you see today and then fox news gets all the fucking wound up and goes like oh so now they're saying that cookie monster has to be canceled these people where do they stop and it's like these debates have been going on forever forever these same conversations always fucking happen and people oh, so now we can't just enjoy things, you know? It's like an unending spectrum. It is bizarre just how much more upset people get now when things are debated. Oh, totally. And I think that also, I mean,

links to something that unsurprisingly is on my mind quite a bit. But people's discomfort with any sort of criticism that brings a strong intellectual historical perspective. It's, oh, people can't just enjoy things. I mean, that's why I'm off fucking Twitter. Because I'm like, you know what? Smart. I can't. It's not good.

It's not. And it's, you know, you let so many other voices in your head. And I think that's actually not good for you creatively. Like you can kind of lose your own voice amongst the masses. Talk about in the mouth of madness somewhere, right? I know. Yeah, that is basically Twitter. But, you know, I think that having a critical perspective is really important.

Like you can, like, for example, within In the Mouth of Madness, can I just like watch it and just enjoy it just as a, you know, piece of spectacle and horror on a more visceral level? Of course. fascinating subject matter, the nature of madness, the nature of reality, our own perspective on ourselves and others and how other people look at us. I mean, I think those are all worthy subjects of consideration and thought. But also, yeah, the movie just rips. And I think it's it sucks that there's not more movies that I feel can work on both levels, both intellectually, viscerally, emotionally, visually. I think,

you know, in the mouth of madness is just really good at kind of firing from all cylinders in a way that you don't really see that much anymore. And especially, you know, stateside I'm speaking of, and especially in horror. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, this is, he like, where,

I'm just going to read this verbatim because it's really good. This is from a Film Threat interview. But people asking about commentary being put into his work and whether this movie was ultimately, above all else, trying to be a statement on this idea of the cyclical nature of like art encouraging violence and yada, yada, yada. And he said, this is not a new thing. When I was a kid, and this gets back to also what we're fucking talking about, how about the same arguments are had cyclically over decades and people act like it's a new thing. So he says, this is not a new thing. When I was a kid watching television, there were these documentaries on TV asking,

are foreign movies too violent? This is really not a satirical film, but it's based on the idea that Sutter Cain is being told what to write by these creatures from the beyond. And so when people read this stuff, they become possessed, paranoid schizophrenics and run around killing people with axes. So in that sense, yeah, it is a take on the ridiculous premise that television, movies, and books can create killers. But most importantly, he says, Angelica, hopefully that isn't the first thing on people's minds. Hopefully you're screaming rather than thinking. Like, this is his whole thing. He's always like, I'll tell you what's in my fucking mind while I'm making this movie.

I have shit. I'm a deep thinker. I have things I want to say. But I'm not this movie. I have shit. I'm a deep thinker. I have things I want to say, but I'm not trying to make like polemic films. And primarily my number one concern is I want to entertain people. I want to entertain people in the way that the movie is set up to entertain them. I want to fulfill the obligations of that genre. I want to give them the visceral excitement that they came for. And if they want to think about this shit, then fine, they can. The other quote I just want to read here.

So this is from Cinefest Fantastique, the French movie magazine from the year before this movie came out. And he's sort of talking about how earlier in his career he felt a need to prove to people that he wasn't just a horror guy. He was never embarrassed about being a horror filmmaker, but that he always wanted to do Westerns and dramas and seen as someone who had range. And his quote is, I love horror. I love science fiction. I had different kinds of dreams when I was younger, when I was trying to break into Hollywood. I wanted to direct Westerns and action pictures. Then Halloween came along and gave me basically a career, and I struggled with it for a while, but I've come to understand what a gift it was and how wonderful it was. I'm extremely happy being John Carpenter. I enjoy it.

Oh, I love that. Really sweet. And this feels like a movie made by a guy who's at that exact state in his life and comfort with himself and it is so good that he got over whatever like you know like so much of the this sort of like ash i want to be a studio guy but i hate the studios and like i don't want to just be the horror guy but i'm clearly the master of heart you know like he sort of came to you know some sort of self-awareness and self-respect now he just seems like the coolest i know you know he's like doing his music and just sort of self-awareness and self-respect now he just seems like the coolest i know you know he's like doing his music and just sort of like you know giving these interviews

where he like mouths off and has fun and i i don't know like doesn't he just sort of seem like a delightfully sort of like self-assured uh settled guy he's like i made halloween fuck you it's it's also funny how in that same interview where he's complaining about the idea of upscale horror he's like i don't know cronenberg says he doesn't want to do horror anymore like he already in 1994 was like this fucking guy yeah i love that i would love to smoke wheat with carpenter and play some video games. I think, Angelica, that's the easiest thing to pitch him on, I think. I know, that's why I'm like,

hey, I'm always the friend who has weed in multiple forms. I'm like, hey, you want an edible? I got an edible. You can bring the weed, exactly. I got this joint. And with Carpenter it would work. Most of my friends do not smoke weed like I do, but it would work on him. You should have like, send out the official request through vulture like we are proposing a

piece in which the two of you smoke weed and play video games and if anything comes up then cool if not i would love to actually have a column at vulture that's either like reassessing films while i'm blazed as fuck or interviewing people while blazed as fuck that i would be scared of i would be very or maybe i would be less scared you know what maybe i'll be less anxious if i just got stoned before interviews oh god i'm anxious enough before them already um should we play the box office game yes let's play the box office game this movie came out february 3rd 1995 it was kind of unceremoniously dumped a little by new line uh sort of a betrayal by new line because they weirdly like just kind of apparently kind of chose between west craven's new nightmare and this They didn't want them to both come out in the Halloween period.

And so they picked New Nightmare, which is a wonderful movie. I love that movie. But it was a huge flop. No, it did better than this. Well, I feel like it was not well received at the time. People were pretty fucking confused by it. It made like $ million dollars or whatever like you know wasn't whereas this comes out in february and makes eight million dollars total like it really just got abandoned which sucks yeah um but and it opened number four at the box office griffin

at a weird lame box office number one is a epic movie that i feel like is kind of forgotten partly because it's not that good um but it was it was a a big moment for a crucial hottie um sort of so it's a brad pitt movie starring roles yeah there you go is it uh legends of the fall it's legends of the fall yeah have either of you seen legends of the fall yes i actually ranked all of brad pitt's performances about a year or two ago so i have where did you put legends of the fall not high up there i will say that not really like i know a lot of people like kim in it because he's hot and has long hair and shit but i'm like he's like not good in it there's a lot of like it was really interesting for i think all of his performances because i was like damn you

were sucking for a while dude it took you a minute to find the right balance and figure out your persona it's that right he he he's that actor who feels kind of uncomfortable just kind of playing the swashbuckling lady. Exactly. He needed to kind of play some weirdos to sort of figure out how his image worked better. I don't know. Griff, what were you going to say, Griff? No, my understanding of that movie's legacy

is just that that's the one where the hotness crystallized and it was kind of a disproportionate hit at the time. It was very hot. Because people had Brad fever, but no one really cares about that movie. It was just the long hair broke everyone's brains for a moment. It's also funny because it's Anthony Hopkins kind of at the peak of his stardom, too, like post Silence of the Lambs. And it's also one of those movies, though, where Brad Pitt's character is set in Montana, and he's the one who understands understands america and native american traditions but also he's like this you know super white blonde guy yeah i don't know

like there's a lot of there's a lot of stupidity in that movie but uh it's very pretty i guess john toll sort of a handsome anyway legend of the fall big hit it's number one in it in in its seventh week griffin jesus wow it's just It's been number one for four or five weeks. It's been doing great. Number two is, and I say this not pejoratively, but it is the kind of movie that at the time Hollywood called a chick flick. I would say it's one of the lesser remembered ones, but it's three kind of major good actresses.

It's a road trip movie. Is it, okay. Is it How to Make an American Quilt? It's not How to Make an American Quilt. You're sort of in the right zone. Yeah. Is this the one with Drew Barrymore? Drew Barrymore, Whoopi Goldberg, and Mary Louise Parker.

Is it Boys on the Side? Boys on the Side. Okay. Parker Is it Boys on the Side? Boys on the Side Herbert Ross' Boys on the Side I've never seen it either I know that Mary Louise Parker I think gets AIDS in it It was sort of like one of those weepy

comedy dramas that has social issues kind of woven into the script Wr this kind of obviously it's written by don ruse uh before he makes directed by herbert ross yes right okay but you know as much as i've never seen this movie and i don't think this is like a particularly beloved movie wild to imagine hollywood releasing a whoopee drew mary louise parker movie you know what i mean like oh yeah it's just yeah they put them out by it's a warner brothers release but we talked about this

because what fried green tomatoes came up a year before there was this era of just doing this sort of like generational women's light drama and they were big and you like it goes all the way to sort of like uh you know, the waiting to exhale. But you can kind of like mermaids as maybe a starting point. Steel Magnolias, obviously. I don't know. It was a fertile genre for about a decade there. Yeah.

Number three, we're swerving, Griffin. Ben, pay attention. This movie, I feel like it was your kind of movie it is a um i don't know it's a comedy uh about two guys who had become very popular as uh it's the jerky boys it's the jerky boys movie how do you how do you give clues to the jerky boys yeah? Here's how I guessed it. You said it was a big Ben Energy movie, and you struggled to explain how these guys became popular.

There's no other movie that fits that better than the Jerky Boys movie. I don't know. Who are these guys? They were fucking, oh, it's the Jerky Boys movie. They're prank callers. They're prank callers. I've only ever heard of it. I never, not my cup of tea.

Well, it really is just designed. Oh, yeah. It's designed for 13-year-olds. Like, it's just for little shits. Have you seen the film? Because I believe the premise of the film is that the Jerky Boys prank call the mafia. Correct. And I believe Peter Falk plays the mom...

No, Alan Arkin plays the mom boss? Alan Arkin, it looks like. I remember seeing it and walking away and being like, not enough prank calls. Wow. Too much plot. Too much plot. More pranks. They forgot what made them good.

That's where they made their error. Number four. That's where they... Not calling the mafia. Number four is in the mouth of madness. number four that's where they not calling the mafia number four is in the mouth of madness number five

is one of the hit hit comedies of this year it technically came out Christmas time but it's gonna make so much money it's dumb and dumber

yeah that's another big New Line movie I mean yeah that's another movie DeLuca gets credit for for spearheading.

1994. Wow. Feels like a lifetime ago. I was eight years old. I was not even five. I was young. Humble brag. You got Nobody's Fool, the Paul Newman

movie, and number six you have highlander the final dimension is that three i think that's that is three yes with christopher lambert that is the one apparently where with uh mario van peebles is maybe the villain i'm not sure i'm sorry i think that is four because highlander no no no you're right you're right you're right it was released in other countries highlander three the sorcerer that's what it was it sometimes was called the sorcerer i have also only seen the original highlander i have not seen the quickening i have not seen end game well they told me this is the thing they told me there would be only one so then when two three four come out i'm like what's this shit you told me you made me all right all right yeah all right all right number eight of the box office is

higher learning uh which we covered yes podcast okay i knew some of these movies sounded familiar i don't know how you feel about higher learning the john singleton's third film third film right yes i'm not i'm no comment on john singleton so no comment okay yeah fair enough leave that you've also got murder in the first an underrated crime thriller starring like a prison movie starring kevin bacon right that was one of like several 90s bacon wants to get his best supporting actor nomination he gets He gets like a SAG nom. He gets close or whatever. He gave up being a leading man and took supporting roles and kept on almost getting nominated.

And then you've got the 1994 Little Women. Still hanging around. With Christian Bale. Little Christian Bale. Kiki Dunst and Winona. Trini Alvarado. absolutely samantha mathis all those good people claire dang's good people um yeah not a bad movie jillian armstrong speaking yeah yeah

so that's yeah but in the mouth of madness no it's just another sad tale of like you read the reviews and a lot of the reviews, once again, are like, Carpenter almost had me, and then he goes all in on fucking makeup and special effects. The weird guard that these critics had against Schlock. I know. But now, I think more people dig in the mouth of madness and definitely see it for what it's worth. I think it's definitely gained an appreciation although i still feel sometimes it's underappreciated even by people who did carpenter like it's not usually the first movie of his that people will mention even though it's like one of the first to pop into my head

personally yeah this is definitely top tier for me yeah um me too and this is a top five maybe top three i don't know well well yeah it's like carpenter rankings two three for me but this feels like this is followed by another sort of major career shift right i mean this is sort of the last carpenter movie that feels kind of classically carpenter and they all get a lot more bombastic after this. Yeah, because the next one is Village of the Damned, then Escape from L.A., Vampires. I haven't seen in years, but I remember being very bombastic. Angelica, do you like any of these sort of later,

Ghosts of Mars and The War? Do you like any of the later, like sort of end of career carpenters? No, I honestly, it's not on my wavelength the way his earlier works are i can like appreciate parts of them is what i've noticed but they don't really have the gut punch effect that something like in the mouth of madness has well i'm ex i griff i considering this series has basically been all bangers i am very intrigued by how this last chunk is gonna go oh it'll be fun me too i'm curious but uh i i do feel a little it feels a little bittersweet this episode because it's like

right that it's the final like agreed on masterpiece this is probably the last masterpiece right right yeah right unless i i come in with some radical vampires yeah you're gonna well some people love vampires some people love vampires. Some people love vampires. Some people do. Bella Swan. Bella Swan loves vampires. She sure does.

She does. She does. She does. Can I just say that one of the lines that has stuck with me with this movie is, reality is not what it used to be. Because, damn, isn't that the truth about everything we're going through right now that's what i'm saying even i have to admit joking about

you have to admit but every one of these movies i rewatched them i'm like this one hits too hard carpenter was fucking ahead of the curve and he saw it all and everything feels like a fucking john carpenter movie now like it used to be him heightening his perception of reality to a satirical bent, and now it just feels like a Carpenter movie. Now everything's at that click. Oh, totally. We're living in very surreal,

devastating, destabilizing times, and what's a better movie to watch at, like, five in the morning than In the Mouth of Mad madness to remind you of that? Yeah. I mean, I love watching these movies. And then I hate when the movie ends and I look outside my window.

And it's like, ah, yes, I guess I shall return to this hell that we call our current reality. Yeah. Just as, you know, less compelling cinematography. Yeah. And the people aren't as hot. No. Nope. It's not as well written.

Definitely not. Angelica, people should read all of your work. You're one of the best people out there writing about movies. And I think in particular, you write about acting particularly well. Thank you. I think that's a blind spot of a lot of critics. And anytime you go in deep on a movie star, it's a must read for me. Thank you.

That really means a lot. Acting is one of my favorite things to write about when it comes to film because there's such an elusive quality to it. It's hard to grab your hand around what an actor is actually doing and how it interacts with the editing, the lighting, and the directing, so on and so forth. But I have some acting essays that are going to be coming out soon. I'm really excited to start writing more about acting. Cool. I don't know. I'm just trying to challenge writing more about acting um cool i don't know i'm

just trying to challenge myself as a critic and keep leveling up you know what i mean love it yeah excited to read it thank you so much for doing it for doing the show yeah you'll be back thank you guys this was a lot of fun and i look forward to coming back and uh cursing a lot absolutely hell yeah we love cursing fucking rules yeah Absolutely. Hell yeah. We love cursing. Fucking rules. Yeah, fucking rules. Yeah, it's cool. Fuck yeah.

Shit. Yeah, and thank all of you fuckers for listening. Thank you to fucking Marie Barty for social media, Joe Bowen and Pat Rounds for our artwork, Leigh Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. You can listen to their new album, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Online, wherever music is found.

Thank you to JJ Birch and Nick Lariano for our research and AJ McKeon and Alex Barron for our editing. Every time, now that there's so many more names, every time I'm worried I'm going to flip everyone's name. I'm going to give people the wrong credit or combine two names into some portmanteau or whatever whatever i'm doing fine i'm in the mouth of madness uh go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit and go to patreon.com blank check for

blank check special features where we do uh commentaries on franchises we're finishing up uh the mummy the modern mummies the three phrasers and the tom cruise mummy uh its own weird form of uh modern horror but what comes after that can we say it at this point when's this episode coming out this episode is coming out october 31st halloween itself what oh my goodness are you saying why didn't you tell me that before? I didn't want that spooky ass energy. Alright, wait, wait. Can we get some clean spooky takes and we'll just intersperse them throughout the

episode? It's just me going, wow, Pinhead is hot. Did anybody else think Pinhead was hot? Just me? We'll put that throughout the episode a couple of times. We'll just sprinkle that. that yeah uh no i guess we should announce in the spirit of halloween that in november santa claus is coming to town on the blend check patreon we're doing the tim allen santa claus trilogy that's true that's our disgusting end of the year yep we'll be

subjecting ourselves to those that i would like to reclaim as upscale horror i would like to make the case maybe lamb is not horror but the santa claus trilogy is it's deranged enough absolutely it's body horror body goes through some weird shit changes transforms it's true

he goes back and forth a couple times got evil robots in the third one anyway i don't know that's our episode on In the Mouth of Madness. Next week, tune in for Village of the Damned. And as always, what can I say? Pinhead's kind of hot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.