Blank Check with Griffin & David - Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior with Jon Gabrus

Episode Date: April 5, 2020

Comedian, Jon Gabrus (High and Mighty) returns to discuss 1981’s  sequel effort Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Together with #thetwofriends they examine the similarities between the Evil Dead and Mad Max franchises, dystopian future fashion justification, the career of actor Bruce Spence and American Gladiators. Plus, Ben has a shocking revelation.

Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check In the future, cities will become deserts Roads will become deserts, roads will become battlefields, and the hope of mankind will appear as a podcast. There you go. Stranger.

Stranger. Stranger. Just one podcast can make a difference. Yeah, but I liked the longer one, the drawing it out. This film has four taglines and zero quotes on its IMDb page. Yeah. Because this movie has very littlelines and zero quotes on its imdb page yeah because this movie has very little dialogue here's another tagline when all that's left is one last chance play pray that he's still out there podcasting how about this is a tagline uh ruthless savage

spectacular i mean that fucking rules yeah it pretty good. Every movie poster should just be one word, ellipses, one word, ellipses. I wish I could read this German one because it looks very intense. It's kind of crazy how every poster for this movie rules. Yeah, that's true. Like, there's the painted Australian one. That's the Mad Max 2 one. There's the sort of just like him on the road. That's the American Road Warrior one. Right. Mad Max 2 one there's the sort of just like him on the road that's the american road warrior one right mad max 2 der vollstrecker this japanese one's pretty cool too that fucking roll

look at that well here's here's an idea maybe if every single piece of imagery in your movie is fucking awesome it's almost impossible to make a bad poster for it right right right whether you're just compositing images or shooting something particularly for the poster or painting it, everything in this movie looks so goddamn cool. Hello, everybody.

My name is Griffin Newman. Who are you? I don't know who you are. I'm David Sims. Oh, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. Woo! It's a podcast about

filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce, baby.

Yes. And this is a mini-series on the films of George Miller. It is called Mad Pod Fury Cast. Well done. Well done. Well done. Light applause. And today... Oh, thank you, everybody.

Thank you so much. Very nice sounding golf claps. Today... You think we still play golf in the Mad Max world? No question. Okay. No question. I mean, essentially, the world has become one giant sand pit.

Yeah, sure. Right? Big old sand trap. Yeah, sand trap. Is that the right term? Yes. I know a lot about golf. Today we're talking about

Mad Max 2, aka The Road Warrior. Hell fucking yeah, bro. Just one podcast can make a difference. Just one podcast can make a difference. Just one man

can make a podcast. That's not true. You need two friends. You need two friends. Right. Unfair advantage. And sometimes you need Ben Hosley. That's not true. You need two friends. You need two friends. Unfair advantage. And sometimes you need Ben Hosley. That's right.

Hey, it's me. The word friend not being used there. Pretty pointed. Yeah, it's always kind of been a thing that I feel like even fans talk about. They're like, are you a friend? I'm a friend to the two friends. But you are also a Ben Hosley. I am a Ben Hosley. Which is a very specific honor.

That's true. It's an honor that my parents bestowed upon me. And you're a poet laureate and a tiebreaker and a meat lover and a fart detective. And I love a dusty boy. You love a dusty... That was your big takeaway from this movie. Yeah. Right.

You love a dusty boy and they rarely have they come dustier. Ooh, they are just covered in sand and grit but in the best kind of way they're dirty i would even venture to say this much because i've been on the record saying i love wet stuff right we all know this about me this is no wet there's no but all the sand all that dry ass sand i like sand too. So I like it dry on occasion. What is sand but dry water? Exactly. That's true. You know,

it's like how the moon has like the sea of tranquility. There's no water, but it's like, you know, a dust sea. I don't know. I let the record show,

David, put moon in quotes. I was getting ready to put sea in quotes and I just did it for moon. Well, we've let the government tell us. But the moon is fake. They couldn't have faked it because the moon doesn't exist.

So, right. Exactly. I like the idea that you're the world's first anti-moon truther. Marianne Cotillard's there with me. There is no moon. There is no moon. It's just cheese hung from a tree. A wheel of cheese.

Ben, I don't know if I'm exposing you here, but you in conversation, and if this is too hot, Rachel, get ready to cut this out, okay? I'm not trying to out you here. Uh-oh. In private conversation, Yeah.

you had told me at the end of 2019 that you were thinking of rebranding, that you felt like- Oh, that he was going wet he was gonna get dry yeah yeah i had been thinking about it it's a bit that's been going on for near four years me you've been a little sick of you joking one time that you like a wet thing and then everyone anytime anything has water in it which is by the way a lot of stuff has water in it people are like hey hey you excited? Hey did you see this episode of this random show? You see this random

movie that just came out? There's a lake in it! There's some wet stuff you should watch it! But also like we're in a post Aquaman world we sort of hit the apex of wet movies Yeah Aquaman is kind of right What about Aquaman 2 though? Well that's the question. I mean, maybe that's the comeback, but I feel like, Ben, you and I were at a bar a couple weeks ago, and we had a long conversation about the dry subsection of the Nintendo character sphere.

Yes. Dry Bowser, dry Bones. Oh, dry Bones is one of my favorite characters of all time. That there's now all these dry varietals yes of mario villains so i think what i think i want to be a dry guy like i think i'm done with what i think i want to be a dry guy it's like think about it there was a wet level of mario i'm now i've beaten the level yeah and i've now transitioned to the desert level perfect time yeah i mean we're talking so you're into like pyramids now i Well, I've always been into pyramids.

I love a tomb. Big and dry. He likes it big and dry. This is seismic. We are actually embracing that Ben is now anti-wet pro dry. I'm not anti-wet. Okay. But I'm now more pro dry.

Because there's this Japanese movie, Weathering With You, that's out this week as we record. Okay. It's set in a Tokyo where it's always raining. But now you're out on that. That's Coruscant. We've been there. Not Coruscant, the planet Camino. I've got Dune to look forward to, which is going to be a dry-ass

story. But you know, in Dune, everyone's obsessed with water. When he cries in Dune, they're all like, he uses his water to express his grief. They're all like, he uses his water to express his grief. They're all like. It might be the ultimate Venn diagram for Ben. Exactly.

It's a dry movie about loving water. About the value of water. They're coming together. All right, great. Well, we figured it out. It just feels like. Great, all right. See you later, Ben. All right, bye.

Okay, thank you for coming. Mission accomplished. Now I know why you got him this bouquet of flowers, because he's coming out as a dragon. It all makes sense now. It just felt like, look, I'm not trying to force you out of the dry closet. And it is all cactus, by the way. We should mention

the bouquet. And it's kind of poking. It's dangerous, but I do appreciate it. What a nightmare. He must have been on the train carrying this. Ben's hugging it like a prom queen, and his whole left side is bleeding. No, but it felt like, queen and his whole left side is bleeding. It felt like if we're going to be talking about the Mad Max movies for the next couple months, what better time to sort of embrace

the Dry Guy 2020 persona. Dry Guy 2020, here to stay. Like Shy Guy, another Mario character. Dry Guy. Or Dry Shy Guy. I don't, have they? I'm telling you, I was drunk but we went onto the Nintendo wiki and there were like 20 different dry varietals.

There's like a dry, like toad and a dry everything. Yeah. Yeah. What about them makes them dry? They're just skeleton versions of the regular villain. So it's like, oh, this is like a skeleton paratrooper. This is a skeleton or skeleton. This is a, this is a dry bones

that dude but then there's right rather than calling him like bone Bowser skeleton Bowser his name is dry Bowser which fucking rules yeah that is cool it's cool I don't know why it's cooler you do not have to say that this is cool no it's cool

I don't think it's cool I think it's cool to have learned that yes that's fair I'm saying that's cool. No, I don't think it's cool. I think it's cool to have learned that. Yes. There you go. That's fair. You're proud of me. I'm saying that's cool. Thanks for sharing. You're proud of me for having me.

Yeah. Our guest today, of course. He's cool. He's cool. He's a cool guy. Cooler than Dry Bowser. Wish I was dry, but unfortunately, developing quite a bit of moisture. Already.

This studio is kind of like a coffin it's like some ancient egyptian uh mummification room where we just uh have all of the moisture sucked out of our body over the course of recording long episodes and and we're sitting here with the man who currently holds the record for longest main feed episodes still, if I'm not mistaken. I believe you're right. Silence of the Lambs came close. Great episode. Emily Vanderwerf put up a fight, but I believe you still have her beat by a minute or two.

Is that right? I think so. I can double check this. I think it might be. I have an unfair advantage that that movie, Heat, is the longest movie. Yes. Quite long.

Yes. And this is a short movie, but similarly dense in terms of things we could talk about. John Gabrus back on the show from the High and. Yes. Quite long. Yes. And this is a short movie but similarly dense in terms of things we could talk about. John Gabrus back on the show from the High and Mighty podcast. Thank you for having me, fam. I'm so excited to be here.

I rarely reach out to someone to ask them to do their thing. No, but it was like perfect. We were recording an episode. We were getting ready. We were like had just finished Demi getting ready to start

George Miller. And it's crazy how George Miller just like hits the ground running with two Mad Maxes. And we hadn't found someone for this one yet. And then you fell into our lap. It was perfect. And this is such an important canonical action movie that I was like, we need to have a guest who's representing the action movie sphere. Oh, a ton of tropes are created in this movie. A ton of action movie tropes are launched

on the back of this movie. This is one of those movies that is formative for the next 40 years of genre cinema. Arguably, chose the path that cinematic dystopia would choose. It becomes the almost cliche.

Sporting goods stores are just available no matter whether the country, the world is flooded, the world is dry. You need shoulder pads? At least the used sporting goods store is always open. It's one of those crazy things where people talk about the first Mad Max being one of the most influential movies of the last

40 or 50 years. I suppose. But it's one of those things where it's like, oh, the elements within it are influential. This is the influential one. But it's like, it's so weird because it's like Mad Max, if there were never any sequels, would sort of have like a Velvet Underground reputation as like, oh, it inspired these people to like do the things that would then permeate the mainstream. Mad Max 1 is like a hyper indie action movie, which is just was such an unusual idea. But then Mad Max inspires other people to take the elements of what he's done and then also inspires George Miller to be like I think I can

perfect this. Much like Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 in the horror series. They're very similar things where it's like the first one's both made on a shoestring surprise hits. Yeah. And then the second one to the director being like no give me like 10 times the budget and I can give you something that's even cooler.

Right. And it's kind of a sequel, but it's kind of standalone. Like, I'm not much different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same basic plot, same basic vibe. Just juice it up a little bit.

Exactly. Bigger canvas. And sort of like focus it in a way, like strip it down to its basic elements and then take it to the extreme. But also both will weirdly acknowledge the first movie in like a brief prologue and then be like, we are a sequel, but it's also kind of a remake yeah and it's enjoy a lot of both and I'm so glad

you said the Evil Dead 2 thing because it's really like opened it up to seeing it's like Road Warrior and Evil Dead 2 were like both looked at their first movie and be like we now know what people dug about those movies too like Evil Dead if people didn't find the irony or the fun in the first one yeah

it wouldn't it wouldn't be a part of the second one you know what i mean yeah so the audience kind of helps we're allowed to mix those tones so then the directors are like fuck now if i know you like that kind of tone let me wait till you see my second wait you know ramey's like wait to see another one then uh george miller is like oh you guys like the violin part the car chase parts well you're gonna love this one you're also also dealing with first films with largely first-time crew and cast who going into the second movie are like, we've figured it out. We've all done this job one time, and we've done it with each other, and now we can hit the ground running.

But here's the other thing. They also both have a third sequel that's kind of really grand, and fans dig, but it's definitely a harder one to deal with. Army of Darkness and Thunderdome are also weirdly similar. And weirdly, and this is so specific to me, but I think it's just because of my age. Those were the two I was most familiar with.

Yeah. Was Evil Dead 2 and Thunderdome. Were the two that I, because they were like on cable all the time. Or Army of Darkness and Thunderdome. Army of, sorry, rather Army of Darkness and Thunderdome. Thunderdome were the two that I Because they were like on cable all the time. Army of Darkness and Thunderdome? Sorry, rather. Army of Darkness and Thunderdome. Thunderdome was on TNT, I think, every weekend that I was grounded. Any weekend I happened to be grounded

it felt like Thunderdome was on because I've seen that with commercials a hundred times. How often were you grounded? Very often. But grounded, you were still allowed to watch TV. Yes, yes. Well, grounded, but no one's home because my parents would have to work weekends. So it was a very complicated form of grounding where I'm like,

okay, I can't go to a friend's house technically. It was just your media education every time you were grounded. Little did I know I would eventually weaponize that to podcast hundreds of dollars. Well, yeah, and then I said High and Mighty, but also Action Boys, you have a podcast that is

specifically going over your favorite sort of action movies. Yeah, from what we deem the classic action movie period. And we a couple of months ago did Road Warrior. You did. Okay. So yeah, I'm so pumped to re-watch it. It's so fucking watchable. The other thing I realized

watching this is like Beyond Thunderdome, I don't think I've ever seen like all the way straight through but I've seen so much of it on TV Fury Road I've seen too many times already

the original Mad Max I saw like they screened it midnight at IFC right when Fury Road was coming out okay

Road Warrior I think I saw in high school and haven't seen since I haven't I hadn't seen this in since I was a teenager.

Yeah. I've only seen Mad Max once, and it was after I've seen everything. Yeah. I guess when I was a kid, I thought Road Warrior and Thunderdome were the two Mad Maxes. Right.

And I thought it was weird that Road Warrior was Mad Max 2. I couldn't really figure out what that meant. And when I finally watched the original Mad Max, I'm like, wow, this is nothing like... It is shocking. It's very fun to watch it last when you're like I know what uh this I know what everything's supposed to be and then you

watch that movie you're like oh this is not at all what I thought it was gonna be it's especially funny to watch it after Fury Road yes all of it right right right I think I might have actually seen it after did I say after before I saw that I've seen either right before right after I don't I don't remember what you said I don't remember what I said four seconds ago I saw I did see one and two when I was a teenager as a sort of just me being a movie nerd and being like well I should watch those yeah and then I years later we were at Trivia and they

played Mad Max yeah and that was the first time I'd seen it and I was like I forgot this is like a cop drama basically like you know like I remember being shocked by how lo-fi it was but and that it has like emotional dialogue scenes. Like, all these things. There's, like, an interlude where he's with his kids.

But, you know, we talked about that. But it's that same sort of thing where, like, your cultural understanding of who Mad Max is, it's, like, even before you see these movies, it's so much a part of pop culture. Right. You're coming in, like, unfortunately or fortunately pre-informed. So then when you're watching Mad Max and you're, there are still diners and stuff right like he's like going to visit his in-laws australia is having a bad crime year right is what's going on in mad max and then mad max 2 there's like there's no government right there's no towns but i remember like when i saw the first evil dead i was like why doesn't he have the chainsaw like why is it taking this long for

him to make jokes right you know like I didn't get that movie is so fucked up that movie really messed me up that's the thing which we will do on this podcast we will definitely do at some point but the other thing that struck me watching this having seen it for the first time since Fury Road

is that like as much as Road Warrior is to Mad Max what Evil Dead 2 is to Evil Dead 1, Fury Road is also Evil Dead 2 to Road Warrior's Evil Dead 1. Right, right. It ignores

Thunderdome and it's like, let's pop back to what we liked about Road Warrior. Oh, you like the part where the truck is driving and people are chasing it? It's like, I bet you I could do 120 minutes of this. Fury Road is basically just an updated version of this exact movie. Which is pretty crazy.

Of one scene from this exact movie, technically. Right, it's like, can I make the whole thing that one scene? Can I deepen all the themes? Can I figure out a way to do more world building with less dialogue? The villain is played by the villain from MX1. It gets so weird how he has reused bits and pieces of these movies his whole life. It's also crazy that It's so weird how he has reused bits and pieces of these movies his whole life.

It's also crazy that he is an extremely respected art director, art house director in a way, even though his first three movies were these insane car movies. Yeah. And like, he's never really made an art house movie. He's made one studio drama. But I think that he has always been highly respected by critics.

Like there's just, it's not like he was a, Raimi was a schlock guy. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, Miller, it was like, oh, well, you know, he's from Australia. And even, like, Cameron and Bigelow, you feel like there's a little bit of a bell curve

in terms of people getting them, where it's like, you watch, like, Siskel and Ebert reviewing the first Terminator, and they're like, this is fucking garbage. Like, they're not even giving it any consideration. Right, it's like trash. Years later, they're like, oh, I guess I recognize there's a filmmaker there even if I don't like that movie right right but they're just like there's nothing going on here whereas George Miller it feels like it's interesting I mean you read like the reviews from the first Mad Max when I was looking up a bunch of shit last night because I watched

I re-watched uh first Mad Max and then did Road Warrior this morning and then was reading a bunch of stuff accompanying both. And the reviews in Australia for the First Mad Max are really bad. Well, because they were scandalized. It was just like this is a scandalous film. It's a very conservative country. It especially was back then. Whereas it didn't make much of an impact here. No offense to Australia.

Of course, there are many non-conservative Australians. I'm sure some listen to this podcast. It didn't make much of an impact here. No offense to the monster. Of course there are many non-conservative Australians. I'm sure some listen to this podcast. It didn't make much of an impact when it came out here so I think its reputation was a little better because it was seen as more of a curio for the people who wanted to seek it out. Was it our cherry pop to Ozploitation? Like was it like the American 100%. So I think that also gives

it that juice where it's like oh this is you know like remember when we were like this is a Japanese horror movie. Like, when that kind of came to America. So whether it was very well sought after in Australia, the fact that it was, do you guys know that the Aussies are making some crazy-ass car action movies

or whatever? And so we get that. And to us, that's the iconic, quote-unquote. I don't think, like, the cars that ate Paris, like, those are early Oz exploitation things that really made it the cars that ate Paris, like those are early exploitation things really made it to American anything except for like a midnight movie. And weird doesn't hit until it becomes kind of respectable.

Yeah. You know? Oh, the other example of it, I think that's like kind of analogous. The Meat Pie Western, that's a type of Australian exploitation movie, which I just like the name Meat Pie Western. That's true, man.

It's such a weird country. I don't want to generalize about Australia but anytime I think about it, I go down a rabbit hole about it or anything. It's such a strange place. Americans have been obsessed with Australia. I mean, I know that's different for you. Why would it be different for me?

Wait a second. John, what are you talking about? Are you accusing my co-host and friend of un-American behavior? What are you saying here? Do you think he's like a Ruskie? I believe he's an expat. From where? What country trying to attack?

He's doing a double salute? I don't know why. He's got one of those tall like boom microphone hats that the fucking Westminster Guard wear or whatever their name is. Boom microphone. If I was a boom operator, that's what I would do to be fun.

Is wear that hat. Hey guys, guys, check it out, check it out. Hey, I'm like that. Yeah, you see it? I'm not moving. I would wear that hat and have someone else hold me.

No, I feel like there was a similar phenomenon with like Luc Besson where people were really excited by LeFemette nikita and then in france they were like we're trying to get rid of this guy right um and even i mean john woo i think is more respected within his own land but it was the same thing where i came here people were like what the fuck and it gets that it gets momentum coming to america because we're dying

and like for like american uh movie audiences you're like now i am i'm cultured here comes a movie from like a foreign movie and it's just we make it the representation of that country you know what i mean where we're like yes that's what i i think luke basson when i think of paris you know what i mean it's like this more than the first mad max right people watch and they're like right australia is like some desert that's just filled with criminals that shoot you and drive cars over you, right? That's what it is, right? Well, like Americans have always been like Australia is like a place where there are animals that can kill you.

There are people that are gorgeous. It was a prison that turned into a country. Yeah, it's surfing. It's hot. They eat shrimp. Should we just get every stereotype out of the way? Put it on the Barbie. That's a knife.

Yeah. And there was something like it was magical to us. I feel like Americans looked at Australia the way we looked at like when we learned about martial arts. When martial arts movies, and we were like, it's magic. Like Asian people became magic in our movies for a while where they were like, they're unstoppable. They could stop bullets. Aussies can like talk to bears and like walk on water. mystical you know outback folk well like within the 80s you have crocodile dundee and mad max and young einstein well yeah but you have these two franchises that are both like you know different genres but are both creating these insane archetypes of what an

australian man was the actor's name? In Young Ainz? Yahoo Sirius. Yes! One of the greatest names of all time. That's a good name. He was like the proto Jamie Kennedy. Yes. He does have a Jamie Kennedy look. Yahoo Sirius walked so Jamie Kennedy can run.

So DJ Quiles can run. It's one of those things I always find fascinating, where you look at a Yahoo Sirius or Jamie Kennedy, and you're like, we really had the confidence that this guy was going gonna work in movies like i don't care how funny we found him on tv we really thought we were gonna watch 90 minutes of this guy carrying the emotional weight of the film of a narrative film griffin you're forgetting we all did get x'd we did get x'd i've been x'd oh have you actually been x'd no i not yet what a dream the knights of puppy but then

the crazy thing is that you're saying that and at the same time George Miller made a no budget fucking action movie in Australia

and just like in auditions unearthed Mel Gibson I know it's crazy who's born in New York that's true

the story with him is that his dad was so insane that he was like, we're moving to Australia. It'd be crazy. The real story, or the other story I've heard, is that his dad won Jeopardy. And used that money to take them to move to Australia. Yes. Because my wife is from Westchester.

Okay. And he actually was born in the town of- Hutton Gibson is Mel Gibson's father. And Mel was born in Peeksk Hutton Gibson is Mel Gibson's father yes and Mel was born in Peekskill so so crazy so they have that pride

of like what everyone thinks Mel Gibson's Australian but he was actually born here in Peekskill you know like which has gone from being like a pride to being like

we want to make it very clear you would be surprised Peekskill might agree with some of the things he's still alive he had 11 children Mel Gibson Hutton Gibson okay he is 101

years old jesus in my head having no idea what this man looks like he like sits on like a throne of bones in like some australian desert i feel like he looks like he looks five years older than mel gibson sure when he has a beard that makes mel gibson sane. When the Simpsons would show a photo of Matt Groening, do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, the guy with the eye patch. Yeah, that's what I imagine Hutton Gibson looked like. I mean, that's incredible. Just 101 years old and still hating Jews with as much energy as ever.

If you think Mel Gibson's bad, anytime he's ever given an interview, it is incredible. Right, right. Yes. It is, right. He's one of those guys who's like, he's ever given an interview, it is incredible. He's one of those guys who's like, you know how the Catholic Church kind of slightly chilled out in the 60s? The Vatican II?

That's when I ducked their asses. That's when I was like, go screw. The Catholic Church got too liberal for me. But you're right. Mel Gibson becomes this definitive Australian action star, but it's such Mel Gibson becomes like this definitive Australian action star but it's

it's such random happenstance that George Miller found him that it became a career and he isn't actually even technically Australian well it's funny

because he went full sex symbol in America but there he is so attractive despite what this movie does I know

but what these movies do I mean this is him is peak him at hot as Max. I think he's at his hottest. In this one. As Max in this one. Because the first one, he's a little soft. There's something a little delicate.

But this one, they just know how to like sort of grime him up just right. He's a little too baby faced in the first one. He clearly cut his own hair haircut. And it's so perfect. It's so cool. And also, we see Mel Gibson with a dog, which we know means, at least in most movies, means the character has got humanity to them. It's the first layer of humanity given to Max or Mel Gibson in reality.

And it's funny because I just recently rewatched Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2, and he's got that dog that he loves. And it is very weird it is classic 80s though you're right how crazy could he be he loves his puppy there's like this fetishization of like the loner dude who like the stereotype the cliche

is really hammered in Lethal Weapon but it's gone on forever where it's like in Cobra you come home and you cut your pizza you put your gun in the fridge you do this but there's gone on forever where it's like in Cobra, you come home and you cut your pizza, you put your gun in the fridge, you do this, but there's a dog or a cat that demonstrates that like, oh, I'm going to root for this guy. Or there's a blonde with visible breasts.

But it speaks to the efficiency and economy of this movie that George Miller's just like, the opening, the first thing you see of this guy is him with a dog. I don't need to show you anything more. I need to show you finding the dog. The fact that they're close is just shorthand. There's something about

the one sleeve down, one sleeve cut look too. I love that. Tell me. The reasoning behind that is because he breaks his arm in the first movie. Yeah.

Right. I forgot that there's all those little hints about the first movie. So they connected to that in that if, and that's why he has the leg brace too

because he gets shot in the leg. So in the first movie he gets his arm broke that in that if, and that's why he has the leg brace too because he gets shot in the leg. So in the first movie he gets his arm broke so you would assume the EMTs cut the, it's just, it's a really fun,

simple little like set up callback situation but it also explains that like the end of the first movie happened and Max was unable to find clothing

or anything else. That's it. He was just like guessing where it is. But if you remember the first movie, it didn't end with the oil's gone. But the fashion in this movie is so great. The costume design, especially of the white clan,

the hero clan, all the mesh. I really love it. And I also think that this is so 80s with that and that it's punk adjacent. Yes. For sure. It's got the spikes and the leather jackets and stuff.

Everyone in this movie could be in the decline of Western civilization. Yes. The bad guys have four different aesthetics amongst them, which I really appreciate.

And they're all sort of, each one of their aesthetics has sort of been co-opted or created in the gay community. Yeah, a hundred percent. Because there's like the S&M look. Yeah. Then there's also like the biker cop look,

which was sort of like the motorcycle policeman of the village people type situation. The T-1000 sort of cue ball phallic helmet. Yeah. And then like unseeing eyes like aviators. And then there's like the golden boy type guy, like Wes's sidekick, which is like the effeminate style. It just, they hit all of that. Oh, and then Lord Humongous,

which was what I would like you guys to call me for the remainder of this recording. Of course, hello Lord. I'm the Humongous. That might actually be a good title for myself. The way it's spelled too, it's like hummus and humongous. It's wrong. Humong humongous right right i mean that's the vibe he continues from now on right i mean that's the fury road

where everyone's called toast the knowing and cheeto and all that shit it's just kind of amazing are so fun it's so great where he's like i don't know it's the future they're all idiots now they don't read 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 the 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. Kalani Kitchen and Bath, how can I help you? I'm looking for a Riobel Touchless Kitchen Faucet in Brush Gold. Do you have it in stock? Yes, we actually have all the gold faucets in stock. Even the Riobel Shower Kit with matching faucet? Yep, we've got that too.

Thanks. And by the way, why is the sign at your Barry location upside down? Well, we just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Kalani Kitchen and Bath. Visit kalani.ca for your nearest location. This franchise is second only to Star Wars. And on certain days days I would consider to you it's just the number two franchise

what I'm about to say I think it's a phenomenal franchise but I think it's second only to Star Wars and maybe surpasses it in terms of how cool every fucking character looks like how you can pluck some tiny background character and it looks cool and the names are great

and you just go like, who is this person? Like, who is she? Where did she come from? What's her life? Cause it's like, yeah,

it's some fucking mechanic who lived, I don't know, in the town over there. And we put a hockey mask on. Right. And like, you know, whatever.

But that feeling of, and he's like, yeah, oh, it was a good time. Oh, yep. Right.

If you asked, they would have an answer for everything, but they have the confidence to not tell you. You just can tell. They have the confidence of a backstory in every performance and every design and every character name. I think we haven't seen that. You don't see that again in cinema until, and this is a softer version of what you're saying, but I think John Wick had that feeling when you watch it.

You're like, I feel like there's a series of books about Lance Reddick's character. Yes, yes. And like, because I always use Star Wars and like Tales from the Cantina or the Bounty Hunters, like those books that fleshed out the five characters you see once in the movie. Like, I feel like you can have that about, this is how the origin story of these freaks end up here in the post-apocalyptic Australia. origin story of these freaks end up here in the post-apocalyptic australia in mad uh not mad max john wick has the added level of also the the bureaucracy the way they world build the bureaucracy the moment in the third one when uh uh asa kate dylan first enters and throws down a bigger coin

and says i'm the adjudicator i probably laughed for three three minutes straight. I lost my shit, and then they mentioned that, well, we'll have to bring this to the higher table or whatever, and you're like, there's another fucking table. That's the best thing in John Wick 3. They're like, no, we're international, there's Europeans we have to think about. But I feel like almost, like any-

I'm gonna rewatch all three of those. They're the best. But any time, any franchise outside of, I feel like basically Mad Max, John Wick, and Star Wars tries to do that, it feels too forced. Yes. It feels like they're going. Surely there are other franchises. But they're the ones I think about where I feel like they consistently work.

And in other franchises, it sometimes feels to me like peacocking where they're like mystery at the bar wearing something stupid so you ask them a question. I get that. You know? Right. It feels like too pointedly like we something stupid so you ask them a question. I get that. You know? Right, right. Like it feels like too pointedly like we want to write a comic book about this. The consistency through which throughout the films, throughout the universe, every element feels that. Oh, I would love to try to think of what other franchises come close.

It's the mystery. It's the fact that they're able to sell the mystery but make it seem enticing and like it's not just random. Yeah, like I think the Mad Max trilogy, the Star Wars trilogy, and the John Wick trilogy would have people, like modern people asking, is this based on anything? Totally. Because it's just so rich and so specific that you'd be like, oh, there has to be a graphic novel that John Wick's based on. Or like there has to be something that Star Wars – You're telling me someone just sat down and made all this up right like the way that people like you know uh big fans of the harry potter books or lord of the rings books or the song of ice and fire books will be like oh that character who's like in the background for two lines is actually like a big part of this other thing

that i mean which is right i mean game of thrones i like the show a lot but right the books are have that quality which i adore where he's like anyway let me talk to you for five minutes about the meal this person's making and Mad Max is like there's something to the fact that Mad Max is like that yes my favorite new show you watching The Witcher Gabrus of course I've watched so fucking good of course first of all uh The Witcher is high fantasy featuring my uh gay for a day number one Henry Cavill there's there was a recent i have i have like one episode to go there's a recent foreground shot of just his his arm where it looks like i don't know the snake i mean a dragon snake i don't know it's so big anyway sorry yeah

and i the movie i mean that means the show is like right over the plate for me so excited for it and i just didn't love it. Wow. Oh, that's insane. You're sick. You're a sick boy. I know. And I'm kind of bummed.

And I was, we'll talk, this doesn't have to be on this, but what the fuck is the timeline of that show? Okay, it's like Dunkirk. One's two weeks, one's like 10 years, one's 80 years.

I know. It's fucking insane. It rules. Can I ask, I know you guys are watching The Witcher. Are any of you a witch in The Watcher? Oh, I've witched The Watcher. Who witches The Watchman?

I bought a full-screen DVD of the Keanu Reeves thriller, The Watcher, and I've been casting Wiccan spells on it. I just did an impression of the poster of The Watcher. Of course. He's holding a garrote. He's holding like a, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is that thing, though, where, like,

George Miller has also retained such control over Mad Max that there is so little. One of those rare, like, it is only mine. Yeah, and there's so little appendix media. And there's no need to, like, delete some canon. Right. You know what I mean? Where it's like, oh, ignore the Lord Humongous web series that came out five years ago or whatever. They did a couple, like, comics when Fury Road was coming out that I think were pretty poorly

received. But they, if I'm not mistaken, were like four one shots that gave you a little bit of runway into the movie. Not like all the backstory, but here's like, well, what would have happened in the 30 minutes before? And that's like, from what I know, the only real additional stuff he's done. But like the video game isn't like a canon thing. And that's, like, from what I know, the only real additional stuff he's done. But, like... The video game isn't, like, a canon thing.

Well, sure, video games are fun, but you're right that it never, like, stumbled into that Terminator problem. Yeah. Where there have been so many failed sequels that now, anytime they do a sequel, they have to specify which sequels they are ignoring. Like, you know, where they're like, this one is one, two, three is implied. Like, you know, this one's just one and two. Because it's fascinating. And now Star Wars is even doing that. Yeah, Star Wars is going to run into that.

Ignore the last one. Yeah. Yeah. But it's fascinating that like. We're like divorced. We're like the children of divorced Rian Johnson and J.J. Abrams where it's like,

I don't know what your mother told you when you were with her this weekend, but it's completely different here. That's what episode nine is. Right. Eight and nine. Right. I don't care what you think. Finn and. That's what episode nine is. Right, eight and nine. I don't care what you think. Finn and Poe are not gay.

I'm your dad now. Nope, definitely doesn't matter. And Abrams comes in and he's like, he does matter in that he doesn't matter the emperor created him. I mean, it's your job. It's that battle too of like half shit talking the other parent,

but then also trying to be lenient on other things to make the kid like you more than the other parent. Yes, yes. It's like, your dad's an asshole. That shit's not going to fly, but also you're allowed to watch R-rated movies. Like, he's doing things in Rise of Skywalker that he thinks are going to make us feel better about the fact.

Oh, I got chicks kissing in one scene. Like, all right, JJ, relax. It's integral. An exclusively gay moment finally finally uh it no it is kind of crazy that there's like no other thing there that all four movies are kind of standalone in a certain way you know they build on each other if you've watched all four but the real connection is just george and right and the style but the the fact that like the fourth one is a new Mad Max who is younger than the guy was in the third one,

and it doesn't care at all where it is in the timeline. If it's chronologically the last, if it's in the middle, why he's younger, if it's a new thing. Yeah, there's no moment where he takes dice

off the mirror of the truck, and he's like, these are my dice from the first movie. No, it's just a fucking straight. I, and name another franchise that takes what? 20 years off and then comes back with a fucking banger. I mean,

you know, we'll, we'll talk about this more when we get to it, but the night that we figured out what this podcast was, was the night that David and I were going to see fury road. Yes, of course. Because you look at this guy's, uh, uh, filmography and that David and I were going to see Fury Road. Yes, of course, because you look at this guy's

filmography and it's, I mean, the story behind when he was coming out with Fury Road, there were, us film nerds were like, do you know what other, like, I remember saying to my wife, and just, I was like, I want to see your face when I tell you this guy's other movies. Yeah. When you just, like,

list his other movies. No, it is the wildest. But the thing that's crazy is the version of that story that would make sense is david and i walk out of fury road and go that's the podcast we've been doing star wars for a year the through line is a director who has that sort of success now that we've seen fury road it makes sense what's crazy is we had that idea 30 minutes before the movie started we were sitting in the theater waiting to watch it we did not know it was going to be that good. We did not realize that we were about to see one of the greatest examples of a blank check ever.

You know? And a movie that, in terms of what we've like discussed in our five years doing this show, by all accounts, should be a fucking disaster. Like, every time anyone's done something like that, spent 20 years trying to make one thing, go back to their old franchise, change that many elements, It's like a fucking

train wreck. But there's something incredible to how much this and Fury Road are of a piece, despite being decades apart, at different budget levels, with radically different technology. I mean, even though Fury Road has a lot of the aesthetic of this, obviously it also

has this whole, you know, its whole updated angle of like like it's about female liberation and charlie's throwing with a robot arm and overcoming the patriarchy which this does not have obviously no i mean so he mad max comes out costs four hundred thousand dollars and ends up making a hundred million dollars worldwide it is a massive worldwide success almost everywhere except for the United States where it does not do well. And the studios got really scared. I'm going to just call bullshit on the $100 million thing. It's made

up. It's the stat that they like to share. It's made up. That's an insane amount of money to not miss the American market. To make that much money without the American market or to be that successful elsewhere. You can call bullshit but that's the stat that they repeat. I'm not calling bullshit on you.

I'm calling bullshit on them. It's a stat where they're taking every single home rental, every merch sale. It's a made-up stat. Inarguably, it was one of the most powerful movies of all time. It's sort of like when people ask me about High and Mighty, and I'm like, oh yeah, 3 million downloads. And they're like, what?

And I'm like, well, it's 280 episodes. But let's not get into the details. I'm just going to tell you 3 million downloads. And 10 people have re-listened to every episode 20 times. Yeah, exactly. It's mostly a core element of freaks somewhere around America. Fuckboys. Number one, Fuckboys.

But it was this insanely profitable movie that doesn't do well in the States. They re-dubbed the film with all American accents because they think – Which is baffling. And the film was so little dialogue. Well, it has more than this. It's so baffling. It has more than this, but it still is not a very dialogue-heavy movie.

To re-dub an English language movie just because you're like, oh, the accents are going to throw them off. I mean – Insane. And they have that as an option on the Blu-ray and I talked a little bit and it's astounding how bad it is because it is one of those things where it's not astounding how bad it is it sounds bad I'll tell you no sure it's even worse when you do it what is particularly weird about it is when you're watching a bad dub of a movie it is usually like the way people like parody like bad dubs of martial arts films where it's like the energy doesn't match,

but it's also like the mouth is so out of sync with it. And then this, it's like they're saying the exact same words, but they're just coming from a disembodied voice. That is a bad performance. Right. There's something to the fact that the lips are matching. Right.

So that's one of the things that, you know, sort of sabotages the movie doesn't do crazy well here, but like within the industry, people go like, oh, look at what this guy made out of nothing. So it becomes a calling card film, and he gets offered, like, fucking everything. And he gets offered First Blood,

he gets offered, like, all these big 80s studio action films. It's kind of the John Woo thing. Right. Where they're like, oh, well you, yeah, let's hook you up with the Sylvester Stallone-ers. Who do you want to work with? All the movie stars want to work with him. Because Woo's first American movie is Hard Target. Is Hard Target with Van Damme. So it's that kind of thing of like,

you know, any big star is going to go like, this is a guy I should get in my corner. Any big action star. He comes to LA, he takes all the meetings, and goes, you know what? No, I'm going to fucking go back to Australia, double down, and make the like four times as big Mad Max sequel.

Yes. Does that, and then that becomes huge in the States as a creative you can imagine George Miller watching Mad Max watching its success and like you know having to see it in theaters having conversations about it and just the whole time going fuck let me get another swing

at this oh man now if I had money we would do this oh man I wish we could do this oh fuck it the fucked up bad guys is the most favorite part of Mad Max. What if I extrapolate that out? And you could just see it, and then he's like, forget it. Let me go back to Australia. Wait, just stay right there.

Let me come back with a movie I think you're going to really like. But it's a ballsy move because if this had fucked up, then all those Hollywood offers would have been rescinded. Right, right. That's probably true. He's always conducted his career with so much integrity and gone against the grain of how anyone else would go about making a career

at this budget level. Right. And it's always sort of benefited him where he's just consistently played by his own rules. A big thing that helped him is that he was with Roadshow Pictures, which later becomes Village Roadshow, which becomes one of the biggest film financing companies and later does like The Matrix and a ton of things at Warner Brothers but the fact that he was a local boy that he was with them from the beginning that he had this good relationship meant that he always had like good

funding he sets up the Kennedy Miller company from the get-go he has a strong crew he works with he's built somewhat of a little industry around himself with all of his key team. But he just makes this crazy big bet on himself. And in the same way that you watch Fury Road and you go, oh, this is probably what Road Warrior looked like in his head and he couldn't until this point execute it. You watch this.

This is what Mad Max looked like in his head. Yeah, and it doesn't feel small to you. Like, what's crazy is, even though the budget is like minuscule

compared to Fury Road and the difference in technology and the scale, I watch this movie and I'm like, it still feels so fucking big.

Like, you watch this, you're like, this feels like the biggest movie ever. That anamorphic photography, stretch it out. just that,

the way fucking Road Warrior uses the sky is insane because you're just like, oh right, I never see movies where there are no man-made structures anywhere on the horizon. Yes! I didn't even put that together. There's just like one little fucking, you know, water

tower or there's like a little crane or whatever. Sea of sand, if you will. It just feels endless. Like you just, every shot is like this. He's just been Googling that phrase for like 40 minutes. He's like, sea of sand. Sea of sand. Sea of sand.

But like almost every shot in this movie is just this insane vanishing horizon of just like yellow and blue. Also upon watching it this time around, I kept jumping back for a little like, he does a great job of shooting these five second sequences that are small things like the dude's hand coming back in or like you know these minor little looking things that are you're like oh this dude has such an eye that you know he's like give him millions of dollars and you could still know he's

gonna shrink it down to this cool ass it's five second just like oh when uh when max crawls it's got a like the choices he makes you're like oh and that's fury road was like the best movie of the last several years and it was so long after all the mad max movies that you're kind of like yeah i remember liking the mad max movies this is cool it's true we're like yeah do we need no one of those those are fine right i remember when it was announced i was, why is he doing that? Why would you do another Mad Max? Right. It felt desperate in a weird way.

Yeah. Yeah. And then the trailer, well, we'll talk about it if you're ready. Yeah. Anyway, I also want to note that he was trying to make a rock and roll movie called Roxanne, which, you know, never happened, but would love to know what that was. Right. I forgot that was the step in between.

When he turns down all the, when he turns down all the when he turns on all the la jobs he works on he's like i'm making roxanne yeah it's a rock and roll movie right and then when he couldn't get that together then he said let's get steve martin to sign on yes um and he brings aboard the guy who wrote the novelization of mad max this guy um terryes, who becomes a collaborator for him to write the script. And Dean Semler, who becomes a really big part of it. Because the first film is well shot, but very scrappy. And then

this film just takes it to the next level. Dean Semler, who's less than a decade away from winning the Oscar for Dances with Wolves, becomes this very prestige-y Hollywood cinematographer. Oh, yeah. Also shot Apocalypto, speaking of Milk and Pee. Yes.

And they went out to New South Wales, to the sort of blasted deserts of Australia, to a place called Broken Hill, which sounds like a grim place. Apropos. Exactly. The thing I feel like I've always heard about Miller and his reputation is that like his movies, he always squeezes maximum value out of the budget he's given. Even when his films are expensive, he somehow makes every movie look four times more expensive than it actually is.

And the main thing that he like bathes in is time. That's like the main thing he wants is the time to do everything correctly. And I think that comes across in what you were saying, John, about like all those little shots where it's just the kind of stuff that would often be relegated to a B unit. Right. Or you're just like let's just do it again from a different camera setup. But he understands like the energy

with which you crawl in this one setup has to be different than how you're crawling from other angles. Because in this shot yeah and he feels like he knows he's like the tone I want when your hand is coming back into the car is like you're destroyed you're defeat you're slinking

back to your whatever when it becomes maximalist when the performance is sort of become like kabuki theater there's a story I kept on thinking about watching this movie that when Peter Bogdanovich was doing Last Picture Show and it was like his second movie ever and his first movie was they gave him a bunch of scraps of footage of Boris Karloff and were like, can you shoot 20 minutes around this and make it a narrative? Right. But this was his first time like writing a script and shooting it.

And Bob Rafelson was producing it. And he shoots the scene where Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges get in a fistfight over Cybill Shepard at the end of the movie. Right. And the people at Columbia Pictures see the dailies and call up Bob Rafelson and they're like, this kid's a moron. He doesn't know how to fucking shoot an action scene. This is incomprehensible. We're screwed. You have to go over and take over production.

And he was like, let me see the dailies. And this is one of my favorite terms ever. But Bob Rafelson says he called up Columbia and he was like, are you stupid? This thing's going to cut like butter. Isn't that gorgeous? That's pretty sexy.

I will say, if you didn't give me the setup of like, and I love this term, I would, and I still am, I'm just injecting that directly into my vocabulary. I'm like, oh, I got to remember that.

But this is a movie that cuts like butter. And the reason why, and it's the same thing that worked with Last Picture Show is he was like it was Bogdanovich's naivete being such like a film critic and a film student and loving watching the construction of things

but having so little experience making it himself. He didn't realize that the way anyone else would do it is choreograph a fight, shoot it from eight different angles, at every angle you do the whole fight, and then you cut it together later. So what he did is he went, okay, so this shot, I'm close up right here,

and this shot is just, when I say action, bridges your fist goes from here to here. Like he was just- He knew what it was going to be. He knew what the end piece was. He knew what the end piece was. And so he did it in a totally disjointed way where they never did the full fight as actors

straight through. But he got every piece he needed. And when you watch that fight, it has the same kind of energy that the Mad Max movies do where every little piece has so feel cohesive and continuous because you're doing it so piecemeal. But somehow Miller just always has that like throttle of like, you know, and so much of this movie is someone looking at something, establishing the next sort of danger, the next conflict by someone clocking. Oh, who's at the window next to me? What's the spatial relation? Like life in an apocalypse where there's no settlements right like that is what it is where it's like oh somebody's coming down the road what would that be yeah oh there's smoke over there that's weird that's not supposed to happen like i think it's because it kind of like there's a person there weird there's never

people there that's bad it's usually not a lot of people around. I don't know if you guys have hung out here, right? But to do this at high speeds, to do it in motion above all else. And a lot of the times the cars are going 60 miles per hour and they're speeding up the footage. And I am the first person to dislike visible effects. But the fact that it's practical with just a little bit of speed and it's not used the whole time, but it's used at certain times, it really hits you extra hard where you're like, this doesn't bother me at all. No. No.

It doesn't bother me at all when it's like weirdly takes off, when the car takes off. You're like, this is kind of cool actually. But it's like weirdly he's getting the performances out of his actors that also will play well at that speed. If that makes sense. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, like everyone's got a certain energy. Yeah. I mean, I don't... This is not a performance movie for me, really, apart from Mel. I mean, everyone's, you know, everyone's doing... Bruce Spence is pretty fun. Thank you.

Yeah, he's pretty good. That's Gyrocopter? Yes. Yeah. Which, back in the Star Wars days, I kept on bringing up that he is Tion Miedon in Revenge of the Sith. And every time I brought it up, you went, who cares?

So here was the situation. He's in Revenge of the Sith. Right. He plays the... Tion Medan. He's like, I mean, I'll show you what he looks like. He's got lines on his face and pointy teeth. And, right, Griffin was like, and do you know who that is? He's the gyrocopter.

The gyrocopter pilot from World War I. And I was like, all right, Jesus, who cares? There he is. Oh, shit. I mean, he's got a good vibe. It's Bruce Spencey, long face. Yeah, tall, long face. He's also in Thunderdome.

Yes. And then Gethard was on the podcast. He tried it on him and he was like, what? But he is, of course, also in a performance that matters a lot to me, the evil train man in the Matrix Revolutions. And in Return of the King, he is the mouth of Sauron. He is, in a performance that matters a lot to me the evil train man in the Matrix Revolutions and in Return of the King he is the mouth of Sauron he is

in a deleted scene and so he's only in the special edition yeah but that puts him in five different trilogies in the last movie right

four in Finding Nemo he is also he's one of the sharks right yeah there was a stat where in 2003

so if they made a third of those then that would be a fifth trilogy in 2003 he was the they made a third of those, then that would be a fifth trilogy. In 2003, he was the highest grossing actor. Right, right. Because he had Lord of the Rings, Star Wars,

or not Star Wars, but whatever. You know what I mean? The man was in some high earners. The man was in like $1.8 billion worth of movies. Right, within like six months. He was in like 2% of them. Right, right.

But it was this crazy crazy his performance is really great because he's the only person in this universe who is having fun who has any yeah who still seems sort of like a human right yeah 100 and i feel like there's something to the fact that he is the only person that's ever in the air yes so that makes it seem like it seems like such an insane advantage it's an insane advantage but it also gives him a different perspective than every single other person that exists in this world like the ground is so dire in this movie right but it makes it seem like oh that would be why he's got some positive some hope to him because he can see he sees more than everyone else sees yeah so he's got like a weird perspective. Also do you think that Stephen Merchant saw

this guy and was like alright when he was like zero and he was like I'm gonna I'm gonna grow to be just like this dude. I mean he looks like George Miller designed him. His proportions I mean the size of his hands and the skin of his legs. He makes Jack Skellington look like Danny DeVito.

It is insane that this is his real body. It is. And he is really fun in this movie. He's so fun. Also, his head is four feet tall. It's the length of the head. All of it. He had been in the Cars That Ain't Pairs. He'd been in some of these sort of small budget Australian

ausploitation, what do you want to call them, movies? But I will say this. You're saying it's not... It's called Stork, which was like a breakout hit for some comedy. You were saying this is not really a performance movie but watching the first and the second back to back uh pretty much um it does make you realize that as opposed to a lot of genre cinema especially genre cinema coming out of like these sort of you know humble beginnings uh the performances are often so wackadoo. You have people who cannot act or people who overact so much because they don't have respect

for the material. And in this, even though it's a cranked up movie, it does feel like everyone is actually invested in the world. The people who have two lines, the people who are just in the background, even the people who aren't making a big impression. There's like an integrity to all the actors in this. There's something to like if you're in a movie and you only have two lines you're like who gives a fuck right but if the lead only has 10 lines you're like well i guess like right i mean fair point i have i'm the fucking weird captain who has the 80s uh blonde

daughter right um the mechanics assistant the mechanics kills it the mechanics are the fucking uh statler and waldorf for this movie they're my they're my comic relief they're the gildan uh rosencrantz and guildenstern but it's also one of those things where it's like probably the 14th person this movie still worked 35 days right and mostly just like on a uh dirt bike with a mask on in the back but has like a dozen close-ups. Like because it is such a physical movie, all the supporting actors in this are so much more invested by the nature of what they have to do.

Yes, I agree with that. I think one of my beefs is with, and I hate to say something mean about the Lord Humongous. I don't love the Lord Humongous. He's my least favorite Mad Max villain. I don't think it's even really a debate. Toe Cutter's so good. I mean, the Q King Barney's performances

are so good. Those are the best two. And then Tina Turner also kicks. The Lord Humongous, it's like, okay, you're big. You're a big guy. It's cool. You got a hockey mask. I mean, you're not the first to do that, but okay. Maybe he is the first. Although in 1981, Jason's still wearing a sack.

Jason might still have a sack. He might still have a sack at this point. But nonetheless, like a hockey mask. Jason might be a kid in the bottom of the lake. He might be in a lake at this point. The opposite. This guy's desert with a hockey mask, shaking sack in the lake.

The hockey mask is fine. It's good. It's good. The fact that Lord Humongous is this huge bodybuilder who uses a pistol with a scope for most of the lake. The hockey mask is fine. It's good. It's good. The fact that Lord Humongous is this huge bodybuilder who uses a pistol with a scope for most of the movie. It's like,

get in the fucking... He is a lot of bark. He's a lot of like, Lord Humongous is back. You have two more chances to disobey me. Debate me, you coward. Convince me otherwise

in the public sphere. I'm planning on leaving soon. I mean, he's scary. Yeah, one of my big beefs Debate me, you coward. Convince me otherwise in the public sphere. I'm planning on leaving soon. I mean, he's scary. Yeah, one of my big beefs with most action movies is they always get like a big actor to play the villain. Just like a big guy. Yeah. No, not even.

I mean, a major name. An overqualified thespian. An overqualified thespian. So by the time Steven Seagal is squaring off against a bad guy you're like Steven Seagal is going to kick

this 60 year old guy's ass like Tommy Lee Jones is supposed to be scary he just fought 100 Navy Seals now he's going to fight Tommy Lee Jones

who cares the ultimate example of that for me is the Goshen in Under Siege 2 is a big one I think there's

an even more egregious one the one I just remember going like this movie should end right now is Quantum of Solace, where the film expects you to feel any tension

in a final fight that is Daniel Craig on a catwalk with Matthew Ulmarik, who's like, I am an eco-terrorist. You know, Bond has had a few of those problems, like Jonathan Pryce in Tomorrow Never Died. I mean, often when you have the ineffectual, they'll have a heavy, you know them a heavy they do the order wrong where

you fight the martial the badass martial artist who's his sidekick yeah defeated him it's like now you have to fight you know jonathan price in a neighborhood collar the weapon two's got the best one he kills that guy uh he fights that guy and then he's like now you have to fight me the old fat south african man robocop well i mean haywire makes the very strange decision of having ewan mcgregor be the final boss like no yeah offense to him hey she's already dispatched like channing tatum like bigger guys like it's weird haywire also makes the weird decision to be uh totally incomprehensible yeah but that that I love.

Yeah. But so then you see this movie and you're like, oh, finally, a fucking bad guy worthy of a head. Yes, he's big. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. And then you're like, sort of, never deal. Oh, it doesn't matter if you're a bodybuilder, if everything you fight is in a fucking weird, what are they called, fan boat turned car or whatever. But the first one has that thing too. He's got those Mississippi roots. He can't let him go.

What if that's the backstory? He used to be a fan boat captain. The first one has that thing too where where Toe Cutter gets killed

second to last. Yeah, he gets killed penultimate. Yeah, it's true. And the same happens in Fury Road. He doesn't care about the hierarchy.

You know, you might get hit by a truck and that's... They set up a different... This movie and Fury Road, ostensibly, too, isn't about needing to defeat or banish the bad guys. It's about crossing

the finish line. And it's also about these are the guys who open the gates of hell. So ultimately, it's not that stopping them the problem. The problem is everything that they've unleashed. And then also you have an end point you've got to get to. You've got to do a delivery.

I do like his prosthetic pulsating veins on the back of his head. Do you know the original plan for him was that he would be Goose. He would be Max's old buddy from Mad Max 1 who gets all burned up but you never see his

corpse I guess. You see his arm. And that's why he's burned. They were like let's do that and then I think someone was just like it doesn't make sense so don't do it. And it's also cooler to just be like who the fuck is this guy? I agree. I think it would be a little too much to have it be.

I love the fact that you don't know who any of these. You're just some fucking asshole. You don't even know their motives at all except that like gas is important and you want it they have it they need it in the mad max world all you need to do is like find gas or water or something and then be like okay i am lord fuck you and i'm the boss you all answer to me now and that's it it's futile you know one of the reasons why I love the Mad Max franchise so much is it's the only piece of media that seems to find cars as terrifying as I do.

As someone who will never get a driver's license does not like being in a vehicle the idea stresses me out. Watching this movie is how I feel every time I'm in an Uber. I'm just like someone's going to fucking ram into us. It's too much. You know,

like no one should have this much power in their hands. No one should control this much like fucking muscle. Dom Dierkes used to have this standup bit that was really funny. He was like, in like 40 years, kids are going to be like, so you were just like in these 5,000 pound death machines

going 80 miles an hour next to each other. That's how I feel. And they were like. I mean, it's the old joke, but right. Anytime you're driving a car, you're like, what if I just like... Right. Yeah, you're like, oh, well, thank God I have like a fully working cerebral cortex and I'm not going to do that.

For example, I do not have a fully working cerebral cortex and do not have a driver's license. Smart! Out of a sense of compassion for the human race. But this movie, like the way they just in the prologue set up so beautifully. Because the first one you're watching it and society hasn't fully collapsed, but you're like, there is a weird dominance of vehicles. It's like a pre-Pixar cars thing where it's like the scales are starting to unbalance between the natural and the mechanical. And then the second one just sets up this whole thing of just like we got all into machines.

Like everything was all about machines. And we went into war and then realized, oh, fuck. We blew our machines trying to win the machine war. And now society has crumbled and the only thing we care about is how to keep the machines running. It's just such beautiful table setting. And to just have some old man over stock footage of World War II explain this. You're like, I get it. It's the type of self-destructive thing that humanity does.

The movie is so oddly poignant. Watching it now, you're like, this is crazy. You're almost crying just in the opening narration, which is like their version of the Star Wars crawl, but the guy is really imbuing it with a sense of real sort of pathos about like of course we did what humans do, you know? And this idea where it's just like

it's just, it's all about fucking guzzling. Like just let's hammer the point, let's underline it, this movie's about one thing, everyone's gotta get guzzling. Guzzling? Guzzling. I'm sure we talked about it in the last episode but you know there have been all these gas crises in australia and things like that you know that was what inspired him feral child by the way we haven't shouted him out yet uh you

know with the boomerang yeah yeah no cool guy you're looking at me confused and i was like john he's got the boomerang please clarify which character is the feral child no i was gonna say he must have learned to speak quite eloquently very eloquently because i love I was like, John, he's got the boomerang. Please clarify which character is the feral child. No, I was going to say, he must have learned to speak quite eloquently. Very eloquently. Because I love that. There's no surprises left in movies anymore for me. And then when it's just something small like, and I am the narrator,

you're like, oh, that's fucking cool. And I don't know why I liked it so much. It is such a classic twist. Are you remembering that that is the final twist of to rook the last flight the first flight right the um avatar cirque de soleil show that we saw i'm sure you saw we're like you're watching the you know they have a whole avatar adventure and there's a narrator and at the end of it he's like and by the way that guy is me me. I'm him. Later. It was great. Hard blackout waiting for people to go like, what?

Lights back up to him like this. To people slowly walking out. Anyway. Yeah, Feral Child. Bit of a Ben vibe from Feral Child, right? Did you ever have a boomerang? I did. Yeah.

I actually one time hit my friend in the head. He had to go to the hospital oh come on bad it wasn't like i was doing it on purpose we were doing american gladiators and i lined up he was next to me and i was going to throw the boomerang and i guess i kind of it kind of let go and it went right into his head point blank range yeah it was close what type of injury are we talking about here not a metal boomerang. Point blank range? Yeah, it was close. What type of injury are we talking about here? Not a metal boomerang I'm hoping. No, but like a hard plastic. It wasn't good. He had to get stitches.

I felt bad. But yes, I've had a boomerang and I've thrown them many a time. Ben, what was your American Gladiator name? Oh, wow. I don't know. I mean, I think it was who was my favorite guy. Yeah. It was either Nitro, Laser, or Tower.

I had two goldfish that I wanted at the Belmore Street Fair that were named Nitro and Laser. I think mine was Nitro. Yeah. Those were the two coolest guys, I thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. American Gladiator feels indebted to Mad Max, too. I mean, like, everything's fucking indebted to him. But it is wild.

There was all, Britain had its own own it was just called gladiators but did you read this in some sort of book yeah are you like a big gladiator guy in England they didn't have American gladiators

but once in a while it would cross over with the American and they would show up and they'd be like hi I'm Nitro and the Brits would kind of be like alright buddy

I'm picturing like the British sports like oh and Earl Grey and he's like and he and it's like they all have rolling fingers. It's all biscuit.

It's all about kicking soccer balls and shit. As far as I know, it was a very similar show. They did the jewels. Except with spats on. But there was a character called Wolf who had long hair. And he was the bad guy. So like everyone else was really nice, which is sort of weird to think

about. That's what Gladiator was. Like they would joust and maybe one wins and they'd be like, how do you feel about that, Hunter? And he'd be like, oh, he's a great competitor. But Wolf would like eat the microphone or be like, I'll get you, you know. It was great. I loved Gladiator. They did try to bring it back, I remember.

It was one of those things where they brought it back, I feel like, during the writer's strike when they needed a ton of programming. But Ninja Warrior eats its lunch so hard. It's a little more hardcore. And then Gladiators starts to feel goofy. It starts to feel childish with some of the events. Which, I mean, it's for children.

It was very childish. There was a dude, he's got his own wikipedia page i wish i could remember his name but he was the guy who like oh uh russell crowe yes yes that's the guy who uh uh threw a phone no he uh this dude showed up on gladiators on american gladiators and was such a fucking stud he could like no one could beat him in anything he's just was just like, you know, it was like, and Gary wins again or whatever. This like tiny little black dude just smoking everyone in every event. Like they just never dealt with this. They were like, it was like Ken Jennings.

Like we need a robot to fight him in the joust. He could just beat everybody in everything. It was very fun. Did you guys have the travelator? Did you guys have that? No. What do you mean you guys? We all grew up in the same country.

I grew up in Britain. What? Holy shit. I haven't heard that in 30 episodes. Jeez. Where I watched. That's only because we're 30 episodes. Where I watched The British Gladiators with Wolf and Hunter and Jet and Nightshade and

all the other ones. Nightshade? Nightshade. Tom Brady's worst nightmare. Nightshade, all the other ones. Nightshade? Nightshade. Tom Brady's worst nightmare. Nightshade, unfortunately, was the black woman. And guess what they called the black man? No. Shadow.

No! So bad. Oh, my God. It's just like when I was a kid, I'm like, right, yeah, Black Ranger and Yellow Ranger. It's a black guy and an Asian woman. Pink Ranger's the girl. Yeah, that makes sense, right? You know, I'm a child.

I have a very, you know, impressionable brain right now. This is what I should be watching. Can I move backwards in conversation and make a joke that's not worth it? Yeah, please. I thought Tom Brady's worst nightmare was an air pump. Oh! The one thing Griffin knows about football. I was just about to say.

Thank you. Griffin dipping his toe into sports humor for the first time. I'm just stunned. I know one other thing about football. Anyway. Tell the truth. Tell the truth, of course. Tell the truth.

In the end of the big gladiator, they did like a big gauntlet run at the end of every show. The last thing, you know, they had to climb a thing and do a thing, you know, but the last thing was they just had to walk up a backwards escalator, essentially. Yeah, they had to run up a treadmill that was going down. Which was always- That's the travelator. That was called the travelator, and it was always, it was so hard. And I always appreciate it. I up a treadmill that was going down. That's the Travelator. That was called the Travelator. It was so hard.

I always appreciate it. I'm like, that's so simple but so fucking difficult. Also, American Gladiators, I don't know if Gladiators with a U at the end had this. Her Majesty's Gladiators. I don't know if you guys had this, but the fucking

it was all the going through the paper door where there's sometimes a guy there and sometimes someone not there. That's just like, if you choose one with the guy, you lose. No, it had the breakaway paper. Yes, I mean, it was a good show. I enjoyed it. Tennis ball air guns. You just can't get those. The assault as a kid was the best one.

Where you're like, You shoot the rocket launcher. Did you guys have what they called Atlas Spheres where you were in a giant mouse ball? That one was cool. And then Powerball was the one I always thought I would be the best at, which was kind of like rugby, but with a slam dunk in the middle. Oh yeah, right. Bring it back.

Why not? I don't know. I feel like they did that revival. American Ninja Warrior. American Ninja Warrior and the CrossFit games Bring it back. Why not? I don't know. I don't know. I feel like they did that revival. You're right. American Ninja Warrior. Right. American Ninja Warrior and the CrossFit Games eat the lunch of all this. I also feel like... I also think, no offense to the Gladiators, but it's probably like a steroid situation

happening over there. They all looked very large. I also feel like the American Gladiators reboot came in a slight lull period for the WWE, which has since swung back really hard and is just so dominating Zoom out from WWE to even just say professional wrestling because now there's so many other shows and shit. I think no one

wants that. Do you know what I thought I had watching this movie? It is insane that this is almost 40 years old and there is still not a stunt category at the Oscars. I know it's a thing that gets discussed a lot. It does, but you're right. But this is the fucking point where they should probably go, oh, this

is a thing we need to acknowledge. Because this is like the birth of a modern type of stunt movie. This is the birth of a type of movie where you have like 80 people doing insane things that defy logic. And real people doing real stunts with real fire and real cars.

It's just like, and I don't know if it's because I've watched all these classic action movies for action boys or because of just modern movies. I'm so tired of CG and the Disneyfication of everything that like watching this movie is like a fucking antidote. That's what's crazy. You're like, watch this. You're like, dude, when that one biker who I think, according to IMDB, actually breaks his leg because he's not supposed to hit the car and he's doing like those. Like rag balls.

And I'm like, you watch it. You're like, holy shit. Now, that's insane. Someone actually got hurt. Apologies. But if he didn't get hurt, that's still a dude soaring 30 feet through the air. And what's crazy is. And that was the intention.

Oh, he wasn't supposed to hit the car, but he was supposed to definitely fly 30 feet as a air. And what's crazy is... And that was the intention. Oh, he wasn't supposed to hit the... I don't understand it. He wasn't supposed to hit the car, but he was supposed to definitely fly 30 feet as a person. Right. And that's fucking awesome. That person made that choice

to do that thing. I respect it. It just... I'm not a director, but as a director, that would frighten me so much. Like, the days you have that shit to do.

Oh, I know. But here's what's crazy. He's made four of these movies sure and i believe and i was trying to do my research on this it seems like the worst injuries that anyone's gotten on any of them is like that is like a broken bone yeah you know like a badly like harmed uh limb but nothing that you couldn't recover no one died or anything yeah there's like i was reading an article two days ago about the amount of people who have died making Resident Evil movies. You know?

Because they got like that Bulgarian loophole or whatever that they're shooting outside of America. Right. And Norton almost took down a fucking Harlem apartment or Brooklyn apartment. I mean, like two firemen got killed. I mean, it's one of these things that sort of speaks to George Miller where it's like, even the first one where he is like, in retrospect, we were like playing with like death a lot. You know, we got really lucky that no one got more hurt. But from then on, he becomes very aware of like, if I'm going to ask people to do this, we have to plan out so deliberately.

I have to be very specific in what I'm asking them to do. I'm not going to ask them to do footage I'm not going to use. Here comes that time shit again. It's all about the time. So if he uses his money for days, that's what you're talking. Here comes that time shit again. It's all about the time. That's his main expenditure. If he uses his money for days, that's what you're talking about when you say time, right? It just takes days. Correct.

For stunt shit, that's a dream. And especially when you're traversing large, large patches of land, the reset time for this stuff is crazy. The stunts are complicated enough. There are enough moving pieces. There are explosions and stuff that, like, I was reading this article about this woman lost her arm making the last Resident Evil movie because they didn't like the way the shot looked on playback and they decided, hey, camera guy,

let's change the timing of your move by two seconds and didn't communicate it to her. And as someone who has been on set, I'm sure you can relate to this as well, John. I read that and I go, holy shit, I know that moment. I know that moment. I've never been in that moment where the stakes are that great I've done it where I'm like this is

I'm set up to fail here totally but not die right not to get hurt and to fail is I'm not going to land this joke right because they're like right and because they leave you out of one piece of conversation right or you're not even being considered there was a time when we were filming tick where they had a big crane and the director wanted to change the

timing of when the crane moved and because of that and the rush and we're being like we have to had a big crane and the director wanted to change the timing of when the crane moved. And because of that and the rush and we're being like, we have to go, we have to go. The crane completely smacked Sarah Finowich upside the head. And thankfully, it was not any sort of serious injury, but he was super freaked out by it. Right? Right. And he's had the insulation of wearing this dumb machine on his head. Right?

Yeah. But it was one of those things where it was like that was just a product of people being like, we don't have time to speed it up, speed it up, right? Yeah. But it was one of those things where it was like that was just a product of people being like, we don't have time. Just speed it up, speed it up, speed it up. And a movie like this where you have so many complicated shots,

so many cranes, things in the air, things on the ground, things mounted to vehicles, things being held, moving at high speeds with people jumping and explosions

and all of that, the fact that their track record for injuries is so great that it is so low, I think it's something you've got to give him credit for. But here's my question. What? Are they just lying?

Well, possibly. That does seem to be something that happens all the time where it's like much later they're like, yeah, actually 16 people fell off a cliff, but they're okay now. It wasn't technically during a stunt. Right, right. But I'm not talking about that. You're saying a stunt Oscar, but would we measure a stunt Oscar by

most people put in death's way who didn't die? Would it be a stat thing? How do you measure? I am supportive of a stunt Oscar, but how do you measure the artistic craft of a stunt? I think you treat it like best choreography. I assume you would

have stunt members be part of the Academy, but the way the Oscars work, the peers would decide. But it's sort of like, what's the metrics for sound design? I love to think about those guys being like, oh yeah, good popping. David's holding his headphones. Yeah, because people

are always just like, well, what movie has great cinema? What movie has a lot of cuts? That wins best editing. What movie has a lot of sound? Especially. That wins best editing. That can be, unfortunately. What movie has a lot of sound? That's best sound design. Especially when you throw it to the general body. Right, because the sound Oscar

almost always goes to a movie with a lot of vehicles or a movie with a lot of music. It's either cars or war. Sometimes music. The walk the line sort of Bohemian Rhapsody thing. Helicopters, though.

Yes, they love that. If you got helicopters, then you could win a sound Oscar. But you're like, in what universe did Roma not win best sound in the universe where everyone's fucking watching on Netflix and not hearing that there's like waves over there

everyone's watching from the what's up Ben I feel that way about Quiet Place it's incredible sound I mean that's the whole attack sound we refuse to move to the waterfall. For me...

Just fucking pick up your shit and move there! The thing we always joke about, because it's the best part, is when they show Krasinski's layer where he's planning everything, there's like, on the whiteboard it says, like, they dislike sound, with like a circle around it. It's like, we got it! Attack sound.

We do not need to. Attack sound. Can you imagine how good he felt the day he figured that out? Yeah, right. He's like, we should have that. Oh, it's not the smell thing. It's the sound thing. We can stop rubbing dog shit all over my body. Call off the three months of smell experiment.

The kids are like, no more dog poop dips. You're like, no. Every morning I wake up and shit on my baby here we go creature blind, attack sound, armor how many in area, what is the weakness

he's a good father, he's not particularly good at whiteboards, that's what that movie is about that's really funny to me the reason why this movie doesn't feel like the, I mean, the reason why this movie doesn't feel like a dry run for Fury Road, you know, it doesn't feel like it's just sort of outmodeled by

Fury Road, is that you cannot believe that they did all of this in this time period without any digital effects. Yeah. And Fury Road is still more practical than most movies. Yes. Right. But he's embellishing everything. Right. And this, you're just like, on the budget they had,

the time you had, when there's no model for this, when people really haven't done a movie like this before, I mean, where essentially the movie is pretty much one long action sequence.

Right. Yeah. You know? Or it's like, it's kind of two. Yeah. There's the stuff at the beginning.

There's kind of a pause as we like meet what, you know, Papa Jonas. Well, it's, you know, Papa Janus. Well, it's like the leader of the community. Act one and act three are action sequences. Act two is like, here's who everybody is.

Yeah, here's who everybody is. And he's like, I don't want to help you. All right, I'll help you. You know, right? Which is sort of the classic Max dynamic. But that's Fury Road is like two chases, two. Yes, it is. The thing that's wild about Fury Road is that the pause in the middle is just in the middle of nowhere.

It's not like he gets to a city and meets new people. Right, right. The breath is just like... They're just like... He is so good, though, at sort of structurally knowing when to slow things down. I was literally just about to say, but when you watch Fury Road on IMAX in the theater, when it stops in the middle of nowhere, you are like, oh, okay, all right, like stretch my, oh my God, I just realized I've been crunching my shoulders

for one hour. Griffin was at the press screening with me, if you remember. It's the first, it's literally at minute 30, there is a shot of the flare. They're going in like the tornado. After they've gone into the storm, the flare like goes to black,

and it's black for like one second, and the whole audience bursts into applause. Yes. And it was an incredible moment. And then you heard everyone sigh. Yes, 100%. Like exhale at the same time. It was awesome.

And then you have the small scale, really cool. We'll get to that. It was one of the best audience response I've ever seen. It was also incredible because we were seeing it at a press screening. It's traditionally not the most vocal? Well, yes. A, that. And B, people were like, I've heard it's good.

It had been at Cannes, and everyone was like, it's great. But you can never trust Cannes because they've been watching all these movies about Moldovan lepers, and then they see Solo, and they're like, there's a laser gun. This thing's reinventing cinema. People forget how good the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull reviews were at a Cannes. I always think of Port in the Storm at Cannes, right? Because it's just like, I just watched eight black and white and then here comes a movie with recognizable music and you're like that was actually pretty good and it's like yeah if you saw if you saw that

movie last you would be like yeah that's what stuck stuck in your head or whatever george miller's a functional filmmaker it's probably gonna be a better action movie than most but you don't know if can liked it that much if that's really gonna translate to translate. Well, no, his last credit was Happy Feet 2. It just wasn't something where you're like, this is guaranteed. Yeah, but this, it's like, he's kind of creating everything. I mean, the only real forebear he has

for what he's trying to do is the previous movie he made. Right. And, like, in terms of the larger storytelling themes, he's pulling from, like, westerns and samurai films. I mean, he's doing, like, a very Kimbellian thing as he's you know he's very stripped down uh he does credit like joseph

campbell and all that stuff all that denial of call it's got everything stuff yes exactly but it's it's amazing how he just it's like it there is it is so lean it is so focused always he hits those beats so efficiently the movie doesn't tell you anything that you don't need to know. It has nothing extraneous, but it also feels like there's so much going on around it. He's this one filmmaker who I feel like is able to be

completely maximalist and minimalist. Mad maximalist? And mad minimalist at the same time. You know who's the person, the people who are really influenced by this and I saw them say this in an interview

and then watching it today I really, really saw it. Who? The Coen brothers. Oh, that makes sense. They talk about how this and the first Mad Max were like the two films

they studied obsessively going into Gyro Captain is is like just so close to like a random Coen brothers character. The moment when Gyro Copter like just so close to like a random Coen Brothers character. The moment when Gyro Captain is having the extended conversation with the dog about snake recipes

is a moment that you feel like this would be in so many modern movies. And this is the most unbroken dialogue in the movie. Yeah, it is. Like from one character. You're right. And this is interesting. Raising Arizona is like comedy Mad Max. Right, yeah.

It has that sort of like anarchic energy and like the nonstop movement and all of that. And then you even go like their serious films, like even something like Blood Simple feels like they're the byproduct of like Howard Hawks and George Miller. No, you're right. Blood Simple is very like, again, lean and economical. Whether they're doing like a drama or a crime film or a comedy, it always has that Miller crank. And a lot of the visual notes, I feel, come from... There's something about... His movies just look so expressive.

You know? Those little flourishes he'll put in. The famous one is obviously the eyes bulging out in the first Mad Max. Which I fucking love. Oh, we get a little bit of that when the guy falls out of the truck. Yes. When, in this one, when Max opens the passenger side door of the truck.

Yeah. Yeah, just like that small moment. I know I mentioned the hand before. The dog holding the bone in its teeth with the string attached to the shotgun and the general captain in the back. That is three seconds of the movie. Must have taken forever to set up and to get to work with a fucking shelter dog like that but that's like you choose that your priority is time and you get a

movie that feels this deliberate where it feels like i mean he's talked about how he wants the mad max movies to feel like a literal fever dream like they come out of the dreams he has when he has like the flu yeah and it does feel like when you wake up and you're like in cold sweat yeah was that guy shirtless with a hockey mask screaming a dutch poem into a microphone you wake up and you try to break down what the dream was but while you're dreaming it it all makes perfect sense right you know yeah and it is right which i love right not a movie that wants you to think about like and break it down and be like why would they be you know there's no there's no necessity.

It's so primal. He doesn't give you the time to ask questions and doesn't give you enough leeway to want to ask a question. There's not too much rope where you're like, wait a minute, why does this character care so much about this character? Because there is not a lot of that. But then when you have, what's his name, Papa Lardo,

the leader of the Warriors? I just wanted to get it wrong. John Papsadera? Gil Adari? His name is Papa Gallo. Papa Gallo. Nick Papagiorgio. Got it.

When he has that sort of scene with him where he's like, you've fully succumbed to the madness of this world. Right. You're telling us that you're the same as us. But we've done what we need to survive but have maintained a hint of civilization a purity and a sense of hope

you are gone yeah you're more like those guys right and Max knows that because by the end he's like alright

yeah I'll see you later it is one of the longest continuous dialogue scenes in the movie and it is still pretty short and pretty sparse right

but it is a basic statement of like here's me here's me, here's you. Right. That's what's going on here. But it's like, he uses dialogue when it's something that you cannot communicate other than through dialogue.

And it feels like he's using it so sparingly. I mean, he always said that his goal for the first Mad Max, and I feel like every movie since then, he's just intensified this as the goal is to make a silent movie with sound. The things he studies the most going into each one are like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Well,

that makes sense for like elaborate stunts and elaborate visuals. Like it makes total sense. Like Chaplin, it was like, these guys were like the original stunt men. And most of those movies are like chase movies. There's usually some fucking cop with a nightstick like chasing after. Yeah. My favorite stunt is when the house falls down, are like chase movies. There's usually some fucking cop with a nightstick like chasing after them.

Yeah. My favorite stunt is when the house falls down but they land like in the window. An incredible guy. So good. I was reading

I was going through reviews of Blu-ray releases for these films because weirdly for how much he controls

the rights of these films they haven't gotten the kind of treatment in a lot of areas that most films that are creative owned and protected do. The home video releases have never really been up to the level of how

beloved these films are. Right, right. They haven't gotten the criterion adjacent. Right. And he's never really done much merchandise, which is both good and bad. Good in terms of artistic integrity, bad in terms of my apartment. The Lord knows the box is Mad Max shit. I would own if he made it.

But this Blu-ray review I was reading that was just talking about the transfer, the guy just mentions in the middle of the review, like, I remember watching this as a child and going, what is this? These aren't even stunts. Right. This is just really happening. This feeling that you're watching it where just the amount of damage being, like, caused to vehicles. When they go to a wide shot of the desert and you just see 40 vehicles moving fast in the endless sand. Caravan of destruction. You're like, this feels like the largest movie ever made.

caravan of destruction. It rules. This feels like the largest movie ever made. There's five or ten scenes where someone is just looking at something, and the thing that they're looking at is 12 independent vehicles moving in some way. Sometimes it's like Max is just looking at the camp, and two motorcycles are jumping off of ramps. Sometimes it's like three dune buggies chasing one person. They're just constantly showing. How do you do this? That's just scary enough. I know. There's not even cell phones. Sometimes it's like three dune buggies chasing one person. Like they just constantly

showing. How do you do this? That's just scary enough. There's not even cell phones. There's not like. As Griffin said, just driving a car is pretty scary.

Terrifying. To get like 40 people to do it like in coordination with each other and a camera. Or driving a car with two people

chained to the front of it chasing another car like being on the roof of a speeding fucking truck. This is all shit that those people were objectively doing. And when I see the shots like that, I go, where is the

crew? You know, like there's one guy behind the camera operating it. It's the magic of Fury Road as well, but yeah, you're right. It's crazy. I'm like, are there some chairs set up somewhere? Because they're moving full speed down a road. There is something behind the scenes thing. To shoot Max

driving, they had to build a rig on the outside of the car and shoot in and that's where the cameraman and the camera set up was and they thought they had it all set up and then they went over like one hill and that thing bottomed out and sent sparks flying everywhere and they were like, I guess this is just what

the conditions are and continued to shoot like that. So awesome. I have not been able to get over Dominic's bit about how it's crazy that we all drive cars. I'm having a slightly existential crisis about just driving cars right now. You've been reeling into yourself the last 20 minutes. Welcome to my life.

This is how I feel all the fucking time. And yet I love driving a car. I moved to Los Angeles and I've adjusted to being in my car big time. The thing about LA that freaks me out is that you're in your car like hours a day. That is wild. But yes, I do have a car in New York. I'm the rare New Yorker. He likes driving people.

Yes. I love driving people. I love driving places. I hate flying. So I've like doubled down on roads, you know? I'm totally cool with flying. Yeah, it's so weird that you're cool with flying. Totally cool with flying.

Mad Max for me is like, that's my like existential horror movie is like this world. It's all cars. Has anyone ever attempted like a planes Mad Max? Like an aerial Mad Max? I mean, I feel like not. Are you saying like Kevin Costner in a sequel to Waterworld called Airworld? Yeah. I mean, that kind of rules.

That kind of rules, right? Someone's going to do that eventually. Like a blimp fight? Ooh, that'd be good. Blimps? You know what would be cool, too, is if someone made a movie that was like Star Wars. Like it was like Mad Max, but in space? Yeah, like spaceships.

This can of mints is empty and I will whip it at your head. Like Star Wars. But when will there be Star P? I don't know. Do you care about Star Wars gamers? I forget. Like you don't,

you're not really giving a shit about Star Wars, right? I used to really, I played, I did all the Star Wars shit, customizable card game, all the video games. Loved it growing up. Fell off during the, I played, I did all the Star Wars shit, customizable card game, all the video games. Loved it growing up.

Fell off during the, I was really fucked up by Phantom Menace. Yeah, right. And then you were just like, that's fine. You didn't fuck with Death of Jets. I'll leave it at the side of the road. Yeah, I didn't watch anything. I mean, I watched every movie, of course, in the theater. But it was like in one ear or out the other.

Yeah, and I've now reached that level with Marvel. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm at that point now where I find myself, I've never been really vocal online about the stuff I like, despite being a podcast host, because I'm just like, whatever. But now I have to take the, well,

I'm definitely less vocal about what I dislike, but now I take the time to be like, anytime someone makes a movie, like anytime the Safdie brothers come out with Fury, anything that comes out and it's like not Disney and not you just want to be like guys let's put this

in a fucking pedestal yeah 1917 watch this fucking movie there's not one superhero in it but like that's the thing like the Mad Max movies

it could only be the result of one person having a very specific well thought out and well planned vision. Like, that's the other part of it.

It's not just like, oh, someone had an idea and then it got fucked up in the editor or whatever. It's like, he's making a movie that can only be constructed

one way. It's so fully in dialogue with itself that you couldn't even fuck it up if you took the footage away from him to an extent.

You could make it worse, but you probably- You could definitely make it worse. But you couldn't make it- I know what you make it i know what you're i get what i'm saying i get your concept yes there's a fun game to play where you're like oh i would love to see so and so direct a marvel movie i would like to see so and so direct a star wars movie yeah i don't think you should say that about mad max right i don't think anyone but george miller should be directed no auteurship like yeah His pure auteurship.

It's true. And even, as we were saying, the fact that unlike all these other franchises, he never goes like, I'm going to let you write a novel. Right. He keeps it tight. He doesn't let it get watered down. He doesn't want to do a Peacock original series or something like that. Well, you know what?

Actually, probably he will. Little Max. Mad Max Babies? Yeah. HBO Mad Max? I feel like didn't another little cartoon... That was funny. He's got to sell it to HBO Max.

He's got to sell it to HBO Max. He has to. He has to. I guarantee they're out to George Miller. There's at least been an email. Yeah. We got to get you. HBO Max Fury Road, please.

Yeah. Let's run through some fucking great sequences yeah in this uh in this movie well the first big feral kid sequence is so great when it's taken so much effort to like get to the compound yes yes you know he finds this guy he saves this guy he's willing to bring him back and go through the trouble because he knows there'll be some gasoline in it for him. He gets back to the compound. What's his name? Jez and the golden child. Oh, Wes.

Wes. Wes is visible butt cheeks. Yeah. Yes. He's the Mohawk fella. They all follow him there and then this stinky kid comes out and just fucking massacres them with three throws of a boomer I know

cuts kills golden boy cuts the fingers off toady yeah and then disappears into a I really appreciate the inclusion of toady like that not everyone

is like I am just a tough guy who rides a motorcycle there's still space for him I think he invented that's like future dystopian jester

like comic relief. You see it in Waterworld, which rips this movie off a ton. But you see that in every post-apocalyptic movie. And then eventually, every action movie, every group of baddies features the books. Exactly. The guy who has weird wireframe glasses or whatever. I think Die Hard's a great example. The black dude who's just like, and we're in.

The most annoying character in the history. I love that character. Almost annoying performance, maybe. Oh, yeah. But that's the character that's going to get you into the Fast franchise. I know. That's the character that's going to get you into the actual movie. Fast, of course, has had versions of that.

They've never had a big one, though, which is the one reason I still feel like they're space. Oh, let's have a nerd in this one. Can she be played by the hottest woman in the universe? That's the Vin Diesel note where he's like, I saw Natalie Emanuel in something. Let's have her play a computer. They have the nerdy sort of squirt body shop worker in the first movie who's part of the family. But it's nerdy on a relative scale in comparison to them. Right.

But I feel like they still haven't gotten that diehard archetype in there. Which is what I want to be and you want to be James Gandolfini and killing themselves. You've got a D&D,

you know, shirt on right now. You want to be Benedict Wong in Gemini Man. You want to be Hawaiian shirt in Noah Guys. He's the bard. He's an evil bard.

I mean, that's what I love about him. Yes, yeah, yeah. It's a great archetype. It fucking rules. It's just this yeah. It's a great archetype. It fucking rules. It's just this thing. Worm tongue. Yeah.

It's always just kind of impressive that when you watch a movie that is this formative, that becomes this much of a, dare I say it, Rosetta Stone for other filmmakers, that watching the first and purest execution of the thing always still somehow is more powerful than the people who have, in theory, perfected it with years and multiple tries. There's something about that. There's also something about watching the movie

that created the references that you know. You know what I mean? When you watch The Godfather, if you watch it, you're like, oh, now I get why people do so many different things. So much shit is unlocked for you. It's like Casablanca. I see the invention of every trope.

Casablanca is an even better example. You don't seek it out when you're in Canada. People leaving the factory, that's one of those movies that everyone's ripping off because they had the idea to place a camera. Well then there's train. There's train coming into the station.

It's going to come through that screen. I can't see that in the theaters. It scares the shit out of me. Wait, that going- Has anyone spoiled that for you yet? I can't watch the ending. Okay. I've watched the first minute of it and keep falling asleep.

The ending's fucking crazy. I keep falling asleep watching it on Netflix. Right, yeah. Are you still watching? The train's coming. They pause 40 seconds in. Are you still watching? The train's coming. They pause 40 seconds in. Are you still watching? It sort of got the original twist ending

in a lot of ways. Yeah, it kicked M. Night Shyamalan off. He was like, wait a minute. I didn't, I expected that thing to come right into the theater. Right, because the twist ending was, I thought movies could kill me. I've now learned they can't.

It was prepared to be murdered by a new art form If I had a time machine I'd do a bunch of stuff But one of them I'd be like When did they fucking first show that thing? Is that for real? I would just like be in the back

Being like Are they really gonna freak out right now? Like news stories are just Everyone's like This movie's got people scared People are saying They're gonna bring their own trains To the movie theater

And you're like We had securities being doubled down On every theater As everyone pulls up in trains And engineering outfits got people scared. People are saying they're going to bring their own trains to the movie theater and you're like, security's being doubled down on every theater as everyone pulls up in trains and engineering outfits and stuff. You know what I'd love to read? I'd love to read were there like reviews of the train coming into the station? Hated it. Derivatives.

It lacks the nuance of Shakespeare. 4.5. I don't think movies are going to take off. I expect this to be a fad so many vehicles could be filmed coming towards a camera we know all the tricks now now I have to look up this stupid movie

the other one I always think of is the kiss there's that one that's like two middle aged people and he has a disgusting mustache and they kiss and it's five seconds long and it was like fucking scandalous people were flipping the fuck out you just made me think when you talked about that fury road shared audience experience that's something that a lot of people are losing i don't want to be old man uh yeah movie podcast but that's

something a lot of people are losing and it's so fun when you can have that i know these days like it's not it's even kind of rare because like even the second event Infinity War yeah whatever I was tired of the movie by that point but the way the audience

went apeshit right it's good to feel an audience yeah it makes the movie better it makes every comedy better but I'll tell you

the best version I've had of that recently was when I saw 8th grade in a crowded theater I swear to god people we watched it like it was a

horror movie. The entire crowd going, oh! Like, everyone awkward at the same moment. I've never felt that shared. We're all cringing at the same time. Like, Jackass 3D is one of the best movie theaters. The Jackass movies are incredible to see with an audience. I feel like both

of the Jordan Peele movies, at least I got really good experiences. Horror is always a good one. But it was like, we've talked about this, but just walking out of Us, I saw a midnight showing in Times Square and people were standing outside the AMC 25 going like, so what do you think the theme of that movie is? And I was like, this is amazing

that he got people to see a horror movie at midnight. And they're going to discuss it. And they're screaming and clapping and laughing. And at the end, they're like, so was that a metaphor for i just want to say i saw eighth grade in a tiny screening room and the only other person there was peter travers it was a very strange i was fucking squirming in my seat the whole time because that movie really does make you squirm in your seat it's like cronenberg level reaction it has one of my most uncomfortable like sort of like teenage experiences in it,

which is giving a present at the birthday party where everyone else is giving presents. And then she's going to open all her presents. And she got her a card game or something. It has to be like, oh, it's really fun. And she's like, oh, thanks. And I was just melting down in my seat. The front porching of it, too.

You're like, you can open mine later if you want. You got to understand, it's actually really fun are you opening mine yeah that's what kills it how hard she oversells that the game's really oh yeah

even in memory it feels too real and that was one of the of course there are there are even rougher moments in the movie but I was like he's a genius

that he gets those little moments right and it's like that's awkward when you're 40 exactly and that's what's cool about it that's awkward when you're 40. Exactly. That's what's cool about it. That's awkward when you're 40 and you're just trying to...

Hey, look, I got you this Funko thing. I hope you like it. I have it. Oh, sorry. I already own three Dew Warriors. That's the Flaming Guitar player, right? Yeah, it's Ben's favorite character. Of all time. Because he's just like...

He's drier than fire, baby. But he's like the guy who had played the flute in front of the army. And I've always been like, what an insane person. The musician leading himself to die in war. That's what's kind of incredible, though, is that like...

Is there like a jerk in the army who's like, I like to shoot the flute player? When he's like running, he's like, I don't know. I was trying to find that fucking flute guy me i'm a fife guy it does feel like miller is just so like he's you know the dude's a fucking genius he was a former doctor he has a phd he's a very thoughtful academic guy right and it does feel like the fact that everything he looks like sort of like

some sort of Santa Claus. He has the glasses on the string. He dresses like a professor. He looks like some sort of Victorian librarian. Right.

And there's something to the fact that something like the Doof Warrior doesn't just feel like weirdness for the sake of weirdness because he is tapped

into the fact that it's like nothing's weirder than the fact that we used to have actual fucking musicians on the front line. Right, right. Like every weird thing he's doing is only an insane heightening of something nothing's weirder than the fact that we used to have actual fucking musicians on the front line.

Every weird thing he's doing is only an insane heightening of something that humans actually do or how we behave in war. There's the two types. There's the Guillermo del Toro types where you're like, oh, of course this guy makes horror movies. He's like, hello, yes, I am a little creature from the darkness.

Then there's the George Millers or Ari Aster where you're like, who's this nice person? He's like the George Millers or Ari Aster where you're like, who's this like nice person? He's like a Muppet English professor. Ari Aster's a good example. Like a dude who's like kind of funny and normal in person.

You're like, oh, what's your movie about? It's like, oh, here, take a look. When Hereditary was at Sundance and like that's when

no one knew who he was, like all of the publicists were like, just wait till you meet this guy. And we were like, oh, is he like really fucked up? And they're like, no, he's like really nice.

Yeah, you think you're meeting Rob zombie and you meet rob cohen accounting it is this kind of incredible thing though that like that these movies for how intense they are for how visceral they are they are not very violent in a traditional gory these movies are so famously violent and yet they are not right they're not that intensely gory at all. So much of it is suggestion. I mean, so much of it's the editing

around things. Which is always, that's always true. Like the movies that were so famously violent, Psycho, you know, like when you watch them

you're like, right, no, this was all just people working themselves up, like it's very suggestive. Right. There's not a lot of guts

or whatever, you know. But car crashes and penetration from like sharp objects. up like it's very suggestive right there's not a lot of guts or whatever you know you know but car crashes and uh penetration from like sharp objects arrows and stuff makes them count but those are also two uh very what's what i'm looking for like understandable or triggering like yeah we can know what a car crash feels like we can know but when like someone gets their neck snapped in like a john wick movie you're like I don't fully Right.

This is visceral in the way that it's relatable. They're very visual too. He's always like it's easily visual trackable things. Mel Gibson also is so good at playing pain.

I think it's that whatever the weird part of him that is so obsessed with like masochism and torture and martyrism and whatever yeah that has come up in all of his films after this yeah there's some connection to how innately good he is oh like right fucking braveheart uh riggs william wallace riggs these

are characters that are like you want to see with blood on their face i mean getting up again and hardy's good at it too and i think that's like the commonality see with blood on their face. I mean, getting up again. And Hardy's good at it too. And I think that's like the commonality is both those guys. There's like there's something kind of insane about these dudes. But the other thing he latches on to is with a film that's going to be really technical and piecemeal, you need someone who can really track their injuries and their damage and play them intelligently in every little piece. Because you're never losing track of how much energy Max has left. How much he's smarting from the last thing to happen.

It is interesting. He is, you know, not Christ-like. It's just because, as you say, in his directorial career, they're always about these people who take unbelievable amounts of punishment. And that is associated with he's like, this guy's so fucking tough. You wouldn't believe it. Which is literally his take on Christ.

Right, right. You won't believe the shit they beat out of this guy. You won't believe how many hit points the son of God has. Right. He doesn't, like, I mean, there's like seconds in that movie where he's like, hey, yeah, also, I don't know, he had a couple things to say, people were interested. Mostly he's like, the fucking flesh they ripped out of his back, you know?

But, like, the fact that Mad Max isn't that visually gory, and it also doesn't fetishize his pain. It doesn't motorize him that much. No, because he's so, like, ugh. It's just him sort of enduring everything, but they don't make that a heroic act in and of itself. Right. sort of enduring everything, but they don't make that a heroic act in and of itself. And it also is telling that, like, Mad Max is like this, like, Clint Eastwood man with no name figure, where it's like, you don't know why he's this committed

to saving this person or doing this thing. And the second he accomplishes it, he just leaves. He doesn't want any credit. He doesn't, like, bathe in it at all, you know? He just kind of disappears again. I think that generation that's, you know, one older than us that grew up

on like westerns and stuff. I feel like that's, and like from the male perspective like the sort of machismo was you get the shit kicked out of you, you don't react, you finish your business, and you're like, I don't need a cake. It's not, you know, like

and you just walk off. It'd be funny if he demanded a cake. He's like, I don't need a cake. Yeah. It's not, you know, like, and you just walk off. It'd be funny if he demanded a cake. He's like, it is my birthday. The difference with Mad Max, though, like on that archetype is it's not look at how much punishment this guy can take. And he's still cool under pressure. Right, right. It's that he's Mad Max. Like, you can see that the guy is going insane.

Right. Yeah. The fact that he, by like design of him being able to survive out there, he must be insane. Right, yeah. The fact that he, by like design of him being able to survive out there, he must be insane. Right. The fact that he can tolerate all this punishment and keep trucking

is a byproduct of the fact that he is way post complete psychological break with reality. Right. Like he's lost everything in his life. He's lost all his human

tethers in the first movie. Even if you haven't seen the first movie, if you're being sold this film just as the road warrior, it's all sort of implied of like this guy must have had something he lost yeah you know right but but it is that thing of just it it has broken this guy this guy is not a paradigm of of

heroism like even his relationship with the helicopter guy yeah they're kind of friends but he's so removed from having actually like a real emotional relationship with this guy in any way. Even the feral child who you think in any other movie this becomes Shane or this becomes like a father-son proxy. He never submits to those kinds of things.

Yeah, which I think makes it so. And I mean we see when he shows up and there's Warrior Woman, which is what she's billed as. Absolute smoke show. Virginia Hayes. Beautiful eyes, beautiful wardrobe, beautiful body. Beautiful shoulder pads. Yeah, she looks fucking amazing.

And you're like, oh, these two are eyeing each other. And then that also doesn't matter. It means so much to me watching it. Max is weirdly asexual. And for a guy who's sort of defined by losing his wife. I wouldn't say weirdly. Like sex in this world. Oh, sure. A lot of sand. But I'm just saying Max's of defined by losing his wife. I wouldn't say weirdly. Like sex in this world. Oh, sure.

But I'm just saying Max's origin is he loses his- This is where your dry guy theory starts to butt up against some- You're like, that's famously, those are- That's not a good- Oh, antagonistic forces. He's thoroughly dry. Yeah, I guess sandiness can be uncomfortable. I guess.

I suppose. I'll give you that. But he's like, he's lost his wife, he's lost his child, and he's lost his best friend. And these movies always present to him figures who could be the replacements. Right. And you always get the sense that he is helping them because he doesn't want to lose someone else. But he never gets that close to them. He's never going to let them be.

There's never the breakthrough. And he leaves. He'll never be hurt again. But he'll never feel the positive side of that again. Exactly. And he still got that weird idealistic cop thing in him. Where as much as it's just like, I'm just in it to survive.

I just got to survive on this fucking road. He does have this certain fucking compass for justice. Well, yeah. When he sees those people being attacked and he goes and intervenes and he's, you can tell he's like, this is wrong. This is, I draw the line. Like he wants to help defenseless people constantly. And if someone is so fucking bad, he's like,

oh God, I got to chase him across the desert. Ben, what do you want to say? By design as well, I think for a survival tactic, being alone in this world is the best option. Yeah. Because the more and more people, the less you can hide, the more you sort of have to work as a group, a collective, and then be taken advantage of by other groups.

So if you're a solo actor, you can sort of just operate only worrying about yourself. Just to play devil's advocate, though, the only argument for running with a little crew is that the carpool lane is much less violent. Oh, yeah. Well, that's why he puts a little human mask on the dog. They never show you the carpool lane, but it's a breeze. What if that happened in Fury Road where Charlie's like, I've got an idea?

He just pulls off. There's a Danny's. We can't get to her. There's a white line and two double lines. She's an express lane. It looks like Toe Cutter doesn't have easy pass. Take this next exit over the bridge. Get in here.

Get in here. We need at least three. That's a good idea. I love the looks of all the bad guys and the weapons of all the bad guys. There's that guy who has a pneumatic. He's one of the cop-looking dudes. He has a pneumatic, like he's one of the cop looking dudes. He has a pneumatic nail gun with a backpack attachment. That's so much effort and look and like,

but it just, what else has he got to do? Right. He's gotten that. This movie gives you kind of a blanket justification in which, what else do these people have time for? They don't need to pack for survival. They need to pack for murder.

And it's a matter of like, whatever's around is a weapon. So the fact that there's so much crossbows, but not bows and arrows, makes it so funny to me. It's true. There's this kind of beautiful... It gives it that sort of...

What if the narrator was like, in the 90s, everyone went wild for crossbows for a while. That's why they're everywhere anyway. This fact that there's no nunchucks in this movie is the only thing... That's pretty crazy. Yeah, that is nuts.. This fact that there's no nunchucks in this movie is the only thing. That's pretty crazy. There's not just one dude ripping nunchucks.

There's something perversely beautiful to the idea in this movie that in a world where society has collapsed and survival is the only thing, people still find a way to be creative through their survival, through their armor, through their armor through their weapons

they're still expressing themselves like there is their butt artistry there is there is a poeticism to yes everything that everyone's wearing and driving the way they customize their vehicles like all that sort of uh stuff um here's a here's a little fun fact behind the scenes uh that actor who played wes in interviews uh went after this movie came out would say that his character. Vernon Wells. Vernon Wells. Wes is not gay. His relationship with the golden boy is not a homosexual relationship.

It used to be in the script that I rescued him and he's like a father-son kind of relationship. Relax, Wes. In IMDb, it has that quote from him. It says, though no one has ever seen footage of this interview. And George Miller admits that that was never like, he's clearly like, I think people think these characters are gay and he didn't see it while

they were filming. He's like, I'm in a thong. I cry when this, when this golden boy, like Rocky from Rocky Horror Picture Show, I cry and I'm so angry for the rest of the movie and I'm literally dressed

like a gay dominatrix. And then he's like, oh shit, I better come out ahead of this. Don't protest too much. I'm a dad. Fucking own it. Apparently he's in Commando.

Yes. Oh, he's the bad guy. He puts on a lot of weight. Oh, right. He gets fat. He's, no, Bennett's the good guy. No, Bennett's,

he's Bennett. Isn't he the guy with the weird mesh shirt? He wears, yeah, he's dressed, he's fat good guy. No, he's Bennett. Is he the guy with the weird mesh shirt? Yeah, he's fat Freddie Mercury in that movie. He's got a chainmail shirt and a fucking mustache. He looks like donkey lips. He also eventually became a Power Rangers villain. Which one?

Rancic. Are there other important things to cover in this movie? I mean, it's not a thing you can go through plot-wise. Right, because there's no point in going beat by beat. No. Because you're like, there's not even payoff to things that are set up. Yeah. Let's just talk.

I like the production design of this movie creates worlds that you're like, this looks so cool. And then when you see the functionality of the things, it's like you're like you're i was blown away when they were like close the gates and the gate was a bus that you get in and drive across and you drive it eight feet but then when it drives across the part of the bus that would be shown is steel-plated like over the windows and stuff and you're like that's just something that comes up if you live in a campsite like that for like a number of years you just see these things that you look at visually and you're like that's wild and then you see it pay off of like how those weird drums on

Max's car you're like that just looks cool and then you're like that's where the gasoline is you're like oh fuck yeah nothing is ever meaningless in a Mad Max movie and none of it's ever just cool and right it's always cool plus thought or whoever the designers is not just right like being like well yeah what if you like you know, or whoever, the designers, it's not just true. Right, like being like,

well, yeah, what if you, like, you know, had a sound system on the back of a car? Yeah, yeah, like what? The way they defeat them is through intelligence both times, which does still feel like kind of, you know, they have like the two decoy

kind of tricks that they do. That's like a rare, you know, it's like a scarcity in an apocalyptic world, right? It's like cunning. Right, right. That's like a rare, you know, it's like a scarcity in an apocalyptic world, right? It's like cunning. Right, right. The sand thing

and the way they blow up the compound. I don't know. I'm just trying to think of things we haven't forgotten. And that is also teamwork, which is what the bad guys aren't going to do.

Like, they're all out there for the, because they're all fucking insane gladiator types who are just like, right, like I've only, yeah.

As my dad used to say growing up, and he just stole this from everyone, he's like, right, like I've only, yeah. As my dad used to say growing up, and he just stole this from everyone, he's like, who wins in a race? The fox that's running for dinner

or the rabbit that's running for its life? And you're like, ooh, dad, interesting. And then he's like,

just like ripping off like fucking Aesop's face or whatever. Or I was gonna say no fear t-shirts, but yeah, same thing.

Was your dad Tim McGraw in Tomorrowland? No. Two dogs. We said plenty about the gyro captain. I love when he throws a snake on the guy who has a triple nail gun. Yes.

Or a triple crossbow, and that kills the driver because he shoots it through the back of the car. Love that he becomes the leader, they they say in the end narration because it's like this is a guy who wants to be around other they become the great northern tribe yeah and he's smart and the gyrocopter guy is clearly smart he like made the gyrocopter he set the snake trap yeah yeah um love the there's a couple of comedy bits in this movie that i think work despite it like you would never there's the scene where uh uh gyro captain has a fucking scope to the binoculars and they have like a sort of like give me that kind of moment like right which you don't see in a movie like this and then the whole and you mentioned it earlier but the

mechanic and assistant bit when it's like uh how how's the bus how's the truck look he's like how's the truck look he's like crack things like crack thing yeah what does that mean what does that mean nothing you know like that that's a fucking simple little silly like that is like more humor like and a stronger choice than the shit you see in like uh big budget pg because it's like behavioral it's not like quippy one-liner it's not cutting the stakes of the universe yeah it's not like they have motorcycles, they have motorcycles, they have motorcycles. There is this weird... God! There is this weird, like,

touch of Looney Tunes in all of George Miller's stuff. 100%. Not just in the comedy of the sort of escalation and the sort of, like, escalation of weapons and battle

and Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote sort of shit, but even just the rhythms of the humor like that. That, but also just that. Yeah, everyone's like the great humor. These are weird bits that people are doing.

It's a weird cartoon character that you've leaned into and invested in the do for you. Even just like the clouds of dust is so Looney Tunes. Like you're saying that really acting like lit up Fury Road is just like roadrunner running like the exact. Even when he does nitrous and he's like, ooh! It's so cartoon. Looney Tunes, yeah, is kind of apocalyptic. Oh, very much so. Right, because it's always weirdly

in the desert because it's easy to draw. I would have loved a bad guy run off a cliff and then be like, look down, like just have that moment before he falls. Look down and just see his bulge in a codpiece and he's like, why am I wearing this? It's so hot out, why all the leather?

Bugs Bunny had multiple regular antagonists who were trying to shoot him. There was that feeling of like, everyone's out for this fucking guy. You got some fucking Tex Turner, like cowboy asshole. You got some bumpkin hunter. Right. Got some genteel rooster. He wasn't trying to shoot him. He got some bumpkin hunter. Right. Got some genteel rooster.

He wasn't trying to shoot him. He was trying to kill him with kindness. I say, I say, boy. Oh, no. Oh, boy. All right, let's play the box office game, guys. Come on. All right.

An amazing movie. Yeah. And also, like you said, like indisputably influential. Like, just, you know. If you haven't, if you're listening to this podcast, one of those people who can listen to a podcast, talk about a movie you haven't seen yet, do yourself a favor.

I think it's like, just go see this movie. And it's like so simple and stripped down in the best way possible. This is the kind of movie and it's hack to say, this is the kind of movie that makes me want to make movies. Totally. Cause you just see it and you're like, fuck,

this maybe is something I could do. I want to get a chain. I want to get a bag of sand and I want to get movies. Totally. That's fair. You just see it and you're like, fuck, this maybe is something I could do. I want to get a chain. I want to get a bag of sand. And I want to get a camera. And let's do this thing. Okay, I'm glad you want to get a camera because I was worried there for a second. You were going to be missing one big L.

I'm going to get a motorcycle, quit my job, and live in the desert. Yeah, sounds like a good movie. Dude, when I saw this movie, it inspired me. And I opened a gas station. And bought a shotgun.

Honestly, that might be the most fruitful adventure you can take from this movie is invest in gas. I do like the sort of fake-out at the end of the tanker getting shot, the sand coming out. You thinking that it's this totally bleak ending of like it was all for naught. Yeah. And then it was like, no, they were using him as a distraction. Right. We got all the gas. That part is fucking cool.

Yeah. Everyone just had a tank in their own vehicle. Yeah. Mad Max 2, called the Road Warrior in many countries, made $23 million in America. I don't have worldwide numbers. Okay. It opened to two million dollars worldwide not yet yet apparently made 10 million australian dollars in australia

it opened at number four okay on may 21st uh 1982 in america so you know i'm three i'm four months old so you saw it right the amount of movies I did see in the theater that I in hindsight like when I do the math on it I'm like when did T2 come out

I was 10 and I saw that Jesus well T2 is also that era where R rated movies have like toys and cartoon shows

right where you know and you're like you're aware of it before it comes out you're like I never saw the trailer but I know what Terminator is I haven't seen the first one.

But they're pitching this hard to me in the pages of Nickelodeon magazine. All right, number one is a big medieval or fantasy action movie with a big star. I'm sure you've done it on your podcast. Yes, and I believe there can be only one. Oh, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait. Wait, no, say i believe there can be only one oh no no no wait wait wait no say it there can be only one no it's not that it's not highlander no oh um what other it's not excalibur no it's not although there's a movie coming up in this top five that is sort of an excalibur rip dragon slayer no i've never heard of it. We'll get to that. Okay. Number one, big star.

But this is an early movie for it. It's not Ladyhawk? No. Bigger, bigger. Bigger? Yeah. How big? The big, oh, Legend?

Legend? Tom Cruise? Oh, no, no, no, not Legend. No, no, no. That was a good guess, though. Good guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry.

Bigger star. Big, big star. Physically dead. Oh, it's Conan. Yes. Which one? Wait, 82 is the Destroyer. It's the Barbarian.

Oh, Barbarian, the first one. Oh, okay. The Conqueror was what the third one was going to be called, right? Yes. The second one is the Destroyer. Yeah, Destroyer is Grace Jones. Which has made $20 million in two weeks. Yeah.

And is a big hit. That was the one for him. I mean, he had Terminator already, obviously. That movie fucking owns number two is comedy with a big comedy star of the 80s one of his weirder movies

one of his better movies I think one of his better and weirder films yeah have you ever seen this one no and he's the guy he doesn't have like a partner in this one is this guy And he's the guy. He doesn't have a partner in this one? Is this guy one of Griffin's faves? Yeah.

So is it gung-ho? Okay. Is it a Keaton, a Murray, or a Martin? Martin. I was guessing Keaton. And it's not the jerk, right? No. Jerk's 80, I think. It's one of his weirder ones. It's one of his weirder ones it's one of his weirder ones

is it it's not dead men don't wear plaid it is 1982's dead men don't wear plaid yeah both weird and great

yeah it's good right I haven't seen that movie in forever I think it's Carl Reiner movie it's his follow up to the jerk yeah with Carl Reiner it's kind of incredible

how Carl Reiner was just all in on Steve Martin he was a guy from a different generation. Not a bad bet. But he made him a movie star and then stuck with him and did four more movies.

Well, yeah. I think when you're like Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, too. You found the guy. You're like, why would you move on from there? This is a resource.

Number three is one of the most successful films of 1982. It's a comedy. It invents a genre that is big in the 80s and resurges in the late 90s. Porky's. John got it. Oh, sorry.

Sorry. That was impressive. I want to play it. Good pull. Pornography. Softcore pornography. I have seen Porky's. There is a plot in that it's like, we're graduating. There's no fucking plot. The same director who then goes on to do a Christmas story and baby geniuses I mean it is impossible that is weird to think that those three movies are made by the same person like one

is so gross one is so perfect and one is like made by someone who doesn't get a Christmas story 106 million dollars humongous in 82 oh humongous humongous. In 82. It's crazy. Humongous. And you're like, what's the premise? No stars come out of it? It is so rare for a movie. I don't think you know stars. I mean, Kim Cattrall is in it. But apart from that, no one is even.

No, Booger is kind of a star. Wait, what's that? No, Booger is a nerd. Booger is a nerd. Oh, sorry. Which is like, at least has like a plot. Right. You know, it's like sort of a vaguely.

All of the characters have like some differentiation you're like oh you're the gay character you're the real nerd Porky's has like one loser and five beefcakes and then just a bunch of like anonymous women I believe one of the guys names is Beef in the movie or Meat because that's like what a nickname of mine was

I just think it's like fascinating that most movies that are that big launch one major career. And I guess I forgot Kim Cattrall was in it, but you even look at Revenge of the Nerds and you're like, right, Anthony Edwards. Like they're like, John Goodman's in this, you know? I mean, Kim Cattrall had been in stuff. I don't know.

Anyway. Crazy. Number four is The Road Warrior. Number five is a movie I've never heard of. Is this the medieval one? Yeah. And you've never heard of it? No. Krull. No, I've heard of Krull. I grew up in Britain. What? It's not...

Is it a one-word title? No, it's many words. It's many words? Five. Five words. Brother. Okay. It was an independent film, which is wild.

It made $40 million. It was very successful. It's like a medieval independent film with five words in the title million dollars and it was like very successful it's like a medieval independent film with five words in the title yeah it was horribly reviewed nonetheless it was sort of a hit wow um any stars about no no it's about what i don't know a mercenary with a three-bladed sword rescues a princess and there's an evil sorcerer like it sounds like that sounds like crawl yeah yeah it's the three-bladed sword. You're right. I don't know. It sounds like someone wrote a

sort of junky fantasy movie. What's it called? The Sword and the Sorcerer. Wow. I cannot place it. It's so generic. But it is one of those names that's like, if you search it, you would get like a thousand results. Of course. The guy who directed it went on to make the Captain America movie with J.D. Salinger's son.

Oh, Albert Pyun or whatever his name is? Yes. Wow. So who I think was just like a low budget guy. Yes. I think he did. I love Blank Check for that last. For that pull.

That exact back and forth interaction where you're like, well, I never heard of this movie. But he did go on to make the Captain America movie with J.D. Salinger's son. That everyone knows what we're talking about. Oh, Albert Pyun. I know that director's name. It's a Pyun picture. You guys are fucking freaks. I'm going to restate it because it was behind the Patreon paywall.

But on an episode where we had my father on and we were discussing the history of New Line Pictures, David, my father, and I pretty much in unison went, well, it's just a label now. And Ben went, Jesus fucking Christ. You are the dorkiest people in the world. That's awesome. We were all rushing to say, but New Line's just a label now. My wife's first job was at New Line and was so huge for me as like, we're talking about

while the fucking, this is 2004. This is like Lord of the Rings is coming. And it was such an awesome time. She's like, we have a DVD closet. I'm like, take a picture of it. Show me all the DVDs. I'll tell you what to steal. My dad's office was next to New Line's office.

It was either he was the floor above or he was at the end of the floor. Was it like, is 888, right? This was, well. Oh, no. This would have been like mid-90s. Oh, okay, okay. But the moment I remember very specifically is Austin Powers came out. And for the first time, I cared about New Line. And they would get all this-90s. Oh, okay, okay. But the moment I remember very specifically is Austin Powers came out. And for the first time, I cared about New Line, and they would get all this Austin Powers merch.

Oh, cool. And I would like, go visit my dad at the office, and then go down to the bathroom, which is on the New Line floor. That's awesome. And then I knew which people to bug about like Austin Powers shit they were getting. Some other movies in the top ten. Fighting Back, Tom Skerritt kind of death wishy movie. Okay. Jared's a Fire.

Yeah. Best Picture picture Victor Victoria on Golden Annie opening in limited release one of the blockbusters of the year John Huston's Annie

yeah one of the wildest blank checks of all time so weird the first film I ever saw really yes whoa

my parents took me to like some revival of it when I was like two and a half years old it is weird how many Oscar movies are in the top 10 considering this is May. It's Memorial Day weekend essentially. Yeah. It's like that used to be a thing.

You didn't have to release a movie in the last three months of the year. But wasn't 82 also sort of famously a good movie year too? I feel like, or am I just remembering that because it's my first year? Well, I feel like it's a good movie year, but not a great Oscar year. It's a good movie year, E. great Oscar year um it's a good movie year E.T. right that's what I'm thinking of

Blade Runner The Thing right these are good movies wait wait wait wait a second so wait Tarot to Fire

I think is a holdover for last year's Oscars and Golden Plum must be the same thing as well yeah yeah cause it's you know right cause this is

the Gandhi E.T. year yeah 82 rules Fast Times at Richmond High Classic Verdict Masterpiece Rathacon Road Warrior Tron Gandhi ET year. Yeah, 82 rules. Fast Times at Richmond High, The Verdict, Rathacon, Road Warrior,

Tron, 48 Hours, Diner, Tootsie, like there's all, you know. Gandhi wins Best Picture, which is sort of like,

you know. But that makes sense at least. This is a year that I was born, and there's no way that these movies could have any of an effect on me because I was born that year but the movies you just list arguably are 8 facets of my personality I just realized

when you said 48 hours I think we're at peak I think you make that potion and you turn into Gabriel I'm not born for years after this and I'm at least 40% Tron I'm a lot of Tron I'm Tron curious I'm thinking least 40% Tron. Right? Yeah, you're 45. I'm a lot of Tron bullshit. I'm Tron curious.

I'm thinking about getting a light cycle. I'm pretty Tron fluid, I will say. I'm Tron non-conforming. Tron conforming. Yeah. But it is, okay, so it's the opposite phenomenon of what I thought, but an equally wild thing that in May, the films from that year's Oscars that came out the previous year

are still burning up the box office. VHS is a new technology. They're still in top 10. It fucking runs. My dad was talking about this as if it was still 1982 or whatever. He was like, well, what? Parasite's made $25 million, so if it wins

Best Picture, it'll get to 50 or 60. If it wins Best Picture, it will have been out on itunes for two months right right that no longer happens like slumdog millionaire was the last one where it hadn't made most of its movie by the time it won best picture most of it then kind of exploded yeah oh that makes sense now they want it out on streaming by the time it wins best picture so they can just immediately get the rentals. I saw 1917 on Screener and I want so I've never felt like, this rarely happens where I'm like, I guess I want to see it again.

I'm like, now I gotta go see this again. Because my father-in-law is only made to be seen in it. Right, exactly. And it was fine on DVD. I enjoyed it, but I'm like, fuck, I would have killed to see this in a huge screen. Totally, and that is a movie too too, where you want to see it with audience responses and stuff.

It's so visceral that you want all of that. Well, The Road Warrior. What a great movie. Were you going to do Merch Corner? Did you look up? Yes. Okay, so I mean, I realized... There's like original toys. So I realized recently that Merch Corner almost never

works if it's me describing a visual. Right. But there is kind of a story to this, which is he never did merchandise originally, okay?

But then in the early 2000s, so like 20 years later, a toy company started releasing action figures of the Road Warrior and it felt like this like, oh, the gates are open, the collector's market

has kind of come up, now finally the Mad Max toys exist. And then they all disappeared from shelves. Sure. And it turned out that the company was kind of dodgy, and they never properly got the rights for them. Right. They were just like, let's just do it.

Who's going to get mad at us? Totally. It's a 20-year-old movie. It's not like the guy's got something in the works where he wants to make another one of these. There's no fucking way. He's making happy feet. He doesn't want to do this shit. Well, little did you know.

This was the company that had the rights to Matrix. And then that blew up. and they sold a bunch of Matrix merch, and it was like, oh, they got the thing that everyone passed on that no one wanted, and then they started getting all these crazy licenses, and then it turned out they had not properly negotiated anything. They were kind of operating on the assumption that the deal had closed.

That sounds like a Netflix shit I'd watch or whatever. It went under within four years. They're kind of a fascinating company. And two toys. It was like people came from Kenner who worked on like Star Wars and then got really excited about like, we're going to make the action movies that never got toys for adults now. And they did like fucking Steven Seagal. Which is a smart business model, yeah.

Like Big Trouble in Little Chinatown. I would kill to have a fucking Jack Burton action figure. And all of them were like have now like disappeared go for insane prices because it was taken off the market and since then George Miller's like no merchandising a year after Fury Road came out

he like relented to Funko Pops and Funko was very clear that they were like we're doing this so that hopefully they'll let us make a ton of stuff and then he was like no that's the end all be all good for him. Yeah, kind of,

but also I want everything. And I just had this thought watching this movie this morning, um, of the video game road rash. They did do a video game. It was highly influential to me. Yes. Um,

and I want a road rash movie. Yeah. There is just about motorcyclists that fight with chains and lead pipes and race. There were so many video games in the mid-90s that I had no time for that were like for you, marketed at you. Like Armageddon or whatever. You were like, yeah! I went into a video store and someone just threw it at my head. I'm also realizing because of, John, you making the comparison that if Ben had been a coked up

studio executive in the early 90s, he would have been the guy who came up with Waterworld. I got it, I got it. So it's Mad Max, but it's bigger and it's wetter. It's like, Ben wants us to do a movie about water. It's like, wasn't he the dry guy? He's like, not anymore. His wife

just left him. Susie left him. He's been on a bender and now he's the wet guy yeah he got a fucking dunk pool put in his office he's been splashing around in there guy's ready to rock

he's only doing jacuzzi meetings now it's so funny how much Waterworld ripped off this it's crazy even there's a gyrocopter in Waterworld

and it's also it is also amazing that like so many people have ripped off pieces of what he did and no one came close until he came back 20 years later and arguably outdid himself.

And now he's walked off the field again and you've seen the last five years people trying to sort of do Fury Road stuff and it's like futile. Maybe he'll do it again? We'll talk about it. I would fucking shit a biscuit if he comes back in 10 years and he doesn't do another movie for 10 years and just delivers

Fury Road 2, Fury Warrior. It's been 5 years. It's been 5 years. And he's supposed to be starting production on a movie in 2020 starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba that is apparently a romance about a genie. Which one of them

is the genie? That's the question! I'll tell you, I hate to give this answer to someone that I just met, but it doesn't matter. I'm fucking on fucking board, dude. Holy shit. And that's the thing, George Miller has whatever

the Gabrus blank check version is. I'll see whatever that guy puts out. Safdie Brothers, there's few people that I'll just see. You pre-bought your tickets. is. I'll see whatever that guy puts out. Safdie Brothers, there's few people that I'll just see. You pre-bought your tickets. Yes. I'll help you build a boat. You've GoFundMe. George Miller, if you're listening to this, I promise you, I promise you,

you have at least one ticket sale of whatever you make for the rest of your life. And I see shit in theaters. Yes. Thank you so much for being on the show. Other than your many podcasts, which you should promote now. Oh, now's the time. Yeah you so much for being on the show. Other than your many podcasts which you should promote now. Now's the time. Yeah, so I have a podcast called High and Mighty that Griffin's been on a few times. Tonight, at the

time we're recording, I am going to be going with you to do a power hour on stage drinking a shot of White Claw every minute. If you're a movie head, I have a movie podcast that's on Patreon called Action Boys where three dudes review action movies

often longer than the run time of the movies themselves. I mean, if you like Blank Check, you like the sound of that. Yeah, exactly. And we have, you know,

we have a ton of episodes now. So if you want to jump on for one month and listen to like 100 episodes and then cancel your shit, go for it. Hide them in a tanker truck. Don't give them ideas.

No, no, no. Monthly, guys. Just put the credit card info in and forget about it. Set it go for it. Hide them in a tanker truck. Don't give them ideas. No, no, no. Monthly, guys. Just put the credit card info in and forget about it. Set it and forget it. I want to make money off you like 24-hour fitness has been for 10 years. And you got the Gino Lombardo show on Stitcher. And I got the Gino Lombardo show on Stitcher Premium. Gino Lombardo, my favorite character in comedy.

Thank you. And I appreciate you calling him a character. That's my character who's pretty much just a more unfiltered version of myself doing a shitty accent but i did 10 episodes of a drive time radio show fully uh improvised but with tons of bits i i do like eight fake commercials per episode so it's like the most amount of work i've put into a podcast ever possibly anything ever, but definitely. And one last thing to plug. If you're ever on YouTube, search Strong Island.

It's still up, Griffin. Really? I found it the other day. The web series. I sent a screenshot to Justin of me, you, and him. Justin Tyler and John Gabrus' web series in which Riley Salner and I appear in an episode. Yeah, where Griffin plays a child to our adults. And we are four years in age difference. Can I ask you one final question?

Sure. If, and it's unlikely, but by the time this episode comes out, we will know. It will have happened. If Bombshell wins Best Cast at the SAG Awards, will you tell people, like, I was part of the SAG winning cast? That's the thing. I don't know how far down they go. Here's my bigger thing If Charlize

Did she get nominated for She did She did You might be the clip I might be in her Oscar Gaber's might be the clip Yeah you're right You're right

There's a good chance Like that's the biggest bet I have is that I end up You see my face at the Oscars Yeah And somehow I'm not If they get the SAG award

Which I think it seems like It might be in the bag Cause it's like Just names alone A lot of people Yeah They got the quantity going not if they get the SAG award which I think it seems like it might be in the bag because it's like just names alone a lot of people yeah they got the quantity going

yeah if they can get because if you're the SAG award you want that table right you want a shot of that fucking table right right

yeah I would love to I would love to be invited so you you might be a theoretical you probably won't get a trophy but you can tell people

that you won a sagal oh yeah well the funny thing is like my friend our friend Darcy is in the movie too and she has like two more scenes than me

but she's more famous has more and so we went I went to the cast and crew screening and I was like oh are you going to this she's like yeah I'll see you there

and then like a couple days later she was on the red carpet for the premiere I'm like I wasn't invited to that oh that's when just like real life always at the bachelor party never in bridal party And like a couple of days later, she was on the red carpet for the premiere. I'm like, I wasn't invited to that. Just like real life.

Always at the bachelor party. Never in bridal party. And David, next time I'm in New York doing a high and mighty or next time you're in LA ever, I want you to do come do high and mighty. Let's talk about it. Very. I would love to grow up in America.

So we have a lot of stuff in common. I lived here for nine full years before I moved to Britain. What? What? Wait, wait, should the bit now be that I'm like but I also lived in America? It is funny because the premise of High and Mighty is find a common ground. Something that you love with Gabriel.

Griffin's been on four times talking about Fast and the Furious. I'm aware. By the way, during the power hour tonight, I'm mostly going to talk about Fast and the Furious. We're going to have a hard time not doing it. It would be quite a move though if you picked your subject for a High and Mighty episode to be America. Channel of America. Greatest country on Earth.

I don't know about you, but from zero to nine, I love this place. Yeah, I love America from 86 to 95. Those were the good years. Those were the good years. Well, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Go to patreon.com backslash blank check for blank check special features. We're at this point in time.

We're probably, we're dropping some toy stories. We're finishing up Star Wars, something like that. Ben is whispering something very secret to David. It's not going to be referenced on air. Ben has to go. Jesus, not going to be referenced on air. Ben has to go. Jesus, end that fucking... Okay, Ben wants me to end the fucking episode. Go to blankiesirad.com

for some real nerdy shit. Thanks to Joe Bone and Pat Rounce for our artwork. Lane Montgomery for our theme song. And for Guto for our social media. Producer Rachel for our editing. He's packing up the laptop. And as always, Ben does not like me narrating

what he's doing right now, but he is zipping up his bag with a lot of animosity. It's very weird how uncomfortable he is with this. I have to go to therapy. I'm late already. Congratulations, Humblebrag! That's the name of my clothing brand!