Blank Check with Griffin & David - Memoirs of an Invisible Man with Alan Sepinwall

Episode Date: October 24, 2021

In which we try to find the John Carpenter in what is overwhelmingly a Chevy Chase vanity project. The legendary Alan Sepinwall (Rolling Stone) joins us to make sense of this befuddling genre mishmash. What are the invisibility rules of this movie? Who is the silver-voiced British man named “Richard” and is that his real voice? Is Chevy Chase good at acting? Does it matter? In this movie…yeah, it kind of does! We’re sad to see the Carpenter hot streak end with this movie, but that’s what Blank Check is all about - the bounces, baby! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Women want him for his width. The CIA wants him for his width. The CIA wants him for his body. All Nick wants is his podcast back. Okay, so tell us your thought process. Okay, so we were talking about this with our guest, who will probably be introduced 45 minutes from now after he's already said a copious amount of things. Okay, go on.

I can say a few things. You can say a lot of things. You can say anything you want. I have a lot of thoughts, but I want to hear your thought process first. So I was looking through the quotes page, and there are not a lot of great options. And you said,

I just want my molecules back, which is probably the most distinctive line in this film, right? Yeah, very badly delivered, which we'll talk about. We will talk about. One might say. My problem was, I said, I can't change that line because then it becomes meaningless if you just say

I want my podcast back. That could be any that sounds like any Harrison Ford thriller. Yeah. Right. Mel Gibson give me back my son.

Right. There's nothing distinctive there. The tagline offers a little more context. Now here's the thing. None of the lines are easily butchered in the way I like to

cram in the word podcast but this is one of those movies I've often talked about, David. How if you read the IMDb quotes page for You, Me, and Dupree, a comedy directed by the most successful directors of the 2010s. The Russo brothers, that's true. The men who made Welcome to Collinwood. Yes.

Which made, what, that make $2.8 billion? I think so. That's the highest grossing point. When you read the quotes page for You, Me, and Dupree dupree you go oh is this the funniest screenplay ever written like i have been directed by one of the russo brothers so i will not hear people speak ill of them in the in my presence this is my this is my stance my stance is i remember seeing you mean dupree and going okay and then i read the quotes page and i go like did fucking noel coward write this like every quote in that context somehow is funny and then you watch the clips and it's like ow did fucking Noel Coward write this? Like every quote in that context

somehow is funny. And then you watch the clips and it's like Owen Wilson's doing his job. Russo Brothers directed it OK. But for some reason, those things work better out of context. You look at some of these quotes

for Memoirs of Invisible Man out of context and you go like, does this movie fucking rule? Like now you listen to me, you son of a bitch. I've lost everything but my soul. You're not going to take that away from me. Is that from a fucking early Michael Mann movie?

I know what you're saying. Right. So you're saying it's actually not that it's full of zingers. It's actually just kind of full of like weighty lines that you're sort of impressed by. I've dealt with people like this before. No close personal ties, no strong political beliefs, no particular interests. In fact, when you think about it, the man has the perfect profile. He was invisible

before he was invisible. I'm not saying these are the best lines ever written, but you read them in this context and you're like, huh, there's like a little bit of salt here. I mean, part of the problem is that the movie is trying, the movie was written to be one thing and made to be another thing. And so a lot of this dialogue I think would work in more of a thriller

context, which the movie is sometimes and sometimes not. It's really all over the map. It's lonely, isn't it? When you're a freak. Oh, we will talk about lonely. That's so much.

It just sounds overwrought. It's just, I guess I just like the idea of this kind of like overwrought fucking like tough men pot. Someone else like that idea. Yeah. Perhaps a small reminder of the state of things is in order. I'm the one who kills people, Warren,

not you. And if you screw up with me, I will cut off your testicles, I will lightly fry them, and Morrissey here will have them for lunch. I mean, that's, I guess, he got what he asked for, right?

Which was a tough existential thriller about being invisible. About the loneliness of invisibility. Yes. And if you read it on the page, maybe you're like, well, you know what? We're going to have a great time making this great movie that people will like and see, pay money for. Right, the problem is then there's things like,

brackets, while sucking on her finger, Alice Monroe. There's really only a few places in the Amazon that could still be considered virgin what yeah uh but here here's one that i think is kind of the most telling this is this is a tobo line he said tobo says to sam neill it's not what it is it's what it isn't yeah and that's kind of the whole movie it's not what it is it's what it is not god i i mean i will say i was expecting to watch this movie and just be like outright flummoxed by it sure i am i am oddly compelled by this film like i enjoyed watching it part of it is that it is like neither fish nor fowl it is

a fish with a duck bill and legs and wings that don't function right it's like some weird but like watching it walk is pretty entertaining it was not like giving me a headache it was not boring me i was really interesting i was sort of i would say it was boring i was expecting to be bored right i cannot argue this movie is good, but it is compelling. Yes. Well, it has a compelling idea. It has many compelling ideas. It has some compelling ideas. And I was compelled by it.

Is this not what we like talking about here on a little podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David? I am Griffin. I'm David. So fast. He's getting quick. He's learning. But I'm like the guy who, like the cowboy who shoots so quickly that he shoots a sign or whatever.

He's not aiming. He's just like, I just gotta shoot it really fast. You become Don Knotts. You're the shakiest gun in the West. That's a thought I had recently. By the way, I'll just pitch very quickly on air. What if we did Don Knotts as a Patreon miniseries? Did he direct Don Knotts? He directed? No, that's why I'm saying Patreon. Oh, do you like Don Knotts? Incredible Mr. Limpet. Right, I'm like, there are he direct Don Knotts? He directed? No, that's why I'm saying Patreon.

Oh, do you like Don Knotts' Incredibles? Incredible Mr. Limpet. Right, I'm like, there are like five Don Knotts movies that almost feel like a franchise. Now I'm taking a look. Go ahead.

Shake His Gun in the West, The Ghost of Mrs. Chick. What does his voice sound like? I know he's got a female voice. Oh, right. The Angel Lemon! That's what I remember. There's an episode of Matlock

where Don Knotts... The Love God question mark. Right. That's when I remember. There's an episode of Matlock where Don Knotts. The love god question mark. Right. What's the one, the astronaut one? The reluctant astronaut? Is that what it's called? The reluctant astronaut. I just like that Don Knotts movies were,

what if Don Knotts was asked to do a thing and then the poster is him looking terrified? The ghost in Mr. Chicken that's a haunted house. What if he had to go in a haunted house? Oh, no! Limpet is Don Knotts in the Navy? What if he turns into a fish?

It's a very Rob Schneider kind of filmography. Yes. Now Don Knotts is a stapler. Right, right. You know what he's so good in his Pleasantville. He's great in that. He's so menacing. I should mention to people,

this is a podcast about filmography. Sorry, yeah. We're not talking about Don Knotts' filmography today, but maybe later. I'm testing the waters and dipping the toe into that ocean and hoping I don't turn into a fish. But it's a podcast about directors

who are given, who have massive success early on in their careers. Say, direct a film like Halloween and then are given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion products they want and sometimes those checks clear like escape from new york sure and sometimes they bounce really really fucking hard like memoirs of invisible this is his biggest bounce i guess in terms of both economically calamitous and universally disliked it has been a unique miniseries for us because even everything

that had bounced at the time for him has kind of aged well everything has gone from at least bounced to cult classic and some have gone to universally acknowledged masterpieces right and this is the first movie of his that has not been reclaimed. And for good reason. We're talking about John Carpenter. The miniseries is called They Podcast. And today we are finally opening up the memoirs of an invisible man. Are they memoirs?

He does like a 45 minute video diary. It's not like he sits down and gets know gets out the quill well he was just foreseeing like the rise of youtube and tiktok i think he was it's a forward-seeking character yes exactly yeah that's what chevy chase was he he saw the future he knew what to what to aim for yes and that that insight by the way of course come from our guest one of our finest cultural critics from rolling stone alan Alan Sepinwall. Hey, guys. He's here.

I'm so proud to be here to talk about the finest and most quintessentially John Carpenter movie of the entire miniseries. Now, Alan, we've talked about this. I think I mentioned this

in a previous episode. But you asked if you could ever come on the show and I said, we're doing John Carpenter. And we're both huge fans of your work. We're very flattered that you even wanted to be

on our silly show. But you made a fatal mistake yes i was very stupid and so i was like yeah i mean most of them are for grabs like what are some movies of his you like or you would want to talk about or and you give me a list probably i can't remember the exact list but probably had like escape from new york on it maybe or you know i was like assault on precinct 13 because i've seen every remake of rio bravo and starman on it maybe or you know I was like Assault on Precinct 13 because I've seen every remake of Rio Bravo and it had Starman on it because I even watched

all the episodes of the TV show that would have been fun actually yeah it would have been fun this is the thing you should have stopped there you shouldn't leave

well enough alone you made a rookie mistake unfortunately you said maybe Memoirs of an Invisible Man and I was like you've said the one no one has asked

you were immediately in the spreadsheet because it was just like well there are no bites on that and there are bites on every other film and we're gonna make you take the one you never should have offered yep good job by me very good job but but hey i think i think it's a hot episode in a lot of ways because this is such a career uh shifting point for him yes uh i mean you have the 70s and the 80s are fucking unstoppable for carpenter as we said even the things that were uh speed bumps for him at the time he is totally vindicated uh with

through modern eyes yes and then this is the beginning of the magic is sort of gone his 90s are shaggy and he makes one movie in the 2000s, one movie in the 2010s and we're out. Is that really? Yeah. Yeah, because that is rough. It's rough. The tale. It's rough. He's made two films in the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, in the last 20 years, six, five, six of his movies have gotten remade or sequelized or rebooted. Beyond that, a guy like steven spielberg who's pretty much exactly his age has made like 15 movies or whatever i mean obviously it's steven spielberg but like right you know there's something conscious there uh mike ryan friend of the show uh just told me he interviewed him i guess for halloween kills

he's like around he's around you know he's very around doing his fucking pores yeah he's playing his video games plays his video games so i've i've made comments in episodes about how he's like i don't want to make movies anymore i'm old just pay me for remaking my shit let me play video games then some people have corrected me and said like he really wants to make shit he had a fucking pitch at blumhouse that no that couldn't get off the ground and And it feels like him sort of just godfathering and blessing the Halloween Bree Boots was like the sort of concession prize for him. He's obviously a guy who contradicts himself a lot.

We're reading all these interviews from him and some of them he goes like, I don't give a shit, I don't care. And other ones he's like, I care so fucking much. So I believe that both things can be true at the same time. But it is somewhat surprising if, in fact, he still does want to do it, that

Jason Blum doesn't just go like, Hey, John, got an idea? Right. I'll give you 10 million bucks. Because apparently there's this pitch that's floating around for what he tried to set up at Blumhouse like eight years ago. I wonder if it's a, I could see, I feel like a lot of filmmakers like him who were very scrappy and bootstrappy

when they were young and had these films that were failures at the time that they fought really hard to make that became cult classics are like, I don't want to have to make a $3 million movie again. I'm old. If I'm going to do this, I want a proper budget. And I could see that maybe that's the case. And Blum is like, I can only get this made if it's under 10, which he doesn't want to do this. I want a proper budget. And I could see that maybe that's the case. And Blum is like,

I can only get this made if it's under 10, which he doesn't want to do. Or I don't know. I don't fucking know. It feels odd that someone wouldn't take a flyer on him now. But I also think that The Ward is maybe a movie that killed a lot of his interest. This is the first movie of his that he kind of disowned. Like there are things like Dark Star and The Fog where he's like, eh, I didn't fully execute what I wanted to do there, but it's my thing,

for better or worse. And this I've heard is a movie he just, like, doesn't like talking about. Like, he doesn't like acknowledging. Yeah. Well, no one liked it. But I mean,

but you can tell it, like, just, you know, I've not seen every John Carpenter movie. I'm not, like, a big horror guy, but, like, the ones that I do know and the ones that you guys

have been talking about in the miniseries like even when he does a hired gun thing, it still feels to a degree like a John Carpenter movie. It does. Yeah. You've talked about this does not. There's some decent craft in there and some good special effects, but like anybody could have made this movie. I recognize the

craft. I recognize the craft. There's nothing in the worldview of this movie. Not really. there's no personality of his that seeps into it i would say it and it's this funny thing where it's like it feels like he was brought on board because he's at this point well regarded in a way that chevy chase will respond to his hiring right chevy chase like i don't want to make a comedy you ain't great stop trying to make me make a comedy okay well who's around maybe john carpenter and chevy chase is like yeah like i want that guy like so now do you think it's that they thought chevy would respond

to him or do you think it's that they thought at this stage of carpenter's career where he'd been kind of in movie jail ever since they live yeah he would be malleable because this had been a project that they were having a great difficulty i think getting off the ground i think it's a two-pronged thing i think it's that and i think also he was at at this point for whatever failures he had had notorious for he gets it fucking done there's no drama bring it in comes in under budget under budget most of his films are profitable and even the ones that flopped at the time pretty quickly established tv but home video cult status the the the right the the fuss is that he will of course fight you on he's got strong opinions yeah on the final edit of the movie or something like that but he's like a consummate professional in terms of getting the movie

making your days delivering it you know i i think that's part of it. And you know, the guy knows how to handle the effects of the thing, designing these sequences, which this movie is going to be sold a lot on those visuals. It is while watching the trailer for this movie that tries its hardest to frame. This is more of a comedy, but also essentially features every single special effect shot in the movie. So it just gives it all away because they're like, what else do we have to put on the screen? Like I watched the trailer and I went like, does else do we have to put on the screen here? I watched the trailer and I went like,

does this movie cost a hundred million dollars? Is every scene like this? And it's like, there are a lot of gags, but the trailer features 98% of them. So Alan.

Yes. Did you see this film in theaters? I did see this film in a theater. Wow. I was a big Chevy Chase fan. Okay. Yeah. Fletch,

which I know you've covered on the show, was a very important movie for me as an adolescent. You know, I've reevaluated a little bit in the year since then but definitely like just sort of the wise ass chevy chase persona really spoke to me so you re-evaluate and you're like actually this is greater than i remember yes no okay okay a part of it is just watching what chevy has done since then both on screen and off screen. And you sort of, you start to recognize that Chevy, like the thing that I loved when I was 13, 14, like is really insufferable, you know, like in a lot of ways. And it's one of the reasons why, like, if you read the Tom Shales SNL oral history, Chevy is the one guy no one can say a nice thing about yeah you know why he got forced out at community why just sort of he keeps having these big crashes and burns because he's just he doesn't give a fuck about other people or at least he comes across in that way yeah yeah i mean you

will sometimes hear these weird contradictory stories about him even from the people who hate him and talk shit about him where they'll be like i will will isolate this thing. And there's this thing I always think about. Yeah. One of, you know, many hours-long interviews or podcast episodes that Harmon did where he said too many things about Chevy Chase, right? And Dan Harmon is like talking about how they fucking fought and all the stories about his absurd behavior and these horrible things

he'll casually say to people where you can't tell if it's a joke or if it's actually him attempting to hurt someone, even if it is a joke. Probably. It actually him attempting to hurt someone even if it is a joke probably it's not a joke that someone should make right right and then he's like there was this day when uh like one of the the craft services people came up to chevy and i was just like fuck don't do it man don't do it and was like hey my sister's on the phone and she's like your biggest fan would you mind like just saying hi to her and he took the phone out of the guy's hand and walked away for like 20 minutes and talked to this sister and then gave the phone back and the guy was like that was like the best my sister will never stop talking about that he was so sweet he asked so many questions about

herself yeah you know he did all the voices she wanted to hear it said the lines or whatever and it's like where does that come from like in isolation yes he's obviously a charming guy when he wants to be yes right but when he picks his moments is odd and the thing i wrote about and harman actually like thanked me for this a few months later when i initially reviewed community i was sort of comparing because joel mccall's character is named winger doing kind of a he's doing a bill murray thing and i'm sort of talking about the difference between bill murray and chevy chase is chevy is a soloist chevy is on screen to do chevy things yes you know if if there's another person on the screen with him they are a prop at best most of the time right with with the exception

of a few movies here and there whereas murray is collaborative he's he's always a leader type but he will interact with people and har Harmon said, like, I read that and I realized, okay, this is how I'm going to write that dynamic from now on. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. The community thing is so fascinating

because he is good in it. Yes. He's so good on it. And of course, the role is also this obviously evolving commentary on Chase now. Right. And what a difficult, miserable guy he is to interact with both rewatch that show feel him seething at the performance he's having to get you know like it's the anyway go on we both

rewatched that show during lockdown yeah and it is fascinating watching the evolution of it where he is so funny at the beginning of the show playing a very different character where it essentially is wouldn't it be funny if we had chevy chase this? You know, he does the physical comedy. He's not in things over. It's also an old guy who still thinks he's Chevy Chase. Right. But he's a little clueless. But he's sort of an innocent

to when the character becomes like the most malicious. Yes. He becomes like the tube of anti-God from Prince of Darkness, essentially. And he's good at both of them, but there's that weird feedback loop of he's so good when they start writing the commentary about how much they hate working

with him, and that fuels his anger even further, but he remains good at playing it. He can do it. It's within him. It's bizarre. Harmon understands him, but he hates that. He hates that Harmon understands him. This is sort of the end for him. This really is...

You realize looking at it... Vegas Vacation is the only legit comedy he makes after this. Here's what he does after this. He does Cops and Robertsons, right? Which is like a bust. I feel like it's a movie where everyone's like, Jesus fucking Christ. Put him back with Michael Ritchie and no. Right. And this movie, at least like people are flummoxed by it.

But it's like he's trying to do something different here. I don't know what or why, but there's at least an attempt to growth. And Cobbs and Robertson's, it's like, this is just diminished returns. Then he does Man of the House with Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Right. Which is like, I think sort of seen as like, is that the second rate to the getting even with dad? The classic, the kid's running the show now. Right.

Were you guys JTT guys? No. Absolutely. No. Come on. Home improvement? JTT?? Absolutely. Come on. Home Improvement? JTT? I'm aware Home Improvement and Simba. Of course he was young. Wait, wait. What?

What? What? Right? I never saw Man of the House. I watch Man of the House a lot. I used to think Man of the House was like a classic. Have you seen Man of the House? I've not seen Man of the House. You probably have seen Cops and Robbersons. I reviewed Cops and Rob the House was like a classic. Have you seen Man of the House? I've not seen Man of the House. But you probably have seen

Cops and Robbersons. I reviewed Cops and Robbersons for the college paper. Wow. And it was very disappointing because, again, at the time, I still really loved the idea of Chevy and Richie

coming back together. This would be great. And it's also sort of like the first movie to cash in on Jack Palance's Oscar comedy. Right? Like, it's less about that movie building off of his City Slickers performance

and more about, can we build a movie around how funny it was when he did fucking push-ups. But then after that is Vegas Vacation. Right. Which is his sort of like, alright, I'll do what you want of me. And everyone's like, no, we don't even want this. Right, that's his last, I guess I go back to the franchise.

Then his next movie, I believe after that is snow day which is like jesus dirty work then snow day oh dirty he's got the part in dirty work which you know which is good but like but that's him essentially like you know doing a favor to the guy who he sees as his heir apparent and then snow day it's like his face isn't on the poster his name's not above you're the old man now you're the crank. That's it. That's all you are now. He's in Orange County. Like a cameo once. Right.

He's in... What is vacuum? I don't know. Some of these things are like... You hate to be in a project that Wikipedia doesn't have a link to. He plays a kid in a movie called Our Italian Husband.

He plays a character named Paul Parmesan. That sounds pretty good. I mean, the truest actor in Hollywood history is Paul Parmesan. I mean, he was the voice of Karate Dog, I believe. Karate Dog? Yep. He's the voice of Cho-Cho. I don't know if that is the Karate Dog.

I think that is the titular Karate Dog. Yeah. I think that's just his given name. His Christian name. He played a train in the american dub of the magic roundabout movie which is called doogle yes the american dub right uh he was in and then then it's like when he's in hot tub time machine which is probably a year or two that's the same year same year yeah it's like that's the year when everyone is trying to revive it's like oh right

and he's settled into his older guy look yes The gray hair and there's a little rounder. And, you know, so like. His little glasses. Whereas, yeah, I don't. I mean, like, this is our first Chevy since Fletch, right? We've not discussed a Chevy. Right? No, I feel like it came up in some recent conversation.

But I think this is the first Chevy movie. It's the first movie we've talked about. Yeah. With him in it. Ben is racking his brain. I think we had it. Yeah. He's come up because we've like probably done box office games that mentioned like nothing

but trouble or talked SNL shit too. I feel like somewhat recently like Patreon and stuff. But it is. It is fascinating because he was it is easy to forget how big of a star he was. to forget how big of a star he was i think to a certain degree because a lot of his biggest hits have not particularly like lingered and the ones that did are ones where you can give credit to other people the ones that have lingered the most are probably caddyshack and vacation right i would say fletch has actually lingered less yes yeah then it maybe should haveletch, I think, has been revived in the last 10 years. There's a little more Fletch love out there.

But Three Amigos, I feel like it's kind of forgotten. But that's an example also of you go, like, Three Amigos, what do you think about there? You do not think about Chavis. Short, Chase is the third one. Chase is the third. But I also think people just, yeah, don't talk about that too much anymore.

They don't talk about spies like us. No, you don't talk about the Goldie Hawn movies, were huge for him you know and foul play is kind of an interesting counterpoint to this because that's like the last time he was really trying to do something even slightly serious in between the chevy's shtick yeah but that's like you don't think about those caddyshack you don't think about his performance like they're movies where he's like part of the soup you know yeah he's probably the least interesting member of the caddyshack stars right as much as like you know at least two of the four vacation movies remain pretty beloved and christmas vacation like most so i feel like

it's just like well that's like the franchise it's the vibe it's ensemble it's he's reacting to everything it's the set pieces it's the hijinks people like him in those movies but it feels like the franchise is bigger than he is in a certain weird way right yeah yes it's yes i mean he just will never have the legacy of a his contemporary like bill murray steve martin even a Martin Short, maybe. Totally. I mean, we talked about this. Like, part of it is that his reputation as a person is so toxic. This is what I remember bringing up recently,

but, like, there's that moment where suddenly NBC says, we'll greenlight community if you can get Chevy Chase, right? Like, that was the thing. They were like, we really want Chevy Chase back on primetime. We feel like it's a moment when people would like to see him again. And then Hot Tub Time Machine's the same fucking they were like we really want chevy chase back on prime time we feel like it's a moment when people would like to see him again and then hot tub time machines the same fucking year

from my memory uh or at least it happens right after right before and um i remember that being fucking dumb young struggling actor comedian whatever i go to la and i do these like general meetings or i do them in new y or whatever. And there was that air of all these development executives being like, we want to bring Chevy back. I'd go to all these meetings where whoever I was meeting with who was like the new junior executive at some new fucking startup production company had

a framed picture of Chevy Chase on their wall. And it was like, that's the moment where all the guys who were rising to these positions grew up thinking Chevy Chase was the coolest fucking guy in the world. Yep. It was Chevy and Murray, and Murray was getting his credit,

and Chevy wasn't. And everyone wanted to be the guy who brought Chase back. And this is the movie that kills Chase, arguably. That creates that dark period. The moment you're talking about, I mean, Alan, you were such a Chuck fan. Yes, he did several episodes of Chuck at the end of season two.

And that's sort of like the creative high point of Chuck in my opinion. Yes, I would agree. And I remember... Does he play Chuck's dad? No, he plays like the boss who like stole ideas from Chuck's dad. He's kind of the big bad of season two, right? Okay. Yeah, he's only in three episodes.

Only three, but I remember when you saw him, when I saw him, I was like, oh, Chevy Chase is kind of putting in an effort here. Yeah. This is exciting. Like, there was a, and then Community is,

you know, whatever, the fall after that. Right. And there was a moment where it was like, he's playing ball. The guy is, he's here. Yeah, we get it.

Lightning in a bottle. What if you could get him to give a shit again? Yeah. To your point, though, Alan, I saw some fucking algorithm recommending to me Quentin Tarantino talking about Chevy Chase and why he loved Chevy Chase movies in the 80s.

And for me, why Chase movies age less well than Murray movies, but it's the exact dynamic you're talking about, not just the fact that Chevy is just like a black hole in those movies who does whatever he wants and sucks everyone else into his orbit. And like, as much as Murray has his Bugs Bunny, like, wink to the camera, I'm not taking any of this too seriously shit. He likes the juice of playing off of other people in a way that Chevy does not necessarily. The other thing that Tarantino pointed out, which is true, is that like Chevy Chase movies have no art.

Chevy Chase movies, Chevy Chase does not change. There is usually some part of a Bill Murray movie where he learns the lesson, where he shows that he gives a shit. Yep. Where he's enough of an underdog that him taking it over on the bigger guys is seen as a victory. Whereas Chevy Chase pretty much always starts high status remains high status doesn't give a shit about anything the entire time acts like an asshole to everyone

gets the girl and wins at the end of the movie like there's no moment where he needs to like be humble where he needs to gain a conscience it's an odd thing that he was sort of this guy who just like, I'm a fucking asshole and I'm going to own it.

And there's this element of wish fulfillment of like, what if I could be the dude who just walked through everything, was constantly making these fucking deadpan jokes at everyone else's expense and just like sleepwalks my way through to another victory. People were into it for a while. And yet, like you said, this movie is sort of the end of that high status for him. And within a year, he's doing the Chevy Chase show. Have either of you ever seen the Chevy Chase show? That's the year after this.

I have seen the notorious first episode. That's the only one I've seen, but I've watched it its entirety. I think I may have watched a compilation of sort of bits once that he did, you know, like a video. I've never seen any, how did you,

I have to admit, I've never watched an episode. I know what it is. It's so bad. It's so weird. It's so weird. Because like the set is this like giant cavernous set. Yeah.

That he can't fill it all with his personality. Cause he seems kind of uncomfortable. Yeah. Yep. And like nothing about it works except some of the cutaway gags that are kind of dark you're like okay i mean i guess this is a new thing but it almost plays like the eric andre show or something now where you're like what if a talk show is hosted by someone with complete contempt and the audience is held hostage no i mean that's what it is because

like like letterman mostly does not really like or care about his guests but he likes making the show loves making yes so he likes engaging even if he does not necessarily care about who you are as a person or what you're there to promote right chevy just did not want to be there like maybe he wanted an excuse to play piano on national television and that's about it but i feel like I've read interviews with him where he's just like I don't know they offered me a lot of money it felt like a bad idea I hate TV I think it's stupid I don't like talk shows

I didn't want to do it for very long and it's like so what's the point they like renamed a theater after you but that makes me think so much of it was the failure of this movie I mean JJ and Nick are researchers dug up so much shit in in researching for memoirs of an invisible man but there's so many interviews from before during and after this movie

that are just about like he really felt like i have wrung this dry the chevy chase persona is done i'm tired of these movies i'm not putting effort into them i don't like this persona anymore i have contempt for the audience still wanting to see me do this shit. I need to figure out how to evolve. And this was a very, very awkward attempt of him trying to figure out how to evolve into a new era. And when this didn't work, I think

he just became so contemptuous of everyone and everything. Like, as much as you hear bad stories about Chevy from the 70s and 80s, the 90s are where things really kick into gear. And I think this failing, he's just like, fuck it. I don't know. Fuck you.

I'm going to shovel shit into your mouth. Yeah. And but it's and also it's just once you're not a hit maker, no one's going to put up with that. Right. So you'll hear more about it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Listen up, let me tell you a story.

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Now on stage. Book at Mirvish.com. Okay, now here's the question. Do you think that his problem with his persona, the evolution, is that he always had to be cool? I think that's the thing think i'm thinking about it because i think like if he was like a loser or a bumbling idiot or just played into he's always like the coolest fucking guy but i think he likes that no i know but i'm saying if he had what he could have evolved into like how he could have maybe changed actually and like had a whole other

era in his career as I feel like pivoting in a way like that I agree I mean Harmon always talked about how he would like pull him aside and be like you're writing for me wrong audiences like it when I'm the cool guy who's above it all and is unflappable yeah and he would be saying that like season three you know and he would just be like dude and he's like i'm like the cool young handsome guy like you should be giving me the things i wouldn't say young but you know he'd be like you should be writing for me the same stuff you're writing for mikhail you're getting my persona wrong and he just lacked that self-awareness even a point where physically he was not seen that way aside from his reputation not being that

i also think it is telling that like someone like bill murray who wes anderson is able to finally cultivate the like what's what's the more serious darker side to this persona right and brings it to the forefront and it fucking works and he has his run there you know arguably culminating or at least peaking with loss and translation everyone's like fuck you took everything that was interesting about this guy and you figured out a way to not dampen his charisma but give a dramatic performance

that still retained everything we like about him as a movie star. I feel like this movie is trying to do that, but as much as he wants to make a movie about the loneliness of being invisible, and there was clearly such an anger and contempt to Chevy Chase, where you see,

he does seem like someone who should be able to do like an Albert Brooks and drive. Yeah, but this is my sure. He will not give up. I agree with Ben. The idea of being the guy who's above it all. I don't disagree. You need to lean into how sad and lonely and angry this guy is. And he still wants to have his little like bon mots to camera where he's like well i don't know this is my larger take he's not as good an actor as anyone we're mentioning absolutely he's

not as talented a comedian as anyone we're mentioning what he was was handsome fit a certain profile he is handsome so charming so yeah charming and obviously had the sort of gift of the physical comedy and i think i think he's sort of verbally dexterous in a way that like it's fun not a lot of people have been able to do it's a good point and that's why fletch is so good because it's a lot of yeah no i still i'd love fletch but it's sort of like it's right now you watch it and you're like god this guy is such an asshole absolutely but he's a funny asshole he just doesn't have him in him in my opinion to do like the whatever this sort of like performance that surprises you and he knows it is my other like there's a half of him that doesn't know it right

where he's like no come on but then there's the thing with pierce in community half of him knows like yeah this is who i am and that's why he's so mad and like you know it's sort of that's why it's like the good dramatic performance he could give would be very villainous right it would be very dark i would assume i it's hard to imagine him playing like a kindly grandpa right but i don't think he will let himself do that to a certain degree wants to put up with it because and again and also even though there's that brief moment you're talking about like now there's no one being like is there a chevy chase angle we haven't found could we revive him again like no one thinks that anymore i saw some 60 minutes interview with him maybe on the sand wants to reboot chevy single-handedly van is gonna assign chevy cheese to a five picture deal ham is doing uh

ham is doing ham is doing flat and ham makes sense in so many ways for that role. More than a Zach Braff or even a Sudsy. You think it makes more sense than Sudsy? Have you guys read the books? I've now, after, I love the movie so much, I went and read all the Fletch books.

No. Are they good? Yeah. Not all of them are good. Some of them are actually really terrible, but there's like four or five that are fantastic that I've read a bunch of times.

They're basically all dialogue. It's sort of like you know you know the friends of eddie coyle you know it's just sort of like banter and fletch in those is a devastatingly handsome guy very confident sort of so like you can sort of see certain ways in which he's chevy but he is still invested in a way that chevy as fletch in those two movies is not part of his thing. Who gives a shit? Right. Yeah. Like Ham's good for that.

He's a great reader of dialogue. Yeah. He's handsome. Yeah. I'm funny. My whole thing with him is I feel like people are rude to him now because he's never hit gold in a movie. Yeah.

So I think people are a little down on him and I'm just, I want him to surprise people like i i kind of want the hammer so weird where i feel like every other year ham will do a movie and people will be like he's really good in this i think this is the one that finally gets him out of the don draper box and then it doesn't work and even some of them are hits like the fucking town or baby driver people are like he's goodness and he's playing a very different part yeah and then the movie's a hit and then maybe other people pop from it and then it goes back to oh he's like funny when you cast him in a cameo on a comedy show and otherwise i'm always going to view him as don drape yeah but the weird thing is like what like why has no one

built a whole comedy around him before because he always comes in and he's like the m the mvp on these other things bridesmaids or whatever it was fucking keeping up with the joneses oh which is a bizarre train wrecking movie directed by greg mottola who now also is directing the flesh movie right mottola is doing the flesh i believe yeah so maybe that's uh maybe i mean fletch is what you're asking for they probably shouldn't call it confess fletch i know that's the name of a book they should call it confessions yes and also that book is interesting because's the name of a book. They should call it Conflessions. Yes. And also that book is interesting

because it's sort of a, it's a double act where without spoiling too much, like a lot of the plot is resolved by the other character and not Fletch. So I wonder what they're going to do with that in this movie. Is that the female lead?

No, no. There's a Boston police detective named Flynn who then gets a sp-off series of books no it's playing flynn well the other male actors in this movie who could play a flynn are kyle mclaughlin and john slattery be funny to have john slattery in a double act i don't know yep yep uh don't really know marcia gay harden and roy wood jr also on board. Anyway, look, yeah, I don't know. Anyway. Yes. If I went into a lab and was like, let me crack the Chevy Chase code and create a modern movie star,

I would, like, throw my hands up in frustration after with what I got. I'd be like, this isn't a movie star. Like, he's a movie star because he hits at the right moment. Yes. It's not like Chevy Chase is, like, a thing that Hollywood endlessly repeats. No, and it is. I mean, I feel like wevy chase is like a thing that hollywood endlessly repeats no and it

is i mean we've i feel like we talked about to a certain degree he's like the comedic mirror of michael douglas right where you're like why did this guy become such a big movie star obviously i love michael douglas he's a great actor right but there's more malleable than yes but there was a 20-year run there where his stock and trade is just what an absolute piece of shit. How am I rooting for this guy? Like, what's going on? This guy fucking sucks. And it doesn't matter

if he's in a comedy, if he's in a thriller, if he's in a drama. It's like, this guy should be fucking murdered and somehow you're still rooting for him scene after scene. What do you want to do?

They also both are just like, they do cocaine. Right, right. They're both just coked out of their fucking mind. Like, it might be these guys, their careers followed the arc of cocaine in American culture so cleanly.

Except like... It's not like cocaine disappears, but you know what I'm saying. You can't imagine Chevy Chase playing Liberace. No. Right, you know, Michael Douglas actually did find his way out. He's got more bottom.

He's got more craft. Chevy doesn't do characters. I mean, you look at what he did as Gerald Ford on SNL versus any other SNL president. Yes. He's not doing anything. It is just there. It is wild. It is wild. For people who do not know what we're talking about. We've talked

about how, like, season one of SNL, you throw it on, you're like, I can't wait to be electrified by the show that had people like it's fucking in the streets and then you're kind of like this is 12 minutes long yeah his take on gerald ford is nothing look the hit the hit to failure ratio on first season snl is pretty much exactly the same as it is today except when it's good it's really electrifying yeah but it's still only good 15 to 20 percent of any episode and it's for he's he's not like wearing a wig makeup not doing a voice nothing no it's just this is a guy who's a klutz that was a thing chevy chasing a suit i don't know

come on he falls down it's good it's really funny it's just it sort of speaks to this idea i'm talking about where chevy is above it all yes Yes. He's not going to wear a wig. He's not going to try to resemble Ford in any way. He's going to do this slapstick that he's brilliant at. Right. But like that's all. But he's going to be doing it as Chevy Chase because that's all he is in all of these movies. It is incredible that I just always go.

It can't be true that he only did one season. just always go it can't be true that he only did one season like but but it's just wild how huge his cultural impact was on snl considering he did one fucking year and then was already so huge that like a i think they thought this show was big because of chevy chase who knows if it can sustain itself without him bill murray basically apologizing for not being chevy chase right yeah and as much as gilda and Belushi and Aykroyd were popping whatever they were like but it's the Chevy Chase show right I think largely because he was the guy hosting

Update he's doing the president cold opens but he's doing them as himself and he's the tall handsome guy right which the wilder thing is they hired him as a writer and he had to like fight to be on camera yeah he was like literally doing pratfalls in the street to convince them to put him on camera right and like he was the guy i believe reading off camera with everyone during the auditions bringing people in recommending

people to lauren and he was like wow why don't you fucking hire me to do the thing um and then he leaves and to go be a movie star and he becomes a movie star immediately. Like there's so many stories in the 70s of and the 80s through the 90s of someone's a hit on a fucking sitcom and they leave

prematurely to go do movies and it it fucks them over. Or they have a couple hits and then the career is dead. And he just leaves and automatically works and everyone loves him.

Yep. And yeah, works for about been 15 years, right? 15 years. It works until like 1990 him. Yep. And it works for about 15 years, right? 15 years. It works until like 1990, essentially. Foul, wait, okay.

So he leaves in 76. Foul Play doesn't come out until 78, though. I'd forgotten this. Is that the first one? That's the, I mean, he was in something called Tunnel Vision. Okay. Playing Chevy Chase. So I'm guessing it's a sketch movie or something.

Yeah. But basically the first movie that is released after he leaves SNL is Foul Play, which was huge. My parents took me to see that in the theater, and I was like a zygote back then. And it sets up the, oh my God, look, now he's got chemistry with another movie star. We can put them together again. He's the new Cary Grant. Right, that was the whole thing. Which is still there in this movie that we're talking about today.

Oh, right, this movie. I'm like, which is still there in this movie that we're talking about today. Oh, right. This movie, the movie. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I apologize. The movie we're talking about today is memoirs of an invisible man.

And the reason we're talking so much Chevy and not much carpenter is this was a ultimate passion project for Chevy chase. Yeah. And it's the knife he put in his own back basically and the everything like the research found about it it's basically like at every turn the studio is like we know how to make this a movie that will probably succeed yes he's like no yeah not only i not allow it fire the people involved and you must pick me, Chevy Chase. Did you guys dig out the Bill Goldman stuff?

There's obviously our researchers found. But Alan has brought Alan has brought Which Lie Did I Tell? Which I believe is the second of Bill Goldman's memoirs. I was obsessed with those books when I was a teen. My dad bought them for me. And it's funny to think about it now that I'm like reading

about him being like, you know, Saul Sinet's such a jerk or you know like whatever i'm like who are these people but i was just intrigued and i remember the memoirs chapter mostly as a chronicle of an actor's ego right like that's how he kind of puts it and a good case study and just like do you want to like get a sense of how big studio movies are actually made like all the weird back and forth and how you end up with a thing that seems to please nobody. When so much thought and hand-wringing has happened over this one fucking thing. I mean, I guess we should start,

because the development of this movie is odd, but you get... I'll give you a little. Yeah, please. I'll give you a little. Yeah. It's a novel by Harry Saint. But even going back to,

he had one published story in Esquire like 20 years earlier. He had had one published story in Esquire like 20 years earlier. Um, he had written a short story in Esquire in 1960, in the sixties. And he, yes, he had not written anything else.

Period. Cause he wanted to like get a publishing contract. Cause he's like, I'm not writing something if I'm not going to make any money or whatever. And he like has a successful career totally outside of writing because he refuses to be like a poor struggling writer. And in the back of his mind he's like, someday I'm going to come back to writing and figure out how to

be successful at it. In 86, a version of the novel that's not even done gets in Chevy Chase's hands. By his design he goes like, I want to figure out how to write something that everyone will want to buy. So he comes up with this concept where he goes like, modern prism, visible man, deal with the practical realities of it, really focused, detail oriented. He gets an agent.

They sell the book. The advance on the book is like $5,000. But immediately they sell the book on tape rights and the movie rights for like a combined $2 million. It was basically yes exactly and chase set this whole deal up at william morris and then left them for caa right reading an unfinished book grabs him yeah he goes fuck this is the thing i've been looking for get caa uh uh what's mcclellan sorry uh a first agency is william gets them to buy it for him and then goes sayonara see you later goes over to ca and as i'm sure you alan have read in the book this is also when

goldman's going to ca and ovitz is like we can rebuild you we have the technology like i know you're a pariah right now but come on like you're william goldman you've won two oscars like how are you not how are you on this like run of flopsops? William Goldman was on this where he's a famous screenwriter for anyone. But also more than anything, and there was a good quote that JJ pulled up about it. But like the thing that was really hurting him was that he had spent the better part of a decade tilting at windmills with projects that didn't get made. And he's like, you can recover from a flop or a failure. The thing that that scares them the most is if they're like is this movie not going to get done if we hire this guy alan what is your takeaway from goldman's

memoir so you know he's ca promises to get him out of movie jail they said ivan reitman he's coming off of ghostbusters it's a whole package yes chevy chase and he lists like chevy chase is the number five box office star in the world after like Eddie Murphy, Michael J. Fox, Stallone. And I forget who the other one is. So it's like this is obviously going to be a go picture. It's a special effects, heavy comedy with the guy who made Ghostbusters. Reitman's whole thing was he went into the studio and he was like, I can make this into the next Ghostbusters. This is the first thing I've read that has Ghostbusters potential since Ghostbusters. Cannot miss. Goldman sits down with Chevy. First of all, I was very impressed that Chevy is tall because that's a hangup of Goldman's. It's also a hangup of mine.

Like, I think when you're above a certain height, you, like, gravitate towards, you know, similarly tall people. Shots fired. Yes. That's the only person under six feet tall in this room. My wife is five foot three, so I'm also a hypocrite when it comes to height. Hey. All right.

So he meets with Chevy. He finds Chevy charming because Chevy is capable of doing that on occasion. But Chevy says he wants an investigation of the loneliness of invisibility.

Right. And Bill Goldman panics, runs to CAA, and says, this is going to be a train wreck. Get me out of this. This will not work they keep telling them no no we're cia we package right we can do this um right that's the whole

thing where they're like stop fussing this is a go picture and he's like well i see a lot of creative problems here and they're like these is your you're speaking greek right that's how it works budget set director actor we'll figure it out like it's fine like it's the sort of like 80s thing like if we can get a deal done everything will work out later right you know um and so what's described in his book i think is just this constant thing of like right when we'll be like write me a funny movie about a guy who turns into an invisible man think of him as like a Chevy Chase type and then Chase

will come in and be like what are all these gags what I'm like looking up ladies skirts get out of here I don't want to play Chevy Chase can I read this quote directly Goldman said as as it was said to him by Ovis right in this meeting or phone call whatever he says

Bill you've been away a while now. Things are a little bit different. Ivan is represented by us. Chevy is represented by us. It is what we at CAA specialize in. It is called a package, and there will be no train wreck. Just write the script.

It will all sort itself out. I know this is what you just paraphrased, but there's something in the wording of that of just like, you child. The 80s confidence of it. You don't understand. This isn't how it works anymore.

Famous screenwriter William C. Johnson. Yeah, you got your two Oscars in the Paleolithic age. Disasters don't happen. Yes, of course, on paper, all of this sounds horrible. But what will happen is

the movie will be successful. Yeah. And Ivan keeps saying to him over and over, let me handle Chevy. I know how to handle Chevy. I've dealt with these people before. Reitman is best at.

It's truly like Reitman's style. An ego manager without equal. He is the best ego manager in Hollywood. And so that's the thing. And this is the Goldman line that I like. He's like, I have no problem investigating the loneliness of invisibility.

I just don't want to do it with Chevy. Yeah. Perfect. It just. just and like but i will say yes there's something interesting to like right what if you were a king of the universe type and then no one could see you the narcissism being reversed on you i don't think that's a compelling movie it might be a compelling story it's tough to be make a hit movie about loneliness you know and like no one can see me you like it because you like the the absurdity of the pitch i know i don't know if you can make a hit movie out of that i do think you could make a movie that i would find uh compelling but uh yeah god i mean some of these these uh quotes here. Well, I mean, there's so many chase quotes, but we do have to note, Goldman eventually fucks off and says. No, no, no, Reitman gets fired first.

Which is, Reitman eventually is so, like, and Reitman has managed Bill Murray four times at this point, who is, like, maybe the second most difficult guy in comedy. And he goes to Warner Brothers brothers and is like i'm done either it's me or it's chevy and make your choice hasn't he just made like twins ghostbusters 2 and robocop it's like it's not like those movies are robocop kindergarten i mean i wish this may have been earlier than that because i think the way goldman's talking about it's still like 86 or so so maybe circle legal eagles maybe he leaves and goes and makes twins and it's like yeah there you go fuck you either way he has made ghostbusters he has made and he has single-handedly made bill murray a movie star i think my point was going to be like if he had just made twins maybe the

studio is like we can't fire ivan reitman the man makes you know shit into gold like you know it's like he's just such a yes whereas maybe at this point they are still like now we have to side with chevy i guess it's still weird though it is still fucking weird they fire right but also chevy has the rights to the material right that is true so you can't like kick him off the picture he also right i mean because of the thing he got warner brothers to buy it for him which is why caa was able to package it after he left william morris who had him at the time the purchase was made like he had so much sway that he went to warner brothers and him, which is why CAA was able to package it after he left William Morris, who had him at the time the purchase was made. Like, he had so much sway that he went to Warner Brothers and was like, I think I would

like to do this novel that is not even finished. And they will pay a lot of money. Absolutely salivating at the idea. When Reitman leaves the project, Goldman leaves pretty soon after. And then does not get paid for it as a result of the studio being vindictive about it. Right. But he has the great kiss-off line, I'm sorry, but I'm too old and too rich

to put up with this shit, which is a powerful thing to say in Hollywood. That's the line when they try to bring him back. Yeah, right. When Carpenter's taken over. Or is it the Richard Donner version? I think it might be Donner at that point, but right there, like, come on, punch up the script. It can be like this and he's just like no I'm not I'm

not getting on that treadmill again I mean the Chevy thing is like you know he he goes into Warner Brothers and they're like we obviously see big money in this and he's like okay cool of course it's a drama we agree it's a drama right and Warner Brothers is like no and he keeps on thinking he's going to win them over. He speaks about it as if it was such an obvious thing and he did not understand their opposition. And he said, they said to him, you can make this book as long as it's hilarious. And his response, you know, let's see a comedy with Chevy Chase Invisible. He'd say, read the book and you'll see it's not about that.

So they read the book, and they said, well, there's a lot of funny parts in it. It's 450 pages. You take 150 of those pages, funny. And my response was, I want to maintain the integrity of the book. I want it to have substance and death. Where there's comedy, I'll have it in there.

They just sort of looked at me. And finally, I said, look, fellas, I swear to you, you've known me a long time. Please give me this break. I see that it's funny where, I'll see that it's funny where it needs to be funny, but I'm not going to distort it. I want to tell the story that's there. He's talking in this way that people talk about great projects that were

sort of wrestled away from them by an evil studio. Right. Yeah. Like he's using the same sort of language, but it's like I don't know that he i was consigned with him or projects where the person is totally vindicated the thing turns out to be a masterpiece or it's one or the other or or everyone knows like well they have a cut and i've seen it right and their cut is good right there's nothing like that with this no no please not to go off on a digression when we're an hour into this and have not talked about the plot of the movie at all yet.

And there's a lot. Yes, okay. Have either of you seen the movie True Identity with Lenny Henry? No. Early 90s, it's sort of, it's remember the Eddie Murphy, like white like me,

short film from SNL. One of the best SNL sketches ever. It's that as a movie. I'm not sure if it was technically based on that short film or not, but Lenny Henry, who was a big deal in British comedy at the time, comes over. still a hugely

he's kind of a mocked figure in Britain as a comedian but he's a huge figure Charles Lane is directing this movie and the idea is Lenny Henry is running from the mob and to avoid the mob he disguises himself as a white man okay and apparently it was originally Andy Breckman wrote it

and it was supposed to be a big broad comedy with a lot of jokes jokes like the thing in the eddie murphy short film and lenny henry and charles lane start making it and they realize right away like we don't find this funny this is just kind of sad the idea of him being able to like enjoy white privilege so there's literally one scene early on where he's in the white makeup where like he sees a black guy trying to hail a cab and the cab will not stop so he then hails a cab stops it points to the guy says hey man you get into that that is it the rest of the movie there is none of like him enjoying being white at all and it's very clear like why did you make this movie where you're putting lenny henry in white face right if you're like you this is not a premise that really works

as sort of a dramatic thriller thing. It's just so absurd on its face. Yeah. This isn't quite that, but like when you're making a movie with Chevy Chase as an invisible person, why are you trying to do it as like this poor man's Hitchcock with the tragedy of invisibility?

But I mean, you look at the reviews of the time and everyone's like, this movie totally makes no sense. If it's supposed to be a comedy, why did John Carpenter direct it? And if it's supposed to be a thriller, then why is Chevy Chase starring in it, right?

Like people cannot get over this fundamental divide. What I find fascinating about it is that like, that tonal imbalance was forced upon the movie by Chevy Chase, who was adamant. It's going to be this thing. I'm going to be able to make this work. I'm breaking out. People are going to see me in a new light.

Finally, like he just like hated his audience at this point. He did the movies he was in. He did the fact that they were successful. Like he did the fact that he could sleepwalk through these things. And now he hates that he's not successful. He's a hateful man, probably. He's a hateful man.

And that center, that he's not successful. He's a hateful man, probably. He's a hateful man. And that center, that nucleus of hate is what you could, in theory, were he more malleable, build an interesting, dramatic persona around, right? But what I find fascinating is there are so many scenes in this movie that

he overplays. For how much of the movie he is muted and sad and angry and kind of lacking in energy, there are scenes where he That he overplays. For how much of the movie. He is muted. And sad. And angry. Yeah. And kind of lacking in energy. Right. There are scenes where he goes way too big. And is delivering his lines. Like fucking.

Caddy Shake. Shaq style. And I. It's true. You might listen to. The episode before now. And just be like. Is this movie totally bleak? And it's like.

No it's not. Kind of still a light comedy. There are jokes. There's a bit of business. With like the chopsticks. Yes. That's like classic Chevy slapstick. Physical comedy. comedy they're line deliveries that are so jarring and they don't feel like well the studio forced him because the story sounds like he fucking was so stubborn that

they let him make it his way it feels like he is still insecure enough that he cannot let go of the security blanket of doing the chevy chase moves. As much as he thinks he's putting them into a darker, more adult package. Yeah. Yes, the fucking tomfoolery of this movie is absurd. Yeah. I want my molecules back is like, that's a Clark Griswold read.

Yes. That's how Clark Griswold would say that line. That is not how the character in this movie would be saying it as upset as he is about it. The character in this movie who we all know is called Nick Holloway. Hollowell. Holloway. But it's just that fundamental difference of like when Wes Anderson puts Bill Murray in Rushmore, Bill Murray is very funny, but he never feels like he's in stripes.

Right? He's able to be funny in a very different way. And there's obviously some you know sort of like dark comedy beauty had from this premise but when he goes for a laugh in this he goes for a laugh in full european vacation mode both in terms of pitch and success right he's not a talented enough actor this is what i keep coming back to it's like the man wants to be something he isn't but when i watch him on screen i'm like you're just basically doing chevy chase or you're just sort of not doing anything like there's no pathos to him i think there's one there's the one scene

where he's been hiding out in sam neill's office all day sure and then sam neill confronts him and like he's like i know you're in there and they talk right sam neill like talks to nothing for a minute yes and finally he finally eventually gets frustrated he puts sam neill in a chokehold he's like i don't sleep much i see through my eyelids and for like 15 seconds yes yeah wait a minute this is the movie they wanted to make yeah that's the biggest one there are a couple moments for me i don't even know if i can name the other ones but there are individual line readings. There are looks he will give for a moment where I go, fuck, they almost had it there.

If he could have sustained this for the entire movie, at least it would have a consistent viewpoint. Yes, but I just don't even know what this character is beyond a sort of generic yuppie. Well, I think the idea is idea is like here's a problem i think if this movie is ever going to work chevy chase needs to be full-on unstoppable chevy chase for the first 20 minutes before he turns that's right do a jim carrey thing yeah where right we get a good chunk of him right antic you know like wild peak of his powers

so that there's a sense of loss and the loneliness of the movie comes from this guy no longer has his bag of tricks no he can't perform for anyone he doesn't have

the looks he doesn't have the speed look here's the thing yeah it has nothing to do with Chevy Chase I just have to say it

before I forget it there's a character in this movie called Richard he's played by a guy called Gregory Paul. Oh my god, I want to talk so much about Richard. Who is, I believe, the son of George Martin,

the Beatles producer. Oh, wow. This is... This explains a lot, actually. Okay. This is Matt Berry we're talking about. The longer hair, yes. Who has a voice that sounds like it's being run through a machine. He sounds like Matt Berry. Or it's being run through a machine he sounds like matt barry yeah or it's being dubbed right where is that just a guy who talks that way it has to be here's the reason i bring this up yeah apart from the fact that anytime he's on screen you're

like is this guy what is going on anytime he was on screen i forgot chevy chase existed absolutely because i was just immediately distracted by something more interesting so compelling there was no pathos to Chevy Chase. No. Unfortunately, also none to Daryl Hannah, who I guess we'll get into at some point. Not much of a character there either. No.

And so when a weird supporting character came on screen, I would just kind of be like, well, who's this guy? Like Jim Norton, that Irish actor, when he shows up and he's Bishop Brennan on Father Ted, like he's an actor. I'd be like, what's up with this guy and then we back to chevy chase and i'll be like oh right the ostensible hero of this movie this emile scenes have a similar energy yes and and carpenter obviously must have liked because he put some in his next movie he was like that was

my only friend on this production we were in the foxhole together. Samuel seems like a pro, right? Like a guy who does his job. And like, but like tonally, it even comes into like the climax of the movie. Yeah. Because they've been doing this whole quantum leap thing throughout, which we can talk about where it's like a lot of the time you're just seeing Chevy chase on screen,

even though he's supposed to be invisible. Right. Even because you don't make a whole movie where you can't see your leading man. Right. All right. So they're, Chevy and Sam Neill,

they're on the construction site. Appreciate you calling that a quantum leap thing. That's a good way to put it. No, it's a good way to put it. I just think there are other movies

that use that device and it's almost a really good representation of a person's worldview to see which one they pick. No, but Hot Chick, you're seeing them as other people see them.

Quantum leap is sort of switching. It's more, heaven can wait. Heaven can wait, of course. Yes, heaven can wait. Yes, seeing them as other people see them. Quantum leaping seems sort of switchy. It's more heaven can wait. Heaven can wait, of course. Yes, heaven can wait. Yes, that's a good one. I'm trying to think about it. Anyway, go on.

Okay, so they're on the construction site. Sam Neill's decided, like, I'm not going to be able to recruit this guy. I'm just going to kill him. Yeah. Chevy has gotten construction dust all over half of his jacket. So his jacket is visible. You see the jacket before you see Chevy, and it looks like Chevy is

standing on the edge of the construction site. And he's talking about, I I'm done. I can't live like this anymore. I'm going to kill myself. Yeah. And Sam Neill starts talking to him. And when you cut back,

you see Chevy chase and he is holding the jacket and he's pretending to cry and it is all bullshit. And it undercuts every last bit of tension and ethos out of the scene and it is just being played for yucks it is and then of course he's using that to commit murder right and then the murder

is like weird I mean him tossing Samuel off the is weirdly sort of underplayed as well where he's like take that yeah Ola you son of a bitch or something once again that all feels like he just can't not go to his old bag of tricks because it's all these it's all he's got a fucking god he doesn't have depth but is that a chevy choice or is that a carpenter choice that feels like a chevy choice to me because i feel like at this point everyone is fucking like in for a penny in for a pound on what chevy thinks he's gonna be able to pull off

on this movie and carpenter talked extensively like, I just lost control of that fucking thing. I couldn't get my voice through. I mean, we should back up a little, recenter this around Carpenter a little bit. But he has this four movie deal with Alive Pictures. He does. Coming off of Big Trouble in Little China, which is now his new biggest bounce. Right. So he goes, right.

And he's made two Alive Pictures, Prince of Darkness and They Live, both for live both for low budgets that deal as we've talked about is you can make whatever you want we will green light it with no notes and full creative control off of a one sentence pitch but your budget is three million dollars it's fixed um and but he's in a fight with them at this moment he wanted a little more money and they were like well then we want a little more control so it's kind of one of those things that doesn't get resolved he has lots of things he thinks about he doesn't make a movie for four years

which is a long time for him not for pretty much makes a movie every year I believe since we've started this miniseries there have been two year gaps and that is it yeah pretty exactly exactly so he pretty much makes a movie every single year circles a sci-fi adventure movie called pin cushion starring share which uh sounds cool because he says it would have been a real cool

picture someone should do it yeah uh he circles exorcist 3 and then he said realize william peter blatty wanted to make right like he was like he was like, you know what? This is your movie. Yeah. He tries to remake Creature from the Black Lagoon. That one seems to get pretty far. Which sounds pretty cool. Sounds pretty fucking cool. He's all in on doing like a 3D movie. Yeah. They're working on the design of the creature.

Right. You know, doesn't happen. He's attached to both Fatal Attraction and Top Gun. I don't even have to read his quote for this. Yeah. Fatal Attraction. I have no idea. They wanted Adrian Lyne. I have no idea why. I his quote for this. Fatal Attraction. I have no idea. They wanted Adrian Lyne.

I have no idea why. I guess it's because he'd done another hit for them. I didn't like them. Fatal Attraction was just plain misty for me. I didn't want to do that. And Top Gun. Come on. They fight the Russians in the third act.

Come on now. World War III. Stop that. Come on. That's his quote. He's not wrong. But I just feel like every other movie we've covered on this show, we're setting up like, here are the things he almost made before he made this movie.

And you're like, wow, he went through a lot of failed projects and somehow still got another movie out 12 months later. And this is the one time where you're like, he's just stuck in development hell for four years, jumping from thing to thing. There are his own things he wants to make. There are things he attaches himself onto because he wants to work with a certain star. There are things that studios

court him for that become big hits later, but nothing's getting off the ground. And Chase is the one who pushes him through the studio. The studio doesn't want him for this because they think he'll make a horror movie. Carpenter, I mean, his line. I got into this business because i wanted

to direct westerns i can do any type of movie so don't give me your shit apparently so that a boardroom meeting the other part of that quote is where he's the first part of the quote is long but it's him pretending like they were like don't you can't do any of that bloody carpenter stuff and he's like oh shoot because my plan was to have the invisible man stab a person in the gut take his wrapped entrails around him his own invisible body uh yeah i mean he's ornery he comes off ornery in these so weird match for chase in my opinion another ornery guy can i tell you my my pet theory about why he did this you can but i just want to say one other thing it's like two ornery things and then the third ornery thing you hear is because the visual effects this movie was a nightmare a nightmare

to make a nightmare body suits and you have to bring in the the vista vision camera to shoot the visual effect you have to essentially shoot the whole movie twice because you have to get all this reference footage miserable miserable but wait what's what's your theory um you know there there is this element of carpenter where i feel like he constantly has a grass is greener view of things on top of also constantly feeling like well but i was younger then if i tried this again now i could handle it right so he's in this zone where it's like i'll make a big movie for a studio that was a fucking nightmare i want to go back to making my smaller things right i want complete control eh I'm tired of complete control. I want a big budget. I know how to politic. I know how to deal

with the studio again, right? So there's that oscillation where for some reason he does this movie just because he was ready to try the other thing after having done two movies on his own terms, after having done two movies on their terms, after having done, like, it's just the back and forth, right? But the other part of it is this running theme we've seen in all of these development stories is he keeps on wanting to work with big ass stars. And you go like, dude, do you not realize

you're going to have a really hard time battling for control with someone who is protective of their own persona rather than someone like Kurt Russell who is collaborative

and is going to give you what the movie needs? And he's like, ah, but what if Clint Eastwood did it? And it's like, dude, it's not going to fucking work if you work with Clint. I think there was this part of him that finally wanted to work with, like, an A-list star, and he made the mistake of picking the A-list star at the absolute last moment of his A-list status, trying to do the exact opposite out of what everyone wanted out of him. But we keep on hearing the things of, like, I want to try different genres.

I want to see if I can prove that I can do it within the studio system. But also, how do I make sense of a movie star's persona? How do I use that weight and that power that comes with that? And it was the wrong choice. Chase is like, well, I don't want to do that. Right. I don't want to use my persona. Also say, look, I have no firsthand experience

as to what this feels like, but it sounds like it's pretty difficult when you have a lead actor playing the title character in a project that, because of its very concept, involves a tremendous amount of special effects

and the person doesn't want to do it. The person does not want to wear the thing. No, he would like not do it. He'd be like, I'm done today. Right. I have no personal experience, but I would imagine that's a thing that pushes everyone to the brink of insanity on a daily basis. When you have an entire day built around the guy's thing all day.

And then the guy decides he's tired two hours. That's just the thing that I could imagine maybe puts a tremendous amount of strain on everyone else. Sure. And makes it very hard to put together coherent things because the footage you have is very misshapen. That seems like a challenge to me. It seems like a challenge and I'm so happy

I have never had to experience that. Now, in Memoirs of Invisible Men, you could think they would be like you know what Chase doesn't want to do it today fine put a telephone on his string we're doing a phone call have him dub it in post it is bizarre how much they were

sort of held captive by like if he they put him through all the makeup and then 15 minutes and he's like eh I don't like it and walks off set and Carpenter's like the whole day is ruined now he should just be like yeah, he's not in this scene. Guess what? Because he's invisible. Right. Don't call him to set.

Ugh. I mean, he's not invisible that much in the movie. Again, this sort of gets back to the whole Quantum Leap thing. Most of the time you are watching Chevy Chase. And when he's not invisible, it's just Chevy Chase in a fucking suit. And it should not be that much of a hassle for him to do it. The clothes that he had on him are invisible,

but no other clothes. Correct. But then there are times he wears other things. I was not quite sure how to figure it out. It's an invisible suit. I've thought about this a lot. Because it has been invisibilized. Yes, it has been invisibilized.

So he has to keep track of these clothes for the rest of his life because anytime he wants to go out into the world and be invisible and not be naked, this is his only option. I'll say that. I appreciated,

not to spoil the end of this movie, but that he is invisible at the end of this movie. He ain't going back. I like that too. That is something that would be a good ending to a good movie.

Yep. He's got to figure out his new life as an invisible man. Yep. Let's just say, like, quickly, the plot of this movie is he's a fucking chevy chase guy except not like a stock guy right this guy flirts with women and hates his job and fucking sleep and doesn't try and his secretary is super impressed with him despite him being like right he's like i'm going to the club and she's like what you know but yes, but yeah, he meets Daryl Hannah.

He love at first sight. He gets as vulnerable as he is capable of getting with anybody drinks too much. I love the weird note that it's like what fucked him over was that after he met her, he went back to the bar and had more drinks that they like met, made out, connected. She was like, they set a date. It's too soon. I'm not going to let you go home with me. And then he just goes back to the bar and really ties one on as a victory lap yep by himself yeah oh my god but then as he explains the narration that's what fucks him over because the next day when he's supposed to go report on this fucking scientific presentation he's so hung

over that he as one does walks out of the presentation and tries to find a place where he can take a nap. Yes. And this electronics physics lab, whatever it is, they've got like a sauna on site that he can go lie down. Right. There's, of course, a room with a thousand computers where the door is wide open. He asks, where's the bathroom? The guy casually, but with all the clumsiness of a Chevy Chase protagonist, knocks over

his coffee, electrocutes a computer. Chevy Chase opens the wrong door, some executive suite where there is a private sauna. He locks the door. He decides to take a nap. And at that point, whatever happened with the coffee on the computer causes the entire building to be demoralized.

The entire building explodes. They evacuate everyone immediately. Everyone else gets in chevy is such a sound sleeper because he's so hung over and he does not hear soundproof sauna baby oh there i see there we go one of those classic soundproof sauna yes hate hearing things in the sauna i hate that in my office my my personal sauna. Um, yeah, I don't know if there's a cleaner way for him to fall in front of the invisible Ray or whatever,

but yeah, it's a little, it's a little convoluted. I don't know. Yeah. I feel like the book is a different thing. I was reading through this. Um,

it's also the book, the, the Daryl Hannah character is kind of only at the beginning of the film. And Carpenter was the one who was like, he has to have some human connection. There has to be a reason why he wants to keep going. So it's not just a man on the run. In the book, a bunch of Marxist protesters cut off power to the building.

And that's what causes the accident. Right. Not a cup of coffee. In the book, she is his love interest at the beginning of the book. It sets it up. She's a journalist. She gets him to the lab. And then when he turns invisible, she marries someone else instead.

Yes. Can we talk about the rules of the invisibility? Please. I hate that he can't see himself. It's so annoying. It makes it not fun. He's invisible. No, I know.

But it's like the whole fun of being invisible is that you could sneak into a bank and like go into the vault, but he like can't see his hands. He can't like feed himself. Do you know what I'm saying? But that's, it's the loneliness of invisibility, Ben. Well, fuck that. I want to fucking see shit go down.

The whole pitch on the book, Ben, was that like you have the invisible man, right? That's this huge fucking hit. And then Universal makes the Invisible Woman and the Invisible Agent and the Invisible Man Returns. That idea is explored. The sort of fun of what the Invisible Man could do is all covered.

And the pitch of this book that got Hollywood salivating is it would be a real pain in the ass being invisible. Like that was the whole thing that everyone was attached to. And I think for Warner Brothers, they go that pain in the ass could lead to a lot of hijinks. Right. Which makes sense.

And then for Chevy, he's like that could lead to someone living a miserable existence. Right. And they both have like the incorrect reading of the thing and commit too hard to it but they're they both believe that the success of this movie is caught up in the minutiae of how difficult it is i went back and i reread some reviews of the movie that were published at the time and several of them go to town on the chopstick sequence like thank god like there's this great chevy chase slapstick set piece in the movie it's like 10 seconds yes but they're just barely anything anything they can grab on to yes because the other thing in those reviews that i

like briefly noticed and it's so rude it's like every time there's a carpenter movie they're all like here comes mr special effects again we get it you've got a computer but where's the humanity and it's like the guy's made great movie like yeah but every time they're just like i could barely like stay in my seat because there were so many special effects right it's bizarre it's bizarre and it's also like this guy's fighting to put humanity into this movie i think yes i guess so i mean he's finding to put more of a normal guy narrative right and chase is like ah what if no one could see me at all maybe that's what i crave i think there's also there is a real intelligence and wit to the way the special effects are employed in this movie not only are they incredibly well executed this is like maybe that perfect sweet spot of digital effects just starting to come

into the picture being able to clean up more traditional techniques uh where you just have this perfect kind of tactility to these things you cannot believe they could execute they look so good they look so good when she puts the makeup on his face and it's just his face floating in midair and then they cut to the reverse and you see like the hollow inside. It's insane. It is insane. They barely would need updating. You know what I mean? Like they look pretty much how I would

imagine now. I think those are also the parts of the movie that work best. It is weird that the reviews are like, ugh, enough of the effects. Give me more chopstick hijinks. I'd be like, this movie should just be Invisible Man Effect. Also like this movie should just be invisible man effect also this movie seems to work better when chevy chase is not on screen when he is not even like in front of camera yes and you just have some fucking gag happening because it's more

interesting than a sad fucking guy who's whatever i don't't know. Not even interested in being charming. There's also Hollow Man, a half-successful movie at best, right? Invisible Man, the recent remake, which I think is a pretty terrific film, in my eyes. Both of those movies get away with being like, and once the guy

turns invisible, it can't really be about him anymore. Right. We need to expand out. Right. I think you can do it a little easier in a book where it's all the guy's kind of internal monologue, where it's structured as his memoirs. When they get into narration on this movie, it ends up just feeling like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. It's like a parody of noir. The narration is so stiff.

It's so stiff. Oh, so yeah. And just exhausted sounding he sounds so fucking tired and also like sometimes it's like this purple prose which is a little more interesting like the shit i was like more memoir right other times he's like i realized i had to go out but before i did i'd have to put on my pants but it's hard to put on pants when you can't see your yeah i'm imagining someone actually watching this and being like, we get it, guy. He's describing exactly what's happening on screen. And then I realized, wait a second.

And he's doing the wait a second face. And you're like, to either trust us enough or trust his performance enough to carry us through it. Anyway, when he becomes demolecularized and the movie becomes something of a man on the run thriller this was part of carpenter getting the job was pitching them like it's like starman i just did this it worked the government wants him and he's got this love and that's the thing carrying him through the et thing they can't get their hands on me because they'll dissect me or whatever sam neill gets sent in to investigate this bizarre building that's also the best fucking imagery in the whole yeah the swiss cheese building this was that's also the best fucking imagery in the home

yeah the swiss cheese building this was that's very cool that is yeah and eerie ish i i remembered that as from when i saw it back in the 90s as being like a longer set piece than it is like i really would have loved to see like him wandering around this building do more in the building it's possibly yeah something out of like a michelle gondry video or something. It's like very bizarre kind of. It's like MC Escher kind of like from the inside perspective when they're doing that shot. That sequence does go on fairly

long and is compelling and he's just playing panic there. But there's sort of a perspective shift where you're mostly seeing it from Sam Neill's eyes and then when it cuts back to Chevy it's first person POV sort of worry, which sort of maybe works better for how to play his internal life at this point.

But the idea is that Sam Neill very quickly realizes there's a guy in there. This guy could be the greatest intelligent asset in the modern world. Especially because his whole take is like, look at this guy. No family, no life, really really it's like all his job like he basically can disappear he's anonymous it's almost like he was already an invisible man i'll use him i'll train him to

right be a super soldier basically what's weird is that crystallizes for me the best version of what this movie is at least if you're doing it with Chevy Chase, right? Which is, it's Chevy Chase trying to create a slightly deeper comedy in that it's about a superficial Chevy Chase protagonist who, once he no longer has his looks to rely on, everyone realizes, like, you're nothing. You have no life. You skate through shit. You have no attachments. There's no depth to anything you've ever done right you're meaningless now it's why the carpenter road trip take might be the wrong one

because actually maybe we should stay put with him i think so maybe i don't know what do you think anything but what they actually do would have been more interesting it's just it's such a weird misshapen collection of ideas and then he's like hanging around at Michael McKean's like beach house for a while that's where the movie is so deadly yeah apart from the crazy guy with the deep British yes right in which case I'm like give me more of this guy what's going on with him

but I mean no I mean or why do you like the beach house if you're giving me a mischievous Griffin look it's Michael McKean you got a Patty Heaton right young Patty Heaton and Michael McKean. You got a Patty Heaton, right? Young Patty Heaton and Michael McKean are the couple. Neither of them are given anything to do.

Well, they have a very unsatisfying sex scene on the beach. That's true. That's maybe his only good moment. And I love Michael McKean. He's not doing anything wrong in this. I do not think I've ever seen anyone, any project fail to milk Michael Keenan. Because the guy's so versatile, can turn anything into something watchable.

And this movie just strands him. Yeah. And then you've got Daryl Hannah, who we're picking back up. And George Martin's son, who's trying to hit on her. Right. Bloody purchase. I'm an author it's like okay where we back in fletchy kind of territory where chevy chase is like pulling his pants down

but he says something mean and like i don't write like he's sort of trying to like get one over on the guy who wants his girl yeah eavesdropping and spying and, you know, like scaring the delivery boy. It's yeah. But like, I'm like, wait, aren't we, is the FBI,

the CIA or whatever after you or whatever. I mean, the thriller aspect of it is so incompatible with everything else. This movie is doing and Sam Neill plays it totally straight and is good and is actually pretty scary. But then even no disrespect to him, but Tobolowsky, it feels like is hired to be the number two in the comedy version of this yes dude and sam neill is in the serious when tobolowski

swings in yeah and i saw him in the credit he's like fourth or fifth build i was so baffled i was like why is he showing up all of a sudden and he's doing his thing he's doing his thing. He's doing his thing. Do you know him? I feel like he's, you know, he's around. Like, does he have any stories? He's always telling stories. He probably has 87 stories about this. Hold on. I think, I think, you guys keep going. I think I may have one. Hold on. Because like, he, and he, is he in

another Carpenter? Am I crazy? Had he worked with him before? Maybe. Let me. I don't think we've seen him in one yet. Right now. you know what i just re-watched it thelma and louise and he's in that and look it's his brand but obviously anytime he pops up you're like oh there he is i think both of them are doing what they do and what they were hired to do well but they are representing the two contradictory ideas of what this movie could be often in the same scene

with the two of them together but also this is this is pre-groundhog day so while he definitely did comedy stuff before this he was more of like a heavy you know he'd been like yeah mississippi burning things like kind of a big guy but i still think there's that weird i mean there's the there's obviously the folksiness to him yes you know the voice the yeah right yeah i feel like even when he's playing someone's scary part of it is that like this guy is going to be made to look a fool at some point in some way even if it's a menacing fool yes you know it's just he come am i wrong that he comes in really late or maybe i just sort of like when the building disappears doesn't he no he shows up sam neil is testifying before Congress or something.

Right, because he's the one... Sam Neill sort of says, like, look, this is good for both of our careers. If you kick this up to the superiors, you're not on this case anymore. Whereas you can get the credit for doing this and I can get the credit for developing the invisible agent. He's there for exposition

and to sort of establish sam neill's bona fides because sam neill can now threaten tobalowski right and sam neill i guess is kind of doing james mason a little bit because this is very like north by northwest which is score and the scene on the train the decent score by uh shirley walker yeah this is by most accounts and perhaps someone correct here but by accounts, it is accepted that this was the first solo score by a female composer in a major studio film period. What? In 1992. What?

It's the one of at least, you know, like to hedge. It's like one of the earliest instances. 1992. I was alive. 92. The question is whether it is the first or it's like the of the earliest instances. 1992. I was alive. 92. Like the question is whether it is the first or it's like the third. Right.

And I think she still might be the, have the most credits as a female composer. Still to this day. And she died 15 years ago and she still has the most credits. No one's been able to catch up with her. It is such a weird thing where you're like, yes, Hollywood's a boys club.

Yes, of course, there's only so many directors. Of course course the turnover is going to be so much slower and all that but like yeah like why is composing like it is well they're also there are positions and high level positions like editor that where like those roles women have been in my high level forever but it does feel like that there was this divide of like women get to do things that are organizational. Men get to do things that are creative. Creative, right. Or roles of leadership. No female cinematographers or composers. Right.

Lots of designers and editors. They can be casting. They can be editors. But Julie Walker had done like she's was it Apocalypse Now? She's on one of the early Coppola movies. I can look at it. But she does a lot of like additional material. She does a lot of like.

Yeah, she did. Hope Composer. Credited as doing synthesizer in Apocalypse Now. Right. And then her big thing is she works with Elfman on the Batman scores, which leads to the same year as this. Her being the composer on Batman the animated series. It's the next year she worked. Oh, yeah, no, well, the animated series, right.

And then she worked on Mask of the Phantasm and Batman Beyond. She won an Emmy for that. But this score is very Batman to me. It sounds very similar to the Elfman Batman. And then her score on Batman the Animated Series is sort of running further with a lot of the initial ideas

of the notes, of the tones, of the Elfman thing. The score, I think, is really fucking good for this, actually. And then Batman the Animated Series is this rare animated series where you have a full orchestral score with original material for every single episode. This is what I was going to say is

interesting, though, that JJ pulled up. This is one of only three times that Carpenter cedes composing duties to someone else. Entirely, at least. Right. Christine and the thing. And this, or the three, right? This is the third time.

This is the time that the person is the least established that he's actually giving someone their first breakthrough solo credit. Right. You have to imagine that it's because of his respect for her, especially because, like, it's such a big concession deal that he's like, well, Morricone wants to do it. I'll let Morricone do the score for the thing. Right. Yeah. That he was a man who respected his his female collaborators and gave people opportunities and all that sort of stuff. Do you know how Shirley Walker got this job? I don't know. Chevy Chase. Really? Yeah, I think it was maybe Spies Like Us. It was one of the Chevy Chase movies from the 80s.

Chevy goes into the scoring session and sees that she's conducting. They hired someone else to do the score for this movie and they quit and Chevy Chase... Jack Meech. Yeah. And Chevy Chase was like, I don't know, why don't you hire that woman

who did the conducting? Fletch Lives. Fletch Lives. She conducted Fletch Lives and he was like, hire that woman who did the conducting. Good for Chevy.

But weird, he doesn't feel like anyone who would be paying attention to anybody. phone call. Yeah. Where like, you know, he's got it in him.

George Steinbrenner some people tell stories about him being the most wonderful man they've ever met and then the rest of the time he's a monster it's it's just odd that he broke a glass ceiling single-handedly and treated it like i don't know like i saw her once she seemed like she knew what she was doing but here's what i wonder because like the music of Carpenter is so anemic to the the things he makes do you look at the fact that like he is willing to see this and not fight to say I want to do it myself as another sign that like he is just a hired gun on this like there's really so little of his personality in this movie what's interesting is that with Christine and the thing you have composers who it feels like have enough respect

for Carpenter as a composer and how much the sound of his movies is part of the DNA that both of them are doing scores that are kind of half Carpenter-y. Yeah. Whereas this is Shirley Walker doing what feels like it could fit into any episode of Batman the Animated Series. Right.

It's an adventure score. It's not a synth score. Right. It's big sweeping orchestral sounds. Apart from the visual effects batman the animated series right like it's an adventure it's not a solid war right it's it's a big sweeping orchestral sound no apart from the visual effects there's nothing in this movie that you're like that is incredible you know like that is really distinctive like it's a movie that's going for a certain tone that we are familiar with just doesn't really match it in plot or lead actor. No. Like, that's the problem, right? He said, like, you know, he wanted to prove that he could work within the studio system and fight it.

And that it was just, like, absolute non-starters all the time. That they were questioning everything he did. That he was yelling with them about everything. But he still thought, I can get a good movie out of this. And then he gets on set. And then the two actors don't want to work. And it's like, well, now I'm just fucked. Now there's like nothing for me to fight for.

And that, yeah, they would do things like that scene with the makeup that we talked about. It's like the most striking visual effect in this movie. You watch it. That seems really fucking quick. And they have less shots of him than you think you would want, considering how stunning that effect is. And the story is you had to be in this blue jumpsuit,

and they had to cake his face in this makeup, and they had to paint inside of his mouth blue, and then they had to have these blue contact lenses that were the circumference of his entire eyeball. Which does sound awful. That does not sound pleasant. And then they just had tiny pinholes to see through. It was so physically,

like your body does not want to accept anything, that they had to like inject him with medication to numb his eyes so that they could get the things in and they shot for 15 minutes and then he was like I hate this and he took them out I mean I sort of sympathize with him on that one yeah I guess still don't work on that

but my one point is Chevy you desperately wanted to do this movie you knew what you were fucking doing. The whole concept is it's going to be this big fucking effects thing. Whether the argument is if it's funny or serious or not, you know the nature of this is going to be you having to do these complicated things. There's some quote in the dossier that's basically him being like,

yeah, I didn't realize it was going to be all this visual effects shit. And it's like, I get that it's 1992, and that stuff isn't like entirely baked into movie making as it is then now. Yeah. But, right, no. You're playing the Invisible Man. You didn't see this coming?

His storyline was like, I knew it was going to be bad, but not that bad. And it's like, that sounds like the worst of it. That sounds like a really difficult day. And he was often apparently left just sort of like

holding the bag going like, I don't know how to cut this into anything. Everything now is unusable because we only got coverage from one side, you know, whatever the fuck it is. But it is bizarre that the production did not at some point start working around him and going like, okay, assume he can't handle this. How do we get doubles in here?

How do we reorganize sequences? Whatever the fuck you do. And that he kept on sort of acting like no no i can handle it he goes through all the hair and makeup they put him in the fucking thing and then after 30 minutes he's like i'm done i'm done for the day because there's that really cool sequence when he's in the park in san francisco he's trying to talk to the scientists from magnoscopics and then it turns out that sam neill's guys are there and he's like peeling out of the suit and running. That's what like maybe the second best effect

after the face. I think the rain kind of blows my fucking mind. No, the rain is very cool too. But what I'm saying is like, you could do a bunch of scenes of like a double in the suit moving around. There's ways to do it. Look, and once again,

it's a thing I would have no experience with, but sometimes maybe that happens. I don't know what you're implying, Griffin. Sometimes maybe you realize an actor is going to have two hours of energy all day. So you've structured your filming around making sure you get all the stuff with them first and that it's clean and that no one else is in it. And then you have a series of doubles in costumes who are filmed from very specific angles. And you use the voiceover of the audio from the takes where he was on camera, or have them stitch it in post.

Talk about memoirs. I don't know. It's difficult for the other actors in the cast, but that's maybe how you get workable material. There's a part where it's just pants, you can see, are running. Yes. That was cool.

The movie needed more pants, is what you're saying. You like that? I think that's a fun gag. Whoa, the pants are running? Look. but he's in some sort of uncomfortable thing wasn't that the Pixar movie Onward yes have you seen that movie Ben

a pair of pant disembodied legs that might be your favorite movie oh shit yeah is a major plot point in Onward they resurrect their dead father, but only up to the waist. They fuck up the spell.

So it's just pants and like, you know, shoes. Docksiders. Oh shit, I gotta watch this. Yeah, so the whole movie is just like slacks and shoes. Underrated movie. And they have to communicate with their father

through like stomps. Better than Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Yeah. You said that like there was about to be a real um are we gonna talk about daryl hannah i mean it's a shitty role it's nothing i mean her problem is bad no jj pulled up all these quotes of just how fucking mean the press was to her at the time like like here's this fucking trust fund kid she was like born rich and then her mom remarried even richer yeah she's like hollywood royalty through being like you know

daughter-in-law through marriage of haskell wexler like everyone held that against her right that the wexler fortune but like it's also isn't it partly like they were just mad that like she was a blonde who played a bimbo one time and they just were sort of like, well, that must be her whole thing. She played these ethereal. I mean, it's like Splash and Blade Runner are getting hit on. Right. Right. And Splash is obviously such a big deal. But then everyone's just like, we'll do that again.

Be magical lady. And she wants to play people with interiority. Steel Magnolias was like a thing she fought for. There are other things that JJ pulled up that she really wanted to do. Like she wanted to make a movie about Nicaragua where she played like a photojournalist. She wanted to do a show on Broadway.

Yeah, she wanted to play this sort of, yeah, this sort of like heroic female journalist in Nicaragua that was, you know, she wanted to do, like, what sounds like a very Oscar-y kind of biopic there. Right. She wanted to do theater, you know. And she took this with no delusions. What do you think about what it was? She had

a run there in the 80s. She had a run. She's obviously really striking physically. She's got a great camera presence. I don't think, for the most part, like, when she's not, when she's actually being given characters to play, it's not necessarily in a great movie,

like legal eagles. I'm not sure what anybody could have done. Yeah. Right. That role probably was not helping. Yeah. Yeah. Same with wall street.

That's like a terrible role, but like, she's funny in splash. It's not just that she is beautiful. Yes. Yeah. She's good in Roxanne, right? Yes like she's funny in splash it's not just that she's beautiful yes yeah she's good in roxanne right yes and she has like four or five genuinely kind of big performances in big movies steel magnolia is i guess is kind of the end of her and being in serious i think that was the beginning of her wanting to be like i want to be a character actress i'm going to take the part you don't expect me to take.

I'm not going to take the Julia Roberts, young, ingenue part. I'm going to put on glasses. After, after Steel Magnolia, she does Crazy People

and then she does a play in the fields of the Lord. Okay. Then she does this and the thing she does immediately afterwards is the HBO version of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Oh, yeah, which, yes. And like, the 90s are rough because it's like okay grumpy and grumpier old man a lot of kids movies like little rascals my favorite martian yes the straight to video adams family movie that recasts everyone yeah yeah which is i i don't think very

good no it's terrible i just remember like her being very big as I was growing up because she had been reclaimed. A, my parents were like, these movies are good. You should watch Splash. I definitely liked Splash when I was a kid. And Roxanne. Roxanne is wonderful and she's very good at it. She's starring in mediocre Disney winter comedies. And then, you know, when

she's in Kill Bill, it's like the classic Tarantino thing. Oh shit, he dug up like this sort of faded star. Right. This is how you should have all been using her all along. She's so good in it.

Fantastic in that movie. And then like too many people in Tarantino movies, nobody bothers to like try to duplicate that. There's the Weinstein element too. Like she says that Weinstein harassed her so hard

that one time she had to escape a hotel room out of a balcony and that after that moment she was kind of like she did not get any of the follow-up hillbill roles that she clearly should have gotten I think it's also just like the industry at large is it does not know what to do with women in their 40s which at that point she was I don't think there was a clear pathway and I have no doubt that Weinstein made it exponentially harder for her. I agree. But I do also think it's this thing

with Tarantino where when he does these revival, he has this very specific idea of how to use this actor. And he kind of puts it on a plate for other people to borrow it. And that worked with Travolta, but usually it doesn't work.

Usually no one else picks up on the idea the idea forster at least kept working but certainly no never as well as in that no like it's like he just got this guy it's same with pam greer yeah like he just got this person for you out of the you know the disused bucket or you know like it's and then the studios are like great job in that one movie anyway right yeah but this is this is just an utterly thankless role like this is sort of classic the woman in a guy movie in the 80s or 90s and she disappears for so long on unintended in a movie where she's supposed to sort of be the emotional thrust of the thing is like that relationship is what's keeping him right keeping him alive almost yeah it's like well the all he's got to fight for is but like why does she like nick

what draws her i mean this is the problem with him being so sad and lonely at the beginning of the movie where it's like he's doing a half-ass chevy chase flirting right where you're like if we're gonna believe that she still wants to be with him, at least give me fucking like best of times. Or what's it called? Seems like old times? Seems like old times. Best of times is Kurt Russell

and Robin Williams playing football. That's been on my mind recently because of Kurt. Yes. But like, or do something where like the invisibility thing

works for her. Yes. Like she likes that for some reason. Right. Give her some degree of like independence. That's probably too high concept for her. Yes. Like, she likes that for some reason. Right. Give her some degree of, like, independence in some way.

That's probably too high concept for Chevy. I mean, she talks about, like, her interviews from the time of this movie are like, I don't know, this movie is what it is.

I had no delusions about it. I like Chevy Chase's movies, work with a big star. It's a nothing part. It's light entertainment. It's fine. Like, she very much spoke of this like,

I need to do a big movie where I'm above the title while I'm biding my time, still struggling to get these projects off the ground that will reframe me as a legitimate actress. And Chevy is like, this is the movie that will reframe me as a serious actor, but I don't know how to do it. And Carpenter said both of them were nightmares to him that they were both just like, I don't want to fucking be here. I don't want to do this Chevy, i think because of the technical realities of this but also that was always the story about

him on community was like the biggest problem is he hates the hour he does not want to have to work the hours of an actor he wants to just show up and do his thing and go you got it good and then they go no we have five other pieces of coverage to get yeah Yeah. You know? And I think she just didn't like being in this movie and having to be the innocent ingenue again. Like, this sort of ethereal, beautiful woman. And they both were apparently assholes to him. Right. They're both

mad about their place in Hollywood. And they're taking that on him, and he's kind of just like, look, I'm just trying to make a studio movie here. Right. Like, he doesn't have enough passion for the project maybe to have perspective ran down to him and he was like they were both like spoiled children who knew

they were never gonna experience repercussions for this the studio was always gonna have their back so I just had to deal with it but it ends up kind of just killing all three of their careers yeah I mean Carpenter keeps making movies right and then Sam Neill gets to make jurassic park the following year that's funny like it's not like he becomes an a-list leading man but he does have the fucking biggest plug buster no it's

a year later he's also the best thing in this movie so it was acting wise a year later is also the piano like a year later he has his fucking heavy duty oscar movie and his giant blossom the other thing is that that and he's basically kind of co-first choice to play james bond yes right and they go with pierce brosnan for i think a variety of reasons but like that was also he was right there he was right there you know like yeah well he's good i i gotta be for sam he's good there's the scene where um chevy is in theory holding him up at gunpoint right yep and then you do your reveal where it's like okay you see chevy right then chevy's not there anymore then you see just the gun to sam neill's head and he's leaning way back like how is he still upright and that's the fucking

thing so that scene when chevy when when sam neill is playing being held at gunpoint he's leaning way back. Like, how is he still upright in that scene? That's the fucking thing. So that scene, when Sam Neill is playing, being held at gunpoint, he's walking through the hallways of the offices and whatever. You're like, this is unbelievable physical acting. Imagine how good this movie would be if the other people who had to play these scenes were committing this part. You know? Who were working with the effects and with the gags. And he's like playing the stakes of the thing. He's playing the tension

of the thing. But he's really making you believe that there's invisible man there. It's not a digital effect. It's very clear. There is just a gun glued to his head and he's just selling it himself.

But it makes sense that like to a certain degree, obviously the carpenter wants to work with him again. But to someone like Spielberg, you're like, like well this guy is going to do the work like there are all those stories about how when jurassic park was bought they were like i don't know is it harrison ford do we do it with like the biggest stars and spielberg was like the star of the movie is dinosaurs either we pull off the effects or we don't but that's what people are going to come

to see so let's just hire three really good actors who are not going to be divas and are going to just do the work in what will be a very laborious process and it's a certain degree doing an invisible man movie you kind of need to do the same thing yes you need to hire elizabeth olsen who still wants to like do the work around moss excuse me elizabeth moss you want to get in the moss um but uh but she's gonna fucking show up and go through this very what difficult process what isn't what is that movie not really concerned with uh the practical everyday realities of being invisible that is yes but also visual effects like the visual effects in that movie are really simple. Yeah. They're like this, but in a digital era where you could get away with so much more.

They're not show-offy. They're simple gags. You know, right. It's a knife floating in the air. It's the most effective imagery. It's impactful. Yeah. Did you see the Lee Wannell?

I did not. I love that movie. It's good. Big fan. It's better than Memoirs of an Invisible Man. It is. Like, in all the years you guys have been doing this, like, how low down does this particular movie rank?

I'm just curious. We've done some real stinkers. I would not put this at the bottom. Okay. There are movies that make me angry, and there are movies that fail to elicit any sort of response or interest. There aren't that many movies

where a character puts up brown face to play a cab driver, which we have not mentioned. It is incredible. Because you're like, at least Chevy's made it this far without doing anything that's aged poorly. And then, boy, does he ever. Oh, God. It's just so unnecessary because he's playing a cabbie. Yeah. But he doesn't have to have no he doesn't

makeup on his face he could just have a chevy pitch exactly you could just have the regular old makeup on his face that he had earlier yeah yeah or you or use some of the liquid paper that alice had like in her line of makeup stuff when the camera pans across it something yes but the brown face no no don't do it, Chevy. And it's so late, too. Like you said, you're like, all right, we're like,

and again, it's like, wait, you want to do this weighty, serious, existential thriller and you're in fucking brown face. Right. I found some quote from him where he was like, you know, they kept on writing gags and I was like,

I want to lean into the adventure of this thing. Adventure was the word he kept using. Adventure. I want the audience to see me. I think they're going to join me on this journey into becoming a different type of star.

I want to do adventure. And it's like, you know what adventure requires, Chevy? Long hours. Right. A bunch of people just said yes. Yeah. To everything. To everything.

And then it's just a movie that isn't anything. It's just a mix of a bunch of shit. I don't know. It's wild. Interesting thought I had. He's contradicting himself constantly. Everything. And then it's just a movie that isn't anything. It's just a mix of a bunch of shit. Here's an interesting thought. He's contradicting himself constantly. Yes. He's like, I don't want to be funny. I want to be serious.

I wanted to be an adventure. Yes. Like, I also want the premise to be boring. Essentially. I don't think he has a clear enough vision. I mean, the other thing with Chevy Chase is like,

he was a heir to a massive, massive fortune who resented being a rich kid and was like I want to be in the dirt with real people and then got very quickly tired of everything he ever tried to do all of which he was very successful at. He would just get so ornery

like he wouldn't want to work for it. And he was just like yeah I don't know I'm bored of being a movie star. I don't know dude then shut up like then don't know. I'm bored of being a movie star. I don't know, dude. Then shut up. Like, then don't do movies. Whatever. Well, fortunately,

this movie absolves him of being a movie star. It does. It relieves him of the burden. And then he becomes angry about the fact that he's not a movie star anymore. This is what we're talking about.

Right. He seethes. He watches whoever in 1992 has eaten his lunch. I mean, Bill Murray kind of comes back. That's the other thing. Bill Murray was gone for five years. But whoever it is, he's. I mean, Bill Murray kind of comes back. That's the other thing.

Bill Murray was gone for five years. But whoever it is. Yeah. He's like, well, I'm better than that guy. I want to do something. And then they're like, okay, what do you want to do? I want to do this. All right, well, we'll see you for the next 20 weeks.

Oh, what? Like, that's a lot of work. Like, the community thing. Yeah. Like, well, I know better than you. Okay, Chevy. I also don't want to be on the show that much. And I don't want to do the work. And, like, I'm not going to read this guy's, like, I know better than you. Okay, Chevy. I also don't want to be on the show that much. And I don't want to do the work.

And like, I'm not going to read this guy's like coverage. And I won't show up for like, remember, Harmon hated him for like not doing the final bit in the video game episode. Right. Like that broke my heart. That was this big thing. And Chevy was like, fuck you. He just doesn't want to put in the effort to be better. I mean, really mean to Chevy Chase on this but we have to look it's the obvious comparison point

you have to keep on going back to but for all the stories about Bill Murray being this like aloof dude who can be really nasty and fuck with people you know and like you cannot get him on the phone you cannot get him to commit he'll quit projects in a mercurial way. He, by all accounts, when he is on a movie, does the fucking work. He is a guy who actually likes the process of making movies and is collaborative if he enjoys the process, the project. And cares a lot about being there off camera for other actors to give them something to play off of. And Chevy feels like a guy who treats the act of filmmaking the way a Chevy Chase character treats whatever ostensibly the movie is supposed to be about. Where it's like, I don't know who fucking gives a shit about this. There is an interesting, you know, I love my sort of like pulling together accidental trilogies of like a weird trend at a time where Hollywood was trying to do a thing

that never worked, right? Right. There was a weird analog to this movie in Vampire in Brooklyn. Oh, which is, when is that? It's three years later. It's 95. It's the last Eddie Murphy Paramount project

is essentially the movie that kills Eddie Murphy until Nutty Professor brings him back. And again, he's also working with a horror auteur in West Craven. A project where people can't decide, is it funny for a horror movie? Is it more scary for a comedy? Right. And he kind of is like, I'd like to play a villain. I'd like to not be Eddie Murphy.

There's a reason I hired West Craven. And they were like, but it's going to be the comedy about like, how do you brush your fangs? Right. Like there's that weird balance of it. And it's like, what's the third movie in this trilogy? Right. And I've always talked about the trilogy of the let's make fucking hypersexual literary monster movies of the 1990s. The first strike at doing Dark Universe, which is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, obviously.

But the third one in that equation, which you always say is kind of different, is more in line with this, which is Mike Nichols' Wolf, where it feels like that movie can't decide if it's a satire about, like, what's the modern-day version of this monster? Well, I have not.

Is that the one where the Jack Nicholson nodding meme is from? That's... Where he's just going, yes. I think that's Angson nodding meme is from? That's where he's saying, where he's just going. Yes. I think that's anger management. That is from anger. The one where he has the yellow eyes is bull.

Okay. There you go. Wolf also has a notorious scene where I feel like it's kind of like the meet Joe black car accident scene that like every six months, someone's like finds it on YouTube and is like, what is this? Right. He pees on someone's shoes and it's like,

I'm marking my territory. Right. The thing with Wolf is there's a concept. You kind of get it. But then Mike Nichols clearly so much is so disinterested in shooting action. Right. That the action is shot in super slow-mo because they clearly have like 15 seconds. Right.

And then the other movie on the other end of this that predates those two, but I think is like the, if you combine this with Wolf, it's the third film in the trilogy, I would argue is Scrooge, direct by Richard Donner, who almost does this,

where it's like, here's a guy who does not have the background in comedy, right? Who's done effects, who's done drama, who's done action, who's done like spectacle.

And he wants to do a comedy. The idea is, can we elevate this to mythical status with this funny man, this well-established persona? There's a weird battle in that movie between Bill Murray comedy and overly designed set pieces. What do you think of Screwed? A bigger

hit than any other movie. Much bigger. I've seen it once. It did not leave a big impression no i'm not a big fan you watch it and you go like this should be a slam dunk this is so really should be yeah it really should and i think there is that weird incompatibility of like what does the movie star want to be at this point in time and a director who's an odd match for the material and all that sort of shit um yeah but i just remember seeing this movie in a theater. And like I said, me and my best friend, Mike, we love Chevy. We saw all of his stuff.

We go to this. We're very excited. The trailer has obviously made it look like a comedy. With an amazing special effect. Yes. And we're just like, what is this? Be funny. You know, it's like Homer Simpson banging on the TV.

Like, be funnier. Yeah. We just wanted the version that Ivan Reitman wanted to make. Right. What you're describing also right it is because like me going and watching it and being like i know this thing is famously kind of not a comedy right i'm still kind of like geez this is really not a comedy it is crazy to imagine what you're describing sitting down being like all right chevy what do

you know give me let's get those molecules back right and then like half an hour in just sort of being like why is there no jokes but then the weirdest thing is this movie still does have more jokes than something like prophet el dundee 2 where you're like but now the jokes stick out the jokes don't fit with the rest of what this movie's doing yep i find it kind of the hole in his dick that one time yes that's the fantasy where he's fantasy where he's got a black hole. His extended dream sequence. I will admit, as a kid, I was obsessed with Invisible Man stories and the Universal

movie. I think I would get very hung up on the logic of monster movies. I went through a weird Jekyll and Hyde phase. I was always really fascinated by transformation movies yeah and i think asking those sort of questions about like what happens when you're invisible i just the

fact that this movie is taking the time to bother to be like oh the food is visible until it's digested right there's some part of my brain that still gets activated by that where i enjoyed watching this even though it is of misshapen calamity. Can't say I enjoyed watching this. I do own it now. I do too. It was only $1 more to own than rent. That's the classic iTunes thing.

Yeah. Rent it for four, they're like, just buy it for five. And I'm like, you guys, you bought it? It's an extra dollar.

Stop that shit. You should never watch that ever again. I'm going to watch it again. Why do you even have it? I'm going to watch the effects again. I'm going to watch it again. I'm going to watch the effects again. I'm going to go see my favorite scene. That's insane. Just watch the Richard scenes again

and try to figure out, like, is he being dubbed? Like, it feels as if someone else is doing that. Like, like Andy McDonnell and Greystoke. The first time I saw Garth Brangie's Dark Place, I assumed the same with Matt Berry. The joke is that the guy's poorly dubbed and then you realize

the guy can just fucking do that? Did this guy ever act again? The other thing is he looks like he, visually, this actor,

for those of you who are not watching this movie in preparation for this episode, which, good on you, he looks like the guy who would play,

like, the dude at the country club that Chevy fucks with in Fletch. Yeah, he's got an ascot, he's got long blonde Chevy fucks with and flex. He's got an ascot. He's got long blonde hair, sort of Roman nose.

Very right. Like sort of blue blood looking. And then this voice comes out of him and you're like, what the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. He's George Martin's son. He might just have an incredible way of,

uh, trolling his voice. I don't know. Yeah. Uh, he did act for a few years after this. In fact, he's in something called lily's light

the movie that's credited as being from 2020 but also in 2010 so this may just be imdb being okay stupid okay um the box office game griffin the box office game griffin well do we have any final thoughts on the movie bad movie alan more any more thoughts? It's not good, but I mean, did we talk enough about its impact on Carpenter, since this is, in theory, the Carpenter miniseries? Its impact seems to kind of just be, like, in the interviews at the time, he's like, I think it's good that I'm not doing a horror movie.

I like branching out. It was his first movie in forever that didn't have John Carpenter's blank on it, and part of that is because the author of this movie is Chevy for better or worse. Part of it too is that he wanted to be like, look, I can do fucking other genres. Before this movie came out,

he was like, look, they're offering me bigger projects. That's the quote where he's like, for once in my life, I'm not just getting horror scripts. It's like his next two movies were horror movies. Mouth of of madness and, uh, right.

The settlement of the alive deal is that he makes a deal with universal who, of course, we're supposed to be the home video TV sales output for the alive films where he has a higher budget, but more control. And then he goes back and does a more carpenter genre movies for universal that flop. Like,

it's like, he just, the other side of this movie is him trying to go back and do the thing that everyone liked in the 80s and it never works as well again. But he doesn't get to elevate to the new levels of studio filmmaking that he hoped this movie

would at least cynically bring to. This is the thing, Alan. We've done, this is I think the 12th episode, but we've done 11 episodes where it's basically always like, what a picture. And the narrative is like, oh, maybe people didn't like it at the time. Maybe it didn't make enough money.

But still, everyone in the room is just kind of like, wow, hell of a film. And now pretty much every movie that we're going to do, Mouth of Madness, I think is very well liked. That's the one.

But the rest of them, Escape from L.A. is kind of bananas. I guess some people go to the bath for that, but it's mostly going to be us wrestling with like oh he's like trying to get the magic back and he doesn't quite have it like we talked about this i'd probably wax too long about this without ever settling on a real cohesive point but in the they live episode we were talking about like tonal weirdness especially when it comes to genre movies right and how some people don't know what to do when a movie is like

combining different elements. And you have high camp and comedy along with like violence or gore or whatever it is. And Al Carpenter was a guy who always had his hand really firmly on that dial.

Yeah. That he was able to make a lot of different energies gel. And that arguably the two movies where people kind of push back on it were They Live and Big Trouble, where the reviews are like, why is some of this G's gel and that arguably the two movies where people kind of push back on it were they live and big trouble where the reviews are like, why is some of this so fucking cartoony?

Right. Those movies have both aged well. But I do feel from this moment on accepting Mouth of Madness, all the movies are like, is he in on the joke or not? Right. Like when people talk about Escape from L.A., when they talk about Ghosts of Mars, when they talk about vampires, even the people who defend it,

they're like, I don't know, you kind of can't tell if he's just like being swallowed up by the ridiculousness of the thing or if he's being kind of panty about it. And up until this point, you always know that he's pulling off exactly what he wants to do. This is the movie that maybe breaks

his tonal dial a little. Yeah. Chevy Chase broke him. That's sad. He's not the only one, right? As he did many people. I mean, there's that incredible story that, like, you know, fucking Spielberg mentored Chris Columbus, right?

Spielborg. Spielborg. You gotta watch out for him. Big bad Beatles Spielberg. We're out of Spielborg license plates. Spielborg mentors Chris Columbus after he writes this spec script, and then he has him develop all these other Amblin scripts for him.

And then he was like, you should be a director, right? And what was, I believe, supposed to be his debut film was Christmas Vacation. Sure. He was selling the studios, bringing them in development meetings and he

goes on to christmas vacation and i believe calls spielberg like a weekend and is like chevy is going to break me i cannot handle this like am i sabotaging my career and shooting myself in the foot if i stick with this because it probably will be a hit but he just i never recover everyone at that point is so like we know that they're like you know what there's this John Hughes has this Home Alone script just why don't you just make this a step. It's a mulligan. No one will hold it against you if you quit a Chevy movie and he does

and his career is fine. Whereas the people who finish a Chevy movie maybe kind of never come back. Sad. He is just such a piece of shit. Yeah. I like his movies. F is good fletch is good fletch is working overtime i and but like what are the other chevys that you would go because

like you're saying you were the biggest chevy fan i mean i think he's probably the fourth person you remember in caddy's show but that's more because dangerfield and murray and ted knight are so good but that also might be the exact right amount of Chevy in a movie. Right. At least through a mod of eyes. Yeah. And I love the vacation movies, you know, especially the first one. He's good in them.

He's great in them. The first two. And Fletch, I loved at the time, and Fletch Lives is a disaster. Fletch Lives is sort of indefendant. No one has a Fletch Lives is good take. Can I throw something out, though? What? The vacation movies are the only movies where he allows himself to be a little low status.

Yes. Like, shit happens to Gus Griswold. Clark. Clark. Clark. Gus is the kid. Like, he still tries to keep his, like, Chevy sarcastic.

Ross is the kid. Why did I say Gus? He still tries to keep his, like, above it all quips but like he fucking falls down and things hit him and he's embarrassed I think that's why they've aged better because like in this day and age no one wants to see a comedy leading man who is just an asshole

who wins yeah and he's a handsome asshole it's sort of like it's like the inverse of Dangerfield like Dangerfield they didn't unlock him as a movie star until he started playing rich guys. Right. And once he's a rich guy,

oh, everything else about him is funny. Right. Chevy's kind of the opposite. He's too perfect. Yes. Like we need to take him down a peg a little bit.

Right, but in fucking Caddyshack, you can have him play Golden Boy and it's not insufferable because he only has to do 25 minutes of the movie. Yes. And I like him in Community. I really do.

I do too. Pretty much everything about that performance, I like. It's great. The whole time. The whole time you're watching it, you know there's all this stuff

churning behind the scenes. Yes. Awful, indefensible stuff. My favorite Community episode is the Dungeons & Dragons episode. It's unbelievable. And it's an incredible performance. It is both a great comedic

and dramatic performance. It is so scary and so mean. And now it doesn't exist unless you own the DVDs. Is that true? It's really gone. Yes. I know it got pulled from

one of the big series. Yes, because of the Ken Jeong and Blackface. Yes. Are they going to make a community movie? Would he be in it? I can't imagine

he would be in it. I feel like it would probably be like the five who were there at the end. But Donald Glover went back and did that virtual people read. I remember Glover kind of made noise about like,

oh, we're having a good time doing this live read. Right, yeah. He was so good in it and then he was telling all these stories afterwards that were just like, oh, you have like fondness for this.

I don't know. Who knows if they ever fucking make it. I mean, it's bizarre that also just like between Rick and Morty and the Avengers movies. Yeah. Or even Justin Lin and the Avengers movies. Yeah. Or even Justin Lin as the backup director.

It's like there's enough juice behind it that you want to believe from a creative side. If they want this to happen, they get it made as a one for me, one for them. Right? Yes. Deal. But I think Harmon has talked a few times about it. He's having a hard time cracking it. But he's also working on so many projects now.

18 TV shows. Box office game. The movie came out February 28, 1992. Not a confident release slot. So like as much as the studio may have once been into this, they are dumping this movie. It opened to $4 million. It made $14 million.

I think it cost $40 million. So no one's happy. No. And They Live cost three. Like, he's made two three movies in a row. It makes They Live's gross. Right. But cost, like, ten times as much. How does this compare to, like, The Thing or Starman? Like, it's kind of the other studio stuff he's done.

And The Thing are both in, like, 20s, right? This is The Thing. It's not, like, almost twice as much as anything he's ever done. Apart from Halloween, which is like just an insanely profitable movie. Yeah. John Carpenter does not make hugely successful movies, but yes,

uh, you know, star man made 28. Right. I think everyone was okay with that, you know, but that was sort of the high end. I think that cost like 10 or something. Right. Um, and then big trouble and thing costs like 25. Right. You know, but that was sort of the high end of his like studio output. I think that cost like 10 or something.

Right. And then Big Trouble and Thing cost like 25 and both bombed. Big Trouble was, right, it made 11. Yeah.

But then, right, they live in Prince of Darkness, both make around 14. Right. Everyone's happy. All right. Didn't cost anything.

And the whole point of his live deal was like, even if it bombs in theaters, eventually his movies make profit on TV and VHS. Like, you're playing long game with him.

But this $40 million is a whole different budget strata for him. Number one at the box office is a comedy film that I'm sure we all have seen and loved. It's in its third weekend. Are you being sarcastic? It's still... No, no. It's in its third weekend.

It's a huge hit. Three weeks at number one for a comedy. Three weeks at number one for a comedy that's... Ben's trying to sneak a peek. That's... Is it... It's not Groundhog Day, is it? No, it's not that good.

Right. But it's... Groundhog Day is 93. 93, I think. Yeah. But it's certainly a major comedy star. Uh-huh. Emerging from Saturday Night Live, much like the stars of Memoirs of an Invisible Man.

Is it Billy Madison? No. Wayne's World? Wayne's World? No. Wayne's World? Wayne's World. Oh. Wayne's World. Right, that movie comes out in like January? That movie came out in early February.

Wow. First weekend, it made 18. Second weekend, it made 11. Third weekend, it's making nine. It does 130? Yes. Did you see Wayne's World? I did see Wayne's World.

Yeah, no, this was like my senior year of high school. I was like going and I had a car. So we went to the movies like all the freaking time. You know what movie is great? Wayne's World. It's real good. Our friend, Rob Shear, a friend of the podcast, he brought up a great point to me,

which is like Wayne's World is one of the only movies of that era that is like a boys will be boys comedy that has no homophobia in it that's interesting like there was some waynesville probably yeah weirdly largely unproblematic because it's sort of just goofy and innocent like absolutely look there are things i'm sure people will correct us and say this and that but i do think that movie is like so weirdly good-hearted because like that's the thing with um what's it called bill and ted where you watch it and you're like I love this this is so we showed it to the kids and I literally had to like have the mute button

ready for that one bit yes it's not just that it's but it's like it feels like an opposition to everything the characters have been established as up until that point and like Wayne's World has that consistency of like there is a pureness to the worldview of these guys.

Like they are good. They are good people. It's a fucking masterpiece. Wayne's World rules. Love it. And I would love to do Penelope Spheeris one day. She was on the bracket. She was on the bracket.

She was on the bracket. Number two, Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Number three. Now it's a comedy that I'm sure was a big Razzie winner. Can you imagine how angry Chevy is about that, by the way? That's getting his ass kicked by like I'm the was a big Razzie winner. Can you imagine how angry Chevy is about that, by the way? Yeah, getting his ass kicked by like the fourth Chevy type. I'm the first SNL leading man.

I've been a proven movie star for 15 years. It's a $40 million movie, and here's a sketch adaptation from a guy who was on the show for six years and was never the big breakout star of the show. This feels like a Ben movie. I think you've shouted this out before. This is like a very memorable. I think you've shouted this out before.

This is like a very memorable in the rental store cover. That's true. What genre? A comedy, but it's starring an action star. Is it Oscar? Oscar? No, it's not Oscar, but that's the correct actor. So it's Stop Where My Mom Will Shoot.

Oh, boy. Oscar's a better movie than Stop Where My Mom Will Shoot. It's also, it's a funnier cover because she's doing the Buster Keaton. Harold Lloyd, yeah. The cover of this one is still pretty good.

Well, the cover of this one is just every fucking background poster gag on 30 Rock of a Tracy Jordan. Like, the poster is just exactly what the movie is. Yeah. Right?

Like, there's no artistry to the poster. The poster is just, the mom's got a gun, she's pointing it at the person looking at the poster. She looks delightful. Right? Like there's no artistry. The poster, the poster is just, the mom's got a gun. She's pointing it at the person looking at the poster. She looks delightful. Right.

She looks like, you know, still getting. What is the premise of this movie? Oh, it is stop or my mom will shoot. I mean, this is also,

I know you have to leave Alan. I'll say this as quickly as possible and add time to it by saying, I'll say this as quickly as possible. It is a phenomenon I love, which is in France. American comedies always get translated to titles like this,

where it is the main character exclaiming something. Like every French comedy title is like, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. It's just a great way to title a comedy, I think.

What would the character be saying if they were trying to convince you to pay attention to what they're doing right now? Number four at the box office is a film that comes up on this podcast once in a while. I think Basic Instinct is released in a few weeks. So we've done some of these movies. It's what they called a chick flick back in the day.

But it's sort of like, you know, kind of a serious literary movie. It's based on a hit book. Fried Green Tomatoes? Yeah. How a hit book. Fried Green Tomatoes? Yeah. How do you just find Fried Green Tomatoes? Look, that was a period of time where they said...

That was the kind of movie. You can get a bunch of good heavyweight actresses and put them in a movie about women crossing over generational gaps. Right, and telling each other stories and learning things.

Right. Like, now it would be a 10-episode Netflix miniseries. Yeah, that would be a 10 episode netflix miniseries and it gets way over lifetime yeah right like yeah um but yeah it's just like you know that's a movie about listening to your elders like i don't even know how to define and you're like the biggest box office drawing that movie at the time is jessica coming off an oscar popping in her 90s number five of the box office is a movie that I've never seen, but we will do one day because the director has mostly made hit blank

check films. Okay. But this is the one in his career that you kind of forget about. It's in between. Well, it comes after two of his hugest hits. Is it medicine, man?

Medicine. John McTiernan's medicine, man, with Sean Connery and Lorraine. Melfi. The big two big two yeah everyone was waiting when's connery gonna unite with brocco it's also just a funny look at the poster for that which is like connery brocco like he brought in connery's like got his hands on his hips i'm the medicine man and like like also Lorraine Bracco is here. And it's like Predator, Die Hard, Hunt for Red October, medicine man. And then you've got Last Action Hero, which is the classic man.

Then you've got like Big Flops. It's just that's his only movie that doesn't exist. And it's starring one of the most legendary movie stars of all time. I don't. I think I saw that in the theater too. Because I think we were hoping it would be like a romancing the stone type of thing. What is the premise of that movie? He's a medicine man?

What does he do? He, she is like a pharmaceutical rep and he's like a researcher in the Amazon and they have, she has to like get something from him. Like some wonder drug that can cure 16 things. Exactly. And then it's like an odd couple, I assume romance.

So it's like Jungle Cruise. Is he old enough? It's like Jungle Cruise. i assume romance so it's like john connery's old enough it's like jungle cruise you gotta find the flower that will stop the flower will cure all illnesses we don't even have to say what this flower can do because the answer is it can do everything no one will ever get sick if we have this flower i'm just saying i did my own research and i think you don't need to get vaccinated if you have this flower i'm just saying i did my own research and i think you don't need to get vaccinated if you have the flower from jungle cruise griffin i did my own research griffin no uh some other movies the hand rocks hand that rocks the cradle uh big hit big good one movie called final analysis i don't know this movie i'm'm looking it up. I feel like I've seen this. Neo-noir erotic thriller with Richard Gere and Kim Basinger.

There we go. Sort of a Hitchcock knockoff thing. All right. Beauty and the Beast. Big hit. Mississippi Masala, which is a great movie. Denzel. Early Denzel, Mira Nair movie.

The Prince of Tides. One day we'll do it. We have to. Which takes us back to lorraine brocco because tony eventually give oh i don't want to school griffin griffin's watching sopranos now i'll shut up okay and then 35 up the latest in the michael apted up series opening it where it's a number 11 made 312 000 wow this weekend or in total? In total. Okay. Yeah, I don't know.

Anyway. Could I speak on The Prince of Tides? Of course. You yourself are a Prince of Tides. Starring the sexiest man alive, Nick Nolte. Damn right. So we had to read that book, and I was like, no, I'm going to read it. So I got the movie, and the movie stunk too.

So I don't know anything about it. We should watch it though someday a necessary interjection from our finest film critic final notes was way too boring yeah uh yeah we're gonna do it i mean uh uh marie uh bardy uh constantly uh i'd say on a weekly basis now texting us we gotta do barbara babs. It'll be quick and brief. Quick and quick and easy. As long as you talk about the mall some more. Yeah, we got to talk about the mall episode on the mall. We're going to it.

Yeah, that's a Patreon goal now. How we open a storefront. We're going to break the Patreon so they would have to like pay for your bail. We open the store. Idiotic podcast hosts arrested in attempt to meet Patreon goal.

We're like in front of a judge. Well, podcasting, it's kind of like radio, but it's stored on your phone. Now, I know that. Well, Patreon, it's kind of like a per person. But what's the premise of the show? Well, we started out like it was like, what if the Star Wars movie? I just tried. I know.

In front of like a night court, you know? Yeah. Anyway, we're out like it was like, what if the Star Wars movie? I just tried. I know. In front of like a night court, you know? Yeah. Anyway, we're done. Alan. Yes. Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure. It's really I've been talking with David for like a while about coming on.

And I'm glad we could finally make this happen. Come back. Yeah. Absolutely. Anytime. Let me do a better movie next time. You just you got to learn your lesson. Don't do the one. I know. I am. It was a rookie mistake. I. Let me do a better movie next time. You just, you got to learn your lesson.

Don't offer to do the one that stinks. No, it was a rookie mistake. I'm stupid. I know better now. I'll tell you off, Mike Allen, because it's a little ways away. We'll see. We had a very big guest star potentially like floated to us.

Yeah. And we sent the list of like six movies of which there were like five big beloved classics and one absolute stinker and this very notable person wrote back essentially i only want to do the stinker i have no interest in this director's other films i'm a big fan of this movie that no one likes excellent that'll be a good one magnificent yeah um so sometimes it happens but more often it's what you're doing which is i'll happily do any of these five.

And we're like, you're doing the fifth. No, and I've been listening to the whole mini series. And it's like every episode at some point, either you will talk about like the incredible run Carpenter is on. And then comes Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Or one of the guests will say,

well, at least I'm not doing Memoirs of an Invisible Man. And I'm here like, yep, I'm the schmuck who's doing it. Hey, but, but that's,

we need, we needed you to make this episode sing alan um people should check out your work on rolling stone you're constantly writing good shit um is what's alan watching can i still go to the blog spot it the blog spot still exists oh yeah you know it hasn't been taken out it hasn't really been updated every day 15 year old david going to his blog spots. It's sort of funny to imagine that now. You know, click on your individual little blog spots. Yeah, not going on social media, just going straight there.

So, yeah, you can find me on Rolling Stone on social media. I have my own podcast, which is on hiatus right now, but should be coming back hopefully later this fall, called Too Long, Didn't Watch, where every episode, a story including the aforementioned Jon Hamm hey yes we will we will pick a show

that they have never seen before we see the first episode and the last episode and nothing in between and they have to figure out what the fuck happened

oh that's that's a cool Jon Hamm watch Gossip Girl Alison Brie watched Game of Thrones Kumail Nanjiani watch Veronica Mars

you know Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally watched My So-Called Life, and we've got a whole bunch of great new ones coming up for the second season. That's awesome. My So-Called Life is an all-time pilot. It is. Incredible pilot. I like this show, but the pilot's

incredible. Eventually, I will have all of like Chevy Chase's former co-stars on the podcast, but I'm guessing after this, Chevy will not want to come on. No, but I think that's the way to do it is to talk to everyone but Chevy. Yes. That seems to be the way that the best oral histories

get put together as well. If you just do not let his voice enter the picture and you let everyone else speak for him. Chevy, Chevy, we love it when you fall down, but I wish that you were falling for me. Would be nice. And look, he took his biggest fall ever on this movie

from Grace. Well, well put. Thank you. Yes, very good. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to the aforementioned

Marie Barty for our social media, Pat Rounds and Joe Bowen for our artwork, JJ Birch and Nick Bowen for our artwork, JJ Birch and Nick Lariano for our research, AJ McKeon and Alex Barron for our editing. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit and go to patreon.com

slash blank check for blank check special features where we are doing the mummy movies. Tune in next week for, next week is? Tune in next week. Tune in next week. next week is Tune in next week. Tune in next week for Mouth of Madness, right? Next week is in the

Mouth of Madness. Maybe the last good one. We'll see. I'm excited. I'm excited to watch. And as always, Cherry Chase really is an asshole. We should just stay at it again. And as always, uh, cherry chase really is an asshole. I just, we should just stay at again.

Hot take.