Blank Check with Griffin & David - Predator with Jon Gabrus

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

GET TO THE CHOPPA! Griffin attempts his best (actually, worst) Arnold voice this week as we head to the jungle with Jon Gabrus and some bic razors. For almost three hours, we’re dissecting every little bit of PREDATOR - the glow-stick goo alien blood, the Alan Silvestri score, Arnold’s calves, Arnold’s biceps, Arnold’s long red polo shirt, Arnold’s chiseled cheekbones, the way Arnold says KILL ME!!! - you can expect lots of Arnold talk.  The filmed special of Blank Check on Broadway Live at The Town Hall will be available on VOD! The premiere will be on March 23rd 8pm ET. Get your ticket to watch it at: bit.ly/bconbway Video can be viewed on your phone / tablet / laptop or stream it via Airplay / Chromecast to your compatible devices. Purchase allows for a 7 day access window. This episode is sponsored by: Indochino.com (CODE: CHECK) Zocdoc (zocdoc.com/check)  Mubi (mubi.com/howtohavesex) Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

if it bleeds we can podcast it. That was such a fucking... That was disaster. Do you remember? I mean, this is... We haven't covered... Come in, John. Save us. That was offensive.

We haven't covered... That was offensive to German people? They could be offended? I was doing warm-ups. I know he's Austrian. And then I lost it immediately. I don't know if you remember this, because this is many, many years ago.

This is eight years ago now. But James Cameron, one of the first directors we covered on this podcast, we talked a lot of Arnold then. Yeah. It's been a little while since we've maybe talked this seriously about Arnold. Yeah. But my attempts at doing an Arnold impression were so bad in that era that I reclaimed it and said, I'm actually not doing an Arnold impression. It's a different character that I've made up named Yarnold. Yeah. But you also said you spent the last eight years practicing for this episode. No one can ding me. Shout out Rachel Yarnold Sanders.

It's her middle name. You borrowed her middle name on the Terminator episode to create the new character of Yarnold. Hey, Yarnold. To explain why you have such a pathetic Schwarzenegger impression impression so that's my dead accurate yarn old impression it doesn't say hey arnold it says he yarn do say get to the chopper come on okay get to the podcast i can't do it get to the chopper get to like dracula get to get to the job you do it you try one uh. Blah, blah, blah. You do it. You try one. No, I mean, let me think.

Oh, see, it's so easy. I never said it was. I ain't got time to podcast. Wait, what the hell was that? I like that. That's good. That was Jesse. That's Nicholson.

No, it's Jesse. I ain't got time to podcast. See, I could do an okay Jesse. I ain't got time. Jesse the body venturer. It's so hard to find Arnold Schwarzenegger's filmography on his Wikipedia page because of his tenure as the governor of California. I don't know if you guys are aware, but he was the leader of the biggest state in the country for eight years. You're mistaken.

That was the premise of a high-concept mid-2000s comedy. That was obviously the premise of a movie. There's the old Dylan Marne routine about like do you know how he got famous and by lifting things like there's a heavy thing we wouldn't want to lift it and he's like how about I lift it up all the time lift it over and over and over again and we were like yeah you're the guy we want to like run our like water supply and like taxes I'm so happy to be talking about Arnold again yeah how do you feel about Arnold, John? Do you like Arnold?

I just listened to his entire audio book and I know everything about him already. So it's like almost nothing new. Did you watch the Netflix talk? No, I didn't. I started it and it's good shit. Oh, okay. I'm so like bathed in this dude's life.

I like talk about him like three hours a week, more or less. Yes, yes. As a host of Action Boys. A host of Action Boys. bathed in this dude's life. I like talk about him like three hours a week, more or less. Yes. Yes. As a host of Action Boys. A host of Action Boys. A garbage man. No, garbage mans are the listeners. Janitors.

Janitors. Janitors are the listeners. We treat them so well over there. But no, there's something like, even if, look, I perhaps know less about Arnold than you do,

but I consider myself a minor Arnold scholar and watch this documentary and it's not that there were like a ton of revelations that blew my mind but it is fascinating to watch him just kind of like speak with perspective and candor on living the

most insane life imaginable right like you're making the joke version of it that's, like, that's embarrassing for us as a people that he became governor. I mean, that's Maren's joke, but like, at this point... He's really Forrest Gump. Yes. Like, he's like, he's just one of those dudes who keeps just being like, oh, and then he's just like, oh,

if he chose, whatever he wanted to do in life, he would have been absolutely the best at it. Yes. I just, that is objectively true. The dude is broken in a specific way. Correct. Luckily, he chose something that lined up with his insane genetics. Yes. And his ability to handle hormones. Right.

Injections. God bless him. I mean, good for him. Yeah. The fact that he became governor, was the governor. Had like kind of a mixed tenuous governor. Was a Republican governor of california for a decade eight years yeah yeah and uh you know a baker's decade a baker comes out of that

you know does some more movies he still will do a movie now but like it's you know it's getting fewer and far between and then like my boss came over a couple years ago and was like, isn't it weird that, like, the face of moderate Republicans in America is Arnold Schwarzenegger? Yes. Because he's like, you know, I think Donald Trump is bad. Like, it's like, wow, this guy's a real fucking genius, you know? He used to be, like, the thinking man's Mitt Romney. Right? It's bananas, but if they changed the law, he would be president.

Every single time there's some headline I read of like, Arnold releases scathing new video. I'm like, okay. And then I watch it and I'm like, he raises some good points and he sold them well. He actually is the one guy from this side of the party line who kind of is making some sense and is speaking to sanity. Because he's a historian as well.

And his dad was a Nazi. And he has intense regret. and he knows what that did to his dad and what it did to his home country yeah and so he's like guys i i'm hey we'll keep the taxes low but we gotta save the planet and like love each other yeah yeah we are here obviously not to talk about you know his political career or even his later career like we do have to talk about, you know, his political career or even his later career. We do have to talk about Predator, the Kennedy family of governors. Yeah. You mean, yeah, right. The Kennedy family of movies.

Right. And a political film in its way, sort of. I can grasp at the politics of this era of movie. One of the things I find interesting about this movie. It's just also just what I'm considering Schwarzenegger and I'm watching this movie, which is about a man, an impossibly large man.

Yes. Fighting a reggae lizard warrior. Yes. In a fictional jungle. Yes. While covered in mud. Right. And surviving a nuclear explosion.

And I'm like, yeah, this guy, right, became like a sort of of noted civic figure. Yes. It's just funny to think about. You just ripped out that log line.

That sounded so fucking awesome. It sounded so good. This movie you could watch as a dead-brained child and be like, that was the coolest thing I've ever seen. I watched this last night for the 400th time in my life. And I was like, man, I'm getting so much out of this. So much. Male friendship. Yeah. But also just the McTiernan thing. night for like the 400th time in my life and I was like man I'm getting so much out of this male friendship but also just magic hour helicopters

this is like such unshowy sophisticated filmmaking yes like you put aside the special effects and all the like the memeable moments and all the things that people like to focus on and you're just like this movie has astonishingly little dialogue considering that almost every line

is like eminently quotable. Yeah, you forget how many references from society are in this movie. But then there are also like multiple 10 plus minute stretches where no one talks. Yeah. And you're like, this is a movie

where every single story beat is like communicated so clearly and effortlessly i kept saying i felt so old watching this movie because it was like they don't do this in pictures anymore it was like all my brain kept saying like these wide jungle shots with our heroes walking through it you're like motherfucker there's not a piece of civilization there no no we it's it this is a, we didn't know how good we had it movie. And as David said right before we start recording,

just one of the most watchable movies ever. Just the easiest assignment is watching Predator. Yeah, hands down. Predator is the origin story of Action Boys.

It's the second episode of High and Mighty is Ben Rogers and Ryan Stanger coming on this. Oh, wow. This going on like nine years ago.

The second episode of High and Mighty. The first was Jake and Amir, the guys who picked my podcast up. The second was... And the topic of that episode was letting me do a podcast? It was about launching a podcast, yeah. And then this, literally, one night at a bar at Bird's, Rogers and I were talking.

We kind of knew Ryan Stanger. And he comes over and I'm like, I'm thinking of launching a podcast where I just have celebrities come on and talk about my favorite movies over and I'm like, I'm thinking of launching a podcast where I just like have celebrities come on and talk about my favorite movies. And he's like, Oh yeah. I'm like,

I like, I'd love to have Seth Rogen on talk about predator. And in that moment, Rogers and I, who've known each other way longer, we start talking predator and Stanger starts chiming in. We all had just watched if it bleeds on YouTube, the like hour long special features thing.

So we went off and we talked for 90 minutes at Bird's and I was like, okay, guys, I think you guys are going to come on my podcast. Can we replicate this again on Mike? We did it like six days later and fucked it up. And it was not as interesting as the bar convo. But then that launched us into now I've been doing, there's like 400 episodes of that show. And that was a

spinoff from High and Mighty. So you never did a proper Predator episode on Action Boys? No, we have not. But in this next one... It was coming to the backdoor pilot. McDonald's? Like, now it's the one you won't do?

Well, we are saving, because the eight awesome ones we did on High and Mighty in an hour and 30, we need to give the three and a half hour spectrum treatment from us. You even talk about If It Bleeds. I was watching this

and I was reading the McTiernan commentary. The Blu-ray allows you to do the commentary subtitles. Whoa. Because I was like, I want to hear McTiernan's insights, but I also don't want to not hear the Silvestri score or the line readings. I listened to the theme from Silvestri, the whole walk from the G train.

I forgot how fucking hard this score goes. Yeah. I like, I stupidly don't think of it immediately in my life. What are like the obvious big Sylvester scores? It's that's fair. Cause you think of back to the future. And now I guess you think of the Avengers,

right? Those are the, and the Zemeckis. Right. Yeah. Roger. This is like a kitchen sink score, right?

There's like so many instruments. You're like, what the fuck? Is that a didgeridoo? And like a kitchen sink score, right? There's like so many instruments. You're like, what the fuck? Is that a didgeridoo and like a djembe at the same time? There's a horn maybe? I think Sylvester says that like in a movie that is an hour 47. Just boo-booze-allies. Yeah, movie is an hour 45 basically.

It's like an hour 47. I think he said there's an hour 35 of music. He's like, this is a movie that almost never doesn't have music because a lot of it is dialogue-less and the music is what's like carrying you along. I don't know if you've seen Robodoc. I have not yet. That's on my fucking queue.

I can't wait. Just reading all the things that McTiernan was saying about this, reading the research that JJ did, digging into some other things. I'm like, this is a movie that needs a nine-hour documentary. 100%. I would gladly sit in a movie that needs a nine-hour documentary. 100%. I would gladly sit in a chair and talk for hours into a camera for the sake of this doc. I remember watching If It Bleeds a billion

times when I was 15 years old, but I'm like, that's not enough. And the other thing that's fascinating about this movie, similar to RoboCop, is this movie was forged in trauma and pain and stuff. Everyone is losing their mind making this movie. And then also everyone's account of what went down

fights everyone else's account. Everyone else is like, fuck that guy. No, this is what happened. Is there a movie set in the jungle where the behind the scenes story is like, yeah, it was a really chill time. Like, you know, plumbing was easy. Nobody got sick.

That's a good question. Temperature was normal. It didn't run long. We didn't go over the budget there was no weird weather like you it's always like every director is like i thought i could make the movie in the jungle but didn't go wrong and i was a fool like just like everyone else i got fucked by the jungle i want to do a movie so bad i say this all the time where the boom op is in like cut off jeans no shirt and a bandana yeah like i just want to be in one of those like coppola jungle like where i'm crawling in the mud and it's like my fucking

leg is still hurting from yesterday everyone's like just shoot like i want to be on like one super toxic weird out of country and now that's like eastern european like expendables you know you got steven seagal right moldova yeah right right and uh what's it called when you can't take someone out of the state like a no extraction law? No extradition. There's already so much to talk about. We're like setting up like 15 different press. What is this podcast? That's what I'm trying to do now.

It's Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers. Like for example, having Predator be your second film. Yeah. Insane. Sure. This is one of the biggest leaps from first movie to second movie I feel like we have ever covered on this show.

Because his first movie is not very good. I have never seen No Man's. No one had seen it until we did it on the show. And I was expecting, like like even if it wasn't a secret you know like hidden gem I was like I'm gonna see the thing that made them hire him for Predator and I watched it and I was like

they had a much better eye than I did or they got really fucking lucky. So you didn't see cocaine? Cause cocaine is the thing that got everyone hired on this fucking movie dude. Holy shit. You see cocaine you know like hair in the lens? They're flex they're like rocks in the lens yeah everyone's got the the fucking neil young last waltz booger no no no man's does feel cocaine-y as well yeah no man's is a little coked up but no man's is also just like, I don't know, like, you know, what is anyone doing here?

Like, it does have a bit of a mood. It does. But it has a noir-y L.A. mood. It doesn't have a jungle action movie mood. It doesn't have, let's gather eight of the craziest fucking people in Hollywood and trap them in a jungle together. So the thing with Nomads is, let me finish the introduction. Directors who have massive success, like making Predators at the second film. Early on in their career, they're given a series of blank checks

to make whatever crazy passion products they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they get to the chopper, baby. This is a mini-series on the films of John McTiernan. It's called Pod Hard with Avenge Cast. Ah, that's a good one. I like that.

Our guests say return to the show for, I believe, the fifth time. Do I have to look this up? Oh, shit. Yeah, because I didn't. I have goldfish brain. From High and Mighty from Action Boys,

John Gabrus. This is your fifth appearance, my friend. Congratulations. Oh, this jacket fits great. Thank you, Hosley. Of course. You're so welcome.

I'm glad it fits. Congratulations. 54R. Perfect. Shouldn't start making a BlankCheck five-timers jacket. We really should. Yeah. I would put it in loose site in my living room if you guys did that.

Like, I would have Planet Podcastwood in my house. This and the signed Comedy Bang Bang Bug next to it. Then it would be like, yeah, so come to this address. Yeah, go to the elevators. Also, what are your measurements? Like, that would be the new. It's not a value judgment because the way our favorite guests, people like you, who we love and we love to have on the show and try to have on regularly. Sometimes it's about timing.

Sometimes about what we cover. And the way you live across the country. Sure. You know, it's not like we give preference to certain people to only give them the best movies or only the worst movies or this or that. But the internal canon of the Gabrus blank check episodes is Heat, Road Warrior,

Too Fast, Too Furious, Predator, and the fifth one I'm forgetting is It's a big one. Why can't I remember it? Why can't I remember it? It's a big one. Heat was a big one. Yeah. Why can't I remember it? Why can't I remember it? It's a big one. Yeah.

Heat was my first one, right? Right. Yeah. Do you want me to tell you? Yeah. Full metal jacket. Full metal jacket. But look at that fight.

Yeah. It's violent. It's violent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guns. Guns are present. Well, to be fair, those are like five movies

that if you cut my head open, you would would just fall out in like big like icons and david's right that too fast too furious is on a different tier from the other four movies basically undeniable masterpiece right but also it's the only movie in our shared favorite franchise we've covered right so if you like have it occupied the space of fast and furious at large that's like an impeccable five. I am thrilled with that five. And when you texted me about this, I was like, I'm going to be in town on a whirlwind tour.

I could do that. It was just like, who should we ask to do Predator? And then we were like, wait, we're fucking morons. Right, right, right, right, right. It is so easy. The highlight of getting a text from Griffin that says we're doing John McTiernan on blank check. If you didn't even invite me to Predator, I'd still be excited that you sent me that text

because I'm so stoked to listen to it now. I put this on last night as prep for the podcast. As you said, easiest job in the world, right? Watch Predator as prep. Great. I'm going to have a great fucking time. Yeah. 30 minutes in, I was like, I fucked up.

I fucked up waiting until the night before to watch this movie. I wish I'd watched it two nights ago so I could watch it twice before recording the episode. I kind of know what you mean. I watched a half hour on the toilet this morning on my iPad. That's how, like, I was like, I need to get more in. I should, and I felt the same way. I was like, you flew here, asshole. You could have watched it on the flight.

You could have fucking watched it three times. You could have watched it 10 times this week. here asshole you could watch it on the flight you could have fucking watched it three times ten times this week but just guess an immaculate film made in insane conditions with a lot of humongous personalities right that was greeted as stupid as fuck when it came out was a hit but not like a you know hit no and everybody loves it forever and ever now, right? Yeah. No one has any shit to talk about Predator. No, and weirdly, the junkiness and the odd misstepped nature of the Predator franchise continuing for decades only helps the reputation of this movie. How can you not make that movie again?

It looks so easy. Yes. It's muscle guys with guns and the predator fucking wastes them like and why do you keep fucking this up every time someone fucks it up you're like i guess predator should be on money i guess we should put the predator on our hundred dollar bill it's funny because a lot of when a movie does that many bad movies it starts to tarnish some of the og ones you know you're like oh fuck okay i can't even watch this because now i can't stop thinking about last jedi or whatever but now when you're fucking watching this i like all the aliens danny glover uh shane black's autism is a superpower version like yes

all that shit just disappears and i'm like i'm this is like a singular piece of art i mean prey is finally the good predator sequel we waited decades to get. It's the one closest to this one where they finally kind of figured out the right way to replicate the formula without totally copying it. It's definitely the best one since the first, but it's not nearly as good as Predator. No, it's not nearly as good as Predator. I really enjoy Predator 2.

I do not hate Predators. That one's really solid. I don't hate any of these. I don't hate any of them. I hated The Predator. The Shane Black one is just depressing. Where there's someone doing Tourette's in a movie. I've erased that movie from my brain. Smart.

Yeah, I wish I could. Like, as, like, a trauma response. Instead, I erased my social security number and my mom's birthday. But I still have Predators deep in there, and The Predator, and Requiem. Predators is fun. It is. But once again, like, all of these, you're, like, on paper, perfect pitch for a Predator sequel. Right? Pred is fun. It is. But once again, like all of these, you're like on paper, perfect picture of Predator sequel,

right? Predator 2. What is it? Okay. And the way the first movie was like commandos in the jungle. This is LA race riots. Danny Glover is a cop.

Yeah. And the Predator lands in the middle of that. You're like perfect fucking lateral second beat. Right? I love it. Yeah.

And then you're like, it doesn't really work. And then you're like, Predators, here's the idea. Yeah. And then you're like, it doesn't really work. And then you're like, Predators, here's the idea. Their planet, they get like 10 of the deadliest killers.

They stock their pond. Different definition. This is their sort of like Hunger Games. Yeah. And you're like, kind of works. Yeah.

That kind of works because the cast is pretty radical. The cast is fun and Nimrod's alright. Yeah, it's like a tie. I just like these movies. I mean,

Predator 2, I've famously never been able to get through without falling asleep. That was Blade Runner for me for like 10 years. Okay, no wait. Blade Runner is like a meditative film that's kind of dense and complex and there's a lot of mumbly conversation.

Predator 2 is not relaxing. Predator 2 is the loudest movie ever made. And it's got Paxton going off. They need a urine sample, a semen sample, and a fecal sample. I can't get my underwear, get all three. Like, this movie is insane. It's bananas. Insane.

And Prey is, using UCB terminology here, sorry to 8% of your listeners. You're welcome to the 92% that have taken level two. I think Prey is chasing the game of the predator that I like. Now, I could sit here. I wish I could be in the, is chasing the game of the predator that i like yeah now i could sit here i wish i could be in the like where alien write the dollar sign i would just be like

predator lands in the crusades predator lands in feudal japan why don't we go the assassin's creed it sounds like now that's what they're finally predator fights vikings predator fights american revolution fights samurai fights dinosaurs well i mean fuck yeah wait a second no no but now we're gonna get in ourselves in trouble why do you well because now what they're just dinosaurs well they can talk i guess see now we're getting ourselves in trouble do they have weapons i guess they all right all right the dinosaurs can talk predators can't but the predators have their own dino species, the P-Rex.

So you got a predator riding a P-Rex who's like a T-Rex with the fucking mouth. Sounds good. It sounds good. Predator versus Toy Story. Fighting like a caveman on it. We just cross them over with the worst franchises. No, but it sounds like now,

finally they've gotten Predator down to the right budget level by being like Hulu, $20-30 million, and just make the premise Predator lands in X. In time of Famous Warrior. Feudal Japan continues to be the rumor of what they're actively developing. It makes total sense. I'm putting theaters and I'm satisfied. Yeah, and just fucking slam dunk. There's this long standing sort of urban legend that this movie was the Hollywood joke of,

uh, Oh, who's, who's Rocky going to fight next? Rocky keeps on escalating to such ridiculous levels. He's got to fight thunder lips. He's got to fight. Yeah.

So he was like by Rocky seven, he's going to be fighting an alien. And there's this, uh, erroneous, uh, notion that predator came out of a rival studio being like fuck maybe we should actually just make that rocky versus alien

now and then it shifts and it's i'm reading from the dossier then jj has disproven this yeah jim and jim and john thomas the idiots who wrote this movie god bless them i love the world's smartest idiots yes exactly these are the guys that like like, forced the script onto, like, the studio, right? Yes, correct. And let's get to J.J.'s thing in a sec. I also want to speak overall about how, like,

accidentally good this movie is. That's the thing. This is the reason I want the nine-hour documentary. That's exactly the thing. Because, like, those guys, you know, they went on to write Executive Decision,

which is a fun movie. A lot of their credits, it's Wild Wild West. Mission to Mars, it's not a movie where the writing is what i like about it behind enemy lines they have a story credit on solid you know solid solid solid you know i'm sure they they like oh a guy gets caught behind enemy lines and holly was like yeah fine you bizarrely get a story credit on this and the eight dvd sequels we're gonna make sure um that's about it since then but like the wild wild west thing especially screams to me like these guys are not

you know stories that are like honed you know like this is not what they guess what you come up with this premise you get to dine out for the rest of your fucking well he like they more or less do because if you look at their imdb it's like all of their credits are like characters by in like 40 video games and 70 movies. Yeah, good. So they start working on this movie in 83. Rocky four came out in 85. The joke that you referenced the sort of like Hollywood was like, well, fucking let's do Rocky versus an alien is a joke that Joel Silver basically came up with, and said in an interview to Starlog or whatever, where he was like, you know, it's reached the point where they have to fight an alien because, like, that's the only enemy we can give them. And, like, Arnie has beaten Stallone to the punch. Like, he's puffing up the movie, you know?

It feels like that thing that sometimes happens where someone, like, tweets a joke about a bad movie pitch, and then two months later, the trailer comes out, and they're like, see, they made my movie. And you're like, do you understand how film development works yeah right don't tweet movie pitches that's on you bro but like yes

I think it was these two guys independently writing this script meeting a moment where the joke had entered the culture and suddenly his landing of like oh basically the framework exists for us to green light this I just miss the 80s when it was like we need to write a script that arnie and sly will get in a bidding war over like that's our that's our strategy basically yes so the pitch their script

was originally called hunter yeah where they plus it up to predator that that's another like accidental genius move because hunter makes total sense yeah predator stands out in such a specific and maybe it's because now i've been like washed over it no but even i think i think the predator is a more evocative word in a certain way it's a little scary it's a little scary it's a little more mysterious also just try to imagine referring to this species as the hunter right you know like the way we're all able to say like the predator right you say the predator everyone knows what you're talking about right they jump to the predator before they jump to the predators that chris hansen catches if you said the hunter they'd be like from what like

snow white and the huntsman what are you night of the hunter right too many guy fieri's son the hunter fieri so they write this movie which is basically yeah just the most dangerous game with an alien and like the most dangerous game is going to be like soldiers so they're even more dangerous right like look i want to give them a little credit here i do too they did a great job there's a really smart logic chain of like if this then what that we're just going to throw so many improv terms out stop it but. But for listeners who don't know Griffin and I met when he was in my level one like two improv

shows in my entire life. And that was one too many probably. I think I mean unless I'm getting this wrong of one of you being level one and one of you being level two because there was a switch off. I did intensive with both you and Rogers. Right. We are actually doing this now. Stop him Ben. I can't with both you and Rogers. Right. We are actually doing this now.

Stop him, Ben. I can't. It's already started. The only way you could stop it is if you get up and walk around the room and sort of clear it. You got to sweep at it. Is that an improv term? Yeah. That's what I,

I stand over while Ben is editing that blank check episodes. And whenever I think there should be an edit, I run in front of his desk. And go, okay, so... Talking about... Wait, you were saying the world building...

No, just the logic chain of like, what would be fun? Huh. Deadliest game with an alien. Right? Right. Okay, so if an alien...

It's like, create deadliest game with a species... Most dangerous game. Most dangerous game. I'm sorry. Most dangerous game with a species

that's better at hunting than we can even fathom right right so then who would they want to hunt the deadliest humans who are the deadliest humans commandos right yeah you know like guys in fatigue and then you're like oh so it's them in the jungle like there's right once you have this it's the 80s so it's like everything is like nicaragua and like you know all that shit we're always in the jungle just like line up so perfectly. Yeah, if this movie came out in like the 90s,

it would have been like the Middle East. It would have been the, it would have been the middle. Like, that is entirely accurate. Yes. And they would have gotten,

you know, had other set drama instead of the jungle set drama. True. But they slip it, they send it everywhere, it gets rejected everywhere. They slip it to a Fox reader.

Lawrence Gordon, the legendary, you know, producer. Producer at one point Fox had. He had just become the head of the studio, and he was a guy who came out of the Corman School. That's the thing.

This is the big thing. He's like a trash guy. Like, trash is his milieu. Right. He's coming into Fox. He gets the script, or his reader gets the script, and gets kicked up to him. He likes it.

They get a phone call. They sold the script. They didn't have an agent or a lawyer. But they truly, like, slid it yes yes yes and like it just through like sort of twists of fate made it to larry gordon who was like i love this it got to the right desk on the right day right guy who like finally had just it was like basically the first nerd like movie dork to ascend to like a high position who wasn't like, I'm Jack Warner. The magic of the movies was like,

isn't it cool? And monsters fucking punch shit. John Davis, a producer at Fox, a new producer at Fox had worked on commando, which is a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. So Fox is like starting to see the value of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh yeah.

That guy. Yeah. Yeah. He's pretty popular. People like him. Yeah. But look, I think he was very much

seen as like, that's not a proper studio movie star. Let the canons of the world work with Schwarzenegger. Well, it was like coming in on, coming in big on Terminator 2

is like, well, of course you can play a stoic robot. Right, right. Exactly. He can play monsters, essentially. Yeah.

But he's not going to play like a person. He had basically done Conan, the two Conan movies, The Terminator, Red Sonja, which he's sort of not the total star of, right? Commando, which completely rocks,

but it's basically about what if a guy with a gun shot people? That's not a high concept movie. I know it's a pretty big concept when you say it like that. Honestly, Liam Neeson owes a lot of money to Commando it's pretty it's literally like you're gonna pay yeah like you pissed off a guy oh who'd i piss off this guy but you idiot how do you make him pay shoot him with guns commando and predator both have this in common and maybe i'm maybe it's just specific to me but i'm sure it's more universal than i think yeah they are like kid ideas for something where it's

just like what if me and what if we were all just jack dudes like kid ideas for something where it's just like what if me and what if we were all just jack dudes with machine guns in the jungle it's like awesome commando is like there's a sequence where he goes to a gun store and just picks out his weapons like it's a video game fucking there's also that scene in the terminator like yes like it's like they just know that it's like what's his character's name john matrix uh yeah it's like, what's his character's name? John Matrix. Yeah. It's like a nine-year-old came up with a character name. John Matrix. And it's like, and they take his daughter and then takes him to an island.

And it's like bad guy island. It was like one of the first bad guy island movies, too. That's now everyone uses to protect geopolitics. It's like, it's a separatist island off the coast of the Philippines. Filipino people are like, what the fuck, man? One of Epstein's favorite movies look anyway after commando he does raw deal this is kind of similar to commando they gave him a raw deal yeah i've never seen nobody gives him a raw deal i feel like it's kind of the forgotten schwarzenegger movie of this era it's not bad i've seen

you know he's uh he got a raw deal he got got a raw deal. He's taking down the mafia, right? He's like a sheriff and like there's a witness protection angle to it. Who directed Raw Deal? John Irvin. Okay. Raw Deal and the Russian one.

Right. Red Heat. Red Heat. Getting confused because of the titles. Right. Because that's Walter Hill. Red Heat,

which is obviously the one with Belushi is Walter Hill. Yeah. And those are where he's like doing his Chuck Norris kind of era where it's just likeushi is Walter yeah and those are where he's like doing his Chuck Norris kind of era where it's just like this is a plug and play this has nothing

to do with not built around Arnold it's just like oh this is a story of an undercover cop it's like well of course the undercover cop would be six foot three two hundred and ninety five pounds and shredded but plug and play is a good point because you're like right Terminator everyone goes you know what this does actually make a lot of

sense for casting. Conan, obviously. Conan, the guy's built for, like, he built his body to look like this illustration. When you start to get into Commando, Raw Deal, Red Heat, I guess Red Heat is playing on him being stoic. Well, so Red Heat is the first inch towards, like, could he play, like, a somewhat comic character?

Right. You know, like, Twins is the same year as Red Heat after Twins it's like this man runs society yes because like Twins is his first

hundred million dollar movie which is so bizarre to think about Twins is the most lucrative job he's ever had yes like in terms of like pure profit

yeah because they all took back end him, DeVito and Reitman and they they took 40% of the back end yeah because no one wanted to bet.

They all dropped their quotes to make this movie because everyone's like, there's no way. And it ends up being humongous. I remember he was like a nerdist interview back in the day. He was like, yeah, more money on that than like the entire Terminator franchise or something crazy like that. It's so funny to me that it's like,

well, that's his comedy era is him like poking fun at like what it established action star he was. Which he was. No, he was huge. But it's like comedy is what finally really broke him to the A-list. Right. That's what moved him to the very top of Hollywood is when he started doing the comedy. When he proved he could do that. Yes.

It was kind of like, okay, we forgive you. You know what else he could do that not a lot of people in in his uh realm can do he's great as himself yeah in like in interviews and press in real life and like which is why you could just see the road to governor the road to political leadership you watched the the documentary right david no i haven't seen the arnie dark i i listened to him on conan i'm gonna get this word wrong but there's a word he uses like an Austrian word, a term that's like smech or something like that. And they're like, what's smech? And he's like,

smech is like all this stuff. I'm doing my impression of Arnold now. He Arnold. He Arnold. But he basically was just like all this stuff, like the cigar and the tanks and all of these. Arnold or accoutrement. Right. And he's like, he basically is like, he Arnold Accoutrement right and he's like he basically is like he can't define it but he's like

it's kind of like a term we use for like bullshit yeah I get it but it's like bullshit that's like kind of exciting and makes people pay attention to you look the dude is a master of branding there's no way he has an accent still like he's been in America for like 50 fucking

years yeah and his accent in the audio book is stronger than like in predator. Yes. He's got like, he's saying work, you have to work hard. And he's never done that. The other thing about this guy being like the greatest self actualizer in history,

they're like, okay, you want to be a movie star? First of all, probably never going to happen in legitimate films because you are a bodybuilder with no acting training but if you wanna give this a go

just to be a lunkhead who swings a sword around yeah right and shoots people change your name and learn how to speak an American accent and he was like

I firmly refuse to do either the world will bend around me Arnold Strong of course was how he was built in Hercules in New York I'm Hercules that's a crazy ass movie right and

they dubbed him over yeah and they dubbed him over with someone who speaks even like more broken english somehow that what he does do for conan he doesn't change his name he doesn't master the english dialect but what does he do train with a fucking sword master change his entire like bodybuilding program because he this is what conan would have yes and i'm like that's a different approach to acting that not a lot of people do anymore and like and that is such like that's another thing about his magic he isn't an intellectual theater guy but he comes at it from i feel like conan would have big legs because from carrying the wheel of pain and he's like and then he's a sword guy so he goes and trains with like a master samurai swordsman and trains like hours a day and like works on developing his shoulders because conan would be swinging a sword all the time he

understands this fucking visual storytelling like he's an incredible communicator like you can't argue that he is a naturalistic portrayer of the human condition well he's at his most awkward when he's playing a normal god god i gotta get the toy for my kid like and he's at his best when he's at his most awkward when he's playing a normal god god i gotta get the toy for my kid like and he's at his best when he's like i am a metal man built to kill you're like fuck this guy's believable as the metal man so a movie like this i'm like he's communicating every beat he wants to pretty gracefully the camera also loves him like it just fucking especially by this time you know in predator is there a word for the male gaze on males via heterosexuality though because it's not they're trying it's not trying to sexualize these guys but it's impossible not to stare at them but it is the sort of male like look at that

guy's fucking traps energy guys like mctiernan, I think guys like Zack Snyder now, you know, who I've always, if nothing else, admired for like he shoots the male body with something of a sexual gaze. Like not in like an insane way where he's, you know, going like, you know, completely over the top of it. But he's like, I appreciate this and you should too.

Like this is not, and this is not just you looking at a statue. This is you looking at a hot fucking giant man. Like, enjoy this. It's the thing that Arnold talks about, which is like very in line with what you're saying about Conan that I found so interesting in the documentary is like, his objective was not, I want to be the biggest guy in the world.

He was like, I looked at bodybuilders and I was fascinated by the way that muscles were sculpted. And he was like, I was going for very specific aesthetics. I wasn't just trying to be larger than everyone else, which he did basically do, right? Yeah. were sculpted. And he was like, I was going for very specific aesthetics. I wasn't just trying to be larger than everyone else, which he did basically do, right?

But he also was like, I like this curve of the shoulder. I like this muscle here on the leg. And he was like, I would spend six months doing one thing

to try to build something that wasn't the look I wanted, but would support the look when I went to the next phase. Like, he really was thinking compositionally about his body. There's a famous story that he thinks he didn't win one Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia because his calves were underdeveloped. So he took all of his sweatpants and cut them at the knee. So he had to have his calves exposed all the time. So he was

constantly reminded that they were weak and small. And so he just went and went fucking ape shit and that's where you see there's a crazy exercise called a donkey calf raise where you kind of are bent over with your elbows on and you're doing calf raises there are so many photos of arnold with like his bodybuilding friends on his back doing that like franco colombo who was like his best friend r.i.p but then yes then, yes, then he won the next Mr. Universe. Like he was just like, great, note taken. My calves will be superior. And he, along the way, every time he met like a new weightlifter, a powerlifter or a bodybuilder that was doing something different than him, he was like open-minded, learned from them, stole from them. You know, like he did whatever it took.

He's like, he's not afraid. Like, you know, that's another thing. He's like open to input. Well, this is, look. He wanted to be he's not afraid. Like, you know, that's another thing. He's like open to input. Well, this is, look. He wanted to be Reese in Terminator. Imagine that fucking movie. Insane. We're loading a lot of things on the plate here.

But like, it's another reason this movie works so well is he talks so much about in those like early California bodybuilding days. He went from being very competitive to being like, if I want to be the best, I have to actually go open source on this information and this sport with everyone else. Right. Like, I need to find all of my contemporaries and rather than like antagonize them, bring them in. We all work together.

We all share our notes on everything. And it wasn't like, no, the enemy kind of shit. He was like, first of all, the whole sport's going to get raised if all of us can like create excitement around this. But secondly, he was like,

we're like scientists in a lab developing shit. We need to be like comparing notes and this movie similarly like puts him with a crew for the first time

where I think he's kind of doing the same thing with acting. Like he's watching other guys act who are maybe more natural actors than he is. There's a moment in If It Bleeds when he's kind of doing the same thing with acting. Like he's watching other guys act who are maybe more natural actors than he is.

There's a moment. And if it bleeds when he's like, and we've got all these big muscle men, soldiers and, and wrestlers and football players here. And I'm like, that's what excites him in such an interesting way. It's like,

bro, it's like a 13 year old kid. And then there was one guy there who knew karate, you know, like it's like, it's such a fucking dream. Something out of him to surround him with all these guys and then you talk about how fucking good he looks aside from just like his face remains insane especially this is maybe like this movie is

possibly the most beautiful his face ever was absolutely fucking like his face is chiseled but unlike some guys who just get big for the sake of being big you're like arnold knows what will play on camera he has developed his body in a way to work on camera specifically it's so radical by somehow in the third act of the movie everyone's undershirts are gone but everyone still has their vests it's like fuck yeah yeah there's just that scene at the end when him and carl weathers is like they're both there's no way you can be that like flexed without trying. And they're like, Dylan, he's like, yeah.

They're all just like fucking like raging, like, you know, like vascular as fuck. And it's like, they're clearly just ripping out everything in between. It's so fucking awesome.

What's this drum roll? We have an announcement. Announcement? Yeah. I briefly was like, is Ben okay? What is this? Ben's never been doing better. I'm doing so good. Why?

What's up? Okay. So you know that we have a live show coming up at the town hall. Don't remind me. On March 8th. I can't wait. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you should come. There are a few left.

There's some left. There's a couple left, but let's acknowledge. Yeah. Not everyone is living in the tri-state area. It's not convenient for everyone to come. Maybe you got outstanding obligations. Maybe you live in. If you live in the tri-state area, though, you better come.

This is the thing. Everyone in the tri-state area is on blast. If you're outside the perimeter. And by the way, by tri-state area, though, you better come. This is the thing. Everyone in the tri-state area is on blast. If you're outside the perimeter... By the way, by tri-state area, it's kind of like eight states. There's a lot of tris that you can put together. We keep on kind of pulling other states into a tri. Like Delaware, you're on my list. This is the point.

Look, we don't travel. We don't do touring shows. People sometimes get bummed out that they don't get the opportunity to see our live shows. Yeah, I have young children. I don't care about touring. Plural? No, you're right. Young child. Well, okay. I don't get the opportunity to see our live shows. Yeah, I have young children. I don't care about touring. Plural? No, you're right. Young child. Well, I don't like this. Are you about to make

an announcement? I don't like it. He's now pointing towards me. Griffin's sort of a young child. No, I have a figure of speech. I'm a 35-year-old child, to be clear. I'm a 35-year-old child. Okay, but here's the thing. We have exciting news. We have exciting news. Let's focus up. We are

going to film the live show. We're going to film it. And we are going to make it available on the internet. We're going to have a premiere drop about a week, a couple weeks after the fact. Ben, you got the date there? I sure do because of course the

date is March 23rd, our anniversary. That's nine years, baby. Great. Syncing up on that one. So it'll be going live 8 p.m. Eastern. Yes. On our anniversary, and then it will be available to watch for the next seven days.

That's right. So you can experience Night Check on Broadway. Yeah. Technically, we're on West 43rd Street, but yeah. Sure. Well, come on, David. Broadway is sort of weird

because, you know, I mean, Lincoln Center is on Broadway, but they count as Broadway shows even though they're outside of the Broadway district. We're on all this right now, yeah. But for just $15, we'll have a beautifully put together multicam special. Yes.

Filmed live at the Town Hall. A lot of special guests. A lot of fun surprises. It's going to be multimedia extravaganza. Hypervisual. That's right. You're going to want to watch this thing. And Town Hall is a union house.

We got a crew. We got a sort of cover in the cost of the video rental. Yeah. Yes. But everyone's being fairly compensated. Exactly. So if you are interested, in the episode description, there will be a link where you can get your tickets available on Monday at noon. Sneeze to some extent.

Guys, is this the best episode we've ever done? I was like bordering on it and then the sneeze happened. I was like, this is good. This is like standalone good. I decided I have multiple children. Ben forgot what the word podcast is, it seems like. Sneeze directly into Mike.

I really tried to sneeze off Mike. David was leaning away and he leaned all the way in for the sneeze. Okay, so this is just a little taste of what you could get. Imagine this with visuals. We're definitely not tired. No, we're doing great.

Once again, there'll be a link in the episode description. It's going to be great. And I think that's all I need to say. Yeah. And as always, be Italian. Be Italian. That's a little...

A little tease. Arnold Schwarzenegger likes this script. This movie exists because of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes. Like, he, I think wisely, picks kind of ambitious script post-Commando. Yeah.

Commando's, like, unambitious. Commando is, I throw guys through walls. This is also the moment when he is like... He likes sci-fi. He likes like genre stuff. He's also fully legitimized now. He doesn't have to like go to Dino De Laurentiis. Right.

You know, it's like the major studios want to work with him. And suddenly when you have a new type of movie star like this, where you're like, we don't have scripts that are kicking around that are obvious to just throw to him, right? Like a Bradley Cooper emerges. It's like, hey, here's the pile of stuff that Wahlberg and DiCaprio have turned down the last five years, right?

A Schwarzenegger emerges in the mid-80s and they're like, we're starting from square one, basically. We need to find things you would work in. Right, and then there's something weird about like, well, maybe it doesn't make sense to have a giant bodybuilder commando. But what if we surrounded him

by other freaks? So that's Schwarzenegger's idea. Because the script, I think, was Solo. He was the only... Oh, interesting. It was like really just about like a guy versus an alien.

Yeah. And he's paid $3 million for this film. Nice work. You can get it. 100%. And he says, well,

I always wanted to do a film like I always wanted to do a film like The Vile Bunch or The Magnificent Seven. You know, like that's it. Not a bad impression. You know,

he wanted guys working together. He wanted, you know, he says, it took me back to my bodybuilding days where you work with a bunch of guys like you're saying.

You got a camaraderie that develops. He wanted to capture that. But also, he's so aware of his limitations that he's like i shouldn't be doing 90 of the dialogue right i i should have other guys i think he's wise you get fucking bill duke and carl weathers who are like liquid charisma like just do whatever the fuck let them say well put liquid career like literally like either of those guys if schwarzenegger died, I'd be like, I got weather.

It's like, I'm going to be okay in this movie. They're like, you know, shit fucking, we pull a Steven Seagal. We'll pull an executive decision. Like Schwarzenegger's out.

Like, are you okay with that? I'd be like, yeah, I'm fine. Duke and weather's like classically trained actors who are also fucking built. Right now. And are just relishing the opportunity here of like,

oh, can I see like i know i can act i don't need to prove that to anybody right can i fucking out tough yeah right right and duke is like like give me three weird character monologues and i'll do the movie give me three like a like an actor would love to be singing fucking like Long Tall Sally during a mental breakdown or whatever. I mean, let's just put a pin in 15 minutes sidebar on Duke. We'll give him eight minutes. Twelve.

Five minutes for Duke and another five for the shaving. Which this is the first time I've noticed that they establish it on the chopper right in. It's right at the start. So John Davis takes credit for McTiernan. He says, I saw Nomads. I liked it. I made Larry Gordon watch it and say, like, this is the guy.

Schwarzenegger takes credit for it as well. Everybody takes credit for it. McTiernan's like, no, I showed Larry Gordon Nomads and he liked it. The thing he says on the commentary is that his manager, you want to know how I really,

here's the secret to how Hollywood works. You want to know how I really, here's the secret to how Hollywood works. You want to know how I really got this movie? My agent says to me, this is the lawyer you should hire. He also represents Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you employ him. You'll get on his radar, basically. Yes, right. And then he was like, so then they were sending me Arnold scripts.

He said that he was offered commando. He doesn't, McTiernan doesn't do commando because there was another thing he was developing that fell through. Sure. So then the second Arnold project they offer him is Predator. And he's, for basically the same reasons. He's like, I love kind of like Dirty Dozen, you know, Guns of Navarone, sort of men on a mission movies. And also, I like the sort of King Kong aspect of like, guys go on adventure, think they're doing one thing, realize they're way in over their head. Reality is very different than they thought.

Always works. For me, I'm a team guy. X-Men, heist movies, heat, like anything where everyone has like a specialty. And because of, I think, being like, you know, simmered in G.I. Joe my whole life. If you can like look at the way someone is dressed and guess their specialization is like a dream come true this is a very real american hero coded movie yes yes it's human gi joe it's so perfect but but you get to fucking actually kill people for once it's not just like planes crash and you see parachutes all the time i love the team

specialist thing and i love the we're experts we know what we're doing we're in control of this movie movie that 45 minutes in they're like oh fuck we're experts we know what we're doing we're in control of this movie movie that 45 minutes in they're like oh fuck we're in a different genre than we thought i like that i also they are like experts at what shooting guns into leaves they don't ever do anything smart in this movie well to be there's a great moment where he's like why weren't you in libya he's like we're a rescue team not a hit squad and then the scene when they get to the fucking base, they just murder everyone. No questions asked. Pistol whip a woman.

And then Schwarzenegger's like, what the fuck was this, by the way? And it's like, I don't know, bro. Did you want to do any more recon before you drove an exploding truck into the middle of this base?

Not to jump ahead, do you guys know the story of that sequence? I mean, let's not jump. Okay. Yeah. Okay. This film was attached to,

we got to shout him out because he gets shouted out so much in this podcast. We've covered one of his films. Okay. New Zealand filmmaker, Jeff Murphy, who of course directed undersea shoe, dark territory. Yeah,

of course. But also was the original choice to direct this and the original choice to direct alien three. One of the many original choices. Sure. A great filmmaker. He's made Goodbye Pork Pie,

Udu, The Quiet Earth, a lot of good New Zealand films. Then he made like junky American movies, Young Guns 2, Free Jack, Under Siege 2,

you know, stuff like that. Did all three of those movies on Action Boys? Hell yeah. Did you do Fortress 2 re-entry? No. Yeah.

Is Fortress the one with Ray Liotta? It's Christopher Lambert, I want to say. Oh, yeah. No, we haven't done that one. I'm thinking of Did you do Fortress 2 re-entry? No. Yeah. Is Fortress the one with Ray Liotta? It's Christopher Lambert, I want to say. Oh, yeah. No, we haven't done that one yet. I'm thinking of the Prison Island one with Ray Liotta. He had also been the first choice to direct Conan, maybe? He and Arnold had fought on the development of Conan.

And so once Arnold comes aboard, get out of here, Jeff Murphy. Sure. They need a new guy. Arnold's quote on McTiernan is, what set Nomads apart was the tension McTiernan created maintained in a film that cost less than a million dollars to make.

Like they're watching Nomad and they're basically like this is a high ceiling guy. Right? Like it's like sure maybe the movie is small but like That's 20 extra guys budget.

He's doing a lot with nothing. I can kind of see it. I mean look like the script for Nomads is poor. It is the worst It's the script for nomads is poor it is the worst it's the only script is the biggest stuff which is kind of telling where it's like maybe that's not his strength and the script is vaguely incoherent in ways it's fucking nonsense right you'll see it but there is like there is like a mood and a tone and the thing i think there's a

gordon quote in the dossier about just like a lot of that movie is just Pierce Brosnan looking at a van slowly rolling down the street and a maintained sense of ominous dread of like when is this going to break and they were like if he can make a van scary right and he has no money and this movie is just Pierce Brosnan looking at a van if we drop him in the jungle with

Arnold Schwarzenegger and a good monster design but even still I do think part of him getting this movie off of Nomads is that no one thought this movie would be particularly important.

Right, they weren't betting big on it. Right, even though now Schwarzenegger's making Fox movies, this is still a B-movie for Fox, where they're like,

look, we need a guy who will just get it done. This movie sells itself. It's Schwarzenegger fighting an alien. Critics are going to make fun of us. You saying the nomads tension thing makes me see like the jump to Predator

because Predator has got like a little bit of that Jaws energy for like the first act, the first couple acts. It is wild how little you see the Predator. It's a genius to how little you see the Predator. You don't see him in full until the very end. But even like if you're just stop watching

any physical representation of the Predator, it happens so much less often than you remember yes even just the cloaking him with the helmet on no for an hour plus no like you i mean let alone the face i i clocked it i think it's a little under an hour is when he takes out his toolkit and tries to like fix his legs fix his wounds and that's the first time you're seeing like his hand without cloaking. Right. You're seeing like his hand and his thigh.

You're seeing actual body parts. It's awesome. Donald McAlpine shot this film. The cinematographer of Moulin Rouge. Riker Morant. Australian.

Big Australian guy. Yeah. He says about Arnold and this is sort of along the lines of what you were saying. I really admire Arnold because he knows exactly what he's playing. I remember there'd be rewrites every morning.

One morning, Arnold comes out of his trailer up to John, grabs him by the collar and says, John, John says, yes. And he says, there are four words here. I'll do three. Yeah. You know, he's basically just like, the less I talk, the better. That's how you use me.

Why are some of my favorite actors guys who famously like him, Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood, Nichols, like the favorite actors are guys who just go, no, no, I'm not saying no.

Lose. Take me out of here. Take me out of here. Look, there's a slippery slope from doing that to being really fucking lazy, which certainly a lot of the guys we like have had that arc

where it's like, why did he start sucking in everything? It's like, because he shows up and just rips pages up and goes, I'm not shooting any of this shit. And then he's not in his own coverage and shit. Like they keep doing like, you just get lazier and lazier.

But when these guys have good judgment, it is like most scripts you read are overwritten. Even the great ones, they kind of have to be. They're written in a way where everyone who's reading them, the people who have to green light it, the crew members who have to start developing, you know, strategies based on the script, everything needs to be communicated so clearly.

I understand exactly from this what this scene is like, what this room needs to be like, all of this. And then you get to set, and most good actors are like, you know what, I can say this in a look. Yeah, right. That line is overstated. That's frequently like, these are two this is redundant there's always so many redundancies

in scripts because you have to like sorry executives but you got we need to make it so you can understand it I think I invoked this on another episode recently but there was an interview where Damon was talking about being on set with Nicholson and the Departed and all these actors

who work with Nicholson have this story where just in between takes, he just goes like, can I explain to you the secret of my career? Like he just imparts the advice. Like, you want to know how I became the biggest star? I broke it down into five easy pieces. Nicholson's five pieces for success. But he says to Damon,

he's like, you want to know the secret of my career? And he goes, yeah. And he goes, I'm a really fucking good writer. And Damon was like, what does that mean? And he was like, oh, the answer is that when he's on set and he's making those kinds of decisions of like, I shouldn't say this or we need a scene like this here. Even if he's not manually

physically the one writing the script or getting credit for it, if you're going to be like the guy in a movie who's carrying the story, you kind of need to have a good writer's brain. You need to have a grasp on the story and like character and all that shit. Or else you're just getting lucky. And to a certain extent, I do think Arnold's a kind of a good writer. At least he was.

He gets it in the big picture. He definitely loses something in the mid-90s. Yes, he does. Like he starts making junk in the mid-90s. I think it's probably because he's getting less good scripts because his star is waning. And also, he has it to an even lesser degree than Sly and JCVD and Chuck, all my heroes.

Yeah. All these guys go mad with power as well. He goes mad with power. Yeah. He has the best filmography of those four guys. He's the best actor of those four guys. And he's the best actor. And, like, movies like end of

days in the sixth day you're like this isn't bad but I mean this isn't good but I see what you saw in this like right there it's not like a disaster like sly is basically doing schlock like JCVD basically goes direct to video yeah goes to like Serbia and makes movies starts making like

Putin propaganda right so in a gym just like shoving 200 pound doughy guys around makes movies. Seagal starts making like Putin propaganda. Seagal's in a gym just like shoving 200 pound doughy guys around. Those videos where he's just standing there and guys just charge him and he goes like,

and they just fall over. I'm like, what is this demonstrating? Have you seen these? Amazing powers. I have. It's kind of sad. Yeah, it's really sad.

And then like, I mean, there's some viral video of like one of those, you know, direct videos, seagal movies where he plays a guy who's dragging like it's like an assault army scene he's dragging someone who's fallen like you know to safety and it's so obvious that the guy is being dragged by a wire and seagal's like barely touching his his arm bro i watched something called like sniper for special ops something like that and it's a whole movie about a mission and sagal's on the cover with a sniper rifle they just he's on a

separate like he's like the b story where he's just sitting at a desk with a sniper rifle in a chair and he has like one hand-to-hand fight and one sniper but the rest of the movie is just he didn't have to show up he's not even involved at all he shot like three days and he's on the cover of this fucking movie but the power crazy thing right a lot of these other guys we're talking about start to think of themselves as auteurs or someone like stallone is like i've always told you i was the auteur well he's always he's he's an actual like theater nerd kid that somehow just was jacked in blue yeah that's the one that's pretty good right that's in the peak Seagal

doing the hair and beard stencil just put the fucking stencil over his face and there I go he gets the fucking Eddie Munster's widow peak woolly woolly facial hair and then the Hollywood Hulk Hogan facial hair the makeup artist uses

a magnetic pencil on him and just drags the little metal shavings over. But Schwarzenegger never was like, they need to let me write and direct the film. Right? Right. Like there's something telling about he knew his limitations even in that department.

Stallone's like, I'm an artist. Right. Fundamentally. And Schwarzenegger's not like that. He's like, I'm an entertainer and a businessman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Schwarzenegger also comes from the world of athletics and quotes, where you're, like, understanding of coaches and training partners.

And you understand that it's a big team effort. And also, he becomes friends with someone like Jim Cameron. He's like, stay nearby, bro. Like, look, they're not at the same tier as McTiernan and Cameron, who are, like, two of the best action filmmakers of all time. Right. But like his later 90s, early 2000s runoff period, you're like, he's still working with like Andrew Davis. Yeah.

Decent director. And like bigger budget. Peter Himes. He's got taste. Something like Batman and Robin is like, they paid him this much money to do this little work. Like, that's a little different than end of day, sixth day collateral, Collateral Damage, where it's like, he's trying. Collateral Damage is hot garbage. Collateral Damage is tough.

And then I hate Last Action Hero. Yeah, but that's Andrew Davis. You're like, he's hiring the guy who did The Fugitive in the first Under Siege. That's a good pick.

End of Days is Peter Hyams, who's a great action director. Sixth Day is Robert Spottiswood coming off of Tomorrow Never Dies. This is not the best or anything, but like,ottiswood that was a big movie

and then it's Terminator 3 yeah and then he's the governor of California and Mostow was like another good pick like Breakdown Rules

Breakdown Rules yeah it does I mean I love that movie Mostow makes sense in a like pick a guy who maybe hasn't totally gotten

to flex what he can do I just think making a Terminator movie without Cameron was the mistake and they never should have done it. Irreversible. At least they made it

nine more times. And then right and then they were like but this time and that's the lesson of Terminator is like no. What if we make it

without Cameron and without Arnold? It's like wait, wait, what? No, this is a double negative that will turn into a positive. I hope you're all enjoying our Terminator Patreon series for $5 a month. Four consecutive bad sequels being covered right now on our Patreon.

Anyway, first they get Carl Weathers. He's in the Rocky movies. I don't know if you know that. Yeah. They get Bill... He's Adonis' dad. He's Adonis. He plays Adonis' dad.

He's Adonis' dad. One day Adonis. He plays Adonis's dad. He's Donnie's dad. One day, Rocky, I'm going to have a kid. McTiernan seemed to apply in the commentary that they didn't want to pay for Weathers, that he was sort of like outside of. Apparently, McTiernan's first idea was like, let's get Vietnam vets. Like, let's get real guys. The casting director. What's her name?

Her name is Jackie Birch. Yes. That was her big idea of like, if we want like guys who can out-tough Schwarzenegger also in this age grouping, we can get only Vietnam vets and have them all bring

that versamilitude to it. They did get Richard Chaves and Jesse Ventura who both served in Vietnam. Right. And Richard Chaves had written the play Trancers? They're like opposite versions of Vietnam vets. Like Richard Chaves is Jesse Ventura, who both served in Vietnam. Right. And Richard Chaves had written the play Trancers?

They're like opposite versions of Vietnam vets. Like Richard Chaves is this sort of like, yeah, he was a soldier. And then he kind of becomes this intellectual artist about it. And Jesse Ventura, it's like, yeah, he became a pro wrestler because he's a giant man. Right. Of course, later he does become the governor. Another governor. Two governors in one movie.

So they get those guys. But then like Carl Weathers, it's like, that's Carl Weathers. Bill Duke, it's like he was in Commando. He was great in that. Let's, you know, let's have Bill Duke. That Commando scene with Bill Duke, that's the famous, I'm a Green Beret. I eat Green Berets for breakfast. He throws Bill Duke through a wall in this hotel fight.

Hard to do. Hard to do. On the bed in the hotel room they go to is maybe the earliest representation of pegging I've ever seen. Wow. Rewatch this Commando sequence. The dude is on all fours, and the girl is behind him with his hands on her hips. And it's played in the background.

No one reacts to it. They just do the classic like, oh, you know, but it's fucking wild. I was like, wait, can we go back? Um, do you guys think the deadpool has seen commando my least favorite thing about deadpool is what you are referencing essentially like i'm happier with him being like i eat chimichangas the most random food of all time versus him being like i have anal sex the most random sex of all time it's like shut the fuck up Deadpool just enjoy your nice

drop it Deadpool yeah exactly I saw two nerds on YouTube last week complaining about the pegging just being like we all know Deadpool rules I mean that one scene makes me so uncomfortable like it's just kind of weird that's why I should shut up because Deadpool is I'm at one end of a spectrum

and Deadpool's in the middle I had the same sort of eye roll reaction to the Deadpool pegging and then I watched this video and I was like maybe the next movie he should be pegged 10 times it's kind of like when Nirvana made out on SNL to like spite rednecks or whatever this is working keep doing it

but Carl Weathers no it was like the challenge of who's a guy who is like a serious trained actor but has like the challenge of who's a guy who is like a serious trained actor, but has like the size, the toughness, the build to be able to credibly stand next to Arnold and is like a star, but isn't so much of a star that the movie becomes like an unbalanced two hander. And Carl Weathers, it sounded like was a little bit higher in quote than what they had sure allotted for that role pretty big name

really hard especially coming off of Rocky to be like I really think if we put him in the scenes with Arnold it's gonna up Arnold's game apparently it did

they competed basically like they're running they're bodybuilding they're waking up at 3 in the morning they're definitely not using steroids also like look Carl Apollo is the like egomaniac fool in in rocky right it's fun

to watch him flip it kind of yeah in rocky's two to four he's the heart of those movies he's so good in this yes but then he becomes just like right a nice friend mostly right basically he's great then but you could see him being like this is my chance to actually be like tough and cool. Yeah. I mean, in Rocky two to four, especially two and three, he's the guy who's like,

Rocky, I've been where you're at now. Like, you know, I've done the celebrity thing and it sucks. Like, you know, he's on the other side of it.

And Rocky four, he's just like, I have to kill Ivan Drago. Yeah. I'm sorry, but I'm heading, I'm going to fight the cold war for us. I'll be right.

He's kind of irrational. I'll be right back. I got to fight the Cold War for us. He's kind of irrational in that way. I'll be right back. I got to stop the Cold War. Wait, hold on. Let me raw dog somebody real quick for an idea of three more movies. Is that Felicia Rashad? No, that's his real wife. Do we know who Adonis' mom is?

She's not in the movies. No, they're waiting to reveal it's like Adrian. The movie is like this fucking snake eating its own tail at this point. They've done a good job making Creed sequels not suck, but it's going to be so easy for them to make a mistake like that. To have those kid be like, it's like, this is fucking, this is Rocky babies. It is Rocky babies. It is crazy.

Rocky babies. Absolutely crazy that that second movie basically works. Yes. Like, obviously the least successful of the three, but still like a B movie. Like a totally fine movie. When they were like, are you going to do a Creed 2? And Stallone was like, yeah, and I want to write it.

It's Drago's kid. Nice scent. Have a sad conversation with Lundgren at a restaurant. You're just like, no, this is the exact opposite of what you guys should be doing. I think if he would have died in Creed, he would have won the oscar agree if he would have if he would have let him if his ego would have let himself die and if he had yelled at 20 less assistants he might have won the oscar that's assistance studio heads everybody heads producers i mean this is my big

theory it's i i think it's just very logical. We said this on The Big Picture, but like everyone's like, how could he have lost that award? And it's like everyone else who voted for him were bodies that don't really have to work with him. Right. And it's the same thing that I think fucked Eddie Murphy and Dreamgirls,

which is like, well, the Globes will give it to them. The Critics Associations will give it to them. But not colleagues. Even SAG, where the union is so big and a lot of them are just people who idolize these guys and have never worked with them. And they colleagues. Not industry grits. Even SAG where the union is so big and a lot of them are just people who idolize these guys and have never worked with them.

And they get to the Academy and it's like, do you understand how late he was every single day? Yeah. He made Griffin Newman look early.

That's why you're never going to win an Oscar. Do you understand how big his shits were? He made Griffin Newman look like a light shitter. But yes, no. Beginning of Creed 2 when he's alive you're like oh right

they fucked this up yeah and now he doesn't really at least he gets one more paycheck how you doing you know and you're like right he's a vampire but rock look he keeps caught there's a period of he's a great instagram follow he's he's an amazing social media head sly yeah and he's yeah yeah he pops off, he knows what he's doing. And he was doing all this anti-Erwin Winkler shit for a long time. It got a little anti-Semitic. I don't think you should call anyone who's Jewish a vampire. I agree.

I love his Erwin Winkler shit. Just to be clear, Griffin, he didn't even get a SAG nomination for Creed. That's wild. So you know what? That even further backs up my point. Yeah, proves it even more. Right. That's wild.

Yeah. So you know what? That even further back up my point. Yeah, proves it even more. Right. It was only people who don't actually work on film sets giving him awards. My point was just like the arc of those four Rocky movies, Rocky goes from being like an underdog to being like a fucking cartoon superhero. Right.

Apollo Creed becomes the humanity of the movie. But at the same time that Rocky is becoming this absurd action hero. Apollo becomes like the actor of the movie. But at the same time that Rocky's becoming this absurd action hero. Apollo becomes like the actor of the movie. Right. You're like, oh, we need to like put some heart and some, it's like, well, we'll give those lines to Creed. There's something fun about like Weathers challenging Schwarzenegger to act harder. And Schwarzenegger challenging like Weathers and activating something in of like, I want to kind of do the fucking action star thing that I'm watching my co-stars do. Well, Weathers was a huge

jock. He was like a fucking pro football player. And like a big ass guy. He's the best. He's a pretty solid director. He's a good director. His fucking Mandalorian episodes are really good. Both of them are good. And Eugene Cordero says he's amazing. Yes. But yes yes like liquid

charisma you're just like and even just he's hot too he's so he is aged incredibly he is hot in this he's hot now yeah he was probably hot when he was 22 years old and fucking right like catching passes in san diego state or whatever he's fucking so yoked in this movie yes so proportionate. And his arc. And this is another thing I like picked up only in the last few viewings. It's like, but they give him that moment of like, you don't have to do these.

Like, no, I, you know, and I owe it. And you're like, that's, that's more than this movie needs.

Agreed. And it's, that's what, that's what keeps this elevated. Talking about the interesting politics of this movie. McTiernan said in the draft, the first draft he read, which I imagine was still written by the brothers. Sure. Dylan was, it's like halfway movie twist.

Dylan is the bad guy. Yeah. He is the human villain of the movie. Kind of a Rambo twist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He set them up to fall, right? And McTiernan was like, A like i don't think this movie needs a human villain right we got the ultimate villain right everyone is should be unified and trying to not

get killed by the predator it's basically at this point chopper or no chopper are your only choices that's something that this movie when you watch it you didn't know you were craving because every action movie now is like we we're actually the zombies. Right. We're actually the dragons. We're actually, and it's like, fuck you.

And it always is the Jean-Claude Van Damme. It always is the guy, the sort of off, you know, lead guy who's famous-ish. And it's like,

they cast him so he can be the villain in the last act. He'll be the nice guy and then he'll be the villain. But also, McTiernan's like, look,

I just don't think that's that interesting and I think it's so much more interesting to give Carl Weathers as an actor rather than like, you know, oh, is this guy a little suspicious and sneaky for the first half of the movie and then you reveal he's like mustache twirling puppet master in the back in the shadows. It's like,

nope, he fucking reveals where he was coming from. Schwarzenegger calls him out on it. And he has to suddenly assess, was I wrong about all of this? And the second half of the movie is him being like, I've like fucked everything up. I like followed a lie blindly. I sent another group of friends to death. And I'm about to do it again.

I like believed the wrong thing. Yeah. Right? Which is like this whole movie. He gets to play it. He plays it well. If it's about anything deeper, this movie is about like American interventionalism. That's what it's about. No, it's not deep.

Every 80s movie, you do an action movies podcast. Yeah. That is mostly about 80s movies. I'm steeped in the fucking like pseudo-fascist American politics of the time. Yeah. That is the anxiety of all 80s action movies,

especially about soldiers, especially about soldiers going somewhere else. It's like, we don't know how to do this anymore. We fucked this up in Vietnam. Like, that's Rambo, obviously, is the most obvious version of it. But, like, it's in all of these movies through the 90s.

Guys in fatigues being like, oh, shit! And, like, shooting at a tree where nobody is. And then getting their fucking solar plexus transported to Venus, you know? That story shift, though, I think it's like, it's not letting Dylan off the hook to make like an easier movie. It's actually making a more interesting, which is then halfway through.

You're like, they shouldn't have been here in the first place. I love that Dylan's like little outsider status throughout the movie. Like when when he gets when Jesse threatens him, he's like, I don't know who you are, but you make noise again. And it's like, oh oh this is fucking awesome and everyone kind of gets one scene with dylan where they're like fuck off square and it's so funny to cast carl weathers as the pencil as the pencil pushing cia twerp is like this absolutely yoked stud right introduced with of course famously the manliest the handshake of all time the most famous picture in action movie my desktop wallpaper for 12 years like they can't have a normal fucking handshake they have to have an arm wrestling competition like just to say hello but

this is the little kid brain yeah you know what i'm gonna back off my idea of the male gaze and i'm gonna go to little kid gaze the the little kid, because this is like, you're just looking at two. And in a way we're objectifying these men in a way that, uh, it doesn't traditionally happen to men. It's like, this is about their fucking arms.

Yeah. This is two important characters who have like a deep history and they're going to have some issues across this movie and connect and reconnect and save each other's ass. But their greeting is a single shot of a insert of two fucking baby-oiled arms going like this, vascular as fuck. You know they were, like, hitting the bands

and the dumbbells in between. And no one looks cooler in this movie coming off the fucking... When they all come off the chopper in their street clothes with their cool sunglasses and shit. His long red polo, like weirdly long. Jesse Ventura's got like a fucking Linda trip glasses on.

But yeah, it's also material and just like doing perfect tone setting of like, if I'm cutting into this shot of these arms styled this way with this intensity, you will immediately know exactly what movie you're in you do but also i mean aliens is the year before i'm watching this movie and i believe i wish at one year old i had watched this movie in theaters but like being like those guys coming off the chopper being like man these guys are gonna die in so many ways like all

these beat heads are gonna go yes i fucking love aliens for all the same reasons you love this movie uh and aliens aliens that's jim cameron so he's like we're gonna spend 25 minutes with these guys like having breakfast right chatting to predator no no no no predator the characterization of the like is just in their weapons yes it's like that's the big gun guy that's the grenade guy that's the knife guy that's the guy and you. That's the grenade guy. That's the knife guy. That's the guy. And you're like, got it. I'm in. A shaving guy. Yeah, I'm a shaving guy.

Shane Black is there. He was brought basically because they were like, we'll cast you and then you'll rewrite the movie on set. And he was like, I don't want to do that. I just want to be in the movie. That sounds great. He wanted to act more. Right.

I'm hot. Can I be in the movie? And then are like, we'll get like free rewrites out of just give him here and we butter him up with the role and then he gets there and he's like no i agreed to do this so i could act and be in mexico right and john davis is like kill his character right so that's why he dies immediately because he refused to do any punch up i mean there's stuff they were like naturally stuff comes out of him on set that we then did use right because you

have a legendary doing jokes writer right and he would just be like you know what'd be funny is if you did this so even aside from like the joke the the twice repeated joke which is so good is like his thing right obvious that's such a shane blackism but i also think there are like a lot of ideas he seeded throughout the movie even though he refused to ever sit down and actually like run a draft through his typewriter. It's also just such a good comedy rule of threes of like he tells the joke on the plane. It bombs. Right. And then the second time you're like, he's going to keep trying to make this joke work, but he does a variation of it.

The guy's workshopping. Yeah. And he's just choosing the worst audience every time. Yeah. He chooses Billyy who is like out to fucking lunch for the second joke you know and then you're like great runner now this guy's gonna keep one by one going through every member of the team trying a different version of the giant vagina joke no he's dead no he dies thank god two beats twice and then all right

i mean even the predator is like you keep doing the pussy line you get out of here the movie the script it's like underwritten doing the pussy line. Get out of here. The movie, the script, it's like underwritten in a very interesting way, like you're saying. But everything someone says seems like something they would say. You know what I mean? Like from Ventura's slinging the F word,

you know, from Billy's kind of like, and I ain't afraid of no man. You know, like all that. Bill Duke, you believe it. You're like, yeah, this guy is ice cold. Ventura, you're like, if I saw that guy on the subway, I would like, oh, I want to afraid of no man. You know, like all that. Bill Duke, you believe it. You're like, yeah, this guy is ice cold. Ventura, you're like, if I saw that guy on the subway, I would like, oh, I want to get off this car. I'm a limp dick.

What? Oh, no. You know, Ventura would start talking to me on this. Hey, brother, like, can you tell me we're 50? I don't want to talk to you, man. I'm getting out of here. I'm on the F train headed to North Uptown. I'm getting off at East

Broadway. Where did the stonemasons meet and plan out the forced demise of our planet? When I went on High and Mighty, I talked about the subway. Just remembering that. And Ben, you did Grindset Mindset? Correct.

Maybe the funniest thing for you to pick. We had a blast we had a blast it was really fun we were both we realized that we have dozens of side hustles and that's something we have in common we're both entrepreneurs in that way yeah someone recently we we were out at dinner i mean this was a couple months ago now but we were like you were talking about your fashion show and then uh a friend of a friend went, I'm confused. I thought you said you were a podcast producer. You have a clothing line?

You're like, well, I did a show for a clothing line. He was like, was it a bit? And you were like, no, the clothes are real. And I could see you doing the thing you often do where you struggle to like explain your existence to new people. And then the guy just went, oh, I get it. You're a multidisciplinary artist. And Ben went, yes. Yes yes that's exactly what i am like the relief the way say that say that again there's a c in there okay got it

yes david yes i hate planning weddings You're always doing that I keep getting stuck Addicted to planning weddings I keep getting buttonholed Into planning weddings Dragooned I keep getting

Everyone's like who would be good at this Griffin Newman People know that I am No one understands mature adult love better than I do Task oriented I'm organized I am... No one understands mature adult love better than I do. Task-oriented. I'm organized. I love micro and macro managing. Punctual.

Punctual. Formal. Look, I've planned a wedding. I just told you, I planned a hundred. It's intimidating. It's not a competition. Finding the perfect suit, though, Griffin, should not be intimidating.

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And you can go to a showroom if you want to see um styles for yourself and stuff which is great but this isn't off the rack stuff they're gonna they're gonna make something fit to your taste i want this wool linen olive suit do you think it's time for me to get an olive suit yeah i think you need a wool linen olive suit inachina lets you design any suit you've always wanted. Fine-tune every detail, lapels, linings, monograms, pocket flaps. They start at just $4.99 for suits. Fitted shirts start at $89. It's bespoke without that premium price tag. They've been dressing grooms and groomsmen since 2007, and we all know that was a great year for movies. That's a good point.

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we haven't mentioned the person who got fired from this movie not Shane Black killed off early but fired and this is another thing that makes it insanely accidental Jean-Claude Van Damme was the original Predator do you know this Ben I did not he was going to play

the Predator in the suit because they were like oh it'll be cool he'll be agile he'll like do kicks and shit and when you hear the guys in the movie talk about it like they talk about it like comes in here doing his fucking little gay kicks and shit and we're like what the fuck is that and like the average height of the main cast is like six foot five and he's listening at 5 10 exaggeration no obviously his whole thing is yeah he's flexible he does the jumps he does the kicks and they make this like dog costume like it's more like a bug thing i can show you what it looks like i've seen it yeah yeah it's it's it's bad it's i mean it's not the kind of thing where I'm like,

oh my God, the ultimate predator is here. Like, I'm not looking at that feeling. It looks sort of like a jaguar, right? Like a sort of human jaguar. Yeah, it's like a lycanthrope more than anything else. Let's take a second here and dig in on, using Van Damme too, but let's dig in on the predator design a little bit

in this moment. Because that's a fucking another huge, he's like, Arnold's like, this sucks, want me to talk to my friend Stan Winston the best and they're like, uh, sure and when you hear Winston in the If It Bleeds doc

say, I was really inspired and like, by a picture of a Rastafarian warrior that was on a producer's wall and you go i'm sorry what and that's what kicked him off he drew it on a fucking plane yeah sitting next to james cameron jim cameron looks at what he's drawing and he's like oh that's cool and he's like i'm trying to figure out the mouth he goes and james cameron says i always want to do something with mandibles and then winston goes in draws trying to figure out the mouth. He goes, and James Cameron says, I always want to do something with mandibles. And then Winston goes in, draws the fucking mandible,

the iconic mouth predator. He fucking, that's Jim Cameron. And that's because Arnold is so likable and just did such good work with those guys that they're like, yeah, we'll fucking take a crack at it. Yeah. And this makes the movie up fucking 33% better. But once again, it's like they have this bad design.

They hire JCVD. JCVD was trying so hard to break into movies. Jackie Birch puts it as that he would just come to her office and like jump in the air and do kicks.

And be like, come on, don't you want Iron Man? She'd be like, go away! I know like five people who do that at Allison Jones casting now.

Basically, he was doing, he was doing exactly that but with jump kicks. And so she's like, look, you know what, here, you want a part, here's what i could put you in the monster who fights arnie arnie and there are a lot of conflicting reports and every again everyone has a different story how everyone

breaks down the timeline of what happened but basically he signs on to the movie he does not understand how invisible he will be physically in this role. Yeah, he doesn't even know he's got to cover his face. Right. So he thinks like everyone will see it's me. And they're like, this is great because he moves really well. We'll have a performer in the suit who can move really well.

He'll be able to do something really distinctive with it. So there's this humongous gap in communication where he's like, I want people to know who I am. And they were like, we just want you to do your fucking thing. But also use your body in the ways we want you to. And he's like, no, I have my own, like, demo run of, like. This is how I think the Predator would kick or whatever. Yeah.

And because he's little, part of this design, which is entirely different and bad, also is stilts, arm extensions. So he's moving a lot more unnaturally. And this head that goes, like, up. Right. Like this. The original Predator suit almost looks like a Julie Taymor Lion King costume. It looks like something from Broadway. Or not to open up this bag of worms,

but like those droids that fight the Jar Jar people. Yeah. Like with that weird curved head. Roger, Roger. Yeah. But the weird, like, you know what I'm talking about, the Lion King, like they have the mask hanging over. I know what you're talking about. like they have the what you're talking about yes i know what you're talking about you're talking about george santos's

broadway play yeah exactly yeah i just like it's kind of incredible that there's this these two things colliding at the same moment the design is bad and we've cast the wrong actor if it's only one problem or the other they maybe hold their nose and like fight through it. Or they maybe just go like recast and put a new guy in the same shitty suit. There's also a story that like he kept swearing and screaming because he was so grumpy when he realized like, oh, I'm not like talking in this movie. Like I'm just a stunt performer, basically. I see how you sell it to Van Damme. You go, you're going to go fight Arnold.

And he's like, oh, that is my future. Because he thinks like, oh, great. arnold versus jcvd and they're like no this movie is arnold versus some guy in an alien and mostly invisible right now and the script is about his cloaking one stunt coordinator says that he threw the head of the costume on the floor and it broke and the head had cost like 20 grand to a costume and joel silver was like Get off this set. This is the other thing. JJ did like four pages just on the JCVD of it all. And basically, 20 different people have accounts of this was the

moment where he got fired or that he quit. And I think the reality is he probably quit 10 times and was fired 10 times over the course of like two weeks. Dude, but just listen to the names that Sims is throwing out from the dossier. You got fucking, we're saying McTiernan,

Van Damme, Arnold, Joel Silver. Like everything is just fucking, this is like peak fucking Hollywood. Shane Black just like doing coke in a suite in Mexico with Joel Silver being like, I'm not writing fucking jokes for you. Him saying like, the Predator should be a kickboxer and like, I'm just like Joel Silver

like rubbing his tongue, he's not a kickboxer. And i'm just like joel silver like rubbing his tongue was being like he's not a kickboxer and john clive bandame supposedly said kiss my ball everyone is just yelling at each other and like alternating between my quitting and then firing him and they're trying to like work through it and then it gets to this point of like complete breakdown and also he's five six or whatever he whatever. He's very small. And someone's like, get Harry and the Hendersons in here. Get the tallest man alive. He never did principal photography,

but he did do some amount of camera tests. Yes. And those were disastrous. And they were like, well, this doesn't work. We're not going to be able to work with him.

This isn't effective on screen. Stop all of this. Continue shooting. Focus on everything but the Predator. And we'll get to that later they go to rick baker who was the first choice and go like can you redesign this he's like i'm doing harry oh did i say stan winston before or no they come back around okay yeah yeah rick baker was the

first choice he's doing i get those two guys confused all the time they're the big they're the big two but then they recommend this guy uh peter mich? Peter Brandon Hall? No, the guy who plays the Predator? Yeah, Anthony Michael Hall. Anthony Michael. Kevin Peter Hall. He's 7'2". Yes. He obviously is Harry of Harry and the Hendersons.

He's done some Star Treks. He's a tall man who can wear a suit. A gentle giant. Someone who everyone can move. Who worked with him speaks so fucking highly of this guy. Very, very well regarded. Died tragically young. Because you're that fucking tall.

It happens to our giants. You know, we lose all of our best giants. He got a blood transfusion related case of HIV. Yes. Like it's not from his height. Just absolute like insane luck.

Yeah. The story from If It Bleeds is like they're super impressed that they saw the hotel bring a second queen-sized mattress into his room. And like, God, his hotel room was mostly a bed because it just had two queens stacked next to each other. JJ put this in the dossier and it genuinely made me tear up. I find this very touching. made me tear up. I find this very touching.

It's an interview with Kevin Peter Hall, a part of a larger Predator piece from July 87, in Fangoria, when this movie was coming out. So he's speaking as just like, I'm doing an interview as the creature guy in the suit, unaware of what legacy this movie's going to have. Right. I don't realize I'm going

to be the original Predator. An iconic monster. 25 movies will be launched off this. Yeah. And he talks about the process of them, the suit getting redesigned, him coming in. And he said, I wasn't just shuffling around in a monster suit. I was kind of a puppeteer from the inside, attempting to give the creature some measure of personality as well as a Jaws-like sense of terror. There are a lot of subtle things, arm and body movements that I threw in that will probably be missed

because of the emphasis on the action. But if you look closely, you'll see some interesting little bits that give the Predator a definite personality. And he's just like, I tried to do stuff, who knows if any of it will register. And you're like, 35 years later, every other actor who plays a Predator is

clearly working off of the language he developed. And no one does it as well as him. You're like, everyone is still doing like his finger movements. Is there anything better than someone who's like in the weeds artistically and humble at the same time? It's like one of my favorite genres of interviews. I really thought about this and I tried and I tried to develop a language and we'll see if any of it comes across. No one's coming to the movie for this. And then you're like, every five years, Fox throws so much money at like, build a new suit.

It's true. This Predator's big now. And none of them ever like move as well as he does. He does make the movie because everything before the final showdown is good. Yeah. And like the Predator being this unseen monster is cool. But if the final showdown sucked, this movie wouldn't be a classic. And the design is great.

And, like, another Hail Mary pass of, like, fixing that before the bad one ends up on camera. But also, it's like, if you have a guy who isn't giving as good of a performance in those final 10 minutes when he's visible. And sort of, like, conveying that much physically and that much menace and moving in such a bizarre alien way. You're like, this doesn't become like an important part of pop culture. The Predator as like a creature, as an idea. He's the titular Predator. And even just the close-ups where it's like

the only thing you're seeing from him are his eyes. Right. He's like fucking emoting a lot. It's crazy that Predator and Alien were two franchises that have like two great movies and three i know uh three but then they like weave together and are like intertwined for a while then like in the recent years have split back off and prey is good and like prometheus is kind of found themselves yeah it's like they both it was like uh you know like a couple that

got together and had a toxic relationship and yeah I think we're better off friends and they kind of just go away and they both like have these great third acts in their lives it's like now I

want to see a Nancy Mike we were both alien predator yeah the two characters just them coming back together again and again yeah over the years but yeah this movie basically had

this like bifurcated shoot where they just had to shoot around. We haven't solved the actor. We haven't solved the suit. We need to go back to the drawing board. Stan Winston's on board.

He'll come up with something, but it's not going to be ready for a while. Along the jaws parallel, right? Bruce was fucking breaking down. Right. So they had to figure out ways to shoot the movie

without the shark in the shot. And that if Bruce is in the movie anymore, the movie sucks. Beyond that, it's 100 degrees all the time yes they decide to shoot in you know like west coast of mexico which has what's the word deciduous trees right all the leaves have fallen off the trees they have guys with 40 bags of leaves like spreading leaves around because it needs to look like the jungle when they're not really even shooting in the proper jungle. But David, why did they film there rather than the east

side of Mexico, which is where McTiernan wanted to film? Go ahead, tell me why. Because that area where they were had nicer hotels, so Joel Sulphur made that choice. Right, exactly. And they were like, yeah, fuck it, we'll just get leaf bags. Right. And day five when the movie is starting to collapse and JCVD is getting fired and

they're going to have to go back to the drawing board with the suit. They also were spending so much time and money having like PAs throw leaves to set up every scene. This is what I'm saying. That he was just like, we have to change locations.

They're shooting at a 45 degree angle because like everything is on a crazy hill. Right. They're all getting bitten by like red ants and shit. They do finally like move to a lusher area like everything is on a crazy hill right they're all getting bitten by like red ants and shit like they do finally like move to a lusher area after that first week or so of filming because on the commentary mctiernan will point out like this is from those first five fucking days the amount of times i had watch a kid put a leaf on the ground um and yeah it's that's true and like mctiernan

says like look i see the movie in my head when I'm making it. I'm one of those guys, right? Yeah. So I think the extreme frustration of like, you don't understand, it has to look like this. And they're like, well, I'm covered in ants right now. I'm doing my best, John. I'm not sure it's going to look like how it is in your head. It's like what all the crew are saying.

McTiernan talks about... Let me get Anthony on the phone. McTiernan talks about, like, when he reads a script, his term is I see the movie on the back of my eyelids. Like, I see the whole movie. I see exactly where I want it to be. Which makes sense, because his movies are, like, so

immaculately constructed with, like, these ensemble character pieces with, like, incredibly complicated visual geography and, like, story beats that have to be conveyed silently through camera movements or things like that, that he just sees it all. And then he's like, then the challenge is communicating that to other people.

And he doesn't like to storyboard because he's like, I'm not just thinking about how visually I would approach a scene. I'm thinking exactly what lens I would choose from the get-go. And if I'm hiring a storyboard artist, I have to explain to them the spherical distortion of the lens I would choose from the get-go. And if I'm hiring a storyboard artist, I have to explain to them the spherical distortion of the lens I want to use

and say, well, draw it this way with this in relation to this. Because even if they were six feet apart, when I film it, it's going to be like this. And he's like, it takes longer to explain it to the guy in order to draw it. So the only time I'll do storyboards is if it's effect shots.

And they need some sort of like, you know, visual reference to be able to budget it out. I rewound this to try to see if I could get the text clearly. And McTiernan will kind of go off on tangents,

get distracted in the middle of the commentary. A thing I don't relate to at all. I think if you start a point, you have to finish it. Clearly, concisely, with no jokes.

Listeners are just steering their cars uh into oncoming traffic at this point but he talks about another blankie related pile up i couldn't tell if i missed it or he actually just didn't explain it but like another way in which this movie kind of gets like saved from calamity that i was it uh no it was Boss Film who did the special effects for this, which was Richard Edlund's company, which is like one of the best companies, one of the big ILM expat companies of the early 80s.

And Fox obviously wanted them to do the predator vision, thermal vision effect. And they're like, okay, we know how to do this. There's the real kind of equipment that like actual people use. So we have this giant camera and it's connected to an umbilical cord and we have to get it on a truck and it can only go four feet away

from the truck and it takes like two days to get one shot but it'll actually measure the heat so we can get the genuine image of what you want. And they get there and because it's like 100 degrees in the heat so we can get the genuine image of what you want. And they get there and because it's like 100 degrees in the desert, the environment and the bodies are the same temperature. So they're like, we have a solution for this.

Here's what we're gonna do. Before every shot, we're gonna spray down the environment we're shooting in with ice water. And then we're gonna build a fire and we're gonna have all the actors stand right next to the fire and the trees are covered in ice water. And the actors next to the father,

we make them run in. We get the shot. And he was like, after four weeks, we'd gotten two shots. And they were incredibly expensive. And McTiernan was like, fucking...

We cannot do it this way. We cannot. And he was also like, they looked bad. They looked bad. I'm sure they did. They looked real. Right.

So McTiernan coming off of commercials goes to a commercial special effects house. Hell yeah. Behind Fox's back because he's like, they wouldn't want me going to someone who isn't like a serious outlet.

And he's like, let's just do like the fucking down and dirty version of this. Right. Let's like own the pixelation. Let's just like fuck with it. And they were basically like, we have this red velvet suit.

If you wear the red velvet suit, then it can like be like this. Because it's the furthest from the green foliage and the blue sky. Like that's like in order to key it out. I think almost all

the thermal vision then they ended up doing and controlled like backlot environments because you see less of what's actually going on around it. So it also was able to like

break it into a different unit. But he basically just figured out the most lo-fi way to do it. then rather than getting approval from fox which they never would just brought it back to them was like look i just did like 10 of it in the time it took those guys to do one percent and for none of the money and it looks cooler yeah and so the predator vision itself is a special effect that's a huge win yeah the vision of the predator the predator's cloaking device is another special effect that is ahead of its time and a huge win jj put in here the explanation of how they do the cloaking thing which sounds like the guy

basically figured out a glitch that he could exploit to create the ripple effect you can look it up i don't want to describe because it takes too long unless you really want to like the way they did it is basically, right, you shoot it, like, over and over and over again at different speeds, right? It's, like, basically doing, like, inverted matte lines. Jesus. It's very cool.

The effect is awesome. It really works. It's one of those special effects that, like, you can't do now with all the money in the world. You know, like, even now now they're like yeah well let's just do what they did you know we'll make it look like it's something that only comes out of a weird quirk of how like film processing was annoying yes you know like there's a reason you would never do it again but like it looks so cool it also shows this problem that a lot of movies

have when depicting invisibility where it's like either you're showing me nothing i'm looking at a blank screen which is a footprints is usually one of the right or i'm looking at like a translucent blue spectory version of the character and you're like well then they're not invisible i can see them it's like okay so you make someone wear a bright red suit uh you remove the red with chroma key stuff so there's an empty area then you repeat the take with a different lens and you combine the takes optically and like the shape is suddenly visible if you do that. I don't know. It sounds like a pain in the ass.

I will say on this viewing is the first time I really noticed in the end when the predator passes Arnold and Arnold's on the other side of the cloak. And that's the first time I was like, that's even crazier, right? Oh, it's insane. Like how the fuck did they do that yeah but it's also a fact an effect where you're like if i were in the jungle

and i saw this with my eyes i'd be like i might am i going crazy right i'm hallucinating like it does it kind of has that heat that heat wave energy yeah i believe that these guys could see it and not think wait a second is there an alien in the forest with us? That's why they're shooting at leaves. What did she say? She said the jungle is attacking us. She said the jungle came out and attacked me. And like Weathers finally sees the guy, the monster himself, but that's late in the film.

Another thing. Okay, so they've been shooting for 48 days. Yeah. Their shooting schedule is 56 days. This was the point I pinned earlier. Exactly. So the big sequence where they blow up the, you know, the guy. The big attack sequence.

This whole time, because they still haven't solved the predator problem, Fox is like, is this movie like a... Right. They're getting nothing, I assume, in dailies. Basically, they're probably just getting dailies of guys like with big knives talking to each other. I assume in dailies. Basically, they're probably just getting dailies of guys like with big knives talking to each other.

I think McTiernan is also a guy who like shoots for the edit in such a specific way that if you're watching the dailies, it's kind of confusing because it only makes sense when he puts it together. You're not going to piece like,

oh, this is obviously that scene. Yeah, right. So they're like watching footage that doesn't make sense to them. The predator thing still hasn't been solved. They were like, is this maybe a cut our losses movie?

Do we Zaslov the hell out of this fucking thing? Don't Zas me, baby. Right. And yes, he's like a week away from what was supposed to be his full allotted production time and like less than half the movie's been filmed. And they're like, Silver's begging him basically. Eye candy. You have to let me like just outsource second unit one big sequence off your plate so the raid of the compound is all done by a second unit team that he was obviously like overseeing but all of those guys

came from the a team he was like we need to hire tv guys who can work fast and just get this done what's your job i drive jeeps into things that explode i've been doing that for years. I direct people falling out of towers. It's like the most A-Team shit ever. Because A-Team has that same G.I. Joe disease where no one ever dies. So you get people blown out of things is famously what they do. But this is like a more violent A-Team sequence that doesn't have to deal with TV censorship. Silver is screaming more blood, apparently. More blood.

And they're getting probably the amount of money that they get for a season to do this one sequence. And these guys know how to do it so fast. And they've got fucking legendary action talent. A great fucking location. And they get to use all the first team actors. Like, they're not using doubles. They're like, no, you get like a week. Build this around each guy having a big moment in this sequence.

This is like one of my favorite things, you know, watching millions of action movies. The formulaic shit I do enjoy is like, open on a mission, let's see our guys crush it, or our guy, or our person. Let's see this person absolutely crush it.

Great shot. This is what it looked like. Dave's got a picture of the red velvet suit. This is what they're seeing when they make this movie. They must just be thinking like, this is going to be the worst piece of shit. Pin in the 18 thing for a second,

because I want to say this red velvet suit thing before I forget. McTiernan's big thing he was talking about was the struggle of like, how do you make the predator move fast because the suit weighs 200 pounds? Is this the monkey thing? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And it's like, we have to find ways. this insane like bungee rig where all the weight was supported by like these cranes

and the bungee, like industrial, like 400 foot bungee ropes. So there's one shot when he's running away on the rocks that he's like, that's the one shot

where I got the fucking bungee thing to work. You successfully see him moving fast on his feet. It only worked for five seconds. At one point, they tried to put a monkey in the suit.

So the big thing was for the thermal vision, he was like, we can get away with making the predator move fast in the thermal vision. We'll have a monkey wear a smaller version of the red velvet suit, and then he could be climbing in the trees. And he was like, we put this red velvet suit in the monkey.

And the monkey, we had him on the set and he was like running around the trees. He was great on camera. Put him in the suit. We put him in the suit. He comes out. You just saw it in his eyes. He was so embarrassed to be wearing this suit. He got sheepish.

He tried to take it off, right? He was just like, no. But not even like he was like revolting and like, you know, you hear a lot of stories of like, oh, an animal and they get touchy and they start throwing shit. It wasn't like a nope situation. No.

The monkey was just sort of like, this thing is like really. It's kind of unbecoming. Yeah. I wasn't like a nope situation. The monkey was just sort of like, this thing is like really, it's kind of unbecoming. I don't want to do it. Can I read for Dutch? I didn't get my monkey footage. But the A-Team sequence is so big because it's like the one set piece

that has the energy of the fucking handshake, right? And you need it because it's the last moment where these guys are in the movie they think they're in. Let's watch these guys kick ass for a minute. Right, which I think McTiernan

is like so hyper conscious of not wanting to fall into the like America Hoorah fascism shit. The whole war movie. Right, like he makes this

big point in the commentary of like, my most pointed thing was the sequence where they just run their guns for five minutes as them shooting at leaves and then they're out of bullets and they look

stupid. Yeah. And he's like, and I do the same bit in Die Hard. This was this era where the studios were like, they want the Rambo moment. Audiences want the Rambo moment of them just like unloading bullets everywhere. And he's like, the two times I've done it, they're shooting at no people. In Predator, it's at leaves

and in Die Hard, it's at the glass. And he's like, and then people start copying my moment because I made it so much bigger and longer than everyone else except people when other people do it they put human bodies in front of it and then it just starts being uncomfortable i'm thinking right now of the hot shots of part two when the boat fills with magazines but you're like start sinking this action, he would have been a little more conservative about it. You have to imagine. Yeah.

On top of the fact that it would have taken him six months just to get this sequence done, it helps to have this one sequence done by kind of junkier guys. I will say,

the shot when all of them are crawling in camo, you're like, that looks fucking awesome. It's like an overhead shot and Arnold Dutch is already there and everyone just kind of scurries up next to him yeah and you're like this fucking rules the

second arnold's like you guys guards you guys tower no one do anything till i blow the fuel pump you're like it's just like it's unbelievable little boy shit and it does feel so gi joe and it feels like oh here's the button to like activate the trap door that makes the bad guys fall down. And like fire spring-loaded missiles at them. Wait, is this truck just here running? Yeah, perfect.

Yeah. You have so much fun with it, but then of course it ends with Arnold being like, what the fuck was this, by the way? You know, that's why it works. Yes. Is that you can have the moment after

of Weathers being like, I'm sorry, this is kind of bullshit. Like, I i basically how gleefully they're like engaging in this which is then going to get flipped on them of like this is like a sport for you this has been gamified like the crew and predator acts even when they're just in the chopper at the beginning the way like my buddies and i would at a laser tag birthday party oh yeah you're like we're like, we're going to fucking annihilate out there. You're like, yeah, but you have real bullets and you're shooting at like real people

and you don't even really have a grasp of the geopolitics of the mission you're on. And they're just sort of fucking high fiving each other. And then immediately it's

like, guess what? You guys are fucking the middle of someone else's game. This predator is just doing this for no fucking guys were actual pawns. The thing that is going to

kill you is just a bad wrong place, wrong time. You were political pawns just to like for no fucking reason. You guys were actual pawns. The thing that is going to kill you is just a bad, wrong place, wrong time. You were political pawns just to like get a job done. And we're being lied to. And now, by the way, you guys are the targets in someone else's fucking game. I love when in this sequence when Jesse

gets shot, I ain't got time to bleed. And then he's like, do you have time to get in undercover? He's like, do you have time to hide? And he Like, he's like, do you have time to hide? And he fucking launches like three grenades up there. And you just, debris flies off. And you just know that some dude up there was absolutely pink misted. It fucking rolls.

They built this gun to be like, what's the biggest possible gun we could, like the biggest gun you've ever seen in a movie. It's a minigun, the Gatling gun. But they have a name for it. What is it? Fucking, I'll look it up. Oh, it's like you know because they do the whole thing it's like little sweetie or some shit yeah old painless old painless but

they build this gun for him i think he is physically the biggest guy he's huge the movie he's so big now uh what's his name is billy is billy billy's like seven foot eight sunny is like a legit Fucking huge guy And terrifying and of course I think this is like This is how the movie Is so in my bones I'm like I know this is common knowledge But I will throw out Contractually Sonny had to have a bodyguard

Not to protect him But to protect other people From him This is real The studio would only let him be in the movie if they hired a guy to make sure he didn't hurt anybody or like fuck anybody up. All the guys went out drinking in town the first

weekend before filming started and he caused so much trouble that they were like, if you don't have him watched at all times by a guy who's even bigger than him, he's gonna end up arrested before this movie is over. Okay, he's officially my favorite now. I mean, he's awesome in the movie too. He did he posed for play girl that was before he ran for governor of kentucky at one point being like well if jesse ventura can do it it was like bro you have a criminal record

but arnold arnold gets elected jesse gets elected governor arnold gets elected governor right i think snl did a sketch where it was carl weather saying and now i'm gonna run for governor anyone's like funny or something like that right everyone's doing that billy straight up did run for governor three times and lost on like very controversial platforms yeah yeah i don't think his politics are good no i think in fact they were quite bad and eight uh the politics of this movie and the whole G.I. Joe-ification of these characters, he's a native and a tracker and like spiritual and like communicates with the beast. Right, which is like straight up

a G.I. Joe character. I mean... Named Spirit, I think. Yes. We talk about it on Action Boys all the time. Yeah. There was a period for like

maybe 15 years in movies where Asian people and natives were magical. But there was also Warpath of the X-Men. Yes, that's true. And Thunderbird. And Thunderbird, right.

The native American characters. The proud stars. The proud stars. Yeah, I mean, look, there's a, yeah, there's a sort of Apache warrior type, you know, like 70s stock action figure, right? Tarantino loves to like jokingly play with that kind of like Brad Pitt's character

in Inglourious Bastards is like right I'm gonna eat the patchy or something like that well the Billy Jack is right right it's at least a diverse cast it is it's crazy yeah for the time all the way up through like the

mid aughts this is considered a diverse movie basically until the Fast and Furious it does have one woman who's mostly like going like what the fuck did you say yeah we're not talking eight different like fucking roid heads get to shake her at different points in the movie like she does not have a ton to do she's a good actor i mean she she had a great career after this uh she's a real actor for sure and like uh she's an independent spirit nominee and all that you know like yeah she she had a good career and of course uh 2023 topped it off by playing blue beetle's mom is that right

yeah i need to see that movie um i will i'll say on record holy shit that movie was so much better than i expected it to be i've heard this one there's a joke where a girl, Blue Beetle's sister is like, yo, I got to take a dump. Can you watch the door? And I was like, this is so childish, but also grown up and a real understanding of like comedy. Real specific characterization. Right. Yeah. And George Lopez is on fire.

It's unbelievable. I love George Lopez. George Lopez is like. All right. I'll check it out. I'll check it out. You're winning me over. It's on Max, baby. George Lopez is not... All right, I'll check it out. I'll check it out. You're winning me over.

It's on Max, baby. George Lopez is not only like... Thank you, Zazie. ...landing every joke, but you're like, there's like a weird amount of depth to this character. I cried during Blue Beetle. Yeah. I was fucking...

I was into it. I was caught up. Looking at the box office. David, it did okay! It did not. David has points. That's why he's mad. Yeah, he's mad.

And that he refuses to watch it now. I'm the one WB guy who's still trying to make the company money. Everyone else got fired. He went long on Blue Beetle on the Hollywood Stock Exchange. He's been smarting from it all summer. David. Yes. You like to treat yourself, right?

Absolutely. I feel like you're the one friend in our friend group, Blank Check Productions, that likes to treat yourself. Got to do it. Here's some things I know about you. right absolutely i feel like you're the one friend in our friend group blank check productions that likes to treat yourself gotta do it here's some things i know about you you love to get a pedicure and opt for the extra 10 minute foot massage with green tea infused lotion i mean that's very specific but sure you refuse to make coffee at home because that fancy coffee shop is right downstairs the one that serves everything on pure ivory. Yeah, that's me. You opt for that extra legroom seat on the plane because your vacation starts now. I do do that

also because I'm quite tall. Okay, well, that's a humble brag. You always buy double at a sale because it's actually like saving money. I'm going to tell you, I don't think I've ever done that. I got you dead to rights. I named four things that you specifically do, none of which are prompts from ad copy. Never. Well, David, if you treat yourself to the top options with everything in life, why settle when finding a doctor?

It is my health. Why is that when you settle? That's a good point. For less. I should go for the best. Don't you want the extra legroom of medical care? Well, I just don't know where to look, so I just kind of, you know, wing it.

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by accident zownload it you're getting z-pilled you should zownload zocdoc zai it's a great cast yeah bill duke obviously is like one of he's a great great actor like who's always so arresting physically and like his eyes amazing. But he's also one of the great black filmmakers in American history. Because McTiernan went to AFI as well, is that correct?

Yes. I think Bill Duke and he and Bill Duke overlapped or Bill Duke was a year or two ahead of him. I mean, that's why

obviously Bill Duke was in good graces with Fox and Schwarzenegger because of Commando. But McTiernan was like, I fucking love that guy. And that's like, much like bringing

Shane Black on set, you're like, you're only going to benefit from having the mind of Bill Duke filmmaker also there. Him being like, his type,

his physical type is so specific that he's not a fucking muscle head. No. But he seems so hyper capable and scary. He just seems like a fucking hard man

quietly six foot three yeah there's something so deeply haunted about him his eyes he's got like uh droopy the dog like face like a hang dog face he looks incredible now like the current day bill duke like him in high flying bird where now he's sort of gaunt. It's amazing in that movie. No one looks better with bloodshot eyes than Bill Duke. He's an old ham dog. My brother James and I exclusively refer to him as the Great Bill Duke. He is the Great Bill Duke. That is his full proper name

and we're like, you know who's good in that fucking movie? The Great Bill Duke. You know who they just cast in this thing? The Great Bill Duke. One of our biggest controversies was in that episode of the Predator episode on High and Mighty, we kept calling his character Duke, not Mac, and we had to like issue a formal apology. You want to call him Duke.

Right, it makes sense. It's a G.I. Joe, it's literally a G.I. Joe name. Yeah. But Mac is a great name. Everyone's got great names too. Yes. Billy, Hawkins, it's fucking Duke, Dylan. But I just like- Wait, what's Ventura's fucking Duke, Dylan. But I just like-

Wait, what's Ventura's name? Blaine? McToonie's like insanely good ensemble thing is just from that opening chopper sequence where they're basically three lines of dialogue, maybe at most. Yeah. And it goes on for a long time.

Looks awesome in that red light. Looks awesome, but they basically admitted the footage was so good that we didn't want to, like we just want to use as much of it as we could. So that sequence is like five or six minutes long all the chopper flying from a distance shit looks so awesome choppers landing he cast guys

with different looks with different energies in that one scene everyone gets like a handle yeah right they get like at least one thing where you're like okay Shane Black's read the comics again tell the joke right like this guy looks like dry shaving he's a psycho just like one thing when he drops the razor you know he's doomed each guy does one thing where you're like okay now i remember who he is jesse wants everyone to be

blaine wants everyone to be sexual tyrannosaurs he spits on dylan's foot right and says some shit they say some shit to dylan like you fucking cia fuck we don't trust you i want to i want to zoom out for a second here because i the way i knew predator as like iconography right and like alien versus predator and then when i until i was like 13 or 14 i think i always was like well there's predator which is some franchise like alien where there there's another weird-looking alien that, like, kills people. And then I know there's, like, a video, there's a VHS cover I recognize that is Schwarzenegger in the crosshairs, and it's just called Predator.

Yeah, it's a crazy neon picture. Right. And I was, like, I think conflating that Predator with Commando, and I was like, they're two different things. There's, like, some Schwarzenegger action movie called Predator, and there's whatever franchise Schwarzenegger action movie called Predator. And there's whatever franchise the Predator comes from.

And when I was 13, my friend Lucky Gretzinger at summer camp was like, you know, when Arnold Schwarzenegger fights the Predator. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he was like, that's the same that movie. That's the same movie. And I was like, I've only seen pictures of Arnold with a bunch of commandos looking cool and then I've seen action figures of the Predator

right that's such a funny way in yeah that's the same movie and he was like that's the whole pitch on that movie is the first half of it

just feels like some Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie and then boom suddenly you realize you're in a totally different film and like

the realities change and now it's like a horror movie. They're getting plucked off one by one. The fundamental tension of this movie in development, in shooting, all the way through editing is that McTiernan was like, I'm making a horror film.

I like the monster movie part of this. Right. And this is, and then there were none. They're going to get picked off. And Joel Silver was like war movie. War movie, war movie that happens to have an alien in it. And both guys are pushing so hard on their thing that it's a rare movie that does feel like it's successfully doing both things at the same time.

Right. It is two kind of different little movies. And the tug of war is interesting. It is. But what else happens, Griffin? They fucked up the Predator design. They don't have a monster. Yeah.

They have to shut down production because They don't have a monster. Yeah. They have to shut down production because they don't have a monster. McTiernan cuts what he has together, which is basically probably the first two-thirds of the movie. They're at the point where they're like, borderline, we could scrap it and save our losses.

Shows it to Fox, and Fox is like, this looks good. Like, fine, here's your money, go finish it. And I think for the last part of the movie, which is the most powery, McTiernan finally actually has like okay they

want what i'm doing he had wind in his sails he had the support he and had cut some shit together and of course by then they have a monster like right you know which is cool they were suddenly like this design rules this shit's cutting together well this actually might be a hit this movie is like better than we thought it was going to be then we

commissioned it to be like it's over delivering just to jump back to the predator for a second we said when he looks at things and he when they look at things in heat vision it looks awesome yeah when they look when you look at their cloaking we didn't talk about the sound design of the predator is so fucking awesome yes dude the whip cracks the fucking even the even the sound all his guns make, the parrot gun, the sound it makes when it moves,

his sort of distorted repetition of other things that people have said in the movie. It's so fucking cool. It's freaky. It's really spooky. When he took, it takes out the toolkit to stitch up his own wounds. It's all real veterinarian's equipment. And McTiernan

was like, you have to convey these complicated things to an audience really quickly where it needs to look unlike medical equipment they've seen, but it also needs to be recognizable as medical equipment, which is the specific line they're towing on every element of his existence.

It's the exact same thing you're thinking there when the countdown thing goes off on his arm. And it's like, there's not real numbers, but when the first one disappears, even Dutch is like, well, I think when all three disappear,

this is going to blow up. He said, we were so fucking worried about that. And we go into the first test screening being like, the nuclear bomb is not going to work and we're going to have to figure out how to recut it.

And he was like, they understood it immediately. I couldn't believe it. It was like shot in the dark. We were ready to rework it. It's fairly complex. It has not been set up earlier in the film. And you like just go like cut in tight to a bunch of alien numerical symbols on a gauntlet.

And the audience was like, I understand what's going on here. But wait, the thing I was going to say, going to this final section of the movie, which like a lot of it was shot chronologically. As it's going along, they're moving to the better location.

They're getting wind under their sails. They're getting more movie done. There's this final- Conditions have improved. The foliage has improved. Investment of money. Ants are gone.

Yes. I don't know if the ants were gone. The other thing McTiernan said is, like, Arnold slims down as the movie goes on but he does he's looking really gaunt in the face which plays into him being kind of haunted of like this guy's maybe like he's collecting ptsd in real time right yeah here's this guy who's like served in vietnam and still treats everything like you know like a night on the town right right right this is gonna like be point of no return for him

and it was um arnold uh went out to a restaurant and got quote-unquote montezuma's revenge they call it traveler's diarrhea in trivia in imdb trivia and i'm proud of them yeah tiernan makes a point of saying i think montezuma's revenge is bullshit i've shot other movies in mexico since then i now know know how to do it. You basically hire one restaurant to be your catering for the entire production, and you just control that restaurant. The only people who

get diarrhea when they go to Mexico are tourists. He's like, natives do not get diarrhea from their own food. It's only the tourist trap restaurants. You have to find legitimate restaurants. Arnold went to some shitty, like, fucking tourist trap restaurant with his boys.

That's probably true. I mean, it's often a water thing in another country. It's like, you know, whatever. Even if you eat a salad or something, maybe they washed it. Or the ice cubes in your drink. But he was like, what you're seeing on screen, his gauntness, isn't from him being sick. It's that he got sick the one time at the beginning of the shoot and then got so on edge that he didn't want to eat during filming.

So he's actually just kind of starving himself out of fear. And he already was cutting down a little bit to play Dutch because he thought like Dutch wouldn't be too huge and buff. And so he was already kind of like trying to lean out. And, you know, and so then he leans into that and then it adds so much and then when he's caked in mud he doesn't look like uh you know a fucking stretch armstrong doll you know he looks like a fucking guy caked in mud especially in comparison to command oh it's like opens with him like holding the fucking tree trunk over his head one of the best character introductions in an action movie he just comes back chainsaw in one

hand tree trunk on his shoulder, and he's like, my daughter, I hope no one kidnaps you today. The McTiernan... Insane sequence. McTiernan's like, I get it. That's cool. It works for that movie. We need to, like, set you up as more of a normal guy in this film. You get a red polo. And you can

have a cigar and sunglasses. Don't worry. Because we have to, like, sort of, like, break your soul as the movie goes on, and there has to be this human triumph of like you pushing through this when he's i mean i've you know guess that they fooled the predator's vision by dumping him in mud like it's this inadvertent thing but when he's set up the trap and he's lying there and he's like come on kill me kill me you know like yeah he he sells that he's kind of gone crazy by that point. It totally works both in terms of his mania of like, I've almost got you. And also his mania of like,

this is it for me probably, right? Yeah, he's really good. And that sequence too, fucking the Predator sells. What is going on here? Predator's really good at the kind of, yeah, animal kind of cocking of heads. Yeah.

It's the shit you got gotta give Hulk credit for. I won't give him credit. I'll give it to Jean-Claude Van Damme. David! They knew they wanted someone with at least three names to play the Predator. Maybe four. You got too many names, JCVD. What he's saying in that quote, the puppeteering

side of it, that he's just like really smart of understanding a visual language that will... When he's like come on come on and they see the predator go like wait a minute why do you want me to go in there

yeah and them realizing that it won't attack them if they're unarmed like all these fun elements of like oh you have to like get into his head

as a gamesman right yeah and like what is the sport of this for him it would be so easy for this movie to like you say just

reshoot something to be like, ah, the audience doesn't get it's a countdown clock. Ah, the audience doesn't get that. It's the most dangerous game. Like, you know,

let's have some computer that goes like target identified, you know, continue your hunt, Mr. Predator. Never does anything like that. No subtitles. It's just the weird triangle.

The last 30 minutes when basically everyone else has died, it's just silent Arnie like going through the physical motions of how to take it down there's no scene where he's like up against a tree and he's like okay Dutch think think yeah how do you beat the predator you know like he's it's so awesome that like all we've seen is

cool gun tech yeah all we've seen is giant knives and they have to like break it down to like wooden sticks mud and home alone it is yeah jungle a little bit well it is sort of like it's a kind of rip from aliens too right no no what can we use bad language no pulse rifles no flamethrowers no blah blah blah you know and it's like oh shit we're back to bare bones you know like swords only like it's it's like golden eye slappers only their their original plan was for the predators should be slappers only that's what they should announce yeah wouldn't it be really fun if in the new bond it's uh whoever it is it's dev patel yeah but he's whipping proximity mines relentlessly the

whole time just absolutely nuking everything there There's no, like, nuance to his actions. How great would it be if they announced the next movie was GoldenEye 64? They go, we're adapting the beloved James Bond entry. One of the last remaining works in the Ian Fleming canon that has yet to be adapted. The plot is light. You put a PC-90 to Baron Samedi's head

and fucking rip the trigger. Put 80 bullets into it, and you stand on the body armor. The original plan was for the Predator's blood to be orange. Right. And it was because they were like... You always need a fun blood color. Well, they were like, we want an alien blood color

and it can't be green because we're surrounded by green. It won't stand out. And there was some problem, I think, maybe with when they changed the technology of how they were filming the vision uh where like they they thought it would be easier to key out or whatever it was it ended up being an issue and their quick fix was the alien blood in this movie is they just bought glow sticks in bulk and broke them over and mixed it with uh ky jelly it's just straight up or vaseline, it's the toxic shit inside of glow sticks. It's awesome.

It looks so fucking cool when you first see it on a leaf. Right. And we know aliens need, like, crazy colored blood, like David said. Yeah. But we also, for the entire premise of the movie, we need to know. We need to know that it can bleed. Yeah. But also, it's like, my turn's like, I saved us so much fucking money here.

Like, suddenly, none of this has to be in effect. We're just buying glow sticks and pouring them on a guy. bleed yeah but also it's like mcterian's like i saved just so much fucking money here like suddenly none of this has to be in effect it's we're just buying glow sticks and pouring them on a guy it's all in camera and it has the special effect quality of it's glowing right they called it like mountain dew on set or something like that was like one of the games it's crucial that they then when the movie was done you know told Alan Silvestri to put 18 million brass instruments into a tiny room and have them all play at the same time. Like, to the loudest score of all time. There's, I mean, I just really clocked it in this one.

The distinctive, especially 80s Silvestri. Dun-dun! Dun-dun! Oh, yeah. Like, he's got his thing in all the scores where it's like the short bursts of like... He, like, is giving Joel Silver his war movie score and giving Maturin his like suspense

score right like he can do both right this movie is truly both and it's not like what's interesting is the tug of war between the two creative sides resulted in something in the middle it's like the movie itself is textually like basically an alien

and a soldier fighting for who has control over the movie and like the genre being dictated by who's winning the scene what's your guys favorite death or kill either by our good guys or by the predator the fucking weather is going out arm by arm well, on this, and this is the viewing I noticed where Dutch goes, Dylan, and throws him like, he has like a full long gun already

and he throws him like another little long gun. He's like, this, with the two of them you could probably beat the predator.

And, but instead it's like, oh, that's just setting up Chekhov's arm to capitate. Yeah. But also for him,

there's a bit of a suicide thing too of like, they're all hitting this like Vietnam, like what we're even doing here in the first place yeah and now i brought us all here so if i can go out there and fucking hold shit off i will yeah i think uh ventura getting his chest like caved in is awesome it's so awesome uh watching that gunfire also famously that thing is so awesome on camera but it could not shoot more than five seconds at a time i mean those fucking mini guns are like they're ridiculous

they built it for him of like we need to build the biggest gun possible that this guy could actually like wield and then it was too heavy for him like it's so funny how much he likes that he has the big gun yeah like he in all the fucking behind the scenes stuff when he's talking, he's like, and of course they wanted to give me the biggest rifle because I have actual combat experience. He says in that, if it bleeds,

which I think is really funny. It's like, yeah, I'm having a good time down in the jungle, but let's just say I wouldn't actually want these guys on a real mission. It's like, yeah, of course.

Yeah. I mean, I would maybe bring Bill Duke. Shane Black's got two good jokes in his pocket. Yeah's like, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, I'd maybe bring Bill Duke. Shane Black's got two good jokes in his pocket. No, like the prop gun, when he's lugging it around, they basically had to hollow it out. And so when it's firing, they like frame

it in a way where you like don't really see that it's being supported by other things or it's only for a short period of time. But otherwise they had to make sort of like the junked out version of it. The action is very simple like that. And a lot of the deaths are very simple. And like, yeah, just, you know,

someone gets blasted and that's it. Like, I love that when they start to realize that the Predators like... Collecting trophies. Yeah, and they're like, everyone get up on the bridge. Bill Duke, and again, anyone with special specializations bill duke you do your thing with claymores and traps yeah you're the sweatiest so we'd love to see close-ups of you putting

fucking clay and pins and shit i just just doing that shit he's like uh you get up here on the tower we'll do this and like everything's all squared away and then he just still just comes in mercs people and they're like, this motherfucker's in the trees now. Motherfucker's in the trees. Motherfucker's in the trees. Apparently, Peter Cullen did the Predator voice.

Yeah. Optimus Prime. Yeah. It's cool. According to the IMDb trivia, he had like, really fucked his throat up on the previous gig.

He primed too hard yeah so i don't i don't know he kept scaring me sam witwicky uh unicron autobots roll i love those fucking the monologues at the end autobots together we realize the earth is our home every fucking transformers movie ends with him being like, I've realized it. And I'm just like, you're still a fucking car. Shut the fuck up. You don't live here. It is my favorite part of the Transformers franchise. It gets me hard every single time.

For millennia, we have looked. A young Latino soldier just saluting Optimus Prime or whatever and Bumblebee shakes hands with a blind Asian non-binary person it's like what the fuck is going on in this movie it's like i've learned these human beings have more than me right eight chevys like go through a sunset yeah sorry michael bay is masturbating in his trailer

sorry public transit we are a car country. Is there a subway transformer? There should be one. There fucking should. He's got a British accent. Train transformers. It's the tube. Yeah.

There are locomotive transformers. There have to be like, there must be like an Acela Express transformer. But like, do like that. Do subway transformers. Like, that's just a franchise unto itself. That that meme of like blank movie if it came out in 2007 that is just the movie ends like the end of the first transformers with the drop of the lincoln park song it always works because i'm like really yeah that is that is how every movie should end

every movie should end with optimus prime going like remember when i asked if you thought building this bomb will end the world i am become shiva destroyer of worlds uh wait while we're on just stupid internet memes did you do you guys know the one where predator opens up his uh his like explosive arm thing and then he's just like doo doo doo doo doo and starts playing Axel Follett on it. Very cool. He just cuts to a guy doing a synth version. The Predator is just funny.

He is. He is funny. He's an ugly motherfucker. You are one ugly motherfucker. The Predator is basically always funny because unlike the Xenomorph, who I love, no disrespect, but there's intelligence to the Predator. basically always funny because unlike the xenomorph, who I love, no disrespect, but there's intelligence to the predator. There's a strategy.

Well, here's the thing. There's this sort of, what's this guy doing? Well, I'll say, I think what it is, is there's the status. The xenomorph is just trying to survive. Correct. It's a motherhood story. It's a bug, yes. Predator is hunting humans, so it has personality, but it also deserves any fucking ire you want to give it right so you can like go like all right you sassy little dreadlock fuck let's let's do

this thing i like when he hits you're right when dutch hits him with a lot of high status yeah it's always funny to make fun of the president right because they've been elected to the highest office when he hits him with the fucking log and he's like oh shit i love arnold's acting there is so awesome the guy just takes the predator just takes the log to the dome and he's like oh boy he basically sold him on the like yeah the fake trap like this movie could end with you know greetings dutch yeah the being you encountered like you know someone explaining what just happened it doesn't at all the whole final chunk was supposed to take place on the alien spaceship right that makes sense that's the predator too and the budget got pulled and

mctiernan was like it was a gift in disguise i was like really annoyed by it at the time it's why they put the spaceship at the beginning because they're like we need some visual representation and prey does the same thing too yeah praise move to like we landed but it's so much better remaining in in the woods in the mud, all of that. But yes, like, no... It's just, what the fuck are you? And he's just like, I'm not going to tell you. I'm going to nuke myself instead.

Yeah. Which McTiernan said is based off of a dream he had in high school that he has never gotten over, where he, in the dream, was suddenly in Los Alamos with Teller telling him we're about to... Of Penn and Teller? Yeah, no, because he says he's telling him so Teller wouldn't talk.

Penn is going, listen here. Listen here. is the same as my Penn Jillette. Let's go to a sex club. No, Teller, why am I forgetting his first name,

but the character that Safdie plays in Oppenheimer. Right. Yes. Edmund Teller or whatever. We developed a new bomb.

We're setting it off today. You should run right now. Hell yeah. or whatever we've developed a new bomb we're setting it off today you should run right now oh yeah so and imagine running away from a new and i love that when we see arnold run like he looks so fucking cool tiernan's dream was like it was just me running high speed for like five hours like just trying to survive this thing and it had haunted me for decades this dream i had when i was a teenager. And in this moment, I was like, this is my chance to visualize this thing I've never been able to get out of my head. That feels like personal and visceral to me. Well, he escapes a nuclear bomb. Yes, much like John McTiernan did in his teenage dream.

Well, the Mad Magazine I have of Predator, which for some reason I own, I have like a big pile of old Mad Magazines. That's the big gag at the end where they're like, how did you survive a nuclear bomb? And Arnold's like, I didn't. I skinned my knee. You know, like that's his joke at the end. He's like in a bed with radiation poisoning. McTiernan brags about the fact that no one got injured on this movie. So during all the big action sequences on the commentary, he goes.

What a specific brag. But you'll see like a giant explosion, four guys falling over, and then he'll go, and no one got injured. Like he keeps giving himself credit. And then at the end of the commentary, he goes, I'm actually realizing I was lying know that I'd broken my wrist because then I would have had to wear someone being injured on the film. So I just kind of like powered through it for a week or two. Talking about running away from the Predator. Great moment that I really that really shined for me in this is when Dutch goes over the waterfall. Already a huge, scary thing. But then you're like, well, I put some space in between me and the Predator.

And the Predator's like cannonball. I can just jump in the water and he's coming out of the water and you see it on dutch's face he's luckily covered in mud and doesn't know about it yet but you see on his face he's like all right fuck it kill me dude i'm not running anymore you fucking psycho you just jumped off that waterfall to hunt me damn it's such a crazy shot it's a cool shot yeah i, he just also looks like... When he's in the mud... Because that's when the cloaking gets hit and then the force lightning

is kind of thrown around a little. When he's in the mud, it feels like his eyes are glowing. Yeah. He's got perfect eyes for that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Makes me think of Encino, man.

Fair enough. When Schwarzenegger was at his best... Remember when the titties are printed in mud on the glass sliding glass door at the end of it I brought this up on an episode recently

it's a huge moment it's a huge moment for me that's how much I was desperate to see boobs that seeing like an art direction

designed set of mud prints was like oh man what if there's a real cave woman just draw boobs on a piece of paper

and have the same impact. I used to. Sean, we brought this up on a recent episode. So funny. But that gag of the mud imprint of the boobs, I was watching it at my friend's place on VHS. That scene happens. The movie ends.

I go, so did they make a sequel? Can we wheeze the juice real quick? My internet's not working right now. I'm typing in Encino Man 2 and nothing is happening. And then I remember going to school. Is it Encino Woman? Like, what is this? And being like, okay, look, I know this movie came out five years ago.

Maybe they would have made a sequel by now already if they were ever going to. But he's naked at the beginning of the movie. So by transitive properties. The rules, right, demand. The beginning of the second movie would have boobs on camera. Let's go to the video store now. Change.org didn't exist. There was nothing I could do to will it into existence.

No, you know, Schwarzenegger at his best had this reality distorting effect, right? Where you're like, the comedy of like, I am normal man, right? Well, yes, by the 90s, right? Where he's like, this movie, you never questioned the fact that he's like Dutch and served in Vietnam

with American troops. No, I don't care. You don't care. It's awesome. You don't care. If I'm in an army and that guy shows up, I'm like,

can he be in our army, please? I'll go with you. And he's like, hello. And I'm like, I'll let that ride it's fine this movie does not feel the need to like

much like it doesn't have the voiceover explaining the predator technology or him talking out his strategy alone in the woods this movie doesn't also feel the need to have

it would be funny if it had like the weird Sarah Connor like the predators were built as a hunter species like just kind of articulating what's going on I don't want any of that

but it also doesn't have the scene where Dylan's like I mean thank god america and austria formed this union that put our units together don't need it right you're just like you know what this guy just has so much fucking integrity and credibility on screen and so much fucking confidence yeah if he shows up and he's like i am your leader and you're like yeah i'm in can you just take off your undershirt but then put your vest back on and he's like you got it brother dylan you you too billy yeah don't worry chief i'm already open ready to cut my chest up that shit when i was a kid i thought was the coolest shit but it also broke my heart because i was like i truly believed i was a kid i was like

billy has a chance this thing that i thought was like quietly profound, where this guy like goes from Juilliard to them being a commercial director. So he's in like heady, emotional, like psychologically grounded theater into being like a visual stylist. Right. And he like understands the unique properties of both mediums and how film has to bring the two together. and how film has to bring the two together. And he's, it's over some scene of Bill Duke where he's talking just how much he fucking loves Bill Duke. Just like waxing poetic about Bill Duke. Great guy. And being like, you know, he's like one of the great theater actors. And it's like funny to put him in a movie like this,

doing this. But like, you know, you can give him, he can give you so much more than you need. And he said, you know, it's like weird acting in a movie like this because it's not like proper dramatic performance in an obvious way. There's something about acting on film that isn't quite acting. It's like visual music is the term he uses.

And he's like all of filmmaking is like visual music and like acting on camera is more about like conveying some feeling than it is like communicating a specific like characterization in certain ways. And he said, it's a reason why I love in a lot of my movies to have characters who speak in foreign languages

and not subtitle them. And he's like, because if you do that, the audience only pays attention to the way in which the actor is saying it and not what they're saying. And I think the former

is always more important. Cool. I like that. And he just talked about Bill Duke as a visual music act. Until the hunt for Red October, when he's like, okay, hold on. And very pointedly is like, which is so funny. But I just, the visual music thing, he was just like, Duke gets it.

Like him being an actor and a filmmaker, he understands like what color he needs to be in the palette. And Duke gets the most like metaphorical representational scenes in the movie, too. Like he when he spirals over Blaine's death. I love the reveal that like him and Blaine were best friends. Like it's such a funny thing. But he's basically making this point of like Duke is giving the most grounded performance in this movie.

And yet there is nothing naturalistic about what he's doing. That moment where he's like stripping his clothes off, singing like about to die and it's like so crazy but it feels like he it feels so elevated he brings it's like it's like having like one guy in the band who could like solo really well it's like just like let's let bill duke we'll roll on him we got the rights to this song he'll be fucking weird and it's like i'm in i'm on fucking board his death is heartbreaking it's the saddest one because he's the one that has some sort of deeper pathos you feel yeah and then you have this ending where like you know it's funny for how much of a meme get to the choppa is it's like oh they do say it 800 chopper so many goddamn times that you are

like which one is the meme? I don't even know. Because especially because they wisely removed the sort of extended double cross element of it. Right. You're like, then the movie just becomes everyone needs to get back to the chopper. There is one objective. Chopper, chopper, chopper, chopper, chopper. And like, what a good word to hand over to Schwarzenegger. Oh, it sounds so good. And let him make a meal out of. Choppa. But yeah, just like they're getting away.

Anna's in there. They see the explosion. They go back around. They get him. And he's just there with like the fucking thousand yard stare of like. That's so fucking cool. It's good acting by fucking A-Man there too. Yeah, absolutely. And then you're hard cut to fucking curtain call every guy doing.

This is my fucking. Every movie needs to end like this. Yes. Every. Absolutely. And then you're hard cut to fucking curtain call every guy doing. This is my fucking. Every movie. Every movie. Yes. Every. I don't care if the movie is a Hungarian art movie about leprosy. I want actors giving a thumbs up to the camera with their character names underneath. Can I tell you the fucking mind blower?

This is the very end of the commentary. Obviously, McTiernan drops this. And I literally I thought I was having a disassociative episode, because this is what I would write. This is what I would force into existence. And I can't believe I didn't know this and had never known this, unless I had forgotten it.

He said, I felt like the ending was so down, and I wanted it to be down. It's a tough ending. Right. But, like, the movie was fun at a certain point, and i don't want the audience walking out bummed so i wanted some spiritual way to remind everyone like hey remember this was a fun movie it was a popcorn movie so he was like i had this idea originally that as dutch is in the chopper getting away he looks into the sky and their faces are all superimposed in the sky oh

shit force ghosts right but like bullet dodge right yeah and he was like it felt like overly Oh, David. Do you know what I'm going to say? No. McTiernan fucking name drops Brewster McCloud. Wow. Oh, shit. My favorite movie of all time. One of the most bizarre left-handed movies ever.

The movie Robert Allman makes after MASH. And his crazy blank check that goes down in in flames uh that i made ben and david see a couple years ago the metric movie i love it's weird deeply weird movie i believe it it's griffin's favorite yeah it's some normal shit uh but most of the characters in that movie die across the running time yes and it ends with a final death and there's just the silence and then it becomes a three-ring circus and every actor you've seen the movie is brought back to life in a guise of a different circus performer yeah it's very cool and they like the announcer announces them one by one lets them do their little curtain call

direct to camera and mcternan was like that i'm just gonna fucking steal from a cloud which obviously came out 10 15 years before this movie it's not like he had just seen it right right he was like you know what endings always stuck with me, which is the weirdest inspiration. But he was like, that's so easy and so cheap. Just fucking tack it on to first unit filming that anytime we have a down moment with the guys, we're just like, hey, just like turn to camera and do your sort of introduction. What's your bit? He wants to throw you a gun. You want to look up from the comic book.

Do your like sitcom opening and just break the fourth wall and do this like hey we want you to know we had fun time making this movie but i'm an actor and i didn't actually die don't worry it's all pretend the predator's not real yeah i i swear to god the predator do a final i really picked up on this viewing that this i think the film predator explained to me what movies are. Like, I feel like I was so obsessed with this movie. Like I, in my head,

every movie should end with that credit sequence. Yeah. Every movie should have like big buff guys that like greed each other. Like, and I was just like, and watching it this time, I'm like, this is why I think every movie should end like this is because predator

fucking like imprinted on me me like Renesmee. What? Yeah, Predator imprinted on you like Renesmee. Predator is... I got a new tattoo idea. You're Renesmee and Predator is your Jacob. Jacob's a Predator. He is a Predator.

David. Yes. I got a problem. David. Yes. I got a problem. I got a big, big, big, big, big issue.

What's that? Well, when I'm looking for hand-selected, great cinema from around the world, I go to Mubi. I go to our friends at Mubi.

I pull up Mubi. We love Mubi. That solves that problem for me. Yep. I got an unrelated issue that I don't think Mubi can solve. What's that? I don't know how to have sex.

Okay, look, listen, look, listen. I'm looking and listening. Look, this episode is brought to you by Mubi, of course. It is. And they are presenting the new film, How to Have Sex. Well, wait a second. Which won the Uncertain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. And it follows these three British teenage girls on a rite of passage holiday where they're drinking and clubbing and hooking up

in the streets of Malia you know in Greece Feature debut from rising British filmmaker Molly Manning Walker notably the cinematographer of Scrapper one of your favorite movies of 2023 an excellent film but I just will I do want to warn you that this is not

really about how like the sex being had is often actually you know quite you know sort of complex and problematic and it's you know it's about difficult situations that evolve like it's definitely not a manual or it's not it's not instruction manual but it's a film that i would enjoy watching it's a vibrant and authentic depiction of the agonies ecstasies and ride or die glory of young female friendship. It's a good movie. I've seen it. It sounds like my kind of thing.

BAFTA nominee for British film of the year. It was at Sundance. It was a can. It's gotten incredible reviews and it's playing in theaters. And it is a cool movie to see in theaters because it is very sensory. It is, you know, you are partying with these girls.

Like it's about this sort of crazy sort of like overwhelming scene that they're in so it's cool to be you know locked to theater with it obviously is dr ruth still alive i believe dr ruth is still alive i'm definitely gonna watch this film it sounds right up my alley but i'm also just like i got maybe gotta tackle this other problem on this five so you want to give her a call soon but yeah how to have sex is now playing only in theaters visit movie.com slash how to have sex one word to see showtimes and get tickets that's mubi.com slash how to have sex this film came out in june 12 1987 it was a big hit made 60 mil domestic 100 100 worldwide. It cost about 15, so everyone's happy. Yeah.

Reviews were bad. Janet Maslin called it grisly and dull. It is wild how dismissive the reviews are. No, it's not. It's the 80s, bro. You have to think about

like the critics of the 80s were born in like the 30s, you know? They don't want to see Predator. I was not expecting anyone would respect this on an intellectual level but they're also just like boring well yeah that's that's untrue like that is i understand going like

not a lot of depth i mean you can find it if you look for it but i can understand all the fancy critiques but i can't imagine you watch this movie and go like it's kind of boring i guess i'm also like unfairly comparing this to robocop and Terminator, which were a little more sophisticated on their face and both got reviews where people were like, huh, this is actually better than it should be. Yeah, those movies are highly metaphorical. Whereas this is, you know, Arnie versus the reviews on those two movies. This is a fucking cheeseburger. Yeah. And you're where we were previously talking about steaks.

Greatest fucking cheeseburger. Sometimes you want a fucking cheeseburger. Most of the time. previously talking about steaks. Greatest fucking cheeseburger. Sometimes you want a fucking cheeseburger. Most of the time you do. Most of the time you don't need a steak. Michael Wilmington in the Los Angeles Times says that the script is arguably one of the emptiest, feeblest, most derivative scripts ever made as a movie motion picture. I'm like, this is a perfect script. Even if I don't expect him to praise it, to be like, this script has nothing going for

it. I'm like, it is perfectly structured yeah and i that guy's fucking uh jokes on you dude it's got it's like 15 of the most quotable lines of all time right yeah no one will ever remember anything written for the film predator he also says there's no need to mad magazine parody of this it's already on the screen well they did one and it's funny and i own it yeah and. And the scraped knee wasn't going to come out of McTiernan's pen. Exactly. Schwarzenegger, of course, never does a Predator sequel in all the years.

No. He's done many other sequels. The Lawrence Fishburne role in Predators was made for him. Oh, that makes sense. Unsurprisingly. That movie was pitched in the 90s by Robert Rodriguez as and we bring Arnold back and he's the one, the survivor. Man, that would have been cool.

I mean, Fishburne is bananas in that movie and I love it. It is just kind of, maybe, it might be the wrong moment in the bell curve when that movie came out

in terms of like, Schwarzenegger's legacy and he just left office, maybe. Because now he's doing the, I feel like we can get, I mean, we are getting like triplets,

right? Is that one of the rumors like triplets right is that the one of the rumors well or is that still like a bit that Eddie Murphy is long rumor

yeah that Eddie Murphy is going to play the third genetic brother which is being written by Josh Gad at a certain point

hell fucking yeah yeah but also Ivan Reitman was supposed to direct it who has now sadly left us and it was supposed to be Eddie Murphy

but then Eddie Murphy passed their pitch for triplets has always been, what if the third guy was black? That is the beginning and the end of their pitch. And then at some point, they were like... Not at one point could it be a girl.

No. Their pitch is just, what's the next least likely in this SAT pattern? Right. So it was like Eddie, and they kept on being like, he won't commit,

but we think we're going to get him. And then at some point they're like, we give up. We're going to do it with Tracy Morgan. And we're going to do it, and we're ready to do it, and Ivan Reitman's going to direct it. And then Ivan dies,

and then now I don't know where it stands. If he's looking at his checking account right now, he's like, we could do first grade cop. We can do, you know, like he's just looking through his shit, and he's like, I do first grade cop we can do you know like he's just looking through his shit and he's like i'll fucking do a legacy sequel for anything like he's clearly down to still be in a terminator movie which is like upsetting and kind of might have finally ended that i think so he's got it he tried two different versions of i age naturally

as a terminator and it's like and we'll talk about this on Patreon, but I think Dark Fate is a good final note I think he's good in both of those moments. Yeah. But yeah, the movie is certain. But if he came back, I mean,

I don't know. As much as we're saying the model for Predator is Prey and they should just keep doing that, if they could find the right way

to bring Dutch back, we'd be hooting and hollering. Well, the real legacy sequel I want him to do is King Conan. yes yeah he can do it yeah he should do it just like an aged you know like his last hurrah defending his fucking people or whatever do stuff like and not just action movies i'd like him to try stuff i just want to

say about predator 2 he's like like they come to me mcturnan is now too expensive because he's made die hard in red october right so his fee is too high so they hire the guy who did nightmare on elm street five stephen hopkins yeah who is like you know he's had his moments like journeyman uh and uh joel silver is like come on like we got the director let's go you know we did this before and schwarzenegger told him like the script is set in LA no one wants to see this no one wants predators in downtown LA like you know gang warfare is a serious problem like you don't need to bring extraterrestrials

into this he's right and that movie and Arnold makes even less sense than Danny Glover no it's kind of like you don't need a black guy if you're gonna bet it against the race and the best thing that movie has going for it is like, Glover's kind of interesting to place at the center of this.

He's giving a very different type of performance. It's a very different type of hero. If it were that same story with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Dutch again. Yeah. Dutch is now a police sergeant. Yes. I retired. Yeah.

I just love L.A. I need to keep it safe. I'm a coppa. So this... Get to the coppas. Funny. I don't know. Five comment points.

Sure. I'm here for it. This film is opening number one, Griffin, to a healthy $12 million in June. You said we did this weekend already? We did. What's number two? Also new this week. A film we've covered.

87? Yes. Also new this week. Yes. Do've covered. 87? Yes. Also new this week. Yes. Do you want a clue? Give me the distributor of the picture. Warner Bros. The Bros, I called them.

Give me the distributor. I fucking love this podcast. Thank you. Do you want a clue? Yeah. How about who's the head of marketing at the time? Like, what? That helps you?

Is it? It's not Beyond Thunderdome, is it? No, but correct director. Oh, is it Witches of Eastwick? The Witches of Eastwick.

Oh, yeah. Opening to a fairly healthy $9 million. What a fucking weekend. Did you see I asked distributor and I thought about the year and I singled in on

it's probably a George Miller if it's Warner Brothers and we've covered it from this time period. That was the only clue I needed. I was one for law. What a fucking weekend. Predator?

And we, it used to be, you know, let's make America great again, folks. I'm going to put this forward. Was this the original Barb and Hymer weekend? Predawick?

Predators of Eastwick. Number three at the box office, a film we will cover one day, a sequel, an action sequel. An action sequel. To a gigantic hit. Will we cover it on

Main Theater or Patriot, you think? This is, okay, so it's a main theater. One day I'm going to insist we do this guy. Did the director only do this sequel? Correct.

Interesting. Yep. Okay, and it's a two. Yeah. It's a deuce. Deuce. Okay, director only did it two. You're going to insist we cover this guy.

I believe it is the only sequel he ever made. And it's to someone else's film. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll also do the original in a different director's miniseries. But we won't do the third. We won't do the third? No.

No, no, no. We won't be doing that one. Is it like a radioactive movie or is it just like... Radioactive director. Radioactive director. I think I know what it is. What do you think it is? Is it Beverly Hills Cop 2?

That's correct. Oh. Again, can I repeat? And I'm going to insist on Tony Scott, but no, no, no. This isn't him. Landis. There's the door. Very, very good pull,

Gabriel. I have to say, just repeat myself, what a fucking weekend. Imagine that marquee. Just wait for number four. Number four's fun, too. We'll probably do this guy one day. More of an established big auteur.

It is wild that's his only sequel. Yeah, he never did sequels to his own movies. Yeah, he never did sequels to his own movies. Yeah, he never did another sequel. He's so fucking good. It's a historical drama thriller. It's a historical drama thriller. It's kind of the most mainstream movie

this guy ever made. Oh, no. That's not true, actually. But maybe at this time. Director? You're saying that the director made? Director, kind of a famous freak. That's not true, actually. But maybe at this time. Director? You're saying that the director made? Director, kind of

a famous freak. He's kind of a famous freak? He kind of is. We just interviewed one of his leading ladies yesterday. You and I. Yeah.

Yeah. We... At the time of recording this, Gaber, yesterday, we talked to Amy Irving. Excuse us. As an episode to accompany our Yentl episode. Yeah. At the time of recording this, Gaber's yesterday, we talked to Amy Irving. Excuse us.

As an episode to accompany our Yentl episode. But it's not, it's one of his. Yeah. Who does she collaborate with? De Palma. Yeah. So it's a Brian De Palma movie. Is it Untouchables?

The Untouchables. There we go. Holy shit. I mean, like, Jesus. Wardrobe by Giorgio Armani. Fucking hell, man. That movie. That's another one where... That is one of the iconic fucking credit

when it just says wardrobe by Giorgio Armani. I've said this before on the podcast, but you read the reviews of that film that are not rude, but are like, yeah, it's like fun popcorn for dumb kids. Right. And then you watch the credits

and you're like, suits by Armani, score by Ennio you watch the credits and you're like, suits by Armani, score by Ennio Morricone. And you're like, these are the highest level people in the world. I know. Making you a period piece. And people are like,

boring, Last Emperor, please. They weren't like boring. They were like, they weren't like boring. You're right. They were just like, yeah, sure, Zepoma did some fun trash.

Right. Yeah. Now, if you release this, it would be like only at the cinema village i'm sort of joking just like a critic to bring a knife to a gunfight we're gonna talk about that man's accent work soon it'll swim up your urethra i can't i can't like the medicine that's all i remember from that movie careful i'm excited we're gonna do two conneries on this yeah oh this is another great thing about mctiernan two conneries two fucking schwarzeneggers yes two bruce yes a banderas you get sam jackson

with the second bruce two pierces yeah right two sam jacks travolta one travel a chris klein you get a Klein basic basic low-key slaps it's like my kind of movie I love I'm pumped for basic I've heard this from other people

I'm not pumped for rollerball no I'm pumped for basic I've heard this from other people completely reasonable feeling

I'm getting excited at the notion not to overhype it the basic will be like the quick and the dead of this series yeah just like hell yeah

the quick and the dead when we did that on Axe Boys was the first time I had seen it too and I was like this series. Yeah, just like, hell yeah. The quick and the dead, when we did that on Action Boys, it was the first time I had seen it too. And I was like, what a fucking movie. I'm like, Sharon Stone, turns out she's amazing at movies. Everyone should talk about that movie every day. Number five at the box office is a horror film that I had probably not heard of.

And Alex Rossberry probably texted me afterwards being like, how do you not know this movie? Yelled at you about it. Yes. Oh, when we previously covered this weekend. Right. That probably happened to me already. I still don't really remember this film.

It's too late for burnt offerings. No, it's not burnt offerings. It's a John Slicinger movie. Oh, okay. Starring Martin Sheen. Ooh. About a New York psychiatrist who finds that a Child sacrifice cult Has an interest in his son

Is it called like Blank-er? No, it's got a really boring name Is it called Danger Zone? No Man's Land? It's got Robert Loger in it And I bet he doesn't like that cult one bit Lieutenant Sean McTaggart Does it have a sort of off-the-shelf title

That could apply to 20 movies Okay It's called The Believers Oh yeah Yeah Never was gonna Never gonna get that

You've also got Harry and the Hendersons If you wanna see Predator in another role Talk about big haul weekend Seriously You've got Ernest He's gone to camp

This is the first one This is the start Of a major franchise Right You've got Platoon Last year's Best Picture winner Still hanging around Like eight months later Michael J. Fox In The Secret of My Success the start of a major franchise. Right. You've got Platoon, last year's Best Picture winner, still hanging around like eight months later.

Michael J. Fox and the Secret of My Success and a film called Million Dollar Mystery. What is that? Oh, I don't even know that one. It's a film released with a...

Okay, glad I looked this up. Glad I looked this up. Yeah. 1987 American film released with a promotional tie-in for gladlock brand garbage bags this was the final feature-length film directed by richard fleischer the legendary golden age director did conan the destroyer it was shot by jack cardiff maybe the

greatest cinematographer in my history i'd say number one yeah It has an ensemble with like Eddie Deason, Rich Hall, Kevin Pollak. They got the Dees in this movie? They got Dees. Tom Bosley is in this motherfucker. It's sort of like it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world, but with garbage bags? I don't really know. Okay.

The cover of the movie, the poster is a garbage bag, like with millions of dollars in it, but nonetheless. Was there like a tie-in contest where people could win money? I feel like there's some movie that did that. Dino De Laurent conceived of the idea dealing de la renta's a man who always puts hard over commerce when he uh visited new york and saw a row of people lining up for what he

thought was a movie but it turns out they were buying lottery tickets so he's glad bags sponsored a sweepstakes uh when you um uh watch the movie you would fill out a form with your answer as to where the last million would be hiding based on clues given in the film and if you won I guess you got some money I don't know someone said 0% on Rotten Tomatoes it's like a scam it's so funny it's like a scam

it's like we can get people to watch the movie by offering them money and then when they watch the movie we're actually just advertising to them it's like fuck you guys it's like fucking bullet train delarenta said this is a really broad comedy with car chases designed for young movie going audience the sweepstakes gives us the potential to reach more people um you know people more interested in winning a million dollars than in going to the movies and these are the kind of people who use glad bags he's decided to two things so three things this is like the real coupon the movie right it's garbage bag the movie yes it's about garbage bags

two man that's like uh spinal tap level reviews you can write about this. Two, it says the winner of the contest ended up being a 14-year-old girl who successfully guessed that the loot was hidden on the bridge of the nose of the Statue of Liberty. Okay. All right. That's where it is. Good for her. Three, much in the way Ben and I often talk about the Simsism of a sensitive, nuanced performance when you're describing absolutely bananas, ham sandwich bullshit performances for actors. I think Blank, who always puts art above commerce, needs to be another go-to Sims lineman talking about the great heroes of cinema.

I love catty Sims. I just love it. Like people are like, Dino, please give me money to make like, you know, this art movie I want to make. And he's like, I got my garbage bag movie lined up this year. So much of the Schwarzenegger documentary. We're going to get Tom Bosley for it. Yo, the Schwarzenegger documentary is three parts. It's athlete, American and the American part is so much Schwarzenegger just fucking dunking on Dino

De Laurentiis for just talking trash about him and being like I will never ever produce a movie that you start in I hate you you're not the movie star nothing makes Arnold feel better than the fact that he blew past doing fucking laps around Dino De Laurentiis' grave good for him

he outlived him we're done predator oh man holy shit rules can't wait to watch it again i it's predator i'm not complaining i downloaded it to my ipad to watch it came here yeah this morning when i was watching it says two days left i redownloaded it because i might have to be watching it again soon here i mean look you should just buy predator that's my advice Here's another thing I'll say. I own it on DVD. I'm in this situation in my life where all my DVDs are in storage so I keep having to buy movies

that I definitely own somewhere. Well, here's another thing I'll say. This was a formative movie for me as a teenager, right? My friend Lucky tipped me off. I rented It and Alien the same night from Couch Potato Video across the street and was like, I should it and Alien the same night from couch potato video across the street and was like, I should fucking dig in.

A night I think about like being as important as me losing my virginity and far less uncomfortable. Well, I mean, 20 years earlier. Absolutely, 40. If my projections are correct. Yeah, yeah, well, by the time of the recording, we could always...

Knock on wood. Hi, this is Ben Hosley cutting in to say, Virgin Watch, we're still going strong with Griffin News. I think I'm going to have a big February.

That's all I'm saying. I'm thinking I got a big February in store. But I watch these two movies and it blows my fucking mind. And I watch Predator so many times I'm a teenager. And it was like kind of

a real gateway action movie for me where I was like, this is what I fucking want at a movie.'s like what you're saying and had the DVD the two discs that had the if it bleeds all special features I watched obsessively I put this on last night and I was like have I not seen this movie in like in fall right 15 years why is that and I realized this is a movie that notoriously had the worst fucking home video transfers from DVD on. Yes. They released it like four times on Blu-ray with like crazy waxed like digital noise reduction and take out the grain where everyone looks AI'd.

Like the movie was only available in forms that look like mid journey for so long. And if you were streaming it or renting it, it was the same version. And they only corrected this like four years ago. So there were years where I just had the DVD and I was like, still not upgrading it. Still not fucking buying it on iTunes because I refused to give money to the shitty version.

And I just, like when they finally fixed it, I bought it and I just hadn't watched it since then. And I put it on last night and I was like, oh, I basically, I went from VHS to DVD to now watching it in 4K. For the first it on last night and I was like, oh, I basically, I went from VHS to DVD to now watching it in 4K for the first time in 15 years.

I'm like, the fucking cracks in the mud. I've never seen this shit before. So odd. The movie looks incredible. It's a beautiful movie. Roll. Shout out to Donald McAlpin.

I'm so honored to be here, guys. I can't believe this is my fifth fucking time and it's like talking about one of my favorite movies of all time. Incredible canon.

Well, you know, it's just too bad that he had to follow this up with, oh, I'm seeing Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October were his two follow-ups to this film. What a fucking error. The most absurd three-movie run. Although the next movie we're going to watch is Medicine Man. We're actually jumping to his weird one. Oh, man, that's almost like, hey, what's over there?

It's like, no, no, no, we're going over here. You don't want to see. Sorry, we're going to the jungles to study spiders with my mom. Ben, just because I know Predator is one of your main guys, one of your main artistic influences, I just, before we end the episode,

I want to give you the space if there's anything you want to say about the dude. He loves bones. We haven't really, you know, the man likes a skull. I mean, he collects them. Yeah, it's kind of Ben's

I like when he's like washing them and shit. He's like, he's got to clean his skulls. He I mean, he collects them. Yeah. It's kind of bed-bosom behavior. I like when he's washing them and shit. He's like, he's got to clean his skulls. He's like, these are disgusting. You mean like a bartender glass cleaner, maybe? He just kind of like, you know, dumps them in his... He's got a skull washer. He keeps them in like the blue barber juice. He's kind of a multidisciplinary artist.

In a certain way. Another thing you have in common with the Predator. Like different approaches to murder. Different approaches to murder. Sometimes he's a shuriken guy. Sometimes he's a whip guy. He's designed his own look, I'm sure. He's, I mean, he's got a look.

I would say this. We didn't really talk about his fashion, the Predator. Yeah, we didn't. We didn't. How about His fashion The predator Yeah we didn't We didn't How could we not Obviously invisible For much of the time Well right

But when you get to see it What a killer Fucking fit Fishnets and armor Fishnets and armor Helmet Helmet The helmet is so

The wolverine claws Yeah Oh my god yeah A helmet that lets your dreads Hang out the back Wolverine claws a parrot gun yeah fucking arm gun like this shit shoulder gun awesome nuclear bomb on the wrist yeah when he uh unfurls the like uh the whatever the like spikes the wolverine yeah like spikes but like around

arnie's head yeah he pulls one he's doing a bit. Yeah. And it's good. He's funny. Yeah, it's a funny bit. Do you like how he takes off his helmet, too? Like, I love that it's like, yeah. And he, like, unplugs, like, four different, like, air things. Like, goes full Vader and reveals that. And then it's, like, another layer of, like,

he's more raw and now more susceptible to pain and damage. And you're like, fuck, yeah. It's also, like, you get to see this, bro. You're special. You're going to get to see my crazy face. I'm loving this. I love when he fucking echoes back. You're one ugly motherfucker.

What the fuck are you? And he's like gargled. I'm so fucking hungover. You did great, Gabriel. You guys are the fucking best. You're the best. You're the best thank you for coming action boys everyone should become a janitor yeah actionboys.biz and if you're uh just want to sniff you can go to free.actionboys.biz where we have like 10 of our episodes that are out from

the paywall so maybe you get hooked that way i told you this uh months and months ago because animation takes forever but now it's finally coming soon and will be out by the time this episode comes out. But Gwildor, an important character in Action Boy's lore. Gwildor appears in over 200 episodes

of Action Boys, which is crazy. And you recently made Gwildor merch. We have Gwildor shirts. Gwildor is a significant character in the new season of the Masters of the Universe Revolution cartoon I am on.

I cannot fucking wait to see it. My character, Orko, his whole plotline this season is just him fighting Gwildor. Oh, awesome, dude. It's just he and Gwildor fighting like an old married couple. On our podcast,

Gwildor has become a sort of hothead police officer. Great. He's always like, shut the body cameras off. I think you're going to like, this is a very classic representation of Gwildor.

It's Gwildor just as you remembered him. He looks like Gwildor. He sounds like Gwildor. Oh, it's awesome. Yeah, it's great. A lot of Gwildor. And he's just fighting over,

like, let me make my sword my way. I like barbecue sauce. Bye, David. Bye, David. David has gone to the bathroom and shoved his own head in the toilet.

Came out in a Superman album. That was so fast. Wrap it up. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty, our associate producer

on this show. Thank you to AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing, Leigh Montgomery and the Great American Owl for our theme song, J.J. Birch, for our editing, Leigh Montgomery and the Great American for our theme song, J.J. Birch for

our research, Joe Bone and Pat Reynolds for our artwork. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, where as I said, we're doing Terminators. If you want more Arnie talk, there's a lot of it happening

over there on the other side of the Rio Grande. Tune in next week for Die Hard. Bummer. Big movie. Snore. And as always, get to the chopper.

He's talking to Ben to start chopping up this fucking episode. Listeners, stick around. Ben and I are going to do another hour on the... This is the hidden track. If you're still here, Ben and I are going to talk for an hour about the Predator's hair. Like when the action guys go like,

that's always sick. Yeah, we just have like a full child's conversation. Exactly. In a sandbox. Agh. Agh In a sandbox. Sound speeds. Okay, ready? Ready? Oh, God.