Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Thing with Emily VanDerWerff

Episode Date: September 12, 2021

Here’s the thing about THE THING - it might be the best movie we’ve ever covered? Emily VanDerWerff joins us (and joins the five-timers club!) to discuss Carpenter’s Arctic paranoia classic, which was unfairly maligned upon release. Topics covered include the “Brimley COCOON Line,” the film as a trans allegory, and dogs getting their faces peeled back like bananas. Checkout Emily’s podcast What to Watch on the Vox Quick Hits feed or the scripted series Arden! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

I know you gentlemen have been through a lot but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking podcast That guys got great eyebrows. I love it Donald Moffitt right that's on a Yeah, I love his eyebrows That guy's I I could ride him all the way home. You want to go on an eyebrow ride? I would would happily go on an eyebrow. Is he the president in clear and present danger?

I think he is or is he the secretary of defense or something? Let's see. He's the president. He's the president. It's at the end Harrison Ford's like, you've been a bad man, end. Harrison Ford's like, you've been a bad man, Mr. And he's like, Oh, tell you. And then he's like, you're bad. And he's like, fine, I'll resign. He's also he's he's lit. It be Johnson in the right stuff.

Yes. I feel like he is always perpetually playing an evil old man who also possesses a lot of power, which is like a very specific typecasting, but also one where there's a surprising number of times you can pop up as evil old man with a lot of power. Well, let's acknowledge his single most evil character, the tax man and Robert Altman's pop by. Do you remember what tax man? You know what?

You know what? I'm glad Carpenter won March Madness But Altman if Altman had won March Madness. I truly was going to have a renewal of vows to my wife at Popeye Village Oh and fly all the blank check folks out do a wedding episode Emily but Carpenter won I know I know well next year maybe Do you remember his bit and Popeye? No, well, next year maybe. Do you remember his bit in Popeye? He's really good in it,

because his bit is he just keeps on coming in and telling people that there's a new tax that they have to pay for. It's funny. Like he's like, oh, baby on a dinner table tax, five cents. The thing about fucking Popeye is it captures the spirit of a newspaper comic strip. It does.

It is a perfect adaptation of a newspaper comic strip. And people didn't appreciate it. And there needs to be a blank check wedding episode at the Popeye Village in Malta. Absolutely. It's going to happen. One week on the George Lucas talk show, we set a stretch goal for like one of our fundraisers

that was the boys go to Popeye Village in Malta. And I believe the crew who we had signed on to do it as of that moment, which is probably like 2 a.m. We've been streaming for like 13 hours, and we were like, here we go. If we reach $200,000, the boys are gonna go to the Popeye Village in Malta, and I believe it was Steven Weber.

That'd be fun. Yeah, it's probably a good hang. Nate Cordray, of course, George Luke is Wato. Oh, those guys. Patrick Conner. I think there was another actor we had roped into doing it. Anyway, this is not an episode on Popeye, unfortunately. We will get there eventually if it's the last thing I do. We will get there. The water is going to officiate the wedding.

Oh, boy. This is I mean, God, Wato officiates the renewal of vows at Popeye's village in Malta is a pretty incredible event. It really is. I'm trying to figure out how far Popeye village is from the Malta's find out. I did this math pretty recently. I'm glad this is all on our minds independently, just like, it's not a big island. Malta, I believe it's the densest populated place on Earth, Malta, anyway. Really?

You'll, because it's so small, because, you know, there's a lot of people there. Yeah, I've never been. The other reason I looked into it is because Malta now has, I think, one of only four remaining open planet Hollywood locations. Oh wow. Oh wow.

That's like, is it because Bruce Willis is too lazy to fly there and close it down? So they just keep on going. He's like, I don't wanna go there. Yeah, here it is. It's open right now. Yeah, yes it is. they just keep on going. He's like, I don't want to go there. Yeah, here it is. It's open right now. Yeah, yes it is. I can book a table.

What a double episode that would be. Writing, wedding renewal at Popeye Village, and then you do like a Ben's choice from Planet Hollywood. I feel like. Hell yeah. Yeah. I hope the multi-planet Hollywood is just Popeye stuff. Gotta say, food doesn't look great doesn't look great

Nope It looks okay. You know it's the the Times Square plan in Hollywood state open until the pandemic Mm-hmm, and that was that at a certain point they Half the real estate became a buka de bapo, but it still was half planet Hollywood on like 48th Street and Broadway. And I had always, I don't know. I always thought we'd go someday. I'd never been.

How did they not become like a outlet for a ghost kitchen? That's what like all the chains stood around here. I know. I know. It should have become like a slice sliders or something. You know, they should have had like three there. There should have been a ghost kitchen each first alone, Willis and Schwarzenegger. This of course is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Here's the thing about the planet Hollywood in Malta, Griffin. Here's the thing people are confused

I just said it was blank check and people are gonna think it's Alec Baldwin on MPR Of course it opened in 2019 so they can't close it. They just opened the damn thing. Wow. It's fresh It's too fresh. It's fresh But but you did kind of spoil, David, here is the thing. Okay. Oh yeah, that's true. Wow. That's true.

Do you think on blank check we say here's the thing? Do you think people get invited onto, here's the thing without Baldwin? And then he's like, so what's your take on Trump? And they're like, I thought I was here to talk about the thing, the hit movie. I was sad to be invited on that show and be asked about Trump and not John Carpenter's 1982 classic, The Thing,

one of the great films ever made. No, Emily, were you on here's the thing with Alic Baldwin? I was not on here's the thing with Alic Baldwin. I had the friend who was, I mean, it happens, right? I've heard that when Alic Baldwin invites guests on here's the thing before he starts according to his goes, oh, one second. And he slices open their hand, takes a petri dish of their blood and puts a heated up

bronze, a cup of wire in it to see if it acts up. And then he goes, great. Now I can speak to Patty Smith. He did time he to a chair, so. Yeah. Right. This is a podcast about filmographies. Sometimes it's about playing a Hollywood,

sometimes about pop-eye village. Sometimes it's about Alik Baldwin retiring from public life. These are three subjects that come up, a fair man on the show. But primarily at its heart, this show is about filmography's directors who have massive success early on in their career. Nor given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want,

and sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they mutate into a monster when Wilford Brimley, baby. And this is a mini series on the films of John Carpenter, Johnny Boy, Carpenter. John John, John Carpenter. John John, John Carpenter. Today we're talking,

but what I think many people consider to be his masterpiece, but this is a guy, I think more so than a lot of directors we've covered who has like five or six movies that people argue are the masterpiece. And like conventionally argue are the masterpiece, not like outtrap picks, you know? This is his blank check, right? This is the one we're gonna like take what you want. This is the one that I want. This is, yeah. Take what you want.

This is the one. I think it's the most conventional, like when we're talking about blank checks, it's the one that you most conventionally could say, like, yes, that is the blank check. I do think Escape from LA is weirdly his biggest blank check, but I think we talked about this a lot of that is Russell. Russell's kind of the co-signer on it. But I mean, then we've caused $50 million, which is, we'll talk about it. But yeah, no, this is the sort

of, look, he's a, he made Halloween. He's at the height of his success. He's moving to the studio system. He has money for the first time. This is the blank check. He's refrigerating sets. He's flying to Alaska. It's, it's the blank check. He's refrigerating sets. He's flying to Alaska. It's the blank check. He's minted a movie star. Kurt's his guy now. He's not an unconventional trick. Kurt's helping him like get this glow up and it is at the time undeniably a bounce. I knew this film had seriously flopped at the box office. I did not realize until I was digging into this last night to what extent this movie was met with like vitriol. Oh god, people hated it. People were furious. Furious. Everyone, like audiences, critics,

everyone fucking hated this thing. This thing. Do you think it's because a dog's face gets peeled apart like a banana 20 minutes in And then after that things get a lot worse. Do you think that's why like like this David? Yes, yes, Griffin has a banana Griffin what is your is this from like a thing video game or something your background? I don't recognize this is this is the thing video game that came out in the early 2000s. I think for PC primarily, but then maybe it was also on. Yeah, I remember it.

I remember it. I remember it. I mean, being a pretty well reviewed, not great reviewed, like people like that. At the time? Yeah. Yeah. And it was sort of like a head of the curve now

of like cult movies getting remade into modern video games. I know it has like a trust system. It tried to build in like some sort of thematic elements. I think that's what this picture is because my, let me just see. So my background is there's like a thing like torso hung on the wall. Right. Months are remnant. Yes. there's like a thing, like torso, hung on the wall, right? Monster, monster, remnant, yes.

Right, but it's like he's like hung like in a noose and then his chest and his lower arms are all like thingy. And then the, you're, I guess this guy in the lower corner, you're like his POV, and there's a guy standing next to the corpse with a gun to his head, and then there's a green square above his head with a question mark. head. And then there's a green square above his head with a question mark. And I think that's the trust feature.

I just think this is such a bleak image for a video game, especially with one with graphics that are like not that far beyond like golden eye. Like that's the level of detail we're looking at here is like a pretty spare room, a horribly mutilated corpse hanging from the wall, and then a guy with a gun to his head and there's a box going like, do you trust him? Everybody in that image looks like a big pussy from the sopranos and Max Gain had a baby. Like that's just amazing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well put, well said. I miss that era of video games, but I'm surprised no one has taken another swing at the thing. Love the thing swing. There's a lot of tabletop games. Like, the tabletop is kinda where it belongs.

There have been a fair amount of comics, I think, as well. But makes sense for a tabletop game because it's good to have things where it's like, do I trust you? That's always a good mechanic in a tabletop game. I do think a big part of it, David, is that the 2011 film, which God, it flips me out that that was a decade ago. That's a prime example of a movie from the 2010s

that I could have sworn came out three years ago. But that movie, I think, had been in the works for a long time. I feel like from the early 2000s, Universal was like, oh, this thing's considered a classic now. We should do something with it. And there was maybe 10 years of development hell of trying to figure out something to do with the thing. And then, right, the video game is sort of at the beginning of that.

And then I think there's a period where they maybe like didn't want to do more shit because they were waiting to put all their chips on the new movie and try to revitalize it that way. But now it's been 10 years. They should make a new fucking game. They should do shit like that. Well, aren't they planning another remake of this movie or something?

Yes, yes. The thing I remember about the thing, the thing I remember about the 2011 prequel is Ron Moore ends Battlest star Galactica. And there's like a lot of hoopla about he's moving into the movies. The first thing he's gonna write is the new version of the thing.

And it's prequel and it's gonna be great. And he turns on a script that apparently just nobody liked. And like knowing Ron Moore's love of bleakness, his crossover with the thing could have been truly dark and despairing. Too much. Yeah. You might have liked it, although I will say I love Ron LeBmore.

I love the man. Yeah. And he's made things so I love. But sometimes I do think he can outthink himself a little bit. Yes. He'll go like five layers deep and I'm like, Ron, just write a thriller and like it's okay. People, people enjoy entertainment.

You don't have to like subvert the genre three times in 40 minutes or whatever. But anyway. David, have you watched For All Mankind? No, I need to. You would love it. I knew the question was coming. I know. We've been talking recently, David and I

about the fact that both of us are like, we got to watch that fucking thing, right? I know I got to watch it. I assume I'm going to like it. Here's my bigger take. I think I want to be an Apple TV plus. Oh, I think I want to do that. I think I'm gonna watch C.

Why not? Well, I know. Come on. I'm gonna watch C. Why should someone should watch C? Yeah. I'm imagining trying to like tell a friend in a dinner party. I love that show C and they're like,

are you saying a letter to me? What is the? What is the? Right. Is it the letter C? Is it the body of water? Is it the? I'm like, no, C.

Because it's set in a world where everyone is blind. Okay. It's terrible, but you should watch it. Okay, great. No Apple TV good. That's one of the surprises of the last year. They are doing the FXAMC thing of like only green lighting stuff. They're passionate about and sometimes it's terrible, but generally it's pretty good.

And like I and I watch so much stuff there. It's limited enough that there's like you you can actually develop a standard of quality because you're like well they're not making everything. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's kind of red. They're trying to be HBO back in the day or whatever. And is that a good strategy? I don't know. Who cares?

Yeah. I'm an Apple TV plus ho, OK? It's very hard for me to say that. It's just sort of like a lot of words that don't really work. You don't have to say it. And you certainly don't have to phrase it that way. Our guest today is Emily VanderWarf, of course. I was your friend here to talk about the thing.

A movie, I feel like you emailed me about something else and then ended the email with, by the way, just putting it out there. The thing is a very important trans text and then I texted David and went, well, I guess Emily's on the thing. That's my truck cart. That's my truck cart. That's my truck cart. You know. You pulled that cart twice and both times we go, yeah, the, sure, yeah, the episode's yours.

And it's like, The Christmas Carol, you just pulled the, it's about Christmas. Yeah, which you don't know. Right, you pull the Christmas cart, yeah. But, but. That's how you get on this show five times. You just keep saying, oh, I'm going to, this is the times. You just keep saying, oh, I'm gonna,

this is your favorite, right? Look, Emily, you're one of our favorite people. You're one of our favorite guests. We need no convincing to have you on the show, but I just admire that this end silence of the lambs, you picked the two biggest movies in each filmography. And both cases people, you would sort of bang the drum for pretty hard in March Madness.

And just went like, I'm throwing it out, there here's my take. Try telling me I'm not on this episode. So. Well, I wrote a very nice email to you guys. I was just like, hey, you're my friends, and I love you, and I'm in your corner. And by the way, I should be on the thing and worked.

So don't reward my behavior. No, it's, it, look, everyone is rewarded every time you come on the show. That's exactly true. That doesn't mean that anyone should ever write me an email though. Never, I want to get clear. And we're not even saying don't write us that kind of email.

We're saying no one ever write any email to either of the two of us. If you want to write me an email, you just better think long and hard about that email. I'd just be very, very sure you want to do it. The thing that I have backed myself into with this show is that I alternate one of my favorite movies of all time with one of my least favorite movies of all time. And that happened because I was on Munich. And I was like, I don't really think I, I think that's my weakest episode to rank myself. I was like, I don't really think I

nailed that. And then I was having lunch with David when I was in New York sometime. And he was like, I think we're going to do Michael Bay. And I was like, I will come on and do Transformers. What's the second one? Revenge of the Fallen. Yeah. It's Revenge of the Fallen, correct? One of the worst movies I've ever seen. Yeah, we've talked about this, the legendary canceled Michael Bay series where we had booked every episode where we literally had the whole schedule figured out and then we got scared by the internet. Yeah, everyone was wrangling for the island though. That was the one everyone wanted. But I would have thought they were being cute asking for the island, but they didn't realize everyone wanted the island though. That was the one everyone wanted. But I wouldn't thought they were being cute asking for the island, but they didn't realize

everyone wanted the island. I want to say RPED called dibs on it first, but everyone else was asking for a call. RPED called dibs on it in his way of like, well, that's my episode because it's sort of his most forgotten project or whatever. Right. Like that was sort of, he was just, I don't know. Which is it? I don't know.

I don't know. But yeah, then I then David was like, David like DM to me one day, and like what felt like a panic being like, you hate Alice in Wonderland, right? And that was my second time on. And since then I've just been like, I'm gonna keep this going.

So. Right, love hate, love hate. That makes sense. So yeah. Now I have to do another total piece of shit. So you either got to do finally do Bay, or you got to do Tom Hooper. Those are kind of the two where I'm like,

I know what I'm doing. We're not doing Tom Hooper. We're crying out. What's the whole group there? Also which one? I will do the Danish girl. It will be, everybody wants the longest episode in blank check history.

I want the shortest episode. Yeah. It should be the Danish girl. It's me talking for five minutes. Then there's five minutes of box office game. There's like 15 minutes of ad reads. That's it. I don't know. Can I like read some Wikipedia facts from like the page for Denmark maybe? I don't know. ethnic groups, 86% Danish stuff like that, right? Gross domestic product. It seems to be about $370 billion. Yeah, we can get into some Denmark facts, maybe.

I don't know. I mean, if we have to pad the episode, we could just have pastries. Yeah, I have some Danish things. Exactly, we just sort of go on Danish tangent. It's very, it's Danish tangent. Yeah, cause I mean, Emily, you're saying I only want to talk about this movie for five minutes.

You're forgetting that we did an episode on a master builder that featured a straight hour of talk about playing will be all This is true. Yes. Yes, but yeah, I always find a way to make it too long I appreciate it anyway We're never doing Tom Cooper. I mean Danish girl is probably the biggest argument for never fucking doing Tom Cooper We're never doing Tom Hooper. I mean, Danish girl is probably the biggest argument for never fucking doing Tom Hooper. Everyone's like, it'd be funny to have a cat's episode and I'm like, but at what cost? There's a lot of interesting stuff in there. Like, Landmills is like a very fucking weird movie. No, no, every episode would be funny. I think the damn night is actually a good movie. The King's speech, you know, everyone can do the bit.

Look, the saving grace of the hypothetical Tom Hooper series is that it's not long. It's not long unless he puts out two movies a year, starting next year. I don't know what Tom Hooper's worth. If he starts going so to Berg, we're fucked. He was a very, yeah, right. He goes full-skate, he's just doing iPhone shit.

Yeah. Yeah, he was a lovely interview. I gotta say he was a nice man. Yeah, you interviewed him like two days before cats came out, right? I interviewed him, right. It was like a day or two after the premiere, which I had been at.

And the week, yeah, it was the week of the movie's coming out. Yeah, yeah. And he was clearly someone who was Hours removed from finishing visual effects. Well, he wasn't even removed. It was still happening right because they were still fucking fixing the movie after it came out Yeah, yeah, the cyberpunk 2077 of movies Seriously, yeah, are we talking about top okay? This is a mini series on the films of John Carpenter. It is called They Podcast because I was overruled.

And today we're talking about the thing. His 1982 colossal flop reviled. It wasn't a colossal flop. It was a flop. Okay, a flop. It was a flop. It disappointed,, completely disappointed. There's no doubt about it.

And it came out, obviously, famously pretty much in the same month as ET and Universal released both movies and thought ET would be like a dumb kids movie that no one wanted to see and that the thing was going to be a big deal. And they were wrong. I know that's often cited as one of the real causes of this film's negative reception, is that this film was sort of like so anithetical to ET and its spirit and its relationship to aliens. It was so bleak after everyone saw this life-affirming movie, but like the level of vitriol cannot be explained

solely by that. I mean, as cinephantastique, which was like a classic horror, sci-fi, fantasy, nerd magazine, did an issue. Called it. Right. The most hated film of all time. It was the cover. Yes. The cover was the thing with the headline, is this the most hated movie of all time? That was a valid question in the aftermath of this film's release.

And it's like, what are some of these quotes here? movie of all time. That was a valid question in the aftermath of this film's release. And it's like, what are some of these quotes here? Vincent can be called it the quintessential moron movie of the 80s, instant junk. Hell yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, this is the thing. Sounds good, right? I can keep saying this is the thing, Jesus. I know I say that all the time, but still, right. Well, the reason that people thought that, Griffin, is because the thing is really gross. It's a gross movie, which again, rules is good, but I just think people were completely unprepared

because everyone who's ever seen this movie without fair warning or whatever is completely unprepared for what's going to happen, right? Yes, yes, yes, you just don't, yeah, you don't know. My wife had seen this movie before and rewatched it with me last night and was just like so grossed out by it, don't mean she loved it, but she was just like, I forgot how gross this is. I've seen it, I watch it every year and forget how gross it is. It seems like an austere movie until it very much is not an austere movie. Well, we should also point out it does start off with just someone trying to murder a dog.

Which rules? Why would you want a course? Well, of course, but it's better be a bad dog. That guy really doesn't like that dog. Well, yeah, like, because like, first timer, you're like, you don't know what's about to happen. So you're just like, are these guys just killing dogs and that's like kind of their deal? You know, clearly you make the connection later.

No, of course, but no, that was forkiss reaction. She's just like, they're gonna kill a dog and I'm like, you don't get it. This is not a good dog. This is, this is a bad news dog. We're gonna be in the good dog. This is a bad news dog. We're gonna be news pairs. This is a bad news dog. Bad news dog. This is Ebert's review ends with.

The thing is basically then just a geek show, which he's using in the like carny term of geek, which is a show where you watch people bite chickens heads off and shit. Right. He was actually, he was okay on it though. He gives it a mix review. He gives a two and a half stars. He says it's basically a geek show, a gross out movie in which teenagers can dare one another to watch the screen.

There's nothing wrong with that. I like being scared and I was scared by many scenes in the thing, but it seems clear that Carpenter made his choice early on to concentrate on the special effects and the technology and to allow the story and the people that become secondary. That's maybe the most positive review it got from a major critic. And that one is saying, it's good if you were not expecting any depth or intelligence

out of this material whatsoever. But I understand it. I think this movie just scandalized people. It's too violent. Like I just, they were like, I know, you can't do that. Like, I really think they're walking out of there being too much, too much. This is a studio movie.

I get seeing this at one press screening and being like, okay, no, no, no way. And then like, it sits well. Like, this movie like, is very bleak and nihilistic and dark and that's often bombs and theaters, and then when it comes home to all the like weirdo shut-ins, like us, people are like, fuck yeah, that's what I need. Look, I mean, I don't wanna be rude about Vincent Canby,

who I'm sure was a nice man. I don't know about that. He may be who was a mean man, but at the time he's reviewing the thing, he is near the end of his tenure. He basically wrapped up in the late 80s as a film critic. But I just, I really just don't think, I think that there was just a certain kind of critic

who was seeing this movie and was like, the minute everything goes hog wild, is turning their brain off to the darker theme, like to sort of the mad stuff. They're just like, that's just the movie where tent, like to the sort of thematic stuff. They're just like, that's just the movie where tentacles come out of people's faces and stuff. I can't think about it anymore. I just find it fascinating that it was such an immediate

and dramatic and total turnoff for people. Like I understand this one is very gory, but it was just like, there's an opposite of this, which is, Cisco and Eber, it's Toy Story review, I find really fascinating, because they only talk about the graphics. But you're not that interested in Toy Story, it's very strange that you find that fascinating.

Yeah, it's weird that I've watched that 87 times, but it's one of those things where it's like, it's because I'm such a fucking personality Toy Story nerd that I'm like, you guys seriously don't have anything to say about the meat of the movie, and their whole review is eight minutes of them being like and the wood on the floor It looks like real wood and you do look at us Right, but you look at a lot of Toy Story views from the time and it's the opposite thing where people are so positive on the movie

But they can only talk about like you won't believe it. It looks like plastic And then this it's just every review is just like what is this fucking fucking shit I'm having to look at? I mean, this is Starlog Magazine, right? Which is arguably like the prominent sci-fi horror magazine of its day. So this is not like Hoi Di Toi Di Elite, Snappy Critics. Alan Spencer of Starlog Magazine called it Cold and Stereial, it's a Cold and Stereial attempt to cash in on the genre audience.

We're, we're take, I, again, I'll say about Starlog and I don't want to be mean about Alan Spencer. I don't want to be. But like those fucking nerds like Star Trek, where there are no tentacles ever emerged from anybody's face. That's what he said. He said Star Trek too, but he's like, what's this gross shit?

Where is it? You know, deep ideas. It's a cold in sterile horror movie attempting to cash in on the sci-fi audience against quote, the optimism of ET, the reassuring return of Star Trek to the technical perfection of Tron and the sheer integrity of Blade Runner, which Blade Runner comes out the same weekend as this, I believe. Well, I don't want to be rude about a tron either because I love tron. I do too. I agree. I agree. I agree. Even at the time, I think that's not really a thing

you can throw out at it. But this is like, beyond this. Okay, so you look at that and it's like, that's him saying, reflecting but we're all talking about which is like this movies to bleak it's to gory it's just so mean and rotten as core right it's just this visual all visceral visual effects showcase but then he goes even further in his review and says a carpenter was not meant to direct science fiction, but was instead suited to, quote, direct traffic accidents, train wrecks, and public flogging. That's kind of a funny line. But isn't that just wild? Here's the other thing, though. And I did say here's the thing again,

and I understand that I did that, and I will cop to that. Yeah. When Psycho came out and the early reaction to Psycho from a lot of these funnyuddy-Dirty critics, and I say that as a Fuddy-Dirty critic, was like, you know, kind of, you know, unease and very mixed and sort of, you know, ooh.

But then of course, Psycho becomes this phenomenon. Right. And people are checking it out so much that I think it very quickly gets reassessed. People are sort of like, well, geez, I think I took over the world. Well, Bonnie and Clon is a similar thing. Yeah, exactly. People are sort of like, well, geez, that I think I took over the world. Bonnie and Clon is a similar thing. Yeah, exactly.

There are examples of this. Right, but the thing is sort of a bomb. And so it's kind of like, yeah, we were right. That thing, that audience injected that. It was too gross. And so that's what's funny about it's now canonical status. Yes. It survived all that.

It's also funny that it was so randomly rejected by both like the fan genre press and the mainstream press and flopped and has been reclaimed by both. Like I feel like it is one of the rare genre movies of the last 40 years that is sort of put on like a great American movies pedestal. Not this is a good popcorn movie. And it's also within sci-fi and horror circles,

I think thrown up as one of the 10 best ever. I was not paying attention to the critical reception in 1982 for some reason. But when I was a... No, no, no. I didn't subscribe to Starlog at the time. When I was a little kid, there was, I loved horror stuff. Horror's always been my favorite genre. And there was this book in the school library called Movie Monsters that had, you know, it was about Frankenstein and the Wolfman and Godzilla and Jaws and Gremlins and then the

thing. And like the whole chapter on the thing was just like dunking on how bad the movie was, but we have to include it because the special effects are so impressive. So that was my first impression. And then I feel like kind of the film geek world of the early 2000s internet reclaimed it. So then I watched it for the first time in college.

It was like this movie rules. This movie's great. Yeah. Griffin, there's an argument and forgetting Patreon because I never remember what we covered on Patreon. But there's an argument that this is the best film we've ever covered on the podcast. I'm not saying, you know, obviously it's all in the eye of the beholder, but there's an argument.

It's reasonably in that 10. Yeah, you know, I would say so. Right. It's in that echelon. Yeah, absolutely know, I would say so. Right. It's in that echelon. Yeah, absolutely. Thing, Assassin's Creed. Those two obviously. Under siege to from coming in number three. Right. Like, yeah, Joe dirt.

The man who dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, in the back half of the top. These deaths, yeah. Right. It's six through 10. I just, I kind kinda can't get over, like I was just digging to find anyone defending this movie at the time on any level. It doesn't really seem like. No, the level of rejection is fascinating to me.

And yes, like the timeline of sort of it being reclaimed, because I think I see it about the same time I see this when I'm maybe 13 or 14 in like the early 2000s. I'm seeing it probably because like this video game is coming out, you know, I'm seeing it starting to get regurgitated into other mediums. And I'm very much like a beautiful nerd kid who's like, oh, what are the things that are part of the canon? You know, anytime anything's getting canonized, reclaimed, and a cult is building off of it, I immediately rent it. I don't think I had seen it in full since then,

which is odd, but it also was a movie where like every second of it was burned into my brain. Yeah. Can I share the first time I saw this movie, which is odd, but it also was a movie where like every second of it was burned into my brain. Yeah. Can I share the first time I saw this movie? I remember it really clearly because it was one of the first times I ever smoked a bong. And this movie, man, wow, did it like blow my mind in just the best way possible. And just to complete the image here for our listeners, Ben is wearing his own congratulations ball cap

and his virtual background is the dog. To the dog post, the nanoprole. The bloody dog. It's a bloody dog. When it's got like sort of the worm face. Fork, this is when Forkie just held her iPad in front of her face and was just like, just tell me when it's over. And then like a minute later was like, it's not over.

And I was like, now there's like two more minutes of this talk. Just fucking going nuts. So, some of these things were like, the budget, Boateen was given, Rob Boateen, who's the genius behind all the creature effects in this movie, was given I think $1.5 million out of a 15 budget. Yes, that is correct. And initially he was given less, but it made it all the way up to about $1.5 million. I think Universal offered like a quarter of a million or 300,000.

And they were like, that's a lot. Right, they were like, that's the most we've, this was far and away the most they had ever paid, spent on the monster element of a monster movie. And that was Carpenter's whole thing is like, why do we always skimp out on that? That's like the thing that everyone cares about. And 1.5 was seen as exorbitant.

And it is, I know, you know, factoring and inflation, 1.5 went a lot further back then than it does stay But it remains astounding that they were able to get that much out of that amount of money Well, this is one of those movies where you don't know how they did it. I know I know that's the hackiest thing to say But it's true like I'm like how the fuck are they doing this? Yes, like when it went it's all like driving around all those They I think here's my here's my theory I think they got a real thing. I think you got a real one. You think they got a real thing I think they brought in a real thing and it that it did all that stuff and they just covered it up

And that's those in you those perverts in Hollywood those Lefty hypocrite liberals got a thing. I think there's this thing, and, sure, David, can you say this? There is this thing. There is this thing. I think that within criticism, there is a lot of received wisdom.

And you become a critic, and you're like, here are the rules of a good movie. And you can break maybe a couple of them, but if you break them, I'm going to be watching you. And it takes a long time to break out of that mindset. And I feel like that has become easier with the advent of the internet because you're exposed to a whole bunch of different viewpoints on what makes a good movie. But at this time, like, you know, something like, oh, there's this much special effects

automatically. People are on their, along their guard. And then it's that bleak. It's that, you know, the special effects are all poured into the monster. Like, I think there is an element of, it just broke a bunch of like, unstated rules. And it did so brilliantly, but it was hard to see that because the rules are so prominent in your brain.

Right. Yeah, I mean, David, I sent you, I mentioned this in an earlier episode, but it, what's it called, Terror on Film? Yes, which was an internally produced universal, promotional half hour video that was directed by Mick Garris, who's in the stable with these guys and later goes on to become a director himself.

And it's him interviewing John Landis, John Carpenter, and David Cronenberg, because all three of them had just done universal movies. Right. Right. It's being made, I think, before the thing has been released, I think, right? Fear on, I'm sorry. The name of it is fear on film.

Of course, of course. It's a video, video drum and is Landis's movie American Werewolf for. Right. And that's come out already. I think that one has come out in video drum and the thing have not, but I think it's Mick Carous, just as like a fan working in the Universal promotional department being like,

here we have these three guys who are trying to like bring back horror at a major level. It universal, I mean, there was this feeling, I think sort of like this is Universal's roots, is like these classic monster movies. Here you have these three guys, one feeling I took sort of of like this is universal's roots is like these classic monster movies Here you have these three guys one guy who's sort of like a nasty genre guy who's made these really profitable indie movies This kind of like avant-garde Canadian cerebral Freudian body horror dude who's like this art house favorite who's now making studio films and then you have John

Landis who's this populist like ribald comedy dude who's now getting back to his And then you have John Landis, who's this populist, like, Ryeball comedy dude, who's now getting back to his sort of shlocky John road. Right, that's the thing. Like, Landis has this vibe of like the shlocky showman. Carpenter is just the kind of like,

guys like, look, I do the work. What can I tell you? I make movies, movies. I'm a carpenter. Right, I make a cab. And then, yeah. And Cronenberg, whenever you ask, whenever he's asked a question,

you're like, is this guy about to, like, produce a gun and shoot whenever you ask whenever he's asked a question You're like is this guy about to like produce a gun and shoot someone like he's sort of like You know, he's David Kronenberg. It's just he's unsettling and right and for you sort of his also starts with not to get Freudian about it It's pretty good and of course and the whole thing has the vibe of like a penis You know, it's incredible. I mean I remember seeing it in high school and stuck with me and I've watched it a number of times I rewatched again today. It's on the video drum criterion

but you can also find it on YouTube in full. But it's very interesting, the framing of these three guys where it's like universals making a big play for like big budget horror with like, you know, real directors and shit. And American Wherewolf and London is like a fairly, you know, reasonable hit. And video drum is like too weird for the fucking public,

but it's like very well received by the critics and Kronenberg fans. It like helps, you know, build his reputation as a trade. He is on trade into, right, into sort of like genuine art house. Yeah. Right. And then the thing is just kind of there in the middle. And they're talking a lot about their theories about what you can and cannot do in horror.

This is why I'm bringing it up, Emily. You're sort of thing about like the unwritten rules, right? And they're sort of comparing their notes and like what do you think you can put in a movie? What is a moral to put in a movie? What works with an audience? What doesn't? And Carpenter is so unpretentious about everything.

He's far and away the guy who talks the least out of the three because I mean, you want him to talk more because you sort of sit in there. And Landis is a fucking hand. Right, right. And Cronenberg is like, just anytime they ask him a question, he gives a Griffin Newman length answer.

He just can't concisely put any of his thoughts into words in less than eight minutes. But Carpenter, they ask him, they're like, what do you find scary in movies? And he goes, nothing. And they go, movies don't scare you. They go, you don't get scared. He goes, by movies, they go, yeah, and he goes, no. No, not since I was a child. Yeah, he has the term for what is it? Like a chair razor, right? Like a seat lifter.

A seat lifter, that's what it is, right? Right, he would say, what is it? It's the thing from, it's not the movie that he's re-emaking here. It's a thing with a similar title though. It came from another world or something like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It came from outer space.

It came from outer space, right. That's the movie that he was saying. He saw what he was for in 3D and it made him want to be a filmmaker and he called it a seat lifter. And then every time they ask him a question, that's a little more high-falutin. He's like, I don't know. And then at one point, Landis is just like,

John, I read your script. I have no idea how you're going to pull any of these things off. And he just like, John, I read your script. I have no idea how you're gonna pull any of these things off. And he's like, yeah, it's rough. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha remake the thing from another world for a while. Daw thing. I had never seen the original until today. Today, I watched this movie last night, and then I watched the original, and I watched the prequel, and I watched this fried on film, the year on film, today, this morning. And the original is this point of much contention whether Hawks really directed it or whether he's a very common daring producer. Credit to Christian Nibie who was not, you know, his first movie and he never made a lot of big movies and Hawks produced it and he probably, you know, whatever he was involved.

Which by the way, Nibie's review of review of carpenters movie was if you want blood go to the slaughterhouse all in all it's a terrific commercial for jen b scotch uh... well that is what you know he's actually right on the second that's right make you want to make you want to go to the slaughterhouse how am i going to go to what if i got a knock on the door and be like hey can i just watch today like you guys have a listen, you can do that. That is allowed. I was taken on a trip of a butcher shop as a kindergarten or they were like, come on, kids. It's very Troy McClure. I wonder that I, it's a wonder that I like more. My dad's office used to be in the Me Packing District, which now is just a very hip night club,

high-end clothing store neighborhood. But back then was, as its name suggests, a Me Packing District, a like 15 block stretch of Manhattan where the streets literally ran with blood, Manhattan where the streets literally ran with blood and everything smelled like death. And I just find it so funny that like decades of trying to make that neighborhood hip, hip cannot correct the fact that like the rats, it's like in their blood, it's in their like their cells. They'll never forget those streets. All these places are infested. What I was going to say is I had not seen the original film,

which I think was a favorite of Carpenter's. He obviously spotlights it in Halloween, Hawks is his main guy. It is based on a short story, which is called Who Goes There, an Avela by John W. Campbell, Jr. I knew this was a loose remake. I did not realize that,

although the concept of the thing adapting and replicating other forms, and that sort of like, I don't know if the person next to me is who they say they are sort of paranoia, is in the original story. It is not in the Nibie movie, because they couldn't afford it.

So it is just kind of a guy who looks like Frankenstein. They joke about him being a giant vegetable. Yeah, it looks like a big plant. Right. It's black and white, but I think they talk it on like he's big carrot. And he's sort of like a vegetable Frankenstein. And there's just a thing they find in the ice, and then they thaw him out, and then he's sort of hiding. And it's sort of closer to alien in that it's just like,

they're in this base and there's a group of people and there's one thing that's lurking in the shadows hiding out in the steam rooms and shit. The monsters, the monsters split by James Arnest, right? The gunsmoke guy. Yeah, crap, crap. Big tall motherfucker. He's a six foot six dude.

It's also funny that one of the humans in the skeleton crew of the movie's a six foot six dude. It's also funny that one of the humans in the skeleton crew of the movie is also six foot six. So there's like one of the good guys who's trying to like outwit the thing is as monstrous looking. And even sort of in facial structure looks more like a Frankenstein that James Arnès who is just wearing a lot of prosthetics.

But you know how James Ar Ernest got hired in Hollywood? I'm looking at his Wikipedia page. He hitchhiked there from Wisconsin. Yeah. And then he just started calling people up. And said, I'm big. Yeah. And he probably walked in the room

and they were like, hey, you're really are big. Yeah, put the sky in a cowboy outfit. He got the job on Gunsmoke because they approached John Wayne, and John Wayne thought about it, and then was like, no, just hire this guy. And so they hired him. And it's a very different history of John Wayne just goes to TV in 1955.

Yeah. Yeah, that is fascinating to consider. But yes, the milieu of the movie is there. Like it is the sort of like a tough man stuck in a cold base, you know, in the middle of nowhere trying to outwit this thing. But they had tried to develop this for a while with Toby Hooper. Yep. I want to pull this up if you give me a second.

I think there might have been some other people who worked on it at different points in time, but the Hooper one was a big one. William Nolan is the big one. Later they think about bringing in Walter Hill and Sam Peckin-Pond people because Carpenter briefly was like, thought he could go make L.D.O.B.O. which is his like, you know, his long gestating passion project.

It's just so it's so funny to imagine him calling up Universal and being like, look, L.D.O.B.O. I gotta do it, right? You know, like, John, we have a go picture over here. He's like, yeah, I've been L.D.O.B.O. though. Poor L.D.O.B.O. John Carpenter like, ah, been LDO blow though. Poor LDO blow, John Carpenter says. But so they called up Walter Hill and then whatever Carpenter comes back.

Right. But yeah, Toby Hooper is the guy they have for a while and they don't like his big concept for the movie. They big whatever, universal sourd on it. Hooper and Carpenter were in similar spots in their careers for a while and Hooper never figured out how to sort of replicate the Texas chainsaw magic outside of Poltergeist which of course has its own thing from another world style Did he really direct this kind of mystery behind it?

But this is what I found Hooper's version would have been drastically different from the Carpenter version featuring an alien that did not shape shift or assimilate, and following an A-hab-like character named the Captain, who goes on an epic quest to find and kill the thing. The film would have served its own film, it served as its own film, and it also as both a remake and a sequel to the 1951 film, with little influence from the novella, which Huber openly found to be boring. Huber also wanted the film to be a horror comedy with slapstick humor it was pitched as

a swashbuckling action adventure epic a modern day moby dick set not in the ocean but at the bottom of the world and article it sounds like a good movie i think it sounds like a lot of fun he pitched it to them they said we avoided a. It would have been one of the worst movies ever made. I don't know. Maybe it would have been good. I think that sounds fun. I wish that existed. I'd like to see that type of movie. It feels like the kind of thing if like Guillermo del Toro told you he was making that you'd be like, hell yeah. Come on. Yeah. I want to see that. It sounds fun. Absolutely. Absolutely. But it's weird that this was such a high priority project for Universal. I mean, I guess this film was popular and well liked is a movie that I'm sure just kind of replayed on Saturday afternoon movies for decades and built up a following in that way.

But it does feel like they were treating this like, well, we got to remake King Kong. We got to remix it. Right. You know, it's also just that Hollywood thing where I think they had like wrangled the rights away from some like Wall Street people who'd bought them. Right. Because it was an okay, oh movie. Exactly. And so, you know, and then it's like, okay, we got to fucking do it, right? Like we were so, and you get carpenter attached and this, and this is the hottest he'll ever be, right?

Right around now. This is the most, it's just seemed so obvious that this one was like, okay, this guy's about to make the jump. This is a guy whose name is in front of movies already. He made Halloween, which is like, reinvented Hollywood, basically. Like of course, we should make the thing with john carpenter

he's essentially had three hits in a row plus he had shepherded hollowing two which was also successful so it's like look this guy birthed the franchise now they're selling movies on his name he made a new leading man and Kurt Russell like yeah it was obvious do you want to read this quote, David? Which one? I saw you because we both look at the Google Doc and I can see when you're highlighting something. I do like to highlight shit. I mean, it is interesting what he's like, obviously, right, this is just, you know, he was afraid to be lost in the giant factory is the quote, but I do, I like the Matt painting quote. Oh, sure, really?

Yeah, which is, because at first he's like, yeah, you know, he said he had freedom, but he was worried the universal would like swoop in at some point and fuck him over. But which is exactly what happens on the 2011 movie is like, they give this, like Norwegian director a lot of freedom and then they made him reshoot the ending and the beginning and CGI

it over all the practical effects and changed everything and the guy retired from movies for 10 years. But I like what he says here, where there's a lot of pluses to working here. I'm 50 feet away from Albert Whitlock's office. He's the all-time great Matt artist and I can just wheel over there and be like, all right, I'll come do this for you. That's the sort of magic of this movie is he finally can ask for something in the answer is yes, right like right after before it's sort of like Okay, how do I you know take this dollar and stretch it as far as I can you I mean you talked a lot in an earlier episode

About how he just wrote the scores for his movies because you know,, it was his cost saving measure. And like, this movie has a score by Ennio Marquone. It's like a brilliant, beautiful score, but like, he finally had the money to hire a composer. And like, uh, who turned in a very carpenter-esque score, if I do say yes. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, carpenter demanded it. He was like less notes. It was his big thing. He was like, make it like me, right? Like very synthy. Very. But I also read that like more Kona kind of studied his earlier scores. I mean, maybe it was at Carpenter's behest,

but he was trying to make something of a piece. Carpenter also just said in interview. I mean, yeah, because he was like, I think that he wanted them to hire Jerry Goldsmith, Goldsmith Pass and then they went to more Kona, which is like, nice work if you can get it. But I guess we'll hire this moron. Well, it's only for fucking more time.

But Carpenter, someone asked him some interview, like, why didn't you do the score for this? And he was like, they never asked me to, and I never asked to do it. Like it just truly was never a discussion. I was excited that I finally have the ability to hire someone better than me. And his phone.

And his incredible is he is. In every movie we've covered so far when it comes to the score, it's not like John Carpenter was like, I had this huge concept for it. He obviously is a guy who never gives himself enough credit. His scores are wonderful. But he's always like, well, I'm the cheapest guy. You can do it right.

So I went over there and I fiddled with a synth for an hour and out came the Escape from New York score. And that's how it right. So I went over there and I fiddled with the synth for an hour and out came the escape from New York score And that's how it worked. You know, he's always undercutting it. Uh, I do love this quote This is from this is a recent quote from carpenter. He's fabulous. He's just a genius. He didn't speak English I didn't speak Italian, but we spoke the language of music pause. Oh God, that's awful Pause. Oh God, that's awful. He's like, ah, he's such a corn ball now. But Carpenter showed Maracone the movie, but then didn't really talk to him about it afterwards.

And Maracone was like, I don't really know what this guy wanted. So I just kind of sent him a bunch of stuff. And Carpenter picked like the stuff he wanted. He actually even filled in some gaps musically Carpenter himself, scored a little thing, just to sort of string it together. And Maraconi says, one of the things he sent Carpenter became the hateful eight theme.

Or whatever it is, it's just like, he's like, he had rattling around. There was such an excess of music created for this movie. Also, do you know that this film was written by Bill Lancaster? Yes, of course. The bad news bear's guy. Exactly. He was the son of Bert Lancaster, the grandson of Ernie Kovacs, and he wrote only three movies

in his career. Well, because he died. And they were the bad, but he doesn't die until 1997. I know. He did die young, though. Yeah, yeah, you're right. He wrote bad the bad, but he doesn't die until 1997. I know. He did die young, though. But yeah, yeah, you're right. He wrote bad news bears. Bad news bears go to Japan.

The best of his three screenplays. Yes. And the thing. And the thing. Yeah. And he was going to make fire starter with John Carpenter. Right. And they both got fired with this box.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. I adore John Carpenter. I think he's he's a genius. And I think he made, you know, like 12 straight, great movies. I think memoirs of an invisible man as the first movie where I'm like, eh, maybe not. That's a good call, right. He's pretty much full of proof until then, right? But yeah, like, the thing is, I think, my favorite of his films,

I think it's his best of his films, I think it is just an out-and-out masterpiece. And I think a lot of that is he was not doing a lot of the jobs. He was doing on these other movies. His attention was not as split, but he's a master storyteller, so he knows when the screenplay needs less. He knows what to do in post, he can trust the people he's working with and also trust his own instincts. So you see a lot of the stuff that's in his early films.

Like he does a lot of just like when they're searching for the thing at the end, Gary's just going around like setting up a detonators and you're like just watching this happen. And it's the actor doing all of that practical business. But like Carpenter is just focused on maintaining the tension, maintaining the pacing, maintaining everything about it. And like I think I'm not going to say he's a bad screenwriter But like Carpenter is just focused on maintaining the tension, maintaining the pacing, maintaining everything about it. And like, I think, I'm not going to say he's a bad screenwriter because he's a great screenwriter. He's a great composer, but I love that he got to just focus on making this thing as tight

and as taught as possible because it's, there's not a bad scene in it. No, that's a really good point. Is this might be the only time he actually trusted this much and trusted this much of his movie to collaborators because so many of the interviews we read about why he chose to write the thing himself or do the score. What? Yada, yada, yada. He's like, I don't know.

I'm cheap and I don't trust anyone else. I don't want anyone else to fuck it up. And this feels like the time he got like high level collaborators. He trusted them. He worked with them, which of course isn't to say that he wasn't very involved in the screenplay, as we said, very involved in the sport. No, but you know, it's pretty interesting because Lancaster is kind of like,

wait, why are you hiring me? Like, I'm the bad dude, like, you think I got, like, he was like, I had a take. I know why he hired, like, he liked my take, but at the same time, I was sort of amazed he was entrusting me because I've never written a sci-fi movie. I've never, basically, never written any part. I forgot his pairs, yeah.

I forgot his pairs. I think his pairs go to print. This is the movie where he's not having to stretch himself thin, and he's a guy who's incredibly good at wearing multiple hats on one set at the same time. But when he's doing very short, low budget shoots where he has to occupy eight jobs or whatever, it's kind of astounding that all the earlier films turn out as good as they do. But then this one, you feel him having the space and I think that really comes to the forefront

and William just the focus of the thing. This movie just feels so lean and focused in every way. It doesn't have a good scene. It's all great scenes. It's not even just no bad scenes. Every scene, I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? I like this. Even the boring, connecting scenes.

Go on, go on. I remember getting, I remember we're watching and watching and watching this movie and I was like, this is another good scene. There's another good scene. And then you get to like the defibrillator, which is the most famous scene in the movie probably. And I was like, oh fuck, we haven't done the defibrillator yet.

And I knew the blood test was coming. And I just was like, this is, there's not an ounce of fat on this movie. No, there isn't. And I mean, I was reading about how Russell worked with Carpenter, developed this whole backstory from a treaty and his past as a vet and how he was part of this sort of like atrocity, this mission gone wrong. And that's why he has PTSD and he can't sleep and he's an alcoholic. And then Carpenter was like, yeah, cool, all of this is good, I'm not gonna put any of it

into the script. And there's something about the fact that like this movie does not waste its time with like the third act scene where the guy has the fourth glass and says like, you know, I never forget that day, you know? Like I don't dislike obviously the, the JAWS Robert Shaw monologue, right? Like Quince monologue about the Indianapolis is incredible.

But there's something even more incredible about watching a movie like this where all of it is just kind of inferred and the guys never open up and they never really have those bonding scenes. I think there's this thing Carpenter fundamentally understands which is the more unreal, the villain, and a horror movie, the less the character,

the less the humans can feel real. When you're doing a movie about killer shark, we all know sharks exist, and they might eat us anytime. They could be coming for us right now. So you have to have people who feel like people. But the thing is probably, I mean, unless they built a real thing, is probably not here.

And therefore, we need the people to feel a little bit stripped down and a little bit unreal. And I think Carpenter's really good at walking that line in every one of his movies. Yeah, in terms of how they're written and also all the performances, it's like they're just kind of behavioral. They just sort of exist.

You know, you don't have, there's even a lack of like comedic games to each crew member where I feel like you watch any movie like this and it's like, well that guy's got this bit. There's this thing that differentiates him from the other guys in the group. And it's like, no, all that's really differentiating them

is the different actors, you know? Which is why life is energy. I do too. Obviously, you know, we all love Wilford Brimley. We all have like Donald Moffat, like keep David a court. You know, there are a few actors where you're like, okay, well, I know that guy. I have seen him in one million things. And then there's the other guys and I like, right, they just sound like one of them has

fingerless gloves and a graphic tea. Okay, right, go ahead, go ahead. Couple of them do like to smoke the weed. And I do that we should shout that out. The wacky tobacco. Ben, you're just like like, he's got like a big ass like freaking cone, man. That one's seen, baby.

Ben is going full like very jean on this episode. Oh my god. At first I watched the thing, I was to big bong rips. I love it. Have you ever heard of the... The Lover Heres, what? Like, one of the characters they cut it out of the movie,

he gives a tour of his like weed, like grove like situation. So this has got a rich weed history as well. We should also just mention that Ben's a positioning in relation to his virtual background, makes it look like the dog is about to eat him. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's an out-of-the-zone Ben's head's position directly inside his jaw. Ben, what do you think that deleted scene? It's like the thing is in the weed garden and then they have to set it on fire.

And then they're all like, oh shit, Ben. And they're all like, whoa, feeling kind of weird right now. Like, do you think that's how the scene goes? The thing starts doing the cabbage patch. Well, I think what happens is a guy's smoking it and then he passes it to his other head. Oh, shit. Right, wait, dude, you look like me. What's going on? Oh, damn, dude.

The studio's like, what the fuck is this? Sorry. You do have roller skating chef, and you have guy who hates Stevie Wonder. There are these little moments where you're like, little moments. There's little, these little okay-cupid profile snippets of like, I like to roller skate while I cook. Yeah, sounds good. I do like to roller skate when I cook.

There's also something, you already said it, David, but like he refrigerated the whole set. The set was like 40 to 50 degrees the entire time that they were filming indoors. There's obviously a lot of exterior stuff for this, which I believe they all shot first, which was actually freezing cold. Right. Well, that's where they're up in British Columbia, like on the Alaska border for that stuff. All the way up there. They also go to Antarctica too, like legit went and shot there for a week. No, that would be insane. That would be good. No, that's what I read about it. But I mean, yeah. In this book I got called the Saul on the System by Troy Howard. I know that, but no, they went all the way up north,

like way, way up north. And we're talking, it's chilly up there. And that's why he hired Kurt Russell because he was like, I need an actor. It's not gonna whine and moan about this bitch of a shoot we've got coming up. But that's it, that's all I'm aware of. I just, I want to interject the Kurt Russell so fucking hot in this movie.

Oh, God. So good looking. Well, he grew all his hair and the beer too. For a year. For a year. For a year. He didn't cut anything for a year. He's, I was ranting at Forky about how hot he is and she was like, he's alright. She was like on board, but it's her boy.

She was like, her kids chill out. To board. Yeah. And he got a Popeye village and divorced her, David. Do you think, wait, just like, Bluto, do your divorce? Like, yeah. Oh my God. I got married.

Um, and it's like, I think we sort of talked about it a little got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it.

I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it.

I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. Let's see. The eyes, we're going to spend 10 minutes on the eyes. We'll circle back to that. He's got to, but then it's just that sort of like, sense of humor but without ever feeling cutesy, right?

Like that's sort of like, come on. You know, that's sort of like, like kind of Harrison 40, but a little more, sort of, I don't know how to put it, like a little salty or, you know, or maybe a little less mean than, I don't know how to put it, like a little saltier or, you know, or maybe a little less mean than Harrison Ford in a way. A little more sad and broken maybe. Yeah. Right. There's always a little twinkle in his eye and he can turn that up or turn that back.

Emily, I said we're going to circle back to the eye, but I just want to say it is fascinating to think about this performance with big trouble and escape book ending it because both of those are like satirical performances. Yeah, like they're like tongue-in-cheek Big trouble obviously even more of a comedy, but he's sort of like parodying action stars and then this he's doing like the most stripped down action star imaginable, you know, it's like he's sort of taking away all the superficial trappings of it and is just playing this man as just like,

I don't know. That these, as just nerves. Yeah. Wait, I want, there was something, is it in the dossier? Of course, we're always referring to our dossier. The dossier. The dossier.

That's what we call it. Now, that's what the Discord fans apparently dubbed it the dossier and I course, we're always referring to our dossier. A dossier. A dossier. That's what we call it. Now, that's what we, the, the discord fans apparently dubbed it the dossier. And I think about that a lot. But, um, I, it was how Bill Lancaster, yes, okay, this is, I think this is how we could be a, uh, Bill Lancaster writes the character 35 period helicopter pilot, period, likes chess, period, hates the cold period, the pay is good, period. And like that's such good fucking screenplay shit, right? That's all you need, baby. Curious to take one look at that and he's like, I get it.

Yeah, I know it. You know, this movie is masterful. It's all you need shit. And just because I failed to complete this thread, but in that fear on film thing, when they're asking Carpenter about his approach to remaking the thing, he was like, but in that fear on film thing, when they're asking Carpenter about his approach to remaking the thing, he was like, I love that movie. I thought remaking it was kind of stupid, you're not going to top it.

So then I looked at it and I looked at the original story and the movie doesn't retain a lot of stuff from the story. So I thought, well, that's my thing. I'll just do the original story. And the crux of that, of course, is that story is coming out of a Cold War paranoia. It's all about this sort of shape shifting, creature that can take your identity. They had cut that out of the budget. He now can maybe revolutionize special effects

forever by executing it for the first time. Right. That's his whole thing. It's like, I'm not trying to keep you with the Hawks movie I'm doing the thing that Hawks couldn't do But as you say there's and then there's this script and people are reading it being like well, but wait How are you gonna do this right and this is a positive pulls it off with a budget that's far bigger than he's ever had before but not you know

Backbreakingly crazy. He saved them money. There's some quote, like, right, he saved them a million dollars. The producer said, John saved us a million dollars. He's not interested in trappings, trappings, fancy offices, limousines, or fancy clothes. Apparently John Carpenter does not demand fancy clothes. But, you know, like, so his sort of, you know, economical, like, you know, like so his sort of, you know, economical, like, you know, background, right?

Like helps them probably to vote as much as they can to the special effects, which is like all you need. And then also they hire a bunch of nobody's. I mean, no offense to the cat, but like, you know, they hire a bunch of pretty unknown guys. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think they, they, Russell was a bigger star than they thought

they were gonna get for that part. They had sort of like, there was a peer where they were like, what a fucking Clint Eastwood is in the thing? Like they went through all those like blue sky names, but then they got in the idea of like, we can just make this cheap and put all the money into the creature. And then Russell was slightly bigger,

and as a name, then they thought they were gonna get. Do you know how old Robboen was when they made this film? I don't. You're going to have a film. 22. Correct. Correct. 22. 22. I was fucking, you know, pooping at diapers when I was 22. I wasn't doing groundbreaking special effects. He is born in 1959.

I believe he is 23 by the time the movie came out, but 22 during production. And he had already been working since 1976. I believe his story is that he like, in the way that Rick Baker was like obsessed with Dick Smith and like followed him or wrote him a letter or something and said like, can I come to your garage and work with you? Rob Boateen showed up on his doorstep when he was like 15 and was like, your Rick Baker,

can I live in your garage and work with you? So he starts on the King Kong movie that was sort of Rick Baker's first big, big solo job, the De La Rente's King Kong. But then he works on fucking doing cantina masks for Star Wars. Incredible melting man, the fury, piranha, mistress of the apes, the fog, maniac, airplane, Tanya's island. He does all of that between 76 and 1980, right?

Rick Baker getting him in the industry. Then the howling, he is the special makeup effects creator. That's like his big solo job. He's 20. He's really cool wear wolf transformation in the howling. Right. Very similar timing to American wear wolf, obviously. They're the same time.

And I believe Rick Baker was supposed to do the howling, gets offered American wear wolf, quits American wear wolf, recommends bo team, and that's what makes Boateen sort of his own man. And so this is his follow up to the Howling, which was a big calling card movie, but was also overshadowed by the other Werewolf movie. But you also, you love him because he did Robocop, Griff, he did a total recall. I mean, he's got a great career after this too. So go ahead. He is astonishing that this movie was not only has three awards and nominations. It was nominated

for best horror film and best visual effects at the Saturn awards and nominated for worst musical score at the Razzies. And like the real real effects that the Razzies used to do a worst score. This is the effects, not getting an Oscar nomination. I looked up the nominations. They're pretty good, but like I would put this over, I would put this over Poltergeist, which got nominated. Oh, absolutely. Yes.

Yeah, it's not even, I mean, I'm looking it up now. I put it on Blade Runner, Blade Runner ET perfectly great nominees, like those, you know, for sure. Yeah, put the thing in with those two, yeah. Yeah. We're the only three nominees that year. The you know, yeah, put the thing in with those two. Yeah. Yeah. We're the only three nominees that are. The only three. Yeah. Okay.

And back then, three was the max. Yeah. But you're right, Emily, like the way this was talked about for a while of just like, well, you have to acknowledge how good the makeup is, but the movie is fucking diarrhea otherwise. It's like how I as a child would see fucking heart beeps in like movie makeup books And I'd be like this thing looks incredible Andy Kaufman's a robot It was not made for an Oscar

How have I never heard of this thing and then you watch it? You're like I understand exactly why no one ever talks about this this thing is Unwatchable but the makeup's incredible anything you need to know about this movie you can get from looking It's still images and then like the fact that there's like a decade plus of writing about the thing in that tone of just like, well, we have to acknowledge Rob Boateen broke some boundaries with this movie, but don't fucking watch it.

Yeah, but I feel like the cult was already starting to form in like the mid 80s. Like I said, Stephen, I'm just, I'm just also seeing there was a makeup category with two nominees that year and the thing right now. Right now because the first the first year of makeup is the year before this. America where we'll wins the first makeup award against heartbeeps. Yeah, and then this year it's Gandhi and Quest for Fire. I'm not gonna fuck on. this year it's Gandhi and quest for fire. I'm gonna cut the fuck on.

Griff, don't come for quest for fire. You don't know, maybe it's good. You don't know. No, it is good. It is good. But, but. Don't try. Right. Did John Jack and no director, he did, he did. Yeah, I know this. I've seen this, I know from Quest for Fire.

It's got good makeup. Come the fuck on. Yeah, I do, the question is right, when does the public come around on the thing? I'm not sure or what not the public, but like, yeah, when does the reputation flip on the thing? It is definitely one of those movies that became much bigger on home video, was saved by home video.

And again, it's because when you take this movie home, there's like an intimacy to it that really works there. Yes, it is. Look, I would love to see this movie in a theater. I've always been meaning to, and every time it gets screened in New York, I've had to miss it for one reason or another. I would love to see this film on a big screen with a silent audience and all of that. But there is something about watching this movie alone in your home at night in a dark

room that really kind of spooks you. I am so fucking mad about this. The night before LA started its COVID lockdown, the thing was screening at the theater right next to me. And I was like, I should go see it. And I was like, no, I'll die. Which is like the, I think kind of the ideal way to see the thing in the theater, but I think it'll go.

It's how I feel about not seeing blood shot and on the big screen while I had the chance and I fucked that up too I was when there's a repertoire is screening a blood shot. Oh the Metrographs gonna open back up with blood shot We all know that David what if we emailed the Metrograph and went we would really like to host a screening of blood shot that was our move That's okay No, I mean Emily early. I think off, you said it's a good Christmas movie. It is. It's a great Christmas movie.

It is. It is. Um, even though it came out in the summer, I watch it in Halloween for the scares and I watch it in December just because it got great, great vibe, great winter vibe. Like, do you think part of the mistake actually was releasing this movie in the summer as much as I'm sure they figured it was gonna be a blockbuster or whatever But like this is a god damn. This is a god damn Thanksgiving weekend. Yeah, this is a I am sick of my family And I'm sick of being inside and I'm gonna watch a movie about those two things

Yeah, yeah, cuz I just I mean I remember Empire magazine had some big article of the thing and was trying to paint the picture. Imagine you're at a shitty multiplex. You're seeing ET and you can hear the thing bleeding through the wall. You can just hear screams coming through and you're like, what is that over there? I'm trying to enjoy my Reese's Pieces eating alien over here. That's how I always thought of the thing. It's just this nasty little side thing going on next door that was just everyone was walking out, like, barfing. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to imagine what this movie felt like

to the average cinema goer. With no like whatever, warning, right? Cause like the trailer doesn't really spoil the creature effects at all, I think, right? Like it's not like it's trying to sort of be end-coil about it. The poster famously was like done in like three hours overnight with

Drew Struz in knowing nothing about the movie. Right, with this very vague, it's a good tag line, but with the ultimate and alien terror. And yeah, yeah, is could, could like, you could say that about a lot of things, right? But the poster is also like a guy in a parka in the snow and like light is exploding out of his hood. It's true. It's not really a descriptive, it's a good poster. He didn't know he'd read the script.

No one told me. He was given like no material. They were like, yeah, this feels like a poster you draw after you're like told you were given a basic summary of the opening credits of the movie and then like maybe and then there's snow like that's right. All you know. And it's a good image. It's become iconic in its own right,

but I think if you are expecting that, and then you get like a fucking spider head and shit. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot the trailer does have, man is the warmest place to hide, which is a way better tagline. Way better. Way better, that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, is the warmest place to hide, which is a way better tagline. Way better? That's great.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it does have a little bit of the creature effects, but it's definitely... I think, go ahead. I think 1982 had this thing, especially in the, like, film geek circles. Yeah, it had this thing. I think 1982 there was this concept that attached itself to the summer of 1982, especially

when the film geek websites took over of like, that was the best summer for movies ever. And I think that the thing, the movies specifically, benefited from that and sort of drafted off of that. And then people actually started to watch it again and were like, this is, yeah, this is pretty fucking great. But that's an interesting take. Yeah, because that is such a sort of legendary genre blockbuster summer that the thing might have gotten re-evaluated and re-appreciated faster than it otherwise would have, because people were sort of think piecing it into this movement.

And Blade Runner's right there already going through the same arc. So you're like, okay, you're open to it already. Because like ET, Polter Guy, Star Trek 2, Cone in the Barbarian, Rocky 3, those are the ones that are totally succeeding. Right? Yeah, pretty much. And then you have like Tron, you have the thing, you have the road warrior, you have these ones that are sort of at a cult level or underperforming or sort of like grow later.

And then Fast Times arrangement high as well. That is a wild summer. Yeah, it's a good summer. So the original story and the original film open with a more conventional like, you're seeing the thing crashing, you're seeing people discovering the ship, they're taking it in like all this sort of shit. And that was Lancaster's first move, it's just like, let's just start it in the middle. Yeah.

Let's like totally disorient you. They wanted to do some crazy thing with like the spaceship crashing into the universal logo for the opening of the movie. And then that didn't get approved for some reason, so he said like, then no universal logo, which is a really jarring thing. I think this was only like the second or third time

universal that ever done that, where the movie just starts with a universal picture. You don't see the globe. Then you have, these opening credits that are kind of classic, carpenter, just sort of like black, white, taxed, creeping dread, but it's like an all-star open in credits, except they only name one actor,

because they're just throwing down their fucking weight of all the people who worked on this movie, where it's like a universal picture, a John Carpenter film shot by Dean Kandy, special effects by Rob Boat, and they're just like boom, boom, boom, starring Kurt Russell, and then you have your title revealed the thing,

which is exactly the same as the title reveal in the original movie, and they replicated the exact same process. Do you know what it is, David? I don't, but is it like them cutting holes in a, you know, sheet or something? Like what is it? Something that simple? So they have like a, whatever it's called, like a loose site, like transparent thing of the title, right? The text in that weird handwriting, the thing. They put that on one side inside of a fish tank. Then they cover the fish tank with a garbage bag. I love this.

And they fill it up. Is that how it works? I think they fill it up, but here's the better thing. You're not, there's a step here. You're not gonna put it, right? I think they put some light behind it. So the light will shine through and the letters will glow, right? They have the camera on the other side and then they light the garbage bag on fire and start filming and

The way that the letter slowly up here is a garbage bag melting away Because it's flickering that actually makes sense when you watch the right that that's really funny But that's what they did for the original film. And then from another world comes in underneath. And Carpenter was like, we're gonna do the exact same thing and we're gonna do it the same way. How is that not the way you reveal the title of every movie? That they should just be the only way. You should always let a garbage bag on fire

and then reveal my best friend's wedding. It's so good, but it's like, it is so creepy the way it happens, and it speaks to just some kind of odd effect that you could never really, I think, intentionally design. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know, we were talking about this a lot

in the Halloween episode of just like the weird magic of that mask in that movie, which they have now spent eight or nine sequels trying to replicate, and it's never worked as well as the time they just bought a thing and spray paint it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just watched the opening credits for the remake and they stink. They're bad.

They're bad and lame. I saw the prequel one time in theaters and didn't hate it. I don't remember a thing about it. So how is that, Griff, having watched it today? Having watched it today, I think it's fine. I think it's fine, but I'm also saying that with a decade distance from hearing from everyone that it sucks.

You know, so I think there was a little bit of hope as opposed to a lot of the other horror remakes and like 20 years later sequels that were happening around that time and the decade leading up to it. I think there was a lot of hope of like, oh, this one might actually be good. They got Joel Edgerton, Mary Elizabeth Winston and those are both good actors. They got this cool sort of like commercial stylist dude. They're doing a prequel.

It feels respectful to the original. This is this interesting sort of story point to fill in. And then it's disappointing in relation to the thing, which is such like an unsparing masterpiece. Universal did kind of muck it up in the way the carpenter was worried they would fuck up his original film. I think like if you watch it, it's clearly compromised. We talked about this in our fall episode. You can watch the YouTube cuts of all of Studio ADI's tests for the practical

effects and they're amazing. And then Universal freaked out and CGI'd all of them over. And also did not have was unwilling to commit to the bleakness of how the film was supposed to end. And so it feels compromised in that way, but it's like better than a lot of horror movies of that moment. Sure. Oh, I think one thing they got right

that at the time they were kind of derided for is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the female Kurt Russell. Like I feel like that has borne out. So. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's also just, I mean, you know, stuff that's like completely predictable, but if you're watching it now,

it's hard to get pissed off over because you just know that this is what they did. But like, it's got a lot of jump scares. It's got too much score that is too aggressive, you know? It's got too much panic. Like, a thing that really hit me watching the original, the carpenter, I have to make a very clear, the distinction between the remake,

which is actually a prequel, the original, and then the remake, which is the carpenter. But watching the carpenter last night, I think that really hit me as like, is this the only horror movie I've ever seen where no one screams? Yeah, I mean, apart from the line you did to open the, which is yelling, not even screaming.

But yeah, yeah, exactly. And everyone's very... Well, for Bremley does smash a bunch of stuff with an axe and he's kind of screaming. He does that in every movie. The characters have freakouts. Right, and there's the Seamer Kurt Russell has the flame thrower and he's freaking out

and trying to get them to release him and all that sort of shit. But like, this is a movie that does not, like, and I know a lot of it is like, well, it's a bunch of fucking emotionally closed off men in the cold and they're dead inside and all of that. But even like alien, you think about the way that everyone reacts to the chess buster. Versus this, where most of the creature reveals played a stunned silence.

People are just kind of like terrified, but motionless and wordless, you know? Absolutely. But motionless and wordless, you know? Absolutely, I mean. There's an awe and irreverence for the creature that is very interesting, both on the part of the movie end of the characters. Also, they can't run anywhere. They can't run anywhere. Yeah, that's part of it.

There's stuck. Yeah, and I like the guy going for the dog, like trying to save the, you know what I mean? Where they have the weird little human stuff, where it's like, I get why, like they would just have these kind of instinctual reactions that don't make sense, like, because you're seeing something that doesn't make any sense.

It's beyond, even the alien, like the alien in alien obviously is crazy looking, but it is vaguely humanoid. Yeah. And it's coming for you, so that's scary. You know, like this thing, it's like, I don't even know what to focus on, right? Like, you're looking at all this.

Yes, right. And it's always gonna look different, and it's gonna change, and it's all of that shit. That was Carpenter's like single biggest sort of mantra with this movie is like, is it possible to make a horror movie without a man in a suit? You know, that was his whole thing. Like, not only are we gonna use modern special effects

and makeup and all of that, but we're gonna free that from it needing to be grafted onto a humanoid form. Because he's like, I loved alien, but it kind of bums me out that he's got like two arms and two legs and walks up right. Like that was my one complaint about alien and I want to see if we can make it more abstract and harder to pin down and all of that.

I tend to not be one of those people who's like, oh CGI is bad, you know, like there's good CGI, there's bad CGI, but I think there are certain topics that are better covered practically. And I think this is one of those things where you want to see the like organic gristle of what's happening and like doing that CGI inevitably strips that away just a little bit because your eyes always going to know it isn't real. And here like, I know it isn't real, but also it might be, you know, it's that feeling of like they might have actually created something in a lab somewhere. Well, and we've already talked about they did

and classic Hollywood's come. But I carpenter in that fear on film thing is talking with land is about like they've both now done these movies where sometimes you only get one shot done per day. And in these big creature sequences, there is that feeling of just like, God, the amount of shit they had to set up for that one shot,

which is one shot in a three minute sequence. And like, in many of these sequences is building a different prop for every shot. You know, it has to look a different way, it has to function a different way. It's like each shot is one gag and a build just for that gag. And then things like famously in the defibrillator scene when his arms fall in and then he rips them off, they hired a double amputee for that one shot. So it's really a guy without arms. And then the special effect

is that he's wearing a mask to look more like the actor. But as Carbiter says, no one looks at the mask because they're looking at the arms and the arms are real and no one can get past how we've hidden the arms. I, I, that I, that sequence is just so damn audacious. I think I, I, I'm with Emily that it's like annoying to bag on, you know, to make CG, the sort of easy villain, right? Like, because that's sort of what so much discourse about modern movies has become where it's like, oh, it's because of the CG, but like, it's just that thing of, like, when you, where you can see the limitation and how hard everything is being pushed,

it does just, it hits different. I mean, it's basic, maybe, but yeah. What's frustrating about the 2011 movie is like, I think their intent was to do something like what Geralt Doutoro often does, especially with his lower budget movies, where it's like, you put a guy in a suit and you CGI really, really wisely and sparingly

to make it more inhuman. And to remove rods and to remove like the excess parts of it and whatever. And then Universal just went overboard and kept on wanting to tinker it more and more and more to the point where they fully painted over everything. Right, Crimson Peak is the one where people were like, I just hated those CG monsters and they're not CG monsters.

Right. Right. But there's been enough, I don't know, yeah enough tweaking done that it becomes sort of difficult to distinguish. Yeah. I just think he tends to strike the right balance on his lower budget movies where it's like you put Doug Jones in a thing and you film that with a camera and you use CGI to like slim it out and carve things out and remove wires and rods and shit like

that but there is something to the visor of this movie I mean like I apparently with Corrust will walk on set and be worried about the thing looking cheesy Carpenter would just go like, just wait until we put the goo on it. You know, and there's the amount of fucking slime in this movie. There's a lot of goo. I mean, oh man, yeah. This is like an incredible slime.

The color too, the color is so underrated. It's like somehow grosser, and I feel like the remake from what I've seen of it, it's more human, it's more blood and gutsy, right? It's more reds and purples and blues. And it's wild when the guys just fucking green. It's like weird green entrails are like spurting everywhere. The only thing I could think of to compare it to is placenta. Like that, that is the feel of it. It's like something doing board. The only thing I could think of to compare it to is placenta.

That is the feel of it. I was thinking, it looks like tumors to me. When you've seen footage of tumors being removed. Right, where it's like this is not human essentially. This is something that grew that wasn't part of the bottom. Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. What can I say?

I've been on the record. I like snowcrime. Man. Do I love cold slime? Wow What no bet no David yes, David yes, you can't just ignore the fact right we get room temperature slime Yeah, we get hot slime cold slime though. Yep David. They cannot just ignore that room temperature slime. The word yeah. You know, snowcrime and cold slime is a great title for something.

I just want you to know that. Have that ready. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Yeah. Like double dare, you just know that set, that game show set was room temperature. Oh, first share. Yeah.

Ooh, I'm just, I just, do you got, do you guys ever just watch clips of the thing? Because I do a lot. Yeah, first. You know, like, let me, let me spend some time with the spider today, the spider head. I just want to see it. Yeah.

It's a bigotus for that. Yeah. Yeah. It's at the timeus for that. Yeah. It's at the time we're recording this, it's about to come out on 4K in a steel book. I've still not been able to pre-order because I keep on missing it. But I'm so excited to have that fucking disc because like, total recall is the other one that I put on and just watch certain sequences over and over again trying to figure them

out. And this one, it's just like any two shots you can just frame by frame it and just fucking live in it. Yeah, I mean, just I know we're jumping all around here, but like the order of like that defibrillator scene is, okay, chest opens up, eats his arms, arms rip off, right? Yep. Then like the monster comes out of the chest. Well, so the chest has turned into a big mouth that's hungry and has eaten his arms non-stop. Right.

Then it eats him, sorry. But then the head starts to just sort of stretch off the body. And you got a lot of green tendrils going and then the head finally pops off and grows legs and starts skittering around, but also coming out of the chest. I was gonna say it between. It's another crazy hat. Yes. And that head sort of like poking on the ceiling and going like, and meanwhile Kurt Russell

is sort of looking at it going like, which is my favorite part. Like Kurt Russell is like, oh my god, burn a fucking thing right now. He's just looking at it like Jesus. Like, which maybe that's the reaction you have, right? Where it's just sort of like your brain's like, you know what, let's disable all higher functions. It's very realistic. Yeah, yeah.

Everyone just goes into complete shock in this movie. And it's like, as you said Emily, there's a certain degree of awe for this thing, but there also is just the like, I can't process what is happening. And weirdly, that makes the horror more realistic than most films you've seen where people accept far too quickly. Oh, there is a burn man who hunts your dreams.

Yeah. And you're like, wow, I guess that's Freddie's deal, you know? There's the classic fight or flight reaction, but there's also, you know, the freeze or fawn, the four Fs. And like, this is a movie about people who freeze. Yeah. Freeze, and they don't know what to do, and then it's too late.

And Kurt Russell's the one who figures out what to do just quickly enough to set something on fire. And these guys are just like, I mean, you have all the early scenes where it's like, these guys barely talk to each other anymore. You know? Yes, they're all settled into their Antarctic, they're sort of in hibernation, right? Right. Because it's yes, they're right. They're all settled into their like Antarctic. They're sort of the inhybernation, right? Because it's like it's dark. And I love though, like again, like a

whatever, a fattier movie, whatever the opposite of a lean movie, it would have more scenes of power struggle, like of like, well, you can't be in charge. And instead, this kind of boils it down to like one scene and McRattie becoming the sort of, you know, like, like, there's the guy who's like, I can't do it. Right? Like, he's like, oh, you should be in charge. Well, I can't do it. It's just sort of obvious that Kurt Russell is going to be. We know Kurt Russell's the guy, who keys the movie star, but also he's just fucking like, like, wafting confidence like in the way the others are not ready. He's ready. He's ready. He's ready. Yeah. He ready. But like, I just like that there's not like a lot of

shoelether over like, well, should the helicopter. No, come on. Like, we get, you know, that's the, those, that's, that stuff is great. No, and that power struggle scene, like like really happens pretty deep into the movie. And unless I'm misremembering leads to that, no, no, no. into that defibrillator scene. Like you have that sort of standoff with him and the, with the flame thrower,

which then like he's sort of wrestling control. Oh, he's got the dynamite, yeah. Where he's like, he's all snowed up. What do we think of snowy Kurt, by the way, because he's also pretty cool. Oh my god. I want that guy up. This is the eye thing I want to say. We said that he's got very gentle tender, right, pretty eyes, right? And he is a very pretty man. We're saying, we're saying he is a twinkle dial somewhere on his body that he can turn up and down.

Yeah. But there's something to just his eyes being so goddamn icy blue, especially when he's just surrounded by brown hair, right? Like you have like this dark mane and this beard, there's so little flesh actually showing on his face. You're not really seeing his bone structure. So it's like this guy is just kind of like hidden. But then these eyes cut through in every single shot. And the colder he gets, the more covered in snow he is, the paler he is, the more hypothermic he is, the more his eyes pop. And like, it feels like he's turning down the twinkle, but it just innately gives him a level of humanity in any single scene, because like there's just, there's an intrinsic vulnerability to the delicacy of his eyes.

Right. There's the you know what what do we do when we try to figure out if somebody's trustworthy, the first place we look is their eyes. Right, you look in the eyes. Movie needs a fucking good eye actor at its center and like that that's so key to everything. I feel there's a lot of scenes where his eyes are kind of just lit slightly better within the scene just so we can see them. I think that that's a huge part of why this movie works. He's so pretty. He's so pretty. Oh, his goggles. His eyebrows. Yeah. His look, the fashion in this, but I just love when he pops those goggles off and they're like on a chain, you know, like on a strap. Yeah, well, you said chain first though. You like it because they're on a little chain. You like it because they're on a chain. I also, I mean, also the introduction of him playing chess

and then breaking the chess computer because it beats him by pouring bourbon and it's guts. And it's a it's Adrian Barbow. Yeah. Yeah. But I just like that where it's like, it's Adrian Barbos. Yeah, it's Adrian Barbos. Yeah. But I just like that. No one's fixing this chess computer. This guy hates to lose so much. The tech is so good. The scene where Wilford Bremley figures out life on Earth

is doomed with what appears to be like an Atari is great. Yeah, with the weird asteroids thing where it's like, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip. I love that. It's like he's playing Oregon Trail. Yeah. What program or like, you know what I mean? Like, what was the fucking algorithm to lead him to that?

I mean, I think. He coded it in basic. Yeah, things dot dots. Yeah, that makes sense. Brimley by the way, I know what this is like his fourth or fifth role or whatever, like I feel like the China syndrome is this big Breakout, and this is one of those movies where you're like, you know, actually he's 14 years old like you have no idea But like he's so good in this movie. I love everyone. Everyone's good I every and everyone's doing unsholy, and that's part of the magic.

I appreciate that. But I'd love just a whole movie of him in his cabin mumbling to himself. If we do a thing one and a half, a thing side equal, a rose and cranson-gildon-stern thing, where it's just like him grumbling, I just want to live in his grumbling. Well, there's the Wilford Brimley line thing, of course,

which is when cocoon reached theaters, Wilford Brimley was 50 years, nine months, and six days. And he's playing a grandpa. And everyone else in the movie is like 30 years older than him, and you don't question it. So like, there are, you know, the Brimley cocoon line is its own Twitter account devoted to telling you which celebrity just passed the the Brimley line any given

day, and it's always astounding. Martha Plimpton just passed the Brimley line. Uh, Tonya Harding. We left Martha Plimpton. Uh, yeah, it was a little sad Fred Durst recently. Is he's rebranding into whatever it is he's rebranding into. He sort of looks like the sheriff from Longmire now. But yeah, it was a little sad. Of course, when Brimley died, yes, and he wasn't even that old.

I mean, he was 85. It's not like he was a young man, but you want to read like, yeah, Wilford Brimley finally popped at the age of 112. And you're like, yeah, of course he did. He got 100 when he started in movies. I get it. When you see that like a month ago,

the lead singer of Baranacid ladies crossed the Brimley cocoon line. That doesn't, that doesn't really process. Jeff Mangum from Neutral Mill Cotel. My doesn't, that doesn't really process. Jeff Mangum from Neutral Mill Coatow. My point is, this movie is only three years before cocoon. So he's like 47 in this movie, and it is incredible the difference. He does not look young in this film, but this movie, his hair still has some color in it, and he doesn't have that big old push broom mustache. And when he shows up in cocoon three years later, you're like, this man is one hundred.

Someone please put him on life support. I think I read there was that they cast him because they were like, well, he's a great every man. People will forget about him because we have to have him off the board for a while. And I think one thing that you can't do now that they could do in 82 is you always remember Wilford. And I think one thing that you can't do now that they could do in 82 is you always remember Wilford, remember? You always remember.

Now we're like, where's Wilford? Where's Wilford? Where's Wilford? Bring him back, right? And see that back then, they're like, yeah, there's like six guys in this movie who look like him. There's no big deal if we take him out of the rotation for a bit.

But by the time I see this movie, I'm just like, how am I gonna take the Quaker Oats guy seriously in a horror? You know, it felt like it was overpowering. By the time I see this movie, I'm just like, how am I gonna take the Quaker Oats guy seriously in a horror, you know, it felt like it was overpowering. Well, they did cut out the scene where he uses the computer program to diagnose everyone with diabetes. I don't know.

I don't know. We just, we gotta do some brimley time. I mean, what's the next brimley we're gonna do, right? We're gonna, we're gonna do frickin' in and out anytime soon. We should've heard this good. We should've heard this good. Man, in and out. He is good enough.

He's always good. He's great in the firm. He really is always good. I mean, the last thing I remember seeing him in was, did you hear about the Morgan's? Right, right. Which I have to imagine was one of his last films and he was fucking good in that

and your brain shorts circuits when he shows up because it feels like Fucking Peter Cushing showing up in Rogue One where you're like, but how does he still look like this? He's a frozen member Right, he started at a certain age, but he didn't really advance. He just stayed right that would that was his genius Right, he looks exactly the same age and did hear about the Morgan's as he did in Kukku. Yeah. And then of course at the end of this movie

turns into a gigantic monster that tries to eat everybody. Yeah, I also feel like Brimley is usually so gruff and sort of like strap down and everything. It's nice to watch him have his fucking freakouts and his little timeout shed. Like, Brimley, Brimley going wild is fun.

Oh, it's fun. That was a very poor selling spin off of Girl's Gone Wild though. It was Brimley going wild. Like full of Brimley gags. I have to stop. It's mostly him morning people about diabetes. Right. Now you girls be careful. Don't eat too many sweet snacks.

Yeah. It is wild to watch it. Right. Cause it's like trying to cinch him since his first credited role. And then it's like absence of malice. The thing tender mercies. the thing tender mercies. Yeah, good and tender mercies. Great performance. The natural. Oh, he's so good in the natural. The natural is one of those funny ones where he's the grizzled old coach

and Robert Redford is the young player and they're like five years apart and age or whatever. Well, it's like when another guy who died more recently than you would think, but the grandpa monster, what was his name? Al Lewis. Who played grandpa? It was Al Lewis, yes. When Al Lewis died, I think his family realized that he was like 20 years younger than they

thought he was. And that Al Lewis faked his age in order to get hired as grandpa on the monsters. He was like 35 and he told him he was 55 and so when he died people were like, you're 98 and it turned out he was 78. Yeah, following his cremation, his ashes were reportedly placed in his favorite cigar box. Hey. Hey. Hey.

Perfect. Anyway, Al-Louis rules, he's not in the thing. Are we going to talk about the plot of a thing? Yeah. Here's the plot of the movie. A spaceship crashes, right? Then some of you determine it amount time later. Bunch of men, dead inside, burn out,

tired of each other on an Arctic base that is never defined. We never know what these guys are doing what they're there for, which I love. Yeah, they're from the US. We know they're from the US. We know they're from the US, but it doesn't matter. Because there's this Norwegian camp

that we are introduced to in a helicopter shooting at a dock. Yep. They crash near the American base. The one guy gets out accidentally sets himself and the helicopter on fire explodes it. The other guy won't stop shooting at the dog shoots at them. They take him out. Now they have this dog. What the fuck happened to those Norwegians? It's pretty good. It's pretty good setup. Yeah.

Yeah. When they go to the base to find out what happened there, the giant ice thing, they dug the thing out of appears to be a gold belly order that someone has placed and have come, like it literally looks like one of those insulated coolers, they send you frozen food in. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. That's a good, it's kind of like the same plot as alien, I would say approaches alien where it's like, little preview of all the freaky stuff that's gonna happen in a, but everything's static. Where they're seeing a bunch of horrifying things, but nothing's moving, and it's kind of just a little intro to the aesthetic of the monster.

Love that. We've been talking a lot about how that's seen with the dogs and the tentacles coming out of the dog. Like really just seems like a, but like that, that creation in the Norwegian base, the mutated man's or the two face. Cotton hat. That sets you up pretty well for what's coming. That is true. I think there's something about the dog's face peeling so rapidly.

Yes, I mean. Yeah. The way it pops rather than there's no warning. I rewound it three times. And I've seen this movie before, but I rewound it three times because I was like, I know the gory shots coming. And when that shot starts with like five solid seconds of an animatronic dog head before peels open.

It's not like they cut to it right before the peel. You're watching an animatronic dog head with for looking realistic and then suddenly peels open. You go, wait, that was the robot the whole time. Like this was the special effect shot. It blows my fucking mind. But yes, this dog goes ham. It does is it goes ham turns into a tentacle monster, starts fucking with the other dogs,

the other dogs are fighting their way out to escape. Right. And they eventually figure out that it can only be subdued with fire. And then they realize they got a thing on their hands. They got a br on their hands. They got a brimley so they wanted to figure it out. Which, like, God, the way he just sort of, it's, these guys are worth their weight and gold. If you can get, like, sort of a fucking crusty old character actor to, like,

deliver your mumbo jumbo exposition like they resent it. You know, and just feel like, I don't know what to tell you. It seems like an angling. That would be a great career. That would be a great career. It would just be the guy who comes in and says, ah, God, I don't want to be here, but, alien. David, you and I saw Shang-Chi this week,

and we were talking about how Tony Lung and that is like a fucking Vegas blackjack dealer every time I was here and some Marvel or metaphor and I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, it helps obviously he's seated in the scene you're talking about like sort of facing all them like a blackjack dealer, but it really is the absolute calmness with which he explains how there was another character called the Mandarin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tony Lung, maybe the best actor alive has handed this sort of like ham-fisted kind of like,

look, we kind of got a paper over a few choices that were made a decade ago. And he kind of like, you know, deliver this with like, you know, adequate sort of soulfulness and he's like, yeah, no problem. Right, let me think about my father and yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right, yeah. But maybe this whole thing's gonna to be about family and it's actually going to kind of move

you to tears. I put it into words as the black Jack dealer, but it's because you turned to me and you just did this motion with your hands. Like he's just like fucking like letting it just slide off. I think he was like exactly. He's just serving this up. And it's like, there's no shame or whatever. Right, like he doesn't seem embarrassed by the material. You're getting the same effect from Brimley here, which is so important. That like the guy who now kind of sets the temperature of the movie saying like, this is an alien

that can replicate other human beings, is able to do it with just the right level of like not playing the camp of it but not being embarrassed by it either, you know? Definitely. Yeah, it's a thing. And what the thing does is it looks exactly like you. If you give it long enough, basically. Yeah, in between, it doesn't look anything like you. If you give it long enough, basically. Yeah. In between, it doesn't look anything like you. In between, it looks like the worst fucking shit you've ever seen in your life. But given enough time, it'll look like you.

And it's magic. It's a magic premise. It's a premise, obviously. It's not like this movie invented it, but obviously, it's just like the pure simplicity of like, yeah, well, you could be the thing or I could be the thing now The classic debate here is do they know their things or don't they know their things and the answer of course is who cares? Yeah, yeah, but it's never really talked about because

Everyone behaves like they're supposed to until the moment they turn into a crazy monster, right? right haves like they're supposed to until the moment they turn it to a crazy monster. Right? Right. Yeah. Which the fact that it's unexplored makes it scarier because that's almost the most terrifying concept in the movie is what if I'm the thing and I don't realize it? It replicates you so perfectly that it replicates your mental state right before the thing takes over you.

It's kind of what it's, I mean, the ending is so perfect, but it's not just that they're like, well, maybe you still are the thing. It's like, maybe it's, I mean, the ending is so perfect, but it's not just that they're like, well, maybe you still are the thing. It's like, maybe I am, I don't know. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I think this movie is a trans text.

We got there, everybody. Okay. I'm going to do a couple, I'm going to do a couple readings on this and why I think it's a trans film. So there is this thing that, there is this thing that there is this thing. I resisted Griffith if you couldn't. I can't resist. I'm gonna take it every time. I'm gonna take a D I'm gonna take a D tour into Ari Asters masterpiece mid-Somar, which is a movie about a woman who goes on a trip with a bunch of men.

And like famously, they just kind of act like dudes around her. They're kind of act like they're hanging out with, you know, they're cracking open open a cold one with the boys to use a meme. That's 10 years. Because it's also they don't fucking want her there. They don't want her there. So they're obnoxiously behaving in the way they want to behave on their bro trip to mid-Samar. Yes, right. Baxiously behaving in the way they want to behave on their pro trip to mid-Sahman.

Yes, right. And I saw that movie shortly after it came out publicly and was just blown away by it. And was deeply moved by it. And I was like, why am I moved by this? And it is this thing of God damn it. It is this theme of before you come out to yourself, before, as we call it in the community, your egg hatches, you are frequently in spaces with other men. And you're just like, well, what you perceive to be other men because you think of yourself

as a man, and you're just like, what is happening? None of this makes any fucking sense. And we're all just kind of acting like it's absolutely fine. And I am learning the fine and I'm learning the customs, I'm learning them through, you know, osmosis. And I think that the thing captures that feeling of being trapped in a space where you're not entirely sure if you are human, if you are someone that exists in this world, or if you are like some sort of deadly shapeshifter who needs to go off and make their head go off and become a spider,

but I think there is a flip side of this, and this is the way I've always read this as a trans text, stemming from mid-Samar again as an example, which is there's this play called A Spine House of Men. It's written by a trans woman whose name I forget. And the concept of it is when you are among men, you hear how men talk about women. And sometimes that is, you know, just, I'm just blowing off steam about my god damn wife, you know. And you're like, oh, Sterla. Yes. know, just I'm just blowing off steam about my god damn wife, you know, when you are, when you are among men, and they perceive you as a man, they talk about women in an unfiltered

way. And when you figure out you are a woman, you also immediately figure out the ways that men have been talking about you all along. And it is fucking frightening because, yeah, some of us just blowing off steam and it's fine, but there's inevitably one guy who's just a little bit too angry, just a little bit too something and you're like, what the fuck is going on here? And when it's just, you know, the guys, you can kind of like laugh about it or whatever, but like when you realize what has been happening there, there's a really unsettling thing about that. I watched the first move, the first thing I reviewed after I came out to myself was, not publicly, after I came out to myself was the terror,

season one, great television show. Glad I get to be the first one to mention it here instead of Karen Han, my nemesis. But that is a movie about how win or a TV show about how when you have a group of men together in an isolated location, they're going to start murdering each other. And the thing is, the thing is also about that. And it just really captures this feeling of not being quite in and of this group.

This is a movie about outsiders within a group of men, both literally in terms of the monster of the movie, but also within the way the camera regards them. It's like, none of these people quite work. None of them quite make sense. They're all archetypes. They're all very strange and weird and flawed. And they're all kind of unknowable. I mean, the lack of backstory were given the lack of sort of big emotional sort of catharsis

scenes. Yeah. Something I always think about is that also whoever signs up for this job has something that is going on with them, which I think also, it's like they don't even lean into any of the backstory, but it's just, it's like inherent. You're like, it's implied. Yeah. You're not going to sign up for this.

It's true. Like, yeah, sure, I'll go to an hour to cut for an indefinite amount of time. Sounds like an adventure. Oh, it's 11 other guys. Sun doesn't rise in the winter. Yeah, that sounds cool. Within, I think, binary gendered environments, non-binary genders, of course, have this experience as well, but I'm not as familiar with them having been,

being a binary person. There is this sense of community that develops. And this movie is about a place where there's already no sense of community. It's very much a movie about, oh, men who don't want to be around each other, everybody's kind of like, yeah, I, when I came out, I had some various agents and publishers be like, you should write a memoir. And I was like, I'm not going to write a fucking trans memoir. Everybody does that. And I, but then I kind of had this notion of doing a book that was a different essay

about different horror films through a trans lens. And this was always the one that I was like, this is about what it means to pretend to be a man and not actually be one. The thing is about being a spy in the House of Men, whether you take that to mean that you are a thing or that you are watching how men behave in violent and destructive ways when they don't think, you know, that women are watching them. And like, I just, I have always related to that very hard before I came out and after I came out, it made so much more sense to me.

So the thing is trans, I've proved it. Now everyone has to give me kick. All the kicks to Emily, please. If you, that's a great take. Absolutely. Well, I just, I think the thing that I'm thinking about is Emily talks about is like, hmm, so it's so true. I am thinking about the thing you're thinking about is the thing. Exactly.

Exactly. Is, is how like no one ever really becomes friends or comes around to each other in this movie. Cause they can't. Cause you know, the distrust is always gonna be there. To the extent that like, we're kind of rooting for, I mean like also, it's, you know, I'm a modern viewer and I probably first saw this movie whatever, you know. Kurt Russell and Keith David are the people

I'm gonna grab a ticket because I know that bass. Of course. Yes. And so I am, I guess, quote unquote rooting for them the most, but still, they're still not really, they have a hint of a smile at the end, but that's the most you can give. And so they are throughout the movie. They never can shed that feeling of like, am I myself? Am I, like, what I think I am?

Right, like, or am I just pretending to be because that's what I'm supposed to do in this environment, like that sort of weird, liminal, like, I just don't know if this is real or, and then, you can do this to yourself all the time also where you're just like, you know, do I live in the real world or, you know, just sort of dreaming that I live in the real world? Or, you know, just sort of dreaming that I live in the real world.

The thing I fucking think about constantly, that my existential terror, but there are a lot of things in the soup with this movie. Obviously, like the story in the original film, kind of like early Cold War panic, right, in that idea of like, how well do you know anybody? People can be trying to assimilate amongst us, all that sort of thing. And then Carpenter has talked about that like the AIDS crisis figures into this movie as well. Right, this fear of just like,

oh, there's this silent killer out there now. You know, this thing that can be transmitted through intimacy, through proximity to people. You know, I mean, certainly in the early days there was so much confusion about how it could or could not be transmitted. But this idea of, here's this deadly thing and we don't know how we get it and you don't know who has it or not. I think Carpenter is accidentally a really good film maker about gender. Like he makes movies that have gender infecting them at every inch. And this movie is very much about how

within all male spaces, there is a fear of intimacy. There's an attempt to be like, oh, we're not actually that close. And you have to work to overcome that. And then you never know, you know? Yeah, I mean, I bring all this up just because and I, I don't wanna say, like this is a great movie. I was excited to watch it again. But there was a part of me that was dreading

the experience of watching it again because much as I predicted, this movie is like really, it hits much harder for me post COVID. And I don't say post COVID as if COVID is over and dumb. I say post COVID is in a time where we've had to live through this to any degree, A, it's a movie about this weird sort of like broken seclusion, you know, these people living this kind of like closed off isolated lifestyle

and sort of watching their personality, their sense of self die in isolation. But also this fear that like, you know, we had this somewhat like a horror movie like false ending of just like, oh, everyone's getting vaccinated, things things feel good I guess things can reopen and at the time we're recording this we're in this liminal state now of just the Delta shit and how much of a risk is this really and how much is breakthrough cases of thing versus it only affecting the unvaccinated what are we gonna have to give up again in society or things gonna to stay open is that scary in its own way. And I do increasingly now after like a month where I felt like I was living my life with relatively limited anxiety, at least for me, I'm now back in this stage now where I have that sort of weird-iness anytime I look at another person in the flesh. Whether it's a friend of mine, whether it's someone I know well,

whether it's someone I know casually, whether it's a stranger. Anytime someone walks into the grocery store, and they're not wearing a mask, and they get too close to you, or you make social plans with somebody, and you're operating on the faith that, I guess we both really want and believe we don't have it. But that's a status that can change minute by minute, you know, even as recently as like I had to get tested twice

recently. Man, what a fucking load off my mind to know I don't have it. And then that stops being up to date information a day later and hour later, you know, all that is scary. And this movie taps into that into such a primal way where it's like AIDS was the manifestation of that at the moment that he is conceptualizing this moment, right? But like the form that COVID takes, this sort of viral pandemic is much closer to I feel like what this movie represents, which is just that this kind of unseen, invisible thing that's only gonna reveal itself too late, and it manifests itself in,

and the distrust is the thing that has fucked up my brain more than anything in the pandemic, where it's like, there are people who are very close to me who I know fundamentally distrust, and I have a fundamental distrust of strangers, and anytime I let someone get close to me, I'm scared that I'm making a fatal mistake. The modern world is designed to stoke paranoia.

It's designed to make you say, oh my god, is this person vaccinated? It's this person not vaccinated. Social media blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, I do think about this in terms of Carpenter was clearly really fucked up by Reagan's election. And this is kind of a movie about like, who do I know that is secretly like plotting

the destruction of everything I hold dear? Absolutely. Right. And then, you know, they live is the more satirical goofy version of that. But it is a thing. I don't know. I just feel like, it's a thing.

It's a thing. 18 months of pandemic and then four months of my fucking health bullshit and then I go back out into the world and to some degree it felt like, okay, I've been in like an Arctic base for the last 20 plus months. And now I'm cautiously trying to wonder in the way what is, as you said, the point of the ending of the movie is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if both of them are things

or both of them are humans. The bigger point is, they're gonna spend the rest of their life not knowing whether to trust anything or anybody for the rest of time. There's the point in the movie in which the stakes become not do we survive this, but how do we make sure that this thing doesn't escape and spread because Brimley's done his fucking calculations

and factored in how much time it would take for this to take over the entire planet. And so there's a certain degree of self preservation, but there's also this degree of like, we might be the last stop. Well, there, and that's what they struggled so much with the ending, because it's like how heroic can you make it?

Like, should they defeat the thing? Should they get wiped out? Obviously, they come up with the perfect ending, which is basically like the two of them sitting there being like, we're probably being heroes because we're probably going to die, right? Right. That's where it concludes where it's like, well, so I think we're both okay. And the whole place is on fire and we're probably going to die here.

And that's good, unless you're the thing. And then it's like, let's just wait. It's a perfect thing're the thing like I'm and it's like let's just wait it's a it's a perfect thing the thing is a perfect thing sorry carry on go ahead I'm sorry I think that I slip my mind I'll come back to it I'll have it I'll have I'll I'll I'll I'll stall for a moment and say that carbon or considers the video game to be canon and in the video game apparently which is a sequel takes place after the events of this the beginning of the game There are some text on a computer screen that says that they were rescued and McCready survived and What's in trials is the key David character? I believe dies of hypothermia, but it does prove that he's human.

And so, Carpenter has said like, I didn't write that, but I accept that as canon. There's a thing also in the 2011 movie that they realize a character is the thing or is not the thing I forget because the thing can't replicate the earring because the thing can't replicate. It's organic matter.

Inorganic matter? Right, yeah, yeah. So, some people look to that and the fact that Keith David still has his earring at the end of the movie as proof that he is human. But then also, other people say they've replaced the J&B scotch bottles with gasoline, so maybe the bottle, the Kurt Russell hands Keith David, is filled with gasoline and the fact that he drinks it and it goes down easily But you don't see Kurt Russell drink it proves that he was testing him and that he is a thing doesn't know that that's not how

Like you can spiral out in a thousand different directions The point is There's a Fundamentally doesn't matter the question is the point I Love I love a scary movie or I love any movie where everybody realizes we all have to die. Like this is a thing we all have to die to save the world.

This is a thing. And yeah, I've been trying to think of other, my other favorite examples of that, but yeah, it's, because the thing is, they remake the thing on TV so much because it's a perfect bottle episode. It's perfect, we're in one location. Yeah, famously, we're talking about ice, right? Which is the best.

I think that's a hugeorama one too. There's a hugeorama episode that's like a third-degree or even more. The word is plus. Yes, there's a doctor who wants it. There's a doctor who wants it. But like, what I think about that is on TV, you have to say, okay, we save the world

and everyone's fine because you have to go on in Mulder and Scully have to save the day next week again. And like, I don't know, something about the bleakness of this, I didn't hit people in 82, but it's the only appropriate response to the world this film sets up and the world we live in argue with.

The ongoing world. I agree. sets up and the world we live in argue with. The ongoing world. It's just it's such a fertile concept. And the thing that this movie was able to do is for the first time actually visualize that. You know, like there are things like the monsters on Maple Street or what's it called? The monsters are coming to Maple Street Twilight Zone. Are monsters on Maple Street or what's it called the monsters are coming to Maple Street twilight zone? Are do on Maple Street, I believe. Oh, yeah, it's playing with similar things, but you just have to live in that space of

One of these human actors might secretly be a monster. We're never gonna be able to reveal them. Right. You can't have the in-between part This this movie is like well, let's show the in-between part by the way. Right. It is so nice. Right. Right. This is just adds a whole other level to it. This is kind of a body snatcher movie, but also kind of not. So it plays off the paranoia of the body snatcher genre, but like also gets at this added layer of, you never know. It's also fascinating that the original body snatcher and the original thing from another world come out very close together. And this comes out only four years after the Kaufman body snatcher. And Griff, I don't know if you noticed, but in the dossier, JJ found this quote where

he disses the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is an rare bad take by Carpenter. And of course, this is at the time. So it's a pretty fresh movie. And he says, like like when I saw it I thought why did he do this the original was so much better and showed so much less Yeah, which is an interesting note considering his the thing shows lots, but his sort of defense is like in terms of Remaking the thing I had it easy because I wasn't trying to remake it because you know his argument is really like I'm kind of doing doing the story, right?

And the Hawks movie is its own thing. But it's just funny because I love the Kaufman movie. The Kaufman movie. It's great. But that's about, it's sort of the opposite of this movie, it's your isolated, your trapped, all the stuff we've been talking about. The whole brilliance of the Kaufman movies is happening in plain sight in a big crowded city. And it's just about that feeling of like, wait, do I not trust anyone

on earth? Like do I, do I just feel completely unmoored from like how society works? Like everyone's yeah, I mean, I love that movie. But that's they live, they live, they live as his body snatchers move. Totally. Yeah. And they live fucking rules. So John Carpenter wins again. Yeah, he wins, double wins. A few other things I want to just throw out from the dossier. He wanted to film in black and white. Universal would not let him. That would be great.

Right. But then his thing was like cool. So then I'm going to have this thing be so devoid of color. I want everything so drab and bland. So that when the thing shows up in any manifestation, whether it's green tentacles or red dog head or whatever, it really, really pops. And so a lot of it is just done with lighting and a lot of the lighting in this movie, most of it is the natural lighting of the actual spaces they're filming in, but also lighting it with the

flares that the guys carry around and shit like that. It's also just it's one of those things like watching the 2011 movie after this where horror movies are not especially studio films comfortable being this quiet for this long and usually They'll only be this quiet in the build-up to a jump scare but like the lack of sort of unnecessary dialogue, the lack of an overbearing score, the fact the score is more tonal rather than like underscoring the scares specifically. Because the score isn't doing the usual how you would move a thing of kind of alerting you to the scare rhythms, right?

Like where it's like, okay, we're building up to something. It's mood setting. And even, you know, more conez trying to find a tone closer to what Carpenter is done in his earlier scores, but Carpenter's earlier scores are a lot more propulsive and aggressive, you know, and this is a lot. A big theme, a good, you know, chunky theme. We love it.

This is sort of a slow simmering score, which really fucking works. I was watching this movie, it's hot right now, we're in the middle of the summer. I had my AC blasting and I was like, the AC is taking away from the movie and I watched it with headphones because I was like I need to be like totally in this sound space in the silence of this movie and it did make a big difference for me definitely definitely speaking

Speaking of the technical elements. I think Dean Kundy shoots fire on ice So well obviously fire and darkness, but there's something primal in us that's like oh fire in the cold I want to go sit by the and like like I think Dean Cundee captures that. That last scene is just beautiful, like in a weird haunted way. Yeah. Yeah, it is. This movie fucking rules. It really does.

Have y'all ever checked out any of the sequel materials, other than the video game? There was a mini series that was scripted by Frank Daribont and the script of that bounces around the internet every so often. It's set in like a little New Mexico town that gets like infected by the thing. It's actually pretty interesting. Like I don't think it would have been a great mini series. I'm glad they didn't make it, but it wouldn't have been bad, you know. I feel like it's... This was the return of the thing, which was almost happened in 2005 for the sci-fi channel. Yeah.

The other, the one thing I do want people to check out is a Peter Watts story called The Things. It's a sci-fi short story. It is basically telling this movie from the point of view of the thing. And it's a movie, it's a story about assimilation and conversion. It's basically about religious proselytization. The thing is like, oh, I just want everyone to know the joy

of being many, part of the many. And it's horrifying and unique and really cool and it's available online for free. So people should check out. If you just Google it, it's right there. It's not long. It looks really cool when the show gets an award. That's my thing.

I mean, now that they're like threatening to, I guess, Blumhouse and Carpenter are working on trying to do some new thing. But it's like, I would much rather see an expansion than a sort of retread of this same story. I don't disagree with you, Griffin. But I will say, I'm kind of getting sick of the expansions In general, you know, the this sort of thing now where it's like we need to remake the movie kind of but hat

Yeah, well, but have it connect to the original in some sort of potty way, you know I mean the worst version obviously just being literally like oh Ray is Palpatine's granddaughter or whatever You know what I mean? But even these smaller re- That was good, that was good. You're right, that was good. I'm sorry, yeah, you're totally right. But like this, I almost, and maybe it's just a reaction

to the condominant trend where I'm like, just do the trashy thing again and make a better way. Well, well, like, well sure. But have either of you read about the new predator movie that Dan Trachtenberg is doing? Uh-huh, no, no, I have not. It is apparently about the predator versus a Native American tribe.

So it's like set hundreds of years ago or whatever? Right, which I think is kind of interesting to just go like, we need to just put the predator in a radically different environment in the same way that like a deribot, oh the thing comes to a New Mexico town, it's just like, let's use the larger spook and just put it into a totally different setting is a little more compelling to me. I think the deribot reused a lot of, there are a lot of, there are a lot of, there are a lot of that for the mist, which is, the mist feels very thing-esque, yes. And kind of his best movie.

The predator, he, he, he can put that fucker anywhere. Because it's like, what does the predator do? He, he, he hunts people like where? Anywhere. They're aliens. They have spaceships. They can go wherever they want. So, that, I mean, that, that's cool with that. That sounds cool. What was compelling about the shame black pitch that

then sort of got beaten out of it was the idea of like, oh, it's the predator in the suburbs. Like it being such an incongruous place to drop a predator. I mean, there's definitely a good movie in that shame black movie. It's just, you know, that movie's obviously really messy. Release the black cut. Release the black cut. Yeah, sure. You know, that would be obviously really messy. Release the black cut. Release the black cut. Yeah, sure. Can I try to very quickly?

I think this is worth it to emerge in a spot light. Wait, wait, wait, I had a pitch for my take on the thing. Okay. Okay. Okay, because I was like, I was liking your, like, your train of thought, David, of like just keeping it, like instead of the expansion, right, just like remake the thing.

Sure. But here's the, here's the difference. This time, it's a bunch of dogs working in our article. And then there's, you know, you just switch it. The human's being chased. Oh, there's one human. There's right, right. There's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You see what I'm saying? I do. I do see what you're saying. Do you have anything more than that or that that's where it went? That's where it's starting. I can't see it. It's starting. This is a movie if you're gonna remake it, doing the gender flipped remake would be interesting.

I don't know if it would work, but it would be interesting. It would be interesting. I don't think anyone would have any objections to that, and there wouldn't be some weird backlash where people claim they always cared about how people would feel the thing was. People would love it. Yeah, people would love it.

There's one thing we know about Ghostbusters, it's that they're boys. That is number one most important thing. We can't let go of the fact that that was the complaint. It's like, well, Ghostbusters have always been boys. There's only boy ones. Look, I also, I'm not trying to start shit here, but I remain flummoxed by how few people are outraged by the fact that the Ghostbusters are now kids.

They should be outraged. Kids, I don't get them out of here. No. Well, grown up-spusters only. Because if you ask me, what is the defining characteristic of a ghostbuster, a cranky grown up? Boys are priests and they're ghostbusters

and I know that's true and I don't want that to change. Yes. Okay, I'm gonna try to do this merchandise spot I think quickly because there's a thing I'm setting up here that I think is gonna pay off. Okay. I weirdly brought this up the last time, not the last time Emily was on, I'm gonna try to do this merchandise spot, I think, quickly, because there's a thing I'm setting up here that I think is gonna pay off. I weirdly brought this up the last time, not the last time Emily was on,

but in the Sans the Lamb's episode. But Todd McFarland revolutionizes collector action figures in the 90s, because he wanted to make his own spawn toys, because he thought all the other toy companies were lame, so he made his own shit, and then he was trying to figure out a branch out into other toys that kids' companies were afraid to make. And so he said, there are all these movie characters

that are one cool looking character in a movie that couldn't support an entire action figure line. What if I collect all of those licenses? So he does this series called Movie Maniacs that was like monsters, horror characters, things that no one else is making, and you put them all in as like a popery in one line. So he does, it's Freddie and Jason and Leatherface, and then weirdly because it was topical at

that point, two of the characters from species two, right? And it's huge. Suddenly, it's one of the like top 10 best selling toy lines in America. So now he's got this thing and it's like, oh, it's an anthology line. You put the best characters in. He's got a thing. Yeah, both things. He's got a thing. Series two,, oh, it's an anthology line. You put the best character in it. He's got a thing. Yeah, love thing. He's got a thing.

Series two, Chuckie, the Crow, Ghostface, Michael Myers, Norman Bates. These are all kind of like, no, from screens. From screens. From screens. And then pumpkin head, who's kind of an odd pick, but that's just like, well, it's just a cool looking monster, right? Yeah. Okay, this is the thing I want to set up. So, Series 3, he goes a little bit hog wild, right?

And Series 3 is interesting because we've covered most of these movies or characters, and the ones we haven't covered, it's very possible that we will eventually get to them. Okay? So, Series 3, he does the thing. He does two different sets of the thing. He does one of the creature coming out of the body

with the spider head and he does another one of the final monster which I guess is the wolford brimley mutation right Then he also does snakepliskin. So it's like oh, you're not doing just like monsters and stuff now You're doing like kind of badass R-rated heroes, right? like monsters and stuff now you're doing like badass R-rated heroes, right? Cronenberg's the fly. Sure. The final form. Another big gross thing.

Right, Edward's sister hands like, okay, like yeah, monster, gentle monster, but what have you? Ash from the Evil Dead franchise. And then I just want you to, like I want three guesses quickly of like think about the icons of these types of films. And, like, who do you think, oh, it's weird they haven't gotten around to that character yet. Take a guess.

Who the last character is, and I'll give you a hint, it is a movie we have covered on the podcast. Oh, wow. Okay. Is this Hannibal Lecter? It is not. Everyone wanted Hannibal Lecter and Anthony Hopkins did not give up his likeness rights. It didn't happen for another 10 years. I know we haven't covered this, but it's not, so it's not like the exorcist. It's done nothing from the exorcist.

It seems like another. Reagan also, there were rights issues for a while, end up happening about 15 years later. Ben, do you want to take one guess? Is it Fletch? Ben, you are the closest, I would argue. Damn it, I was hoping it was correct. The final action figure in series three of movie maniacs is Samuel Jackson as Shaft. Hey, whoa, though, Samuel Jackson is Shaft.

Yup. Is it the grumpy older version of him that doesn't like like, you know, soy milk and, you know, live streaming? Doesn't like eating ass. Yeah. No, it's in 2000s. It's in 2000s, John Singleton.

How weird is that? Why not Richard Roundtree? Why not? I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I'll be back for that. Okay. And the dip has been clear. Actually all of Cronenberg's movies are about gender. I mean, I was about to say, right? It's not, it's not, Cronenberg does a lot of body stuff. Yeah, so what the fuck is this flesh prison? Yes, exactly.

Box office camp. Okay. Oh, the chat. I think that was worth it for that reveal. Right? No, of course it was. Great. Oh the chat. I think that was worth it for that reveal movie mate. No, of course it was great People love for merch spotlight. I'm looking at it now You should make some merch spotlight merch. I want to so badly. Hmm interesting Okay, it looks good like it looks just as Emil Jackson

But it's just a man and a trench coat with his hand in his pocket. He's got his hand right there though. All right. Yeah, it's right there. This movie comes out as we've noted on June 23rd is it? Or wait, I'll light you. Sorry, wait. Yeah, let me look it up actually, because now I'm forgetting. June 25th, 1982. And it did come out, as you noted, Griffin, the same week as Blade Runner,

which seems like a mistake to me. Yep, I would say. Neither of those films opens at number one, because number one of the box office is what? ET. ET. It's ET. Making $13 million in its third weekend in 1982.

Just a freight train. It was the highest-rate of third weekend. In 1982. Just a freight train. It was the highest rate of my vote. Absolutely outrageous. It sure was. It is a good movie. It is a staggering work. It is the fucking best.

It for me is one of those undeniable objects where I just don't want to hear anything bad. I don't want to hear anyone's criticisms. Every time I see that movie, I'm astonished it works. I'm just like, this is so good. It's true. It shouldn't really work. No, I know. And you just want to, yes, die of crying.

That's how I do it. Like a decade ago, I saw like a screening of it at Dumbo Park where they like projected it in the middle of the summer. And I was sitting on a towel with my friends. And the towel next to us was like a dad with like a two or three year old daughter, maybe three or four. And she starts obviously losing it when ET goes like pale, right?

It's not good. We don't like it. And he just, two is his daughter. The way he reassured her was he went, don't worry, honey, everyone cries this much when they watch this movie for the first time and I said that's such a profound thing to say right he was just like nothing nothing unusual something this is the common response we've all been there ET good ET one blade runner number two

okay it's also interesting in terms of the reputations changing and growing for these two movies, Blade Runner has to be like re-edited and repursieved to like three or four different times to become an undiable classic. The thing is just like completely unchanging and everyone just comes around to it. Blade Runner has a similar like long running debate about it too that's like, oh, he's a replicant. That doesn't matter and like doesn't matter doesn't matter so similar it's we doesn't doesn't matter doesn't matter if the top falls over doesn't matter whether that occurs a replicant or not doesn't matter if either of them are things that's the whole point the uncertainty is the point right but I just love that Harrison Ford the whole time is like

what he's not a replicant fuck you anyway Anyway. I don't know what this box is. I think he is, I don't know. He seems really worked up about it. I can't. Oh, I am. Number three at the box office is a film from one of our, one of our favorite guys. God, we covered him.

We've never covered him because he's made one billion movies. Uh, he is, of course, the director and star of this movie. It's one of the many movies he's the director and star of. It's Clint Eastwood, but that ate much of a clue. Cause it's not a movie. Yeah. Is it? Is it tightrope?

It's not tightrope, which he did not direct, although he constructed that movie. Fuck. Um, what go ahead? I'm going to try to say a high plane strifter. It's not high plane strifter, which is a great not tightrope which he did not direct although he constructed that movie fuck what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what what I'm gonna have a guess. We're gonna get this. We're gonna get this. Oh, okay. Sure, sure. It's Firefox. It is Firefox. That was about to say it shares the name of a famed internet browser.

Well, it is. Clint Eastwood's. Nice work, Emily. I don't even know what that movie's about. It's about like a futuristic new plane that he's gonna fly It does it's one of the few eastwards I've never seen and I've always been like that was probably pretty good, right? I just let it send to the Soviet Union on a mission a steel prototype jet fighter that could be partially controlled by a

Neuro link correct. It's controlled by thought. Oh, fire fox. Fuck. And it's just one of those things where I'm like, Clint Eastwood directed this, but he sure did. I just wrote a piece for Vox.com about Clint Eastwood and James Gunn having weirdly similar vibes. And like, I looked at all these Clint Eastwood movies

and every one of them I hadn't seen. I was like, that sounds like it might be pretty good. And like this man directed the 1517 to Paris, which is another movie where I'm like, that was awful. So I know he can make shit, but I'm just like, I wanna watch them all. But when he makes a bad movie, it is mind-warpingly strange.

Yes, correct. So, even though like everyone's like, the guy basically phones it in at this point, but you're like, I don't know, man, no. No one makes movies like yeah, but it's also like he's got some wacky Nickelodeon phone He's not like a normal phone He's got a hamburger phone He's got a hamburger phone. Do you know what the original title was for Firefox? I don't fly macho. What's number four? fly macho what's number four the

is okay here we go we're settling down number four the box up this is one of the biggest hits of the year it's a sequel uh... in my opinion it's rocky three directed by still best or still own it's got a so best or still

starry do you do got to do so or put the loan in March madness. I think he wasn't much madness. Yeah, we and we put Rocky in March madness. We get into bites at the apple. I think we need to do Rocky on the Patreon first because it would be tough to do still alone without doing

Rocky. I think we could also just fold Rocky into a Stallone series because like why not, I guess, right? Just do the bonus episode first. Do the Rocky boss first. Yeah, right. If you do Stallone, it's Paradise Alley, Rocky 2, Rocky 3, staying alive, Rocky 4, Rocky Balboa, Rambo, and the Expendables.

That's his directory. No, we would do like the Noray Fronting, we're the first episode is Rocky. And you we would do, we would do like the, the noria front thing, we're the first episode is rocky. And you have to do first blood. Not maybe not the other ones, but you have to do first blood as well. But see, then I think, no, then I think what you do is you put Rambo on Patreon, but he did that might be good. That might be good. That might be real. He never, no, he never directed a Rambo. Did he? Did he? No, he did. I'm sorry, he directed the first one. Fuck, he directed.

Right, that's what. That's what. Oh, how dare he. It's so weird which ones he decides to direct. He's the only one he does. Yeah, I'm going to direct Rambo for. All right. Right.

Yeah, no, he did Rocky's two, Rocky two, three, four. Six, you know. Yes, great. He left five. He directed know, yes, great left five He directed Rambo four but not five and not one through three and the directed Expandables but then passed over the sequel solid he sure he sure and they make him No, I think what I got Number five you forget the announced expendabela's which yoss Queen I don't want to put it in my veins big. I don't know what that is but I don't want to put it in my veins. Big, big. I don't know what that is, but I don't want to talk about big mood. Girlboss.

Expandables have always been boys. No, no Emily. Now they're girls. And they're big spend-up fellows. Number five of the box office is another sci-fi sequel. It's a big hit of the year. We did a Patreon episode on it recently. A Patreon episode on it recently. Star Trek II? It's Star Trek II. Star Trek II. Two, the Wrath of God. recently patreon episode on it recently start track to it's start to start to start to to the wrath of

And number six at the box office Griffin is the first film I ever saw in the theater. What is it? fuck You told me this I did was you saw it as a rerelease it was being I was being re-releaser as a rap or something. Is it no idea what Dalmatians? No, it is, no. The whole reason it's weird is that it's a weird movie. It's John Houston's Annie, the movie of tomorrow. She is.

That was like, I- The movie of tomorrow. Didn't that make a fair amount of money? It was considered a flop because it was so expensive. It was a ridiculously expensive movie, but it did make money. It just was kind of, you know, it didn't make enough money,

but it is totally worth seeing. It is so, there's so much money on the screen. Because it's like old-ass John Houston just being like, what do you mean you can't build a set? Build a set for everything. You know, like it's these crazy sets, Albrecht Finney, you know, Munchen the scenery, Carol Burnett, obviously. There's a lot of good stuff in Annie. And he's

good. It's just so funny to imagine like that, that, that Daniel Plane view voiced mother fucker directing people on the set of Annie. The little orphan's gonna, she's gonna, her dreams are gonna come true in this scene. All right, I want more joy in this tap. You've also got poltergeist at number seven and the thing opening at number eight behind everything. Not good. No, it is opening above the Halena movie. Megaforce star in Barry Bostwick and purses. Come Bada the two. Whoa.

Wow. A and B. Letters wanted to. Bosphorus Cumbata, they're together finally. The tagline for Megaforce, there has never been a superhero like Ace Hunter. That is the tagline. I mean, this is true. Megaforce, if people don't know it,

it's famous, it's a Golden Harvest movie that was built for the American audience. Like it's Golden Harvest, the famous studio from Hong Kong is trying to make a Hollywood movie and they made a movie called Megaforce. Anyway, I've never seen it. I've always thought about watching it. Wow, yeah, it sounds interesting. It does. But yeah, the thing, yeah, it didn't do well. But, you know, what are you gonna do? Oh, what are you gonna do? I guess you're you just got to sit around and become an established classic. Just by fucking eating. Yeah, right about E.T. in 82, but they were wrong about this.

Right. But of course, what's what wins best picture? Gandhi, the best makeup of 1982. So, you know, know is what it is Well Emily thank you so much for coming on the show for throwing down the hammer and once again demanding It's no no one takes over the show by force as well as you do I'm putting my I'm putting my chips down, call my shot. Mid-Summer episode, 2029, I'm doing it.

Sure, and the fly, you've already put your chips down to fly. I fucking do it. Yeah, that's not good. I, you need to let me know when you're covering some real pieces of shit coming up, because I gotta do that next thing. Right, I need to, I'll keep my eye out for real stink bombs. Right.

It's like horrendous. Like what's the next movie we're gonna cover that has a Futter Wack in it? Oh god. Oh, it's our tough to come by, group. They're tough to come by. In this economy, a Futter Wack in this thing. Futter Wack is like fucking Haley's convince.

Like what's every 80 years? There's something that heinous. Emily, people should follow you on Twitter, a hell of a site filled with demons. Twitter.com slash Emily B.D.W. You can read my writing at Vox. I'm just gonna plug everything. That's what I'm gonna do.

Plug it out so much. I got so much shit to do. I read all my stuff at Vox. I have a podcast at Vox called, what to watch. It's in the thing called Vox Quick's Quick Hits It's just a list of Wilkinson and I goofing around every week for about 15 minutes. You can and should listen to my scripted podcast. Arden, we just finished our second season in late 2020. We have a short mini series coming up in November, December, two women, solving crimes, falling in love, very proud of it. We've won awards now, so like I have to do it. Hey, sure.

Hey. Award winning podcast. You also could read my newsletter, which is at mlebdw.letterdrop.com. My book is Monsters of the Week, the Complete Critical Companion to the X Files. And please don't sleep on my recent Grammy-winning album of the year, the third time I've won that.

It's folklore. It came out last year. It's very good. it's a good one uh... you're you're the best Emily and it's always a pleasure i love coming here i love talking to you guys and uh... i want to do it again but i want it to be for a terrible movie yeah well we'll run some titles by you soon uh... and thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barney for our social media. Thank you to JJ Burst and Nick Laryano for our research, AJ McKeein and Alex Barron for our editing, Pat Reynolds, Joe Bowen for artwork. It keeps on getting longer. Lay Montgomery in the Grand American novel for

our theme song. You can go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit. Go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where you do commentaries on franchisees. Maybe Rambo someday, but right now we're spulunken in the dark with Reddit. Also there, what we're doing, and we're filling in some of the Carpenter TV movies, Elvis and someone's watching me primarily.

Tune in next up to everyone's like, we definitely won't wait, we'll see, we'll see. We'll try and figure it out, okay? There's a lot of us. We don't know. I mean, I'm gonna say something now that's gonna stress you out the moment I say it, but I have to.

We have, look, it's been a weird year. There's been a lot going on. We have yet to really contend with how we're gonna talk the walk this year. I look, Griff, I've been thinking about that. You're not stressing me out. You're wearing the shirt. You're wearing the shirt right now.

I don't know what the answer is there. I don't even, we should have a little combo the shirt right now. I don't know what the answer is there. I don't either. Maybe we should have a little combo with JD or something. I don't know. We need to buy the shirts because we have a lot of them left. Yeah, buy the talk in the walk shirts. We might come up with some deal. You guys don't want, you know, you're not interested.

What's up? You know what, a snowman, the JD Drew. We're, we'll come up with a deal. Ben, we'll come up with a deal. We're gonna have a really hot deal. Tune in next week for Christine. That's right. A movie that for me presents the most terrifying concept

in the world. What if a car existed? Oh yeah. Watch out. Tune for our guest to a car. Oh, you're telling me to a car room. A room. Ha, ha, ha. Hong, Hong. I think, I think I think I just I got to pitch this you guys on this bison teniel man bring in my

wife and I do Chris Columbus. You're gonna love. Fuck. You're just blaming one of the worst movies ever. Yeah. We have already done an episode of podcasting about Bicentennial Man, and she jokingly said, I should try to be on every movie podcast to cover Bicentennial Man, and now I'm holding her to it. She only said it to me, but I'm making it public. So, that's a great thing. He covered the Christmas Chronicles two, but not one, because weirdly, he didn't direct the first one.

I'm sorry. What? Chris Columbus only directed the second Christmas chronicles. He produced both. Chris Columbus. He's going to direct Chris Columbus. This is the first time hearing of this. Directed the Christmas Chronicles part two. That was directed by the Chris Columbus,

the man who did Harry Potter. Kurt Russell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy. He, you know, Kurt Russell and him came up with Christmas Chronicles and for two, they brought in Goldie Han. Yeah, it's a perfect Emily van der Wurr overlap of just all my interests.

David, I had, I had no idea. Yeah, why would you? Why would you know that? Why would anyone know that? It's hated knowledge. It's like the fucking in-kin empire. Yeah, you said first. Yeah.

I guess maybe we do Christmas chronicles on Patreon, one and then the two for the community. I refuse to entertain this any further. The show is over. This is the end of the episode. And as always, I would just like to read the leaked plot synopsis for the expendabellas, which was supposed to be directed by Robert Lucettic, director of legally blonde and winnate with Tad Hamilton. They had said

Avi Lerner had gone out with offers to Merrill Street, Cameradilla's, and Mela Jojovich to play the three leads. And this is how I'm gonna end the episode, this plot synopsis. When America's Navy SEALs are wiped out trying to penetrate the island layer of a deadly death spot who has captured one of the world's top nuclear scientists, it becomes clear that there is no such thing as the right man for the job, and that this is a mission so impossible that only Women can handle it the only way in some of the world's deadliest female operatives must pose as Wait for it high-class call girls By private plane to satisfy a dictator and instead save the scientist and the day please make this movie so I can make

the press chunk it really uncomfortable sounds we're proud to announce that blank check pictures has acquired the rights of the expendabela's in turn around no i don't want to turn it back around got it We caught it. I can't wait. you you