Chapo Trap House - Bonus: Gremlins 2 feat. Joe Dante

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

Our talk with legendary film director Joe Dante from our May 16th screening of Gremlins 2: The New Batch at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood California.

And now, let's say a few words before the movie I want to introduce, Will from Chapel Trap House. Give it up for Will. Yeah! Woo! Thank you very much. Thank you, LA, for coming out to see us tonight. Thank you to the Egyptian Theater for hosting us.

Thank you to Josh Olson for making this possible. And thank you most of all to Joe Dante for being our guest of honor after the movie this evening. Just a quick bit of breaking news from back on the East Coast, fans of the show might be interested to learn that just moments ago, Virgil has gotten himself kicked out of the Pod Save America live show.

I don't know how he managed to do that. Usually, he's very demure. But you can check out his timeline for updates. But we're not here for Virgil tonight. We're here for Gremlins 2, a modern masterpiece. It is our distinct pleasure and honor to present this movie for you tonight and then to have a discussion after about it.

Gremlins 2 has been described sort of as an anti-sequel, a movie that satirizes the very idea of sequels attacking not only the original, but the very idea of movies themselves. A live action Looney Tunes episode that is also a madcap, metatextual narrative about how corporations are destroying humanity. This is the textbook example of a movie that

is way ahead of its time and one whose vision only becomes sharper as time passes on and our world gets even more absurd and gremlified, if you will. As Amber told me last night, well, we live in a society. We live in a Gremlins society. So without further ado, once again, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Please stick around after for our conversation with Joe Donte.

Gremlins 2, thank you very much. [?]. Elephant in the room. You guys all got really quiet when Getty Wadnawis, anyone on the screen. Let's give a big applause for a pioneer. I just want to make note of the very, very last scene of that movie.

I think sums up what's so great about it, because it's Robert Picardo and his character just sort of is like, yeah, I'm going to fuck a Gremlin. And who among us? And it really dawned on me just just now sitting in my seat watching that the timeline for this is almost perfect. Robert Picardo and Gretchen, the lady Gremlin,

getting married, having a kid, we just witnessed the conception of Ben Shapiro. Well, I don't want to go on too long. I think without further ado, why don't we bring up our special guest for this evening, the director of Gremlins 2, Joe Donte. Thank you so much for being here with us. I want to start off with the idea of Gremlins 2

as kind of a parody of sequels. And I was wondering if we could start talking about like, how did the idea for Gremlins 2 start? Was it your idea? Did the studio pitch you on this? Or was it just like, how did you first get the idea to do a sequel to Gremlins? Well, when Gremlins 1 became a surprise hit

to everybody, including me, suddenly, I mean, it was out of all proportion to what it was expected from it. And immediately after the first weekend, the studio said, well, now we can make another one. But it was a very, very exhausting and difficult picture to make because we were inventing the technology as we went on. And it's actually quite a bit different from the original script.

And I just thought, I've had enough of Gremlins. I can't do this again. And so I just said, no, I can't do it. But the problem is that the studio didn't really much like the first movie. But when it made a lot of money and had a great preview, suddenly it was like, well, this is obviously something that works, and so we should make more of them.

But they didn't quite realize how to do it. And so they spent four or five years trying to replicate a movie that they didn't understand in the first place. And of course, it didn't work. So finally, they came back to me after all that time and said, we really want a sequel to Gremlins. And if you will give it to us on this date,

we'll let you do whatever you want. I think it just says, if you give us a couple of cans of film with Gremlins in the next summer, you can do whatever you want. And I guess I'm wondering, when the studio told you, you can do whatever you want. Do you remember what was your first thought or idea like dealing with that concept?

Well, there really wasn't a reason to have a sequel to Gremlins, which is pretty much self-contained. And so I thought, well, what if we made a movie about why there shouldn't be a sequel to Gremlins? And also, maybe just a comment on sequels in general. And of course, this was 1989, so the 90s were going to be upon us, and everybody was talking about the future.

And I just thought, one of my favorite comedies is Hell's a Poppin, which is a wonderful movie that almost no one ever sees because it's out of circulation. But it's a movie where, based on a stage show where literally it was different every night, and anything could happen. And I thought, what if we did a movie where people just couldn't tell exactly what was going to happen? And it's so not like the first picture

that they won't be able to be ahead of it. Because most of the time you see sequels and you go, oh, yeah, we know. This is the part in the first picture where they did this. And there are anodyme sections of this picture which relate to the other movie. Instead of a microwave, we have a shredder and stuff like that. But then there's also heartbacks and references

to the other movie. But, and I don't think you have to have seen Gremlins 1 to enjoy this. But I think it definitely helps. Yeah, and you're able to show how Gremlins will always defeat any technological innovation. Because the microwave, you say, was used to kill a Gremlin in the first movie.

And in this one, it makes all of them. What did the studio think when you showed them those cans with the Gremlins in it? Well, they were true to their word. They let me do the picture the way I wanted. And they let me do what I want. But I can't say they were any more enamored of the sequel than they were of the original.

And in fact, I think that they probably disliked it even more. It was not a popular film among the producers, because you go up the ladder, were not pleased. It's so funny to think of someone turning down an option for a sequel in this day and age when all of the big money films aren't even movies. They're like six-picture franchises from the get-go.

I kind of wonder, what did they think a Gremlin sequel was going to be? Were they just trying to repeat the same thing? I don't think they just wanted it to be as successful as the first picture. They had also, right after Gremlins, they offered me Batman. And that was a big deal. They were going to make a big Batman movie.

And it was not the one that Tim Burton made. It was a prior version of it. And it was very flattering. But one night, I woke up and I said to myself, I don't believe in Batman. I'm doing this movie because I like the Joker. And they really should get somebody. So I went to them and I said, you know,

I'm really the wrong guy to do this. You really have to get somebody who really believes in Batman and Alfred and Robin and the whole story, which just seemed a little bogus to me. And so I didn't do it. And they really thought I should be committed. I mean, it was really, they just could not understand why I was turning this down.

But I was turning it down because I was not the right guy to do it. And I think that if you really feel that something is for you and you can really relate to it and put your personality in it, then it's worth doing. But if you have to fake it, then it's not going to be a good movie. They're not going to like you.

They're not going to be happy with you. They're not going to be happy with the movie. And you're not going to be happy with yourself. There we go. I agree that the story of Bruce Wayne and Robin very sus. It seems weird to me as well. But so of course, the movie opens and then ends with the credits with Daffy Duck.

And there is like throughout the entire movie, there isn't the unmistakable influence of like the Warner Brothers cartoons. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the influence of Looney Tunes on you in this movie, particularly the insistence on breaking the fourth wall and like breaking out of the movie itself and acknowledging that you're the audience watching it.

Yeah, as I've gone through my career, particularly when I did my actual Looney Tunes movie, I discovered that there is an increasing resistance to breaking the fourth wall among studios. There's a certain generation that just doesn't understand the idea of reminding people that they're watching a movie. Somehow you're not supposed to do that. And I grew up watching the Hope and Crosby movies,

where they were constantly talking about the script and the movie and it was all inside. And you could watch it on both levels. But there's a certain breed of executive that is just so doctrinaire about how you have to be serious about making these movies that you cannot break the fourth wall because it's just a no-no. And of course, the Warner cartoons

exist to break the fourth wall. They really weren't made for kids. They were made for adults. And they played on double bills with adult movies. And so it's always been part of my DNA. And I watched these pictures when I was a kid. And Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett and Frisk Freeling and these guys who really broke a lot of rules.

And that was just a part of the way that I looked at comedy. You see it in some of the Frank Tashlin movies, Bob Hope movies. But there's a lot of Tashlin in Romans, too. I think of the scene in that one classic Warner Brothers cartoon with Bugs and Daffy, where Bugs breaks out of the animation and the animator, a pencil, comes into the frame and begins to redraw Daffy in increasingly ludicrous ways.

And he just looks at the camera and goes, you're a death pick-a-ball. And I think that moment to me sums up the ethos of Gremlins, too. So now that the movie's gone on and it's become a real cult hit, I'm wondering, are you familiar with something, like in this second, third, fourth life as the new generations become introduced to it?

I'm wondering, are you familiar with something called the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies? How could I not be? These guys are pioneers. I just want to read a little bit from the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies here. There's the old line that history repeats itself. The first time is tragedy, the second time is farce.

The same could be said of the Gremlins films. I think the Gremlins 2 resonates so strongly because the contemporary viewer can identify with the characters who find themselves living in an over-the-top parody of past events. I think we all have a suspicion that the same is true of the real world. And that line that we're living in an over-the-top parody

of past events is particularly relevant impression in this film, considering the Daniel Clamp character is now President of the United States. And I was wondering, the creation of the Clamp character, because you talk a little bit about that, and his, I don't know, very subtle similarities with our current president. Well, at the time, he was this sort of tabloid icon of New York.

And his image was self-generated, and with a lot of help from the media. And as we have discovered, and watching him more closely over the last couple of years, that's really all there is. I mean, what you see is what he wants you to see. But there's very little else going on. It's all about him. And the scene that struck me tonight

was the scene where Clamp decides he wants to have a parade to congratulate himself for all he's done for the neighborhood, and just the general level of self-aggrandizement. Now, this character in the movie is much more benign than the actual game. And it's because he was partly a combination of Donald Trump and Ted Turner, because we wanted him to have a cable network.

And we wanted to make fun of what were then outlandish cable shows, like imagine a whole channel about archery? Well, guess what? I mean, now there's a whole channel about tonsillectomies. I mean, it's just the world has moved on. It's changed. And it's become, actually, a little bit more like this movie. Yeah.

I don't know. The Institute for Agrimal Institute Studies has a term for that, hypergrimalization. Now, you had a question about the Ted Turner, Donald Trump. Yeah, because Clamp is an amalgam of Turner and Trump. And I was just wondering if somebody had, when you were making this movie, come up to you and said, which one of the two guys that went into Clamp

will be president in 30 years? Which one do you think it would have been? Well, I would rather it had been Ted Turner. The scene where he looks at the end of the world tape is actually based on the real end of the world tape that Ted Turner made and had ready on TBS to show in the event of the end of the world. I am glad you brought that up, because I actually

watched that video earlier today to prepare for this. And I'm wondering, the people, so yeah, he had an actual Doomsday video. And I look this up and it says, Ted Turner said of this, barring satellite problems, we won't be signing off until the world ends, Turner declared. And in anticipation, he prepared a final video segment for the apocalypse.

He said, we'll be on and we'll cover the end of the world live and that will be our last event. We'll play the national anthem only one time on the first of June, the day CNN launched. And when the end of the world comes, we'll play nearer my god to thee before we sign off. And now you can watch this on YouTube, the Ted Turner Doomsday video.

And it is basically a military band in front of what looks to be like the golf course or something playing nearer my god to thee, and that's it. And if that was the last thing I saw before the flash hit, I don't think I would be very calmed by it. Well, it's not to make you feel better, it's another part of the narcissism, because he's just saying to you, the world doesn't

end until I say it does. I mean, to talk about, to keep talking about Clamp, there are a number of truly outstanding comedic performances and cameos in this movie. But in Washington, John Glover really, really stands out as the comedic heart of this movie in the Clamp character. And I think there was even a scene

where he's alone in his office and he's sort of sneaking around it. And was he walking exactly like Bugs Bunny, or is I imagining that? Well, the part in the original script was written as very villainous, because these movies always had corporate villains. And when John got hired, he had this boyish quality to him

and this sort of innocence that just, as we were shooting, we were aware that the character was transforming into something much funnier and more likeable than we had intended. But it turned out that worked for the story. And he's actually one of the more entertaining aspects of the picture. And that scene where he's in his office,

where he's got nothing to do, and he says, oh, let's do some memos. I mean, it's because he's literally bored stiff. I mean, there's nothing. You can't really see it. But we had little airplanes flying outside his office and everything on the strings. And there was also a colorization

gag, which we had to take out because another movie called The Big Picture beat us to it. But you'll notice on one of his TVs, it's a wonderful life, black and white. And then at one point, out of his boredom, he looks unhappy, and he pushes the button that goes to cartons. The one moment that struck me the most,

is seemingly most Trump-like in the clamp figure, is at the very end, when he rushes into the lobby leading the SWAT team. That struck me as something very Trump-y. And I don't know if Trump would lead the SWAT team, but he would certainly like to dress up. But even before that, he's wearing the hard hat. Yeah.

And he fell down, too. Yeah. I'm just really happy for Billy Pelzer, who is now a clamp's secretary of energy. You mentioned the clamp character started out as more of a standard corporate villain. And I'm wondering if the movies of that era really took for granted that a guy in a suit

would always be the bad guy. And do you find there's any difference now in movies? Do you think movies lionize entrepreneurs, or are corporate suits still the bad guys? Since all the movies that are made now are superhero movies, I'm not sure that there are any corporate bad guys in them. Yeah, speaking of, there's Glover, and there's a lot of other brilliant cameos.

And actors who come from sort of the Joe Dante stable, sort of like your team of players. There's Henry Gibson has a small cameo as the sort of almost a silent film role as the poor guy who gets fired for smoking. But of course, you got a big round of applause. Dick Miller. I was wondering if you could talk about working with Dick

Miller, and he's in, I think, almost all your movies. How did you meet Dick Miller, and what about him made him sort of your good luck charm? Well, if you look at the filmographies of a lot of directors, you'll see the same actors appearing over and over and over. And it's partly because you become friends with them, and you like their work. Dick, I had seen when I was a kid in movies,

and I was like them. When I got a chance to make a movie for Roger Corman, I said, I've got to have Dick Miller in my movie. And we hit it off, and he was great. And I thought, I just like watching this guy act. I like being around him. I like being able to give him a job. And so the first thing I would do when I got a script,

after figuring out whether I was going to do it or not, is, OK, where's the part for Dick? And sometimes it would be a little part. Sometimes it'd be one day part. Sometimes it would be a larger part. But he was, you know, there are no small actors. They're only small parts. And Dick would never let me down.

And I miss him terribly. He was just a wonderful actor and a great guy. There's obviously, when you have something like the Gremlins in a movie, they're little green guys. And then it gives you the chance to sort of make different versions of them, different outfits, different personalities. And you do that a lot in the first Gremlins, where they're

all at the bar, you know, like smoking and playing cards and drinking and everything. But it seems like this movie had the chance, with the bigger budget and everything, to just do every type of Gremlin you could ever imagine. Well, that actually came from the practical fact that Chris Whales, who had done the original Gremlin work, had gone off to become a director.

And so he wasn't available to do this. And in order to get Rick Baker, who I'd known for years, interested in doing this, because Rick said, well, you know, this is just Chris's designs. I mean, what's in it for me? And I said, well, what if we come up with a plot where the Gremlins are in a genetics lab and we can do all kinds of different Gremlins?

And that's what convinced him to sign up. And that's the reason that that whole subplot is in the movie. Wow. I mean, it must be slightly nerve-wracking to have the entire plot of a movie based on how good the animatronics and puppetry looks, because Gizmo is really cute, but he could very easily have been uncanny and not cute.

I mean, was it concerning? Were you ever worried about having to work with just the number of puppets? Not by the time we did the sequel, because we had three times the money. We had more time. This time the studio was supporting us instead of sort of looking the other way.

And the technology had improved to the point where we could have them talk. We could have Gizmo walk around instead of having to be carried in a backpack, as he was in the first picture, because we just didn't have the technology to get him to move. And also, all of the machinery and other stuff was all smaller now.

So some of the close-ups in the first picture are we had to build a giant head. Because if we took big close-ups of the small head, you could just see all the seams and you could see how it was done. Here, the general level of achievement and the technology is just much better. And Gizmo, although he has less to do in this movie

than he did in the first movie, he's much more expressive than he was. And the fact that he could dance, that was a scene that we started shooting at the beginning of the show and didn't finish shooting until the end of the show, because we had to keep doing it over and over and over as they figured out the technology. And also, we lost the rights to the Billy Idol song.

We're going to do it for him. And the only one we could find was the Fats Donnero song that's in there now, which, ironically, was written by Al Lewis, who is the guy that grandpa Fred did. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my god. That's amazing. Wow.

We're talking about the expressiveness of Gizmo in this movie. The scene when Billy hits his hand in the file and then he comes out and he's just like, what the fuck, dude? It's incredibly versatile. I was just wondering, though, you had all these gremlins in the hair, and yeah, you're giving something for Rick Baker

to get excited about. Were there any gremlin ideas that didn't make it into the movie because they were too complicated or too out there or anything? There were a lot of things that didn't make it into the movie because movies like this can't run that long or if people get tired of them. And this is one of those rare movies

that managed to sustain a 107-minute running time, which, obviously, when you see it with an audience, it's a much better movie than if you watch it at home because there's just something, it's just a more fun movie to watch when there's people enjoying it. And so I think we managed to keep the pace going. But we did end up dropping a lot of things. And we dropped things that we shot.

We had many things that we didn't shoot. There was a whole subplot where Christopher Lee turns into several different people, including Albert Einstein. I mean, I can hardly even remember how that happened. But it was just stuff that we just can't do. And there was an elephant gremlin that we had to cut that. I mean, there was a lot of crazy stuff.

And we only had room for so much crazy. Well, speaking of that, you told me yesterday that you had an idea, like a William Castle-inspired idea to do in the theaters. One of the things that, in the first movie, the studio hated the story that Phoebe told about her father getting stuck in the chimney. That was the thing they hated the most.

On this one, the thing they hated the most was the fact that the film breaks. And so they just kept saying, well, if the audience thinks the film is broken, they'll leave. And I said, well, no, they're not going to leave. They just paid money to see this movie. And it's not going to be fast enough so that they'll get the joke and they'll

realize that they were fooled. In the early screenings, people would boo and go, ooh, the film is broken. And then, oh, then they'd laugh because they'd see the gremlin. What I wanted to do, which they obviously didn't go for, was I said it would really be cheap to make some cardboard gremlin cutouts and put them up in the booth with little springs on them.

So for the projectionists to ping, as the people turn back to look at the complaint about the fact that the film is broken, I thought that would be a really cheap, fun thing to do. But they didn't do it. Actually, the first time I saw gremlins was at home on VHS. And so I didn't see the whole film break. No, because on VHS, we thought the film break wouldn't work.

So we changed it to the VCR breaking down. And it switches channels to a bunch of different movies. And then instead of Hulk Hogan coming to the rescue, it's John Wayne in footage from some other movie with Chad Everett doing his voice and telling the gremlin and shooting it out with the gremlins and telling him to go. So did you have that idea of when you were shooting it? It was only when it came time to go on VHS.

We just realized that the film break gag doesn't work as well. Well, I will say I was a small child. But for a second, I really believed it. And I was really annoyed. That's what it was supposed to do. And I mean, I've obviously seen it since mostly with the film break version. And man, it really does play amazing in the theater.

I'm really glad I got to see it live. It is probably the most explicit acknowledgement by the film to the audience that you're watching a film, which is part of what makes it very fun and very castle-inspired. We're acknowledging that we're in a room together watching a movie. And that's fun. Which is not a bad thing.

Yes, exactly. I just keep figuring, why can't we say that? Why can't we remind people? But what are the more subtle? One of the more subtle moments of that, which I loved, is that you killed pedants. Like, you killed your first pedant. It's like the person who's looking for plot holes.

Like, well, what do they do if they're passing over a time zone? What do they do if they get a seed stuck in their teeth? And first person down, just enjoy the movie, OK? Quit looking for plot holes. You also killed Leonard Moulton as well. You killed the critics, you killed the haters. Leonard was a friend of mine, but he didn't like the first movie. And so I said, well, Leonard, I'm making a sequel.

Do you want to come and get killed in it? He said, sure. But he reviewed the second one, too. And he put a note in it. His problem with the second one was that he said it had gratuitous cameos. There is certainly, I would say that the cameos are gratuitous. But again, like everything else in this movie,

it pushes so far past the gratuity. It becomes genius. And do you have a famous, do you have a favorite cameo appearance in Grumlin Stowe? Oh, gosh, favorite. Well, I have to tell you, it wasn't a cameo, but I really enjoyed working with Tony Randall. Oh, my god.

Oh, my god, amazing. That was one day in New York just doing these. And if you get the lure, there's outtakes of him doing stuff on the track, which are sunk up to the puppets, because we had to play it back in order for the puppets to do their stuff. So you can hear him blowing lines and saying, oh, it's OK. I'll get it.

I mean, it was just so much fun. And I haven't seen this in a while, and certainly not with an audience. But one thing that Howard Hawks said, in order to have a good movie, you had to have three great scenes and five great scenes and no bad ones. And I just remember always watching this, I was thinking, oh, and now this is coming up.

Oh, no. And then this is coming. This is pretty good. And then, oh, yeah, this is coming up too. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in this movie. It just sort of washes over you. I mean, for me, I think my hands down, my favorite scene in this movie is the Tony Randall

scene, the interview with the brain Gremlin. It's just so funny. It's a habit style interview. Yeah. And again, the expressiveness of the animatronic puppet is so wonderful. And yeah, when he kills that poor Gremlin in the beanie, is the brain Gremlin the villain of this movie?

Or is he the hero? Is he the necessary force that is driving a revolution against our society? This was Susan Sontag. Wait, I think Matt has a moral conundrum. I think we can go now. I want to go into the, speaking of a killing pedant. So I want to go into the annoying nerd

pedant questions about gremlins and the sort of Slavo Gizek. What do the gremlins represent in post-capitalist society? But Matt has an interesting moral philosophical conundrum about gremlins. Yeah. You don't have to answer this. This is just something to think about. This would be in an essay if there was like a gremlins

and philosophy book. So we know that Gizmo is adorable and friendly and loves humans and doesn't want to become a gremlin, doesn't want to create gremlins. But he just has this knack for getting wet, even though he doesn't want to, because it's hard not to. Water's everywhere. And so it's highly likely that even

though he doesn't want to do it, Gizmo's eventually going to get wet and create a bunch of little gremlins. And all his offspring really want to become gremlins and are going to immediately go off and try to find out a way to eat after midnight and then become gremlins who wreak havoc on society and can reproduce at will. It's really dangerous.

So my question is, if you meet Gizmo, are you morally obliged to kill him? This is me thinking about that. That leads to Gremlins 3, in which I have been told, or read, that Chris Columbus has a dark version of the script in which Gizmo actually dies. No! That's what I read.

But I've read a lot of stuff about Gremlins 3 over the past 25 years. And it always ends up being just about as true as the other stuff that I read. So I wouldn't hold my breath. Well, we were pondering this moral conundrum last night, and we realized it really is. The Gizmo question is similar to the baby Hitler question.

And then our friend, Josh Androski, is here tonight, said, baby Hitler also voiced by Howie Mandel. Thank you, Josh, for that one. My philosophical question about the Gremlins and what they represent is, why are Gizmo's offspring who bud off of him? Why are they immediately so intense on terrorizing

and abusing their creator? Is there sort of a God and man Nietzschean thing going on here? Well, that could be one explanation. The other explanation is that that's just not nice. Gizmo's the only nice Gremlin. All the other ones are nasty. I mean, even in the first movie, they're horrible, horrible creatures.

They bite Corey Feldman. I mean, there it is. Who wants to do that? One more quote here from the Institute of Gremlins 2 studies about the brain Gremlin. The brain Gremlin is a bit of a detestable figure. He guns down that helpless Gremlin in the propeller hat. But plenty of figures in the philosophical canon

are morally compromised. Many have been influenced by Heidegger, despite him being a Nazi, and then running off to cosplay as a rural peasant instead of taking any kind of responsibility for that fact. I view my relationship with the brain Gremlin in a similar way. I cannot endorse him, but I cannot entirely disown him

either. And I think that sums up Gremlin's work. I think that'll be sending a lot of you to this particular site, just that kind of thinking. But yeah, I cannot endorse him, but I can't disown him either. I feel that that sums up the Gremlins' relationship to human society, because they are awful, nasty little monsters, but only in so much as they reflect us and our society,

which they attempt to recreate in their own way. They do reflect us. And that was what we discovered in the first movie, that the Gremlins were more interesting when they had human traits and when they imitated humans. And they took human clothing, and they did human things, and they imitated what they saw. Then it became a mirror for us.

And it's often been said that the scene in the movie theater, the first movie where they're watching Snow White, is the audience, is the actual audience for the movie, watching the Gremlins. We are all Gremlins now. Yeah, exactly. I just want to, this is a really question. If anyone else has an answer to this,

I can just shoot it out, is that this is a movie. For me, one of the reasons I love it and watch it a lot is because I always find this something that I didn't notice before, you know? And for me today, it was the realization that Christopher Lee's Dr. Catheter was 100% the style inspiration for Daniel Day-Lewis and Phantom Thread.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Gremlins, what is this word? Don't speak to it to me. Before we go any further, I will be beaten to a pulp by Josh Olson if I don't plug my podcast. Because we have this travelism-held podcast called The Movies That Made Me, and which we have recently hosted, these gentlemen, not the lady, unfortunately.

I'll come back. But which will be on, I don't know, sooner or later. But it's a podcast where we don't ask people to plug their new book or their new movie. We just ask them what movies they love and why do they love them. And we have, it's been a lot of fun to do, and it's been pretty popular. And you should check it out.

So there. Matt and I did an episode where we talked to Josh and Joe about our favorite movies that, despite us liking them, espoused in various ways insane right wing or reactionary points of view. But this movie doesn't. This is a subversive gem. And Matt, I think we should close by.

You said to me in the past that Gremlins 2 is the only non-reactionary, postmodern text. And I'm wondering if you could take us off by bikes, maybe taking a stab at explaining that. Well, I mean, I was probably exaggerating. But the basic point I was making is that Gremlins 2 is self-aware in a way that postmodern art is.

But usually, that kind of thing in movies exists to deflate and diffuse whatever feeling of alienation you have when you're started watching it, because everything just disappears into a hall of mirrors. But Gremlins 2, the Gremlins, as evil and mean as they are, like you're talking about with brainy Gremlin shooting that guy. They are liberatory, because they

are this thing that comes into being due to our crappy society. They take over the thing over that clamp tower. It's like a vengeance. They made this horrible, sterile, alienating building with technology that controls people's lives and also doesn't make them any more convenient, which I think we can all recognize.

We literally lived that experience last night trying to sign into different fucking streaming services, remembering passwords to watch this movie and prepare for today. Yes. We couldn't just pop it a VHS or DVD. We had to spend 20 minutes trying to remember passwords and get onto the streaming service. If they released this now, and if you

wanted to do a prank in mid-movie, it would have to just start buffering. Matt Wood was also very high and at one point tried to put in his Apple ID and started to write in Apple. Don't tell people that. They don't need to know what my password is. People are going to start buying movies without my permission. No, but the Gremlins, they're liberatory

because despite their evil and their violence, they do represent a break with technological capitalist society and that they are cleansing Gremlin reign. And narrative because they're aware that they're in a movie and therefore that they can change it. They literally break the film at one point. And then at the end of the movie, they narratively break the film because once the musical number

starts, you have this amazing segment where there's just no continuity anymore, where it's like they're singing and then they're getting a tattoo and then Greta's coming up with the music number with the big cards. And it just falls apart even as a narrative and they've taken over the actual film itself in addition to the physical copy. It's cool.

It's a good movie. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I think that is the perfect place to leave it. It's cool. It's a good movie. And for that, we have Joe Dante to thank. Thanks for coming. Thank you guys so much for coming out tonight.

Thank you. Again, once again, thanks to Josh Olson, their podcast, the movies that made us trailers from hell. Once again, thanks to the Egyptian. Thanks to you guys. And thanks to Joe Dante. Cheers, everybody. That one of these creatures is somehow able to talk.

And he's going to talk with us right now. I think the main question that people have is the creature, what is it that you want? Fred, what we want is, I think, what everyone wants and what you and your viewers have. Civilization. Yes, but what sort of civilization are you speaking about, Richard?

The niceties, Fred, the flying points. Diplomacy, compassion, standards, manners, tradition. That's what we're reaching toward. Oh, we may stumble along the way, but civilization, yes. The Geneva Convention Chamber Music Susan Sontag. Everything your society has worked so hard to accomplish over the centuries, that's what we aspire to. We want to be civilized.

I mean, you take a look at this cell here. Hello, baby. Now was that civilized? No, clearly not. Fun, but in no sense, civilized. Now, bear in mind, none of this has been in New York before. There are the Broadway shows. You won't have to find out how to get tickets.

There's also a lot of street crime, but I believe we can watch that for free. We want the essentials, dinettes, complete bedroom groups, convenient credit, even if we've been turned down in the past.