Club Random with Bill Maher - Ron Perlman | Club Random with Bill Maher

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Anarchy! Hell Boy! Quest for Fire! Ron Perlman and Bill on what got Ron through the pandemic, the instructive nature of the movie Quest for Fire, the name change Bill wants for the Oscars, why TV has overtaken movies,  when art became lecturing, L.A.’s best watering hole ever, how the psyche of America has changed movies, the guys’ favorite J Lo vehicles, Ron’s take on Hell Boy, Bill’s pitch for a Titanic sequel, and the genius of William Goldman.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know what my favorite superhero movie is? It's the one everyone thinks is garbage. Help boy. No, help boy, yes, well. Oh. The only reason I was in Quest for Fire, by the way, you thought it was, put up my acting. The guy was looking at my forehead.

He was so fast. I just quit smoking one month ago. Figures? Cigars. Cigars, but you don't have a hair, or cigars. I was inhaling cigars. I just quit smoking one month ago. SIGARETS? SIGARETS. SIGARETS. But you don't have to hail a SIGARETS. I was inhaling SIGARETS. Come on.

I know. You look great. I can't believe you. I'm trying to just try to just... It's funny. You've got to hand some words. You've got older. Thank you.

No, really. But you're all first party of career. It was always in these parts. You know, it was for fire and beauty and everything. They did everything they could to cover it. It worked for you. It didn't work. The first party of career was always these parts. You know, what's for fire and beauty and everything. They did everything they could to cover it. It worked for you. I mean, look at the career you've had.

But you actually grew into a nice, I would never guess that those were the roles looking at you now that you played early in your career. What are you drinking? I'm drinking, I think that's maybe a Nyeho tequila, perhaps? Well, whatever you want, maybe it's already here, and here are some drinks that are already poured. That's water.

We will figure it out. That's water. Is this a drink? That's water as well. I can't get enough water. You got it. You got a high drink. What do you, what do you have?

Communism of a drink. There you go. What do you want to mix it with? Nothing. Really? Just like, just like, just to put hair in your chest. Just the eyes. By the way, I remember seeing QuestreFire in the theater in New York on 54th Street, the

Jigsaw. Yes. Which was a big room. Do you remember the big? My favorite theater in the world, the fifth cell. Seriously? Well, my two favorite theaters, it's hard to generalize like this because you know, I mean, Radio City Music Hall

is a pretty nice space. But not movies. They're all movies. Yeah, I saw some amazing movies. They show movies at Radio City Music Hall. They use to do all the Carnegie Hall. Yeah. Right.

Radio City is a good place to go see a movie. But cinema, a dome, and in L.A. and then the Ziegfield in New York were my two favorite places to go see movies. And you're just, you know, as luck would have it, that's the two theaters that Quest opened in. Oh, you remember that? You remember where it opened? I don't remember the good shit, Bill. But I mean, I remember it was 1981. Cheers, Bill. Yes, great to see you. I always loved seeing you when I saw you after the show. You'd be at the after party at real time.

And I was always very flattered that you were just wanted to be there. Like more than I could tell you and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. No, I had, it was fantastic to watch you live the night I came, the last time I came. Fernand Amandi was the journalist who you had on the show that night and he invited me as a guest and watching you zigzag your way through all of these different mindsets was very aquabatic. Oh, thank you. I will say, I love I'm sure it sounds amodest.

We do it still within real time. I mean, the show's cold real time when we do it in real time. For most of the 20- when years it's been, it was live, I mean, live, live. You know that it. We shot it at seven o'clock, we're at air down here. If you had the east coast feed,

and it was 10 o'clock to the east. Well, I wasn't aware that that ever changed. I assumed it was... No, when the pandemic came, then we had to move to four o'clock. Okay. For like most of the things with the pandemic, no reason that ever saved one life.

And you were doing it from one of your rooms here. Here, right? Right, fucking here. And in my backyard for six months, I mean, my God, six months, I mean my God Looking back it just looks so stupid, but I don't want to get on that You were one of the things that got us through pal. Thanks. I mean, but you know everybody was like you know Turn and tail and oh for fuck going into a defensive crowd. Oh, I can there stand. And there you were. I can't stand.

We got to see pieces of your wardrobe. We never knew existed. Exactly. Yes. And my dogs were like bit players in my fucking television show. Now my dogs are like getting a credit. It was the whole thing was just so stupid. Anyway, I do remember so vividly seeing that movie

in that theater. I also saw Gandhi there. When it opened, I was so blown away, Gandhi. I mean, the way he portrayed him and just the way he enveloped that character and the feelings of peace and love and harmony that radiated to the screen. But the guy next to me would not shut up, I had this luck. Did you?

No, I'm just kidding. It's a good left or right. No, but I saw a quest for fire there and it was such, I mean, I'd never seen a movie like that. I don't think they made a movie like that since. And I'm wondering if you, I said that question. Do you keep up with, like I'm super fascinated with prehistory?

And 1981 to now is a long time and they keep making discoveries and, like, I remember vividly saying on the screen, when I came on 80,000 BC, I was like, oh, that is so awesome. That is a great memory. It's a great thing to have remembered because very few people that just escaped a lot of people. I mean, I know because of all the questions you get when the movie opens. When did that take place? It was right there, motherfucker. 80,000 B.C. And of course, I think for a lot of people who don't have this silly hobby I have of studying prehistory and following the latest discoveries of the archaeologist and shit, they can't place that.

So let me place it for you. Homo sapiens are species, it's only 200,000 years old, which is pretty amazing. Now humans, our last common ancestor is six million years ago with the chimps. Then about 2.5 million years ago, we have Australia, Pithicus. That's a human. It's like Lucy, remember? They called her Lucy, but four foot tall. Not that cute.

No. White frame. Not like Desi's Lucy. Unless you're a vol. But so that's a human, but not a homo sapient, of course. And they left Africa. Humans did about two million years ago. But it wasn't until, now they say fire was discovered in 300,000 BC.

So before homo sapiens and the connection you've all harari makes in his book is that that's not coincidence. When they came up with fire, they could cook food which had formerly been filled with so many bacteria and parasites that the intestines had to be enormous, but cooking it allowed the intestines to shrink and the energy went up to the brain. And that's why our brains got bigger. Oh, wow. Not that you'd know it by this campaign.

But so that's where I place you now. Human fire 300,000 BC. So it's been around for a while in 80,000 BC, but they still can't make it, I guess. Oh, wait, no, I think that's what they were saying. That's what also has been seen in the film. So that's in the 40, something years since they made that film, that's what's changed.

And in your movie, 80,000 BC was when they were still trying to find how to make fire. They could capture it in the lightning. They captured it in that thing that they call them the first muck. The guy who drops it in the stream, they're carrying it. They have it, but you have to keep it in a tabernacle. And it's the ball guy. I loved it.

They made it the ball guy. It's always the ball guy. I loved it they made it the ball. So it was the ball guy. It's, um, he's about a million. Let's, you know, let's just face it. I mean, you know, but, um, no, the whole, uh, conceit of the film is that, um, the ability to evolve was commensurate with the kind of climate you lived in, by that point, so that there were certain areas that were very cold and people were just living in a tremendously defensive manner just to try to stay alive.

And then there were certain more tropical climates where people were evolving faster because the obstacles were not, you know, yeah, stultifying that. So the conceited the film is our fire goes out. We live on the north of the Pyrenees and then these three warriors are sent to find fire, which is a commodity, not something that happens spontaneously in nature. And we cross the Pyrenees and where it's much warmer and and glow and behold, there's's Ray Don fucking John.

Absolutely. Right. Naked. And so... Right. And she... That was... That was a fire, baby. That's right. It was Ray Don, John. And she makes fire. It's this thing.

Yeah. It's rubbing your hands together, basically, with the stick in the middle. Right. And, you know, the fact that they hadn't figured that out yet, This thing. Yeah. It's rubbing your hands together basically with the stick in the middle. Right. And, you know, the fact that they hadn't figured that out yet and they needed her to tell us, I think, is instructive. Is that everything you need to know?

Humans, and I mean, I could, you know, be the champion feminist here and say, sure, the woman figured it out and the stupid man wouldn't ask for directions to fire. Well, no, but I mean, in your defense, it wasn't her specifically, but with the tribe that she lived among. Well, she shows the guy. She shows the guy, but then she takes him into this cave, in this rather sacred moment of the film, it's a very climactic moment of the film,

and introduces him to the shaman who is responsible for keeping this thing going. And so it's a skill that's already being passed down which he happens to be a part of. But yeah, that was the theory. Of when John Jacques, I know, great filmmaker, who has... And he's French, obviously.

This French, and I've done four movies with him. Is that right? That was the first movie I ever made, and that was certainly the first collaboration with him. But he had made another movie called Black and White and Color, which was an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Jean-Jacques Iszaz, intellectually curious, is anyone who I've ever met in the business. He made seven years into Bette later on.

He made this called The Bear. He made another movie about these tigers in Canberra. The Bear called Brothers. He just has, he refuses to ever... Still with us? He's still with us. He just made an incredibly beautiful rendition of the burning of Notre Dame.

It was never got American distribution, but that's a whole lot. Put a documentary about when it was not a documentary, although it, when you watch the movie, you think you're watching. Because Notre Dame really did burn a few years ago. He made him film about that, which was a fictionalized telling of a real event. But the way he made it. Who'd done it? Who burned Notre Dame? Well, yeah, that's all in there.

And he's got these guys who are real firemen playing in the movie, acting in the movie. I don't think they've ever acted before, but they're so invested in what he's asking them to do, that they're giving phenomenal performances. And you actually think, so the beauty of this film, which is indicative of Jean-Jacques's singular, non-commercial way of storytelling, is that you actually think, he's making you think you're watching real footage of the fire.

When the fire was a year and a half earlier, he just recreated it. And he shot in about eight cathedrals all around Europe. I said this one, you did. I can remember the name, but I liked it a lot. You're in a, it's recent. It's a Famke Jensen as your co-star. You're a, you're a hitman. And Richard Dreyfus is in it. I heard a wonderful, I saw some stills. Oh, of wonderful moment you had with him right here in this moment. It went on for two hours and... Oh God, now it's gonna be doing the Dreyfus.

No, no. Well, he had had a rough day. He was having a rough moment. He was ill or something. He was not ill. He was just very relaxed. I mean, there's no excuse. Well to his credit, if you didn't see it and just listen to it, he was perfectly elucid. And I mean, I'll always be a big Richard Rifers fan, both professionally and personally.

I did the first thing we talked about. He did a special on ABC was a big movie start at the time so we could get a thing like that's done in 1987 on the Constitution goes the 200th anniversary of the Constitution right and I was for some reason one of the young whippers nappers who was like on that show And it was a big feather in my cap at the time. I was thrilled that Movies of Arbiter Dreyfus was, you know, putting me in something. And I was gonna be on TV and not just telling jokes

but like doing a little high brow sort of thing with a big star. So, I feel the same way about him. He's real American royalty. and he's cinema royalty. And this little movie that you're referring to called Asher, Asher, right, is something that I had a little production company at my own for about five years. It was a lot of lessons learned and no small amount of come up, it says, but it was a result of like, you know, if you just pick really, really cool material, you can make hundreds of millions of dollars in every movie that I may lost money.

Hollywood is like a cat. I mean, it's just a movie making. Like, they have declared it dead so many times. My theory was always it'll never die because if something you can do on a date for two hours without talking, which what everyone is looking for in life at a certain point in relationships. I remember when I don't remember when I was born wasn't born yet, but I've seen the footage of when like cinema scope or some they when TV came in like in the early 50s they were they thought it was over for movies.

So they made movies in like this way too big screen. Movies of that era when they come on our TVs, they have to sort of box them weirdly because they thought they could like win the audience back with size. Like TVs are small. So the other day I posted, 1986, Billy Wilder won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. We should. Very big deal. And it's one of my favorite speeches. But he starts off the second half of the speech with I've been working in Hollywood for more than 50 years,

which is also a half a century. And I've watched Hollywood vacillate between despair and fear. And there was such a witty thing to say that it took 30 seconds for the audience to realize, oh, that was a fucking great line. From it, from it. But then you went on to say, first it was sound that was going to kill us. Yes. Then it was the, and he goes through this whole litany, I think, and this is 1986. The cell phone hadn't been invented yet. He said the new thing that's going to kill us is the chip. What does it call them?

The microtrip? The microtrip. He said, whereby you, you know, you won't need theaters anymore. You won't need studios anymore. You'll be able to a satellite will take an image and spread it over five million screens. And then he goes on to explain AI. And this is 1986 and he lays it all out. Really? Oh, I got to see this. Can you YouTube this? Yeah, you must. And I'll shoot it to you.

Shoot it to me. But I'm sure it may be all you do All you do is Google you know Billy Wilders acceptance speech in AFI But the point of it is is that The his the reason why I posted it is because the last line of the movie is so my fellow picture makers don't despair They may have the kingdom, but we have the power and the glory. Well, which is one of my, one of the greatest lines in a speech

that an artist can possibly give. It's a good book, right? It seems like, but it's, it's power in the glory. Yes, that's from the Bible. Yes, yeah. But it's, it's, it's so many, it's so many movie titles are. East of Eden, right, be in Harriet the Wind.

Right. I'm sure there's a list of 50, and I knew too, show I'm gonna. You're way ahead of the game. I'm not gonna get off it. I didn't know any. I'm gonna make believe that. No, but I'm at Sodom and Gamora.

That was, well that. Yeah. Sound of music. No, that didn't do. I don't know. No, it was from the Bible. When I had my genealogy done by Skip Gage, you know, that show, the Henry Lewis Gates, the Oh, Finding Your Roots, the brilliant Harvard Professor, Henry Lewis Gates.

I know. No, they, they, you should do it. I mean, they, they would be perfect. Well, I've been obsessed with doing something like a 23 and me or whatever they call them. But they do all the research for it. But this one sounds really tricky. Well, you must have seen this. It's not PBS since, you know.

Yeah, this is the one to do. Okay, so I did it and they do, like, I mean, they do you on one day and then they have another one and they put two people together to make it more interesting episode. And they do the way they've traced my heritage back to 1818 in Ireland. You know, they have the church records of the person. It's cool that you get that time and they give you a booklet with all the clippings and the information. It's, I mean, you cannot get your geology done better for free. Or they may pay you a stipend. But I, when they, the star of my genealogy thing on the Skip Gate show

was my grandfather, my Irish side grandfather, my father's father, who I never met, he died in 1940. But he was a major motherfucker. There's batter headlines in the New York Times. So from 1919, 1920, he was head of the Boatsman's unions. He shut down New York Harbor. Yeah. Negotiated with the president. Maybe it was Woodrow Wilson, I think, himself.

That's pretty big. Oh, that's cool. Oh, very cool. I'm kind of afraid of what they'll find. Why? Because you know, the cold, the onion, the and the thorns that I have. Yeah. We, but that's the only reason I was in question fire, by the way, you thought it was for at my acting, but no, like, boy, you're acting. But the guy was, but the guy was looking at my forehead and he was so fascinated. But that's what I'm saying. It's funny at your age now, that's all gone. I know what you mean.

We all noticed that. I'm a different kind of animal. You are a different kind of animal. Yes, in the end with thought. But isn't that, to go back to Quest V or five for a second, wasn't that also part of the plot, was that Ray Don Chang's tribe, who were much more human-like, than interbreeded, because we did interbreed. Everybody has not everybody, but people do have

an eanderthal blood in them. Well, the last image of the film is, you know, he's trying to fuck up from behind, and she turns them around around and they they that's not the last In the film I remember I turned it off after that. That's all I can't watch my movies either Like like There are cannibal women in the abacuda jungle. I love that film. I know all the dialogue, but no the last shot Excuse me. It's not the last shot. The last shot is she is pregnant. Yes, she's pregnant. Looking at the moon, she's sitting against his chest

and they're looking at the moon. Yeah, but about 30 minutes before the end, he goes to take her from behind. Okay. And she turns around and shows him a missionary. Fairly, that's meant a lot more to you. That's the only reason I took the moon. I feel like I'm, I sit to myself, this is filmmaking. Fairly that scene meant a lot more to you. That's the only reason I took the move.

I feel like I'm, I said to myself, this is filmmaking. Right now I'd like to give a shout out to all those people whose job it is to hire. From the small business owners growing their team to the HR directors hiring people across the nation. You have one of the toughest jobs there is. But what if I were to tell you that there's something that can make your whole hiring process faster and easier? It's Zippercruder, and right now you can try it for free at zippercruder.com slash random. Zippercruder's smart technology finds and sends you available great matches for your job. Once you review your list of the most qualified candidates for your job, you can easily invite your top choices to apply. So they're more likely to apply sooner.

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The actor, the artistry in general. Okay. People who are brilliant enough to paint like Picasso and like, very branching stuff. People who are brilliant enough to write music like Chopin and Gershwin's The Constance. When we invent the new modality of storytelling, which was cinema back in the beginning of the 20th century, they came out of the woodwork, geniuses. Geniuses? If you look at the like, chaplain. Yeah. The only thing that changes is not the artistry.

The artistry is constantly there. Right. And it's there to be tapped. A lot of it doesn't get tapped. But there's so much in reserve that is waiting to be tapped. The only thing that changed to me was the marketplace. So when before there was cinema, you had playwriting that was mind-blowingly exquisite and literature, fiction writing, great, great, the Hemingways and the Fitzgeralds of the Falken and then movies

come along and you see those same guys writing for films. And then the studios started to falter in the 50s and it was really hard to make a living as one of those guys. So they started to move over to alternative sources of revature. They went with the money was. So they went to television. Now, the reason why they're calling this the golden era of television is because little by little, the movie going experience got fucked up, really fucked up, little by little. You're talking about superhero movies and sequels and... Yeah.

Because... Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I'm talking about the difference between an amusement park and a movie theater was almost unrecognizable. That's great. That's a perfect way to put it. But these geniuses, these great writers, still had phenomenal stories to tell. They would have been writing them if it was the 70s and you had Ryan DePamma and Juan Escozese and those dudes, motherfuckers, you know, doing their thing.

They would have been writing for cinema because that's where the money was. But the money was no longer in cinema, so where do they go? And this is how you get FX becomes, you know, a cable station and a mind-blowing content. And all this cable stations start exploding to give these writers a place to go where they can write original mind-blowing shit, but also make a living, like make a living. Raise their kids, put them through school. You have the school that you hear all the time that the 70s was kind of like the peak of movie,

like the movies of the 70s. Lots of people are always, maybe it's just something to say at a cocktail party, you know, like, but I think there's great movies in every decade of course, it's like there's great music, but there is something about the 70s. Like I was watching three days of the Condor recently.

What a fucking movie. Right. I mean, so fucking good. So fucking good. And they knew how to make something that was at once entertaining, but also serious. It had adult themes and it was about a real thing. But it wasn't just a downer, which is, you know, it wasn't like, oh, homeless lady shits in a bucket movie, which is like a lot of what they put out now. But we did a whole thing on it one night that they should call the Oscars the Downers or the Debs for for Debbie downer. And out here's your MZ, the Sad emoji, because

they just seem to change the raison d'etre from, we want you to enjoy yourselves and be entertained and think sometimes to, we want you to see how worthy we are. We want you to see, and this is my thing about, once it gets to that place of lecturing, then you're leaving the realm of art. Now you're in the realm of polemics, which has a place, but it's not what art does. I mean, my feeling is that the golden age of cinema

was a 30s and 40s. And then the 70s was a tremendously kind of atypical, phenomenal period, because you still had an infrastructure that would support the emergence of great new storytellers. Like Scorsese, like Dupalma, like Coppola, like all the guys that came up in the 70s, like the guy who did five easy pieces.

You know, with... Oh, Jack Nicholson, yeah. Yeah, no, but the... No, I know. How Ashby? Well, how Ashby is one of them. I'll think of his name, but it was just one guy after another, but we still had an environment

that would support them commercially. We still, people were still going to the theater enough to justify giving $15 million a year. But again, because they knew they could do, they could walk and chew gum at the same time. Spielberg, you know, I mean. But every era has shit and greatness. I mean, era has mostly shit.

Most of everything is shit. Most music is shit. Most books are shit. Most movies are shit. Most TV is shit. Life is mostly shit. You know, I mean, you said there's all these geniuses. Can I just say more to drink because this is,

I really need to conversation. It's kind of like, well, different things. depressing you know not at all I'm just joking but but I did go through that tequila quite quickly and I'm using my hand is that I please go we don't we don't we're brothers we're brothers and we don't stand on ceremony I love brand of piece of ice brand of his right in the title oh my, my new Trader Vicks lighter. I love it. It hears the Trader Vicks coming back to L.I. here.

They sent me all this awesome shit. I love the lighter. That's beautiful. Do I put some of the shit? Oh yeah, there you go. Trader Vicks since 1934. And I hear from one of the people I met when I came in here today that they're coming back to LA.

Yes, they are. They have a presence again. Did you spend some time at the one under Mosher and Santa Monica in your day? Well, when I first got here in the mid-80s, we all did. It was one of my first stops because it's like, you know, it's like 77 cents extra. One of those places, you know know you just got to hit. But also because you could get so drunk, the drinks were not like any other bar.

I mean it was a little kind of old school, which is also what was kind of cool about it booths. I mean trust me in the 80s, that was like a go-to to get laid kind of place. Because like one of those drinks, and you were both on your ass, we were always doing a Richard Dreyfus in those booths. We were always sliding around in the slush because they would bring out a fucking human

skull. It looked like it was that big, ceramic, beautiful ceramics, but it was a bowl of liquor. It was a bowl of like eight different kinds of liquor, and of course the sugar amount that we took must have been just enough to make many diabetics, but you know, you didn't do it all that often, but between the fruity stuff that they put in to mask the multiple liquors in there and the liquor itself. But yeah, and big long straws and you would just be under the table after, you know, one and if you had two of them.

So unfortunately, those days in my life are long gone. I can't drink like that. Can you still? I can't. I never could. I never could drink like that. But I can drink a little, not every night, but that's otherwise you just you wind up looking like Ted Kennedy. Yeah. I'm going through the thing about aging. I'm like North of 70 now.

So, that's as good as you can do. But it's very, very hard when you are confronted, not confronted, but smacked in the face with the fact that you can't do the things that were so dearer, that were so like, of course. We're doing tonight. We're going to go out out. We're gonna get five or six places. Exactly. And, you know, and then you get to the point where you say, you know, you go to see your doctor and go, I have this lower intestinal discomfort

and he said, well, did you do anything different last night than you usually do? I said, no, no, I just went out and had seven or eight drinks. Oh, and I had to have a very good. I could I could I could that was something I could have done routinely, but not now. Well, now I'm finding out that my pancreas is is revolting as has melt Brooks. The the way Mel Brooks used the term, the people that are revolting.

Of course they are, they stink on ice. I know. But um... Well that is, I mean, my hats off to you at that age, to be able to drink like that. The point is I can't. But for you, Bill, I'm making an example. No, no, no, no, no, look it. It's amazing, because like whatever the trade--off was when Jesus was making you in heaven, like it was worth it because like here you are at 73, that is not the skin of a 73-year-old,

especially one who drinks, and that's usually what goes on people. I mean, you could definitely still play really any late middle age, you know, if the character's 59, that is not a problem. That's a good thing to, especially like, you know, you're a good heavy, you know, like I, that's why I like that asher movie because you were, but, you know, I mean, they, and we've certainly have seen a zillion hitmen. I mean, talking about Hollywood and their lack of imagination,

like can't they think of another way to say that a guy's morals are compromised? I mean, really, you could put a longer list than the names of the movies that come from the Bible to the list of people. What are we fascinated about though? We really like people who take matters into their own hands.

Yes, that's interesting. I think that that's the fascination. I think that that's why we like the Godfather so much and all the gangster movies so much. And the Cagnies and the Bogarts, if you want to go all the way back to the origin story, we just like vigilante. But they weren't, but now they're with deathwish.

No, this is, yes, vigilante. OK, but that's a different category than assassin, hitman. There's been many, I mean, the one has played it. I could name a lot of people if we put our minds on it right now, who have played some version of the hitman. Remember the one, the French guy with, I think, Natalie Portman is the kid in it. Yeah, the genre, no. Terrific.

And it's always, you know, I'm a hitman, but I have a code. But I have a heart of a gold. Not a heart of gold, but they definitely have a code. No women and children, and also her mafridates. I will not kill her. I have a code. You know, whatever it is. But I thought you guys brought, whatever it was, it was moody and cool.

So, you know, the fact that that's what it was, I guess that had to be the spine of the project. Well, the tag rope walk, if you're going to, you know, immerse yourself in a hitman movie, then you have to, you're very signed on to like, okay, I'm gonna walk a fine line here. And if I go to the left too much or the right too much fallen, and I kill myself. But the type of walk is that you have to make the audience believe that everybody you're killing has it coming. The world is better off with them dead. Well, yes. That's, and that's where this thing comes in about, you know, this instant sort of justice that we're all longing for. Right. I think we're all longing.

Definitely that, then there's an interesting way. We see the psyche of America change by how we look at movies with villains who, in the past, did not have to die. I'll give you an example. In the original Cape Fear. I love that movie. The original? Yeah. And the Scorsese. Scorsese was good, but the original was phenomenal. It's 1960, I think. The original. Probably in 1960, he doesn't die at the end, the bad guy, the psycho. Because in 1960, I think, the original. Probably not. In 1960, he doesn't die at the end, the bad guy, the psycho. Because in 1960, people still had faith in the justice system. So if a guy was saying to the bad guy, well, that's it.

You'll be going away for a very long time and you will get your just-comuppens and there's just country of ours and that's just what I have to say to you. It was all good. But by the time you got to 1992 or whatever that was, the person has to die. The person always has to die. We do not trust the justice system. If there's an evil seed, I was watching the Jennifer Lopez movie called The Boy Next Door, where she fucks, she's like this hot, you know, 45-year-old woman and she fucks a teenager, next door,

a teenager. He looks like he's 35 and he's playing 18 and he talks like someone who's 40. I mean, it's hysterical, but she, in a moment of weakness one night, fucks the boy next door, and then he sprung on her, and he becomes a psycho. And he's gonna ruin her life, many tries. We've seen this pattern in many movies.

It's amusing. And at the end of course, he has to die. She has to kill him. He can't just keep being a psycho when we trust that the system will take care of you. And before he has to die. He has to kill him. He can't just keep being a psycho when we trust that the system will take care of you. Because he has it coming. He definitely has it coming. He had her coming that first night and that's where all the trouble is.

Short of loops. That's where the trouble started. Unsustainable as they say. He gave it into it that one night. He put public in party. I think it better movie would have been if she just went with it. It was like, oh, this is... That was a sequel.

This is Good Dick. And he's next door. But the problem is he had befriended her teenage son as a kind of a... Oh my God, no. A bad, bad move, bad. That's hitting below the belt. Wow. Really have it coming when you use the teenage son

to get a little. He wanna put J.Lo in a messy situation. And so another one she just did called mother. It's fantastic. Did you see that on Netflix? That's brand new, right? It's pretty new. Yeah, I haven't seen that one.

Really good. But I read amazing things about it. Yeah, she's like up in Alaska. And again, I think she said, it matters, or some shit. Yeah, and that's definitely doing some badass stuff in the snow. Can I get back to something? Please do. We, please do, Ron. Yeah, you hydrate a little bit there because I, I feel as though you were onto something a minute ago where we talked about how there seemed to be an unstoppable, irresistible movement to keep everybody at home, which culminated with a pandemic, which was, you know, like nobody saw that coming.

But everything was going in that way anyway, because Amazon was delivering everything to your house, and the burgers were being delivered to your house, and you never had to really leave your house. You could even, like, you know, have put on some goggles and have a sensation like you were walking in the park. You know, walking your dog virtually. I will never be one of those people. No, none of those. I don't think you ever look cool with goggles on your head. But what I was saying was that it seemed as though

when all of this was proliferating, that this was the new normal, that this was gonna be the way it was. People were going to be consigned to doing everything at home and there would be no more communal office. Yeah, like the office, like there's no place where people gather communally. Yeah, there would be, you know, movie theaters were the synagogues and the churches.

These were places where there were ritualistic in nature, but what you got out of them was real spiritual kind of nourishment. And all of those things began to become devalued by the fact that you don't have to leave your house now. You can stay home and get anything you want, anything you want. And we thought, and I even thought, but then, you know, somehow it's like that little piece of grass that grows between the concrete. And somehow a movie does $180 million on a weekend, and you go, not so fast. They look a knopper, however. I think that the message from the audience is, do more of that. Work a little harder i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i just made $350 million. I mean, there's a reason why they make the movies,

they make, they wanna make money. If people didn't go to these, but a lot of those franchise ones are starting to peter out. You can only do it so many times, right? Even for kids. And they're all the same from each other. Like, you know what my my favorite superhero movie is,

it's the one everyone thinks is garbage. Hellboy. Hellboy, yes. Well, that's a, that's it's own special category. Right. Yes, I agree. It really is. But that was a great thing for you. That was well said for you, you know.

No, I'm kidding. No, it's a big thing. It took a shot there. No, it's great to have a tent pole, franchise thing like that. Plus, it's a, what was great about, now that I've taken this conversation, shoved it back my way, which is please do. It's better watch out because I do that. But it was basically a superhero movie about a slav.

Yes. I wanted to stay on the lead pizza in a watch. It's really good. It's fun. It's an underachiever superhero movie, which gives it a second layer, but anyway, enough about me. No, no, I love Hellboy, so you don't have to apologize for that. I was just going to say the one I like that everyone hates is Catwoman. For some reason, Spider-Man is genius and Catwoman is horrible.

And to me, it's always the same movie, the origin story of how they got to be where they are. And it's like, I mean, AI looks at that and goes, oh, please, it'll take me one second to come out with the next one. I mean, they don't even need AI. It's just feeding the last one. I mean, they don't even need AI. They just feed in the last one. And Catwoman. What is the opposite of artificial intelligence? Real intelligence? Non-intelligence. Well, yeah. That's what you're describing. Yeah. I mean, it was just

zero intelligence. At least in the Catwoman, I could look at Halle Berry. But you know, I mean, it is amazing how much they will, Liam Neeson has done like three, I'm not talking about taken, which is, I mean, the first one was great. The first taken is great. Then of course, it gets like, oh, taken again, All these kind of movies were something crazy happens to somebody and the movies such a big hit, they're like, well, I guess it's going to happen to Bruce Willis again in Die Hard 4. I think they should make Titanic 2 where she goes on another ship and it hits her iceberg. Well, then Titanic And it is a right-spirg. Qual that Titanic too, is it me? But you know what I mean?

They just, they, they paint themselves into this corner. But Liam Neeson has done this other thing where he did a movie where he was on a train and somebody's like blackmailing him to take over the train or else I'll kill your mom or something. And then they did the same movie on a plane. It's almost the exact same script. But now we're on a plane. I'm like, my hat's off to you Liam. That takes full disclosure. It goes back to William Goldman, who said in Bad Hollywood, nobody knows anything. Oh yes. Oh, yes.

Right. So that's an amazing book. The William Goldman adventure. Hollywood something. Adventures in the screen trade. Yes, and that's exactly. I mean, it is such a handy guide to, if you ever wonder about anything that's happened in Chobasitz,

he will make sense of it for you. Like, I love the part where he says, people think it's a mystery, like, how we get big movie stars to, you know, like, trick our script. Write them their first scene where you first see them. Write them a big fucking speech where they look like a hero, and they'll do your movie. Write them, make them look cool. Put that on the paper. And it's so true. Everyone, every star, just about, wants to just, in baseball, they would say, stay in the

show. But the interesting thing about a guy like William Goldman is, you can't assign more hits with a person than he was associated with. And yet he writes a book, which is the first sentence, is, he's the thing about Hollywood, nobody knows anything. Yeah. I think he's talking more about the studio heads and what's going to be a hit or not. But as far as, how do you actually have a good script? And he's like

butch Cassidy right? And I mean, I can't, the sting is that what he- Yes, I mean, yes, I can't remember all of them. But yes, he had an amazing run. But- And the Princess bride. Oh, really? I didn't know that. But here's the thing I just, you know, better than I do about movies is anything can fuck up a movie. It's, you have to be lucky. There's so many elements. And if any one of them doesn't work, it's probably not going to work. Yeah.

I'm sure when everybody, I mean, when I was making brilliant movies like Cannibal Women, I remember every day they come back from the dailies and it's just the greatest fucking thing anyone's ever seen. I mean, cellular, this should be sent directly in their time capsule. Smith's Sonia, I smell the Sonia. Yeah, and this is like, they all think when they're making it, and then I guess they get in the room with the editors and they put it together and then suddenly it's like, oh, I mean, and you see so many movies from very talented directors. Let's talk. They just miss.

Yeah, no, I've never been, I've never, I've been working on a movie where all along the way you say, did you see the Dallas? Right. Oh, I know. I know. And then you go see the, you invite it to the cast for screening and you watch the movie and you like. Right. Oh, I know. Oh my God. I know. And then you go see the cat, you get invited to the cast for screening. Right. And you watch the movie and you're like,

Right. And you go, what happened to all those great dailies? Right. They never made it to the screen. But it's all just everybody's blowing smoke up everybody's ass. Right. But the thing is like, And you're right, the odds are so against something good taking place because 400 pair of hands touched

this product. Right. For it comes out. You have to, yeah. I got a pee. Look to be perfectly honest. I was, I can't remember the name of the fellow in the white sea share who welcomed me here.

Chris? The minute I got here because I drove from Pasadena, and I was really three in the men I got here. I said, I get a bathroom, so bad. And that's only a 40-minute drive. I mean, you know, come on. It's just not for the... I understand.

...agent is not for the... Well, Petty Davis, so this never-siss is... It's so not for siss. It's really not. But I'm so glad we got here. But the only thing that aging is good for, which you've always been good at, but you're better at now,

is that you just don't give a fuck with anybody's thing. Yeah, and you're wiser. Climb, renderer. All right, man, thanks, brother. This was really so much fun. I'm so glad we get up slowly because that's the way I know it. Well you know, drivers has the record.

So you're never gonna, you don't have to worry about it. This is a very rectible chair, but it's kind of low.