Happy Sad Confused - Damon Lindelof

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

Damon Lindelof is a nerd after our own heart so of course he's on the podcast this week to talk about a comfort movie Josh firmly approves of, "The Last Starfighter"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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none of you are safe. New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, Sad, Confused begins now. Today on Happy, Sad, Confused, Damon Lindeloff on his comfort movie, The Last Starfighter. Hey, guys, I'm Josh Horowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused.

So pleased, that's always, to bring you a new guest to Happy, Sad, Confused, someone that I'd wanted to have on the show for a long while and apparently took a global pandemic for him to come on, Damon Lindeloft, yes, co-creator of Lost, the leftovers, so many things you love, is on the show today talking about his comfort movie, The Last Star Fighter, which is a movie I can guarantee Sammy Heller has never seen.

Sammy, what say you? Never even heard of it. Well, this is educational, and this is a public service for you, Sammy. Hey, thanks. This is what this time needs. Well, I have a question for you. I have a question for you, Sammy, who's joining me from an undisclosed location. I'm looking at her via Zoom right now, and you have, all I see is whiteness and portraits of dogs behind you, which is a little unnerving.

Yeah, well, you think it's, so I'm at my parents' house, 32 years old, and I'm now back in with my parents. And behind me are portraits of two beautiful chocolate labs, Sheba and Cleo, who have been dead for over 10 years. have they been preserved? Are they stuffed somewhere in the house? Their ashes are in the house? Of course they are. And, well, my parents have three children, four grandchildren, beautiful family, no photos there, just, just the dogs. Just the beautiful dogs. It sounded like you were about to break down. You were about to well up. No, I saw my dad inching towards here, and I knew he was.

I was going to try to hop in. So I set up a barrier really quick. No Zoom bombing on this podcast. No, no. My hand went up so fast. I was going to ask you when we started this, when I said the words, the last Starfighter, what would you guess knowing nothing at all,

I assume, about this movie? Tell me your summary. What is the last Starfighter about? I think it's like one of the Star Wars prequels. Okay, enough. Probably. I'm sorry, I even bothered. No.

Yeah. or at first I thought you were going to say the last ship, which is a Sting show. Oh, I thought it was like a TNT drama. Oh, no, no. It could be, but no, no, I'm referring to the Sting Broadway production, which

is touring now very good. Oh. But no, you said the last Starfighters. So let me educate you. Nerd stuff. All right, back off. The last Starfighter, everybody else is listening, thinks you're a moron right now

because the last Starfighter's awesome. It's a 1984 film that's, it's definitely in the kind of Ambliny, Spielbergian influenced realm. Amblinny, I haven't heard that is. It's an adjective. Yeah, yeah. I like it. Damon and I will bond over this in just a bit. You'll hear the real nitty-gritty, but suffice it to say, it's a film that meant a lot to meet to young Josh Harwoods and to young Damon.

And it's about a young man who's recruited to save the galaxy because he's good at a video game. so oh there you go there you go there you go and we love damon lindeloff of course as i mentioned you were a leftovers fan right or lost fan both okay good good good good hey guess i am a nerd too josh so i was thrilled to catch up with damon who's always been uh lovely to chat with over the years but never on the podcast i'm glad uh we finally got around to chatting and and certainly one day when all this madness is all over he'll come by for a proper chat but glad that we got a chance to geek out over a mutual of The Last Starfighter. Other things I want to mention,

we should mention our mutual buddy, Ben Schwartz, who not only has a great new series of specials out on Netflix. Three of them. Middle Dish and Schwartz. You actually saw at least one of these, right? I saw all of them. Whoa.

Where were they recorded? Were they in Philly? No, they were in New York. Oh, they were in New York. Okay, got it. So, yeah, these are three different lines. Long-form improv specials, of course, if you know anything about Ben Shortsy and Thomas Middletch are the best at this kind of improv, and these are really funny.

They're awesome. And Ben is also a guest on one of this week's episodes of Stir Crazy on Comedy Central. I highly recommend it. It's a blast. It's bizarre. What do you guys do? We play some games. We use some green screen technology to leave our homes to run around the world.

Yeah, it's good. It's good stuff. We play a game of Who Am I, where we have to kind of impersonate famous celebrities. Oh, both of you are rocking some crazy quarantine hair right now. My hair is bananas. His is wild, too. So I think just tune in for that alone. Yeah, that's really, that's really special. So, yeah, so that's worth plugging. Other things, you haven't been watching this. I don't know, you're the one person on the planet, Sammy. You should really get with the program, the last dance on either. SPN. Everybody's talking about this, the Chicago Bulls. Not about choreography or tap dancing. Sammy tuned in, and within 35 minutes, she realized, wait, this

isn't what I signed up for. Where is Fred Astaire? But I've actually, I got a sneak peek at some of the future episodes. It's a 10-part series. The first two have aired. I've watched, I think, the first five, and it's great. It's really, really well-done documentary. So stick with it. If you have started, I'm sure you're going to stick with it. If you haven't already, get with a program. This is a nice diversion in these times. Ten hours of good documentary material. That's good stuff. Yeah, I'll do it. Okay. You sold me. Well, your standards are low right now. I heard you're looking for the next binge, right? You're searching? Desperately. Desperately. When do you do, like a, see, like a West Wing, if you were done the West Wing, like a long one, like a really

one that's going to take a couple weeks? So I was really going to do West Wing, and then I was so afraid it'd get depressed. Yeah, it could go that way. That's true. That's true. We're contemplating going back to Battlestar Galactica, speaking of nerdy things, which I've seen, but my wife has never seen. And she actually seems to express interest in it, so I should take advantage of it. I've heard good things. It's a great show. Oh, I could do that. If Jenny's going to do it, I could do it. I don't know if it's for the entire Heller family, though. I don't know if they'll get with the program.

no but half of them fall asleep half they do in an episode so it's fine you're drugging them yeah just doesn't have a good first 10 minutes oh my god um this podcast has more than a good first 10 minutes the entire conversation is worthy of your time this is going to be damon lindaloff and i in your ears talking about one of the geekiest uh comfort movies there is from the uh 1984 the last starfighter um i recommend it whether you've seen the movie or not if you listen to this podcast then don't want to see the movie then we've failed you. Um, but I think, I think you'll get a kick out of it regardless. I'll be the judge of that. Okay. Um, remember to review, rain, subscribe to happy, say I can

fuse. Spread the good word. And one last plug. Remember to check out Sir Crazy on Comedy Central, new episodes, uh, this week with Ben Schwartz and Olivia Munn, both great episodes. Not together. No. Separate. Two, two different episodes. Got it. Oh. Whoa. Yeah. Act now while, while it's free. Um, I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation with Damon and, uh, take away, Josh and Damon. I'm sad to say this is the first time Damon Lindeloff has been on Happy Sank, Confused, only sad because I wanted you in my office,

Damon, and we're doing it this way, which is not the way to do it. But it's good to catch up. It's really, it is sad for me because the whole purpose in doing it is to be able to make those faces with you. And now I don't even get to do that. I mean, so, I know.

This is, this is an amuse-boosh. We're going to get through this, this weird time in our lives, and then we're going to reunite and make silly faces. You're holding up okay, though? You're managing? Yeah, we're okay. I mean, certainly in the grand scheme of things, I think that other than the fact that Angelinos have now been asked to wear masks and then, like, there's a parenthetical of, even though they won't do anything for you, have fun with it. literally in Mayor Garcetti's message, it was sort of like, this is a very creative community and just like, and I'm suddenly like, were we just collectively given like a civil crafts project? Is that, is that what's happening here? Because, um, but, uh, you know, I'm on, I'm, I'm all about mass, man. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm ready to rock. Yeah, you were, you were ahead of the game this year. Um, oh, sure. Have your, uh, what of your viewing habits been in the last couple weeks? Have they changed?

Are you watching different sorts of things? Are you, where you at? You know, had to do Tiger King because that's kind of what everybody's talking about. But the two new FX shows, Dave and Devs. Yeah, I've heard a lot about Debs. Is it all it's cracked up to be? Should I check this out? They're both great.

Okay. They're both great. Dave is like single camera comedy in the vein of kind of like Louis. or better things about Little Dickie. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's a Caucasian hip-hop artist who has Jewish parents, and it's about his career

and the people that he hangs out with, very, very enjoyable. And Debs is just, you know, Alex Garland at his best. Sure. And Nick Offerman and mystery and nonlinear storytelling and, you know, weird tech gurus, and it's just everything that I love and adore. I was going to say, made for you, yeah.

Yeah, and then my wife and I are finally catching up on the new Pope. We loved the Young Pope. Oh, I haven't stuck with that one. You're enjoying second season. We have just, we are three episodes into the New Pope, and we're enjoying it as much as the Young Pope, although I don't want to give anything away. the young pope, you know, is not in it as much as we would hope, but there is, but the new pope ain't bad either.

You know the old saying. There's always another pope. I've heard that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to popularize that. It never really made sense before just now. But now it makes sense.

You're right. You're right. So as you know, I've temporarily changed the focus of this podcast a little bit. I mean, on the podcast, I've always geek. out with folks about movies that we adore, but it seems apt right now that we're talking about comfort movies, movies that really bring us a lot of joy in a stressful time. We need these kind of things. So I asked you, and you were pretty quick with your comfort movie. I don't know if you went through a rigorous process or this one just let to mind. Would you care to tell the audience what

your comfort film is and introduce them to it if they're not familiar? Yes, it did just leap to mind because I think you can't really overthink these things when you said comfort. The first movie that popped into my mind was the last starfighter. And I purposely went out of my way to not Google it

or Wikipedia it or learn any factoids about it. I figure that I would just bring my own everything that I knew about the movie to this conversation knowing that probably a lot of it was factually inaccurate. For example, I don't know

who directed the movie. Like, but I do know, but I do know, I believe, and by the way, you should fact-check everything that I say. I will. I've done my research at least. I will. I got you.

Okay. But I do know that the director of this movie, either the director, I think is the director, could be the writer, played Michael Myers in Halloween. This is correct. Nick Castle is the original, the shape. And he, and here's another factoid about Nick Castle. interesting directing career. He did this.

He directed some comedies that are somewhat forgettable. Mr. Wrong, that Ellen DeGeneres won, Major Payne. But he also, you'll appreciate this. He wrote, or at least co-wrote, Escape from New York. What? No. Well, that makes sense because he had the Carpenter connection from Halloween. Exactly.

Exactly. And the lead of this film was in Halloween, too. We'll get to him in a second. Hey, did you know that John Carpenter is, actually, in addition to writing his own musical scores, a Master Carpenter? That's not true. It is not true. But it could be.

I was going to say, there is another factoid about John Carpenter besides his musical prowess. He is a crazy, I think he's like a crazy gamer, like NBA fan. Like that's what he lives. Yeah, that's what I've heard. You know, who is a Master Carpenter is David Lynch, and that is absolutely true. And if you watch this new crazy thing that he dropped on Netflix a couple months ago where he's yelling at a monkey for 20 minutes in black and white. I'm not joking. Got to go.

Got to watch this. Oh, you have to see it. He smokes cigarettes and yells at a monkey, and then the monkey sings the song. But at the end of the movie and the credits roll, it's basically like written, directed, and shares by David Lynch. So he built the set. So Master Carpenter, that's true. Okay, we're both bad at tangents. We're good at tangents.

We digress. Yeah, we do, we do. So, okay, what would you say the elevator pitch was probably for the last Starfighter? For those uninitiated, what's the story in a nutshell? The elevator pitch is that a sort of down on his luck, you know, post high school, not going anywhere, young man, lives in a trailer park, and he is wanting to get out and make something of his life, but things seem to have stalled out dead-ended for him. And he's got a great girlfriend, but not much else. And he just dreams of being more. But his one diversion is that there is this arcade game that

is outside the sundry store of his trailer park called the Starfighter. And he plays this game, and this is his this is how he's able to escape but he gets really really good at it to the point of mastering sort of like its final level and he gets to the end screen and um and this is like a major accomplishment for him and later that night um an emissary from a a galactic um a war happening many many parsecs away comes to him and says this game was a way that that we recruit the best and the brightest from all over the galaxy to basically fight the good fight. And you are now a starfighter. So come and hop into my shitty space car.

And we will pull it off. Okay, sorry. It's no DeLorean. It's DeLorean-ish, yeah. It's DeLorean-esque. And let us blast into this, into the stars. and let's go fight this fight. Well, unfortunately, this kid, once he gets sort of a look at the reality of what

Space War looks like, he opts out. He says, I would rather not engage in this. It feels very dangerous to me. And while he is returning back to Earth having chickened out, the bad guys attack, and they kill all of the Starfighters. I think there's only 15 of them. with memory shares. So not a lot of starfighters.

And now he is the last starfighter and must go single-handedly bring balance back to the universe. That wasn't just an elevator pitch. Maybe if there were like 85 floors, but that's the gist.

That was the official pitch meeting, actually. It's a clever conceit. I read up the screenwriter, a guy named Jonathan, Bettswell. We'll see if I'd probably butchering that. But apparently his idea was he wandered into an arcade and he thought of the once-in-future king and basically said, what if

a video game had basically been the sword and the stone? That was his angle into it. So, interesting because, so one of the reasons this is my comfort movie is I had a friend named Ben and we watched the last Starfighter together obsessively because we had it at VHS for some reason.

And our parents got divorced at the same time. And so we would hang out with each other and watch this movie and something wicked this way come. They were like the two movies. And we would just, one of the quotes from the last Starfighter that I always remember is that Robert Preston, who plays the character Centauri, who recruits this kid from Earth, he brings him to the, to Starwood Fighter Base. And we find out that Earth is not actually even supposed to be a place you can recruit from because they're not yet punched

into the Galactic team, and the guy who busts Centauri's boss says, up to your old Excalibur tricks again, eh, Centauri? And so the name of the, the name of the recruitment plan is Excalibur. So that is an interesting factoid that you have now, you've now made sense of that quote. So have you returned to this film in recent years at all? Like, what's the last, do you remember the last time you've seen it? In its entirety, I probably saw it again, like, maybe five or six years ago. I think I showed it to my son.

And did it work for your son and did it work for you? It feels like all 80s movies do now, which is I have a tremendous amount of nostalgia and love for them, but they move much slower than I remember them moving. And this movie was like no exception where there was like a five-minute long scene of one of the best things in the movie is that when he goes off to fight in space, they leave a decoy of him in the trailer park because they don't want the bad guys to know that he is in space as a last starfighter. And so they want the bad guys to think, oh, he never left the trailer park. And so they keep sending alien hitmen to assassinate the decoy, but they don't know who the decoy is and all these, like, fun hijinks and two. But there's like a five-minute long scene where the decoy is, like, putting up an antenna in a trailer park. And it's just like, what, why is this here? Why does this exist?

Well, can I interrupt quickly to tell you why it exists? Apparently, another fact that I've uncovered, test screening. wanted a little bit more humor. So they added additional photography of scenes with the beta unit. So there's much more beta unit thanks to needing some more comic relief. And so is there a scene where he is where he's putting up like an antenna? That's the one that I remember is being very long. That's in there.

I think that's in there. It's interesting to say to the pacing, the thing that jumps out to me, because you let me revisit this thanks to your pitch. and I was happy to, because I have a ton of affection for this, too, is, I think the elephant in the room we haven't talked about yet is the, there are a few elephants, maybe, is the effects in this film. Oh, my God. Which were, along with maybe Tron, I would put it in that category, they were like, they just took seven leaps. They were like, we're going to just go for it. We're going to do CGI before CGI is ready, and all of the space battles are full-on CGI as best as it could be rendered at that time.

which isn't great. And I think renders the film maybe an artifact of the time and perhaps hard to digest for a modern audience. It definitely stuck out as, I will say that when this movie came out after Tron, if memory serves. Yes. But part of what made the effects in Tron work was that they were inside a video game. And so you were kind of like, oh, okay, like the light cycles look cool.

like, I'll go for this. That is not the case in last hour, right? They, like, the, the, the car, the car that launches, that, that, that launches into space, it is real on Earth, but then it becomes, like, computer generated when it's flying through space, and, um, and it's not, and it's not good. And then there's, like, a scene where they're, like, hiding in an asteroid, um, where they're all, like, they get into sort of like a, like a battle with some other.

at some enemy ships, and the asteroid is CG, as are the enemy ships, as are the lasers, and it's cutting in between that and the live action of our guys in the ship. So, yes, it's not, it doesn't hold up, as this the kids say. Now, I want to say this is all out of love, because I still have, I still actually really find a lot of comfort in this film, too. I think, there are a lot of great things in it. I love the score in this film. The music is just like one of these soaring, great, like, John Williams-esque,

but it wasn't John Williams. It was a guy named Craig Safen, who has, does, his filmography is not that, like, doesn't jive with me on other respects, but this one clicked. Right, but it's full, like, it's a full orchestral, sort of, like, you know, big movie score. Yes. And let's talk. And, yeah, no, no, it's, it's, it's, it, I.

I wish I could hum it right now. I'm sure if you started, I could finish. Every year when I'm watching, I want you to note this on the next Super Bowl, I tweet the same tweet every year watching the Super Bowl. When the Lombardi Trophy is passed from hand to hand after the winner of the Super Bowl wins, they play a theme that is basically the last Starfighter theme.

Oh, wow. It's a bizarre sound alike. So there's my connection to that. Fascinating. So, okay, so the cast. let's give some some some facts on the cast it's it's mostly not necessarily familiar faces uh lance guest is alex rogan he's our lead i think he does a fine job you have dan o'herlehy under a lot of makeup as grig yes he's a he's a lizard guy there's yeah yeah i don't want to interrupt the cast

but when as as you mentioned these things i will just i would just share memories that i have is There's a scene where Alex and Grigg are showing each other photographs of their families back on their respective planets. And if memory serves, Griggs planet was either blown up by the bad guys or everybody was enslaved. I might be confusing it with enemy mine. But in any case, he has like, here's a photo of my wife. And it's just like, it's just a lizard woman. and she's wearing like a feather boa and like this cute little outfit but there's like but she's underground and surrounded by rocks and is like what is what is this um i'm i'm so glad you

mention that because the factoid i have related to that is that the actor who played griggs wife is the same actor who played grig no i i shit you not dan it's just dan o'herlehy in reptilian drag someone had to do it wow they call that they call that dragon if it's reptilian

no you're better than that no am I am I gosh let's move on to the great Robert Preston the most recognizable face in the film of course best known for the music man he's essentially playing the music man again in this film

like that's that character he is not an actor who is known for for great um he's no daniel day louis i think like um in terms of if he's going to play bill the butcher he's going to he's going to do it by way of uh of professor henry hill so um and by the way not that not that big of a leap between those two characters. But yes, he's marvelous and fantastic and and

is in it just for the money and has a very long death scene that gets negated at the end of the movie fairly arbitrarily, but that's okay because it's Robert Preston. And I think it's his last movie. It is. It's his

last film. Yeah. Yeah. The revival, the resurrection of Centauri at the end has maybe my favorite line in the film, which is when... I thought you were dead. Exactly. Great. That was another one.

Yeah. Tatari, I thought you were dead. Perfect. Perfect. You know, naming things in films is pretty important, Damon. You know this as the top-notch screenwriter that you are. I love that the ships are called Gun Stars. That's cool.

Yeah, that is a good name. On the other hand, and we referenced this in our correspondence with each other, The ultimate weapon that he relies on that wins the day is called a death blossom. A death blossom. That's right. And I like what they were going for. And it's interesting because I had forgotten what it was called. And then I was at the Outback Steakhouse a decade ago eating a bloomin onion.

And I was like, what was the name of that? It was something like Blumen Onion. And then it turned out to be death blossom. So I think that the idea of something that grows, I don't know. And it's, it's, but it's, it is kind of a good name for a band. that's true we're death blossom yeah totally we're opening for gunstar probably gunstar opens for death blossom i don't know it's debate it depends on the year yeah speaking of the year i did i was just inspired to look at the summer of 84 so this movie

opened july 13th 1984 the heat of the summer um not to be one of those guys that like things were better back then but let me read you the summer of 84 like major releases okay You ready? Yeah, I think, yeah, I remember one movie that came out in summer before, I think. What's that? Purple rain. Purple rain did come out, yes. Yeah, I remember that.

Yes, we also have Conan the Destroyer, Star Trek 3, Bukaru Banzai Damon, DreamScape, Red Dawn, Muppets Take Manhattan, The Natural, 16 Candles, Top Secret, Karate Kid, Indiana Jones, and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, and Ghostbust in that summer. Wow. Wow. Gremlins was a summer movie? Yes. I know that's like a Christmas movie, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a Christmas movie, but I forgot that it took place in the summer.

And then, and then, ah, that's so interesting because I have it in my head that the PG-13 rating came into effect because of those movies. But I also have it in my head that Red Dawn is the, the first PG-13 movie. See, I thought... So that can't be right. I thought, I mean, I'll try and Googling while we're talking, but I thought it was DreamScape, actually. That Temple of Doom spawned the PG-13,

but I'm going to do some... I thought it was Gremlins that spawned the PG-13 rating, and that Red Dawn was the first PG-13 movie, but I could be... I am clearly wrong about that. Yeah, but... And also Temple of Doom was another movie that should have been PG-13,

because when they take Indy's heart out. Yeah. We're both thinking the same thing. The answer is the first PG-13 movie introduced on July 1st, 1984, Red Dawn. Ah. So I was right that it is Red Dawn, but I was wrong that it was in response to Gremlins. It would have been too quick a turnaround. I don't think they, like, right?

They couldn't have put it together so quickly. No. So I was actually kind of surprised by this. Do you want to guess what the Rotten Tomatoes score is for Last Starfighter, how the critics received it? So Rodden Tomatoes, do they aggregate critics act like now, people who are talking about the movie now, or do they look at reviews that were published at the time? It's a great question. I think it's a mix, and I think you're heading in the right direction because of it, yes.

I think it does aggregate current reviews looking back as well as those at the time. I would put it in the low 80s. Yeah, you're close, 77%. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's good. It is good.

It's impossible to not like the last Starfighter. I mean, even it is more clever than it needs to be by half. And it's got several memorable bits of sort of goofiness, including that the heavy who is this very like prince joffrey's kind of like you know entitled manchild who is just goes all the way over the top and then it escapes at the end he he not by way of any physical prowess but i think that the ship that they're on gets hit by um you know Alex and Greg and that allows him to run away and get into an escape pod and so when the last starfighter ends they're basically like well this guy got away so we still need you up there but he's the most non-threatening bad guy ever it's just sort of like the only thing that made him threatening was he had somehow forged an alliance with this armada of the coden armada these really really dude who have all been blown up at the end of this movie so the idea that he had somehow forged an alliance with this armada of the kodan armada of these really right dude who have all been blown up at the end of this movie so the idea that he is any threat whatsoever moving forward is absolutely absurd.

He is the definition of, like, a petulant child. And he does have, like, kind of a threatening, like, not a sword, but something that kind of, like, it shoots out kind of like a blade from it. It's a little scary. Yeah, he has a, he has a scepter made for him. That's, like, his stick, like, that's just like, oh, my scepter is finally ready. It's got a sharp, sharp blade at the end. But he doesn't stab anyone with it.

No, no payoff. Clearly, there's no Chekhov Scepter to be had in the last Starfighter. Let's go through my comfort movie questionnaire, and this actually is perfect. The first question I was going to ask you is, who would you award the best performance in this film to? I honestly, my award was going to go to Norman Snow as Zor. I think whatever he's doing is over the top as it is, I love every second of it. Who do you think delivers the best performance? You know, it's a toss-up between, and I don't know the actress names, unfortunately,

but between Alex's little brother who is kind of mugging his way through the, his name's Lewis. And so there's a scene where the beta unit that is impersonating Alex, like, has to take off its own head and repair itself. And Lewis wakes up from the top bunk and is sort of watching this. And the beta unit's like, go back to bed, Lewis. if you're having a horrible nightmare. And I love that kid.

But the prize has to go to whoever played Mags, who is Alex's girlfriend. Yes. Who really doesn't get to do anything in the movie in terms of like movie The Plot Forward. But she's just wonderful and lovely. And there's this one moment in the movie where the beta unit sacrifices its own life

to stop the enemy spy from transmitting information about Alex's whereabouts. And she just sort of like turns towards the camera and looks towards the stars and says, like, you know, I love you, Alex Rogan in the music. Exactly. And it was like, I would watch that. First off, I was clearly in love with her

when I was 11 years old. But also, like, I was like, to have anyone ever loved me, much, you know, after my synthetic doppelganger gives its own life to protect me, that she would be so understanding in that moment, I was just adoring. And I don't like, a lot of those actors, you're kind of like, oh, yeah, she was in a couple of John Hughes movies. I don't think she was ever in anything ever again. She's only exists in The Last Starfighter. It's almost like she just retired after that.

Kind of on top. Catherine Mary Stewart is her name as Mags. And you keep beating me to the punch on every category because literally my next category was favorite line. And I was going to vote for, I love you, Alex Rogan, because you're absolutely right. The wind machine picks up, the camera

swoops in on the dolly, and that delivery is just perfection. It's incredible. And it's amazing. It's arbitrary, but it totally works. That held up. Like, when I saw that again, I was like, oh, I remember why I love this movie.

Should this movie be remade, get a sequel, be left alone, Damon Lindeloff? Oh, boy. Well, it is called The Last Starfighter. So you can't, you can't, like, repcon it into being like, well, that was actually the 10 Ultimate Starfighter. Right. This one. It's the last Starfighter, too, or the last Starfighter really this time. But I don't know.

I mean, like, it is one of those things that you wouldn't do as a movie. But if, like, if you did, like, a cool 10-episode limited series where, like, it started, like, where essentially Lance Guest gets killed in the pilot, right? like um and it and it's some kind of like meta analysis of oh the there was this really cheesy 80s movie that came out but it was all real like that might be an interesting way to do it but you can't you couldn't do it straight um even though you're hot for zor clearly um you want to know you want to know what happened in that guy last starfighter too hot for zor it's more of an erotic thriller, yeah. Right, yeah, exactly. I'll have you know that Gary Witta apparently has written a sequel or something in recent years to The Last Starfighter. We don't know much about it. I don't

know where it is at, but there were reports a couple years ago that Gary Witta, who is credited on Rogue One, among other things. You know, someone told me I was gushing about the Last Starfighter in a writer's room a bunch of years ago. Someone told me that they had seen a musical of the Last Starfighter on this is true off Broadway yeah yeah I have not been able to verify nor hear any of the songs and that is again I should be Googling that post taste exactly we have to imagine I love you Alex Rogan is the fifth track or the close yeah the close of the first act of the of the show oh lord I hope so so I should mention the good news if we We have enticed you folks who have never heard the last Starfighter before.

It is, of course, available on like every possible streaming service. It's iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime. I really, I think it does hold up in enough ways that will work for any audience. If you can get past the effects, it's a very sweet story. It's a very earnest story. And, yeah, having watched it a couple nights ago, it holds up well enough for me. It's a fun movie. I agree.

I, you know, look, there's so much out there to watch right now. I do think it's a good movie for, like, six and seven-year-olds, like, who aren't quite cynical yet. And I think that I remember the thing that was most cool to me about that movie was that at that point, I definitely had an Atari and maybe a Colico vision, which were the, or maybe Nintendo, but I think Nintendo didn't exist yet. Anyway, but parents were starting to say to kids, stop playing those video games, they'll rot your brain. brain. There's nothing good about them. And the last Starfighter was like a movie that essentially said, playing video games is the most important thing in the world. Like, if you can get good enough at a video game, you could potentially save the galaxy. I remember that. Yeah. This one and like Iron Eagle, I feel like if you were good at like a flying game, you could

defend our country, right? Yeah. Um, what's, my last question, I always tried to, I was try it. I always like to plan a double feature a potential second film to see with this. I was racking my brain. I mean, Tron is kind of an obvious one from a tech standpoint in that era. I was also thinking explorers, maybe. I don't know.

There's something to that maybe, right? The Joe Dante film certainly. But I actually also do group it with enemy mind, which does totally hold up. I mean, it's zany as hell enemy mine. But I haven't

I've seen that forever, yeah. Lou Gosser Jr., who was in Watchman, all I wanted to talk to him about was enemy mine. And he's like, this is just very odd because everybody only wants to talk about Officer and Gentleman. I was like, yeah, Officer Generalman's pretty good. But, like, we need to do the deep dive on enemy mine.

And it's not a comfort movie, but it's a crazy movie. I'll just say this. Lewis Gautza Jr. is pregnant and gives birth to a baby that is delivered by Dennis Quaid in enemy mine. And then Lewis Gatsa Jr. dies. And then Dennis Quaid has to raise the baby as his own. The baby, of course, is an alien baby. And if that doesn't hook you, I don't know what will. Also directed by a fine director, Wolfgang Peterson. Wolfgang Peterson. I know. I discovered that many years. years later. I'm like, what? Like a real director of this? It's crazy. It's insane that movie.

I've taken up enough of your valuable time. I'll just say, as we depart, you know I'm a fan of The Hunt, which people should also check out the misunderstood great film that is suddenly not so controversial when, like, the world is ending outside. It's like the least of our problems. But yes, people have misunderstood this, but this is just a great, I don't know, for me, a dark comic satire and like a show-stopping performance from Betty Gilpin. So, Betty Gilpin, the best. Amazing, yeah. Yeah, it's a good 90-minute escape from whatever misery you may be living in right now.

And again, the movie had a lot of controversy surrounding it for a variety of legitimate reasons, but I've yet to come across a single person who has seen it who thinks that the movie is controversial or even borderline offensive. So, yeah, check that out if you can. Definitely. Well, it's good to catch up, even in this weird format. Hopefully we'll all escape our isopods soon enough in the world. We'll go back to semi-normal before too long,

and I look forward to seeing your smiling face in my office at some point. Ditto. And if we hear the last Starfighter-adjacent theme at the Super Bowl next year, we're back on track. Exactly. That's how we know we've made it. I think we should be back on track by the Superbeda. Let's pray.

Let's pray. Stay safe. It's good to talk to you, man. Thank you, as always. You too, man. And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

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