How Did This Get Made? - Last Looks: Driven

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Burt Reynolds obsesses over a chair and Steven Seagal freaks out on a plane?? Paul covers it all when he answers your Corrections & Omissions on last week's Driven episode. Plus, the thrilling conclusion of Paul's lost Sylvester Stallone Podcast and we announce next week's new movie! • Go to hdtgm.com for tour dates, merch, FAQs, and more• Have a Last Looks correction or omission? Call 619-PAULASK to leave us a voicemail!• Submit your Last Looks theme song to us here• Join the HDTGM conversation on Discord: discord.gg/hdtgm• Buy merch at howdidthisgetmade.dashery.com/• Order Paul’s book about his childhood: Joyful Recollections of Trauma• Shop our new hat collection at podswag.com• Paul’s Discord: discord.gg/paulscheer• Paul’s YouTube page: youtube.com/paulscheer• Follow Paul on Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/paulscheer• Subscribe to Enter The Dark Web w/ Paul & Rob Huebel: youtube.com/@enterthedarkweb• Listen to Unspooled with Paul & Amy Nicholson: unspooledpodcast.com• Listen to The Deep Dive with June & Jessica St. Clair: thedeepdiveacademy.com/podcast• Instagram: @hdtgm, @paulscheer, & @junediane• Twitter: @hdtgm, @paulscheer, & msjunediane  • Jason is not on social media• Episode transcripts available at how-did-this-get-made.simplecast.com/episodesGet access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using the link: siriusxm.com/hdtgm

Zagal on a plane, Reynolds in a chair, and Stallone is just your average Joe. All this and more on today's How Did This Get Made? Last Looks, hit the theme. One, two, three, four. How did this get made? What were they thinking? Where is this going? I'm so confused. I'm so upset.

Did someone lose a joking? That someone really read the script and think of themselves. Like a bit my kids through college. But nay, I have a date with destiny I've got a million dollars of medicans to In the immortal words of Tommy Lee Jones to Jim Carrey I can't sanction this befoolery And so could Paul do Jason please explain to me

Exactly how did this get me Hello all you 55 year old listeners pretending to be 37. I am Paul the Hummer Shear, and welcome to how did this get made last looks, where you, the listener, get to voice your issues on Driven, a movie that Discord user Steve Buscemi Eyes thinks should have had the tagline, Driven, where the stakes are served a la carte. I love it. Thank you, Steve Buscemi Eyes for that alt movie tagline. A big shout out to Matthew Fountain for that opening song. Wow, that kicked ass. I love it. Now, if you have a alt movie tagline. Maybe an alt title. Submit it to us on our Discord. It's simple. Just go to

Discord.g.g. slash HDTGM. And you could actually even upload songs there, too. How about that? Yeah, you can write your own songs for the show. Very simple, very easy. You hit the submit a song button and then you upload it. We put it in a drop box and we don't listen to it if it's more than 45 seconds. That's the rule. All right. Coming up on today's episode, we'll be hearing about all your corrections and omissions on. But wait, we also have some amazing phone calls today. Yes, Stephen Segal's stories are pouring in, and we need to get to them. Plus, we'll be playing the thrilling conclusion of my lost Sylvester Stallone podcast, featuring another appearance from June and maybe Sly himself. You know, Jack McBrayer called me up this week and he was like, buddy, was I on a podcast with you? And he forgot, and I forgot that Jack was on it. So anyway, this. been a real fun trip down memory lane. As always, at the end of the show, I will reveal the movie for next week's episode. And people, I hope you're listening to this while you're online to go see

June in Weapons and Freakier Friday. That's right. Two movies. Number one, number two at the box office, both with very high cinema scores. I think they're both A cinema scores. That's like a business thing. Yeah, it means people like it, and they want to recommend it. I've seen them both in theaters, and I've got to tell you, weapons needs to be seen with a crowd. It is fantastic, and I enjoyed the heck out of Freakier Friday. I thought it was fun, made me cry. And you know what I'm going to say? Let's get Chad Michael Murray back in the mix.

I want Chad Michael Murray back in the mix. I love the kids in that movie, too. That's, I think, where these movies often go wrong. I was talking to my friend Wes, a producer of the dark web, every Monday dark web on YouTube. And he was saying, yeah, when they do the reboots, the kids suck. In this movie, the kids don't suck. And you know who else doesn't suck in weapons and freak your Friday? June, Diane, Raphael.

She is fantastic. Again, just a shout out to everybody who has been sending Averill, all these great well-wishes. You can continue to email her through her partner at moviebitches, Andrew. You can email Andrew at moviebitches. X, Y, Z, or just send something to a Peelbox, Averyl Halley, P-O-Box 641, Agora Hills, California, 9-1-3-7-6. Now, if you are a fan of the Dark Web, you know that tonight is our PowerPoint presentation night. If you're listening on Friday, if you're not listening on Friday, you can watch it anytime when you're a member of our Patreon.

You have a seven-day free trial on the Dark Web Patreon. $3 is the starting tier. We got so much stuff. The show has been growing so much, and I just want to say thank you to everybody. who's been watching it. We've heard like 65% of you are watching it on TV. That blows my mind. Anyway, thank you for all that support. Let's get into it about driven. You had questions. We might have answers. Or we might just let you take a lap about how smart you are. Anyway, we're going to get into it all with a little something I like to call corrections and omissions.

on another planet. Now we come to you hats in our hands. Tell you all about how we fucked up. Corrections and domicions. Thank you, cool skull, for that theme song. It rocks. Let's go to the Discord. Dr. Guts, 1003.

Dr. Guts, how are you? I'm not sure how common this is in filmmaking, especially today, but Estella Warren said in an interview with The Guardian that Rennie Harlan berated her in front of the whole crew in order to make her cry for the scene where she has to break up with Bo. Here's a little excerpt.

Didn't Harlan also chew you out one day in front of the whole crew to get you to cry for a breakup scene? Oh, yeah, Rennie wasn't really a nice person to me that day. Let's just say there was a lot of champagne and cavier involved in making up for it. But I ultimately thanked him for making me cry because it worked out so well for the scene. I really wanted that emotion to come out. Don't like what I'm reading. Yeah, Rennie Harlan is an adorable dick. And look, and that's fine.

He was at a time when directors could do that. I think it's, you know, there's some great Rennie Harlan movies I love. But I think that if you do a quick Google of Rennie Harlan, you will see. He's an asshole. And even his ex-wife will tell you that. Gina Davis, who has some amazing stories about the torture that he put her through in one of my favorites, The Long Kiss Good Night. Or The Last Kiss Good Night, whatever. It's one of Sam Jackson.

All right. So don't approve of that. Don't approve of Estella Warren being like, it's cool. It ain't. George Glass writes, I just want to state how joyed I was at seeing Robert Sean Leonard in this. He was my big teen crush and I watched my best friend as a vampire, dead poet society, swing kids, and much ado about nothing far too much. That being said, I thought his character and driven was right. Homegirl Sophia was using his brother, Jimmy, as a rebound at best, and to make her as a

ex-boyfriend jealous at worst. He had every right to tell his brother not to get mixed up in that dynamic, and Sophia was wrong to punch him. There, I said it. Well, George Glass, you're damn right. You are right. I agree with you. I am on Team Robert Sean Leonard.

Where is he? I'm sure he's acting. I'm sure he's doing a great series that I have not seen. And not even like a series on Brit Box, just like a series that might be like buried on Paramount. I'm sure that at one, point, you know, he'll be in the Tulsa King universe. Anyway, Sean McBee writes, I can't find any reference to it in my research, but this movie really felt like it was being filmed for 3D.

There are so many instances of things flying straight to camera from raindrops to manhole covers and even one of the quarters Stallone flipped before that dumb coin pickup thing. Sean, excellent point. And guess what? An audience member at our live show actually brought up this same point. So rather than respond to you now, I will play our response in this deleted scene. Yes, we didn't talk about this. A lot of the static two-person scenes are zooming in and out as if someone's finding focus.

Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's like, I don't know why they needed to make the off-race moments like they were being shot like a race. I think that's why they did it. I think they were trying to make everything kinetic and full of energy, which is what kinetic means. All right, people, let's go to the phone. Larry from Florida. What do you got?

Hey, Paul. On the Driven episode, one of the balcony monsters from Toronto asked if Bert Reynolds signed on to do Driven on the condition that he could sit the entire time. I might be able to say something, speaking of this a little bit. I went to film school in the late 2000s at Florida State University. Florida State University where Bert Reynolds went to college and played football. And our school had a very intentional. production cycle-based curriculum. All that got interrupted very suddenly when Bert Reynolds decided he wanted to teach an acting class to the film school. The first day we heard about this, there was the most expensive chair I've ever seen on the loading dock of the film school,

and it was wrapped in caution tape. We were told Mr. Reynolds is going to come and teach class for some weeks. This is his chair. Do not touch it. Do not sit in it. Keep a wrapped in the caution tape. he showed up for about three weeks. He would call for like the corporate football stadium sky boss chef to come to the film school to make him stay at like midnight and they would make it happen. He was in the chair the entire time except when he was leaving the chair to leave the school or arriving to the school to sit in the chair. My favorite picture probably from that year of film school, I got to sneak into the chair

when he was like using the bathroom and I threw my digital camera at somebody and said like, get a picture. So there's a very blurry photo of me, scared to death, that Brett Reynolds was going to spot me. But yeah, I just know that fitting was a very big part of when he caught our class. And, uh, yeah, probably pretty important. He used to be a stunt person and he was a football player and he was like ancient at the time. So, you know, he has a lot of issues. Anyway, yeah, I could probably confirm that fitting is probably contractual. All right, thanks, love all. Oh my God. Larry, this is the best story of all time. You know, I've been talking about this.

Marlon Brando taught an acting class after 9-11 that was directed by the director of American History X, whose name is escaping me at this very second, but who cares? And I remember that Marlon Brando, like, taught it from a bed, and the director of American History X was dressed as Osama bin Laden. somebody helped me find this it's great and if there's any acting tape of bert reynolds and i love that he just went to florida to get like stakes at two a m two a m stakes oh man the shits that guy must have had just with his bald head out there taking meaty dumps at four a m oh what a what a what a life what a life uh anyway uh let's go back to the calls uh which when i say calls i mean phone calls. What do we got?

pertaining to the movie Driven, when they drove around and were picking up quarters with tires, if your tires get hot enough, they don't actually pick up anything until the tires start to cool. So the fact that the quarters were getting picked up while going around the track would not actually happen because the tires would still maintain the heat, thus letting the quarters go. it wouldn't be until you started to pull off the track and the tires started to cool, that the corners would actually stick to the tires. Okay.

Okay. I believe you. But our producer, Scott, wants to chime in and say, tire temperatures aside, Stallone claimed that that idea was based on a trademark stunt performed by Formula One legend Juan Manuel Fangio. Stallone explained Juan Fangio would lay a piece of cardboard down at the corner. of the track when he would drive around the corner at 130 miles an hour, 140 miles an hour. After 20 laps of going around, he brought the cardboard up, which was the size of an

8 by 10 piece of paper, and they would put a dime on the cardboard, and he would pick up the dime every time at that speed. This feels to me like Stallone heard a story weird. So, Scott, I appreciate the research. I know that we talked about this in the show, too, but I feel like Stallone might have gotten his wires crossed. All right, next call. Kora. Hi, my name is Kora Veltman. Not only am I a massive Sylvester Stallone fan, but I have been a long-time listener at the show, love every Stallone episode, especially. I actually worked for carts slash IndyCar. I also studied under the Master Historian in Motorsports, and I know a lot about this league in this series, and there are some, of course, inaccuracies here. One, this movie was

partly subsidized by the league itself. It originated as, of course, an F1 movie, but when the F1 properties decided they didn't want to fuss around with Celeste Stallone, they came to the cart people, and they were like, yeah, we definitely want to have our movie made. It was such a flop that the league denies it exists, even though multiple drivers and team owners are actually featured in it. I traveled with the league for six years covering it for NBC Sports, and this is a movie that is frequently quoted as kind of trolling the league and trolling the series. It is the oldest league of NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula One.

They actually do go faster than NASCAR and Formula One. I just wanted to thank you again for doing this movie, doing this series, and if you have any further questions or anything else, I am definitely an expert on this and would love to talk about it more. Anyhow, have a good evening. Bye-bye. Cora, bring in the heat. We thought we had the cart expert in the crowd, but you brought it here. Thank you for your service. And I love that this movie was a joke, even at the time. All right, back to the Discord. All right, more info on CART, more info on IndyCar. Okay, this is Keith now says the fracture of cart slash IndyCar would have been a better story to tell.

The split between IndyCar and Cart, known as The Split, began in 1994 when the Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George created the Indie Racing League, which launched in 1996 as a rival to the dominant championship auto racing team's cart. George aimed to center the series around American drivers and oval racing and emphasized cost control, while Cart featured a mixture of international drivers, diverse tracks. and major corporate backing. The conflict escalated when George reserved 25 of 33 Indy 500, starting spots for Indy Racing League teams in 1996, prompting a cart boycott. This fractured American open-wheel racing confused fans and diluted media attention,

which helped NASCAR rise in popularity. The arrival lasted over a decade with declining viewership and sponsor interests across both leagues. In 2008, the two series finally reunited under the IndyCar banner, ending the division, Wow. How poignant and powerful of a story could that have been? The split. Oh, the split. Oh, this is Keith now. I don't think we need the split. I don't think there's that much drama there. I'm fascinated by what you shared. I don't think it's dramatic. It's a story, but it's not an emotional story. Where's Joe? Ghostbag writes, if you had your dreaders, what sports or sport-themed-related film would you like to see Stallone Tackle next? He's already appeared in boxing, arm wrestling, and race car movies. But what sport or sports-adjacent film could sly, and by extension, we, the audience, benefit from being in next? Well, ghostbag, great question.

Pickle ball. Get him. Older guy lost his wife, finds pickleball, gets competitive, and then, you know, him and McEnroe have a match at the end. That's just the beginning part of my ideas. Hollywood, hire me. I got great ideas. John Steele writes, I have a few points on Memo's accident. They said the emergency people would have a hard time getting to him.

But how come Jimmy and Bo had no problem? And also, they were so worried about the explosion, but Memo's cart already blew up as it flew through the trees. Can cars blow up twice? John Steele? You broke my brain. I don't think they can. Maybe they can. Is there another part that could blow up?

I mean, the gas tank is what's blowing up, right? I mean, it's not like, there's not another. combustible part, is there? I don't know. Anyway, so many great corrections and omissions this week, but there can only be one that is the best. What could it be? What could it be? Well, you know what? It's one that answers the only question that was unanswered in the show. Did Bert Reynolds request being in a wheelchair so he could sit for the entire movie? And I got to say, Larry from Florida, you approved our point that we were right. And whenever you do that, you get to win. And you get this amazing song from the Action Jackson Five.

You're the winner. You are the world. Now, if you want to chime, hit up the latest, hit up our Discord, or our Discord, or leave us a message. at 619, P-A-U-L-A-S-K. Also, heads-up, if you want us to consider your correction and omission inclusion in last looks, please send it by the Monday night after the episode is released. We've been getting a lot of great voicemails that come in too late. But if you leave your message by Monday night, you'll guarantee that we hear it in time. Anyway, coming up after the break, I'll be opening up the phone lines again because, wow, we got some good ones.

And these are not about Stallone. These are about Seagal. Also, the conclusion of my lost Sylvester Stallone podcast. We'll be right back. Welcome back. By now, I'm sure you've noticed that every Tuesday we re-release classic how did this get made episodes back into our feed. This week, we wrapped up our Stallone's summer matinee with Demolition Man, and next week

we'll be revisiting a fan favorite episode, No Holds, barred with guest Tomlin. And that's a really fun episode. So keep on checking out all our replays of classic episodes every Tuesday. Now, speaking of our matinee episodes, we've gotten a lot of great phone messages from you guys related to our Stallone summer matinees that it didn't want to ignore them. So before we move on, let's reopen the phone lines and entertain us. Georgia, what do you got? Hi, Paul. I just listened to the Cobra episode.

And what I'm about to say doesn't have anything to do with the movie Cobra, but it does have to do with the episode. where Jason makes a joke that Dolph Lundgren doesn't know how to write. Oddly enough, Dolf Lundgren has a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Sydney. And while still living in Sydney, he won a Fulbright to go to MIT. But before he could start at MIT, Grace Jones, the singer, saw him working as a bouncer and hired him as a bodyguard. They became lovers, and he moved to New York with her. And then he started taking acting classes and hanging out in, like, the New York downtown art scene. So he's actually very well-educated.

I don't know if being good at chemistry means that you can write, though. All right, bye. Yeah, yeah, yeah, George, I know. Big deal, yes, this story is a big, yes, he can read. It was a joke in the show. We know, I think most people know. This is, like, the one fact that we know about Lundgren is that he's like a physicist, you know, whatever he is. All right.

Next one. Alwyn from London. I have been a little bit delayed sending this because I have to follow a bit behind the podcast, that I can dine for an opportunity to call and tell this hotline my Steven Seagal story. And I heard you talking about Steven Seagal on the Expendable Four episode a few weeks ago that I just got the chance to catch up on. And it reminded me to the time that Steven Segal woke me up on an airplane when I was about 10 years old. Yeah, I was flying from Paris to Thailand with my family. I was about 10 years old.

And as we were getting on, my dad was going, look, look, that's Stephen Seagal. I was about 10, I had no idea who Steven Seagull was, but I remember this giant man with a ponytail, and he was wearing sort of traditional East Asian wear, sort of doing a whole big, like making a big deal of sort of, you know, bowing to the air hostesses on this Thai flight. It was a whole big thing. We were flying business class as with Steven Segal. I think it was me and my family and him and his assistant business class. And I'm old enough and this was long enough to go that it was when. that they still showed a big movie up front of the plane, possibly in addition to having individual little screens in the chairs.

And so this big movie plane on the front, I had fallen asleep because I'm 10 years old. And I wake up because someone is shouting on the plane that's a jerk awake. And it is Stephen Segal shouting at the top of his lungs at his assistant about how unrealistic and bad the movie is that's playing on the big screen. And my memory is that it's basically,

I couldn't tell you for all the money in the world what the movie was, but a helicopter in a chase scene is flying through a tunnel. And Gina Segal is at the top of his lungs shouting that that's unrealistic and that the airflow in the tunnel wouldn't allow the helicopter

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just remember being like, even at 10, who is this asshole, but also him having the lack of self-awareness and goal to yell at a terrible movie on a flight just seems very in Congress with that. So, yeah, I just wanted an opportunity to tell that story from sort of 25 years ago. So thank you all. Whoa.

Whoa. Whoa. This is a man who loves attention. Okay. Wasn't he just a karate instructor for like a Hollywood mogul? And then the Hollywood mogul is that, no, he actually was like a four. former CIA agent, and he was never, and he's really embraced this life and the music, and wow, great story to call everyone's attention out.

Like, I could see him laughing. I believe Bob Odenkirk tells a great story about the most humorless person ever on S&L as a guest host, and it was Stephen Segal. I was helping with Hans and Franz that week. Yeah, I didn't usually help with that piece, but I love those guys, and, and Segal read it, and he said, if I do this sketch, if I do it. And they, you know,

they want to fight him. Hey, we'll take you on. He goes, if I do it, I have to beat them up. Like, he has to, it's like a John Wayne thing, right? Like, it's the most ludicrous scenario. You don't

worry, no one will think that they actually, no one's thinking anyone beat anyone up here. But that was his ad, the whole week was he kept saying, I've never seen your show. I don't know what you do here. Like, really, you've never seen Saturday Night Live?

Where do you live? And he wrote a scene, Howard, Howard. He wrote a scene and it's the last scene in the show and it's like one of his movies, but they tried to do it live. They got some stuntmen to come in. It's insane. So there's like this board of directors,

there's a bunch of stuntmen in suits. So as a viewer, you're like, who are these actors? They're not in the cast. And then there's like some speech. And then he enters the banquet room and starts beating it's live. And he's beating them up

and throwing them around the room. And it goes on for like eight minutes. It's the longest scene you've ever seen. And then at the very end, he turns to camera and says, This is what happens when you pollute the planet. And the audience is mystified. Watch those S&L clips.

They're great. Now, that was a great Stephen Segal story. But believe it or not, we might just top it because we have another Stephen Seagall story. Hey, Paul and Crew, I was listening to your Expendables episode, and you mentioned that Stephen Seagall should be, would be a great villain for it. I have a great Steven Seagal story. So I worked for a company that we had a rep dinner and they were having dinner with Stephen Seagall as well. So we sat down to a dinner at a steakhouse and wouldn't you know that he decided to do a demonstration of his knife skills at the steakhouse whirling around the steak knife,

you know, in the middle of a crowded state cast in Las Vegas, it was like that video where they say, oh my God, it's Jason Bourne. And that was probably my highlight of my entire

professional career. And this wasn't like in the 80s or 90s when he was pretty popular. This was about seven years ago. So it was bananas. But anyways, hope you all enjoyed the story. Bye.

Oh, my goodness. Now you're making me want to just hire Stephen Seagal for events. I mean, how expensive could that be? It's not like getting like Aerosmith to play your bar mitzvah. Not that anyone's hiring Aerosmith. I don't think anybody's hiring Aerosmith right now to play your bar mitzvah. But like I imagine it's not that expensive. I love this.

Please tell me there are pictures. And if anyone has a picture of Seagal out and about just bowing, doing knife tricks, there's so many great stories about Sagal, you know, we've, I think we've talked about it on the show a million times, there's great stories. I mean, he threatened a guy in an ADR booth with a gun because they asked him to do the line again. Like, that's, and I'm not even telling the story great, because I'm just like, we should just do a whole episode of like, I heard a Sagal story. All right. And finally, our own Jafar. We've traveled with her. We've seen her through her ups and downs. I hope she is still dating that gentleman. Farah, what do you got? Hi, Paul. Hello to all my fellow nerds, wishing a happy Sloan summer to all who celebrate. So if you can kind of hear in my voice in this episode playing the game and watching all the special features on the DVD of Driven literally broke me. So instead of talking about the movie specifically, I would instead like to speak to a Stallone trend I noticed when I watched Stop or my mom will shoot a few weeks ago,

which is that Stallone seems to really have a thing for playing average shows. So beginning in 1975 with Death Race 2000, he plays Joe Machine Guns a Turbo. In 1992, Stopper My Mom will shoot, as we all know, he was Sergeant Joseph Jobimowski. In 1995, he played Judge Joseph Dredd and Judge Dredd. Also in 1995, he played the dual roles of Robert and Joseph Wrath and Assassins. In 2001, Steaming Pile of Shit Driven, he played Joe the Hummer Tonto. In the 2011 animated film Zookeeper, he was the voice of Joe the Lion, and in 2022, he played Joe

Smith and Samaritan. So out of just under 70 future film roles, Sylvester Sloan has been named Joe in just over 10% of them. Thanks again for a great show in Vancouver. Can't wait to see where Jafar shows up next. Take care. Bye. 10%?

Okay. 10% is fine. I want I think if you're calling in for like an observation like this, it's got to be in the 50s. 50s or 40s? I'll take a 10 is he's a Joe. He's an average Joe. I mean, that's where it's coming from. He's an average Joe. And that's about the level of like metaphor in a Stallone script. Anyway, thank you for everyone who called in. Coming up after the break, the thrilling conclusion to my Sylvester Stallone podcast and I'm going to announce next week's

new movie. Welcome back. It is finally time to see if I ever got to interview Sylvester Salon on my podcast. In the last segment I shared, June had kicked me out of the house due to my obsession with the podcast. I was spending Thanksgiving alone in my car and, well, I was near rock bottom. But thankfully, I found a group to help me find answers. That's right. Take a listen. Hello, people of earth. I am pleased to have the honor to do this podcast. I am Paul here. I am recording this, uh, right now in the bathroom of a Burger King. Let's not get into it, but I do want to tell you guys about is an amazing journey that I took. Um, let me tell you about,

well, let me ask you a question. Would you like to change your life in three days? Would you like to live an extraordinary life? Would you like to redefine the very nature of what is possible? well, I think then you would like my friends at the landmark forum. I met these people this past weekend and they are amazing. I have been right now currently, I'm in day two of a three day breakthrough class where I am learning how to redefine the very nature of what is possible in my relationships and in my work and in my family. And it's only in three days. And I know that if I continue on this path, I am going to get to Stallone because the beauty about this whole thing is that you can, whatever you learn, it's natural and without effort. Okay. It's, you know, and yeah,

maybe I'm not going to, maybe I'm not going to start hanging out with my old friends because I think my communication is changing, you know. I really want you guys to look into the landmark forum. I think that we are going to, we're going to go here because most of us, like, we are, intent to live a life without question. But when you're a part of the landmark and your friends in the landmark, they call you on your bullshit. Hi, welcome to the Sylvester Stillin podcast. As you can no doubt tell, this isn't Paul. This is Brett Morris.

I'm his engineer at Earwolf and Wolf Pop. So I'm sorry to say Paul's not here today. He sent me a strange email though It's a little concerning I'm not quite sure what to make of it But I'll just read it for you I don't have much of a choice really So I'll let you be the judge

Subject Please read this on air Hello people of earth This is one of the brainwashed wolf-pop stooges However I'm reading you a message from the great Paul Shear and say the last part like you mean it. He actually says that in parentheses.

I'm currently going through a 24-hour detoxing and silencing pact with the great people I've met at the Landmark Forum. This time that I'm spending in Connie's basement apartment is magical. Fasting and not sitting down for hours on end is finally allowing me to reflect on my life and think about the mistakes I've made

and why I've brought this Stallone trauma. upon myself. I've come to the realization that I might be here for a higher purpose. I believe that, like Moses being sent down from the mountain with the commandments, I'm being sent down from Hollywood with the word of Stallone. What the fuck? I shouldn't say anymore, but this is big. How big?

Let me just say this. Bible 2. What is he talking about? Then he says this. Oh shit. period. I fear that Tommy, one of Connie's lieutenants, is seeing that I'm emailing. This is not a quote-unquote approved activity and into the interest of not getting shamed with the stick in front of the circle again. I must stop writing. But before I go, please

keep sending questions to ask Salone at Gmail and enough with the questions that focus purely on farting and sex. You are only disappointing yourself. It gets cut off there. I guess supposed to say you are only disappointing yourself. But then it says this. This is a message from Tommy, a proud landmark forum member. E-mailing your podcast is a frowned-upon activity here, and Paul knows this.

By listening to this, you are assuming the pain ritual upon your false idol, but what else do you know but greed and avarice? Is you talking to me? I guess it's to all of us. You haven't been enlightened. However, if you would like to change your life in three days, come to a free landmark forum orientation.

Hello, people of podcasts. I'm not sure that's the correct greeting. I'm pretty sure it is. Anyway, welcome to the Sylvester Stallone podcast. I'm Connie Franks. I'm a senior member of the Los Angeles. chapter of the Landmark Forum, and I find this podcast disgusting in content and execution, which is why, with Paul's explicit blessing, he's allowed me to take over his podcast to promote

the amazing new work of the people of LMF. That's Landmark Forum for those of you people out there that have let the media corrupt your brains. This is fun. Well, what's Landmark, you ask? Landmark is a place where people begin to understand the pre-given possibilities for meaningfulness, specifically to the human subjects that participate in them. There is no need to fear any meaningless objective universe for such a thing as an abstraction, not an ultimate observable reality.

Oh, and by the way, congratulations. By listening to this podcast, we have selected you and two guests of your choice to join us in our four-hour lecture series, The Talking Ritual. So, you'll finally learn what you've been doing wrong when speaking. Also, don't worry about Paul. He's fine. He's not in any danger.

And from what he tells me, it's the first time he's been truly happy. He's not being held against his will. And he wants everyone to join him on this new venture of self-expiration and honesty. Testing. Testing. I'm sorry. I'm not, I usually don't do this type of thing. I'm recording this message in the hopes that Paul, you hear it somewhere out there. I'm very scared. I'm so scared. I haven't heard from you in a long time. And I think you've gotten mixed up with some really bad people. And I am in praying for your return. And if anyone has any information about where Paul is, Paul Scheer, please reach out to me on Twitter or however, whatever.

Oh, God, this is hard. Paul, please come back home. Please come back home. I don't know where you are. I don't know if Connie has you know who's kind. I don't know if Connie has you. I don't know what you've gotten mixed up in. But I want you to know.

that I'm here and the baby is here and we are waiting for you and we fully, fully support the Sylvester Stallone podcast. And I know I said some really terrible things to you about embarrassing us and our family and I take all of it back. I really do. I just want you to come back and I want you to know that I have emails out to my agents and manager. and entertainment lawyer about Sylvester Stallone and if there's any way anyone knows him to reach out to me because I'm in full support, babe, I am in full support of you doing this. I really am and I just want you back. And if having you back means that you do a podcast in which you try to get Sylvester Stallone

to answer questions, that's final. with me. And I can only say that, you know, to the people who are out there who listen this podcast, like, please, if anyone does know him, like, seriously, I know this has been a lot of, you know, this has been funny to certain people. This has been, you know, weird to others. But now it's, it's actually a very scary situation. And so this is a plea. Please help my family. please help us get Paul back through Sylvester Stallone oh god welcome to Sylvester Stallone podcast hello people of earth I'm Paul Shear and I'm scared I don't know if anyone can hear this but I'm trapped in this house landmark form is not what I thought it was these people who are

cruel. I don't know what they're going to do to me. I'm scared. I'm scared. Please help me. Please help me. I'm at 15.01. Please send you police officers. Send anyone. A landmark form. They're not what they say. They're evil. These people are evil. I'm gone. You hear that? You hear that? It's starting. It's starting. Please. Please, God help. me. Please help me. I've seen things. I've seen terrible things. You're people here. They want to hurt me. Oh God. Oh God. I haven't eaten. We are the power. We are the life. We are the power. We are the life. We are the power. We are the power. I'm Mikkel, formerly the podcaster known as Paul Shear.

For far too long, my body has been inhabited by an interdimensional demon who went by the name Fnuk. The landmark forum has been instrumental in my freedom, and now I would like to free you. I have seen the truth and the light, and I believe that the eye that burns the brightest is the one that knows the truth. The government is corrupting our brains. Look at our currency. The green color interacts with receptors in our brains to paralyze us and pacify us.

We must give our money to the landmark forum. They will keep this money away from us to free us from the ties that bind us. But this, my friends, is just stage one. Stage two involves our army of freed beings taking over the U.S. post offices across the country. When we are ready, our group will attack and peacefully siege these domiciles of communication. We will be heard. The U.S. post offices will be our base camp for the outcropping. We will farm our embryos and build a new alien infrastructure along the postal routes of this fine country. The United States of America will forever be now

referred to as the farmland. Repopulmonary. Reproduce. No money. No government. No entertainment. We will subsist on the berries of straw. No food. No water. We are now the one power. And we worship him. His name is Dioxinu. We worship Dioxinu. Hello, people of Earth, and welcome to the final Sylvester Stallone podcast. I am Paul Shear. I am actually Paul Shear, despite what you've heard this week. And this is the Sylvester Stallone podcast. What a journey this has been. I started out with a goal to do the best podcast I could possibly do with.

one of the best entertainers that currently exist in cinema. Not just American cinema, but international cinema. He is a writer, a director, a producer, an actor, and we never got him on the show. If I had to give myself a note, I would say next time you do a show named after someone, you should get that person. So I apologize to you, the listener, for never getting Sylvester Stallone. that was a that was a big mistake i i probably should have stopped the show early um i wouldn't have been kicked out of my home uh living in a seedy motel using up my relationships with my my

closest friends and finally um getting kidnapped by a group of people that called themselves a landmark forum um i don't know if you guys were able to understand this but i was taken in by a cult and it was a hellish nightmare of a time. I am currently being deprogrammed right now. And my deprogrammer told me I should not do today's podcast. It's too fresh. But I needed to talk to you. I needed to tell you what exactly happened because I was saved by someone. And I will say there is tape of this moment and I'd like to play you some of the tape. What you will hear is kind of a bad audio quality,

but I feel like it's the best way I can explain to you what exactly happened. I am Mikal, and I command everyone here to begin the blood ritual. Begin. The blood ritual has begun. Free yourself. The blood ritual has begun. The blood ritual has begun. What's it?

Oh, my God. What's going on? Everyone run! Everyone run! Let me just pause the tape for a second to explain to you what was going on. Part of my indoctrination into the landmark forum was finding drifters and runaway teens, bringing them back to our basement and doing what we... I'm so embarrassed to say this.

we did something called the blood ritual, which was we cut these people and bled them out and then buried their bodies in a basement. Now, before you get judgmental, I will say I was under a heavy amount of sedatives at this point. And to my knowledge, we did not kill anyone. We were about to, and I know that that is frowned upon. I'll just say that you try it. You try getting sucked up into a cult. very, it's a crazy, it's a crazy situation, okay? Because you're doing stuff and, yeah, I know we can all sit on our high perch and say,

oh, you shouldn't kill people, but I was there. It was, it was intense. Anyway, from our basement window, gunfire erupted, and this man entered in to the room. I looked up, and I saw his face. You're going to find it hard to. believe, but I'll play some of the tape. And again, this tape has been compromised, obviously. But let me, let's play some more.

What's going on? Everyone, no, no, no. They must kill her. Oh, my God. Where are you? No, no. My name is Mikhail, not Paul. You.

It's you. That's right, everybody. At that point, I looked up and I saw a visage that I have been dreaming about for days. It was the man, the myth, the legend, Sylvester Stallone. He had been listening to the podcast, and he broke in to save me. And he said something to me that I will never forget. I believe it. I can't believe it is you.

You found me. Why? Why out of everybody, out of your busy newbie schedule? Why would you find me? I'm so upset that that piece of dialogue was garbled because what he said to me, and I don't remember it 100%, but he looked at me and he goes, it's not about how great. your podcast is. It's about how hard it is to do a podcast and keep on moving forward. And he goes, and I listened to your podcast every day, and you kept me going forward. He goes, if I was to

appear on day one, you wouldn't be where you are today. You needed to grow. You need to go back to your wife now as a man, as a man who almost killed a teenage runaway. This podcast was a test. And I said to him, a test? Like, you were testing me the entire time? And he looked me right in the eyes and said, yeah. Can you believe it? Stallone was testing me, just like his characters were tested with impossible odds, insurmountable foes.

He gave me a challenge of a lifetime, and I swear to God, as God as my witness in my hand on the graves of my parents who are not yet dead, but if they were, I would put my hand on their graves. And he said to me, you are the Rocky Balboa of podcasting. To which, of course, I replied, thank you, and I know. And then I had a mission, a mission that this podcast started with, and I know I needed to do it. So I will play you this next section of tape.

Thank you. Thank you for saving me. And before you let me go, before you leave, I just have to ask one thing, waxing a couple of things. What role didn't you take that you regret? What are the three seashells from Demolition Man do? That makes sense. Will Hocall can ever be in the next expendables?

As a watchmaking student, I'm always intrigued to learn about people's watch collections and reasons for collecting. With your no affection for Panan Air, Richard Milley, and Monte Grappa, what are some other brands that you like? Of course! And finally, Rocky Rambo, Covertango, John Spartan, and Bonnie Ross in a knockdown, dragout fight to the finish. Who would win? They would all die at each other's hands. Thank you. Thank you.

And again, I am so bummed out that the recording cut out most of his answers. We just kind of shortened it up because I guess the mic was kind of more on me than it was on him. I mean, rookie mistake. My apologies. But I did it. I came here with a mission, and I finished that mission, which was to ask the Sylvester Stallone, the fan questions that we all needed answers to. Unfortunately, I don't really remember the answers to the questions.

I was pretty drugged up on a mix of Sudafed and Prozac and a little bit of lithium, I think. I don't actually even remember much more than him carrying me in his arms and putting me down on a lawn, and there was a mess of fire trucks and engines, and he walked away. And when people ask me, who saved you? I didn't tell them because to tell them is to let them in on a secret that was only between me and him and you, the fans of this show. So I think with that, my job is done. Just like Rocky Balboa and Rocky Balboa, I'm walking away from the ring. Prouder, smarter, and enlightened.

And I just want to say out there, thank you, Stallone, for rescuing me from that cult. So the next step for me is repairing my life and hopefully getting the Daniel Day-Lewis podcast off the ground. Thank you guys so much for listening to the Sylvester Stallone podcast. I am Paul Shear, and I am a champion, a winner. Fuck it! Wow, so long ago, so many memories I was saved. And now it's me, present-day Paul, and I am free of that landmark forum's grasp. Thank you for tagging along with me through my old Stallone podcast over these last few episodes.

If you miss my Just chats with Jason, well, don't worry, he'll be back on last looks next time. That's right. But now this is the moment you've been patiently waiting for this entire episode. It is finally a time to announce our next movie. Stallone's summer is finally over, and next week we are going from Champagne celebrations to champagne and bullets. That's right. We are covering the 1993 indie action film, Champagne and Bullets,

starring Wingshouser, Pamela Bryant, and the film's writer and director, John DeHart. The film is considered by many to be the room of direct-to-video action flicks. Well, there are actually three different versions of this film, with different titles, plane in more detail in just a second. And as for the movie's plot, they're all the same. There's a satanic cult leader who betrays a pair of ex-cops, and you've got some baby

sacrifices, drug deals, and a whole lot more. Take a listen to this trailer. Welcome to the biggest little movie ever made. Action, suspense, a thrill of a minute, romance. It's a very funny moment. We get some dope, forget them in a moment. You just made a big mistake. See, Sam?

You see this? White powdering. How about tolerating the goddamn justice system? Sit down. Okay, so if you want to watch this movie before listening to our episode, here's what you need to know. There are three versions of this movie. The original movie is titled Champagne and Bullets and has a runtime of 99 minutes. You can stream Champagne and Bullets on Tubie, Hoopla, and Fossum.

Fossum, great recommendation by a... friend of the pod and I have been loving it. The next version of the movie is called Road to Revenge. It has a runtime of 75 minutes. This shorter version cut out most of the sex and nudity. I'm guessing you don't want to watch this version, but it is available on Amazon Prime video. I will say that, look, I'm not going to say that we need to have exploitative films on this show, but the sex and nudity in this are awkward in a great way. And the latest version, well, there's a lot. There's a lot here. You take it at your own risk. The latest version is called Get Even. It has a runtime of 89 minutes. Now, Get Even restored most of the sex annuity while adding a very important scene of the main characters practicing martial arts and feeding his pet poodle. Now, this version isn't available on any streaming services, but I'll say if you search for it online, you'll probably find it with minimal effort. So Get Even is probably the one that you want to find. you just got to search for it online, and you'll probably find it.

Now, I know I already mentioned Hoopla earlier, but as always, I encourage you to check out Canopy and Libby, which are digital media services offered by your local library that allow you to consume movies, TV, music, audiobooks, and ebooks for free. All right, that is it for Last Looks. If you listen to us on Apple Podcast or Spotify, please rate and review us. Please also make sure you are following us and have automatic downloads turned on. It helps the show, and we appreciate it. Visit us on social media at HDTGM, and a big thank you to our presentation.

producer Scott Sonny and Molly Reynolds and our movie picking producer April Halley and our engineer Casey Holford. We'll see you next week for Champaign and Bullets, aka The Road to Revenge, aka watch get even. Bye for now.