How Did This Get Made? - Last Looks: Megalopolis

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

This week Paul answers all your questions about Megalopolis, chats with Jason about some TV, books, and comics, and announces next week's movie! Paul & Jason's RecsSAS: Rogue HeroesLandmanBillionsJentry Chau vs the UnderworldLaidTraitors USExtractedWild RobotThe DiplomatShorseyWolf HallJenny Sparks by Tom KingAbsolute Batman by Scott Snyder & Nick DragottaLegacy of Vader by Charles SouleKubrick: An Odyssey by Nathan Abrams and Robert P. KolkerStanley Kubrick's BoxesDoom by Jonathan HickmanAstonishing Spiderman by Scott AukermanNamor by Jason AaronKarma Doll by Jonathan Ames HDTGM Spring Tour 2025 tickets are now on sale for Austin, Denver, Seattle, Boise, San Fran, Portland, & LA at hdtgm.com.Order Paul’s book about his childhood: Joyful Recollections of TraumaCheck out new HDTGM movie merch over at teepublic.com/stores/hdtgmJoin the HDTGM conversation on Discord: discord.gg/hdtgmPaul’s Discord: discord.gg/paulscheerVisit Paul’s YouTube page: youtube.com/paulscheerFollow Paul’s movie recs on Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/paulscheer/Friend Zone w/ Paul and Rob Huebel live on Twitch every Thursday 5pmPT / 8pmET: www.twitch.tv/friendzoneLike good movies too? Listen to Unspooled with Paul and Amy Nicholson: https://www.unspooledpodcast.com/Listen to The Deep Dive with Jessica St. Clair and June Diane Raphael: www.thedeepdiveacademy.com/podcastWhere to find Paul, June, & Jason:@PaulScheer on Instagram & Twitter@Junediane on IG and @MsJuneDiane on TwitterJason is not on social media Get 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.

Night Terrors, King Kong vs. Adam Driver, and Jason and I talking audiobooks, all this and more on today's How Did This Get Made? Last Looks hit the theme! Last Rats! Last Rats! Welcome all my Caesar fans and Cicero fans. A place where you can both live together in one. A perfect utopia, if you will. This is Last Looks. I'm your host, Tall John Shear, AKA Paul Shear, and this is the only show where we break down how did this get made films even more.

Why? Because it involves you. Where we break down how did this get made films even more? Why because it? Involves you you call out all the things that we might have missed and honestly there wasn't enough time to get into everything We want to talk about in Megalopolis, so this episode is going to be Truly a mind-blowing one now before every show starts We like to give somebody a chance to maybe have an alt tagline for the movie that we just did. And I gotta say that Discord user, Zilla21, had the best tagline when he said,

"'It's like the room with a view.'" Ooh, I love it. That is, that's great. Look, I just wanna make sure that we're all on the same page. He means Tommy Wiseau's The Room, not Room Brie Larson's Room. Thank you, Zo 21 for that tagline. Remember, if you have an alt movie tagline or title,

submit it to us on our Discord, and we may just read it on the show, and I might over explain it just like I did. Now, coming up on today's episode we will be hearing all your corrections and omissions on Megalopolis and believe me there are a lot. Then Jason and I will chat about all the stuff that we've been watching and we've been watching a lot of TV and yes we're watching SAS Rogue Heroes. You'll get into all that more in just a little

bit. But before we get into anything else, I wanna give a big shout out to Sean Fogel, who created that amazing opening theme song. Thank you, Sean. We love these songs. If you have any last look episode theme songs, please, you know the drill, send them to howdidiscgetmadeatearwolf.com.

Keep them short. 15 to 20 seconds is best. All right, people, How Did This Get Made is on tour. It's a giant spring tour. We are going to Austin. We are going to San Fran. We are going to the Tree Fort Music Festival where you can purchase a festival ticket or a regular ticket. That's right boysie. We are taking care of you. Plus we're going to go back to Denver. Finally. We have been excited to hit Denver again so we will be there. San Francisco, I said we're gonna be there

Um, I think or maybe not Portland Seattle. We're doing it all go to HDTGM calm So far the only movies that have been announced are for the LA shows But as we get closer, we will tell you exactly what to watch Also, I want to plug a brand new show that Rob Hubel how did skim aid all-star and I are doing it is called The dark web you can go to my website Paul shear calm to find out how to Enter the dark web. You can also go to enter the dark web Calm it is a weekly YouTube show where Rob Hubel and I watch the craziest stuff that we can find but not like in a

the craziest stuff that we can find, but not like in a disturbing, upsetting way, and not like in a ridiculous way. These are things that just make us laugh, and it's a big new show. So watch it. It's completely for free on YouTube. Again, my website or enter the dark web.com to get right to it on YouTube. All right. now, enough of plugs, now it's time to get into Megalopolis where there are no plugs. It's a perfect world. It is now time though, for you to tell us where we went wrong, just like Mayor Cicero told Caesar

when he developed a perfect plan for whatever they called New York. Anyway, it is now time for corrections and omissions. Hit the theme! Just wait one minute. I can't believe you missed something. So I must correct you and clarify what you omitted. Can't believe you missed it. My friends and yours, Bombay Beach Revival with another banger. Thank you Bombay Beach Revival.

Let's go to the Discord. Rob from Long Island writes, dingbat news was the name of Sophia Coppola's newspaper that she did with her friends. It appears in another one of Francis Ford Coppola's films, but I can't remember which one. So this is kind of an inside joke. Okay, Rob from Long Island. There we go. I like it.

But I have to say, when it's so prominent, that kind of a callback or that kind of, it would be better subtly implanted there. But okay, Mitch Kappa, that's a chunk style, writes, I like the continuity. And Francis Ford Coppola really cared about what he was making, and he wanted to make sure that Dustin Hoffman had a line during the wedding saying that

John Voight's character has a huge dick. So later, when we check out that boner, when he has that hidden bow and arrow, the audience would all have thought, yes, this is the boner I would expect given the previous information. Thank you, Mitch Cappa. You're right. He's a stickler for details. And you know what we call that in the literary world? We call that foreshadowing.

But maybe when it's about dicks, we call that dick shadowing, which is what a lot of guys do to their dicks to make it look girthier and longer. Anyway, the angriest Hickey writes this. I don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet, but Megalon is one of Godzilla's foes. He is featured in the classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic, Godzilla vs. Megalon. Holy hell. Wait, it's not spelled the same way. Is it?

I guess it is. Oh my God. The universes have collided. The dark universe is open. We need the characters from Megalopolis in one of those new Godzilla, King Kong, you know, whatever it is like middle earth where they all live, whatever the fuck is going on. I love those movies, but I, you know, it's kind of ridiculous at this point. So let's get Adam Driver in a King Kong versus Godzilla versus Megalon because maybe Adam Driver's wife becomes the creature that Godzilla's got to

fight. I don't know. I'm open to pitching on the idea. Anyway, let's go to the phones. Katie from Seattle. What do you got? Hey guys, this is Katie. I watched Megalopolis seven hours ago and I literally it's like 1 a.m. and I cannot sleep because I am haunted. I feel like Adam Driver's relationship with his mother in this movie really needed more discussion. Like every single interaction that they had left me just like physically and emotionally deeply like uncomfortable. And honestly like watching this entire movie and then the seven hours following it feels like I tried a new drug where it's like, I can't get a good answer from anyone about like how long the trip's going to last. And I desperately, desperately would like for it to end. And I'm honestly scared.

It's never going to, uh, love the book, Paul love listening to the podcast. And, uh, yeah, thanks for everything. Katie, that's what we call art. Okay. It's supposed to keep you awake at night. It's supposed to fuck you up. I still haven't slept since seeing Megalopolis. All right, let's go to Zenobia from New York.

This is Zenobia. First time, a long time. I'm just calling about the last episode of Megalopolis. I wanted to share the experience my husband and I had going to see the movie in IMAX on opening night. Before the movie started, the lights all came on and the manager came out and he said without any fanfare he goes, ladies and gentlemen, very special guest, please welcome Francis Ford Coppola. And Francis Ford Coppola came out. He proceeded to tell us to all call him Uncle Francis,

and then he said, this is a film about asking questions. It's a film about being curious, asking questions, maybe questions that don't even have an answer, but posing them, and so because of that, we really should be open-minded about this movie. We really shouldn't judge this movie the first time you've seen it. Let it sit with you. And also, maybe don't ever judge it.

Because all this movie is doing is asking questions. And isn't that, in and of itself, something that's worthwhile, even if you didn't like the content of the movie? So I just thought that that was a fun thing, a fun thing to experience before the movie, and to sort of hear Francis almost... I just thought that that was a fun thing, a fun thing to experience before the movie and to sort of hear Francis almost, it felt a little bit like defending the movie

before anyone had even watched it or criticized it. You know what? I wanna take this as my rallying cry. No, No Judgment. This is a No Judgment film. This is a no judgment film. This is a no judgment TV show Look just tell people it's like a little title card comes up like the jackass morning is like can't judge this one. Sorry This is off the table Thank you uncle Francis, I love you

Rafael hey there. My name is Rafael about Megalopolis and the live participation aspect of it, so I work at a movie theater that had to do this. One thing that you guys mentioned that wasn't correct was that the live participant actually didn't read anything. We weren't allowed to. I had to do this. I had to go up in front of the crowd and pretend to talk and mimic and mow with everything. The notes to do this are some of the most insane things in the world.

It's wild. The live participant component begins precisely at one hour, 22 minutes, and 29 seconds into the feature. There is a run of show that is down to the second of how we were supposed to do this. Obviously, that's impossible. I didn't care enough to do it that way by technical director here at the theater. Didn't really care enough staff to do it that way either. We still did it. It was confusing to us. It was confusing to the audience.

It didn't add anything. It was just weird. What? No! That's... that is truly a bummer to me. How dare he? How dare he let something so interactive be so staid? What are you, some sort of character that walks around Disney World? No, no, no, Rafael, you need to live. You need to be out there. You should have done more lines. Alright, thank you so much for calling in.

Let's go back to the Discord. Ghostbag writes, the boner under the sheet is actually a weapon scene was completely ripped off from the Paul Verhoeven film Black Book in 2006. Nice try Coppola, but you can't out-perv the master. Well, you know what? Here's what I'll say. It seems like Megalopolis has been in his head since 1976, so he might have thought of it before Verhoeven. Quantum Jazz writes,

Did anyone else find it confusing that Caesar insisted on constructing his new utopia in the densely populated city of New York? Why couldn't he have built the smaller more manageable sample city in New Jersey or Long Island? It seems crazy to conduct such a large-scale unproven experiment in Manhattan before testing it out in a less densely populated area. Quantum jazz you don't get it. That would be a suburb then. We don't want a suburb. We want a suburb in a city. We can't take the suburb out of the city then it's a suburb. That's megalopolis baby. Maximum Clark writes, correction, an audience member tries to point out

symbolism in Dustin Hoffman's credit scroll, stating he didn't have a name and that it fades in and out weirdly, when in reality he is credited as Nush, the Fixer Berman, and every featured cast member's character name disappears halfway up the credit scroll, with Dustin Hoffman being no different than the rest. This was clearly an artistic choice by the title company with no special significance. Thank you, Maximum Clark. Wow, so many great corrections and omissions this week, but there can only be one that is the best,

one that exceeds all of them. And you know, truthfully, it is the person who was in Megalopolis, and that is Raphael. Raphael, you are the winner, and you get nothing, but you do get this amazing song from Case Silva. Hit it! Now if you want to chime in with your own thoughts about the latest episode hit us up on the discord at discord.gg slash hd tgm or calls at 619 P a u l a s k.

All right coming up after the break Jason will stop by we'll chat about all things on TV, audiobooks and movies that we've been loving. Welcome back people. I want you to check out our matinee episodes. Those are re-releases of old How did this get made episodes. And I think you're going to enjoy them because this week was one of my personal favorites. That's right. The old villain Ron Silva shows up with Timecop.

Nick Kroll guests on that episode. It's episode 166. And next week will be Gods of Egypt with Aaron Gibson and Brian Saffie. So keep on checking out our replays of classic episodes every Tuesday and without any further ado it is now time to welcome Jason for a little Just Chat. Antoine Wellen, play us in. And it's a fact that we can all call it... Just Chad! They're watching their movies! They're watching TV!

They're going to tell me You can all call it just Chad! Jason, how are ya? Paul, here we go! Boom! Boom! Boom! Um, couple of great TV shows, TV shows coming back or have come back. SAS Rogue Heroes, the Steven Knight World War II series. Yes.

Fantastic, back in action. A lot of people have asked us if we have seen that. I have not seen that, so I'm happy that you brought it up. Oh yeah, I loved the first season a couple of years ago when it came out. I love Steven Knight, who did Peaky Blinders and a ton of other stuff. One of the most prolific writers working right now.

I love that show Rogue Heroes, so I was thrilled it came back. And so far this season too has been terrific. Boy, did I love every insane second of Taylor Sheridan's Landman. I need to watch that. I've only heard it is great. The two shows that I've watched that feel to me

as though they are somehow connected are Landman, and I'm currently watching Billions. Oh, Billions, wow. Which is straight crazy and an absolute blast. And they both have that feeling of unhinged kind of machismo and bravado constantly being like kneecapped. It's a blast. Well, and Billions is kind of like,

and my limited watching of it, I've caught episodes across the years, it is like a high stakes entourage. I think the dig that you would often get at entourages, oh, nothing really happens. This show is like everything happens. And, but the bravado, it's a heightened, I mean, it is, it's a heightened entourage in it,

but with stakes and craziness and it truly is fun. It's a heightened, I mean it is, it's a heightened entourage in it, but with stakes and craziness and it truly is fun. It's absolutely nuts. And both of, the thing that I love about both of these shows, Land Man and Billions, is that they are every single character monologues constantly. Everybody's given minutes to just give full-throated, crazy monologues and everybody's like, yeah, yeah, it's a blast.

It's definitely a show, both shows are writer forward. Like, you know, you could tell you're like, oh yes, this is what, yeah, this is the, got it, I got it, I'm here. It's wild, it's wild, but both those shows are a blast. Super fun, Landman though, Billions obviously is long since over, butman, I just had so much fun with. And it's a, don't give it too much thought. You know, again. That's why I like Tulsa King. Yes.

Yes, exactly. This is Tulsa King. This is Mayor of Kingstown. This is Yellowstone. It's not Lioness. It's not as violent. It's not, it's got a lot more, Lioness is a lot more intense. This is fun. Ali Larder, incredible performance from Ali Larder in this show, absolutely unhinged. It's a blast. I gotta watch it. I've been so, like, watching Academy Award movies,

trying to catch up. This is like my period where I am just, like, like, OD-ing on those films, which I'm loving and it's great, but I am missing my shows. And the only one I'm really keeping up on right now is Traders. American Traders, which only gets better and better. I will say- Is that the one that is Alan coming hosting or is that the other one?

Yes. Alan coming hosting American Traders. Now, will I say, I'll be very honest and say, it's still not as good as UK Traders, and the best of all of it, season two of Australia. But I'm saying all that to say that America is a great season right now, because they bring on some characters from a bunch of different shows and some great characters.

They upped the ante in the right way on season two. I highly recommend it. If you know these people, great. If you don't know them... Is this the one that, um, Vanderpump's scandal, Scandal Ball? Is that what he's on, right? Oh, and he is great. Oh, good. Oh, wow.

He is... I mean, one of my favorite things about Vanderpump is watching him react to things. He always looks like a guy that is guilty in a police interrogation room. And I thought, oh, you know, because I haven't watched all of Vanderpump, I've watched a lot of it. I always thought, oh, this is maybe because

he's really under the gun or he's really under this eye because of, you know, the scandal. No, that's how he is in general. He feels constantly being zoomed in on. By the way, I'm gonna pitch a show, well, not pitch a show. I wanna talk to you about a show to get your reaction to it. I have not watched it, but I saw a commercial for it yesterday.

It's a new show on Fox. It's called, it basically is alone, right? People are put out into the world, but their family is in a base station watching them. And their family gets to manipulate certain things in their environment, a la Truman Show. And they get to call the extraction or not. Wait, but it is similarly like- They are alone, they are- In the wilderness, it is still a kind of problem solving

in the wilderness survival show. And they're not connected to their family, but their family is in like a NASA control room where they're watching live feeds of their person. Okay, oh, I'm in, I'm in for sure. Basically dealing, and I was like, ooh, this looks, I'm in, I'm in, for sure. Basically dealing, and I was like, ooh, this looks, I mean, clearly someone was like, all right,

how do we capitalize on Alone? Well, that's what's happening. Everybody, Alone has been such a big smash success, both on history, and then once it started airing on Netflix, it was so big that Netflix themselves developed their own Alone, which I hated, because it was mean-spirited. It was like every, it was a competition.

It had a competition, and one of the teams was like all villains, and they, instead of like playing the game, I mean, this is the game, I guess, but not a game I'm interested in, their game became, their team's thing became sabotaging other teams, like cruelly, and I was like, I don't like this at all. You see, so the extracted idea, I'm Googling it,

the show is called Extracted. It's a survival competition show where family members watch and decide their fate of the people out there. And it's very similar to Alone, 12 untrained contestants. That's the biggest difference. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. And the contestants are given more challenges, like they have to do things that are, you know, so it's kind of mixing and matching. Yeah, I'm going to check it out, but my guess

is I'm not going to like it simply because I think the thing that attracts me to Alone is how capable the people are. Right. You know what I Right. Yes. Is watching people, the things that I love about a loan are when someone solves a problem, not when someone fails. You know, I don't take joy from like, uh, ha ha, they got you. You know, like, are you failed, you're out.

I love it when someone is like, I have this problem and now I've turned this problem into an asset or whatever. And you wanna watch somebody be good at something. There's a difference between watching someone who's never fished learn to fish, that's fun. But there's something about watching a person who knows how to fish create a fishing net and create like an ecosystem that can fuel them.

There is something that alone does that is a celebration of incredibly smart people in an extreme situation. Whereas it seems to me on the basis of what I just read about extraction, it's survivor skills. I always watched survivor and I go, oh, I realized this recently

cause I watched it when I was younger. And I'm like, oh, these people are just, they're not, they don't know how to do anything. They don't, like at one point in Survivor, most of the times when they have to make fire, it's like, oh geez, I gotta make fire. You know, it's like, they're not even coming on the show with that level of knowledge.

So, you know. No, no, and that's, you know, that's, that's, and that's a little bit why I didn't watch, or why Survivor, I think I watched the first maybe three seasons when it came out, because it was such a new, sticky thing. But then I fell off of it, but I mean, Alone, I devour. Also, Alone, Australia is fantastic.

Why is Australia always better? I mean, I was in it with Traders too. You know why? Because they've got all these crazy animals. It's just like, it's nuts. You're like, whoa, giant spiders, whoa. Hi, man, oh man, oh man. I am, uh.

Let me shout out just a few more things if you don't mind. There's a new animated show on Netflix that Ali Wong, our friend Ali Wong is the star and producer of called Gentry Chow versus the Underworld. Whoa, I don't know about this. It's fantastic. It's an absolutely dynamite show that I can't recommend enough to everybody.

If you've liked a lot of the other kind of animation stuff that we've talked about, I think this fits solidly into that. It is a wonderful coming of age, teen angst story, while also being a fantastic girl has powers that she didn't know about. And as those powers come to bear, how does that influence and change her life? It's got a great, like, it's not quite a superhero story.

It's got magic. It's got coming of age. It's got family history. It's got everything going for it. And it's also very funny. Gentry Chow versus the underworld. That's on Netflix. On Netflix.

I don't remember what network this is on, but the TV show Laid, the Nanachka Khan show. Oh, that's great, yes. I believe that's Peacock, yes. That's really funny. With Stephanie, is it Shoe? Stephanie Shoe? Yes, from She Is Great. She was in that, oh my gosh, I love all these people.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, and Zoë Shaman was in it. From Joyride, which I really enjoyed. Yes. Fantastic. Yes, and Zoesha Mammott's in it. From Joyride, which I really enjoy. Yes, fantastic. Yes, and it is Stephanie Shue. Stephanie Shue is so fucking funny in this show.

She's hilarious. Absolutely just crushes everything in this show. And there is, I was watching it, and this made me laugh just because it's a bit that was part of our episode, is there's a bit in one of the episodes about malignant and Stephanie Shue keeps calling the character malignant

like we were doing on the podcast. I love it. That alone got a laugh out of me. But the show is fantastic and very funny and absolutely worth checking out. It's on Peacock, like you said, Paul, I just looked it up, you're right. It's great, Can't recommend enough.

Uh, if you've not seen Wild Robot, holy cow. Oh, yes. Wow. That movie crushed me, like, in the best possible way. Like, I read a review that someone said, hey, if you wanna cry for an hour and 42 minutes, this is a great movie for you. Uh, my son came home so upset, in a wonderful way. Like he loved the movie, he was so moved by it.

And I was like, oh, I wanna watch this. And you know, I'm sure it'll be sad, but it won't be, it destroyed me in a great way. A beautiful movie, Wild Robot. She's one of the actresses in it as Bill Nye, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamerill, I'm mispronouncing it. Mark Hamerill? Mark Hamerill.ames, Mark Hamerl, I'm mispronouncing it. Mark Hamerl?

Mark Hamerl. Mac, Mac Hamerl. Mac Hamerl, Peter Pescal, all the classics. It's a great movie, it's great. Matt Berry's very good in it. Lupita Nwongo is in it, it's great. Highly recommend Wild Robot. I will shout out as well,

a lot for me, TV is going down real smooth. The Diplomat on Netflix. Oh, you're talking like June right now. This is what she's watching. I know. Fantastic show, loved it, goes down smooth. I will shout out two shows that are about to return. So if you wanna catch up on them, go right ahead. Sure is the season four, as I mentioned earlier,

coming soon. Uh, Unstoppable, the best comedy on television. Um, and then a show that I think is one of my favorite shows, and I've just started rewatching it again in preparation for Season Two coming out, I think 12 years after Season One, uh, the British masterpiece, uh, Wolf Hall. Oh, I love Wolf Hall.

I didn't know that was coming out. Season two comes out in March and it is a continuation of the Hilary Mantel books. And Wolf Hall, I am, if you're not like, this is where I met Mark Rylance. Boy oh boy. The best. He is amazing in this and, or maybe I saw him on Broadway and then I saw him on this. But this is- It's an incredible performance.

Wow. This is the story of Thomas Cromwell. So it's the court of King Henry VIII, it's Anne Boleyn, it's all of that era of history told inside of the story of Thomas Cromwell, who's a lawyer who Rylance plays. And what's fascinating is there's so much going on and everybody in the show is a straight up home run murderer actor. And Rylance though is the focal point of everything and has, I'm going to say, a quarter the amount of dialogue as everyone else. He's speaking I'm gonna say a quarter the amount of dialogue as everyone else.

He's speaking so infrequently, but you're watching his face constantly. It's riveting performance. It's so funny that you say this show because I remember that I bought the DVDs of it. That's how long ago I was watching this show and watching it in a trailer in a cold Canadian set wherever I was and just love and couldn't stop watching it.

Like one of those shows where I was like, can I get back to my trailer so I can watch more of Wolf Hall. Wolf Hall, you know, it was a PBS masterpiece. It aired here on masterpiece, you know, PBS. And I think that's how I found it first. And I just remember, cause it's also like, it feels like Barry Lyndon.

It's all lit with candles and natural light. It is beautiful and slow and it is just a blast. It also feels like that, I mean, it has a similar feeling of the favorite too, which I loved and is a great movie. It's kind of the opposite of Billions. You know what I mean? Like it's the opposite.

So it's like, it's a good, or the Diplomat or these other shows that I've mentioned, just because it is Slow and thoughtful and incredible anyway Okay, I'm just gonna throw out a couple of comics that I think it have come out in the last bunch of time that I think I've been catching up on my I've been catching up on my unread pile of comics Ooh, I love that and so there's been a bunch of good stuff One red pile of comics. Ooh, I love that. And so there's been a bunch of good stuff.

Our friend Tom King, you know what, Tom King, you can go to hell, has a new book, is writing a new Jenny Sparks book over at DC. It's fantastic. Jeff Spokes. Oh, by the way, I just got that Jenny Sparks. I had had it on my list of things to get and I really loved it. I thought that was great. It's fantastic. Yep. it's a great book.

Tom King always doing super interesting stuff. It's a great read. The art is fantastic. Scott Snyder and Nick Tragota are doing a book called Absolute Batman. This is the biggest comic book of the year, I believe, just in terms of sales and it's a huge book. It's a big success.

I'm just gonna shout it out just cause it's great and it looks fantastic. By the way, and you know, Charles Sol, who I's a big success I'm just gonna shout it out just cuz it's great and it looks fantastic by the way, do you know and you know Charles? So who I'm a big fan of as well is coming out with a brand new series called legacy of Vader Which is gonna be can't wait for that and these comics are always Gang gang we say it a lot but like I can we cannot recommend enough if you are a Star Wars fan, and you maybe feel burned by the hot and cold shows and movies, some are good, some are bad, you can't always count on it, you can't predict it,

the comics are phenomenal. So- Really, really good. Dial yourself into the comics, it's an absolute blast. And I'm also like, I'm on my last Timothy Zahn book, Star Wars novel. I've now listened to all of them on audiobook. TITO These are the ones that came out when we were kids, right? TITO Yeah, when we were, well, not just when we were kids, but when we were kids all the way

through our adult, they've been coming out for years. Some of these books came out. TITO Oh, wow, I'm looking at this. Yeah. TITO Yeah, exactly. TITO Okay, he basically is, all right, so all the Thrawn books are basically his. He is Thrawn. He is Thrawn, but he's also Mara Jade and the Mara Jade Luke Skywalker Thrawn storyline. You know, so there's all these connected books inside of this is, and to be clear, these are non-Disney, these are the decanonized legends stories, the expanded universe, whatever

they call it, I can't remember now. But so these aren't in line with the current canon, but they are great stories, fantastic books, and the audiobooks specifically are incredible because they audio design everything. Mark Thompson does incredible voices for everybody. They have the John Williams score. They have the TIE fighter and lightsaber sounds.

So it feels very rich. So they're a blast to listen to. Maybe I should listen to this. I'm right now listening to a great, I'm reading and listening to a great Kubrick book. It's kind of like the, it's supposedly like the definitive Kubrick book. It had come out, I believe a couple of,

maybe a couple months ago, it's called Kubrick and Odyssey. I kind of prefer when I listen to a biography like this, it goes down smooth. I mean, there's no sound effects, obviously. But it goes down smoother. It would be great if there was. Yeah, like monolith. It's red in the Hal voice.

Kubrick is really interesting also because I feel like lately it's been coming up a bunch, oh, Action Boys, the podcast just did The Killers. And so they were talking about Kubrick a bunch. And I feel like that's, it's a great, oh, and Eyes Wide Shut, I just watched Eyes Wide Shut. Well, we just did Eyes Wide Shut on Unspooled, which found its new home at Realm.

But I will say this, it was fascinating to rewatch that movie. And then, you know, there's a lot of talk about The Shining and well this, and he was hiding this. I love listening to people's theories on Kubrick because whether or not it's true, like who cares? It's just that people have gone this deep into it. Well, that's that whole documentary.

Room 236 is just people trying to find larger meaning in Stanley Kubrick's work. Kubrick is, like, he's such a powerful filmmaker that he has caused an entire industry below him of people who are like, I have unlocked or I have unpacked the puzzles that are in the Kubrick canon. And what's so interesting about this book is they basically have fun with this idea.

Like, you know, actually, as a matter of fact he was a devout family man who was so happy at home wanted to be with his animals and his family. And there's like, he just kind of was like, oh, I don't need to be in Hollywood. I don't care about that. And because of that, he got labeled as this, and so everyone was like, yes,

he was trying to tell us all these things. And it's like, the truth is, he just, so far from reading the book, he's like, oh, he just loved, like Hitchcock, to research and get in and create a world. And it was very personal because he loved it. Yes. It's his world. That's the thing personal because he loved it. And it was his world. Yes.

It's his world. That's the thing is like that like, oh, eyes wide shut. It's like, well, that's not New York. It's not. It's this weird New York that Kubrick created. I can't recommend enough if you're into the Kubrick thing, if you haven't watched it.

There's a million documentaries about Stanley Kubrick. All of them I've seen and are terrific. But there's one that is a British TV documentary that John Ronson made called Kubrick's Boxes. I literally would share my screen with you right now that I brought that up because I was like, oh, I got to recommend that doc. It's one of- Kubrick's Boxes.

Kubrick's Boxes. It's incredible. John Ronson, who you might have heard on This American Life or his own podcasts, or he's the author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed or all these other great books. Really interesting documentarian, really interesting journalist, has that sing-songy British voice,

and it is a great documentary about how he is invited after Stanley Kubrick's death to go to Stanley Kubrick's house and look through what would become later, years and years later, the Stanley Kubrick archive that then toured the world. As somebody who has many things in boxes labeled just like this, this movie had a profound effect on me.

And I will tell you this, if you wanna watch it, it is on YouTube. The entire 48, it's only 48 minutes, not even a long documentary, but it's an amazing- No, I think it was a TV documentary. I think it was just an episode of a TV show. And it really is a wonderful way of looking at this guy who was constantly researching

and working on these projects. And I think what's so kind of fascinating was like, he was mercurial, but he wasn't without humanity. And he was actually, if anything, full of humanity. And yeah. Very funny, very, all about connection. Like you hear all these stories about like Spielberg and Sidney Pollack and all these people

who had relationships with Kubrick that were based on long phone conversations or fax conversations. Like Kubrick was always wanting to be in touch with other filmmakers and other people, but the way he did it was always through like technology, which is super interesting because it's the sixties or seventies or eighties. Well, I mean, the fact that he was writing and never got to make AI, Spielberg made it, and God knows it's not the same thing. But, uh, Napoleon movie, ghosts movie. But I'm

just talking about AI as, like he was, this is not, Kubrick has been dead for a very long time, that he was on, like this was his, he was there. Like he was looking at it. Like I wouldn't say even Jules Verne. He just was like, he was a man who read a lot. And I think he saw certain things coming.

And like the Coen brothers, I think, his movies get better and better with each watch because everything is a choice, and you may not get it the first time you watch it or you may not appreciate it, but man oh man, it comes back and it just gets, it's, yeah, it really just gets better. There are some people for whom you can keep

watching those movies and it's diminishing returns, it hits, oh boy, wasn't that just as fun as when I saw it the first time. And then there are movies, and I think Kubrick movies are really up there for them, and Coen Brothers as well, that feel like every, when you revisit them, you learn more about yourself, especially you learn more about yourself as an older person.

Like I've just been, I just have rewatched both Hannah and her sisters and Crimes and misdemeanors. And as a middle-aged person, boy is it different to process these movies than when I was younger and they are incredible. Well, I mean, I will also say like, you know, the interesting thing about like Eyes Wide Shut when I watched the first time, you know,

I guess it's not a sexy movie. Like it was like kind of really built as that, but it really is like- It was sold to us as an erotic thriller from Stanley Kubrick. And it's not that at all. I mean, in many respects, it's like a fucking guy who gets spirals

because his wife tells him she had a dream. It's such a wonderful, like look at a man's insecurity of his wife's sexuality. It's like, and you're like, that's a hard film to sell, obviously. You can't just say, ooh, you wanna watch a guy lose his mind because his wife said that she had a dream where she was fucked by somebody else? I remember it so vividly going to the Court Street

movie theater in Cobble Hill when I lived in Brooklyn, when it came out, seeing it, there couldn't have been more hype, couldn't have been more excited, couldn't have been more excited, and being like, whoa, that was not what I thought it was gonna be. No, not at all. Really having to process it in a way that was like, huh,

and it's simply because Kubrick wasn't interested in coming out ahead of time and being like, everybody keeps saying this is an erotic thriller, it's not. He just didn't say anything, and yeah, wild, great. Even though he was involved in the marketing of it, which I think is very much a true, look, that's the biggest argument that people can make

is like, was the movie done? Finished, the way he wanted it to be finished. And I've not gotten up to that section of the book, but they allude to certain things. And the truth is, is like, probably, there might have been some small, like... I don't think that he was into the... It wasn't gonna be like a slashed and burned... Like, you know, like 2001, like he had...

I think that original sequence of like the space ballet was like 12 minutes and he cut it down, you know? It's like, I think he was past that, and it was a lot more like coloring notes and sound mix. It wasn't like we need to redo this or that. I'm so curious. I got to read that book. Are you reading the book or you're listening to the audio? I'm listening to the audio book.

It's again, it's because it's sort of like the book is really big. And so I started reading it. I was like, oh, this will be more interesting to listen to as I'm driving around. I love that. Yeah, that's great. I just have been reading a bunch of like pulpy detective books that have been super fun. Have you read Jonathan Ames's new book? I love, oh, I love Jonathan Ames.

I didn't even know there was a new Jonathan Ames book. Oh yes, so he has this like trilogy. I'm just gonna make sure I'm getting all the names right here. While you look that up, I'm gonna just shout out a couple of other comic books. Yeah, go for it, yeah. I can do them quick.

The book Doom by Jonathan Hickman and Sanford Green is a great one-shot Dr. Doom story. I talked about Jenny Sparks. Our friend Scott Aukerman's Astonishing Spider-Man is absolutely terrific. And he has written me in as a podcaster. I am Jason Manzoukas, podcaster who hosts a podcast with J. Jonah Jameson.

Couldn't be more excited. Love that. I think that Jason Aaron's Namor is fantastic. who hosts a podcast with J. Jonah Jameson, couldn't be more excited. Love that. I think that Jason Aaron's Namor is fantastic. I'm a huge fan of this guy, Ram V. His book, Dawn Runner, I thought was absolutely terrific. And last but not least, it is my favorite book going right now just because I can't beat Chris Somney's incredible artwork,

Batman and Robin, year one, Mark Waid, Chris Somney, a team that just absolutely crushed Daredevil many years ago, back in action for Batman and Robin year one Mark Wade Chris Sommarie a team that just absolutely crushed Daredevil many years ago back in action for Batman and Robin year one the book is absolutely I gotta get into some more I've been bad on comics lately and I've been trying to catch back up um this is the book that uh it's called Karma Doll and it's the third in this trilogy that is very much L.A. noir in like it feels like a Michael Connolly book who wrote Bosch. It feels like Chandler. Oh, I started watching Lincoln Lawyer, by the way.

Oh, which people love, right? People love it. People love it. And you know, he's Bosch's like half brother. Did not know that. The Lincoln Lawyer is literally Bosch's half brother. It's fucking, it hasn't come to bear in the show yet, but it can't wait.

Oh, I cannot wait. I hope it does. I know that the, I play tennis a lot here in Los Angeles and there's a guy that I often play next to who is the show runner for Lincoln Lawyer. I don't know him, but I hear him talking about Lincoln Lawyer all the time and the issues that they have on Lincoln Lawyer and the successes they're also having.

But so I like to listen in. So funny. Anything else? I'm still on my anime kick. I'm still watching Dan Da Dan. I have rewatched Free Rin again. Fantastic. I want to once again recommend Look Back, the incredible anime movie from last year. It's only an hour long and it is absolutely beautiful. And then I just started a new show, the title of which is Dead Dead Demons Dead to Dead Destruction. What?

I don't know. But I had a blast watching it. I've only watched a couple of episodes. Absolutely a blast. I wanna call out one thing that I really enjoyed and I was mad at myself that I didn't watch it earlier, which is the Please Don't Destroy movie. The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.

Super funny. Well done. Conan O'Brien, very funny in that movie. Conan's great. It's just really funny people being funny. And, and I think I was like at first put off by it because I felt like no one was really talking about it. But I'm like, I like these guys on SNL and why am I not watching their movie?

And I'm like, oh, it's great. It's really funny. It's really silly. It's really good. Like it's thumbs up. Just. I had a blast. I had a blast watching it.

I thought it was really funny. And I like those guys as well on the show. And I'll recommend the documentary series on the Morgan Neville four part documentary series on SNL that's on Peacock is so funny. There's one entire episode that's just about the Morcau Bell. There's one entire episode

that's about everybody's audition. There's one episode that's just about the weird year, the year when Lorne comes back and hires Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. And there's a whole episode that's just about that one failed year. It's great. Oh, I can't wait. I love all that SNL stuff.

By the way, our, a good friend of ours, Carl Tartt, is writing for SNL. So good. And the two banger sketches in the last two weeks, if you watch the Chappelle episode, the evacuation episode, or the evacuation sketch, that was a Carl Tartt, watch it. It's about Dave Chappelle goes kind of nuts

when LA gets an evacuation order. And then this week they did a barista training one that killed me and Another Carl and if you like funny, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Please you finish If you like funny stuff I just want to keep on talking about the fact that the onion is back and you can get it in paper form Which I am getting it delivered because I wanna support journalism.

But it's, they're ad free, this guy who bought it, a rich guy who bought it, and so basically, I wanna bring back what I loved about The Onion. So he's paying people well, they're creating really funny articles, it's non-stop, it's great. Just get yourself another subscription to The Onion. I love that.

How do you find out who, how do you know that Carl wrote those sketches? How do you find out who wrote what sketches? We can cut this from the episode or not, but I'm genuinely curious. So sometimes there are SNL websites that will break down, like this person wrote this, this person, and that, you know, and I don't go to that that often,

but I, last week I had written Carl and I was like, man, that Chappelle evacuation sketch was hilarious. He's like, that was mine. And then, and then, and then this week I was like, man, that barista sketch was so funny. And then I saw that Carl had, had posted, like I, I did this one. And so, Okay. Like on, on I did this one. And so- Oh, okay, like on social media. Yeah, so I don't know everybody's sketches, but one time I did do a little bit more of a deep dive and there was like a couple of like,

it's a website called SNL by the Numbers, which is a fascinating, like if you like bar graphs and things like, this person had this many minutes, this is what they said, it's a hilarious thing, but they sometimes will get like that, not inside scoop, but they'll be able to say like this person wrote this. And a lot of the cast now, like, who is it? I really like Sarah Squirm and Sarah Sherman.

And she had a sketch that she wrote this week where it's basically just CPR, but someone farts in their face. And it's very funny, very funny. So funny. But that's the kind of thing that I'm like, because I watched it yesterday, and I'm like, oh, I don't know who wrote this.

Yeah, I know. And I wanted to ask you, because you had sent the text message a while back about Carl writing one of those Chappelle sketches, and I was like, I meant to ask you how you found out about that. Yeah. That's great. That's super helpful.

So sometimes it's just sort of like, I just catch it in different ways, but I feel like now I'm gonna get it wrong for the rest of it, but there was this thing where I was like, it felt like, both of those sketches felt like Carl's voices. Like, I was like, oh, and look, and I just looked at this. There's a Reddit called Live From New York

that breaks down every single person who is, you know, who wrote it, stuff like that. All right, Jason, I think we talked about a bunch of great stuff. Until next time, we'll meet again. Thank you, Jason, for just chatting with me, but now it is finally time to announce our next movie. Next week, we are going from,

oh, you ready for this? Megalopolis to, I don't know what to say about this movie. Yes, that's right. We are watching 2010's Passion Play starring Mickey Rourke, Megan Fox, and Bill Murray. Yep, this movie exists. Here's a short breakdown of the plot.

A washed up jazz musician becomes infatuated with a beautiful woman with wings. And then Bill Murray plays a gangster who's trying to steal her away. That's right people this movie is nuts. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 3% score on the tomato meter and Nick Schaeger from LA Weekly says Mickey Rourke recently made headlines for dubbing Passion Play a terrible movie. A proclamation that's ultimately most notable for its understatement.

Ooh Nick Schrager! Alright let's take a listen to the trailer. I'm not an angel. If you'd like to get away from all of this, you're welcome to go back with me. Man, I know you want me dead, okay? So I get the angel, then you get your life. You can stream Passion Play for free on the Roku channel or rent it on Fandango or maybe on Amazon Prime. In addition, you can check out Hoopa, Canopy, and Libby, which are digital media services offered to you by your local public library that allow you to consume movies, TV, music, audiobooks, ebooks, and comics for free.

All right, that's it everybody. Thank you for listening and if you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate and review us. 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. Get your tickets for our live tour and a big thank you to our producers, Cody Fisher, Matt Apodaca, his last shows.

Bye bye, Matt, we love you. Molly Reynolds, our movie picking producer, Avril Halle, our associate producer, Jess Cisneros, and our engineer, Casey Holford. We'll see you next week for Passion Play.