Podcast: The Ride - Backdraft

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

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FOREVER! DOG! It's Backdraft on Podcast The Ride. Welcome to Podcast The Ride, a show about theme parks where we're excited to discuss all the times that the Universal Backlot was supposed to be on fire. I'm Scott Gerner, joined by Jason Sheridan and Mike Carlson. Hey, fellas. Yeah, hello, I'm Mike Carlson. Yeah, there is a rich history of fires at the Universal Backlot. This one also has a time it wasn't supposed to be on fire yes within the attraction where there's a fire inside of a soundstage the outside of the soundstage was also set on fire uh unrelatedly i don't know i believe it was a blowtorch just a worker then they were that's what i'm. They were working on it during the day?

During business hours? What? Yeah. Was it a test run for the fake fire that happened later that destroyed the King Kong part of the tram tour? Like 20 years later? Yeah, I mean, was it that late? No, it wasn't that late. It was 1992, this accidental fire happened.

This opened in 92, and the fire was in the first couple months. Yes, it was also in 92 and then the The fake New York fire Was 2008 There was a different I was watching I can't remember it's like Yesterland Yesterworld one of those And there's another incident where

Not the movie where the Beatles music disappears No that's a different that's yesterday And that's not the Bruce Springsteen musical One yeah I didn't know about that Which we saw before when we saw Aladdin No, that's a different, that's yesterday. And that's not the Bruce Springsteen musical one. Yeah, I didn't know about that one. Which we saw before when we saw Aladdin. No, it's not that. It's one of those YouTube videos where they recount what happened in a defunct attraction. And there was an incident where the fire sprinklers were set off, drenching the people that were watching Backdraft.

Because the ride itself got like too flamey it like flared up and it set off the sprinkler system like dousing people i think in like chemicals and water no both and they had to change their clothes they had to go to the hotel they had to like they offered they all got free whatever shirt thing one and thing two shirts and then they got marched in the hotel to take a shower And back out yeah so I think I was confusing It with that because that was I don't think too long Ago I didn't know about that one But but but I bring this up

Partially because have you guys been following That the 2008 Universal fire has been back In the news this week Yes oh yeah yeah yeah This is fascinating it's like this is It suddenly is a story again And we picked backdraft pretty randomly as a topic. But this actually fire in the universe a lot. Extremely relevant right now. And if you at home don't know this incredible article from the New York Times magazine about the 2008 fire that the big headline at the time was that the fire destroyed king kong uh the the original experience on the tram and the amazing animatronic that i got to yell at every day for uh one of the

best summers of my life uh you know that was the big thing about it and it destroyed some of the backlot sets and everything uh and then there was also the element that it destroyed a little bit of the video vault yes um and which i remember when i was training to be a tour guide they pointed out that building and they said this is one of the things you can never mention on the tour you cannot bring up that that building is the video vault we will tell you that but there's very precious stuff in there and we need to make sure nobody knows where that is then it caught on fire two years later uh and they tried to they they addressed that at the time and they said well everything was backed up and don't worry about it and uh you know

we think we think maybe we lost uh we thought that we lost like the original print of what dreams may come i was gonna say what dreams may come you remember that yes that was the one i remember that they were trying to track down the master of. We might have lost What Dreams May Come. It went to heaven, like the movie itself. But no, we tracked it down in Europe. It's fine. Okay, so film situation's fine.

Oh, yeah. Oh, and by the way, we might have lost a little bit of music, but we're not really worried about it. Just like a couple obscure. That was all that remained of that and then in the last couple weeks mega expose where that basically is that um all of the master recordings for you know all of the music ever was destroyed it is wow so bonkers and have you guys read the article i haven't that's I didn't know the extent of it. It's shocking. I mean, as a result of media consolidation over decades, the Universal Music Group is massive. Yeah.

And there was all of this, like Buddy Holly Masters. Is it Louis Armstrong? Yes. Anyone you can think of. Jeez. And then other older stuff of like record labels people don't even remember anymore the stuff where it's like this could be the only copy might just be gone now entire labels chess and i believe deca yeah uh impulse what was impulse records who cares just throw it in a warehouse

so that's most of john coltrane's masters wow uh it's else was on Impulse? So, you know, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Favaro Sanders, Charles Mingus. And then that's just like, the list is so overwhelming that if you just like stop and meditate on any individual one of them, like Rock Around the Clock was destroyed. There can never be a true remaster of Rock Around the Clock. At Last is gone. Jeez. Louie Louie is gone.

Things, these like fundamental touchstones in popular music. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you keep going down the list to like more recent stuff, you got blues to deal with. It's John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy and Howlin' Wolf and then you keep going through like Quincy

Jones, Four Tops, Burt Bacharach, Mamas and the Papas, Joni Mitchell, Al Green, Steely Dan and that is the unkindest cut of all. That's your most favorite of all the people you listed. You've gone too far, Fire. All of Steely Dan dan not all of steely

dan and this actually comes up in the article and i don't want to just recap this or the article in the podcast but i encourage everybody to look it up because it's even if you're just there's you know if you're a little interested in the theme park of it or the music of it it's a or just if you like government cover cover-ups conspiracies. This isn't government, but if you like crazy conspiracies. It's so insane. Steely Dan comes up specifically in the story because, okay, so the fire happens, and they downplay it, and even there's a guy who they make fall on his sword and say, hey, can you just give me the names of two obscure artists who might have had their masters in the fire and they're able to say like oh so and so uh you know uh you know this guy's uh this organist all

his music's gone nothing else important they hiding the fact that this is all like fundamental american culture that got destroyed um and nobody was really asking questions and then irving azoff started asking around who was at the in the 70s was like a manager, an agent or something. Now is one of the most powerful people in the industry via Ticketmaster and all this stuff. He started asking, was this set of Steely Dan masters destroyed? And they panicked. And let's try to find it. And luckily, they found it in a warehouse in Pennsylvania.

It was somewhere else. Don't worry, Irving. It's all fine. But guess what? That wasn't all of it. There are Steely Dan. There's Steely Dan songs that can never be heard again, which is infuriating to me because there's like demos that are on hissy tape that are still fantastic and they'll never

be like done properly. To the quick thoughts. Do we know what Steely Dan songs were destroyed and was my old school destroyed? My favorite Steely Dan song. Oh, I don't know, actually. And there's maybe no way of knowing. Can't vouch for my old school. You know what, though?

I think here's an interesting component of all this. You start to ask why are masters important beyond making better know, making better mixes of albums? And music engineering and stuff can be kind of esoteric to me. I can't tell the difference between the mono and the stereo. But there's all these bizarre uses of masters you might never think of, like with the Beatles, if they want to make a Cirque du Soleil show and remix all the stuff or rock band. And I believe my old school was on rock band i think you could buy that and in order

to make rock band happen they had to separate out all of the stems so that makes me think that my old school is safe yes but there is a really hissy it's only available in horrible quality on youtube is a song called the bear that i love and there'll probably never be a good version of the bear by steely dan fuck all this but and also and then another one uh chris novichelic himself says he's fairly certain nirvana never mind the master recordings are gone oh my god been gone since 2008 and that's not even it's like so this thing goes like the list is so insane it goes on tom petty this tom petty it's gone forever uh rem that's rough yeah yeah it's so bonkers it is crazy i mean a couple things to think about one

these uh uh warehouses are just that they are warehouses even if you have the best climate control and fireproofing um and they as we learned today And they didn't because Well they did have climate control and they made everything very Cold the exact temperature for Old film to be stored at Which is too cold for music So some of this music already was like cracking Apart like the tapes were breaking

So it was already shit and then It all caught on fire It's already shit it's one it's staffed by Humans sometimes it's just staffed by humans sometimes it's just staffed by a guy or two um usually sometimes it's staffed by a dog you said staffed by humans uh yeah sometimes it's a dog maybe they might have just had a big hound like walking around this big warehouse old like 15 year old hound with like a security hat on top in the barrel for what the saint bernard barrel in case somebody gets falls and needs whiskey i mean i i worked like at a post house

for many years with massive vaults of like dailies and stuff like and masters i one project i worked on was the blu-ray restoration of Star Trek The Next Generation. And I had the camera masters. I just had a room filled with film casters. Oh, my God. Did you get fudge all over the Star Trek The Next Generation masters? And I got fudge all over them. I got Trader Joe's yogurt all over them.

How come in most episodes, like this like brown gas like filled that seemed like they went to that plot yeah there's every episode fudge gas monster on every new episode newly mastered episode of tng um uh yeah so i usually understaffed sometimes often underpaid and a lot of times that they'll just like cut costs or i mean stuff disappears forever like i i just the other day watched um the other side of the wind that orson wells this last movie that they finally uh finish that they finally and that film was scattered all over the france and america like the masters were scattered everywhere uh frank marshall uh hollywood power player helped finish it he was one of his first jobs was a production manager and he's even on camera in the movie margaritaville power player uh margaritaville

best friend jimmy buffett's best friend always on tour with jimmy for what his wife is uh heading up lucasfilm he'sanging out Drinking a margarita And watching the same set list Every night It's great honestly It sounds like a great life Brown eyed girl Only gets better

Yeah with Hey you know The steel drums You put on the Brown eyed girl In the night Sounded great Jimmy Hell yeah they did

And then that's like Every night Essentially Sure Probably fist bump Hug it out Yeah Hug it out

They're good pals Yeah so But that That was able They were able to Piece that all together essentially sure probably fist bump hug it out yeah hug it out uh yeah so that but that that was able they were able to piece that all together with what he orson had already edited and script notes to cut it together as a miracle because like the ending to the magnificent and uh ambersons was just thrown in a furnace like our juice hughes which is like the actual like the his ideal and they recut it and it got taken away from wells um but like there's people always think like maybe one day maybe one day we'll find it the canister is a film in a vault but it's also possible that died in a fire or howard hughes was just like no throw it out just burn it um right right uh or i come at it from the beach boys angle where like brian

wilson wanted to like not you know he tried to destroy the smile tapes yeah and then he came around on it eventually and thank god they weren't all destroyed or yeah sure we couldn't have pieced together this great musical artifact do we know are the prince archives anywhere near an amusement park that's my biggest concern uh i mean they're the only they're like probably 40 miles away from the mall of america into indoor amusement park so it'd have to be a really epic fire to make it all the way to shantusen or whatever the town is where uh well they were they've been moved i've heard they've been all moved to los angeles that's my understanding is No archives.

Now somewhere in a climate controlled place in Los Angeles. Good. Okay. But is it, it's not the lot, is it? I don't know. Next to earthquake.

I don't know. It might be the lot. It might be in Buena park next to Knott's Berry farm. I don't know where it could be, but hopefully it's not near a theme park. That's my concern. No, no, I, Oh oh god it's next to uh it's right next to the flash flood and at some point it's like it's right it's it's in old mexico and at some point that facade's gonna crack the um

the seaplane from water world is going to fly into them. It's just balsa wood, but... Who would ever suspect that all the Prince Masters would be under the tank where they perform water world every day? No one will find them there. That's what the mariner is trying to protect. That's what the deacon is trying to get at. He doesn't care about dry land. Oh, wait a minute. Precious Prince Masters.

He just wants the DV tapes of the documentary Kevin Smith shot hours and hours of like following Prince around. Talking about spirituality. Yeah. All right. I have the answer to the question. Where are the Prince archives?

Okay. Iron Mountain. Well, Iron Mountain came up in this story. Iron Mountain is presented as like an important alternative and that it is, which is so crazy, race to Iron Mountain. But you know, Iron Mountain also... It's not Iron City, though, which is good. So we can't use those coins we got when we won the Alita experience? It would be better if the tapes were in Salem.

We're up in the sky in Salem. Iron Mountain is also a destroying company. Like a shredding and hard drive destroying company. They do both there is an iron mountain literally across the 101 from universal city walk no no I don't know which iron mountain prince's archives are at they're everywhere like

big office buildings use iron mountain so what if there's a flood of those aqua spas in the zen zone all that like chemical water starts rushing down the hill yeah or or uh say someone's in the i fly and they get shot out the top and then they go flying into the archives and they just destroy all of it with their dead lifeless body that would be a nightmare crash through the ray yeah at that point they're going 120 miles per hour such force that yeah the uh

original all of parade, uh, cracks in half. Um, well, you know, princes, princes, there's a quote about Prince in this article.

It's our quote from Prince in this article, which is if you don't own your masters, your master owns you. All of that shit. The Prince is so good. So crazy about and writing slave on his face and changing his name and everything. This is the kind of thing he was fighting about.

Yeah. This is exactly what it was. Like, uh, he was smart smart enough to realize that and then it all got put in a vault at paisley park and now we're all getting to experience it newly remastered thanks to prince being aware that this could be a problem he could have left a little bit of a clear will um but other than that i think a lot of people accused him of being kind of kooky in the 90s but i think on a lot of this stuff, he's 100% right. Artists rights, owning your masters. Wanting to put out albums all the time.

Right. No, only, please, Prince, only put out one, like 10 songs every three years. That's what the label wanted. Right. So, yeah. So, I think that in hindsight, a lot of the things he was championing were correct. Yeah. And the only thing he got wrong is that he thought he would live to be 120 years old.

Right. And have to make a will. But he also didn't celebrate his birthday because he didn't believe in birthdays. Oh, so I don't even know. He didn't even know how old he was. So he thought he was 36. Yeah. He thought he was 36 eternally.

Something like that, I think. Yeah. Anyway, the theme parks do factor into this story also because there's there's one guy who essentially has been whistleblowing this whole thing and who expressed his concern in 1990 when the plan was to put all this in a warehouse on the universal lot his concerns proved to be correct when later in 1990 there was a fire purposefully set by a disgruntled security guard that burnt down lots of things very close to this vault. And then another fire in 1997.

And besides all of the fires, he points out in the article, the King Kong ride had explosions all day, every day. Flames shooting up right next door to the vault. Right. It's important to note that film making technology has never figured out a way to perfect lighting other than very hot lights on top of very flimsy poles. That smoke. We've all been on sets where something starts smoking and then nobody's actually that alarmed. It's fine that alarmed. Like, yeah, it's fine. That happens. Or like the gel is too close to the light bulb, like gel or blackout stuff, like flammable

material that you put right next to the light. Or we've almost been like hit in the head with a falling light many times. Like that always happens. A light is about to fall on you or someone. So like, yeah, if it falls over and cracks like yeah the fire quickly spreads it's all pretty flimsy for sure and also do you guys know how that well if yeah no you might not believe me but i don't know if you know how the fire really supposedly started in 2008 which is that there was a guy repairing the roof and that gets hot

enough to start a fire. So they keep somebody watching it for an hour, which they did and then the people went on break at four in the morning and then it caught on fire 35 minutes later. It was still hot enough to start a fire even though it had been cooling for an hour and a half. They watched it for like the exact

amount of time. Like when you jump a battery in a car and they're like, drive it for 30 minutes. They turned the car off at 30 minutes even that feels like a perfect alibi though it gets the workers off the hook sure and then it's no problem there's nothing will ever convince me that it was not set on purpose because of the fact of the new king kong that got put in that's the most suspicious thing i mean it was two months later so you you feel that it was so close to that they had the new peter jackson king kong so ready to go yeah they i mean they waited like maybe a year or something to announce it officially but they had it ready to go they had to deal with him like in place i don't like if what other part

of the tram i don't know i guess they what other part of the tram, I don't know. I guess they could have updated anything that got destroyed by a fire. But it seems very convenient to me that they were just like, yeah, we'll put the new King Kong. You know, that thing that we've made a deal about already. Like, let's just do that. There was a recent release of theirs and they didn't know it was a king kong was a license before i think right it just seems it seems very convenient is all i'm saying let me ask you guys uh how quickly after the fire did you go to universal very quickly because i was there uh

the next day the fire was on a sunday uh i was there on monday doing runs because the production company i was working for at the time had a bungalow. And then one of those little temporary kind of office trailers next to the smoldering wreckage. I was looking at like E.T. hazmat suit guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorting through flaming wreckage. Everyone just had the windows open and fans going like, oh, the smell is terrible. And I'm like, what are we breathing in

how are you doing accounting here like i'm getting the fuck out of here as quick as i can yeah yeah i mean i was there the that day yeah i went because i wasn't supposed to work that day but i was still on the schedule as a tour guide and i somebody called me and said put on the news and i said which channel he said any channel put it on raging fire. I drove down as quick as I could. I came running to the fire. The ghoul that I am. And I watched it from the balcony where there was an unbelievable view. But now I'm adding up that I was from there breathing up a lot of toxic fumes.

And I now realize that I breathed edda james at last at last went through my lungs and i'm going to die of cancer because edda because edda james at last was in my body they'll be doing some sort of scan and they'll be like little vibrate like they'll be able to hear it a little bit in the machines he's gone but there's a lovely tune being played. The last remnant of the song left with Scott's soul. Yeah. What year was it? 2008.

2008. So I was a PA nearby Warner Brothers at the ranch. And I remember seeing it, I'm pretty sure from, I think, what was it, a weekday? Yeah, I could see the smoke. Was it a weekday? I think I saw it. It was Sunday, I think. There were a lot of a lot of fires that year i think too so i'm trying to remember if that was one of the fires i saw from there but i could have easily seen it because it was so close there yeah but then we went very quickly to on the tram tour anyway absolutely insane i highly recommend this

article uh which describes the the incident as the biggest disaster in the history of the music business universal music group is going to get sued into the ground now which is states and management houses and record label like sued out the eyes yeah and apparently there were uh there were three artists uh joni mitchell sting and peter frampton who all put in the request to have their the masters enough time had passed and legally the masters could revert back to them and they could have them physically now and due to bureaucracy and red tape they never got it oh those three can fuck universal up wow it's great that is that is an insane problem when a client wants uh masters dailies that sort of stuff back then the company has to go through catalog everything in the system

print it out start giving that out and then you have to find it all in the physical facility box it up catalog it again to make sure you got her and then send it at like it's insane that's a lot to do okay you know the wins and outs of the post and there was tons of this stuff that just wasn't labeled nobody knew where it was if they wanted to start looking for it If stuff is coming right from recording studio Or coming right from set people are writing in like Grease pencil or like Scratchy notes and just shoving it

In a box and sending it to the Lot barely remembering to Say what the hell it even was so this Thing is this this thing is so insane and if I Could tie everything together to really add insult To injury the biggest Revelation of the article has to be that in every uh show of backdraft the initial fire was sparked by a rare blues master every single time the backdraft ran you know 30 times a day they burnt through the entire howlin wolf catalog on a single labor day in 1993

and it's just uh it's hateful man that is not rough that's not it's learned from mistakes of the past but anyway um in in 2008 the back like the purposeful fires of backdraft still raging still going not very far away from down on the lower lot if you uh aren't super familiar with universal studios or its history it's where the transformers ride is today um and uh yeah backdraft backdraft i saw a clip of an old commercial that was promoting like if you haven't been to Universal in a while, come check this out. And it was guys in prison. Like, it was like, hey, I bet you haven't been to Universal in a while.

And they're like, no, I've been busy. And it's like, you got to come check out Backdraft and E.T. And I think, did the Tram Tour also briefly load from the lower lot for a while? Do you remember that? It did, before Jurassic Park that it did before um before jurassic park it did yeah okay yeah that was all down so so that was all sort of what they were guys yeah lower lot has to be this was the new land of its time before galaxy's edge all of all of that in one place oh my god the starway yes and the starway miraculous theme

park invention of uh three or four escalators uh in a row it feels like eight escalators it feels it's not it's like crazy four is it four uh i think it's more than five maybe five uh well we'll find that out that'll be one of the pieces of info in the eventual starway episode that's a perfect uh second gate to me full things you have to travel is it four one two three four i it's that sounds right i mean the first this first one is like an overlook like right universal studios hollywood has to do a little more of the la like the magic of the movie sort of like uh because and and it's in a scenic spot so there's a spot just for pictures oh it's wait it's four wait and only recently is it four that's interesting what do you what was it they only added a oh no i'm sorry they added a fourth row i'm talking yeah they widened yeah yeah i'm not sure how many long ways there are okay they never um

try i wonder if they ever like it's did the math on like we build, I guess it wouldn't be a monorail, it would probably be a funicular. Like at a Grand Budapest hotel or Angel's Flight in Los Angeles. A funicular goes down a slanted hill. Well, I've wondered will they try to do, will the Harry Potter train suddenly become a uh what's the word funicular funicular i think they can turn it into a funicular i mean that would be a very gradual that'd be great yeah that would be perfect but make it an angel's flight sure do we have an answer it looks like four from this picture only four they're so long that's why I'm saying it feels like eight but I think it's like four now I can't stop thinking about a Starway episode

yeah yeah let's just go straight into the head from this yeah sure well because if we can find Starway father of the pride summer is heating up do you hear this and Lucy a tribute oh yeah haven't listened to podcast

the ride in a while? Here's what you're missing out on. Starway episode. I think I can see it. Lucy, it's true. Sounds good. I'm going to bust out of here. I'm busting out of Sing Sing. We start at Star Wars Galaxy's Edge in the summer and we end with Lucy Attribute.

And our ratings plummet. But praise from my mother goes skyrocketing. She's so happy with that episode. Praise is always high with her as long as you don't swear. Yeah, that's true. That's really what it depends on. Yeah, that's really what the main thing is. Or something about the Lord.

So, Fact Draft, a pretty big movie of its time. The number 14 top grossing movies, 1991, made about, in America, made about 78 million. Internationally brought it up to 150 million. So, did pretty good. But, like, they were a little disappointed, it felt like. They were a little disappointed. They wanted it to be a massive one. Because it is, like, Kurt Russell and Ron Howard directing. Robert De Niro's in it and Donald Sutherland

Scott Glenn Scott Glenn fans out I mean it's a weird level of hit certainly a hit but weird that I wonder if you what's the actual ratio of least box office success to theme park attraction

and like long running their length of the ride being open. Well 1991 was a big year for movies Terminator 2 Judgment Day Robin Hood Prince of Thieves number 2 that year Beauty and the Beast Silence of the Lambs City Slickers

Hook The Addams Family Sleeping with the Enemy Father of the Bride Naked number 10 Naked Gun 2 and a half The Smell of naked number 10 naked gun two and a half the smell of fear number 10 wow domestic uh receipts that yeah with that guy who's on twitter now oh yeah i think the third lead of naked gun i forget his name but he just joined twitter and people seem oddly uh right right i did hear about um i forget who is now george is that george kennedy you know he passed away i forget i don't know i'll look it up was that also scott glenn i think

scott glenn is on twitter now everybody's so uh twisted up about scott glenn's twitter um so so kind of it reminded me thinking about this and reading about backtrack which i don't think i've ever seen all the way through i think it's one I've seen bits and pieces of on cable. Not seen it. Not seen it. Yeah. It seems like that type of movie where they're like, oh, they don't make movies like that anymore. They don't make movies

for adults anymore. Sure. Well, a lot of what was on your list, I feel that way about. Yes. Those are all, that's when movies worked and how much of that was original. Not a lot of franchise in there. gun franchise was a remake teenage mutant ninja turtles 2 star trek 4 i guess so yeah but jfk um hot shots do you consider jfk based on ip in a way jfk ip uh yes i do okay yeah for sure the mental real estate of right assassination

yeah but not not an earth-shattering hit i mean you're not going to take down t2 no it took them a few more years to get those rights to make a ride also something that i feel like i didn't see it and maybe i'm wrong and biased. This doesn't feel like one that lasted very long. It didn't feel like Apollo 13 or something where I felt like, eh, people thought of that movie. I feel like no one thought of this after a few years. Maybe that's totally wrong. Like a match that you ignite and burns out very quickly?

And it goes out very quickly, yes. Yeah, okay. Maybe I'm wrong. It's you're seduced by the flame. Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that i think that sounds right i think i it's i think it looms any any looming that uh backdraft has is due to the attraction i would i would think um although now once again i was we picked this topic pretty randomly a couple days ago but strangely you know hey there's the there was the fire tie-in that we covered but also

um y'all y'all know about backdraft 2 right i'm so glad you brought up backdraft 2 we all have not said it yet but we all know learned about backdraft 2 in the last 24 to 48 hours i i i was almost done my research and i was like let me just look at the wikipedia for the movie not the ride to just just go over it all once again just to make sure i missed any i didn't miss anything and i opened up another 45 minutes of learning about backdraft 2 well we should say when backdraft 2 came out it's a month and a half ago what in the world how is it that the day we think of backdraft there's oddly surely they didn't get anyone from the original cast no they're all too busy right your kerr russells he's got plenty to do and i don't suppose wait i'm sorry i was wrong they

got william baldwin and donald sutherland to reprise their characters. What? What? Two members of great acting lineages lending their valued names to this franchise again. Where is this? I didn't actually learn this. Where is this available to? It's on Blu-ray DVD. It's on demand. You can get it.

And it's Universal produced. Like, this isn't someone bought the rights. It's like Universal put this out billy baldwin plays his character from the movie and the main character is uh the son of kurt russell's uh firefighter character who passes away in the first one and there's lots of mention of his wife and son you know his wife you know i gotta get you it's too dangerous being around you. Oh. All you care about is, you're too reckless. All you care about is fight.

Sean, I think that's the son's name. Sean, I can't have Sean around you all the time. And Sean's all grown up and is also an arson investigator. Wow. Like his father and grandfather. Because Kurt Russell plays Kurt Russell's character's father in the first movie. It's a multi-generation. It's multi-generational. And Billy Baldwin is the brother.

So the new character's uncle. And it goes all the way back into time. And eventually that ancestral line fought the first fire ever set by man. They had to fight the fire, the cow that kicked over the lantern that started backdraft 2 available on netflix for streaming right now oh boy oh we got a lot to do we really should watch that and it's also it's universal and imagine oh as is uh kindergarten cop 2 which i unfortunately rented uh on a lark uh from a video store not that long ago and discovered that it is a big anti-PC tirade. It's a movie where Dolph Lundgren gets to show that he's mad that kids have peanut allergies.

And why don't they just like shut the fuck up and get over it? Eat the damn peanut butter. Isn't that what all dads want to say to their children who have a legitimate syndrome and a thing they can't. Force them to eat. That they did not choose to have. These little wimps. These snowflakes.

Eat the peanut butter. Is there anyone from the original movie in that? I don't think so. The grown kid. Yeah. The famous kids yeah what do you give them what are the kids even say uh i don't know kindergarten cops not coming to me um i wonder is are there more of these weird 90s movies that were like kind of hits that all of a sudden are quietly just being sequelized on netflix oh they mean there have to be there have

to be there have to be this snuck by us we didn't even know we wouldn't know if we weren't doing this topic yeah um we might gotta get them a lot of their box office right most people are going to log on to see this now because of us we should get a commission check so um the screenwriter of of the first backdraft gregory wild wilden named checked in the ride in the ride is a former firefighter uh i didn't realize he also wrote highlander yeah and the prophecy the christopher walken movie the prophecy wow um wow and he wrote the sequel right for backdraft two yes he did write this okay uh-huh there's so much original crew yeah yeah it's it's kind of as

close as you could come to a sequel yeah do you think ron at least like sent flowers or anything ron seems like a nice guy he seems like he would have you know done something a token of some like hey great job yeah a box of cupcakes or something cupcakes yeahcakes. Yeah, maybe. Well, and it's imagined. So he is like. He had to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got to check. Yeah. He might have gotten an email. He didn't specifically.

While he was trying to make Solo work, he was like an email like, we're doing Backdraft 2. Okay, sure. Fine. Great. Send. All right. Back to figuring this out.

So, Alden, here's what a Merc is. It's a terrible way to keep to refer to star wars fans who are keeping the faith scotch you can call them marks um different mark different mark uh they refer original backdraft uh music by han zimmer

uh yes yeah and one of an early score of him. Uh, and I, I actually wanted to point out, I haven't pulled up on Spotify. I didn't realize till rewatching this, that this music cue that has loomed in my head. I didn't realize this from backdraft and, and, uh, is used in the ride. And you see this old seat, like hopefully seem familiar to you guys. Maybe even outside of backdraft here really quick. Oop.

Oh, yeah. That's you. That little. That's every Universal area music's. Yeah. Fireworks show like that is played. Yeah. I remember it from, I associate it with, I think they used it in ads for The Lost World. Like in my mind, that cue, because it's still a little haunting to me and it reminds me of like watching a T-Rex run.

I think they used, I think they repurposed it for a lot of other stuff. The other song like that, that gets used, I feel like maybe Disney and Universal is actually, I forget what it's called, but it's from Dragonheart. It's like a very stirring orchestral thing. Yeah. And it's just used everywhere in theme parks. It has outlived Dragonheart by like decades. I think there was a video you could play on the tour that had, yeah, that was whatever that Dragonheart theme is.

It's an interesting genre, the music that outlives the movie It doesn't outlive it Because people like this movie But I know Hook is like That score is so well regarded Isn't like the American President Don't people They feel like they use that all the time

Soren maybe is that the American President they use There's something like some Older not that old but like movie I think the theme from the right right stuff shows up in a few attractions but especially um oh there's a website i just saw they released like some compilation i think it's like uh the epcot legacy project put some playlists together that you could stream on their site of the different entry loops for MGM Studios. Ah.

And they would use a lot of classic movie stuff. Mm-hmm. Not all Disney either. Like, a lot of classic movie songs, like, in this style mixed in. Mm-hmm. Sure. Do they play that Alan Thicke putting on the Ritz? Oh, if only.

The masters of that weren't burned up in any fire were they because we need to preserve that they were and I did it oh no sorry I'm not actually that upset about it she also know Hans Zimmer was I didn't know Hans Zimmer was associated with

the buggles and appears in the video for video killed the radio star wow really yeah the Radio Star. Wow, really? Yeah. The first music video. Little known trivia. I don't know if anyone's ever said this trivia, that Video Killed the Radio Star is the first music video ever played on MTV. But I do like

that song and he's in the video. He's never in the first video ever played. He wasn't in the band though. I mean, he may have not been an official Buggle. He he was bugle he's like billy preston in the right beatles right yeah fifth bugle the fifth bugle it's a lot of discussion of who's the fifth beetle but nobody nobody talks about the fifth bugle a lot um interesting bugle is you all the bugle heads out there thanks for the one hit and that's um yeah so so backdraft i think as a backtrack

as a kid i remember like i didn't get to watch uh r-rated movies as a child i'm sure i've talked about it before i was so scared i don't even think i was like felt like i was missing anything until like the mid 90s or whatever for like but my friend luke was like a big i feel like his family watched backdraft a lot i feel like he would talk about backdraft they would watch like all these everything that was on like they'd watch empty nest and he'd be like a six or seven year old and talking about empty nest on tv and i was like i don't know i don't have any context for this at all so like that was my own like that was the only time I'd ever hear about Backdraft. He would talk about watching like the

VHS or the taped off of WGN Backdraft that his dad had. I'll say this. I do not, especially as a kid, I did not like man versus nature movies. Because like what do you do? How do you fight nature? Heroes fight it.

That's what happens. I think a lot of kids entertainment in the late 80s early 90s were like here's how you stop a bad guy with a gun like with a zapper or like the ghostbusters proton pack or swords a lot of swords in kids entertainment and as a kid that's true most of you stop a ghost sure i i think as a kid i was like well you can't stop with a gun or a sword so what do you do there's like a tidal wave like what how fast can you run or drive away from it like could try to fire into the you could try to shoot bullets at the fire and see if that doesn't yeah but even as i got older i was like that summer of the the meteor armageddon deep impact i was like i'm not

seeing i don't want to see these like i don't know so even back even at that point you were scared because then i was all in on like this these type of movies i think i saw the tv cut of dante's peak where they were like in the boat uh going across the lake that was melting like someone and i was just like this still sucks like I still hate this did you see Independence Day I saw that on VHS but see that was a clear enemy that was a clear that was aliens man versus aliens but Armageddon 98 or is it 97

you know I was a real good at worrying at all ages Michael so Armageddon really and that's very interesting to me because at Armageddon at that point I was still like it's PG-13 movie you'd go see with a couple friends in the summer like it was a big event do you have the same experience or no i didn't see armageddon in a group no okay i felt like i missed out i like that would have been a blast it felt like that was a time like that that was in the zone of like summer movies when it came out okay but you were too

scared you were too scared. You were freaked out by the army. I think I was kind of indifferent. I mean, I don't think I was like, oh, right. Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis. Like, I don't think I was a super fan of either of them at the time. I mean, I don't think I was a super fan of either of them either. I think I was chasing Amy Head at 12.

No. No. A few more years before I entered the view of the universe. Yeah. Interesting. i like that this is an interesting like existential you like you like if a problem can be solved in a solution though i mean if you view deep impact armageddon armageddon they do solve the issue they they they do go plant bombs and blow it up i guess that one a little better it's just how do we live in a post-asteroid world yeah but like the rock is bad guys you just you just kill the bad guys okay

uh then jurassic park that's a tough one because they uh jurassic park like the the video game like the arcade games i was like okay let's shoot these dinosaurs but the movies they, like the arcade games, I was like, okay, let's shoot these dinosaurs. But the movies, they were like very not into killing the dinosaurs because they were trying to protect them, but also run away from them. But like, did that freak you? Because I didn't see Jurassic Park. That's man versus animal, not man versus nature, though.

Okay. I see the distinction. I feel like. Did you see that? I didn't see that in the theater i was i think too intense for me at that age uh but then i saw it later on tape and i liked it but i was scared of it but do you consider is jurassic park a man problem or a nature problem it's a fine line because man created nature that started acting like nature. So where does that fall in this

issue umbrella? Woman inherits the earth. I did see Lost World opening weekend. I remember seeing that. Okay. We saw it too and we goofed on it the whole time. That's one of the first

memories I have of like just being like we're funny like we're better than this movie like we're cool we were down the shore we were in Jersey and like rainy at the

beach you're like just so thankful a good movie is out sure because you want to be up to your like distance when you said that everything I mean maybe I'm sure it's better now with phones and streaming media and stuff.

But like at the time it was like, oh fuck, it's raining out. We're not going to the beach. Most of the boardwalk shuts down. Nature. You can't shoot at the rain and make it go away. Or take a sword to it. You stand in the rain while you're waiting to buy the ticket at the one movie theater on a boardwalk. So you wouldn't like

you didn't like the movie Hard Rain? I don't think I've ever seen that. Okay. That's the movie from within Bowfinger? Or that's Chubby Wings? No, that's Hard Rain. That's Chubby Wings. No, I know. Christian Slater? Yeah, is that right? I think so. Yeah, Randy Quaid.

Yeah, 98. so right around the same time wow randy quaid and christian slater were the stars of and morgan freeman huh oh freeman makes mini driver ed asner wow what a yeah that's our podcast right pick of the week hard rain and hard rain too coming soon everyone is back they're all of you if I could say my childhood feelings about the elements and fire specifically I was terrified of fire I was terrified of this attraction and I don't think wrongfully so sometimes we bring up things where it's like you were afraid of that as a

kid this thing was very scary to be in and I think I did it pretty pretty young and you know and hey look what happened they they did have to like set the sprinklers on people and the thing caught on fire so it was a I feel like a scary and you know it was very hot to be in there but I was like yeah my biggest fear as a kid was uh you know anything that mattered to me uh burning up and i expressed my fears to my parents once that like what if the house uh burns down or catches on fire and they explained to me what would happen if that happened which is that they when they moved into the house so therefore it could not catch on fire. This was told to me at eight or so years old.

I mean, I guess it can't... You guys are acting as if that's not true. Did you not have super houses? I guess it can't catch on fire lit by a demon. Like, I think you're good on hellfire. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. But I think like... That's what I was the most concerned abouted about was Satan himself I think like a

Toaster oven with a fraying Cord might still be like An issue my question is Did that actually happen That a priest came Yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't put it past A lot of stuff getting blessed and hey You baptize a baby why not baptize a house

Interesting and is that a thing a lot of Catholics Do yeah I'm not sure Yeah were they telling me that But That's my question Is it what's the Is it just like a little Like a little fun

Like not fun But like a little white lie To make the child feel better And not feel like They're gonna die I'm just imagining One of your parents With a scratch pad

Going like Okay Bell Atlantic Set up the phone Time Warner was here Got the cable hooked up Let's see What day What day was Father O'Malley coming Okay, Bell Atlantic set up the phone. Time Warner was here, got the cable hooked up. Let's see. What day was Father O'Malley coming?

We need to have a covered dish. Well, first off, he's doing this pro bono. I mean, I guess he is a priest, but we do need to have a covered dish ready for him. We haven't settled on how many Hail Marys it would take to properly bless the house. Wow. But one thing of chicken a la king. You know, this is a question that I would ask them, did you actually have a priest bless the

house? But that will lead to a line of questioning where the question goes to, why don't you go to church anymore? I can't exactly go down that line. So I will just have to imagine it. Yeah, I mean, there would be a nice way if you like trick them into answering it without getting into your beliefs. That would be somehow like, I don't know.

Yes. Well, maybe I could send a letter as the government. Yeah, that's it. Just like, can you check? Like, have you? Yeah. Do you have you like, you know, replace the roof recently? Is there an asbestos issued?

Have you gotten the house blessed by a priest since 1994? The Vatican laws changed. It has to be blessed again. asbestos issued have you gotten the house blessed by a priest since 1994 because the laws the vatican laws changed it has to be blessed again it has to be renewed yeah yeah um that is interesting i'm very interested in that i want to know the answer i really i really do too and what else did that priest do was he was it did he he flood protection also? Like gutter protection? Yeah, yeah. Did he bless the house to protect it against rust?

What was the extent? No leaves will back up this gutter for over 30 years. May you remain sludge free. May your pipes not make weird noises. You may still have a child who goes into the entertainment field so i can't do anything about that lord knows we've tried i like the brokias

oh my god well thank god our priest did not bless stage 30 or Backdraft could not have run its show. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I saw this probably in 2006 when I first went to Universal Hollywood. I was impressed. I mean, it is. It was impressive. The effects, I would say, very similar setup to the Twister Ride It Out that we talked about with Matt Rogers many episodes ago. I might have called it Rooms of Peril.

That's my genre I'm putting on it. peril increasingly scarier things until the third room which is the most perilous of all yeah uh they both have that floor drop yeah floor drop always scared the crowd um it's it's really scary it would scare me today i think if i did it yeah uh and if i'd gotten the chance to do it in osaka where it remains yeah strangely i'm hoping it's still there a year from now it is of course even though i don't i'm not like the biggest fan of this but i'd like to do it it seems like they went bigger in japan as they tend to with theme park track you enter through a firehouse facade yeah yeah right the first the first sound stage is bigger the second soundstage is like an alleyway with like a lighting show and a fire truck thing.

Much better sets, yeah. The footage of the cast and crew is all in Japanese. Yeah, yeah. Which is fun. That's amazing to me that it's footage of Scott Glenn from 1991 dubbed over in Japan in 2019. Yes. Really strange. Scott Glenn in his massive blazer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. His giant jacket. I said, was he putting himself on tape to be a knight at the Roxbury? Is he gunning to replace Catan in his own idea? Scott Glenn is in a giant blazer and then Kurt Russell shows up in a fireman's jacket, which are large and it fits slimmer than it's

got Glenn's blazer. Kurt's firefighter jacket was just that broad. Yeah. And he, yeah, there's this weird movie where Scott Glenn talks at you and then Kurt Russell shows up and Scott like watches him pull up, but they're never in the same shot. And it feels to me like kurt walks exactly to and past where scott glenn was previously standing yeah it doesn't uh they really didn't figure out the geography of it before they i don't who knows what it was shot first but they yeah it's a piece

together it's like kellen hunt and and paxton in the pre-show yeah i mean that one's like side by side trying to fool you into thinking they were there wow so that's a that's an important component of rooms of peril is the second one has to have disconnected actors speaking as mellow as possible scott glenn seems so depressed in that video yeah i'm trying to think of a pre-show video where somebody seems like like made me that sad because people we've we've talked many a time about uh like bored disinterested bad public speaker whatever but this one's he like seems sad to me he seemed depressed and it was also maybe because he was describing like getting hurt on the set of backdraft to like prove to you

that it was real he got fucked fucked up on Backdraft. He got shot with that ashmatic. Yeah, they were shooting ash at everyone. He had, he was the one who got lit on fire. Yes. And it burned through to the last layer of Nomak's long underwear. It got too hot. I had to call

cut. I had to call cut. That's like horrifying. That story is being repeated in a theme park like it should not have gotten that close yeah whatsoever i mean this is very much before cgi so like a lot of practical effects i think that was the practical practical effects some models so yeah that's you right little models but um that's still practical yeah yeah you're right the possibility is somebody getting hurt if then if the story kept going and scott glenn said and i i did lose a leg that day and then he like lifts his big uh he lifts his big thick pant leg and just shows the metal leg underneath enjoy your day at the universal studios hollywood you guys have fun but know

that people are really suffering out there, including me, Scott Glenn. Oh, Kurt, good to see you. How are your legs? Fine? I see. You didn't have to burn alive like I did. Scott Glenn. For some of us,

we didn't want it to end. I wanted my pain to end immediately. Who says they didn't want it to end, Kurt wanted my pain to end immediately. Who says they didn't want it to end? Kurt Russell? Well, Scott Glenn says it as like a dig at Kurt Russell getting out of a fire. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's right. Some of us.

Yeah, yeah. That was like he lost his mind in the part. He was implying that Kurt Russell was like Jim Carrey in number 23. Like he stayed in the role forever. Yeah, yeah. like he he stayed in the role forever yeah yeah well of course uh in the plot of the movie uh scott glenn's character is the uh both i'll i'll say a term that i've heard a lot recently both the arsonist and the firefighter oh is that right that is like the twist like he's one of the there's some crazy thing about like Chicago mayoral politics

and an arsonist. They keep consulting an arsonist Donald Sutherland's character and they realize like, oh, these burns are so controlled, only another fireman could do this. So like Scott Glenn could have set

the universal fire for real and then put it out. Oh's, oh, gosh. Like, and that would have thrown off the scent. Interesting. So, he's the bad guy in the movie. They're having him do the intro. That's the twist. Spoiler alert for this super old movie.

So, the bad guy is introducing backdraft? That's interesting. Well, he's the good guy for most of the movie. And then it's revealed, like, I had to set these fires because this guy who's running for mayor was going to cut the fire department budgets which what politician has ran on like we got to slash these fire department budgets

there I mean it seems like something Trump would want to do that way yes but I don't know but yeah so that's the whole thing Chicago people just don't run on it they just do it probably they just yeah they do it secretly it comes out five years later Ron Manuel just stole it in the middle of the night

stole it big bag of money from a firehouse immediately he did yeah so like he is the twist he is like the bad he's like I did that one of those like I did this for us right right interesting firefighters died so then so at the end is like the baddies like i did that one of those like i did this for us right right interesting

firefighters died so then so at the end when in the scene that they show in the raw in bin spin room two uh there's the exchange he's when he in the scene where he really burn up he says let me go bull yes you go we go that's him saying i deserve to die and he does oh and then oh and then it's oh that's right they spoil it all in the attraction yeah yeah kurt russell gets they he's like barely alive they get he dies in the ambulance okay but he tells i think billy baldwin he says like don't don't tell them it was him like it'll just make it worse for the fire department. It's a Two-Face scenario. Oh, yeah.

Yes. He has Harvey Dent. Or Jebediah Springfield. Or Jebediah Springfield, yeah. Donald Sutherland in that episode, too. Oh, yeah. Your children's children for two months. So, he's...

I was thinking, like, who else could they have gotten to do the opening? Like, who could they have? I mean, De Niro would have been the get. He wouldn't have done that. He would have been just as depressed and sad in the video. Donald Sutherland might have played ball. Or Billy Baldwin. Where Billy Baldwin?

Yeah, that is surprising. Yeah, that seems like, especially back then, folksy or, maybe not folksy, but more energetic. Slicker. Slicker. Slicker. Hey hey this is the they're gonna get to see this fun piece of movie magic yeah instead of like we almost died and they hated it let's keep going they hit me with a machine and then i got to destroy the machine yeah the crew let me blow it up you know movies you know when you work on a movie or TV show and they let you destroy a massive expensive piece of property at the end because you hated it. Yeah, that's a very common thing. How did they destroy the Ashamatic?

With another Ashamatic? With more flames? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Well, it's kind of, I guess it's Scott Glenn getting to have his office space moment. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That's kind of nice. Is it on the DVD extra maybe? Could we see, does anyone have the DVD for Backdraft? I hope so. Of Scott Blow. Edited to that song, whatever the rap song is. Oh yeah, he could have taken a bat or an iron rod or something and beat it up, you know? Or driven a car into it.

Yeah, I want to see this scott glenn beating up a piece of machinery yeah why didn't they save that for instead of him actually coming close to death or even just put it in the entry like i got and they let me destroy it and then there's a just quick shot of him railing with a baseball bat on this metal you think you're better than me you try to kill me while i kill you. You're going to hell now. I'm Scott fucking Glenn. I'm Scott fucking Glenn. All right.

Will somebody find that piece of footage? Because I can't find it right now. Maybe it was unerrable in a theme park environment because he peed on it. Yeah. He took his pants on the whole time with the baseball bat big plop shit onto the automatic the blurring would have to be it was too expensive there's a locations guy who's like i can't go home until he's done he better fucking finish beating up that machine three in the morning pooping on it won't make it not work yeah

uh i do have to say one of the things about this ride you know they show the footage of the like different fire effects from the movie and they're very impressive that they're doing this live they're also very varied in a theme park ride you need to run like every 10 minutes you kind of can't have flames that look like this and flames that look like you need a reliable controlled burn which is right why most of the flames in the attract or like natural gas it's like natural gas that is apparently mostly silent like a lot of the fire burn you hear in that last scene of the ride is sound effects because right right that's interesting burns quietly you really only hear the fire uh going on or off with natural gas in that one video i was

watching before they were saying on occasion the sound effects wouldn't be working and it would be very strange weird because that's so much of it in your head like of like oh well that obviously is coming from that sound i mean that's in theme parks everywhere where i like i have to remind myself oh yeah that sound of cars racing and radiator springs is not the cars it's a weird invisible thing because you really get tricked yeah sometimes the recording has reactions like a multiple alien encounter walkthroughs I've watched, I realize after a few years like, oh, that scream is on the soundtrack.

That scream comes at the same time every time. That's not an audience member. Oh, yeah, right, right. Yeah. To try to make people freaked out by hearing other people scream. Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. And the, well, the Muppet Vision 3D. He's up there. Oh, yeah.ppet vision 3d he's up there oh yeah he's up there yeah yeah uh-huh yeah trick to get everybody i wonder if there's like a really good one that i

don't know that i've always for years assumed is a something that has like a machine is making the noise but it's really just a piece of soundtrack, essentially. I'm sure there is. I just wonder. Well, the busts in The Haunted Mansion aren't really alive. Okay. That's on tape. Those aren't real ghosts. But Thurl, I know Thurl's there. You're saying Thurl isn't? He is not.

That actor is long past and is not sitting there live performing the song. Okay. Every day. Disappointing. First to tell you that he's not with us. I don't care for that either. He doesn't sit in that room all day. I prefer he lived to be as old as Prince

thought he would live to be as old as. Thoroughly Prince living into infinity. I hope they've met in heaven. They for sure have met. What dreams may come In a meadow somewhere And the rain is purple And whatever

Thorough liked is represented too Yeah Infinite frosted flakes He was Tony the Tiger That's what that This I saw this ride I think probably 2007 or 8 the first time because it wasn't in florida uh and but fire did always just fire real life fire

scared me whether it was at the hollywood disney's mgm studios uh catastrophe canyon thank you uh yeah that would always freak me out. And the heat, that would always feel new. I feel like touching my face, did it burn me? Jaws in Florida was the craziest thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, anytime. So, I do remember going on Backdraft in 2007 or 8, or walking through, I should say, and

still feeling like a, you know, fire. Yeah, it's intense. It's not a thing I don't think people wanted to do a ton that's maybe the problem it's extremely impressive but yeah i wouldn't like uh hey i worked there i could have gone on it every day if i wanted to and i think i only did one time it's also the furthest away attraction from the gate of the park it takes forever to get there it's not fun backdraft is not a fun experience that's a thing to key into yes it's extremely impressive and everybody who put it together should be very proud but it's not yeah it's like basically unpleasant it's unpleasant i think it's more unpleasant than the twister because Twister, at least in the, because

both of them are just watching a scene play out. But like Twister is like a little more character. Maybe there's a town. This is just a cold, impersonal warehouse, chemical warehouse. There's like no, I don't know. There's no fun. There's no little gag in it. There's no fun.

There's Mrs. O'Leary's cow is nowhere to be seen. That would be something maybe of like, oh, there's a little gag in it There's no fun Mrs. O'Leary's cow is nowhere to be seen That would be something maybe Of like oh there's a little whimsy here No it's just fires and barrels And doors blowing And it's loud It's impressive but it is not Only a fire in the center office Burns up everything in the room

Until it ran out of oxygen Oh it may look quiet now but that is deception it's deception for hiding inside our unburned natural gases waiting for a breath of fresh air and that's when they simulate the back draft and the doors fling open that kind of scares me this dialogue that is a scary dialogue it is it would be unnerving it would be cool if it was like a dark ride that was on fire. It would be scary, but at least like you'd be kind of doing something. I think the mix of it being a passive, kind of a

passive experience, there's nothing fun to hang on to. It's a little scary. So like would dummies have been good or do dummies make it darker? Because you're watching human shapes get lit on fire. There's not a lot of ways to make fire fun.

I was thinking as far as fire goes, maybe my favorite fire-based attraction was at Santa's Village in my hometown, a couple towns over. And the idea was that you were on this little train. And at the end, you were all in like little firefighting trains or whatever you'd call it. I don't know. I guess cars. But there was like a long train. And you had little water guns in front of you. And the idea was that Santa's house was on fire.

And you had to put Santa's house out. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. And it was a very, it was not big. It was not a giant house. It was a smallish house. Help me, kids.

I left the electric blanket on. Please. We would go around here and the whole thing was like, all right, we're getting a Santa's house. Everybody get on the water gun to put it out. So, like, I'd have like a water gun like you'd have at a carnival or whatever to that sends the, when you, like, know you know those ones where they go up the you know there's like eight people they all have water guns you're trying to shoot at the target and whoever gets up to the top first it's like a race uh it was like similar to that and then we would all shoot our water guns at this tiny santa's house to put out a fire it was obviously a little controlled flame inside wow but i loved it

yes i loved if there was ever motivation if you're worried about kids not understanding stakes yeah you don't get presents this year unless you fix this yeah and we did every time it would always we'd always i i didn't ever i never questioned why it was always on fire. Santa always falling asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. You got to make Mrs. Claus. I never learned. I think because I'm eternal that I can do this. And he was also nowhere to be found either. I guess like maybe he was out.

He had an alibi. They explained Santa was out. So like, but his house is on fire and we had to fix it. Yeah, because you'd expect like elves and reindeer and Mrs. Claus on the front lawn and like, oh my God, we're, oh, our house. Jesus Christ. I had some workers working on the roof, but they said they watched the tiles for 40 minutes afterwards.

Try to rescue the photo albums. Look at this. It's the first elf I ever bought. That elf island. My master recordings. They're burning up. All my albums. Jingle bells.

My blues records. Yeah, why did Santa have the muddy waters masters? I was a collector. New from universal music group give them all to santa yeah he seems to be good with inventory there's so many presents and stuff getting made and going around but it's too cold up there they're gonna crash oh no it's cold but too cold but But Santa is associated with religion. So, does he have a blessed house of some kind? It's his magic of some kind. Did he bless it or did Santa's priest come to bless it?

Santa's priest, I probably did it. Whatever parish that Santa goes to in the North Pole. It's a snowman, a priest, probably. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's got to be a snowman isn't it in frosty the snowman doesn't he they pretend that he's parson brown right in this case he really it is a snowman who is really a person yep parson brown is real frosty was impersonating him fraud but also it made it also made a lot of sense because how else would you impersonate a human man if you were a snowman?

So he had to have been a snowman. Yeah. Because then it's easy to impersonate two snowmen. You could look like each other. But another being wouldn't because it's not the right shape. Yeah, it would be confusing. Although very few humans are bigger in their bottom third. Yeah, that's true. It's a very sick human being. are bigger in their bottom third.

Yeah, that's true. It's a very sick human being. You have a lot of health problems if your legs are almost twice the size of your head. Yes, that's true. I'm saying, yes, I'm saying Parson Brown was a snowman already. Yes, sure. That's all I'm saying. I'm just going through why a snowman

couldn't literally trick a person. I 100% agree It would be impossible to trick Please Parson Brown Bless this house It's made of gingerbread It would burn almost instantly Well I saved the house regardless of the magic

You're a good boy who did a good job Thank you We both have Mike to thank. We might not have gotten presents almost any Christmas growing up. Everyone, please use the hashtag. Thank you, Mike. For our Christmases. I think Santa's Village is at a weird.

There's many different Santa's Villages. It has a weird history. And I'm wondering if it's they reopened it a few times. I wonder if that is still there. That's worth looking into. Yeah, that might be. We might have to each pick a different Santa's village in the country. I mean, I had the one in

San Bernardino that yeah, it was recently reopened in some regard. I haven't been there but I believe it's an extreme sports park primarily. But also Santa's house is still still there he's still around sometimes i hope you can go ziplining so somebody so parson brown the snowman now needs to go bless it to make sure a snowboarder doesn't wreck him doesn't go crashing through the walls um i'm looking there was a santa's village the one i was talking about uh rebranded as an azusman park for a little while which i'm looking there was a santa's village the one i was talking about uh rebranded

as an azusman park for a little while which i'm not sure if they are still in azusman to that word that's torturous yeah oh oh oh oh here we go tragedy at the azusman park today become a firefighter for a day and join the santa's village fire department once you hear the sirens and see the lights hop onto the santa's village fire department engine number three and use your hose with real working water to put out the fire still there so it's still there oh you gotta go yeah is it wait i'm sorry are you on a vehicle or are you an adult would you fit on whatever um it's uh here it is hold on let me there it is okay uh it's a little. It's a little wagon. It's a little more of a hose.

It's sort of the hose end of what I was describing as the carnival game. I see. You could be part of it. Yeah. You'd have to push a kid out of the way. Yeah. Adults seem like they're maybe taking the backseat without the hoses, but, you know, maybe one for old time's sake.

You got to see if you still got it in you yeah it's been years since you've been in the game much like the firefighters in backdraft 2 that's true uh suit up again we're going back billy baldwin seems like in backdraft 2 in the trailer he's like sitting down a lot more delivering lines from the fire truck front seat a lot more so he's not as opposed to back draft one going to run across an actual burning roof while it splits down the middle behind him his speed in back draft two is a little more sit in a chair yeah i see what here i got an idea for a scene what about petting a dalmatian for 17 minutes straight yeah he's definitely more of a chief character now this one or something very good it's fun though

but i get it he shot out in three days but yes but again again we don't maybe we would watch backdraft 2 and decide that it is more fun yeah it's up to us to do now some technical innovation in the backdraft attraction this was the first appearance of brain fire did you guys come across brain fire i saw that word but what is it so uh developed by technifex which is in california right by magic mountain uh their headquarters um it's where you pump natural gas onto a stone stone or metal ceiling and light it on fire so it looks like the whole ceiling's on fire oh um so i think in the attraction you could see that right by the doors um uh that fly open at the beginning of the attraction there's kind of a small ceiling there you can kind of see on fire because the fires don't get that close to you so like the ceiling above you is not on fire no but um to feel like it is with the rafters falling

but i see so maybe the more intense effects are further back there's some trickery in that regard yeah technifex uh also responsible for uh some stuff in the borg invasion 4d and star trek the experience we talked about lately uh the some mechanical effects in the indiana jones stunt spectacular uh some cool effects at the six flags power plant the short-lived attraction in baltimore oh boy we gotta get to that one day and then two big ones the water tunnel in poseidon's Fury at Islands of Adventure. Oh, that shoots water. The water that goes 360 around you. Whoa. And then, Mike, you'll like this.

They made the tiny hologram Dick Van Dyke that shows up in the Walt Disney Family Museum and explains how Disney's first optical printer works. Tiny Dick Van Dyke appears at different parts of the machine and it says, and this does this, and this does this. Is a little Dick Van Dyke Appears at different parts of the machine And it says and this does this And this does this Is a little Dick Van Dyke trapped in a printer? Is it like Madame Leota At the end of the Haunted Mansion? He does kind of look about that size

Wow that's fun And at the end he's ultimately Seeking a mate Marry me Live join me in this printer forever um so yeah a very uh tied in company yeah wow wow really very good work um and it's done lots of other fire effects stuff out there for casinos too they do a lot of fire stuff uh casinos you mean like uh like decorative fire type situation yeah i guess yeah i guess there's some uh there's some fire casinos. You mean like like decorative fire? Mirage type situation. Yeah I guess

there's some fire casinos and stuff. Yeah what else have we missed? It was the soundstage where it was at was the soundstage where they shot the Munsters which I like. Yeah. And then it was Backdraft.

So it was a real soundstage there so you could convert it. And now it's gone. Now it's blown up, and Transformers is there. And that's sort of probably the line is where the line was, is around where you now enter for hopefully soon for Super Mario World or whatever they are calling it ultimately. Super Nintendo Land, I believe.

Super Nintendo Land. Okay, okay okay i believe that's the word at the moment it's where the line stretches to for the tiki drinks at elan new bar soft open now oh yes yeah the ride's not ready but the bar is open oh really huh yeah they opened that it might be all that i'm doing uh oh yeah depending on what the word of uh fear is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What the fear factor is on the ride. Right. Oof.

Something's going on over there. They've got the people from Iron Mountain on top of the ride. Don't worry about it. Whether it's from the preservation side or the shredding, industrial shredding side, I'm not sure. This will be a quick side note. I do think that opening it this week, which was the rumored day around when they were opening the ride. For weeks, I think I've seen like June 15th is when the ride's going to open.

And everything opening without the ride to me is like delay. That's a delay. You would think a theme park that is opening a water ride, you want it open before July 4th, right? You're going to get those July 4th crowds. It's probably going to be hot. I'm just saying to me, it's like there's no way they planned for just the bar to be open yeah and they were probably like well open it all around here and then there's something going on which there's plenty of rumors you can look we're now we're in 17 into the back drive you can look these

up on your own yeah on all those message boards we talk about. Hmm. I, uh, yeah, but there's no way this deep into galaxy's edge being open. Did they like not have their, um, their competition ready? Yeah. Yeah. At a certain point they were. Yeah.

Well, they got Hagrid's open. Kind of, kind of Hagrid's off. Yeah. There's a little, yeah. It's only in the afternoon though.

That's what's happening. It opens in the late. It opens. It's opening at noon for a little while for a only in the afternoon though yeah that's what's happening it opens in the late it opens it's opening at noon for a little while for a few weeks oh stay at our on-site hotels get an hour early admittance but haggard's is you gotta come back at noon come back hang out at the today's show cafe for a while today's show cafe take the hogwarts express yeah so there's yeah so there's a lot of others Everyone's doing their best We're laughing at their pain They try they want to do a nice thing for everyone

We're like ha ha ha It's not open in the morning We think that's funny Again I always I like to criticize the big picture The rush that creates like Things to be short changed or cheapened out on Or things to be open when they aren't ready That's what you gotta be mad at is those up top decisions

not the people working very hard on everything. And everyone loves this Hagrid's ride. Everyone is raving about it. I'm excited to figure out what it's all about. I have a different definition for theme park. A tireless cast and crew working under demanding conditions

to realistically portray imaginative scenarios. You there have just quoted. That's the only thing I have left that we haven't talked about is the Ron Howard video. You know what I was thinking about this? So you the the premise is OK. So in room one of the rooms of peril, you are where you watch kind of a sizzle reel of scenes from Backdraft.

And they tell you that Ron Howard is working on his latest project. And his latest project, I guess, is still Backdraft, which came out a year and a half ago. Yes, forever Backdraft. It made me think we just talked about Mickey's PhilharMagic where I think we determined that all the Disney characters are in an infinite loop living their most memorable moment. And that's what's happening with Ron Howard. Ron Howard is always in the edit bay alone, personally, physically slicing the film of of backdraft backdraft tinkering, never quite getting it right. Like Lucas and the benda the original star wars um yeah he's going maybe he's in the process of adding tauntauns and stuff and they never updated this either like how there's three different versions of spielberg

on the et intro video it's always just him doing it too so there was never one where he was like you get into that room and you help out or anything Yeah So he was just stuck there up until 10 years ago Editing And then they put him out of his misery Also those sounds, that first room and that second room Are almost identical

Yeah And it's just beige Barely dressed sound stages I mean again, Japan has this cool alleyway and there's a light show and a fire truck and they painted the barrels in their version of the final room where everything's lit on fire it's multi-colored barrels as opposed to here in los angeles where it was all beige yeah backdraft potentially the beigest attraction very beige but had some cool

trash cans that had flames on them outside the entrance they themed the garbage cans cool trash cans outside can you do you have a picture on here I didn't see they had a picture I gotta see these cool trash I gotta take a look at these galaxy that has cool trash cans but can they be thrown

and that's an eventual final for best trash cans maybe push wins the one that talked yeah of course yeah well we determined it already congratulations push one of my favorite things is and I think it is mostly universal but

I'm forgetting everything today this twister and on the tram tour in the subway there's a funny thing that like a big inanimate object like in this one it's the um it's like the what do you call it the support thing falling and swinging what do you call that oh yeah yeah like a catwalk thank you geez a catwalk uh falling and swinging uh and then it's in the subway it's like the ceiling falling and then like moving there's a funny robot motion that these things make that i really enjoy like

it doesn't look quite natural because it's obviously it has to be reset every time it's every time the show starts again um but i don't for whatever it really makes me laugh when something like big that's supposed to be oh my god it's wildly out of control and it like slowly moves to its final move so like the catwalk oh no here it comes oh it's coming at two miles an hour and then it comes to a nice stop and it's the same thing in in the subway and it's the same thing in twister it's kind of cute it's kind of relaxing yes i think that is actually perfectly described it's cute because it's supposed to scare the shit out of you yeah and it doesn't quite do it because they can't really throw a catwalk at you yeah so if i if a like

street that you're under collapsed the gasoline truck up above would not just kind of slowly like uh you know like a kid on a sled just kind of like slope down that hill oh yeah here it comes oh it stopped everything's fine like kind of give me a start for a second yeah the water when the water like floods in that's still kind of almost seems like the scariest part of it to me on the subway specifically yeah earthquake yeah for subways you're going i keep calling it subway my brain is fried subway exclamation point i barely made any sense for the last three minutes that also it's a weird coincidence a cat a wooden catwalk collapses in a weird way like three times in the other side of the wind i'm not i think what i think yeah it's very weird that this just

happened to come up but like is like an opening shot of the movie and then a closing shot of the movie is a catwalk that collapsed awkwardly now in that case it's probably we have one shot to do this we have no money we have to use whatever it is but it falls in a really odd way so the magic of the movies folks yeah that is, that is what that is. Collapsing catwalks. Everyone's favorite part about a film. But yeah, like, I mean, what's or do you have something else? I don't know.

Plus up, obviously, like if you get to put the fire out like Santa's house, that would be great. That's it. Yes. Wait a minute. Just like we all had like maybe little like Ghostbuster packs full of water. That's great. And, wait a minute. Just like we all had like maybe little like Ghostbuster packs full of water. That's great and they give you little plastic hats. You stop the fire.

Right, and you walk in there and it's already kind of on fire and it gets worse, but like you keep trying, keep trying. And Scott Glenn is encouraging you along. Right. Keep going. You're almost there. Don't let what happened to me happen to you.

Keep your legs unburnt, kids. I found the trash can. Oh, pretty cool. Pretty cool. It looks like Guy Fieri's shirt. Yeah, it really does. That kind of flame. It really looks like a Guy Fieri shirt.

It is a little bawdy, but I like it. I enjoy it. It's beautiful. I don't see a flame that cool unless I go to the Bob's Big Boy Burbank and look on the hoods of some cars. Bob on the Lubop. Or go to Tim Allen's garage in Burbank or Jay Leno's garage in Burbank. I was just learning about Tim Allen's garage via some like CBS.

I watched the same Tim Allen piece, I think, that you did. Yeah, where we've discovered that he has tool time recreated in the garage. He has the full tool time set somewhere mere minutes from here. It has to be. Potentially adjacent to Leno's. Yeah, probably next door. The billionaire car district. We live very near it and I don't know where. It's got to be near the Burbank airport.

Yeah, does Seinfeld have a car garage out here too? I feel like he might. I think most of them are in New York. He's got to have something. Like how James Bond can get a car in any city in the world. Right. I think he does. And in New York Like how James Bond can get a car in any city Right I think he does And he also keeps Bees in there Yeah he recreated a scene from

Bee Movie in there like Tim Allen An interesting fact about you guys you both saw the same segment Because you like to watch the Sunday morning news shows Of course yeah If we record on Sundays we have to be wrapped up before 60 minutes Because you both go to your separate homes and watch that Sunday is CBS day Yes But also we're big Tim Allen guys If we record on Sundays, we have to be wrapped up before 60 minutes because you both go to your separate homes and watch that. Sunday is CBS day.

CBS, yes. But also, we're big Tim Allen guys. So, we'll watch whatever he is. Any piece about Tim, we got to see. Yeah. I specifically hate the Toy Story films, but I see them because it's Tim. I got to support Tim. More of this toy shit. Hold your sides, fellas, right?

Well, I got one thing right he is a funny man yeah um have we missed anything uh Scott Glenn and okay I wish here's a thing like this is a pretty minor plus up and I they don't really make these kinds of rides anymore

um but like the same thing with like this uh less twister this and like earthquake in florida and then disaster you have to go you cannot just jump right to the attraction part of it you have to go through so many pre-show rooms yeah and they are really holdovers of like here's how the movies get made And now it's more like you are in the movie. You are in the action. Let's get right to it. Maybe one or two quick pre-show rooms.

But like. Well, you say this, but these attractions are all no more. That's what I mean. Yeah. They don't really make these anymore. Yeah. I guess in Japan, but I don't know. But they have cool sets.

So that offsets it. Which is interesting because this, like Jim Hill was talking about, like just talked about how they almost made a Godzilla attraction when they were going to build Disney MGM Studios Japan. And then part of the verdict that Second Park morphed into Disney Sea because- Thank Christ. They seemed more interested, like the Japanese audience was more interested in living stories than finding out how they are made. But Backdraft is just finding out how it's made.

So, yeah, I'm glad Universal Japan, I guess, is a window into the never built. Yeah. Yeah. What the dull Disney second gate would have been. What about like the Star Trek? We talked about on the Patreon, the Star Trek where you would dress up like starfleet officers and then you would take a video home what about an attraction like that where you had firefighter suits on and then you got a video of yourself in the middle of the fire that would be better that would be something and then it kind

of they like edit it together with a flaming dummy and it makes it look like you died like oh sure uh-huh yeah for you and there's a 15 minute intro of scott glenn and kurt russell and ron howard talking about how much they respect the firefighter like they i feel like not like two lines go by every between all of where before they get another line out about like we respect the men and women that fight these fires and like they say it so much what they think they are playing into at least like it does seem to me like the probably how backdraft lives on now is that it is like the main firefighter movie still possibly because once one was made nobody wanted to make one again they said well i i kept

coming across the phrase like this is the second or third most popular firefighter movie and i'm like what are the others firehouse dog oh no you know what it was in terms of box office receipts the first one was technically i now pronounce you chuck and larry it was a joke. It was a joke in a video. A movie which contains the slur that starts with F. And it's a scene where they, there are scenes where they tell you where Sandler mumbles like, yeah, don't, that's not a good word. Don't use that word. But there were scenes earlier in the movie where they use that word. And I got to laugh.

I was at the premiere at universal yeah yeah and i at the at the amphitheater and they yes that word was used in lines that were joke lines and succeeded before towards the end of the movie he mumbles a bit it's not good don't you don't like put it in a screenplay or something so i was gonna suggest before you told me that because i've never seen that movie that they could have changed this to a Chuck and Larry ride. But now that I hear that, I guess that would be a problem. And then at the end, you go to a photo booth like you were at Chuck and Larry's wedding. Their false wedding to where they humiliate themselves pretending to be gay to get insurance money.

This is a bad film i'm so happy that sandler is in like a good run because i think that was the those were the darkest days um that was a rough date what 2008 right around the same time the universal all the world's music catches on fire and sandler makes his worst film but now he's back on top with Murder Mystery. Maybe. I don't know. I'm like, now I've liked all the stuff so much, like maybe I'll like it. Maybe I like Murder Mystery. I don't know. Who knows? People seem to like

the stand-ups, but I haven't really seen. I saw clips of the stand-up special. That was alright. It's very good. Recorded some of it at Dynasty Typewriter, right where we performed our show. Yes, part of the lore. It's where Sandler and Mike and Jason and I go work stuff out.

I won't tell you in what order. We might be messing around with him there. I haven't seen the full special either though, but does a certain gangster show up in the Adam Sandler special as well? No? Okay.

He knows what's good for him. He puts it in there. Well, what have we... I'm out of things to talk about. Yeah, I know. This one actually was a little bit tidy. The only thing I have to say is I really like that Ron Howard intro

and it made me... That and the early Spielberg intros in E.T. just feed away from each other. Universal made me think that all directors have to wear caps. I really thought as a kid, I thought three things as a kid. Directors all wear caps. Scott Glenn and Billy Baldwin are the biggest movie stars

in the world. Like I didn't know who they were watching Backdraft, but I was like, but my mom probably knows and she probably, they're're probably once I'm an adult I'll learn they're the best. ET also starts with Spielberg talking about how much he respects ET and Botanicus I respect the work

of the interstellar plant fixers I respect the work of the healing touchers of course I respect firefighters and everything they do I'm just being silly because they say it so many times no no absolutely and the yeah well and the and the third thing that i of all these that i believed as a child related to backdraft was that my house was

was safe i really that's what's looming large in my mind after we after we're finished here hey it's never burnt down uh yeah i can't argue with that but that's what i guess yeah just find out somehow I'll try to figure out a way I think the government letter is the way I think I know if we could see If we could get Bugsy Bones to that house And if he cannot step foot

Onto the property If uh I'm from hell I can't even make it in Yes cannot like But he's Hugsy now so he never could we lost bugsy is gone forever bugsy is gone forever we are we are with hugsy who i thought was really cool he's a pretty awesome really nice guy yeah yeah good guys have white hats he was yes if he weren't if you were just listening and you didn't see it he was dressed in all white as opposed to

all black so he's good now and I can't wait to see him again. I hope he shows up next episode and he just might. But anything's possible. Yeah. You'll be hearing a lot of Huggsy every episode from now on. But until then, you survive. Podcasts, the ride backdrafts edition. Hey, more stuff over on Patreon dot com slash podcast.

The ride. We got the T public we got the twitter we got the instagram tons of ways to participate and i bet on one of those things we can show that cool trash can yeah oh yeah all right that to look forward to if that was our that we considered that bonus content you pay five5 a month and you get to see this flame trash can. Flame trash can. We're hiding that photo behind the paywall. That's where we're going to put all the extra Choco stuff. Hope everyone is enjoying wading into Choco.

I'd like to put him in an unblessed house. I want to thank everyone for all the Choco content in the last few days on all the various platforms. And I just want to say, keep it coming. Keep it coming. Because I'm thinking about him a lot. He's Choco. He's Choco. He's Choco.

He's the happiest clown in town. He's the happiest clown in town. And just in case you didn't know, his face was a menu at the Disneyland Hotel. And a mask. And also, the menu was a mask. So, just I want you all to think about that as you're as you're going about your day as you're enjoying your daily juice

think about it all night and when you wake up and the whole rest of the day my menu face thanks for listening everybody hey and if you ever hear a fire engine get out of the way. They're not going to the movies.

Yep. All right. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. Engineered and mastered by Alex Arche. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcast.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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