Podcast: The Ride - Dive! with Eva Anderson and Jason Woliner

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Celebruary begins! Eva Anderson (Briarpatch, You're The Worst) and Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) return to the show to discuss this failed, submarine-themed restaurant from Stephen Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. McDonald's Fry Wagon episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever. Dog. menu, feel free to ask our special guests, Jason Wollner or Eva Anderson. Thanks for dining with us today at Steven Spielberg's Underwater Submarine Restaurant Dive, because it's celebratory on Podcast Arrive. Welcome to Podcast the Ride presents Celebruary. Podcast the Ride's latest and greatest themed event. It's Celebrity Restaurant Month. All month we will be celebrating the wonderful world of celebrity-owned restaurants I'm Scott Gairdner, joined by Mike Carlson Hi Hi, I'm Mike Carlson

And I don't want to contradict you immediately But some of these are presented as owned by celebrities True I just want to make sure we add that caveat Because we want Some celebrities are being used maybe as a mascot Just their name value When you hear these

I don't want to spoil it But when you hear the name value of some of these celebrities we're going to be talking about you're going to be blown away and understand why people wanted to manipulate the public into believing that they owned it with the incredible assets that are at play some of the biggest names in our industry if you know you know where we're starting today with today's topic dive and steven spielberg and i think it maintains that level throughout our entire month jason sheridan speaking of star power jason sheridan's here no the timing could not be better because i'm getting over a stomach ache so i'm very excited to talk about this bad food restaurant to steal a phrase from our former president

the bad food restaurant uh which former president what did he say that about? Donald Trump, I believe, referred to a place as a bad food restaurant. I see. Maybe one of his New York films. Maybe like a Grayson Carter or Graydon Carter. Okay. Whoever that was. Well, Donald Trump, one of the many great men who will factor into this month. I know he pops up more than once.

I think he might today a little bit. It's, it's stacked with, with great men, uh, which you have to be to get these massive establishments, which some of these are like, some of these are weird little holes in the wall.

And then some require the most expensive real estate on the planet and thus requiring the muscling through of people who should be in jail for like 40 reasons. Yeah. Some real regular characters show up in this one. And this is also one of the heaviest thematic ones, like in terms of a themed environment. I'd say so. This is perfect in terms of it is themed. This is a thing that we can parse throughout and we've talked about a little before some of them are some

celebrity restaurants are themed as well but some aren't explicitly but i feel like the celebrity themselves are the theme in a way like it's like in an ideal scenario where it's almost like you are like entering into the celebrity's body or mind and piloting their brain. Like it's like hopefully like being in a fever dream of the life of some esteemed person. Their paraphernalia, their vibe. If a celebrity restaurant succeeds and a lot of them i would say almost everything we're talking about did not succeed yeah these are mostly massive failures i think in one way or another um but yeah the month you'll be there'll be a lot of a variety for you um some of the celebrity restaurants the whole idea was just you'd go and you'd see the celebrity sitting sadly in a chair.

Those are some of the ones we're the most excited about. Yeah. You can find those on the second gate. But look, it's great stars throughout. We got a great logo, which has stars in it, made by Aaron Gardner. Thanks, Aaron, for the awesome logo for the month. And joining us, very exciting to kick things off, joining us for the first time in far too long,

for the first time since directing the best comedy film of the last 10 years, we're at Subsequent Movie Film. It's Jason Wallner. Hi, Jason. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me back. I'm very excited to be back on the podcast. It's been far too long. We're happy to have you. I was going to just quick say, I was going to ask,

could I no longer be referred to as the Alec Baldwin of Podcast The Ride? Why? I just feel like it's since time has come and gone. There's something about that name. No, nothing in particular. I just think people might get the wrong impression. I was referred to as that because I had been on the show a bunch of times. At the time, it was a reference to... Right, right, of course.

And that you were around so much and so often. Like Alec Baldwin on SNL where you you could have been in the cast that was the idea yeah such a match were you

so it was meant as the the highest praise it was fun it was a lot of fun but I think you know I just feel like it's time to

is there another five timers club member you would want to be referred to now like Louis CK perhaps really anyone who hosted SNL and hasn't killed anyone I would sure sure I'm trying to think I can't think of one so we'll have to get back to you thank you on every record uh rudy giuliani oh yeah that works he worked with him yeah yeah

i have yeah that's right my buddy uh uh okay and as if this were not stacked enough great topics great guests we are going to be joined might be the most exciting part of the month we're going to be joined multiple times throughout the month by one of the best guests in all of podcasting so excited you're here eva anderson hey guys you guys are a favorite you're a favorite guest you're regulars uh um this i mean this is so exciting it's a great room this is this is a stacked lineup and i love that what brought this this awesome group together is discussing Steven Spielberg's submarine restaurant dive. For me, genuinely a

huge topic. I've certainly been looking forward to it for a long time. Every once in a while on the social media somebody will say they got to do dive and I point to it as much as I can. Yes, we do. Maybe we should build an entire month around dive is what we should do. And here we are. we're submerging and uh and i can't wait yeah this is i feel like we see this a lot people really want to talk about this uh and it feels it feels important in the

like 90s era of these type of restaurants yeah kind of the ultimate version of what we're talking about, where celebrities can throw their muscle and their money and their hubris behind an idea that seems a little risky. And in this case, very risky. I would say this was not a long life at all. Yeah, and there were grand plans for Dive. Was it 60 restaurants they planned? restaurants yes that's right michael

60 we're going to open 60 they wanted 60 dive restaurants around the world uh and they got to two they made it to two just further than which one is they almost opened one in barcelona i think i was trying to figure that out because i saw a logo for one, but that did not come to pass. I found a few references online that people think that it did exist, but I don't think it did. But that, I guess, was number three. Did it get built and then taken over by someone?

They just moved in? It was seized by locals. Or was it like a sketchy fake? Oh, maybe. I went to a weird Simpsons bar in Barcelona It was definitely not authorized What happened? What was going on there?

Just like pictures of the Simpsons on the walls and stuff So that dive was like the Austin Powers bar in Glendale Maybe Also not really approved Barcelona has no respect for IP law. I went to the wax museum there if you're ever in Barcelona, it's fantastic and has a Star Wars room that

E.T. is just hanging out in. Well, but don't forget, E.T. is a senator, or there is a senator that's part of E.T. Senator Greblebs is in the Imperial Senate. He's in a little one of those discs. Perfect.

Greblebs, of course, backwards for Spielberg. Backwards for it. Oh, boy. Things are falling. Senator Greblebs. Yeah. So I'm excited to talk about Senator Grereeblips namesake, Steven Spielberg. I mean, the, I think one thing with these restaurants is it's often where celebrities hit a wall, right?

Like they, people who think they can achieve anything and have achieved, like this, This restaurant was opened at Spielberg's absolute peak. The restaurant opened two months after the Academy Awards, where almost every award was won by either Jurassic Park or Schindler's List, where he won Best Director for the first time. So the highest heights. Did he plug the restaurant at all in the speeches, in the Schindler's List speech? It was a really solemn Holocaust memorial. He was wearing a shirt that said dive on the stage.

Did I remember properly, wasn't his Oscar speech, this is a cool drink of water after a long drought or something like that? And maybe he was referring to the water outside of dive. Oh, yeah. Are you trying to subliminally just make us think of bubbles? Just get people in a water mine space. Yeah. Wow.

Wow. trying to subliminally just make us think of people in the water in the air space yeah wow wow um uh so he made a subliminal advertising effort uh and yet it wasn't quite enough although i sense that this is a place that was like hot for for a minute i i don't know and they said candace bergen ate there once in an article i read yeah i have a list of celebs that People Magazine spotted. Let's hear it. Who's there? Henry Winkler, Pierce Brosnan, Tom Hanks, Rob Reiner, Candice Bergen, Warren Beatty, the Olsen twins, and Michael Keaton. Wow. Wow. A-listers.

It really is crazy that all these people would eat sub sandwiches. Yes. That is an important thing we have not gotten to yet. The concept was gourmet sub sandwiches. Expensive sit-down sub sandwiches. Yeah. Can I read the quote? Did you guys find the quote by this dude who worked?

What the California Pizza kitchen did for pizza we want to do for the submarine sandwich which i yeah i was just gonna say i ask what did california pizza kitchen i looked it up they put barbecue chicken on that's what right that was their big thing they stole the idea of doing that from a place i think in the toujunga village. From Coyote? Well, Chef Ledoux, I believe, was the one who taught Wolfgang Puck how to make pizzas. And then he was the executive chef at California Pizza Kitchen. And then Coyote is his little retirement cafe restaurant. Oh, I see.

In 1985, Ed Ledoux told the LA Times, we are at the threshold of a new epoch in pizza dining, an epoch that will transform convention into invention and open up an infinite spectrum of pizza possibilities. When I worked there in the 90s, in the training video that you had to watch to work there, the two owners said, I remember very vividly, they said, we are the Pied Pipers of pizza. Something you always want to be.

Like, who was it who called himself the Pied Piper of R&B? Oh, yeah, R. Kelly. I guess if that did make pizza something people would go and sit down with their families, it just seems so unlikely for that to happen with sub sandwiches, which are just like, there's just something about eating a sub that you have to like hold it with both hands and, like, gnash, like, gnaw into it.

It's just, like, it doesn't look good to eat a sub. It's not like you don't want to go on a date and, like, chomp on subs. You know, like... Not glamorous to eat. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's a really... It's like what a grab-and-go kind of thing.

It's a gray area. It's like a construction site. It's what a construction worker eats on the top of a half-built building that's what the theme should have been yeah we're carbs on the way out as well i feel like in this era like we were transitioning from carbo loading to like no carbs for anyone i feel like low fat was still low fat and like sugar was okay, but fat was bad. So, and this is- But these are really, they were really bready subs. No matter where things were at in terms of bread

and the conversation, it's they were like, they're really bread forward for sure. Here's a, here's a like a promotional picture. And I know this is just the like very saturated film of the time, but this is another instance where i'm going to refer to this all looking as uh looking like disgusting food that's what i'm trying to say i mean well documented uh i like garbage but like there's so many details about this place and the menu where i'm just like oh man i don't want to eat that. But imagining Warren Beatty chowing down on the nuclear Sicilian Sub Rosa,

I like that. Also, just every time we say Sub, because on the thing it says, dive into a fleet of gourmet submarine sandwiches, and then all caps at the SUV. Substantial salads. I always read it as Substandard. Wait, yes. Sub is below.

Sub means below. I know it also means submarine, but just there's so many words. Yeah, subpar, sub like. Did you read, did you guys read about the genesis of this restaurant? Yeah, yeah.

The origin story with Spielberg and the other person who we have not brought in yes senator grebnez tack also known as jeffrey catflip he's jeffrey katzenberg senator grezmik tack the character he later put in shrek but he of course jeffrey katzenberg uh at the time or maybe about to be or on the way the way of being Spielberg's partner in DreamWorks. And maybe they were sewing the dream, perhaps, together. Maybe they were brainstorming what the opening logo should be. Yeah, it's a kid sitting on a moon chomping on a sub.

Was Katzenberg coming out at Disney at the time? Yeah, that would have been around like when he's like so he feels like he's darting to get out there environments real good right yeah and i god there's so much there's so many things i keep thinking like five things to bring up uh probably my i think the best find i found out about this restaurant there is uh you can find a video online because again this is a themed restaurant like a plant hollywood style restaurant there's a lot of bells and whistles to it there's a video online on someone's like portfolio youtube page of the kooky video montage that would play this restaurant every 45 minutes every 45 minutes uh zaget zaget referred to this restaurant as uh

like eating uh so many bells and whistles it's like eating in a pinball machine so there is this very 90s like super sped up dive footage of like people jumping from high high dives and then like the camera coming out of a hot tub and there's like a sexy lady the end credit on this says uh produced by bob weiss design island if that name rings a bell bob weiss is the outgoing president of walt disney imagineering whoa he oversaw mg disney mgm studios yeah he left disney imagineering after overseeing the failed disney's america project whoa and then came back to oversee the redo of california adventure so in the middle there he started his own design company and uh apparently helped produce some uh

media materials for Dive. Yeah, yeah. There's universal royalty in this as well. It is a really stacked lineup. But to take it back to the origin, to the two fathers of Dive. I mean, well, feel free to tell it, Jason, or your version of it. I think this was like a New York Times article or an LA Times article, but something there. Spielberg invited Katzenberg to lunch at his office.

To surprise him, Mr. Spielberg asked several assistants to drive around Los Angeles and try to find the best submarine sandwiches. They came back with a dozen or so. Surprise! We're eating a dozen subs for lunch. As the two moguls began sampling them, they agreed that the ingredients were too soggy and leathery. Jokingly and then seriously, they began to wonder about opening a restaurant

to restore the credibility of submarine sandwiches or take the food tastes and cravings of the 90s with first-rate breads and reinvent the sub sandwich. This was the quote. Spielberg said the Sicilian sub should be wetter so he came back with the idea of marinating the bread to make it juicier.

That sounds terrible. It's like a French dip. That's like if you order a French dip wet. I like a... Actually I do love a French dip wet. That is one time a sub. To do pre-wet is kind of weird. I mean they pre-wetted at Philippe. They don't say it should be wetter.

Just something describing it as, yeah, that just sounds awful. Jersey Mike's has a wet. If you get a Mike's way, it's wet. It's very, like, it's soaked. But I think they, you aren't calling, Mike's way is like a euphemism, right? For wet, you don't say

get it the wet way. You don't go, how wet you want it here? Like, how wet you want it? Like, they don't, right? You don't say get it the wet way. How what you want it here. Like how what you want it. Like they don't, yeah, they don't say wet. That's oil and vinegar on the inside. That's different than dipping it into a bowl of oil and vinegar and then cutting it and looting it up. Okay, that's true, yeah. And yet, I mean, you shouldn't besmirch these people so much

because the people then who they partnered with from the restaurant industry said Stephen and Jeffrey have world class taste buds. Yes. So how could they be wrong? Are you referring to Larry Levy? Larry Levy. Yeah, he's the guy who quoted was the California Pizza Kitchen quote I quoted earlier. Okay. Okay.

So, yeah, the Levy's are who they came to to bring this mission to life. The mission of. I'm earlier. Okay, okay. So, yeah, the Levees are who they came to to bring this mission to life. The mission of, I'm sorry, what was it? Restoring the credibility? Of soggy subs. Of soggy subs. They needed pros to do this,

and they went to this company, the company, the Levee Group, who still operateate restaurants in Disney World and I never really put this together That Really the pre-dive It's something that we talked about on the show

A long time ago would have come up in Pleasure Island with Paul Scheer and I know we Talked about it but now I'm feeling like we didn't talk About it enough or meditate on it enough Because what probably the you know If a place that's going to do a submarine that's two stories and exploding with life and sounds and videos, they had to get their feet wet somewhere. And they did it with a restaurant called the Fireworks Factory, which was in Pleasure Island in Disney World. The Fireworks Factory. I mean, do you guys recall

hearing about this it was like a a the idea was that it was a restored fireworks factory that was still very singed and bricks were loose everywhere i mean first of all i don't are there fireworks factories in reality? I guess they got to be made somewhere. Yes, there are. I'm looking this up. Oh, okay. So there are those.

A lot of disasters throughout history when they explode. Yeah. So a place you want to hang out and do fast casual dining. Would it blow up like every 45 minutes? Like dive? Would dive? I'm not sure about that, but it seems like it's set up for that like the lighting there's bells and whistles and if i'm remembering correctly one of the details was like you know the is it what's it

called is it a one-way mirror or a two-way mirror like you know on cop shows and stuff two-way yeah two-way glass i think so behind the bar there's what looks like a mirror and that is the men's room but the urinals that's you can look into the bar but they can't see you dive or in in the fire factory i can't i've also had weird urinals did you read about that no i don't know about their well much like because i when we did hard rock park they also had weird urinals. Like, that's such a... They're all your topics right there. Weird urinals. The urinals were hooked to giant clear cylinder tubes that would blast water around when you flushed.

Huh? They would do like a water show when you flushed the urinal. With your piss? Why do all these people that have these like ill-fated ideas for themed entertainment are always like, we gotta put a lot of money in the urinal experience would you like yell would your pee go up in a pneumatic tube yeah you watch it go so you have to like make sure you like register your level of hydration or not so that you know all right yeah i know that pee that's going through right now is exactly how dehydrated my pee was it's extra yellow wow look at it go what a show the

two-way mirror is to spy on your girlfriend while you're like like i'm going to the bathroom don't don't like flirt with the waiter and then you're like watching her while you're peeing and you're just like she's gonna flirt with the waiter i know it angrily peeing she doesn't know i can see her i'm gonna better not talk to that guy she's laughing a little too hard you're like i gotta go get out there oh but i'm not oh but i want to see my pee i want to wave goodbye to my pee i gotta watch the show first you bitch shit i was able to confirm it was indeed the fireworks factory had the one-way mirror above the urinals on a website.

Huh? Just a regular mirror. Oh, no. Oh, sorry. I misspoke. Two-way. No, wait. Yeah, two-way.

Yeah. Whatever the term is. I found it on a website. It's called Save Pleasure Island. We must preserve things like this real quick i learned this from watching a mr morrow video yesterday yeah there's still like thematic narratives around disney springs did you know this every building yeah every every building is like a reclaimed i didn't know this there's like a bottling like a fake it's a fake bottling

factory that's a bar they've kept this alive but if But it's much more boring. If you want to go to a Talbot's, that you know that it used to be a place where crayons were made. Yeah, it's like Pleasure Island, but it's like all the explanations are like much more boring. It's like, oh yeah, this bar used to, we used to make bottles here.

Really? No. Oh, why'd you lie about that? It was fun. Is it? Yes that it's fun is it yes it's good we like it well that's a big step down from the backstory of the fireworks factory which is that of course it was all under and then joe rody i think responsible for all of these um mary weather pleasure uh was the responsible for all of Pleasure Island and rehabilitating these facilities. So the backstory for Fireworks Factory

is that Meriwether Pleasure persuaded, in 1922, persuaded China's premier fireworks inventor to emigrate to Orlando. Who was the premier fireworks inventor? Why, the Bangmaster. Oh, okay. Bangmaster. the bang master oh okay bang master come do your experiments here well i recommend people look up google the phrase fireworks factory see pictures of that long gone restaurant i can't say i recommend people google the bang master do you think it's odd that a guy named Meriwether Pleasure also had a relationship with the Bang Master?

Great summit between Mr. Pleasure and the Bang Master. Jeez, Joe Rohde. So anyway, there's so much similar in terms of like a kind of ludicrous theme, two stories, like massive facility. Burnt out pretty quickly. Crazy themed cocktails and stuff. But the other thing is, I think in terms of design and scope and it feeling very high end 90s theme parky. I think all of these places kind of pulled it off. Like pictures of the fireworks factory look awesome. I would love to go there.

And pictures of Dive. I mean, the food doesn't look so great that you were showing us, Jason. But, like. The interiors, though. Yeah. Are awesome. I think so. That was my big takeaway after looking this stuff up.

I was like, as much as we're, you know, goofing on it or whatever, I'm really sad that there's not more stuff like this in the world. Just stupid themed things that you go and eat in a submarine. As the physical world has kind of faded, I just miss everything. Yeah, how much would you love to go to dive right now? And especially in the magical alternate universe where dive survived still in an optimistic view there's like seven people in there at any given time yeah and like how great would it be to go to an empty two-story facility where every single surface is themed like everything's got weird little bolts or curved steel or

holes in it or uh i i mean it's like everything's custom and cool in the place i feel like it's it seems like they missed they screwed up it should be a tiki restaurant right that's what you would eat in a submarine like you mean like taco you're saying like it would have a different like a polynesian kind of i thought it was spielberg's love of the sea and then they're like well sub and subs but no it was it the genesis of it was spielberg and katzenberg being like we gotta make a sub sandwich restaurant it's so backwards yeah well you should eat your food that's named after the thing you're in like that's the weird thinking that's like the like the that's's named after the thing you're in. Like, that's the weird thinking.

That's the flaw in the immersive theming. Yeah, there's so many awful puns on the promotional materials, the menus, the media coverage really went wild with the sub and die, those kinds of puns. Well, then it's weird that it yeah it came out of this sub thing and they're trying to you know make people excited about subs again but then the but then it's called dive exclamation point which lends itself more to what eve is saying where it's like a that that you think of a dive bar right like were they kind of playing with that too but it's not it's the opposite of a dive bar yeah massive and

sprawling and expensive well i'm trying to think of is there like how they did with the avatar land where basically you know they were trying to make the food seem alien so basically all they did was like pick something that like your dad has not had ever before like a poke bowl or something and they're like look at this thing from a fucking pandora dad huh alien food like i don't know if anyone remarked on the hell of it it's like noodles that you don't can't get at the grocery store uh yeah so it's like i don't even know if there was a was there any restaurant that was doing like kind of that thing where they would just like repurpose some food and make it act like like

maybe diet a color i'm trying to think now yeah i don't think i can't think of one it's just yeah because you you could do like they should have done i mean this is look i i wish this was all sea quest dsvV themed also That gets mentioned That's right around that time Spielberg is he's got dive Mania he wants everything underwater His TV show That was like a star truck underwater

But it was in the future They could have done an episode where Their submarine encountered The future version of the dive restaurant Which was on a real sub and just people Are eating and they like go and they sample all the menu items and yeah and then like yeah dolphin watches people eat dolphin registers his his feelings about that and then they have to talk to him yeah they should have done that yeah there was promotional material yes

do you do you think that the solution is leaning into sequest dsv more it's the runaway success of sequest well some press releases were like steven spielberg has been obsessed with deep sea diving from a very young age and i was like what since when no james cameron's don't know who you're talking about no way nope it's spielberg i'm afraid what roy scheider was in that show right yeah and he was also in jaws did they reference jaws in that show that he's like i hope there are no sharks this deep oh my god they must have right it's an episode he would turn to the camera and look right into camera we're gonna need a bigger see jonathan brandis too yes very good on sequest yeah uh so i don't know i in my in my heart i want it to be sequest themed but i understand why

they didn't want to maybe i don't know i was trying to say i was going to say they were going to tarnish one of the brands with associating with the other but i wasn't sure which one i guess sequence was on for a couple years so it might have made sequence get canceled quicker yeah what could have happened right so um submarine sandwich i just can't get my head around this the worst combination of stuff it's the worst food to be serving because i saw like the picture jason held up had like a blue drink like um it's like it's just you should just be eating some like fried shrimps and some little ribs yeah and some drinking some blue drinks in the submarine i don't know eventually they did like spruce up the menu a little and add like the most more i mean this is

all this is the era of like tgi fridays and ruby tuesdays they're at their height and stuff so it's all like upscale bar food was the thing that stuff that mention of like very good bread i think in the 80s and 90s like labrea bakery was so huge like made such a big impression and for both the bakery itself and then supplying a lot of la restaurants so i I think that, that all was just in the air. It's like, yeah,

people might've still been eating quite a lot of bread. We want the breadiest shit. There's much bread. One thing down. Just sopping wet bread. Sopping bread. And then, and then sop up more with a blue,

a giant blue drink. That's the combo that doesn't add up to me and doesn't that that photo jason also have um a sigh i feel like they would come with fries but then there's also like a weird like uh are you talking about chicken salad looking thing oh there is a salad substantial salads the fries with the dipping sauces one of which was pesto cream and i think i've had that before but just the phrase made me gag uh like um the cocktail menu there i couldn't find a good scan of the full sub menu i kept finding one that was cut off i have something i think yeah yeah okay there you go scott yeah oh sure uh let's see polaris punch

a refreshing blend of smirnoff vodka fruit juice and lemonade oh no this is the one i've the cocktail menu i've had oh okay okay oh sure sure we'll throw out one throw out ones you you dig well the one that sticks out to me i i keep reading i can't find mine uh now um the let's see tropical torpedo peach daiquiri and pina colada with a burst of peach schnapps picardy dark rum midori melon liquor blended with fruit juices i mean i hate all of that these are all i don't want i want as little juice it's possible i'd say um quote on the drink menu uh down the hatch attributed to W.C. Field. Did he invent that?

I'm sure he said that. I'm sure he said that, but I'm sure we've all said that in some form. And where does that fit into the theme? I guess because a hatch on a submarine? Is that a thing on a submarine? Yeah, a hatch. Yeah, that's how you get in and out of it.

Well, there you go. Did W.C. Fields drown? How did he die what why do they call it c level drinks spelled s e e there's a lot of that on the menu the c s e e like you gotta see die you gotta see these level drinks you gotta see there's a lot of like sub stuff and then it's called dive but then there's like a the kind of the tagline of it is deep sea experience and c is spelled s-e-e why because you don't know and there's periods after all of those right end of sentence deep and c and then experience oh oh i see it's like um but it

does it does not make sense but it would be like see here experience like it's like you do these things at dive but deep is not a thing you can do it's not a verb so a verb kind of works as its own sentence but deep does not deep you know go deep yeah yeah well that works but you can't just say deep but deep sea is a phrase sea experience is not i've had a sea experience you can have a deep experience but it wouldn't be like a deep experience but he wouldn't be like a deep you don't have a c you wouldn't call it a deep visual experience you wouldn't say c yeah there are definite do you see the definitions though i have the definitions of the word there's codes on the menu for these three words so deep means a mind state excluding matters of irrelevance. C means visual sensory stimulus or a sustained flash of understanding.

I don't think that it doesn't. What do you mean? Hold on. Hold on. One more. It's hard to look at something. Experience a fully awakened state of complete sensory stimulus. Now it sounds like a fucking cult.

I can almost guarantee you Jeffreyffrey katzenberg wrote this just from like studying his crazy brain and like there's so much i mean his life there's so much stuff that just like kind of makes no sense that he just like gets an idea and sometimes it really works and sometimes it really doesn't but like this all has that ring to it of that like logic that's just like, what brain came up with this? It doesn't really make sense.

The gallons and gallons of Diet Coke-y drinks just destroying his cerebral cortex. He's a Diet Coke guy? Oh, he's a Diet Coke guy. Is he? There's multiple Diet Coke stories

in the Disney War book. Wow. And like breakfast, multiple breakfasts. Did he have breakfast a dive three times a day oh doesn't he do that now he's a multi he's a diet coke guy a multi breakfast guy and if the quibi offices are to be believed a big jars of candy yeah he's a treat boy well that's what's wrong with that do you think he he had PAs go and get takeout from Dive every day for his meal?

Maybe? Maybe he put money back into the business. Yeah. He got to get people. The story that sticks out to me when he needed somewhere to lie low but didn't want to go too far from his Burbank office, he had someone meet him at the restaurant at Providence St. Joe's Hospital across the street. Meet me at the cafe in the hospital that walt died in

so he's a hospital food guy too who and all of this taste came together to start a restaurant wow there's no rumor that can be started if you're spotted in a hospital cafeteria very powerful famous man that's definitely where you want to quote Lilo. He might have been in the middle of the lawsuit and he needed Frank Well, or he needed someone from the lot, but he couldn't get back on the lot. So he's like, meet me in the hospital across the street. Guys, I think Katzenberg's dying.

Or he went to kill a rifle maybe. He hit a syringe into somebody's neck. There's two things on the cocktail menu that stand out. The Ocean Motion Margarita, the description says, Ooh, it's blue. Our special recipe uses only the best. Jose Cuero tequila with a splash of blue curacao. Ooh, it's blue is what Mike says

any time he orders any drink. Scott says, Boo, it's blue. Well, yeah, he orders any drink. Scott says, boo, it's blue. Yeah, when we had to drink from the big bucket at Towel at the Moon. We got a big blue bucket. Disgusting. The other thing of note on the cocktail menu to me, the two-tone torpedo, a blend of any of the above frozen drinks. The captain's favorite is our ocean blue margarita

layered with polaris punch hang on so these we've been reading these recipes that all have seven ingredients and then the final drink is just throwing two of them together any two you have a suicide of just all the all the shit mix them up now i'll tell you from personal experience i once ordered at a bar a drink that was half pina colada and half strawberry daiquiri and that was a classic stomach ache that's called a lava flow that is an existing drink yes so i i can't recommend that but right above the two-tone torpedo is a drink called the antarctic cappuccino which is all coffee liqueurs so you gotta think that some lunatic was there and he's like give me the frozen lemonade with the cabbage

um let me say this really quick uh one thing we haven't said is where this this location was it was in the century city mall um like on the the same level there's a big amc over there if people might know it if you're in la hopefully it's a place you avoid if you're in la it's the like the worst parking scenario maybe of any mall around here but i um i went i definitely went when i was a kid i remember my dad taking me and my sister and i just saw my dad and asked if he had any memories i said because you took me there right and he said yeah i went there with you guys and then i went there with uh with george my george what and george was a really like super drunk friend of my dad and i said wait so you went to you went to this crazy restaurant

without your kids and he said yeah i was working out in century city and i met george because i'd loaned him a bunch of money for a business that went south and he was paying me back for my she managed to get money to pay me back so like all right here you go kent sorry it didn't work out hey shots on me right and my dad did a bunch of shots at the dive bar at the dive bar um and he was on the clock he was working he had like a plate like a like some formal conference room thing to go do and he showed up an hour late and super drunk because he's doing shots at the dive bar liquid lunch baby liquid lunch and dive i said did you did you like you're not a shots person are you he said no never it's like one of the only places my dad ever did shots in his life was dive

i gotta say pretty proud of my dad drunk at work because of like and with like if he was there for two hours that might have been enough times for to get three dives yeah yeah have we have we actually does everyone like we haven't really talked about exactly what would happen every 45 minutes we should talk yeah i have a video also if you want but should we say a little bit and then and then experience the video from in the restaurant or the yes what jason is referring to oh that video i watched that video that video is watched it. It's very similar to like the Nickelodeon promos where it was just old stock footage

sped up. It has a lot of stock footage that has nothing to do with submarines or diving or anything that it's just like that. Yeah,

that 90s, like I wrote lots of screaming alarms, panic, stock footage that has nothing to do with subs, ends with surfing safari.

Yes, there's another one that um i only saw this described it and watch it there's only this one documented but like there's one like it was always that the submarine because okay so just to paint this all over the restaurant are video screens so many like next to almost every table is a separate video screen with porthole stuff in front of it. And then a giant video wall, which is wonderful, with a big Panasonic logo on it. And I remember this. Yeah, it happened a lot.

The dive. My memory of it going as a kid, all I can remember is like dive, dive, dive. Right, you hear a guy scream dive, dive, dive every 45 minutes and then just like like crazy sirens. The last thing you would want to happen in a restaurant. Oh man,

George just has to stop apologizing. And then your dad and George just quietly nodded each other and we were to be over sorry again about the business sorry for picking this place he's holding up like one moment when it's over I'll keep it going

hold that thought George thinks it's just like his own emotional projection like it's the only one who can see it he's like no man has sunk lower than George. I feel like I was hallucinating at this restaurant was a submarine. I'm not doing too well, Kent. George ain't doing too good.

George's business, failed business was another submarine restaurant. That must have really stung to do that meeting there yeah so i just don't know what happened i don't know why i didn't wait a second all right here's your shot it's a layer of blue curacao layer half and half layer of cutty sark scotch. Good luck. Dive, dive, dive, dive. So, this, yeah, this dive sequence that would play, the idea is that, like, you're in a submarine,

but you're not on some set trajectory or any, there's no, like, place that you're heading, so it would always, the submarine would always pop up in somewhere unexpected and kooky. I think it seems very inspired by the naked gun sequence where there's the you're looking at the hood of the police car and the siren in front of it's going in places that a car would not be like a water slide or jurassic park or whatever seems like completely maybe maybe a ripoff of that yeah i might say so

it would like it would pop up and then you're like in a jacuzzi uh with a supermodel or something or like and they would try to do little puns out of what uh like the song that played so like it would surface somebody you'd hear a voice say captain what do you see and then it would play i can see clearly now the rain is gone yeah yeah did it ever provoke anything other than that ugh yeah i can't imagine but you'd pause eating your fat sopping wet sandwich to be like god damn it little little tommy finish your softll crab sub so we can get out of here. That was the menu. The sandwich menu, all the coverage emphasizes, and of course they have the classic Italian sub and turkey sub,

but then they've got a southern fried chicken sub and a soft-shell crab sub and a chicken fajita sub. And I'm like, no. That's what they mean with the CPK thing. Here's a Chinese one and a mexican one that's they're covering genres within a food genre because one of the things at spago when wolfgang puck started doing pizzas that was real big was like a lox pizza it was like a layer of cream cheese smoked salmon they still have it they'll deliver to you on doDash right now. Whether you want it or not.

If you open the app, it just comes. Let me just play the mania of this for a second, just so Eva gets to see it. So every 45 minutes, which we should do within the episode. Let's just interrupt. It's like 45 minutes exactly.

Whoa! Alright, here we go. we should do within the episode let's just interrupt it's like 45 minutes exactly whoa all right here we go so there's something strange on the surface prepare the surface What the? Sir, what do you see? Not certain, ma'am. Let's head in for a closer look. The submarine was, that was, it was in a pool with a woman like a lady doing a

foam roller but in a hot tub and then she starts knocking the periscope with the foam roller and they play other footage of people getting knocked knocked around three stooges this is like in a 60s movie when someone like takes bad lsd and that's how you like show that jack nicholson is like freaking out and it was like very like like unpleasant yeah that was like half of it i didn't even make it halfway through the full video before wanting to bail yeah that's and so that happened every 45 minutes in this place really Really loud, like cranked up. My dad also said it was dark. It's really dark in there, too.

It must have been someone who loved the food and just hated all the. I had to get rid of the riff riff. Could you imagine the the dive ghost kitchen or like dive has delivery like during the like the first early months of 2020 pandemic where everyone's like we do delivery now like take out dive cocktails they would have done chucky cheese i feel like and made up a fake name didn't you guys did you guys see that one of the simpsons writers said that they would get takeout from dive they made a list of like the top like the top takeout in the 90s and one of them was just dot like they really oh wow because it's

the lots right there yeah yeah that's a really funny thing to do locally maybe yeah that sounds familiar okay okay wow that's pretty cool only uh eating it without the the deep sea experience um the well the simpsons i would i i think it not explicitly said, but you'd have to think that The Simpsons parodied this in a way with season finale, season nine, Natural Born Kissers is the episode. There is a restaurant that is a plane that they shake around like crazy. Like Homer and Marge are trying to have a romantic anniversary dinner. Grandpa drops out, so they need a sitter. But then Bart and Lisa say, no, we know a place. And they go to a place that's just a crowded airplane

where they come on the PA, say the Simpsons name wrong, and then shake the plane wildly. And all the contents of the overhead spill all over everybody. So I would have to think that is a parody. You just went to a plane restaurant in palm yeah oh right ps air um in the in the back of a liquor store in palm springs there's a airplane themed bar that does a saturday night like floor show with naughty stewardesses where you crash at the end right yeah and i don't know maybe but uh i went i didn't want to sit and

do it because it's omicron i didn't want to do a full indoor thing but i did go in and get a drink there and it was really funny it was just wow it was like you go through the back of this wine shop you open a door and you're just in like a plane and then they you sit in like uncomfortable plane seats do they like sing or like yeah they they do there's like music and they were warming up the like singing when i was there um and then you drink they have like a brunch they have like a bottomless mimosa brunch any other time i would do the full thing yeah but not not right now but everybody go is it is it interesting to be on a fake plane i was so happy i mean i like i was just in the bad themed environment like you look out the window and one of them had just a superman

like christopher reeve superman flying at the plane oh yeah and the flying nun you sent a picture what a reference to pull how many rows of seats on the fake plane? Probably like 20. And some of them were facing each other. So, you know, there's like two with a little table in the middle. But they still were airplane seats. Yeah. So it was authentic.

Yeah. Not comfortable. Oh, by the way, also, when you're picturing George and his hard luck with my dad doing shots, this is all happening on the bar stools are torpedoes. They're like very industrial looking torpedoes with like a target

top. I don't know if it's a cushion or a hard top. Your butt is the Your butthole is the missile? Or it's where they launched where a missile is yes great I'll say this if you're the

dive is surprisingly well documented and there's a great collection of like the the high end promotional pictures well I thought you were talking about these books I have these crazy coffee table books by Martin Pegler. One is called Theme Restaurant Design.

Well, that I love. And one is called Cafes and Coffee Shops. And these are wonderful. These were when I was really pining for crazy themed environments in the darkest days of the pandemic. These books did a lot for me. Dive is on the cover of one of them vegas dive which will yeah move on to take take a look if you want i don't want to distract but uh they're here for your perusing my library is always open um but there's like yeah i mean if when you light it right and don't

have any knuckleheads eaten in here when it's just an empty restaurant it looks uh beautiful i would say yeah so if you but listeners if you go to twitter uh the user evan collins uh we've mentioned him on the show before he's very good at collecting these kinds of pictures and and themed restaurants or design theme design all kinds of design in one place he has a great thread on dive where you can see all the interiors and the disgusting food photo and some of the like merchandise i mean the merchandise that that's a big thing that there's a mental floss article they were speculating one of dives uh one of the undoings uh they say um uh themed restaurants uh some of them some restaurants we're seeing 50 of the revenue from the sales of like merchandise and stuff uh but with dive in the first year of operation in california dive made just 15

percent of its gross sales on souvenirs that's a big and we'll find this with other restaurants we'll do in this month that it's so caked in that you have to be buying in addition to your expensive meal you have to be buying an addition to your expensive meal you have to be buying really expensive merchandise in order to make this worth it which i think it's all seemingly ripping off the original long ago out of date notion that coming back from the hard rock cafe in london with a shirt is cool but that stopped being cool when there's a thousand hard rock cafes and the restaurant's bad planet hollywood there was kind of some like cachet to the merch a little bit but the dive logo well i like the the design of the place the logo is bad i feel anybody agree disagree

thoughts on the logo yeah it's very like nine it's very 90s in like a bad way yeah it's like a cd-rom game yeah font and yeah so you don't want merch of that i don't think and uh i kind of want the merch uh there's a little plush toy of a happy little submarine oh oh i like that that's cute next to the sexy dive one piecepiece bathing suit. You can get a shirt on eBay for $13 with just a little dive insignia. Okay. And there's a dive hat you can get for $20. I wish George had been trying to pay your dad back in merch.

It's a dive watch. That's pretty funny. It's a dive watch. Years from now, you hand this to your kids. This is their college fun right here. Please help me out, Kenti. You gotta help old George. Oh, hang on.

I gotta go to the bathroom. Did your dad wind up beating him up? George goes to the bathroom, looks through the two-way mirror, watches watches your dad see if your dad is mad at him he's cutting a business deal with a new guy I couldn't they used to be me I went to throw up but then my urine splashed in my face in a colorful display for fifty dollars you can get a dive polo shirt on ebay yeah yeah i think it's like it's from the somebody in the uk has it uh and it's it's you can buy it now we're all gonna end up with some dive crap it's like 50s probably i could buy it now and it 56 would go out of my account and i would own a dive polo shirt.

You could. That's a good way to think about buying things. I wish I could conceptualize money that way more often. There's a brochure too. I won't have it anymore. Yeah. You know what I will have? This shirt that I don't want.

It'll be replaced by this. I don't know if you guys saw this too. Did you have the dive gear? Yeah. The list? Yeah. Of what you could buy yeah no did you see this okay so my phone hopefully won't die here um but you can see there's like shirts and hats and like bucket hats and then i feel like spielberg i associate having like i don't know how to i guess like a letterman style jacket you know he would wear in the 90s kindty's 8 ball jacket on Seinfeld You could get like a dive Spielberg jacket

I want that That's a great jacket That must have been so expensive There's different colors too That actually looks like a wrap present Like something they give the crew Of like a crew jacket There's also like a sleeveless kind probably did when the

restaurant wrapped did they yeah did they do full like taps when they had to shut the restaurant down did they do a full military lower the mess that's a funny way to gaslight your employees. It's like, wait, you mean we're all fired? No, you know, restaurant's wrapped. In Hollywood, we say. That's a wrap. Showbiz. The funniest thing, actually, though, is that you could buy a dive denim vest.

Oh, cool. With a huge dive logo on the back. Huge. My dad has an old Planet Hollywood denim jacket with the logo on the back, and has a plant an old planet hollywood denim jacket with the logo on the back and i'm so jealous of it but it's a family heirloom dive saw you can save money on denim material by cutting the arms off see they were canny about some things i found um another unpleasant food thing i wanted to highlight i don't think it would be awful to eat but just the phrasing of cold angel hair pasta with peppers scallions

and spicy sesame dressing and like the biggest all caps it just says cold angel hair pasta like guys do another pass on this weird menu what is going on there's a non-alcoholic drink that's like pina colada strawberry daiquiri and different chocolate add-ins and i was like oh too much yeah what are bathyspheres okay bathy i did look that up too they're those circular circular submersibles. Okay. Yeah, submarine kind of things. It's like a name of a real practical submarine thing. What's the food version of that?

I couldn't figure that out. We don't know. We don't have an answer for that. We don't have an answer. Wait a minute. That salad I was talking about comes in a weird little pod that looks like they put some big cabbage leaves together. And is that supposed to be the food version?

Like a little round bulbous? Hard to say. I think it's just a deep 90s-ass bowl. Am I crazy to think that it is cabbage? That you could eat the side of that, like a bread bowl? I would believe that. I think maybe. Wait, I see something on a plate.

Yeah, maybe bathyspheres are just bread bowls. Yeah, might be. Soup them. I would believe that It might I think maybe Wait I see something On a plate Yeah maybe Bathyspheres are just Bread bowls Yeah It might be Soup them Yeah More bread

Just in the bowl Just wet Meat Yeah Any sub is available In bowl form Fill the bread bowl Can we play a quick

Souvenir smackdown For how much Some of these these items cost at the time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Oh, back then. Oh, that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Okay. So, this will just be the jackets. We'll just talk about there are many versions of the jackets. Okay. Okay. So, leather reversible bomber jacket. How much do we think this cost back when this opened? We start.

Yeah, go, Jason. $70. $70. Scott? $120. $120, Jason. I was going to say $79. $79.

$200. $200. Eva is correct. The answer is $325. Oh, my God. Wow. Real quick, one more. The leather special edition bomber jacket. How much do we think that costs?

Well, a special edition, $350. $350, Scott? I've got to go higher. Ah, geez. Then $370. $370. $6,000. $6,000.

$500. Eva is 100% correct. $370. $6,000. $6,000. $500. Eva is 100% correct. Whoa. Wow. Wow. $500 for the leather special edition dive jacket. Be like, that's the premier item.

That's the most expensive item. The denim vest is $45. And then there's a couple jackets that are 250 and then just the regular denim jackets are 75 and 95 this is like delusional katzenberg signing off on stuff nobody can afford like no wonder they weren't making any money from merch yeah that's the level and they have to be moving that level of stuff every day well yeah a lot of it and and now you were setting us up to talk about las vegas the las vegas store was moving about you know it was uh 40 percent of like money coming it was coming from the store because that was in a high traffic area and they got like 3 000 guests

a day okay so they are making the money it's it's next to what's still there the fashion show mall which the marketing on that was like the most luxurious shopping mall las vegas has ever seen and then of course in the 2000s every casino built a shopping mall into it so a little less shiny now yeah that place sucks it's awful it was a good like exterior though like now there was more there's like a whole water scene and water jets shooting up and they had to find a way to to you go big because it's vegas how do we get this thing cooking a little more how do we how do we submerge even deeper uh we gotta get a creep involved and so it was not just spielberg and katzenberg they rounded it out with

steve winn jason's got a photo picture that i had said has very sinister energy and i think it's steve winn's shit-eating grin and the fact that he's just wearing a dive t-shirt like steve winn in a t-shirt is upsetting wait so steve went just to be clear steve went not involved with hard rock he's not involved in planet hollywood this is like his his swing i think other than his casinos yeah i don't think he's been part of a separate like not in his complex shopping at this fucking bit to get you know one of these yeah themed uh yeah this this trend that is really big this year

and assuredly will not collapse by the end of this year. Wow. Steve's got to get a piece. I think he was involved in getting the fashion show mall off the ground. Okay. Oh, okay. So it was kind of maybe part of a facility.

If you don't know Steve Wynn, Mirage is him. Treasure Island is him. Bellagio is him. The Wynn. The Wynn and Mirage is him. Treasure Island is him. Bellagio is him. The Wynn. The Wynn and Encore. Yeah. Now, of course, no longer associated with any of those companies. Yes.

Due to his own insane behavior. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to remember what it was, and I started looking, and boy, it's bad. And boy, there's a lot of them over many decades. And there's also his feud with girls gone wild founder joe franklin oh who do you root for in that one you tell me he owns the maltese falcon that's something i learned recently really wow that's so bizarre yeah he paid like three million dollars for it

the uh uh there's three million dollars for a mcguffin the uh the best i mean i may be correct me if i'm wrong some of the best uh steven media is him watching his old commercials on youtube i don't know if you guys have seen this no these are great these are scott knows yeah we've talked about this here he goes over his old commercials with like frank sinatra and then he explains to you what it was like to work with frank which is just he has nothing to say there's nothing interesting to say see frank was just frank classic frank and there's no real story there no no story but like the commercial was uh you know frank's in the hotel room, and then he's like, hey, you. And he's talking to Steve, and he's like, hey, can you get me some more towels? And Steve went and looks at the camera and goes, towels?

And then the logo for the hotel comes up, and Steve's like, classic Frank. That was the hotel he opened that famously didn't have any towels. Yeah. That was a gimmick of it. But these are all still probably online yeah the the lawsuits section of his wikipedia is so massive and including the girls gone wild guy where i didn't know the source of that that feud but and i assumed win was in the wrong but i think it's i i mean i glazed over i'm sure win, Wynn's always in the wrong somewhere, I would imagine.

But this involved like that guy, Joe, owed so much money to the hotel that he wasn't paying. So they were suing him. And then he threatened in some media, he just said, I want Steve Wynn dead. I'm going to kill him. So then he got sued for that for a lot of money. And so then he owed more money. And then he said it again. And then he got sued for that For a lot of money And So then he owed more money

And then he said it again And then he got sued again Didn't Steve Wynn though Said he was gonna bury Joe In the desert? Joe Francis? Maybe I'm wrong Maybe one was a threat

Maybe there was a threat volley Maybe it wasn't both I think Steve threatened to like Joe Pesci and casino him Or something That's so weird I have to look that up There was like five years where joe francis

was really joe francis i call him joe franklin popular and powerful not popular but just had so much power yes when he was the vonda chat era videos with snoop dog yeah yes we have everyone loved him girls wanted to be on the thing i guess they put me in it i want to be on tv with the word censored over my breasts i want to be a star uh steve win of course uh when new jersey legalized casino gambling and atlantic city was adding all the casinos steve win was in a war with the other casino magnate that eventually ran him out of town. Former President Donald Trump once again. So that was another no matter who wins, we lose situation.

But who they ended up kind of getting to be friends seemingly. And in fact, it was Trump who told him to call the hotel the Wynn. He was going to name the hotel after a Picasso. And Trump said, but ultimately, you're going to want your name in there. You got to put your name on there. And he did it. And Trump ended up being at Wynn's third wedding,

a wedding that was also a reunion of his partners in dive, Spielberg and Katzenberg. And also Planet Hollywood's Sylvester stallone clint eastwood was the best man wow steve wins best man at his third wedding uh brett ratner was there of course wow and uh disgraced junk bond trader michael milken who also famously ate at dive seemingly a regular yeah LA dive so that must have been cool for everybody it's like boy this

this weddings like being back at the old place was George there parking cars crashed he crashed the second one he fucked up glenn eastwood's car i'm so sorry don't steve win i believe a big republican party booster along with the his casino founder uh uh in the same part of the las vegas strip sheldon adelson one of the law now dead uh one of the worst people in america gave gobs and gobs to the republican

party and yeah bought the local newspaper and started to demand coverage changes like really nasty stuff that end of the biggest trip just has so many bizarre ghosts some of them are funny like duh a dive and some of them are not didn't he just die shelton adelson i believe last year or so yeah because last two years he got mad at trump for being rude to him and he yanked a bunch of funding right before the election because it wasn't because of the stuff it was because he was rude he was rude he hung up on him or something yeah i i found out that that guy okay lynn wood that crazy lawyer guy yeah who what like he used to represent steve winn at some point in time and uh and yeah he's the most like cute pilled guy he just represented kyle rittenhouse and did a bad job and kyle rittenhouse hated him yeah he kept kyle

rittenhouse in prison longer for fundraising that's what came out and said in interviews he's like he's like they had all the money to pay my bail they kept me in longer to raise more money and then they kept that money and so so this was steve lynn wait was steve lynn's lawyer it was once steve lynn's lawyer also represented richard jewel and wow And the falling out with Steve... Hang on, this is so twisted up. Apparently, he hates Steve Wynn now because Lin Wood was trying to get Trump to give Richard Jewell the Medal of Freedom,

but posthumously, he's been dead for a long time, and Steve Wynn talked him out of it so now they hate each other one other person Linwood represented is the the Thai cave diver

that Elon Musk called a pedophile Linwood represented him in that in the like trial to sue Elonon musk and fuck that up too oh wow so what we're learning is the downfall the arc of dive the downfall of dive mirrors the downfall of the american 20th century like as a theme restaurant industry craters in the late 90s early 2000s which many of the same players yeah yeah yeah this actually might be a good time to play it could be like a painting like that famous like diner where they're sitting in the corner but just dive and like all of these like

yeah katzenberg and george keeling over uh oh it's okay oh i was gonna say there there's a an article in the los angeles review journal that they that talks about the downfall of kind of like themed restaurants and ones like rainforest cafe and hard rock that did manage to hang on and of course they quote another recurring podcast ride villain tillman Fertitta, CEO of Landry's, which owns the Hard Rock Cafe now. His scintillating quotes include, people eat differently when they're on vacation and you have to know who your customer is

and then have the food. So great stuff as usual, Tillman. Otherwise, the paddle where the food should be or else paddle paddle um here is if we're talking like aftermath this is um on a las vegas news site that was kind of uh synopsizing what happened they were showing footage from the opening when things were optimistic and steve winn and katzenberg and spielberg or buddy but i i don't think spielberg actually did public appearances for the la dive at least not that i could find so it was kind of crazy that he's so publicly they there was in some article it said that they

didn't really neither of them wanted to talk too publicly it said that they didn't really, neither of them wanted to talk too publicly about it because they didn't want to create the impression that it was their new full-time job. They didn't want people to think that Spielberg was making the subs

at the restaurant. Roast beef and turkey up, table six. My investors are like, I thought you were a movie director and here you are he's not working on amistad at all was it that like he was you know he came up with the wet sub restaurant and then he won an oscar and he's like oh shit like what am i what am i doing like i just i just made schindler's list i can't be associated with this stupid

fucking restaurant like he thought people would think he's like ronald mcdonald now like i'm just the mascot for this yeah he had agreed to be in the ads and that would have been so cool though if they had like merchandise with like a cartoon spielberg or like guy like every restaurant every dive would have a spielberg going from table to table like checking in on you oh big mascot he's like and then like he asks you to describe your um meal with the frame of the lens oh that's good perfect visualize it for me yeah and what lens would you use to view it yeah or if he comes over he goes uh you guys ready to order yet and And action. Then you order when he says action.

He flips the chair around and sits at the table with you. Oh, man. Hello, I'm Steven Spielberg. I'm going to be brief. We don't have much time. The sub has to get back to its home. The sub is sinking. Would you like any appetizers?

I'm always on the podcast. I'm always talking about I wish there was a Michael Eisner, like a doll or a toy of some kind. There is an unlicensed Steven Spielberg one-sixth scale toy that's called like Director Man. And it's made overseas. And I don't know if they make it. And I can't find it on eBaybay but you can jason my phone just died could you look up steven spielberg one sixth scale because i need this toy yeah yes there's all these different companies overseas that make like like licensed like knockoffs essentially but they look so like they make like a daredevil

toy and it's called lawyer man. And it's exactly, it looks like Charlie Cox from the Netflix show. And they have a Spielberg when he comes with like accessories and like his hat. The hat? His famous hat? And like his, you know, the,

the, the, maybe the megaphone and like the chair, I think as well. Wow. And I need this stupid thing. Did you find it? Okay.

I don't, I haven't found a full set, but on AliExpress. Oh, I love AliExpress. AliBop website. Oh, I found AliExpress. The AliBop website. Oh, I found it too. The head.

The head sculpt. The Steven Spielberg head sculpt. How much? How much? How much? $29. That's just the head. $29?

I'll find a picture of it after this. You get Steven Spielberg's head for $29? The jackets at the restaurant he made cost $500 now his head is 29 i'm going to buy that yeah you have things very you have one of these of you already it's really similar wow wow um yeah okay so uh as as we're wrapping up the stories of everybody, like what did the dive team go on to do? Here's this little clip from a Las Vegas news station. Oh, man. Yeah.

Might take a sec. Wonky news site. Hang on. So where's dive today? It was the second location. The first had been in L.A. with plans to eventually open about 60. But the intense atmosphere actually seemed to be too much stimulation for dining. L.A. closed in 1999 and Las Vegas a couple of years later.

There were no more. Steve Wynn opened a couple more hotels but was eventually forced out of the industry amidst allegations of sexual harassment. Spielberg kept directing and Katzenberg now runs a video streaming platform called Quby. One of the worst pronunciations of it. That's the company he started after Quibi went under. Here's what we'll do. It's fine.

It's fine, everybody. We're just moving it to Quby. Guy does feel a lot like Queeby. They feel so of a piece. Yeah. That still wasn't right also. Quibi. They feel so of a piece. Yeah. Yeah. That still wasn't right also. It's the author. It's Quibi.

Right? Even though it's spelled Quibi. I think it's for quick bites. Yeah. But that was the thing about it is that quick bites should be Quibi. Right? It's a shortening of bite. That sounds like a dune race of people. Or the Quibi. shortening of of bite sounds like a dune race of people there were some problems with that uh site yes and with his submarine restaurant this might have

been a clue or the clue long before that that he said cut the song from little mermaid that saved the entire company uh part of your world he He's had so many, I need to, I actually don't know very much about his life, but I was just reading the wiki of the original Toy Story movie, and that's also a very crazy, winding story that almost wound up, was almost falling apart, was way over budget, was almost killed a lot of times,

but he's a real character in there, where I probably remember this wrong, but just read that, his opinions are fascinating. Considering what it became, probably remember this wrong, but just read, read that his opinions are fascinating considering what it became. I think all his notes were just like, make Woody meaner. Cause there's still, I mean,

that's why it almost died is that he was so unpleasant and they got a lot of it out of there. But when you do watch the first, because I'm watching these movies every day with my kid and the, uh, yeah, okay. Yeah.

We're both, we have them both memorized. The War of One is so much more caustic than all the rest. Woody is still really hard-edged. Well, there's that. Read the wiki when you can. We're just like, well, he's obviously had a tremendous amount of success, but also, and it's probably because of this quality of just having a weird, crazy idea that no one else had and then just hanging on to it.

And enough times it's like that worked. And then, yeah, there are these other times where it's just like, no, that just seems so crazy and misguided. From the get-go, would not work. What was the thing with the other name of Quibi that was going to be called omakase? Omakase. Which is a term for expensive sushi. Yeah, like little bunches of little sushis that cost like 500 it costs as much as one special edition jacket something middle america could really

relate to middle america 19 year olds all know what omakase is look just go down to your local omakase place in any town usa you'll get get an idea of what our website's going to be. He needs to start an omakase restaurant. And I don't know what the theme is of that. But, I mean, if there's any other food that he's, you know, dying to. Yeah. I'm sure he's still got a few tricks up his old sleeve. Right?

We haven't heard the last of Jeffrey Katzenberg. No way. Yeah, of course not. is there a dive cookbook or dive recipes published anywhere because cbk put out a cookbook around that time cbk is a very successful chain there is some uh i feel like i found some sauce that was determined good enough to try to hold on to. Let me see if I can find it from a website, topsecretrecipes.com. That's like

copycat recipes. I'd like to make a dive sub for dinner tonight. The dive Sicilian sub rosa, aforementioned. There's a recipe for. What? You can make dive carrot chips. You can make dive brick oven mushroom and turkey.

Okay. Okay, all right. Doesn't sound good. Not to me. I don't know. And then s'mores. Dive s'mores. They kind of just look like s'mores to me.

I'll make a Subrosa. I'll see how you make it wet. You could just go to Subway and buy something and soak it. That's true. Soak it wet. You could just go to Subway and buy something and soak it. It's true. Soak it overnight. Dive, dive, dive. Dive, dive.

Into the ragu. One thing we haven't, I would like everyone to guess now, how much to bill the first, the dive in Los Angeles? How much was the budget? Scott, do you have a guess? I have this reference.

I'll refrain. Jason? It was like 9 million. Eva? I'll say 10 million. I'm trying to remember. I saw a figure and it was 7 million, but was that what just Spielberg invested?

Oh, is that right? I saw 7 million. I saw 7 million. I thought that was to build yeah you're probably right but now but i'm now i'm seeing all separately that vegas cost 15 okay so that seems to be it would be more it would be less you would think they did it once i think they went a little harder on vegas okay they upped the design on vegas because it's got so much competition although some of the vegas pictures are very funny because it's still in that transitional period between old vegas and theme park vegas

so you can see like the dirty old sign for the frontier casino in the background century city mall is cool now i like it is it am i am i uh underrating it well they have a lot of uh interesting asian uh chain restaurants that don't exist to other places it's a very good hot pot place oh there's a a brand of a cult ramen place that just opened and they also have a um what's the dumpling place we went to uh din tai fun yeah they have a din tai fun italy's there yeah maybe i'm being italy's great italy is great they have a container store there which i worked at when i was younger so you gotta go and feel feel the old gals that's right the old gs22 i don't know what your uh containers were called i walk around and listen to people planning closets and i go he's not doing it right um does anyone know what like

did the vegas i'm just picturing did they did they have to do a demolition of the Vegas location? Presumably. Oh, wow. I think I found demolition photos of the Hollywood one. I think I have photos of just the frame, and they've taken all the yellow off of it. Vegas, I don't really know. They don't blow up small buildings, do they? They blow up everything. Oh, you're wondering if they did the implosion.

Nothing just closes in Vegas. They have to implode it in slow motion everything dive dive no implode we've got to close the rbs let's load it up with explosives the location of the los angeles one probably wasn't doing itself any favors because century city is not like yeah it's a lot of offices and like talent agencies like it's not people like oh we gotta see the century city neighborhood sure if anything my memory of century city is like yeah the parking situation is atrocious i mean since they redid them all it is like uh my teen step daughter loves it like that's where she likes to go and hang out with her friends because she can

oh interesting yeah she can like go shopping and see a movie and stuff okay but um yeah the parking's okay there i feel like it's bad it's all got better better right i just feel like because when i was in college at usc around this time which i think is when dive was open but i never went but we would go to that movie theater a lot and then everything at century city mall closed for like a decade like it was it was always under construction it was mostly gutted dead except for the movie theater except for the movie theater so also like there's no it was a really hostile environment to like it just it wasn't a good mall like it there was it was mostly just gone um so i don't know weirdly the dive site not filled i don't think i think there is

nothing there currently oh wow wrong nobody could fill the shoes there's no building it's just it's a lot it's a no no it's it's an empty storefront i think there's just no there's no because it's a massive right right i think the two-story is maybe the issue like there's there's too many ideas going on here right like bringing back sub sandwiches is one but a 300 seat 15 million15 million restaurant that has entertainment and $500 merchandise. That's an entire other thing. We've complained before

about this Margaritaville at City Walk because it's not two stories, but maybe it not being two stories will allow it to exist longer. I don't know about that. It ain't looking great. Wait, they never opened that chocolate place that was

going to go where the hard rock... They haven't even started on it. They're working. We're mad at them, not you. I'm mad at you, too, for bringing it up. Yeah, wait, yeah, you're right. I know, I was excited. One of those in Florida, what is it called? Toothsome Chocolate.

Professor Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. Chocolate Emporium and Savory Treat? Yeah. Chocolate Emporium and savory treat? Yeah. Specifically, chocolate emporium and savory treat. They've got characters. They've got original characters. I know, I know. It smells disgusting inside.

It smells like the M&M's store in Vegas. But you've been there. I got a Sunday to go at the Florida One, and half the restaurant smells like chocolate, and the other half smells like plastic fries and plastic and it's just a kind of an overwhelming sense they got sued by whoever owns willy wonka yeah because it's clearly which is actually netflix oh is that right yeah netflix bought the roll doll extended universe and they're gonna be themed multiple shows they're

gonna make a themed willy wonka environment they announced a place a place yeah okay well that's a good idea okay the official name the toothsome chocolate emporium and savory feast kitchen who is uh what character what is the character is jock huh is jock the dog jock might be like the tiktok man like the gear man because there's like a steampunk robot gear man but then there's also a dog oh my god there's a dog and i can't remember the name of him already the dog is the um boston dynamics is it the company dogs that they're like retrofitting to be police like digital police yeah it's like that black mirror like killer dog robot thing the dog can either bring you a sundae in its mouth or murder you.

But he has a cute name. Look up his cute name. Yeah. Man, my phone died. How could you only get something to go from this place? It was crowded. When we were there, it was crowded. We went up to the bar

because that was the only place you couldn't even just like get a table. Wow. They have a bar? Yeah, not surprised. You can do shots there. Wait, maybe there's Hope for themed restaurants. I want to go to this place more than anything well that's in orlando and if if either of you guys want to join us on a maybe orlando adventure that we're i'm there thinking

about doing yeah let me know this keeps uh not killing everybody there'll be a window there'll be like a week where there'll be like low level virus. We'll go, we're doing it now. We've learned. That's how it has to work. We have pounds now. If things are okay for three days, we act as if the world is literally, we act as if the rapture is coming. Yep. Okay. The robot

dog at Twosome Chocolate Factory is latte. Yes. Latte. It is latte. are we getting one of these in la yes we are getting one in the old hurrah in theory but they haven't done anything this could save city walk as we know it i'm telling you they there were surveyors up there standing in front of it when i went up to get a covet test where i got the results nine days later these things aren't related that classic city walk sheen the same people who were doing

his test were surveying the old hard rock to put the retrofit it for for latte chocolate swab in your nose and then they had a like two o'clock shift to be bob the minion in the park there's so much yeah anyway one more thing before we wind it down we haven't talked about the periscope you there was a working periscope where you could like actually spy on people on santa monica boulevard yeah it actually did work and you could like stare at a specific conversation for a while if you wanted to that That is the two-way mirror of dive. Yeah, a lot of voyeurs working at this restaurant. Wow, so they did have crazy urinals.

Why do these people think that people just want to spy on people? There's so much of that. What, you don't want to see what other people live like? Imagine yourself living their lives, wearing their their clothes living in their homes you know normal stuff you got to make sure your partners and your business aren't talking smack about you so you can you don't end up in a lawsuit so sometimes you got to bug their office this is how the levy restaurant group does their business famously um so look this is a crazy place i guess um here's a question uh because i like i like asking if and meditating on if do we think that the place uh had the

essence of of the man and katzenberg we know less about but spielberg we know him we know his movies so well do we think this is the ultimate iteration of a spielberg restaurant was it spielberg enough um i was thinking like man right now i'm like on a real spielberg high because west side story is so good but fucking guy made ready player one so my answer is yes this is a You call this equivalent to Ready Player One. Most Spielberg stuff in the last 20 years is like dive level. Dive has BFG energy. Do you think dive caused an artistic dive? Did it like make him distracted?

And he maybe could have sustained the Schindler's Jurassic Peak for longer if he hadn't gotten into the business of soggy bread. Didn't he make Saving Private Ryan in Quick Apples? He made a few good movies after that. Oh, come on. It's a more convenient narrative. The dive destroyed

Steven Spielberg. Isn't that more fun? It is more fun, yeah. That did become his full-time job in his own heart too much he was doing too much dipping couldn't make any good movies we're out of bathyspheres we need to put the new england glam chowder in something we're out of bread bathyspheres oh yeah it's i i feel like there's too much i'm trying to think like there's too much tacky shit still to really feel like that quintessential 90s Spielberg. Sure. And I don't know.

Maybe he was led astray by certain people, certain operators, where he thought, oh, that sounds like a fun idea. But he wasn't. I don't know. I think maybe he was spread too thin, and he couldn't assess all the parts of the restaurant. I feel like look at the E.T. ride. Look at other theme-y things he's done. I feel like he wasn't really involved in it. I don't know.

This just feels like not something he spent a ton of time on. But what about Katzenberg? In a way, I guess. It feels more Katzenberg than Spielberg to me. The timing works out where Katzenberg could have had early meetings with Siegfried and Roy about Father of the Pride and taken them to Las Vegas Dive. Oh, you're right. It's really close to the Mirage. It's where they work.

Do you think that's where it was born? They workshopped ideas? I'm just saying it's not impossible. Jason's just asking questions. I'm just asking questions. I'm doing my own research. Like Lin Wood. Just asking questions. Siegfried, yeah. There was an old racist guy who worked in the bar.

Didn't the grandpa race? And he could be in there. That's Sarmody. That's our Sarmody. Our least favorite character in fiction i think so yeah that's about oh no someone else ordered the cappuccino mix with the punch again so it is the katzenberg of restaurants we can maybe agree i uh um the i mean i guess the the final question is would if it was if it was around right now, LA or Vegas, would you go?

Would you be excited to go? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'd die. Yeah, yeah. I'd go a lot. Yes. I'd go all the time. Yeah.

God. I mean, if only we could leave here right now and I'll go do shots at that sitting on a torpedo. Sure. I would say, real quick, like a plus it up i mean everyone shared their ideas real quick but i feel like maybe it was just we were talking about big size too big what if it was like a 25 seat place and it was like a real so it was like the sub on the 20 000 leagues ride at disney and you ate in like a tiny little immersive area like an

experience don't would that be more i mean i think intimate that's what i was thinking in terms of yeah like to bring more um of what it's like on a real submarine yeah to the experience i was like i actually did i looked up some facts about life on a submarine you basically i mean you go out for hundreds of days a year. It's very cramped. Life is divided into three six-hour segments. So there's no, like, days and nights. There's no sunlight. Right.

Yeah. You sleep in coffin-sized racks in a manner they call hot racking, which is three guys to every two beds. It's like the Star Wars hotel. Similar, yeah. I read an interview with Walter Lyon, who was a Navy diver and a fire control technician, who said, if the curtain's rocking, don't come a-knocking, which is, I think, a reference to masturbation.

I don't know how this would have been incorporated in the restaurant. They should have allowed you to go have a casual sub there but also rent it out as a jerk-off motel yeah yeah make sure to try the hot you know the hot cookie with ice cream afterwards and that's the uh jack-off rack you're on a date and it's not going well where it is going well that's uh they asked this guy are there this is like a military magazine website navy website are there any interesting submarine rituals? He said, whenever you have a major accomplishment in the maritime community, you have this big ceremony.

Like when we cross the equator, we have a ceremony which basically culminates in us singing songs, crawling around on our bellies, swimming in urine, and eating M&Ms out of a fat person's belly button. Typically, the biggest, fattest guy is dressed like a baby who wears a diaper and gets covered in whipped cream, malt vinegar, mayonnaise, and mustard. You gotta do what you gotta do to have some fun.

So maybe something like that would have made the restaurant more fun. So, like, full-on insanity. Full-on Sodom and Gomorrah level debauchery. Your mind rotting from being under the sea going inside from cabin fever this is an official navy magazine yes oh man it's very cool that many of these subs are armed with nuclear weapons Oh my goodness. So where they went wrong was that they had substantial desserts,

but that you didn't lick whipped cream out of the belly of the heaviest person in the restaurant of the 300 possible diners. Yeah, I guess they would have to weigh everyone who came to eat there. It's George. And it is what I recall about George. George passed away, RIP. Oh, I'm sorry. And on that note. Wow, Jason Waller, you survived Podcast The Ride, the first Celebruary edition.

It's an honor. Thank you so much for having me back. Thank you for learning about dive, for coming in with research, for coming in with submarine knowledge that will never escape our brains. It'll haunt us forever. Let's exit through the really expensive gift shop. Is there anything you'd like to plug? Oh, geez. No. No. A Mystica by Chris Angel. Previews beginning

March 11th Alright okay Check out Wherever tickets are sold For A Mystica Eva Anderson You also survived Podcast The Ride

But you'll be back I'll be back You'll see me soon There's more Hear me soon More Eva to come We're so happy about that And as

For all the Celebrity happenings Find us on the socials At Podcast The Ride Merch is available in our t public store which i feel like we should jack up the cost of just for this month can we say you spent six hundred dollars on the usual on our regular shirt but does he public do they allow you to put our logo on a heavy leather jacket like a leather bomber jacket with a

spielberg arms like an eight ball yeah yeah actually purple and white like or maybe white or like purple arms or what do you think what color white i usually the canvas part is yeah the canvas part white arms are purple purple arms with a big logo on the back take the colors of one of the cocktails that dive and the colors of another one of the cocktails that dive split the colors of another one of the cocktails at dive, split it down the middle and it's both. Seven different shades on each half of the jacket. Wow. We should do that. God, I want that really bad.

Just make one. And everybody can share. And we, yeah, you're right. And we send it to a special fan who will then send it from fan to fan. A sisterhood of the traveling pants scenario, if you will. Yeah, yeah. Everybody's gonna feel so bonded by the end of that. That's beautiful.

Okay, well, we'll do that and find us on the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride where there's a bunch of celebratory fun. Yeah, set your bar at Spielberg, just calibrate it right there, and then just imagine not submerging like submarines

going up up up and that's who's coming next week on the second gate bigger than spielberg dream as big as you can dream get ready for it happy celebratory thanks for listening this has been a forever dog production executive produced by by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.