Podcast: The Ride - The Fast & Furious Cars That Dance To Gasolina with Griffin Newman

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

In the past, the wonderful past, there was a section of the tram tour where you'd watch cars dance. They'd twirl, spin, nod and most importantly, delight every guest. One of the most prominent delightees was accidental PTR legend, Griffin Newman. He joins this climactic Septramber episode to bring his knowledge and share memories of his automobile-based delight.Tickets for Scott Performs The 2006 Universal Tour at Dynasty Typewriter available here:https://www.squadup.com/hosts/7408591/eventsFOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Folks, do you want to see Podcasts the Ride Live? Are you going to be in Los Angeles on September 28th at 4 p.m. Pacific Time? Well, if you are, you are in luck because we're doing a very special show at Dynasty Typewriter. Yes, Scott is going to perform the 2006 Universal Tour, the finale of September. Yes, he's going to do the actual Universal Backlot Tour spiel that he did as a real job about 20 years ago. It's going to be very exciting. There's going to be fun. There's going to be surprises you will see.

Now, if you're not going to be in Los Angeles, we are doing a live stream. You can buy tickets on the Dynasty Typewriter website for the live stream and then stream to whatever device you want. TV, phone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So just to remind everyone, Sunday, September 28th at 4 p.m. Pacific time, the live show, come to see it in person or watch it home. And then you'll find the link to buy tickets on our social media. description of this podcast, or just go to the Dynasty Typewriter website and go to the 28th. There's a link there. You'll figure it out your smart people.

So remember, Scott is performing the 2006 Universal Tour live, and it's coming up soon. Forever! Hello, TramPod listeners. The following episode may contain a famous man's soda brand, gasoline music. Kuka Armed Potential and Flat Voice Directing. All that, plus Vin Diesel scholar Griffin Newman joins Subtramber to talk about the Fast and Furious Extreme Closeup on today's podcast, The Ride.

Welcome aboard podcast, The Ride, Sip Tramber, a month-long tribute to the World Famous Universe Studios tour, where after a big nostalgia-filled theme month, I hope we all feel a little bit more like family. I'm your guide, Scott, joined by our very own Hobbs and Shaw, Mike and Jason. Well, we used to be more like Hobbs and Shaw back in the day. day when Jason was a little bawder, when the boys used to go out late at night. So that is true.

We still are like Hobbs and Shop, but we used to be more like them in the old days. Oh, man, when you close out city walk at when everything closed at 9 p.m. Man, you close that sucker out. I know. We've calmed down in our old age, but Mike's still a young man. So we're a bit more like Hobbs and Ray's. You'll have to help. What's that character?

Yeah, that one's lost on me. I'm sorry. Our guest laughed. Well, he'll get a good joke. I just didn't know. Sorry. Well, as I was reading about the film franchise, we're discussing today, I learned that there's a, in the works, Hobbs and Ray's movie, which is the Rock and Jason Mamoa. Oh, okay.

But you don't know anything about the characters. You just saw the name today. I just saw the name. Yeah, I had to keep looking. So they might hate each other then. They might not be best of pals. I don't know. Well, that's, look, that's why our guest is here to fill us in on some stuff.

Well, I'm going to bring in in a second. But before we do that, I just want to say we are approaching the end of September. Next week's going to wrap it up. The month is going to eke into October a little bit. So Tramber will steal a little bit of October. And yet there will still be four main feed, Hauntcast, The Frights. And we're excited to get into all that. But just at the top here, because,

this is still barely in the future. I wanted to say the culmination of Siptramber. Scott performs the 2006 Universal Tour is occurring at Dynasty Typewriter this Sunday in just a few days. If you're hearing this on the day, it drops Siptramber 28th, the special dad-friendly start time of 4 p.m. That is also going to be live streaming if you can't be there in person. We are, I think, going to put it out as an audio episode, but the visual component, the costuming component, even, I would say we'll be strong, so highly encouraged to experience the visual component, whether in person or on streaming. We're going to put a link in the description for that. Okay, so September has been a very nice month.

I've been enjoying it, if you can't tell, really enjoying myself, talking with fellow guides, reliving great memories, talking about classic attractions. But here's the thing. Not all of the memories are so great. and that's because not all of the attractions are so classic. Because of an unfortunate fact that we have to face here in the month of September is that a quite beloved franchise has somehow been the inspiration for not one but two of the stupidest things ever done on the tour, nay, the entire park. I am talking about the Fast and Furious franchise,

and despite Jason's recent Googling and Wikipedia, I don't think any of us are quite experts in this field. And luckily, we know someone who is now Tokyo drifting into this episode, Fast and Furious Fissionado, as well as accidental PTR legend and completer Griffin, Newman. Hello. Hello. Also, call forward conductor, a railroad conductor. Call forward for future episode. We have banked up. This is a, yes, this is a call forward, and I'm glad that we're discussing a little bit of business. We are over Zoom right now. And, just in terms of our scheduling, you know, if you have been hoping for a big high-octane rip-roarin Griffin IRL episode, recorded with the energy and the momentum and the runtime that only in person can make possible, we do have such an episode in the can. It has been benched in order to let all of these theme months transpire.

But if that's what you're craving, then, you know, not to talk this episode now, but just consider this like a, bit of an appetizer for the, you know, the seven-course meal that will be coming once the theme months are over. I don't want to oversell it, but it is a very focused, streamlined, on-topic three-hour episode. It is an episode when you opened your research document, we realized we have been planning for three years. Your original notes were from three years ago.

It is... Yes, I think that's right. I don't want to overheat this. It's a Disney Park's attraction. that existed in three different parks that has never gotten an episode and so we recorded that because we've been pushing it off for far too long

and then once again something topical came up that we had to address sooner I have been nearly biting through my tongue in these first couple minutes out of deference to the traditions of September which I respect deeply

but already so many offensive things have been said offensive oh wow you mean Yeah, I was wondering if you were going to go inaccurate because we don't really know what we're talking about, Fast and Furious Wies, but I just did a little screed that I think you disagree with, and I think that's going to be some of the tension, the old Hobbs and Shaw, if I'm getting that right, when they were enemies, we're doing some old school Hobbs and Shaw tension about the quality of these attractions. Well, that was the first thing I was going to say, is that Hobbs and Shaw obviously started out as enemies. They were common enemies of the Touretto family, but enemies on separate sides. So the, uh, the Touretto family, both his biological blood family and his chosen larger family, are all on the wrong side of the law, but kind of chaotic good in a way.

They have hearts of gold and they just can't outrun their rap sheets. Whereas, uh, Hobbs was a hard-assed, hard-nosed, uh, government agent. The diplomatic security service. Exactly. Who's trying to hold them responsible. And Shaw is of a moralist, Marassie old British crime family who has no code of conduct. He has a family, but there's no, there's no value system.

There's no line they won't cross. Right, exactly. The Sheridan's, yes. Like Jason in general. Yeah, it used to be like that. You know, they're, they're, Ping-ponging. Yeah.

There's some, maybe some seedy elements in a few generations back, you know? Yeah. Now, because Hobbs is such a lawman and Shaw is such a degenerate, there wasn't even a kind of of enemy of my enemy is my friend connection between them. Hobbs was like, the line is drawn here. You suck. I hate you. And so the movies were working towards them meeting and in theory the kind of like,

have burned Tracy back and forth between these two clashing, and then they became buddies. So in theory, doing a Hobbes and a Dante Reyes movie would be kind of replicating the same dynamic, except the problem is Dante Reyes sucks. He's the worst character I've ever seen in a movie, and he is one of many things that ruin the franchise irreparably. In my opinion, the Fast and Furious franchise is basically on life support. I would say it's beyond that. It's in like a vegetative state.

There is like a comatose non-functioning body. You can visit in a hospital that ostensibly resembles a thing I once cared for. But in a certain way, the grieving is already done and you're just waiting for it to be over. Oh, my gosh. But you feel like you, but you have to go see the body, the barely functioning body, because it's family. Correct. Correct. And much like that kind of situation often, it's stretching on much longer than

we thought, it has now been, I want to say, two years since the release of FastX, and we are nowhere close to production commencing on FastX2, what would ostensibly be the second part of the two-part finale, a movie that truly feels like it might never get made. Right. Well, there was talk initially of like, oh, the roller coaster in Hollywood's going to open with the new movie. Yeah, that was the plan. Because they had a date pegged out.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying that Scott's joke was bad and it's going to confuse people and upset them. It's disrespectful and it's disrespectful at a time of great morning. And I am going to call the FCC on Scott and have them look into these very cruel, mean, misleading jokes. Which one was offensive? Wait, I lost track of which joke I made that was offensive.

Let's make it clear what I'm going to. Yeah. could say the same thing about Jimmy Kimmel. And I say, you ask yourself which joke was offensive. The damage is already done. I also, I also just want to say comedy is subjective, so I can't say there's an empirical truth here, but the missed opportunity to not say, I don't got friends, I got trammily. Pretty absurd, pretty offensive.

This is why, we should have just let you open the entire thing. I should have kicked this to you as a writer. I should not have been so presumptuous, you know, because I know my way around. this back lot, but I don't know my way around this franchise. And the stuff that we're going to talk about today did not exactly encourage me or make me want to check out the franchise. You know, we're talking about some of my first exposure to the franchise being via one specific attraction that opened the summer that I started my tour guide duties. And, you know, it didn't exactly set me on a course to being a Fast Furious franchise fan.

you say this is like the second time the franchise has been on life support because Tokyo drift I mean no one came back uh you know I state uh Dominic Touretto came back for an unused cameo used used deeply used yeah it was used okay um but it it seemed like that was nearly a directed DVD movie, that third one, and then they all came back in the fourth one. Jason, you have set me up perfectly. Oh, great. May I please request some space to just lay a little track here, if we will, to explain the kind of correlation between the Fast and Furious movie franchise and its presence in the

fiend parks. These two things that become- Well, please do, because I don't think there's any way that we're going to understand how we got to the cars dancing to gasoline if we don't properly lay the context. Because I think both of these things are good. I think supercharged and the gasoline dancing cars are good. I mourn them both.

I think they are products of their time. Perhaps they needed to go. And I'm very excited as we sit on the precipice of this proper fast and furious roller coaster for the first time. The thing that obviously feels like the ultimate form of theme park representation for a fast car franchise.

I disagree. They did it. They did the best they were ever going to do, some cars danced on poles to gasoline. How is that, explain to me how a roller coaster, it doesn't make sense. A roller coaster isn't cars. Ah, Scott, they danced on cucka arms. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, there's a lot of important stuff going on here. Mike, you look like you have something to say.

No, I do, but there's like, no, go ahead, please. We agreed to give you space. Yeah, no, you have space. I'm holding space free. I'm holding space. We're holding space. It's time for you to defy gravity. Yeah.

And will you just, as I explain this, Mike, will you just, uh, through the Zoom screen, attempt to grab Jason's pinky and only his pinky? Yes, I'll try. There are many things I love about the Fast and Furious franchise, but one of the things I love about it most is that it is this like accidental franchise, right?

That it becomes increasingly this like, paramount like cornerstone of universal as a conglomerate and I even think there's you see a parallel in its presence

in the theme parts of this thing for a very long time they were in denial of how important it was to them because it was like a junk pile franchise that kept defying the odds

and there was a resistance for how much to commit to it and support it and treat it seriously right? So like Buff has a and The Furious is based on a magazine article

based on the real phenomenon of underground late night street racing in Los Angeles. The main reason this movie gets put into production and development is because Universal is really hot on Paul Walker, who they think is the next big thing. He has done the skulls for them and maybe had done another movie for them, but had a couple

other credits. You're Meet the Deals. You're Pleasantville, what have you. But they see this incredibly wooden, incredibly handsome. a man. And they go, this is our guy. We need to find some cheap, low budget material to put him into a programmer. They're like, what do you like? What's your dream vehicle? Pun unintended at this point, right? Like a two-pronged question, or he gives a two-pronged answer. We want to build a movie for you. What's your dream movie? And he says, I like cars a lot. Tragic foreshadowing will ultimately be his undoing, right? And also, I don't think I can carry a movie alone.

So all I ask is that you build this thing to be a two-handed. So then they search, what's good source material? They find this article. They bring it to him. They bring on a bunch of writers. They develop it. Rob Cohen, notorious sex criminal, allegedly, by his children. His director from the Skulls brings it on.

One of the whitest men alive to make a movie about like underground, hypercultural, largely Latino street racing. Right? The role of Dominic Touretto is... I was going to say, what's the article? The, like, the, like, the article, like, is the article, like, extra, extra. Cars go fast now. It was. It was not like a news report.

It was, like, a larger journalistic. I want to say it was, like, a GQ or an Esquire. But it was sort of like a larger cultural trend piece of, there is this subculture of guys, uh, a largely non-Caucasian, but it's otherwise the sort of melting pot in Los Angeles of people putting a ton of money into building like really souped up, splashy, showy cars, uh, and racing them like high stakes down streets in Los Angeles, the middle of the night, uh, trying to evade the cops. Um, and they take this article and they write it into a movie that's meant to be just like, I don't know. It's a whatever, right? It's like a

$20 million movie. Uh, they intend for the Dominic Torretto part to be, um, uh, Timothy Ollifant, who is another guy they've tapped as this is a star on the rise. Timothy Ollifant turns it down. They're like, fuck. This movie we got with this weird guy who can see in the dark, Vin Diesel, pitch black, just

tested well. They think it's going to sort of surprise open. Do we throw him in this? That ends up being the decision that defines the entire thing, right? And Vin comes in, the most insane man in the world and throws in all his opinions and sort of locates the heart of this thing and they put like a good supported cast around it,

what have you. The thing just explodes immediately, right? It like opens like four times as high as they think it's going to. It multiplies. It sells crazy well on DVD. They immediately go sequel. Vin Diesel goes, no thank you. I've already identified my next target.

I want to be the next James Bond, the new James Bond, cooler than James Bond, triple X, which Rob Cohen, previously noted follows and they go off and do that together. So he's now like a $20 million guy. They offer him all the money in the world for Fast and Furious. He goes, no.

They're like, I guess it's not about Torretto anymore, even though he was the breakout star. I guess the actors are kind of interchangeable. We can make it Paul Walker with someone else. And they add in Tyrese, they add in Ludicrous, they add in Eva Mendez. Also huge. Not as well

liked, pretty poorly received at the time from the fans. But massive box office hit and their takeaway from that is do any of these actors matter can we literally just put any movie in theaters with cars called fast and furious is this a franchise about like an idea that's bigger than any character and in that case this thing is bulletproof because all of these movies can cost less than 20 million dollars because no actor has levered over us so there was this feeling of do we keep these going and go direct to video or do we try to make them cheaper, lesser star theatrical movie?

And so that's where Tokyo... Was there honestly a... Was there a potential for straight-to-video that was a, like, on the table, possibly? Yeah, and I think the bigger straight-to-video moments actually after Tokyo drift, but their big thing is like, if these... Because I'm sure, too fast costs like 60 or 80 after the first one cost 20. And they were like, how do we get this back down to movie one budget? it. Like, get Little Bow Wow and Lucas Black, right?

Um, and there was this feeling of like, are the fans going to be annoyed if there's no connection? So pretty late in the process, they reach out to Vin Diesel, who at this point has had like a five-year run of megaflops. The pacifier was his only hit in that period because obviously also when triple X hits, I said this was going to be short. Jesus. When triple X hits and they're like, we're still on space. The space is being held. Yes. When Triple X hits and they're like, great, you proved everyone wrong. Everyone thought you were carusoing by leaving Fast and Furious, but now you have your own franchise.

Time for Triple X2. He's like, no thank you. I want to make Chronicles of Riddick. So he does Chronicles of Riddick at Universal, the same studio he walked away from, and banks everything on Chronicles of Riddick and Chronicles of Riddick bombs. Then he has, like, Pacifier, which is a hit, but a kind of like ignoble hit. And then there's shit like Babylon AD that's just like he's D-O-A, right? So he, they reach out to him and go, would you consider doing a cameo in Tokyo Drift to tie this into the universe? We just need one scene where you meet the lead character and we make it clear that all of this is connected in some way. And we'll pay you like $200,000 to show up for six hours.

And he says, keep the money. I want the rights to Riddick back. And they go The right to Riddick He loved Riddick He loved Riddick And he went So Pitch Black

Small hit That leads to him getting Fast and Furious He caches in the double Like arguably the double blank check Of Fast and Furious N triple X On being like we're about to blow Riddick up And his argument is Pitch Black was the Hobbit

Now I'm ready for my Lord of the Rings And he goes into Universal with three leather-bound volumes that are all literally locked and chained. And goes, here are the three scripts for the Riddick trilogy. In order to read them, you have to greenlight them. And so they green with the first one. I swallowed the keys. Scott truly, they green light the first one. And he goes, here's the first key.

But you don't get to read the other two until you green light those. Like, he's holding them hostage. and then the first one bombed. They're like, well, sorry, we're not going to commit to three at once. The first one bombs, and they're like, there's the door, right? So now he comes back to the- Can I get reimbursed for the books and the keys, then? Leather bounding is an expensive process these days.

They come back to him years later, and he's like, yeah, I'll do the cameo in exchange for you, give me back the Riddick rights for free. And they're like, yeah, that's like a tax write-off. That's like a charitable donation. Yeah, sure thing, fucking moron. He comes back for the cameo. They hand him back the Riddick rights. And when the movie test screens, the audience, like, explodes.

And the movie does, okay, it's certainly profitable. But the bigger takeaway is they're hearing, the ending is playing like gangbusters. And they're like, fuck. There does seem to be some desire for Vindiesel back to maybe do a true follow-up where you get the whole team back together in a way that hasn't been the case since the first movie.

Because Paul Walker's the one guy who carries over to two. You're also missing for Dana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez, who are the two other big parts of the original. So that's a moment where they're like, is this a shitty direct-to-video sequel? Because all four of these stars are pretty cheap now. It seems like there's an audience here. But like, do we need to knock them down to size?

Do we keep making these movies sort of like random stories in the Fast and Curious universe? what do we do and they make the big push to be like let's close it out let's do like the sort of like proper legacy will return to the original cast and then that thing explodes and suddenly they're like fuck we did not realize what we had on our hands we did not realize that there was this level of passion of people who had been waiting like 10 years to see the team back together and uh from that moment on it's like this is one of our drivers for our company Vin Diesel has our nuts in a vice He owns us He leather bound our balls And only he has the key He is the key

He has demonstrably proven his value And the ultimate moment is like Two years later he gets independent financing To make his third Riddick movie And then sells it back to Universal Who releases it Wow But also the longer this goes on

The crazier he becomes the more power he accrues, the more untenable it becomes to work with him. These movies become disasters of production. And you described him as crazy at the beginning of the tale. Yeah. So the beginning was crazy. I love him. But part of what I love about him is that he is like when you read of like Vincent Van Gogh or whatever, you know?

Yeah. The greatest artist of all time who are like lunatics and we're yelling at. at their walls and like that's how Hobbs and Shaw came about is like him and the Rock did not get along so they just spun off the Rock's character

and then he wasn't in some movies but then he was supposed to come back or he did come back for 10 he came back as the after credit scene in 10 in a cameo that was shot I believe two weeks before the movie came out, and I have no proof of this, but it really, really looks like it

is his face superimposed onto someone else's body, that he was not even physically there. There's like a guy with a ski mask running a mission, and at the end, he takes the mask off and you, like, push in on the rock's face, and I don't think it's been his body up until that point. Yeah. And that was the promise that he was going to come back, and everyone was like, that's him bearing the hatchet, and now he'll come back for the finale. re-team within, and then that announcement was followed up by, no, actually, this is teeing up a

solo Hobbes movie. This is teeing up a Hobbes and Reyes movie. Like, he keeps just posting thing on Instagram trying to, like, get something going. Yeah. Also, Scott, important. These movies have done a lot of, like, backwards continuity, a lot of lure building of, like, that secondary character is actually very important three movies later and the third movie takes place between six and seven don't worry when they don't worry about the phones the phones like being iPhones and then flip phone don't think about that you know but but yes they they uh after the cameo four basically right off the bat establishes that it is a pretty sequel to Tokyo drift that's going to end so all the movies start ending with Toretto being like, I've been hearing some crazy things about Tokyo and you're like, oh, and now he's going to go to Tokyo and close the loop. But the movies get so successful that they keep pushing off the Tokyo thing. So there's like four movies that take place in between. Like there's all this crazy stuff, right? That speaks from the fact that like it's the opposite of Marvel. There's no plan going in. This like thing.

is built from scraps, the one thing that is demonstrable is, like, the world loves these characters and they like seeing them together. And they keep adding more characters to the pot, and it gets bigger and bigger. But then all these interpersonal, like, fractions start between the actual actors on set. What were you going to say, Jason? But like Marvel, death does not count. All characters that you've seen die very clearly, either dodged it or got amnesia. or something, you know? There's amnesia, there's, like, long-loss siblings. There's, like, surprise pregnancies.

I, like, always say part of my love of these movies is that they, like, have the plotting of telenovelas. They are, like, very emotional and saccharine for movies that are, like, seen as being super macho. Um, but, but, yes, the timeline thing with Tokyo Drift happens because of a character who dies in Tokyo Drift, who they want to bring back into the first. franchise and reccon as being one of Vin Diesel's friends.

And so they keep making the other movies prequels to keep that guy alive. Then they finally catch up to it on the timeline and everyone is so bummed that the character is gone that two movies later they go like, never mind, he faked his death. All of this is important to say

the gasoline is a very key moment of them being like what is Fast and Furious? Fast and Furious is just a brand name we throw on to car ship. That is all it is, nothing else matters. This is what I think is interesting about the gasoline, right?

That there's like two things going on. One is universal, and I know I'm talking amongst gentlemen who know, who remember this, Jim Hill posting rapidly about the introduction of the Kuka Arm technology and being like, this is the game changer. This has been independently developed and everyone's bidding on it now, and you, Universal is trying to get the rights away from Disney because they think if they can do Cuka Arm plus Harry Potter, they got a chance to take Disney down. And this was the first use of the Cucca Arm. It was kind of like a soft launch to be like, we got to get it in there, we got to get something working.

What's like the dumbest, easiest thing we can do? And the answer was, Fast and Furious. We don't need actors. We don't need some fucking showroom. Just get the cars and put them on the Cucca arms and do a quick pop, right? well and and if they're also itching to get something fast and something anything fast and furious into the parks they're they're facing a problem that disney has faced where like oh my god beauty and the beast is a phenomenon aladdin's a phenomenon later frozen's a phenomenon but we don't have like we can't just build a ride like an incredibly expensive ride from scratch out of nowhere and have it ready what's something in the meantime so they didn't do a parade but what they did do is this yeah and it's also like, let's examine this moment, right? They're committed to, I think, we want to keep doing these movies.

At the same time, they're like, is this fundamentally a B or C tier franchise? So even though the obvious thing is, just make a roller coaster without actors and call it fast and furious, at that moment in time, I think that seems like too scary a commitment to them. Because you're like, is this going to be out of date in eight years? Who knows when the public stops liking these movies? But something like this is easy and sort of like. like swappable. And they're identifying certain things they know the franchise has value

which is like the cars themselves, the aesthetic of the cars, right? This kind of like souped up brightly color, muscle car, like modification culture. And also like the soundtracks. That these movies are like wildly overperform because they like hit a bunch of fucking audiences that don't get movies made for them. It is like the multicultural cross-pollination

of these films where it's, like, oh, you're like exposing subcultures, you're exposing like subcultures of music, like all these kinds of things. It's like a 30 second snapshot of what they think the franchise is at that point, which is just like, is it a mixtape and four cars and nothing else matters? Now, do you mind if I examine this moment as well? And I mean, this moment of recording. We've got a long time without me bringing up in the episode.

the fact that Jason is reclined on a couch and wearing a blankie over his lap as well as a wimpy t-shirt. I just wanted to make sure that we properly examined this moment. I got my sapphire falls around the house hoodie. It's just a nice. My mother-in-law got it for us. She said it would look nice with our couch. And I agree.

He just looks really bundled up and like tucked in almost. look so comfy. He's also like 14 miles away from the laptop. I'm pretty far. You're the furthest from the screen by far, yes. Yeah. I, yeah. Well, flashing it back to the old days

when we record on couches, you know. I was trying out. I've tried the recording set up in the kitchen. You're just a little too hot on a 90 degree day. So yeah, so it's just trying

it out whether it works or not I don't know um but is this the closest that we've gotten to you being in the research fort while doing an episode it it is closest I have not I could rig this setup up in my bed but I have not yet so I was tempted to ask if this was the much discussed for it looks at least like it could convert very quickly but just three moves yes it becomes the research fort yeah it could and it's got a coffee table which the research fort doesn't normally so um yeah what's it missing to be the research fort what are what are the what are the components that we need to make it a research for it oh i don't know i mean i have a lot of pillows this couch came with a lot of throw pillows uh it's technically

called a choufa they said because it's got a chase lounge at the end of end. That is, you, huh? A Shays? Shays Lounge? Yeah.

I always said. We call it. Shays Lounge. Chase Lounge is what he said. Sorry. That could have been over the internet. A day bed is what I always said. That's a day.

Yeah. I thought you were going to bring up that I love the dancing cars. I, I truly thought that's where this was going. Well, that's, too. That lines up with your, my first time at Universal, Hollywood also lines up with like, you worked there that summer. I came out in late August and went to Universal and they were

pushing that Fast and Furious. That was their big new thing for like summer 2006. Yes. Well, here, let me, let me delve into a little bit of context here. So this, what this thing is properly called is fast and furious extreme close-up, which is different than fast and furious supercharged, which we did an episode about, and yet we will devote a little bit of time in this episode to discuss. But let's be clear, extreme close-up is dancing cars, supercharged is the cast is participating. So the context in which I arrive into this, it's summer 2006, and I don't know one second of the stuff that you just said, Griffin.

To me, I am excited about getting this job. I'm excited to go do the classics that I know, to do King Kong and Jaws and Earthquake and the big ones. But also, I realize that I am entering the tour experience with a lot of fanfare. They're promoting a bunch of new stuff. There's a lot that is new on the tour and refreshed for 2006. We'll be Goldberg is your host now. Al Roker makes a brief fun cameo. You get to see an incredible, unforgettable bigoture from Peter Jackson's King Kong.

And Mike, don't go correcting me on that. It's not a miniature. It's a bigoture. Let's be very clear. It's a big miniature. So don't. If you were going to start accusing me, I use the term bigoture completely on purpose. Thank you for giving me that warning.

That stern warning. Yeah, I was mad in advance. I don't want any Shayslawn shit. It's a bigoture. And Peter Jackson and the fine people at Wet a Workshop made it possible. And I took people to see it each and every day. All right, all you're doing right now, Scott, is making Mike feel emasculated by his NECA Ninja Turtle set up behind him, which he previously thought was pretty big. But now he was realizing would not qualify as a bigoture.

He's got several street scene and sewer diorama play sets, but they're not quite bigoture scale. They're on the way to bigoture. They are pretty big, and they are not quite miniature, but they're sort of, they're maybe miniature is what the technical term might be. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll let you name it. It's your, uh, uh, it's your stuff.

Um, but anyways, uh, this, this is, this is all new stuff, but it's all peripheral, not to like, undersell the incredible bigoture from Peter Jackson's King Kong. Hi, this is Tim Heidecker to tell you about the very special episode of Office Hours Live, where I go deep with my old friend Eric Wehrheim for the full two hours. You will not want to miss a minute of this stimulating chat. Find us on the podcast app of your choice or support us at patreon.com slash office hours live. Now, can I ask you? Yes, yes.

I'm sorry if this is what you're about to say. Were you truly part of the absolute first group to have to introduce this? Yes, yeah. I was in the first class. A single time before you. Wow. Okay. Now, maybe it was like testing or like I couldn't tell you the exact date.

And I bet by the time I was through the training, other guides had done it. But I was certainly in the first class. Yeah. And I felt like I was in first class on an airplane just in terms of the luxury of getting to reveal this to the public. So this is the biggest thing that is a new attraction. And not only did I not have any of the franchise context that you said, Griffin, I didn't have the context of what it was. Like the first time that we were in training,

we would ask, what's this Fast and Furious thing? And they were like, you'll see, you'll see. And they were pretty high about it. And they were pretty excited to like take, oh my God, the trainees are going to experience a new attraction altogether. this is rare, this is Universal Studios history. Now, without revealing the events of it, which we will go through, I will say that we got through this part of the tour.

There it was. I think we were all a tad underwhelmed and a tad confused. There was a lot of looking around what was that, what is that, or do they need to fix things about this? It did, admittedly, leave some things to be desired. Is this heresy what I have just said to you, Jason, the dancing car lover. And Griffin, presumably a dancing car lover as well. That's what he said, yeah.

Yeah. I thought it was cool. I mean, it had explosions. The cars came right at you. Then they did a fun little dance. Now, after I saw Tokyo drift, I'm like, well, those cars didn't drift at all. And they didn't race through an unfinished housing development, which is kind of a big set piece in the movie. The thing that's really important, I think,

or the thing that's really the like Roershack test, litmus test is the dancing element of the cars because everything else makes total sense for that tour. Like, I really think it just depends on if you like the end of that thing where gasoline plays and the cars dance, which just means they rotate a little bit, then you're going to like it. But like everything else is normal.

Everything else feels like, oh, yeah, this would of course be on the Universal Tram tour. This makes total sense. It felt very classic Tram Tour to me. Right. Yeah. I mean, look, I should say this too. The moment where I really start loving the franchise is four. So despite seeing three Tokyo Drift in theaters and enjoying it, the first time I'm seeing this, I'm not like, yes, representation.

These are my guys, right? Finally Fast and Furious got in there. I think over the years that it stays in there, my fondness for it. grows. My first experience seeing this was just off of the hype, and I was looking up the original Jim Hill articles, where he's saying

Tolja, Universal has gotten the rights to Harry Potter after this months-long negotiation with Disney. It's funny that he cites Nikki Fink as the one who finally broke the story, which is pretty... When we intrude journalism, oh, the days

of Nicky Fink. But then there's a quote in here, As one imaginering insider told me last week, given how difficult Rowling had been to deal with, losing Harry Potter wasn't that much of a loss. But Universal scoring an exclusive on Kuka's robotic arm technology, that was a real heartbreaker. And this was the beat. I remember Jim Hill hitting really hard was the Potter thing was getting reported widely, but they were sort of like, Rowling's demands were like untenable, and we weren't ready to give her that much control or that much. We were ready to let that go, but this Kuka arm thing fucking pissing. us off. We've been working

with them trying to test out ideas and now Universalized an exclusive for 10 years and the way they get it in there immediately is this fast and furious thing. And I had read Jim Hill describe what it was going to be and he was like you're going to be on the tram and then like two cars are going to drive

out and then they're going to lose control and it's going to feel like they were about to crash right into you. It's going to be so thrilling and then you're going to realize the cars were on robot arms the entire time, right? And they'll be like the magic of the movies. Sort of a version of the LA subway station sort of like, oh my God, the danger it's so real, never mind it's fake kind of thing. It is impossible to imagine with what you just said

that what they made would possibly deliver on that promise. Correct. And the concept art, I remember it being like there's like a fireball explosion that's like obscuring the cucka arm so you can't see that the car is controlled and you really think you're about to be decapidated or whatever. So with that is the expectation. My son and daughter are going to be crushed. They're maniacs here. How could they do this?

My family will be torn apart by these flying cars. And not being a huge Fast and Furious fan at the time. The first time I saw this, I was like, this is what they were fucking hyping up? Like, sure, I could see how they could use these robot arms or something cool in a ride, but this is not exciting. Until they did that little dance, I thought this was a complete,

flop as a thrilling magic of the movies moment because you're also not using a technology that the movies use. It's a theme park technology. You're not actually revealing anything about how these things work and the thing was chintzy and there were like cutouts on the ground where you could see the arm was even when the car was like quote unquote driving forward. And the cars were like hollow shells, which once they were up on the arms and dancing around, you could clearly see like, of course they wouldn't put a full weight car up there. But you could tell the whole time, like, these aren't real. What is this setting up?

And so when they fly at you, which they do pretty slowly, and they don't get that close, and there's not a very believable arc to their physics, I wasn't blown away. But then gasoline starts, and the cars start doing the jaunty little dance, and I'm immediately charmed. And this became a moment I looked forward to on every tram tour just for the dance. I was going to say it helps hide the logic problem of like, man, there's a lot of Japanese writing at the entrance of this and then they dance to Gasolina. Right, right, right. Well, Gasolina is an international phenomenon, so that's, you know, that can play anywhere. It would play, and even in the mean streets of Tokyo, something I think I had to say at some point in the script.

Oh, the famously mean streets of Tokyo. Are they? Seems nice and pleasant there. The mean streets where cars are very stationary. Can I, I think obviously this will, this is going to entail a lot of debate about the dancing cars. And are we for the dancing cars? Are we not for the dancing cars? I would like to lay the pipe a little bit and kind of like just make sure that we step through everything that occurs leading up to the fundamental moment,

the key moment and that I think will be the biggest difference between all of us here. So from my perspective, what we would do, what this attraction was. So, you know, I think we just, I think at this point you'd maybe just done King Kong pretty recently. That's one of the most exciting things there is to do. So how do you keep the interest alive? And what they gave you to do was say that we're about to experience some true Hollywood stars, get ready to see some picture cars.

And that's not how you were required to say it, but it's how I always. always said it in my sort of loopy, I'm maybe not that excited about what we're going to do. Get ready, folks? Picture cars. And then you'd play this, like, kind of like, like, I was going to call it jokey. I don't know if that's a word. Junkie rock music. And they'd try to, like, get you in sort of like fast and furious agro mode, which was a weird

tone to hit because what you saw pretty quickly after was like a car that the little rascals would drive. Right. Right, the Flintstones Mobile, yeah. Yeah, probably you got some Flintstones in there. Some Flint's, the Marks Brothers car. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the Marks Brothers Mobile.

There's the Duesenberg from the mummy. Is that the word like the, the Little Rascals card? You get the soot in the eye from the tailpipe? I never thought about that. That was probably the tailpipe that did a lot of that soot damage. Yeah, that's Jason's favorite car. Yeah. And I think we'd all be more excited about the Fast and Furious movies if that happened frequently.

To all carriers. Oh, if the whole tram got a soot eye, oh boy, that would have been something. I know that's Instagrammable. I know there's separate studios, so it was unlikely contractually this could ever happen. But imagine if in the early 2000s, Freddy versus Jason, Alien versus Predator Wave, Universal and Paramount, had teamed up to do Beverly Hills Cop versus the Little Rascals car.

Could you imagine the fight between Axel Foley, banana in hand, and that tailpipe? It would be a knock-down, drag-out brawl. I mean, the only reason they didn't do it is because that would have eaten up

most of the movie. There'd be no room for Judge Reinhold. Correct. You know? And Judge's quote was really high at the time. Judge was asked, Judge weirdly, his demand at the time was that he would only do it if they gave him the rights to Riddick. I went way up. It went way up after the clerk's cartoon, you know? Well, it was kind of a, it was sort of a pivot point in the franchise of is this about, is this franchise about the characters or is it about soot-in-the-eye gags with tailpipes?

And that's what probably else got out of decide. And they couldn't decide, and thus there were no movies for quite some time. It was kind of a stalemate. Who's the star? Is it Axel Foley or is it the tailpipe? and it's hard to compete even somebody's big as Eddie it's tough to compete with the tailpipe

now I don't want to talk down this row of picture cars too much because a lot of them would get the audience excited you'd see the Death Mobile from Animal House you'd see Magnum P.I.'s car you would see A. DeLorean one of only I believe 94 used in the production

of the next to the future movies but for me when I got to do a walking tour of the entire lot getting to put some trash into a real Mr. Fusion was a big deal. I still got my photo from it. I got a photo of David doing it. It was just on the show.

That was very special for all of us. So this row was pretty exciting. But then we get into the copy that I had to say that was maybe a little more like we're spoon-feeding the audience something or trying to trick them. I started saying things like, now over the years, picture cars have grown bigger,

badder, and faster as movie audiences embraced their need for speed. And then you would, And then probably around then you would hear a jaw rule track, and I don't know what it is. But my best impression of it was him, he would go like, do that. That's all I'll never know what those words are. But it's lodged in my head. So whatever that is, and now, oh, I see, we're heading into, where are we going?

We're going to get some street racing right now. And then you head into a sound stage, stage 55, I think it is, and it's the rare stage that doesn't have a roof. and that is not soundproof in any way. It is an outdoor stage, but there are little doors that you go through. And this is no ordinary stage. It is dressed with, you know, it's meant to make you feel like you're on those mean streets of Tokyo.

And they do that by putting some barrels around, by doing some, like, graffiti or perhaps written with junk, phrases like Dr. Bar and Dr. Turbo. Is that, do you know, you know the franchise Griffin? Is Dr. Turbo someone that you meet? Not yet, but he might be one of the exciting characters. Who is the centerpiece of FastX2.

He might save the franchise. He might save the dormant franchise. He could save the franchise. It could be Hobbs, Reyes, and Dr. Turbo. It could. It absolutely could. I could see Dr. Turbo being the generic brand of soda that Jason drinks. It's not the Dr. Pepper.

It's cheaper, just as good. And it's good for you. It gives you that sugar kick. It's a nickel. It's a nickel cheaper than Dr. Pepper. Mike says that, but he is also the one who texted me Ben Stiller's soda earlier today. Ben Stiller's new Stiller's soda has been announced today. You can buy it on Amazon.

None of that probiotic junk, just high-quality ingredients. High-quality natural ingredients. Let's pin Dr. Turbo and look into the current rights holder because it would be great to officially fold that into Untitled Jason Sheridan Animation Project. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. It could be played by Jason even.

Yeah, no, there's possibilities with Dr. Turbo. Right. When I put on sunglasses, I become Dr. Turbo. Not steal the dog shades joke from Eagle Art, but... We want Dr. Turbo to be the brand of soda that Jason drinks, but also have a mascot that he emulates. Right. He tries to be as cool as Dr. Turbo.

Coolest after turbo and by the way it's very reasonable none of this $3 a can slice bullshit that ain't the real slice the probiotic one you might have alluded earlier you guys know what he's talking about I do no of course not I do and also let's just

clip what he just said and transcribe that of course you all do and I don't that's going to be direct dialogue in an episode I just think exactly what was just said Let's just lift that and send that over to Rough Draft Korea immediately. None of this $3 slice, this, no further explanation, but there were no further explanation was needed in this Zoom, and I get maybe not with the audience here. The slice controversy. They know that slices back, but it lines up in the audience.

Yeah. Ben's a stiller. Jason's a stiller soda, truther. He got mad when I sent that Stiller Soda link to him. It better have high fructose corn syrup. Bullshit. Jason loves high fructose corn syrup. I need to cool down for a few days.

Things are getting too heated in this country. He gets mad. He gets mad. He's mad at R of K because he's worried about that high fructose corn syrup going away. His favorite ingredient. High fructose corn syrup causes autism? What doesn't? Okay.

At this point, I have just one more little piece of pipe to lay, but as I do so, I'm going to ask if you gentlemen could all open your emails if it's reasonable and convenient for you to do so, in which you will find a PDF, a PDF that will involve all of us. But what I would like to say is that what happens, not only as you pull into this little outdoor sound stage, is that you don't just see the sign for Dr. Turbo, you notice two cars. in place in front of, like, gym mats, and they are not moving. Now, there was some retooling that happened with this thing. It might have been in my first summer. They changed the entire premise of it and the setup of it. What the setup used to be, the first few times that I did it,

was that this was meant to teach you about pre-visis, pre-visualization, which is what directors used to plan out and demo complicated action sequences. Now, in this pre-vis that you're watching right now, two of our cars are racing through the streets of Tokyo. Basically, you'd watch this really rudimentary animation that was almost to say, like, yeah, we know, this isn't, this is a cheap way to tell you that this is why when you get in here, the cars aren't moving. This is like a set up for, but imagine if when you see the final movie, which will never exist, this pre-vis will help you understand why we've built you up and we've gone, and then you were looking at two parked cars. Now, at some point that changed, and it changed into the premise

that I will reveal via this script, because we're coming up on the show on the Scott Performs the Tram Tour show, but I didn't want to leave all of the performance for that. We have four skilled performers here in this window, and I wanted to give everybody a chance to bring to life one of the great texts,

which is the, I've labeled it in the document, if you all have it, the perfect script for Fast and Furious Extreme Closeup. The sacred text, I guess is what I called it. Does everybody have the script? And can I divvy up the parts? Yes, sir. Yes, please. Yeah.

Okay, great. Griffin, as our guest, I don't want to end up doing all of the tour guide dialogue myself. I think you deserve the opportunity to be in the role that I got the sacred role that I got. So I would like you to be the tour guide. Mike, if you could be. Opportunity of a lifetime. Absolutely. Well, when you see what you get to do that, you get to set up the dancing cars, not to spoil things. Mike, I would like you to be the director, and I want to give you one note, which is to do it like you are completely dead inside.

I will read stage directions, and Jason, I would like you to read the role of explosion. Are you prepared to be explosion? Oh, I'm always prepared, brother. Okay. So, now here, a live performance of a script that is lodged in my brain forever. Here, let us perform Fast and Furious Extreme Closeup. We're about to head in a special effect stage 55 to give you a demonstration of motion control technology. I'm going to turn things over to our director, Jimmy. Jimmy, take it away. Clear on the set. Let's see the bullet hits.

And go. Smoke. Go. Fire. Go. Okay. We're clear for a full run through. All systems check.

This one's for real, guys. So watch out. And action. Mike, just to pause, you did that perfectly. That was exactly how it was in the real thing. Nailed it. Yeah, there was a quality to whoever was doing that. Now, I left, I should have put in my own.

Stage directions, which are that he says bullet hits, and then you see some bullet hits, you see smoke, you see fire, there's little previews as they test all of these things. Now I'll pick it up proper. Screech, we hear the sound of tires peeling as we watch two cars sitting in place. Next, we hear, we hear, but don't see a helicopter. Three rounds of bullets are fired, shooting big bursts of water into the air in an effect that we just saw during the testing but are now seeing again. This happens a second time. It happens a third time. Suddenly, there's a gigantic burst of water from somewhere for some reason. And then also an explosion. Boom! Yeah. The huge explosion blasts the pair of cars into the air straight for the tram,

excruciatingly close to the tram, as if to crush them for real. As exciting as Jim Hill hyped up many months prior. and cut The flying cars freeze in midair A mere six I might call it more like 10 feet from the guests Let's call it 40 Say hello to carnage and karma

Great examples of motion control effects Take a bow boys The cars bow in a genteel manner to the guests Hey guys, you got any other moves And now The cars begin to spin around and bust various moves to the song Gasolina by

Daddy Yankee. At one point during the spinning, the cars sort of touch their faces, touch their grills, you might say. Almost as if in a kiss. Pin in that. Pin in that. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay, important. Okay, back to you. Let's hear it for Carnage

Karma and motion control technology. Take that dancing with the stars. Computer controlled robotics. Hold for lots and lots of laughs. hold for 30 seconds of laughter and applause. The crowd stands up on their feet. You have to remind them the tram is in motion.

You have to sit back down. I was going to ask, was that the worst part of the ride was the concern that people wouldn't finish their standing ovation and you would not be able to get the vehicle in motion ever again? I mean, yeah, I was worried about their safety. I was worried about people falling out, especially kids. But mainly when you're a performer and you get a standing ovation three times a day, minimum. You don't want to reject that standing ovation. I mean, that's like, what a gift to

receive and to have to say, no, no, no, take it back to the store. You feel snooty. You feel disgusting. Even if it's primarily for carnage and karma, you're part of it. It is. Yeah, yeah. But I also, and yes, it's for the writing of the joke, take that dancing with the stars. But if I didn't deliver it with full gusto, as I always did, you know, if I didn't sell it, then I'm not getting that standing up. It's the Ginger Rogers part. It's backwards and it heals. Excuse me. Let me get back into character here. Computer-controlled robotics like Karma and Carnage can rehearse all day,

take incredibly precise direction, and perfectly repeat performances over and over again, all without questioning their motivation. Now, that's a little bit of an inside baseball joke. That's kind of more than we usually peel back the curtain to let the public see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it feels maybe written by a performer. I don't know who was writing the scripts at this point, but yes, to even discuss motivations.

But to me, revisiting this in 2025, you know, with the scourge of AI and post a lot of strikes that devalued the value of performers, this almost like, this sort of precedes it in a way. Does it not? This is like, with carnage and karma, we may not need actors anymore at all. It was a warning. It was a shot across the bow. It was, are you listening actors?

This is what they're. They can already do all of this. The moment we get them to be able to deliver lines, you're cooked. Then we make carnage and karma the movie, and they don't need all that motivation shit. Sorry, Mike. No, I was just going to say, if Shia LaBuff had seen this, he would not have been such a pain in the ass on the set of Megalopolis. That's a thing you would have known. I'm going to Megadoc after this, by the way.

I'm so excited. Yes. I got a night ahead of me. I'm going to say this. I have seen Megadoc. You guys might need to do yet another theme on. You might need to do Mega Monthless. Yeah.

Mega month. Do you think it's going to be weird that I'm seeing it without having seen the movie Megalopolis? I would actually say that might be the better order to watch them in. Yes, yes. I am a feeling partial defender of Megalopolis. And yet my greatest regret after seeing Megadococ was that I didn't. see them in the flipped order. Now, I don't know if this is still the case,

but for a while, the only place to see Megalopolis was on American Airlines flights. Like, it was released in theaters and hadn't hit streaming or whom, you know, Blu-ray or whatever. So I think I saw a writer

saying, I might just book an American Airlines flight that's three hours. So I can watch this movie. I didn't know. I flew Orlando to L-A-X is five hours. You didn't realize you were in a flying movie theater. Yeah, but you always, you're a red-eye man,

so you usually don't watch a full movie. You try to go get some shut-eye. Try to get some shut-eye. Yeah, so I wasn't even thinking about. I didn't even really look. It wasn't high on your inflate entertainment list. You really fucked up. Well, they're burying it.

They're shadow banning the work of Coppola because they know that we live in Megalopolis now. I assume. I haven't seen the movie, but this is what I'm told is that the world resembles Megalopolis more and more each day. More and more. Yeah. No, Coppola, Coppola, you know, owns the movie after putting all of his own money into it. and he has been adamant that he

doesn't want it on streaming or physical media there's certain territorial deals he didn't realize he had signed away so in certain countries you can buy it on Blu-ray and it's like certain airlines have it but there is no legal way to stream rent purchase it in any form in the United States of America right now

he's like bringing it back around and touring it again and doing like long talks afterwards and threatening to recut it and reintroduce a stranger version of the movie. Yes, yeah. Do it. Do it. We all, I'd say,

aced those performances. It was an excellent boom, Jason. And I just want us all to get the chance to ask the question to, what's his name, Mayor Cicero? Yes. Or is that a different character? Okay.

I want to be the guy in the audience. I want another shot at that. I believe I'm driver's characters names Caesar Catalino That's right That's you're asking the question Yeah Mayor Cicera I think is Jean Carlo Esposita

I was just digging back into the Jim Hill article And the thing I forgot was that The big blue sky idea That Disney had for the application Of the Cucca arm When they didn't think anyone was going to get an exclusive deal on it But whoever could develop the best pitch first Was going to be the first to get it in a park

was an Incredibles ride, which they were making as like a huge e-ticket. And it was going to be like a crazy, like the Cucca Arm is lifting up your ride vehicle. And I think it was going to be more of the kind of the Incrediccar, but also with the underminor sequence that they tee up the end of the first movie and whatever. And apparently a big stumbling block was they were like,

this is too blue sky. This is like impossible. You are like overextending the actual possibility of the Cucca Arm now and jumping straight to like, wouldn't it be if someday we could get it to do this. And so part of Universal's thing was like, here's our roadmap, we just got Potter, broomstick, tenable, you know,

and like we're going to like soft launch it with the Fast and Furious thing. You saying that this was a bit of a like a wicked, like how do we get something into the parks immediately? I think that's more what supercharged was in its sort of like second wave of popularity. I think this was really just, we need something that we can throw on top of a Kuka arm.

Now, what I like about this accidentally, right, I think the discovery they make in realizing this is not exciting, nor thrilling, nor in any way, educational about how movies actually get made. Yeah, it doesn't reflect anything that movies do. You don't put cars on arms and have them fly. The first three Olympic judges are like holding up zeros. And then they're like, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. What if it's a little bit funny? and in this they accidentally land on what if the cars are somewhat sentient

and have personalities and this I like because it is still one of the only untapped areas of the Fast and Furious franchise it has always been seen as kind of like the jumping the shark moment that they can never get to is like smart cars talking cars you know like in the queens

is herbie the love bug shit any kind of thing like that right and there was there was always the joke of like what are they going to do, send them to space in the next one? Because it's a franchise of escalation. Every movie gets more ridiculous than the last. They got to space in nine. The Talking Cars is the final frontier.

Like five or six years ago, they did a DreamWorks animated series that went straight to Netflix. And when they announced it, I got so excited. Because I was like, this is their zone to do their, like, shitty 80s Saturday morning cartoon, you know, like Chuck Norris and the karate commandos or, like, Rambo or Mr. T or whatever, where it's like, have time. talking cars, have kids, you know, like, bring all the dead characters back to life, have them fight Dr. Turbo, like, this is what I want.

And that way you can put the most insane stuff in the cartoon. The cartoon was called Spy Racers. It was the nieces and nephews of the main character. It sucked. I think it was really, really bad. It's both, like, silly and not silly enough. The always strong nephew bond. Plenty to build a TV relationship around.

Yeah, and like, Torretto, Vin Diesel came in like once every 25 episodes and was like, I'm proud of you. But then otherwise it was just like so far away from the main narrative. And what I want is like Brian O'Connor, the Paul Walker character is back to life and also he has a talking dog or whatever. And I feel like karma and carnage tap into a little bit of that.

It's the only place that the franchise has ever gotten into a little bit that. And so I like Carnage and Karma as characters. I like that they're a little romantic. I like that they're a little bit silly. Carnage and karma. We know things about them. They're romantic, but they're also in obedient. Like an animal would be

where if you say like, if you said to a trained dog, take a bow, then they might do that. They're somewhere, they're kind of between animal in person. That's got, yeah. Let's not cake. There are many humans who like to be told what to do as part of.

of a very erotically charged experience. And for some people hearing the phrase, take a bow boys is an extremely, the fantasy come true. Yeah. Yes, ma'am or sir. The carnage and karma, they share DNA with the old animal actors show, you know?

Yep. Yep. Yep. It's really a nod to that. Yeah. Well, I like, and you know that they're romantic, and by that you refer to the little smooch that you also notice that they, they give each. I'm glad we're discussing the smooch. Because the dancing is delightful when it begins, but then they sort of do run out of moves. And that's sort of just spinning. But then the bit, when they sort of like start apart and then move as far as they possibly can with their little lips meeting. I mean, I think the only thing missing is a little, is a little smooch sound. And then this, then this would be as romantic as a Sterron Rogers. Yeah. I wish, I wish they could have built away for the girls of the car. to just pucker up a little bit,

to just push out a little bit so you could see the intent of the smooch. Should turn the cars? Like the tongues we know the cars have? Yeah, a little car tongue. Yeah, you could do that. I mean, we've seen Mader's mouth move in California Adventure, you know,

those are, that's technologies available. You'd have to do it a more realistic way, not the cartoon mouth, perhaps. Jason's deepened thought he's stroking his shin calculating here. he's in research for mode I was just say are the names Carnage and Karma

it's that a joke yes because car is in both of them you see that's the joke okay that's it that's as far as they got okay yes well all right now you're I know that you were delighted by the dancing but perhaps you could see some of where I was coming from where it left a little to be desired I don't think this is a

oh you know what I set it up saying it's a perfect script. But surprise, that was in jest. I think there are some things that aren't perfect about the writing of Fast and Furious Extreme Closeup. I, yeah, I mean, I think the writing, if I could note it, it doesn't go far enough, right? I think it's far too short. I think we're just starting to get to know these characters. I think we really want to give them more time to shine and explore each other's bodies. And let's get a lot more, it become more like dirty dancing, you know there's really there's no there's no kind of like there's no grinding occurring no and that would be really funny let's dive in to the showmance to the like richard burton elizabeth taylor of it

all you know absolutely we should watch them fight we should watch them make up you know i want to see the whole arc they fight with their arms like their doors open the side doors open yes they're waving their arms like oh slap those are those are slaps But then it leads to kissing. Of course they do. You don't even need to say that. We were all picturing it. You were all picturing it.

And then maybe a little shove with, you know, assuming that the, you know, the trunks go too. You know, like you give a little playful whack on the back. Yeah, you could do that. You could also do a joke where one of them, the cars takes a shit. That would be really funny. If something falls out of the trunk. Yeah. Yeah.

Is that just like Is that just like Like could that be anything that's in the back or is it like Spare tire tire? Yeah Like if you say I'm going to the bathroom to drop a spare tire Right and the spare tire falls out of their I guess you know

And there's a farting sound When it's launched out yes Yeah Alternate bitch and I I like spare tire but what if it were a bag of manure Like a little bag or like a Like how much are you imagine? Like it's, but maybe there's not even a bag. Maybe the trunk has just been shoveled full.

Yeah. Like back to the future. Yeah. Yeah. It's really abusive to these nice cars. Yeah. The tour guy can go, that's karma for you. Yeah.

There we go. There we go. Yeah, it's also a joke that doesn't. That's karma for you. Yeah. Do you feel like it's possible to use windshield wipers to create kind of like come hither eyes or even do like a little double eyebrow pop I feel like a little wiggle I think that's underutilized in the cars movie in all movies where cars talk and kiss and stuff

yeah I definitely want to see I want them to kiss and then I want one car let's say maybe carnage to turn towards the audience and give a kind of dream works face one arched eyebrow ain't I a stinker look to the audience you know and be like if you thought that was wild watch what I'm gonna do now And I want the sound of grinding metal to be loud anytime they have to do something. Yeah. I want to, like Transformers. Yeah, deafening. Yeah.

Yeah, excruciated. Yeah. And they should sing a romantic song like strangers in the night or something, but through hideous voices that are part honk. So you're just these like straining. but it'd be romantic if you were them like a goose trying to speak English yeah yeah and also just I mean here's just another

pitch so the manure comes out of karma's trunk right and the tour guide goes that's karma for you and everyone's laughing and before you even get a chance to like finish laughing the tour guide's like wait carnage no don't and carnage is putting his face straight into the manure and he's like you're in to that? That's what gets you off.

Oh, no. Wow. When I said take a bow, boys, I didn't mean into your partner's shit. Yeah. You guys are even kinkier than I thought. It ain't just about obedience with y'all. Was this like a planned thing? Is this like a thing you guys do regularly?

You have to go to the manure store on a semi-daily basis? To make sure of the goods to do this? All the music stops and the cars just look ashamed and then the tram pulls slowly out with no soundtrack. Everyone's upset. Guide does not speak through the entire next 10 minutes of the tour. Does not share any trivia about Old Mexico.

I'm so sorry. Tour guide apologizes off mic to people. Here's what happened. They took us on it and we complained about the writing and they said, fine, we'll show you. and then they wrote something so much weirder. I guess that goes to show don't complain to your bosses about anything ever. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, well, I love this like Michael Hanakey level of profound discomfort. My other pitch was that like after the poop the tour guy can go, karma's a bitch, huh? But it's, it's family friendly.

He has a little bleep button. and he can also explain it like oh a honk that that's good karma's up yeah and he goes sorry folks sometimes we gotta edit stuff for television what you know and that's another inside baseball joke what if karma honks and then the tour guide goes like oh why you like it when i call you that and you're like oh the tour guide and karma got something going on that's good yeah that's Okay. Is this like a cucking or is it like a thruple?

Like what's the relationship between the three? We got a little. Well, it already feels a little implied in the line you guys got any other moves because I felt a little lascivious saying that always because that that's kind of like, hey, spin it around. Let me see what that back is doing. Show me that trunk. Yeah.

Show me that trunk. Oh, we got a little Gasparneau level of eroticism going. It's two. So I guess the more appropriate reference would be short bus. You all remember short bus? It's what he did after Edwig and the Angry Itch. And let's clip that and put that in verbatim. Yeah.

These are the biggest films that like tour guests would love to hear these. No crowd pleasers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, playing the rafters. Does everybody sense a different energy from Jason? right now than a normal recording because I feel he's more relaxed

he just said he just technically swore like this is what I've been trying I've been trying to get this out of him recently here we go this is we're close to Jason right this is nasty guy I don't think there's a lack of

profanity from me on this podcast well fair okay maybe but there's it's more of a difference in energy maybe it's something I'm trying to you're on working Yeah. You're on creating, Jason. Jason's always in a blanket.

Every episode from now on. Whether at home or not, you're bringing that blanket. That's right. I just like the idea of the tour guide verbatim in script workshopping. Gasper Noah? Oh, no, I guess that reference doesn't work for you. How about short bus? Short bus work?

That every single tour. This is all scripted? Is it, is that right? Is that, I know, is that three? rename her. I just want to make sure I had it right. All of this interview. We wrote a Targai character who knows slightly obscure films but isn't sure

of the details in the filmmakers. He's right, but he's not confident that he's right. He's still guessing he's making sure. I mean, you're a paid trivia guy. You don't want to like say anything wrong. It's almost like it's been 20 years since he really engaged in

a lot of these director's works, found them a little too abrasive, you know? so that's the care i would play a character who hasn't interacted with art in 20 years despite that i was doing this when i was 20 years old maybe if you feel like jason hasn't been body enough recently mike it's because he only recently resolved his trauma from seeing short bus 20 years ago clearly it pushed something too far and he had to work through it before he was ready to watch

blue again. So he's ready now as of today to work blue again. It took the style. And seen. It's time to reveal that the script that we just read was designed to get Jason the nasty little freak back in action. This was an intervention you didn't know about. I was.

I did tell this story to Jane because John Cameron Mitchell came up in conversation. And I was like, I did. He made this movie short. bus and I did end up third wheeling a screening of that film with who? Explain what's the details?

Carmen Carnage It was these two cars I know they're really good dancers so they were fun to hang out with they didn't drive up they arrived via Kuka on they mostly just like it was a couple

it was my friend Aaron and her boyfriend at college and we're like oh, there's a new movie from the, playing at Cornell Cinema from the director of Hedvig. And I was like, oh, I'd like to see that. We all went up to see it. And it was a very sexually confusing film, you know? Hey? And I'm like, well, there were my ride over this side of Ethicott.

So I guess, yeah, I, uh, on the third wheel for this one. Wow. That's interesting. I've never heard that anecdote, I don't think. And I... So you avoided... When you parted ways that night,

you avoided shaking their hands or high-fiving them in case their hands had been covered in fluids during the... As they watched the film. Tears or otherwise. Yeah. I mean, I meant otherwise. With the third wheeling, I mean, I'm imagining things.

I don't know how far they took it. but only Jason could tell us. Anyway, let's get back to the largely sexless, fast and furious movies. Can I say something? It better be about short bus or dipping your face into shit. It's actually on topic, unfortunately. I think I would rather this still existed than earthquake. Oh, man, you're really selling earthquake short.

You really don't like earthquake. It's a big swing. Earthquake is much more visually impressive. But that end, gasoline, I miss gasoline and the dancing cars a lot on this tour. There was a certain thing. So I'm the only person here who did not, was not just naturally enthralled by the dancing cars. I don't care for the first part with the like gunshots and explosions and whatever. A total flaw.

That's not it. Quite, quite dull. The gasoline dancing cars though becomes iconic in my memory, especially. Yeah. Yeah, and I think you're making a good point here, Mike, which is the tram tour is entirely devoid of this energy now. Like, I think earthquake is a bigger loss, but my ideal world is, earthquake is back, and at the end of it, the subway car does a little dance to gasoline. That's good. And we give it a name, and the subway car is a little saucy.

Like, I just think, I think in the way that Mike values and. intimate moment, right, of support on a ride. I just like when, when non-human things are like a little, are a little impish, you know? Yeah. When they, when they do a little coquettish behavior and we don't have that in the tram tour anymore. And I, I, I think that was the ultimate discovery of the gasoline dance. You know, it's from the misidentifying are the car. the star. I also think it's interesting that in the Fast and Furious franchise, for how much the characters love their cars and view them as extensions of themselves, they do not name them. Like, there are no, like, in my memory, I cannot think of a single nicknamed major car in the franchise. Maybe someone will jump in and correct me, but like they're almost always just like the models, you know? They're not like, here's my bad girl, Betty, you know? So I just think there's like, they were testing out a sort of like, does this become a franchise where like carnage and carnage.

are the main characters, whether they become sentient or not, is it a franchise where, like, ownership changes of our main character cars, and that's the connective thread. Now, hang on, I don't want to correct you, but what I read, and this is kind of unsourced, but I did read an article that said that the Fast and Furious producers, the actual producers, were embarrassed of this attraction and wanted it to go away as quickly as possible. I don't think that the dance, I don't think Carnage and Karma ever factored into where does the story go next. but maybe okay so then that's what it actually speaks to it speaks to a moment where universal views this as like so inessential to their branding that they don't even feel the need to like clear it with the team still making the movies you know like the lack of synergy here is kind of interesting as a snapshot because i would say sort of off it's not on not on model which it would never be again right because i think the the next era of fast and furious on the tram tour which i guess we should train

transition to in an episode I promised was going to be short. Can we make it ten minutes? How short? How much can we not talk, revisit all of, just because at this rate, it's going to be, we're looking at two and a half hours. Look, it's a, the next error is a hard swing. I got to see Megadoc, damn it. It's a hard swing in the opposite direction, right?

They swung too hard to what do people like? They like the characters and they like crazy shit. happening. Yeah. Can I say, hang on, before we move on, this is wild to me that there is just full agreement on the dancing cars.

Because when I worked there, none of the tour guides liked it. It wasn't a just me thing. This isn't Scott Kermudgeon. I was 20 years old. And everybody, everyone I worked with across the board was like, it takes,

it is everything I can do to just swallow and get through this fast and furious car thing. Nobody liked the cars. I can't believe this is a group where like, so we're all in agreement dancing cars incredible should come back. Subway should dance in earthquake. All cars should dance and it should always be to gasoline. Showbiz isn't pretty, right? And the magic of show business is the amount of blood and sweat and tears and pain that go on behind the scenes in order to give the audience a

sense of magic, right? And I'm so if I'm having fun, if I'm having too much fun, then I'm not doing my job. I need to be bleeding for it. which is how I felt every time I watched the cars dance. I'm not happy that you suffered. I get no joy from hearing that you couldn't enjoy the cars dancing to gasoline and your contemporaries could not either. But maybe that was the price you had to pay. You talk to the fucking original cast of Hamilton.

You go, oh my God, what incredible experience they must have been. And they're going to tell you about the calluses on their feet, you know? They're going to tell you about the twisted ankles. They're going to tell you about the all-nighters. you know it was it was a grind you know and you step back and you go but man we really we gave the public something that mattered it's like i mean that is how i feel that is certainly how i feel go sorry go ahead yeah i'm gonna say it's like on the comedians and cars getting coffee when jerry Seinfeld tells michael richards it wasn't our job to have fun doing this show

no it was for them it was for them now i the real missed opportunity that those cars never danced yes if here also We're not saying that the whole thing was a perfect experience. I get that you're saying that the first part is boring and who cares. And yes, your job to sort of set it up was like, whatever, I don't like this part. We're just saying that, whatever it is, 20 seconds. Yeah. That was sublime.

We're isolating the gasoline dancing. No, I'm aware. If you, you know, you conveyed that. I'm just saying that's a chunk is the chunk. Yeah. Sublime. Not such a crazy compliment Since perfect for American

Idiot Sublime? This is sublime? It's sublime. Sorry, Scott. It's sublime. You got the grotesquery And we got the sublime.

Sorry. Yeah. You know? You unfortunately not only had to see how the sausage was made. You had to make the sausage And in fact become part of the sausage And we just got to eat

Sublime sausage. I have also Sublime. So much affection for gasoline now. The song Gasolina. Oh, you mean the song from the end of Fast and Furious Extreme Clothesh? That's exactly what I'm talking about by Daddy Yankee. That song makes me happy now.

Presumably, as far as we know, made specifically for this attraction. It's from 2003 or something. I think I looked it up. It's a very current by Team Park standards. Maybe 2006. But more, I mean, imagine if all the picture cars danced as you. drove along that picture car section. Imagine if you got the Flintstones Mobile and stuff.

It would be great. I would certainly love that. And you know what? I like in cars, in the movie cars, when they all, like, everybody's getting along now and, you know,

including Lightning McQueen, and they all do like a little dance down the street in Radiator Springs. Look, I've given my share of compliments to car dancing before. I'm not against this. There was just, there was something. And I, look, I just, I don't know, maybe my other tour guides would sell me out.

Maybe they would say, oh, sublime. No, sublime is the word I always used. I don't know if you got negativity from me. Have you not looked up the definition of sublime? I just know, I can point to a lot of people who would probably not use that word. And also, they got rid of this thing. I also think, it was there for seven years. Because they had to move on to something bigger and better.

Maybe. I think I miss. I don't think I knew what I would. was going away. I didn't know what I had until it was gone as well. You didn't know what effect that would have on the tour overall as far as what piece would be missing. I also think there was

there was, yes, there's a big missing piece. I think there's a bit of a baby with the bathwater situation here in that like maybe a radical rethink was needed. What worked here? Gasolina? How do we rebuild

and make that more the centerpiece? You know? And play to the strength. I think of far as supercharged, my favorite part of Supercharged, and I'm sure I said it on the episode, is the party before the ride. I like going into the warehouse and seeing the party. And that's what title is. The parties are supply. Titles safe dancing. Titles safe dancing.

That's the stuff I like. And so I think that that's the core of the experience is the fun part. So you just like whenever, so when Fast and Furious in theme parks gets musical, this is where it gets sublime. So we have to hope that in the new Hollywood Drift coaster, that they're aware of this, that they tap into their sublimity, I don't know what word that would be.

Yeah. Look, it's already happening now in cinema. I saw a graphic earlier about all the different versions you can watch of one battle after another and isn't that of a piece with the sublime of dancing cars of title safe

Jason you have a lot more explaining to do no it is not of a peat you just said a thing that has nothing to do with dancing or cars please do some connected tissue I had a turkey club on sourdough is that not the same I think

I rest my case. Did you, were you just looking at Twitter or something and you saw like a graphic about one battle after from others formats? There is a graphic. I've seen the graphic. I've seen an indistivision at the vista. Let's give him some space. Griffin, I'm sorry, Jason, explain how you got from the different formats to that it's the same as Sublime Dancing Cars. Well, I was mostly thinking about the warehouse dancing

and how that's of a certain visualization, no one dancing on the side. A unique film format, you know? Sometimes format is part of the fun, you know? Sometimes format is part of the fun. Are we, is that enough to that, does format part of the fun, was that sublime enough to let him off the hook? Oh, it better be enough. I'm going to say this. I think Jason's explanation was sublime.

Thank you. All right. All the judges' signs go up. Sublime, sublime, sublime. This thing is obviously long gone. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Let me just, can we just talk about the joke?

Take that dancing with the stars. Is this, does the sublime part? cut off before that joke or would you include that in the in in uh in uh this in the in the sublime zone scott which media conglomerate owns dancing with the stars what network does it air well that's uh the recently embattled ABC and it remains a franchise there to this day which is uh uh I guess you would say kind of an opponent of NBC and NBC Universal yeah the exact people they had just stole the 10-year window Kuka Arm license from. Right.

Wow. Take that dancing with the Stars is a coded way of saying, fuck you Walt Disney Company, right? Right. You thought you fucking owned the theme park game? Look at this arm. We own it. You don't.

Coming up next, Harry Potter. And by the way, what do you have going for you? Dancing with the Stars? We can make Dancing with the Cars now. It's them saying, hey, guys, stop resting on your fucking laurels. We're coming. Anything good that you think the Walt Disney Corporation has done since 2006, I would argue, is their direct response to take that dancing with the stars. Disney executives taking the tour, fuming.

Because already they're staring at that arm, being mocked by those arms thinking, my God. You know, the thing that drives me crazy is that if it was just the arm. and they misuse them, that's one thing. But to pull off something so sublime, God, it just boils my blood. And then they throw in the most sublime joke I've ever heard. My God, I have to devote all our resources

to taking them down forever. The Walt Disney company squandered their Cougarons when they had it. Stitch's great escape. For whatever reason, keeps coming up some of all thrills. Those were early Cucca Arm implement. They did not make a mark, you know?

Jason, how would Stitch say, Take That Dancing with the Stars? Oh, he'd probably say some of the long lines of He's not dancing with the Stars, but he's owned by the Paracompa, but he probably wants to be on a, probably wants to be dancing with Hilaria Baldwin.

He wishes. You know? Yeah. He can only dream. Yeah. Well, it's, look, the Cucca Arm I will say, is the new Ironman ride thing a cuck-arm?

In theory? Because now obviously Universal's exclusive window has long expired. Yeah. I just want to have that attraction if not for the gauntlet thrown by that joke.

Exactly, that's what I'm saying. An absolutely poisoned, tipped joke. You wouldn't have Rise of the Resistance. You wouldn't have Black Panther. You wouldn't have any of this stuff. No output of the Disney company. Yeah. Then deciding to bring Jimmy Kimmel back is only thanks to take that dancing with the stars.

Never has there been so much fallout from one joke than when Obama and also Seth Myers roasted Donald Trump at that one fateful press correspondence dinner, and now we live in the fallout of that joke. In a media sense, take that dancing with the stars is absolutely the same. The roast herd around the world. Exactly. Now, if I can just say, you know, I know you weren't teeing up, plus it up, or burn it down for insurance money, because this thing is obviously long gone. But I think we did accidentally land on the ideal plus up, right? If they're going, oh, the Fast and Furious creative team doesn't like this, maybe we need a bigger attraction for Fast and Furious. Maybe we're in kind of a wicked zone where we look a little behind the curve.

What's the quickest thing we can get in there? Well, people love this gasoline a moment. They love carnage and karma. They love the comedy. They love the romance. How do we repurpose this? I think we landed on it. We set it in a drive-by, if you will.

Comedians in cars getting coffee. They should have gone to Jerry, gotten the rights, and you're leaning into your limitations now, right? Oh, these cars aren't good at driving fast. They can't do a bunch. So you go, and here we make all types of different shows at Universal from game shows, films and television to even certain conversations happening between certain people of a similar work field in different vehicles. And then like the tram pulls up, right? And a nice little car, two nice little cars come out. I guess at first, let's say it's one car comes out, right? And it's

Jerry and let's say Bill Maher, just to make Mike happy, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm very happy now. And their little... We were losing him until he said that name. Yeah, I almost fell asleep, but now I'm back in it. Animatronic, Jerry and Bill Maher drinking little cappuccinos behind the wheel, and they're just driving very, very slowly. And then Jerry's like, and they're talking about like, when you find the right tag? I don't like when they turn the square card reader around and you got to add a tip.

Perfect. Yes, that's it. Good punch up, Jason. And then a second car pulls up. It's karma, right? And Jerry's like, what? Who's this? It's Orney Adams from the documentary comedian.

Great, great. Love to get Ornery. He's doing his own rival comedians in cars getting coffee. Maybe it's comics in cars getting tea or whatever. And he's there with like a young open micer. And they start like, oh, what are you doing? What are you doing? They're turned towards you.

They're going to crash into. other and then they fly up towards the tram and then karma incarnate say boys let's not fight and then they just start kissing gasoline a place is that not a perfect moment it is perfect it is I think it's pretty it's pretty clean it's sublime if it's a lot it's sublime the only thing is the special effects department they have this media element they have this well they're calling it a tiny drone helicopter and they'd really

like to be able to work it in. You want the drone in there. What if okay, so what if karma and carnage, they're smooching, right? And Jerry and Bill Maher and Orney Adams and the unnamed open mic are all like pumping their fists.

And the crowd is cheering and gasoline is playing and the tour guy goes like, hold on guys, did you remember to use protection? And then like trunk opens up, drone comes out. the trunk of carnage and it's their drone baby

fart sound fart sound oh oh I see oh it's not waste this time it's a it's their child they produced the drone that later Vin Diesel flies on in the next which like sets up the next franchise

that's beautiful and also yeah wow and crazy to know that when two cars this is like the sex explanation when two cars are very much in love yeah they put they They mush their undercarriages together, and then nine months later, out pops a drone helicopter. Right. But boy cars dump manure out of their trunk.

Girl cars dump helicopter drone babies. And that way also, when the helicopter drone shows up in Supercharge and Dominic Toretto grabs that the audience is cheering because it's an old friend coming back. And you're so proud to see how he's like come into his own. it's the son of our favorite dancers I look I mean that's or you could do like a Mori thing like when the drone comes out it's like

well who's the real father oh that's pretty good you have a car more like a Mori car um maybe maybe the and then a helicopter shers up and coiggled its windshield

yeah Cory Cory C-A-U-R-Y I think I think what we've kind of landed on here, Scott, is the reason why you have such a better twisted memory of this, what would I call it, theatrical event that was shared by you and your cohorts, isn't that it was bad. It's that you felt the lack of dramatic fulfillment from this not going far enough, right? Like people, if, you know, people still occasionally come up to me and be like, hey, I, I'm. I really liked that show you were on the tick. I'm sorry it got canceled. And I'm like, yeah, it's just really frustrating to me.

We never got to finish our story. You know? I'm glad you liked it, but to me, I look at it as this fundamentally unfinished work. And you feel the same way. We pitched all these ideas and you're like, yeah, that's what needed to be expressed. No, we're getting closer because there's a will there, won't they, with carnage and karma. And in my world, they didn't. You know, they would, like, they would, it was just, you know, exchanging glances.

and just, it was extremely flirtatious, getting all of us as hot and bothered as you'd be at a screening of short bus, and yet not fully making good on the promise. And I, yeah, I, no, you tapped into it. I always just wondered, did carnage and karma reproduce? And would that satisfied? I feel like that puts to bed something

that I've been tossing and turning about for 20 years. Hmm. Well, nailed it. This is, this show is really like therapy in a lot of ways. For us, or Jason got over trauma, too, finally today, and he's going to be bawdy again. So that's nice. The nasty freak is back. And we've covered a lot. And I'm going to be honest, I can't imagine a universe where now we still talk about the other attraction.

Like, how? How? There's no, this truly, that is where it becomes a long episode. I had my questions about when you text, this can be a short one. I'm like, I can't square this when I'm staring at these words coming for a plate to know, who sent it now? Like, there's no, there's no way. But, okay, so can I, can I just speed around some thoughts and say, this is perhaps a pinned conversation in full later? Maybe, let's say this, okay?

Maybe this is a conversation to be continued when the new coaster opens. Oh, there you go. That's smart. Oh, that's smart. Yeah. Right? Yes. but I want to say this

because this is the tram-specific part of it I want to discuss and I don't know if you guys remember this I have a great fondness for Supercharge primarily because I really liked the way they framed it the first summer it opened I remembered visiting LA very shortly after

it opened LAX having the banner of like Fast and Furris Supercharge now open and I was like fuck I got I got to get there. I got to see this thing. Right. And they did this thing that by the second time I went on it, I want to say it had been phased out where it was narratively seated throughout the tram ride. So there would be like early on in the tram ride, the video was interrupted by Hobbs by Dwayne the Rock Johnson saying like, we're on the lookout. Dominic Touredo and his family have escaped. They're on the run. Please let us know if you see any suspicious activity. And then it was like, got it, everyone's on the case. And then at multiple points. That's cool.

A little bit of, there's nothing like that on the tram ever. Like little blips of story throughout. Yeah. That's what I really liked about it. And then at multiple points in the tram tour. Agent Novak. We can't forget Agent Novak. You're probably about saying that.

Of course Agent Novak. Of course Agent Novak. Yeah. But you set up, you set up Hobbs. And then you had multiple points in the tram tour. The one I remember very distinctly is when they were taking you down. with Sterea Lane, and they're giving the whole spiel on Desperate Housewives, they go, wait a second, what's that car? That's not supposed to be here.

And it was the infamous Dominic Toretto Dodge R.T. Charger. So you had, like, the muscle cars appear in the wrong places a couple times. And the tour guide had to, like, call it in and be like, let's stay on the lookout. So then when you got to supercharged, it felt like a closure to something, which I think made it weirdly feel a little more complete. That's obviously the complaint of when they spun this off to be its own proper ride. It's like, this isn't a fucking ride,

right? And the more you sold it, the more disappointing it was as its own, like, holistic thing. But I think if you were setting up this whole idea of you're in a vehicle, they're hiding out, they're somewhere, people are looking for them. It worked. And we're exploring a vast

amount of acreage as opposed to get on these party buses. and it's over and said and done. And then it was just a nice little kind of caper on the thing. I also think as they took those elements out, and I'm surprised they took them out so completely because it wasn't just putting cars in places. It was like they had exclusive fucking Dwayne Johnson footage

that they just deleted at a certain point. But I also feel like the technology faded really fast on that. thing. Like, I just felt like by year two it was looking dim as hell. You know, it was never like a stunning use of technology and it was already basically just doing the King Kong 360

thing again. But I feel like outside of the party scenes, which looked sublime until their final day, that's right. I think the main body of the attraction literally faded. P.C. Anderson worthy, yes. Fated pretty fast.

Yeah. So those are those are the two things. I want to say about the tram-specific era of this thing, and perhaps other thoughts will be saved for Fast and Curious Coaster. I don't, I didn't recall that there was all the like seating of the story. I, yeah, and I, that is pretty cool. And to give the tram tour a narrative, at least like an overlay in a non-terror tram time, I think is cool.

I would have enjoyed participating in that and seeding a big narrative. I also started to love that, uh, this supercharged finale. a little more when I watched a video of the last time they ever ran it where they the guide was aware of what it was he kept calling it like the final ride and

everybody in the audience all knew what it was and they were all reciting the lines in that rock video perfectly which are all a little mealy mouth so imagine 200 people all so hyped about this thing and all saying in unison I'll tell you who I am

I'm the reason bad guys use a night light. I'm the reason the boogie man begs his mom to look under his bed. And then, so that's all exciting. And then at one point, then the guide is loving it, because the camera's on him, at least in the version I watched. And then he pauses it at some point. And he's like, I'm pausing it just to mess you guys up. I'm just, I'm testing your rhythm right now. And so he's like, he's just so delighted, leaning back, smiling. He's never had this much fun doing this thing, probably doing any of the tour. And then throughout, but especially at the end, once the tour is over, in mass, everybody on that tram at the top of their lungs going family family it was I only I wish I had

experienced so much energy from the crowd on that thing I was like it gave me it I was like I wish I was on there I wish I was experiencing this you're describing what I hope I see when I die uh where I hope I am when I a tram load of people all yelling all like you recognize all of them and you love all of them and they're all going family. Right. It's the big fish ending, but in the final showing of Fast and Furious Supercharged and all the other people on the tram are the people I've known. So you're hoping St. Peter takes your hand and goes, let's go, cookie piss.

Absolutely. Yes. And then as soon as you enter the pearly gates, the first faces that greet you are carnage and karma themselves. And they say, Griffin Newman, you lived a life that was sublime. That's all I want to hear. And I just want to, I want to put one, if not a prediction, at least a hope on the record. What's the name of the coaster again?

Hollywood Drift. Hollywood Drift. Which is a good fucking name. I just want there to be a significant multimedia element in like the pre-show. I want there to be like an equivalent of the part. party scene, perhaps a little carnage and karma. Like, I want some of this vibe of, like, the characters, the actors, new footage, environmental shit before they strap you in and you just go in the thing that goes fast.

Because the fundamental disappointment of Supercharge, fundamentally, to use my, my PTR-specific catchphrase, yeah, yeah. Is that, like, you're never going to make people happy with a fast-inferrous attraction that isn't fast, right? And the tram is stuck in place. It's just like, you're never going to satisfy people if the vehicle is not moving fast. It's like the

promise of the premise. And so I just think if Hollywood Drift can give us a little bit of some of what I like of these two things before they strap us in and launch us, I will be thrilled. I'm hoping for like Veloccoaster level pre-show

with, you know, that obviously had the two main stars of Jurassic World, but something along those lines where there's a lot of video of some actors having dialogue but i do think we can get what you're talking about on the pre-show i think that building looks pretty big considering how much of the ride is outdoors you know the ride building itself yeah i'm hopeful in that respect that it won't be chinty even if it's like a batman the ride level thing of like you know you're loading in through wayne manor and then you're getting michael guff video being like, oh, no, you found your way in.

We must use the emergency evacuation protocol. Like, I want them to come up with some stupid reason why I'm getting in a car. What is being accomplished, what I need to accomplish, why they're forcing me to do this. And, like, it doesn't need to be like... Kernag and karma ran out of gasoline. Yes, hurry. Yeah, yeah. I would love it if the pre-show video had it, like, even if it was a composite, all 30 cast

member. Like, you get Helen Mirren in there, you get Vanessa Kirby, Jason Mamoa, Roman Raines, I think shows up in one. Yeah, absolutely. Both Living and CGI, Paul Walker. No, I think that's a great take. I was going to say they should only get one cast member and it shouldn't be anyone in the top tier. But I think it's one or the other. I think it either needs to be like 15th most important person or it needs to be literally everyone at the same time in a sort of we are the world party room projection

hologram. So you would be happy if it was a few dozen people or if it was just bow wow. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Griffin, will you fly out if we can get invited to the opening

of the ride? Absolutely. Is there a projected opening day? It's just still says 2026. They're not running. running the cars yet. They've done the pull through, so I, and they're still building like sound walls. I'm guessing early 2026. I mean, I truly cannot imagine a thing that would prevent me from getting on that plane if you told me here is the media den. Yeah. Well, we can try. We were at the Jurassic World opening event. Yeah. Yeah. And remind me, Frank Marshall spoke at that event, right? I'm trying to remember. Yeah. He did he speak, but he was there at the event. My memory was incorrect.

Okay. Frank Marshall was there, but he did not speak. And yes, the audience, yes, many, many audiences that I saw of this tram attraction stared blankly at the dancing cars, glared at the dancing cars, barely looked up at the dancing cars, and yet it was because they hadn't processed it yet. They hadn't let it into their hearts, and we needed this thing to be extinct in order to understand how sublime it was as sublime as an ungiven frank martial speech and i thank you griffin newman for making us aware of how sublime this attraction was and for heading us to the

end of subtramber here i'm really good we fit you in griffin newman you survived podcast the ride uh for sub tramber uh psyched you could do it you're look you're you're back on soon it's in the can yeah it's a that's a corker that one but uh anything that you want to plug in this as a to that. Yeah, I don't remember what I plugged in that. I do want to plug that upcoming episode, which I think is fun. Stay tuned for that episode on Main Feed.

Plugging our show. That's good, yeah. Some really topical post-comicom litigation that's going to age beautifully. Five months later, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of stuff about Halloween, which is, will have fast. Some of that's going to come on.

I'm editing some of that. out, I think. I don't know. Now you've said it. Maybe it's all in. Maybe I'll stay. It could be a little bit of a time capsule. You know, it takes you back to it.

They know, the way that you go back to 2006 in the era of short bus. Exactly. Sometimes nostalgia is what you want. Here is something I will plug, though. George Lucas talk show. We got a series of fall dates coming up. We're doing the Bell House in Brooklyn, October 10th. with the doughboys just announced his guests

who will be in town for New York Comic-Con. If you are a listener to the show who's also attending New York Comic-Con, we will be doing a panel, in quotes, panel being very loose here. Our Comic-Con panels tend to just be chaos on Saturday, October 11th, at the Javitt Center, New York Comic-Con.

And then we're doing a show in Chicago at the Den Theater, November 23rd guest to be announced. Jeez, wonderful. Those will be great. You guys are great. I haven't seen these chaotic panels, but I imagine they're blessed. And thank you for taking the time here.

And, you know, months ago in a place that in an episode, people will hear in months. And as for us, tickets for Scott performs the 2006 Universal Tram Tour. It will be available in a link in this very episode. A couple things I wanted to make sure we say in an episode proper. I want to thank Aaron Gerdner for our fantastic logo. this month. I want to thank Mike for the excellent new theme music that was never said and great

job with that, with your hooray for Hollywood and Universal Fanfare. I guess though now we're realizing probably should have just been Gasolina. Our theme converted into, our theme remixed with Gasolina. That is a good point. It would have been some line. Yeah.

You could do, yeah, uh, yeah, well, do it in seven years. Forever. This has been. been a Forever Dog production, executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Sillio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit Foreverdog Podcasts.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.