Stuff You Should Know - Movie Crush: Janet Varney on Tron

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

This week Movie Crush launches with two great episodes. Up first, actress Janet Varney talks with Chuck about the movie Tron and how much it means to her. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody and welcome to Movie Crush, this is Chuck Bryant and this is episode one. Very excited to welcome everyone. If you're coming over from stuff you should know, then thanks for your support. If you're just a movie fan in general and happened upon this, then welcome as well into our studio here at Pond City Market in Atlanta, Georgia. So guys, I am so excited about this show. I'm so excited about episode one because Janet Varney, I gotta say, is probably the best episode one guest in all of podcast history. She's a she's a pal of mine. I met Janet. I met Janet a few years ago at her comedy festival that she co-created

many years ago, Sketchfest in San Francisco every January and for my money it's the best comedy festival in the land and she's been kind enough to ask Josh and I to perform there for the past few years and it's become a little tradition for us. Janet is just awesome. She is a very, very talented actress. She's a gifted improv comedian and she's smart and funny and just as kind of a soul as you would ever hope to meet. So she was here shooting in Atlanta so I had her in the studio which is great. She's shooting season two of her awesome awesome show on IFC, Stand Against Evil which actually just premiered yesterday

on IFC. Season two just premiered so check that out. It's a really great show. It's Dana Gould's comic take on the zombie show which if you haven't seen it, binge season one and then check out season two on IFC right now. So anyway, Janet was here shooting that and the last thing that people want to do when they're shooting a TV show in the hot, hot summer of Atlanta, working a lot of nights just to come in and record a silly old podcast. But Janet is a pal and very loyal person and friend and so she was great. She came in here. We killed it. We talked about the movie Tron, the original obviously from

1982, the Disney picture with Jeff Bridges and Bruce Box Lightner, Cindy Morgan, David Warner, written and directed by Stephen Lisberger way ahead of its time. We both agreed and this is episode one and you'll notice here this was such an early episode that as we get started here in our conversation, I didn't even have a title for Movie Crush yet. But since then, I did get a title from my good, good friend in real life, Scott Ippolito. Scott's one of my best friends and I threw it out to him and said, hey, what should I call this thing? And I gave him the idea and he went, eh, how about Movie Crush? And it was just

that simple. So we talk a little bit about that at first, which was kind of fun. So here we go with Janet Varney and Tron. This show is so new. I don't have a title for it. This is very exciting. Should we just spend the whole time trying to figure out what the title is? Well, it's funny. I was going to call it like something dumb and on the nose like my favorite movie. But then I was like, oh, I don't want people to think it's my favorite movie. What's your favorite movie, Notable Person? And that's a bad title. But all those variations of all those things were taken and that's

the thing about podcasting is someone can do a show for a month, eight years ago and it's sort of taken. Like if you go to start something up, they could always say, hey, I had that first. When I started my podcast, which is now and has always been the JV Club to the public, which is one of the greatest names ever, by the way. That worked out. That worked out for me. Yeah, I'm glad about that. But I was originally and maybe that's for the best because this other I was going to call I was a teenage podcast with this sort of, you know, like 60s era monster movie kind of theme to it. But someone had had had

had a podcast where they did a handful of episodes a couple of years back called that I was a teenage podcast. So I had to throw that away. Those people, the worst, the ones that start something and don't succeed. And then they're like, oh, give me $500 and you can have like all of us. Oh, like all of us at one point. All right, listen, here's some I'm an I do improv. I surely can come up with some. My first instinct was to suggest chucks flicks instead of chicks flicks, like chick flicks. And then I thought it could be called Chucks Flux. That's that's great. No one will listen to it or they won't know

what it is. Chucks Flux. It just sings. My friend, I did ask my friend who's great at titling things. And he said, what about the confession stand? Oh, instead of the concession. Yeah. Yeah. But then that sounds like you really are getting into it. Well, but it also sounds like it would be just about guilty pleasures. Exactly. Yes. Yes. You have to confess. Yes. And no one would confess like, oh, got to say like the Godfather is my favorite. Right. Don't tell anyone. Yeah. Yeah. That's something to say with pride. Some kind of it. I'm coming at zero right now. I have no idea. Okay. And then I thought about something like, like

psycho, psycho's Godfathers and streetcars named desire, like something big and grand. Right. That just sounds like the title of a book. Well, then has a colon after it. Well, no, it was a, there was that book about movies called, that's where I stole it. It was a book about 70s filmmaking called easy riders and raging bulls, which I was like, ah, I can just rip that off. Yeah. But I guess I can't because that's the first thing he said. And you don't even know the book. That's a coffee table book without me knowing it's a coffee table book. We'll title it later. Okay. But what is your... Thanks for bringing that up because now

that's just going to eat away at everything I would have said. I'm just going to only be thinking about what the name is for the show to be. I've got it. For sure. I'll come up with a, and then I'll put it on a T-shirt for you like you did with Ben Acker and his dream joke. That'd be great. Which we can't spoil. Did you, were you like, did you go to movies a lot when you were a kid? Because I know a little bit about your life because of your own show in Arizona. Yeah. Movies are a very... That's right. I guess I can finally talk. No. But did you go to the movies a ton? I did. That's definitely one of the things that you can do in a smallish city

in Arizona when the summer is just brutal and there's nothing to be done outside really. Like literally things melt in Arizona. Yeah, exactly. I have so many memories of like just the fold out car. Like no one uses those anymore I guess because windows are better or maybe they still do in Arizona. Sure. Maybe you still have the sunshades that sort of open. But we just had those folding, we just had folding cardboard. Some of them, the four fancy made the card look like they were in sunglasses. Sure, sure. But that was vitally important as was trying to find any place in the shade because so many times I would get seatbelt burns. Well, you guys would have... Severe seatbelt burns. You know I lived in Yuma

for a year. Oh, that's one of the hottest places on the planet. They had carpeted dashboards. Yeah. Because of that. Yeah. Two, there's... I mean, those are the moments where you really do think and you really think how I can barely survive here and we have all the technology. Yeah. And the idea that the only reason we're here is because people have been dealing with this heat for a couple hundred years. Why did anyone settle there? There's even survivable beyond, you know, free having car shades. I imagine every time I drove to LA through that desert and then I would eventually get crossover into the LA basin and that cool breeze hits. Yeah. I used to think about like the settlers. Yeah. What they must have thought, those who pressed on.

Yeah. Like, well, this is clearly where I'm going to live. My god, if you stop in Yuma and go, I think this is the best we're going to get, guys. We're not going any further west. We keep being told just a few miles. Screw it. Not us. Right here. Yeah. So the movie theater, obviously, is a respite. Yeah, very much so. So you would go see whatever? I feel like I would. I mean, I think we dropped off by the parents. That kind of deal. Yeah, I would get dropped off by my parents for sure. They're, you know, then I would take the bus. I saw a lot of movies by myself. Oh, for sure. That's the public bus to the movies. Yeah, you bet. They're my dad's house is right in between two malls that have movie theaters. So that was there was a really easy

couple of straight line go-tos on the bus to see movies. And I have very I do have very specific memories of seeing certain movies and and I can sort of put them in context. And then there are other movies I couldn't tell you. Bus movies? Not bus. Well, no, I don't think that like, for example, when I did, Craig Kikowski has a podcast where it is just us talking about his his movie. He likes to talk about the his old list of his favorite movies and his wife, Carla's on it. And I because they go in order, I happened to get Dead Poets Society. And that was a movie that I could remember. I could remember everything about like going into El Con Mall and seeing it and then feeling like my life had changed. And I cried so hard that I had to wait until they were they

kicked me out as they were sweeping their popcorn up. That was a heavy movie for people that like you're a few years younger than me. But I well, quite a few, actually. But just to be a teen or a young teen and seeing that movie, that's like heavy stuff to process. Absolutely. Yeah. Although I yes, 100%. And then I feel like shortly after that, I got into like, even darker stuff, because you have to go through that phase in high school where you love a coffee for orange. And yeah, and like Eraserhead and all that kind of stuff. And I'm having a lot of flashbacks to that era because of Twin Peaks coming back. And have you been watching that? I have. What do you think? I mean, I'm struggling with some of it. I'm struggling deeply with some of it. Our producer

Noel is very into it. You're into it. The Hookline and Sinkr, including this last episode. Oh, yeah. Well, I've been watching and my whole deal is the Twin Peaksy stuff I love. And that's what I expected. 5% of it. And the other stuff like is Total Lynch, which is great and weird and awesome. But I kind of wanted Twin Peaks. Yeah. Listen, I'll take Dougie all day long. I don't ever want, I don't ever want Kyle McLaughlin to be anyone but Dougie. I love him so much as Dougie. You should do road movies. I will watch. Yeah, I will watch the seven minute take of him eating potato chips. Yeah. But I don't know if I can watch the seven minute take of XYZ, all of these other things that he's throwing in that are just, they're so long. I just love Lynch so much though.

And like, I just want him to be doing this stuff. Yeah. Like, even if it doesn't resonate fully with me, just keep doing it. I agree. I'm just, I can't sometimes I feel like he's pranking us a little bit. I do too. Sometimes I feel like he's like, they gave me final cut. I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to show this for five minutes because I can. Yeah, because I don't think it fully makes sense in his head in a narrative way. No. There are things that don't advance the story in any way, shape, or form that I can tell. David Lynch. And the dude is like, how old is he? And he's still that weird. Yeah. Yeah. You know. Talk about like. Brandon interviewed him for Wired Magazine and. Oh, really? He, they. Like sat down with him? Mm-hmm. And they got on really well

because Brandon asked really interesting questions and stuff like the questions that he was supposed to ask probably. Right. So he got all this like fun backstory about David Lynch and the bird that lived in his on his roof and all this kind of this and that, the kind of stuff that you want to hear that you want to go, Oh God, of course that's how his brain works. But yeah, so lots of going to the movies when I was younger, lots of my dad is a huge movie fan. And he introduced me to a lot of movies that I certainly wouldn't have seen as young as I was had not been like, I think you're ready for this, you know. What was your first R rated movie? Do you remember that? I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it was, but I know that my mom took me to see Robocop. Was that R? Yeah,

that was probably R. It's got to be R. There's no way that's not a hard R. Yeah. There's some crazy violent stuff that happened. I guess I'll forget how violent the movies were back then. Yeah. So I don't know. And then I don't. And then she took me to die hard also. My Mormon mom who did not have a television at home for some reason wanted to take me to both of those movies. That's great. Yeah. So those were probably, I mean, those have got to be the first R movies that I went to. I don't know if I'd seen something at home before then, but definitely those stick out. Yeah. Mine was my dad took me to a war movie, the big red one, which was good and fine. Good World War II movie. And then the first one I ever saw, I think at all was Escape from New York. Oh, sure. And I

was over at some friend's house after church and they were putting it on and I called my mom to ask if it was okay. Adorable. What'd she say? Yeah. She said because I had called. If she had said no, you think you would have been like, guys, I'm going to go. Now, that's a good question. I mean, I certainly am and was an am a rule follower. So I don't know what I would have done. I like to not walk through those stories. I saw the movie. She said, yes, that's all that matters. She knew she had a good kid. What a relief. But my dad, this is kind of really, I don't can't believe I'm going to say this to people out loud. My dad took my sister to see Body Heat in the theater, which I don't know. I can't imagine. My dad did not go to movies ever. Yeah.

So I've got to think that he had no idea what he was going to see. It was called Body Heat. It's not like the postman always rings twice where you're like, oh, that could be anything. It's probably about mail. It's about the U.S. mail system. Exactly. Body Heat? Yeah. What did you think? It was like a thermal tracking, some soldiers tracking. That's predator, guys. Yeah, I'm going to have, well, I would say I was asking about that one day, but I'm never going to ask him that. Maybe I'll ask my sister. I'll ask him. You want me to ask him? Why didn't he, yeah, why didn't he get up and leave the movie? Yeah, I actually got up and left during Greece, too, during the scene where the girls were having a sleepover in their underwear. My mom took me to

see Greece and I was so like embarrassed. I said, mom, can we leave? I don't even remember their underwear. I feel it wasn't just pajamas. It was, I was Southern Baptist Janet. I was really, Mom, I saw an ankle. I saw an ankle. There was a lot of refreshing going on. Yeah. I didn't know what was going on. We'll get my therapist in here. My dad let me watch Animal House and I was like, boobs. Oh, wow. Boobs. So your dad was cool. Yeah. He, well, that's what's weird is he really didn't want me to see violent stuff because he knew how sensitive I was, but he was like, yeah, sex is fine. It's silly. It's, you know, that's normal. It's fine. And then my mom who, again, Mormon didn't have a television. Yeah. Somehow wanted to take me to see those two movies.

I just don't, to this day, I don't understand. So you got the violence from your mom. I guess so. Sex from your dad. Yeah, that's great. As it should be. Yeah. The American way. Everything was covered. So do you remember where we're talking about Tron specifically? Yeah. As your pick for all-time favorite movie. Listen, first of all, I'm really bad at ranking anything. Everyone is. Yeah. I mean, that's, well, but some people really like kind of going like, I mean, again, using Craig's example, he loves that he has this order that can kind of shifts and he plays with it and he kind of ignores it and he gives time. But it shifts though. Yeah, that's true. Isn't that the point? Yeah. Like no one can, anyone's all-time favorite movie on

any given day is probably going to be different. I guess. Yeah, I guess so. But I do feel like there are people who take pride in kind of like, this helps define me. This is my all-time favorite movie. And for many people, it is The Godfather. I wonder how many times you're going to have to talk about The Godfather. And are you going to tell people, can you pick a not, if that's your favorite movie all time? We've talked about it three times already. Can you pick a different one? Yeah, I'm not going to repeat movies, I don't think. Unless it's, unless there could be some like a fresh take. Right. But it's funny that everyone I've asked so far has immediately been stressed out about the notion of picking one and then going public with that. Yeah. Because I think

everyone does think it says something about them. Yeah. Well, that's, I think, could I, if I really sat down and tried to pick something, I mean, someone asked me, I think actually when I did a brief interview at the LA podcast festival, where we have pointing to you because we saw each other there and you did my podcast. I think I blurred it out, Harold and Maude, because for a long time that was, I would have said, I would have, that would have been the situation. Like from my teens into my 20, in my early 20s, I was proud to say that was my favorite movie. That's cool. And it's how Ash being in it. Super cool. And I still love it a lot. But, but I think, so I could, and I said that when I was interviewed, then I was like, okay, I'll put Harold and Maude at the top of the list,

I guess, but screw it. Yeah, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going to go with Tron because it's been important to me far longer. Yeah. And I, I love it. Well, there are a bunch of nerd, nerd dudes all over the world listening to this that are super excited that that's your favorite movie. Well, I probably, well, you're probably also safe in that I don't think anyone else will. It's not going to be like, Oh, yeah, yeah. Tron again. What is it? Everybody's number one. Hyreglass loves Tron. Yeah. I have a confession to make about Tron. Have you never seen it? I've seen Tron. I saw it this afternoon. You really? It was the first time you've ever seen it? I don't know how I didn't see Tron. I never saw Tron. This is what a great first episode. I know I loved the arcade game. Yeah.

I played it obsessively. Yeah. And I never saw the movie. Oh my God. This is great. And I don't know why I was trying to figure it out today. I was like, yeah, I've seen Tron, right? Yeah. It's like, yeah, the movie with the, the light cycles, right? Then it started to dawn on me. I never, never, ever saw Tron. Oh my God. So I watched it today in full. And we should talk about it. Okay. What was your first like Tron experience? Do you remember seeing it in the theater? I don't remember my first time seeing it. I really don't. I don't, I couldn't tell you if I saw it. Was it theater? Probably VHS. Well, I could have seen it in the theater. I mean, it's a Disney movie. Number one. You've been pretty young though. Yeah. But I mean,

you know, I would have, I mean, I was, what, six? It was 1982. Yeah. That's reasonable. I think I probably saw it in the theater. And the reason is that it like rocked my world. And so I can't imagine that I would have seen it on VHS for the first time. Okay. I, I maintain to this day that it was so far ahead of its time. Oh yeah. So far ahead of its time. And it is pretty peculiar and amazing that it's a Disney movie. I think it's, it's worth, like it's of note for that reason in itself. I don't play video games. I'm not a game at all. Well, I was gonna ask you that. So it has nothing to do for me with like, I didn't, I never played. So you didn't go to the arcades or anything? No, no, no. Wow. I mean, I would play like handheld Pac-Man games at my friend's houses and I played

whatever like PC learning games my dad got me. Like Oregon Trail and stuff. I don't even think I had Oregon Trail. That was more advanced than I had. Yeah, Arizona Trail. Didn't even have Arizona Trail check. I'm talking about the only thing I can think of right now was a game called Spell It. That was a spelling game that involved a frog who the little tongue would come out and like lick, it would lick and absorb the letters after you spelled something correctly. That was like your prize. How old were you? I mean, I was little. Oh, I mean, this wasn't like 15 years old. I mean, it was like, you know, when you're, but it sounds like something that a two year old would play. Not a two year old. Maybe like this was when it was, you know, still cool. Like it was shocking

that there was any kind of a game to be played. So probably around six years old or something. Spell it. Yeah. And like, you know, listen, some of the words would get pretty tricky. I don't want you to think that it was like dog and cat, you know, frogs of the hunk frogs are hungry. Maybe long words. So arcade games that got you in there. Not at all. No. No, I, I just loved the world of it. I loved I and to this, like I would have dreams about it. I still sometimes have dreams about it. Yeah, that I'm inside the game grid. Yeah. And, and I think part of the reason that I didn't play the arcade games is that because I saw the movie first, the arcade games were just these flat two dimensional things. And the whole point was like, but no, don't you understand these games exist for

regular people to play. I'm a user, but I should be inside the game. That's the only way I want to experience it is like viscerally with my cute uniform on. And, and I love the music, the music again, totally ahead of its time and crazy and weird and great. And, and now we'll get into kind of the sentimentality of it, which was that my dad also loved it. Okay. And we would play this game at night like, yeah, when I was this is why you love trying to walk out and just close the door behind me. We had an alarm system in the house where, you know, you have the motion detector and the little red light blinks when there's motion. Yeah. And then we also had like, you know, everything digital. So like our microwave was digital or all our VCRs clocks, all that kind of

stuff was digital. And that's all. Yeah. So that's all green. So and our house was this little tiny three bedroom house, but it you could go in a complete circle around it, right? So you could come in the front door, you could go through the living room, turn left, go down the hallway where all the bedrooms were go back into the back room. And then that reconnected with the kitchen that reconnected with the front room. So you can go in a full circle. And there was a Koi pond in the center. And there was there was zero atria nor Koi pond. Okay. And so my dad would, we would play this game where we were inside the game grid, we would turn off all the lights in the house. And he would when I was really when I was little, like, I guess six or whatever, because I would have

that's as little as I would have been able to be, he would kind of hold me Superman style. And we would like scoot around the house and we would be trying to avoid Sark and like all the bad guys. And so if we were trying to creep past the motion detectors, I mean, listen, it was a great great training for me. If I become an expert cat burglar, we would be we would kind of get as far as we could before we would see a light. And then we would see the red light, we'd be like, they see us, the recognizers. And then we'd like run into the next room. And like, like, you know, and so for to this day, I'm not afraid of the like, I've never been afraid of the dark, because I only equate the total darkness with playing

Tron. Right, which is good. And yeah, and it was this like super great cool game that my dad made up that was legitimately like kind of scary and exciting. And it made me feel like I was inside that game grid. That's adorable. And then at Disneyland, we would go to Disneyland every summer. My dad would, we had friends who lived in La Canada, which is kind of like Pasadena area. And he would, because it's the Arizona summers, he would wake me up, he would he would take a nap, like he would sort of sleep for a couple of hours. And then he would get up in the middle of the night and wake me up and put me in a sleeping bag in the covered cab of our Dots and Truck, which was carpeted. Yeah. And and he'd be like, he would he would wake me up at, you know, say two or three

in the morning and say, like, Miss Jay, are you ready to go to Disneyland? Wow. And I was like, yeah. And then and so then I would get into the car and fall asleep. And then I would wake up and we would be almost there. And then I would kind of clamber through the little window and then come sit with my dad and and then we would get there. And then at Disneyland, they had the people mover, which one little tiny sliver of the people mover was that you would go inside this kind of room that they had just put trying out. Yeah. No way. It all it was was movie screens. Yeah. Yeah. But you would be on the people mover and then suddenly you would be on the game grid and they recognize we're coming almost squash you and then you would go inside the

light cycle maze. Right. Again, no interest in the arcade games. I did. I was like, I just want to live here full time. So those are all like very they're very deep embedded childhood memories. That's awesome. And but but there's nothing about the movie now when I watch it. It means every bit as much to me. There's no there are plenty of movies that I loved that I can't I can sort of go. Does it hold up? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not able to see if it doesn't hold up like you just watch it for the first time. So your experience was your experience. And I totally respect that. Right. But I it's I mean, I've brainwashed myself. I still watch it and think, God, this is ahead of its time. God, this is good. It's so good. Well, it was ahead

of its time because it was in a little research today. It is. It was one of the very first movies to use computer animation at all. Yeah. And this guy was blown. Who's the director? The director is. I heard you earlier. Stephen Lisberger. Oh, you nailed it. Earlier. Earlier. I was like, Peter Lindbergh. I think you were just trying to be funny. John Flansbergh from They Might Be Giants. Stephen Lisberger. And he it was kind of a not kind of it was a passion project for him. Like he thought of this world and was ahead of his time and couldn't get anyone to make it and like sunk his own money into like test shots and we took it around to the studios and was like, look at what I have. Look at this amazing

thing. And I was like, I don't know about that. And finally, Disney took a flyer and said, all right, we'll give you like 10 million bucks or whatever, which was huge because he wasn't in the Disney clan. Right. He was an outsider and he said he always felt that way too, which is kind of sad. But it was way ahead of its time and no one knew what they were seeing. Yeah. Like now for someone like me to watch it who's never seen it before. Sure, it might look dated, but it also looks modern in a weird way. Yes. You know, yes. Like the especially the stuff with the and I didn't know, but they really shot in black and white. Yeah. The characters and did this rotoscoping process. And that because of how they had to do it painstaking that ends up looking kind

of cool now. Yeah, it looks fantastic. Yeah, it's weird. And all the way the city lights up at the I mean, it's all so wonderful. Yeah. Also collect these these like at some of the kind of like hipster like Japanese toy shops. Oh, those when I was well, there you know, there are they exist in like San Francisco and Los Angeles. And you know, these are some of the kind of certainly on the western coast cities. There was a place in San Francisco that sold the they're called Kubrick, of course. Just I'm saying that because of course it's named after something also equally like Nishin hip, where they would do these limited edition lines of toys from beloved movies like that. And so they I have these really cool. They almost look like, like mobile, like,

am I is that the M O B I L or those were those little people? Oh, yeah. It's just a little kind of Lego people. So they sort of do look like Lego people. But you know, they're in their little uniforms. And then there's a great but the design is so great. And there's this great. I wish I if we were in LA, I could have brought it with me. But there's a recognizer that you can, you can pop the legs off and then turn the legs inward in the center so you can make it into like the tank. That's really beautiful. But they're just so well done and well made. I mean, do you want a lot of these? I have the whole set of the Kubrick stuff. And then I have like a scattering of the original toys that look more like, you know, Star Wars figures or whatever.

Wow. Yeah. And I have, I mean, that's a good, that's a good go to gift. Yeah. Well, my wheels are already turning. I was like, hmm, I think I know your birthday. And they did this really cool. They had it. They showed it at the Arrow in Santa Monica years ago in Los Angeles. And and Steven, their director was there and then one of the producers and and I think Bruce Box Lightner was there. And for sure, what's her name? The woman was there. Cindy Morgan. Cindy Morgan was there. And so they all kind of talked and traded stories and talked about it. Oh, it was so cool. And they had a couple of, you know, costumes from there. And wow. And I hate Tron Legacy, like nothing that came after Tron. Do I have any respect for what's on it? Well,

I didn't see Tron Legacy and I didn't, I think there was even a TV show. I'm not sure. Yeah. There was something in between that between the two main big Tron movies. But see, now that I've seen Tron, the idea, I know what the idea of Tron Legacy was, it seems like a great idea that like this, this Jeff Bridges son has now come back now. It's so boring. Yeah. And it doesn't even look, I can't, I can't, I don't. It didn't capture the spirit of the original at all. And not to me. Yeah. To me, it's just this sort of empty, soulless. Wow. I just doesn't feel like and it just doesn't do anything for me at all. I see why they did it though, you know, like Tron was so ahead of its time and like now they have the technology. Yeah. And to make a new

and I like Garrett Hedlin. Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, I never saw it because I didn't see the original. But also, and I saw it only once I saw it, El Capitan. I mean, I went, I went hoping it would be great, you know, El Capitan, for those of you who don't know is on Hollywood Boulevard and it's Disney's big theater and they have sometimes live entertainment forehand. It's really, it's a beautiful place. And that was the right thing to do to see it there. I can barely remember what it was about. Did they have a light cycle up front? I wish. I bet. No. No. I don't think they had, they might have had some costumes from the, the then who cares because it's from the new stuff. It's so weird that I love that game so much. It's not wise ass enough, right? Jeff

Bridges character, he returns in different variations of himself. Well, they made him creepy on. Yeah. And he's humorless from what I can remember. Yeah. And Olivia Wilde, Olivia Wilde, she's lovely, but like she's, everybody was just humorless. Right. And that was, I mean, the whole point so much of Tron is, is Jeff Bridges being a complete wise ass. He's a total smart ass. And infuriating Sark, which I mean, obviously that's played by, don't tell me, David. Yes. I always forget his name, even though I love him. And he's one of the great bad guys. Yeah. A man with two brains is very close the top of my favorite movie, but if you ever podcast Sam Levine, that is his favorite. So I kind of struck that from

the list because I knew Sam would want to talk about my two brains. I could talk about that all day long. I came out the same year, you know. Yeah. David David. Oh, no, no, no. It did not. Deadman, don't worry, Plaid came out that you're sorry. Oh, yeah. I can't remember his last name. David Warner. David Warner, of course. One of the, and you know, it's so freaky as, I don't know if you do this, but you go back and watch some of your favorite movies and then you think, wow, I'm older than them when they made this. Oh, yeah, for sure. So Bridges and Boxlite and we're both around 31-ish when they made it. David Warner, it was five years younger than me. He was 41 years old. He seems ancient in that. Yeah. Of course he did. In our brain.

Because we were kids. Right. And now, and I even watched it today. I was like, ah, look at that old creepy guy. Yeah. He's five years younger than me. Oh my God. Well, he also has one of those faces where you're like, oh, you're 60, 20-year-old. And he wasn't in, you'll get there. Cargo shorts and a 40-watt t-shirt. Yeah, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And then the guy who plays Ram and then when Ram dies. Yeah. Oh, it just still makes me cry. Yeah. And the whole weird, the whole idea of technology and like the gods and that sort of playing with that kind of like theology, the idea that there would be information living inside a computer that would be, you know, that would be intelligent enough to question

where it self came from and putting all this faith in the people who created it. And I mean, it's just fascinating. Well, that was sort of the great fear, I think, at first when, you know, computers became a thing. But now it's sort of a legitimate fear. Yeah. Of, you know, robots becoming sentient. Master control program, man. Yeah. Like, that's kind of a thing now. It was ahead of its time. Yeah. But what's kind of struck me, a couple of funny things, um, on that note when, uh, is it, who is the main? Was it Sark? Sark, yeah. Was, uh, talking to the David Warner character and kind of explaining how things- Oh, well, MCP, that master control program is the main, and then Sark is like his lackey kind of. Oh, okay. And that's David Warner.

Yeah, MCP was- So MCP is just- It does get a little confusing because they all play different- Yeah. MCP, you just hear, you hear that deep, scary voice. But then you see it as like a computer grid face in the end. Yeah. Oh, I also have the toy of that. It's so cool. But a couple of funny things. One is he said that, um, he was getting involved with the Kremlin and, uh, who else? The Kremlin and the Pentagon, because he said that he could design things 900 to 1200 times better than any human. Yeah. I just love that number range. Yeah. Like, yeah, between 900 and 1200 times better. Yeah. Uh, and the other thing was the beginning and the end of the movie is so weird and abrupt. How the movie starts, it just, you know, it says Flynn's Arcade, which is in

Culver City, by the way. I don't know if you've ever been by that building, the whole building. I haven't. Um, that's where they shot the exterior. And, um, it starts with just a dude playing the Tron game, and then it goes in on the Tron game, and then you're in the Tron game, and then it just starts. Yeah. And then it says, it literally says like, and meanwhile in the real world. Yeah. And then this Jeff Bridges, and you're like, well, who's this guy? And then when the movie just, it just ends, like they're in the computer world, they have the big climax fight, and then, uh, he gets out of a helicopter at the end and joins Box Lightner and Cindy Morgan. They're like, they hug and that's the end of the movie. Listen, first of all, I'm not picking it apart. There's

a lot of, there's a, the big climax is definitely inside the game. And sure. And that's what the movie was about. We do see him come back out. And then when he comes back out, we see that he's successfully gotten all the information that's printing out very slowly on the loud printer. Oh yeah. The dot matrix. Uh-huh. And that's all we need to know. Well, then David Warner sees that. No, it didn't. Yeah, I mean, then it's like, he's toast. And then it's like, hey, we better, the boss is coming, and you're right, it's Jeff Bridges in the helicopter. It didn't strike me as bad filmmaking. It struck me as such a thing of its time period, like to where movies would end with just everyone like high fiving. And that's it. Now we have, now we've been tainted

the, in the other direction by too many false endings where you're like, wait a minute, this movie, every, every scene now for the last 20 minutes has felt like the last scene. Tarantino. Let's keep it clean. Let's get in, get out. Yeah. And then as the lights go down in the city, not to quote a journey song, then you see how much it looks like the game grid. What else to have in here? The whole building. David Warner, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Farmer, 31. Well, Cindy Morgan, you know, I know her from Caddyshack. She's a fox. She's a real fox. As Lacey Underalls, which is, wow, couldn't get away with that today. Oh, and then the other thing I thought was neat was Incom as the name of the company. It was like kind of one of the great

evil villain companies of all time, I think. Yeah. It sounds like it could be anything. Yeah. And that's what's so great and terrifying about it. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the key door and just all the stuff they're working on. The whole idea that you could, you know, use lasers to break down the atom to the point where you could just shoot it through space. I mean, that's a little bit wonka vision too. That's another movie I could have probably said. Everything goes back to being a young person. Like I don't, I think I'm so connected to that unbridled passion that feels kind of unmatchable as an adult. Pre-sensitism. Yeah, I can't. So those, I think those are all the movies that I really go back to because when I think about movies,

I mean, you know, after I saw In Bruges, I was like, this is my favorite movie. And then I saw another movie that I felt was my favorite movie a year later. I was like, no, this is my favorite movie. But, you know, In Bruges is in there. The Ice Storm, I still think is like one of the best movies I've ever made. One of my favorite movies. So there's artistically, you know, intact and brilliant movies that would also be kind of in my list. But I like to say, like, I have a top, it's like I have 25 top five movies. Yeah. You know, you have like, you get 25, but they're all part of your top five. But I did think of a segment today that I'm going to do for everyone, which is... Oh, you asked me to remember some...

think about maybe something more like guilty pleasures. We'll do that later. Okay. And by later, I mean, in fact... Hours three. Okay. This is a segment, maybe we'll get an older, do some cool music for this, called What Ebert Said. This movie is a complete disappointment. Okay. All right. Because I thought he's always, I mean, there are plenty of legendary film critics, but he's always been my favorite. Absolutely.

He gave, well, what do you think, first of all? Do you have any idea? Listen, I want to believe that he was on board and that he understood how special and important it was, and that he thought to himself, Janet Varney will one day name this as her favorite movie. But I don't feel like it got particularly good reviews, and I don't think it did particularly well. So I... And he was pretty influential at the time. So I'm prepared for him to have given it a thumbs down. Ebert loved it. Oh, good. Okay.

He gave it four stars and a thumbs up, and he says it was a technological sound and light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun. Oh, good. And then he went on to rave about the special effects. He said that the holy imaginary worlds of Tron are so cleverly composed that I never, ever got the sensation that I was watching some actor stand in front of or in the middle of special effects. Never. And I think you see that so much more today. Oh, yeah. You can really feel the sort of flatness of the poor. These poor people. You can do anything.

And it's hard to act with a green screen. It's really hard. Yeah. Yeah. No, I felt like I can't. Again, I feel like they were all there. They were all there living in that world. They're starting to get it right, though. Like, did you see the jungle book? Yes. Yeah. Like, that was good. That was really well done. That was really well done. Yeah, it really was. But for a while there, people kind of went nuts. Well, even still, even if like fantastic beasts, for example, I just... Did not see that. I feel so strongly that I can see like Eddie Redmayne sort of looking at his finger where something is supposed to be. And I just am so aware it's not there.

I'm so painfully aware it's not there. I don't know about that finger scene, but... Well, you know what you're talking about. Like when there's a lot of mystical, fun, toy things going around. Yeah, yeah. Well, the eyeliner's never quite matched. It's always... Even with all the technology, they're off just enough to where it looks like the Threes Company episode where Jack's twin visits, you know? Which I don't think it ever happened. And the last thing here is I looked up the movies of 1982 mainly because I was like, why didn't I see this? What was I going to see? Oh, so I can know now what else was 1982? Well, yeah. And it's... Is a powerhouse of stuff.

Well, movies back then were amazing. Yeah. And this is just... Like when you look at the list of movies that are out in 2017. Yeah. And then this list, it makes you want to cry. Yeah. Because 1982... I'm excited to hear this list. Blade Runner, ET, The Thing, Fast Time to Ridgemont High, Poltergeist, Rath of Khan, Tootsie, 48. Also in my top five. Tootsie, hands down. Probably Blade Runner 2. Tootsie was just a March release in 1982. It wasn't like Oscar season's coming up. That's where it would be slotted today. These movies, Chuck, this is blowing my mind. Did I say Fast Times to Ridgemont High? You did, yeah.

48 hours. Huge. Officer and a gentleman. Huge. Annie. Oh my God. First Blood, very big for me. I don't know if you want to do it. The Dark Crystal, Gandhi. No, The Dark Crystal. Rocky III. Never saw Gandhi. Rocky III was very big for me. But I did see Rocky III. That's where my priorities lie. I mean, there were a couple of movies that I wouldn't say like, oh my God, this is so great,

but they were big for me. Like Beastmaster was 1982. Never seen Beastmaster. It was great. But then Sophie's Choice, World According to Garp. My Favorite Year, The Secret of Nim, Diner. My Favorite Year. Like, this is just a smattering. This isn't all the movies. That's crazy. That's a crazy partial list. An average year in Hollywood in the early 80s.

I mean, I could comfortably pick some of my all-time favorite movies just out of that. You could stop Blade Runner, E.T., The Thing, and Poltergeist. And you could say... Poltergeist and throw Tootsie on there for me. Tootsie, no other movies were made that year, and it would be like one of the great years. The Thing I just saw on the big screen at the Arclight, and it beyond holds up. Yeah. That's a great one. Amazing. And super gruesome.

Yeah. Really gross. John Carpenter is the man. Yeah. And, well, he did all his, still does all his own music. That's great. Yeah. That's great.

Any finishing thoughts on Tron? I love it. Thumbs up. Tron, I love you. Tron, I know that you're a movie, even though you were also a character in the movie named Tron, but I just wanted... I mean, I was gonna, for the longest time, I was like, if I have kids, I'm naming my kid Flynn, no matter whether it's a boy or a girl.

Oh, though you're gonna say Tron? No. No, I wouldn't name that. No, because Flynn is the one I really love. Was it MCP? MCP. Yeah. That'd be a funny name. Michael Chadwick Peterson. Just so I could call him MCP.

That would be a pretty slick move. But Tron was a character, but also the name of the security system. That's right. The box lightener was designing. My Tron program, yeah, exactly. Noel just got up and I walked him. I walked Noel. He's done.

That's what I thought was confusing to me a little bit about the movie. So all the different characters playing users or... But that's what it's about, dumbass. Bruce invented the program Tron, so that's what Tron looked like. Tron looked like his user. And then Flynn designed a ton of stuff. Yes. So that's why when you go inside the beginning of the movie in the tank,

that's Flynn too, because he designed that program. In the tank. What about the scene when Cindy Morgan and when Lacey Underalls and Bruce... And the scarecrow first... He was the scarecrow, right? Sure. He thought he was. He certainly wasn't Mrs. King.

I never saw that show, but I just did the math real quick. They walk in the first time they go to see Jeff Bridges or Flynn, excuse me. And he's so overly sweaty from playing the video game that at first I was like, is he really that sweaty? Because the armpit sweats out to his chest. Then his chest was sweaty through the shirt. I was like, why are they doing that? He goes up and takes off his shirt and I was like,

I think that's exactly why they did it. Yeah. He takes off one shirt and puts on a different shirt and they're both Flynn's video game. But he takes it off in front of her. Because they used to date. And then he had that sly line about leaving the house messy or whatever. And then she practically shoves Bruce Boxlight on the couch. Because of the quip about her leaving her house messy.

Relationships, am I right? I'm all tron that now. What I say that Tron is a go-to to understand relationships between two people who care about each other? No, probably not. But maybe between man and computer. Between man and computer, between a bit and a program. Remember that little bit?

Yes, no. Janet Varney, thanks for coming in today. What about my guilty pleasures? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chuck, you're right. You've been doing this podcast for one hour in life. And you don't remember your signature. And in all caps bold, I have clothes with guilty pleasure.

All right, what's your guilty pleasure? This is a pilot program. Well, I did think about it because I didn't want it to be a thing. Tron? Listen, first of all, how dare you? And I said that in our text, too. I said, don't you even pretend like my favorite movie can also be a guilty pleasure.

I'll never call it a guilty pleasure. But I was trying to think because I thought, oh, I don't want to have some pretentious schlock, like you said, where someone's like, my guilty pleasure is the godfather. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, shut up. But it's kind of hard because I don't have a lot of the like,

oh, I know this, like same with reality television, stuff like that. I can't, I don't find that I have a lot of like, this is delicious and I know I shouldn't. But here I watch, you know, I feel I get really impatient with stuff that isn't good. So I was trying to think of things that I would watch anyway. And I think I actually wrote a couple of them down.

I know for sure that recently on Plains, I can't stop watching movies about horses, which was never something I cared about. But all of a sudden, Sea Biscuit seems like the best movie I've ever seen. I watched Secretariat. Secretariat. They didn't have, well, this is Delta,

and they have some old movies that you can watch. Right. I hadn't gotten to the Horse Whisper, which I've never seen. Hmm, I didn't see that either. I probably won't watch War Horse. But suddenly, I need like feel good horse movies when I'm on a plane because I'm too tired

to enjoy anything else. So feel good horse movies. Apparently, that's a new thing. And then I also admitted to- Black Beauty, did you see that when you were a kid? Or the Black Stallion? I didn't give a crap. I didn't give a crap about horse movies.

I did see the Black Stallion. I barely remember it. The Last Unicorn, that was a tough one. I will always, but I did, especially because I know you like Jaws so much, I feel the same way about Jaws, and I will see- That's a guilty pleasure. No, but a shark movie, not Sharknado,

not like intentionally campy shark movies, but I will give almost any shark-based movie a chance. And I love the movie Deep Blue Sea. I love it. I knew you would say that. I love it. I think I saw that in the theater. I've seen it so many times.

If it's on, I will watch it till the end. I love it. I love it. I liked how unabashedly schlocky it was. Yeah, it knew what it was, and so it camped out in a good way, but it was genuinely still very scary to me, even though the sharks got smarter

because they were injecting them with some sort of growth hormone so that they could cure Alzheimer's. That's a side effect. The sharks got smarter. The sharks got smarter, Chuck. That was the big pull line from the trailer. I love it.

I remember that. And I was so starstruck when my friend Oscar, we were going to dinner with Oscar and Ursula, who are our dear friends of ours, and he said, I hope you don't mind. Our friends are going to be joining us. Was it the shark? It was the shark.

It was the shark. No, it was Saffron Burroughs. And I said, in a million years, I never thought I would meet Saffron Burroughs. This is not a person that I think I travel the same circles with, so I'm very excited that I got to meet Saffron Burroughs on Deep Blue Sea. And was it everything you thought?

She's wonderful. Yeah. She's just great. That was her line, wasn't it? The shark's got smarter, yeah. She made those sharks smarter. She made those. She put us all at risk.

Wow. And she got Sam Jackson munched. I mean, that's a great moment. That was a great moment. When that shark snatches them, I feel that that moment, I can't think of having seen that anywhere before that movie,

and I feel like I've seen it a million times since. Yeah, and like Snakes on a Plain was a direct descendant of Deep Blue Sea. Yeah. Because I think Deep Blue Sea, I don't think they were, was that Renny Harlan? I don't want to say that was Renny Harlan. Oh, maybe it is.

Is it? Was it? Gosh, I don't know if it was. It might be. I might be making that up. It was not Stephen Lisberger, because he didn't direct anything else. Yeah, he was like a Silicon Valley nerd

who just went right back to doing whatever he was doing. He did a couple of things. His claim to fame was Animaniacs before. Oh, for sure. That's how he got a little juice in the industry. Sure, sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that Animaniacs cred and dough.

Animaniacs cred and dough. Big Swinging Johnson, Animaniacs. So anyway, those are a couple of my guilty pleasures. And I also, this is probably too far on the side. This popped in my mind. It was the first thing that popped in my mind. OK. And that doesn't mean that it's accurate.

But for some reason, the first thing I thought of was intolerable cruelty with. Love that movie. With Catherine Zeta-Jones and George Clooney. And I think the reason I classify it as a guilty pleasure is because I somehow know I'm supposed to not like it because it's not full Coen Brothers. Yes.

And so I've been told it's terrible. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not. Society has told me it's terrible, unlike Oh Brother We're Out There or whatever. And so, but that's, so that was the first thing that popped in my mind. I love that movie.

Yeah, I don't like when people, I think there's two Coen Brothers tears and I love that second tear when they're clearly just having a good time making a comedy. Yeah. I love those movies. Yeah. Like intolerable cruelty. And the one I really love is a man with Brad Pitt and Clooney.

Oh, Burn After Reading. Burn After Reading. I think I hated that when I saw it and now I like it. And I didn't love Hail Caesar and I'm wondering if in a couple of years maybe I'll love that too. I like Hail Caesar. Because maybe it, I was fine with it. Yeah.

Would that were that simple is like maybe laugh so hard. I loved that scene. It's a really great scene. So good. But Barton Fink is another one where I'm like, is that one of the all time greatest movies? Probably. Yeah.

Probably has one of the all time greatest endings of any movie. Yeah. Talk about an ending. Yeah. I didn't whistle for that. I saw that. That's kind of one of my friends and mine's from

college favorite movie. So we watched it. Saw it in the theater then watched it obsessively. Yeah. In college. It's very special. And he went on to be friends with Tony Shalube who like in real life IRL and he was so good in that.

Yeah. So good. Yeah. And that little part. He's great in everything. How do you feel? Do you feel this went well? I think it's.

Let's have a postmortem on camera. On camera. I think it went great. I might do a little solo postmortem not tonight. Because I have to go to bed. Fair. Because it's like 7.30. No.

I think it went great. The pilot episode. Do you like how I jammed in like eight of my other favorite movies in? So I think that's kind of whatever takes them. I still was the first one to say. Yeah. That's kind of the point though.

Screw you, Sam Levine. That's right. Sam, Man with Two Brains is really great. I could quote the hell out of that movie. You know. I'm a real dork. What for that movie? Yeah.

Just all my favorite movies. Everything I'm naming is just so dorky. But. Well, you went after Tron hard. So and now that I know the whole story behind it. Yeah. Like it's really it's. It's a real thing.

Yeah. It's. I get it. Yeah. You weren't seeking a nerd cred or anything like that. No. Like you hate nerds. But now hold on.

No, let me ask you to back off that for a second. Untrue. No, this is great. All right. Well, thanks for coming in, Janet Barney for show number one. Thanks, Chuck. Here I go. I guess I ran away only after the door was closed.

Man, that was just. I'm just so excited about the show that could not have gone any better. I knew Janet was a great choice as guest number one because she's well. She's a professional podcaster herself and does interviews herself. So she knows how to how to keep the conversation going like a real pro. So that was just a lot of fun. Janet at her feelings on Tron were. I was kind of wondering what to expect on why that was her favorite pick and it was

it was very heartwarming to know to me that that was a movie that she and her dad bonded over. And it was a very special film from her childhood because of the cute little Tron game that she used to play with her dad. So as we go on with movie crush, I think it'll be super interesting to see sort of the why behind why people pick these favorite movies. And I suspect that moving forward, we're going to get quite a few that have a lot of sentimental value and that is certainly the case with Janet here in Tron and Stan against evil guys.

I am so excited. I love season one. Janet is so funny in it. Everyone's just great. And season two actually premiered yesterday in real time. So November 1st, premiered on IFC. Check it out. Stan against evil season two.

It's wonderful. And check out JV club, the JV club podcast where Janet interviews people about their embarrassing high school years. It's a really, really good show. So thanks to Janet for her time. And until next week, would it kill you to spare a little popcorn maybe? Movie crush is produced, edited, engineered and scored by Noel Brown from our podcast studio at Pond City Market Atlanta, Georgia.