The Big Picture - The Black-and-Chrome Action Movie Pack and ‘Onslaught’ With Michael Biehn and Adam Wingard!

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to take some MDMA, get kinky, and grab some guns because on today’s show, Chris Ryan joins us (duh) to discuss Adam Wingard’s new metal action flick, ‘Onslaught.’ They briefly cover two additional recent releases in ‘Mutiny’ and ‘The Whisper Man’ before diving into ‘Onslaught’ and building out their “Black-and-Chrome Action Movie Pack.” Later, Sean is joined by iconic actor Michael Biehn and Wingard to discuss ‘Onslaught’ as well as the wild personal story that inspired the film and plenty of anecdotes about making movies in Hollywood. (0:00) Intro (1:47) The ‘Mutiny’ leak, and does piracy affect the box office? (7:19) ‘The Whisper Man’ (17:22) ‘Onslaught’ (34:08) The Black-and-Chrome Action Movie Pack (52:05) Michael Biehn and Adam Wingard join the show! Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan, Michael Biehn, and Adam Wingard Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh and Jacob Cornett Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan®. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there®. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about Onslaught. Today on the show, we're having a very metal episode of The Big Picture because we're discussing a very metal movie, black and chrome metal, that is. Adam Wingard has a new movie that throws back to the halcyon days of sought-off shotguns, unkillable super soldiers, desolate American survivalism, government conspiracy, and insane action set pieces. The movie is Onslaught, and it's a loving homage to movies like T2 Judgment Day, the Road Warrior, and many more. Chris Ryan is here to talk about it and to help me build out the black and chrome action pack later in this episode. I'll be joined by Wingard as well as one of the stars of his film, the action movie icon Michael Bean. You know him from The Terminator, Aliens, Tombstone, and many more films from the 80s and 90s. Wingard shared the crazy personal story that inspired Onslaught and Bean shared tons of anecdotes and wisdom from 50 years of making movies in Hollywood, the highs and the lows.

It's a great chat. Definitely stick around for that. But first, some movie news with CR. This episode is presented by State Farm. You know the feeling. Long day, good meal, you finally sit down, and now you're just staring at your screen. Slasher, rom-com, period drama,

psychological thriller, but some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help. Like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Okay, see, are you ready to break down a news story that is nine days old? Let's do it. So the Jason Statham Vehicle Mutiny. Which I have not seen.

Which I have seen, and I'm happy to say, I enjoyed. Okay. The film premiered in movie theaters last weekend to modest interest. And it was revealed that one of the reasons why this film may have premiered to modest interest is because the film was accidentally shared on Amazon Prime for two hours for users. I think the day before it was released. Yes.

This is a real Doug from Title move, if I can invoke a watch character. Bring the Watch Lorin. Yes. But in title, I can't remember what album they either did or didn't successfully upload to the service. We imagined a sweaty, middle-aged white man, much like myself named Doug,

working in the offices and pressing the button or not pressing the button as it were. And maybe he got involved here. What was it, Magnacardo Holy Grail? Was it 4-4-4? It was some J thing or Beyonce thing where it was like, where it was like, where is it? Title, you still have that? Dylan, I heard the fidelity on their audio is quite good, though.

Yes, I think that was true eight years ago. I don't know if that's so true. I listened to my audio on little white pods, though. That's a good point. So Jim from Amazon. Yeah, yeah. uploaded mutiny. And the pirates came in.

This is a film that takes place on a ship. There's a pirate quality to the film. Ironically. Great premise on this movie. Jason Statham plays a bodyguard who is a former police officer who has formed a bond with a shipping magnate of some renown. Okay. This shipping magnate is selling his company because it's not for his son.

His son doesn't want to work in this business. He wants to try something else. Okay. So he's selling the business. On the eve of the sale, this man is shockingly murdered in front of Jason Statham. And Jason Statham will have his revenge. And his revenge is on a boat. And so he goes on the boat to figure out what's really going on with this.

Very entertaining Statham movie. I can already guess who's behind all of this, right? Well, I won't spoil anything. Please don't, yeah. Nevertheless, this movie, you know, it's a question I think of Statham's box office power, maybe not as strong. He was in a film earlier this year called Shelter, which also did not perform. that well. But like I said, one of the reasons why maybe it didn't perform as well is because it was up

online and people might have pirated it. Yeah. And do you think that's a, like has a meaningful impact on something like box office? Because piracy is not something we talk about often on this show. You know, the two things I thought about here was the dangers in which in housing films specifically in a world where in the same sort of compartment that you would house albums or TV shows or anything else is that you're essentially then gambling with the theatrical financial performance of those movies anyway. Now, this movie has written all over it, wait for it to hit streaming in three weeks. So I don't think they made a big push being like for the next 90 days. If you want to see a mutiny, you're just going to have to bring your ass down to the theater. But I definitely think

that like, look, man, you could take a cursory look at X and you will be quite surprised by the things that are being uploaded there to be to be viewed without even download. And I think that we don't talk about it as much because most people, I think, like us, are like, I'll just pay the $15 or whatever the fee is per month to have access to everything anyway. It's about ease of use. But for a lot of people out there, it's both financially expedient and kind of a cheap thrill to be still trafficking in this stuff. Yeah, I think you're totally right. I think there's obviously an entire underworld of this sort of thing happening that has probably meaningfully harmed

a number of movies over the year, including movies that we deem incredibly successful. I mean, this is a huge issue for streaming networks several years ago, and I think continues to be in terms of uploading episodes to foreign, like, markets. Like, usually it would happen with Thrones when it would go up

in country X, and it would get pirated. Now, it would also not even be live. It would just be like they've uploaded it into the backend server and it would kind of be like when we used to about rap where they would tell us like essentially once a record went to the CD printing plant, there was really nothing they could do to stop it. That was a long period of time. There was some guy getting paid $9 an hour somewhere along the line who's going to be like,

yoink, and that's all you take it. It just needs one leak. Yeah, it's so interesting because in that period of time, it felt like there was a music needs to be free mentality. And I think a lot of pirators think about culture that way. And obviously, there are a lot of safeguards in the world of entertainment that just allow for that. And in the era of streaming both music and movies,

we think that's not possible anymore. But it is, and it can have an impact. It's fascinating. Mutiny, you know, waiting the three weeks, I think, would be fine. Yeah, you know, we were talking when I think Bill was on to do the flop-straft. We talked a little bit about the kind of psychology around modern moviegoers and to what extent they're seeing things. And they're like, that's definitely a renter now.

And the renter being something that you can do in four to six weeks instead of going down to the theater versus what's like a, you know, an event film that you want to be either in a theater full of people because you want to feel their reaction or because the spectacle is so grand that you want to appreciate it on a big screen like Odyssey or Spider-Man or what have you.

You know, it's funny, we're going to probably talk about a Netflix movie Whisper Man, which is sort of right in, is right kind of in the, in between of those two things to me in terms of the experience of it, but I was wondering how you were kind of thinking about the,

the instant VOD market these days? Yeah, I think a lot of the big studios have changed their windows. So Universal for a period had a 17-day window for films that I think failed to garner $50 million in its first two weeks of release. And they've since changed that and they've extended them. There was a lot of pomp and circumstances at CinemaCon about this in April. And it seems like most of the studios have been pressured to lengthen their windows. But not all of them.

I noticed that the film The Wrong Girls, which is the new Kristen Stewart, a Lias Shaw Cat comedy, Stoner Comedy, hit VOD this week, like a week and a half after its release. That was really fast. And it didn't perform very well at all at the box office, but this is a new Christian Stewart comedy that had a 10-day window.

And I guess there's something fascinating about that being a normal for a certain level of movie. Whisper Man, which we should talk about, is sort of the inverse. Bring it down a little bit. Whisper Man. Sort of the inverse.

So Whisper Man. It's a new feature film directed by James Ashcroft. Horror thriller, I guess. Serial killer thriller. Yeah, it reminded me at least in intent, a lot of reptile,

which came out a couple of years ago on Netflix with Benicia del Toro, a little bit of the Empty Man. That vibe, that very, very indebted to Fincher that Whisper Man features a explicit homage to Zodiac. early in the film.

It does. Yeah. So, curious movie. Now, I say it's sort of in between these two things

because when you look at the stars, Robert De Niro, Michelle Monaghan, Adam Scott, are the three leads. Hamish Linkleaders in the film.

There are a couple of other more notable names that I won't spoil for people who haven't watched this movie, at least, not quite yet,

but some big cameos. And this is a pretty celebrated collection of actors, and it's a film that I think, relative to other Netflix titles

like it, like shot on real locations. Yeah. And has a lot of craft applied to it. And it did feel to me like Netflix attempting to kind of match a narrative movie to a lot of the true crime serial killer content that

they make on the nonfiction side. And the premise of the movie is essentially that Adam Scott's character is a novelist whose wife has died and he's moved to a new town with his eight-year-old son and his eight-year-old son is abducted by the Whisper Man, whoever that is.

The latest in a number of young boys being abducted, abducted in and around this town. Yes, turns out that The Whisper Man was also at work 30 years ago and that Adam Scott's character's father was a police detective responsible for putting the Whisper Man away. Yes. And that detective is played by Robert De Niro. In one of the quietest performances

I've ever seen in a movie in my entire life. Yes. He never goes above this tone of voice. for in a two-hour serial killer thriller. Except for the one moment where he rescues Adam Scott from drug dealers in Jersey City. That is the truth.

Shades of the stomp out scene in the Irishman there. You know, Robert De Niro is getting old. But he's still putting in the hours, putting in the time. What did you think of this movie? You know what? This was one of the first films

in a long time that I've seen that I was like, that should have been a TV show. Wow. I actually thought that the pacing of it and the way that they tried to kind of shoehorn in a couple of things towards the back half of the movie and the third act especially probably would have worked great over six to eight episodes. And instead it just sort of seems to come out of nowhere, especially the Hamish Linklater part, kind of is in the background of somebody saying his

name and then you're like, wait, you guys mean Hamish Linklater is in this movie? Yes. And Hamish Linklater, I think it's amusing to note, plays a collector. A bone collector, a collector and scholar of serial killer artifacts. And I seems to be having a grand old time. Sure. Everybody does seem to be, I guess he especially seems to be enjoying himself. They probably could use one more ham in this movie. I agree. Michelle Monaghan playing it very straight. Adam Scott playing it very straight.

Robert De Niro playing it. Yeah. You know, Michelle Monaghan's character, for instance, it's not an important plot point to note, is a Quaker. And at one point, Adam Scott goes and confronts her at her meeting house and, you know, she's just like, please don't yell at me in this, this house of worship. I was like, cool detail. Like, what, this should be, this would in any other story, like probably be a little bit more expanded upon like this woman, her faith, whatever led her to being a detective. There's a, there's a few elements of here where I could feel maybe some development happening in this, in the way of like, hey, this could be a pretty good, like,

like white knuckle like presumed innocent style thriller that then they turned into like a lengthy two-hour movie I would say. Yeah, I would say especially in the final third, it really drags. That's a smart take.

I think I agree with you. I would never watch that show. It's always the other way, right? You're right. We're always watching TV shows where you're like guys, guys, this would be an awesome movie. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And I'm not sure if the mythology itself could withstand eight episodes, but that hasn't stopped many TV shows before from elongating to do that kind of work.

It's a fascinating thing. Something feels off, and part of it is, I think, that this kind of movie, which is, as you said, heavily indebted to Fincher and The Silence of the Lambs, and this wave of movies that came in the aftermath. You mentioned the bone collector, taking lives. In the 90s and 2000s, this was a very dependable, 75 to $120 million kind of movie, where adults would show up on a date night to watch it. They would have some thrills. They'd get to see. a movie star saved the day, and they would feel satisfied that the killer would go behind bars or be killed in a moment at the end of the film. Yeah.

And we don't have those as much anymore, right? No, they've moved entirely. I do think true crime has kind of replaced that idea. And I would say even true crime is making incursions into our beloved horror genre. I was watching a movie called Man Finds Tape, which came out, I think, was dated for 25. Yeah, I've seen it. Yeah, and it very much like, I am both a victim of this crime,

but also a podcaster documenting it, kind of like, you know, am I also making a documentary about the found footage that I found? Yeah. So there's like, there is like this kind of uncanny valley happening where I can't tell like,

is this, did somebody decide to make like a found footage horror movie out of a true crime podcast that they were developing and whatever? It's certainly a emerging genre. As far as it, like, the streaming movie aspect of it, the thing that surprises me still,

is, and I know how to get around this, it's just like the Friday night thing where like seven men you know have watched whispermen on the same night because we're just all home, you know, and it's like, eh, come on, how bad gonna be? I'll give it a try.

Yeah, and the same thing happened with Devil's mouth, the shark movie from a couple months ago, so yeah, that phenomenon is, I just don't know how to recreate that or recapture that at the theater of like, I'll just, it's a five o'clock It is. There's something interesting happening inside of me, at least, though, with movies like this, which is last night, Eileen and I watched an episode of Furious, which we're really enjoying. And after it was over, Eileen said, should we do one more? And I was like, I think I have to watch The Whisper Man. And she was like, what's that? I explained it. And she was like, I'm not watching that. Even though the Furious and The Whisper Man have some things in common. And so I was like, all right, I'll just, I'll go watch The Whisper Man and you can go to sleep.

And half with The Whisper Man, I was like, fuck, I wish I had watched Furious. Like, this was not... Now we're getting this podcast segment out of it, I guess. Yeah. But there felt something kind of instantaneously disposable to me about the movie. Whereas with a show, and as you know, I don't watch nearly as much TV as I did say 10 years ago, with a show I really like, as you and Andy have talked about many times over the years on the watch, there's something really enjoyable about going on a journey with a show.

And you can't have a journey with a mediocre movie that you know is mediocre and that is just going to... go into a text chain for 48 minutes with six other men and then never be spoken of again. And I don't know. It's an interesting confrontation with my time. Isn't that it's replaced the utility of television in that way? Like the streaming movies are what you would say, okay, it's the end of the night. I've done my work in the great temple of cinema. Now I'm just going to throw on whatever's on HBO or whatever. And instead you're like, I rather than do the work of of being an ally and being present for female trauma, I'm going to go watch the Whisper Man instead.

Yeah. I don't really know how to reckon with that. I think it's probably a testimony, at least for me, to the fact that I'll just watch any movie. Yeah. There's not really a kind of movie that I won't watch at this phase of my life. We're going to find that out by the end of this podcast, I think. Yeah, maybe so.

Truly going to celebrate that. I will push the edge for sure. But I just mean, like, no matter how bad it is, I'm kind of curious. Sure. And with TV, my shield is up. I'm like, I really need seals of approval from many sources while also knowing I like the people involved. I like the kind of storytelling.

It's exactly, you know, like... Jack me around, like, on episode five, and it should just end there, but instead there's five more episodes. And I don't want it to be a show that could go on for eight seasons and that I have to wait nine years to watch eight seasons of a show that I'm only kind of invested in. Nevertheless, I like that comparison that you made.

Well done. Thanks. Onslaught could only be a movie. There's no TV show for Onslaught. Many are saying that only two men could really podcast about Onslaught. Well, yeah, they put it in a lab for us. I remember vividly, I don't remember if you were at this screening. I remember vividly going to see 2012, 2013, whenever the film was released, the film The Guest at the Ace Hotel.

Couldn't have been me because I saw the guest with the people. Okay. Well, I was with people, a lot of people as well. It was not a premiere. It was just a special screening of, it was the Ace Hotel Theater. which I think is now called the United Theater. And it was a big, big crowd. And Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett,

and I think Dan Stevens all spoke after the movie. And you and I love your next, and we loved the guest. And I think that was a real season tickets moment for Wingard movies. And then immediately after that, he takes this pretty dramatic turn to make Blair Witch, Death Note, and two King Kong versus Godzilla movies over his last 10 years. This new movie is what I'll call a return to form.

Do so, please. What form that is we can debate. Yeah. But Onslaught stars Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Reunion, Eric Wareheim, Reginaldell Vell Johnson of diehardt fame and Family Matters, of course. Michael Bean, guest on this podcast, Drew Starkey and Rebecca Hall. The premise of the movie is an army sniper living in a trailer park, struggles to protect her family from a trio of super soldiers who have escaped from a secret military facility,

and are killing everyone in their path. That's a very accurate description of what this movie is. What did you think of Onslaught? I felt so deeply pandered to it. Not even saying it's like the best movie ever made or anything like that, but the core elements of this movie really scratch a niche for me. And, you know, even some of Wingard's fetishes are not my personal fetishes. Like what?

Like some of the sexual stuff in this movie that I'm not a big BDSM dominatrix guy. Oh, good to know. But I'll die defending his right to do it. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And... Well, that sequence is quite memorable. Sometimes it's kinky to watch other people do something that they think is kinky.

Mm-hmm. And this movie does fuck. This movie does fight. This movie doesn't really have a story. Does it love? I think so. It's about a love between a mom and her daughter. It is.

Right? and it's a love between Drew Starkey and several women. And I just really enjoyed myself. I think that for fans of scratched-up covers of VHS films from the 80s, for fans of Cameron and Carpenter, and we're going to get into a kind of very specific action subgenre that we may or may not be weaving out of full cloth. Like, I just thought this was super enjoyable.

I felt the same way. I don't think it's the most high-concept movie. It is a very loving homage, you're not interested in the homage part. It may not hold up. In the Adria or Hona character, there's a lot of Ellen Ripley. We just did the rewatchables of aliens.

Super Sarah Connor here. There's a lot of Sarah Connor in here. Sort of single mother, trying to figure out how to stay alive in the face of some killing machines. There's some assault on precinct 13 in here in terms of the sort of like the noise and the fear of being confined

in a place, like trapped and fearing a violent end. lots and lots of Cameron's ideas about the way that the government kind of like hypermanages its populace with violence and it's also the other kink I think is I love the way that Wingard unleashes actors who would otherwise seem to be

prestigious, respectable figures like the great Rebecca Hall like downtown abbey's Dan Stevens and just turn them into little freaks you know, little weirdos. We can add Drew Starkey to the list. Drew Starkey, who, one of the stars of Outer Banks,

who appeared in Luca Guadanino's queer. Buy your stock now. He's doing some stuff in this movie. And he's doing some stuff over the next two years. And it's really, it's quite exciting to see him in this film. When he showed up, you and I, like, we didn't fist bump, but there was a psychic fist bump.

Or it was like, this man has made a choice. This is a strong choice. According to Wingard, too, he had some ideas that he had some ideas that he wanted to put into the character that showed up on screen, which is what I want to hear. Like, I want to hear that there's an actor

who's like, sure, this character's kinky, but we can go a little further. And Starkey plays, as you put it the other day, the sort of Winston the wolf of government conspiracy management. He's the fixer for when super, like, soldiers or government secret programs go wrong. He's there to clean up the mess. Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall play a,

husband and wife team won a doctor of super soldiers. They're both sort of not so crypto-Nazis. There's some white supremacist bent to their point of view. Yeah. And they are interested in... Creating killing machines without conscience. And reviving dead soldiers and removing that conscience and allowing them to just do what the government wants them to do, which is just kill.

Yeah. Adrian Hohana is a woman suffering from PTSD, who is a mother whose daughter has been dropped off unceremoniously by her father at her house, which is a trailer park in New Mexico? Yeah. And she, does she manage the trailer park? Is that her job? She's like the super, yeah.

Okay. And the super soldiers eventually find their way towards that trailer park. Great action. Not totally sure I understood all of the motivations of all the characters. It was a 90-minute film. Probably could have used like a little bit more seasoning on the character And yet, like, I was thinking about this because a friend of ours said that they didn't really enjoy this movie.

And I was like, well, how did I feel the first time I watched They Live? Or the first time I watched The Terminator, you know? Like, the first time I watched the movie and I was like, there's something kind of like handmade and a little dingy about this. But I like that. And maybe this isn't Howard's End, but it's not trying to be. No. And I think that Wringard really knows how to get the most out of what is probably a relatively limited budget. and he did this with the guest.

I think this is fairly explicitly taking place in the guest verse or in the idea that this kind of stuff is happening. And I think it's really worth mentioning too that this is essentially a Western that takes place at night. You know, this is about a team of small town trailer park folk teaming together to fend off Super Soldiers, which is basically the plot of half the Clint Eastwood movies in the 70s just without the Super Soldiers part.

And he just really, like, you know, if you're going to shoot in New Mexico for tax breaks or whatever, like, make it New Mexico. Do it. Like, take advantage of the surroundings. And he really does. I thought that there was probably like three full different movies in this movie. There's the Arjonia part, which is pretty on the nose straightforward, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger plot about like a guy who's just trying to be a good dad, but it gets pulled back into the world of violence. Then there is the almost cartoonish, pretty awesome Michael Bean and Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall side of things. That's all about government experiments on soldiers. And then the Starkey part, which kicks in about midway through the movie and is just an absolute jugular adrenaline shot to the whole thing kind of made it for me. Because I was just like, first, I guess like I have seen it before, but I was like, I have not seen a movie do this in a while where it's just like, this guy, we gave no notes to. And so he is, should we talk a little bit about what his character is up to? Yeah, sure.

He's interrupted in the middle of a BDSM session. A house of pleasures. Yeah, I mean. No judgment. No, of course not. But he's like kind of leashed up while women wearing gimp masks, but nude. And otherwise nude. Yeah, otherwise nude tease him.

and we find out quickly that when the government interrupts this vacation session, not unlike the one in Bourne where Carl Urban is just doing mad vodka shots in the middle of the day in Moscow, and they're like, we need you to kill Jason Bourne, you know, again. Drew Starkey gets pulled out of this. He is rolling on pure MDMA, and he is for the rest of the film. And it's just a delightful character trick. I don't know what to say.

Well, he finds himself in a convenience story, at a certain point. And I guess like you do when you're rolling, he just kind of zones out for a minute, but the camera never moves off of him and you can kind of feel him losing touch with reality while also being plunged

into this really violent, hyper-emphasized world of super soldiers. Yes, he is investigating a mass shooting but stops to inhale a bottle of water because his body is about to go hydrated in toxic shock. Don't take this movie too seriously. Yeah. But I thought, like, that was just, like, a really good slider to throw.

There's one other thing in it that I really liked that I didn't totally see coming, which is that, you know, Wingard is really a genre, Maven. And he does turn the third act into kind of a slasher. Like, there are a lot of overt homages to horror movies that I think through the first 80 minutes, I was like, well, this feels like kind of a down-the-middle military movie, along the lines of a lot of the films that we'll talk about. But he does get you some Texas chainsaw and some, the hills have eyes

and like some components of sort of like in the middle of nowhere there is a violent force that can take everything from you that I thought was also pretty effective I had a good time with the movie not a masterpiece but not he casting around the edges really well I thought where I was really funny

He was funny he was funny Reginald val Johnson it was really cool to see I can't remember the last time I saw him yeah 20 years 30 years Is he still working like I don't even know But he plays a tool for this shit a vet who connects with Aharnia's character

and it's just what do you think of her? Great question. She's him right now, right? Like, she's getting a lot of like big roles. She got, by all accounts, is Wonder Woman. She's rumored to be Wonder Woman.

Yeah. She is, Amanda and I've talked about it many times. It's just like stunningly beautiful and almost to the point of distraction. And, you know, like, use that to such great effect in Hitman that her alluring

quality almost like explains the movie like of course this guy would do all this crazy shit so that he could allow for all this to transpire I will see about Wonder Woman

I have no idea what to make of like what's happening at DC you know like it seems like that could go in any number of directions right now who knows if there will actually be a Wonder Woman movie there's a lot of speculation about like what happens if Man of Tomorrow doesn't work but she's going to be in Man of Tomorrow

Sure I think she could do a lot of different kinds of things. I think the fact that she's very comfortable in a movie like this and pretty credible holding a giant gun is cool. Yes. I mean, it was funny to watch. I saw a video of her talking about her experience making this movie where it sounds like she was essentially up for six weeks

in the middle of the night shooting guns in the freezing cold in New Mexico. And then Starkey came in for like three days at the end and got to be on ecstasy and like putting cigarettes out. And that was, she was like, must be nice, basically. Yeah, he's begging for a spinoff. Yeah. Begging. There's a very obvious.

If this is happening in the guest verse, there's a way to kind of keep expanding that. I don't know if this is the most commercial movie of all time. Yeah. It feels like it's being kind of slid into a quiet part of the calendar. Sure. This is to our earlier conversation of VOD Bangor, though. It is.

I think you should see it on a big screen because some of the photography is wonderful. And, like, I think the vistas and the way that they kind of do the Western stuff is a really awesome time. And you get to hear guns go boom. Yeah. Even Wingard himself said in not so many ways, words. Like, I've designed this to be a cult classic, you know? And like, he has he really has that pitch down.

Now, whether or not that's like a pitch that has value to all people is kind of an interesting thing to think about for me, because sometimes the keys are jingled in my face and I'm mad about it, and sometimes they're jingled and I love it. And I'm only human. I can't really, it's my subjective experience. But this was one where I was like, God, I fucking love John Carpenter.

Like, I just love those movies and I think they're so smart and so dumb at the same time in a way that I find so appealing. Those are, are, and we're about to mention a couple of them, those are my comfort movies. Like I, if I'm trying to fall a bit to sleep and I'm not doing the things I should be doing, like reading and, you know, calming down, I will put on big trouble in a little China or Prince of Darkness. And I just love the music and I love the photography. And I love the way that people talk and act and the shit that happens. I totally agree with you. I don't know what to say. It's just how it was how they made me.

No, it's something we've always bonded over. So it's funny to watch someone, you know, who is effectively our age, who had basically the same experiences growing up watching movies. I mean, he talks about his relationship to aliens and how it kind of like expanded his mind as a young kid in the interview. But I... I mean, this is a fascinating, like, aspect of what he did here is that

we don't have a lot of people who are making programmers to use a term that is probably way outdated, but the idea of making a innings-eating, modest but really fun movie that can be watched over and over again over the course of five to ten years, but really is just there to be the third thing on a marquee somewhere.

Well, that's why I think this is kind of an interesting trio films to discuss, that Mutiny and the Whisperman and this movie all kind of occupy the same... Action thriller, whatever. Yeah, the same kind of category, the same kind of phylum of genre movie where it's like there is a star attached to the movie.

Yeah. There is like a veneer of prestige associated with it, but it's also quickly like dispensed with that prestige. Like it's almost like knowingly like don't take this too seriously at times. All three will be received in different ways and seen and experienced in different ways, which will be the most remembered. I would imagine it's going to be onslaught,

though. I don't know if it's going to be like an all-time classic or anything like that. I don't think it quite gets there. But there is still like a strain of this thing, but our expectations of those movies have been significantly reduced. Yeah. Or, I mean, I think that

partially because, like, we talk so much about the box offers performance of films now that, like, in a way that I think is different than maybe perhaps what it was viewed and say the 80s or the 90s when a lot of these movies thrived, that we look at something purely as to whether it connected or not, rather than whether or not it's like kind of cool

and people might dig it down the road. I was having a very fun exchange with a buddy of mine who was like, I like dog stars. How about that? And I was just like, honestly, you may, you might. You know what I mean? Because I was like, if I was just going to dog stars

as a dude, I might dig it, you know, a little bit more. Have you seen the 1991 film Time Bomb? Remind me what this is about. I saw a lot of movies. The director, science fiction action, starring Michael Bean, Patsy Kenzit, Richard Jordan. It's about a watchmaker who runs into a burning building to save a woman and then eventually becomes ensnared

in a secret government conspiracy. Okay. And Adam talked about this and being the star of it and how to Adam when he saw that movie, he was like, this is it. And it was a reference for him on Onslaught based on the action. Yeah. I've never seen this movie.

I've never heard of it. I mean, MGM put it out in 1991. You'd think I would have some familiarity with it. It cost $7 million to make, and it made $64,000 at the box office. It's a true, you know, sent to the dust bins of Blockbuster kind of a movie. And I never pulled it off the shelf, and neither did you.

But there are all kinds of movie history is littered with titles like this. So it's really fascinating. So we'll talk about the Black and Chrome Action Pack, which will include some extremely well-known classics and some lesser-known films right after this. Okay. So black and chrome is inspired, at least in part to me, by the title of Mad Max Fury Road's black and white edition.

Yeah. Which was eventually put in theaters and then included on the Blu-ray and 4K discs. And that indicated almost like the color-coded idea of these sorts of movies. Yeah. Which is not to say it's post-apocalyptic or science fiction or military or alien focus. or, you know, conspiracy focused. But like, everything, right? I wrote down some stuff here,

kind of stream of consciousness, to give people an idea of what we're talking about. Future set and or future feeling. Militaristic, fetishistic, sci-fi-leaning, percussive, pulsing, gritty action, has to have some sort of vehicle, preferably a motorcycle,

definitely souped up. Leather jackets are cool, drugs are cool, being in the special forces, but also having a hard, is cool in this world. I like that. So like you just kind of have this

I would also say that extreme settings are also work really well. Jungle, desert, etc. We like to have a great backdrop for these. Love that. And yeah, definitely sense of humor works in these.

How do you think about the heroes? Men with no name. Push two extremes can kind of redeem themselves if they do the right thing with this last mission or this mission in particular. What if they're women? Even better.

Yeah. Why do these movies not really exist anymore? Like, did something change in the culture that discontinued this? I think people play video games of them. That's it. Because that's what so many games are now. Is this kind of environment and experience?

I think this is like a lot of Call of Duty and a lot of Halo and a lot of take your pick. I mean, maybe even going back as far as Metal Gear and Resident Evil. Like, I am not an expert, but I know that it's pretty awesome to

smoke cigarettes and drink beer and play these games. And that used to be, what I would do is just re-watch they live a hundred times, you know? It's such an interesting observation. I think you're totally right. There's something about that, like, primal feeling of

letting your weapon rip that I think the movies like allowed for and now they have been supplanted not like anything weird yeah no not a handgun like something

something sort of artificial and imagined but also seemingly very destructive yeah I think that's right I mean I think there's something else about how action was sort of suffused into

larger more comedic versions of you know tent pole movies You know that comic book movies and Jurassic and Fast. And fantasy. And fantasy too. But like they kind of sucked all that energy up. And like, yeah, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings.

These films, you know, we're reading Harry Potter right now for the first time. And even in Harry Potter, there's like all these notions of vengeance and fate. And like when will there be the epic showdown, you know, this classical storytelling tropes? And these movies do seem to be. really out of fashion and I guess you could make the case that maybe like John Wick is working in the tradition to some extent

that feels more elevated, stylized to me than some of these movies are? Yeah, you know, it's funny, there's a couple of sequels we have on this list we're about to give folks and like weirdly ballerina would be like, would be blood and chrome to me

but like Wick maybe not. Yes. I don't know why I say that, but like that, the intent of ballerina feels very much like let's self-consciously make a John Wick B movie.

I totally agree with you. And if that movie were discovered on cable at 16... And Adarmus just fucking killing people for two hours. There's that great scene when she's... I think she's in Scandinavia somewhere. She throws all the grenades.

Yes. Like that stuff is so fun. But when you're sitting through a two-hour ballerina movie that is like very, very loosely connected to John Wick, you're like, ah, seems like a wasted time. And also, you and I are traditionalists. And I think a lot of these...

movies start to taper these movies start to taper off when we become a little bit over overly indulgent on CGI. That's true. I think the VFX and ballerina felt a little unfinished to me and some of the like scenes that are preposterous

are preposterous because we'll like nobody would live through this like in any way shape or form and so her throwing a bunch of explosives around just doesn't really feel the same way it feels to watch like a giant big rig truck full of super soldiers like bearing down on a town like it does in onslaught.

What's the single best example of these kinds of movies? My take would be Road Warrior because it's like building the fashion and aesthetic of these kinds of movies out of nothing because it is like all scraped together both like the film itself being kind of an instant cult sensation anyway. But the football pads with leather jackets with crazy Dodge Chargers. with feral kids with like whoever the fuck that guy was

in the desert for Road Warrior what was his name? It's like Galacticus Maximus something Yes, yes. Yeah, I can't I would probably say Terminator 2 is my platonic ideal. Again, leather jackets

souped up shit, super killers. Yeah, I think I lean ultimately it's funny because Road Warrior is also a post-apocalyptic future telling story But I think the desert versus the kind of dying cityscape. I think I lean dying cityscape more. And maybe that's why I'm more of a carpenter person because a lot of his movies take place in those kinds of environments.

Though not all of them, obviously. There's a lot of desolation in some of his films too. Likewise, for Robocop and Total Recall in the Verhoven movies, where there's like just this kind of glimmer of comedy in the storytelling that I really enjoy. And I think Encelot is doing that, you know, not just with the Wareheim character, but with like some of the sarcasm that a lot of the characters just, speaking in or some of the outlandish performance styles that like Dan Stevens is rocking with.

Aliens falls right in the middle. Yeah, I think it has a lot of the hallmarks just because of the colonial marine stuff, but then it's sort of separated by the classic kind of survivalist, like one woman protecting a child against a monster. Are there any other all-time classics that go in this? Because, you know, we've got three tiers here of movies,

and I can certainly make arguments for, Starship Troopers or for Snowpiercer, movies that have that feel, those colorways, that dinginess that I was talking about, and are sometimes very comic, sometimes very absurd. But to me, there is a distinct difference between aliens and Starship Troopers,

even though they're totally related to each other. There's a nice, for Carpenter fans, they'll know these, but they're probably lower on the power rankings for most people's Carpenter films, but John Carpenter's vampires. and Ghosts of Mars are both about incredibly cynical

bands of brothers taking on the supernatural and with incredible settings either in like I think what vampires takes place in like the Great Plains or something or like Texas, right?

I thought it was in the desert, and then Ghost of Mars is on Mars and it features Natasha Hensstrich, Jason Statham and Ice Cube and Pam Greer fighting cannibalistic they're not aliens, are they in Ghost of Mars?

They've been like taken over by a... Yeah, they're not really ghosts. No. They're really more zombie-esque. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, I love vampires. Love. John Carpenter's vampires, I think, is way underrated. Ghosts of Mars I have, I'm less interested in, but maybe actually fits this even more in a way.

Yes. Because of some of the story elements and some of the acting styles. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's something about him trying to do his, like Mario Bobba's Planet of vampires. Like, that's really what he's trying to do. It's those kinds of, like, 50s or 60s. Yes, totally. Yeah.

Universal Soldier? Sure. Yeah. I think this one has been a little bit forgotten. Yeah, JCVD, Dolph Lundgren. Very similar story idea to Onslaught. Yeah. Clearly a direct influence.

And, you know... Did Adam mention this as like a... He didn't. A totem for him? No. He didn't. But, you know, it's Roland Emmerich. It's very early Roland Emmerich,

who went on to make Independence Day and many other big, big, big, big noise. blockbusters over the years Godzilla remake, etc. And I remember really liking it, but it's exactly what Adam is talking about on the podcast, what you're talking about, which is I saw it in the attic

of a friend of a friend's house when I was 11 and we weren't supposed to be watching it. And we snuck it up there. Maybe it was mom and dad's blockbuster rental. And we went and we watched it and I was like, God damn it, this is cool. This is such a cool idea, such a violent movie.

I can barely understand either of these men speaking to each other, but I'm really enjoying myself. So I feel like that movie, and because that movie has spawned like a VOD paradise of spinoffs and sequels. Of really, like, it's incredible action set pieces. Some of them, yeah. The John Himes one is particularly good.

Tier two. Yeah. I like what you've got here with Dread and Upgrade. I put Kurt Russell's Soldier on the list. Yeah, and then there's some sequels. Rather look down upon sequels than I think are worth mentioning. Particularly McG's Terminator Salvation,

which probably lives on because of Christian Bale's viral meltdown, but is actually probably as much blood and chrome as the first two. I agree. And then Predators, which was Robert Rodriguez's... Was it him or he produced it?

Well, he produced it. Nimrod Antal directed it. And Nimrod Antal directed it with Adrian Brody, Lawrence Fishburn, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins. All your guys. All super killers dropped on a planet to fight a predator. Yeah, literally criminals, right?

From prison who have been dropped onto this planet. Yeah, I think there's other movies. Like, I do think that the pitch black chronicles of Riddick movies are in this zone, for sure. V for Vendetta is a movie that I think is, you know, maybe more politically charged. Would you put any in the Matrix movies in there? I think reload.

There's a case for Reloaded in Tier 1. Because Reloaded is such a pure action film. Yeah. And it does have the leather jackets. No, that's the second one. The second one, which has the sequence on the highway. Oh, yeah. And some of the, like, more bravora action sequences in the film

where you've got the two albino twins and Neo really going full-blown. Yeah. I have a leather trench coat. Yes. Hear me roar. It's kind of his most Arnold performance as well. There's something like self-conscious and fun about it, but also very super serious. I like Reloitered a lot.

So I think those are there. And then there's like a third wing Yeah Of like maybe less respectable Or less quote unquote good movies I got creative with this one Yeah When we were brainstorming

I added a few too And I think there's two tracks I think there's pure sci-fi And there's pure military Sometimes they cross over They cross over in the Tomorrow War Yeah Did you like the Tomorrow War?

More than I thought I would For a what was it like a day and date Or like an Amazon Prime Straight to Prime Blockbuster right with Pratt as a teacher who then becomes a future super soldier against a robot army, right?

I mean, this could happen to you. Any day now. You could get called up. C.R. We need you. We need you. The Pratt Battalion. Yeah, if you won't enlist, we'll bring you in by via draft. How would you do in the Tomorrow War? I think, you know, Chris and I could talk a lot about Young Washington,

some of its pros and cons. Do you think he's... Have you seen Young Washington? Not yet, but I will watch it. I also haven't seen the brink of war, which is about Reagan. and Gorbachev. If we did an Angel Studios special,

do you think it would do numbers? Angel Studios Hall of Fame? Yeah. I don't think it would do numbers. Yeah, me neither. I don't think the audience is really caught up on those titles. I watched some of them.

Yeah. What was the Jim Caviesel hit that he had? Well, I don't know, but he just put one... There's a trailer out for one where he just goes around like breaking the arms of human traffickers. Did you see his film where he portrayed Christ? The Passion of the Christ?

Yeah. You know what? I actually don't think I saw the Passion of the Christ. Should we watch it on Easter? Sure. Sound of Freedom, which was a mega sensation a few years ago. And kind of an indicator, I think,

of where certain things were going. You can draw some connectivity to obsession or amazing digital circus. Where it's like, we are hyper-targeting a niche. We actually know that there's a huge audience. There's an audience for this, yes. Tomorrow War I threw in there, without remorse, an absolutely appalling movie

from Stefano Salima, my goat with Michael B. Jordan with a screenplay by Taylor Sheridan and yet somehow is the most like morbid dark kind of dull Tom Clancy reboot you can possibly imagine. Not sure

I don't think he is going to continue into the Jack Ryan verse. The plan was Rainbow 6 with him and Jamie Bell and then it looks like that's dead right now. But we shall see. I mean he did make the Thomas Crown Affair for Amazon. Sure. He seems like he's still in business with them. I'm just saying like

I think we would have heard a little bit more. He's got Miami Vice in 28. We have to clear all the other calls until then. Rainbow 6 done properly fits neatly into this package. There's a lot of movies. Like, Ultraviolet, the Emiliovich sci-fi action movie, is like this Aon Flux, which doesn't really work, but has all the-

The Shurly's one? Yeah, has all the trappings. Did you watch the Aon Flux animated series on MTV? I think I've seen it as like, this is on MTV for 15 to 20 minutes. I'm not down with that. I'm pretty cool with that. I just don't sit down to watch it.

Why, you're being a little defensive? No, I just mean, like, I think that my reputation precedes me as a cartoon hater and... Oh, I see. What about the head? Did you watch the head? I'm sure I did, but I can't think of, like, even what it's about. To watch Beavis and Butthead? For sure.

Yeah. Important guys for me. You didn't watch The Simpsons. I did. You did. Yeah, but during the Herman's Head, Simpsons'Ins' Living Color era, not just recreationally. See. More of a Beavis or?

more of a butthead. Who's the redhead? There are no redheads in Beavis and a butt head. There's a blonde guy and there's a brown-haired guy. You don't think he's redhead? You don't think he's... Not ginger? I think you're a redhead. Yeah. Is that what you're asking? What's fun of time? I always really appreciated their critique of pavement. It made me look inwardly. No kidding.

About some of my taste. Yeah. And they're like, why don't these guys do something? Do something. There was an interesting note in... In one of Matt Bellany's newsletters recently about Mike Judge trying to claw back the rights to Beavis and Butthead because they are crossing, I guess, the 35-year threshold. Oh, it would be revert? The rights can revert back to them. Okay.

And 2027 will be 35 years since they first appeared on, I think, Liquid Television. Didn't they try to reboot that? Didn't they try to bring Beavis and Bidhead back? It might actually be active right now. The thing is, is like, to me, what was truly wonderful about, that show was not the plot machinations episode by episode, but the music video stuff. It was mystery science theater. Yeah, that was the best part.

But also we were music dorks, so what do we know? Tron Legacy, where do you land on that? Six score. Fun to look at. Don't remember a ton about the plot. They were probably not going to make another one of these, even though they seem to be kind of cool classics, so I almost want to put these in blood and chrome just because... Did you watch Aries, Tron Aries?

I didn't see Ares. Okay. It's not very strong. I wouldn't recommend it. I do think that franchise is dead for now. Although there is a Tron ride at Disney World. Yeah, and the Tron video game continues to do numbers, I bet. Do you think the guys trying to get the rights back to their franchises

or get the rights to their franchises is going to... I saw this really stuff where he's like, I'm going back to Alien. I'm coming back from my corners. Yeah. What about it? What are you asking me? How feasible is it even for that to happen? I think it depends on how much power and influence you wheel.

You know? I mean, will you be coming back for Take Hunter 10 years from now? Maybe you should. Right? Yeah.

What else would you come back for? I would come back for anything that allowed Beavis and Butthead to view my work and speak honestly about it. Should we send a strongly worded letter to Josh DeMorrow about the ownership of the sea is dope?

And how can we get that back in your hands? Yeah. Because that's valuable IP. Sure. Off-sighted, hugely influential. had a real tone and attitude about it. But I like it's almost like time bomb. It's like if you know you know.

And maybe like 20 years from now, some guy will be like, you may think that I've been influenced by Cormac McCarthy, but in fact, it was this blog post on Grantland that you have to Google specifically to find. You think that'll still be up?

In some capacity, if we still have an internet, yeah. It's all out there. Yeah. You know, just kind of grab it. Thank you, C.R. Thank you. Okay, let's go now to my conversation

with Adam Wingard and Michael Bean. Michael Bean and Adam Wingard are here. incredible moment. Adam, I know that you grew up loving Michael, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the first time you saw him on screen or not on screen and how you developed a relationship to his work. Well, earmuffs, Michael, because this is embarrassing to talk about, you know, I don't know, weird him out. Actually, he's heard me tell this story a bunch of times. This is part of our mythology now. But, yeah, like, it kind of goes all the way back to when I was a little kid back in the early night. I was at a Walmart with my family, and they had just released a toy series of aliens, and the toy series consisted of like the space marines and all these like different versions of like the alien figures.

And I had never heard of the series up to that point. And so when me and my brother saw them at the store, we were just like fascinated. And for whatever reason, my parents were in a good mood, and they, you know, it wasn't every time you'd go to the toy store. They would actually buy you a bunch of shit. And so, like, we actually walked away with, you know, a couple space marines and a couple aliens. And, you know, specifically, I picked up the Hicks figure, you know, which is Michael's figure. And, you know, it became literally my favorite toy, you know, and I still remember the toy. Actually, I have another one that I had Michael signed it on his podcast. It's my most treasured item that I have. But, you know, like the figure was really interesting.

He had like a bazooka. I don't know why. You didn't have a bazooka in the movie. And one of his hands for some reason was kind of like, one was straight and the other one's kind of like this, you know. But it was like that was like the toy that like, you know, I didn't just strictly, like when I bought toys, it wasn't like G.I. Joe's go over here. He-Man's go over here.

It was like they all kind of work together, you know. So that Hicks toy, you know, he interfaced with a lot of the other toys, you know. So, you know, like we got these toys. We were obsessed with it, but we hadn't seen the movies, right? And, like, I grew up in a really small town called Marion, Alabama. And the one video store we had was, like, part Radio Shack, which is, like, I don't even know if that's, like, like, a legal kind of thing that they had going. But so it was, like, half Radio Shack and half, you know, video rental store. And we go there, and they had.

Just a copy of the first alien. And I think maybe Alien 3 was just coming out. It was right there at the beginning of the 90s. And so we got both of those. And then we're like, wait a minute, these don't have the space marines. Like, what's the deal? Like, so, oh, it's aliens. That's the one we needed to see, you know.

And so we go to the head of the video store. His name was Tommy, I think. And we're like, can you get a copy of, you know, aliens? And we looked everywhere. Like, at the time, for whatever reason, aliens was like kind of out of print. hard to find. And so, like, you know, Tommy, he goes and, like, orders a copy of it, and it doesn't come in for, like, a week, right? And then we kept going back in, you know, like, pretty much every day. Like, it was like, every day we'd go in. Is aliens been? Is aliens yet? You know, is it here

yet? And this went on for a long time, at least like a month or two, right? And, and at a certain point, I think, like, somehow, like, Tommy just got tired of us, like, coming in there asking about aliens and so, you know, he went out and somehow tracked down a copy and we rented it from him and we had it in our possession for an entire month. And I lost count of how many times we watched it. I think it was like 24 times or something. We would just watch it constantly. How old are we? I would have been probably like 10, you know, something like that, you know, nine or 10. And so, yeah, which is pretty young to be watching the alien films. You know, but...

I think we're the exact same age, and that's probably exactly when I saw it, too. Yeah, well, that's like, you know, like, I was always too afraid to watch horror movies, and I always felt like the alien movies, the Terminator films. Those were sort of like the gateway movies into getting into horror, because they're still sci-fi. And, like, weirdly, I still kind of think of, like, Terminator and aliens as being for kids, you know, like... They were marketed to us. Yeah. They wanted us to see it.

Yeah. So I'm watching this movie, and I'm like, you know, for the very first time, and I remember the whole time, And I remember the whole time it was like, which one's Hicks? Which one's Hicks? I just wanted to know, you know? And like, you know, Michael comes on and he's like so cool in the movie. You know, he's got his like, I like to keep this handy for close encounters and, you know, all his cool lines. And, you know, he's so cool.

He's falling asleep in the drop ship, you know, on the way down. And so totally lived up to the expectations, you know. And around the same time, you know, me and my friends were really discovering Terminator for the first time. So we became obsessed with Michael Bean. this is all in Alabama, and we created what we called a Michael Bean fan club. And I still remember writing it down on a piece of paper, you know, like that we were just like all thought that Hicks was like the coolest guy and just like all your roles, really. And we didn't really know how to say Michael's last name either because we went to like Hicks

from Alabama. So we used to call you Michael Bayhan. I'm sure you got that a lot. It's not the first time I've been called Michael Bayham. And so, you know, like flash forward, you know, many, many years later, you know, we're developing onslaught. And, you know, I'm sitting there with Simon. He's writing the script. And, you know, we get to this character Baylor and we're kind of just like doing our wish list of like, you know, who do we want to cast and or who do we want to kind of write with our, you know, thinking of in this role.

And at that time, Simon and I were really obsessed with the movie called Time Bomb. Yeah. And, which is like a lesser-known film. Have you ever seen Time Bomb? I haven't seen it, no. Oh, man. I mean, when I brought it up to you, you were like, oh, yeah, nobody's mentioned Time Bomb in a long time, you know. But it's a cool movie, actually.

It was directed by a guy named Avi Neshire, who had directed a movie about the English being involved in the Middle East and kind of getting thrown. out and it was like a really really really good movie and so i i saw that movie and met abbey and um i i i i said i would do it uh raphael de laurencis produced it and um they cast patsy kensit in it and um you know um knowing smile well yeah i had uh yeah she was she was she was very attractive, but she played a psychologist in it. And it was a small movie, and it didn't do any business. And it wasn't as good as I thought it was. But Adam brought it up when he wrote me a letter introducing himself,

and he brought it up saying, you know, I love the action sequences in this. I'm going to have my stunt team go through, watch this movie because I like the stunt so much. And, you know, so, you know, something that I hadn't thought about for a long time. And I didn't really think about, I thought of Patsy for a long time. But I didn't think about the movie for a long time. And that came up out of kind of nowhere.

Well, yeah, because, like, Simon and I were always talking about it with, like, you know, my film, The Guest, it's like, you know, at one point I was, like actually interested in seeing if we could get the rights to time bomb just to like tie it in and make it in the same universe literally as the guest like for like a sequel because they feel like it's the same thing it's like a super soldier kind of program you know he's sort of like a almost like mk ultra super soldier that like has like his memory wiped and stuff and um uh you know so simon and i are really obsessed with that and that's why we kind of like you know michael was really on the top of our minds when we were doing it and he's right it's like the it's kind of an interesting film

because it's got like a lot of like B movie elements to it but the action in it is like fucking like unparalleled. I mean like I don't know what the deal was like with who the action choreographer was but it's some of the coolest stuff and the action scenes are all pretty short right but they're just these like insane bursts

and they I took a lot of inspiration because like I like how you guys in that film like anytime you're shooting a machine gun you're always screaming and there's something very primal realistic about that because it's like you get the feeling like it's like the character's like almost trying to like

threaten as he's like firing was that like your idea or is that sort of the choreographers that's just me having fun you know if I'm out of arrange some place and I got a machine gun I'm screaming at the same time you know yeah no character

no character development there I didn't want to ask you though when did you know when you were working in the 80s and 90s that kids like Adam had that relationship to your work? Did you have a consciousness of being idolized and that there were fan clubs? Like obviously they were successful films. You know what? I don't, I think I'm just different than a lot of actors. I came out to L.A. to work. I needed, you know, I needed right away to get a job so I could not work at the manual labor job that I had. And so I started in bits and pieces and television. And I never, I never, it never,

it never dreamt in my wildest dreams that I would end up in some of the movies that, and work with some of the people that I worked with. I thought like, if I could be on a soap opera for 10 years and get paid 100 grand a year, I would have sold my soul for it, you know, getting a commercial. was a huge deal. Getting into the screen actors guild was a huge deal, getting a, like, a modeling job that the picture showed up in Playboy. I'd run home and show my parents. And, like, my expectations were really low.

I've talked to a lot of actors. I knew ever since I was, you know, three or four that I wanted to be an actor. I didn't at all. I went to college. I did go out. Are there nudes of you in Playboy? That's Playgirl. That Playgirl.

Yeah. You should know that. I think you do. So I don't, so I, I never, it was always about the work to me. And it was, I just would go from one job to another job to another job. And I was very, very serious about the work. And I never had a publicist. I was never, I never, I felt a little bit better.

we did the red carpet for his movie. And what's it called? Onsla, onsla. So we, and I felt a little bit more comfortable, but I never really felt comfortable doing press and doing the red carpet and doing pictures and going to parties and stuff like that. So I was not aware.

I mean, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they started calling me iconic. And so I had to get my dictionary out and read like, I'm going to. Okay. And I just am a different type of a person when it comes to the movie star element and the actor element. The actor element I've always been very serious about and always been very passionate about. The movie star stuff, I always felt uncomfortable. I'd go in like the morning show or I'd go in the Johnny Carson show.

And I just, it just made me feel uncomfortable. And I'm better now because I have a podcast and it's easier. When you're doing three minute bites, you know, and you've got to get something out to promote your movie and be cute at the same time, that's like what I was never very, very, very good at and felt very, very, very, uncomfortable and standing, I still even standing that line, hey, Michael, over here, over here. You know, it all just seems a little, you know, I, I, I like the work.

Okay, okay. And I really, really, really enjoy the work and collaborating. And one of the reasons why Adam and I got along so well is we took his words and we mushed them and we played with them and and and and I had some weird ideas and what about this and what about that and yes Michael and no Michael and uh the most important thing for me and the most fun thing for me is um and you don't always get this experience but when you are able to have a writer-director uh and ask you actor and the words, okay? You start with that. A lot of times that's what you just end up with,

you know? You go do a movie and those are the lines and that's the director and I do my job. He does his job and there's the lines. But in our situation, and it was the same with me with Jim Cameron. It was the same with me with Billy Friedkin. It's been the same with me. The fun of it for me is being able to go like, hey, this is cool. what do you want to do with it, you know? Well, let's push this over here. What do you think about this idea? I like that idea.

Let's go with that idea. What about this? Not so much, you know, but being able to mold it and be collaborative is the, for me, it's the high of acting. It's the highest part of acting. And we did quite a bit of that for a role that doesn't have an extraordinary extraordinary amount of screen time, we worked a lot on that.

And we had fun and we made some changes to what I think that I thought what we were going to be doing when I came in and maybe what Adam thought we were going to be doing when we came in. And I thought it, you know, it worked out really well. And so that to me is the important thing. Yeah, I kind of wanted to ask you about

you know, not just that sequence, but the whole vibe of the movie. You spent about 10 years in an IP world, you know, making big movies where there's a lot of, I guess, interested parties probably that have to... To say the least. Yeah. And I really fell in love with your movies with your next and the guest. Those are the, you know, those are my favorites of your films. And this feels like a real return to that, very conscious return to that. I was wondering maybe you could talk a little bit about why you pivoted back. to doing a movie like this and maybe why these movies are so important to you. I mean, I guess it kind of, you know, like started back in 2021. You know, like this was like, you know, during the pandemic and, you know, the world was in an apocalyptic state. And, you know, I, you know, we managed to squeeze out Godzilla versus Kong and it was, you know, still successful at the top of that year.

And that was just, you know, just such an intense situation. And, you know, in some ways, I think back to that time and I'm like, would I have done, you know, another sequel to Godzilla versus Kong right away if the pandemic had happened? But because there was this feeling of like, you know, it felt like movies could just go away. And it was like, you know, and I had a great time doing Godzilla versus Kong. It was a lot of work. And I was at the end of it just like, I felt like I was going to be really burnt out. But really just like after like a short period of recoup and, you know, the fear of the. the industry going down, it was sort of like, hell, I'm ready to throw me back in. Let's do another,

you know, and so I instantly, the second that we were able to develop another one, I did. And so, you know, we started that process towards the end of the year of 2021. And, you know, at that time, I'd been working on a lot of other little stuff. And I'd had a lot of movies set up. You know, I was like attached to Face Off 2 and Thundercats and a movie called Hardcore, just all these big studio projects, you know. So all my development was kind of in that direction, but I really wanted to do something a little smaller, a little bit more my thing. But I didn't really have that story quite yet, you know. And then at the end of the year, I was over at Simon Barrett's house. He lives like just a couple blocks from me on the other side of Los Felas Boulevard, which is a pretty, you know, the traffic goes pretty good, good and fast down there.

And so we had, we finished our day of working on a face off too. you know, I remember I was like about to walk across the street, you know, and I thought, oh, you know, I should go to the grocery store and get some tacos, like some stuff to make tacos. And so I started turning around and I started walking towards the grocery store. And I thought, you know, I'm going to go get my car. I was picturing myself with like bags walking up the street, you know. And so I was like, fuck it. I'm going to go back to my house.

And so I went back over to the street and then the light turned green, you know, or the crosswalk light turned on. and I took like two or three steps in the road and a car just plowed right into me, you know, and I like flipped over the hood of it, you know, like basically the way that I can describe it is like I never actually saw the car and the car never stopped, by the way, it just kept going. And like it was like I went from being like thinking about, I'm going to go make tacos for dinner. You know, that would have been my last thought to suddenly it was like I couldn't really see anything, but I was aware that I was getting hit by a car. And it was like I was in a tornado is what it felt like.

So I don't know if it looked as impressive as it felt, you know. But it was interesting because everything does go in slow motion, you know. Like I didn't feel any pain, but I knew I was being hit by a car, you know. Wow. And like I landed and the first feeling I had was embarrassment weirdly of like, oh my God, that was my fault. You know, because I didn't even think about the fact at first, it only occurred to me later. I was like, no, I had the ride away. Somebody just ran a red light, you know.

But I, like, pulled myself out of the road and I thought, oh, my God, I was like, am I paralyzed, you know? And so, you know, I tried to stand up and then all the pain hit me, right? And it really, it felt like somebody took a gigantic paddle and just like, just like the size of me and just hit this side of me, you know. And it was just like all this pain surge. I couldn't get up, you know. And, you know, but I was kind of doing this, like, check. you know, like the scariest thing when you do something like that is that you're sort of like, okay, is my neck okay, you know, am I paralyzed? Can I move my legs? And you go through this

process. You're like, okay, I'm in a lot of pain, but I'm okay. And I just felt like, like all this blood on my face, you know, and this guy runs up to me and he's like, oh my God, are you okay? I was like, oh my God, I was like, I thought that my whole face had gotten ripped off, you know, like, that's what it felt like, you know. And I was like, oh my God, do I have a face, you know? And he was like, yeah, yeah, you're all right. You know, like, and so, you know, one of the bystanders that came by, they called, like, an ambulance and stuff. And so, like, I got them to, like, go get Simon. Simon comes out from his apartment, you know, and he comes over.

He's like, oh, yeah, you look all right, man. And, like, you know, so, like, the ambulance comes against me, takes me off. Long story short, you know, like, I'm really fucked up for a little while. And I started that Godzilla movie in a cast, you know, like, because the pre-production officially started two weeks after that. And so I didn't have any time to heal at all, you know. And then, you know, six months later, my partner gets pregnant and this was like a totally unexpected thing. And then so suddenly I'm thrust into all these, like, I'm thrust into this new reality

where I'm a father. I'm recuperating from this accident, you know, I'm making another, you know, $150 million movie, you know, all the pressures that come with that and the stress. You know, I ended up having another little physical problem that I don't want to go into right now. And so, you know, like once I finished that Godzilla movie and I was in post-production, I thought, well, you know what's interesting is now I'm in a place that weirdly, like, you know, because I've been in franchise IP land for so long, you know, I didn't really have a story to tell, you know? It was like I didn't, I was, all my movies for so long since the guest were focused on, you know, just building my. career. And so that's why they were all sort of like, these are the available movies that I can get made, you know, and I could put myself into them, but they weren't my story. And so I was like, I knew that I wanted to do a story about a parent, you know, a reluctant parent. I knew I wanted to do a story about kind of PTSD in a way, you know, the military thing just became like a way to do that because I felt like I was working through my own things. And, you know, so this movie, even though it's like, when you watch it, it's just like a good time and it's like fun. And, you know, uh, you. You know, sometimes it's ridiculous and sometimes it's funny.

And it's got a couple disturbing things. And, you know, it is about a character dealing with, like, past trauma and stuff like that. But, you know, I wanted to do something that I could put myself into. It's very personal, it sounds like. Oh, yeah. That's a crazy story. Yeah, it was wild. It's funny.

I was thinking, as I was thinking about talking to both of you guys, I was trying to think about how to characterize the kind of movie that it is and the way that, like, you're really even being used in the movie as, like, a, like, a talif. like a symbol for this, the history of these movies, right? Like the Terminator and aliens and a lot of these films represent. And I kept thinking of black and chrome. Like that was the thing, like the color, the images, the ideas that struck me. And those movies are defined by their action.

You've made a lot of action movies. You've made a lot of action movies. I was hoping you could maybe demythologize like what makes a good action movie. And how do you know you're making a good action movie if you do? Because what we see on screen is obviously so dramatically different from what it's like to on set of one of these movies. You can talk more about, you know, shooting action. You know, I'm just like, where do I run?

You know, where do I jump? You know, I don't really know the basics of shooting action. So you can talk about it. Do you know when you're making one that it's working? Well, you know every shot that you do, whether it's an action shot or whether it's just, you know, talking. Most actors, at least I know, when it's working and when it's not working. And, you know, we rely on our director at the same time.

You know, the action sequences for me really got, you know, real when I, you know, did The Terminator. And, you know, Jim was very intense. and very focused and because of his intensity and his focus and his passion, you know, I wanted to please him. And so I, you know, I did a lot of running and jumping. And there were a few stunts in there that I didn't do. I, you know, when it comes to action, for instance, when Adam said, oh, you know, I just saw this movie that you did called Time Bomb and the action. And it is incredible. I'd seen Time Bomb in a rough cut,

and I was, like, very disappointed because I'd seen this guy's previous movie. So I just know... I know when things work and when they don't work, and mostly action sequences, I think, are a lot easier to make work than some of the other stuff. Am I wrong?

I mean, from a director's standpoint, that might be completely different. Well, you know, I was really delighted when we did this one because, you know, like, your character doesn't have a lot of action, but there's some pretty, there's, there's an intense moment that you have to do, and you definitely insisted on doing it, and we didn't use a double for you or anything at all. I don't think we did at all, no, because you fell back on the pad and everything.

And by the way, like, on set, like, you know, we had to put some squibs on Michael, and, like, there's like a moment where, like, when we did it, just, like, kind of around everybody, he took his shirt off and everybody was like, damn, right? You guys looking at this? It was like, he's still got it, man. Look at that. You know, like, everybody's all jealous and shit.

You know, it's funny. It's like, people ask me all the time about, like, oh, you know, you look like you really enjoy doing action, you know, is it really fun to be doing that stuff? And the answer is absolutely not. Actions never fun because you never have enough time to do it, you know? And it's like, it's fun in the sense that, like, you know, when you're rolling and it works, it's like, yeah, everybody's like having a, you know. blast, you know, in that moment. But it's just like, you know, action requires so much coverage

most of the time. And even more difficult if you're trying to do it in a longer take, you know, it takes that much more prep. And, you know, in a movie like this, a lot of like the, the choreography is tied in with like gunshots and all this stuff. And so, you know, action is one of those things that, like, it's, I love it. But, you know, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, yeah. It can be a pain in the ass. Are you ever surprised after you finish something that you, maybe if you weren't sure if something was working or not, when one of these movies goes on to be iconic?

Like, I know you've talked about Tombstone, right, where that was like a little bit of a more complicated production. Here's the thing is that people don't realize. They won't realize with this movie either. There'll be a bunch of people come out and review it, and they'll say this and they'll say that about it. But they don't really F-and-no, okay? Terminator came out. Terminator came out.

And it did well. It won the first weekend, and nobody really expected that. But Terminator was not in the top 20 movies box office the year it came out. Okay. So it wasn't this, you know, now we think of like the Terminator. Of course, it was this huge hit. It wasn't. It wasn't. And, um, it. nobody was like clamoring to get me in their movies. And luckily I was able to work with Jim a few more times. And now, you know, people talk about the Terminators being iconic, being, you know, changing the way that, you know, people, you know, shoot movies. And Tombstone is another example of a movie that we made.

We had a lot of problems making it. The movie came out. Nobody gave a shit. Nobody cared. I can remember the New York Times review was just horrible. A lot of bad reviews. Nobody ever, because I want to read my own reviews, see what people say. New York Times, L.A. Times, the reporter, the variety, San Francisco Chronicle, the Texas.

Nobody even mentioned Johnny Ringo. Didn't even get a mention. And when they were, everybody said Val was good, but most people didn't like that movie, okay? So the people's immediate reactions to movies, reviewers, and when they have to all of a sudden write down, oh, I like this movie for these reasons, and I didn't like it for these reasons, I really don't think that they're that applicable to, really how good the movie is people don't realize you know shashank is another example of a movie that like nobody cared about nobody cared about it now yeah i mean like with the guest i mean like that's probably like the movie i'm most identified with in a lot of ways um and you like on that one we

we got like good reviews out of the festivals but like nobody saw that film at all i was just telling someone i saw it at a screening at the ace theater out here in l.a and it was blew the doors off. You would have thought it was the Terminator when it played. But then, you know, it's also about

how many people will a movie reach at any given time and then how they find it. Like, you told the story about going to the video store to find aliens. Like, that's how I saw

a lot of your movies. I don't think I even saw Tombstone in theaters. I think I saw it on video. Yeah. And like, I think the shelf life thing continues. But one thing I was thinking

about with you is you saw that over the course of 10 or 12 years of your career where like the Terminator becomes increasingly more popular in the 80s. Did you find yourself trying to chase parts like that or movies? No.

I was trying to make a living and I was like trying to take, you know, the best roles that came along. I was never, but he chased anything. I'm just like I got sent scripts and if I liked them, I did them. A lot of them I didn't like it. My big mistake with my career was I was, would get a script like Navy SEALs for instance and I would get it and say like oh uh well this is not not not not really what I was expected Charlie Sheen's doing it oh Charlie Sheen's doing it oh okay um who's directing it Lewis Teague Lewis Teague what's he done a woman in red oh

a woman in red oh that was good like I yeah I liked a woman in red that was that was really well done Cujo, too. Come on. Coojo. Well, Coojo. Yeah, okay. And so I needed that push. And so I said, okay, I'm in. And then I found him he didn't direct a woman in red. That was Gene Wilder who directed a woman in red. He directed a movie called A Lady in Red.

So, but that movie, like, it needed a lot of work. And unlike Adam, unlike Jim Cameron, unlike Billy Friedkin, they had the clamps down on that script. I don't know what they wanted to make some comedy or something like that. It's like four movies in one. The tones are all over the place.

It's a mess. And we had the Navy behind us going, hey, you want to shoot on an aircraft carrier? Shoot on the aircraft carrier. You want to fly in jets? We'll fly in jets. You want to do helicopter stuff? We'll do helicopter stuff.

We have a Navy seal. to double each one of you. We got underwater stuff. And that was my biggest disappointment. I kind of forget what your original question was really. It makes me think of something that's true for both of you guys in your careers. Like, Navy Seals now has like a $50 4K,

and people love that movie. So even if you worked on it, you're like, I don't know, it didn't work. Nobody loves that movie. You'd be surprised, man. I don't know where you're getting your information. You'd be surprised. And to tell you what, no Navy Shale's love of that movie.

That may be true. And, you know, your early films, too, like, maybe they weren't huge box office successes, but these things, they build cults around them, especially genre movies. They really have these massive cults. Like, what is it like to kind of experience that, having made something and feeling like maybe it didn't totally reach as many people as you wanted? Well, you know, it's funny. It's like, you know, back then it was probably pretty disappointing,

but more from the perspective, not just of the individual movies, but more what it meant for the longevity of my career. Because for me, for many years, it was always about, like, getting the next one set up, you know, because, you know, like, that's really where, like, it hurt me more, you know. Because the reviews were good in those early movies, but the box office wasn't good. But, you know, I have to admit, like, you know,

after doing those Godzilla movies in A-24, probably doesn't want me to hear me say this. But, like, when I was setting up this film, I was like, this is not a movie that's about opening weekend for me. I mean, you know, you hope for the best and everything. But for me, it's like, you know, kind of selfishly as a director, I felt like I needed to kind of solidify who I am as a filmmaker. Because I think like I felt like I was kind of getting lost in the franchise IP thing. And, you know, even though those movies have my personality and them in some of my style, it's like you're still playing by pre-established rules that those IP and stuff dictate, you know.

And so for me, the mission statement was like, I want to get in there and I want to do my movie. And, you know, hopefully it's successful when it comes out. But I felt like if I'm doing my thing, it's like this is a calling card for another 10 years if I'm not able to convince somebody to make, let me make another one of these for a while, you know. And, and that's an important thing that, you know, filmmakers, you know, like especially if you get kind of sucked into the studio system is that at a certain point, you know, like if you're able to. to step away, it's like you kind of have to, you know, you have to like force yourself to get back in there and, you know, do the movies that are, you know, kind of all about your, your own thing, you know. And, you know, also for me, too, you know, Tombstone would come out and I didn't look at it as like, oh, it's not doing, you know, like, I was too busy trying to make a living. I've got five boys,

I've been married three times. I, you know, I just had to work. And I was just like, working. And so for whatever reason, I'd never sat back and thought, like, I didn't realize box office was even important in any way until I did Grindhouse. And when I did Grindhouse, it was the very first time I remember looking at the opening weekend and thinking, oh, that's weaker than I expected. But I'm so busy doing the acting part of it that, the career and the icon of whatever all those words and that just just just just happened there was no there was no like well I'll do this movie and if I do this movie then that will happen there was no planning on being I never thought a movie

star or a film actor working with people like Adam and Jim and and all sorts of good people and working with great actors. It never dawned on me, never thought that I would ever work in that, in these environments. And so I, it's hard for me to explain, but I just never thought of it as a career as much as a job. And there are guys like Johnny Depp and like Brad Pitt and numerous, numerous people, Denzel and Richard Gere, numerous people that are great movie stars and great actors too. But I felt like I did a really good job acting,

but the movie star stuff, I just, I didn't pay attention to it, and I didn't feel comfortable. It's funny that you put it that way, because I wanted to ask you a little bit about how you're really able to get, I think, what could be otherwise perceived as sometimes more prestigious actors to really let their freak out.

You know, like Dan is so good, Literally in this one, we get a lot of freakingies. Truly, but like Rebecca and Drew Starkey is so, so good and so magnetizing in this movie. Why do you think actors want to play like that in your movies? What is it about that you see in them, that you want to see that from them? I don't know. Maybe, maybe, yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think, you know, I'm a very collaborative person, not just with actors, but across the board with, you know, everybody.

I mean, the funny thing is about when you're making. films, the directors oftentimes the least experience went on set, you know. And I remember like back in the mid-2000s, a friend of mine was writing a movie and it was for a film, I won't say which movie it was, but it was, I think the budget was about a million and a half, you know, and so we were right out of film school. And so it was like, oh, cool, you know, they're doing this big movie out in New Orleans or wherever it was. And so we went on set and the guy directing it was a writer up until that point. This was his first movie he ever directed.

And so he really didn't know what he was doing. And self-admittedly, he didn't know what he was doing. He even said, like, when we showed up, he was like, yeah, you know, like, I didn't know really like what a director did. Like, when I came on set the first day, I was like, do I tell him where to put the lights or whatever? You know, and he's telling us this stuff. And I'm just like, what?

You know what I mean? And then it kind of hit me. I'm looking at like this guy doesn't know what he's doing, admittedly doesn't know what he's doing. And you've got all these professionals around him that do know what they're doing, right? And you got all these jobs. And it suddenly hit me. I was like, a movie is designed so that even if the director has no idea what he's doing, it will get done. It may not be a good movie, but it will get completed.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And sometimes that works. Sometimes there's a magic to just the pure creativity that somebody can bring. and it can, you know, even if they don't really know all the ends and out of directing, you know, it can still turn into something. Tombstone was a lot like that. And Tombstone is a beloved movie. These days, that movie 30 years ago, nobody cares about.

Now, everybody absolutely loves it. But that movie had Kevin Jar for four weeks. They threw out most of his material. They brought in George Cosmodos, who was. a shooter. He had no idea what the story was about, what the characters were about or whatever. They shot it. They got it to a good editor. And, you know, it didn't really have a director. People asked about Kurt directing it, and Kurt was totally responsible for, we had a script that was 160 pages, and he tightened it up, and a lot of actors lost scenes. And he had

to be the person who was in charge and he's a great guy and a great leader. This is going to have to go, Michael. This is going to have to go powers. And the wife's, this is going to have to go. But it was a mess. It didn't have a director. It had a series of people that were sort of directing it. And when it came out, it didn't do anything.

Now, 30 years later, that's just kind of typical of, you don't need a director. My 11-year-old son could be a director. He could because DP could come to him and say, you want the cameras over here or over here? And he's straight, put them over there, okay? You want that actor or that actor? I'll take that actor, you know? Do you want to like, so we run this scene?

Yeah, go ahead. All right, we'll shoot it like this. Yes. Are you happy? You know, like truly, truly. Yeah. And, you know, like with me, I really like working with repeat actors. You know, I think that's like that.

rapport that you can build is great. Like, I mean, for instance, Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens, like, I couldn't have started my experience with them with this movie for a lot of reasons, you know? And it was the, you know, they trust me and I trust them. And it was almost like we were challenging ourselves to do things that they'd never done before, you know, because we had that familiarity, you know? And, you know, I think it's the same with Michael. I mean, it's like, this was our first kind of testing ground. But by the end of it, like, we were already really kind of having a lot of fun. Like, there's a sequence in this movie where, you know,

where Michael's, like, sort of, like, offending Dan Stevens' character. And in the script, he's sort of just like, you know, I was actually picturing it one way, which was a little bit more straightforward. Like, it's kind of written in a way where he's sort of just like, you know, you just ate shit doctor. And he's sort of just, like, talking down to him, you know. And on the day, Michael was like, he's like, you know, like, I want to try something, you know, like, what?

What if I'm like totally humiliating this guy and I'm just laughing at him. I'm just laughing at him. I'm just laughing my ass off. And I was like, you know, and I'm thinking, okay, this could work, but if it doesn't work, I need to make sure that I have like an out, you know, like, but I want to, you know, I want to give it a shot, you know. So, you know, I tempered the expectations. I was like, all right, let's try it. I was like, but let's at least do it the way it's scripted and, you know, just in case,

you know. And then, you know, he did like take one of it. And I was like, okay, forget the way it's scripted. This is working. Let's do that. So I'm looking forward to our next one. I mean, you can see, you know, I got Michael to, you know, he's scruffier than usual. This is because I've asked him to.

You know, so we can't say what it is yet. You know, but, you know, right away I was like, okay, will you grow your hair out like this? And he texted me, yes, sir. And I was like, yes. Michael, I want to ask you about that because what Dan is doing in the movie is pretty big. And you've been opposite, like Paxton and aliens is big. So when you're acting and you know an actor's making a big choice and the way that they're performing, like, how do you respond to that?

Is that something that is discussed before you start shooting? You know, usually, it's always about the words. It's all, from an actor's standpoint, it's always how good the words are, you know? And this was an extremely well-written script, okay? The reason why I made that choice was this was described early on, I don't know if it was you or A-24, as a gonzo something or other, you know, which is to me just meant like anything goes, you know? It's like playing an Alzheimer's person, you know. I could just say anything I want here and, you know, like, and I thought, I'm not even sure where that came from. I just thought, wouldn't it be fun if instead of, you know, it's staying in that sort of realm of, of, I'm disappointed for the company that I'm working for, that this didn't work out, that this whole thing was just insane.

And it's just struck me as funny. And I didn't think he would go for it. I didn't think he would go for. I just didn't. I just, but this is the thing about Adam. I think most good actors, and I heard Drew was this way too, come after you. Come after you. What about this?

What about this? Can we try this? Can we try that? What do you think about this? Okay, well, let's give it a try. And Jim is also good that way, you know? Just like, yeah, okay. And he'll say no to me eight times out of ten, but two times out of ten, he'll say,

well, let's try it. Or once, you know, like, yeah. really works. And that, that to me, is a very collaborative. What makes movies fun for me is not showing up on the set, not showing up on the red carpet, not learning my lines. It's getting together with a group of two or three or four people, including your DP and your sound guy, you know, and saying, well, like, how are we going to mold this to make it even better, you know, and how are we going to kind of make this like you know jump and um i think that we took you know when i first got the roll adam sent me a a letter and uh said that he was a fan and and and would i do this and uh i

immediately went out and saw the guest and i was like okay i'm done yeah definitely going to do this for sure not that i would wouldn't have anyway but um then i watched two king congresses Godzilla's that he made, and I'm not the guy kind of, I'm not going to watch King Kong versus God's. That's just not my fucking, you know, that's just not my wheelhouse, you know. But I watched it and right from the very beginning, I thought, oh, this is kind of interesting. They're fun. Yeah, you know, this is a lot, a lot more. There was a lot there that I didn't even realize because I hadn't given it a chance. And so, you know, so, you know, then I signed on and, you know, it was great.

And the thing also that was happening is that Adam had already shot the rest of the movie. So you know the movie. You know that I work with Dan in that sequence. That entire sequence that takes place with the helicopters coming in and us coming up. And that was all. So he already had shot his movie. And he looked really fucking confident. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I know what I have.

He looked like he was really happy with what he already shot, you know. And that, that, and I asked him also like, you know, how did it go? Going great, Michael, going great, you know. You never know if it didn't, though. Yeah. No, but this was a great shoot. This was like the smoothest shoot that I ever had. So it was authentic.

Well, you said, you described it as a calm set. But this is not a calm movie. This is like a rip-roaring movie. He's calm, okay? He is a leader that leads, I would say, by example, but he's calm. And I'm sure inside of his head he's intense, but he's not running around this and that, you know. He'll, we'll finish a shot. And then he will walk over to the next place he's going to shoot and his crew just kind of follow.

He follows him over there, and he's very calm. And maybe it's because he knows what he wants. But I've been telling this story. I've got to tell this story because this to me is about like collaboration. Okay. So I found out, because I talked to your DP yesterday at the party, and I found out something. But anyway, so I had to go off and do another movie.

So Adam showed me the movie about four months ago. And I was, when I went to see the movie, I was, I was like, what am I going to say if it's like, it's not as good as I, you know. You still think about that because you've been in that position before? Well, I have. And the problem with me is I'm really honest. I told Jim Cameron, I thought the third act of aliens had some, not the Abyss. The third act of the Abyss had something chunky about it. Some people agree with you. Yeah, just, you know.

And so, so anyway, so this is kind of this collaborative thing that I'm talking about. I'm shooting a scene and I'm waiting for the doctor. I'm waiting for the doctor to show up. And so I say to Adam, like, I'm fucking just standing around here, waiting for the scene to open. He, give me a phone just so I've got something that I'm doing, you know? The phone ends up being like kind of part of the character. I'm on the phone. We introduce you.

So I take the phone, which was not scripted or anything. So I take the phone and I'm doing this and we had a real good prop guy, real good prop guy. And he took the phone and he did some stuff to it and made it look kind of military. Not that it makes any difference. Maybe it would help me or whatever. So I'm looking at the phone. I'm doing the phone. And then we're getting ready to shoot what I would consider like a master, although he's

He doesn't really shoot masters per se, but what I would consider shooting a master. And the next thing I know, he is like down on the phone. And the phone is the beginning of the shot, okay? And then he pulls back to reveal me, and then he pulls back even further to reveal the operators. So if I hadn't said to him, hey, can I have a phone? And this is like a director who's, you know, he's got a storyboarded. He could shoot it 20 different ways. But because I asked for a phone, he thought, hey, maybe we'll do it like this.

And we did. So when I saw it last night, I realized, I thought, like, I saw that the first time. And then your DP told me, oh, the shots in there, but it's just when it's pulled back a little further. But my point is that me being able to say, hey, that shot wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for my input, which was not input. It was just, hey, can I have a phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what's exciting, you know, about. Do you think that's something you would have done 15 years ago?

I mean, I was even more seated the pants 15 years ago. Well, yeah, because, you know, like my first movies were all, and that's probably where this comes from is, you know, my first movies were, we didn't even have scripts. We just improvised the whole film, you know, because that was part of a movement that people call mumblecore, you know, and those mumblecore movies were entirely unscripted, just actors kind of riffing, and, you know, you just shoot a ton of footage, and then you kind of put it a movie together. And so that was a good lesson, though, for me, because it does teach you to sort of, like, not be rigid. I'm, you know, I've never been the type of filmmaker where, like,

I'm like, just shoot the boards, you know what I mean? Because, like, I want that kind of, like, the realism and the spontaneity. And again, I want to be inspired by the people around me, you know, like the actors, the crew and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, the shot you're talking about. Like, we knew we wanted to do a shot with, like, you're waiting. And we had all the guys, like, suiting up and all their stuff. But we didn't really have a beginning to this shot.

And so whenever I saw you on the phone, I was like, oh, this is interesting. It also said something about your character because it's like, you know, this guy is in the middle of this, like, you know, crazy. military exercise and he's busy you know what I mean and he's the only guy that gets a phone at this place you know But there was also a two-fold thing too is that because it was the beginning of the shot We were able to kind of like just kind of subconsciously stash One of the like the cockroach one of the main killers is mask over there, you know So that it gave the audience one moment to see that mask before we put it on the character and it's one of those things you you probably don't even really notice it

But it's it's in there so it's like you know, part of the shot is a mask in the background, and then the phone, and then you pull back and see you on the phone, and then it's the rest of the guys. And so, you know, like, I mean, maybe I also just didn't have a really good plan that morning, and I was just like, oh, yeah, yeah, let's just fucking do this. I ask you about it, and you said, like, well, you know, you have it all storyboarded out anyway. And there were probably 15 different ways that he could have shot that. and being the director that he is, other people that I work with, and I work with some good people that are all so similar. But most people come in and they know, before I walk on this set,

they know where I'm going to be and they know where their camera is going to be. And, you know, it just, okay, so I come in, I do my lines, try to do the best I can with the other actors. And there's a difference between that and exploring a scene from a filmmaking standpoint, from an acting standpoint, from a DP standpoint, where everybody's kind of like, you know, going in and saying, well, what if we put the camera, Michael, if you could take one step over this way, then we can make the camera work. And that is, to me, the most fun about making.

That's why I get my car, I drive them on my set, get in the makeup chair, put the ward robe on, walk out on the set. Usually wait four or five hours before I walk out on the set in my trailer because they always want me there at dawn to work at one in the afternoon. But come out and it's that moment of collaborating with Adam especially on this show. It is just like it's thrilling for me. It's thrilling to be able to. it's like being part of a painting, you know?

I like that you don't also, like, you don't actually go back to your trailer between shots. Michael just, like, hangs out. Like, you know, it's really funny because like when we, you know, first, you know, our first day working together, it was like the, it's like a big exposition scene. So it was a very difficult scene. We had a lot of pages and stuff and, you know, and there's a lot of like walking and talking and it's very complicated, you know. So it was kind of a hard scene to kind of like start, you know, a character off and a relationship. all that kind of stuff, but it went really well. But like, you know, once we did our first sort of blocking, you know, like we sent everybody

away and, you know, the crew starts going. And, you know, Mike is just like hanging out. And I look behind like a door and he's like sitting there and he's like sitting there like this. Like, you know what I thought? It was just like, it was such a funny visual. I have a photo of it too. You know, you just hang it out. But like he likes to just hang out.

He doesn't leave the set ever. And I don't know. Were you always like that? Or? No, I wasn't always like that. We just have a lot more fun in my trailers. Let's talk about that. Back in the day.

I find now, listen, what I'm doing in my trailer is the same thing that I'll be doing two hours from now at home. I'll be sitting on my bed, like going like this on my phone, you know. And I like the energy of a crew. I like the crew to know that I'm interested in them and I kind of get to know them at the same time. I talk to them a little bit. And I like them to know that I appreciate what they're doing

and that I'm watching them. And, you know, it's like actors like people watching them. And I'm genuinely interested in, okay, what's the shot going to be? Oh, he's got a camera here. and he's got a camera here. Okay, well, I'm going to walk behind this camera and see where he's at on this camera, and I'm going to walk behind this camera,

and then I'll talk to the guy, says the camera are going to move. And I get a better idea than just walking onto the set, being an actor, I know more about what the shot is going to entail what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like, whether the camera's going to move. And I, I, um, I, um, I enjoy the camaraderie.

You know, making a movie is a lot like being, I grew up playing sports. And, you know, we all want to win the Super Bowl. And we're all playing to win the Super Bowl. And everybody has a position. He's the coach. You know, I might be, you know, the tight end. Dan might be one of the running backs.

We've got linemen. We've got. And it's a team. team effort. And so I like to I like to be out in the field, not in the locker room, you know. This has been great. The movie is a lot of fun. We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last

great thing they've seen? Have you guys seen anything? Well, I tell you, just out of you know, I don't know if you call it great, but I have trouble finding movies. You know, and I've been around for so long that I've seen all the great movies like 10 times. But I hadn't, I'd seen, Adria had done a movie with Glenn.

Glenn Powell. Yeah. And I saw that and I'm like, okay, she's very sexy and I think that was successful. Yeah. Hit Man, yeah. But I watched a movie called El Freakos, El Freaks. Do you know that movie?

Oh, yes. Yes, her film. Yeah. And I saw that when I met her, and I didn't get a chance. to talk to her. But I wanted to say, I saw this movie.

She's on it as a producer. I have a feeling that movie wouldn't have got made if she wasn't. Very small film. Very small movie shot supposedly in Cuba. Yeah.

And, you know, if you're familiar with the movie, it's just a little tiny movie about people that were so desperate in Cuba that they would inject themselves with the HIV virus to, you know, get away from the sugar cane fields

and the horrible life that they were living in the city. And she was great in it. And she's, there's a scene, and, you know, the scene where she's chasing the car out and her husband out. I just love her. And by the way, like, she is, like, phenomenal. And Drew is fucking phenomenal.

makes some like really interesting kind of like really interesting choices and really interesting choices. I saw the movie with a buddy and every time he showed up on screen he turned and looked at each other like this is the good shit. Yeah. Luce Freakies is the name of the movie that you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've heard her talk about talking to Adam. I wasn't sure if I could do this. I wasn't sure. Well, in that movie at one point, one of the young kind of star of the movie is lying about having HIV and she finds out about it and she just gets fucking she goes fucking like she goes to her ex-husband in your movie. No, you could, she knew she could do that.

I'm looking at Jason Momoa taking pictures and I'm like, I don't know how Jason is, you know. Don't get her wrong. She's a fiery spitfire. He said she was just a pleasure to work with a lot of fun and everything, but man, I wouldn't want her mad at me. I've been lucky. I've had almost only good experiences with actors. I've only had one season actor that I work with that I had a bad experience with. Okay. Okay. What are his initials? I'll tell you afterwards. So it is a man. Yeah. So, like the, you know, it's funny with me, it's like, I'm like,

always so far behind because I end up re-watching movies more than I watch new ones. Like, I just get obsessed with, like, repeat viewings, you know? And so, like, whenever I'm going to watch a new movie, it always feels more like I try to take as safe of bed as possible because I hate more than anything, the feeling of, like, walking out of a movie and, you know, being disappointed or, like, bored during the film and that kind of stuff. But this year's been pretty good. like I really like Pillion and I thought that was a really great experience.

Really like it I was the the ending really through a curveball at me. Yeah. I was really. What's Pillion? See, there's so much kind. I'd love for Adam to explain the premise of the movie to you. It's like the scene with Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens, but like the gay version of that for like for two hours.

Yeah. It's pretty amazing. It's like nothing I've really ever seen before. It's actually it's actually pretty. funny. It's like a romantic comedy. It's like kind of a sweet movie for a lot of it in a weird way. It's called Pillion. Pillion. Yeah.

Pillion. Like it's like the I guess it's a reference to like the seat on the back of like a motorcycle. Oh, yeah, right. Okay. That one and also backrooms. I mean, I loved obsessions, you know, or obsession and I love backrooms. But like back rooms like, I don't know, I've always been obsessed

with like the liminal space thing. And so to see somebody do a movie on it, it was, I was like really, you know, like kind of blown away just like the visuals of it and um kind of jealous too you know because like i've always thought like oh you know if like like let's say like i retired today like i think the the thought that i've always had is like i'd love to just get like a shitty um digital um camera from like 2002 and just like drive across the country and just like find liminal spaces and

like do a photo book of it or something yeah yeah because i just there's something so cool about that so you know i was really really into that and It was just, you know, it's been a cool year for horror and all that. Right on. Michael, Adam. Thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, thank you. Thanks to Adam and Michael.

Thanks to CR. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders for his work on today's episode. Thanks to Lucas Cavanaugh for his production support. I'm headed to tell your ride. Amanda is already in Venice. When we get back, we will have our festival reports. We'll tell you all the movies we saw of what you should see. We'll see you then.