The Rewatchables - ‘King of New York’ With Quentin Tarantino, Bill Simmons, and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

For the 100th episode of 'The Rewatchables,' Quentin Tarantino returns for the third and final movie in his three-part series with us. In the final episode, we return from prison to reclaim our spot atop the New York criminal underworld as we rewatch the 1990 crime thriller ‘King of New York,’ starring Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, and David Caruso, and directed by Abel Ferrara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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wherever you get them. But broke down all the Oscar nomination stuff this week, including it turned out really nice for one of the guests on today's podcast, although we didn't know that when we taped this last month. Coming up, the third part of the Tarantino trilogy here on The Rewatchables. Let's do it. Welcome home, fuckface. King of New York is coming up next.

I spent half my life in prison. I never got away with anything. They're waiting years for this. Inspector to get away with killing all these people. King of New York. I never killed anybody that didn't deserve. Rate it all. Yeah, man, let me tell you about another Saturday night.

All right, Sean Fettyses is here. Quinn Tarantino is here. Yeah, this is the trilogy. The trilogy. We watch the most trilogy with you. It seemed like this is the one you felt the most strongly about that we had to do. Well, this is, yeah, I think this is. the classic of the one that we're doing.

And a movie that probably means the most to me at the time that it came out and still cast a shadow of what it means to me then, what it means to me now. Were you living in 1990 when this comes out? Was I living? No, where were you living? Oh, where was I living? Yes, I was in Los Angeles at the time. And you wanted to break it in the industry? You see this movie?

Well, I literally was getting ready. you know, this comes out in, um, comes out in, um, um, um, comes out in 91, doesn't it? Or does it come out in 90? I think it's like, uh, New York Film Festival in 90, right? I think it's New York, but yeah, uh, I actually think if I'm not mistaken, I actually think it's playing in the theaters probably, it's probably straddling 90 and 91 as far as this theatrical engagement is concerned. But yeah, I'm, I'm getting ready to make reservoir dogs. You know, so it's like, so, uh, so this movie is coming out where I actually now know I'm going to be a filmmaker. It's not just

pie in the sky anymore. I've actually sold my true romance script and so and I'm going I'm going to be making it with this company, live entertainment. I'm going to be making it with the company that made a King of New York is financing

Reservoir Dogs. So this was part of, you know, this was, you know, one of their films. But it was also like a combination of I had a whole history with Able Farrar as far as following him since, not his first movie, but his second movie,

Miss 45 played at the theaters. And this was accumulation of what I'd always waited for him to do. But even before I get into that, which I kind of want to talk about that, before I get into that, was just kind of what this movie meant to me and, like, my partner at the time, Roger Avery and all the other guys had video archives.

And then also just kind of young filmmakers. because most of us were coming out of an attitude that the 80s was the worst decade in the history of Hollywood since the 50s and definitely the most repressive decade. And the movies we looked to were Hong Kong, all right, because they broke the rules that Hollywood was adhering to. Yeah. And both with their violence and then their extremities and just the wild things that could be done that just couldn't be done. And you would totally, like, read interesting paperbacks that you thought were terrific crime novels and everything. Then they'd make them into a movie, and you knew it was going to be bastardized because they couldn't do what the novels could do. And then, like, you knew that you'd see some really interesting foreign film, and then Hollywood bought the rights, and you knew they'd screw it up and ruin it because they couldn't do that in Hollywood.

And you were right. They did all those things. And right before I did my film. two movies came out that broke that mold and actually showed kind of like pointed the way that we were where we were going to go in the 90s and one was king of New York and the other was Lafemdiquita. And it's like when they came out, it was just like, yes, this is where it's at. But it was also something kind of funny about it because even watching it today and imagine talking about it, you got a certain kind of anxiety.

watching King of New York because I think it's an absolute cinematic masterpiece. But there's an anxiety going around because it's so disreputable. You know not everybody's going to get it. So you're going to have to fight for it. If you're going to talk about it in the terms that you want to talk about it, you're going to have to fight for it. And a whole lot of people are just not going to get it. Because it can't even be compared to able to.

Ferrar's next movie, The Bad Lieutenant. Because the Bad Lieutenant exists in an art house world. It is an art house piece of product. And this kind of genre-fied art-house movie. Well, by that point, that became its own thing. And I helped make that happen. That became its own thing. This is still in the exploitation movie world.

It doesn't have, it has the patina of this great look and these magnificent actors and all this stuff. But it is in this exploitation. No, our job is to make a big violent crime film that black folks are going to dig. Right. And that's what it is. And that's what it does. But it's not trying to be Scorsese. You know, as much as it is, as close as it adheres to, as much as it seems like a weird stepchild of Goodfellows from the same year.

It has a more downmarket, disruptible B-movie vibe to it. Yeah, it doesn't have any. of the faith and spirituality stuff that Bad Lieutenant has, which a lot of critics glommed on to, right? It's much more visceral, but it's kind of a moral movie. You know, it's a Robin Hood movie. It's got some ideas about what is good and what is not good. What is wrong with the system and what is right with the system. Oh, well, we're going to talk about it later and everything. But I mean, frankly, I mean, it's the cops have ruined Frank's plan. Yeah. I mean, they bring the whole fucking movie down. Yeah. They're kind of fun to be around, though.

they're awful. That's a complexity of the movie. It was such a weird time to love movies right around. Because I remember like Heather's came out, I'm going to say 88. That's another one. And that was such like a crazy movie. And I just loved it. And I loved Winona Ryder and Slater just seemed like,

fuck me gently with a chain song. And it was like, what is this? Yep. And people loved that. And then there was a backlash to it. Yeah, yeah. And that was the first, because we were talking before we started about all these movies in the 70s and 80s that are just crazy to rewatch now and some of the scenes that were in.

And we're like, oh my God. I can't believe they did that. And in the late 80s, that started a shift. And when this movie came out, Kings of New York, people were fucking furious about it. Like, people were walking out of the New York City Film Festival. Well, forget about that. Well, forget about that, all right?

I'm thinking about those guys, all right? Of course, they're going to react that way. That's the hoi-poly that would never buy a ticket for this movie. Right, right. But people weren't walking out of the theaters when it was playing. All right. People were buying it, you know, going to see it two or three times. It was a small audience.

I mean, what was interesting about it, though, was King of New York came out, and it sent, if you were on its vibe, it sent out a shockwave to you. Now, look, the audience that it was really, that really connected with it was the black audience, and they didn't find it until video. Right. They didn't find it until video. They didn't find it till cable. All right.

So it wasn't like they were filling the theaters. But now, the thing that was interesting is after King of New York, I'm going to ballpark this. But somewhere within, after its last actual play date, six weeks or so later, seven weeks or so later, came New Jack City. Which I felt like just living in Massachusetts was a much bigger deal. Yeah, yeah. Phenomenon. Yeah, no, yeah.

New Jack City was the hit that King in, theatrical, that King in New York wasn't. But to all of us, New Jack City was the Diet Coke version of King of New York. Now, actually, it was still worth watching because we loved King of New York so much that even to take a watered down version of it, all right, was better than anything else. But, you know, to me as, you know, New Jack City was to King in New York, what the Hunger Games was to Battle Royale. Right, right. It's like the weak-ass fucking version, but nevertheless. Right. But this is also one of those things where New Jack City was available to a lot more people.

It was harder for people. lived in Ohio in 1990, it might have been tough to see King of New York. Oh, yeah. It didn't open in as many theaters. Movies didn't get distributed the way that they do now. And even the dialogue around a movie like this, like, you'd have to really be paying attention to know about Abel Ferrar's eighth movie. Well, no, it was like, you know, there was, I mean, I actually know a lot about the history

of King. I'll save it for possible casting things because I actually know a whole lot of inside shit. Oh, good, because there wasn't a lot of good casting. Yeah, I know a whole lot of inside shit. Well, I remember. But at one point, though, just to make. your point about that was at one point, they almost, Abel, almost did it for Universal. Because at Universal, at that time, I remember, because I met with him. We all met with the

dude at some point. There was the guy, Jim Jacks and Casey Silver had a shingle there. And their whole thing at their shingle was for Jim Jacks to bring in the independent filmmakers, all right, that did really terrific work that stood out in the film festival circuit, that did good independent films and bring them under the fold at Universal. And then, you know, their whole thing was like, you know, and then you get to make a movie with Universal and you get to make a studio movie. And then we can keep you, we can keep them off you. And so they had done that with Sam Ramey.

All right. So Sam Ramey had gone to Universal and made Darkman for them. Rick Linkletter had gone to Universal and made Dase and Confused for them. They're the ones that brought John Wu over to America and they did Hard Target. and they talked with us at one point and they talk, they talk with everybody. They talked with Robert Rodriguez at one point. They were trying to get all the guys.

And at one point... All genre guys, basically. Well, I don't think they looked at it. I don't think they looked at Rick Linklitter as a genre guy. We were the independent guys that stood out. Right. And then they did it with Kevin Smith, with Mulrats. They're the ones that brought him over to Universal.

So that was their whole game plan. It was a pretty damn good game plan, actually. And at one point, they were going to do King of New York universal. But then at some point, I remember talking with Jim Jackson. Yes, eventually we let it go because, you know, we claimed that the script had story problems. And as you can see from the film now, it does have story problems, you know.

And I was like, that's the best film of the year. I remember, so I was going to school in Worcester, but my dad lived outside of Boston, and Boston had this one theater that would show movies like this, called the Nickelodeon, which was in Boston University. It was just really hard to find movies like this, Even in a big city, you know, Boston, outside of Boston, there was one theater that had a chance to do this

or Henry Portrait of a serial killer or all those types of movies. It was only at the Nickelodeon. That was it. I think by the time, you know, mid-90s rolled around, they started moving in the bigger theaters. But King of New York, if you didn't go see it in the two weeks, it was at the Nickelodeon was gone. Yeah, no, no.

If King and New York had been released by Universal, it could have had a chance. Yeah. I mean, because New Jack City caught its wave within six weeks of King of New York. Yeah, and look at the cast of this movie. It's riddled with charismatic, fascinating people who are about to be famous.

Oh, no, but even more than that, there is an aspect, I mean, one, it's wonderful as far as that's concerned, and that's always exciting when you can look at a movie that way. It's really, like, amazing. It's insane. Yeah. But even more than just that,

it's more specific than that, because this is literally a movie filled with a cast of the most exciting, young New York actors of that era, of that time. I mean, like, when you're just, just looking at the opening credits as he's driving, as he's driving home in the, uh, in the limo, and you're just like, oh my goodness, this one, that one and this one, you know, and they all, you know, and they've all done shit, so you all know who they are, but they haven't exploded the way they're going to.

It's literally, it's, it's, it's two years before Steve Bissemi scores with reservoir dogs. It's seven weeks before Wesley Snipes scores with New Jack City. Yeah, it's two years before Caruso is the biggest star on TV. Yeah. Well, and then there's some people that you would have thought would have been big stars that never became big stars, and I'm still confused by it. Like, Paul Calderon, I always really liked him. I don't know why he was one of the people that made it. Paul Calderon is, he was one of the fantastic actors of that era and every the time.

he was the guy who almost beat Sam Jackson for the role of Jules in Pulp Fiction. Holy shit. Now, there's a whole story about how I wrote it for Sam. I go, but I'm still going to audition people. And Sam was like, well, you audition who you want. Ain't no one going to take away from me. And so then Paul Calderone came in, and he just killed it. He just killed it.

And then Sam comes in and kind of walks through his audition. And it's not as good as Paul Calderones. And so I'm going to give it to Paul. And so what? What the hell? Well, you said. And audition anybody I want. And Paul Calderon came out.

He blew your ass away. That's what, what? Well, shit. I didn't know how this shit was like, do or die. Isn't it always do or die if you're reading my work? You know? And then I'm like, Harvey Weinstein was like, it's got to be Sam.

What are you talking about? Paul Calda, who? You'll make him a star and then like helps everybody else's movie, not yours. You know, I can't get Paul Calderon on the Arsenio Hall show. I can get Sam Jackson on the Arsenio Hall show. And then I said, okay, here's the deal. Here's what I'll do. I will erase in my memory Paul's magnificent audition,

and I will waste in my memory Sam's inadequate audition. And we'll spend up a special time on a Saturday, and we'll come in, and I'll give them a couple hours each, and then we'll do it again. And whoever wins that one is who wins. And if it's Paul, it's Paul. And they go, okay, fine, fine, fine, fine.

And then Sam won that one. Unbelievable. And Paul, he gets a look in, Paul. He gets some good moments, but Jesus. He never found the right awesome rule. Well, he did it. Well, he did before King of New York. I mean, since King of New York.

The New York's actually probably my favorite. Well, he had a huge. huge, a role that everyone, the people in New York all wanted in the movie Q&A in Sydney Lemmette's Q&A. Oh. He's the, he's the, he's the, uh, a transvestite. Yeah. And he kind of almost steals the whole second half of the movie.

I mean, it was one of those coveted roles that everyone in all the New York actors wanted to get. Like the same year is. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about walking. Yeah. I call it a 1990 comeback tour for walking. Mm-hmm.

You have King of New York, you have comfort of strangers. You also have his first S&O appearance. Yeah. During one of the great S&L series of 1990, where the show really mattered back then and everybody watched it. And when he came on, I had no idea he could do that.

And it was like, what the fuck's going on? Christopher Watkins, the best episodes they've ever had. He's becoming an S&L icon, all right, in that one episode. Right. And that's not the one he did Trivial Psychic

because he does it two years later, but he does the Continental. He does a couple other things. But it was just... And then even Trivial Psychic. Okay, okay. Now we're looking at past, great walk and performances are I being paraded.

Right. But he's, to this point before that happens, he's Rush from Roulette guy and Dare Hunter. He is dead zone. He's dead zone guy. And he was on the Robert Wagner boat. And that was the three things I knew him for. At close range. No, he's done some stuff.

No, he did a lot of stuff, but he didn't quite become the stuff. He's from heaven. Yeah, yeah. He did some stuff. No, but I'm saying like things that broke through really resonating. At close range. Well, no, no. No, what happened to him is what happens to a lot of people is, you know, especially when they win the best supporting actor Oscar, is they have their time where they're now the leading man.

They can try their hand at leading men. And that either breaks for them in a big way. And actually, his movies as leading men are pretty, very, very respectable. Dogs of War, brainstorm. Dead Zone is a classic. I mean, you know, so I mean, that's a classic. So, I mean, that is, you know, I mean, that's a pretty fantastic little run. He was the villain in a view to a kill, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. But then they kind of segue away into superstar character actors. And then I think that's where he was. And then with this, with this that year you're talking about, then he kind of became like superstar independent leading actor. And then he became an icon all over. This is when the Christopher Walken impersonation started. Right.

Was in this period of the 90s. He doesn't lead as many movies as you'd think. though, after this. You know, he still becomes... Prophecy? Yeah. No, I mean, but that's a movie, though.

That's a... For sure. And that's like, five or six years later. But, like, it's not as many as you would think, because he is a tremendous central figure in this movie. The movie, in many ways, just does not work without his energy. It's also the most walk-in-y-walk-in movie. Yeah.

He's the most walking. But you are right, but there also is just the aspect, though, of it's like, for the most part, it's critical. for welcome that's getting these movies made. Sure. Yeah. You know, so even if he comes in and does the Nicholson or comes in and does the Brando. All right. So, so every, you know,

like the addiction. Okay, you're going to give me the 20 minutes, but it's going to be the 20 minutes that everyone talks about. And the entire movie is going to be built around me during those 20 minutes. Yeah, and he does a lot of villain stuff, you know? He does like Nick of Time and he does Batman Returns and he does all those movies too. Those ones seem the one like, though, he's paying the bills. Yeah. Where the independent ones, like,

that's his heart and soul. Yeah. Well, it's probably not a coincidence. you wrote two awesome scenes for him your first two movies. Yeah, two monologues, yeah. So are you, are you, is he in your head as you're writing those? In those, well, not in, well, not in true romance.

I didn't, uh, you didn't know who that was going to be. But when I wrote, uh, Gold Wattsby, yeah, absolutely. I positively wrote that for Walker. Are you like walking around your bedroom going, he would say it like this and doing walking impersonations to yourself? No, not really, no, I would, the, uh, when people weren't really doing impersonations at that time. So it was more about, like, how he would do it. I wasn't quite nail it. I wasn't trying to nail it to his, to his cadence in so much as I was trying to nail the character's cadence

and just figured Walkin would find his own cadence inside of that. Right, right. Yeah, so I wasn't writing it for, I was imagining him doing it. And I was trying to write a three-page speech that would tempt him to do it, you know. Are you positive he's going to do it at that point? No, no, no, no, no, not at all. I'm not positive. My whole thing with him was it's a three, I know he likes monologues. It's a three page monologue and I promise I won't cut a word.

He has in that speech the same thing that he has in this movie, which is the most sublime, weird line readings. You know? You know how I love money. You know, stuff like that where you hear it and you're just like, I can't get that out of my head. And it's the same thing, you know, you're all

welcome. That whole thing is one of those you hear it. And it's inside your body forever, you know, and you feel yourself saying it out loud for no reason. There's very few actors, I feel like, who actually have that power. Well, he has, we're going to do it again when we do the most rewatchable scenes,

but he has that one part where he goes, I must have been away too long because my feelings are dead. Yeah, right. But the way he delivers that, it's like, what's happening? He's amazing. And he was like, is this guy joking?

I love money. I love money. But this, so 1990, it's on. Yeah. And he was one of the few guys I felt like from that era that the character of Christopher Walken was part of what you liked about the actor Christopher Walker. It was almost hard to separate these two different things. But this is one of the... Nicholson became like that too, you know, the course of the 80s.

But to the point that Quinn's making about like this movie being kind of transgressive, this is like some of the nastiest shit he's ever done. You know, he took on like an avuncular quality in later years. Yeah. And he is a badass in this movie. He's a mean motherfucker. And there's something about that, too, that it feels like we're losing that from him. Because when he does other villain stuff, too, it never feels as, like, malevolent in the way that it does in this movie at times. I don't know.

He's just a, he's a special dude. So then you tap into you have Fishburn, who does this movie, then rips off. Boys in the Hood, Deep Cover, What's Love Got to Do with a and Searchie, Bob Fisher, in three years from 91 and 93? So I think this movie, you could say, got him going. Well, my feeling is, it's funny because it's like, as great as Christopher Walken is in this movie, to me, it's Larry Fishman's movie. As great as Walken is in it. And to me, it was one of the, the bullet that becomes, oh, no, it was the rock that becomes a diamond aspect of the movie. Yeah.

It's why I could, it's why I could defend this movie against all comers, because to me, Fish's performance in this movie was comparable to. to a young Brando. It was the most exciting performance by an actor of his generation that I'd seen in a movie of that time. And I thought, well, that's it. There is a new Marlon Brando and his name is Larry Fisherman. It was just, it was amazing. It was mesmerizing.

He's also an interesting thing. He is the first hip-hop gangster in movie history. That character had never been done before this. He invented that character. And he invented it as something to do. It wasn't in the original script. Right. He came up with that himself because it was actually,

and I'll talk about it later, but I can go into more. Don't step on that casting one out because that's a classic. Okay, I'll hold on to it. I'll hold on to it. But he's dressed like he's in Run DMC. I mean, he is affecting that Queens, Bronx, New York figure who was living in the city at that time, make music. So, like, it makes sense. He's pulling from the real world.

It absolutely makes sense. But, I mean, it was like, after he did the, I mean, I wanted him to play Malcolm X after that. All right. I wanted him to have all the big roles. And it took him, you know, and it took to what's love got to do with it. All right, that he finally really, okay, could get out of the supporting roles and actually, like, you know, compete in the leading man contest between Wesley and Denzel at that time period. It's a messy movie, but I really like him higher learning, too. Oh, yeah. He's really good in that movie. It's totally different. Oh, he was true.

But he's terrific. That's closer to Malcolm. That's as close as he got to Malcolm. But everything he does in this, all right, you know, it does during this time period. Like, right after King of New York, I watch him in class action. All right, with Mary Elizabeth Moss for Antonio and Gene Hackman. And you're like, he's fucking killing this, you know, in this like, young lawyer role. And it's not like this was like the first thing he did.

He's been around for years. He's in apocalypse now. You know, he's got 10 years of work understel. You never. considered him for Jules? Yeah, he turned it down. Yeah, he was offered it and he turned it down. I think it worked out for the best.

Yeah, I worked out for the best. No, he was offered Jules and he turned it down. Why would you turn down Jules? I'll tell you why. You want to know why? Yeah. All right. His people suggested he turned it down.

It all happened. It's an interesting thing. I wrote initially, I wrote Jules and Vincent for Fishburn to be Jules and Michael Madsen to be Vincent. And then we offered it to fish. He read it. His people read it. And his people suggested that he passed.

He said, you got to pass. You got to pass on this one. And the reason they suggested is they said, okay, here's the deal. You could have done this last year. But the reason you hired us is to make you a leading man, to make you a star. So, yes, if this was your searching for Bobby Fisher time, this was your class action time, then you could have done it. But you can't do that anymore. Now it's got to be Larry Fishburn in.

And you've got to be above the title. And so you're not, you're, he was like, but I begin the movie. I end the movie. You're supporting character. And they're casting John Travolta. You're supporting to John Travolta. You're a supporting character. You can't, you got to, part of the thing is you got to say no to supporting roles,

no matter how good they are if you want to be a leading man. Now, actually, their strategy is actually. actually right on. If you've gotten stuck in the really good supporting character role, and it's hard to turn them down because that's a good director. It's going to be a good movie. You're working off the big stars. They took me lightly. Their strategy was right on. They took me lightly. Now, here's the interesting thing. So he turns it down and talks to me about it, though, and he says, look, I want to do it. All right. But, you know, look, I'm paying these people. So, you know, if I'm paying them, I ought to listen to them. You know, they're, they're

got a strategy. The movie he did instead of Pulp Fiction was, is it just cause? No, it's not just cause. It's a, that would be a supporting role, actually. It was a, uh, uh, the movie he did with Ellen Barkin, all right? Oh, bad company. Bad company, that's what it was. That's the movie he did instead. Because it was, he was starring in it. Yeah. Um, he goes into like a little... I like that movie. But he goes into like a little bit of a black hole for the next few years. And then, oh, okay, but there's a really one. I mean, when he eventually, what he, what he, what he, what he, what he, what he, what he, what he,

up with Pulp Fiction, he eventually gets with the Matrix. That's where he finally gets it, gets it. But what happened, I mean, it was just the weird turn of events, what it ended up happening is, okay, so he turns down Pulp Fiction because it's not a big enough role. He's not the star in it. So Sam Jackson gets the role instead. So Sam Jackson does it.

Now, they're going to do Die Hard 3. and they've literally written the role for Larry Fishberg, the black character in it. And, well, if he's holding out for the right movie, this is the right movie. It is, he's one of the leads in it. It's him opposite Bruce Willis. It's going to make $300 billion. Yeah, it's for sure a hit and not just a hit, a hit that will play all over the world. So the entire world, not just America, the entire world is going to know who Larry Fishbur

and is he will be the guy from diehard three i love this movie by the way but yeah okay so he is that guy they've written it for him not only that he knows they can't cast anybody else they're not going to get denzil and they're not going to get wesley they need him they need him for this movie so he asked for a million dollars they don't want to pay him a million dollars but they need him so they're going back and forth, negotiating, negotiating, negotiating, and they have one out. And that is, it's now May. It's Khan Film Festival. And Andy Vanya is going to be in Khan.

And there's this guy named Samuel Jackson, who's apparently really good in Pulp Fiction. So they're going to go literally and see the premiere, because they're going to support Bruce anyway. They're going to go and see the premiere of Pulp Fiction. and if they like the Sam Jackson guy, they're going to pull the offer from Larry Fishburn and give it to Sam. And if they don't like the Sam Jackson guy, they'll close the deal with Larry.

And the rest is history. Unbelievable. The movie he turned down because the part wasn't big enough. It's good that the Matrix happened. Yes. You know, because you can feel better. I'm not rooting against Larry.

You can feel better about what happened to his career and he still got to have the iconic parts. And, you know, he's nominated for Oscars, and he's done amazingly well in his career. But that's a brutal one-to-miss. Yeah. It's pretty bad.

Matrix makes up for it a little bit, but, man. But it's just, but I think, I mean, but it's also a fantastic Hollywood story about how, like I said, I don't, they were wrong about me, all right? But his people, their strategy was right on except not, but you can't, but a strategy, but a great strategy doesn't apply to everything. thing. You have to be able to look at the things in front of you. But that was the correct

strategy to get him out of the superstar character actor quality place, you know? It's so funny though, because it's not black and white, though. The strategy to say you're either above the title or you're not, it doesn't make as much sense. Is his name above the title in the Matrix? I don't think it is. I don't even think, I honestly don't think people. But he's definitely the second lead. For sure, but still the second lead. People don't think they're smart enough now to know. It's just good for you to be in a good movie. I think the 80s, 90s. I think you're right.

Well, I think, you know, but, you know, I think there was an aspect. He was number three amongst the young black leading men. And something needed to happen. Yeah. And what was happening is he's just, you know, he was just getting offered. He was like the Bruce Stern thing. He was getting offered all these great, cool supporting characters in good movies with good directors with good actors.

It's hard to turn that shit down. Yeah. And you need to be a leading man. If you're going to be thought of as a leading man, you need to start leading. Do you know how... Incredible story. You know how you're on Sean's team with the rewatchables and not mine?

Yeah, uh-huh. Guess who wanted to do searching for Bobby Fisher for rewatchables and nobody else was with me. Uh-huh. This guy, right? Yeah, just so you know. I'm not against it. No, you laughed.

Well, I just don't think it holds the place. Like, the movie like King of New York holds a much bigger place in my mind. It's great Joe Montania. Sure. Well, it's, okay. My son is better at this than anything you've ever been at in your whole life. He's not afraid of losing. He's afraid of losing your love.

It's a great movie. You guys are just doing the trailer. I remember both of those lines from the trailer. That's a great movie. I mean that mockingly. I stand by Bobby Fisher. You guys can't waver me off. It's fine.

Hey, let me go. I need to do a bit of a history about my history with Abel Farrar before we go into. I had him coming up. Okay, great. I just wanted to do Snipes really quick. Okay, sure. Snipes post-major league makes it in 1989. Snipes from 90 to 90.

King of New York, Mo Better Blues, New Jack City, Jungle Fever, Water Dance, White Man Kinschup, Passenger 57, in three years. Always been on black. Epic. Yeah. What are we doing water dance? When's the water dance, rewatchable? Yeah. That's a tough one.

That's a grueling movie. Hard enough to watch the first time. Yeah, Jesus. The watchable. The one watchable. The unwatchable water dance. We have discussed unwatchables in the past. The Watchable.

I'm going to step on casting what if so because this is a really crazy Lawrence Fishburn is cast as Flanagan, the part that Snipes plays. And then James Rousseau. I know the whole story behind them. One of our favorite rewatchables actors

because we're so fascinated by his Beverly Hills cop performance. Turns down the part of Jimmy Jump. Fishburn switches roles and then begs the director. Oh no, I'm sorry. He didn't beg director. Caruso is doing a TV pilot

with Wesley Snipes. And he and Snipes are tight. And he's like, this guy's great, begs the director to give him the old Fishburn part. And that's how Wesley Snipes ends up in this, who then ends up having the biggest career out of any black star for the next five years. And they...

And they become howdy-died-duty and the chocolate wonder. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Also, a black guy named Flanagan. Incredible shit. What's weird is... You want me to go,

me to go into the James Rousseau story now? Yeah, let's do it now. I just want to say with Snipes, like, it's kind of like not a great Snipes. It's like Snipes, it's Diet Coke Snipes, that performance until the end, then Snipes comes out. But for the first parts of it, Caruso

is kind of the much bigger part. Oh, well, well, but Cruso should be the much bigger. No, I know. It was just weird seeing Snipes in that role because I didn't feel like it's... It's a good simmering thing that he's doing, though. He gets there. No, I like that. I like that it's him, he doesn't have to, you know, he doesn't have to steal scenes or play Nico Brown, all right?

But I like that it's him. And I like his white wife. All right. I like all the, I like the whole social fabric of him with all these white boys, you know, and that's his life. It's the inversion. It's purposefully the inversion of everything going on with Walkins character, you know? The one white guy with the whole black gang and then the one black cop with all of the white cops. I guess Victor Argo is not white. But you know, you know my point. Like, that's a lot. That's, That seems all purposeful. That also fits together. It was on the rewatch.

It took me a while to get used to because usually I'm used to him stealing scenes and being huge. And he's just like set in picks. Yeah. And then it's like, is Snipes going to come out. It's like, oh yeah, this is when he came out. I remember. All right. Let's talk about your guy.

Yeah. So what happened was it's so James Rousseau kind of had his time. Like a lot of these like New York Act and New York intense actors come out. They do a couple of really cool roles in some. big films and like maybe maybe they're going to be the next de Niro guy and then they find their their their their their niche and rousseau had really hooked up big time by that point with abel farrar and he had starred in the movie that's the closest thing to a precursor to king of new york is china girl by abel far which is really good uh it's actually much better now than i remember

it being when i saw it when it first came out um and he's the he was the start of that and then later when they do dangerous game, Russo's going to be in that with him and Katel. But Russo was now a part of Abel's gang. He's one of Abel's lead guys now. So, Ferrar's going back and forth on who's going to play Frank White. But he writes Jim for James Russo, and he writes the cop,

Howdy Duty, for David Caruso. Now, both Caruso and Rousseau work together in China Girl. And part of the thing is they're both actors, you know, full of gauge and totally fucking intense. Tough guy in New York actors. Yeah, they want to steal the scenes from each other. They both think they're better than the other one. And so they have a complete antagonism during a China Girl that is both. in the scenes

and even though they're supposed to be playing his best buddy and offstage. All right, they just want to beat the other one. Wait, you mean Caruso is difficult?

I've heard of that with him. It's competitive. And so, and Abel is like, I love that antagonism, so he gives the kind of role that they can be antagonistic with each other

and now we can really, really run with this. Rousseau reads the script, turns it down flat. Boom. Abel calls him up. Why? I'm not going to let David Caruso spit in my face. Remember the scene where he's...

Oh, yeah. Of course. When he spits in a fissus face. That was in the script. And he goes, I'm not going to let that red-headed cock sucker spit in my face. Fuck that shit. No way. Jose. And... He's like, what about a stunt spit? No, I will let Walken spit in my face.

Yeah. I will never, in this lifetime, will I ever let that Irish prick spit in my fucking face? Wow. Fuck that guy. And Chris says, fine, get the fuck out of here. I can't stand your ass anyway. Now they're actually, now they're all friends and actually on CSI Miami, Russo actually had this recurring character that he played like the big mob guy that, like, that Horatio could never like, you know, take down. All right.

But that's why he said, and this is straight from Russo's mouth, because Russo's in Django. And he's one of the brothers at the beginning. And he told me, though, I go, I cannot believe you turn Jimmy Jim down. You know? And he goes, yeah, I was a fucking idiot. Well, what's the story? Okay, here's the story.

I go, oh, my God, you are a fucking idiot. He goes, yeah, yeah, I know. I know I'm a fucking idiot. Especially because Fishburn gets, he spits in his face. But then, you know, he kind of pulls it down and he licks it. He's great in that. And give me some. Yeah, he makes a moment out of it, you know?

It's Fishburn wins that scene. Caruso doesn't win that scene. I don't know. That's crazy. Also, I think Jimmy Jump being white would have been all wrong. No, no, no. No, no. Ultimately, it's like the best thing that could ever happen for the movie happen

because it was, you know, it was the casting of, I don't think I'm talking completely out of school here. It was the casting of fish. that all of a sudden then they got the idea, all right, to just pepper Frank's army, all right, with more black guys and more black guys and more black gals. And now all of a sudden, Frank White is sort of like Crazy Joe. Yeah.

All right, a little bit, a little bit of a parallel to the Crazy Joe character. That was the big criticism against the movie, though, as a white guy running an army of black guys, which was what it got nicked for. Yeah, not by the black people who love it. That's what made it their movie. I know. That's the irony of it.

Scarface fucking part two. You had a bunch of white critics being enraged by it. Meanwhile, it became like one of the big ones. Yeah, my favorite critics. The white critics who are enraging about black shit. But that is how I was a kid. I was a kid when this movie came out. And the reason I know about this movie is the way that a lot of people

might know about this movie is because Biggie Smalls. Biggie Smalls calling himself the Black, Frank White, and trying to figure out what does that mean? What is the Black Frank White? Imagine it being 1993 and hearing someone say that, who you idolize. I idolize Biggie. And I was like, what?

is that and then it forces you to track it down. And then I think you were talking about it in interviews at the time. Yeah, yeah. What is this mystical movie that is inspiring all these people who make great shit? I actually think you could make the case. Yeah, like on the box here. That's Teresa Randall from Girl 6. Right.

You could make a case that's one of the greatest belated marketing pushes of all time. When Biggie got me, when he started calling himself Frank Wait. And it was like a lot of people like, you're like, wait, why is he doing that? It was so effective. There's no internet back then. Yeah, yeah. There's no way to find out. Caruso really quick.

I was with him since he was an officer and a gentleman, but then Thief of Hearts, which isn't even ever on cable, Stephen Bauer. You know about that movie? No, yeah, yeah. They burglarized this lady's house. Stephen Bauer and David Cruz are thieves. And they find her diary, and Stephen Bauer kind of digs her. And he's reading the diary all her fantasies.

He's like, I'm just going to pretend to be the guy that's in her fantasy. And then they fall in love and Caruso's the guy is like, you're in too deep. Like you do that guy. but just is dialed up the whole time. Confessions of a cat burglar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then really until NYPD Blue, I don't feel like he became famous.

I think he was, like, cool movie famous, but not famous, famous. Yeah, but I actually think there's a reason for that because the thing about it is, you know, first, I mean, when he first started really coming out was he kind of had a recurring character on Hill Street Blues. He was like the white gang leader, all right, with Trinidad Silva as the Puerto Rican guy. The Shamrocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Shamrocks, yeah, exactly. And then he started, you know, and then he was like, you know, everyone's a wormy best friend. Yeah, the, the vaguely handsome guy, all right, who's on the wrong side of the tracks, his way over the, over the line best friend.

They had the Norton rolls. You know, that was kind of his stock and trade. And he had actually had his biggest movie to date just before this, which was Mad Dogs on Glory. Oh, yeah, yeah. But now here's a weird thing about it, though. And he's good in that movie. Yeah, he's good at it. But here's my weird thing about Caruso,

about during this time period. I was never into him back then. I didn't like his, I mean, I didn't like that best friend character of the shady guy, all right, who's like the shadier one.

And I wasn't really down with all his pushing and all his, I'm so intense mannerisms. And I wasn't down with the red hair. I wasn't down with fucking anything about that dude. And I was like,

this guy is just totally not as good as he thinks he is. Yeah. All right. Now, in King and, New York was the first time

that I was like, oh, okay, well, he's pretty good for this character. He's doing a good job in this.

I actually think he's, I think he's one of those guys who's less than he thinks he is and apparently the industry does. But in this character, he was pretty good. Then I started seeing

a few episodes of NYPD Blue in that first season. Yeah. And David Caruso, was so great on that show. The first eight episodes are unassailable. That character he played, the fact that the show was actually a good show, it fit in the whole 70s cop vibe, the fact that they built the entire show around his character,

it was like, oh, wow, you did everything in your career to actually land with the perfect character that makes you an actor that you cannot take your eyes. Did anyone ever look at Dennis Franz once during a single episode in that first eight episodes? You couldn't. You couldn't watch anybody on that show. My dad, Fred Lynn leaving the Red Sox and Caruso deciding to leave NYPD Bluer, like my dad's two biggest. Why the fuck did you do that tragedies? He was so good that first season.

There was nothing like it. I mean, you know, well, the thing about it was because the marriage of him as an actor and that character was just, So effing right on. Yeah. John Kelly. It seemed ungrateful to the point of being a just absolute ingrate. Yeah. To actually walk away from the character.

One of the five greatest parts of that decade. I think it's come all the way back around again that it has now verified his legacy. Like he fucked it up or whatever, but then he gets to do CSI Miami and he gets to make all the money in the world. Yeah, he gets to put glasses on. He gets to, say, quippy lines and take his glasses off as emphasis. But that move. Also, let me just say And proof of life

That's for you We didn't invite you on that one You know, I was not invited to that episode Incredible Crusoe Here's the thing As you probably both of you guys know I am the son of an Irish cop I come from a long line of Irish cops

The speech he gives in King of New York The wedding toast He's the most Irish cop moment In the history of movies I believe that is a real You're stepping on most rewatched I'm sorry St. John's scripted

Whatever Abel did It's fucking unreal. I feel like I knew 20 of those guys growing up. You left out the part the next scene he's trying to make out with the bride. But that's a bit. But that's a bit that those guys would part. My wife! I love that so much. Relax! We're just

fucking around. Did you like him in Kiss of Death? The Test came back negative? Yes, I did. I did like him in Kiss of Death guy. I just love Caruso. He's great. I just think he's a perfect cop. He's such a perfect cop. And that was part of why he didn't play a lot of cops in those early roles that you were talking about. He was kind of playing a tough guy or bad guy a lot of the time.

And he was perfect as like a shitty asshole detective. Yeah. So. Shitty asshole detective. All right. We get to get the categories, but I want to talk about the director. Yeah. Yeah.

So he says, I was gone through some stuff that was written about him interviews he gave. And he had one thing that I thought was fascinating. He said, in 1990, my films explore the dark side of people. I'm fascinated by the conflict between good and evil. That's what every great story ultimately. comes down to. He's not wrong. No, not at all.

He also said in the movie, I made Scarface look like Mary Poppins. He was very, very kind of confident, braggy a little bit about what he was trying to do with this movie and how fired up he was that he pushed every limit. He didn't care if people didn't like it.

He was like, fuck you, I'm doing my movie. I want it. I'm so happy I did it. Well, look, here's my little Abeo for our story, because the thing is, part of the thing of being in the late 70s and really loving exploitation movies

and going to see them, part of the ritual of that was you were going to see a lot of crappy-ass movies. That was just, that was, that was, that was the deal you were making. You were going to do with that, all right? And you were okay with it. And you were like, well, at least I saw it.

And you exit off your little list. You sound like Sean. It's true. But, part of the reason that you ponied up to see these movies that you knew most of the time you're going to be disappointed is that maybe three times a year that would not be the case. Yeah. And one, you know, three of them would be a little better than you expected them to be. And because they were better than you expected them to be, then they seemed actually more great.

Are they like, wow, you were really kind of taken with them? And then part of the thing about that is you'd find that director from that work and like, wow, now that director, you know that guy's name. You leave the theater knowing his name. And then you made a point that I'm going to follow them and I'm going to see their other films. So, you know, I went and saw Rabid by David Cronerberg, not knowing Jack's shit about him or the movie. And I'm like, what the fuck is this crazy ass thing? This was amazing. So as soon as the brood open, I couldn't wait to see it because that's the guy.

who did rabid. And then I saw what I saw. Holy shit. All right. So by the time, dress, mind blowing. Yeah, exactly. So by the time everyone else is discovering him in America with scanners, I already, I'd done known who he is.

Yeah. Right. Same thing. I saw Deep Red, all right, when it came out. And so I learn who Darya Argento is. And so I'm not surprised when Suspirit comes out. I'm there right away because that's the guy who did Deep Red. So in 78, I see Piranha.

All right. And I walk out knowing Joe Dante's name. And so I'm not surprised when the howling comes out. I can't wait. I'm reading about him in Fangoria now after that. Same Louis Teague with Lady in Red. Now I can't wait for Alligator. And so Stuart Gordon, the same thing with Reanimator.

So now the thing is, you've had that moment with them in these films, and then you go and you're looking for that second film or that third film to see if they can confirm it. And the truth of the matter is most of them don't follow it up, not the way you really want them to. Toby Hooper never quite follows it up, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Stuart Gordon never quite followed up. I mean, there are some fun movies, but he doesn't top or match reanimator. And so one of all those exploitation movies that just blew your socks off was Miss 45. You know, and it had the fantastic Kevin Thomas review in the LA Times, and you went and saw it.

And he was just like, wow, this guy is fucking amazing. This guy could be like a new, another Scorsese. That's what you're thinking about. That's what you're absolutely thinking. And, you know, and there was two guys fighting for that new Scorsese title. There was him and James Toback. They kind of out there doing their own thing. And so I'm following Abel now.

So he does his second film, it's sort of like more of like official movie movie, which was Fear City. And that's, you can tell us, Abel Farrar did it, but it's not as good as Ms. 45. It doesn't take it all the way. All right. And then he starts doing Miami vices. And then he starts doing crime stories.

And his Miami vices are fantastic. And his crime stories are fantastic. Yes. He did the first season of Miami Vise. Yeah. And his home invasions and it's just like fucking wild ass violent shit, all right? It's a famous one. And he does a really good TV movie around this time.

I'm watching anything he does. He does a really good TV movie with Ken Wall called... Gladiator. Yeah, the Gladiator. Yeah, that's what it is. Robert Cope is in it. Nancy Allen's in it, too. You can watch it on Amazon Prime right now.

Yeah, the gladiator's cool. What's the part of that movie? It's like a guy's... Is his brother who's killed? His brother's killed and he's like seeking revenge. Oh, I like that movie. His brother was killed in a hit and run. And now he's going to go and get guys who do hit and run.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one. And so I'm following his stuff, but never quite... I'm still waiting for that one that takes me further than Ms. 45. And then the closest thing he does is China Girl, which is definitely like the classiest thing he's done. And it's also written by Marco St. John. All right. And that's an important part of this equation, his writing partner, Marco St. John.

All right. And it's classy. It's got terrific actors. He has a visual sense that he's not hampered like he was in his earlier film. but it doesn't take you further. It's still in second gear. Now, actually, it was more in third gear than I gave it credit for when I watched it again recently.

But I still thought he has somewhere to go. And I know the King of New York, even before this comes out, because he's talking about it and interviews a lot, that this is his magnum opus. This is the one that for years he's been trying to get made. When people see this shit, this is going to be it. And now, now it's the time. And now it comes out. And from the opening 20 minutes, the whole explosion of style that happens from the cutting back and forth and the set pieces of all this of the opening 20 minutes of the film is just, oh my God, this is the able.

This is what I was waiting for. This was worth waiting six years for. This is, I can't even imagine him ever topping this movie. This is the movie that he's waited his whole career to make. And it's even interesting because he wasn't Scorsese. You realize when you watch King of New York, he wasn't going after that vibe. One, he's closer to Leone than he is Scorsese, all right?

There is this whole set piece quality about the way the characters are set up and the set pieces. You know, the guy gets executed in the phone booth. That's almost the Leone piece of him, like, you know, touching the ass of every prostitute in the brothel on the way out with the champagne bottle and stuff. That's the way Leone would set up a character, you know, some duster dude showing up in town before he gets whacked. But one of the things that is so exciting is, well, yes, he's definitely influenced by the Scorsese New York style and the Scorsese use of actors and this and that genre of cinema in particular. He's just as much influenced by Freakins, New York cop movies. Yeah.

All right, both the New York section of Sorcerer and including even the guy from the guy from Sorcerer, all right, playing the daughter's father at the wedding. And then, like, rush connection and stuff. But if there's one director that you can tell that he's even more connected to, it's Michael Chimino. And you can tell that there is a, you know, there's a deep, deep connection to Year of the Dragon in this movie. I mean, he has some of the same characters from Year of the Dragon, Joey Chen. Yeah. All right. It's from Year of the Dragon and China Girl.

Arian, all right, who ruins Ender the Dragon is... Year of the Dragon is terrific in her scene in this movie, in the restaurant. Yep. You want her, not Janet Julian, to be the girl that Frank leaves with. Yes, yes. What are you going to do now that you're out of prison, that whole scene? Yeah, right. I mean, she ruins Year of the Dragon, and she's terrific in her scene.

Yep. But he gives her the closer. He knows she's the girl from Neuro the Dragon. Yep. But even the whole New York thing. Okay, now, Pete Hamill is there. I mean, so New Yorker that doesn't even exist anymore. I know.

All right. You know, the famous columnist is there with the gangsters talking and the gangster's fucking, you know, signallieri. I have some unanswerable questions about that scene in particular. You know, what you were describing about liking a director and seeing potential and then kind of sticking, buying season tickets for the person, basically. Yeah, right on. That was a very pre-internet.

thing because I think the internet's done a lot of great things obviously a lot of great things for me and us but there's a consensus that forms and checks and balances where it's like should I see this movie and you end up Googling online you look at rotten tomatoes you read different views we don't look at rotten tomatoes bill you know well I'm saying people do I personally know but in the 70s and 80s in the 70s and 80s you might have trusted one writer you might have trusted your one buddy who went to all these movies like you didn't really have a lot of things. And there was way more rolling of the dice back then that I feel like there probably is now.

And I remember going back to the Nickelodeon Theater. I would just go see these movies. I would have no idea if they were good or not. Well, I mean, one of the things that I mean was that's really bizarre. And this was this way for like a long time into the 90s was, okay, now the horror film community is just completely linked online and they have tons of websites and they can all just talk about what they want to talk about. And you know where they're coming from.

but in the 80s and 90s, what it was was Fangoria would have a piece on a movie. And it was always a public relations kind of piece. You know, so they're never going to be critical about the movie per se. There's always a set visit, and they talk about John Frankenheimer's prophecy and all the bear looks really great. You could just find out about the movie, though. But then when the movie opened theatrical, when that film finally played theatrically, what you did is you read the next issue of Fangoria after it played and you read the letter section. Yeah, yeah.

And that was when you knew what the horror fans thought of any horror film. It was in the letter section the month after a horror film had played theatrically. Well, I remember Goldman's column that was in New York Magazine. That was like one of the only people I trusted. And when he would tell me like, this movie, I hear this is going to be good or that or I love this, I'd be like, okay, good. And I just didn't have a lot of people like that by life. I just had a different experience because I'm just younger than you guys.

So I had the early stages of the internet and I had message boards and forums and I was on those things like a fucking animal. And it was rap and movies. Those were the two things that there was not a, you had to go find the conversation in person. You didn't trust a lot of the criticism. And a lot of the movies that I liked and I'm watching our dental movies at 14 years old. And I think I'm the only person in the universe that is watching this movie. Like I don't know anyone who wants to watch Deep Red with me at all. And that can be really isolating.

And then the internet comes along, especially like 96. And all these forums start popping up. And that's where you start, if you get a chance to see King of New York, you're like, oh, what is Miss 45? How do I see the Driller Killer? How do I find these movies that are hard to find? It's really hard to find Ms. Forty. They don't put that in Blockbuster, you know?

No. You have to go to a more illicit place to get those things, too. King of New York feels like the first time that he reaches like a little bit of a commercial sort of moment, though. Yeah, I think so too. I think so, too. I mean, actually, you could find China Girl because that was actually Vestron. Right, right. But your point is still well taken.

What you were saying, though, about finding him, it was like, Bomback was like that for me, because I saw that movie, didn't know if it was going to be good. I'd heard a couple good things. And saw it kicking and screaming. And it was like the perfect, that was the exact same age as the characters. And I'm just like, I'm in on this guy for life,

whatever he's making, I'm seeing, and that's just the way it goes. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know, maybe it's like that now, but I do think the consensus makes it a little different. Well, I mean, I'm kind of that's, but, I mean, but like, your point is actually still well taken because I'm kind of that way now with Mike Flanagan, all right?

I'm searching out his stuff and everything. And I thought I watched all the episodes of House on Haunted Hill. I think it's a masterpiece series. I think it's terrific. I agree with you, though. He's not made a movie from beginning to end yet, all right? But I'm actually, but that's something to look forward to. I'm actually really, uh...

He's like in his 30s. He's going to get one. He's going to get one. I would like to take a piece from all his shoes. I mean, Dr. Sleep came really, really, really, really close. It came really, really, really close. I don't, I don't mind the 30s. third act. I don't like the last sliver of the third act, but then the epilogue writes the shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's really good. But he's a season tickets guy. He's a guy who Chris Ryan was like, you got to watch Flanagan's movies. And now I have watched everything he's done. And I'm, interested in anything he's going to do. And that's still, I still think we have that. I still think we have seen a Ouija 2, which actually looks terrific. The trailer for it, like, looked like it'll be the best one. Might be his best movie. You saw Ouija 2? Of course. On Chris's recommendation. and that was how I got into it. Farrar said about this movie, we only murder every motherfucker in that movie

because when I made that film, that's how I felt. I love it when they say, can't you make King of New York too? And I say, well, the only person that's left is a 75-year-old lawyer. Every other person that movie is dead. Every single human being in that film is dead. He's very proud of this.

Pete Hamill is still alive. Pete Hamill is still alive. Pete Hamill is. He have it was still kicking. And the lawyer is actually everyone's real lawyer, Jay Julian. All right. There's some good stories about him with this, too. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, we mentioned the Frank Wright thing. Frank Wade thing belatedly it took off. But when the movie came out, not as popular, Ebert, two out of four stars. He said, Walkins, it's tough around. Usual, polished, and somehow sinister ease, he complimented that.

But then he said, Ferrar's effects are too good. his command of mood is too sure for him to continue trying to bluff his way through half-written movies like this one. All it did was wet my appetite. No.

It's tough. But that's what you were saying. People were critical of the plots of his movies a lot of the time. They feel like the story wasn't right for them so they didn't like it. They weren't responding to like the gate slowly closing on Sing Sing

at the beginning of the movie. It was like, holy shit. I never saw anything like that in a movie. But, yeah. I mean, I had the feeling that I, the anxiety that I had watching in King in New York knowing that, oh, wow, I'm, yeah, I'm feeling like Silieri, all right. I'm sitting in the opera box crying, all right, knowing that this fucking asshole theater

does not appreciate what is in front of them. And I'm going to have to get into, I'm going to have to really get into what we're motherfuckers. And I hadn't had that feeling, because I was watching it again reminded me of that feeling. And I hadn't had that feeling again until being part of the jury. seeing Old Boy at Khan, imagining that we're going to have to fight about this in the jury room. And then actually when everyone loved it, so there wasn't a fight.

But I thought, we were all thought that we were going to be having to get into a bloody fight with each other about the greatness of Old Boy. So I think that makes a great point about this movie, too, which is that at the time, maybe people felt like it was shocking and they were clutching their pearls. But over time, we've gotten more comfortable stuff like this. The fact that Old Boy is, like, beloved and is like not even a cult hit. It's like a movie that moms have seen. And they're like, that was cool. It just means like our cultures has changed. Well, when we did the reservoir...

We were like literally... One of the best things is the brother-sister-sex thing. Yes. Like, absolutely re-watchable. Absolutely re-watchable. We did the reservoir dogs re-watchables. And I didn't realize in the research, like, just how big the ear-cutting thing was during when the movie was coming out.

Oh, fuck, yeah, man. It basically dominated all the reviews and the discourse about it. was like, why did he do this? No, no, it was literally, we had a, we got a lot of good reviews, but the good reviews almost meant nothing as far as lowering people into the theater. Because in order for them to even write a review, there had to be a surgeon general warning. All right. Every single, every single review had this search and general warning that, like, unless you

like to watch dismemberment and horrible, pitiless sadism, then this might not be the movie for you. And then they would go and talk about the way we were going to say, well, okay, what you just described, nobody likes that. Nobody wants to buy a ticket for that, but I don't think that's how you would describe my movie. No, definitely not. But that was how it was described. Even in the people who liked it. Yeah. What do you think the budget of King of New York was?

I'm going to get it. 1990. Okay, 1990. I'm going to guess $4 million. 5.3. And, you know, who paid for that, right? Who? You know who chipped in money?

on this one. Who did? Courtesy of Jay Julian, Sylvia Berlusconi. Oh. Well, the King of New York video, which gave it New Life, and that's when it became kind of iconic. Now, Ronan Wallace was, you had the, she pulled the trigger on it.

She was the, she pulled trigger on she ran live and she had the power of the pen at live. If you made a movie, I think, 5 million and under, she could, she had to go to give it it okay. And what live

was live was the video arm of Caracroco. And so Live released all the Caracos films on video and they had a little expending cash to make movies straight for them. And so she made Reservoir Dogs at Live. She made King of New York at Live. She made Bob Roberts at Live.

And she made Bad Lieutenant at Live. Great movies. All of those movies are great movies. You're just talking to Robbins about Bob Roberts. Yeah, he's bitter. It's not on TV. He thinks especially I just did a podcast with him.

It's like, this is the perfect time to be running Bob Roberts on like AMC. Especially that opening theme song. And they complain and complain and complain. Let's do most rewatchable scene. Hey, with the new year officially here and everyone vowing to restrictive resolutions, Pepsi wants to usher in the new decade a bit differently

by encouraging everyone to unapologetically do what you enjoy even in the face of others' judgment. So Pepsi encourages you to let loose, be yourself, and live your life like nobody's watching. For instance, maybe you have an opinion that, you know, isn't that popular. Here's one of mine. We had the Oscar nominations come out this week. Joker got 11. Didn't love Joker.

Not a huge fan. Thought Joaquin Phoenix was incredible in it. It's a movie I would never watch again. If you gave me the choice, would you like those two hours of my life back? I'd probably consider it. That's not a very popular opinion. But you know what? It's an opinion that's true to me.

Pepsi. That's what I like. It's up to you. Do you want to include the phone booth at the very beginning or no? Oh, yeah, absolutely. All right. So we'll include that. God, how do you, how do you even break up the opening 30 minutes?

I think the whole, the minute he gets out of the cell and he starts walking down the alleyway and we get into credits mode. that's when it starts. And we don't, we're not going to do every single moment of the movie. I had trouble because I didn't want to have 12 scenes. Yeah, because I haven't like walking in the, just in the limo.

Yeah. I mean, the reason I would, the reason I would put the Benny guy, all right, getting blown away, walking through the, uh,

walking through the, uh, a brothel and getting executed in the, in the phone booth. The reason I would make that a separate thing on its own is, I think that announces the style. Mm-hmm. That set piece of that character announces the style that we're going to be watching for the rest of the film.

Fishburn's first scene. Oh, Fishburn and Versami, absolutely. Test tube? Love test tube. That scene. Fucking relax. It's going to take a few minutes, all right? We ain't got a few minutes, man.

We got to get busy. Why don't you do what you got to do so we can get busy? All right? All right. Calm down, all right? Relax. Yo, I'm sure you had to do this. I'm sure you had to test this, man.

Like that. That show you and better by. Shittiest and funniest little dab of cocaine in the history of movies ever hit a table. All right. It's fucking Bushabees, boom. Yo, man, you ever got the feeling you was being watched? The way he delivers that. Yo, man, you get the feeling you was being watched.

When he starts talking about basketball, you play ball tito? You play ball tito. That's okay. That's a quotable line. Suitcase. I fucked up my leg, please. Bull. Suitcase of Tampax.

It's amazing. The bullet holes, then the other guy, Roomservice, motherfuckas! All that is great. And by the way, that guy, that's Leonard. That for years,

that was Sam Jackson's standing. Oh, wow. Yeah. Really? Leonard. Next one, the Walker Fishburn's crew reunion, which we talked about a little at the top

when Watkin does that, I feel no remorse. It's a terrible thing. The dance. You don't know if they're about to fight and then it turns out they're all buddies. What do you got in there? Root beer?

Yeah. Oh, really great. My feelings are dead. I feel no remorse. Yo. It's a terrible thing. Yeah, I ever beat in jail makes you feel like that, man. The dance is just like a iconic, much like the line reading.

I'm like, I can't not see him swiveling. You know, it's like somewhere between Fred Astaire and Elvis. It's so good. walking going to see Artie White playing one hand a blackjack with him and then shooting him many times I have that as a rewatchable scene

Very good From here on nothing goes down Unless I'm involved No blackjack, no dope deals No nothing A nickel bag gets sold in the park I want in You guys got fat while everybody

Stopped on a street It's my turn You think you're gonna live long enough To spend that money You fucking hump The only thing that could beat Artie White pissing on Calderon's shoes, all right, is the second round of shots after he's dead. This prick, boom, boom, boom. He shits him three separate times, eight times total.

The fried chicken arrest scene. Yo, what's happening with the food, man? What's up? I got all day, you know? 5670 total. Did I say I was finished? I want something to drink. Maybe I want some birch beer.

You got birch bag? We don't have no birch. I don't even know what that shit. It is. You got a view good? No, we got no repeat. Yeah, well, how much is this? 56.9.

56.90? Fuck you very much. Hey, scumbag. Guess what? You're on the... Oh, right? You're on the... You're on the...

You're on the... What about that? It's... Yeah, I think it's... It's one of... It's the three big Fishburn moments to me. Is his opening sequence with...

Yeah. You play ball, Tito? Yeah, Tito. Yeah. with Tito, black glove dude, all right, and his reunion with Frank, and then it's the chicken scene. Those are his three big arias. It's one of four hours favorite scenes because it was filmed in a very grim Brooklyn slum neighborhood that they had to like figure out how to even shoot there and a whole thing.

He's very attached to that. Not only that, though, is like, also expressions that I would later hear for the rest of the decade, I actually heard for the first time in that scene. I'd never heard the expression I'll slap the black off you before All right That was the first time I heard it When Fish says it to Snipes

All right I've since heard it many times But that was the first time I heard it And that was actually the first time I ever heard Fuck you very much And I would proceed to hear that All right For the rest of the 90s

All right But those were the first times I'd ever heard those expressions Growing up in New York I had heard those phrases Before I saw them from me The wedding scene? Yeah.

Huge one. Very good. The speech. Fantasy loves that one. The most, and maybe the most chimino-esque sequence. Very 200. Yeah, and but right on. I mean, really, you know, a good comparison by comparison.

Yeah. Then another Caruso one, the bar monologue about having to take these guys down and actually kill Frank White. We can make it look like a rival gang if that makes you feel any better. You're going to shoot everybody who can't arrest Dennis? That's not your fucking... You know what my problem is with you? I can't do my job. My job is to protect the people this city

and you won't let me. Which he's doing in front of the bartender, which I thought was maybe a tactical mistake. The bartender in a cop bar is always an old cop. I open a bar. You're preventing me from doing my job. He's so good. Well, I'm going to kill him.

And now you know I'm just saying It's my job to protect the people of this city And he's laughing at us The big nightclub shootout With Scooly D Yes, a legend I've written about school E many times in my career

This is a very important schoolie D movie And then finally Fishburn I'm black, that one yeah Fishburn killing snipes in the rain And then we just go to the tailending of him Getting in the cabin I realized he was shot. Did I leave anything out?

I think the Plaza Hotel dinner scene with the columnists and the lawyer and the beautiful people and the sort of like New York that maybe existed once upon a time, maybe never even existed, maybe it's imagined. A little bonfire of the vanities feel. A little bit, yeah. But a real New York that actually, you know, and Farrar hobnobbed in both New York. And that's an important thing. He was a, you know, he was a cult figure in New York. for the next decade, actually. And so he, you know, I'm sure he called Pete Hamill up and says, hey, Pete, be in my fucking thing.

Pete's pretty good, too. Yeah, exactly, yeah. It's exciting. Pete Hamill was like my grandparents and their whole generation by far their favorite columnist. That was their guy. They grew up in Brooklyn. They worshipped him. They were at him until the day they died.

To me, he was the guy who wrote Flesh and Blood, that boxing novel. The only other one I had was, I forgot to put this one in Walk and Go. went to see Victor Argo in his place and doing all... What do you have? Cuffs him? This country spends a hundred billion a year and getting high.

It's funny because some of these are like great scenes and some of them are great lines. Like, um... Yeah, I'm holding off. I'm holding off on the re quotable lines. You know, I'm holding... I'm thinking... I don't want to piss them away for that.

I would have... I'd add one other thing. Okay. Because, uh, um... I think the best action scene in the movie is the car chase. Yeah, yeah. All right. And even that has a bit of sloppiness, too. I mean, there is a aspect where it's like, he's definitely inspired by some of that Hong Kong stuff. Ferrar is not a great action director. He has a, he's, he has a similarity to, and they're both kind of wild guys, too, of Sam Fuller. All right. And that is, you know, he's about the moment. He's about the excitement of the thing. So he's not going to have the get everything perfectly right that you need in order to pull off an action scene to make it.

transcend. So even that is as as he can get, and it's still so obvious that it's not Christopher Walkin driving the car. The guy even has black hair who's driving in the car. And every time they cuts him to do the close up of Walkin, you're like, oh, shit, I forgot that it's supposed to be Frank behind the wheel. And, you know, but

that's the sloppiness that's easily taken care of. That it just, I mean, at the very least put a fucking wig on the dude. Yeah. But he doesn't even do that. His kill scenes are really good, though, because the chase into the showdowns. The kill scenes are great, but those aren't action set pieces. Right. Right. Right, right.

I'm saying he's faulty. But faulty in that way that, like I said, Sam Fuller was. He was all about the moment. And then when the moment's over, he's on to something else. So what do you have from us who are at you? I would say the, am I black enough for you kind of dance sequence where they're partying all the way into the raid on the compound. That's like, that to me is when I was watching the movie, I was like, I've just never seen anything like this. I've never seen a scene set to a song like this.

Never seen this use of color. that's a really good case for that scene I had that as well I you know I always just am so enamored with Jimmy Jim's introduction

all right but I'll join you guys though because that song is just so fantastic and we're now in the bowels of their world so I really get that I really really get them I really really get them

yeah Bryce that's quote me Cash. I can get you six. And I get you another six after I recoup from street sales. I have the cash, you got half the drugs. It's all nothing, man. This is film hip-hop, Dorky, but there weren't a lot of movies around this time that were using

this hip-hop that had basically started just a few years before. Correctly in movies. And this is really, like, other than do the right thing, the first movie I remember, that kind of hit it correctly. Or it's like, oh, this makes sense that this song would be playing in this nightclub with these people doing this.

And Scooley is a lot different from what was becoming mainstream rap. I mean, he is really the godfather of gangster rap. He's not New York. He's Philly. You know, PSK, what does it mean? Parkside Killers is like a...

It's a really important thing. And it influences NWA and it influences all the New York rappers. He's like a very... It influences all the rappers in Texas. He's a really, really important dude. and Abel making a connection with him is one of those just like

if you have taste you have taste like Abel just has taste he just could spot things No game finds game Exactly yeah And that makes it such a That's part of what makes that scene Game recognizes game

For sure it is yeah What stage is the best I'll just rip through these The use of a limo As an action movie card Fucking hell yeah man It just doesn't happen often There even is a moment

When fish comes out of the sunroof All right It is blowing two guns that like Stipes is like, oh, what the fuck? Like, that's unfair. I got to do this shit. I was trying to think of my... I was going to make a list of best uses of a limo in a movie,

not for the typical use of a limo. Because I was thinking about Michael Keaton and Nightshift, how he makes that, like, the Morgmobile and is playing Rolling Stones in it without a stereo. But the limo at the beginning, picking Frank up, could be like Dracula's, you know, coach, you know, driverless fucking black. black coach, all right, that like pick people up at the fucking stagecoach

thing and, like, takes them up to the castle. Have any of their action movies used a limo like that? Not like that. I feel like the answer is no. No. Doesn't Teresa Randall also pop out with the guns? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Pop it out of the sunroof was great. Pretty woman had some good, not pretty woman, big. Had a good limo scene. Yeah, yeah. With Elizabeth Perkins. Well, you'll be the end of Pretty Woman, I guess. He's standing out there. Another one age the best.

We talked about it, but you have a young Fishburn, Bouchemmy, Caruso, Snipes, and Esposito. Yes. And Paul Caldera. But just a lot of young people. Speaking of people who had to wait a long time to kind of get their famous moment,

Esposito had to wait decades. 20 more years. Yeah, 20 more years. Another one's age the best. The Snipes Caruso Buddy Cop movie that's buried inside here. Yeah, yeah. I want it.

I want the prequel. It could have been running scared with Billy Chris, Like kind of in that in that in that world never happened. But I actually think you know something else you could actually make a case about is I mean in almost every way, shape and form. And I hadn't thought about this until I watched it again is the whole structure of King of New York is basically the wire. Oh yeah. All right.

You know, the whole thing is you watch Frank there like the way you watch Barksdale. But then you're completely connected to every member of his team and their function is how it works. I mean, you're completely connected to Calderon's job, what he has to do, what Jimmy Jim has to do, what Esposito has to do. You understand who the girls are. You understand their function. And then, now you've got to meet all these mooky cops, all right? And you see them. And like the wire, even though you're down with them, they're not as flashy and you don't enjoy them as much as you enjoy the bad guys.

And you're kind of rooting for the bad guys because they're just more enjoyable. There was, when I was doing the research, there was a think piece about this that I thought it was a little bit of a stretch, but maybe not as much of a stretch as I thought when I read it because you made a good case about how this paves the way for the shield and then the wire and this kind of a thing where you just have all these weird characters. They're not even in it that often, but you know what everybody's job is. Whatever their job is is kind of fascinating. Who knows if this influenced the shield, but it was the first of its kind. I can't really remember another movie doing that. So there's something to it. To me there's a thing about, to me there's the wire because it's like the combination of the two camps.

Yeah. Hopping back and forth through the two camps. And then the bad camp just can't help but be more compelling. Yeah. And so thus it throws actually no anxiety with me, but a seeming anxiety for the viewer. Yeah. The one thing that makes it like the shield as well, I think, is that the more. moral, not even ambiguity, but the badness of the cops in this movie is real.

Caruso is breaking the law. He's like, I'm going to fucking kill him. And in The Wire, all the way through the first three seasons, you feel like the cops are trying to stay within the lines. And then four and five things change a little bit. But the world in which, like, the cops are just as bad as the bad guys is like, that's a big part of telling the story. That's why you root for Frank White. Yeah. I have for what stage the best, just to mention it.

a second time. Carrasusus wedding performance. Joe Mulligan, follow her a bride. Come on a fair, Joe. Joe provided these lovely decorations for us. Where did you get these,

Joe, in an AA meeting? Not only that, he paid for the whole thing, the whole $200. Joe, by the way, put your shotgun away. The test came back negative. Yeah, there you go.

All right, all right. Roy Bishop, do I detect a little Afro sheen on that unusually wavy hair? Yeah. Real. Need to hear the whole speech. I need to hear the whole speech.

He makes like three threes in two seconds. Walk and dealing with muggers on the subway. Which is like a little vestige of a lot of 70s, 80s, New York movies where there was always like the stereotypical mugger scene and they actually... And Harold. Peronaut. Yeah. Super young heroin. Oh, yeah.

Larry Wong keeping his cocaine in giant MSG containers. That is a great idea. That is a great idea. Who's going to ever figure out of that? that out. That's good. Also, Larry Wong hanging upside down. I really enjoyed.

It's unclear how he died. He's just hanging upside down. It's like, what happened to him? Are they going to explain it? Well, but it's like a genius callback to Nosferatu.

He's watching Nosephiratu. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's like a band hanging. Looks like Nospheratu. And Walkin is channeling fucking Nospherazirata. Like a fucking bat. Yes.

I didn't catch it. That's why you guys are the experts. What else do you have for Witzage the best? Hmm. Anything else? Well, I would say, well, we've already said it before, but now to actually say it in the proper category is the whole hip-hop gangster, the whole hip-hop aspect, the black and Puerto Rican foot soldier gang.

Yeah, yeah. All right, is like introduced a whole new thing to gangster films at that time. And then obviously it sets off like a dozen movies that are like this after New Jack City blows up. I guess we could mention 1990 New York. Oh, yeah. As age the best, just as a movie locale. Because we always talk about it on this part about how New York has been a character and all these different movies, especially like the Warriors and the late 70s and Manhattan is just such an essential part of it.

And then that kind of fades as the 80s go and then it really comes back. Yeah, but I was, and I would say both New York as a place and also those actors from that time as actors in a place in time. I also like that it's high, low New York. Yeah, yeah. It's the plaza and it's under the bridge. You know, it's as glossy as you can get, and it's as low down as you can get in the same movie, which is part of what's appealing about this movie in general, right?

It's like Abel's, like, exploitation background, but also his, like, beautiful photographic, cinematic sense. Like, all that stuff fits together. What do you have for what stage is the best? What would you pick? I just think that the kind of, like, movement of the hip-hop gangster movie is the most... I would say the milieu of the hip-hop gangster movie.

I have that second. I think catching all these guys at this cool moment of their career is probably my favorite thing. That's undeniable too. It's just the odds of getting three is pretty good, right? Yeah. To go for like six plus walking, I don't know, the casting is great. What's age the worst? I always think it really, you know, be one of those things where everything you're going to say is like,

that's the thing that makes the movie the great. Right. Actually, I think one of the things that age, is the worst is Janet Julian in as the lawyer girl. All right. That is, because there's an aspect about it where it's like, even when you see her name pop up in the credits,

surrounded by all the guys in front and all the guys been back in like, what the hell? Now, I actually think she catches up to some degree by the time that they're at the Freddie Jackson, a, him singing thing. And you kind of see her, you kind of see her like about partying in her female tuxedo.

She's kind of won me over a little bit, but it's like, if there's one person who doesn't belong in this magnificent cast of ball biters, it's her. Yeah, she's a weird one. I don't have a big relationship to her. Like, I haven't seen her in a lot of stuff.

I don't know. Other than this movie, I don't even know. I think she was in a couple of, the name is familiar, and her face was familiar. She was in a couple of things. But, I mean, you know, she literally looked, she looks like she, I don't know how she won the part.

But the thing about it, though, is, you totally want Ariana to be that part. The girl from a year of the dragon at the beginning. Well, I had her in What's Age the Worst, the worst, and we have her coming up in the recasting couch. Oh, great, excellent. I just assume, like, to me, the watershed all time, why are you in this movie is Karen Lingorny and Saturday Night Fever, where it's like, were you dating the director or something?

And then it's like, oh, yeah, she actually was. She got in there, but, man, she's tough in this one. You're probably going to get mad at this next one. You haven't been mad at me this whole podcast. I feel like this is going to make you mad. What stage is where is Victor Argo? I just think he's bad as Bishop. I wish that was an awesome actor in that part

because I think there's a lot to work with that part, and he gets nowhere with it. You know, look, you know. I'm sorry if you're a Victor Argo fan. No, no, well, I know, I knew Vic and everything like that, and he's a good guy. I do, I, I, I unfortunately agree with you. I think he's fine in the movie, but the part deserved more than fine.

And I actually, and I actually think he didn't quite realize, I don't, I think he had, I didn't think he thought the movie was that good. And so he just did, he did his journey men role. And I actually think more could, much more could be done with that character. I mean, I even wish, I mean, I even wish that, oh, wait. Talked about, we watchedable scenes, and we didn't talk about fucking walking, killing fucking Caruso at the goddamn... Uh, uh, oh, the funeral.

At the funeral? One of the great fuck yous of all time. Yeah. I have... One of the great shotgun deaths of all time. I have some logical issues with the scene. I don't think he gets away. You know, the police funerals are not easy to infiltrate. That's my one take on the scene.

It's like, so there's a thousand cops at this funeral. Maybe that's what they're... Actually, one of my favorite parts of it is they're going, what the fuck? Yeah. That's actually a great moment. It's funny, but it's like police funerals are very protected. There's a lot of bodyguards.

There's a lot of entries and outguards. You might very well be right. I wouldn't change a frame of it. The kill is amazing. You just don't expect it. I mean, even like when you've seen it before you, it's a thing that you do forget. And they're like, oh, wow. That's a good one.

Argo is tricky, right? Because he's like, he's like the central figure. that unites Abel Scorsese and Woody Allen. He's like the only actor, I mean, maybe I'm overstating him. I feel like he's the only actor who's worked with all of those guys multiple times.

It was like Harvey Catell's best friend in the world. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, all right, so I'll step on recasting couch. It's a part for like 2001 Harvey Citell. A little bit older version of him. But it's some, whoever the 1990 version of that is. I actually wish

there's a Harvey story involving this movie I actually wish if fucking Russo wasn't going to play that he played this guy He's got to be older then He's got to be older right? Because he's like the He's stuck between these two warring generations

Yeah I mean like I still would prefer it But I think you're right He should be he should be old Yeah Ricardo Montobahn maybe would have been good That would have been a little much Another new, like a Tony Lobionco or a Cliff Gordon. A 70s New York actor.

Any other what's age the worst? I really didn't have a lot for this category. I was surprised. It's a 30-year-old movie. People tried to say the things that age the worst upon release, and all that stuff was overstated in. Yeah, yeah. Casting what ifs we already did.

DeAnne Waiters Award. Oh, no, no, no. No, there's some I've been waiting for. Oh. Okay. Let's go. Keeping it in the right. Right, Lane, mate?

I'm proud of you. I've been sitting on it. I've been trained. You're like a real member of the cast. Well, I said, don't treat me like I'm some dorky Aaron Sorkin. I mean, treat me like I know what this fucking show's about, all right? Like, I've actually seen, I've listened to a few episodes. This is great.

All right. I love it. So the thing is, so, okay, so initially, who we was going to do it with, but like four years earlier, because they've had the script for a long time trying to get it going. This was his, like I said, Magnum Opus. For a while, they were going to do it with James Ramar, playing Frank White. Oh, like him. That's my guy.

Yeah. Because it was right after... Gantz. It was right after a Cotton Club. All right. So he had already played Dutch Schultz and Cotton Club. And so he was having his time right then. And he was going to be in aliens.

He was in the Reese role of aliens. And so they were going to, oh, I'm going to do it with Jamie Ramar. And it's going to be King of New York. and then they couldn't get it going. So that didn't happen. So then finally, he's set up with Live. They're going to do it. And it's going to be Harvey Cattell, all right, playing Frank White.

And they're going to do King of New York. And then they're going to do a bad lieutenant together. But then Harvey didn't care for the script. And Harvey finally backed out at the live and said, you know what, I don't think this is the one for me to do. But he considered it for a long time. But I don't think this is the one for me to do. So I'll let you.

but I think we should just stick with bad lieutenant. So why don't you do this one and then I'll do bad lieutenant when you're done with this? And so then they went to Walken and Walken said yes. I think that's perfect though. Like it has to be walking. There's a weirdness. There's like a distancing thing that Wauken has that Kaitel doesn't have. I feel like and Kaitel is so good in Bad Lieutenant.

Like I feel like it worked out perfectly. Yeah. It's the best walking part of all time. You think so? do. It's, it, it touches all the walking parts that I want to be touched. Well, I would say, yeah, I would, I guess, why would I choose? I guess, okay, if I take my stuff out of the equation. Yeah, I know, well, no, I can't even take my stuff out of the equation. I would actually say his best scene isn't true, isn't true romance. I think that's my favorite one. But I'm saying like, a character of a whole movie. Yeah, okay, I'll go for that. Okay, if you're doing that, then I think, I, I think it's a three-way dog fight between deer hunter, King of New York, and the funeral. No dead zone Oh god No it doesn't have to be in there

It has to be in there It's tough And it might win All right It might actually win a loser leaf I was gonna make this case I was gonna make this case The ice is going

To break Yeah He's the best See I was gonna make this case The Apex Mountain But he gets to be funny In this movie though He doesn't get to be funny

In Deer Hunter So he's using like 80% of his pitches But he's not gonna throw a slider in that movie In this movie he's funny he's scary He's weird His funny stuff he's also his physical His scary stuff too Which is why it's the perfect thing for him

You know you guys got fat while everybody Stopped on the street You know that whole thing is like he's hilarious And so scary at the same time And like all these other guys Like I said Harvey being a little too over serious about this A lot of people being a little too over serious about it Walken realizes he gets to play a vampire

Yeah yeah yeah All right and not make it a metaphysical piece of bullshit. So I have this leads into Apex Mountain. I have this as is Apex Mountain. Just 1990. Okay. For all the reasons covered before.

Because it sets up. It sets up everything that's about to happen to him. He's in a Batman movie, what, 18 months later? Playing Matt Shrek. Yep. He was brought to again. These people like you writing scenes for him and it's just, he's in a better place. More apex mountain.

What about quotable lines? We're getting there. Or is that good thing? Okay, cool. Apex, look, I actually... Able? I say fish. I say it's fish as Apex Mountain.

I say because it's like... As terrific as he has been and other things, it's... The level of excitement that I had over him when this movie was over, I have never had that excitement again. I mean, I was satiated. I was satiated by what's love got to do with it. I would say, I personally would say that's his apex man. And, you know, and I, and that's, and that is.

I'm not saying from a performance. I don't know, but that's, after that movie, he has better. Look, I, no, I, I can go with, I can go with that. I understand that. And I, I get, I get that argument. And I could, you know, and I was satiated with Matrix. You actually think that's air of your breathing? Yeah.

And then if you take the blue pill, you will wake up and you will tell yourself whatever you tell yourself. It's not Boys in the Hood? Because think of Apex Mountain not just as when you liked him the most, but when he had the most that he could do after a car. But, but Ike Turner comes after. Yeah, it does. Boise in the Hood. And then after that, it was just like, oh, this guy's going to be the next Denzel. Yes.

And I mean, to me, I just thought his world after. King of New York would be a far, far, huger world. And it wasn't. It wasn't. It was good and it was terrific. And he did wonderful work. But I mean, I thought with this,

he could be the greatest actor of his generation. I literally, that was an actual real fucking thing. Wow. He could be the greatest actor of his generation after seeing this. And not just after seeing this. It's not like, you know, from Apocalypse now and Willie and Phil and every fucking thing he did

after that and before this, you know, so it was all building up to this. And he had made movies with Copeland and Spielberg. Absolutely. I can quote his lines from Cotton Club. You want me to go against, oh, wait, Madden? If you get, oh, wait, Madden on your ass,

you truly have somebody on your ass. Not Bobby Fisher for Apex Madden? I'm not inviting either of you on that podcast. It's Joe Dallon's Apexman. Not anybody either of you know it. I have the Plaza Hotel as Apex Mountain. You have this movie and Home Alone, same year. When was it better for the Plaza Hotel?

It has to be Apex Mountain. This is a great poll. This is why you're the best of this. Thank you. Donald Trump, back when he was still not really Donald Trump yet. Movie Limos Apex Mountain? Movie Limous, yeah. Let's put it in there.

Put it in there, man. Incredible. How about, schoolie D, no question. Of course. On screen, sure, but maybe not in his career. No, but it's great year for him. Yeah, I would say Freddie Jackson's apex mountain. You know, I was trying to rack my brain about whether or not, like, where he was in his career in that scene.

Because is he still, like, in the prime of his... He's not Luther Vandros anymore, but he's still a dude. A dude, yeah. He's still a dude. He's not Luther Vandros. He's not... I didn't know what category of put him in, right? You know, but he's not, to be real Sylvester.

but he's He still got cloud Would you go pre-gentrification Brooklyn? I mean, you're talking about like a long history of movies Portraying Brooklyn though But this is Every gangster movie in the 30s and 40s

And yeah, I don't know Yeah, just throwing it out there Because it's also they bounce They bounce from the boroughs too Like the movie takes place all over the place Anything else? No, I don't think that. I'm, I'm, uh, who gets the Dionne Waiters Award?

Is Caruso eligible is my first question? No, he's probably in too many scenes. Too many lines. He's like the third lead. I'm going off the map for this one. For my choice. Okay. I always love Teresa Randall.

Really? And I love seeing her in this. She's not in it that much. I had a lot of... Wouldn't she be then that guy? I had her in there too famous. She's lead films. No, but yeah.

But look, I was under the impression that that guy is either, he's either that guy. Or it's that guy. guy before he's that guy. It could be either. I mean, I always thought that... That's the interpretation. Yeah, I always thought it could be... It's somebody before they were that guy.

Okay. It could be there. That's tricky then. Especially in this movie that complicates it. It does. Because Crusoe is that guy. No, no, no, but Crusoe is too much of a lead. I mean, he literally is...

No, the answer to the Joey Pants Award, we can go back to Dei Ann Waiters is Paul Calderon. Because I think most people don't know who that is. They know he's that guy. No, man, I would... No, no, I would... They know he's that guy, though. I would say.

it's Busemi wins. No, because he becomes Steve Busemi, though. But we just talked about before that guy, before that guy. You turn this into the Matrix. Hold on. Here are my candidates for Hitchellon. My candidates are Carrie Nygrin, who does not speak in this movie

and is amazing as Melanie. Roger Gwynnevere Smith, who is a city councilman, I guess. Leonard L. Thomas, who you already mentioned, who has one of the great line deliveries in the movie. Joey Chin. Joey Chin is doing a lot.

Joe Chin's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. That's a good one. Joey Chin watching those ferratu and doing that whole spiel is one of my favorite parts of the movie. Not Theresa Randall? I go for Paul Calderon for Joy Pants.

No, what about for... Dionne Waiter. Dion Writers. I would go for Calderon for Dion Waders. Okay, okay. I was under the impression that that guy could literally be... Look, Steebersomey was that guy

when this movie was made. He was that guy. He was that guy who was like the old most things people knew him for if you knew him at all was probably for the movie parting glances he did

but in other things he would pop up. It was your movie that made him not that made him see that. Yeah, but that was after this movie that's two years after this movie.

Before this movie, it's like he pops up in Billy Bathgate. He's like a henchman in Billy Bathgate. He pops up in Heart of Midnight. He pops up in in the Miller's Crossing.

Yeah, in Millers Crossing. He pops up in Barton Fink. And he's always that guy. So maybe this is a variation of the category of the at the time Joey Pants Award. See, I personally, I'll just say, for the record, I like Joey Pants for the people whose names you don't know right now. So I like it for, and it's tough with you because you know everyone's name. But Victor Argo is a person who to any, you know, movie fan, but not cinefile is a that guy. I think Paul Cauderone is.

I think he's a that guy. He is definitely a that guy. He is, I saw that guy in Pulp Fiction. I don't know what his name is. Yeah. For Dion Waiters, though, I'm going to make, can I make the case for Theresa Randall? Should go ahead. Not positive what her job is.

Not positive what her motivation is to be in the movie, like what he was thinking. She owns every scene she's in. I'm convinced she's dangerous. She can do drugs with whoever. She's hot. And for some reason, I'm rooting for her to survive and she barely has any lines. She's described as a bodyguard. Yeah.

Right. So, you know, redefines bodyguard, I guess. Let's take a break to talk about the rewatchables. The podcast you're listening to right now. This was the 100th episode of the rewatchables. That's right. Episode 100. We've done 100 movies.

And if you want to know what they were, you should follow the rewatchables Twitter feed, which is at the rewatchables, where we have put a bunch of stuff from our highlights from the from the hundred movies that we've done we have a page that has all the links with breakouts that we did from different movies and we also have a Facebook group that you can join it's closed so it's only people that uh that love the show we want real discourse we don't want people coming in and just flaming everybody but that is on facebook the the group is called the rewatchable so if you didn't know about that go check us out the 101st episode the Celebration episode is next week, and it's a movie we've already done.

So we're sticking with the 100. The first movie we ever did was called Heat. You might have heard of it. Michael Mann Classic, Pacino and De Niro. That was the podcast that basically led to the format that we have now. So what we thought we would do, me and Chris Ryan, back again. We're calling it the reheat. We're just doing heat again, but we're doing it with the categories that we have now

after 100 episodes of the rewatchables. So check that out next week. If you didn't know about our Facebook group and you want to jump into that, God bless. If you didn't know about our Twitter feed, why aren't you following it? Go follow us there.

And thanks for spreading the word and supporting. It's been a blast to watch this podcast feed unfold. Back to King of New York with Quentin Tarantino and Sean Fettison. Linda Partridge, they knew, overacting award. I have Artie Clay peeing on Paul Road Shoes. Yeah. Listen, Fishburn's amazing in this movie.

He dials it up in that last scene. The death scene, he's dialing it up. When he's screaming, laughing, like I said, I'm choosing Fishburne for Apex Mountain. So, all right, I wouldn't give him the overacting award, all right, even though he would earn it. I just saying he dialed it up. Yeah, I think it's already Clay.

I think it's already Clay. But also, I think, I mean, one, Artie Clay is the perfect that guy, too. He's one of the, one of the hoods at the beginning. of once upon a time in America. Oh, yeah. All right. That shows up.

Another of that guy is the father of the bride. Yeah. He's in sorcerer, and he's, what you might call it, Shiders, a partner and the robbery. Right. And he's also one of the four members, one of the five members of the Brinks job. Okay. Are we meant to believe that he's the father of the bride or the father of the,

is he a family member? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, he's the father. But then he's in the bar later. Yeah, no, but he's a cop. He's a cop. He's a cop. He's a cop. Yeah.

James Lorenz, all right, marries. Right. Who's from street trash. All right. Yeah, he marries a cop's daughter. Okay. I'm moving to half-ass internet research because we're behind schedule. The real Christopher Walken called Biggie's hotel room and left a message,

hey, this is the real king of New York. Call me. That actually happened in the mid-90s. That's maybe apocryphal. I love the story. I love the story. Half-ass internet research. At the second showing in the New York Film Festival,

Lawrence Fishburn and Nicholas St. John were boot off the stage. So that happened. The first cut of the film ran for almost two hours, had to be edited down to 106 minutes to avoid an X rating. I don't know what was in there. I want to see that version. Me too. Donald Trump, this is director saying this, Donald Trump gave him permission to film at the Plaza Hotel,

at no charge on condition that Waukin would pose for a photograph with Ivana Trump. Incredible. That almost has to be true. I don't know. I believe that one. Abel claims that Wesley Snipes was living in his car during production of this film. I looked at his IMDB, it's possible. He really only made Major League, and it was like a year later.

He might have been living in his cards, conceivable. Sure. The film's opening sequence was shot partially at Sing Sing Prison, the first time the prison was ever used in a movie. Oh, wow. The word fuck? The word fuck is used how many times you think? I have no clue.

What would you guess? I'm bad at that. I don't have a... What would you guess, Sean? 90. 90. And then, did we mention that Abel directed a porn film titled

Nine Lives of Wet Pussy using a pseudonym? Yeah, we didn't mention that. No, we didn't mention it, but I know. Throwing that in it. Okay. Recasting couch. Here's where we go back to Jana Julian. Poor gal.

Tough beat for her. What about Sharon Stun? 1990 Sharon Stone? Kind of that Action Jackson total recall. Yeah. Kind of era for her? Yeah, no, I can see that. I think that could have worked.

I just want someone who's more New York. Janet Julian and Sharon Stone is not very New York either. Yeah, that doesn't work for you then. Midwest California. Annabelle Seora? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, but no, no, no, I, you know, look, the one thing about, look, Janet Julian doesn't work, but the idea behind the girl being out of place does work.

Yeah, that's true. All right. So I like the idea of a Kelly Lynch, especially with the whole Chimino. Kelly Lynch. That's perfect. That's who it should be. Yeah. Remember, she plays the lawyer in desperate hours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that would even work in with the whole Chimino. She's Coglin's girlfriend in a cocktail like a year before. Yeah, yeah, right. Kelly Lynch would have been perfect. Yeah. Damn it. But like I said, though, I'm a little California for me, like, no, though, she's for money.

She's drawn to New York to deal with this. But I like the fact that it's not an Italian chick or a Jewish chick. Maybe it's more like it needed to be like a New England kind of a person. You know, somebody who is like not familiar, not used to being in the kind of rough and tumble New York scene. But anyway, I digress. Kelly Lynch is a good suggestion. Picky Nets. Walk and punches.

What are we going to do the lines? It's the next one. I don't remember being this far down the list. This is a really long podcast. Okay. Picket Nets. You're rewriting it for this way. episode is waiting to say the fucking lines.

It's coming. It's usually married to... You want to just do it now? No, no, no, no. Go it your way. Pick a nits. It's the money shot. Walk and punching Snipes multiple times.

When they get him the first time, I don't know. Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't buy that either. Didn't agree with that. Snipes is cool with it. Thanks for punch me in the face five times. No, if I get back of my car. In the world that we now know really exist and not the world that Starsky and Hutch told us,

their police story told us existed. All right. Oh, we needed an excuse to shoot Frank. Well, you just have it. Right. Just punched Wesley. He just punched a cop. Yep.

I was afraid for my life. The Chinatown shootout. Yeah. Oh, what about that? A little one-sided. It felt like somebody on walking side could have been shot. He's just strolling the street. I love it. It's like a callback to the Paul Mooney Scarface. It's great. Little one-sided. I love it.

Look, I can always go for a few more extras on each side. Take more bullets than they normally do. I mean, they win the shootout, 10 to zero. Yeah. I would, I look, I'm always, I always have a problem with that. I still like the shootout, but I always have a problem with that. Caruso dies that scene of just being able to assassinate somebody at a police funeral. I wasn't 100% sold on, but I still enjoyed it. Yeah. You know where I stand on that one. What was Snipes's game plan with the tail end of the fishburn shootout when he's chasing him and he just wanders into this giant dark open area and he's like calling him out? Jimmy! I think that the...

I'm right here. I'm with you. And it's like, you're just going to die? What are you doing? I think the adrenaline was really flowing after the crazy car chase. I think the adrenaline is throwing and I think he's counting on fish to get out of there. All right, as opposed to lying and wait. I mean, which is a dumb fucking fucking...

Bad strategy. He's trying to elude. That's why I'm picking this of that one. And then why did Joey, aka Paul Calderon, why did he set Frank in his crew up at the club, how much money could he have possibly been offered to sell those guys out?

Enough to make it worth his wife. But by cops, how much are cops offering for a sellout? I thought about this a little bit. And my take on it is that he knew that Frank was doomed. And then he knew that this plan to take over the city fully was, the cops were never going to let it happen. And so he was like, I got to get out of this racket right now and get away from Frank's side. So the only way to sell them out is to sell them out to the cops. But you know, here's a weird part about that, though, it's like one, I mean, look, if it did work according to plan, well, then it's all taken care of because everybody's dead.

So there is no recoup, there is no retaliation. That's smart. But having said that, and this is something I don't think I ever thought about until I watched it this time. Frank's plan seemed like it was working like a fucking charm. Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, I mean, it actually was almost like the way we're talking about unstoppable, almost about the way that all the people who work for the train company don't give 777 enough respect. They all think they can handle 777 and they can't. And 777 just keep proving that it cannot be stopped.

and all your attempts are ridiculous, and I am the King Kong of this jungle, is the same arrogance that all the mob guys that Frank actually tries to deal with. He tries to deal with them as businessmen, and they're like, you're fucking crazy. And then he shows that he's not, that he can take them all on.

And there is no loyalty involved with these people. He will pay them better. And it all seems like it's going to work. And it like it would have worked, at least for a while, if the cops hadn't had gone rogue. Very fair. I think can you trust cops to not go rogue is an interesting question.

That's maybe also unanswerable. Any other nitpicks? Because we're about to do best quote. No, let's do best quote. It's time. Best quote. Go ahead. Okay, well, there's many.

All right. I'll start it off with, I'm going to go downtown, find me a girl, and get my knob polished. I'm going downtown, find me a girl, get my knob polished. It's not the real part. That's Jimmy in the plaza when he first sees Frank. There's a lot of Jimmy lines. There's a lot of Jimmy lines coming.

For black males, every line that Larry Fishburn has, you say to the screen as you watch it. It's like him and Smokey in fucking Friday, and you would just say that you say his lines with him. Get my knot polished is almost a separate best quote. It gets pulled out. It's a double quote. That's similar to like you were saying about fucking.

you very much. I don't know if I ever heard got my knob polished before him saying that in the movie, too. That's good. There's a lot of those. And I, and the... Is he ad libbing that or is like Able writing that? I think it's a combination of it's in the, it, in that one, I think that's fish. Yeah. That one I think is fish. All right. I feel like anybody could write that. Yeah. It's really good. No, no, no. Nick St. John could. Nick St. John could. It might not polish. It's really good. That feels like an ad lib. But then following very closely after that is the... the last moment.

Hey, Jim, why didn't you visit me? Who wanted to see you in a cage, man? Really good. I should have put that in what stage the best. Because he's right. He didn't want to see him that. I actually felt like that was a genuine explanation. Oh, well, and then fucking luck is rid of response.

Oh, yeah. Of course. It's fucking amazing. Great line. Of course. It's perfect, too, because the whole scene starts with, you think that there's this tension, this beef, this drama between them.

And then it ends and you feel like maybe the drama and the beef will come back. And then it doesn't. And then they're together for the rest of the movie until they both die.

Any other best quotes? We've said a lot of them. Can I do one, Jimmy one? Yeah. I love when Joey comes back to the house right before the raid and jumps like, I want to know who I'm selling drugs to.

You know what I mean? Joey says, you don't sell drugs. My brother, you shoot people. And he says, yo, I'm unemployed. Ain't nobody left. Yeah, right.

Yo, Joey, what's up, my boy? Well, you're going to diss me, ain't going to introduce me to your friends, man? What's up? Because I want to make a good impression on. Yeah, well, I want to know what I'm selling drugs to, you know what I'm saying? You don't sell drugs, my brother.

Shoot people. Yo, I'm unemployed, man. Ain't nobody left. And then, okay, as you said before, which is also a same, but also a lot is the, okay, of Caruso's,

since you're the cop expert here. Well, I think the test came back negative. when he's given the toast, it's like the funniest fucking aside that I ever heard. I think his whole speech, too, in the bar that we talked about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bar speech is amazing. You're preventing me from doing my job, you know, just to protect the people of this city.

And basically, like, imagine me giving you that speech. Because that's what it is. It's like, we're friendly, but this guy's my boss, you know? It's like, you don't tell this guy that he's fucking you over by not, being able to do your job. Like, I don't know. Caruso communicates arrogance better than any actor ever. And there's a reason for that.

But he's so good at it. He's so good of being such a prick. Are you in on Proof of Life or no? I haven't seen Proof for Life. That was Caruso dipping back into King of New York Caruso. Oh, really? Huh? I think you have to watch it.

I have a lot of females really love that movie. It's really good. And I guess they're the last 20 minutes are excellent. It fits their fantasy of like everything is going to shit and a guy comes in. That knows how to fucking handle shit. You know what one scene I forgot about is it features one of my favorite lines is very quick. It's when we see Snipes and Caruso and Victor Argo when they're grabbing Frank for the first time and they're going to drag him out into the car. And they have that kind of nasty exchange.

He's like, I heard a rumor about you, whatever. And then Frank at the end of it is like, I thought about you every time I jerked off, Dickin. So good. Okay, we're just throwing out little lines like that. Okay, slap the black off you. All right. Oh, man. Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show?

I was surprised to my reaction to this. Maybe. Oh. I would watch every 10 episode. You want the extended tales of Frank White. Well, the question for me, I actually thought this through. I wouldn't want to do 1990. It's like, could you do 2020 King of New York and what does that look like?

Their crime isn't like this. Yeah, I would look, look, I, I would say yes, but the Achilles heel of this movie is it's too short. There's a reason the third act is so thin is they've had to just reduce everything. And so it, you know, this movie needed to be two hours, all right? This could have held to a two and a half hours if he had what he could have done. And also, I just want Frank's reign to be longer. So if you had a, if you had a 10 episode version of this from this time period that just, that lives out, we play more about the hospital, more about the cops, more about the inner workings of Frank's, we just talked about the wire. All right.

So I think it all kind of, it would be fantastic. I would set it now. See, the thing, the only tricky part about it is, in 1990, if you think about what's going on in New York, you've got the. the sort of the dying Italian American mafia in the city. You've got the borough's starting to gentrify. You've got hip hop

coming alive. We talked about all of that stuff. And you've got the sort of Trump figures rising in power. And it needs to be cocaine. Yeah. Yeah. It needs to be coke. Yeah, because if it's the shit that people are doing now... It's like can't be MdMA.

Yeah, it's got to be coke. It's got to be coke. And like it still needs to have it needs to have its connection to Scarface. It needs to have a fish hook. All right. That connects the two movies together. Next category, probably unanswerable questions. Was the character of Omar inspired by Frank White?

Omar? From the wire. Not Avon. You're saying Omar. I'm saying Omar, the Robin Hood of the Wire. Oh, see, okay, so maybe it's like a split. Or maybe is it Omar and Avon together? No, I think if it's inspired by anybody, it's got to be barking.

All right, you know, because it's about, it's about the empire. Yeah. You know. Maybe he split Frank White up into five different characters. That's, that's legitimate. I mean, those guys are based on real guys that. Because McDowellty has a little caruso, I might go over the edge at any time. I actually think a case could be made that, like, if anything, King of New York is missing an Omar character that in a longer version of it, in a two and a half hour version.

That would literally be the, you know, I don't think it would be, I don't think it would be the guy who's trying to bring down Frank and also effing with the cops. I think it's like, you know, Frank has his gunfighter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He has his guy that he sits on ice until he gets the word. I agree. Did Watkins Muggers ever come back to the plaza for a job?

They did. We see Harold Pirono later. You see him in the plaza, circling in the plaza. He comes back in the movie. Oh, I missed that. Yeah. He's in the school in D-Same. So that was it.

answerable. He's out there boogieing and the scilly decent. Yep, they're there. I mean, wouldn't you take them up on the job? Yeah, absolutely. All right, this is a deeper question. This will be a longer answer. What takes so long for filmmakers to tap into certain people who are obviously stars?

So like Caruso is somebody I would have bet was going to have a moment at some point. But I didn't know where it was and it might not ever happen. Walk in the same way. Somebody like Fishburn who's bouncing around the entire. and nobody really totally taps into it until this movie. Why can't, because we dealt with this with Grantland and at the Ringer, where we see writers and we're like, that person's good. We should get that person.

That person would thrive where we are. We just see it. And it seems like you can see it with actors. Well, your examples, though, all right, of the ones you're using as an example, they're doing what it takes to have their moment. They've all had done, I mean, in the case of fucking fish, or, you're talking. talking about a decade, all right, of complete work leading up to this place that he actually has this type of confidence that he can deliver this way. And when it came to Caruso, you know,

he literally, he was, again, specializing in that scary best friend role, all right? And then really in movie. So you think it's more you get pigeonhole than nobody taps into it or? No, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, this director and that director, this movie, that movie, the casting directors know him, the directors know him. And he's, just waiting for that right role that fans him. And now he finds it in the case of King in New York and he finds it in the case of

NYPD Blue. But there's certain directors and I think this is something you're probably proud of and should be is part of the thrill of making a movie is like, I like that person I'm going to put them in this role and they're going to be fucking awesome in it. Do you feel like most directors even think that way though?

Or they're just trying to make their movie? I think the situation is. I think most directors, I think most directors are just, they know the actors they know, but they're not as plugged in to, and look, I'm not as plugged into the young actors of now that I, the way I was in the 90s, the way I was in the 80s and the 90s and even in the early, early 2000s. You know, by the time I know somebody, like a lot of older directors, like, you know, well, they're known to some degree or another. You know, so it's like, you know, yeah, I know who Walt Goggins is, all right, from watching.

the shield and justified, but fucking so does everybody else. They have watched the shield and justified, too. But if you had an alternate life where you were just a casting director and you never directed, you would have been a good casting director. Oh, no, actually, it was saying when I was doing Reservoir Dogs, we were working

with a casting director named Ronnie Eskell, who was, amongst other things. She was the casting director on LA law. Yeah. And so we're going through our casting sessions. I've never done, I've done fuck all up until this point. Yeah. And I haven't done Jack or shit. And so I'm sitting there.

And I'm sitting there and I know every fucking actor that's walking through the door. All right. And I can say their names and the characters that they played. Oh, I loved you in this. I loved you in that. And then I'm also showing off. I'm picking the most obscure shit that I could possibly say. If they're older, I'm picking the weird exploitation movie they did in the fucking seven.

And I'm just blowing everyone's mind. And then Ronnie actually says to me, she goes, Quentin, if this directing thing doesn't work, I will give you half my business. Wow. I will, you just come working from me. I will split the business in half. Amazing. And it'll be me and you.

If the directing thing doesn't work, I will give you half of my business and just be a casting director with me. I feel like the thing that you said earlier, too, is the point of this, which is it has to be a little bit of game recognized game, you know? Farrah has to know. that Caruso is ready for this part. And then what is it, Stephen Bocchco? And who is his writing partner?

But, I mean, he produces... Milch, David Milch. And they recognize that Caruso was ready. But Caruso was one of the young guys. You know, the way, the way, like, DeTuro had his moment in the 80s and everything. Caruso was in that spot. And Mad Dog and Glory was the thing that says he was in that spot. Right.

I just did a podcast with Tim Robbins. And he was telling the story about how he got the player. And he's basically like, Alman, if I get the funding to make this, you're my guy. And then a couple months past, he can't get the funding. And then I forget the actor that he said they had instead. But they were like, we'll fund it. But it's got to be with this actor.

And he's like, I can't. I already promised it to Tim Robbins and it'll be perfect. And that's who I won in the movie. It does seem like with the great directors, they do have like a real instinct for who's perfect. also for the point of the career that they're in, which I think is one of the things you're the most famous of, right? Well, I mean, one of the things in the case of, like, say,

Robert Forster is Max Cherry and Jackie Brown. All right, that was the situation where when I wrote the part, thinking about who I was going to cast in it, I had four names that I actually thought would be terrific Maxes. I thought Paul Newman at that time would have been a great marriage. I thought Gene Hackman at that time would have been a great max. But that's almost too dead on. Because that's exactly the kind of roles that he played and that he is that character.

I thought Forrester would be a great Max Cherry. And I thought John Saxon would be a great would be a great Max Cherry. And so those were kind of my four guys. Obviously, I'm going one way. I'm going one way with two guys and going the other way with the other two guys. And then like I said, after I watched Alligator again, I was like, this is not just, this is the character. This is, he's actually, this, that is Max Cherry just in an earlier seven. 17 years earlier. And then I happenstance bumped into Robert Forrester in a restaurant.

And then I just decided to give him the role. I gave him the role then before we even opened up offices because I knew that bigger names were going to really want to play the role. But if I had already given it to him and given him my word, then there'd be nothing I could do about it. I'm sorry, guys. I already gave it away. Paul Newman. Jesus Christ. Same thing as all these other what-ifs, though.

It's like Forrester's perfect in that part. Yeah. And so it doesn't, you wouldn't, I worship Hackman. I think he's like, he's an unexplored person on this show, actually. Yeah. When we do anything in the state, he won't be.

Well, that's another conversation, I guess. Not my favorite hackman role. Oh, Chris and I'll do it. We'll leave you up. But he, I would take Forster 100 out of 100 times. But I also, You know, you thought of that.

But like Pam Greer, you were saying for years, I'm making a movie with Pam Greer. No, no, the reason I'm writing it is to do a Pam Greer movie. Right, yeah. Yeah, so Pam Greer was that, she was baked in the cake. Right. But Travolta is somebody, you're fascinated by who's in a career swoon, and you're going, wow, that guy's, it's almost like a basketball player

on the wrong team for five years. Initially, I had actually, because I thought it was going to be Michael Madsen playing Vincent. Right, right, right. So I was actually thinking that Travolta is. could have been good in the Eric Stoltz role. Oh. All right.

And so then I sit there, I get together and talk to him. And then in talking to him, I realized, oh, wow, he could be a good Vincent. This could be an interesting Vincent. Well, okay, well, I have a little, I have a backup if things don't work out with Michael. And things didn't work out with Michael. And so I went. And there was also one of the things where I was like, because I had made the movie a zillion times in my mind with Michael, the idea of thinking about John in the part, it seemed fresh and new.

because I hadn't seen that movie at 10,000 times. Oh, yeah, and you're in the writing, yeah. Yeah. And like somebody like Brad Pitt in the last movie you just made. Yeah. Is that you're hoping he does it,

but it could potentially be other people or is it just, you're like, this has to be Brad Pitt. No, no, no. It's like, what, you just can't assume something like that when it comes to guys like that. I mean, the fact is, you know, I lucked out with one of the...

Yeah, but you're you. You can get Brad Pitt at this point? I can get both of them? All right. That was a casting coup that a lot of things had to do. just literally work out the right way. Getting two of the most famous actors the last 50 years.

Yeah, I mean, that they're not booked on another movie, all right, that we can work out a deal that everyone, everyone's going to be happy with, that we can afford them. I mean, all that kind of business all had to happen. But not only that, I'm also stuck into another situation where the fact is the guys had to be realistic doubles. Yeah. So it was like if I had to have my Rick first. I couldn't cast Cliff until I had a Rick.

And Brad's even talked about that in interviews. He goes, well, he needed to know his Rick, and then he needed to know who he's casting as the double. And that had to work out. I'd say it worked out pretty well. Yes, it did. It worked up pretty well. Who won King of New York?

For me, it's always going to be fish. I'm going walking as well. But you made a... I respect. You made an incredible fish case. I think I'll think about him differently as an actor now because of the case that you made. But it is always... It's Walkins movie.

my head. It has to be Walkins movie. Well, we should plug once upon a time in Hollywood. No, we don't need to. I've seen that damn thing about that. Oscars are coming. But you're going to come back on and do fast break

at some point in your life. I am absolutely going to do fast break. Fast break, bad news bears and breaking trading. I'm dying out like just bad 70 sports movies. I will literally, I will be happy in particular to do another trifecta, all right, of a fast break,

bad news bears and breaking training. Again, a big William, a big William Devane fan. Oh, he's unbelievable. that movie. And one-on-one. You heard it. This is your dream.

You heard it. This is Bill Simmons's dream. From his mouth to God's ears. Well, I got to do it with him. We'll love other people, for sports movies, I can't imagine not doing it with him. I appreciate it.

Sean Fantasy, Quentin, thank you so much. That was the rewatchers. My pleasure. All right, thanks to State Farm and thanks to Pepsi. Remember, with the New Year officially here and everyone in Valuing to Restrict resolutions. Pepsi wants to usher in the new decade a little bit differently by encouraging everyone to unapologetically do what you enjoy, even in the face of others' judgment. You'll know that we are

living this here at the rewatchables with a couple of the movies that we pick for February, March, that are on the 2020 schedule. But you know what? We unapologetically love the movies we're going to talk about in 2020, no matter what happens. Is it 2020 or 2020? Whatever you want to say, it's up to you because Pepsi, that's what I like. We'll see you next week on the rewatchables for the reheat, the 100th episode. Oh yeah, it's happening.