Unclear and Present Danger - Die Hard with a Vengeance

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched “Die Hard with a Vengeance,” the 1995 threequel to the original 1988 “Die Hard.” Directed by John McTiernan, who helmed the first film, it was written by prolific Holllywood screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh based on an original screenplay and stars Bruce Willis as recurring hero John McClane, Samuel L. Jackson as “Zeus,” and Jeremy Irons as Simon Gruber, brother of Hans.In the episode, Jamelle and John discuss Rudy Giuliani’s New York, the racial and class politics of the film and how this movie seems to anticipate the imagery of the 9/11 era.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more.Our next episode is on the 1995 political satire “Canadian Bacon,” directed by Michael Moore and starring an ensemble cast of John Candy, Alan Alda, Bill Nunn and many others. You can find it to rent on iTunes and Amazon.

In the hands of a mastermind of terror... I want to play a game with Lieutenant McLean. What kind of game? Simon says... The path to revenge lead straight to John McLean. If we don't do what this guy says he's going to blow up another public... Well, why me? What's he got to do with me? I have no idea. He just said it had to be you.

No. It's nice to be needed. Simon says, get to the paper in Wall Street. in Wall Street station by 1020, or the number three train and its passengers are vaporized. I'm not jumping through hoops for some psycho. That's a white man with white problems. You deal with it.

Where the hell are you going, McCline? I know what I'm doing. Not even God knows what you're doing. This guy wants to pound on you till you crumble. Are you aiming for these people? No. Well, maybe that mine. He wants you to dance to his tune, and then

kill you. Oh, dear. McClain. You don't like because I'm white. I don't like you because you're going to get me killed. Ah! They knocked over to Federal Reserve. Bruce Willis, Jeremy,

Samuel Jackson. Congratulations. You're still alive. Hi. Mother. In a John McTierman film, Die Hard, with a vengeance. John McClay, NYPD. Are you all right?

Yes. We're hungry day. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gant.

I write a substack newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I'm editing my book about American politics in the early 1990s. Great. Can't wait for that to come out. Yeah, me neither. I can't wait to finish it. This week, we watched Die Hard with a Vengeance, the 1995 threefold to the original 1980 Die Hard. We previously did Die Hard 2, Die Harder.

That's the Rennie Harlan movie. Check out that episode. It was good fun. I heard with the vengeance was directed by John McTiernan, who held the first film. It was written by prolifically with screenwriter Jonathan Hensley, based on an original screenplay, and it stars, again, Bruce Willis as a recurring hero John McLean, as well as Samuel L. Jackson as Zeus, his partner,

and Jeremy Irons as Simon Gruber, brother of Hans, the villain of the first movie. Here is a short plot summary. John McLean thought he'd seen it all until a genius-themed Simon engages McLean, his new partner, and its beloved city, in a deadly game that demands their concentration. The tagline for die hard with a vengeance is, think fast, look alive, die hard. I kind of like that. John does not.

It's a little bit of, it's a little too much going on there. It's got three parts. Die harder. I guess they did die harder, you know, so they can't do that. Okay, all right. Die Harder with the Vengeance is available for Intel on iTunes and Amazon. There's also obviously Blu-ray. I don't think it ever got like a higher-res release, although it probably deserves

watch. There's higher-res than Blu-ray? Yeah, the 4K. 4-K is like the ultra-HD. I don't know anything about this stuff. Usually the 4K stuff, when it's done right, is what they do is they get like either a theater print or an original camera negative and they re-scan it. and they pull out more resolution because the original camera negatives

yeah sort of the actual like resolution if you were going to like use it in these terms is something like like 8 or 10k it's something insane oh but can't be displayed really by commercial television at this point that's interesting so they pull it out may downscale a little bit and then they provide it easy to do it some audio restoration that kind of thing okay i understand okay so it's based on the original print that's cool right blu-rays are typically 1080P from like a 2K scan of an original camera negative. Yeah, anyway, for those of you who care about that stuff like me. Well, it's very informative because they went to the store to buy a TV and they started

talking to me about this. They're like, do you want 4K? And I was like, please, I have no idea what that is. Die Hard with a Vengeance was released on May 19th, 1995. So let's check out the New York Times front page. Okay, dokey. There's a remarkably small amount of international news. It's very domestic.

But there's some interesting and historic things going on. House endorses balanced budget and 231 to 193 vote. Plan covers seven years. Objections by Democrats get little weight. Contrast with Senate proposal, Washington, May 18th. With barely a glance at a bitter Democratic minority, Republicans in the House of Representatives took a daunting political step today and endorsed a broad blueprint complete with dollars and cents targets for

balancing the federal budget. The vote for the plan was 238 to 193 with eight conservative Democrats joining the Republican majority. A lone Republican representative Michael P. Flanagan of Chicago voted no, saying the budget unduly punished urban areas. That's interesting. Four lawmakers did not vote. Republicans easily rejected three alternatives to the proposal, two of them from factions of conservative and liberal Democrats before the final vote. The Republican plan is a seven-year behemoth, plotting a course that would reduce $1.5 trillion in spending from the now envisioned federal budgets through the year 2002. Most of that is aimed at erasing an annual deficit that threatens

to raise past $200 billion a year and stay there. Roughly $350 billion to the package however is earmarked to pay for the personal business tax breaks that the House approved last month. Okay. Basically, what's going on here is this is the aftermath of the Republican Revolution of 1994, and they promised that they were going to do this kind of stuff, and they did it. And basically, this was also the beginning of the right word shift. Well, Clinton had always been a man of the center, let's say, but directly after being elected, he was a little bit more inclined to listen to the kind of populist and liberal side of his administration, people like Robert Reich. But once the Republicans swept into office, they basically took this as a sign

that, you know, liberalism was really over, that they had to kind of shift to the right. And this is when you see Clinton endorsing things like, you know, going for the welfare reform and stuff like that. This is Newt Gingrich's engineered stuff. Let's see. There's more about this here. Once more with feeling this time committee majority may help to measure to balance the budget. Well, it's just worth noting that this is the first House majority for Republicans in a very long time, maybe 40 years or something like that? Yeah, since the 1950s. Let me actually look. You keep going to look this up for it.

It's pretty remarkable. Once more with feeling, this time committed majority may help measure to balance the budget succeed. Make no mistake about it, this bill is a historic watershed said Senator Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon. If this bill does not work or if Congress and the president attempt to frustrate it, we'll lose our last significant. an opportunity to deal with the deficit. These sentiments were expressed repeatedly today as the House of Representatives approved a resolution that is supposed to lead to a balanced budget by 2002, and the Senate began to debate on a companion matter, a companion measure.

But Senator Packwood's remarks were not made today. They came last night, they came on the night 10 years ago when Congress approved the Graham Rudman-Hollings legislation, which was meant to balance the budget, put the budget to balanced by 1991. The fact is the Congress has been promising a balanced budget ever since 1978 when legislation was adopted stating that beginning of the fiscal year 1991 spending shall not receive receipts. Now, okay, I'm not going to go into the whole thing about deficits and how balanced budgets are stupid and deficit spending is not something to necessarily be afraid of. It's interesting, you know, during the Reagan years, the Republicans had no problem

running giant deficits. In fact, you know, that was their, basically they cut taxes. They cut an enormous amount of, you know, of social programs, but they spent an enormous amount of money, mostly on, you know, on defense and, and things like that. They ran a giant deficit, which they funded mainly because the Japanese market opened up for, for U.S. Treasury bonds. So they were borrowing money at an attractive rates and they were able to run deficits. but we're not, they didn't care about the deficits until the Democrat was elected. Right. Well, this is a recurring, I mean, this is a recurring pattern.

Like, this happened after Bush was elected in 2000. This happened after Obama, Obama gets elected, then everyone cares about deficits again. Trump gets elected, then no one gives a shit. We're kind of at a point where no one really gives a shit anymore, which is given the destructive impact of it, I think it's generally good to be at a point where no one really cares. I think that you're not going to get into the whole explanation of the differences. I don't think I will either, but I will say that one thing is hard for communicating to the public beyond kind of the fact that everyone kind of thinks in a household metaphor. And this is the thing I'm a little kind of obsessed with.

People don't appreciate how big the United States is and how big the U.S. economy is. I think there's a real, I don't think there's a common, you know, public sense of just how fucking enormous. the U.S. economy is. And so when you're thinking about federal budgets, the numbers are going to be big by default, but you're really going to think about these numbers in the context of the entire productive capacity of the United States. And in that context, right, like running a trillion dollar annual deficit, which we haven't done it at some time, but was what's happening during the Obama years, a trillion dollar annual deficit is like 117, what was 117th the size of the U.S. economy. It's like you don't want to do it all.

the time. But it's like not that big of a deal. And if you're spending on things that are actually like that themselves are productive, right? Like part of the problem with Republican deficits, it's usually spent on tax breaks for money and interest and the military. And it's like, okay, so we're giving away money to people we're going to stash it. And we're giving money to an institution that is just going to blow the things up or consume them in a way it doesn't add back into the economy versus blowing a bunch of money. If we were to spend a bunch of money on health care, right, it'd be very expensive relative to not spending it. But it'd be very productive.

Yeah, or like there's a discussion now. There was a discussion then, but there's discussion now about industrial policy. I mean, the U.S. is always sort of doing industrial policy, but the way it kind of sets up taxes and the way it sort of moves money around. But, but, you know, there is a debate now whether or not we should encourage basically by bribing certain industries to, you know, invest in productive capital. And, you know, Republicans say, no, this is picking winners and losers and so on and so forth. But to a certain extent, like, well, if we're not building anything, you know, we need to have some actual investment in the country going on.

And if we don't, well, what's going to happen? I mean, obviously the market can't always take care of itself. Right. To the question of Republican House majorities, this is interesting. So there's this period of Republican, like kind of real Republican dominance in American politics from basically sort of like the late 19th century until the Great Depression, where Wilson is being sort of like the exception, the point of exception. But so in the 72nd Congress, which is the last Congress of Hoover's administration, we're looking at like 217, 217. 17 tied the House Democratic control. And then after that point, it's Democratic control until the 80th Congress,

1947 to 49 under Truman. This is actually, this is like a very noted backlash election, 48, or the 46 midterms. Republicans gain a bunch of seats. I think this is when Taff Hartley shows up. Maybe Taff probably shows up a couple years later. But this is when there really is, this, I think you should understand. as kind of the end of the New Deal, and the New Deal, like in a political order,

or not political order, but like the end of the New Deal as a specific program under Roosevelt is this backlash that shows up in the House and Senate and, you know, everywhere. Okay, so Republicans win a House majority, they lose it in the next cycle in 48, and then they gain one again in 52 under Eisenhower.

And that's the last Republican House majority until 1994. Incredible. And you know what? And Eisenhower sort of made his peace with the New Deal order in a way. And what the total Democratic domination of the House of Representatives shows is just like, dude, the New Deal, Social Security, this is not going anywhere. And it kind of ends now because like, okay, the Republicans had won presidencies, obviously.

But they always had to contend, first of all, with the permanence of the, I mean, they still do, but the permanence of certain New Deal structures and the House majority keeping that in place. And part of that was, you know, like this one Republican who was an urban Republican who voted against us because it attacked cities. It was like cities were, you know, the heartland of the New Deal order. And, you know, Republicans basically did all they could to, you know, try to cities start. began to have problems for a lot of reasons, but basically, like, portray the city instead of like this wonderful, vibrant place where America was sort of reaching its civilizational apex, you know, dangerous, wasteful, decadent. And then the shift to power gradually moves

to suburbs and then to, to rural area. So there's a very, very like gradual shift away from the political center of the New Deal. in a number of different ways. And this is like kind of the terminus of it. And like it's sort of the end of Keynesianism in a way because we're even going to be worried about we're going to try to balance budgets. They're going to get rid of welfare, so on and so forth.

So it's really kind of very much the 90s where the putting the new deal to bed in a way. Right. I think in Gary Gershull's most recent book, The Reisville of Neal-Liber Order, I mean, he really presents the 90s. It's kind of the consolidation of liberalism. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, it's interesting because everything kind of seems like it was working for a little bit. But then we saw, well, we saw in the financial crisis, the kind of thing that really hadn't happened since the Depression, right? Everything that was set up to prevent that kind of thing, all of the systems of social stabilization were kind of taken apart because it wasn't really working anymore. And then it seemed like, oh, well, we have a new way of doing things.

and there's a certain kind of prosperity that comes with it. But we obviously have huge problems that come with it. I mean, we've rampant income inequality, you know, real wages really haven't grown since the 70s. Like, we have not been able to recreate the prosperity that came from the New Deal order using neoliberalism. Right. We get these bubbles of prosperity and then they explode. Yeah. I think it's really important to emphasize that this isn't some sort of like new.

and emergent phenomena. This is just kind of how capitalism works in the absence of a strong countervailing force. It's back to the 19th century in a way. Right, exactly. It's very useful if you're interested in sort of American politics in 19th century.

I think one of the most important things you can do about understanding American politics in that period is really getting a handle on the recurring economic and financial crises of the 19th century, beginning in the 1820s. Because those really do structure politics in the United States in that century and profound ways. And they're kind of like, outside of the economic historian, like, no one thinks of, no one thinks of people think of depressions and recessions as a 20th century thing because of the Great Depression or a 21st century thing. But no one, like the end of the 19th century had a great depression on a scale that was similar to the, to the Great Depression of the 30s, maybe even bigger at certain times.

If you were born in 1870, by the time you reached like 40, you will have lived, you lived through three or four just like horrible processions and depressions. Well, they just didn't give that much of a shit about people in this country. That was basically what it was. All right. So let's see what else we got here. Judge finds by, that's not that interesting. Okay, 30 million year sleep, germ is declared alive. A prominent molecular biogist said he has restored dormant $30 million-year-old bacteria in

life, a feat so astonishing that if confirmed, it would force scientists to re-examine long-held notions with the temporal limits of life. I think you should leave the ancient bacteria alone, personally. Report of the achievement is to be published today in the journal Science. Okay, DNA. DNA was very big in the 90s. They were just learning about DNA. Dino, DNA.

Exactly, right. Yeah, we loved DNA. We loved extracting DNA. We loved DNA testing. DNA was very big. Iran's nuclear goes lying half-built plant. Boucher Iran at a vast construction site baked by the sun and buffeted by the salty Persian Gulf air.

Two partly built nuclear reactors are frozen in time. For the Iranians, the enormous steel and concrete structures represent what it might have been and what might be a symbol of their legal right to develop nuclear energy and of their potential to become a regional power. For the Americans, the reactor is an ominous sign of Iran's determination to build nuclear energy. There's a typo here. Have never reported sufficient activity. But the plant has strained Washington's relationship with Moscow, aggravated already in inimical relations between the United States and Iran and train the spotlight on a place that is yet to produce either gram of a rich uranium or a water electricity, as you can tell. tell. This problem is ongoing. What do we do about Iran's nuclear program? Still

dancing around this issue. Okay, what else we got here? Can I just say real quick on Iran? The deal is defunct thanks to Trump. But I do think the Iran deal, sort of like the joint nuclear agreement between the United States and Iran under Obama, was like a great diplomatic success. And I think it was a success because it was a recognition of something that I think it's true, which is that the Islamic Republic of Iran, not a great place. Like, not going to say it to particularly good state. But relative to our other major regional partner, Saudi Arabia, I think I'd much rather have the U.S. working constructively with Iran than with Saudi Arabia.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. I think if our foreign policy, politics are a little more sensible, people could say that openly. Like, yes, yes, Iran, problematic. But, like, have you seen what that happens in Saudi Arabia and who has seen what Saudi Arabia does abroad? Yeah, right, exactly. I mean, none of the states in the region, I mean, Egypt's human rights record, which we don't hear an enormous amount about in the United States, is one of the worst in the world. I mean, you'll just disappear.

Like, they just throw people in prison and they never heard of again. Right. And this is a, you know, a close strategic partner of ours. So, yeah, I mean, the choices are pretty. thin and it looks like you know obviously israel's human rights situation is is is is pretty dire and it looks like even the pretense that we can call them are the only democracy in the region is going to be over pretty soon and they're going to probably resemble all of the regimes surrounding them that they they think that they're better than pretty quickly they're either going

to be some kind of secular military dictatorship that's you know that that that gets put in place to keep down the religious minority that's very getting increasingly powerful and large, or there are going to be some kind of theocracy. So there's some good jokes about this on Twitter, just as Joe's finally becoming a Middle Eastern state. Yeah. I mean, it's true. I mean, they always were, but it's the, the, the, the process is more obvious now.

Anyway, anything else here we should talk about? I don't think so. Bomb suspecting. I'm going to read this tiny little thing here. bomb suspect in court and preliminary this is post I think this is actually

interesting for the discussion of the movie in a preliminary hearing a federal agent said that the government had indications that Terry L. Nichols might have not been

in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing but judge determined there was probable cause to hold him. Okay, so good to know this is post Oklahoma City bombing

when we do this movie. Okay. It's interesting. This movie, and I found this on talking about on Twitter last night and I watched it.

This movie has, there are a couple of myths associated with this movie, which I just find kind of fascinating. I guess it makes sense because it was a huge movie, which I'll get into a little later. This was a truly, like, colossal film. But the biggest one is that die hard with a vengeance was originally a lethal weapon movie. This is sort of a thing that people say about it. And it's, I watched, this watch I watch with the commentary, which is a very unusual commentary, instead of having the director or the screenwriter, whomever in the room together,

it's like three separate commentary that they spliced together into the rhythm of a conversation. It's very weird. But it's still... It was still very useful. The screenwriter, Hensley, has a lot to say about the script, obviously. And so here's basically the story. Die Hard 2, huge hit, Rennie Harlan movie. Studios were obviously going to do.

it. They were looking for scripts to adapt. One script they were thinking about adapting. This is Fox was John McLean fighting terrorists on a cruise ship. They rejected it because under siege was already in production and it was like too close to that. This would become the basis for speed two cruise control, which involves Keanu fighting terrorists on a cruise ship. Or is it Canada in that movie? I don't know. I don't know. I've never seen that one. So Hensley had written a script based off some 1979 crime novel called Simon Sets about a terrorist who goes after a New York City cop by having him, you know, perform tasks. If he doesn't do them, they'll blow stuff up. And he was shopping the script around, and Warner Brothers picks up the script, and they try to develop it into a lethal weapon movie.

doesn't work out, the script that can't break the script. And so they kind of toss it aside. Fox picks up the Simon says script and repurposes it as a diehard film. And according to Hensley, more or less the first 50 minutes of Die Hard with the Vengeance are his script almost unaltered. And then the diehard stuff really kicks in in the second and third acts. I'd also say that the first 15 minutes are like the strongest part of the movie. I really like this movie, but it totally drags in the last 30 minutes.

So that's the story with the diehard with a vengeance script. Here's something a little funny. Lawrence Fishburne had been offered the role of Jules in Pulp Fiction, and he turns it down because his agent's like, you don't want to only be a supporting actor. He is offered the role of Zeus for this film, but the producer of DeHard with the Vengeance sees Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction. It's like, Sam Jackson's great. I want him as Zeus. So, I don't know, I find that's funny. Poor Lawrence Fisburn.

But then he ends up in the Matrix taking a role that Sean Connery turned down. And, yeah. There is an alternate. There's an Earth, too. There's an alternate world where the Matrix stars Will Smith and Sean Connery. I think that would have been very funny. I don't think that the Matrix would have been what it is now, had it starred them i don't know we'll see no no it certainly i mean it absolutely would not

i will so will smith the 98 making the matrix he first of all at that point he's he's like the biggest star of the planet he's not going to listen to anyone no he would have made it like his fun jocular action star like independence day and man and black where he's got like i'm i've got an attitude you know like he would have like you know karate chop someone yeah and then been like, you know, I got to get me one of these or something like that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I like Will Smith quite a bit as an actor,

but it's, it's, um, the Wachowski's not being able to get star, big stars for that movie, uh, was a blessing. Die Hard with the Vengeance. Top-versing film of 95. It earns $366 million,

um, uh, which is just insane. Like, that's a huge amount of money. it beats out toy story Apollo 13 golden eye future movie for this podcast pocahontas Batman Forever 7 casper waterworld and Jumanji so like it's it's not like it's beating out small movies it's just crush it and I don't think it's really in a way as a sequel I don't know if it was even expected to compete with those guys in a like what did they have the I feel like this movie was, like, not a sleeper hit, but it was like, it was a little bit of a surprise that it was like people went this crazy about it.

Yeah, apparently in the financing of it, like, they did a weird way of financing it by doing an outside company because Fox wasn't, like, it was expensive to make and Fox didn't want to take on the whole commitments. I think you're right that, like, they figured it would be do well because the diehard movies did well, but I don't think they anticipated it to be like, you know, a gang bus. hit. I hid so big that they kept churning them out with, like, diminishing returns. I can't believe all those movies you mentioned came out in the same year. It's crazy. It's like what, looking back on this time period, like, I just, well, I just realized, like, all of my favorite movies came out in, like, 1997. I was like, how is it possible they all came out of the same year?

And now, and now every year, not to get into our old man, cranky, complaining about movies stuff. but it's like every year there's like three movies that are maybe good and then you read like you look at like a year in the 90s and you're like these came out in the same year it's like it was just like you could go to the movies every week and see something worth seeing not all of them were great movies but like some of them were like I mean well water world was terrible but like kind of interesting compared to some things that they make now at least it was ambitious I so I think actually what really stands out about this list of the top brochures is Just like the diversity, not like racial diversity, but sort of you have, I wouldn't, people use that term to mean that now, so I need to be clear. I don't mean diversity in terms of demographics. I mean that top-grossing film, adult action film, right? This is a bloody, violent movie. It's not for kids.

The second top-grossing film, a kids-animated feature, Apollo 13, a family-friendly, although not like a family film, but a family-friendly. friendly-friendly drama. You have another adult action filming Golden Eye. You have another kid's movie in Prochondas, another family-friendly adventure in Batman, an adult thriller, a family-friendly movie, like a big sci-fi adventure, and kind of a family-friendly adventure. It's like they're all, these are all, if not four quadrant movies and like three quadrant movies, right? They're movies that are made for broad audiences and they aren't, you know, it isn't all a bunch of Cape movies.

And the last thing I want to say before we get into talking about the movie is that we have talked about John McHerran again, before, rather, since he's the director of Huntford October. But I really think it's worth remarking on just his kind of

suey-generous career as a Hollywood action filmmaker. You know, his first run of films, his very first film with something small, but then it's Predator in 87, die-hardy in October in 1990. And these are all canonically great action films.

And Die Hard in a way creates its own genre. I mean, Die Hard on a Blank movies are still part of kind of like cinematic culture. The most recent one I saw was nonstop with Liam Neeson, just die hard on a plane. Then he does a medicine man, which I've never seen. I probably should see it just because. Who's in that? Steven Seagall sounds like something Steven Seagal said. No, no, Sean Connery.

Oh. But then in 92, or rather 93, 94, we get the last action hero, which I think is a very underrated movie, unfairly malign. Got Die Heart 3. And the movie I've mentioned before, the Thomas Crown Affair remake with Pierce Brasson and René Russo, which is great. And then he closes out with the remake of Rollerball, which is fine and basic, which is okay. And then he goes to jail for lying to the FBI in the legal wiretapping. because he got so rich and paranoid that he did some stupid stuff. Did he not want to pay taxes or something?

No, I forget the exact situation, but he basically hired a private investigator to illegally wiretap someone. And that guy got caught. And then he lied to the FBI about it. Oh. Oh, he did some like Rothboro type of shit. Yeah. Now, what's funny about this, of course, is that this is all happening in the early to mid-2000s. And so it's like, well, the feds are currently illegally wiretapping the American

people, but Mr. McTiernan gets caught for it, goes to jail for it. Should we watch medicine man? Because it came out in 1992 and it looks like it's got some kind of, I don't know. Maybe it's not worth it. I mean, the reason I've never seen it, despite being something of the completionist, is it just looks, it looks stupid and not in the way that I will enjoy. All right. Okay. We have to do Last Section Hero, though. Yeah. Yeah, should we do it?

I mean, maybe. Maybe. Not political enough. I mean, look at the poster for medicine, man, real quick. I know. It's Sean Connery with a pony tail. Yeah. Oh, that's why I thought it was Stephen Segal.

There's Lorraine Bronco. You know, she's great. Yeah. I don't understand where you draw the line, Jamel. Like, why is this beneath you? I think. I think. I think it's because, I mean, frankly, it's like, is there going to be some outrageous death?

You're like, it's got to have some action sequences or I'm not going to put up with the stupidity. Basically, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I can deal with a lot of stupid stuff in a movie if, like, something gets cut in half. Explosions happen and stuff like that. All right.

Yeah. Okay. Die her with a vengeance. John. What do you think? Look, I got to give it up to this movie. This is a great classic action movie. it's pretty tense. I love it shot New York. I love any movie shot in New York.

And it's a very New York movie. Yeah, it is. It does a pretty good job of getting the atmosphere of the city. Like it doesn't feel fake. They lay it on thick a little times with the accents and the and like the localisms. Like there's no trucks on the FDR drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, but that kind of stuff I, you know, you appreciate if you're actually from New York and you're like, yeah, they're they get us. And like, you know, if you see these movies in the theater the audience loves that kind of shit it's a fun movie the action sequences are great the chasing around the cab in the city is great like the explosions it's it's also like um it's like remarkably harsh for in a way and it's aesthetic for an action movie like a lot of

wounds and injuries and it's it's it's kind of like it's kind of hardcore it's not like a lot of fiery explosions a la 80s movies it's a lot more grit and gravel and smoke and like like so in that way it also kind of fits with the new york atmosphere i mean the first die hard is violent but this i think you're right this one's actually much more violent there's a scene where mclean is in an elevator and he like kills a bunch of guys yeah i think most movies of this era would have him shoot you wouldn't really see any blood he'd kill a guy there might be like a little spray of blood and then it kind of cut the black in the next scene but this you really see mclean like struggle and fight and he he's like drenched in blood and when he kills a

last guy, you see like a artery spray of blood hit him. It's like actually quite striking for a Hollywood film. Both both guys get cut up. I mean, Sam Jackson gets injured. Like there's lots yeah. And like it there's a lot of blood sweat and not too many tears. But the aesthetic is attempting more realism than the other diehards, which were more like big explosion action movies I feel like. I think they actually kind of drew audiences to it because they felt like it was more visceral. We're in the world, obviously, before 9-11 in this movie, but this is after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center basement, which actually, and a basement garage, which actually is mentioned in the movie. The idea of a big terrorist attack in New York is

like, is already like in the national psyche and being expressed in this movie, I think. And this is also, which I think we're going to talk about, this is the, this is Giuliani era and we see some of those racial politics, class politics in this movie. This is kind of like the most Giuliani movie in a certain way. Those are my initial thoughts watching it. I mean, like, I've seen this movie more than once. I remember exactly where I was the first time I watched this. I was at my friend's house.

We weren't really supposed to watch this, but he had the videotape and we watched it. We just both went totally bonkers for it. being like, I don't know what, 10 when this came out. This is more on the action side of the thrillers that we watch, not like, you know, that's cerebral always. But there are definite themes going on in terms of society and politics. Yeah. I mean, Hensley is a good script writer.

McHarendon is a great director. And I think it's sort of sometimes the politics come through unintentionally. Yes, I think here there's actually like a conscious effort The sort of like channel what's happening in the world In the imagery especially of this film For those who haven't seen it And as we always say, you just watch the movie Before you listen to the show

And one thing I admire about the script There's not a lot of a setup for this one The movie assumes you know who John McLean is You know what his deal is You know that John McLean is always in some weird cat and mouse game With Terrorists So you don't even know anymore there is an explosion

in the New York streets the terrorist who calls himself Simon says he wants John McLean he wants John McLean specifically to play this game with him and then we're off to the races the first real big set piece

which really sets the tone of the entire movie introduces the character of Zeus, Sam Jackson's character is McLean is asked to stand on a street corner in Harlem wearing a sign that says, I hate, and for podcasts, I'll just say, I hate ninjas. Fun fact, when they were filming this in the actual shoot, the sign says, I hate everybody because they did not want a passerby to come by and see Bruce Willis wearing a giant sign with a big racial slur on it.

And so when you see, when they show the sign and the slur in the film, that's an effect that they add after the fact. That's interesting. He is confronted by a bunch of angry black guys. I just rewatched Hollywood Shuffle, which is Robert Townsend's really funny satire of being black in Hollywood. And there's a whole sequence about basically how

no one can get a job other than being a thug. And I always think of that when I see all these black actors. I'm sure they are on stage. Like they have like careers. Right. And in a movie is they just have to be, they got to pick thugs.

Right. And the film Black Dynamite, there's a fun twist on this, on this joke where a character is a snitch and he gets like found out and he starts like denying he's a snitch. And he's like, he's talking in this like received acts. And he's like, I'm no snitch sucker. Kind of making fun of the fact that this is a thing that black actors have had to go through. Anyway, this is really kind of comically stereotypical group of black tough. start trying to kill McLean.

Zeus, who owns a pawn shop, rescues him reluctantly somewhat, and then they steal a cab, and they're kind of off to, but figuring out what's going on, figuring out each other, and also trying to stop subsequent attacks. And the movie is so kinetic.

I mean, this is the thing that I think makes it to watchable. I'm not sure it's a better movie than the first diehard, but it is a very, kinetic movie. It's always moving. One thing McTiernan notes in his commentary is that the way he shoots, he kind of does the little subtle critique of other film, other actions filmmakers. He was like, they're kind of shooting on a two-dimensional plane, kind of connecting scenes together two-dimensionally.

McHurin's like, well, what I like to do is use wide lenses, especially for close-ups, then have lots of things going on in the background. They kind of create a three-dimensionality. And that, along with kind of the propulsive and kinetic movement of the film, really creates this sort of sense of busyness. There's a New York sense of busyness and movement that I think makes the movie just really engaging to watch visually throughout. And, yeah, we discover that Simon is Simon Gruber, the brother of Hans, who's ostensibly out for revenge, hence the vengeance. but we find out that he doesn't really care that much. He wants to steal, I mean, it's kind of a super villain plot. He wants to steal all the gold in the Federal Reserve.

And all of this is meant to distract the New York City police while him and his team do this. Another fun fact, Hensley was interviewed by the FBI after this movie came out, basically because they were like, this plot to steal the gold is too realistic. Really? Yeah. That's funny. It's like too good of a plan?

It's too good of a plan. And we want to know where you got some of this information. And basically he's like, listen, I just went in, I went and asked where the volts were and they told me. And then I figured out how would you get to them? So there is really this much gold underneath the New York Fed? Apparently. Wow. There's explosions.

You know, people die. That's the movie. You should watch it. It's great. But as you said, John, there's, there's some political stuff in this. This is, this is, like you point out, very much Giuliani's New York. Yeah, I mean, like, McLean is like this, well, is he from L.A. or New York? Like, I don't know.

He's from New York. And the first movie, like, yeah, yeah. Because he has a New York accent. He's Irish. And, like, his whole racial politics. And he's like, this is the era of like, reverse racism is bad. And, like, you know, he sticks up for himself because Zeus, Samuel, all Jackson character kind of like doesn't like white people very much as a slight like

kind of gives his nephews this like black self-reliance speech at the beginning like we don't want help from white people we don't like white people in a very funny sequence when they're supposed to be disarming a bomb mclean accuses Zeus of being a racist that doesn't really get resolved like but they learn to work together the line I should say because I sent it to you because I was like yeah so funny that um The line is McLean says, you got some fucking problem with me because I'm white. Have I oppressed you? Have I oppressed your people somehow?

You don't like me because I'm white. You don't like me because you're a racist. And Jackson says, I don't like you because you're going to get me killed. Right. But they're both supposed to have a point, you know? Like McLean doesn't have to get over his prejudices in the movie, really. I mean, he says some, like, insensitive things. And Sam Jackson kind of chides him for it.

And he's like, oh, give me a fucking break. like we're in a bad situation here like I got to you know like don't give me a don't give me this PC shit don't give me this racial shit you know so basically Sam Jackson kind of lightens up and is like whoa this white guy's not so bad you know so you know like you know basically by the end like they become friends and respect each other but that mostly is Sam Jackson kind of dropping his uptight black national spiel and being charmed by you know McLean's blue collar, you know, down home ways and sees that he's a decent guy. But like there's a whole, in all the diehard movies, like McLean is like this kind of like

white working class hero. This is like we've talked about this idea of like black populism that sometimes comes out of these action movies is like both McLean, the kind of white kind of half racist white cop and Zeus, you know, Sam Jackson's character, the black businessman. from Harlem who owns a small business. They both kind of have like an opportunity to like reflect sort of populist sentiments against like yuppies who the movie really takes shits on in various ways. Like Sam Jackson like terrorizes a yuppie who accidentally gets into the cab with him.

They force a guy with a car phone to pull over like the car phones this time were still like this, you know, status symbol. So the movie has like this weird class politics on top of its racial politics. You know, this is like the era. where, you know, Giuliani's just kind of won off of a white working class backlash a little bit. But is it really racism? Like we're getting not the post-racial society exactly, but there's all these defenses of reverse racism or being like, maybe you're being a little too politically correct. And this movie definitely with McLean as its working class hero gives some voice to that.

But it also gives voice to, in a less way, Sam Jackson's sort of like, it doesn't exactly justify Sam Jackson's anger towards white people. But it doesn't, it sort of shows the class system in an interesting way. And also, what is the, I know that the villains are not ideological, but they're militarized, like in a weird way, which is meant to suggest Nazis, I'm sure that Germans is a safe villain, you know, like we're not really going to offend anybody by making Germans the bad guys. We all don't like Germans. But they're also like kind of communist because they have this, we're going to do this fake attack to like, I don't get rid of the gold in the Federal Reserve to like cause a destabilization. He obviously tricked some of his people by making them think it was an ideological thing. So anyway, there's a lot to unpack there.

But yeah, those are the political themes I noticed. Yeah, I mean, I think those are it. Yeah. Um, the, the kind of Zeus black nationalist thing and McLean, uh, you know, white ethnic cop thing with the Zeus character. So, okay, a couple of things. The first is that you're right. We're not in a post racial era yet, very much not so. And in fact, I think 95 is when the bell curve is published.

Yeah, I think all year before. Or a year before around this time. There's a lot of nostalgia for the 90s right now, but when you begin to distract the surface of politics and culture in 1990s, there's stuff to look back on and say that was pretty decent. There's a lot of very ugly stuff as well, and the country's far from post-racial. What I think is happening, and Giuliani's rise in political success are indicative of this, is basically, reverse races is one word for it. it's like this sense of exhaustion with black people in black demands on white society. So we've talked about the Sista Soldier moment with Clinton's election. I think this is very much a part of it.

Sort of this like mainstream exhaustion of like black militancy. And at the same time, we're also, I think the million man march is around this time as well with Farrakhan. in Washington, D.C. And so there's also much more visibility, public visibility of black nationalism. You also have this influx of black filmmakers and black actors, some of whom are representing this stuff on screen

a little more than you might have seen in previous seconds. I'm thinking of Spike Lee in particular. And so Sam Jackson's character, and Sam Jackson obviously part of like Spike's, you know, repertoire of actors, like he's in this world. And so I think, what same jackson may be bringing to the character of zeus as much as it's written is this sort of this like embodiment of some of this stuff happening within the black community black communities

um within black politics because you're right the movie doesn't so somehow justify same jackson's animosity towards uh white people um it kind of really treats that treats it treats as equivalent to like white racism against blacks um but i do think what the movie does is basically say, listen, even though Zeus has animosity, he is a small business owner and a family man with kids, right? He represents sort of like integration into mainstream society. And he is someone, if not to like, then to at least respect versus the black thugs to see at the beginning of the movie, who do represent kind of like the pathological side of black Americans. Right, right. Well, it's true in a way.

I mean, it's kind of sociologically accurate that they would give the black businessman the nationalist politics, you know? Right, yeah, exactly. You know, like, and the politics of like self-reliance. So that's sort of true in a way. But he's also like, you know, he's also like doesn't want McLean to get killed just because he's a white guy with this stupid sign or this racist sign because he doesn't know what the deal is with him.

It's kind of funny to me, like I can't exactly put my finger on it. But the fact that this cop comes to heart. with the sign that says, you know, I hate, it's just like kind of funny because I'm like, well, they kind of do. Like, you know, that's like what a cop sort of represents in that neighborhood. It's like just making this like under this, this, this like implicit thing, explicit. And it's like weird like unconscious thing. So I think it's also shows the movie.

I see what you're saying. He does treat his, his prejudice as being, you know, as being racist and a prejudice he has to work through, but it also kind of treats it not as harmless, but it's like being like this doesn't disqualify him as a person. He might have some prejudices. He might have a certain politics, but you know, he's not irredeemable because of it. Yeah, like we can figure out a way to get along, you know, if everybody just lightens up a little bit. Right. The other thing is, like, just in terms of the racial moment, things were, it's interesting because, you know, Clinton has this reputation as a president who was very popular with black voters. And there's the famous quote about

from Tony Morrison, his first black president. But, you know, his electoral election, black voters kind of were not that enthusiastic about Clinton as they had been about other Democratic candidates. And partially, I think that had to do with Clinton fighting off in quite ruthless manner, Jesse Jackson and kind of bringing the end of the Rainbow Coalition to its knees. And the growth of the sort of nationals politics of the late 80s and early 90s, I think, as a source of two things, is the extreme racial polarization in the 80s that had to do with, you know, the economic outcomes for blacks and whites just become, you know, radically divergent. And I think the feeling of the failure of Jesse Jackson's kind of multiracial

social democracy and its institutional rooting in the church, which was felt to have to do with an older generation of politics and activism. So the feeling of exhaustion with all these things and then the turning to, oh, well, this is failed. You know, Jesse Jackson's kind of soft and loving approach has failed, like, and we're fed up with it. I mean, that was the whole thing with Sister Soldiers, that she was, she was very hard on Jesse Jackson and said very mean things about him, but he was trying to reach out to her and didn't want to totally jettison her from his imagined coalition. So I think it's like the black politics of the era really had to do with the horrible

experience of the 80s. Yeah. And the real, not failure by, I think, well, I mean, less to do with his own political missteps than just the structural limitations of the era, although there are arguably missteps of Jesse Jackson's attempt to kind of create this multiracial, social democratic alternative. And then when that fails, I think there's a lot of anger and frustration, the whole experience of the 80s as a politically frustrating time, and that is expressed in a lot of the nationalist things that come out. I think that's right. Spike Lee's politics in the politics of John Singleton, you know, like, and also there were from different social classes. Sister Soldiers is interesting because she's from a working class background and had a nationalist

politics. But a lot of the people and a lot of the Afrocentric rap music at the time, a lot of those people came from black middle class family. That's right. And they had learned as children, they had been brought up with these nationalist ideas, not in the church necessarily, not from a black church. They had grown up often in the north or in Los Angeles with nationalist ideas and not from a black Marxist tradition, although Tupac kind of was.

I'm going to make a general listener, but I think it's true. There is just a soft black nationalism that exists in kind of many black households, almost regardless of where they end up politically or whatnot, especially amongst the black middle class, for which the black middle class has and always has had at least the older black middle class, like the historic black middle class. It's a bit different.

Speaking as someone who comes from sort of like the more recent entrance into the black middle class, my grandparents, and my grandfather or my mother's side, worked on railroads, which was like a decent job for the time, but like not necessarily what you call middle class job. And my grandmother was a domestic and worked in restaurant kitchens, right? And my father's side, my grandmother also a domestic, I think, working class jobs.

And my grandfather on my dad's side owned a carpeting business, upholstery business. for more established families. There's like this whole social world that's kind of like not visible to mainstream America. But like HBCUs, institutions like Jack and Jill, like certain church denominations, African Methodist Episcopal versus maybe a Baptist's nomination. It's like a whole, it's a whole, you know, set of institutions for cultivating a black middle class. There particular regions, I mean, people who are familiar with D.C., know a PG-G County, right?

So know of the, of the, of the black middle class parts of Maryland and D.C. So throughout all of that, there is kind of like a soft nationalism just because it's sort of like, you know, we have to, you know, and I heard this, I mean, I heard this quite a big growing up, you know, like cultivate amongst her own. We have to kind of do all that kind of stuff. I wanted to note two things. If I can remember the other one, I will get to it. But what I do remember is just thinking about.

black nationalism and black politics currently the news is clarence thomas for you know being corrupt um but interesting about clarence thomas's background it's known that um he was thomas's father left the family when he was very young um his mother very much struggled to raise her kids and thomas and his younger brother were sent to live with his maternal grandparents but his grandfather owned a fuel oil business, was a black business owner. And Thomas does attribute basically his world view of politics to his grandfather.

I think that's kind of an illustrative of the things you've said. The other thing I wanted to say about the character of Zeus is that I do think it's interesting for as much as the film doesn't give this pass for his hostility towards white people. He also is an audience identification figure. The audience is meant to like Zeus.

And I think it is interesting that in this era in American politics, we have this a massive hit movie in which one of the key sympathetic characters is explicitly antagonistic towards this white cop and that a lot of the character and emotional growth derives from this clash between this white cop and this black guy who kind of hates him on the basis of being a white cop. I think it's interesting. It's interesting in part, and this is one thing I'll credit to the era, in part because there was this kind of, you know, like, you may, I mean, I like you for some stuff. Right.

Like me, you know, we might be made mutually, racially antagonistic to each other, but we can get a long kind of thing. Yeah. I think if you were to try to do this in the present, it would be very cloying, right? It'd be very, it'd be very sort of like messaging. And there's something about how this is like the opposite of that. The screenwriter in the commentary says he didn't want. to write the defiant ones makes it like at least interesting to watch well mclean is an asshole like he even admits it and like you're like him but he's like kind of a prick and like he's just

like ultimately kind of decent but he doesn't like he doesn't like there's no like moment of understanding between these characters right right they learned they learn to like work together there's nothing cloying there's nothing lesson teaching about it's just like yeah black guys they don't like white people you know like and it's just like and maybe that's not fair i don't know maybe if we got to know each other a little bit we would get along but like yeah i agree with you there's there's i mean as as idiotic as the racial politics of that speech that mclean gives to him it's not unrealistic it is what a cop would say like a cop was not just an old like a total racist but just you know a court of a racist and like yeah he would be like

you know, I don't think it's really fair for you to, like, assume that I would be racially prejudiced. Maybe you're the racially prejudiced person. Like, you know, so I think that that's like it. The movie, again, maybe speaking to its realism a little bit, like, none of the lines, like, those are stupid, but not unbelievable that would come out of a character like this mouth. And as an audience, you're maybe supposed to cheer for it a little bit and be like, yeah, you know what? That's right.

I mean, that's 100% in the audience. Yeah. guys like being like yeah that's right that's right you know what i'm finally someone is saying maybe you're the racist i don't you do i haven't oppressed your people what have i been doing i'm not oppressing your people maybe you're the racist so that kind of attitude which is idiotic but but like it's not uncommon and very juliani era very juliani era new york post reading i mean that even is a little bit more racist than McLean's character but like that yeah so anyway

and none of the movie feels cloying and it's absolutely true and it and it would be now I think that they wouldn't they would deal with it in some ways that are on paper more intelligent but would probably read worse on screen.

Yeah. The other thing I wanted to note about this movie or at least its imagery is so there's early on, first act or so, there was a subway bombing. And they successfully, you know, there's no injuries on the subway, but there's a large bomb it explodes. It's part of the heist that the gruber is trying to commit.

But there's a kind of a short scene where you see the aftermath, big cloud of dust, people staggering out of it. And that's when I said on Twitter that this was like had very 9-11 vibes. We obviously were some time before that. But like you said, the World Trade Center bombing, the first one was in 93, so it happened before this movie even got into development. And I'm sure it was part of what material in the cinematography were drawing on visually. It feels as if, because in all the movies we watch, we have not really seen like New York-centric kind of like this kind of stuff yet. And maybe that's because sort of like the World Tristanterbombing is taking its time to like kind of disseminate through cultural memory.

And certainly Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma City bombing, which is prior 10-11, the worst terrorist attack on American soil. But we're soon going to get a lot of this kind of stuff, most famously, maybe cartoonishly, an Independence Day, when New York is destroyed. But even then, and this is what I think, this is why I wanted to note this. Even then, the kind of aftermath shot is very unusual. feels just very different. I think we may see some of this when we watch The Siege, when we eventually get to the Siege, which is very much kind of like a 9-11 pre-9-11 movie.

Also stars Bruce Willis. I thought I was really struck by just the shot of people kind of, a man in a business suit kind of lumbering out of the dust, kind of shell-shocked. Like that is an image from 9-11. I know. I noticed that as well. I mean, some of that is because of the prequel of 9-11, if you will, the 1993 bombing, which is not well remembered, but it's true.

It's almost eerie how some of the imagery of this movie seems to anticipate 9-11 and is very much in that world with its valorization of police and firefighters. and like it just very much like it's we're already we're ready like the we're ready for 9-11 i don't it's really weird to say that but it's like the the culture had already like had the ingredients in place in a certain way you know the subway bombing in this movie really stuck with me because i think we were really convinced after 9-11 that would be the next thing that would happen that there would be a terrorist attack on the subway which feels like a natural and horrifying place for that to happen And so the idea of a bombing in the subway, which I probably got into my consciousness from this movie, has always sort of stuck with me. One of the movies I watched prior to this.

I rewatch the Taking Appellum, One, Two, Three, the original. And another very, very kind of, like, maybe the most New York movie, but also a movie that kind of centers the subway as kind of, like, a vulnerable point for the city. Yeah, I have nothing to add to that. It is interesting that sort of the subways, which is so vital to New York as. a city. It's also understood to be this point of tremendous vulnerability, even though nothing, I can't, I don't think anything ever actually happened to it other than, you know, poor maintenance and management. You know, the subway is always a little bit scary for people, especially whether or not from New York, subterranean, you know, you're trapped down there. You can be trapped down there with a

crazy person, on a car with a crazy person. This is everybody, everybody has a story about this. you know, in the 80s, in the 70s is very violent. There was violent crime in the subway, vigilanteism, you know, you got Bernie Gets and all that stuff. I don't know if there was ever, oh, there was some, they caught some guy who was going to do a subway bombing, and shortly after 9-11, and he was convicted. But the plan didn't come to fruition. In Japan, there was a horrible nerve attack attack on the subway.

So that, you know, which is in the 90s. actually think of me, boom, in 1998. 1995. Oh, it was an op. There you go. Yep. So that was. The Ams-Renrico.

Yes. And that was very scary to read about. I don't think that they could, they didn't have a good way of storing or distributing the nerve gas, but I think it was, it's pretty horrible. And the idea. It killed 14 people. I mean, that's pretty bad. Like, the idea, well, there's also public transit attacks during the end of

Fata and Israel and Palestine. But yeah, I remember also the fear of terrorism in the 90s because I am Shinrikio seemed so, and their cult was so scary. The cult was so scary and the use of chemical weapons was so frightening. So all these things were floating around prior to 9-11. And then there was the anthrax attacks. I'm less scared of terrorism now than I was as a kid, even though we're post-9-11. 11, but for some reason, I think we were sort of dreading, you know, the idea of a spectacular

terrorist attack. Also, again, especially because we didn't have state enemies anymore. So the the threat was from these like non-state actors and stuff like. Right, right. Although it's interesting, right, that like in this movie, ultimately the non-state actors are non-ideological. Right. Yeah, they're just stealing. Right. They're just stealing. And although we're going to encounter more and more non-state actors, they're rarely ideological. They're, they're basically ordinary criminals or they have some particular, very concrete political goal, but sort of like, just sort of ideological expression as a motivation for the attack.

Yeah. Doesn't really show up. No, they have like a fake ideology, but that's like, it's in keeping with the attitude of the movie with the sort of populism of McLean, which is like, yeah, you know, they it's really about they're just really trying to there's a certain downhome skepticism where everything is a racket and that's like very much the the politics in the movie is that you know like behind the the idea that there's some kind of passionate reason or ideological reason for this is just some kind of it's just kind of desire to steal gold um we're running out

Running up against time, any last observations? No, I like this movie. Probably not going to watch it for a while now because I've seen it more than once. But I'm pro diehard with the vengeance. Yeah, it's a bit, it's like two hours and 20 minutes or so. Yeah, it's kind of long. So it's a bit too long. If this were an hour and 45 minutes, which I think it actually could be.

This is my main criticism of the movie, I think there's a lot of fact, the trend. This is like an hour and 45 minutes. I would watch it all the time. It's like it would be a regular rotation. If it stands for me, it's also sort of like a once every year kind of, I haven't watched that hard vengeance to see. Let me put that on. Yeah, it's a great movie.

One of, you know, McTiernan's best. Worth watching, I think worth watching with an eye towards the racial politics. I think if you know anything about kind of like black politics and white racial backlash in the 90s, there's actually quite a bit here as we've discussed. So if you're if you're listening to this and then watching the movie, kind of watch with that in the back of your head. I forgot to mention this. I'm talking about when I was talking about the commentary, but I feel like I have to say this because it took me it back. I took my wife back too.

She was like reading and then it happens. And I was like, oh, holy, little shit. McTiernan straight up says the inner word during the commentary when talking about the sign. Oh, and I wanted to mention this. The studio, when the studio, when Fox bought this script, they thought about making the Zeus character either white or Korean. And I think that, I think, I think Korean is... Would have been very charged.

Yeah, yeah, very charged. Yeah. But yeah, I'm tearing in just straight up says the inward. And that was like, cool. All right. Well, there's the use mentioned distinction, right? Yeah, the use, but the thing is the most tedious people on the internet like to talk about. about like he was just saying it

as a say you know I don't think I mean I don't know John McI don't I don't I don't think you're saying it to be provocative yeah yeah yeah he was just like yeah that's what it says I'm going to say but just like for for me at least I can deal with that but when you're just not expecting it no

you're just sort of like oh wow yeah you just said yeah okay that is our show if you're not a subscriber please subscribe or available on iTunes Spotify by Sitra Radio and Google Podcasts. And wherever else podcasts are found.

If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find the show. And you can reach out to both of us on Twitter as well as the podcast, Twitter feed. I'm at Jay Bowie. John, you are. I'm John Gantz. Oh. I'm at Lionel underscore trolling, but really not on Twitter very much anymore.

That's why I'm just now, John Gantz. I'm not Lionel trolling anymore. And the podcast feed is at Uncleared Pot. You can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week and feedback, we have an email from Adam titled Post-Cold War Optimism. Hi, guys. I was wondering whether you might consider covering the unification two-parter from Star Trek the next generation. I recently rewatched the series, and this episode stood out to me as an unusually zeitgeistee

and surprisingly revealing of elements of that zeitguise, which have since been long forgotten. The plot about Romulans and Balkans reuniting after 2,000 years makes no sense at all in the logic of the series, but it is just a metaphor for the giddy optimism of the post-Berlin wall end of the Cold War period, and optimism, which I recall being quite potent during the early 90s, but it was just forgotten today. I was too young to remember the Berlin Wall coming down, although I do remember with the USSR collapsing, but I definitely remember for some years afterward. People were really excited about these changes, even just normal, everyday folks like my

parents. That optimism eventually curdled, of course, and regrettably led to the neoconservative project, which we can see now, was taking a judgment based off of too small and too non-diversive sample size for its grand theories. But that's a whole other conversation entirely. I believe that the post-Burland wall optimism informed the decade of the 90s to a very large degree, though I think it's hard to find very many movies or TV that capture it directly. Unification definitely does so with some notes of the post-oslo, Israel-Palestine optimism in the mix as well. It is, unfortunately, not a great episode of television, but I can promise that it's no without warning at least.

Best wishes, Adam. I mean, we have on the docket a Star Trek first contact, and maybe I'll throw it. Maybe I'll just watch the next generation of episodes as well, so we can kind of just talk about Star Trek. Well, we did the Undiscovered Country, which was pretty end of Cold War. Right. Yeah, you know, I agree there was a lot of optimism. You know my feelings about Star Trek, and I think that there's something about like the whole Star Trek, the next generation worldview.

That was sort of the type of people who were optimistic about the Cold War and didn't really have a clear-sighted vision of it. You know, it was a lot of like Bono and, you know, a coffee shop with a Nelson Mandela poster and, you know, we're going to next up, we're going to save the rainforest and the pandas and kind of this toothless love to all optimism and everything was working out. I don't think it stood up that well in retrospect. And I think a lot of the voices that are a little bit more insecure, not insecure, but. anxious at the end of the Cold War have turned out to be more prescient and interesting so yeah I mean I'm willing

to discuss we've we've talked about the triumph the triumphalism has come out as we've discussed in some of the movies but there's always an undertone of not being what sure to do next even when there's a triumphalism so yeah I mean that was definitely a thing I'm not where we can't deny it but I mean as I think about first

contact which is a movie I like a lot have seen quite a bit I think one thing to maybe hone in on in that movie is the kind of end of history vibe of it. Part of the plot, I mean, part of the plot of that movie in the context of the 90s is basically the Enterprise True have to guide humanity on its proper path to the end of history. Right. But not let it. And it's got it like, we have to make sure that we enter this utopian period because we make this. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Yeah. no definitely that'll definitely be in our minds when we tackle first contact and maybe again I'll watch some of these next generation episodes which I haven't not revisited that show in a while thank you for the note Adam episodes come out every other Friday so we'll see you in two weeks with Canadian Bacon oh awesome political farce from 1995 here is a brief plot synopsis the US president low in opinion polls gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war with Canada Directed by Michael Moore.

Canadian Bacon is available for rental on Amazon and iTunes. I guess, I mean, and we'll do Wag the Dog eventually. So kind of kind of two movies with a similar kind of vibe. Please, if you listen to this podcast, don't forget our Patreon. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on the Iger Sanction, the 1975 Asmina St thriller, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. We did not have an episode last. No, we did the parallax view.

The Parallax View was. Oh, you're right. Parallax. So you're right. Yeah. It was the parallax view. We are an episode behind mostly because I was out of town and we couldn't find a way to to record. But next week, we will have our episode on executive action, which is a JFK conspiracy movie from the early 70s.

But I'm kind of curious to watch just because it's very, it's very soon after the assassination. You can listen to the Paralax View episode, the Iger Sanction episode, in our upcoming executive vaccine episode, and much more at patreon.com slash unclear pot. They have a bunch of episodes on the LaCare, including the Tinker Taylor, Soldier Spy, BBC adaptation, and some other stuff. We've got a lot of stuff on Graham Green. We're kind of just with the main feed we're going kind of chronologically through the 90s, but with the Patreon, we're kind of just hopping back and forth to whatever we think is interesting. So after this JFK movie, I think we both agreed we're going to do some Costa Gavras movies. Z, State of Siege, The Confession, Wonderful Films, Great Filmmaker. And I'm looking forward to watching those.

We're going to do Battle of Algiers. That's Gila Particorvo, but we can do Battle of Algeria. I got my copy on my shelf. Happy to crack that open. Maybe we do that after. Yeah. Yeah. We can talk about how the Panthers watch Battle of Algeria's,

for tactical inspiration. And so did the American troops in Iraq? Did they really? Mm-hmm. Ah. From the other side. Very much the other side, yeah. The Patreon is just $5 a month.

And as you can tell, we think it's totally worth it. Our producer is Connor Lynch, and our artwork is from Rachel Beck. For John Gant, I'm Chmall Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. You're going to be able to be. Thank you.