Unclear and Present Danger - Drop Zone (feat. Soraya Roberts)

Episode Date: March 19, 2023

This week, Jamelle and John are joined by Soraya Roberts of Defector and Pipe Wrench magazine to talk “Drop Zone,” a quintessentially 1990s action film starring Wesley Snipes and Gary Busey. They talk Snipes' career and his fall into “sovereign citizenship,” the 90s obsession with “extreme” sports, and race and Hollywood.In our next episode, we’ll discuss the (ridiculous) disaster thriller “Outbreak,” directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo. It’s available to rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes.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 most recent episode is on the Clint Eastwood film “The Eiger Sanction,” and our next episode will be on the Alan J. Pakula paranoia thriller, “The Parallax View.”

What I'm offering you, no one else in the world can provide. No one else. Two million dollars a month for the operations and names of every undercover agent in the world. And I'm willing to prove it by doing it one time for free. In a world of high-tech secrets, the survival of justice is at stake. The whole system is going down. And all that stands between anarchy and order is one man. You've got evidence, make your case of the FBI.

You're going to have to do better than this time on Kreef, fella. He's DEA. God bless America. It's not a high jacket with your hands down! If you want my help, $15,000. $15,000? What do you care anyway? It's the government's money.

The other U.S. Marshal has acquired some information. I'm impressed. Not with you. The other marshal. You are way out of your league. Way out. Paramount Pictures presents. These people are killed.

You leave the cop stuff to me. The year's most exciting thriller. I'm not gonna find who I'm looking for down here, right? So I gotta go up there. Stage one is complete. Stay focused. Okay, we're into the game. Five minutes to exit right on schedule.

Yes! Wesley Snites. Well, the schedule's gonna change. Drop Zone. Welcome to Unclear and Military Thriller's of the 1990s of 1990s, and what they say 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. I'm John Gans. I write a substack newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I finished my book about American politics in the early 90s. That is to say, I submitted the first draft of the manuscript to my

editor, and now I'm waiting for him to get it back to me. So, I... Counts is finished in my book. Yeah, I'm kind of treating it like that. I don't know how my... probably needs a lot of work, but And yeah, I think, you know, there's a good chance that you guys, if everything goes well, we'll be reading this in about a year's time or see at a bookstores, yeah. Congratulations. Thanks so much. And we have a guest, Soraya Roberts. Would you like to introduce yourself, Soraya?

Yes. I am also writing a book, but it's nowhere near done. And I'm a contributing writer at Defector and editor at large and columnist at Pipe Ranch. And the reason I'm here, I think, is because I do write a lot about 80s and 90s culture and because those were my formative years. I am a fan of your work, Soraya, and so that's sort of more or less what inspired me to reach out. I should be here and talk about this very silly movie from the 90s, Drop Zone. another entry, I guess, in the Wesley Snipes action canon. We've done a couple Snipes movies thus far.

Passenger 57 also takes place in the air on a plane. It's almost the same movie. Yeah, I mean, it kind of is the same movie. More or less, there was Rising Sun, his co-starring with Sean Conner. I feel like there's another Wesley Snipes in there somewhere. And we will do more Wesley Snipes at a huge 90s and was in a lot of these kinds of movies. Drop Zone was released in 1984.

It was directed by John Badham, Badham. Batham. Batham. Yeah, that sounds, that's, yeah. Badham doesn't really sound right. Previously known for Saturday Night Fever and War Games, so like a real deal director did a lot of other kind of like standard Hollywood stuff, but Saturday Night Fever and war games to big hits critically and commercially successful.

Dropstone stars, Wesley Snipes, Gary Busey, who is more or less an unclear pod regular at this point, shows up in a lot of movies. Yancey Butler, Michael Jeter, and has a little brief role for Malcolm Jamal Warner. Here is a short plot summary of the film. A team of skydiving crooks led by rogue DEA agent Ty Moncrief, which I feel like I said this in the previous episode when we were previewing this, but Ty Moncrief is a great. great movie name. Specialize in landing on police roofs and breaking in so they can steal undercover agents' files and sell them to drug lords. Federal Marshal Pete Nessup lost a brother to this crew and learned skydiving with the help

of top instructor Jesse Crossman so he can track them down. The tagline for the film is, quote, taking crime to New Heights. That's all right. Drop Zone is available for rental on Amazon. on an iTunes. Funny enough, I went to go rent this this morning and discovered that I already owned it on iTunes. So at some point in the previous couple years, I must have bought drops and lost it. Don't have any memory of doing that, but. That's makes sense, actually. Yeah, I mean, it checks out. So I actually kind of enjoyed this

movie. Feel free to check it out if you liked you before listening to the rest of the episode or don't, you know, it's your choice. The film was released on December 9th, 1994. So let's check out the New York Times front page for that day. And having already looked at it, it's a good one. It's a big one. Well, first, I think this, we usually focus on foreign policy stuff because of the topic of our podcast, but I think that this domestic news is interesting to talk about, too.

House GOP would replace scores of programs for the poor. Money would be set to state as grants. House Republican leaders are preparing plans to abolish more than a hundred social programs and replace them with grants, which would then have a virtual free hand in redesigning aid to the poor, although with substantially less money than the current programs provide. That would move would sweep away more than $60 billion in federal programs that provide cash, food, job training, child care, foster, and other services. The amount spent by the government in each category would be reduced perhaps by as much as 20 percent,

and the money would be handed over to the states with a few broad guidelines. So this is basically what actually happened eventually with Clinton's eventual welfare reform. And a lot of the way that this money gets distributed now is in fairly stupid ways or actually bad ways that doesn't actually help poor people. They'll take grants and put them into absence-only sex ed and things like that. So this was a real destruction of welfare in the United States or the beginning of it. Clinton's variation on it was not quite as radical as what the Republicans were proposing, but this was, you know, the beginning of the end. Well, not the entire destruction of the U.S. welfare state.

That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but definitely the reduction of the U.S. safety net. And, yeah, Jamel, do you have thoughts on it? Yeah, no, I mean, this begins. or, you know, it begins the transition of a lot of federal anti-poverty programs, and especially, as you mentioned, welfare, formerly aid for dependent families with children, and an after welfare form becomes temporary aid for needy families. And the thing, the difference between those programs is that the former program was more or less a direct federal grant to families. the federal government budgeted a certain amount, you know, certain Americans were eligible based on their income, and they got the benefit directly. And welfare reform, what Republicans were proposing here is to end the federal entitlement,

which is just kind of what it is, not unlike something like Medicaid or Social Security, end the federal entitlement and turn the programs over to the states, which will allow them to administer as they'd like, including. give them what's called block grants. Not quite an unlimited grant of cash, but something close to it to operate the programs. I say, please, Jason DeParl, who wrote this story, notes that there'd be only a few broad guidelines. And with temporary aid with needy family, that's kind of what happened. You may be aware, over the last year, this story out of Mississippi about the state i'm laughing it's not it's not funny it's terrible but it's it's funny because it's just

sort of like of course this of course this particular scheme would happen in mississippi but basically the mississippi government was giving a bunch of money to brett farv the former quarterback for um uh the green bay packers yeah uh to do like shady stuff like you know give speeches revamp some sort of athletic facility or whatever in that money was it was coming out of the state's temporary aid for needy families funds because there's basically no guidelines for how to spend it. And so as long as there is some minimum payment to eligible families, and I think in Mississippi for like a family of three or four, it's like $170, $180 a month. It's like basically nothing. As long as you meet that requirement, you can kind of do whatever you want with the money.

And in this case, it was sort of a kind of used as a sluss fund for supporters of the governor, Tate Reeves and the previous governor as well, Phil Bryant. This is how you cut programs without necessarily saying that you cut programs. It's how you get around like the politics of it by simply devolving administration to a different level of government. And this is, I mean, this is why one of the big aims of policymakers, not even just liberal policymakers, policymakers interested in anti-poverty programs has basically been to do as much as possible to reverse this, to begin having more direct transfers from the federal government to eligible people because the states are just like not, is that they're not good at this?

They cannot be trusted. You cannot trust the states to fairly administer these programs or even use the money as directed. No, they become, as you said, it's subject to actual or borderline corruption. Or just the screwed up political incentives of the states that have an electorate that says, well, we should spend this on some stupid shit that they want to do. And then, you know, marriage promotion or something that's, yeah. And, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that, unfortunately, the poor are not really a voting block as such. So don't really, can't really force the hand of their state governments to say, hey, you know what, that really needs to be distributed in.

you know, a responsible way to us. So we're starting to see a reversal back to direct payments and the necessity that they're important, but it's happening slow. I have a question. Wouldn't they think that they would be audited or wouldn't they think that people would know that they were doing that? Didn't they think that looked bad? Or are they just like, oh, well, it's fine because it's pretty general what we're allowed

to do with this. so it falls within our capability. I don't know, our abilities to do that. Definitely the latter. Federalism, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, research, research, research service, uh, that when the federal government does something like create a black grant type program and doesn't really attach to any strings to it, there's no reason, like, research, like, research, is like the congressional research office or the congressional research service will issue reports, right? they'll be like, well, this is what's actually happening with the money and it's not really working. But like, you know, no one gives a shit.

Right. Yeah. It's very difficult, especially in these states that are kind of captured by very conservative Republicans and the political culture is conservative, it's very difficult to make a big fuss about, you know, the welfare money is being misspent, you know. Especially since in these states, I mean, this is like a whole other thing. Right. But in a place like Mississippi or Alabama or Georgia or Arkansas, right, like a disproportionate number of the recipients are just going to be black. And so it's sort of like the politics of being like we should do a better job spending welfare funds on the people who need it in a place where a lot of those recipients are going to be black people. It's just like you might as well, you know, you might as well be asking like a dog to fix you breakfast, you know? Right. Yeah. Did Brett favor feel bad? Did he apologize? No. He was like. Like, I ain't do nothing.

I ain't, I didn't do shit? Yeah. Right. I think probably it's one of those things if you apologize, your lawyer tells you not to apologize because that's a possible culpability in a criminal act. So you don't want to admit any wrong. But no, he did that. So there's another headline here that seems relevant to us.

U.S. and Ukraine cooperate to destroy nuclear arsenal. Can I say this name? No. Dinaupratov. I should be able to see. did not broodal mosque. I'm trying to say the name of the city in Ukraine, but I can't. In the heart of one of the former Soviet Union's largest missile factories, rocket scientists who once built nuclear weapons aimed at the United States are destroying them with the help of Americans. In the main

building, a dilapidated brick structure where the portraits of pioneering Soviet space scientists hang like solemn deities. American defense contractors are working alongside Ukrainian engineers to build a new plant that will vaporize the last drops of fuel from SS19 missiles. What Americans, officials are calling unprecedented cooperation at the USMash plant is a result of nearly three years of coaxing by Washington to persuade Ukraine the world's third largest nuclear power to give up its weapons. The Ukrainian parliament overwhelmingly approved the country's accession to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty by mid-November after a string by a stirring speech of Lena D. Kuchma, a rocket engineer who used to be a top manager at the USMash plant. The vote opened the way for Ukraine to formally renounce his nuclear status at a December meeting in Budapest at the conference on security and cooperation Europe. You may have heard about the Budapest conference because that was sort of a tacit agreement

between Russia and Ukraine, where it was like, okay, we'll give up our nuclear weapons, but you're not going to attack us. Yeah, with the end of the Soviet Union, something really extraordinary happened, which was that the successor states of the Soviet Union, not necessarily Russia, kind of has been the designated main successor state to the Soviet Union, ended up with nuclear weapons. Because Kazakhstan had a great deal of nuclear weapons because that's where they just happened to be when the Soviet Union ended. And the same thing with Ukraine. And the United States and Russia basically and the UN basically convinced Ukraine to give up its weapons.

I think that this, from my perspective, kind of implicitly gave a security guarantee to Ukraine that if they were attacked, that wouldn't just be allowed to happen. But yeah, I think probably I'm a proponent of nuclear nonproliferation, so I think this was good. But, I mean, the fact of the matter is that when you give up weapons of mass destruction, your capability to deter attacks goes down. So this is part part of the story of approaching the war in Ukraine over many years. I'll just note also for the sake of our podcast that this whole thing, former Soviet states having nuclear weapons in them and potentially unprotected nuclear weapons is like a plot point in a number of movies we will cover. I believe in Air Force One, it is a plot point.

Gary Oldman's villain is, you know, trying to get his hand on the weapons. And late, on a later movie, the sum of all fears, it is basically like the instigating thing. True lies,

too, which we had to skip. There was like, the nuclear warhead comes from Kazakhstan or something. Right, right. Yeah, I think so. So this was,

this provided a lot of fodder for screenwriters in the 90s. And you may, people may recall after 9-11, fears of the use of a dirty bomb or something like that. And part of that, right, was sort of like, we don't know about all this unsecured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. One more thing here, 25,000 U.S. troops to aid U.N. force if it quits Bosnia,

danger to ally, cited. Americans would be ready to rescue peacekeepers in the Balkans if necessary. President Clinton has decided to send as many as 25,000 United States troops to Bosnia to insist in the withdrawal of United States peacekeeping forces there for pull out his ordered, senior administration officials said today. Until this week, Mr. Clinton said he would send American forces to Bosnia only to enforce a peace agreement in the war-shadowed country. With a settlement appearing ever more likely and with European governments saying peacekeepers withdrawal may now be inevitable, the official said the president believes that it is time to make

clear that the United States would help in what would be an embarrassing retreat. Mr. Clinton signed a memorandum Wednesday authorizing United States. States forces take part in such an operation and his deputies afford the alliance and congressional leaders about this morning. The president believes that it is important to keep the United States as a leader of NATO to be ready to assist our allies at the forces in danger of the State Department spokesman Christine Shelley said under the White House plan the American ground trips to Bosnia would take part only in rescue operations and would leave as soon as withdrawal was completed. So this is part of the long commitment of NATO to an individual.

prevention in Bosnia. At this point, since 1992, there had been a no-fly zone requested by the United Nations peacekeeping force on the ground, but enforced by NATO. Gradually, NATO would take a more aggressive posture, which would culminate in a kind of sweeping array of strikes in 1995 against Bosnian Serb forces. This sort of culminates around the time that the massacre at Shrebanica happens. So as it becomes clear that the Bosnian Serbs are engaging in genocide, the NATO involvement becomes more sharp. But that's what's going on here. What else? Anything else look? No, I think those are the big ones. I will tell you something. I looked at the cover of the Globe of Mail because I'm Canadian. So I wanted to see the same day in Canada. And

That's the only story that that we share with you is the U.S. one about Bill Clinton and the troops. Oh, the Bosnia one. Yeah, the Bosnia one. The rest are all like very local, except for one out of Beijing about Chinese school children dying in a blazing movie theater. Jesus Christ. Yeah. I was like, Jesus, why is that on the cover? But yeah, but it was all Canadian otherwise.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. just be um we our patreon podcast on the cold war since we're looking at new york times from like the 60s and 70s the paper is like much less international it's much more it's like a new york paper it's like a new york paper yeah and then like half the paper might have the front page might be something you know relevant to a national audience but much of it is is um is local news and it's you know by the 90s uh as you can see the front page it's very much sort of like

paper of record for the country kind of thing with only like a one or two stories devoted to things relevant to new yorkers or people in the in the tri-state area and now pretty much none yeah i mean there's this thing about u.s. investigates new work group as possible political slash fun that's the extent of it for this for this day okay drop zone some background um not a ton of background for this movie it's kind of a standard hollywood production the kind of movie they used to just churn out, um, and people would go see them. This movie did decently well. I mean, I should ask my dad if you saw this in theaters. It seems like I'm kind of moving my dad would have seen in theaters. Um, decent size budget, 45 million,

45 million. None of the actors could really do any skydiving because, um, uh, the insurance is too expensive. And so all the skydiving shots are actual professional skydivers, um, not so much any of the cast. The critical response to the film was about what you would expect. Sort of like this is a silly, macho action, fantasy movie, and it's enjoyable in that level. And otherwise, it's like pretty much forgettable. Ebert says, it drops to it as one of those thrillers where the action is so interesting that you almost forgive or even forget the plot, which I think is true. the movie is virtually one stunt after another many of them taking place in midair and during the pure action sequences you simply suspend your interest in the story and look at the amazing sites before you critic chris hicks says as the film moves along plotting becomes more and more illogical uh again totally checks out uh i enjoyed the movie just fine hour and a half kind of a perfect like friday night movie for example like you're not going to think too hard to be totally totally

enjoyable. How about y'all? What did you think of Drop Zone? I didn't like it. But this is my, you know, not the kind of movie. I like movies. I like these kind of thrillers, but I need them to have a little bit more. They got to have some kind of, some kind of social message or political content, I guess for me to enjoy it or be like, I don't know, particularly wild. No, I'm not. That's too exaggerated. There were parts of it that I thought were pretty fun and exciting. I mean, I love Wesley Snipes as an actor. Like, he's fun to watch and him kicking people's ass is awesome. Like, when he like beats those guys up in the bathroom, I was like, this is a good fight. But I, uh, yeah, I wasn't totally, um, engrossed by it,

but it was definitely an entertaining movie. And, um, it kind of struck me, though. I had this feeling, which happens sometimes when we watch some of these movies. Like, this movie feels like it's from like it's like it's like purely from the atmosphere of its era like it seems like it's like made up of other like a pastiche of other similar movies like I was like is this the same movie as we saw before like passenger what was that one passenger 57 I was like is this passenger 57 and then I was like is this point break like there were just it just felt like it was like so many other movies that I've seen so I felt like I was sort of having this dissociating moment where I was like I don't know like am I really experiencing this or is this just

like some kind of like hazy production of culture itself I don't know so that was kind of interesting that I was like this is so generic it almost feels unreal um I wasn't terribly bored I didn't it didn't capture all of my attention but it yeah it was it's an action movie is it a movie for babies John it is it is not a movie for babies because it's too violent. What did I say was a movie for babies? It's not a movie for babies. It's, it's, well, it's definitely not for adults.

Maybe it's a movie for teenagers. Well, actually, that's funny. So I was, I think I'm a little bit older than you guys. So I was 14 when this movie came out. And I loved it when I was 14. Oh, really? Yeah, I was like, I remember getting so excited to see Malcolm Jamal Warner, even though he dies in like five minutes.

But I think it's like his first feature after the Cosby show, or it's like the first time you saw him on the big screen. So I was really excited about that. I also like their dynamic, him and Wesley Snipes. And I also had a huge crush on Koran Nemick because he was in the show called Parker Lose Can't Lose, which I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's terrible.

Don't watch it. But so there were all these elements of it that I really liked. I outsized in my mind was that scene just from like having watched it 14 and me remembering now was the toad the wet sprocket scene where they're learning to jump and that fall down scene like I thought that was way way longer from when I remembered and then I watched it again just like a couple days ago and I couldn't stop laughing the whole thing like it's so clear a skydiver came up with this movie because there's so little character development and I remember reading Stephen Holden did a review of it in the times and wait I

have it here. He said, Mr. Snipes drifts through the movie seemingly unsure of whether to play it straight or tongue in cheek and winds up wobbling between the two. I want to be nice to Wesley Snipes because I don't actually think that's his fault. I think that's the script. I think that's the film itself, which was basically just set pieces of jumping out of planes and doing all sorts of things. So there wasn't really room for much. I'm also a huge fan of Yancey Butler, even though she's, I don't know, I think she had two big movies. She had a hard target and then this one. She wasn't hard target, wasn't she?

Yeah, yeah, but she was more of a like damsel in distress in that. But I liked that they didn't make them have an affair or something in this. Yeah, they had no romance. Yeah, she was just like kind of badass and I liked that about it too, just as a woman to watch that, a girl. This is something we talked about actually not infrequently because in the 90s, you do start to get many more mainstream Hollywood action films with black male leads

in a way that just like doesn't happen before but their female co-stars are sometimes white and so I'm always curious as to why there is even when there's clear chemistry between the actors

which is I think of the case here I think they have good chemistry with each other why there's no romantic subplot I know when we discussed what was it the Pelican Brief

with Denzel and Julia Roberts, in that case, Denzel himself was like, we can't, I can't, we can't kiss. We can't do any of that because, A, because like my audience might be like, you know, what's up with that? And B, because it's still at a point where you could have like insane people, I get very upset at that kind of thing. But I'm always, I'm always interested whenever you see, you have this pairing of a black male lead and a white woman is the female lead, the extent to which they even. allow any kind of like sexual chemistry to be like expressed well without it being the specific plot point of something problematic like right right you know not not just like oh of course it's a man and a woman in a movie you know like they're going to get together at some point um and like

but yeah or they have to like somehow deal with the audience discomfort now I don't think it I mean it still doesn't happen that much but like there's I don't think it. I don't think it would be as, you know, it wasn't a taboo. It's just probably something studios wanted to avoid because they were like, that'll make people feel weird, you know? Like, not necessarily they would get protested or anything, but it would probably like, you know, it was just like, that's a little too much for us, you know, like a little too controversial.

Just one last note on potential racial politics, his movie, which there aren't really any, except one scene where they're in the DEA office building and Gary Busey and Wesley Snipes both have guns and a cop shows up and then looks at both of them and shoots Wesley Snipes. Right, right. Yeah, that's like the only kind. And then there's the kind of like the bad guys are sort of rednecky in a certain way. Yeah. But that often happens where you kind of have like that was also in, well, there was that

in Passenger 57 where there was, you know, black cop dealing with ignorant rednecks. it was much more explicit in past 57 here it not so much wait there's another scene though and this goes back to what you're talking about the the sexual stuff i think too um right at the beginning when he's in the car with his brother and he talks about how his brother keeps setting him up like or his brother's wife keeps setting him up on dates and he hates all the women he's setting him up with and he says Wesley snipe says i like my women nice quiet and dull not like that Mongolian feminist. And then his, yeah, nice.

And then he brings up, and then his brother brings up a woman named Shenandra, which is very, kind of like a coded name, I feel like. And so you're like, yeah, he's saying, I don't know, it made me think of the sort of asexuality of, you know, Will Smith and Denzel Washington. It's like non-threatening, like, in quotes, threatening, like not too sexual, not too I think this is one of the things that people have written about Wesley Snipes. Like the guy is really sexy and that's a problem, I feel like for mainstream Hollywood has like, doesn't know what to do with him because it's like, he's sexy.

He can also be sad. He can also do this and that. And it's like instead of versatility, it's considered like, I don't know, you can't brand him appropriately. And so how do you place him? He's too all over the place. Plus, I don't know if you remember, but he was. during this film by the cops for possession, I think, or for speeding or something. Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, he, it was probably one of those, like the cops being just shitty. But I think he was speeding and he had, like, they said he had drugs and he was armed or something. He said that was not true later. But I think Wesley Snipes' ongoing issues with the law were also a bit of a, I don't know, if those were an ongoing. problem it seemed like that had an effect on his career but i think i think you're right to note that the fact because so it's it's not as if will will smith or denzil the other big 90s black stars are like not very attractive and like denzil like known for being sort of like very sexy yeah um very handsome but um snipes like how i put this denzel

you could put in very easily in a kind of like explicitly romantic role like Mississippi Massala is the one that comes to mind but like you can there's there's a bunch of these sort of he's he's leaner he's tall he kind of has that look about him Wesley Snipes is like not just very handsome he's very muscular and he's like kind of very like

has like kind of this aggressive energy in a way that I think you're right made it Hollywood did not know what to do with him outside of action movies. Something we've talked about before, is at least in my experience, like Wesley Snipes was like the much more like populist black, black star.

Like Will Smith, big mainstream star. Obviously, everyone went to go see Will Smith movies. But like, like you, you go to a Will Smith movie and it's a mixed crowd. You go to Wesley Snipes movie and it's a mixed crowd. And it's all black people in the audience. And that was sort of like, to me, that was sort of that that's like their two differing appeals that like snipes by virtue of his energy, but virtue of being very dark-skinned. I mean, this is like another thing that can't be, can't be ignored.

He's darker than Smith, certainly darker than than Denzo Washington. and sort of one of the more dark-skinned, like, leads of the decade. And I think that just, like, for audiences, for black audiences, made him more relatable, which also made sort of made it harder for him in Hollywood, since Hollywood does not know what to do with black actors who have, like, very strong support from black audiences. It's sort of, like, they don't know what to do with that without putting the person in, like, a quote-unquote black movie.

I don't know if you've read, Ed Guerrero, wrote, this book called Framing Blackness. Have you read it? I've not write that. No. Sorry to quote, but it's such a gone. He says, the fact that Hollywood has known about the disproportionately large black movie-going audience since the early 1950s gives further credence to the argument that the movie industry routinely ignores black filmic aspirations and marginalizes black box office power until it can be called on as a sort of reserve audience to make up sinking profit margins at any given moment of economic crisis. So apparently when black exploitation came around and when this sort of 90s group of movies

came around, there were like issues beforehand. And so they're like, oh, well, might as well go for these guys. And so we'll get some black actors in our movies, but not too many. And let's not do too much with them and all that kind of thing. And I think I was actually surprised to see, like, I think Wesley Snipes was quite vocal about the fact that Hollywood wasn't. a place for black actors particularly. I don't know that that Will Smith or Denzel Washington ever spoke that way.

But Wesley Snipes was speaking that way back to like 91 when his star was kind of rising. And I'm actually surprised that he didn't get more. Maybe he did get blowback for it. Yeah. Yeah. He's always been, I mean, whether it's a fairly earned reputation or not or based somewhat on his appearance as well, he's always been thought of as the harder edged of these, these actors and someone who was angry and problematic and like but i don't know how much of that

is just because of the way he was cast i mean he's had legal troubles but his legal troubles was unfortunately someone this really strange tax sovereign citizen stuff that he was talked into um actually i was going to ask you guys about that too sorry to interrupt but does that sound feasible that someone told him that stuff and he just believed it or does it It sounds like just an excuse. You've got to believe in this stuff ideologically on some level to do it because it's so crazy. I don't think he thought of this. I think he might have been talked into it.

It just sounds very unlikely to me that someone was like, here's, an accountant was like, here's a way to get out of taxes. I think you kind of have to believe in the ideology of this kind of stuff to get into it, this whole like not sovereign citizen stuff. I think. So that's what's strange about it. I don't know if he doesn't, it doesn't seem like he's naive. I don't think someone was like, hey, like, I figured out here, here's one weird trick to get out of taxes.

I think he kind of believed it. Yeah, I mean, the sovereign citizen stuff is weird because it's sort of like, it's an ideological trap that I think can actually ensnare lots of different kinds of people. Yeah. And this probably applies to this types of just like low trust. towards the government, like low, if you're a low trust person, if you feel that perhaps the authorities are hostile to you, if not out to get you. And his run-ins with police might engender that kind of feeling, then it's not like a big leap from that to being like, well, actually, for reasons I can even break into it.

I mean, I'll be totally honest here. I cannot articulate the reasoning of this stuff because it's so crazy to me. But if you come to believe, right, that like the federal government has no right to tax my income, it seems plausible to me that someone could come to that view. I mean, I should say for full background, you know, much of my family is sort of like on the rural Florida and sort of there's already kind of like I'm already familiar with the kind of maybe middle age black band with that kind of like sovereignty vibe. that's that's that's that that's sort of that that's sort of where I come from um so even though I don't know there's no sovereign citizens in my family it's sort of like it's not it's not it's not the biggest leap from from sort of a general distrust to sort of like well the constitution says my income is untouchable by the feds like it's not and I can I can very easily

see how someone like snipes could could fall into that I hope my parents don't listen to this podcast. I don't want to insult your family. I mean, look, we all have eccentric relatives. The thing is, you know what? There's a funny little irony in the movie. So back to the sovereign citizen thing for a moment and and Snipes getting into it. There's a moment where they, while they're investigating the initial airplane heist escape, they

talk about posse comitatis very briefly. And I caught it only because, like, I am obsessed with things like. this and I wrote about it in my book. Posse Comitatis was an idea cooked up by American Far Right to basically say that the county was the highest authority recognized by the Constitution and therefore, you know, the county sheriff was, you know, a sovereign above all other, you know, above the federal government, above state, above local governments. This idea came directly out of neo-nazzi groups. It was a kind of an ideology and a tactic for trying to organize sort of violent resistance to the federal government. And it is the origin. And during

the 80s, there were a lot of people who were involved in like shoot-ass with the federal government who are believers in posse comitatis. A lot of posse comitatis believers, people in that orbit became militias, which were bigger, big in the 90s. It's a really, one of the roots, root ideas of all kinds of American extreme right, both organizations and activities and ideology. But what's interesting about it is also this kind of sovereign citizen stuff comes out of the same body of thought, if you want to put it that way, same body of propaganda and ideas. And it left the white nationalist culture, subculture, and became sort of associated with general

distrust around, you know, the U.S. government, anti-government groups that were not explicitly white supremacists. And then it even transferred into black and kind of black nationalist or, you know, black Hebrew-Israelite and these kind of black separatist movements got into sovereign citizenship. So this career of this idea is interesting because it started out on the white nationalists far right. And it's kind of spread all over, you know, the lunatic fringe, I guess you can say, of American extremism or American separatist ideas, white and black. And presumably, I'm sure there are other ethnicities who are interested in as well. So that was kind of funny to me. I just made the connection with what actually happened with Wesley Snipes.

Is there anything like this in Canadian politics? I'm 100% sure there is that. that. But I'm like the last person you should ask about that. But I don't think all the sort of fringe. I mean, we have a reputation for being so lovely. But I think it's come up that we're so unlovely often. And I think that these fringe groups are just like everywhere else, particularly right now, there's a lot of kind of nationalist. I'm sure there was. I don't know. Again, I'm not I'm not certain. A related idea became very popular in Canada. British Israelism, which is the idea that Anglo-Saxons are the real Israelites in the Bible.

Was that kind of, well, that comes from Britain originally, but it crossed the border into Canada. That's a one thing. I love how you can always find someone who's like, no, we're the real Jews. Where are the real Jews? They don't like, and of course they don't like Jews, but they want to say. Oh, because those are the fake Jews. They're the fake Jews. They may have invented this idea.

I don't know. Well, you'll have to wait for my book. I talk about it a lot. Yeah. Wait for John Gant's book to discover who are the real Jews. I reveal. Finally, who are the real Jews? So plot-wise with this movie, there really is not much.

It's basically sky hijackers kill Wesley Snipes' brother, Wesley Stemps' revenge, but he's suspended. He goes to fine. the partner of one of these hijackers, former partner of one of these hijackers, who eventually trains him to be a skydiver. And all the while they're kind of like hunting is too strong of work, but like looking for seeking out Gary Busey's hijacking crew. And they all kind of end up in the same place in Washington, D.C., ahead of a big meat, skydiving meat, which the Busey team is going to use to steal into the DEA office.

and then, like, get a bunch of information about who is an undercover agent and sell out the drug wards. And there's, like, there's not really much, much to it other than that. And because they don't really get into the politics of this stuff so much, I'm trying to think of what other observations are there to make in that regard. I have a question for Soraya. Oh, no. when you were young what drew you so much to this movie well it was it was in a line of like

I liked Wesley Snipes he had done he had done I loved him in Major League which I think is like the first like his was kind of my favorite character in that at Mays Hayes was that his name then it was like white man can't jump then it was passenger 57 rising sun I know it's problematic I know you've done a podcast about it

and then drop zone He was just someone that I'm like, okay, if it's a Wesley Snipes movie and it's action, it's going to be good. I don't think that I even picked up what the real plot of this movie was. I think I think I saw that, okay, his brother got killed. He's mad about it. Nobody believes that his brother saw these people doing the stuff and that's why he did it because that's like part of the thing, right?

is that like no one believes that there were actually hijackers because no one can jump out of a plane that high or something and they had taken the tech nerd with them which is a side note. It's very funny to see the early 90s depiction of computer geniuses because they're always, they always look like that. They always, it reminded me of Albert Brooks in out of sight as well.

They're just always kind of like these snively little, yeah, weeners basically. And that's what this guy is But yeah So I think I think I was mostly just enjoying The jumping out of planes And the Wesley Snipes part of it all I don't

So but there was something particularly cool Like he embodied a certain type of cool to you As a young team Yeah he was he's just so charismatic And he and I also really liked Yancey Butler again like I'm really disappointed That she wasn't I mean, I don't know if it didn't seem like she was employed appropriately afterwards, and

I don't know if people didn't know what to do with her. I mean, she was beautiful and she could do a lot of stuff, so I don't really know what the problem was. I really like cliffhanger too, and there's nothing to that movie either. There's just people climbing, you know, mountains. It's like, I was, I wasn't very politically minded as a teenager. I'm slightly better now, but I think it was, yeah, it was mostly the action stuff and the fact that he was just great. Like he was, I don't know. This is like better than Aspen Extreme or something like that. So it's within that.

Yeah. Do you think, well, I think, well, this is for both of you. Passenger 57, even the screenwriter said this is, this was marketed to a black audience. This movie seems less marketed to a black audience in Passenger 57. Because Passenger 57 has explicit racial, um, populism, let's say. Always bet on black. It always met on black. Also, he's, like, going around and, like, outsmarting and beating up rednecks and stuff like that.

This movie seems like the only plot point I could see or see where it's, like, slightly a marketed to a black audience is that Wesley Snipes enters into a world sort of dominated by white people skydiving and, like, excels in it very quickly and, like, becomes an equal of the people very quickly. That's the only sort of black populist angle I can kind of see, but it seems like this was just an action movie unless, I mean, obviously had the added benefit of an actor who was very popular among black audiences, but less like explicitly like we're making a movie and we're trying to appeal to a black audience. I mean, this goes to what you said at the top here. This movie does feel like it kind of is like assembled from the parts of many other movies. So, sorry, you mentioned cliffhanger. When I was watching this, I was thinking of cliffhanger, another movie about a kind of subculture of people doing extreme things. And there's like the whole 90s extreme sports thing that is like actually kind of

at its peak in the mid 90s. And as a as a quick parenthetical, it's interesting that like, you know, we talk, we say, talk a lot on this podcast, but we say, talk about this podcast, but we're no longer made. But this particular kind of genre of action film, the kind of like people, dramatizations of extreme sports with like some nonsensical plot thrown in doesn't exist anymore like that movie does not exist anymore right like it's that that's been subsumed by the whole you know super hero big blockbuster thing they are but but uh this this seems like very much you know riving off of cliffhanger there's even bits of the net in there um like when he gets flown into the you know the huge

electrical thing i think a plane goes into one of those and then net. There's like, yeah, that I thought of that too. It's like, yeah, a montage of all the early 90s action movies. This, this movie is kind of generic in that way. This kind of, it's like the not nice way of putting it. The other way to putting it, it's sort of like it's emblematic of the kind of stuff you might find in the movie theater in the mid-90s, right down to the cast, right down to a guy who kind of looks like Fred Thompson, but isn't Fred Thompson? But isn't Fred Thompson? Oh, Andy Romano is.

Is that who he is? I don't know who he is. Wait, the guy, he also, are you talking about the guy who's his boss? No, the guy who is a skydiver and he's bald. Oh, him. Yeah, he's now married to, I think, Reba McIntyre. Oh.

I think. Randomly. But no, it's funny that you, like, one of the things that I found that was, well, I actually kind of digging for political stuff because I knew it was coming on here. But there is the idea that he's a U.S. Marshall, and so is his brother, I think. And they're not being trusted by the organization. So they're going on. So he's having to go off freelance, basically, and he's having to find these guys. So it's the lack of trust in even the system that you're supposed to be employed by and that's supposed to trust you. They're not. They're not.

like there's part of that there's part of um isn't gary busy like originally part of the d a tie moncrieve yeah yeah so he's like a rogue rogue kind of so there's that idea of like lack of trust and you know those kind of systems i guess but because there's no real politics in this movie because like you can imagine a version of this movie where it's like more explicitly and this is the thing we've seen in this movie is like connected to kind of like the end of a mission right It's sort of like, oh, Ty Moncrief, you know, it wasn't allowed to do what he wanted to do to like stop drug lords. Now he's getting revenge by like helping drug lords.

Like it doesn't have to make sense. But like that's the kind of trope you often see, kind of the former member of the service driven to oppose the service. But there's like none of that here whatsoever. Yeah, not really. There's, and he, I mean, well, but the motivation of the characters is not that well fleshed out. So they, he's just. sort of like a mercenary.

And I had some kind of, well, a couple thoughts about it. It's interesting that the movie is so, I think it says a lot about what's changing in the country, that the movie is so generic. We're a couple years out from Passenger 57, which sort of is, although a generic movie, one explicitly targeted to black audiences. And now we have a movie that is so generic. We have trouble separating it from other. 90s movies in our minds and has a black star. And I think that that is showing, you know, as we

said earlier, not necessarily they're comfortable enough having an interracial romance on screen. But they're definitely like, there's no second thought being like, okay, this is a genre movie of no particular outstanding nature in any direction. And it makes perfect sense to have that. I did come up with one kind of political or social interpretation of this movie, which I think we can maybe extend to a lot of these, the interesting extreme sports in the 90s. It's sort of like, I want to suggest that that's something, there's something kind of like, oh yeah, so skydiving, rock climbing, and then all of the X games were huge at that period. and there was something kind of like cutting edge and hip about that but in a way I wonder if you could connect it and this might be a little dubious but I'm going to try to like a kind of feeling of post history which is like okay nothing matters what matters is that you have fun and you cultivate some kind of hobby or skill and like now everybody is going to do or be a rollerblader or or everybody's going to be a rock climber, everyone's going to do that, like, have these sorts.

Not that to say that these hobbies didn't exist beforehand, but I feel like in the 90s, there was a real almost obsession with being into stuff, you know? Like having these sorts of hobbies or having these sorts of interests weren't only for, you know, like subcultures. It was like, in order to be a cool person, you had to pick a subcultural identity

that wasn't just like, okay, I do this because I like it, but it's also like there's a whole cultural self that comes with it. And you still have that. I mean, like lots of people who are into rock climbing. It's a very specific world that has its own sort of subculture. So I feel like the interest of identifying with the subculture and the absence of like when American mainstream culture was kind of collapsing or splitting up was a lot bigger. So there was lots of interest in like, well, especially among middle class people, it's like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to get into rock climbing or I'm going to get into extreme sports, which was both kind of cool and bougie at the same time. Does this sound anything like what I'm saying, it's just a complete making this up as I'm going along. It's possible.

That's true. I mean, that makes me think of how I was doing the complete opposite because of all, because of grunge and all that kind of thing. Like doing sports was so illusory And like what are you doing Like you're supposed to be sitting in your room And like eating shit And just listening to music And maybe even watching people do sports

But like actually not doing sports But that subcultural identity was really important Right? Like I was kind of a punk A little A little younger than you But that rejection Of those sorts of things was really important

Like, it was really important to be like, I'm, I mean, maybe this is just what it's like to be a high schooler, but or, or, you know, a young teen. But I was like, yeah, no, I'm not into that stuff. It's not cool. That's not me. Yeah, I fully had a patch on my backpack that said, I hate jocks. And I went to a high school that was like a sports high school. And it was really important to me to walk around. And yet you loved Wesley Snipes movies.

Isn't that interesting? Yeah. It's a secret shame. I was really shocked. And you were like, yeah, I was really into grudge, but my favorite thing was just what. but going to Wesley Snipes movie. It's the whole 90s experience. I have nothing to add to this because I played football and did like student government.

Oh my God. And was a Boy Scout. I'm very square. I'm very, very square. This comes up every so often sort of did that the distance, the delta between sort of like the image my critics have of me. And then sort of like my actual life, which is the most square fucking person you can imagine. Well, sometimes you take. edibles, I think, right? Yeah, that's the extent of it. I think at this point, that's pretty normal. But, like, yeah. No, I think that that's, and like, I think that was a case in point break where it's like, oh, we're going to look at this crazy subculture of people who live on the edge. Now, I don't know. It seems like almost everybody, it seems like subcultural identity is mainstream. Like, everybody's a little bit grunge or everybody's a little bit. Like, it seems like so many of the things that were subculturally.

Even styles, like even the things that were like, oh, that's like a little underground, dying one's hair or whatever. Like, you know, in the 90s now it's like that's just part of middle class life. Oh, man. Yeah. I remember, well, I went to a private school, but I remember dyeing my hair. And it was like this incident that I was dying my hair. But now, like I see people who are the age I was then.

And I'm like, I don't know what you are. Like I can't, I can't pinpoint what you're. interests are, which I think is better because why would you want to look like a single thing that you are associated with? Right. Yeah. It seems less, I don't know what's going on with, I don't know what they're doing, but it seems less tribal. Yeah. All right. I think we can start to wrap up. Final thoughts on drop zone. Anyone? I don't have them as such. I thought that this is really remarkable and how unremarkable it is in the fact that it just seems so generic, so could be a million other movies, it's almost hard to believe it exists. It's just like

you're looking at something that like a perfect thing that was like made in a factory from its age. It's like looking at like something like designed in the 1950s and you're like this is the most 1950s thing I've ever seen, you know? Like a piece of mid-century modern furniture. Yeah, exactly. You're like a radio from that time and you're like, damn, that really looks like what it is. So in that sense, it's kind of interesting in terms of like sheer style and surface. But there's not a whole hell of a lot going on. Soraya?

I'm just really glad that Yancey Butler had a chance to have sort of a semi-leading role in a movie that wasn't with Jean-Claude Van Damme in it. And I miss her and I hope she's able to do, I hope she's happy, able to do more stuff like that. I'm just looking She was The last big movie she was in was kick-ass too Yeah I'm sure she had a small role in that

Yeah She's on TV a lot Yeah She had a lot of I think substance abuse issues Oh I don't know if that Sort of

Cause things to derail slightly Or I think she's famous She's got a famous dad Like 11 spoonful guy I think that was her dad Yeah Yes

Yeah It says that here Yeah Yeah I have no particular thoughts either, totally, for me, a perfectly enjoyable movie. I watched it as I do many movies for this podcast at 5 o'clock in the morning while preparing my children's lunches and had a good time. All right.

That's our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcast. And wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and review. It does help people find the show. You can reach out to all of us on Twitter. I am at Jay Bowie.

Soraya, you are... Just Soraya Roberts. At Soraya Roberts. And John, you are... I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. 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 Jason titled Toys and the Happy Worker Factory Trope. Hello, Jamel and John.

Thanks for hosting such an enlightening podcast. Thank you. The only one I know that could credibly include a discussion of, I'm going to pronounce this like a Philistine, a discussion of Walter Benjamin. I know that's not how you say it. It's banning me, but that's fine. All right. In an episode on the movie Toys, speaking of that episode, you mentioned how the film valorized a certain American idea of a family run business where the workers identify with the owners. Thinking about it, I realized that such a vision in the 90s was not unique to the movie Toys.

In 1994's Tommy Boy, the factory workers rallied behind the titular character despite the fact that he is a slavish fail son. Yeah. I do like that movie, though. Me too. Having worked in a factory myself in the 1990s, I can attest that these depictions are as realistic as the lone wolf fantasies of the action movies of the time. By eliminating class conflict completely, they are the ultimate expression of neoliberalism's hold on culture and politics at the time. In fitting with your project on the pond, I think this is a lot. is a specifically 90s thing. Earlier depictions of working people never presume this unity

between workers and bosses. Heck, even Fred Flintstone resented his boss. I'm curious if you think the pop culture trope of the Happy Family Factory Media is a particularly 90s thing and what it means if it is. Thanks again for your insights. Yes and no, because there's also, it's a wonderful life, right with the nice baileys and their savings in loan company. It's so older than that. Frank Capra noted anti-new dealer. Yes, he was a big Republican, which might, you know, you can kind of see that in the whole, well, you know, it's pro-family business, which is arguably kind of Republican. I think that basically there is, okay, I think I think what's happening in the 90s with deindustrialization is that the idea of deindustrialization gets associated with the loss

of something that's like, you know, familiar, homie and cozy. So that kind of gets wrapped up with these, with family businesses failing. It's not really true. But that was like, oh, you know, not only are we losing like these companies that once, you know, employed people, but they were also, like, really wholesome, owned by the same family for years, had these relationships to their workers. So I think it's related to deindustrialization, or it's conflating two things going on, like the breakdown of nuclear families and deindustrialization are kind of getting

wrapped up in one little meat package with that stuff. But it's just naturally sentimental. I mean, it's a naturally sentimental theme because, I mean, who, I mean, I don't know what came first, the chicken or the egg. But think about it in your town, you know, or a restaurant or a business, a store that you like that's been owned by the same family for a very long time. And it goes out of business. You're sad about that. You know, you don't think, oh, well, it's just a business like any other.

It does come with a kind of special aura. And I don't know. Maybe that's just because I'm the product of a family of business. And so I have some class connection to it or something like that. But, you know, the success of a failure of family businesses is something that I think pulls particularly on the heartstrings of Americans. I don't know about Canadians, too, Soraya? I think it does.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it's a naturally sentimental theme. And it also just came smack down in the center of the country changing in really radical ways and people feeling sad about that. That makes sense to me. I'd also say that, you know, by the 90s, we have really kind of the labor movement and total free fall.

And so even if this were a 90 specific phenomena, it's true that there isn't really kind of like a cultural counterweight in terms of depictions of the labor movement, depictions of organized labor or that kind of thing in a way that was like certainly, I want to say Fred Flintstone was in a union, right? Like part of part of, that's funny. I think he was. Part of kind of the cultural background of the 50th and 60s, just the fact that there were many Americans were in unions, many Americans are part of organized labor. And so that stuff filtered into into pop culture and media. And you know what's funny is that we obviously think of like the Midwest as like the working class part of America. But in a lot of mid-century presentations of working class America, they're New Yorkers. You know, like the honeymooners

are New Yorkers. They have that accent. And Fred Flintstone kind of has a New York accent. You know, like that's that's like a working class accent. And like that idea. Yeah. And like, yeah, Union kind of like street smart guy, white ethnic, et cetera. And then that kind of shifts as like the, well, you know, you have blue collar, which is a great movie, which takes place in Detroit. But as, as, you know, I'm thinking about Tommy Boy and this movie, it's like as the Midwest deindustrializes, you have this like sentimental view of like Tommy Boy, like the auto parts factory, which is also a family business and like they have these wonderful relationship

with their workers and stuff. You know, they're actually working class and, like, they're not, they're, they're more down to earth than the middle managers and so and so forth. I want to say it's older, but there is maybe a concentration of it in the 90s, yeah. Okay. Thank you for the email, Jason. Episodes come out every other Friday. So we will see you in two weeks with Outbreak, the 1995 pandemic thriller directed by Wolfgang Peterson, a crazy movie. I watched it at the start of the pandemic, that and contagion.

I don't know why I did that. I was just like, let me watch movies about mass death. Crazy movie. Can't wait to watch it. Here's a brief plot synopsis. A deadly airborne virus finds its way into the USA and starts killing off people at an epidemic rate. Colonel Sam Daniels' job is to stop the virus and spreading from a small town which must be quarantined and to prevent an overreaction. by the White House.

Outbreak is available for rental and Amazon on iTunes. And don't forget our Patreon, the latest episode of our Patreon podcast, is on the Iger Sanction, a 1975 Espionnais Diller directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, also kind of an extreme sports movie. There's a lot of mountain climbing in the movie. We talked about this in the episode, but someone died making this movie. It's not good. So you better watch it, so you could.

You better watch it. People actually died to make this movie. Honor their memory. Yeah. You can listen to that and much more at patreon.com slash unclear pod. It's just $5 a month. Soraya, do you have anything to plug? Anything to plug?

No. I just, I don't know. I write for a defector often, so keep an eye out for that. And I have other articles in the pipelines. so just look around, and that's it. All right. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

Our producer is Connor Lynch, and our artwork is from Rachel Eck. For John Gans and Soraya Roberts, I'm Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. See you next time. Thank you.