Unclear and Present Danger - Executive Decision (feat. Nick Wiger)

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

Welcome back to Unclear and Present Danger! It’s our first episode of the new year and we’re here with a pretty fun movie — “Executive Decision,” directed by Stuart Baird, produced by Joel Silver and starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Joe Morton, Steven Seagal and many others. Music by, as you might expect, Jerry Goldsmith. In “Executive Decision,” an intelligence analyst played by Russell and a group of commandos, led by Seagal, must infiltrate a passenger jet bound for Washington DC that has been hijacked by a terrorist group. On board the jet is enough nerve toxin to kill everyone on the eastern seaboard. Most of the film is a tense standoff on the airliner, as the commandos try to defuse the nerve bomb and take down the terrorists, while the terrorists move forward with their mission. The tagline for Executive Decision was “Five miles above the earth, an elite team of six men must make an air to air transfer, in order to save 400 lives on board a 747... and 40 million below.”You can find Executive Decision to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon.Our next episode of the podcast will be on “The Substitute,” otherwise known as “Stand and Deliver if the teacher body-slammed the students.”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. The latest episode of the Patreon is on “Marathon Man.”

Excuse me, sir. May I help you? Sir? In an age. Excuse me, sir. May I help you? When terrorism knows no boundaries. And the level of threat. I have a message for the American president knows no limits. I am in control of flight 343.

Sir, I don't think this is about hostages. What are you talking about? A shipment of the nerve toxin DZ5 was hijacked. Are you saying nerve gases on fire? Is on board? Yes, sir, I am. They plan to use the DZ5 and the airplane together to detonate here over Washington. When global response is routine.

London is demanding immediate action. There's a hatch on the belly of the 747 here, the nose. We could dock there. I know you wrote the book on assaulting hijacked aircraft, but this is five miles above the earth. I don't think we have any other options. In advance technology. Who's this? 007?

can accomplish miracles. What are you doing up here? Who the hell else is going to do with you? I'm opening the outer hatch. A life or death decision. I hope there's a good movie on this flight. For 400 hostages in a plane. Keep it going!

Or 40 million civilians on the ground. You can forget Washington. There's enough nerve agent here to wipe out half the eastern seaport. We'll come down to a choice between the unthinkable. The Pantacod. He's going to shoot us down. And the impossible. I'll reach our airspace in 85 minutes.

The hatch is got to be closed down or we'll lose both planes. Order the F-14s to intercept the 747. Kurt Russell. I'm losing control of the airplane. Hallie Berry, John Liglasamo, and Stephen Seagal. We're not going to make it. You are! Warner Brothers invites you.

We're really going to ship this plane down, are we? It's too late. They've already crossed the line. To fasten your seatbelt. This is directly from the president himself. Everybody dead! Now you have your orders, execute them! Executive decision.

Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers at 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 the Substact newsletter on Popular Front. And I'm the author of the forthcoming book When the Clock Broke, which is a history of out of, American politics in the early 1990s. And if you like this podcast, you might like the book. So please pre-order it. I have my galley copy. Folks. Oh, yeah. It's a good book. You should read it. Thank you very much. And we might be, we're planning something around the book. So yeah, we're going to do an event with the podcast. Something. Something. All right.

Pre-order it, read it, enrich yourself. We have a guest for this episode. Our first episode of the year, it's been a little bit delayed, but we are back for 24 with this new episode. Our guest is Nick Weiger, host of Do Boys and Get Played. Hello, Nick. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me.

Our pleasure. So we are here with a, what I think is a pretty fun movie, executive decision directed by Stuart Baird, produced by Joel Silver. It's a very general silver-produced semen movie, and starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, John Likwasamo, Oliver Platt, Joe Morton, Stephen Seagall, and many others, with a score by Jerry Goldsmith, kind of like the almost like prototypical 90s action thriller. It's like sort of right down the line full of everyone you expect. In executive decision, an intelligence analyst played by Kurt Russell,

and a group of commandos led by Stephen Seagull must infiltrate a passenger jet bound for Washington, D.C., that has been hijacked by a terrorist group. On board, he has enough nerve toxin to kill everyone on the eastern seaboard. Most of the film is a tense standoff on the airliner as the commandos try to defuse the nerve bomb and take them a terrorist, while the terrorists move forward with their own mission, including their leader who has designs for himself. The tagline for executive decision was five miles above the. The Earth, an elite team of six men must make an air-to-air transfer in order to say 400 lives on board of 747 and 40 million below. A lot of description there telling you exactly what you're going to get.

So the funny thing about the ad campaign for this movie, of course, was that you knew it was a Kurt Russell picture, but also getting co-billing on the poster with Stephen Seagull, who was still quite a big deal at the time, hadn't completely... fallen off. And as we will discuss, Steven Seagall, not in this movie for very long. Thank God. Right. This is the thing that I remember watching this movie, and I didn't see it in theaters. We saw it on VHS, but I remember

the thing about this movie not knowing what was going to happen to Stephen Seagall and the movie being billed as a two-header. He's like, oh, these two action guys are going to, these two action stars are going to team up together. Oh, let's see what's going to happen here. So I think that moment actually, I'm not sure if it plays in the same way

with a contemporary viewing because I think a lot of people know what's coming but just like at the time I think it really hit it was like a true true surprise no it was a big deal

I posted about it on blue sky one of the one of the various Twitter alternatives and a lot of people chined in to say that when they saw it in theaters way back when there was like cheers in the audience like people were like shocked

surprise happy right by this point Segal was like a well known asshole so but there were people upset too like oh my god you killed off stevens to go we'll talk about what happens i think it's a pretty awesome movie death um uh and we'll talk about it but yeah so uh the film made a decent penny domestically 56.6 million dollars 65.4 worldwide um cost 12 million

dollars to make totally again this this is a right down the middle 90s action thriller you can find executive decision to rent or buy on iTunes and amazon Also, just let me note, it's funny that this movie is called the executive decision and the president is not in it. Yeah. Yes. He's complete. There is no possibility of an executive decision. He's just out of the country and the secretary of defense has command.

Which feels unconstitutional. Right. It's like an Al Haig maneuver who was it to did it in the Reagan administration? Yeah, I'm in charge here. Yeah. So that's the thing. But you can find it to buy a rent on iTunes and Amazon. I think it's totally worth watching.

So you guys should do that before you listen to the episode if you have not seen it before. The movie came out on March 15th, 1996. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Okay. So immediately, there's a lot of stuff that is relevant somewhat to the movie and also relevant to today, sadly. First headline on the left here is Clinton in Israel stresses support for peace effort. Anti-terror aid pledged. 100 million package plan. President visit is also meant to bolster Paris. By turns politician,

pre-turned professor, President Clinton, raised from the peak of Mount Herzl here to the heart of coastal Tel Aviv today to convince Israelis that the United States stood behind them and their endangered peace. The formal centerpiece of Mr. Clinton's brief visit was his commitment to $100 million to supply Israel with training in technical systems in the fight against terrorism. American officials said that the aid would include advanced bomb detection devices, x-ray systems, robotics for dealing with suspected bombs and advanced thermal and radar sensors. They said 50 million of the funds would come from the Pentagon's 1996 budget, but the rest would be added to next year budget.

American foreign aid to Israel is $3 billion a year, of which $1.2 billion is economic system, assistance and 1.8 billion is military. Mr. Clinton was less precise in the possibility of formal military treaty with Israel, which would be troubling for both Israel and the United States. The president said only that the two sides would immediately begin to negotiate an agreement to combat terrorism. This is the interesting political part of it. The president's 22-hour visit was clearly intended to bolster Prime Minister Shimon Perez's Damage standing before the national elections on May 29th. It included a meeting with the entire Israeli cabinet,

a visit to the National Cemetery on Mount Herzl to lay a wreath at the tomb of Prime Minister Izzakrabin and pay respects for 10 victims of terror attacks and meetings with the opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. So who comes to power in this election? Benjamin Netanyahu. This is after the execution, I mean, I'm sorry, the assassination. of It's Akra Bean, which Benjamin Nittanyahu basically cheered on, I think it's fair to say, in an effort to, you know, dash the peace process, come to power.

And basically, he's been ruining everything ever since. So the whole Oslo framework is about to collapse, didn't Yahoo's coming to power. And little did people really know it yet, but this was really when everything started to go to shit. And then right next to it is a big image, and it says, the caption is Hamas, the militant Islamic group has merged as the strongest opponent of peace accords between Israel and the PLO. Hamas supporters are shown rallying under a wall bearing anti-Israeli graffiti. Hamas, the main force behind suicide bombers who have thrown the shaky peace talks into crisis is an organization with deep roots, a popular base that feeds on misery and resentment,

an international support network and a clear goal to turn the nascent Palestine into an Islamic state. Mosques, hospitals, and schools are its weapons as much as bombs. And Sir Arafat, that's the head of the PLO, for people who don't remember, as much as Israel is its target. As world leaders of the United show this week at an anti-terrorist resolve, even the experts who study groups like Hamas see the nature of the organization presents a daunting quandary. Do you attempt to co-op the religious and sylvan side that's isolating the militants as Mr. Arafat has sought to do? Or so you seek to crush Hamas as a whole as Mr. Arafat's American-Israeli partners are now pressing him to do.

Well, that's a little questionable. No one knows as well that either method can back as Israel that either method can backfire. In the 1970s, in early in the Palestinian uprising, Israel allowed the surging of the Islamic movement to flourish and even covertly supporting it, calculating that the Muslim groups would undermine and draw support from Mr. Arafat's PLO, which was then the more immediate threat. The tactic failed. Hamas, which of its tight net sales and devotion to Islam, proved much harder to infiltrate and influence than Mr. Arafat's more secular and corrupt PLO. But cracking down was hardly more successful. In 1992, an attempt to decimate Hamas, Israel deported 450 of its activists to a snowy hillside in Lebanon.

It goes on to talk about how they just regroup there and train and so and so forth. Basically, yes, you have the whole horrible formula right here, Hamas and Benjamin Nittanyahu. And they were really, as they're kind of collaborated, it's strange because they're on one hand sort of sworn enemies, but they're collaborators in the kind of the attack on the peace process. And they both become serious forces in the politics of their respective nations around the same time in the middle of the 1990s. So, I mean, the whole formula is right there on the front page. Both these groups would come to dash and destroy the peace efforts. And now we see the awful results of that.

This movie, as we're about to see, has some kind of depoliticized aspect on terror. It's not clear. I don't know. if I at least couldn't figure out if they're meant to be Palestinian or what, but they're Arab terrorists and Islamist terrorists in the movie. So we'll talk a little bit about that, I guess. But those were the two things that jumped out of me. I don't know if there are any other headlines here that you guys saw and looked interesting.

There is the only thing that I want to comment on is a deal with deal with release on line item veto with Dole's help, prospects still and clear, presumptive GOP candidate helps overcome resistance to aiding the president, prodded by Senator Bob Dole, Congressional Republicans ended a nearly a year-long stalemate and agreed today on a version of the line item veto for the president. The proposed legislation would shift much of the power of the purse from Congress to the White House would be the president, the power to remove items from spending bills one by one rather than vetoing or approving the measure as a whole, as is now the case. supporters say would allow the White House to kill pork barrel projects and specially aimed

tax breaks and to influence policy directives by denying money for them. This was like a big Republican cause in the 90s having a line item veto for the president. And this bill ends up passing. This bill, which is called the Line Item Beto Act of 96, was introduced in 95. It's signed into law the next month on April 9th, 96. And then it is immediately challenged in the district court for the District of Columbia by a group of senators, chief among them, Senator Robert Bird of West Virginia, famously, infamously known as being a former Klansman, but longtime senator and kind of a senator, a type of senator that doesn't really exist anymore, sort of a guy who really cares about the procedure and who really cares about kind of like the incident. institution qua the institution. So they sue, and the district court agrees and says the bill is unconstitutional, the laws unconstitutional. This is a Reagan appointee, interestingly enough.

And then the case is remanded back to the district court level by the Supreme Court, and after Clinton used the line item veto on a 97 budget bill and a 97 tax cut, The city of New York, as well as these senators, again opposed the law, filed suit in the same district court. They got a different judge. That judge combined the previous case with this case, previous case Reins v. Bird, this case Clinton v. City of New York, and declared the law and constitutional. It was appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed by a six-three decision with Breyer, Scalia, and O'Connor in dissent, which is an interesting group of dissenters. And, yeah, so then no more lay on a veto. I think that decision is probably correct.

It seems to break separation of powers. If you let the president just sort of like selectively veto stuff from a bill, it has to be, in my view, the constitution pretty clearly dictates it has to be all or nothing. And so, yeah. But I don't know, that was like domestic politics in the 90s. It was like all about this bullshit. of like, line item vetoes, you know, small bore programs and the like, not really, nothing really all that serious in retrospect. Was the idea of the line item veto, was the reason that was like such a Republican cause

celeb because like, like, okay, we can, we can individually veto the funding for the national endowment of the arts. Like, it's like things like that. It's like, this government should not be spending money on anything except for, like, know, military and Medicare. Right. Pretty much. Yeah, that's exactly.

And maybe not even Medicare. Maybe, yeah, right. There's a lot of stuff, right? Like, yeah, the federal budget is massive and it's very easy to find things that, like, give people's hackles up. So, yeah, a Republican president, you let it, you let a Democratic president be able to do this and the next Republican president can kind of, you know, selectively veto. things they don't like.

And I mean, this was budget politics in the 90s were very stupid. I think the next year, Congress comes like close to passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I remember it. So stupid. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the only other thing.

Everything else is sort of like local news. There's something here about Chicago. there is a funny picture here of Rod Vylovich campaigning for the house it looks like campaigning for the house Raupovic famous for going to prison for trying to sell Barack Obama's old Senate seat

back when people cared about political corruption so let's move on to executive decision again 96 Kurt Russell, Stephen Seagull Nick have you Have you had you, you, you'd seen this movie before. Oh, yeah, no, I have some history with this movie. So in the 90s, we had a, uh, a, for a, for a brief bit, we had a Spanish exchange student, um, from Spain who stayed with us, who was a huge fan of American action movies.

And I knew about this movie, but it kind of like, I think it was like a mild hit. I don't think it was, it was huge. I think it kind of underperformed expectations, even though it was a success. I think a lot of people was like, oh yeah, I know. that movie, but maybe hadn't necessarily seen in the theaters, he made us aware of it. And so he was staying with us. Like, I love executive decision. It prodded us into renting executive decision on VHS. So I'm watching this with my parents and this very excited Spaniard. And I, like, I had no expectations for this movie. And I was like, this rips. Like, I came away thinking,

like, this is, I think, one of the best action movies of the 90s. Opinion I still kind of hold. Like I think it's just like, I think it's just very successful, especially as an exercise of like building tension and having a bunch of just spinning plates at once. Like, I think it's just like a like a really well edited movie, but which would make sense given the director. But like it's, I think it's really, it's really effective just as like a, you know, kind of a plain takeover in terms of its premise. You know, the thing you also, you have to just keep in mind is that and especially I felt this rewatching. watching this for the first time in 20 years. It's just like how, uh, how racist it is. It's just, it's pretty right. Yeah. Yes. So it's like, it's like, you know, it's like, oh, man, I love this movie. You got to check it out. Like, oh, boy, you know, it's one of those sorts of experiences.

Um, but I, but I do think it is, it is very effective as an action thriller. John, yeah. I think this movie's pretty stupid. I mean, I guess that's not saying it's not a good action movie. What I looked at when I watched this movie, well, again, it was great. That's they killed off Stephen Seagall, literally my least favorite actor in the world. So, and I think that improved the movie a lot and took, took, but it's like this movie is sort of like looking forward to some of the more apocalyptic action movies that come around out around 9-11. And it's kind of looking backwards to kind of smarter thrillers like, um, the hunt for red October. And, yeah, it's just like in terms of its script and in terms of its, you know, acting, it's more like a Stephen Segal movie than one of the Jack Ryan movies.

So I just think it's kind of, it was kind of a little bit silly. And in terms of the politics and, well, that's what I found really interesting watching it is like, oh, there's like these Arab and Islamic terrorists, I think only one actor. I was going through the list of the actors. I don't think only one of them was of Arab descent. The rest of them are Latino or, you know, Greek guy. Greek, yeah, there's a Greek American actor who's the Persian, Persian, right. Yeah, yeah.

And David Suche, which, who is Jewish, Lithuanian. So I, yeah, I was shocked with how racist it was. We're not shocked, but I noted how racist it was and how the kind of like the depolitical. the idea of terrorism was, not to say, I'm not to say they should have justified there, but they had no idea what the grievances, they gave you no, they were just like, they're just terrorists. They want to get this other terrorists out of jail. So it was completely out of political context. I think we look at a lot of these 90s movies, and I think you can kind of divide them into two types almost. There's like the populace

blue collar thriller, like with, like the diehard type movies where it's like, it's like a guy who's like kind of working class and like the people up top don't don't listen to him and but he's smarter than all of them and then there's like the middle class thriller which is like the guy who's an academic or an office worker he's not really an action dude but they bring him on along anyway because he's like smart and knows the stuff and you see that in like honferry october it's like and there are two types two different types of every man right so like there's the every man who's just like a white collar worker and works in an office and you know like a lot of you know people can relate to that and then there's a guy

who's like you know I'm a working class guy but like and all these people think I'm an idiot but I'm actually smarter and more capable than all of them and I think those are two like they're usually both white guys except in 90s movies we start to see that changing a little bit like with the with the um movies that that have black protagonists and like I have them in as either kind of professional smart professionals like in um Crimson Tire or have them as kind of more like working class guys. And so like that's changing. But it's usually two different types of white guys.

So those are my thoughts about the movie. I've seen this before a couple of times. I really enjoy it precisely because it's sort of like a dumber Tom Clancy movie. Yeah. It has a lot of the tropes of a Tom Clancy kind of story, especially the protagonist being the sort of like ordinary analyst type. but is substantially dumber in a lot of its conceits. For those who have not watched the movie,

you just need a quick refresher. Kind of the basic plot here is that the government is on the hunt for some nerve gas. And the first thing we see is this commando raid led by Stephen Segal, raiding these Chechen separatists. Oh, no, sorry, Chechen mafia. as a sidebar right like this movie does have sort of like the two almost stock villains ethnic villains right yeah uh like you know suspicious eastern europeans of uh of various stripes and then arabs um and not even i mean again because the actor is only like one of the actors is arab kind

of just like swarthy brown guy um lots this movie has lots of yelling uh alu akbar which yeah it's it's rough um so it's the true lies problem it's like i think this is overall an effective action movie but just the way the villains are characterized is just like a you know a big thing you've got to either get over or not be able to get over it makes me feel so bad for the actors too you know for sure you're just like it's it's hard to get work and this is what this is what they have up and a bunch of those actors you'll notice um they would reprise similar roles in other movies. Like, I think like half of the terrorists show up again in that first Ironman movie

in various roles. It's kind of the triple fuck you of, um, it's like they're, the first off, the actors that are cast in the biggest roles aren't even Arab. Uh, and then it's, and then the way they're characterized is so like, you know, awful and stereotypical. Um, but then also that there isn't even like one of the squad members, one of the heroes who's like a sympathetic Arab character. No, they started doing that in Hollywood a little later. Yeah, they didn't do that for like another 10 years.

So it's like, so it's just like, yeah, it's, it's pretty rough stuff. Yeah, the squad, the squad that is what's to go in the beginning and the same squad that infiltrates the plane, it's, it's otherwise multicultural, right? Like you have B.D. Wong, John Lekwazamo. Who's great in this? I love Lagozamo in this movie. Oh, he's terrific. And this is actually a good cycle.

into one of the funnier aspects of this film, which is the treatment of Stephen Seagall. As we already mentioned, Stephen Seagall dies. Pretty much after the first, like the end of the first act, Stephen Seagall dies. They're trying to do a mid-air

infiltration of the plane. And in the process, the jet that they're flying to do the infiltration disintegrates, and Seagall somewhat heroically goes out with the jet there is a very funny i mean what i appreciate about the death the most is that you don't it's not like a fade to black kind of like there's like an explosion and then it cuts to the

rest of the crew kind of like ruminating on the lost leader now you see the the mannequin get like sucked out yes yeah great um and so segal in when this movie was being um developed it was developed as a tour. Like, it was developed as Russell and Seagall throughout the entire film. Um, but Seagal was just a huge asshole, uh, on set. John Likwazamo says that Segal physically attacked him during filming. Um, that Seagal just sort of like bullied him constantly, uh, threatened to attack him, uh, again on multiple occasions. It just was like a huge fucking dick.

and the cast and crew just sort of like got tired of it and they did a rewrite and the rewrite was segal dies that's amazing i i was wondering well sorry i was wondering about watching how would he have ever but he didn't have the star power to come up with some kind of crazy contract that would say like i could never die in the movie at this point right now he's not the rock or vin diesel right like i can't lose a fight he's not yeah at that level and at the time of Let me pull up Stephen DeGull's career. So executive decision, which has released 96, we're probably filmed in 95. This is like as he's on the way in, right?

Under siege, his big hit, is kind of his massive hit is 92. The On Deadly Ground, which covered on this podcast, you can check it out, is his environmental action film directed and produced by him and was a pretty a pretty big flop very expensive a pretty big flop a sign that stephen seagull is sort of losing it the previous year was underseats too dark territory a movie i kind of like it has eric bogosian as a villain and i love i love eric bogusian um uh but also you know it did fine did fine was a sequel did okay but seagal is not bringing in the money like it used to because under siege was just a stupendous hit and so at this point he's like he's still famous he's still like you know a big action star but not nearly as big as he

was and i just don't think he had the kind of clout to um to uh you know bully people on set the way he did so he's he's written uh out of the movie and he has this again somewhat heroic scene where he is killed uh and a fun fact is that in last year's the menu like wasamo plays a was-up action star, which he explicitly models after Seagall. That's funny. I didn't realize that. Yeah, that is a funny, that is a funny character. That makes a lot of sense because, yeah, I guess they did not get along.

The thing I read, and because I don't know how much of this is Stephen Seagall, like, retconning what happened because, like, you know, he maybe initially didn't want his character to be killed. He wanted a Colonel Austin Travis to survive the whole way, and then they wrote him out of it. and but then the movie was well received and so he was like oh I always that's that was the plan all along I actually like that I was I was in favor of that

but that's kind of what he says now but the thing I did read is that his death was originally supposed to be his head exploding like it depressurizes then his head pops and he refused to do the head pop so they change it to the mannequin flying away which I think probably does play better but it would have been funny to see his head explode

that would have that would have I mean people love the being sucked out into the jet but head explode would have been great. That's too bad. That would still be a giff in use to this day. Stephen Seagall's head exploding would just be like every Trump tweet, someone would reply with that.

Yeah, pretty much. So they infiltrate the plane. Hallie Barry, who has, we haven't mentioned yet, she is a flight attendant on the plane and sort of like working to assist the commandos when she knows they're on board, but also kind of working to frustrate the terrorists as much as she can. And most of the movie is sort of like, I think quite tense. attempt by the commandos to, you know, establish a position, find out what's going on, defuse this bomb, Oliver Platt and Joe Morton, the great Joe Morton, being the two characters

who are tasked with diffusing the bomb. So the movie's sort of basically cutting between bomb diffusing, the Kurt Russell and John Lekuizamo team trying to basically stage a way to take down the terrorists. The terrorists doing their thing, including negotiations with Washington, where the Secretary of Defense is leading negotiations. As we mentioned, in a movie called Executive Decision, the president is not available. It's not a thing I think can happen. I think that if an American airliner gets hijacked and the president is in Europe, what they do is they give him a satellite phone. And then he takes command.

It's just, hey, we can't reach the president. I don't know what the deal is. He doesn't have his phone with him. So the secretary defense is president now. Like, that's not how that works. Yes. And he can authorize an F-14 to shoot down a commercial airliner over international waters. But there is a titular line.

There is like, there is that like, it's an executive decision now, right? Like when they put it in the president's hands. But I don't know if that's like they reach him or if it's just the chain of command has been deferred. I have no idea how it's actually working. in the logic of this movie, I guess it doesn't matter, but it is very stupid. Yeah, I think in the movie, it's like they contact the president, but he doesn't appear. And you would think by the title, like, the whole thing would be the difficulty of the decision to shoot down the plane or not, you know?

Right, kind of a fail-safe thing of just like, you know, but no, he's just completely absentee here. Long story short, they successfully defused the bomb. Well, they don't diffuse the bomb, but they're able to stop the bomb from going off. The terrorist is freed, but then the guy on the plane wants to crash the plane into the Washington. And so there's a whole, you know, showdown on the plane. People are killed. terrorists are killed.

Kurt Russell, who we see at the beginning of the film, is learning to fly, ends up successfully landing the plane. And everyone is, you know, everyone, everyone except for a few civilians is A-OK. Right. You get sucked out of the side of the aircraft. I always forget that part because it happens and then it just never mentioned again. It's sort of like, oh, yeah. Yeah, the masks lower and like, and it's just like, ah, it's fine. Don't worry about it.

And I'll say watching it this time with an eye towards sort of like it's politics, the first thing I was struck by was just sort of like how this is like the one of the instances of basically like screenwriters or fiction writers kind of anticipating like a 9-11 type attack. for sure yeah the other example is tom clancy in one of his later books uh uh imagines a plane crashing into the white house like uh and killing everyone and jack ryan becomes president um but this is this is this is one of them and i think it's because airplane hijacking it's very much like a 70s thing in terms of sort of like it's a 70s terrorist tactic yeah and It had largely, in the 80s, you have more just like, we're going to blow out planes now.

But using the plane itself as a weapon is sort of like a novel intervention. And it's interesting to me that in the late 90s, you should see this pop up a bit as like a potential thing that can happen. The other thing is interesting. And this doesn't get back to what we were talking about earlier with the depiction of the terrorist is how they are completely, you're right, John, they're completely depoliticized. There's no, it's not clear. why, like, what their goal is. And there's some gesturing towards, like, oh, we're doing this for religious reasons.

But it's very inco-it, right? It's just sort of like, yeah, this is a thing that they say. But a sense that they have any political objectives is just, like, not there whatsoever. And that to me is also something that is, like, is going to change, right? like after 9-11 Arab terrorist characters have political objectives maybe they're insane

in the terms of the film but they have political objectives here this is just sort of like a kind of these terrorists kind of could have been anyone in terms of like their ethnic background like they could have been they could have been Chechen

they could have been who are the who are the baddies and the Taken movies they could have been Albanian Right. Just vaguely Eastern European. I think there could also just be like a, like, I think if they made it today, it would just be like, you know, the Maverick approach of just like, oh, they're just kind of these stateless, you know, not really part of any nation. You know, we were just sort of this, this undefined sort of agenda. I mean, they make it so vague that you couldn't connect it to anything in the real world. I'm not so sure. You think you think they pick like Russians or something. I think, I think actually, just like we talked about in the, at the beginning, where we talked

a little bit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I think that like, the context for making these terrorists Arabs was, and including a suicide bombing in the movie, was the emergence of Hamas. And that's that type of terrorism that, you know, okay, PLO terrorism, as you're saying, was we're going to, we're going to hijack an airliner and we're going to, we're going to try to get some demands, right? And then the Hamas kind of terror is more like we're going to inflict, you know, a price against the power that we're fighting in. sheer blood. And so I think that that was really like the emergence of suicide bombing in the middle of the 90s was really something that captured Americans' imagination.

And that's why they make them Arab terrorists specifically. And I also think it sort of this movie weirdly, even though as we both mentioned, it's not very politically sophisticated. As Jamel points out, it kind of anticipates like the change in terror attack. between like, okay, some kind of demand, some kind of like concrete demand to these massive attacks like 9-11, which are just like meant to destabilize and, and destroy as much as possible in the people they attack. So I think there was like, the movies like kind of aware of something going on in the world

of politics, even though it's not able to like thematize it in an intelligent way. But that's what I would say is like why they made them Arabs, why it's a suicide attack. was because Hamas had just arrived on the scene and that was like beginning to enter American consciousness. You know, like when I was young, Hamas was like very scary. And then and then Al-Qaeda kind of appears and you're like, well, much, much scarier. But so that's my read on that. Yeah. And I think there is maybe a little bit of the, you know, the American government is caught flat footed by fighting the last war. Right. It's like a little bit of like what you were saying like, oh, they think it's a hostage-taking operation.

They think the agenda is to free somebody that it's a prisoner exchange. But in all, you know, in actuality, they want to, you know, to coat the Eastern Seaboard with nerve gas. Which I should say nerve gas doesn't work like that, just to throw that out there. Not that they should have like let the plane crash, but if that were to happen, a couple thousand people might die. But this is, I mean, this is what we're a year past. the

Japanese tunnel attack the nerve is that is that around this time? Oh wow is that the same

time? That's wild. Shinriko Yeah. The Tokyo Subway Saran attack was on March

20th 95 so almost like exactly a year before and that killed 14 people and it was a nerve gas attack

yeah it was a nerve gas attack that's right which is to say that sort of like it's one thing that is

one of the persistent themes we see kind of like in these movies is so in the 90s there is this concern about weapons of metastructs about chemical and biological attacks around Iraq around sort of like stockpiles former Soviet stockpiles so all this stuff is kind of like in the atmosphere and it is a thing that like the American

public is concerned about but it feels like often you know in this the case of this movie like what can we have that can be sort of a major threat to the United States? States. It's sort of like it has to be resolved, but isn't a nuclear weapon. And sort of like a chemical attack, I think fits that bill. But again, it's sort of not, that's sort of not chemical weapons, nerve weapons don't quite work like that, which is just, it's worth saying. The other thing I wanted to, the other thought I had was that I mentioned before that the commandos are multicultural, like very, you might, we might say today, woke. No, we don't, it's, it's not woke anymore. These are, these are, it's like, DEI commandos, right? This is, I feel like the other thing

that is very much reflective of the time, which is, look, the American military is this, like, rainbow coalition of killers. Everyone can be a commando, like, the most, elite American soldiers can be completely multicultural and sort of like represent the rainbow of America. So we have an Asian-American, black-American, Latino-American. It's almost kind of comical how sort of like how much it is, you know, everyone from every, every major American demographic. And the character names are specific to, you know, the actors' ethnicities.

I don't know if they worked backwards from casting or if that was in this, it was written that way. But yeah, certainly it's, it's, that's definitely a thing that's in the movie. I mean, like, I do really like this, this group of commandos. And while we're talking about this, how great is Bidi Wong's flat top? I, you know, the entire time I was like, man, that is a sharp-ass flat top. Just the crispest flat top I've ever seen in a movie. You could put like a teacup on that bad boy. Great. Has, I don't think Biddy Wong has ever played that kind of character again. And I kind of, he's great at it. It's great seeing him as a commando. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I agree. And I mentioned Joe Morton before, an actor I love.

Yes, it's awesome. I think his other big 90s role, like Terminator 2, where he is one of the researchers working on Skyna. And he has, although he dies in the film, he has maybe the most metal death in like an action movie. It's one of those things where you're like, did they, who's, I don't know what the chronology is. I think T2 came out first, right? Yes. But like, was he partly cast because they're like, oh, he's so good at playing like kind of incapacitated and out of breath. Because that's the big thing of, like, him, him dying in Terminator 2 is just like he's just kind of sitting there just like breathing heavily. And it's the same sort of thing that he's kind of stuck in this movie. He's just, he's just laid up the whole time trying to diffuse a bomb by proxy. Right, right.

I think you're probably right about that, that he just, he does that. His voice is so commanding sounding that you, you don't kind of need him to move around. You just need him to be able to talk. Is there, is there some kind of political content, content we can draw out of the absence of the president is I want like there's something like is this for such a mid mid 90s thing it's like the government basically is just a bunch of boring bureaucrats there is no like the executive what does it really mean like it's it funny that the movie it just I can't get around the fact that that that that the movie called executive decision has literally no well it has

branch but it has it you know secretary level appointments It's like, it's just, it just seems so funny to me. Like, it's just drained the drama out of all of these things. And then they're just like basically a room full of scheming, not scheming bureaucrats, but people just trying to manage this crisis rather than, you know, like a political drama of any kind. I wonder if there's any content there. I'm just reading it into it. But it's very, I just can't get over the fact that the executive decision barely has a president figure in it at all.

Yeah, maybe it's because, you know, it's written. by the Thomas brothers who wrote the Predator movies and I don't I you know it it seems like in in parts it seems like kind of a at a political movie but also kind of a conservative movie in some at some regards so maybe it's kind of a comment on Clinton maybe it's kind of like oh this guy's that you this is the absentee president who'd rather you know like he's he's not really I don't know if that was a conservative criticism at the time I'm just trying to like think of what it could be but like are they kind of saying in the same way that so many I feel like 70s political thrillers are are about like how like the president is like,

you know, corrupt and feckless and a coward and now it's like by the 90s, they've kind of caught like we've got movies like absolute power and a murder at 1600, which are just about like the president is like a criminal. I don't know if there was also a criticism of like slick Willie is just like asleep on the job. That was more of a W thing though, right? The idea that he was taking so much vacation.

So I don't know. Maybe that's maybe that's not what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, you know, I'm, Nick, I'm kind of with you. I think, I think this is kind of maybe an oblique commentary on Clinton, because that was one of the criticisms, like, one of the criticisms of Clinton was like, first of all, he didn't, he didn't serve, right?

Like, he was, right. Oh, sure. Yeah. He was of Vietnam age. Oh, and he's, the president being in Europe. Yeah. On a foreign trip instead of at home defending the country. That was a big thing they hit Bush with, you know, he was always on these trips abroad.

But yeah, Clinton. Yeah, and then there's, there's the senator character who. is like the, and they explicitly referenced Jesse Jackson negotiating for hostage release and are kind of saying like, this could be your opportunity. But in the context of that, and maybe this is also a Clinton thing, they're just like, you know, we know that they hit you for not having a military record. This could be your opportunity to kind of like, you know, show a little something here. And then he, you know, ends up in the. They kill him. Ends up in the diehard guy role. Yeah, then he gets executed. I mean, it's executed. They show. But I think.

that that character I think is also interesting because they show they show them as like such a piece of like you're like it's not like the movie has you root for the terrorists there for a second but maybe in a very slight way it does in this kind of way where it's like oh the scheming politician thinking about his career above all yes for sure yeah course he gets it because he doesn't understand who he's dealing with you know it's like the the Like, and Stephen Seagal is sort of contemptuous of, you know, the civilian analyst and we're going to bring him along kind of to get him killed, you know, like, as to as revenge. So I think like the treatment of the one politician appears someone who has presidential ambitions is like his little advisor is like, why don't you try to work with them? And then it's like, oh, he's like, yeah, he's portrayed as being like, um, driven by ambition and, and being, you know, kind of a coward. Well, not like, I mean, and, and like not really there to do the right thing, but only thinking about his career. So I think the movie is like contemptuous to a certain degree about politicians, um, as a lot

of these movies are that we've talked about. And like, yeah, you're like, it's sort of like, yeah, you know what? that's what you get for trying to negotiate with them, you know? Yeah, it's like, and I was trying to remember the character's name. It's Ellis, right? And die hard. He's like, oh, I can talk my way out of this. It's the same sort of thing. But yeah, because it's a senator, it's like the added layer of this is this political scumbag. He does kind of have a pretty cowardly death, I think.

Like, he's by the time when they actually, like, shoot him in the face. It's grisly. But he's, he's like very, like, scared at that time at that moment. I was trying to think of how often in these sorts of movies that, like, actual like politicians like lawmakers get not just like die off screen or or die in um as a result of like the chaos but like this is pretty it's pretty it's pretty kind of graphic but it's pretty shot striking to see yeah um a u.s senator get just shot in the face right i don't think it happens very often someone mentioned x-men but the in that case of senator Senator Kelly, he isn't killed intentionally. He just kind of accidentally becomes a

goo. I'm with this reading. Just because it's 96, it's an election year. And this is sort of peak politics don't matter election, like American politics, right? Sort of, you know, you got Clinton, you got centrist, Clinton, small bore presidency. You have Bob Dole who's sort of just like, yeah, he's like a Republican, you know, kind of like generic Republican in a lot of ways. There's not a sense that either party really is this thing is simple from the other, you know. Well, what's that Simpson's joke, you know, Democrats like we can't govern Republicans, like we hate everyone. I think that joke is made around this time. Well, this is also the

Trey House of Horror episode where Clinton and Dole are the candidates and the whole joke is that they're both being taken over by aliens and they're both the same guy. Right, they're both, like, one is Kang and one is Kodos. One is Keng and one is Kodos.

And they're just like, it doesn't matter who you vote for. It's just like, you know, that's the whole joke of that episode. And this, my, you know, my view has always been that this, the kind of depolitization of like American life in the 90s

is like actually kind of a pretty important phenomena. And this seems like a striking example of it, just like the total absence of the president from a movie called Executive Decision. And it kind of like quiet contempt for politicians as basically being useless. It's sort of you have that. And then in the following year, we'll have Air Force One where it's not, it's not depoliticized, but there's like a year for like a real president, right?

sort of like if only we could have if only we could have president punch right yeah president you can have reagan back basically yeah a president will knock the shit out of people the president air force one is george w bush you know or supposed to be oh wow yeah i always assumed watching harrison ford in his roles as jack ryan and later in uh air force one that like oh you know Jack Ryan, you know, Jack Ryan's a liberal, kind of, like, he's a, he's an analyst side. Like, he's a smart guy. And like, and, you know, he comes up against the kind of military goons and, and shows them that he, but, you know, that, it took watching these movies with somebody who didn't grow up in a liberal household to be like, oh, Harrison Ford in these

roles is like preparing the ground for George W. Bush. He was just like, earnest, Boy Scout, does his best, is maybe not that bright in certain respects or, you know, not brilliant, but is like a very earnest and sincere and is able to, is a middle class guy, but able to act when it's necessary and make decisions and be decisive. And so I think that that's sort of like, oh, my assumption as a liberal was like, oh, the good guy in the movie in these action espionage movies is also a liberal because he's smart and he uses his wits to kind of defeat these military goons and so on and so but no, you know, like this is not the way they appear to people who don't share those

politics. They're like, well, of course this guy's a Republican. Right. And I think in this movie, Kurt Russell, you know, could go, again, could go either way. Who would Kurt Russell vote for? in 1996. He's a guy who would seriously wonder, should I vote for Bob Dole or for Bill Clinton? Like, he's like, and a guy who was probably like an Obama to Romney to Hillary voter. Yeah, Perrault in 92.

Yeah, no, he brought in the 90s. Kurt Russell vote. Kerrhus was a libertarian. He voted for Perot in 96. He voted for Bush in 2000, probably. He voted for Bush in 2004, probably. Probably voted for Obama. Might have voted for Obama.

Again, voted for Gary, probably right. Vote for Gary Johnson in 2016. And then voted for Biden in 2020. Right. I was going to say, the other thing is that like, sort of like a wish casting, it's sort of like, you know, President Harrison Fordman to be perfect, but he's not going to get his dick sucked in the White House. Yeah, for sure.

Right. Right. We don't want our presidents to be horny. Right. That's the most important thing. And he will, the problem is, and he won't be busy doing that. He'll be busy beating up Terry. You know, yeah, like, I think it's like, I think like Clinton's sexual peccadillos were seen as a sign of weakness because, like, they showed his, like, inability to focus.

He's too busy getting his dick suck. Protect America. He was too horny to protect America. And it's so funny how that, like, completely flips the switch. Like, when it's like a Republican who's got issues with women, it's always like, oh, well. that's just he's just red-blooded you know and like but but in in in a liberal you're like oh he's so weak he can't keep it in his pants and then when it comes to trump they're like well it's just locker room talk you know like and they're like well he's a rapist and it's like but

but like in that case it's incredible how like sexuality can be flipped from a weakness to a strength in and political uh discourse very quickly right yeah like like i mean just the the the the Biden-Trump thing is like kind of like because the most, you know, one of them is a hair-sniffing creep and the other one is, you know, like just a, just a red-blooded American male. Did you see that they were celebrating Biden's lawyer because she, no, someone was posting about how Trump's lawyer was hot and that was like in his favor. They're like, you don't stand a chance, Biden. Here's a picture of Trump's lawyer, a very beautiful woman. And you're like, why? What are you talking? Like, how stupid? I just, it's just like, it's just like,

so funny. I was like, oh, this is like the level at which these things are being broadcast. Interestingly, just on the, on this note, Obama, who, you know, you know, young, very handsome, it was always sort of like, yeah, he seems a little sexless. That was always like the, well, which, which probably is the thing that like Obama would have wanted to encourage because sort of like if the black president were horny, you know, they would have assassinated them. Do you know where he was disciplined by that? Yeah, that's true. That would have been a, problem. You know where he got, but he was disciplined on that, not from the right, but from his left, because any time, anytime Obama said, oh, that's a good looking woman about like an actress or

anything. Like, there would be like a lot of people being like, how could he say something so sexist, you know? And it wasn't. So it was almost as if like people were like, chill on those left like had this sense. Like don't become like Clinton. Like don't become, don't do anything horny that will embarrass us like you have to so like i just remember any any comment that that um obama made about gender that indicated any interest in the opposite sex like it got attacked on the left and his only talk about his wife which was like oh she's a wonderful partner and like and also like she's actually in charge of the household then that got attacked because he was like oh he's always playing the role of the hen pecked husband and uh always implying that

Michelle, the black woman is yelling at him and pushing him around. And I just thought, like, oh, he's trying to be relatable and funny. The thing is, is like nothing for me, I mean, because I was a constituent in very many ways. Nothing he said, like, like, I was just like, you just sounds like a normal guy who's like trying to be relatable, but also like be appropriate. That was the thing. Like, Obama was like very careful not to say anything inappropriate. Right, right.

Yeah. Yeah. kind of wonder when because you know you can kind of think if these things is happening on a cycle so you know

Clinton horny president um his predecessor is not all that horny until JFK notably horny president JFK's predecessors predecessors predecessors not that horny but

FDR horny but nobody knew it LBJ pretty horny LBJ kind of weird and crude right just sort of just like LBJ like to talk about his dick um yes

would have a great was he having affairs I'm not sure Great, great, great doughboys guest, Nick. LBJ. One mic for him, one mic for Jumbo. But then Warren G. Harding, notably horny. I've heard this. Yeah, I think you told me this.

Oh, yeah, he had lots of affairs. Lots of affairs, wrote lots of sexy notes. Like, he was a notably horny president. Wasn't like Coolidge? Didn't people were like, oh, coolidge at least, like, won't be horny? Like, they were happy that he seemed kind of, Yeah, basically, they were. They're like, yeah, this guy does not seem like he's interested in having sex,

which is what we won out of a president. And alternatively, Al Smith, Al Smith, the Democratic nominee in 24. Yeah, 24, who is Catholic, New York Catholic, part of the, you know, part of the case against him was like, he's a Catholic, too horny. Americans are really, like, weird about their presidents, sexuality. Right.

Some cyclical prudishness. Yeah. Anyway. What we're talking about horny presidents, we should mention that Trump's wife is in this movie. Yes, Marla Maples. That's right. She plays one of the flat attendants.

Marla Maples Trump. Yes. I think they were divorced by this point. Were they divorced by then? Okay. Yeah, because they got divorced like in the early 90s. It was all over the tabloids and it was pretty. The thing is, what's interesting is like the stories were so

embarrassing and terrible. But they were both, like, they were, like, both encouraging them because on, like, the principle of, like, good, good publicity is, is better than no publicity. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember it was him and Marla Maples or him and Ivanka. Oh, no. I'm sorry. I'm wrong. They were just getting together when in the early 90s. Their divorce happened in 1997. So they were still together. They separated 97 and divorced in 1999. So, so I was wrong about that. She, she has billed as Marla Maples Trump in the movie.

But yeah, you're right that they that both him and I think and him and Ivanka also like made a meal out of being in the tabloids as much as possible about their their divorces. And I can't remember it was him and Marla Maples or him and Ivanka that did the pizza hut commercial about it. Did you ever see that? It's a really, it's really bizarre. It's, but it's like the two of them talking about like they're they're divorced at the time. They're like, we shouldn't do it. It's so sinful. But like, but come on. We're here together. We got to do this. And what they end up doing. is sharing like a Pizza Hut pizza. But it's like a direct comment on their divorce and it's, was used to sell bad pizza in like 2000. Weird. I think now is a good time to start wrapping up. So any final thoughts on executive decision? It became loop, loop back away from horny presidents and back to the movie.

Any last thoughts on the executive decision, Nick? I think it's just, I think. think the cast is great. I think it's really, you know, it got a lot of great character actors. I mean, we didn't talk about Oliver Platt as the, as the tech. We have Richard Reel, who's the Air Marshal, who's undercover. Yes. You know, in a, in a ton of stuff. J.T. Walsh is the, the senator who gets shot. I mean, it's, it's a, it's kind of a murderer's row of that guys. And I think that's a big part of why this movie works for me. I think it's really tense. I think the watching it this time, I'm like, you probably could lose about 12 minutes of its two hour, 12 minute runtime and just make it a little bit tighter because there is a lot of back and forth about, there are a lot of double beats, I feel like, about like the bomb diffusion and maybe one too many conference room scenes. But overall, I think it's just really well constructed and really tense. And I think the final raid when they put on their night vision goggles and they go into the,

the body of the aircraft, I think that's actually like just really gripping action. So, yeah, I don't know. I really enjoy this just like as an action movie if you try to just separate it from its politics, which I know is not what we're not what this podcast is. But I feel like, yeah, but watching it from this standpoint, it's like, you know, I think it just, I think it's just an effective sort of contained action movie. Stuart Baird, by the way, the director, I think this is, he makes three movies, right? This is his first one, and then he makes U.S. Marshal's.

And then Star Trek nemesis. He makes two bad sequels. But the, and then that's it for his directing career, but still has this amazing editing career for like 40 years. That's right. It's like the Richard Donner Superman and it's like Casino Royale, you know. So, yeah, I think that's a big part of why this movie is just so well-paced and does such a great job of cross-cutting between all these different set pieces.

Another, another, he edited. Tango and Cash, lethal weapon, too, and lethal weapon. But a more recent movie, he edited the 2018 Tomb Raider, which is quite good. Wow, okay. I didn't know we edited that. I didn't see that one. Yeah, you know, this movie's not quite for me. It's just a little too stupid.

Like, it's not as good as the Jack Ryan movies from the earlier part of the decade. It's not as good as Crimson Tide. It's just so weird watching this after watching Crimson Tide. like because this movie feels dated compared to crimson tide you watch crimson tide which was what was that the last movie we talked to about on main feed and you're like this movie is excellent excellent the writing is good the pacing is great it's extremely exciting like it's pretty smart and you're like it holds up and this movie I feel like shows its age way more I felt like I was watching a movie from earlier in the decade and almost sometimes an 80s movie in terms

of, I was like, this, you know, this is like kind of a Stephen Seagall vehicle. It's sort of like, it's sort of crap. And like, I didn't get that sense from watching Crimson Tide, which is like, you know, like, it's a fucking Hollywood movie with a lot of, but as I'm like, this is a, this is a, care was put into this and this is like a solid piece of film. And this movie to me, after watching Crimson Tide, I'm just like, this is a crappy movie. I can't, I can't, I can't get her at it. It's just not as good.

And I know action movies, like, you have to take action movies on their own. terms, but let's face it, compared to Crimson Tide or Hunt for October, this is kind of a B movie. I mean, I do agree. I like this movie, but I do agree that this is not as good as either those movies. Yeah, I, I, I absolutely, I agree as well. I think, I think the thing about executive decision, I think you're right to notice this. And again, it's almost, it's like, it's like almost generic.

It's like exactly, exactly everything you would expect from this kind of movie. It's better than, say, a judge dread or a drop zone, but it's quite similar to Passenger 59. The other Wesley Snipes... Yeah, yeah, exactly. Passenger. That was trying to think of that earlier. Yeah. 57, right?

57, yeah. Pester 57. Yeah, yeah. It's sort of, to me, it's a very different kind, very different genre, not different subject matter, but it's about as good as blown away, right, with Tommy Lee Jones. and um uh jeff bridges like a down the down the middle terrorist thriller uh yeah um yeah you're right i like this movie i enjoy it for exactly the reasons i just uh i just stated um it's it's sort of like kind of kind of comfort food i watched this last night well like i was editing a column

i was like doing some other stuff and i could happily tune in and and see what's going on so i would recommend it just on those on that level like you watch this on a on a Sunday evening or on a weekday evening just to kind of have a movie on and enjoy and you'll see some kind of cool stuff and enjoy some kind of cool stuff and you'll and you'll move on um it's not a gem of the 90s but i think it's like very emblematic of what a 90s action movie was yeah right right the the generic aspect like i mean extends even to its title right it just it's like yeah exactly Which I think... It would be anything.

Yeah. Executive decision. All right, sure. Yeah. It's really... It sounds like a movie they made up in Seinfeld. Prognosis negative. Exactly.

By the way, one more quick factoid about this. Did you see how the rights worked out for this between Paramount and Warner Brothers? No. So I guess... I guess... I remember which studio is... I think Paramount was developing this and effectively sold the... right to Warner Brothers, sold the rights to Warner Brothers in exchange for the rights to a different

movie called Forrest Gump. And then so, so like Forrest Gump obviously is huge hit, but at the time it was like, oh, there's the no brain. We have this Kurt Russell, you know, this Kurt Russell, Steven Seagall movie, this thing is going to do gangbusters. Forrest Gump, not a movie we're going to discuss on this show, but I've discussed it on blank check. That's right. Weird movie. I think for people our age, because I saw Forrest Gump, not in, theaters, but sort of like on VHS, right? It's like, I think my parents rented. And in my head, it's like, Forrest Gump is sort of just like, oh, it's treakly and, and, you know,

it's like, it's Forrest Gump. And then I rewatched it for, um, for Griffin and David's podcast and was like struck by just how fucking weird that movie is from the jump. It's highly reactionary. The first thing you see in that movie, one of the, among the first things you see is Tom Hank's head on like Nathan Bedford Forrest's like body as like a Klanzman.

Yeah. It's like it's really weird. It's both very reactionary and very cynical. It's a strange movie. People should watch it just because you'll watch it. You'll be like this movie became like the smash hit of 1995. It's super strange. I remember seeing that in the theater like a full year after its release and it was like

a packed theater. Like that movie was that popular. had that long legs. America had gum fever. Extends to the chain restaurant to this day. Gump fever feels like, sounds like a real disease too. That is our show.

Thank you, everyone, for listening. Am I stalling yes, because I bringing up my notes real quick. My apologies. That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcast.

wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review so people can find the show. You can reach out to us on social media or on various social media places. I'm on, you know, Blue Sky and TikTok, John's on Twitter, the podcast accounts on Twitter,

whatever you feel like reaching out to us, wherever you feel like reaching out to us. You can reach out to us there. 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 Craig, who writes in an email title,

The Unintended Semiotics of Crimson Tide. Hi, guys, it was interesting to hear you discuss the film as a debate between two factions, both loyal to the same ideas from different perspectives, especially since the Navy's refusal to participate with the film meant that the tribunal at the end was filmed at Chapman University. Chapman is famously the university that until January 6, 2021, employed John Eastman

and also had no compunction about bringing on torture memorial author John Yu as a visiting professor. Everything works out for the moment in the film, but as an alum who still lives on the street from the university, those buildings with their white columns are an omen of what is to come. That is fascinating. Wow. I don't know if I have a comment. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, that's just a cool fact.

It's a cool fact. The university being home to two of the worst Americans at the third. 21st century. Nothing. I can't. This is the public feed, so I can't say what I want to say about John Yu because of,

for professional reasons. But John Yu, not a great guy. Yes. John Eastman, I mean, also a bad guy, but kind of clownish in a lot of ways.

But like John, you, the last thing I read from John Yu was a justification of how the vice president can overturn a president to election. The guy, his job is to launder the worst things imaginable. Executive decisions. Executive decisions, yeah.

John, you would say that a legitimate executive decision is the president torturing a child. Right. Right. I want to pile drive that guy. You can't say what you really think, but you do want to pile drive him. I would say that I would be in favor of the torture and execution of Stephen Seagall. Thank you, Craig. You might have to cut that.

No, it's okay. Keep it in. Connor, keep it in. Thank you, Craig, for the note. Episuses come out every two weeks. So we'll see you in two weeks from this episode with an episode on the, you. on the 1990 Pulled up

1996 thriller The Substitute directed by Robert Mandel starring Tom Barringer and Mark Anthony Mark Anthony Sorry If you are not familiar

With the substitute It is Here's a very quick plot synopsis When an inner city Miami school teacher gets her knee broken After standing up to the school's gang leader

Her mercenary combat specialist boyfriend Goes undercover as a substitute teacher to take down the punk Toon he discovers a conspiracy of criminals at work and must reassemble his team from his last jungle raid to stop them. This is a terrifically racist movie. And it's sort of like stand and deliver except the teacher beats the shit out of the kids. So we'll be covering that.

I think it'll be a conversation about kind of like 90s crime fears. This is what this movie very clearly evokes. I watched it like two years ago. So it's kind of a little fresh in my mind. mine. And that is our next film. Nick, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, thanks. What an absolute treat. Thanks so much for having me. I would just, I would not have another situation where I get to discuss this movie that I've seen a bunch.

So thanks a lot. Our pleasure. And listeners, if you don't listen to doughboys, you should listen to Do Boys. It's one of my favorite podcast. I've been on a couple times. You have.

Last episode, we did. I think our favorite live show from last year, but we did Lido Pizza with you and Tammy Sager in D.C. Yes, which was a ton of fun. A lot of fun. So I highly recommend people listening to Doe Boys and Get Played. I'm also a guy who plays a lot of video games,

so it's fun to listen to a video game podcast. Thanks, buddy. Thanks for having me. Don't forget to subscribe to our Patreon. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on Marathon Man, the 1974 and the Tiffany 5 Thriller with John. I just forgot the actor's name. Dustin Hoffman.

Dustin Hoffman. Thank you. And Lori Scheider. And Roy Scheider. A great film. Very intense torture scene in that movie. So fair warning. But a great film.

We had a great discussion. The previous episode from that was Three Days of the Condor, another just absolute classic of 70s cinema. So that's where we are in the Patreon, kind of 70s thrillers. We're going to do the Odessa File of our next Patreon episode. That one was John Voight. So the Patreon is just $5 a month. We do two episodes every month in the Patreon.

Usually it's a classic of the 60s, 70s, sometimes 80s, but kind of Cold War era films. So please check that out. For John Gans and Nick Weiger, I'm Jamel Bowie, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.