Talking Pondo: Maximum Overdrive and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

 In this episode, Marty gives Clif the film Maximum Overdrive to watch and Clif gives Marty the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World to watch.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Trailer

Maximum Overdrive Trailer

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Making Pondo and Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where we pick out two movies each week and talk about them in detail. Making Pondo is a podcast where we talk to people we've made films with and we discuss all their experiences on set.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Talking back Talking Pondo. We're back. We're gonna talk.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

We're Pondo. Right. And you wouldn't think this week's movies have anything in common. Oh, I'm Marty, by the way. Oh, yeah, I'm Cliff.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

And we're uh we're the hosts of this. Yeah, we're the hosts for this, and uh yeah, we like to make films. So we make each other watch films. We make them, we make each other watch them. It's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

So, you know, Master and Commander of the Far Side of the World, Maximum Overdrive. What do these two movies have in common? You wouldn't think anything on the surface. But then when you go a little deeper, you realize it's man against machine week. Bit of a stretch, but in a way, you know, because it's the there's I would I I suspect both a little.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah, it's just a stretch, yeah. But I see where you're going.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

But really, what the important thing is we've come full circle this week. Uh I thought we had wrapped everything up nicely last time, but no, we this is truly the wrap-up from all the way back on a knight's tale. Now we're back to uh Paul Bettany and another movie that has the same ending. Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I that's literally in my notes too, which I and I laughed as it happened because I was like I was like, that's why. It's all that makes sense. It's all together. Oh, which one do you want to start with first?

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Well, we might as well start with uh Master and Commander, I think. Uh Maximum Overdrive being the B movie. It is.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So that's the film that you gave me, um, which was must have been a gift. You must have been like, well, let's let's let's I've been throwing some weird shit at him lately.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Surprise.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

You know, you know, I'm a huge fan of those books. Um, I've read those books three or four times, Patrick O'Brien's books three or four times. Um I'm a big fan of that series, and I was a big fan of this movie when it came out. Um they got so much right that even the little things that they maybe kind of changed or got wrong, you really just don't mind because they got so much of it right. Um and but like this is my first note is this is back when Miramax was good. Like you put Miramax in the front of a film and you knew even if it wasn't, you know, didn't make a bunch of money, it was going to be a really quality picture.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

And not only Miramax, Fox, Universal, and Samuel Goldwyn Company. No wonder there's no sequels to this. That sounds like a production nightmare to get all those companies on the same page. My guess is the rights to these have probably been around long enough that Samuel Goldwyn probably had them back in the day, so they're included, and then Fox has a piece, but then Universal, and overall it's a Miramax, and amazing that that many companies can come together and make something so so good.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah, it was a fantastic film. Um but yeah, I mean, so basically the film's about a British captain in 17, I think it's eighty-six or seventeen eighty-seven, something like that. Which book is this in the series? So it's a that it's it's a mix-up of a bunch of books. Um so there is no book called Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World, but there is a book early in the series called Master and Commander, and there's a book later on in the series called The Far Side of the World.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

And and they've they've sort of taken several plot lines and mashed them together um quite well, in my opinion. It was it's it's really well done. But um the the film is basically about a British naval captain and his crew of a of a very small frigate. It's barely a frigate, it's it's a 28-gun ship, and they're shooting 12-pounders, which is a 12-pound ball, cannonball. And they're chasing a French um uh uh that's what it's called. It's a um like a it's a um mercenary ship. It's a it's a it's been given permission by the French government to hunt down British whalers and things like that, and because that whale oil is super, super worth a buttload of money. That's a that's a lot of money back then. So um, and of course he's been sent to basically track the ship down, protect the whalers, and and you know, sink it or or make it go away, basically. And that's how the movie so that and uh what I love about the movie is that it starts very quiet. Like you you get a very quick sense of a boat in the ocean in the middle of the night, like boat that big in the ocean in the middle of the night. Everybody sleeping in those cots and swaying, just almost touching each other, you know. And and when you read the books, you know that you know he he does that on like he does he runs a different uh I'm gonna go on and on about this all the whole podcast. But he uh you know, the cots are close and swinging together like that, but because you know, people the men have to sleep on below in different shifts. You can't you can't just let them all go to sleep at like nine o'clock at night. They so they so he does he runs different shifts basically. He runs a four-watch, a four-shift watch, right? So there's four watches all throughout a day, six-hour shifts, right? And so you go downstairs, you sleep, you eat, whatever, come back up and you do your six-hour shift, and they shift off and stuff. Some boats run a three watch, eight hours on, eight hours off, eight hours on, right? So it just depends um on the captain. So anyway, um I love that the guy who plays Barrett Bondon. I can't remember, he's from Lord of the Rings, I can't remember his name. Uh he plays Pippin in Lord of the Rings. Uh Barrett Bondon is a very beloved character from those books. He's basically the captain's right-hand man throughout the that and that and Killick, the guy who cooks his who cooks his food and is bitching at him the entire time. That's just like in the books. He bitches at him constantly about going to shore. You know, you can't go to shore wearing clothes like that. You got to change it to something better. My God, you got to get better clothes. Look at you know, your rag. You know, he's always constantly stealing things to take care of the captain's, you know, you know, larder or whatever, and make sure he's well fed and and uh has wine and all these types of things. Um and that area that they're in when they're sleeping, that's the same area they're fighting in later on. So they fight in the same areas that they sleep and they eat in. You know, it's a it's a very I I can't imagine living like that. I can't imagine going to sea for eight, nine months and living with a bunch of guys, and you know, no. That's insane. Yeah. Um right away that ship just gets the shit kicked out of it, you know. Right. Yeah, and there's a line in there where he says uh 12 pounders versus 24 pounders, right? Or 18 pounders versus 12 pounders, and that's I mean, that's a big, big difference, you know, when you add up the number of that's 50 guns shooting 18 pound ball, so he's throwing 25 guns aside, probably. So he's throwing uh times what 15, you know, he's he's throwing like 500 pounds versus a 14-gun ship throwing 12 pounds, probably throwing about 250, 280 pounds. So it's a it's a major display displacement there's just metal coming at you. You know, just anyway. Um but yeah, so uh I you can tell I I love that book, I love that series, I love that movie. It's well shot, it's so pretty to look at. I mean, those boat, those boats are beautiful, those ships, I should say. Those they're beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, for uh O3. This movie holds up uh surprisingly well. Uh some of the stuff from that era will look a little dated, you know. Yeah. This is actually, you know, they they did it in a way that it holds up. I mean, you can start to see through a little bit because it's 21 years old as this recording, but it isn't it weird that this movie is already like qualified ancient because it's like it's it's so old that uh some young people wouldn't even bother watching it. It's already that old. That's crazy to think because to me it doesn't feel like that long ago. Didn't this come out the same year as Pirates of the of the Caribbean?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

I think it came out the year before, maybe, or the year after. It's right around that time. Yeah, that's the movie that got all the hype. So this one's this is the one that's to me that's that's you know, the one thing about those books that you when you read about O'Brien's books and about what he wrote is you know, he basically he mo he modeled Jack Aubrey, the captain, off of a real British officer. And this battle of a 28-gun ship against a 50-gun ship really kind of happened that way. It didn't exactly happen that way, but he did you know lash his guns to lash his ship to the side of another one and board it and take it, you know. Um so in he got a lot of the like the he researched constantly about British history and and how these guys lived and what they did and what they were interested in, and and so it's all in those books. And so I I feel like the movie feels very authentic because of that. Um the only thing they've really done is they've modernized the language. Like in the in the books, he's very I he's much more true. The books are sort of hard to read because of the the way that they talk at times. You have to get used to that sort of style of English. That's like kind of reading Shakespeare, but not, where you're like, oh, this is I mean, I get what he's saying, but you know, um the way he's saying it's kind of weird.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

So yeah, one of my notes is, and this is how they got their PG 13, fucking pirates. I'm like, hey, there's the F-bomb.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Well, I think they got it for cutting that kid's arm off early on, too. Oh, that's who that's a pretty graphic scene. You know, they they cut that point off in the books. That kid actually he lose he does lose his arm, but he becomes like he he becomes this awesome character, like he's just a rake. He just he's always running after women, and he ends up the captain gets pretty successful later on in the books, and he has like a tender ship that follows his other ship around, and that kid gets to captain that ship and zip around and he kind of he acts as kind of a scout in that little ship. Um so he it's not it's it's uh it's much like you know, I think Nelson lost his arm uh too. So it's you know, those one armed captains and and one armed officers weren't weren't uncommon, did pretty much and still did okay. Um yeah. There's a there's a bit in that movie, I don't know if you if you catch it, I catch it having read the books, but that crew has a real weird affection for for the doctor. Like they really like him, they like having him on board and they really watch out for him. Like they they put up with a lot of foolish behavior from him in the books that they wouldn't put up with from anybody else. But because the books they talk about the fact that he's not a doctor, because a doctor back then was basically like a barber or something. It was just a dude who kind of knew a bit about maybe cutting somebody open and had gotten a uh a certificate from the Royal Navy, and the Royal Navy gave you this you know trunk of medicine and and instruments, and off you went onto a ship, and you may not know anything. And this dude, Dr. Matron, he's a he's an actual physician. He went to the Royal College, he you know has been trained in medicine, he's a naturalist, so he's into much like um Cook at the time or all that stuff, he's into like cat he and this is also a time where science is starting to categorize everything. So he's one of these dudes that's really into discovering things and categorizing them and giving them names and presenting them at Royal Sciences Society type things. So he's a really interesting dude, and but he's also like throughout the 20 books, he's been he could he's he's on board ships for 20 years, and he will still fall off the side of the boat while trying to get onto land. Like the crew won't let him in the books, they won't let him get off a boat by himself. They'll get a sling and crane him over onto land because they know he's just gonna fall off and they're gonna have to fish him out, and he'll be wet and pissed off, and it's dangerous. And so there's this weird sort of like they they watch out for him, they protect him at the same time, but he's also like he's also a pretty deadly guy. Early on in the books, he's uh at a party and gets into it with a guy and he calls the guy out for a duel and just within a few passes of a sword kills him and goes back into the party. So it's uh he's an interesting character, he's a very interesting character.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, they uh allude to you know his credentials when they're watching him put the plate in the guy's head.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah, and that happens in one of the early that happens in one of the early books, which is kind of how that whole affection for him starts. Where they're just like, oh, he's not just a oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Yeah, they try to and and cramming so much in, they kind of make it seem like everybody kind of equally cares about everybody on the ship, unless, of course, you get so much inside your own head and think that you're responsible for jinxing everybody.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Which I also what I liked about that is after it happened, shit don't get any better. Just because dude jumped off the side of the boat. Next thing you know, doctor's getting shot, and now uh the the dude's getting a chance to put the uh vision makeup on years earlier. Looking all nice and pale, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Um that's a good one. I can't remember which book that's from. Or I that's one of the ones I can't remember if that's actually in the book. Um, but yeah, the brain surgery scene happens early. He has an armor hammer out a silver shilling flat, and then he affixes it to the open uh hole that he's made in the skull. It's called tree panning, I think, back in the day. And uh you you do it to relieve pressure from the you know, from the brain, get all the blood out of it, and then you can cover it and let them stitch the scalp up and supposedly live like that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

And see, if our second movie was Texas Chainsaw Part Two, the movies would tie in together with a plate in the head.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Um the dinner, that those two dinners where they get really drunk and they're loud and having a good time, those are really prevalent in the books, and and apparently that was expected. Like the captain was expected to keep a table and invite officers, and he so you know, making sure that you had a well-stocked pantry, like I said, Killicks constantly making sure that they have wine and things like that, and he hoards things because he doesn't want the captain eating them because of you know for this or that, or it's it's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

My favorite part of the movie, the aspect of the movie is uh when they get to that island and the doctor's so obsessed with all of the and it's like nope, this comes first, you know, and that always keeps happening over and over. And it reminded me of like this pseudo-star trek type relationship between the characters. Yeah, I'm the steadfast, you know, captain, but I kind of off the side represent a mixture of McCoy and Spock, you know, kind of, and they balance each other and they give about each other. And it's like I think if you like Star Trek a lot, you're probably gonna like this movie if you don't know anything at all.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

True. That that's that's pretty true. I would agree with that. There they are very, very close friends. Um, and um there's an aspect of Steven that isn't in the movie, which is that he's a spy for the British government. Um he he's Irish, and so he's he's a he's kind of a double agent because he's also fought for Irish independence, but he's also he works for the British government because he he works against France and things like that and their interests in Spain. Um so it it it's and eventually Jack finds out about it and kind of he never really asks him, but every now and then Stephen will be like, hey, I need you to just kind of drop me off here and come back in a week. And he's like, Alright, you know, I don't want to know, okay. I guess should I ask? No, you shouldn't ask, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Um I thought the pacing is excellent for a movie that's only a little over two hours, right? 216 something. Yeah, it just grabs you, and the next thing you know, they're at the island, and then the next thing you know it's wrapping up. It there's it's there's no fat on it.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

The the some of those some of those high seas scenes with those massive storms that they're sailing in, like I I just I can't imagine. I can't I just can't imagine sailing on walls of water like that, and just and it, but yet, you know, even in the books and then definitely in the movie, he just seems to really love it. You know, he really seems to enjoy that uh um Hollem's poor Hollem, you know, um getting a shipmate killed and becoming a Jonah. Um they talk about him in the books, and he's a 30-year-old midshipman, and a midshipman is like a kid's job. Like you're you you should be up to lieutenant, you know. You shouldn't there shouldn't be and he he has to beg for the job on land, which is one of the things they don't talk about in the movie, but yeah, in the books he he traps Aubrey coming out of some store and basically just he just takes pity on him because he just knows he's like, Jesus, you're 30 and you're still a midshipman. Okay, well, maybe we can get you to lieutenant, you know. And of course he becomes a Jonah instead.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

And it's it's a nice subplot. Like there are there's a handful of subplots in this movie, and it's a nice one that none of them feel like they're tacked on or weird, it's very organic to the story. This is set in very early on when he starts feeling guilty because he didn't help, dude. Yeah, didn't make it. And that guy's just like, oh, he knows what's happening. They're cutting the shit because it's dragging them down. You know, that's one of my main points is I like that you do not need to understand anything in the movie in order to know what's going on and to follow it. Yeah, yeah. You don't need to know the sailing stuff if you go that's an anchor, it's dragging them down, they have to cut it so they can get away. Exactly. So the ship got fucked up by this other ship, we're gonna find that ship and fuck them up. Yeah, yeah. And then they can't get away with that.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

You know, yeah. Oh, we're being chased. Well, a floating decoy with lamps, that's a great idea, you know. You know, the it reminded me of something else.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

This movie does it correct, right? A slow chase on the ocean between two boats hunting each other.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Last Jedi could have taken a fucking cube or fleet. Because that's fucking boring. We all know it. Yeah. And you watch this and you go, this is how you do it because it's texture and it's engrossing and it moves.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And it covers, I mean, it's over weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. I mean, it, you know, I mean, it's not a you know, it's not a boat, two boats chasing each other over a day or two. It's a it's a long thing these guys are engaged in. Um yeah, the Galapagos are great. I enjoy that. The Fastmith bit is definitely also from the book. Um, not like it is in the movie, but it's but it there is that whole talk of a Fast Smith and that type of thing. And and he does, he does, you know, uh describe the uh or uh uh you know make the ship look like a different when he disguises it. But uh one of the weird things about that I remembered from the books was that it was really important to him that they that he raised the British flag before they attacked. He did it right, like right as it was happening, but if you don't, then you could be, I think, gotten for piracy or something like that. Or it was also just considered to be a real kind of bitch move to attack under somebody's uh to to attack under a false flag. It was not a big that was a big deal. So um, oh, I was listening to this movie on headphones, and at and I don't know, you'll people just if you're watching this, hey, at at one minute, at one hour, six minutes, and thirty-eight seconds, or about thirty-six seconds, there's a weird fart noise. I don't know what it comes from. One of them goes, something, something, Jack, and then and it's really funny. You sure that wasn't maximum overdrive?

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Because there's a random fart noise in that movie, too.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah, but this uh this is during that scene where he's telling him that he doesn't have time for his hobbies. He's like, we don't have time for your damn hobbies.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

This is something that I almost didn't bring up, but you brought it up, so I'm gonna talk about it briefly. This movie has a weird sound mix. Maybe this is what I'm watching, but I'm noticing things like, and it's part of budget limitations and it's time, it looks great, so the sound is where it lacks a little, and what I mean is when you hear huzzah, and the echo sounds like this perfect sound stage, you know, it doesn't have that boat feel of the crisis, it's like that sounds like a little artificial in a way. But I mean that's hardly a criticism. But since you bring up, you know, the heart sound, I feel obligated now to bring up huzzah. Sounds like they're all standing on a stage somewhere. Um so super clean.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah, oh yeah. So in my notes, nine pounder versus eighteen pounder. So that's that's twice the metal right there. That they're throwing against each other. Um in the book, one of the weather things in the book, I keep saying in the book, I sound like a nerd and I feel like this. Um Jack pays for powder out of his own pocket to train his crews. Because apparently in the in the Navy back then you only got so much powder and you were only, according to regulations, allowed to use so much of it for practice, and it was enough for like to shoot a few half half-full cannons a couple times and then that's it. Because the British uh Navy at that time didn't put a price on being able to fire rapidly, they just put a price on being able to just you know get in there and just hammer constantly for a long time, right? And his tactic was more of a, especially with a small ship that was super fast, he wanted to kind of get around, shoot, boom, boom, boom, move, maneuver, maneuver, shoot, boom, boom, boom. So um he paid for powder out of his own pocket, would spend money out of his own pocket to get extra powder so that these so he could train his crews and get them to be really, really good. So I thought that was interesting that put that in the movie, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Right, because I was wondering, and I thought, well, they must have extra to practice with when they're like, you gotta get this time faster, you know, this is too slow. Another one of those things where you don't need to know all the technical terms to know exactly what's going on. Yeah, if we don't speed up, we're never gonna be able to overpower them. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Um, so so there's a at one point when he comes back from all that you know practice gunnery and he's like all hungry and he's rubbing his hands together, and Killick comes in and he's like, What's for dinner? And he goes, It's soused hog's face. And he goes, What is it? And he goes, It's soused hog's face. So I looked it up. Soused hog's face. Um, here's the recipe. I had to. One pig's head, about 10 pounds, cleaned but not skinned. Two pounds of white cornmeal, three cups of white wine, three cups of white vinegar, a cup of water, two bay leaves, a tablespoon of salt, twelve peppercorns, a knob of fresh ginger, and one nutmeg cut in half. So you place the head in a large bucket with half the cornmeal and cold water to cover and you soak for two hours. Then you remove the head from the water, you rinse it, place it in a large pot with the remaining cornmeal and water to cover. You bring it to a boil and you simmer it for three hours, covered. You remove it from the pot, when it's cool enough to handle, you pick all the meat from it. And then you reserve the tongue and the ears. You want to you want to hold on to those. So then you wring out a cloth in warm water, you put all the meat into the cloth, and you tie it up as tightly as possible, and you chill it until it's firm. So it's like a like a terrine or an aspic. And then you combine wine, vinegar, water, and spices, you untie the cloth, pack the meat into a croc, you add the tongue in the ears, you pour the mixture all over it, you wait the meat to keep it submerged, and then you seal the crock and you store it in a cool place for two weeks before serving.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

Well, I I wait to hear what the listeners uh think after they make this and try it and write in. Tell us about it.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Um I mean, it makes sense if you're on a ship, you can you could put it in a crock and store it, I guess, for two weeks and you know, pop it open and serve it later or something, but that doesn't I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

No, the food did not look good in this movie, but I think that was the point.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Not not by any not by any interesting well, no, and the food back then, from what I've read, or at least in those books, it was not very good. Um, they do a great job with the hysteria and the superstitions of the crew, you know, kind of how that stuff could kind of sweep through a crew and suddenly turn on somebody like that. I thought that was really good.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

And I also like that they also are like, yeah, we know we're just superstitious and he just couldn't hack it, and then bad luck continues to happen. Fucking doctor gets shot like immediately after. So I like how they acknowledge both. You know, we're superstitious, but at the same time, we're rational.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

I love how he hands him the book of Jonah to read while they're while they're just like he's like, What's wrong with you, dude?

SPEAKER_02 26:17

I know he's like, I know. You know, that that's a perfect example of doing it without saying it, right? They're saying it in their faces, there's no dialogue, and you know exactly what the emotion is.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Um, so one of the other things in the book that uh that they don't cover in the movie is that Steve, and for good reason, is that Stevens basically he's a he's a drug addict. He's hooked on laudanum, he self-medicates constantly. Like when they get to South America and he gets all he gets a hold of cocoa leaves and lime, and he's just like, oh my guy's up all night, just this is great, dissecting everything and making notes like a like a coke addict. It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny. Um, but yeah, so he has to and eventually he has to kind of dry out and you know quit and all that kind of stuff. He gets anyways. Um yeah, I I love this movie. I thought it was a lot of fun. Um it's one of the best naval sea battle movies you're ever gonna see.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Um it's unfortunate that they didn't make uh four or five of these. Uh and now if they were to start it over, they'd have to recast and start over again. Because it's been so long. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Yeah, you'd have to do a different one. Yeah. I I I I I don't know why either, because I could easily see it's it's also interesting they never you never see Jack and Steven on land. And Stephen on land is much the opposite of what he is on the water, and so is Jack. Like Jack's very confident on a boat, but he and kind of is on land, but he's easily like taken advantage of. He's not very smart with his money, you know, he's kind of a rube. He doesn't really, you know, yeah, he quickly learns, but early on he doesn't know a lot about how the world works and that type of thing. And um but yeah, they both get married, they've got wives and all that kind of stuff, and it'd be interesting to see some have seen some of that in a future film, I think.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

Yeah, I guess it's something of a small miracle that this even happened in the first place. I don't really know, I didn't look into it, but it just seems like based on how many production companies it took to make this, and the fact that we haven't heard a peep about any further entries into the franchise all this time later. I think it must have been some a nightmare to get this thing to finally where it was at the greenlit stage. There must be too many hands in in the pot, I would guess.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

It's a pee- I mean, so it's directed by Peter Weir. Yeah, right? Um He made a green card and stuff like that, right? Patrick O'Brien got credit for writing it, for writing screenplay, so that's good.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Yeah. I mean it I don't know. I I really don't under understand why.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Now I have a controversial take on all of this, which might not actually be a controversial depending on what your stance is. But uh we we watched a movie a few weeks ago for this show, and I it's it's the only other kind of ocean movie that we've done, and I feel this is vastly superior to it. It's funny that Peter Weir, of all people, didn't he make like green card and shit like that, right? Yeah, I believe so. I think he did a better ocean action adventure movie that's mo more coherent, it's more tight than The Abyss. Because I would agree with that. This feels so natural. Remember when I was talking about in the Abyss, it feels like this weird ballet when they're running through a ship, and I'm coordinated to come out on a monkey bars right at this time and hit my B. I'm gonna point at this fire right here and hit my little quips and all this, and it feels so faky. But anytime in this movie where somebody walks through a ship and there's the world going on, look, I know both movies are complete fake, but this one feels authentic. This feels lived in and it feels that way consistently through the whole thing. Its story makes more sense all throughout. You don't have to know what's going on, the abyss. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? You had to explain it to me, you know, parts of that movie after it was over. But this one I feel like I caught it all the second time I watched it, which was for the show. I liked it even more. And then made me think about the Cameron style of the kind of ballet of perfect timing running through the ship hit beats as opposed to just walking through the world of the lived-in ship that of this.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

I see what you mean by that. Yeah, I I see what you mean by that. His yeah, hit Abyss feels more like a comic book. You know, uh, you know, you you know, you're hitting all those moving through the world, hitting all the beats, whereas Master and Commander feels like a well, it feels like a book, feels like a novel, feels like something much more lived in and real, like you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

It has a story and and proper subplots to hit and wrap up at it with a good pace, while as The Abyss is just more concerned with pushing the technology forward, I think, and making sure its story was nice and coherent. But of course, I watched that shorter version of The Abyss. I didn't watch the super long version, which might actually be I might enjoy it more.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

So it was a so I I mean I I I would probably say that whoever that Hollywood probably considered this a flop. It cost 150 million to make. Um it it only did 93 million in the US and then it did it did 211 million worldwide, so it it made its money back eventually, but it didn't you know I think Hollywood consider that a flop and not do another one, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

That's unfortunate, which is a shame, yeah. Yeah. This a series like this should have been allowed a couple of entries that just kind of simmered, that just made their money back, and much like a band being signed to a label back in the day, you'd have a couple albums to really warm up, and then people would be like, Oh yeah, I like the Master and Commander film series. There's five of them with the same actors. That would be fantastic, right? Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Might might have made a great um boy. If you could have recreated the ship and figured it out, it might have been a great way to do it as a series.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

You know, I wouldn't be surprised that when this eventually, inevitably, comes back to the screen series might be the way.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

They can use so much.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

It's definitely like a more realistic version of Horatio Hornblower, which was very popular, I think, in the 50s, the 50s, and the 40s and the 50s, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

There was even a version of that that was popular in the early aughts. There you go. A television production. I forget if it was a BBC or an A. I'm pretty sure there was a Horatio Hornblower around that time. We had a small obsession with pirates and ocean movies and the aughts.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Well, your kid, especially if pirates are a lot of fun. Um this movie also doesn't have any opening credits. On the 80s, which is Walter Mathow as a pirate. So very, very interesting. You know, no. No, it doesn't. It just starts right up. Yeah, it just starts right up.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Oh, I I didn't notice.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

I didn't either. I could have sworn there was one. Maybe I just had that Mandela effect of thinking I saw the words.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Well, I think it has a title card for the movie, but other than that, it has no I don't think it is.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

It doesn't have any of the like the names. Directed by feature, yeah. That makes sense because it would be weird to have their names going by the screen as we're already trying to feel like we're exactly. We're already trying to put you in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

I mean, the first real sound you hear, other than the ship moving in the rigging, is the sound of a bell. And that comes in probably a good two or three minutes into the movie. I mean, they're really trying to immerse you in it early on, like you said. So anyway, so yeah, subs. I I thoroughly enjoy that movie. I highly recommend everybody watch it. Buckle in, it's a great flick. So what do you give it, like four and a half or something like that? Yeah, it's uh yeah, I'm I'm I'm easily a four and a half. Yeah, easily four to four and a half on that. So but I'm gonna say four and a half because that's uh especially this viewing for some reason. Like when I sat down to watch it, it immediately grabbed me and I was like, oh yeah, I was just in the perfect head space to watch it, and I really, really enjoyed it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

Uh I like it a lot. I'm gonna say three and a half. I like the even more of the second viewing. It's like it's kind of like a perfect action movie. It is. It really hits like all the beats, it's everything that you're wanting, uh, leaves you wanting more. And then uh even the wrap-up, you know, where it's just like, oh, we're almost gonna go back to your island. Oh, we gotta. What you mean that wasn't the fucking okay, let's go get them. Just like, look, your bird's not going anywhere. Yeah, it's flightless. Yeah, I guess you're right, it's flightless. It's we know where it is. You already discovered a thing. We'll go back and we'll go back and get it later. Pictures later. You know we will. You know eventually we're going back there. So for now, let's just go do our job. Kind of like buddy cops in a weird way, you know. Yeah. It's that running scared thing, you know, where it's like we can't go start a bar, we gotta go chase this other boat. This is what we do. Who would have thought that I could compare Master and Commander to running scared, but happened here on the talking pond though. Only here on Talking Pondo here.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Oh no. Oh no, gotta go. Final Jeopardy's on. Um all right, so then that moves us into Maximum Overdrive.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Maximum overdrive, what a bizarre double feature. So now you're giving you a horror movie, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:56

This is I I mean, if yeah I I I've seen people call this a dark comedy, so I don't know if you want to call it a horror movie, although I think it's I think since it's directed by the master of horror.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Directed by Big Steve, you know, our first Stephen King, because you can't count night riders.

unknown 36:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

And it's our first Dino De Laurentis, also. So, wow, and back into that weird world of 1986. Oh my. Maximum overdrive. I watched it about six months ago around Halloween, hadn't seen it in years. Watched it with the Jonah Ray commentaries. Here's Jonah again. Uh and he always wanted to riff this movie on a future season of MST, and it's like, okay, but you're riffing a comedy. This movie's everywhere, it shows it's funny. But you you could have fun with that. And so their their track was good with that. But now, for this viewing, I watched the movie with its actual sound, which is something I did many, many times in 1986 and 1987, probably more likely 87, because this is like I've mentioned before, the year I watched everything, the year I became obsessed with film was 86, and I would rent movies like this, and you'd live with the movie, right? You'd like we've talked before, you'd you'd watch the movie three or four times, take it back to the video store. Somebody else hasn't seen it, so when they watch it, you're watching it with them, and then so by the time you take it back, not to mention the old hook the two VCRs up together trick, so you have a copy that you watch forever. But for this movie, this movie, I remember taping it off the movie channel at like four in the morning. And at the time thinking, why are they showing this really good movie only in the middle of the night? Now I know why this movie. Now you know why. You know, this early Marvel movie was delegated to the middle of the night. Or early Marvel, because you could license the Green Goblin head pretty cheap back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Well, yeah, back back then, I mean, 86 was like for me. So look, I mean, 86 is is when a lot of the storylines in that time uh in that time were being created that are basically on film now. Yeah. You know, the got the Infinity Gauntlet, the X-Men stuff, the the G the Dark Phoenix, all that stuff is coming out then, but the only people who were aware of it are people who were reading comic books, and comic books back then weren't really cool. Like people liked the comic book characters, but nobody really read the comics. Um, yeah, I mean you could get Green Goblin Cheat because people weren't really reading Spider-Man. They knew who Spider-Man was and they watched the Saturday morning cartoon. And that's the other thing is that they they licensed a lot of that stuff early and did really poor jobs of it and kind of beat the market value of it down. Like those those early Marvel movies were not good. No, no. They were not good. The Incredible Hulk was was okay, the television show. But even that was kind of corny.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

As an aside before we really dive into this movie and what it's about, the whole Marvel aspect of it is this would have sat alongside, say, Golden Globus' Spider-Man movie, and these other things that would have come out at that time because these properties were being floated around, like the Corman Fantastic Four, the uh the early 90s Captain America movie that actually did come out. But like you're saying, it was all this like, what the fuck is this? It's very strange. You know, we might actually visit that Corman Fantastic Four one day. I feel like it's still the best Fantastic Four movie they've ever made. It's like a teenage mutant ninja turtle movie, in a way. Like that first one that was kind of gritty, you know. But anyways, Maximum Overtok is about a comet that passes Earth, and much like a Knight of the Living Dead scenario or is that what it's about? It's a siege thing where you know you're stuck in the house because the zombies, and in this case, it's the machines. The machines are alive because of the comet tale, I guess. It was a it was a comet.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Because honestly, for the first hour of this movie, I I never heard anything about a comet.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Oh, yeah, you don't hear anything until they talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Yeah, until an hour into it, they're like, oh yeah, there's a comet passing overhead. Maybe this will all get better in a week when it stops. And I'm like, oh, okay, an hour into this friggin' movie, and you finally told me. Okay, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

You know, it's funny that Stephen King, like a lot of writers, you keep writing the same story over and over again. How many times have you given us different versions of this alternate version of the mist, essentially, right? We're stuck in the place. You got this character, you got this character, you got this character, oh, you got the unhinged one. Oh now, these two main ones, usually the guy's been with the story the whole time, who's the outsider, uh, not the asshole boss, right? He's gonna die. And the other guy who kind of came in on his own, who's kind of like sort of badass or whatever, they're gonna be the ones who get the ammunition and sneak through the thing next door to get the thing we need, to then go back to where everybody else is, and then we can sneak out. It's the same story over and over again. It's Night of the Living Dead, it's Dawn of the Dead, it's it's any siege movie, it's Assault on Precinct 13. It's it's a great formula, it's a fun trope, but Stephen King calls this a moron movie. And I kind of understand why watching it back, you know. We were watching They Live the other week, and uh Adrian was like, oh man, this dialogue is not that great. He might have been even more harsh than that. And I was like, oh, you should see Maximum Overdrive again, because this is pure fucking EC comics, like out uh fuckdifano, fuckdifano, fuck the fino. The most basic, but it at its core, isn't it like the most distilled pure version of Stephen King you've ever actually seen on film? Because it rings so true to some of his shitty short stories, and it's not good, but there's got a thing in there where it's like it's that perfect redneck thing that he always puts in his book.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

It's definitely got that that sense of humor that he has. Yeah. Um, he, you know, like the first 10 minutes of that movie, like first off, you can it has that first time director feel and look to it. Yeah, where you're just like, okay, first time director, first time feel. Like he overcomp, like when that bridge goes up, you know, he's got like 90 cars falling down. Like car after car. It's just like, dude, more, yeah, more cars. All those other crank slow motion shots. Yeah, those uh the death but the death by soda cans, like how many sodas are in that vending machine? Right. Endless supply. Ah, okay. Um right away I'll say no more Emilio movies, okay, for a while. No more, no more Emilio movies.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

Yeah, I was surprised that you threw a I didn't, I didn't, I yeah, I'm talking about but it makes sense because of the Knights Tale thing, you know. You shook me all that long again. Next week, private parts, because that movie ends with that song too. No, we won't watch private parts.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

Um so in one scene early in the movie, the someone says, Eat my shorts, and then not not two minutes later, Yeardly Smith shows up in a scene, and I'm just like, oh, that's a weird Simpsons. Oh, yeah, Lisa Simpson's in this movie. Yeah, that's a very weird. So Bart and Lisa are sort of weirdly referenced.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

This was probably made, well, this was made in '85, is when they shot it. So it's about the time that the Tracy Ullman and all that was getting ready. She probably did this right before. So I'm guessing in between Billy Legend of Billy Jean and Tracy Ullman's shows, my guess. Fair is fair.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

Um, so is it machines? Because it's like At one point in one shot, like a side view mirror moves, and I know damn well that things are not automated, and then and then water sprinklers are turning on and off, and it's like that's just a hand cranked. And then like when he goes to put the gas into the into the uh into the uh into the tank, you know, the underground tank once the pumps run out, the the crank, the hand crank moves on its own. Oh yeah. And I'm just like, this is like the internal the internal logic is very, very kind of fucked in this. It's very weird logic. And why is everyone in this movie so dumb? Oh, it's like I mean it but I mean you've got a semi, a big ass semi, it's rolling at you, probably 10, 15, 20 miles an hour. Just run perpendicular or something. Try, don't just run away from it looking over your shoulder. You know, the classic there's just so many, the only smart person in the movie is the kid. Yeah, yeah. That's how the trope works. I guess. Um yeah, and meanwhile, it's and it's like you can't get away from a semi, the trucks are uprising. Meanwhile, this married couple is still driving their K-car across country. No problems. That that car is still, I just hasn't gotten the message or or is that is that one of the good machines?

SPEAKER_02 45:24

I don't know. Because it seems like the other machines don't like some of the other machines and they destroy some of the there's no logic. But I could I guess when your director is fucking coked out of his gourd and drunk as shit from dusk till dawn, yeah, this is what you get. Not like Stephen King could have been a good director. He just needs to get out of his own way, I think.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

There's signs, but when you're that there's some good shots in there's some good shots in there, and he does some smart stuff, like he shoots from inside the cab to kind of give an ominous feel of the truck, the truck's feel, you know, look, the truck's view, truck's eye view as you're looking through the cab and stuff like that from inside the cab.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Uh in a way, it's a shame a sober Stephen King never directed a movie, but I'll get into all of that here very soon.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Um it's an it's another movie that seems a lot longer than it really is.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Yes, it does. Where I'm like passed while I was 12 years old, and now it's a bit of a slog.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Yeah, it's it's yeah. And that bathroom scene. If you have the ACDC music, how boring would it be? True. Very true. Yeah, I mean they it needed a it needed a rock and soundtrack. Um that bathroom scene is just disturbing and plain weird. Uh why would you ever look over the stall into a stall where somebody's taken it? Obviously because he's farting and you can hear farting shit. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. And uh it's just like it's completely weird. And then we just stop and then we just stop with to have sex with the girl for for some reason in the middle of the game. As you do. Uh as you do. Did these people not? And then finally we talk about the comet an hour into the friggin' movie.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Oh yeah, by the way. Did these people not watch Shake Hands with Danger? Making these rookie mistakes all over the place, staring into the gas nozzle.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Yeah. Oh, staring into the gas nozzle. Oh, yeah. I will say this the movie has an excellent cast. I mean, it's a it's an excellent cast of character actors. Um, you've got um the dude from the abyss is in this movie. The guy that gets the gas sprayed in his face is one of the guys in the abyss. He is, isn't he? Yeah, that's why he seems so familiar. Wow. See, it all ties together again. Yeah, the dude that gets electrocuted in the video game arcade, that's Giancarlo Esposito from the. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

Yeah, blinking looks at very early. If you would have told me back then, that guy's gonna be in Star Wars and he's gonna be like a Darth character. I would have been like, what? That guy gets electrocuted at Max Mower Drive. Doesn't he have any dialogue? I I met Pat Hingle. Pat Hingle's been in tons of shit. You know, he moved to where this was shot after they were done rapping. He liked it there so much.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Really? I didn't know that. Well, he I met him in Tucson. He came into the movie theater we were we used to work at. Well, really, that's yeah, I sold him yogurt.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Yeah, Wilmington, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

He decided to just stay there. Interesting. Well, for some reason he was in Tucson. Um, but yeah, it's good, it's a good cast, it's just not a good movie. Um, it's not a good movie, and there's guns can fire at will, so that that too, I guess. I guess so if so, all guns are mechanical, so they can all fire, like we now we really have a problem. Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. And if that's the case, like why aren't all the nukes just going off?

SPEAKER_02 48:46

The logic of this movie is kill your dealer, or something. You don't kill your dealer. Yeah, it doesn't make any more sense than like in Tales from the Crypt comic or something. You you really can't pull the strength on this.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Oh, I hear you. I hear you. Oh, and they blow up the truck of beer. That's the that's the greatest shame. That's the greatest, you know, uh death in the entire movie is an entire truck of Miller High Life, those poor rednecks. Um look, if you like watching semis destroy things, if you like trucker movies, if you like that type of stuff, if you like watching things blow up, this movie we might be right up your alley. Um, it's it's it's you know, it's uh it might be yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:33

It has a little nostalgic feel, but you know, after this time watching it and going down this rabbit hole that I'm about to reveal here, it's permanently changed my viewpoint of this movie.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

The dude um the dude who gets run over at the end by the Green Goblin truck, Brad. You know, he dies because he's greedy, he's getting the he's getting the ring. That dude's from The Patriot. He's uh he was in a Mel Gibson movie called The Patriot. Oh, yeah, the Keith Ledger film. Yeah, he's another character actor. And it and it ends, it's such a weird ending. And then of course we you know we move to You Shook Me All Night Long. Yeah, Night's Tale. And the credits are like, oh, there was a UFO above, and it got shot down by the Russians. I'm like, what the hell? I think I for me, here's what I think. When I was watching this movie, I I feel like it would have been better cinematically if he had told the series of events differently. If he'd if he had started the movie with um following the wedding, the the couple who've just been married and the kid at the ball game, and we start to think see things are kind of bad, and then they both get to the truck stop kind of at the same time, and then from there everything's moving, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 50:52

Rather than look like a novel still, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

Yeah, rather than starting at the truck stop and and showing all these other things. Like I feel like cinematically, if you'd kind of done it a little bit more like that, it would have been less of a milio and the truck stop, sure, but I think it would have been more compelling. And again, it's like why are these two still driving around 30 minutes into the movie in this car that hasn't for some reason tried to kill them? It's weird. You know, it doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_02 51:19

Same with the Cadillac, and it never will make any sense. No, there was no explanation for it. No. Did you ever see Trucks? The second movie made from the short story Trucks. It was made in the USA Network. I barely remember it. I think it was more of a serious version. So, anyway, this movie. So for some reason I I wanted to, you know, learn a little bit more information about this film, and so for some reason. I'm looking it up, and you know, they shot it in 1985 at the brand new place in Wilmington, North Carolina, because it was a right-to-work state there, and Dino De Laurentis didn't have to hire union crews, so we're already cutting down on production costs. And then it was uh gonna be a three-picture deal with Stephen King, and he stated he was coked out of his mind all through its production and really didn't know what he was doing. Now, when I was watching it this time within the first few minutes, and I thought, you know what's wrong here? It's not that Stephen King's a bad director. I feel like they gave him a DP that doesn't fucking mesh with them. Oh boy, was I fucking right. Oh my god. Onset translator Roberto Cracci, because he had to translate for the DP who only spoke Italian. Oh no, it looks like an Italian movie that's dubbed into English. You know, it's not like the guy's bad, but there was no communication between director and camera person. The onset translator didn't remember King's cocaine use, but recalls him drinking from early in the morning until late at night. I never saw him do coke, but I did know he was drunk the whole time, basically. I'm paraphrasing six o'clock in the morning, we have a roll call and he's drinking beers. At 8 30, he's on his tenth beer. Wow. No wonder this movie doesn't make any sense. And uh apparently Stephen King rode a motorcycle from Maine to Wilmington to go to the set so he could ride alongside the semi-trucks on the highway to get a feel for how terrifying the big rigs were. And when he showed up at the front gate, nobody knew who he was, and they wouldn't let him in for a bit, and then they let him in, and he's fucking rambling about some fucking movie where these trucks are gonna kill people, and it's like, what the fuck is already going on here? He wanted Bruce Springsteen to be the Emilio thing, but Dino didn't know who he was, so he put Martin Sheen's kid in there, production sour right from then. Really? Stephen King checked out he didn't want Emilio Esteves in the movie. It made him not guilty.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

Nobody does. Nobody wants Emilio in a movie. For some reason, we've reviewed three of them.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

Apparently, they had a pretty decent time making the movie. Yeah, because everybody was high as a fucking kite and there was no speculations. Uh he he checked out a theater and they showed movies like Godzilla and Night of the Living Dead, where Stephen King did commentary for them, and they played around on golf cart races during the downtime. And uh the a lot of the wardrobe and special effects were uh made by De Laurentis personally. He was watching a sc uh early dailies of what's the Road Twitch's character? I feel like we're watching Road Games again, Road Twitch. Laura Harrington's character, that actor. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. De Laurentiis was upset she was wearing jeans in a scene, so they made him reshoot it so she was wearing something more revealing for the rest of the movie.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Yeah, um, her name was it was Bill, and what was her name? Wasn't Betty, but it was something like that.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

The Dixie Boy truck stop was completely made up for the thing, obviously, because they blew it up. Some private collector bought the Green Goblin head in the mid-90s. And here is where it gets really fucked up, people. And this should never happen on a movie ever. Safety first, because obviously you don't want anybody to get hurt, but you don't want to get sued either. While shooting the scene when a lawnmower comes alive in a residential neighborhood, and a nunsee, the DP, was struck in the right eye, his shooting eye, by a large splinter of wood that had become lodged in the blade. And you saw that scene, it's barely in the movie, and it's so insignificant. Motherfucker lost that your DP lost his fucking eye making the movie. Wow. Holy shit, I knew there was something wrong with. Oh my god. Uh according to camera assistant, we were shooting a scene where a lawnmower uh was following a boy to kill him, and we put a camera on the ground with a piece of wood beneath to wedge, okay? And I remember the DP asked Stephen King, can we take out the blades? But Stephen King say, no, no, I like to see them. Armando say, but we don't see them in the shot. But Stephen King say, no, no, better that you let it in. The special effects department had also suggested removing the blade for safety reasons, but King continued to insist, so one more lifelike. Nanunzi was helicoptered from set and then flown to hospital in Raleigh where he eventually lost his eye. Production was halted for a brief period, and then the guy returned to the film to finish it. And finished it. After it was released, Nanunzi sued King, De Laurentis, and 16 Ellers in the film for 18 million, and it was settled. Wow. No wonder Stephen King didn't direct again.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:35

Holy shit. And you know, so you can only imagine the safety regulations of none. Uh-huh. They're doing whatever the fuck. It's amazing more shit like this didn't happen. You know where the trucks driving into Emilio and he's like, come on! It's like you wouldn't ever do that now. That's so goddamn dangerous. And they were doing shit in all the movies all throughout the 80s, coat, drunk out of their mind. This is just somewhere where the shit fucking went bad. And you didn't hear nothing about this, right? Not a thing. Now this would be a social media story everywhere, production halted, blah blah. But back then, under the fucking rug, in the crazy continues. They did get some good shit back in the 80s. That's true. Uh the guy uh continued to work after his accident, but he thought he would never get considered for big budget projects again, because who's gonna hire a cameraman without depth perception? Yeah. He returned to Italy where he worked until he retired in '98 and passed an 01. Yeah. The studio uh was uh grazed by Hurricane Gloria, which uh uh let's see, it basically was assaulted over and over again for rain, so that was that was rough. And then it says Pat Hingle, who played Dixie Boy owner Bubber Bubba Hendershoot, moved to Wilmington after production wrapped, and he lived there until 09. Happily ever after. So he he's like, you know what, I actually like it here.

SPEAKER_01 59:03

Shame about that guy's eye, but I think it's pretty nice out here.

unknown 59:06

Fuck me.

SPEAKER_02 59:07

So yeah, if you ever wondered why Stephen King never directed again, he probably wasn't allowed, didn't want to after that horrible experience, but there was a there was a spark, had things not been so horribly troubled. Yeah, maybe he could have been a better filmmaker down the line. But I knew right away, I was like, it feels like there's some disconnect between him and his camera guy. Oh shit. Little did I know when I went down that rabbit hole and was like, holy fuck. Because you could never want that to happen.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

But that, oh my god. I can't think of a much bigger disconnect than causing your cameraman to lose an eye. That's uh that's pretty bad.

SPEAKER_02 59:49

The machines really did strike back. Yep. That fucking lawnmower.

unknown 59:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

What do you see for like all of two seconds?

SPEAKER_01 59:57

Well, and they tell you not to run over branches or twigs or stuff when you're doing your lawnmower because it shoots that stuff out the side. It's bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:03

Makes me wonder if everybody had been speaking the same language, would that have happened? Who knows? But that I can see why they put King in the lawsuit according to that story, because they make it sound like he was like, no, no, over and over and over again.

unknown 1:00:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:18

Weird. Just a strange, troubled production. Amazing that it got finished, amazing that it's as interesting as it is. Back when it was cheap, the license ACDC to do music for a movie, and then later Iron Man would do it, right? Yep. Well, Iron Man's around out of the streets.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:41

Been in a ton of movies.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:43

There was no Thunderstruck when this movie came out, kids. It was how we failed. Shook me all night long.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

We failed to mention that um uh the lead, the girl, you talked about her um, she was in Bakuru Bonsai. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that'll be a fun one to unpack one day. Yep, that'll be an interesting one to unpack. That's another I feel like this is a kind of a nexus movie for B actors. Frankie Faison's in this. There's a there's a not B actors, but character actors, sorry. Um, and you know me, I mean, I love me some character actors. Those are some of my favorites. So that's fun to see them all together in a movie like this.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

I think my favorite part is when uh Pat Hangel's like, okay, rocket launcher time when they all four of them drop. Yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, they're just gonna blow shit up.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

You know, I I that's when I started laughing because I was like, I'd looked this movie up just on INDB to just to look at it for a second, and it it was listed as a dark comedy, and I kept thinking, where's the comedy? And then he comes out with that rocket launcher. I'm like, ah, there it is. Yeah. Okay. Because the rest of this movie is kind of grim. Yeah. It's like, you know, you meet this kid and he's being screwed over by the guy who runs the place, and then he figures out, oh, everybody here is being screwed over, and you know, it's just kind of a grim, shitty place to work. And everybody all the all the guys that eat there are just sexually harassing that waitress the entire you know time. Right. And now it's the stand. Yeah. And then suddenly it's the stand, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:11

But uh uh essential if you're a Stephen King completist for his film, sure, you gotta watch it at least once. Yeah, I don't know what it's gonna feel like watching it for the first time now. We watched it when it was new, so I just don't know what people are gonna make of this if they watch it now. Maybe it'll feel more like a 50s monster movie to them.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:33

Yeah, it's it's pretty silly. I mean, you it's not something that you're gonna be able to really take seriously, and and um maybe you'll get a good laugh out of it, you know. I mean, yeah. I I sure did at certain points, you know. Uh that that meet that meat cute at the beginning between the two of them is so dumb where she's just like, you're cute, and he just laughs. That's what I mean about the the duh dialogue.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

The dialogue is terrible. Holy shit, and and you're a writer.

unknown 1:03:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:04

Bob making cinema. There shouldn't be a lot of dialogue. They say it with the face.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:13

That was um that was an easy one and a half stars for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:16

How what was it? One and a half. Hey, that's what I said. Yeah. I said one and a half. You know, if you had 12, I probably would have said four. I couldn't give it, I couldn't give it away. Loved it. But now I realize it's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

Yeah, if we were giving it like if we were if we were gauging it based on like terrible bee movies, you know, what their rankings were, I'd say, oh, that's a that's a pretty high-ranking terrible bee movie. Yeah, but just as a movie in general that I'm gonna watch again, ugh, no, one point five.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Yeah, and I think that'll complete our Hamilial trilogy for this season. You know, I'm looking through my list, I don't see him in anything that I got an idea of making us watch anytime soon. Yeah, I got nothing else either. So So what do you got for me next week? Next week is wisdom with Demi Moore in the middle of the show. I'm kidding. It's funny. Laugh, it's funny. So next week, you beat me to the horror genre by one week.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:18

Woohoo!

SPEAKER_02 1:04:19

So this is a movie that uh I I'd had as an idea for a while, kept getting pushed, kept getting pushed, and I guess it kind of ties back into James Cameron a little bit because after Aliens was over, uh a chunk of people from that movie went and off to the side and they made this little actual vampire movie. Not like Once Bitten wasn't a vampire movie, but your movie next week is 1987's Catherine Bigelow's Near Dark. Near Dark and Bill Paxton.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:50

Okay. That's I that's I haven't seen that in a while, but I I remember not hating it. I don't remember, you know, it's not one I watched a lot. It's got uh Hendrickson in it too, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:01

Yeah, so it's become oddball. Okay, watching it now, the point break on the brain is kind of like she's a hell of a director.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

I'll I'm I'm interested in that. Um okay, so then I've got something really new for you. Um I watched it, I really enjoyed it. Um it's an indie film, and it it felt very much like uh something that we would make. And so I'm gonna give you a film called The Late Game. The Late Game? The Late Game.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

The Late Game. Okay, I think I've seen the poster of this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:37

Um I came across it. Yeah, yeah. It's just it's a pseudo blind, it's a blind pick for you. I came across it, um, I've already watched it, but I came across it uh, I think last week on Prime, and a buddy of mine talked about it. And I'm a big sports movie fan, so I've been kind of going through some sports movie things today.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:56

So this is 2024.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:58

Yeah, it's about a hockey game.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:02

Nice. Yeah, I intend on sprinkling some newer and blinder picks in as we progress.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think we're kind of we've kind of been back and forth now from the 40s into the 80s and all that. So I think we'll go back to, you know, we we started with Dungeons and Dragons, which was a pretty recent one. So I thought here's one that just came out that I kind of checked out. Cool, you know. I don't think we'll do anything that's been in theaters, but this is at least available for rent. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:33

And by the time you hear this, it's probably still just available on Amazon. Yeah. So near dark and the late game.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

Near Dark and the Late Game. All right. Well, until then. Right on. All right. Talk to you soon. Later.