Speaker 1: Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to Movie Crush Friday Interview Edition. Uh
Speaker 1: film crew addition, as you know, I've had some people
Speaker 1: in the costume department and the prop and art department
Speaker 1: in here. I've had writers and directors. I'm looking to
Speaker 1: kind of do more of these here and there. It
Speaker 1: would be nice if, at the end of this whole thing,
Speaker 1: if I had most of the departments and jobs represented
Speaker 1: in some way, shape or form, because it's always cool
Speaker 1: to hear about these things, and I'd love for you
Speaker 1: guys to hear about these kind of unsung jobs. And
Speaker 1: today is specially an unsung job because I had Scott Willis.
Speaker 1: He goes by Sparky Scott, Sparky Willis in here. Craig,
Speaker 1: my buddy Craig who crushed out the thing, hooked me
Speaker 1: up with Sparky. He works in special effects. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: he is a shop performan. Sometimes he is a special
Speaker 1: effects technician. Uh. It was cool to talk to him
Speaker 1: about that job. He does everything from uh building, he
Speaker 1: builds stuff everybody. He builds ramps for cars to jump,
Speaker 1: He builds roll cages inside of cars for when they
Speaker 1: have to flip um. He constructs things, and he and
Speaker 1: his team construct things out of thin air. They invent things. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he makes us a point of saying this in
Speaker 1: the in the in the conversation we had about how
Speaker 1: the fact that you can't just run down to the
Speaker 1: to the store or the shop and buy the things
Speaker 1: that you need to do for most of these shows
Speaker 1: and movies because it's usually something that's never been done
Speaker 1: before quite like that. So they have to build the
Speaker 1: stuff and it's really cool. It's a cool job, very unsung. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was fun to get to talk to him
Speaker 1: about that as well as his movie Crush Repo Man
Speaker 1: cult classic from which I know as a favorite movie
Speaker 1: of a lot of people. I had never seen it,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. We talked about that, and we
Speaker 1: talked about the movie itself and his connection to it.
Speaker 1: And here we go with Scott Sparky Willis on Repo Man.
Speaker 1: That's a cool shirt. What is that? Oh? I see
Speaker 1: what it is? Is it japan It's not Japanese? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it Japanese? Back to the future. There's a place online.
Speaker 1: I can't remember that. I feel terrible. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the store. But my lady friend and
Speaker 1: my best friend are big fans of this guy he makes.
Speaker 1: He's like Japanese mashup. Yeah. Sure things. I've also got
Speaker 1: one of the thing that's really good. Well for people
Speaker 1: that are listening at home. This is a yeah pull
Speaker 1: that just kind of right in front of your mouth. Um,
Speaker 1: it is a clock tower. Is Marty sliding down the
Speaker 1: clock tower? But it also it's gonna be Doc right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess that would be Doc. Sorry Marty
Speaker 1: never Tower Jesus Christ. But it has also got a
Speaker 1: very Japanese sort of Godzilla type movie poster. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like the Japanese imprint that's really hard to find, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the real rare edition. That's awesome. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I've got a Repo Man shirt that's a like a
Speaker 1: Repo Man black flag mashup that I was tempted to
Speaker 1: wear this morning, but it kind of felt like wearing
Speaker 1: the shirt of the band you're about to see. It's
Speaker 1: that like going to the concert and wearing the big shirt.
Speaker 1: I contemplated for a moment, even though it's it's a
Speaker 1: podcast when but now that would have been cool actually,
Speaker 1: So I feel like I've been researching like this is homework.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm sitting for a test. Now, you'll
Speaker 1: be fine. And I have been researching too, because uh,
Speaker 1: well we'll get the repo. Man. I'm gonna say. I
Speaker 1: was talking. I was talking to Craig this morning. He
Speaker 1: just assured me, you know, just be super nervous. The
Speaker 1: stakes have never been higher. It all hinges on this.
Speaker 1: Where are you from? Do you have a map? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a story. I was actually born
Speaker 1: in Vancouver, Canada, that is yeah, right. Um, we moved
Speaker 1: down to the States when I was real little though,
Speaker 1: so I grew up in California. So, uh, elementary, middle school,
Speaker 1: high school in California, all right, formative years exactly part
Speaker 1: of California, mostly southern California. We lived in the Bay
Speaker 1: Area for a couple of years when we first moved down,
Speaker 1: but we moved to Venture County in House my folks
Speaker 1: are still at So that's where that's where I mostly
Speaker 1: grew up a right, And that's where you spent your
Speaker 1: formative movie years. Well no, actually, well I didn't really
Speaker 1: get into movies until later. I feel like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wasn't super I'm gonna be talking more about it. I
Speaker 1: guess it was never like a movie kid so much
Speaker 1: growing up. It kind of developed around the time I
Speaker 1: like went to college and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: As I they were like early germs of it, but
Speaker 1: it didn't really really didn't become a thing until I
Speaker 1: was about twenty or so, like nineteen twenty. What was
Speaker 1: your jam muse Um, where are you into? I guess
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I was really Uh. I
Speaker 1: played a lot of hockey. Canadian Canadian kid growing up
Speaker 1: in California in the Gretzky era, Like, I played a
Speaker 1: lot of hockey, and hockey was kind of a big
Speaker 1: part of my identity. It was really into aviation when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. For a long time, I was
Speaker 1: gonna be a pilot um, and then that kind of
Speaker 1: took a bit of a bit of a sidetrack. Um.
Speaker 1: So I grew up in southern California, went to university
Speaker 1: in Arizona for two years, studied aerospace engineering. Decided very
Speaker 1: abruptly one day I didn't want to be an engineer
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. Yeah. My brother was
Speaker 1: an aerospace major at first and also got out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff I really liked about it,
Speaker 1: and then there's a lot about the kind of culture
Speaker 1: and just the idea of like what what my day
Speaker 1: to day life would be. It wasn't. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was really what I wanted. So I left there
Speaker 1: kind of abruptly. Thankfully. I made that decision really late
Speaker 1: in semester, so I couldn't transfer anywhere, and I ended
Speaker 1: up the following summer moving to Boston on a bit
Speaker 1: of a whim. I moved to Boston with like a
Speaker 1: duffle bag in twelve bucks to help teach high school
Speaker 1: march band. Wow, Yeah, so you musician or well I played?
Speaker 1: I was in marching Man when I was in like
Speaker 1: high school and stuff. I wouldn't. I haven't picked up
Speaker 1: an instrument since then? Would you play back? Then? Uh,
Speaker 1: clarinet and then saxophone a little bit later on in
Speaker 1: the jazz band. A really cool seventeen year old Yeah, no, dude,
Speaker 1: I was never I was never very good, but I
Speaker 1: was very much into that. It's the thing I've been
Speaker 1: doing since I was like an elementary school. And you
Speaker 1: kind of your circle of friends and it's kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very social thing. Yeah, the end
Speaker 1: up as part of so I enjoyed that part of it.
Speaker 1: I was never really that great a musician. I loved kids, man,
Speaker 1: I was. I was not good enough. I played saxophone
Speaker 1: when I was like eleven for a year, but it
Speaker 1: was not good enough to play in band, but I was.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of my friends are band friends.
Speaker 1: Actually cool that we're in high school band and jazz band.
Speaker 1: So that's why you have the Boston phone number. I
Speaker 1: saw you had a Boston exchange exactly. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: I ended up moving to Boston on a bit of
Speaker 1: a whim h. Not really sure what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I had this vague idea that I wanted to work
Speaker 1: in the film business and make movies, but I was
Speaker 1: about as specific as it was. So moved to Boston,
Speaker 1: got a job working in an oil change place. Uh.
Speaker 1: Did that for two years, various little like auto shops,
Speaker 1: and then I went back to school. Uh, with the
Speaker 1: idea of being a film major doing something with movies,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really it was wasn't well defined yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you were interested in the medium. Uh did you
Speaker 1: know people that did that? Nope, not at all interesting.
Speaker 1: So I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people either like the familiary
Speaker 1: story you hear a little more often is when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to like
Speaker 1: be in this business. But you were, I guess into
Speaker 1: your twenties when you sort of gout or late teens
Speaker 1: or early twenties. Yeah, early twenties when I really started
Speaker 1: getting the film. I would say, what was it about
Speaker 1: about your current job? And uh, special effects? Like how
Speaker 1: did it? How did that all come about? Um, I
Speaker 1: kind of I don't want to say stumbled into it,
Speaker 1: but maybe stumbles the right word. So like I did,
Speaker 1: feel for is a film school and uh, I won't
Speaker 1: say the name of school because I I want to
Speaker 1: be able to disparage them a little bit. Okay, the
Speaker 1: program I went through wasn't very well geared towards people
Speaker 1: actually getting a job doing that. It was very geared
Speaker 1: towards When I say art film, I mean like experimental
Speaker 1: single filmmaker, black and white film, no sound, no story,
Speaker 1: no care. Like it's very it's more kind of collage
Speaker 1: as film than it is like narrative storytelling. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, aside from that, I know that some film
Speaker 1: schools get UM criticized for not being as career not focused,
Speaker 1: but like, literally there should be classes on like how
Speaker 1: to get a job totally, Like if you want to
Speaker 1: work in this business, you need to teach people about
Speaker 1: sort of the business side of things and not I
Speaker 1: mean the creative has to be there obviously, but you
Speaker 1: should also take classes and like how to get jobs
Speaker 1: and what career paths are. No. Absolutely, And I actually
Speaker 1: I butted heads a little bit with the administration when
Speaker 1: I was there because I had one teacher who had
Speaker 1: actually worked as a narrative filmmaker, had made an actual
Speaker 1: studio film, and was very adamant about teaching people who
Speaker 1: wanted to learn, like this is the process, is what
Speaker 1: the different departments are, these are what the roles are.
Speaker 1: But he was very much the outsider in that in
Speaker 1: that world. So put a petition together and got everybody
Speaker 1: in the film department to sign it saying that like,
Speaker 1: we want classes to teach film business, we want classes
Speaker 1: that teach us production skills, we want all these things.
Speaker 1: Cause it's a little bit of a got a couple
Speaker 1: of classes out of the school because of it, UM,
Speaker 1: But we were very much like butting heads with them
Speaker 1: the entire time. Uh. I was really adamant that when
Speaker 1: I got out of school, I needed to get a
Speaker 1: job doing something in the movie world. If I got
Speaker 1: out of school and went back to working in an
Speaker 1: auto shop, then it was just four years of waste.
Speaker 1: And there were so many people that I went to
Speaker 1: school with who when they got done, their part time
Speaker 1: job became their full time job, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: like maybe they would make video art on weekends or something,
Speaker 1: but yeah, and that's not what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I was really adamant that, like, I need to get
Speaker 1: a job doing this, and you'd be able to pay
Speaker 1: the bills doing this. Um, So got out of school,
Speaker 1: got on set as a p A in Boston, did
Speaker 1: uh did a couple of little commercials which are kind
Speaker 1: of you know, at the time, we're super exciting to
Speaker 1: get to work on a commercial, having never four years
Speaker 1: of film school, never being on a proper step before, right,
Speaker 1: and it seems like such a there's like a magic
Speaker 1: and an aura to it. And then once you actually
Speaker 1: step through that boundary and realize like the nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts of like how doable it is. Yeah, um, it
Speaker 1: breaks through a lot of that mystique real quick, and
Speaker 1: you realize it's it's a job, and there's you've got
Speaker 1: different roles and tasks and it's just just a job
Speaker 1: like any other job. Just gotta get done. Yeah, totally, man.
Speaker 1: I remember sort of having that same experience when I
Speaker 1: first started working on commercials and paing and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is how it's done, and most of the jobs
Speaker 1: are kind of the same. Yeah, it's still totally one
Speaker 1: great job. Oh no, I love it. So I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not bagging on it, but I think the mystique
Speaker 1: have your onto something there. Yeah. Um, And I guess
Speaker 1: the other really important thing that happened to me is
Speaker 1: the summer between my junior and senior year. A bunch
Speaker 1: of kids who are a year ahead of me, who
Speaker 1: are also big fans of this one teacher put together
Speaker 1: and try to make a feature film during the summer,
Speaker 1: and so I helped them the work. I think I
Speaker 1: worked as an assistant camera. I was like the number
Speaker 1: two camera guy. I wanted to be a camera operator.
Speaker 1: Camera cinematography was kind of my cam from the last
Speaker 1: couple of years of school, and so I did that
Speaker 1: for a couple of weekends in the summer, and that
Speaker 1: was a big thing that broke through the idea that
Speaker 1: this is very doable. And I think prior to that,
Speaker 1: I was contemplating going to grad school because I wasn't
Speaker 1: really sure if I had the skill set yet to
Speaker 1: work on set. You know, It's like I've been looking back, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you've been going to school since you were
Speaker 1: a kid. You know how to go to school. This
Speaker 1: is a whole foreign world and I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: I'm ready for it. But then just getting that little experience.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is the film never got released
Speaker 1: or anything because we've shot at all digitally. And then
Speaker 1: that summer the hard drives crashed and they lost everything
Speaker 1: and they try to send it to like recovery started,
Speaker 1: recovery labs and whatever and just which is super expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was a point total shoestring budget. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be proper like, full on, full on future film. Um,
Speaker 1: totally lost. Was it any good? You think? At the
Speaker 1: time it seemed it right something. I mean, the stuff
Speaker 1: we shot on set seemed to be pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I struggly remember exactly what it's about. It this guy
Speaker 1: having a mental breakdown with his family, real, real fun stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah that seems film school, Yeah it was. It was
Speaker 1: ambitious though, you know, for what it was and for
Speaker 1: what we were doing, but that helped just to get
Speaker 1: your just to get in that world and realize like,
Speaker 1: this is totally doable, and you look around you see
Speaker 1: the other people doing this thing, like I can. I
Speaker 1: can at least figure my way through this. This is
Speaker 1: no longer this huge obstacle. I just gotta do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially coming up through the world of digital filmmaking, it
Speaker 1: is really democratized it and open down to so many
Speaker 1: people to be able to do things. You can shoot
Speaker 1: a movie with your iPhone now it's wild, which is
Speaker 1: great I think ultimately, No, I totally agree. Yeah, um
Speaker 1: so I did that. Graduated from school, is very adamant,
Speaker 1: started working as a p A. And the big thing
Speaker 1: that happened is I ended up on this non union
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel show in Boston called Time Warp. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a MythBuster ease science e show, our whole
Speaker 1: gag because he had these high speed cameras like phantoms
Speaker 1: when phantoms are brand new. Totally remember that. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the SloMo Super SloMo when it was right at cutting
Speaker 1: edge and that you can do anything at that speed
Speaker 1: and looks amazing like popcorn Colonel's going off glass breaking
Speaker 1: and we were that it looked amazing. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a great. Uh, it was a great show to work on.
Speaker 1: But it was also a terrible show to work on. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had no art department, zero zero art department. So
Speaker 1: what they did is they got a studio space in Boston,
Speaker 1: like an old warehouse, built it out as a sound stage,
Speaker 1: dropped like three corps of the budget in the lighting grid,
Speaker 1: and thought, Okay, we're just gonna bring people in the space.
Speaker 1: They're gonna do their thing, and that's it. We don't
Speaker 1: need an art department. We don't need anybody on hand
Speaker 1: to build anything whatsoever. And that that test failed, like
Speaker 1: the very first day when the directors like, I want
Speaker 1: a table this size over here. There's nobody to build
Speaker 1: a table. There's nobody to do Yeah, and uh, they
Speaker 1: had like the first a d was also the production
Speaker 1: coordinator was also getting props was also it was one
Speaker 1: of those kind of things. Has So I got on
Speaker 1: as a as a p A and you know, I
Speaker 1: was getting dunkin Donuts and taking the tapes of FedEx
Speaker 1: the end the night and just kind of running around
Speaker 1: doing whatever and they needed to do. And they quickly
Speaker 1: ranted these obstacles were they wanted to set up really
Speaker 1: simple things and had nobody to do it. So I
Speaker 1: kind of raised my hand and jumped in. It was like, well,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been mechanical since I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I went to engineering school. Not that it really matters,
Speaker 1: but like, I can problem solve, I can figure out
Speaker 1: how to make a thing work. So I started doing
Speaker 1: that stuff a little by little, and Uh, the really
Speaker 1: big thing that happened is that there was a tremendous
Speaker 1: turnover on the show. Uh. People are getting fired left
Speaker 1: and right, quitting left and right. Everybody was changing out,
Speaker 1: and I was I was low enough down on the
Speaker 1: total pole that just yeah, exactly. I was like one
Speaker 1: of myself at the end of season two, myself and
Speaker 1: one of the camera guys the only crew members still
Speaker 1: around from when I started, apart from the on the
Speaker 1: on camera but the people. Yeah. Um, But so we
Speaker 1: got a new director in and uh he's kind of
Speaker 1: he's like the doctor Emmett Brown to my Marty McFly.
Speaker 1: He's like I described as like a mad scientist type. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he's since become a really close friend, and he's
Speaker 1: he's been a filmmaker since he was a little kid.
Speaker 1: He's been he's a chemist, he's a cinematographer, he's a
Speaker 1: film guy. He is very much about the process. He's coming.
Speaker 1: He's from that like older world of like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make my own camera rigs. I'm gonna build the things
Speaker 1: I need to build to get the shot kind of guy.
Speaker 1: And he had this idea for making these movable lighting
Speaker 1: rigs because we're losing our entire day moving lights around.
Speaker 1: It takes so much light for like ten thousand frames
Speaker 1: a second. It's final because it's all exponential and it's
Speaker 1: not you got lighting guys who are used to working
Speaker 1: narrative film where you use like one or two lights,
Speaker 1: and this like we need an eight K like twelve
Speaker 1: inches away from the subject kind of thing. So he
Speaker 1: had this idea to put two lights on a rolling stand.
Speaker 1: And he thought, with these two rolling things and a
Speaker 1: little hand crank, one person can operate either of them,
Speaker 1: we can light light our whole day like that, and
Speaker 1: we can start knocking the stuff out because we're just
Speaker 1: dying every day. The producers hated him and said, absolutely not,
Speaker 1: it won't work. We're never gonna do it. So, being him,
Speaker 1: he just ordered the steel and went to home depot
Speaker 1: and bought a welder off the shelf and yeah, I
Speaker 1: just started building it, like gotta pop up tent set
Speaker 1: up outside and just started welding ship. Oh can I
Speaker 1: swear in this? I don't sure? Okay, sorry? Great? Um.
Speaker 1: I remember we came back from set one day because
Speaker 1: this kind of thing that they got multiple directors trading
Speaker 1: off episodes or whatever. Come back from set. We're unloading
Speaker 1: the box truck and John's out there welding under a
Speaker 1: pop up tent, which I'd never done before. I always
Speaker 1: wanted to learn. So I finished my day of work
Speaker 1: and I go over to him and ask him what
Speaker 1: he's doing, and uh, he shows me what he's doing.
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, so, like, you put those welding mask
Speaker 1: on and watch what I'm doing. And he says, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you do it right, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a big hot glue gun. So he says, watch me.
Speaker 1: So I watched him and then he has me do it.
Speaker 1: He says, okay, you're better than I am, so you're
Speaker 1: gonna do all the welding out. And from that day forward,
Speaker 1: I did all the welding on that show. I had
Speaker 1: no experience whatsoever. Every day was just trial by fire,
Speaker 1: like just being thrown in the deep end. And between
Speaker 1: the two we built these lighting rigs and then they worked.
Speaker 1: They worked great, and the producers hated us for it.
Speaker 1: And there were like these competing groups within the production
Speaker 1: between like the people who were kind of on the
Speaker 1: side of like myself and John the director, and the
Speaker 1: people who were on the producer's side. It was wild.
Speaker 1: So you guys were smart people accomplishing a task, and
Speaker 1: the other side was not. Yeah, and uh it was
Speaker 1: only because of the chaos of that show that I
Speaker 1: had a chance to do any of this. On any
Speaker 1: real real I know, right on any real production, no
Speaker 1: p A would ever be allowed to pick up a welder,
Speaker 1: let alone be taught by the director how to weld um.
Speaker 1: But in the kind of wild west of that show,
Speaker 1: it gave me an opportunity. And uh so I started
Speaker 1: went through two seasons of that show. By the end
Speaker 1: of it, that's all I did. But I think by
Speaker 1: the end of the first season, all I was doing
Speaker 1: was fabrication, and like I said, I had a mechanical
Speaker 1: background but didn't have specific experience. Did you get a
Speaker 1: pay bump or did they still pay you as a
Speaker 1: p A. They gave me a little bit of a
Speaker 1: pay bump one season two, which I thought was huge
Speaker 1: and in retrospect, oh yeah, in retrospect it was what
Speaker 1: I mean, it was what it is. It was to
Speaker 1: get you know, to get the experience. Um. And so
Speaker 1: in the course of that show, I started building stuff
Speaker 1: and building and the more things I built, more things
Speaker 1: that they found for me to build and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and like pretty much all the gags that you see
Speaker 1: in that show, I had some hand in. I was
Speaker 1: involved in like every day of that project and it
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. We got to a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of great stuff and the full time.
Speaker 1: In the back of my head, I'm still thinking that
Speaker 1: I want to be a cinematographer. I'm still thinking about
Speaker 1: the camera world, um, and I'm feeling myself kind of
Speaker 1: being pulled away from that direction. And the most important
Speaker 1: thing that happened on that show is we had to
Speaker 1: do us. We were doing a breakdown of like stunt action.
Speaker 1: We had like stunt guys going into glass, and so
Speaker 1: we brought in had to bring an actual pyrotechnician to
Speaker 1: to pop the glass breakers for the temperate glass to go.
Speaker 1: And so I got to meet an actual effects guy.
Speaker 1: And that was a big moment for me. I think
Speaker 1: prior to that because I didn't actually know how productions
Speaker 1: worked at all, and I didn't know what had to
Speaker 1: be built on any given show. I didn't know there
Speaker 1: was an effects department. I didn't know there was an
Speaker 1: entire world of people still building physical objects and gags
Speaker 1: and mechanical elements. And so meeting him, and what's funny
Speaker 1: is that, like I still work. All these people that
Speaker 1: I'm that are in the story are still like a
Speaker 1: part of my life. I still talked to on the
Speaker 1: Red still work for I was just the pyrotechnician guy.
Speaker 1: I just did a show up in New England with him.
Speaker 1: That's like a couple of weeks ago. Um, So I
Speaker 1: met him, and I met another couple of guys like
Speaker 1: oh my god, like this is this can exist outside
Speaker 1: of this one show. But that's for people listening. That's
Speaker 1: the secret or relationships, and you know, that's how you
Speaker 1: navigate through. I mean that's how you navigate any job
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. But in the film and street,
Speaker 1: it's really about the relationships that people you meet. You
Speaker 1: being a p a who can jump in there with
Speaker 1: a skill set, and there is a hierarchy. But there
Speaker 1: are also productions where they're like, I don't care what
Speaker 1: it says on the call sheet. If you can help
Speaker 1: me and you can do this, then do it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you start to work in that area special effects
Speaker 1: from visual effects, special effects, and then once uh, once
Speaker 1: I do that show, and then once I meet those
Speaker 1: other guys and realize that this is a thing that
Speaker 1: exists outside the orbit of this one little weird TV show,
Speaker 1: then like that was it. This is this is all
Speaker 1: I wanna do day and day out. Um, so what
Speaker 1: is your most of your work now? Like, what's what's
Speaker 1: your current job title? Um? Special effects technician. Okay, sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm a forming on a show. Depending on how big
Speaker 1: of a show it is and what kind of stuff
Speaker 1: are you doing? Um, we do. We do a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. It's hard to kind of describe because it's
Speaker 1: sort of it's effects. It's kind of a catch all.
Speaker 1: We do, Um, all the atmospheric effects they see on production, right,
Speaker 1: so wind rains, smoke, snow, all that kind of jazz
Speaker 1: that has seen how that works behind the scenes. It's
Speaker 1: always super cool. We also do We do a lot
Speaker 1: of metal fabrication. We do a lot of car work.
Speaker 1: We do like when stunt guys are crashing cars, stunt
Speaker 1: guys are the ones driving them. Uh. Picture Car Department
Speaker 1: make sure that the cars start and run the way
Speaker 1: they're supposed to. But anything above and beyond that becomes
Speaker 1: an effects responsibility, like putting role cages in the car.
Speaker 1: If the cars have to flip over building, the ramps
Speaker 1: the car is gonna hit, or the building the mechanism
Speaker 1: that goes in the car to flip it over. Um,
Speaker 1: that's all effects work. Um. Like I said, we do
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of steel fabrication, a lot of
Speaker 1: problem solving, a lot of a lot of big mechanical
Speaker 1: things that don't necessarily like you don't watch the movie
Speaker 1: and realize like, wow, they must have been on a
Speaker 1: on a hydraulic platform that was being actuated against the
Speaker 1: screen screen. Yeah, Which is an interesting part about your
Speaker 1: job is because sometimes when you're doing it best, you're
Speaker 1: the least noticed absolutely, you know, because it wants it
Speaker 1: has to appear organic and real, and you can't see
Speaker 1: the I mean, growing up watching movies in the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties, you've seen some of this stub done poorly,
Speaker 1: you know, like even the car ramp where it's just
Speaker 1: like it can't be so clear that it's a car
Speaker 1: ramp sometimes right, and this is the a couple of
Speaker 1: cardboard boxes stacked in a straight line right in front
Speaker 1: of it or whatever. Yeah. Um so in some ways
Speaker 1: it's sort of a unsung uh job. I think on
Speaker 1: the set it's a it's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: dark art, yeah, I think. And even the people, even
Speaker 1: the people that we work with on production don't really
Speaker 1: they don't. They only see the part that comes to set.
Speaker 1: They see that like last five percent. And if you
Speaker 1: if you do your job well, you show up the
Speaker 1: set with a gag whatever it is, you set it up,
Speaker 1: you press the button, it does its thing, You clean
Speaker 1: it all up and you go home. Right. Do you
Speaker 1: get that thing though? Where the production is like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, they get the invoice and they're like they
Speaker 1: spent twelve days. Oh it's not only saw them on
Speaker 1: one day and all they did, was do this one
Speaker 1: thing right exactly. Uh, it happens all the time. And
Speaker 1: unless unless you actually come to the shop and see,
Speaker 1: like the testing that has to go into all the
Speaker 1: prep work all the time, all the gags you have
Speaker 1: to build that don't work right, you have to then
Speaker 1: scrap and start over. You if if we're doing everything right,
Speaker 1: you only see you know that that tip of the
Speaker 1: iceberg or whatever analogy you want to use, You only
Speaker 1: see that little bit of it. And it's really hard
Speaker 1: unless you actually come to watch the other part happen
Speaker 1: to understand like what's going on, yeah, and how much
Speaker 1: goes into it. Yeah. And for folks listening, when you
Speaker 1: say the word gag, which you've said a bunch of times,
Speaker 1: I know what that means. But as far as a
Speaker 1: gag isn't a practical joke that you're playing on set,
Speaker 1: a gag in the film business is I mean it
Speaker 1: could be a stunt could Yeah, sure, um usually would
Speaker 1: call that a stunt. But what would you say a
Speaker 1: gag is? Um if i'd give like a definitely just
Speaker 1: an event, yeah, a thing, a note that happens in
Speaker 1: the script. Yeah, there's not you know, a chandelier falling
Speaker 1: from the ceiling, right, the chandelier gag. Right, So that
Speaker 1: would be and that's kind of the terminology that we
Speaker 1: use internal. We refer to them all as gags, which
Speaker 1: is a and it could be it could be something
Speaker 1: as simple as that, or it could be a it
Speaker 1: could be an extended sequence of a car flipping over
Speaker 1: thing and going into into a bus. Right, that would
Speaker 1: be the car bus gag, the car bus gag. The
Speaker 1: classic what is some um, like, what's one of the
Speaker 1: coolest things you've done? I thought about that a lot.
Speaker 1: I think I'm sure that's a I mean, such a
Speaker 1: obvious question. But do you remember the movie Flight? Uh? Yeah, Washington, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was here right, yeah. Yeah. We shot most of
Speaker 1: that over at UM screen gems. I thought that was
Speaker 1: pretty good movie. It was. It turned out great. Um
Speaker 1: the early part of the movie when the airplane rolls
Speaker 1: over man, that was amazing. We built a giant steel
Speaker 1: gimbal to put the cockpit and section of the airplane
Speaker 1: in that rolled around and literally circle. That's probably it's
Speaker 1: probably the coolest thing I've had a chance to be
Speaker 1: a part of. How long did it take to do
Speaker 1: something like that? For instance, we did that in an
Speaker 1: amazing I think we built we built that rotisserie which
Speaker 1: is the gimble flipping over, and we built this massive
Speaker 1: air bag platform for the aircraft to sit on. I
Speaker 1: think we built it all in like four or six
Speaker 1: weeks with a really small crew. We only had about four,
Speaker 1: say four or five effects guys working on that. It's
Speaker 1: such a cool job because any you know, it's a
Speaker 1: p a I would I would get to peek inside
Speaker 1: these worlds sometimes, whether it was uh running an errand
Speaker 1: over to the shop or whatever. And I always love
Speaker 1: these sort of um off to the side, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, departments where you're busting your ass offsite in
Speaker 1: some warehouse for weeks and weeks and weeks to show
Speaker 1: up on set and do something that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be a gag that you shoot in an hour,
Speaker 1: or it could be imagined something like that's pretty complicated
Speaker 1: that you shoot over the course of days or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're playing Gimble. We used that for a couple of
Speaker 1: days because we and we put we put the cockpit
Speaker 1: in and got sections with the principal actors, and then
Speaker 1: we put sections of the airplane in there and got
Speaker 1: you know, had forty stunt people in there and slipped
Speaker 1: them upside down and all sorts of crazy things. It's
Speaker 1: just it's a testament and one of the coolest things
Speaker 1: about the film industry to me, and the magic. I
Speaker 1: know it sounds corny, but the magic of filmmaking is
Speaker 1: all these people. Uh and to the uninitiated who have
Speaker 1: never been around sets and don't know anything about it,
Speaker 1: they might look at the list of credits and just
Speaker 1: been like, especially like these Marvel movies and like, are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? Like how many people need to work
Speaker 1: on a movie? But everyone's got their their job right
Speaker 1: from tiny things two huge things And if you guys,
Speaker 1: I mean you're off figuring out the literal nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts on how to accomplish something. That's just one of
Speaker 1: the coolest things to me. And with like that airplane
Speaker 1: Gimbll for instance, Um, the guy who was the lead
Speaker 1: sort of engineering that was an effects guy named Andy
Speaker 1: Miller who's retired, actually just saw any the other week. Um,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I still like keep in touch with these people.
Speaker 1: That's like coming in and out of my life and
Speaker 1: its family in a lot of ways. And Andy and
Speaker 1: he had built a lot of gimbals over his career.
Speaker 1: He built a lot of the gimbals on Titanic. Make
Speaker 1: that that whole thing happened, um, But he had never
Speaker 1: built this exact gimble before. So like every time we
Speaker 1: build something, it's a prototype. Everything is that you're drawing
Speaker 1: off your previous experiences. But there's no like, we didn't
Speaker 1: go to the gimbal store again. We need the seven
Speaker 1: thirty seven half part three turn. I'll take the Titanic Junior. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just go ahead and have it delivered overnight. It
Speaker 1: So every everything thing exactly and everything is a prototype
Speaker 1: and so there's always that that learning curve involved in
Speaker 1: anything that you build. And like I said, sometimes you're
Speaker 1: more familiar with that. Sometimes you have a lot of
Speaker 1: experience building these things, and sometimes it's sometimes you gotta
Speaker 1: build it three or four times before you get it
Speaker 1: right right because ultimately your safety is a big part
Speaker 1: of what you do too. It's huge, Yeah, it's huge,
Speaker 1: and it's really easy to forget how dangerous this stuff
Speaker 1: is until it gets away from you, right. Um. And
Speaker 1: you like even on the airplane gimble, we because we
Speaker 1: think we we ran it for I want to say
Speaker 1: three days on set, and we ran for three days
Speaker 1: without issue. Like they never waited on us. We didn't
Speaker 1: have a problem. We never had to shut our stuff down.
Speaker 1: It never didn't work when I was supposed to. And
Speaker 1: we start off day one and we have a big
Speaker 1: safety meeting. We remind everybody like this is gonna be
Speaker 1: our protocol for starting and stopping. Nobody else goes near
Speaker 1: it until we give the all clear we've got any
Speaker 1: of these certain steps are gonna follow. And for the
Speaker 1: first like day, people were pretty good about it. And
Speaker 1: then by the third day, while the thing is still
Speaker 1: moving and come to a stop like you got grip
Speaker 1: and electric trying to come in to move a flag
Speaker 1: or something, give it three seconds because I know it
Speaker 1: moves really slow, so it looks really safe, but it's
Speaker 1: a lot of momentum, it's a lot of energy, and
Speaker 1: it if it catches you, it's not gonna hick up.
Speaker 1: It's just gonna yeah, yeah, bad. Yeah. I mean again,
Speaker 1: for the benefit of listeners, it's uh for any kind
Speaker 1: of gag or stunt or even having a prop guns
Speaker 1: on set, there is always a safety meeting and that
Speaker 1: involves everyone. They have to tell everybody like the protocol
Speaker 1: for everything. And it's remarkable that. I mean, you've seen
Speaker 1: what goes down on film sets. It's pretty remarkable how
Speaker 1: few tragic you know, deaths have occurred on film sets.
Speaker 1: It's always big news. It's always very tragic and sad,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a testament to how safe of an
Speaker 1: industry it is. Yeah, someone doesn't die on like every movie. No,
Speaker 1: it's wild and a lot of the things that we
Speaker 1: do are we're playing with a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of big energy, a lot of forces, a lot of
Speaker 1: these like hydraulic and pneumatic systems that we're using for
Speaker 1: like tearing a wall down and flipping a car or
Speaker 1: these crash things. If they get away from you, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it can it can go bad real quick. Yeah. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: one of the guys who kind of mentored me on
Speaker 1: my first show got uh ily, he got crippled on
Speaker 1: an accident on Green Lantern And it wasn't even on
Speaker 1: it wasn't on production. It was a test at the
Speaker 1: effect shop and it was never hear about that in
Speaker 1: the news. No, it was it was a gag raa
Speaker 1: box truck. I think it's like superheroes are having a
Speaker 1: fight or something of them slams one of them into
Speaker 1: this box stuck in this box truck from stationary like
Speaker 1: does like a barrel world. So they were testing it
Speaker 1: at the effect shop. A bunch of things went. With
Speaker 1: any disaster story, it's never like one big thing that
Speaker 1: goes wrong. It's always a series of small things that compound.
Speaker 1: This was a day where a bunch of little things
Speaker 1: went wrong and people were not in the right place,
Speaker 1: and you know, all these little things kind of compounded,
Speaker 1: and on one of the tests, the rear axle of
Speaker 1: this thing breaks loose, flies off eight degrees from its
Speaker 1: line of travel, and hits my buddy right in the
Speaker 1: mid section. The fact that he even survived as remarkable.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and so that's like, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: daily reminder for me when I'm when I'm at work
Speaker 1: that like, I remember what happened to Johnny. You know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there for it, thankfully, And I'm really glad
Speaker 1: I wasn't, because knowing me, I would have been standing
Speaker 1: right next to him. Well, you just it's it's a
Speaker 1: job where you have to be so on point. You
Speaker 1: can't ever shortcut anything or be lazy or forget all
Speaker 1: the protocols, right, because this big, heavy, dangerous stuff. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as one of my buddies like to say, it's like
Speaker 1: we've got catastrophically hanging over our shoulder keeping an eye
Speaker 1: on us. Oh geez, what did you just shoot? What's
Speaker 1: like the most recent thing you did? The New England thing?
Speaker 1: I just did two shows up in New England. I
Speaker 1: went and helped out on Season to a Castle Rock
Speaker 1: just finished up and I think it is released now.
Speaker 1: And then, um, this AMC show called nos Ferat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also season two. Fun stuff. Pardon fun stuff you
Speaker 1: were doing? Oh yeah, I really enjoyed working on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a really good time. So it's a good crew.
Speaker 1: I like being in New England whenever I can. Um,
Speaker 1: not huge, not huge shows by any stretch as far
Speaker 1: as effects work goes, but there was enough stuff to
Speaker 1: keep us busy and enough kind of interesting, challenging stuff.
Speaker 1: What what makes for a good job for you, aside
Speaker 1: from just a supportive production. Um, like being challenged and
Speaker 1: having to figure out the the impossible. Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 1: think getting to build stuff for the first time, getting
Speaker 1: you know, to uh to design and fabricate things and
Speaker 1: do stuff that maybe we haven't done before. Um, and
Speaker 1: just that that problem is solving and that challenge is
Speaker 1: what really kind of it's what drew me to this discipline,
Speaker 1: and I think what keeps me in it is the
Speaker 1: challenge of it. That's awesome. Um, the atmospheric stuff I
Speaker 1: can kind of take or leave. I don't really like
Speaker 1: running a smoke smoke machine. Um, I really don't like
Speaker 1: doing snow dressing. Snow dressing is so tedious. Oh man,
Speaker 1: did a you know they shoot so many of those
Speaker 1: stupid Christmas car commercials in l A of all places,
Speaker 1: and there's this one I think it was it might
Speaker 1: have been Warner Brothers. I think it's where they shut
Speaker 1: Desperate housewise, but there's a sort of a cul de
Speaker 1: sac that they use for a lot of ship And um,
Speaker 1: I feel like I was always shooting like Lexus Christmas
Speaker 1: commercials and all that fake snow, which is, as you know,
Speaker 1: just a nightmare everything. And for these commercials it never
Speaker 1: looks good movies it does, and TV shows it can
Speaker 1: think you have to look more authentic, but like those
Speaker 1: Christmas car commercials never look it never looks like it's snowing. Yeah. Never.
Speaker 1: Um so all that stuff was. I mean, I'll do
Speaker 1: whatever we need to do to get the job done.
Speaker 1: For me, getting to getting the design and build stuff
Speaker 1: is really that's really what I enjoy doing the most.
Speaker 1: And over the last I've been doing this about ten
Speaker 1: years now, so I feel like more and more of
Speaker 1: my day to day is focused on that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: which is great. Yeah, and stuff as you progress in
Speaker 1: your career, you can um hopefully like steer yourself more
Speaker 1: towards that stuff. Yeah, And that's kind of the direction
Speaker 1: I'm pushing towards. Like I don't I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever want to be a coordinator, the head of the
Speaker 1: effects department. I'm sure it's more money. It's more you
Speaker 1: get your name at the top of everything or whatever.
Speaker 1: But a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of paperwork.
Speaker 1: You've got to be the person to go to the meetings,
Speaker 1: you gotta talk to producers, you gotta deal with the budget.
Speaker 1: You want to build it, You've got to manage people.
Speaker 1: It's a whole different job, you know, And I just
Speaker 1: want to build it. Yeah, it totally that's what I
Speaker 1: really enjoy doing. I used to love on set, seeing
Speaker 1: the satisfaction that goes largely unnoticed after a good, well
Speaker 1: done kind of seamless gag, because I would always see
Speaker 1: you guys, there are three or four of you that
Speaker 1: would pull it off, and it's a very small group
Speaker 1: of people that feel very proud of each other, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of times the rest of
Speaker 1: their crew was just like, yeah, these the weird tattoo
Speaker 1: guys showed up every every like once a week, and
Speaker 1: no one knows their names, and and uh, why did
Speaker 1: it take him this long to build this thing? I
Speaker 1: remember my and I feel sorry for the kid. My
Speaker 1: very first job, the first movie I was working on,
Speaker 1: which is The Town Sean the ben Affleck talking off
Speaker 1: Fenway Park. It was a great movie. H that was
Speaker 1: a huge show for us. Effect he directed that too,
Speaker 1: right he did? Uh yeah, and he was great. Yeah
Speaker 1: as a director, I really I really liked working on
Speaker 1: his set. I thought you could tell he was under
Speaker 1: a lot of stress between starring in it, being one
Speaker 1: of the writers directing it. He had a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of things, pulling a lot of direction totally,
Speaker 1: but he was always very he was He was never
Speaker 1: agree on set, you know what I mean, Like you
Speaker 1: never took it out on anybody. I'm sure you've worked
Speaker 1: with those directors to yeah. Um. But so we're on set,
Speaker 1: it's been like it's been a really busy show. We
Speaker 1: had we had to put cages role cages in like
Speaker 1: thirty or forty Crown Vix or something because the cars
Speaker 1: crashing all over that. And we have been working really
Speaker 1: long days, really long weeks in the shop. We were
Speaker 1: doing like six day weeks. We at a certain point
Speaker 1: of the show, we moved like fifteen hour days, six
Speaker 1: days a weeks just to catch up on all of
Speaker 1: the fabrication work we had to do. And then we
Speaker 1: would we would take chunks of things and go to
Speaker 1: set for a day shoot those gags, and then everybody
Speaker 1: treat back to the shop and keep plugging away. And
Speaker 1: a month set One day and one of the p
Speaker 1: a s turns to me, he's like, oh, it must
Speaker 1: be really great to work in effects because you guys
Speaker 1: only have to work like one or two days a week.
Speaker 1: And I looked to him, it just you know, and
Speaker 1: I've got that like that, you know, I'm tired, like
Speaker 1: I've put in like ninety hours in the last six days.
Speaker 1: Just you're like, yeah, it's great. Yeah, all this stuff
Speaker 1: that you see, like we built all of this from scratch,
Speaker 1: like we order steal and put it together. There's no
Speaker 1: did you explain all that or did you say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great to work one or two? You're right. I
Speaker 1: think I said something gruff to him. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go back and sleep again. Yeah. But and
Speaker 1: you know that's kind of the if you only exist
Speaker 1: on set and you just view it through that lens,
Speaker 1: that's all you know, that's all you see. You just
Speaker 1: like you said, these weird guys chauffeur a day and
Speaker 1: doing some stuff, and why they've been on pay roll
Speaker 1: this whole time, Well they only want dude. I always
Speaker 1: I always knew what was going on. Well that is
Speaker 1: super cool, man. I know that listeners love to hear
Speaker 1: from different crew members. I was glad to get you
Speaker 1: in here. Um, I've had writers, directors Craig and UH
Speaker 1: props and set deck and his wife Karen from wardrobe.
Speaker 1: So I need to get like a I don't know,
Speaker 1: I need to get locations in here, maybe a music
Speaker 1: supervisor there. You go, just keep expanding this this UH
Speaker 1: film crew thing. Yeah, so repo man, Oh yeah, you're
Speaker 1: cult classic. It was a cult classic about a month
Speaker 1: after it was released. It was one of those rare
Speaker 1: movies that somehow existed kind of only in that world.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, it seems like, uh, and here's my
Speaker 1: dirty little secret. I had never seen this movie, no kidding.
Speaker 1: Oh wow until last night. Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: felt like I had seen it, but I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I've really never seen Repo Man. It's
Speaker 1: so in the public consciousness. And I worked at the
Speaker 1: cool video store and Athens and like it was everyone's
Speaker 1: favorite movie, and I was like a Repo Man, But
Speaker 1: I never fucking saw Repo Man. And I'm gonna admit
Speaker 1: it right here. Oh that's amazing. So I got to
Speaker 1: have my my debut experience last night with it. What
Speaker 1: did you think? I loved it? I mean, it's um.
Speaker 1: I love movies from the early eighties that didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of money. I love early eighties movies period,
Speaker 1: but there's there's a certain thing to early eighties films
Speaker 1: that were low budget. Sure, it's just there's a kind
Speaker 1: of weird magic to those. For me. Um written directed
Speaker 1: by Alex Cox, his debut feature film. He has had
Speaker 1: an interesting career. I don't know how much him uh he.
Speaker 1: I mean he came out of the gate with With This,
Speaker 1: then Sid and Nancy, and then straight to Hell, which
Speaker 1: is a kind of a Gangbusters way to start out
Speaker 1: your career. Maybe not huge box office films, but all
Speaker 1: three regarded as sort of classic cult classics. And then
Speaker 1: he kind of, I don't know, not went away. But
Speaker 1: I looked at his filmography last night and read some
Speaker 1: interviews with him, and I think just a lack of
Speaker 1: support and funding and it just never kind of went
Speaker 1: the way that we all thought it might for him. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Is that a fair statement, I think so. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of projects that he had in
Speaker 1: mind that he never got to do. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: maybe people out there being like, oh no, dude, you
Speaker 1: should see like the movie he did three years ago.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. I don't know, I have Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely not on my radar. Yeah, it's not on my radar.
Speaker 1: He's a very interesting guy. I watched a lot of
Speaker 1: the interviews, and I felt like I was studying for
Speaker 1: a test for this, So I watched I watched the
Speaker 1: movie like half a dozen times, I've got the Criterion collection.
Speaker 1: I watched like all the special features. That's because of
Speaker 1: the cover of that. I got it. I brought it
Speaker 1: just so I could show you. I've seen that poster. Um.
Speaker 1: It is not the movie poster. It is the I
Speaker 1: don't know who did that, but it's the skull with
Speaker 1: the overlay, the skull with the overlay of the um.
Speaker 1: How the movie opens in the title sequence with that
Speaker 1: sort of fluorescent green map that is just looks fucking
Speaker 1: badass on the screen. And then like the inside of
Speaker 1: the the inside of the sleeve or all these like
Speaker 1: a show flyers with references to the movie. They're so
Speaker 1: well done, so they look like punk band they're all
Speaker 1: and you start reading them and they're all just inside
Speaker 1: references that I mean one of the bands called Auto Parts. Um,
Speaker 1: they're so well done. Whoever did the artwork on this
Speaker 1: is deserves a gypsy dildo. Very nice. No, that's fantastic. Um.
Speaker 1: And I did a lot of research on it too.
Speaker 1: Uh so, I'm sure you know most of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about, as far as trivia and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. They wanted him to cast Mick Jagger. I
Speaker 1: heard something about that. Yeah, that did that would have
Speaker 1: been And I think he wanted Dennis Hopper And this
Speaker 1: is for the Bud character Harry Dean Stanton Um. But
Speaker 1: Harry Dean is just such a treasure, he really is.
Speaker 1: And it's funny that this in Paris, Texas for the
Speaker 1: same year. And I think that it sounds as if
Speaker 1: I think Paris, Texas was shot after this. I think so. Um.
Speaker 1: But both, Yeah, both Harry Dean and Robbie Mule and
Speaker 1: the cinematographer go straight from this to Paris, Texas. Oh
Speaker 1: did he shoot that too? Yeah? Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: for a low budget um. And this is still a
Speaker 1: studio movie, but the weirdest studio movie maybe of all time.
Speaker 1: But for a low budget film, there are some really
Speaker 1: beautiful shots in it. Absolutely. Cinematography is gorgeous. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really is. Um. Like a few things that come to
Speaker 1: mind are the scene with uh Tracy Walter's character I
Speaker 1: can't ever, I can't remember his name, the sort of
Speaker 1: wise sage, yeah Miller, when he's when they're burning in
Speaker 1: the in the big trash can. That's such a beautiful scene,
Speaker 1: it is. And the dialogue in that scene is great too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: play shrimp his Yeah, it's a very like kind of
Speaker 1: classic monologue. And he's such a classic character actor period,
Speaker 1: Like just put him in anything and he's still around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some of the so many of the shots are so
Speaker 1: gorgeous in the film, and I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that weirdly makes it stand out from just
Speaker 1: being a low budget Yeah, whatever are these little these
Speaker 1: little kind of gems, Like the cinematography is so good.
Speaker 1: Harry Dean Stanton's this, I mean, I think you put
Speaker 1: this up there with Paris Texas is like the two
Speaker 1: movies that really define him as an actor totally, because
Speaker 1: everything else that he does, he's kind of a big
Speaker 1: character where he's got a really small part. Both these
Speaker 1: two films, he is sort of leading roles, leading role
Speaker 1: and really really kind of grabs hold of it. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen Paris Texas and so long. I need to
Speaker 1: dig back into that one. I think the cinematography is
Speaker 1: better than the storytelling in Paris Texas, but I remember
Speaker 1: liking it. It was sort of one of those early
Speaker 1: when I was first starting to get into independent films
Speaker 1: and stuff in college, one of the early like movies
Speaker 1: that I watched. Yeah, I want to say, like Kirk
Speaker 1: o'bain Listened is one of his favorite movies, so gave
Speaker 1: it a certain a certain bump with a certain demographic, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And I think someone else was going to play leaving
Speaker 1: of the punk band fear. I heard that. I think
Speaker 1: Alex Cox, Because clearly Alex Cox was um familiar with
Speaker 1: the punk scene. And I think that's why so much
Speaker 1: of this feels authentic, right, Uh, it felt kind of real.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like some Hollywood version of the punk scene. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we should probably just dive right into that,
Speaker 1: like why this movie, Like when you ask punk kids
Speaker 1: like to list like your favorite punk movie, this always
Speaker 1: up to the surface, and at first glance, it's not.
Speaker 1: The story is not really a punk story. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like Alex wasn't setting out to me a movie about punks,
Speaker 1: agreed he and if you listen to interviews with him,
Speaker 1: he was actually trying to make a very different movie.
Speaker 1: Then I think there's a disconnect between the movie he
Speaker 1: thought he was making, the movie that got made, in
Speaker 1: the movie that he thinks he made. All three of
Speaker 1: those are very different points in space. And I think
Speaker 1: because the way that the punk stuff is is shown
Speaker 1: and the way that, well, I could take a step back.
Speaker 1: So what's the guy? What's the actor? Dick Rude, the
Speaker 1: actor who plays Duke, his best friend, right, who was
Speaker 1: originally supposed to be play Auto. I guess way why
Speaker 1: because this movie went through a bunch of different incarnations.
Speaker 1: Originally it was gonna be a student film and then yeah,
Speaker 1: so I went through all these different He pitched as
Speaker 1: a comic book too, yes, or made a comicieve, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe there's like a three or four page comic.
Speaker 1: I could read it, but like as part of the
Speaker 1: trying to get the movie made process. So I guess
Speaker 1: dick Rude had written this other screenplay or maybe a
Speaker 1: short or something that got incorporated into the repo Man script,
Speaker 1: and I'd be curious to know which parts or because
Speaker 1: Dickery doesn't have a writing credit on this. He gets
Speaker 1: a writing credit on Sitting Nancy and some other stuff,
Speaker 1: but he credit collaborated with Alex Cox quite a bit
Speaker 1: through his career. Yeah, Um, so I think because they
Speaker 1: weren't trying to make a movie about punks, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like it wasn't just gluing mohawks onto actors and throwing
Speaker 1: them out there. It was almost by accident. It was
Speaker 1: just writing about what they knew and what the experience
Speaker 1: that I think resonates so well with people. You know
Speaker 1: that it doesn't it doesn't feel like you're going to
Speaker 1: a show for the sake of having a show seen. Um,
Speaker 1: you know the scene where they're just hanging out in
Speaker 1: the parking lot listening to the circle jerks and dancing around, right, dude,
Speaker 1: that was one of my favorite parts of the movie
Speaker 1: because it just it. It showed a side of l
Speaker 1: A that was, um, not even like a criminal underbelly,
Speaker 1: just sort of I mean, you've spent time in l
Speaker 1: A as um l A is. You know, there's Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: and there's the Hollywood Hills, and there's the glitz and
Speaker 1: the glamour. But there's also the reservoir and the l
Speaker 1: A River and the back alleys and the side lots
Speaker 1: and the valley And like Paul Thomas Anderson has always
Speaker 1: done a good job I think of showing like the
Speaker 1: valley side of l A, the sort of dusty hut
Speaker 1: industrial Los Angeles, but that's a that's a lot of
Speaker 1: l A. And they really captured it here. They really
Speaker 1: did and it's a very l A film, Like it
Speaker 1: feels so much like like Los Angeles is almost a
Speaker 1: character in the movie. It's so strong, but in a
Speaker 1: way that other movies where l A was a character,
Speaker 1: because people will say that about like, well l A
Speaker 1: story was, It's like l A is just a character.
Speaker 1: It is. But this is an l A that you
Speaker 1: don't get to see a lot because it's kind of
Speaker 1: dirty and dirty and yeah, rough and like yeah, all
Speaker 1: sorts of dumb shifts happening. Yeah, but there. I mean
Speaker 1: l A is full of green grass and palm trees
Speaker 1: and pretty birds of paradise plants, but it's also a
Speaker 1: parking lot in waste land and other parts. Yeah. No, definitely.
Speaker 1: Um So just starting the movie off the energy um
Speaker 1: with that opening credit sequence in the music, and it
Speaker 1: was such a big part of this movie and a
Speaker 1: big part of why it got released. I think like
Speaker 1: they released it and it didn't do anything, and then
Speaker 1: the soundtrack became a big hit, so they brought it
Speaker 1: back to the theaters. Yeah, that's what I had read,
Speaker 1: and I think they got the movie got caught in
Speaker 1: some like power struggle at Universal between people leaving and
Speaker 1: people coming in the Door, the Universal and like not
Speaker 1: want to be part of like the past person's projects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the theatrical release was really limited and kind
Speaker 1: of lackluster. And then the soundtrack is really what gave
Speaker 1: it traction. Yeah, and it's a while. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: incredible soundtrack, is it really? And it captures that kind
Speaker 1: of moment in the the l A punk scene so
Speaker 1: well and I think, like to this day, it's a
Speaker 1: soundtrack that I haven't listened to. Yeah, it's great. And
Speaker 1: Iggy Pop did the score, uh, and I think was
Speaker 1: given kind of carte blanche to do whatever he wanted
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, And there's a great story about Iggy
Speaker 1: Pop being like in l A in the early eight
Speaker 1: and being broke and not being not knowing how he's
Speaker 1: gonna make rent next month. Yeah, this was sort of
Speaker 1: post stages and Alex Cox kind of showing up as
Speaker 1: this crazy, wild eyed British guy wanting him to write
Speaker 1: this song. And yeah, Iggy kind of tells a story
Speaker 1: that he kind of saved him, you know that, like
Speaker 1: he didn't he really didn't know how he's gonna make
Speaker 1: rent the next month, and then his thing just kind
Speaker 1: of like falls on his lap. Yeah. And Alex Cox, Um,
Speaker 1: I did the math. He was, I guess making this
Speaker 1: in his late twenties. He was thirty when it was released,
Speaker 1: so he was making it when he was like probably,
Speaker 1: which is you know, that's young to me. Suicidal tendencies
Speaker 1: Circle Jerks. Circle Jerks very famously have a cameo. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of lounge act. It's so good and one
Speaker 1: of the this movie is full of so many little
Speaker 1: subtle jokes that they don't they just kind of drop in.
Speaker 1: Like when they go to the lounge scene and you know,
Speaker 1: Circle Jerks are on stage playing whatever dumb lounge song
Speaker 1: that is, and it cuts to otto, he is like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I used to like these guys. I know.
Speaker 1: That's great. It's yeah, it's such a little it's such
Speaker 1: a great moment. Uh. And it's such payoff if you
Speaker 1: actually pay attention to what's going on that it's really
Speaker 1: easy just kind of breeze by and not notice. Yeah, totally. Um.
Speaker 1: And and I think it's a movie of the time,
Speaker 1: like it's a it's it's a it's a statement in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And we'll talk about the various
Speaker 1: kind of social statements he's making. But it's very subversive.
Speaker 1: It was Reagan's America and this movie, I think, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't super obvious about like politics, but you know
Speaker 1: the subtle things like this burnout pothead parents giving all
Speaker 1: their money to a televangelist, and there are all these
Speaker 1: sort of little subversive elements sort of flicking the finger
Speaker 1: at Reagan's America. Yeah, and they make references to revolutions
Speaker 1: in Latin America. Yeah, I guess there was. Originally there
Speaker 1: was going to be a There are a lot of
Speaker 1: different endings of the movie, but one of the endings
Speaker 1: involved Auto going to Salvador and becoming a revolutionary, which
Speaker 1: I think is why the Rodriguez brothers were also running guns,
Speaker 1: which they kind of reference but then never talk about again. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like there are a lot of storylines at
Speaker 1: one time, we're going off other places that never got completed,
Speaker 1: so we just have a little weird bits and pieces
Speaker 1: of him and left in the movie. No, but it
Speaker 1: kind of works for the film somehow, Like there's not
Speaker 1: a ton of um, traditional character development or backstory, like
Speaker 1: the way, um, the way you just jump into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way the Auto even meets his girlfriend if I
Speaker 1: guess you want to call her that? Uh, I mean
Speaker 1: he says my girl a couple of times. You know,
Speaker 1: he's driving down the street and he's like, hey, baby,
Speaker 1: you want to ride knocks over some trash cans. She
Speaker 1: gets in the car and then you know they have
Speaker 1: that fast motion love making. That seat is so goofy,
Speaker 1: but it all kind of works. There's a a punk
Speaker 1: rock feeling to the movie that I don't think he
Speaker 1: was even setting out to say, like I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: a practical and I think that's what's so earnest about
Speaker 1: it is that it's not trying to be that thing.
Speaker 1: It's just becomes that thing because that's kind of who
Speaker 1: he is and that people he's around. It. It It feels
Speaker 1: so organic in a way that so many other movies
Speaker 1: try and all and become a bit embarrassing. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a magic to this movie that's hard to define, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's why I resonates so well. I think
Speaker 1: you're right, um here, I'm gonna There's a couple of
Speaker 1: quotes here from a couple of write ups. Roger Ebert,
Speaker 1: in to his credit, said, I saw repo man near
Speaker 1: the end of a busy stretch on the movie beat,
Speaker 1: three days during which I saw more relentlessly bad movies
Speaker 1: than during any comparable period in memory. Most of those
Speaker 1: bad movies were so cynically constructed out of the formula,
Speaker 1: out of formula ideas and commercial ingredients, that watching them
Speaker 1: was an ordeal. Repo Man comes out of left field,
Speaker 1: has no big stars, didn't cost much, takes chances, dares
Speaker 1: to be unconventional. It's funny and works. There's a lesson here,
Speaker 1: and then this guy Todd Gilt gil Christ gil Christ,
Speaker 1: this was a recent thing. Like if you type in
Speaker 1: repo Man revisited, there's a lot of articles over the
Speaker 1: last few years as it had. I think it's thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary where people have gone to sort of uh dopeeck in.
Speaker 1: But he said, Repo Man feels like the platonic idea
Speaker 1: of a cult film inspired by punk culture William Burrows
Speaker 1: and R. Crumb, among dozens of other obscure liminariaes. Alex
Speaker 1: Cox's Breakthrough is a funny and oddly profound sci fi odyssey,
Speaker 1: tapping into ideas the zeitguys seemed to barely know existed.
Speaker 1: That kind of sums it up. Though it does, it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like he was trying to make a thing.
Speaker 1: Know what's funny is that when you watch the interviews,
Speaker 1: and I mean listen to Alex Cox talk about what
Speaker 1: he thinks repal Man is about, it doesn't what does
Speaker 1: he say, uh, that it's about the neutron bomb, that
Speaker 1: it's about nuclear proliferation. It's a A yeah, that's in
Speaker 1: there a bit. It's it's in there a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I don't know anybody would walk out a repal
Speaker 1: Man and be thinking seriously about like nuclear ars, like
Speaker 1: we really got to do something about radiation. Um, And
Speaker 1: it's almost like this other stuff almost. I don't want
Speaker 1: say it happened by accident, because that's not that's not
Speaker 1: a fair way to put it. But it's not that
Speaker 1: it's not what he was in ending to say. Like
Speaker 1: I said, in all, in all the interviews, like it
Speaker 1: seems like kind of muddled. There's this one interview he
Speaker 1: does where he was the guy who actually worked on
Speaker 1: the actual neutron bomb and they watched deleted scenes together
Speaker 1: and discuss whether or not they should have been in
Speaker 1: the movie. It's so bizarre because he was a big
Speaker 1: fan of it, right, Yeah, apparently so, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: he wrote to Alex or something to talk about how
Speaker 1: much you like the movie. It's and it's like you're
Speaker 1: trying to learn more about the thinking and the thought
Speaker 1: process behind the movie. And if the more you find
Speaker 1: out about it, the more confused to become and the
Speaker 1: less clear it is. It's so bizarre. And then so
Speaker 1: all these interviews, and there's one with the Iggy Pop,
Speaker 1: right nigg He's just in his backyard and he's got
Speaker 1: a he's got button up T shirt that's like buttoned
Speaker 1: up to there, which is probably more of a shirt
Speaker 1: and his worn in a decade. He's wearing a shirt
Speaker 1: and he's he says like it's you know, it's a
Speaker 1: simple film about the times and the people in those
Speaker 1: times just trying to get through. And he says, you've
Speaker 1: got old man, young man. Crazy shit happens. And that's
Speaker 1: the most concise, like clear vision, Like that's what the
Speaker 1: movie is about. The old guy, young guy. Crazy shit happens.
Speaker 1: And it's a lot of fun along the way. And
Speaker 1: there's yeah, and any of the larger points that Alex
Speaker 1: is trying to make about nuclear weapons or about social
Speaker 1: uprising in the Latin American don't really land yea um,
Speaker 1: but all the stuff that happens in between is so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The consumers and aspect is uh is kind of played
Speaker 1: out with these generic um grocery store products, which I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people who have seen this movie
Speaker 1: think like, oh, that's so smart and funny that he
Speaker 1: went out and made all this stuff. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: might know this, but that was mostly real stuff from Ralph's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was I guess the stuff that was
Speaker 1: all expired that they couldn't sell her. Yeah. Just when
Speaker 1: I first went to l A in nineteen ninety was
Speaker 1: when my brother lived there. That's when I first took
Speaker 1: my first like three visits. Uh, they still had that
Speaker 1: stuff Ralph's. And my friend Eddie and I UM and
Speaker 1: my other friend Chris and Jim. We all went out
Speaker 1: there for spring break one year and stayed with my
Speaker 1: brother and went to the grocery store and freaked out
Speaker 1: with the generic beer and that's all we drank the
Speaker 1: whole time, was the light blue can that said beer beer,
Speaker 1: the white with the light blue stripes. But that was
Speaker 1: the stuff. And I think the ones that said just
Speaker 1: food they made, yeah, as as a statement of like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's about consumerism to a certain degree. Ah,
Speaker 1: and advertising I think, and uh in film maybe even
Speaker 1: like product placement. Yeah, and I think, but I think
Speaker 1: even more than that, they were just kind of having fun.
Speaker 1: I think whatever consumers statement they were trying to make,
Speaker 1: maybe Dix yeah, um, but yeah, I mean it's just
Speaker 1: Otto sitting there eating the can that says food and
Speaker 1: his parents, his mom saying you should put it on
Speaker 1: a plate because you'd enjoy it more. It's like I
Speaker 1: couldn't couldn't enjoy it more if I tried. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: whole scene is pretty interesting to disconnect with he and
Speaker 1: his parents and asking for the money to go to
Speaker 1: Europe early how about if you just gave it to
Speaker 1: basically saying kind of a thousand dollars. But that sort
Speaker 1: of kick starts the whole job that he gets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like crash cut from that into him in the
Speaker 1: car with Harry Dean, like on day one, as Harry
Speaker 1: starts to give him his Uh yeah, that was cool.
Speaker 1: Apparently that was originally going to be multiple scenes realized
Speaker 1: Harry Dean stands idea to kind of merge it all
Speaker 1: into one kind of month because it was one daytime
Speaker 1: and a nighttime. Yeah, if you try to follow the
Speaker 1: daylight contuity, it goes all over the place. I don't
Speaker 1: even try, so yeah, it's yeah. Their wardrobe keeps changing.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of little things that are Auto's earrings
Speaker 1: change as goes on, and he gets he gets more
Speaker 1: square by the end of it. Oh totally. But it
Speaker 1: works really well as one scene that kind of breaks
Speaker 1: through all the time things. I agree. Um, And and
Speaker 1: that another great smash cut is when he talks about
Speaker 1: doing speed. It's a smash cut to them, like cutting
Speaker 1: out lines on the mirror in the car and hear anything.
Speaker 1: He's just like, whoa, Yeah, that's good stuff. Their relationship
Speaker 1: is awesome. Um, it is sort of mentor student. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: little father's son thing going on, because he's clearly disconnected
Speaker 1: from his dad. But again he's not. I don't think
Speaker 1: Alex Cox wanted to make some to overdo it as
Speaker 1: far as that goes. And that's probably so organic about
Speaker 1: it and what he feels so genuine. I totally agree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh you know. Harry Dean Stanton played almost every week
Speaker 1: in l A played music at the Mint that was
Speaker 1: one of his things he did for years, and when
Speaker 1: I was living there, he did that and I never went. Man,
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things my big like l
Speaker 1: A regrets is never going to see Harry Dean Stanton perform.
Speaker 1: Oh that's wild. I didn't realize that. Yeah, he played,
Speaker 1: I mean his own he was just doing his Harry
Speaker 1: Dean Stanton thing on stage playing acoustic music. Oh good him.
Speaker 1: That's apparently it's pretty cool and weird. I believe it. Um.
Speaker 1: That's one of the great things about l A. Though.
Speaker 1: You can go see Herry needs Stanton like every Monday
Speaker 1: night for you know, eight dollars if you want to. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Amelia Westebez was so awesome back then. I kind
Speaker 1: of forget how much I loved him, um, and how
Speaker 1: this sort of worked as an antidote to his character
Speaker 1: in The Breakfast Club, you know, just polar opposites his characters.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I love them both. I love Breakfast
Speaker 1: Club too, but this, this whole movie was almost I
Speaker 1: don't think again it was a conscious thing, but it's
Speaker 1: it's the anti John Hughes movie and kind of every way.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to imagine if Amelio and Harridan Stanton
Speaker 1: are a part of this. It's probably not you know,
Speaker 1: probably doesn't resonate, It probably doesn't hit the right notes
Speaker 1: in the right way. There's something about the chemistry between
Speaker 1: the two of them that works so well. It's hard
Speaker 1: to put like you know, like I guess, Dick rude.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it was originally supposed to play auto
Speaker 1: and it's hard to It's hard to picture the guy
Speaker 1: who played Duke as the lead. It feels like it
Speaker 1: would feel more like a student film where you just
Speaker 1: have your buddies in it, which it would have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's there's a certain magic about it about those
Speaker 1: two characters. To get those two actors together. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's that indefinable magic of casting. Yeah, time and
Speaker 1: a place that just it all worked. Um. I love
Speaker 1: the helping hand office that I'm not so you hard,
Speaker 1: I guess, but the impound a lot office, just that
Speaker 1: whole vibe in there. It's just so weird. You've got
Speaker 1: this sort of off duty cop just sitting in the corner.
Speaker 1: Who figures or whatever. Later on he kind of he
Speaker 1: turns on them in the end, right, he pulls a
Speaker 1: gun on her at the end. Yeah, she kicks so
Speaker 1: much as in that scene really does. And another great
Speaker 1: little like inside joke that all the all the people
Speaker 1: work at Helping Hand all named after beers or all
Speaker 1: beer related Ide Miller and Light and just I love Light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a little like undercurrent, just a funny thing to
Speaker 1: throw in. Yeah yeah, And then the light is, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because Harry Dean Stanton has all this
Speaker 1: talk about the code and Light is just like constantly
Speaker 1: breaking that code about hot wiring and you know with
Speaker 1: the gun and everything. When he pulls in the Mustang
Speaker 1: scene when they're when they're boosting that car is so
Speaker 1: great because he starts getting fired up from inside the
Speaker 1: house and the car pulls up with light and you
Speaker 1: think like he's just gonna get in and write off,
Speaker 1: but he won't open the door and just fucking unload
Speaker 1: the magazine into this random house and it's like, get
Speaker 1: in the car, man, get in the car, that badass Mustang.
Speaker 1: Yeah great, the Chevy Malibu is it turns out. I
Speaker 1: mean there there is this plot of aliens that is
Speaker 1: kind of a red herring in some ways because it's
Speaker 1: all through the film, but it never like the aliens
Speaker 1: never really come into play. There's no payoff on it. There,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no resolution that whatsoever. And you're not
Speaker 1: really sure like what actually is in the trunk of
Speaker 1: the Malibu Well, I mean it's presumably aliens, but you're right,
Speaker 1: you don't see it, right, And there's like radioactive aliens, right,
Speaker 1: radioactive aliens or neutron bomb. It's also implied to and
Speaker 1: I guess there was there was one ending where the
Speaker 1: Rodrigue brothers open up the trunk and it's a neutron
Speaker 1: bomb and it blows up Los Angeles. Oh. Interesting, there's Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like maybe the filmmakers were sure what was
Speaker 1: really in the trunk either, which would explain why it's
Speaker 1: explanation is convoluted at best. Yeah, it's probably best, like
Speaker 1: the more you think about at the last sense it makes,
Speaker 1: but it's still kind of works. Yeah. Yeah, Um, you
Speaker 1: know who who's the guy that's driving it around? What's
Speaker 1: his character's name? Oh man, Yeah, the guy who's the
Speaker 1: who was clearly suffering from radiation poisoning as happens more
Speaker 1: and more throughout the movie, people getting sick, throwing up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's he's lost it. He's driving this Malibu
Speaker 1: around that everyone wants because it's worth but the repo
Speaker 1: aces like they're not great repo men, Like that car
Speaker 1: is all over the place and it keeps swerving in
Speaker 1: front of them. They never gave get old. Apparently the
Speaker 1: guy they cast to play that role couldn't drive, So
Speaker 1: it's a big problem throughout the production that like they
Speaker 1: had to keep probably had to use like driving doubles
Speaker 1: that didn't match them at all. A bunch of times
Speaker 1: it was Alex Cox driving it himself because the one
Speaker 1: time the actor actually drove, he drove into a bridge
Speaker 1: or something like that. They just had so much, so
Speaker 1: many issues with it. And then the then the Malibu
Speaker 1: got stolen, the actual car during during filming, Like I
Speaker 1: guess Alex was using it because he didn't have a car,
Speaker 1: so they said, want't you just drive it so they
Speaker 1: can show up that every day, and then it got
Speaker 1: stolen from his It got stolen while they're having a
Speaker 1: meeting or something, so they had to try to find
Speaker 1: another one that was close enough. Did they ever get
Speaker 1: it back, Yeah, they recovered it during production and then
Speaker 1: then they had to thank because they brought in every
Speaker 1: replace but it was like, is that kind of show?
Speaker 1: I guess man, that's crazy the director driving the hero
Speaker 1: picture car and then it gets stolen. What's more fitting
Speaker 1: for a movie about cars getting knocked off? Right? Then?
Speaker 1: Like exactly, it would have been better if it had
Speaker 1: been repossessed. Um I did notice the bad replacement driver
Speaker 1: and that very first scene with the highway patrolman where
Speaker 1: he gets zapped. Um the shots from the rear of
Speaker 1: the car, I'm like, that is not that. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: all that stuff kind of adds through the charm. There's
Speaker 1: a certain roughness to it that he is endearing. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: this is not a movie you go see if you
Speaker 1: want flashy, perfect continuity. No, it's not gonna be in
Speaker 1: the Marble universe. Um. I did think it's interesting and fun,
Speaker 1: though how much he uh how much, Emilia? How how much?
Speaker 1: Auto sort of went from this fuck you give the
Speaker 1: finger to the security guard with a gun in your
Speaker 1: face punk to really meshing with this new sort of
Speaker 1: square family in the in the Toe office. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he was, you know, more than anything. He's a kid
Speaker 1: trying to find something to do right, Like, he's totally
Speaker 1: disconnected from his parents, he's bored, he's bored. His friends
Speaker 1: aren't that great, you know, as you know, the only
Speaker 1: one really sticks by him is Kevin Um and yes,
Speaker 1: this is being in the circle jerks, right. It's so weird.
Speaker 1: And I guess, I guess when he was on set,
Speaker 1: he like introduced himself to them, was like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: I played the nerd and they were just like so yeah,
Speaker 1: when you even give him the time of day or whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he ends up playing with him for twelve years or
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, what a world, But yeah, it's like Auto's
Speaker 1: he's just a lost kid right in this world, trying
Speaker 1: to find something, and he ends up, you know, by happenstance,
Speaker 1: ends up with these guys and very much like falls
Speaker 1: into he buys in in a way like he doesn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, he rejects his friends in a lot of ways. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, his one best friend did cheat on
Speaker 1: his h he cut holded him when he and he
Speaker 1: went to go get a beer. The twelve seconds that
Speaker 1: it took him to get a beer. He ends up
Speaker 1: in bed with his girlfriend, which is great. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: but yeah, he does reject his friends and um kind
Speaker 1: of goes a little square and a little more. It's
Speaker 1: funny for a repo guy, it's like going straight or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a punk well. Yeah, And even at the end
Speaker 1: when they have after the shootout in the convenience store
Speaker 1: or whatever, and she's pulled the gun on him, he asks,
Speaker 1: you know, any chance for our relationship At this point,
Speaker 1: he offers to make her a repo wife. He's bought
Speaker 1: in so much at that point that scene. Man, that
Speaker 1: was crazy because there's not a ton of violence in
Speaker 1: this movie, or like overt violence, and then that movie
Speaker 1: kind of went over the top with it in like
Speaker 1: a great I just really went for it. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: great B movie sort of way though. And you noticed
Speaker 1: the thing about where they smashed the ketchup. I guess
Speaker 1: it was something where they were worried about the m
Speaker 1: p A A rating and so something to do like
Speaker 1: if they smash the catchup and get ketchup everywhere, then
Speaker 1: it adds a layer of ambiguity. Was or not it's
Speaker 1: blood or catchup or something silly like that. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: pretty genius actually, Yeah, creative work around. Um. I love
Speaker 1: the l a river chasing, right, that's kind of one
Speaker 1: of the things that sells him on the job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's so excited about that afterwards. It's really sweet. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you've ever been to l A,
Speaker 1: the l A River, I mean that's technically what it's called,
Speaker 1: but it is a concrete river. Yeah. And I mean
Speaker 1: even if you haven't, if you've seen Greece and Terminator
Speaker 1: too and all the who He's like, keep coming back
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, it's pretty iconic. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: This is one of the best uses of it though.
Speaker 1: I think, Uh, this and maybe T two. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a great chasing and that one. Obviously this was a
Speaker 1: little more fun. But um, the Rodriguez brothers, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: there were another interesting part of this movie because they
Speaker 1: end up teaming up with them, Yeah, towards yea, towards
Speaker 1: the end, and you don't really know why. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden they're on the other side, like you had
Speaker 1: just seen they were like swinging baseball bats at them
Speaker 1: and threatened to assume or what all sorts of crazy things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel yeah, I think there's some some narrative
Speaker 1: parts that but again part together. That's part of the
Speaker 1: charm in that there wasn't some scene where the Rodriguez
Speaker 1: brothers decided well, we need to flip sides here and
Speaker 1: help them out because of some repo code or whatever.
Speaker 1: It just kind of happens, just kind of happened, and
Speaker 1: it works. Old guy, young guy, crazy shit happens. Um
Speaker 1: So they actually boost the Malibu and have it for
Speaker 1: a little while. The car is literally hot, which is
Speaker 1: kind of one of the funniest means. It's like, and
Speaker 1: then that's where this whole other subplot of the punks
Speaker 1: um Otto's friends on this crime spree. Yeah, they steal
Speaker 1: it for a little while and they running like one
Speaker 1: of the great physical gags of running into the trash can.
Speaker 1: It's just such a stupid thing, but it's so funny.
Speaker 1: It is just that Archie character is always running into things,
Speaker 1: even when they're leaving a liquor. Story runs right in
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, it's those little bits I think that
Speaker 1: they pepper in. Yeah, that that that make the movie
Speaker 1: work so well. You can tell that they're having fun
Speaker 1: when they do it in it it translates on screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think Amelia esteveez um. I think his agents
Speaker 1: didn't eat, like try to hide the script from him
Speaker 1: early on when he was getting courted. I heard something
Speaker 1: about it because they were like, no, they were only
Speaker 1: doing big budget, like he's not gonna see this, And
Speaker 1: then he got it to him, like to a friend
Speaker 1: or something, and he was like, yeah, man, this is
Speaker 1: like I gotta do this movie. I'd be so curious
Speaker 1: to know his thoughts on the movie. This many years later,
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find any interviews with him. How
Speaker 1: interesting it was, like everybody else on the crew, like
Speaker 1: looking back, Yeah, I'd be curious to know, like what
Speaker 1: he thinks about the movie in the context of his
Speaker 1: own career, and like, like, I don't know what his
Speaker 1: relationship was in the in the early eighties taming those bands.
Speaker 1: I didn't write he was familiar with them or well,
Speaker 1: I do know that he was not familiar, because I
Speaker 1: did read one interview where he said that he was
Speaker 1: not a part of the punk scene or didn't know
Speaker 1: much about it. But I think his not Charlie. Did
Speaker 1: he have another brother? Is there another I think, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I think Ramone or no, wait, or is that Martin
Speaker 1: Sheen's real name? I get lost. I do too. I
Speaker 1: think he either had a brother or a friend or
Speaker 1: a friend's brother that was in the punk scene that
Speaker 1: he kind of leaned on for help on this, but
Speaker 1: he said he got into it a little bit after this.
Speaker 1: But I don't know how I would think he looks
Speaker 1: back with fond memories about this movie. I hope so,
Speaker 1: you know, and people are still talking about it, yeah,
Speaker 1: all these years later. I mean, it has its place
Speaker 1: I think in Hollywood history, uh, in a pretty big way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's on It's constantly on top lists of
Speaker 1: cult films. I think it's on in the top ten
Speaker 1: list of like l A movies of all time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly enduring, and it it holds up to multiple viewings,
Speaker 1: you know, like I watched it half a dozen times
Speaker 1: in last week or whatever. I didn't I didn't find
Speaker 1: myself getting sick or tired of it in any way.
Speaker 1: Like there's something about the energy and the humor of
Speaker 1: it that just there's Yeah, there's something adhesive about it
Speaker 1: that's hard to really describe. And then also the way
Speaker 1: that shot. Yeah, it's beautiful, so beautiful. It is not jokey,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of fun and funny moments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in quotable lines. One of the interesting things that Alex
Speaker 1: mentioned one of the interviews is that he wanted to
Speaker 1: make it so that he thought he was making a
Speaker 1: funny movie, but he wanted any any still from the
Speaker 1: film to look like a serious drama. And it kind
Speaker 1: of does. You know, like there's no there's nothing like
Speaker 1: visually goofy about it. You know, there's nothing, there's no
Speaker 1: like shot in the movie that feels like humorous shot.
Speaker 1: I think if you freeze framed the when the trunk
Speaker 1: is opened and people go to skeleton owing skeleton, that
Speaker 1: might seem a little hokey, but maybe, but it's a
Speaker 1: great effect for what it is for the time in
Speaker 1: the budget it reads yeah, you know in the end,
Speaker 1: you know with the uh, the floating glowing car, right,
Speaker 1: which they actually painted that way, right, Yeah, parent of
Speaker 1: it was like six hundred bucks a gallon or something
Speaker 1: for this like super super fluorescent paint they used on
Speaker 1: signage or something. I don't think they realized how much
Speaker 1: it was gonna cost when they got into it, and
Speaker 1: so that turned out to be like a five thousand
Speaker 1: dollar paint job or something. Cheaps off. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: he he knows that he's uh Otto even has a
Speaker 1: line You're a suburban white suburban punk just like me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and that kind of says it all. It's
Speaker 1: one of the best lines of the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has no illusions about who he is. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: Duke is dying, Yeah, there's a lot of deaths. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's ano little funny. More like Duke is on
Speaker 1: the ground, like coughing and bleeding out, and as Auto
Speaker 1: walks away, was like, oh, you'll be fine. Yeah. Fine.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much of this was superscripted and how
Speaker 1: much was sort of on the fly. It seems as
Speaker 1: though there was a lot of stuff that was on
Speaker 1: the fly. There's a lot of stuff they were kind
Speaker 1: of making up as they went. I know, the plate
Speaker 1: of shrimp scene he wrote sort of I don't know
Speaker 1: about on the fly, but I don't think that was
Speaker 1: in the original script. No. I read that that was
Speaker 1: actually a mono like he wrote for auditioning. Oh interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that the characters liked it so much they wanted
Speaker 1: him to include in the movie. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: that's one of the I mean, it's on of the
Speaker 1: best monologues in any film. I actually I have a
Speaker 1: played a shrimp tattoo in my thigh because of it. Yeah, way,
Speaker 1: me and my buddy both have it on our leg.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's one of those weird things you keep
Speaker 1: coming back to all the time. Yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a shrimp or played or play to shrimp, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he is the sage in the movie. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: not like it's not throw away stuff, Like I don't
Speaker 1: want to say that, like it gets really profound and deep.
Speaker 1: But man, you look at a couple of Miller's scenes
Speaker 1: and monologues, it is a little profound, it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean he's also the one to go. He
Speaker 1: tells first, tells Auto about the car air fresheners. Find
Speaker 1: one in every car you'll see another recurring bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think the story is they got just a
Speaker 1: bunch of those for free. Yeah, it was like the
Speaker 1: only product placement they're able to swing. And then so
Speaker 1: after he says that, it cuts to the motorcycle on
Speaker 1: the side of the road as they're doing like the
Speaker 1: the cleanup of the first the opening sequence, right, and
Speaker 1: they they've got the Christmas tree air freshener on the motorcycle,
Speaker 1: which I think is such a great gag. The idea
Speaker 1: of having an air freshener on a motorcycle. There are
Speaker 1: so many little fun jokes like that. Um. One of
Speaker 1: one of my other favorite lines is when they come
Speaker 1: back the Malibu after auto has found it, secures it
Speaker 1: in a lot, comes back the next day and it's
Speaker 1: not there. Um, and the g men come into the
Speaker 1: to the office and they're getting their asses kicked, and
Speaker 1: she is the chair above his head and the one
Speaker 1: guy goes, not my face, and then she smashes one
Speaker 1: on him. Anyways, you hear that great off camera like
Speaker 1: oof sound. Yeah, that's so good, and again that works
Speaker 1: better than seeing it happened. I think it's just definitely
Speaker 1: hearing that sound effect. Yeah, not my face. Because the
Speaker 1: GMN are all like these kind of kin doll models. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though they're kind of shadowy figures, they're all handsome,
Speaker 1: like blonde haired yeah, and they all got the super
Speaker 1: reflective sunglasses. Yeah. And then the lady too, who leads
Speaker 1: that crew with a weird and they never really explained
Speaker 1: why she's got a robotic hand or what that's all
Speaker 1: supposed to be about. But I think again though, part
Speaker 1: of the weird charm of this movie because people can
Speaker 1: then speculate right about, like what the funk that was
Speaker 1: all about. Yeah. Yeah, and there's something I keep saying organic.
Speaker 1: But you know, life is not Life is not full
Speaker 1: of neat and tidy storylines, so you always know what's
Speaker 1: going on. There's always a little like that, how was
Speaker 1: that about? You know, you're only ever getting bits and
Speaker 1: pieces of things in real life, and it the scattered
Speaker 1: nature of the narrative kind of reflects that, probably unintentionally.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's I don't think he's set out
Speaker 1: to make that. You know, it's what end up happening
Speaker 1: in the process, which is part of what filmmaking. You know.
Speaker 1: It's this first it's his first feature. Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: The Happy Accidents, Um, this movie that is kind of
Speaker 1: about an area fifty one like government cover up of aliens,
Speaker 1: but again, it never really dives into that too deeply. Um,
Speaker 1: because he has this girlfriend that's somehow is it on
Speaker 1: this plot? Yeah, that's never explained, but she's running from
Speaker 1: the g men. Yeah that's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this seems like a movie that like, like a cool
Speaker 1: college kid would get as much as their twelve year old,
Speaker 1: uh younger sibling. Like it works on an elementary level.
Speaker 1: I think in some ways that and not to slag it. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. Yeah, there's something so endearing about it,
Speaker 1: the way that it all comes together. What else you
Speaker 1: got over there? I'm just looking through mind. I want
Speaker 1: to make sure didn't miss anything. I think we think
Speaker 1: we hit on all the points. I think so, man,
Speaker 1: uh oh, did you know that he tried to get
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali in this? I did see that. Tell the
Speaker 1: story it's pretty great. So I guess when they were
Speaker 1: filming the last scene where uh where buggets shot from
Speaker 1: the helicopter and where the where the Malibu lifts off
Speaker 1: into space, they found out that Muhammad All and they
Speaker 1: were supposed to shoot a couple of days earlier at
Speaker 1: a different location and the weather was bad or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I ended up doing it back at the parking
Speaker 1: lot at the Repalmand lot, and they found out that
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali was like training down the street or something.
Speaker 1: So Alex Cox had this brilliant idea that as part
Speaker 1: of like the procession of like the Holy Man coming
Speaker 1: to the car and then being rejected by the car,
Speaker 1: he wanted to get Muhammad Ali in there as well
Speaker 1: as another you know, human dignitary to come to try
Speaker 1: to get on the car to be rejected by I
Speaker 1: guess Muhammad Ali very politely listened to his speech and
Speaker 1: then politely declined that the sweet story, because that's a
Speaker 1: very first time filmmakery thing to do. Is like, I
Speaker 1: think that you can actually get Muhammad I'll need to
Speaker 1: be in your movie because he's just down the street.
Speaker 1: But you never know. I mean that is that sweet
Speaker 1: naivete of a young filmmaker is It's like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: if you don't ask. And the flip side of that
Speaker 1: isn't Jimmy Buffett is in the movie. Yeah, I read that,
Speaker 1: but then I never spotted him. I only figured it
Speaker 1: out by watching the commentary track. Is one of the
Speaker 1: man he's one of the when they burn the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember the guy's name now on the on
Speaker 1: the bed, the bench, Jimmy Buffett is one of the
Speaker 1: guys the camera taking one of the g men taking photos.
Speaker 1: So random, it's so weird. It's not like you, it's
Speaker 1: not like you see him close enough to identify him.
Speaker 1: And also like for all the cameos in a punk movie,
Speaker 1: like Buffett, it's pretty funny yet somehow completely appropriate. Yea,
Speaker 1: it's like the most anti punk guys. Somehow works. Yeah, somehow,
Speaker 1: there's nothing there's nothing about it that feels forced or
Speaker 1: it's just whatever it is, it is and it it's
Speaker 1: somehow magical. Oh man, it's good stuff. I love a
Speaker 1: movie that is sort of inexplicably great, um, because you
Speaker 1: can't point to any classic conventional way is that this
Speaker 1: is great? Um, Like oh my god that like the
Speaker 1: script is amazing, or the story is just so tight
Speaker 1: and moves. It's like it's just one of those movies
Speaker 1: that works right, and it wouldn't work in any other
Speaker 1: like this is a book, this is a graphic novel,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a podcast, doesn't work. But
Speaker 1: there's something about the magic of movies that somehow brings
Speaker 1: those all all those things together the right. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: you have it's a movie you have to I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still I think it's a movie you have to watch,
Speaker 1: unlike all the movies you don't watch. But no, I
Speaker 1: know what you mean though. Yeah, And people are excited
Speaker 1: about this because I posted a do like a little
Speaker 1: coming soon things so people can watch movies ahead of time,
Speaker 1: and Repoman is getting a lot of love. People are
Speaker 1: excited about it. It still holds up. It does. It
Speaker 1: does because it's a it's a slice of time and
Speaker 1: just encapsulates nine and eighty four. So well, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not like there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different ways of doing that you can do like fast
Speaker 1: times at Richmond High and really the suburban mall culture
Speaker 1: of l A. Which that nailed that too, but this
Speaker 1: is a different l A and a different subculture it is.
Speaker 1: And it felt like the way he was just trying
Speaker 1: to put in the things from his life and the
Speaker 1: things that are around him. It didn't feel as if
Speaker 1: he set out to do that. He wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: make a time capsule. He wasn't trying to make a
Speaker 1: movie about what it was like to be a shitty
Speaker 1: kid walking around l A. But he kind of accidentally
Speaker 1: ends up making that, and it's it's really beautiful for
Speaker 1: what it is. Totally totally agree. All right, man, Well
Speaker 1: that's good stuff. Thanks for coming in and enlightening us.
Speaker 1: Are you Are you relieved? Yeah, it's okay to be relieved.
Speaker 1: You did great. I feel like once I got into it,
Speaker 1: now that's fantastic. Yeah, And people love hearing about the
Speaker 1: different jobs too. So Anothery're gonna love the first part
Speaker 1: of this one too. Yeah, it's great to get a
Speaker 1: chance to actually talk about that because so much of
Speaker 1: it feel, like I said, even the people we work with.
Speaker 1: It's it's a dark art. It's yeah, it happens off
Speaker 1: some other places and sung heroes of the film business.
Speaker 1: Nice work. All right, thanks dude, Uh, come back another time.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about something else, all right, Alright, folks, hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Sparky is a cool dude. Very nice
Speaker 1: of him to come in here and share a little
Speaker 1: bit about the job that he does on set, get
Speaker 1: a little insight into special effects and how that works,
Speaker 1: and uh what he thought a repo man um. He
Speaker 1: he watched a bunch of times everybody, and did his
Speaker 1: due diligence that has always appreciated because he came in
Speaker 1: here well armed with with facts about the movie as
Speaker 1: well as his take on this really unique, um strange,
Speaker 1: weird cult classic that still holds up after all these years.
Speaker 1: Really enjoyed watching it for the first time. I love
Speaker 1: talking to Sparky about it, and he's welcome back anytime.
Speaker 1: So thanks for listening to this one. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, and we will see you in your ear
Speaker 1: holes next week. Boe Crushes produced, edited and engineered by
Speaker 1: Ramsay unt Here in our home studio at Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: For I Heart Radio. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.