Speaker 1: Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to Movie Crush Friday Interview Edition. Here
Speaker 1: well not here with Cole Stratton. You are in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: right's right at home of earthquakes and judging my last
Speaker 1: You guys had an earthquake last night. Tell me about it.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you about that. It wasn't that big.
Speaker 1: It was like three point one or something, but I
Speaker 1: was only a couple of miles away from the epicenter,
Speaker 1: so it felt pretty legit. Or just sitting on the
Speaker 1: couch watching the first episode of Lock and Key because
Speaker 1: we decided to dive into that and and just sing
Speaker 1: where you know, Swede for about fifteen twenty seconds. There's
Speaker 1: been quite a few in the last like year or so,
Speaker 1: so that's getting slightly alarming, but they've never really scared me.
Speaker 1: But it was legit, you know. Man. I lived there
Speaker 1: for about five years and I never felt so much
Speaker 1: as a tremble, and that was It's kind of one
Speaker 1: of those things where you obviously don't want anything bad
Speaker 1: to happen, but you kind of want to know what
Speaker 1: it feels like. Yeah, I mean, I usually don't feel
Speaker 1: them up to this past year, when they've become like
Speaker 1: a lot more prevalent and like have happened during the day.
Speaker 1: Like I just don't feel them half the time. And
Speaker 1: of course you just go to Twitter or whatever to
Speaker 1: find out if legit had happened, because then everybody in
Speaker 1: the world's tweeting about it in the l A area.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I mean I I didn't feel them.
Speaker 1: I usually don't feel them, but the last couple I have,
Speaker 1: I think mostly because they've been pretty significantly rocking. So
Speaker 1: and the other ones you just feel emotionally. Yeah, you bet.
Speaker 1: It gives me right here. So Cole is a an
Speaker 1: improv comedian. Um, you do some acting as well, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit here and there. And you are someone
Speaker 1: who I met through San Francisco sketch Fest. You were
Speaker 1: one of the co founders of sketch Fest along with
Speaker 1: Janet Barney and I think one other person, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: David Owen, where the three that started it in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. So that's crazy, man. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've met David. Um he is. He's still a
Speaker 1: part of it. Yeah, he's around. We're just because we
Speaker 1: have a billion shows happening. It's at odds are we
Speaker 1: have not you guys have not been in the same
Speaker 1: building at the same time. Yeah, it is crazy big
Speaker 1: and really successful. For my money, the best comedy festival
Speaker 1: in the country. And I would love to hear a
Speaker 1: little bit about how that started out in your relationship
Speaker 1: with Janet as well. Yeah. Sure, so we're we're coming
Speaker 1: up on our twentieth festival in Theory in January. Who knows,
Speaker 1: with the way things are going in the world right now.
Speaker 1: But back in two thousand two we started it. Janet, me, Dave,
Speaker 1: and this other guy, Gabe. We're in a sketch group
Speaker 1: together called Totally False People. We all met at San
Speaker 1: Francisco State We started doing sketch together and there wasn't
Speaker 1: really a lot of places to do sketch in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: There was a couple of kind of jankie venues. One
Speaker 1: was called the Mock Cafe that had like a beam
Speaker 1: in the middle of the room, So they're not great. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you did sketch like comedy clubs, it was very
Speaker 1: confusing for people. Remember we did uh, we did a
Speaker 1: gig in Rooster Ti Feathers because Gabe's mom owned it
Speaker 1: at the time, and we did like a twenty minute
Speaker 1: opening up or something, and I remember some guy like
Speaker 1: called and left a message on the voicemail and being like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what they were doing, stage acting or something.
Speaker 1: So so it was kind of hard to find a
Speaker 1: place to do this stuff. So there was a couple
Speaker 1: other uh sketch teams in town that we're kind of
Speaker 1: in a similar boat. UM, So we kind of banned
Speaker 1: together and we rented a theater because you couldn't do
Speaker 1: a one off in the theater, you had to like
Speaker 1: kind of rent for a month. So we rented the
Speaker 1: Shelton Theater and Union Square, which was seventy five seats,
Speaker 1: and the six teams decided to kind of do to
Speaker 1: like two groups of night co head lining with an
Speaker 1: intermission and then the last week like kind of cabaret style.
Speaker 1: We're all six teams tod like fifteen minutes sets instead
Speaker 1: of forty five minutes sets like that. Um, And we
Speaker 1: had no idea if it would work, and we just
Speaker 1: decided to give it a shot. And thankfully the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Chronicle ran a date book story on it back
Speaker 1: when print like really did a lot for you and
Speaker 1: it was front page on the Thursday date book section,
Speaker 1: and it kind of took off. We sold out every
Speaker 1: single show but one, and then when we didn't sell
Speaker 1: it had like ten tickets left. So that's where we
Speaker 1: kind of figured like, oh, this thing could actually be something.
Speaker 1: We had really no intentions of it becoming an actual festival.
Speaker 1: That was just kind of the the guys to put
Speaker 1: it under an order for all six of us to
Speaker 1: kind of cross pollinate our own audiences and find some
Speaker 1: new ones. Yeah, that was kind of my My question
Speaker 1: was whether or not you guys were like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we should try it again next year. I mean,
Speaker 1: did it kind of grow organically? Yeah. The next year,
Speaker 1: we just decided we could kind of go to a
Speaker 1: bigger venue, so we rented the Eureka Theater, which is
Speaker 1: not the Gateway, but it's been one of our venues
Speaker 1: since here too. It's the longest tenured venue at this point,
Speaker 1: and it's two hundred se up from the seventy five
Speaker 1: and Shelton, and so we decided to do that and
Speaker 1: we pursu we like, we kind of opened it up
Speaker 1: to other sketch teams in the country. You could kind
Speaker 1: of submit send a video and back when everybody's sent
Speaker 1: in vhs, s UM, and we went after some headliners
Speaker 1: like just thinking why not, can't hurt to ask, and
Speaker 1: we managed to somehow get um UCB the three guys
Speaker 1: to come and do a sketch show and an impropt
Speaker 1: while UM and uh Fred Willard and his Hollywood Players,
Speaker 1: which is a sketch team that Fred was kind of
Speaker 1: in charge of. So those two were like kind of
Speaker 1: the first to really take a chance on us, and
Speaker 1: then we just kind of built it out from there.
Speaker 1: Just every year kind of added a few more venues
Speaker 1: or a few more headliners, and after five or six years,
Speaker 1: we just realized that sketch was very finite. So we
Speaker 1: decided to open it up to hall forms of comedy
Speaker 1: and just kind of went from there. And that is amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've never been to Sketch Fest, you're
Speaker 1: missing out. It is a is it just in the
Speaker 1: month of January, now, Yeah, that's when the festival's self
Speaker 1: is proper. We sometimes do programming throughout the year, a
Speaker 1: little bit here and a little bit there. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: we usually book the comedy tenant outside Lands, which a
Speaker 1: big music festival there, and we were working at Clusterfes
Speaker 1: the last couple of years too. We've done some summer
Speaker 1: events at the Castro Theater and things like that too,
Speaker 1: but yet the bulk of what we do is in January. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Um, if you've never been, you should go.
Speaker 1: It is a month of some of the best. I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys have gotten to the point now where you
Speaker 1: just kind of owned the city of San Francisco for
Speaker 1: a month. Um. Just I feel like, dozens of venues.
Speaker 1: How many venues do you have going we have? It
Speaker 1: kind of varies per year, but I think we're usually
Speaker 1: around twenty. We've had as many as three. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: on any given Friday night, say like at eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: they're probably twelve shows going on at the same time
Speaker 1: against each other. And you know that's the only shitty part.
Speaker 1: As a performer, It's like, oh man, I want to
Speaker 1: be doing this, I want to be doing this, and
Speaker 1: it's just you can't get it all in. So you
Speaker 1: go and you see what you can see, and you
Speaker 1: you sacrifice by doing your own perform princes when you'd
Speaker 1: rather be going somewhere else to watch somebody. And you
Speaker 1: guys are getting I mean, you do these big tributes.
Speaker 1: Now you've had these legends like Carol Burnett and I
Speaker 1: know Jeff Goldwin was there last year, I think or
Speaker 1: two years ago. Yeah, he's done his kind of fun,
Speaker 1: weird music jazz thing he does where he sings songs,
Speaker 1: but then he also comes out and does like music
Speaker 1: trivia or movie trivia in his own movies and stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's really funny and silly. But yea, at this point,
Speaker 1: like early on, we were just kind of like, there's
Speaker 1: no way anybody would do this thing. You know, in
Speaker 1: our minds, it's like we're just a bunch of college kids,
Speaker 1: which is really all we were. We're just we had
Speaker 1: no knowledge of this stuff. But I think the reason
Speaker 1: we've been able to survive and actually thrive as long
Speaker 1: as we have is that the three of us came
Speaker 1: came out, came out there as performers, but we all
Speaker 1: have good heads for business. So it's that combination of
Speaker 1: knowing what the performers want to get out of it
Speaker 1: and the audiences want to get out of it. So
Speaker 1: hopefully the performers come and have a good time, the
Speaker 1: audiences have a good time, and it's kind of symbiotic
Speaker 1: and it goes from there. And I think Fred Armison
Speaker 1: once said is like many summer camp, which we kind
Speaker 1: of lean on that quote because it kind of is
Speaker 1: like any given weekend because of the volume shows we have.
Speaker 1: There's so many performers in town, and so many people
Speaker 1: are friends with each other, and then I just don't
Speaker 1: get to hang out that often because they're not in
Speaker 1: the same town. So that's kind of the fun part
Speaker 1: of it is at the end of the night at
Speaker 1: the parties, you know, at midnight, there's like a hundred
Speaker 1: people in a room that all barely see each other
Speaker 1: and are excited to come together and kind of cross
Speaker 1: polity to each other's shows and stuff. So yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it's um I think stuff you should know has been
Speaker 1: there for maybe five years straight or at least four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's always, you know, one of our favorite things
Speaker 1: to do every year, and we get to see all
Speaker 1: of our friends because you guys are kind enough to
Speaker 1: book us of the weekend where you know, word Colton
Speaker 1: and Hodgeman and beIN Acker and the guys are all there,
Speaker 1: and and Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison, so we're all
Speaker 1: of our buddies are kind of all there at the
Speaker 1: same time, Paula Tompkins, and it's just it's just sort
Speaker 1: of a fun weekend of celebration with each other. It's
Speaker 1: really great. Yeah, we love it. We were pretty cognitive
Speaker 1: of that, like when we put stuff together of like, okay,
Speaker 1: well that'll be the weekend of all the thrilling people,
Speaker 1: all the podcasts on Maximum Fun, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: because you guys all want to be at the same time,
Speaker 1: which is cool. Um, And that's always the weird thing
Speaker 1: is like everybody's there's three kind of weekends, so we
Speaker 1: have shows on weeknights to we only stayed dark on
Speaker 1: Mondays if we can. Sometimes we can't. We could do
Speaker 1: Carrol Burnett and on on Monday because that's when she could do.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a different weekend for each
Speaker 1: of these performers that are coming through. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: try to put the same kind of folk on the
Speaker 1: same weekend, which also sometimes sucks because we have to
Speaker 1: program shows that have a very similar audience base at
Speaker 1: the same time, and it's kind of, yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: choose one, sorry, audience or whatever, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's an embarrassment of riches. When you get
Speaker 1: to that point, you know, yeah, um, who's the biggest
Speaker 1: I know, Carrol Burnett was a really big deal. Who
Speaker 1: who for you has been kind of the coolest, biggest
Speaker 1: person in your life that you've been able to meet
Speaker 1: and work with? Their how it's been crazy? I mean
Speaker 1: early on for us it was Kids in the Hall
Speaker 1: because they were kind of our heroes and and that
Speaker 1: was kind of a goal of ours just to get
Speaker 1: the Kids in the Hall to a festival. So we
Speaker 1: kind of got them individually first, like Bruce McCulloch can
Speaker 1: did one of his solo shows and fully I think
Speaker 1: came into that too, and then Scott came in did something,
Speaker 1: and then Kevin did something, and then I think Mark
Speaker 1: was the last one we got when we did a
Speaker 1: full Kids in the Hall like Sketch Live Sketch show
Speaker 1: and a tribute where we had them in conversation and
Speaker 1: I remember there's a moment where um, they had a
Speaker 1: big suite over at the Marriott, which was like our
Speaker 1: sponsor hotel that one one year only, but we used
Speaker 1: them that one year, and I remember all of us
Speaker 1: were up there hanging out in this big like sweet
Speaker 1: at the Marriott with the kids in the hall and
Speaker 1: being like, okay, um, we're here now. So yeah, that
Speaker 1: is amazing. I was on the elevator with Bruce McCullough
Speaker 1: one year and I just like, I couldn't even say anything.
Speaker 1: And I'm usually pretty good about that, but I, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I froze up. It's funny because like he
Speaker 1: he and Janet are pretty good friends. And I remember
Speaker 1: once we went and saw the National at the Hollywood
Speaker 1: Bowl and Bruce came with Janet and afterwards we were leaving,
Speaker 1: he was he had a backpack on in a ball
Speaker 1: cap and he looked just like Gavin his character and
Speaker 1: it was just hard to not like the National ways
Speaker 1: eight and a half pound. Um did he have cabbage
Speaker 1: on his head? Pretty much? So yes, that was early on.
Speaker 1: That was a big one for me. Since then, like
Speaker 1: we've gotten so many of our heroes, and Carolman obviously
Speaker 1: was huge. Um, Alan Arkin was one of my like heroes.
Speaker 1: So we've had him, Like my white whale right now
Speaker 1: is Albert Brooks because he's my comedy hero. Never had
Speaker 1: but we've been trying and I think one year we will.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's interested it just hasn't worked out yet.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, it's been crazy the amount of people
Speaker 1: we've gotten there, and it's gotten I don't get star
Speaker 1: struck anymore because of the volume in which we get
Speaker 1: these people over. I mean, obviously there's some people that
Speaker 1: I'm a little more like I'm just gonna say hello
Speaker 1: and shake their hands and that's it goodbye, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not going to try to strike up a conversation. But
Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy. It's very surreal every year. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I mean just what you guys have managed
Speaker 1: to put together or it's just amazing and um, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's one of those festivals. It's just there's a good
Speaker 1: vibe everywhere you go. It's staying in that hotel is
Speaker 1: fun because like you never know who's going to cruise
Speaker 1: through that lobby or be on the elevator with you,
Speaker 1: and it's all very chill and you know, probably because
Speaker 1: it's San Francisco, and um, it's just a great vibe.
Speaker 1: I have a have a great time every single year.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys keep inviting us that we definitely well,
Speaker 1: that's one of the wonderful things about the festivals. We
Speaker 1: finally get somebody for the first time, and then most
Speaker 1: of the time they want to come back, and then
Speaker 1: they become staple the festival year after year. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool and um our our listeners look forward to
Speaker 1: us coming every January at the Castro and Janet his um.
Speaker 1: I've told her this too. She has always pushed me
Speaker 1: to do things that I didn't think I could do.
Speaker 1: And I got to do the in Conversation with the
Speaker 1: Baskets UH TV show and so I you know, I
Speaker 1: was on stage with Zach and Louie Anderson and just
Speaker 1: like that was a huge career moment for me and
Speaker 1: I just thank you guys for letting me be a
Speaker 1: part of it. Of course. Yeah, it's crazy how far
Speaker 1: Janet's com I mean, like I just remember back when
Speaker 1: we were doing sketch together, she was selling furniture, like
Speaker 1: that's what she did and going to school she had
Speaker 1: transferred from Arizona where she's from and stuff, and so
Speaker 1: she was very very shy about it, like she didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of confidence at first. And I just
Speaker 1: remember I wrote for her a lot because I thought
Speaker 1: she was really funny and like she it took her
Speaker 1: a little while to like believe it and then what
Speaker 1: she did. She's amazing and she always has been and
Speaker 1: lo and behold, she's the one that really took off
Speaker 1: and has has an amazing career and I still get
Speaker 1: to work with her all the time. I see her
Speaker 1: less here in l A, even though we both live here.
Speaker 1: Then when we're in San Francisco, because she's in the
Speaker 1: East side. I'm on the west side, which so you
Speaker 1: might as well be like New York l A at
Speaker 1: that point. It's so far but yeah, yeah, how far
Speaker 1: west are you? I am in Century City, so kind
Speaker 1: I'm kind of near that mall. Uh yeah. So I
Speaker 1: like it a lot. It's like central West Side. The
Speaker 1: only thing that's hard to get to is like Burbank
Speaker 1: because there's no real I gotta go around her over.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty easy to get to Cinema. I got
Speaker 1: pretty easy to get into Hollywood. So I like it
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, that's awesome. Man, Um, where are you from? Originally?
Speaker 1: I was born in East Lansing, so I grew up
Speaker 1: in Okamist, Michigan. UM lived there till I was nine,
Speaker 1: and then my mom she worked at Michigan State and
Speaker 1: then she got basically the same job, but at U C.
Speaker 1: Davis for like double the salary or whatever. So it
Speaker 1: was like, okay, pack up the camper, here we go
Speaker 1: to California. We moved out to Davis, California, which is
Speaker 1: where my folks still are and where most of my
Speaker 1: formulative years are from nine through you know, the end
Speaker 1: of high school, and that's where I still go back
Speaker 1: for holidays and stuff. And was San Francisco after that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That that's um interesting you mentioned that age range because
Speaker 1: that's sort of where I like to talk to people
Speaker 1: about their formative movie going years, which for me are
Speaker 1: like ten or eleven through you know, seventeen or eighteen. Um,
Speaker 1: what what movies were you into? Was this something that
Speaker 1: you were always because I've seen, you know, we're on
Speaker 1: face Facebook together and I see you have an amaze
Speaker 1: in collection of movie posters that you display regularly on
Speaker 1: Facebook and it's it's truly impressive, and so I know
Speaker 1: you're a really big movie buff. Was that always your bag? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I always? Um, I like to say I'm a child
Speaker 1: of HBO um because because like you know, I was
Speaker 1: born in seventy six, so like, you know, mid eighties
Speaker 1: was really like when my film stuff started happening, and
Speaker 1: my dad was like really into movies and stuff too,
Speaker 1: when he passed down a lot of classic films, so
Speaker 1: I was getting both the HBO things that I watched
Speaker 1: all the time. So there's a good twenty movies or
Speaker 1: so that, like, I will defend at the end of time.
Speaker 1: I know they're not great movies necessarily that I've seen that.
Speaker 1: I've seen girls just want to have fun and cloak
Speaker 1: and dagger in the Pirate Movie, in the Last Unicorn
Speaker 1: a million times. Um, So I love those things to
Speaker 1: death and I get that, you know, for me, the
Speaker 1: eighties are the sweet spot. That's all the stuff that
Speaker 1: like I have such romance for, so to speak. And
Speaker 1: then the nineties is really where I started to kind
Speaker 1: of go into explore wearing all sorts of film. I
Speaker 1: worked in indie video stores for like fifteen years, uh
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and then even down here when I
Speaker 1: first moved here, so I was really into physical media.
Speaker 1: I still have like two thousand blue rays and DVDs,
Speaker 1: So which is you know, they're not all on streaming people.
Speaker 1: I know you think that they are, but they're not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're speaking to the heart of many movie
Speaker 1: crush listeners, because there are a lot of people that
Speaker 1: have vast libraries and take it pretty seriously. Um, I
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. With the HBO. There were
Speaker 1: I called them HBO movies. I mean they were there
Speaker 1: were movies. They weren't made by HBO, but there were
Speaker 1: movies that I watched just incessantly just because they were
Speaker 1: on and in that same gap. I'm I think I'm
Speaker 1: about five years older than you, but it's it's that
Speaker 1: same window of time where uh, HBO came into your
Speaker 1: house and between that and MTV, like it changed my life.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, fully, I mean that. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: funny because I don't watch cable that much even anymore,
Speaker 1: even though I have a billion annals and I'll flip around.
Speaker 1: I'll just put movies on if I'm working because I
Speaker 1: work from home for the festival. Sometimes I'm just doing
Speaker 1: a lot of busy work on my computer, and like,
Speaker 1: if there's certain movies out they're just on cable. I'll
Speaker 1: just leave them on in the background. I just won't
Speaker 1: ever change off, like Mr Monto or Major League or whatever, like,
Speaker 1: they just will constantly be on because Silverado, Like, they're
Speaker 1: just things that I just love and it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what part it is, because I've seen him a bunch
Speaker 1: of times. It's like, oh cool, I'll just pick it
Speaker 1: up right here. Awesome. So yeah, but HBO definitely was
Speaker 1: the one. I still like love. I have that theme
Speaker 1: song stuck in my head still, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: oh god. So yeah, that was the best, that flying
Speaker 1: Hbos symbol that would come over town. Yeah. Someone posted
Speaker 1: that on our on our Facebook page the movie Crush
Speaker 1: on the other day, and it's just it's impossible to
Speaker 1: see that and not just be awash in a wave
Speaker 1: of nostalgia. Yeah, And I think what was great about
Speaker 1: that time and what's confusing about this time is you
Speaker 1: didn't have choices. And I like that, like you had choices,
Speaker 1: but you didn't have what you have now, which is
Speaker 1: like needles and haystecks of needles, whereas before it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you had a pitchfork, so you could at
Speaker 1: least bay all through the hay um. So like not
Speaker 1: movies come out and it's like you don't you look
Speaker 1: at the cashmick, how have been heard of this? How
Speaker 1: is this not in the theater is that kind of
Speaker 1: thing or back then, it's like movies came out in
Speaker 1: the theater. There was like three or four that opened
Speaker 1: on a weekend, and then it used to take like
Speaker 1: six months to a year for it to come out
Speaker 1: on vhs. Like you had a legit amount of time
Speaker 1: to wait for the movies. Now it's like if you
Speaker 1: don't see in the theater, you're like, oh, I'll be
Speaker 1: on demand in like three weeks or whatever, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: So like that was, and when vhs came out, they
Speaker 1: cost so you had to wait for them to get
Speaker 1: to price to own, so it was so crazy like that.
Speaker 1: It was just like a different pace of living. Everything
Speaker 1: was slower and if you think about it, even though
Speaker 1: at that time the generation before was saying like stop
Speaker 1: living so fast with your VCRs and whatever. But it
Speaker 1: used to be that you would call somebody, you'd leave
Speaker 1: a message on their message machine, and then when they
Speaker 1: called you, you called them back the next day, or
Speaker 1: they called you back the next day. You're like, thanks
Speaker 1: for calling me back so quick. Right now, it's like
Speaker 1: I texted you fifteen minutes ago. Are you dead? Know
Speaker 1: what the funk is wrong? Right? Do you have do
Speaker 1: you have COVID nineteen exactly. So that's just I kind
Speaker 1: of missed that time. I missed that kind of like
Speaker 1: slower pace of everything, even though there's still a lot happening.
Speaker 1: But and I think that enabled me to like watch
Speaker 1: movies and not think about it, just like enjoy them
Speaker 1: and be able to relax. Now it just feels like
Speaker 1: there's something I should be doing. There's something I should
Speaker 1: be doing, and it's harder for me to, like, I
Speaker 1: want to sit down and watch movies as much I
Speaker 1: feel guilty when I do it. I still watch a
Speaker 1: ton of movies, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: have the same kind of childhood glee that it once did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I talk a lot about um, certainly great movies
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, in nineteen seventies, some of the
Speaker 1: most iconic films ever. But I talk a lot about
Speaker 1: just like nineteen eight two or nineteen eighties. If you
Speaker 1: go back and occasionally someone will scan in like the
Speaker 1: newspaper movie section from that one of those years, and
Speaker 1: it's staggering the quality of of the movies that came out.
Speaker 1: We're just really good movies. I mean, they might not
Speaker 1: be the biggest blockbusters or these iconic films, but movies
Speaker 1: like you know, Absence of Malice or The Verdict like
Speaker 1: these call them adult films, like adult dramas that you
Speaker 1: just don't see enough of anymore. It's really and and
Speaker 1: I don't want to be the old guy that's talking
Speaker 1: about how you know, things of my day were so
Speaker 1: much better. But I think week to week, every Friday
Speaker 1: there were a couple of really good movies that would
Speaker 1: come out. It felt like, yeah, for sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think movies were built different then. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you go back to the old Hollywood system, they're all
Speaker 1: built kind of on a formula. But the formula was
Speaker 1: like take your time, hit these marks or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the au tour stuff happened with you know,
Speaker 1: Easy Writer and and Godfather and all that stuff Scorsese
Speaker 1: and then the kind of studio system kind of got
Speaker 1: freaked out. Um. But so then it was kind of
Speaker 1: a clash between that where the indie film and and
Speaker 1: and the system and stuff after that. But I just
Speaker 1: feel like they're if you, yeah, you look like a
Speaker 1: two four. I mean, eighty four is kind of when
Speaker 1: all the blockbustery stuff started happening because you had Grandus
Speaker 1: and Ghostbusters and all that kind of stuff. I think
Speaker 1: Raiders was at eighty four. Was that I think it was.
Speaker 1: There might have been eight. I think that was a two,
Speaker 1: but like that's kind of I mean, obviously Jaws was
Speaker 1: the first, like the thing that set the whole Blockbuster
Speaker 1: chain going, But I just kind of feel like then
Speaker 1: it was more tentpole summer event movies from that point on. Um,
Speaker 1: and then like the art films are still open or
Speaker 1: they still be there because the studios had prestige films
Speaker 1: they wanted to get out there in addition to their
Speaker 1: popcorn movies. Yeah, and now it's like every weekend, it's
Speaker 1: like you're lucky if you live in a town that
Speaker 1: will get the movies that aren't the big studio movies
Speaker 1: that planned three thousand screens. Yeah, that's where you kind
Speaker 1: of have to look these days. I think you're Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are still some good studio films, but
Speaker 1: there are a few and four between that aren't Marvel movies.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love those movies, but you have to
Speaker 1: kind of look to the indie world a little more,
Speaker 1: do a little more curating and searching. Um, I feel
Speaker 1: like you could write a book about this kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I thought about that. I've thought about I
Speaker 1: thought about doing some sort of podcast on eighties movies
Speaker 1: and stuff, especially where I thought I would like take
Speaker 1: a movie and really deconstruct it and be like, here's
Speaker 1: here's the audio from the trailer, this is how they
Speaker 1: did it, here's the marketing, here's that stuff. Because it's
Speaker 1: really fascinating, especially if you like most of those old
Speaker 1: trailers are on YouTube and other places too, if you
Speaker 1: just look them up or if you end up down
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole Systel and Ebert reviews. That's always fun
Speaker 1: because like it's just fun to see what they thought
Speaker 1: of things at the time because time and distance from movies.
Speaker 1: It's just good weird to see how things were received
Speaker 1: initially versus now movies that are classics are like panned
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff too. But yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: it's weird to look back and all how that all went. Um.
Speaker 1: But the trailers are great too, and that like they
Speaker 1: did voice over on almost all of them, and they
Speaker 1: don't do that anymore. It's just like music, you're lucky
Speaker 1: if you get in a world, even in a world
Speaker 1: is an old true now but most of like if
Speaker 1: you look back on those eighties movies especially, it's always
Speaker 1: just like Charlie Babbitt is a wonderful lawyer, but he's
Speaker 1: about to have the Weekend from Hell. Like they literally
Speaker 1: spell it all out for you. Yeah, you're great, and
Speaker 1: they just don't do it anymore. And then like the
Speaker 1: voices used to be, not the not the Fred Melama
Speaker 1: is not the like the low like in a world
Speaker 1: where it was more conversational, it was like different. It's
Speaker 1: just different. And it's just interesting to see it now
Speaker 1: because if you play one of those trailers now before
Speaker 1: a movie, people would laugh at it. They'd be like,
Speaker 1: that's so cheesy. Doesn't mean you want to see it.
Speaker 1: I don't get it up, but that's what it was like.
Speaker 1: It's just weird how much things have changed to be
Speaker 1: slick and evokes certain feelings and not actually tell you
Speaker 1: kind of what the movie is half the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this leads me to the movie posters in your collection.
Speaker 1: I think we can both agree that movie posters nowadays
Speaker 1: are awful and yeah, they're there's fucking terrible and and
Speaker 1: so formulaic and with all the faces. And you've got
Speaker 1: a really great collection of both foreign not foreign films,
Speaker 1: but foreign versions of American movies, which is really fun. Um.
Speaker 1: The first time I traveled to Europe, I took a
Speaker 1: lot of pictures of of American of you know, European
Speaker 1: versions of American movie posters and the titles. But when
Speaker 1: did that start? And what is your collection all about
Speaker 1: to you? So? I mean, I love the alternative, any
Speaker 1: alternative art. Orc for posters, I love because there's a
Speaker 1: certain thing you've seen a billion times, but when you
Speaker 1: see us, different countries take on it are different. I
Speaker 1: just love it. And how the titles are different stuff too.
Speaker 1: I just find them entertaining as well. But for me,
Speaker 1: like I worked, I was obsessed obsessive movies growing up.
Speaker 1: So my room was just covered in movie posters that
Speaker 1: I got, like free from the video store that I
Speaker 1: would just frequent And I even had a couple of
Speaker 1: the cardboards standis, like the big ones because they when
Speaker 1: they were going to toss them out, they would given
Speaker 1: to me. So in my room I had Willow broadcast
Speaker 1: news and dy dancing. And you don't you don't see
Speaker 1: a lot of like you know, ten year old kids
Speaker 1: of the broadcast news standy. But that's why that's my
Speaker 1: second favorite movie. Like I love it to death, but
Speaker 1: it's just one of those I just loved it all
Speaker 1: and like I would just like the room I was
Speaker 1: given we moved into our replace in Davis. I think
Speaker 1: was like a little girl's room at the time. So
Speaker 1: I had like strawberry wallpapers. Is weird? It wasn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't love it, so I just just like covering it
Speaker 1: up with movie posters. I just plastered over it. So
Speaker 1: I had so many and then I would just you know,
Speaker 1: get something new and replace it. But I didn't like
Speaker 1: like protect them. They were just taped up there like
Speaker 1: there's no thought and about value. It was just like
Speaker 1: this is cool, and I just think back they're so
Speaker 1: weird too, Like I hadn Deane up there with Jeff
Speaker 1: Bridges and Convintion, like what is that? But it was
Speaker 1: just like, I like those actors, this is a cool
Speaker 1: looking poster. Why not um? And I would just keeps
Speaker 1: constantly cycle through it. So I think I always kind
Speaker 1: of have that. And then as they started to kind
Speaker 1: of really get serious about movies because I technically went
Speaker 1: to San Francisco State four film. I was enrolled in
Speaker 1: the film program there. My degree is in cinema with
Speaker 1: an emphasis on direction. Fat a lot of good I'm
Speaker 1: doing with that, but um, but it was different then
Speaker 1: too because the film I was I learned to edit
Speaker 1: on a flatbed, like, it wasn't digital, So it was
Speaker 1: just different. It was just you know, you'd you'd go
Speaker 1: back and you look at the film and what you
Speaker 1: thought was fast wasn't wasn't fast because you were cranking
Speaker 1: it too fast. And then you look at it and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my god, this is the slowest cut
Speaker 1: thing in the history of the world. Um. But it
Speaker 1: was just a different like feelings. So as I started
Speaker 1: to go through that, um and I started to work
Speaker 1: at indie video stores and stuff too, I would start
Speaker 1: to get posters that were like I had a I
Speaker 1: used to get reproductions because I didn't really think much
Speaker 1: like about value of it. So I had like a
Speaker 1: gold Finger poster on my wall, like the British UK
Speaker 1: Quad version, that kind of stuff. And then I just
Speaker 1: started kind of getting excited about these like foreign film
Speaker 1: posters I would find for American movies and stuff, and
Speaker 1: I just started collecting them. And at first I would
Speaker 1: put them up, but now I have hundreds. So a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago I realized these are just sitting
Speaker 1: in a closet. I just take these all out, photograph
Speaker 1: them and then periodically post them on my socials as
Speaker 1: a way of hanging them without hanging them. Um, and
Speaker 1: I still have at it. Thanks. Thanks, And it's not
Speaker 1: hard to find them, Like you can go on eBay
Speaker 1: and just you know, literally just look at originals non
Speaker 1: US years or whatever and just kind of scroll through
Speaker 1: and some stuff is ridiculously expensive. But I'll order like,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty from Australia that are arranging from like
Speaker 1: three d ten dollars each and then ends up being
Speaker 1: just like you know, a hundred fifty bucks or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I got a much cool posters. So they're all
Speaker 1: out there, and they're not They're undervalued a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, especially if you like movies that aren't the
Speaker 1: big blockbusters. Yeah, what is your what is your most
Speaker 1: prized possession? I know that's a tough one. Or do
Speaker 1: you have a oh that's stuff. I think it might be.
Speaker 1: I have some that are are signed by people that
Speaker 1: I got either through the festival or my podcast or whatever.
Speaker 1: I have a Swedish Young Frankenstein posters signed by Gene Wilder. Um.
Speaker 1: We did a uh kind of a tribute to him.
Speaker 1: Ended up being a post festival event because he can
Speaker 1: only come in March to time with the book release.
Speaker 1: So he did like a book release signing and a
Speaker 1: screening of Young Frankistein and then like a conversation Q
Speaker 1: and A with him, and it was just like magical.
Speaker 1: And while the film ran, we all went and got dinner.
Speaker 1: And that's like probably the most surreal night of my life.
Speaker 1: Sixth top of Us. It was like Jean and his
Speaker 1: wife and me, Janet and Dave and Sydney Goldstein who
Speaker 1: used to run City Arts and Lectures who pass away
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, her husband and we were just,
Speaker 1: you know, stare chatting and I wasn't there's somebody between
Speaker 1: me and him, so I wasn't talking to him that much.
Speaker 1: But we rode over together and you know, what do
Speaker 1: you talk about on a car ride with Gene Wilder.
Speaker 1: He just kind of pressed about the rates of houses
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, I think, and expensive is the answer. Um.
Speaker 1: But it was crazy, and there's been a few nights
Speaker 1: like that like we went and we got beers with
Speaker 1: Terry Jones after we did Holy Grail and stuff, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, he this is about five or six years
Speaker 1: before them and just set in and then he passed
Speaker 1: recently too. So there's just things like that that are
Speaker 1: just like these are things that people nowadays would like
Speaker 1: have to win and like one of those like by
Speaker 1: three worth of things and one person will win this thing.
Speaker 1: And these are just things we got to do. And
Speaker 1: it's just crazy to me. And I'm just glad that,
Speaker 1: like I'm somebody who would appreciate it, because there's people
Speaker 1: that get that ship all the time that don't, which
Speaker 1: is crazy to me. Yeah, that's unbelievable. Gene Wilder, boy,
Speaker 1: that's special. He's he's up there for me, that would
Speaker 1: have been, uh intimidating. Everything I've heard about him is
Speaker 1: that he was the biggest sweetheart of a man in
Speaker 1: the history of the world. You know. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: very soft spoken and gentle and sweet and funny. Still
Speaker 1: very very sharp and funny. Then he I think it
Speaker 1: had already retired from acting, or I think he was
Speaker 1: doing a couple of those like TV mystery things for
Speaker 1: that character. Like he liked to do, but that was it.
Speaker 1: He hasn't done any features after that. I know Spielberg
Speaker 1: was trying to coax him out of retirement to do
Speaker 1: Ready Player one. Um wow, yep, which would have been crazy.
Speaker 1: But he I think he was an ill health then
Speaker 1: and I don't think they wanted that to get out
Speaker 1: because think he died like six months or a year
Speaker 1: later or something. But um, yeah, he was trying to
Speaker 1: get him out for that. That That would have been crazy. Yeah, cheez,
Speaker 1: that's unbelievable. He um, yeah, he would have been. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I would have said to Gene Wilder.
Speaker 1: I would have been super intimidated. It's crazy because you
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about their work because obviously they've
Speaker 1: talked about their work a billion times. Even though you
Speaker 1: would love to be like, what was it like working
Speaker 1: with Prior? What was it you know whatever? Like Brooks.
Speaker 1: You know that you like Mel didn't find putting on
Speaker 1: the Rits funny, but you did. How did you fight
Speaker 1: for that or whatever? But you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to come at them as a fanboy. You want to
Speaker 1: come out as a peer at the best, you know,
Speaker 1: like Or's just somebody that he can talk to, he
Speaker 1: can be free, he can take he can take off
Speaker 1: his persona that a lot of actors and stuff have
Speaker 1: to do, and just like chat about whatever you want
Speaker 1: to chat about, you know, whether that's other movies or
Speaker 1: whether that's whatever, it doesn't matter. I think I would
Speaker 1: have to break proto call a little bit though, because
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to come across as indifferent to who
Speaker 1: he is as well, So I would have to sneak
Speaker 1: in something about Blazing Saddles or Willy Wonka or or
Speaker 1: speaking of HBO movies of that era, The Woman in
Speaker 1: Red was a movie I probably saw thirteen times as
Speaker 1: a youth. All the Charles Grodin blind stuff in that
Speaker 1: movie just oh man, it's so good. He was just
Speaker 1: so good. I mean even in his like movies that
Speaker 1: were kind of pan his lesser works that are speaking,
Speaker 1: like Haunted Honeymoon, Hanky Panky, like those were HBO movies.
Speaker 1: I watched the hell out of Haunted Honeymoon. So yeah,
Speaker 1: now I totally did too. There's people you're watching anything,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what they're is just joy to see
Speaker 1: them on screen, and he was one of them. That
Speaker 1: is amazing. So before we get going with the movie.
Speaker 1: I do want to cover really quickly. I saw on
Speaker 1: Facebook the past few days, you have you have watched
Speaker 1: the Add Boys movies? Movies that I have never seen. Uh.
Speaker 1: I worked with Michael Bay one time. I was at
Speaker 1: p A on a TV commercial that he directed, and
Speaker 1: it was one of the most interesting, enjoyable and surreal
Speaker 1: commercial shoots I've ever been on. UM, but what were
Speaker 1: those movies? Like? Are they any good? You know, it's weird.
Speaker 1: I've seen most everything in that era, you know, working videos.
Speaker 1: Was I just push it on in the background if
Speaker 1: but I somehow I just never seen the Bad Boys movies.
Speaker 1: I was always aware of them, but just had never
Speaker 1: put him in. I think I missed the first one,
Speaker 1: and then when the second one came out, I was like,
Speaker 1: why didn't see the first one? And at that time
Speaker 1: it was a little harder to kind of they weren't
Speaker 1: playing a TV and I didn't really want to rent
Speaker 1: it or whatever. So I just finally decided. My wife
Speaker 1: and I were just talking and I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I've never seen the Bad Boys movies. She's like, I
Speaker 1: haven't either, and I was like, well, I guess we
Speaker 1: should watch the Bad Boys movies and how was the time.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah at the time, and they're on Netflix,
Speaker 1: the first two and the third one just just became
Speaker 1: rentable on iTunes, so we watched them. And it's weird
Speaker 1: because you know, I'll get people will write about my
Speaker 1: movie picks and I put them up there and my
Speaker 1: posters or whatever, and like, right now I'm doing this
Speaker 1: Quarantine film fest thing that I just decided to do.
Speaker 1: Or I'm like picking like thirty your favorite movies one
Speaker 1: movie a day. I'm not necessarily watching them now. I'm
Speaker 1: just like posting one a day just to be like,
Speaker 1: I love this movie and whatever. But those would get
Speaker 1: some responses. But the Bad Boys thing has caused a
Speaker 1: lot of conversation on my wall because people love those movies,
Speaker 1: like and I realized it's for people a bit younger
Speaker 1: than me that like the nineties were their HBO movies
Speaker 1: so to speak, and so that for them was huge
Speaker 1: because the first one came out in ninety five, which
Speaker 1: means I was like my second year of college, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's two thousand three, two thousand twenties, like most trilogies do. Um,
Speaker 1: So the first one to me, like that's everybody kept
Speaker 1: saying watch to watch two two is the best one
Speaker 1: watched to watch too. Um, which it's always annoying when
Speaker 1: you get that for series or things like at to Like, oh,
Speaker 1: the first season of Buffy's terrible, but season two is great,
Speaker 1: but you need to watch season one. But you know so,
Speaker 1: so I gotta I gotta suffer through twelve terrible episodes
Speaker 1: to get to where it's good. We'll do appreciate where
Speaker 1: it's good, okay, whatever. So we watched Bad Boys, and
Speaker 1: like I thought I was okay, Like I didn't. The
Speaker 1: has a conceit in it, a plot mechanic that I hate.
Speaker 1: It's one of my pet peeves and movies, which is
Speaker 1: mistaken identity and it goes on for fucking ever. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things where like she only will deal
Speaker 1: with Mike Lowry and that's that's Will Smith, and like
Speaker 1: she gets Martin Lawrence and he's like has to pretend
Speaker 1: he's Mike Lowry and takes her back to his apartment
Speaker 1: and it's pictures of him, of Will Smith everywhere, and
Speaker 1: she thinks he's gay because you know, gay panic still
Speaker 1: happening in the nineties, and um, it's three company, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and three companies fine? For what three company is? No?
Speaker 1: I love but sure, I get I get what you're saying.
Speaker 1: But this drags on for over an hour of the
Speaker 1: mistaken identity thing, and I was like, this would have
Speaker 1: been a good scene or two. This would have been
Speaker 1: a good ten minutes. And I always get frustrated in
Speaker 1: movies where a simple conversation clears things up. I just
Speaker 1: hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it when like,
Speaker 1: like I always think about Shrek as an example of
Speaker 1: like he's about to tell her how he feels, and
Speaker 1: he goes to the door to knock, and then she's
Speaker 1: saying something out of context and he hears that, and
Speaker 1: so he doesn't knock and he watch Like I hate
Speaker 1: so much it makes me. It frustrates me. It frustrates
Speaker 1: me so that so watching that movie, I just just
Speaker 1: getting frustrated with it. I was like, okay, just say
Speaker 1: like I'm his partner, like he will be here tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Do would you rather go ouside and get shot at?
Speaker 1: Like that would have sufficed, But they wanted to mind
Speaker 1: the comedy out of it, which then took away the logic.
Speaker 1: And like, I'm fine with things being brand less action movies.
Speaker 1: I love them, but at a certain point when you're
Speaker 1: this is just going on and on and on, I
Speaker 1: was just like, oh my god, cleared up. Please let's
Speaker 1: move forward to the third act. Um. So I didn't
Speaker 1: love the first one. I thought it was fine. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I thought their chemistry was good and stuff, and I
Speaker 1: could see like, okay, this is potential. But then everybody
Speaker 1: was saying watch to watch, to watch two. So we
Speaker 1: watched two. It's like two and a half hours long,
Speaker 1: which the movies are way too long, does not need
Speaker 1: to be and um, it's way over the top. It's better,
Speaker 1: it's shot better, the action sequences are more exciting. The
Speaker 1: camaraderie is better in a sense too, but it's still
Speaker 1: like very uneven and like still ridiculous lapses in logic
Speaker 1: per usual. But that's fine. I don't mind that. Um.
Speaker 1: But then I felt like, okay, we should watch three.
Speaker 1: Three just got rentable yesterday, so we should complete the trilogy,
Speaker 1: um and watch that one. And honestly, I might have
Speaker 1: liked it the best, only because I saw them all
Speaker 1: at once, and it's a little more of a modern sensibility. Now.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little more grounded and logic, even
Speaker 1: though it's still ridiculous. But I don't know, I thought
Speaker 1: it was pretty good and and I would give them
Speaker 1: all like two and a half stars out of five,
Speaker 1: like that's kind of where they said, that's kind where
Speaker 1: they stay with me, you know, like moments, good moments.
Speaker 1: But I don't have the same emotional attachment to them
Speaker 1: as people that were raised on them or grew up
Speaker 1: with it, right, And we'll forgive those things because it
Speaker 1: meant a lot to them when they were twelve, you know.
Speaker 1: I didn't have that. But there are definitely little holes here,
Speaker 1: and there are movies like that that I haven't seen
Speaker 1: and periodically realizing like, all right, I'll go I have
Speaker 1: the time, now, I'll go back and check them out
Speaker 1: and see what I was missing. Yeah, I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of those holes. There's a whole uh spade of
Speaker 1: movies from the nineties that because those were you know,
Speaker 1: uh my college years as well. And I certainly went
Speaker 1: to a lot of movies and I worked at the
Speaker 1: cool video store, but I didn't go see everything that
Speaker 1: came out because you know, when you're in college, you're
Speaker 1: just doing a lot of other stuff and I never
Speaker 1: saw any of those movies. I never saw any of
Speaker 1: the h and people can't believe that. I've never seen
Speaker 1: any of the Happy Madison movies or the the Spade
Speaker 1: Farley movies. I've never seen any of those. I never
Speaker 1: saw the the Jackie chan Owen Wilson stuff. What were
Speaker 1: those Shanghai Neon and Shanghai Nights? And I didn't see those?
Speaker 1: Are they good? I think they're really good. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: at least the first one is. I think it's it's
Speaker 1: a fun comedy. Um. And like the Happy Madison, like
Speaker 1: Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, all that stuff, like I those
Speaker 1: were in college. For me, I watched was in college.
Speaker 1: I love them. I still have a spot for them,
Speaker 1: but I know I realized they're not great movies. I
Speaker 1: recognize that, but I don't know why I didn't see those. Well.
Speaker 1: It's also weird too because like Tommy Boys fantastic. I
Speaker 1: think it still holds up. It's very funny, but then
Speaker 1: Black Sheep, which is right afterwards, is pretty abysmal. And
Speaker 1: so it's just weird how things can be like really
Speaker 1: hit and missed with the same you know, set of people. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I can see like, if you just miss those,
Speaker 1: it's hard to want to go back and watch those,
Speaker 1: though people will quote them around you all the time.
Speaker 1: Then you feel like you get a little bit of Bomo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I should probably go back and watch Tommy Boy.
Speaker 1: I've seen parts of a lot of these movies. Um
Speaker 1: was which was the Gulf? One? Was that Happy Gilmore's.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen most of that, but I
Speaker 1: never definitely never just sat down to watch that or
Speaker 1: saw it in the theater. Uh. And I like Sandler.
Speaker 1: It's certainly like what we're getting these days from him
Speaker 1: a lot more. But um, now is the time. Maybe
Speaker 1: I should just go start watching all this sort of
Speaker 1: popcorn Hollywood movies from the nineties. Sandler had such a
Speaker 1: weird trajectory to me, and that like, you know, he
Speaker 1: all the college bros and stuff loved those movies and
Speaker 1: they first came out, and like those two, especially Billy
Speaker 1: Madison Happy Gilmore, are like so goofy and so silly,
Speaker 1: and so many non sequiturs and things that don't make
Speaker 1: any sense whatsoever. They're just bits or whatever, but they're
Speaker 1: funny and they're very juvenile. And then wedding singer happened,
Speaker 1: and he started to get a little it's a little
Speaker 1: more serious in a sense. It was still accommoye that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was still a comedy, but he was kind of
Speaker 1: acting a little bit in it, you know, water very
Speaker 1: silly too. But then punch Drunk Drunk Love happened and
Speaker 1: it became like, oh Sandler as an actor, He's not
Speaker 1: just like a goofball, right. And then for a while
Speaker 1: after that he was in the gym carey thing of
Speaker 1: like serious stuff only and then you were kind of
Speaker 1: like make goofy movies again. And then he went to
Speaker 1: seriously goofy, like maybe the worst goofy movies and like
Speaker 1: the Netflix ones. He was doing Ridiculous six and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And Little Nikki I never saw,
Speaker 1: but that was supposed to be really bad, wouldn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that though is nineties and a time capsule. That is
Speaker 1: like probably the most nineties movie that exists, Like, watch it.
Speaker 1: It is so nineties. The soundtrack alone, like just go
Speaker 1: song and song to song. It's just it's it's, it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's Incubus was a movie. Um, it's it's Little Nicki.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good stuff, man. I feel like we could
Speaker 1: just talk about random movies forever. Maybe you can become
Speaker 1: like a regular guest and we could do some more
Speaker 1: fun stuff like this would be great, man, that'd be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Um. I think we will move
Speaker 1: on to Searching for Bobby Fisher. Which was your pick?
Speaker 1: Is your favorite film? Uh? This is a movie from three,
Speaker 1: I think right that I saw when it came out,
Speaker 1: um in ninety three. I was in college and Athens,
Speaker 1: and it's not a movie that I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why I saw it in the theater at the time,
Speaker 1: because it's, um, it's not a college movie that I
Speaker 1: would have that would have drawn me to the theater
Speaker 1: for some reason. But I got to watch it again
Speaker 1: this morning, and it's just purely magical in every way.
Speaker 1: It's great. And I don't know why you would see
Speaker 1: in college. It's not like you're like, bros, you guys
Speaker 1: want to go see this, Uh Father's Son Bonding Chess
Speaker 1: Prodigy movie. Oh, there's there's no reason you would do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I did. I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 1: saw in the theater, but I know I definitely saw
Speaker 1: it very soon on VHS. If that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: But um, tell me about your first experience with the
Speaker 1: movie and why before we kind of dig into it,
Speaker 1: what it means to you and why it's your favorite movie. Well,
Speaker 1: it was definitely VHS for me because I missed it
Speaker 1: in the theaters. Um because it didn't I mean I
Speaker 1: looked up some stuff on it, and like it opened
Speaker 1: at number nine in its first weekend. It had the
Speaker 1: third highest per screen average, but it was not on
Speaker 1: a lot of screens, and that's when like Fugitive is
Speaker 1: ruling the box office and like Jason Goes to Hell
Speaker 1: open that weekend, So that was number two, like it
Speaker 1: was nineteen, So like it wasn't really widespread and I
Speaker 1: didn't think to go see it, even I love all
Speaker 1: these people in it, especially now if you look back,
Speaker 1: like character actor Bonanza, Oh it's ridiculous, But um, I
Speaker 1: think I just we've rented it and I put it
Speaker 1: in and it was just like from frame one, I
Speaker 1: was just like my jaw just dropped, like the whole
Speaker 1: The feel of it to me is like the most
Speaker 1: like consistently magical. There's no tone issues whatsoever. It has
Speaker 1: a tone and it just nails it and it's just
Speaker 1: like it's perfect because it gives. It has every emotion
Speaker 1: in it to me, like it's it's it's sad at times,
Speaker 1: it's funny at times, it's very touching, it's very it's
Speaker 1: feel good. It's just like kind of everything. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not like a chess guy, you know, like I
Speaker 1: was gonna ask you that if I had anything to
Speaker 1: do with it. I played us a little bit, but
Speaker 1: like I'm just okay at it. Like I never bothered
Speaker 1: to learn theory or like you know, moving and stuff.
Speaker 1: It was just like, let's just play and if somebody's
Speaker 1: too good, I'd be like, well this is pointless. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't care about learning that much. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I like chess fine. I played like battle Chess on
Speaker 1: my PC and whatever else. But I think it was
Speaker 1: just like I always tell people that, like, well, really
Speaker 1: it's a father son movie with chess is just a
Speaker 1: vehicle for it. Um. And that's not to say that
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of things in it too. Obviously, Joan
Speaker 1: Allen's amazing as his mom and stuff too, and like
Speaker 1: everything with his buddy Morrigan and his sister and like
Speaker 1: and also this movie gets kids right, Like it's so
Speaker 1: goods kids right, and so many movies do not so good,
Speaker 1: just like just the feeler. I think little scenes, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's got little beats in it, so many little
Speaker 1: beats that when you watch it again you'll be like,
Speaker 1: that is so good. That is so perfect. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think people I've never met anybody who didn't like it.
Speaker 1: If they've seen it, they're like, oh I like that movie.
Speaker 1: They've never any met this be like oh what a bore,
Speaker 1: or like it's just I feel like it grabs you
Speaker 1: immediately and it doesn't let go, and it it's a
Speaker 1: combination of everything, the acting, the script, the score is
Speaker 1: beautiful to James Horner is so great, and the cinematography
Speaker 1: by Conrad Hall is so great. How do you make
Speaker 1: chess look good while you put it in the park
Speaker 1: in the rain and it looks amazing? It does, And
Speaker 1: he got nominated for an Oscar that year for cinematography,
Speaker 1: but he lost to Janie Kamiskey for Schindler's List? So
Speaker 1: what are you Gonna Do? Exactly and amazingly Shy a
Speaker 1: beautiful movie too, but um, it's just there's just nothing
Speaker 1: in it that I don't like. There's nothing in it
Speaker 1: that I can say I don't like about that movie. Yeah, jeez,
Speaker 1: there's a million things I want to talk about. Um.
Speaker 1: What occurred to me today for the first time is
Speaker 1: that it's a sports movie. Yeah it is. It is Rocky,
Speaker 1: it is karate Kid, it is Hoosier's Um. But it's
Speaker 1: also goodwill hunting and finding Forrester and Dead Poets Society.
Speaker 1: It's got elements of all and those are all movies
Speaker 1: that are just so dear to me, and it has
Speaker 1: elements of all those films. I feel like it. It
Speaker 1: does such a skillful job of dancing around tropes without
Speaker 1: fully going trophy. But but trope tropes are are comforting,
Speaker 1: Like that's why there are tropes, because they work, and
Speaker 1: we make fun of them a lot, but especially on
Speaker 1: movie Crush. But I think it veers towards trophy at times,
Speaker 1: but it knows just when to pull back. Um. And
Speaker 1: there's a couple of instances that I can think of specifically.
Speaker 1: One is just as a general plot device, they didn't
Speaker 1: make Joe montanea uh. He had his carrecter arc but
Speaker 1: it wasn't he wasn't living his life through his kid.
Speaker 1: He wasn't the guy that almost had it all but
Speaker 1: didn't quite make it, and now his son has to
Speaker 1: do it and they could have very easily done that.
Speaker 1: And the other the other big moment was at the
Speaker 1: end when he beats and it's okay, we're gonna jump
Speaker 1: all around. But at the end when he beats the
Speaker 1: jerk kid. Um who By the way, that guy died
Speaker 1: of cancer at eighteen. Did you know that? I did
Speaker 1: not know that. Yeah. I looked him up and I
Speaker 1: was like, where where did that kid go? And he
Speaker 1: very sadly passed away as a teenager. But um, after
Speaker 1: he loses he you see it through uh glass that
Speaker 1: is um frosted this sort of moment with his dad
Speaker 1: where he's sort of pulling away from him. But in
Speaker 1: another movie that would have been sort of front and
Speaker 1: center in this big scene where he pulls away from
Speaker 1: his dad and it's like you made me do this
Speaker 1: and I lost now and all, and so it sort
Speaker 1: of dances toward that line, but just sort of hints
Speaker 1: at it, which I thought was really smart. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's what one of the reasons I really love
Speaker 1: it is like I don't like unnecessary conflict in movies.
Speaker 1: I don't like things that like. I don't like tension
Speaker 1: for the sake of attention. I really don't like. One
Speaker 1: of my biggest pet peeves in movies in general is
Speaker 1: like I embarrassment humor. I just can't. I can't get
Speaker 1: behind it, I think because I have anxiety and issues
Speaker 1: like that too. Like I don't find me the Parents funny.
Speaker 1: I'm always just like, leave him alone, he's trying his best.
Speaker 1: Like that to me, Like that kind of stuff is
Speaker 1: hard for me to watch. There's not really moments of
Speaker 1: this in here. Like whenever the adversity happens, it happens
Speaker 1: in a way that like, this feels like it should happen,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't send characters reeling into a thing for
Speaker 1: an x amount of time. That's my problem with music
Speaker 1: biopics is like they almost always have a twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty minutes section of rock bottom when they're in rehab or.
Speaker 1: I was like, we know that that's going to happen,
Speaker 1: and there's no there's no way to show it in
Speaker 1: a fresh, new, exciting way. It's just an awful thing
Speaker 1: to watch as they push their friends and family away
Speaker 1: and do all the others too, Like how how about
Speaker 1: we just like this gloss over that maybe go to
Speaker 1: like show one instance to say like three years later
Speaker 1: or whatever. I get to the stuff that's more interesting
Speaker 1: to me unless that's what the movie is, fine, but
Speaker 1: in general, like that kind of stuff makes me crazy.
Speaker 1: And you're right about that, Like through the through the
Speaker 1: window from far away, it's not like really dwelled on
Speaker 1: and with his dad with Fred like he hes he
Speaker 1: there's never that thing too. It. I also hate when
Speaker 1: often is like this kid has a gift and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: he has to work on his studies or he has
Speaker 1: like there's that whole thing instead, Like at first he's
Speaker 1: just like okay, kind of dismisses it initially until it's
Speaker 1: very early proven to him. When you want to go
Speaker 1: to the lake and his kids beat beats him without
Speaker 1: even being in the room, he realizes like, oh okay,
Speaker 1: I get it now done as a gift, and it's
Speaker 1: my job to cultivate that but not make it the
Speaker 1: thing he does. And that's I think it's great about
Speaker 1: it too. It's a way to like like cultivate it
Speaker 1: and stuff like that too. But they have like rules
Speaker 1: of like there's no chest talk this weekend. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna go swimming, or we're just gonna want to be
Speaker 1: a kid. Like that's what's amazing about it is the
Speaker 1: protege kid obviously doesn't have be a kid. He just
Speaker 1: has a Rocky Ford destroy I will break you attitude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whereas like like Max Promac's character, like he never Josh
Speaker 1: never has a mean bone in his body ever, Like
Speaker 1: he's just a sweet kid. He's always a sweet kid.
Speaker 1: And that's what I like about it. And like when
Speaker 1: it's when Morgan his best friend is like not at
Speaker 1: the same level of him and chess, but you know,
Speaker 1: he's a chess player just like the whole like the
Speaker 1: last line in the movie, and this doesn't speak like
Speaker 1: don't see it, puts his arm around him and just says,
Speaker 1: you're a much stronger player than I was when I
Speaker 1: was your age. Like it's so it's such a sweet
Speaker 1: little moment to leave the movie. God, it was so great.
Speaker 1: And they're just two little boys with their arms around
Speaker 1: each other and he says that, and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: you know, ten fifteen in the morning, I'm just like
Speaker 1: bawling in my bedroom. At the end, of that movie.
Speaker 1: It was just so perfect and and the kid, uh
Speaker 1: it was such a good actor, has had such an
Speaker 1: expressive face, and you're right, they get kids, right, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: There's not a moment that feels false in this movie
Speaker 1: with him, or really at all, but especially with these kids,
Speaker 1: it's all so pure. They don't ask him to overact.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, it's just his face that's conveying
Speaker 1: that what would normally be a line, and he has
Speaker 1: those eyes, and it's just it just works on every
Speaker 1: single level with these kids. One of my favorite moments
Speaker 1: of the whole movie is when they kick the parents
Speaker 1: out of the tournament and basically lock them in a
Speaker 1: jail in the basement, and all the kids start clapping
Speaker 1: because yeah, because they just get to be kids. It's
Speaker 1: just a wonderful moment. I think that's what's so good
Speaker 1: about his performance is just like he's just being it's
Speaker 1: so natural. It's so natural. There's no precociousness to it,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like it's just the worst. He's just a kid.
Speaker 1: Like when he's playing in his room and he's reaching
Speaker 1: under like his bed defined things and he disappears on
Speaker 1: there and stuff like that. It just feels so authentic.
Speaker 1: My daughter just broke in. Hey, you want to say
Speaker 1: hi to Cole? Hey there, this is Ruby. Hey, Ruby.
Speaker 1: She's been busting in lately and I've just been kind
Speaker 1: of leaving them in the episodes. I heard you banging
Speaker 1: on the door to do you want to say? Hid?
Speaker 1: Everyone again? All right, Well you can't come in from
Speaker 1: that way, and I'm gonna have to ask you to
Speaker 1: go back upstairs now, just because it's not a it's
Speaker 1: not an episode where I can feature you. I'm very sorry.
Speaker 1: Thank you. She was banging on the back door too,
Speaker 1: all right. I think maybe we'll just leave that in
Speaker 1: there because these have been Quarantine episodes and everyone knows
Speaker 1: her by now, she's made appearances, so um, thank you
Speaker 1: for indulging that. It's funny. It's just we're literally talking
Speaker 1: about kids being natural and being kids and then and there.
Speaker 1: I love it. Um yeah, the whole thing, just like
Speaker 1: that whole everything is so natural to me in that movie.
Speaker 1: And like you're right about the tropes, like because you
Speaker 1: have like the street Wise Teacher and you have the
Speaker 1: book Wise and like, I mean, the formula is there,
Speaker 1: but formulas are okay, Like the reason that people write
Speaker 1: screenwriting books. Is because screenwriting is a super duper strict
Speaker 1: formula for the most part um. But like the Larry
Speaker 1: Fishburn character, uh, like pre Matrix, Larry Fishburn is my favorite.
Speaker 1: I love the Matrix, But before the Matrix, he was
Speaker 1: just a different guy, I feel like, and he, uh,
Speaker 1: he manages to pull off this role. Like they don't
Speaker 1: have that trope of I won't say what they normally
Speaker 1: call it, but sort of the magical black man that
Speaker 1: comes into the movie. They dance towards that, but he's
Speaker 1: not that, and the movie is much much better for that.
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, I agree. Like there's that one little
Speaker 1: wonderful scene to where like Josh asks his mom like
Speaker 1: where does Vinnie sleep, Like he just doesn't know, like
Speaker 1: he doesn't doesn't know about him, and she's like, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's just kind of how it's a
Speaker 1: dryst and like he's his character is great, Like he
Speaker 1: definitely like I love the thing was like what's your name?
Speaker 1: Don't tell him your name. Your kid's got you know,
Speaker 1: he's got talent, and write his name down right now.
Speaker 1: I saw him one, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's just yeah, and you know it's gonna end up
Speaker 1: being the like he has to put together both styles
Speaker 1: to become the kind of player that he is. And
Speaker 1: you know he's going to bring his queen out too
Speaker 1: early if he wants to. It's great though, it all works,
Speaker 1: like the Ben Kingsley character and the Larry Fishburne character,
Speaker 1: Like he said, they're headed for a collision course in
Speaker 1: a way. But I think in the hands I mean
Speaker 1: Steve Zali And we haven't even mentioned the writer and director,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest writers in the in the history
Speaker 1: of writing movies. Um has only directed a few, but
Speaker 1: I think in anyone else's hands, this movie could have
Speaker 1: been uh really really smalty. But he has such a
Speaker 1: such a deft hand as a writer. I think he
Speaker 1: did not let it veer into those lanes. And it
Speaker 1: was his directorial debut, so obviously, like it was all
Speaker 1: his kid. And when I found out about the movie,
Speaker 1: didn't realize about Alien is like I was just reading
Speaker 1: the liner notes of the soundtrack because I bought it
Speaker 1: on CD at the time because I loved it and
Speaker 1: like as weird as like I don't love classical music,
Speaker 1: but I love film scores, and I think it's because
Speaker 1: classical music puts me on edge because that was always
Speaker 1: it was playing in the waiting room at like dentists
Speaker 1: and like doctors and something as a kid. So like
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't have pleasant memories associated with it,
Speaker 1: whereas film scores I do, and some really good ones
Speaker 1: I just like, I love and I'll listen to over
Speaker 1: and over. It's it's weird which movies do. Like Gatica
Speaker 1: has a great score, but you wouldn't say that grad
Speaker 1: gadic has a great you know, it's a great movie, boever,
Speaker 1: But like this movie to me has one of the
Speaker 1: best scores, like James Horner scores great. And I was
Speaker 1: reading the liner notes that Steve's Alien went to San
Speaker 1: Francisco State, which is where I went, and I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. So I used to do
Speaker 1: a thing back in college too where I would write
Speaker 1: a lot of actors and filmmakers and stuff like that too,
Speaker 1: and they would often send me back, like you know,
Speaker 1: signed photos. Have a bunch of signed photos and stuff
Speaker 1: like that too, because I was definitely an autograph collector
Speaker 1: early um and some some people would actually write me
Speaker 1: back and write letters. And I wrote him about like,
Speaker 1: you know how much I loved the movie and it's
Speaker 1: my favorite film. And I'm I think at the time,
Speaker 1: I was at San Francisco State or I just graduated
Speaker 1: from it, and you know, I just found this out
Speaker 1: and it's so great and I love it. But I
Speaker 1: just wrote him and he wrote me back and sent
Speaker 1: me a nice handwritten note which I having a thing someplace,
Speaker 1: but um just basically saying me's a lot, I love
Speaker 1: my time in San Francisco whatever. So cut to me
Speaker 1: working at Second Spin here in Los Angeles, which was
Speaker 1: used in new CD and DVD like Blu Ray place, um,
Speaker 1: like Wilsher um where we would buy stuff, use things
Speaker 1: and then sell them or whatever. That's how I built
Speaker 1: up my collection because I would get things that like
Speaker 1: very cheap, a lot of DVDs and blue rays for
Speaker 1: a dollar or two dollar or whatever. Um. But he
Speaker 1: sometimes people celebrities would come in there because it's you know,
Speaker 1: like Los Angeles. And one time this kid, teenage kid
Speaker 1: was like buying something and he gave a credit card
Speaker 1: and the credit card said Steven's Alien on it. So
Speaker 1: I was like, Steve's Alien, like the director writer, and
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, that's my dad. And I was like,
Speaker 1: please tell your dad hello for me, and tell him
Speaker 1: that Searching Before a Bobby Fisher was my favorite movie,
Speaker 1: and I thank you so much. He's like he was
Speaker 1: really excited about it. And then like a couple of
Speaker 1: days later, he brought Steve's Alien in with him, like
Speaker 1: brought his dad just to say hello, what I mean,
Speaker 1: like to meet him, so like that was amazing. I
Speaker 1: mean we just talked like a minute or two, but
Speaker 1: it was still really cool. Like it's just crazy the
Speaker 1: stories of people that would come in there, because one
Speaker 1: time Janice Kaminski came in and was buying up box
Speaker 1: sets and I just looked at it. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was him because I didn't know what jan Komiski
Speaker 1: looked like. But I saw his credit card, and you know,
Speaker 1: Jannis Kaminski was like, you you lends movies beautifully. I
Speaker 1: love so much of your stuff. And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Like he was very nice about it, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't famboy and I don't think he gets it
Speaker 1: that often, you know, so um. That was one of
Speaker 1: the weird benefits of like working at a retail store
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles in a sense there Cinophiles would come
Speaker 1: in sometimes, so yeah, so that's when I meant alien
Speaker 1: and stuff too, and through his kid initially, which is
Speaker 1: kind of funny too because Father Soun's story met my
Speaker 1: filmmaking hero through father sound connection. So yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna read through some of the movies
Speaker 1: that he's written. His The first movie he ever wrote
Speaker 1: was The Falcon and the Snowman. Amazing. Yeah. Uh. He
Speaker 1: follows it up with Awakenings, Schindler's List, Bobby Fisher, Uh,
Speaker 1: Clear and Present Danger, Mission Impossible, Civil Action, Gangs of
Speaker 1: New York, Moneyball, American Gangster Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
Speaker 1: The Irishman. It's just that's an intimidating list, all great movies.
Speaker 1: I Mean, you can argue that Awakenings might be the
Speaker 1: smalty place that this could have gone this movie, but
Speaker 1: I love Awakenings to we can definitely like slightly manipulated.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if that's so much about the
Speaker 1: writing and more so about the Witch like done directed.
Speaker 1: I love that movie though, Like it gets me every time. Oh, totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's he's amazing. He's one of the best writers out
Speaker 1: there for sure. Um, I have a quick Conrad Hall story,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite cinematographers of all time. And when
Speaker 1: I was at p A in Los Angeles on TV commercials,
Speaker 1: I worked a lot for his daughter. She was a
Speaker 1: commercial producer, Naya Hall, and Iah was just amazing and
Speaker 1: I always just nerd it out with her, and she
Speaker 1: loved how much I loved her dad's work, and I
Speaker 1: really meant a lot to her, and she was just wonderful,
Speaker 1: and she when he passed away, she asked if I
Speaker 1: wanted or she asked for my help. But to me,
Speaker 1: it was an opportunity to go um before his memorial
Speaker 1: service and kind of help help her out and help
Speaker 1: put everything together and put up these posters and put
Speaker 1: up the flowers and all that stuff. And so I
Speaker 1: and she said I could stay. So I went to
Speaker 1: Conrad Hall's memorial and just uh and very much just
Speaker 1: hung back in the background and like Tom Hanks was
Speaker 1: there and Spielberg was there, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a room that I never thought I would be in.
Speaker 1: And I literally didn't speak to anyone. I just just
Speaker 1: sat there like a fly on the wall and watched
Speaker 1: everybod It was. It was pretty cool. It's amazing. It's
Speaker 1: hard to not want to call him Connie Hall because
Speaker 1: I know that's what they all his friends called him.
Speaker 1: Was like, I don't know. I can't call Marty's Connie.
Speaker 1: I can't call him a Bobby de Niro into my head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you mentioned, um, how do you make chess exciting?
Speaker 1: And that that opening and those opening scenes in the
Speaker 1: rain in the park. Uh, the sound design is really
Speaker 1: important in this movie too, how they're slamming those pieces
Speaker 1: down and hitting that clock and it it really gives
Speaker 1: the It gives chess an energy that it might as
Speaker 1: well be Rocky or Karate Kid. It might as well
Speaker 1: be a prize fight that you're watching or the final
Speaker 1: of a karate match. It's that thrilling, and it's totally
Speaker 1: due to the way he shot it in that sound design.
Speaker 1: And it's also like especially then too, it's it's his
Speaker 1: way of of doing a difference between street chess and
Speaker 1: like textbook chess, because like Vinnie's whole thing is like
Speaker 1: you gotta attack, you gotta attack, you gotta attack, you
Speaker 1: can't sit back, and Bruce's thing is more like don't
Speaker 1: move until you see it, don't move into take your time,
Speaker 1: don't move until you see it, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So it's very two different approaches and Vinnie's things like
Speaker 1: move fast, catch your guy off guard, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um. And so it definitely has that
Speaker 1: energy and the kind of streen energy to it too.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like Washington Park in New York
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff too, and um and did
Speaker 1: you know about that stuff then? By the way, that
Speaker 1: because that was my first introduction to the fact that
Speaker 1: there were people like on the street playing chess in
Speaker 1: Washington Square Park, it really sort of brought it to
Speaker 1: me in a different light that I hadn't seen before.
Speaker 1: I definitely had seen people play chess and parks, but
Speaker 1: didn't think about it, like I didn't really pay an attention, like, oh,
Speaker 1: these guys are playing chess, like I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: Like it's the same card kind of thing, is like
Speaker 1: people doing three card monty in the corner or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like it's kind of has this kind of hustler energy
Speaker 1: to it. And these guys that were either chess pros
Speaker 1: or ranked at some point now that just I've kind
Speaker 1: of fallen out of favor that are trying to just
Speaker 1: like earn a living by going out there, like the
Speaker 1: Russian chess master or whatever that he's with early, who's
Speaker 1: like will give him a lesson for five dollars and
Speaker 1: like that kind of whole thing. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: really thrilling to see that, and like it just kind
Speaker 1: of opens up the whole world that you don't you're
Speaker 1: not aware, like spelling bees or whatever, like this is
Speaker 1: that kind of thing of like like like just seeing
Speaker 1: the tournament footage too and that kind of stuff and
Speaker 1: realize that this is a whole world. This is just
Speaker 1: like anything else, um. In terms of his competition. It
Speaker 1: could be a pageant, this could be horse raising, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Um. And like I said, like two and
Speaker 1: they locked the parents up. It's like that so many
Speaker 1: of the parents are like living by karisy through their
Speaker 1: kids in that and it's not so much like Fred
Speaker 1: and Josh's relationship, which is what I like a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you you briefly mentioned Ben Kingsley, and holy
Speaker 1: sh it, Bing Kingsley's in this movie too. Like it's
Speaker 1: a murderers row of actors, uh in the main roles
Speaker 1: and then all the way down like Tony Shalube has
Speaker 1: a one minute scene. Young Laura Lenny has has one
Speaker 1: of the best scenes in the movie, and she's in
Speaker 1: it for like a minute. William H. Macy's in it
Speaker 1: for a minute, Like it's crazy the cast that he
Speaker 1: was able to Austin Pendleton and um Danadea, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: David Paymer, like, it's just it's just chock full of
Speaker 1: people that and I think a lot of them came
Speaker 1: out of the New York Theater scene, probably Jone Montania
Speaker 1: on that Center stuff too. But they're so good and
Speaker 1: it's kind of interest to too if you read up,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of those guys are playing versions of
Speaker 1: real people. And this is a true story, right, It's
Speaker 1: based on a book that the Joe Montania character, but
Speaker 1: his dad, uh Fred Wayskin wrote about his son and
Speaker 1: that whole thing. Um, But Austin Pendleton in his one
Speaker 1: scene where's kind of talking to himself and he's doing
Speaker 1: the board thing, he's playing a real chess master and
Speaker 1: that chess masters like didn't like the the version of
Speaker 1: himself in it or whatever too, which is interesting to
Speaker 1: hear about that. Like, but they interviewed Bobby Fisher at
Speaker 1: some point about it. And he never saw the movie
Speaker 1: and he was upset that, like he feels like he
Speaker 1: should be gotten paid something because they used his name
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff too. But it, um, I
Speaker 1: was like seeing the movie, dude, like he's not playing
Speaker 1: you and if anything, like, I think it gives a
Speaker 1: lot of humanity to Bobby Fisher because it kind of
Speaker 1: like totally interstitials about kind of what his journey was like. Too.
Speaker 1: Then how it mirrors like Josh and Friends a little
Speaker 1: bit too, Like I think it's a it does a
Speaker 1: big service to himself and paints him in a positive light.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I hear your cat, dude. I see your
Speaker 1: cats on Facebook. Your cats are the best. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's Sydney. He's the redheads in the other room. Sidney's
Speaker 1: usually pretty chill, So I left him stay in this
Speaker 1: room because I did a thing on Zoom the other
Speaker 1: night where, of course, one of the red heads popped
Speaker 1: up on the computer and completely ruined. So I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna chance that right now. Oh man, I
Speaker 1: love it. We call her we call cats are rotten
Speaker 1: because we have two rotten cats, and rotten cats are
Speaker 1: the best. They're always We have two very weird cats. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're awesome. Sydney's the he's the old man, he's fourteen.
Speaker 1: And then the Redheads are now Rudy and uh, Lucas
Speaker 1: are year and a half. Now I think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're great. So they have that kitten energy still, but
Speaker 1: they're starting to calm down a little bit. Did they
Speaker 1: get along with the with the old one? They do?
Speaker 1: We did it in the right way. I think we
Speaker 1: isolated out the kittens in one room and they gave
Speaker 1: them another room and then reintroduced them slowly to each other,
Speaker 1: and they get along the um. So the narration, you
Speaker 1: know you mentioned the Bobby Fisher parts. Uh boy, that
Speaker 1: really just is the through line to this movie. That
Speaker 1: narration is so great. It always comes in at the
Speaker 1: perfect moment and I can't imagine this movie without that stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that they, I guess, risk getting sued
Speaker 1: or whatever by showing that footage, the black and white footage.
Speaker 1: It just it all works so perfectly. Yeah, it totally does.
Speaker 1: And it always say like movies and narration are lazy,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's a screen trope they don't like
Speaker 1: like a lot of filmmakers do. But like it's not
Speaker 1: really narration. It's just like they're just these little moments
Speaker 1: that helped feel lynn the gaps of everything else that's
Speaker 1: going on. It's it's you know, they could have started
Speaker 1: with like all my life I wanted to play chess.
Speaker 1: That's differently or whatever. Like it's not that it's not
Speaker 1: good Fellas or whatever, but right, um, And I think
Speaker 1: that's what's so great about it, is like he's he's
Speaker 1: he's narrating his own story in a way without really
Speaker 1: narrating his own story. That's what's really cool about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was great. Um. One of my favorite shots in
Speaker 1: the movie is uh and it just like it gives
Speaker 1: me chills when I see it and I rewound it
Speaker 1: like three times. Is early on when he does when
Speaker 1: he sets those legos up as the chess characters in
Speaker 1: his castle and opens the castle door and the camera
Speaker 1: goes through. Oh man, what a shot. It's such like
Speaker 1: it's just like a little glimpse inside of kid's mind.
Speaker 1: It's just it's so great. Yeah, That's what I think
Speaker 1: is is so wonderful about this movie is it just
Speaker 1: straddles like here's the adult side, here's the kid's side.
Speaker 1: Here's everything he me And it doesn't treat anybody with contempt.
Speaker 1: It doesn't judge anybody, you know, even like the villain
Speaker 1: so to speak of like the the Grandmaster and his protege.
Speaker 1: Like if anybody complains about anything, is that those characters
Speaker 1: are one to mentional. I don't think that they are.
Speaker 1: I think that they're the least drawn of the characters
Speaker 1: in the film. But I think it's because they're not
Speaker 1: meant to be known, Like they're not they're not part
Speaker 1: of Josh and Fred's world. Like what you see is
Speaker 1: what they see. It's just these little glimpses of them
Speaker 1: in tournament time, and like you actually learn a little
Speaker 1: bit about the guy he's against when he offers in
Speaker 1: the draw and how he's kind of stuck in that
Speaker 1: moment of like why are you? Why are you offering
Speaker 1: me this? Like I don't understand what a great moment
Speaker 1: in the movie if his little hand reached out like
Speaker 1: a little kid didn't even know how to shake his hand.
Speaker 1: It's all like kind of stiff and straight. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and that was the one moment like they gave they
Speaker 1: gave that kid that one moment where he said trick
Speaker 1: or tree eat, which is kind of out of character
Speaker 1: for him as as as a really sweet kid to
Speaker 1: kind of use that back against him. But that moment
Speaker 1: where he says like you've already lost, and like I'm
Speaker 1: offering you a chance to draw. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if I remembered when I watched it this morning, because
Speaker 1: I just saw this in ninety three if he took
Speaker 1: him up on the offer. So there was genuine suspense
Speaker 1: again when I was watching that scene, and I was
Speaker 1: going to take the deal in hand. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what's so great about it. Like I feel like when
Speaker 1: he does do the trick or treat thing and he
Speaker 1: says it back and he'd be like, whoa, Okay, shots fired,
Speaker 1: it's almost like he realizes he has to stand up
Speaker 1: for himself and that thing and he has to dish
Speaker 1: back a little bit. That's him channeling Vinny a little
Speaker 1: bit in that moment. That's him being like, Okay, you've
Speaker 1: been trash talking me and everybody else you're playing against.
Speaker 1: I'm for real, I'm gonna trash hockey back just for
Speaker 1: a moment, just just so you know that I can
Speaker 1: go toe to toe with you and I can dish
Speaker 1: out whatever you're gonna dish out, yeah, and that that
Speaker 1: final matches, it's so great. There's the shots of him,
Speaker 1: there's so many great opportunities for a chessboard with the
Speaker 1: wreck focus shots and there's so many great ones. But
Speaker 1: when they would rack from the chess piece back and
Speaker 1: there's so much tension there and Ben Kingsley is saying
Speaker 1: out loud what the moves are? I think it was
Speaker 1: like twelve moves or something like that, and he sees
Speaker 1: you see his all you see is his eyes darting
Speaker 1: around that board and bing bing. Kingsley's like, man, he's
Speaker 1: working it out, and he's working it out. And Joe
Speaker 1: Montane he's like, what's he working out? What's he working out?
Speaker 1: Like when they when Banks goes that's a mistake. That's
Speaker 1: a mistake, and he realizes it and then you can
Speaker 1: see him just trying to like communicate with Josh mentally
Speaker 1: being like it's there. It's he moves away, but it's there.
Speaker 1: It's there, just don't move in to see it. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is this is my teaching now, like and you
Speaker 1: can see that Josh is actually like, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna this is what Bruce did for me, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna wait until I see it, and I see it
Speaker 1: and so that's when the draw thing happens and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So it's just so it's like, how do
Speaker 1: you make chess exciting? They do? How do you put chess? Like,
Speaker 1: because you to the so many watching, you can't tell
Speaker 1: what's going on. You have no idea unless you have have
Speaker 1: an advanced knowledge or chess, you don't you can tell
Speaker 1: them like somebody's like if the camera shoots in a way,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, the the king's open, we know that
Speaker 1: that's going down or whatever. But you don't know, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to do a play by pay announcer
Speaker 1: being like, oh Josh's castling on the first move. We're crazy,
Speaker 1: Like you can't do that, So how do you? How
Speaker 1: do you do it in a way that the audience
Speaker 1: will have an idea of what's going on, at least
Speaker 1: enough to know. And I think Zillion was smart enough
Speaker 1: to know that, Like, I don't need to explain the
Speaker 1: mechanics with chess. I don't. People don't need to know
Speaker 1: how he's beating them or what he's using a gambit
Speaker 1: or whatever. That doesn't matter what I had to be
Speaker 1: able to communicate to them, is that like, is he
Speaker 1: doing well? Is he not doing well? What are the stakes?
Speaker 1: Where are we in that? Yeah? Absolutely, And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of other I think this in the hands
Speaker 1: of other people, it would have been way too on
Speaker 1: the nose, way too telegraph. They probably would have had
Speaker 1: a fucking announcer in the room, like you said, like
Speaker 1: spelling out exactly what was going on. But you know
Speaker 1: exactly how much you need to know to follow the
Speaker 1: match and the and these these peaks and valleys of
Speaker 1: that match. Kind of the same as um Karate Kid,
Speaker 1: which I think is a great, great movie. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and that's what I think the best sports movies do
Speaker 1: is you don't have to know anything or be a
Speaker 1: fan of the thing if you make a great movie. Uh.
Speaker 1: If if someone says, I don't I don't like basketball,
Speaker 1: so I've never seen Hoosiers, Like, no, you should see
Speaker 1: Hoosiers because it's a great, great story. The same with
Speaker 1: boxing or karate or chess or anything else. Um, if
Speaker 1: you do it right, you transcend the thing that the
Speaker 1: movie is about because the story is there. Or even
Speaker 1: like Moneyball, which is alien also wrote like you know
Speaker 1: that's absolutely about math baseball. I know, I'm a big
Speaker 1: baseball guy. I love baseball, and I was actually at that.
Speaker 1: I've said this billion times in general rolleris and she
Speaker 1: hears it. I was at that Wayne in Oakland when
Speaker 1: they won their to really straight, so it was like
Speaker 1: Giants as more than Giants. I think it's because when
Speaker 1: I was in Davis we would drive to see A's
Speaker 1: games sometimes, but I like the Giants too, like I've gone,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm a Tiger guy. Like it's because of
Speaker 1: my Detroit roots, so with Tigers, but I definitely would
Speaker 1: go to Giants and A's games. And it's definitely the
Speaker 1: first like sporting event that I've seen re enacted on
Speaker 1: screen that I was at that that was really surreal
Speaker 1: to me too. But again, like that's the thing, like
Speaker 1: how do you make trans baseball transactions like fascinating And
Speaker 1: like when you just see him working his magic on
Speaker 1: the phones in that movie, it's just like this, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like it's almost Bobby Fisher again with chess, but
Speaker 1: now it's now it's numbers, baseball numbers. Yeah, I'd like
Speaker 1: to see Moneyball again. That was a great movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: real good. Um, So, a couple of my favorite this
Speaker 1: that you were talking about the small moments in this
Speaker 1: movie and these small beats. There are a few lines
Speaker 1: and moments that just really are so touching and so great.
Speaker 1: One of them is when again outside in the rain
Speaker 1: after I think it's after he throws the tournament, uh,
Speaker 1: And there's a great moment before that when he's in
Speaker 1: bed talking about not wanting to be the best, and
Speaker 1: you kind of know what's coming, you know he's gonna
Speaker 1: throw it, but he's outside and he looks up at
Speaker 1: his dad and says, why are you standing so far
Speaker 1: away from me? That's just the most heartbreaking moment of
Speaker 1: the entire moment, and that's what gets Fred to like,
Speaker 1: that's what it gets Joe Montanie where he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: what what am I doing? Because that whole sequence too,
Speaker 1: it's like I love how they handle it when the
Speaker 1: little girl runs out of the room and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was that was fast, Like because he's supposed to cheat,
Speaker 1: he's supposed to destroy her, and it turns out the
Speaker 1: other way around, and like goes to her dad far
Speaker 1: away and starts celebrating, and he's just like no, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's just like his jaw just drops and then
Speaker 1: it's like a rainy day when you're yelling at your
Speaker 1: kid about losing, like yeah, and that's when, yeah, he
Speaker 1: realized it's not about winning, you're losing. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: line just it's, um, I don't know if Zalion had
Speaker 1: kids then, but my daughter is almost five. He's supposed
Speaker 1: to be seven in the movie, and that's what a
Speaker 1: kid would say because they don't have the emotional processing
Speaker 1: ability at that age. All they know is dad is
Speaker 1: standing far away from him right now, and that's doesn't
Speaker 1: feel good, and like that's It's such a simple line,
Speaker 1: but just nailed it on the head, you know, Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. Another one of the best lines is the
Speaker 1: great Laura Lenny scene where she's sort of condescending about
Speaker 1: this chess thing and he's being the you know, the
Speaker 1: sports dad sort of, but when he says, you know,
Speaker 1: he's better at this than anything I've ever done and
Speaker 1: anything that you will ever do, it's just such an
Speaker 1: aniviscary line. So yeah, it's so crazy. I mean, I
Speaker 1: especially love it too, like when even Joan Allen has
Speaker 1: her moment when Laura Lenny's like, I had this chest
Speaker 1: thing and like he's like chest thing and he wanders
Speaker 1: away and like that, it's just that whole thing. I
Speaker 1: think that whole moment. Um. Laura Lennie's like John Allen
Speaker 1: is so good in this movie, and like she is,
Speaker 1: you think you could be a thankless role because it's
Speaker 1: more so the mother um or the father's son part
Speaker 1: of the thing. But she she holds her own. She's
Speaker 1: amazing moments of this movie. And her little sister is
Speaker 1: so cute too, like such a good little character. I
Speaker 1: love it so much totally. Um. And then the other
Speaker 1: two big moments for me is the scene where Ben
Speaker 1: Kingsley is telling him that he has to hate his
Speaker 1: opponents and he said Bobby, Bobby had contempt for everyone,
Speaker 1: and he just said, I'm not him. It's like a
Speaker 1: three word line and and just sort of a masterclass
Speaker 1: in and not overwriting I And that's like so devastating too,
Speaker 1: and like he like tears up all the master class
Speaker 1: certificates that, Like that's like the one thing he's like trying.
Speaker 1: He's doing this because he wants the praise too, and
Speaker 1: he's working so hard for this. And then to realize
Speaker 1: that in the eyes of his coach, it's nothing, You're
Speaker 1: nothing in a sense, like that's just that's like one
Speaker 1: of the most heartbreaking moments too well, and that pays
Speaker 1: off so well when he um frames that really nice
Speaker 1: masterclass uh A certificate and he gives it to him
Speaker 1: before the last match and he says, I've never been
Speaker 1: so proud of anyone in my life. I'm proud to
Speaker 1: call it, call myself your teacher. And the kid goes,
Speaker 1: I'm scared, and he says, I know. And again, it's
Speaker 1: just not overwriting. Like I like to with some of
Speaker 1: my favorite screenplays in lines, I like to picture it
Speaker 1: on the page and it's so sparse but just pitch perfect.
Speaker 1: And also the scene when they first started working together
Speaker 1: and they're playing games and you think they're playing chess
Speaker 1: and he's like candle secred over and he's like rope
Speaker 1: or what was and he's like they're they're playing clue.
Speaker 1: And then he's like, so you guys talking about chess
Speaker 1: in there? No, it didn't come up, like they're just
Speaker 1: playing games together, getting to know each other or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he's perplexed about why is he in they're playing
Speaker 1: board games with my son at three an hour or
Speaker 1: something whatever it is. Yeah, which again sort of dances
Speaker 1: in that trope of like Karate Kid. He's standing the
Speaker 1: floor and waxing the car, but he's really learning karate.
Speaker 1: It's that it's sort of that it's tried and true
Speaker 1: in movies like this, and it works every single time
Speaker 1: if you do it right. Yeah, it's so beautifully done.
Speaker 1: I mean this movie is just like it's just like
Speaker 1: I said, moment after moment. It's just little little vignettes
Speaker 1: in the sounds, like little things. And that's why I
Speaker 1: think it rewards you with like repeat viewings, because you're
Speaker 1: gonna pick up on things you didn't notice the first
Speaker 1: time through, because you're gonna get caught up in different
Speaker 1: aspects of it. Um. And you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: it hurts to actually like listen to something like this
Speaker 1: or like watch um or read about it or read
Speaker 1: about Bobby Fischer himself, or like I've heard the memoirs good.
Speaker 1: I have not read it, but I don't think it will.
Speaker 1: I think it will change your perspective in some ways
Speaker 1: to like think of approaching it from a different viewpoint,
Speaker 1: to like watch it like you're like a kid, or
Speaker 1: watch it like you're a parent or whatever. I think
Speaker 1: it's just different every time you see the film. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I watched it when I was in college,
Speaker 1: and then I watched it with a five year old
Speaker 1: in my life, and it's definitely had a more residents.
Speaker 1: I loved it back then, but it had a lot
Speaker 1: more meaning and it was a little deeper for me today.
Speaker 1: And it's not on Blu Ray. It's a shitty DVD
Speaker 1: released from a long ast time ago. Like that just
Speaker 1: kills me. It's it's at least thank god it's wide
Speaker 1: screen on there, because there are some DV releases earlier're
Speaker 1: all full screen. You're like, what are you doing? Like,
Speaker 1: I just remember working at the video store and having
Speaker 1: to explain to people because we had letterbox vhs is
Speaker 1: for some movies, and we'd have a section called letterbox,
Speaker 1: you know, and we put them there. We put a
Speaker 1: thing on the side and said letterbox or whatever, and
Speaker 1: we would like when people would bring it up, we
Speaker 1: would explain it to them. And sometimes people will be like,
Speaker 1: so what is this and be like, well, when films
Speaker 1: are shot, they're shot. They're not shot in the four three.
Speaker 1: They're not shot like a square there shot like a
Speaker 1: rectangle and this basically shows you the entire picture. There's
Speaker 1: black bars with the bottom on the top of the
Speaker 1: screen so that you're not going to computer panning back
Speaker 1: and forth. So people are like walking down the sidewalk
Speaker 1: from far like different size of the street, ge see
Speaker 1: them both the same time and go through the whole
Speaker 1: rig and roll and they go okay, and then they
Speaker 1: bring it back an hour later being like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the top and bottom or cut off, and you're just like,
Speaker 1: you can't. There was no way to explain this to
Speaker 1: these people. They could not get their head around it. No.
Speaker 1: I think the easiest way to set it back then
Speaker 1: was like compare your television screen to a movie screen
Speaker 1: and that's the difference, and still couldn't. He couldn't wrap
Speaker 1: their heads around it. So most things are full screen,
Speaker 1: and then they started to come out white screen, and
Speaker 1: then thank god TVs just started being manufactured why and
Speaker 1: now that's the norm and there's no way around that.
Speaker 1: But you can watch old DVDs and stuff from like
Speaker 1: movies from the eighties and never got a good like
Speaker 1: version ever put out, Like Short Time I have like
Speaker 1: a boot version of which is a great movie, but
Speaker 1: like it's not out there, and it's a shitty little
Speaker 1: four three grainy awful like version of that movie. But
Speaker 1: at least I can watch it. But you can put
Speaker 1: those things in it, and it just looks so god awful.
Speaker 1: But I can't imagine watching anything not wide screen anymore.
Speaker 1: Let's me shot that. I mean a lot of old
Speaker 1: movies weren't shot wide but right, and now the fight
Speaker 1: we have to fight is the motion smoothing it to
Speaker 1: the in law's house. Oh god. I every time I
Speaker 1: go home, I turn that off and somehow it resets.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it just needs no crazy Like I did that
Speaker 1: for years at my father in law's when we would
Speaker 1: go for Christmas. Now they live here, so I don't
Speaker 1: bother because I don't watch TV over there, but I
Speaker 1: would sneak over and grab that fucking remote and it
Speaker 1: would somehow be changed back the next day. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Like when the movies would start that way, I was like,
Speaker 1: you've realized, this doesn't look like a movie anymore, And
Speaker 1: it looks like somebody who's recording a soccer game with
Speaker 1: a camcorder. Right, you realize that's what this looks like. Now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't get it. They think it looks super clear,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, it clear isn't necessarily great awful, Like
Speaker 1: I get it if you were watching football, but it's
Speaker 1: terrible for movies. Movies should look like movies. Yep, anything
Speaker 1: else on Bobby Fisherman, I think that was a good discussion.
Speaker 1: Thoroughly enjoyed that, thanks man. Yeah, it's hopefully people will
Speaker 1: go find it. It's been cable lately, like it's been
Speaker 1: on I think like Showtime or Stars or it's been
Speaker 1: playing because I've caught it a few times. So when
Speaker 1: people do check this out, they might be able to
Speaker 1: find it someplace. I don't know if it's streaming or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it's not. I got it on iTunes movies and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it looks it looks fine. Cool. They should
Speaker 1: definitely seek it out because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people haven't seen it, and people always find it weird
Speaker 1: that it's my favorite movie because I'm a big comedy guy.
Speaker 1: I mean that's how I'm making my living is in comedy,
Speaker 1: and like I love comedies, like going on about comedy,
Speaker 1: but like, this is the movie that touches me more
Speaker 1: than anything else, and I'll defend it till the end
Speaker 1: of time, and it's just like it's great, a little
Speaker 1: sleeper of a movie that more people should have seen
Speaker 1: and it should have done better than it did. But
Speaker 1: at least they do think it is appreciated with those
Speaker 1: who have seen it and who love it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: totally agree. I get your stuff on Facebook. I'm not
Speaker 1: on Twitter, but I'm sure your Twitter handle is a
Speaker 1: fun follow because you were especially for our listeners, because
Speaker 1: you're a true movie buff and movie nerd and connoisseur.
Speaker 1: And I have a lot of great stuff. So where
Speaker 1: can people find you? They can find me. I have
Speaker 1: both Instagram and Twitter, which I mean, obviously with the
Speaker 1: movie posters and stuff, I usually put them on both,
Speaker 1: but I definitely put them all on Instagram, which I
Speaker 1: believe is Stratton Cole, and then Twitter is Cole Stratton,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty pretty easy one or the other. Um alright,
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're all kind of up there and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I'll continue to post movies ship all the time.
Speaker 1: That's great, man. I appreciate you coming on. Janet was
Speaker 1: my inaugural guest on this show, and now I've gotten
Speaker 1: you in here, and I would love to just have
Speaker 1: you back to talk about anything. At some point there's
Speaker 1: I can talk movies forever, so theyre all right. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks Buddy, awesome, Thanks jack Man. He's a lot all right.
Speaker 1: Bye bye bye. M Movie Crush is produced, edited, and
Speaker 1: engineered by Ramsay Hunt here in our home studio at
Speaker 1: pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.