Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. Chuck here with your Saturday selects.
Speaker 1: And this week I think it inspired me because recently
Speaker 1: we did an episode on the movie Roar, the most
Speaker 1: dangerous movie ever made, supposedly, And so let's go back
Speaker 1: to November of twenty seventeen, the sixteenth to be exact,
Speaker 1: to talk about movies being cursed in this episode that
Speaker 1: runs at fifty six minutes long. Can movies be cursed?
Speaker 1: Please enjoy it right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry.
Speaker 3: My tongue is super big today for some reason. Cross
Speaker 3: and this is stuff you should know. I know, it's
Speaker 3: like it sound like Peter Overbee, for God's sake, who's
Speaker 3: that You know that guy's voice anywhere?
Speaker 2: He's like an MPR reporter.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and like he he has me even beat
Speaker 3: for the large tongues candy sucking sound. Do you remember
Speaker 3: when we first came out and people would write it
Speaker 3: in and be like, t Josh, stop sucking on candy
Speaker 3: while these podcasting, And I'd just be like, that's my
Speaker 3: normal voice.
Speaker 2: Man, thanks a lot, Yeah, appreciate that.
Speaker 3: But now now that we're high rollers, they provided me
Speaker 3: with a private nurse to suction out the saliva every
Speaker 3: thirty seconds. My god, and then Jerry has to edit
Speaker 3: it out. So gross, gross but true, right, like a
Speaker 3: cursed movie story.
Speaker 2: True?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you know what? I hated the dentists besides everything?
Speaker 2: Man, that was a pretty good segue.
Speaker 1: I know that I just totally mowed over. I hated
Speaker 1: the dentists. Now, you know, you don't have to spit
Speaker 1: anymore because they do have those suction things, But it's
Speaker 1: still like I still do the fake swallow, you know
Speaker 1: how it feels like it builds up in the back
Speaker 1: of your now so like they'll be in your mouth
Speaker 1: and you'll just go like that.
Speaker 3: I hate that.
Speaker 2: It's funny. Do you do that?
Speaker 1: Does everyone do that?
Speaker 2: A gag reflex thing?
Speaker 1: Well, it's not even a gag reflex, it's just the.
Speaker 3: Hard swallow that it's almost swallow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sort of swallow reflex.
Speaker 3: If that's such a thing, do you feel like you're
Speaker 3: gonna break your vocal cords or your throat muscles?
Speaker 2: Got I hate that.
Speaker 3: I know what you mean. I don't hate it, though.
Speaker 3: I think it's kind of yeah, not enjoyable, But I
Speaker 3: don't know, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: When they talk to you and expect me.
Speaker 3: To talk about they can talk, but yeah, they can't
Speaker 3: be any questions involved. Maybe rhetorical questions that you can
Speaker 3: shrug at.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: My last hygienist I really didn't care for, Like that
Speaker 1: was a personality thing. And they have TVs at my
Speaker 1: dentists that they'll put down in front of you, and
Speaker 1: which is fine, I don't really care. But she would
Speaker 1: stop and like look and make comments about the news
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, why don't they just why don't they
Speaker 3: just let him do his job?
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. It was real annoying. And then
Speaker 1: I came back in not too long ago and there
Speaker 1: was a new hygienis for me and she was awesome,
Speaker 1: and on the way out, I was like, by the way,
Speaker 1: I was like, I won't say your name. I was like,
Speaker 1: but this new hygienis I really like a lot. And
Speaker 1: she was like, what about before? I was like, I
Speaker 1: wasn't crazy about her, and she went, no one was,
Speaker 1: and you guys need to tell us that. And we
Speaker 1: let her go because we got all these complaints huh
Speaker 1: started flooding in. I was like, well, I feel bad,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to get anyone fired. Sure, but
Speaker 1: I didn't that was she wasn't good.
Speaker 2: Huh. So anyway, was this in brook Haven?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah? Is it Brookhaven? How do you know where
Speaker 1: my dentist is?
Speaker 3: Why? I just hadn't experience in brook Haven And I'm like,
Speaker 3: this town is just small enough for that to be possible.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll go ahead and shout out my dentist, the
Speaker 1: great doctor Darryl Kimchi. She's wonderful kimchi.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, that's one of my favorite foods.
Speaker 1: Well, but is that your dentist?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Okay, but it's possible that we're talking about like a
Speaker 3: hygienus that gets fired pretty full.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know she's just making the rounds and buck
Speaker 1: ed Brookhaven, right, yeah, doctor Darryl Kimchi of Atlanta Cosmetic
Speaker 1: Sports Dentistry.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is quite a shout out.
Speaker 3: I think doctor kim Chi owes us some free kimchi
Speaker 3: maybe as a thank you.
Speaker 1: She's sort of a celebrity that she does a lot
Speaker 1: of the sports people in Atlanta and the Real Housewives maybe,
Speaker 1: but I went in and they have memorabilia up everywhere,
Speaker 1: and when the TV shows out of giving them a
Speaker 1: poster and they never put it up.
Speaker 3: Oh no way, that's hilarious. Yeah, wow, that's great.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of the Friends when Joey tried to
Speaker 1: get his head shot up at the I think it's
Speaker 1: like the dry cleaner or something. Right and do it?
Speaker 2: Man, that is so stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this has got a nice loose start.
Speaker 3: Indeed, chuck, but this is a this is this is
Speaker 3: a fun one. But let's begin, shall we.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, this was written by the grabster of the
Speaker 1: article is ten movies that were supposed cursed, and Ed
Speaker 1: goes to great links to point out health there's no
Speaker 1: way that anything can ever be really cursed, right.
Speaker 3: I think probably his couple of lines where he's like
Speaker 3: just so stupid kind of it was edited out.
Speaker 1: You know, I got the only guy to sign this
Speaker 1: was like, oh god kidding me. I want to write
Speaker 1: about real stuff like satanic panic.
Speaker 3: But he does love writing about movies. He's definitely a
Speaker 3: movie guy. Yeah, especially horror movies. And it seems like
Speaker 3: more than any other movie, horror movies. They're the variety
Speaker 3: that tend to be associated with curses more than other types, right.
Speaker 1: Or at least the marketing department cooks that up.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, that's definitely par for the course these days.
Speaker 3: But there was a more innocent, gentler time when when
Speaker 3: rumors of Satan influencing the production of a movie was
Speaker 3: a legitimate rumor. You know, it wasn't a pr stunt, right, So,
Speaker 3: like you said, it goes to some trouble to point
Speaker 3: out what's actually behind the idea of a movie curse.
Speaker 3: That some things are bound to happen on just about
Speaker 3: any movie track, especially when you stop and consider, especially
Speaker 3: in the early days, the kind of stuff they were
Speaker 3: doing with the technology they were working with at the time.
Speaker 3: Of course, bad things happened on movies since of course
Speaker 3: people died. Yeah, Like for example, I look this up, right,
Speaker 3: there was a nineteen twenty eight movie called Noah's Arc
Speaker 3: and they used six hundred thousand gallons of water to
Speaker 3: create the flood scene one take. They did, one take
Speaker 3: and three extras drowned. One guy who did survive had
Speaker 3: to have a leg amputated.
Speaker 2: It was broken so badly. Because this is the flood.
Speaker 3: Scene and you needed to basically get it as real
Speaker 3: as possible.
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1: That is? Yeah, especially back in those days. But they
Speaker 1: didn't care back then, right, they.
Speaker 3: Were just like, Oh, they're just extras. Who cares? Although
Speaker 3: John Wayne turns out was an extra in that movie,
Speaker 3: but he's really obviously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and any actors into another curse he does.
Speaker 3: He also worked in the special effects department on that movie.
Speaker 3: Or prop prop sorry, prop.
Speaker 1: Like special effects was what he did early CGI. Right.
Speaker 2: He would he would clap the coconuts together.
Speaker 1: For all the horse scenes.
Speaker 2: Right, But oh, I have another one.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is another movie years later they died
Speaker 3: with their boots on. I think it's about the charge
Speaker 3: of the light Brigade maybe, Okay. It was a nineteen
Speaker 3: forty one movie starring Erow Flynn and during this cavalry
Speaker 3: charge that they recreated, three extras in that movie died
Speaker 3: just in that one shot.
Speaker 2: That one scene.
Speaker 3: One of the guys was thrown from his horse and
Speaker 3: he threw his sword like away from him. Unfortunately threw
Speaker 3: it ahead of himself and the sword stuck into the ground,
Speaker 3: handle first, and he was impaled on the sword. Wow,
Speaker 3: this is this happened on a movie set. And it's
Speaker 3: not just like back in the day either. In nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty three, the Twilight Zone movie, very famously, there was
Speaker 3: a disaster.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it was very sad. That's when Vic Morrow,
Speaker 1: two children were chopped up by helicopter blade, very infamously.
Speaker 1: It was terrible, terrible tragedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Shin Yi Chan and Micah Din Lee were the
Speaker 3: two child actors who were killed. So things do happen
Speaker 3: on movie sets. And again, when you stop and think
Speaker 3: about what they're doing, it's often very dangerous. So what
Speaker 3: Ed is saying is when you start to put these
Speaker 3: things together and then you get rid of all of
Speaker 3: the things that don't support your point, you got to
Speaker 3: curse on your hands.
Speaker 1: Should we start with Poltergeist? Yes, Poltergeist. That's one where
Speaker 1: people always list this is a cursed movie because quite
Speaker 1: a few of the actors died sort of unexpectedly after
Speaker 1: the movie. And then Ed goes on to say, very astutely,
Speaker 1: but it's also a textbook example of why the idea
Speaker 1: of curses is silly. If I mentioned that curses are silly,
Speaker 1: so over and over, so three of those first three
Speaker 1: Poulter guys eighty two, eighty six, and eighty eight. I
Speaker 1: didn't see the remake, did you.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know there was one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course there was. They remade it a few
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. I didn't see it.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think it was very popular. But Dominic
Speaker 1: dunnique Dominique, excuse me? Her father was Dominic done correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and her brother was Griffin Dunny is Gryffin done?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was well, she was murdered. She was murdered
Speaker 1: by her boyfriend John Sweeney. Yeah, and that was a
Speaker 1: very disturbing case. Have you ever poked around that case? Yes,
Speaker 1: Like these signs were all there. It was one of
Speaker 1: those things that could have been prevented. And he got
Speaker 1: away with it for the most part.
Speaker 3: He did like three years in prison. And Dominic dunn
Speaker 3: her father, he was there every day for the trial
Speaker 3: of the man and was just just crushed by the
Speaker 3: injustice of the sentence that the guy received.
Speaker 1: Well, changed his life. He became a crusader, it did.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You can read some of the best coverage of high
Speaker 3: profile murder cases in the pages of Vanity Fair that
Speaker 3: he covered for years and years and years as a
Speaker 3: direct result of him basically covering his own daughter's murderers trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oj, very famously he covered that guy.
Speaker 3: Yes he did, and he apparently the Duns spent a
Speaker 3: great deal of time basically keeping tabs on John Sweeney
Speaker 3: for years, and.
Speaker 1: He was a chef for a while, he was, And
Speaker 1: I even started tracking him down this. I just went
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole like six or eight months ago
Speaker 1: on this for some reason.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is one of those you know things where
Speaker 1: you see something on Facebook and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you go, oh yeah, and then you go down
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole. And I was, I was trying to
Speaker 1: find this guy. I was like, where's this guy? Where
Speaker 1: is he? And the last I saw he was some
Speaker 1: chef somewhere. I think he had changed his name even
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 2: He had to John Mora.
Speaker 1: I mean you are a Yeah, well keep changing that name, buddy,
Speaker 1: because it's going to follow you around.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I mean, like there was no question whether he
Speaker 3: did it or not. He admitted to it. Like he
Speaker 3: told this guy who who had been in the house
Speaker 3: at the time in Dominique Dunn's house rehearsing lines to
Speaker 3: call the police, that he just killed his girlfriend. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but yeah, he was hounded for many years, and I
Speaker 3: guess toward the end of his life, Dominic Dunn said,
Speaker 3: you know what that can ote my life, like keeping
Speaker 3: tabs on this guy anymore, and just just dropped it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's a lot of people out there who
Speaker 2: don't like that, dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would imagine so so, so she died by
Speaker 1: murder then the the Young Girl, And.
Speaker 3: This was like a couple months after poultry geyst came out, right,
Speaker 3: so it was very close to the production.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, she was not in the sequels obviously. Heather
Speaker 1: O'Rourke was the Little Girl and poulter Geist, and she
Speaker 1: passed away after in nineteen eighty eight, after Poultrygeist two
Speaker 1: was wrapped, and she initially was diagnosed with a flu.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in our flu episode a little bite,
Speaker 1: but what she really had was an intestinal blockage and
Speaker 1: at the tender age of twelve, she had a heart
Speaker 1: attack and sepsis and passed away. Super tragic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so those two dying so close to the
Speaker 3: production of the actual movie she died.
Speaker 2: It was poultry Guysed three.
Speaker 3: I believe that Heather O'Rourke died after filming, they were
Speaker 3: basically done.
Speaker 1: Did ed get it wrong?
Speaker 2: I got it wrong?
Speaker 1: Oh man?
Speaker 3: And then Dominique Akin died just a couple of months
Speaker 3: after the first Poultry Guys came out.
Speaker 2: So that's like.
Speaker 3: One big hallmark of a movie being cursed story is
Speaker 3: the deaths that happen typically need to happen either during
Speaker 3: production or right around production. Right, Okay, so those two
Speaker 3: are the big ones. But then people say, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: still not convinced. Well, listen to this. In Polsier Guys too,
Speaker 3: there was an actor named will Sampson who played Taylor,
Speaker 3: the medicine man who helps the family. Yeah, and he
Speaker 3: is better known for playing the chief in One Flew
Speaker 3: Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yes, one of the great characters
Speaker 3: of all time. He died, I guess after filming a
Speaker 3: few years after filming the year after filming in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty seven. He died following a heart and lung transplant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he had a history of health issues. He
Speaker 1: was a giant man. Yeah, and so that was, you know,
Speaker 1: again tied to the curse. But what can you say
Speaker 1: about someone who just died sort of natural issu.
Speaker 3: Causes after a heart and long transplant. I think there's
Speaker 3: pretty good odds. Yeah, and then there's Julian Beck who
Speaker 3: played the scary, scary, scary preacher. Yes Caine also in
Speaker 3: Poultry Guys Too.
Speaker 1: Man, he was creepy.
Speaker 3: He died I guess before Poultry Guys Too actually came out,
Speaker 3: so that would have been close to the production as well,
Speaker 3: So it checks those boxes. But he died of stomach
Speaker 3: cancer and he apparently had a long standing issue with
Speaker 3: battling it as well, So you can make the case
Speaker 3: it doesn't really count. But are you really trying to
Speaker 3: make a case about curses. Yeah, let's just talk about
Speaker 3: him instead about that, agreed?
Speaker 2: Okay, what's next? The Wizard of Oz is next.
Speaker 1: That's right. Nineteen thirty nine. Great great movie, but a
Speaker 1: great movie that was marred by for such a happy movie,
Speaker 1: it had some rough stuff going on because it was
Speaker 1: in the early days of making movies, and like you
Speaker 1: said earlier, back then it was they didn't know or
Speaker 1: care as much about safety. Like for instance, the tin
Speaker 1: Man Buddy Ebsen. They said, all right, we need to
Speaker 1: make you look silver, and so we'll just coat you
Speaker 1: with aluminium powder. And that stuff was really dangerous. He
Speaker 1: went to the hospital that irritated his lungs and he
Speaker 1: could not even continue in the role.
Speaker 3: No. Luckily he survived to go on to play Jed
Speaker 3: the Dad in Beverly Hillbillies, thank god, but he was
Speaker 3: out of the Wizard of Oz. He was so Buddy
Speaker 3: Ebsen was replaced by Jack Hayley, and they said, well,
Speaker 3: we probably shouldn't use that same aluminum powder, so they
Speaker 3: used an aluminum paste which didn't get into his lungs,
Speaker 3: but to give him a really bad eye infection. Man, right,
Speaker 3: So thein just the Tin Man role itself had a
Speaker 3: bunch of problems, but that was just one of many.
Speaker 1: Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, she was
Speaker 1: burnt pretty badly with some of the pyrotechnics from the movie,
Speaker 1: and I think she was only she was hospitalized, but
Speaker 1: she came back and you know, completed work on the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but she said she wasn't going to do any
Speaker 3: more firework. Apparently the trap door that she was standing on,
Speaker 3: the timing of it wasn't wasn't right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it didn't open up.
Speaker 3: And drop her right before the fireworks went off, but
Speaker 3: did it simultaneous to the fireworks going off, which is
Speaker 3: not what you want, but it was nineteen thirty nine, right,
Speaker 3: so they were like, whatever, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: There's the very famous urban legend, which is not true,
Speaker 1: but it bears mentioning that one of the munchkins hanged
Speaker 1: himself in the background of a scene. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: just google image that junk hanged Munchkin Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 1: it will have a screen cap with a little circle around.
Speaker 1: I mean, he doesn't even look It just looks like
Speaker 1: something that is not a tree, in other words, not
Speaker 1: attached to the ground. It doesn't necessarily look like a
Speaker 1: hanging muchkin. But apparently there was a bird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't look like a bird to me either, though,
Speaker 3: like supposedly it's a silhouette of a bird.
Speaker 2: And if you watch the like a close up of the.
Speaker 3: Video of it, it does sway back and forth above
Speaker 3: the ground. So, I mean you can see where people came.
Speaker 2: Up with that for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that is not the case. There was no
Speaker 1: munchkin that just couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 3: There's actually there's a really great horror fiction story by
Speaker 3: I think a guy named Steve Naggy called the Hanged
Speaker 3: Man of Oz looking up and reading. It's pretty good,
Speaker 3: but it's about this dude kind of becoming obsessed with
Speaker 3: that rumor and seeing it on video and not being
Speaker 3: able to unsee it, and all the stuff that happens after. Wow,
Speaker 3: I think it's Steve Naggy. It's definitely called the Hanged
Speaker 3: Man of Oz.
Speaker 1: Right, we'll check that out. Other tragedies and Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz anti em miss Clara Blandick. She killed herself.
Speaker 2: At age eighty one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she left in her suicide note that she
Speaker 3: was going on her greatest adventure.
Speaker 1: Well that's kind of nice, I guess.
Speaker 2: So it's about as pleasant as it can get. With
Speaker 2: the suicide note.
Speaker 1: I think the Wizard himself, Frank Morgan, he was injured
Speaker 1: in a car wreck just a few months after they
Speaker 1: released the movie. And then, of course Judy Garland had
Speaker 1: one of the more tragic lives in Hollywood history. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're making a movie about her soon, I think she.
Speaker 2: I can't believe they haven't already.
Speaker 1: I think they've done it on TV, but not a
Speaker 1: big movie thing.
Speaker 3: I don't think she was basically owned by MGM. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like almost almost the definition of being owned right.
Speaker 2: She was.
Speaker 3: Like we discovered at age thirteen, I think in Kansas
Speaker 3: actually at a state fair and they said, well, we're
Speaker 3: just going to buy you from your parents, basically, and
Speaker 3: they took her and they said, you can't get fat,
Speaker 3: so smoke eighty cigarettes a day. Yeah, they basically prescribed
Speaker 3: her that. They got her on amphetamines to keep her going.
Speaker 3: They let her have one square meal a day.
Speaker 1: Terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really so she and she Yeah, if ed makes
Speaker 3: a really good point. If there was any real tragedy
Speaker 3: that came out of the Wizard of Oz, it was
Speaker 3: Judy Garland's life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, so. She eventually would die by suicide herself
Speaker 1: on an overdose of barbituates. And I think it's she
Speaker 1: had the equivalent of ten seeking all capsules. Lord.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, man, let's say it. I want to see
Speaker 3: that movie. Do you know who's going to play her? Oh?
Speaker 1: Man, I just saw this the other day. I can't
Speaker 1: remember who, but I remember thinking, yeah, good casting. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: like it wasn't Owen Wilson. That'd be pretty bad troubles
Speaker 1: come on and get happy. So right, she was forty
Speaker 1: seven years young, by the way, which is far far
Speaker 1: too young. Sure, to have lost Judy Garland. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: you want to take.
Speaker 2: A break, Yeah, that downer.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, we'll come back and talk about the
Speaker 1: Man of Steel right after this.
Speaker 2: All right, Chuck.
Speaker 3: So there's actually a role Superman that's considered a cursed role.
Speaker 2: Did you know that?
Speaker 1: I did know that because I remember as a kid,
Speaker 1: even though I'm not, you know, sixty five years old.
Speaker 1: I like to watch reruns of stuff like Gilgan's Island
Speaker 1: and Green Acres and Petticoat Junction.
Speaker 2: Oh really, Petticoat Junkes. Is it good?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, you know, it's one of those old shows.
Speaker 1: They're all great.
Speaker 2: What about Troop Troops probably one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: I watch stuff Troop, I'll watch all that stuff Superman.
Speaker 1: The name of the show that I watch was called
Speaker 1: Adventures of Superman, and that was straight up from the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and still in reruns in the mid seventies
Speaker 1: at least, Yeah, because that's where I watched it. And
Speaker 1: that was the one starring George Reeves as the not
Speaker 1: even very muscular and slightly tubby Superman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that kind of like fifties fit which Daryl chested,
Speaker 3: chunky and just weird, like weirdly shaped. Yeah, like what
Speaker 3: were they What kind of exercise were they doing back then?
Speaker 1: Well? I don't think they did exercise back then. Wasn't
Speaker 1: that the deal?
Speaker 2: Oh? Is that what it was?
Speaker 1: Yeah? They were just like, you know, you're gonna play Superman,
Speaker 1: So eat a bunch of steak, right, like buff up
Speaker 1: a little bit, right, do some push ups? Maybe so?
Speaker 3: He George Reeves Reeves, He's George Reeves. Christopher Reeve was
Speaker 3: not plurals singular version right, Yes, George Reeves became synonymous
Speaker 3: with Superman. Like everybody thought of him as Superman. He
Speaker 3: liked like they he wouldn't be cast in anything else, right,
Speaker 3: And he had some He had to put up with
Speaker 3: quite a bit being known as Superman who recognized as Superman.
Speaker 3: Apparently kids would come up and like punch him in
Speaker 3: the stomach to see if he was made a steel there.
Speaker 3: I looked into it. I learned this years ago from
Speaker 3: the Uncle John's bathroom reader, and I looked into it,
Speaker 3: and I think it actually may be correct. But at
Speaker 3: one like public appearance, he had to talk a kid
Speaker 3: out of shooting him, like this kid had brought his
Speaker 3: father's loaded thirty eight caliber pistol to shoot Superman to
Speaker 3: see if the bullets really bounced off of him, and
Speaker 3: George Reeve got the kid to put to hand the
Speaker 3: gun over to like a cop or something, because he
Speaker 3: told him that sure, of course the bullet would bounce
Speaker 3: off of him, but it could ricochet and hurt somebody
Speaker 3: else who is standing nearby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was in the Ben Affleck movie. Hollywood Land
Speaker 1: is about George Reeves, and that scene was in the
Speaker 1: movie Okay, and he does it's it's okay, it's not great,
Speaker 1: but you you lost me at ben aff It's not bad.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he talks the kid out of it in
Speaker 1: the in the movie and has said exactly what you said,
Speaker 1: like of course, blah blah blah, and then he takes it.
Speaker 1: Then you can see him he's just like, oh God Jesus,
Speaker 1: like almost got shot right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah that was. I can't imagine the relief that
Speaker 3: would wash over you after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So George Reeves Reeves, Reeves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the plural. It's tough to keep.
Speaker 1: Up with it is he He had a very sort
Speaker 1: of sad life, which is in that Hollywood Land movie.
Speaker 1: He like you said, he couldn't get other work, and
Speaker 1: he was only known as Superman. I think he turned
Speaker 1: to the booze and was not a happy guy. And eventually,
Speaker 1: in June of nineteen fifty nine, there was a he
Speaker 1: was having a party at his own house as fiance
Speaker 1: was sewing a party, and he said, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: upstairs and shoot myself in the head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Ed makes it sound like he was upset
Speaker 3: about the noise or something like that from the party.
Speaker 1: I mean that may have been the straw, but he
Speaker 1: was upset about life.
Speaker 2: I gotcha.
Speaker 1: And I got the sense like legitimately depressed, you know,
Speaker 1: like clinically depressed.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean like it's it's as we get
Speaker 3: to know more and more about like depression, it's so
Speaker 3: much easier to look back at, like, you know, people
Speaker 3: who were depressed before. But you just never really kind
Speaker 3: of pegged him like that because people didn't know about
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. Then it's just sad to see,
Speaker 3: like how many people suffered like that because no one
Speaker 3: knew what was going on, or they just thought it
Speaker 3: was the blues or you should just snap out of it, right, Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we've never done one on depression. I think we should
Speaker 3: have We not, I don't believe we have.
Speaker 1: Man, Well, then we should definitely do that.
Speaker 2: We have the one on Cats.
Speaker 1: And then Christopher Reeve played Superman and that is why
Speaker 1: some say it is a cursed role because he was
Speaker 1: very sadly injured in a horse riding accident in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties which left him paralyzed from the neck down.
Speaker 1: And he became very much an inspiration to people because
Speaker 1: he became an advocate for research into spinal cord injuries
Speaker 1: and he went on to direct and even act them
Speaker 1: as well after that.
Speaker 3: And it also points out that after Christopher Reeve died,
Speaker 3: his wife Dana, who saw him through this whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she died of cancer like two years afterward.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just man, I felt so awful for that family and
Speaker 1: less kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just to get like that random, to
Speaker 3: be thrown from a horse and then just be paralyzed
Speaker 3: from the neck down.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you put those two together and everyone says, well,
Speaker 3: Superman is a cursed role, correct? What would the grabster say?
Speaker 1: No such thing as curses, so stupid. The Conqueror is
Speaker 1: a movie that, like we said, John Wayne factored in,
Speaker 1: and this one was definitely. I don't know about Cursed,
Speaker 1: but well, here's the story. It is very unlikely that
Speaker 1: John Wayne would play Mongolian Genghis Khan. He did, though,
Speaker 1: but it was Hollywood back in the day where they
Speaker 1: just would cast white people to play whoever, right, And
Speaker 1: he played Genghis Khan. And they shot the Conquer in Utah,
Speaker 1: less than one hundred and fifty miles from the Nevada
Speaker 1: Test Site, sorry Nevada test site, where our own US
Speaker 1: government set off eleven nuclear detonations above ground.
Speaker 2: The year before, just in the year before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that area was crawling with bad stuff, lingering
Speaker 1: fallout in the dirt and in the rocks and like
Speaker 1: everything it was in the soil, and they were just
Speaker 1: running around in their filming movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I read this really interesting article in the Guardian called
Speaker 3: Hollywood and the down Windows about the people who lived
Speaker 3: in that area who suffered tremendously health problems from the fallout,
Speaker 3: and the government went to great lengths to cover it
Speaker 3: up and just assured everybody that there was no danger
Speaker 3: whatsoever to them, even though their houses and school yards
Speaker 3: were covered in radioactive ash and so from filming there.
Speaker 2: When this production came to town and they filmed there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were exposed to the same radioactive debris and
Speaker 3: dust and dirt that these people who lived in the
Speaker 3: area were as well. And as a result, supposedly something
Speaker 3: like ninety one out of two hundred and twenty cast
Speaker 3: and crew members who worked on location for the movie
Speaker 3: The Conqueror came down with cancer later on in life,
Speaker 3: which is highly unusual statistically speaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like forty something percent of the crew. And
Speaker 1: years later, in People magazine in nineteen eighty they actually
Speaker 1: did a special report on that movie in the Cancer Connection,
Speaker 1: like John Wayne, Agnes Morehead, Gene Gerson, Susan Hayward, the
Speaker 1: director Dick Powell, they all died of cancer. And in
Speaker 1: that People magazine, doctor Robert C. Pendleton, he was director
Speaker 1: of radiological health at the University of Utah, said that,
Speaker 1: like this would hold up in a court of law.
Speaker 1: That's such an outstanding number of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and apparently not even just the people who worked
Speaker 3: on the production. It came to be known The Conqueror
Speaker 3: came to be known by the way, it's considered one
Speaker 3: of the best bad movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Speaker 3: But people who visited the set battle cancer later in
Speaker 3: life too. Both of John Wayne's sons who came to
Speaker 3: visit him. There's a famous picture of him with two
Speaker 3: of his sons and a guy using a Geiger counter
Speaker 3: on set. Wow, both of his sons had cancer later
Speaker 3: in life too. But supposedly the family and Dick Powell's
Speaker 3: son Norman, who's interviewed in that article I read, they
Speaker 3: discount the idea that it was that people got cancer
Speaker 3: from that test site. They say, maybe it was a
Speaker 3: contributing factor, but these people all smoked heavily eight steak,
Speaker 3: like eight times a day, and that they had a
Speaker 3: lot of other risk factors that probably led to it.
Speaker 3: But it's also entirely possible that they may not have
Speaker 3: died of cancer as early had they not filmed at
Speaker 3: that site.
Speaker 1: Well, that doctor Robert Pendleton said essentially that this is
Speaker 1: about three times the rate of cancer that you would expect.
Speaker 1: So right, I think that it definitely contributed.
Speaker 3: It's pretty curious. I want to see it. Have you
Speaker 3: ever seen The Conqueror? No, I gotta see this.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty cringe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, super racist, but apparently, like even if you take
Speaker 3: all that away, just like the dialogue is awful, like
Speaker 3: the whole premise of it, as he kidnaps a woman
Speaker 3: and forces her to marry him, and of course romance
Speaker 3: blossoms as a result, you know, just the usual stuff
Speaker 3: from the fifties.
Speaker 1: The Omen. Yes, this is a good one because this
Speaker 1: is one of those where it's a movie about the devil,
Speaker 1: and so all these stories are going to be heightened, right,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like Poulter guys, like it wouldn't
Speaker 1: if this was when Harry met Sally and then some
Speaker 1: of this stuff happened.
Speaker 2: That when Harry met Sally was cursed with great.
Speaker 1: Laughs, it was I love that movie. One of the
Speaker 1: few romantic comedies that were legit good movies. Yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's go back to the beginning of this one. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the omen everyone knows was the great movie from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six about the Antichrist taking well not but I
Speaker 1: guess possession you could call it. But it's not like
Speaker 1: an exorcist thing. It basically the Antichrist is this little boy.
Speaker 1: He comes back as a little boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, in a bad, bad naughty little boy Damien
Speaker 3: who dresses like Angus Young. Yeah, sure, okay, So Damien
Speaker 3: is adopted by Gregory Peck in the movie, and in
Speaker 3: real life, Gregory Peck's son killed himself. He died by suicide,
Speaker 3: apparently out of the blue. No suicide note or anything
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, And this was before production had started,
Speaker 3: but after Peck had agreed to do the movie, right,
Speaker 3: and he still went ahead and did the movie. He
Speaker 3: left the US and went to London, and even on
Speaker 3: the way to London, before you even got to London
Speaker 3: to start shooting, something happened to him, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, I'm gonna get on a plane and
Speaker 1: fly to London. His plane was struck by lightning, right,
Speaker 1: and the producer's plane was struck by lightning separately.
Speaker 3: These are different, two different planes struck by lightning on
Speaker 3: the way to start shooting in London.
Speaker 1: So this curse thing is being legit this time.
Speaker 3: This is the one that even Ed got a little
Speaker 3: shaky on if you ask me.
Speaker 1: How about this. The hotel where they stayed, at least
Speaker 1: where the producer and some other folks stayed, was bombed
Speaker 1: by the Irish Republican Army.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hilton, the London Hilton.
Speaker 1: I don't know about a curse in that case, because
Speaker 1: the mid seventies there's a lot of that going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the IRI was bombing all sorts of stuff back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it was like a restaurant where the crew
Speaker 1: and the cats went to eat one night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were about to go eat there.
Speaker 3: So there's actually like all these close calls actually make
Speaker 3: it seem like this this movie production wasn't cursed, but
Speaker 3: instead was actually being looked out for on high by
Speaker 3: the dark Lord.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So like the crew that was going to go to
Speaker 3: dinner didn't go to dinner, they didn't make it there
Speaker 3: in time for the bombing. The people who were staying
Speaker 3: in the hotel when it was bombed weren't there yet.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of close calls, but there was
Speaker 3: one close call that really is just mind numbing. I
Speaker 3: would have freaked out had I been one of the
Speaker 3: people involved.
Speaker 1: The private jet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they chartered a private jet to fly them
Speaker 3: around London to get some good aerial footage of London,
Speaker 3: and at the last minute, the charter service switched planes
Speaker 3: to accommodate a group of Japanese businessmen. Well, the plane
Speaker 3: that the Japanese businessman took that the crew was supposed
Speaker 3: to be on, crashed on takeoff, actually crashed into a
Speaker 3: car and killed everybody on board the plane and everybody
Speaker 3: in the car.
Speaker 2: It crashed into.
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 2: And this is like a last minute switched to supposedly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those make you think, yeah that.
Speaker 3: I mean cursor, No, just knowing that you were that close,
Speaker 3: It just that gets you.
Speaker 1: How about this? A worker there was an animal sanctuary
Speaker 1: where they filmed, and a worker there was killed by
Speaker 1: a tiger. Yep, that one.
Speaker 3: Uh, I think I think that was the actual animal
Speaker 3: wrangler for the movie was killed. Really yeah, which makes
Speaker 3: it even closer. This is the one, though, Chuck, you
Speaker 3: got to take this one home. This is the one
Speaker 3: that really gets everybody, even though I think it's like
Speaker 3: a lot of it's made up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a car crash with John Richardson, who
Speaker 1: was a special effects worker. He designed the effects for
Speaker 1: the omen.
Speaker 3: Including a very famous decapitation scene toward the end.
Speaker 1: Yes, very famous. And I thought that was at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Was it the beginning?
Speaker 1: I think so. I think it's how it opened if
Speaker 1: I remember. But it's been a while okay either way.
Speaker 1: He was in Holland after working on a movie called
Speaker 1: A Bridge Too Far, and he was involved in a
Speaker 1: head on collision in his car and was injured. But
Speaker 1: his assistant Liz Moore, was decapitated and killed in that
Speaker 1: car wreck. And he claims, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is lore or not, sounds laurish. It does sound laurish,
Speaker 1: but he claims that he awoke from that crash and
Speaker 1: looked up and there was a street sign where they
Speaker 1: crashed that said the distance to the next town, and
Speaker 1: it was the town of oh Men, mn N. At
Speaker 1: a distance of sixty six point six kilometers.
Speaker 2: Sam, Now, is that true.
Speaker 3: There's no way it's true, because I looked up up
Speaker 3: on the internet that sign trying to find any picture
Speaker 3: of that sign. If that sign existed, there would be
Speaker 3: so many pictures from tourists taking photos of it on
Speaker 3: the internet. There's not a single one.
Speaker 1: Do you think from back then those pictures would still
Speaker 1: be around.
Speaker 2: The sign would probably be still be around.
Speaker 1: Well, see, I think that's the presumption. That may not
Speaker 1: be true. Like they may have taken the sign down
Speaker 1: for that reason.
Speaker 3: Maybe I guess that's possible, But no, picture of it
Speaker 3: whatsoever that no AP photographer went, I gotta get a
Speaker 3: picture of that sign. Nobody did that. There's no existing
Speaker 3: photo of that.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the one that makes me think, like, although,
Speaker 3: there is a town called Omen in the Netherlands, so
Speaker 3: it's entirely possible a crash took place by there.
Speaker 1: So that checks out.
Speaker 3: That definitely checks out. So we're gonna take a break, everybody,
Speaker 3: we just decided, but we're gonna be right back, So
Speaker 3: don't worry, because we're gonna talk some more about cursed movies.
Speaker 3: All right, We're back, as I promised, and we're on
Speaker 3: the Brainstorm, which I think Ed was just kind of
Speaker 3: showing off with this one, because he even says, like,
Speaker 3: you're not going to find this on many lists of
Speaker 3: curse movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure I get the curse in this one,
Speaker 1: but we'll talk about it. Brainstorm was the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three sci fi movie most famously known as being the
Speaker 1: Great Natalie Woods final film, right because she died in
Speaker 1: real life after the movie, obviously, when she drowned after
Speaker 1: being out on a boat one night partying with her
Speaker 1: husband Robert Wagner and her co star Christopher Walken right
Speaker 1: under some say many say mysterious circumstances. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was reading up about that case. And they apparently
Speaker 3: have been drinking since at least four in the afternoon,
Speaker 3: and they made it back to the boat pretty late,
Speaker 3: and they've been.
Speaker 2: Drinking through dinner.
Speaker 3: They were all just pretty pretty crocked, right, And supposedly
Speaker 3: Natalie Wood was either afraid of water and or couldn't swim,
Speaker 3: and for some reason she had tried to get into
Speaker 3: a dinghy that was attached to the boat that they
Speaker 3: were staying on and probably hit her head and drowned.
Speaker 1: That's the story.
Speaker 2: That's the official story, right.
Speaker 3: But apparently in twenty twelve it was reopened or her
Speaker 3: cause of death was changed from accident to undetermined.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there were stories that she and Robert
Speaker 1: Wagner had been fighting. The captain even many years later,
Speaker 1: said that he actually killed her. No charges wherever brought
Speaker 1: Christopher walking for his I think he's never talked about
Speaker 1: it publicly, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: No, he finally did years and years later in a
Speaker 3: Playboy interview, and he basically said it was it must
Speaker 3: have been an accident that no one knows but she
Speaker 3: surely it was a incident.
Speaker 1: That was what he said, and that's probably the only
Speaker 1: thing he said, because I didn't think he ever said anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, he said it's an accident. Clearly.
Speaker 2: That was great.
Speaker 3: Because that was that was Christopher walking with just a
Speaker 3: hint of John Travolta.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's a little trible to esk for? Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's tied to Brainstorm as being a curse,
Speaker 1: I guess because they were both in the movie, even
Speaker 1: though the grabster points out that some people tied this
Speaker 1: back to a Rebel without a Cause curse.
Speaker 2: Because that makes way more sense to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because James Dean and Salminio and Natalie wood Than
Speaker 1: all died from that movie relatively young.
Speaker 3: She made it the longest. She was in her early forties,
Speaker 3: I think when she died. But James Dean died very
Speaker 3: young in a car crash right after Rebel without a
Speaker 3: Cause was released.
Speaker 1: I think yeah, And I think wouldn't saw many a murdered.
Speaker 3: He was murdered in nineteen seventy six at a pretty
Speaker 3: young age.
Speaker 2: Still.
Speaker 3: He was stabbed to death in the heart in Ali
Speaker 3: behind his house. Yeah, I have a pizza man to me,
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, huh, it's so weird. Well it is,
Speaker 3: but I mean we're talking about curses so well.
Speaker 1: I mean usually the pizza man gets stabbed, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Right, I think this guy was actually a serial killing
Speaker 3: pizza man.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, I just saw recently. Is there a
Speaker 1: serial killer in like central Florida?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I hadn't heard anything. But aren't there like at least
Speaker 3: fifty serial killers operating at any given point in time?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I do know that I saw
Speaker 1: something that I heard that like three murders in the
Speaker 1: Tampa area were just linked. Oh man, I think that
Speaker 1: made me think it's been a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't hear about him very often, but as
Speaker 3: I grow older and wiser, I'm starting to think, like
Speaker 3: there's a lot more serial killers out there than you
Speaker 3: would imagine. That, like human life has very little value
Speaker 3: to more people than you would hope.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that the darkest thing you can think of.
Speaker 1: It's pretty dark.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The last high profile when I remember is BTK. But
Speaker 1: surely there's been one since then.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, because he was like early two thousands, right,
Speaker 3: I know, but I can't think of one.
Speaker 2: I can't either, man, But.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time since. You know, we've heard
Speaker 1: of like Jeffrey Dahmers and man that was said, Bundy's
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Yeah, thankfully, sure, the Son of
Speaker 1: Sam's and the Zodiacs. It seems like the seventies and
Speaker 1: eighties were sort of the time where that was happening more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was harder to get away with it, or
Speaker 3: easier to get away with it, or.
Speaker 2: I don't know, who knows.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to that Heaven's Gate podcast. Have you heard that?
Speaker 2: I haven't heard that. No, it's good.
Speaker 1: It's from our buddy Chris Bannon over at Midroll put
Speaker 1: it out and is he hosting it? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: Glenn Washington narrates it. But having through three episodes now,
Speaker 1: it's really good. But it's kind of funny, man, that
Speaker 1: time of the sixties and seventies, it was just and
Speaker 1: we talked about it some in our Cults episode. It
Speaker 1: was people just believed more in trying stuff out like
Speaker 1: that and UFOs and it was all just kind of
Speaker 1: the in the mainstream right and it just all seems
Speaker 1: so unbelievable now but back then it wasn't. It was
Speaker 1: kind of believable that someone might join up with a cult.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of people were on grass back then,
Speaker 3: on the Grass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy. I got to hear that.
Speaker 3: It's good podcast. Man, that's just a fascinating story.
Speaker 1: But now that means we can't do Heaven's.
Speaker 2: Kate because Bannon did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then they did. You know, you can't cover
Speaker 1: in forty five minutes what they cover in whatever ten episodes.
Speaker 2: Ten sounds about right.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I haven't. I don't think they released
Speaker 1: it all at once, but it feels like a ten.
Speaker 2: Let's say seven to ten.
Speaker 1: So anyway, can we close on Brainstorm or are we
Speaker 1: still uh? Do we miss something?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean Natalie Wood's murders or death death sorry is unsolved,
Speaker 3: still in its mystery.
Speaker 2: It may always be.
Speaker 3: I had no idea about that about Robert Wagner. I
Speaker 3: just knew Natalie Wood drowned. I'd never heard anything about
Speaker 3: it being mysterious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's long been mysterious, and well, here's how
Speaker 1: we'll finish it. Then she wasn't even able to finish
Speaker 1: filming on that movie. And they did use a body
Speaker 1: double to complete some of those scenes and it was
Speaker 1: a big flop.
Speaker 3: Dude, Yeah, yes, it was okay, Chuck. So for the
Speaker 3: last one, then we're gonna combine two together.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Strangely, they are almost the same story, but with two
Speaker 3: different films, and both of them were films that were
Speaker 3: never made or have yet to be made, is a
Speaker 3: better way to put it. The first one is a
Speaker 3: Confederacy of Dunces, the film adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's book.
Speaker 2: I Guess Novel.
Speaker 1: Great book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never read it so good I really want
Speaker 3: to have just never read it for some reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a classic, classic book. And very sadly, Tool
Speaker 1: killed himself in nineteen sixty nine and the book was
Speaker 1: not out yet, And part of the reason he killed
Speaker 1: himself is because he could not achieve success as a writer.
Speaker 1: His mother gets a published it wins a Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one, and posthumously he became a famous author.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So people when it first was published in the early eighties,
Speaker 3: people were like, Oh, we've got to turn this into
Speaker 3: a movie. This is a great IDEA great book will
Speaker 3: be a great movie. And they said, could who can
Speaker 3: possibly play the main character? Belushi? He'd be perfect. Belushi dies, Well,
Speaker 3: who's next? Let's wait a few years and let's see
Speaker 3: who else could play this main character? John Candy. John
Speaker 3: Candy died. Okay, all right, everybody, let's just take a breather.
Speaker 3: We'll wait a year or two. Who's the next guy
Speaker 3: who's gonna play this? I got it this young up
Speaker 3: and comer named Chris Farley. Yeah, Chris Farley die. So
Speaker 3: a confederacy of Dunce has just kept getting put off
Speaker 3: and off and off. Right, Then finally Will Ferrell steps in,
Speaker 3: and it looks like it's going to happen because Will
Speaker 3: Ferrell is obviously indestructible.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And if you haven't gathered by hearing the
Speaker 1: people cast as ignatious, Riley was, he was a heavy
Speaker 1: man in the book. So obviously Belushi, Candy, and Farley
Speaker 1: are all big dudes, and they all died. So finally
Speaker 1: to go to Ferrell and they're like, well, he's in shape,
Speaker 1: and we can bulk him up. Maybe you some special effects.
Speaker 1: Have no idea, but at least he's probably not gonna
Speaker 1: drop dead of a heart attack or something, right, he
Speaker 1: was a safe bet. Yeah, but that didn't happen either.
Speaker 1: I think it was sort of in turnaround forever. It
Speaker 1: took a long time in development, and eventually the head
Speaker 1: of the Louisiana State Film Commission. It set in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: so they would have shot there. He was murdered and
Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina came along to wipe out a lot of
Speaker 1: where the film would be shot, and so I think
Speaker 1: that kind of just helped to put it on indefinite
Speaker 1: hold at the very least. But they are. I just
Speaker 1: saw I was looking this up see if I was
Speaker 1: back on track, and I saw there's a movie called
Speaker 1: The Butterfly and the Typewriter about John Kennedy Tool oh
Speaker 1: neat So they're doing a biopic on him with Thomas Man.
Speaker 1: Now Thomas Mann playing Tool. Who's he he's an actor right?
Speaker 2: Well obviously, but what has he been in?
Speaker 1: The thing that I saw him in was a movie
Speaker 1: out a couple of years ago called Me and Earl
Speaker 1: and the Dying Girl. Oh okay, it's a good, good
Speaker 1: little indie film. So he's good. So he's playing to
Speaker 1: and then I think Susan Sarandon places his mom oh
Speaker 1: and Diane Krueger's in it as well.
Speaker 3: So and Susan Sarandon's going to totally try to date
Speaker 3: him too, I'll bet.
Speaker 2: Why would you say that? Oh she likes younger dudes?
Speaker 1: O really? Oh yeah, maybe I have a shot.
Speaker 2: She likes young hipster dudes. No way younger than you,
Speaker 2: my friend.
Speaker 1: Maybe not good for her. I love Susan Sarandon.
Speaker 3: So oh yeah, more power too. I think she's great.
Speaker 3: But she is totally going to try to date Thomas Man.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, good for him too.
Speaker 3: Then sure I'm not being judgy, no, I know, Okay,
Speaker 3: So then that's a confederacy of dunces. Right, Yes, there's
Speaker 3: another script out there called A Took that has virtually
Speaker 3: the same story to it, Right well, but the story
Speaker 3: is totally different, But the cursed story is virtually the
Speaker 3: same with A Took.
Speaker 2: It's like a fish.
Speaker 3: Out of Water movie about an Inuit man who comes
Speaker 3: to New York and has to make his way in
Speaker 3: the big city.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, that script.
Speaker 3: Was early on, it was optioned and John Belushi was
Speaker 3: scheduled to play the main character. Right well, what happened
Speaker 3: to John Belushi?
Speaker 1: He died?
Speaker 2: So who was up next?
Speaker 1: Chuck John Candy.
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Well John Candy passed, God rest his soul.
Speaker 3: Who was after John Candy Chris Farley. That's right, Chris Farley.
Speaker 3: And so the narrative to this curse story takes a
Speaker 3: huge sudden turn when the next person up after Chris
Speaker 3: Farley is Sam Kennison.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Sam Kennison. They were actually, I mean they
Speaker 1: were actually gonna make the movie. It was happening, and
Speaker 1: Sam Kennison kind of destroyed that because he wanted to
Speaker 1: He want to be really heavily involved in the scriptory
Speaker 1: rights in the direction of the film. He wanted a
Speaker 1: creative control. He battled with the studio. I think there
Speaker 1: may have even been lawsuits going on, yeah, and that
Speaker 1: he eventually got to the point where he was like,
Speaker 1: you know what if I'm gonna if you're not going
Speaker 1: to give me creative control, I'll be in your movie
Speaker 1: and I'll suck on purpose.
Speaker 2: On purpose.
Speaker 3: And they said, oh yeah, we're gonna sue you, and
Speaker 3: he said, oh yeah, right, and then he died in
Speaker 3: a car wreck, yeah, before anything could happen as a result.
Speaker 3: So I took for the moment died with him again.
Speaker 3: In that bizarre it is the idea that those two
Speaker 3: things crossed over like that that one. Obviously it's not
Speaker 3: a curse, but I think that it's pretty interesting at
Speaker 3: the very least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: Well, if you guys want to know more about movie curses,
Speaker 3: just go start watching movies and ask people or is
Speaker 3: this one cursed? And then if they say no, go
Speaker 3: watch another one and ask about that. And then eventually
Speaker 3: someone will say yes, this one's cursed, and then ask
Speaker 3: them the story behind it. And in the meantime, since
Speaker 3: I said all that, it's time for listener.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm gonna call this just a very kind of
Speaker 1: email from a kind assie.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, discovered your show a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: and I reckon I have listened to two or three
Speaker 1: podcasts a day since then.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love you guys, and to say that your
Speaker 1: show is addictive would be an understatement. Until very recently,
Speaker 1: I was a news junkie. I live in Melbourne, Australia.
Speaker 1: I would listen to Radio National at every opportunity, but
Speaker 1: since Brexit in the recent US election, listening to the
Speaker 1: news and current affairs has become a health hazard for me.
Speaker 1: I also have two youngest children, eleven and nine, and
Speaker 1: having grown up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud myself,
Speaker 1: I don't want to subject my kids to the same fear.
Speaker 1: So finding your podcast has been a true joy. I
Speaker 1: love how enthusiastic and optimistic you both are about everything,
Speaker 1: and your curiosity is truly infectious.
Speaker 2: That is so nice, isn't it.
Speaker 1: You are so gloriously accepting of different ideas and cultures.
Speaker 1: And I've even adopted Chucks. I don't want to young
Speaker 1: someone else's young, which, by the way, Bridget, I did
Speaker 1: not make that up.
Speaker 2: Now, that was another listener who knows most, but we love.
Speaker 1: To say it. For sure, you've adopted that. But I
Speaker 1: love the podcast so much I've got my husband and
Speaker 1: kids into it as well. My husband is a radio
Speaker 1: ham and you listen to your episode on Ham Radio together.
Speaker 1: He was impressed with your efforts. Keep it up, guys,
Speaker 1: and thank you for all the joy and information you
Speaker 1: brought to my life. Cheers is from Bridget Foster and Melbourne.
Speaker 2: Cheers with some Fosters.
Speaker 1: And I tell you what, Bridgid, We're coming to Melbourne
Speaker 1: in September of next year for shows.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And you right in with a friendly reminder, and you
Speaker 1: and your family can get on the old guest list.
Speaker 2: How about that awesome man, Chuck, you're the guy.
Speaker 1: You're the guy. They're your passes too, all right?
Speaker 2: Cool?
Speaker 3: Well, thank you them out, Thanks a lot, Bridget, it
Speaker 3: was Bridget and family, right yeah, Bridgid with a D.
Speaker 2: Bridgid.
Speaker 3: Thank you for writing in And if you want to
Speaker 3: get in touch with us, like Bridget did, you can
Speaker 3: send us an email of the Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.