Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Movie Crush Special a dish. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of shish is going on in there. It's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant here at the Home Studio on
Speaker 1: Pont City Market, Atlanta, but setting up a show that
Speaker 1: I recorded in California, not one of the l A sessions,
Speaker 1: but the lone Max fun Con session. As most of
Speaker 1: you know, every year in June, I go to Lake
Speaker 1: Arrowhead in California for Max fun Con. And that's the
Speaker 1: Maximum Fund Podcast networks annual hang that they have in
Speaker 1: the woods every year. And so what happens is Jess
Speaker 1: he Thorne, who the leader of the Maximum Network, gets
Speaker 1: a bunch of comedians to perform and people to teach
Speaker 1: classes like acting classes or crafting classes or role playing,
Speaker 1: LARPing and stuff like that. It's just like nerd Heaven
Speaker 1: out there. And I go every year and do a
Speaker 1: trivia thing with John Hodgeman, and we've been doing it
Speaker 1: for like nine years straight and it's an annual tradition
Speaker 1: I love. And this year my pals from the friendly
Speaker 1: Fire podcast we're there, John Roderick, Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica.
Speaker 1: They do the friendly Fire podcast for maximum fun and
Speaker 1: it is one of my favorite shows. It's definitely tops
Speaker 1: for my movie shows. And uh, it's a war movie podcast.
Speaker 1: They sit around and each week they pick out of
Speaker 1: the hat and talk about a different war movie on
Speaker 1: their list. And they're all three very smart guys. Roderick
Speaker 1: is so insightful and knows more about history than anyone
Speaker 1: I know, So he's great on a war movie podcast.
Speaker 1: Ben Harrison is one of the smartest, uh nicest, most
Speaker 1: in fightful, well spoken guys you can have a conversation with.
Speaker 1: And Pranica he's the secret comedy weapon everybody. I love
Speaker 1: Pranica and his rise sense of humor and his sweet,
Speaker 1: sweet comedic delivery gets me every time. So that's friendly fire,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm pals with all these guys. Like I said,
Speaker 1: So I said, let's get together and do a true
Speaker 1: crossover app Uh, let me pick the movie. Let's do
Speaker 1: Platoon if you guys don't mind, And they were all
Speaker 1: way into it because Platoon is one of the great
Speaker 1: great war films of all time and one of my
Speaker 1: favorite uh movies and war movies of all time for sure.
Speaker 1: And so we got together in a cabin in the
Speaker 1: woods quite literally and recorded a crossover that is going
Speaker 1: to be airing on Friendly Fire, Speed and Movie Crushes,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna edit it how they want to, and
Speaker 1: we did segments from both shows, like the segments that
Speaker 1: I do and the segments they do, so it was
Speaker 1: a true crossover. So I would recommend listening to this
Speaker 1: thing twice if you can go over to Friendly Fire
Speaker 1: listen to their weird, short, shorter, ter edited version, and
Speaker 1: then mine, which you know me, I just kind of
Speaker 1: throw it all out there and let you sift through
Speaker 1: the rubble, and I think it'd be pretty interesting experience.
Speaker 1: So here we go, without any further ado, with the
Speaker 1: Friendly Fire dudes and me in a cabin in the
Speaker 1: woods on Platoon. Have you guys ever recorded in the
Speaker 1: same room. Yeah, okay, And it's a it's very enjoyable
Speaker 1: to be able to see there. They're bright, scrubbed young faces.
Speaker 1: Most of the time we've done it, we've done so
Speaker 1: after having a giant barbecue dinner, and so to demystify
Speaker 1: what's happening here, we're actually doing this in the morning,
Speaker 1: the best time to record Poda, Like Roderick literally put
Speaker 1: on his first article of clothing about eight minutes ago.
Speaker 1: I'm still my body is still resisting having a shirt on.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought we were going to
Speaker 1: start at nine, but we're starting at ten. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's the pad that we give ourselves. I think
Speaker 1: we all knew that this was not going to go
Speaker 1: down to nine. Yeah. We are up at max fun
Speaker 1: Con for the weekend, and we prepared for the weekend
Speaker 1: by watching a super gruesome and pretty upsetting movie. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's your relationship with this movie? Check? Well, this was
Speaker 1: a big, big movie for me and my roommates in college,
Speaker 1: So it was you know, I saw it in the theater,
Speaker 1: but then for on VHS. When did this come out?
Speaker 1: What year was this? Six? I think, oh really, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it was well, and you know, I didn't go
Speaker 1: to college until this would have been ninete, like four
Speaker 1: years later when we had it Heavy Heavy in the
Speaker 1: rotation in the in the VHS player, And I mean
Speaker 1: we watched it probably a twenty times in the space
Speaker 1: of a year. It was one of our movies. It was.
Speaker 1: It was kind of one of my movies in college too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kind of sessed of it. I mean it's
Speaker 1: such Uh, I mean, it's a really funked up movie
Speaker 1: to be obsessed with that. Yeah, I was obsessed with
Speaker 1: Tommy Boy in college. Like, how did that impact your
Speaker 1: life and your reputation? I don't know. I mean it
Speaker 1: was like the era where you watch movies on a
Speaker 1: computer by yourself. You know, we didn't have like a
Speaker 1: wave to It was that weird era where like there
Speaker 1: was not really DVDs anymore, Like all of the movie
Speaker 1: rental places had closed. But John still in that era.
Speaker 1: He's like, what are you talking about. I'm listening to
Speaker 1: nostalgic about, Like, oh, well, it was way back in
Speaker 1: the old days when you had to watch movies on
Speaker 1: your laptop by yourself. Well, it was a weird middle
Speaker 1: time where like you could I think you could know.
Speaker 1: I guess I wasn't streaming them, but I was the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, Like we didn't we didn't have a way
Speaker 1: to like watch movies together that much. Wow. So it's
Speaker 1: just like walking six miles to school in the snow
Speaker 1: every morning. It's so weird. Did not be the youngest
Speaker 1: person in the room at any point. We just didn't, like,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a VHS and nobody wanted VHS at
Speaker 1: that point. So I don't know. I saw this movie
Speaker 1: in the theaters and I was a senior in high school.
Speaker 1: So if you can imagine what it's like to be,
Speaker 1: you know, senior in high school in a movie like
Speaker 1: this comes out, which and this movie was absolutely groundbreaking
Speaker 1: in the in its time, right it's uh yeah, the
Speaker 1: first one told from the grunt's perspective. Is that true
Speaker 1: fully from or is that not true? Well, it depends
Speaker 1: on how you how you put where you put Apocalypse
Speaker 1: Now in there, like is but you know, in Apocalypse
Speaker 1: Now obviously as super groundbreaking, but by we were still
Speaker 1: culturally reckoning with Vietnam. We had not at all dealt
Speaker 1: with it as Americans, and it was really still still
Speaker 1: felt really raw. And when this movie came out with
Speaker 1: all of its brutality and all of it's like unvarnished h. Gorey,
Speaker 1: but also like really reckoning with American um over violence
Speaker 1: and and losing the war, which we still I mean
Speaker 1: Adam's favorite movie being Rambo where he saves us from Vietnam,
Speaker 1: where he wins it for us. Right, Um, this was
Speaker 1: like the first movie where we just full on lost
Speaker 1: right in front of everybody. These guys weren't supposed to
Speaker 1: just take pictures, so it was it can you imagine
Speaker 1: developing their film at the photo mat when they get back.
Speaker 1: So John, uh, for listeners of movie crush, they may
Speaker 1: not understand that you are and you're the job you
Speaker 1: serve unfriendly fired a lot of times is historian, because
Speaker 1: you know much more than what you like to call
Speaker 1: these dinglings. It's not that, it's just you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a I am a generation different and not even I'm
Speaker 1: not even that much older, certainly than you Chuck. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm I'm not yet fifty. But my dad
Speaker 1: was born in and fought in World War Two. I
Speaker 1: was a younger child of his, but you know, we
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time watching war movies together, and
Speaker 1: he was watching them from the perspective of somebody that,
Speaker 1: you know, it fought in the Pacific. So I grew
Speaker 1: up really thinking about war, digesting it at a different
Speaker 1: level than sort of I wasn't I'm not a veteran,
Speaker 1: but right, but but you may as well be. I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm a veteran of a thousand psychic wards.
Speaker 1: I think we can agree that John will eventually become
Speaker 1: the docent at an air and space museum, like getting
Speaker 1: me yeah, like most veterans do. That will be his eventuality.
Speaker 1: The pincacle of Florida Mustang. So, since you're the historian, though,
Speaker 1: I thought you could say it up the setting a platoon,
Speaker 1: which is late nineteen early nineteen, what was where was
Speaker 1: that in the Vietnam War? So we had we the
Speaker 1: this is it begins a year before I'm born, right
Speaker 1: September of sixty seven, and it's prett offensive, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a time when you know, I guess you would
Speaker 1: call it like pure Vietnam. And it's before before Nixon's elected, right,
Speaker 1: So it's still the Johnson administration, and it still feels
Speaker 1: like we are fighting a war. We understand in the
Speaker 1: back in the States, the anti war movement hasn't yet
Speaker 1: become It hasn't tipped over. It's still the province of
Speaker 1: students and intellectuals. It hasn't become a mainstream movement yet.
Speaker 1: So there's still support for the war. We're still fighting
Speaker 1: it like a conventional war, thinking that you know, if
Speaker 1: we just get in there and bomb them and shoot them,
Speaker 1: the surrender. All that changed in and this is kind
Speaker 1: of this is describing the run up to the realization
Speaker 1: that like, uh, we're not fighting a conventional war. And
Speaker 1: that was that was the tet offensive, you know that
Speaker 1: that um, the North Vietnamese staged a massive, massive um
Speaker 1: invasion you know, of the South, and they came at
Speaker 1: came at us from all sides, and it was like,
Speaker 1: how did how do they have the power to do this?
Speaker 1: How did where do they? Where do they find this strength?
Speaker 1: Like we felt like we had them on the ropes,
Speaker 1: and we did have them on the ropes, but we
Speaker 1: just didn't have them. We didn't understand the kind of
Speaker 1: war we were fighting. Yeah, because even Charlie Sheen is
Speaker 1: Chris Taylor in this movie, I mean, there's plenty of
Speaker 1: disillusionment that happens as his character arc. But at one
Speaker 1: point in the you know, we could admit very obvious
Speaker 1: voice over letters to Grandma talks about, you know, fighting
Speaker 1: for the freedom of Americans. So there is still that
Speaker 1: idea that there they have a righteous job to do
Speaker 1: over there. We think of that kind of of uh
Speaker 1: language as being a thing of recent years, you know,
Speaker 1: like our freedoms, but this hearkening back twenty years and
Speaker 1: it was language that was it didn't ring jingoistic even then,
Speaker 1: it felt like, yeah, sure, how do you think Grahama's
Speaker 1: feeling reading those letters? Well, you know, so my dad
Speaker 1: was a veteran right and also a liberal in the sixties,
Speaker 1: and heat impossible. It's I'm afraid it's true, the contradiction
Speaker 1: in terms. And he had a really really hard time
Speaker 1: coming to grips with the idea that the American military
Speaker 1: was not a force for good, and so he was
Speaker 1: late to turn against the Vietnam War because he was
Speaker 1: just he couldn't fathom uh situate ation where we weren't
Speaker 1: actors on the in the service of of like global
Speaker 1: peace and unity, and so we had to have been
Speaker 1: doing the right thing there. It was inconceivable. And so
Speaker 1: I think Grandma is reading these letters, and and this
Speaker 1: was happening across the country, like people, people back in
Speaker 1: the States were becoming disillusioned, and they they didn't understand
Speaker 1: it because that this had never happened before. What a
Speaker 1: strange like Grandma had experienced the Great War in her
Speaker 1: in her own terms, but to be receiving letters that
Speaker 1: are so different from what her expectation must have been
Speaker 1: Gammy Sheen's world was rock right. She loves her boy.
Speaker 1: She knows he's not a drug addict shirker, which is
Speaker 1: what she's seeing on the evening news, like the hippies
Speaker 1: are these disgusting uh cowards. But this is her son,
Speaker 1: for her grandson fighting in the war, and she's getting
Speaker 1: the letters who volunteered, who volunteered, which is a very
Speaker 1: important character trade for him. And I think that's Oliver
Speaker 1: Stone's story, right, He like, I don't think this is
Speaker 1: entirely autobiographical, but he kind of it though. It recycled
Speaker 1: back from the war and went to film school and
Speaker 1: then made I think he made did he make uh
Speaker 1: the El Salvador movie before this, Yeah, came before, but
Speaker 1: he wrote I actually didn't know this. He wrote this
Speaker 1: movie right after he started writing this movie, right when
Speaker 1: he got home from Vietnam, and at one point send
Speaker 1: it to Jim Morrison to play that role. Uh. So
Speaker 1: that's how old that the Platoon story And it wasn't
Speaker 1: this script, but it was his Vietnam experience movie that
Speaker 1: that eventually morphed into Platoon. Did you guys see his
Speaker 1: student film that he made when he was in film
Speaker 1: school with Martin Scorsese. I've I've actually seen it projected
Speaker 1: on film really as I went to the same films Goal,
Speaker 1: but it was it's on YouTube now, and it's like
Speaker 1: it's hard to find the whole thing. It's like pieces
Speaker 1: of it are on YouTube in weird ways, and it
Speaker 1: is real, like it is it really like Pegs the
Speaker 1: Needle for like art student, like like super pretentious student film.
Speaker 1: But it's it's you know, I think probably has a
Speaker 1: lot of the DNA of Platoon in it. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of it's a lot in French. Right, It's in French,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that made it's so pretentious because
Speaker 1: it's in New York, right, It's but set in New York. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But Scorsese talks about having Oliver Stone as a student
Speaker 1: in his class and just like, you know, this guy
Speaker 1: was really intense. He was he'd like he would do
Speaker 1: a rail of coke and then he'd get up and
Speaker 1: present to the class, but like he'd you know, he'd
Speaker 1: been in the ship and the rest of us hadn't it,
Speaker 1: And it was Yeah, I think this is the first
Speaker 1: war movie made by a veteran of the war that
Speaker 1: he's depicting which is pretty landmark. You know, well, at
Speaker 1: least in Vietna in the case of Vietnam, right, Like ever,
Speaker 1: I think any war that a veteran directed a movie
Speaker 1: about the war that they were in, damn the very
Speaker 1: least Vietnam. But I think it was any war. That's astonishing.
Speaker 1: I don't have access to that. Do you think there
Speaker 1: was a resistance to making a tent pole Vietnam film?
Speaker 1: Starting Starting a Sheen not long after Apocalypse Now, Like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if they had any second thoughts about casting
Speaker 1: she and the younger? How do you think about that?
Speaker 1: That really wasn't what seven years later and he's the
Speaker 1: spitting image of his dad. Yeah, that was That's a
Speaker 1: big part of it. And the voiceover is the same
Speaker 1: dead pan um sort of walk you through the walk
Speaker 1: you through what's happening? Poly sounds a little more artful,
Speaker 1: I think, And also he's way more broken. Yeah, Sheen
Speaker 1: stayed is kind of a college kid through the whole
Speaker 1: movie some in some ways, Yeah, I mean his like
Speaker 1: his end of movie ruminations on the nature of war
Speaker 1: and togetherness are really like, oh wow, it's very heavy handed,
Speaker 1: even for Oliver Stone. You know, what do you guys
Speaker 1: think about Oliver Stone because I've always enjoyed a lot
Speaker 1: of his movies. But I always, even when I was
Speaker 1: younger watching his movies, before I even had much of
Speaker 1: a film aesthetic, it was like, come on, man, like
Speaker 1: we get it. You don't need to literally tell everyone
Speaker 1: the theme He lost me at JFK up. Until then,
Speaker 1: I thought that he because born in the fourth of July. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty good. Was also, you know, like a
Speaker 1: really intense experience, intense watching experience as someone who was nineteen,
Speaker 1: I guess when it came out, you know, like that
Speaker 1: was and especially at that moment in American history. Um,
Speaker 1: just what it was like in the late eighties. That
Speaker 1: was That was because I was you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: about this on our show before, but this was the
Speaker 1: height of the m I a p O w R
Speaker 1: in the U S where we were. Vietnam was still
Speaker 1: a raw, raw wound. So I thought, Oliver Stone, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's heavy handed, But what compared to what like Rambo two,
Speaker 1: I mean, there was just would you stop? There was
Speaker 1: just nobody else working in this working this way. He
Speaker 1: was only supposed to take pictures. What about you made it?
Speaker 1: What about you guys with Stone Are you stoneheads? Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the time you came along, been like his whole
Speaker 1: his whole thing was developed. Yeah, he he had a
Speaker 1: like a known of at at that point. And uh,
Speaker 1: they saw I had the Oliver Stone box set in
Speaker 1: my dorm room, Um did you? Yeah? Which was what
Speaker 1: Wall Street Platoon, Natural Born Killers FK one on the
Speaker 1: fourth of July, Salvador Um, I mean it's hard to
Speaker 1: think of a good movie he's made recently. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he still has the power to have a film made,
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's not how about that choice to
Speaker 1: choose not to It seems like there would be a
Speaker 1: lot for him to say right now, Yeah, what what? What?
Speaker 1: What are his recent movies? Well, he's done. He made
Speaker 1: George W. Bush movie that was a little while ago.
Speaker 1: One of the things he has done a lot recently
Speaker 1: is go interview like Boogeyman. So he has a documentary
Speaker 1: where he's interviewing Putin on Showtime. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of documentaries he made where he interviewed Fidel Castro that
Speaker 1: are really wild to watch because it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: Oliver Stone ah cares that much about the like human
Speaker 1: rights abuses, of the Castro regime, they like kind of
Speaker 1: get along. Really. His politics are yeah right pretty uh
Speaker 1: like yeah, pretty like on his sleeve. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean he made he made like that Alexander the
Speaker 1: Great movie And I heard him talking about that before
Speaker 1: he made it, and he was saying like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: it was just like a totally different time where like
Speaker 1: the relationships between people are totally unimaginable to us now.
Speaker 1: And uh, if that sounds like a recipe for a
Speaker 1: film that is unrelatable, that is the film that he made.
Speaker 1: So he made I forgot. He made the Wall Street sequel, right,
Speaker 1: Money Never Sleeps. Yeah. He made a movie called Savages,
Speaker 1: which I remember was like a drug movie. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then um, it's about two guys that are in a
Speaker 1: threatle with Blake Lively. None. He made the Snowdon movie,
Speaker 1: which I did not see, And then I love this.
Speaker 1: This is so all every stone. He just produced it.
Speaker 1: But he deuced a documentary called All Governments Lie a
Speaker 1: Little on the Nose title eyes there. But sure, so
Speaker 1: he does have a lot to say and he is
Speaker 1: saying it to very few people, I guess. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he has kind of fallen off the map. What
Speaker 1: about you guys. What's your relationship to Oliver Stone? Uh?
Speaker 1: Mine actually is opposed to yours. With respect to JFK,
Speaker 1: I I actually really enjoyed JFK. That's where I onboarded
Speaker 1: with Oliver Stone, mostly because at that time in my life, I, uh,
Speaker 1: it was unexpected to find a courtroom drama so exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean, say what you will about the you've never
Speaker 1: seen an episode of Matlock. Obviously every summer I'd watch
Speaker 1: Mattlock in syndication. But you didn't watch mash No why.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a film. You could argue that
Speaker 1: it's a film for cranks by inks, but I thought
Speaker 1: it was extremely well made, and it was. It was
Speaker 1: one of the first examples of like a three hour
Speaker 1: film that I found totally riveting. Did you like the
Speaker 1: one part where Kevin Costner was giving his long soliloquy
Speaker 1: talking about doing the right thing and he looks right
Speaker 1: at the camera it's up to you, the American people.
Speaker 1: I like that part. Did you like Joe pesci with
Speaker 1: with his like electrical tape eyebrows. Oh yeah, I got
Speaker 1: about the whole thing. He was seen the real pictures
Speaker 1: of that guy, right, Yeah, he looks just like it.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that struck me about this
Speaker 1: movie was the and especially watching it now in my
Speaker 1: mid to late forties as opposed to in college, was
Speaker 1: the brutality of the conditions and just the sort of
Speaker 1: it's the first time I had ever seen the day
Speaker 1: to day of war, like filling sand bags and hacking
Speaker 1: down brush and burning trains, burning boot and I think
Speaker 1: that was kind of definitely what Stone was after was
Speaker 1: it was not clearly not glorification, but like a lot
Speaker 1: of it is just shit work every day and then
Speaker 1: you go out and kill people at night and try
Speaker 1: not to get killed. And somehow he communicates in all
Speaker 1: that ship work the like pregnant tension, like it's no
Speaker 1: you never you're never bored watching guys fill sandbags because
Speaker 1: you feel in the room, in your own you know,
Speaker 1: watching it all by yourself with your DVD collection or whatever,
Speaker 1: you can feel how how much this is just like,
Speaker 1: this is just some busy work in between the next
Speaker 1: time we go out into the jungle and yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, face the enemy set off claym wars Um.
Speaker 1: It's uh. The movie that also spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time on class because he is so different from the
Speaker 1: people that he's there with. And I think that was
Speaker 1: something that kind of went over my head when I
Speaker 1: was in college because I was like a sallop cistic
Speaker 1: college student. Yeah, when did that stop? It hasn't. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, is that the title of the episode, the
Speaker 1: most solipsistic Midshipman and friendly fire inside joke? Everywh Yeah?
Speaker 1: So the but that but that class stuff I think
Speaker 1: hit me a little harder now. And I think maybe
Speaker 1: it's just like where we're at politically now. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that like anybody was screaming socialism in
Speaker 1: response to George W. Bush, but like we're in a
Speaker 1: political era now where like the the liberal response to
Speaker 1: what's going on in Washington is a lot more like
Speaker 1: a lot more about like uses the language of class
Speaker 1: and class warfare a lot more so that stuff like
Speaker 1: came out in higher relief for me watching it. I mean,
Speaker 1: And I hadn't watched this movie in ten years, I think, so, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I had forgotten how much a part
Speaker 1: of it that was. And like the like Sheen's character
Speaker 1: like makes friends with these guys, but there are like
Speaker 1: he describes them as like people from the end of
Speaker 1: the tracks, like people from towns you've never heard of.
Speaker 1: And that's really interesting to me. The this movie is
Speaker 1: like bringing in a general American audience and showing them, hey, like,
Speaker 1: you guys have people you don't care about fight your
Speaker 1: fights for you like and saying that really explicitly, Like
Speaker 1: he says everything very explicitly. This is one of the
Speaker 1: first times you would ever the first time, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't say for sure, but like Rambo
Speaker 1: tries to say that, but it's like he's an action hero,
Speaker 1: you know, like we don't we believe that, we that
Speaker 1: society doesn't care about him for the first thirty seconds
Speaker 1: of that film and then it's out the window. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to dunk on you, but which Rambo film
Speaker 1: are you referring to? Just so I can tailor my response,
Speaker 1: don't give him, don't give him a chance to say
Speaker 1: ub again. Uh this is There are several moments, several
Speaker 1: moments in Platoon where there are no white faces on
Speaker 1: the screen, where there there's a vignette where it's just
Speaker 1: the black soldiers interacting with one another, and that was
Speaker 1: unprecedented at the time, and when you think about the U. S.
Speaker 1: Military even at the even at the start of the
Speaker 1: Korean War, military was not integrated and there were not
Speaker 1: really very many black frontline combat soldiers. Grandma must have
Speaker 1: been really confused getting these letters Gammy sheen. She didn't
Speaker 1: know what was coming, trip and balls. Right, But this
Speaker 1: is fifteen years later, her uh, And the the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army is black soldiers drafted. So a massive change in
Speaker 1: the way war was fought and the and the this
Speaker 1: and this class because it wasn't just like blue collar.
Speaker 1: I was from Brooklyn, but it was like we were
Speaker 1: building an army from the underclass and if you have
Speaker 1: any money at all, you can skate um. And that
Speaker 1: was like that was wholly new. But the country was
Speaker 1: reckoning with it then and in the eighties too. I
Speaker 1: mean this it wasn't the language, didn't didn't seem alien.
Speaker 1: We were all very conscious of the class disparity of
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. Yeah, I think that that's something that
Speaker 1: maybe got lost to me, and like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: what I don't remember, like learning about the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: and history classes they skated over to did much detail
Speaker 1: at all. It was the last day of the year,
Speaker 1: right before summer. They were like, and then the Korean
Speaker 1: War in Vietna, um Watergate and have a great summer.
Speaker 1: It had the worst pr as wars go. They wanted
Speaker 1: to talk. World War two was the one that took
Speaker 1: a week to get to in those classes. I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys were growing up in a world where it
Speaker 1: was understood that we had lost or at least gotten
Speaker 1: battered in Vietnam. I don't think I did understand that.
Speaker 1: I Like, I remember when I saw a fish called
Speaker 1: Wanda and they make fun of Kevin Klein for losing
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, and he goes it was a tie,
Speaker 1: being like, wait, what what happened? Like was it a tie?
Speaker 1: Or that my father was in Vietnam. I didn't really
Speaker 1: know what the outcome of the war was growing up.
Speaker 1: I think my understanding was that it was the complicated
Speaker 1: war and that's about all I knew. Right, Hey, Ben, Uh,
Speaker 1: my dad wasn't in Vietnam and this isn't this isn't
Speaker 1: a joke or anything. But does your dad not like
Speaker 1: to talk about it or what was his relationship to
Speaker 1: you about the war? I mean, he wasn't in combat,
Speaker 1: so he was he was in the rear with gear,
Speaker 1: as they say, but it must have he must have
Speaker 1: had strong feelings about it. Yeah, And I'm I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here wondering, like he had enough privilege to have like
Speaker 1: made himself a college student instead of somebody who was
Speaker 1: eligible to be drafted and did not. And I don't
Speaker 1: really know what factored into that, if it was a
Speaker 1: sense of obligation or did he say whether or not
Speaker 1: he believed the United States one Vietnam, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever talked to him about it in those terms. Interesting,
Speaker 1: and he texts him right now, maybe platoon is going
Speaker 1: to bring you guys closer. Hey, Pops, by the way,
Speaker 1: one in your estimation, did we win Vietnam? The boy,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, there was, you know, to
Speaker 1: to suggest that we hadn't one in Vietnam would start
Speaker 1: a fight right even on the playground, because because it
Speaker 1: was still inconceivable. Uh. And then you know in the
Speaker 1: narrative that that that that transformed into we still here today,
Speaker 1: which is that we weren't allow those bureaucrats in Washington
Speaker 1: didn't allow us to win the Vietnam right, And so
Speaker 1: it became a it became a political football to indict
Speaker 1: those whoever you want to indict in Washington, whoever it is. Um,
Speaker 1: But we could you know this idea that the American
Speaker 1: military still has never been defeated except for that one
Speaker 1: time where we were kind of but you know what,
Speaker 1: we've already we'd already left. It wasn't us, It was this.
Speaker 1: You know, there's just this like constant rationalization about what happened,
Speaker 1: and we're still you still get into a fight in
Speaker 1: a bar. I bet we if we went to this
Speaker 1: bar a mile up the road, you can get into
Speaker 1: an argument about it. Let's do it, guys, Let's take
Speaker 1: our microphone. We've never done we've never done field segments
Speaker 1: on either of these shows, but I think we could
Speaker 1: make that happen. See if we can get a Vietnam
Speaker 1: fight at Lake earra Head at ten fifteen in the morning. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you guys watching it now, does I
Speaker 1: mean you have all described it as as a brutal film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but does it still feel like I mean, other than
Speaker 1: Charlie Sheen's kind of cornball voiceovers, does it still feel
Speaker 1: really real and hard? Or or is it? Does it?
Speaker 1: Is it two technicolor? I hadn't seen it in many years,
Speaker 1: probably ten years, and I was surprised at how affected
Speaker 1: I remained by the film here. It never lost any
Speaker 1: of it teat for me. I mean, it's the I
Speaker 1: think it's those those scenes in the village where there
Speaker 1: are uh all over the map in terms of what
Speaker 1: like like the individual soldiers like come into this village
Speaker 1: with very different agendas and you see them all play
Speaker 1: out and some are like explicitly horrifying and summer not
Speaker 1: and like, I don't, like, I can't think of a
Speaker 1: lot of war films where like a group of American
Speaker 1: soldiers like are involved in a project where some of
Speaker 1: them are doing things that like our crimes and right
Speaker 1: like they should go to jail. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: whole sequence still is just especially now that I have
Speaker 1: a kid, uh, just brutal to sit through. Still, it's
Speaker 1: very upset, and in the central piece of the movie,
Speaker 1: you know, everything in the movie sort of spins out
Speaker 1: of that that incident, which was clearly a I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure these things happened a lot, but what was
Speaker 1: the big famous Yeah. I was watching it last night
Speaker 1: and Chuck was sitting there with me. You know, we're
Speaker 1: kind of what he'd already been through it once, but
Speaker 1: we were watching it together. You just wanted to see
Speaker 1: that one part again. Well no, and then and then
Speaker 1: as they're walking up that hill into the village, Chuck
Speaker 1: was like, I can't do this again. It was brutal
Speaker 1: to sit through. I mean, this is weird to say,
Speaker 1: but like when I was in my twenties, I like
Speaker 1: don't know if I had developed enough morally to like
Speaker 1: understand how horrifying that was. No, totally, it affected me
Speaker 1: more now than when I was in college. And it's
Speaker 1: not like we were rooting it on in college, but
Speaker 1: just like, man, that's fucked up. But like this disturbed
Speaker 1: me to the core. And and Charlie Sheen's acting was
Speaker 1: really great in that in the in the scene where
Speaker 1: he thwarts the rape. I think the acting in general
Speaker 1: in the film is great, and the cast is stacked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody isn't that guy basically, Yeah, everybody acting the ship
Speaker 1: out of their parts. I mean just Tom Barrenger ever
Speaker 1: been better. I mean he was great in the Substitute,
Speaker 1: the Substitute and outwithstanding, but his you know, Barnes, Sergeant
Speaker 1: Barnes is like a pillar of cinema like one of
Speaker 1: the ultimate roles, and he inhabits it so completely and
Speaker 1: it's so affecting. I don't understand why Why was he
Speaker 1: nominated for an oscar for this? Is this something? That
Speaker 1: he and Willem Dafoe were both nominated for Supporting Actor,
Speaker 1: which is a rarity to see two actors in the
Speaker 1: same film in the same category, and they lost to
Speaker 1: somebody from my cousin, Vinny Or's, but it did win
Speaker 1: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editor, Best Sound Mixing. This
Speaker 1: sounds incredible. I mean, we we can get to that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and then was nominated for those two acting
Speaker 1: roles in script and cinematography. So it was I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a powerhouse movie across the board. And I
Speaker 1: remember that year at the Oscars, it was it was
Speaker 1: such a big deal for a Vietnam movie because it's
Speaker 1: sort of old hat. Now we've seen so many Vietnam
Speaker 1: movies since. But I forget in NI we had Apocalypse
Speaker 1: Now and not a ton of other ones there were.
Speaker 1: That was the common ballor if you want to count that,
Speaker 1: that was the era where we were where Rambo spawned
Speaker 1: a bunch of here we go, let's go back and
Speaker 1: kick some map us right, Chuck Norris did several of those.
Speaker 1: If we want to have another Rambo podcast, we can
Speaker 1: have another Rambo. You're gagging for it. But if you
Speaker 1: think about it, like the first Vietnam movie you drew first,
Speaker 1: like Green Berets came out in Night with John Wayne
Speaker 1: and that was the corniest war movie ever made. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it on Friendly Fire ventially. It is
Speaker 1: so so bad. And then Deer Hunter. Right in the
Speaker 1: mid seventies, there were there were a few movies coming home,
Speaker 1: a few movies about Vietnam vets coming back and being trashed,
Speaker 1: but Apocalypse Now was the first one that took us there.
Speaker 1: And then the Chuck Norris stuff of the early eighties
Speaker 1: was just that was all filmed in Santa Monica. And
Speaker 1: then this you know that just uh that just landed
Speaker 1: like a fucking sandbag full of blood on everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know where I got that. That's a pretty great, yeah,
Speaker 1: a pretty great way of describing this movie, sandbag full
Speaker 1: of blood. So John that they had that first firefight,
Speaker 1: that first firefight is so uh scary when Um Junior
Speaker 1: falls asleep on his watch and Charlie Sheen to have
Speaker 1: that great shot where he's just so still with his
Speaker 1: little hood pulled over his head, doesn't know what the
Speaker 1: funk to do as he sees the soldiers creeping from
Speaker 1: the jungle and he's so green and it's so scary.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a horror movie at that point. And
Speaker 1: then they had this firefight, and I just wondered, in
Speaker 1: the context of Vietnam, it seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: these were like guys fighting fifteen to twenty guys, Like
Speaker 1: were they trying to advance? It didn't seem like what
Speaker 1: was the what was the goal in the firefight? Just
Speaker 1: to kill some soldiers? Yeah, that was the problem with
Speaker 1: with the with fighting the war in Vietnam. Every prior
Speaker 1: war is about gaining and holding territory. Yeah, like take
Speaker 1: that hill, and the Vietnam had some obviously well, but
Speaker 1: they took the hill, but the hill was not really
Speaker 1: a strategic uh place in terms of advancing forward, right.
Speaker 1: I wondered why this bunker was like built where it
Speaker 1: was like just deep in the jungle there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of holes, Like why, yeah, it was what are we
Speaker 1: doing with them there? We would take a hill and
Speaker 1: we hold it, but it wasn't connected to any greater plan.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, now we have the advantage because we're whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd hold up there, and then they would they'd kind
Speaker 1: of build you know, that's the thing about the Hochi
Speaker 1: Min trail, right, we would blow it up and they
Speaker 1: would just build another one over here, because there wasn't
Speaker 1: any Because what we weren't trying to do was conquer
Speaker 1: North Vietnam. What we were trying to do was stabilize
Speaker 1: the government of South Vietnam, which had been through multiple
Speaker 1: political upheavals and because corrupt governments and turnovers, and there
Speaker 1: wasn't there wasn't a sense that the people of South
Speaker 1: Vietnam embraced the government of South Vietnam. And the risk
Speaker 1: was ideological. That's why we were there. This was the
Speaker 1: domino theory, right, if if these little countries fell to
Speaker 1: the ideology of of Marxism, then it was so appealing
Speaker 1: two uh, you know, two people in underdeveloped countries, that
Speaker 1: the Soviets would gain this global advantage by getting all
Speaker 1: these little el Salvadors and Angolas and Vietnam. So but
Speaker 1: we weren't trying to conquer North Vietnam. We were trying
Speaker 1: to like beat them, but what that looked like wasn't clear,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't beat them because every night, and this
Speaker 1: was was so horrifying about it, Right, every night, the
Speaker 1: guy that was in the village during the day working
Speaker 1: put on his black pajamas and became envy. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the enemy. That's why it's so parent. It's such a
Speaker 1: paranoid war. The enemies all around, And it's not they're
Speaker 1: not the enemy. They're just like people living in their
Speaker 1: country who want you to stop doing weird, like, you know,
Speaker 1: just like stop doing this please, You get it. You
Speaker 1: really get a sense of that ambiguity from the soldier's
Speaker 1: perspective of like what are we even doing with these
Speaker 1: firefights night after night? Like it didn't feel like to
Speaker 1: them like they were gaining any advantage or anything. We're
Speaker 1: just like playing war guys. From the standpoint of like
Speaker 1: did we win Vietnam? Like we killed hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of Vietnamese, they were right on the verge of just
Speaker 1: not being able to at the end of the war, right,
Speaker 1: there was no North Vietnamese army for all intensive purposes.
Speaker 1: But when we left and said okay, South Vietnam, you're
Speaker 1: on your own there, you know, there the South Vietnamese
Speaker 1: government couldn't stand and people just sort of rose up
Speaker 1: and and toppled it. But it wasn't like South Vietnam
Speaker 1: didn't um didn't fall to an invasion from the North.
Speaker 1: It just fell out of its own bloated. Uh, they
Speaker 1: couldn't support themselves. But from a military standpoint, we had
Speaker 1: and we dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs.
Speaker 1: How different was the idea of Vietnam from the idea
Speaker 1: of Korea? Because Korea is like another Asian country where
Speaker 1: the North went to communism in the South didn't, and
Speaker 1: we got involved and built a bulwark there, which, like,
Speaker 1: you know, sure, it's debatable whether our involvement there was
Speaker 1: a net good or net bad for global history, But like,
Speaker 1: why did whatever we set out to do in in
Speaker 1: Korea achieve a situation where there was a capitalist government
Speaker 1: in part of Korea even though there was a communist
Speaker 1: government in the other part. You know, in the Korean War,
Speaker 1: the Chinese were actually engaged in battle, right We the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army fought actual Chinese like Red Army soldiers, So it
Speaker 1: was really a a war between the U. S and China,
Speaker 1: and it was at an era where the there was
Speaker 1: because nuclear weapons were really new. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure in the U. S. Government from MacArthur and
Speaker 1: all these guys that are just like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we could just like drop some tactical nuclear weapons and
Speaker 1: wrapped this right up. So it was a whole different
Speaker 1: moment in history. And when we when we arrived at
Speaker 1: that stalemate line, it was really like in part because
Speaker 1: the question was how far do we want to go
Speaker 1: with it? If we go any further, it's going to
Speaker 1: be like really yeah, Like the Chinese understood like it, well,
Speaker 1: if we go all the way, this could really get
Speaker 1: ugly for us. But but in the US, like what
Speaker 1: was the end game there? All the way into China
Speaker 1: who had an army of two million men or something
Speaker 1: at the time, So there wasn't a It was again
Speaker 1: like what are our objectives here? And when we when
Speaker 1: that c spiral line happened, everybody was like, let's just coolest,
Speaker 1: extremely long pause, gentlemen, And here it is like what
Speaker 1: sixty eight years later and the war still technically it's
Speaker 1: still technically by the time this comes out, chances are
Speaker 1: pretty good that will be so and and that wasn't
Speaker 1: a guerrilla war right there. It wasn't like um a
Speaker 1: thing like this where there just was no front There
Speaker 1: was no Korea had had old fashioned like here's the
Speaker 1: front line. Yeah, well, I'll take part of the blame
Speaker 1: for this, but we've gotten really far off the movie.
Speaker 1: Well back to the movie though it didn't. We kind
Speaker 1: of go to one of my favorite sequences, which is
Speaker 1: the um latrine emptying like fire in the sky. That
Speaker 1: great shot of the of the silhouette of those dudes
Speaker 1: as the sun goes down. Are the doors playing? No,
Speaker 1: that's what the mud the go ask Alice music que starts,
Speaker 1: you know, that snare role, which is so great, and
Speaker 1: then it goes into the scene with the Heads, which
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite sequences in the movie, when
Speaker 1: Charlie Sheen when King introduces into the guys the pot
Speaker 1: Heads in their bunker, which I would so love to
Speaker 1: live in. That poker. It was so cool that that
Speaker 1: super wide angle shot of Willem Dafoe that is like
Speaker 1: the only time in history that he's had the face
Speaker 1: of an angel. I love the one Clear and Present
Speaker 1: Danger episode. You guys did you described him as not
Speaker 1: always looking like a tree, but he's pretty fresh faced
Speaker 1: in this. And I remember when I first saw this
Speaker 1: being really surprised that Alias was one of the potheads. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just didn't think the Serge would affiliate like that,
Speaker 1: But there he was in the hammock stoned out of
Speaker 1: his mind. Yeah, I really. Uh So, there's a shot
Speaker 1: right at the beginning when they're first getting off the
Speaker 1: airplane and a man walks past them who has like
Speaker 1: a skull face, and that's specifically cast because his face
Speaker 1: looked like a skull, and that that moment where Ali
Speaker 1: is like kind of comes through the pot smoke and
Speaker 1: his like moonfaced. I feel like it's kind of like
Speaker 1: an interesting counterpoint to that, like this is kind of
Speaker 1: a way to have a little salvation here in this
Speaker 1: place that is death and destruction. Which was great. I
Speaker 1: mean that scene when they are all dancing two tracts
Speaker 1: of My Tears and genuinely having a good time, and
Speaker 1: then the camera just kind of booms up away when
Speaker 1: Forest Whittakers dancing and singing, And it's just interesting to
Speaker 1: think about a war where you're getting drunk and you're
Speaker 1: getting stone back on base and trying to forget like
Speaker 1: the horrors that you experienced that day. There's a ton
Speaker 1: of christ imagery in the film, and it all points
Speaker 1: to Willem Dafoe's character, like he offers Charlie Sheen's character
Speaker 1: communion through the barrel of his weapon, constantly putting his
Speaker 1: arms over his weapon as if to be crucified while
Speaker 1: walking through the jungle. That scene. This is the first
Speaker 1: time I ever watched it where this occurred to me.
Speaker 1: But that moment when he first walks in and the
Speaker 1: the character played by Anthony Quinn's son, Yeah, Taylor, you lame? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy, are you lame? It turns the peace pipe
Speaker 1: and it's like, are you lame? It always read his
Speaker 1: pot to me every end and throughout the movie it's
Speaker 1: always kind of referred to those guys are potheads. But
Speaker 1: the this time watching it, that exchange the are you lame?
Speaker 1: And then Charlie Sheen's response to that toke uh suggested
Speaker 1: this time to me that it was heroin. Oh interesting
Speaker 1: because he tookes it and he's not just like WHOA,
Speaker 1: I'm high. He's like, oh, I feel no pain, like
Speaker 1: my my injury has gone away, And there's a there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of like heroin vibe there. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a hair some Heroin stuff that was cut out apparently
Speaker 1: the one uh, I don't know which guy, but he
Speaker 1: was the only um black senior officer. And if someone
Speaker 1: makes a remark about that some of that ship you've
Speaker 1: been smoking or whatever, shooting, yes, shooting. There was a
Speaker 1: Heroin stuff that was cut out from that character was
Speaker 1: supposed to be like Heroin addicted. And then at the end, uh,
Speaker 1: there's the part where it maybe King even that's going
Speaker 1: around and he reaches in the pocket of a Vietnamese
Speaker 1: soldier and pulls out a little thing and that's a
Speaker 1: little heroin bag Yeah, it was like a napkin or something.
Speaker 1: I was like, what is that? I know, I had
Speaker 1: to look it up, and apparently that was a little
Speaker 1: heroin baggy and that the soldiers would use heroin like morphine.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah. I mean Heroin was a big, big,
Speaker 1: big part of the American experience in Vietnam, and that
Speaker 1: was that Heroin came back to the States, and which
Speaker 1: is crazy to think about soldiers on heroin fighting in
Speaker 1: a battle all that heroin and not one hero m
Speaker 1: but but yeah, that's show myself that seemed read differently
Speaker 1: to me this time, like whether that was Oliver Stone
Speaker 1: kind of coding that in there for this thing for
Speaker 1: the heads that would go. You pointed out how strange
Speaker 1: it was that for Alias to be there to begin with.
Speaker 1: But I think he has to be there to stand
Speaker 1: in opposition to Tom Berenger's character. I mean they are
Speaker 1: polar like again, Stone is heavy handed and drawing the
Speaker 1: most polar opposite characters wiser versus yeah, we exactly, yeah
Speaker 1: for sure. And and in contrast, it shows the other
Speaker 1: part of that scene is what's going on in the
Speaker 1: the other tent, with which literally starts with Merle Haggard singing,
Speaker 1: we don't smoke marijuana. It's like the first thing you
Speaker 1: hear as it smatch cuts from the marijuana scene, but
Speaker 1: they're getting drunk playing cards, and then elements of race
Speaker 1: are coming in that as well, because Junior is the
Speaker 1: one guy who's kind of abstaining from all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's interesting like the roles that those characters play in
Speaker 1: the village scene to like it kind of like the
Speaker 1: morality kind of falls on the same lines, like, oh,
Speaker 1: like Junior and those guys are gonna go do some
Speaker 1: raping and Kevin Dillon is gonna crush you guys skull
Speaker 1: with the butt of his shotgun, and Charlie Sheen and
Speaker 1: William Dafoe or like trying to bring some sanity to
Speaker 1: the situation. It's a platoon divided, and that was kind
Speaker 1: of the point of the movie. Even said so at
Speaker 1: the ending, I'm looking back. We fought ourselves. But are
Speaker 1: you on team Alias or Team Barnes. That's the big question?
Speaker 1: And a country divided? Like watching it, you're and I
Speaker 1: think part of the tension of that village scene as
Speaker 1: a viewer is you're, uh, you really have to reckon
Speaker 1: with in a situation like that where you have where
Speaker 1: the rules are gone, where you're where you're used to
Speaker 1: following orders and now the people that are giving orders
Speaker 1: are behaving like anarchically. Where what do you do? Like personally,
Speaker 1: which side do you fall on? Do you know you
Speaker 1: want get back? Like the that lieutenant that is so
Speaker 1: so subordinate to barringer John C. McGinley, super ineffectual babyface lieutenant. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Mark Moses, I believe you don't even see
Speaker 1: characters in the film kind of wrestling with like well
Speaker 1: ship I mean, can we just do anything? Yeah? Can
Speaker 1: I just like just just go for it? And watching it?
Speaker 1: You kind of have to you know, what makes you
Speaker 1: uncomfortable as your consciously or unconsciously searching your feelings? Where
Speaker 1: would I be in this? Like? What would I do
Speaker 1: if you can just go for it? What you know?
Speaker 1: Where do you do? Really stand there and say like
Speaker 1: stop you guys? I mean history is pretty um ambivalent
Speaker 1: about like there aren't a lot of heroes and even
Speaker 1: in uh, when King finally gets his papers, uh, he
Speaker 1: says to Charlie Sheen, you know there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as a coward out here, don't mean nothing? Like that
Speaker 1: was the idea. You get the feeling among these grunts,
Speaker 1: like and you even see with John c McGinley full
Speaker 1: on pulls the soldier, the Vietnamese soldier over his body
Speaker 1: and hides in a bunker. Just do what you gotta
Speaker 1: do to get through this, because he was he was
Speaker 1: trying to go to fucking Hawaii and leave, which that's
Speaker 1: felt weird to me, but I guess that happened, have you?
Speaker 1: I mean, you just got to Hawaii for a week?
Speaker 1: Can got the got the car? Like they're they're about
Speaker 1: to be overrun and they're like, but this guy, his
Speaker 1: orders came through, so you're out, and he's like, oh great,
Speaker 1: Like how bizarre, right bye, motherfucker's especially when you contrast
Speaker 1: that that idea with like there's the disciplinary structure is
Speaker 1: gone at that point, and yet the one thing they
Speaker 1: still observe is, oh, this guy asked paperwork that allows
Speaker 1: him to leave. But this other thing about perhaps disciplining
Speaker 1: someone for an unauthorized killing, like we're not going to
Speaker 1: pay attention when we're we we will give lip service
Speaker 1: to taking that very seriously, right, What's interesting in watching
Speaker 1: that scene in particular, which one the climactic battle um
Speaker 1: and this is something none of us were like active
Speaker 1: duty soldiers in a war zone. But when you think
Speaker 1: about in terms in terms of your own life, like
Speaker 1: there are probably events for all all of us when
Speaker 1: we were nineteen, that something something that happened just once,
Speaker 1: a brief moment where you were tested you still reflect
Speaker 1: on now, right, like, oh god, you know, like what
Speaker 1: does that say about me? When I was nineteen, there
Speaker 1: was that moment I was tested and I made this choice,
Speaker 1: and I made this choice and and the rest of
Speaker 1: my life follows from that but in a situation like
Speaker 1: that where you're in a foxhole and you pull a
Speaker 1: dead body over the over your head and waited out
Speaker 1: the rest of his life, he's going to think about
Speaker 1: that and reckon with his choice, and and you have
Speaker 1: to face whether or not he was a coward, whether
Speaker 1: or not you know, uh, Like he'll be rationalizing with
Speaker 1: that until until his dying day. And I think in
Speaker 1: war you have that situation. We see it in war
Speaker 1: movies all the time, where some some episode that lasted
Speaker 1: two seconds is going to affect you the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. It's gonna and like affect you, not just
Speaker 1: like wow, I wish I'd ask that girl to dance,
Speaker 1: but like this is the number one hot coal in
Speaker 1: your mind. Yeah, I think I think he put it
Speaker 1: pretty well. And he said he's gonna be sitting at
Speaker 1: a Pontiac dealership staring off into the middle distance thinking
Speaker 1: about that, right, Like, am I a coward for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life? But I'm one of only a
Speaker 1: handful of dudes that made it out? So would you
Speaker 1: rather be a dead non coward? I wanted to say hero,
Speaker 1: but just fought with the rest of the guys matter,
Speaker 1: Just a guy that just happened to catch a bullet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he was just sleeves ball through this whole movie.
Speaker 1: He was John C. McGinley was, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the classic unlikable characters that he's really good at that.
Speaker 1: I love that scene where he's like holding the lighter
Speaker 1: out but not paying attention. I wondered whether that was
Speaker 1: a gaff that they just rolled with or whether that
Speaker 1: was intentional. I think it's I think he like, he's
Speaker 1: like a great actor and he didn't break character and
Speaker 1: he just did it again one barings are two just
Speaker 1: sat there like I mean, if that was a gaff
Speaker 1: that they left in, that was a great moment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I agreed, so and and so good in like that
Speaker 1: moment in the movie because it really like sets a tone. Um,
Speaker 1: do you guys want to hear a very distracting mistake
Speaker 1: from the films that an Internet pet dance has brought
Speaker 1: our attention to. Yeah, they're there are a lot listed
Speaker 1: for this movie. It's a big, fairly long list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's there's always like plot holes and like oh
Speaker 1: there's a boom pole in one of the shots, which
Speaker 1: I'm never interested in, but somehow like there's a whole
Speaker 1: section of the internet commentary and they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: saw part of a light stand assholes, But I like
Speaker 1: the ones where like it's a mistake and like how
Speaker 1: they present how the military operates. Sure, this one is.
Speaker 1: Tunnel rats were a special group of individuals who performed
Speaker 1: a dangerous job during the Vietnam War. Having said that
Speaker 1: the majority were small men, usually less than five ft
Speaker 1: six inches, due to the fact that the tunnels they
Speaker 1: needed to clear were built by Vietnamese and men and
Speaker 1: women who are of small stature. Since he is at
Speaker 1: least five ft ten Alias would be too large a
Speaker 1: man to ever try to squeeze through those tunnels small hips.
Speaker 1: It's very sinewy. Yeah, but I mean he that scene
Speaker 1: and and actually the other scene that I love with
Speaker 1: Defoe is when he's just charging through the woods. He
Speaker 1: goes off on his own, and he's just a badass
Speaker 1: man in this movie. Like he is every bit the
Speaker 1: badass that Bringer is in terms of like war fighting ability.
Speaker 1: It's a real sex in the city question are you
Speaker 1: a Barnes or are you an Alias? And it was
Speaker 1: also interesting to see Taylor's Charlie Sheen's progression from so green.
Speaker 1: He's you know, throwing up on his first hike too,
Speaker 1: becoming like a legit soldier by the end of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's doing he's running around shooting his gun. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: running forward right, not not back, not to the side,
Speaker 1: only forward. So Barnes kills Elias in a very fucked
Speaker 1: up powerful shot in the movie. You know when they
Speaker 1: confront each other, Barnes lowers that gun a little bit
Speaker 1: and you see de foes he kind of smiles at
Speaker 1: him that like e s u on his eyes where
Speaker 1: you can see that he's stopped smiling, but you can't
Speaker 1: see his mouth. Yeah, it's really a great shot, Like
Speaker 1: you see his expression change through his eyes, like, man,
Speaker 1: this guy's about to kill me. It's not one second
Speaker 1: of his face is another is another moment in cinema
Speaker 1: where William Dafoe is beautiful, like the light and the
Speaker 1: way his smile kind of creeps into his face like
Speaker 1: it's he's um. Yeah, he is genuinely happy to see
Speaker 1: He kind of forgot for a minute, like wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to court martial this guy. It's not who
Speaker 1: I want to run into in the middle of the woods. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he pops him. I mean, there are two
Speaker 1: murders of their own men in this movie. Barnes analyze
Speaker 1: because she gets gets him in the end. You know,
Speaker 1: is that a good kill? Do you guys think there's
Speaker 1: always there's always been fragging in war. It's a it's
Speaker 1: the thing that didn't get talked about in World War Two.
Speaker 1: But you know, like incompetent officers, bad sergeants like this
Speaker 1: this happens, um, but this one where he's like basically
Speaker 1: his father figure killing his bad dad. Um. I mean
Speaker 1: there's so much like sexual charge in a lot of
Speaker 1: these relationships in this movie too. Oh yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: you were watching this film naked John, so I think
Speaker 1: that might have colored your But yeah, I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a good kill. I guess that's one of the
Speaker 1: things you walk out of the theater wondering. Yeah, get
Speaker 1: a piece of pie and talk about whether that's a
Speaker 1: good kill. My answer to that question has to do
Speaker 1: with when it occurs. I think if that kill were
Speaker 1: to happen while there was still a disciplinary structure in place, right,
Speaker 1: that's a bad kill. But the rules had changed at
Speaker 1: that point in the film to where there was no structure.
Speaker 1: They were I mean he was like about to club
Speaker 1: him in the head with a shovel. Yeah, what was
Speaker 1: what saved him? So? And did they do that? I
Speaker 1: mean that last firefight was just food bar to put
Speaker 1: it in military terms, and that that one, I think
Speaker 1: he was a real life army guy that played the
Speaker 1: the major general or whatever, they'll they'll die. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I mean he he basically was just like he called
Speaker 1: in the airstrike, knowing that he would lose most of
Speaker 1: his men as well dump all remaining ordinance on my pause. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's tough ship, man, It's really tough ship within my
Speaker 1: perimeter and he and he's one of the few that
Speaker 1: makes it through that. In the end, like that there's
Speaker 1: that shot of him just standing like bleary eyed, like
Speaker 1: looking at the craters around him, I mean, while the
Speaker 1: Bobcat just shovels bodies. Yeah. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot in our show about the about
Speaker 1: how well a film communicates the geography of the environment. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: if you watch Saving Private Ryan, you understand they're going
Speaker 1: from Omaha Beach or whatever to some town and find
Speaker 1: but it's like the geography of that film is a
Speaker 1: little unclear you're not sure exactly where they like really
Speaker 1: deep in France or is it like a little ways
Speaker 1: down the road. Yeah, And then when we were watching it,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, wait a minute, this this is
Speaker 1: only like two and a half miles into France, and
Speaker 1: that's not what it feels like in the movie. It
Speaker 1: does a somewhat bad job of communicating the geography. And
Speaker 1: some movies are great at it. You always know where
Speaker 1: you are, and some movies are awful. You don't. You
Speaker 1: have no sense of what the mission is. And the
Speaker 1: fact that in this movie the geography is so uh
Speaker 1: like incomprehensible. You never know where you are. You don't
Speaker 1: know where you are in Vietnam. Every once in a a
Speaker 1: while somebody references like Cambodia is right over there, but
Speaker 1: you don't know where that is, or where you are
Speaker 1: north to south, like even just the battle seeing that
Speaker 1: precedes Barnes killing Alias, where they're like kind of pinned
Speaker 1: down in the you know, like Charlie Sheen is like
Speaker 1: hiding behind a h ant hill or something. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's stop a bullet too, by the way, that I
Speaker 1: was interested in that too. Don't feel like it would.
Speaker 1: But you know, those ant hills are pretty substantial constructions.
Speaker 1: But like even that which is like like a flat
Speaker 1: piece of terrain with trees in it, like you don't
Speaker 1: know what the angles are, and that that felt intentional
Speaker 1: in this movie, where it's like this is confusing and
Speaker 1: terrifying because that's exactly what they wanted us to experience.
Speaker 1: And often they run at each other like, uh, their
Speaker 1: allies run at each other in a way that is confusing.
Speaker 1: They're like calling in air strikes on themselves, and well,
Speaker 1: then that that's kind of what I meant, Like the
Speaker 1: geographical confusion is a character in the story. I'm agreeing
Speaker 1: with you, John, It's okay, I know, I know, I
Speaker 1: know you are, but I was, I was, I was
Speaker 1: trying to address Chuck's question, which was in that final
Speaker 1: scene where he calls in that that fire just on himself,
Speaker 1: and it's basically like, well, anybody who survives is the winner,
Speaker 1: but like you have an equal chance of getting hit
Speaker 1: by our fire or theirs. But you know that's the way,
Speaker 1: and it and it and it absolutely is a description
Speaker 1: of the Vietnam War. Are there is no there is
Speaker 1: no rear, there's no line. It's just you were encircled
Speaker 1: all the time, and the bombs are just landing everywhere
Speaker 1: and you and you have no idea which direction do
Speaker 1: you run? Remember there's that great scene where the lt
Speaker 1: is like, we're pulling back and the captains like to
Speaker 1: where stay in place and fight? And they had all
Speaker 1: just given up at that point, Like the lieutenant has
Speaker 1: that one scene where he's just like I just don't
Speaker 1: give a funk anymore, Like no, but they're just so
Speaker 1: done because of this, the hopelessness of their thing. You
Speaker 1: get the feeling as soldiers they don't even know are
Speaker 1: we accomplishing anything out here with these firefights? That guy die,
Speaker 1: the captain, he is a decorated Marine Corps vet who
Speaker 1: started the company of like veterans consulting in war movies,
Speaker 1: and so he was a consultant on this film and
Speaker 1: consulted on Banda Brothers. And he's somebody that's there to
Speaker 1: make sure the uniforms are right and that soldiers do
Speaker 1: what the soldiers would do, and also make the actors
Speaker 1: through ship right right here, starving in them and depriving
Speaker 1: them to the training camp thing. Yeah, he sort of
Speaker 1: invented that for Hollywood, and then George Clooney went on
Speaker 1: to do that after Three Kings as well. After Three
Speaker 1: Kings that was that was like at the end of
Speaker 1: the movie that he said, that's what he went Also
Speaker 1: at the end of the last scene there, the last
Speaker 1: firefight that was just so fucked up in the it's napalm,
Speaker 1: right they napalm them? Or is everything all remaining bombs um?
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like, did you guys feel like
Speaker 1: that next day that like all of second Platoon should
Speaker 1: have just gotten to leave, Like a couple like Charlie
Speaker 1: Sheen and then Corey Glover from Living Color he gets
Speaker 1: they get to leave, but some of the other guys
Speaker 1: stay back, like Quinn stays back, puts a knife into
Speaker 1: his thighs. Yeah, but I remember feeling when I watched
Speaker 1: it two days like you guys should just get to go.
Speaker 1: I mean, Quinn at that point is the ranking n
Speaker 1: c O. He's there's no sergeants left, you know, he's
Speaker 1: the he's the guy. Well and then McGinley though that's
Speaker 1: his come up into the end is right now get second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to imagine going through something that fucked
Speaker 1: up in large and a lot of them get to
Speaker 1: go home. And the other guys are like, all right,
Speaker 1: start filling sandbags. Get back to it. That moment when
Speaker 1: McGinley is given that command is such a feeling of
Speaker 1: like the reward for survival is actually a worse circumstance,
Speaker 1: And the way his face looks when he gets that
Speaker 1: news is one of it's one of the most tragic
Speaker 1: parts in the film, in a film full of tragedies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but deserved, Like he was such a jerk that Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly he's an unlikable, awful character in the film,
Speaker 1: but still I still felt empathy for him in that moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, sure you don't want him to die necessarily
Speaker 1: if you're looking for schadenfreude in this movie. That end
Speaker 1: scene where basically everybody you hated gets its shot in
Speaker 1: the face, it's like, well I didn't like that character either,
Speaker 1: but he's dead now, And that guy caught some shrapnel
Speaker 1: And what was up with the swastika flag on the
Speaker 1: tank stuff, stuff like like Nazi imagery and Confederate flags
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. At that time, we're I mean,
Speaker 1: this man, I just like the pattern and the colors. No,
Speaker 1: it was like being remember original Hell's Angels used a
Speaker 1: lot of that iconography because it was it communicated badassary
Speaker 1: to them, and they weren't they There wasn't a there
Speaker 1: wasn't a climate of like reckoning like there is now.
Speaker 1: It was much more like, um, I mean, they weren't
Speaker 1: saying like I'm an see. They were saying like fucking
Speaker 1: swastika ema right, fucking boom look out. It was an
Speaker 1: uninterrogated swastic Yeah. I was just like, fuck you, like
Speaker 1: this is this is fucking this makes us as bad.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to be as badass as they can.
Speaker 1: And I think if in the military that the Confederate
Speaker 1: flag and the Nazi flag took the that on though,
Speaker 1: because they're both the flags of losing armies. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: why did Why was that Badassah? Yeah, because because I
Speaker 1: think this's the sense of the like mythology of both
Speaker 1: of those um you know whatever whatever they represent now
Speaker 1: um sort of lost causes rather than I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what they say about the South Right, the defeated Confederacy
Speaker 1: is that it was a lost cause. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like wearing a Seattle Mariners capt on. No. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I feel like that's there are in the U
Speaker 1: s military today. If you could, if you could paint
Speaker 1: a swastika on your t dudes would do it. And
Speaker 1: they go into war with the Punisher logo painted on
Speaker 1: their helmet because that's the toughest thing they can think
Speaker 1: of that they're allowed to put on. There. I say
Speaker 1: a photo on the Internet of a police cruiser with
Speaker 1: a Punisher logo painted on the hood, and somebody commented,
Speaker 1: we've reached peak dork fascism. So I had met Gore
Speaker 1: Lean earlier this week to do a Bond special and
Speaker 1: we somehow ended up talking about Platoon for a minute,
Speaker 1: and he pointed out something that I've never seen. I
Speaker 1: think it's in the Bond universe. Um. Yeah, like when
Speaker 1: Charlie Sheen beds that woman in the middle of the
Speaker 1: jungle that's on the silken sheets. Um. He pointed out
Speaker 1: a gap that I had never noticed. It is so clear, Uh,
Speaker 1: in the defot dying scene, that iconic scene from where
Speaker 1: we get the movie poster, he doesn't have the bullet holes.
Speaker 1: He the squibs don't go off, and he says, look
Speaker 1: at it when you watch it, and he said, in
Speaker 1: his left hand he's clicking and clicking for the squib
Speaker 1: and by the time he falls, he's still going and
Speaker 1: it's all in super slow mo. And you see the
Speaker 1: wire had come out on that one that was great,
Speaker 1: and the wire had come out of his of a
Speaker 1: sleeve and it was spilling out and he was still
Speaker 1: trying to click it. The whole time he's acting and
Speaker 1: doing his thing, and there are no squibs going off.
Speaker 1: He's not getting shot, even though he's flailing his body
Speaker 1: as if he is. And there was so much there
Speaker 1: was such a complicated scene that they didn't have more takes.
Speaker 1: They couldn't do it again because they're like shooting helicopter.
Speaker 1: And I've seen that movie twenty times and never noticed that,
Speaker 1: And then Gory pointed out it's like there it is
Speaker 1: man like like mashing the button over and over in
Speaker 1: slow motion. I wonder if Olliver's Stone has ever considered
Speaker 1: George Lucas in his movie and adding CG explosions it
Speaker 1: really in that. I mean, that's like so much Christ imagery,
Speaker 1: and the theme is just swelling and slow motion helicopters.
Speaker 1: Everybody loves a slow motion helicopter. But when he when
Speaker 1: he finally gets shot there and you're like, uh, uh,
Speaker 1: and no, there's no special effect given how much other
Speaker 1: everybody else in the movie gets lots of blood flying
Speaker 1: all over the place, even in the theater. I remember
Speaker 1: watching that and going like interesting, interesting choice to preserve
Speaker 1: his chests, as you know. And that's the iconic image
Speaker 1: from the movie. But the image that really sticks with
Speaker 1: me is when, uh, when Sheen makes eye contact with
Speaker 1: Barnes in the helicopter and like you see like just
Speaker 1: a little glimpse of shame or like realizing that he's
Speaker 1: he's kind of that that you know that he knows.
Speaker 1: So there's the the scene that we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: that with Barnes when they're talking about getting back at
Speaker 1: him and Barnes is in the corner drinking whiskey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what do you all know? And that's that's an
Speaker 1: intense scene, man. I mean they literally talk him out
Speaker 1: of stabbing Charlie Sheen and the eye with that knuckle knife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he gives him that little quick cut two, which
Speaker 1: is throughout the movie. That sound of the knife hitting
Speaker 1: skin is one of the great sounds in this film.
Speaker 1: Is throughout the movie barringer. Like, there are multiple times
Speaker 1: that I noticed in this watching that I don't think
Speaker 1: I picked up on where he shows real love of
Speaker 1: his men, total sorrow when people die, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of emotion in that character that you kind of don't
Speaker 1: see because his face is so scarred and he's so
Speaker 1: he's such the villain in the movie that it's easy
Speaker 1: to watch it and not see that Stone is really
Speaker 1: trying to humanize him over and over again. Every time
Speaker 1: somebody dies on his watch, he's like really hurt by it,
Speaker 1: and his reaction is often to be like, get the
Speaker 1: fucking what's your goddamn problem. But it's because he doesn't
Speaker 1: like to see his guys die. And throughout the movie
Speaker 1: he's given you know, he has that scene in the
Speaker 1: Helicopter where he shows he shows his culpability. He's not
Speaker 1: like Kevin Dillon is playing a psychopath. He is not.
Speaker 1: Barringer is not. And and when Alias, you know when
Speaker 1: they're when, because there's that great scene where Barnes is like,
Speaker 1: Alas is a water walker, and then right away Alias
Speaker 1: is like Barnes, you know, Barnes is a true believer
Speaker 1: or whatever, like uh, and those are both assessments of
Speaker 1: one another, but really Barnes gives Alias, I'm sorry Alias
Speaker 1: gives Barnes a lot of credit in that moment, and
Speaker 1: you know, and Barnes is like, he also gives the
Speaker 1: last credit, but he's he he feels like like Alias
Speaker 1: has become soft a trader. Yeah. Um, but Barnes is
Speaker 1: a way more complicated character than just just like the
Speaker 1: tip of the spear, and it's but it's really hard
Speaker 1: to have sympathy for him. Yeah. So um, We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a segment now everybody movie Crush listeners called Who's
Speaker 1: Your Guy? And it's a It's a Friendly Fire crossover
Speaker 1: segment where how would you describe this? Is it the
Speaker 1: person that you most relate to? Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: who are you, like, not usually not a main character,
Speaker 1: but like, who are you rooting for in this movie?
Speaker 1: Who who among the the platoon in this case? Did
Speaker 1: you say, like I kind of see myself the guy's shoes?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, who's your guy? Guys that got my guy? Uh?
Speaker 1: My guy is uh no, I'm not proud of this
Speaker 1: being my guy. But Junior is a character that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, is one of the bad guys, is one
Speaker 1: of the one of the rapists in the in the scene,
Speaker 1: and that's not he was there. He was there tearing
Speaker 1: him on and like ha ha ha yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: waiting his turn. Yeah, So that is it is not
Speaker 1: for that reason that he is my guy, but it
Speaker 1: is for the reason who's your guy? But like, kind
Speaker 1: of in a very complicated way, he's the character that
Speaker 1: speaks the injustice of the situation the most loudly of
Speaker 1: of anyone. And uh And at a certain point kind
Speaker 1: of tries to take matters into his own hands by
Speaker 1: like inflicting a foot rot injury on himself to get
Speaker 1: out of this thing, because he's like, like, there's no
Speaker 1: reason for him to be here. I don't like believe
Speaker 1: in this. I don't I'm not like yeah yeah, Like
Speaker 1: and and his his sense of the injustice of the
Speaker 1: of the way things were going, it was kind of naive,
Speaker 1: but it's something that I related to, so uh And
Speaker 1: and I think that, like, knowing myself, I probably would
Speaker 1: be trying to find a sort of dubious reason to
Speaker 1: get out of the war. My glasses are fog. Somebody
Speaker 1: get warby Parker on the phone, Oh, one of my
Speaker 1: cuff buttons came off. I can't go into battle, John,
Speaker 1: who's your guy? So you know, I have this movie
Speaker 1: more or less memorized, right I could. I could. I
Speaker 1: could do a pretty close version of a lot of
Speaker 1: the dialogue in the film, and I've had when we
Speaker 1: do this show live, we should just have him do that.
Speaker 1: John's one man show. Ship. Still don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: Mary Jane, Yep, she's the one for me. I don't
Speaker 1: need this ship. I am reality. Great line. But the
Speaker 1: character that it's the Captain Um and what's his character's name,
Speaker 1: the character played by Yeah, the the real deal guys,
Speaker 1: capthan Harris Um. Every time he's on the screen, there's
Speaker 1: a very similitude that like of actual officer war fighter guy, right,
Speaker 1: Like he's the lt playing the green Lieutenant is a trope,
Speaker 1: and particularly a Vietnam trope. That guy does do it,
Speaker 1: particularly job that trope. Yeah, he does. But and you know,
Speaker 1: and you and you you kind of watch him get seasoned,
Speaker 1: but his seasoning doesn't take He's not born again hard
Speaker 1: and he's still a leader. He doesn't have any leadership skills,
Speaker 1: never never develops them, right, I mean, he's chicken ship
Speaker 1: right to the end. He's just becomes he's just bitter
Speaker 1: and you know, like um. But he's a classic college
Speaker 1: boy where it's presumed that he's going to be a
Speaker 1: leader because he went to cornell Um and he comes
Speaker 1: from a rich family. But he's a you know, it's
Speaker 1: a surprise they didn't frag him before. But the captain's
Speaker 1: like a useful idiot to Burns. Yeah, right, I mean
Speaker 1: just an example of like how the in any military culture,
Speaker 1: the idea of the fresh out of college lieutenant ordering
Speaker 1: around a chief master sergeant is a kind of it's
Speaker 1: a thing that every we all joke about. And right,
Speaker 1: a good officer knows how to let his non commissioned
Speaker 1: officers lead, but but without disrupting the chain of command.
Speaker 1: But the way the die speaks, the command that's in
Speaker 1: his face, that's in his eyes when he was when
Speaker 1: he's in that situation. Because after the village, right, you
Speaker 1: just get this sense of like fucking nobody's in charge
Speaker 1: except Barnes, and that is not who you want in charge.
Speaker 1: And then this guy arrives and he's just like Barnes
Speaker 1: sergeantalias once you need you to stow this ship, and
Speaker 1: you're just like fuck, yes, thank you, Dad is here,
Speaker 1: and like he there will be a court martial like
Speaker 1: he felt good to hear him say those words there
Speaker 1: will if they But he also is like, I don't
Speaker 1: need this ship right now, you guys, you guys zip
Speaker 1: it up, and I need you to fight. And every
Speaker 1: scene he's in, I'm just like he he um. He
Speaker 1: just so real to me and I wanted to cleave
Speaker 1: to him to survive this movie because and he shows
Speaker 1: it all in his face too. It's a great it's
Speaker 1: not just some like he's not a trained actor, and
Speaker 1: he does some great face acting, like when it washes
Speaker 1: over him, like how funk they are? When the sapper
Speaker 1: goes into the other bunker and kills Oliver Stone, who
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the major, I guess like that
Speaker 1: that's like a wordless reaction that he has, but it
Speaker 1: speaks volumes, you know, and you get you know, like
Speaker 1: the gunnery sergeant from from Full Metal Jacket who went
Speaker 1: on to be a reality TV star. The Army is
Speaker 1: an example of a of a veteran that's playing that character.
Speaker 1: The the the sergeant, the training sergeant. What are the
Speaker 1: funk am I trying to say? The boot camp sergeant, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Luke Gossett, yeahler, But but that's such a like
Speaker 1: chew up the scenery type of of character. And the
Speaker 1: captain is like he never says a word, he doesn't
Speaker 1: need to say. So from the first time I saw
Speaker 1: the movie and every time I've seen the movie when
Speaker 1: he's on screen, I'm just I can't take my eyes
Speaker 1: off him. Rana, He's my guy. I think when we
Speaker 1: were starting the Friendly Fire project there were a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons to feel reluctant about about doing a project
Speaker 1: like this. I think the first one was like tying
Speaker 1: any sort of schedule to John Roderick. But the second one,
Speaker 1: uh is maybe truer today than it ever has been,
Speaker 1: which is my own personal reluctance to comment on a
Speaker 1: thing I can't possibly understand. And so for that reason,
Speaker 1: that's why your Star Trek podcast is so good, Because
Speaker 1: like one of three things you totally understand, what are
Speaker 1: the other two? U he Man and Rainbow? But there
Speaker 1: is one character in this film who embodies that spirit
Speaker 1: more than anyone. And for that reason, I'm choosing Grandma
Speaker 1: as my guy. I knew it because she's the woman
Speaker 1: in the film. She's not there, she's only hearing about it.
Speaker 1: To me, this film is the letter home from the war,
Speaker 1: and I'm reading it, and anyone else who watches the
Speaker 1: film is reading that letter, and it's a way to
Speaker 1: understand what happened there for someone who couldn't possibly know. Wow,
Speaker 1: strong guy, ad M what you chuck? Did you have
Speaker 1: a guy? I had a guy that there was no
Speaker 1: question that my guy was King? Uh, the character played
Speaker 1: by David Keith Keith, David Sorry, yeah, man, his his vibe.
Speaker 1: I just dug it. Uh, he was. He's just one
Speaker 1: of the great ones. Yeah, he was one of the heads,
Speaker 1: and then I would have been down there and then
Speaker 1: bunker with those guys. He's just he just sort of
Speaker 1: sort of had a very comforting, relaxing vibe. But he
Speaker 1: fights hard. But he fights hard, which is not so
Speaker 1: much me. That's kind of where we diverge. But but
Speaker 1: he's like he also like he meets Charlie Sheen's character
Speaker 1: halfway on becoming friends, Like, yeah, they're speaking to each
Speaker 1: other across the divide. Like when when Charlie Sheen tells King,
Speaker 1: like why he's there, King is like laughing his hats
Speaker 1: off at him, like he didn't need to be here,
Speaker 1: you dope. Before he got Here's a crusader. That great
Speaker 1: moment at the end where Charlie is like, well, you've
Speaker 1: got my address and information and Kings like yeah, and
Speaker 1: just like right off, changes the subject right away, like
Speaker 1: we're never going to see each other again. See Taylor
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com, across mounted dot com. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like bandmail at but King, you know, he steals
Speaker 1: the beer, he's hanging out smoking weed. He's he got
Speaker 1: he got out of there, he got his he got
Speaker 1: his papers and got the out of there and was like,
Speaker 1: It's one of the great scenes in the movie to
Speaker 1: me is when King gets to leave and I and
Speaker 1: I yelled at earlier, but I'll yell it again when
Speaker 1: he's in that helicopter. His final salutation, goodbye, motherfucker's just
Speaker 1: so great. So you know, keep your keep your pecker
Speaker 1: had and your powdered dry and the world will turn.
Speaker 1: So King's my guy, great guy. He becomes the philosopher
Speaker 1: the film after Elias dies, does Yeah, he picks up
Speaker 1: that mantle. Um, So I don't rate movies on movie Crush,
Speaker 1: but you guys do. And um for the for the listeners,
Speaker 1: Every week, Adam picks a a standard by which we will.
Speaker 1: I'm not a standard what do you call it, actually system?
Speaker 1: A rating system, rating system. The important thing about this
Speaker 1: is that it's not stars, so they're not interchangeable exactly.
Speaker 1: Can't say that one film really relates to another with this,
Speaker 1: and that's crucial. Yeah, so it's a movie specific. So
Speaker 1: it's one of the ways that I could say First
Speaker 1: Blood is one of the best war films because because
Speaker 1: you gave it five turds. What was first Blood or
Speaker 1: was that pre No, it was because we did that
Speaker 1: as the live show, so we recorded like twenty episodes
Speaker 1: by that point. Was it was exploding arrows? No, that
Speaker 1: was First Blood? Part two? What was first Blood? Yeah?
Speaker 1: First Blood wasn't ye first Sorry, that was pretty early
Speaker 1: first Blood something it did. So what's Platoon? What are you?
Speaker 1: What are you going with there? This film is like
Speaker 1: stacking hopeless all the way through, right, There's like the
Speaker 1: hopeless situation of being there to begin with. It gets
Speaker 1: hopeless er when when the system breaks down. It gets
Speaker 1: hopeless yest at one specific moment though, and that is
Speaker 1: the moment you talked about earlier where the suicide bomber
Speaker 1: runs into the bunker. The one thing that struck me
Speaker 1: most about this scene was the like the modern Jim
Speaker 1: backpack with the spaghetti straps that he wears, which I'm
Speaker 1: assuming is the thing containing the expo parachute. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's tiny. Yeah, there's like a free bag. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: something so contained in something that looks so benign. And
Speaker 1: and it's a lot like this film to me, Like
Speaker 1: how hard can a film hurt you? This film hurts
Speaker 1: a lot, even though it's just a DVD or whatever,
Speaker 1: a lot like that backpack. Uh, this film is devastating.
Speaker 1: I watched this a couple of mornings ago, like Rise
Speaker 1: and Shine style, and it changed the next few days
Speaker 1: for me. That doesn't make it a bad film. I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the things that makes it great.
Speaker 1: And so four and a half backpacks full of explosives
Speaker 1: is the rating I will give Platoon and what did
Speaker 1: you check? Uh, I'm gonna go with four and a
Speaker 1: half as well, Like four isn't isn't enough? Five is
Speaker 1: too much because to me, the one thing that holds
Speaker 1: this movie back still is that voiceover. And when I
Speaker 1: was watching it, the voiceover has always bug me, and
Speaker 1: I was watching those scenes where they use the voiceover
Speaker 1: and I would love to see a version with that scrubbed,
Speaker 1: because it's all there on his face. You don't need
Speaker 1: It's like idiocracy. It works without the voice over. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: A daggio for strings is the letter. Yeah, like that's
Speaker 1: the voiceover. You don't need anything else the voice over
Speaker 1: at and then you don't have your guy. Yeah that's fair.
Speaker 1: I could project a grandma out there somewhere. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: four and a half backpacks full of explosives. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: join you guys at the four and a half mark.
Speaker 1: I this was like a like like for you, Chuck,
Speaker 1: a real heavy rewatch film for me, And I don't
Speaker 1: think I will. I'll watch it again for a long
Speaker 1: time after this rewatch it. We'll do a tenure special.
Speaker 1: Tu might it might have to be addressing because it's
Speaker 1: like it's very upsetting like and up setting in a
Speaker 1: way that I didn't remember it being. I remember it
Speaker 1: being like an awesome action movie and here that's really
Speaker 1: not what it is to me now. So uh that said,
Speaker 1: it's beautifully made, like astonishing, like they got like amazing
Speaker 1: location sound, they got amazing cinematography. It's it makes it's
Speaker 1: setting look beautiful. Before it part and um and just
Speaker 1: a crazy crazy tour DeForest cast And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: like Sheen might be the weakest performance in the movie,
Speaker 1: and he's like pretty great in it. So yeah, four
Speaker 1: and a half exploding backpacks. You know, Sheen is the
Speaker 1: worst performance in the movie, but it's the best thing
Speaker 1: he ever does. And you know, you could argue that
Speaker 1: Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now was also maybe miscast. Have
Speaker 1: you never seen minute work? I never have seen men
Speaker 1: at Work? Oh, what's the one with Richard Dreyfus and
Speaker 1: Charlie Steak out right, isn't isn't there a movie with
Speaker 1: the two of those guys? But there there? Like I
Speaker 1: don't mind the voice over, but I also like the
Speaker 1: um the orchestral version of Long and Winding Road, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not above um the corn. I won't
Speaker 1: split hairs about it, right, because when I look at
Speaker 1: this movie and try and think of how you would
Speaker 1: do it better if you were Oliver Stone, Like, I
Speaker 1: just can't see how you would avoid it. You. I mean,
Speaker 1: he could have been more artistic, but he needed to
Speaker 1: say those things clearly, that was that was in him.
Speaker 1: He'd I mean, think about working on this script for
Speaker 1: fifteen years and having and having it be so autobiographical,
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't be able to to stay out of
Speaker 1: it as the director and writer. I would have had
Speaker 1: to have gotten in there and said, you have to
Speaker 1: go back to the twenty century. Uh so the you know,
Speaker 1: like there. I can point to the moments that irritate me,
Speaker 1: and one of them is William Dafoe's death scene that
Speaker 1: never read properly, and I didn't know about the failure
Speaker 1: of the exploding blood packets, and if that had happened,
Speaker 1: that might not have been a beef for me. The
Speaker 1: very final scene of Charlie Sheen lifting off in the
Speaker 1: helicopter where he like waves goodbye to the people on
Speaker 1: the ground. He does it badly. He like, I feel
Speaker 1: like they cuts somebody out, like there was He salutes
Speaker 1: and then kind of does another salute, and it's just like, hey, guy,
Speaker 1: you know, like we get it, and I think you're right.
Speaker 1: There was probably somebody else that he was saying goodbye to.
Speaker 1: But that always graded on me from the first moment.
Speaker 1: It still grates on me. Um, But like, this is
Speaker 1: a movie where Johnny Depp is on screen a lot
Speaker 1: and he is never he never even really steps forward
Speaker 1: because everything else is so incredible, like even beautiful young
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp, who's acting the ship out of If you
Speaker 1: just watch this movie just looking for Johnny Depp, he's
Speaker 1: fucking killing it. He's in every scene, but he disappears
Speaker 1: completely into this ensemble and into the jungle. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: I have to give it five stars. It's a seminal movie.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I gotta get lectured on this show. I
Speaker 1: have to give it five exploding backpacks because I can't
Speaker 1: split hairs about it, you know, like there are there
Speaker 1: are five things that I would have done differently. But
Speaker 1: I think it's just an incredible accomplishment and like a gift.
Speaker 1: It's a gift to as you're saying, it's a letter
Speaker 1: home from Vietnam. I think it helped us all process Vietnam.
Speaker 1: I think it's set the tone for how we were
Speaker 1: going to think about the war for the rest of
Speaker 1: the century and beyond. Yeah, it sounds like such a
Speaker 1: whank off to call a movie important, but this is
Speaker 1: one of those rare films that it was a seminal
Speaker 1: important film. It came at the right moment in in
Speaker 1: time and it. It changed the narrative, and so I
Speaker 1: can't look at it. I can't like apply any kind
Speaker 1: of retroactive oliver stoneness to it. I don't look at
Speaker 1: it as a you know, like as some kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's tainted by his interviews with Castro twenty years later,
Speaker 1: or you know, you know what I mean. Like, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways to look at movies, but
Speaker 1: this just stands as a totem to me. So five
Speaker 1: exploding backpacks and the fact that we've all seen it
Speaker 1: multiple times, and that it's that now you watch it
Speaker 1: and it hurts you more than it did before. It
Speaker 1: evolves over time. It's no longer like a like an
Speaker 1: action movie. It's now just like this moral reckoning, especially
Speaker 1: with how much more acute movie violence is right now.
Speaker 1: It's more than it's ever been before. And yet you
Speaker 1: go back thirty years into this film and it hits
Speaker 1: harder this because there's so little moral reckoning in film there.
Speaker 1: It's all exploding blood packets. All right, guys, Well, let's finish,
Speaker 1: if you'll indulge me with the movie crush five questions,
Speaker 1: Um do we each get five? Is it? And this? Uh,
Speaker 1: well it is? And so we'll just keep your answers
Speaker 1: short and we'll just kind of go around. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: you may not understand my role in this show. The
Speaker 1: first movie you remember seeing in the theater? Ben Harrison, Dick, Tracy,
Speaker 1: John Roderick, Bugsy Malone, whoa Granica? Both batty movies? Right, No,
Speaker 1: Buggsy Malone? That was just bugs Buggsy Malone started, Jodie
Speaker 1: Foster and O're gonna have to watch that movie together.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the first movie that I ever saw,
Speaker 1: but I do remember the first R rated movie that
Speaker 1: I snuck into. Another Speeds question. Speed? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: well what's the first R rated movie? Guys? Speed was
Speaker 1: my first R rated movie? Really, for both of you together,
Speaker 1: it was not Speed. No. I was forbidden to see
Speaker 1: Animal House in the theater by my mom, who actually
Speaker 1: went to see Animal House to see if I could
Speaker 1: go see it, and she said no. She came almost
Speaker 1: like you cannot, and I was, I don't know ten,
Speaker 1: like Animal House was like what I was ten, and
Speaker 1: uh so I snuck in to see it because I
Speaker 1: was not going to go with another fucking day without
Speaker 1: having seen Animal House. I didn't even know what it
Speaker 1: was about. I just knew that this was this was
Speaker 1: the beginning of adults. Uh, will you walk out of
Speaker 1: a bad movie? And can you name one? Um? I
Speaker 1: have not. I have turned off bad movies a couple
Speaker 1: of times, but if I'm in the theater, it'll take
Speaker 1: a lot to get me to walk out. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I thought really hard about walking about out
Speaker 1: of Spider Man two, but I did not. I stuck
Speaker 1: it out Spider Man too. McGuire years ago. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the good one. I hated it is that the
Speaker 1: one with Doc Doc. Yeah, I couldn't stand that. But
Speaker 1: it's largely regarded as like one of the best in
Speaker 1: this year. I know, I Jesse Thorne, I have heard
Speaker 1: seeing that movies praises a bunch of time and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Man, that's a terrible movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Maybe it was just maybe I
Speaker 1: was having a bad day. What about you, John? I
Speaker 1: will walk out of a movie. And the first movie
Speaker 1: I ever walked out on was Bugsy If you can
Speaker 1: believe it, the Warren I did not think so. And
Speaker 1: I had smoked a bunch of weed and I went
Speaker 1: in and sat down. I was like all the things
Speaker 1: I was like, let's go, like, whoa, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be amazing. And it was so wooden and and just
Speaker 1: so like unfun that And it was pretty early on,
Speaker 1: like I think in the first half hour, I was
Speaker 1: sitting there in my chair just like this is this
Speaker 1: travesty and I and I stood up and was like,
Speaker 1: I think I might have even made a speech to
Speaker 1: the room. How dare you? I could probably second guess
Speaker 1: that vouch for that, say yes? So I went out.
Speaker 1: I went out and went found another movie and went
Speaker 1: in and watched some other movie. Yeah, that's Runaway Train
Speaker 1: with John Voyd. Probably what about you, Branica? I saw
Speaker 1: you googling feverishly over there. I often confused this movie
Speaker 1: with another film, which is why I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure I got it right. I almost never walk out
Speaker 1: And the only film that I actually can remember walking
Speaker 1: out of was Chris Farley's last film. It was called
Speaker 1: Almost Heroes. It came out after his death, and it
Speaker 1: was so bad and it was so clear that he
Speaker 1: was dying, like right in front of us. Couldn't take it.
Speaker 1: It was too sad to watch. Besides it being totally unfunny,
Speaker 1: it was almost equally tragic and I just couldn't do it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: number four, I'll taylor to you guys. Um, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite war movie, favorite all time war movie? Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: We just watched Dr Strange Love and that might get
Speaker 1: it from me. Yeah, it's still a ways away in
Speaker 1: our release schedule, but and also on the bubble of
Speaker 1: war movie. Yeah, but it's I mean sure ends with
Speaker 1: a bunch of nuclear bombs going. No, I get you,
Speaker 1: but I know you guys are it's the boundaries, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, um, but yeah, sure, yeah, I really love
Speaker 1: that one, right John. We haven't watched it yet on
Speaker 1: Friendly Fire, But it was a mid seventies war epic
Speaker 1: called Midway with Charlton Heston and another all star cast. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was the first big, big World War two
Speaker 1: movie that I saw in the theaters with my dad,
Speaker 1: the two of us, like they're watching this thing and
Speaker 1: this was the theater of war that he was in
Speaker 1: and uh and it's you know, it's just one of
Speaker 1: those big, big budget Hollywood films made at a time
Speaker 1: when there was still World War two surplus shit lying around.
Speaker 1: So when you know, when the F four US flew over,
Speaker 1: they were real and they and they still had them,
Speaker 1: and they've had live AMMO and the guns. You know,
Speaker 1: so well, we'll get to that on our program Midway
Speaker 1: Midway Pranica. It's a little bit of an edge case,
Speaker 1: but it's the final that would be great answer, and
Speaker 1: I would accept it if I weren't already thinking of
Speaker 1: the Final Countdown, which is also an edge case. I
Speaker 1: think Final Countdown. The thing I think about a lot
Speaker 1: when I watch a war film is like, how tragic
Speaker 1: it is to have arrived at this circumstance to begin with.
Speaker 1: And that's I don't know if you've seen that film.
Speaker 1: It's a time travel film where an aircraft carrier goes
Speaker 1: back rise goes back to World War Two before Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 1: and it has a chance to stop it. It's got
Speaker 1: some famous actors that it's it's stacked. But I love
Speaker 1: that movie because it actually pays off the idea of like,
Speaker 1: if you could stop the thing, would you? They're there
Speaker 1: December six, really like mid eighties nuclear carrier and they
Speaker 1: have to reckon. We're like, well, what do we do? Now?
Speaker 1: Do we stop that? That's on our list. We'll get
Speaker 1: to it eventually. Finally, guys, movie going one on one.
Speaker 1: What's your movie ritual at the theater? Where do you
Speaker 1: sit and what do you eat? I'm a dead center guy,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm sure this will be controversial, but I
Speaker 1: have often snuck something in from outside the theater. Not controversial. Um,
Speaker 1: it happens a lot. Like I grew up where we
Speaker 1: would pop a bunch of popcorn at home and put
Speaker 1: it in like a brown grocery store. Controversial in your
Speaker 1: own popcorn. Other guests have done that too. Yeah. My
Speaker 1: mom had a giant purse and she would put a
Speaker 1: brown grocery jack in it. Popcorn. Yeah. Yeah, and my parents,
Speaker 1: I don't know. My parents were really against the like
Speaker 1: processed but are like product that they were pumping all
Speaker 1: over popcorn and those days, I guess it's probably still
Speaker 1: the thing. But Sy being oil John, what about you.
Speaker 1: I don't go to the movies that often. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a a special occasion for me because I'm not somebody
Speaker 1: that's just like, yeah, the movies. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: a well and they started a certain time, but you
Speaker 1: know I have to be awake and say run the picture. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I go to the movies sometimes, but by the
Speaker 1: time I get to a movie. It will have been
Speaker 1: running for a while. I will have heard from other
Speaker 1: people that people I trust that is good, And I'll
Speaker 1: go at a time when there won't be anybody else
Speaker 1: there because I don't like being in the movie theater
Speaker 1: with other people. And I don't object since I go
Speaker 1: to the movie so infrequently. I don't object to buying
Speaker 1: popcorn and soda and a candy bar at the at
Speaker 1: the front desk, even though it costs twice what the
Speaker 1: movie costs. You know, you can spend twenty just getting
Speaker 1: nothing at the front desk. The concierge at the front desk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I go to the front and like, bring me a
Speaker 1: popcorn and and roll film. But when I get give
Speaker 1: me a wake up call, I fall asleep in the film?
Speaker 1: Where are my cigarettes? But I sit right now if
Speaker 1: I said right in the middle, and I try to
Speaker 1: be you know, I try to be in there at
Speaker 1: a at a time when there when you know, the
Speaker 1: only other people are like two guys in the back
Speaker 1: and trench coats who aren't watching the movie, and you know,
Speaker 1: like a couple of canoodling over here. So I'll just
Speaker 1: pick the best seating and sit and because I get
Speaker 1: immersed in a film, right, I don't want any distractions,
Speaker 1: Like I fall into the screen and i'm and I
Speaker 1: live there with them. And that's why I don't want
Speaker 1: to go see shitty movies, because it's I don't want
Speaker 1: to live there. I don't want to live there. I
Speaker 1: don't want to live in Chris Farley's death scene. Adam,
Speaker 1: we feel a lot of like about this. I prefer
Speaker 1: to go to films long after they've been in theaters,
Speaker 1: mostly because I'm easily distracted by other people's sounds. It's
Speaker 1: why when I do go to see a film, I
Speaker 1: sit in the back because I don't like hearing people
Speaker 1: behind me. My least favorite thing about going to a
Speaker 1: film is hearing anyone talk about a trailer after the
Speaker 1: trailer is over, like oh that looks good or that
Speaker 1: like it's so irritating. Yeah. My a wife makes fun
Speaker 1: of me for famously like I don't want to move
Speaker 1: in a film. I don't react to her if she
Speaker 1: nudges me and says like, who's that, Like we've gotten
Speaker 1: an arguments over after the film. She's like, I asked
Speaker 1: you a question in the film, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a real son. Of a bit. When I go
Speaker 1: see a film because I just want to be in it,
Speaker 1: I cannot. I cannot brook any sort of distraction. What's
Speaker 1: your worst? Something is distracting me in this theater story,
Speaker 1: the light of a cell phone, just two people behind you.
Speaker 1: The experience of seeing a film on opening weekend is
Speaker 1: often really bad because people is going to sound like
Speaker 1: super Old managed to say, but people don't know how
Speaker 1: to watch a movie anymore with other people. It's a
Speaker 1: ton of cross talk and cheering at stuff on the screen.
Speaker 1: I was in a movie one time in a theater
Speaker 1: Times Square, and it was a pretty sparsely attended screening,
Speaker 1: and about fifteen minutes into the film, a guy came
Speaker 1: in with a huge garbage bag and the garbage bag
Speaker 1: was full of other plastic bags. And he just went
Speaker 1: and sat in like the front row furthest right seat,
Speaker 1: with the garbage bag in his lap and just kept
Speaker 1: moving it. And it was just like the plastic wrestling.
Speaker 1: Had a lot of strange New York experiences, like you knows,
Speaker 1: a certain point, people started shouting like, please put down
Speaker 1: that giant bag full of plastic bags. It is very distracting.
Speaker 1: I saw the Witch in New York. You know that movie,
Speaker 1: and you know how disturbing intense that movie is. And
Speaker 1: it was a very crowded theater, and that was the
Speaker 1: one scene where the crow is is picking at the
Speaker 1: woman's breast and it's so fucked up and disturbing looking,
Speaker 1: and just you could hear a pin drop in the theater.
Speaker 1: Everyone's so uncomfortable. And this girl in the front row
Speaker 1: says that is so fucked and everybody died laughing, and
Speaker 1: I was like, thank God for you, like in that moment,
Speaker 1: it was so well placed. It's just like, God, bless you, lady.
Speaker 1: I didn't answer the second part of your question. I
Speaker 1: have recently gotten heavy back into raisin ets at movies, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, look, that is a wildly unpopular candy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me see if we still have any here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like blows off the dust. Was I can't imagine raisinet's
Speaker 1: ever go bad, though, Do you have any worths? Would
Speaker 1: you make me some tea? Like trust me on this.
Speaker 1: Next time you go see a film four weeks after
Speaker 1: it's been out, John, and get those raisints. It's a
Speaker 1: good match. I actually have a friend who dumps the
Speaker 1: raisins into the popcornure. Yeah, that's a classic. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they put peanut butter on a hot dog too. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: do we do it? Hey? We did it? Hey, just
Speaker 1: before we go and before we throw to whatever outgoing credits,
Speaker 1: either version of this is going to have. We're putting
Speaker 1: this episode in both the Movie Crash Feed and then
Speaker 1: the friendly Fire Feed. So if you enjoyed this and
Speaker 1: you're a movie Crush fan, come check out friendly Fire.
Speaker 1: And if you enjoyed this and you're a friendly Fire fan,
Speaker 1: please go check out Movie Crush Jack. This was super
Speaker 1: fun to do. It's a lot of fun, good times.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, how about that? I kind of want
Speaker 1: to just be on the friendly Fire podcast. I want
Speaker 1: to be the fourth guy. I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: room though. They're already h already pressed for getting words
Speaker 1: in edgewise because they're all smart and insightful and funny
Speaker 1: and always have great things to say about the movies
Speaker 1: they they dissect. So that was Platoon, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite flicks, and it was great watching that movie again.
Speaker 1: It had been many, many years, and I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about it through my Converse agents with not only them,
Speaker 1: but if you heard recent podcasts with Matt Gorley and
Speaker 1: Paul Sheer. We also kind of dabbled in Platoon, so
Speaker 1: it's been getting a lot of love here lately. Great
Speaker 1: movie and I hope you enjoyed this show. Definitely please
Speaker 1: try and go out and support the Friendly Fire Show.
Speaker 1: They've been going at it for a little while now
Speaker 1: and have a nice stock of really good war movie podcasts,
Speaker 1: so check it out on the Maximum Network. And I
Speaker 1: thank you for your support. And in the meantime, why
Speaker 1: don't you go hang out in the bunker with the heads,
Speaker 1: because that's where the party's at. Movie Crush is produced, engineered, edited,
Speaker 1: and soundtracked by Noel Brown in Ramsay unt at How
Speaker 1: Stuff Work Studios, Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia,