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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

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Speaker 2: that brings you the secret histories and little known, fascinating

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Speaker 2: facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music,

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Speaker 2: and more. We are your two truck drivers of Triviare

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Speaker 2: I should have written more of these. I'm just so

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Speaker 2: excited to get into it. I'm Alex Heigel.

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Speaker 1: And I'm Jordan run Tug and I'm so happy and

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Speaker 1: how excited you are right now? This is truly adorable.

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Speaker 2: That is because we are talking about maybe my favorite

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Speaker 2: film of all time. If I'm being truly honest with myself,

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Speaker 2: like I can front and talk about, you know, Goodfellas

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Speaker 2: or Paris, Texas or any of my real high falutin

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Speaker 2: things that I dip my toe into. But if I'm

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Speaker 2: really honest, this is my favorite movie ever made from

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Speaker 2: one of my if not from probably my favorite director.

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Speaker 2: A heady mix of creature costumes, ancient Chinese mysticism and

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Speaker 2: kung fu films, and dumb red meat Americana from the eighties.

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Speaker 2: That's right, we're talking about John Carpenter's Big Trouble in

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Speaker 2: Little China. It is a movie that I saw when

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Speaker 2: I was eight or nine years old and have been

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Speaker 2: aggressively fixated on ever since.

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Speaker 3: It's a comfort watch for me.

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Speaker 2: It's a movie I love introducing people to because, like

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Speaker 2: I would, I will put this movie on and then

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Speaker 2: just watch the person watching because it's just like that.

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Speaker 2: You get so much out of it. It's funny on

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Speaker 2: the surface, but then it just gets more and more bizarre,

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Speaker 2: and like by the time there's a giant shrimp bug

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Speaker 2: coming out of the sewer to just randomly kill one

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Speaker 2: of the heroes, and then that's never addressed again.

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Speaker 1: You'll notice that I texted you a lot in the

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Speaker 1: beginning and then I stopped for me.

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Speaker 2: I was just like, yeah, it's oh man, And you know,

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Speaker 2: I really researching this and realizing that the sort of

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Speaker 2: stew that went into it, it really just confirms my

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Speaker 2: opinion that it is like I mean, i'd call it

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Speaker 2: like grade A carpenter, And I know you like the

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Speaker 2: thing a little bit better and it certainly doesn't have

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Speaker 2: the like critical bona fides of something like Halloween. But

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Speaker 2: holy there's this movie so much fun and I love it.

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Speaker 2: What did you think of it?

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Speaker 3: No pressure, I.

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Speaker 1: Mean, I just out of the gate. I find it

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Speaker 1: fitting that on the heels of Peewee's Big Adventure was

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Speaker 1: just the tale of a man child who wants his

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Speaker 1: bike back. We're delving into the tail of a manchild

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Speaker 1: who wants his truck back. So I really appreciated that, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, I considered playing a game where I wanted

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Speaker 1: to see how far I could bluff it through this

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Speaker 1: episode before admitting to you that I didn't watch it,

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Speaker 1: but I knew that I couldn't do that to you. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know that would have just been this meant so

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Speaker 1: much to you. Yeah, especially after all the double episodes

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Speaker 1: you've done for my triple episodes for my beloved large Boat.

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Speaker 1: I couldn't do that to you. Yeah. My main takeaway

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Speaker 1: was really, I feel like I know you a lot

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Speaker 1: better having watched this.

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Speaker 2: It's all there, man, rubber suits, kung fu quipping, false gbado.

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Speaker 1: I watched a handful of things for you over the

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Speaker 1: course of this series, A racer Head, thing, freaks and geeks,

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Speaker 1: and Big Trouble in Little China, and I would say

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Speaker 1: that I definitely liked Big Trouble more than a racer Head,

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Speaker 1: slightly less than the thing. It's possibly because I'm not

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Speaker 1: really all that into fantasy stuff or like kung fu

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Speaker 1: fight movies. Really that's not really my area. And also

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Speaker 1: I just I found it, and I'm sure it's as

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Speaker 1: intentionally so kind of disorienting on first watch. I just

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Speaker 1: finished watching it intentionally, I wanted to get you my

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Speaker 1: freshest test possible, so I just like the credits rolled

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Speaker 1: for me like maybe twenty five minutes ago. So this

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Speaker 1: is very, very fresh. But I think it's supposed to

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Speaker 1: be this or anything, because your point of reference is

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Speaker 1: the Kurt Russell character, and you're finding out what all

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Speaker 1: these characters are, what all these supernatural things are as

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Speaker 1: he is. So I almost feel like I need to

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Speaker 1: watch it again just to have some symbols of what occurred.

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Speaker 3: It is amazing.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I don't really think I would be hard

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Speaker 2: pressed to think of another film that throws all this stuff. Yes,

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Speaker 2: certainly of the time. Yeah maybe since, But the only

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Speaker 2: comparison that has is The Golden Child, which we'll get

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Speaker 2: into laryer. But yeah, like, what do you you if

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Speaker 2: you were pitching and make an elevator pitch? I mean

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Speaker 2: you rattled off. You have a pretty stellar comparison here

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Speaker 2: that I want to. I'm wanna hear you read out loud.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I loved how truly singular and weird this

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Speaker 1: movie was. I have never a Golden Child aside, heard

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Speaker 1: of another movie like it. I don't think it's it really,

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Speaker 1: it's a stew as you said, but it's definitely not derivative. No.

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Speaker 1: I mean my elevator pitch was that it's like Enter

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Speaker 1: the Dragon meets Labyrinth meets Escape from New York meets

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Speaker 1: John Wayne.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.

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Speaker 1: Did I miss anything?

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Speaker 4: Well?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the conventional wisdom is that kur Russell's

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Speaker 2: doing Clint Eastwood in Escape from New York as just

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Speaker 2: like the ultimate badass, and then in this movie he's

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Speaker 2: doing John Wayne as a nincompoop.

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Speaker 3: Which, Yeah, one of the things that I.

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Speaker 2: Love most about this movie is how it really commits

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Speaker 2: to keeping you in just as much of the dark

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Speaker 2: as the main character. Yeah, Like there's the there's those

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Speaker 2: little glimpses of exposition, like when you see Eggshan and

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Speaker 2: Wang Cheese Dad talking about like they're doing like Chinese

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Speaker 2: fortune telling. They're like when the goat butts against the mountains,

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Speaker 2: his horns become entangled in the roots, He's like, what

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Speaker 2: in God's name is happening? But they don't, Like a

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Speaker 2: movie today would probably pause and explain that to you. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: And I think this is best illustrated by the aforementioned

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Speaker 2: part in the Sewer where the monster comes out and

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Speaker 2: just completely hauls off and murders one of the protagonists

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Speaker 2: and the eggshn throws like a magic grenade at it

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Speaker 2: and goes, you will come out no more, and car

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Speaker 2: Russell just goes, what what will come out no more?

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Speaker 3: And the movie just keeps moving and never addresses it again.

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Speaker 2: And in like a Marvel movie or something today, they'd

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Speaker 2: have a whole thing or like God forbid, like a

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Speaker 2: Tolkien thing, they'd be like, well that was actually Shuschwalfe

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Speaker 2: of All the Destroyer, who was like web and go

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Speaker 2: to this very pedantic thing. But Big Trouble is just like, Nope, Nope,

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Speaker 2: you don't need no keep going. There's a guy's gonna

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Speaker 2: explode in a minute.

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Speaker 1: We got we got more fights to see.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, another guy, there's gonna a guy is gonna self

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Speaker 2: inflate to death.

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Speaker 1: Was like some woo Lee Wonka like villainous and.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, well from the somewhat controversial genesis as a

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Speaker 2: turn of the century Western that the film had, to

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Speaker 2: the backlash from Asian American advocacy groups in the entertainment

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Speaker 2: industry that it faced upon its release, to that curious

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Speaker 2: coincidence of a movie starring an infinitely more bankable star

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Speaker 2: at the time based in the same premise happening to

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Speaker 2: come out at more or less the exact same time.

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Speaker 2: Here's everything you didn't know about Big Trouble in Little China.

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Speaker 1: Wow.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 3: I didn't know this as much when I.

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Speaker 2: Was a fan, but I really started getting into this

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Speaker 2: because I love screenplay and like script doctoring stuff. It's

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Speaker 2: so nerdy to me and so interesting. But like so

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Speaker 2: many of the films that we've already covered here, Big

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Speaker 2: Trouble Little China came together because of Hong Kong, specifically

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Speaker 2: because of the amazing wave of action movies coming out

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Speaker 2: of Hong Kong in the nineteen seventies, and specifically a

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Speaker 2: sort of mystical teen film called The Butterfly Murders by

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Speaker 2: a guy named Sui Hark, who's a name in Hong Kong.

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Speaker 2: And there was a screenwriter named David z Weinstein who

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Speaker 2: was looking for a film to collaborate with his buddy

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Speaker 2: Gary Goldman on and he remembered thinking, if you took

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Speaker 2: this film The Butterfly Murders and bring it to an

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Speaker 2: American audience, give it a Hollywood style plot structure, but

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Speaker 2: also keep it Chinese, it could really blow people's minds.

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Speaker 2: And that was the genesis of the idea. There's a

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Speaker 2: whole interesting lineage of historical Chinese Hong Kong action martial

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Speaker 2: arts that is like based in myths and legends. I'm

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Speaker 2: probably going to butcher the pronunciation, but it's wuja is

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Speaker 2: like the historical epic thing, like you're crouching tiger stuff

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Speaker 2: and then all the Golden Harvest and Hong Kong stuff

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Speaker 2: that was coming out that the Wu Tang later became

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Speaker 2: obsessed with and put in all of their songs is

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Speaker 2: also kind of belongs to that branching sub genre. And

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Speaker 2: the reason that Weinstein put it in San Francisco was

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Speaker 2: because he was in interested in a period in San

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Speaker 2: Francisco's Chinatown that's called the Tong Wars, and Tong is

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Speaker 2: a word in Chinese that basically just translates to hall

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Speaker 2: or gathering place, and essentially they were early on. They

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Speaker 2: were just support systems for the waves of Chinese immigrants

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Speaker 2: that were landing in the US at the time period,

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Speaker 2: and they were in a bunch of different cities. But

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Speaker 2: as most things do, they became corrupted and it were

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Speaker 2: involved in all kinds of nasty stuff, like literal human trafficking.

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Speaker 2: Like a lot of what they were doing was bringing

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Speaker 2: women in because there were infinitely more Chinese men in

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Speaker 2: the country at the time than women. So one of

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Speaker 2: the things that these tongs were doing were trafficking women

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Speaker 2: in to be wives.

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Speaker 3: And sex workers and such. But they were also involved in.

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Speaker 2: Drugs and gambling, and the gang warfare between these organizations

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Speaker 2: got so bad. A gang warfare between these different tongs

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Speaker 2: would have open battles in the streets by thugs that

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Speaker 2: they'd all hired, and oftentimes they were brawling with melee

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Speaker 2: weapons like hatchets, and that's something that you actually see

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Speaker 2: in a lot of Chinese cinema. There's a Jackie Chan

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Speaker 2: movie called The Second Legend of Drunken Master, which is

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Speaker 2: one of the best martial arts films of all time,

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Speaker 2: by the way, go watch that if you have any

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Speaker 2: interest in it, where there's the he and his buddy

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Speaker 2: take on like a whole gang of guys just armed

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Speaker 2: with hatchets, and that's like sort of a villainous stereotype.

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Speaker 2: It's like you're, you know, in like in American action

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Speaker 2: movies where you have like the bad bikers like that

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Speaker 2: are just interchangeable enemies that get killed. That's like how

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Speaker 2: hatchet men functioned in a lot of Hong Kong cinema. Anyway,

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Speaker 2: the nineteen oh six earthquake in San Francisco and the

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Speaker 2: fire that really did more damage than the earthquake itself

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Speaker 2: sort of wiped this era out because most of the

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Speaker 2: brothels and opium dens and gambling houses that were these

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Speaker 2: criminal enterprises territory were just kind of wiped out. And

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Speaker 2: as the city reconstructed itself, naturally they put an end

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Speaker 2: to the dens of in nickquity. So fascinated by that

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Speaker 2: backdrop and the air during the gold Rush, when San

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Speaker 2: Francisco was a wash In Cowboys, Goldman and Weinstein penned

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Speaker 2: a screenplay called Lotus about a cowboy named Wylie Prescott

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Speaker 2: who friends a railroad worker named Sun who needs to

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Speaker 2: meet his incoming fiance at San Francisco's Docs and an

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Speaker 2: evil sorcerer named low Pan intercedes and crucially takes Prescott's

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Speaker 2: horse and high jinks En Sue oh Man, we didn't.

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Speaker 3: Talk about Low Pan.

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Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk about Low Pan with you,

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Speaker 2: Goldman said. We felt like we were writing a brilliant

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Speaker 2: movie that would be the next Raiders of the Lost Arc.

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Speaker 2: It was a very unusual project and still is. There's

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Speaker 2: never been anything like it, so trying to do something

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Speaker 2: unusual was a little bit of a risk, but we

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Speaker 2: had great confidence that we could pull it off. Goldin

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Speaker 2: and Weinstein's agent did request a new title, and Weinstein

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Speaker 2: told Tara Bennett and Paul Terry for their making of

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Speaker 2: The Big Trouble Little China Coffee table book that is

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Speaker 2: out of print and copies of it are going for.

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Speaker 3: Like two hundred and fifty dollars online and I cannot

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Speaker 3: justify the expense. But it's a huge, beautiful book and

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Speaker 3: I'm I'm obsessed with it.

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Speaker 1: If anybody has has a copy that they are in

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Speaker 1: the part where Tigel's birthday is coming up in less

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Speaker 1: than a month, it is I always have to shout

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Speaker 1: out Uprocks.

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Speaker 2: Somebody at up Rocks, like went ham On Big Trouble

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Speaker 2: Little China oral histories. There are like four separate two

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Speaker 2: thousand word features on the making of Big Trouble in

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Speaker 2: Little China. So I didn't like an idiot, I scam

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Speaker 2: past the bylines, but shouts to them anyway. For the

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Speaker 2: making of book, Weinstein says, we spent a half a

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Speaker 2: day brainstorming titles and then Gary said how about Chinatown Gun,

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Speaker 2: which thank god they didn't go with that, because the

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Speaker 2: next suggestion was Big Trouble in Little China. So then

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Speaker 2: they sold the script to a producer named Paul Manag,

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Speaker 2: a real estate developer turned producer, because Hollywood is paid

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Speaker 2: to play. If you have money from real estate, you

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Speaker 2: can start making movies. Those two had made Sophie's friggin choice, so, uh, what.

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Speaker 3: Do I know?

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Speaker 2: They clearly knew something. And then so the script was

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Speaker 2: optioned into a movie at twenty Century Fox under Goldman's

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Speaker 2: former boss, a guy named Larry Gordon, which was a

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Speaker 2: bit awkward since Gordon had at one point fired Goldman. So,

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Speaker 2: if you're keeping track, these two wrote a script. It

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Speaker 2: was optioned by the studio under a guy who had

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Speaker 2: just fired one of them.

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Speaker 1: And this is perhaps the reason why the script went

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Speaker 1: to a writer named W. D. Richter, who just directed

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Speaker 1: the Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension.

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Speaker 3: You ever seen that one?

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Speaker 5: Not?

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Speaker 1: Nope, And I mean the title speaks volumes. But tell

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Speaker 1: me more about this.

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Speaker 2: I mean it is I believe it is a no

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Speaker 2: It was based on a novel apparently, but it is

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Speaker 2: just a bizarre film.

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Speaker 1: I gathered that by the Adventures of bucker Ubon.

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Speaker 2: Doctor bucker UBONSI is a physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and

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Speaker 2: a rock star. And he's played by Peter.

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Speaker 1: Does he have a podcast?

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Speaker 2: Well, he's played by Peter Weller, which is hilarious because

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Speaker 2: to most people, Peter Weller is known as the sort

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Speaker 2: of exoskeletal, quasi lifelike star of RoboCop. So you just

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Speaker 2: get that like severe teutonic, like carved in stone Peter

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Speaker 2: Weller presence in this deeply bizarre pulp film. But I

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Speaker 2: don't think Richter was a director either. I think he

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Speaker 2: was primarily a screenwriter.

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Speaker 1: What an insane cast? John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd,

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Speaker 1: Jeff Goldbloom, veteran character actor Dan Hidea, Yes, Vincent Chavelli

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Speaker 1: Oh my god. Okay, bookmarking this anyway, back to Big Trouble,

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Speaker 1: back to back to another Clancy Brown boy, Clancy Brown,

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Speaker 1: the greatest pipes in the business.

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Speaker 3: What a voice on that man?

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Speaker 2: Jonathan Banks friggin Mike from Breaking Bad is in this movie.

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Speaker 3: Holyh what?

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Speaker 1: Okay? Yeah, we will be watching this imminently and possibly

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Speaker 1: doing an episode on it, but for now, back to

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Speaker 1: Big Trouble. So this is the guy, the director of

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Speaker 1: this insane movie is the guy who got put on

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Speaker 1: the Big Trouble in Little China script, completely elbowing out

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Speaker 1: the original two writers, Goldman and Weinstein, and this guy W. D. Richter.

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Speaker 1: He's the one who moved the time period of the

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Speaker 1: movie up to modern day from the late eighteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: which is a change that the original writers still disagree with.

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Speaker 2: I want to see what you think of because you're

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Speaker 2: a screenwriter first, and I want to see what you

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Speaker 2: think about his because I think his assessment here is

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Speaker 2: quite shrewd.

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Speaker 1: Actually, yes, the guy who was later brought on the

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Speaker 1: co writer W. D. Richter. He felt that it was

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Speaker 1: a mistake for the audience to have the quote double

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Speaker 1: remove first of a historical setting and then a fantastical adventure.

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Speaker 1: It's basically you just suspending your disbelief too much. He said,

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Speaker 1: you're asking audience to go to a period Western, get

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Speaker 1: used to all these little eccentric realities, and then you

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Speaker 1: go one step further into a yet more exotic world.

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Speaker 1: I don't think so, and I think he's right. I

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Speaker 1: think that's about as somebody who just watched it for

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Speaker 1: the first time, knowing next to nothing about it other

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Speaker 1: than it was your favorite film. Uh it was. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't It was tough to follow. It was just like,

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Speaker 1: what is that was the prevailing feeling was what is

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Speaker 1: happening at all moments in the best way, in the

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Speaker 1: way that you feel when you're on a thrill ride

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Speaker 1: or something. But yeah, no, I think it would have

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Speaker 1: been a little tougher. Yeah, in a funny way. The

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Speaker 1: dialogue and Kurt Russell's just the bad John Wayne impression.

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Speaker 1: In my mind, it almost felt like a Western anyway.

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Speaker 1: Sure like to make it explicit, would it probably just

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Speaker 1: muddied the waters? I mean obviously, yeah, I mean he

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Speaker 1: had a truck, obviously, but still the pork Chop Express, dude,

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Speaker 1: the CB radio stuff is so good.

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Speaker 2: It's you just tell him that when knocks the back

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Speaker 2: of your favorite head up against the wall, that's such

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Speaker 2: a great line. Yeah, man, his dialogue in This is gold.

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Speaker 2: When I saw John Carpenter play play a bunch of

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Speaker 2: his film scores live, the Pork Chop Express song, like

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Speaker 2: the not the Big Trouble Little China theme, which we'll

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Speaker 2: talk about, but the Pork Chop Express song killed live

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Speaker 2: like he does these little intros for each song, and

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Speaker 2: so everyone knows what's coming. But still when the guitars

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Speaker 2: do the hit that wearn air nail, it's just like

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Speaker 2: the roof just done it, Donna done it.

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Speaker 3: It's just so great.

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Speaker 1: While yeah, let's tell my ex wife, I'd never drive

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Speaker 1: faster than I can see. I mean, that's great, that's great.

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Speaker 1: I've seen this movie once and I remembered that.

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Speaker 4: Yes.

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Speaker 1: But another reason for moving the time period from the

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineties to present day or then present day was

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Speaker 1: a much more practical concern, he said, it's a much

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Speaker 1: more complicated thing to have to make. You have to

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Speaker 1: create eighteen nineties San Francisco. And I just finished Bukaroo,

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Speaker 1: the aforementioned Bukaro Banzai across the Eighth Dimension and I

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Speaker 1: knew how hard it was to create a whole world

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Speaker 1: and make it up out of thin air, And geez,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't it be great to be able to point the

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Speaker 1: camera at something that existed at a real location and

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Speaker 1: worry about the content of the script and performances rather

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Speaker 1: than do we have the right building behind us? Do

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Speaker 1: we have the money to make it look like the

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineties?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's funny that John Carpenter and W. D.

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Speaker 2: Richter knew each other from film school. They both went

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Speaker 2: to U Film School, and Carpenter would say Rick and

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Speaker 2: I went through all three production classes together. We each

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Speaker 2: had our own crews, so we never actually collaborated on

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Speaker 2: a film. Carpenter also did script doctor worked on a

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Speaker 2: screenplay that Richter had called The Ninja, which was a

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Speaker 2: big I didn't know anything about this movie, probably because

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Speaker 2: it never got made, but it was this big historical

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Speaker 2: epic that was in development hell from twentieth Century Fox

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Speaker 2: in the eighties. That was at one point people they

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Speaker 2: were gonna have star Richard gear.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, is that rumor about him and the Gerbil reel?

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Speaker 3: You know, I don't know man.

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Speaker 2: In all my time in the gossip trenches, I don't

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Speaker 2: think of all the quote unku allegedly closeted male celebs.

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Speaker 2: I just don't think people it's like that mad Men thing.

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Speaker 2: I don't think people think about Richard Gear anymore, not

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Speaker 2: since Runaway Bride at least.

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Speaker 1: Doctor T and the Women.

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Speaker 3: Was he in Runaway Bride? Am I making that up?

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Speaker 1: I think he was?

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Speaker 3: He was? Yeah, so nineteen ninety nine, like come on.

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Speaker 1: But original writer Gary Goldman argued against this change in

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Speaker 1: one of the many pieces on uprocks dot com. Once

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Speaker 1: you make the story contemporary, that changes a lot. Our

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Speaker 1: idea was that because it was set in the past,

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Speaker 1: it was much more like Raiders of the Lost Arc,

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Speaker 1: where the hero wasn't as ridiculous because he didn't need

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Speaker 1: to be. Jack Burton is a truck driver who encounters

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Speaker 1: Chinese magic, and by making a contemporary you had to

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Speaker 1: turn it into really a full on comedy. He also

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Speaker 1: added to Entertainment Weekly, the idea that we would be

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Speaker 1: rewritten was not so unthinkable, although in this case the

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Speaker 1: idea that you would have something so original and not

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Speaker 1: speak to the original writers about it did strike us

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Speaker 1: as being bizarre and unfair.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I do feel.

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Speaker 2: Bad for them, and like anyone, when there's something gets

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Speaker 2: taken and butchered.

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Speaker 3: But this is the business we've chosen.

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Speaker 2: The two eventually had to go to the WGA for

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Speaker 2: arbitration for credit, but Goldman snuck in a particularly rightly

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Speaker 2: bit of vengeance.

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Speaker 3: I love this.

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Speaker 2: He was brought on to rewrite the Total Recall the

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Speaker 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger film a few years later, and he made

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Speaker 2: one particular change. Michael Ironside's villain in that film is

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Speaker 2: named Richter, and you better believe that guy dies horribly

395
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Speaker 2: just a little petty. It might not even be true,

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Speaker 2: Like I mean, it's true, obviously, that's the name of

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Speaker 2: the character. I don't know if if that was why

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Speaker 2: he did it, but if he did writer's revenge.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Speaking as a screenwriting major, I can say that

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Speaker 1: they are a petty, petty group of people, and I

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00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:36,040
Speaker 1: one hundred percent believe that that's the case. So wait,

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Speaker 1: I have a question for you. Yeah, as evidenced by

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Speaker 1: your incredibly thorough history of Kung fu films from the

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Speaker 1: beginning of this episode and also the episode we did

405
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Speaker 1: a long time ago on Fista Fury to the draft

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Speaker 1: Fista Fury. Yeah, was this the movie Big Trouble, Little

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Speaker 1: China that got you in the Kung Fu films.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I didn't even mention how I got this.

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Speaker 4: No.

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Speaker 2: So I started doing taekwondo when I was five or

411
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Speaker 2: six because Power Rangers came on and my parents wanted

412
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Speaker 2: me to make do a sport and I was like,

413
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Speaker 2: I want to do that. So I don't even know

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Speaker 2: how they. Oh I do know through a friend who

415
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Speaker 2: was also doing taekwondo at this studio.

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Speaker 3: We landed there and that was like my thing. When

417
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Speaker 3: I was a kid. I didn't do any other sports.

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Speaker 3: I just did taekwondo.

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Speaker 2: And they, you know, you have these things called promotions

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Speaker 2: where you have to go in and you basically do

421
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Speaker 2: all your little kicks and your stuff in front of

422
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Speaker 2: a panel of judges and you get a new belt.

423
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Speaker 2: And the place where I was doing all this at

424
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Speaker 2: for a while had movie nights after their promotions, and

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Speaker 2: you know, in the ultimate hands off era of the

426
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Speaker 2: early nineties, they were just like, yeah, we'll show you,

427
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Speaker 2: you know, Enter the Dragon, which has nudity and gratuitous violence,

428
00:22:48,320 --> 00:22:50,520
Speaker 2: or they'll be like we'll show you Big Trouble, Little China.

429
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Speaker 2: And he had dude was like as baffled.

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Speaker 3: And enthralled as you were.

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Speaker 2: As you were imagine being a nine year old kid

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Speaker 2: hopped up on cherry Pepsi and Twizzlers and watching this

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Speaker 2: movie at like gymnasium, lock in style where you're like,

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Speaker 2: I'm unsupervised. So really that's how I got into it,

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Speaker 2: and that's why it's you know, that that thing that

436
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:18,680
Speaker 2: you lock onto as a kid as being the coolest

437
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:20,320
Speaker 2: thing ever stays there.

438
00:23:20,480 --> 00:23:24,520
Speaker 1: I had that same experience, but with Apollo thirteen and

439
00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:27,840
Speaker 1: not at taekwondo, and then I went to space and

440
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: then you went to space. Me of it, and then

441
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 1: I went sent home early because I was crying too much.

442
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:36,800
Speaker 2: I mean, if anything cured me of being fascinated in space,

443
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:40,879
Speaker 2: it was watching the movie Alien at like six.

444
00:23:42,840 --> 00:23:45,479
Speaker 1: You've spoken at length about how much that movie upset you.

445
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:46,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

446
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:47,200
Speaker 1: Probably.

447
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 2: The other reason I loved John Carpenter is because there

448
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:50,200
Speaker 2: was a kid who grew up down the street from

449
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 2: me who, for whatever reason, was obsessed with the Halloween franchise.

450
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:58,399
Speaker 2: And if I told this story on this podcast.

451
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: Before I remember, tell me again, yeah, I might have

452
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:02,879
Speaker 1: been just to me. It might have been our in

453
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:03,800
Speaker 1: our session.

454
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,159
Speaker 2: So you know, in one of our sessions, you know,

455
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 2: so how like like little idiot boys play like Ninja's

456
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:10,680
Speaker 2: or G I Joe or whatever.

457
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:12,440
Speaker 3: We'll go on.

458
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:14,919
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, like you know, with like some of my

459
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:17,000
Speaker 2: other friends at that age, we would play like G I.

460
00:24:17,080 --> 00:24:18,920
Speaker 2: Joe where we would like run around with like because

461
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 2: America is a hellscape, we would run around with fake

462
00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 2: guns and pretending.

463
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: We're crop in the fifties.

464
00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 2: Yeah kind of, or like coming from me, or like

465
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:28,439
Speaker 2: Ninja's where we would just like run around and like

466
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 2: play fight with swords and stuff because like big yards

467
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 2: and like that kind of sh.

468
00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 3: So this kid down the street from me, his idea

469
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 3: of a fun time was to play Halloween, where he

470
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:39,880
Speaker 3: would dress up in a boiler suit and a Mike

471
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,880
Speaker 3: Myers mask and stalk me through the friscillating dusk light

472
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:47,640
Speaker 3: of our neighborhood with a plastic butcher knife.

473
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: Was this run by you beforehand or did he just

474
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:54,640
Speaker 1: start doing it? Well, I just pitched it together. Oh

475
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 1: he pitched it. Okay, we at least he pitched it.

476
00:24:56,920 --> 00:25:00,879
Speaker 2: I mean I was I was like okay, but I

477
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:03,400
Speaker 2: was like scared of that. Like I remember his one

478
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:08,439
Speaker 2: party he must have turned ten right before Halloween. H

479
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:11,480
Speaker 2: two O came out or like around that eras ninety seven,

480
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:13,880
Speaker 2: and so for his birthday party, we had a sleepover

481
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 2: where they just watched all of them and I was

482
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 2: so scared by one and two that I tapped out

483
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 2: for four, five, and six, and just like was in

484
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:27,800
Speaker 2: the other room, like sleeping, trying to sleep with my

485
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:31,439
Speaker 2: head under my pills, just hearing screams through the wall.

486
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:35,159
Speaker 2: And people wonder why I'm so fixated on horror as

487
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:35,680
Speaker 2: a genre.

488
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 3: Just a few.

489
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 2: Formative, few formative memories that really drive that into your psyche.

490
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:45,199
Speaker 1: I ever tell you my time machine story from my

491
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 1: little bastard next door neighbor.

492
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:48,960
Speaker 2: No, but does doesn't have to do with your fixation

493
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:51,120
Speaker 2: on trying to travel back in time to the fifties?

494
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 1: Maybe kind of. So, yeah, we had these older boys

495
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:57,000
Speaker 1: who lived next door. They were like twelve when I

496
00:25:57,040 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: was like six, and they used to they used to

497
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: like to kind of one of them in particular, used

498
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: to like to torment me. We lived in a lake,

499
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:05,919
Speaker 1: and he used to take dead fish on rakes and

500
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:08,719
Speaker 1: like fling them at me. So that wasn't nice. And

501
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: I saw back to the Future, and I loved it.

502
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:14,199
Speaker 1: It could that that's my favorite movie, even more so

503
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:17,840
Speaker 1: than Large Boat. And I had a plastic big wheel tricycle,

504
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:21,399
Speaker 1: and I had a little area in the backyard that

505
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: I transformed into my laboratory, and I taped a bunch

506
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: of bits of paper and my cardboard, toilet paper tubes

507
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: and stuff onto my tricycle to make it into a

508
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:32,919
Speaker 1: time machine. That was. I made a little flux capacitor

509
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: out of construction paper and a little like keypad that

510
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,200
Speaker 1: type in the date. And they spent a couple afternoons

511
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 1: outfitting my big wheel, and then I started pedaling it

512
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:43,240
Speaker 1: as fast as I could in circles around the little

513
00:26:43,280 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: back walk. And eventually this one of the kids next

514
00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:47,800
Speaker 1: door came over and asked me what I was doing,

515
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: and I explained that I was trying to pedal through time.

516
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:54,040
Speaker 1: I did my very own time machine. And he said,

517
00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: oh no, no, you're doing it all wrong. You know

518
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: in the movie they got to go up to eighty

519
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 1: eight miles an hour. Oh god, that's you know, you're

520
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: not going anywhere near fast enough. And so, oh man,

521
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: what am I going to do? And he said, why

522
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: don't you go to the top of the driveway and

523
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 1: now my driveway at the house, the house we still have,

524
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:16,680
Speaker 1: actually was four hundred feet long and it sloped down

525
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: at a forty five degree angle that ended in a

526
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:23,639
Speaker 1: twelve foot sheer cliff into a lake. And so I

527
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 1: hauled the thing up there, and I remember getting to

528
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 1: the top and he came with me, and again he

529
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: was like twelve and I was like five or six.

530
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:34,119
Speaker 1: And I'm up there straddling the bike about ready for

531
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: blastof and I turned him and I remember saying, well,

532
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:39,680
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what about the lake, Like I want

533
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: to go back to nineteen fifty five, like like Martin

534
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: McFly did, what about the lake? The lake will be there,

535
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:47,440
Speaker 1: Oh no, won't now back in the fifties, now lake,

536
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 1: they like, won't be there. No, And so I shove

537
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: off And my only real snapshot memory of the whole

538
00:27:55,080 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: experience was that there were sparks flying out the back

539
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 1: wheel of the bike. It was going so fast, and

540
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 1: which I thought boded very well.

541
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 3: I thought, I'm like, yeah, it's happening, it's happening.

542
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 1: No, it's happening. But yeah, no, I the bike flipped.

543
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 1: I went into a hedge and the bike went over

544
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:16,680
Speaker 1: the edge of the little mini cliff into the lake.

545
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: And I've been trying to get back to the nineteen

546
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:20,919
Speaker 1: fifty five ever since.

547
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 2: Kinder Trauma formative influences.

548
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:31,359
Speaker 1: John Carpenter, Yeah, same way I did. I did that

549
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 1: on purpose. I put it right there for a reason.

550
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 2: So John Carpenter one on one is that he loves westerns,

551
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 2: and specifically he loves Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo. He said

552
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 2: something to the effect of every film that I make

553
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 2: is a remake of Rio Bravo. And you know that

554
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:50,000
Speaker 2: the Western framing is especially obvious in his obsession with panavision,

555
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 2: shooting in panavision scope and the beautiful, big wide American

556
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 2: landscape style images that you like so much of his

557
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 2: and my Dean Cundy.

558
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 3: I loved in Cundy.

559
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:06,959
Speaker 2: I found out that he and Carpenter actually like had

560
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 2: a falling out over the thing, apparently because they were

561
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was just that much of

562
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 2: a nightmare to shoot out in the wilderness like that,

563
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 2: but yeah, they didn't work together on Starman, which was

564
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:23,720
Speaker 2: Starman actually starring Jeff Bridges, for which he was nominated

565
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 2: for an Oscar was what basically got Carpenter the clout,

566
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 2: I think to get big budget money to make this movie. Anyway,

567
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 2: So they didn't work together on Starman, but he came

568
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 2: back for Big Trouble. So anyway, Carpenter loves westerns, right,

569
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:45,400
Speaker 2: but despite this movie starting as a western, he was

570
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:47,480
Speaker 2: not the studio's first choice to make the movie. That

571
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 2: would have been Walter Hill, the eighties action icon who

572
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 2: directed The Warriors and who Larry Gordon, the executive, had

573
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 2: worked with on Forty eight Hours. It's funny because Goldman

574
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:02,640
Speaker 2: and Weinstein wanted Clint East to direct and star in

575
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 2: their original idea for Big Trouble, but Hill passed and

576
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 2: the film came across John Carpenter's desk. And this is

577
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 2: where the Big Trouble Golden Child thing has such a

578
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 2: legend about it because Carpenter was asked to do the

579
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 2: Golden Child, he turned down because he thought Big Trouble

580
00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 2: was more interesting, which it is. Yeah, I mean for

581
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 2: anybody who's not familiar, because this movie seemingly doesn't exist.

582
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 2: It's been like completely memory hold. There's a ton of

583
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 2: people who have just no idea about it. It does

584
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 2: not have the cult following, but Golden Child is basically,

585
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy is an LA social worker and he has

586
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 2: to go and rescue a child, the titular Golden Child,

587
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 2: to save the world. And it has a ton of

588
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:48,920
Speaker 2: trappings that are very similar to Big Trouble, which we'll

589
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 2: get into later anyway. Carpenter told Entertainment Weekly though, that

590
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 2: he saw his first kung fu film in nineteen seventy three,

591
00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 2: The Five Fingers of Death, and he name dropped Masters

592
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 2: of the Flying Guillotine and Zoo the Warriors of Mystic

593
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 2: Mountain as some of his other favorites. And those are

594
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 2: funny because those have all been name dropped by either

595
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 2: the Wu Tang Clan or Quentin Tarantino at various points.

596
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 3: I believe there is.

597
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 2: A line in Wu Tang Clan Ain't nothing with when

598
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 2: he says uh and the survey says, Bam, you're dead.

599
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:28,600
Speaker 2: Fatal flying guillotine chops off your head. And he told

600
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 2: up Rocks John Carpenter did. They really are a unique

601
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:36,360
Speaker 2: kind of cinematic form. They're extremely innocent but incredibly violent.

602
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 2: It's hard to describe them. They're really strange and have

603
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 2: all these odd ball things that happen in them.

604
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 3: They're delightful.

605
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 2: He took no issue with the setting change to making

606
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 2: the film in the modern day, but the change that

607
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 2: he made to Richter script mostly involved renamings. He said,

608
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 2: Rick had included some names of real triads, real Chinese triads.

609
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 2: We had to change them because we're going to get sued.

610
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 2: We had to make up a lot kill yeah or murdered.

611
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 2: Triads are real. They are real gangsters. There's nothing you

612
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 2: can do about it. You don't want to fool around

613
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:10,040
Speaker 2: with them. My wife was like, she was like, how

614
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 2: many John Carpenter are smoking cigarettes? Impressions are you going

615
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 2: to do in this one like you did in the Thing?

616
00:32:15,360 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 2: And sure enough, I was watching an interview with him

617
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 2: from around the making of and he just lights up

618
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:23,720
Speaker 2: in the middle of the interview. This is in nineteen

619
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 2: eighty six when you could do that sort of thing

620
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 2: on TV in a studio. But Carpenter quickly pulled in

621
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 2: other members because okay, so the thing about The Golden

622
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:35,000
Speaker 2: Child is that they that Fox knew that Paramount had

623
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 2: this movie in production, and so they basically either I

624
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 2: think Carpenter probably agreed to it, but they gave him

625
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 2: a very short production time because they wanted to get

626
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 2: this movie out to beat Golden Child, because they were

627
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 2: operating under the correct assumption that opening anything against Eddie

628
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 2: Murphy at this point in the eighties was commercial suicide,

629
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 2: and it in fact was. So Carpenter wanted to bring

630
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 2: back people he'd worked with. That includes Tommy Lee Wallace

631
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 2: for Second Unit. They go way back to usc and Halloween,

632
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 2: and Dean Cundy's cinematographer and the guy who was production

633
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:10,959
Speaker 2: designer on the Thing, guy named John J. Lloyd, who

634
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 2: is this legendary production designer and just the most taciturn

635
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 2: like not fun guy to watch interviews of. There's an

636
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 2: AFI interview with him that I watch where they just

637
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 2: are like feeding him the names of his movies and

638
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, that was a good one, just like

639
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 2: completely over there by the time they got to him

640
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 2: to interview. Weirdly enough, in the DVD commentary track, Kurt

641
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 2: Russell and John Carpenter claimed that one of the sets

642
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 2: for the film, I assume the street set was used

643
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 2: for a Janet Jackson music video, and I, because I'm

644
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 2: a nerd, I went and tried to find which one

645
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 2: it would have been, the only video that matches the

646
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:55,840
Speaker 2: timeline for it is her first music video for dream Street.

647
00:33:56,760 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 2: But I watched that music video a lot and I

648
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 2: couldn't pin point exactly how the set figured in. But

649
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 2: that's something that you now know, so go nuts with

650
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 2: that information.

651
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: I am. At this very moment, I was gonna say,

652
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 1: are you trying to pinpoint this set? One of the

653
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: sets that's supposed to be Chinatown with a gang's brawl

654
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: during a funeral took over two square blocks at Fox's

655
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:23,240
Speaker 1: Stage six, which Dean Coundy made to look like foggy

656
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: San Francisco by draping a silk over the entirety of

657
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 1: the stage's ceiling. Hilariously, Dean Coundy said in the making

658
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: of book that John Copper offered him the gig. Well,

659
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: the pair were flying a helicopter over Santa Barbara. I

660
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: guess John Carpenter had gotten his license before Cundy and

661
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 1: brought him out claiming to help him practice for his

662
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:47,839
Speaker 1: own test, and had offered him the gig. Wait. I so, okay, yeah,

663
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 1: I don't understand how you drape silk over the entirety

664
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: of a stage set to make it look foggy.

665
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:56,719
Speaker 3: Well, so the sets.

666
00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:59,480
Speaker 2: Are ceilingless right, like that's the classic thing, and so

667
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:03,400
Speaker 2: the storefronts probably only went up like maybe a story,

668
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 2: a story and a half. So you find a load

669
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 2: of silk.

670
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:10,319
Speaker 1: It seems like there should have been a cheaper way

671
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:10,759
Speaker 1: to do that.

672
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:16,400
Speaker 2: I mean, Dean cash, our boy, Dean Kundy is you know,

673
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 2: the guy who was filming in sub zero temperatures for

674
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 2: the thing. So I'm sure he tried a variety of materials.

675
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 2: It's like, wait, oh, I can feel my face. Oh

676
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 2: this is great, this is so easy. How much silk

677
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 2: can we buy? I'm so happy I could buy a

678
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 2: load of silk. I mean I think this is the

679
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 2: highest budget Carpenter ever had, so like there was there

680
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 2: was money.

681
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:38,279
Speaker 3: Flowing for this.

682
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:41,319
Speaker 1: What did he make before this?

683
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:45,640
Speaker 3: Starman? Okay, so yeah, yeah, which you might like.

684
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 2: Actually it's a little bit sweeter and more. It's like

685
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:52,399
Speaker 2: it's like if it's like him doing et HM out

686
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 2: of allegiance to David Bowie, I can't fair. Carpenter then

687
00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 2: hired casting director Joanna Merlin to fill out the majority.

688
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,839
Speaker 2: He's an American cast once again, truly amazing that there's

689
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 2: like three.

690
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:04,520
Speaker 3: White people in this movie.

691
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:05,279
Speaker 4: Ah.

692
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 2: She pulled in Victor Wong who plays the good sorcerer Eggshen,

693
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 2: Dennis Dunn, who plays Wang Chi, the film's hero, as

694
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 2: well as James Hong, who is a legend. You know,

695
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:22,200
Speaker 2: he was finally basically re recognized for his role as

696
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 2: the Grandfather and everything everywhere all at once. But the guy,

697
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:27,560
Speaker 2: he was one of these guys who was making like

698
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:31,720
Speaker 2: ten movies a year for fifty years, and my god,

699
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 2: he is so damn funny in this movie. Funnily enough,

700
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 2: Jackie Chan turned down the role of Wang. Can you

701
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,920
Speaker 2: imagine that? It was because John Carpenter had seen him

702
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 2: in his first American language movie and wanted to cast him,

703
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:47,279
Speaker 2: but his English wasn't good enough, and I think the

704
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 2: film had kind of flopped, so he went back to

705
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:52,919
Speaker 2: Hong Kong. Dennis Done. This is his second film role.

706
00:36:53,080 --> 00:36:56,359
Speaker 2: He is so good, he's so charismatic, he's so great

707
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:58,880
Speaker 2: and so funny. He had only been in this movie

708
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:01,240
Speaker 2: called Year of the Dragon, which we'll talk about later.

709
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 2: It was a Michael Simono's movie after doing I think

710
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 2: right after Heaven's Skate maybe not.

711
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:12,440
Speaker 3: Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Doo.

712
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was his first film after Heaven's Gate. You're

713
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 2: the Dragon and it was it is so racist, starring

714
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 2: Mickey Rourke. It was co written with Oliver Stone, so like,

715
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,600
Speaker 2: of course it is. But John Carpenter saw Dennis Done

716
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 2: in that and was like, come be in my movie.

717
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:31,760
Speaker 2: That's not going to be racist. Victor Wong is also amazing.

718
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:34,279
Speaker 2: He's like a Bay Area icon. He was like hanging

719
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,400
Speaker 2: out at City Lights in the fifties with all the

720
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 2: beat poets. He's like a genuine Bay Area like eccentric

721
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 2: and those guys actually have a beautiful friendship. And they

722
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 2: also went on to start in Prince of Darkness, which

723
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 2: is like a Bee Tier John Carpenter movie from eighty

724
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 2: seven or eighty eight, and but yeah, he just he

725
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 2: wanted to work with those guys again anyway. Joanna Merlin

726
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 2: also brought in him Patrol. Beautiful. God, she's so pretty

727
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 2: in this movie and such a delight they're doing like

728
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:11,879
Speaker 2: that ratitat like mid century hup, Oh my god, it's

729
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:14,239
Speaker 2: so good. She was mostly unknown at this point. The

730
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 2: studio wanted her in there because of Porky's and Police Academy.

731
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 2: Perhaps more Germaine to your interests. Kate Burton, the daughter

732
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 2: of Richard Burton, is playing the journalist Margot Price.

733
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:28,799
Speaker 1: Did she do anything after this? I can't believe Richard

734
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 1: Burton's daughter was in this. Hell yeah, mostly theatrical stuff,

735
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 1: I think.

736
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,799
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, but she says she said an interview that

737
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 2: she teaches like acting master classes, and she says the film,

738
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 2: this is the film she gets asked about the most.

739
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 1: Oh oh, she was in First Wives Club. Okay, she

740
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: was a woman in bed in the First Wives Club,

741
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:57,720
Speaker 1: A classic befitting the daughter of the Burtons, the Burton lineage. Yeah, wow,

742
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 1: that's wild. Hilariously. Kim Katrol, speaking of classically trained, was

743
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 1: classically trained. She would leave the Big Trouble in Little

744
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: China set and go to star in stein Winge's staging

745
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 1: of Chekhov's Three Sisters at the New Los Angeles Theater Center.

746
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 1: She recalled having to explain to studio executives who check

747
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 1: off the legendary playwright was. It also took her fifteen

748
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: minutes to be able to film after inserting the green

749
00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: contact lenses into her eyes for her character, because that's

750
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:29,120
Speaker 1: how long it took her eyes to stop watering.

751
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:32,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Carpenter, actually, I think put in a bit

752
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,719
Speaker 2: of backstory for her character that was ultimately not used

753
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 2: in the movie Gracie Law. The character was supposedly born.

754
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:41,399
Speaker 2: Don't panic everyone, It's just me Gracie Law.

755
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 1: It's like, it's very comic book. It's very yeah. Yeah,

756
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: I mean in the way that the Indiana Jones movies

757
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: were sort of a tribute to those thirties pulp comic books.

758
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: It feels very.

759
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:54,880
Speaker 3: Similar Indian Jones.

760
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,759
Speaker 2: No, they're playing it's straight right, yea, And this film

761
00:39:57,800 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 2: has a wink to it.

762
00:39:59,239 --> 00:39:59,479
Speaker 1: Yeah.

763
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:02,360
Speaker 2: So the to her exposition, she was born in China

764
00:40:02,480 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 2: to missionary parents and they were massacred. They wisely cut

765
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:11,279
Speaker 2: that as a bit of exposition, and it's a little

766
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 2: bit confusing the film. I never got this until doing

767
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 2: this research. When they show up to rescue the women,

768
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 2: she is hogtied and gagged, and that was due to

769
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 2: a scene that had also been cut from the shooting script.

770
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:26,240
Speaker 2: It was never filmed where she's like sassing the guards,

771
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:30,520
Speaker 2: so they hogtire and gag her and Kim Control showed

772
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 2: up to set and because this scene had been cut,

773
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 2: she was unaware that she was about to be hog

774
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:41,959
Speaker 2: tied and gagged for a day of shooting and John

775
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 2: Carpenter said she was a trooper about it. He would

776
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:46,000
Speaker 2: be like, okay, like are you how you doing this?

777
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:46,439
Speaker 3: Do you want?

778
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 2: She just asked for drinks of water, and when he

779
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 2: asked if she was uncomfortable, she says, I've been in

780
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:53,400
Speaker 2: tighter situations than this.

781
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 3: She is a true.

782
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:57,839
Speaker 2: One of the things that Carpenter is constantly cited for

783
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 2: is having hawksy in heroines. The archetypal Howard Hawk's heroin

784
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:07,520
Speaker 2: is very you know, sassy, brassy, can do woman. And

785
00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 2: that's most I think notable in Assault on Precinct thirteen

786
00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 2: where one of the like three leads is this like

787
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 2: brassy lady.

788
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,760
Speaker 1: He did the big sleep. Yes, so it's got that dialogue.

789
00:41:20,800 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, And sharp eyed students of Hong Kong cinema or

790
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 2: nerds will notice a number of distinctive martial arts heavies

791
00:41:28,560 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 2: filling out the ranks of the film. Probably the most

792
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 2: non nerdy one for this is a guy named Aliong

793
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:37,839
Speaker 2: who has the incredible combination of balding with shoulder length

794
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:42,239
Speaker 2: hair and handlebar mustache. And he is most familiar to

795
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:45,320
Speaker 2: non nerds as Genghis Khan in Bill and Ted.

796
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 1: That was his real hair and facial hair setup.

797
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:50,879
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it was Wow.

798
00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 2: He's also the bad guy in Lethal Weapon who electrocutes

799
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 2: Mel Gibson hit him again Endo, and he's also in

800
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:04,439
Speaker 2: Diehart Gerald A. Kamura is a. James lou and Dan

801
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:07,279
Speaker 2: Inosanto fill out the ranks of these of the martial

802
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 2: artists in the film. Uh Dan Inosanto credited is the

803
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 2: guy who showed Bruce Lee the nun Chucks, which is

804
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 2: a pretty cool thing to have on your CV under

805
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 2: Skills Special Skills. Okamura is interesting too, because he's got

806
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 2: this great heavy look. He's got the kind of Fu

807
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 2: Manchu and bald and his tremendous eyebrows. But he's a

808
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:30,239
Speaker 2: real deal martial artist. He's designed a number of weapons,

809
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:32,680
Speaker 2: which I guess is a thing that you do if

810
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 2: you get really into this sort of stuff. And then

811
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 2: when he was at this giving an interview with a

812
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:39,719
Speaker 2: cast reunion, how he shows up and he's like, yeah,

813
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:41,719
Speaker 2: all right, I'm a black belt. I'm like, I'm in

814
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 2: a bunch of different disciplines. I'm a weapons specialist. And

815
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 2: they were like, cool, take these six guns. And he

816
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:52,359
Speaker 2: was also laughing because he didn't know how to use them.

817
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:55,800
Speaker 2: But he's given these big like, uh, you know, Sancho

818
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 2: Panza bandoliers, and he was laughing because he was like,

819
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:02,240
Speaker 2: there's no way those cartridges would actually fit in those guns,

820
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 2: so that's a technical error. Cinema sins ding. Also, Jeff

821
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 2: Imada was another guy in there who talks about there

822
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 2: were simply weren't a lot of Asian American stunt men

823
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:18,839
Speaker 2: at the time, so the people who were working on

824
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:22,600
Speaker 2: this film were often just redressed as different people. They

825
00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 2: were like slapped a mustache on him or a hat

826
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 2: or a new wig, and they just had him play

827
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,799
Speaker 2: multiple roles, so everybody wound up beating everybody else up

828
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 2: as different people, which I love. Also, the guy who

829
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 2: plays one of the henchmen who inflates himself to death

830
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 2: later on, the character's name is Thunder. He was played

831
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:48,160
Speaker 2: by a guy named Carter Wong who was supposedly, according

832
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 2: to Hong Kong legend, one of the only people that

833
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:54,319
Speaker 2: Bruce Lee was afraid of. And John Carpenter talked about

834
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 2: how sweet this guy was. He's this you know, muscle

835
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 2: bound martial artist who like trained the Hong Kong Police

836
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 2: Force as part of his day job, and he talks

837
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 2: about him just having this like solid ridge of callous

838
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 2: across his knuckles. But he said he had an incredibly

839
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:13,920
Speaker 2: high voice. Just there's a little details about this that

840
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 2: I have loved since I began researching it, since this afternoon.

841
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a.

842
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 5: Quick break, but we'll be right back with more too

843
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 5: much information in just a moment. Though the character of

844
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 5: Wiley Prescott would be reborn as Kurt Russell's trucker Jack Burton,

845
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 5: the character's dynamic, as you indebibly put it, a completely

846
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 5: inepty loser to everyone but himself, was there from the start.

847
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 5: The original one of the original writers, Gary Goldman, told

848
00:44:56,120 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 5: up Rocks instead of a comical cowboy hero, he's a blowhard.

849
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 5: He has real skills, but he's not the scary cowboy

850
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 5: and in the end he's just all talk. And much

851
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:08,360
Speaker 5: of his rewritten dialogue for the next draft of the script,

852
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 5: through writer W. D. Richter, was based apparently on Richter's

853
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 5: interpretation of if Donald Trump had been a truck driver.

854
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: Sort of makes sense.

855
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:24,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, Carpenter wanted to reteam with Kur Russell. You know,

856
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:26,839
Speaker 2: he's leading man from the thing and escape from New York.

857
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:29,840
Speaker 2: But the studio, aside from winning Clint Eastwood. They wanted

858
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholson for this. I can imagine him doing the

859
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:38,280
Speaker 2: CB scenes, but not my chalice. Yeah, doesn't Jack Nicholson

860
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 2: not like to move just in his movies since like

861
00:45:43,600 --> 00:45:47,840
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty after The Shining he was like, I'm.

862
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:49,360
Speaker 3: Not gonna do any more moving.

863
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: Does that work for you? I mean I could hear

864
00:45:56,680 --> 00:46:00,960
Speaker 1: him doing a bad John Layne impression. Her choice is

865
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 1: a bad John Wayne impression.

866
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:03,800
Speaker 3: Real, Yeah, that's true.

867
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 2: Neither of those panned out, and so Kurt Russell was

868
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:10,480
Speaker 2: in and per the May nineteen eighty six issue of

869
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:16,920
Speaker 2: Cine Fantastique, Russell turned down the movie Highlander, also another

870
00:46:17,080 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 2: iconic eighties action property, on the advice of Goldie Hawn,

871
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:24,319
Speaker 2: his girlfriend and common law wife. She was like, no,

872
00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:27,879
Speaker 2: you should do Big Trouble, Which is another check mark

873
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 2: in my column of reasons to love Goldie Hawn is

874
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:31,960
Speaker 2: that she got Kurt Russell a star in this movie.

875
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 2: He had never driven an eighteen wheeler before, which he

876
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:37,839
Speaker 2: learned to do for this film. He said he was

877
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:39,719
Speaker 2: a little bit concerned about it because the set was

878
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,759
Speaker 2: very tight, and to get in character, he installed a

879
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:47,439
Speaker 2: CBE radio in his Chevy Blazer. He actually got sick

880
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 2: during filming. Part of the reason that he looks so

881
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 2: sweating all the time is because that he was filming

882
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:55,520
Speaker 2: through like a one hundred and five degree fever. I

883
00:46:55,560 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 2: love the friendship between in I love male friendship in

884
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 2: quotement on that I'm not afraid to say it and

885
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 2: the listeners of this show and the male friendship between

886
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 2: Kurt Russell and John Carpenter is adorable, especially knowing that

887
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,440
Speaker 2: Carpenter has described Russell as to the right of Genghis

888
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 2: Khan politically, and Carpenter is such.

889
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 3: A like old hippie dude. I have you ever seen

890
00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 3: They Live?

891
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:26,160
Speaker 1: No.

892
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:28,400
Speaker 2: The movie that he made after this that has a

893
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 2: that I believe is responsible for coining the line I

894
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 2: have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass,

895
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:34,920
Speaker 2: and I'm all out of bubble gum starting in the

896
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 2: South Park. Yes, yeah, So that movie is so wildly

897
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:44,719
Speaker 2: anti quote unquote anti American and anti leftist. It has

898
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:48,560
Speaker 2: cops getting shot, it has cops clearing homeless encampments. The

899
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 2: whole film is structured around the idea that the America's

900
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 2: ruling class are aliens who are just using earth for

901
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 2: its resources. Anyway, John Carpenter and Kurt Russell are besties.

902
00:47:57,680 --> 00:47:57,839
Speaker 1: Uh.

903
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 3: Their commentary track for this movie is hilarious.

904
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:04,400
Speaker 2: They are just shooting the ship openly at certain points,

905
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:08,279
Speaker 2: like I think Russell asked about Carpenter's kids baseball game

906
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 2: or basketball game at one point, just like while they're recording,

907
00:48:12,160 --> 00:48:13,280
Speaker 2: and so Russell.

908
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 3: It was like he actually he was leary.

909
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:18,239
Speaker 2: That he was being cast because he was in kind

910
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:20,239
Speaker 2: of a foulo period as far as his career was

911
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 2: a concern because the thing, well, if you recall was

912
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,840
Speaker 2: had been a big flop, and Carpenter said he just

913
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:32,359
Speaker 2: wanted someone who was right for the role, his pal

914
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:37,759
Speaker 2: Kirk coming in, and so Russell says, he's the reason

915
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 2: I'm building to this as a Russell says he was

916
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 2: concerned about hitting someone with the truck. Carpenter says he

917
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:45,800
Speaker 2: was more concerned about damage to the truck. And another point,

918
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 2: he says he was too busy smoking weed to ever

919
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:52,200
Speaker 2: have seen The Computer War Tennis Shoes, which is one

920
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:54,520
Speaker 2: of Kurt Russell's early Disney movies.

921
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,320
Speaker 1: This is the point of the episode where after remind

922
00:48:57,440 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: folks at the day that Walt Disney died in December

923
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:04,080
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. He wrote the following on a notepad

924
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: by his bed in the hospital, and no one knows

925
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 1: why He wrote the names Ron Miller, which was the

926
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: son in law way Down Sellar which is an episode

927
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 1: of the Magical World of Disney which would eventually air

928
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 1: in January nineteen sixty eight, a year after his death.

929
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 1: Kurt Russell with his first name misspelled krt Cia Dash

930
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 1: Mobley thought to be Roger Mobley, who was a frequent

931
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:33,840
Speaker 1: cast member on the Magical World of Disney TV show

932
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:36,319
Speaker 1: who later went on to be a Green Beret. So

933
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:39,759
Speaker 1: maybe Cia Dash Mobley. Maybe there's a deeper meaning there,

934
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:41,200
Speaker 1: and then he.

935
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 3: Died with Kurt Russell the last thing on his mind.

936
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 1: May we all go so well musing over Kurt Russell

937
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 1: has the Cia.

938
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:54,440
Speaker 2: One of the most quietly revolutionary things about this film,

939
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:56,920
Speaker 2: maybe not quiet, it's pretty on the face about it

940
00:49:56,960 --> 00:50:01,480
Speaker 2: is how it flips literally every convention of Hollywood action

941
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 2: movies at the time on its head. Burton is the

942
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 2: quote unquote fish out of water. Yes, and he's the

943
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 2: audience's POV into this fantastic world. Yes, But if you

944
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:12,600
Speaker 2: compare this to every other martial arts or action movie

945
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 2: made at the time. That's where the similarities end. John

946
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 2: claud Van dam and blood Sport is also a fish

947
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 2: out of water. He goes into this topsy turvy, you know,

948
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:24,239
Speaker 2: world of Hong Kong, bare knuckle brawling matches, but ultimately

949
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:29,760
Speaker 2: he triumphs handily. Chuck Norris steven Sagall like the archetype

950
00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 2: of these movies is like these, you know, hard bitten

951
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:38,840
Speaker 2: American archetype characters go into these worlds and then beat them,

952
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:44,400
Speaker 2: and their preternatural competence in ass kicking grants them safe

953
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 2: passage and eventual triumph. But in Big Trouble, Jack Burton

954
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 2: strides into every situation like a macho man before the

955
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 2: film immediately makes it clear that he is a hapless moron.

956
00:50:56,040 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 2: And as John Carpenter's told Entertainment Weekly, Jack Burton is

957
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 2: a guy who is a sidekick but doesn't know it.

958
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 2: He's an idiot, blowhard, an American fool in a world

959
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:12,239
Speaker 2: he doesn't understand. Tremendous, he told up Rocks. Carpenter did,

960
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:14,960
Speaker 2: Kurt's not the kind of actor who brings his personality

961
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 2: into a movie. He's just a constant actor. So he

962
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 2: plays the role. He plays the script. We thought about

963
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 2: it for a long time and I said, well, what

964
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 2: do you want to play here? And Kurt Russell said,

965
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:27,920
Speaker 2: I think he plays his blowhard John Wayne.

966
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:29,320
Speaker 3: That's what I've decided.

967
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:32,200
Speaker 1: Do you feel that that's a fair assessment of Kurt

968
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:34,600
Speaker 1: Russell's acting ability. Do you feel that he doesn't bring

969
00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:36,240
Speaker 1: his character into a movie?

970
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:40,719
Speaker 2: No, actually, I don't think I think every well, part

971
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 2: of it is that he's just got that fucking face.

972
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 2: You know, He's got that like lantern jaw that his

973
00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 2: kid have you ever seen his kids acting now?

974
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:54,239
Speaker 3: Wiley Wyatt. Russell just has that jaw, you know.

975
00:51:54,680 --> 00:51:58,200
Speaker 2: And I granted of not seeing the Elvis movie that

976
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:04,279
Speaker 2: they did together that and Kurt Russell did, but yeah,

977
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 2: he does a lot of coasting on the hair and

978
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 2: the jaw line, but yeah, he delivers the lot. This

979
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:14,640
Speaker 2: is my favorite performance of his I think. I mean,

980
00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:17,800
Speaker 2: the thing is great. He has that kind of steally,

981
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 2: but he's just it's like you said, man, the dialogue

982
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 2: in this is all endlessly quotable.

983
00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 3: The timing can have of this movie.

984
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:27,960
Speaker 2: Where he's like they're fighting their way out of the

985
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:30,479
Speaker 2: hideout and he's like all right, here's how we're gonna

986
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 2: play this, and like gives him the whole thing and

987
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:34,680
Speaker 2: then opens the door and is faced with a wall

988
00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:37,959
Speaker 2: of bad guys, slams the door shut, turns around and goes,

989
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 2: we may be trapped.

990
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:45,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, he's so funny in this. And to his credit,

991
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:47,720
Speaker 3: Carpenter knew what he was doing here was risky.

992
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,359
Speaker 2: He told up Rocks. Jack doesn't do much throughout the

993
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:53,200
Speaker 2: film in terms of being an action hero, which is

994
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:54,920
Speaker 2: very different from all the other action here is that

995
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 2: were out around the time. Also one of the reasons

996
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:01,240
Speaker 2: why the studio was less than happy with it. Dennis Dunn,

997
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,759
Speaker 2: who plays Wang, said he remembered Carpenter telling him I

998
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 2: don't know if they're ready for this, and done actually

999
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:10,560
Speaker 2: got this role because he was he was often a

1000
00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 2: part of a TV movie around the same time, and

1001
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 2: his agent was like, you should pass on this big

1002
00:53:14,520 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 2: trouble thing. But Dennis Dunn decided to take it because

1003
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:20,720
Speaker 2: he was a fan of the aforementioned to Buckeru Bonzai

1004
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:23,800
Speaker 2: and recognized WD Richter's name, so he's like, I'm.

1005
00:53:23,640 --> 00:53:24,279
Speaker 3: Gonna go for that.

1006
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:27,520
Speaker 1: The studio certainly wasn't ready for what John Carpenter was

1007
00:53:27,560 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: doing with this protagonist. Presented with the original cut of

1008
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:34,440
Speaker 1: Big Trouble in Little China, Studio had Barry Diller mandated

1009
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 1: that the scene in the lawyer's office at the top

1010
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: of the film, in which Eggshen recounts how great a

1011
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:41,799
Speaker 1: man Jack Burton is be added. You know that he's

1012
00:53:42,120 --> 00:53:45,960
Speaker 1: we're all in Jack Burton's debt just to give audiences,

1013
00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: just to make them seem like less of a screw up.

1014
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: I had to. Yeah.

1015
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:52,319
Speaker 2: They were like, you cannot have a hero that is

1016
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:55,840
Speaker 2: not like you have to underline his quote unquote heroism.

1017
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,279
Speaker 2: So they shot that after everything else. It's just like,

1018
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:00,120
Speaker 2: and the guy they got in it is that the

1019
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:02,720
Speaker 2: lawyer who goes on to play Deep Throat and X Files,

1020
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:06,759
Speaker 2: which I love. That's where you recognize that guy from.

1021
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 1: You know what. I think you're right. Yeah, there are

1022
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,120
Speaker 1: some very dear to me friends of the pod whose

1023
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 1: name I won't mention who because I feel like it

1024
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: would embarrass them. I've been begging us to do it

1025
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: X Files Files episode so Deep, so much.

1026
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:22,400
Speaker 2: I know.

1027
00:54:22,480 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: I still feel bad though. Another mandate from the studio

1028
00:54:27,120 --> 00:54:30,640
Speaker 1: for Big Trouble, Little China, the exposition explaining the two

1029
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:34,239
Speaker 1: gangs during the funeral scene. Apparently having all the bad

1030
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:36,520
Speaker 1: guys in black and the good guys in white was

1031
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:40,279
Speaker 1: not clear enough. John Carpenter said that all this kind

1032
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:42,879
Speaker 1: of what I was talking about earlier, kind of confusing.

1033
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:45,000
Speaker 1: Just tossing it at the deep end of this movie

1034
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:47,960
Speaker 1: was intentional because Jack Burton is a point of view

1035
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:50,160
Speaker 1: character and the audience is supposed to be a little

1036
00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:54,440
Speaker 1: confused by what's happening. Critics also really didn't like the

1037
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:57,360
Speaker 1: fact that Jack Burton doesn't appear to really care about

1038
00:54:57,480 --> 00:55:00,520
Speaker 1: Gracie Law, the female lead, by the end of this movie,

1039
00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:03,120
Speaker 1: and he actually rejects her offer to go on the

1040
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:06,520
Speaker 1: road with him, which was meant as like an inversion

1041
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:09,440
Speaker 1: of the common action movie romance Trowe. It's pretty funny.

1042
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:12,120
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite quit like cuts because they

1043
00:55:12,239 --> 00:55:14,799
Speaker 2: she does the like whole sexy come hither thing where

1044
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:16,279
Speaker 2: she's like, the only way I think we could make

1045
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:18,600
Speaker 2: it work is if you got one of those trucks

1046
00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:20,719
Speaker 2: with the little sleeping compartment in the back just big

1047
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:23,319
Speaker 2: enough for two with Petulia, and then the next scene

1048
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:26,319
Speaker 2: is him on the CP again, just like the same

1049
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 2: way you started the movie. Just talking to no one,

1050
00:55:30,160 --> 00:55:31,759
Speaker 2: soliloquizing to no one.

1051
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 1: It's the Seinfeld law, no hugging, no learning.

1052
00:55:35,719 --> 00:55:37,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, I found this great interview.

1053
00:55:37,640 --> 00:55:40,040
Speaker 2: I want to put the time stamp in, but you'll

1054
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:41,040
Speaker 2: hear it now.

1055
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 5: Did you get the depression that made your view?

1056
00:55:45,600 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 4: Foxes from Ah?

1057
00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:55,680
Speaker 6: After I finished shooting the film, After I finished shooting,

1058
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 6: they've seen Holiday Ladies. They watched everything that I shot.

1059
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:01,360
Speaker 6: I kind of together and showed it to them, and

1060
00:56:01,440 --> 00:56:08,959
Speaker 6: they they had never realized it was a comedy. Maybe

1061
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:10,880
Speaker 6: that wasn't it exactly. They didn't realize it was this

1062
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:11,720
Speaker 6: kind of comedy.

1063
00:56:12,680 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 4: They were worried that the white.

1064
00:56:14,239 --> 00:56:17,600
Speaker 6: Guy was too stupid in the film, that all the

1065
00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:23,040
Speaker 6: agents were better than I said. Yes, the point, that's

1066
00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:25,239
Speaker 6: what the movie is about. It's about this idiot, you know,

1067
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:28,840
Speaker 6: stumbles into a world he doesn't understand. Stagger's through it

1068
00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:31,960
Speaker 6: does absolutely nothing. It's thanks, He's thanks, He's done everything,

1069
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:34,800
Speaker 6: and Stagger's away into the night the middle.

1070
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:36,760
Speaker 4: This is the script I read.

1071
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 6: This is what the movie is.

1072
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:41,200
Speaker 1: Here's a question, and I'm sure that there's a better

1073
00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 1: way to phrase this. Was that done on purpose to

1074
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:47,640
Speaker 1: make a political point or was that done on purpose?

1075
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:49,879
Speaker 1: Because they just thought it would be funny to have

1076
00:56:50,239 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: this big beefcake guy bit dope.

1077
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:53,239
Speaker 3: You know, that's hard to say.

1078
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:58,800
Speaker 2: I don't think I can't parse Richter's intent with rewriting

1079
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 2: it or those original guy. I certainly know that, like

1080
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 2: once Carpenter decided that that's what he wanted to do,

1081
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:08,319
Speaker 2: that's what he did. But I don't think it was

1082
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:14,440
Speaker 2: from any particular advocacy standpoint, which brings us to our

1083
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:18,040
Speaker 2: next point. During Big Trouble, Little Chinese production, several Asian

1084
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:22,080
Speaker 2: American groups were actively condemning the nineteen eighty five movie

1085
00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:24,000
Speaker 2: that we just mentioned, Year of the Dragon for its

1086
00:57:24,080 --> 00:57:27,360
Speaker 2: negative depictions of Chinese and Chinese American people. I have

1087
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 2: never seen this movie, but it is apparently quite racist

1088
00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 2: in the way that something co written by Oliver Stone

1089
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 2: and starring Mickey Rourke must be really bad. Apparently, And

1090
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:44,480
Speaker 2: so at a twenty fifteen cast re union for Big Trouble,

1091
00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 2: Peter Kwong, who's the actor who played Rain, one of

1092
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 2: the three storms, the supernatural henchmen, the one with the

1093
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 2: great hair which is a wig, he explained that Carpenter

1094
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 2: was in fact sensitive to this. He said he really

1095
00:57:57,320 --> 00:57:59,120
Speaker 2: asked for all of us to put in our input,

1096
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:02,520
Speaker 2: and community leaders from San Francisco were invited to the

1097
00:58:02,560 --> 00:58:05,720
Speaker 2: set to get a closer look at production. James Hong,

1098
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:09,400
Speaker 2: the aforementioned legend who plays David Lopan, said in an

1099
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:12,960
Speaker 2: interview that John gave us all a chance. Jim Low,

1100
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 2: James Lou and Jeff Imata were the stunt coordinators, choreographers,

1101
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:19,360
Speaker 2: and they were promoted to associate producers by the end

1102
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 2: of the film. That's the work that they put in.

1103
00:58:22,360 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 2: So I don't really think, yeah, I don't think Carpenter

1104
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 2: was deliberately trying to make a statement. I think that

1105
00:58:29,440 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 2: once it came together and he treated everyone well and

1106
00:58:33,360 --> 00:58:35,640
Speaker 2: stuck to the conceit of it. But I didn't think

1107
00:58:35,680 --> 00:58:37,680
Speaker 2: he was like, let's put one up the ass of

1108
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:42,240
Speaker 2: Michael Simono and anti Asian American discrimination. He might have

1109
00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:44,240
Speaker 2: been thinking, let's put one off the ass of Michael Simono,

1110
00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:45,480
Speaker 2: but probably not the second thing.

1111
00:58:46,040 --> 00:58:48,280
Speaker 1: Peter Kuong, the actor who played Ray, and recalled the

1112
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:51,520
Speaker 1: uprocks that protests over the film began as soon as

1113
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 1: plot details were leaked, with organizations sending letters to John

1114
00:58:55,040 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 1: Carpenter and twentieth Century Fox Dennis Dunn who played.

1115
00:58:59,120 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 3: I can't remember the the rank ching Wang Wang Chit.

1116
00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:05,720
Speaker 1: Yes. I explained that John Carpenter shared one of the

1117
00:59:05,760 --> 00:59:07,440
Speaker 1: letters with him so that he'd be aware of what

1118
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:10,720
Speaker 1: was going on. Dunn said, in the mid eighties, China

1119
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:12,720
Speaker 1: was just opening up at the end of the Cultural

1120
00:59:12,760 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 1: Revolution in the late seventies, and there are these things

1121
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:18,200
Speaker 1: about China that Americans were curious about. That's why I

1122
00:59:18,240 --> 00:59:21,080
Speaker 1: started getting work. Actually, I was going to quit acting.

1123
00:59:21,360 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 1: I was doing theater for nothing in San Francisco for

1124
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:26,360
Speaker 1: about seven or eight years. I had to make a living,

1125
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:28,439
Speaker 1: so I was going to quit. Even then. I saw

1126
00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:30,320
Speaker 1: there were a lot of things people were going to protest,

1127
00:59:30,440 --> 00:59:33,040
Speaker 1: but I thought, I don't really know anything about this business.

1128
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:35,440
Speaker 1: I guess I'll just go back to retail. That's what

1129
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 1: I was going to do for work. I was doing marketing.

1130
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: I know.

1131
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:41,160
Speaker 2: It's so amazing to me that he was in near

1132
00:59:41,200 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 2: the Dragon, which everyone slams, and then Carpenter is like,

1133
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:46,720
Speaker 2: all right and gives him his a role. He'll be

1134
00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:49,040
Speaker 2: remembered more forever. And then he decided to go back

1135
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 2: to theater. I think that's all he does now. But

1136
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 2: there's a fascinating la Times article about this controversy that

1137
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:59,120
Speaker 2: mentioned leaflets were distributed by protesters that called Dennis Dunn's

1138
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:02,240
Speaker 2: character a yes man to Russell, which is of course

1139
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:06,000
Speaker 2: wildly inaccurate to anyone who's watched the movie. The film's

1140
01:00:06,120 --> 01:00:08,840
Speaker 2: marketing coordinator, guy named Daniel Kwan, said that he met

1141
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:12,160
Speaker 2: with the groups over the script and asked them what

1142
01:00:12,200 --> 01:00:15,960
Speaker 2: specific changes that they made, and nobody had anything specific.

1143
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:18,440
Speaker 3: They just objected to the overall vibe.

1144
01:00:20,640 --> 01:00:23,080
Speaker 2: Literally, one of these groups told the told the La

1145
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:25,720
Speaker 2: Times for the article, we aren't objecting to specific lines,

1146
01:00:25,720 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 2: but the overall impression of the movie.

1147
01:00:27,880 --> 01:00:30,040
Speaker 3: And this is really fascinating. I love this too.

1148
01:00:30,320 --> 01:00:33,600
Speaker 2: One of the characters that they objected to is the

1149
01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:37,640
Speaker 2: Noel Toy as the actress who plays the Madam, and

1150
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:40,440
Speaker 2: they said that she was like a dragon lady stereotype,

1151
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:42,919
Speaker 2: which to be fair, she is, that's her role.

1152
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:43,400
Speaker 3: In the movie.

1153
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:48,720
Speaker 2: But that woman, Noel Toy is a incredibly famous in

1154
01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 2: the Annals of American Performing Arts and San Francisco. She

1155
01:00:52,840 --> 01:00:56,680
Speaker 2: was the first Chinese American to perform the fan dance,

1156
01:00:56,800 --> 01:00:59,200
Speaker 2: the like you know you strip and you're hiding the

1157
01:00:59,320 --> 01:01:02,440
Speaker 2: choice bits behind the big fans. She got famous for

1158
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:05,440
Speaker 2: doing that in San Francisco and New York. She was

1159
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:10,080
Speaker 2: literally nationally famous and worked at a nightclub in San

1160
01:01:10,120 --> 01:01:14,120
Speaker 2: Francisco called Forbidden City, which is the nation's first and

1161
01:01:14,200 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 2: only Chinese nightclub. So even in this, I mean, that's

1162
01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 2: the duality of this film, like it might traffic in

1163
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:23,360
Speaker 2: this stuff, and I'm never going to tell people that

1164
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 2: they should not be offended by what they're seeing, but

1165
01:01:26,240 --> 01:01:29,400
Speaker 2: the fact that there are people from this community who

1166
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 2: were given these cameo roles in maybe I don't know

1167
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:35,680
Speaker 2: if it's intentional recognition, but I like to think it was.

1168
01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:41,200
Speaker 2: I just love that so much. And obviously Big Trouble

1169
01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 2: had a bigger target on its back because You're the

1170
01:01:43,680 --> 01:01:46,200
Speaker 2: Dragon had just come out the year prior. That's set

1171
01:01:46,240 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 2: in New York, and that movie stars Mickey Rourke as

1172
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 2: a detective taking on the triads in New York's Chinatown,

1173
01:01:52,760 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 2: and it is liberally sprinkled with racist slurs, and Rourke,

1174
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:01,320
Speaker 2: true to form, stuck his big old meaty mickey foot

1175
01:02:01,440 --> 01:02:04,080
Speaker 2: in his mouth when he was asked about it. He

1176
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:07,439
Speaker 2: was talking to The New York Times in nineteen eighty

1177
01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:11,120
Speaker 2: five about the controversy, and he railed against La City

1178
01:02:11,200 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 2: Councilman Mike Wu, who is one of Year of the

1179
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 2: Dragon's most vocal opponents, and Mickey said he's only become

1180
01:02:17,080 --> 01:02:21,280
Speaker 2: involved in that issue to elevate himself politically. Year of

1181
01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:25,000
Speaker 2: the Dragon was nominated for five Razzie gnombs and made

1182
01:02:25,200 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 2: eighteen point seven mill at the box office, failing to

1183
01:02:28,360 --> 01:02:31,160
Speaker 2: recoup its twenty four million dollar budget, which is the

1184
01:02:31,240 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 2: nail in the coffin for old Mikey Simms and probably

1185
01:02:34,600 --> 01:02:35,520
Speaker 2: Bicky Mickey.

1186
01:02:35,360 --> 01:02:38,120
Speaker 3: Rourke for a little while. So anyway, all that said, though,

1187
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:40,280
Speaker 3: there are some airs in big trouble in Little China.

1188
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:41,080
Speaker 3: Here's a funny bit.

1189
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:45,040
Speaker 2: When the three storms first appear in thunder, says Huwondo

1190
01:02:45,680 --> 01:02:48,280
Speaker 2: and pulls out. They all pull out those knives and

1191
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 2: throw and do a sweet front flip and throw the

1192
01:02:50,680 --> 01:02:54,800
Speaker 2: knives and it's really cool at rocks. Huwan Du translates

1193
01:02:54,840 --> 01:02:59,240
Speaker 2: to soul returning blades, which is metal as hell. However,

1194
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 2: those knives are Nepalese Kirkie blades used by the Gurkha

1195
01:03:04,040 --> 01:03:07,520
Speaker 2: military regiments in the British Indian Army, so cineamasens ding

1196
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:13,000
Speaker 2: Lopan's backstory is also incorrect. Funnily enough, when Jack is

1197
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:15,680
Speaker 2: it's explained to Jack that the first sovereign Emperor of

1198
01:03:15,760 --> 01:03:19,280
Speaker 2: China defeated Lopan and imposed upon him the horrible Curse

1199
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:21,880
Speaker 2: of no Flesh in two seven to two BC.

1200
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 3: That's incorrect.

1201
01:03:24,160 --> 01:03:27,240
Speaker 2: The first sovereign Emperor of China was Ching shui Han,

1202
01:03:27,640 --> 01:03:29,800
Speaker 2: but he did not become emperor until two twenty BC

1203
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:34,360
Speaker 2: and wasn't even born until two sixty BC. I mean, God,

1204
01:03:34,800 --> 01:03:37,680
Speaker 2: I sure hope someone lost their job over that one.

1205
01:03:38,840 --> 01:03:42,840
Speaker 2: But that character that that sovereign Emperor Chin chi Huang

1206
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:46,080
Speaker 2: is the same emperor who is resurrected as the villain

1207
01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:50,360
Speaker 2: in Tomb of the Dragon. Emperor, the much maligned third

1208
01:03:50,480 --> 01:03:53,320
Speaker 2: entry in the Mummy Brendan Fraser Mummy trilogy, where he's

1209
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:56,560
Speaker 2: played by Jet Lee, and there's a there's a translation

1210
01:03:56,720 --> 01:04:01,200
Speaker 2: or I don't know ido idiomatic error. Bigshen describes low

1211
01:04:01,240 --> 01:04:05,520
Speaker 2: Pan at one point as the Bodhisatfa of the underworld. Bodisatfa,

1212
01:04:05,600 --> 01:04:08,600
Speaker 2: aside from being a killer steely Dan deep cut is

1213
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:11,440
Speaker 2: an Old sanscrit term for someone who has attained buddhahood

1214
01:04:11,560 --> 01:04:14,000
Speaker 2: for the benefit of all sentient beings. The term would

1215
01:04:14,040 --> 01:04:16,960
Speaker 2: never be used to describe an evil spirit. So there,

1216
01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:22,320
Speaker 2: and I mention I love this movie so much and

1217
01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:24,840
Speaker 2: have so many of these line readings burnt in my head.

1218
01:04:25,000 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start to go fund me to get you

1219
01:04:26,560 --> 01:04:30,640
Speaker 1: that coffee table book. It's damn shame you don't have it.

1220
01:04:30,840 --> 01:04:31,040
Speaker 5: Yeah.

1221
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:33,919
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think I was on like online enough

1222
01:04:34,400 --> 01:04:36,160
Speaker 3: when it came out. Anyway, John J.

1223
01:04:36,320 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 2: Lloyd, who's a production designer, does a beautiful job with

1224
01:04:39,680 --> 01:04:42,840
Speaker 2: the interior every set of this movie. The sliding doors,

1225
01:04:42,880 --> 01:04:46,000
Speaker 2: all the lacquered stuff in the hideout, the layer at

1226
01:04:46,000 --> 01:04:49,360
Speaker 2: the end of the movie with that crazy Neon demon

1227
01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 2: sculpture and the skull that the elevator comes out.

1228
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:54,120
Speaker 3: What the hell is that?

1229
01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:58,320
Speaker 2: What kind of drugs was this old, crusty white guy

1230
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:02,880
Speaker 2: on to design that? That is just an incredible interior set.

1231
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:04,040
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1232
01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:06,440
Speaker 2: And so in the aforementioned I went watched his AFI's

1233
01:05:06,480 --> 01:05:09,760
Speaker 2: American Film Institute interview and he just recalls this one

1234
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:12,480
Speaker 2: being a fun script and he said it was a

1235
01:05:12,600 --> 01:05:13,320
Speaker 2: rushed production.

1236
01:05:13,720 --> 01:05:15,240
Speaker 3: That's all he had to say about it.

1237
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 4: I believe me.

1238
01:05:16,640 --> 01:05:19,720
Speaker 2: I looked I wanted to know so much about it. Yeah,

1239
01:05:19,800 --> 01:05:22,080
Speaker 2: and that's true. They had three weeks of post production.

1240
01:05:22,560 --> 01:05:25,160
Speaker 2: Dean Cundy told the American Society of Cinematographers that he

1241
01:05:25,200 --> 01:05:28,080
Speaker 2: had twelve weeks to shoot and four months of post

1242
01:05:28,640 --> 01:05:31,560
Speaker 2: which is not a lot for a movie that I

1243
01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:34,480
Speaker 2: think it was his twenty five mili hefty budget too.

1244
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:37,360
Speaker 2: Jordan take us into creature Territory.

1245
01:05:38,080 --> 01:05:40,360
Speaker 1: Yes, the real MVP in the world, a big trouble,

1246
01:05:40,360 --> 01:05:44,160
Speaker 1: Little China as FX designer Steve Johnson, who created the

1247
01:05:44,240 --> 01:05:47,920
Speaker 1: incredible old age makeup, James Hong Warriors as the wheelchair

1248
01:05:47,960 --> 01:05:51,880
Speaker 1: bound LoWPAN, as well as the array of fantastic monsters

1249
01:05:51,880 --> 01:05:55,040
Speaker 1: the populate the underworld, like the hairy wild man that

1250
01:05:55,120 --> 01:05:58,400
Speaker 1: snatches Kim Catrall's character, the bug monster that eats one

1251
01:05:58,440 --> 01:06:01,240
Speaker 1: of the good guys, and of course the eyeball tongued

1252
01:06:01,360 --> 01:06:05,080
Speaker 1: Guardian character. The prompts one of Jack Burton's best lines

1253
01:06:05,120 --> 01:06:06,760
Speaker 1: in the film, please do it for us?

1254
01:06:07,240 --> 01:06:14,720
Speaker 3: Oh my god, what is that? Don't tell me. It's

1255
01:06:14,760 --> 01:06:16,920
Speaker 3: that in the end that you will come out no more?

1256
01:06:16,960 --> 01:06:19,600
Speaker 3: Or on what what will come.

1257
01:06:19,480 --> 01:06:20,200
Speaker 1: Out no more?

1258
01:06:20,400 --> 01:06:22,600
Speaker 3: That's just my favorite lines in the movie.

1259
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:25,880
Speaker 2: Man or wait at the end when he went He's like,

1260
01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:28,120
Speaker 2: you know what, Old Jack Burton says a time like this,

1261
01:06:28,320 --> 01:06:30,560
Speaker 2: and and Lo pen Is like who He's like.

1262
01:06:30,600 --> 01:06:39,640
Speaker 1: Jack Burton Me, sorry, you guys, I cannot I cannot

1263
01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:43,360
Speaker 1: match your enthusiasm and joy. Actually no, I can't match

1264
01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:46,640
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm. But but not your not your expertise on this,

1265
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:48,600
Speaker 1: please please, Well.

1266
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:51,320
Speaker 2: So he's Steve Johnson said when he got this script,

1267
01:06:51,360 --> 01:06:53,640
Speaker 2: he said, it's loaded with the kind of all kinds

1268
01:06:53,680 --> 01:06:57,480
Speaker 2: of animatronics and makeup effects and a Schmorgsberg of everything

1269
01:06:57,560 --> 01:07:02,280
Speaker 2: that we people affects, people get hers over. And the

1270
01:07:02,360 --> 01:07:07,800
Speaker 2: man said that to Entertainment Weekly, God love him. James Hong, it,

1271
01:07:08,240 --> 01:07:12,000
Speaker 2: you know, cannot be said enough. That he's in like

1272
01:07:12,160 --> 01:07:16,720
Speaker 2: twelve inch heels to play tall wizard LoWPAN and then

1273
01:07:16,800 --> 01:07:20,920
Speaker 2: that crazy old age makeup to play wheelchair David Lopan

1274
01:07:21,280 --> 01:07:24,360
Speaker 2: and he, James Hong told Entertainment Weekly, when Steve Johnson

1275
01:07:24,360 --> 01:07:26,480
Speaker 2: worked on me, he took the utmost care with every

1276
01:07:26,560 --> 01:07:29,440
Speaker 2: hair because nothing was digital in those days. The first

1277
01:07:29,560 --> 01:07:31,640
Speaker 2: day of work, I think it took him nine or

1278
01:07:31,680 --> 01:07:34,880
Speaker 2: ten hours to put that makeup on. So James hung

1279
01:07:34,960 --> 01:07:39,120
Speaker 2: makeup for the film was ten overlapping facial appliances, a

1280
01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:44,000
Speaker 2: shoulder hump, and hair that was hand punched into like

1281
01:07:44,040 --> 01:07:46,720
Speaker 2: a bald cap and then when he transforms or whatever.

1282
01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:48,520
Speaker 1: I love this.

1283
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:51,000
Speaker 2: They just made a dummy head and stuck a thousand

1284
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:53,880
Speaker 2: watt bulb inside of it, but they knew that it

1285
01:07:53,920 --> 01:07:55,720
Speaker 2: was going to burn so hot that it would melt

1286
01:07:55,760 --> 01:07:59,120
Speaker 2: down the effect, so they had to like actually really

1287
01:07:59,160 --> 01:08:01,120
Speaker 2: plot out the shot and then they ended up getting

1288
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:04,840
Speaker 2: it on the first take. James Hong is soing funny

1289
01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:07,840
Speaker 2: in this movie that opening scene where he comes in

1290
01:08:07,920 --> 01:08:14,400
Speaker 2: like shut up, mister button, and indeed, that's our buddy

1291
01:08:14,400 --> 01:08:16,600
Speaker 2: Ben Triven's favorite line from that movie. A lot of

1292
01:08:16,600 --> 01:08:18,640
Speaker 2: times Ben will just hit you out of.

1293
01:08:18,640 --> 01:08:19,679
Speaker 3: Nowhere with indeed.

1294
01:08:23,360 --> 01:08:23,559
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1295
01:08:23,600 --> 01:08:26,880
Speaker 2: And he had to drape that incredible kimono robe that

1296
01:08:26,920 --> 01:08:29,559
Speaker 2: he wears over those twelve inch lifts, and when he

1297
01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:31,720
Speaker 2: was talking about going down the elevator, he wanted to

1298
01:08:31,720 --> 01:08:34,479
Speaker 2: get his stunt double to do it, and John Carpenter

1299
01:08:34,560 --> 01:08:37,800
Speaker 2: was like, here's my smoking impression. Uh no, James, we

1300
01:08:37,800 --> 01:08:39,200
Speaker 2: don't have enough time. You gotta do it.

1301
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:43,400
Speaker 3: Rolling sound.

1302
01:08:44,960 --> 01:08:48,280
Speaker 2: Steve Johnson said he found James Hong's performance in that

1303
01:08:48,400 --> 01:08:51,519
Speaker 2: scene so funny that John Carpenter threw him off the

1304
01:08:51,560 --> 01:08:55,439
Speaker 2: set after he've ruined three straight takes by bursting into laughter,

1305
01:08:57,040 --> 01:08:59,680
Speaker 2: which is amazing because James Hung. You know, he was

1306
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:02,240
Speaker 2: doing this kind of inscrutable Asian. He was typecast a

1307
01:09:02,240 --> 01:09:04,799
Speaker 2: little bit, so he's doing this kind of inscrutable Asian character.

1308
01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:08,839
Speaker 2: But he got to start doing performances for the USO,

1309
01:09:09,040 --> 01:09:13,360
Speaker 2: doing Al Jolson routines in blackface during World War Two.

1310
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:20,040
Speaker 2: For the wild Man character, Steve Johnson told Sin Effects

1311
01:09:20,080 --> 01:09:22,880
Speaker 2: that they used a modified version of the Ape suit

1312
01:09:23,040 --> 01:09:27,360
Speaker 2: that fellow FX god Rick Baker used in the Tarzan

1313
01:09:27,439 --> 01:09:31,040
Speaker 2: flick Greystoke Legend of the Apes.

1314
01:09:31,120 --> 01:09:33,000
Speaker 3: I think that movie is subtitled.

1315
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:36,200
Speaker 2: Starring Christopher Lambert, if memory serves, which is our second

1316
01:09:36,240 --> 01:09:39,719
Speaker 2: Highlander reference. Third, because we talked about our boy Clancy.

1317
01:09:40,640 --> 01:09:41,920
Speaker 2: It all comes back to Highlander.

1318
01:09:41,960 --> 01:09:44,200
Speaker 1: Have I not mentioned Sean Connery in this episode yet?

1319
01:09:44,280 --> 01:09:46,479
Speaker 2: No, but I was about to hit you with Actually

1320
01:09:46,479 --> 01:09:49,440
Speaker 2: I don't remember any of his lines in Highlander.

1321
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:51,479
Speaker 3: That could only be won.

1322
01:09:51,520 --> 01:09:52,920
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's the only one I can know.

1323
01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:57,280
Speaker 2: Yeah that. So that monster suit for the wild Man

1324
01:09:57,320 --> 01:10:01,720
Speaker 2: is three layers. It's spandex and then muscle padding over that,

1325
01:10:02,120 --> 01:10:05,519
Speaker 2: and then another spandex like layer which is painted to

1326
01:10:05,520 --> 01:10:08,840
Speaker 2: look like skin and every one of those hairs was

1327
01:10:08,960 --> 01:10:12,639
Speaker 2: hand punched and nodded one at a time for that suit.

1328
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:16,720
Speaker 2: The head of that was rigged with a mechanism that

1329
01:10:16,840 --> 01:10:20,240
Speaker 2: let the guy kind of do the mouth and stuff

1330
01:10:20,240 --> 01:10:23,200
Speaker 2: for his roaring and everything. And then they use they

1331
01:10:23,280 --> 01:10:25,800
Speaker 2: rigged another head for just the insert shots of it,

1332
01:10:26,120 --> 01:10:28,720
Speaker 2: and that had twenty different cables inside of it that

1333
01:10:28,840 --> 01:10:34,960
Speaker 2: let them individually control the eyes, ears, lips, cheeks, and brows.

1334
01:10:34,520 --> 01:10:35,519
Speaker 3: Of that thing's face.

1335
01:10:36,560 --> 01:10:39,040
Speaker 2: And then in that making of book, they never even

1336
01:10:39,120 --> 01:10:40,880
Speaker 2: mentioned the guy who's in the suit because he was

1337
01:10:40,920 --> 01:10:44,759
Speaker 2: a diva about being in it. He was constantly complaining

1338
01:10:44,800 --> 01:10:46,759
Speaker 2: about how hot it was. He was asking for extra

1339
01:10:47,200 --> 01:10:49,240
Speaker 2: padding when he has to do the little jump, and

1340
01:10:49,280 --> 01:10:52,120
Speaker 2: he wouldn't walk in a particular way that Steve Johnson

1341
01:10:52,120 --> 01:10:56,920
Speaker 2: asked him for, so they dragged him. Yeah, I've already

1342
01:10:56,920 --> 01:10:59,760
Speaker 2: talked about my favorite line when the Monster Super Monster

1343
01:10:59,800 --> 01:11:03,720
Speaker 2: come out. That is a segue for one of my

1344
01:11:03,880 --> 01:11:10,040
Speaker 2: favorite guys of all time, SFX guys, Screaming Mad George. Yes,

1345
01:11:10,080 --> 01:11:12,240
Speaker 2: the name is a tribute to Scream and Jay Hawkins.

1346
01:11:12,760 --> 01:11:16,800
Speaker 2: Screaming Mad George. His specialty as an FX artist is

1347
01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:23,880
Speaker 2: gross body horror stuff, usually things that involve distensions or

1348
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:30,719
Speaker 2: inflations or melting. I cannot in good conscience actually tell

1349
01:11:30,800 --> 01:11:34,960
Speaker 2: anyone to go in YouTube the closing sequence or the

1350
01:11:35,000 --> 01:11:39,360
Speaker 2: climactic sequence of a film called Society. It is decidedly

1351
01:11:39,479 --> 01:11:45,320
Speaker 2: NSFW and maybe emotionally scarring, but it's incredible. It's one

1352
01:11:45,360 --> 01:11:49,120
Speaker 2: of the high water marks of rubber work at the time.

1353
01:11:50,040 --> 01:11:52,240
Speaker 2: My god, it's so gross. Anyway, so he did some

1354
01:11:52,280 --> 01:11:55,639
Speaker 2: work on this film. He is responsible for the sculpt

1355
01:11:55,720 --> 01:11:59,240
Speaker 2: of when Thunder Self inflates and blows up. But the

1356
01:11:59,400 --> 01:12:02,280
Speaker 2: sewer Monts is also scream and Mad George, and that

1357
01:12:02,439 --> 01:12:04,679
Speaker 2: was a full sized puppet. That thing was the size

1358
01:12:04,680 --> 01:12:07,839
Speaker 2: of a car. It was foam latex over a solid

1359
01:12:07,920 --> 01:12:12,759
Speaker 2: steel armature, and they used sculpted glues sticks for its fangs,

1360
01:12:13,120 --> 01:12:15,839
Speaker 2: and it was mounted on a track in that tunnel.

1361
01:12:16,160 --> 01:12:19,160
Speaker 2: So they had a puppeteer inside it who was rigging

1362
01:12:19,200 --> 01:12:22,960
Speaker 2: the head and movements, and then its arms and legs

1363
01:12:23,000 --> 01:12:27,080
Speaker 2: were manipulated by guys outside of it with wires, and

1364
01:12:27,280 --> 01:12:30,240
Speaker 2: the thing was potentially deadly. Johnson said, we had to

1365
01:12:30,280 --> 01:12:32,720
Speaker 2: be extremely careful that when the monster shot out on

1366
01:12:32,760 --> 01:12:35,920
Speaker 2: the track it didn't accidentally hit the guy, because if

1367
01:12:35,920 --> 01:12:37,599
Speaker 2: he had been hit, it would have been like he

1368
01:12:37,640 --> 01:12:42,080
Speaker 2: was hit by a car. So they basically forced perspectived it.

1369
01:12:42,520 --> 01:12:44,680
Speaker 2: They had hit shot in a way that there was

1370
01:12:44,680 --> 01:12:46,960
Speaker 2: no way that it would actually impact with his body.

1371
01:12:47,240 --> 01:12:49,840
Speaker 2: And then they cut to a reaction shot and then

1372
01:12:49,920 --> 01:12:54,120
Speaker 2: they scream and Mad George created spring mechanized legs that

1373
01:12:54,160 --> 01:12:59,040
Speaker 2: they shoved in this full sized puppet's mouth, and then

1374
01:12:59,640 --> 01:13:02,400
Speaker 2: so and they when the guy moved the monster's mouth,

1375
01:13:02,439 --> 01:13:04,559
Speaker 2: the legs would jimmy around like they were being eaten.

1376
01:13:05,320 --> 01:13:06,040
Speaker 3: God, I love it.

1377
01:13:06,960 --> 01:13:09,360
Speaker 2: Screaming Night George had a punk rock band at one

1378
01:13:09,400 --> 01:13:11,559
Speaker 2: point that he fronted in La that all of his

1379
01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:14,720
Speaker 2: like creations were trotted out during part of the stage.

1380
01:13:14,439 --> 01:13:16,519
Speaker 3: Show, which makes him kind of an early forerunner to

1381
01:13:16,560 --> 01:13:19,040
Speaker 3: like Gwar. What do oh well?

1382
01:13:19,080 --> 01:13:20,360
Speaker 1: Gar were all art.

1383
01:13:20,240 --> 01:13:22,439
Speaker 2: School kids who they wanted to make a metal band,

1384
01:13:22,439 --> 01:13:25,800
Speaker 2: But they also have all these horrifying practical monsters and

1385
01:13:25,880 --> 01:13:30,040
Speaker 2: makeup and oh yeah, all their costumes are really ridiculous.

1386
01:13:30,120 --> 01:13:34,080
Speaker 2: But Screaming Matt George was doing the same thing Jordan

1387
01:13:34,160 --> 01:13:37,120
Speaker 2: tell us about the eyeball monster The Guardian what it

1388
01:13:37,280 --> 01:13:43,400
Speaker 2: sees Low Pan knows, I'm doing the spirit fingers at

1389
01:13:43,400 --> 01:13:45,960
Speaker 2: my camera in Jordan and Jordan rant as he just

1390
01:13:45,960 --> 01:13:49,879
Speaker 2: sees my pale fingers waving at him.

1391
01:13:50,120 --> 01:13:54,920
Speaker 1: Special effects asigner Steve Jordan's not's Nott's his name Spifferent.

1392
01:13:54,400 --> 01:13:58,479
Speaker 2: Guy, the Session drumming icon Steve Jordan, renowned for his

1393
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:03,800
Speaker 2: place in The Rolling Stones and also designing FX for

1394
01:14:03,920 --> 01:14:05,080
Speaker 2: Big Trouble, Little Child.

1395
01:14:05,600 --> 01:14:12,320
Speaker 1: A Special effects designer Steve Johnson told Entertainment Weekly about

1396
01:14:12,320 --> 01:14:15,120
Speaker 1: this eyeball being that was probably the most complicated thing

1397
01:14:15,160 --> 01:14:16,720
Speaker 1: we did on the film, and I think it may

1398
01:14:16,720 --> 01:14:19,200
Speaker 1: have been one of the most complicated things ever at

1399
01:14:19,200 --> 01:14:21,600
Speaker 1: that time. The only way to do it was with

1400
01:14:21,680 --> 01:14:25,400
Speaker 1: a huge animatronic puppet. But imagine how many motors go

1401
01:14:25,439 --> 01:14:28,160
Speaker 1: inside it. The eyes all had to have upper and

1402
01:14:28,280 --> 01:14:31,799
Speaker 1: lower blinks. Some of the eyeballs were actually on stalks

1403
01:14:31,800 --> 01:14:34,880
Speaker 1: that could retract into and poke out. And then of

1404
01:14:34,880 --> 01:14:36,880
Speaker 1: course he had a face, he had a mouth, he

1405
01:14:36,920 --> 01:14:39,479
Speaker 1: had a tongue. We had so many motors in that,

1406
01:14:40,160 --> 01:14:41,840
Speaker 1: and what you see in the film was actually two

1407
01:14:42,000 --> 01:14:45,040
Speaker 1: different twenty four inch puppets that were shrunk down and

1408
01:14:45,080 --> 01:14:48,120
Speaker 1: composited for when it's flying, and each one took up

1409
01:14:48,160 --> 01:14:52,200
Speaker 1: to two dozen puppeteers to manage, mostly because of its

1410
01:14:52,280 --> 01:14:53,639
Speaker 1: highly expressive face.

1411
01:14:53,880 --> 01:14:56,200
Speaker 2: It's crazy to me that they made those things bigger.

1412
01:14:56,320 --> 01:14:59,000
Speaker 2: They made them two feet in diameter, and then he shrunk.

1413
01:14:59,040 --> 01:15:01,160
Speaker 2: If I was this even that put this together, I'd

1414
01:15:01,160 --> 01:15:06,479
Speaker 2: be like, you made it smaller. But they did not

1415
01:15:06,640 --> 01:15:09,479
Speaker 2: talk about how they composited that. They literally just like

1416
01:15:10,040 --> 01:15:12,280
Speaker 2: it was like a cutout shot for the compositing, and

1417
01:15:12,320 --> 01:15:15,600
Speaker 2: they just made a cut in the print of it

1418
01:15:15,760 --> 01:15:19,200
Speaker 2: the background where it was supposed to be, just like pasted.

1419
01:15:18,760 --> 01:15:19,439
Speaker 3: This thing in.

1420
01:15:19,800 --> 01:15:23,559
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And that costs one hundred thousand dollars

1421
01:15:23,600 --> 01:15:25,719
Speaker 1: of the film's what twenty five million dollar budget.

1422
01:15:26,120 --> 01:15:27,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, impressed every penny.

1423
01:15:27,880 --> 01:15:29,760
Speaker 1: I mean, that's up there with Foucore for the never

1424
01:15:29,840 --> 01:15:33,919
Speaker 1: Ending Story. Didn't that some insane number of puppeteers to activate?

1425
01:15:34,160 --> 01:15:36,839
Speaker 2: I mean, this is where the to paraphrase Unter S. Thompson,

1426
01:15:36,880 --> 01:15:39,360
Speaker 2: this is where the wave crested and broken. Yeah, this

1427
01:15:39,520 --> 01:15:41,840
Speaker 2: is the era when that that has just had an

1428
01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:42,679
Speaker 2: all time high.

1429
01:15:42,840 --> 01:15:45,400
Speaker 1: I think, I mean we our first episode was Hook,

1430
01:15:45,760 --> 01:15:49,240
Speaker 1: and I think that I would argue, having put zero

1431
01:15:49,320 --> 01:15:54,759
Speaker 1: research into this, that Hook might have been production design

1432
01:15:54,840 --> 01:15:55,360
Speaker 1: in sets.

1433
01:15:55,400 --> 01:15:57,920
Speaker 2: Production design in sets certainly, but I think as far

1434
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:01,320
Speaker 2: as makeup you're not going to get more than this,

1435
01:16:02,479 --> 01:16:04,559
Speaker 2: like the thing American Werewolf in London.

1436
01:16:04,800 --> 01:16:05,280
Speaker 3: I mean like.

1437
01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:11,920
Speaker 2: Skin on gross stuff, goop, wet puppets, if you will.

1438
01:16:12,439 --> 01:16:15,479
Speaker 2: Speaking of enormous chunks of the film budgets, Peter Kuong's

1439
01:16:15,800 --> 01:16:21,559
Speaker 2: Wig as Rain costs three grandny. Once again, much like

1440
01:16:21,600 --> 01:16:23,439
Speaker 2: the studios, he said he had no idea he was

1441
01:16:23,479 --> 01:16:27,000
Speaker 2: shooting a comedy until he was fighting Wang at the end,

1442
01:16:27,120 --> 01:16:30,360
Speaker 2: and you know, Dennis Dunn does a little eyebrow raise

1443
01:16:30,400 --> 01:16:32,559
Speaker 2: at him in the middle of the fight, which I love,

1444
01:16:32,960 --> 01:16:35,800
Speaker 2: and then he was like, oh, this is camp. That

1445
01:16:36,200 --> 01:16:38,240
Speaker 2: scene is great when the two of them are fighting,

1446
01:16:39,040 --> 01:16:42,360
Speaker 2: flying through the air, fighting, which John Carpenter I think

1447
01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:45,360
Speaker 2: like he clearly saw this stuff like wirework in like

1448
01:16:45,439 --> 01:16:48,639
Speaker 2: the movies that he name dropped, and then was like, yeah,

1449
01:16:48,680 --> 01:16:50,479
Speaker 2: but I don't want to do that. I want to

1450
01:16:50,520 --> 01:16:53,240
Speaker 2: spend more time on the monsters, and so that those

1451
01:16:53,280 --> 01:16:55,040
Speaker 2: scenes of them flying through the air they are just

1452
01:16:55,240 --> 01:16:59,280
Speaker 2: upright and stationary dueling. And then the camera is the

1453
01:16:59,320 --> 01:17:01,920
Speaker 2: print is actually like cant it at forty five degrees

1454
01:17:02,280 --> 01:17:05,640
Speaker 2: and it's rear projection to make the background look like

1455
01:17:05,680 --> 01:17:10,200
Speaker 2: it goes flying by Dennis Dunn was not an experienced

1456
01:17:10,200 --> 01:17:11,840
Speaker 2: martial artist, but he did learn how to use the

1457
01:17:11,880 --> 01:17:14,679
Speaker 2: sword for that film. And yeah, like, that's not wire work.

1458
01:17:14,720 --> 01:17:17,120
Speaker 2: It's just guys bounced around on trampolines at the end,

1459
01:17:17,160 --> 01:17:21,479
Speaker 2: which is another thing I love there, Like, yeah, the

1460
01:17:21,520 --> 01:17:24,280
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars on this puppet, but no wires.

1461
01:17:24,479 --> 01:17:26,840
Speaker 3: You guys get trampolines, and.

1462
01:17:26,800 --> 01:17:30,200
Speaker 1: We blew the cigar chopping executive, We blew the budget

1463
01:17:30,200 --> 01:17:37,280
Speaker 1: on the guy's wig. Yeah, exactly, whitched every hair punch,

1464
01:17:37,640 --> 01:17:38,559
Speaker 1: the wire budget.

1465
01:17:39,120 --> 01:17:42,120
Speaker 3: They get trampolines, used trampolines.

1466
01:17:45,840 --> 01:17:48,320
Speaker 2: As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with

1467
01:17:48,400 --> 01:17:50,759
Speaker 2: more too much information after these messages.

1468
01:17:59,080 --> 01:18:06,439
Speaker 1: Wow, I love that you were so much of a

1469
01:18:06,479 --> 01:18:08,960
Speaker 1: nerd that you're giving me the background on a bus

1470
01:18:08,960 --> 01:18:12,080
Speaker 1: that was used in this movie. The bus, yes that

1471
01:18:12,200 --> 01:18:16,320
Speaker 1: Eggshen drives, is a nineteen thirty six Yellowstone National Park

1472
01:18:16,439 --> 01:18:19,120
Speaker 1: tour bus, and at the height of the popularity within

1473
01:18:19,200 --> 01:18:23,040
Speaker 1: Yellowstone in the mid nineteen twenties, more than four hundred

1474
01:18:23,080 --> 01:18:26,519
Speaker 1: of these vehicles operated within the park, the second largest

1475
01:18:26,560 --> 01:18:29,640
Speaker 1: bus fleet in the country after Greyhounds. I did not

1476
01:18:29,840 --> 01:18:30,200
Speaker 1: know that.

1477
01:18:30,720 --> 01:18:32,160
Speaker 3: Hell, yeah, National Park System.

1478
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:34,439
Speaker 1: And you're not sure if there are any more. But

1479
01:18:34,600 --> 01:18:37,519
Speaker 1: for a while, the actual bus from this movie was

1480
01:18:37,560 --> 01:18:39,760
Speaker 1: still in operation at the park, so they got a

1481
01:18:39,760 --> 01:18:43,840
Speaker 1: loaner bus and it earned the nickname Hollywood This Bus

1482
01:18:43,840 --> 01:18:46,680
Speaker 1: for its appearance not only in Big Trouble in Little China,

1483
01:18:46,760 --> 01:18:49,320
Speaker 1: but also on the TV show Mash or the movie

1484
01:18:49,360 --> 01:18:50,440
Speaker 1: Mash probably.

1485
01:18:50,160 --> 01:18:50,920
Speaker 3: The Problem movie.

1486
01:18:51,000 --> 01:18:51,360
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1487
01:18:51,400 --> 01:18:52,599
Speaker 3: I was unable to track it down.

1488
01:18:52,640 --> 01:18:55,000
Speaker 2: There are no references to it on the actual Yellowstone site,

1489
01:18:55,000 --> 01:18:58,000
Speaker 2: but if you can find people's like trip advisor reviews

1490
01:18:58,000 --> 01:18:59,800
Speaker 2: where they're like, we rode in the bus from Big

1491
01:19:00,120 --> 01:19:01,960
Speaker 2: a Little China that rule.

1492
01:19:02,080 --> 01:19:04,240
Speaker 1: I'm kind of shocked you haven't made a pilgrimage.

1493
01:19:04,600 --> 01:19:06,240
Speaker 3: Again, I don't know. I didn't. I didn't put in

1494
01:19:06,240 --> 01:19:08,760
Speaker 3: a call to Yellowstone to confer, confirm or.

1495
01:19:08,680 --> 01:19:13,880
Speaker 2: Deny that that Hollywood was still in circulation, but I would, Well,

1496
01:19:13,960 --> 01:19:14,479
Speaker 2: you live in.

1497
01:19:14,439 --> 01:19:16,839
Speaker 1: The San Francisco now, are there were there any location

1498
01:19:16,960 --> 01:19:18,120
Speaker 1: shots that you could go visit?

1499
01:19:18,560 --> 01:19:20,400
Speaker 3: Uh, well, the Oakland Waterfront.

1500
01:19:20,439 --> 01:19:22,320
Speaker 2: I don't know where they shot the early stuff in

1501
01:19:22,360 --> 01:19:25,760
Speaker 2: the Oakland Waterfront, but yeah you can. There's there's like

1502
01:19:25,840 --> 01:19:27,640
Speaker 2: parts of Chinatown that you can go through that are

1503
01:19:27,680 --> 01:19:30,360
Speaker 2: just establishing shots. Also, I've been to SFO a bunch

1504
01:19:30,400 --> 01:19:34,880
Speaker 2: of times, I get another great buffoon part for for Jack.

1505
01:19:34,920 --> 01:19:37,719
Speaker 2: He immediately strides into that situation with the gang members

1506
01:19:37,720 --> 01:19:39,479
Speaker 2: and he's like, all right, buddy, let's try that one

1507
01:19:39,479 --> 01:19:41,600
Speaker 2: more time and just gets taken out again.

1508
01:19:42,800 --> 01:19:43,800
Speaker 3: And Eggshen's high.

1509
01:19:43,840 --> 01:19:46,719
Speaker 2: Speaking of eggs Sheen, his hideout is fire Station twenty

1510
01:19:46,720 --> 01:19:51,280
Speaker 2: three in LA which is the Ghostbusters headquarters. Come on,

1511
01:19:51,680 --> 01:19:54,800
Speaker 2: it's in a bunch of movies apparently. But speaking of

1512
01:19:54,840 --> 01:19:57,360
Speaker 2: male friendship and egg Shen.

1513
01:19:57,520 --> 01:20:01,680
Speaker 1: Yes, Dennis Dunn, who played Wang She was so inspired

1514
01:20:01,720 --> 01:20:04,439
Speaker 1: by his experience working with Victor Wong, who plays Eggshen,

1515
01:20:04,760 --> 01:20:09,040
Speaker 1: that he named his daughter Victoria in his honor, and

1516
01:20:09,080 --> 01:20:12,599
Speaker 1: their friendship actually spanned years before this movie and after

1517
01:20:12,640 --> 01:20:15,519
Speaker 1: this movie, Dunn and Wong had performed and plays together

1518
01:20:15,520 --> 01:20:18,800
Speaker 1: at San Francisco's Asian American Theater Company, and they made

1519
01:20:18,840 --> 01:20:21,960
Speaker 1: three films together in three years, the aforementioned Year of

1520
01:20:21,960 --> 01:20:24,920
Speaker 1: the Dragon in nineteen eighty five, Big Trouble in nineteen

1521
01:20:24,960 --> 01:20:27,519
Speaker 1: eighty six, and another John Carpenter movie, The Prince of

1522
01:20:27,600 --> 01:20:29,280
Speaker 1: Darkness in nineteen eighty seven.

1523
01:20:29,400 --> 01:20:32,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, Victor Wong can't be stressed enough is like a

1524
01:20:32,880 --> 01:20:38,240
Speaker 2: bizarre legend, really, I mean he He's also in Tremor's

1525
01:20:38,479 --> 01:20:42,160
Speaker 2: another of the greatest movies ever made. And he's the

1526
01:20:42,200 --> 01:20:45,040
Speaker 2: grandpa in Three Ninjas, another movie. It was a big

1527
01:20:45,080 --> 01:20:49,080
Speaker 2: deal for me growing up. But yeah, he's literally in

1528
01:20:49,280 --> 01:20:52,719
Speaker 2: the Jack Carroak novel Big Sir. He's fictionalized a character

1529
01:20:52,880 --> 01:20:57,679
Speaker 2: at the Jack Karak wrote under a pseudonym Wow. Yeah,

1530
01:20:57,720 --> 01:21:00,000
Speaker 2: and he was like, you know, he was a journalist.

1531
01:21:00,080 --> 01:21:02,760
Speaker 2: He studied political science at UC Berkeley. He was a

1532
01:21:02,760 --> 01:21:07,599
Speaker 2: member of the Second City in Chicago. He studied at

1533
01:21:07,640 --> 01:21:10,559
Speaker 2: the San Francisco Art Institute under Mark Rothko.

1534
01:21:14,160 --> 01:21:14,320
Speaker 5: Uh.

1535
01:21:14,360 --> 01:21:15,840
Speaker 3: He won a regional Emmy.

1536
01:21:18,280 --> 01:21:21,040
Speaker 2: Like, this guy is just literally like he's like the

1537
01:21:21,640 --> 01:21:24,200
Speaker 2: friggin Forrest Gump of the Bay Area. He's just like

1538
01:21:24,320 --> 01:21:27,360
Speaker 2: in all of this stuff. He was friends with Lawrence

1539
01:21:27,360 --> 01:21:31,120
Speaker 2: fer Lengetti and city Lights. He had his first art

1540
01:21:31,160 --> 01:21:36,040
Speaker 2: showing at city Lights. Like fascinating guy. Speaking of automotives,

1541
01:21:36,120 --> 01:21:40,400
Speaker 2: Jack's truck is a nineteen eighty five freightliner FLC one twenty.

1542
01:21:40,920 --> 01:21:43,439
Speaker 2: This is the thing that grieves me most heartily about

1543
01:21:43,520 --> 01:21:46,439
Speaker 2: doing this episode is that I found a news story

1544
01:21:46,560 --> 01:21:51,120
Speaker 2: about this truck and I can't get past the paywall

1545
01:21:51,720 --> 01:21:52,320
Speaker 2: to get it.

1546
01:21:53,640 --> 01:21:54,360
Speaker 3: So this truck.

1547
01:21:54,400 --> 01:21:58,519
Speaker 2: This freightliner somehow made it to Calay, Maine, where it

1548
01:21:58,640 --> 01:22:02,120
Speaker 2: was owned and operated by a named Wilfred O'Brien who

1549
01:22:02,200 --> 01:22:05,040
Speaker 2: drove it up until twenty eighteen, and then in twenty

1550
01:22:05,080 --> 01:22:07,760
Speaker 2: twenty it was shipped off to England and I don't

1551
01:22:07,760 --> 01:22:08,880
Speaker 2: know if it's in a museum there.

1552
01:22:08,880 --> 01:22:11,680
Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on. I desperately need to know.

1553
01:22:14,720 --> 01:22:17,439
Speaker 2: A lot of people have speculated that Rayden from the

1554
01:22:17,560 --> 01:22:22,160
Speaker 2: video game Mortal Kombat is stolen from this movie, the

1555
01:22:22,360 --> 01:22:25,200
Speaker 2: specifically Lightning, who is one of the three Storms the

1556
01:22:25,240 --> 01:22:28,120
Speaker 2: henchmen in it, because if he has that distinctive conical hat,

1557
01:22:28,560 --> 01:22:32,080
Speaker 2: and Mortal Kombat co creator John Tobias confirmed that on Twitter.

1558
01:22:32,840 --> 01:22:36,679
Speaker 2: Another thing that's repeated is that the character in that game,

1559
01:22:36,760 --> 01:22:39,599
Speaker 2: Shank Son the Big Bad, was inspired by Low Pam

1560
01:22:39,720 --> 01:22:41,880
Speaker 2: But I wasn't able to pin that down. But those

1561
01:22:41,960 --> 01:22:45,599
Speaker 2: hats are actually a reference to another Martial Arts film.

1562
01:22:45,680 --> 01:22:49,200
Speaker 2: I think it's the Lone Wolf and Cub trilogy. I'm

1563
01:22:49,320 --> 01:22:51,519
Speaker 2: going to kicking myself for not putting that in there.

1564
01:22:51,600 --> 01:22:55,280
Speaker 2: But so they made it into Big Trouble as reference

1565
01:22:55,320 --> 01:22:57,040
Speaker 2: to another Hong Kong movie, and they made it into

1566
01:22:57,040 --> 01:22:58,160
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat as a.

1567
01:22:58,120 --> 01:22:59,880
Speaker 3: Reference to Big Trouble, which I love.

1568
01:23:00,320 --> 01:23:04,000
Speaker 2: Speaking of that character Lightning when he dies, when he's

1569
01:23:04,000 --> 01:23:07,360
Speaker 2: crushed by Rocks and he explodes into lightning. The SFX

1570
01:23:07,439 --> 01:23:11,679
Speaker 2: team made some of the lightning spell out the Chinese

1571
01:23:11,840 --> 01:23:15,920
Speaker 2: character for the word Carpenter as a tribute to John Carpenter.

1572
01:23:15,960 --> 01:23:16,639
Speaker 3: Isn't that cute?

1573
01:23:16,800 --> 01:23:17,000
Speaker 6: Oh?

1574
01:23:17,240 --> 01:23:17,840
Speaker 1: I liked that?

1575
01:23:18,640 --> 01:23:18,840
Speaker 6: Yeah.

1576
01:23:19,600 --> 01:23:22,519
Speaker 1: James Hong explained to Entertainment Weekly that the duel between

1577
01:23:22,520 --> 01:23:24,559
Speaker 1: Eggshan and Low Pan at the end of the film

1578
01:23:24,680 --> 01:23:27,240
Speaker 1: was not outlined in the script, so he and Victor

1579
01:23:27,280 --> 01:23:29,960
Speaker 1: Wong decided how it would go. He said, Victor and

1580
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:32,160
Speaker 1: I had seen all these Chinese films where the two

1581
01:23:32,160 --> 01:23:35,120
Speaker 1: opponents would fight each other with this hand magic where

1582
01:23:35,120 --> 01:23:37,439
Speaker 1: things would come out of their hands. That's an old

1583
01:23:37,520 --> 01:23:40,920
Speaker 1: Chinese fable type of magic fighting. So Victor decided to

1584
01:23:40,960 --> 01:23:43,800
Speaker 1: throw balls at me of fire, and I invented that

1585
01:23:43,840 --> 01:23:46,320
Speaker 1: I would cross my little fingers and little rays would

1586
01:23:46,320 --> 01:23:49,719
Speaker 1: come out, and Carpenter put that in the film. Surprised

1587
01:23:49,760 --> 01:23:52,000
Speaker 1: they didn't go to the GA for credit.

1588
01:23:52,400 --> 01:23:53,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, seriously.

1589
01:23:54,920 --> 01:23:57,160
Speaker 1: Jack Burton going through one of the last few scenes

1590
01:23:57,200 --> 01:24:01,200
Speaker 1: with Gracie's lipstick still on his face, which I actually

1591
01:24:01,240 --> 01:24:03,000
Speaker 1: totally missed, wasn't in.

1592
01:24:02,880 --> 01:24:05,599
Speaker 2: The scrow So funny, you see so many like promo

1593
01:24:05,720 --> 01:24:08,120
Speaker 2: stills from there, like like if you look up Jack

1594
01:24:08,120 --> 01:24:10,680
Speaker 2: Burton little in Big Trouble, like in Google, that's one

1595
01:24:10,720 --> 01:24:13,479
Speaker 2: of the things that comes up is just that gorgeous

1596
01:24:13,520 --> 01:24:16,200
Speaker 2: feathered mullet and just like bright red lipstick.

1597
01:24:17,880 --> 01:24:20,400
Speaker 1: Kurt Russell told an Entertainment Weekly one time, Kim and

1598
01:24:20,439 --> 01:24:22,839
Speaker 1: I kissed, then I noticed that the crew was smirking.

1599
01:24:23,160 --> 01:24:26,120
Speaker 1: I had lipstick all over my face. I said, you know,

1600
01:24:26,240 --> 01:24:29,320
Speaker 1: I've always wondered about that in kissing scenes. How come

1601
01:24:29,320 --> 01:24:32,000
Speaker 1: that big red lipstick is always magically not there when

1602
01:24:32,000 --> 01:24:34,400
Speaker 1: the guy pulls back. I looked at John and I

1603
01:24:34,439 --> 01:24:37,400
Speaker 1: started laughing. I said, let's leave the lipstick on at

1604
01:24:37,439 --> 01:24:42,519
Speaker 1: least a couple of scenes. And he said, all right, Ah.

1605
01:24:41,960 --> 01:24:45,599
Speaker 2: Kurt wants to leave lipstick on for a shot rolling

1606
01:24:48,520 --> 01:24:51,360
Speaker 2: those awesome boots that he wears in the movie. Yeah,

1607
01:24:51,600 --> 01:24:53,879
Speaker 2: hand made at a place he knew in Aspen.

1608
01:24:54,160 --> 01:24:55,640
Speaker 1: Do you know what brand those are? I feel like

1609
01:24:55,680 --> 01:24:56,280
Speaker 1: you need those.

1610
01:24:57,439 --> 01:25:01,280
Speaker 2: I did find a place that does custom like knee

1611
01:25:01,320 --> 01:25:05,839
Speaker 2: high leather moccasins, but not in the budget. They're marketed

1612
01:25:05,880 --> 01:25:07,559
Speaker 2: as The Big Trouble Boots. I don't know if it's

1613
01:25:07,560 --> 01:25:09,479
Speaker 2: the same guy. I assume that guy might be dead.

1614
01:25:11,160 --> 01:25:17,559
Speaker 2: This movie is almost forty years old. All the water scenes,

1615
01:25:17,640 --> 01:25:21,719
Speaker 2: which again the Hell of the Upside Down Sinners. Chinese

1616
01:25:21,720 --> 01:25:25,360
Speaker 2: people got a lot of hells. The what does Yeah,

1617
01:25:25,479 --> 01:25:28,120
Speaker 2: there's the I used to have all of them memorized.

1618
01:25:28,160 --> 01:25:30,880
Speaker 2: There's the Hell of the Upside Down Sinners, the hell

1619
01:25:31,960 --> 01:25:35,960
Speaker 2: where people are boiled alive. There's so many different Yeah,

1620
01:25:36,240 --> 01:25:40,360
Speaker 2: Chinese people got a lot of hells. Margo Burton recalled

1621
01:25:40,360 --> 01:25:41,960
Speaker 2: that every day I would come into work and go

1622
01:25:42,000 --> 01:25:44,600
Speaker 2: into hair and makeup and look absolutely stunning. Then the

1623
01:25:44,600 --> 01:25:46,280
Speaker 2: next thing that would happen is someone would throw a

1624
01:25:46,280 --> 01:25:53,679
Speaker 2: bucket of water on my head. When when they're swimming

1625
01:25:53,720 --> 01:25:55,760
Speaker 2: through the tunnel and they come up for air and

1626
01:25:55,840 --> 01:25:59,000
Speaker 2: Jack Burton's like, would you stop pressing your body up

1627
01:25:59,040 --> 01:26:02,040
Speaker 2: against mine? And the swimming it makes it really.

1628
01:26:01,760 --> 01:26:02,360
Speaker 3: Hard for me.

1629
01:26:06,720 --> 01:26:09,120
Speaker 1: When Jack Burton is running and being shot at near

1630
01:26:09,120 --> 01:26:11,160
Speaker 1: the end of the film, one of the squibs went

1631
01:26:11,200 --> 01:26:13,320
Speaker 1: off too early and a little too close to Kurt

1632
01:26:13,360 --> 01:26:16,840
Speaker 1: Russell's head. In the DVD commentary, Kurt recalls that it's

1633
01:26:16,880 --> 01:26:19,200
Speaker 1: one of the only times he's seen Carpenter lose his

1634
01:26:19,280 --> 01:26:22,640
Speaker 1: cool on the set, and I am going to speculate

1635
01:26:22,680 --> 01:26:24,439
Speaker 1: that it might be because this was around the same

1636
01:26:24,520 --> 01:26:28,280
Speaker 1: time that an actor named John Eric Hexham accidentally killed

1637
01:26:28,320 --> 01:26:31,000
Speaker 1: himself when he shot himself in the temple with a

1638
01:26:31,040 --> 01:26:35,200
Speaker 1: blank when he was just joking around on a set of.

1639
01:26:35,080 --> 01:26:39,320
Speaker 2: A TV show called Well there's the Twilight Zone death.

1640
01:26:39,439 --> 01:26:43,600
Speaker 1: No, that was show called cover Up, and he was

1641
01:26:43,640 --> 01:26:45,320
Speaker 1: just playing and I didn't realize it. With a squib,

1642
01:26:45,439 --> 01:26:48,519
Speaker 1: something actually does fly out if it's pressed like up

1643
01:26:48,520 --> 01:26:49,360
Speaker 1: against your skin.

1644
01:26:50,120 --> 01:26:50,559
Speaker 4: Jesus.

1645
01:26:52,240 --> 01:26:55,240
Speaker 1: So maybe he was just being extra cautious Carpenter.

1646
01:26:55,040 --> 01:26:57,120
Speaker 3: Or it was because he was worried about his best

1647
01:26:57,120 --> 01:26:58,120
Speaker 3: friend Kurt Russell.

1648
01:27:00,360 --> 01:27:03,559
Speaker 2: At the end of the DVD commentary track, Kurt Russell

1649
01:27:03,640 --> 01:27:07,200
Speaker 2: says of their day together recording. He says, the beer

1650
01:27:07,240 --> 01:27:10,800
Speaker 2: has been good and the cigarettes aren't stale. Just like

1651
01:27:10,920 --> 01:27:14,960
Speaker 2: such an American dude thing to say about you hanging

1652
01:27:15,000 --> 01:27:17,639
Speaker 2: out with your buddy. Well, now we have to talk

1653
01:27:17,640 --> 01:27:19,400
Speaker 2: about the theme song of the movie, recorded by a

1654
01:27:19,439 --> 01:27:22,680
Speaker 2: carpenter and the Coup de Vill's. The music video for

1655
01:27:22,720 --> 01:27:25,360
Speaker 2: this makes its rounds every couple of years because people

1656
01:27:25,360 --> 01:27:28,280
Speaker 2: are just struck anew by how ridiculous it is and

1657
01:27:28,360 --> 01:27:32,080
Speaker 2: how amazing does everybody wearing like big blazers. And I

1658
01:27:32,120 --> 01:27:34,200
Speaker 2: think he's playing a beatle bass. He's like playing a

1659
01:27:34,240 --> 01:27:38,960
Speaker 2: hopper in it in the video. That band is Tommy

1660
01:27:39,040 --> 01:27:41,439
Speaker 2: Lee Wallace, who is the film's production designer and one

1661
01:27:41,439 --> 01:27:45,720
Speaker 2: of Carpenter's cronies. They both grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky,

1662
01:27:46,080 --> 01:27:48,719
Speaker 2: and they were classmates at USC, along with the stuntman

1663
01:27:48,840 --> 01:27:50,960
Speaker 2: Nick Castle, who is one of the men who played

1664
01:27:51,000 --> 01:27:53,799
Speaker 2: Michael Myers. The three of them used to get together

1665
01:27:53,920 --> 01:27:57,559
Speaker 2: and sing like harmony, like three part harmony stuff. And

1666
01:27:57,600 --> 01:27:59,760
Speaker 2: they're and little novelty songs that they wrote while they

1667
01:27:59,800 --> 01:28:03,519
Speaker 2: were USC, and they reformed for the purposes of Big

1668
01:28:03,560 --> 01:28:06,479
Speaker 2: Trouble Little China to get together and play. And they

1669
01:28:06,520 --> 01:28:09,280
Speaker 2: have a full length album out under the name Coup

1670
01:28:09,320 --> 01:28:12,480
Speaker 2: de Ville is called Waiting Out the Eighties that's distributed

1671
01:28:12,560 --> 01:28:15,720
Speaker 2: only to friends and so consequently copies of this thing

1672
01:28:15,800 --> 01:28:17,679
Speaker 2: are going for hundreds of dollars online.

1673
01:28:17,680 --> 01:28:19,559
Speaker 3: But I have one of the songs here, this is

1674
01:28:19,600 --> 01:28:20,680
Speaker 3: the title track.

1675
01:28:45,680 --> 01:28:55,559
Speaker 2: Here that kind of goes like if you were to

1676
01:28:55,600 --> 01:28:57,640
Speaker 2: tell me that was a Fleetwood Mac demo from the

1677
01:28:57,720 --> 01:29:00,400
Speaker 2: Tusk era. I'd be like, oh sure, yeah, yeah, raw

1678
01:29:00,439 --> 01:29:03,280
Speaker 2: production really revolutionary what Lindsay was doing at the time.

1679
01:29:04,439 --> 01:29:08,920
Speaker 1: The cottage industry of really expensive side projects and things

1680
01:29:09,000 --> 01:29:12,080
Speaker 1: associated with this movie, from the making of hardcover book

1681
01:29:12,400 --> 01:29:14,520
Speaker 1: to this album. It's very impressed.

1682
01:29:14,720 --> 01:29:16,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, the apocrypha you can get into as a big

1683
01:29:17,000 --> 01:29:22,080
Speaker 2: Trouble fan is really bank breaking. So now we have

1684
01:29:22,120 --> 01:29:23,479
Speaker 2: to get into the sad part of the film, which

1685
01:29:23,520 --> 01:29:25,120
Speaker 2: is of course that it came out in the studio

1686
01:29:25,280 --> 01:29:27,120
Speaker 2: or when it was done the studio was like, what

1687
01:29:27,160 --> 01:29:28,160
Speaker 2: the hell do we have here?

1688
01:29:29,280 --> 01:29:30,040
Speaker 3: It is part of.

1689
01:29:30,000 --> 01:29:33,600
Speaker 2: The movie's lore that it is abysmally marketed. In the

1690
01:29:33,680 --> 01:29:36,280
Speaker 2: DVD commentary of Russell remembers and he's talking about this

1691
01:29:36,320 --> 01:29:39,320
Speaker 2: in other interviews. He was doing press for the film

1692
01:29:39,320 --> 01:29:41,360
Speaker 2: and people were like, how does it feel to be

1693
01:29:41,360 --> 01:29:43,360
Speaker 2: in one of the biggest movies of the year Because

1694
01:29:43,360 --> 01:29:45,800
Speaker 2: their test screenings were so good. People saw this and

1695
01:29:45,800 --> 01:29:48,920
Speaker 2: were like, rightly, We're like, holy, what is this? And

1696
01:29:49,280 --> 01:29:52,120
Speaker 2: then he said I kept waiting to see ads and

1697
01:29:52,200 --> 01:29:53,679
Speaker 2: things that just didn't happen.

1698
01:29:54,520 --> 01:29:58,639
Speaker 1: Oh. John Carpenter says in the commentary for the movie

1699
01:29:58,640 --> 01:30:01,400
Speaker 1: that Fox had a mandated that time to not spend

1700
01:30:01,439 --> 01:30:04,840
Speaker 1: more than three million dollars marketing of film. But even

1701
01:30:04,880 --> 01:30:08,080
Speaker 1: if they had spent that, they must have spent that poorly.

1702
01:30:08,880 --> 01:30:13,439
Speaker 1: Materials focused on Russell asking who is Jack Burton, which

1703
01:30:13,479 --> 01:30:15,720
Speaker 1: is just so not the angle you want to go

1704
01:30:15,800 --> 01:30:17,280
Speaker 1: with when promoting this movie.

1705
01:30:17,439 --> 01:30:20,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's Ker Russell, who's like in an interview,

1706
01:30:20,000 --> 01:30:22,360
Speaker 2: He's like everyone all the posters were asking who is

1707
01:30:22,439 --> 01:30:28,400
Speaker 2: Jack Burton? Everyone said, I don't know, I don't care. Also, like,

1708
01:30:28,439 --> 01:30:31,679
Speaker 2: the original poster for this movie is Drew Strusan, who's

1709
01:30:31,720 --> 01:30:35,120
Speaker 2: like one of the most iconic poster guys of all time.

1710
01:30:35,320 --> 01:30:37,880
Speaker 2: But Kurt Russell joked that he didn't recognize himself on

1711
01:30:37,880 --> 01:30:41,680
Speaker 2: the poster, which is fair. It is truly one of

1712
01:30:41,720 --> 01:30:47,120
Speaker 2: the shiest of Drew Strusan's incredible movie posters. He looks

1713
01:30:47,120 --> 01:30:50,040
Speaker 2: like a gremlin, Like, he looks like a completely different person.

1714
01:30:50,200 --> 01:30:52,760
Speaker 1: I mean, the real poster for this movie that you

1715
01:30:52,800 --> 01:30:54,960
Speaker 1: see more often these days is kind of weird because

1716
01:30:55,479 --> 01:30:57,000
Speaker 1: his head is very large.

1717
01:30:57,280 --> 01:30:59,640
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and it's obviously it's like him and Kim

1718
01:30:59,680 --> 01:31:02,439
Speaker 2: Control all up front, But this one's really bad.

1719
01:31:04,040 --> 01:31:06,320
Speaker 3: I don't even know what he looks like in here.

1720
01:31:06,640 --> 01:31:11,200
Speaker 3: What you would even describe a particular.

1721
01:31:11,640 --> 01:31:14,240
Speaker 1: Well, everything that's a part of his face has been

1722
01:31:14,720 --> 01:31:15,519
Speaker 1: shrunken down.

1723
01:31:16,120 --> 01:31:19,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you got the chin wrong. Do you get

1724
01:31:19,920 --> 01:31:21,360
Speaker 2: Kurt Russell's chin wrong?

1725
01:31:22,400 --> 01:31:25,839
Speaker 1: Anyway? John Carpenter pointed out another factor in a interviewed

1726
01:31:25,840 --> 01:31:28,800
Speaker 1: with the Ottawa Citizen in July nineteen eighty six, saying,

1727
01:31:29,360 --> 01:31:31,240
Speaker 1: in the time it's taken me to make Big Trouble

1728
01:31:31,240 --> 01:31:33,759
Speaker 1: in Little China, there have been major changes at Fox.

1729
01:31:34,240 --> 01:31:36,599
Speaker 1: Larry Gordon was the president when I began the film.

1730
01:31:36,800 --> 01:31:40,479
Speaker 1: Now Gordon is gone and Alan Horne as president. And

1731
01:31:40,600 --> 01:31:42,840
Speaker 1: another telling quote that he gave to Total Film in

1732
01:31:42,880 --> 01:31:45,680
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one on Big Trouble, I was working with

1733
01:31:45,680 --> 01:31:49,120
Speaker 1: the head of a studio is an intentionally cruel human being.

1734
01:31:49,680 --> 01:31:53,000
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to deal with that anymore. One

1735
01:31:53,000 --> 01:31:55,040
Speaker 1: big problem was that the film was up against some

1736
01:31:55,120 --> 01:31:58,240
Speaker 1: serious competition when it was released on July second, nineteen

1737
01:31:58,280 --> 01:32:02,120
Speaker 1: eighty six, including from Box Itself, its own studio, which

1738
01:32:02,160 --> 01:32:05,080
Speaker 1: sent Alien into theaters just over two weeks after Big

1739
01:32:05,120 --> 01:32:07,600
Speaker 1: Trouble in Little China. It also went up against The

1740
01:32:07,600 --> 01:32:12,040
Speaker 1: Great Mouse, Detective Prince's highly anticipated follow up to Purple

1741
01:32:12,160 --> 01:32:17,000
Speaker 1: Rain Under the Cherry Moon Stephen King's directorial debut Maximum Overdrive,

1742
01:32:17,560 --> 01:32:22,080
Speaker 1: and that was just all In July, critics didn't love

1743
01:32:22,120 --> 01:32:25,000
Speaker 1: Big Trouble in Little China. It pulled in a disappointing

1744
01:32:25,040 --> 01:32:28,719
Speaker 1: eleven point one million dollars at the box office, which

1745
01:32:28,760 --> 01:32:33,759
Speaker 1: means that even Psycho three outgrossed it, which does feel criminal.

1746
01:32:34,439 --> 01:32:38,200
Speaker 1: And also John Cassavetti's last film, also called Big Trouble,

1747
01:32:38,320 --> 01:32:42,160
Speaker 1: starring Alan Arkham Beverly DiAngelo, having released five weeks prior

1748
01:32:42,200 --> 01:32:45,519
Speaker 1: to John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, so title

1749
01:32:45,560 --> 01:32:47,200
Speaker 1: confusion probably didn't help.

1750
01:32:47,520 --> 01:32:50,439
Speaker 2: Carpenter has said that the film's miss marketing and reception

1751
01:32:50,920 --> 01:32:54,440
Speaker 2: was basically responsible for him abandoning major studios and financing

1752
01:32:54,439 --> 01:32:57,880
Speaker 2: his movies independently going forward. He said in nineteen eighty seven,

1753
01:32:58,479 --> 01:32:59,920
Speaker 2: and one time I thought I wanted to be a

1754
01:33:00,000 --> 01:33:03,479
Speaker 2: big budget, major studio Hollywood director. Now I realize that

1755
01:33:03,520 --> 01:33:06,040
Speaker 2: I don't. There's no way I can't do it. I

1756
01:33:06,080 --> 01:33:09,320
Speaker 2: hate authority too much. After making four big budget, major

1757
01:33:09,360 --> 01:33:12,759
Speaker 2: studio Hollywood films, I was burned out the grind of production,

1758
01:33:12,920 --> 01:33:16,360
Speaker 2: the dishonesty of the studios, and the corruption involved in advertising,

1759
01:33:16,520 --> 01:33:19,080
Speaker 2: publicity and the press maybe want to quit. When you

1760
01:33:19,080 --> 01:33:20,920
Speaker 2: make a big budget film, you get trapped into so

1761
01:33:20,960 --> 01:33:23,280
Speaker 2: many situations that you don't want to be in. You're

1762
01:33:23,320 --> 01:33:25,639
Speaker 2: making a movie with the studios money, and they'll spend

1763
01:33:25,680 --> 01:33:27,600
Speaker 2: it the way that they want. I think it was

1764
01:33:27,640 --> 01:33:30,320
Speaker 2: this and Memoirs of an Invisible Man and working with

1765
01:33:30,400 --> 01:33:33,439
Speaker 2: Chevy Chase that he's oh sighted is the one two

1766
01:33:33,479 --> 01:33:35,719
Speaker 2: punch of him wanting to retire.

1767
01:33:36,560 --> 01:33:40,400
Speaker 1: That'll do it. But Big Trouble a Little China did

1768
01:33:40,400 --> 01:33:42,920
Speaker 1: have a long life, becoming a cult classic and a

1769
01:33:42,920 --> 01:33:45,720
Speaker 1: big hit when it was released on home media. But

1770
01:33:45,840 --> 01:33:48,600
Speaker 1: in basically every interview, it seems like John Carpenter is

1771
01:33:48,640 --> 01:33:51,640
Speaker 1: still stung by it. Asked about stuff like this and

1772
01:33:51,720 --> 01:33:54,439
Speaker 1: the thing, he usually says something to the effect of, well,

1773
01:33:54,479 --> 01:33:55,559
Speaker 1: better late than never.

1774
01:33:56,479 --> 01:33:59,000
Speaker 2: It's sad because he really seems to take it to heart.

1775
01:33:59,200 --> 01:34:01,080
Speaker 2: I really do feel for him because he is such

1776
01:34:01,080 --> 01:34:04,839
Speaker 2: a it's you know, he's one of the great examples

1777
01:34:04,880 --> 01:34:08,280
Speaker 2: of people who got chewed up by the system of

1778
01:34:08,320 --> 01:34:10,800
Speaker 2: their art form. And it's and like he might have

1779
01:34:10,920 --> 01:34:12,840
Speaker 2: let go of some of that bitterness because he's just

1780
01:34:12,920 --> 01:34:15,639
Speaker 2: high and watching the Warriors and playing video games and

1781
01:34:15,720 --> 01:34:18,280
Speaker 2: noodling around on synths, so he's had about as great

1782
01:34:18,280 --> 01:34:19,679
Speaker 2: as retirement as anyone could.

1783
01:34:20,320 --> 01:34:24,240
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, it sucks. Imagine like you may you

1784
01:34:24,240 --> 01:34:25,960
Speaker 3: have like an incredible ten year.

1785
01:34:25,920 --> 01:34:28,840
Speaker 2: Run doing like Halloween and the Thing and this, and

1786
01:34:29,439 --> 01:34:33,400
Speaker 2: they're flops except for Halloween, but like, you know, yeah,

1787
01:34:33,640 --> 01:34:35,760
Speaker 2: poor guy. I just feel bad for John Carpenter. I

1788
01:34:35,800 --> 01:34:38,800
Speaker 2: want to tell him it's okay. Maybe one day I

1789
01:34:38,840 --> 01:34:42,960
Speaker 2: will yeah you repeatedly. To Jordan's credit, he's repeatedly offered

1790
01:34:42,960 --> 01:34:45,760
Speaker 2: to use his clout to try and get me an

1791
01:34:45,800 --> 01:34:47,960
Speaker 2: interview with John Carpenter. But as anyone who is a

1792
01:34:48,000 --> 01:34:52,720
Speaker 2: John Carpenter fan knows, the man does not like interviews

1793
01:34:52,840 --> 01:34:56,320
Speaker 2: and only comes alive talking about video games or the Warriors.

1794
01:34:56,479 --> 01:34:59,280
Speaker 1: He would like talking to you, I don't know.

1795
01:34:59,520 --> 01:35:01,679
Speaker 3: I I feel like I'd get on and just start gushing.

1796
01:35:01,720 --> 01:35:06,719
Speaker 1: He'd be like, yeah, yeah, Sonic's not about to play itself.

1797
01:35:06,840 --> 01:35:09,639
Speaker 3: So yeah, Warriors are doing well this season.

1798
01:35:11,080 --> 01:35:13,880
Speaker 1: Everything from comic books to board and video games have

1799
01:35:14,000 --> 01:35:16,880
Speaker 1: added to the Big Trouble Little China lore, and for

1800
01:35:16,920 --> 01:35:19,040
Speaker 1: a long time it was rumored that Dwayne the Rock

1801
01:35:19,160 --> 01:35:21,960
Speaker 1: Johnson was going to star in a sequel or reboot

1802
01:35:22,040 --> 01:35:24,200
Speaker 1: or requel or whatever. The hell they call it now

1803
01:35:24,720 --> 01:35:27,519
Speaker 1: of big trouble, but that has thankfully stalled out.

1804
01:35:27,600 --> 01:35:29,519
Speaker 2: You say, yeah, it's one of the kind of like

1805
01:35:30,439 --> 01:35:34,760
Speaker 2: great unmade things of the past ten years, because The

1806
01:35:34,880 --> 01:35:37,000
Speaker 2: Rock has been talking about it for a long damn time.

1807
01:35:37,040 --> 01:35:41,360
Speaker 2: But has John Carpenter indelibly put at one point an

1808
01:35:41,360 --> 01:35:43,960
Speaker 2: interview that I read, He's like, the studio wants a

1809
01:35:44,000 --> 01:35:46,639
Speaker 2: movie with The Rock and they want the name, they

1810
01:35:46,640 --> 01:35:51,800
Speaker 2: don't want me. So yeah, I don't think it's ever

1811
01:35:51,800 --> 01:35:54,160
Speaker 2: going to happen, especially after Black Adam came out and

1812
01:35:55,160 --> 01:35:57,160
Speaker 2: The Rock used all of his clout money to get

1813
01:35:57,200 --> 01:35:59,080
Speaker 2: that made, and then that didn't do very well.

1814
01:35:59,200 --> 01:36:02,280
Speaker 1: So I don't know if I that.

1815
01:36:02,280 --> 01:36:05,080
Speaker 2: Was a big DC one that DC Warner d C

1816
01:36:05,320 --> 01:36:09,080
Speaker 2: had a year because they put out Black Adam, then

1817
01:36:09,120 --> 01:36:12,439
Speaker 2: they put out The Flash and Blue Beetle, and the

1818
01:36:12,439 --> 01:36:15,200
Speaker 2: next thing on their slate is Aquaman two, which is

1819
01:36:15,920 --> 01:36:18,320
Speaker 2: shaping up to be one of the biggest flops, or

1820
01:36:18,320 --> 01:36:22,240
Speaker 2: at least one of the most dramatic productions. The big

1821
01:36:22,240 --> 01:36:26,639
Speaker 2: news from that today was that James Wan and Jason

1822
01:36:26,640 --> 01:36:30,400
Speaker 2: Momoa wanted to cut Amber Heard's or recast her and

1823
01:36:30,960 --> 01:36:34,559
Speaker 2: Elon Musk because that he dated Amberherd threatened to sue

1824
01:36:34,560 --> 01:36:39,000
Speaker 2: them and the studio. Like his lawyers sent a legal

1825
01:36:39,080 --> 01:36:42,240
Speaker 2: letter to the studio threatening Lake. I believe the phrase

1826
01:36:42,360 --> 01:36:47,799
Speaker 2: was scorched earth if she was recast or cut anyway.

1827
01:36:48,560 --> 01:36:51,320
Speaker 1: So the story for the Flash the DC movie is

1828
01:36:51,320 --> 01:36:54,240
Speaker 1: written by John Francis Daly, who played Sam Weir on

1829
01:36:54,320 --> 01:36:58,200
Speaker 1: Freaking Geeks. Oh, the Littlest Freak or Littlest Geek.

1830
01:36:58,240 --> 01:37:01,040
Speaker 2: I guess I'm so sorry that he will not get

1831
01:37:01,040 --> 01:37:05,400
Speaker 2: another chance to make one after this. So Golden Child, Jordan,

1832
01:37:05,520 --> 01:37:06,880
Speaker 2: you are you familiar with The Golden Child?

1833
01:37:07,600 --> 01:37:10,360
Speaker 1: I only knew of it because didn't Barry Gordy finance.

1834
01:37:10,400 --> 01:37:12,479
Speaker 1: It wasn't in a Motown producer movie.

1835
01:37:12,520 --> 01:37:14,679
Speaker 2: I think you're thinking of The Last Dragon. I am

1836
01:37:14,960 --> 01:37:19,479
Speaker 2: so no, I'm not fun fact though, the woman with the.

1837
01:37:19,120 --> 01:37:21,400
Speaker 3: Bow staff that shoots smoke.

1838
01:37:23,080 --> 01:37:25,080
Speaker 2: In one of the scenes in Big Trouble Old China

1839
01:37:25,160 --> 01:37:29,400
Speaker 2: is also in The Last Dragon and is like a

1840
01:37:29,439 --> 01:37:36,080
Speaker 2: famous entertainment journalist, Leah Chang. So The Golden Child stars

1841
01:37:36,160 --> 01:37:38,439
Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy. It is also a movie about a smart

1842
01:37:38,479 --> 01:37:42,720
Speaker 2: alec Westerner descending into a world of Eastern mysticism. How

1843
01:37:42,720 --> 01:37:44,439
Speaker 2: did two of them get greenlit? At the same time

1844
01:37:44,640 --> 01:37:46,360
Speaker 2: Big Trouble. It seems at this point to have become

1845
01:37:46,400 --> 01:37:49,720
Speaker 2: the winner of the battle, but it is a weird coincidence.

1846
01:37:50,880 --> 01:37:53,599
Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy stars in the film as Chandler Jerrell, a

1847
01:37:53,600 --> 01:37:55,960
Speaker 2: Los Angeles social worker who's told that he is the

1848
01:37:56,080 --> 01:37:59,160
Speaker 2: chosen One who's faded to save the Golden Child, who

1849
01:37:59,200 --> 01:38:02,400
Speaker 2: is a kidnapped to boy with mystical powers said to

1850
01:38:02,439 --> 01:38:05,360
Speaker 2: be the savior of all mankind. The Golden Child evolved

1851
01:38:05,360 --> 01:38:08,439
Speaker 2: from a script by Dennis Feldman, who is a NEPO baby.

1852
01:38:08,640 --> 01:38:11,360
Speaker 2: Dad was an attorney, a Hollywood attorney who became a

1853
01:38:11,360 --> 01:38:14,640
Speaker 2: producer and an executive and yeah, he was involved in

1854
01:38:14,640 --> 01:38:18,160
Speaker 2: the Wild Bunch Anyway, this guy went to Harvard became

1855
01:38:18,160 --> 01:38:22,559
Speaker 2: a documentary filmmaker, and his only writing credit before he

1856
01:38:22,560 --> 01:38:25,559
Speaker 2: wrote The Golden Child was an adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth

1857
01:38:25,640 --> 01:38:27,160
Speaker 2: Night called Just one of the Guys.

1858
01:38:27,880 --> 01:38:29,479
Speaker 1: Oh, he's called a classic with.

1859
01:38:30,960 --> 01:38:34,880
Speaker 2: Someone, wasn't it remade with what's her name? A pre

1860
01:38:34,960 --> 01:38:40,000
Speaker 2: breakdown Amanda bends. Yeah, I like Joyce Heiser's like the

1861
01:38:40,200 --> 01:38:43,320
Speaker 2: woman's name. I think, Yeah, it's a classic movie. So

1862
01:38:43,360 --> 01:38:45,720
Speaker 2: Feldman's original script for The Golden Child was called The

1863
01:38:45,840 --> 01:38:48,080
Speaker 2: Rose of Tibet, which he would later describe as a

1864
01:38:48,120 --> 01:38:51,640
Speaker 2: Raymond Chandler movie with supernatural elements. He originally wanted the

1865
01:38:51,720 --> 01:38:53,960
Speaker 2: role to be played very straight, and mel Gibson was

1866
01:38:54,000 --> 01:38:57,160
Speaker 2: in mind for it, but Eddie Murphy loved this script

1867
01:38:57,240 --> 01:39:00,240
Speaker 2: so much that he selected the film from twenty different

1868
01:39:00,360 --> 01:39:04,719
Speaker 2: projects that were in development at paramount for him, following

1869
01:39:04,760 --> 01:39:08,000
Speaker 2: the hot streak of forty eight Hours and Beverley Hills Cop,

1870
01:39:08,240 --> 01:39:11,679
Speaker 2: which is hilarious because he ended up hating it and

1871
01:39:12,520 --> 01:39:16,880
Speaker 2: Carpenter turned it down. So Mad Max director George Miller

1872
01:39:16,920 --> 01:39:19,479
Speaker 2: was also in the running for Golden Child, but the

1873
01:39:19,479 --> 01:39:21,720
Speaker 2: Golden Chob was ultimately directed by Michael Richie, who did

1874
01:39:21,720 --> 01:39:24,639
Speaker 2: Bad News Bears and Fletch, one of the good Chevy

1875
01:39:24,680 --> 01:39:29,160
Speaker 2: Chase movies. Apparently, Golden Child, like Big Trouble, is subject

1876
01:39:29,200 --> 01:39:33,679
Speaker 2: to a lot of studio interference. Charles Dance Tywin Lanister himself,

1877
01:39:33,680 --> 01:39:39,040
Speaker 2: who plays the film's bad guy, numsot this guy you'll

1878
01:39:39,120 --> 01:39:41,200
Speaker 2: never in a million year's guest, what this villain's name is?

1879
01:39:41,920 --> 01:39:47,360
Speaker 2: Sardo Numbspah, No way, yeah, anyway, he told Fangoria when

1880
01:39:47,360 --> 01:39:49,479
Speaker 2: they first screened it. It was a very different sort

1881
01:39:49,479 --> 01:39:52,040
Speaker 2: of film for Eddie Murphy. Paramount took too much notice

1882
01:39:52,040 --> 01:39:54,760
Speaker 2: of the preview audience as unease about the unfamiliarity of

1883
01:39:54,840 --> 01:39:57,120
Speaker 2: Eddie's character. They had gotten to know him so well

1884
01:39:57,120 --> 01:39:59,040
Speaker 2: through Beverly Hills Cop that they wanted the character to

1885
01:39:59,360 --> 01:40:01,640
Speaker 2: me much more like like that. So the studio went

1886
01:40:01,680 --> 01:40:03,880
Speaker 2: back and reshot a lot of footage of Eddie doing

1887
01:40:04,000 --> 01:40:07,400
Speaker 2: quote Eddie murphyisms and put them in the picture. Then

1888
01:40:07,439 --> 01:40:10,000
Speaker 2: they took out a really sumptuous, weird and beautiful score

1889
01:40:10,040 --> 01:40:12,479
Speaker 2: by John Williams and replaced it with something more funky.

1890
01:40:12,880 --> 01:40:15,519
Speaker 2: So basically what you got was Beverly Hills Cop into bed.

1891
01:40:16,240 --> 01:40:17,479
Speaker 2: This is a big part of the lore of this

1892
01:40:17,560 --> 01:40:20,719
Speaker 2: movie that they went back and just had Eddie Murphy

1893
01:40:20,800 --> 01:40:23,839
Speaker 2: like riff and did a bunch of like button jokes

1894
01:40:23,840 --> 01:40:26,720
Speaker 2: to scenes, and he is obviously phoning it in so

1895
01:40:26,920 --> 01:40:30,160
Speaker 2: hard during it. And Carpenter backs this up. Since it

1896
01:40:30,200 --> 01:40:32,680
Speaker 2: was commonly known in the trays in the industry that

1897
01:40:32,720 --> 01:40:35,040
Speaker 2: he had turned down Golden Child to do Big Trouble,

1898
01:40:35,200 --> 01:40:37,479
Speaker 2: people kept asking John Carpenter about it, and he started

1899
01:40:37,479 --> 01:40:40,599
Speaker 2: off pretty sanguine about it, he told Starlog. The films

1900
01:40:40,600 --> 01:40:42,679
Speaker 2: have a similar theme in that they both explore Chinese

1901
01:40:42,760 --> 01:40:45,960
Speaker 2: legend and magic, but they developed in different ways. Golden

1902
01:40:46,040 --> 01:40:48,400
Speaker 2: Child is a very fine script. It has its problems,

1903
01:40:48,400 --> 01:40:51,320
Speaker 2: but it also has one big plus Eddie Murphy. It

1904
01:40:51,320 --> 01:40:53,280
Speaker 2: will be hard to pull off that script, but if

1905
01:40:53,320 --> 01:40:56,439
Speaker 2: they do, it could be a wonderful movie. And then

1906
01:40:56,520 --> 01:41:00,680
Speaker 2: later in that same interview, though he told if Big

1907
01:41:00,720 --> 01:41:02,599
Speaker 2: Trouble and Little China were released at the same time

1908
01:41:02,640 --> 01:41:06,320
Speaker 2: as Golden Child, we would be killed at the box office, which.

1909
01:41:06,600 --> 01:41:08,840
Speaker 1: Whoops, why did they do that?

1910
01:41:09,200 --> 01:41:13,680
Speaker 2: Executive brain So, in another widely cited interview that I

1911
01:41:13,680 --> 01:41:16,760
Speaker 2: haven't been able to source unfortunately, John Carpenter supposedly said,

1912
01:41:16,880 --> 01:41:20,360
Speaker 2: originally Golden Child was a serious Chinese mystical, very sweet,

1913
01:41:20,520 --> 01:41:22,960
Speaker 2: very nice film, but now they don't know whether to

1914
01:41:23,000 --> 01:41:25,960
Speaker 2: make it funny or serious, And then he doubled down

1915
01:41:25,960 --> 01:41:28,479
Speaker 2: on that. He continued, Golden Child is basically the same

1916
01:41:28,520 --> 01:41:31,320
Speaker 2: movie as Big Trouble. How many adventure pictures dealing with

1917
01:41:31,439 --> 01:41:33,760
Speaker 2: Chinese mysticism have been released by the major studios in

1918
01:41:33,760 --> 01:41:35,920
Speaker 2: the past twenty years. For two of them to come

1919
01:41:35,960 --> 01:41:38,520
Speaker 2: along at the exact same time as more than mere coincidence.

1920
01:41:38,680 --> 01:41:40,840
Speaker 1: It is not like Armageddon and Deep Impact. I feel

1921
01:41:40,880 --> 01:41:42,519
Speaker 1: like there's a phenomenon.

1922
01:41:42,000 --> 01:41:43,759
Speaker 3: Of Dante's Peak and volcano.

1923
01:41:44,040 --> 01:41:45,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

1924
01:41:45,160 --> 01:41:45,960
Speaker 3: Mean it happens.

1925
01:41:46,640 --> 01:41:49,439
Speaker 2: Hollywood is a gossips like a small town.

1926
01:41:50,160 --> 01:41:51,960
Speaker 3: I'm sure these execs were like.

1927
01:41:52,640 --> 01:41:55,880
Speaker 2: Uh, we got one of those now too, don't we

1928
01:41:57,280 --> 01:41:58,439
Speaker 2: put one of those on our doc?

1929
01:41:58,600 --> 01:42:00,920
Speaker 1: So big Trouble Little China made a eleven point one

1930
01:42:01,080 --> 01:42:04,599
Speaker 1: million dollars on a twenty five million dollar budget. Eddie

1931
01:42:04,680 --> 01:42:07,240
Speaker 1: Murphy's Golden Child, I don't know what it was budgeted for,

1932
01:42:07,400 --> 01:42:11,120
Speaker 1: but made almost eighty million dollars. Wow, So I didn't

1933
01:42:11,120 --> 01:42:12,760
Speaker 1: realize that he got beat that bad.

1934
01:42:13,800 --> 01:42:17,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, and nobody talks about this movie. Yeah, that's what's

1935
01:42:17,720 --> 01:42:21,360
Speaker 2: really funny to me. And it's bad too. There was

1936
01:42:21,400 --> 01:42:24,880
Speaker 2: a famous like scathing Janet Maslin review of it.

1937
01:42:27,040 --> 01:42:29,680
Speaker 1: I can find it well most major parties associated with

1938
01:42:29,720 --> 01:42:34,280
Speaker 1: Golden Child. I hate it. Writer Dennis Fellman was disappointed

1939
01:42:34,280 --> 01:42:35,880
Speaker 1: with the film and thought they should have taken the

1940
01:42:35,880 --> 01:42:39,840
Speaker 1: script more seriously, but he says instead everybody wanted to

1941
01:42:39,840 --> 01:42:43,080
Speaker 1: make it an Eddie Murphy comedy, adding of Michael Ritchie,

1942
01:42:43,280 --> 01:42:45,320
Speaker 1: it's not what the director should have done, and he

1943
01:42:45,360 --> 01:42:48,679
Speaker 1: didn't even do it that well either. Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy

1944
01:42:48,720 --> 01:42:52,200
Speaker 1: himself famously told Rolling Stone, my pictures make their money back,

1945
01:42:52,320 --> 01:42:54,800
Speaker 1: no matter how I feel about For instance, the Golden Child,

1946
01:42:54,880 --> 01:42:56,960
Speaker 1: which was a piece of shit, The movie made more

1947
01:42:57,000 --> 01:42:59,120
Speaker 1: than one hundred million dollars, so who am I to

1948
01:42:59,160 --> 01:43:02,760
Speaker 1: say it sucks? And then he made Pluto Nash.

1949
01:43:02,880 --> 01:43:09,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, time has been equally unkind to the film. Big

1950
01:43:09,080 --> 01:43:11,719
Speaker 2: Trouble sits at a seventy four percent critical and eighty

1951
01:43:11,760 --> 01:43:14,880
Speaker 2: two percent audience score i'd Rotten Tomatoes. Golden Child has

1952
01:43:15,080 --> 01:43:19,720
Speaker 2: twenty one percent critical and forty seven percent audience, so

1953
01:43:20,080 --> 01:43:24,439
Speaker 2: suck it. One silver lining for the cast and crew

1954
01:43:24,479 --> 01:43:27,840
Speaker 2: of Big Trouble, though, was that Peter Kwang, who played Rain,

1955
01:43:28,000 --> 01:43:31,080
Speaker 2: told up Rocks half our people went from Big Trouble.

1956
01:43:30,800 --> 01:43:32,840
Speaker 3: Little China to the Golden Child.

1957
01:43:33,080 --> 01:43:35,400
Speaker 2: So it's a nice little hiring boost for the Asian

1958
01:43:35,439 --> 01:43:39,080
Speaker 2: American community in Hollywood, he says. James Hong Victor Wong,

1959
01:43:39,240 --> 01:43:41,320
Speaker 2: I was on Golden Child. A lot of people that

1960
01:43:41,360 --> 01:43:46,760
Speaker 2: were from our camp were cast, So I guess that's fine.

1961
01:43:47,160 --> 01:43:47,519
Speaker 1: I don't know.

1962
01:43:47,600 --> 01:43:51,080
Speaker 2: My love for this movie is apparent and abiding. As

1963
01:43:51,080 --> 01:43:53,479
Speaker 2: we go into our second and a half hour of

1964
01:43:53,560 --> 01:43:56,440
Speaker 2: talking about it, I'm literally going horse from being so effusive.

1965
01:43:58,040 --> 01:44:01,120
Speaker 2: I will give our boy JC the last word. Here

1966
01:44:01,240 --> 01:44:05,120
Speaker 2: from a twenty fourteen interview with Flashback Files. We don't

1967
01:44:05,120 --> 01:44:07,760
Speaker 2: need to revisit this, but I can say that when

1968
01:44:07,760 --> 01:44:09,840
Speaker 2: the movie came out, it wasn't a big hit, It

1969
01:44:09,880 --> 01:44:12,679
Speaker 2: wasn't reviewed particularly well, and they attacked Kurt.

1970
01:44:13,640 --> 01:44:19,080
Speaker 3: Come, I don't care. I love that movie.

1971
01:44:20,040 --> 01:44:24,840
Speaker 1: Goes for JC, goes for me too. Well, Heigel, we

1972
01:44:24,920 --> 01:44:30,000
Speaker 1: really shook the pillars of heaven, didn't we deliver? To

1973
01:44:30,040 --> 01:44:35,120
Speaker 1: my best John Wayne via Kurt Russell inflection, the beer

1974
01:44:35,160 --> 01:44:38,000
Speaker 1: has been good and the cigarettes aren't stale. Thank you

1975
01:44:38,120 --> 01:44:40,960
Speaker 1: for sharing this beloved film of yours with me.

1976
01:44:42,520 --> 01:44:45,240
Speaker 2: When some wild eyed eight foot maniac grabs your neck,

1977
01:44:45,640 --> 01:44:47,960
Speaker 2: taps the back of your favorite head up against the

1978
01:44:48,000 --> 01:44:50,080
Speaker 2: barroom wall, and he looks you cook it in the

1979
01:44:50,080 --> 01:44:52,439
Speaker 2: eyes and ask you if you paid your dues, you

1980
01:44:52,520 --> 01:44:54,599
Speaker 2: just stare that big sucker right back in the eye,

1981
01:44:54,600 --> 01:44:56,519
Speaker 2: and you remember what old Jack Burton says at.

1982
01:44:56,439 --> 01:44:59,360
Speaker 3: Your time like that, Have you paid your dues? Jack?

1983
01:45:00,280 --> 01:45:04,360
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, the check is in the mail. This has

1984
01:45:04,400 --> 01:45:09,480
Speaker 2: been big trouble and too much information. I'm Alex Heigel.

1985
01:45:09,479 --> 01:45:45,519
Speaker 1: And I'm Jordan runtalg We'll catch it next Time. Too

1986
01:45:45,600 --> 01:45:47,880
Speaker 1: Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

1987
01:45:48,120 --> 01:45:51,360
Speaker 2: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk.

1988
01:45:51,520 --> 01:45:54,360
Speaker 1: The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

1989
01:45:54,640 --> 01:45:57,519
Speaker 2: The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan run

1990
01:45:57,560 --> 01:45:58,920
Speaker 2: Talk and Alex Heigel.

1991
01:45:58,760 --> 01:46:01,160
Speaker 5: With original music by That Apple Bomb and the Ghost

1992
01:46:01,240 --> 01:46:01,960
Speaker 5: Funk Orchestra.

1993
01:46:02,320 --> 01:46:04,360
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave

1994
01:46:04,400 --> 01:46:07,360
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts and iHeartRadio, visit the

1995
01:46:07,400 --> 01:46:10,680
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1996
01:46:10,720 --> 01:46:11,439
Speaker 1: favorite shows