Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us today. And that's okay because
Speaker 2: we're just gonna be sitting around rapping about one of
Speaker 2: our favorite things to talk about.
Speaker 1: That is movies. Let's go to the movies.
Speaker 2: You had a little Katherine Hepburn thing going on there,
Speaker 2: ethel Merman, it was Katherine Hepburn singing ethel Murmy. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's how I think that. Yeah, we are going to
Speaker 2: go to the movies, Chuck, and in particular specific kind
Speaker 2: of movie that the more I dug into, the more
Speaker 2: I realize is one of my favorite types of movies.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, disaster movies. I had no idea, but
Speaker 2: remember we were talking. This whole thing was kicked off
Speaker 2: by me watching The Day After Tomorrow a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, And I was like, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: one of my favorite movies. And the reason why is
Speaker 2: because I love disaster movies. Love them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like a lot of these. It's not my
Speaker 1: favorite gen overall, but like I found myself saying like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, that was pretty good. I like that all right,
Speaker 1: But generally, if we're in this, this is a subgenre
Speaker 1: of action movies, and I think I prefer action movies
Speaker 1: overall more than disaster movies.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well, yeah, we'll get into that because
Speaker 2: it is a subgenre of action, and that makes a
Speaker 2: lot of sense. Disaster movies are packed with action, and
Speaker 2: there are some that are like, Okay, this is definitely
Speaker 2: a disaster film, like The Towering Inferno.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'd be okay, But then.
Speaker 2: There's also movies like Speed, and Speed checks off a
Speaker 2: lot of the boxes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not a disaster movie.
Speaker 2: You would not call it a disaster movie, even though
Speaker 2: it really could. If you really wedged it in there,
Speaker 2: it will qualify. But there's just a couple of little
Speaker 2: things that are different that make it definitely an action movie.
Speaker 2: And then you have other ones like The Birds. Alfred
Speaker 2: Hitchcock's The.
Speaker 1: Birds not a disaster movie to me.
Speaker 2: It ends up on lists. It's part of the animal
Speaker 2: attack subgenre of disaster films, which is a subgenre of action. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I'm sure you did the same thing
Speaker 1: when reading off some of these. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: it just a gut feeling sometimes and you can't say
Speaker 1: exactly what it is that you feel personally like doesn't count,
Speaker 1: but someone you know, someone else might think it counts.
Speaker 1: It's not like this is something you can say is
Speaker 1: very cut and dry, you know, right.
Speaker 2: And because of that, I looked everywhere on the internet
Speaker 2: to try to cobble together this list of like basically
Speaker 2: the basic defining characteristics of disaster films. Yeah, and it
Speaker 2: was hard. Nobody's ever seen sat down and said here
Speaker 2: they are right. People have kind of piecemeal but people
Speaker 2: don't talk that much about disaster films, which I find sad.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe this can be that, and maybe you can,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, start a website. Josh defines disaster
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: I'll just put this article on there and that'll do that,
Speaker 2: all right?
Speaker 1: Should we go through some of these? Because you did
Speaker 1: a bang up job, thank you. The first thing you
Speaker 1: needed in a disaster movie is a disaster. Sure, but
Speaker 1: this can be a lot of different things. A lot
Speaker 1: of time it's a human made thing. Then that varies
Speaker 1: from climate change movies, which we've seen a lot more
Speaker 1: of lately, to like pandemics. And sometimes I get, like
Speaker 1: I guess some things like Towering Inferno or a bit
Speaker 1: of a mashup, because you can have like the thread
Speaker 1: of a structural collapse, so that is a human made thing,
Speaker 1: but it might be brought upon by like a fire
Speaker 1: or flood or something. Yes, there's overlap.
Speaker 2: Nobody said you can pin down disaster movies pretty easily.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: What else there's like, extraterrestrial is a big one. It
Speaker 2: can be an alien attack, it can be a comet
Speaker 2: or an asteroid headed toward Earth. Yeah, transportation is huge. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people love screwing up like cruise ships and trains and
Speaker 2: boats and airplanes love it. And then one of the
Speaker 2: other things about it too, The disaster is ongoing, right,
Speaker 2: so it's not like the people survive a five minute
Speaker 2: earthquake and then the rest of the movie they all
Speaker 2: like go out to dinner and everything's fine. They spend
Speaker 2: the rest of the movie negotiating all the problems that
Speaker 2: that disaster created, So they're they're negotiating sub disasters. Or
Speaker 2: it can be like an ongoing disaster like a flood
Speaker 2: or something like that. Like that can happen the entire movie,
Speaker 2: but one way or another, the entire movie takes place
Speaker 2: over some sort of disaster and all of its after effects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, impending or in in what.
Speaker 2: In Oh that's a good point too. Yeah, sometimes there's
Speaker 2: a lot of lead up to.
Speaker 1: It, Yeah exactly. But what am I looking for in process?
Speaker 1: In progress? Sure? No, good lord, it's usually a pretty
Speaker 1: large disaster, and for me this is like can be
Speaker 1: a real big differentiator in my personal opinion. But again
Speaker 1: it's a gut check. Like sometimes if it's just a
Speaker 1: local thing to me, I'm like, well, that's not really
Speaker 1: disaster movie because it has to be more big and
Speaker 1: sweeping to truly qualify. But then sometimes it is sort
Speaker 1: of a smaller thing, and I feel like it does qualify.
Speaker 1: So like in the case of you know, like a
Speaker 1: bridge collapse or a collapse tunnel, or like Daylight Stallone's
Speaker 1: movie about the when that one of the New York
Speaker 1: tunnels was collapsing or collapse, Like, I considered that a
Speaker 1: disaster movie. So I'm like contradicting myself. And that's what
Speaker 1: makes this all fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one end of the spectrum, the world can actually
Speaker 2: be ending then to be the premis or like you said,
Speaker 2: a little tunnel collapse, the rest of the world just
Speaker 2: going on business as you care. Exactly let them die,
Speaker 2: like that guy an airplane.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. What happened.
Speaker 2: There was like a debate TV show, like on the
Speaker 2: News or something like that, and one was like, we
Speaker 2: need to take better care of people in the FAA
Speaker 2: has to step it up, and the other guy was
Speaker 2: presenting counterpoint. He was like, I say, let them die.
Speaker 2: It's way funnier in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously, surviving the disaster is a big part of
Speaker 1: the plot point. We know some people won't make it
Speaker 1: out alive, but usually, like most of the A list cast,
Speaker 1: will make it out alive unless they're really trying to
Speaker 1: pull one over on you in a scream sort of way.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you tease something just now. Some people will
Speaker 2: definitely not survive. And one of the things about disaster
Speaker 2: movies is all you have to do is basically see
Speaker 2: one and the next one. Maybe you don't even need
Speaker 2: to see a second one. You can pick out very
Speaker 2: quickly who's going to die, yeah, who's going to live?
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because the stereotypes are pervasive
Speaker 2: in disaster movies, like you have like the dumb, brawny
Speaker 2: guy or you know, a smart scientist damsels in distress.
Speaker 2: Like to this day, disaster movies are sexist. I could
Speaker 2: not come up with a single disaster movie where the
Speaker 2: hero was a woman, not a single one. In all
Speaker 2: the decades of disaster movies. It's men. Most of the
Speaker 2: main characters and leads are men. Yeah, and the woman
Speaker 2: is basically there to essentially be saved and maybe help
Speaker 2: out some Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess more recently they may throw your
Speaker 1: bone with like a woman as president, but then she's
Speaker 1: like commissioning the team of men to usually solve the problem.
Speaker 2: Good point, right, So you know very quickly who the
Speaker 2: hero is, But there's also plenty of other people who
Speaker 2: you're like, I think they're going to live, and you
Speaker 2: can really kind of cut them into three moral categories good, bad,
Speaker 2: and redeemable. Yeah, and redeemable can be like the guy's
Speaker 2: ex wife's new boyfriend who you hate, but really he
Speaker 2: actually turns out to be a good guy. He probably dies,
Speaker 2: but he'll die a good, noble death. He could also
Speaker 2: not die and become like a sidekick. And then there's
Speaker 2: like the shady rich people, often the people who are
Speaker 2: responsible for the disaster through like their greed or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: MM hmm.
Speaker 2: You know they're going to die a very bad death.
Speaker 2: And the point is like it's a really simplistic way
Speaker 2: of looking at humans, and I think that's one of
Speaker 2: the reassuring things about it that make them enjoyable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I think we would be remiss
Speaker 1: if we didn't bring up a little bit of a
Speaker 1: prickly topic for our African American listeners. It has long
Speaker 1: been a movie trope in horror movies, disaster movies or whatever,
Speaker 1: where the black characters will die almost certainly and usually first,
Speaker 1: and that has such a trope it's become a joke
Speaker 1: and lampooned in like you know, the parody movies and stuff.
Speaker 1: But we have to mention that and what I'm curious about,
Speaker 1: and hopefully we'll hear from some of our listeners if
Speaker 1: that has now become so ridiculous and crossed over to
Speaker 1: where it's now just sort of funny and expected and
Speaker 1: a movie thing and not like truly upsetting. Right, So
Speaker 1: I'm curious how our African American listeners feel about this
Speaker 1: at this point in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's usually about as many black characters as there
Speaker 2: are women characters in disaster movies. Yeah, but like you said, similarly,
Speaker 2: they're often the president, like Morgan Freeman or Danny Glover
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 1: I'd vote for Morgan Freeman, yeah.
Speaker 2: For sure. But I heard the reason. You know he
Speaker 2: wears those diamond studs in his ears all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's been rocking those for a while.
Speaker 2: I heard the reason why. This is an old pirates
Speaker 2: thing where you wear some sort of jewelry or whatever
Speaker 2: so that if you die away from home, you have
Speaker 2: enough currency or value or something on you to pay
Speaker 2: for your funeral.
Speaker 1: That's why he does that.
Speaker 2: That's what I heard.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes you want to vote for him even more. Huh.
Speaker 1: I just want to hear that State of the Union.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever speech he's delivering, it would be really smooth.
Speaker 1: I was going to try and bust out of Morgan Freeman,
Speaker 1: but I just I think I would embarrass myself. I've
Speaker 1: never tried, so it's never good to launch into your
Speaker 1: first attempt live on the air.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe we'll workshop it off air.
Speaker 1: Well, we have to talk about the hero. The hero
Speaker 1: most times is not like a typical hero. It's usually
Speaker 1: in every man kind of character who just like Armageddon
Speaker 1: for instance. You know, they put together a rough and
Speaker 1: tumble team, you know, Dirty dozen style. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: bunch of like elite problem solvers. It's they were like
Speaker 1: oil rig guys, right, like drillers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they weren't even astronauts for Pete's sake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had to train them. I only saw armagedon once,
Speaker 1: so I'm pulling a lot of this from distant memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm more a deep impact dude.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's what I heard.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely certain I've
Speaker 2: ever seen Armageddon.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, it was okay, it was fairly you know, schlocky,
Speaker 1: big budget sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: You just described almost every single disaster movie you ever made,
Speaker 2: and the response too, your judgment of it, almost every
Speaker 2: single disaster movie you ever made. Like, they don't get
Speaker 2: you to jump off off the couch at the end
Speaker 2: and scream Bravo or Encore. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: You just kind of like them. They're just kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's summer movie popcorn. Fair. I still love
Speaker 1: these kind of movies. I think there's a place for
Speaker 1: all kinds of movies, and I still love going to
Speaker 1: the theater and seeing these sort of big budget like
Speaker 1: it probably isn't a great film, but it might be
Speaker 1: a fun movie. Right.
Speaker 2: So within these the structure, these constrictions, people have learned
Speaker 2: over the years how to kind of play with them
Speaker 2: and make new forms of disaster films. And a really
Speaker 2: good example, I think so we said that either a
Speaker 2: big disaster affects tons of people or a small disaster
Speaker 2: affects a little amount of people. Something that kind of
Speaker 2: combines the two is Leave the World Behind Ethan Hawk movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know that one.
Speaker 2: Oh it's great. It was on Netflix, Ethan Hawk and
Speaker 2: Julia Roberts. So basically there's a cyber attack that just
Speaker 2: causes civilization to essentially collapse, but we're just following like
Speaker 2: two families who are kind of having to figure out
Speaker 2: what to do and what's.
Speaker 1: Going on and all of that approach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was definitely worth seeing. And then
Speaker 2: other ones, rather than having kind of a schlocky humor
Speaker 2: that really started to develop in the late seventies and
Speaker 2: then it kind of turned in to like quips, I
Speaker 2: guess in the nineties. Yeah, there's some very very serious
Speaker 2: ones too, like the impossible, not a schlocky depiction of
Speaker 2: the two thousand and four Indian Ocean tsunami.
Speaker 1: It's incredible movie though, it is.
Speaker 2: It's so it's probably the most realistic film I've ever
Speaker 2: seen in my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I remember, I think I remember when
Speaker 1: it came out. We might have even talked about that
Speaker 1: on the air at some point when we did the
Speaker 1: tsunami episode with the how they recreated that was just
Speaker 1: herrowing exactly.
Speaker 2: So that's disaster films in a nutshell. And I feel
Speaker 2: like we could probably take a break here and then
Speaker 2: come back and talk about the history of disaster films.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Let's do it.
Speaker 2: So Unlike some other things, disaster films are one of
Speaker 2: those things you can explore and find that there's an
Speaker 2: actual beginning and it's not like this thing developed over time.
Speaker 2: There were disaster films because there's these definitions, these characteristics
Speaker 2: that you have to have. There were films along the
Speaker 2: way that just happened to have those, And the first
Speaker 2: one was Deluge from nineteen thirty three, where if you
Speaker 2: watch it, there's a several minutes of New York City
Speaker 2: being destroyed by a tsunami and it's pretty impressive for
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: Three, Yeah, for sure. And it also sort of as
Speaker 1: we'll see, and usually they're the schlockier ones. But you
Speaker 1: get a lot of these one word title disaster movies, right,
Speaker 1: especially in the seventies, but then again, as we'll see
Speaker 1: in the nineties, resurgent things like tornado, flood stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you put an exclamation point at the ada of
Speaker 2: a natural disaster or a force of nature in your set.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know, I didn't know any of these
Speaker 1: early early ones, but one from nineteen thirty six. It
Speaker 1: was called San Francisco, right, yep, and it was made
Speaker 1: thirty years after the nineteen oh six earthquake and about
Speaker 1: that earthquake.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's also apparently people break into song in
Speaker 2: it here or there, so it's sometimes listed as a
Speaker 2: musical drama.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's another one called Old Chicago, about the eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: one Chicago fire that came in nineteen thirty eight. Titanic
Speaker 2: apparently was a favorite subject of early disaster films and
Speaker 2: actually stayed that way over time. Yeah, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: until nuclear anxieties really started to develop as the Cold
Speaker 2: War picked up and it was reflected in movies that
Speaker 2: people started imagining what would happen if all these nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons went off? Yeah, that actually kind of created the
Speaker 2: first crop of what you could really point to was
Speaker 2: the Earth disaster films.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like the ones as we know it
Speaker 1: in the early sixties. Voyage to the Bottom of the
Speaker 1: Sea was one in sixty one when a nuke powered
Speaker 1: sub that was radiation fire coming from space. They were
Speaker 1: going to bomb that radiation fire from below. Like anytime
Speaker 1: you're using a nuclear bomb to you know, launch it
Speaker 1: into a disaster, Like, I feel like that's happened a
Speaker 1: couple of times at.
Speaker 2: Least, sure for sure. What else? There's the day the
Speaker 2: Earth caught fire?
Speaker 1: Not a good sidy.
Speaker 2: No, that kind of wondered what would happen if a
Speaker 2: couple of nuclear bomb tests that happened to be carried
Speaker 2: out simultaneously by the US and the Soviet Union, what
Speaker 2: would happen? And they said, oh, well, probably the Earth's
Speaker 2: axis would be shifted and we would be knocked out
Speaker 2: of orbit and we would start heading toward the Sun.
Speaker 2: That is cut and dry disaster plot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Also in the sixties we had crack
Speaker 1: in the world and for me, one of the great
Speaker 1: movie of all time. Panic and Year Zero such a
Speaker 1: great title.
Speaker 2: It is a great title. And then of course The
Speaker 2: Birds an undisputed disaster film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I take issue with that. The Knight of Living
Speaker 1: Dead is listed that is not a disaster movie.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a great question, because is a zombie apocalypse
Speaker 2: that a handful of survivors have to survive and negotiate.
Speaker 2: That's an ongoing disaster. You have a group of people
Speaker 2: from different walks of life sometimes stereotype coming together. Yeah,
Speaker 2: their lives intersect through this disaster. Yeah, and then they
Speaker 2: have to survive. Some people do, some people don't. There's
Speaker 2: a hero I mean in that sense, Night of the
Speaker 2: Living Dead definitely qualifies. World War Z would qualify Nope. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that there's like a I mean, there's room
Speaker 2: for debate there. Like those could also be horror monster
Speaker 2: movies too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I consider those sub gens. I think as soon
Speaker 1: as you add any zombie, it becomes something else, something
Speaker 1: else entirely. That's again, these are all just my dumb opinions.
Speaker 2: Did you see god Zilla Minus one?
Speaker 1: No, but I've heard a lot about it. Is it
Speaker 1: garbage or great.
Speaker 2: No, it's great. Oh it has a great plot, great acting,
Speaker 2: great dialogue, and then the action sequences unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I gotta check that out.
Speaker 2: Then it's a really good movie. Again, is it a
Speaker 2: disaster movie? If you add Godzilla? I don't know. I
Speaker 2: could make it a monster movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see what Chuck says, Chuck, monster movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, it is officially a monster movie.
Speaker 1: Then. Well, you know I did host a movie show
Speaker 1: for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: I know you did. That's why I deferred to you.
Speaker 1: That makes me an expert. The seventies is when really
Speaker 1: things start get cooking with all manner of disaster movies,
Speaker 1: from things like The Andromeda Strain in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: you know, a Michael Crichton novel, so one of his
Speaker 1: early novels. It was adapted.
Speaker 2: I tried to watch that the other day, and the
Speaker 2: animal torture, I yea, get past man.
Speaker 1: That's when they just didn't care about depicting that stuff
Speaker 1: with any kind of tenderness at all.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, I stopped the movie and went and
Speaker 2: looked it up, like, did they actually kill this monkey
Speaker 2: and these rats?
Speaker 1: Did they?
Speaker 2: And no, luckily they did not and the ASPCA was
Speaker 2: on hand and signed off on it. But what they
Speaker 2: did was they suffocated it with carbon dioxide until it
Speaker 2: passed out, and then the moment it passed out, they
Speaker 2: cut and then they revived it. But that that monkey
Speaker 2: was still suffering from this phyxiation during that those moments
Speaker 2: where they filmed it. It's awful.
Speaker 1: Did someone do mouth the monkey resuscitation?
Speaker 2: Well, there's this, there's this when the monkey dies. If
Speaker 2: you look closely before they cut, there's a shadow of
Speaker 2: somebody moving toward it. All righty to be serious, So
Speaker 2: I think they used a little tiny oxygen mask to revive.
Speaker 2: Oh god, but it's yeah, I mean that makes it
Speaker 2: a little better. And that they didn't kill them, but
Speaker 2: they still tortured them. So I couldn't finish that movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't blame me. I never saw it, but
Speaker 1: I remember that kind of as a holdover, you know,
Speaker 1: came out here I was born, so but I remember
Speaker 1: it just being a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So okay, yes, you said we started off with
Speaker 2: their drama Streen.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean Airport was in nineteen seventy and
Speaker 1: that's the one that you know kicked off a huge
Speaker 1: I mean it had sequels. It led to Airport seventy five,
Speaker 1: Airport seventy seven, and then Concord Colon Airport seventy nine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which all eventually led to Airplane. As I mean, that
Speaker 1: had to be the first spoof, right, like disaster spoof.
Speaker 2: That's as far as I could tell, unless I would
Speaker 2: qualify or include Attack of the Killer Tomatoes as a
Speaker 2: disaster spoof. And I'm not sure if that came out
Speaker 2: before or after Airplane.
Speaker 1: I think it was before. But Airport was a very
Speaker 1: lauded film. It got ten Oscar nods. It actually won
Speaker 1: Helen Hayes one for supporting actress it. And this is
Speaker 1: something that we'll see over and over again. Most of
Speaker 1: these movies they make a huge, huge return on even
Speaker 1: if they cost a lot to make, Like that costs
Speaker 1: ten million bucks in nineteen seventy, which was a lot, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it brought in one hundred million dollars in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so that really caught the attention to the
Speaker 2: studio bosses. They're like, let's do that again. And like
Speaker 2: you said, there were three sequels to it. This is
Speaker 2: probably one of my favorite movie franchises. I would Yeah,
Speaker 2: I would make the case that the sequels, at least
Speaker 2: the first two sequels are better than the original. I
Speaker 2: didn't see any of these, they're so great. I watched
Speaker 2: seventy seven and seventy nine in the last twenty four hours. Really,
Speaker 2: I love them so much. And Airport seventy five is
Speaker 2: probably the best of the bunch.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll check that out. And Airport seventy seven,
Speaker 1: of course brings in the Bermuda Triangle, because I think
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven was peak Bermuda Triangle paranoia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And then that concord, the Airport seventy nine.
Speaker 2: The concord, it's people keep shooting missiles at it. They
Speaker 2: have to take like evasive action, and you're like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is definitely when the genre really started to die
Speaker 2: or died it had already started. But one of the
Speaker 2: big things that Airport ticked off, in addition to eye
Speaker 2: popping box office returns, was that huge cast of like
Speaker 2: where you recognize every single person, especially I mean if
Speaker 2: you were alive at the time, in an adult at
Speaker 2: the time, you would recognize everybody in there. Sometimes there
Speaker 2: are cameos, and what they were following Airport was based
Speaker 2: on a novel by Arthur Hailey, and he had written Hotel.
Speaker 2: One of his things was a ton of different characters
Speaker 2: whose lives kind of intersect in this issue or this
Speaker 2: problem or this disaster. So basically, Arthur Hailey, the novelist,
Speaker 2: in invertently it invented the disaster film through like his format.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know they movie post respect then reflected
Speaker 1: that too, because I remember stuff like Towering Inferno. They
Speaker 1: would be the more artistic like the inferno, the you know,
Speaker 1: the building on fire, but then like at the top
Speaker 1: of the bottom, they would literally just have like frames
Speaker 1: of people's faces of the cast, like just tagged on there,
Speaker 1: like look at all these all the star power.
Speaker 2: Right, and as time went on, the stars got a
Speaker 2: little schlockier. In Concord, Charro makes a hilarious one minute
Speaker 2: cameo Oka JJ Walker is one of the major minor
Speaker 2: characters that smokes grass the whole time. Okay, I think
Speaker 2: in Earthquake, which we'll talk about in a second, Walter
Speaker 2: Mathow makes this inexplicable cameo a few times where he's
Speaker 2: dressed like a seventies pimp with a curly wig and everything,
Speaker 2: and he's drunk out of his mind.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's his character.
Speaker 2: Like, they were definitely known for cameos, but yeah, those sweeping,
Speaker 2: huge casts of generally A List and then former A
Speaker 2: List stars. That was a big hallmark of disaster films
Speaker 2: that came around in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, they're trying to appeal to a broad demographic,
Speaker 1: so they would definitely bring back, like some of the
Speaker 1: stars from like the Golden Age of Hollywood when they
Speaker 1: were in their later years would be in these, Like
Speaker 1: Fred Astaire was in one of them, right, Yes, I
Speaker 1: can't remember.
Speaker 2: I think he might have been in the Towering Inferno.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, they're clearly trying to appeal to
Speaker 1: all age groups. Another thing a lot of these had
Speaker 1: in common, at least in the nineteen seventies was a
Speaker 1: man named Erwin Allen, the Master of Disaster. He came
Speaker 1: up in the nineteen fifties, but he really hit his
Speaker 1: stride in the seventies with things like The Poseidon Adventure
Speaker 1: aforementioned Towering Inferno. Each of those was the top box
Speaker 1: office hit of their respective years. Poseidon Adventure very famously
Speaker 1: was about an ocean liner that flips upside down and
Speaker 1: sinks basically, so everybody is upside down on this boat,
Speaker 1: on the ship trying to trying to get out while
Speaker 1: they're underwater. Pretty great, yep.
Speaker 2: And it's a bunch of different people who are stereotypes
Speaker 2: from different walks of life who are laid out to
Speaker 2: safety by in every man in this case of priest
Speaker 2: named Gene Hackman, hal the character's name, that's actor's name.
Speaker 2: That'd be pretty coincidental that you had played a character
Speaker 2: by named Gene Hackman.
Speaker 1: Such a brutal tragic very upsetting and for such a
Speaker 1: wonderful person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, upsetting is definitely a good word for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't stop thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you should probably try to. I think that would
Speaker 2: be for the.
Speaker 1: Best I know, towering it for and O of course,
Speaker 1: you know we mentioned there was a fire. If you
Speaker 1: don't know this movie, you should check it out for sure.
Speaker 1: It's one of the good ones. But faulty wiring of
Speaker 1: course makes it catch fire. People are trapped at the top.
Speaker 1: But you've also got you know, sometimes they can work
Speaker 1: in other mini disasters within it, and that's the case
Speaker 1: here where there's a flood scene because they're trying to
Speaker 1: douse the fire and then all of a sudden, you've
Speaker 1: got a flood to reckon with.
Speaker 2: That's like a prestige disaster film. They played it straight ahead,
Speaker 2: there's no shlock to it. The cast was just amazing,
Speaker 2: and they did something that would be picked up again
Speaker 2: in like the nineties and then today's disaster films, where
Speaker 2: they had two heroes you kind of have to work together.
Speaker 2: One was Paul Newman, who played the architect of this
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty five floor skyscraper. Yeah, just totally
Speaker 2: fictional at the time, especially, Yeah, and then Steve McQueen
Speaker 2: was this fire chief and they had to work together
Speaker 2: to figure out how to get the people out of
Speaker 2: this building and keep the quench the fire.
Speaker 1: Man McQueen and Paul Newman. Does it get any better
Speaker 1: than that?
Speaker 2: Not really? Maybe Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: whance kid.
Speaker 1: Oh Yeah, that was great.
Speaker 2: Okay. So yes, if you see one disaster movie, see
Speaker 2: The Towering Inferno.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. If you want to see one that's kind
Speaker 1: of super slocky. If you want to go down that avenue,
Speaker 1: you could start with Earthquake from nineteen seventy four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Old Charlton Heston was in that one. People are in
Speaker 1: this case again trapped in a skyscraper once again, but
Speaker 1: this time it's an earthquake. A lot of you know,
Speaker 1: when you see these earthquake moves, they're always shaking the camera.
Speaker 1: But what's funny is if you ever see them being shot,
Speaker 1: obviously nothing is moving except the camera, so the people
Speaker 1: are all just going whoa on just you know, solid grounds.
Speaker 2: It's always fun So Earthquake did not really mean to
Speaker 2: be schlocky. It just kind of ended up being schlocky.
Speaker 1: They did a great job of doing it unintentionally.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't the film that like led to the
Speaker 2: end of the seventies boom, but it was definitely one
Speaker 2: of the early signals that this is not this party's
Speaker 2: not gonna last forever. And it's a good movie. I
Speaker 2: watched it last night, No, I watched it early this morning,
Speaker 2: and Charlton Heston, who's a regular in these disaster movies,
Speaker 2: he did great. Everyone did really good in it. It
Speaker 2: was just some of the premises and then also some
Speaker 2: of the special effects. Like there's a scene where the
Speaker 2: earthquake tremors are rocking the street in La Yeah, and
Speaker 2: they're just pushing over the facades so you can see
Speaker 2: that it's just this cardboard facade coming down. Stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And then there's a very famous elevator scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a weirdtube.
Speaker 2: It drops like all the way down, killing everyone inside.
Speaker 2: But the way they show the impact is they just
Speaker 2: freeze the frame and then some animated blood splatters across
Speaker 2: the screen for some reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks it looks really really bad and is
Speaker 1: so abrupting, jarring and weird. But it's, like I said,
Speaker 1: that part is on YouTube if you just you know,
Speaker 1: type in Earthquake movie elevator scene.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's so good. You know, it's a good scene if
Speaker 1: someone is taking the time to clip it out and
Speaker 1: put it on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it is definitely worth But Okay, you want
Speaker 2: to take a break now and come back and talk
Speaker 2: about the end of the seventies or push on through
Speaker 2: until the nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's maybe push on and then we'll stop at
Speaker 1: the nineties.
Speaker 2: Okay, sounds good. So, like I said, it was kind
Speaker 2: of clear fairly early on that this wasn't gonna last forever,
Speaker 2: and I definitely did not make it out of the decade.
Speaker 2: It really kind of came to it ugly and starting
Speaker 2: around nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, one person's great disaster movie is
Speaker 1: another person's shlock. It all kind of depends because some
Speaker 1: of the ones listed here is sort of being the
Speaker 1: lazier versions. Avalanche and Meteor are that's not one movie
Speaker 1: that would be pretty great though. Actually sure it'd be
Speaker 1: Media or then Avalanche probably, but those are two different movies.
Speaker 1: The Hindenburg I thought that was okay from being a
Speaker 1: kid and watching it. I haven't revisited. But then Roller Coaster,
Speaker 1: I as a child loved, loved that movie about a terrorist.
Speaker 1: It's you know, again, I don't know if it holds up,
Speaker 1: but it's about a terrorist that's going to blow up
Speaker 1: a roller coaster. You know, he's targeting amusement park.
Speaker 2: So are the people on the roller coaster like having
Speaker 2: to go on it or stay on it over and
Speaker 2: over again, like it can't stop or something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Oh, but like there's the bombers
Speaker 1: in the park and I just you know, I'm having
Speaker 1: these fleeting memories. It's probably terrible, but you know, as
Speaker 1: a you know, ten or eleven year old, it was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got you. And then there's Flood with an
Speaker 2: exclamation point.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Laura who helped us with this, who
Speaker 2: came up with this list of lazily named disaster movies,
Speaker 2: kind of like they were phoning it in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, roller Coaster isn't the best name.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'm gonna watch that one though. All right,
Speaker 2: But a lot of people who think about this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff point to The Swarm from nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 2: as the one that was like, yeah, this is over.
Speaker 2: Not only was this over, but Irwin Allen's career was
Speaker 2: over because he had not one, not two, but three
Speaker 2: disaster film flops from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: and that really ended the boom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty much the Swarm kind of. I
Speaker 1: don't know if Nicholas Cage if they were referencing or
Speaker 1: paying homage to that with the bees thing later in
Speaker 1: The Wicker Man. It became a very popular meme the bees.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't know.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, from Nicholas Cage. But in this movie, in
Speaker 1: The Swarm, there's a pilot that yells bees, bees, millions.
Speaker 2: Of bees, right, and the bees take down an air
Speaker 2: force helicopter.
Speaker 1: Of course they do.
Speaker 2: And the way that they're overcome is somebody figures out how.
Speaker 2: I think it's Michael Caine leading the cast. He's the hero.
Speaker 2: He figures out that they can lead these bees out
Speaker 2: to an oil slick in the ocean and then set
Speaker 2: the oil slick on fire and no more bees.
Speaker 1: That's hey, I think that's a pretty decent, you know,
Speaker 1: disaster movie solution.
Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough. But I was reading a criticism of
Speaker 2: that movie by Tyler Sage, I think, on a site
Speaker 2: called Ultimate Classic Rock of All Things, and Tyler Sage
Speaker 2: says that the cast seems either faintly embarrassed by the
Speaker 2: proceedings or confused about what's supposed to be actually happening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's all you need to know. Like, that's
Speaker 2: not supposed to happen in a movie, you.
Speaker 1: Know, No, it's not. So Alan had a black mark
Speaker 1: on his record with that With a Swarm and then
Speaker 1: Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, they tried to recapture that magic
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine movie released seven years later, even
Speaker 1: though it took place the very next day of the
Speaker 1: original movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was Michael Kane too, but also Sally Field,
Speaker 2: Telly Savalis, Peter Boyle, and like, if you're cast like that,
Speaker 2: can't keep a movie, Yeah, like make it good, then
Speaker 2: there's something really wrong with it.
Speaker 1: Oh I thought you were about to say afloat.
Speaker 2: You almost did, and then I was like, no, Josh,
Speaker 2: do not say that.
Speaker 1: He did produce perhaps one of the worst entries Irwin
Speaker 1: Allen did of the genre with I don't think it
Speaker 1: was his swan song, but it was definitely the end.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty a movie called When Time Ran Out
Speaker 1: that did have Paul Newman. It was about a volcano
Speaker 1: at an island resort, but he was very much forced
Speaker 1: into this movie because of his contract. I don't think
Speaker 1: he had all wanted to make it. They cut the
Speaker 1: budget Warner Brothers did, so they didn't even have the
Speaker 1: money to make it look okay, and it was just
Speaker 1: it was really bad. There's a pretty good quote in
Speaker 1: here too.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, that the eruption when it finally comes, is
Speaker 2: a wonderfully cheesy amalgam of wobbly back projection, bathtub title
Speaker 2: wave and scared expressions from the cast.
Speaker 1: Oh man.
Speaker 2: So then because of all this, because these movies has
Speaker 2: got worse and worse, but then also like the high
Speaker 2: drama that was played straight, it was just ripe for parody.
Speaker 2: And like you said, Airplane was the one that you
Speaker 2: really don't need to mention any other parody. It's it
Speaker 2: as far as disaster film parodies go. It just completely
Speaker 2: captured it perfectly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that movie holds up pretty well. I have
Speaker 1: to say, it's still a fun watch, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think we've made it to the end of
Speaker 2: the seventies. The first real disaster boom has come and gone,
Speaker 2: and things quiet down throughout the eighties. And we'll let
Speaker 2: you think about this quietly through this ad break.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the resurgence of disaster movies in the nineteen nineties. And
Speaker 1: I may have mentioned it on this show before. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but this is one of my legendary predictions.
Speaker 1: My friend I can't remember it, but it was one
Speaker 1: of the very, very very early nineties disaster flicks came out.
Speaker 1: I wish I could have pinpointed which one it was,
Speaker 1: but I remember very distinctly at the time in college
Speaker 1: telling my friends, I was like you watch I was
Speaker 1: like they're going to start making all of these movies again,
Speaker 1: just like they did in the seventies, and there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a ton of disaster movies. And it literally happened
Speaker 1: like starting that year.
Speaker 2: Man, did you hear that from the Ghost standing in
Speaker 2: the middle of the street.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, that we've whispered it to you.
Speaker 1: It's probably pre Ghost. But yes, Sharknado, Jared from Subway,
Speaker 1: Hugh Jackman, and disaster movies the only four things I've
Speaker 1: ever predicted.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think some more are going to
Speaker 2: come to the four over the coming years.
Speaker 1: Chuck Stradamus could it could.
Speaker 2: Only have been one of just a few movies, because
Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was. Yeah, this whole, this
Speaker 2: nineties disaster boom started and peaked and within a two
Speaker 2: year period, and it got started off. You could say
Speaker 2: in retrospect it was started off by Outbreak, which came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen ninety five. It's an epidemic disaster movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that counts.
Speaker 2: I think most people don't point to that and say
Speaker 2: that kicked it off. It's more like they say Twister
Speaker 2: or Independence Day in nineteen ninety six picked it off.
Speaker 2: And then yes, you would definitely lump Outbreak into it,
Speaker 2: but it was probably one of those two movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's there was a movie called Avalanche in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, so they were dabbling in that world, but
Speaker 1: it was not a big movie at all. As far
Speaker 1: as like capturing attention. I think Twister for sure, And
Speaker 1: that may have been the one actually where I was like,
Speaker 1: oh man, you because that is what I think of
Speaker 1: as like typical disaster. I don't I know this is controversial,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I put Independence Day in disaster movies.
Speaker 1: There's something about when you add like zombies or aliens
Speaker 1: and stuff, it just tweaks it slightly for me from
Speaker 1: classic disaster. But again just my opinion.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so even if you accept and not with
Speaker 2: an A, but at ex Independence Day from this list,
Speaker 2: then you still have Twister.
Speaker 1: I think it was Twister.
Speaker 2: I remember the entire country was talking about Twister.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's I famously said Emily's favorite movies of all
Speaker 1: time or every independent film ever made in Twister.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean it's a really good movie. Bill
Speaker 2: Paxson's amazing in it. Helen Hunt does great too, Like
Speaker 2: it's a good movie and One of the reasons I
Speaker 2: think that it did kick off that that second Boom
Speaker 2: and disaster movies was that you could take the disaster
Speaker 2: formula but then apply emerging CGI computer assisted special effects
Speaker 2: that were at the time. It was like, holy cow,
Speaker 2: we can do this now, like the White House being
Speaker 2: blown up by the alien ship and Independence Day, Like
Speaker 2: you just had not seen stuff like that before. This
Speaker 2: was all very new, and they were using it sparingly
Speaker 2: enough too that it didn't look fake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, it was like those are really great
Speaker 1: special effects. At the time, Twister looked really, really good.
Speaker 1: We should also mention too. I know we didn't go
Speaker 1: over this, but the it's just now occurring to me.
Speaker 1: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Twister is also a kind of
Speaker 1: a classic disaster movie trope character, which is sort of
Speaker 1: a side character to the guy in the Chair. You
Speaker 1: ever heard that, like the computer expert that just literally
Speaker 1: sits in a chair the entire movie and figure stuff out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and usually has a smart mouth always.
Speaker 1: This is sort of an adjacent thing though Philip Symore
Speaker 1: Hoffman's character, which is sort of he's not in a chair,
Speaker 1: but it's the wise, cracking, irreverent kind of you know,
Speaker 1: he's wearing the Hawaiian shirt when everyone else has on
Speaker 1: like tactical gear. That's you know, but super smart and
Speaker 1: figuring stuff out. I'm not sure what they call that
Speaker 1: in disaster movies, but it's their version of guy in
Speaker 1: the chair.
Speaker 2: I think. I don't think people have written enough about
Speaker 2: disaster movies for anyone to name it. So call them,
Speaker 2: call them what you want.
Speaker 1: A Hoffman.
Speaker 2: There you go. That's thet He was the Hoffman of
Speaker 2: the movie and maybe one of the first.
Speaker 1: We got to talk about Titanic. It's a disaster movie,
Speaker 1: but it's got so much story and romance. It's definitely
Speaker 1: a subgenre within it.
Speaker 2: I think Bill Paxson was in that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, b man, what a great guy.
Speaker 2: Oh I forgot he was gone.
Speaker 1: That was so sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was sad. So one of the other things too,
Speaker 2: that fueled this nineties resurgence of the disaster broom is
Speaker 2: that these movies, some of them Titanic, Independent, State, Twister,
Speaker 2: they're among the highest grossing films of all time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So just like in the seventies, studios were like, we
Speaker 2: can spend lavishly on a production, but we're still going
Speaker 2: to make back ten times or more what we put
Speaker 2: into it. So they're like, good, let's start making disaster films,
Speaker 2: and very quickly after some of these really creative original
Speaker 2: disaster films you could see in theaters virtually at the
Speaker 2: same time disaster films about the exact same topic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the thing for a little while. I
Speaker 1: think I was still getting Premier magazine at the time,
Speaker 1: and I remember they started writing about, you know, these
Speaker 1: product auctions being kind of out trying to outrace one
Speaker 1: another to get to the box office first, maybe to
Speaker 1: their disadvantage as a production. But very famously the two
Speaker 1: biggest examples, or I guess four are Armageddon in Deep Impact,
Speaker 1: about a meteor striking the earth, you know, to basically
Speaker 1: wipe out humanity, right, and then Dante's Peak and Volcano.
Speaker 1: Neither of those were that great.
Speaker 2: No to me, weren't. I don't was Volcano with Tommy
Speaker 2: Lee Jones? Is that the one?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And Ann Hesh Yeah, ip again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Dante's Peak was Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton.
Speaker 1: Oh, Linda Hamilton, that's right.
Speaker 2: And that's a really good example of like just how
Speaker 2: disaster films like minimize women and their contributions. Linda Hamilton
Speaker 2: was well known by this time as a female action star. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like she was in the Terminator movie. She was a
Speaker 2: total b a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sarah Connor.
Speaker 2: Right, and but and in this movie, apparently she's she's
Speaker 2: like a single mom who's totally dependent on Brosden to
Speaker 2: help her and her kids. She's like kind, she whimpers
Speaker 2: at times, like, Yeah, that's just one of the big
Speaker 2: problems with the genre. Like if you can just kind
Speaker 2: of hold your nose and make it through stuff like that,
Speaker 2: then you're you can enjoy them. But if you focus
Speaker 2: on things like that, you're probably not gonna like disaster films.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, What a waste of Linda Hamilton. What a shame.
Speaker 1: I got to shout out a few more that weren't
Speaker 1: listed here from the nineties Hard Rain, remember that one
Speaker 1: Christian Slater and Mini Driver. No, it was a it
Speaker 1: was a flood movie. But you know what was it about.
Speaker 1: It's about a very hard rain. Okay, I just won't
Speaker 1: stop raining. Friend shout out a friend of the show
Speaker 1: Mini Driver. Listen to her wonderful podcast on our own network.
Speaker 1: Many questions, very nice, I don't know if you remember
Speaker 1: this one Firestorm with NFL legend Howie Long. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the bad ones. I think he
Speaker 1: was a like a forest fire, like a fire jumper
Speaker 1: kind of guy.
Speaker 2: Are these ones you're shouting out sound like riff tracks? Candidates?
Speaker 1: They probably are? And then also some of the one
Speaker 1: word titles. There was a movie called Tornado. There was
Speaker 1: a TV movie called Tornado Warning that starred Jerald McCraney
Speaker 1: from Simon and Simon.
Speaker 2: Nice. I love that kid.
Speaker 1: There was another movie called Flood, a second movie called Flood,
Speaker 1: and then there was one from nineteen ninety nine, which
Speaker 1: is sort of when things started to peter out, called
Speaker 1: Storm with Luke Perry and Martin Sheen.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is that's some nineties casting is a mini
Speaker 2: driver in Christian Slater that screams nineties pretty.
Speaker 1: Hard too, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: But like you said, there's one other thing. The nineties
Speaker 2: definitely contributed to the hero scientists where it wasn't it
Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily some you know, tough dude. It was a
Speaker 2: guy who had the smarts to figure out how to
Speaker 2: deal with this or knew what was coming. That's another
Speaker 2: trope from Disaster films, especially now, Usually the hero is
Speaker 2: the only one who can see the impending disaster. You
Speaker 2: believe him, and then he ends up having to save
Speaker 2: everybody Else's took us because no one believed him and
Speaker 2: didn't take any measures to thwart the disaster from happening.
Speaker 1: Right, And once again you were saying he because all
Speaker 1: of these movies failed the Bechdel.
Speaker 2: Test for sure.
Speaker 1: And there's also a thing that pops up in the nineties,
Speaker 1: which was the like the rival scientist. If there was
Speaker 1: a hero scientist, a lot of times there was an
Speaker 1: ant well not anti hero, because that's still a hero.
Speaker 1: Just the anti scientist show was still a scientist. I'm
Speaker 1: clumsily working my way through this. But they thwart the hero.
Speaker 1: It's you know, like usually a government scientist or something,
Speaker 1: or maybe an official and they dismiss everything like that.
Speaker 1: The hero scientist is.
Speaker 2: Saying, right, that's it can also be a government official.
Speaker 2: Very frequently they get their come up, and pretty commonly
Speaker 2: in nineties on disaster movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you call it? Diehard? That's not a
Speaker 1: disaster movie, is it.
Speaker 2: I've seen it listed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it could be.
Speaker 2: To me, it's just a straight ahead action film.
Speaker 1: I totally agree, but it does splash Christmas movie.
Speaker 2: Like you would say, all the people in all the
Speaker 2: people in Nakotomy Plaza, that's a disaster to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the world's going.
Speaker 2: About its business as usual, but to them inside, they're
Speaker 2: in the midst of a disaster. They have to survive.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I think just I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think so. The same thing with Speed. In Speed, Keanu
Speaker 2: reads the hero was a.
Speaker 1: SWAT member, right, Not in every person right die.
Speaker 2: Hard John McClain. He's a cop, even though he's off
Speaker 2: his beat, he's still a cop. Like the hero has
Speaker 2: to be some sort of everyman who or may not
Speaker 2: possess some special sort of skills or knowledge that help
Speaker 2: him overcome this problem. And then his medal that he
Speaker 2: may not even have known that was there is tapped
Speaker 2: and he leads other people the safety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But you know, as the nineties wore
Speaker 1: on with things like Luke Perry's movie Rip once Again
Speaker 1: in ninety nine, things really kind of stopped. In the
Speaker 1: wake of nine to eleven. It just wasn't something that
Speaker 1: people wanted to see for a little while, so there
Speaker 1: was a lull. You knew it would come back. Early
Speaker 1: two thousands had a few of them here and there.
Speaker 1: There was one called the Core in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: where the inner core of the Earth ceases to rotate
Speaker 1: and scientists once again have to vomit to get that
Speaker 1: thing kickstarted, just like using the paddles in the er,
Speaker 1: right clear?
Speaker 2: Yeh? What was the two thousand and three So yeah,
Speaker 2: the very next year was the Day after Tomorrow, and that,
Speaker 2: to me is the bridge between the nineties YEA disaster
Speaker 2: films and the ones that kicked off in the twenty tens.
Speaker 1: Agreed, It is awesome.
Speaker 2: It's got a great cast. Scientists are the heroes. There's
Speaker 2: a bunch of different stuff going on. The world is
Speaker 2: being threatened. There's amazing special effects of things just going haywire.
Speaker 1: There's wolves.
Speaker 2: There's wolves, yep. And then that scene of the tsunami
Speaker 2: flooding New York. There's a shot that's the exact same
Speaker 2: shot in Deluge of the tsunami coming.
Speaker 1: To no interest.
Speaker 2: So I've read that it was probably an homage to that.
Speaker 1: Oh that's kind of cool. Yeah, so too. Two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine was a pretty big year, just when they
Speaker 1: really started to come back. You know pre twenty ten's
Speaker 1: with the movie the Mayan Calendar anxiety movie twenty twelve
Speaker 1: came out.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That was rolling emerick right, yes.
Speaker 2: No, But I mean, do you remember living in that
Speaker 2: time where people were actually like a little nervous about
Speaker 2: it was like y two k light.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean we did a podcast on it.
Speaker 2: We totally did.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if I remember correctly, we told everybody it's
Speaker 2: totally fine. The Maya Calendar doesn't actually say the world's
Speaker 2: gonna end, a new calendar starts.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we're all here right now. So thankfully
Speaker 1: that came true. Twenty twelve was not a great movie,
Speaker 1: but it did because of the scope of like just
Speaker 1: the world ending. They could be they could be like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's just do any disaster we want anywhere, all across
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: Not a great movie. I watched that one yesterday too.
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was very good.
Speaker 2: Oh I liked it a lot, I think to me,
Speaker 2: and I know you know this, but to me, twenty
Speaker 2: twelve is basically up there with The Towering Inferno as
Speaker 2: far as the best examples of a disaster film. Go, okay,
Speaker 2: there you go.
Speaker 1: My favorite disaster film is not listed here, but it
Speaker 1: is from the twenty tens. As far as being an
Speaker 1: actual great great film is Steven Soderberg's twenty eleven film Contagion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a good one.
Speaker 1: It is. I mean, it's a disaster movie, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't play like one because it is so realistically scary
Speaker 1: and doesn't have that sort of summer movie kind of
Speaker 1: schlocky appeal. But it's it's a disaster movie for sure.
Speaker 2: Did you like me detect a note of hostility when
Speaker 2: the medical examiner pulls Gwyneth Paltrow's face like roughly off
Speaker 2: of her skull during her autopsy?
Speaker 1: I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: It seemed like they that was gratuitous, like they there
Speaker 2: was like Soderberg had a problem with Gwyneth.
Speaker 1: Palkwyneth Paltrow maybe.
Speaker 2: So Yeah, that was a really good movie too, And
Speaker 2: that would be an example of some of the highbrow
Speaker 2: ones that started to come out in twenty ten, like,
Speaker 2: like we said, The Impossible, there was a Korean one
Speaker 2: called Pandora that came out in two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: about a nuclear meltdown. Solly about Captain Chelsea Stulemberger's landing
Speaker 2: in the Hudson River where not one person died. I
Speaker 2: have seen a plane I should say landed a plane.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was Hanks, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: He was in every single movie that was out at
Speaker 2: one point. I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he went through a string of playing real life
Speaker 1: characters here and there. That's right. Some of those weren't great,
Speaker 1: but I did like the one about the Somali pirates,
Speaker 1: Captain whatever his name.
Speaker 2: Was, Captain Hoffman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was it.
Speaker 2: So one of the other things that the two thousand
Speaker 2: and ten Onward Disaster films did was at the very
Speaker 2: least the studios figured out, like, hey, these are kind
Speaker 2: of like easily translated internationally, and we don't mean the
Speaker 2: dialogues translated easily, although it definitely is, yeah for sure,
Speaker 2: And because everything's so morally cut and dried, people anywhere
Speaker 2: can get what they're seeing, even though it's an American
Speaker 2: made film about Americans. But also in these movies that
Speaker 2: are like a worldwide catastrophe, you have the opportunity to
Speaker 2: take down landmarks all over the world. So in France
Speaker 2: they can see like the Eiffel Tower going down, they're like,
Speaker 2: whoa France, you know. And then one of the other
Speaker 2: things too. Is because of these huge, huge all star casts.
Speaker 2: You can easily cast foreign actors or actors who are
Speaker 2: really big in the country they hail from, and that'll
Speaker 2: up the box office too in the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all a formula. The Rock started being in
Speaker 1: a lot of these. That was one of the few
Speaker 1: moves I've ever walked out on was San Andreas in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen with Dwayne the Rock Johnson. I did not
Speaker 1: think it was very good at all. He followed that
Speaker 1: a few years later, you liked it.
Speaker 2: I didn't see it in theaters, though. I think if
Speaker 2: I had paid twenty bucks to see it, I probably
Speaker 2: would have been upset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he was in Skyscraper, not to be
Speaker 1: outdone by San Andreas, another not so great movie a
Speaker 1: few years later in twenty eighteen. But again, some people
Speaker 1: love all the Rocks stuff. Sure, it's just my dumb opinion.
Speaker 2: I had an idea or a thought that I wanted
Speaker 2: to share, Chuck, let's hear it about the twenty ten's boom.
Speaker 2: It didn't burn out in one decade. It's still they're
Speaker 2: still making straight ahead twenty ten style disaster films. And
Speaker 2: I was thinking that the reason why is because there's
Speaker 2: so many more studios now putting out so many different
Speaker 2: types of movies that it hasn't become a glut of
Speaker 2: so so movies, or even if there are so so
Speaker 2: disaster movies, there's still room to make other good ones
Speaker 2: rather than just three or four studios going all in
Speaker 2: on disaster films for the same few years.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, just spacing them out as you know, like
Speaker 1: just something you can return to. That's a pretty dependable release,
Speaker 1: but not like, hey, let's release nine of these in
Speaker 1: the next two years exactly.
Speaker 2: There's a wider variety. So it's been allowed to just
Speaker 2: kind of continue on, and in my opinion it's gotten better.
Speaker 2: Like Leave the World Behind was really good. The wave
Speaker 2: of Norwegian one that came out in twenty sixteen was
Speaker 2: like highly acclaimed. Don't look up, did you see that?
Speaker 2: The satire from Adam McKay, Yes, I did. It was
Speaker 2: pretty good. Actually liked it a lot. But it's it
Speaker 2: satirizes government and people not taking climate change seriously. But
Speaker 2: and it's a disaster film, but it's not a parody
Speaker 2: of disaster films, right, it uses disaster films to satirize
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is. That's an interesting take for sure.
Speaker 2: You know you got anything else?
Speaker 1: No, I feel like I need to watch more. I
Speaker 1: didn't actually watch any full disaster films again in preparation
Speaker 1: like you did. So this has inspired me to go
Speaker 1: back and watch some of those from the seventies that
Speaker 1: I never saw.
Speaker 2: Definitely watch Earthquake and watch Airport seventy.
Speaker 1: Five seventy five. And I still haven't seen Towering Inferno.
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely see that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, done, Okay, great.
Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck agreed to see some movies that I
Speaker 2: thought he should see, we've unlocked listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this follow up to morgana The Kissing Bandit. Hey,
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh and all that helped make your show awesome.
Speaker 1: My wife and I are longtime listeners, but first time writers.
Speaker 1: My wife Jennifer and I love having you entertain and educate.
Speaker 1: It especially on long distance trips with the family. You
Speaker 1: help keep us awake and focused, with a pleasant side
Speaker 1: effect of putting our five year old Ben and seven
Speaker 1: year old Eleanor asleep. That's great. I love it when
Speaker 1: we can lull children to sleep.
Speaker 2: We live to give.
Speaker 1: We are on spring break traveling to my in law's
Speaker 1: house right now and during the drive, one of our
Speaker 1: episodes we listened to was MORGANA The Kissing Bandit. When
Speaker 1: we arrived at our destination, to ask my father in
Speaker 1: law if he remembers her since he is the biggest
Speaker 1: sports enthusiast I know, Get this, dude, he said, of
Speaker 1: course he sees her all the time because she lives
Speaker 1: down the street. What you ended your podcast with the
Speaker 1: mention that you didn't know she was still alive and
Speaker 1: what happened to her? And we wanted to let you
Speaker 1: know she's still alive and enjoying retirement with a full
Speaker 1: life that is and cherry on top. This is written
Speaker 1: to us by John Ritter.
Speaker 2: Wow, my mind is coming apart of the seams right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe best listener mail ever, so big Hello to
Speaker 1: John Ridder and you're wife, Jennifer and Ben and eleanor.
Speaker 2: Yes, Hello and happy travels to you guys. And hats
Speaker 2: off to your dad too for knowing MORGANA The Kissing Bandit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and hats off to MORGANA. I'm glad. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you're doing great. Hopefully this message gets to you.
Speaker 2: Yes, this message brought to You by John Ritter. If
Speaker 2: you want to be like John and get in touch
Speaker 2: with us, you can send us an email send it
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