Scott Willis on Repo Man

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.

(00:29):
Hey everybody, welcome to Movie Crush Friday Interview Edition. Uh
film crew addition, as you know, I've had some people
in the costume department and the prop and art department
in here. I've had writers and directors. I'm looking to
kind of do more of these here and there. It
would be nice if, at the end of this whole thing,
if I had most of the departments and jobs represented

(00:51):
in some way, shape or form, because it's always cool
to hear about these things, and I'd love for you
guys to hear about these kind of unsung jobs. And
today is specially an unsung job because I had Scott Willis.
He goes by Sparky Scott, Sparky Willis in here. Craig,
my buddy Craig who crushed out the thing, hooked me

(01:13):
up with Sparky. He works in special effects. Uh. Sometimes
he is a shop performan. Sometimes he is a special
effects technician. Uh. It was cool to talk to him
about that job. He does everything from uh building, he
builds stuff everybody. He builds ramps for cars to jump,
He builds roll cages inside of cars for when they

(01:34):
have to flip um. He constructs things, and he and
his team construct things out of thin air. They invent things. Uh.
And he makes us a point of saying this in
the in the in the conversation we had about how
the fact that you can't just run down to the
to the store or the shop and buy the things
that you need to do for most of these shows

(01:54):
and movies because it's usually something that's never been done
before quite like that. So they have to build the
stuff and it's really cool. It's a cool job, very unsung. Uh.
And it was fun to get to talk to him
about that as well as his movie Crush Repo Man
cult classic from which I know as a favorite movie
of a lot of people. I had never seen it,

(02:16):
believe it or not. We talked about that, and we
talked about the movie itself and his connection to it.
And here we go with Scott Sparky Willis on Repo Man.
That's a cool shirt. What is that? Oh? I see
what it is? Is it japan It's not Japanese? Is it?

(02:37):
Is it Japanese? Back to the future. There's a place online.
I can't remember that. I feel terrible. I can't remember
the name of the store. But my lady friend and
my best friend are big fans of this guy he makes.
He's like Japanese mashup. Yeah. Sure things. I've also got
one of the thing that's really good. Well for people
that are listening at home. This is a yeah pull
that just kind of right in front of your mouth. Um,

(03:00):
it is a clock tower. Is Marty sliding down the
clock tower? But it also it's gonna be Doc right.
Oh yeah, I guess that would be Doc. Sorry Marty
never Tower Jesus Christ. But it has also got a
very Japanese sort of Godzilla type movie poster. Yeah, it's
like the Japanese imprint that's really hard to find, you know,

(03:20):
it's the real rare edition. That's awesome. Yeah, I was.
I've got a Repo Man shirt that's a like a
Repo Man black flag mashup that I was tempted to
wear this morning, but it kind of felt like wearing
the shirt of the band you're about to see. It's
that like going to the concert and wearing the big shirt.
I contemplated for a moment, even though it's it's a
podcast when but now that would have been cool actually,
So I feel like I've been researching like this is homework.

(03:43):
I feel like I'm sitting for a test. Now, you'll
be fine. And I have been researching too, because uh,
well we'll get the repo. Man. I'm gonna say. I
was talking. I was talking to Craig this morning. He
just assured me, you know, just be super nervous. The
stakes have never been higher. It all hinges on this.
Where are you from? Do you have a map? Uh? Well,

(04:05):
it's a bit of a story. I was actually born
in Vancouver, Canada, that is yeah, right. Um, we moved
down to the States when I was real little though,
so I grew up in California. So, uh, elementary, middle school,
high school in California, all right, formative years exactly part
of California, mostly southern California. We lived in the Bay
Area for a couple of years when we first moved down,
but we moved to Venture County in House my folks

(04:29):
are still at So that's where that's where I mostly
grew up a right, And that's where you spent your
formative movie years. Well no, actually, well I didn't really
get into movies until later. I feel like, yeah, I
wasn't super I'm gonna be talking more about it. I
guess it was never like a movie kid so much
growing up. It kind of developed around the time I

(04:49):
like went to college and all that sort of stuff.
As I they were like early germs of it, but
it didn't really really didn't become a thing until I
was about twenty or so, like nineteen twenty. What was
your jam muse Um, where are you into? I guess
when I was a kid, I was really Uh. I
played a lot of hockey. Canadian Canadian kid growing up
in California in the Gretzky era, Like, I played a
lot of hockey, and hockey was kind of a big

(05:11):
part of my identity. It was really into aviation when
I was a kid. For a long time, I was
gonna be a pilot um, and then that kind of
took a bit of a bit of a sidetrack. Um.
So I grew up in southern California, went to university
in Arizona for two years, studied aerospace engineering. Decided very
abruptly one day I didn't want to be an engineer
for the rest of my life. Yeah. My brother was

(05:32):
an aerospace major at first and also got out of it. Yeah,
there's a lot of stuff I really liked about it,
and then there's a lot about the kind of culture
and just the idea of like what what my day
to day life would be. It wasn't. I don't think
it was really what I wanted. So I left there
kind of abruptly. Thankfully. I made that decision really late
in semester, so I couldn't transfer anywhere, and I ended
up the following summer moving to Boston on a bit

(05:54):
of a whim. I moved to Boston with like a
duffle bag in twelve bucks to help teach high school
march band. Wow, Yeah, so you musician or well I played?
I was in marching Man when I was in like
high school and stuff. I wouldn't. I haven't picked up
an instrument since then? Would you play back? Then? Uh,
clarinet and then saxophone a little bit later on in
the jazz band. A really cool seventeen year old Yeah, no, dude,

(06:17):
I was never I was never very good, but I
was very much into that. It's the thing I've been
doing since I was like an elementary school. And you
kind of your circle of friends and it's kind of,
you know, it's a very social thing. Yeah, the end
up as part of so I enjoyed that part of it.
I was never really that great a musician. I loved kids, man,
I was. I was not good enough. I played saxophone
when I was like eleven for a year, but it
was not good enough to play in band, but I was.

(06:40):
I have a lot of my friends are band friends.
Actually cool that we're in high school band and jazz band.
So that's why you have the Boston phone number. I
saw you had a Boston exchange exactly. Yeah. So I
I ended up moving to Boston on a bit of
a whim h. Not really sure what I wanted to do.
I had this vague idea that I wanted to work
in the film business and make movies, but I was
about as specific as it was. So moved to Boston,

(07:01):
got a job working in an oil change place. Uh.
Did that for two years, various little like auto shops,
and then I went back to school. Uh, with the
idea of being a film major doing something with movies,
but it wasn't really it was wasn't well defined yet. Yeah,
but you were interested in the medium. Uh did you
know people that did that? Nope, not at all interesting.

(07:24):
So I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah,
I mean a lot of people either like the familiary
story you hear a little more often is when I
was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to like
be in this business. But you were, I guess into
your twenties when you sort of gout or late teens
or early twenties. Yeah, early twenties when I really started
getting the film. I would say, what was it about

(07:47):
about your current job? And uh, special effects? Like how
did it? How did that all come about? Um, I
kind of I don't want to say stumbled into it,
but maybe stumbles the right word. So like I did,
feel for is a film school and uh, I won't
say the name of school because I I want to
be able to disparage them a little bit. Okay, the

(08:09):
program I went through wasn't very well geared towards people
actually getting a job doing that. It was very geared
towards When I say art film, I mean like experimental
single filmmaker, black and white film, no sound, no story,
no care. Like it's very it's more kind of collage
as film than it is like narrative storytelling. Yeah, and
you know, aside from that, I know that some film

(08:30):
schools get UM criticized for not being as career not focused,
but like, literally there should be classes on like how
to get a job totally, Like if you want to
work in this business, you need to teach people about
sort of the business side of things and not I
mean the creative has to be there obviously, but you

(08:52):
should also take classes and like how to get jobs
and what career paths are. No. Absolutely, And I actually
I butted heads a little bit with the administration when
I was there because I had one teacher who had
actually worked as a narrative filmmaker, had made an actual
studio film, and was very adamant about teaching people who
wanted to learn, like this is the process, is what
the different departments are, these are what the roles are.
But he was very much the outsider in that in

(09:14):
that world. So put a petition together and got everybody
in the film department to sign it saying that like,
we want classes to teach film business, we want classes
that teach us production skills, we want all these things.
Cause it's a little bit of a got a couple
of classes out of the school because of it, UM,
But we were very much like butting heads with them
the entire time. Uh. I was really adamant that when

(09:36):
I got out of school, I needed to get a
job doing something in the movie world. If I got
out of school and went back to working in an
auto shop, then it was just four years of waste.
And there were so many people that I went to
school with who when they got done, their part time
job became their full time job, you know, and it's
like maybe they would make video art on weekends or something,
but yeah, and that's not what I wanted to do.

(09:57):
I was really adamant that, like, I need to get
a job doing this, and you'd be able to pay
the bills doing this. Um, So got out of school,
got on set as a p A in Boston, did
uh did a couple of little commercials which are kind
of you know, at the time, we're super exciting to
get to work on a commercial, having never four years
of film school, never being on a proper step before, right,
and it seems like such a there's like a magic

(10:20):
and an aura to it. And then once you actually
step through that boundary and realize like the nuts and
bolts of like how doable it is. Yeah, um, it
breaks through a lot of that mystique real quick, and
you realize it's it's a job, and there's you've got
different roles and tasks and it's just just a job
like any other job. Just gotta get done. Yeah, totally, man.
I remember sort of having that same experience when I

(10:41):
first started working on commercials and paing and be like, oh,
this is how it's done, and most of the jobs
are kind of the same. Yeah, it's still totally one
great job. Oh no, I love it. So I'm not
I'm not bagging on it, but I think the mystique
have your onto something there. Yeah. Um, And I guess

(11:03):
the other really important thing that happened to me is
the summer between my junior and senior year. A bunch
of kids who are a year ahead of me, who
are also big fans of this one teacher put together
and try to make a feature film during the summer,
and so I helped them the work. I think I
worked as an assistant camera. I was like the number
two camera guy. I wanted to be a camera operator.
Camera cinematography was kind of my cam from the last
couple of years of school, and so I did that

(11:23):
for a couple of weekends in the summer, and that
was a big thing that broke through the idea that
this is very doable. And I think prior to that,
I was contemplating going to grad school because I wasn't
really sure if I had the skill set yet to
work on set. You know, It's like I've been looking back, right,
you know, you've been going to school since you were
a kid. You know how to go to school. This

(11:46):
is a whole foreign world and I'm not sure if
I'm ready for it. But then just getting that little experience.
And the funny thing is the film never got released
or anything because we've shot at all digitally. And then
that summer the hard drives crashed and they lost everything
and they try to send it to like recovery started,
recovery labs and whatever and just which is super expensive. Yeah,
and it was a point total shoestring budget. It was

(12:07):
supposed to be proper like, full on, full on future film. Um,
totally lost. Was it any good? You think? At the
time it seemed it right something. I mean, the stuff
we shot on set seemed to be pretty cool. Yeah,
I struggly remember exactly what it's about. It this guy
having a mental breakdown with his family, real, real fun stuff.
Yeah that seems film school, Yeah it was. It was

(12:29):
ambitious though, you know, for what it was and for
what we were doing, but that helped just to get
your just to get in that world and realize like,
this is totally doable, and you look around you see
the other people doing this thing, like I can. I
can at least figure my way through this. This is
no longer this huge obstacle. I just gotta do it. Yeah,
especially coming up through the world of digital filmmaking, it
is really democratized it and open down to so many

(12:52):
people to be able to do things. You can shoot
a movie with your iPhone now it's wild, which is
great I think ultimately, No, I totally agree. Yeah, um
so I did that. Graduated from school, is very adamant,
started working as a p A. And the big thing
that happened is I ended up on this non union
Discovery Channel show in Boston called Time Warp. It's kind
of like a MythBuster ease science e show, our whole

(13:13):
gag because he had these high speed cameras like phantoms
when phantoms are brand new. Totally remember that. Okay, Yeah,
the SloMo Super SloMo when it was right at cutting
edge and that you can do anything at that speed
and looks amazing like popcorn Colonel's going off glass breaking
and we were that it looked amazing. Yeah, it was
a great. Uh, it was a great show to work on.
But it was also a terrible show to work on. Uh.

(13:36):
They had no art department, zero zero art department. So
what they did is they got a studio space in Boston,
like an old warehouse, built it out as a sound stage,
dropped like three corps of the budget in the lighting grid,
and thought, Okay, we're just gonna bring people in the space.
They're gonna do their thing, and that's it. We don't
need an art department. We don't need anybody on hand

(13:56):
to build anything whatsoever. And that that test failed, like
the very first day when the directors like, I want
a table this size over here. There's nobody to build
a table. There's nobody to do Yeah, and uh, they
had like the first a d was also the production
coordinator was also getting props was also it was one
of those kind of things. Has So I got on

(14:19):
as a as a p A and you know, I
was getting dunkin Donuts and taking the tapes of FedEx
the end the night and just kind of running around
doing whatever and they needed to do. And they quickly
ranted these obstacles were they wanted to set up really
simple things and had nobody to do it. So I
kind of raised my hand and jumped in. It was like, well,
I've been I've been mechanical since I was a kid.

(14:41):
I went to engineering school. Not that it really matters,
but like, I can problem solve, I can figure out
how to make a thing work. So I started doing
that stuff a little by little, and Uh, the really
big thing that happened is that there was a tremendous
turnover on the show. Uh. People are getting fired left
and right, quitting left and right. Everybody was changing out,
and I was I was low enough down on the

(15:02):
total pole that just yeah, exactly. I was like one
of myself at the end of season two, myself and
one of the camera guys the only crew members still
around from when I started, apart from the on the
on camera but the people. Yeah. Um, But so we
got a new director in and uh he's kind of

(15:23):
he's like the doctor Emmett Brown to my Marty McFly.
He's like I described as like a mad scientist type. Uh.
And he's since become a really close friend, and he's
he's been a filmmaker since he was a little kid.
He's been he's a chemist, he's a cinematographer, he's a
film guy. He is very much about the process. He's coming.
He's from that like older world of like I'm gonna
make my own camera rigs. I'm gonna build the things

(15:44):
I need to build to get the shot kind of guy.
And he had this idea for making these movable lighting
rigs because we're losing our entire day moving lights around.
It takes so much light for like ten thousand frames
a second. It's final because it's all exponential and it's
not you got lighting guys who are used to working
narrative film where you use like one or two lights,
and this like we need an eight K like twelve

(16:05):
inches away from the subject kind of thing. So he
had this idea to put two lights on a rolling stand.
And he thought, with these two rolling things and a
little hand crank, one person can operate either of them,
we can light light our whole day like that, and
we can start knocking the stuff out because we're just
dying every day. The producers hated him and said, absolutely not,
it won't work. We're never gonna do it. So, being him,
he just ordered the steel and went to home depot

(16:26):
and bought a welder off the shelf and yeah, I
just started building it, like gotta pop up tent set
up outside and just started welding ship. Oh can I
swear in this? I don't sure? Okay, sorry? Great? Um.
I remember we came back from set one day because
this kind of thing that they got multiple directors trading
off episodes or whatever. Come back from set. We're unloading

(16:46):
the box truck and John's out there welding under a
pop up tent, which I'd never done before. I always
wanted to learn. So I finished my day of work
and I go over to him and ask him what
he's doing, and uh, he shows me what he's doing.
He's like, okay, so, like, you put those welding mask
on and watch what I'm doing. And he says, uh,
you know, if you do it right, it's kind of
like a big hot glue gun. So he says, watch me.
So I watched him and then he has me do it.

(17:07):
He says, okay, you're better than I am, so you're
gonna do all the welding out. And from that day forward,
I did all the welding on that show. I had
no experience whatsoever. Every day was just trial by fire,
like just being thrown in the deep end. And between
the two we built these lighting rigs and then they worked.
They worked great, and the producers hated us for it.
And there were like these competing groups within the production

(17:27):
between like the people who were kind of on the
side of like myself and John the director, and the
people who were on the producer's side. It was wild.
So you guys were smart people accomplishing a task, and
the other side was not. Yeah, and uh it was
only because of the chaos of that show that I
had a chance to do any of this. On any
real real I know, right on any real production, no
p A would ever be allowed to pick up a welder,

(17:50):
let alone be taught by the director how to weld um.
But in the kind of wild west of that show,
it gave me an opportunity. And uh so I started
went through two seasons of that show. By the end
of it, that's all I did. But I think by
the end of the first season, all I was doing
was fabrication, and like I said, I had a mechanical
background but didn't have specific experience. Did you get a

(18:12):
pay bump or did they still pay you as a
p A. They gave me a little bit of a
pay bump one season two, which I thought was huge
and in retrospect, oh yeah, in retrospect it was what
I mean, it was what it is. It was to
get you know, to get the experience. Um. And so
in the course of that show, I started building stuff
and building and the more things I built, more things

(18:33):
that they found for me to build and stuff like that,
and like pretty much all the gags that you see
in that show, I had some hand in. I was
involved in like every day of that project and it
was a lot of fun. We got to a lot
of a lot of great stuff and the full time.
In the back of my head, I'm still thinking that
I want to be a cinematographer. I'm still thinking about
the camera world, um, and I'm feeling myself kind of
being pulled away from that direction. And the most important

(18:57):
thing that happened on that show is we had to
do us. We were doing a breakdown of like stunt action.
We had like stunt guys going into glass, and so
we brought in had to bring an actual pyrotechnician to
to pop the glass breakers for the temperate glass to go.
And so I got to meet an actual effects guy.
And that was a big moment for me. I think
prior to that because I didn't actually know how productions

(19:18):
worked at all, and I didn't know what had to
be built on any given show. I didn't know there
was an effects department. I didn't know there was an
entire world of people still building physical objects and gags
and mechanical elements. And so meeting him, and what's funny
is that, like I still work. All these people that
I'm that are in the story are still like a
part of my life. I still talked to on the
Red still work for I was just the pyrotechnician guy.

(19:39):
I just did a show up in New England with him.
That's like a couple of weeks ago. Um, So I
met him, and I met another couple of guys like
oh my god, like this is this can exist outside
of this one show. But that's for people listening. That's
the secret or relationships, and you know, that's how you
navigate through. I mean that's how you navigate any job
to a certain degree. But in the film and street,

(20:00):
it's really about the relationships that people you meet. You
being a p a who can jump in there with
a skill set, and there is a hierarchy. But there
are also productions where they're like, I don't care what
it says on the call sheet. If you can help
me and you can do this, then do it. Yeah. Yeah,
So you start to work in that area special effects

(20:23):
from visual effects, special effects, and then once uh, once
I do that show, and then once I meet those
other guys and realize that this is a thing that
exists outside the orbit of this one little weird TV show,
then like that was it. This is this is all
I wanna do day and day out. Um, so what
is your most of your work now? Like, what's what's
your current job title? Um? Special effects technician. Okay, sometimes

(20:47):
I'm a forming on a show. Depending on how big
of a show it is and what kind of stuff
are you doing? Um, we do. We do a lot
of stuff. It's hard to kind of describe because it's
sort of it's effects. It's kind of a catch all.
We do, Um, all the atmospheric effects they see on production, right,
so wind rains, smoke, snow, all that kind of jazz
that has seen how that works behind the scenes. It's

(21:09):
always super cool. We also do We do a lot
of metal fabrication. We do a lot of car work.
We do like when stunt guys are crashing cars, stunt
guys are the ones driving them. Uh. Picture Car Department
make sure that the cars start and run the way
they're supposed to. But anything above and beyond that becomes
an effects responsibility, like putting role cages in the car.
If the cars have to flip over building, the ramps

(21:29):
the car is gonna hit, or the building the mechanism
that goes in the car to flip it over. Um,
that's all effects work. Um. Like I said, we do
a lot a lot of steel fabrication, a lot of
problem solving, a lot of a lot of big mechanical
things that don't necessarily like you don't watch the movie
and realize like, wow, they must have been on a
on a hydraulic platform that was being actuated against the

(21:50):
screen screen. Yeah, Which is an interesting part about your
job is because sometimes when you're doing it best, you're
the least noticed absolutely, you know, because it wants it
has to appear organic and real, and you can't see
the I mean, growing up watching movies in the seventies
and eighties, you've seen some of this stub done poorly,

(22:10):
you know, like even the car ramp where it's just
like it can't be so clear that it's a car
ramp sometimes right, and this is the a couple of
cardboard boxes stacked in a straight line right in front
of it or whatever. Yeah. Um so in some ways
it's sort of a unsung uh job. I think on

(22:30):
the set it's a it's a little bit of a
dark art, yeah, I think. And even the people, even
the people that we work with on production don't really
they don't. They only see the part that comes to set.
They see that like last five percent. And if you
if you do your job well, you show up the
set with a gag whatever it is, you set it up,
you press the button, it does its thing, You clean
it all up and you go home. Right. Do you

(22:51):
get that thing though? Where the production is like, oh
my god, they get the invoice and they're like they
spent twelve days. Oh it's not only saw them on
one day and all they did, was do this one
thing right exactly. Uh, it happens all the time. And
unless unless you actually come to the shop and see,
like the testing that has to go into all the
prep work all the time, all the gags you have

(23:11):
to build that don't work right, you have to then
scrap and start over. You if if we're doing everything right,
you only see you know that that tip of the
iceberg or whatever analogy you want to use, You only
see that little bit of it. And it's really hard
unless you actually come to watch the other part happen
to understand like what's going on, yeah, and how much
goes into it. Yeah. And for folks listening, when you

(23:33):
say the word gag, which you've said a bunch of times,
I know what that means. But as far as a
gag isn't a practical joke that you're playing on set,
a gag in the film business is I mean it
could be a stunt could Yeah, sure, um usually would
call that a stunt. But what would you say a
gag is? Um if i'd give like a definitely just

(23:55):
an event, yeah, a thing, a note that happens in
the script. Yeah, there's not you know, a chandelier falling
from the ceiling, right, the chandelier gag. Right, So that
would be and that's kind of the terminology that we
use internal. We refer to them all as gags, which
is a and it could be it could be something
as simple as that, or it could be a it
could be an extended sequence of a car flipping over

(24:15):
thing and going into into a bus. Right, that would
be the car bus gag, the car bus gag. The
classic what is some um, like, what's one of the
coolest things you've done? I thought about that a lot.
I think I'm sure that's a I mean, such a
obvious question. But do you remember the movie Flight? Uh? Yeah, Washington, Yeah,

(24:36):
that was here right, yeah. Yeah. We shot most of
that over at UM screen gems. I thought that was
pretty good movie. It was. It turned out great. Um
the early part of the movie when the airplane rolls
over man, that was amazing. We built a giant steel
gimbal to put the cockpit and section of the airplane
in that rolled around and literally circle. That's probably it's

(25:00):
probably the coolest thing I've had a chance to be
a part of. How long did it take to do
something like that? For instance, we did that in an
amazing I think we built we built that rotisserie which
is the gimble flipping over, and we built this massive
air bag platform for the aircraft to sit on. I
think we built it all in like four or six
weeks with a really small crew. We only had about four,
say four or five effects guys working on that. It's

(25:21):
such a cool job because any you know, it's a
p a I would I would get to peek inside
these worlds sometimes, whether it was uh running an errand
over to the shop or whatever. And I always love
these sort of um off to the side, like you
were saying, departments where you're busting your ass offsite in
some warehouse for weeks and weeks and weeks to show

(25:45):
up on set and do something that, uh, you know,
it could be a gag that you shoot in an hour,
or it could be imagined something like that's pretty complicated
that you shoot over the course of days or whatever. Yeah,
they're playing Gimble. We used that for a couple of
days because we and we put we put the cockpit
in and got sections with the principal actors, and then
we put sections of the airplane in there and got
you know, had forty stunt people in there and slipped

(26:07):
them upside down and all sorts of crazy things. It's
just it's a testament and one of the coolest things
about the film industry to me, and the magic. I
know it sounds corny, but the magic of filmmaking is
all these people. Uh and to the uninitiated who have
never been around sets and don't know anything about it,
they might look at the list of credits and just
been like, especially like these Marvel movies and like, are

(26:29):
you kidding me? Like how many people need to work
on a movie? But everyone's got their their job right
from tiny things two huge things And if you guys,
I mean you're off figuring out the literal nuts and
bolts on how to accomplish something. That's just one of
the coolest things to me. And with like that airplane
Gimbll for instance, Um, the guy who was the lead

(26:51):
sort of engineering that was an effects guy named Andy
Miller who's retired, actually just saw any the other week. Um,
it's funny. I still like keep in touch with these people.
That's like coming in and out of my life and
its family in a lot of ways. And Andy and
he had built a lot of gimbals over his career.
He built a lot of the gimbals on Titanic. Make
that that whole thing happened, um, But he had never
built this exact gimble before. So like every time we

(27:12):
build something, it's a prototype. Everything is that you're drawing
off your previous experiences. But there's no like, we didn't
go to the gimbal store again. We need the seven
thirty seven half part three turn. I'll take the Titanic Junior. Yeah, yeah,
I just go ahead and have it delivered overnight. It
So every everything thing exactly and everything is a prototype

(27:32):
and so there's always that that learning curve involved in
anything that you build. And like I said, sometimes you're
more familiar with that. Sometimes you have a lot of
experience building these things, and sometimes it's sometimes you gotta
build it three or four times before you get it
right right because ultimately your safety is a big part
of what you do too. It's huge, Yeah, it's huge,
and it's really easy to forget how dangerous this stuff

(27:53):
is until it gets away from you, right. Um. And
you like even on the airplane gimble, we because we
think we we ran it for I want to say
three days on set, and we ran for three days
without issue. Like they never waited on us. We didn't
have a problem. We never had to shut our stuff down.
It never didn't work when I was supposed to. And
we start off day one and we have a big
safety meeting. We remind everybody like this is gonna be

(28:15):
our protocol for starting and stopping. Nobody else goes near
it until we give the all clear we've got any
of these certain steps are gonna follow. And for the
first like day, people were pretty good about it. And
then by the third day, while the thing is still
moving and come to a stop like you got grip
and electric trying to come in to move a flag
or something, give it three seconds because I know it
moves really slow, so it looks really safe, but it's

(28:38):
a lot of momentum, it's a lot of energy, and
it if it catches you, it's not gonna hick up.
It's just gonna yeah, yeah, bad. Yeah. I mean again,
for the benefit of listeners, it's uh for any kind
of gag or stunt or even having a prop guns
on set, there is always a safety meeting and that
involves everyone. They have to tell everybody like the protocol

(29:00):
for everything. And it's remarkable that. I mean, you've seen
what goes down on film sets. It's pretty remarkable how
few tragic you know, deaths have occurred on film sets.
It's always big news. It's always very tragic and sad,
but it's it's a testament to how safe of an
industry it is. Yeah, someone doesn't die on like every movie. No,

(29:22):
it's wild and a lot of the things that we
do are we're playing with a lot of a lot
of big energy, a lot of forces, a lot of
these like hydraulic and pneumatic systems that we're using for
like tearing a wall down and flipping a car or
these crash things. If they get away from you, Uh yeah,
it can it can go bad real quick. Yeah. Um. Actually,
one of the guys who kind of mentored me on

(29:43):
my first show got uh ily, he got crippled on
an accident on Green Lantern And it wasn't even on
it wasn't on production. It was a test at the
effect shop and it was never hear about that in
the news. No, it was it was a gag raa
box truck. I think it's like superheroes are having a
fight or something of them slams one of them into
this box stuck in this box truck from stationary like

(30:04):
does like a barrel world. So they were testing it
at the effect shop. A bunch of things went. With
any disaster story, it's never like one big thing that
goes wrong. It's always a series of small things that compound.
This was a day where a bunch of little things
went wrong and people were not in the right place,
and you know, all these little things kind of compounded,
and on one of the tests, the rear axle of

(30:26):
this thing breaks loose, flies off eight degrees from its
line of travel, and hits my buddy right in the
mid section. The fact that he even survived as remarkable.
And yeah, and so that's like, that's a that's a
daily reminder for me when I'm when I'm at work
that like, I remember what happened to Johnny. You know,
I wasn't there for it, thankfully, And I'm really glad

(30:46):
I wasn't, because knowing me, I would have been standing
right next to him. Well, you just it's it's a
job where you have to be so on point. You
can't ever shortcut anything or be lazy or forget all
the protocols, right, because this big, heavy, dangerous stuff. Yeah. So,
as one of my buddies like to say, it's like
we've got catastrophically hanging over our shoulder keeping an eye

(31:08):
on us. Oh geez, what did you just shoot? What's
like the most recent thing you did? The New England thing?
I just did two shows up in New England. I
went and helped out on Season to a Castle Rock
just finished up and I think it is released now.
And then, um, this AMC show called nos Ferat. Yeah,
it's also season two. Fun stuff. Pardon fun stuff you
were doing? Oh yeah, I really enjoyed working on it. Yeah,

(31:29):
it was a really good time. So it's a good crew.
I like being in New England whenever I can. Um,
not huge, not huge shows by any stretch as far
as effects work goes, but there was enough stuff to
keep us busy and enough kind of interesting, challenging stuff.
What what makes for a good job for you, aside
from just a supportive production. Um, like being challenged and

(31:51):
having to figure out the the impossible. Yeah, exactly. I
think getting to build stuff for the first time, getting
you know, to uh to design and fabricate things and
do stuff that maybe we haven't done before. Um, and
just that that problem is solving and that challenge is
what really kind of it's what drew me to this discipline,
and I think what keeps me in it is the

(32:12):
challenge of it. That's awesome. Um, the atmospheric stuff I
can kind of take or leave. I don't really like
running a smoke smoke machine. Um, I really don't like
doing snow dressing. Snow dressing is so tedious. Oh man,
did a you know they shoot so many of those
stupid Christmas car commercials in l A of all places,
and there's this one I think it was it might

(32:34):
have been Warner Brothers. I think it's where they shut
Desperate housewise, but there's a sort of a cul de
sac that they use for a lot of ship And um,
I feel like I was always shooting like Lexus Christmas
commercials and all that fake snow, which is, as you know,
just a nightmare everything. And for these commercials it never

(32:55):
looks good movies it does, and TV shows it can
think you have to look more authentic, but like those
Christmas car commercials never look it never looks like it's snowing. Yeah. Never.
Um so all that stuff was. I mean, I'll do
whatever we need to do to get the job done.
For me, getting to getting the design and build stuff
is really that's really what I enjoy doing the most.

(33:17):
And over the last I've been doing this about ten
years now, so I feel like more and more of
my day to day is focused on that kind of stuff,
which is great. Yeah, and stuff as you progress in
your career, you can um hopefully like steer yourself more
towards that stuff. Yeah, And that's kind of the direction
I'm pushing towards. Like I don't I don't think I

(33:38):
ever want to be a coordinator, the head of the
effects department. I'm sure it's more money. It's more you
get your name at the top of everything or whatever.
But a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of paperwork.
You've got to be the person to go to the meetings,
you gotta talk to producers, you gotta deal with the budget.
You want to build it, You've got to manage people.
It's a whole different job, you know, And I just
want to build it. Yeah, it totally that's what I
really enjoy doing. I used to love on set, seeing

(34:02):
the satisfaction that goes largely unnoticed after a good, well
done kind of seamless gag, because I would always see
you guys, there are three or four of you that
would pull it off, and it's a very small group
of people that feel very proud of each other, absolutely,
and I think a lot of times the rest of
their crew was just like, yeah, these the weird tattoo

(34:22):
guys showed up every every like once a week, and
no one knows their names, and and uh, why did
it take him this long to build this thing? I
remember my and I feel sorry for the kid. My
very first job, the first movie I was working on,
which is The Town Sean the ben Affleck talking off
Fenway Park. It was a great movie. H that was
a huge show for us. Effect he directed that too,
right he did? Uh yeah, and he was great. Yeah

(34:45):
as a director, I really I really liked working on
his set. I thought you could tell he was under
a lot of stress between starring in it, being one
of the writers directing it. He had a lot of
a lot of things, pulling a lot of direction totally,
but he was always very he was He was never
agree on set, you know what I mean, Like you
never took it out on anybody. I'm sure you've worked
with those directors to yeah. Um. But so we're on set,

(35:08):
it's been like it's been a really busy show. We
had we had to put cages role cages in like
thirty or forty Crown Vix or something because the cars
crashing all over that. And we have been working really
long days, really long weeks in the shop. We were
doing like six day weeks. We at a certain point
of the show, we moved like fifteen hour days, six
days a weeks just to catch up on all of
the fabrication work we had to do. And then we
would we would take chunks of things and go to

(35:30):
set for a day shoot those gags, and then everybody
treat back to the shop and keep plugging away. And
a month set One day and one of the p
a s turns to me, he's like, oh, it must
be really great to work in effects because you guys
only have to work like one or two days a week.
And I looked to him, it just you know, and
I've got that like that, you know, I'm tired, like
I've put in like ninety hours in the last six days.

(35:52):
Just you're like, yeah, it's great. Yeah, all this stuff
that you see, like we built all of this from scratch,
like we order steal and put it together. There's no
did you explain all that or did you say, yeah,
it's great to work one or two? You're right. I
think I said something gruff to him. I can't remember.
I'm gonna go back and sleep again. Yeah. But and
you know that's kind of the if you only exist
on set and you just view it through that lens,

(36:15):
that's all you know, that's all you see. You just
like you said, these weird guys chauffeur a day and
doing some stuff, and why they've been on pay roll
this whole time, Well they only want dude. I always
I always knew what was going on. Well that is
super cool, man. I know that listeners love to hear
from different crew members. I was glad to get you
in here. Um, I've had writers, directors Craig and UH

(36:36):
props and set deck and his wife Karen from wardrobe.
So I need to get like a I don't know,
I need to get locations in here, maybe a music
supervisor there. You go, just keep expanding this this UH
film crew thing. Yeah, so repo man, Oh yeah, you're

(37:02):
cult classic. It was a cult classic about a month
after it was released. It was one of those rare
movies that somehow existed kind of only in that world.
From the beginning, it seems like, uh, and here's my
dirty little secret. I had never seen this movie, no kidding.
Oh wow until last night. Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, I

(37:22):
felt like I had seen it, but I was like,
wait a minute, I've really never seen Repo Man. It's
so in the public consciousness. And I worked at the
cool video store and Athens and like it was everyone's
favorite movie, and I was like a Repo Man, But
I never fucking saw Repo Man. And I'm gonna admit
it right here. Oh that's amazing. So I got to
have my my debut experience last night with it. What

(37:43):
did you think? I loved it? I mean, it's um.
I love movies from the early eighties that didn't have
a lot of money. I love early eighties movies period,
but there's there's a certain thing to early eighties films
that were low budget. Sure, it's just there's a kind
of weird magic to those. For me. Um written directed

(38:06):
by Alex Cox, his debut feature film. He has had
an interesting career. I don't know how much him uh he.
I mean he came out of the gate with With This,
then Sid and Nancy, and then straight to Hell, which
is a kind of a Gangbusters way to start out
your career. Maybe not huge box office films, but all
three regarded as sort of classic cult classics. And then

(38:28):
he kind of, I don't know, not went away. But
I looked at his filmography last night and read some
interviews with him, and I think just a lack of
support and funding and it just never kind of went
the way that we all thought it might for him. Yeah, totally.
Is that a fair statement, I think so. I'm sure
that there's a lot of projects that he had in
mind that he never got to do. Yeah, and there's

(38:51):
maybe people out there being like, oh no, dude, you
should see like the movie he did three years ago.
It was amazing. I don't know, I have Yeah, it's
definitely not on my radar. Yeah, it's not on my radar.
He's a very interesting guy. I watched a lot of
the interviews, and I felt like I was studying for
a test for this, So I watched I watched the
movie like half a dozen times, I've got the Criterion collection.
I watched like all the special features. That's because of
the cover of that. I got it. I brought it

(39:13):
just so I could show you. I've seen that poster. Um.
It is not the movie poster. It is the I
don't know who did that, but it's the skull with
the overlay, the skull with the overlay of the um.
How the movie opens in the title sequence with that
sort of fluorescent green map that is just looks fucking
badass on the screen. And then like the inside of

(39:36):
the the inside of the sleeve or all these like
a show flyers with references to the movie. They're so
well done, so they look like punk band they're all
and you start reading them and they're all just inside
references that I mean one of the bands called Auto Parts. Um,
they're so well done. Whoever did the artwork on this
is deserves a gypsy dildo. Very nice. No, that's fantastic. Um.

(40:00):
And I did a lot of research on it too.
Uh so, I'm sure you know most of the stuff
that we'll talk about, as far as trivia and stuff
like that. They wanted him to cast Mick Jagger. I
heard something about that. Yeah, that did that would have
been And I think he wanted Dennis Hopper And this
is for the Bud character Harry Dean Stanton Um. But

(40:20):
Harry Dean is just such a treasure, he really is.
And it's funny that this in Paris, Texas for the
same year. And I think that it sounds as if
I think Paris, Texas was shot after this. I think so. Um.
But both, Yeah, both Harry Dean and Robbie Mule and
the cinematographer go straight from this to Paris, Texas. Oh
did he shoot that too? Yeah? Yeah, And you know,

(40:41):
for a low budget um. And this is still a
studio movie, but the weirdest studio movie maybe of all time.
But for a low budget film, there are some really
beautiful shots in it. Absolutely. Cinematography is gorgeous. Yeah, it
really is. Um. Like a few things that come to
mind are the scene with uh Tracy Walter's character I

(41:01):
can't ever, I can't remember his name, the sort of
wise sage, yeah Miller, when he's when they're burning in
the in the big trash can. That's such a beautiful scene,
it is. And the dialogue in that scene is great too. Yeah,
play shrimp his Yeah, it's a very like kind of
classic monologue. And he's such a classic character actor period,

(41:23):
Like just put him in anything and he's still around. Yeah.
Some of the so many of the shots are so
gorgeous in the film, and I think that's one of
the things that weirdly makes it stand out from just
being a low budget Yeah, whatever are these little these
little kind of gems, Like the cinematography is so good.
Harry Dean Stanton's this, I mean, I think you put
this up there with Paris Texas is like the two

(41:43):
movies that really define him as an actor totally, because
everything else that he does, he's kind of a big
character where he's got a really small part. Both these
two films, he is sort of leading roles, leading role
and really really kind of grabs hold of it. I
haven't seen Paris Texas and so long. I need to
dig back into that one. I think the cinematography is
better than the storytelling in Paris Texas, but I remember

(42:04):
liking it. It was sort of one of those early
when I was first starting to get into independent films
and stuff in college, one of the early like movies
that I watched. Yeah, I want to say, like Kirk
o'bain Listened is one of his favorite movies, so gave
it a certain a certain bump with a certain demographic, right, Um,
And I think someone else was going to play leaving

(42:25):
of the punk band fear. I heard that. I think
Alex Cox, Because clearly Alex Cox was um familiar with
the punk scene. And I think that's why so much
of this feels authentic, right, Uh, it felt kind of real.
It didn't feel like some Hollywood version of the punk scene. Yeah.
I mean we should probably just dive right into that,
like why this movie, Like when you ask punk kids

(42:48):
like to list like your favorite punk movie, this always
up to the surface, and at first glance, it's not.
The story is not really a punk story. It wasn't
like Alex wasn't setting out to me a movie about punks,
agreed he and if you listen to interviews with him,
he was actually trying to make a very different movie.
Then I think there's a disconnect between the movie he

(43:09):
thought he was making, the movie that got made, in
the movie that he thinks he made. All three of
those are very different points in space. And I think
because the way that the punk stuff is is shown
and the way that, well, I could take a step back.
So what's the guy? What's the actor? Dick Rude, the

(43:29):
actor who plays Duke, his best friend, right, who was
originally supposed to be play Auto. I guess way why
because this movie went through a bunch of different incarnations.
Originally it was gonna be a student film and then yeah,
so I went through all these different He pitched as
a comic book too, yes, or made a comicieve, yeah,
I believe there's like a three or four page comic.

(43:50):
I could read it, but like as part of the
trying to get the movie made process. So I guess
dick Rude had written this other screenplay or maybe a
short or something that got incorporated into the repo Man script,
and I'd be curious to know which parts or because
Dickery doesn't have a writing credit on this. He gets
a writing credit on Sitting Nancy and some other stuff,
but he credit collaborated with Alex Cox quite a bit

(44:12):
through his career. Yeah, Um, so I think because they
weren't trying to make a movie about punks, it wasn't
like it wasn't just gluing mohawks onto actors and throwing
them out there. It was almost by accident. It was
just writing about what they knew and what the experience
that I think resonates so well with people. You know
that it doesn't it doesn't feel like you're going to

(44:33):
a show for the sake of having a show seen. Um,
you know the scene where they're just hanging out in
the parking lot listening to the circle jerks and dancing around, right, dude,
that was one of my favorite parts of the movie
because it just it. It showed a side of l
A that was, um, not even like a criminal underbelly,

(44:55):
just sort of I mean, you've spent time in l
A as um l A is. You know, there's Beverly Hills,
and there's the Hollywood Hills, and there's the glitz and
the glamour. But there's also the reservoir and the l
A River and the back alleys and the side lots
and the valley And like Paul Thomas Anderson has always
done a good job I think of showing like the

(45:15):
valley side of l A, the sort of dusty hut
industrial Los Angeles, but that's a that's a lot of
l A. And they really captured it here. They really
did and it's a very l A film, Like it
feels so much like like Los Angeles is almost a
character in the movie. It's so strong, but in a
way that other movies where l A was a character,
because people will say that about like, well l A

(45:36):
story was, It's like l A is just a character.
It is. But this is an l A that you
don't get to see a lot because it's kind of
dirty and dirty and yeah, rough and like yeah, all
sorts of dumb shifts happening. Yeah, but there. I mean
l A is full of green grass and palm trees
and pretty birds of paradise plants, but it's also a

(45:56):
parking lot in waste land and other parts. Yeah. No, definitely.
Um So just starting the movie off the energy um
with that opening credit sequence in the music, and it
was such a big part of this movie and a
big part of why it got released. I think like
they released it and it didn't do anything, and then
the soundtrack became a big hit, so they brought it

(46:18):
back to the theaters. Yeah, that's what I had read,
and I think they got the movie got caught in
some like power struggle at Universal between people leaving and
people coming in the Door, the Universal and like not
want to be part of like the past person's projects. Yeah,
I guess the theatrical release was really limited and kind
of lackluster. And then the soundtrack is really what gave
it traction. Yeah, and it's a while. I mean, it's
incredible soundtrack, is it really? And it captures that kind

(46:41):
of moment in the the l A punk scene so
well and I think, like to this day, it's a
soundtrack that I haven't listened to. Yeah, it's great. And
Iggy Pop did the score, uh, and I think was
given kind of carte blanche to do whatever he wanted
to do. Yeah, And there's a great story about Iggy
Pop being like in l A in the early eight
and being broke and not being not knowing how he's

(47:02):
gonna make rent next month. Yeah, this was sort of
post stages and Alex Cox kind of showing up as
this crazy, wild eyed British guy wanting him to write
this song. And yeah, Iggy kind of tells a story
that he kind of saved him, you know that, like
he didn't he really didn't know how he's gonna make
rent the next month, and then his thing just kind
of like falls on his lap. Yeah. And Alex Cox, Um,
I did the math. He was, I guess making this

(47:24):
in his late twenties. He was thirty when it was released,
so he was making it when he was like probably,
which is you know, that's young to me. Suicidal tendencies
Circle Jerks. Circle Jerks very famously have a cameo. That's
the kind of lounge act. It's so good and one
of the this movie is full of so many little

(47:46):
subtle jokes that they don't they just kind of drop in.
Like when they go to the lounge scene and you know,
Circle Jerks are on stage playing whatever dumb lounge song
that is, and it cuts to otto, he is like,
I can't believe I used to like these guys. I know.
That's great. It's yeah, it's such a little it's such
a great moment. Uh. And it's such payoff if you
actually pay attention to what's going on that it's really

(48:06):
easy just kind of breeze by and not notice. Yeah, totally. Um.
And and I think it's a movie of the time,
like it's a it's it's a it's a statement in
a lot of ways. And we'll talk about the various
kind of social statements he's making. But it's very subversive.
It was Reagan's America and this movie, I think, and

(48:28):
it wasn't super obvious about like politics, but you know
the subtle things like this burnout pothead parents giving all
their money to a televangelist, and there are all these
sort of little subversive elements sort of flicking the finger
at Reagan's America. Yeah, and they make references to revolutions
in Latin America. Yeah, I guess there was. Originally there
was going to be a There are a lot of

(48:48):
different endings of the movie, but one of the endings
involved Auto going to Salvador and becoming a revolutionary, which
I think is why the Rodriguez brothers were also running guns,
which they kind of reference but then never talk about again. Yeah. Yeah,
it feels like there are a lot of storylines at
one time, we're going off other places that never got completed,
so we just have a little weird bits and pieces
of him and left in the movie. No, but it

(49:09):
kind of works for the film somehow, Like there's not
a ton of um, traditional character development or backstory, like
the way, um, the way you just jump into it. Yeah,
the way the Auto even meets his girlfriend if I
guess you want to call her that? Uh, I mean
he says my girl a couple of times. You know,
he's driving down the street and he's like, hey, baby,

(49:30):
you want to ride knocks over some trash cans. She
gets in the car and then you know they have
that fast motion love making. That seat is so goofy,
but it all kind of works. There's a a punk
rock feeling to the movie that I don't think he
was even setting out to say, like I'm gonna make
a practical and I think that's what's so earnest about
it is that it's not trying to be that thing.

(49:52):
It's just becomes that thing because that's kind of who
he is and that people he's around. It. It It feels
so organic in a way that so many other movies
try and all and become a bit embarrassing. Yeah, there's
a there's a magic to this movie that's hard to define, right.
I think that's why I resonates so well. I think
you're right, um here, I'm gonna There's a couple of
quotes here from a couple of write ups. Roger Ebert,

(50:14):
in to his credit, said, I saw repo man near
the end of a busy stretch on the movie beat,
three days during which I saw more relentlessly bad movies
than during any comparable period in memory. Most of those
bad movies were so cynically constructed out of the formula,
out of formula ideas and commercial ingredients, that watching them
was an ordeal. Repo Man comes out of left field,

(50:35):
has no big stars, didn't cost much, takes chances, dares
to be unconventional. It's funny and works. There's a lesson here,
and then this guy Todd Gilt gil Christ gil Christ,
this was a recent thing. Like if you type in
repo Man revisited, there's a lot of articles over the
last few years as it had. I think it's thirtieth

(50:56):
anniversary where people have gone to sort of uh dopeeck in.
But he said, Repo Man feels like the platonic idea
of a cult film inspired by punk culture William Burrows
and R. Crumb, among dozens of other obscure liminariaes. Alex
Cox's Breakthrough is a funny and oddly profound sci fi odyssey,
tapping into ideas the zeitguys seemed to barely know existed.

(51:20):
That kind of sums it up. Though it does, it
didn't feel like he was trying to make a thing.
Know what's funny is that when you watch the interviews,
and I mean listen to Alex Cox talk about what
he thinks repal Man is about, it doesn't what does
he say, uh, that it's about the neutron bomb, that
it's about nuclear proliferation. It's a A yeah, that's in

(51:41):
there a bit. It's it's in there a little bit.
But I don't know anybody would walk out a repal
Man and be thinking seriously about like nuclear ars, like
we really got to do something about radiation. Um, And
it's almost like this other stuff almost. I don't want
say it happened by accident, because that's not that's not
a fair way to put it. But it's not that
it's not what he was in ending to say. Like

(52:02):
I said, in all, in all the interviews, like it
seems like kind of muddled. There's this one interview he
does where he was the guy who actually worked on
the actual neutron bomb and they watched deleted scenes together
and discuss whether or not they should have been in
the movie. It's so bizarre because he was a big
fan of it, right, Yeah, apparently so, yeah, I guess
he wrote to Alex or something to talk about how
much you like the movie. It's and it's like you're

(52:23):
trying to learn more about the thinking and the thought
process behind the movie. And if the more you find
out about it, the more confused to become and the
less clear it is. It's so bizarre. And then so
all these interviews, and there's one with the Iggy Pop,
right nigg He's just in his backyard and he's got
a he's got button up T shirt that's like buttoned
up to there, which is probably more of a shirt
and his worn in a decade. He's wearing a shirt
and he's he says like it's you know, it's a

(52:45):
simple film about the times and the people in those
times just trying to get through. And he says, you've
got old man, young man. Crazy shit happens. And that's
the most concise, like clear vision, Like that's what the
movie is about. The old guy, young guy. Crazy shit happens.
And it's a lot of fun along the way. And
there's yeah, and any of the larger points that Alex
is trying to make about nuclear weapons or about social

(53:08):
uprising in the Latin American don't really land yea um,
but all the stuff that happens in between is so good. Yeah.
The consumers and aspect is uh is kind of played
out with these generic um grocery store products, which I
think a lot of people who have seen this movie
think like, oh, that's so smart and funny that he

(53:28):
went out and made all this stuff. Uh. And you
might know this, but that was mostly real stuff from Ralph's. Yeah,
it was. It was I guess the stuff that was
all expired that they couldn't sell her. Yeah. Just when
I first went to l A in nineteen ninety was
when my brother lived there. That's when I first took
my first like three visits. Uh, they still had that
stuff Ralph's. And my friend Eddie and I UM and

(53:50):
my other friend Chris and Jim. We all went out
there for spring break one year and stayed with my
brother and went to the grocery store and freaked out
with the generic beer and that's all we drank the
whole time, was the light blue can that said beer beer,
the white with the light blue stripes. But that was
the stuff. And I think the ones that said just
food they made, yeah, as as a statement of like,

(54:12):
you know, it's about consumerism to a certain degree. Ah,
and advertising I think, and uh in film maybe even
like product placement. Yeah, and I think, but I think
even more than that, they were just kind of having fun.
I think whatever consumers statement they were trying to make,
maybe Dix yeah, um, but yeah, I mean it's just
Otto sitting there eating the can that says food and

(54:34):
his parents, his mom saying you should put it on
a plate because you'd enjoy it more. It's like I
couldn't couldn't enjoy it more if I tried. Yeah, that
whole scene is pretty interesting to disconnect with he and
his parents and asking for the money to go to
Europe early how about if you just gave it to
basically saying kind of a thousand dollars. But that sort
of kick starts the whole job that he gets. Yeah,

(54:55):
because like crash cut from that into him in the
car with Harry Dean, like on day one, as Harry
starts to give him his Uh yeah, that was cool.
Apparently that was originally going to be multiple scenes realized
Harry Dean stands idea to kind of merge it all
into one kind of month because it was one daytime
and a nighttime. Yeah, if you try to follow the
daylight contuity, it goes all over the place. I don't

(55:16):
even try, so yeah, it's yeah. Their wardrobe keeps changing.
There's all sorts of little things that are Auto's earrings
change as goes on, and he gets he gets more
square by the end of it. Oh totally. But it
works really well as one scene that kind of breaks
through all the time things. I agree. Um, And and
that another great smash cut is when he talks about

(55:38):
doing speed. It's a smash cut to them, like cutting
out lines on the mirror in the car and hear anything.
He's just like, whoa, Yeah, that's good stuff. Their relationship
is awesome. Um, it is sort of mentor student. Oh absolutely,
little father's son thing going on, because he's clearly disconnected
from his dad. But again he's not. I don't think

(55:59):
Alex Cox wanted to make some to overdo it as
far as that goes. And that's probably so organic about
it and what he feels so genuine. I totally agree. Yeah.
Oh you know. Harry Dean Stanton played almost every week

(56:20):
in l A played music at the Mint that was
one of his things he did for years, and when
I was living there, he did that and I never went. Man,
And it's one of those things my big like l
A regrets is never going to see Harry Dean Stanton perform.
Oh that's wild. I didn't realize that. Yeah, he played,
I mean his own he was just doing his Harry
Dean Stanton thing on stage playing acoustic music. Oh good him.

(56:41):
That's apparently it's pretty cool and weird. I believe it. Um.
That's one of the great things about l A. Though.
You can go see Herry needs Stanton like every Monday
night for you know, eight dollars if you want to. Uh.
And Amelia Westebez was so awesome back then. I kind
of forget how much I loved him, um, and how
this sort of worked as an antidote to his character

(57:03):
in The Breakfast Club, you know, just polar opposites his characters.
But I mean, I love them both. I love Breakfast
Club too, but this, this whole movie was almost I
don't think again it was a conscious thing, but it's
it's the anti John Hughes movie and kind of every way.
And it's hard to imagine if Amelio and Harridan Stanton

(57:24):
are a part of this. It's probably not you know,
probably doesn't resonate, It probably doesn't hit the right notes
in the right way. There's something about the chemistry between
the two of them that works so well. It's hard
to put like you know, like I guess, Dick rude.
Like I said, it was originally supposed to play auto
and it's hard to It's hard to picture the guy
who played Duke as the lead. It feels like it
would feel more like a student film where you just

(57:47):
have your buddies in it, which it would have been. Yeah,
and there's there's a certain magic about it about those
two characters. To get those two actors together. Yeah, I
think that's that indefinable magic of casting. Yeah, time and
a place that just it all worked. Um. I love
the helping hand office that I'm not so you hard,
I guess, but the impound a lot office, just that

(58:09):
whole vibe in there. It's just so weird. You've got
this sort of off duty cop just sitting in the corner.
Who figures or whatever. Later on he kind of he
turns on them in the end, right, he pulls a
gun on her at the end. Yeah, she kicks so
much as in that scene really does. And another great
little like inside joke that all the all the people

(58:30):
work at Helping Hand all named after beers or all
beer related Ide Miller and Light and just I love Light. Yeah,
just a little like undercurrent, just a funny thing to
throw in. Yeah yeah, And then the light is, uh,
it's it's funny because Harry Dean Stanton has all this
talk about the code and Light is just like constantly
breaking that code about hot wiring and you know with

(58:53):
the gun and everything. When he pulls in the Mustang
scene when they're when they're boosting that car is so
great because he starts getting fired up from inside the
house and the car pulls up with light and you
think like he's just gonna get in and write off,
but he won't open the door and just fucking unload
the magazine into this random house and it's like, get

(59:14):
in the car, man, get in the car, that badass Mustang.
Yeah great, the Chevy Malibu is it turns out. I
mean there there is this plot of aliens that is
kind of a red herring in some ways because it's
all through the film, but it never like the aliens

(59:37):
never really come into play. There's no payoff on it. There,
there's no there's no resolution that whatsoever. And you're not
really sure like what actually is in the trunk of
the Malibu Well, I mean it's presumably aliens, but you're right,
you don't see it, right, And there's like radioactive aliens, right,
radioactive aliens or neutron bomb. It's also implied to and
I guess there was there was one ending where the

(59:59):
Rodrigue brothers open up the trunk and it's a neutron
bomb and it blows up Los Angeles. Oh. Interesting, there's Yeah,
it seems like maybe the filmmakers were sure what was
really in the trunk either, which would explain why it's
explanation is convoluted at best. Yeah, it's probably best, like
the more you think about at the last sense it makes,
but it's still kind of works. Yeah. Yeah, Um, you

(01:00:22):
know who who's the guy that's driving it around? What's
his character's name? Oh man, Yeah, the guy who's the
who was clearly suffering from radiation poisoning as happens more
and more throughout the movie, people getting sick, throwing up.
But yeah, he's he's lost it. He's driving this Malibu
around that everyone wants because it's worth but the repo

(01:00:45):
aces like they're not great repo men, Like that car
is all over the place and it keeps swerving in
front of them. They never gave get old. Apparently the
guy they cast to play that role couldn't drive, So
it's a big problem throughout the production that like they
had to keep probably had to use like driving doubles
that didn't match them at all. A bunch of times
it was Alex Cox driving it himself because the one

(01:01:06):
time the actor actually drove, he drove into a bridge
or something like that. They just had so much, so
many issues with it. And then the then the Malibu
got stolen, the actual car during during filming, Like I
guess Alex was using it because he didn't have a car,
so they said, want't you just drive it so they
can show up that every day, and then it got
stolen from his It got stolen while they're having a
meeting or something, so they had to try to find

(01:01:27):
another one that was close enough. Did they ever get
it back, Yeah, they recovered it during production and then
then they had to thank because they brought in every
replace but it was like, is that kind of show?
I guess man, that's crazy the director driving the hero
picture car and then it gets stolen. What's more fitting
for a movie about cars getting knocked off? Right? Then?
Like exactly, it would have been better if it had

(01:01:47):
been repossessed. Um I did notice the bad replacement driver
and that very first scene with the highway patrolman where
he gets zapped. Um the shots from the rear of
the car, I'm like, that is not that. Yeah, but
all that stuff kind of adds through the charm. There's
a certain roughness to it that he is endearing. Yeah. Absolutely,

(01:02:08):
this is not a movie you go see if you
want flashy, perfect continuity. No, it's not gonna be in
the Marble universe. Um. I did think it's interesting and fun,
though how much he uh how much, Emilia? How how much?
Auto sort of went from this fuck you give the
finger to the security guard with a gun in your

(01:02:28):
face punk to really meshing with this new sort of
square family in the in the Toe office. Yeah, and
he was, you know, more than anything. He's a kid
trying to find something to do right, Like, he's totally
disconnected from his parents, he's bored, he's bored. His friends
aren't that great, you know, as you know, the only

(01:02:50):
one really sticks by him is Kevin Um and yes,
this is being in the circle jerks, right. It's so weird.
And I guess, I guess when he was on set,
he like introduced himself to them, was like, hey, I'm
I played the nerd and they were just like so yeah,
when you even give him the time of day or whatever, Yeah,
he ends up playing with him for twelve years or
sounds crazy, what a world, But yeah, it's like Auto's
he's just a lost kid right in this world, trying

(01:03:12):
to find something, and he ends up, you know, by happenstance,
ends up with these guys and very much like falls
into he buys in in a way like he doesn't.
I mean, he rejects his friends in a lot of ways. Yeah, um,
I mean, granted, his one best friend did cheat on
his h he cut holded him when he and he
went to go get a beer. The twelve seconds that
it took him to get a beer. He ends up

(01:03:34):
in bed with his girlfriend, which is great. Yeah, so
but yeah, he does reject his friends and um kind
of goes a little square and a little more. It's
funny for a repo guy, it's like going straight or whatever. Yeah,
for a punk well. Yeah, And even at the end
when they have after the shootout in the convenience store
or whatever, and she's pulled the gun on him, he asks,

(01:03:56):
you know, any chance for our relationship At this point,
he offers to make her a repo wife. He's bought
in so much at that point that scene. Man, that
was crazy because there's not a ton of violence in
this movie, or like overt violence, and then that movie
kind of went over the top with it in like
a great I just really went for it. Yeah, a
great B movie sort of way though. And you noticed

(01:04:18):
the thing about where they smashed the ketchup. I guess
it was something where they were worried about the m
p A A rating and so something to do like
if they smash the catchup and get ketchup everywhere, then
it adds a layer of ambiguity. Was or not it's
blood or catchup or something silly like that. Wow, that's
pretty genius actually, Yeah, creative work around. Um. I love

(01:04:40):
the l a river chasing, right, that's kind of one
of the things that sells him on the job. Yeah,
he's so excited about that afterwards. It's really sweet. Uh.
And you know, if you've ever been to l A,
the l A River, I mean that's technically what it's called,
but it is a concrete river. Yeah. And I mean
even if you haven't, if you've seen Greece and Terminator
too and all the who He's like, keep coming back

(01:05:01):
to that. Yeah, it's pretty iconic. Yeah, it really is.
This is one of the best uses of it though.
I think, Uh, this and maybe T two. Yeah, that's
a great chasing and that one. Obviously this was a
little more fun. But um, the Rodriguez brothers, Yeah, they
there were another interesting part of this movie because they
end up teaming up with them, Yeah, towards yea, towards

(01:05:21):
the end, and you don't really know why. All of
a sudden they're on the other side, like you had
just seen they were like swinging baseball bats at them
and threatened to assume or what all sorts of crazy things. Yeah,
and I feel yeah, I think there's some some narrative
parts that but again part together. That's part of the
charm in that there wasn't some scene where the Rodriguez
brothers decided well, we need to flip sides here and
help them out because of some repo code or whatever.

(01:05:44):
It just kind of happens, just kind of happened, and
it works. Old guy, young guy, crazy shit happens. Um
So they actually boost the Malibu and have it for
a little while. The car is literally hot, which is
kind of one of the funniest means. It's like, and
then that's where this whole other subplot of the punks

(01:06:06):
um Otto's friends on this crime spree. Yeah, they steal
it for a little while and they running like one
of the great physical gags of running into the trash can.
It's just such a stupid thing, but it's so funny.
It is just that Archie character is always running into things,
even when they're leaving a liquor. Story runs right in
that point. Yeah, it's those little bits I think that

(01:06:27):
they pepper in. Yeah, that that that make the movie
work so well. You can tell that they're having fun
when they do it in it it translates on screen. Yeah,
and I think Amelia esteveez um. I think his agents
didn't eat, like try to hide the script from him
early on when he was getting courted. I heard something
about it because they were like, no, they were only

(01:06:49):
doing big budget, like he's not gonna see this, And
then he got it to him, like to a friend
or something, and he was like, yeah, man, this is
like I gotta do this movie. I'd be so curious
to know his thoughts on the movie. This many years later,
I wasn't able to find any interviews with him. How
interesting it was, like everybody else on the crew, like
looking back, Yeah, I'd be curious to know, like what
he thinks about the movie in the context of his
own career, and like, like, I don't know what his

(01:07:09):
relationship was in the in the early eighties taming those bands.
I didn't write he was familiar with them or well,
I do know that he was not familiar, because I
did read one interview where he said that he was
not a part of the punk scene or didn't know
much about it. But I think his not Charlie. Did
he have another brother? Is there another I think, yeah, sure,
I think Ramone or no, wait, or is that Martin

(01:07:31):
Sheen's real name? I get lost. I do too. I
think he either had a brother or a friend or
a friend's brother that was in the punk scene that
he kind of leaned on for help on this, but
he said he got into it a little bit after this.
But I don't know how I would think he looks
back with fond memories about this movie. I hope so,
you know, and people are still talking about it, yeah,

(01:07:53):
all these years later. I mean, it has its place
I think in Hollywood history, uh, in a pretty big way.
You know, it's on It's constantly on top lists of
cult films. I think it's on in the top ten
list of like l A movies of all time. Yeah,
it's incredibly enduring, and it it holds up to multiple viewings,
you know, like I watched it half a dozen times

(01:08:14):
in last week or whatever. I didn't I didn't find
myself getting sick or tired of it in any way.
Like there's something about the energy and the humor of
it that just there's Yeah, there's something adhesive about it
that's hard to really describe. And then also the way
that shot. Yeah, it's beautiful, so beautiful. It is not jokey,
but there are a lot of fun and funny moments. Yeah,
in quotable lines. One of the interesting things that Alex

(01:08:35):
mentioned one of the interviews is that he wanted to
make it so that he thought he was making a
funny movie, but he wanted any any still from the
film to look like a serious drama. And it kind
of does. You know, like there's no there's nothing like
visually goofy about it. You know, there's nothing, there's no
like shot in the movie that feels like humorous shot.
I think if you freeze framed the when the trunk

(01:08:57):
is opened and people go to skeleton owing skeleton, that
might seem a little hokey, but maybe, but it's a
great effect for what it is for the time in
the budget it reads yeah, you know in the end,
you know with the uh, the floating glowing car, right,
which they actually painted that way, right, Yeah, parent of

(01:09:17):
it was like six hundred bucks a gallon or something
for this like super super fluorescent paint they used on
signage or something. I don't think they realized how much
it was gonna cost when they got into it, and
so that turned out to be like a five thousand
dollar paint job or something. Cheaps off. Yeah, but you know,
he he knows that he's uh Otto even has a

(01:09:38):
line You're a suburban white suburban punk just like me. Yeah,
you know, and that kind of says it all. It's
one of the best lines of the whole thing. Yeah,
he has no illusions about who he is. Yeah, as
Duke is dying, Yeah, there's a lot of deaths. Yeah,
and that's ano little funny. More like Duke is on
the ground, like coughing and bleeding out, and as Auto
walks away, was like, oh, you'll be fine. Yeah. Fine.

(01:10:01):
I wonder how much of this was superscripted and how
much was sort of on the fly. It seems as
though there was a lot of stuff that was on
the fly. There's a lot of stuff they were kind
of making up as they went. I know, the plate
of shrimp scene he wrote sort of I don't know
about on the fly, but I don't think that was
in the original script. No. I read that that was
actually a mono like he wrote for auditioning. Oh interesting, Yeah,

(01:10:25):
and that the characters liked it so much they wanted
him to include in the movie. Yeah, And I mean
that's one of the I mean, it's on of the
best monologues in any film. I actually I have a
played a shrimp tattoo in my thigh because of it. Yeah, way,
me and my buddy both have it on our leg.
It's yeah, it's one of those weird things you keep
coming back to all the time. Yeah, I mean there's

(01:10:46):
a shrimp or played or play to shrimp, and yeah,
he is the sage in the movie. Uh. And it's
not like it's not throw away stuff, Like I don't
want to say that, like it gets really profound and deep.
But man, you look at a couple of Miller's scenes
and monologues, it is a little profound, it is. Yeah,

(01:11:06):
And I mean he's also the one to go. He
tells first, tells Auto about the car air fresheners. Find
one in every car you'll see another recurring bit. Yeah,
and I think the story is they got just a
bunch of those for free. Yeah, it was like the
only product placement they're able to swing. And then so
after he says that, it cuts to the motorcycle on
the side of the road as they're doing like the
the cleanup of the first the opening sequence, right, and

(01:11:30):
they they've got the Christmas tree air freshener on the motorcycle,
which I think is such a great gag. The idea
of having an air freshener on a motorcycle. There are
so many little fun jokes like that. Um. One of
one of my other favorite lines is when they come
back the Malibu after auto has found it, secures it
in a lot, comes back the next day and it's

(01:11:52):
not there. Um, and the g men come into the
to the office and they're getting their asses kicked, and
she is the chair above his head and the one
guy goes, not my face, and then she smashes one
on him. Anyways, you hear that great off camera like
oof sound. Yeah, that's so good, and again that works

(01:12:12):
better than seeing it happened. I think it's just definitely
hearing that sound effect. Yeah, not my face. Because the
GMN are all like these kind of kin doll models. Yeah,
even though they're kind of shadowy figures, they're all handsome,
like blonde haired yeah, and they all got the super
reflective sunglasses. Yeah. And then the lady too, who leads
that crew with a weird and they never really explained

(01:12:36):
why she's got a robotic hand or what that's all
supposed to be about. But I think again though, part
of the weird charm of this movie because people can
then speculate right about, like what the funk that was
all about. Yeah. Yeah, and there's something I keep saying organic.
But you know, life is not Life is not full
of neat and tidy storylines, so you always know what's
going on. There's always a little like that, how was

(01:12:57):
that about? You know, you're only ever getting bits and
pieces of things in real life, and it the scattered
nature of the narrative kind of reflects that, probably unintentionally.
I don't think he's I don't think he's set out
to make that. You know, it's what end up happening
in the process, which is part of what filmmaking. You know.
It's this first it's his first feature. Yeah, I totally agree.

(01:13:20):
The Happy Accidents, Um, this movie that is kind of
about an area fifty one like government cover up of aliens,
but again, it never really dives into that too deeply. Um,
because he has this girlfriend that's somehow is it on
this plot? Yeah, that's never explained, but she's running from

(01:13:42):
the g men. Yeah that's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah,
this seems like a movie that like, like a cool
college kid would get as much as their twelve year old,
uh younger sibling. Like it works on an elementary level.
I think in some ways that and not to slag it. No, no, no,
not at all. Yeah, there's something so endearing about it,

(01:14:04):
the way that it all comes together. What else you
got over there? I'm just looking through mind. I want
to make sure didn't miss anything. I think we think
we hit on all the points. I think so, man,
uh oh, did you know that he tried to get
Muhammad Ali in this? I did see that. Tell the
story it's pretty great. So I guess when they were
filming the last scene where uh where buggets shot from
the helicopter and where the where the Malibu lifts off

(01:14:25):
into space, they found out that Muhammad All and they
were supposed to shoot a couple of days earlier at
a different location and the weather was bad or whatever.
So I ended up doing it back at the parking
lot at the Repalmand lot, and they found out that
Muhammad Ali was like training down the street or something.
So Alex Cox had this brilliant idea that as part
of like the procession of like the Holy Man coming
to the car and then being rejected by the car,

(01:14:46):
he wanted to get Muhammad Ali in there as well
as another you know, human dignitary to come to try
to get on the car to be rejected by I
guess Muhammad Ali very politely listened to his speech and
then politely declined that the sweet story, because that's a
very first time filmmakery thing to do. Is like, I
think that you can actually get Muhammad I'll need to

(01:15:08):
be in your movie because he's just down the street.
But you never know. I mean that is that sweet
naivete of a young filmmaker is It's like, hey, man,
if you don't ask. And the flip side of that
isn't Jimmy Buffett is in the movie. Yeah, I read that,
but then I never spotted him. I only figured it
out by watching the commentary track. Is one of the
man he's one of the when they burn the body. Yeah,

(01:15:29):
I don't remember the guy's name now on the on
the bed, the bench, Jimmy Buffett is one of the
guys the camera taking one of the g men taking photos.
So random, it's so weird. It's not like you, it's
not like you see him close enough to identify him.
And also like for all the cameos in a punk movie,
like Buffett, it's pretty funny yet somehow completely appropriate. Yea,
it's like the most anti punk guys. Somehow works. Yeah, somehow,

(01:15:53):
there's nothing there's nothing about it that feels forced or
it's just whatever it is, it is and it it's
somehow magical. Oh man, it's good stuff. I love a
movie that is sort of inexplicably great, um, because you
can't point to any classic conventional way is that this
is great? Um, Like oh my god that like the

(01:16:14):
script is amazing, or the story is just so tight
and moves. It's like it's just one of those movies
that works right, and it wouldn't work in any other
like this is a book, this is a graphic novel,
this is a this is a podcast, doesn't work. But
there's something about the magic of movies that somehow brings
those all all those things together the right. It's yeah,

(01:16:36):
you have it's a movie you have to I mean,
it's still I think it's a movie you have to watch,
unlike all the movies you don't watch. But no, I
know what you mean though. Yeah, And people are excited
about this because I posted a do like a little
coming soon things so people can watch movies ahead of time,
and Repoman is getting a lot of love. People are
excited about it. It still holds up. It does. It
does because it's a it's a slice of time and

(01:16:57):
just encapsulates nine and eighty four. So well, yeah, uh,
you know, because it's not like there's a bunch of
different ways of doing that you can do like fast
times at Richmond High and really the suburban mall culture
of l A. Which that nailed that too, but this
is a different l A and a different subculture it is.

(01:17:18):
And it felt like the way he was just trying
to put in the things from his life and the
things that are around him. It didn't feel as if
he set out to do that. He wasn't trying to
make a time capsule. He wasn't trying to make a
movie about what it was like to be a shitty
kid walking around l A. But he kind of accidentally
ends up making that, and it's it's really beautiful for
what it is. Totally totally agree. All right, man, Well

(01:17:39):
that's good stuff. Thanks for coming in and enlightening us.
Are you Are you relieved? Yeah, it's okay to be relieved.
You did great. I feel like once I got into it,
now that's fantastic. Yeah, And people love hearing about the
different jobs too. So Anothery're gonna love the first part
of this one too. Yeah, it's great to get a
chance to actually talk about that because so much of
it feel, like I said, even the people we work with.

(01:17:59):
It's it's a dark art. It's yeah, it happens off
some other places and sung heroes of the film business.
Nice work. All right, thanks dude, Uh, come back another time.
We'll talk about something else, all right, Alright, folks, hope

(01:18:21):
you enjoyed that. Sparky is a cool dude. Very nice
of him to come in here and share a little
bit about the job that he does on set, get
a little insight into special effects and how that works,
and uh what he thought a repo man um. He
he watched a bunch of times everybody, and did his
due diligence that has always appreciated because he came in
here well armed with with facts about the movie as

(01:18:44):
well as his take on this really unique, um strange,
weird cult classic that still holds up after all these years.
Really enjoyed watching it for the first time. I love
talking to Sparky about it, and he's welcome back anytime.
So thanks for listening to this one. I hope you
enjoyed it, and we will see you in your ear
holes next week. Boe Crushes produced, edited and engineered by

(01:19:17):
Ramsay unt Here in our home studio at Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia.
For I Heart Radio. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.

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