Go Canuck Yourself: Videodrome

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Instead of TV.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
The one you take to bed with you is amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Junk and watching. You gonna come out and stop me?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
All right?

Speaker 4 (00:39):
This is Dick Miller.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
If you're listening to junk food cinema, who are these.

Speaker 5 (00:44):
Guys broadcasting live from spectacular optical let's joke food Cinema,

(01:06):
brought to you by CIVICTV dot CA that dot co
dot long Live the New Coke. This is, of course,
the weekly cult exploitation filmcast. So good it just has
to be fattening. I'm your host, professor Brian Oblivion, media prophet,
and joining me, as per usual, is my friend and
co host. He is a novelist, he is a screenwriter,

(01:28):
a LIEUTENANTI Mega force, the man just tacky enough to
turn you on, mister c Robert Cargill.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
Oh yeah, how's it going, man.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's going great. It's going really good. Uh, life is good.
I have no complaints. South By Southwest is about to start,
and we're talking about David Cronenberg today.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Man.

Speaker 5 (01:49):
South By Southwest is a great opportunity to shove a
lot of new movies into your chest.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
Vagina.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Oh yeah, yes, it is.

Speaker 5 (01:56):
Just absorbed the media goodness that is South by Southwest Ah.
I am super excited this week because we are wrapping
up our Go Connuct Yourself series.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Figured it.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
I feel like it would be impossible to complete this
mini series and not discuss David Cronenberg, a man who's
rise was inarguably aided by the Canadian tax shelter film craze.
But the film we're talking about today is perfect to
wrap up the series, as it seems to be a
transitional project. It was fifty percent funded by Canada, fifty

(02:36):
percent by Universal, and is not only moving out of
the tax shelter movement, it's on the tail end of that,
but it's also at a moment where Cronenberg has had
enough success to start garnering major studio interests. So today
we're talking about a border straddling movie and I'm not
sure who pays the tariff on this nineteen eighty three's videodrome?

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Why did you watch it? Max? Business reasons?

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
What about the other reasons?

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Max Wren is a victim. I woke up with a headache.
He has been exposed to video dro I've been hallucinating
for a while, ever since since a first of video drome.
His brain is already receiving video images.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I think that massive doses of Videodrome's signal will ultimately
produce and control hallucination to the point that it will
change human reality. Soon, his visions will coalesce and become

(03:49):
uncontrollable flesh. Video Drob is seducing Max Wren.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Please come to me now.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Calta and Max Wren can do nothing to stop it.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
What makes you think I need help? One of our
test subjects has returned to normalody. Television can change your mind.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Videodrome will change your body.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Long live the new Flesh. It will shatter your reality.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Video Drobe, starring Deborah Harry and James Woodrow, a shocking
new vision from the creator of Scanners, coming soon to
a theater near you from Universal Pictures.

Speaker 5 (04:47):
Video droned The radio drome, Videodrome the radio drome. Man,
I'm kind of surprised it took us this long to
talk about videodrome because this podcast is in and of itself,
kind of its own video drome.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
There's there's a reason for it.

Speaker 5 (05:04):
Actually, Oh you know what, that's a good point, and
maybe a disclaimer up top here.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
No, no, there's a different reason. We haven't talked about it.
There's two reasons we haven't talked about it. There's your
reason and my reason, and they are very different reasons.

Speaker 4 (05:18):
Let's start with your reason, then.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
My reason is I didn't watch Video Drome until recently.
What and the reason I hadn't watched Video Drome until
recently was because I saw it when I was a kid,
and I got it confused with another movie that I
saw as a kid all the time, and for years
I thought i'd seen it.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Wait was it Terror Vision?

Speaker 3 (05:40):
No?

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Okay, okay, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
No, no, no, And the thing is it'll make sense.
I can't. I was racking my brain last night. I
couldn't remember if we did the episode on it or
we have just talked about doing the episode on it.
But I confused this movie with Looker.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
Oh, the Michael Crichton film.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
The Michael Crichton parent Annoyed using, you know, television and
things to control us. Movie. They blended together when I
was a kid, and I had always thought Looker was
video drum, So every time people were talking about how
great video drum was, and I was like, well that's cool. Yeah,
but it was a little weird and goofy not realizing

(06:21):
I was talking about a different movie, and when I
sat down to watch Video Drum, I remembered exactly three
seconds of Video Drum. And I only discovered it, i
want to say, a year and a half two years ago,
and actually sat down and watched it, and then of
course fell madly in love with it, because instantly as
I'm watching it, I realized what this movie was and
started digging deeper and deeper and became, you know, as

(06:44):
infatuated with this movie as multiple other people are. Uh.
But uh, because this is one of those movies that
I think gets really confused by people, Like people think
that this is, you know, a goofy, sexy body horror movie,
that is you know, Lynchian insomuch as that it is
hard to even figure out what the movie's about, and

(07:09):
strong disagree on that it is absolutely Cronenberg's probably his
most literary film in terms of having to dig into
the text to really get what he's doing. You know,
he would actually adapt literature in the you know, going
forward to start with, Cronenberg is the king of body horror,

(07:33):
but he started out as a literature professor in college.
Like that's who Cronenberg was he was this guy teaching
literature that made a short film with a friend in
the sixties and caught the fucking bug and said, holy shit,
I want to be making movies and then started playing
around making just low budget stuff. And then of course,

(07:55):
as the you know, as we talked about the Canadian
tag shelter Era came into its own able to capitalize
on that and start making his films. And as he
made his very weird, crazy little gross out movies up front,
you know, his his very you know, smart films, but
not as literary. When he got that power, this was

(08:16):
his chance to finally make that movie where he's like,
I'm going to make something completely bananas and bonkers and
very me wow. And that's what he made. And what
he made was essentially a william S Burrows movie.

Speaker 4 (08:30):
I was just going to say, knowing now that he
was a literature professor before becoming a filmmaker, I now
understand why he did an adaptation of Naked Lunch.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
And when you read Cronenberg talking about Burrows, he has said,
there's two writers that really influenced him. One was Nabokov, who,
of course everybody knows for Lolita and probably not else,
because Lolita is the one thing that's really moved forward
in time of his And then William S Burrows, and
he said the thing he loved about Burrows, and he

(09:00):
said this multiple times is that Burrows was the writer
that he felt most felt like the ideas going in
going on inside his own head, and that he really
looked at Burrow's material and really said, oh, that's why.
Now I know this feeling intensely because when I discovered Burrows,
I felt very similar a huge way mess Burrows fan.

(09:23):
And he would go on to be able to adapt
Naked Lunch because Burrows would see his work and go,
oh shit, this guy gets me. In fact, Cronenberg at
first felt like there was nothing else for him to
do because Burrows had already written it all. And then
eventually he got over that that mental block and started

(09:43):
creating his own Burrosian kind of stories and movies. But
they really became CRONENBERGI, you know, he really elevated that
to another level and moved beyond what he was inspired
by Burrows. But this is the one movie that you

(10:05):
just watched this and you're like, oh, he's he's literally
talking about Burrows in this movie through subtext. And it's
really really fascinating to break this movie apart into its
various pieces and then put it back together, because this
is a really deep, meaningful, fucking film that is also
fun and gross as fuck.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
See. I want to say two things.

Speaker 5 (10:28):
First of all, I am shocked that it took you
so long to see Videodrome, because it's essentially if you
took Night Flight and Paul Schrader's Hardcore and smashed them
together and then fucked the wound, that would be exactly
what video drome is, which seems right up your alley.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah. No, I mean I would. Everyone was talking about
it around me. It wasn't that I wasn't exposed to it.
It was just that I remember it being a different movie.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
I've definitely had that happen, So.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
I mean it happens sometimes. And the minute I realized,
because me and just sat down to watch it, and
when I realized was going on, I hopped on on
Blue Sky. The next day, I'm like, guys, I'm trying
to think of this movie. I mistook this movie for
this movie. And it took about I described some scenes
from it, and it took about fifteen minutes. Where before
somebody came in and said, you're talking about Looker, and

(11:16):
I watched the trailer. I'm like, fuck, that's the movie.
And I sat down and watched Looker that day. I
was like, oh, we got to cover Looker because Looker
is it's oh and separate, wonderful thing. But yeah, but yeah, no,
it is so my shit. It should have been my
shit for thirty years. But it was one of those
things that when we were talking about You're like, hey,
we can't get out of Canuck's ploitation without time out

(11:38):
Cronenberg and I was like video drum we haven't covered
video Drone. And You're like, well, it came out in
eighty three, and then you go wait, wait, wait, And
it turns out it was one of the last movies
that got in under the wire. They filmed shoot, they
finished shooting in nineteen eighty one in order to make
sure they could get under the tack shelter rules, and

(12:01):
they did, and it took till eighty three. Now, quick aside,
before we get into everything else about that, right, I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
A quick what now.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Sidebar.

Speaker 5 (12:17):
You've been away for a while, just want to make
sure you still know how this fucking thing works go ahead.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
So one of the centerpieces of this movie is that
James Wood's character, who will get into and we'll get
into the James Woods of it all runs Channel eighty three.
He is the president of programming at Channel eighty three.
Now Channel eighty three doesn't exist anymore. Channel eighty three

(12:41):
used to exist. Channel eighty three was dis was taken
off the bandwidth of usable stations in nineteen eighty two.
So when they made this movie, Channel eighty three is
supposed to be this channel at the end of the
band that is, you know, so hard to find that
nobody watches it. But by the time the movie came

(13:03):
out in eighty three, it was now a band that
doesn't exist anymore. So does that band actually exist in
this movie?

Speaker 5 (13:12):
That question could cover. I mean, there's a lot you
could apply that question to, is this real? Did this happen?
Are we the audience under a hallucination? There's a lot
of things, Oh yeah, that you could pick apart, and
I'm excited to get into that. I also, you know,
just sitting here a you've inspired me now to finally
cross Looker off my muscy list. I'll be doing that
as soon as we're done recording. Secondly, I feel like

(13:35):
I'm understanding Coronerberk so much better just with the small
nugget of information that he used to be a literary professor,
because not only does that explain his affinity for Burrows
and adapting Naked Lunch, but also he is one of
the rare filmmakers who has managed to take a book
and adapt it into a movie that is better than
the book.

Speaker 4 (13:53):
And I'm talking about history of violence.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Oh, I would argue, well, Crash, maybe Crash is pretty
fucking good. Um uh yeah, I No, he's uh, he's
very very very good. Also, also, all of a sudden,
when you know he's an ex college literary professor, his
on camera demeanor makes so much more sense.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Oh yeah, a thousand percent.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
I think like corns, that guy used to teach literature
in college.

Speaker 5 (14:24):
It feels like he brings a briefcase to set every day.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
I wouldn't doubt if you were one of those guys.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
Shock me, what do you call those like saddle bag
type of briefcase? I would absolutely believe that one thousand percent.
But no, I'm not familiar with the book that Crash
is based on. I am familiar with the.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Graphic called Crash by a jud Ballard.

Speaker 4 (14:41):
Okay, gotcha.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
I'm familiar with the graphic novel the History of Violence
is based on and it's pretty bad. Like the the
the art style is atrocious to me. I think the
ending is preposterous. So when you see the movie that,
in my opinion, is the far better version of that story.
So the fact that he's able to suss out of
something sort of rough and raw and turn it into

(15:02):
something that seems a lot more you know, structurally sound narratively,
that totally tracks for somebody that studies literature.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
And Josh Olsen wrote that script and did a kind
an Oscar nomination for it.

Speaker 5 (15:15):
Well, there you have it. But also I think, you know,
we we just to address this up top. I want
to I want to be able to see the trees
without the woods for a second. Uh So, I do
not like the idea of featuring a James Woods movie
on this show.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
So that has been my hang up on this movie
for a while.

Speaker 5 (15:33):
There's another movie that we really want to cover that
I've just I've just felt so icky of it. Yeah,
covering in James Woods movie has just felt really icky
to me. He was once a great we.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Could just consider it a Michael J. Foxx movie.

Speaker 5 (15:45):
Yeah, And I'm slowly kind of coming around to this because,
you know, Woods is a guy who once was a
great actor, but like Max Wren in this movie, he
underwent a ghastly transformation that saw him descend to the
depths of hate and you know, used his clout to
harass and spread lives to target marginalized groups, and his
career rightfully died even if he hasn't. So yeah, he

(16:08):
is a reprehensible monster. All of that said, we discussed
this movie today not to praise James Woods or in
any way can done his behavior, but instead to celebrate
the brilliant, spectacular work of cinema that exists around him
in video Drome. Like, I feel like you're really throwing
the baby out with the bathwater if you start, you know,
limiting some of these things, as uncomfortable as it might be,

(16:30):
you know, to have somebody of this dickish caliber as
as James Woods. But again, we're talking about video drum,
We're talking about David Cronenberg's movie today.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
I'm going to push back just a little bit that
he's not a dick. Really, do you think that's where
I'm gonna push back.

Speaker 5 (16:45):
I was weird, dude, I don't know where you're pushing
back on that stage.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
I know, no, no, no, where I'm pushing back is
my rewatching this And because last night was one of
those Okay, I've dug in, I've read a bunch of
essays on this by brilliant pe who have studied this
movie for years. I you know, followed my own things
down the rabbit hole once I got done watching, and
I was like, oh, I got to check out everything
he's ever said about Burrows, and sure enough, there's a lot.

(17:10):
Because I was like, he had to be a Burros
fan before Naked Lunch, because this is this is a
willyamous Burrow's fucking movie, like right down to its philosophical core,
Like there's so much there and we will get into
this because this is one of my favorite writers on
the planet and this movie is kind of Cronenberg's love
letter to him. But no, James Woods in this movie

(17:32):
plays a character who is very much a deviant, and
as a deviant, he is potentially leading towards the completely
destruction of the audience and society as we know it,
and was James Wood drawn to that because of his
conservative ideals that playing a character, a self destructive character

(17:54):
who is destroying the fabric of America or I mean
it is Canada, but destroying the fabric of culture was
that was his conservatism what drove him to want to
play that and say.

Speaker 5 (18:07):
That that's that's a that's definitely a dense onion that
would be hard to get to the middle of and
would just be as stinky.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (18:14):
But it's it's a fair point. It's a fair point,
for sure. I don't I I can't dispute it, and
I think it tracks with a lot of you know
what I what I know and uh yeah, no I
I I don't discredit that at all. But all that
to say, Videodrome, if you haven't seen it, is a
movie about a character named Max Wrenn, and Max wren

(18:34):
is Uh he's a you know, for all of you
gen Z's listening, he's a content curator.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (18:41):
He kind of works for YouTube before YouTube, or maybe
maybe that's unfair me. He works more like for Ebom's world.
He's going out and he's finding the most violent and
sallacious content to put onto Civic TV, which is you know,
as Cargill said, this UHF station at the end of
the dial that specializes in sensationalist programming. And he comes
across this pirate signal that they have an unauthorized satellite dish.

(19:04):
And this guy Harlan, who's sort of there their expert
video pirate, comes across this broadcast called Videodrome that appears
to just be staged pseudo snuff from Malaysia. It's a
plotless show depicting victims being tortured and eventually murdered. Max
Wren believes this is the future of television and orders

(19:26):
Harlan to begin unlicensed use of the show. And at
this point, you know, like literally, as he's discovering this,
he is on a talk show where he is one
of the guests, and another guest is this radio host
named Nicky Brand played by the amazing Deborah Harry Blondie herself.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
Blondie who is a redhead in this movie by the way.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here
and say something that's gonna be very unpopular. I think
DeBie Harry's kind of fucking hot. I know, it's an
extremely hot take. I know it's a bold statement, but
little little hot.

Speaker 5 (20:01):
So if you're playing along at home, the hot takes
we've thrown up in this episode are one Deborah Harry hot.

Speaker 4 (20:06):
Two James Woods is a dick. Yeah, I know. Stick
with us here.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
We're really yeah, yeah, we're really. We're really breaking boundaries
here tonight.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
We're at the end of the band right now. That's
what's going on. This is now our Civic TV.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Welcome to Channel eighty three. By the way, quick a
quick side for those of you out there that are
still into watching, you know, modern outsider art and crazy things.
If you've ever watched a Joe Begos movie, Joe Begos's

(20:39):
production company with Josh Ethier is called Channel eighty three,
using the same logo as the logo Pacific TV.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
They might be fans, as it turns out.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
A little bit the body horror guys might like Cronenberg
what it's so weird.

Speaker 5 (20:56):
It So here's here's my favorite part about Debe Dewy
Harry in this movie. The the speed at which they
go from meet cute to hardcore s and m That
relationship goes a ham so quickly that I'm not sure
Max was as deviant as he is, was ever prepared
for how much he would have to match her. Freak right,

(21:18):
They go from do you want to have dinner? To
will you stick needles in my ears? In the span
of what twelve hours? It's it'ssane.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
There's two things to be said about that. One is
brand real, oh yeah? Or is she a hallucination because
he's already experienced a video dram.

Speaker 5 (21:40):
So this is probably a good point to discuss this
because we'll get into many of the themes of this movie.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
But one of the things that comes.

Speaker 5 (21:48):
To light throughout the plot, which I will agree, I
think is actually kind of straightforward, maybe more so than
a lot of David Krona like. This movie, of course,
relies on a lot of the same body horror things
and dream logic and hallucination. There's a lot going on
that you're just like, oh, why the fuck is that happening?
But in terms of the A to B story of
this movie, it's pretty straightforward, like it's we're gonna use

(22:11):
this broad where the military is gonna use this broadcast
because anybody who watches it has hallucinations and starts like
violently hallucinating and potentially growing tumors and dying, and they're
trying to kill off the scum of the world, who
they consider to be the viewers of Channel eighty three. So,
in an effort to kind of thin the herd and
encourage survival of the fittest, We're gonna call the viewers

(22:33):
of this channel by intentionally broadcasting something that is going
to kill them.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
That's the plot, like it's it's middle word.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
Yes, yes, in.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
Several words in fact.

Speaker 5 (22:43):
But now that we know that when you watch the
movie again, watching videodrome even once causes some hallucinations. Woods
watches it very early in the movie. Therefore, everything that
happens from that point, including meeting Deborah Harry, is at
least somewhat in doubt, if not over dream logic. So yes,
great question up top is this character even real? But moreover,

(23:06):
the movie starts with the staticky title card for the
video drome broadcast itself, meaning we the audience have subtly
been exposed to the broadcast as well, and every frame
of this movie could therefore be our collective video drum
induced hallucination.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yes, after these messages, we'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Hi, I'm sending I'm the perfect Female Time eighteen to
twenty five.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
You know what's going on?

Speaker 6 (23:32):
This is more than commercial stickuling all the girls that
are perfect.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
What have you got me mixed up in?

Speaker 6 (23:43):
It?

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Looks could Kille looker grated? Dji now playing check newspaper
for a theater near you.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
So w Harry's playing Nicky Brand. One of the big
things here is what you got to keep in mind
is this is nineteen eighty one that they filmed this.
Deborah Harry's on top of the fucking world. Yep, she's
a huge star. She's all over television and all over
the radio, MTV has not happened? Has just happened? And

(24:19):
isn't everywhere yet? You know, and in fact, most people
don't know MPB exists. When she's filming this movie. Contrary
to popular belief, everybody's like, oh yeah, first video video
killed the radio star. It's like, yeah, one cable channel
had it in New Jersey, Like nobody was fucking watching.
But why is she in this movie? How does a

(24:41):
big star like this end up in a Canadian tag
shelter film. Well, the answer is because she wanted to
give a middle finger to how the media was portraying
her and how people were viewing her, and so the
character Niki brand, she is a brand. The whole point
is it's Deborah Harry. You're not supposed to see anything
but Deborah Harry. She's not playing a character. The character

(25:04):
she's playing is the fantasy that all these men in
the era are having of her, and she's playing into that.
And that's how Cronenberg sold her on this movie is
you're going to be playing the dirty fantasy that all
these guys are having about you, because they're degenerates who
are going to be drawn into that and are going

(25:26):
to be drawn into the videodrome as a result. And
so she's literally satirizing her own image in this crazy
fucking Canadian tag shelter moan.

Speaker 5 (25:37):
And the additional, more disgusting, subversive part of that is
you're going to play a character who not only would
take the abuse from these men and men as an
analog for the industry, but someone who actually gets off
on it.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
So who enjoys the hell out of it. Please slice me,
please stick my ear. Oh, I want to go on
video drome. I want to be beaten. You know, she's
the fantasy. This character doesn't make sense because it's not
supposed to, because Debbie Harry is the the male fantasy,
the submissive male fantasy of someone like Max Wren. Like

(26:10):
he is, she is completely and totally built to play
to all of his puri interests.

Speaker 4 (26:16):
Which tacitly justifies his cruelty exactly.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, And I think it's
just it's you know, it's one of these things that
this film is one of those that the more you
dig apart all the layers of it, there's just everything
about it. It's such a literary fucking movie masquerading as
cheap early eighties late night junk, and it's every bit

(26:41):
that you would that would written off at the time
as being late night junk is brilliantly executed and part
of what we still love about it over forty years later,
but just how deep and dense the narrative is and
what they're talking about right down to one of my
favorite things about the movie is that, you know, when
we've got the side character who's an agent for television,

(27:05):
she's telling Max Wren when he's looking for who runs
video drum, these people are dangerous. He's like, no, no, no,
I've dealt with the mob before she's like, this isn't
mob They're not mobbed up. These people are dangerous because
they have a philosophy, right, And the thing is, this
movie has a philosophy. This movie is actually saying something
quite deep that goes back to Burrows and goes back

(27:30):
to these theories that were being developed at the time.
There's another guy I'm blaying on his name, but he
was a media professor who had written all this stuff
on the dangers of the expanding media, and it was
something that Croneberg was really taken by and fused with
Burrows and came up with the whole concepts for video Drum.

(27:52):
Quick dive into that so that we can dig it
apart the rest of the episode. Essentially, what it comes
down to is that we do not engage in art
intellectually the way we think we do. When you sit
down to watch a movie, when you listen to music,
when you read a book, you're engaging with that physically,
not just you know, watching it with your eyes or
listening with your ears, but that the media itself is

(28:15):
triggering things within your body. It's increasing your heart rate,
decreasing your heart rate, turning your stomach, releasing endorphins in
your brain, giving you, you know, goosebumps, tingles, all sorts
of chemicals are firing as you're responding to this thing
and it's affecting you physically. And so the question that
was being asked at the time, as all of this

(28:37):
media is expanding and as media is getting you know,
more and more powerful, as televisions are getting better, as
you know, visual effects are getting better, as computers are
starting to come around, the question became is there a
point where we as the viewer, can be so affected
by this media that it can actively break us. Meanwhile,

(28:59):
he's talking about what's scary about the burgeoning video market,
which is when you have a video market, you have
these niche media markets. And by having a niche media market,
now you can cater to the more prurient interests of
people eat and you can get these darker corners where
you can have this evil stuff. And what happens when

(29:20):
these two fuse? Can this art really affect us? And
if it does, what happens when we give the darkest,
most violent, terrible stuff to this audience. Is it harmful
or is it not harmful? And the movie asks that
on a TV show, very early on, but then the
rest of the movie is literally about asking that question

(29:40):
because Max Wren isn't a good guy in any way,
shape or form. He's a deviant who we like because
he's charismatic, but he never does anything in the movie
that makes us go, oh, this is a good dude.
He's somebody that wants to go deeper and deeper down
that rabbit hole and get into darker and arkor shit,

(30:01):
and then by the time it's fucked him up, it's
too late for him to do anything about it, and
now he's going on a killing spree.

Speaker 5 (30:08):
His whole mission that he repeats many times in the
movie is that he's looking for the future of television.
But if we are to believe that he has found it,
that is not a great portent for the future of humanity.
Like this is the future of television and he's found it,
then we're all fucked and you're right.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
Like the rise of the VHS.

Speaker 5 (30:28):
Format and home video and tape trading, it allows for
not only a more constant consumption of media, but it
operates outside the bounds of something like say, theatrical regulations
in the NPAA, and therefore indulges that growing demand for
salacious material. And you know, if we're becoming over stimulated
by all this media with cable TV, now and home video,

(30:51):
what is it going to take for us to be
sated with that need for stimula? For stimulation is going
to require more and more extreme content, and you have
that rising with the burgeoning market that's going to get
around all regulation to bring you that content. It's a
bad recipe and that's what this movie's playing with.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah, no, absolutely, and then it portented a lot of
things that we would then see in the Internet. In fact,
one of the lines that really hit me last night
was in the interview with Brian Oblivion where Brian just
comes out and says, Brian Oblivion's even my name. I've
just chosen that and in the future we'll all have

(31:30):
our own names for media.

Speaker 5 (31:32):
And I'm like, if you think I didn't hear the
word mass a worm when he said that, you're out
of your fucking mind, dude.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
And I not only thought about that, but what I
thought is, man, I wish I'd had this movie in
my head. Instead of choosing the name Massworm, I would
have been Brian Oblivion on at cold names like it
would have been I would have been satirizing the fact
that everybody else is using names by choosing a name
that was literally making fun of that, Like that would
have been fucking rad. I wish I were that smart
twenty five years ago. That would have been cool.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
So five years ago.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
But the thing is is that we all then went online,
and you know, you even have mister Brayguy Salisbury. You know,
we all have our own online handle names now, and
you know, for gamer tags or for you know, logging
into places or for email or however you've done it.
Most everybody at this point has chosen their own handle,

(32:29):
because just getting your own name sometimes is you know,
you end up with you know, Brian Salisbury eighty one
and there you go. Uh So, I just found that
really interesting that back in nineteen eighty one they portended that, yeah,
handles are going to become a thing.

Speaker 5 (32:47):
Yeah, I mean, in retrospect, I wish I had picked
a handle that obfuscated my real name a little bit better,
because really all I did was add a syllable to
my existing name.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Like I'll put it to you this way.

Speaker 5 (32:56):
I would be toast if I went into witness protection,
because yeah, Brian Guy Salisbury that can't be Brian Salisbury.
The only person worse than me than picking a witness
protection handle is probably Obi wan Kenobi. I wonder if
he means Old Ben Kenobi. Yeah, no shit, Sherlock, Uh.

Speaker 3 (33:15):
Now that's the name I've not heard in a long time.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
It's your fucking name. What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Nobody talks to Old Ben a lonely man.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
That explains a lot if we really think about.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
It, Oh, lonely boy.

Speaker 5 (33:30):
But to go back to Deborah Harry or as I'm
assuming you would call her in this movie, Deborah dirty
Harry based on the persona that she's putting forward and
how she is sort of the emblem of the the
industry's treatment of her. I think this is a really
interesting time for Deborah Harry. This is also a really
interesting time for David Croningberg, because they're both being offered

(33:52):
so much that would push them in a direction I
don't feel would be genuine for them to go. For example,
you know, around this time, Deborah Harry was offered PRIs
in Blade Runner, she was up for lead roles in
Raging Bull and Tron and because of the successive scanners,
you know, we mentioned this being sort of a Lynchian movie.

(34:14):
One thing that Kroneberg and Lynch have in common is
they were both offered the chance to direct Return of
the Jedi but declined, And Kroniberg declined to.

Speaker 4 (34:23):
Make this movie.

Speaker 5 (34:24):
And I feel like, whereas there is a Faustian fork
in the road for Lucas when it comes to Return
of the Jedi, that he clearly went the wrong way,
Kroniberg may have chosen the correct path in that Faustian
moment of like, I could either make Return of the
Jedi something that is not really my voice at all
but would be very commercial, or I could go do
something that's intensely personal that ends up not really making

(34:47):
any money but being hailed as a classic for for
years and years and sort of helped define who I
am as an artist. And I feel like he absolutely
made the right choice. But like Lynch, he was offered
the chance to do Return of the Jedi. We need

(35:12):
to talk about Rick Baker and his association with this movie, because.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
Much stage Rick Baker.

Speaker 5 (35:19):
Rick Baker, who had just come off of doing An
American Werewolf in London, just come off of having an
oscar invented for his work an American Werewolf in London,
and he comes onto this project and he normally likes
to take six months to plan things out to you know,
to create these effects. He had three and also a

(35:42):
more limited budget than he was promised. So I want
you to think about that when you're watching the effects
in video drome. That is Rick on less time and
less money than he usually gets, and it's still that
fucking good.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
Oh yeah, I mean, I mean Rick Baker is twenty
one at this point, and at this point he's all
ready one of the best in the business. Yes, Like
it's it was disgusting how talented he was or it
still is. I love the fact that he just like
dropped out, He's like, I'm done, and that he just
loves to go and help out other help out college

(36:16):
students by doing effects for their small movies. Like that's
that's the ballorus dash shit, mad love and respect for that.
I love when somebody's like, I'm just done and uh
but you know, I'll help out other people and you know,
lend my lend what juice I have left to helping
their shit get done. But man, yeah, the stuff he's
doing in this era is unreal. Effects that still creep

(36:41):
out to this day. And yeah, and this movie look
fucking phenomenal. They're so surreal, it's so captures an aesthetic
that you know only it existed on the page up
until then. Because I don't know how much Burrows you've
ever read, uh, Ryan.

Speaker 5 (37:01):
That would be hold on checking notes exactly, none of it,
I'll be completely honest.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Okay, So he really influential on me. You know, deeply
philosophical guy, very weird guy. Burrows is somebody who didn't
start writing until he was thirty five. You know, he
was hanging out with the Beats. He was the old guy.
They were the young Turks. Accidentally killed his wife in

(37:25):
a drunken accident. They were drunkenly playing William Tell and
he missed. Uh. He went on the run to Mexico,
where the he he lived out the life that you
just saw in the movie Queer. If you've not watched
Queer yet, definitely watched that. That is very much about
a guy on the run. But the thing is is
that Burrows in the run in particular, but he became

(37:48):
obsessed with altering perceptions and so he went His big
thing was, well, fuck, if I'm going to be in
South America hiding out from the cops. I may as
well discover all the drugs ever made that are down here,
and literally went on a quest and would write letters.
I have a book of his letters here. It's something
just got me for Christmas one year, and so many

(38:10):
of the letters are just about he's, you know, writing
to his beat buddies in New York talking about Okay,
so I tried this thing. Do not try d MT.
It is the worst. It is hell on earth. Do
not try it.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
Is this why I've always associated him with Hunter S. Thompson.
Oh yeah, okay, all.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
Right, yeah Thompson. Thompson was political philosophy and lots of
drugs just for the sake of drugs, and Burrows was
you know, politics is fine, but really I'm just a
queer man trying to elevate my consciousness in some way,
shape or form. Also having a good time doing it.

Speaker 4 (38:47):
So maybe a little more Timothy Leary than Hunter.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
He's literally, I was about to say, he's literally the
halfway point between Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Leary. Got
it because there's a lot of hedonism in it in him,
you know, he really was, Because I mean that was
the thing. The relationship he had with his wife was
special because she understood he was queer, but they loved
each other very much, and so he was clearly by

(39:10):
for a while and then became fully gay after she passed,
because stories have it that he only saw men after that.
But he was very much in the hedonism kick, very
much in the live for the moment, get high, have fun,
but also trying to awaken himself. And he was playing
around with art in very weird ways, essentially a thing

(39:32):
that comes up for here. One of his big things.
He was obsessed with something called cutups, where he would
take tape cassette recorders, the old school ones, not like
the cassette cassettes we know today, but like reel to reels,
and they would record poetry, record rambling speeches, and then
would go in and cut it up and splice it

(39:52):
together and create these weird, nonsensical performance pieces out of
whatever that was. And they were called cut ups, and
it was a thing that he and another beat fiddled
around with, especially for a while in France, and he
began Burrows became obsessed with media and started writing about,
you know, various things. His writing's very paranoid. It's full

(40:18):
of body horror. One of his most famous stories is
called Spare Ass Annie, which is all about a young
woman who was born with a second stincter on her forehead.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
Uh and hey, the title delivers what the title promises.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
It does, and it's full of there's actually a really
great if you want to hear it, there's a great
it's a great album that uh uh a DJ got
together with uh with Burrows in the nineties and put
out an album of a bunch of his reading set
to music and playing around with cutups. And they do
a version of spare As Annie on there that actually

(40:53):
kind of fucking slaps. So if you want to have
an interesting evening tonight, look up Williams Burrows spare As Annie,
the the musical track, and it is a hell of
a thing.

Speaker 4 (41:02):
I'm gonna before I do that, but sure.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
Yeah, he would recommend you don't.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
You're not the William Burrows.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
He's not. He's long gone now, but uh he Yeah.
So he played around with a lot of stuff, and
his stuff gets dark and fucked up, and one of
the key elements of a Burrows piece is you're never
quite sure of the reality of the piece because it
always feels like it's surreal, like you're on the the

(41:31):
the concept of most of it is that it's a
lot of it feels like you're on drugs while you're
reading it, and this is just your your reality now.
And that's what really connected with uh with Krounenberg. So
Kronenberg is reading these books going, oh shit, this is
the stuff that's in my head, this is what I'm

(41:52):
playing around with, this is what I'm you know, and
this guy gets it, and he gets these weird vision
visuals that I get.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
And.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Then took that to the next level and brought it
into film, and that Cronenberg look, that sense of body
horror is his interpolation of william S. Burrow's writing and
does so in such a phenomenal way that then goes
on to own it himself and you know, he makes
he makes his naked lunch, which, by the way, critics

(42:24):
felt was disappointing because they felt he was just retreading
ground he'd already tread that through his own movies. He
had explored Burrows, and now that he's actually doing Burrows,
it's like, well, it just feels like Cronenberg griffing on Burrows,
which he's always been doing so and he has kind
of a trilogy with Videodrome, with Videodrome Existends and then

(42:46):
Crimes of the Future.

Speaker 5 (42:48):
I mean, I kind of understand that criticism because it
would be like if Brian DePalma got to make an
actual remake of Rear Window, you'd feel like, yeah, you've
been doing this for fifty years.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
That's exactly that was the reaction. That was the reaction
at the time. Now it's a it's a whole other,
you know thing. Now I would love to cover that
movie at some point because the thing about Naked Lunch
is Naked Lunch is not an adaptation of Naked Lunch.
Naked Lunch is.

Speaker 4 (43:15):
An out of Burrows's like Life and Experiences or what.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
No, it's an adaptation of four of his books at
one time, Like it's Naked Lunch and inter Zone and
Exterminator and I'm forgetting what the fourth one is. Or
of a Naked Feast, Yeah, a movable naked feast if
you will. But yeah, so all of a sudden, people
are like, wait, car, you reads books, what why why

(43:40):
didn't this become a literary podcast and here you can
read like I know he writes, but he reads too.
This is you know, he has opinions on books. What
what the fuck is going on here?

Speaker 4 (43:53):
Welcome back to Junk Food Cinema now on NPR.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Yeah, shweaty bulls. Yeah but so so yeah. I would
love to cover that at some point. But yeah, this,
this movie in particular, is playing around with so much
of Burrows's obsessions. But what Cronenberg has done here is
there's no imitation here. It's all his own invention of

(44:20):
what he was inspired by. And he really did take
Burrows's ideas and concepts and inspiration and run with it
with a truly unique, original movie that then caught Burus's
attention and got Burrows to go, hey, he should do
naked Lunch. So you know they would end up collaborating
eventually as a result, but it was really you know,

(44:44):
this movie wants you to kind of start peeling its
layers apart and asking questions about everything, because it's one
of those movies that if you're drinking, if you're you're
halfway into a bottle of whiskey and you're watching this
movie and it doesn't make it like goddamn sense, it's
just weird for the sake of being weird. It's not.
It's and it's also not Lynchian in that you need

(45:06):
the primmer that you need to know, Hey, this is
a dream, and you need to understand all the weird
symbolism that's going here and here to fully understand what's
going on. It's something that once you start pulling in
a thread, you see all those threads are connected, and
you're going to unravel the entire sweater because every thread
is intentional. There's nothing accidental in this movie. And it's

(45:30):
really brilliant and literary in its structure and in its concepts.
And then at the same time such a brisk, eighty
seven minute fun, gross, sexy, pure Cronenberg delight. After these messages,
we'll be right back.

Speaker 6 (45:51):
On this island, in this building, through this door, down
this hallway lies the most frightening exp of your life.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Prepare yourself, for.

Speaker 6 (46:04):
They came from within. What are they? Raging demons that
must be exercised, bloodthirsty creatures that must be killed, or
incarnations of absolute evil?

Speaker 3 (46:18):
They came from within.

Speaker 6 (46:23):
They possess men, women and children and drive them to
x of unbelievable hearts.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
No one is safe from them. No power on Earth
can stuff them to only escape to the death. They
came from within, bound by honor.

Speaker 6 (46:41):
If this picture doesn't make you scream and squirm, you'd
better see a psychiatrist, quick rated r.

Speaker 5 (46:51):
I'm gonna run through the plot here a little bit,
just to kind of wrap things up here. But just
as we go through, I would like to touch on
the grody shit that Rick Baker unloses upon so to
At this point, Nikki Brand decides she's gonna go an audition.
They find out that somehow video drome is being broadcast
not from Malaysia but from Pittsburgh. So she's gonna go audition,
and she goes and just vanishes. And so in his

(47:13):
quest to figure out what is going on, a softcore
pornographer that he works for named Masha gives him a name,
and the name is media theorist Brian Oblivion, who he
was on the talk show with, who runs a homeless
shelter where he actually has the homeless watching marathon sessions
of TV and his method, yes, the cathode.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Ray mission, the cathode Ray mission.

Speaker 5 (47:34):
And he speaks to Oblivion's daughter Bianca, who runs the mission,
talking about his vision of the world was television replaces
everyday life, like, are you starting to get the saturation
of media? Sort of subtext in this?

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Okay? Great?

Speaker 5 (47:47):
So later on Max gets this video of Oblivion explaining
that videodrome is this socio political battleground, a war is
going to be fought to control the minds of the
people in North America. And then we actually see Oblivion
be murdered in the vis video, so something is clearly
going down. He talks about how he's been given a
brain tumor by by videodrome.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Or is it because what it brings up gets this
is where we get into the burrows of it. He
gets a brain tumor, which at another point it's not
a tumor, it's a new organ, an organ that fully
can connect with media that's being unlocked within us. And
that's the power of videodrome. Is that what is happening

(48:29):
to Max is not cancer destroying him, but rather the
evolution of man, and that this is Max possibly attaining
the new next level of existence through his connection and media, the.

Speaker 5 (48:47):
Next phase in the evolution of man as a technological animal.

Speaker 4 (48:50):
I believe it is how they phrase.

Speaker 5 (48:52):
It yes, yeah, so it's it's being tapped into by
video drum, something that was always there, something that was
very primal, again, very body horror, but also philosophical, very
Kroniberg indeed. So it's at this point that we get
one of my favorite running effects through the movie is
the the breathing Beta Max tape, which, by the way,

(49:14):
breathing Beta Max it sounds like something Bert Ward would
yell if he worked at a video store in nineteen
eighty two, and it leads me to believe that the
other subtext of this movie is that Croneberg himself invested
heavily in Beta Max, and this movie is his seething
hit piece against the technology, against that technology, surrendering to
the inferior VHS format, Like, I think that's another layer

(49:36):
of this onion.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
For sure, I would. I would say that, except he
was offered the option to make that point and he
doesn't like, which format would you like? Videodrome? Familiar with it? Well,
tell your father, well what format would you like? To
answer it? And he doesn't. He never says Beta.

Speaker 5 (49:53):
Yeah, he's one of those guys that had both, you know,
Kronenberg had both and was a rabbit consumer of both
of those formats.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Look, there's somebody who's made a movie that has trumpeted
the betterness of Beta. I have strong opinions on actually
just saying it out loud, just say Beta it was great,
It would have been awesome.

Speaker 5 (50:15):
Cargo just yelling at the TV Saya say, say the
goddamn words, you're gonna be watch it on Beta.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
I mean.

Speaker 5 (50:23):
And then then this leads from breathing Beta Max tape
to breathing TV screen and a shot that you know
is so good that it actually made the Criterion cover
of the film, you know, where they're using a weather
balloon and expanding it within the frame of a very
specific type of TV. And just like, Rick Baker is
a mad genius, absolute mad genius, and I love what
he does with this, where he's able to literally make

(50:44):
a TV look like it's breathing, look like it's welcoming
James woods In.

Speaker 4 (50:48):
And then later in the movie Discovering, he has this.

Speaker 5 (50:52):
Chasm because the other thing about a Kronerberg movie, everything
is a vagina. It's kind of like that viral sense
is it cake, except it's called how many Vaginas? Because
everything is a vagina?

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Real or vagina.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Real or vagina?

Speaker 5 (51:09):
Do you do you want a vagina in your chest
and your arm and your elbow and your fucking forehead.
Kronerberg will find a way to put one there.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
The mouth and the vampires and blade two real or vagina.

Speaker 5 (51:23):
It's just that that's his bag, man. And it is
very upsetting when Max puts a gun into this, this
gaping maw in his chest and then it seals up,
but the gun is gone, So now means the gun
is inside of him, which is maybe the most upsetting
thing of all the body horror in this movie is
he's just now walking around with a gun in his ribcake.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Except it is, as much as we make this joke,
it's Chekhov's fucking gun.

Speaker 4 (51:50):
It is Chekhov's gun.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
The gun disappears into him, and that gun's gonna be
important later.

Speaker 5 (51:55):
Sometimes you put Chekhov's gun in Chekhov's vagina. That's just
how it works, guys. I don't know, oh, if that's
something that Cronerberg taught in his literary class, but it
is true in a Cronenberg film.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
And then we go, you know, why have a vgina
on James Woods? I mean, you know, if you're gonna
make him the biggest pussy in movie history, why not
give that vagina vagina dentata.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
It's just it's a thing. It's just a fucking thing, man.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
It's a last thing.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
And the way this this movie just fucking runs, man like,
there is not an ounce of fat on this eighty
seven minute movie. It's literally later that night that he's
contacted by the video drome producer Barry Convex, which is
a type of lens, and he sees the world through
a certain you get it anyway, who is the owner
of Spectacular Optical Corporation, an eyeglass company that's the front

(52:48):
for an arms company. And then this is where we
find out that in fact, it is a military broadcast
and what they're intending to do with it, and you
know they're they're going to they intend to kind of you,
who'se max as a convert to have like to offer
up Channel eighty three as this launching pad, and if

(53:08):
your partners won't go along with it, kill your partners.
And at first it seems like the brainwashing has been
successful because he does kill his partners at Channel eighty three.
But then as this man again just the fucking effects
in this movie that Rick Baker pulls off the handgun
as it were, where just these rods come splitting out

(53:28):
of this gun and into his arm flesh, and then
it just keep This is where I can see the
trilogy notion with existends for sure in Crimes of the Future,
because the gun just starts to take over the arm
but instead of continuing to go after Video Drum's enemies,
he goes after Convex.

Speaker 4 (53:44):
And I don't know what the fuck is.

Speaker 5 (53:46):
Wriggling out of Barry Convex when Max blows him away,
but I'm gonna see that in my nightmares for the
rest of time. It just looks like a whole tidal
wave of teeth trying to burst out of it. It's horrific.
Rick Baker is amazing. That's That's all you really need
to know. And that's not That's not the only hand weapon,
by the way, because later when when Max attacks Harlan,

(54:09):
who we find out is in on this whole thing,
Harlan's hand becomes a grenade. He has a hand grenade
that then explodes and kills him. Like it's just fucking crazy.
What's happening at the end of this movie and we
are just running to this finale at this point.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Oh yeah, because at this point we're in full blown hallucinations,
like we don't even know what's real, what's not real,
what's going on? It's you know, at this point you're
just like, I, you know, is he really murdering people?
Is he really laying at home in bed? Is he
you know, you know, a drooling idiot in you know,

(54:44):
the cathode ray mission, Like, what is what is going
on here? And uh, it's uh, it is a fascinating
run to that ending.

Speaker 5 (54:53):
And I think part of it may be motivated by
the fact that, you know, this movie was shot in Toronto,
like a lot of the movies we've talked about this month,
in the late fall of eighty one, and because the
Canadian government funded films were beholden to non negotiable cutoff dates,
production had to wrap by the end of the calendar year,
so David Kroneberger's crew had to start shooting without a
finished script. He had a complete script when filming began,

(55:16):
but it was kind of a prototype of Placeholder, so
and apparently the prototype was even wilder and more audacious.
But I think in the process of kind of having
to work on this time crunch because the movie was
at least half funded by the Canadian government.

Speaker 4 (55:30):
I think there might.

Speaker 5 (55:31):
Be whole sections of this story that get cut out
so that we finish on time, which is why it
feels like it's running to this finale. This is just
me speculating, but given everything we know about the production
of this movie, it would not be. It would not
be outside the realm of possibility that there was a
lot of this movie that had to be trimmed to
get it done on time.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
Well, and in fact there was, in fact, one of
the things that is kind of mostly lost to history.
You got to read in the right places. The original
of this movie was not eighty seven minutes. It was
eighty four minutes. And it was disliked by critics, it
was disliked by audiences in general. It didn't do very
well at all. And then within a few years, with

(56:12):
you know, the advent to video, Cronenberg recut it and
put three minutes back in and that's the director's cut,
and that's the version we all know. I don't know
if I know anybody who has seen the original version
in what three minutes were gone, But yeah, it is
this is his director's cut that improved the movie substantially

(56:34):
and made it the cult success that it is now.

Speaker 5 (56:36):
So I do know one way you can tell if
you're watching the original theatrical cut and not what Cronenberg
went back in and fixed. You know a couple of
years later, if at the beginning of this movie you
see a dildo, you're watching the version that Cronenberg put
back together and added those three minutes too. Because this
is this is I know that sounds like a bit.
This is apparently a real thing that happened. Universal made

(56:58):
cuts to this movie that the MP didn't even ask for,
because I can't believe.

Speaker 4 (57:04):
I'm saying this.

Speaker 5 (57:05):
One of the Universal executives disliked sex toys and was
very uncomfortable with male genitalia in films and cut because
the opening of this movie is like a softcore porn
that they're thinking of buying and putting on Channel eighty three.

Speaker 4 (57:19):
So you see like this Geisha.

Speaker 5 (57:21):
Woman like like ceremonially unwrapping a dildo to then ride,
and apparently a Universal executive is like, oh no, can't
have sex toys in my movie. This movie that has
again chest vaginas and people exploding into vicera. We can't
show a dildo because that's a step too far.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Okay, you know, you know why it's a step too far.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Why is that?

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Probably because they're like, no woman should be putting something
that large in them. That's not how the size of
penis is. My penis isn't that size? Why would she
want something that big?

Speaker 4 (57:48):
Carcle.

Speaker 5 (57:49):
It's all about altering perception. It's very william S Burrows.
Penis envy is also apparently about altering perception.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
For sure, for sure, I have no doubts.

Speaker 5 (57:58):
So we get to the end of the movie, which
apparently there were many different ways they were considering going
with the ending of this movie. After Max has has
killed Convex and he's you know, he's on the run,
and he ends up in this derelic ship, he receives
another broadcast. He's he's getting these hallucinogenic broadcasts from Debbie
Harry throughout the movie and basically just tells him like,

(58:19):
you've got to let this flesh die so that you
can transcend, like, long live the New Flesh.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
I'm just death to videodrome. Long Live the New Flesh.

Speaker 5 (58:29):
A phrase I'm sure if you know nothing about this movie,
you at least know the phrase long Live the New Flesh,
where she's basically telling him that it's time to leave
the corporeal form behind and transcend into where the video
sphere to exist only in media and in broadcast waves.

Speaker 4 (58:45):
Like it. Again, the metaphors abound, for sure.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
Is he really truly transcending into some other sphere or
is he becoming legend by his murder spree and then
suicide that will then forever leave him as part of
the media sphere.

Speaker 5 (59:04):
Yeah, his picture will be on the news for years,
the anniversary will be talked about, so in a sense
through notoriety, through media notoriety, he will live forever.

Speaker 4 (59:12):
That's that's definitely another way to take it, for sure.

Speaker 5 (59:15):
And it's at this point where we get the fucking
the TV breathing and then exploding into a like explodes
into viscera like a Victor Crowley pinata, like it's just
so good, just like throwing meat all over the screen.
The Universal executive is very uncomfortable with that, and then
we just get the long Live the New Flesh goes black.

(59:35):
We hear the gunshot credits, and that apparently was the
ending that James Wood suggested they had a couple different
ways they were planning on going with that, including a
sort of coda that showed the two of them reunited
and sort of a otherworldly next life kind of you know,
digital plane of existence kind of a thing as an

(59:58):
epilogue that was but never filmed. They're on the set
of Videodrome altogether. So yeah, it's just a wildly visionary movie,
one that is very visceral and upsetting, much like a
Kronerberg movie you would expect to be, but has a
lot to say philosophically, and I think maybe might be
the best blend of Kronerberg's visual style Crona Brooks body

(01:00:22):
whore and kroner Brooks philosophies. Like It's just it's a
very dense movie to chew on. Even if you might
be worried that chewing on it will give you HEPCI,
I don't know, it's still it still works on all
those different levels. And I fucking love this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
Yeah, no, it's it is. It is an absolute delight
of a crazy banana pants movie. And uh, and just
I love how literal it is. I really wish it
had been in my life much longer. I wish I
hadn't confused it with something else, And I'm so glad
it's here now, and I'm so glad that we were
able to talk about it. I was like, seriously, when
you're like Kroneberg film, I'm like, we got to do

(01:00:59):
video drum. You know, there's so many Kronenberg films that
I love, but that's the one that I've recently discovered
and just picked apart and obsessed over and and yeah,
and it is. Uh, it's something that if you've not
watched it in a long time, if you not watch
it with the context of william S. Burrows, if you
are really into Cronenberg and you've seen it all but

(01:01:21):
you've never read Burrows, highly recommend picking up something like Exterminator.
It is a collection of short stories that start weaving
together and feels very much like this. This and inter
Zone are going to be your two places where that
Cronenberg intersection is going to be something you really dig into.
And as you go into that, I think you'll find
more and more where Cronenberg got his initial inspiration in

(01:01:44):
the in the best way, and I think it will
further increase your appreciation, appreciation of Cronenberg's work and how
brilliant and original it is. Uh so, yeah, before we.

Speaker 5 (01:01:56):
Get into the junk food pairing, we've got to talk
about Howard Shores.

Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
Howard's score here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
Oh god, yes, this is young Howard Shore fucking fucking
doing it up man.

Speaker 5 (01:02:06):
Yep, one of Cronenberg's favorite collaborators. I love the way
like it would have been. I feel like it would
have been so tempting to just do everything synthetic. You know,
He's He's gotten a lot of credit for how defty
is with doing sort of synth scores and yeah, and
bringing in digital music, but I love the way that
he combines the two things.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
For this well.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
I mean, again, this movie has a philosophy.

Speaker 5 (01:02:31):
It definitely definitely has a philosophy. But just like the
way that you know, we are starting off with this
this music that feels very big orchestral and gothic, and
then what he's doing is he's literally playing the same
music then again through a digital keyboard a synthesizer, and

(01:02:53):
then layering those two things together by the end of
the movie, so that we are literally literally seeing what
happens when when man and machine are fused, like the
music is literally speaking directly to the themes of the
movie in such a beautiful way. And I love I

(01:03:14):
love that that literal fusion of artistry and machinery. It's
so so good.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
Oh yeah, no, absolutely, it's uh, there's nothing accidental about
this movie, Like it's just it's always great when you
watch a movie that gets better and better every time
you watch it, because every little decision that was made
was all about selling a core idea. Yep.

Speaker 5 (01:03:38):
Absolutely, And although it wasn't it wasn't a hit at
the box office. It was considered a box office failure.
It obviously was picked up by film lovers and critics
alike and heralded as something truly unique and special and
even And it may have taken a few years, but
the consensus seems to be now, especially that this is

(01:03:59):
this is an hour absolute classic, and I fucking love that.
I also love the balls of Cronenberg knowing that this
would be a divisive movie, knowing that he's still early
in his career, knowing that critics haven't fully gotten him yet,
and putting lines in the movie where he dares them
to use that as a poll quote in their panning
review like, there's only a line in this movie why
would anyone watch a scum show like Video Drome? He

(01:04:21):
is daring hack critics to pull that line and say,
I agree with you. Why would anyone watch a scum
show like Video Drome?

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
And why would on critics be from the nineteen thirties?
These answers we kind on end.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Zip Geene Shall. It's the first person I went after
for no reason whatsoever. Sorry about that, don't cumulating.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Please?

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
And that brings us to the junk food pairing of cargo.

Speaker 5 (01:04:52):
You may want to sit back for a second, because
I did a little research on this one.

Speaker 4 (01:04:57):
My junk food.

Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
Pairing for Video Drome is a le menu chicken cord
on blue TV dinner. As you well know, or perhaps
you don't, frozen dinners were first developed for the military
during World War Two as an easy, pre assembled meal
kit with a long shelf life to feed sailors in
the Navy. After the war, pan Am airlines began to
utilize these packaged meals on a few select flights, dubbing

(01:05:19):
them skyplates, and then they were repackaged for pub owners
as a way to feed their drunk clienteles something other
than peanuts without also having to set up a kitchen,
and then you got the rise of television ownership alongside
a surplus of turkeys in nineteen fifty two that led
to the biggest boom for the concept of the TV
dinner and the rise of someone like Swanson's Food Products.

(01:05:40):
In the nineteen eighties, however, Campbell's expanded from soups into
the TV dinner game with an alternative to what consumers
saw as already cheap, low quality frozen meals, and created
their line called Le Menu, which offered ritzy, tastier on
paper at least meal options like pepper stick with long
grain rice and chicken parmesan. And though this line is

(01:06:01):
now discontinued, it was a hit with consumers and especially
popular in Canada. So in honor of this, and nodding
to the finale of our Go Conduct Yourself series, I
have chosen the chicken Cordon blue TV dinner from Le
Menu as it also pays tribute to the former dabble
French population of the Great White North, and since the

(01:06:22):
television screen is the retina of the mind's eye, it
would only enhance your new flesh to ingest a TV
dinner while videodrome ingests you and I think the attempt
by le Menu to elevate a classic staple of convenient,
economic microwave culinary arts is reminiscent of Kronerbrig's ability to
make art out of even the most grotesque, seemingly exploitative

(01:06:42):
subject matter.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
Poutine.

Speaker 5 (01:06:52):
You know what, I am not at all mad at
the fact that poutine is a running bit on junk
food cinema. Just the word poutine has become its own
running bit, and I'm fucking fine with that. This has
been an absolute blast. Cargo, thank you for suggesting this series,
because I have had a lot of fun discovering a
couple of movies and reappreciating and reevaluating some movies, and

(01:07:13):
just this has been such a great series.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
I've really enjoyed this.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
Yeah, we're gonna by the way, we're uh, Brian and
I have talked about it. We're gonna get We're gonna
go back to like junk fruit roots this year. Oh yeah,
we're gonna get fucking weird with it. We don't we
don't know how much time we have left, but we're
gonna get real weird with it. That is uh, that
we're gonna go very frank so uh yeah, we've got

(01:07:38):
some We're gonna do some deep dives. We're gonna, you know,
watch some crazy ass shit, gonna talk about some forgotten films,
some unknown films. Uh and and pull some interesting shit out.
Uh So, uh I hope you stick around and uh
and enjoy.

Speaker 5 (01:07:55):
It's gonna be every bit as weird as a Paul
Harvey Eskadia tribe about the history of TV dinners.

Speaker 4 (01:07:59):
So stick the fuck around.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
And that's the rest of the story.

Speaker 5 (01:08:04):
And now you finish the rest of your dinner. Cargil,
Please tell people where they can find you on the interwebs.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
You can find my new movie The Gorge streaming on
Apple Plus. It's still doing very well. People are quite
liking it, so that that's that's doing that. My new
book is gonna in the next few weeks. We're gonna
put it up for a pre sale. All the Ashley
leave behind that's coming up. You can find me on

(01:08:33):
social media at c Robertcargill dot Blue Sky dot social
and you can find our entire back catalog, you know
wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
This is correct.

Speaker 5 (01:08:43):
You can also find us on social media at Junk
Food Cinema pretty much everywhere except for the Blue Sky one,
which is much longer and I will never learn the format,
but you know what it is.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
Also, if you really like the.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Show, I mean, you really like the show, if.

Speaker 5 (01:08:55):
You like it as much as I love esoteric footnotes
in the history of junk food, you can go to
Patren dot com slash Junk Food Cinema for as little
as a dollar an episode. You are financially supporting the show,
and we greatly appreciate it. But it's time to wrap
things up because you'll forgive me if I don't stay
around to keep talking. I just don't cope with the
freaky stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
In my mind, in my God, we contry wind. We
got to fu