The Hot Rock (1972)

Happy Yates-Giving, everyone! 


On this very special holiday episode, Brian and Cargill discuss a Robert Redford heist movie that is a hidden gem in every since of the word: The Hot Rock!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
NBC's live coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade continues.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
With our host Willard Scott. Gosh, I mean junks and
watching Rabbish.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
You gonna come out and stop me?

Speaker 4 (00:28):
All right?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
This is Dick Miller.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
If you're listening to Junk Food Cinema, who are these.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Guys, drop your socks and grab your rocks.

Speaker 5 (00:53):
It's a brand new junk Food Cinema brought to you
by Miasmo dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Afghanistan Banana Stand Afghanistan Bananastan.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
This is the weekly cult exploitation film cast.

Speaker 5 (01:06):
That well, good, well, yes, mister Redford, that's something of
a mantra around here.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
If you want more of whatever this horseshit is eleven
years in fact of this horseshit, you can find it
on your favorite podcast or follow us on social media.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
And if you really liked the show.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
I mean you really liked the show as.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
Much as I'm gonna trip to fan Fantastic this week,
you can go to patrion dot com slash Junk Food
Cinema and uh financially suport the show, which we greatly
appreciate and I have not even mentioned because I have
been a little bit out of sorts of late and
forgot how to fucking intro this show correctly.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
I'm Brian Salisbury.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
That's literally all I needed to tell you, other than
the fact that I'm joined by my friend and co host, novelist, screenwrinner,
lieutenant and mega force, the Butch cassidyed my sundance kid,
mister c Robert Cargill, and I just fucking forgot who
we were.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
I forgot what our names were.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
He blew it. Yeah, And this is an incompetent team
that keeps dropping the ball. How many times do we
have to try to record the same podcast as what
I'm asking?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
It's true, It's true.

Speaker 5 (02:06):
We dropped the last one down a sewage pipe and
had to which is crazy that you can even do
that with audio, but we did. We found a way
to do that, and now we're trying to recover it
here live in front of all of you, onto this
very special week and Cargo, let me be the first
to wish you a happy Yatesgiving. Yes, this is both
a continuation of our celebration of the recently departed Robert

(02:27):
Redford and another step towards our newest and maybe most
esoterically insane mission ever, to cover every film directed by
Peter Yates.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Apparently, I don't.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Know we're gonna do every film. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
If not, I hope not.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
I don't know if I can handle a separate piece.
Middle School was hard enough.

Speaker 5 (02:48):
Which, by the way, a separate piece sounds like the
movie we should be doing on Thanksgiving, because if there's
one thing I definitely want is a separate, additional piece
of pie. So I mean, it could have worked for Thanksgiving,
but I'm glad that that's not what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
No. Instead, I'm just going to wish you a happy
bird Day.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Happy bird Day. Oh boy, oh boy.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
We are covering a film that has been on my
short list for a very long time and satisfies this
weird purple Vinn diagram circle of both being a great
Robert Redford film and another in the Peter Yates catalog and.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Being one of the great heist films.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
And you know, we love a heist film around here.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
We do love a heist film.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Those movies can steal our time any day of the week.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
We love a show that steals the show.

Speaker 5 (03:32):
That is correct, that is absolutely spot on. Get ready
for the t shirt. It will be available in the store.
But we are covering a film today that Yeah, it
doesn't just have one heist, it has multiple heist and
that is of course The Hot Rock.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
Robert Read, George Siegel and company an incredible team for
an impossible job. Blitz the museum, flow the jail.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Sure you guys get the night high.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
Class, the police station, sir, bombs, the bombs in the streets, Sir,
it's a revolution. Their objective, the priceless Sahara Dimond.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
You kill me.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
And then you take the diamond from my wife when
she inherits it.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
This is the story.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
But crime is so big.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
It cost a fortune just to commit four men who
don't know the meaning of the word impossible until they
try to hang on to the hot Rocks the room.
I know that the Hot Rock.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
And no not not the local radio station that plays
like a lot of them.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Do the Hot Rock where we are all Chili Peppers
all the time.

Speaker 5 (04:44):
Playing the music your dad's and your uncles on Facebook
really love, but you kind of tolerate.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's the Hot Rock. One O seven point five.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Coming up, the red Hot Chili Peppers.

Speaker 5 (04:53):
But next Californiaication, Get ready for six straight hours of
Bachman Turner Overdrive.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
We don't don't know why.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
I'll let me some bt O.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I do too.

Speaker 5 (05:04):
But isn't that the kind of thing the Hot Rock
one oh seven would do is just play hours upon
hours of Bachman Turner Overdrive.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
I love that you went to that end of the dial.
You're already in the sevens, dude.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Of course, of course, that's why we're so far down
the fucking dial. Don't even worry about baby.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Did you ever wonder, wonder whatever became of me? I'm
somewhere down the dial.

Speaker 5 (05:27):
Damn, damn getting all am here in the pm E.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
I mean, come on, it is Thanksgiving. That is the
one time everybody remembers WKRP exists.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
This is true. The Turkey Drop will forever be legend.
We all know this.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
It is the it is. It is one of the
greatest twenty two minutes on television of all time. Oh
the humanity.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Here's how I know you're right, car Gil.

Speaker 5 (05:49):
I have never seen a single episode of WKRP in Cincinnati,
and I still knew the Turkey Drop reference.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Oh man, you'd love that fucking show.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
I'm sure I would. I'm sure I would. Who is
the star of that show. Oh god, the guy he's
also in ahead of the He's also the start hows
Howard Hessman. Yes, he was one of the supporting casts.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, oh okay, See, I don't even show here that
you would appreciate the show, because the show is very
much about you. It's about this guy who goes into
an office and he's there. He's the hot shot coming
in to kind of convert a radio station from soft
listening to a rock station, and he is now saddled

(06:29):
with a bunch of fucking crazy people. And that is
pretty much this show.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (06:34):
And in fact, the Turkey Drop would have been a
great alternate title for Jump Food Cinema now that I
think about it. So absolutely didn't really put those things
together until now.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Peter Yates, PETERR.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yates.

Speaker 5 (06:49):
Peter Yates is a director we love around these halls,
and we've already covered his films such as well. I mean,
the one we've obviously already covered, which is one of
Cargill's favorite movies of all time, is of course Crawl,
of course, but that is not all. We've also covered
the uh incredibly weird pseudo TV movie An Innocent Man

(07:10):
with with Tom Selleck that he directed.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yep, uh, what else.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Have we I feel like we've done one other or
maybe we.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
No, no, no, that's the problem is is we haven't
done enough of his films, which is what we've talked about,
because we have, we should have, but have not done Bullet.
We have not done the Friends of Eddy Coyle. You've
never even heard until I mentioned it in on a
previous episode of Mother Jugs and Speed thought it was
a bit. We haven't covered The Deep, and uh, nor
have we covered Breaking Away.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
We've only covered two of us films. For Pete's Sake,
by the way, For pete Sake is a movie he
directed that we haven't covered on the show.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
By the way, we haven't even covered Suspect. There's a
share in Dennis Quaid eighties thriller that we haven't even
talked about that he directed.

Speaker 5 (07:52):
Which I have, you know what, so knowing that we
were going to kind of be dipping our toe into
this and after we did an innocent man, I went
through a little bit of a of a Ya's marathon
from myself and I recently watched The Deep, which because sidebar,
which because it's a movie based on a Peter Benchley

(08:15):
book that also stars Robert Shaw and came out two
years after Jaws.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
I just assumed was a sea creature movie. Oh no, no,
it's not at all. But it's a really cool fucking
movie that.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
It's a movie again, one of those that we have
to cover, you know, I don't think we've ever covered
a Jacqueline Bessett movie.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, we are, we are. I don't know, beset in
our ways.

Speaker 5 (08:36):
I don't know what I was where I was going
with that, So we'll just leave it on the shelf,
don't worry about it. But yes, this is gonna be
kind of the the bridge point between our our eulogy
of Robert Redford in our weird the deep dive into
the work of Peter Yates with The Hot Rock, a
movie I had discovered several years ago and fell in
love with because basically, this is like Ocean's Eleven if

(08:58):
those guys were completely inept, And that's fucking funny to me. Yeah,
And it's based on a novel by the great Donald Westlake.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Uh huh and adapted by who.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Adapted by William Goldman.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
The great legendary William Goldman, the screenwriters screenwriter.

Speaker 5 (09:17):
Yeah, the Goldman standard, some would say, if some were inclined.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
I mean he For those of you that aren't familiar
with William Goldman, not only has he written some of
the greatest movies of all time, like quite literally just
you know, straight up Butch Cassidy and Sunday It's Kid,
All the President's Men, Princess Bride, Marathon Man. Those are
just his top four. He's written so many great ones.

(09:41):
Was one of the great crime writers in the early
in the early days, and then wrote a series of
screenwriting books called Starting with Which Light Did I Tell?
And Just a Bunch of his books that both teach
you screenwriting while sharing all of his various crazy Hollywood
an goats. Just one of the great writers of one

(10:04):
of you know my heroes. It is a requirement if
you're a Hollywood screenwriter to worship at the altar of
William Goldman. And this is one of his great scripts
that because he's written so many great scripts, falls down
the list of other great scripts.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
And Donald Weslke, of course, the incredible crime writer known
for his Parker novels that are the basis for movies
like The Outfit and Payback and The Split and there's
so many fucking movies in which, you know, actors of
legendary status have all played this character of Parker.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
And what I love about The Hot Rock.

Speaker 5 (10:38):
Is it feels like such an amazing departure for him,
like still within the world he likes to write about,
but so different in tone. And what's fascinating is he
has said that when he started writing the book that
The Hot Rock is based on, it started off as
being the darkest of his Parker novels, but then somehow
it quote kept turning funny as he was writing it.

(11:00):
So it's almost like the story was this sentient being
that he's trying to rein in and wants it to
be dark and gritty, but it just wants to be funny.
And I appreciate the fact that Donald Weslake did not
try to hamper that and just went, you know what, fine,
We're gonna run with it. We're gonna see where this goes.
And The Hot Rock was born in nineteen seventy two
films starring Robert Redford, George Siegel, Ron Liebman, and Paul

(11:23):
sand Now George Siegel Cargo. Before we get into the
Man of the Hour, Before we Talk more about Redford.
I feel like George Siegel is one of the perpetually
underestimated talents in Hollywood history. Like he is just so
funny and so poised. He feels like the blueprint for
Steve Gutenberg.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Well, he's one of those. He's one of those great
sixties and seventies actors who then gladly aged in everything,
and because he was a legend, started appearing in everything.
So Jen answers mostly know him very old, right, you know,
we mostly know him from his late work before he
sadly passed away in twenty twenty one. But he did

(12:09):
lots of TV, lots of victory lap showing up on
movies and TV shows. He was just one of those actors.
But that when you dig deeper and get past his
victory lap appearances, you start going, oh, holy shit, this
guy's in fucking everything. He was everywhere, and he was
fucking great.

Speaker 5 (12:31):
So ubiquitous that this is not his first appearance on
Junk Food Cinema. He was also in the Saint Valentine's
DA Massacre that we covered a few years ago.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 5 (12:39):
So he is an alum of Junk Food Cinema and
I'm sorry now that I'm thinking about it, the blueprint
for Steve Gutenberg. Does that make him the Gutenberg Press?
Or do only the biggest history nerds know for sure?

Speaker 3 (12:51):
I don't. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
Hm, that's the reaction of going for every time. It's
just the resigned hmm. Things that make you go hmm,
things that make you go.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
After these messages, We'll be right.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Back Thursday from New York, Hawaii, Detroit, and Toronto. Join
your favorite cdstars well the twenty eighth Annual All American
Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Oh.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
This movie is about a character named John dort munder Man.
There's Parker, which is one of the coolest names in literature,
and then there's John dort munder which sounds like a
character from Animal House.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
The names here are all they all have to be
fucking intentional, Oh Gan, It's it really is one of
those look when you're making a movie about I mean
dort munder Let's just get to it. It is a
heist movie about somebody who just gets out of jail,
and the minute he's out of jail, somebody wants him
to help plan a heist because of apparently he's one

(14:00):
of the best except that the best don't end up
in jail, right, And I guess I've always felt that,
like the whole thing with Danny Ocean has always been like,
you know, throwing back to the hot rock and kind
of like, what if they were actually really good at
what they did instead of just kind of good at
what they did. The only reason Danny, the only reason

(14:24):
Danny ended up in prison that first time was because
his wife turned him in, right, Yeah, not because not
because he blundered in the myriad of ways these get blundered.

Speaker 5 (14:36):
No, it was out of his control, and this one
feels like definitely something else happened. I love the exchange
he has with the warden. This is what's so great
about Robert Redford in a lot of movies, and here
is no exception. He's playing this calm, collected, sort of
criminal masterbind which is delectable. But the irony, of course
being the fact that we're starting with him getting out
of prison, and as the movie unfolds, it feels even

(14:58):
more ironic how much he's tried to stay in control
and how much things keep going wrong, Because again, this
movie is if Ocean's eleven was a farce. And I
know I can hear some of you screaming, isn't that
just Oceans twelve?

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Look?

Speaker 5 (15:10):
Maybe partially, maybe partially, but this goes even further than that.
And also, I don't like your fucking tone. Don't yell
at me while I'm recording.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
God damn it.

Speaker 5 (15:17):
But yeah, no, he gets out of prison, and he's
immediately because the blueprint of movies like this is that
when you have someone who's a really good at what
they do and they're a criminal getting out of prison,
they've got to immediately be dragged back into the life.
And there's a great exchange he has with the warden
as he's getting out, where the warden's like, man, why
can't you just go straight? And Redford says, my heart
wouldn't be in it.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Ye. I love that line so much.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Scorpion meat Toad. We know who we are. Everyone is
very aware of who they are. I understand.

Speaker 5 (15:44):
But yeah, he's out of prison and the first person
he runs into is George Siegal's character who just.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
Will not I feel that I feel that that's a
little backwards. George Siegel runs into him.

Speaker 5 (15:55):
Fair Point, Fairpoint literally almost runs him over with his car.
This character, Andy Kelp his brother in law played by
George Siegel, who is This is a character I love
so much, and I feel like this is sort of
the the worm character from like Rounders and you know,
and Edward Norton type character of like oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
totally not trying to drag it back into life.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
I'm totally trying to drag it back in the life. No, no, no,
I don't want you to do anything for me.

Speaker 5 (16:18):
I have a huge favor to ask you, like just
that really sort of like fast talking.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Is your brother in law want to see you in
the minute you get out of out of prison, and
then we'll talk about the job later exactly.

Speaker 5 (16:30):
Yeah, just very fast talking, very double talking, very much
like a Schlebby character who's got a lot of charisma
despite himself. Again, a very Gutenberg type character. I feel
like I'm gonna keep hammering this because it just feels
so much like a Steve Guttenberg character.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah. Yeah, the goot, the goot.

Speaker 5 (16:46):
But the job in question here is there's a valuable
gym in the Brooklyn Museum that's called the Sahara Stone,
and there is a diplomat from Africa who wants the
stone return to his country because it was stolen during
colonial times and re stolen by various African nations. He
wants the stone to return to its rightful owner, so
he hires Robert Redford, George Siegel and the rest of

(17:09):
their crew to steal it. Right, should be pretty simple.
You guys are good at this. Just break into the
Brooklyn Museum and steal this fucking stone. And the good
news is they do manage to make it out of
the Brooklyn Museum with the stone. The bad news is
where it is when it comes out of the Brooklyn Museum.
So maybe we should break this movie down heist by

(17:32):
heist here as we go along.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
I mean, that's all it is. I mean what you
have set up the plot, that is the plot, and
then every time they are about to get the stone
and get the stone, get away clean with the stone,
there's a new complication. Something has gone wrong. And I
mean that is that is the you know, homework of
any great heist movie is the fact that we set

(17:57):
up the heist, we plan the heist, and then something
goes wrong. And the question is are the something's going
wrong intentional? As this was all part of the plan
allah Ocean's eleven, where you know, you get everything starts
going wrong and you get to the end and find
out nothing has gone wrong, that this was the plan
the whole time, or something goes wrong and they have

(18:18):
to improv, and the improving is is the thing, And
how do you improv your way out of this situation
that something unexpected has happened. And that's the interesting thing
about a heist movie. This is that on repeat, it
is just here's a heist. Okay, something has gotten in

(18:41):
the way that requires another heist, and something gets in
the way, and that another heist. And the thing is
is these guys are not truly inept, like we're not
giving them enough credit. They are pretty good at what
they do, but they are still fuck ups. They are
still low rent. It was one of the things about
Donald Westlake was so interesting is that he doesn't imagine

(19:05):
the crime world as some kind of John Wick. Everyone
here has a tragic backstory and is super good at
what they do and only someone else from that world
could possibly bring them down. No, they're all kind of
fuck ups in their own way, Like even even Parker
fucks up on a regular basis. But these guys are

(19:26):
Each of them have a skill that they're pretty good at.
They're not the greatest, and this movie is unafraid to
show that to us as it goes along, as we
see the thing they're supposed to be very good at,
and they're pretty good at, but not great at. There's
a helicopter sequence that really kind of highlights that. There's

(19:47):
a lock picking sequence that really highlights that. But we
keep seeing this. But these guys are so likable, they're
so well intentioned. It's such a simple heist. The you know,
the product of the heist, like what we're stealing, actually
has some significance in terms of the story that you
can go along with. You know, it's two countries are

(20:10):
constantly arguing over who really has ownership of it. The
United Nations is kind of sessing it out but has
not figured out who's who has it, and one country
wants to fund the theft of the diamonds so that
they can have it back. They've been stealing it from
each other for centuries, going back, you know, hundreds of years,

(20:33):
and this is their time to steal it back again.
And this diplomat is kind of enjoying the fact that
he's being a criminal at first, until he realizes how
expensive it is to be the guy funding the criminal expense,
and that there's a delight to that in its own way.
But then watching these guys go from they make one

(20:55):
tragic mistake in the first heist that leads to this
whole series of shenanigans, and you see how good they
are at planning and pulling off these heists until that
one unexpected data point always throws them the thing they weren't.
They couldn't see coming, because why would they, And that's

(21:16):
really fascinating to see how that happens each time.

Speaker 5 (21:20):
And I think it's really sort of serpent eating its
own tail that we're sitting here talking about how you
know it does the Ocean's eleven thing where it seems
like you know, or is it gonna do the Ocean's
eleven thing where it seems like something has gone wrong?
But that's part of the plan the whole time, And
really Ocean's Eleven got that from another heist movie that
may also involve Robert Redford, which is of course The Sting.

(21:42):
So I just love that we're talking around this Sting
when Robert Redford is sitting right here in the episode
going Guys for Real Seriously, You're right, yes, that is
something that the Sting definitely introduced to us, was the
idea that you could have a device where it looks
like everything's gone wrong, but that's actually part of the plan.
And what I love about this movie is that doesn't
fucking happen at any point in this film. When things

(22:03):
go wrong, it's because they actually fucking went wrong. And
I love that. That's what attracted Peter Yates to this story.
You know, he read the script, the script by William Goldman,
and William Goldman called Westlake's book wonderful, very funny. You know,
he was a big Westlake fan. And then Peter Yates
agrees to make the film because, as he put a quote,
all around me, I was finding that people were making

(22:24):
nothing but films about violence, sex and drugs. Everything was
a downer. I wanted to do an upper. The point
of this film is not that the characters are criminals,
but that they are likable, and that they, like many people,
plan things all their lives and never have it work out.
One of the things that Peter Yates loves, because all
directors have things that drive them as storytellers. And one
of the things that is catnip for Peter Yates is underdogs.

(22:49):
He loves stories about underdogs. See Breaking Away, which I
did this year and fell in love with and he
will probably.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Mean the best underdog movie of all time according to
one mister T Hanks.

Speaker 5 (23:02):
According to one of the best films of this year,
it is one of the best underdogs. It is the
best underdog movie ever made. And we may or may
not be, but definitely we'll be talking about it very soon.
But that's one of the things that drives Peter. He
hates the stories about underdogs. And that's who these guys are,
cause you know, they're not violent criminals. They're not out
here trying to hurt anybody. They're not out here like
trying to make a name for them. They're just trying

(23:23):
to eke out a living.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
You know.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
They're blue collar heistman, which I think is a community
that doesn't get enough credit. They're just they're just doing
a job. God damn it, They're just doing a job.
And the first job, the first heist, as it were,
is we got to break into the Brooklyn Museum. We
gotta get the Sahara Stone and this heist is very
Ocean's eleven in that you have multiple gambits that are

(23:47):
involved with people playing different roles to accomplish different facets
of the plan, sort of all simultaneously.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Right.

Speaker 5 (23:55):
My favorite thing about this particular heist, you know, outside
of the fact that there is a really impressive car
stunt where they just flip a car in front of
the museum to distract all the guards.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
And it's an impressive fucking car stunt.

Speaker 5 (24:09):
I mean, coming off of making Bullet, I'm sure it
felt like small potatoes for Peter Gates, but it's still
an impressive car stunt for a comedy. And while they're
in the museum, all the cops are outside, they're trying
to get the stone out. They get this heavy display
case up and George Siegel gets inside there, but then
they can't hold it and he gets trapped inside the
display case and they're just like, shit, shit.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
I can't I can't hold it, I can't get it up.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Because the one mistake, as I referenced earlier, is they
figured out everything about it except how much that glass
case would weigh. Yes, and they didn't anticipate that it
would take three of them to lift it, and that
the three of them could not hold it up and
grab the stone at the same time, which leads to,
oh god, now we have trapped our guy in with

(24:57):
the diamond instead of gotten the diamond out.

Speaker 5 (25:00):
And then the police come in and they all scatter,
and I love that this for a moment becomes an
episode of Scooby Doo, where because our con men are
all dressed like museum guards and not every guard saw
them when they came in. At one point, they're like
running through these hallways and then they convince other guards
that they're also looking for the bad guys, like, oh, yeah,
they went in there. It literally becomes like in and

(25:23):
out of doors like Scooby Doo, and it's fucking hilarious.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah it is. It creates like they're running around in
the dark. They're all dressed up like guards, so they
don't know which one of them are that they're seeing
is part of the team or the guards, right, which
hilarity ensues.

Speaker 5 (25:41):
And I love that when Paul sand who is this
sort of like really schlubby character on the team, he
ends up getting nabbed. But again, it's not so much
about making the perfect plan. It's about your ability to improvise,
and his yes, and in this moment is to swallow
the saharas stone while he's getting caught. So I guess

(26:01):
he picked an alimentary approach to crime at this particular
moment and swallows the saharastone before he's.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
Caught, leading to now we need to break him out
of prison. So now we've got a jail break heist
to get the guy with the rock out of prison
because he's got it in his gut.

Speaker 5 (26:21):
If you smell what that rock is cooking, you will
not be happy.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
But before we get to that heist, yes, we are
introduced to the one of the films Nemesi.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yes, the perfect ten of this movie, as it turns out,
is a zero.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
And it is Zero Mustelle, who in his full, in
full form, going full zero must Mostelle like he It
is so much fun to watch him his do his
lines in the way that he was so good at doing.
He plays this role full common and is great as

(27:02):
the father of Greenberg, He's a lawyer who's in the
crime world. And his father too we haven't imagined yet.
So we've got we've got Greenberg, We've got merch, we've
got Dormundter, We've got Kelp and every single one of
them has a skill set. Dor Munder of course being
Robert Redford is the Danny of the group. He's the
he's the brains, he's the guy who works everything out.

(27:23):
George Siegel is the man with the golden hands. He
is the lock pick. He is he's he's their their
door breaker. We've got Merch who's the wheelman and he
can drive anything, and he goes on to try to
prove that over the course of the movie. And then
we have Greenberg who is kind of the he's the

(27:45):
explosive expert, but we really only use that like twice,
but he is their explosives expert who helps blow shit up.

Speaker 5 (27:55):
Is this just the Okay, hold on, I'm just realizing something.
Is this just the A Team?

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Like I said, is that where we put together here
is literally the fucking eighteen.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
I mean that was what the A Team was. That
as the you know, Stephen J. Kenel said of the
A Team back in the day that everybody thought it
was an action TV show, and he said, no, every
episode has the same plot. It's it's literally a comedy.
Every week. It's about how do we get a ba
on a plane. How do we break out Murdoch again? Like, yes,

(28:23):
it is. It is quite literally this the template of
the A Team is if you took The Hot Rock
and mixed it with the Magnificent seven.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (28:35):
This movie is is so foundational for so many fucking
reasons that I didn't even think about it until now.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Oh God, yes, and I guarantee, I mean I've spoken
to many the reason I knew about this movie. This
is not one of those movies that anyone really tends
to put on people's radar in the industry. It's not
something that comes up on best lists. When people talk
about Robert Redford, George Siegel, this movie rarely get gets mentioned.
And you know, I was shocked to see Zero mustellin here.

(29:04):
I love Zero Mastell and had no idea he was
even in this until he showed up in the credits.
But this is a movie that many filmmakers have mentioned
to me privately, like when we share movies that oh,
you know what you've probably never seen, you need to see.
The Hot Rock was something that kept coming up, and
several producers I've worked with on films like, oh, you know,

(29:26):
one of my favorite movies the Hot Rock. No one
ever talks about it, but the Hot Rock. And so
this is one that's been on my radar forever that
I had never gotten a chance to see, and watching it,
you go, oh, you just see all the other films
influenced by this. There's shots in this like I'm convinced
the opening of this movie is where they got the
opening Four Oceans eleven. Like, it just feels like Soderberg

(29:48):
was doing his Hot Rock, sure, you know, thirty years later.
And it just is one of those movies that is
foundational but was not, you know, so such a big
cultural It didn't leave a cultural thumb print, if you will,
to be able to be something that we can keep

(30:10):
going back to time and again. Like The Sting, this
thing is one of those that you've been hearing about
this thing in your whole life, whether you've seen it
or not. It's just one of those that was so
good and so big and such a huge hit. You
can see why immediately Robert Redford turned, you know, turned
into the Skin ran and gotten the first heist movie
he could get in. But but it just didn't have

(30:32):
that that staying power that several other movies have had
in this space. But it is so important and so good,
and you can see all the other filmmakers that clearly
borrowed from it in some ways. April four, after these messages,

(30:56):
we'll be right back.

Speaker 6 (30:59):
Least Charlie's for just nine ninety nine for adults and kids.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
He's free all day to celebrate at Beeasteak Charlie's.

Speaker 5 (31:06):
It's it's a remarkable movie, and it's one that I
wish more people would see.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
But it is also.

Speaker 5 (31:14):
Very much the very much the boilerplate from which a
team sprang because Robert Redford, again, cool, calm, collected, mastermind,
is the guy who loves it when a plan comes together,
but he's also the guy that will calculate all the
ways the plan won't come together. Like I love that
monologue where he just stands there after they meet doctor
Musa uh and they're just he's standing there and laying

(31:37):
out an entire if then flow chart of.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
The time they stole from for the Simpsons.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yes, yes, that's good. That's bad. That's good. That's bad.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Hey, but the sprinkles have polyservon it carbonates.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
That's bad, that's bad.

Speaker 5 (31:54):
I also love the fact that he's dealing with gastritis
in this movie and trying to keep it from his
co horts, like the pressure of getting this fucking stone,
the fact that they've had to jump through all these
hoops is literally giving him ulcers, Like it's fucking insane,
how much it's like, God, damn, this fucking job. I
don't understand why it keeps going wrong. It keeps going right,

(32:15):
and that we keep getting our hands on the goddamn stone,
but then something happens and we've got to steal it again.
What if you had to steal the same thing over
and over and over again. Is essentially the elevator pitch
of this movie.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, Yeah, can we finally get the rock? Can we
have the scene where they walk away with the rock
in their pocket? Finally? Can it please happen? Well, that's
the impetus of the whole fucking movie.

Speaker 5 (32:40):
By the way, look at me with a straight face
and tell me that if they had made a Batman
movie in the seventies, zero Mostelle would not have been
the penguin, because he absolutely would have been the fucking penguin.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
Oh I'm, I'm he was just too big a star
to beat the penguin to begin with.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
He's too big to be the penguin.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Too big, Yeah, I mean, I mean in the sixties,
you know, when he's like crushing it. He was not
going to do children's television.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Which is okay because we still had Burgess Meredith.

Speaker 5 (33:07):
But once we move into the seventies and we're trying
to get away from the campy TV show and we're
trying to make a grittier Batman movie. Scorsese's Batman movie
zero Mustelle would be the Penguin.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Here is nineteen eighty nine. I am sitting in a
dark theater and I am watching a darker, grittier Batman.
Ear is two thousand and four. I am sitting in
a dark theater and I'm watching a darker, grittier Batman.
The ear is twenty twenty two. I am sitting in
a dark theater and I'm watching a darker, grittier Batman.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
I really wish you could perceive movies as we do.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
Before we move on to the second heist, though, we
have to talk about We've talked about the feel of
this movie, the texture of its script, the direction of
the movie.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
We haven't talked about how the movie sounds.

Speaker 5 (33:50):
And I really think we owe a huge debt of
gratitude to Quincy Jones who did all for this. Yeah,
probably the greatest music producer of all time, more of
the most celebrated pieces of music of pop music than
anyone else in history.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah, he was ripping it up in movies, he was
ripping it up in albums. You know, just you know,
took a little victory lap and made thriller like I mean,
dude's fucking legend, fucking.

Speaker 5 (34:21):
Forty seven of the biggest artists of nineteen eighty five
or six, I can't remember exactly when, and made We
Are the World. Quincy Jones was behind We Are the World.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Like the only only he could be.

Speaker 5 (34:32):
Yeah, but what I'm saying is like the fact that
that that he pulled that off, that should be his
if that were his only accolade, that would be enough
to get him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But then, on top of that, again produce some of
the most celebrated pieces of pop music in the history
of pop.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Music and and in movies, created a theme that then
got used for multiple more movies that many of you
will uh think of as the Austin Powers theme.

Speaker 5 (34:58):
Yep, my wife is a huge fan of those movies.
And we actually watched gold Member the other night, and yeah,
the music still rips, but that movie is full of
ghosts and monsters. It is crazy how many people like
I understand how time works. I understand the movie came
out twenty years ago, but there are so many people
who have passed on in that movie. And then there
are people in the movie who we don't really want

(35:21):
to talk about anymore, people referenced in the movie we
don't want to talk about anymore.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
And it's just like.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Those are boys. It's very weird to see how poorly
Mike Myers's career has aged. Oh yeah, and not as
a you know, as a person in particular because he's
a Canadian treasure. But yeah, many of his films did

(35:46):
not age well at all. They were the biggest fucking
things of the planet. We referenced them all the time.
There are so many pop culture references that come from
his films, and yet some of those films weirdly weird.
His James Bond parody is the stuff that ages less
than his SNL movies.

Speaker 5 (36:06):
Did that gold Member movie aged like a carton of
guacamole that you left in the fridge with no cover on.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
That's what I'm saying. I'm saying Duayne's World movies aged
so well and really hold up, and yet it's the
Austin Powers movies that, like you pop on, You're like, ooh, ooh,
I don't know. How did baby get in my belly?
Become a whole meme?

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Jesus that.

Speaker 5 (36:31):
It's hard to say, but it was fun explaining to
my wife all the James Bond references, because she's not
a Bond fan. So she's like, is doctor Evil like
based on somebody? I was like, yes, Donald Pleasant. It's like,
do you really want me to go into all this
because I will?

Speaker 3 (36:45):
Oh yes I will. And okay, so hold on one second,
let me pull out the whiteboard, all right. So really,
in order to explain this, we have to go back
to World War Two. There's a young man, Ian Fleming
working in an office.

Speaker 5 (37:02):
Twenty minutes later, I'm like, now, Kevin McClory enters the
picture here and he's the real villain. It's actually not blowfelt.
And I look up and she's just gone. It's like,
oh no, that tracks I get it. I understand.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
No, no, no. Now, first of all, while that's funny.
You and I both married women that will indulge us
and let us go on that and they will just
sit there quietly and let us do our thing for
an hour.

Speaker 5 (37:23):
Yes, learning very very early on how to tune us out,
like there has to be a white noise machine in
both of their heads. Then when we start talking about
the shit, they just flip on and they just go
to their happy place and pretend that we're not doing
a fucking master's class treatise on all of the ways
that Kevin McClory ruined the Bond franchise for thirty years.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
No, it's fine.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
See everything you just said sounded like, you know to
our audiences, like, oh yes, I understand all those words,
and to your wife wow wow wow wow wow. Donald McClary,
I'm not wrong.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
No, nope, not wrong.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
That's that's that's Jess and Warhammer. Why why a Space
Marines wha wha wh wow? The tow wow wa wh
wh Why.

Speaker 5 (38:15):
If it makes you feel any better, that's how I
am when you start talking about Warhammer as well.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
So that's so true, Stargrove.

Speaker 5 (38:24):
Sorry for the random drive by on Mike Myers, did
not mean it to come off that way. Just happened
to watch a movie that Quincy Jones was in the
other night, and it, uh, it reminded me of how
good this fucking score is. And by the way, I
love the Quincy Jones was so impressed by the members
of the band he hired to put the score together
after he wrote it that he insisted that each individual

(38:45):
member of that band be credited, which is not something
that was really done at the time.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
No, no, I had not seen that in it, and
I was like, oh, well that's cool.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (38:54):
He just he was like fully enamored with the work
that they did. It's like you wrote the score, but
he was just so impressed with the way. And again
this is this This is a really jazzy, a little
bit discordinate times perfect for a movie like this where
we're trying to pull off crimes and things aren't going right.
It's pitch perfect. And I mean that in every sense
of the word. It's so, so, so good.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
After these messages, we'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Coming.

Speaker 4 (39:18):
Attractions in our parade A medley from Broadways Tony Award
winning Lei Miserob actor Patrick Swayze and the New Balloon
Calls snuggle.

Speaker 5 (39:27):
And it sets us up for heist number two, the
prison break, because we've got to we've got to get
Paul sand out of prison, and.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
They make sure be a.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Break.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Are you are you Jethro telling me about something right now?
I might be okay, fair enough.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
Another thing that Peter Yates is often praised for is
his attention to detail. And I think that not only
the fact that he's put together four different heists in
this heist movie, right, but in this heist in particular,
you can really see the Mike man like attention to
detail to criminal activity. And my favorite example is that

(40:08):
you know they're using the bolt cutters to cut the
two perimeter fences. There's multiple perimeter fences. Now, in any
other in an other director's hands, there would be one
perimeter fence. We cut through it, we move on to
the next thing. In this one, not only do they
cut through two fences, but they make different cuts for
each fence, Like literally one cut is a vertical and

(40:28):
the other is a horizontal near the bottom of the
fence so they can kind of roll over it. And
it's based on the angle that can be reached by
the guard tower light at each spot and I'm.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Just like that.

Speaker 5 (40:39):
That is an attention to detail that probably wasn't even
necessary for the audience to understand what's going on. But
I love that Yates, doesn't. I love that He's like, no, no, no,
see this one. They'd have to cut this way and
roll over it because the light's gonna come over that.
It's just like, Yes, I love directors who are obsessive,
and this is clearly a director who obsesses about details.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
Oh yeah, no, this is this is a movie that
it is one of those detailed heist movies.

Speaker 5 (41:03):
And they do all of these amazing things, like you know,
getting into the right building, strangling the right guards. There's
a great scene because Zero Mostelle is introduced as Greenberg's lawyer,
and then it's revealed that he's his father, and there's
this scene where he goes to visit Greenberg, who's Paul
Sand's character in jail, and he uses this code talk
to let say and know exactly what to do to

(41:26):
accomplish the escape, which is very Matt Suiy from Motions
twelve again. Now Cargio Remami is Soderberg a fan of
classic film?

Speaker 2 (41:32):
I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
He might be a little bit. He might have also
made an entire second film in that franchise that is
just aping back to this era.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, so it feels very much like Matt Suie.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
It's like, you know, all the things he needs to know,
and one of the things he has to do is
get himself into the infirmary. So he picks a fight
with his much larger cellmate at three o'clock in the
morning so that they will be taking him to the infirmary.
When Robert Redford and George Siegel come in, strangle two
of the guards, intercept him, hit him out to the yard.
They pull off all of these steps brilliantly, and then

(42:04):
Greenberg can't climb a fucking rope like he's literally like.
Reverend has to climb behind him and push him up
the wall, which then slows him down and allows the
spotlight to find them. So now the alarms are going off.
They're running for their lives. They managed to get to
the getaway car, which Ron Lieberman drives into the back

(42:24):
of a semi truck. So again it's like something went wrong.
We improvise, we're good at improvisation. We figured it out.
We got into the back of this truck.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Hooray.

Speaker 5 (42:32):
We did it, and then Greenberg's like, oh, by the way,
I don't have the stone because I shit it out
in the holding cell and had to hide it so
that they wouldn't take it from me.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
So is this like? Goddamn it?

Speaker 3 (42:47):
By the way, I absolutely love all the subtext around
the conversation that that comes from that. It's like, couldn't
you just have kept re swallowing it? He's just like, no, no, no, Jesus, Jesus.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
No, it's a hot rock, not a hot lunch. Do
you know what I mean? Like, I'm not I'm not
gonna eat my own shit.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
As it turns out, it's really just a little spongy.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Are you fat bastard? Now?

Speaker 5 (43:15):
Are we going back to gold membership? Is that what's
happening right now?

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Actually? No, sorry, I was going to a different heist movie.
I was actually going back to things Things to Do
in Denver when You're dead.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Cargil, Cargo, I want you to look at me.

Speaker 5 (43:29):
No one other than the person on the other end
of the zoom call has any fucking clue what things
to do in Denver when You're dead? Is so you
and I will talk about that movie later and have
boat drinks.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Don't worry about it. Yes we will, but that is
the most.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
Because I am Godzilla and you are Japan.

Speaker 5 (43:48):
I just we're talking about the Hot Rock, and I'm like,
this is the most obscure movie we'll talk about during
this recording. Nope, you had to bring up things to
do in Denver when you're dead.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Is that really obscure?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Who the fuck? Cargill?

Speaker 5 (44:02):
Yes, it's obscure, no one, no one despite And you
know what's crazy, Cargil is it's one of those situations where,
on a scale of how incredibly talented and well known
the cast is to how popular the movie is, it's
in that weird zone of like super crazy talented, well
known cast the movie that no one has ever fucking seen.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
So so you see why I'm bringing it up here?

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Yes, yes I do. I do.

Speaker 5 (44:23):
I understand that what I'm asking you to do is
keep doing that because it delights me anyway.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
So he won't swallow his shit Rock.

Speaker 5 (44:33):
And I want to throw a shout out here to
Moses Gunn, who plays doctor Amosa, as Cargil mentioned, a
guy who has like all these noble ambitions. It's like,
I'm I'm turning to crime and I'm dipping into the
criminal world, but only for this noble purpose. And then
it gets so disenfranchised with the budgeting of pulling these jobs.

(44:54):
It's just like again, it becomes like a thing that
would have been a running bit on the A team,
Like the guy with all the money is just like, really,
you need a submarine now, Like what the fuck is
going on?

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Yeah? No, I mean that the whole thing of like, okay, so,
oh what you need another truck? No, we're gonna need
a helicopter.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
Oh my god, that line that kelp whiches. Peter Peter Siegel,
George Siegal's character has this line where he says, here's
the materials request doctor. Doctor Moose is like, is it
gonna upset me? And he goes, I think it's safe
to say that, yes, sir. He's just like, yep, you're
not gonna like this one. We need a fucking helicopter.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
And then we get a great, great heist on a
police station.

Speaker 5 (45:38):
Man breaking into a police station and just dude, just
as he's just as Redford is standing outside casing the joint,
he gets mugged by this dude.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
That's like, that's a nice watch.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
I'd really like that watch, and Redford's like, keep going
to church, maybe God will reward you. And then the
guy who is credited as the happy hippie the fucking
pulls an eye on him and steals his watch. He
gets mugged in front of a police station while casing
the police station they're going to break into.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
It's fucking nuts.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Which because you could tell what's funny. The subtext of
the joke is the guy's another criminal and realizes that
the criminal is up to some things, so he's not
going to report it to the police.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Right.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
In fact, what I was surprised, Uh, I was surprised that, uh,
it wasn't mentioned. But when they went to have their
their the list of things that they needed for the heist,
I was expecting there to be a watch on there.

(46:38):
Why am I buying a watch? Just just do it?
I expected that to be part of it.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
It's pivotal to the plan. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
After these messages, we'll be right back.

Speaker 6 (46:48):
Jasper and I are happy to announce the chief any
after Thanksgiving. Sale early Christmas, Shopperson called Fine Jewelry twenty
five of all women's sleep wearing robes twenty percent off
all Fox Apparel for kids, twenty five percent off these
men's crew neck sweaters on the nineteen ninety nine Big

(47:08):
Savings at the j C. Penny After Thanksgiving Sale.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
I just told.

Speaker 5 (47:13):
Them, yes, for this one, they need a helicopter, and yeah,
I think we need to just go back in and
underline Rob Leieman one more time because, as we mentioned,
every good Heighs team, every criminal outfit, and there's either again,
every good Highs team, every criminal outfit, or just gang

(47:33):
of renegades needs the guy who is not only a
getaway driver but one who can drive anything to various
degrees of competency. And that's Leeman's character. Merch is you know,
I even I fucking put it in my notes. Cary
you it's so funny that he is Ryan Gosling me
Twaling Mad Murdoch because he is the getaway driver who
can drive anything but is kind of a fucking wild

(47:55):
guard about.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
It and by the way, loves his mom. And who
you blink and you miss it, but is Charlotte Ray
who most of you like, I mean, like Allana you listening,
Let's let's be honest here, will remember her from her
most popular thing as the house mother in Facts of.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Life, you take the good, you take the bad, you
take them both.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
In there.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
You have the heists in this movie and also the
Facts of Life, yes.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
Which I love that scene where he's sitting with his
mom and they're just playing the sounds of cars racing
because that's what soothes them.

Speaker 5 (48:34):
I'm not about to judge that cargill An as an
Indianapolist boy Jesus Christy, I as an Indianapolis boy man
the sound of the Inn five hundred and the cars
going around the track. Even though I'm not a big
auto racing fan, that is something that I wish I
could buy a CD of and just go like, have
that be my white noise machine, because oh my god,

(48:55):
it's such an amazing sound.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
It's such a soothing sound.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
I love How how you you want a CD of it?

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (49:05):
Because I'm an Indiana heppless boy who's old as shit
as well, So yes, get me a CD.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Play it on your boom box.

Speaker 5 (49:12):
On my ghetto blaster, which wouldn't have a CD player,
it would have a tape deck.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
But by the way, have you seen that thing going
around right now that that they're selling they're selling a
they're selling a retro audio kit so that you can have,
you know, listen to music like they did in the
old days.

Speaker 5 (49:31):
Like my first car that I bought off my great
grandmother who only had a tape deck, so did a.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Portable player with headphones that connect by wires.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
See and then and then you have to get the
cord that comes out of the discman that has a
cassette tape on the other end of it, so you
can play the CD.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Three you into the tape player.

Speaker 5 (49:49):
Yeah, yeah, that's how I That's how I jammed out
to Incubus in my first car. I don't worry about it,
Jesus Christ. I have never felt older in my life.
Like I feel like I just stepped off of the
that field in Iowa and I'm Moonlight Graham and now
I'm an old doctor again.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
That's just what happened anyway.

Speaker 5 (50:07):
Leibman, by the way, is someone that I know because
he was Rachel's dad on Friends, and it's just funny,
like much like you know George Siegel, who a lot
of people would probably know as either the granddad from
the Goldbergs or his stint in a couple of them.
There look, who's talking movies. As you said, Victory Lap
type roles, A lot of people would know him from.

(50:28):
And I feel like Leibman is another guy who I
recognized from his Victory Lap roles. But he's really really
good in this.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
George Siegel had to be in Friends somewhere, right.

Speaker 5 (50:39):
I, dude, I would not be surprised. I'm racking my
brain right now trying to remember. I.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Oh, wait, no, no, no, he got he got called
for another one of the NBC shows, Caroline in the
City instead.

Speaker 5 (50:51):
Oh, just to keep you all updated, we're talking about
Discman's this show.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
We're talking about Caroline and the City.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
I'm sorry, Retro audio Kit.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Sorry, retro audio Kit.

Speaker 5 (51:05):
We're talking about Caroline in the City and we're talking
about things to do in Denver when you're dead.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
Things were great in the nineties.

Speaker 5 (51:12):
Yeah, we are the greatest nineties podcast of all time.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
H We are spent the first ten years pretty much
just mining the eighties for everything that was there. It's
about time we got to the nineties.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
We're evolving people, Okay, we're trying to keep up with
the times thirty years ago. Don't worry about it, Okay, Anyway,
when they're flying around in this helicopter. I'd love these
absolutely stunning shots of tuoling around Manhattan, you know where
we're going under the Brooklyn Bridge and flying over the
Hudson River. Actually seeing the World Trade Center under construction,

(51:48):
which is you know a lot of times people talk
about how when you see the World Trade Center in
a movie, it's like it's you know, it's it's disheartening.
It's kind of like an eerie feeling. This one it's
being built, like it's kind of fucking crazy. And then
they land on a roof and those two old guys
standing there and they realize immediately they're on the wrong building.
Like that was the most a team shit to me,

(52:08):
was like we do all this flying, this expert landing
on the top of a building, and then it's not
even the goddamn police station.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Then they have to go ask for directions.

Speaker 5 (52:17):
They have to ask the old guys where the police
station is, where's the Ninth Street precinct. Yes, there's one
on ninth Street. Cool, thanks, Oh my god. When they
blow the door on the actual police station, that confused
old guard who's like you you sure you guys got
the right place, Like you're breaking into a police station.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
You know that, right, yep?

Speaker 5 (52:39):
Because who the hell would do that? Who the hell
would break into a police station? But I also love
that they know exactly which cell Greenberg was in, so
they got to get the guy that's in there out
so they can.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Get in the prisoners. The nicest thing anyone's ever done
for me.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
You're doing all this to free me. That's beautiful.

Speaker 5 (52:58):
And that actor, by the way, is an old Williams
who bringing things around to James Bond again, was the
smooth talking New York City cab driver giving James Bond
the business and live and let die. So it was
nice to see him and this just being like, this
is the most beautiful thing I ever heard of, and
they're just like, get the fuck out of the way,
And so they go in there. Sand unscrews the pipe,
the pipe housing where he hid the Sahara stone, and

(53:20):
it's gone. Wouldn't you know it, It's fucking gone, hey
real quick. One of the cops at this station, Christopher
Guest m H is first credited on screen roll. So
welcome to Welcome to movies, Christopher Guest. But yeah, no,
it's it turns out zero Mustelle has stolen the fucking stone.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
And now we have to pull a bank job.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Man.

Speaker 5 (53:42):
I love that Redford, who didn't want any part of
this heist in the first place, develops this personal vendetta
against the stone. He thinks it's cursed, but he's not
gonna be deterred. He's like, you will not beat me stone.
So it's like at this point he's like, I don't
care what we have to do. We're getting that stone,
not because it's valuable, not because we're getting paid, because
I can't let that thing beat me again.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Peter Yates and his left for underdogs.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
And then we enter the one thing I have never
ever fucking seen in a heist movie, which is hypnotism.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Oh boy, uh yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
This is a Afghanistan banettastan.

Speaker 5 (54:18):
So through a bit of coercion and u staged murder,
we find out that Zero Mostelle has hidden the stone
inside his safe deposit box. They basically create a scenario
where Zero Mostelle thinks they're gonna kill his son. They're
gonna throw him down this elevator shaft unless he tells
him I'm where the stone is, and they pull it
off so well that they've got ron Liebman in this

(54:41):
like stocking pretending to be a character named Chicken who's
I think, stuffed his jacket so it looks like his
lats are higher, which is fucking hilarious that it looks
like brock Lessner's about to throw Zero Mostelle down down
an elevator shaft and he's like, yeah, it's it's in
my safe deposit box, and but it requires this and
that and the other thing. How the hell are we
gonna do this? How are we going to get in there,

(55:01):
get past the signature check? And they know what zero
looks like? Like, I don't understand what's happening. And this
is where Redford starts to equate the bad luck on
these on these heis with his gastritis and the stone
being cursed. He's like, Nope, it's not gonna beat me.
Uh AMusA has another great line here where he's given
a new list of materials and he's just like, I'm

(55:22):
really quite disenchanted with the results you're getting.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
It's just like a guy who's.

Speaker 5 (55:28):
Clearly about to rage out but refuses to because it
would break decorum. It's like, I fucking hate you guys,
and I'm just gonna I'm gonna keep simmering about it,
but yeah, they they end up having to hypnotize a
bank manager. And I feel like, this is where if
you didn't know we were a comedy yet, this is
where you fucking know that we're in a full on comedy.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
And I remember there was a role for Robert Priccardo
to show up, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Man, yeah that would be oh as the snoody bank manager. Yeah, absolutely,
be so good at that. But he was probably like
fifteen at the time this movie.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Yeah, yeah, he was a little young at the time.
After these messages, we'll be right back Thursday at eight
America's Homecoming, We continues, Thanksgiving Day is coming, and for
Charlie Brown that can.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Only mean it's a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Speaker 5 (56:18):
What is another thing we need in every heist movie, Cargill,
We need a double cross.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
We need a good double cross.

Speaker 5 (56:24):
And it's here that we find out that AMusA has
made a deal with Zero Mostelle to get the diamond himself.
So he fires Redford in the crew, not knowing that
Redford is already in the bank, and now we've got
ourselves a race. But before he goes to the bank,
he literally hires a hypnotist to run into quote you know,

(56:44):
accidentally quote unquote in an elevator the bank manager and
use this phrase on him that hypnotizes him. And anytime
he hears the phrase Afghanistan, Banana Stan, whoever says it
to him, he will do whatever that person says. So
a little bit of day making it, But I don't
fucking care because at this point these guys have been
through the ringer and I'm like, I am on board

(57:05):
for hypnotism.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
Let's go. Yeah. Well, I mean, and especially since it's
one of those things that it's what's interesting is like
the levels of heists get more and more complicated as
the movie goes forward. That's part of the reason the
movie works. Uh, but this one is not only has
a criminal stolen the diamond, he's put it in a

(57:29):
in a lock box in a safe deposit box at
a bank and done everything in his power to make
sure in the past that he would be set up
in case he ever needed to do this. So, like
he talks about how he tips everybody so everyone knows
who he is. Everyone knows his name and his face,
so you can't just go in and claim your meat.

(57:51):
So how are you gonna steal from a bank bucko?
And well, sure enough, how about hypnotism?

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Why not natism?

Speaker 5 (58:00):
So he goes in there, he opens his own safe
deposit box. So he gets into the room with the
manager to open his own box. So therefore his signature,
his face, all of that gets him in and that's
when he drops the Afghanistan banana stan and I love that.
It's not like you don't get like a weird like,
you know, a musical sting. And he like his face
goes white and his eyes go big. It's just like yes,

(58:21):
it's just like like he just keeps talking.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
It's amazing. It's like, now we're going to open that box.

Speaker 5 (58:26):
And then he gets into the box and he finds
the stone, and literally he gets out of the bank
just as we see the car pull up with Zero
Mustelle and doctor AMusA. And the way that Robert Redford
as he's walking out of the bank is he's triumphant,
he's relieved, and he's trepidacious, all at the same time,
and all without a single line of dialogue. I think

(58:50):
not only beautifully communicates how much the character believed the
stone was cursed, but also demonstrates what a brilliant actor
Robert Redford was. Yeah, and then we end we in
the movie with the I love this jazzy rag that
ends the movie that sounds like it could have one
hundred percent been played at one of Gatsby's parties.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Yeah, so good. It's just such it's just such a great,
one of a kind heist movie that is so influential,
and yet this hidden gem of sorts that just isn't
part of the pop culture. So it's there for you
to discover and enjoy and savor every delightful moment of

(59:36):
these these beautiful fuck ups.

Speaker 5 (59:40):
And I hate that this movie was such a bomb. Like,
this movie was such a bomb it didn't even cover
the cost of its negatives. And I find that confounding.
And I understand, you know, Robert Redford was somebody on
the rise at this time, but still like the it's
got Beater Yates behind it, it's got Quincy Jones behind it,
it's got like all of these things. And the movie

(01:00:00):
itself is so fantastic that I feel like word of
mouth should have done something for this film, and yet
it bombed. And that sucks because it's really really excellent.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Well, I mean that's the that's the early days of
distribution for you. I mean that is that is one
of those situations. I mean, sometimes you'll get something that
they'll believe in. Just a few years before Bonnie and
Clyde had bombed twice, they just kept re releasing it
because they refuse to take a failure as an option

(01:00:32):
for that movie, they really believed in it, and by
the third time they put it out it was a
huge hit. We watched them thirty years ago do the
same thing with a brilliant fucking film that they kept
putting out because well, it worked for Bonnie and Clyde.
Will try it here. Never never took in theaters. The
shawsh Ank Redemption movie everyone on the planet is now seen.

(01:00:54):
You know, sometimes a great thing just doesn't hit right,
and this didn't hit right, but but it's fucking great.

Speaker 5 (01:01:00):
I would argue that marginally, few more people have seen
The Shawshank Redemption than have seen Things to Do in
Denver when You're Dead.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Just a few, just a few. But yeah, maybe they
should have done that with this movie.

Speaker 5 (01:01:12):
Released it very much, you know, pursuant to the plot
of the film, just release it four times until it
finally succeeds.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Or they put it in put it in drive ins
back to back with the sting.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Perfect, let's go, let's do it. Channel four wishes you
and your family.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
I'm very happy Thanksgiving.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
And that brings us to the junk food pairing, And
for this one, Cargil I went with cinnamon rock candy,
so literal hot rocks, and I chose this not only
for the obvious eponymous connection, but also because the idea
of adding cinnamon flavor to rock candy is very much
like the plot of the film and the uphill battle
of our heroes taking a bad thing and making it worse.

(01:01:52):
So enjoy your cinnamon rock candy while you watch that rock.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Yeah, I'm gonna go with a double jack. Oh, the
drink of choice of our man that we have that
moment where just some clever setup, you know, where they're
setting up the zero mostelle thing, but in a weird
way where you know, he walks into a bar after
having been in jail for a while and the bartender

(01:02:19):
knows his order. It's a double jack. And so I
think this is a movie best enjoyed with a double jack.

Speaker 5 (01:02:25):
Once I know your drink order, your mind for life
is what Rollo the bartender says in this movie, and
that is very true. I remember every bartender that remembered
my drink without asking and shout out to Pepe at
the Pepe at the Texas Chili Parlor, who I think
is still the goat in that department. But yes, I'm
glad that the double Jack was the drink you were
referring to, because I've told you many times it's gonna

(01:02:46):
take a much much higher Patreon tier for me to
agree to a double Jack.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
I mean, it's called a Dutch rudder.

Speaker 5 (01:02:53):
Hey, speaking of disgusting things, car Gil, I want to
make a recommendation for Thanksgiving. If you haven't tried, I
cannot believe I'm saying this. And please understand that no
fast food restaurant has ever deigned to sponsor this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
The Baja Blast Pie.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Oh my god, everybody is eating this pie and actually
liking it.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
I dude, I'm just as surprised as you are. I
bought it because I just had to know, right. I
was like, this is going to be disgusting. But I
have to know. My wife has been on a big
kick with the soda recently. You know, they add coconut
cream to it. It's like a whole thing. So it's
been that the soda has been around the house a lot.
So when they introduced this pie, I was like, you know,
that's insane, and I kind of have to know, because
those maniacal forays into the absolute depraved from fast food

(01:03:38):
restaurants always interest me. So I got one. And you
can't buy a slice. You have to buy an entire
fucking pie, which I think is amazing. So bought a pie.
I came home with it and took it by, thinking
that I was going to spit it out immediately. Turns
out it's kind of a great, cool, citrusy meringue pie.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
It just fucking works. I have no explanation. But if
you want to.

Speaker 5 (01:03:59):
Be the weirdo slash hero of your Thanksgiving, bring the
Baja Blast Pie to Thanksgiving. I just make that recommendation.

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
I'll be honest. I hear these. I keep hearing people
talk about it, and all I can think that Baja
Blast cream pie is some kind of Google search I
shouldn't make. It's like, oh, it's like the Alabama hot pocket. Yeah,
you know, just don't google it.

Speaker 5 (01:04:22):
Did you buy that at the Taco bell In Kyle, No,
I bought it at the Taco Bell in incognito.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Mode for sure, for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:04:30):
Thank you for joining us here as we kick off
and it celebrate our Yates Giving with the Hot Rock
More Peter Yates films to come and again rip to
the Great Robert Redford. If you'd like more junk Food Cinema,
you can find us on your favorite podcast or follow
us on social media.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
And if you really like the show, I mean you
really like the show, you like it as.

Speaker 5 (01:04:51):
Much as I cannot recommend more highly the baa blast
cream pie man that really does sound terrible. Go to
patreon dot com slash duck Food Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
I gave a woman a Baja blast ones that it
turned out to be a cream pie. I mean, like,
look the jokes right themselves.

Speaker 5 (01:05:05):
I just gotta vasectomy. There will be no more uh
problematic baja blasts for me. And I appreciate that. Paedrion
dot com s last joke food cent him. If you'd
like to financially support the show, Oh my god, I
know Thanksgiving is coming.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
I hope you're celebrating it with people that you love.

Speaker 5 (01:05:20):
And to quote a great line from this movie that
also applies to Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Eat your hearts out, you sappy bastards. I got change.

Speaker 6 (01:05:27):
Craze potatoes to meat us lamp, change creaze potatoes to
meatus chicken chuck his creat Change craze potatoes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
To meat us lamp ramps, yalt damp. Change craze potatoes
to meat US chicken chuck his chickens chuck. Is it
change creeze potatoes