Episode 644 - Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Room Service, and Keanu Reeves

Mark and Professor Mike Dillon discuss the 1995 cyberpunk action film Johnny Mnemonic. Directed by Robert Longo, and starring Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Dolph Lundgren and Jones the Dolphin, the movie focuses on a mnemonic courier who loves room service. In this episode, they also talk about cyberpunk cinema, club sandwiches, and Starship Troopers.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:42):
thirteen From Paramount Pictures, Hello and welcome to Movies, Films

(01:12):
and Flicks. I am Mark Hofmeier and joining me is
a man who just finished off a delicious club sandwich
it's Professor Mike Dillon.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Off my arm. Don't forget the cold Mexican beer.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I figured you would jump in with that, so then
what a move. I love this movie first and foremost,
and I bought the black and white version of it
John Imonic in black and white, which I've never seen.
It's gorgeous. And I didn't know back in the day.
I didn't know about Robert Longo's art. I didn't know
that was featured in American Psycho. I didn't know about
The Men in Cities or any of that. So watching

(01:46):
it now in black and white, it is quite gorgeous.
So going back and watching the nineteen ninety five just
colored version, like in color kind of Canadian shot film,
there's still some really great frames, but it just looks
so gorgeous and black and white. I know people have
problems like when you convert a film the black and
white dog, what does that do? But I really, I

(02:08):
mean know one about Longo's art now it really elevates
the experience. So it's just very happy to watched it.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
It's yeah, it's it's a handsomely made movie. I mean,
it may be a few too many cantid angles for
my taste. But yeah, there's definitely frames you could pull
out and you know, frame them on a wall or
something like that. And also the I mean, the black
and white cyberpunk is so rooted in noir that trying
to give it this throwback look and make it seem

(02:37):
as though it's a science fiction film that could have
been made in the fifties, I think is neat.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
After researching this film and listening to the commentaries, there's
like Q and A in the like twenty three minute
Q and A with Gibson long Ago and Reeves talking
about the film like I think it's twenty twenty one
they recorded it. I thinink John Okay, this is my
This is how how I think what happened to Johnny Namonic.
You know, when someone throws a nice intimate party with

(03:06):
just a few friends and you're gonna just kind of
hang out and you're gonna have a nice relaxing night
with a few friends, have some drinks, hang out, but
then a couple of people come into it, and then
a couple more people come into it, and then before
you know it, you've completely lost control of the party
and it's kind of become something else. You don't know
the people there, and it's really not your party anymore.

(03:26):
I feel like that's what happened to long ago, because
they wanted to make a two million dollar movie black
and white John Knemonic, and then different studios got involved,
more studios got involved, Keanu hit big on Speed, more
people got involved, and then it just sort of like
then they had to go to Canada. They were gonna
shoot New York and then they had to go to
Canada because of Keanu Reeves to get the tax credits.

(03:47):
They were gonna have the DP from Taxi Driver, but
it went to another DP who had shot Weekend at Bernie's.
Like that was because in brain Scan was one of
his major credits and National impun Senior trip. So then
he all these new people come in. You he had
to go back and do reshoots. You know, like it
just seemed like they wanted it small, but then it
exploded and then they kind of lost control of it.

(04:10):
But at the end of the day, it still turns
out to be a really fun movie. I enjoy this
film and I enjoy watching it, but from what I get,
it just seems like the house party that blows up
and then you kind of lose control of it. But
I still think there's a lot to like about this film.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
That's a fun analogy, and it's you know, we're we're
hitting the ground running here. Because this is a big
reason I enjoy talking with you so much, because you know,
in just that that little intro you gave, I've learned
more factoids about the making of a movie. I thought,
I thought I knew this movie like the back of
my hand. But this is the this is the Hoffmeyer Special. Yeah,
so I'm intrigued by you. So you said that, So

(04:47):
Speed is one year before this, right, mm hmm. Do
you have to know if he was already signed on
to do Johnny.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
He was so so they were originally supposed to have
oh Man, who's the other oh Val Kilmer was signed
on and h R I P. But then he was
he he was holding holding out for Batman forever, but
then he so then he got Batman Forever and left
really quick. And at this time, you know, Keanu was great,
he had done some good movies, but Speed really like

(05:15):
he had he had Point Break, which was amazing, but
then he had Bramsoker's Dracula with I think that's one
of the most gorgeous movies ever, but his accent wasn't great.
Blah blah blah blah. But yeah, when Speed comes out,
he was already signed on to do it, and so
then they're like, oh, man, like this this was supposed
to be a March release, but they're like, we got
to push it to May, like we gotta, we gotta
bump this up, and we gotta like, we gotta do
a video game, we need to do a soundtrack, we

(05:37):
need to get all these people. And so then it
became this kind of smaller cyberpunk film that everyone jumped
on because of Keanu, like they want to get on
the Kanu bandwagon. So then it got a really tough
release date. And you know that's why I think it. No,
I don't think long Ago or Gibson planned on this
being a summer tent pole. They just wanted to be

(05:57):
released in March, be smaller, he kind of grungy, and
and people might like it. But then it just sort
of exploded because of keanu'soppolt popularity. But was great and
he loves long Ago.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
It works as a grungy B movie, it does not
work as a as a ten pole release, I think
because because the expectations that come with that, like the
movie doesn't doesn't meet them, right. But yeah, I was
curious about that simply because I had assumed because Jack
and Speed is such a he's quite wholesome and charming,
and I had assumed that he wanted to get away

(06:29):
from that. And then there's an interest on his part
in playing Johnny as an antihero because Johnny is kind
of a dick. He is, right if you think about it,
Like whatever part of his brain they removed to make
room for storage clearly took his manners with them as well,
because because there's that line that I texted you, Jane

(06:49):
Dina Meyer asks you know you have parents and stuff
and his response is you got parents and stuff? So
childish and juvenile, right, I mean, whatever part of the
brain they removed is I think what modulates maturity and
normal adults.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Oh and like Henry Rawlins is like stopping an asshole,
like he just calls him out for it. He's just
yelling at Ralphie all the time. He loves his ten
thousand dollars a night hookers, which is interesting.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, so you you clocked the the Chekhov's Club Sandwich. Yeah,
I mean, do your listeners need us to explain what
we're talking about before we dive in. It's up to you.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, go for it, explain it, are you?

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Oh? Well, Late in the film, Keonu delivers arguably the
greatest monologue of his career.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, easily.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, I mean maybe second to the I want no
the it was free pizza monologue from Knock Knock, I
would put that up there. But if I I want
room service, I want the club sandwich, I want the
cold Mexican beer, I want the ten thousand dollars a
night hooker, and I want my shirts laundered like they
do at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. And like, if

(08:07):
I ever had to do a dramatic monologue, it would
be this. It's the great battle cry for privilege and
luxury in a world run by capitalism. Right to shake
your fist in the heavens and demand that your first
world problems be addressed immediately. That's essentially what the I
want room service thing is. And so you very well spotted,
by the way, I never would have caught this. You

(08:28):
found in the first scene where we meet him in
a hotel, the prostitute is about to leave and there's
a club stand I have, like a happy even club sandwich.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
I don't know if I like it or not, though,
Do do you like the fact that it's in there
now or no? Well?

Speaker 2 (08:41):
I think it, I mean, there's no need for it there.
It makes me wonder whether it means that he just
eats the same thing in every hotel because that's what
he wants. And I mean, I don't know if your
daughter does this, but I tend to associate this behavior
with little kids, like they want the same thing all
the time, like mac and cheese or Dino nuggets, Like

(09:02):
they like what they like and they want it every
meal because there's a sense of safety and the familiarity.
And the thing about Johnny this ties back to my
earlier point that he's kind of a dickhead. He's clearly
suffering from some kind of arrested development as a result
of his memories being erased.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
I mean, I'm no expert in this area, but I
feel like if you can't remember anything from your past,
it stands to reason that you're not able to access
any of the wisdom and maturity that comes from drawing
upon lived experience.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
And so him crying out for room service. The kind
of creature comforts of room service is really about crying
out for the things that make him feel normal and
safe and comfortable in this crazy world, like a security blanket.
So it's kind of sad if you think about it. Wow.
I didn't mean to think about it too deeply, but
there's an element element of him that's kind of reverting
to being a scared child who just wants his favorite

(09:50):
things to make him feel good.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Wow, Because you know, I love the spontaneity of that scene,
and you know, the beginning scene was a reshoot. They
shot that after production had wrapped, So whoever worked on
the prop department or whoever rewrote the script, maybe it
was Gibson, Like, you know what he said, club sandwich
and beer before and hookers. Let's just bring that in

(10:13):
in the beginning so that we know the kind of
lifestyle he leads. But when I hadn't clocked those and
when I didn't know that that was a reshoot, So
just later on, I just thought he was pulling things
out of thin air, like I just want a club sandwich,
Like I just thought, I just I had the biggest
smile on my face because a club sandwich. But now

(10:34):
that you're saying that he had all of his childhood
memories wiped and it's like his comfort food when he's
on these runs because he's had his childhood taken from
him and he needs his club sandwich and Mexican beer
after every mission. That. I didn't even think about your
way of thinking about it. I just thought it takes
away a lot of the spontaneity of it and like
a lot of just the did he say lawn like

(10:56):
laundry like it, just the absurdity of that speed. It's
kind of different knowing that he gets those all the time,
if that makes sense. That was my rationale. But I
like that too because he is a jerk, and you
were right about Brandon Lean rapid fire too, like he's
kind of a jerk too.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
He's petulant, he's capricion. Yeah. I mean, the other interpretation
could be that because he's experiencing such severe neural seepage
at this point in the film, Yeah, he's not aware that,
so his his memories are kind of looping in on themselves,
and so I want the club sandwich and the Mexican beer,
and someone should step in and go brother you you

(11:35):
just had that twenty four hours ago. Are you all right?
Like he's experiencing it? Was it, uh, anterior grade amnesia whatever,
like the memento disease.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Wow, that was a couple that was a day before
that or yeah, yeah, so it sounded like he had
been a long time since he had those. Wow, you
just took it to another level. I looked at it
a very superficial thing of like, hey, I see it,
and now I don't know if I like it.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
But then well, the other thing to bear in mind,
and to go back to this theory that he's really
just a dick, is so if the opening scene and
the details you spotted refer to the comforts that he seeks,
and you know in the room service speech, it implies,
I mean, first, that he lives entirely out of hotel,
so he's kind of a nomad, which which you know,

(12:22):
makes a certain amount of sense and the kind of
world we're dealing with, But more to the point about
what a prick he is, it implies that the woman
in the beginning who walks out on him by claiming
to we need to go get ice, is a ten
thousand dollars a night hooker, right, that's what he wants.
And so my very loose understanding is that sex workers
it pays to It pays to give you a good

(12:45):
experience because they want your repeat business, right, and an
escort charging upwards of ten grand a night would definitely
know this. So for her to just make up an
excuse and leave in such an impolite way, he must
have been insufferable as a client, as a john, right,
as a job. Yeah, she just wanted to get out

(13:05):
of there.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, she ducks. I'm going for ice we have.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
He's a terrible he's a terrible hang.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
I think he is a terrible hang. And like the
smooching with Dina Meyer scene towards the end, that's so
tacked on because uh, you know, like it happens. But yeah,
he he yelled at Ralphie. He he doesn't really have
much tactical no how because he just sort of walks
into clubs. He just runs in the right, yell at Ralphie,

(13:32):
even though he had been attacked. This guy's just kind
of a chaos.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
It's not clear what she sees in him.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
And he lies about how many gigs he can hold,
like all right, yeah, I can hold.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
That lies by a pretty big margin too.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, double the amount. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
If I had like fifty gigs of storage and you
were sending me something that's like really close to like
forty nine point five, they're like, ah, okay, I guess
I can move some things around. But if yeah, if
you were giving me something that was what two hundred
percent more than I could handle, Like, wow, I'm sorry,
I can't. I can't do it. So my brain isn't
wet wired enough for it.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
He you know what it is, Yeah, he you don't
have enough silicone in there. But it's he's so earnest
Keanu that even when he's being a big old jerk,
you just like the earnestness of him. It's like just
like the dialogue delivery, like yeah, you have a mom
and stuff, and just there's a like you just know

(14:28):
he's a good dude. So all the time that he's
saying all this petulant dialogue, I number once thought, man,
this guy's a big jerk. I just kind of thought
he's just Keanu and he's in a hurry because he's
a good dude. It's it's kind of interesting that you
brought that up, because I never once thought, man, this
guy's kind of a jerk. And when when Rollins calls
him an asshole, like he's hyper aggressive too. Like if

(14:48):
if nineteen ninety five Rolins calls you an asshole, you're
doing something wrong. Because that dude was intense. Yeah, he's
not a liar. Oh that song, remember that video?

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah, I think he's a if you're if you're crossing
Rolins or if you're too intense for him. Yeah, that's
a good point.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, so he annoyed him and I don't know that
took it to a whole new level. I need to
watch it again now.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Although you could say no one has taken their role
in the film more seriously than Dolph Lunderground.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
You know, he had a naked preaching scene in front
of a group of women that got cut.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
So is that scene available somewhere? Just something you.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Can't find it? It's and so you know what. So
what happened was more producers got on board, so like,
you need Dolf, you need Udo kir you need what
beat Takashi, you need him like, so they kept tossing
people into the movie and longgo, He's like, uh, what
do I do with Dolf? So then they just made
him this preacher and he has a naked speech in
front of a bunch of women who are all into him.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's it's a can't be performance of the film, I think.
And that's saying a lot. So yes, Street Preacher. Street
Preacher takes his job maybe a little too seriously, and
it kind of reminded me of a bee keeper with
staate them. Now. I mean, maybe I just saw a
working man a couple of days ago state them on
the brain a little bit, But it reminded me of

(16:06):
how in Beekeeper. Uh, he talks almost exclusively in beehive metaphors.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
He throws jars of honey to light people on fire.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, you know, sometimes you got to protect the hive.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
It's just he a street preacher, only ever speaks in
religious pronouncements. Even his dagger is a crucifix, right. He's
so created, he's so committed to his own bit. You're
you're a bigger golf lunder and scholar than I am.
I mean, where do you place this in his career?
Is this is he kind of past his prime at
this point?

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Oh yeah, I mean so by this point he had
he had had some duds. You know, I think Dark
Angel is probably one of my favorite when is Blackjack.
So let me let me pull up this thing here,
because he had Showdown in Little Tokyo that wasn't a
big hit, and then he had he just wasn't hot
by this point, and this was his last starring role
for many years. He would go to do direct video,

(16:58):
direct video stuff, but when we're talking about film, this
was not. This was kind of the end of his
run in big budget films for a long time. But
in ninety five, like he had done Men of War,
which is fine, he had done Pentathlon, he did Universal Soldier, which, Okay,
you're gonna think I'm crazy. I think he delivers an
Oscar worthy Oscar nomination worthy performance or at least Golden Globe.

(17:23):
He's great in it. He has a monologue in a
shopping in a grocery store where he just nails it.
Like Dark Angel wasn't that big. The Punisher didn't really
even get released in the States. Dark Angel had a
ton of problems in eighty eight being filmed. The Masters
of the Universe wasn't a hit. It was on video,
so he had had Masters of the Universe. He did
the maximum potential workout video, which is insane. Red Scorpion Punisher,

(17:46):
Dark Angel Cover Up Showdown, Little Tokyo Universe Soldier was
a hit, but is more of a JCDD vehicle. And
then you know he had like mena Warm Pentathlon, So
this wasn't like after this he just went to direct
the DVD land. This was kind of if this was huge,
this would have helped him a lot. But the problem
is he's fun in this movie. He gets hit by

(18:07):
a car and he goes Jesus like he keeps and
he keeps saying stuff like that, it's Jesus' time, It's
Jesus time. And the look on his face when he
gets zapped by the dolphin, it's just I'm a little.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Unclear how they kill him at the end. Through the
dolphins thought waves.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, because it could pierce submarines to read their Yeah,
this for submarines, we could get through the hole and
read the stuff. So whatever the dolphin does creates like
a sonic wave that whoever has implants and them gets
affected by. So then he just and they did, you know,
they wanted him to come back, but Longo said no,

(18:45):
And that's why there's that scene where he gets picked
up at Dan. He's just a dead.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Body taken out.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, just garbage like that kind of which.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, there was more of a climactic battle between him
and Jones the Dolphin, because then you get Dolph versus Dolphin.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Watching him front kick a Dolphin would be I think,
I I think I'd stop watching movies because nothing would
ever get better.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, but we're done, we've seen it all.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
But he's fun. But they cut his role back a
lot because you know, they said nothing about his profession.
He was professional on set, he was totally fine, but
they didn't know what to do with him, and they
told him that he had to be in the movie.
So then that's why his his role is just so
odd and like it's Jesus time. Oh my gosh, what
a great, what a great I love him in this movie.

(19:33):
And I also have you seen Dark Angel? Yes, okay,
what do you think about Dark Angel?

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Long time ago?

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Though? Okay, it's so good. I love Baxley, I love
those movies. But yeah, he got like he got chucked
in this like iced Tea got chucked in this film.
And then like it's it's a really there's all there's
there's too many characters in this film, and I could
see it working as almost like a Sin City black
and white type film. But I think what makes this
work is the personality of it all. I just think

(20:00):
it has a great personality, like Keanu doing bathroom tied
chi when he when he gets his when he gets
his head smacked into the wall, and another bathroom like
hearing Udo Kir say not in the head, just that
lady who's screaming motherfuckers with rocket launchers. I don't know,
there's a lot of character, and I love it.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
When when are people in the movies gonna learn not
to trust Udu Kir every frigging time?

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Right?

Speaker 2 (20:27):
I mean the snake in the literal Garden of Eden
probably sounded just like Udu Kir, like that that perfect
measurement of like silky but also slimy.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, if he's your courier, or like Joey Pantaliano is
your courier for maybe like the Sopranos era, yeah, or
or Peter Lorie, you know, just like you know what,
I'm gonna give a new handler, sorry Ralphie, but then
he gets killed and you kind of miss him.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
My favorite delivery is actually from Blade when he's talking
down Stephen Gorf and he says something to the effect of,
I was born a vampire. You were merely tuned oozing.
He's got an oozing voice.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
He always makes every role he's in better. I think
you bring him in for ten minutes, knock it out
the park the Light. What did I have a question?
When did you first watch this movie? Because you recommended
this for our series here, like, what's your history with
John namonic.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Hard to say. I saw it contemporaneously, so you know,
within the year it came out, I probably saw it,
and that was probably just you know, speed was still great.
Not sure how I felt about Dracula, but certainly point Break,
you know, and of course Bill Intent, so I like
Keanu and I was into sci fi things like that,
so I would have seen it around that time. I

(21:44):
became an instant Dina Meyer fan because she was doing
dragon Heart that year, so ninety five was a very
solid year for her. And then, of course, of course,
you know, any Dina Meyer fandom is cemented by starship
Troopers and bats and bats that is a little later
she's movies as well, you know. Yeah, also not to
name drop too egregiously, but I've met Dina Meyerk a

(22:06):
few times. She's one of the nicest and most charming
people you ever made. I don't know what her secret is,
but she also hasn't aged a day since Troopers, so
she's She's just a really genuine and lovely person.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
She's good in this movie.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
She's good in this movie.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, yeah, like looks the part, I mean just kind
of a and she sells it to when she has
the shakes, Like she really goes for it in this
movie because this is one of her first roles. But yeah,
I think I think my first Dena Meyer experience with
Starship Troopers. And when she got killed in that, oh man,
I feel like millions of people's heart sank in that

(22:42):
moment because you know, she's just the best.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
But yeah, that's when she's u when she they're evacing
her and she's dying and Johnny the other Johnny is
saying like, no, You're gonna be fine, and she says, no,
I'm going to die, but at least I got to
have you. Yeah, that's a rough moment.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
For like fifteen year old kids. You know. Obviously, the
role is written. The performance was written by a dude,
but for like a fifteen year old kid watching that,
You're like, oh my.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Gosh, exactly, So do you mind if I go on
a tangent you can you can cut it out tangent away. Yeah, so,
I you know, like you said, the fifteen year old
boy and mirror or however old I was when I
first saw Troopers, and I was obsessed with it. It
was just such a cool movie, and that movie holds up.
In fact, I think it improves over time. I think
the same thing about RoboCop if we're talking Verjola. But

(23:31):
I guess it was a crush. I guess that's as
fair a way to put it as any on Dizzy,
the Dina Meyer character, because she's so brash and tough
and kick ass as well as the rest of them,
and she's beautiful and cool, you know, So you want
to hang with Dizzy, and you don't want to hang
with Carmen, the Denise Richard's character, because you know, her

(23:51):
storyline is not as compelling. She's just this kind of
lame character who breaks our hero's heart and all the
rest of it. But I have since done a complete
one eighty these two women. Yeah, still love my Dina
Meyer and I love Dizzy, but I think two reasons.
One is that Dizzy is just kind of single mindedly
obsessed with Johnny in a way that I think betrays

(24:11):
the sort of shallowness to her character, Like she's still
cool and spunky and all the rest, but she's just
kind of boy crazy in ways that just aren't particularly interesting.
But Carmen, I've come to argue that Carmen is the
character that most exemplifies how Verhoven likes to use actresses
and their star personas to great effect, because Dennis Richards

(24:34):
is so conventionally beautiful with those like big doe eyes
and that big beaming smile, and it's just it's so
absurd that she looks the way she does, going into
battle the way she does. And so I think the
way Verhoven is using the Denise Richards star persona and
photographing her really keys into how trashy this movie is
and its sensibilities are. And I think that that's the

(24:56):
secret sauce I think of Starship Troopers. It's not Dina
Meyer as Dizzy, I'm sorry, it's casting Denise Richards as Carmen.
That's where the movie sort of is like winking at
us more. I think than anything.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
She's a legit pilot too, Like she has a pretty
major role in in that military. So it's you know,
it's weird. I've I've always liked Carmen. I guess I've
always stuck up for Denise Richard's characters. Actually, like the
world is not enough January Jones. I'm like, have you
guys never watched a Bond movie before Christmas? Yeah, Christmas Jones,

(25:28):
January Jones, that's an actress from love Actually, yeah, mad men,
we both I should have been like American wedding. But
it's yeah, like Christmas. I've always liked her. I think
she's great and drop dead gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Uh huh, yeah, I teach. I mentioned I think dropped
dead gorgeous before because we talked about Drive and we
love Britney Murphy. But I teach a cult cinema class
and one semester I showed Tammy and the t Rex
and dropped dead gorgeous and uh, Starship Troopers, and I thought, well,
this this is a Denise Richards trifecta. This is only

(26:03):
going to make sense if we invite her to come
talk to the class. And this was during the pandemic.
So I thought, well, you know, she's probably under lockdown
and bored, and she doesn't have to actually trek to
our camp as you can just zoom in for like
twenty minutes just to say hi, let's you know, go bigger,
go home. So I reached out to her people. They
long story short, they declined because she was actually like

(26:23):
in Spain shooting something. But they were really kind. I mean,
I was impressed that they even wrote back. I was
expecting that I would never hear from them, but they
wrote back and sent their their gratitude and said that's
lovely and great, but we can't do it. But she
sends her best and so that was nice.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, how'd you students like the movies?

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Well, the cool ones got it?

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Okay? God, I love Paul Walker and Denise Richards. That
makes me happy.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
I love that makes me happy. Tammy and the Trs
is directed by Stuart Raphil, who also did Mac and
Me and which is another film I featured pretty regularly.
But they love drop dead gorgeous, in particular when she
serenades Jesus on the cross as part of her talent
for the for the pageant.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, big laughs. Nobody gets a beer can stuck to
her hand. Oh my gosh, and real quick. So we'll
get back to Johnny and mnemonic. But I watched that scene.
So I've been on a Brittany Murphy kick ever since
the Drive episode. And there's that scene in Riding with
Cars with Boys where she has Drew Barrymore tell her
that she's pregnant and she just goes up my daughter

(27:25):
as a whore, Like does that that that whole speech
that she does in front of everybody walking by, It's
just she's hilarious Brittany Murphy in that scene. And I
told my I still haven't seen Black Book, and my
wife is like, oh my gosh, Mark, we got to
watch that. So I've enjoyed my my Brittany Murphy kick,
but that that speech in Riding Cars with Boys made

(27:47):
me really happy.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
The one I mean, apart from the obvious ones, you know, clueless, Drive,
what have you? Uh? The one I like to recommend
to people Brittany Murphy is the Ramen girl, the all
right that Yeah, she she goes to Japan and becomes
an apprentice at at a ramen shop.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Oh wow, I've never even heard of this.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Worth your time she's I believe the tagline. I believe
the tagline is that her life is on pins and noodles.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
If you came up with that line, would you retire?

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Uh? Yeah, I would just have peaked. Oh man, a
Dolph versus Dolphin. I don't think that was that bad.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Yeah, that was really good. It just he loses the
dolphin gets the better of him. But yeah, that's uh.
Like I have a question too. When when this movie
came out, I remember just being kind of wary of
it because Super Mario Brothers double dragging, like that grunge air,
Like I saw iced tea and like he had that

(28:47):
thing on his head and the drawings on him, and
like just the grungy nature of it. I was a
little bit over that. In ninety five, I think, I
think like cyberpunk or that very of like post apocalyic
post apocalyptic or futuristic wasteland, but also kind of look

(29:08):
kind of cheap. I was a little sick of so that, Like,
do you think that maybe affected the box office as well?
Because when I saw it, I just was kind of
I love Keanu. I thought it looked good, but I
was like, not another one of these did did like
you know, as far as cyberpunk goes, were you kind
of this those weren't cyberpunk movies, But do you think

(29:28):
that also had people wary or no?

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Possibly? I mean I would assume that audiences who were
kind of going based on what's popular and what's interesting
would be more attracted to a post speed Keanu Reeves
action film that that that curiosity would outweigh having been
disappointed by Richard Stanley's Hardware or you know, lawn and
or Man or death Machine or something like that. Also,

(29:52):
I mean, this is not too long after really successful
kind of cyberpunk adjacent films like RoboCop and Terminator and
so yeah, I mean that's that's less about the themes
about cyborgs and more about the kind of grungy aesthetic, right.
That's that's interesting that you're bringing that up.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
I've just a feeling. I just felt that way because
like Mario, like, all those movies look the same, but
they all look kind of cheap, but they do.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
I mean, but you have other sort of so I mean,
these are all iterations of something going on in the culture, right,
because in ninety five or maybe ninety six, you also
get strange days. You get Hackers, the Net, the Net. Yeah,
so you're getting all these projects that are addressing a
similar set of things going on in the culture, and
some of them, you know, kind of embrace the cyberpunk, grungy,

(30:37):
dystopian aesthetic more than others. But I wonder if that
is what explains it, because a lot of these movies
disappointed anyway, Right, I don't think is that big a hit.
Strange Days I think was kind of a flop, although
both these movies have a lot of love. Yeah, I
don't know. I think people just weren't weren't absorbing it.

(30:57):
But what we're going to, right, they were going to
move like Independence Day and Twisters and Jurassic Park sequels
and things like that. So maybe just the appetite for
sci fi, not the twisters of sci fi, but the
appetite for these things was kind of pitting in a
more fantastical direction than a more inward looking dystopic, cynical direction.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
That's a good point, really delivers, and it's kind of
cyclical too, right, where certain sci fi is popular at
certain moments, So I think, yeah, like maybe there's ushering
in something new at that era that's interesting, But there
was a lot of I feel like ninety four ninety five,
and I'm kind of going, like, like The Phantom came out,
and there's a lot of that's not cyberpunky at all.

(31:36):
It's a comic book adaptation. But there's just a lot
of really interesting films I just didn't do too well,
but they sounded great, Like this movie sounded great, but
not too many people went and watched it. So I
don't know what point I'm trying to make here, but
it just it was like it was an odd era
where I don't know why, but when you see the
trailers for certain films, you're kind of, oh, no, one
of these again. So I was kind of wary of

(31:59):
this film. I didn't watch just till years and years
like later, so it and I don't even think I
ever watched it that closely, like watching it again and
paying attention to I love it a lot more now,
so I think I was kind of sour on it.
But it's no, I don't know right now, though I
love it. I think this movie's great, and I like
that Johnny's a jerk.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Do you know this old theory that when democrats are
in office, vampire films become in vogue, and when Republicans
are in office, zombie films come in vogue. I mean, okay,
it doesn't really hold up.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Bush was in the zombie phase, right, Who's sixty eight?
Who's the president in sixty eight? Was it?

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Nick? Sixty eight? Would is that an election year? So
that would that would be when Johnson Withdrew and Nixon one?

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Right, because then that's not Living Dead? And then the
early two thousands was Bush and then what Obama eight?
That's when Whylight came out.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Well, it doesn't really hold up because one of the
most successful uh cable ever is Walking Dead and that's
like that's a strictly Obama era show. So it doesn't
quite hold up under scrutiny. But the theory is because
horror films tend to reflect or allegorize sort of anxieties
that are going on in the culture at the moment.
And so when you have Democrats in office, what's the

(33:11):
rating stereotype. It's that you know, democrats are going to
tax you and direct money towards welfare services and things
like that. So this idea of a bloodsucker, someone who's
sucking away your your your tax dollars and things like that.
And also, vampires are very intimate and kind of sexualized. Right,
There's something very queer coded about movies like Interfra the Vampire.
There's something really deep and intimate about exchanging fluids the

(33:32):
way vampires do. So there's kind of a sexual libertine
element to it that conservatives associate with liberals. So that's
the logic there. And then when you reverse it, Okay, well,
what makes the culture anxious when Republicans are in office?
It's the sort of like zombie like hive group mind
of kind of brain dead coindnssumption. And of course, you know,

(33:56):
the maybe the most zombie apocalypse type imagery we've had
in recent years is like January sixth, Right, These mindless
hordes just like descending on a building and then making
everything dangerous. So obviously these are vulgar caricatures of both sides,
but that's the reigning theory. And so the point I'm
making is that I haven't thought this through, but I
wonder whether or not the sort of deep cynicism of

(34:18):
cyberpunk was simply more relevant and more accessible during the
Reagan years. But then once you're in the Clinton decade,
you know, ninety five being smack in the middle of that.
The culture isn't quite attuned to what cyberpunk is doing,
which is why a lot of these films just kind of,
you know, they don't quite make an impression, because, you know,

(34:41):
cyberpunk is essentially about a dystopian world in which corporations
rule over people, and the world is characterized by information
technology and biotechnologies that completely blur the line between national
and cultural boundaries, but also the boundaries between what's real
and what's virtual, or what's biological and what's cybernetic, and
the class struggles that emerge from that. I think people
are just going to be more sensitive to the danger

(35:04):
and oppressive systems that come from that new alignment of
power under Republican administrations that focus on deregulating corporate hegemony, right,
and so the kind of featers that emerge from that
are just going to be more relevant under a Republican administration,
particularly Reagan and his kind of mission to deregulate you know,

(35:24):
corporate malfeasance as much as he could, Whereas once you
get into the nineties, it's kind of a different era.
The Cold War is over, right, and so that kind
of raining structure of struggle on a global level is
kind of passed us, and we're sort of ushering in
this era of prosperity and globalism and cultural mixing is

(35:44):
not something to be afraid of anymore, and so there
isn't the same anxiety about like, oh my god, I'm
half this, but half this, what does that mean for
my identity? Like that's not something people are really freaking
out about anymore. And so the idea of a cyborg
is just kind of fashionable and technologically exciting and optimistic
moving forward, whereas it was something that pretended some doom

(36:04):
and gloom just a decade earlier. That might be a
way to kind of parse the relative success of the
genre in the eighties with Bladerunner, Terminator, Rebocop with the
kind of deflation of that genre in the nineties. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
But it makes sense though, because Longo and Gibson started
developing this in eighty nine, So that.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Was well, although the short stories from eighty one.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
So yeah, oh that's true. Yeah, so eighty one, and
then they started developing it in eighty nine. Wait, wasn't
George Bush Senior was the president? Then the Republican. Yeah,
Clinton in ninety two, right, Yeah, so I think Longo
loved it, and then this was written beforehand, but then
they started developing it during a Republican campaign, which is
kind of interesting. And then but you're right, though, if

(36:50):
you think about the nineties, you think about the Big Twister,
you think about the raw Rov Independence Day, the Rise
of Michael Bay Nicholas Cage was the world biggest action star,
which nobody could have predicted it was. It was. It
was kind of a different era. I think when Johnny
and I think this thing got delayed so many times

(37:11):
that I think by the time it came out, I
had missed the beat a little bit. It's it's like,
you know those movies that straggle a little bit. I
think this was one of them. So yeah, I mean
maybe just the long development the era itself kind of
cost it. But also there's so many cooks in the
kitchen for this film as well. That yeah, it was
never because I remember watching the trailer and I'm like,

(37:33):
what's kind of happened?

Speaker 2 (37:33):
What's happening here?

Speaker 1 (37:35):
So it's it definitely felt stretched, But I don't know
now looking back at it and just watching his performance
and just and maybe like the black and white cut
made me a lot happier with it. I I kind
of adore this movie. I think I gave it four
stars on Letterbox. Maybe I'm insane, but I like that,
Like it's half three and a half, yeah, three and

(37:55):
a half. Hey, stupid question. So I just want to
get this out of the way before I forget. You
have to, like your courier, you're wet wired. You have
to give you have to you have to deliver data.
You have to go from California to New York and
you have to drive right and you get to pick
a bodyguard between these Is.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
It gonna be? Is it gonna be a hard drive?

Speaker 1 (38:15):
It's gonna be a very hard drive. That's the name
of the movie.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Hard Well. You know, Johnny Namonic has a great poster.
One of its posters. You can look it up online
is It's just Gonna Blue poster. And the camera is
sort of aimed upward at Keanu Rus's crotch and he's
looking down at you and it says, meet the Ultimate
hard Drive. Amazing poster. Anyway, it Oh my gosh, isn't

(38:43):
that fantastic?

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Oh man, that's great. What was your question about mind
blowing Meet the Ultimate Heart, was that like a VHS
that looks like just from a straight up eighties movie,
Like that's that's the movie I want. With Toss Rucker,
how're in there? I don't know, split seconds Rucker Houer
in there? Somehow that works? Okay, So the question you

(39:05):
have to hear you have a hard drive name of
the movie's hard drive, you have data in your brain
like Cyborg or Joynamonic one of those movies, and you
have to get from California to New York. I give
I'm gonna give you a pick of six bodyguards you
can pick from. So I picked three that deal with
like AI and and technology, and then I have just
three regular bodyguards. So here they are Jane from Drying

(39:27):
Tomonic Go Go from Kill, Bill Gibson, Rickenbacker from Cyborg,
Joshua from The Creator, Odd Job from Goldfinger, and these
are your bodyguards or Frank Farmer from The Bodyguard. Kevin
Costner he's good at the sword, yeah, and he's good
in kitchen fights. Which one would you travel? Which one

(39:47):
would you make a hard drive with?

Speaker 2 (39:49):
So wait, those are my choices?

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Okay, Well I wouldn't do Go Go because she seems
a little dumb, seems a little unstable.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, that'd be terrible.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
I'd go with Jane j Yeah, I mean, I mean, okay,
so this is some you know, Dina Meyer bias. I
wouldn't go with odd Job. He just doesn't seem like
good conversation on a long road trip, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, that'd be bad.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Who are the other ones?

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Frank Farmer from Kevin Costner from the Bodyguard.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
He doesn't seem like a conversation either.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
No, No, Joshua from the Creator because he has to
get the kid to wherever the kid has to go.
And then Gibson Rickenbacker from Cyborg because he has to
deliver a lady with data in her head to a
place as well, and they make a long, perilous journey.
So it's it's you've knocked out go go an odd Job,
and you have Jane Gibson, Joshua, and Frank. Oh no,

(40:39):
you knocked out Frank too, So Jane Gibson and Joshua.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Are I mean, Joshua would be a backup, But I'm
still Jane.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yeah, I mean, she knows what's up as long as
she doesn't have the shakes. She's fixed and she won't
mess up, you know what I mean, And she puts
up with a lot from him, and she's quite loyal.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
I yeah, I would be concerned though that I would
have to be doing all the driving and you can't
hand off because if I'm you know, catching some some
z's in the back and Jane is driving, if she
gets into like a spasm like in the middle of
you know, behind the wheel, and that could lead to
an accident, So that would be a liability.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
But yeah, and like then I might have to deal it,
like we have Rawlins yell at me too, Like I
just don't know if I want to deal with that.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
You'd have to call him and be like, yeah, Jane's
like wigging out, what do I do? Like, fuck you,
I'm not check support doctor on doctor Rawlins.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, so it's tough. But I think Jane, because I
mean Gibson, he wouldn't talk much and no, no, like
Josh was cool. But yeah, I take Jane the hard
drive professor.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, as a as a cyberpunk fan, as a fan
of the of the genre as well as you know,
literature and everything in terms of pop culture legacy, Jane
is the most significant character in the film, because so
in the short story she's called Mally, who becomes a
recurring character in Gibson's work. If you saw this documentary
you mentioned earlier about Gibson, maybe it came up, but
she's the quintessential archetype of what's called a razor girl,

(42:13):
like the sort of cybernetically enhanced lady Assassins. This character,
not literally or directly, but the archetype generally in later
iterations is what Ghost in Michelle is referencing. The main
character there and most importantly Trinity from the Matrix are
all kind of descendants of the Mally character, who is

(42:34):
kind of re reconfigured as Jane and Johnny Demonix. So
it's not just that I like Jane as played by
Dina Meyer. It's that the Jane character archetype looms so
large and cyberpunk literature that that would be just like
a really cool road trip companion I think.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
And you're a big fan of cyberpunk, is that when
when did you get into that? Like, what's your history
with cyberpunk?

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Well, I mean I mentioned when we talked about Drive
that I grew up in Tokyo, and so my love
of cyberpunk is partly to do with just I love
dystopic sci fi. You know, It's just like I like
hard science fiction as opposed to more fanciful you know,
Dune or Star Wars, which which are almost more like
fantasy than sci fi. But like hard, hard boiled sci fi,

(43:17):
I really, I really dig And I love noir as well,
So there's a good marriage there. But I do wonder
whether or not my both introduction to cyberpunk as well
as my kind of appreciation for it has less to
do with my loving science fiction as a genre, but
it has more to do with being having grown up
in Japan. Because the thing you have to consider is
that it's a genre that emerges essentially in the late

(43:41):
seventies and early eighties as a response to sort of
Western anxieties around the technological superiority and corporate and market
hegemony of Japan at the time, wow, and throughout the eighties, right. So,
I mean it's the reason why Blade Runner takes place
in La, but La looks like Hong Kong, right, it
looks like an Asian city. And it's also why the
yakuzo loom so large and so many cyberpunk stories, including

(44:03):
Johnny Namonic. It's it's not an accident that, you know,
the evil corporate overlord who's trying to you know, mess
everything up. They're they're Japanese, even though it takes place
in Newark, right. So yeah, that Japan as a culture
circa the eighties when I was growing up there looms
really large, and it just sort of has, you know,

(44:26):
no small degree of ownership over the kind of conventions
of the genre, and so I think, and of course
you get films like Akira and A Ghost in the Selle,
which are Japanese works, and so and Tetsuo of course,
which is kind of this weird, experimental, kind of biotech
cyberpunk film. So yeah, I was, I was. I keyed
into that pretty early. I think it's another.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Guy, Well, were you in the computers and everything or
because I got my first computer was eighteen.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
No, I'm I'm not good at that stuff.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Oh okay, Yeah, you just like the stories and like
the the got it Gibson.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I'm a fan of Gibson. You know, if your listeners
need an entry point, it's Neuromancer from nineteen eighty four.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Is like the book.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
I mean, Gibson also is the guy who what introduced
a lot of iconography that we now take for granted,
right in terms of like he like the word cyberspace
and how to this This is one movie Hackers does
the same thing, really trying to imagine through CGI what
the Internet physically looks like. It's all kind of absurd.

(45:30):
I mean, both of these movies are kind of charmingly
anachronistic windows into what people in the mid nineties thout
the Internet could look like and what computers were capable of.
It's all pretty silly, but there is an attempt right
to think of cyberspace as an actual space that you
could kind of float through. Lawnmower Man does this too,
although that's more we are than Internet. And the idea
of like jacking in to the Internet and creating avatars

(45:54):
and like Gibson introduced all of that into the cultural lexicon, right,
So it's all really fun to go back and take
a look at those.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
And do you think also, I was watching a documentary
about cyberpunk in the nineties and I think gen X
was popping up, and you just had a lot more grunge.
You had a lot more like I guess, more gen
X style and I know that there were some hackers,
and then I was watching this hour long documentary about
like these people who know about computers now, and like, oh,
I could get in there and change things, so we

(46:23):
could make we could freak and do long long distance calls.
And I like to go into people's websites and just
look around. Like it seemed like a counter culture a
little bit, like it was still kind of like an
open like it seemed like at the time cyber space
was there are very few people who knew how to
really dig in, and they just like to explore that.

(46:43):
So there's kind of something counterculture about it a little bit.
If you were a kind of hacker or if you
were you know, like appreciated cyberpunk, I think it was
just such a new world. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Absolutely. I mean it's about because you have to think
about all the kind of optimism and promise that comes
with the early age of the Internet. Is this kind
of completely new way of consuming and delivering and trafficking
in information, and that's going to kind of democratize information
in a way that was kind of the early promise
of the Internet. And so what you tend to get

(47:18):
is in the genre is this sort of convention of
people scraping things together at the bottom of society and
fighting against the systems of oppression that come from you know,
corporate power and things like that. Because the Internet now
gives us access to the same things. If you know
how to navigate and surf the internet, then you can
hack into things and use the tools of oppression against power, right,

(47:42):
And that's the punk in cyberpunk, if you think about
it that way, right, It's why the heroes tend to
be in cyberpunk narratives. The heroes tend to be hackers
who are fighting or going against you know, the system.
A capital t capital s THEUS system. So the most
famous description of cyberpunk is a genre is it's emerging
of high tech and low life.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Oh wow, yeah, Oh that's cool.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
I can't remember if Gibson is the one who coined
that phrase, but that's an early kind of descriptor of
what the genre is doing. These people sort of at
the bottom and and you know, scraping things together in
back alleys and augmenting themselves in ways that are completely
improvised and unauthorized, kind of unauthorized use of technology, Like
this is not what it was built for but we can,
we can appropriate it or co opt it and use

(48:28):
it for our own means in this really punk way.
That's kind of the ethos.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Like I guess modern iterations are like Elysium where Matt
Damon saves the world from Polo people and that opens up.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Yeah, there's always kind of narratives of resistance.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
That's interesting. And also we're going to talk about Demolition
Man eventually, like Dennis Leary from that the people who
live live in the sewers.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, they're the low texts of of of that movie.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Basically, Oh yeah, let's fighting against this really clean, fake society.
It's got interesting. Yeah, there's the low tex but I
guess that's always been a part of cinema though, like
whether it's you know, the Greasers or I guess there's
I guess the society changes, they cheat, Like those kind
of types of characters change and they kind of adapt

(49:14):
with what's been given to them.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yes, I mean they do. They do plug into pre
existing narratives of like resistance movements and fighting the power
and things like that. But what cyberpunk does is that
it imagines what that would look like in a world
in which we're besieged by technology and computer access and
things like that. Are those the tools that both oppress
us but also can we use them as our as

(49:36):
our weapons of liberation? Basically the one thing that I
complain I think I have the criticism of Johnny Namonic,
which is that, you know, it doesn't give us any
scenes to really give us a sense of how the
rich people are living. Oh yeah, none, yeah, in order
to provide this juxtaposition to make real sense of the
class struggle that's inherent in this kind of dystopian society, right,

(49:58):
because cyberpunk is largely all ready about people using technology
and like I said, these unauthorized ways in street alleys
and things like that, and you know, improvising their implants
and augmentations. Which is why Jane is a quintessential cyberpunk
character because she's got the implants, but they're so shoddy
and done in back alleys that they're malfunctioning on her.

(50:19):
But all of that needs to presuppose the technology having
official uses by rich people, and that dynamic is implied here,
but it's never addressed or explored in a way that
kind of really kind of what demonstrates what that class
disparity looks like in the film because we simply don't
have any characters who represent that side of the ledger
and so as a result, the film, like the picture

(50:42):
feels incomplete in terms of the world building of Johnny Neamonic.
That's small criticism, no, but.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
That you're absolutely right. You don't have the high Rise
to compare it to or snow Piercer, where you like
the people bust through the back of the train and
learn how everyone else is living. Like, you never have
that scene because you immediately just go to Newark and
it's gross.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Well, we we spend the whole movie in the gross parts.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Of Newark quote unquote gross you know what I mean, grungey.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah, yeah, we see the skyscrapers in the distance.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
The show that really does a good job. I don't
think it's that great, but in terms of cyberpunk world building,
in terms of like, yeah, these are the class disparities
that emerge in the world, like this is the Netflix
show Altered.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Carbon Oh yeah, yeah, I think that show.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
It does a really good job of sort of showing
how your access to the technology and your your ease
of access and ease of maneuvering around the technology really
makes a difference between the people who live up there
versus the people who live down here, you know. Duncan
Jones's Moon is also pretty good about addressing not a
great film, No so not Moon, Mute Mute. Yeah, I

(51:53):
like to take the same yeah, same universe as Moon,
but in Mute, which is very very cyberpunk, yeah, is
concerned with a lot of these, a lot of these
questions of all the all the promise and potential of
being able to augment your body and using nanotechnology to
clear your diseases and live forever. Yeah, that's all really wonderful.
But of course, in a capitalist society, that technology is

(52:16):
going only going to become available to those who can
afford it, and that leaves a lot of people behind,
And so a lot of these sort of quasi Marxist
class struggles are also like at play in a lot
of these a lot of these world as well.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Even the Mute posters look a little noir ish, I
remember that. And also Laita does that too, where you
see where the rich people live, but then you never
get to really see how the rich people live, so
then we're just trying to get Elita battling battle angel. Yeah,
that's yeah. I guess there's a there's always a wide
gap in that. I think the most I know, I
just got quiet there, but I just got I got

(52:50):
hit with a bunch of data. I got hit with
two hundred and sixty gigabytes. Right, we're talking to me, Yeah,
you need it, you need a mouthguard, I got, I got.
The seepage is big.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
The uh, yeah, I want to hear about your seepage.
But the uh. The iconography does repeat itself, right, because
when he when he jackson into the into the web
and is collecting all the data, it's just like when
he's jacking into the matrix. Right, So when he takes
off the goggles, you almost expect Keanu Reeves to just
be like, I know, Kung Fu. Now, it's kind of

(53:24):
a mirror of the same thing, right, I Mean the
real tell that this movie has, and so does Hackers,
and so do a few other films, is what I
think is maybe the most iconic scene of Johnny and
the Monic, which is what he's got the VR goggles
and Keanu is just like pantomiming opening folders and grabbing
It's preposterous, right, I mean, I do love a freak scene, right,

(53:44):
pH freak, I'm glad you're familiar with the term, but.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
I'm freaking I love that line and hacker sorry free Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Uh So it's it's iconic because it really shows this
sort of idea of and it's largely based on a
yet still developing idea of what the Internet really is.
You know, people are still kind of grasping what this
new technology is and what does it mean that what
kind of potential it has for businesses and the economy

(54:13):
and daily life and social life and all the rest
of it. And so it's really kind of optimistic and
imaginative in terms of, well, we don't quite understand what
it is, so let's imagine it as a physical space
that you can float through, not glide through, not walk through,
although you do walk through it in Disclosure, right, because
with Michael Douglas, Disclosure has this r sequence when he's

(54:35):
like an avatar walking through file cabinets. So people are,
like in the movies, really trying to get a bead on,
like what does the Internet actually look like? And what
it looks like is these bright colors and all these
flashing lights, and like what synapses popping everywhere, and it's
just kind of a cool technocity that you float through

(54:55):
and you can do anything, you can be anyone. Right.
That's the kind of optimism that people had at the
early stage of the Internet that I think they're trying
to give a visual component too in movies like this,
which is what makes these movies I think, really charming.
They're completely anachronistic in that representation, but you can see
the kind of like, oh my god, we can do anything.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
One thing I love. One thing I love too about
his acting here. I remember just thinking he has to
put that thing over his face so Keanu Reeves can't
see anything, so he just has to move his hands
and fake type. And so he's just he's expanding a
lot of stuff. He's doing a lot of hand flipping,
and that seems like my nightmare is an actor. Like
I was watching Elizabeth Olsen be Scarlet Witch and all

(55:38):
those Avengers movies, and she's basically just raving to shoot
those orbs out of her hand. So like just imagine
being on set and you're just keanuh kind of like
long goes like all right, now, twist your left hand,
twist You're right, all right, expand like that's when I
guess you really have to embrace the you're playing a
role type thing. I just don't think i'd be capable

(55:59):
of that, and I love how Keanu does it. But yeah,
I just whenever I started, when I was watching that scene,
it made me think about Elizabeth Olsen's Rave Moves and
all the Avengers, because that seems like my nightmare is
an actor has nothing to do with going inside of
the Internet, but it's just as far as an actor,
it seems miserable.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yeah, if I was Elizabeth Olsen, I'd say, like, you
guys are going to make this look good, right, because
I look so ridiculous right now, and I'm putting a
lot of trust in you guys to make this make
sense later. And so I think what would be really
funny is if you could tinker with the audio and
that scene from Johnny Naimonic and remove the score and
then maybe raise the Foley stems, Like just how utterly

(56:41):
ridiculous that whole scene would seem if you just remove
the musical component and the sound effects that give it
the dramatic impact that the scene is trying to telegraph, right,
If you remove all that, then it's just a guy
like pantomiming with a weird vin It wouldn't make any.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Sense, but he nails it. He pulls it off, and
he totally nails it.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
That's a great scene.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Yeah. And and and I love I love when he's
just ordering all this stuff too, and and and Jane's
just going around grabbing all of it. And she gets
to use a grenade in that scene too, which makes
you really happy.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
It's uh, it's like a pink grenade too.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Everything a girl needs.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Yeah, it's I mean, is it Keanu Reeves's best worst
performance after Dracula.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
He lost a lot of weight for this movie and
he looks just so exasperated that I don't I don't
think so this is his best word. Let me pull
up this movie is here. Advocate is also pretty Oh
my gosh, the accent and that you know what I
learned in Bromstokers Dracula. So Copola. Keanu is such a

(57:44):
good dude, and he was so professional on brom Stoker's
set that I don't know why Copla didn't do it.
But Copla is like, I just like him so much.
This is from his words. He said he liked Keanu
so much. He felt bad telling him about his accent,
so he just let him do it the whole time.
Like that's terror direction.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Yeah, that's that's irresponsible as a director.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
So you see the movie and you're like, thanks Francis, So, yeah,
that's that accent's bad.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Oh it's that's my dearest Mia. I'm on my way
to be a pitched the count. He's a he's a
strange old So.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
I like carry El's in that movie and Hopkins there's
the and the visuals. But yeah, Devil's Advocate because it's
just the acts. But see, I've always liked him like speed.
You know why I've always been taken by Keanu reeves
Is growing up. I never bonded with Stallone or any
of those guys I always liked. I liked John Cusack lot,

(58:42):
like specifically say anything because you know, I used to box.
I used to box in high school. I used to
wrestle in high school. But I was still like a
nice dude, but I was I wasn't like nice dude.
I was also paying the butt, but I wasn't just
like a bro, if that makes sense. So like watching
Lloyd Dobbler be a good guy but also kick people
on the head. I'm like, oh, okay, that's interesting, Like
that's an interesting character. So when I saw Keanu and Speed,

(59:05):
you're so used to the just the brawn of a
lot of the villains and just you know, Stallone meets
a lady, hooks up with her. Arnold blows people up,
but JCVD sensitive guy gets his bucket, but he always
hooks up with the girl. And then you watch Speed
and he's just a nice dude. And his relationship with
Sondra Bullock was just so cool, like they were just
nice people and they were like bonded towards the end.

(59:26):
But he was a kind of a genuinely like nice guy.
So I've always liked Keanu for that, Like I always
like that character from Speed because he pulls that off.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
So he he comes across as really genuine. Yeah, I
think right, even when he's being kind of a goofball,
he seems like a really genuine guy. Or even like
when he's a knucklehead like like Karen Hooker of course
Bill and Ted, he's always likable and charming. And I
think as the Internet culture took over and we just
sort of, you know, we have decades more of Keanus stuff,

(59:58):
both on screen and off screen, like or he's kind
of a private person, right, so you know, there's only
so much you can kind of glean from the Internet
and things like that. But the more time goes on,
I think the more everything you learn about Keanu only
reinforces that initial impression that he's just a good fun dude.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
And he keeps having hits every hit eighties, big hit nineties,
big hit two thousands, big hit twenty tens, big hits
twenty twenties, big hits, Like the guy just keeps rolling
with the decades, keeps kind of reinventing himself.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
He also, I mean, I don't know that he's reinventing himself,
but I do think that he definitely he understands his
persona right here, he's a joke. He knows that he's
a meme or he has been before. He knows that
what people say about him, he knows what value he
brings to a project. I think, like, I think he's
really self aware in a way that's unpretentious and self deprecating.

(01:00:54):
And like I said, I think he's in on the
joke in ways that are really really lovable and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Like without I don't know Matrix could have worked without
him John Wick, but he brings this really interesting energy
to them as well. So, like I guess when people
say I've never thought he was a bad actor, I
know a lot of people say he's terrible, and I
just don't really have the energy to to argue about
that back and forth, because that just sounds horrible. But
I've always I mean, I don't know how a guy
who's been around this long, who keeps getting roles and

(01:01:21):
keeps like starring in gigantic films like I and liked
as much as he is, I don't I don't see
him being a bad actor. But I think when he
gets it with a good director, they know how to
use him, Like I think knows how to use him.
The Wachowski's knew how to use him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
It's that, It's also you know, he he's a really
interesting choice in certain frameworks and things like that. And
I think you also have to think about what what
do you mean by good acting right? Good screen acting?
Cause like, is he sort of a classically brilliant, nuanced
actor in the way of like a Daniel day Lewis no? Right?

(01:01:59):
But if that your marker for excellence in the performance
in the field. Then, No, Keanu Reeves is not a
Meryl Streep or whoever, or he's not Peter O'Toole. But
what he does do is that he's really good at
sort of bringing his physicality to bear in a performance. Right.
He knows how to command the screen. He knows how
to move his body and kind of stare intently in

(01:02:21):
ways that are inherently cinematic. And this is why the
John Wick movies like, is he doing quote unquote good
acting in John Wick? Like? Arguably not, But is he
like a fantastically dynamic screen presence in that film? Right?
That movie works because of Keanu Reeves and and the
kind of energy and charisma and command of your eyeballs

(01:02:42):
that he messages, right, And that's that's that's what makes
him a star. It doesn't necessarily make him, you know,
a future Oscar winner as an actor, but it is
what makes him. So it's not what makes him an actor,
it's what makes him a star. Those are two different categories.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
I think we need to That's a great point. And
there's a bit of a wildcard to him as well.
There's a big a little bit of Nick Cage energy. Energy.
Sometimes you know, you watch Knock Knock or you watch Jaynamonic,
he has he has a what's interesting about him is
he does a go for broke. Yeah exactly. And you know,
as much as I know, this is a terrible example,

(01:03:18):
but there's actors maybe like Tom Hittleston or the guy
from the guy who played uh the Danish girl Eddie Redmain,
very good actors, but they're very polished. They're very maybe
overly polish, sometimes very good, but they're never like their
screen presence, never straight up light lights up the world.

(01:03:41):
So I think, I don't know. I think what I
like Keanu too is you watch his accent and brom
Stokers or you see him just go for broke during
speeches and Joynomonic or Knock Knock. You see him popping
up in various films, Like I think he had like
a little bit of an unpolished wildcard bit that makes
him interesting as well, little little yeah right, But he's

(01:04:02):
also kind of sensitive in roles and he's he doesn't
look like the traditional action hero, so I like that
as well. And you know, Catherine Bigelow cast him in
and Swayze very specifically because they both have kind of
sensitive sides, and they're both very handsome and athletic, so
she wanted those presences on screen for point break. She
didn't want you know, Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. She

(01:04:23):
wanted those two on on the screen because of the
way they moved and like their sensitivity to their characters.
So I thought that was pretty interesting as well. So
he has like a sensitivity side, which I love, like
kind of like a he also just seems I know
a lot of people don't. I mean, I guess Qusac
had that smart side, but he also had like a
sensitive side, So I think he checks a lot of
boxes as far as being a star and a screen presence.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
It's this ties into the cyberpunk conversation pretty significantly too,
And I think, I mean, we're also now with Mark
Decascos and Brandon Lee under our belts. Were developing quite
a pattern here of discussing these half Asian action star
which as a hopa myself, I really enjoy. I'm not
sure who we could do next, since it's such a
finite list of people. I don't know, Maggie Q have

(01:05:09):
no idea. Have you seen it's pretty good?

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
I love.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Late Lately Hair Frank Marshall. I just saw The Cleaner
actually a couple of weeks ago, which is also Marshall.
It's all right, yeah you must, but Okay. The point though,
is that we've talked about him in the specific context
of being a biracial action star, following to Cascos and
Brandon Lee. And that's particularly interesting in his associations with cyberpunk,

(01:05:39):
because this isn't a one off for Keanu, right, He's
he did the Matrix, he did Scanner Darkly, He's in
that Cybernage Runners game, right, So so people are keying
into something with him that makes it non coincidental, right,
I mean, I do think he is quintessentially cyberpunk as
a figure, not just because he straddles the line between

(01:06:00):
between being proficient as an action star and so he
can handle the gunfights and the martial arts as we've
seen in Wick films and things like that, but he's
also someone who can plausibly weaponize computers. But he can
play a nerd at a keyboard. There's a nerdiness to
him that makes him work equally as Thomas Anderson as Neo.
You know, he can switch rolls pretty fluidly and on

(01:06:21):
top of that. He's ethnically ambiguous, right, he passes for
a white guy and then plays a white guy in
many films, But he's he also has the sort of
ethnic ambiguity that ties directly into the themes of globalization
and cultural mixing and the kind of erasure of traditional
boundaries that are the foundation of the kind of worlds

(01:06:42):
that cyberpunk is typically invested in. WHOA, Yeah, he really
is the ideal casting choice for the kinds of value
systems that cyberpunk is really keying into, because.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
I guess it's a global world, right like that, as
like a lot of like androgynist characters as well, like
just very does the pronouns don't really matter, and like
this the people from all over the world join into
one megacity I guess, and kind of form like that. Yeah,
that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
It's all in response to what we loosely refer to
as globalization and the gender fluidity that comes with that.
I mean, I mentioned the kind of ethnic fluidity that
you get with all the cultural mixing and biracial characters
and things like that, is which is a very post national,
post racial idea. The gender fluidity, I think the people
who really brought that into the fray are the Wachowskis,

(01:07:36):
Because the first time I saw the Matrix, I couldn't
I didn't have the language to understand it. But it did,
like they say, like a splinter in the back of
my mind, like like Morphia says, something always bothered me.
So why does Trinity look so much like Neo? They
have the same haircut pretty much, they have the same
kind of lie figures, you know, and you know, if
you wanted a strong visual contrast, the love interest ought

(01:07:59):
to be like a blonde something like that. I don't
know why they went with that choice, and it always
kind of nagged at me. And then I realized, of course,
after the Wachowski's transitioned, and you realize the kind of
interplay between sort of gender fluidity and queerness that isn't
explicit in that film, but it's clear that they were

(01:08:19):
doing that all along. And there have been since people
who really look at the Matrix as a queer allegory.
So in hindsight, looking at that with what we know
about the Wachowski's, it really kind of opens up very
different kind of readings.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Well, they couldn't explicitly put that into the film, But
by doing it the way they did it, like you said,
it kind of puts something in your mind correct.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Where it is. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, it's a.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
Smart way of doing that, or maybe there were anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
I don't know that anybody was preventing them from putting
it in because they obviously deal with really explicit lesbian
themes and bounds. Yeah that's true right beforehand, but it's
done on this allegorical level that I just I didn't
have the wherewith all of the vocal tabulary to really
kind of read correctly at the time. But now with
the benefit of hindsight, I'm realizing, oh yeah, the kind
of sense eight sort of queer coating things that the

(01:09:10):
Wachowskis are clearly interested. It's not something they developed later,
you know, during or after they transitioned. It's something that
they've always been interested in. It just it was kind
of under the surface a little bit more. And so
that's kind of an eye opening experience I had revisiting
The Matrix maybe like fifteen or so years after it
first came out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
And that's why the Matrix and Starship Troopers are so great.
You could watch them with your Lizard Brain. You just
watch them be like that was awesome. Ah, and then
years later you go, wait, like, I get I see
what Varajova was going for, I see what the Wachowskis
were going Like. They age so well because they evolve
as you get more mature, and they just that, like

(01:09:50):
I guess it's a sign of just really good filmmaking.
But yeah, both those movies definitely change over time the
more you grow and start to look at.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Them, well, they they bend and weave with the culture, right,
and so the Matrix and the idea of being red
pilled that that iconography has been completely co opted by
the sort of alt right men's culture as well. So
it kind of goes to show that these themes of
resistance and and you know, power struggles and things like that.

(01:10:18):
I mean, they're available for both sides of the left
right equally, right. It's just you can co opt this
imagery for any reason if you view yourself as being
part of a larger struggle, whether it's legitimate or not.
And so, yeah, that's been an interesting journey that the
Matrix has had as well. It's just kind of it

(01:10:39):
The fact that it has aged so well is to
say that it has been consistently relevant and malleable to
the culture as the culture changes, because people keep finding
new ways to plug it into whatever's going on right now.
I mean, it's a really prescient movie in that way.
Right it predicted a lot of things that have come true,

(01:10:59):
and so it's kind of consistently available for different reading
strategies as the kind of focal points and pressure points
of our culture change over time. It's it's still like
there's plenty of that movie is so dense that there
are different aspects of it that seem relevant even as
the culture changes around it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
And the more you watch movies as well, like Hard
Boiled and John wu type stuff, you learn about its
influences as well. So it's fun watching like what influenced
it and then what it's become. I because you know,
at seventeen, I hadn't I had really no. I knew
about Hard Target and movies like that, but I hadn't
watched Hard Boiled yet in the way that he changed
gun warfare or or like the gun the way gun

(01:11:38):
fights are seen on screen, and so once learning about
their influences like that, I don't know, it's all cool
it's all tied together. I guess it's definitely aged better
than Joan Knamonic, but it's still this is a charming movie.
I guess that's my thing about Johnny. It's it's scrappy.
You had a beautiful artist maker. Gibson wrote the script.

(01:11:58):
Keanu gives good it at all, and like you can
just kind of see how it fell apart. You know,
it's interesting too where Drive is beautiful, but they had
no budget and they were just talking about how fast
they had to move. And then I think Rapid Fire
was pretty easy to make. They kind of knew what
they wanted and then this one just sort of ballooned

(01:12:19):
from what it should have been. And you can feel
that with all the extra characters. But I think credit
goes the long Ago and the rest of the actors
for at least giving it a personality. Like this movie
is still a lot of fun to watch, and it's
ninety some minutes, so you can't be.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
Can you see this being remade?

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Yeah? Because I mean listen, Like I was reading a
review from Ebert, and I don't want to quote him
all the way, but he said the heroes in trust
with a valuable cargo which he must get from A
to B without being killed by the bad guys or
stepping in anything. There's a pretty girl, evil villain's a
weird prophet, and of course a violent final shootout in
an abandoned flame factory. So I mean the the the

(01:12:57):
skeleton factory, so he and all they produces flames. He said,
He compared the thing at the end to an abandon
He calls them all abandoned flame factories, which is.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
Amazing too's got one of those ends.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
There's so many abandoned flame factories in cinema. But it's
I think that makes sense because it would be easy
to remake because the skeleton's there. This is a very
simple plot, and so I mean, and also nowadays with hackers,
and it's like, hey, I well, you know, you know,
what's the easiest way not to get hacked is just

(01:13:30):
to have it on a file like a hard piece
of hardware, so then you know you can't get it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Doesn't make any sense as a premise, right because now
transferring data through telecommunications is too risky and you need
data careers to physically carry things across national borders. What
what is it you can store in a hard drive
in your brain that you can't physically carry on a
disc disguise it if you need to. But it just

(01:14:01):
seems surperfluous to surgically implant the information in your brain
when you could just carry it in your pocket because
you're carrying it with you either way.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
You could just cut it put it into your body,
like you could just all right, we're going to protect
this and we're going to put it in this kind
of thing. It won't poison your body, but it's in you,
so it can't fall out of your pocket when you're
going to the bathroom.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Yeah, why is it need to interface with your brain?
That's a good question.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Yeah, you know you can't get pickpocketed. Well, I, this
is in your gut, and we will cut you open
when you come back, and we'll just keep repeating that process.
And you know there's a limit to that because courriers
can only get cut open so often. But yeah, you
don't have to stuff it shove it into his brain.
You could just put it in and then this is
still the future in this world. Well yeah, at then

(01:14:46):
they were envisioning the future. So it's a very silly idea,
but it's so simple that it works. Okay, he's a courier.
You can't email it because people will find it. So
just stuff it in a dude and have them go somewhere.
That's right, really easy to follow, so it could totally
be roomade. And also nowadays you wouldn't even have to
shove it in his head, just be like, hey, here's

(01:15:06):
the data in your hand, let's go. I don't think
Cyborg the lady had it in her head, did she.
She's had it in her body somewhere, you mean, Jane No,
the movie Cyborg with Sorry with JCVD. Remember the lady
had the right right, she was just like, I don't
know whatever that was, but yeah, I mean it's just here,
take it, go to Newark so no one can hack

(01:15:28):
us Like that's it seems more logical today to just
carry something somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
Or or I mean, strap it to a dolphin and
have them if they're so advanced. You know, I have
a question for you about Jones the dolphin. Do you
think he's happy? No, just there in the tang.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Horrifying anyways, And I know in the short story, the
dolphin was a heroin addict that was living in a
large aquarium and they had to give it smack.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
That's trade. Yeah. So the short story mainly follows the premise,
but it doesn't have the epidemic storyline that everyone has
the Black Shakes or you know whatever they call it.
Johnny's passed and him trying to remember his childhood is
not doesn't really figure into his characterization either. But Jones
is a heroin adict who trades his cyber skills for

(01:16:24):
for smack, basically for a quick fix. That's a that's
his uh, his trade. So he's not there to like
help out the Low tex As their secret weapon. No,
he's just something like back Elie Dolphin who's like, you
got some smack, I'll give you some data

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
And Jones get go anywhere, Like the ocean's the water
is kind of ripe.