Season 2 - Ep 9 - Pam Grier Night at the Sizzler - The Arena & Black Mama, White Mama - The After Movie Diner Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:13):
Yes, that's right back by populardemand, well, that by a deafening
silence that we took to be areasonable demand that you're all just too polite
to make. It's the inevitably nonsensical, yet hopefully enjoyable After Movie Diner Season
two. If you enjoy the showand have pursued the recommended treatment from your

(00:35):
medical providers, why not support theshow on Patreon over at p A t
R e o N dot com forwardslash after Movie Diner. You can also
donate to the show directly at aftermovieDiner dot com. Rate and review the
show wherever podcasts are found and ratingand reviewing is possible. Even a one

(00:59):
star provides useful insights on exactly thesort of petty minded and wretched individual who
negatively reviews free entertainment they do notneed to be consuming. So, without
further dribbling, please put down yourlenon merangues for the one the only John

(01:19):
Cross. That's right. I amJohn Cross, and today I almost certainly
ate some sort of butter byproduct orshouted at a child for not understanding Kickguard
properly, even though I don't reallyknow who Kickguard was anyway, On this
show, we are so happy tohave returning to the casually mauve and most
definitely weirdly sticky seats of the aftermovieDiner. All I can say is that

(01:42):
the previous person who sat there hada dacent is a man who in two
thousand and three decided just on awhim to punch a resting elk, which
resulted in the activity being turned intoa national sporting event hosted by a former
heroin addict who once had a seriesof repeated racist events on a cross city
bus before apologizing and finally getting validationfrom the public because he was photographed with

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Taylor Swift and the other host,which was a life sized cutout photograph of
Ali Sheedy. Since then, ourguest has given all his proceeds from this
disastrous event, which nearly bankrupt theisland nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis,
to a pack of wild ducks,which he then filmed and ironically uploaded onto
YouTube. The video went viral andmade our guest a millionaire overnight. He

(02:30):
then lost all of his money ina moxy Ponzi scheme and is hoping his
presence on this show will open doorsfor him in regional British Theater. He
is already and waiting for Pam Grenaddown at the Sizzler. It's the one.
It's the only and definitely the onlyone. Matt Poory, I think

(02:53):
I got away with that one.Okay, yeah, of course, yeah
for sure. Yeah, the staycationthing this week Philadelphia. One of the
things Philadelphia does really well is junkfood or like food that's bad for you.
And so yeah, today just gotthe Italian HOGI I get a cheese
steak. Earlier in the week,I went to a fast food place.
There's a Filipino fast food chain calledJolly Be and okay there's yeah, and

(03:15):
there's one way out like in theNortheast. To day, I was like,
oh, I'm me try this out, and I get like a burger
and a chicken sandwich there. SoI've been I've been putting my body to
some you know, I'm gonna beforty five. So I probably shouldn't be
doing these kinds of weeks of justlike bad food fish. No, I
think I think that's entirely what weshould be doing, because it's it's often

(03:35):
it's often amazed me, especially inrecent years that as the world has burnt
and and and is hell bent Imean hell bent on destroying itself, you
know what I mean, like hellbent on just oh the human race,
I mean the world that we didn'thave it. It's just hell bent on
just fucking destroying itself. It doesn'tmatter what we do, what we say,

(03:59):
what we think, how we doesn'tmatter. People are just beset on
war and sexual discrimination and violence,and you know, climate change, anything
else. It just it's hell beenon destroying itself. It often maddens me
then that the other thing that hasproliferated during this time is you know,

(04:19):
diet fads, health fads, etcetera. What are we looking thinner and
healthier formatt for? What? Fora pocket for the apocalypse? No?
Like I mean, I suppose ifwe're going to fight in a mad Maxic
Maxian style apocalypse, and it won'tbe for anything as frivolous as gas.

(04:41):
It'll be for like water and ediblefood and our lives potentially, I mean,
just our lives. If we arefighting in that mad Maxian type world.
You know, I suppose at thatpoint that yes, uh, you
know, we would need to bephysically fit. But I don't know that

(05:02):
if the You know, if ifby the time I'm fifty five, let's
say we've got another eleven year goodyears on the planet, right, we
might have another fifty good year.I don't know. I don't know.
I've not been all doo mgloom.I'm just saying, if I get to
fifty five and they're going to expectme to be the warrior of the wasteland,
I think they're they're you know,sorely disappointed. You know what I

(05:26):
mean. I'm the wasterell of thewarrior Land, That's what I am.
I'm not the warrior of the Wasteland. I'm the guy since in the corner
and be like, has anyone foundany more Twinkies? You know what I
mean? Has anyone found any morepop chips? Because I could really just
eat an entire bag of those orwhatever, you know what I mean.

(05:47):
So, you know, are thereany McDonald's that have not been ransacked yet?
Because I'll take a twenty piece chickennouggy please, you know what I
mean. So I'm the wastrel ofthe of the of the warrior Land.
That's that's if this is because itmakes absolutely zero sense with the world the

(06:08):
way it is that everyone's like,but at the same time, we've got
to look fitter and healthier and sexy. Why for who? For what?
For what? Future? Really?Seriously, you know what I'm saying that
I think I definitely do it.I think the thing that gets because I
definitely think in terms of the apocalypse, I mean I don't Unfortunately, you
know, Richard Norton is in hisseventies now, and I don't know if

(06:30):
there's gonna be another Richard Norton outthere or any sort of like fit Italian
actors. Maybe there are some thatwe don't know about who are hanging out
in Rome, you know, tanningthemselves with curly hair, like they're like
ready to just donn a leather vestand go out and save the world with
it. Keep hoping that one dayRoger Coleman's gonna come back and make like
one more movie, you know exactly, like maybe maybe I get to play

(06:51):
Gladiator in one more movie from RogerColeman. You're like, I don't think
that's happening, dude, but youknow, have at it. But the
other thing I've noticed with you know, eating foods like this, Like,
for example, when I got thecheese steak on Wednesday. The place that
I went to is like, itwas about about two miles away, and
I walked out there thinking like okay, i'll walk there, walk back,

(07:13):
I'll work off the cheese steak.You know it'll be good. It was
a big, huge mask when theplace was called Gooey Louise, which is
like yeah, exactly. And itwas one of those places where they didn't
even take the order right because Iwanted like provolone cheese on the cheeseteak,
and they're just like, no,you know, you get the cheese we
give you. You know, theAmerican was like, this is the cheese.
Okay, where do you think thisis? This isn't the land of
choice. This is Philly. Now. If you went anywhere else in America

(07:38):
demanding your own type of cheese,they might accept that, but we give
you whatever we scraped out from underneaththe hibachi grill or whatever. Well,
it's the thing. It's most placesin Philly they do let you choose you
cheese, because that's all you're suposedto order, supposed to say, like
the cheese you want, and whetheryou want onions of provolone with onions or
cheese, gooey lose is like youget American, that's all. And it's

(07:58):
like, really it's about the toppings. You want ketchup and stuf, which
I don't want that kind of stuff. So melted a melted orange square because
it's a square of orange. Americancheese is not cheese. Well this is
white. This is the white version. So they're a little bit, they're
a little bit, they're a littlebit on top of you. It's like
a little bit keeps ruining my I'mwonder like that's what what it is?

(08:20):
Is like it's American, but it'slike because there's two types of American.
There's like the individually wrapped orange sliceorange. When Bourdain goes out to the
does the New Jersey episode of hisshow where he goes out to the the
Howard Johnson's that's like barely hanging onand he's like trying to figure out what
he can order that he knows isnot going to kill him. He asks

(08:41):
for a grilled cheese because he knowsthat the cheap wonderbread and the cheap processed
American cheese are the two things thathave probably lasted that aren't going to make
him sick. So that's why hegets a grilled cheese and chips because he
knows it's so Yeah, so thisplace had the higher quality deli style American
cheese. Okay, yeah, butit's still I mean, you're you're sitting
outside in this area, there's likethese like kind of like these little like

(09:03):
picnicky kind of areas. I didn'tknow this, but I chosen to people
who didn't have the ashtray because whenI got to throw my stuff, there'sn
nother one had an ashtrays. Youcould smoke and eat, you know,
if it's you know, it's justlike that. The glory of that's because
if you're eating, you know,that amount of meat and processed cheeses,
the one thing you should also bedoing is smoking. And I think that's
the one thing I miss right againbecause again I'm not a I'm not a

(09:24):
health chaser, but I have inmy life quit smoking and quit soda.
Those are the two things that I'vekind of quit in my life. And
I have to say, when eatingfistfuls of greasy meats, the only the
only companion to that is a cigarette. And I have to say, because

(09:46):
there is something about human nature thatonce. Once you've stepped, you know,
down the path towards uh debauchery andself harm, you just it's almost
like the next step is a andthen you're in the pool before you know
it. Right, there's no likedainty uh you know, stone work,

(10:07):
uh, slabs or whatever, youknow what I'm talking about, to like
skip through the garden of self harm. There's no there's no like lily pads
you can jump from to avoid fallinginto the pool of self harm. You
take one step, you're then inthe shoot and then sprush your out into

(10:28):
the pool of self farm. Andwhile you're there, you may as well
consume you know, heroin. Imean that's that you might as well go
the whole hug because you've already putdangerous chemicals and meats in your body.
Well, the cigarette is like it'sit's one of those things like when you
see the when I see when yousee the astroid just sitting there. It's

(10:48):
like almost like this this mental thingof like, oh, just sitting there
having a cigarette after consuming all ofthat, it's like the perfect topper,
you know, the cherry yes floppeddown on top of that, and it's
like yeah, yeah, and thebest thing about it is is you can
eat the marachino cherry and still thenhave a cigarette. You know what I
mean. There is no end towhen you can have a cigarette before the

(11:13):
meal, after meal. I missall of it, Matt. I hands
down missed all of it. I'llnever I'll never go back because my wife
is well. First of all,for my own health, although that isn't
a consideration, it's it's it's twothings. A it's my ego. I
quit and swore I would never doit again, so therefore, if I
do it again, I'm letting myselfdown, and there's something about my ego

(11:37):
that can't tolerate that. The otherthing is my wife is rapidly anti smoking
and has never smoked and I meancomes from a smoking household weirdly, but
never smoked herself and everything like that. And I wouldn't want to let her
down. So that's why I've nevergone back, Matt. But and why
I've found pleasure in the arms ofthe marijuana edible rather than in the arms

(12:03):
of a nicotine laced stick. Butwell, the other thing to consider about
the marijuana edible compared to the nicotinelay stick used to be right, that
the nicotine lays stick was a muchmore affordable option than the edible. But
now I mean, I mean apack of cigarettes is like fifteen bucks,
right, pack of marbles, It'slike for twice that you get a whole
container of edibles and they're going tolast you much longer than a pack of

(12:26):
cigarettes. That's the other peace.I my wife, she did smoke before
we met each other. I smoketoo. I smoked in college, but
luckily because I started in college,it was easier to quit. But she
got bronchitis before we met, andthat caused her to quit. And she
said, actually it was kind ofalmost a social stigma because every place she
worked people smoked, and they wouldget annoyed that she didn't go out and
smoke with them or didn't need to, you know. And also it can

(12:48):
also be a social stigma in certainjob environments because the smokers all go off
for a break, right, andthe people who don't smoke and stay in
and work. There's almost like aoh no, that was yeah back when
he used to be able to smokeand work in places like I can remember
going to an office job and they'rebeing a smoking room in not you couldn't
smoke in the office, right,I'm not like from the nineteen fifties.

(13:11):
But I was alive early enough orlate enough, or whatever you want to
call it, that I was anadult working in an office job and I
could go two flights down and therewas a smoking room in the building and
filled every day, filled from nightlike you know, everyone would take their

(13:33):
break, and then the next twentysmokers would come in and fill the room,
and then the next and so onand so forth. And it was
it was remarkable because back when Iwas a smoker, the smoke in the
air didn't bother me at all.Like I remember, I was still a
smoker when I first moved to Vegasin seven eight. And the hilarious thing

(13:56):
was was like walking into the casinodidn't bother me, like all the smokers
with their cup, big golf cupsfull of change. A lot of the
smokers, by the way, onoxygen. I'm not even like a lot
of the older ladies at the casinoor men putting in with the big golf
cups full of change, greasy quartersinto the machines, smoking with one hand

(14:18):
and an oxygen tube up the nostrilwith a little canister by them horribly dangerous
because that would ignite and kill them. But that was definitely a thing that
I've seen in my life, peoplein wheelchairs smoking all sorts of stuff.
And I have to agree, there'sa part of me that says, again,
to do with the whole self destructivething. I've never understood it when

(14:39):
someone you know is horribly injured andthey get given, you know, a
prosthetic limb or something like that,but the next thing we see they're running
up a mountain or taking part inthe Olympics, or fucking you know,
helping out at soup kitchens or whateverit is. Suddenly they're becoming incredibly you

(15:00):
know, charitable and benevolent and wonderfuland fit and healthy and everything like that.
If I lost a leg, Idon't know about you, but I'd
bring on the hero and the cheesy, salty sweet snacks, cigarettes, fucking
every You'd see me at nine PMand a Walmart parking lot in one of
the mobility scooters swearing at a pigeon. That's what would happen. If I

(15:24):
lost a limb, I'd be like, that's it. Life is over.
Surely all I get to do now? Is wheel myself around and scream,
you know, birds of the airand form it e can be delivery.
I don't even know. If youjust be like I mean, it wouldn't
even go on. You'd just belike I look at Philadelphia. I don't
know how I get along with themobility school in Philadelphia. It's like people

(15:45):
park, you know, you knowhow there's a little ramp on the sidewalk
that you're supposed to kind of edgedown to get into the crosswalk people park
on that. Yes, and soI don't even know how I would get
around. I don't know, youknow, it's it's you know, it's
a mess. And so I wouldjust have to sit at home and be
like, all right, grub howyou know? Right? Well that's the
other thing. Yes, you're right. I mean I had this. I
had this slightly melancholic yet romantic visionof me scooting my way around abandoned car

(16:10):
parks late at night, you know, sifting for gone off snacks round the
back of the delivery bay or whatever, saying like if Gonny like Gunny cheetos
that have gone bad, I'll takea whole box, you know whatever.
Well, because I lost a limb, you know what I mean, Like,
I lost a limb and I'm justthat's it. The only other option

(16:33):
is I'd want Like it'd be hilariousif I was just a complete wasteoid most
of my life and then at likefifty five or something, lost a leg
and they gave me like the bedoingbedoing legs, you know, like the
like the Terminator two legs where theseamazing I mean, they're amazing, Matt,
I can't like, I'm so inspiredby them. But at the same

(16:53):
time, this would never be me. They're just the moment they get the
bedoing bedowing legs, they're like,that's it. I'm running, you know,
I'm running the Wall of China,you know what I mean, Like,
I'm I'm gonna run the entirety ofthe Andes. And you're like,
wait, you just got two fakelegs, I know. And now I'm
gonna bedoing my bedoing way all theway up to Mount Everest or something.

(17:15):
And you're like and then you becomelike the first guy with the bedoying legs
to get to Everest and they're givingyou medals and ship I'm like, there's
no way on earth. I'd justbe like, how do I how do
I get from here to my porchto get more snacks from the guy from
Amazon who's gonna deliver me more snacks? Ye? Well, the thing is
with those those those human pieces,they almost always show them at the airport,

(17:38):
you know, like when you're sittingat your gate and you get the
TV up there. They're always showingeither that or like somebody who has like
a startup where they're making like jackfruitsandwiches or something like that. It's like
showing this woman with the with thewith the with these two like hipster guys
getting jackfruit from some you know,Southeast Asian country. Yes, it's always
like that. It's always or whenthey do there's always one episode of Queerai

(18:00):
Me and the Wife Loved Queeria onNetflix. There's always one episode where the
person runs a small business and thewhole point of the episode is that QUEERREI
comes in, puts them on Instagramand suddenly they start making one hundreds of
thousand dollars get through their small business. And it's always you know, my
mama was prostitute and a heroin addictand killed three men in a bar fight

(18:25):
and you know, has only onelimb and whatever it is. And her
great grandmother ran a barbecue shack fortwenty years which has been closed now for
forty years. But suddenly, youknow, she got some money from the
you know whoever hit her with thecar, and she started up the while
she was high on smack. She'sand just coming out of prison for the

(18:49):
eighth time. She starts up thebarbecue shack again, can't find any customers,
and in swoops quaerere and then suddenlyyou know it's the biggest bubshak in
Texas or Louisiana whatever. It's alwaysa story like that, right, It's
always and I always just like Idon't know, man, Like after my
third arrest and my third bit andJA like hang me out to dry,

(19:12):
I'm done, you know what Imean? Like, there's no way I'm
certainly like, no, I wantto now inspire people and become a small
business owner. There's none of There'snone of that. It's like, no,
I'm blocked on heroin and I've beenin prison three times. I killed
some people in a bar fight.It's probably best that you just locked me
away somewhere in a chair with enoughsnacks. You know. That's what I'm

(19:33):
saying, I mean, I'm veryinspired by these people. I mean,
don't get me wrong, I'm anempathetic, loving, kind of pro pro
happiness kind of person. But Ialso find anything that's inspirational deeply suspicious.
It's true because so somehow and quitepeculiarly. This then led to a conversation

(19:55):
all about the film The blind Side, which I did ill needed to be
included in this episode. It justit didn't add anything. Let's just say.
Uh. Then that sort of movedthrough into talking about Forrest Gump again.
Forrest Gump didn't add anything to theconversation, but it does lead us

(20:18):
to this next discussion about the BubbaGump Shrimp Company and New York City and
various other things, which I feelis worthy of inclusion because it's not just
me rambling about mad theories about inspirationalmovies. All right, here we go
back to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Yeah, I think that that makes

(20:40):
absolute sense. The only problem,right, of course, is it gets
it gets the Bubba Gump Shrimp Companyplace, which it's like you you go
to Manhattan and yeah, it's stillin bed to the one in Manhattan.
I need to check it out justnow you know, you don't need to
you don't need to check it.I would always say, like I want
to say I've gone there, butlike I wonder like eating by myself there
because I probably that would be so. Yes, it's like I'm gonna sit

(21:00):
at the bar and open up somemail and at twelve o'clock in Manhattan at
the Bubba Gump Shrimp No, Iwould never go. I I've never been,
uh and and I would. Iwould never go personally, it's it's
it's not my thing. I didn'tknow when I saw that, Like,

(21:21):
and I didn't know because I'm obviouslyit wasn't raised here. But I presume
the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company came fromthe movie, and not that the movie
created a fictional way to the fictionalorigin story for the chain restaurant. I
assume the chain restaurant came after themovie it did, right or No?
I have no idea. I've honestlyno idea. And did did Does Hanks

(21:47):
get a little bit of buns fromthat? Then? Does he get a
little kick back? He might,but it is I remember Anthony Bourdain did
a really great episode bring up PortAgain. Ordine fan clearly exactly. He
did an episode of No Reservations calledDisappearing Manhattan, and he kind of pontificate
because of course, obviously he wasfrom the Manhattan that was like, you

(22:07):
know, Times Square was just likeprostitutes and sex, you know, porn
shoe. Yeah, and he washe sees the Bubba Gump thing and he's
like, I just can't imagine howsoul crushing it is for that the weight,
you know, that the wait staffworking there. Every time they hear
somebody like spouting off different types ofshrimp and like the you know, the
guy's voice and you know, orjust saying run Forest Run or whatever like

(22:32):
that, and it's it's it's oneof those. And here Philadelphia that they're
talking about opening the basketball arena indowntown because currently it's down way in the
south of the city where it's kindof away from everything. And I just
imagine like all these changes is showingup, because especially it's in a bunch
China town where it's like, youknow, Chinatown. You have these restaurants
that have like, you know,culture character, they're unique, and it's
just like imagining like just you know, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company opening there.

(22:55):
Because you know, everything around thatthe arena becomes all touristy and stuff like
that. It you know, TimesSquare, it is. It's one of
those things. I've only been toTimes Square a couple of times, but
like one of the times Jen showedbecause we had a we were switching trains
at Penn Station. But the othertime I had to get I was going
to a Mets scheme and I hadto get to the seven train and like
walking through it as not a tourist, but seeing everybody just like wandering around

(23:18):
Times Square, it was like,even though I'm not from New York,
I had the feeling of being inNew Yorker and having to get through there
for whatever real. Yes, yeah, it's just yeah, it's just it's
scary having been in New Yorker.Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's
it's odd because I definitely as aas an ex pat who has a big
love of Americana and just landmarks andyou know, tourist locations in general.

(23:44):
I do. I'm someone who Iknow a lot of people who are like,
well, yeah I went to NewYork, but I didn't go to
any of the touristy locations. Iwanted to see it's a real New York.
And I'm like, well, youknow, at least forty percent of
the real New York is tourist dlocations, Like, it's not that big a
city for you to be like,well I went to the real New York.

(24:06):
Really, where's the real New York? What are you talking about?
Did you go up to the BronxNo? Did you go into like the
middle of Harlem? No? Sowhat do you mean about like the real
New York? But you find thesepeople? Well, you know, I
found a little you know, authenticeatery down on the Lower East Side,
but there are no like, whatare you talking about? Do you know

(24:27):
what I mean? You know,well, you know I urinated on the
sidewalk just outside where CBGB's used tobe. Oh well, okay, fine,
the authentic New York. But youknow, those people need to be
fucking shot into space or Jennison's offthe island. I'm someone who listen.
I can tell you some great placesto go to New York the tourists wouldn't

(24:49):
go to just that. I cando the same in London, but the
better. The difference between tourist locationsin New York versus tourist locations in London,
is that in general, tourist locationsin London, I wouldn't suggest,
I would suggest people go to them, but I wouldn't suggest anyone eat within
a five mile radius of them,you know what I mean? Whereas I

(25:11):
don't know. If you go upto eight Avenue or ninth Avenue at the
Hell's Kitchen, you can find somereally decent restaurants and coffin a spit away
from Times Square, but I wouldnever eat in Times Square. However,
I have a love hate thing withTime Square because as a tourist, I
kind of love it because it isthis sort of weird monument to capitalism,

(25:33):
consumerism, tourism, homelessness, andmadness, like all just within a square
mile, you know what I mean. And there's something like when they call
it the Crossroads of the World,that's sort of there's sort of a romance
to that, you know what Imean. I also love the idea that
Disney came into a place and waslike, can we paper over hypodermic needles,

(25:57):
prostitution, you know, death andwhatever with you know, a Madam
twosodes and a you know whatever.And they've just about managed it with But
what's nice to see is every sooften you'll see some crime or some filth,
or some drugs or something like bubbleup back into Times Square and you're

(26:19):
like, it doesn't matter what youpaper over, this shit's gonna keep coming.
And I like that about it aswell. But I also say this
as a New Yorker. Yes,trying to get through Times Square at the
height of any kind of daylight timing, I would, yeah, stay clear,
don't go anywhere near it. It'san absolute fucking nightmare. But Times
Square at two in the morning,Oh, it's so much fun to walk

(26:41):
through Times Square at two in themorning. That's the greatest thing you'll ever
do. Walk along Times Square attwo in the morning. That is,
it's just because it is. It'slike a late night pleasure pit for like
you'll get like little kids running aroundTimes Square at two in the morning,
you know, because adults don't anymore. Adam's like, yeah, well,
you know, I take my kidsall of the places, and I'm like,

(27:03):
your kid is three, it shouldeither be in daycare or in school.
And they're like, no, youknow, I take it to Times
Square. But then you know,we stay up because I get it all
hopped up on McDonald's and bullshit,and I have it running around Time Square
at three in the morning or whatever. And I'm like you, it's like
people bring babies onto planes. Ijust because it's just massively irresponsible. We

(27:25):
have no idea what the pressure oftakeoff and anything else is doing to your
baby's developmental brain or skull or anyof that stuff. But to say nothing
of the huge imposition you are causingevery other passenger who's just trying to fly
in a plane, which is miserableanyway. I mean, plane travel is
just, at this point the worstthing you could possibly do with yourself to

(27:47):
then be sat next to either ababy or someone carrying a yappy dog,
which is another thing that I've seenon planes. Jesus Christ, have some
fucking self awareness, and if youmust do that, drive don't get in
a plane. I mean, it'sjust it's it's irresponsible for the animal,
it's irresponsible for the baby, andit's irresponsible to everyone else on the plane.

(28:10):
You know. It's it's because we'vegone the other way now, we've
got away from the parents who justto like, fuck it, leave them
at home, leave them with achild, I leave them with an older
an older sibling. And by oldersibling we mean well, if you're eight,
the older sibling's ten, and I'llfigure it out, you know what
I mean. We're not saying like, oh, the older sibling is sixteen.
It's like, you know, butso that was it when we were

(28:30):
kids, but now the opposite istrue. Now parents are like, well
wait a minute, we want tocontinue. At no point did any parent
give up, like sacrifice anything fortheir kid, right. Our parents didn't
go, well, maybe we shouldbe home more. They just went,
well, fuck it would just leavethe kids home, right, And parents
these days don't go maybe we shouldbe home are looking after? They just

(28:53):
take the kids everywhere, no matterwhat it is, business meeting, casino,
bah Glad, Gladiator fight, youknow, R rated movie Like this
is the other thing that in Americatells me nuts that you can take kids
into an R rated movie. Yes, with supervision. No, that's not
how that works, you know whatI mean, Just like, don't in

(29:18):
fact, don't take kids into anymovies other than like matinee screenings on a
Thursday. That's right, That's thewhole point of the R rated thing is
that it's really supposed to be theparental thing. It's supposed to be like,
Okay, you know my friends andI when we were like fifteen,
parents sign us in this Terminator youknow. Yeah that's different. Yeah yeah
yeah, something like Torminator two,you know, something like that. That's
our you know, that's the wholepoint of it. It's not supposed to

(29:40):
be that parents take their two yearold in to watch I remember parents taking
like basic like babies and or toddler'sin to see the Lord of the Rings
franchise, and I'm like, firstof all, those movies are like three
and a half hours long, likedon't bring and no child. After about
five minutes, that child is likenot paying any attention at all. But

(30:02):
secondly, like, especially once youget into the second one, some of
the action sequences and war sequences andwhatever, they're just very noisy. It's
not that they're violent because whatever,kids they don't fucking pay attention, but
the noise causes kids to be like, oh shit, something like mad is

(30:22):
happening, and then that sets themoff, you know what I mean.
I'm not talking before people are like, well, you know John Cross of
the Aftermovie Die Now they stated thatkids should be logged away in cages and
beaten with sticks. I never saidthat, although that is a good alternative
to taking them on a plane.But have we thought about cages at airports

(30:44):
that people simply deposit their children in. They go away for like two weeks
vacation to Carbo or wherever the fuckthey're going, and then they come back
and pick their kids up, youknow, in whatever form their children happen
to be at that point. Thatcould be an option. Just to answer
an earlier question that came up,Tom Hanks does not own any of the
Bubble Gum Shrimp Company. The BubbaGum Shrimp Company did come about after the

(31:08):
movie, not so it's because ofthe movie. Not not that the movie
referenced and already existing chain restaurant.The only connection that Tom Hanks has to
Bubba Gum Shrimp Company, apparently,is that in the Times Square location we
were just talking about Times Square beforethe building was a shrimp lover's paradise.

(31:29):
I don't know that it was ever. I don't know that the Bubba Gum
Shrimp Company is a shrimp lovers paradise. This is just on Google. The
aftermovie diner does not endorse any statementmade by Delish dot com but anyway,
but he does have an interesting connectionsthe Times Square location before the building was
a shrimp lover's paradise that's still indebate. It was his first bank when

(31:55):
he lived in New York City innineteen seventy nine, So before it was
a chain restaurant, it was abank, and Tom Hanks banked there in
nineteen seventy nine. That is theonly connection he has, apparently to the
Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. I haveto say, Tom Hanks, mister Hank's
American sweetheart, Hanks, America's cuddlyuncle, Hanks, America's wait he's the

(32:20):
father of Chet Hanks. Tom Hanks, that guy. I think that's a
mistake. He should have been givena you know, a bit of a
kickback. After all, he isthe Gump in Bubba Gump without him,
you know. So, I thinkit's wrong that the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company
has never given any money to misterHanks, although Hanks has his own money,

(32:45):
you know what I mean. It'snot like Hanks like an animatronic like
Hanks, like with the cap likewaving. I mean can you see how
the tourists be like, oh,look at me, get my picture of
this right? And exactly I meanyou listen, get the likeness rights from
Hanks, give them, you know, throw them a few beans, and
then get an animatronic Hanks at yourrestaurant. You're missing a trick. And

(33:08):
we've solved why nobody goes into yourrestaurant anymore. That's how you get them
back in. All right, weas I have a heart out. At
six pm tonight, we are movingover to not only a double bill of
Roger Corman and Pam Greer films,but also and actually I didn't realize what

(33:29):
a genius I was when I suggestedthe two movies. I simply pulled out
two of my favorite of the RogerCorman Pam Greer collaborations. But it also
happens to be two movies which alsostar Pam Grea and Margaret Markoff. So
there is a trilogy of connections betweenthese two films that we're covering in this

(33:52):
And it's interesting because Pam did theseCorman movies which a lot of people assume
were sort of you know, shedid a few and then went on to
the Black Spectation early seventies, Coffee, Foxy Brown, those kind of movies
that people mostly know her and loveher from. Not true. She did

(34:15):
some corn movies, then she didCoffee, then she went back to Black
Mama, White Moman, and thenshe came back and did Screen Black and
the Screen. Then she went backand did the Arena. She was in
and out of Corman movies pretty muchfor the first, you know, six
or seven years of her career,and even Coffee. The director of Coffee

(34:39):
is a Roger Corman collaborator, JackHill. So although Corman does not produce
Coffee, it's definitely off the backof the Corman association that Coffee happens.
So, yeah, we are talkingearly seventies Pamgria, Double Bills, Black
Mama, White Mama, and TheArena. Matt about histories with these two

(35:00):
particular movies. Had you seen thembefore or anything? So I had seen
you know, I've seen like Coffee, Friday Foster, you know, I'd
seen those ones before, Foxy Brown, but I hadn't seen The Arena or
Black Mama, White Mama, butI'd wanted to. So essentially, what
kind of got me wanting to watchthese movies? Was you know, recently
there was that that situation, thatthe kind of the whole Madam web thing,

(35:22):
and every time, you know,and I was looking at it,
I was like, you know,it seemed like more of the female led
ones. It's like the people makingthose movies just were not doing a good
job of making you know, thefemale let you know, like whether it
was that one Electra cat Woman,and I was like, how hard is
it to make a female led actionmovie? And I was like, well,
Pam Greer is the queen of afemale action yeah, And so I

(35:45):
was like, well, a bunchof her seventies ones were on TV,
and I was like, well,you know, I should probably be catching
up on some of the ones thatI haven't seen before. And so,
you know, Black Mama, WhiteMama and The Arena were two that was
like, you know, available ontwo B that I wanted to check out.
And of course they are kind ofa blueprint for I mean, both
of these movies. I think,you know, if Hollywood is looking to
be making more, I do alwayssay that women in change them, but

(36:07):
I mean, I mean, youknow, the Marvels that could have been
a great intergalactic kind of women's Yeah, I mean, I think what you're
trying to say matter is that youthink Marvel female driven Marvel movies should have
more topless scenes in the shower.And that's exactly what I mean, madam.
What probably would have been a lotbetter off with more right exactly,
No, I agree, No,I I think that I think that the

(36:34):
Marvel female driven movie thing, it'sI think it's a little difficult because once
they started to make like a concertedeffort to make female driven superheroes. And
I'm not too necessarily about Electric becausethat was obviously sort of before the MCU,
but once they started doing Captain Marvelor even the Black Widow prequel or

(36:57):
whatever, is that a prequel ora sequel, I don't know what the
because she'd already died in the regulartimeline by that point, so I don't
know spoilers for anyone who's not followingthe MCU. Black Widow dies in a
way where she didn't need to,by the way, like in a way
where it didn't make any sense,in a way where they could have pushed
the red skull off the cliff andhis could have been the soul that released

(37:20):
the soulestone, or they could havebrought anyone from that, Like they could
have broken a villain out of prisonand brought him to the mountain and pushed
him off the mountain. Like theydidn't even need that rule. They didn't
even need to have that rule.And it's like, if Scarlett Johansson said,
you know, I don't want tomake these movies anymore, that's one
thing, right. If she's like, write me out after this one,
I'm gonna make my solo one,write me out, that's fine. They

(37:43):
could have found a better way probablyto do it than like her noble sacrifice
to let Hawkeye live the old guywho's not a good character, like not
nobody cares, like no offense,Jeremy Renner, but like, don't kill
the only woman in the Avengers sothat you can save yet another man,
like I'm not interested. Yeah,exactly if that was the reason, If
the reason was that Scarletuhnsen's like,I'm done, because if she wanted just

(38:06):
out, yeah, okay, yeah, find a way to do it,
you know, find a way todo it in a way that that makes
it so you know that it's notbecause again it's it was a contract that
they didn't need. But again it'slike that idea that like, yeah,
like you know, like she hasto die, so then they have to
make up like a bag said,a prequel or whatever. I don't know
whether it's and then they released itlike kind of in the Pandemic or kind
of act. So it's like it'skind of buried there too. But that's

(38:28):
what that was. What I haven'tseen it. I'm meaning to see it,
but it has like a lot ofgreat elements because it's got like,
you know, Olga Carolinko plays taskMaster, which seems like that would be
really cool to see. So itseems like it probably was a good one.
It's just you know, it waslike it's the Marvel movie I've started
probably four times and never been ableto finish. And but but my point,
so my point was is that theiron Man driven first act and I

(38:53):
know they go phase one, facetwo, face, whatever, but I'm
saying the first act of the MarvelSo universe was, let's just say the
Iron Man Tony Stark driven movies,right, which start with iron Man and
end with Avengers Endgame or whatever,and you know, it goes from Tony
Stark's creation of Iron Man to himdying, And that's it, right.

(39:17):
Those movies were of a piece andthey were working towards something. They'd already
decided who their central villain was goingto be, they'd already decided which characters
they were going to introduce. Andhad they done a instead of just crowbarring
Black Widow into Iron Man two ina very sort of inauspicious way to introduce

(39:40):
her, had they done a youknow, like Captain America first Avenger,
had they done Marvel, you know, had they done a Black Widow,
you know, maybe a Black Widowand Hawkeye or whatever like kind of origin
story movie. When those other moviescoming out would be talked about, I
think in the same terms as Thorand Captain American, Ironman and whatever the

(40:05):
beloved MCU because at that time theyhad a focus, they had a channel,
they had good writers, they hadthere was a momentum building and there
were things going on. And althoughthere are movies that people debate, like
Thor two and Iron Man three thatthey don't think are as good. I
love those two movies, by theway. I think they're actually better than
their predecessors. But that's me.Although there are movies in that first run

(40:29):
of Marvel that are considered lesser thanI think in general, those twelve years
of films are considered the piece.And I think the problem Marvel's had since
then is finding out what that secondact is, right. And I think
initially they had made the second actCaptain Marvel. They wanted Captain Marvel to

(40:51):
be like the Tony Stark of likethe second wave of Marvel movies. And
the problem is is by that point, all the good writers, directors,
anyone that was doing anything had alreadyjumped ship because they were already off the
back of having been part of Marvel. They were then able to make their
own films. They also didn't havea lot of female writers or directors in

(41:13):
the first run of Marvel films.And so by the time Marvel Captain Marvel
comes around and The Eternals and BlackWidow and all these other movies, the
core audience is not watching as muchanymore. They're just not And not only
are they not watching as much anymore. And I consider myself in that audience.

(41:35):
I watched religiously almost every single oneof that first run of movies,
and then once they started doing thesecond run, I watched enough of them
to be like, I don't wantto keep going with this. However,
again, another series that was absolutelypanned and everyone hated it, She Hulk,
I loved. I thought She Hulkwas really great. So I still

(41:57):
think there is I still think needto get And I'm not talking about the
greater goings of the world, becauseI also find her like, you know,
frustratingly hipster, and and and andabout as subtle as you know,
a breeze block but or you know, cinder block or whatever she just did,
like I don't want to go downa Barbie place, but like she's

(42:19):
not She's not subtle, you knowwhat I mean with with with what she's
doing. But you know, Ithink maybe there's a world where, you
know, a strong female writer,a strong female director, or a strong
collaborator with a male director or whateverit is, could produce a good female
driven superhero movie. I just thinkthat by the time Marvel went all right,

(42:44):
we'll make a few female driven superheromovies, people already burnt out on
superhero movies, like and I thinkthey and and that includes writers and directors,
right, So to go back toI think that's the Marvel problem.
To go back to these two moviesas sort of examples of early female empowered

(43:05):
action films and sort of all thethings that come with the sort of Corman
b movie school, and that isthat both these films are based on films
that have male counterparts. First ofall, so neither film was Both films

(43:29):
come from the Roger Corman idea of, well, we have Spartacus, what
if we did Spartacus with tits.Now I'm saying it in that language,
not because I'm not a feminist,not because I don't believe in female empowerment,
because I do in both those waysone hundred percent. But I'm saying
it because from a Roger Corman mindsetand from a financial standpoint in the seventies,

(43:58):
that is exactly what some one thoughtsomeone when what about Spartacus but with
tits? Or with black Mama,White Mama? What about the Defiant One?
Is it defined Ones? Right with? Uh? Yeah, with Sydney
Potier and Tony Curtis, which isagain a fantastic film. The certainly in

(44:22):
case of The Defiant Ones, Uh, that movie is very much about race,
and it's it's it's built into itsset up and its elevator pitch,
which is what if a white manand a black man were you know,
tied together and had to you know, make it out on the outside in
you know, the racist America oftoday or whatever. And the interesting thing

(44:49):
about the female versions of these,the Roger Corman versions of these, is
actually the pagrias race is not actuallyyou know, part of it at all.
It actually becomes purely about the factthat it's women and what Roger Corman
does, which I think absolves himfrom the what if it's spartacus? But

(45:15):
with TETs like he knows, titssell right. And I hate to break
this to everyone, feminists and millennialsand everyone else, tits sell They still
sell pornography on the Internet, eventhough it's widely available and mostly free.
Is still a huge, huge,huge money in it because fifty percent of

(45:37):
the population of the planet love TETsright. Even gay men are fascinated by
breast, maybe not in the sameway as straight man, but they sell
right. So you can either go, will I condemn Corman for that mindset,
that b movie mindset, or youcan be like, well, I

(45:57):
condemned the audiences that lapped up forlike the Big Dollhouse, women in cages,
Big bird cage, et cetera.Or you can say, okay,
that was a reality of the time, right, and it's actually a ract
reality of today, but a realityof the time. It was also not
done in it because you had castsof multiple women. It wasn't just like

(46:20):
one woman and then like fifty guys, because in these movies it was predominantly
women. Whenever you hear any ofthem talk about being on set. The
nude scenes were actually less of aproblem because instead of it being you know,
a basic instinct type situation where itis one woman and the lascivrious male

(46:43):
gaze of you know, twenty mensweating and leaning over or whatever, it's
a movie in which, you know, several women are together filming this scene
and it is not as exploitative asit may look on screen. And so
the benefit that Corman had was thatwhile he was making exploitation pictures and he

(47:05):
understood the market and he understood whathe was trying to sell, the actual
making of the movies, while notcomfortable because they were like either in the
Philippines or in Italy or whatever,they weren't in their backyard. It wasn't
comfortable California or whatever. But therewas a camaraderie on set. The women,
as far as I'm aware, goton very well on set. A
lot of those scenes were often supervisedby women, and in fact, Pam

(47:32):
Gray has stated repeatedly that her asa black woman, showing her breasts was
actually a sign of empowerment because atthe time black women were not seen as
the attractive norm in movies. Andby her, you know, and by
her saying, you know, hereare my nipples and this is the color

(47:53):
that they are, and this isthe color that my breasts are, and
this is my skin, and thisis my female body. To her anyway,
as an actor, this is herwords, not not my male interpretation
of it. Her words were Idid that in my early movies because to
me, it was a way toget black female sexiness and black female nudity

(48:16):
and black female attractive attractiveness in thefaces of the audience, for them to
then one day be able to accepta black woman attracted a diverse audience,
being able to accept a black womanas attractive anyway, so that that sort
of tease up where its coming from. It They live in a they live

(48:37):
in a complex world between a clearlyvery male centric idea and a very empowered
female cast, and these movies areoften in conflict between those two things.
But anyway, I just thought i'dsort of tear it up that way.
You know. A couple of thingsto point off for that. I think

(48:58):
one, like you talked about withPam Greer saying that she wanted to do
these nude scenes. I think thatalso harkens back to Roger Corman not having
Pam Greer's race be an integral partof the story, right that, like,
yes, an arena, her charactercomes from Africa, and she's sort
of got an African history, butit's not like the fact that she's does
that makes sense within the Roman youknow exactly, but it's not like,

(49:22):
you know, like, oh she'syou know, like right like that that
element. So I think that partof it where it was like, okay,
it's just women who are naked,like Pam Greer's like, well,
yes, I am considered a beautifulwoman amongst these other women. It's not
just like a novelty that the blackwoman is naked, but rather we're all
naked. So there's that one piece. The other thing I think people forget
about the seventies is that sexuality andand sex was was was. It was

(49:45):
a much more open period than whatwe're used to today, where back then
that for those actresses involved, ifit is that kind of environment like you're
describing, like we're talking about itis, they're much it's considered much more
freeing for them, and it's muchmore of what they want to do.
And I think that's one of thehard things I think for us for viewers
today watching these movies today with thelens of growing up in the eighties and

(50:08):
nineties where things weren't quite the sameas you know, and of course granted,
you know, in the eighties andnineties it was different because you know,
in AIDS and you know, youcouldn't you know, free love was
not something that you could have.The sixties and seventies had both a cultural
and also sadly a scientific backlash,which was AIDS being the Reagan and Thatcher

(50:30):
being the political conservative backlash of culture. But then sadly you also had sexually
transmitted diseases beyond the sort of crabsor whatever of the the joking the jokingly
named sailor's diseases that people used toget that you know, penicillin put a

(50:51):
stop to you know, now wehad a far more serious thing, which
obviously comes off the back of thesixties and seventies. So it the cold
collides with you know, very unfortunatesad illness. Yeah, but yeah,
and I think with these movies,watching them with that lens of saying like,
okay, you know, in theseventies, you know, sex on
screen or you know, nudity,this this kind of rawness because there's a

(51:15):
rawness to the nuty that when weget to you know, the nudity of
the nineties or the you know,the eighties and niney with the erotic thrillers,
you've got you know, like whetherit's the Sadaris films, which aren't
rodic thrillers, but you know,you know, playboy models, you know,
or you get to the erotic thrillerslike like Shannon Tweet, they're very
airbrushed, they're very made up.There's a lot of you know, they're
very perfect, you know, they'resculpted, you know, the blue.
Because the nudity in those movies isabout sex, right, whereas the nudities

(51:38):
in these movies it's about it's aboutsexual sex and sexuality, but it's about
it's more about, well, aslong as we have nudity, we can
sell this movie. The nudity,though in both movies, tends to be
like shower scenes or oh they haveto get dressed to go out and fight.

(52:00):
It's it's less We're going to stopthe film and have an eight minute
sex scene with like you've described inerotic thrillers, with amazing lighting and you
know, billowing curtains and you know, soft focus and all the rest of
it. It's and also, thereis no like the women of the seventies,

(52:21):
or certainly the women in these moviesare women like when you when you
watch the films, you go,okay, that's a real woman undressing and
showering and playing around and doing whatever. You know. I hasten to call
them, uh, it's it's notto call them ugly would be completely wrong.

(52:43):
What I mean to say is thatthey are natural and they are human,
meaning you know, they have wrinklesor stretch marks or you know,
blemishes or whatever, which personally mytaste in women and sexuality whatever, I
like that like, I like realpeople like and I always I always talk

(53:05):
about because there's a lot of peoplewho don't. There's a lot of people
who like a Page three pin upor a Playboy pin up or whatever,
you know that's highly airbrushed, andit's just, you know, I look
at them and I go, yes, that's okay, but I might as
well be looking at a blow updoll. Like it's not there's that fucking

(53:27):
Kardashian advert for their Spanks brand orwhatever it is, where it's just this
weird clones, like Kardashian clones whowere all in a spaceship wearing beige,
and I'm like, I don't know, what are you trying to sell me
a hideous idea of the future whereeveryone is a beige spanks wearing sex doll

(53:50):
on legs, Like I'm sorry,give me the seventies where people had different
like all the boobs and different sizesand different types and nipples of different sizes,
of different shapes. And I hateto make that sound like it's fucking
weird or red, but it is. These days, there's there's a realness,
like there's a rawness and a naturalnessto it that I think, you

(54:13):
know, one of the things,you know, you my wife and I
have talked about this because we've seen, you know, kind of studies that
go with younger generations where they grewup with porn, right, Whereas you
know, for our generation, right, porn was like this thing that you
were like, it was like aunique thing. Right. We didn't know
that father had it in a boxunder the bed and if you found it,
it was on VHS and all ofthe genitals were brown because the VHS

(54:36):
was sort of this weird, faded, pinky brown kind of color. It
was weird, yeah, And wedidn't equate that to real sex, right,
Like, we didn't equate that towhat But I think you know,
where's like, you know, millennialsand younger they expect when they have sex
with you know, like males expectwhen they have sex with a woman that
oh, I'm just gonna pull itout and you know, just to be
you know, transgressive. You justyou know, whatever come over face or
what you do, like whatever youdo in a porn movie. They expect

(54:57):
that kind of thing. I thinkfor us in oureneration, we grew up
with sort of that the airbrushed thingin the eighties and nineties where we didn't
equate pour into sex, but weequated like sort of the images of people
as like, oh, this iswhat we expect, and then it's like,
wait, this is what I expectfrom my cinematic sex, right,
But I'm not going to assume thatwhen you know, my girlfriend or my

(55:20):
wife or my one night stand takesoff her dress or I take off her
dress, that I'm suddenly going tobe like, oh my god, it's
this like in a tweet Bobby style, glossy whatever. The whole. The
interesting thing about true human sexuality isthat smells and touch and skin and shape

(55:44):
and all of that plays into it. It's it's not this, Yes,
you can watch an image on ascreen and become aroused. I'm not saying
you can't, but and that imagecan be airbrushed and well lit and you
know whatever. The idea that thepeople in these movies in the seventies were

(56:07):
real women, very often real womenwho were you know, as I say,
far from home in a foreign countryor whatever doing these scenes, as
you know, all having to bandtogether and just suck it up and kind
of do these scenes or whatever.Because they understood that. But they understood
the double edge of it that youcan you can play in a world that

(56:30):
is potentially misogynistic in other words,know that thirty percent of the people who
are going to buy tickets to thismovie are buying it because you know,
I get to see boobs, right, but also know that maybe, just
maybe the person who walks in andgoes, I'm just here to see the

(56:52):
boobs might leave going I want tosee more movies where women wield swords and
like fucking attack male oppressors and whatever, you know, like the Arena.
So if we t talking about themovies specifically, I know we're running I
can go to six fifteen, butthe because already running out of time.

(57:12):
But in Arena, which is theGladiator version of the Gladiator movie, you
know, essentially it is that theRoman emperors suddenly decide one night, they
go, well, what do wewhat can we do to liven up the
the glad gladiator matches. How aboutwe take some of these female slaves and

(57:36):
make them gladiators. And it's allabout how the women want to escape their
oppressor. But they also know thatthey have to fight to the death.
But women aren't going to in thesame way that men are just going to
be like, yeah, I willfight for survival. Women are going to
be slightly more either horrified by thator more camaraderie between them, and therefore

(58:00):
they figure out a way that throughtheir number, there's shear numbers that they
can be strong, powerful and overthrowtheir oppressors. And then in the other
movie Black Mom and White Mama,it's far more about it's far more just
Pam and I said her name earlierand I've forgot her name again. Now

(58:22):
Margaret Margaret Markov are tied together.There are three different groups of people chasing
them, and it's it's through theirintelligence, but also their endurance that they,
you know, make it out ordon't make it out, depending it's
it's it's far less. There's farless message there than there is in the

(58:45):
arena. Uh. The arena hasa little bit more of a message in
there, But like Corman says himselfin the making of I never wanted it
to be on the surface. AndI think that one of the reasons I
personal love B movies, and I'vesaid this on the diner many times,
is that the best B movies havemessage in them if you choose to find

(59:10):
it, But they also have allof the exploitation fund that you could ever
possibly want. And I think thatthe two things can live together in a
far more successful way than what wehave currently, where people are like,
this is a movie for women,made by women, about feminism, about

(59:32):
feminism, that also happens to givemillions and millions and millions of dollars to
a giant corporation that makes a dolldo you know what I mean? Whereas
back then it was like, well, we're making a scrap. You know,
there aren't many instances where Corman backedwomen. Most people you list who

(59:55):
come out of the Corman school,as it's called men, it's Deparmer,
it's de Niro, it's you know, it's it's Jack Nicholson, It's Scorsese,
it's Joe Dante, it's Alan Arkish. I mean, you could keep
listing it, right. Pam isthe one incredibly famous woman who came out
of the Corman school, not onlycame out of this Corman school, but

(01:00:19):
did multiple Corman movies, did multiplemovies with then like Jack Hill and other
like Corman acolytes. But they arenow known as Pam Greer movies. They're
not known as Roger Corman movies.They're not known as Jack Hill movies.
They are known squarely as Pam Griermovies, and that speaks to just her
sheer power and charisma and sex appealand intelligence as a as an actress,

(01:00:46):
all of which shines through in allof these movies, no matter how dumb
women in prison exploitation movies some ofthe ones she did, her character and
her intelligence just shine through and everyone. Yeah, and I think that you
know the big thing with both ofthese, But I think the arena you
kind of you hit on, whichI think is one of those areas where

(01:01:08):
kind of the modern sort of feministmovie would would wouldn't want to admit,
is a strength of this movie.But the thing about the arena is you've
got the men who are these thesebig gladiator fighters who just accept their fate,
right, I've got to go outand kids, Whereas you've got these
two women, in particular in Pancreerand and and Margaret Markoff's characters who say,

(01:01:28):
you know, no, we don'taccept this, we don't accept this,
this situation here, we're going toyou know, we're going to defeat
this. The other thing I reallyliked about this movie is that you know,
you have all those sort of likesouthern you know, like like you
think, like a gum with thewind right. But you know, you
have all these these sort of Southernlike I don't know how romantic say,
sizing movies where they would you know, sort of paint it as like this

(01:01:49):
beautiful picture. One of the thingsyou would get is you get like this
sort of like the the the houseslave, you know, the person that
was like kind of you know,attached to them. And I really liked
in the Arena how they did thatwith the Roman woman, who was the
woman who's of Roman is sad whowas sort of like teaming up with the
slave, you know, the slavemaster in that group there and and again
using that imagery of something that werecognize. And I think that's kind of

(01:02:10):
why Tarantino did that with you know, we had Samuel Jackson in Django Unchained,
you know kind of you know,use that imagery as well. But
you know those are messages, likeyou said that like Corman wasn't out and
outgoing, like I'm making fun of, you know, these Southern romanticized movies
that I grew you know that we'recoming you know, when I was coming
of age in the in the thirtiesand forties that were like, oh,

(01:02:31):
we love the South and look atlook at this this, you know,
this, this this this slave who'sdoing everything right and you know being you
know like I'm gonna make them,I'm gonna say, you know, say
something about that. We're going tosay something about that in here. But
it's not overt right, it's likeyou kind of have to dig in and
see it. And I think thesame thing with like the message about the
two women being the ones who whoare the ones that that foment the change?

(01:02:53):
Who are the Spartacus of the movie? You know, it's they're the
strong ones. And there's never apoint where even though they're both captured in
both films they're both prisoners, there'snot like a damsel in distress element.
You know, they're not waiting formen to save them. They're not being
rescued by men. They're the onesthat are rescuing the men in the case
of the Arena, but also inthe case of Black Mama, White Mama.

(01:03:16):
You know, they're they're you know, like, you know, yes,
Margaret Makoff's got her people that are, you know, looking for her,
but it's not like they come andsave the day with her. They
have to you know, it's upto Pam Greer and and Margaret Makoff to
find them right, to reconnect withthem and do it on their own.
So I think that's another piece ofit is that you know, you know,
they're the stars of the movie.They're the sort of the action heroes.

(01:03:37):
And I also like too that youknow, you think of movies like
Arena the way that they're done nowadays, they're don't you know, they're not.
It's always just more about like bringingup people, having them fight and
having rich people watch on a TVscreen or something like that. You know.
This Again, the other thing too, I liked about it was that
the slaves were the civilized people,right whereas like the Romans were the uncivilized.

(01:03:58):
That's something you see with like withFred Williamson's Westerns, you know,
where it's like he and maybe DurbilMartin are the only two African Americans in
town, and the whites are theones that are like, you know,
just completely uncivilized with them. Andyou know, so a lot of like
you say, a lot of thosekind of messages that Corman kind of puts
in the films here. So it'slike you've got boobs, you've got exploitation,
but then you've got like real commentaryin there as well, right exactly.

(01:04:20):
And I think that it's as Isaid that, I'm not again,
I'm you know, I'm very I'mvery much not against There's too many people
out there right now who are againstwhatever they consider to be woke, right,
and and someone like a Bill Maherhas become insanely nauseating about this stuff.

(01:04:43):
John Clees, a comedy idol ofmind, has also become insanely nauseating
about this right. So I'm notI'm not doing that right, I'm really
not doing that. I think Iunderstand the over correction we're making. I
understand the plea for more empathy andunderstanding and unity and diversity. I agree
with all of those things one hundredand ten percent. The fact that twenty

(01:05:06):
twenty four is still talking about thatis upsetting to me as someone who's you
know, lived through this debate.I feel like, four times now or
five times now, it's remarkable thatthis is still going on. And I
praise the people who are just tryingto make a better world. I really

(01:05:28):
do, genuinely. However, thereis something to me. The one thing
I would say that and I willtry and phrase this a little more eloquently
than the cleases in the mars ofthe world who just are like, well,
I don't understand why you know thissort of nonsense, or rather with
Bill Maher, where he's just slapsin the chair, high off his tits,

(01:05:50):
talking endlessly about stuff that no onecares about. I mean that anyone
watches that club random show, itis baffling. He is he has become
to me, he is now BillO'Reilly, He's now what's his name,
fucker, Alex Jones, He's TuckerCarson. Yeah, you know, Bill

(01:06:14):
Maher is just another one of thoseguys now, And the fact that he
can't see it is weird to me, considering he used to rally against those
guys. But I think there's something. What what I would want to get
back to is this idea of areality. So, and what I mean
by that is this, Yes,human beings should strive to be better.

(01:06:34):
Yes, human beings should be perfectlyokay with diversity and and and you know,
feminism and everything else. However,there is a reality that you know,
people like to watch movies to beentertained, or people like to watch
movies to become aroused, or peoplelike to watch movies to cathartically live through

(01:06:58):
a situation they never get to livethrough, or you know all that.
There are certain elements in movies thatexcite audiences, and they don't have to
be elements that are in real life, but they are excite movies. What
Roger Corman did and the reason whyhe's been a successful film producer for one
hundred years or you know, eightsor whatever it's been, it's been a

(01:07:21):
long time that Roger Corman has beena successful producer. He knows at its
core what either excites, thrills orentertains audiences. There's also something that we
need to say in twenty twenty four, and that is it's okay to like

(01:07:45):
exploitation movies. It's okay to watcha movie that has nudity and like the
nudity. It's okay to watch amovie that has violence and like the violence.
There's nothing wrong with it. Itdoesn't make you a bad it doesn't
make you're a racist or a sexistor whatever. That's that's where I would
draw the line with some of thestuff, right, and it listen,

(01:08:10):
when you go to the supermarket,when you go to a restaurant, when
you go out into the world,when you're voting, when you're in a
hospital, when you're when you're existingin the real world. Pro feminism,
pro diversity, pro like immigration,Like I only want a diverse, more

(01:08:30):
caring, more empathetic, more femaledriven, more a better world. I
do, genuinely. But when Iwatch movies like I'm I'm here's the best
analogy, I'm coming, I'm massivelyanti gun, massively massively massively anti gun.
You know, I can just aboutaccept guns for people who have to
hunt because they live on a farmand deer keep or foxes keep stealing their

(01:08:53):
chickens or whatever it is I can. I can just about like, or
you live where there's a lot ofbears and you need to iris shotgun to
like get the bears to run away. I can just about go, Okay,
fine, you need a gun forthat, But like, beyond that,
all other guns are stupid. Butin movies, I fucking love guns.
More guns in movies the better,right, So, And it's the

(01:09:15):
same with because movies are there.One of the reasons I love movies is,
like I say, you cathartically getto live out a situation you yourself
would never get to live out right, and hopefully while you're living out that
cathartic scenario, there is a positivemessage behind the scenario, right, whether
that is you're right, we shouldsave all the children from the mind run

(01:09:41):
by the mad you know, crazyIndian warlord right in Indiana Jones and Templar
Doom, or you know, weshould be like the women should rise up
and overthrow their male oppressors in thearena or whatever it is. And so
to take two male driven movies andmake female driven movies from them, but

(01:10:01):
in such a way that isn't like, oh, look what we did.
We took a male driven movie.We just put females in it, like
the female Ghostbusters for example, althoughI do like that movie, but for
other reasons rather than just giving whatis often seen I think by people as
giving women sort of men's scraps andbeing like, well, you know,

(01:10:27):
we've made a we've made an actionmovie, but it's a male action movie,
but we've just put a woman init. I think what I like
about the arena to your point,and Black Mama, White Mama, is
that it's all unspoken, is thatwe can sit here as men in twenty
twenty four and go, oh mygod. The genius thing about Arena is
they don't sit down and just accepttheir fate like the dumb men gladiators,

(01:10:51):
or even accept their fate and takethe ego aggrandizing her witicism of being the
best gladiator, you know what Imean, Like most male driven action movies,
it's like he's the top fighter,the elite thing. He can do
things other people can't do. Blahblah blah blah blah. This is a

(01:11:14):
bunch of women sold into slavery,forced to take arms against each other,
and you know, after one incidentthat they could not back away from legitimately
because it was literally an us orthem situation, they decide no more,
Like that was the that was it. We don't you know? That in

(01:11:35):
itself is such a powerful statement withoutever having to be like, oh,
did you see the did you seethe powerful statement we just made. Let's
replay that powerful statement again and justtalk to you about it, which is
what every feminist movie does now.Again, if that's what movies need to
do now in order to speak tothe children of today, fine, have
at it. That's the like,I'm not anti Barbie, Like, that's

(01:11:57):
why Barbie was made. It wasmade for those that generation and those children,
and it wasn't made for me.In fantastic calaluya, you know,
I became a feminist without needing tohave any of that stuff. I just
had to realize that, you know, women are actually phenomenal. So so
yeah, that's that's that's how Ifeel about that. And I just think
that and it'll all come back aroundbecause we overcorrect and then you know,

(01:12:21):
it's always two steps forward, onestep back. So it's fine, and
it's not like, you know,uh, much has changed looking at the
I watched all the Oscar movies recently, and yes, there was Barbie,
and there was Past Lives, whichuh start and and an anime of a

(01:12:43):
Fall which starred women. Uh andin the case of Barbie and Past Lives
were made by women. But everythingelse was male driven movies. And it
was the typical crop of male drivenmovies. Uh. To the point where
even something like American Fiction that Iactually rather liked American fiction has Jeffrey Wright

(01:13:04):
being mad that a female black authorhas written a very kind of like ghetto
language or stereotypical ghetto language book andit's played as ridiculous like you know,
oh, you're pregnant again, shiwandaor whatever kind of thing in the in
the scene. And I couldn't helpthat. As much as I loved Jeffrey

(01:13:29):
Wright in the movie, I couldn'thelp thinking, what if it was the
male black author who had written thatawful ghetto slang book and it was the
female author that took umbrage at it, and we watched a female main character
throughout that movie. I couldn't helpevery movie, like you know, they

(01:13:51):
kept talking about like, oh,Maestro is the story of this love affair
and this understanding woman and the blahblah blah blah blah. I couldn't help
thinking, I'd much rather a storyabout the woman then. And I think
this is what I don't understand aboutmovies today is that they talk about diversity,
and they talk about diverse casts,and they talk about female driven movies,

(01:14:15):
and they talk about female directed movies. But we still haven't found a
place in Hollywood today that is anywherenear, anywhere, even remotely near as
liberated as the even the seventies andeighties were. You look at some of
the female driven movies in the eightiesand some of the female driven movies in

(01:14:36):
the seventies. We've really forgotten wherewe came from. We really have,
and we instead of building on those, we've dialed it back to this weird
thing where you're like, well,it's kind of like a comic book movie
because it's about a toy, butwe've whipped a bunch of feminism in there,
and you go, is this thebest? Like is this really the
best we've got? Like this isthe movie that's going to make a billion

(01:14:59):
dollars. It's just I don't know, it's just so depressing to me because
it could have done so much more. Yeah, I mean, I think
we're thinking about moving forward, youknow, and sort of you know,
like you know, for Marvel's stake, where Marvel's thinking about like, okay,
what happened with the Marvels? AndI watched The Marvels thought it was
a pretty good movie. But Ithink, you know, when you look
at Pam Greer, whether it's yousee like her comments on movies like these

(01:15:21):
or just see what she says onTwitter, I mean I feel like Disney
should hire her, yeah, andget hurt as a consultant whenever they're making
a female driven movie because these moviesthat she does in the seventies here,
they should have been a template goingforward. And I think, you know,
for you and me, I thinkgrowing up, you know, these
movies were on in the afternoon.Growing up as a kid, you know,
these were on on Saturdays in theafternoons. Plus I had Wonder Woman

(01:15:43):
as a TV show was in reruns. So the idea, like when I
started seeing Cynthia Rothrock movies, theidea that there was a female led action
movie wasn't absurd to me. Yeah, I agree completely. None of it
seems that we shouldn't even talk aboutit in those terms. We only have
to because that's how everyone else talksabout things. But yeah, and I
think Pam Greer when you hear hertalk about these movies that she's made,

(01:16:04):
and I mean, you know,I think you and I in her agreement
that probably the best thing that QuentinTarantine has ever done is the stuff in
Jackie Brown with with Pam Greer andRobert Forster. It's just absolutely amazing stuff.
She could tell Marvel DC whoever,this is how you need to make
this movie, because this is howI would do these movies. This is
how when I would have made thesemovies in the seventies, are the things
that I looked for that I wantedmy characters to have. And yeah,

(01:16:27):
just just because I got naked doesn'tmean that my movie wasn't right. And
if if anything, I I youknow that there was I remember her coming
to I think it was Anne Hathaway, Anna Hathaway's defense, because I think
people were talking. I don't knowwhether it was love and other drugs or
it was it was some movie inwhich or whether just the fact that Anne

(01:16:49):
Hathaway had done nudity and and sortof multiple films or whatever it was,
someone was coming off to Anne Hathaway. Uh. And I'm remember Pam Guea
being like, you know, backwhen we were making these films in the
seventies, we never thought that bythe year, you know, twenty fifteen
or whatever, that nipples would bea problem like that nipples would be you

(01:17:13):
know, a reason and you know, a reason to be outrage And I
think one of the one of thesadder things is the fact that oh,
I mean, okay, here's Ididn't I didn't mention this in my female
driven movies, but I suppose PoorThings is, you know, this sort

(01:17:34):
of female driven movie. H Ihad some I had some issues with the
with the sexual politics and the genderpolitics in in in Poor Things a little
bit because it was desperately a filmthat was trying to have its cake and

(01:17:56):
eat it too, which is againthat's that's totally fine. It was it
also made its it made it madeits points a little blootly for my taste.
But again, there is an Oscarwinning movie. The lead actor won
won the Oscar. Uh, EmmaEmmstone, Emmastone won the Oscar Uh.

(01:18:21):
It is an incredibly sexual movie,incredibly like new to defilled movie. And
while I feel like there has beensome discussion I've seen I've not read,
but I've read. I've read storiesthat use the sentence like, you know,
Emma Stone had to defend sex scenesor whatever outside of something like that,

(01:18:46):
which and I think Poor Things hassurprised some people. For me,
actually, it was more that afterthe sort of first first of all the
sex scenes in Poor Things, Iliked how they were realistic. No one
looked like they had a lot ofmakeup on. There was you know,
Mark Ruffalo had butt crack hair andback hair, and you know, you

(01:19:10):
know, Emma Stone wasn't like coveredup with makeup or whatever, Like she
had freckles and lines and whatever likehuman bodies do. I hate to break
this to people, but human bodieshave blemishes and stuff. You don't.
You don't get out of your teamswithout beauty spots or freckles or scratches or

(01:19:31):
scars or stretch marks or whatever.And so I did. I did applaud
it for that. My only thingwas after about the third sex scene,
I was like, I get it. Do you know if I didn't need
the next eight sex scenes? Butit was fine that it had. But
I have to say, like PoorThings is probably the closest we have in

(01:19:53):
comparison in the sense that and hopefullymaybe this leads like maybe poor Things other
than Barbie. And it's very interestingto me that Poor Things won the awards
more than Barbie did. I mean, Barbie won the money, but poor
Things won the awards. The reasonwhy I'm gratified a little bit by that,
and hopefully it pushes us into amore interesting realm. Although I'd like

(01:20:15):
to see female directors doing it ratherthan a male male European director doing it.
Is that Poor Things in Barbie havevery I have one hundred and one
things in common. Actually they're verysimilar films. It's just Poor Things takes,
to my way of thinking, amuch more realistic, understandable, almost

(01:20:41):
more feminine route to its to itsmessaging, and to its meaning than Barbie
did. Barbie took a very Hollywooddirection, whereas Poor Things took more of
what I would consider poor Things tome felt like a warmen talking to me,
whereas Barbie felt like just Hollywood talkingto me. Does that make sense?

(01:21:06):
And so I'll definitely applaud Poor Thingsand say that, yes, that
is if that's where movies are going, or female driven movies or female produced
movies or whatever it is. I'dmuch rather that than the Barbies of the
world in terms of feminism and whatever. And not just because there's nudity,
but because there is nudity in sucha way that I think speaks to women

(01:21:28):
more than it speaks to men,which I think is important. But back
to the point is that I don'tthink Pamgrea ever Force saw a world post
nineteen seventy five where the side ofbare breasts or the side of nipples,
or the side of cleavage or theside of the feminine form would be you
know, untoward, or would becensored, or would be you know,

(01:21:51):
the conservative moral whatever would come downon it. Again, I think every
generation feels like we've done with theseconservative idiots, right, We're done with
them. Like we've shown them thatour art and our culture and our music
and our movies are popular. We'veshown them that, you know, black

(01:22:14):
people can be leads in movies,women can be leads in movies, Asian
b leads in movies, Like we'veshown them, right, Like, we
don't have to keep having this conversation, right, but apparently we do.
And I think that's that that isthe frustrating one. But I do wonder
like, when you watch Black Mama, White Mama. Do Republicans watch that
movie If they ever watched that movie, Probably not because it has a black
woman in it, But if they, if they do watch it, do

(01:22:35):
they side with Diaz? Are theylike, oh, I'm I'm I side
with the businessman who's just trying toget his money back, right right?
Yeah, right for sid Hag who'swho's helping out the cops, right,
you know, yeah? Are theylike, yes, great, let's I
hope that the cop Sid Haig andthe Doug Lord get their money back and

(01:22:55):
arrest these women who are just wantonlyrunning across the countryside, destroying things in
their wake. And you're like,that's probably how they watched these movies.
I've known that you make the Ithink the biggest point you make is that
is that Pam Breer she really thoughtshe was I mean, I thought,
you know, she she was hopingor wanted these movies to be groundbreaking.
She wanted to be kind of movingthings forward, so that she was hoping

(01:23:18):
that in ten years time, innineteen eighty five, there was a whole
cadre of African American women who wereleads in big budget films, and women
were getting nude and naked and itdidn't matter men probably getting you know,
everybody, can you know, likeshe was, she didn't probably expect nineteen
eighty five to be what nineteen eightyfive was. And you know, and
I think one of the things wetalked about with the term black exploitation or

(01:23:40):
exploitation of film, you know thatthat exploitation term. Hollywood used that term
in the eighties to say, well, you know, Pam Greer, Richard
Rowntree, you know whoever you know, you're Fred Williamson, You're You're just
in exploitation stuff. You're not mainstreamHollywood when you know, Richard brown Tree
should have been a leading man alongthe lines of like a Richard gear right,
you know. And I have tosay, I think if there is,

(01:24:00):
I think one of the reasons whythe early seventies filmmaking did not become
did not then lead to a Hollywoodrevolution. Two reasons. A Because as
we all know, in nineteen seventyfive ninety seventy six, Hollywood came back
in and was like, thanks formaking our studios lots of money, We're
now going to put white people backin movies again. So we know that
happened, right. But I thinkthe other thing, and I think this

(01:24:23):
is this is actually more detrimental,is that the diverse audience for those movies,
not the white audience. I thinkthe Tarantinos of the world who watched
them when they were kids, orus who found them subsequently and have embraced

(01:24:45):
them. We are predominantly white maleaudiences. And I hate to say that,
but we seem to be us talkingabout these films as wonderful as it
is as much as I enjoy it, much as I hope the listeners enjoy
it. We're not changing anything,moving the needle or getting people to recognize
this stuff. I think what issad is that the divoice audiences that did
enjoy these movies did not then carrythese actors into the eighties and the nineties

(01:25:15):
and the two thousands. Very interestingthough, that rappers, people like Snoop
Dogg and so on, and IcedTea and things did like Ice Team was
in Friend William Was a movie.Snoop Dogg put Pangrea in movies, et
cetera, et cetera. The WuTang clan when they started producing films,
they put Pangrea in the movies.A lot of that generation of black stars

(01:25:39):
do in their own way pay homageor celebrate those actors. But when you
think of the next big wave ofAfrican American filmmaking, which the end of
the eighties into the nineties what peoplewould call kind of like the Spike Lee
era. Right to this day,I've never heard any of those actors give

(01:26:04):
any kind of props, kudos,representation. They're more likely to mention Potier
or Balafonte than they are Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pamgria, and so
on. Now I know Samuel Jacksonhas been in a couple of like blaxportation
documentaries or making ofs. I knowthat he's obviously been in the Shaft franchise

(01:26:26):
and therefore met Richard Rowntree and workwith Richard Roundtrees, obviously met Pamgreen and
worked with her on Jackie Brown.But in general, these movies are hidden
the revolution that these movies were,the sexual revolution, that these movies were,
the feminist revolution, that these movieswere, the action revolution, that

(01:26:47):
these movies were, whatever you wantto tie to them. A lot of
them have been dismissed both by audiencesat love and also by unfortunately a lot
of sort of the black community aswell, and especially weirdly by And this

(01:27:10):
is like what American fiction talks aboutto some extent, and I wish actually
American fiction had gone deeper into this. There was actually a way that American
fiction could have used either the ninetiesmovies or the seventies movies as examples,
because I think just because a blackauthor or a black film maker decides to
make a movie about crime or violenceor sex or whatever, it doesn't mean

(01:27:34):
that they're saying, this is myentire culture. It's the same way that
Scorsese makes movies about gangsters. He'strying to say, like, this is
how we fucked up, this iswhat we shouldn't be doing. This is
these are the areas that we havebeen put in, whether it's Italian Americans.
Again, they were immigrants that wereoppressed, you know, attacked,

(01:27:58):
you know, were forced into alo for crime because America wasn't offering them
anything else, you know, andthen et cetera. So those kind of
stories, the Italian American stories arevery similar in a way, and a
parallel could be made there, andAmerican fiction should have done more to talk
about it. But I've heard alot of African American intellectuals who do these

(01:28:19):
sort of documentaries, you know,on Netflix or there was Horror Noir that
came out on Shutter that was aboutblack horror movies, and there was is
It Black Enough for You or whateverit was on Netflix and both of them,
and there's even one called I thinkit's either Badass Movies like Sweet Sweet

(01:28:39):
Backs, Badass Song or whatever thatcame out just after the Jackie Brown like
era that has a lot of Tarantinoin it, and a lot of black
filmmakers or black intellectuals or black professorsin these documentaries. When they're asked to
talk about these films, they talkabout them in such derogatory terms, and
and I really think it's so narrowminded. I think our culture doesn't come

(01:29:04):
from the I think our culture doesn'tchange because of sweeping documentaries that are made
incredibly straight faced about slavery or aboutyou know, in a city, gang
violence or whatever. I actually thinkour culture, if it has any chance

(01:29:24):
of changing, it's it is theyou know, it's the Samuel or Jackson,
it's the Denzel Washington's the fact thatwe have. You know, Denzel
Washington could play the equalizer. Andat no point is it that he's a
black assassin. He's just an actionhero. And that's what Fred Williamson was
trying to do thirty years, fortyyears before that. It's not that I'm
a black action hero. I'm justan action hero who happens to be black.

(01:29:47):
And it's nice for a black audienceto be able to see someone who's
black kicking ass, taking names andbeing an action hero. And actually,
I think that genre film without wantingto sound too high flutin pretentious about it.
Film is where we make our moststrides because it's literally a palatable thing.
We know audiences love. We knowaudiences like action and sex and violence

(01:30:11):
and rock music and everything else.You can put anyone in those movies that
women, black, Asian doesn't matter. You can have diverse casts in those
movies. And as long as you'reblowing shit up and having sex with someone
and you know, running away fromthe bad guy or whatever it is,
people lap it up. And sothis idea that the diversity only belongs in

(01:30:32):
movies with like, you know,heavy messages and stuff is a complete lie.
And I think if these movies gottheir do instead of people being embarrassed
by them, or instead of blackaudiences shunning them because they're not as intellectual
or whatever, I say, fuckall that. I would love to see,
you know, Spike Ley a DenzelWatcher, as someone who's still a

(01:30:55):
prominent African American voice in filmmaking,be like, you know what, I
fucking love love slaughter, I fuckinglove coffee. I fucking like and not
just as a gee. When Iwas a kid, watching Pam Gray was
like it was great I mean it'sgenuine, uh, and a genuine cinema
where that one to sound to theone person who I think fits that.

(01:31:15):
One who does that, I thinkMario van Peebles is one who and unfortunately
he just never had the success,right yeah, yeah, but I think
he was because I think, youknow, Pam Greer, the one thing
I've almost take care, I know, you get a run. Pam Greer.
She never has been embarrassed in thesemovies. She never has. She

(01:31:36):
loves what she did in these movies. She's proud of what she did in
these movies, and she should beproud of what she did these movies.
These are great, you know,she did really great work in these and
I think every time I see somesort of click baby oh best women action
stars of all time and she's noton the list, I just it.
I cringe, and I just thinkthis is you know, because the only
thing we should say is that inArena, the two women in it do

(01:31:57):
all their own stunts with real weaponsas well, right yeah. And I
mean I think the only person thatI would even put in Pambrewer's category is
Michelle Yo. I mean, youknow, Cynthia Rothbrecking can be close there
too, But Michelle Yo is probablythe only other one that I would say,
Okay, Pam Grier, you know, but Pam Greer was doing this
stuff in the seventies when Michelle Yeowas a kid. You know, Michellelee

(01:32:17):
was blaming sixty one, you know. So, I mean Pam Green was
going out to the Philippines, whichat the time was like a war torn
country full of like disease, poverty, and you know whatever else. In
fact, on Black Mama, WhiteMama, she got very sick and was
in y It was in bed foralmost three weeks with incredibly high fever.

(01:32:40):
But you know, you see herin these movies in rough terrain, running
around with no shoes very often,no pants on or no no trousers or
shorts or whatever very often, youknow, wrestling in muddy water and cold
water and against rocks, and youknow, fighting in gladiator pits or whatever

(01:33:01):
it is. You know, doingCoffee and Foxy Brown. It must have
seemed like a luxury production comparatively withthe Philippine movies. I mean, there
is no glamour to them whatsoever,like zero glamour, and there's a there's
a stark bravery to them. Justwatching them as a well versed film fanatic,

(01:33:27):
you can see there's no stun people. There's no crash mats, there's
no cushioning on their costumes or anythinglike that. Like these guys were fighting,
pulling hair out, punching each other, rolling around, wrestling whatever.
Oh natural, you know what Imean. And and the fact again that

(01:33:47):
this is not, you know,applauded, and I think, you know,
we've given black Mama, White Mama, Like we haven't given a lot
of attention, but I have tosay black Mama, White Mama. But
you know, it is a fantasticaction romp. It's an action romp.
You know, it's a series ofaction scenes, but they're all done really

(01:34:09):
well. There's a good central plot, you understand it. There isn't the
message that there is an arena.There isn't necessarily the gender or racial politics
in it that there are in othermovies, even movies like The Big Bird
Cage or whatever. But it's agood old romp. Like it's just a
great action romp with two women inthe lead. And you can't get past

(01:34:30):
how awesome that is even today.Yeah, and I think too to the
top point, I think, youknow, when think about like the messager,
you know, that kind of thing. I mean, it's like,
I think that's that's kind of whatmakes this movie so great is that,
you know, you've got some reallygood pitched action sequences. You've got shootouts,
you've got you know, and you'vegot really bad you real baddies and
vistas and and Sid Haig who youknow, and then of course the warden

(01:34:51):
you know in the I the worldrobeHaig has how did he get away with
it? It's just phenomenal. Thatlight blue shirt with the fringe, the
brown unfriendly Joe got out boy boots. Yeah, it's just amazing. And
and so for those two women,you know, to be amongst these bigger
you know, these big personalities likeVictaz and and sid Hag, but for
them to carry the movie the waythat they do, like you said,

(01:35:14):
doing all those action scenes, youknow, you it's the kind of thing
that again, I think if ifpeople are making actions, you know,
female led action movies, they shouldbe looking at a movie like this and
saying like, okay, what didthis movie do? Right? Well,
okay, you have women in prison, but you don't have women who are
damsels in distress. You know,you've got women who are fighting their way
in off every situation, Like whenthey go they come across the guy and
they try to get him to likebreak their chains apart, and he tries

(01:35:38):
to assault them and they kill him. I mean, that's them as women.
You know, they're not waiting forsomeone to rescue them. They're the
agents of their own either success ordownfall. And I also think it was
it was a very wise move toget Eddie Romero working on this. I
don't know if it's the first timehe works with Colemack, because I know

(01:35:59):
he'd done like Beast of Blood Islandtrilogy and stuff, and I forget that.
Is that a Corman or not?I don't know. And he done
the Months of Yellow Knight or whatever. But you know, Romero, for
all his you know, exploitation leanings, there is an artistry to his filmmaking.
There really is. There's a thoughtprocess, there's an artistry. He's

(01:36:20):
a great storyteller, he's a greatcinematographer, and all of his movies are
worth watching. But like he takessomething like this, which could have been
a very sort of throwaway yet anotheryou know, women in prison kind of
film. He takes this and Ican't quite explain what I mean except that

(01:36:45):
he just puts it in very realenvironments. He shoots the hell out of
it. I mean, it looksfantastic. There was a cleaned up,
you know, four K print ofthis, it would look really great.
There's some really great shots in itfor such a cheap film. You know.
He also puts some humor in there. There's like a decent amount of

(01:37:08):
humor in there. He's never Inever feel that he is like lascivious with
his camera work. Very often,like when we're talking about like Verhoven and
stuff like that. Very often,when there is nudity in a Veehoven movie,
He's like, yes, yes,yes, there's nudity, look at
the nudity. Yes, Whereas Idon't feel that from Eddie Romero. I

(01:37:30):
feel like he's a little more playfulwith it, which I think helps.
For people who have enjoyed our conversationand want more, go find Mark Hartley's
documentary Machelley Maiden's Unleashed. It's fantasticand there's a rich reign of Filipino filmmaking
that is both like wildly irresponsible anddangerous while also being a phenomenal breeding ground

(01:37:56):
for directors, writers, actors,stunt performers, you know, monster movies,
action films, female driven movies.I mean, it's just once you
get into like a vein of cinema. I always think of those like seventies
Filipino films as like it's like thisvein of it began at a certain year
and ended at a certain year,and you can kind of consume all the

(01:38:18):
films made from that time. AndI love documentary. It's like the Mark
Hartley also did not quite Hollywood,the Osploitation one, and Osplitation is another
one where you go, Okay,I want to watch all Austrian Australian films
from like nineteen sixty eight through thenineteen seventy eight because it's just a good
period of experimental cinema and artistry andaction, and yeah, people should dive

(01:38:41):
into it, definitely. Yeah,And I think, yeah, so just
to your point on Beast of theYellow Beast of the Yellow Knight, that
was a Corman production, so itwas okay, yeah, yeah, but
yeah, I think that's something thatwe often forget about these Filipino films,
is that whether it's Romero or Serialeight Santiago, or when they had the
Italian directs come over like Bruno Mattaior Antonio Margariti. They brought like this

(01:39:03):
quality of directing to these movies.Like there they were real artists as directors,
and I mean, you know,Albert Pion talked about Serious Santiago as
being someone like he said, hegot his start editing trailers for Santiago films,
so he kind of understood that artistry. It's an element to these things
that I think we take for grantedthat like with filmmaking today, with directors

(01:39:23):
today, there's this whole art utar kind of thing and you know,
you got to make a movie orsomething like that. These guys were like
legit professionals but also artists and theythey there is something about how the way
they crafted these movies that I mean, I think again going back to Black
Mama, White Mama, with thewith the Lady said it's not lascivious.
The fact that they used the wardenas the lens through which we're seeing the

(01:39:44):
naked women like cleaning themselves and youknow, getting cleaned up. I thought
was a really great touch there andwas really really great that you know,
we see it now. Of coursewith the eighties sex were off with the
team's team maales for doing that kindof thing. Doing it this way,
like you said, it didn't makeit as lascivious, right, it made
it you. Then it gives youa dimension to the warden, and it

(01:40:04):
makes you judge the warden. Itdoes not make you judge the women in
the shower. You're not contemning,belittling, leering over or anything the women
in the shower. You are intriguedby what the warden is doing, and
then you suddenly realize, oh,what a hypocritical, you know, two

(01:40:29):
sided woman this warden is. Youknow, on one hand, she's attracted
to these people and wants to bedthem, and on the other hand she's
sort of vicious and violent and andand puts up with all the degradation they
have to go through as female prisonersin this place. So I always love
that kind of stuff. And actuallyit's often the wardens in these movies that

(01:40:53):
that have a really interesting personality orreally interesting side character that sort of comes
to play later in the movie.And so yeah, it's just a wonderful
way to go. Okay, howdo we do a woman in the shower
scene, but we actually make itintriguing for the audience rather than judgmental or

(01:41:15):
belittling for the for the women inquestion. And I think, yeah,
it's a wonderful way to to setit up. But I also think that
it did because these directors come fromcountries where genre film is not belittled.
And even what what blows my mindis, even with the recent like Marvel
Boom and Star Wars Boom and allthis stuff, we're still not calling them

(01:41:39):
genre films. We call them Marvelmovies or big blockbusters or whatever. We
call them anything that is apparently palatable. If you call them action films or
comedy films or you know whatever,people are like, no, no,
no, no, like that's that'sthat. Liam Neeson does action films,
Robert Downey Junior does Marvel movies.You're like, all right, but you

(01:42:00):
know what I mean. So,and I think that there is a language
there that denigrates these films that weneed to get away from, because the
best I will take to my deaththe opinion that the best films that have
ever been made on earth anywhere arenot sweeping epics in which people mumble three

(01:42:23):
lines and stare out of windows andwatch fields of wheat blowing in the wind,
and whatever they are, you know, dirty, grimy b movies made
in the toughest conditions, or horrormovies, or genre films or action films
made in the toughest, weirdest conditions, but which revealed true art in them,

(01:42:46):
and reveal true humanity in them,and reveal true messages in them.
And I just don't know that hollywouldall ever get there, but thankfully we
have. As I said, thedocumentaries like what Mark Hartley made, and
he made three in a row hemade and they're eight, each less successful

(01:43:08):
than the one before. But thebest two he made were not quite Hollywood
about Osploitation and Machete Maidens Unleashed.About the Filipino movies, both of the
seventies. I'd strongly, strongly recommendpeople watch those because if you want to
be like I hear you, John, But how do I get into these
movies and how do I discover them? And how do I know who to
watch and what not to watch?And blah blah blah blah blah. Those

(01:43:30):
documentaries are a great place to start, because they are I love documentaries like
that, because I will watch them. I'll see a clip from a film
I've never heard of, and I'llgo, I want to watch The Mad
Doctor of Blood Island, Like Iwant to find that movie and watch it,
even if it's you know, twothirds of it is mad and I
don't understand it, or it's weird, or it's bad or it's whatever.

(01:43:50):
Like, there's enough in the clip, and there's enough in what they talk
about it that made me write itdown. And that's why I've always liked
documentaries on film, all periods offilm, even the ones I mentioned earlier,
like horror, noir and stuff.Listen, if you don't know that
there are a huge, great sceneof black horror movies, fucking watch harror

(01:44:10):
noir. Make a fucking list andstop watching those movies, you know what
I mean. That's that's what Idid. Yeah, And I think for
these one thing, you know,for people, especially in the States who
get too b just look up oneof the movies we have here and then
click on Pambreer and see all themovies that come up. Because a lot
of her seventies stuff is on thereright now, whether it's stuff that she
did on her own stuff that shedid with Fred Williamson. You know,
all all of these movies here areon there and you can watch them,

(01:44:33):
get a taste of them and belike, Okay, you know, now
it's time to go get the Bluray or get whatever, you know,
get the physical copies that you've got, because you know, then you get
like the behind the scenes stuff.But I mean, I think, like
you said, those documentars are anothergreat way to do it. I mean,
but you know, this stuff hereis like it's it's it's like this
treasure trove of just really great ideasand execution and and and and performances that

(01:44:57):
like you said, it's just we'resitting there that like, you know,
we know, you know, there'sthere are plenty of people out there that
recognize Pam Grier. I mean,she has tons of follows. I mean,
you know, if you know,if I post to Pamgrea think people
be like, oh yeah, youknow, I love pamgrist She's right now,
so people recognize who she is.But I don't think enough people,
like I think right there are Idon't think that the Marrow when they do
Top ten Action Stars, and SigourneyWeaver is number one around hand. I

(01:45:19):
like Sigourney Weaver and alien and aliens, and I get it, and I
understand that like most adolescents in theeighties watched her in her underwear holding a
large gun and went, oh,yeah, there's a woman action star.
But Sigourney Weaver is not a femaleaction star. She was in some action
films, but she is not afemale action star in the way that Pam

(01:45:41):
gre Is, Cynthia roth Rock,Michelle Yeo and others, and even Michelle
Rodriguez and others. Uh, youknow, yeah, no, I just
make my I think my last part. I think just yeah, kind of
just what you said. I thinkthat, you know, Pam Greer,
I think, you know, ifwe're trying to figure out, like I
think these movies gave me what Iwanted, right like this is the bluepir
or this this tells you why?You know, how could you make a

(01:46:01):
Madam Went better? Well, Imean you could follow one of these movies
here and you could have done it. You could had Sidney Sweeney and Dakota
Johnson doing Black Mama, White Mamaor The Arena or something something like this,
and people would have loved it.I think I think it would have
been big, it would have beencohesive, it would have made sense.
But yeah, Hollywood just they're afraidof these movies for whatever reason. And
I think right these are the blueprintfor how to make Look at was it

(01:46:26):
Thaul, Blood and Thunder that wasbasically a gladiator movie or like a third
of it was a gladiator movie.That Ragnarok or Wagnarock, whatever the m
was where he meets the Hulk onin the space planet and fights him in
a gladiator ring. Like that's basicallya big movie and a big Marvel movie.
Like that's basically what it is.So let's do more of that.
I agree with you, Matt,Thank you ever so much for talking.

(01:46:46):
Pam Gray, Roger Coleman seventies awesomeaction female stuff with me today. Man,
we will do this again. Thanksso much. Always a pleasure and
speak against Sue. Thanks yea talkhave a good one all right by grab

(01:47:36):
home, love moy stopping, getfreeze one more ba that the drawing of

(01:47:56):
the art. There are spot oneswaptop side hold out fault fetter you shoo,
I fill to ron cross the backNo hope that lost lord. Oh

(01:48:31):
while your thoughts we do the crowdhad better around enough to know what's bet
y'all things up half so the ideasget to place last, and your fans

(01:48:57):
lost the time planning. Don't Iwish your jose waiting the dead were rested

(01:49:28):
up. They say, you find, but they won't let you stroll.
I don't see if it doesn't makethe smile in effect? Who's I even

(01:49:53):
know? I've never bo Plenty ofdancers, but no one wants to do
the work. It's mostly just thechansons who hold on to one. The
bird have been around. You're not. You know what's a god dast to

(01:50:27):
play all You will fla most thetime and plenty over going. You know
what? Just win any specs SS, S, S still, schools,

(01:51:13):
stores, places and things, ss slost storms, s

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Season 2 - Ep 9 - Pam Grier Night at the Sizzler - The Arena & Black Mama, White Mama

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Season 2 - Ep 9 - Pam Grier Night at the Sizzler - The Arena & Black Mama, White Mama