Partagas Cifuente Maduro Toro: The Fifth Element (Movie Review)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike.

(00:05):
And I'm Nate.
And it just now occurs to me that I made Mike last time say what cigar we're smoking.
So I'm going to do it again.
Mike, what are we smoking?
Because it's the brand he loves to pronounce.
Apparently it's partegas, but it should be partagas.
C-Fuentes.
Partegas.
Yeah, partegas, whatever.
A?
A. Partegas.

(00:26):
C-Fuentes Maduro.
And this is a probably a toro length.
It is definitely not a Robusto.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Sometimes they say on the little cellophane, but sometimes they don't.
Yeah, it's a toro.
It says toro.
Perfect.
It is a toro.
So my level eye worked today.
Yes.
And rule of thumb or whatever, right?

(00:48):
Yep.
Guestimation.
We're recording this one in person yet again.
And yes, we're both drinking Guinness warm this time.
Nate had cold ones last time.
The horror.
The horror.
The abuse I go through for this show.
That's right.
I drink my Guinness at basement floor temperature.
As it's intended to be drank.
Right.
Yeah, there's a big thing.
I spent a month in London and a lot of people were like, oh, they drink their beer warm

(01:12):
there.
It's not really warm.
It's just a few degrees or 10 degrees or something like that warmer, but it depends
on the style of beer.
Warmer than we keep it in America.
Americans want everything cold, cold, cold, I guess.
But that's not how you get the good, good flavors out of some of this beer, some of
the beer styles from what I've heard.
I'm not a beer kind of surer snob or anything like that.

(01:32):
My beer fridge is so cold that it'll freeze pops.
I keep it as cold as humanly possible because American style beers are typically designed
to be drank almost on the verge of freezing.
There's nothing better on a hot March day than opening a can of soda or pop or Coke
and having it kind of ice into a slushie while you're drinking it.

(01:55):
That is true.
And then that's my annual case of Pabst I keep very, very cold.
Yes.
This cigar is very firm in the hand, much firmer than the Rocky Patel.
I still get a good squish, not terribly squishy, but it's not rock hard or anything like that.
It's not like gas station cigar.
Beak for yourself, man.
Oh, oh yeah, the cigar.

(02:16):
No, it's, but it is a little firmer than the Rocky Patel that we did, that we smoked in
the first episode.
So it is, and these were both kept in the same humidor as the rock.
And this one, this one smells great.
So far it tastes really good.
It is very, uh, wouldn't call it spicy.
Very flavorful though.
It's flavorful in a kind of a mature way.
It's almost fermented.

(02:37):
I would say, you know, it's got that like body profile that you want out of a very dark
cigar.
Yes.
Yes.
I mean, fermented to me kind of makes me think of, you know, vinegar, some kind of like a
vinegary, but that's not at all what we're getting.
I mean, it's, um, like a, like a barrel aged almost taste often.
So just to be clear, cause I don't know.
Word associations are kind of weird because I had a boss once that said, well, give it

(03:01):
the old college try.
And to me college try means not really try at all and just wing it.
But that's not the official definition of the phrase called try.
And my current, uh, one of my current supervisors believes that a showstopper is a bad thing,
but a showstopper is something is so good.
You have to pause while everybody applauds at how good it was and you want showstoppers.

(03:23):
And they're like, we can't release this because there's too many showstoppers.
I'm like, cause it's too awesome.
Like I'm not following you here.
That makes no sense to me.
It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
I've always understood the showstoppers.
Like you want that snap, you want to blow up his ass, you know, like, um, that's like,
it's the thing that's going to get everybody like cheer or stand up in the chair and that's
like a strategy in sport where you start off with like something really snazzy to quote

(03:48):
unquote intimidate your opponents or something of that nature.
Yep.
It's like, oh, we're, we're fucked.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To bring up the B word, which we did not bring up last episode.
So it's season, uh, season four, episode two, we're going to bring up the B word very early
on.
Let's do it.
Very good.
Well, when you do Baker style bowling, you want your first bowler to be the second best

(04:11):
bowler on the team usually.
And you want them to be impressive.
Like you want, you want to start that first frame with a show of force.
And then in your sixth frame, which is when the first bowler bowls again, you want to
continue on the strikes, hopefully, but you know, you want a strike, your fourth, your
fifth and your sixth frame.
So you want that to be a continuation.

(04:31):
And the first ball down the lane, you want to be a splashy, impressive event and be like,
oh, if this is their first bowler, they're going to, they're going to, they're going
to stomp on us.
Yeah.
You know?
So you want to have a lot of force or intimidation tactics work in all sorts of things, not just
the gladiatorial Coliseum ring of Baker style bowling.
Yes.

(04:51):
Yes.
How often do you look up to the, the bowling emperor for the thumbs up, thumbs down in
Baker style bowling?
Oh, just, you know, you, you, you gotta run your team like a tight ship.
You know what I mean?
Like you missed the spare.
You're fucking gone.
Yep.
Yep.
You're not playing the Coliseum anymore, bud.
Yeah.
And then in the back, you know, your punishment's going to be on Monday.

(05:12):
Yeah.
I saw a video online.
I should have sent it to you.
It was, uh, if all sports were played with a bowling ball, which went about as you would
expect trying to like kick a bowling ball into a soccer net and throwing it so forth
and so forth.
80 yards down the field or whatever.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, uh, fluent in football.
I don't know how long you can throw a football.
I don't know.
Probably a hundred yards these days.

(05:33):
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's there's a, they train for it.
Yeah.
The guy in the, the chiefs, he could throw the ball far.
Yeah.
I don't know his name though.
Yeah.
Is that the Taylor Swift guy?
Uh, no, not the Taylor Swift guy.
No, I don't think so.
I hear chiefs that I think Taylor Swift and it's messed up our society these days.
I actually read an article before you came over about the Redskins because they're going

(05:53):
to bring back the name and they did.
Yeah.
Because who got upset about the name change?
Yeah.
Woke liberals.
No, no, no.
Who got upset about them changing the name away from redskins?
Oh, native Americans.
There you go.
Just like a Hispanics, Mexicans are mad that when you want to ban Speedy Gonzalez, like
they love Speedy Gonzalez from what I've heard.
Yeah.
He's a good guy.

(06:14):
He's a good guy.
He's the hero.
He's the hero of the, of the show.
So, uh, yeah, they went down this deep dive and apparently the old Redskins logo was based
on a real person.
Yeah, it was.
And they had a committee with like native American leaders of the native Americans at
the time.
I watched a little short, they had a short little clip of, uh, like the grandson and
the son of the guy who helped design the logo.

(06:35):
And they were like, yeah, we're bringing it back.
Like this is a good thing.
And they had the whole history behind painting your skin red.
This is all Blackfoot, uh, in Montana tribal history they went through.
And for sure it was pretty interesting.
I thought it was a unique, you know, and something that if you weren't, if you're not explained
to it, it could be easy to say, oh yeah, it's racist, but you go down a layer and it's like,

(06:57):
well, no, it's legit.
Yeah.
And I think that's what culture is trying to mature past re purely being reactionary,
I guess.
I've seen so many, so many memes online, uh, about news stories about, let's say the DEI
initiatives being canceled and everything.
And then most of this stuff has happened post the last election and people are saying nature

(07:20):
is healing.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, they, the New York times recently to us, this is now six months after the fact
for the listener release that they, uh, what would you say?
Stifled and hit a story that DEI had the exact opposite effect of its intended goal, which
Nate and I discussed.
And we did, of course, of course it did.
Like if you go to a DEI course, it makes you feel hatred in your heart.

(07:43):
Like for sure it's like, uh, not a happy time.
And I've been to many of these over my years and it's never a happy time.
Nobody's leaves that being like, Oh, I think that I'm happy today.
I should go hug someone who doesn't look like me.
Yeah.
Like, Oh, this is great.
Like we're making progress in this country.
Like you never get that feeling of like, you know, 1955 was a shit hole in a lot of ways.
Like you don't get the feeling, Oh, we're better than 70 years ago.

(08:06):
Yeah.
Same chance of nuclear war breaking out.
Same.
Uh, anyway, that's not really what we're talking about though.
Is it?
Well, kind of all I can say is like, Mike, why is it so dark in here?
Aziz light.
It's not that dark, Nate.
It's just not sunny out.
It's winter time.
Never sunny.
The glyphs aren't going to decipher themselves.

(08:28):
We are going to talk about the fifth element, which we mentioned last episode.
We briefly mentioned it because they did, they put it back in theaters and I mentioned
I didn't get to go to theaters to see it, but I watched it on Blu-ray and I think it
was the very first time I ever saw it on Blu-ray because the Blu-ray menu was distinct enough
that I would have remembered having watched it in HD before, but it's been many years
since I'd seen it.
Of course I watched it quite a bit on DVD and everything.

(08:50):
Right.
I've seen it on TV a thousand times.
Yeah.
I went to see it in theater and-
My Sarah actually dressed up as Lelou Dallas for one of our Halloween parties and I have
some photos that I'm probably not even going to put on the Patreon for paid followers.
We'll have to do a nice Ash's Only Fans or something.

(09:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lelou.
Because she does not wear much in the movie.
No, no.
Which is why it's a terrible, terrible movie and nobody should ever watch it.
It's disgusting.
Where is it in HD, by the way?
No, I'm just kidding.
Exactly.
It's a classic film and Fifth Element's a classic film now.
I would say it qualifies.
Oh, 100%.
That's certainly getting re-released in theaters.
They don't randomly choose the pictures they show in theater.

(09:32):
No, they don't.
I know the theater that did it down by where I live is Imagine.
There's a location closer to me and then there's a location closer to my buddy and that's where
he frequents.
I used to be an AMC fan boy, but their theaters have rapidly declined in quality of... They
smell like piss now.
So I don't go there and Imagine's have good prices.

(09:56):
They're not a sponsor, but they do one classic movie a month showing because a lot of these
theaters have multiple screens and they'll do one a month.
And so I missed, they did this year, 2024, they also did Neverending Story, which is
one of my favorite films.
The German cut is a really good differing cut than the American version because they

(10:20):
use the original German score and so there's no poppy disco tracks, Neverending Story in
there and it gives you a bit more backstory on the Wolf, but that's neither here nor there
because we're talking fifth element, but that theater chain does one a month of classic
films and it's like a two day run of vintage films or classic films.

(10:41):
They did Christmas Vacation, Neverending Story, other older films that they bring back to
put on the big screen for people.
Sure, we watched it at Marcus Theater Group in Waite Park.
We drove down to Waite Park and my wife has a Kia, so we have three cities in our area.
There's Fargo, Duluth and Waite Park.
We have to go to one of those towns every time we need an oil change or any sort of

(11:03):
maintenance.
We make a trip and take care of that sort of stuff when we do.
And then Marcus does, often they do Studio Ghibli productions.
They have a whole series.
Oh sure, yeah.
It's actually pretty nice.
I enjoy it.
It's the first one that we went to for that.
I think that we went to when they released Beauty and the Beast in 3D, I think we went
to Waite Park because Sarah loves that film.

(11:26):
That's a decent film to watch in 3D because it's bright and there's colors.
Buddy and I went to see Thor, Dark World in 3D and partook in some plant that grows in
the ground somewhere, I guess.
But everything was, there was more than 50 Shades of Grey and so 3D was not conducive
for that film because you can't really distinguish the foreground, background, mid-ground of

(11:49):
the film when everything's just grey.
So not a good 3D film, but for me anything that's animated or brightly colored is good
for 3D.
Otherwise, the colors get too muddled if it's a black and white film or a grungier film
that doesn't have much color.
Yeah, I mean, 3D is a gimmick.
You have to have a certain style of film.
I watched Harry Potter in the chamber, no, not in the chamber.

(12:11):
It was Order of the Phoenix in 3D.
Okay, because that's one of the later ones.
Yeah, it's one of the later ones.
And those are pretty dark in like blue tone or grey tone.
Everything's kind of the same tone, color palette.
We saw it, I went down to the Minneapolis and saw it in 3D IMAX when it came out.
And the flying scenes were kind of cool, but other than that, it didn't really serve any
function.
The earlier films would be cool when it's more brightly colored, they're playing the

(12:34):
Quidditch.
Like that kind of stuff would be neat or could potentially be.
Harry Potter, my wife and I was last week just as a film festival at home or whatever.
And I made the joke like, oh, there was no world.
They don't really have very good lighting.
They need some electricians here.
They need more Illuminatus or whatever it was, right?
They need some more illumination here.

(12:57):
Discover that as some light bulb.
They could do the glow globes from Dune.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can get light anywhere you want.
Absolutely.
You pay the right patents, fees.
Right.
And then you can get the key.
Anyway, that's coming up.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I'm working through Machine Crusade, but we need to summarize the plot for Fifth
Element.

(13:18):
Yes.
And then we can start talking about Fifth Element.
And if anything surprised us on our reviewings, I don't know the last time or the previous
time you'd seen it since seeing it in theaters.
It had been a couple of years.
I know I watched it within a day or two of you watching it because it was only in theaters
for two days, I think.
Yeah, something like that.
I think it was one day.
So we watched it almost the same, probably the same day.
Yep.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the plot of the movie.

(13:38):
Starts out.
Ancient Egypt.
Ancient Egypt.
Not saying it was aliens, but aliens.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1912 or whatever year it was, they discover this tomb that has all the hieroglyphs.
And it's a German guy.
And he's got his assistant.
And there's a priest there.
But is it as the...
Because there's...
Well, we'll call it this way.

(13:58):
There's two white guys.
An older white guy, a younger white guy.
The older white guy is the professor, whatever.
And then the younger white guy is his assistant or his son.
It wasn't really...
It's his assistant.
It wasn't really clear.
It doesn't really matter.
He's an artist and he's trying to do it.
It doesn't matter to the point.
Well, he's trying to...
Yeah, he's drawing sketches of the wall and kind of translating what the guy is telling

(14:20):
him to write down.
So he's the scribe or something.
So yeah, I guess assistant.
It wasn't really clear if he was a son or nephew.
I mean, back then you'd bring your family members along because they're cheaper than
anything else.
Yeah, yeah.
Treat your family like business partner and all that.
Yeah, so they find this discovery and they're like, oh, this is gonna be the biggest thing
ever and the priest comes up.
Well, and they're supposedly friendly with the priest because the priest allowed them

(14:41):
in there.
Yeah, the priest allowed them in there.
And they knew the priest and the priest was then going to poison their glasses of...
Wine.
Just water.
Was it water?
Was it wine?
I think it was just water.
He brought in water.
He's like, you must be famished.
And the guy was like, no, no, no, no.
This is a huge discovery.
We need something better than water and dumps it out.
Yep.
And the guy gets...
Bring the wine.
And then the priest is like, he's a nervous priest, you know, like, because he's trying

(15:02):
to keep the peace with who we're soon to be introduced to.
But at initial viewing, you don't know why he's nervous or why he's trying to kill them
or other than he's trying to keep the secret that they just discovered, but then why would
you men...
Anyway.
Yeah.
And then the horribly clunky aliens show up and they basically kill them other than the
priest and take the secret rocks that are supposed to unleash this fifth element force,

(15:28):
the super being.
Yeah.
And did they kill them on purpose or it was kind of just a haphazard mess of stuff because
these aliens are kind of like peace loving and be ready because they're fighting some
bigger force that the priest is aware of and they're aware of, but the two Germans are
not aware of.
Yeah.
It's some alien supernatural type deal.

(15:50):
And then of course...
But the ship design was pretty cool.
Like a little landing appendage that kind of came down.
And I mean, that's kind of the coolest thing about sci-fi movies, especially earlier sci-fi
movies is they all have their own very unique spaceship designs.
Like 2001, the Space Odyssey doesn't look...
The spaceship doesn't look anything like any other spaceship.
And Star Trek versus Star Wars, the big main ones, right?

(16:13):
And then in here, the spaceships and stuff are very unique as well.
It's cool.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
It's not a JJ Abrams Star Trek where it's just an action movie based on Star Trek.
Yeah.
It's not derivative of something else.
It's a pretty unique...
Very unique design.
Then we fast forward, now we're in the future.
Bruce Willis is a taxi driver.
Bruce Willis is a taxi driver in New York City.

(16:33):
But ex-military.
Ex-military.
Oh, super secret elite ex-military.
Of course.
It has to be.
Yeah.
It has to be.
Yeah.
Has an ex-wife, I think.
And then his mom keeps calling him all the time throughout the film.
Yeah.
She's like a nanny person.
Yeah.
He's like the stereotypical Brooklyn taxi driver from the 80s.
But he's like...
Served in Vietnam.
Now he drives a taxi cab.

(16:53):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But drives a taxi cab.
He's close to getting his taxi license revoked.
He's got a couple of points left on his license or something.
Yeah, basically.
He lives in a dystopian-esque futuristic view of New York.
I don't know if it's 100% dystopian, but he lives in a little one-room thing.
And his shower pops out of the floor, and then it goes down, and his table to eat is

(17:15):
on top of the shower.
So it's all like...
Yeah, and his bed self-changes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he goes in and out.
And it's like a closet that he lives in.
And they have a...well, this is future...further in the film, he has a window that opens, and
then the fast food restaurant pulls up, and it's like a little ship, but it's a...
Yeah, but it flies.
A hover ship.
Literally a flying ship.
But it looks like an old Chinese galleon or something like that.

(17:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's very visually pleasing, and it's fun and light and very colorful.
And the CGI for all the flying cars is actually decent.
Oh, it looks legit.
Yeah.
It looks great even today.
Yes.
Yeah.
And it's layered CG over actual objects that look like what they were supposed to look
like.
Yeah.

(17:57):
So yeah, Bruce Willis, super secret spy.
Yeah.
He does his taxi driver stuff.
And he gets a visit from his ex-military buddy who's still in the military advising the president.
Yeah, and he's like, you're the last colonel.
You got to...yeah, you're the only one of your team that survived, and you were highly
decorated, and we need you for this mission.
And he's like, nah, I'm interested in that.
And then...
Right, he fights against local scum.

(18:18):
Yeah.
And he's like, I'm interested in the crazy sci-fi weapons.
Yeah, yeah, because somebody wears a hat with a JPEG printout of what the hallway looks
like from the security camera.
So it looks like nobody's out there, but he rings the doorbell, and he opens it, and there's
this tweaker out there.
Yeah, very clearly a tweaker too.
Yeah.
And then it's like Bruce Willis has this whole rack of confiscated weapons, allegedly.
People have tried to rob him, and he's like, you know what you're talking about.

(18:40):
Disarms them, sends them out.
It does a great job of setting the tone where it's like...
Without a whole lot of exposition, it's all showing.
It's all showing.
And more movies would do that these days, is you show.
You don't tell.
You're a movie.
You're a visual medium.
Show it.
You can show it and have these details that on future viewings, you pick up more and more
things.
Well, Nate, you would have to try to create a film instead of creating media for a streaming

(19:04):
service for that to be the case.
You mean I'd have to try and create a film instead of one of the modern day PowerPoint
slides?
That's all text?
Even though it allows you to put pictures in there and a separate section for notes
that nobody else sees, but you have to put all your words on the slide and then read
every word verbatim.
Don't put bullet points for notes.
Just put your notes on the slide and then pick a background color that makes it very

(19:25):
hard to read the notes so that when you're reading it verbatim, I've already read the
slide five times before you get through the second sentence because you're a slow reader.
Don't do a dark background with bright yellow letters, something where you can really see
it.
Yeah.
We were talking, we want a gray background and then slightly darker gray text.
That would be great.
If we could do that, that would be fantastic.
Beef supreme.
That's what we need.

(19:47):
Or pick one of those colorblind tests where there are the dots and the numbers of a slightly
different color in the middle.
Just do that for the text.
Do that so nobody knows what's going on.
Yeah, it'll be a good time.
It'll be a good time.
Yeah, so there's the four stones and I think they actually, they showed the stones in the
beginning bit.
They did and that's where the aliens took it.
They left behind the key.

(20:08):
The aliens came and collected the stones.
They left behind the key to open the little sanctuary where the stones need to be placed.
One of the aliens die as well, so it's not just people.
So they're not shown to be aggressive and negative.
No, no, no.
It was a war.
They're trusted alien and things went south.
And then the fifth element, the hieroglyph looks like a person, so they assume it's
like a person or some other kind of thing.

(20:29):
And they take the case and go.
And then, yeah, they cut forward to modern times.
Bruce Willis says no to the thing.
And they're also investigating this like black hole slash planetoid sphere type of thing.
Yeah, that shows up and they attack it.
And every time they shoot it, it gets bigger.
And it attacks back.
And of course, Ian Holm is there and he's the new, he's the descendant of the priest
or part of the priesthood.

(20:50):
His predecessor of some variety.
Yeah, post-decessor because his predecessor was the one in Egypt and he's carried on the
line and he's got the little fifth element symbol thing on his belt buckle, whatever
it is.
And the president who's a black guy with a bad eye.
Yeah, he's trying to advise the president that they need to find these stones and the
fifth element thing and there's a way to defeat this thing and they shouldn't shoot it with

(21:13):
missiles.
But of course, the military is raw, let's shoot it with missiles and more missiles.
And then at one point, even the ship commander was like, what's bigger than what we just
sent at it?
And they're like, nothing, sir.
So he complete the military, you know, industrial complex.
Yeah, it's the same old story that you hear everywhere.
And then the aliens show up, which there are aliens in this universe.

(21:33):
They're already aware of other species.
They have yacht liners off to other planets for vacations and things like that.
Yeah, it's future verse.
These aliens show up, they get attacked by these other evil aliens who look like pig
men largely and the story ensues.
They were like, oh.
Yeah, and I don't know if you know this, Mike, but they take a hand from one of the slain

(21:57):
aliens who they're just trying to get information from who turns out to be Lelou and they reconstruct
the entirety of the body from the hand and the hand is in a glove and the glove is holding
the one handle from the case that the stones were in.
And later you see it and there's only one handle on the case, but it's never explained
explicitly.

(22:17):
But if you look closely, when that scene happens and they put the hand of the alien in the
Reconstructor, it's in a glove holding the handle of the stone case.
Oh, nice.
That's good detail.
I did not necessarily pick up.
So anyway, the ship gets attacked.
They find it.
They find one DNA sample, of course, and it's of Lelou.
They don't know that at the time.
They reconstructed.

(22:37):
Well, they think it was a man because all these aliens look in their suits.
Yeah, their armor, the alien beings.
And they're like, oh, this has 40 chains.
They do all this techno-vabble.
Yeah, it's got the quadruple the amount of DNA points a human has or something like that.
Right.
And it's supposed to be the perfect being.
Perfect being.
And of course, it's Mila Jovic who, very attractive.
At the time was the perfect being.

(22:59):
Yeah, very attractive.
And you get some nudies, of course.
This is a 90s sci-fi film.
So you got to get some naked pics of the supermodel that is your main actress.
Riving around in the reconstruction tube.
I wanted to bring this up.
So we have Bruce Willis, who's one of the biggest movie stars of the day.
We have Gary Oldman, who's one of the biggest movie stars of the day.

(23:20):
We have The Priest.
What's his name?
Ian Holm.
Ian Holm, great actor, legendary.
Yeah, Bill Bo from Lord of the Rings.
Yep, yep, yep.
And then we get Mila Jovic, who's the biggest supermodel of the era in one of her very early
acting films.
And she's good.
Oh, yeah.
So where are these talented people now?
Where are the supermodels who can act, who will show a titty here and there, but then

(23:41):
also do action films and comedy and are truly talented despians, if you will?
Yeah, I would put up Mia Goth.
Okay.
I'd put up Anne Hathaway.
I think she could do it.
Just who I've seen from X, Pearl, and Maxine.
It's a horror trilogy in the vein of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original one.

(24:02):
But there's way more gore in these than there ever was in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because
all the gore in Texas Chainsaw Massacre took place off camera.
But they were so effective at showing or leading you to believe what was happening.
I have seen the original.
Yeah.
It is beautifully shot.
It's a great film.
And so it's in the vein of that.
But she plays dual roles in X, one role in Pearl and one role in Maxine.

(24:27):
But the range of her acting is far beyond anybody you would ever put in a horror movie
generally.
I was blown away.
And I am not often blown away by people's acting in films these days.
It was a horror film.
I was going in expecting a blood fest, which yes, there was some of that.
Which is what you do there for.

(24:48):
But the complexities of the character and her acting through it and everything.
She's been in some other things like Lars Von Trier's, she was in Nymphomaniac part
one and part two, which I haven't seen yet.
So she's not afraid to be not wearing anything on camera.
And she's not wearing stuff in these films sometimes.
But her acting chops are definitely there.

(25:09):
And Anna Hathaway has publicly said that she would do nudes for films if it made sense.
She's a good actress and attractive and she's been in a lot of films that are very good.
She's good in them.
She's good in them.
She's got some range.
So I guess there are actresses out there.
It's just that maybe we're soured on the modern media environment.
Maybe it's the modern media.

(25:31):
I think there's a fine line because there are so many, there's a whole sub genre of
films, black exploitation films.
I love myself some black exploitation.
I love it.
And that's all sub genre.
But you could get into the argument like, is it exploitation for exploitation sake?
Is it film for film sake?
Is it, you know, what is it?
What isn't it?
You can make the argument, Pam Greer is Pam Greer.

(25:52):
She's legendary for a reason.
Well, then you got people like Tom Hanks who talk about this apologizing publicly for playing
a man with AIDS in Philadelphia story or something.
A gay man with AIDS.
It was because of the gay part, not the AIDS part.
It's like ridiculous.
I understand that.
But I think the modern world has gotten to the point where nobody wants to offend anybody.

(26:12):
So you lose out on some of the Fifth Element stuff.
Not that it's super racy, but you're not getting the same sort of thing.
Yeah, you're doing what you want because it makes sense in the film and it makes it better.
It works in context.
There's not gratuitous nudity in the Fifth Element.
You can make a PG-13 cut.
The nudity isn't an important part of the story other than it's supposed to show off.

(26:37):
I'd say yes and no because you've got the priest, Ian Holm, and he's got his younger,
much younger, late teens, maybe very early 20s, disciple or follower or whatever.
Assistant or however.
Yeah.
But even Ian Holm, who's supposedly old and mature and shouldn't be tempted by the perfect

(26:57):
being, and he wouldn't have been had the perfect being been a man because it's Mia Jovovich.
And there's several scenes in there where he's fumbling with his words and she has no
modesty in terms of humanity because she's playing an alien.
So she doesn't mind disrobing right there, putting on new clothes or whatever because
they're like, oh, we brought out some new clothes you could try on.
She throws off the blanket or whatever it was and the priest divert thine eyes kind

(27:21):
of thing and stuff.
Yeah, so it is a plot point.
It's a plot point.
It makes sense in the story.
It doesn't feel like it's exploitive or we're doing this to get viewers or get audience
members.
I mean, of course it's a selling point, but I don't think that was the sole artistic reason
for doing so.
Yes.
I guess.
I mean, things are more complex than black and white.
Yes.

(27:42):
So they get together and they of course have a crazy adventure, sci-fi style.
What you guys talk about because Bruce Willis doesn't want to go on this mission, which
is the same mission that he ends up going on later because Mia Jovovich is fleeing the
lab facility and jumps, does a Peter Pan right here off this building, right off this dam,
all of the witness and lands into Bruce Willis's cab car.

(28:04):
Yes.
And then he tries to protect her because, well, that was Mia Jovovich.
Right.
That's Bruce Willis.
Perfect being.
Yeah.
And so he's trying to help her because she can't speak English yet, but she reads a little
brochure because she's an alien.
And so she goes, please help or whatever.
And then that's just enough to pull on Bruce Willis's heartstrings to get him to save her.

(28:24):
And then there he's involved with it.
Right.
And her learning of English and the culture is very well done, shown.
Yes.
Again, it's not like a text box.
They show you, they show her learning over time.
Yeah.
But it's always kind of, I would say like an intermittent scene where you're back at
the scene, she's reading stuff on like whatever their version of Wikipedia would be.

(28:47):
And then it pans back and then the action happens.
So it's kind of, it's not the foreground action, even though they opened the scene on that.
Right.
It's a sub story.
It's implied.
Like it's an implied story.
Yeah.
The action ensues and we meet all these different characters and then of course they save the
world.
So that's a plot synopsis.
It's cut it short because it's, I don't want to ruin the movie for those of you who haven't
seen it, even though it is, I would say it's entering the zone of being a classic.

(29:09):
We just ruined Gladiator 2 for everybody.
Gladiator 2 is not going to be a classic.
I never said that.
I'm just saying it was released more recently than Fathelment by a couple of weeks, I think.
That shows the level of respect I have for this film versus the...
So basically they rig a giveaway, right?
A lottery for a free trip.

(29:30):
The president and the military rig a lottery for a free trip where this alien singer is
holding the stones.
Yes.
And so...
So they have to go there.
But then along the way he meets Chris Tucker who is very effeminate, like radio star.
Chris Tucker is 20 years too early to be a modern social media character, but...

(29:51):
But he was very much an influencer.
A very flamboyant person wearing a dress that is a womanizer and all the women are wearing
very scantily...
They're wearing very sexual outfits.
Yeah.
Even the stewardesses.
But there is a scene where he...
I don't know.
This scene is maybe not even relevant to the movie.
There's a scene about five minutes worth of him performing oral sex on one of the stewardesses.

(30:15):
Yeah.
He's banging her.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It cuts in and out.
It cuts in and out.
It's not like a gratuitous takeaway from the movie type of thing, but it's just showing
his character.
And I don't know because this was a 90s film and The Sopranos was a 90s TV show.
And there's a whole episode or two of The Sopranos where the main character's uncle

(30:36):
was discovered that he likes performing oral sex on women and they made fun of him for
it.
Sure.
So I don't know if there's some kind of like 90s sub joke where men didn't perform oral
sex on women kind of thing.
I wasn't an adult then either.
I just mean like it was in the movie and he's like obviously coming up for air and to talk
to her and then going back down and she's digging it of course because whatever.

(30:57):
But I don't know if there's some subtext that just kind of lost because that's no longer
a taboo anymore.
Yeah.
It's not a culturally relevant point.
Now it's more culturally relevant if somebody finds out you don't.
I guess so.
They'll be like you're not a giving lover.
Like fuck is wrong with you.
Yeah.
You're not trying to sexually please your partner.
Yeah.
Like that's-
That's like boomer, boomer type of thing.
It was kind of.

(31:17):
Yeah.
It was kind of a theme in old media where it's like women are not sexually satisfied
because the men are lazy sort of thing.
And I don't know.
That hasn't been a feature of my-
It's not really a thing.
No.
My experience being born in the 80s and growing up in the 90s.
Yeah.
That just wasn't-
Well we weren't.
I mean we were doing way too young in the 90s to be doing any of that kind of stuff

(31:39):
anyway like-
The first time I saw it.
First acceptable reasons.
I didn't.
I was too young to see it in theaters when it first came out.
Well yeah.
But-
I mean you know when you're 10 you probably shouldn't be performing oral sex on people.
Probably not.
Probably not.
That would be my-
I would say that would be wise.
Yeah.
But yeah and we talked about this and we'll talk about it now.
Chris Tucker character didn't exist in real media at that time.

(32:01):
It was kind of a projection.
No it was.
I would call it because I've met some radio people and I worked at a television station
that had a radio station as well.
And so working with, and this is a very small town in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma.
But they were all known by everybody in the town because it's the only radio station in
town and they had the only local news for the people in town.

(32:23):
And people had their own opinions of these people.
But these people are very, very egotistical and to an extent flamboyant.
So what the movie was doing was taking this well-known trope of media people, media personalities,
being a certain way and then dialing it up to 11.
And now Chris Tucker is the social media- he's Jake Paul.

(32:44):
Not exactly the same but it is over the top and the show being recorded live during all
the action of the film is an ongoing thing.
Which is basically live streaming.
Live streaming, yeah.
He was live streaming everything that was going on to this famous show.
So all the people listening, he's the biggest star, all this is being known to everybody

(33:05):
on the planet.
That's one of the undertones.
It's like this is not secret information.
The military and the president are acting like it's secret information.
But then simultaneously Chris Tucker is live streaming all of this.
And it's hilarious because the action is still going on and his end time is on.
He goes, well, that's all for the show.
Listen again tomorrow or something.

(33:25):
And the action is still going on.
He has to cut out because his time slot is done.
And it's great.
It's a lot of fun.
Yes.
It's a very fun film, a lot of great performances for, it's a sci-fi and it's got deeper themes

(33:47):
than a normal comedy would.
But they're very much so the comedic elements within the film.
I watched it in theater and everybody in the theater was of course our age or older.
And into it.
Everybody was into it.
And it was the laugh track in the theater was on point.
Some people cheered and it was a very positive experience.

(34:09):
Almost as if you go, and I haven't gone yet, but it'd be fun to go to a live screening
of Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I have not yet done that either.
And apparently it's a thing in Minneapolis to go to midnight screenings.
And I would love to go and not necessarily do the dress up.
Let's go.
Yes.
I know that my Sarah would love me to dress up as Meatloaf.

(34:31):
I don't have a leather jacket.
I don't have a black leather jacket.
One could easily be procured.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could find one at a secondhand store for next to nothing.
Even if it was pleather.
Pleather is better because I mean I throw it away.
Or keep it for those hot steamy nights.
Yeah, right.
Maybe Al can borrow me his leather jacket if he still has it.
I'm sure he would.
I'm sure he would.
But yeah, I highly recommend it.

(34:52):
We'll still talk about it.
We're going to keep talking about it, but that's kind of the plot summary.
The plot summary.
And of course in most of these movies, most of the movies, the good guys triumph.
The good guy wins.
There's a shit ton of explosions.
Oh yeah.
And it's like.
But we didn't really talk about Gary Oldman's character yet.
No, we haven't talked about Gary Oldman.
We will.
We will.
The one thing that they can't make this movie today, all of the background actors are attractive.

(35:18):
There are no ugly people in this story.
There's not a single ugly person.
The ugliest person is the assistant and he's not ugly.
He's just young and immature.
I don't know.
I thought those like warthog looking aliens were pretty unattractive.
The aliens are unattractive.
The human characters.
Hey, that's.
That's speciesist.
That the president has a fake glass eye, but he's buff.
These are all like movie actors.

(35:39):
They're supposed to be nice looking.
Yeah.
Well, even the superhero people.
Even like the, even Bruce Willis is a taxi driver, right?
He doesn't have like the beer belly.
No.
I mean, he's ex military, so it's explained, but you know, I guess a lot of times when
you have kind of the future view of society, a lot of times, depending on the era that

(35:59):
the future viewers looked into, there aren't a lot of overweight or sick or diseased people
because they assume all of that stuff has appeared.
And this very much assumes that they have access to proper medical care and nutritional
diets that are not, not so in the green.
Yeah.
So back to the fifth element.
Yeah.
So, you know, access to good healthcare and allegedly, you know, it's hilarious because

(36:25):
somehow, well, the mom heard about Bruce Willis' character winning the cruise before Bruce
Willis even knew about everything.
And the Chinese meal guy saw him get a mail in his mail tube, like the pneumatic tubes,
which don't exist hardly anymore.
Right.
And it was a fake out because the first one was a nasty gram.
Yeah.
And the next one was the way he got fired from his taxi job because he tanked his car.

(36:47):
He crashed his car.
He had a perfect being dropped through the roof of his car and then ran from the cops
and got shot up.
And there's some pretty intense car scene, future car chase type of stuff.
Yeah.
And something that is in just a little bit of the film, just a tiny little bit of the
film is he goes down and he's like, once you're below the smog, we'll be fine.

(37:10):
Until like New York has been built on New York and stuff.
And it's kind of, it's not a common trope, but I know Futurama has New New York where
it's built on the ruins of old New York and you can go down into the sewers and see old
New York in the animated show.
And then this one, they go down in the smog and there's like a whole other kind of like
sub-society.
World down there and they don't spend much time there.
They're there just to hide from the cops, but it's like one of those things where they

(37:31):
give just enough stuff to add depth to the world.
To the world.
Yeah.
There's that underground.
It's the world building.
Yeah.
That despite our character being a lowly taxi driver, he is above.
He does not go down there.
He does not go down into the underworld.
Usually.
Yeah.
He's aware tertiaryly it's there, but he's not of that sub-society.

(37:51):
And then let's talk about Gary Oldman because.
Before we talk about Gary Oldman.
Yeah.
I love Gary, man.
I'm halfway through my cigar.
Yes.
Nate is almost halfway.
He's about there.
I like this cigar.
I like this cigar as much, maybe even more than the A10.
I like this maybe more than the A10.
This is right upper alley.
That's.
Yeah.
This is upper alley.
Yeah.

(38:12):
This is more upper alley.
Yeah.
This is a Maduro that is spicy.
It's got a full flavor profile.
Not too spicy.
Not too spicy.
But it doesn't have, it's not complex.
It's just a very nice profile of a Maduro cigar.
It's exactly what you want.
Yes.
Yes.
So it's easy sell.
That's true.
That's an easy sell.
I'm already smoking it, Mike.
You don't have to sell me on it.
Yeah, exactly.

(38:32):
So Gary Oldman.
He's a, what he calls, he calls himself a merchant.
He's an arms dealer.
He's arming these pig, like I can't remember what their alien race is called in the movie.
Yeah, they're outlaws.
They're outlaws.
But they're outlaws.
But he's, you know, shady is all arms dealers kind of arm.
And he has this crazy hairdo get up with a plastic thing on his head.
Yeah.

(38:52):
With like an acrylic like, you know.
And my Sarah said, oh, if you didn't know it was Gary Oldman, you could easily not know
it was Gary Oldman because they did.
He doesn't have makeup on, but they changed his visual appearance with these accoutrements.
Yes.
And his voice, he does a little bit different voice than he normally does.
Yeah.
Like a Southern ish.
Yeah.
Weird, whiny.

(39:12):
Yeah.
A little more nasally, a little more higher pitched than he normally talks.
Yeah, it's great.
He's a great sci-fi villain.
He's a great sci-fi villain.
Like you'll love to hate him.
You'll love to hate.
You'll see his action too.
Cause he's going out and killing people and kicking ass and taking hits.
He's not a wussy.
No.
He's not like a loser guy.
He's a kick ass character.
He's playing the long game, but he had been contacted previously.

(39:34):
You find out later in the film by the orb thing, the planet thing.
Yeah, by the evil aliens that are trying to destroy the world.
The biggest evil that's coming that the fifth omen is supposed to prevent.
Right.
Exactly.
And it calls him on the phone for some reason.
I don't know why.
It doesn't matter.
It's funny.
It's hilarious.
And he's like, did you get the things?
And he's trying to get the stones too.
So Gary Oldman is trying to get the stones while he's trying to sell these arm shipments.

(39:55):
He's trying to trade arms for the stones to these pig things and they didn't bring the
stones.
So then he's like, well, if you guys were really warriors, you'd ask about this red
button on the bottom of the gun.
You can get two crates cause he brought brought me two things or one crate cause he brought
me one thing or whatever.
Yeah.
And then of course it's like the auto-destruct.
Yeah.
And they're like crazy future weapons that do everything, including a net.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(40:16):
And it's like this ridiculous is almost like walking into a 1960s early seventies bond
film and Q is like, Oh, I've got this pen and you know, it does this and you can kill
the person that way or this way.
I got Batman, Batman vibes.
Like 60s Batman vibes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Batman's utility belt in a gun.
Right.
Exactly.

(40:36):
So it's just, it's good fun and it's not a dark film.
It is all dark film.
It's a little dark.
I mean, it's got some subtones, a subtext where she learns about war and she's like,
why would I even want to help you?
Like the alien is going to come and kill you.
Like what's the point?
Right.
If you're just going to kill yourself.
Love conquers all.
I mean, it's a very feel good story all throughout, but there are some moments where it's, you

(40:59):
know, a little bit more.
Well, yeah, you can't have a feel good story if you don't have dark elements to it.
Yeah.
So, but yeah, it's all good fun.
Everything's pretty much bright and fun.
I mean, she wears like orange suspenders and her hair is orange.
Her hair is orangey and everybody is beautiful and bright colors.
Everything is bright colors.
Yeah.
And then there's some dark dystopian future necessary.

(41:21):
There's dystopian elements to it.
Yeah.
I mean, talk about like how dark it is that the pop singer they're going to see puts on
a hell of a show, one, and then the stones are in me and he has to like dig the stones
out of her abdomen.
Yep.
And she's a hot blue alien chick with tentacles, of course.
Yeah.
Well, why wouldn't it be?
And a ton of practical effects too.
A ton of practical effects.
As you can see, they have explosions that are real explosions and they have levels of floors

(41:46):
falling and you can tell that it's actual debris falling.
It's all real stuff.
Yeah, it's all real stuff.
I mean, the flying cars, no, but-
They use their CGI-
They use everything very effectively.
Yes.
Very effectively.
Yes.
And like, well, Gary, go back to Gary Oldman.
He's a very realistic villain arms dealer character.
Yeah.
Despite his weird quirks.

(42:06):
The weird quirks are what makes him sci-fi.
The weird quirks are what makes him, I don't know, not a completely hateable character.
Yeah, Zorg.
You don't really hate him, but he's got a little elephant type of thing with a long
trunk that's like his emotional support animal that he pulls out of his desk every once in
a while.
And then you've got, he actually meets the priest Ian Holm and he almost chokes to death

(42:27):
on a cherry or something.
Yeah.
And Ian Holm lectures him before saving him as he's suffocating on this fucking cherry.
He's like, see all your techno babble bullshit, it's not going to save your life right now.
And you could have been taken out of this world by a cherry and then pats him on the
back and cherry pops out.
Yeah.
And it's really good social commentary and power dynamic interplay all throughout the

(42:48):
film, which is great.
And they don't do that in a whole lot of films anymore.
No, it's a film of the past.
Nothing about it could be made today in many ways.
They wouldn't do it.
Yeah.
Which they should.
They would choose not to.
They would choose not to do it.
They could do it.
Yeah.
It's one of my favorite memes I've ever seen because it starts out to try and get you incited.

(43:08):
They could never make Tropic Thunder today.
Different times you could never make Tropic Thunder today because the actors would read
the script and they'd say, this movie's already been made.
Tropic Thunder's already been made.
Right.
Yeah.
So, I mean, some of it is that and I think some of it is, it depends on what films you
watch because you can watch indie films or foreign films and they're usually pushing

(43:30):
the bounds more nowadays than any major Hollywood studio is pushing bounds.
Right.
And this was a major production.
This was a major production.
A huge hit.
Yes.
And we spent a significant amount, not significant in like hurting my paycheck, but we spent
a lot of money to drive hours.
Yeah.
To see a movie you've already seen and have at home.
To see a movie we've already seen that we have at home but in a theater.

(43:53):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The tickets were-
It's a good enough movie that you will pay extra and take time out of your day to go
see an experience of the film.
Exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
It's 50 bucks just to get tickets and popcorn or whatever.
Yep.
And then you have to drive the driving and all that extra cost.
Yeah.
But it's worth it for a good film.
Oh, it's definitely worth it.

(44:15):
I drove for longer than the movie.
Yeah.
By a long margin.
Yes.
There's a handful of films I would love to see on the big screen.
So if they ever come back and it's just time.
They will.
They'll eventually come back.
They will.
It'll be-
We saw when Sarah and I first started dating, we saw a midnight showing of Beetlejuice and

(44:37):
awesome.
All adults.
Yep.
It had a bar just like the theater we went to and everybody's having a good time in the
popcorn and having a couple of drinks.
Can you see the second one?
I have not seen the second one.
Okay.
I did.
Was it worth it?
No.
Okay.
Well, there we go.
It's fine.
Fine or no better?
Yeah, it's fine.
It's no better.
The first one's legendary.

(44:58):
It's hard to-
First one's legendary.
It's one of those ones where does Beetlejuice really need a sequel?
No.
Could they have done it in a better way?
I mean, the one selling point was they had all the original cast back.
What about the dead?
No, because he was dead.
He got eaten by a shark or something.
Yeah.
So he was back partially in the afterlife, right?
But he wasn't back.
But they had the main ones back and stuff.

(45:19):
So it was fine.
It's not essential viewing.
I think if you like the Beetlejuice and you like kind of the vibe, it's fine, but it's...
I'm trying to remember what that movie was.
Oh yeah.
The newest Ghostbusters Frozen Empire where they had this whole subplot of the daughter
of Ivan getting a lady boner for this ghost that was evil or something.

(45:41):
That was a major subplot of movie and made no sense really because-
Is that the one with the kids and they have the 15 year old girl?
I watched that.
I did not like it.
I thought it was trash.
It broke reality for me.
I thought Afterlife was fine.
They had a nice little send off to Ivan who had died, who had passed at the end of it
because it was his-
Are you talking about Ian?
Ian, yeah.

(46:02):
Well, the actor.
Harold Ramis.
Harold Ramis.
Ivan Ramis is his brother or something.
Oh, okay.
I don't know.
There's a couple of them.
I'm bad with names sometimes.
Listeners, you should not be surprised.
I have bad with names and pronunciations.
But yeah, Harold Ramis is his character's daughter, the girl.
In Afterlife, it was kind of a good kind of send off to everything.

(46:25):
There's a weird huge product placement to Walmart.
That was very distracting.
With Paul Rudd running around with mini marshmallow men running around for no reason.
Afterlife has the exact same plot as Ghostbusters, the first one, the original one.
So it's kind of like-
Crazy.
... even trying at this point, but it had some good scenes and a good little send off
because they brought him back as a CGI ghost.

(46:46):
He didn't say anything, but it was there and you got the whole crew from the original one
back on film together.
Sure.
But the second one is kind of like-
Meh.
... and dumb.
But in the fifth element, something bringing up product placement.
Not product placement in the fifth element.
It's future world.
None of the brands that we know now exist anymore.
Yeah.
Kind of.

(47:07):
That's the-
Yeah.
They have cigarette advertisements, but they're fake cigarette advertisements.
I thought there was a McDonald's or a Coke banner in one of the scenes.
There might have been.
There might have been in the background.
But those are kind of eternal now.
Right.
Yeah.
They have-
Ubiquitous with New York City, right?
Cigarettes with two inches of filter and a half inch of cigarette and they have a ration.
You have a ration of cigarettes you're allowed, like five cigarettes a day, but it's only
half an inch cigarette with two inches.

(47:28):
Yeah.
It wasn't a ration.
He was trying to quit smoking.
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's why he was on his own prescribed rationing of them.
So I caught that.
I mean, there's so much stuff when you go and re-watch a movie you hadn't seen since childhood
or seen for 10 years, let's say.
Right.
Five, 10 years.
It's a well enough... It's a world that's built well enough.
It was made by competent filmmakers, is what I'm saying.

(47:49):
Yeah.
Where you can watch it again and again and you're going to pick up on new elements every
single time.
On fifth elements every single time?
Yeah.
So it's a classic.
No, I think, yeah, it's a classic.
It's one of those films that they spent time fully developing.
The story, the sets, the costumes, the casting, the editing.
The costumes are super simple.

(48:09):
You could get them from used stores or whatever.
Yeah.
They're wearing some goofy stuff.
Yeah, it's not crazy.
It's like 70s Goodwill finds.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What we would call vintage these days.
But it all matches and it all makes sense and it's all put together.
All put together.
They're drug addicts and they're clearly drug addicts.
I want to talk a little bit.

(48:30):
The pig aliens can shape shift.
Yes, they have a device.
Yeah.
So, and then it's funny, it's hilarious because you've got the one lady at the ticket encounter.
And so all these people are claiming to be Corbin Dallas, Bruce Willis' character, to
claim the prize of the free tickets.
But he beat everybody there with Mia and was already on board.
And so she's like, well, I've already had these tickets claimed and blah, blah, blah.

(48:52):
And so it's like the one henchman from Gary Oldman.
Zord.
Yeah, Zord.
Zord.
And then it's two of these warthog alien things.
But one is shape shifted to a very attractive woman who's wearing panties, like a thong.
And then her skirt is like translucent green or transparent green.

(49:12):
And it's like blasting.
It looks terribly uncomfortable.
But you see like the ass cheeks walking away from the camera because the camera, of course,
you know, 90s is like right there.
And then she talks with like the warthog voice, you know, like a very warthog voice.
Oh yeah, we couldn't get that ticket.
That's too bad.
Yeah.
And she's got like sores, like meth sores or whatever.

(49:34):
She would be, well, I'm sure the actress is, she was clearly an attractive woman with makeup
to make her look like a drug addict.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's hilarious because, you know, and you have the tweaker, right, one of many, apparently
through the visual cues of his gun rack that comes down.
But you know, he lives in a neighborhood where it's normal for him to get tweakers trying

(49:57):
to rob him for drug money.
Right.
Yeah.
But it's all not explicitly stated, which is awesome because it's a film that's made
by people who know how to make film.
World building.
And they world build and they don't spell things out for the audience because I remember
the first time watching it, it's like, what?
Like, okay, we got the stones.
We got like a, there's a fifth element.
They got the four stones, four elements and like, you know, all this other stuff.

(50:20):
Oh yeah.
And the stones are just shitty stone props that could be made in my shop.
Like styrofoam.
Like you could make it out of styrofoam.
Yeah, yeah.
And then spray paint it.
Yeah, sure it was.
But it was cool because there was a little like mental puzzle that they purposely made
the audience get before the characters got.
So you're kind of like almost yelling at the screen, you know, where it's like air for
air and fire for fire.

(50:41):
And like, that's the instructions that they got from, I don't know who, like in home characters.
Like the sacred texts say air for air.
Blow on it, light a fire, get water on it.
Yeah.
But they took them longer than it would take, hopefully, than it would take the audience.
The audience was supposed to get it first because then the one guy kind of like coughed,
like the priest's assistant kind of like coughed on the air one and it opened up a little bit.

(51:02):
And they're like, how did you do that?
Do everything you just did.
And he's like, well, I said, I was reciting this prayer.
And you're like, no, you idiot, you blow on, you know, like the audience is like, you blow
on it.
Like, what do you, you know, so like it gets you involved in a non, non condescending way.
Right.
Yeah.
And they have one match to light the fire.
Yeah.
Can he do it?
Can he not do it?
Yeah.
It's like, it builds tension in a fun way, in a way that doesn't put down the audience

(51:25):
where a lot of modern films, I feel the exposition puts down the audience so much with like the
voiceovers and explanations of everything.
And it's like, yeah, let's have five minutes of exposition to explain the techno babble
instead of just letting it flow, build the world around it.
The rest will come.
Right.
I mean, I don't know.

(51:50):
Good films bring such joy to me and bad films don't, you know what I mean?
Like, right.
When you can go out and you can go watch the fifth element and you can dedicate a whole
like podcast episode to it and talking about it.
And it's an old film nowadays and everything is so perfectly done.
Sure.
There's I'm sure there's goofs and stuff, right.
And I'm sure there's things that are kind of like, well, this isn't, if you sit down

(52:13):
and think about it, like, does this really make sense?
Like, I don't know.
But in the film, you never have time really to think about it because it's always moving
and progressing the plot forward.
And it's giving you just enough to stay with it, but not enough on the first viewing to
foresee what's coming necessarily.
You've got crazy characters like Chris Tucker's character and even Gary Oldman's character

(52:35):
where it's like they're kind of wild cards.
You don't know what they're going to do next.
Is Chris Tucker's character going to like say something at the wrong time and get everybody
killed?
Is Gary Oldman going to go on a rampage and kill everybody?
Like nobody really knows.
So you've got kind of like, you've got that tension.
You've got a crazily well-designed world and setting, and you've got a good backstory for
all the characters, except maybe Leeloo.

(52:57):
But she's the mystery character, right?
So she's supposed to be the mystery character, but everybody else has a really good background
because you've already seen the ancient priest in 1911 or whatever it was, or, you know,
in the beginning.
But he's the continuation of that line of priests or that sect or that order or whatever.
Yeah, he's part of the order.
Yeah.
That's not a perfect film, obviously.
There is no such thing, but it's wonderful.

(53:19):
Yes.
A very good film.
Makes me wish more filmmakers would do that instead of, you know, the, what was the one
that had De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in it?
The Killers of the Flower Moon.
Instead of making a four and a half hour long movie that has no point to it, I know it's
based off of a book, but you could have taken that time that you devoted to that and made

(53:43):
a better film.
Right.
I mean, that director, I don't remember if it was Scorsese or...
It was a very famous director.
Yeah, I know the movie you're talking about.
They have supposedly the chops to be able to do a really good movie, but I understand
they're past their prime, but just take a little extra time and make a really good movie.
You know, you can make a good movie.
You don't have to make a not a good movie.
It's the same with the Disney live action remakes.

(54:03):
They're just doing that to extend their copyrights on their original animated films so they don't
have any motivation to make a good movie, but they could if they wanted.
They have the money to do so.
The crazy part about the Disney remakes is now they're spending a lot of money on them,
an insane amount of money for a movie that's going to lose money.
They have to know.
They have to know.
The people making this film know it's going to lose money.

(54:23):
Why would you spend any money on it?
It's going to be a net loss.
Why don't you make that net loss as minimal as possible?
If you're not going to try to make a legitimate movie, if you made a legitimate movie that
was a live action, then people would like it and watch it and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah, it's crazy because you have these Disney movies where you have fans.
You have a rabid fan base for the animated movies like Aladdin, Lion King, Snow White,

(54:46):
Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid.
Yeah.
All of these things, you have a fan base.
You already have a fan base.
You have generations of fan bases, right?
Because those are movies we grew up with.
These are movies I'm showing my kids.
My parents enjoyed them.
Yeah.
So you've got generations that love these animated movies.
You have the fan base to actually make money off of these if you just make them well.

(55:07):
Right.
Yeah, and they could.
You could do a live action.
This is something that I'm not looking forward to when they do it.
Live action version of Robin Hood with the animated version of Robin Hood.
Sure.
It's going to be trash.
It's going to be CGI anthropomorphic animals.
Yeah.
They're not going to have Roger Miller singing the songs.
They're not going to have the traditional Robin Hood made Marion fucking story with

(55:28):
the evil prince and the snake that's the bad guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like that's fun.
It's fun.
It's fun and you don't have to change much.
And the one that kind of like blew me away was like, we're doing a live action Lion King.
How are you billing this as live action?
It's all CGI.
There's no need for a live action Lion King.

(55:49):
Even if you want to do like a grittier Lion King, just go watch Hamlet.
It's the same fucking story.
More or less.
You want to do a live action Lion King, just film Hamlet and call it Hamlet and call it
good.
Right.
So you're calling it a live action Lion King.
It's all just CGI things.
So what the animation is better, but it's still animated.
So what am I more realistic animation?

(56:10):
I guess.
Yeah.
But it's not live action.
No, you're not training lions and hyenas training a baboon to hold up a lion cub on a precipice
and to sing, you know, Anakshana Bhaskan or whatever.
And then, you know, what does it mean?
It means you're a baboon and I'm not a Santa's on a squash banana.

(56:31):
Yeah.
So I don't know, man.
But they haven't done it with Fifth Element and I hope they don't remake it and I hope
they don't make a sequel because there's no need.
They won't.
All the original actors are now they're older.
Retired or older.
They're dead.
Bruce Willis can't act anymore, unfortunately.
Which is sad.
And he made a bunch of really shitty movies at the end of his career, which people were
like, why is he making all these shitty movies?

(56:51):
And then he came out with his diagnosis and he was doing it to, you know, bank money.
Yeah, bank money.
Which makes sense.
And that's fine.
But he pre-gave permission to AI him, which adding all those movies helps for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, and I guess that's kind of like a, it's a tough thing because he's such a
beloved actor.
He's been in, think of the quintessential movies he's been in, you know, like Die Hard,

(57:14):
Fifth Element, other things.
Sixth Sense.
Sixth Sense, right?
I mean, he's been in, he was like the star for a long time.
But then you also have to balance like his private life with his public life.
You know, it's like, well, he's got the chops to do almost anything that he wants to do.
And he's doing all these shit movies.
Like, you know, so it's a little weird, at least for a while before they publicized the

(57:34):
diagnosis and everything.
Yeah.
Everybody was very understanding.
He's a beloved actor in Hollywood.
Definitely one of the last movie stars.
Yeah.
I've never seen any reference of him being in any way, shape or form associated with a
trip to FC Niles.
So one of those actors you can legitimately like.
Yeah.
He's a pre social media actor, what's Bruce Willis like off the screen?

(57:57):
No idea.
Don't care.
You don't need to know as long as they're not an asshole, right?
Yeah.
Doesn't need to know.
He's like Jack Nicholson style.
Like you don't really need to know anything about me.
And that's, I always appreciated that public persona of Jack Nicholson where he brings
like the hot young chicks that maybe he's banging, maybe not.
It's impossible to know.
It's Jack.
It's all a show.
It's all a show.

(58:18):
He's presenting himself as a movie star.
I work in no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Right.
I always appreciate it.
It's like, Oh, he's bringing all these prostitutes to these events.
And it's like, he's, he's, he's selling an image.
He's got the Jack Nicholson prostitute outreach nonprofit.
He's selling an image.
Like, do you really know what he's like?
No, no, no.
Same as, uh, well like Dolly Parton.

(58:39):
Oh yeah, for sure.
It's exactly the same thing.
I, uh, I love that interview.
Like what's your original hair color?
Oh, I don't remember.
Yep.
Yep.
She wears a wig and heavy makeup anytime she performs so she can go out in public and
not be harassed.
Nobody really knows what she looks like.
I mean, they could figure it out, but I mean, I think her husband's done interviews and
stuff.
So if you knew what he looked like, he could likely find her.
Yeah.

(59:00):
But yeah, it's kind of like a weird, where's Waldo thing.
And I'm not a crazy internet stalker of celebrities.
So no, I don't care.
It's kind of like, uh, we talked about the Taylor Swift AI, uh, stuff that was going
on.
It's like, I never saw any of that cause I didn't really care to, but the cult personality
is, uh, is real for sure.
I mean, if I meet a famous person, like that's cool and all that.
I mean, I've met Katy Perry and Tom DeLong and, uh, and stuff, but I, you know, I wasn't

(59:25):
gawking over them or anything.
I got to give Tom a hug.
So that's cool.
That's cool.
I got a picture with Katy Perry.
Didn't allow pictures.
Oh, there we go.
What do you do?
But her line was way longer.
We budged that line to meet her warp to her, man.
It was a different era.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
I don't know if I've ever met like a famous person.
I mean, I have, uh, but not like Katy Perry famous for sure.

(59:45):
Yeah.
I mean, they were, uh, they were there to meet people, right?
They had the meet meet and greet line.
So it wasn't like I was randomly at Applebee's or something and saw some famous person sitting
there and went over to their table drooling and wetting my pants and asking for an autograph
or something.
It was just like, it's a meet and greet.
They expect to meet me.
I expect to meet them.
Not that big a deal.
Was it cool?

(01:00:05):
Yeah, it was cool, but not really that different from me.
He's still a person or she's still a person.
Right.
Yeah.
They have a different lifestyle for sure and different reality, but by and large, like
why would I be intimidated by meeting somebody?
Right.
Because it takes sustenance and breathe the air.
Right.
And that, well, we've talked about this off air in the modern world.
If you are an American, which we both are, we live pretty okay lifestyles.

(01:00:29):
The biggest differences between us and the celebrity isn't so much the life.
It's I drive an F-150.
They drive a McLaren.
It's still a fucking car.
Or they don't magical, or they don't even drive.
They have somebody drive them.
They could have some a drive that or whatever.
Like we both live in houses that are warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

(01:00:51):
They obviously have a house that is significantly larger.
Yeah.
More square footage and more people to clean it for them, whereas we clean it out at home.
Yeah, well, I have to clean it myself.
Their grass is green and my grass doesn't have a lawn sprinkler system.
So if the summer's hot, I just let it dry out and die.
Yeah.
Because I don't care.
If it dies, it dies.
It dies.
I actually enjoy it when my lawn dies because then I don't have to mow.

(01:01:13):
Then I hate mowing.
Speaking of if he dies, he dies, Dolph Lundgren just beat cancer.
So that's good.
It is good.
Good for him and his family.
So anyway, that's pretty much the fifth element.
Give it a watch.
If you like the director, please, please for the love of God, whatever God you pray to.
Fine, sweetie, monster or not.

(01:01:33):
Do not watch Valeria and the Thousand Planets or whatever.
That was one of the few movies my wife and I literally walked out of the movie theater
too.
I had never even heard of it.
It's the same director, but the two people that were supposedly married and had chemistry
had the opposite of chemistry.
Interesting.
And it was so boring.
And we just looked at each other and we're like, I can't make the rest of this film because

(01:01:57):
it was a theater that didn't have alcohol.
So there was no way to make the rest of it.
That's one of those like shitty movie nights where it's like, we're just going to get real
drunk and we're going to make fun of this thing, but not in the theater.
The only movie I ever walked out of was My Name is Sam with Sean Penn where he played
a handicapped person.
Oh, is that...
I am Sam or My Name is Sam or he had like a daughter...

(01:02:18):
No, it was a Beatles-centric movie.
Is it I Am Sam?
Possibly.
Something of that nature.
I can look it up.
Yeah.
I think it's a Beatles-centric movie, whereas he liked The Beatles or something.
So there's a lot of Beatles songs in the film.
Oh, maybe.
I saw that one.
I don't remember particularly one way or the other way.
Of course, being a film student, I've watched a crap ton of movies that range from absolute

(01:02:40):
terrible to fantastic.
I Am Sam is the name of the movie and he plays a handicapped man that has a child who is
struggling in school and all that jazz.
And I was like, this is fucking woke nonsense.
This is of course...
What year did that come out?
Let's see.
It's got to be late 90s, early 2000s.
2001.
I watched it in theater in 2001.

(01:03:01):
I was like, this is nonsense.
This person should not be raising a child.
This is a pro, people with mental disabilities raising children type of thing, which was
the woke thing of the time.
And it's like, no, this guy is struggling and maybe he needs some help.
I don't know.
We don't need to glorify this.
Yeah.

(01:03:22):
I mean, I guess it's been a long time because I think I only saw the film once, probably
in college.
I don't really remember.
I know that emotionally it makes sense.
It's a very emotional film.
Very much so, drama.
To drive upon that and win you over through the emotional appeal.
I think that having your parents, your biological parents involved in your life is better than

(01:03:45):
not having them involved in your life.
In a lot of cases, I think statistics show that and studies have shown that.
Absolutely.
But that doesn't mean that it should be without help or without supervision in some cases.
You know, it depends.
It does.
It does.
And of course I was a teenager at the time.
So maybe if I watch it now...
Maybe you have a different view now.
Yeah.
Maybe if I watch it now, I wouldn't have walked over the theater halfway through.

(01:04:07):
There are certainly films that I've gone back to as an adult and watched where I get a different
vibe from it.
Mostly, we talked about this last season, mostly Pinocchio where Jiminy Cricket doesn't
eject shit.
Right.
And then Pinocchio is to blame for everything, even though he was assigned like a guardian
that didn't show up for the whole film.
Right.
Yeah.
He's a bad boy, but he didn't get any help either on his first day of being alive.

(01:04:27):
He didn't ask to be alive.
I didn't ask for this.
You know?
Definitely some films like that out there.
The point is that watching a movie like The Fifth Element today, for one, makes me really
appreciate how well-made it was, as ridiculous as some of the plot points are and some of
the characters and stuff like that.
But it's all for a reason and all for a point.
And it all fits in the world and the narrative that the movie is creating.

(01:04:52):
And it makes me wish films were made with such care as they were back then, because
nowadays it seems like they're making them to sell tickets and maybe pump them out as
fast as possible.
Looking at Marvel, Marvel has their whole, however many next years slated already, so
you know what's coming out from Marvel.
And they're just trying to get all this stuff out and keep going with their multiverse.

(01:05:14):
So you lose something with that when you're relying on previous films to sell subsequent
films.
Right.
To me, watching it in theater was a breath of fresh air.
It was a film created independently of anything else, and it was not created for content.
It wasn't there just to get eyeballs on it.

(01:05:34):
It was intended to be something that people enjoyed and watched independently of anything
else.
It was its own story.
Yes.
And it's a classic.
My parents like it.
Yeah.
It was not a remake of the 1952 Fifth Element.
Right.
Yeah.
It wasn't an extension of...
It was an action version of the animated 1992 film, Fifth Element.

(01:05:55):
Right.
And it's got visual elements that are pleasing that politically probably wouldn't go anymore,
potentially.
Maybe not.
Maybe not.
Depending on the studio.
Too many attractive people in it.
Depending on the studio.
The score was great, music and everything was good.
The music was great.
It even had a musical number in it.
Yeah.
That was fantastic.
Yes.
It had a diverse cast before diversity was a buzzword.

(01:06:17):
Yeah.
It had a cast for a reason.
Yeah, it was based 500...
How many are every...
200 years in the future, I think?
And it's like, well, of course.
Yeah, 200 years in the future.
There's going to be every race of person plus all these weird aliens.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It makes sense.
You're going to have a black president with a fake eye.
Why not?
Why not?
Yeah, it's not relevant to...
It's not President Camacho, but...

(01:06:38):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not relevant to being president to have a fake eye, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you had these military leaders that are basically the military leaders we have today.
Yeah.
And have had in the past.
They've had in the past the same trope, if you will, pretty much.
Military leaders who love the smell of napalm in the morning, yada yada.
Yeah, exactly.
Blow it up.

(01:06:59):
We probably should have more of that.
They can't fight us if we're dead.
Yeah.
Which maybe there should be more of that.
I know my old man, being Vietnam here, it's like, they should have just let loose and
burn down Vietnam.
It's possibly so.
Possibly so, I wasn't there, I wasn't alive then.

(01:07:20):
I wasn't alive then.
I know World War II era, I was my grandfather and he was very thankful they dropped the
bombs.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Because he was stationed off coast, so he was gonna have to go.
Hindsight's 2020, you can make excuses today, but when the projection is you're gonna lose
a million soldiers or you could just kill a half a million of the enemy or quarter million
to the enemy, that's a no-brainer, obvious.

(01:07:41):
That's an obvious choice.
Yeah, at some point it does, unfortunately, even though every life is sacred and every
life has value, at the end of the day in a conflict like that, it does come down to numbers
at the end of the day.
Oh, for sure.
It's like the bombing of Dresden, like, oh, we could kill 100,000 civilians or we could
kill 50,000 of our own troops.
Well, in a war, your troops are worth a hell of a lot more than the enemy civilians.

(01:08:03):
Yeah.
So that's how the game works.
Not saying war is right, but just...
No, I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it's the way it is.
That's how things shake out.
Yeah.
It's a fact.
It's a fairly fact, but it is still a fact all the same.
Yeah.
One gladiator in the ring of comodus is worth less than his sister is to him in his bed.
Or something.
Something of that nature.
Maybe I missed the point of the movie.
I don't know.

(01:08:23):
I have to say, Nate, we had two good cigars in a row.
This is not going to be the theme of season four.
We did.
This is atypical.
Atypical.
This is not going to be the theme.
Hey, we got to be happy with the first couple episodes or else we're going to be listed
the rest of the season.
We had a string of anti-bangers.
Yeah, man.

(01:08:44):
Those Rico Baratos or whatever.
The backers too, and those were terrible.
You have to have some losers for there to be worse.
That's true.
You have to have something to compare because we talk about price points and everything.
The A10, is that within our price range or is that a little outside of it?
That's outside of it.
It's a $12 cigar somewhere in there.

(01:09:05):
It's the premiere, episode one of season four.
We generally splurge the first and last episodes of the season.
Knowingly, it's like, oh, this is going to be special.
We want to start and end on high notes.
Everything else in the middle is up to the cigar gods.
Right.
Hopefully, we get some winners in there.
I know that when we start doing the flavored cigars, those skinny long flavored ones, they

(01:09:28):
stink.
They stink terribly.
They're in a separate humidor.
I haven't opened since he gave them to me.
They're in their own jar humidor for me, but extra cedar in there because they are just
okay.
I'm noxious.
Hopefully, they taste fine.
I don't know.
They're going to be sweet, I'm sure.
Hopefully, not soft.
Hopefully.
They're long and skinny.
It's a whole jar full of blood red moons.

(01:09:49):
Hopefully not.
Oh my God.
I'd be so disappointed.
The price was right though.
I think those were like a dollar a stick or something.
That's what we do.
We smoke so you can spend your dollars wisely.
Yes, exactly.
I know flavored cigars are a big part of the industry that we don't usually explore.
We don't usually explore, but I've gotten more people interested in cigar smoking with

(01:10:11):
the Moon Trance and the sweets.
Oh yeah, those are epic.
Those are really good intro sticks.
Even if we find just one winner out of that batch of flavored ones, then I think that's
a win because it's a good way to get other people who want to try but are not ready for
something like what we're smoking now.
This is a full bodied heavy cigar with fairly high nicotine.

(01:10:35):
My mouth is tingling.
It has a pretty high nicotine content.
Yes, the A10 did as well.
So feeling pretty good over at the Nice Ashes studios.
It's not terrible.
Nice Ashes North studio.
Yes, where the biggest problem is do we or do we not buy chainsaws?
That is an issue.

(01:10:55):
That is an issue.
So yeah, fifth element, definitely a go.
I'm guessing that every listener has already seen it.
If you haven't seen it for a while, watch it again.
It's worth a rewatch, especially if you remember enough about it.
You can pick up on other things, other little Easter eggs they put in there and clues and
stuff.
Oh yeah, it's very humorous.
There's a whole slapstick comedy almost when you have the military crew and the priest

(01:11:20):
and his assistant all in Bruce Willis' little apartment room and he's trying to hide them
in the showers and the things and they run through the cycles and everything does its
automatic thing and everybody comes out like wet or frozen or wrapped in plastic or whatever
it is.
So you've got all of the humor tropes in there.
The priest hides on the airplane and he's hidden up in the wheel well and the wires

(01:11:45):
and it's all good times.
They have the stoners out there and the road crew trying to burn off all the alien parasites.
The parasite hens or whatever.
Oh, we got a sensor off.
We got more parasites.
We just cleared those off.
That's the priest triggering the sensors.
So definitely, definitely give it a rewatch.
If you like that one, I really like Leon the Professional.

(01:12:07):
Get the international cut or whatever or the extended.
It's by a few scenes.
It's not drastic, but that's what's on the Blu-ray.
A classic as well.
Definitely worth a watch.
Yeah.
You'd argue.
Nellie Portman's first film.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I think you told me that.
But you could argue that Leon the Professional is better than the fifth element.
Totally different style of film.
Different style of film.

(01:12:28):
I think they're both really good, great.
I like Leon because I gravitate to those stories like The Shootist where it's somebody who
was really good and is maybe not at the top of their game or is a little bit older and
has to take care of somebody younger or something like that where it's like they've done their

(01:12:52):
things and they've done things, but now there's a softer side to them kind of thing.
They are not at the peak of their performance.
They're on the decline, but they have the knowledge and experience to make them still
competitive amongst the newer generation.
They're still the best, but in Leon, he has rules that he follows and doesn't let anyone
deviate from and there's arguments about that in the film stuff.

(01:13:13):
Yeah.
Yeah, The Bring Up the Shootist is one of the greatest films, one of the greatest Western
films made at the end of the Western craze.
It's kind of like a double close out to John Wayne's career and to the Western genre.
Because he knew he was dying of cancer and his character in there has cancer and it's
the second pairing of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart.

(01:13:34):
Do you remember the first pairing?
No, I'm sure I've seen it, but-
The Man Who Shot Liberty Vowels.
Oh, okay.
A very fantastic film, Western, but also kind of like a really gritty noir whodunit because
John Wayne plays like a gritty cowboy character.
Jimmy Stewart plays, I don't know, like a in town business person.

(01:13:55):
That schoolboy.
Yeah, who claims to have... But whatever.
Anyway, if you haven't seen Man Who Shot Liberty Vowels or The Shootist and you enjoy Westerns
that are deeper than let's go kill some engines.
Their terms, not mine, but of the era, those are great.
I think my favorite John Wayne film still though is The Searchers.

(01:14:16):
The Searchers, he had a lot of good film.
The Searchers is a great iron... What the hell was it?
Island in the Sky.
Island in the Sky.
I haven't seen that one yet, but I am going to watch it.
I love Island in the Sky.
I think that it's depictions of hallucinating in a winter environment.
That's a war film, not a cowboy.
That is a war film.
Yeah, a war film.

(01:14:36):
We're extremely good, probably a little too realistic for-
The era.
The era that it was made in because of censorship associated with the war effort.
His lighter films are good too.
I like Big Jake.
I like McClintock.
He was in how many other films?
Sons of Katie Elder, True Grit, Brewster Cogburn.

(01:14:57):
He was in a number of-
He was in a lot of films.
Extremely good movies.
I still don't like Donovan's Reef.
I like Donovan's Reef.
I think it's great.
I know.
That's the only John Wayne disagreement we have.
It was great.
I prepped Sarah up.
I'm like, the chick that is in the love interest is way too young for John Wayne.
He self-admitted it at the time.

(01:15:19):
He was like, this is a little gross, which is big for a major movie star.
Even today, looking at you, Leo.
But for the era where it was macho men or macho men, macho men loved women of all ages
and blah, blah, blah.
That's fairly out of character for that timeframe.

(01:15:40):
It was very self-conscious of the major movie star to be like, a little bit too far.
Not a fan of this.
Yeah, yeah.
Him and Cary Grant shared that where they hit a certain age and are like, we're not
doing love stories anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm too old.
I'm too old to do love stories.
Even though crowds loved it.
Yeah, crowds loved it.
Yeah.

(01:16:00):
It would have been better if John Wayne was not in Donovan's Reef, if John Wayne was
not pursuing a woman who was in her early 20s.
Yeah, they could have cast just a different actress.
Yeah, she could have been in her 30s and it would have been appropriate.
It would have been better.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But we're not talking about that.
We're talking about the film element.
Film element.
But good films spill over to other good films.

(01:16:22):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We get a little rambly sometimes.
So it's to be expected.
It's to be expected.
Right.
Well, Mike put his cigar out and I'm just about done.
Yes.
This is good all the way through, I think.
It was a great cigar.
There's nothing bad.
I think we have another five.
I can't go above a five.
But this is in our price point.
This is in our price point.
This is in our taste profile.
I'm just going to do a 5.25.

(01:16:44):
If you're going to do a 5, that's fine because it'll pull it up just a little bit because
it is slightly better than the A10, the Rocker Patel A10.
I don't want to shit on the A10 because-
I'm not trying to shit on the A10.
It's more complex and it's a higher price point and that plays a role in how I'm trying
to make these make sense in my head.
Yeah.
But I feel like this is as good, if not slightly better, for way less.

(01:17:09):
I agree.
So I just, that's why I did the, if you're doing a 5, I'm going to do a 0.25.
So the average is just slightly up so that we can look back and say, okay, it was-
I can give a stronger recommendation for this because it's a lower price point.
Yeah.
And it is way more in the wheelhouse of what we like.
We enjoy anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's an easy win.

(01:17:29):
Very much so.
Oh, we have a Guinness flavored Guinness.
Probably going to like it.
We like Guinness flavored Guinness.
Oh, you mean like it's going to be like 60 degrees?
Oh, that's terrible.
Yeah.
I hear you extra you adding British-
So and so.
Whatever.
Yeah.
I don't even know what the-
NAVE, NAVE or some archaic curse word is not offensive.

(01:17:53):
Yes.
Not offensive nowadays, but I would have gotten shot.
Or at least a duel.
Talk about Aaron Burr this episode.
Yeah.
We're going to hope the pistols misfire so we can beat them to death with a cane.
That's right.
A la Andrew Jackson, who's on the no-no list.
Yeah.
Yep.

(01:18:13):
I can't wait for that to come up again.
Total aside, the $20 bill is going to get redone.
Has to.
Yeah.
I love it.
I love the arguments.
Last time it was going to be Harriet Tubman, I thought.
Yeah.
That's what I've been hearing.
It never happened.
But I love it.
I hope they do Harriet Tubman.
Why not?
Well, why wouldn't they?
Yeah, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Betsy Ross.
Honestly, Benjamin Franklin shouldn't be on a bill.

(01:18:33):
Why?
He's the founding father.
Yeah, but he was never president.
He was never president.
I think you've got...
Either was Alexander Hamilton.
Yeah.
He was the first head of the Federal Reserve.
Yeah.
So they're founding fathers.
That's his prerogative is founding the Federal Reserve.
I'm the first professor.
I gave myself an assignment and I gave myself an A. Plus.

(01:18:56):
You know.
Yeah.
None of the modern presidents will be on bills, most likely.
Hopefully not.
They're a little controversial.
None of them are...
The older ones are controversial if you've learned enough about them.
That's true.
That's very true.
But there are...
I mean, it's weird because in America, we don't have the same kind of...
Hopefully.

(01:19:16):
I mean, the mega stuff aside, idolation of our presidents that say England might have
of their King Queens and things.
Yeah, it's not official state policy to be like, all these guys are great.
Yeah.
So you could definitely put other notable Americans on there.
I mean, I don't know why Neil Armstrong isn't on a bill or...

(01:19:36):
Sojourner truth.
You know, General Patton could be on a bill.
Absolutely.
Eisenhower.
Eisenhower's fairly non-controversial.
Yeah.
You could put these other people that have done great contributions to America as American
citizens and put them on a bill instead of feeding the idolation of presence who are
really there for four to eight years.

(01:19:57):
So...
Right.
Yeah.
So you could put a little series from the perspective of preventing...
They put Sacagawea on a dollar coin.
Right.
You could do that.
You know, she didn't do anything really, but...
She's part of the American story.
If you're history is...
That's the important part.
...in like that era, she didn't do anything, but you could put literally anybody on there

(01:20:17):
as an American.
Yeah.
Ancient...
You could put some...
Ancient historical figures.
Yeah.
You could put some indigenous Native Americans on there.
Oh, you could put Sitting Bull for sure.
Yeah.
Geronimo.
You could put Crazy Horse on there.
Crazy Horse.
Maybe they'd finished that before that monument they're building out there in the West.
Yeah.
Crazy Horse would be...
Yeah.
If they put some government money behind the Crazy Horse monument, at the conclusion of
that, they could put Crazy Horse on a bill or on a coin.

(01:20:40):
Yeah.
You could put Rosa Parks on one.
Oh.
Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King.
I can't believe Martin Luther King isn't already on money.
I know.
Yeah.
Because he's obviously...
He's got a national monument in Washington.
Well, and he's a well-loved American character.
If you say something bad about Martin Luther King, you're probably a shitbag.
You're probably a racist.
I don't know how to tell you.
Yeah.

(01:21:00):
That's like a universally loved, beloved American character.
Yeah.
Icon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Him as a man, maybe not the best person 100% of the time, like any other human who...
Well, everybody's the product of their time and product of their own vices and what have
you.

(01:21:21):
Yeah.
You have proclivities as a human that aren't necessarily part of your public life.
Yeah.
But probably better than any president.
I don't know.
I don't know if he's better than any modern president.
For sure.
But anyway, fifth element, love it.
Go watch it again.
Highly recommend.
Watch it on the big screen.
Take an edible.
Yep.
Yep.
If it's legal in your jurisdiction, sorry, South Dakota.

(01:21:41):
And North Dakota, scum.
Otherwise, the Protagus, Cifuente.
Maduro Turo.
Very good.
Very good.
Highly recommend.
Recommend from us here.
And thanks for listening.
Be safe.
Until next time.
you

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Crime Junkie

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Partagas Cifuente Maduro Toro: The Fifth Element (Movie Review)

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Crime Junkie

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Partagas Cifuente Maduro Toro: The Fifth Element (Movie Review)

Crime Junkie