John Hodgman on The Avengers: Infinity War

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to Movie Crush Friday Interview edition in
New York City. I tried, everybody had to come to
New York for some meetings. And when I come to
New York, as you all know, all right, go to
l A. That's where the talent is. So I tried
to get a couple of folks in the studio, and uh,

(00:45):
I had John Hodgman in again. Everybody my first repeat customer,
because you know, John's my pal. Always like hanging with
him talking about stuff, talking about movies, and uh, I
was given him a hard time because his favorite movie
is The Third Man and I want to, you know,
I want to talk to him about it. So I

(01:06):
was texting with him in Saint John. You know, can
I got some time in the afternoon in a studio?
Do you want to come and talk about The Third Man?
Since you did? Uh Marble's The Avengers last time? And
he said, I do have time, and I would love
to come and be a guest again, but the only
thing I will talk about is, uh the Avengers Infinity War.
So I think we have a thing now going with

(01:29):
Hojji where he will only talk about Avengers movies, which
is great. That's fine with me. So we talked about
UM a lot of stuff, including a little bit more
on horror movies because it was the day before Halloween
when we recorded, and um, you know, so we were
in in the spirit and uh we we we got
around to Infinity War. In his knowledge, as you know,

(01:50):
of comic books is deep, much more than myself. So
I always learn a lot from from John when we
talk about UM comic book related stuff. And we had
a good time. Then we went out and had um
way too many martinis and some steak and it was
just a good night in New York City with my
old pal. So here we go with John Hodgeman on

(02:12):
the Avengers Infinity War. Chucky is the Mariam Webster's Collegiate
Encyclopedia definition of Thanatos is the ancient Greek personification of death,
the son of Nick's, goddess of night, and brother to Hypnos,

(02:34):
god of sleep. He appeared to humans to carry them
off to the underworld when the time allotted to them
by the fates had expired. Fanatos was once defeated by Heracles,
who wrestled him to save the life of Alcestis, and
he was tricked by Sisyphus who wanted a second chance
at life. Wow, this is a dictionary talk with John
and Chuck. I'm John, there's Chuck. Hi. That's not what

(02:56):
we're talking about at all. And we just happen to
have a a dick snary here. It was here as
if everyone doesn't have a phone. Well, my phone is
charging outside and that's true. And uh and I'm glad
there is a dictionary here, because you know, every podcast
needs a dictionary. Now, it's not right next to thanatost,

(03:17):
but directly opposite. This definition, in a hilarious way, is
a picture of Margaret Thatcher. She also carries you off
to sleep. Goddess of death, the iron Lady, the iron Lady,
she isn't the goddess of death. And Sanatology is the
description or study of death and dying and the psychological

(03:37):
mechanisms of dealing with them. This is the sound of
a dictionary closing. Let's talk. That's my ruling. That is all.
How's it going? My name is John Hodgment. Right off
the bat, what a pleasure it is to be here.
I I'm a friend of Chucks and and this podcast

(03:58):
only two time guests. This is the second time that's right. Yeah,
is it? Well, I'm the only two time guests. Yeah, oh,
thank you for inviting me back. Do you know why
why my head studio time ran out? No one else?
You ran out of people? You want to hear who
I invited? Sure? Who else? Who? Who are your first
choices for this hour? Holly Hunter? Oh wait a minute,

(04:24):
you're you're catching the phone. You gotta put your phone
on airplane mode? Dude? Sorry? Is that what that is? Yeah?
How long? How long have you had a podcast? It's
on airplane mode? Yeah, that's why I stopped Holly Hunter?
Double h m. That would be great, she said, She said, no,

(04:47):
said no, al right, Tina Fe, great guest, great guest,
no response and R Parker Posey. Wait, Holly Hunter just said,
uh no, no, you know that was one of the
nicer knows I've gotten. That's nice from her from a representative.
And what do you think, representative? Good? Tina Fe? No response.

(05:07):
It's very busy, Parker Posey. Her people said, out of
town written on iPhone. That's fine. Leaves the door open.
Claire Danes c D. She just had a baby. I
thought you to get out. She did all right. Sidekis

(05:27):
Well I was really low on this list Sidekis Sadakis.
What did he say? I got no response, Naomi Watson,
you probably know all these people. O don't know. Naomi Watts.
How do you know? I was going to say her?
Did I say it? Already said it? Yeah? Okay. I
was like, man, what do you think I'm I'm some
kind of mentalist. That's some pretty good guess distracting you

(05:50):
over here? When you say things, you forget that you
say them. And then I said, and you're about to say,
hang on, hang on his coming to me? I see
an end. Naomi Watts, what do you thinking of? I don't.
I don't think I heard from her people. Sarah Jessica
Parker got nothing. Jake Jillen Hall. Oh yeah, I got
a very nice response. I met people. They said that

(06:11):
he is not available at this time. But I'll pass
this around the office and see if anyone else's as
a client, and then I think even someone from their
office might come back. Oh yeah, hi, Um, I was
just replacing the water cooler and I heard you were
doing a podcast and I like movies, so uh, Jake
Jillen Hall wait, I said that Gretti Girwig Greti, Girwig gig.

(06:36):
I really wanted to get her in here. Sure sounds
er prepping for a movie. O, Billy Joel? Why not? Right?
I could think of some reason. Are you a big
Billy Joel fan? Chat tremendous? Yeah, so that would be
very meaningful to you to sit across from Billy joelan
discover that he's terrible company and awful person instead of

(06:59):
just going to see one of his concerts and enjoying
his wonderful music. And I'm I'm a fan of I'm
a fan of Billy Joel's music. I am I have.
I am cynical about his two Really, I don't think
he's He doesn't strike me as a fun guy to
hang around. Okay, but you know what, Billy Joel, if
you're listening this is Joel Talk, remember it's it's Chuck's podcast,

(07:22):
not mine. Don't blame him for my uh. And then
Katie Holmes, Katie Holmes, yeah uh. And then your buddy
Jean Gray. We've been back and forth a lot with Geane.
Have you not done? Have you not recorded with Gene
nor Her cat was sick last time I was in
New York and she had to cancel. It was an accident,
dar cat, and that's the movie. We're here to discuss

(07:43):
that darn cat. Darn cat because she talks about out
that that cat, little's adorable cat, but really puts the
truth to everyone's suspicion that their cats are sabotaging them
at all times. Yeah. A lot of trouble, very very
strategic illnesses, very purposeful shedding, a lot of property destruction. Uh. Cats,

(08:09):
you know, I'm very lucky. We have a new cat.
We adopted a main coon cat. That's what I had
and uh and she is the dumbest and fattest cat
of all time. That's the best. What's her name? Lol? Okay,
there's a long reason for it doesn't matter, just learned.
That's what people call their granddads in the Philippines. Loo

(08:31):
lolo that's nice, yeah, or low law if it's grand grandma.
But she is a she's I've discussed this on my podcast,
the Judge John Hodgman podcast before. It's such a pleasure
to spend time with a cat that is so obviously
dumb because they usually they usually convey a lot of
intelligence and and slyness, and you kind of feel like

(08:51):
they're they're they're planning, They're planning your demise. Lolo is
so dumb and it's so fun to because she doesn't
understand English, and it's just hey, just look at her
and go, hey, you dumb, dumb what does she speak?
Filipino and saying to the Amics theme song to her
all day long. She'll understand that. Yeah, man, you know
Gorly Uh, he's a main kid, another podcasting legend. Yeah,

(09:16):
I've had to him. We hate We did a James
Bond special together. Of course. He loves James Bond movies.
He has a podcast about it, James Bonding, isn't it? Yeah, yeah,
he has a couple of good ones. Let me tell
you about my podcast. Okay, plug in that one. So
my name is John Hodgman. By way of introduction, I
have a podcast called Judge. John Hodgman accused me. Very busy. Yeah,

(09:38):
I'm the author of a book called Vacation Land, which,
as of this moment, is one of three finalists for
the Thurber Prize for American namer That's great. I will
find out on December five. I don't know when this
will be released. Well, I will find out on December five.
That I did not win. My son is applying to
high schools, public high school here in New York City.

(10:00):
It's a very very busy time for me, track very busy.
I don't have the time applying to public high school.
That's how you have to do it. It's a messed
up system. Yeah, you can apply any any kid in
eighth grade can apply to any high school in the city,
any public high school, right obviously, I mean you can
also applied to any private high school. But this is
the public high school system is total school choice. Different

(10:21):
schools have different concentrations, different academic requirements. Some of them
require an audition, like LaGuardia School for Performing Arts, the
Fame School Short audition, some of them require a specialized
test or whatever. But it's it's the benefit of choice
and personalization of educational experience, UH is counterbalanced rather heavily

(10:45):
with the annoyance and anxiety of essentially doing a college
search when you're so, what happens if he gets into
some school on the Upper West Side and you have
to go from Brooklyn every day? He will go there.
What do you think'n get him an apartment up there? Well,
I don't know. I don't know, so good bye forever.

(11:08):
Obviously it's gonna have to fare for himself. Get a
little studio, don't you take? You know kids, you know,
my wife teaches high school. It's stives In High School,
which is a public high school, and kids come from
all over the city, like some of them will have
a hour and a half commute both ways, like they
lived way out in Brooklyn, and her school's one of
the kind of legendary schools, isn't it. No, No, it's real.

(11:29):
It's not a legend. It's real. It's a real place.
I don't know, a lot of people think it's like,
you know, that's that school for witchcraft and wizard dry
your battery Park. Nope, So just a regular high school,
real school. But it's it's a very people meet you guys,
and they're like, hey, Catherine's been pretending to teach high
school for the best. It's one years. Keep the legend going. No,

(11:53):
it's um. It's UM one of the schools you have
to take a test to get into. So it stends
to be. And Frank Court, author of Joel's Ashes, taught
there for many years. It has a certain cultural currency
beyond New York city. Is he going to apply there?
Any interest? Yeah? Would you want to go to high
school with your mom as a teacher there? Dude? My
dad was my elementary school principle. Really, I must have

(12:15):
hearn that seven years Yeah, maybe you did. I don't know.
Was that fun or not fun? Uh? Sure it was fine.
It was cool having uh having my dad around and
he was beloved. Uh and you know you could always
I'm sure when the bullies, when the bullys came up
to you, he said, get ann gets my dad's the principle. Oh.

(12:36):
I was too busy, being desperate to be liked to
be bullied. Nicholas McCarthy was is a friend of mine
and we went to high school together and we started
a zine uh called Sammy's Dot, which was a term
for Russian dissident literature that was circulated in manuscript during

(12:59):
the era of Soviet Union, specifically the Stalin the Stalin era.
I was a senior in high school, very pretentiou senior
Worklin High School, Brierly, Masschutt and and Stommi's Dot was
how dissident literature was, you know, circulated hand to hand
among dissident poets and writers at a risk to their life.

(13:21):
At any moment, they could be taken away by Stalin
for and and put into a death camp. You know
what I mean. We were we're publishing movie reviews, dumb cartoons,
really pretend to short stories on my part, but we
were like we were a zene, we're punk rock, and
we're like, hey, we're gonna get this out there. And
we realized that Nick's dad was the principle of high

(13:43):
school and it was like, you can use the high
school office super xerox machine. And so we used the
state to destroy the state. That's how we That's how
we framed it. Yeah, and we were cowards. We didn't
want to We didn't want to add it, and we
don't want to tell we don't want to. I didn't
want to reject anything. So our submission policy or editorial policies,

(14:06):
we will publish everything that we get. We'll just choose
when we put it in, you know what I mean,
which meant the worst stuff. We were just like maybe
another issue we're holding onto that we published some pretty
racy stuff because we're teenagers, you know, some some adult
content gotten and got the other and we've got in trouble.

(14:27):
You know, and we had to. Oh, so we we
published some stuff that was a little bit some cartoons
that were a little provocative sexually, and parents didn't like it.
And there was a big Supreme Court case around that
time of late eighties around editorial independence of high school newspapers.
I totally remember that because I worked from high school
and so and you'll recall I believe the ruling was

(14:49):
that high school newspapers do not have a right to
full freedom of speech. Very disappointed, and suddenly in the
in the Boston area, we were a hot topic because
you know, news peg meat, um weird dudes with a
zine and women we had We had women on the
editorial board as well as a bunch of us, and
we got called into a to go on a local

(15:13):
teen issues program to debate our side, which is now
unfortunately I realized it's also the side of that creepy
al right alternate Twitter called gab. It's like everything is
fair game. But we, in our defense, were dumb teenagers
at the time. We're not grown creepy men, sure, but

(15:37):
we were. We came in and Nick and Josh sat
Oh and Michael uh Dan Rash and I and I'm
not sure Alori was there, but anyway, a bunch of
us from the Sammis Dot quote unquote staff came into debate.
Members of the staff of our official school newspaper, the Sagamore,
including Christine Connor, who was still a dear friend and

(15:59):
Kavin was now my wife because we went to high
school together. They they were on the opposite side of
the issue. And then some kids from another school and
we never we didn't even talk to them. You know,
we're there in that room. And the thing was and
the show was called wrap Around eight nine teen issues
Local teen issues, and the host was local television host

(16:22):
and personality Tom burge Roun what now, the host of
Dancing with the Stars Crazy. You know what's something funny
is the newspaper, the local news came to my high
school and interviewed us for television about that same issue. Yeah,
and I think it was eight. I think we're juniors.

(16:42):
Do you still have that footage? The wraparound footage apparently
just resurfaced. Someone found it Vhska sett somewhere. I would
love to see that. I was wearing a bolow tie.
I was in a heavy David burn Tree Stories period.
You want to hear something funny dead below of course,
of course. Yeah, but Nicholas McCarthy I mentioned this. I

(17:07):
was starting one thing and then we got derailed. That's
how this is going to go. But Nicholas McCarthy would
host all night movie festivals at his house, specifically horror
and cheesy horror and bad movies and weird movies and
bootleg movies stuff. So that's that's where I first saw

(17:29):
the Evil Dead. Yeah he was Harry Knowles. Please don't
but but this was at Nick's house and a bunch
of a bunch of us dudes. Of course, it was
all dudes would go over, and that's where I first
saw the Evil Dead. That's what kind of introduced to
Bruce Campbell. He introduced me to Cronenberg. I think us
a video drome there, and maybe, um maybe I saw

(17:52):
the Brood there. Probably David Lynch too, huh. I would
know David. I was pretentious enough to be into David
Lynch already, you know what I mean, because you know,
like I was big him to do when I was
being in a raised her head. That was art movie
stuff more than it was grindhouse, you know, horror horror,
and it was Nick's dream to be a horror movie director,
and for a number of years that dream went sideways

(18:15):
as he struggled with this and that until he changed
his name to Eli Ross. No, but no, he could
gives the same name. Eli Roth was from Newton, Massachusetts
and is a little bit younger than we are, but
we never knew him there. So you know, Nick Nick's
life kind of went sideways for a while, but then
he kind of resettled himself, started making short movies and
now he's a He's got a movie about to come out.

(18:36):
Really yeah movie? Good question? Is it horror? He's a
horror movie director now? And has he already? Is this
his first film coming? Take your no, this is his
third feature film. Well, I can't look any up. Take
it off for a second so I can look it up. Okay,
hold on a second. What's his name? Nicholas McCarthy is

(18:58):
I want to say prodigy? Man? You hear that? Yeah,
you totally do. Nicholas McCarthy director, American film director based
in Los Angeles. Lifelong lover of film that checks out.
I'm not lying. McCarthy struggled for the first decades of
a career that checks out receiving its first break into
the motion picture industry at forty what's the most recent one,

(19:21):
alright was The Pack and then two thousand fourteen at
the Devil's Door. It's about to come out. Just hold on,
scroll faster, I'm scrolling. It doesn't say holidays. No, no again.
For the record, everyone, John just snatched my iPhone. Were

(19:43):
you gonna be listen? You can't have this on there? Yeah,
this all goes out. It's the laziest podcast. It's The Prodigy.
I was right, The Prodigy, Okay, comes out starring Taylor
Shill like you just shot it up in Toronto, and
while we're here, you might as well find out Ferber

(20:04):
Award finalists, a very prestigious award. But so Nick Nick
kind of you know. It was very interesting because around
the time that my career was taking this weird turn
into what I many things I do now, Nick was
also starting a new life as a as a director
reform movies what you had always wanted to do. And

(20:24):
he directed a movie. Uh, he did a short called
The Pact that got picked up to be a feature
starring Katy Lots is a really fun, scary movie that
everyone should know. The Pact and then at the Devil's Door,
which is also great. And now he's got this new
one that you just finished filming in Toronto called Prodigy
starring Taylor Shilling from Orange is a New Black. Oh yeah,

(20:46):
and uh, and you should have him on the show.
He he would really be great. He's a really fun guy.
To talk to him where Los Angeles, Los Angeles, but
he gets around, he comes this way, and that you
should have on the show sometime. I will. He's not available, sorry,
out of town, out of town. What what's your deal
with horror movies? Because we've been We've done a couple
of specials this month, and I'm not a I'm not

(21:09):
an aficionado by any means, but I like a good
horror movie now every now and then. Emily doesn't watch
him though, so it's hard to you know, I gotta
squeeze him in. I like them, Um, there was a
time I ever since I watched with Nick McCarthy, I like,
I liked them and appreciated them. I think Evil Dead
Too is an incredibly weird, exciting movie that I mean,

(21:35):
so cliche at this point to point out that you
know Ramy understood that you know horror and comedy are
the same, you know, they're they're working to produce a same,
a very similar, specific, audible and mysterious reaction that no
one really knows why it happens, or why you laugh

(21:56):
or why you scream, you know what I mean? Like
their guesses. It's in a rash, an old response two
that you think you can predict and and sometimes you
are able to figure it out, but sometimes you just
can't predict why someone would get scared, you know what
I mean? Do you go deep? Do I go deep
with horror? What does that mean? Well? Like, you know,

(22:16):
are you one of those? It's like, oh no, only
the sixties Italian horror is while the films of Dario Argento. Yeah,
I've never seen any Giello films of Dario Geno. I'm
the kind of guy who likes to know what the
stuff is. But I won't. I won't. I can't anymore

(22:36):
sit down and watch my way through a work of
a body of work, you know what I mean? And
I don't like Gore. Um. I would say that, you know,
one of my favorite movies and it's and it's highly
problematic because it's directed by a monster. Is Rosemary's Baby. Yeah,
by Roman Lanski. We've covered Chinatown in here. Well you

(22:57):
got I mean, there can't ignore stuff I done sometimes. Yeah,
I mean. The beauty of being trained in literary theory
at Yale University and accredited four year college in southern
Connecticut is that you're trained to disregard the biography of
the creator because the work becomes its own thing and

(23:18):
makes connections in your mind that the creator and no
intention for. And most creators or monsters, No, that's not true. No,
back in the day they were well, I think there
was definitely a culture of exploitation of young women and
men in Hollywood and the like from the dawn of
Hollywood until last October. And now it is slightly frowned upon,

(23:43):
that's true. Momentarily slightly frowned upon. That's true. But you
know it, it goes to the same thing. Now we're
getting tangents upon tangents. But you know, all the discussion
around Brett Kavanaugh, and you know, all these sanctimonious the
old man going, I sure if we start judging people

(24:03):
on who they were when they were seventeen and the
mistakes they made for seventeen, no one would be here,
it's like that's not true. Yeah, maybe a lot of
better people will be here. It was like I was like,
go back to what I was doing in high school.
It's just embarrassing, Like you're gonna call me out for
for for watching The Evil Dead Nick McCarthy's asset two
am with a bunch of dudes, for sure. And you

(24:25):
know that's not to say I'm I'm blameless or I'm great.
It's simply to say there's there may have been stuff
that I did, and I accept that there may have
been stuff that I did that made other people uncomfortable
or happy that I'm completely unaware of, and I'm happy
to hear that and make amends if I can, if
that's true. But I made a lot of choices do

(24:46):
not be bad, but not not just not be break
the rules, but not to be a good person, you know.
And I feel like when you suggest that it is
automatic that seventeen year old boys in particular are going
monstrously abuse people around them, and that they shouldn't be
judged for that because they get another try, when like,
first of all, that only applies to white boys, and

(25:08):
second of all, that's such a disservice to the people
who make the right choices. So when you say all
artists are monsters, that's not true. No, I know, you
know what I mean. I mean, and Roman Polansky is
a particular, particularly bad monster. But I wasn't trying to
let him off the hook. No, No, you were trying
to put everyone on the hook. Yeah, I mean, I
was more thinking of of of writers. And like, by

(25:30):
the way, everyone, we're recording this just before Halloween in
a incredibly cold meat storage locker, and uh, there are
bodies on hooks. They make a nice sound buffer though
they're they're baffles. Yeah, it's interesting. No, Chuck's just been
putting bodies on hooks all afternoon of directors who don't

(25:50):
make the cuts. I just saw the new Halloween movie.
I'm not seen it. Yeah, I saw in Phoenix. People
like it. Um it was good. Yeah. You know, people
don't say yeah about that movie. They say yeah about them. No,
it was good, it was cool, Like I don't know. Uh,
I went. I watched The Ridge two nights later, and um,

(26:16):
I like that stuff. I like all friends of horror movies,
like those kind of dumb slash movies are They're fun
and you know the Obviously, when John Carpenter made the
original Halloween, there were definitely predecessors of that kind of
you know, the loan masked or deranged weirdo with a knife,

(26:39):
it doesn't speak and walk slow. It wasn't unprecedented, but
it was. It was still it was not the cliche.
There had not been eight Halloween's before that Halloween, you
know what I mean? Um uh. The Brood is one
of my very favorite scary movies. Haven't seen it? Yeah? Good? Oh? Yeah,

(26:59):
The Brood is what era seventies, late seventies. David Cronenberg
very Canadian. Uh still, he was still working in Canada
at the time it was. There are a couple of
his early horror movies that I have not seen, like Shivers,
supposed to be great. But this one is a guy divorced,

(27:21):
single parent. Mom is out of the picture somewhere for
some reason, and his little daughter start being menaced by
these little children monsters. Are they more human or are
they just they look like little kids in pink and

(27:41):
blue little parks And the little girls just on her
little swing waiting for her dad to pick her up
at Canada school, and all of a sudden, there like
three or four of these little and they're all shot
from a distance and you kind of just see them
from behind for a while. There's a reveal, there are
reveals within reveals of what's going on. But it's one
of the most terrifying things I can think of, just

(28:05):
like being alone and then seeing these three or four
uncanny little children menacing you, and then they come and
they walk her away. Do you get Do you still
get spooked out by horror movies? I got spooked up
by my radiator this morning. What did it say? Well,
just you know, it was coming on because it's starting

(28:26):
to get a little chilly here in New York City,
and the heat was coming on in the building. Yeah,
that he was coming on in the building. And you
know it's a gat it's gas heat, so you know,
you get little bumbles in the line it and I
know the footsteps of most of the creatures in my home, uh,
including the dumb cat the wanders around dumbly all night long.
That you got a new cat. Normally, I know that

(28:48):
the cat is the cat because the cat is just
going wow wow talking to the air. And that's a
horror movie trope and itself having a cat jumping out right,
but you know you've seen him main Conon cats are huge. Yeah,
they're not that scary kind of cat. They're like dumb dogs.
And they talk all the time like there's nothing spooky.

(29:09):
This spooky about a cat going like you know what
I mean? And then that's it spook about a cat.
Yeahs were chatty. Is that a Is that a trait?
They're notoriously social and vocal. Yeah, I talk all of them.
That's what Lauren was doing for fifteen years. Lauren named

(29:34):
for nobody. I like it spelled U L A big
r O N A little, A big er little fantastic.
Yeah he's gone, but yeah, this is so you know,
the radio started making this noise like I didn't know

(29:58):
what it was for a second. I got aired. I
think I'm not gonna have to get out of this
bed and look around. Was it still dark? Yeah, okay,
yeah it's dark all the time now. Yeah, pure darkness.
I had after I watched the Ridge Halloween the other
night because I was I was out west and so
I was still I was staying up late and Emily's asleep.
I'm watching Halloween. I haven't seen that one in a

(30:20):
long time. The original. We are renting a house. We're
renovating our house in Atlanta, so we had to completely
move out of our home. And we're renting a house
for like two weeks now. And this house is in
the woods. It's a lot of glass. And I went
down to let my dogs out at the end of
the night, and legit jumped out of my skin when

(30:45):
the door went to shut, and I saw my own
reflection out of the corner of where I moved. And
then I looked and jumped and then laughed and then thought, No,
that's when you get murdered, is when you go, oh,
it's just me. And then I turned around again like
a dummy, like is there anyone there? Nobody was there.
Michael Myers was not in my home. No, but you know,

(31:07):
things happen. I know, you know, we're on the we're
on the ground floor, and then I'm on I'm on
the constant. You know when you when you have kids,
as you know, you you go on a high alert
for the rest of your life. Two things going wrong
and first floor. I'm always on alert to a stranger's
type of situation. That's one of my very favorite horror movies.

(31:30):
The strangers. Yeah, those That's the ship that scared me
as a child, was someone coming into my home, not
ghosts or monsters, but like a human being that could
really do me harm. And what that guy did, and
I don't remember the name of that director, but one
of the things that he did, whether this was inspired

(31:51):
by or just simultaneous discovery, but it was a thing
that they also did, I think in Friday the Thirteenth,
Part two, which I've never seen in any other movie
of that kind, that kind of like Slasher being pursued
by someone, which is a moment where you get to
see the killer, in this case one of the killers
and the strangers, one of the home invaders from the

(32:12):
point of view of a character when the when the
killer doesn't realize are being observed. I don't remember what
what happened. So in the in the Strangers, Liv Tyler
runs into just in the nick of time runs into
the um. So if you haven't seen the movie, everybody
out there listening, go see it. It's good as about
Scott Speedmen and Liv Tyler uh in a remote house

(32:33):
home invasion. Well yeah, but first people just start ringing
the doorbell and being weird. It's just listen in an
escalating series of testings of the boundaries of the home,
until finally they get in and live. Tyler goes and
hides in a kitchen closet and can see through the
slats of the door. The horror movie slats. The horror

(32:54):
movie slats. All doors and horror movies are slatted. And
the one of the their three home invaders, and they
all wear creepy masks, and there are two women and
one kind of lumbering dude. And the lumbering dude comes
in looks around and we're seeing it from her point
of view, and he can't he doesn't know that he's
being observed. And he looks around and he just takes

(33:17):
a deep breath because he lost her. And he just
sits down at the kitchen table for a second and
kind of goes, I think I remember that now you
can just like the it's this weird moment where like
this is taking a toll on them too, like they
didn't and it was just it just it was so scared,

(33:38):
so much scarier interesting to appreciate this, this invader as
a human. Was that the purpose of that, I don't
I don't know. I mean when you're trained in literary
theory Yale University and Credit for Year College in southern Connecticut.
You're not trained to look for what the authorial intention
might have been, because that disappears the moment that it

(34:00):
is released into the world, but rather what the textual effect.
And in this case, it does a weird job of
humanizing what is normally a a dehumanized uh A figure
in the film like Michael Myers is a machine, you
know what I mean. And to see the killer as
vulnerable was not encouraging in the movie, like it does

(34:23):
not make you feel like, oh she can beat him.
It's like, oh no, that's a human being and this
is this is everyone's tired now and it's going to
end badly. But I don't think they do the same thing.
On Friday the thirteenth, Part two, one of the one
of the many sexy teens who are being punished for
having sex by the movie get into a position where

(34:46):
they can see Jason as he's looking around and thinks
that he's lost her and Jason, and obviously in the
in the movie this it could had it couldn't have
been Part two for reasons, but it was definitely Jason
and Jason was a was a monster, like a true
horror movie monster, not a human being, you know what
I mean, like a creature. No, he was a dude.

(35:09):
He was undead, was he? Yeah, I don't remember. He
was in the first one that was the mom though, right,
well nice job check, Well come on, that's right. And
the first one it was the mom, And then there
was the second one. It was Jason, but it was
before the how the hockey mask. And the third one

(35:30):
was uh three D plus hockey mask that was the
introduction of hockey mask. But I'm sure we've gotten some
of this wrong. No, no, I've got it right. I
got a dictionary right here. I looked at the true
so right, the first one, since you revealed it, The
first one's his mom, Jason's mom, and the second one
is Jason come back to life, and he's a monster,

(35:51):
but he is, he's confused. And it's just so disorienting too,
particularly in those movies where the point of view is
either the killer's point of view in the chase scene
or this omniscient third person where you just see someone
get having a thing poked through their brains or whatever.
And I watched all I had never seen those movies

(36:13):
when they came out. Yeah, I didn't really me either.
I was little young and and they also did not
didn't carry the kind of weirdo psychotronic cash at that
Evil Dead did. We would never watched it in Nick's house.
But I worked at a video store when I was
in college, the one I mentioned earlier in college University. Actually,

(36:36):
well it's a world class institution, I would say, arguably. Um.
And I worked at the video store, and I spent
the summer of taking a writing summer writing class at
the college and then work in the video store and
just didn't have in an apartment, and just I was like,
I'm gonna watch you know what I do. I'm gonna
watch all the Friday thirteenth movies night after night. I

(36:56):
would take one or two home and watch one or
two of them. And I was hot in the summer
inn And I only mentioned this because there was this
weird architectural detail of this old apartment building where we
didn't have air conditioning. But I had a front door
of the apartment, and then in front of the front
door a door of slats, horror movie slats that you

(37:18):
could so you could open the front door and have
air circulation come through the apartment. This was a terror.
I remember. It's like a screen door, but they were slats. Yeah,
there was. There were slats and a tiny little you know,
like a privacy lock that that adjacent could get through
in a second, you know what I mean. And that
was and I had been sleeping this way, you know,

(37:40):
And there had been an intruder in the building, like
the week I moved in there was a guy trying
to stab people with a syringe. Really yeah, but I'm
eighteen years old. Whatever it was, You're glad that was
last week. I was like, I'm gonna get some Mary
circular time for some merry circulation. And I have to
credit watching I think Friday between part three, and I'm

(38:01):
kind of looking at the movie from my my you know,
the studio Apartment'm leaving a movie from my bed, and
then looking at the doorway and looking at the movie
and looking at the light coming through the doorway making
weird yellow lines on the floor, and I'm like, this
is a horror movie. I have to close and lock
the door, but that means I have to go to
the door. And I saw a reflection of you for

(38:23):
some reason and like I was like, it's just check
and then he killed me. Yeah, I'm gonna know that
guy in twenty years, So Chuck, I'm very busy, is
the point? My God, I'm writing a new book. Is
that where we started? Yeah, I've got my podcast, Judge
John Hodgman, What what's the book? A vacation Land sequel?
It's basically vacation Land too. More musings. I think that's

(38:45):
the title of my book, More musings. Why not? It's
covering so vacation Land was true true funny stories and essays.
Um that I've been working out on stage is and
I've been performing on stage and then these are more
of those, but well, vacasionally sort of covered, uh my

(39:06):
my time in Isolation and Maine the horror movie capital
of the World. This is more my work stories from
this period. It's like weird acting, the surreal world of
being in l A during that time, and the and
the dissolution of fame and the replacing of fame with

(39:27):
Delta Diamond medallion status points. But that's another that's another
story that you have to wait to hear because I'm
not what am I not doing right now? Not writing it? Why? Why?
Am I not working on it? Because Chuck called me
up and said, do you want to come on the podcast?
I'm like, yeah, I do. Why I like you too,
I don't want to work in the book right now.

(39:47):
You've been lately. Three yeah. Three. The last time we spoke,
You're like, do you want to talk about The Third Man,
supposedly your favorite movie that you talked about all the
time on your podcast, And I'm like, no, I don't
want to talk Why don't I want to talk about
The Third Man? I want to talk about a movie.
What is a movie that I will watch at any moment?
And I realized it was Marvel's The Avengers? And so

(40:11):
you said you called me and he said, you want
to talk about The Third Man this time? I'm like, no,
I want to talk about Avengers Infinity War. I think
you said I will only talk about Infinity War, and
yet you tricked me into talking about other movies. We
can talk about everything I have. No, I didn't even
get to watch Infinity Wars for the third time right
before this, like I usually do. Now it's called it

(40:31):
Avengers Infinity War. What did you say Infinity Wars? Did
you like? Did you see one of those knockoffs. One
of those sabusters. I just bought it in Times Square.
Is that not it? What is that company? I think
it's The Asylum that just makes like they'll take a
dumb hit B movie like Sharknado and then I'll turn

(40:53):
it into like uh Ela Kane or something like. They'll
just do. It's a company called The Asylum, and they
do what are called monckbusters. So you know when Transformers,
you know, was was a thing, they would make a
really cheap version of Transformers and call it like car changers.

(41:15):
They just sell them to like foreign tourists. I don't know.
I don't know what their market is. I don't know,
but this has been going on. I mean forever you work.
Did you ever work at a video store? Yeah, so
you remember looking at all these titles, these directive video
and even not so directed video titles, and like who
is who is this? Who is Kickboxer five four? I

(41:38):
don't think we had a lot of that stuff. It was.
It was a pretty but I would I thought yours
in at Yale would be the same though. I mean
mine was a pretty like high brow about your store
vision video? It was, you know, for the movie lovers
in town. Michael Stipe went in there, that kind of thing. Yeah,
that's how we roll in Athens. Did you ever write?

(41:59):
Did you what did you rent to Michael Stipe? I
never rented anything to him, Oh but he did. We
had Flicker Film Festival, which was like a monthly local
film exhibition for local filmmakers, Flicker films on the screen,
and he would go to Flicker and I went to
Flicker and he tried to buy the Flicker shirt off

(42:22):
my back because I got the last one. I bought
it and put it on and he came up and
he mumbled at me that he wanted to buy that
from me, and did you sell it to him? No?
I didn't, wow, And I felt bad, But that's wrong
to feel bad. At some point you're going to be
in a room with Michael Snipe again. I've tried to
get him on here. Well you know why he's not
coming on because I didn't sell mission and hanging them

(42:46):
on the hooks and too. He's like, oh, that dude,
he totally took that last shirt and didn't sell it
to me. Michael Snipe, Yeah, he wouldn't. Although one night,
h what was he gonna what was he offering in
exchange some vegan bacon or something, though it was it
was money. H it's fair, that's fair. Yeah, we don't

(43:15):
have to talk about Infinity Wars though, well, I'm not
going to talk about Infinity Wars at all. What's your
aversion to Third Man? That's your favorite movie? It's not,
it's not. I have no aversion to it. Is it
not to be talked about? No? No, no, it's just um,
it's just you know, time and tastes change and preoccupations change.

(43:37):
The Third Man is a beautiful movie that I watched many,
many times. It was the movie that I on one
of our very first dates. I think I may have
mentioned this last time. I said to my now wife Catherine,
I really want to show this movie to you. And
it's called The Third Man, and it was directed by

(43:58):
Carol Reid, starring Joseph Cotton from Citizen Kane with an
incredible star turn as Harry Lyme by Orson Wells. And
she was like asleep and before I even finished, and
she's to this day has never seen it like that
was yeah, but she's digging in right. No. I've stopped
suggest that when you see a movie because that sounds

(44:19):
that smacks to me of a marriage thing, like Nope,
not gonna watch it. No. I mean, she's extremely good
tasting in everything, but it's not necessarily my taste. And uh,
and you know, I think she would rather read a
book than like watching a movie on a on in
a movie theater is great for her. She loves that.

(44:40):
But if there's any reason to be you know, if
you're at home and there's any reason to take your
attention off the screen, to say, needle point to a
crossword puzzle, great an exam, fall asleep, any of those
options are preferable to finishing this movie pretty much The
Third Man, or any movie I mean pretty much any
movie at home with maybe the exception of the Silence

(45:06):
of Lambs is her favorite one. I would say your
favorite movie, who guess maybe that's the all time leading
movie crush episode and downloads was the Silence of the
Lamb Show with UH with Karen and Georgia from my
favorite murder. I say that to make you feel bad.

(45:26):
What the hell your top five? Man? What the hell
your top five? I don't want to be hearing about
your other girlfriends. What are you doing? Come on your
top five? I don't even want to know where I
am in the top five. I'm not number one. Well,
it doesn't matter. You maybe too. Actually, I'm not here
for I'm not here for the ranks. You maybe too listening, Shepherd,

(45:49):
it's fine fair. What was his What was his favorite movie?
Raising Arizona? Yeah, that was my favorite movie for a
long time too. Saw that the Harvard movie The her
Uh with Charles Diggs. That had you seen Blood Simple
or was that your intro to the Coen Brothers. I

(46:09):
definitely knew who they were, and I knew that I
knew they had made Blood Simple such that I was
I did not appreciate that this was going to be
a straight up comedy. So I may have seen Blood
Simple at that point. I was definitely pretentious enough in
that part of my teenagerdom to have seen it. But
I still don't remember. But I, you know, going into

(46:30):
Raising Arizona, and I remember coming in late because I
was in the middle of that opening montage um the
longest pre opening and mm at Walsh is telling Nicolas
Cage some story about finding guy's head on the side
of the road or whatever, and that that movie totally

(46:52):
totally re reshaped my brain um in terms of storytelling,
what acting could be? What jokes are you know, I've
never seen anything like it. I think I had seen
John Goodman in True Stories. The David Byrne. I mean

(47:12):
that that was, That was David Byrne's True Stories. Was
the quintessence of pretension that I was aspiring to at
that That below tie below tie era for me, and
if if it weren't a bolo tie, then button up shirt,
buttoned all the way up David Lynch style. That was

(47:33):
who I was aiming for. John Goodman, of course, was
the most soulful and only real character in that movie,
and so I spotted him immediately raising hero and I'm like,
that's my guy. I love him. I love John Goodman
ever since. And pound for pound, I mean, I mean
basically the best jokes that I've ever heard in a
comedy in terms of talking. These balloons blow up into

(47:55):
any funny shapes, not unless round is funny. What was
on a jammie, sir, Yoda isn't ship. I don't know.
Yoda isn't ship. Yeah, you know, Yoda isn't ship. I
was obsessive about that movie, of course, for many, many
years I laughed at that that balloon joke for fucking

(48:16):
seven years straight. Right, But guess guess what now we
speak about it reverentially, but we don't laugh at it,
right because it's part of our d n A and
the same things like, uh was my favorite movie again?
The Third Man is part of my d n A.
Raising Arizona is part of my DNA. And when you

(48:38):
get to be our age, which is extremely elderly, you
know they're there are moments where you feel really like
I felt that I was still in my twenties into
my mid thirties, in late thirties, and then something will
happen that will snap you out of that. You're like, oh,
I'm not that person at all. And those people who
are in their twenties, they don't they know, well, that's

(48:59):
what that's what does it Generally? For me, it's like
I remember going back to Athens after being gone for
many years, and I was like, what are all these
what's upfellow kids? What are all these kids doing here?
Like is there a high school tour? A middle school tour?
And they were in college and that's that's when it
was like, oh, for me, it was when Jonathan Colton

(49:20):
my best friend, say period, Sorry, Chuck, that's you and
Karen kill care. I'm not number one together. I've got
other I've got other people in my life too. But
Jonathan Colton and I went to college together, very very
close friends. And Jonathan was a within boof, which is

(49:42):
a very well known within the world of collegia to acapella,
one of the premier collegiate acapella groups. And this this
this after college obviously there the group's hundreds anniversary was
upon us something like twenty in maybe, and I was

(50:03):
still very moderately famous, hot off the Apple ads and stuff.
I had a profile. And so when they asked Jonathan
Colton to come back and host this big concert for
all living within poofs, for all living with him POOFS,

(50:27):
and then they asked me to co host it with him,
and then they were going to make me an honorary
Whippan poof, an honorary with It's very meaningful to me
because I spent a lot of time in college hanging
around like outside of Jonathan's rehearsals, going like I was like,
we're a Whippan poof, but I don't feel like doing
the work. I don't feel like training and rehearsing and stuff.

(50:50):
I don't know where I want to. I want to
be a part of Yale history. Cole Porter, founding member
of the Whippan Poof, maybe even founding member, but he
wrote the Whippan Poof song, Poof, Poof, Poof, poof poof.
You know the woman boof song. We are poor little
lambs who have lost our way. Ba baba, no no thing.

(51:15):
Crosby recorded it. We are a little black sheep who
have gone a straight speaking of creeps. Bababa, gentlemen, songsters,
off for the screen, damn from here to eternity. Lord,
have mercy on such as we bah bah bah. I

(51:44):
still get the goose bumps. And that's I'm not in
very good advoce right now. You can probably here. I'm
coming off of cold. I could, I could could scratchy
It sounded good. Sound like you sound like Cheryl Crow, Yeah, right,
famous women Boof tom Waits. So I always like ive of.
I loved all those weird traditions, especially at Yale, the

(52:05):
secret societies and the clubs and the whatevers and everything,
but I also kind of found them distasteful because I
was too cool for them, and and then also I
kind of didn't want to do the work to get
into them and make the meetings and stuff. So the
most glorious thing about fame of what was suddenly you're
invited to be parts of things and you don't have
to do the work at all. I honorary. I've not

(52:26):
got an honorary degrees. But when I said, like, do
you want to be an honorary with him prove I'm like,
since I've been eighteen, yes, of course, that's all I
ever wanted. And I was, you know, I was thirty
eight at that point, probably thirty seven thirty eight, depending
on what year it was exactly. Um and uh. We went,
but I still felt like, oh, I'm going home, like

(52:47):
I'm the same guy, the same guy went to college.
It's great. I'm just a little enough to be cool,
you know what I mean. I don't know. I was
old enough to be old. And I remember talking to Drew,
who is now Jonathan's partner in a business partner in
his cruise. And Drew was I think a senior, a
member of the Whiffin poofs that year and in the

(53:08):
senior class of YEA, and I was noticing that many
of the Whiffin Poofs of that year were openly day
like just they had partners who were there, you know,
you knew what was going on where, and it really
may sort of struck me that, you know, things have changed,

(53:28):
you know, like when I when we were seniors in college,
there was one openly gay member of the Whiffin Poofs.
But that was a big deal. And the tough acapella Toughs.
Toughs has a very good acapella group. By the way,
the Beel's aboves that. Please don't make jokes, no, no, no.

(53:49):
I was saying, Toughs. Oh, I'm not tough. Sorry, I
have a good friend that works it tough sexually. Um.
But yea. So I was like this, there were some
closeted kids, but not. I mean, the point was that
being gay was obviously a very open way of life
in college life now compared to how loaded it was,

(54:12):
you know. And I was saying something along these lines
to Drew, and I'm like, it's just so amazing, how
you know, the gay members of the group are so
uncomfortable now. He's like, we don't really use labels like okay, goodbye,
I thought, I was connecting, but I was just making

(54:32):
trying to say something like nice thing, and you still
somehow get shamed. I was like, right. And then we
went up on stage and all of the Living with
and poops got up on stage, and we were right
in the middle and went from the current group to
the to the oldest group, from the first with to
the last poof Yeah. And here I was in this
this long like timeline of white male caucasia, with some

(54:59):
accept some exceptions, but particularly once you get to the
older you know, end of the timeline pretty pretty much
white dudes, right, and I and I realized where I
was on that timeline was I was not with these
young people. I was with these old people. And after
afterward we all went uh and and I was honorarily

(55:21):
jumped into the gang. I was given a tie. I
drank everyone saliva from a giant cup of champagne and liquor,
and I was like, this is the greatest night in
my life. I'm an honorary woman poof. Finally, and one
of the one of the dudes who was in the
woman boost of that day at Era came up and said, Hey,

(55:41):
we're all going to go to a party now. You
guys want to come, Like to me and Jonathan, there
are a lot of old guys there. Me and Jonathan,
we're getting the not it's okay come to a college party.
And I was still I was still not cognizant. I
was like, yeah, I want to go to this college party,
because there was still I still had figured out how
creepy that would be for me too, for a thirty

(56:03):
eight year old dude to show up a college party.
But I still because I was still party wasn't like
I still got it. Yeah, and he goes, oh, um,
it's a naked party, and I'm like, oh, what right, seriously,
no clothes at this party? That's right, Jesus, that's my
worst than yeah. I mean, there was nothing more like

(56:24):
I had an inkling of it on stage, knowing where
I was in that timeline, but there was nothing more
clarifying than realizing there's no what's like. It wasn't merely
like I don't feel comfortable being naked. I'm actually I've
come around the other way. Now no one cares, so
no one's looking at me, so I don't care. But

(56:44):
it wasn't so much that I felt traditionally uncomfortable with
naked but I certainly did, but I was obviously had
a very different uh, set of I don't want to
put this, I obviously had a very different set of values. Um.
Then these guys did, which is like, how do you

(57:06):
how could you do that? What about your furniture and
need a mess up? Practical concern? And I was like,
you know what, thank you for letting us know. But
it's a naked party. I can't we do not belong there.
I can't imagine anything more disgusting than you're bare ass

(57:28):
and testicles sitting on a beer spilled like pleather couch. Yeah,
you know, I'm with you. That's gross, but now and
now I'm also it makes you think a lot of
different things though, because first my first thought is, oh
my god, you can't do that. That's awful, But then like, no,

(57:49):
there's nothing wrong with nudity in the human form, and
that's such an American, especially if you're twenty years old.
Yeah great, especially like, uh, I don't know, it just
makes me feel like an uptight American. I think that
there's something, um, but it's also grossing weird. I think
there's something growdy about having all your junk hanging around,

(58:10):
like while while leaning against a counter, getting ice or
something that could be a hang up. But I also
think that these kids have a very different relationship with nudity,
and they also take care of their bodies in a
different way than when we were trained to grooming. I'm
speaking of Oh good lord, Avengers Infinity War. Do you

(58:44):
want to talk about it? We had about half an hour.
I always want to talk about it, because so the
point was when I said I didn't want to talk
about The Third Man last time, It's like, it's it's
it's I have to I don't have a favorite movie,
and we go through as is in our life. And
my criteria then was, if I'm honest with myself, what

(59:05):
movie do I want to watch right now? Like? What
movie would I just put on? Or if it came on,
I would just watch it. And it surprised me as
much as you or anyone that it was Marvel's The Avengers.
I just found it so charming, so funny, such a
such a break in terms of tone and voice from
what blockbusters had become, and a huge wish fulfillment for

(59:27):
a comic nerd to see that they are actually going
to build this interconnected universe. And uh, and and now
it is only become more interconnected and more astonishing. And
I think it's an incredible I mean the I was
saying to uh, David Reese, my my friend and a

(59:48):
partner on a project that well eventually announced, how's he
doing good? He's doing great good? Um, I guess what
his favorite movie is? Not Avengers in Famivie War. It's like, yeah,
it's a different flay where it's a kind of the
Marvel cinematic universe is is a sort of a different flavor,
the way Starbucks is its own flavor of coffee. And

(01:00:11):
there's certain it's it's you can't even compare those movies
too other movies because they have a sensibility and a
style and a set of preconceptions and you're either in
it or you're not. A lot of people are in it.
But it doesn't I wouldn't hold them up. I mean,
they're incredible works. All of them are incredible works of craft.

(01:00:35):
They contain some incredibly all of them contain really really
fine performances that directors allowed to happen, m visual visual
moments of real ingenuity. And they have scripts that while
they generally don't. It's almost impossible to live up to

(01:00:57):
in the third act in terms of plot. When they
got plot and they got holes, that's for sure, but
they got lines. And from a writerly point of view,
I think I pointed out last time like I will
never forget the way they slowly built up to how
does Bruce Banner keep from getting angry? One of the

(01:01:18):
great moments, and then when he turns and goes the
secret is, I'm always angry. It's one of the great
it really is. Um and heat well. And then in
Infinity War, Uh, one of the big plot points is
Bruce Banner and not being able to conjure Hulk and
no one knows why. Still, that's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible

(01:01:43):
that they're paying they're paying that off in a completely
different way, and just from a they're from a again
thinking of that comic book NERD who was bobbing around
in the ocean in Rhode Island with Tim mcgo on
a goal when we're thirteen years old for eleven or
twelve or whatever. It was visiting his mom and him

(01:02:06):
and there they had a rental place down there in
little Compton, Rhode Island, just talking about who would we
cast in an X Men movie and knowing that it
would never ever happen, you couldn't. You didn't have the
technology to show these characters. How are you going to
make put Nightcrawler on screen and have it not be dumb?
You know? And and obviously comics themselves were a marginal form.

(01:02:30):
And plus what would be the point of seeing one
X Men movie if you could not see the entire
Dark Phoenix saga the arc? And then you couldn't see
the X Men meet the Avengers Like that was the
Beast went from being an X Man to an Avenger,
went to a Defender. See I don't know any of
this ship. Well, that's why I think on a certain

(01:02:52):
level these movies really speak to people who grew up
with comics because the idea of telling this is what
the comics were at the time. I think we talked
about this last time Like that was Marvel's innovation as
a comic book company was to I mean, you had
Superman and Wonder Woman and Batman meeting from time to time,
but they didn't inhabit the same real world, non Metropolis,

(01:03:15):
non Gotham world, the way the Marvel heroes did. They
didn't have mundane, you know, needs to like eat and
make rent the way Spiderman did. Is that because Marvel's
New York and it was actually a real place and
not some fantasy city. And it was a decision that
they made to to make this a grounded world where

(01:03:36):
you know, Spider Man was a superhero who had a
ton of problems, you know what I mean, and had
troublemaking rent, you know, and the Fantastic Four we're scientists
who made a lot of money on patents, I guess
or I don't know. And they all met each other,
and they all and they shared, they shared a world,
and they shared a timeline that within a certain span

(01:03:58):
of comics from five to ten years, you can pretty
consistent and tell these stories that harkened back to other
stories and these interconnected stories. That was the innovation and
the fact that they're doing this on this math. They're
doing exactly that on this massive scale, telling telling a
story that started in I guess with the event Marvels

(01:04:18):
the Avengers, with the prequel like the prologue of Iron
Man and Captain America and thor just setting setting it
all up, setting it all up, and then paying it
off and then continuing with you know, different people have
different ideas of how success of these movies are artistically.
But then paying it all off, you know with Civil

(01:04:40):
Civil War and then Infinity War, We'll do a Civil
War show too. Well, that's also one that I would
watch all the time. We'll just cover all them, you'll
you'll be my go to And so there's that. The
other thing is that along the way they did something
that no one expected was even gonna be in in culture.

(01:05:01):
They made Black Panther. And it's really you know, hard
to hm. When you get Jean Gray in here, you
have to ask her about seeing Black Panthers as a
native of Cape Town, you know, seeing a seeing a

(01:05:22):
superhero movie populated entirely by black actors playing Africans and
creating a syncretic African culture. Um that appreciates the differentiation
of of the micro cultures of Africa, not micro to
diminish them, but to say the many cultures, the poly

(01:05:44):
cultural aspect of Africa. Uh. And you know, uh, it's
revolutionary and it made a ship ton of money and
it was fucking awesome. Like it was on top of
all that, I could I could pick apart the third
act a little bit. But yeah, but I mean that's
you could say that I didn't like that. M hmm.

(01:06:11):
I didn't like that to Challah triumphed over kill a
Monger because he had a trickier kick on the on
the train track. Yeah, I didn't basically just outfought him finally,
and I thought we could get that. I feel like
there was something there that could have been done that

(01:06:32):
that grew out of there. There two different characters that
might have something about two Challa's temperament that could have
allowed him to triumph in the fight but also make
a connection with kill Monger in a way that made
kill Monger realize maybe maybe you're the king or something

(01:06:54):
like that. You know, I don't know. But that was
the final piece though as a stage setting piece pre uh,
I guess you want to read went back to Infinity Warna. Well,
but I mean that was it was great because they
set the whole you know, final battle in Wakonda and
you had just fallen in love with this place as
an audience member, and five minutes later you get to

(01:07:15):
go back there and five minutes later exactly it's incredible. Yeah,
after you had just like you know, I love them
all I don't like I said, I don't know any
of the comics, but I saw Doctor Strange. I had
no idea what to think of it, and I loved it.
I thought it was great, a fun movie, a totally
different spin on all that stuff. And the beauty of
Infinity War is finally getting all these people to interact,

(01:07:39):
like we'd already enjoyed Avengers interacting, but now you have
uh Tony Stark trading trading lines with Star Lord and
Doctor Strange, and you can't help but be like a
little kid in that theater of how awesome that is.
It's it's so much fun. It's a zing, but it's

(01:08:01):
not purely fan service because it was in the comics,
right well, I mean that was part of the comics,
but it's not just like now we get to see
our friends talk to each other. Rights it is paying
off and it's not just seeding in the Thanos thing.
What you don't realize and lots of people have talked

(01:08:23):
about this, so I'm not claiming this is an original idea,
but you don't realize until about halfway through that seeing
seeing the heroes talk to each other isn't the good part.
In fact, they're not the heroes. This is a movie
told entirely from Thannass point of view. That is a
movie about how everyone thinks they're the hero of the story.

(01:08:43):
No one thinks of the villain, even if they're the villains.
Thought he was doing the right thing right, yeah, and
which is an incredible you know that was always not
too you know, back back back in the I'm not
sure if you're familiar with them. I portant body of
work called MAC versus PC adds yeah, and people are like,

(01:09:07):
how do you feel playing the PC is such a
you know, dumb, dumb idiot, Like, how do you feel
like being the bad guy? I was like, well, he
doesn't think he's the bad guy. He thinks he's he
thinks he's great, and he thinks he's doing Justin Long's
Mack a favor by helping this dumb kid become a
grown up. You know, like this is his blind spot

(01:09:29):
that he doesn't realize that he looks like fool. And
you know, that's one of the things that makes superhero
movies so prone to mediocrity. And indeed, you know, horror
movies or any movie where you have a big bad
it's like, well, they don't think they're bad, you know
what I mean. That's what makes that moment in The

(01:09:51):
Strangers so chilling. He's not a monster. He's not a monster.
He's not he's not a creature. He's a he's a
he's a human being. And what brought him here? And
why is he doing this? And does he ever think
about stopping? And why doesn't he that's a moment where
he stops, you know what I mean. And so when

(01:10:12):
you get to the point in the movie that you realize, oh,
this Thanos is the protagonist of this movie. Whether you
agree with him or not, it's structured that he is
the protagonist and all the heroes are the antagonists. It's
again like what are you kidding me? Like to create

(01:10:34):
a dumb, dumb tent pole super duper machine, you know,
the theme park ride that so much of movie making
that is destined for cinemas around the world had become,
and to to be that casually subversive, to like we're

(01:10:54):
gonna make We're gonna make a movie that is almost
entirely black cast. We'll throw Martin Freeman in there to
give the white dude some point of entry, and we're
gonna make a billion dollars doing that, you know, and
now we're gonna make a movie where the villain not
only thinks he's right, because all villains do, but there
are times when you think he's right and you don't

(01:11:16):
hate him and you believe him. And that's purely Josh Broman.
Like his performance in that is astonishing. And you know,
I think last time we talked a little bit about
how much more time do I have? We've got all right?
Last time I talked about one of the things that
was so weird about The Avengers is that these weren't

(01:11:37):
their best characters that they had sold off, you know,
to stay alive. Marvel had licensed Fantastic Four, Spider Man,
and the X Men, their three biggest marquis names, if
only if their own the names that had the most
residents outside of comics. Yeah, because you were saying iron
Man was sort of a ninth rate at best, The

(01:12:00):
Avengers was a as a comic book, was a group
of like also rans, like they had wonder Man. Is
that why they put them together was the idea that, like,
let's put five ninth rate superheroes together and that makes
them a fourth grade If I remember correctly, The original
uh impetus for the Avengers was the success of the

(01:12:22):
Justice League, and I think that that sparked the creation
of the Fantastic Four because teams were in and of
course Jack Kirby as much, if not more than Stanley,
sort of twisted the idea of a team. Say, it's
not just a team, it's a family, you know. But
the Avengers were much more of a Justice League type
because they were kind of these random They had these
different characters that they add to play with and they

(01:12:45):
just threw them together. So the original Avengers were iron
Man for the Hulk, Aunt Man, and the Wasp, okay,
and they were all I don't even think they had
their own comics. They were all ring in like I
think I Journey into Mystery was the comic that Four

(01:13:06):
was the feature title in, and Tales to Astonish was
the comic that iron Man was featured in, and like So,
whether they were intrinsically popular characters and therefore they thought
they could maximize their popularity, or they were all kind
of middlingly popular and they would throw them together. I
don't know. Cook to Stanley, he's still around, but those

(01:13:26):
were the characters they had left over. After Fox and
Sony had made their their uh Marvel movies and they
had to they had to build them. They had to
introduce people to Iron Man. Was they didn't introduce people
to who Thor was and who and they're still figuring
out who Thor is uh and Captain American everything else. Similarly,

(01:13:50):
once they started thinking out plotting up the big arc, like,
we don't have Dr Doom because he's Fantastic four. We do'
a Magneto, that's the X Men, we don't have the
Spider Man villains we can play with? Who do we have?
And they turned to this character Thanos, whose name is
derived from Fanatos, the god of death, that opened this

(01:14:14):
this episode. That's why this dictionary was provident. Fantos, who
was obsessed with death, indeed in love with death, the
personification of Death, the goddess Death in the comics, who
seeks power in order to kill half the universe in
order to impress Death and marry her. That's the dumb,

(01:14:34):
dumb thing that they have going on in comics. I
never liked it, but in the movie it's two in
order to save the University. Yeah, they changed it, in
my opinion, wisely because Fantos was almost a concurrent no no,
I think historically rip off of a DC villain called
dark Side created by Jim Starlin, who worked in this

(01:14:56):
whole pocket universe of Marvel Comics in the seventy into
the eighties into the nineties that I never had anything
to do with, which was their cosmic heroes. So the
original Guardians of the Galaxy, Adam Warlock, uh, Fanos, the Eternals, well,
not the Eternals so much, but one of the Titans

(01:15:18):
that he's you know, um this, the Celestials, all this
cosmic stuff, the Novacore, all that stuff belonged to a
strain of Marvel Comics, comics that I never read because
I was like, I'm I like the stuff that's at
the X Mansion. That's like Hogwarts before Hogwarts, you know,

(01:15:40):
like I like the stuff where they're grounded, literally grounded,
when the space stuff always just felt ephemeral to me
and weird. It was cosmic, it was kind of drug adult.
There are a lot of people going through psychological, psychedelic
journeys and other dimensions. There are a lot of people
like Fanos and other people standing on rocks, floating in
space and I'm like, that's that's not how it works,

(01:16:02):
Like having long conversations about the nature of the university
standing on floating rocks in the middle of space. Are
these comic book writers just like getting high? Is that
where this is coming from. I don't know whether Jim
Starlin was a big old dope smoker or whatever, but
there was definitely an entwining of late sixties early seventies

(01:16:25):
Marvel comics with psychedelic culture. That's what was happening in
Doctor Strange. That's why Doctor Strange was the biggest comic
on college campuses because did co Steve Well he was created.
He was creating all of these psychedelic dreamscapes in the comic,
and Doctor Strange himself was sort of like, you know,
I get what you're saying. You're gonna You're gonna sit

(01:16:48):
for a while next to this ancient brazier and the
hailsome magic smoke. I get it. So I never cared
about Thanos. I never knew who Thannas was when he
turned around in Marvels. The Avengers, my my favorite movie
until now, at the end is like, uh, you know,
to the his little helper goes the Earthlings aren't as
weak im puny as we thought. To to battle with

(01:17:10):
them would be to court death, and Fantas goes was
that one of the end credits? Uh yeah, okay, it
was one of the end credit scenes and they're man,
so they were setting this up the whole time. Uh yeah,
But they didn't know what they were going to do, right,
because that line, that jokey line is like, to fight
with the humans is to court death, and that's what
Fantas does from the comics. He courts death, right, So

(01:17:32):
his knowing smile at the end is like dumb. And
then they started bringing him in to the movie's Particlion
Guardians the Galaxy. They hired Josh Brolind to perform And
if you go and watch that that scene with Thanos
and Lee Pace is running the Accuser, it's kind of
a pointless scene where it's just revealed that Fantos has

(01:17:54):
hired Runing the Accuser to get the powers done or whatever,
and he's like, if you don't get it, boy, I
will scatter this go ayways with your blood or something
like that. I was like, that's not that's not the
Fantis who shows up Infinity War at all, Like they're
still figuring him out. They're setting up that he's the
adopted father or he has kidnapped both Nebula and go

(01:18:15):
Mora and setting that relationship up. But by the time
they make Infinity War and shoot it, design it, Fantos
looks different. He looks less menacing, looks more like Josh
Browan handsome thick and there are a lot of people
are into Thannis physically. Yeah, and he's a handsome dude.

(01:18:39):
Than this is great, Like I love watching it was
the same thing as like, I never thought in a
million years that anyone could make me care about Captain America.
It was just kind of the dumbest, the dumbest do
goody concept. But Chris Evans made me care about Captain America. Well,
the casting for all of these Marvel Avengers, I think

(01:18:59):
was the key. I mean, Robert Downey Jr. And uh
the Heymsworth, Chris Hemsworth, Like they've all taken it to
places that I don't think they even knew. No, of course,
you know that that's another testament to the fact that
they're making performers movies, and I in a movies that
rely on performances and real performances. So spoiler like people

(01:19:24):
have seen it, right, so you know how it ends. Yeah,
I did a review of It's it's the ending when
Peter Parker, like I may have actually cried in the
movie theater when Peter Parker looks up at Tony Stark. Yeah,
it's incredible. It's devastating, and of course Spider Man is
coming back. Like everyone, it didn't matter though it it

(01:19:48):
was devastating. That final scene was devastating, doesn't It doesn't matter,
And like we all know that Spider Man Far from
Home is coming out next year or whatever. We know
they're not going to kill Black Panther, of course, not
like anyone who's ever read a comic book, notice that
people don't stay dead, do you know what I mean?
That wasn't the point. The point was they committed to
this idea and played it as though as real as possible,

(01:20:10):
and it was very affecting. And that's because that they
allowed those actors to do. I've heard that, uh, Peter
Parker's lines are not scripted, that they were ad libbed,
or at least part of them were like I don't
want to go whatever, like that's that's that's I don't

(01:20:31):
know if you've seen um there's some person who is
translating scenes from Infinity War to make them look like
eighties video games. Like they're all blocky. I don't know
whether it's sixteen bit or a bit or whatever it is,
but it's all like they make it all look like

(01:20:51):
a side scrolling video game. And there's one sequence that
this person is done where it's like from the moment
of Fantos's arrival in Waconda where it needs only the
time stone and Vision is begging wanted to kill him,

(01:21:11):
and they run it all the way through to the
end of the movie. It's like it is obviously the
visuals are much more rudimentary, but what it reminds you
of is the pace of the story. The music is
all there, the color is like all the color design
is in place. So when Fantos snaps into the Soul

(01:21:33):
dimension and is walking around on water and it's orange
and a little bit more, as they're going did you
do it? And he says, yes, what did it cost you?
Everything good? It's like so as rudimentary as the as
the image had been rendered. You know, people say that's
all c G I blah blah, blah. But it's like, no,
it's pacing, it's music, it's costume design, it's color design,

(01:21:56):
it's when the music drops out, it's the you know,
it's we don't even dialogue, you know, it's just lines
in that in that video game version of it, because
you know, it's just like they do, um what what
do you call subtitles? Right, like in those video games
like I'll Get You you should have aimed for the head.
It's all real drama though, like they fanos would have

(01:22:19):
been stopped had it not been for star Lord and
his being upset over the killing of was it. Yeah,
I mean, and you you get it, like in the theater,
you're like, no, man, they almost had him, but you
can see the gauntlet coming off his hands, you know

(01:22:39):
what I mean? And like they they are, they're very
I forget the names of the guys who wrote it
because I'm mad. I'm not them, the Russo's, you know,
the Russo's directed who wrote it and they and you
know they and the Russo's, I mean obviously they took
the hand off from Josh Weeden. Age of Ultrouns a

(01:23:00):
good movie. Everyone a lot of people just like it.
I just went back and watch it again. It's cut
given that it has to essentially be five movies in
order to get them to where they need to be
in the in the in the story by the end
of it anyway, but um, you know, identifying that like yeah,
god more and star Lord our boyfriend girlfriend and he's

(01:23:21):
going to meet her dad and that's going to be awkward,
you know what I mean. And then he finds out
his dad killed his daughter. That's going to be he
won't you feel it? Like of course, you're like, don't
be dumb, but anyone would be incredibly dumb in that situation,
you know what I mean, Like you believe that he
would do what he did. So it's very very smart scriptwriting. Um,

(01:23:45):
very very I mean real real character is very smart characterization.
Playing off of all of those. It doesn't always pay
off in every possible way, but all of it is believable.
And the thing that really gets me thought back and
watching it again there too, there's a lot of premeditated stuff.
Sometimes it's a little bit on the nose. Sometimes it's

(01:24:07):
less on the nose, right, Loki says in the in
the in the opening scene was beautiful, like in media
race just like should have happened? We've lost. We open
with losing and we end with losing. That's that's a
pretty brave stance to take. I mean, we know they'll

(01:24:29):
get around there in the next one, supposedly, but you
kind of feel like we gotta win something in this one, right,
It's a movie like we I haven't felt that way
since the end of Empire strikes Back, you know what
I mean, like we gotta win something when nothing right
and why should we were the bad guys from Manas's
point of view, where the where the obstacles were, the

(01:24:52):
antagonists are guys. So the two echoes that made me
just appreciate the craft that went into uh structuring this
screenplay was Loki saying, you'll never be a god, right.
And the last line in the movie is Steve Rogers,
realizing that Thantis has skilled half the population of the universe,
SAIDs my god, yeah, you know, and then we see

(01:25:16):
thanas immediately to thanis what does that mean? Right? And
then but the opening line of the movie is I
know what it is to fail. I know what it
is to know that I am right and to fail anyway,
And obviously that's exactly what happens to Tony Stark and
everybody else like. And that's setting the terms of the debate,

(01:25:40):
which is, you know, everyone who everyone who takes action
in life thinks they're doing it for the right reasons.
And uh, you know, you think about how much of
not to get political. But the Republican Party is evil,
but they're not evil. There's a reason that Paul Ryan

(01:26:05):
has sacrificed every principle that he ever stated, both with
regard to personal integrity, to the to the sanctity of
the civic norms of our government, to even the fiscal
responsibility that he claims to uphold. But he sacrificed all
of that to support to to not get in the
way of Donald Trump. And that is because an end

(01:26:30):
justifies the means. I know I am right when I
break this government, if I'm Mitch McConnell or if I'm
Paul Ryan, it's like this government is bad and my
vision of government is good. And that means spending this
government down into oblivion so that people can finally get

(01:26:50):
off the government. Dole, I'm trying to inhabit their brains.
Now that isn't me, but get off the government. Doal
and stand up for themselves and it will be better
for everybody. I know it. I know I'm yeah, and
this is my opportunity to do that. And even though
I don't necessarily like who's in the president right now,
and even though it's going to mean throwing my own

(01:27:11):
daughter off the cliff, I will do it because I
know I'm right. I don't agree that they're right, but
it helped me to understand really how far people will
go when they're convinced they're right. And the tell many
people have pointed out, and I think this is a reasonable,
a real plot hole, like people don't all right, you

(01:27:32):
get the glove that allows you to do anything right,
and you're upset because the population is outstripping resources in
the universe about instead of having population, you double resources
to snap the other finger, you know, like that. And
it's because Fanos knew he was right when he was
on Titan and the he was like, we have to

(01:27:55):
at that point didn't have a magic glove. There's no
way to double resources. His idea was half the population fairly,
just randomly. He was called insane, cast out and they died,
and he watched the civilization die. So now that he's
got the power to do it. He's gonna stick with
his plan. He doesn't. He doesn't have the imagination to

(01:28:17):
think beyond his plan because he has to justify that
he was right along, you know, he lacks That's the
only thing that makes him of a villain, which is
that he lacks the imagination two see another way to
be flexible, in the same way I would say Mitch

(01:28:38):
McConnell and Paul Ryan lack the imagination that like, there's
another way to get where we need to be, you
know what I mean, but does not require the sacrifices
that you're talking about. Because of course, even then Thanos
when he snaps his fingers, there is a way to
to get rid of half the population where no one
ever remembers that had happened, you know what I mean,

(01:28:58):
he can tells everything. So that's that's what comes for
him as a reckoning in the in the next one,
even though as a character, I all I wanted to
do is just see him on screen. Yeah, So there
you go. That was great. That's movies and Marvels a ventures.
All right, Well, we'll have to finish up with uh

(01:29:18):
Infinity War Part two, Avengers four and I assume we'll
still be friends in the future, so we will also
get to age of age of Ultron and civil Wars.
Why not, right? I think Tony Stark and Steve Rodgers

(01:29:39):
thought they would be friends forever and then it didn't
work out. That's a perfect way to end. Let's go
in the drink check. My name is John Hodgeman. The Judge.
John Hodgman podcast is available every Wednesday from Maximum Fun Network.
That's at maximum Fun dot org. Wherever you get your podcast.
I hope you listen to it. It's a lot of fun.
It is. It's one of my favorite parn and I

(01:29:59):
listened to uh disputes between real people who've got real disputes,
including Chuck, you and your and your wife Emily came you.
You wanted to do some home improvement in your house
and I said, no, get a professional to do it.
And that was my order, and you did it, and
now you're tearing your whole house apart, throwing it all away.
That's right. And my book Vacation Land True Stories from

(01:30:21):
Painful Beaches is available in paperback wherever books are sold. Chuck,
you have something you want to plug? No, all right,
do you any live appearances coming up. Uh no, we
got uh, we got our our Christmas show, which just
sold out in Atlanta, fantastic, congratulations. And then next January
we'll do a sketch fest again, see you there, and

(01:30:43):
uh Seattle Portland's right before that. Oh yeah, when does
this come out? Uh is a couple of weeks. I
got Shawn Gun next week and then you oh Shan Gun. Yeah.
Oh he's a nice guy. Seems like he is. Have
you met him before at a wedding a few weeks ago, Yeah,
and so I had him on he partially he lives
in Land. Tell all those guys, anyone who come from
the m C you tell him, tell him how I feel.

(01:31:05):
I don't have to play modoc I can be anybody.
I can do anything for you. I really I love
I love the movies because I really feel like this
is it. They're they're greater. I mean, there are other
works of art, um uh and they're true. I mean
there's true cinema that's being made. But you know, as

(01:31:27):
a work of popular commercial art, they're doing a lot
more than they have to. And it is and some
of it is remarkably beautiful, including Paul bettany what a
beautiful looking man floating around, floating around. He's got that
weird tintin quiff his hair, little hair tucked. Yeah, all right, anyway,
all right, thanks to see you check likewise, bye bye,

(01:31:58):
all right, everybody. That was fun. I hope we continue
this Avengers motif with Hodgeman and just keep making them.
Although after uh, after we recorded, I think he said,
you know, let's keep doing this with the Avengers. We'll
go back and do uh Civil War and uh and
and that other one too, and he was like, no,

(01:32:20):
I don't want to do those. I will only do
that the new Civil War movie. So he's being very
picky everybody, but you know, it's his guest appearance. He
can choose to do what he wants. Uh. And that's
fine with me because I always enjoy a good conversation
with John no matter what we're talking about. I hope
you guys liked it, and I hope you learned a

(01:32:41):
thing or two about comic books and all those myriad
characters that marvel Stone our way. And uh, let's all
maybe get on Twitter and and petition the m c
U to get John in one of these movies coming
out soon now it's his dream to play more Doc
whatever that is. I don't even know who more Doc is,
but um he is, as he has a dream and

(01:33:01):
we can all help him out and get him on
that silver screen. Everyone. So thanks to John, thanks to
you for listening, and until next time, why don't you
go out and form a superhero team of your own
and maybe John and I'll talk about it one day.

(01:33:31):
Movie Crush is produced, engineered, edited, and soundtracked by Noel
Brown and Ramsey Hunt at How Stuff Work Studios, Pot
City Market, Atlanta, Georgia,

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