Fatal Attraction Ep. 09 - Fear / Swimfan - Get Me Another

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
you oh
Welcome to Get Me Another, a podcast where we explore those movies that followed in thewake of blockbuster hits and attempted to replicate their success.
My name is Chris Iannacone and with me today is my co-host Rob Lemorgas.

(00:24):
Hey, you're not dancing.
That's because nobody's asked me.
Come on!
uh Watch out fights gonna break out immediately
fighting myself right now, Chris.

(00:46):
ah Today is the ninth and final episode in our Get Me Another Fatal Attraction series.
And I have to say, this has been a terrific series.
think both for the podcast and for me, I've really enjoyed it.
just, it's, these movies have been great.
Yeah.
mean, it's always good when you can watch art that has something to say that speaks toyou, that can give you advice for your life and how to live.

(01:16):
Oh boy, it is, it's been crazy.
These movies are fun as hell!
They are!
I miss these kinds of movies just being in movie theaters and you just kind of go see therandom thing that's playing.
Yeah.
Now look, I know spoiler alert, everyone.
I'm middle-aged.
watching these two movies this week specifically, it brought up a recurrent theme to me,which is, they even make stuff for teenagers that's not on YouTube?

(01:45):
I don't YouTube.
don't know pretty much exclusively for teenagers.
And that's, and that's fine.
Look, I have a daughter.
I've watched some YouTube.
I'm not going to be an old guy saying that it's all garbage.
It's actually not.
There's some really interesting stuff.
I watch on YouTube I really like it.
Yeah, so this isn't me poopooing that.
No, why doesn't any traditional media company make just mounds and mounds of garbage forteenagers?

(02:11):
There used to be so much just like they were peddling Snickers bars and cotton candy.
Find out what the kids are into and do that!
What is it?
Is it surfing?
it, uh you know, it race car movies?
What is it?
Find out what the kids are into!
know what the kids are always into Chris having sex with a dangerous stranger
Yeah, that's a perennial that never goes out of style, you know?

(02:34):
That's an ancient wisdom that we have lost today.
People have forgot.
my goodness.
And we, want to say before we start, have some exciting stuff in store for the show, forthe future.
So stay tuned at the end of this episode because we'll be announcing our upcoming bonusepisode as well as our next series, which will be starting this summer.

(02:56):
And it is when we are very excited.
This has been one that's been on the list from before the first episode was recorded.
Absolutely.
Yeah, no, it's, we're very excited about it.
So that will come, we'll do that at the end of the episode.
But first we have two more films to talk about in this series, both of which come a littlelater in the trend and bear some of the hallmarks we've noticed in late entries.

(03:23):
And they are both squarely set in the realm of teenagers, but in a different way, I think,than Poison Ivy and The Crush.
It's weird in that Poison Ivy and the Crush, think they probably in their pitch thoughtteenagers would be part of the audience and they were.
Sure.
But it didn't feel like those movies were made for teens.

(03:46):
You know, and that.
ones.
is different.
Yeah.
don't think they thought anyone's dad was gonna go see fear, for instance.
They might have written a better dad if they did.
So first up today from 1996, this is Fear.

(04:10):
You're not so obvious.
He wants you bad.
You know, you're not at all like what I expect you to be the first time I saw you.
Oh, so?
You're just sweet.
Dad, meet David McCall.
Pleased to meet you, Same here, David.
Nicole's curfew is 12 o'clock.
Alright.
Hello.

(04:31):
song and dance about David in some perfect little town back east.
got no family, no address, no work record.
Big deal Laura is that the guy gives me the creeps and the girl is my daughter.
There's something wrong with- But your problem with David, not He's not a good guy.

(04:53):
Well, this is gonna stop.
Tell me you need me.
I need you, David.
Nicole!
My ex-teeves, my friends, and practically family.
The guy is a psycho man.
We have something that everybody wants but nobody has.
That's why they're trying to keep us apart.
Disappear from my family's life.
You got that?
Guess who?

(05:14):
We should have allowed nature to take its course.
In the end it will anyway.
Mr.
Walker, you okay?
So let me in now!
Go to cold, your door!
The is dead.
Please!

(05:37):
year.
You know, throughout this podcast, in the years now we've been doing it, I feel like I'venoticed uh a pattern, a trend, that we often get with later installment, that as trends go
on, they kind of go in two potential directions.

(05:58):
So in some instances, like Mad Max comes to mind, where you get this broadening of atrend, where it starts to take on...
attributes of other genres.
Like it starts to draw in stuff.
In other cases, what happens is that the films begin to kind of cannibalize each other tothe point where the trend kind of collapses in on itself like a white dwarf star.

(06:22):
And I think we might get that in today's film.
Yeah, it's the analog version of the dead internet theory.
Yeah, the trend starts copying the trend itself and then by the end, it's glorious, Chris.
It's amazing.
Both of these films are amazing.

(06:42):
There's also, I want to say one other trend, because it has nothing to do with actuallythe content of the movies for the most part.
The other thing that I think that this series, like no other, and we've been, we've doneseries that existed in the 90s before.
Sure.
But I think this one in particular, the films in it show the death of Hollywood.
And I'm not talking creatively, I'm talking about the death of shooting big budget filmsin Hollywood.

(07:08):
Yes.
You see the Vancouver tax credits and the exchange rates.
And I know some of our Pacific Northwest films were not just set, but were shot there.
em And part of that, I think, was the appeal of both Twin Peaks and Grunge made itpolitically or artistically palatable to sell the tax break of it all to filmmakers,

(07:31):
right?
Because especially in a these teen movie, this first one, you can.
You're selling it right in the midst of all, or the end, guess, of the grunge era leadinginto the beginning of the boy band era.
But it's a nice slice of US studio film history for this reason as well.
Oh, I agree.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's a great observation.

(07:51):
So our first film today, Fear, was produced by Imagine Entertainment and its co-founder,Brian Grazer.
And it was apparently a Grazer's idea that he had while he was on a skiing trip with hisdaughter.
The film was written by Christopher Crowe, who worked in television going back to the 70s,writing for series like Beretta, BJ and the Bear, and Airwolf.

(08:14):
He also wrote the 1992 Michael Mann film,
The Last of the Mohicans.
And I think it's interesting that Crow was later in his career when he wrote this film,because I think it's interesting that much of this film is not from the perspective of
Reese Witherspoon's teenager, but her father played by a post manhunter pre-CSI WilliamPetersen.

(08:36):
Yes.
mean, it's this movie and you wanted to talk about, you know, when you're mixing up thetrend to try to make it fresh, right?
So even at this point, it's not like there've been 15 teenage versions of a fatalattraction movie.
So that in itself, it does feel fresh.
Sure.
But to separate it out from poison ivy or something like that, or, um, my God, the crush,crush, you know, this is almost like combining all of them where the dad is involved, but

(09:05):
he's not.
sexually involved.
It's his daughter and he's protecting his daughter.
But the rebelliousness of the daughter means that she doesn't want the protection and ismaking excuses for the guy and all of this stuff.
uh
Yo, it is.
It absolutely is.
He's not unlike Kurt Russell's character in Unlawful Entry, except he's not—it's not hiswife that's threatened, it's the daughter.

(09:28):
Yeah, and also he's a dick.
Yeah.
And he's dead.
That's absolutely case.
Russell was not a dick in Unlawful Entry.
The other thing I want to say, because look, it's a teen fatal attraction.
I'm going to be having fun and laughing with this movie, right?
But I do want to say at the top, and I'll try to as we go through call out moments, I dothink one thing this movie does surprisingly for a teen fatal attraction, it does

(09:57):
surprisingly well, is the beats of showing an abuser weaseling his way
into the world of Nicole and getting her to start altering her behavior to do what hewants and just showing how the escalation of that abuse goes and the manipulation and

(10:18):
control.
like, look, I have not been in one of those relationships myself, but I had to takeabnormal psych in school and things like that.
so, you know, it's like textbooks, some of these
markers along the way.
Mark Wahlberg does them very nicely.
Look, I'm not, I'm not, don't love him in everything, but I do think also people don'tgive him enough credit.

(10:45):
Like, no, no.
He's put him in the goddamn departed.
And he's
Great in the Departure.
Yes!
my god.
this movie, what could have been a terribly cliched performance or whatever, like it'sreally well done and Reese is amazing in her way.

(11:08):
uh The movie was originally titled No Fear, was the original title for the script,honestly makes no sense either.
honestly, neither Fear nor No Fear, neither of those titles really make sense.
It's just so generic.
It's like a fatal attraction or just called lust.
I've got the real title for

(11:30):
What is it?
Because I was wondering what it should have been called.
Hot for danger.
Also accept Hot for
my god.
The film was directed by James Foley, who also directed the Sean Penn Christopher Walkenfilm At Close Range, as well as the movie adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross.

(11:51):
uh Fear stars Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Peterson, Amy Brennan, and AlyssaMilano, who made this movie the same year she made the direct-to-video Poison Ivy 2, Lily.
Holy shit!
I'm stunned, Chris.
I am shook.
What a year for Alyssa Milano, my goodness.

(12:14):
uh Fear revolves around the Walkers, a blended family living in Seattle, Washington.
And this is our fifth film, as Rob mentioned, this is our fifth film set in the PacificNorthwest, although this was shot largely in Vancouver, British Columbia, with some
location stuff in Seattle.
The Walkers consist of Steven and his teenage daughter, Nicole, as well as Steven's newwife, Laura, and her son, Toby.

(12:40):
And I won't lie, it took me a beat to figure out the dynamics here.
Like Nicole talks about living with her mom in Los Angeles until a few years earlier.
And Laura, played by judging Amy's Amy Brenerman, mentions her like her son's father.
But here's the thing, and this is where I was, like I couldn't get it in my head.
The two kids look more like brother and sister than they do.

(13:04):
Either one of the parents.
And Reese Witherspoon and the son both have blonde hair.
They look nothing like the...
very much like each other,
It's strange.
So Stephen is an architect and they all live in this amazing house on the water, yetanother amazing house on the water.
Can I just say any architect I've ever met is way more organized than this guy.

(13:29):
That's all I'm gonna say.
It's...
uh
an artist and they can have art, you know, they can be a little artsy, but like they're afucking architect.
They are organized people.
I can I tell you the real problem with this house?
I this house is gorgeous from the exterior.
love the look, everything.
But you know what the real problem, and this is what's bad because he designed it.
Why would you make the kitchen so small?

(13:50):
Like their kitchen is tiny.
And I'm like, what are you doing when you can build your own house?
Make the kitchen, it's the heart of the house.
What are you doing?
You're not a very good architect because if you're build a purge house Like in the purgein the first purge it takes like half a movie to break into the house They they break into
this purge house in like two minutes

(14:11):
Well, I mean, it doesn't help when your daughter gives out the code.
Yeah, but they're best in the windows and stuff.
I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but we call this a tease in the in the biz.
Don't skip this segment.
We put in the chapters, but don't use them.
You're going to miss gold.
uh So, know, we, we, Steven's an architect.

(14:34):
there's, there's a little bit of sleaze factor right from the off where we, you know, wecut from the exterior of the house to Reese Witherspoon in the shower.
I mean, you don't, you don't see anything, but I'm like, they put the sexuality rightthere from the beginning.
Yep.
And, then we have William Peterson Steven out for a run like a mad man.
Like he is first of all, he's running across uneven terrain.

(14:55):
I'm surprised he doesn't break his ankle.
Like, but there's no.
Pacing like it's not like I'm going out for a jog.
I got pace by so he is just running flat out like a crazy person
He ran straight from to live and die in LA to this set.
think is what happened.
It's just like
He swings my Chekov's guardhouse just to establish that that's there before trying to beatthe dog to picking up the morning paper.

(15:25):
And he's then he's like, oh, you he's all he's like, you're lousy, you're lousy dog orwhatever.
Like, he's very kind of like, you know, I just I was like, there's something there'ssomething off with this guy.
Like, you know, he exercises like a maniac.
He, you know.
He drives his red Ford Mustang convertible, is a beautiful, beautiful car, but isn't superpractical for a family of four.

(15:51):
I mean, the mother drives a Jeep Grand Cherokee, clearly he's like, well, she's got the ohkids covered.
This is not a this is not a 50 50.
No, like he he does almost nothing for this family.
And he's determined to take his family to a James Taylor concert and force his boomermusic on the kids.

(16:13):
Any one of them is not individually a red flag, but you put them all together and you geta picture of a very tightly wound dude.
Yeah.
And look, just to shift back somewhat into whatever it is that we do.
ah The opening scene here, right, is doing what these movies do, which is thisestablishing your idyllic opening, right?

(16:37):
This is this is being presented as not a perfect family because they're a little psychoticand they they're going to be bickering and he's going to be coming off like an asshole.
Honestly.
Everybody's on edge in this family.
not great either.
just want to say there's no, this is, this is Laura's not great.
Um, but in any event, you're getting that, like, here's the idyllic family that's goingto, uh, we're going to get a dangerous stranger that's going to shatter through this.

(17:06):
The one thing is what, who has the, I guess this, that seven year itch of even though thislife is good, it's not what I want.
want something else.
Right.
guess that's interesting because it is the,
You know, it's Nicole, the teenage daughter played by Reese Witherspoon.
And I know we're getting to that scene, but her wanting something different is really sonatural.

(17:28):
It's almost cliche.
Right.
We really works and she shouldn't know better.
And so it really, really works.
In comparison to the second movie, which again, both of these movies are something, butlike in the second movie, you have a much more clear and defined aspiration from that
character of what they want to do, how they want to change their life.

(17:51):
Here, it's like she's just kind of a disaffected teen, but not even super disaffected.
It's not, know, she's just kind of like that thing that teens want where they want to growup, you know, which is the completely reasonable thing.
And it's that that relationship seems like the answer whereas in the second movie therelationship is not even what is wanted like
Well, that relationship, if the events of the second movie happened, that relationship wasgoing to crash anyway.

(18:16):
Like just I'm telling you.
yeah.
That was a go in the distance.
No, no, but I just, you know, and we'll get there and we get there.
But the but the character wants in the in the next one is very, very different than inthis one.
Here it is related to her wanting a hot guy, the hot guy, which is, you know, again, socliche, it's believable.

(18:38):
Like just it just works.
oh
Honestly though, everybody in this family, except maybe the son, feels kind of on edge.
Like dad doesn't like the clothes his daughter is wearing.
There just seems to be sort of general tension around the house.
He doesn't want his daughter to be growing up, which is very, which again, also natural.
It's like good beats and her then wanting to rebel against that.

(19:02):
She's going to choose the, in her mind, the most grownup guy possible to try and date.
I mean, all this stuff, it's like, it's hitting this part of the, you know, the, the fatalattraction, psychosexual thriller trend, very, you know, like right, right there.
mentioned we're introduced to Chekov's dog whistle early on as the Sun's got a dog whistlethat he uses to call the dog the doggy door.

(19:26):
That's going to be important later.
So we will periodically get bits of Steven at work, but just enough to know that he works.
Like it's never really a plot element, even though they kind of like, oh, things are goingbad at the office or we got this client we got to deal with.
But like in this movie, it's not like the antagonist can affect Steven's job in the waythat we've seen in other movies.

(19:47):
And even when he does do it at one point, it kind of is meaningless.
You could remove that beat and it really, all it's telling you is that David's a bad dude,but yeah.
That's basically, but the antagonist is David McCall played by Mark Wahlberg.
And this was his first leading role after, you know, a hip hop career as Marky Mark, aswell as supporting roles in movies like Renaissance Man and the Basketball Diaries.

(20:14):
Leonardo DiCaprio was originally sought for the role of David.
but he turned it down and he recommended Wahlberg after the two worked together on thebasketball diaries.
And it's interesting to think how different this might have been with Leonardo DiCaprio.
I mean, I get it's like that.
It's like playing that game of which I always have in my mind that the 1970s death wish,how much better would it have been if instead of Charles Bronson, it had been Alan Alda,

(20:42):
the wimpy guy who broke, whereas Bronson's action star in this version of it though, I, I,and I get the like, the dreamy unassuming guy, but I actually think having the guy with
like the muscles and like,
physically imposing guy.
But not just imposing, because he wasn't as big as a Marvel star, right?

(21:04):
But the big thing about Mark Wahlberg in this era, I'm gonna say, anyway, I'm just gonnasay it.
He was a Calvin Klein underwear model with like ripped abs and like chiseled and likegirls thought he was fucking hot.
And that's the appeal.
If this movie makes one critical mistake.
I actually think it's that early on they don't physically objectify his body enough.

(21:29):
Yeah, I mean you get a little bit out of the beginning with that tight shirt the firsttime she sees him.
you do see him with a shirt off at one point.
It's not like they do zero, but you know, I, and I say that because that is like 50 % ofher appeal is that she's got that sexual attraction to him because he looks like a statue.

(21:50):
Right.
Like, that's why you cast him in this movie.
eh
Nicole gets her first glimpse of David when her and her friends Margot, played by AlyssaMilano, and Gary, played by Todd Caldicott, who was also in Friday the 13th, part eight,
Jason Takes Vancouver, by the way.
uh They leave school to get lunch at the trendiest 90s cafe you can imagine.

(22:14):
But what's fascinating to me is they get takeout, and it just doesn't really seem like atakeout kind of place.
Like it's a vibes kind of place, but like they're talking about it like, we need bragging.
You know, this is a bragging rights that we've gone here, but it's, is it really worth it?
If you stay for five minutes, Ogle, Maki, Mark in a very tight shirt and then leave with asmoked turkey sandwich that I guarantee will not travel well.

(22:39):
Yeah.
What this movie does with the mid nineties white kid culture is rather interesting.
The thing that makes it because I will say in a lot of movies like this, when adults aretrying to do that sort of thing and, you know, capture whatever the teen trend is, they

(22:59):
get it absolutely 100 % wrong.
And it's just like, you know, laughably bad.
Right.
This movie is not that.
No, this this is one of the rare ones that it's the uncanny valley of what it was like tobe there at the time.
Yeah.
Yes, you're right, you're right!
aspects that are, that are right.

(23:20):
Like during the day when they serve food and you can be underage and come in, it's like,but at night it's probably, you know, 21 bar, they, you know, the look of that place is
dead on.
like, even like the dumb pool table, like in a hard to get area, you know, and kids whodon't belong there being there, but in any case, it's, it's, it's not quite.

(23:44):
but it's not as bad as what happens later on at the race.
Oh God.
Yeah, because they pick up a flyer for a music venue that Gary describes as down by thedocks.
Down by the docks.
ah Nicole won't be able to go, unfortunately, because it's James Taylor night for theWalkers.
By the way, I want to add, I once almost sold James Taylor a book.

(24:07):
Oh.
He was looking for the first volume in the Master and Commander series, and we were out ofit, but he was cool.
He was cool about it.
Of wanted, of course James Taylor wanted the first volume of the Master and Commanderseries.
By the way, my estimation of him has just climbed.
This was around the time that the movie with, with Russell Crowe came out.

(24:31):
fun.
I never read the books before the movie.
That's how I learned.
uh
at all yet.
have them.
I got them, but I haven't read them yet.
It's on the list.
got, you know, there's a lot of stuff.
Let's start a book club with James Taylor.
So, you know, by the way, I want to mention Gary.
I could not figure out if Gary was the gay best friend or if he was the best friend whowas into Nicole but got stuck in the friend zone with no hope of escape.

(25:00):
And the movie kind of it's on the line.
I'm not sure which.
Later, Margo and Nicole hang out at Margo's house where she debates.
Margo debates if she should pose nude for a magazine.
It's like, OK, you know, you know, you do you.
And there's a
curious relationship between Stephen and his daughter.
you Stephen, you said it earlier, he doesn't want his daughter to grow up.

(25:22):
He wants her to be daddy's girl.
He literally gives her a bracelet, a bracelet with the words daddy's girl on them, whichwe'll, we'll, see.
And we'll come back.
He calls a sugar plum, plum, which I think is weird.
It's just like, but what's interesting about it is that when you consider he didn't live,she didn't live with him until like two or three years earlier, she mentions that.

(25:44):
So like, is this some sort of making up for lost time that he feels he missed hisdaughter's childhood?
you know, like
He didn't experience it.
Well, yeah, doesn't know that she, you know, it's not, she isn't as grown up as she is forhim.
And that makes that's, you know, good characterization stuff.
although I do have this note.

(26:05):
What's the note?
I'm very excited.
Dad and Laura are both kind of jerks.
He's always up their ass about everything.
But then when he has to do a work trip that he clearly doesn't want to, Laura reallyharasses him about it anyway.
that scene!
my goodness!
I'd go off with Mark Wahlberg too if I was her.
Well, like, so family night at James Taylor is going to get scowled when his job requireshim to make a last minute trip to Vancouver to meet a client.

(26:34):
And I mean like last minute, like a couple hours beforehand.
I got to be honest, I don't know how I'd react to this.
Like, you know, what kind of high stakes situation could it be?
He's an architect, but you know, that he can't say, sorry, I have plans with my family.
Can I go up the next day or next week or whatever?
But if it's that serious, the wife could be a little bit more understanding, and Laura isjust downright nasty about it.

(27:02):
can't go to the concert, I gotta go to Vancouver.
I have to meet the client for dinner in three hours.
Jesus, Stephen.
We've been planning this for weeks.
The whole thing was your idea.
Nobody wanted to go more than me.
What would you me to do?
yeah, then we could just all starve to death.
Spare me the melodrama, nobody's starving.
And the way she digs him, she's like, this was all your idea anyway.

(27:23):
I'm like, it sounds like you don't want to go to James Taylor.
Shouldn't you be like, I don't have to go to James Taylor.
See you later, sucker.
Go to the airport.
uh
She's just testing about the whole damn thing.
it's just like, and then of course he can barely contain his rage by punching a cabinet.
And I'm just, I'm just like, all these people are running in the red already.

(27:46):
And it's just the beginning of the movie and they're running the red.
And it was about halfway through this movie that I made a mental switch for myself, whichis that even though it's weird, Nicole, Reese Witherspoon's character, is in many ways is
and should be the protagonist of the film.
Right.
However, it does kind of almost switch into dual protagonist at times with her dad, right?

(28:07):
Where he's doing things.
And so you're left with kind of like, well, whose POV is the movie really like between thetwo?
And I think it is Nicole's, but I decided.
that none of the movie is objective.
It's all Nicole's.
No, so like the dad and mom being this bitchy, this is her experience of being an annoyedteenager with her parents, because if you, if you put on film what actually annoys

(28:36):
teenagers in real life, it wouldn't play.
That's interesting.
That's an interesting idea.
I don't know how much it's supported in the text, but it's a really interesting idea.
Why should you care?
You do what want.
No, I would almost guarantee that was nobody's intent.

(28:57):
But halfway through, all of a sudden it clicked for me.
I'm like, this movie makes perfect sense to me now.
I'm like, yes.
But here's the fact that everybody is just so continually on edge is not the real problemhere, right?
Do you want to know what the real problem here is?
The real problem is that William Peterson is wearing a shirt that is at least two or threesizes too big.

(29:22):
Like he's on the phone.
I'm like, what's, what's wrong with his pants?
I'm like, is he wearing mom jeans?
But then he comes into the kitchen and the shirt is untucked.
And I realized it's huge.
Like what is happening in the costume department on this movie that they could not find aplaid shirt to fit this actor.
I've honestly never seen anything like it in a Hollywood movie.

(29:44):
His shirt's open to his navel because he's just got the second button open, but it's sobig that a second button, it's like, is happening?
It's just like, it's like they got the wrong size.
They realized it on the day and somehow couldn't replace it.
Which doesn't happen on a big, I guess this is a, yeah, mean, a big budget Hollywoodmovie, but it's enough that you could get the shirt to fit the actor.

(30:11):
it's.
So, with James Taylor off, Nicole goes with Margot to the club out by the die.
I don't know why I went into, I went into, I went Megalopolis with my use of saying theword club.
You go back to the club.
Yes, this is the 90s warehouse rave.

(30:33):
oh it's not a permanent location.
So you only at the flyer tells you the exact time and date that it will be.
This is all this is all actually very accurate.
Sure.
To the era.
Yeah.
You know, it's probably a disused warehouse, something like that.
There are a lot of inaccuracies.

(30:54):
First of all, what's with like the totem pole-esque things?
the decor?
Like it's these like cylinders carved with like totem images that are lit up?
It's like, look.
That didn't happen then.
It just did.
I
fog machine and some lights and stuff.

(31:18):
Some weird random things.
Sure.
But this is again, the, you know, the Hollywood production design ideal of like, if youwere doing one of these clubs, it just, and it's not a club.
They're doing it like a club instead of like a warehouse, right?
It's, it's set up like the, um, my God.

(31:38):
um it's set up like bad influences underground parties.
Yes.
as opposed to a flyby.
Because the thing is, these were often run by like 20 year olds, right?
Who, you know, like, this wasn't like, 50 year olds with all these connections doing thiscrap.
Not yet.
I mean, it gets there eventually.
That's, that's where we are now.
Daisy Carnival.

(31:59):
Sure.
Like this stuff is big business, but back then it wasn't.
It was just getting started, you know?
And also, actually, no, you have to go.
You have to go because we're not at the most ridiculous part yet.
David is there and as well as David's dirtbag friend who Margot is into.
And again, Nicole starts talking to David and again, I think Mark Wahlberg's very good inthis movie, but I mean, I'll be honest though, he does come across as a psycho from minute

(32:29):
one.
Like he's got a look on his face that is, you know, he's just a creeper from the get-go.
There's no time when he's charming or likable.
Like he's just, you could tell that this guy's a creep.
Yeah.
To me, it still works with Nicole, A, because he's hot, but B, he is to her, she wants himbecause he feels a little dangerous and it's gonna make her grown up.

(32:55):
So, like, within the context of the character and her choices, like, I, as a full-grownman who knew what movie I was going to watch, should know that this guy, they're not,
because if they tried to hide the ball, it would probably annoy me.
Right, right.
It's like, I know Dracula's Dracula.
It's like the title.

(33:16):
Later he charms the mom and I'm just like, how dumb are you lady?
Like what, what the hell?
He is very Eddie Haskell in that way for sure.
But when we get there, there's one, there's two great manipulative abuser things that hedoes to Nicole while being nice with the family that I think are great.

(33:38):
So don't let me forget.
I will say that in the whole rave party sequence that my eyes alighted on the girl behindReese Witherspoon who was wearing sunglasses and a red Star Trek original series shirt
while she was at the club and I was just like, I'm gonna come dance with you.
That's where I'm By the way.

(34:01):
Yeah.
No, no.
because the dance music parties and things and this is a little this is a little later 96.
So it's getting more popular and like, you know, I think prodigy might be happening soonin America.
Because it was bigger in Europe earlier, but here it really was it took longer to catch onbut like, early on, it was not the cool kids quote unquote going to these things I know

(34:24):
because I was one of them.
And but like
It was kids who were like into sci-fi and it was a little nerdier, you know?
Sure, there were drugs, but like, you know.
Sure.
And almost immediately though, a fight breaks out.
Like it's around the dirtbag friend is involved and it escalates quickly.

(34:44):
very quickly, which this is, and look, I get it's the movie and they're bad guys, butlike,
It's insane.
The guy jumps on that big cylinder totem thing and it goes down and people start runningaround.
And Dave, he grabs Reese Witherspoon up to the roof to escape.
uh
And the Seattle PD's response time is fucking incredible.

(35:09):
You're
Like a punch gets thrown and by the time they get to the roof, the helicopter
circling, there's people spilling out into the streets.
It's like the grunge version of the attack on Aqaba from Lawrence of Arabia.
But thankfully, David gets her out of there in his vintage Corvair.

(35:32):
And you know, they're gonna share a little bit about themselves.
uh You know, this is their The Madame Butterfly moment here.
I stayed with my real mom in LA after my dad moved up here.
Nine years old.
was just the two of us, all alone in this big house.

(35:53):
And she was so sad most of time that I kind of felt like I was the one taking care of her.
must have been tough.
You're with your dad, you get along with him, okay?
I don't know, I mean, I only moved up here about a year ago.

(36:15):
It's not like we even know each other that well.
about you?
Your parents?
I mean, that you see and stuff.
No, well, they're back east, but I talk to them all the time.
Are they still together?
They're weird, mean, they're totally cool, totally together.

(36:37):
It's just that they've never had a disagreement about anything more serious than whetherit's gonna be mashed or stovetop to your coffee.
Kinda great.
I think there was more truth in the fatal track.
uh
None of what he's saying is true.
And then they start to make out and David proceeds to eat her whole face.

(36:59):
The whole face.
ah So, yeah, he's eating her face for so long that she misses curfew, which is not good,you know?
And she has the lame excuse of my watch broke.
Your watch broke.
But like, that's no reason for Laura
To tell her to take off her makeup because she looks like a slut.

(37:24):
Wow.
And just in case you're wondering, was Laura just tired and cranky?
No, because the next day, William Peterson is, you know, is going to ask her if she calledNikola slut and Laura doubles down.
She says she lawyers his ass by saying, I didn't call her a slut.

(37:45):
said she looked like a slut.
That makes all the difference in the world.
Jesus.
It's just what a nasty thing to say.
Like, just, I don't even know.
Like, it's just no wonder this girl wants to get out of this house.
We get this dating and making out montage to Bush's come down and pretty soon David sayshe wants to meet Laura's family and you know.

(38:14):
It goes well at first, mean at least it's scripted.
uh But again, I feel like Mark Wahlberg, you know, kind of still comes off as a skinnycreeper.
it's not, you know, it's, I mean again, if the, especially Laura is too blind to see it, Idon't know.
But like everything he sounds is creepy.
Yeah.
But there are two kind of innocuous moments and, um, yeah, Steve, Mr.

(38:39):
Walker, picks up on one of them because he reacts to it.
Yeah.
He just, he calls out to Nicole from a different room.
She's not even on screen and he's like, get me a Coke.
It's not, Hey, could I please have a Coke or do
yeah, you know, you want anything?
No, it's, get me a Coke.
get me a Coke.
And then when she comes into the room and delivers the Coke, then he's like, he's alsocontrolling her.

(39:03):
And he might say some, I can't remember if there's some little bit about, you know, we'regoing to be out at night.
He's controlling her and he's controlling.
So it's, it's two very classic kind of little things where he's starting to get her usedto doing what he says.
Right.
Well, yeah, that's that we'll get to that in a little bit.
But like Steven notices that get me a Coke moment.

(39:24):
But he doesn't he doesn't say anything, probably because at that moment he's channelingDarryl from Poison Ivy and lustily looking at Margot, something that David definitely
notices.
yes.
To the point where I thought that was going to be part of David's messing with the familylater.

(39:45):
Yeah.
But it's not.
It's, God, Steven's just the worst.
Like he's just, he's just, I he's not the worst than like a Daryl.
Daryl's still the worst, but Steven within a context, it's just a terrible dad.
uh Steven tells David that the curfew is at midnight and David's response to this is whileSteven's eyes are turned, he pushes back the clock in Steven's office by half an hour,

(40:09):
which of course means he's gonna miss the FedEx deadline.
And all I could think of was the hand that rocks the cradle.
It's more FedEx!
problems.
Yeah.
Although in this movie, it really, there's no real consequence to it.
cares about his job.
Like it's just nobody cares about his job so it doesn't matter.
Like
You get on a plane or whatever.
guess it motivates that.

(40:30):
David takes Nicole to the amusement park where they go on the roller coaster and wow doeshe give her a ride.
You know, look, sometimes you want subtext and sometimes you just want text.
And I have to say the roller coaster as visual metaphor for burgeoning teenage sexualityis something I haven't seen quite like this before.

(40:53):
I've seen it before.
Yeah.
But this really just, again, it strips all subtext away and it's just like,
Exactly, exactly.
Set to the Sunday's wild horses.
which gets reprised later on.
This is not the last time you'll hear that song, but there's something I have to say thatis also a little actually poignant and sweet for me.

(41:15):
know, I know that using, using the roller coaster is the metaphor and they're doing, ahyou know, they're doing the, uh, fingering on the roller coaster as they're going.
Uh, look, this is the perfect metaphor as
Brittany once put it, I'm not a girl, not yet a woman that you're doing.

(41:37):
You're exploring the sexuality.
One gets that this is probably Nicole's first real sexual, uh, you know, relationship thatshe's starting up and yet it's on a carnival fun ride.
So it's like doing something very adult, but you're at a carnival like a child.

(41:57):
It's, it's actually like, it's that perfect fulcrum of like you're at that point where youare.
You're not yet a woman, but you're not you're not a girl.
And I like it's it's actually perfect for me anyway.
It's just like the setting and all that.
do want to mention that according to Reese Witherspoon, in an interview she did in 2023,she was very uncomfortable with this scene, which was not as explicit in the script as

(42:22):
written, and she requested a stunt double for it.
look, and I'll say what I, everything I said about the metaphor of it all doesn'tnecessarily require certain shots that occur in this sequence.
Right.
Right.
And I guess you mentioning that is a great moment to mention if, if anyone listening outthere is going to watch this, I would highly recommend a different double feature than the

(42:45):
movie that we're going to talk about next.
It's another 1996 movie that deals with young Reese Witherspoon being sexualized.
The freeway.
Yeah.
But obviously that movie has a much different.
That movie is saying something about it and it's a far, far different experience.
I don't know exactly when those two were shot exactly because, know, freeway I think is amuch more independent film than this, even though it's got her and Kiefer Sutherland in

(43:15):
it.
An excellent, excellent movie.
I highly recommend freeway.
ah Tough in some ways, a tough picture.
ah Not a super tough picture, but a tough picture.
Um, but I think the fact that these two movies were so close to her, you know, in, how shedid that, uh, I'm like, it's fascinating to me to see how they're treated differently.
And then if you want to really triple feature it, team 99 election dealing with adults,sexualizing kids in a different way and the creep, it's not the only thing in that film,

(43:48):
like, yeah.
Yeah.
And just, you know, anyway, think interesting time.
where I thought I caught glimpses of Tracy Flick in Reese Witherspoon's character here inthe call.
it was like, there's a little bit of, that's where that's gonna go.

(44:09):
The other thing I thought about with this scene, and it made me think of some of themovies we've watched and the way sexuality as depicted in movies was evolving in the 90s.
And a lot of the films that we've watched in this series have touched on
is just the acknowledging of the female orgasm.
Like that was something, 10 years earlier, women have orgasms, I don't know.

(44:32):
Like 10 years earlier, it wasn't even a thing.
But now we're getting into, you know, movies that acknowledge that, you know what?
Women can enjoy sex too, my goodness.
I mean, it's.
I mean, it's a long way from what Porky's when the one lady being heard reaching orgasm isso unusual that it's a joke.

(44:55):
Yes, it's so out of bounds.
Maybe you take progress where you can find it, man.
That's really what it is, I guess.
Sort of?
I think?
But digital sex is not the most surprising thing that happens at the amusement park.
No.
The most surprising thing that happens at the amusement park is that when David is playingone of those shooting games where you shoot the thing and you win a prize, and he wins.

(45:19):
He shoots and he wins a prize.
And what prize?
What prize does he choose to give to his new girlfriend?
I'll take that peace pipe.
What?
Not a stuffed bear or an elephant or owl.
What?
A peace pipe?
First of all, why would they even have that?
And why would she even want it?

(45:39):
I watched this movie and then for like days after I'm walking around I'm just shaking myhead like, goddamn peace pipe.
God damn peace pipe.
uh And you know, if these carnivals back then in the mid mid eighties to mid nineties,there were a lot of Bowie knives.
This was this could have been Chekhov's Bowie knife that could have come.

(46:00):
That would have been amazing.
my God.
the peace pipe.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
So dad, dad's missed the FedEx deadline.
So he's got to go up to Vancouver.
He takes Laura with them, leaving the two kids in the house alone.
That's a bad idea, dad.
Love that though is like, remember how I canceled that James Taylor concert that youclearly were angry about going to do the begin with.

(46:24):
And now you're pissed at me.
Let's go away together to a hotel in where we did that stuff in Vancouver.
And she's like, Oh yeah, I'm in.
You have a house and a bedroom.
Come on.
What are you doing?
But like, and leave the kids cause you know what's going to happen.
She's got a new boyfriend and uh, you know, she's, calls him to come over.

(46:47):
Uh, but, and of course, but he can't immediately come over cause he's up to something withhis scuzz ball buddies, but I don't know what, like were they a gang?
Were they involved in some kind of criminal activity?
It looks like they're driving to a hit or to buy, buy some microprocessors at a warehousein Dorches.
This was my first time seeing this film.

(47:07):
did not see this back in the day and watching that.
I'm like, my God, they're going to cut to like the crime a la bad influence or something.
Or are they stealing DVD players?
Like it's fast and furious.
A few years later, like what's going on here?
Whatever nefarious shit they're up to, they're bringing their pets?

(47:28):
Like, Buck Wahlberg's got like a dog on his lap or a cat, I don't know, I couldn't tell.
But like, he's not going to pass up the opportunity for sex, so she gives him the code toget in.
She's just like, oh, here's the code and come on in.
He comes on over, eventually shows her his Calvin Klein abs, tells her that he loves her,but not before looking through his stuff and finding that daddy's girl bracelet.

(47:54):
So, and of course in classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer style, as soon as the girl sleepswith the guy, he reveals himself to be a complete asshole, which we knew all along because
the look on his face was a complete asshole.
And because she's in high school, this is also the most realistic thing in this movie.

(48:16):
He instantly becomes.
Yeah, yeah, I guess he doesn't become a complete jerk.
Self to be a complete.
Yes.
And he drives up to the school, the school he does not attend by the way.
She sees, he sees her hugging her platonic friend, Gary, and promptly beats the livingshit out of him.

(48:37):
Like even knocking Nicole down and giving her a black eye.
And then what was interesting was he looks when she's crying, she's on the like, he'sknocked her down.
He doesn't mean to hit her, but he hits her, but still he's beaten the shit out of Gary.
And then he looks down.
Viciously.
Viciously.
viciously.
He's a vicious beat.
And he looks down and she's crying and he looks at her and he says, what?

(49:02):
Like as if what's the problem?
You know, like it's like, why would you even like, can't even seem to understand what theproblem is.
This guy, like it's just.
You know, it's another, I mean, obviously it's not like a fun moment, but it's a reallynice moment in the movie and from, from Mark Wahlberg where, how to put it, they aren't

(49:23):
trying, this isn't like Marvel with Thanos.
They're not trying to make you feel for this guy, right?
It's not, it's not that kind of thing.
I see why he would do what he would do uh from like a logic or reason standpoint, but itis showing you that like someone like this.
Yeah.
Doesn't think or work like you or I.

(49:47):
And that's the quote unquote reason that he behaves this way.
So it's an explanation, if you will, not an excuse, but it is because it's not mustachetwirly.
This is a guy who's not in control of himself.
Right.
Even though he is dangerous and like he will consciously decide to go and beat up Gary inthis moment.

(50:08):
But
He's not in control either and both things are true.
It's not letting it's not letting David off the hook.
No, but it's a, it's a really nice uh portrayal and the right, both in the writing and theacting, I think, you know, yes, it is.
it is.
And Nicole, you know, she tells Laura that she got a black eye in gym class.
Laura gives conceal and makeup tips on how to conceal it, presumably doesn't call her aslut this time for her makeup, I guess.

(50:34):
And Nicole, you know, for a while Nicole ignores David because honestly she should.
And we get to see a little bit of David's home life.
And Rob
Like, he and his gang basically live at a suburban house that's been decorated in thestyle of 1990 The Bronx Warriors.
It's all spray paint inside.

(50:56):
My favorite, absolute favorite uh set dressing in this entire movie is in this house.
It's by David's bed.
He's got two things very close to where his head is lying down.
He's got the photo booth, a photo booth strip of him and Nicole.
Yes.
From presumably the carnival or whatever.
Presumably.

(51:16):
Maybe somewhere else.
And yet, and it's just like the poster putty.
can't even see tape or anything.
It's just like stuck to the wall.
And there's another photo right next to that.
It's his mugshot!
He's it's like having his high school yearbook picture up or something.
Exactly.
He's got his mug shot.
Oh, also black and white.

(51:36):
Also like a photo.
Yeah.
she, he sends her flowers, which she dumps in the trash.
And, uh, when, when Laura hears Nicole crying in a room, Laura goes upstairs to talk withher, you know?
Uh, and, and, actually there's, you feel like maybe there's this moment where Laura andNicole are connecting and Laura's getting, getting Nicole to open up about what happened.

(52:05):
That is until Dad comes upstairs and blows the whole damn thing by making it all abouthim.
Like, oh my goodness.
Like, it's just, it's amazing.
Yeah, if you were this close to maybe getting Nicole to come to her senses.
Nope.
Nope.
You blow it.
it.
Now, he finds a condom wrapper on the floor, which he is, that puts him in a bad headspace.

(52:30):
And honestly, just, you know, pick up the condom wrappers on you.
Dispose of those condom wrappers.
Don't leave them there for your parents to find.
Like, it's just, listen, Steven's right that David is not a good guy, but she's alreadybroken up with him.
Like, don't talk her into getting back together with him, because you're such a jerk.

(52:51):
Which is what he does.
essentially.
uh
and Nicole have a conversation where Margot says something truly disturbing.
She says that sometimes guys hit you as an asshole way of showing that they love you.
That is not true, Margot.
You need to smarten up.
That's just not true.
So David puts on a sob story apology and she lets him back into her life.

(53:14):
um It is, again, it's not the right call.
I understand why she makes it in some ways.
What is more shocking to me is that Laura, who knows this dude gave her stepdaughter ablack eye, is happy to just play around in the pool having a good time now that he's back
in the fold.

(53:35):
Like it's ridiculous.
There's so many little, well, there's one little touch at the beginning when David isapologizing to Nicole that I love.
He apologizes.
I think that she has not yet verbally accepted it, but you can see her stance softening,right?
But she hasn't said anything.
And then David gives her this little touch of reassurance on her shoulder.

(53:56):
It's like textbook manipulator shit.
He's crossing a boundary and it's very like very light.
It's not much.
It's very small.
The touch he's about to give her in front of dad is not subtle.
And again shows off his wolf face eating ability.
Yeah, like it's just like they're at the pool and they're making out.

(54:17):
It's just like it's easy.
her eye, Chris.
Yeah.
He is eating-
yeah, it's, it's, he's going full, full cheat and just, you know, going for the eye.
It's, you know.
While staring down Mr.
Walker.
Yeah, with that creepy smile.
So Stephen looks into David's past.
He finds out that he was an orphan that was bounced around from foster home to foster homebefore being kicked out of the system at 18, which deliberately or not appears to make the

(54:45):
message of this movie.
Don't let your daughter date a guy outside of your socioeconomic circle because he'll bebad news.
Stephen tries to go and warn David away, but David doesn't seem remotely scared.
He's talking to Stephen.
He's not taking any of it.
then, so Stephen leaves and David starts to pound his chest with his fist.

(55:10):
And I'm watching this.
I'm like, what is he gearing himself up to?
Like he's trying to psych himself.
Like I literally did not know what he was doing.
I thought it was like Wolf of uh
the same thought.
was like, he, is it's just like, you know, but then we learned that he was bruisinghimself up in order to convince Nicole that her dad beat him up.

(55:34):
And honestly, you take a look at Mark Wahlberg in this movie and that is ridiculous.
It's also, this is the one thing that for me story wise felt a little like bad sitcommy.
Cause when ah Nicole confronts her dad about it, cause her dad literally just like did afinger poke in the chest, like stay away, but like not even, not even hard.

(55:57):
No, did a finger poke and she's like, you hit him in the chest and it bruised and he justgets all flustered because in his mind it's like, well, I did poke his chest, but what I
did, but
I wasn't that hard.
What any reasonable human being would say is like, there's no way I bruised him.
I did not hit him.

(56:18):
Just say that.
Why do you not say that?
Because that is what happened.
Yeah, it's yeah.
Yeah.
But, but that said, it's not going to be long before the relationship goes south again.
When she shows up for a party at the gang's house and she said he was not going to, andthen she changes her mind and she sees Margo grinding away on top of the scuzz ball in her

(56:45):
underwear and then taking a hit off the crack pipe.
Seattle don't believe the pipe.
And this is where the metaphor of the peace pipe comes in.
wait,
No, no, no metaphor for the pipe.
I had honestly forgotten about the peace pipe by this point, which I suppose is successfulin hiding the ball that way.
But then David literally comes in and he, he manhandles Margo.

(57:09):
He, he demands that, that she say that she wants him and he literally picks her up andcarries her off over his shoulder.
And what's interesting about this scene is it's very, because the first time I watched it,I was, I did not pick up on how scared Margo.
But then I watched it again as I was doing notes and I looked at it a second time and it'sclear She is absolutely terrified

(57:33):
No, this is the beginning of a sexual assault.
Yeah.
And, you know, yeah.
Yeah.
And it's, it's disturbing.
And it's also disturbing.
Perhaps real.
I don't know that Nicole completely misreads it.
Yeah.
Because she reads it as Margo stealing her boyfriend and boyfriend having sex with someoneelse.

(57:54):
She totally misses out on the sexual assault.
on the assault part of it.
no.
And I think it's set up in a way where you watch it the first time, it's like, I didn'tquite gather.
But then you watch the second time, like, yeah, no, that's a shit.
And Nicole, she's done with David now and basically tells her father that.

(58:15):
So David starts stalking her.
He shows up at school, it's basically, and he nearly drives Margot off the road andthreatens her.
There's a motor hood, like, you
He puts his hands on her and talking about the other night, he's like, you know, you'lllet's talk.
And my favorite thing is he did a homemade tattoo across his chest.

(58:38):
Nicole for
Ever.
Nicole the number four EVA.
Rob, he did the tattoo in a Boston accent.
Yep.
And he cuts his chest and then rubs like Bic ink.
It's yeah.
That's that's a biro pen for you folks in your biro pen ink all over his chest to ink thetattoo.

(59:04):
Margo comes over and she tries to reconnect with Nicole, but Nicole just doesn't want todo with it because she has taken the wrong assumption.
Her and her brother are playing video games on what I believe was a Neo Geo, which is avery deep cut of video game consoles from the early 90s.
They're playing the Neo Geo and she just doesn't realize the abuse that Margo suffered.

(59:28):
So she rebuffs her and that leads to Margo screaming, you're my only friend.
And, and, but Nicole, her heart is hardened.
She's, she wants nothing to do with it.
we get a Michael Myers shot where David walks into frame, uh, as Gary is walking away.
It's straight out of the original Halloween.
Yep.
And before it turns into graduation day meets first blood.

(59:52):
No, because David follows Gary into the woods and chases him down and straight up murdershim.
leaps off of a hill to like break
He's Nick, like he's John Rambo.
Yes.
Like in one second, doesn't like beat the crap out of, he just kind of click and it'slike, yeah.

(01:00:12):
Like what?
Like it's, it's, it's crazy.
Like it's, and of course my note was Gary is the bunny.
the thing is though is crazy as this seems it's like one tenth as crazy as what our nextvillain will be able to do
Oh my God.
well, yeah, David, does.
He, he, he, he he sexually assaults Nicole in a bathroom.

(01:00:35):
he, know, and then he, you know, there, that's a tough scene.
Um, more upsetting to Steven, the father is that Dave takes a page out of uh Alex andAdrian's playbook and vandalizes the beloved car.
get the third, third car vandalization of
The note on it is amazing.
It's, uh cause it's a red sports car and the note is now I've popped two of your cherriesor something or both.

(01:01:02):
Honestly, he's a poet.
He's a poet right there.
Holy shit.
So that is now physical evidence in his handwriting.
So clearly Steve is just going to call the cops.
Call the cops.
Now it's your home free.
you've got your evidence that they always ask for in these movies.
Where's the evidence?
You got the evidence.
No, he goes to the gang house.

(01:01:25):
There's a source he's got on the phone who can tell him anything he needs.
He goes to the gang house and he discovers that David has built a shrine to his daughter,much like the one that Adrian built in the crush.
This one with 90 % less candles, but 100 % more Chuck E.
Doll.
I was going to say this is my second favorite piece of set deck in this movie is theChuckie doll on the I'm in insane creep alt.

(01:01:52):
uh
Amazing.
And Stephen finds a pair of his daughter's panties.
He finds a family photo with the head removed.
Which is again, they're replacing the person in the family.
It's very poison ivy.
We're going to get two of those in today's movies.
And David's pretty handy because he also, the dad also finds the daddy's girl bracelet,but D D Y scratched off and he's then re-etched in V ID.

(01:02:19):
So it's David's girl.
And I'm like, it looks pretty good.
I scratched it off, but I'm like, this is good work.
He should be, you know, he should be selling stuff at the farmer's market.
He'd be okay.
And what does Stephen do?
Does he call the cops again?
No, he just tears their house apart.
So that's gonna set off a chain reaction where the gang is gonna come to their house andsort of assault the Walker house like it's assault on precinct 13.

(01:02:50):
This is where like literally at the end of the movie, I think this is just in timeinformation delivery, at least in the cup that I saw where like they're going, the house
is going to get attacked and Laura's like, it's okay.
You built this to be an entire safe house.
No one can break into it.
I'm like, what this needed to be set up.
I'm sorry.
You like, you can't do this.

(01:03:11):
Well, we have to talk about the gang's opening gambit, because the opening gambit is anamazing bit of timing.
So the kid, we had established the dog whistle.
The kid's got this dog whistle that he uses to call the dog, and that's established in Act1 in fairness.
But here, he's blowing it.
He's blowing the dog whistle, and the head of the dog appears through the doggy door, butthen the head drops on the floor because it's only the head.

(01:03:39):
which is insane and gross.
Honestly, I'm surprised David could talk these guys into doing that.
Like not one of them was like, dude, I'm not severing a dog's head.
What are you talking about, pal?
Like not one of them was like.
which is trying to make some money slinging the rock.
selling microprocesses!

(01:04:01):
Also, by the way, if you wonder if the dog dies, the dog die.
Like, do not watch this movie if you don't want the dog stuff.
Here's the thing, how's the timing?
Because how could they know that the kid was blowing the dog- It's a dog whistle!
You can't-
Humans can't hear it.
Yes.

(01:04:22):
That is amazing.
Thousand dollar question.
answer is because it's cool to send a severed dog head through the dog door as a gag.
That's real answer.
and the gang, attack the house, they cut the phone lines and the power, like they're abunch of slacker commandos.
and yeah, that's what we get the, well, this is a state of the art security house, exceptfor Nicole gave David the code.

(01:04:46):
Honestly, once you broke up with him, maybe it'd be good idea to tell your dad so he couldchange it.
I'm just saying.
And it's the, this is, talk about the remixed elements from Unlawful Entry here.
ah
because they start breaking in the window.
Well, and that's the other thing is like.
it's it's like the security safe house, but the wrong person has the code, although herethey actually have the code.
They actually have.

(01:05:07):
Yeah.
But like they're trying to break in the windows and I'm thinking to myself like, yeah,like I get that the door may be lockable and there's, but it's still glass windows.
These people cut off a dog's head.
They're going to be willing to break glass.
Yeah, yeah, and they do.
Yeah, and they do.

(01:05:27):
It turns into Fort Apache Puget Sound and ah Laura drills one of the gangs, got his handin the door.
He's got his hand in the door and she takes a power drill.
That's pretty awesome.
uh The guard who we established at the beginning of the movie, he tries to intercede, butone of the gang tries to attack him.

(01:05:48):
But what is amazing is this guard pulls out two guns.
He's got two guns.
This security guy, this
private security guard is carrying two guns like he's in a John Woo movie.
ah And, you know, but they get in the house, they take Stephen hostage outside the house.
He goes out to sea and he punches David, but they take Stephen hostage.
get in.
The son, the little kid is able to slip out of the house unnoticed to use the car phone.

(01:06:13):
They don't have cell phones, but there's a car phone because it's 1996.
Like I knew what movie I was watching Chris and that this was a, after all thisdescription, eight mainstream movie for this was like a wide release supposed to be for
everyone.
But there was this little glimmer of me.
And I think it's cause like the, feels like a remote cabin house, even though it's biggerand nicer than that.

(01:06:36):
And I was like, am I getting a final chapter ending here?
Is the little brother going to into play?
But no, no.
I but he does, he does cause he's got to start the car.
Cause it doesn't have an independent power.
He's got to start the car that one of the guys outside hears it.
And the kid just hits reverse and just like takes that guy out.

(01:06:57):
like, that's great.
Um, and then, you know, like they're in the house.
he's it's the struggle ensues.
Um, you know, Stephen gets loose and, and, and there's a struggle, a struggle that Davidwins.
Cause obviously he is in better shape than, than Steven.
Uh, he's got clothes that fit.
and he's just about to blow dad's brains out when Nicole stabs him with the peace pipe.

(01:07:21):
That's right, the peace pipe!
Checkoffs, peace pipe.
After all, God, this is, this is by the way, even though they're six years apart, there'sgoing to be a critical track it in the next movie as well, which makes play at the very
end.
makes even less sense than the peace pipe.

(01:07:42):
But look at this, you can imagine she just threw it in her room.
Like, you know, she got the peace pipe, she threw it in her room and just, it stayedthere.
She forgot about it, whatever, and then, you know, grabbed the peace pipe.
But like the other one.
instead of a kitchen knife, let's say.
first thought is, gotta get that peace pipe.
damn peace pipe.
guess that's a little bit more of a struggle.

(01:08:02):
Steven throws David out the window and is shot right out of Looney Tunes, sends himcrashing on the rocks below, and you know, the family is safe from this gang uh of
hooligans.
It feels like this isn't quite true, but emotionally, Chris, it felt like they, killsDavid.

(01:08:23):
And then you cut to like a long shot of the next morning and the cops are arriving andthen the credits roll.
There's like, movie does not believe in there's no denouement.
This is just like we killed them.
That's what you wanted to see.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Please.
There's no emotional conclusion.
The lesson, apparently, of this movie is don't date boys from the other side of thetracks.

(01:08:46):
Yeah, which they could have avoided by not making an orphan, but then you have to dealwith parents and the film clearly just didn't want to do that.
oh Neither does our next one.
Not even less of a movie.
At least Stephen's involved in this movie.
The next movie, which is also another teenage-centric, fatal attraction inspired movie, uhdoes the parents are barely even present.

(01:09:08):
So we're going to move from the mid 90s to 2002 for the last film we'll discuss in ourseries, Swim Fam.
Hey.
My swimming buddy.
Ben Cronin thought he had it all.
Scouts are coming next week.
It might actually happen, huh?

(01:09:30):
Yeah.
Can you picture it?
Good friends.
I just remember why we broke up, She couldn't handle me in bed or?
And a bright future.
Hello, Madison Bell.
Dude, she is so smokin' hot.
You know I'm playin' on here in that little southern accent when she moans my name.
I can't get this stupid thing open.
Do you think you could?
Take a look, What's the letter for, Ben Cronin?

(01:09:51):
The letter is for swimming.
Are you good?
I'm okay, yeah.
But he never imagined.
What are you doing here?
Could change everything.
Hello!
Oh honey, hi!
Surprise!
It's so great to finally meet your mother.
Finally, you just met me.
You wanna pretend like it never happened?

(01:10:14):
I have a girlfriend.
Don't worry about me, I got somebody waiting for me in New York.
You have 81 new emails.
Picture received.
Gotcha!
Hey!
I'm Ben Cronin.
just can't stop talking about her perfect boyfriend.
Even when I beg her to stop.
I know what you're doing.

(01:10:34):
No emails, no visits, nothing.
I'm with Amy.
Ben, get back here!
You tested positive for steroids.
I don't take steroids.
I know.
I love the team.
She did it.
I know she did.
You're crazy, man.
Did you lose her?
Don't worry about me.
I got somebody waiting for me New York.
She killed him.

(01:10:55):
When I was with him, I pretended he was you.
paramedics just brought Amy in.
Is she okay?
Amy!
Where is she?
She's good enough for you!
starting to think you don't appreciate me.

(01:11:22):
So here we are, the last film in the series coming 15 years out of the release after therelease of Fatal Attraction.
And I think there's a couple things about Swim Fan that brings us kind of full circle.
First, I want to point out the film was co-produced by Further Films, a company founded byMichael Douglas.
And while he is not a credited producer, he's thanked very, very large type in the closingcredits.

(01:11:48):
uh So Michael Douglas was involved in this.
in this movie, which takes so many beats from Fatal Attraction.
If the last movie was sort of blend of a lot of the movies like that we've watched alongthe way.
This is going back to the source.
It's been long enough that you can go back to the source.
uh
The other thing that has been sort connective tissue is the presence of Jesse Bradford inthe leading role who appeared in a movie we discussed in our first episode, Presumed

(01:12:17):
Innocent, where he played Harrison Ford's son.
And he was also very, he was cast in the role of Henry in The Good Son, but lost that partto Macaulay Culkin when Macaulay Culkin came on board that movie as, you know,
basically by telling Fox, I'm not going to do Home Alone 2 if you don't let me do The GoodSon.

(01:12:38):
Jesse Bradford has kind of been with us in spirit this whole time.
And I, I, uh, there's something else notable about this movie.
What is that?
The runtime.
yeah, it's a, it is a, it is, it is lean and mean.

(01:13:00):
ah My favorite runtime for movie is eighty eight minutes i think that's perfect.
88 minutes.
That's a good amount of time.
I think that is the perfect runtime for most films, but I think this one's 84.
There's no fat in this movie whatsoever.
No, it is lean.
It is absolutely lean.
It released in 2002.
Swim Fan was written by Charles Bull and Philip Schneider, and it was directed by JohnPoulsen.

(01:13:25):
Now, Poulsen was an Australian director and actor who played the helicopter pilot on EthanHunt's team in Mission Impossible 2, which I recently rewatched.
Deep cut, deep
Deep cut that he was in that movie.
Not not little known.
Art House film Mission Impossible to Deep Cut.

(01:13:46):
Yeah.
I mean, in fairness, we have been, because the final reckoning is coming out in the nottoo distant future, we've been rewatching some of the earlier Mission Impossible movies in
my house.
And we decided we were watching two and we're like, all right, that helicopter pilot inthe second one is the least memorable IMF team member in the entire saga.

(01:14:06):
Like, he's just like, wait, that guy?
Like, he's the antithesis of Ilsa Faust.
He's the one you don't remember.
But in addition to Jesse Bradford, film stars Erica Christensen, Shuri Appleby, KateBurton, and Dan Hedea.
Dan Hedea has a small role as the swim coach, but we always love seeing Dan Hedea.

(01:14:28):
So hey, that's a welcome addition.
eh
a shout out to James DeBello of the original Cabin Fever and the FP movie that is ratherinteresting.
Indeed.
But I love him as Christopher Dante.
Yes.
The cousin, right?

(01:14:49):
Yes.
The cousin of Madison.
Yeah.
Swim Fan revolves around Ben Cronin, a promising high school swimmer in North Jersey wherethe film was shot.
And he is being scouted by Stanford University, which does have one of the best collegiateswimming programs in the country.
A lot of Olympic athletes come out of Stanford.

(01:15:10):
And this is just one piece of information that my wife provided because she watched thisfilm with me and was very keen to.
because she was a competitive swimmer when she was younger and she had a lot of thoughts.
Some of which I will relay here on the show.
So we opened with shots of a cello, we see a guy and a girl making out in a parked car.

(01:15:34):
The girl is clearly Erica Christensen, but I wasn't sure if the guy was Jesse Bradford.
I couldn't quite tell, which is clearly intentional.
And was it a flash forward?
What is it?
You're a little off balance.
And then we cut to Jesse Bradford in the,
as Ben in the swimming pool.
should mention in that opening montage, I glossed over it, but then we have what lookedlike baseball trophies on a shelf.

(01:15:59):
We like, we're going over baseball trophies.
Well, we don't know how it connects to anything yet.
We're not sure, but we will.
Oh, we will.
This movie is not just Titan runtime.
It is.
It is put together in a way that's ridiculous and insane, but it is well built in thatway.

(01:16:20):
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, to be clear, this is a holy fucking shit movie.
Oh, bonkers as hell.
there's things that make no sense in terms of the real world, but, in terms of, you don'tcare.
Planning something in a script that's going to pay off and that kind of scriptconstruction, it's actually, it's actually pretty tight.

(01:16:42):
oh
also turns out you can't time travel on a volt of lightning either.
It's true.
You don't know that.
Wait a minute.
I'm saying it's true.
like, you don't know that.
We cut to Jesse Bradford has been swimming through the water in the pool and some highschools do have pools.
Mine did not, but my wife's did.

(01:17:03):
minded.
Okay.
Did not that anyone, even if they were on the swim team could access that pool at allhours, no matter what.
Oh, that was my, one of my wife's huge notes.
She's like, for liability purposes that had locked within an inch of you'd never be ableto get in.
the last thing, the quickest way to end your high school swim program is a headline in thelocal paper, kids drown in high school pool.

(01:17:29):
which you know is going to anyway in this film, but they should have tried to at leastpadlock it.
oh
God.
yeah, Ben is told by his coach that he needs to live, eat, breathe swimming until the bigmeet where the Stamford Scouts will be there.
Here's the thing, Rob.
Now I'm not saying there aren't swimming Scouts, but it's a time-based sport.

(01:17:52):
So they're way less common than it's like, oh, basketball or football.
like, oh, that kid can swim that fast.
Great.
Bring them in.
it's, you know, you don't get like traveling the country.
them in the eye you need to look them in the eye does this guy exude swimmer does he go

(01:18:12):
Like you got the, can you tell is you got it?
Is he got the killer instinct?
You got the eye of tiger.
Don't give me the stats, give me the man.
But the guy doesn't stop Dan Hedaya from putting pressure on this kid.
Man, like he's, he's laying it on.
uh But again, this is a thing where we, the, and I wasn't thinking about this, like ReeseWitherspoon is in, in the last movie had a more sort of general like, yeah, she wanted a

(01:18:42):
boyfriend.
She wanted to grow up.
Here we have a more specific idea of the protagonist wanting to change or improve theirlife.
He wants to go to Stanford and be a swimmer.
That is his.
And here is a key difference from it with the other fatal attraction setups.
We are still, as almost every movie will do, they're establishing the status quo beforeyou change it, right?

(01:19:08):
But the beginning want of our character isn't about feeling dissatisfied with his life.
It's a continuation and extension of his current good life.
He's really great at swimming.
People like him.
You know, he's got his girlfriend and they're trying to figure out if they're gonna like,you know, be close to each other or whatever in college.

(01:19:29):
He, he is not dissatisfied.
So the what's going to happen is functionally very different from fatal attraction.
despite using every fatal attraction beat in the playbook.
Which is fascinating and I have a theory as to this movie is not a fatal attraction stylethriller Even though it uses those beats.

(01:19:50):
It's something else and I will reveal it again in the biz We call this a tease
And Amy, by the way, looks like a combination of this era of Katie Holmes and Meadow'ssoprano.
uh Which Katie Holmes, of course, was on Dawson's Creek at this time, which was on the WBnetwork, which would later become the CW, which honestly, this movie feels like WB fatal

(01:20:17):
attraction.
It does.
And I'm gonna, I'm just gonna jump the gun because we'll, get to some scenes coming up.
But as you say that this movie feels very, very different from fear.
Yes.
You know, in the direction and construction and all of that, even though in many waysthey're, know, it's, you could say very broadly, a similar story, a teenager who winds up

(01:20:38):
having sex with the wrong other person and you get a fatal attraction.
oh
case, genders are reversed because the girl is the pursuer.
Yeah, yeah.
So this is a classic fatal attraction.
Exactly.
But Fear came out in 1996.
There was another movie that came out in December of 1996, which changed the face ofcinema for a while.

(01:21:01):
A called Scream.
Yes indeed.
Yes indeed.
Swim fan fear is definitely a teenage thriller.
Right.
It's a teenage psychosexual thriller.
And people talk about the difference between a thriller and a horror movie.
And I cannot give you things other than if it quacks like a thriller.

(01:21:21):
It's a thriller.
If it quacks like a horror movie, it's a horror movie.
Swim fan is not, I would contend it's actually not a psychosexual thriller.
This is a teenage sex horror movie.
Right.
And it's, it's constructed the, the, the, the lighting and the shots are darker.
Like this is the most dimly lit locker room where, oh and not at night, like when they'rechanging for a freaking meat, it's like there's one.

(01:21:50):
Terrible fluorescent lighting.
What they are not is like, it's just, all washed out.
It's not like-
expect Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt to come walking into this locker room.
Talking about the Makita
It's blue instead of brown is the base color because they make that switch eventually.
But uh this movie is a horror movie.

(01:22:12):
It is definitely a post-scream.
Like you can feel the scream influence.
oh
To that end, our character is fine with their life at the beginning of this movie.
And they aren't searching for something else.
An intrusion of villain is forced upon them and that villain begins wrecking their life,like methodically.
And that is different even from fear, where he's trying to insinuate himself, but like,how to put David in fear doesn't really start wrecking her life until the pushback

(01:22:44):
happens.
Madison is like,
the joker super villain from the get go.
Madison is Leslie Vernon behind the mask.
Like she is so dialed in with everything, with everything.
She is amazing.
Oh, no.

(01:23:05):
She's incredible.
She's all the way over the top.
Like, she's all the way.
oh But it's kind of amazing.
think David and Madison could have made it work?
Probably would.
She would have killed him.
It would have been like Frankie and Johnny.
She would have killed him.
ah Ben and like Scream, another post Scream influence, like Scream, Ben has a group offriends who absolutely do not seem like they would hang out together at all.

(01:23:34):
Like Jackass Josh is his buddy on the swim team.
There's the ex-girlfriend Renee who will be absent from most of the movie, but will comeback later.
Randy played by Jason Ritter, who I swear to God is just happy to be there.
And we established that Josh is an a-hole, because he walks backward in the hallway andthen gets belligerent when he knocks into someone.

(01:23:58):
It's like, But then he sees that guy as Christopher Dante, who is A, a big dude, and B,someone everyone thinks is crazy.
We'll come back to Dante later.
And you know that people, uh, he's an outcast because he wears glasses.
You do have that trope in here.
Yeah, he's getting worse class.
So he's, you know, he must be, he's crazy.
Yeah.

(01:24:18):
Uh, and, Ben and Amy, they're, they're going through that whole thing that happens when acouple is graduating and going to different colleges.
And, know, he, he gives her a gift of a necklace, which is nice.
No better place to give that than in the hallway of your high school.
Like it's just like, and nobody seems to be bothered.
Like, like do they have to class or something?

(01:24:39):
Like it's, there's a couple of figures in the background.
Are they watching?
No split diopter shot to tell me who they are.
So I don't know, but like.
There are no adults in this building besides Dan Hedea.
No, there are zero.
I don't we don't see a single teacher at all.
No, Anything security guard, nobody guarding the fucking pool.

(01:25:02):
But we don't get a title drop here, but we do get uh him saying ah that he loves her andnothing's going to change that.
Yeah.
Well, I think something's going to change.
Good.
A swim fan might change that.
Well, we also get him say, I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for you believing in me,which is, which is good.

(01:25:24):
That's a tease of something with his character later.
We'll, we'll, we'll hit something deeper in his background, but you're right soon as Benis going to encounter the new girl at school, Madison Bell.
And at their first encounter, it is on the surface, not unlike Dan and Alex meeting at theparty and fatal attraction is very innocuous.
But at the same time,

(01:25:46):
She's crazy from the jump.
Yep.
Like she's just got crazy eyes from minute one.
Like she's she's late for class.
She's having trouble opening a locker.
So she asks Ben for help.
OK, fine.
And he's able to open with a hairpin that she has.
He's like, I just need this.
And he takes the hairpin and the hairpin's got a musical note on it because she's acellist.

(01:26:06):
And then he unlocks the locker and she's like, why don't you keep that?
Why?
Why would he?
What?
What?
Why?
would he want to keep that?
Like, why would he want that?
Like, it's, let me give you something that is useful to me, but entirely useless to you.
It makes no sense unless it has a tracking device implanted in it, which honestly,wouldn't, it may, wouldn't, what a bastard.

(01:26:31):
Yeah, no, it is.
ah This is the this is again the the horror movie trope of it, because unlike some of ourother fatal attractions earlier on, unlike Alex, for instance.
Sure.
Like this is essentially species from the get go.
Right.
She is a predator.
She has her sights on him.
And, know, just to I've every now and again, you got I got to quote Joe Bob.

(01:26:56):
So Bob Briggs is like, hey, guys.
If the crazy lady who you meet just instantly is like, let's have sex.
Do not do that.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
do that.
Like it's, it's very, as you, it's very different from the, relationship of David andNicole in, in fear where it does feel like both what he wants.

(01:27:21):
So it does feel like, this is like a teenage, this is teenage dating.
Yeah.
And Nicole is I fucking David.
She spots him.
Yeah.
And then he notices her looking at him and staring him down.
So she does initiate it here.
She appears out of the ether in that hallway.
She's just there.

(01:27:41):
Yeah, no, this is, this is all Madison Nigma ah and her plot to ensnare Ben.
works an after school job at the hospital where his mom is a doctor.
He's got a friendship with the horny older guy there who he brings a pack of naughtyplaying cards for because, you know, Ben's a thoughtful guy.

(01:28:04):
This is such a lot that I like to refer to this, but what a great save the cat moment.
We know he's a good guy.
Ben's a good guy because he gives the old horny dude nudie cards.
cards.
uh Listen, this guy's old and he's in the hospital.
Let him have some naked playing cards.
We meet up with Amy again at a dockside restaurant where she works.

(01:28:27):
She works at a dockside restaurant.
I spend a lot of this movie trying to figure out where in North Jersey it was taken, likeit took place.
A lot of it feels like Bergen County, but the restaurant looks like it's down the shore.
It's like, it's right by the, what looks like it's fisherman's wharf in San Francisco withthe, you know, it's,
You can hear the rave music close by.

(01:28:49):
oh
from the, yeah, Amy is considering trying to get into Berkeley so she can be close to himand get an apartment with him if he's at Stanford.
Honestly, guys, that's a bad idea.
I'm just gonna tell you right now, it's a bad idea.
Freshmen, first of all, freshmen have to live on campus usually anyway, unless they'recommuters.
But honestly, go and have your college experience.

(01:29:12):
Be freshmen.
If it's meant to be, it's meant to be.
But I do say, and I look, I think Jesse ah is great in this movie has been because in alook, this whole beginning is him playing like kind of adorable guy, adorable, good guy,
right?
Which can be boring, but I think he's got a real nice charm to him.
But what I love is when when she keeps pressing ah about the, and I'll live with you andI'm going to come and follow you to college or whatever.

(01:29:39):
And it's weird.
He really has this fine line of like he does love her.
in his high school way.
But he also does play that like, yeah.
uh
Honestly, completely realistic, completely realistic.
Yeah.
But it, I'll say that they don't, it doesn't get played so much that is it perhaps hercoming on strong a factor in him doing, doing the thing in the pool soon?

(01:30:06):
I think so, but I don't think it's the whole, because again, it feels so much more thatshe is a predator.
Madison is a predator coming after Ben in a way that Alex isn't a predator coming afterDan.
Yeah, early on.
Yeah.
And we also, he learns from his buddy, Jackass Josh, that Madison is staying with hercousin while her family is in Europe and that her cousin is Dante, the guy that Josh

(01:30:37):
almost picked a fight with earlier.
So he's driving home and he's still clearly still thinking about his encounter withMadison at the locker because he sees a girl with hair just like her walking down the
street and as
As he's watching the girl with the hair, he nearly hits the actual Madison, very much likeCarrie Elwes in The Crush.

(01:31:00):
Like, he nearly runs her down.
She's right there in front of his car.
Yeah.
And, uh, you know, this is, this is the real question, which is that we're now in 2002, afar cry from 1987.
But I'm going to say not that they aren't different people, but coming full circle fromAlex's hair to Madison's hair.

(01:31:22):
Do you make the connection?
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Curly wavy.
Yeah.
That's, that's yeah.
Oh wow.
That's, that's good.
That's good.
Um, and he gives her a ride home cause he feels bad that he, uh, he nearly ran her down.
Um, and, and you know, that's, you know, watch what you're doing, pal.

(01:31:42):
And, he gives her a ride home and talk a little bit.
He doesn't notice when she leaves a notebook on the seat next to it, which
which is uh obviously a deliberate move.
But this is where we have the one thing in this movie that dates it more than anythingelse.
He locks his steering wheel with the club.
I know, the club, it's amazing.

(01:32:06):
I was hoping when he went in his house, he would turn on his lights with the clapper.
He takes the book to Madison.
He is met by her cousin Dante, who is wearing a members only jacket.
Still less dated than the club.
uh And then Ben and Madison, just, he returns the book.
They go to a diner, which is obviously very New Jersey.

(01:32:28):
And he opens up to her a little bit about some of his previous problems.
So I've been dying to know how come a nice boy like you knows how to break into strangegirls' lockers?
Didn't used to be so nice.
That's hard to believe.
I don't know, it was a long time ago.
Pretty much everybody around here has forgotten about it.
Except the cops.
You don't have to tell me about it.

(01:32:49):
No.
I had a situation with drugs, turned into a situation with stealing.
I spent six months at a juvenile hall.
It was actually the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Because they had a pool.
Yeah, this shitty old lab pool that hadn't even been used in years.
I got assigned to clean it.

(01:33:10):
And pretty soon I was swimming in it more than I was cleaning it.
It was just easy for me to jump in the pool and forget about all the mess that was goingon around me and just swim.
Yeah, when I play music sometimes, I just...
I play cello and I just float out of my body, up above the music where no one can touchme, hurt me.

(01:33:34):
I can escape.
Do you want to escape?
Yeah, sometimes.
But not right now.
Right now I like where I am.
You know, so he had had issues with drugs and stealing.
uh That was a thing.
My wife actually had a huge issue with this because she was like, if he started swimmingin juvie, like presumably just a few years ago, like he didn't go to juvie when he was

(01:34:03):
like eight.
If he was, you know.
Like there's no way he'd be swimming at a potentially Olympic caliber level now, only afew.
Like that's the sort of thing kids start early and they do for years until they reach thatlevel.
And honestly, would a kid with a juvenile record, would even be able to get into Stanford?

(01:34:23):
I don't know.
I'm sorry.
I couldn't hear any of that.
had I had movie in my ear.
m None of that entered.
I'm sorry.
uh But this is his Madame Butterfly moment where he opens up and kind of, you know, thatkind of draws her in.
uh She tells a story about having a guy in New York who's a baseball player and then theMets are looking at him.

(01:34:48):
And it's good that she said the Mets because no one would believe it was the Yankees.
The Mets is just more plausible, you know, because hey, they're the Mets.
Although I, Hey, I'm going to, is 2002.
This is not very far after the subway series.
The Mets were not a joke at this point in time.
I'm saying that.
I think they didn't get swept in the series by the Yankees, but still.

(01:35:09):
Yes.
uh They don't go home from here though, do they Rob?
No, they go to the pool.
The unlocked pool where he can just go in at any time and uh just go right in and Ben hasno trouble getting in.
Madison's sitting on the side of the pool watching him swim and he's doing lanes back andforth and then in a flash, she's in the pool in her underwear.

(01:35:34):
Maybe you're right, it is a horror movie because how did she get there so fast?
Well, and the shot and I love this shot actually.
It's so she is seated in the middle of the side, right?
She's on the side of the pool, not in the pool on the side.
I forget if it's a chair, if she's or if legs are dangling.
Yeah, but she is like dead center in the length of the lane.

(01:35:59):
So we follow and it's a dolly shot from the other side of the pool.
So you're it's pretty long distance.
And we're following the long shot of Ben swimming across.
you're, you start with him at one end of the pool.
see that Madison's sitting in the middle and then you follow him and she goes out offrame.
Right.
And then as he makes his turn, he's swimming back as you're dollying back, she's now nolonger there.

(01:36:25):
Right.
And then you do the cut and she's in the, coming in, coming in the pool and swimming up tohim or not swimming up to him.
She's just kind of standing up there, standing in the shallow end of the pool.
such kind of a horror movie shot.
Absolutely.
But also it's just I do love the shot.
Like it's so fun to have that happen.
And what happens then, of course, they're going to have sex in the pool.

(01:36:48):
again, Justin couldn't be here today, but he, I'm sure would point out that sex in a poolis gross.
I know that he would say that.
We've talked about it many times.
Yeah, generally, Justin, like it's just like this, the, the,

(01:37:08):
The wall, mean, at least the pool is chlorinated, I guess.
guess there's that.
Like the hot tub's not chlorinated.
At least the pool is chlorinated.
It's bigger volume of water.
Sure.
Like the hot tub.
Is that helpful?
Like, you know, but here's the thing is like the logistics of this, they're having sex andit's on the deep end.

(01:37:29):
So like, they're both having to tread water while they have sex.
Like how is this working?
Like the logistics of this are exhausting.
And she can't swim.
We're also establishing that she can't swim.
She tells Ben she can't swim, which you might think is another charming lie to get him toget close to her in the pool.
It is not a charming lie to get him to get close to her in the pool.

(01:37:51):
ah This is Chekov's I can't swim.
uh The most disturbing thing here, more disturbing than the state of the water, is herrequest for him to tell her that he loves her.
And she says, you don't even have to mean it.
And I'm like, dude, this is all a bad idea, but don't make it worse.

(01:38:12):
Don't say that.
Don't do that.
That's that's schmuck.
And she'll be established she can't swim.
So the next morning Ben's running late.
Amy calls him and there's a bit where it sounds like she knows what happened.
Like she's like, she starts to call with, are so busted.
This is at least the first of three times the movie plays that card where it's like, oh,she thinks, she's got him.

(01:38:35):
Oh, no, no, she's just, you know.
um And she says she left something in the locker.
So he gets to his locker and he finds that there's a card inside and a flower in the lock.
And he assumes that both are from Amy, but he's wrong.
the I really like that moment because he then goes to Amy to thank her.
Yes.
And she looks at the flat.

(01:38:56):
He's holding the card from Amy and the flower and she looks at the phone.
She goes, you got me a flower.
And I will say he didn't skip a beat, he kept it.
no, he's a smooth operator this Ben.
It's, it's, yeah, she assumes it's a gift for her.
The other thing I want to mention about this movie in comparison to our last movie, ourlast movie, I mentioned a couple of the songs that were in it.

(01:39:18):
It was 90s grunge in, in fear.
Like we're square in the middle of 90s grunge.
and we have now given way to early 2000s rock in like, and it's a very,
Yeah, it's a very interesting and unique time and everything, everything in this movie,all the songs in this movie sound like they're B-sides off of the Daredevil soundtrack.

(01:39:40):
I kind of, I really kept expecting to hear Huba Stank.
I never got it, but I was expecting Huba Stank.
And Madison, she does the thing where she shows up wherever Ben goes.
She's, she's at the party where Ben and Amy are.
Apparently she left some underwear in Ben's truck, which is unfortunate when a guy asksher to move it so he can go on a video run.

(01:40:00):
What the fuck is that?
I don't even know what that is.
it's, uh, it was 80 yards.
So I wonder if it was like, it was a beer run, but we didn't want to acknowledge that thekids were drinking, but Ben gets to the truck first and Madison starts reaching out.
there's AOL chat.
She does like AOL chat.
and this is where we get a visual title drop because her handle swim fan 85, presumablythe year she was born.

(01:40:28):
Yeah.
Uh, some great fake AOL messenger stuff going on here.
Yeah.
It's not quite as dated as the computer stuff in disclosure, but it's one step, one step.
It's certainly more up to date than the computer stuff in.
my God.
Was it berserker?
No, it wasn't berserker.

(01:40:49):
was the other one.
Oh, was it Twisted Nightmare?
Oh, now all of our Friday the 13th?
It was Edge of the Axe!
Edge of the Axe, my god, yes.
But also reminiscent a little bit of the computer stuff and scream and that there's notmuch of it.

(01:41:12):
Yeah, but you're not.
You're acknowledging that teens use computers now.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And again, there's just, this movie's got a lot of beats taken from Fatal Attraction.
Ben comes home to find Madison sitting and chatting with his mom, which plays almostexactly like the scene in Fatal Attraction where Alex is with Beth in the apartment.

(01:41:35):
It doesn't have the nuance, but it's there.
It's, and this is where we get the weird edits.
Like,
Ben tells her that all this stuff's gotta stop and we see Madison hearing him say that.
We get these weird edits like.
just the jump cuts of craziness at first
I thought there was something wrong with the picture.
At first I was like, is this a bad disc or something?

(01:41:59):
But no, kept happening.
And we got jump cuts, think, before, because this is when he's telling her that he's onlywith Amy or whatever, Yes.
And what, because when he was swimming in the pool to show that he is uh terrible now atswimming in the pool again, uh where you're doing like the, you're doing horror movie
musical stings as you're doing flash cuts of him having sex with Madison in the pool.

(01:42:23):
Like he got, you know, horror movie, you know, infected with like Madison.
And here in this scene of what I love is Erica Christensen has this one delivery that Ilove when she's talking about Amy and she says,
She's really nice.

(01:42:46):
She's so sweet and uncomplicated.
the way she delivers uncomplicated.
Is what a, what a beautiful backhand.
Yeah.
No, it's great.
but also Madison sends him 81 emails in, one.
He opens and it's a, it's a nude selfie with the camera very, very carefully positionedover, over her breasts.

(01:43:17):
So, so Madison starts dating Jack ass Josh, presumably to make Ben jealous.
uh They uh have a conversation in the locker room.
Madison goes and talks to Ben in the men's locker room, the very dimly lit men's lockerroom where he basically tells her he doesn't want anything to do with her.
Again, weird edits.
Ben gives, you he goes to the horny old man at the hospital.

(01:43:38):
He's doing his hospital rounds and the horny old man ends up with the wrong meds andnearly dies.
Like I knew he was in trouble from the moment Ben was kind of short with him.
But fortunately he survived.
He loses his hospital job and Ben's response to this is rushing down to the school andgrabbing Madison by the throat in the music room.

(01:44:01):
at first I'm like, I didn't realize it was empty.
I'm like, that's a hell of a thing to do in public.
Holy shit.
But it didn't look like Amy was around.
Like Ben is psychotic in this moment and just is like choking her out.
Not dissimilar from another film where a guy maybe goes a little psychotic and with Danand Alex.
Yes indeed.

(01:44:22):
Only gets like physically violent with Alex in that movie.
And this is kind of an echo of that for sure in a way that we haven't had in some of themovies in the second half of the trend in the same way.
Right.
No, it's, it's, it's, it's very, it's interesting.
it's Ben arrives at school the next day and everybody's just looking at him.
Everybody's silently looking at him.

(01:44:43):
And, and then he sees Amy and she just gives him a slap.
And that's because Madison did the one thing that Alex never did.
Told Amy what happened, which honestly is like, it's not smart.
Cause you know, you don't have that.
You always say you tell the secrets out.
You've lost your leverage of I'll tell your.

(01:45:04):
Girlfriend!
Like, that's gone!
Yeah, but what I like is there is a certain twisted logic to this beyond the fact thatMadison's the Joker.
Because in trying to get her to understand that he's not going to see her anymore, Ben'stelling, when he was telling Madison, he tells her some version of a thing that I'm sure

(01:45:26):
many men have said.
It's like, I've got a lot going on.
Things are too complicated.
I have too much stuff going on, right?
Including the fact that I have another girlfriend.
Right.
So Madison,
gets him fired from the hospital job, gets rid of the girlfriend.
So she is uncomplicating Ben's life because he told her his life was too complicated.

(01:45:49):
So now she's eliminating things one by one.
but Rob, he's still on the swim team and that's a lot of pressure from the swim team.
So, mean, you know, but I mean, how could she get him kicked off?
He's a good swimmer.
How could she get him kicked off the swim team?
How could that possibly happen?
The day of the meet, cause he takes a urine test and at the meet, just as they're about toswim, Dan today comes up to him and tells him that he's tested positive for anabolic

(01:46:17):
steroids.
And he literally like it showed the paperwork.
pool and then walks over to bed.
Rob, my wife lost her mind.
She lost her mind because no high school swim team has a drug testing program moresophisticated than the IOC.
Like it's, she literally said like, this is the most insane thing I've ever seen in amovie because it's like, it takes weeks and they don't drug test at the high school level.

(01:46:46):
And like the fact that the coach doesn't even question it.
Like he doesn't even say, you know, it's just boom, you're off the team.
It's, it's, it's, she's like, this is, this is not a realistic depiction of high schoolcompetitive.

(01:47:07):
I was just, I was feeling for bed getting kicked off the team.
I was so wrapped up in it.
I don't
We get a scene of Madison and her boyfriend Jackass Josh make it out in the car She'sdressed like a real estate agent for some reason He's wearing an iron cross around his
neck like he's gonna go shoot down Snoopy.
I don't know But things go sideways when she calls him back

(01:47:31):
this was set up because she had told Ben when I'm with Josh, I just think of you.
It's not even anything.
Jealous.
And then, and she, she, he realizes that all the stuff with Ben that Ben had been sayingabout her being obsessed with him is true and that she must have tampered with the steroid
test results because Ben doesn't even need them.

(01:47:51):
That's his logic.
I, I don't understand is how we, this girl can do anything.
Honestly, this, this girl should work for the CIA as like a covert agent, destabilizingforeign governments.
She can do anything.
You know, there's this part of me, aside from the murder and the attempted murder, but Ithink Ben would have been better off with Madison.

(01:48:12):
She is a go getter.
She can literally do anything she sets her mind to.
Yeah, this is a young woman with a future, Chris.
That's all I'm saying.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes you just gotta hit your wagon.
Hit your wagon to that star.
Yes, this lady is going to uh run Facebook's algorithm that will get everyone to hate eachother.

(01:48:36):
that is what is going to happen.
God.
And we get more of the weird edits to reflect her fractured state of mind.
We start to hear the voices in her head.
And Jack asks Josh, he's going to be sorry that he walked away from Madison because whenBen goes for a swim in the pool, despite being off the team, he swims right into Josh's
floating body, bleeding from a wound in the head.

(01:48:58):
Now here's my question, Rob.
I have a question.
How did he see the body floating in the pool when he dove in?
This is graduation day.
It's a horror movie.
This is a horror movie dead body reveal, not a thriller dead.
100 % right.
Presumed innocent.
This is not unlawful entry, although that borders at times.

(01:49:21):
No.
yeah, because we talk about horror and thriller as two different genres and there's aspectthat in some senses They are but they they are next to each other.
They next to each other
theory like it's it's a spectrum.
It's not like a hard line, but
And Ben goes to the funeral.
He doesn't even wear a tie to his buddy's funeral, but Madison is dressed like Mrs.

(01:49:43):
White from Clue.
And we have the cop shows up at the funeral who effectively accuses Ben of murdering Josh,despite no logical reason for him to do that.
Yeah, he was involved with, he got involved in drugs when he was younger.
There's a lot of daylight between that and murder.

(01:50:04):
Like, come on.
And also, like if you were going to murder someone, you're going to change into your swimtrunks, murder them in the pool that you're swimming in and then call the cops.
Just call the cops and find the body.
It's just, it's...
Classic behavior.
Case closed.
uh
That's it.
He's convinced Madison's behind it all, so he takes another page from the Fatal Attractionplaybook.

(01:50:28):
He breaks into Madison's house to look for evidence, which he finds.
He discovers everything he needs.
A nurse's uniform from the hospital that he worked at.
A pill bottle helpfully labeled anabolic steroids.
By the way,
Are not anabolic steroids injected?

(01:50:50):
I mean, that's what I learned from Rocky IV!
Why is it a pill bottle?
there are different types, but I think it's yeah, this is clearly the generic for whateverthe brand name is anabolic serum.
He finds a box with a pair of his swimming goggles, a bunch of newspaper articles abouthim that it looks like she has been collecting for years.

(01:51:12):
And the old chestnut of the photo with the head or face replaced, in this case, Madison inplace of Amy.
We got two face replacement photos in the movies today.
One in each movie.
And you know, this was decades ago.
They had to do this by hand with love and craft and care.

(01:51:35):
There was no, Hey, AI make a photo of me and Ben.
No, she had to do this.
uh Ben's about to leave, but he runs into Dante, who apparently knows that Madison iscuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, so he helps run interference and he provides him with another box
of stuff.
This box contains newspaper articles, et cetera, about baseball player Jake Donnelly.

(01:52:00):
And Ben just sits outside the house in his, the car, like he's broken into the house.
He's gotten away clean and he sits outside the house looking through the box, like drivearound the corner, man.
Madison, like he goes out the window and Madison instantly comes in that room.
He would have heard her.
Ben is not the smartest guy throughout this film.

(01:52:22):
No, it does allow Dante to find him because Dante comes out and he tells Ben he has totake him somewhere and they leave Ben's car right there in front of Madison's house.
They take Dante's car.
I'm like, don't leave your car there.
I knew immediately it was a mistake.
By the way, I need to add that Dante is wearing another members only jacket, a differentcolored members only jacket.

(01:52:49):
He has got a range.
of colors.
I have a theory I know who Dante's absentee father is.
Oh, JT Stryker.
Oh yeah.
falls into place.
All falls into place.
JT striker.
And what we've got like maybe 20, 25 minutes left.

(01:53:10):
We're getting into it and you are about to hear the name Jake Donnelly.
many times.
uh my God.
because Dante takes Ben to this care facility run by nuns where he finds Jake Donnelly ina coma.
And this is where we get all the baseball trophies from the opening.

(01:53:30):
wait, I- I- Jake Donnelly in a coma, I know, I know, it's getting serious!
oh
We learned that Jake was Madison's boyfriend and that they were in a car accident.
According to the nurse, he wasn't wearing his seatbelt, but she was.
So he ended up in a coma.

(01:53:51):
While this is happening, all while we're cutting back to Amy driving down the road on herscooter and Ben's truck approaches her from behind.
And I knew that leaving the truck there was a bad idea.
I knew it.
I swear I knew it.
And the truck, which apparently runs silent, I might add.
up behind her and hits her although we don't see the hit but like boom and Ben gets like apage because he's got a pager he calls his mom from the care facility and and she says

(01:54:21):
that Amy tells him she tells him what happened to Amy then she got hit by by Ben's truckand the cops are looking for him and I'm like man he's got an alibi like he was at the
care facility
like they know when the accident happened and he was at the he got he's got nuns totestify on his behalf that he was there.

(01:54:44):
Just like Mr.
Walker with a note from David in a trashed automobile.
Does he take this evidence to the cops?
No, no.
Well, meanwhile, so, so Amy is in the hospital because she was run over by a truck.
Although she, she looks pretty good for being run over by a truck.
Uh, you know, a couple of scratches on her face, but that's it.

(01:55:05):
And Madison decides to finish the job.
So she is wearing a lab coat and wielding a scalpel like she's Michael Myers in Halloweentwo.
She's just walking down the hall in this lab coat.
She's walking around out in the open.
And nobody's asking who this 17 year old girl is, like she's...

(01:55:25):
Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight, my man.
This is the Joker.
Yeah.
She-
she possibly know about how to do any of this?
It's not even that useful at this point.
No, like, no, like this is all like, you have to go to the bookshop and get the anarchistscookbook.

(01:55:50):
Oh, so, Ben's got a plan and cause he's got some of Jake's clothes and he apparently justguesses that Madison is going to the hospital to get her and Madison hears Jake Donnelly's
name being called over the loud speaker, Jake Donnelly to the, to the, nurses station,Jake Donnelly at the nurses station.

(01:56:11):
And she goes to the nurses station and she sees a figure that looks like poor Joe comatoseJake come back to the land of living.
follows into the parking garage where it's revealed to be Dante.
Ben grabs her, she confesses to everything, and it's caught on camera by Renee, the otherfriend who we haven't seen since the beginning of the movie, but pops back up here uh to

(01:56:34):
handle the camcorder, dude.
And this is where I realized that in this movie too, this number one, Ben actually didwise up because he is coming at Madison with the level of subterfuge you need.
again, she's a devious mastermind.
She's the joke.
So you've got to, you've got to come at her with, with something similar, but also I wantto say for the most part, and I know I wasn't here for every episode, but most of the time

(01:56:58):
the villain confrontation in a fatal attraction style movie is initiated by the villain.
Really?
And then you are just reacting.
This is Nightmare on Elm Street or Scream.
Like you are now turning the tables on your horror movie villain and trying to take backcontrol in a way that doesn't happen that often.

(01:57:22):
Maybe Spade are in bad influence, I guess.
But the feels a little different in this one.
But in any event, you know,
You've got that.
It's unusual for this trend.
Ben grabs her, she confesses to everything and uh that's it.

(01:57:43):
The cops arrest Madison and he and mom head for home and we're good.
We're good.
Yeah.
Madison's and handcuffs in the back of cop car.
Yeah, and Rob, I was looking at it, and I'm like, there's 15 minutes left to this movie.
Wait a minute, Chris.
I'm, getting something on, the Yeah.
Apparently Madison is, yes.

(01:58:05):
A super villain who two full grown male cops are not going to be able to hold.
She's going to the cat like reflexes.
Oh my God.
The one cop left his gun on the snap on the holster is not snapped.
Why?
he's sitting in the backseat to begin with?
Like why is he sitting in the backseat?

(01:58:26):
Because they're underestimating.
Cops.
mean, it's just it's like it.
the Merciless is going to be after you.
stop at like a train, road, road crossing, Cobb spills his coffee and she just takes himout like she's John fucking Wick.
Yeah.
Madison Mars, which I'm going to go keep doing this.

(01:58:47):
oh Amy's been let out of the hospital and for some reason is at Ben's house.
I couldn't figure that one out.
was like, why is she?
Again, looking pretty good considering she's been run over by a-
that she got run over by the way, much, much like in fatal attraction, you know, where,Oh, the guy messed up so much that his affair almost gets you killed.

(01:59:11):
And then that is the thing that turns you around to be like, Oh, I forgive you.
You're wonderful.
You're actually wonderful.
Like you would not be in this almost coma mad or, excuse me, Amy.
If your boyfriend hadn't cheated on you, you know, there's no reason to forgive him.
This is ridiculous.
Don't change your college plans.
Don't, you know, go to Rhode Island.

(01:59:31):
go to Berkeley.
No, go to RISD or whatever.
Berkeley, presumably like she's going to Brown or something in Rhode Island.
Yeah.
Like it's it's it's great, you know, uh it's Madison.
Madison, of course, is able to enter this house undetected.
She knocks out Ben and the mom and abducts Amy.
With a swim trophy, I believe.

(01:59:51):
With a swim That she grabs.
She grabs a swim trophy.
She carried Amy out of this house.
it's just, I mean, she's not Mark Wahlberg in fear.
It's the gamma radiation sometimes creates a Hulk, but sometimes can create anabomination.
So it's like, yeah.
true.
And she abducts Amy and she takes her to the pool's perpetually unsecured pool.

(02:00:16):
ah She takes her to the school's perpetually unsecured pool.
Like, they need a padlock for this thing.
A kid has already died in that pool.
Isn't it a crime scene for Christ's sake?
Yeah.
Also, just to get real, there's no way the school had the funds to clean the pool thatquickly.

(02:00:37):
The dead body.
There's a lot of fluids in that pool.
But this is where Madison's uh rage gets the better of her poetic dress because it turnsout this is her Achilles heel.
And why did she come here other than her mania?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's she she she has Amy tied to a chair and when Ben won't admit that heloves her, just tell me that you love me.

(02:01:02):
She's very intense.
This very scream ask like the beginning with the boyfriend tie to the chair, demands beingmade by the villain and then the, uh, in this one, it's at least attempted murder.
It's not successful.
Right into the pool that poor Amy handcuffed to the chair, right into the pool.

(02:01:24):
But she's sitting there in the pool, like calmly, eyes closed, not breathing.
Why isn't she struggling?
Ben dives in, he's got to swim the length of pool, but he's a good swimmer.
And what does he use to open the handcuffs?
Police issued handcuffs.

(02:01:44):
issued handcuffs.
The hairpin with the music note that Madison gave him when they first met.
Rob, why is he carrying this around?
Why does he have this?
I know Justin from our texts is very much feeling this is what from when he watched thismovie.

(02:02:04):
I have retconned this in my mind.
He put it in the change pocket of his jeans and that if
wearing the same jeans for all these weeks?
No, that hair clips gone through the law, the wash, but it's in the change pocket so itwouldn't come out.
Is he really getting up every morning, putting his wallet in his keys, his pocket and say,let me take this hairpin that this crazy stalker gave him.

(02:02:31):
Dumber than the peace pipe.
It's dumber than the peace pipe.
At least I can believe that Reese Witherspoon would just throw the peace pipe in thecorner of a room and it might still be there.
He has been taking this daily.
Nobody should be the second, no one should be the second person to die in a school pool.
That's all I'm saying.

(02:02:51):
It's just.
And yet someone will be.
Yeah, yeah.
Cause Madison starts slapping at him.
This is where Madison all goes apart because she starts slapping at him with the skimmer.
Why do you need a skimmer for an indoor pool?
It's not like leaves are going to fall in.
It's fine.
But like, and he pulls her in and she can't swim.

(02:03:13):
So he pulls Amy out of the pool and Madison sinks to her doom.
And again, water.
We've talked about this water playing a pivotal role in these films from the bathtub andfatal attraction to the pool and swim fan.
Water and death by drowning has been a continual thing.
And also continual and not all of them, but a lot of them is the you want to play yourhero is not someone who will murder someone else even if they are the villain.

(02:03:43):
Right.
But you craft a scenario that allows the villain to die so the audience can feel satisfiedanyway.
In this case, Ben did not pull Madison in.
to get her to drown.
He doesn't even necessarily know that she actually couldn't swim.
Right.
He is too busy saving Amy and trying to do the, Oh my God, like the, not the high.

(02:04:05):
chest compressions he's trying to the water out of her lungs
out of Amy.
So he does not notice that Madison's drowning behind them.
So he does not actively let Madison drown.
He's too wrapped up in the other thing.
So we can feel good about Ben and feel good about Madison getting her just deserve.
Honestly, she should have escaped.

(02:04:25):
And you know, again, a reign of terror the likes of which North Jersey has never seen.
like and after this moment, do know Madison actually did get out and ever since she's beenderailing trains in the northeast searching Chris.
a super-powered individual.

(02:04:46):
for someone like her for the balance.
god.
In the end, Ben does not rejoin the swim team or apparently even go back to school.
He and Amy drive on
he does creepily watch a swim meet for some reason alone while Amy waits in the car for anentire swim meet.
time Swimbean.

(02:05:06):
And then he and Amy, Amy drive, they drive off to some future together, but probably notStanford.
And there we are.
And, and we began this series with Fatal Traction in 1987.
end 15 years later with Swimfan.
I'll ask the question I always do, Rob, what have we learned?
You're not that hot.

(02:05:28):
If someone tries to instantly have sex with you, maybe give it a hot minute.
I'm not saying.
One night stand, but maybe not the night you meet.
Maybe just like, you know, give it a bit them.
Give it a beat.
You know, it's a...
I just don't...
Especially men, you're not that good looking.

(02:05:50):
Just don't.
It's trouble.
Wifi most interesting about the movies in this series is how many of them stuck fairlyclose to the fatal attraction formula and we're okay for it.
Like, Swim Fan is ridiculous, it's, well, it's ridiculous.
It's a ridiculous movie.
But like, Unlawful Entry is one of the stronger movies in the series and it fills a lot ofthe same beats.

(02:06:16):
Single white female as well.
You know why I think that is?
Because I think the story, while it matters, much like another genre we've looked at, thestory matters less than something else.
I think much like a romantic comedy.
It is the chemistry and personality of the actors will carry these movies.

(02:06:41):
I mean, they always do in any film, but I think in this particular sub-subgenre,
of movies that if you have that chemistry from the leads, because you need to believe thatsomeone who is probably has flashing red signs would still be desirable in some way.
you need to feel that connection, the whatever the chemistry is, you know, whether it'sfriendship, gone wrong chemistry, or co worker or whatever it is, it's got to be there.

(02:07:12):
In other genres, I would feel or other things I'm like, you're just
copying beats, right?
Note for note.
And it feels like a copy.
It never does in these movies.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting.
And to me, the other interesting thing is that even though this trend would would kind ofrun its course by the early aughts, know, how much the fatal attraction influence extends
beyond the films we've discussed in this.

(02:07:34):
I mean, the title itself, you instantly know what that means.
You instantly know what that means.
And you get movies to this day that incorporate those elements.
It has become part of just sort of the cinematic lexicon of of.
you of our movie culture.
like you can play those tropes because everybody knows.

(02:07:56):
you have had the Netflix hit show you if you'd never had this whole language built upahead of time.
I mean, you could have had a version of it, but it's, you know, it's that thing where youget to, get to play with and move on from this kind of thing.
that some of the early movies have already now become streaming series.

(02:08:16):
think both Fatal Attraction and Presumed Innocent both have turned into series on whateverstreaming.
Yeah, we're obviously, we're not done.
We're very excited for the future as we bring this series to a close.
We're excited for what comes next.
So it's been a while since we've had a chance to do one of our don't get me in otherepisodes.

(02:08:40):
where we look at a movie that could have started a trend if it hadn't missed the mark.
So in celebration of its 40th anniversary this year, we hope you join us for Don't Get MeAnother, Jim Cotta.
That's right.
We are going to be looking at 1985's Gymnastics, Martial Arts, Hybrid, Jim Cotta.

(02:09:04):
It is an amazing movie and that bonus episode will be coming to you on Tuesday
June 10th, Jim Cotter, it's the mega force of martial arts movies.
And you know, that's about as ringing an endorsement as I can give it.
Which brings us to our next series that is also inspired by a movie celebrating a majormilestone this year.

(02:09:29):
One of the most influential films of all time.
A movie that effectively invented the summer blockbuster.
We hope that you will join us for
Get me another Jaws.
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
it's, you know, we have got a fantastic live.
And because we had felt it had been too long since we'd done a series where we could do abunch of Italians riffing on a trend.

(02:09:56):
Yes.
There are some Italian movies.
Oh God, have a fantastic lineup of movies about animals eating people.
Sharks, killer whales, bears, creatures of the sea, land, and even sky.
It is going to be terrific.
Get Me Another Jaws will be kicking off Tuesday, July 1st, and will run through the summerjust when you thought it was safe to go back on the podcast.

(02:10:24):
So join us for
Don't get me another Jim Cotta on Tuesday, June 10th and get me another Jaws kicking offTuesday, July 1st running through the entire summer for Jaws' 50th anniversary.
We're never moving this date because July 4th, it's too big of a moneymaker for thepodcast.
There's too much tourism.
We're not shutting this down no matter what happens in the studio.

(02:10:48):
The podcast remains open.
That's all there is to it.
know, like it's, you know, we got to get those, those listener dollars.
don't make any money.
We don't make any money.
did.
No, for anything.
I'm actually I'm actually recording this from the L.A.
River right now.
It's.
Sounds great for being an idiot.

(02:11:08):
thanks.
Again, thank you so much for listening.
We are your hosts, Chris Iannicote and Rob Lemorgis.
If you've enjoyed our show, please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky,Instagram, threads and Twitter at Get Me Another Pod.
In addition, check out the Justin Beam Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts and youcan find Justin's book, Roadside Memories at JustinBeam.com or wherever books are sold.

(02:11:32):
If you like the show, tell your friends about it, tell your enemies about it.
Tell that girl who watching your swim practice about it, but don't accept the hairpin sheoffers you, because why would you possibly need that?
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when Hollywood says, get meanother.

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Fatal Attraction Ep. 09 - Fear / Swimfan

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Fatal Attraction Ep. 09 - Fear / Swimfan