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Episode Transcript
This is Beyond the Big Screen podcast with your host
Steve Guera. I think you must everybody must know this
sort of person, and I'm sure you must have run
into them in your career where it's just a person
who's not necessarily a bad person, and they might even
(00:29):
have some really good qualities. They just they're not capable
of making a good choice.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, I knew a number of people who I would
you know, you chase in a car, chase on foot,
have to fight with occasionally, arrest on warrants, arrest for
possession or for assault or whatever. And yet there will
be other times, I mean we would call them, you know,
a lot of places use the term frequent flyer, you know,
(00:56):
for somebody that's a you know, habitual criminal or a
career criminals, somebody that you come in contact with frequently.
But then there'd be other times where I'd show up
at U say, another call or a party call, or
or or at an apartment or something apartment complex where
you know, they're at the apartment next door to whatever
(01:18):
I'm getting called for, just sitting out there having a
cigarette on the porch or whatever, not doing anything. And
so you encounter them in that scenario, and it's and
they're personable, they're funny, they're not you know, they're not snarky,
they're they're just a decent person and and uh, and
(01:39):
so you have this completely different exchange and and it's
it's kind of weird if you think about it, because
you're you're having this nice conversation with somebody maybe you know,
they're they're talk about a movie or or an event
that has sporting event or something, you know, and you're
just a couple of guys, a couple of people chatting.
You know, well, one of them is working and one
(02:02):
of them is hanging out, you know. And then you know,
two days later, you might be driving sixty five miles
an hour down a back road with your lights on,
chasing them in a stolen car, you know. And you know,
and then after you arrest them and take them to jail,
while you're standing in jail waiting to book them, it
might be the same thing as it was when they
were sitting on the porch there. Everything's chill. It's just
(02:24):
a weird thing for these relationships that can sometimes happen.
Don't get me wrong, there are people out there that
are just absolute jerk one hundred percent of the time.
And I'm sure there are cops that are absolute heart
asses one hundred percent of the time. So not everybody
has this sort of relationships, and you don't have them
(02:45):
with everybody out there either, But there are a lot
of the walkers the name of the character that Max played,
There are a number of walkers out there that I encountered,
And it's just a strange dynamic because you liked the guy, right,
you don't want to have to arrest him, but you know,
you just stopped him in a stolen car and he's got,
(03:06):
you know, an ounce of heroin on him, and he's
got a felony warm. You know. It's not like you
could just give him a break or something, you know,
so you don't exactly feel bad for him, but you
feel bad that you had to do it. It's I
don't know if I'm explaining this very well or not,
but it's a very strange sort of situation. And that's
how I felt watching this movie way back in ninety
(03:29):
one ninety two when I first saw it, and I
still felt that way when I watched it a few
nights ago.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, I think that type of person you can see
that they're not an absolute reprobate. They're they're not like
bad to the core where I'm sure you saw and
you know plenty too where somebody was just absolutely no
good where this guy again, he was you know, not
(03:55):
jackling Highe he was just a goofball who wand up
and the wrong things, probably didn't have the greatest impulse control.
And you can kind of feel bad for that. And
like you said, as an officer, yeah, you have to
arrest him when he's got a pound full of heroin
in the car, and but maybe you you know, cuff
(04:17):
him in the back of the head. What do were
you thinking? Walker? Like, you know, you're not going to
play the hard guy with him where I'm like you said,
I'm sure there probably were people who are very black
and white, but I think with someone like him, there's
a whole lot of gray in there.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
See in the movie, you know, Jennifer Jason Lee's character Kristin,
she she likes Walker, like legitimately likes him, and you know,
tries to help him on a couple of occasions. And
I think Rayner, I don't know how much he likes him.
(04:52):
It's not as a parent, but you know, but Kristin
there's a couple of three different scenes I can think
of off the top of my head where it's parent
that she has affection for him, and not of the
romantic kind, but just of the you know, very basic
human affection. And so yeah, the guy plays the role
just so well. And and that is a kind of criminal,
(05:16):
you know. I mean, his values are what they are.
He grew up in a culture where, you know, you
get a job and you work all day and then
you take some of that money and you buy booze
and dope and have a good time on the weekend.
And that's life. That's what life is, and that's how
he grew up, and that's what everybody else around him
was doing. And so he's not evil, he's not even
(05:37):
maybe bad. He's just making bad decisions based on the
culture that he's a part of, and he's probably not
even thinking very hard about it, you know, And so
it's kind of hard to condemn that person past a
certain point. But you know, at the same time, he's
stealing cars and selling drugs, so you know, there is that.
(05:58):
I mean, there are other characters that are are are
a little more scary. I mean, they buy heroin from
a guy that puts a gun on him and makes
them both shoot up to prove they're not cops. That
guy's pretty scary. There's a guy selling pills the Blue Ringers,
you know, that guy in the in the overalls that
you know kind of you know, he's pretty menacing and
(06:22):
and you think he might actually sexually assault her and
then he stops short of it. But you know, I
wouldn't feel bad about either one of those people going
to jail for what they did. You know, no, no
sympathy whatsoever. But Walker, you know, hey, it's not a
bad guy. He's just making bad choices. Mhm.
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