Rollercoaster (1977)

Mike and Chris keep their arms in the car at all times with writer-producer and Rollercoaster superfan Richard Hatem for a wild ride through James Goldstone’s 1977 star-studded disaster-thriller that pits George Segal’s weary safety inspector against Timothy Bottoms’s soft-spoken, delightfully unhinged bomber. 

They dig into the film’s oddball mix of procedural beats, theme-park mayhem, and Sensurround feeling, tracing how Rollercoaster fits alongside Link & Levinson's energy and why its cat-and-mouse structure still works. Expect talk of Segal’s hangdog charm, Richard Widmark’s righteous scowling, and the many ways a bomber with a walkie-talkie can make a grown man sweat.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Now Universal plunges you into a mystery at the speed
of sound. A roller coaster, an accident in California.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Lass two accidents in one week.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Who's putting the lid on this?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
The police?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
A recording from a stranger, Get on the right Hairry
a drop in Virginia, Harry, Yeah, remember what happens when
you don't follow directions? And a man in the middle on.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
The right of his life.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
They're over the lift.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's too late to stop him out. Let's go.

Speaker 5 (01:59):
R Welcome to the Shabby Detective, yet another Colombo podcast.
I'm your host, Mike White. Join me of course, is
mister Chris Tashu.

Speaker 6 (02:12):
If you don't want to get blown up on a
roller coaster, just don't go on a roller coaster.

Speaker 5 (02:17):
And joining us this time around is mister Richard had him.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
I don't know who the hell I trust less him
or you.

Speaker 5 (02:26):
On this episode, we are taking a little bit of
a break from Colombo. We are looking at a movie
that was co written by Richard Levinson and William Link
and Stanford Shelton.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah. I don't know how the credits got figured. I
don't know who that guy is. I know who the
Levinson and Link are, So we're just gonna say it's
eleven City because this thing reeks of Levinson and Link
in a good way.

Speaker 6 (02:51):
It was also a story by Tommy Cook, by the way,
story suggested by Tommy Cook. One guy was in the room,
He's just, what would happen if you put a but
I'm on a roller coaster.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
If I had to guess, I would guess that's almost
on the level of a studio executive. Look, we got
this sense a round thing, we got to use it.
What would be a good sense around? And then they
said we've done an earthquake. I know, everybody, you're sitting
down roller coaster.

Speaker 6 (03:23):
Because you have to be. If you're riding a roller coaster.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
That's right, keep your hands and feet inside the car.

Speaker 5 (03:28):
Roller Coaster was released June tenth, nineteen seventy seven. I
missed the hype when it came to this movie. I
came to this movie actually through another podcast, the Outside
the Cinema podcast, which reviewed this years ago. I don't
think they knew who Sparks were, and they were just
so confused by the one guy's little Hitler stash. But

(03:50):
they really enjoyed this and said it was way better
than it had any business to be. And I completely
agree with them. I watch this probably ten years ago
and just fell in love with it and really was
super excited to talk about this one with you guys.
And then Chris had a memory of Richard liking the movie,

(04:13):
and I think that's probably the understatement of the century
after listening to a recent episode of Richard Adams's paranormal
Bookshelf where he talked about his relationship with this film.
So we'll definitely get there. But first, Chris, had you
ever seen Roller Coaster before? And what did you think
this time around?

Speaker 6 (04:31):
Sir, I'd never seen this before, but I had seen
George Siegel and a lot of stuff. Because you guys
are gonna like this, I love I absolutely love Just
shoot Me.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
Nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Okay, So you're a George Siegel fan.

Speaker 6 (04:45):
Yeah, I like George Siegel just fine. I like him
on Just shoot Me. Him and Enrico Colantoni him the
bald guy. He's great. I love that show. So I
knew nothing about this movie going into it. I didn't
even to realize he was in it. All I knew
was that George Bush was trying a young George Bush

(05:05):
was trying to blow up roller coasters. Timothy Bottoms played
George Bush in the seminal TV series from Comedy Central,
That's My Bush. He was also in Last Picture Show.
My joke's about the idea of the movie kind of
being wonky aside, because we'll talk about the premise and

(05:25):
the inherent pitfalls surrounding the premise. My biggest issue with
this movie is the opening of the movie is really compelling,
and then the rest of the movie never gets back
to that level. Because the opening of the movie is
a is like a masterclass in suspense and how do
you like really ratchet that tension up and really draw

(05:46):
it out and draw it out and draw it out
and hour and Alway's gonna blow it up. Now he's
not blind, Okay, keep dragging it. I appreciated that, But
then it just it starts getting like overly complicated, and
then it just starts getting goofy, and then the climax
of the movie, I found it to just be less
exciting than they probably thought it was. Is probably the

(06:08):
nice way of putting it. So all in all, it
definitely reeks of seventies disaster movie, that's for sure. And
I'm not saying that in a bad way, Like it
has the hallmarks of a movie similar to the I
mean you already mentioned it, but the other movies that
were released in cens you surround or sense around, the

(06:29):
obvious one being seventy four is Earthquake. I have a
lot of affinity for earthquake. I have a lot of
affinity for earthquake because my mom grew up in San
Francisco My mom was pregnant with me during the big
earthquake in San Francisco in eighty nine. So like I
have an affinity for earthquake and sense around as well

(06:50):
as an idea. So I can understand, like you said, Mike,
why they would be doing it, because I've always wanted
to see earthquake with that technology, because I'm sure it
was I'm sure it was wild. I don't think this
lived up to that, but I can see as a
kind of the Tingler level of gimmick. How do we
take advantage of it? I guess the thing for me

(07:10):
is is a roller coaster really the best way to
take advantage of this technology? Other than that, Again, like
my minor kind of initial quibbles, I get why you
guys enjoy it. Is it my favorite disaster movie from
the seventies.

Speaker 7 (07:24):
No?

Speaker 6 (07:24):
Is it a fun side tangent into a thing that
again is a little less specifically a disaster movie and
more kind of a thriller disaster movie. A disaster movie
by way of Levinson and Link is really the way
of putting it. Yes, And I think that might actually
be the problem that the movie has, is it's not

(07:47):
because it doesn't necessarily have all the disaster tropes. It
feels like from time to time it is missing some stuff.
And again, like the stakes in this are for as
high as they want to make the steaks sound, the
stakes are low. Just close the goddamn theme parks of
it all, and there you go. I know that's a
plot hole. And I'm sure again we'll talk about the premise,

(08:08):
but I don't know. There were wonky bits. But overall, again,
the George Siegel of it all, in the timothy bottom
of it all, I enjoyed. Yeah, it wasn't the worst
thing I've seen all year, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
I think calling it a thriller is correct.

Speaker 6 (08:23):
It drags when it should be thrilling.

Speaker 5 (08:25):
I think it really falls into that disaster movie as
far as the Airport Films, Earthquakes, Howering Ferno. But then
there's also elements like you're saying with the Fourth of
July reminds me of Jaws and the pursuit of commerce
and just this whole idea of we can't close the
park down because we're going to lose money, and it's

(08:46):
really all about the older people that really want to
keep their money flowing. And we should say before we
carry on that this is a start studded film. That
was the thing when it came to the Airport Films
or Towering Inferno or any of those who can we
get in this, And so with Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark,

(09:08):
Susan Strasberg, just so many names that I'm familiar with,
and great to see young Steve Gutenberg in his first role,
great to see a young Helen Hunt. But this was
probably the first Craig Wasson role that was out there,
so when he shows up. And then of course for me,
I'm a huge fan of Kiss Meets The Phantom of

(09:30):
the Park, so having another movie set at Magic Mountain
was really exciting for me. And every time they showed
group shots of the park getting ready, I was just like.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Remember, Kiss Tonight Kiss.

Speaker 5 (09:44):
Unfortunately, Charlie Tuona is no real Don Steele. For me,
it was all right. But my biggest thrill though, was
also having Michael Bell in here as demarest who. As
I'm watching him, I kept thinking he's dubbed, He's dubbed,
and then I go, no, he's actually a voiceover artist,
so every time he speaks, it sounds like someone is

(10:07):
doing a voiceover. So he's mostly known to me as
being the voice of Peter Chris in Kiss Me Savannah
of the Park, but he was in I don't know hundreds,
if not thousands, of Hannah Barbara cartoons, so his voice
is very distinct. Now, Richard, tell us a little bit
about your history with Roller Coaster, please.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
I went and saw it when it came out, so
I was there, probably in June. I don't know if
I saw the weekend it came out. I might have,
but I saw it with my brother and my cousins.
I was eleven years old. It was one of the
first grown up movies I'd ever seen. It felt like
I was ooh, I'm kind of leveling up. This isn't
a Disney movie. This is for people older than me.

(10:49):
But at the same time, it felt like it was
also for me because it was about roller coasters and
amusement parks, and I liked going to those, and so
it was in the kid world. Even I wasn't quite
a teenager, but I saw it with my older brother,
my older cousins, and this movie it blew me away.
I was riveted and horrified the entire time, and part

(11:14):
of it was the roller coaster of it all. But
there's that other trope that is in this movie that
I guess is in other movies, but it was the
first time I saw it, and it was the scary
guy on the other end of the phone, where in
this movie, Timothy Bottoms is the character who actually never

(11:37):
has a name, but he's the guy who is committing
extortion against the owners of these various amusement parks across
America by basically threatening acts of terrorism at the park
that will naturally make people not want to go to
the parks, because it's not just a matter of getting

(11:57):
over your own personal fear of heights or things that
go fast, roller coasters, things like that. Suddenly the thrills
aren't just carnival thrills. Now you actually have to worry
that you're going to die because someone put a bomb
on the track. When the roller coaster car hits that
damaged bit of track, you're all going to be killed.

(12:18):
All of this stuff together had a big effect on me,
and I've seen the movie so many times, and it's
one of those movies that my brother and I continually
say lines back and forth. Typically it's Timothy Bottoms talking
to George Siegel saying, you know what, Harry, I trust you,

(12:39):
and stuff like that. I'm in one of those places
with you guys like The Nightstalker, where my sentimental attachment
to the material is such that I can't really have
an objective view of it. But I will say this,
with The Nightstalker, I understand how people watching it now
as full of grown adults go, this is not really

(12:59):
high production. I'm not seeing the best Hollywood had to
offer even at the time this was being made. Whereas
when I watched Roller Coaster, and for me, like I said,
I think it is a thriller. I don't think it
is a disaster movie. I think it's a crime thriller.
And for me, I think it holds up really well.

(13:21):
As crazy as the concept is. I don't see that.
There's a lot of plot holes. I think the one
that got mentioned is addressed within the movie when George
Siegel is the one who says shut the park down.
He's threatened the park. It's fourth of July. He's going
to do something, just shut the park down, and the
guy who owns the park basically says, so then he

(13:43):
hits us tomorrow or the next day, or do you
want us to shut down permanently, which is totally true.
It's like, we can't just because there's a guy out
there who blew up a roller coaster once. What are
we supposed to do? Shut every amusement park in America forever.
We're going to do our best to figure this out,
and then we're going to go on with our lives.

(14:03):
And it is that kind of draws cynical seventies commerce
before public safety aura that it has so anyway, and
the final thing I will say just about the way
anyone approaches the movie is we all have a different
feeling about amusement parks. Some people love them, some people

(14:25):
really don't. And I think that has a lot to
do with a general enjoyment of this film. If amusement
parks are a place you want to spend a lot
of time in a movie, You'll probably like this movie.
If amusement parks aren't your thing, then the movie might
be of less interest to you.

Speaker 5 (14:47):
That brings up a question. So I know you talked
to a lot in your episode of what you had
on Superian Normal Bookshelf about your history with amusement parks.
But Chris, I'm curious about you. What's your history?

Speaker 6 (15:00):
I love theme parks. When I went to visit Richard
last year, I took it upon myself to go to
Universal Studios when I was there, effectively the free day
that I had, I went to Universal Studios because I
hadn't been there in a long time. So I love
theme parks. I went to Universal Studios a lot growing
up when we would visit my dad's family who lived

(15:23):
in San Diego, so we would go up to La
to go to Universal Studios. And I went to Disneyland
to Fairmount as a kid, Disney World as well, and
growing up in Dallas, we had the original Six Flags
was in Arlington, which was like forty five minutes from
my parents' house, So we went to six Flags a
lot growing up. I didn't get into roller coasters probably

(15:45):
until I was either sixteen or seventeen and I rode
the Titan for the first That was the first roller
coaster I ever wrote on. And that's like the biggest
roller coaster at six Flags over Texas. It's a massive
roller coaster. So I used to not be into like
roller coasters and amusement parks, but as I've gotten older,
I'm definitely more into roller coasters. I've always liked theme parks.

(16:07):
I am inherently just a fan of theme parks. And obviously,
where Richard lives and where Richard grew up, it's the
It's theme park heaven essentially, because you can live in
LA and then you can go to two of the
finest theme parks in the country. But I'm a theme
park guy. Honestly. I think the thing that sucks in
this day and age is how fucking absurdly expensive everything

(16:28):
is now and how you can't afford to just go.
It has to be a thing, I guess if you
live in LA or if you live in Destin or
Kissing Me or wherever the fuck, because Disney World is
not technically in Orlando, so I don't know if I guess, like, Richard,
do you go Do you go to theme parks if

(16:48):
you live in LA Is that a thing? I guess
Magic Mountains a thing which is a six flags place.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
It breaks down like this. As a kid, you go.
There was a handful of summers where my brother and
my cousins Jan and Rob and I would hit all
three every summer. So they're like we'd June, July, August.
It would be divided up between Knottsberry Farm, Disneyland, and
Magic Mountain, and those were the three best days of

(17:16):
the summer. And it lasted for a while. But then
when I got into high school, i'd go with my friends,
and the amusement park stuff, I would say, for me,
lasted till the end of high school. Then I didn't
go for a while, and when I tried to go back,
it was already too much. I couldn't handle it. I
went back literally in my mid twenties, I went back

(17:36):
to Magic Mountain and rode some of the rides, and
I was just like, I can't take it anymore. I'm
getting dizzy, i don't feel well, it's not fun. I'm out.
In terms of like really challenging myself with roller coasters
that it's been thirty five years. But then you have kids,
and then it starts all over again, and it's okay,

(17:57):
I guess we're doing Disneyland again, and then you're back
into the Disneyland of at all. And Disneyland is an
easy place to have a good time. You don't even
have to go on rides, and even if you do,
it can be Pirates of the Caribbean, which is fairly tame.
You don't you're not going to be vomiting. Let's put
it out way. You're not there like Magic Mountain now

(18:19):
really is like you're training for space travel. It's I
don't know how anyone does it, but it's just bigger,
but it is. That park is easily four times the
size of what it was when I went, and they've
got sixteen giant roller coasters, none of which I would
ever get anywhere near for me.

Speaker 5 (18:40):
We have Cedar Point pretty close by. I would go
down there once a year, maybe twice a year if
I was lucky. During high school and maybe over the
few years after that. A so big fan of the
local carnival scene, so we would have carnivals around here
quoit Bit when I was growing up, so those rickety

(19:02):
rides that you never knew if they were gonna throw
you off or not. It was almost as good as
having Timothy Bottoms planting a bomb on there. Reminded me
of was it the Fury or was it Scanners where
one of the guys like makes a disaster on a
ride that's spinning around kind of thing with his mental powers,
and I'm just like, yeah, that reminds me of Carnivals.
But going to Cedar Point was a lot of fun,

(19:24):
and they just kept upping the ante. Every single year.
There'd be a new ride and the new thing that
you need to do. But their line management was for shit.
That was the thing that I liked the most about
Universal was how they made the line part of the ride,
and I think Suedarpoint could learn a lot from that,

(19:45):
because otherwise you're just standing out in the heat. And
eventually they would put in like little stations with spinning
out water kind of thing. You'd be like, oh, cool,
breeze for two seconds, and then I have to move
up in the line. That's my favorite thing.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Now.

Speaker 5 (20:01):
I can't even remember the last time I went to
an amusement park, and probably way too fat for an
amusement park these days and need to slim down so
I can fit inside of some of those lines. I'm
definitely tall enough, but too wide for them.

Speaker 6 (20:15):
Mike is not a five foot tall they four and
a half foot tall man. Excuse me, sir.

Speaker 5 (20:21):
It must be this tall to ride this ride.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Disney I think set the standard for experience management.

Speaker 6 (20:29):
The que line actually putting some forethought and theming into
the queue. Disney is the kings of that. I'd actually
say Universal is better than Disney now me personally.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
And Universal took their queue from Disney. And there's obviously
a whole industry of theme parks and that's their business.
But Disney really did a great job of figuring out
really just how to get people on and off the ride,
and how to time and how many cars do you need,

(21:00):
so that the efficiency was always running out of height.
There is a way you're supposed to experience Disneyland. There
is a pattern where it's okay, ideally, here's how you
would experience Disneyland. You would walk down Main Street, you
would cut to the left, and you would travel from
Adventureland Frontierland all the way through and then circle all
the way around almost through time to Tomorrowland, back down

(21:24):
Main Street, out the door. Thank you very much for
stopping by, and in a crazy way, they had enough
forethought to decide this will be the best way to
experience the park. I don't think it really works anymore
because they've added on Tomtown. Now, they've got the Star
Wars Land, so now it really is more of a buffet.

(21:45):
You can't really do everything at Disneyland in one day,
but I was obsessed. Now here's the interesting thing with
my kids. My son Dashel, who's now eighteen, his best
friend Murray from childhood, was obsessed with roller coasters, and
he and his brother went on a trip to Europe
this summer, just the two of them, to experience all

(22:06):
the roller coasters of Europe. They researched them, they went
to all these parks, and it's not just a passive hobby.
I think both he and his brother have considered or
might be pursuing careers in theme park design, imagineering really
throwing in with it. So the adolescent male's obsession with

(22:30):
theme parks and roller coasters is still alive in the
youth of today.

Speaker 5 (22:35):
So let's talk about roller coaster and the more you
talk about it, the more I feel like for me,
it does hit thriller, it does hit disaster movie. But
like you were saying, it reminds me of a ransom film.
It reminds me of rather than they're trying to save
a kid, they're trying to save this ride, or they're
trying to save people's lives, but there is no kid someplace,

(22:56):
there's no proof of life. But the whole big chunk
of this movie takes place at one park where they
have Timothy Bobdams on the phone or walkie talking in
this case, and they've got George Siegel and he's just
making him do all of these things and taking him
from ride to ride and just running him through the paces,
running a ragged pretty much. That feels so much so

(23:20):
many of the ransom films that we've seen in the past,
where you just have the person you know you're going
to go to this place. No, you've got to make
the drop over here. Now, you've got to make the
drop over there. That takes up I would say the
majority of this film.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
That is the setting of the second act of the film,
and it reminds me in a lot of ways. Both
moves it rids me of dirty Harry.

Speaker 5 (23:42):
I can see that. Yeah, very scorpio.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
It's very scorpiod. It's very much about a cat and
mouse between two people. And yes there's a larger structure
of law enforcement in the case of both, but it
really comes down to a bad guy getting his eyes
on the good guy and going, I'm doing crimes, but
I'm fucking with you. Specifically, this is now down to us,

(24:09):
and that's very much a part of roller Coaster. It's
this guy and what's his psychology and how to figure
it out? And I just want to really quickly say
that I love how by this unknown guy picking out
Harry Calder, which is George Siegal's character, and focusing on
him and communicating solely with him engenders the suspicion of

(24:33):
all other law enforcement. It's just what exactly is this
relationship you have with this guy? In fact, Richard Widmark
has that great line, I'm getting damn tired of your
misplaced admiration, And.

Speaker 5 (24:47):
That's how Harry eventually solves. Which roller coaster he's going
to be bombing for the third act is Hey, I
was the one that inspected this roller coaster three months ago.
It's public record. He knows me he's going to be
doing this. It's not going to be Coney Island. They
make a mention of a Detroit theme park, and I
went and I looked it up and I was like,

(25:08):
I don't think that ever existed. I really don't, like
we had. I forgot all about this until right now.
We had Bablo Island, which was a little island between
Detroit and Canada, and you would take a boat, the
Bablow Boat over to it and then you would spend
the day at the amusement park. So we had that
for the longest time as well, and I completely forgot

(25:30):
about that. One take a.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Day, take some friends that children to take just fucking
his far. No need to.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
Bablo Island because one day aways. So for you, for
the listener who is now half an hour into the
podcast but hasn't seen the movie, just very quickly to
give you a sense of the structure and kind of
the what the movie is. In the first fifteen minutes
of the movie, there is what I still feel is

(26:17):
such a horrific sequence where we're watching and as Chris said,
it's all suspense and we're watching a what seems to
be a guy watching a roller coaster. Anyway, we come
to understand that a guy has dressed as a maintenance
man at a seaside, middle to lower level kind of

(26:39):
carnival ocean park sort of place, and he's put a
bomb on the roller coaster and then he set it off.
So now what we have is a roller coaster on
its journey heading toward a damaged part of the track.
And so now we're watching that, and that is our suspense.

(27:00):
So what happens is this car, of course, this little
train of cars hits that, and now you see people
flying off the roller coaster. You see the roller coaster
flipping over, hitting the ground, people screaming. It's horrific. Without
being bloody, without doing any of the things you could

(27:20):
and would do if you made the movie today. It
is viscerally shocking because it's all practical effects. In fact,
one of those guys, I think, the African American actor,
who I think was like playing a uniformed officer or something,
he's a stunt man, as many of those actors were,
and he actually got injured. People got injured in this stunt,

(27:40):
and you're not surprised anyway. That is so horrifying.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
That.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Really, the rest of the movie is youth being afraid
you're gonna see that again, and that's what propels you.
And in the middle of the movie you understand, oh, okay,
so he's doing is he is? This is extortion. He's
now reached out to the owner operators of all of
these parks and said, I want a million dollars. I

(28:10):
want money, you pay me the money. I won't do
this anymore. It's as simple as that. So let's do business.
And the middle of the movie is trying to pull
that off and catch him at the same time. He
gets away with the money even though a team of
FBI agents done everything they can. But this guy is
really smart, which also makes it scary and interesting. He

(28:33):
gets the money, but they've marked the money and now
he's pissed. And the third act is basically, okay, you
know what, fuck you, I'm going to blow up another rollercoaster.
I'm not looking for money now. Now I'm going to
give you another demonstration of how much smarter I am
than you, and people are going to die and it's
your fault. I will not be calling you again. Click.

(28:54):
And the third act of the movie is where's he
going to strike, how do we stop him? And the
third act takes place at matt Mountain in Los Angeles.

Speaker 5 (29:01):
And what separates this movie from just the run of
the middle. This feels like it could have been a
TV movie even with the level of violence, this PG
level of violence. I wish they would have had an
R rated cut where we saw a little bit more
gory of a death for Timothy Bottom's character. But what
separates this out is that these characters are so well drawn.

(29:22):
You don't ever know that much about Timothy Bottoms's character,
which I appreciate, but you do get those little hints
like you're saying he's super smart, or you get the
feeling by him being this marksman at the amusement park
and the guy who's running the ride is, oh, hey,
I was in this unit in the Marines, and you're

(29:43):
just like, okay, this is nineteen seventy seven. This could
very easily be a Vietnam VET. This could be another
Travis Bickle if we were going that way, But he
doesn't have that peak factor though he is a creep.
But then you get the whole thing with George Siegel,
and he is freaking amazing. This whole thing of him
trying to quit smoking through the entire movie that will.

Speaker 6 (30:06):
See him the beginning of the movie, man, he'd be dead.
He'd just be fucking dead from the amount of cigarettes
he smoked in that room. There is a such thing
as nicotine poisoning. Like he would just be like, how
you doing in there? Just dead? He'd looked like that
thing in Beetlejuice They got a light.

Speaker 5 (30:24):
It's basically he's doing like a cat's eye thing from
that Stephen Kings story where he's got the electricity just
flowing through him as he's trying to do avoidance therapy.
And yeah, it is very intense, but yeah, through the
rest of the movie's no, I don't smoke, or hey,
do you have a light? And there are different moments
where he either wants a cigarette or doesn't want a cigarette,

(30:45):
and then also the whole thing with his wife, and
especially when he visits his house that he misses his house,
that drives right past it because he's so concerned about
other things. Comes back, comes in and there's that guy
reading the paper, eating his breakfast, and he's.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
How do you like the road? It's fine? Thanks, yes,
Birthday President.

Speaker 5 (31:06):
He almost feels like a Walter Mathou character. It almost
feels like the laughing Policeman exactly.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
It's very seventies cynical, just a little bit of character stuff.
It was before the era where we had to know
what demon, you know, he was fighting, and that by
defeating the terrorist he would be redeeming himself from being

(31:32):
kicked off the force. It was just like, no, he's
a guy who works a job. This is the milieu
in which within which he works. These are the kinds
of people he meets. And here's a little bit about
his life. He's divorced, he has a daughter, shared custody.
He's got a new girlfriend. That's all you need to know.

(31:54):
And it's George Siegel and it's great.

Speaker 5 (31:56):
And I love how antagonistic he is to his own boss,
to Henry Fonde, just like basically like, you go take
care of this problem. You know, I don't want to
be bothered. He's like, well it's one that you inspected. Yeah,
I could give a shit. What the fuck? Yeah, It's like, well,
it's my wife's saying anniversary. We're out to dinner. He's like, yeah,
I don't care.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
He says, Harry, it's my anniversary and Harry says, so
take your wife. It is. It's that seventies cop cynical
funny it is. It could have been a Walter Mathow movie,
because again, it's also not about two guys throwing punches.
It was from that era where no one works out.
All these guys look like they've never seen the inside

(32:32):
of a gym, you know, and it's just and it's fine,
doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 (32:36):
Yeah, I was just complaining the other day about the
film Patriot Games, and just that throughout so much of
the movie it is Harrison Ford figuring things out. But
then the whole movie ends with a fucking fistfight on
a boat kind of thing, and it's just like, no, no,
Jack Ryan should be figuring things out, like George Siegel
in this movie, figuring stuff out. Let somebody else take

(32:58):
this guy away, or let somebody else else chase him
up onto the roller coaster so that he's gonna get
hit by the car kind of thing. Like we shouldn't
have George Siegel and Timothy Bottoms having a fistfight down
on the ground someplace or up above the world, you know,
in the loop kind of thing, like, no, we don't
need that, We just it ends the way it needs

(33:20):
to end.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
The energy of that third act is watching an incredibly controlled,
in control chess master who has always been three steps ahead,
one by one, getting the pegs kicked out from under him,
starting to lose his shit, but still figuring out away
I'm still gonna win. I'm still gonna win. But George

(33:44):
Siegel won't stop and is smart and keeps figuring out
ways to be just half a step ahead in this
moment for him to and for Timothy Bontam's character to
end up on those tracks which seem so bizarre, but
he's been shot, he's running, he's a wounded animal, and
they do figure out a way to do my favorite

(34:06):
kind of ending, which is the bad guy is hoist
upon his own petard if you can get him to
be killed. In other words, like in the movie Speed,
if they could have just run that bus directly into
Dennis Hopper, that would have been the greatest movie of
all time.

Speaker 5 (34:22):
Segul just doesn't give a shit. Like when he's talking
with Bottoms, he's just openly antagonizing him the whole time.
There's one part where he's just like, yeah, screw you,
and I'm like, oh, yes, this is great, Like he's
not trying to like, oh, well, what's your motivation and
oh were you hurt when you were a child, or
what's your relationship with your mother or something. He just

(34:43):
doesn't give a shit. He's just like, I could be
doing so many things right now.

Speaker 8 (34:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (34:48):
He hangs up on him a couple of times.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
He's like, then find yourself another messenger, boy, and he
hangs up and the guy calls back and he's like, Harry.

Speaker 5 (34:55):
And when calls him at night, and he's just like,
what the hell, man, I'm trying to sleep.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
Harry, I'm very upset with you. They marked that money.
They didn't tell me. I mean, it's just so the dialogue.
I mean, I don't know. It's all just having seen
the movie five thousand times. But also it is a
movie written by guys who built machines. Their scripts were machines.
It's like, Okay, let's give our hero the smartest bad

(35:24):
guy in the world, and now let's make the hero
uniquely positioned to go to battle with him, as it were.
And I think George Siegel is a shabby detective.

Speaker 6 (35:36):
I was about to say, I'm pretty sure that this
is just Colombo in a lot of ways. Yeah, we
see his family. Yeah, but sure we never see Columbo's family,
and George Seago's better dressed.

Speaker 5 (35:47):
He doesn't figure it out within the first five minutes
and then is just playing with Timothy Bottoms for the
rest of the film.

Speaker 6 (35:53):
No, but I'm talking about the character that he's playing
is Colombo esque. Yeah, the structure of this is yeah,
completely different.

Speaker 5 (36:01):
And Colombo has gone through those times where he was
trying to quit smoking.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Again for the listener, let me tell you, George Siegal's
character is not an FBI agent. He's not a cop
of any sort. He is He's an inspector. He literally
works for the Department of like what it like Safety
and Planning or something. I mean he's an engineer, I think.

Speaker 6 (36:23):
I mean he's an everyman more than like any every
man we've seen in most cities.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Yeah, he literally will he goes to him. He's almost
like an insurance guy. He like goes to the amusement parks,
checks out the rides, makes sure they're up to code,
and then signs off on them. And so he's brought
in as one of six or seven people when that
when the roller coaster collapses at Ocean Park. In the
first act of the movie, he's brought in because it's like, well,

(36:50):
we're bringing in everybody. We're bringing in the guy who
works at the park. We're bringing in the guy from
the county who has to sign off. We're bringing in
the insurance guy. We're bringing in the cops and everybody
to figure out does anyone have any idea what happened here?
And all we're really seeing is that Harry Calder is
a smart guy who can think on his feet, is

(37:12):
not constrained by law enforcement thinking. And because he's got
that latitude, he's able to kind of hook into what
this guy is trying to do. He understands that it's
personal and that this guy is angry, and certainly in
the third act he's able to go, Okay, look, here's
what he's going to want. He's going to want to

(37:33):
make a big splash. This is the debut of a
big roller coaster. It's already getting a lot of publicity.
I'm the one who said it's safe. He dumps on
me at the same time. You know, they go to
the park. It's like, okay, where if he had a bomb,
where would he put it? And he's the one who says,
well it as it's coming off the loop, that's where
you get maximum velocity. And then they're like, well, what

(37:54):
are we supposed to do? Shut the ride down? If
he's here, he'll see it. He'll blow the guys all
over the park. And Harry called the one who says, bunting,
want to send your bomb squad up there, but have
them wrap you know, red, white and blue bunting on
the railing. It'll just look like they're construction guys and
it won't draw the attention. And that's what they do.

(38:15):
And they find the bomb and they diffuse it, and
Timothy Bottom sees it anyway, and he gets back on
the ride and he plants another bomb in the car
this time, and it's just like, oh my god, is
this ever gonna end? So anyway, and all the while.

Speaker 5 (38:28):
Sparks the longest version of the one spark song effort.
They just keep saying it, playing the chorus over and
over again. Could have been kiss, but you know, that's
a whole different movie. The thing that I loved was
that siegl is the one that figures out that there's
this meeting, and he doesn't even know that there's a meeting.
He like figures out that these amusement park guys are

(38:51):
all meeting at a same place, and he's the one
that comes in it kind of like pushes his way
into the door right after Bottom says, just planted a
bug in the room. So Bottoms is aware of this stuff.
But then Siegel starts to figure out, like, oh, well,
who's the owner of this park, who's the owner of
that park, and then puts that together, figures out they're
all meeting at the same place, and goes there and

(39:13):
like I said, forces his way in, and they're like, yeah,
let this guy stick around. And he's the one who
figures out so much more than everybody else.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Right, And it's so funny because then that's the moment,
and it really is fun because there's a number of
moments where Harry called Er walks right past Timothy Bottoms
but of course has no idea who he is or
and and it does.

Speaker 6 (39:36):
They pass him in the lobby of the hotel, lobby
of the hotel, sitting there down on the seat and
they just walk right past him.

Speaker 8 (39:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah, he's looking at the new sperm. And the fun
thing is that we we hand pasted him once and
don't see him. And then the second time when we're
following in the same shot we're following Harry calder back,
we come to rest on him and we're like, oh shit,
he's right there. There's a lot of oh shit, he's
right there moments where it's very almost hitchcocky in where

(40:05):
it's like, oh god, you know, it's like there's a
snake in the room and no one sees the snake.
The snake will hurt you any second. Now, for a
movie that does not go on then to show further carnage,
they do keep a level of suspense and a level
of threat that is fairly creative. I mean, I love

(40:27):
the moment where he's on the walkie talkie on the
he's on the you know, the sky buckets and Timothy
Bottom says, Harry, would you like to know where the
bomb is? You're holding it? And Segull looks at the
walkie talking in his hand, and it's such a great reaction.
He literally looks like he's holding a tarantula in his hand.

Speaker 5 (40:49):
Between outside the cinema and me actually seeing this movie,
I read Steve Gutenberg's autobiography, The Gutenberg Bible, and he
tells a great story about his work in here because
he's only got one line, but it was such a
big deal and he's like, I'm going to be in
the same room with Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda and

(41:10):
the y app Yes you are. And it was the same
guy who I mentioned before, Michael Bell, who kind of
was I think it was a friend of the family,
so he was like looking out for him and so
pretty much got him this role, I believe. So yeah,
it's like he kept fucking up the one line that
he had, and I think they were messing with him

(41:31):
on it. It's been a while since I've read this,
so I'm like trying to find Oh.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
That's the worst. Oh God, that's the nightmare is that
you get you get one shot and you're so worried
about blowing it that you can't stop blowing it. Watching
the movie as a kid, you know the sense around thing,
I don't know, it didn't for me. It did that
did not add or subtract from the movie. You know,
it was like, Okay, the soundtrack loud, but watching it

(42:01):
on TV. This is one of those things where when
they when they finally did show it on television, I
put my tape recorder with the cassette tape right up
by the TV and recorded the entire movie and then
would listen to it, you know, during the summer. I mean,
I was one of those, as I also did with
The Nightstalker. I also tape recorded all the episodes that

(42:22):
I could and then listen to those.

Speaker 5 (42:25):
So Michael Bell was Steve Gutenberg's godfather. And so he
goes in and he meets Harry Garden, Guardine Guardino. There
we are, sorry Guardino. Yeah, Guardino laughed and put out
his hand. Oh my first time. He took a drag
from a cigarette. You're gonna do great. He turned to
Richard Widmark, Dick, this kid's a first timer. Be nice

(42:46):
to him. Woodmark goes, I don't like first timers. My
smile froze at a cricket angle. Did he just say
that Michael's smile was frozen too. Harry started to the
stammer I don't like first timers, growled again and walked over.
He grabbed my hand. I love him, and he broke
into a gigantic smile and his eyes dance.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
God damn it.

Speaker 5 (43:09):
There's a whole chapter of his book dedicated to his work,
his one line on roller Coaster, but for him it
was a seminal moment.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
So I kind of love it. That's what you want,
That's what you want to believe. That these movies in
the seventies with all these dudes, you want to believe
because back then, I think all these guys were half
embarrassed that they made their living as an actor. That
you know, they're from generation where people were going off
to war and you know, really you know, struggling. And

(43:42):
then I'm like, I don't know, I feel kind of
self conscious about the fact that I get limoed to
the set, you know, and there was always a lot
of kind of shunning the glamor of working in certain
aspects of show business and all like weirdly like shame.
So the fact that there was hazing and that these

(44:03):
guys were trying to you know, fuck with each other
and drink on set, it all makes sense. And man,
I think I was born too late in this business.

Speaker 5 (44:14):
I don't know how Sparks got cassed as the band
for the amusement park, but it is so delightful to
see them, and especially to see Ron Mayle with his
whole stick of I do not smile, I do not
interact until he gets up and throws the piano bench.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
That he says, it does create a weird other level
of paranoia. In the third it's like, but who are
these guys and why flash pots going off?

Speaker 5 (44:48):
Oh yeah, well I love that freak out when they
have the flash pot go off and you think it's
the bomb that the guy's trying to diffuse. Do you
think it's the bomb that the guy's trying to diffuse
and then boom and you realize, oh, that's from the
Sparks Show. Okay, all right, and yeah, Russell Mayle, as
opposed to his brother, is like the quintessential rock star
with the long hair and just whirling dervish up on stage.

(45:11):
And meanwhile his brother's there like put it's his arms
up on the piano at one point, just like waiting
for his time to play. Just looks like the most
disinterested guy in the entire world.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
I know, it was weird. I didn't even know they
were a real band for the longest time, and then
when I found out, I'm like, oh wow, So of
course I have both filler up and a big boy
on constant rotation.

Speaker 5 (45:38):
All my playlists and a great score by LaAlO Schiffern
as well, which is nice and I'd like there's also
a fake out at the beginning because you've got Timothy
bottoms out on this dock and he's fishing, and he's
got these binoculars and he's got the Lalo Schiffer in playing,
and it kind of goes in time with some of
the cuts that are happening and some of the things

(46:00):
that are happening on screen, and then you cut and
it's him on the ride setting stuff up, and it's like,
how did he get from one place to the other?
And they don't really answer that, but it's it's kind
of a nice freak out because you're like, oh, he's
looking at this worker from the way that it's shot,
and then no, he's actually the worker up on that

(46:21):
roller coaster.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Yeah, And it is one of those things where retroactively
you're like, Okay, I get it, he's watching it now,
we're on a different day he's up there, because later
on you find out it's like, wait a second, you know, Wayne,
when were you When did you check out the roller coaster?
And he's like, well, same one solid hour from eight

(46:43):
to nine, Like I do every morning, and Calder says, well,
the old guy outside who sweeps up popcorn says he
saw you up there two hours later. Were you up
there two hours later? And the guy's like no, which
is sort of I mean, so it's the first clue
of wait a second, something's not adding up. And then
the other guy's like, look, don't listen to Benny guy.

(47:05):
You know, he's an old He's an old man, you know,
talks to his wife a lot. Eric Alder goes, when
did she die? Now he was never married.

Speaker 5 (47:14):
It was kind of nice for me, Chris seeing Wayne
Tippett show up after we just talked about him last week,
as he was the Amish guy or the Salem witch
guy who kidnapped that woman and brought her back to
medieval times. And then yeah, the guy that played Benny
also in Oh Jack and a whole bunch of other stuff.

(47:35):
He was a great, great character actor.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
Everyone in this movie feels like someone you have seen
somewhere else, and you have. I'm obsessed with this movie.
It's my weird, little private obsession because no one knows
the movie. No one gives a shit about the movie. Right, Okay,
so years go by, I finally get my first big job, well,
second big job I got. I wrote a TV pilot

(47:58):
and there I picked up the series. Biggest thing. I'm like,
this amazing hire a writing staff. It's our first day
in the room. We're all just kind of talking, just
trying to get used to each other. And there's this
woman who's part of a writing team. Her name is
Chris Levinson. And at a certain point she says, you know,

(48:20):
my dad's name is also Richard, and he's also a writer.
I'm like, who's your dad? She goes Richard Levinson and
I go Levinson and link your dad wrote my favorite movie,
roller Coaster, And she bursts out laughing. She's like, I've
met a lot of people who are fans of my

(48:41):
dad and his work. It's never roller Coaster. It's Ellery Queen,
It's Murder, she rode, it's Colombo. I'm like, I'm obsessed
with that movie. And she's like really, I'm like yeah.
She's like, Okay, this is weird, but on Sunday at
Magic Mountain they're going to screen it. Okay. There's this

(49:03):
organization called the the American Coaster Enthusiasts ACEE ACE, and
it's the twenty fifth anniversary of the movie, and they're
going to have a screening at Magic Mountain to celebrate
this thing. And I'm like, I would give anything, and
she's like, you know what I can. We'll figure this out.
You're going to go, I can make this happen. I'm

(49:23):
you know my unfortunately her dad had passed away, but
William Link was basically her uncle, you know, her dad's
writing partner. She's like, let me call Bill and we'll
get this all set up. Two days later, I'm at
Magic Mountain in this sort of parking lot, you know,
arena tenth thing they've set up. They're screening the movie.

(49:45):
I'm now watching roller Coaster at Magic Mountain with the
all the roller coasters going, you know, just one hundred
yards to my right. And they they come out and
they say, okay, so we actually one of the stars
of roller Coaster here tonight, and as a way to
raise money for the American coaster enthusiasts, we're going to

(50:08):
offer a very special opportunity. And they bring out Timothy
Bottoms and they're like, okay, we're going to auction off
the opportunity to ride the Revolution with the Unknown Man.
And at that moment, I'm like, I don't care if
I go into debt for the rest of my life.

(50:28):
This is happening. It is happening. I win the auction.

Speaker 6 (50:35):
Was it more or less than you thought of?

Speaker 8 (50:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (50:37):
What was the price?

Speaker 3 (50:39):
Less? It was less?

Speaker 6 (50:40):
I don't know price on the board. But is it more?
Is it shockingly less?

Speaker 3 (50:45):
No? No, it was. It was several hundred dollars. But
I was I'm like, in my mind.

Speaker 6 (50:49):
That's a lot less than I thought it would be.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
I'm like, I'll do five thousand dollars. I'll do whatever
I have to do. It was it was, you know,
less than one thousand dollars. Put it that way. So
twenty minutes later, I find myself standing like I'm in
the movie, standing at the Revolution on the loading dock
with the terrorist from roller Coaster. I start telling him

(51:16):
how much the movie means to me and how important,
how insane this moment is, and I swear to god,
he is looking at me like, buddy, do you ever
get laid? I'm freaking out. They put us on the
roller coaster, they take pictures. I've got a whole thing
right here on the wall. Chris, you saw it when
you came over, didn't you.

Speaker 6 (51:36):
I believe. So, yeah, the.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Bars come down and we ride the Revolution. And never
in my life would I ever have imagined when I
was a kid that one day I would be on
that roller coaster with that guy was It was surreal,
one of the greatest days of my life. It really
was a bizarrero kind of insanely happy moment. So there

(52:04):
you go, kid, Sometimes your mad bomber on a roller
coaster dreams do come true.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
I have no personal connection to this movie other than
I've been I tried to interview George Siegel many, many
times because he's in California Split with mister Gould, and
I would still love to have talked to him about
that because California Split's a fucking amazing film.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Okay, so here's who I met. Obviously, I well, when
I knew I was going to go to this event,
I brought the copy of the script that I already owned.
Timothy Bottom signed it and William Link signed it. But
years later, there was a screening at the Egyptian Theater
in Hollywood of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and I

(52:50):
heard that they were promoting that George Siegel would be
there and would do a little bit of a talkback afterwards.
So I brought my script before the movie started. I
saw where he was sitting, you know, he was right
over there, and I just went up to him, like,
mister Siegel, I'm so glad you're here. I'm such a
fan of yours. I've got a script from one of
the films you were in that is my favorite of
all your movies. Can I ask you to sign it?

(53:12):
And he looks at me and he's like, do you
have a pen? Yes? I had him the pen. He
opens it up, sees the word roller coaster, looks at it,
looks at me, looks back down, looks back at me,
and goes, it was a good one, wasn't it signs
his name right up there. And then a few years
later they're having another screening there, Oh a Dirty Harry,

(53:35):
and I find out that Lalo Schiffrin's going to be there.
Bring the same goddamn script. Go up to Lalo Schiffrin.
I'm like, one of my favorite scores you ever did.
He looks at the script, looks at me, looks back down,
sees that George Siegel has signed it. Timothy Bottoms, William Link,
He's like impressive and then he signs it. I mean

(53:55):
it was I wish I could have gotten everyone else.
If I ever see Hell and Hunt, believe me, I
know what I'm gonna say to her.

Speaker 6 (54:04):
Yeah, you still get big steveg He's still kicking it.

Speaker 5 (54:07):
You can get Craig Wasson to sign Steve Gutten.

Speaker 6 (54:11):
Why didn't you get Sparks to sign the screen?

Speaker 5 (54:13):
Yeah, the Males brothers are still.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Susan Strasburg alive.

Speaker 5 (54:18):
I think Susan Strasburg's with us.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
I still haven't met these if you, if you can
hook me up with any of these people, I will
be very thankful.

Speaker 6 (54:27):
Richard is trying to make the quintessential piece of roller
coaster fan.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
I know, like there's no like Henry Fond and Richard
Widmark were already dead. Harry Gardino, I'm sure it was dead.

Speaker 6 (54:39):
Yeah, but you could probably get like cut signatures of
theirs pretty easily. Oh yeah, who's going out of their
way to get a Richard Widmark signature? Fifteen bucks on
ebaby Baby.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Got a track down, Gutenberg got a track down, Helen
Hunt got it, and again Susan Strasburg is she's still
with us?

Speaker 5 (54:55):
Well you need that Sanford Shelton and Tommy Cook signature
as well.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Do these people exist? Are they actual? Burton Wall who
wrote the novelization.

Speaker 5 (55:06):
I know Dorothy Tristan passed away a few years ago.
She was married to director John Hancock.

Speaker 6 (55:12):
Chris French passed away earlier this year, and he was
in it for a minute. He's one of the dudes
out on the deefuser dudes.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
What about Oriental Woman.

Speaker 5 (55:21):
I don't know if Oriental Woman is still that.

Speaker 6 (55:23):
Oriental Woman or Oriental Woman's mannequin because you mentioned the
beginning of the movie. So I actually watched this movie
with some friends of mine yesterday and we were just
enamored by the first ten minutes of the movie because
those mannequins are what's the word something else? Not bad,
but definitely they were. It was funny. It made it

(55:45):
unintentionally funny. There's that moment where you see everybody flying out,
like the real people flying out, and then you subsequently
it cuts away and then it cuts back to yeah,
the thing falling over and just a bunch of mannequin
heads like getting crunched in ass or being like yeah,
flipped over like again, suspend the disbelief obviously for a
minute and realize it would be horrible if it actually happened.

(56:08):
But the mannequins do make it a little funny, like you.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Know, you're sort of in the middle of this and
you're and you're like, whoh shit. So it's happening, and
we're seeing it happen and they're crashing through the sign
and people are hitting the ground and people are screaming,
and then and then yeah, you see that that one
car just go h and flip over onto its top
and you're just like, oh, but that's that's gotta hurt.
And then it was literally years later on my fifteenth

(56:33):
viewing that I'm like, are those manicus?

Speaker 6 (56:37):
I think? I say, the Final Destination three is the
only other, like big roller coaster specific thing that I
can think of right out of hand, because that's the
beginning of Final Destination three has the that's one with
the roller coaster opening, like all the Final Destination movies
are known for their openings, and that's the one where
it's the I think it's Mary Elizabeth Winstead and her

(56:59):
friends are on the roller coaster and it starts coming
apart and one of them falls and gets cut in
half by the roller coaster, and they get eviscerated. This
is its final destination. These people are essentially being turned
into blood bags and exploding. Yeah again, like you look
at something like this and if they could have gone further,
they might have. Maybe they didn't for any particular reason,

(57:22):
but I think to y'all's point, like I wish it
had gone a little further, may have made the stakes
a little bit more. Like I always felt like this.
I watched this movie two times, and the second time
I watched it, I was just like, there don't seem
to be a lot of steaks here.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Well, it's weird. It's like the steaks are how do
you feel when you're on a roller coaster? Right? It's
not like, oh my god, there's gonna be a bomb's
gonna wipe out Washington d C. It's like, ooh, how
creepy to think that you'd be on a roller coaster
and then you die on a roller coaster.

Speaker 6 (57:52):
It's a very specific problem that's going on. That's why
I was making the joke of I don't get killed
by a roller coaster, get on a roller coaster. That's
simple enough.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
Only way to in don't play. There's this one shot
in the in that second act sequence at King's Dominion,
where Harry Calder is on the roller coaster and you're thinking,
is he gonna like kill him? And you're sort of
in the point of view of the roller coaster, and
then the and as it's going over this one sort
of like arcing around before it goes down, the camera

(58:27):
just cuts off to the right and sort of dips
down and you're in the point of view and you
totally think like, oh shit, are we are we going off?
And then the camera just continues and turns around and
it's almost just like now it's a drone shot of
the roller coaster and the camera's in mid air. I
still don't know how they did this shot, but it's

(58:49):
so effective. I mean, everyone in the theater gasps when
again you think you're in the point of view of
the people riding, and then it just sort of tilts
off to the side and goes down and you're like,
oh fuck, we're dead.

Speaker 5 (59:02):
I haven't seen roller coaster shots that good since Brain Scan,
the Natalie Wood film. I thought that they did a
great job with that, and I would have loved to
have seen that incense around and just get that roar
of the roller coaster, because that's something that is so
visceral that it just really would be effective. I do
have some good news and bad news. Susan Strasburg is

(59:24):
passed away, but Michael Bell is still with us as
a voiceover artist. He is still working. He just did
a voice on Star Wars Tales of the Underworld. He's
continuing to work like crazy as most voiceover artists do.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
Well. Good for him. Do you have his phone number?

Speaker 5 (59:45):
No, but I can probably find it for you. Okay,
I need that, so if you need to give him
a call.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
So, since I'm not wasting my time riding for television,
all my free time is going to go to tracking down,
hunting down the living cast members of Roller Coaster, getting
their signatures, and then murdering them.

Speaker 6 (01:00:02):
I was gonna say, Richard, you could always just write
the next great roller coaster movie. The world needs another
theme park disaster movie. What Beverly Hills Cop three.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
When it's already been done perfectly, what's the point.

Speaker 6 (01:00:16):
Because theme park culture is so different now that I
think that there would probably be an interesting movie still
to tell here that would be. I think if you
were to do this now, you'd almost have part of
the component of it would have to be like trapping
the people there, like holding them hostage. So that's a

(01:00:37):
component of it, and people can't leave there has to
be like because like how do you make this? How
would you do this movie?

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Now?

Speaker 6 (01:00:45):
Is honestly the thing, Like I've been kicking that around
in my head this whole time. Is this a movie
that almost is anachronistic? Like you couldn't do it anymore?
You know, like so many of those episodes of Seinfeld words,
if they had just had a cell phone, they would
have known that they were gonna be laid for that
China's dinner that they left. Okay, like problem of whatever
Christ is averted.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Once you understand that the movie is really about the
cat and mouse between the two characters, then you can
redo it in a weird way. You can't make the
roller coaster Uneven bigger because you're right, it's like, well,
what is he gonna do force people to get on
a roller coaster?

Speaker 6 (01:01:24):
And it's like, no, That's why I was saying, like
hold people hostage. So much of this is the people
just got on the roller coaster, and that's it's it
could just happen. It's like the tail and all Killer.
He's like the unibomber. It's just random, like he's not BTK.
It's not Hey, if you're a blonde woman in Wichita, Kansas,
don't go out late at night. This is a just

(01:01:45):
don't go on a roller coaster. To give you an idea,
my mom would never go on a roller coaster, so
for her watching this movie, she'd be like, why can
I get on a roller coaster? There you go, reh.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
In the seventies, there was a wave of hijackings. Okay,
now people still flew because they had business trips and
they had family members and holidays and things they had
to go do. But in the back of your mind
beyond oh my gosh, what if a plane crashes? Now
people were worried what if you get hijacked? And that

(01:02:14):
became a part of our culture and there were you know,
jokes about it on sitcoms. Now, this never becomes.

Speaker 5 (01:02:20):
Up, hey, hijack and then the guy tackles it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Yeah, exactly, Now in the movie. It never were never
necessarily in the point of view of the general public.
It's not like people on the We're not cutting to
news reports saying you know, beware this holiday fourth of
July there's a man planting bombs. You're just like, oh,
this whole drama is taking place backstage, and meanwhile, all

(01:02:47):
these people are just it's summer of nineteen seventy six. There.
It's almost like again like Jaws, like we're just trying
to enjoy ourselves in the summer and we're unaware that
just out of our per view, that there's a real
danger that we're not even aware of, Which is what
makes it so poignant and so great is because you're

(01:03:09):
just like, well, that's me. I'm just like those people.
I would just be going thinking I'm going to have
a good time and not knowing that a huge disaster
might take place, because even when you get on an airplane,
you kind of know that something could happen, but most
people going to an amusement park aren't literally worried that

(01:03:29):
they're going to die, not literally. So anyway, what's always
been interesting to me and what still is is that
relationship and if you can come up with a way,
I mean, look, it's the modern version is Hans and
John McClain.

Speaker 6 (01:03:45):
Now, so reminds me of another thing where it's one
guy talking to another guy on the phone cellular that
movie with Chris Evans and I Believe in and State
I Believe is in that one? And then what's the
other one with all twenty four man Keefer but he's
like unbuild in the movie Phone Booth. It reminds me

(01:04:05):
of Phone Booth a little bit where it's again, it's
just like the back and forth. To be fair, you
guys mentioned Dirty Harriet. There's also a little it could
be Zodiac if they didn't show him, if we didn't
see Timothy Bottoms throughout the whole movie. But it was like, here, okay,
here you go. Here's what you do. Don't show us
Timothy Bottoms ever until the end of the movie, and

(01:04:28):
then have it be that moment where we as the
audience and George Siegel realize at the same time that
this guy getting off the ride is now, in fact
Timothy Bottoms, And in that moment it's and we don't
We just see shots of a hand placing something, but
again we know the machinations are taking place, but we

(01:04:49):
don't know who it is. I think that might have
actually helped a little bit because again, and here's the
other thing, Timothy Bottoms's character is so underwritten when he's
not taught talking that he almost doesn't even need to
be on screen the voice on the other end of
the phone.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
The tragedy of loving a mid film is that there
will never be a book making of Roller Coaster.

Speaker 6 (01:05:16):
You know, Richard, what are you doing? What are you?
We know? Hey, Otto Bruno wrote a book all about
Barney Miller because there was no book about Barney Miller.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
Well, I mean again, I'm fifty years late.

Speaker 5 (01:05:27):
I've written a lot about middling things. I mean a
lot of mys and all the work that I did
on Airplane Too. Guys, Come on, this.

Speaker 6 (01:05:36):
Man was doing Airplane Too commentary before he was invited
to do the Airplane To commentary. Richard, you can manifest
your dreams.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
I want to read the book. I don't want to
necessarily write that.

Speaker 6 (01:05:49):
No one else is going to write the book. Pal,
I think that's it. That's kind of your first problem there.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
You know, this whole interaction I had with Chris Levinson
was you know, getting onto twenty five years ago. I
know that William Link is no longer alive, and yet
it would have been. It would have been great to
hear some firsthand stories about the development of the script
and whether, as they were building this mystery, they ever considered, well,

(01:06:18):
what if we never see it? What if it is
we're just we're locked in one point of view and
we never meet them until he figures out here's the voice,
and then suddenly we reveal And why that changed or
or was it never? Were They like, no, we already
decided there was another movie that did that, and we
didn't want to do that, so we did it this
other time. I don't know. There's always a million reasons

(01:06:39):
why this stuff plays out the way it does. Some
of it makes some of it is purely artistic intent.
It's like we had a vision, we pursued our vision,
and then just as often it's like, well, no, we
were told we had to do it a particular way,
or they had Timothy Bottoms on a contract, so we
suddenly thought, oh, wait a second, he's an interesting actor.
You know what, Well, let's do let's actually use him.

(01:07:01):
And if we're gonna use him, let's actually put him
into the movie. So I don't know, I don't know,
I wish I did.

Speaker 6 (01:07:06):
I guess I've never been one to think that your
perform And again, like maybe this is me and the
irony and of the medium that we're using now, but
I've never felt that a performance must be completely constrained
by the physical You can have a good performance in
voice alone, in spoken dialogue, no physical movement along with it.

(01:07:28):
And again the movies we've mentioned, actually I think the
bigger problem would have been in seventy seven. If you're
gonna do that, Timothy Bottoms probably isn't a big enough name.
He's not a big enough we couldn't get orson. So
Timothy Bottoms, here's the thing. If you're gonna do the
voice thing, you notice the people that I've mentioned in
those other movies. Cellular has Jason Statham on the other

(01:07:50):
end of the line, Phone Booth has Key for Sutherland.
Like those two voices alone, Like again like you can
hear those voices in your head without like very little
prompting because they're so well known, and so maybe that's
what it is, on top of everything else that could
be part of it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:07):
And then you get Skeet Ulrich doing Hello Sidney, Oh wait, no,
that wasn't.

Speaker 6 (01:08:11):
Actually yeah intentionally and that one no, no, Roger Williams said,
or whatever that guy's name is, has been making a
living off of that. Thank god, since so good for him.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
There was a lot of roller coaster in my mind
when I was writing that scene in Mothmann Prophecies where
Indrid Cold calls up John Klein and they engage in
that weird sort of you know, can you read my mind?
What's happening here? Can you see what I'm doing? That

(01:08:44):
sort of paranoid What is this voice on the other
end of the line, And how much power does it have?

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
And look. A lot of this goes back simply to
a different era when the landline phone was the most
pphisticated piece of communication technology we had, and in the
seventies it certainly was. There was a bit of magic
to the idea that you could pick up a phone
and be talking to somebody in New York or Hawaii

(01:09:12):
or London. Might take some effort, but you could do it,
and there was a lot of emotion attached to that.
Often the best and worst moments of your life would
come via a landline phone. Relationships would end. You'd be
informed of someone's death, you'd be informed of someone's birth,

(01:09:33):
you'd be informed that you got the job. I mean
the number of people who spent hours quote unquote waiting
for the phone to ring. That's not a metaphor. You
waited because if you weren't at home, you were fucked,
and if your phone didn't reach into the bathroom, you
were double fucked. You know, the power that instrument had

(01:09:55):
in your life at that time was somebody you didn't
really think about until it ended and you look back
and go, wow, that was an emotional appliance in my house,
far more emotional than the microwave.

Speaker 6 (01:10:09):
I would love to see somebody doing something like this
now again, like not remaking this, but again like a
cat and Mouse over the phone movie. It's been a
while since we've had something like that. And I think
to your point, Richard, and now that you say, like
in moth Man, yeah, there's again the Zodiac of it all,
like the taunting of the police and that kind of
like the needling Again. One of the things that sticks

(01:10:31):
with me from Zodiac is, hey, Blue Pig, when Zodiac
is talking about the cops, the San Francisco cops. I
love that because again, like that's for me, that's just
that's an opportunity to like to get the stakes and
just crank them and really crank them up, and also
give us an idea of the best villains are the
ones that they like, don't give us everything, but give

(01:10:52):
us just enough. Give us just enough. Not everything, but
give us just enough.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
The phone booth was the mcguffin in a way for
the sequence in Dirty Harry where Scorpio was like, Okay,
you know, I got to make sure I'm meeting just
with you and not with the whole police department. So
I'm literally going to physically run you from phone booth
to phone booth. If you don't pick up that phone
and I don't hear your voice, the girl dies, and

(01:11:19):
so he is really the puppet master. As Clint Eastwood
is running up and down hills in San Francisco trying to,
you know, keep this guy on the hook long enough
to save this kidnapped woman's life. So it is very dramatic,
and like you said, it's the kind of thing that
doesn't really work. Now, there really aren't phone booths anymore,

(01:11:41):
so that doesn't exist. But if you look back, there's
so many great phone booth moments in movies. One of
my favorite is American Werewolf in London. It's a movie
I love, but one of the most unexpectedly moving moments
is when you know he's in London and he has
his family, and it's late in the movie and he's

(01:12:03):
sort of he's turning into a werewolf and he's pretty
much decided that he's gonna have to offer himself and
he just calls up and talks to his younger sister
and there's never he doesn't say anything other than I
just wanted to say hi, and you know you'd be good.
Tell mom, Oh, mom's not around. Oh, I wanted to Well,
we'll tell her I love her. And he knows it's

(01:12:23):
the last conversation I'll ever have with them. And it's
in the middle of I think Trifolger Squared. It's a
very busy area of downtown London, and he's crammed into
a phone booth and it's incredibly moving and I don't
think it would be as cool on a cell phone.

Speaker 6 (01:12:39):
No. No, the time of seventy seven when this movie
came out, and especially we talked about Richard your Timba
being born in the industry too late. There's something that's hard.
You can't replicate this time anymore. The closest analog we
have now are those movies where it's I'm gonna sit
in front of my computer.

Speaker 5 (01:12:58):
Oh, like ice Cube, The.

Speaker 6 (01:13:00):
War of the World. Yeah, look at those aliens out there. Man,
that's the easiest twenty million dollars you ever made.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
Huh.

Speaker 6 (01:13:07):
Unfriended or stuff like that, where it's like we're utilizing now,
we have to lean into the technology and the interconnectedness
of it all, so we're gonna have it be a
movie about people on Skype as opposed to it's just okay, fun.

Speaker 5 (01:13:21):
Yeah, what's that movie at John Show? Was that Unfriended?

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:13:25):
Disappeared or vanished or something? I like, how much of
this movie is Again, I like the cat and mouse
part of this movie quite a bit because that leans
into the things that I like, again mentioning something like
Zodiac obviously or Dirty Harry. But yeah, there is that.
Just again, the novelty nature of it is the part

(01:13:45):
where I'm like, Okay, that's the seventies of it, which
I'm fine with. Again, when I was like I said,
I was watching with some friends of mine yesterday and
my friend was like, did I read that right? This
is about ut bomb on a roller coaster, and I
was like, yeah, in fact it is that is an
in fact what it is about. He was like, huh,
that's weird, and I was like, all right, I know
it's weird, but I like the weirdness of it. It

(01:14:06):
is just again, my brain, my rational brain is hard
to get over that hump. But I'm glad that you
like this Richard a lot. I'm glad that you were
a champion of this movie because I think, like our
friend Ryan Verrel says, some every movie is somebody's favorite movie,
and this is one of yours, clearly more so than
most things I've ever heard you talk about other than Colchek.

(01:14:28):
Really like, genuinely, no, it's not weird. It's I like freaked.
Freaked is just some fucking random movie that exists out
in the world. I got it bad for it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
Well, that's what's so fun about it is that you
know things hit you, and it has to do a
lot of times with your age. Usually it's you know,
kind of when you're younger in your life you discover
these things. But I will say this, talking having this conversation,
I'm suddenly dying to see Dirty Harry again, we should
do we should find a way to talk about Dirty
Harry somehow, because that is a fucking cool movie.

Speaker 5 (01:15:02):
Andrew Robinson is just so amazing in that movie, and
he's just so great overall. I talked with him a
few years ago around Charlie Verrick, and he's so awesome
in that and he's just a really nice guy too.
I talked to him about everything other than Star Trek's
Deep Space nine. I tell you a little bit about

(01:15:24):
the hell Raiser.

Speaker 6 (01:15:24):
Yeah, with the chains in his face, jeez, and he
licks his lips. Oh my god, commits that man commits
to the bit. Yeah, if you ever want to talk
Dirty Harry. I didn't do Dirty Harry earlier this year.
I did Magnum fours with Father Him Alone, which is
like the Sect that's the second one.

Speaker 3 (01:15:40):
Well, there's Magnum forst the Enforcer, which I think is
the one with time daily, and then the fourth well
then is the fourth one sudden Impact? In the fifth
one's Deadpool and yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:15:52):
And I think that was one of those where it
was we have a script and we could easily change
it into a Dirty Hairs script.

Speaker 6 (01:16:00):
A final destination. Speaking of Hell Razor like Jesus past
the fucking third one. It's sure as fuck is.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
I will tell you, guys, and this doesn't for the listener. Well,
for the listener you can go back, but I will
tell you that the episode of Richard Adam's paranormal Bookshelf
that comes out on Friday, listen to it for a
dirty Harry story, a totally true, dirty hairy story that
you've never heard before.

Speaker 5 (01:16:31):
Well, on that note, let's go ahead and wrap up
The Shabby Detective. When we come back next month, we
are going to be talking about another Levinson and Link joint. Oddly,
no Peter falk between the break here, just all Levinson
and Link. We are going to be talking about Martin
Balsam in the Storyteller. Chris, what are you working on

(01:16:52):
these days?

Speaker 6 (01:16:54):
I'm working on podcasts. I have over six hundred episodes
of the Culture Cast, almost seven hundred at this point.
You can find that weirdingwaymedia dot com where you can
find this show and so many other shows, including the colchaktapes,
which Richard was on with us for a little bit.
And that's actually how we became friends with Richard. He
heard us and was like, these guys like Colejack, I
must be friends with them and here we are, folks. Yeah,

(01:17:17):
that's where you can find me and everything that I
work on.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
What about you, Richard HadAM, You can find me at
Richard Adam's Paranormal bookshelf, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 5 (01:17:30):
As for me, same thing as Chris Weirdingwaymedia dot com,
where you can go back and listen to all the colchaktapes.
You can go on over to our Patreon at patreon
dot com slash Projection Booth or patreon dot com slash
Culturecast and get your fill of us talking all about
James Bond. I'm gonna have to figure out what we're
gonna do here, fellas in like eight months when we're
done with the Bond films, unless MGM and Amazon suddenly

(01:17:52):
get their shit together and actually put out another James
Bond movie. But I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
She of the Shaken, So will I if you don't
run through his side?

Speaker 9 (01:18:28):
Big boy, Baby, my name is David.

Speaker 8 (01:18:37):
He don't care, he's never nice, He's never here.

Speaker 7 (01:18:43):
Baby boy.

Speaker 10 (01:18:46):
Big boy.

Speaker 4 (01:18:50):
Big boy comes around, goes and wait around, goes out,
goes around, please should out stop big boy. She's well
the crypt the girl's ass.

Speaker 8 (01:19:08):
Is that a gift or some big.

Speaker 4 (01:19:11):
Bigbel We brought the tears and your econs And then
we're trying because he's come.

Speaker 8 (01:19:55):
Shea is saying to a you, big.

Speaker 4 (01:20:10):
Boy comes, roses waiters down, goes out goes.

Speaker 9 (01:20:14):
Her tune's with the sugar, especially.

Speaker 11 (01:21:23):
When I was only a side.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
I still remember at the time when there was nothing to.

Speaker 12 (01:21:30):
Know what to think about except the sound of Mama.

Speaker 6 (01:21:34):
And the sound of God side handsome real.

Speaker 7 (01:21:39):
Sands.

Speaker 6 (01:21:41):
Still you know the first one to be censored.

Speaker 11 (01:21:49):
Did MoMA?

Speaker 6 (01:21:50):
No, she wasn't back.

Speaker 7 (01:21:52):
She might have gone to see jobs instead of paying.

Speaker 8 (01:21:56):
The film where the sound attacks the brothers the.

Speaker 6 (01:22:00):
And I mean the pretty farm Sanser.

Speaker 11 (01:22:05):
Said.

Speaker 7 (01:22:06):
The student and the world were supposed to be in
Sansor her.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
Aid in the cool man was and.

Speaker 6 (01:22:21):
When I accidently come.

Speaker 7 (01:22:23):
From damn the Sanser.

Speaker 12 (01:22:29):
I still don't know who does he did or where
they got the head, whether it wasn't me not old body,
its I open the covered in one to shake the
woman in ship sands.

Speaker 7 (01:22:45):
Sad Stipul made.

Speaker 8 (01:22:48):
The bag this weel is it?

Speaker 12 (01:22:50):
When the action when listed one shot out and sposing
me in Sancerron grown.

Speaker 11 (01:23:27):
If I could slim under the water without having debree,
if I could follow the trail three day or some
I think I know what they would bed down the
waiting barn, me.

Speaker 12 (01:23:40):
Sensorround man, sensibility and still thank thankness.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
Rail listened when the action when listen one shot.

Speaker 8 (01:23:53):
And Alow spoke to me, sensorn.

Speaker 7 (01:24:31):
What comes down.

Speaker 10 (01:24:36):
At the Stadtno now staff?

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
Wow?

Speaker 10 (01:24:51):
Wow, come back down, come backs down?

Speaker 7 (01:25:08):
Why don't you right? Job? What step?

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
Step?

Speaker 10 (01:25:47):
Don't steps?

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
No?

Speaker 6 (01:25:55):
John's coming?

Speaker 7 (01:25:57):
You just.

Speaker 6 (01:26:06):
Ride coast?

Speaker 10 (01:26:13):
Which did.

Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
M John?

Speaker 7 (01:26:55):
The mom bining house.

Speaker 6 (01:27:20):
I don't.

Speaker 7 (01:27:28):
I'll let you do what happened. I ride on it,

(01:27:54):
Ride on that last steps business shop.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
In again

Speaker 7 (01:29:03):
In gay Bow a gay bower and