September 13, 2025 • 8 mins
ICYMI: ‘Later, with Mo’Kelly’ Presents – Mark Rahner’s review of the new Lionsgate adaptation of Stephen King’s first-written novel ‘The Long Walk’ in the Rahner Report - on KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app & YouTube @MrMoKelly
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Later with Mo Kelly on demand from KFI,
a M six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Nature.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Mark talks about pontificates about pop culture.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Ron and Report with Mark Ronner.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
It's Later with Mo Kelly on KF I am six
forty live everywhere on the iHeart app. I'm Mark Ronner
and this is the Runner Report. This week I endured
the Long Walk. Here's a little of the trailer in
the very.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
First Long Walk years ago to inspire every day people. Smile.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Boys, you're on candid camera and you gotta not think
about the things out of your control.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Think about your plan. Personally, I can't stop thinking about
all that money.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Your mar term.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Morning keep Walking's.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Second Morning.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Morning takes heavy sack to sign up for this contest.
I'm not going to go through the whole rule book,
but it boils down to this. You fall below the
speed of three miles per hour, you get your ticket,
(01:38):
walk until there's only one of you left.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Oh's ready? When well, I got some bad news for
all but one of the people. This is based on
a Stephen King book that I haven't read. It's the
first one he wrote a few years before he wrote Carrie,
which was the first one he published, and it became
one of the infamous Bachmann books that he wrote to
the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. The Long Walk was collected
with three other King novels in that volume called the
(02:05):
Bachman Books in nineteen eighty five. It also contained a
short novel called Rage, about a school shooting, and after
the Paducah, Kentucky school shooting in nineteen ninety seven, King
let it go out of print along with the original paperback.
At this point, I think you can get all the
other three novels individually, except for Rage. Last night I
saw a Rage first edition on eBay for three thousand bucks.
(02:26):
You can get the Bachmann collection paperback for less than
one hundred. I'm too cheap for either one. The premise
of The Long Walk you kind of heard in the trailer,
which is generous of them to provide exposition like that.
In a dystopian America, there's an annual contest in which
a bunch of young men walk hundreds of miles for
days on end, and the one who outlasts all the
others gets anything he wants for life. A few minor rules.
(02:49):
You can't walk below a certain speed, and you only
get three warnings before armed guards shoot you in the head.
You can also get executed for a variety of other
things which fall under the general category of not continuing
to walk and at the minimum speed. If you've never
heard of the Batan Death March in World War Two,
have a look on your Wikipedia. The Long Walk is worse.
(03:10):
And to answer your other question, no, you cannot stop
to poop, and yet poop we must. For further illumination
on that, you're gonna have to see the movie yourself.
As a game show, the Long Walk is nearly as
bad as that one where they shout know whammies all
the time, hosted by Elizabeth Banks. I suppose you like that?
Was that jokers w No, I forget the name of it.
(03:31):
I looked it up car charts. I don't like. Don't
get me sidetracked. The contestants in the Long Walk get
plenty of whammies with high powered weapons. Mark Hamill, that's
a voice you heard. He plays the major who's in
charge of everything, and he yells at the guys, generally
from a moving vehicle in front of him. Not a
huge role. The focus is on the walkers. I don't
(03:52):
know if he's right for the role, but I like
seeing Mark Hamill in pretty much anything. The contestant we
follow is a regular guy played by Cooper Hoffman, this
of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's starting Liquorice Pizza,
which I thought was terrific. Judy Greer plays his mom,
who's just beside herself that he's entered this death contest,
which is rational since only one person survives it. Your
odds of coming back from I don't know, Popeyes, the Marines,
(04:15):
or college are significantly better, so it's okay to cry
let it out. Along the way. On the Long Walk,
friendships are formed, enemies are made. Some guys antagonize others.
They share their secrets and motivations with each other, and
their bodies begin to give out again. We're talking days,
no rest, no sleep, no bathroom, no in and out,
(04:35):
drive through, no creatine. Yesterday I stared down a guy
in the Costco parking lot who didn't return his cart
to the metal corral. So I'm thinking most of us
wouldn't do so well in this kind of contest. But
I think there's also plenty of allegory to it all.
In the Long Walk, not the Costco guy. He was
just an a hole not returning your cart as dispositive
(04:56):
proof in the real world that you're a bad person.
You don't have to search real hard for allegories in
this movie, though. I mean, something like sixty percent of
Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are having trouble making
ends meet right now, and there's more and more talk
of cutting retirement benefits. So you know, a movie about
people who are forced to walk for more powerful people
until they drop dead isn't the most escapist concept ever.
(05:19):
I mean, you could be watching Alien, which is a
far fetched sci fi thriller about a group of underpaid
space truckers who work for a corporation that regards them
as expendable if that means huge profits from a new weapon. Uh,
all right, moving on. The Long Walk is directed by
Francis Lawrence, who did several Hunger Games movies. He did
the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie, which has been growing in
(05:42):
reputation over the years. He also did that terrible Will
Smith I Am Legend movie, which is so wretched and
so stupid that I'm not sure he understood the book
it came from, written by Richard Matheson, as for a
movie that's largely walking and talking punctuated by some shooting,
this moves along and doesn't get dull. I don't know
when I became aware of the walk and talk as
a staple end show. It's probably The West Wing, but
(06:04):
then I noticed it in older shows like the FBI,
and I realize now what those were all missing. The
long walk is grim, it's grueling, it's neilistic. I wouldn't
exactly call it a crowd pleaser, but it pleased me.
There's been talk of a movie of this story forever,
with different directors over the years, and I'm glad to
see a version of it that isn't embarrassing. King's original
(06:27):
ending sounds more haunting, but movies necessarily change things. Sometimes.
It's a dystopian story King wrote in the sixties, but
the dystopia goalposts have moved since then. They get into
the characters' motivations for joining this death contest, and everyone's different,
but our point of view, Guy is at least in
part motivated by financial security for him and his hot mom,
(06:50):
sorry his mom played by Judy Greer, and it's more
and more desperation in real life. Now when I see
a game show and someone wins, and the host asks
what they're going to spend the day on. I'm seeing
more people say, well, they'll finally pay off their student loans,
or they can finally afford a house. A house, not
a castle, not a mansion, just a house to live in.
And that's where we're at. And maybe you remember a
(07:12):
short time ago, a TV producer pitched a reality show
to the government about immigrants competing for US citizenship. This
was in May. You can look it up. It's real.
Even though the producer's name sounds made up, Rob worse
Off as in worse Off. His credits include Duck Dynasty,
so I guess the name is apt and by the way,
King's Bachmann books also include another death game show contest story,
(07:34):
The Running Man. I bet you've heard of it. We're
going to get a remake of that soon, which is
a much more over the top action spectacle than this
thought provoking, nasty little piece of filth The Long Walk. Now,
let's be honest about Stephen King. For some time now,
he's been like Pablo Picasso, and Picasso could just sketch
on a napkin and pay his dinner tab with it,
(07:54):
except King can do that and it'll get made into
a movie. No matter what. We could do a whole
show on the best and worst of King movies. I
think The Long Walk is one of the better ones.
It's focused at smaller scale. It's, like I said, nasty,
and it has the distinct advantage of not being the
Dark Tower or the lawnmower Man or the Tommy Knockers.
I could keep going, Dangaliars, you get the idem Yeah,
(08:17):
the Langoliers. Yes, I was gonna say the Langoleiers. Great
animation in that one, you know of those flying mouth things,
bang things. So there you have it. That's The Long Walk.
I recommend it. I enjoyed it, maybe not for everyone.
There's your runner report, Moe, what do you got? Press
(08:38):
your luck? That's the game with the Whammies. Yeah, yeah,
you're right, you press your luck. I'm not watching that show.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty
You're listening to Later with Mo Kelly on demand from KFI,
a M six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Nature.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Mark talks about pontificates about pop culture.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Ron and Report with Mark Ronner.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
It's Later with Mo Kelly on KF I am six
forty live everywhere on the iHeart app. I'm Mark Ronner
and this is the Runner Report. This week I endured
the Long Walk. Here's a little of the trailer in
the very.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
First Long Walk years ago to inspire every day people. Smile.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Boys, you're on candid camera and you gotta not think
about the things out of your control.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Think about your plan. Personally, I can't stop thinking about
all that money.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Your mar term.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Morning keep Walking's.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Second Morning.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Morning takes heavy sack to sign up for this contest.
I'm not going to go through the whole rule book,
but it boils down to this. You fall below the
speed of three miles per hour, you get your ticket,
(01:38):
walk until there's only one of you left.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Oh's ready? When well, I got some bad news for
all but one of the people. This is based on
a Stephen King book that I haven't read. It's the
first one he wrote a few years before he wrote Carrie,
which was the first one he published, and it became
one of the infamous Bachmann books that he wrote to
the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. The Long Walk was collected
with three other King novels in that volume called the
(02:05):
Bachman Books in nineteen eighty five. It also contained a
short novel called Rage, about a school shooting, and after
the Paducah, Kentucky school shooting in nineteen ninety seven, King
let it go out of print along with the original paperback.
At this point, I think you can get all the
other three novels individually, except for Rage. Last night I
saw a Rage first edition on eBay for three thousand bucks.
(02:26):
You can get the Bachmann collection paperback for less than
one hundred. I'm too cheap for either one. The premise
of The Long Walk you kind of heard in the trailer,
which is generous of them to provide exposition like that.
In a dystopian America, there's an annual contest in which
a bunch of young men walk hundreds of miles for
days on end, and the one who outlasts all the
others gets anything he wants for life. A few minor rules.
(02:49):
You can't walk below a certain speed, and you only
get three warnings before armed guards shoot you in the head.
You can also get executed for a variety of other
things which fall under the general category of not continuing
to walk and at the minimum speed. If you've never
heard of the Batan Death March in World War Two,
have a look on your Wikipedia. The Long Walk is worse.
(03:10):
And to answer your other question, no, you cannot stop
to poop, and yet poop we must. For further illumination
on that, you're gonna have to see the movie yourself.
As a game show, the Long Walk is nearly as
bad as that one where they shout know whammies all
the time, hosted by Elizabeth Banks. I suppose you like that?
Was that jokers w No, I forget the name of it.
(03:31):
I looked it up car charts. I don't like. Don't
get me sidetracked. The contestants in the Long Walk get
plenty of whammies with high powered weapons. Mark Hamill, that's
a voice you heard. He plays the major who's in
charge of everything, and he yells at the guys, generally
from a moving vehicle in front of him. Not a
huge role. The focus is on the walkers. I don't
(03:52):
know if he's right for the role, but I like
seeing Mark Hamill in pretty much anything. The contestant we
follow is a regular guy played by Cooper Hoffman, this
of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's starting Liquorice Pizza,
which I thought was terrific. Judy Greer plays his mom,
who's just beside herself that he's entered this death contest,
which is rational since only one person survives it. Your
odds of coming back from I don't know, Popeyes, the Marines,
(04:15):
or college are significantly better, so it's okay to cry
let it out. Along the way. On the Long Walk,
friendships are formed, enemies are made. Some guys antagonize others.
They share their secrets and motivations with each other, and
their bodies begin to give out again. We're talking days,
no rest, no sleep, no bathroom, no in and out,
(04:35):
drive through, no creatine. Yesterday I stared down a guy
in the Costco parking lot who didn't return his cart
to the metal corral. So I'm thinking most of us
wouldn't do so well in this kind of contest. But
I think there's also plenty of allegory to it all.
In the Long Walk, not the Costco guy. He was
just an a hole not returning your cart as dispositive
(04:56):
proof in the real world that you're a bad person.
You don't have to search real hard for allegories in
this movie, though. I mean, something like sixty percent of
Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are having trouble making
ends meet right now, and there's more and more talk
of cutting retirement benefits. So you know, a movie about
people who are forced to walk for more powerful people
until they drop dead isn't the most escapist concept ever.
(05:19):
I mean, you could be watching Alien, which is a
far fetched sci fi thriller about a group of underpaid
space truckers who work for a corporation that regards them
as expendable if that means huge profits from a new weapon. Uh,
all right, moving on. The Long Walk is directed by
Francis Lawrence, who did several Hunger Games movies. He did
the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie, which has been growing in
(05:42):
reputation over the years. He also did that terrible Will
Smith I Am Legend movie, which is so wretched and
so stupid that I'm not sure he understood the book
it came from, written by Richard Matheson, as for a
movie that's largely walking and talking punctuated by some shooting,
this moves along and doesn't get dull. I don't know
when I became aware of the walk and talk as
a staple end show. It's probably The West Wing, but
(06:04):
then I noticed it in older shows like the FBI,
and I realize now what those were all missing. The
long walk is grim, it's grueling, it's neilistic. I wouldn't
exactly call it a crowd pleaser, but it pleased me.
There's been talk of a movie of this story forever,
with different directors over the years, and I'm glad to
see a version of it that isn't embarrassing. King's original
(06:27):
ending sounds more haunting, but movies necessarily change things. Sometimes.
It's a dystopian story King wrote in the sixties, but
the dystopia goalposts have moved since then. They get into
the characters' motivations for joining this death contest, and everyone's different,
but our point of view, Guy is at least in
part motivated by financial security for him and his hot mom,
(06:50):
sorry his mom played by Judy Greer, and it's more
and more desperation in real life. Now when I see
a game show and someone wins, and the host asks
what they're going to spend the day on. I'm seeing
more people say, well, they'll finally pay off their student loans,
or they can finally afford a house. A house, not
a castle, not a mansion, just a house to live in.
And that's where we're at. And maybe you remember a
(07:12):
short time ago, a TV producer pitched a reality show
to the government about immigrants competing for US citizenship. This
was in May. You can look it up. It's real.
Even though the producer's name sounds made up, Rob worse
Off as in worse Off. His credits include Duck Dynasty,
so I guess the name is apt and by the way,
King's Bachmann books also include another death game show contest story,
(07:34):
The Running Man. I bet you've heard of it. We're
going to get a remake of that soon, which is
a much more over the top action spectacle than this
thought provoking, nasty little piece of filth The Long Walk. Now,
let's be honest about Stephen King. For some time now,
he's been like Pablo Picasso, and Picasso could just sketch
on a napkin and pay his dinner tab with it,
(07:54):
except King can do that and it'll get made into
a movie. No matter what. We could do a whole
show on the best and worst of King movies. I
think The Long Walk is one of the better ones.
It's focused at smaller scale. It's, like I said, nasty,
and it has the distinct advantage of not being the
Dark Tower or the lawnmower Man or the Tommy Knockers.
I could keep going, Dangaliars, you get the idem Yeah,
(08:17):
the Langoliers. Yes, I was gonna say the Langoleiers. Great
animation in that one, you know of those flying mouth things,
bang things. So there you have it. That's The Long Walk.
I recommend it. I enjoyed it, maybe not for everyone.
There's your runner report, Moe, what do you got? Press
(08:38):
your luck? That's the game with the Whammies. Yeah, yeah,
you're right, you press your luck. I'm not watching that show.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty
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