Year 19, Episode 19

Original Release Date: Monday 15 September 2025    

Description:  In another episode featuring now regular contributor Jon Lawlor (longtime purveyor of excellent Chillpak Hollywood Hour theme songs), Dean tells stories of his ongoing trip back to his hometown of Winnipeg and the workshopping of a theatrical play that was the reason for his trip. He also reveals details of what may, or may not, be a Winnipeg-themed art collection he will be (or might not be) showing at a forthcoming Hamilton, Ontario, art show! Jon and Phil compare notes on the live stage show ("Viva Los Feliz") in which they both performed last week. Then, the focus turns to Spike Lee's latest "joint", a remake of an Akira Kurosawa classic itself based on a novel by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter). Particular attention is paid to the cinematography and the music. Finally, it's time for more Superman discussion, as a longtime, brilliant listener takes Dean and Jon to task for what they "missed" in their scathing reviews of one of this year's most beloved, and most talked about movies. Oh, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens takes quite a few strays in the process!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's fill Larenoess with another cold open for
your chill Pack Hollywood Hour. If you've been keeping up
with your chill Pack Hollywood Hour, you know the Dean
Hagland is workshopping a play in Winnipeg, and so we
recorded this week's show a few days early when John

(00:22):
Lawler you know John, you know him, the purveyor of
many fine chill Pack Hollywood Hour theme songs through the years. Anyway,
we recorded this week's show when John and I checked
in with Dean via zoom part of our weekly discussion
about all things art life and anyway, we got down

(00:46):
to brass tacks and discussed many chill pack Hollywood Hour topics.
And that's coming your way on the other side of
one of John's aforementioned theme songs, Enjoy.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
And now You're Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and phil Alareness.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Joys.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Increasingly, I wonder why we bother recording separately when we're
just getting emails for John first. But first, yes, it
is the art life and that is exactly what Dean
Haglund is in Winnipeg pursuing. Indeed, have you revisited your

(02:36):
truncheon scars, performing locations. This was something you promised you
were going to do.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Only one exists, the Royal Albert Arms, The Wellington's Gone,
Triple A Doghouse is gone. All the places I played
torn down, demolished, empty lots, something else, parking lots. It
is as if my punk rock career never existed, which
frankly would.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
It was sort of like that.

Speaker 5 (03:02):
That's pretty punk rock, though it.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Is punk rock. And let's talk about these venue names,
John Lawler, you've played venues before. Why you recently played
the Born's Dog Gallery Theater? Uh? Did you ever play anything?
What is the Triple A Dog?

Speaker 5 (03:19):
What was Triple A Dog play Doghouse?

Speaker 4 (03:22):
So it used to be at a garage called Triple
A Radiator, and then above it it had like this
small space only big enough for dog, the owner said,
So they called it the Triple A Doghouse. And it
was a tiny only like maybe fifty to one hundred

(03:42):
standing only, and then a small stage and of course
they put Marshall Stacks in there in a tiny space,
so you just were blasted with a wall of sound,
and my god, it was crazy and well.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
I mean I love that. Of course it was triple
a radiator, because that what we are used to in
the phone books, right, you you take whatever you are
and you put triple A in front of it so
that you'll be at the top of the phone.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
Book a book. Yeah, that worked so clever.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
But what you never found was enough certainly venues doing that,
and that would have been great. Like what was the
Wellington Arms one.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Well, it was just Wellington's and you walk down these
narrow stairs. There was a pool table to a right,
then your bar, then your venue, and then it sort
of had this creepy dance floor and sort of raised
the situation there. And that's where I mean. It was
like a biker bar. It was like really tough, and

(04:46):
they had like an S and M night and it
was and we're playing there and I'm sitting with my
girlfriend and my backs to the door, and then she
smoking a cigarette and she goes, oh my god, you
put your cigarette out. Your parents are here and I
and I turned around and my parents came to watch
me play this worst band ever, you know, said to him,

(05:08):
my dad, so perhaps the bass player could use a
little more lessons, you know. It was like, oh, that
means he liked it.

Speaker 5 (05:16):
Exactly. They called for a drum solo. He was very
proud of that.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
So did you guys make the programs yourselves?

Speaker 4 (05:26):
And the flyers? But well, you know, you cut out
the letters all ransom style.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
I told you about that Pacific Design Center show. I
had saved the program for you for a long long
time before recently throwing it away. That was when all
of rock and club, when it was all handmade posters
and flyers was the marketing, and it was a whole
exhibit about this from back in the day, from the

(05:55):
from the seventies early eighties. So and what was the
other one? What was the other band? The one that
still exists the.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
Venue Royal Albert Arms. So it's the Royal Albert Hotel
and the Arms is technically the bottom place that's still there,
but they had put a weird solarium over the front,
so the gorgeous architectural detail is under smoked glass basically,

(06:22):
and it is single residence housing now, so I don't
even think it's the hotel. And it's sold, so it
was closed for a while, and I think they're going
to try and make it a music venue again, but
at the moment, I don't think anybody can enter it.

Speaker 5 (06:38):
So that's the sad fact.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
But all that so that becomes the question right, right
to be, not to be? To take arms again, to
take Royal Albert arms against the sea of troubles and
by opposing and them? So how is.

Speaker 5 (06:57):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (06:58):
How is the I came out firing? Oh not good,
but fire it loaded for bear? How's the play workshop going?
What is the play about? How is this going?

Speaker 4 (07:15):
So? I was in a junior theater program, of course,
called the Prairie Theater Change. We were all young teenagers
with dreams of art and acting, and one of my
fellow acting students called me out of the blue and says,
I'm going to do a play about my bipolarism. And

(07:38):
the time I was arrested for singing Broadway show tunes
out in the street in my underwear at a bedsheet
and they thought he was on meth and threw him
into a ward for two weeks a couple of times.
So so it's sort of that in musical Broadway form,
plus his stories of his journey too, So it's like

(08:00):
narrows down to like the incarceration and then his how
he gets what is the redeeming function of art? Basically
and can that relieve you know, all of the trauma
of that.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
I think, would it not be bipolarity and not bipolarism?
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (08:23):
Okay, we didn't get to that hard.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
I think not because it's a it's a diagnosis.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
This is why we workshop these things.

Speaker 5 (08:31):
Yes, I think not by And.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
So how you've gone further than what you said last week?
But how how is it going? What's it been like? What?
What are you doing this process?

Speaker 5 (08:43):
It's yeah, it's really Uh.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
It's interesting because we, you know, came to it sideways
by reading other plays that he liked, Eugene o'neils.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Or what was it called The tupperware Man.

Speaker 4 (08:58):
And Morning Becomes Electric and and some other things that
had influenced him because he's an avid playwright reader.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
And we read Harold Pincher's Rinky Dink Butt Grab.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
I didn't know he did that for sure.

Speaker 5 (09:16):
That was Mammot, What grab my Mammot?

Speaker 3 (09:24):
I'm quite sure David Mammott comes out swinging with this
one fully loaded.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
And is it at the part yet? I mean, you're
a handful of days in. Is that the part? Yet?
Where are you playing a role? Are you working on
a roll. Are you playing multiple roles? What is that like?
What the cast? What is that process like?

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Well, this is the thing. It's it's the joke is
it's a one man show with a cast of thousands.
So he's good to write it because you know, the
hardest thing about any show ongoing or whatever is a
cast commitment. So he's trying to make so that the
roles can be interchangeable with actors, so that it has

(10:06):
the ability so somebody can swing in in a day
or two if somebody else is unavailable, So it could
go four to five to six people depending on what
everybody's availability is, which is also he herculean in its
difficulty structurally wise, because I thought originally there'd be a

(10:27):
lot more improv in it, but as it's coming now,
it seems that it's going to be more structured because
of the musical numbers involved and that he wants and
all that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
I don't think it escaped Notice that about a show
that deals with bipolarism that you said depending on who
swings in, this did not escape my notice.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
Well, see this is exactly it.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
And there will be letters to John about this.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
John, please explain both young and psychology.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
And so how long are you? How long are you there?
What's the plan from here? How long are there?

Speaker 4 (11:12):
When basically we structure something out and clearly now he's
going to have to write a first draft and then
based on well, everyone else is from Winnipeg, I'm the
only one that flew in. But based on that, my
commitment will then be maybe taken over by someone else,

(11:34):
which I'm not at all adverse too, because this has
been you know, I've been in Michigan five years. Have
I painted a thing? I've half painted some things, but
I've not completed one thing. And here's a guy who's
completing one thing side a week. How you know motivating?

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Is that going?

Speaker 5 (11:53):
Oh, yeah, this is how you do it.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
We go down to his he's back in his house
he grew up in, he's in is Uh. We're basically
in his parents' basement, and we set a couple of
chairs of couches and go, okay, let's begin.

Speaker 5 (12:08):
And it's just.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
There's no like go let's warm up, or oh we
got to think about this. It's just like, okay, here,
I'm want to read this play out loud, and now
let's discuss here's what I have so far. Everybody throws
ideas in and so it's like, oh, yeah, you forget
that is, just pick up the brush and just paint.
It's not like, oh, I'm waiting for the inspiration. Where's
my muse? Oh I got to sit here and stare

(12:31):
at a blank canvas for twelve days till it comes
to me. No, no, just here's some paint, gravity, dabs,
staddy stab. You know that kind of relaxed thing.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
You know, the the the the age, old adage. Right,
Let's let's build a barn and put on a show,
put on a show. Yeah, nobody. The follow up question
never is what show? No, No, it's okay. How how
do we get started?

Speaker 5 (12:56):
How?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
How do I help? How do I write? Like, just
get into the process of it exactly.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
And and so this has sort of reminded me that
it's like it's easier than all the angst that I've
been setting up for the last five years. Here it's
just like, oh, I got to clean the garage. Oh
I gotta oh the repairs. The toilet's leaking. I better
fix that first, Oh, pandemic. You know what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna build an entire steam room. How about that

(13:24):
there's a way to avoid working right.

Speaker 5 (13:26):
It's just like, uh, I.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Knew when I started the sub Stack that I wanted
a part of it to be podcasts about Los Felis
and ideally something that I could scale up to being
about America. Oh yes, though, as tho as Dean said, like,
if you're celebrating the community of Los Felis, you are
talking about America, So you know, maybe there was something

(13:51):
to that, but uh, you know, it starts off gangbusters.
The listenership is huge the first episode, and then it's
a NonStop bleeding listeners from that point forward until kind
of hitting a turning point and then start building the
listenership back up. But while it's building back up, I

(14:11):
confess to announcer Mark Kershaan, I have no idea what
this show is. Like I thought right out of the gate, Oh,
this is it. This is good. This is like an NPR.
When we used to have National Public Radio. It was
like this kind of magazine show, and I thought, oh,
this is great, but it wasn't it, and it wasn't repeated,

(14:33):
not easily, and so I just kept making them. But
I finally said to him ten months in I have
no idea what this show is, and Mark said, oh,
I know what it is, I just have no idea
who it's for. And I said, no, I know who
it's for. And so that conversation was really helpful. I

(14:59):
didn't share my process really at all, but the way
my mind was processing what we were doing started to change.
And then after a particularly popular episode, maybe the second
most listened to show, the most listened since the very
first one, I went, Okay, this is repeatable and this

(15:23):
is exciting, and let's try it again, and here's how
we're going to try it. And within hours hours that
had become the most listened to episode. And I'm sure
I'm going to lose some of that audience because it
was just like exponentially bigger than any other. But the
thing is, I now know what the show is. And

(15:44):
it only took me a year, but I was doing
them and I wouldn't know what the show was if
I hadn't been doing them exactly.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
And as we said, you know, we workshop this thing,
but we haven't put it on its feet. And once
you put a show on its feet, it changed. Is
the act break will change where you think the you
know your big moments are those might change and and
so you don't anchor those out as one of the
other Jackie Lowan is a Manitoba director. Often she's directed

(16:18):
many Manitoba opera productions and my favorite thing she did
is as we're all brainstorming, throws these throw things in.
She will say TBD to be decided and it's just like, okay,
what about and then we can do this TBD on that,
and so like nobody's like dropping a pin that we

(16:38):
have to do that. It's like TBD on that. So
that's like that maybe not be a great idea, but
keep that in as we like adjust all the blocks,
because you don't want to throw a block away or
an idea away, because that may be the hook or
the transition that you need. But at the same time
to be decided. So like you were doing right, you

(17:01):
were doing these things like I don't know, but it's
to be decided what the show is and because you
already knew who your audience was, but that you allowed
that freedom, right, which is what improv is. It's like, okay,
here's your suggestion. Now we're going to do a scene.
I have some ideas to be decided. If I'm going
to say them out loud, because you know, you get

(17:23):
a bunch of train tracks going at the same time.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
And and quite to the opposite, I've always felt that
you can tell the people who decided beforehand.

Speaker 4 (17:33):
Exactly because it comes up.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Which is different than bringing ideas up with you and
then seeing and maybe you are playing the ideas that
you had, but when they have already decided to do
it energetically, that is just so different.

Speaker 5 (17:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:53):
And then particularly an improv, because then that person will
be railroading their bloody idea through even though the scene
is taken on an energy, and then they're suddenly blocking
or not listening because they have adhered to something that
should have been a TBD.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Or or taking it to a more positive way. Someone
who comes in being absolutely certain this is the thing
gets things going. And then the best improve improvisationalist in
any scenario, but just an improv is going to be

(18:30):
going to realize my idea is not the best one now,
but it got us here, and now I want to
go with this like I see it now and now
I feel confident about this idea that's happening. But feeling
confident about the first idea is the I think that's
the hardest part.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Do you remember the money python bit the Philosopher's Soccer.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
Game, Yes, exactly where they're actually.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
And they're all star, all star team of philosophers, right.
I played as got to play it, and they all like,
there's big excitement. They're limbering up. The whistle blows, the
game starts, and everybody walks around for themselves and circles
nobody and until finally, oh, Kiriger guard has an idea

(19:17):
and he can move the ball. And he can move
the ball. It's not a bad metaphor or improv.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Right, Yeah, yeah, for sure, because you think about it
and then you do the action or yes, the action
is the thinking.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Lil did a podcast. I think it was short lived
it but it was a really cool idea for it
and it was conversations with improvisers. It was I called
I Think This Will Never Happen Again was the name
of it. It revealed the id and me anyway, that
no two improvisers have the same philosophy. So it is

(19:56):
the Philosopher's Soccer Game, and nobody comes with the same philosophy.
But it's the idea that gives the ball energy, right,
and from that point on, the ball has the energy.
And you know, the more you share it, the more

(20:16):
you move it, which you have to do with ideas,
the more energy it obtains.

Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yes, exactly, which is what this workshop is.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
The more you know, some people can't make every session,
so the ones that had more people in it was like, oh,
this is now taking on a really interesting thing. And
then sometimes it was just three of us discussing, and
then that was also just as fascinating. And you know,
you add what I would do? What would I do

(20:49):
in this one man show? Well, of course I wouldn't
write down anything and I'd improvise the whole thing. But
that's because I did thirty years of a one man
show around the world that wasn't scripted.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
You mentioned the inspirational factor of it, how it's inspiring.
You have you or do you next? Leap into planning
for this art show.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
While I was going to.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
Take four older pieces that I had and drive them
to Hamilton, Ontario, but now he said, oh, yeah, this
is sort of like Winnipeg artists. So if you have
anything Winnipeg based, and I do not, so I'm taking
pictures around up doing maybe urban landscapes. But I don't
think then by the time I get home, I have

(21:37):
to be I got a week and a half, which
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Don't you have Don't you have some that are Winnipeg based.
I mean in the sense that like you have snowy scenes,
and you have things that reflect who you were as
a child who believed that the adults when they left
the room removed their skin and their flot and became skeletons.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
You have the Pooh from Winnipeg. Oh, that's right, that's right,
WINNI the Pooh.

Speaker 4 (22:09):
That soldier was traveling from Victor in Vancouver and when
they stopped, the train stopped at Winnipeg. There was a
baby bear cub that he picked up train side and
traveled with it in his arms to London. And then
they said, yeah, you can't take that with you, mate,

(22:30):
And so he debated and left it at the zoo
and they said, well, what's the name of it. Well,
it's from Winnipeg, so we'll call it Winnie. And then
that's where aa he saw the bear and wrote this
story for his kid, and that's Winnie the poo.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Wait, and I know that I know that rockwell is
Saturday evening post. We'll come back to that TBDN I
know that Rockwell is Saturday evening Post. But you discover
Rockwell when you're in Winnipeg, when you're a kid in Winnipeg,
and and you know, like the the doctor with the

(23:02):
alien spoiler alert bursting out of the chest, which is timely,
ever timely, but oh my god, born out of your
your childhood in Winnipeg, your youth in Winnipeg. I mean,
I think it if you called it, you know, your
collection growing up in Winnipeg, or a you know, a

(23:28):
child's life in Winnipeg, like all these are fair game,
I think, because they're all born out of where you were. Anyway,
John John had a question about the uh Winnie the
Pooh story.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
I no, My question was I wasn't even a question.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
It was literally just me thinking of the first thing
I remember you drawing that popped in my brain and
then saying, isn't that from Winnipeg? And then you just
happen to confirm that there is some connection between Winnipeg
and Winnie the Pooh.

Speaker 5 (24:01):
I had no I have zero knowledge.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
I literally just verbal diarrhea it at you, and somehow
it made sense to you, and that.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Well they share they share the same first name.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
I mean, when is Winny.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
I don't know, recontextualizing some of that stuff for you
might be really valuable.

Speaker 5 (24:21):
Yeah, fascinating.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
So much of your stuff I think just screams win
a peg.

Speaker 5 (24:28):
I'm bringing Wow.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
I don't know if that's an insult or compliment, but
thank you.

Speaker 5 (24:37):
It is a compliment, is it.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
Well, there's other creative energy in this town, I gotta say.
And it's also the most amount of restaurants per capita
that anywhere in North America. There's so many funky little
holes like delicious food. Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Now, John Lawler, before we get to your question, you
were in La. You did a live show this past week,
and I did, and I told I told Dean all
about it, and only wanted to know was if you
enjoyed it, And so.

Speaker 5 (25:10):
Yeah, I remember you did.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
I listened to the show and I thought that was nice. Thanksteen.
I I did enjoy it. And what was funny was
Phil was like, I'm I mean.

Speaker 5 (25:22):
I think he did. Like I can bother to ask,
are you are you using that thing right? I think?
I mean, yeah, I had a great time. It was
it was really lovely to get to play on a stage.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
When was the last time you're in front of a crowd.

Speaker 5 (25:47):
Like a crowd? Crowd? It's been a minute.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
I haven't really played music in front of a crowd
for a while. The last time I was in front
of a crowd for like a play was in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
Yeah, so it's been a little while for that. After
the did you have a pandemic?

Speaker 4 (26:05):
Right?

Speaker 5 (26:06):
No? No, I don't have stage fright.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
I Actually I love the nervousness that exists backstage and
before you're on stage, and the strange focus you get
when you go on stage.

Speaker 5 (26:22):
I don't know, I.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Don't know what that is, and I kind of have
to rely on it because so we, as you know, Phil,
we had to adjust how one of the songs were
being played, and there were a number of moving parts.
As to why that was sort of difficult, one was
because I could have played it a different way, like
I was using a capo to solve the problem real quick,

(26:45):
because I kind of already decided how my hands were
going to be moving in that song, and so I
used that capo. So I wanted to just keep my
hand shapes the same for all my chords, and but
I knew that there was another way to play it,
and I I could play it that way, but I
was like, I'll screw that up if I don't get
to practice it more whereas I can. I need to

(27:07):
mitigate that and figure out what can all stay the same.
So the only things that need to change is like
where I'm singing and how hard or how differently I
have to actually press or strum a little bit differently
to get a better sound out of things.

Speaker 5 (27:21):
So so that was it was nerve wracking.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
But Lily and I got to practice it a chunk
of times in the sort of like dressing room, which
was really helpful. She was very let's do it again,
and I was very happy because.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, at the risk of being over rehearsed.

Speaker 5 (27:39):
Yes, because there is that concern where you're.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Like, you know, they had talked about this song. The
song was a last minute, almost replacement we came to doing.
We came to it very last minute, and it ended up,
of course being the song that all along would have
been it. Yes, and and it kind of made a

(28:05):
bunch of us realize, oh, the theme of the show.
We've been saying, it's about the shows about architecture, but
what the show's really about is community building and architecture
is the gateway here.

Speaker 5 (28:17):
Right for us, like the lens, we're looking at it through.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, and and even within that, there's so many subtopics right,
like about buildings creating spaces and people create you know,
who create the buildings and their desires for community and
what different buildings represent. So there was there was so
many avenues into this this theme. And so you know
when I said, when when we were asked, are you

(28:41):
doing the Frank Lloyd Writes song, they said, no, we're
doing if I had a hammer, And there was laughs
at first, like I was joking and I'm going no,
like you don't realize, Like that song thematically is exactly
what we needed for this and also energy as well.

Speaker 5 (29:00):
Energetically, it was definitely.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Right, whereas the Frank Lloyd write song would have been
about bumber.

Speaker 6 (29:11):
If I had a hammer, at hammer in the morning,
at hammer in the evening, all over this Lane ad
hammer out of danger, at Hammer, out of morning, at Hammer,
out of love between the LODs and Sisters.

Speaker 7 (29:35):
Lane.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
So but it was nice because we did rehearse and
she wanted to rehearse a couple of times, and I
I was all too happy to do.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
So, getting back to it, that's the joke that I
was making was that when I hear that, I was going,
you guys, yeah, you worked this out in the sound
check and in the green room in the minutes leading
up to the show, at the risk of being overrehearsed. Yestean.
They practic just twenty minutes before the show started, and
they figured it out. But their first real performance of

(30:06):
it was literally on stage.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yeah, and I saw and so so that was great
because it was I did. I kind of had to say,
all right, I'm gonna have to rely on that idea
that my brain will not screw this up when I
get out on stage, at least to a point where
people will know. I can know some insiders can know
when you flob a lyric or when you flub a
line in a play or something like that. It might

(30:30):
not be all that important, it might be very important,
but either way, your brain. I was just hoping that
my brain would sort that out.

Speaker 5 (30:37):
And I heard it. I saw a video.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
Kelly took a video of both, and I was like,
you know what, that sounded great like I'm a pretty
harsh critic of myself, but I was like, no, that
actually turned out so fantastic, and I'm not even necessarily
comparing it to how much time we had to really
work on it. It actually worked really well. It was fantastatic,
So okay, it all went in it all, you know.

(31:04):
I wish, I wished Lily and I could have played
off of each other even more, but I was laser
focused on getting my hands in the right places on
that guitar because it was I had a very short
bit of movement that was available to me, and I
was like, I don't want to jam my hands up
and completely lose myself, all right, So I was, you know,

(31:27):
if I could change one thing for sure, that would be.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Now one afternoon prior you had time to rehearse. But
then you ended up not having time to rehearse because
you ended up helping her do a self tape audition,
which is fun. And that's the interesting thing is I
kind of wondered, as you guys were doing the song,
one of the only parts of the whole show, I
sat down in the audience and watched, right, I watched

(31:52):
the improv performance that led into that and then y
old scene on it right, and then introduced you, and
then I went back down to watch the number again.
But I was wondering, like, did you guys playing with
the audition and having fun with that actually also serve

(32:14):
in some ways as the rehearsal for a song you
had yet to even work on together. You know, yeah,
you know, like what Dean you were describing about, like
the exercises you're doing in this workshop. Yeah, what does
this have to do with what does this have to
do with the play we're going to be doing? Well,
we won't know. We don't know, bb TBD, but it might,

(32:40):
especially if you're getting all the creative energy and juices
moving and channeling in the same direction, all these different
voices channeling in the same direction and having fun doing it.

Speaker 5 (32:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
What an interesting process for you? And then so a
couple of things. Yeah, I liked the nervous energy backstage,
like you saw me. I had like happy feet backstage
all of the I was doing funny little dances stuff,
and I had I had stage brain. I knew it
was gonna be good because I had stage brain from

(33:17):
the jump that morning.

Speaker 5 (33:19):
On the start of the day but it was.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
It was so much fun. And then what was cool again,
like unexpected, I just ended up taking my curtain call
with you and that was kind of cool. We let
the screen come down over us and stuff. It was
it was dope.

Speaker 5 (33:37):
Yeah, wow, that's cool.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
And it was a pactause.

Speaker 5 (33:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
It was a really well attended event because honestly, I
actually didn't know what the setup was going to be,
you know when Phil told me about it a while back,
and in my brain it seemed smaller, but in reality
it was quite big.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
That's stage is huge up there at Barnsdell.

Speaker 5 (34:02):
I had great stage.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, I know, the but the house is so great
the way that it really holds the energy and it's
all coming at you and great in there.

Speaker 5 (34:12):
Our crew, like, the crew was amazing.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
They were so Like the person who sorted the sound
for me, I was a little nervous because I didn't
have like, uh, monitors, monitors, you know, but I just trusted.
I was like, they I can tell they know kind
of what they want to get out of this room,
and this will work and it it sounded great.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
One of the things that I feel really liberated by
is I always had in my mind as we do
each of these. Yeah, I think of on this variety shows,
but really they've been with a flavor of a variety show.
This is the first one that really was, in terms
of its balance, truly a variety show. I was looking

(34:56):
it up. We had like four movies, four live prison,
four live musical numbers, four comedy pieces, right, like that's
balance two prize giveaway.

Speaker 4 (35:11):
Along with this show. How'd you click? Gamo?

Speaker 1 (35:13):
So from the beginning of the pre show loop, I
think it was six thirty five and we were out
just before eight thirty five.

Speaker 4 (35:23):
Wow, you got all that in that time.

Speaker 5 (35:26):
Oh yeah, it was amazing.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
It was honestly, like, because I can say this the
thing that blew mine, we.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Ran over by three minutes. We got done at eight
thirty three.

Speaker 5 (35:35):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, And that was after some sort of time jiu
jitsu that that Phil had to do. But like I
just remember he had a run of show and I
looked at it and it was so specific. I'd never
seen on a run of show the time eight nineteen

(35:56):
and I was like, wow, that's like, oh, how are
we doing that?

Speaker 1 (35:59):
And then oh no, you had John called It was
called the Itinerary for Cobenhook.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
For COVID and Malta what over Mine.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I will say that is also true, but I kind
of felt like that had more uh leeway for the
most part. But then then yeah, when we were backstage
and like the next thing stopped and I was looking
at the itinerary and it's like, on my watch, just
dead on right on eight nineteen filt finish his talking.

(36:29):
Next thing comes up and I was just blown away.
And he came back and I was like, how are
you doing this? Do you talk out there?

Speaker 4 (36:37):
Comedy groups for going over? How do you do that?

Speaker 1 (36:40):
I stopped them. Those are easy. It's the presenters. I
can't centrol really the presenters. But that was the other thing.
So so two takeaways. One was I always each of
these shows going like, are we pushing too far towards
variety shown? Are people not going to get what they want?
Is this not celebration of architecture? Are they coming for architecture?

(37:04):
One oh one? And and it's an interesting thing also
because you do realize that the live presenters are often
what draws people into the house, but once there, it's
the stuff they enjoy the least, not that the presenters
aren't good, but they don't know how much fun they're
going to have with everything else, Like they'll just hear,

(37:25):
oh okay, there's videos by Deb Mattlock, historic videos by her.
They have no idea how much fun these are going
to be. There's also pie, and there's pie afterwards. Anyway,
So that was one thing, was just to realize, yeah,
you can go full variety show. People are going to
eat this thing up like they did the pie. But

(37:46):
the other thing is that, yeah, everything that was within
our control, not only when according to schedule, it killed.
And it's the stuff that's out of my control and
out of Deb's control, the producer that might not work

(38:06):
and might go over time and might bonus for time.
And so we've learned as these shows have gone on,
you have to control when the uncontrollable is taking place,
right because before we've had our endings hijacked and an

(38:26):
otherwise great show like we talked about this Dean, like
all that I'm thinking about for the rest of it
is like not landing. The dismount. Audience will forget about
it after a while and might even ultimately love that
it was such a train wreck the ending, because that
can be something you can laugh about, right, but man,

(38:51):
it sucks when you're when you're not paying it all
off and it's not up to you because it literally
has been hijacked.

Speaker 4 (38:59):
So structuring, I think just for laughs in Montreal where
Dick Cavit tried to do the cutting of the rope trick.
And you know Dick Caviot, you know, he's dry at
the best of times, but he couldn't get the cutting
of the rope and then making it all whole again trick.

Speaker 5 (39:14):
And apparently he.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
Was up there for like forty minutes before the first
comic came on, as he just and he's not funny,
and he's Dick Cavett and he's trying to cut the
rope and he's being you know, very articulate about how
to cut the rope and the trick, and nobody's laughing.
And it went on and on to the point where
the producers were like all in the wings waving at him,

(39:38):
could you know, doing every signal, and he wouldn't look
at them because he was so insistent on getting this
rope trick done. And then it was such a you know,
disappointment at the end.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
But then again in the in the day, but I
guarantee you anybody who saw that, we're talking about it.
Still he remembers it because it's Dick Cabot. Yeah, and
it's so seeing him in that context. Yeah, that's kind
of amazing. I just watched Dick Cavity. He's still alive
and still really sharp, despite some very you know, profound

(40:09):
health problems. But he did the Criterion closet, you know,
where people notables go into the closet a Criterion and
make their film selections. And his is so great. I mean,
it's it's like enough to make you go, Yeah, could
he have a show again? Could he you put him
in a chair and let him have a show again.
And maybe now he doesn't need guests, maybe just let

(40:31):
him talk about stuff. But he he holds court about
always being asked, you know, what's the best film ever made?
What's his favorite film ever made? What's the best you know?
And he he intellectually, dryly, articulately explains why it's such
an offensive question and why it's impossible to answer. And

(40:52):
there is no best film, There is no favorite film.
It's the Third Man. And and I loved the whole bit.
And then I loved, of course that we have just
spent so much time talking about the third on the show.
Should I should I dial up the messages that John
Lawler has gone.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
Yes, let's hear what he's been quiz done.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
John. Did you watch Highest to Lowest?

Speaker 3 (41:16):
I haven't yet. I'm so sorry. Oh dear God, I
know I couldn't. I wasn't able to.

Speaker 5 (41:21):
I am we.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Weren't able to what part of turning on your TV?

Speaker 3 (41:27):
I watched the trailer again because it was on at
the top, but I didn't have time to watch a
full movie.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Well, I'll plant the seed.

Speaker 5 (41:36):
I wanted to so badly.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
This is from our loyal listener, Greg Vincent, a brilliant,
brilliant musician who I kind of want to get. There's
like he is a virtuo so on many guitars, but
on the pedal steel, I feel like there is no
no equal. And I kind of want him to record

(41:59):
like a prompt for you, you know, like how writers
will get writer prom right like, and I want him
to do that as a musical prompt for you. But anyway,
he said, Phil, have you seen Highest to Lowest? O? MG,
I have never been so confused by such an ill

(42:21):
fitting score. It was just dot dot dot weird. I'll
bet John Lawler has thoughts.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
I'm very excited to watch it then, because I have
noticed movies where it's it goes one of two ways.
You're you're you're confused about what you're hearing, and you
can't tell if that's going to be the thing that
sticks out as memorable and even though it's sort of weird,

(42:56):
it's also it kind of works, or if you're just
going to be the whole time, like why is this
occurring right now?

Speaker 5 (43:04):
This does?

Speaker 3 (43:06):
Music adds such an amazing emotional element and movement element
to storytelling in film, and so when it when it's jarring,
it's really jarring, I.

Speaker 4 (43:22):
Know, But think about the blog would that be any good?
With a burke bacarex be here is the blood that
it creeps.

Speaker 7 (43:53):
Beware of the blob. It creeps and leaps and lies.
These lies across the.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Blow right to the door. So I like that where
Dean goes immediately with this, which I think is opposite
where John is going. Dean Dean grabs a shanty and
the blob, two landmarks of cinema.

Speaker 5 (44:19):
Also my new band, Horrible Horrible Side.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
I don't think GV first of all, watches it if
it's terrible, going in knowing it's terrible, whereas Dean goes,
where can they find it? The point is, I think
Spike Lee, we can generally say an accomplished filmmaker, here's
a film with real bona fides and having this experience.

(44:45):
I caution always that there are certain films it's almost
impossible for people to remember this now, but there will be.
Blood was one of them where people came away going, man,
if only the music score didn't suck so much. They

(45:06):
were so bothered by it, and it's it's great right.
We love it when a movie and its music danced
together in perfect what rhythm r I don't know, harmony.
I wanted to not use a musical term for that,
but when they danced together right, lovingly, artistically, cinematically, we

(45:32):
love that. But you know what I also love when
a movie and a music score dance opposite right. Kubrick
frequently was a master of this right, so that his
themes would be expressed through the the the tension between

(45:53):
those those elements, the visuals and the music, and they
become so iconic that then you can't imagine them any
other way. But it's all through him, and of course
it's rejected at the beginning because well, this is not
what we do, this is not how we use music
in films, Singing in the rain being used while through

(46:13):
scenes of violence. I mean, like he's starting stuff like that,
and so I caution. I always caution, because could this
be a case of that where it just it doesn't
go together? And that's the point, right. However, one would
note that this is I think the first film of

(46:38):
Spike Lee, so the first Spike Lee joint not to
be scored by the great classical jazz artist Terrence Blanchard,
my former neighbor, and it's a totally different composer whose
work I believe, I'm not familiar with the problem that
I had with it knowing Spike Lee's ouvra is, it

(47:04):
actually feels like someone who's trying to sound like Terrence Blanchard,
trying to do what he would do. Oh you know, yeah,
you know how in those Woody Allen movies you always wondered, like,
why there the actor is doing a Woody Allen impression

(47:24):
and he would say, I don't understand why they're doing it.
You didn't ask for it, No, I never asked them
to do it? Do you tell them not to? Is
the point? And and so it reminded me of that,
and I could see that if he's working with a
new composer, he's trying to come up with something that

(47:45):
he thinks sounds like what and Spike feels comfortable at
that point. Oh yeah, this, this feels like a Spike
Lee movie. Spike Lee says to himself, So let's have this.
I'm curious.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Hmm, okay, I'm oh my gosh, no, my way.

Speaker 5 (48:05):
Wow. So he is a composer that has.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Worked on I did a lot of work in video
games all the way back into like the Sega Genesis era.

Speaker 5 (48:17):
Dead serious.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
He did Comics Zone, which, for anyone out there listening
to this, I loved that game. I rented it from
Blockbuster like sixty times. But he also did Sonic and Knuckles,
which was Sonic three or yeah, it's Sonic three, and
Sonic Spinball, and frankly, Sonic Spinball is a banger of

(48:40):
a playlist.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
It's weird, but it is great.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
Like I remember, one of the cool things about that
game was that you're playing pinball, and part of it
is the music as well. As the mechanics and the
music was cool. So I'm very interested now to see
someone who came from that background and then got into
movies and is now kind of doing things in this way.

Speaker 5 (49:02):
I can't wait to hear it.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
And yet, and yet, like I'm saying, I don't feel
I don't feel that that's what he's doing. I feel
that this is somebody who's attempting to fit into what
he believes is expected of him. And so it sounds
oddly similar but not, but isn't. It isn't the actual thing,

(49:26):
and so it's not jibing correctly. And I was aware
of that even before, you know, like reading Greg's question
about it.

Speaker 4 (49:34):
Isn't an insecurity that he came from video game composing.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
I want to I want to pull back outside of
the composer for a minute on it. I had a
problem with watching it because I knew the original being
one maybe my favorite currasau in, one of my twenty
five favorite films of all time, Like, Okay, this is
gonna be tough watch for me to see a movie
that doesn't need to be remade, and indeed, Spike Lee

(50:01):
makes some decisions that really weaken it. And so we'll
leave all that.

Speaker 5 (50:08):
Aside, and sad to hear that too.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
But I am if one was a fan of Spike
Lee eight, and I'm more or less. I'm more or less.
And if that person had never seen the original film,
which I think is an interesting place to start, I
bet that person might enjoy highest to lowest. I really do.

(50:35):
It's it's a love letter to New York City, it's
a love letter to music. Who can't get behind these things. Unfortunately,
for me, as a Spike Lee fan, it feels like
a love letter to Spike Lee movies rather than actually

(50:57):
being a Spike Lee move a Spike a Spike Lee joint. Yeah,
it's caught somewhere between the director and this is where
you can't escape the fact that there's another movie, because
I think it's the point that makes it not authentically

(51:18):
Spike Lee. It's as if he feels caught between his
own own admiration for this great Japanese master and quite frankly,
his own admiration for his own way of telling stories.
So he's literally stuck almost between two masters. But he

(51:38):
believes himself to be and doing right by his own master.
So suddenly, now we bring back the music into it.
How could a composer who's replacing this career long collaborator
with Spike Lee, who must be a fan of Spike

(52:01):
Lee and those movies, how could he not similarly feel
torn between his own muses and somebody who, Oh my god,
I'm the first person to replace this giant mm hm,
I better do right by him. M yeah, is that

(52:22):
not incredibly difficult? And don't you need to get external
help to overcome it? I mean, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:29):
If you're going in thinking like that, that's the same
thing like going into an improv show going I have
no script that I gotta be on stage for an hour.
You'll collapse under that weight. You go in thinking I'll
do this scene, that scene, this scene, and you know,
work with this guy that guy. But if you have
this overwhelming oh my god, the honor, the pressure, the
thing that sort of negates all the other little creative

(52:54):
fires that you blow into massive flames.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Right, And also if he was given any direction as
to how to approach it, like did someone say we
want it to be kind of similar to how we've
had it. I don't know, or I don't think anyone
would direct someone in that way necessarily not at that level.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
But no, I think, like with the Woody Allen example
that I gave, what it requires is not direction to
do it. What it requires is direction not to do it,
to free up the person to do their best, your
unique work. But where do you get that direction from
if the director in this case is experiencing the exact

(53:39):
same struggle. There are scenes in it that literally look
like how Kurrasawa shot his scenes, this very theatrical style,
and then there are scenes that look like how Spike
Lee might shoot a scene, and we're kind of going
back and forth, and so given that, you know, yeah,

(54:04):
with the music, there are needle drop selections that are
utterly perfect, as we've come to expect, I think, from
Spike Lee movies. But other scenes where the classical jazz
hybrid score literally, like I said, seems to be copying
Terrence Blanchard's work. So it sounds like someone trying for
a Spike Lee score in a movie that's trying to

(54:27):
look like a Spike Lee film, and as a result,
it's disconcerting. You know, my friend, an old colleague who
shot my first two films, and we did a bunch
of commercials together, Matt Lebtigue shot the film, and apparently
he's relocated to New York City at least temporarily, because

(54:48):
he's been shooting. All his work has been to shoot
New York City films, especially as there's not been a
lot of local shooting going on. The current theatrical release
from Darren Aronofsky, Stealing, which is out in theaters right now,
that was also shot by Maddie And I can tell
just from the trailer. I like how that's shot a

(55:09):
lot more than this, And in fact, I can't help
wondering if maybe Darren Aronofsky and Spike Lee should have
switched projects.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
Oh, that would have been suthening. Just swap projects. That's
that's gonna go off.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
You go, all right? So the other thing we got
and then we'll we'll finish up was not surprisingly about Superman.
Well surprisingly I have a hard time because you know,
not having seen it.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
Haven't you seen it?

Speaker 1 (55:50):
You did? What about what you guys have said makes
me want to see it? See I tell you, whatever
you do avoid a shanty at all, and yours is God.
I gotta find out why he would want to tell me.
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
I didn't tell anyone to avoid it. I told you
I didn't like it. No, that's true, and that I
thought I thought that there's a movie in there someplace,
but that wasn't it.

Speaker 5 (56:15):
That's all.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
And everyone in that film was great and the CD
was great.

Speaker 4 (56:21):
But oh my god, I'm mister terrific's been off.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Oh yeah, And like I mean again, they're like everyone
in that movie was was worth watching.

Speaker 5 (56:31):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Dear Dean and Phil. I mean, it's addressed to us,
but John, it's all about John, Yeah, because he's he's
he's he's driving the ship on this Superman discussion, that one.
I just listened to the most recent episode of Chowpack
Hollywood Hour, and I had to write, y'all because I'm
quite surprised at your thoughts about Superman. Really, I am

(56:53):
not a comics reader, and I never saw the Zack
Snyder films nor the many different Superman series on TV. Wow.
This sounds like a well adjusted, productive human being, actually,
and I salute all those decisions. This woman who wrote
is brilliant and wonderful and a longtime listener. I felt

(57:16):
like I had seen the definitive Superman played by Christopher
Reeve and had little desire to see them. I'm right
there with her, which is why I have never seen
this one. My husband saw the Snyder films and he
didn't have particularly positive views of them, so I can't
speak to whether being familiar with them would have changed
my feelings about this James Gunn directed films. In spite

(57:37):
of all this, we went to see the film together
with their kid. We all enjoyed this film exclamation mark.
It had humor and humanity and action. And this is
the most telling piece to me and all the good feels.

Speaker 5 (57:55):
The film.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
The film spoke to so much of what is going
on around the world today. Uh and she she gets
into this and we can. Maybe I will wait to
go deeper into what she wrote until I have a
chance to see this, but it it has struck me

(58:18):
all along, right, Like, it's not just that this is
a hit, and it's not just that people you know,
the the lawlor scale as we were talking about it
last week, Dan of Metacritic and IMDb. It's not just
that it meets a certain level and that it's doing
well at the box office. It's that people have been
talking about this movie, right. That is such a rarity

(58:41):
in an age where movies don't demand that percentage of
the conversation like they used to. By the way, as
Yoshi pointed out, all three films that we say have
done this this year, Sinners, Superman, Weapons all have something
in common. All Warner Brothers movies.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Interesting Warner Brothers has in September, I think on the
fifteenth coming out the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and
a lot of people are nervous, one hundred and forty
hundred and fifty million dollars writing on this thing, one
battle after another, and boy, doesn't this seem to speak
to the times?

Speaker 5 (59:23):
Right?

Speaker 1 (59:25):
So my thoughts written large. When a defense of or
a criticism of anything is given all that's going on
in the world, part of me wants to curl up
and die because it means that the conversation we're having

(59:46):
about this is about what's going on in the world, right,
and that conversation it will not be the conversation about
the movie a year from now, two years from now,
five years from now, it just won't be. That doesn't
mean the movie will be forgotten, But how many great
movies have been rejected in their time, and they might

(01:00:07):
have been safely we can just say, as we always do,
context of some kind. Maybe it was the context of
the marketing, maybe it was the context, you know, whatever
it was after. But free of the context of its release,
the movie then has a chance to actually form, oddly enough,

(01:00:29):
a more authentic relationship with its viewer down the line.
So it is a case, as I was suggesting when
we talked about it, where clearly people are getting what
they want, or maybe what they need, or maybe even

(01:00:50):
what they didn't know they need from this film. But
that phrase giving all the feels, this is a big
thing right now. Yeah, And I don't want to make
it as simple as something hopeful, you know, you know
some we went through that, right the binarya. We came

(01:01:12):
out of the bush years and suddenly someone fresh runs
on a word hope, and you know, and we all
had hopium all of a sudden, we were taking and
and the problem that I had with it, as you
know back then, is running on hope is no different
than running on fear. It's just to the other side,
or it's the same side, to two different coins. Whatever.

(01:01:34):
But hey, did you see the Banksy work that got
covered over?

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Yeah, isn't that amazing? A judge beating a protester.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Judge beating a protester, and that active protest has been
silenced by.

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
Just as well, it has been beaten down by a metal.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
And what what a great way to make sure that
everyone in the world would see the original piece.

Speaker 4 (01:01:56):
My two guards standing in front of a metal thing
in front of it what is now month multimillion dollar
piece of artwork. How are they going to remove that
from a historical building that you can't actually because it's
on the historic register. It's like, okay, you could either
permanently cover it up, You're gonna tear out some brick
and ruin the heritage.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Or so I am not. I am not saying that. Again.
I have not seen it, and I find it increasingly
fascinating that I have more and more thoughts about it
as a cultural experience, as a cultural experience, because honestly,
had I seen it, I might not be able to

(01:02:40):
avail myself of what's going on culturally around it, because
I'd have my own attitudes towards it. Right Like, I'm
on the outside. You guys are now on the inside
of this, and I'm on the outside of this, going wow,
look at this thing that has been built and is
happening and is continuing to evolve in our culture around

(01:03:01):
this movie.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
Right, But now I feel like I'm culturally outside of
it because I'm so in disagreement with the culture of it.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
So like am I now culturally.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
So I don't. I Again, I am not comparing this
movie these two movies because I think the same thing
will happen, or I have the same criticism or whatever,
because I don't have any criticisms of the Superman beyond
it being a Superman film. And I would be fine
if there never was one, much like I would have

(01:03:30):
been fine if there never were any Star Wars iterations
after the original Star Wars. But I recall, my God,
wasn't Force Awakens popular? And it's not just that it
was popular, it's that, boy, that thing gave people after
almost like decades of foreplay, these people were finally getting off,

(01:03:54):
and boy Lucas was edging them for you years with
some really, I mean, he was at best fluffing them
because his movies there was no satisfaction to be found
at all the ones that he made. In the follow

(01:04:15):
up prequel, right, I mean we can say that rather
writ large, Force Awakens not only a big, big hit,
the one that really justifies keeping the whole thing going
from a financial standpoint, but really so embraced and loved.
And I told you about how I decided I wanted
to go see it, but I'm gonna go to a

(01:04:36):
late night screening of it, free of the opening weekend,
free of the madness, so that I can just watch
the movie. And most of that movie has me going,
what the This is what ale Ginnis warned us about
rit large. This is I'm worried that this is just

(01:04:59):
nostal ALA's mental illness. And at the end of it,
when that movie ends and a whole bunch of the
people in the audience start going far, that's what we're
talking about. I went, this is really bad. And I'm
not saying Superman is any of this, but what I

(01:05:20):
am saying is Horse Awakens is kind of hated by fans.
Now we're not that far removed, and it's far and
away the most successful of the post Lucas iterations, and
it's really kind of derided and looked down upon. Wow,

(01:05:42):
and so free of the context of giving people what
they wanted or what they needed or what they didn't
know they need. It does ultimately become a movie and
it's maybe it's sorely lacking.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Maybe that's why I didn't like it. And I'll admit
that I thought at the end of that movie that
I would not watch this movie again. But now I'm
starting to wonder, should I just watched the movie again
to see, like if I can redescribe, because I I
forget things.

Speaker 5 (01:06:16):
I do think that.

Speaker 7 (01:06:17):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
I did go into that movie with an expectation that
I was going to get a see going to get
to see a movie about the whole interview between Lois
Lane and Superman and and the knowledge of knowing who
he is and all that good stuff, and the interesting
idea that that brought up. That's that brought me in,

(01:06:41):
and I was interested in seeing what James Gunn was
going to do with it. Those were the things I
had expectations of. And and admittedly the first one is
pretty short lived, and so that was that was kind
of a bummer. But I'm not like a Superman fan.
I actually hadn't seen I hadn't seen the Zack Snyder
ones either. The only ones I've seen are the first

(01:07:02):
one with Christopher Reeves and and I did watch a
chunk of seasons of Lois and Clark when.

Speaker 5 (01:07:09):
They first aired, but.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
Not Smallville.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
I just I just didn't. But either way, I didn't
get from this movie a movie that like the story
that I thought I was. I thought I was gonna
get a story, and I felt like I didn't. And
I love to love movies and I'm really easy to please.
So that's where I started worrying, because I was like, wait,
I will, I'll be I'll enjoy anything, man, and I'm
not enjoying this.

Speaker 5 (01:07:36):
What is going on? What's wrong?

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
You did not get the fields, John.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
Oh, I definitely did not get the fields. And I
wanted the fields, especially at the end of God. I
wanted those fields.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
I did not get the feels from Force Awakens. From
Force Awakens me neither.

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
And I didn't want to pile on Force Awakens. But
I remember coming out of that movie having watched it
with Kelly, and I said, I think they did a
lot of fans serve. They made a lot of side
comments to the camera that that play on the idea
that the universe they built in the universe in.

Speaker 5 (01:08:10):
Which they built.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
It exists out here us the viewer, and now they're
making kind of commentary on that, like as though they
know who we are and that that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:21):
Was really really weird to me. That was jarring.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
And I've since watched it again and it didn't bother
me as much the next time I watched it later,
but the first time I watched it, I was.

Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
I was very uncomfortable by that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Yeah, it takes a while before it can free itself
and become a movie. So anyway, that's the comparison that
I'm making, And I guess at some point I got
to see it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
You gotta see it, so we have this deeper discussion.

Speaker 5 (01:08:47):
I think it's rentable.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Now I feel like we had the deeper discussion and
now I gotta see it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:53):
I would just say that I was.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
I was disappointed to not like it, but I would
never tell anyone not to see it. Especially with superhero
movies and sort of cult classic style movies.

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
There are people who will die.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
On a hill to tell you that something sucks and oh,
that's the worst one.

Speaker 5 (01:09:12):
I'm never going to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
I don't care in that way because everyone gets something
different out of everything. But I personally was sort of
let down by I guess the experience I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
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