July 7, 2025 • 70 mins
Original Release Date: Monday 7 June 2025
Description: This week, you will hear your friends in podcasting discussing an ill-fated screening of Spaceballs, the 4th of July, patriotism, fireworks and the seminal band, Earth, Wind and Fire. In "Celebrity Deaths", actor-singer Aki Aleong, journalist Bill Moyers, televangelist Jimmy Swaggert, actor Michael Madsen, and actor Julian McMahon all get remembered. Dean and Phil go back and forth singing the praises of the Netflix comedy-mystery limited series "The Residence" and take a deep dive into the 4th "Mission: Impossible" movie ("Ghost Protocol"). YOUR mission, should you choose to accept it ...
Description: This week, you will hear your friends in podcasting discussing an ill-fated screening of Spaceballs, the 4th of July, patriotism, fireworks and the seminal band, Earth, Wind and Fire. In "Celebrity Deaths", actor-singer Aki Aleong, journalist Bill Moyers, televangelist Jimmy Swaggert, actor Michael Madsen, and actor Julian McMahon all get remembered. Dean and Phil go back and forth singing the praises of the Netflix comedy-mystery limited series "The Residence" and take a deep dive into the 4th "Mission: Impossible" movie ("Ghost Protocol"). YOUR mission, should you choose to accept it ...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And now you're Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Welcome to excuse me, my God, thanks.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
To little i'd one on earned this the hard way
yesterday with Oh my God to Gin and Tonics show
pre show and then post show to jin Martiniz pretty
late at night. And the problem was the show itself
(01:23):
lasted about fifteen minutes. So that's why really really rough. Anyway,
as I was saying, welcome to your nineteen episode nine
of your Chillpack Hollywood Hour, coming at you from the
historic Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Phelis, I am Phil
Lairness and joining us via the magic of both podcasting
(01:43):
and zoom all the way from Birmingham, Michigan. Look, everybody,
it's the MotorCity of Jason Badman. It's TV Stein Hagland
officially on Chill Pack. Allow me to welcome you back
to your main house.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yay. It is an ordeal that we survived barely. Intact.
I believe I have post traumatic stress disorder every time
I see something not finished, or a pile of bricks
in the front yard, or perhaps you know, after the show,
I got a pressure wash our rugs just to get
(02:21):
them back at the house. Oh my gosh, who knew
that moving in was harder than moving everything into the garage.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So as I was saying, you know, this show didn't
last nearly as long last night, and it's one of
those kind of only in LA stories. Was I going
to see a movie in seventy millimeter on the big
screen of the Egyptian Theater, the historic and restored Egyptian Theater.
Oh yes, I was with a friend. Look at that,
(02:52):
And was that movie mel Brooks Spaceballs? What for the
first time ever seventy milimeters? Yes, yes, it was a
movie I saw once prior to this on VHSH I
was thinking about how odd it was that, Oh my goodness,
(03:16):
Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, especially Blazing Fattle Saddles really
made an influence on me. When I was a kid.
My sister used to take me to see a late
showing of it every Friday night for like eight weeks
running when it was re released around nineteen eighty or so,
(03:37):
And oh the influence it had on me. And then
of course the next year History of the World Part
one comes out. Oh yes, and I love that. I
even went to see in theaters to be or not
to be? The remake of the Great Who was it?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Jack Benny?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Jack Benny? And was a Carol Lombard, Yes, ken to
watch that movie again that I do love that movie
and anyway, and I went to see that, albeit not
really a mel Brooks movie. He starred in it and
many of his company of characters. But so the thing was,
I was all in on mel Brooks, and yet Spaceballs
(04:23):
didn't even bother to go see in the theaters. Watched
it once on VHS.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, you know, the first time I saw it, I
think it was on VHS. I think I skipped it
at the theaters too, because the trailer looked dumb, and
the trailer looked like it was trying to ride on
the coats of Star Wars, which it was a Star
Wars parody, of course, and I love Star Wars so much.
I saw it twelve times that I thought, oh, well,
this is just a sad trying to write the coattails
(04:50):
of this thing, and I can't imagine it's funny because
every joke the way it was cut in that trailer
wasn't funny. So I gave it a big pass and
in fact, the first time I didn't even laugh at it.
It wasn't until the following where there was other people
who were really into it that I went, ah, yeah, okay,
now you got to sort of reachoo your head to
(05:10):
be into the dumb joke stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Seeing but also seeing it on the big screen help
so much, because one can forget with, you know, a
greater percentage, let's say, of kind of hackneyed, sophomoric jokes
that Melbrooks would be prone to as his film career
moved on. At least for me, it overshadowed the fact that,
(05:37):
oh right, Melbrooks really loved movies and was a genuine
movie maker, and so a lot of his gags are visual.
They play incredibly well better the bigger the screen is
some of the timing, and some are entirely visual gags,
(06:00):
evidenced by the fact that fifteen minutes in the movie
last Night, the sound stopped working and they spent a
lot of time fixing it. And I could have told
them the only way what happened happened is if you
lost all your power to your soundboard, And sure enough,
after forty five minutes they say, we lost all we
(06:20):
can't do this. I wonder at what point were they
thinking of themselves. You know, not only do we have
a movie after this one to show, but we've got
Yeah tomorrow, a whole slate of seventy millimeter, the Searchers
and Wild Bunch. I would not want to disappoint a
crowd there to see the Wild Bunch. That's the wrong audience,
(06:42):
a Spaceball's audience. Yeah, send them home unhappy, but they're
not going to tear up the place. They're not going
to say things like if they move, kill them. But
big crowd. And when the sound went out. What was
cool as they kept playing it for a while was
(07:03):
one the audience started filling in.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
All of course, it lines every line, but.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I was able to appreciate because I don't know what's
going to happen in this having seen it just once
thirty five years ago on VHS, how much of it
was still funny even without the sound, And that was
pretty cool. But the other thing that I want to
give the film credit for, and I didn't expect to
even talk about this movie because I didn't see it,
but was the fact that when I skipped it in
(07:28):
eighty seven, part of it was also a faux sophistication
on my part. Okay that mel Brooks, first of all,
had been supplanted as a master of parody of film
satire by the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrams Right Airplane,
Top Secret, Police Squad Movies and uh and mel I
(07:52):
Love You. But a Star Wars parody five years after
the trill ended not timely? Raw passe. Isn't the joke
on me? Because it's more relevant now because Star Wars
(08:13):
is still ongoing and will never end. He was right,
He was right, And it's a really good illustration of
what we talk about sometimes, which is as storytellers, don't
worry about the timing so much, even though timing is
everything in comedy. But don't worry about the timing of
(08:36):
the release or is this still relevant? Think about the tone.
Focus on the tone, and if you master the tone
of it.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Then it'll be timeless.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
It has the opportunity. It may not be, but it
has the opportunity. And so sophisticated comedies with social commentary
from just a few years yars Ago might not be
funny anymore, but Spaceballs is funnier than it was because
of what has happened with the Star Wars franchise.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Fascinating, huh, because I see it coming up on my
feed on the streamers and I'm always like what. And
then I heard that he's greenlit to do a second Spaceballs.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yes, he announced it while wearing Spaceballs the sweatshirt, which
really tickled me a great deal. Yes, Josh gadd is
writing it. And as we continue to talk about a movie,
I didn't see one thing that I would say also
about what changed for mel through the years. And I
don't want to be smirch anybody who writes big screen comedy.
(09:43):
I would just say that after winning the Oscar for
Solo Screenwriting Producers, he then is working with the likes
of Andrew Bergman and Richard Pryor on Blazing Saddles. Gene
Wilder writes Young Frankenstein, Barry Levinson, he's writing with on
(10:04):
high Anxiety and silent movie and so not meaning it
as an insult, but just the ilk of his co
writers is not the same. By the time he's working
on a space.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Balls Yeah, yeah, which is tough because you you know,
there's a need to be oh courant, because there's some
gags you may not know what the kids what the
kids slang is and all that sort of thing. So
you always have to find your comedy for Barans. But
(10:43):
you know, mel Brooks, if he calls you up and says, yeah,
I'd like you to co write it a comedy with me,
you can go nah, I don't know, old man, like
you know, you're not gonna do that. You're gonna go Yes, absolutely,
I'll see you in twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Right, because you're anointed. I mean, this is a guy
who knows a thing or to about a writer's group.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, exactly, So I would think that the ilk he
made that decision those writers that he picked right, it
wasn't the other way around.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
And it's not just retroactively though I'm looking at it retroactively,
I'm looking at their careers. It is also the fact that, yes,
he had a tendency. It seemed to pick less not
younger necessarily, but less established right comedy voices with which
to work, almost as if he knew, oh, I know
(11:34):
what I'm doing. I'm the master. I can teach. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Right and Gene Wild there's a perfect example of that
from the producers on up Right. You never heard I mean,
what was he doing Broadway Before the Producers was his
first one, but.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
He didn't write Young Frankenstein significantly with Jeene Wilder. Jene
Wilder wrote it on his own right, and so he
did what he wanted to do and then had Mel directed.
All right, so enough about a movie.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I didn't see the Chili Pack Hollywood Live Event of
the Week.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
We went out for a night at the Hollywood Bowl.
A lot of fun. It will also be I think
it's safe to say the final night out for Lily
in many, many months, because it's the meds that she
is on by nighttime. Man, she is just done in.
So that effort to spend a night at the Bowl.
(12:34):
Loved it, came home so happy, and then the next
day really felt it like I I can't do this anymore.
So she missed the fifteen minutes of the of Spaceballs,
but we went to see the you know, the Hollywood
Bowl Fourth of July Fireworks spectacular.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Right, Okay, so I went one year during high fire
season high fire.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Wasn't this the Kenny Rogers Eddie Rogers show. Yes, this
was the Great American once said.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Great American, Bring those boys home, said Kenny Rodgers. Yeah
he said that. But the fireworks, they had to dial back,
so it literally was just two Roman candles that just
went sort of fizz above the shell and that was it.
Because it couldn't do anymore or less. They burned down
all of the Hollywood Hills. So have they improved? Is
(13:25):
it now a laser light show?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
No, but it's it's yeah, it's the best. This is
like the third or fourth time I've done this over
the years, and yeah, it's fantastic. It's fantastic. It's a
lot of fun. And when and I told you when Gustavo,
due to mel used to be the conductor of the
la fill there he had the controller so he would
(13:47):
time it with the music so beautifully it was. It
was fantastic. The lafl was in fine form under the
direction of Thomas Wilkins, who's the the principal conductor of
the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and he is so funny and
charming and inspiring. He basically, in addition to conducting, served
(14:11):
as the MC of the evening and his pieces were
great and he was funny, and I mean, like I
want to be him when I grow up. After a
very rousing and touching opening act with the Lafil, which
is kind of what we all needed, even though maybe
you know, give them what they don't know they need,
(14:33):
and that's what he did. The Lafil then backed up
Earthwind and Fire, What who took us on a delightful
tour of their musical catalog, absent founding member Maurice White,
who died in twenty sixteen, of course, and with only
three members from what they call the quote original lineup though,
(15:00):
and I know no one hates a history geek, I
mean nobody loves a history geek, but none of those
three actually date back to the groups forming in nineteen
sixty nine. Oh and all but one of them are
now relegated to sort of walking on and waving and
standing around and pretending to play or sing. Oh, it
(15:25):
would be fair, given all that, to think of Earth
Wind and Fire as maybe now being just an officially
sanctioned tribute band.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
However, it's like Jefferson Airplane to Jefferson Starship, right, I
mean technically the lineage of the band.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
The lineage, and that is important, and as is why
I guess why I say that it's officially sanctioned Because
Maurice White wanted this music played and seemingly hand picked.
You know, the airs to this indelible sound, right, And
(16:04):
the third of the ogs is vocalist Philip Bailey, who
only sounds better and better with age. He was incredible.
In fact, I wondered who it was. I couldn't believe
that this was young Philip Bailey. Who it was was
like a kid when I was loving their music. Anyway,
(16:26):
that guy, it's inspiring. He is taking care of his
pipes and his range is remarkable at seventy four.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Wow. See when you do voice work, that's the thing.
It's like yoga for the mouth, and it keeps you
young and yet energetically. You know, you have that channel
open from your brain to your mirk, to your heart,
to your diaphragm and all your organs.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So it's well, McCartney seemed like a guy that was
doing stuff like that, and his pipes sure burst. Well, oh,
I can't, I can't. It's one of my least favorite
sounds is Paul McCartney singing yeah nowadays, Yeah. Anyway. I
can't be alone in saying that I found the idea
(17:13):
of celebrating America's birthday to be at best a bittersweet
concept and I didn't want it to be there. There
was just a palpable sadness. And that's why I say
like this, Thomas Wilkins, the conductor, he really spoke to
something that was in the air, and that's what I
(17:34):
really kind of admired and appreciated, how he was able
to sense it and do something with it.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Oh, oh that's nice, how inspirational.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
You know. Listening to the La phil play Classic Patriarch
Patriotic Marches during especially the part with the fireworks, right
knowing earthwind and Fire would return for an encore of September,
(18:08):
I did ultimately surprisingly find myself with a feeling I
can only describe as rousing and a reluctant patriotism perhaps,
let's say, And you know this desire which isn't far
(18:29):
from me usually, But you know, no matter how other
people act, no matter what other people do, it should
not stop me from pursuing the type of brotherhood American
ideals are supposed to espouse. And I can find ways
on my own every day to belong to all my
(18:51):
fellow countrymen and women. And that's my responsibility to belong
to everyone.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right, how do you do that?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And that's on me? That's not on anybody else. That's
not on that's not reliant on how other people are acting.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, However, tribalism aside, there's also something said for a
mosaic that we are our diversity is our strength. And
so do I need to fit in and reflect every
neighborhood that I am walking through in the world. No, No,
(19:31):
My iconoclastic individualism is also celebrated in the fourth of July.
So by all means, if not everyone agrees with your
point of view, that's the whole point. Not everybody should
agree with everybody's point of view.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Throughout the history of this country, the people who were
really beloved and remembered to the people who were originals, right,
And that doesn't and that that begs the question was
everyone agreeing with them right when they were doing that?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
How hard was their fight?
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Celebrity deaths Aki aliong Man I was pleased to get
to know a character actor whose career spanned eight different
decades and included films like Dragon, The Bruce Lee Story,
and Missing in Action three. He died a June twenty
second here in Los Angeles at the age of ninety.
(20:28):
He got his start on screen in the nineteen fifties
and once he began acting, never Stop. His last roles
came in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Over the years, audiences saw him in dozens of shows
and movies spanning every era, from the nineteen sixties with
Doctor Kildare and The Outer Limits to the nineteen eighties
with As the World Turns and The A Team and
the miniseriies V in which he played Mister Chang, as
well as modern shows that he appeared on like Kurb,
(21:00):
Your Enthusiasm, Roswell, and many more. An entirely different audience
knew him for music. Aliong was a singer and songwriter
who co wrote the nineteen fifty eight doo wop song
Shambalore by Sheriff and the Revels, among others. Bill Moyers,
(21:33):
an acclaimed journalist and award winning host of several PBS
programs and a great influence on many writers and artists
and filmmakers myself included, died June twenty sixth of complications
from prostate cancer in New York City at the age
of ninety one. He was quite beloved by his viewers
(21:53):
for his thoughtful and in depth coverage of everything from
American culture to politics to public affairs. First gained prominence
as White House Press Secretary under President Lyndon Baines Johnson
before transitioning into journalism. And I always heard that he
(22:19):
was kind of at one point the de facto chief
of staff. Really yeah, in that because it was such
a tumultuous time and there were so many conflicting opinions
within that White House that he was sort of the
guy that kept the ship together and kept things moving forward.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Good for him, Yeah, And you can kind of understand it.
And in getting to see his demeanor in the way
that he would speak and speak to other people, it
makes you wish, well, why can't we have more people
like that as chiefs of staff in white houses? He
he of course was one of the most respected voices
(23:04):
in journalism, but specifically in public broadcasting. You know. His
PBS work included such influential programs as Bill Moyer's Journal
Now with Bill Moyer's and Moyer's On America, which would
blend investigative journalism with thoughtful commentary on democracy, religion, and
(23:26):
social justice. He was also a regular on CBS Evening News,
produced programs for Frontline and much much more. Among His
slew of awards that he received for his work included
over thirty Emmy Awards and nine Peabody Awards. He was
inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in ninety five,
(23:47):
and you know, still working for so many years. Yeah,
and you know, his interviews with Joseph Campbell, like I
alluded to such a huge influence for so many of us.
Books were published based on those conversations. And it's safe
to say that without those two men in their conversations,
(24:09):
I would I would not be who I am.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Well, yeah, isn't that also the basis of Star Wars,
those Joseph Campbell books.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The Hero with a Thousand Faces? But Bill Moyers really
helped bring Hero with a Thousand Faces to the general
public rather than just you know, in scholarly institutions, and
the power of myth opened up really the whole discussion
of living a mythological life. He graduated from a Baptist
(24:40):
theological seminary, and his faith always remained strong and present
in the best of ways in all that he did
kind of a little bit like Stephen Colbert, right though,
I do find and I was having this conversation with
someone I do find that Colbert inserts himself too much
(25:03):
into his interview, Oh yeah, whereas Moyer's always had a
soft touch.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Oh that's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never actually knew
much about Moyer's at all, because he never said, oh yeah,
that's similar to the time or we were at Second
City or whatever. He never did that. I didn't even
know he was a press secretary at the White House,
because yeah, you would think, oh yeah, that time when
I was a press secretary in the White House. I
understand a blah blah blah. He never had. That preambled
(25:33):
to a question.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
From a journalist who graduated from a Baptist theological seminary
to a major televangelist whose career met with some serious
public scandal. Of course, Jimmy swaggered, oh no, died. He
was still alive, and now he's been called home. He
(25:58):
died July first, at the Agent ninety, following a heart
attack he had some two weeks earlier. He was born
to a Pentecostal family in Louisiana. His father was a
Pentecostal pastor, and his mother, Minnie Bell, was a musician
who played in local churches. Jimmy Swaggert's first cousin was
(26:22):
an early superstar of rock and roll who was a Dean.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Oh yeah, oh oh yeah, yeah, the piano player, right,
great balls of Fire?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Wasn't that very good? Oh?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
My god? Now his name is three words, sounds.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Like very good?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
No, Johnny, Johnny, what the heck.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Can He also sounds like a partner of Dean Martin.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Jerry Oh yeah, Jerry Lee Lewis, thank you the help
I needed.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Swaggert began preaching at a very young age. By his
teenage years, he was already conducting revival meetings. He got
married at seventeen, lived in poverty, turning down on a
contract to make music for Sun Records. What same record
label that signed Jerry Lee and Carl Perkins and Elvis
Presley and Johnny Cash. Yeah, he wanted to preach instead.
(27:15):
He conducted revival meetings from the back of a flatbed truck.
In nineteen seventy one, he launched a radio show, giving
him his first taste of a wider audience than In
nineteen seventy five, took a q from the rise of
television preachers at the time and began a weekly telecast
of his own, and it took off. By the early eighties,
(27:38):
his show was broadcast on dozens of local stations, and
he had pursued and earned great success as a gospel musician,
getting a Grammy nomination in nineteen eighty for his album
Worship Kiddy. In nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety one,
(28:00):
extramarital sex scandals but swaggered in headlines nationwide. Oh my,
remember when sex scandals were even a thing?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
That's right?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Uh. The first of these scandals prompted the Assemblies of
God to defrock the televangelist. I'm going to suggest that
in all our years of doing this podcast, that might
be the first time I've ever been allowed to say
the word defrocked.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Rocked, how do you get in the first place?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
His ministry became non affiliated and non denominational at that point.
Who can forget the tearful apology to his followers in
what has become known as the I have Sinned speech.
Three years later, again finding himself in a similar situation,
he told his congregation, it's none of your business.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
So wear something in that three years that redeeming yourself
publicly doesn't really pay off, and so it's done of
your business.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Wow, straight ahead, oh, straight ahead. The scandals hurt his career,
but he found his footing again. He kept on preaching, Yes,
there's a lot to unpack there about what the world
was going to become. Michael Madson, Oh yeah, the actor
who John Lawler frequently conflates with Mads Mickelson.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Who's performance in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, He'll Bill, Volume one,
The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
were the cornerstones of a very prolific Hollywood career that
also included a key role in Donnie Brasco, a movie
that I think does not get championed enough. He died
(29:55):
a Thursday this week of an apparent cardiac arrest at
his Malibu home. He was born in Chicago on September
twenty fifth, nineteen fifty seven, to a firefighter father and
a filmmaker mother, Elaine Madson, and his siblings included, of course,
Sideways Oscar nominee Virginia Madson.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Michael began acting at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago
in nineteen eighty. Yeah. Like, what bona fides this guy?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I didn't know he had the I mean he was
a good actor, but I didn't know he had that
kind of training.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
He served as an apprentice understudying John Malkovich the Lord
during the Steppenwolf production of Mice and Men. Right, and
it's that production that becomes a movie, right, with Gary
Sonise and John Malkovich.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
By nineteen eighty two he was appearing on telew He
appeared in two episodes of Saint Elsewhere, and the following
year was cast in a small role in War Games.
It's a computer.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Thriller, right, Matthew Broderick.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
By the middle of the decade he had had parts
in movies like Diner and the Natural and Racing with
the Moon, and on television with the show We Can't
Seem to Shake Cagney and Lacy.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Can't shake that show.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Miamivice, and War and Remembrance. Of course, the nineties would
be a very busy decade and would bring Madson a
considerably higher profile. He began the decade with a sort
of an unforgettable role to me in Thelma and Louise.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Oh Yeah, and was also in the Doors.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
But of course his career really took off with Reservoir Dogs,
especially going to one particularly unforgettable scene in which his
psychopath character Mister Blonde, tortures a police officer while dancing
to Steeler's Wheel, a classic. That ninety two performance began
(32:17):
Madson's most notable collaboration. As I mentioned, he would reunite
several times with Tarantino, while also again playing a key
role as a rising mobster opposite al Pacino and Johnny
Depp and Donnie Brasco and Free Willie Species the Bond
movie Die Another Day, Sin City, Scary Movie four and
(32:43):
upcoming movies Resurrection, Road Concessions, Blood Behind Us and Cookbook
for Southern Housewives, All upcoming and ready to come out.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Busy till the end? Yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
My favorite story of his was a indie producer that
I knew who cast him in something. I forget what
it was, but he was going through his third divorce
or something. So he said, yeah, I'll do it, but
you got to pay me in cash in a paper bag.
(33:20):
And the producers went to the bank and got ten
fifteen thousand dollars and put it in a shopping bag.
And he goes, okay, meet me at this gas station.
And they meet at a gas station and he comes out,
and he just making sure that it's just the producer
in the car and he's not being followed. He goes, okay,
follow me, and they drive up to his Malibu property,
(33:40):
and then he doesn't even go to the house. He
just sits on the lawn looking over the ocean, and
then he comes with the paper bag. The producer comes,
drops him beside him, goes, you want to count it?
He goes, Nah, have a seat, and then just talks
about his ex wife for the next hour and a half.
As the sun sets. It's just like, oh said, and
(34:00):
he did. He said, I've just taken the cash so
she doesn't get fifty percent of this. That's all.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Yeah. I decided not to write down any of the
because we could do a show about his personal life.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
No, I know, I think he lived as harsh and
hard as some of his characters, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
I mean. There was a twenty twenty three documentary about
him called American Badass, a Michael Madson retrospective. There had
been a two thousand and seven mockumentary called Being Michael Madsen,
in which he played a version of himself who is
hounded by paparazzi and seeks Vengeance on its tabloid journalist
(34:41):
Madsen's sister of Virginia, also stars in it, along with
his former co stars David Carradine Harry Dean Stanton, Daryl Hannah.
He's most famous for his big screen roles, but he
did do some kind of like peak television work too.
He had a recurring role on twenty four when that
was at the height of its popularity, and he had,
(35:03):
of course, as I mentioned, guestin on big shows early,
but was also a series regular on three series that
all for whatever reason ended up sort of short lived
back in the eighties, a thing on ABC called Our
Family's Honor. Late nineties, though, he was a series regular
on something called Vengeance Unlimited, which is a really good
(35:26):
name IDOL, and then a couple years later in two
thousand and one, maybe a rough time to release a
series in two thousand and one called Big Apple, Oh,
which also starred Ed O'Neil, David Stratharne, and Titus Wellever
(35:46):
good Lord. Yeah, and that lasted just one season. I mean,
I'm kind of intrigued to at least the pilot for that.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah, never heard of it.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Actor Julian McMahon. Oh, who starred in Nip Tuck, Right, Charmed,
and FBI Most Wanted, as well as the Fantastic Four
movies from the early two thousands.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Right, he was the doctor.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Doctor Doom. He died July second in Clearwater, Florida, after
a private battle with cancer.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
He was fifty six. I find every part of that disturbing.
I'm fifty six. He's got a private battle with cancer
while still working right up to the end and dies
in Florida of all places. I have questions. I have questions.
I mean, like I said, he was working, so I
was he living there? Was he getting treatment? There was
(36:46):
because he wanted to keep it out of the public eye.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
So take it to Hollywood again.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Questions And I'm just speculating, and that's not nice. He
was born in Sydney, Australia in nineteen sixty eight. His father,
Billy McMahon, was the Prime Minister of Australia from nineteen
seventy one to nineteen seventy two. And things kind of
(37:15):
come full circle for Julian McMahon because his final role
was on the Netflix series The Residents, playing the Australian
Prime Minister.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Yeah yeah, Now I never watched like Niptok, which is
what established him as a leading man. He had done
a stint on NBC's Another World. He was a regular
on the network crime drama Profiler for its four season run,
and then moved on to the WB's very popular at
(37:52):
the time supernatural drama Charmed for three seasons. He played
the demonic Cole Turn. So I was aware of him,
but I never watched Nip Tuck, which earned him not
only a six season run on FX, but like some
Golden Globe nominations and some you know, real acclaim did
(38:16):
you ever watch that show? Now?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I watched one or two episodes, but for some reason,
medical drama procedurals don't the warm me wore me as
much as police crime drama.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah, yeah, I never knew what it was exactly. You know,
is this is it a soap opera? Is it a procedural?
You know? Because there it seemed to be sort of
dark to me, But I I.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Dark comedy about plastic surgery. So oh yeah, But.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I remember, I remember being intrigued enough because of him,
but still I never watched it. Now he was in
earlier this year the Surfer with Nick Cage. Yeah, anyway,
that's another reason maybe to watch that. Have you watched
The Residents, which is yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
And they canceled it. I can't believe it.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
But I'm glad that you watched this because I haven't
watched the final episode yet. I've been sitting on it.
But this feels very much like a show that was
made for me. I mean, right down to I mean
an episode called The Third Man, an episode called The
Last of Sheila. The needle drops on this being from
(39:33):
my iPod, I mean, but I was thinking about a
phrase that I once read about a movie that I
Love The Bandwagon with FREDA. Stair and Sid cheris Right,
which was a big comeback vehicle for fred Astaire, And
it was written of that movie that The Bandwagon is
(39:54):
the favorite musical of people who love musicals, right, And
I kind of feel like The Residence might be the
favorite small screen mystery of people who love mysteries.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yes, it is. It's well is so well laid out.
And we talk often about the strength of editing and
the way this is cut together with you know, you
get actual lass just from the edit. I don't want
to show up at a Congressional hearing, cut to She's
(40:30):
at a congressional hearing, Like you know, there.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Are lines, there are exchanges where it makes perfect sense.
The joke even is constructed in such a way that
the setup is the last line of a conversation between
two people, and the punchline is the first line of
the next conversation between two different people.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Right exactly. So it's like it's it's such. And I
was thinking in my head like, Okay, I can write
this out like this, but I'm going to have to
shoot the congressional hearing all by itself, all at once,
because that is a big set to rent. You got
l Franken for how many days you don't know, and.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Al Franklin playing a senator and is it not like
what brilliant casting because he's calling upon both your memories
are our memories at least of Saturday Night Live. This
guy is you know, I mean, yeah, I like con
for some of us from way back in the day.
(41:36):
But it also of course calls upon the fact that
he also was a senator, rather accomplished senator before scandal
brought him down, and it rehabilitates him the best way possible, right,
And I don't know if he needed rehabilitation per se, but.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
But yeah, that one photo had been embarrassing. However, he
now has a gravitas to his acting because of.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
All of that, Because of all of it.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, and so now you're like, oh my, he's your
go to guy for any drama comedy that requires any
sort of authority, figurehead, whatsoever. And it's like it's like
it was stunning his performance, It really.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
It, and it just feels so good. Yeah, and uh,
oh my goodness, this this cast is an all star team.
I love so many of the performers on this people
again that they rehabilitate and that's the wrong word probably,
but bring back right Jason Lee? Where the hell has
this guy been? And how how come they knew I
(42:45):
missed him when I didn't know I missed him, I know?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
And how big his look has changed from my name
is Earl to like I had to stop and go
Wikipedia search the cast, go, I think that's the same guy.
But is fin hilarious performance.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Ronson Pin Show is funny and scary and I don't
know touching Mary Weissman, who I really thought was made
a profoundly effective showing of just how gifted she is
(43:24):
when she was on Star Trek Discovery for all those years.
She's great and I love getting to see her just
play somebody so filled with rage. You know, the partners
of the Detective of Detective Cup, I guess we can
call them her her boss at the Metro PD who
(43:47):
calls her in, Isaiah Whitlock Junior, who I first really
became aware of. I think during THEEP. He's like a
national treasure, this guy. And Randall Park. Yeah, I hope
he had fun in this because so often he's just
called upon to sit in a room and listen and
(44:09):
then maybe have a reaction that gets slammed down. But
he's fantastic. I love Randall Park in everything he does.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, it's an effortlessness that, you know, betrays how hard
acting and doing comedy is on camera. Right. It seems
to him that he's taking it very seriously, and yet
he provides half the laughs in the whole series.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I guess the lead. Uzo Aduba was like an award
winner for Orange is the New Black, and despite that
show having been created by and run by a friend
of ours, I've never watched it. And but oh Man
is not only is she great, but I find her
(45:03):
as an actress so comforting to watch.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Yeah, right, the way she.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Speaks even is like comforting to.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Me and so assured. And I think if Wes Anderson
is watching this thing, get her because the way she
can deliver in that flat but she also has an
emotional range, so she's not sitting on anything. It is
exactly what Wes Anderson looks for in his actors in
all his movies.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
And that's interesting because on I think it was probably
episode seven, the most recent one I watched. But there's
this shot, there's a series of shots where she's just
walking through the White House residence. For people who don't know.
The head usher played by one Carlo Esposito, is perhaps
murdered in during a state dinner at the White House
(45:57):
upstairs in the residence, and it say who done it?
Of all the people who were in the house at
the time and so and in a consulting detective is
called in by the Metro Police Department to solve this case.
And that's enough of a premise build. But she's she's
(46:18):
returned after several months to come back to the scene
of the crime, and she's walking through the empty residence again,
and the camera goes up to reveal the sets, to
reveal that's not the purpose of it, it's that they're
doing it, but they are revealing that, Oh my goodness,
(46:39):
this is the on some stage, this is the layout
that they built, and we see her walking through it,
and I remember thinking, well, this is like a Wes
Anderson moment, right, And I also thought everything that you
said is true about like what is called upon by
his actors, But another element that's called upon by his
(47:00):
leads is to walk through the middle of elaborate, well
defined spaces and sets, and to hold our interest while
doing so right, without doing anything per se. We just
have to want to watch you walk through these elaborate, constructed,
(47:26):
fabricated spaces, right, And if you can do that and
maintain our interest, you're a Wes Anderson lead exactly.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Because that shot that you're talking about really had another function,
which is like the game of clue. Where's the library
compared to the bedroom to where the pool room is?
All of that will be clues later on. So you
need an overhead view of the residents, and to do that,
(47:56):
you fly your camera above where the ceiling would have
been and recognize it as a stage set, but still
you have each room carefully geographically laid out so that
you can understand how every character was crossing the hallway
in a who Done it farcical kind of opening doors
(48:17):
and closing doors.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
The way that in the first episode they have to
lay out all the geography that you just described, not
just a floor plan, but multiple floor plans on top
of each other, right, and the way they have to
lay out for you who everyone is, both on the staff,
(48:39):
the guests, and of course the elected officials and their relatives,
and then also have to lay out the chronology because
this is a story being told in several different timelines.
There are flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, and that episode
(49:03):
pulls all this off and it is a heavy lift.
And I would tell people, if you watch it and
maybe you're not having the most quote unquote fun in
that first episode, have faith that you're doing the work
now so that you can enjoy it soon. Because there's
(49:27):
nothing worse in a mystery than if you're playing catch
up later. Yeah, or you're missing the wit, you're missing
the charm, and you might be missing the clues, right.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
And you see that in some novels where it's like, oh,
by the way, there was another character who was there
to witness, and you're like, well, that's just lazy. You
just put that in as a way to you know, justify.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
So they order or just to remind us, right.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And there's that's I think what's most amazing about this
entire series. No department seems to be lazy. Nobody's phoning
it in. Everybody is like, okay, okay, how are we
going to tell this really complex story. Everybody swings for
the fences, and from there is to edit to directing.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
I really appreciate that Uzo Adubo has said, and it's
apparent in her performance too, that she absolutely was convinced
that it was either of two people who had committed
the crime. If indeed it turns out to have been
a crime, I don't even know that yet, but we
(50:38):
can we think pretty safely it was. But she's playing
it as if she deeply suspects despite having no suspects.
She she's playing it deeply like, oh, yeah, she believes
this person could have done it, and and she she
(51:00):
admitted that yeah when she got to the ending, because
she didn't get to know in advance, right, she read
these scripts that she was utterly shocked, and I love that.
I think that's fantastic, But let herself play her own suspicions.
I wanted to ask you about that though. In the
(51:23):
olden days, yes, actors would commit to a project based
on a pilot script, and you did cast in a pilot,
and maybe you also would do it based on obviously
what the role was, where is it shooting, what's the pay, directing?
(51:48):
You know, any number of things. But the point was
you had the pilot script to go off of, and
you were signing a deal at that point. If this
gets picked up to a six episode, ten episode in
some cases full season order, your terms of involvement have
already been dictated by that deal that you signed. Now,
(52:14):
they the powers, the suits, the networks could always decide
based on the pilot. Yes, we're picking it up, we're
recasting you, right, But all that's got to be different now.
And so I'm wondering, like, on a show like this,
it's eight episodes based on the book, if she doesn't
(52:36):
know what the ending is, what did she have to
go on when committing to the project. And when you're
committing to a mystery, to commit to that without knowing
if they are going to deliver this at the end.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Well, that's a lot of faith for sure, isn't it. Yes,
I agree. So if she hadn't read the.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Note, why didn't she read the book? Yeah? Did she
not want? I mean so many questions. I don't know
why I'm asking you, But you're the only one that's
been in a position of Okay, am I going to
do this without knowing the answer to certain things?
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Well? Yeah, but your lead. You're a detective lead. And
what that provides you with, even if the writing's terrible,
it provides you with the ability to always be searching,
to always be curious. And you know, a detective and
an actor technically have the similar motivations, right, I want
(53:36):
to resolve these conflicting emotions, my character's desire to solve
the crime versus proprietary whatever. You know. So so I
can see that I would sign on to a detective
series limited run that I intrinsically knew the character really well,
(53:58):
or knew I could develop a really character that would
be in this even if I don't know the ending,
because even if I don't have a pilot believe it
or not, Even if I knew the team around it,
and I knew their bona fides. I would go, oh, yeah,
I could trust this group to drive this bush straight
(54:21):
into a home run and and so in.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
The same way, the same way I can trust you
to completely mixed metaphors.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
I've excellented that drive a bus into a home run?
Don't you use a bus in baseball?
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Home run?
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Everybody? So, uh yeah, I think I think it's easier,
perhaps on a limited series, and particularly if you're offered
the lead as detective. Yeah, you know, if you're offering
other characters or you know you're the badass, or you're
the crazy guy, the crazy brother in law, you know, well,
(55:00):
you may be the one who committed the crime because
you haven't seen the last script either, so all of
your suspects, that might be harder to decide to join
that group. But as a lead detective, I think that
would be an easy choice, even if you knew nothing
of the scripts, because ultimately, being the detective, you don't
(55:22):
realize this. You're asking basically a bunch of questions. You
ask a bunch of questions and then you have a
little bit of summary, but basically it's you and other
actors in a room, you asking questions, and then they
get to break down in tears or go crazy or
accuse you, you know, rage. They get to have a
wide rat of emotions and you have to sort of
(55:43):
just be the level headed one asking a ton of questions.
I feel so sorry for Law and Order actors because
all I see them is trying to come up with
ways who ask a question in a slightly interesting different
way than they have for the other thirty three seasons
or however long.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
It really kind of surprised me how much emotional pull
moments could have on this show. But man, it's funny,
and we could go on and on about so many
people in the in the Jane Curtin, how about Jane
(56:21):
Curtin going back to days of SNL ken Marino, who
I feel is a little bit underrated and is always
so solid as the president's best friend, who really is
the one who got him elected. He gets some of
the best speeches, you know, best monologues I've in recent memory.
(56:43):
He has one in particular about a well, you know,
you know how kids fall into one hundred foot well,
like that's the thing that happens. It is a really
very very funny well delivered piece. So just top to bottom, man,
what an on?
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah? In this and again I think it goes back
to editing. The way this is editor delivers the laughs.
It just you know, frames it, well comforts it.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
You know, it's the perfect It's the perfect example of
something that we talk about from time to time, which is, yes,
you may write many, many drafts of a script. In
this case, there was a book and you're adapting it,
and you're writing these drafts. But there's a way of
looking at the filmmaking process or the making of a
TV show that your first draft is the writing, the
second draft belongs to the actors, and then the third
(57:32):
draft is the editor.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
Right right, that's right, and.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Maybe the fourth draft is the audience because we bring
our own context to it. We see it, and then
we write pithy comments online that make the people who
spent years making it going, what the hell did they
just watch? I watched again all the Mission Impossible films
leading up to this Summer's find what we think is
(58:00):
concluding chapter, which I of course saw when it came out.
I think I shared with you that our friend Luke
Thompson had suggested that there is a way of watching
the most recent one as seeing that as a movie
about making Mission Impossible movies that it lays out how
(58:21):
each of those previous movies were made and why the
choices were made that were made within making them. I
have a slightly different look at it now having rewatched
all these There is a way of viewing these films
going again all the way back to the third one,
(58:45):
where really the series starts that it's a series that
is warning us about AI. Not about AI and ten
technology taking over the world, but how AI and technology
is taking over Hollywood in general, and these types of
(59:10):
movies in particular, the Mission Impossible team led by Tom Cruise,
like the IMF team led by his Ethan Hunt, are
all that stand in the way of a loss of
humanity in the world and on screen.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Wow, that's pretty good reading.
Speaker 3 (59:36):
You know the amount of this stuff increasingly that they
were committed to doing in camera and have you know
when they would use green screen and CGI that it
was in service of helping you believe what was in
camera rather than the in camera pieces supporting the constructed
(01:00:01):
world is a possibly a dying art. That's what maybe
the films are warning us about. So where we left
off last week, you know, was with the third one
when we talked about the second one and the third one,
and maybe we'll just end here with the fourth one
(01:00:23):
this week, because as I said, that might be my
favorite one, the twenty eleven Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. It's
the first one that I loved. It's therefore still probably
the one that means the most to me. Perhaps so
I was surprised upon this rewatch to realize that there's
a second film light Ghost Protocol that I would say
(01:00:47):
probably isn't the best, but might be my favorite. This
one was directed by Brad.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Bird, I know from The Simpsons back in the day.
Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
He was Iron Giant the Incredibles, and this becomes his
first live action film, and it's the first film in
the series that gives the franchise a look all its own. Yes,
(01:01:18):
you know that can be kind of something that evolves
rather than a reflection of a director's recognizable aesthetics.
Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Oh interesting, So this is a production design relevation.
Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Well in the case even of Mission Impossible three, right,
we talked about John wu Of course he has his
recognizable aesthetics and they seem now like, as we were saying,
like almost like a time capsule in Mission Impossible two,
Mission Impossible three. Jj abrams very effective aesthetics were television.
(01:01:53):
They were television aesthetics. So this is the first one
that really kind of paves the way for a big
green look and approach visually to telling these films. It's
also the first one that's actually about teamwork.
Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Then even as the team keeps failing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Totally, and that's part of the whole metaphor, right, that
this failure doesn't mean the team has failed. That there's
just elements of failure that setbacks that you still then
continue moving forward and trying to succeed. I mean it
makes sense that brad Bird, coming from animation, would develop
(01:02:36):
this look and develop this breathless pace too, because in
animation you really have to hone your because you can't overdraw.
You're not gonna have your animators draw one extra frame
because it's such hard work. So you are going to
be at your storyboard stage for much longer. You're gonna
(01:02:58):
have every scene a beginning, middle, and end. You're not
going to go, oh, I'm just going to cut a
bud of stuff from my day shoot. I'm just going
to get three and am B and C camera will
all blow up stuff and then we'll just figure it
out and post. You can't do that in animation. And
because Redbird came from that, I think that's why the
(01:03:18):
look of this and the action of this is so tight.
It's this is there's not a speca fat on this
episode at all. And talk about just my favorite the
gloves on the side of the Dubai hotel that intermittently
(01:03:39):
let go and so you never know when.
Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
I was so shocked by how brief a sequence that
is because it's so indelible, and because of those moments
where like the gloves and magnetic glove might go out.
It's it's really a case of man, the impact of
something on you has the tendency to stretch time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Yeah, that tension. That is such a tense scene. And
you know what, the Tom Cruise loves hanging off sides
of buildings and seemingly has no fear of height, so
you know that that's him out there. I'm sure there's
safety rigging that's been a.
Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Race of course, of course.
Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
But still, but he's outside.
Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
As we talked about, he's not just doing the stunts.
He's acting for camera while doing the.
Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Stuffs nuts exactly. So, yeah, all of that when he has.
Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
To acting for camera is hard enough.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Yes, acting for camera while hanging off a side of
a skyscraper for crying out loud, all you would get
from me is screaming like a girl.
Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
I found it also to be just really effective in
the way that the introduction of new IMF members happened.
It never slows it down. It's in the process of
it all the time. We're on the road, we're walking
in talk, you know, in terms of our exposition of
who these people are, in the introduction of them. Even
(01:05:06):
the teaser doesn't focus on Ethan, the teaser sequence sets
up Agent Carter played by Paula Patten, sets up her
involvement and her motivations, and everyone they introduce, even if
they're only going to be on screen for a brief
amount of time, they're all interesting in appealing, Like what
(01:05:26):
a stunt that is to pull off. We only have
a few minutes to establish these people, and they not
only establish them, they make them appealing so that whatever
happens to them you care about. And in that opening,
in that teaser, Josh Holloway, the actor is used quite
effectively in a cameo. It's one of the most effective
(01:05:47):
cameos as a top agent who gets the spoiler aler killed.
Jeremy Renner as William Brandt would have made for an
effective replacement of Tom Cruise as the focal point in
the film's moving forward, which was a real possibility. That's
(01:06:08):
why he was brought in had Part four not shown
that audiences had forgiven Tom Cruise his let's call them oddities,
which really hurt the box office in part three. If
Part four hadn't shown his viability, they were prepared to
move on and Cruise knew that with Jeremy Renner. Brandt
(01:06:35):
does come back in the next film and plays a
very important role. Ironically, the only film where Ethan and
his IMF team are not on their own, either cutloose
from or on the run from US authorities is that
(01:06:56):
dreadful second movie we talked about last week, the John
wo one. That's the only one where he's not disavowed.
Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Or on the Res're gonna hunt you down.
Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Going rogue. Well, this one has even figured out how
to use the introduction of Ethan's marriage from the previous.
Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Film, Oh Right, as a motivating factor.
Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
It's a motivatating factor for how William Brandt behaves and
the career choices he's made because of what we think
we've learned and think we know about what happened to
that marriage, and then the payoff to it at the
end is wonderful. Like I said, it's figured out how
to use it, because the truth is, we don't want
(01:07:41):
to know about their personal lives. We want to know
about them through how they embrace their missions, how they
comport themselves, and how they work together. Last night, my
friend was calling me out on me criticizing the Bond
films for myth a law myth, apologizing Bond's past by
(01:08:02):
making it all Batman begins and giving him a backstory
because he said, I thought you said story comes out
of character, right, and so we're learning about the character.
The best Bond films we learned about character, but we
learned about it based on how he was responding to
(01:08:26):
what was going on around him. We learned who he was,
We learned what he must have gone through. That is
a revelation of character. You don't have to give me
a biography, right.
Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
To go his backstory, why he chose the career.
Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
He chose, the Bond films at their best usually gave
us little in the ways of biography. You know, Daniel
Craig had earned the right to play a complex character,
but the need to turn his Bond into something that
rivaled Jason Bourne or Batman really serve to make some
(01:09:04):
of those films only marginally interesting. Yeah, and at their best.
That's why I say, I think Part four, this one,
Ghost Protocol, and then certainly five and six in the
Mission Impossible series were the modern day equivalents of the
Sean Connery Bond films. Not exciting for the same reasons
(01:09:24):
or in the same ways that those films were, but
they were perfect escapist espionage entertainment that could appeal to
many without leaving anyone cold or bored or talk down
to right.
Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yes, and like we discover, still holds up on rewatching.
Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
So still holds up. It's a great action adventure film. Again,
is it the best Mission Impossible film? I don't think so,
But at this point in time, it's one of the
two I love the most, and that me the most
to me, And so it gets three and a half
stars from.
Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Wow, looking at a four, that's crazy talk. Okay, Well,
I'm gonna watch five and six this week so that
next week
Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
We'll talk about those related spoiler alert
And now you're Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Welcome to excuse me, my God, thanks.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
To little i'd one on earned this the hard way
yesterday with Oh my God to Gin and Tonics show
pre show and then post show to jin Martiniz pretty
late at night. And the problem was the show itself
(01:23):
lasted about fifteen minutes. So that's why really really rough. Anyway,
as I was saying, welcome to your nineteen episode nine
of your Chillpack Hollywood Hour, coming at you from the
historic Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Phelis, I am Phil
Lairness and joining us via the magic of both podcasting
(01:43):
and zoom all the way from Birmingham, Michigan. Look, everybody,
it's the MotorCity of Jason Badman. It's TV Stein Hagland
officially on Chill Pack. Allow me to welcome you back
to your main house.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yay. It is an ordeal that we survived barely. Intact.
I believe I have post traumatic stress disorder every time
I see something not finished, or a pile of bricks
in the front yard, or perhaps you know, after the show,
I got a pressure wash our rugs just to get
(02:21):
them back at the house. Oh my gosh, who knew
that moving in was harder than moving everything into the garage.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So as I was saying, you know, this show didn't
last nearly as long last night, and it's one of
those kind of only in LA stories. Was I going
to see a movie in seventy millimeter on the big
screen of the Egyptian Theater, the historic and restored Egyptian Theater.
Oh yes, I was with a friend. Look at that,
(02:52):
And was that movie mel Brooks Spaceballs? What for the
first time ever seventy milimeters? Yes, yes, it was a
movie I saw once prior to this on VHSH I
was thinking about how odd it was that, Oh my goodness,
(03:16):
Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, especially Blazing Fattle Saddles really
made an influence on me. When I was a kid.
My sister used to take me to see a late
showing of it every Friday night for like eight weeks
running when it was re released around nineteen eighty or so,
(03:37):
And oh the influence it had on me. And then
of course the next year History of the World Part
one comes out. Oh yes, and I love that. I
even went to see in theaters to be or not
to be? The remake of the Great Who was it?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Jack Benny?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Jack Benny? And was a Carol Lombard, Yes, ken to
watch that movie again that I do love that movie
and anyway, and I went to see that, albeit not
really a mel Brooks movie. He starred in it and
many of his company of characters. But so the thing was,
I was all in on mel Brooks, and yet Spaceballs
(04:23):
didn't even bother to go see in the theaters. Watched
it once on VHS.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, you know, the first time I saw it, I
think it was on VHS. I think I skipped it
at the theaters too, because the trailer looked dumb, and
the trailer looked like it was trying to ride on
the coats of Star Wars, which it was a Star
Wars parody, of course, and I love Star Wars so much.
I saw it twelve times that I thought, oh, well,
this is just a sad trying to write the coattails
(04:50):
of this thing, and I can't imagine it's funny because
every joke the way it was cut in that trailer
wasn't funny. So I gave it a big pass and
in fact, the first time I didn't even laugh at it.
It wasn't until the following where there was other people
who were really into it that I went, ah, yeah, okay,
now you got to sort of reachoo your head to
(05:10):
be into the dumb joke stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Seeing but also seeing it on the big screen help
so much, because one can forget with, you know, a
greater percentage, let's say, of kind of hackneyed, sophomoric jokes
that Melbrooks would be prone to as his film career
moved on. At least for me, it overshadowed the fact that,
(05:37):
oh right, Melbrooks really loved movies and was a genuine
movie maker, and so a lot of his gags are visual.
They play incredibly well better the bigger the screen is
some of the timing, and some are entirely visual gags,
(06:00):
evidenced by the fact that fifteen minutes in the movie
last Night, the sound stopped working and they spent a
lot of time fixing it. And I could have told
them the only way what happened happened is if you
lost all your power to your soundboard, And sure enough,
after forty five minutes they say, we lost all we
(06:20):
can't do this. I wonder at what point were they
thinking of themselves. You know, not only do we have
a movie after this one to show, but we've got
Yeah tomorrow, a whole slate of seventy millimeter, the Searchers
and Wild Bunch. I would not want to disappoint a
crowd there to see the Wild Bunch. That's the wrong audience,
(06:42):
a Spaceball's audience. Yeah, send them home unhappy, but they're
not going to tear up the place. They're not going
to say things like if they move, kill them. But
big crowd. And when the sound went out. What was
cool as they kept playing it for a while was
(07:03):
one the audience started filling in.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
All of course, it lines every line, but.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I was able to appreciate because I don't know what's
going to happen in this having seen it just once
thirty five years ago on VHS, how much of it
was still funny even without the sound, And that was
pretty cool. But the other thing that I want to
give the film credit for, and I didn't expect to
even talk about this movie because I didn't see it,
but was the fact that when I skipped it in
(07:28):
eighty seven, part of it was also a faux sophistication
on my part. Okay that mel Brooks, first of all,
had been supplanted as a master of parody of film
satire by the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrams Right Airplane,
Top Secret, Police Squad Movies and uh and mel I
(07:52):
Love You. But a Star Wars parody five years after
the trill ended not timely? Raw passe. Isn't the joke
on me? Because it's more relevant now because Star Wars
(08:13):
is still ongoing and will never end. He was right,
He was right, And it's a really good illustration of
what we talk about sometimes, which is as storytellers, don't
worry about the timing so much, even though timing is
everything in comedy. But don't worry about the timing of
(08:36):
the release or is this still relevant? Think about the tone.
Focus on the tone, and if you master the tone
of it.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Then it'll be timeless.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
It has the opportunity. It may not be, but it
has the opportunity. And so sophisticated comedies with social commentary
from just a few years yars Ago might not be
funny anymore, but Spaceballs is funnier than it was because
of what has happened with the Star Wars franchise.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Fascinating, huh, because I see it coming up on my
feed on the streamers and I'm always like what. And
then I heard that he's greenlit to do a second Spaceballs.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yes, he announced it while wearing Spaceballs the sweatshirt, which
really tickled me a great deal. Yes, Josh gadd is
writing it. And as we continue to talk about a movie,
I didn't see one thing that I would say also
about what changed for mel through the years. And I
don't want to be smirch anybody who writes big screen comedy.
(09:43):
I would just say that after winning the Oscar for
Solo Screenwriting Producers, he then is working with the likes
of Andrew Bergman and Richard Pryor on Blazing Saddles. Gene
Wilder writes Young Frankenstein, Barry Levinson, he's writing with on
(10:04):
high Anxiety and silent movie and so not meaning it
as an insult, but just the ilk of his co
writers is not the same. By the time he's working
on a space.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Balls Yeah, yeah, which is tough because you you know,
there's a need to be oh courant, because there's some
gags you may not know what the kids what the
kids slang is and all that sort of thing. So
you always have to find your comedy for Barans. But
(10:43):
you know, mel Brooks, if he calls you up and says, yeah,
I'd like you to co write it a comedy with me,
you can go nah, I don't know, old man, like
you know, you're not gonna do that. You're gonna go Yes, absolutely,
I'll see you in twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Right, because you're anointed. I mean, this is a guy
who knows a thing or to about a writer's group.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, exactly, So I would think that the ilk he
made that decision those writers that he picked right, it
wasn't the other way around.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
And it's not just retroactively though I'm looking at it retroactively,
I'm looking at their careers. It is also the fact that, yes,
he had a tendency. It seemed to pick less not
younger necessarily, but less established right comedy voices with which
to work, almost as if he knew, oh, I know
(11:34):
what I'm doing. I'm the master. I can teach. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Right and Gene Wild there's a perfect example of that
from the producers on up Right. You never heard I mean,
what was he doing Broadway Before the Producers was his
first one, but.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
He didn't write Young Frankenstein significantly with Jeene Wilder. Jene
Wilder wrote it on his own right, and so he
did what he wanted to do and then had Mel directed.
All right, so enough about a movie.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I didn't see the Chili Pack Hollywood Live Event of
the Week.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
We went out for a night at the Hollywood Bowl.
A lot of fun. It will also be I think
it's safe to say the final night out for Lily
in many, many months, because it's the meds that she
is on by nighttime. Man, she is just done in.
So that effort to spend a night at the Bowl.
(12:34):
Loved it, came home so happy, and then the next
day really felt it like I I can't do this anymore.
So she missed the fifteen minutes of the of Spaceballs,
but we went to see the you know, the Hollywood
Bowl Fourth of July Fireworks spectacular.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Right, Okay, so I went one year during high fire
season high fire.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Wasn't this the Kenny Rogers Eddie Rogers show. Yes, this
was the Great American once said.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Great American, Bring those boys home, said Kenny Rodgers. Yeah
he said that. But the fireworks, they had to dial back,
so it literally was just two Roman candles that just
went sort of fizz above the shell and that was it.
Because it couldn't do anymore or less. They burned down
all of the Hollywood Hills. So have they improved? Is
(13:25):
it now a laser light show?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
No, but it's it's yeah, it's the best. This is
like the third or fourth time I've done this over
the years, and yeah, it's fantastic. It's fantastic. It's a
lot of fun. And when and I told you when Gustavo,
due to mel used to be the conductor of the
la fill there he had the controller so he would
(13:47):
time it with the music so beautifully it was. It
was fantastic. The lafl was in fine form under the
direction of Thomas Wilkins, who's the the principal conductor of
the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and he is so funny and
charming and inspiring. He basically, in addition to conducting, served
(14:11):
as the MC of the evening and his pieces were
great and he was funny, and I mean, like I
want to be him when I grow up. After a
very rousing and touching opening act with the Lafil, which
is kind of what we all needed, even though maybe
you know, give them what they don't know they need,
(14:33):
and that's what he did. The Lafil then backed up
Earthwind and Fire, What who took us on a delightful
tour of their musical catalog, absent founding member Maurice White,
who died in twenty sixteen, of course, and with only
three members from what they call the quote original lineup though,
(15:00):
and I know no one hates a history geek, I
mean nobody loves a history geek, but none of those
three actually date back to the groups forming in nineteen
sixty nine. Oh and all but one of them are
now relegated to sort of walking on and waving and
standing around and pretending to play or sing. Oh, it
(15:25):
would be fair, given all that, to think of Earth
Wind and Fire as maybe now being just an officially
sanctioned tribute band.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
However, it's like Jefferson Airplane to Jefferson Starship, right, I
mean technically the lineage of the band.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
The lineage, and that is important, and as is why
I guess why I say that it's officially sanctioned Because
Maurice White wanted this music played and seemingly hand picked.
You know, the airs to this indelible sound, right, And
(16:04):
the third of the ogs is vocalist Philip Bailey, who
only sounds better and better with age. He was incredible.
In fact, I wondered who it was. I couldn't believe
that this was young Philip Bailey. Who it was was
like a kid when I was loving their music. Anyway,
(16:26):
that guy, it's inspiring. He is taking care of his
pipes and his range is remarkable at seventy four.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Wow. See when you do voice work, that's the thing.
It's like yoga for the mouth, and it keeps you
young and yet energetically. You know, you have that channel
open from your brain to your mirk, to your heart,
to your diaphragm and all your organs.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So it's well, McCartney seemed like a guy that was
doing stuff like that, and his pipes sure burst. Well, oh,
I can't, I can't. It's one of my least favorite
sounds is Paul McCartney singing yeah nowadays, Yeah. Anyway. I
can't be alone in saying that I found the idea
(17:13):
of celebrating America's birthday to be at best a bittersweet
concept and I didn't want it to be there. There
was just a palpable sadness. And that's why I say
like this, Thomas Wilkins, the conductor, he really spoke to
something that was in the air, and that's what I
(17:34):
really kind of admired and appreciated, how he was able
to sense it and do something with it.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Oh, oh that's nice, how inspirational.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
You know. Listening to the La phil play Classic Patriarch
Patriotic Marches during especially the part with the fireworks, right
knowing earthwind and Fire would return for an encore of September,
(18:08):
I did ultimately surprisingly find myself with a feeling I
can only describe as rousing and a reluctant patriotism perhaps,
let's say, And you know this desire which isn't far
(18:29):
from me usually, But you know, no matter how other
people act, no matter what other people do, it should
not stop me from pursuing the type of brotherhood American
ideals are supposed to espouse. And I can find ways
on my own every day to belong to all my
(18:51):
fellow countrymen and women. And that's my responsibility to belong
to everyone.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right, how do you do that?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And that's on me? That's not on anybody else. That's
not on that's not reliant on how other people are acting.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, However, tribalism aside, there's also something said for a
mosaic that we are our diversity is our strength. And
so do I need to fit in and reflect every
neighborhood that I am walking through in the world. No, No,
(19:31):
My iconoclastic individualism is also celebrated in the fourth of July.
So by all means, if not everyone agrees with your
point of view, that's the whole point. Not everybody should
agree with everybody's point of view.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Throughout the history of this country, the people who were
really beloved and remembered to the people who were originals, right,
And that doesn't and that that begs the question was
everyone agreeing with them right when they were doing that?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
How hard was their fight?
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Celebrity deaths Aki aliong Man I was pleased to get
to know a character actor whose career spanned eight different
decades and included films like Dragon, The Bruce Lee Story,
and Missing in Action three. He died a June twenty
second here in Los Angeles at the age of ninety.
(20:28):
He got his start on screen in the nineteen fifties
and once he began acting, never Stop. His last roles
came in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Over the years, audiences saw him in dozens of shows
and movies spanning every era, from the nineteen sixties with
Doctor Kildare and The Outer Limits to the nineteen eighties
with As the World Turns and The A Team and
the miniseriies V in which he played Mister Chang, as
well as modern shows that he appeared on like Kurb,
(21:00):
Your Enthusiasm, Roswell, and many more. An entirely different audience
knew him for music. Aliong was a singer and songwriter
who co wrote the nineteen fifty eight doo wop song
Shambalore by Sheriff and the Revels, among others. Bill Moyers,
(21:33):
an acclaimed journalist and award winning host of several PBS
programs and a great influence on many writers and artists
and filmmakers myself included, died June twenty sixth of complications
from prostate cancer in New York City at the age
of ninety one. He was quite beloved by his viewers
(21:53):
for his thoughtful and in depth coverage of everything from
American culture to politics to public affairs. First gained prominence
as White House Press Secretary under President Lyndon Baines Johnson
before transitioning into journalism. And I always heard that he
(22:19):
was kind of at one point the de facto chief
of staff. Really yeah, in that because it was such
a tumultuous time and there were so many conflicting opinions
within that White House that he was sort of the
guy that kept the ship together and kept things moving forward.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Good for him, Yeah, And you can kind of understand it.
And in getting to see his demeanor in the way
that he would speak and speak to other people, it
makes you wish, well, why can't we have more people
like that as chiefs of staff in white houses? He
he of course was one of the most respected voices
(23:04):
in journalism, but specifically in public broadcasting. You know. His
PBS work included such influential programs as Bill Moyer's Journal
Now with Bill Moyer's and Moyer's On America, which would
blend investigative journalism with thoughtful commentary on democracy, religion, and
(23:26):
social justice. He was also a regular on CBS Evening News,
produced programs for Frontline and much much more. Among His
slew of awards that he received for his work included
over thirty Emmy Awards and nine Peabody Awards. He was
inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in ninety five,
(23:47):
and you know, still working for so many years. Yeah,
and you know, his interviews with Joseph Campbell, like I
alluded to such a huge influence for so many of us.
Books were published based on those conversations. And it's safe
to say that without those two men in their conversations,
(24:09):
I would I would not be who I am.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Well, yeah, isn't that also the basis of Star Wars,
those Joseph Campbell books.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The Hero with a Thousand Faces? But Bill Moyers really
helped bring Hero with a Thousand Faces to the general
public rather than just you know, in scholarly institutions, and
the power of myth opened up really the whole discussion
of living a mythological life. He graduated from a Baptist
(24:40):
theological seminary, and his faith always remained strong and present
in the best of ways in all that he did
kind of a little bit like Stephen Colbert, right though,
I do find and I was having this conversation with
someone I do find that Colbert inserts himself too much
(25:03):
into his interview, Oh yeah, whereas Moyer's always had a
soft touch.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Oh that's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never actually knew
much about Moyer's at all, because he never said, oh yeah,
that's similar to the time or we were at Second
City or whatever. He never did that. I didn't even
know he was a press secretary at the White House,
because yeah, you would think, oh yeah, that time when
I was a press secretary in the White House. I
understand a blah blah blah. He never had. That preambled
(25:33):
to a question.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
From a journalist who graduated from a Baptist theological seminary
to a major televangelist whose career met with some serious
public scandal. Of course, Jimmy swaggered, oh no, died. He
was still alive, and now he's been called home. He
(25:58):
died July first, at the Agent ninety, following a heart
attack he had some two weeks earlier. He was born
to a Pentecostal family in Louisiana. His father was a
Pentecostal pastor, and his mother, Minnie Bell, was a musician
who played in local churches. Jimmy Swaggert's first cousin was
(26:22):
an early superstar of rock and roll who was a Dean.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Oh yeah, oh oh yeah, yeah, the piano player, right,
great balls of Fire?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Wasn't that very good? Oh?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
My god? Now his name is three words, sounds.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Like very good?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
No, Johnny, Johnny, what the heck.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Can He also sounds like a partner of Dean Martin.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Jerry Oh yeah, Jerry Lee Lewis, thank you the help
I needed.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Swaggert began preaching at a very young age. By his
teenage years, he was already conducting revival meetings. He got
married at seventeen, lived in poverty, turning down on a
contract to make music for Sun Records. What same record
label that signed Jerry Lee and Carl Perkins and Elvis
Presley and Johnny Cash. Yeah, he wanted to preach instead.
(27:15):
He conducted revival meetings from the back of a flatbed truck.
In nineteen seventy one, he launched a radio show, giving
him his first taste of a wider audience than In
nineteen seventy five, took a q from the rise of
television preachers at the time and began a weekly telecast
of his own, and it took off. By the early eighties,
(27:38):
his show was broadcast on dozens of local stations, and
he had pursued and earned great success as a gospel musician,
getting a Grammy nomination in nineteen eighty for his album
Worship Kiddy. In nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety one,
(28:00):
extramarital sex scandals but swaggered in headlines nationwide. Oh my,
remember when sex scandals were even a thing?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
That's right?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Uh. The first of these scandals prompted the Assemblies of
God to defrock the televangelist. I'm going to suggest that
in all our years of doing this podcast, that might
be the first time I've ever been allowed to say
the word defrocked.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Rocked, how do you get in the first place?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
His ministry became non affiliated and non denominational at that point.
Who can forget the tearful apology to his followers in
what has become known as the I have Sinned speech.
Three years later, again finding himself in a similar situation,
he told his congregation, it's none of your business.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
So wear something in that three years that redeeming yourself
publicly doesn't really pay off, and so it's done of
your business.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Wow, straight ahead, oh, straight ahead. The scandals hurt his career,
but he found his footing again. He kept on preaching, Yes,
there's a lot to unpack there about what the world
was going to become. Michael Madson, Oh yeah, the actor
who John Lawler frequently conflates with Mads Mickelson.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Who's performance in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, He'll Bill, Volume one,
The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
were the cornerstones of a very prolific Hollywood career that
also included a key role in Donnie Brasco, a movie
that I think does not get championed enough. He died
(29:55):
a Thursday this week of an apparent cardiac arrest at
his Malibu home. He was born in Chicago on September
twenty fifth, nineteen fifty seven, to a firefighter father and
a filmmaker mother, Elaine Madson, and his siblings included, of course,
Sideways Oscar nominee Virginia Madson.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Michael began acting at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago
in nineteen eighty. Yeah. Like, what bona fides this guy?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I didn't know he had the I mean he was
a good actor, but I didn't know he had that
kind of training.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
He served as an apprentice understudying John Malkovich the Lord
during the Steppenwolf production of Mice and Men. Right, and
it's that production that becomes a movie, right, with Gary
Sonise and John Malkovich.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
By nineteen eighty two he was appearing on telew He
appeared in two episodes of Saint Elsewhere, and the following
year was cast in a small role in War Games.
It's a computer.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Thriller, right, Matthew Broderick.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
By the middle of the decade he had had parts
in movies like Diner and the Natural and Racing with
the Moon, and on television with the show We Can't
Seem to Shake Cagney and Lacy.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Can't shake that show.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Miamivice, and War and Remembrance. Of course, the nineties would
be a very busy decade and would bring Madson a
considerably higher profile. He began the decade with a sort
of an unforgettable role to me in Thelma and Louise.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Oh Yeah, and was also in the Doors.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
But of course his career really took off with Reservoir Dogs,
especially going to one particularly unforgettable scene in which his
psychopath character Mister Blonde, tortures a police officer while dancing
to Steeler's Wheel, a classic. That ninety two performance began
(32:17):
Madson's most notable collaboration. As I mentioned, he would reunite
several times with Tarantino, while also again playing a key
role as a rising mobster opposite al Pacino and Johnny
Depp and Donnie Brasco and Free Willie Species the Bond
movie Die Another Day, Sin City, Scary Movie four and
(32:43):
upcoming movies Resurrection, Road Concessions, Blood Behind Us and Cookbook
for Southern Housewives, All upcoming and ready to come out.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Busy till the end? Yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
My favorite story of his was a indie producer that
I knew who cast him in something. I forget what
it was, but he was going through his third divorce
or something. So he said, yeah, I'll do it, but
you got to pay me in cash in a paper bag.
(33:20):
And the producers went to the bank and got ten
fifteen thousand dollars and put it in a shopping bag.
And he goes, okay, meet me at this gas station.
And they meet at a gas station and he comes out,
and he just making sure that it's just the producer
in the car and he's not being followed. He goes, okay,
follow me, and they drive up to his Malibu property,
(33:40):
and then he doesn't even go to the house. He
just sits on the lawn looking over the ocean, and
then he comes with the paper bag. The producer comes,
drops him beside him, goes, you want to count it?
He goes, Nah, have a seat, and then just talks
about his ex wife for the next hour and a half.
As the sun sets. It's just like, oh said, and
(34:00):
he did. He said, I've just taken the cash so
she doesn't get fifty percent of this. That's all.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Yeah. I decided not to write down any of the
because we could do a show about his personal life.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
No, I know, I think he lived as harsh and
hard as some of his characters, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
I mean. There was a twenty twenty three documentary about
him called American Badass, a Michael Madson retrospective. There had
been a two thousand and seven mockumentary called Being Michael Madsen,
in which he played a version of himself who is
hounded by paparazzi and seeks Vengeance on its tabloid journalist
(34:41):
Madsen's sister of Virginia, also stars in it, along with
his former co stars David Carradine Harry Dean Stanton, Daryl Hannah.
He's most famous for his big screen roles, but he
did do some kind of like peak television work too.
He had a recurring role on twenty four when that
was at the height of its popularity, and he had,
(35:03):
of course, as I mentioned, guestin on big shows early,
but was also a series regular on three series that
all for whatever reason ended up sort of short lived
back in the eighties, a thing on ABC called Our
Family's Honor. Late nineties, though, he was a series regular
on something called Vengeance Unlimited, which is a really good
(35:26):
name IDOL, and then a couple years later in two
thousand and one, maybe a rough time to release a
series in two thousand and one called Big Apple, Oh,
which also starred Ed O'Neil, David Stratharne, and Titus Wellever
(35:46):
good Lord. Yeah, and that lasted just one season. I mean,
I'm kind of intrigued to at least the pilot for that.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah, never heard of it.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Actor Julian McMahon. Oh, who starred in Nip Tuck, Right, Charmed,
and FBI Most Wanted, as well as the Fantastic Four
movies from the early two thousands.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Right, he was the doctor.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Doctor Doom. He died July second in Clearwater, Florida, after
a private battle with cancer.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
He was fifty six. I find every part of that disturbing.
I'm fifty six. He's got a private battle with cancer
while still working right up to the end and dies
in Florida of all places. I have questions. I have questions.
I mean, like I said, he was working, so I
was he living there? Was he getting treatment? There was
(36:46):
because he wanted to keep it out of the public eye.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
So take it to Hollywood again.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Questions And I'm just speculating, and that's not nice. He
was born in Sydney, Australia in nineteen sixty eight. His father,
Billy McMahon, was the Prime Minister of Australia from nineteen
seventy one to nineteen seventy two. And things kind of
(37:15):
come full circle for Julian McMahon because his final role
was on the Netflix series The Residents, playing the Australian
Prime Minister.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Yeah yeah, Now I never watched like Niptok, which is
what established him as a leading man. He had done
a stint on NBC's Another World. He was a regular
on the network crime drama Profiler for its four season run,
and then moved on to the WB's very popular at
(37:52):
the time supernatural drama Charmed for three seasons. He played
the demonic Cole Turn. So I was aware of him,
but I never watched Nip Tuck, which earned him not
only a six season run on FX, but like some
Golden Globe nominations and some you know, real acclaim did
(38:16):
you ever watch that show? Now?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I watched one or two episodes, but for some reason,
medical drama procedurals don't the warm me wore me as
much as police crime drama.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah, yeah, I never knew what it was exactly. You know,
is this is it a soap opera? Is it a procedural?
You know? Because there it seemed to be sort of
dark to me, But I I.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Dark comedy about plastic surgery. So oh yeah, But.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I remember, I remember being intrigued enough because of him,
but still I never watched it. Now he was in
earlier this year the Surfer with Nick Cage. Yeah, anyway,
that's another reason maybe to watch that. Have you watched
The Residents, which is yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
And they canceled it. I can't believe it.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
But I'm glad that you watched this because I haven't
watched the final episode yet. I've been sitting on it.
But this feels very much like a show that was
made for me. I mean, right down to I mean
an episode called The Third Man, an episode called The
Last of Sheila. The needle drops on this being from
(39:33):
my iPod, I mean, but I was thinking about a
phrase that I once read about a movie that I
Love The Bandwagon with FREDA. Stair and Sid cheris Right,
which was a big comeback vehicle for fred Astaire, And
it was written of that movie that The Bandwagon is
(39:54):
the favorite musical of people who love musicals, right, And
I kind of feel like The Residence might be the
favorite small screen mystery of people who love mysteries.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yes, it is. It's well is so well laid out.
And we talk often about the strength of editing and
the way this is cut together with you know, you
get actual lass just from the edit. I don't want
to show up at a Congressional hearing, cut to She's
(40:30):
at a congressional hearing, Like you know, there.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Are lines, there are exchanges where it makes perfect sense.
The joke even is constructed in such a way that
the setup is the last line of a conversation between
two people, and the punchline is the first line of
the next conversation between two different people.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Right exactly. So it's like it's it's such. And I
was thinking in my head like, Okay, I can write
this out like this, but I'm going to have to
shoot the congressional hearing all by itself, all at once,
because that is a big set to rent. You got
l Franken for how many days you don't know, and.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Al Franklin playing a senator and is it not like
what brilliant casting because he's calling upon both your memories
are our memories at least of Saturday Night Live. This
guy is you know, I mean, yeah, I like con
for some of us from way back in the day.
(41:36):
But it also of course calls upon the fact that
he also was a senator, rather accomplished senator before scandal
brought him down, and it rehabilitates him the best way possible, right,
And I don't know if he needed rehabilitation per se, but.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
But yeah, that one photo had been embarrassing. However, he
now has a gravitas to his acting because of.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
All of that, Because of all of it.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, and so now you're like, oh my, he's your
go to guy for any drama comedy that requires any
sort of authority, figurehead, whatsoever. And it's like it's like
it was stunning his performance, It really.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
It, and it just feels so good. Yeah, and uh,
oh my goodness, this this cast is an all star team.
I love so many of the performers on this people
again that they rehabilitate and that's the wrong word probably,
but bring back right Jason Lee? Where the hell has
this guy been? And how how come they knew I
(42:45):
missed him when I didn't know I missed him, I know?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
And how big his look has changed from my name
is Earl to like I had to stop and go
Wikipedia search the cast, go, I think that's the same guy.
But is fin hilarious performance.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Ronson Pin Show is funny and scary and I don't
know touching Mary Weissman, who I really thought was made
a profoundly effective showing of just how gifted she is
(43:24):
when she was on Star Trek Discovery for all those years.
She's great and I love getting to see her just
play somebody so filled with rage. You know, the partners
of the Detective of Detective Cup, I guess we can
call them her her boss at the Metro PD who
(43:47):
calls her in, Isaiah Whitlock Junior, who I first really
became aware of. I think during THEEP. He's like a
national treasure, this guy. And Randall Park. Yeah, I hope
he had fun in this because so often he's just
called upon to sit in a room and listen and
(44:09):
then maybe have a reaction that gets slammed down. But
he's fantastic. I love Randall Park in everything he does.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, it's an effortlessness that, you know, betrays how hard
acting and doing comedy is on camera. Right. It seems
to him that he's taking it very seriously, and yet
he provides half the laughs in the whole series.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I guess the lead. Uzo Aduba was like an award
winner for Orange is the New Black, and despite that
show having been created by and run by a friend
of ours, I've never watched it. And but oh Man
is not only is she great, but I find her
(45:03):
as an actress so comforting to watch.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Yeah, right, the way she.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Speaks even is like comforting to.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Me and so assured. And I think if Wes Anderson
is watching this thing, get her because the way she
can deliver in that flat but she also has an
emotional range, so she's not sitting on anything. It is
exactly what Wes Anderson looks for in his actors in
all his movies.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
And that's interesting because on I think it was probably
episode seven, the most recent one I watched. But there's
this shot, there's a series of shots where she's just
walking through the White House residence. For people who don't know.
The head usher played by one Carlo Esposito, is perhaps
murdered in during a state dinner at the White House
(45:57):
upstairs in the residence, and it say who done it?
Of all the people who were in the house at
the time and so and in a consulting detective is
called in by the Metro Police Department to solve this case.
And that's enough of a premise build. But she's she's
(46:18):
returned after several months to come back to the scene
of the crime, and she's walking through the empty residence again,
and the camera goes up to reveal the sets, to
reveal that's not the purpose of it, it's that they're
doing it, but they are revealing that, Oh my goodness,
(46:39):
this is the on some stage, this is the layout
that they built, and we see her walking through it,
and I remember thinking, well, this is like a Wes
Anderson moment, right, And I also thought everything that you
said is true about like what is called upon by
his actors, But another element that's called upon by his
(47:00):
leads is to walk through the middle of elaborate, well
defined spaces and sets, and to hold our interest while
doing so right, without doing anything per se. We just
have to want to watch you walk through these elaborate, constructed,
(47:26):
fabricated spaces, right, And if you can do that and
maintain our interest, you're a Wes Anderson lead exactly.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Because that shot that you're talking about really had another function,
which is like the game of clue. Where's the library
compared to the bedroom to where the pool room is?
All of that will be clues later on. So you
need an overhead view of the residents, and to do that,
(47:56):
you fly your camera above where the ceiling would have
been and recognize it as a stage set, but still
you have each room carefully geographically laid out so that
you can understand how every character was crossing the hallway
in a who Done it farcical kind of opening doors
(48:17):
and closing doors.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
The way that in the first episode they have to
lay out all the geography that you just described, not
just a floor plan, but multiple floor plans on top
of each other, right, and the way they have to
lay out for you who everyone is, both on the staff,
(48:39):
the guests, and of course the elected officials and their relatives,
and then also have to lay out the chronology because
this is a story being told in several different timelines.
There are flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, and that episode
(49:03):
pulls all this off and it is a heavy lift.
And I would tell people, if you watch it and
maybe you're not having the most quote unquote fun in
that first episode, have faith that you're doing the work
now so that you can enjoy it soon. Because there's
(49:27):
nothing worse in a mystery than if you're playing catch
up later. Yeah, or you're missing the wit, you're missing
the charm, and you might be missing the clues, right.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
And you see that in some novels where it's like, oh,
by the way, there was another character who was there
to witness, and you're like, well, that's just lazy. You
just put that in as a way to you know, justify.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
So they order or just to remind us, right.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And there's that's I think what's most amazing about this
entire series. No department seems to be lazy. Nobody's phoning
it in. Everybody is like, okay, okay, how are we
going to tell this really complex story. Everybody swings for
the fences, and from there is to edit to directing.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
I really appreciate that Uzo Adubo has said, and it's
apparent in her performance too, that she absolutely was convinced
that it was either of two people who had committed
the crime. If indeed it turns out to have been
a crime, I don't even know that yet, but we
(50:38):
can we think pretty safely it was. But she's playing
it as if she deeply suspects despite having no suspects.
She she's playing it deeply like, oh, yeah, she believes
this person could have done it, and and she she
(51:00):
admitted that yeah when she got to the ending, because
she didn't get to know in advance, right, she read
these scripts that she was utterly shocked, and I love that.
I think that's fantastic, But let herself play her own suspicions.
I wanted to ask you about that though. In the
(51:23):
olden days, yes, actors would commit to a project based
on a pilot script, and you did cast in a pilot,
and maybe you also would do it based on obviously
what the role was, where is it shooting, what's the pay, directing?
(51:48):
You know, any number of things. But the point was
you had the pilot script to go off of, and
you were signing a deal at that point. If this
gets picked up to a six episode, ten episode in
some cases full season order, your terms of involvement have
already been dictated by that deal that you signed. Now,
(52:14):
they the powers, the suits, the networks could always decide
based on the pilot. Yes, we're picking it up, we're
recasting you, right, But all that's got to be different now.
And so I'm wondering, like, on a show like this,
it's eight episodes based on the book, if she doesn't
(52:36):
know what the ending is, what did she have to
go on when committing to the project. And when you're
committing to a mystery, to commit to that without knowing
if they are going to deliver this at the end.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Well, that's a lot of faith for sure, isn't it. Yes,
I agree. So if she hadn't read the.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
Note, why didn't she read the book? Yeah? Did she
not want? I mean so many questions. I don't know
why I'm asking you, But you're the only one that's
been in a position of Okay, am I going to
do this without knowing the answer to certain things?
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Well? Yeah, but your lead. You're a detective lead. And
what that provides you with, even if the writing's terrible,
it provides you with the ability to always be searching,
to always be curious. And you know, a detective and
an actor technically have the similar motivations, right, I want
(53:36):
to resolve these conflicting emotions, my character's desire to solve
the crime versus proprietary whatever. You know. So so I
can see that I would sign on to a detective
series limited run that I intrinsically knew the character really well,
(53:58):
or knew I could develop a really character that would
be in this even if I don't know the ending,
because even if I don't have a pilot believe it
or not, Even if I knew the team around it,
and I knew their bona fides. I would go, oh, yeah,
I could trust this group to drive this bush straight
(54:21):
into a home run and and so in.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
The same way, the same way I can trust you
to completely mixed metaphors.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
I've excellented that drive a bus into a home run?
Don't you use a bus in baseball?
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Home run?
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Everybody? So, uh yeah, I think I think it's easier,
perhaps on a limited series, and particularly if you're offered
the lead as detective. Yeah, you know, if you're offering
other characters or you know you're the badass, or you're
the crazy guy, the crazy brother in law, you know, well,
(55:00):
you may be the one who committed the crime because
you haven't seen the last script either, so all of
your suspects, that might be harder to decide to join
that group. But as a lead detective, I think that
would be an easy choice, even if you knew nothing
of the scripts, because ultimately, being the detective, you don't
(55:22):
realize this. You're asking basically a bunch of questions. You
ask a bunch of questions and then you have a
little bit of summary, but basically it's you and other
actors in a room, you asking questions, and then they
get to break down in tears or go crazy or
accuse you, you know, rage. They get to have a
wide rat of emotions and you have to sort of
(55:43):
just be the level headed one asking a ton of questions.
I feel so sorry for Law and Order actors because
all I see them is trying to come up with
ways who ask a question in a slightly interesting different
way than they have for the other thirty three seasons
or however long.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
It really kind of surprised me how much emotional pull
moments could have on this show. But man, it's funny,
and we could go on and on about so many
people in the in the Jane Curtin, how about Jane
(56:21):
Curtin going back to days of SNL ken Marino, who
I feel is a little bit underrated and is always
so solid as the president's best friend, who really is
the one who got him elected. He gets some of
the best speeches, you know, best monologues I've in recent memory.
(56:43):
He has one in particular about a well, you know,
you know how kids fall into one hundred foot well,
like that's the thing that happens. It is a really
very very funny well delivered piece. So just top to bottom, man,
what an on?
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah? In this and again I think it goes back
to editing. The way this is editor delivers the laughs.
It just you know, frames it, well comforts it.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
You know, it's the perfect It's the perfect example of
something that we talk about from time to time, which is, yes,
you may write many, many drafts of a script. In
this case, there was a book and you're adapting it,
and you're writing these drafts. But there's a way of
looking at the filmmaking process or the making of a
TV show that your first draft is the writing, the
second draft belongs to the actors, and then the third
(57:32):
draft is the editor.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
Right right, that's right, and.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Maybe the fourth draft is the audience because we bring
our own context to it. We see it, and then
we write pithy comments online that make the people who
spent years making it going, what the hell did they
just watch? I watched again all the Mission Impossible films
leading up to this Summer's find what we think is
(58:00):
concluding chapter, which I of course saw when it came out.
I think I shared with you that our friend Luke
Thompson had suggested that there is a way of watching
the most recent one as seeing that as a movie
about making Mission Impossible movies that it lays out how
(58:21):
each of those previous movies were made and why the
choices were made that were made within making them. I
have a slightly different look at it now having rewatched
all these There is a way of viewing these films
going again all the way back to the third one,
(58:45):
where really the series starts that it's a series that
is warning us about AI. Not about AI and ten
technology taking over the world, but how AI and technology
is taking over Hollywood in general, and these types of
(59:10):
movies in particular, the Mission Impossible team led by Tom Cruise,
like the IMF team led by his Ethan Hunt, are
all that stand in the way of a loss of
humanity in the world and on screen.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Wow, that's pretty good reading.
Speaker 3 (59:36):
You know the amount of this stuff increasingly that they
were committed to doing in camera and have you know
when they would use green screen and CGI that it
was in service of helping you believe what was in
camera rather than the in camera pieces supporting the constructed
(01:00:01):
world is a possibly a dying art. That's what maybe
the films are warning us about. So where we left
off last week, you know, was with the third one
when we talked about the second one and the third one,
and maybe we'll just end here with the fourth one
(01:00:23):
this week, because as I said, that might be my
favorite one, the twenty eleven Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. It's
the first one that I loved. It's therefore still probably
the one that means the most to me. Perhaps so
I was surprised upon this rewatch to realize that there's
a second film light Ghost Protocol that I would say
(01:00:47):
probably isn't the best, but might be my favorite. This
one was directed by Brad.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Bird, I know from The Simpsons back in the day.
Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
He was Iron Giant the Incredibles, and this becomes his
first live action film, and it's the first film in
the series that gives the franchise a look all its own. Yes,
(01:01:18):
you know that can be kind of something that evolves
rather than a reflection of a director's recognizable aesthetics.
Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Oh interesting, So this is a production design relevation.
Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Well in the case even of Mission Impossible three, right,
we talked about John wu Of course he has his
recognizable aesthetics and they seem now like, as we were saying,
like almost like a time capsule in Mission Impossible two,
Mission Impossible three. Jj abrams very effective aesthetics were television.
(01:01:53):
They were television aesthetics. So this is the first one
that really kind of paves the way for a big
green look and approach visually to telling these films. It's
also the first one that's actually about teamwork.
Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Then even as the team keeps failing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Totally, and that's part of the whole metaphor, right, that
this failure doesn't mean the team has failed. That there's
just elements of failure that setbacks that you still then
continue moving forward and trying to succeed. I mean it
makes sense that brad Bird, coming from animation, would develop
(01:02:36):
this look and develop this breathless pace too, because in
animation you really have to hone your because you can't overdraw.
You're not gonna have your animators draw one extra frame
because it's such hard work. So you are going to
be at your storyboard stage for much longer. You're gonna
(01:02:58):
have every scene a beginning, middle, and end. You're not
going to go, oh, I'm just going to cut a
bud of stuff from my day shoot. I'm just going
to get three and am B and C camera will
all blow up stuff and then we'll just figure it
out and post. You can't do that in animation. And
because Redbird came from that, I think that's why the
(01:03:18):
look of this and the action of this is so tight.
It's this is there's not a speca fat on this
episode at all. And talk about just my favorite the
gloves on the side of the Dubai hotel that intermittently
(01:03:39):
let go and so you never know when.
Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
I was so shocked by how brief a sequence that
is because it's so indelible, and because of those moments
where like the gloves and magnetic glove might go out.
It's it's really a case of man, the impact of
something on you has the tendency to stretch time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Yeah, that tension. That is such a tense scene. And
you know what, the Tom Cruise loves hanging off sides
of buildings and seemingly has no fear of height, so
you know that that's him out there. I'm sure there's
safety rigging that's been a.
Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Race of course, of course.
Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
But still, but he's outside.
Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
As we talked about, he's not just doing the stunts.
He's acting for camera while doing the.
Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Stuffs nuts exactly. So, yeah, all of that when he has.
Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
To acting for camera is hard enough.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Yes, acting for camera while hanging off a side of
a skyscraper for crying out loud, all you would get
from me is screaming like a girl.
Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
I found it also to be just really effective in
the way that the introduction of new IMF members happened.
It never slows it down. It's in the process of
it all the time. We're on the road, we're walking
in talk, you know, in terms of our exposition of
who these people are, in the introduction of them. Even
(01:05:06):
the teaser doesn't focus on Ethan, the teaser sequence sets
up Agent Carter played by Paula Patten, sets up her
involvement and her motivations, and everyone they introduce, even if
they're only going to be on screen for a brief
amount of time, they're all interesting in appealing, Like what
(01:05:26):
a stunt that is to pull off. We only have
a few minutes to establish these people, and they not
only establish them, they make them appealing so that whatever
happens to them you care about. And in that opening,
in that teaser, Josh Holloway, the actor is used quite
effectively in a cameo. It's one of the most effective
(01:05:47):
cameos as a top agent who gets the spoiler aler killed.
Jeremy Renner as William Brandt would have made for an
effective replacement of Tom Cruise as the focal point in
the film's moving forward, which was a real possibility. That's
(01:06:08):
why he was brought in had Part four not shown
that audiences had forgiven Tom Cruise his let's call them oddities,
which really hurt the box office in part three. If
Part four hadn't shown his viability, they were prepared to
move on and Cruise knew that with Jeremy Renner. Brandt
(01:06:35):
does come back in the next film and plays a
very important role. Ironically, the only film where Ethan and
his IMF team are not on their own, either cutloose
from or on the run from US authorities is that
(01:06:56):
dreadful second movie we talked about last week, the John
wo one. That's the only one where he's not disavowed.
Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Or on the Res're gonna hunt you down.
Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Going rogue. Well, this one has even figured out how
to use the introduction of Ethan's marriage from the previous.
Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Film, Oh Right, as a motivating factor.
Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
It's a motivatating factor for how William Brandt behaves and
the career choices he's made because of what we think
we've learned and think we know about what happened to
that marriage, and then the payoff to it at the
end is wonderful. Like I said, it's figured out how
to use it, because the truth is, we don't want
(01:07:41):
to know about their personal lives. We want to know
about them through how they embrace their missions, how they
comport themselves, and how they work together. Last night, my
friend was calling me out on me criticizing the Bond
films for myth a law myth, apologizing Bond's past by
(01:08:02):
making it all Batman begins and giving him a backstory
because he said, I thought you said story comes out
of character, right, and so we're learning about the character.
The best Bond films we learned about character, but we
learned about it based on how he was responding to
(01:08:26):
what was going on around him. We learned who he was,
We learned what he must have gone through. That is
a revelation of character. You don't have to give me
a biography, right.
Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
To go his backstory, why he chose the career.
Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
He chose, the Bond films at their best usually gave
us little in the ways of biography. You know, Daniel
Craig had earned the right to play a complex character,
but the need to turn his Bond into something that
rivaled Jason Bourne or Batman really serve to make some
(01:09:04):
of those films only marginally interesting. Yeah, and at their best.
That's why I say, I think Part four, this one,
Ghost Protocol, and then certainly five and six in the
Mission Impossible series were the modern day equivalents of the
Sean Connery Bond films. Not exciting for the same reasons
(01:09:24):
or in the same ways that those films were, but
they were perfect escapist espionage entertainment that could appeal to
many without leaving anyone cold or bored or talk down
to right.
Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yes, and like we discover, still holds up on rewatching.
Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
So still holds up. It's a great action adventure film. Again,
is it the best Mission Impossible film? I don't think so,
But at this point in time, it's one of the
two I love the most, and that me the most
to me, And so it gets three and a half
stars from.
Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Wow, looking at a four, that's crazy talk. Okay, Well,
I'm gonna watch five and six this week so that
next week
Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
We'll talk about those related spoiler alert
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