BONUS The Friday Show - On the QT: Death Proof
Marc:All right, you good?
Marc:I'm good.
Marc:All right, five seconds.
Marc:You always say that so menacingly.
Marc:Well, now I have to do another five seconds.
Marc:Silence.
Guest:Hey, Chris.
Guest:Hey, Brendan.
Guest:How's it going?
Guest:I just saw something.
Guest:It's a good coincidence, I guess.
Guest:It says, Sony teases Quentin Tarantino's final film.
Guest:But then the quote is, more details to come.
Guest:That's literally the quote.
Guest:It's not like that's what the article is saying.
Guest:It's like that was what Sony teased.
Guest:It's almost like fill in space here.
Yes.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:That's exciting.
Marc:So yes.
Guest:So this was apparently at the Cine Europe convention.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Sony Pictures was the first major studio to give a presentation.
Guest:On Monday, the studio's resident of international distribution, Stephen Odell, gave a rundown of what to expect in the future, and lo and behold, Tarantino's final film was mentioned.
Guest:Odell teased Tarantino's new project, although the director's 10th and final film, The Movie Critic, was scrapped earlier this year.
Guest:Odell hinted that something new was coming in the foreseeable future, saying there was, quote, more to come, and that he couldn't, quote,
Guest:Talk about it.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:This is from the blog worldofreal.com, which is like a gossip site, but they do have their sources and they get stuff right.
Guest:So I think this is also a public event.
Guest:The guy was quoted there.
Guest:I don't know how serious he was in it, but yeah.
Guest:So news of a new Tarantino film on the horizon.
Marc:Death Proof 2.
Guest:Well, so that was what I was going to say is that they're saying this could be his 10th and final film.
Guest:And I wish this guy would just tell everyone that the thing we just watched was not, was not a film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it would be totally fine if he was just like, this was me fucking around with my friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like CSI.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Like when I did CSI, exactly, or whatever.
Guest:And this doesn't count.
Guest:And now I can make two more films.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But no, this is, he considers this his fifth film.
Guest:And that's what we're doing here in the month of June.
Guest:It is the fifth film of Quentin Tarantino to continue our 10 months long series.
Guest:Well, I guess nine months long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe there will be a tenth that we do something about this new film if it's announced by then.
Guest:But we are going through all nine existing Tarantino films.
Guest:And we've gotten to, I guess you would call this the midway point, right?
Guest:Yeah, we have.
Guest:What would you like to do first?
Guest:Should we go through our rankings?
Guest:Let's go through our rankings of where we're at with these films.
Guest:And in fact, let's do the reverse of what we've done other months.
Guest:And let's start at the beginning so that we can establish how things descend in our view, Tarantino-wise.
Guest:So start at your number one and go all the way to the bottom.
Marc:Got you.
Marc:So number one for me, Pulp Fiction.
Marc:Number two, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Marc:Three, Jackie Brown.
Marc:Four, Inglourious Bastards.
Marc:Five, Django Unchained.
Marc:Six, Kill Bill.
Marc:Seven, Reservoir Dogs.
Marc:Eight, Hateful Eight.
Marc:And nine, Death Proof.
Guest:All right, so I go number one, Pulp Fiction.
Guest:Number two, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Guest:Number three, Reservoir Dogs.
Guest:Number four, Django Unchained.
Guest:Number five, Jackie Brown.
Guest:Number six, Kill Bill.
Guest:Number seven, The Hateful Eight.
Guest:Number eight, Inglourious Bastards.
Guest:And number nine, just like you, Death Proof.
Guest:And this was my previewing rankings.
Guest:And I think we both were in agreement.
Guest:We were about to watch his worst film.
Guest:And, you know, it's interesting to me.
Guest:I really have a strong memory of...
Guest:my reaction to inglorious bastards being that it was still too close to to grindhouse for me to fully shake it i wonder how i'm gonna feel watching that next month and if it will improve uh particularly because i'm not holding it so strongly against uh being the thing that came after grindhouse knowing that there are other good things still to come
Guest:Like, I think that was the big fear was like, I'm just not going to know.
Guest:Like Grindhouse is, you know.
Guest:Stuck in your teeth.
Guest:That could be the way this guy's, yeah, the rest of his career is going to be like this.
Guest:And I'm never going to like a movie made ever again.
Marc:Well, that's how I felt.
Marc:And on this rewatch as well, because the last movie I watched was Kill Bill Part 2, right?
Marc:So I'm like already like, ugh.
Marc:And then I'm watching Death Proof and I'm just like, oh, no.
Marc:And so it's like a downward trajectory.
Marc:So, yeah, it's kind of hard to get myself out of the mud, so to speak, and kind of get back to it.
Marc:So, yeah, I'm curious how Inglourious Bastards is received by me as well.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, the big conundrum with this was, what do we do?
Guest:Do we watch this as it was shown in theaters as Death Proof, or as part of Grindhouse, rather?
Guest:Or do we watch it as Tarantino intends for it to be seen on its own, and what he considers to be like its own film called Death Proof?
Guest:And, you know, I had only ever seen it in the theater as Grindhouse, as part of Grindhouse.
Guest:Same.
Guest:And, uh, and so I never watched it again.
Guest:And so I watched the, uh, you know, I guess you would call it the director's release or the full version as he considers it.
Guest:And you did the same, but you then went back and watched grind house too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I watched this movie three times, Brendan.
Guest:Three times now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I watched it.
Marc:I watched it once on Amazon Prime and I was so confused because I didn't remember any of this.
Marc:Like I didn't remember any of it until the end, you know, like the end sequence.
Marc:Yeah, but I don't think that's your fault.
Marc:Continue.
Marc:I'll tell you my theory on that.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So I bought the DVD as soon as I watched it.
Marc:And I got the DVD the next day.
Marc:Thank you, Amazon.
Marc:And so I watched the theatrical version.
Marc:The Grindhouse version, like in Grindhouse.
Marc:Yes, the Grindhouse version.
Marc:I skipped the Planet Terror aspect of it.
Marc:But I then watched the extended cut, the director's edition, I suppose, a second time, just to see the differences again.
Marc:It's not much.
Marc:It's not much, but there are some scenes that are...
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:It's such a weird movie because there are scenes that should have been cut and were not released in the theater.
Marc:But then there are also scenes that were cut that should not have been on the director's cut.
Marc:It's a strange movie.
Marc:And then I also read the screenplay, which is, oof, it's just a lot.
Marc:I also, you know what else I did?
Marc:I watched Vanishing Point, the movie that was referenced.
Marc:Oh, the movie with the car that they're getting in this one.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:By the way, I thought for some reason that that stunt would be in the movie, and it's not.
Marc:It's just like a stunt that they wanted to do.
Marc:It's not in Vanishing Home.
Guest:Yeah, it's very contrived, this thing.
Guest:In order to get her on the hood of this car, this thing that is like some...
Guest:I guess, joyride thing they go on all the time.
Guest:Like, that scene is a stretch about, like, them convincing each other they should go do this thing, this, whatever, full sail, or whatever it was they call it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, the whole thing is, there's so much fad on this movie.
Marc:Like, that's what I took away from this, was that it's just a flabby movie.
Marc:It just...
Guest:But I got a question for you.
Guest:Is there, because this is my theory, that there was probably fat on it in the Grindhouse version too.
Guest:Like the shorter version probably felt just as flimsy and requiring much more editing, even though it was cut down by 25 minutes.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, the only thing, like, the Grindhouse version doesn't have the lap dance scene, you know, which was fine by me, but it also doesn't have the entire sequence of the women at the, like, the convenience store.
Marc:Like, that whole sequence is not in the movie.
Marc:So, it basically goes from the two Texas Rangers, who I can't stand, again in a movie, to...
Marc:To the girls in the Kill Bill Mustang.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:So yeah, that's what's missing.
Guest:I think what we should do is kind of set this up for people because I have a feeling that a lot of people have not seen this movie.
Guest:It is very much so the least seen Quentin Tarantino film by a lot because it made...
Guest:Very small amount of money in the theaters, which, you know, that counts as tickets.
Guest:So you know how many numbers of people went to the actual theater to see it.
Guest:And it's small.
Guest:It's bigger than, you know, Reservoir Dogs, where no one saw it on the theater.
Guest:But everyone who ever saw that saw it on...
Guest:home video or cable or some form like that.
Guest:This movie is so incredibly difficult to get in a version you can watch.
Guest:Like, I thought it was going to be on one of the streamers.
Guest:It was, like you said, it was on an Amazon Prime free option.
Guest:So when I turned mine on, it had commercials in it.
Guest:So I was like, oh, fuck this.
Guest:I'm not watching this commercial.
Guest:So I actually went and had to rent it.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:And so it's not in any kind of high demand.
Guest:I just don't imagine many people, the percentage of people that have seen this has got to be the smallest of any of his films.
Guest:And so if you don't know what happened here, this is after he makes Kill Bill, he has spent a lot of time hanging out with Robert Rodriguez.
Guest:He spends a lot of time in Austin where Rodriguez is centered and they make a lot of movies there.
Guest:He is...
Guest:One of his favorite pastimes with Rodriguez is to sit around and watch these old prints of shitty B movies.
Guest:And they love them.
Guest:They're in love with these movies.
Guest:And we talked about this the last time when he was like waiting to make Kill Bill, how he wanted to like live the life of an artist and just like kind of experience things and explore things.
Guest:And then...
Guest:You know, let the muses come to him.
Guest:And part of what he was doing was just like watching every kind of movie and immersing himself in all these genres, which is one of the reasons you get Kill Bill.
Guest:But but here it's almost like an overdose.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like these two guys OD'd on this garbage.
Guest:It's like like supersize me.
Guest:They were eating McDonald's every day.
Guest:And this is what they came away with.
Guest:And, you know, they talked about doing this as a double feature.
Guest:What if we bring the grindhouse back to the movie theaters?
Guest:And the idea of the grindhouse was these old theaters with...
Guest:shitty projectors that would literally grind up the film by playing them on these projectors like that's why the film would look scratchy and it would have missing parts of the reels because these theaters were in you know hard hit areas they were not meant to be
Guest:You know, places where you spent a lot of money, you'd go in with like a dollar or less and, you know, spend three, four hours in there watching these movies that cost the theater nothing.
Guest:They were garbage and they were just playing, you know, continuously there.
Guest:So they wanted this idea.
Marc:Did you ever experience this?
Guest:No, of course not.
Guest:I mean, neither did like anybody of our cohort.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was like Tarantino definitely did.
Guest:And he's, you know, 10 and 10 plus years older than us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, that makes sense.
Guest:But it is definitely a bygone era that predates us.
Guest:Us.
Guest:Like we were not of the age and we're not young dudes, right?
Guest:So this was like, you know, this would be like trying to get people to understand like what a movie palace was like back in the day.
Guest:Oh, it's just like you'd go to Radio City and you'd play these things.
Guest:It was just this thing of a bygone era.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:So they decide to make this thing, and they're each going to make a movie.
Guest:Boy, oh boy, I was reading about some of the other ideas they had for this.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:What else?
Guest:Common sense prevailed.
Guest:Well, apparently, the line that gets him to making Django is that the initial idea he had for his movie in this double feature was going to be about these...
Guest:like college girls who are doing a tour of a haunted plantation and the ghost of a slave is trying to kill them.
Guest:And it would be Sam Jackson playing this like ghost slave.
Guest:Oh man.
Guest:And I can't envision a world in which that was a good and be not offensive.
Guest:Like I just, it's impossible for me to envision that.
Marc:Samuel L. Jackson is Ghost Slave.
Guest:I mean, that name is fine as a thing.
Guest:Like, I would laugh at it just the way... Okay, so here's the thing.
Guest:In Grindhouse, and if you haven't seen it, if you didn't see it in the theater, the thing they did was put these fake trailers for other movies in between, like at the beginning of each movie.
Guest:You had Planet Terror, which is the Rodriguez movie, and then Death Proof, which is the Tarantino one.
Guest:And there were these fake trailers directed by other...
Guest:famous directors.
Guest:Edgar Wright directed one of them, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie.
Guest:And of course, one of those winds up being Machete, which, you know, with Danny Trejo, which they go on to make.
Guest:Thanksgiving is the other one, the Eli Roth one, which they just made into a movie, right?
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And so there were going to be all these little, there were these little trailers in between these things.
Guest:I think the Rob Zombie one is like Werewolf Women of the SS or something like that.
Guest:uh,
Guest:Those are funny for that exact reason, right?
Guest:You make, like, the title is a joke, and then you have two minutes around it of a funny idea of what could come out of that title, and that's that.
Guest:And, like, that's what Ghost Slave is.
Guest:And quite frankly, that's what Planet Terror and Death Proof are.
Guest:Like, these are things that do not hold an entire concept within them.
Guest:They are just fine for a joke.
Guest:Like, one...
Guest:five minute joke you laugh at and then you move on.
Guest:And these guys made, do you know how, do you remember, you, you saw Grindhouse in the theater.
Guest:Yeah, sure did.
Guest:Do you remember how long it was?
Guest:Oh, I think it was three hours, right?
Guest:It was three hours and 11 minutes.
Marc:And can I say?
Marc:That is punishing.
Marc:That is punishing.
Marc:However, I've seen Killers of the Flower Moon three times in the theater, right?
Marc:RRR.
Marc:Yeah, RRR.
Marc:And I've loved every second of it.
Marc:And it matters when a movie is bad.
Marc:That three hours and 11 minutes is an extraordinary amount of time.
Marc:Like the weight.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that is like an extraordinary amount of time that like a good movie has to be great.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To get you to that point.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They are starting at a baseline of, hey guys, this is terrible.
Guest:Come see how terrible these things are.
Guest:Like the idea is that it's a pastiche of terrible films.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Three hours is not going to hold that.
Guest:It's not going to work.
Marc:It's not sustainable, for sure.
Guest:Not sustainable.
Guest:But so he's developing this.
Guest:He comes to this idea of a stuntman as a serial killer because...
Guest:not unlike other Tarantino things we will see later, he gets taken with this little bit of lore or technique, craft that goes along with making films.
Guest:Think about in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the book, there's a whole section about horses that do stunts, right?
Guest:If you have a horse that does a fall down stunt, you could make lots of money as a stunt rider, right?
Guest:That's a very fun part of the book.
Guest:This was like, he was told this idea of death proof cars and he's telling Robert Rodriguez about it.
Guest:No, they like these guys, they drive around and you can do anything to the car and you will not die because the car is death proof.
Guest:And Rodriguez says to him, that's what you should call the movie death proof.
Guest:And he's like, Oh my God, you're totally right.
Guest:And it was, that is why there's this little thing.
Guest:like joke in the beginning of the film where it says Quentin Tarantino's Thunderbolt for like a nanosecond.
Guest:And then a title card imposes over it that says Death Proof, right?
Guest:So I guess Thunderbolt was like his working title for it.
Guest:And he took Rodriguez's idea and called it Death Proof.
Guest:But this idea of the stuntman as a serial killer who is using his car as the weapon...
Guest:is coming out of my mouth right there.
Guest:I'm like, oh, that's funny.
Guest:Tell me a little more about that.
Guest:And then I think my tolerance for hearing about the serial killer stuntman is like five minutes tops.
Guest:I have no more interest in it after you tell me five minutes of what the stuntman serial killer would do with his life.
Guest:I don't have any... I'm not like, oh, but what?
Guest:Does he have a family?
Guest:Does he...
Guest:Like, well, tell me more about the people he kills.
Guest:Where does he find them?
Guest:How does it, like, no.
Guest:Cars, death proof, and this guy's a serial killer.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So we're already starting at that level.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the thing that hamstrings this movie even more when it was presented in theaters is it's the second film.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And the first thing planet terror is a, can't get it off the bottom of your shoe piece of dog shit that will make you angry at life.
Guest:Like it, it is so repellent and unpleasant and everyone in it is worse than slumming it.
Guest:It's like there's slumming it, but like having a good time.
Guest:And then people who are slumming it and like, they're like, we know this sucks and,
Guest:And they're not, they don't even care.
Guest:That is offensive.
Guest:Like it is offensive to have to sit through this to the point where the only guy who's like trying is Tarantino in that planet terror playing.
Guest:I believe his character is named rapist number two.
Guest:Yikes.
Guest:And, and he is trying, which is bad.
Guest:Like you don't want to see that guy try, especially when he's trying and playing rapist number two.
Guest:So you're already off.
Guest:You spend over 90 minutes in just refuse.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Garbage.
Marc:It's like, I mean, look, you'd be in a bad mood from like, just think about doing something fun, like going to a baseball game and the team you root for just gets annihilated, like 15 to nothing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then you then have to go to dinner with your in-laws.
Marc:Right.
Marc:you're already in a shitty mood and this is just not going to be fun.
Guest:Like no matter how charming these, these are, you picked an absolute real world example.
Guest:You know, hypothetically, if this thing were to happen to me, Christopher Lopresto, that's relatable.
Marc:What are you talking about?
Marc:That's the most relatable analogy I've ever had.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's relatable because you can relate it.
Marc:But, I mean, it's just a miserable experience.
Guest:So what you're saying is exactly why I think you, and I was the same way, didn't remember quite a lot of the details from Death Proof.
Guest:Yeah, we were punched.
Guest:Like, I remembered the... If you asked me to explain it, I feel like I could have explained it in 10 minutes and got everything, right?
Guest:I would have left no stone unturned because it's so basic, right?
Guest:The premise and that it's basically the same story twice.
Guest:Which is annoying.
Guest:It is, but I do at least as a concept...
Guest:That was one of the few things within the movie where I was like, or at least you're giving me something here.
Guest:This is some form of nourishment in this dry, dry desert.
Guest:But the idea of it is so simple.
Guest:You blow through it in seconds.
Guest:And the details, I think I was just so sour by the time it came around, the one and only other time I've seen this, that I just didn't... I didn't remember...
Guest:that the car they're driving was the car that Quentin Tarantino showed up to Mark's house in.
Guest:That's so funny.
Guest:He showed up to the house.
Guest:I took pictures of the car.
Guest:I'm like, oh, look at this.
Guest:This fucking car is amazing.
Guest:And all I thought the car was in my mind was, oh, he got a Mustang that looks like the Bruce Lee, Uma Thurman.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:suit from kill bill right he's in the death car it is that right it does look like that but it is in death proof yeah and i did not remember that like that's how distant my memories are of this film right also i i'll just say the the interior of that car is the death is kill bill volume two like artwork where it's red and yellow on the inside
Guest:There's that, and then the pussy wagon decal is on the back of the car, and Rosario Dawson's phone plays the Daryl Hannah whistle from Twisted Nerve.
Marc:This movie is like if a Quentin Tarantino fan made a fan movie.
Guest:That's right, but also it is the harbinger of doom of what would happen if Quentin Tarantino decided all his movies are connected.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that there's a cinematic Tarantino universe like this is the warning sign of again, I guarantee that's why I have some sour feelings about Inglourious Bastards because I had not shaken this by two years after the fact when I saw that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, you're going to see it a month later.
Marc:So you should watch like once upon a time in Hollywood.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But see, that's the thing.
Guest:I know those are to come.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it has not gotten to, you know, ye abandon all hope.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like that.
Guest:I was on the verge of that with this guy.
Guest:Like I was like, I might have to check out like this is bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:yeah i mean i mean by the way there's other stuff that's also like in this movie shoehorned in this movie like kurt russell talks about the big kahuna burger like the yeah the billboard outside of there there's the uh the reservoir dogs diner scene with no cuts like that that's there um the shot where the actors look down to the camera when they open the car hood that's their toes of course like it's
Guest:Well, as you mentioned, there's two characters that are from Kill Bill, like the federal marshals there in Texas are back in this movie and are as pointless in this movie as they are in that one.
Marc:Can we stop trying to make Michael Parks happen?
Guest:Look, I don't mind if they make that guy a role that works.
Guest:He gave him the same role in two films where he doesn't do anything.
Guest:Where, like, the whole point of the character is that he's, like, ineffectual or something.
Guest:Or he's not going to pursue the case.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's not going to do anything about it.
Guest:Why did you choose that to bring back?
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because I actually watched some of the special features of this movie.
Marc:I went deep into this movie.
Marc:And Quinter Dino said that that scene is in the movie as a homage to the end of Psycho, where the doctors are talking about Norman Bates and why he would dress up as his mom.
Guest:Literally the one scene of Psycho that every critic who's ever reviewed it is like, well, that scene sucks.
Guest:But unfortunately, you can't do anything about it because it's in the movie.
Guest:But like, yeah, boy, wouldn't this movie be a million times better if it just went from, you know, the resolution to seeing Norman Bates sitting in the cell?
Guest:Like, that's amazing.
Guest:Instead, you have these doofuses explaining the movie to you.
Marc:Apparently, Quentin's like, that's the most important scene in the movie.
Marc:Like, no.
Marc:No, it's not.
Marc:Who told you that?
Marc:It's not.
Guest:No, not at all.
Marc:That was a funny joke.
Guest:So here's the other thing.
Guest:Now, let's get to this experience of watching it now.
Guest:Here's a big problem.
Guest:So you start this up cold.
Guest:And right away, like I said, there's immediately that stuff with the credits.
Guest:Well, first of all, you get the new Beverly feature presentation thing.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:Great, good stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So...
Guest:you're already put into this zone of like, if you're not watching this in the context of grindhouse, you're like, Oh, this is like an old looking movie, which other filmmakers have done this.
Guest:Uh, they just did it with the, uh, the holdovers, right?
Guest:Like the holdovers starts Alexander Payne.
Guest:It says an, a picture by Alexander Payne or something like that doesn't like, and it's, it looks like it's a seventies Warner brothers logo.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So this is not anything crazy, but,
Guest:But as soon as now you're watching this and all these little grindhouse flourishes are happening, right?
Guest:The scratchiness of the film grain, the scenes that upcut and jump and all that stuff, all it registers as is, that's cute.
Guest:Oh, look at that.
Guest:That thing that just happened.
Guest:That's cute, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So outside of the context of grindhouse, it's just style, right?
Guest:You're like, well, this is like just a style thing.
Guest:And I'm trying to watch a story here and I'm not investing in it because there's all this crazy style every five seconds.
Guest:He doesn't let, let go of it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It just keeps happening.
Guest:So it's almost like you need grindhouse to,
Guest:To have this movie make any sense.
Guest:But the problem is Grindhouse sucks.
Guest:So there's that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:By the way, getting back to the credits.
Marc:Can I just say how disturbing it was to see the credit of Harvey Weinstein?
Marc:Yeah, see it win.
Marc:And a split second later, you see a woman's crotch.
Marc:Grabs her crotch.
Marc:Don't like that.
Marc:Don't like that one bit.
Marc:Um, that was upsetting.
Marc:Um, yeah, that, I mean, that had to be purposeful.
Marc:I had the same exact thought.
Marc:I was like, oh my God.
Marc:It's like the reverse of the Leo, um, meme, uh, where he's pointing backwards.
Marc:Let me run away.
Marc:Just turn the channel off, turn the TV off.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, yes, there's all these flourishes that don't quite make sense.
Marc:And, you know, there's a whole... There's so many scenes that are just...
Marc:And they're, I mean, that's what a Quentin Tarantino movie is, right?
Marc:It's like a hangout movie, right?
Marc:That's what we love about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Pulp Fiction.
Marc:These are, and Jackie Brown, they're hangout movies, right?
Marc:So here we are hanging out with these girls.
Marc:And I got to say, none of it ever goes anywhere.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, here's why it doesn't work.
Guest:I can tell you exactly why it doesn't work.
Guest:There's a quote from him saying that what he wanted to do, that a lot of times in his history of his life, whether it was when he was younger or when he was making films, and we know this, we've talked about it already.
Guest:We talked about how he was like real good buds with Uma Thurman.
Guest:They'd go out drinking together.
Guest:That's how they came up with Kill Bill.
Guest:He was a dude that liked to hang out with women as friends like that.
Guest:I mean that in the total, like normal way that it sounds, this was not a weird thing.
Guest:He had a lot of women friends.
Guest:And one of the things he said was like, I wanted these scenes to sound like they sounded when they talked and I didn't want any of my stuff in there.
Guest:And yeah,
Guest:Like two things about that.
Guest:One, he can't fully do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because his stuff keeps coming in.
Guest:And when it comes in, all it sounds like with these characters is like a collection of trivia.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It doesn't ever sound like anything natural.
Guest:It's like they're rattling off something he told them.
Guest:And it's like, oh, did Quentin Tarantino tell you about this band that you're now telling me I have to listen to?
Guest:And then when he when he's not doing that, he can't get the notes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like he is making it's like a simulacrum of women speaking to each other as filtered through him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it doesn't get to where you would get if women were just speaking to each other.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:They all sound like Quentin Tarantino, just with, like, wigs on.
Guest:But they sound like Quentin Tarantino until they don't.
Guest:And then it sounds like people deliberately trying to not sound like Quentin Tarantino.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Like, it's this very tortured dialogue style.
Guest:And it goes on for long stretches.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:Giving it all I had.
Guest:I just could never attach to any of these characters through the dialogue, which is like the literal hallmark of Tarantino's movies.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like from Jump, right?
Guest:From the first scene of Reservoir Dogs, you're like, I like all these people.
Guest:I don't know who they are.
Guest:You will soon find out that they're psychopaths and thieves.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But at this point, you like all of them because this is a very entertaining conversation.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Also, I mean, look, this movie for some reason is called a feminist movie or like, you know, women, you know, getting revenge.
Marc:And I'm just like, is it like there's the the main bad guy is, you know, stuntman Mike.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And but we're also catching up with these other boys who are trying to sleep with these women.
Marc:And they're like saying like, you know, they're game planning like, oh, we're going to we're going to get a bunch of shots.
Marc:And so, you know, we can make out with them, blah, blah, blah.
Marc:And then they like make fun of the bad guy.
Marc:Like it would be like.
Marc:like, I don't know, making fun of Michael Myers for his mask, right?
Marc:I mean, they're literally doing the same.
Marc:It's as if Michael Myers is sitting there and they're making fun of Michael Myers, except nothing ever happens to those guys.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Then just-
Guest:Well, okay, so I guess that, but hear me out on this.
Guest:I think that's intentional.
Guest:I think that is intended to show that the framework of these old slasher films was highly sexist, highly misogynistic.
Guest:You were watching with kind of a sadistic...
Guest:eye at the basically the destruction of these women right from beginning to end because even though you're watching them unharmed through the majority of what you're seeing you know what's coming for them and it's and so all these things you're watching about them read as tragic right this this one woman texting her boyfriend and you know that nothing's going to come of that all these things can we can we can we
Marc:Can we just pause right there?
Marc:That texting scene or those scenes were agony, like absolutely agony.
Marc:Like why they didn't go anywhere and we had to sit through them for so long.
Guest:But I think that's what he's doing.
Guest:He's saying like, if they were not snuffed out by a stuntman, Mike, these people had entire lives and agency and everything.
Guest:And then this serial killer,
Guest:comes along and kills them and that's what these that's what these genres led to and ultimately you were only rewarded with one of them escaping right the whole thing of the final girl and whatnot and with this thing he does it they all die even the final girl when you assume is the final girl and then he replays the movie right you get it in an entirely different town 12 years later or whatever and you're
Guest:it's structured exactly the same.
Guest:So you're led to believe it's all going to go exactly that same way.
Guest:And instead they kill him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I like, again, I can explain it in 10 minutes.
Guest:It's that's all totally fine to me.
Guest:It's the idea then that that's a movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think it would take something very special for that to be a movie and a compelling one.
Guest:And all of this nonsense, waste of time, grindhouse stuff just puts it behind the blocks.
Guest:You cannot get it out from behind those blocks.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And ever make it into something that is interesting or enlightening.
Guest:Now, I will say this.
Guest:The last 20 minutes is fucking spectacular.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It sure as hell is.
Guest:It really actually made me sad to see what skill he can devote to something this stupid.
Guest:Everything about the last 20 minutes is...
Guest:just the highest level of craft of stunt work, camera work, editing.
Guest:Everyone is at the tip top of their game acting.
Guest:Uh, the, the, the actors who all felt so stunted up until that point, including the two who are stunt women, not feature performers regularly.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:I was angry at him leaving them out to dry for a goodly portion of the film.
Guest:Like you said, they redo the reservoir dog scene, and it falls completely flat because you don't have professional actors there who know how to make this thing sing, right?
Guest:That's no fault of theirs.
Guest:That's his fault to do that to them.
Guest:But once those two women get in the car, those two stunt performers... Mm-hmm.
Guest:They are so good.
Guest:They're good.
Guest:And they're good.
Guest:They're good acting in that part because it's like, hey, act like a stunt person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was so sold on the whole last 20 minutes of this movie.
Marc:Yes, absolutely.
Marc:And that's the that's the thing that was nagging me about this movie.
Marc:Like this movie is like a love letter to stunt people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like giving them their flowers.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But the thing is, this love letter is muddied by this framework of this grindhouse nonsense.
Marc:It's like giving your spouse flowers, but then leaving them a sink full of dishes to clean, you know?
Marc:But like, Quentin Tarantino would later make another love letter to the stunt community with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:and there is no grime on it it is spick and span it is well also it is a period piece that respects the period that's another problem with this is that there is a point where the obviously the movie starts and it looks like a grindhouse choppy film they're driving around the streets the cars are all old looking they drive past the alamo draft house that looks like you know really old or whatever and
Guest:They're showing Gimme Shelter there or something.
Guest:So you're trying to, you know, you're doing the thing you do with movies where you try to geolocate.
Guest:Okay, where are we?
Guest:And it just feels like it's old.
Guest:Then they start whipping out cell phones and stuff, right?
Guest:Wait, what?
Guest:So, okay, that's a, I get it.
Guest:That's the style you want to do.
Guest:This is not a period piece and it kind of like exists in all time and space.
Guest:Once that is clear, you stop trusting everything.
Guest:I didn't trust the dialogue at that point.
Guest:I didn't trust the references.
Guest:Like when I say trust it, I didn't trust that this was coming from its own time zone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like you can't say that.
Guest:Pulp Fiction is a period piece.
Guest:You couldn't tell me that that exists in the past, but you also can't necessarily ground it right in the present.
Guest:And you got these people making references to Lash LaRue and Clutch Cargo and all this stuff.
Guest:So it could easily be in the 70s, but it kind of feels like it's present, 1994.
Guest:And it doesn't matter because everyone in it is existing in that time zone.
Guest:of whatever that universe was.
Guest:It all was hermetically sealed.
Guest:It made perfect sense.
Guest:This thing is like...
Guest:the part that made me like, like I had to do like an audio double take was the woman is a, is a DJ, right?
Guest:And, and stuntman Mike is saying, don't you have a billboard down on whatever?
Guest:And you can see her billboard is right in the frame.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so she says, I got one right there.
Guest:Zatoichi.
Guest:Like that is a movie about a blind samurai that only Quentin Tarantino knows about.
Yeah.
Guest:It was that moment where I was like, guys, what are we doing here?
Guest:Can I at least have characters who I believe exist in the land you have created?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:There's no way this DJ is going to know that correctly.
Guest:Wait, wait, wait.
Guest:Maybe she does, but if she says it as a reference like that, the other person is going to be like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Zaya, what?
Marc:Yeah, there's no double take.
Marc:It's just let out into the wild.
Guest:Again, like I said, it's like this collection of trivia that they all have amassed.
Guest:Right before they get killed by Stunman Mike and they're driving in the car and she has this thing about this band, the weirdest name of a band, and you've never heard of them.
Guest:And you know that he's so happy he knows about this band and he's going to put it into the movie.
Guest:And by the way, she has to call...
Guest:the radio station to have them play the song she wants.
Guest:We've established this is in present day.
Guest:You have iPods.
Guest:You have the aux cable in your car.
Guest:You can play anything you want.
Marc:It's so weird.
Marc:And then, by the way, the radio station is dead silent until that song comes on.
Marc:So yeah, it was very, very interesting.
Marc:By the way, Ken, I don't know about you, but when I was watching this movie, Kurt Russell's in this movie,
Marc:And didn't you think that, man—and I don't like recasting things, all right?
Marc:But wouldn't Kill Bill have been much better if Kurt Russell was Bill?
Marc:Oh, a gazillion times better.
Marc:Like, my God, man.
Marc:Like, he should have been Bill.
Guest:Here's exactly why.
Guest:Because at the end of this movie, you do feel bad for stuntman.
Guest:Like you're like, you're like, oh my God, this is like kind of unfair at this point what they're doing to him.
Guest:It's just, he's a sitting duck.
Guest:And like that moment where he's like basically crying to himself.
Guest:He's like the cowardly lion.
Guest:He's like... Yes, it's like, it is...
Guest:It is actually sympathetic.
Guest:Like, I'm not saying I'm glad that he got away.
Guest:Like, I wanted him to get away with all his murders.
Guest:But it was like, oh, geez, they're really being mean to Stuntman Mike right now.
Marc:I must say, I loved the, oh, be careful of my right arm.
Marc:It's broken.
Marc:Oh, this one?
Marc:Great.
Guest:But like, that's what we were talking about last month about how we just hated Bill.
Guest:And it's like, if it was Kurt Russell, there ain't no way you're coming away from that movie being like, well, Bill was a total dud.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Like, yeah.
Marc:Kurt Russell, I feel like if he met him back then, he would have been Bill.
Marc:And that Kill Bill could have been something special.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, I think that Kurt Russell brings that out.
Guest:Like people, people respond to him in a certain way.
Guest:And I think the reason why he wanted Kurt Russell in this part was he said this had come at a time after like he started making a lot of like Disney movies.
Guest:right yeah miracle and stuff like that and and he wanted like the snake plissken like like this generation didn't know badass kurt russell should come back right yeah and i feel like i don't want to say it's entirely due to tarantino because i think a lot of it is people revisiting the thing and big trouble in little china the carpenter movies right yeah and so but kurt russell now i think has that rep for people it's like he's like a kind of modern john wayne which
Guest:he's even doing in this movie a little bit.
Guest:The whole thing with the book, right?
Guest:He's like imitating John Wayne.
Marc:I actually thought that was John Wayne's voice.
Marc:Like he did a good John Wayne.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And so yes, everyone loves Kurt Russell so much so that
Guest:I think you have something to share about Kurt Russell, don't you?
Marc:I do.
Marc:So I actually got to meet Kurt Russell.
Marc:So my wife's cousin, Meredith Hagner, is an actress.
Marc:She starred in a bunch of stuff, like most notably the show Search Party that was on TBS, and Vacation Friends with John Cena.
Marc:She's hilarious.
Marc:She's great.
Guest:She's also in, what was the one with Andy Samberg?
Marc:Is it called Palm Springs?
Marc:Yeah, Palm Springs, yeah.
Marc:Great in that.
Marc:She plays his girlfriend in that movie.
Marc:Well, she was in a movie called Folk Hero and Funny Guy with a guy named Wyatt Russell, son of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.
Marc:They started dating and then later got engaged to be married.
Marc:So my wife and I and her entire family got invited to the wedding in Colorado at the Russell family ranch.
Guest:The Russell Family Ranch, which is called... The Home Run Ranch.
Marc:Great name.
Marc:Great name.
Marc:And you'll soon find out why it's called that.
Marc:So my wife's whole family going to this wedding.
Marc:Now, my wife's family is pretty large, pretty Irish, and pretty loud, okay?
Marc:So...
Marc:You know, I'm you know, I know what I'm getting into with this.
Marc:There's going to be a lot of like trying jockeying for position with trying to talk to Kurt Russell.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And like, you know, I am, of course, excited for my new cousin and, you know, for her wedding.
Marc:But I'm also like really stoked to meet Kurt Russell, you know, snake fucking Plissken, you know.
Marc:So I want to differentiate myself from the crowd of people looking to rub elbows with the famous folk.
Marc:So I devised a plan in case I happened to meet the legendary actor this weekend.
Marc:Now, I know Kurt Russell from a lot of things.
Marc:But one of the things I know about Kurt Russell is that he was once a baseball player.
Marc:He was even invited and played in the 90s to some Mets spring training games because his nephew is Mets infielder Matt Franco.
Guest:Yeah, a journeyman infielder in the Major League Baseball, but has some very prominent moments in New York Mets lore, particularly one very, very famous at-bat.
Marc:Yes, that's right.
Marc:Now, like Brendan was saying, Matt Franco, decent utility guy, never really a fixture on the Mets lineup.
Marc:His specialty was basically pinch hitting late in games.
Marc:He had a knack for coming off the bench and making an impact.
Marc:One particular game during a Subway series in 1999, Matt Franco came in to pinch hit.
Marc:Bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, Mets trailing by a run.
Marc:Two outs down to his last strike, and he hit a game-winning base hit off of Hall of Fame Yankees closer Mariano Rivera.
Marc:The great Mariano.
Marc:Untouchable.
Marc:Untouchable.
Marc:The Sandman.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So it was a great come from behind victory that made Matt a fan favorite for years to come.
Marc:And for me, that guy is immortalized.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He never has to pay for a drink in New York ever again.
Guest:Never has to pay for a steak.
Marc:Like he could go, he could eat anywhere he wants.
Marc:Well, I mean, as I find out, he can make his own steak because he's like a cowboy now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But so my plan in the event that I meet Kurt Russell was to not talk about him, but to talk to him about his nephew.
Marc:So we get to the wedding rehearsal at some gorgeous outdoor venue.
Marc:The two families are meeting for the first time.
Marc:The Parkers, my wife's family, are Irish and love an open bar.
Marc:People are dancing, having a good time.
Marc:Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, and the like are all dancing as well.
Marc:I go up to try to get a drink at the bar.
Marc:The bar's packed.
Marc:I move to like a quiet part of the bar and wait for the bartender to move my way.
Marc:Well, while I'm waiting, who saddles up next to me?
Marc:Mr. Kurt Russell himself.
Marc:Now I turn to him, introduce myself, thank him for the invite, compliment his family.
Marc:He's very cordial.
Marc:The bartender takes our orders.
Marc:And as I wait for my drink to be poured, I ask him, hey, by any chance, is your nephew Matt Franco here?
Marc:And like, how is he doing?
Marc:He spins around and says, oh, yeah, he's doing great.
Marc:He's over in the back.
Marc:I cut Kurt Russell off and tell him, oh, I couldn't possibly meet him.
Marc:But I will say with me and my friends, that man is a living legend from his time with the Mets.
Marc:Well, he tells me I have to meet him.
Marc:Ball players love meeting fans.
Marc:I'm going to go get him.
Marc:I tell him I couldn't possibly.
Marc:I'd be too embarrassed.
Marc:I'm just happy to know he's here and doing well.
Marc:I thank Kurt Russell for the party and his time.
Marc:Take my drink and walk away.
Marc:I walk away from Kurt Russell.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you won.
Marc:You win.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:You had your, you had your moment.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like you, you got everything you needed.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it was a great interaction, right?
Marc:I then asked my wife to dance.
Marc:We're on the dance floor and we're, we're, you know, we're doing our thing.
Marc:And on the dance floor, who taps me on the shoulder?
Marc:Kurt Russell.
Marc:And he introduces me to met legend, Matt Franco.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:I love that he's like, he's bringing him over to you like a party trick.
Guest:Look, I got him.
Marc:I then got to talk to Matt Franco for what felt like an eternity.
Marc:I asked him about his time as a ball player, what he's doing now.
Marc:And most importantly to me was what in the world was he thinking when he got in the box and got that clutch hit off of Marion Rivera?
Marc:And man, this guy is the sweetest guy you can ever meet.
Marc:He's a cowboy now.
Marc:He works on the family ranch.
Marc:He actually made like the stew or I guess like shot the meat for the main dish of the wedding, which was delicious.
Marc:It was a chili.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, he's doing great.
Marc:He's happy.
Marc:He misses the fans, but, you know, loves baseball, doesn't really watch that often.
Marc:But what he told me about that hit has stayed with me since he told me.
Marc:All right.
Marc:He told me everyone knew that Mariano was going to throw him that, you know, his famous cut fastball.
Marc:OK, he lived and died with that cutter.
Marc:It's one pitch.
Marc:Yeah, it's one pitch.
Marc:And he went to the Hall of Fame with it.
Marc:So he broke down the plate into quadrants and he set his sights on one quadrant.
Marc:And if Mariano threw that Hall of Fame cutter in that quadrant, he would be ready for it.
Marc:Well, that's exactly what Mariano did.
Marc:He threw it right where he was looking and Matt barreled up and shot it into right field.
Guest:which is amazing because it's like one fourth of the plate right one fourth yes where he's looking and a good baseball batting average is 250 or you know one fourth of the time that you're hitting right so it's like literally that is what baseball is is this thing is coming so fast so you just got to basically guess what
Guest:Well, am I going to hit it here or there or wherever?
Guest:Let me just focus.
Guest:And if it's in that spot, it's going out of here.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And by the way, I think about that all the time when I'm watching baseball.
Marc:I'm like, oh, my God, how could he have missed or how could he have taken that pitch right down the middle?
Marc:Well, he wasn't looking in that quadrant.
Marc:You know, yes.
Marc:You know, yes.
Marc:So so, yeah, I asked if I could take a picture with him.
Marc:And it was really just a really sweet moment with a genuinely nice guy.
Marc:And every time I passed Kurt Russell that weekend, I was the guy who was a diehard Mets fan.
Marc:So it was it was great.
Marc:It was.
Guest:Well, I also love that, you know, when you are like sideline up to Kurt Russell and you're like, oh, hey, I don't mean to bother you, but like he's ready with probably five things in his head that he's going to say like, oh, yeah, I loved John Carpenter movies, you know, or like, oh, no, yeah, miracle.
Guest:We were.
Guest:Yeah, we were really on that ice.
Guest:Yeah, it was the same place where the miracle on ice happened.
Guest:Like he's ready what you're going to say.
Guest:And you're like.
Guest:I got to ask you, is your nephew here?
Guest:He must have been so thrilled that it was like, oh, my macro didn't get filled there.
Guest:Wasn't one of the pre-selected questions that I normally get.
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:I really do.
Guest:It had to be.
Guest:That's why he went and hunted him out for you.
Guest:You gave Kurt Russell a mission.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I got to say, the whole family is just a delight.
Marc:Like, they are charming and funny.
Guest:No, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn?
Marc:And Kate Hudson?
Marc:Can I tell you?
Marc:Like, you know how families do, like, toasts at weddings?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And their entire side of the family did a toast.
Marc:Like, all the actors did.
Marc:on their side did toasts and they were all one right after the other.
Marc:First of all, they didn't have a piece of paper and they were just hilarious and touching every job.
Marc:I'm just like, oh yeah, look, that's why they get money to do the thing because they're so good at this.
Marc:Everyone was just charming.
Marc:Kate Hudson's husband, charming.
Marc:It was just a delight to be with everyone.
Guest:Well, I'm very glad you told that story because it's a better story than the plot of Death Proof.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:And hey, I think that Tarantino would appreciate that because... Why?
Guest:To get back to the movie here and wrap this up.
Guest:I noticed something about this that will then become really the touchstone of all of Quentin Tarantino's work.
Guest:And it is in this film, right?
Guest:It's the fact that, as we mentioned, you've got this first section, which is the real, you know, Grindhouse B movie homage to slasher films.
Guest:And it plays out the way those movies play out with the gritty violence that it has and just all of the what we talked about style points.
Guest:And when it switches into this second version of the story, if you notice, he drops all that stuff, right?
Guest:You don't have the grain on the film.
Guest:No grain.
Guest:Everything is shot better.
Guest:You have longer takes.
Guest:You have more discipline around the filmmaking style, even though the story is the same and the trappings are the same.
Guest:And I feel it doesn't hurt that then it has the best sequence in the film with this car chase at the end.
Guest:But I feel that this is the quintessential idea behind his films, which is he can tell this story better.
Guest:right this is the retelling of a story right and and all it's like his heart is in movies right he he lives by movies he grew up with movies it's movies movies movies and the entire reason is he's a director is because he thinks i can do that better and then he extends that into history right i could end world war ii better right i could fix
Guest:The Sharon Tate murder, right?
Guest:He thinks, I will tell this story better than reality, right?
Guest:And I do think that that's this movie's only value.
Marc:It gives him that nugget of an idea, that seed of an idea.
Guest:Right, which is there in Pulp Fiction.
Guest:You know, like I said, when we talked about that, he rearranges the movie so the hero can walk out with, you know, putting his gun in his belt as opposed to dying on the toilet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so, you know, this is there for him, but I feel like this is the...
Guest:the building blocks of like, here is the story for one hour.
Guest:And now I'm going to tell it for a second hour, but different and better and more satisfying where the good guys win and the bad guy loses.
Guest:And like at that level, I'm like, I am not willing to throw the whole thing in the trash and say, it's a total embarrassment and he should be ashamed of it.
Guest:It is more just like, yeah,
Guest:OK, if it exists for that purpose, well, then good.
Guest:Like it's it's something you can watch after you watch all the other Tarantino films.
Guest:You can come.
Guest:You can circle this, go back to and be like, oh, OK, that's a nice exercise in this concept of retelling the story and doing it with your highest level of filmmaking skill that that you like to show off all the time.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And I mean, yeah, in an ideal world, he would have cut that first piece into like 20 minutes.
Guest:Dude, in an ideal world, he never makes this and it's a 20 minute short film.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And I got to say, the most disappointing thing about it, and it would be way more disappointing if he didn't go on to make better films afterwards.
Guest:But this is how I remember feeling at the time and watching this, especially watching it with the knowledge of it being a serial killer story.
Guest:this is 2007 yeah do you know what david fincher was doing in 2007 was making zodiac zodiac yeah right like a real serial killer movie but beyond that do you know what paul thomas anderson was doing in 2007 no there will be blood oh wow wow you know what the coen brothers were doing in 2007
Guest:What?
Guest:No Country for Old Men.
Guest:Wow, that was a dark time.
Guest:But I mean, these are three of the greatest films ever made.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he is, and Quentin Tarantino is one of the greatest filmmakers to live, in my estimation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he makes this the year those filmmakers are making those masterpieces.
Marc:Yeah, those guys took a leap forward or took a leap up and he wanted to slide backwards for some reason.
Guest:And so you know what happens after this?
Guest:What?
Guest:This is when he starts talking about 10 films.
Guest:And I think it's because he was totally embarrassed by this.
Guest:Now, he has talked about it being a commercial failure.
Guest:And there's a lot of, you know, him talking at length in interviews about how he up until this movie had been very good at meeting the audience where they were at.
Guest:And that with this movie, he felt like he asked the audience to come with him and they just weren't interested in the thing he was bringing them to.
Guest:And he said, that was a lesson I had to learn.
Guest:And, you know, he talks about this as his worst film, but his caveat is always, if that's my worst film, then I'm good.
Guest:Like, I'm good to go if that's the worst I'll ever do.
Guest:But I do think that got in his psyche and he thought to himself...
Guest:I need to like put the next part of my career on lock and make only things I can be satisfied with.
Guest:And therefore he limited himself because it's right around this time that he starts giving interviews talking about, I don't want to be making movies when I'm old.
Guest:He has this quote where he's like, when, when you make a limp, flaccid, go nowhere, bad film, that bad film takes away three of your good films and,
Guest:So he's got this idea in his head about like, I can't flop any more of these things.
Guest:And he limits himself to 10 in interview after interview after interview.
Guest:And I totally have to think it was watching his peers, specifically Paul Thomas Anderson, who's like his...
Guest:you know, weed buddy.
Guest:And that guy goes out and makes this just stone cold masterpiece.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And this movie is considered his worst film.
Guest:It had to have an effect on it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that...
Marc:I wonder if that having an effect on him, but what about now where people are making more movies and Martin Scorsese is making movies into his 80s and he's making some of his best work now.
Marc:I wonder if that is factoring into his mind and being like, oh, well, maybe I don't have to stop when I'm 60 or whatever.
Marc:I can just keep going, you know?
Guest:Maybe, but he's such a rules-oriented guy.
Guest:He like...
Guest:you know, hyper focuses on the things that he sets out to do that.
Guest:I can't imagine he's going to break that unless, you know, something else forces it to be broken.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Which is why I think probably the movie critic is on the shelf and something else is coming.
Guest:So he can't, he can't get himself to the point where he's confident enough.
Guest:It's like, this is going to be great.
Marc:right like he feels like it needs to be great right and that that's so much pressure like that is that's like walking up to the plate and you have to hit a home run every time every time and it's just like that's a lot of pressure to put on someone and i hope he's doing okay because i can't imagine the amount of pressure he is putting on himself by saying that you know this will you know be my my last movie like that is that's rough you
Marc:man.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Although I will say even a little bit of pressure is okay by me if it keeps him from doing this.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:At least I know we're set to watch four movies over the next four months that are better than this one.
Guest:Like I know that's going to be the case regardless of where I wind up ranking in Glorious Bastards.
Guest:I know it's going to be better than this.
Marc:Well, can I ask you a question?
Marc:If again, Kill Bill 1 and 2 were split into two different movies,
Marc:Would Death Proof be above or below Kill Bill 2?
Guest:Below and it's not even a question.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was actually hoping that like, oh, maybe this movie is a sneaky good movie, you know?
Marc:And it just doesn't rise.
Marc:You know, it's like a souffle.
Marc:It doesn't rise.
Marc:It just sits there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wanted to think to myself...
Guest:And watching it again, I was going in with the assumption, like, all right, I'm pretty sure this is not getting out of the cellar, right?
Guest:It's going to be the last ranked movie.
Guest:But maybe I can at least say it's a good movie.
Guest:Like, removed from the grindhouse thing, it would at least be good.
Guest:Like, it would be some way that I could watch it and enjoy it.
Guest:And it's not.
Guest:It's got a great 20 minutes, but it is not a good movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It has a low ceiling too.
Marc:It's just like, there's nowhere.
Marc:And like, look, I never, I was never into slasher movies.
Marc:Like, you know, I feel like you love horror movies.
Marc:Like I feel like.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm not like obsessive about them.
Guest:I just like them the same way.
Guest:I like any type of movie that, you know, it's made in a certain style.
Guest:Like I can appreciate it.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So yeah.
Marc:So that, so the fact that this was a serial killer on wheels didn't, didn't make your, you know, sort of, you know, juices get going.
Guest:No, because I don't think like if you think about what are the actual good versions of those type of movies like Halloween, I just watched Halloween last Halloween and it's like not at all sadistic or brutal or or even that scary in the modern context.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:but it's just great.
Guest:It's just amazingly well filmed and the mood is awesome.
Guest:And it's like, so that's what I like.
Guest:If it's a horror movie and it's great, sign me up.
Guest:Like I don't have any problem with it, but like, I'm not into just like the, the fact that this, that something was, you know, playing on a, a, a, you know, split reel drive in double feature and people have nostalgic memories of that.
Guest:And so therefore I want the same type of style and effects all the time.
Guest:Like I,
Guest:I don't care about that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, so safe to say we have not moved this up our rankings, right?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:It's still a number nine.
Guest:Number nine.
Guest:It is indeed number nine on our list.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I wanted us to start out talking with this because I figured, you know, we might spend the whole episode doing so.
Guest:And we kind of have taken up all the time.
Guest:It should not be surprising if you are interested in hearing how I personally can get going on movies.
Guest:I was invited on this show called The Cinephiles and the first part of what I recorded with them just dropped.
Guest:It is two hours long of me and the hosts talking about Total Recall.
Guest:And we only talked about 40 minutes worth of the film.
Guest:So you have to wait till part two, which is like two and a half hours long where we finish the film.
Guest:So yes, I know that I can get to talking about movies for quite a long time.
Guest:And if you want to listen to that, I'll put a link in the episode description.
Guest:Go check it out.
Guest:It was a real fun time with those guys.
Guest:But we also had some WTF stuff this week.
Guest:And I know, Chris, maybe you had some thoughts on it we could get to real quick before
Guest:we go.
Marc:How concerned were you and how much work did you have to do with the conference room audio?
Guest:Oh, I did a fair amount of work with it, but I was very happy with how it came out, actually, considering where it was at.
Guest:I was thrilled that I got that echo down.
Guest:And the way that it ultimately sounded, I felt like if I went further with it, it would have had that bad flangey computer noise to it.
Guest:And so this was, it got to a real nice sweet spot, I thought, where it was, you know, clearly in a different location than a studio.
Guest:But it got fixed.
Guest:I was happy with it.
Marc:Yeah, good, good.
Marc:And the bonus episode was this really interesting live show that I've never heard.
Marc:And at the end of the episode, Jason and his dad, like...
Guest:gosh that was such a touching uh email that he sent mark and uh yeah i hope jason is still listening and hell i hope his dad is too well i gotta tell you we continue to get those kind of emails all the time yeah yeah that's i mean that's really like uh it we've said it before and it sounds trite and i don't mean it to but like that's why we keep doing it it really is like why yeah like why would you stop doing something
Guest:When you hear something like that and someone's like, this is like important to my life.
Guest:You're like, well, fuck, I guess this is a good thing we're doing here.
Guest:We should keep it going.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I see it every week and like it was nice to see even back then it was touching people.
Marc:So that was really cool.
Marc:And just this Thursday, you had Geezer Butler.
Marc:I guess I knew that there were Nazis about heavy metal.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It kind of gets that vibe.
Marc:But this guy had a Nazi brother.
Guest:I like how he was just like, oh, no, he was a Nazi.
Guest:Mark was like, I guess, you know, kind of intrigued by the style and everything.
Guest:No, no, oh, no.
Guest:He believed this stuff.
Marc:Yeah, no, no.
Marc:He's super Nazi.
Yeah.
Guest:I also thought it was crazy that that interview, like it went this whole time and he's, you know, he's got an amazing story.
Guest:He's like his life in that crazy world and all that.
Guest:But then it's like gets to the end and it's like, he's like, oh yeah, basically I was just super depressed and all this.
Guest:And Mark's like, do you think this stuff was maybe like your outlet for your depression?
Guest:And he's like...
Guest:Yeah, I guess it kind of was.
Guest:And it's like, well, I feel like that's a little bit of a that's all, folks.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I think our time is up, Doctor.
Marc:That is so true.
Marc:I never knew that Iron Man was about Super Jesus.
Marc:That was great.
Guest:That's the best part of the whole episode.
Guest:I even put it in the episode summary.
Guest:I'm like, oh, people got to know about this.
Guest:This tells me the secret story of Iron Man, and it's about fucking Jesus in the sky.
Marc:That's brilliant.
Marc:I mean, I'm going to play Iron Man this weekend.
Guest:Well, what's hilarious about that is that you've got that whole end of Mark's stand-up special, the end times fun, about the Marvel recruiting Jesus into their fold.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:Wait, you didn't even know this was the real reason behind Iron Man.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You were there.
Marc:You were on it.
Marc:You got Iron Man before you even knew what Iron Man was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was something.
Marc:I love that the guy saw Jimi Hendrix, man.
Marc:That's awesome.
Marc:Is there a band or performer that you're thankful that you got to see live?
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, thankful that I got to see live.
Guest:I mean, I don't know that I've had any where it's at that point yet where they've like passed or that I'm like... But I'm definitely very happy I saw LCD Sound System in concert.
Guest:Oh, I bet.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:Yeah, that was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that's probably the one that I would rank up there that was like...
Guest:If that didn't happen in my life, I'd be a lesser person for it.
Guest:That's one of those.
Marc:Yeah, I'd say Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
Marc:I got to see them, and that was awesome.
Marc:But honestly, for me, I just recently saw Jeremy Strong in that show he just won the Tony Award for.
Guest:Enemy of the People.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was amazing.
Guest:And it was like- Well, okay.
Guest:Now that I've definitely had many times.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Like seeing someone on stage and being like a privilege to see- Like who?
Guest:Brian Dennehy playing Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman.
Guest:That was one of those ones where I was like, holy shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wendell Pierce for me.
Marc:I was like- Oh, same.
Marc:This is greatness that I'm watching right here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So-
Marc:Yeah, that's cool.
Marc:I mean, I just think about that stuff and it's just like, yeah, it's cool.
Marc:It's good to see these people while they're still around, you know, so you can like appreciate it.
Guest:Yeah, go out there and do things, people.
Guest:I mean, I'm glad you're listening to us, but yeah.
Guest:Get some shows in you.
Guest:Touch some grass, as they say.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, that'll do it for us this week.
Guest:If you have any comments about Death Proof, I would be interested to hear them, frankly.
Guest:And that's in the link in the episode description.
Guest:We'll take you right to the comment page.
Guest:We will have Inglourious Bastards, the sixth Quentin Tarantino film coming up in July.
Guest:And then next week, we'll be back with more stuff about WTF and the behind-the-scenes goodness.
Guest:that you have come to know and love here.
Guest:And until then, I'm Brendan and that's Chris.
Guest:Peace.