CINEMISSES!

CINEMISSES! The Running Man (2025)

Season 3 Episode 10

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0:00 | 1:10:25

While most dystopian remakes lean into camp or the fantastical — this one dares to be frighteningly real. In today's episode, Matt and Tug dive into Edgar Wright’s gritty reimagining of "The Running Man," a sharp, modern take on the classic sci-fi story from Stephen King. Unlike the over-the-top 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film, this version taps into a near-future that feels disturbingly close to home, exploring issues of income inequality, media manipulation, and mass surveillance. We'll talk about how the film pulls from King’s original novella to create a more grounded dystopia that hits a little to close to home. We'll explore the trademark visual storytelling techniques Wright uses to build tension and deliver the narrative. Finally, we'll shudder at how modern tech like deep fakes and drones makes the movie feel unsettlingly current. We aren't as angry as Ben Richards is, but we RAN, to talk about this movie. We hope you'll RUN to listen to it. It's showtime!

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Matt (00:00)
You're listening to Cinemisses, a podcast about movies that one or the other of your two hosts just never got around to seeing. I'm Matt.

Tug McTighe (00:06)
I'm Tug, and we're both reminding you that anybody can make a podcast about movies they have seen. We are here because we haven't. Thank you for joining us on Cinemisses, and action.

Matt (00:15)
I like when you point. I like, action!

Tug McTighe (00:15)
Okay Holy shit.

We have not been here in Nigh on a month. We're usually every two weeks But I have been in first I was in traveling then I was in super busy at work still pretty busy at work, which is always a good thing I know you are too then we went into tryout season of my competitive soccer club that started and then your son Tommy graduated high school and you had a house full of people and

Parties and events and God knows what all and so this is our way of suggesting that we've had a lot going on in fact You could say we've been running around All over town

Matt (00:48)
I feel like a

man who's been doing a lot of running.

Tug McTighe (00:52)
Just a lot of running and I will say this when we get into this there wasn't as much running as As I thought there was going to be There was some running a Lot of walking and actually quite a bit of hotel room sitting

Matt (01:01)
Right.

There was some walking. There was a

fair amount of trotting and a lot of TV watching.

Tug McTighe (01:09)
A lot of TV watching, a big theme. Okay, if you haven't guessed, the movie we're going to cover is the 2025 Glenn Powell vehicle, The Running Man, the Edgar Wright reboot of the 1987 camp sci-fi classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Family Feud's Richard Dawson. Both of these things, they themselves were made from the book

by Richard Bachman, aka Stephen King, The Running Man, which was one of the Bachman books, I believe. Back in the old days. The Long Walk, which just came out. You know what, I'd like to, let's put that on the list. Hold on, look what I'm doing.

Matt (01:38)
Another one was the long walk, which is coming out soon,

You putting it on the list? Wow.

Tug McTighe (01:48)
That's a pencil.

But yeah, I'd like to watch that, because I like that, quite like that novella. So here we are. So as always, we asked the person who hasn't seen the film, the cinema, what they think about the movie. And this time it's both of us. So Matt, don't you take us home on this?

Matt (01:58)
Okay,

I will do this for both of us and you can fill in what I miss. What I knew, what we knew, I think, it was directed by Edgar Wright, one of our favorite directors, director of Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, The World's End, One Night in Soho, or Last Night in Soho, I always forget the name, Baby Driver, and on and on, love that guy. ⁓ It stars generic Ken Doll, handsome actor Glenn Powell, right?

Tug McTighe (02:13)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe? Yeah. Yeah.

Very handsome fella. We'll talk

about Flynn as we go along.

Matt (02:25)
⁓ And Cinemas's favorite Josh Brolin who I think has been in at least 25 % of the movies that we talked about in the show. ⁓ And he didn't disappoint in this one either. It's the second adaptation as you said of Stephen King slash Richard Bachman's novella The Running Man. Definitely more faithful to the source material than the 1987 version starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I love that movie. ⁓

Tug McTighe (02:30)
least 25 % this is our 30th and he's been in at least 10 of them

The

Running Man, the original? Yeah.

Matt (02:51)
The Schwarzenegger

running man, I loved it. Did you have a favorite ⁓ stalker from that movie?

Tug McTighe (02:57)
was a buzzsaw buzzsaw.

Matt (02:58)
Okay, mine would be a professor sub zero. He slices and dices his opponents into his quivering bloody sushi. He actually he actually was a professor in real life. That's why they call him Professor Sub Zero. So what else would I miss?

Tug McTighe (03:01)
You have

Right, quivering bloody sea.

there you go. See?

Not much To your point we can tell by the trailers that it's not gonna be a campy Sort of over-the-top Movie like 87s was More more more leaning more on the dystopia, which is true to the novel and I quote unquote more realistic in nature Which we will definitely talk about this sort of future modern futurism or modern realism Especially with regards to tech

That gives you a little bit the heebie-jeebies. But yeah that I think that's that's that's the that's the beginning and the end of it, right the log line Man joins a game show in which contestants allowed to flee anywhere in the world are pursued by hunters hired to kill them

Matt (03:42)
Yeah, hit it.

Yeah, I have no notes for that, except to mention that he's also facing a public who watches the show. It's the most popular show in the world. And they are rewarded when they provide info that helped get him killed, basically. So if you give info that helps, it's like five grand. And if you give info that gets him killed, it's 10 grand or something.

Tug McTighe (04:01)
chip off a Hunter or right, right. So there's that was a little twist.

Do you remember in the book where I feel like the people were supposed to rat him out?

Matt (04:14)
Yes, absolutely. So that was true.

Tug McTighe (04:15)
Okay, but,

just so I'm getting a little bit as I as I watch and talk, the two are blending together, but they are very different animals. This is more akin to the book. Yeah.

Matt (04:25)
the 87. Yeah, the 87

movie. The studio audience had kind of a role where they could decide which stalker they wanted to pick next. And eventually the old lady comes on and says, my money's on Ben Richards. You said I could pick whoever I want and I pick him. But yeah, this was very different. It wasn't, as you said, campy at all.

Tug McTighe (04:35)
That's right, back-send them, right.

Yeah,

it was trying to be straightforward. think there are several points. the right screenwriter, and Edgar writer trying to make, we'll, talk about them here shortly. So Matt, what's it about?

Matt (04:55)
Well, it's a twenty twenty five science fiction action film. I have questions about that designation. We can talk about that later. Yeah, it's co-produced and directed by Edgar Wright. And we're going to circle back, as we say in the in the biz produced, co-produced, directed by Edgar Wright, who was a big fan of the original movie and of the Stephen King novella.

Tug McTighe (05:01)
that genre title.

and put a pin in it. We'll come back to it.

Yep. In the biz.

Yeah. That,

that, that, feels that checks that he would like that when he was growing up and saw it. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (05:21)
Absolutely. He wanted to do this for a long time. ⁓

Screenplay by Wright and Michael Bacall, who is a character in the show. ⁓ He's an actor and appeared in movies like Free Willy and Inglorious Basterds. If you saw him, you'd say, yeah, it's that guy. It's kind of a weasley, weird looking guy. No offense if he's losing. Also, the co-writer of another Edgar Wright. He probably is. I assume.

Tug McTighe (05:41)
I'm sure he's listening!

Matt (05:44)
He's also the co-writer of another Edgar Wright film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which is a movie that you and I both love.

Tug McTighe (05:49)
We both really like it and continue to wonder why it didn't have a better.

Matt (05:53)
But, okay, that said, it's grown into this cult classic status, which I feel like Edgar Wright's movies just do that 20 years from now.

Tug McTighe (05:53)
It's grown and yeah.

I agree. I think

like, right, I'm not of two minds on this, but I understand. Look, if you can, if you can withstand these flops and then they grow to become cult status, that's almost better.

But it's really fucking hard to withstand a flop.

Matt (06:17)
It's hard to always be ahead of your time.

We've seen this with John Carpenter too. So many of his movies that weren't successful at the time influence. They're like the cheap trick of movie makers. Like where at the time you're like, it's cheap trick. Who cares? And then 20 years later, all the greatest acts in the world say that was an influence or yes.

Tug McTighe (06:26)
Yeah, or the big star, right? Big star, keep track. Right.

Right, you're like every band that we loved

in the 90s loved Big Star and we're like, who the fuck is Big Star? And then we listen to Big Star and we're like, holy shit, this is a great band. Yeah.

Matt (06:41)
Yeah, I get it now. Awesome.

It stars Glenn Powell as Ben Richards, a competitor on a Lethal Reality television show, as we said. Also a pretty good cast. William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera coming back. Amelia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jamie Lawson, Sean Hayes as a ⁓ he just came out of nowhere. I thought he was great. Coleman Domingo was really good. And of course, Josh Brolin, guy. Absolutely.

Tug McTighe (06:58)
In a one moment, yeah.

Yeah, can't stop without a Josh Brolin reference. It premiered

at the Odeon Lux Lester Square in London on November 5th, 2025. It was released on November 12th in the UK and on November 14th in the US by Paramount Pictures. It received mixed reviews. It was a box office bomb grossing 69 million worldwide on $110 million budget. We know that in the modern movie world, you better make at least, to turn a profit on 110, you needed to make 220 at least.

Matt (07:25)
shame.

Tug McTighe (07:33)
of all the stuff that goes into marketing the film so yeah this didn't quite work out and it didn't quite work out on the popcorn-o-meter or the tomato me the tomato meter the critics on 304 reviews a 61 % that is an F if you were in grade school and the popcorn-o-meter 77 a percent so see strong see but you know

Matt (07:35)
Yeah, 300 is better.

Not terrible, but I mean, it's

not rotten.

Tug McTighe (08:03)
No, it's not rotten. It's not rotten, so we'll take it. ⁓

Matt (08:06)
I think

a lot of people just didn't go see it.

Tug McTighe (08:07)
I remember you and I were pretty pumped when it dropped, when we saw the trailers and stuff. And then again, and we've talked about this a little bit on this pod, the way the modern movie biz works, it's just, if you don't fricking see a movie in the first two weeks, you blink and it's on something, it's streaming somewhere.

⁓ There's a very small window. You remember when we were growing up Like Raiders of the Lost Ark was in the theater for 12 weeks or more

Matt (08:34)
my folks will tell me about when they went to see, when they were dating, they went to see Sound of Music and it was in the theater for years.

Tug McTighe (08:41)
on a big screen at a big movie palace, but man now first if it doesn't blow up in two weeks It just goes away and they move it to streaming. So it's it's a bummer

Matt (08:49)
And you're not just competing,

you're not just competing with movies either. Like movies are competing with TV shows. They're competing with the internet, with everything. There's a lot of static, like just to cut through that.

Tug McTighe (08:59)
Yeah, yeah, I there that's

a really good point and a tangent we weren't planning on but I'll go down the road I used to listen to a ton of sports talk until I just can't Listen to sports talk anymore. And then I but I love sports and I read I read a read a book called glory days about 1984 and How it really changed it with the Olympics. It was Michael Jordan. It was

Magic and burden with the height of their powers. It was ⁓ wayne gretzky. was all this really cool sport stuff and part of that was They sold the rights to the 1984 olympics in la for like an exorbitant amount of dollars to nbc in those in those days like people like what are you doing

back to my sports talk. remember guys like Kevin Keatsman going, man, you get an 85 inch TV in your house with HD and the beer and the snacks. You're never going to a game. I'm, I'm, backing up. I'm coming to a point, but it's going to take a sec. Sports are the most popular content on television per period. They cost the most display. They're the ratings are the highest and yet all the stadiums are still mostly sold out.

Streaming and TVs and the snacks being right there fucked the movie business way more than it ever fucked the sports business That's the point I was trying to make but the worry for years was that putting sports on TV Would ruin the in fan experience and it didn't people still go to there's 80,000 people at every chiefs game But the movie theaters are really struggling ⁓ And it's too bad

Matt (10:25)
Yeah, why do you think

Tug McTighe (10:26)
anyhow, so Edgar Wright in 2017 expressed interest in directing a remake of the Running Man from 87.

And like we said, itself an adaptation of the 82 novel by Stephen King, which is interesting to me that it was only five years after the movie, the book was released that the movie came out. That book feels older than that, ⁓ I love that Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling and Hemsworth were considered for the leading role. All of those guys, I think would have been great. You said earlier it had been a dream project for Wright who was a fan of the novel as a teenager.

Matt (10:45)
Cause you're old.

Tug McTighe (10:56)
and didn't like the 87 film. When producer Simon Kinberg heard of this, I love this, Edgar Wright's probably talking to somebody on E network news or whatever about he loves Running Man. Simon Kinberg heard, he emails him and says, why don't you come and do this? I have the rights. So Kinberg is a British born screenwriter and producer with a bunch of credits. Like some X-Men movies, especially like Dark Phoenix, which he directed.

And I won a dubious award, Matt. Do you remember what that was? Dark Phoenix?

Matt (11:21)
Yes, the

golden. He won the he won the Razzie the Golden Raspberry for basically being the worst movie. I watched it. It wasn't that bad, but my bar is pretty low.

Tug McTighe (11:24)
Yeah, sure.

just being awful. Now they lost the plot on

that, on the X-Men there. Maybe we'll talk about that the next season. In 2021, February, Paramount announced they were gonna develop this film, not a remake of the original film, but a much more faithful adaptation of the novel. In April, 2024, Glenn Powell was cast in the lead role. He said he contacted Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gave him his full blessing.

Matt (11:35)
They're coming back.

I don't know that he needed to do that because that the movie, the original movie was 40 years ago, but it was nice that he did. Hey, do you mind if I do this? Yeah, go ahead.

Tug McTighe (11:56)
Yeah, I okay. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Arnold. Thanks, Arnie. Yeah.

Who are you? Right? He's like, don't even have a clue. ⁓

Matt (12:03)
Right, do I get

any money out of this? Maybe.

Tug McTighe (12:08)


in September, 2025, Stephen Price was revealed to ⁓ have composed the score. He worked with right on the world's end, baby driver and last night. So I quickly had to click on the link for Stephen Price to make sure it wasn't Steve Price, the base player of Rex Daisy. It is not, but that would have been amazing if it was.

Matt (12:22)
okay.

It also wasn't Stephen Merchant, who's a completely different person, but the names are kind of similar. So box office, how did it do? We already said not very good. 38 million in the United States and Canada as of January 20th, January 12th of this year and 32 million in other territories for a worldwide total of 69 million. It was released along, okay, alongside Now You See Me, Now You Don't, which is an interesting franchise. I've never seen any of those.

Tug McTighe (12:28)
It also wasn't Stephen Merchant.

That's so great.

Yeah, I haven't either. I've seen clips or snippets, but never. there's gotta be four of How many of them are there? There's gotta be three or four of them. Yeah.

Matt (12:52)
But I like the cast and I like, yeah, there's like three others, like three or four of them

now. I like the cast and I like heist movies and I feel like it's a magic heist, which maybe that's better. I don't know. So released alongside that and Keeper, which I don't know what that is. Is a gold soccer movie? I bet. So it's opening weekend. It finished second behind. Now you see me now, you don't.

Tug McTighe (13:01)
Yeah. Right.

I hope so if it was I would have seen it already

Matt (13:15)
Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes. Spiritedly sprinting through grim source material, Edgar writes, running man doesn't live up to the director's high bar for inventive action extravaganzas, but maintains a slick stride. I thought it was really nicely photographed, like nicely shot. Technically, I thought it was fantastic.

Tug McTighe (13:29)
No, yeah, it's right. is.

He's a pro. It looks great, right? The animation is great. The effects are great. It's all great. And it does. It it goes. It's not there's not a pacing problem. I didn't think two hours went by pretty quick.

Matt (13:43)
So I think it's a story issue perhaps. And I'm trying to think of remakes that did an amazing job, like way better or as well as what was going with Lady Gaga and what's his name. Yeah, like Star is Born. I think that did really well. But I mean, you're looking at decades between. Well, I mean, it's the same thing here. I don't know.

Tug McTighe (13:53)
Yeah. ⁓ Starsborne. That was really nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's tough. I think it's hard to compare. It's hard to make a movie that...

I think it's tough. It's hard to serve both masters. You're trying to Connect to the old film but bring something new to it You know and and then that just a lot of times gets accused. We're just being doing fan service. There's some fan service in this ⁓ But you know, it's just it's a tough you're setting yourself up for a tough task if you're say you're gonna do this

Matt (14:21)
A little bit, yeah, and that's fine. I mean, people like that.

Right.

Owen Gleiberman, our good friend Owen Gleiberman of Variety, viewed the remakes and improvement on the 87 short snagger movie, but did not find the dystopian themes unique or compelling. He wrote that because we've seen so many garishly downbeat sci-fi movies, dystopia is now the air that our imaginations breathe. But for what it's worth, yeah, yeah, I do for sure.

Tug McTighe (14:49)
have thoughts. Do you have thoughts? Go.

Matt (14:53)
For it's worth I felt this was as close to a real actual dystopian future as I've ever seen in a movie It's grounded in the issues. We see every day just taken to a bit of an extreme We worry about the cost of health care today. And so in this movie, it's magnified We're about the coarseness of culture and desensitization of violence and rotting our brains with garbage content Which we do and it's magnified in this movie a little bit People worry about wealth inequality and it's magnified. So compared to the Hunger Games

Tug McTighe (14:57)
I 100 % agree. 100%.

Matt (15:20)
which I thought was kind of ridiculous, because it would never, like the only, my take on the Hunger Games is it was an entertaining story. It would never happen, but like this is kind of happening right now.

Tug McTighe (15:30)
We're living in it. When we, mentioned COVID before, our dear friend John Carlton, when COVID happened and we all got quarantined and sent to our houses, we were on a group chat and he goes, you know, I always thought we were heading for a dystopian future. I just didn't know it was here.

Matt (15:31)
Yeah.

Right. ⁓

Tug McTighe (15:46)
But all

the shit you mention in this movie, some version of it is happening now.

Matt (15:51)
Right, Linda Holmes, who's an NPR reviewer, points out the irony of this. was originally written in 1982 by Stephen King, like we said. It takes place in the USA of some indeterminate future that's, in her words, has finally caught up with the 2025 real life reality in America, massive income gaps, extreme poverty, unaffordable and thus, unobtainable healthcare costs.

I'm still pretty optimistic. I'm, you know, for someone who's not that optimistic, like for instance, a commentator on NPR, this was probably terrifying.

Tug McTighe (16:21)
I listened to Linda's podcast Pop culture happy hour quite a bit. I can totally see her saying this I am about as liberal as it gets and When you listen to an NPR podcast, you're like good lord. How liberal are we? Jesus, but I don't disagree man

A lot of people go bankrupt because they get sick.

Right a lot of people don't have insurance or a lot of people have shitty insurance So your point is is is taken that the way you satirize it is you take it to its nth degree that's what makes it thoughtful Like it's like that series the black mirror there's an episode of the black mirror because the black mirror is kind of like this where it's about this indeterminate future, but you're like that tech looks like it could happen now there's there's a

Matt (16:50)
Right.

Tug McTighe (17:00)
episode of the black mirror where You can implant a chip in your child's brain That you set the settings to what you don't want them to see and it blurs it out So you don't want them to see sex it blurs it out you want them to see violence and it blurs it out and you're watching the show and you're like if you just

extrapolate out four levels of tech, you're like, someone could put that on the market tomorrow and somebody would put it in their kit. Right.

Matt (17:29)
Right. So

I don't I mean, again, this was Stephen King's novella was 40 years ago or 39 years ago where it was a lot easier to parody these things because it seemed so far away. It's really hard right now. It's like that's pretty much it. ⁓

Tug McTighe (17:39)
So away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Stephen King

himself praised the adaptation calling it a bipartisan thrill ride. He read and approved the script changes. Finding the film captured the book's essence of the protagonist being hunted in the real world. Unlike 87's film with Schwarzenegger. And again, I love Stephen King. You love Stephen King. So we both had interest in this.

Just cause it's Stephen King.

Matt (18:03)
Yeah, but I also knew Stephen King's got some recurring problems in his work, and I figured we'd run into those.

Tug McTighe (18:09)
He

very much so. speaking of recurring problems.

If you're a marketer, you don't want recurring problems. You want an agency that can help like little bear. And when you're, when you're a company, you're watching the running man. think, man, this giant media corporation controls everything. That's not what my real life is like. Then you try to launch a small business online and suddenly you're fighting algorithms, bad branding, confusing websites and social feeds that nobody sees. Coincidence? Probably not. It's the network man. And they're out to fuck you.

That's why we're glad to have Little Bear Graphics sponsoring this episode. Their small but mighty creative agency that helps businesses look bigger, sharper, and smarter through killer branding, killer logo design, advertising campaigns, branded merch, and more. Like the Hunters? They'll kill it for you. If you have the guts to hire them, they'll help your business look like the hero of the story instead of the guy eliminated in the first five minutes. Don't make your brand run for its life through a neon-lit nightmare. Just put Little Bear Graphics on the job. Check them out at Little Bear.com.

Matt (19:04)
So great. I know how you do it.

Tug McTighe (19:04)
All right, let's go to the cast.

I want to hear your thoughts on Glenn Powell. Glenn Powell, Ben Richards, he was the blacklisted laborer who signs up for The Running Man.

Matt (19:07)
Awesome, okay.

⁓ I like him so much more after watching this. I and I never saw Maverick. I think that was kind of where he burst out of the Top Gun movie. I didn't love Top Gun, but my friend Steve's going to be mad at me since his favorite movie. I thought he was genuine, relatable. He was funny. Even though I don't, I think the movie could have been funny. We'll talk about that later. I feel like he just kind of popped up out of the cabbage patch at age 30 like.

Tug McTighe (19:17)
I never saw Maverick either. Yeah. We better watch it.

Yeah, this

is like a dude that was clearly working, but I never saw him in hardly anything and then she bango he's this guy and He's great in this real really good. I think the best part of this for sure him and and Brolin their chemistry is great. and Like you said he just kind of came out out of nowhere and even though this was a bomb It's gonna propel him to more cool shit. I think

And I just looked it up. His next two movies are with JJ Abrams and Judd Apatow. So right, well done. So he went Edgar Wright, JJ Abrams, and Judd Apatow. He's a star.

Matt (20:05)
No, I think that's great. And I think

he did a fantastic job in the movie too. He acted really well. So I don't, I think he can't lose whether.

Tug McTighe (20:09)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. So Josh Prolin,

Dan Killian, the producer of The Running Man. Yeah.

Matt (20:15)
he's great in this. It's weird

to think that if not, if if not for no country for old men, he'd just still be day trading at home. He would he would never have gotten back into it.

Tug McTighe (20:24)
Yeah, just to be in his house, just day trading.

And by the way, in our little off season break here, we need to talk about the Sinemis's Hall of Fame, because he's in it. He's fierce ballot. Brolin.

Matt (20:32)
Oh, for sure. Oh, we've

got a Hall of Fame directors, Edgar Wright, Hall of Fame director and Josh Berlin, obviously Hall of Fame actor. And yeah, we need to put those to put that together.

Tug McTighe (20:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so I loved Coleman Domingo is Bobby T Thompson host of the running man He was chewing up the scenery in a great way

Matt (20:49)
Have you watched him? Have you watched Severance? He's great in Severance. Really good, really good. And Lee Pace.

Tug McTighe (20:51)
No, I haven't seen a single minute. Yeah, everybody loves it. ⁓

Our dear friend Lee Pace is Evan McCone, the mass leader of the Hunters. I love Lee Pace. I got more on Lee Pace in the plot section.

Matt (21:02)
Yeah, tell me about.

Okay, very good. And Michael Cera as Elton Parakis, a rebel who helped men. Did you like seeing him? This is his first Ed Wright collaboration since Scott Pilgrim, which we loved. And he's, as in all things, unmistakably Michael Cera. I always thought if they did a Beck biopic, he would be, they should have Michael Cera's Beck.

Tug McTighe (21:07)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right, 100%. You know,

Beck wrote the music for Sex Babam. I did like him. I always liked seeing Michael Cera. To your point, he is now a 100 % realized just caricature of himself. He's leaning into it and let him. 100%. This is I do. If you want me to do this, then I'll just come in and do it.

Matt (21:25)
Absolutely. So did you like him in this? you like seeing him?

Yeah, what? Like a young walk-in, right? Like he, that's him. Yeah.

I think that's

great.

Tug McTighe (21:46)
loved William H. seeing him for a couple scenes. He was Molly Jernigan, he he's the guy that provides Ben with the disguises and then we've got Daniel Ezra as Bradley Throckmorton, the rebel and live streamer. I loved him. Jamie Lawson was Sheila Richard, Ben's wife.

Matt (21:59)
can you name her role in another movie that we just covered in a recent episode? She was Perline. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (22:02)
She was in sinners. She was pearly or pearl liner, pearly.

Yeah. and then we have the twins, Alyssa and Sienna who were Kathy Richards, the infant daughter. We've got Katie O'Brien as, Jenny Loughlin, who was a contestant. She looked familiar, but I couldn't place her. ⁓ okay.

Matt (22:08)
She was great.

She's been in a bunch of Star Wars stuff. So like Nanda

warrior and stuff like that. You probably know her from that.

Tug McTighe (22:25)
Okay, maybe that's where I saw her. martin hurley He is tim jansky a contestant on the running man. He is son of tim hurley He who was one of ⁓ longtime Comedy partners to adam sandler and was a writer for snl in the 90s and martin himself Is part of please don't destroy which

Matt (22:39)
Okay, nice.

Tug McTighe (22:43)
is a comedy shorts group. They were on SNL for three or four years. I don't think they're all on it together or some of them are writers. But the big tall redhead, though I don't know his name, is still on the show. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (22:52)
⁓ he's part of that. Okay. Right. It's interesting

how there are these sub niches of comedy and entertainment like via I think of the lonely Island guys, you know that make songs and videos and little shorts and that's what they do.

Tug McTighe (23:03)
Right. Please don't destroy as

a modern version, trying to be a modern version of that.

Matt (23:09)
Yeah,

and they've made careers out of doing this. Sean Hayes as Gary Greenbacks. He was the host of the guy in the wheel, right?

Tug McTighe (23:11)
You go for a minute.

Yeah, it's

just they ask you questions and then if you get them wrong, they just turn the hamster wheel faster.

Matt (23:21)
Yeah, I and I love that call back to the 87 Schwarzenegger. They had remember climbing for dollars where you're climbing a rope to get money and they're like dogs, Dover and Pitcher.

Tug McTighe (23:30)
Yeah,

they kept cutting back to these, in both movies, cutting back to their other shows, or promoing their other shows, and all the other shows are just ridiculous.

Matt (23:39)
Yeah, they're just crazy. And Rich Hall was in this movie.

Tug McTighe (23:43)
Yeah, this is nuts rich hall It was on snl for a year or two, but most Mostly known for the hbo comedy show not necessarily the news and really known for being the creator of sniglets and Sniglets were words that don't exist that should exist and the one I remember right when you told me it was rich hall was cinnamuck Cinnamuck was the sniglet for the sticky

Popcorn slash candy slash soda film on the floor of not that clean movie theaters and your feet are sticking to the cinema

Matt (24:14)
Yeah.

So he made, yeah, he wrote these. He created a ton of these and sold the books. And it was almost like it was like an encyclopedia. It was like a dictionary of made up words. The one I remember was when your socks refused to stand up when they finally give out and they fall down all the time, they're quitters. That was a sniglet name for those. Yeah, it's sniglets and son of sniglets. So he, yeah.

Tug McTighe (24:18)
Yeah. Sold books. Yeah.

Right, so funny.

So funny.

But yeah, out of nowhere, just a little bit part.

Alright other other actors debbie mazar kat cullen ema cd And noah ritter as the americanos. We'll talk about the americanos later And then arnold schwarzenegger makes a small appearance. What is it matt?

Matt (24:52)
he's the makes a cameo is the face of the the new dollar, the hundred dollar bill. I thought that was kind of funny. I think the movie was a little overstuffed. I mean, you can see there's a big cast like a big cast, probably unnecessarily.

Tug McTighe (24:57)
The new, yeah. Yeah.

The Americano thing was just a riff on the Kardashians and it didn't really add It didn't, it just didn't even need to be there.

Matt (25:12)
I thought it actually detracted. It was an interruption. It's like cutting to commercial and I'm.

Tug McTighe (25:16)
and they never

told you why they kept cutting to, I'd rather, you know what, to your point, I'd rather cut to another promo for a weird game.

Matt (25:23)
I, yeah, absolutely. Like if the idea is that people are like disengaged from society and not interacting and just watching TV, we got that. I don't need to have yet another show to show me that. I mean, I'm glad Debbie Mazar is making works.

Tug McTighe (25:32)
We got that already. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, still

working. Alright, let's hit the plot!

Matt (25:39)
Okay, in the near future, the United States is ruled by the network, an authoritarian media network. I don't know that I understood they ruled the United States, but.

Tug McTighe (25:46)
We don't

get it till later. get that exposition from Michael Cera.

Matt (25:49)
Okay, so most viewers live in poverty with little access to healthcare.

Tug McTighe (25:53)
or groceries or other common goods.

Matt (25:55)
Right, so the network placates the masses with these trashy violent game shows and reality TV. So bread and circuses, right? ⁓ I got ready player one vibes from this where everybody's life sucks, but then they put on, you know, virtual reality goggles and everything. They're in a different world. So in this, I feel like there's a zillion people and everybody's poor. Most everybody.

Tug McTighe (26:02)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

And they're just, yeah, living, Yeah.

Yeah,

someone uses the word circus. I think it's Ben at one point. they're laying it on pretty thick at that point.

Matt (26:21)
Yeah,

and Hunger Games too,

Tug McTighe (26:24)
Yeah, very similar we we get a lot of the and panem I think means bread In some language so like Yeah So again it We're getting it right this bread and circus idea is a really old one right give them bread and circuses

Matt (26:28)
Well, Pan and French is bread. Freshman year French coming back.

Right.

Tug McTighe (26:41)
But your point earlier, it feels more possible due to the world we're living in. There'll be more on that later, but I think it makes it more interesting. We're like, shit, that's kind of like what it is like now. Taking further.

Matt (26:52)
Yeah, I can relate to that a lot. Okay, the most

popular program is the Running Man, hosted by Bobby Thompson or Bobby T. He was amazing, ⁓ in which runners can win a billion dollars, a billion new dollars. So that kind of tells you, they talk about new dollars. So something's happened to reset the economy.

Tug McTighe (26:59)
Bobby T?

Noodle.

Correct.

Yes, the government has collapsed. I'm assuming now the network is the corporations are running everything. Sort of like today,

Matt (27:15)
Yeah, I'm just putting that together. ⁓

They can win a billion dollars by surviving 30 days while being hunted down by the Network's five hunters led by the mysterious Evan McCone, who's got a mask on as well as the ordinary citizens that you see just in the you anybody can call in kind of like voting on American Idol, but you're voting to kill somebody. Right.

Tug McTighe (27:35)
But you're right. You're voting to murder someone. This

was like I said, this was a new twist wasn't in the wasn't in the movie, but some an aside to or a shade of it was in the book. As you remember the the in the in the 87 movie, they're hunted by the stalkers, right? These over the top kind of like professional wrestler. In fact, Jesse the body venture was in it. ⁓ right. Fireball, dynamo, buzzsaw, right? They have all these. Yeah, so.

Matt (27:56)
They were very much like professional, like, yeah.

Like superheroes,

garish costumes and nicknames and such.

Tug McTighe (28:08)
So given a thousand

bucks and a 12 hour head start, runners are required to film themselves every day or else forfeit their earnings but still be hunted. So that's good way to get user generated content. Jesus. Yeah. So Ben Richards is our hero, a blue collar worker in the slums of Co-op City. ⁓ is slum side, that's right. He's unable to afford flu medicine for his two year old daughter, Kathy.

Matt (28:16)
Right at gunpoint

Slumside, they call it.

Tug McTighe (28:29)
⁓ after being blacklisted for union activism. Also, I think for just being a rageaholic and punching out every boss he ever had. ⁓

Matt (28:34)
I think that's true.

He's just a he's ⁓ menace to society a little bit. He's he's not a go-along get-along guy at all. He's defiant. He's oppositional defiant guy.

Tug McTighe (28:41)
He is not.

Yeah, when he goes to the network to sign up for one of the game shows and they put him through these paces and the guy he's interviewing with is like, I see your employment record. great stint at, you know, business tech fired for insubordination. Then you went to work at blah, blah, blah. Fired for insubordination. Then you went to work at blah, blah, blah. Fired for insubordination. So what does he do? He punches the glass.

and breaks the glass in front of the guy. So he's got a bit of a rage problem. But so he goes and tries out for the network. He told his wife, I just, I'm not going to join the running man. That's crazy. But they put him through all these paces and he is unexpectedly chosen for the running man, along with Tim Jansky and Jenny Loughlin. Didn't seem like he got an option.

Matt (29:06)
Yeah, it's a pattern.

No, I like that montage though leading up to it where it so this was really cool and I can't remember if this is an Edgar Wright thing or not, but he's doing these physical challenges to see what show he'll get on and as he's doing it, it flashes back or it quick cuts to actual jobs he had where he's doing the same kind of thing. So he's like pushing a button and diving through a hole in the wall to escape an explosion or somebody falls.

Tug McTighe (29:27)
you

It was cool.

Matt (29:51)
and he reaches down, he grabs him and he saves him and he did that in a job somewhere else too. So I thought that was really cool.

Tug McTighe (29:54)
Right. Right.

So again, is a neat back and forth between the virtual challenge he was in and the real world. Nice Edgar Wright stuff there, right? And then of course Killian convinces Ben to join the show by offering a safe house for his family, advance money for Cathy's medication. And all she has is the flu, so she just needs an antibiotic, right? ⁓ A big carrot.

Matt (30:15)
Yeah, but he dangled he dangled a bunch of like a

billion dollars. He said, you know these other games you can win enough money to get medicine, but this will give you enough money to get out for good. So that's what it kind of encourages him to do.

Tug McTighe (30:26)
to get out for good, yeah. And just a ton

of really good chemistry between these two actors. They're both really relishing in their characterizations together, so it's really fun.

Matt (30:35)
yeah.

Brolin was terrible. He was the worst. I love that.

Tug McTighe (30:39)
what a bad guy. Yeah. And like I

said, for me, it was like lot of good Edgar Wright adjacent stuff. It wasn't as Edgar righty as some of it was. I did not see a Texas switch unless you found one. ⁓ But a lot of the story gets delivered visually and quickly, which is Edgar Wright. I love all the commercial cutaways. I love the game shows that they show, the reality shows they show. And of course there's animations, you know, that's just a bunch of Edgar Wright trade trademarks.

Matt (30:49)
I did not and I was looking.

Tug McTighe (31:05)
And then I did notice real quickly that during the show, pilot Bobby T did the running man dance.

Matt (31:12)
I love that. And yeah,

to your point about animations, loved how slick everything was. Like it was really the animation where they show kind of that line of the running man and you zoom into it and that's the logo. I thought that was really cool.

Tug McTighe (31:18)
Yeah.

Right, right.

And then when he wins, the little character does that. Yeah, but it's produced because it's the network. So they know just what they're doing to produce this.

Matt (31:30)
Right?

Right. They know what they're doing.

So as the hunt begins, Ben gets disguises. He sees his friend, ⁓ Molly, who's William H. Macy. So he goes to him he's like, I need some help. He's got a little head start and he's got a little money. So he's got time to do this. And Ben says, hey, I...

Tug McTighe (31:42)
Molly.

Matt (31:52)
I'm sorry I did this but I didn't have any choice and he says yeah you did I was going to bring you on as a partner in my business but. It's too like he had a jump see I'd like a like a jumpsuit with his name on it so.

Tug McTighe (31:58)
Right, which is, right, he would

have had a shot of normal life, but he doesn't now. this is our gearing up sequence, right? Where he puts the clothes on and gets the disguises on and gets his briefcase, which is quite funny. So then he checks into a hotel in disguise. He's this doctor with like a comb over and a mustache and these glasses. And he's sweating because he's so stressed out.

Matt (32:19)
Right.

Well, there's the train scene too.

Tug McTighe (32:22)
He,

yeah, with a little kid, your face, listen punk, I'll murder you, what, where you stand, your mother won't even wake up. And he goes, no, your mustache is falling off. And he's like, crap. It's just snack box. ⁓

Matt (32:30)
He's like, here, take my snacks. So we,

is kind of ratcheting up how you're like, even he didn't quite understand the stakes or how serious Intensis was going to be, but he's figuring it out as this goes on.

Tug McTighe (32:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're getting The the screw is tightening on on Ben throughout and there's a raising stakes and and obviously right we talk about how often in the third act will introduce the element of ticking clock This whole movie is a ticking clock So it just starts from the jump and you're like this guy's gonna die in in a day if he's not careful So hey, you know, I was it was too bad that Molly got it You know, I like that. I liked Will Macy

Matt (32:59)
for sure.

Yeah.

Tug McTighe (33:10)
I

was sad that he was going to get out, but Ben, please.

Matt (33:13)
But that was brutal

too. Like they showed him with his, he had his fingers in a rice.

Tug McTighe (33:16)
Yeah

When the hunters yeah when the hunters got him so he checks into the hotel Again, there's some TV watching here. Ben is watching the live feed because it's on every night and they they kill poor Tim I think it was just eating a breakfast breed or something Right, right for sure. yeah. Yeah for sure

Matt (33:29)
It's so dumb though. Like he had it coming, right? And

Ben saw this happening in real time where Tim's flirting with a girl at the burrito place saying, you know, hey, have you watched the running man? Apparently there's a guy that they say I look like him. He's you cute guy. I'll come back and talk to you later. But enjoy that burrito.

Tug McTighe (33:43)
Yeah, there's a guy that looks like me.

And then Bobby T goes, little does he know, she's the very girl that turned him in. And then he walks outside and

gets his head blown off.

Matt (33:55)
That was great. Bobby D was great.

Enjoy that burrito. It might be your last. And of course it was.

Tug McTighe (33:59)
It might be your last. So

Ben is starting to have these death dreams, nightmares, he's sweating, he's getting paranoid. So by the way, I did notice there was a scene where the hunters ran out to search for the runners in front of a giant neon American flag. I'm kind of sure that wasn't an accident. ⁓

Matt (34:19)
That's very subtle. Yeah, as

I watched this, I found myself wondering what I would do if I were in that. I mean, you can't not do it. You know, you're watching the movie and you're like, what would I do? And my hand ideas all involved me staying away from people, which he didn't do at all. He's just like, I'll just walk around and blend in. But. ⁓

Tug McTighe (34:35)
Yeah,

no, yeah, that doesn't work I Think we're so we learn Pretty soon that there's three kinds of runners which we'll get to in a moment and one of them is hopeless, dude And that's a old Tim and I unfortunately think we're both We're somewhere between helpless dude and the debauchery Person where it's like let's just go to the casino and booze up until someone kills us Right ⁓

Matt (34:37)
No.

Yeah, think I'd be more debauchery guy. So hopeless

dude is just like within they said in the first 48 hours, he's going to get killed and he did.

Tug McTighe (35:02)
Yeah, there's no chance, right? There's no chance.

So he's in Boston, the Hunters and Soldiers track Ben to a hostel and shoot at him, leading to a giant explosion that kills eight soldiers. And he is in a towel when this all goes down, because he went to take a shower. Yeah, he did the old like, it's like, just keep, like, again.

Matt (35:17)
He decided to take a shower, which I thought was crazy.

Tug McTighe (35:24)
The show's called The Running Man. It's not to check into a hotel and watch TV and take a shower, It's not the show. He's he's. Yeah, he started out with some bad choices. ⁓ And again, like. You can't just sit there and hide these rover cams are everywhere covering everything. But like this is the big first set piece of the film, and there are lot of good bits to it. Powell's really bringing.

Matt (35:28)
Yeah, it's not the showering man. It's not the hygienic man. You're probably better off if you smell bad.

⁓ I thought that was nuts. ⁓

Tug McTighe (35:50)
Again, something to the role, think, that maybe others wasn't. What?

Matt (35:51)
I thought so too.

Yeah, I think so too. And there's a scene where the there's the broken elevator and he's got a grenade. Remember that? And he throws it at McCone and McCone just like kicks it back at him. It's like, shit.

Tug McTighe (35:59)
Yeah, like take that fucker and kick it back.

Yeah. So there's a lot in here. And again, this is when the sort of another dystopian trope that is re is is is feeling truer in these modern times, where the way they report this explosion is tragedy strikes as the explosion at the

YVA takes the lives of eight network guards. So they're very concerned with the network guards, not the people in the building, not the runner who's running. But like said, this is our first real example of how the narrative is being controlled by Brolin, by Killian. Every bit of this is being controlled.

Matt (36:26)
Right.

Right, and that what you see is not what's happening.

Tug McTighe (36:40)
That's correct.

And I do want to provide a cinema, a cinema misses official symbolism alert. Ben fell in the water. That's the sewer, which is likely his baptism and his rebirth into a new world. It's also kind of a false victory midpoint, but we weren't quite to the middle of the film. So I wanted to wait. I do think this is the, this is the mid, the mid point. but then, and then we get a little kid that helps him bringing him into the resistance. So this is a world that Ben never even knew existed. So that's.

again that sort of being reborn into a new world that he wasn't quite ready for.

Matt (37:09)
Right and kind of a symbolic death because they think he's dead. Yeah, so yes, I think you're right. That's well pointed out. Fantastic and that's where we mean anti network activist Bradley Throckmorton. That's a mouthful. ⁓ He shelters Ben in his home. He wants to expose the networks propaganda and deceit. So like you said, Ben is realizing that there's this underground. Opposition.

Tug McTighe (37:12)
Yes, they think he's dead. Yeah.

Thank you. I do the best I can here on Cinemassage.

It's a good name.

Correct.

Matt (37:35)
Right, which

Tug McTighe (37:35)
Correct.

Matt (37:36)
was kind of the same in if remember Dweezil Zappa and Mick Fleetwood in the 1987 short-stagger version. There was always an anti-network anti-

Tug McTighe (37:39)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

But that's

a Stephen King kind of thing that there's always some counterculture fighting against the man. Because Stephen King himself was a 60s and 70s hippie counterculture guy, So this is where we learn from Bradley the three kinds of runners. Hopeless man, the name kind of tells you. Negative dude, there's no chance in hell. They just want to go out in style. And that's like, they're just

Matt (37:54)
Yeah, he's the big weirdo

Right, that was Tim.

That's Laughlin.

Tug McTighe (38:06)
drinking and smoking and right they're gonna party until it's over. That's right. Right.

Matt (38:06)
They're going to party. They know their ends going to come and they're going to go out the bank. They showed the guy that that is the example and he's got a they get him. They they finally quarter him and he's got a like a explosive vest on. He blows himself and everybody else. That was great.

Tug McTighe (38:14)
Right.

Yes, full of explosives. Take that motherfuckers. Right. And then there's final

dude. This is the guy with the fierce will to survive, but cannot win because the network cheats. Which has been so we got a lot of exposition here from Bradley about the network, the execs, the government, the media. This is when we learned that everything is owned by the government, the sorry, by the network. That's the new dollars they control the money, obviously.

Matt (38:29)
Which has been...

Right. And Bradley's making these videos. Yeah.

Bradley's making these underground videos that he sends out and distributes. He's in disguise. And I thought his ⁓ abilities, his video skills are pretty good. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (38:46)
but he's in disguise and he's talking about right so he doesn't get into trouble.

Yeah, really cool.

So Ben sends, so Ben's gonna put these videos in, right? So he sends a video denouncing their action. But of course the broadcast content is replaced with a foul mouth deep fake of Ben angering the public, including Bradley's mother who kicks him out of the house. So again, this tech exists now. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (39:10)
Right now deep fakes are

a real thing. So I didn't have the time or energy to go back and read Stephen King's novella. So I don't know how. Precious was or how much these really sync up or how much Edgar Wright said, this seems like this. This seems like a deep thing. This seems like a drone, whatever. But regardless, this dystopia doesn't seem like a foreign or fantastic or

Tug McTighe (39:27)
Quite right. Right.

No.

Surveillance culture, we're living in a surveillance state. There's drones everywhere. There's these ways for them to look at you. And all it would take is a bad actor like the network to tap into it and use it all. Yeah, so it's a little bit scary. And the network just keeps upping the stakes and making Ben more and more of the villain, which is exactly what they would do to get their ratings.

Matt (39:35)
Smartphone future.

Right.

Right. Which feels like professional wrestling. mean, I used to watch this. I watched it when I was probably 13. I later met a guy I played racquetball with as an adult who was a huge fan and he was probably 35.

Tug McTighe (40:08)
There's a lot of people who love it.

Matt (40:10)
It was crazy, but that you would have that, like you would have the change, like the villain, the heel would turn, would make a turn and suddenly he's the hero, right? He's the baby face. They did that all the time.

Tug McTighe (40:17)
the heel.

Yeah, he's the baby face that they call him a face. And

they call it a heel turn and a face turn.

Matt (40:26)
Yeah, I thought that was that was amazing. And this was a lot like that. ⁓ So right now he's the bad guy. He's the heel.

Tug McTighe (40:29)
Yeah, there, right? Right.

Correct.

He's the heel. So Bradley sends Ben to Derry, Maine. This is a definite nod to the Stephen King Overse. Now we've tied the running man into it, the dark tower, the shining and more. I'll talk about that in a moment. I am a giant Stephen King Overse fan. So Bradley sends him to Maine to meet Elton Parakis. This is Michael Cera, a fellow activist who prepares to lead Ben to a bunker for the remainder of his run. They're like, you got to get underground. You'll pre tape your things. I'll send them in from the road.

Matt (40:39)
Dairy

Tug McTighe (41:00)
and you just get underground away from their surveillance is what you gotta do.

Matt (41:04)
Yeah, that was a nice montage. I like that he hopped a train so he's actually in a boxcar. They're playing revival by the Allman Brothers, but he's driving through, you know, riding on this train through farmland with nobody around and there are still grain elevators with his face on it. There are billboards with his face on it so he can't get away from this.

Tug McTighe (41:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Correct. He cannot hide. Yeah.

Yeah. So now we check in with the show to see that Jenny Laughlin, the second contestant, she's negative dude, who knows they don't have a chance and want to go out the bang has been killed after her week of debauchery. She was in a casino. She's wearing like a leather cowboy outfit. She's a lesbian. So she's got all these hot women around and they're smoking dope and doing all this, doing all these drugs and drinking drinks and, and

Matt (41:35)
Right.

Tug McTighe (41:45)
this out when we know Richard's, we knew he was final dude, but this is when you know he's got a reason to live. ⁓

Matt (41:49)
Right.

Yeah, she tried

to make a break for it. She actually did pretty well, but they nailed her at the end. I think Loughlin was the name of one of the characters in the 87 version too.

Tug McTighe (41:56)
They nailed her in the end,

Okay, we could do a tech on that at some point. I love it. So I liked the idea of him pre taping his updates and going underground. He started to tape some of these messages. He was less angry, more heartfelt, which is what you're looking for is you're looking for him to lose some of that rage and go, okay, now I understand the rules, quote unquote, I'm limited. need to change my behavior.

Matt (42:04)
I probably should have checked that before we started the show.

Yeah, I like that. saw him kind of growing. Yeah, I like that. I thought it was nice to see him kind of, his character growing, ⁓

Tug McTighe (42:25)
I thought the blind Irish priest was fun.

start to grow a little bit. Yeah.

Just so everybody knows, Derry is inherently evil in the Stephen King averse. So the little kids that got the kill on Loughlin, right, who got the lifetime supply of the cereal twinks, that was a nice touch. There's a distinct chance, and it's 100%, that Pennywise will visit those two when he next awakes in 2043.

Matt (42:46)
No. Twink, twink, twink cereal.

Tug McTighe (42:58)
He only comes every 27 years, Pennywise. So, I don't think he's quite dead.

Matt (42:58)
Is that when he comes back? Okay. I thought he was dead.

Ben so Ben stops Elton's mother from alerting the authorities because she's kind of whacked right and she But she's fully bought in she's fully on board

Tug McTighe (43:11)
Yeah, she's got the dimension. Yeah, she's

Yeah, she's buying all the hype, buying all the propaganda.

Matt (43:19)
This was great because Ben says, like they've got a button in the house that you can push. And that's the extent to which they're embedded. You can push the button and then the cops come. Ben says, hey, we don't want to do that cause if we do that, all these guys are going to brushing in here. And then Elton looks at him and says, I'm pushing that button. Cause he wants revenge. Yeah. We heard a whole story about how his dad, ⁓

Tug McTighe (43:24)
then call the cop. Yeah, call the backup. Call that Yeah.

Right. Because Ed Elton hit it because he

is dad. Yeah, we got we got Elton's a really nice backstory. The dad was a cop and when the network took over the government and took over the police force, he didn't like it. His buddies stayed on the force and became goons. He created a hot dog or started a hot dog cart business. And then they finally got him in the end the bad guys, the goons, the cops.

Matt (43:44)
was kind of screwed over by the cops and stuff.

Right.

Tug McTighe (44:03)
got him in the end. So we see this in a slideshow, we see this in video content. And then we see all these boobies. And then he brings them all in the house and he's got a booby trap like Home Alone. So that was fun too.

Matt (44:08)
I like that.

Yeah, no, I thought that was fun. There's an extended fight scene then they're running through the house. They're electrocuting guys. They move the hot dog cart and go through a hole in the floor and then sure enough, one of those hunters is down there. The other hunter. There's like six hunters or five hunters, but you really only know McCone and this other guy whose name I don't know. Yes, so you see him a bunch of times. So he talks about how he's going to.

Tug McTighe (44:28)
Five or six, seven, yeah.

because he was blonde hair and smoking. That's how knew he was.

Matt (44:39)
stab he's gonna slash the Achilles tendon of Ben Richards and drag him out like he tells him this which is a nod to what

Tug McTighe (44:46)
it's a nod to a very horrifying scalpel Achilles tendon moment in Stephen King's Pet Sematary movie adaptation. Yes, Fred Gwynn gets it from Gage, the reborn devil child. ⁓ And let me tell you something about Achilles tendons. If you get yours cut, you're not walking out fighting.

Matt (44:54)
That's right, Fred Gwynn gets it's at least.

Right. was, I saw that in the theater. ⁓

No, I wouldn't think so. But in this, that's exactly what happened. So Michael, Sarah, who got stabbed by this guy in it right when they got downstairs, has the wherewithal to slash his Achilles tendon of the hunter. He's grappling with Richard, so he goes down, obviously, because he cut his Achilles tendon. So we're not going to see that guy again, right? ⁓ I know. And and we get a nice

Tug McTighe (45:20)
What he's he's grappling with Richards, right?

Well, yes, we are in two minutes. Really, that's

really, can we just talk about that trope for a sec? It happens a lot, this kind of shit, and it's really stupid. Just don't have it happen.

Matt (45:34)
Yeah.

Well, I get the whole like there's a lot of that like ⁓ somebody got shot and Then a minute later. They're running around like it's no big deal or they get stabbed and they just kind of shake it off But that's pretty specific like I feel like if you get your Achilles tendon cut and I know this because I watch caddyshack and Yeah

Tug McTighe (45:51)
Yes.

He'll pull everything to the right. He can't transfer his weight. He'll give up the game.

Matt (46:03)
So I know that that would incapacitate you anyway. ⁓

Tug McTighe (46:07)
Yeah, but he's driving a

buggy in a minute. But again, lot of good stuff here with Elton and the resistance that Ben is starting to realize is real because he's got these zines, these propaganda pamphlets he wants to put out. And then there was also I noticed a nod to Jaws. When the goons arrive in the house, we see a dolly zoom. And that's where like when Alex Kintner gets eaten in Jaws, when you see they're zooming in on

Brody's face as the camera pulls back and it's a really disconcerting move. ⁓ it's also known as the vertigo effect because because Albert Hitchcock invented it and then or the jaws effect. that was that was that was neat to see someone paying homage to a very talented filmmaker before them. Speaking of very talented people, I want to talk about Little Bear Graphics, sponsor.

Matt (46:38)
That makes sense.

Tug McTighe (46:52)
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Matt (47:43)
Love it. So at this point, Ben and Elton get out of there in a buggy. But McCone, who's in a helicopter, he shoots Elton, but not before Elton gets to deliver an inspirational speech.

Tug McTighe (47:49)
Just waiting.

Yeah,

you're the instigator. You're the initiator. You're the one that's going to kick this off. You see that there's Richard's lives has become a become a rallying cry for the for the populace. So yeah, he gives a little little speech about Ben being the initiator. And he's like before he's like, fuck you. I just want to get back to my family. But now he's like, maybe I am the initiator.

Matt (48:15)
Yeah, and then boom shot in the head. So Ben's driving this buggy the other hunter is Coming at him with another vehicle like like a playing chicken, right? Like they're aiming for each other It's the Achilles tendon guy like he I don't know how he got to a car much less I don't know which tendon they Slashed, but did he hop? I don't know that was irritating It was annoying and then so

Tug McTighe (48:18)
Blue shot the head.

By the way, couldn't even push the gas without broken with that. Yeah.

Either way, he's in a significant amount of pain and he's lost a lot of blood.

Matt (48:42)
Anyway, Ben jumps out of the car, the buggy or whatever that vehicle is into the river. And then we cut to Bobby T in the studio. He's appealing to some red meat patriotism. This America, God damn it. And we don't tolerate no bullshit. He's really good at what he does.

Tug McTighe (48:45)
Into the over the bridge, right?

So great.

Jesus, hyping them up, right?

Yeah. So Elton has given Ben a map to this bunker that his father created when the goons took over. Unfortunately, it's now part of a neighborhood and it's been paved over for a house.

Matt (49:11)
Right?

So he just kind of spends the night sleeping on the floor. Right. It's worth noting to Elton told Ben that all the streetlights had these DNA scanners. So that was something I wondered about. Like they've got these little drone spheres that have guns in them and stuff that just fly around. I'm like, how do they even know where he is? Well, he sets one of these off. Elton tells us about it. Well, then we see one and Ben sets it off. He's like, shit.

Tug McTighe (49:15)
sits in the house just kind of ⁓

Yeah, it's right.

Right. Right.

Matt (49:38)
And so he commandeers a car and there's a ⁓ self-driving car and a rich woman in it who's watching that Americano show. ⁓ Again, it's tech that's normal for them. But for us, it's close like the way most and such, right?

Tug McTighe (49:38)
Right.

Yes.

Right?

Yeah, she's in the self-driving car, putting on her makeup, watching the Americanos while talking on the cell phone to her friend. So that happens every day in America.

Matt (50:00)
and not driving.

Right, but you usually have someone that actually kind of has a hand on this steering wheel So he you know, Ben Richards breaks a window and gets in he's like, you know drive dad damn it and She says oh my car is almost my car is out of charge and then suddenly you get this voice of the network saying That your car is charged at 93 percent

Tug McTighe (50:06)
You hope

Yeah, drive!

car.

Yeah, so they charge your car up. Yeah, right. So again, they're in control of everything. They know everything.

Matt (50:25)
⁓ and

Absolutely, and I thought this too reminded me of Robert Picardo who has been in many things but he was the emergency medical hologram on do you say Voyager or on a Star Trek Voyager? Love that guy. He was also the voice and visual reference for the Johnny cab in total recall Which was another short snagger movie, which I loved and I I can't write. I can't believe that's a coincidence

Tug McTighe (50:45)
in total recall.

Hope you enjoyed the ride. Right, of course, there's no coincidence.

There's no chance.

Matt (50:54)
⁓ So anyway, they drive off and she tees off on him for being he's like you get one minute to say whatever you want She calls him selfish and awful and a wealth which I thought about I think that was a slurred welfare recipients free murder

Tug McTighe (51:00)
Right.

I think you're right.

I looked it up and I couldn't find anything. but cause I heard it for like, you heard it like 10 times, like Elton's mom was calling him that, et cetera, et cetera. They're calling him on that on the street, calling people that on the street. I think you're totally right. And I think that's terrible. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (51:19)
That's a slur they invented, right? But I see

this a lot. People are like, the reason that we're, you know, our government's in debt is because, you know, we got freeloader welfare people. And I'm like, you know about that.

Tug McTighe (51:27)
Yeah, all this free look. right.

And again, because it feels just close enough to real life, the rhetoric works.

Matt (51:35)
does, but not as a parody.

Tug McTighe (51:36)
And then Amelia learns,

Amelia learns pretty soon that they're deep faking everything because they deep fake her. She's not screaming out the window afraid of him. She's talking to him. And she's like, he's going to kill me. He's got a gun. She's like, ⁓ shit. They're fucking they're they're doing they're really doing what you said.

Matt (51:48)
Right.

Yeah, they got pulled over by the rustic rock militia boys, they spelled like every word wrong.

Tug McTighe (51:58)
Yeah. Militia.

Yeah. Militia was spelled M-U-L-I-S-H-A, if I recall. ⁓

Matt (52:03)
Right.

Right. And so they

stay on their way and we see all this support for Richards, like all these people that are like, we're behind you, we support you, Richards lives and all this stuff.

Tug McTighe (52:12)
and they're about to murder him and what happens? The network hates civilian kills. So the drone that's filming it murders them.

Matt (52:19)
Yes, the militia guys. So they get killed by this drone. They head on their way.

Tug McTighe (52:22)
they get killed by- yeah, correct. cuz no no no, this is- this

is pIlians narrative, not theirs.

Matt (52:26)
Absolutely, and they're and you at this point, you know, they're just gonna change the video to whatever they want it to be ⁓ So they reach an airfield. He wants to go to Canada He says fly low over the richest houses. He feels like they're not gonna Kill ritual right So McCone is there at the plane when they get there and Killian makes a call and offers Ben

Tug McTighe (52:31)
That's correct.

Yeah, and yeah, right. she's now Amelia is now on his side.

Matt (52:50)
his own show as the network's newest hunter because the ratings are so good and everybody loves him now. Right. And what does he have to do?

Tug McTighe (52:54)
They love you, dude, right? Yeah, you're the king. Call all these guys

and I'll bring the plane back and we'll make you our biggest star.

Matt (53:00)
Yeah, all he has to do is kill McCone and all the other hunters and then He broadcasts he and Bobby T Say, you know that McCone has done something that we never do that's the worst thing you could do he

Tug McTighe (53:16)
It's our number one rule in Running Man. We don't attack the family.

Matt (53:18)
we protect these families and

so they show fake footage of them killing him. So at this point, it kind of glosses over a lot. Ben fakes having an explosive device. He makes McCone take his mask off and Killian's like, yes, do it. So at this point, know.

Tug McTighe (53:22)
showing that yeah.

Yep, this is when we get to

see Lee Pace looking tired. Lee Pace, not Lee Pace looking tired, the character of McCone looking haggard. He's over it, yeah.

Matt (53:36)
Yeah, leap pace like a beetle.

Yeah, and and scarred and all this stuff. You can tell

he's been through a lot and he's not running anything. He's doing exactly what Killian's done.

Tug McTighe (53:48)
Absolutely not,

no. And Lee Pace is awesome. He's great in this. He's in a lot of stuff like this. He's Thranduil, King of the Mirkwood Elves in the Hobbit movies. He's Ronan from Guardians of Galaxy and he was Ronan again in Captain Marvel. He's a lot of sci-fi and heavy makeup kind of guy. And in my research for this episode, learned he graduated from Juilliard. So yeah.

Matt (54:00)
No?

No kidding.

Yeah, I think pushing daisies was a big thing for him. I didn't see that.

Tug McTighe (54:16)
Yeah, that TV show a

couple more than a couple years ago, but I definitely remember it.

Matt (54:19)
Okay. So what do you think about Ben's evolution, his rage?

Tug McTighe (54:23)
Yeah,

I he's so angry he's so angry and I believe that in a slightly better script He would have grown more Become a bit more controlled He knows the game right now that he knows the game. He knows there's no way to win He as he's on the hero's journey He would start becoming a different version of himself. That's what the baptism symbolizes. That's what

the sage advisors teach you and you learn from them and you come back different. I think he came back different, I'm just maybe not different enough for me.

Matt (54:49)
I felt like he never kind of gained the upper hand. Like the way you want a hero to eventually be like, now I get it, right? This is what I need to do. I don't think he ever did that.

Tug McTighe (54:56)
Right. Exactly. Even

against insurmountable odds, they always surmount them. That's what we love about heroes.

Matt (55:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

So the flight crew are all hunters pretending to be pilots. So Ben figures that out pretty quick. McCone reveals himself as a runner who the one who was the most successful up till now. He made it like 29 days.

Tug McTighe (55:16)
They talked about him earlier in the movie, like,

season one, this guy lasted 29 days or 28 days or whatever.

Matt (55:21)
So they cut him a deal and he became, you know, the secret hunter. He kills McCone. That was pretty good. I felt like Lee Pace character, like he was glad to die. Didn't you feel like he almost looked relieved when he was stabbed in the heart? Yeah, Ben, we did get a little humor where he has gives Amelia a parachute and then they.

Tug McTighe (55:33)
Agreed. 100%. It's enough. Yeah, it's enough. With his own knife.

Matt (55:45)
blow the door and the door doesn't go and she says it's a sign I'm supposed to stay with you and then the door goes and she gets flipped down which I was impressed like if she

Tug McTighe (55:49)
the door goes right she's like, ⁓ right and he more importantly

he gives her pamphlets to just to distribute. Yeah.

Matt (55:56)
the pamphlets. Yeah, that was pretty good.

I was impressed because I had the feeling she'd never jumped out of a plane and she handled that like a champ. So I thought that was pretty good. And then there's some back and forth with Killian and Ben. Killian says, you know, this is your chance to take the new show. You're on live TV. Ben pleads for the viewers to hunt him down and kill them and put an end to this. But the signals block. So nobody saw it.

Tug McTighe (56:02)
I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah. You're fine. Yeah.

And Killian's

so fucking annoyed. He's like, you know I'm not going to show that, dumbass, right?

Matt (56:23)
Right. And then the plane shot down or is it?

Tug McTighe (56:27)
Right, it is not. I don't know.

Matt (56:29)


We the plane explodes It consider you're watching a movie. You're watching what happens you watch the plane explode, but now suddenly you're watching a video of Bradley Brock Morton made On his show, which you said you love you just love that

Tug McTighe (56:36)
Okay, yeah

Which is right,

I love this. It's important to note that Killian redirects the jet, he redirects the jet to his own headquarters.

Matt (56:51)
to kill all the people in it. Right.

Tug McTighe (56:52)
kill all the people and then they

feel like we shoot it down or do we? And again, Bradley Throckmorton, it's sometime later.

Matt (56:59)
It had a very public enemy vibe to it too. Yeah. you were a 90s Peewee fan, which I was.

Tug McTighe (57:01)
very much so. He's all in a mask and he's like, you think Ben Richards died? Let me show you the footage. And so he's disputing

the network story on his show, which I continue to love the conspiracy theories he's peddling are so great and so true to real life. As you can see this black, this object is the escape, escape hatch of the thing right of the plane, which only this model has this escape hat, right? So all this stuff.

Matt (57:23)
Yeah, just playing her in an escape pod. Right.

Tug McTighe (57:27)
Really really fun and then Fortunately the black box of the plane was recovered and an unaltered recording of Ben's conversation with Killian exciting a rebellion against the network so Yeah, it's your left hopeful in this moment

Matt (57:39)
But I mean, so

much of this movie is showing stuff that didn't happen. And now we see this not like, did it happen? But then so that was something. But then we cut from that to Ben's wife and daughter, who actually were not killed and are still alive and are at a grocery store.

Tug McTighe (57:43)
It's hard to know. Right? Yeah. It's hard to know.

correct. That was all killing. They said

killings like even Lee pay said to him he's he's pushing the right button for you, man.

Matt (58:00)
Right.

I So they're grocery grocery shopping for getting fun twink cereal, which there's, gotta be a story behind why they named it fun twinks.

Tug McTighe (58:06)
Yeah, that's what the two murdering

kids in Derry got, was a Lifetime Supply Fun Twinks.

Matt (58:09)
Right? ⁓

So then she goes to his wife goes to pay for the groceries and there are these little this little pair of red socks like his daughter had at the beginning he had lost. He had dropped one and he kept the other one for luck. Well, she said I didn't get these and she said, well, Mrs. Richard that guy outside bought it and she said that's not my name, but of course it is her name. ⁓ So then we see I thought this was a little odd because he's standing outside.

Tug McTighe (58:20)
that was a red that was his sock for luck that he had.

That guy outside.

Right.

Matt (58:38)
it with a face covering like he's got a hoodie up and a mask over his face, which I would think in broad daylight was a little weird, I would have liked him to show his face there. She came out to him and the daughter came out and they met in the street and anyway, and then we cut to the next season of The Running Man.

Tug McTighe (58:40)
Yeah. And sunglasses,

Right.

Yeah, and the people are like, the audience is like, Richard lives, Richard lives. And Bobby T's like, I'm not fucking going out there. I'm gonna get murdered. And he's like, haven't seen it. He's like, he's like, ⁓ you get out there or your asses. He goes, maybe he read my contract.

Matt (59:03)
Right? Right?

Yeah, page 29, paragraph five, sentence two reads, fuck you. That was awesome.

Tug McTighe (59:16)
Fuck you, nice end. He

leaves Killian the host right now. Riot breaks out when Killian comes out and Ben emerges from the crowd, taking down his mask, shoots Killian. He gets his great action line hero that ties back to the running man. He goes five, four, three, two, right, blows him up. So that was really fun.

Matt (59:30)
That was really good.

That was satisfying. I don't know how those people got Molotov cocktails into the studio, And then you get the end scene, which is animated and kind of zine like.

Tug McTighe (59:43)
Yeah, the end credits is advancing the story because you see Amelia in that just like she's now a fighter in the resistance You see all these fun Z. It's really just really fun Edgar. Now. This is really fun. Edgar, right five minutes here

Matt (59:56)
Right and they kind of kept that gave you the end of the story. I I agree. That's nice And it makes you gives you a reason to watch it. There's no end credit scene. I have to wonder if we've gotten used to that from Marvel movies, but Unless you're teeing it up for the next it's a franchise and you're teeing it up for the next movie. Why would you have it? That's fine. All right, so That's season three,

Tug McTighe (1:00:00)
Okay, little nice touch.

Yeah.

No, just Yeah, just let it go. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, that's 30th episode. ⁓ Okay, I think this is a good, not a great reboot. As we've discussed, it's tackling a ton of issues that neither the book nor the 87 movie tried to work through. So that makes it hard, right? It's really diving deep into censorship and political division, the growing gap between the haves and have nots. I think Stephen King nodded to it, nodded to it in the book. But again, like you said, I have to go back and reread it to really see if he was leaning that far into it.

Matt (1:00:22)
What do you think?

Tug McTighe (1:00:45)
I he was just against the man his whole life was being about being against the man But this was a very definite technology surveillance The gap between the haves and the have-nots billionaire corporations, etc, etc So, I mean I like that I applaud it for that A lot of it was right on the nose Not not a lot of subtlety, but a fun ride And I'm down for Edgar Wright's take on pretty much anything

Matt (1:01:08)
Me too. As I think about that story, I have a feeling.

there were a lot of these elements, but they weren't articulated in the way that makes sense to us now. Like in the original novella, for sure. Well, no, I don't think it's his problem in as much as in the original story, there was surveillance. In this movie, there's drones. In the original, you know what I mean? We can put a name to what it is. It's not this ambiguous technology.

Tug McTighe (1:01:19)
That is clear Stephen King problem.

Correct.

Yes, it exists.

Matt (1:01:41)
it exists it's a real thing we're

Tug McTighe (1:01:42)
Yeah.

Matt (1:01:42)
like yeah that we know what that is we know what dna is

Tug McTighe (1:01:44)
Yeah, you were right

in 82 you were afraid you were afraid it would happen You didn't know the form. Well now we know the form

Matt (1:01:50)
Right.

Yeah, so I think a lot of the technology in this film, As many years ago as 1982 was. It might've seemed really uber sci-fi. So when they call this a sci-fi movie, I'm like, I don't know that it was. It's, at this point, it's standard stuff. It's, is it a dystopian future or is it just kind of a crappier present? Right?

Tug McTighe (1:02:10)
but just a turned up to 10,

right?

Matt (1:02:13)
Right, we're at like a eight and a half. Again, I'm fairly optimistic. I don't think things are, I see the glass half full and all that stuff. It just didn't hit all that hard for me. Like if it's a warning, it's too late, man. There's nothing going on in this movie that couldn't happen next week or tomorrow. And we'd probably shrug at it the way the people in this movie do it. Like, what are you gonna do? You know, yay.

Tug McTighe (1:02:15)
Yeah.

Right, right. That's exactly right. Right, right.

That's right. You're on freebie,

man.

Matt (1:02:36)
If don't want to get your DNA scanned on the street corner, then move to Russia. I don't know. it were, imagine as a parody of society and culture and the coarsening of culture and our ability to be desensitized or influenced by the media or by any bullshit that somebody says, because we want to believe it. You can't parody this stuff now. It's happening right now. It's, yeah.

Tug McTighe (1:02:41)
Right.

It's not, no, and it's not even funny. You're right. Whenever

somebody brings it up, it's not that funny because it's, it's all true. ⁓

Matt (1:03:01)
Right. We do.

That's just how we are. Nothing in this is crazy. So, ⁓ but I liked it. Was this in hit cinemass?

Tug McTighe (1:03:03)
Yeah.

Me too,

yeah, Mylton hit. Don't run out to see it. Run, see what I did? But if you want to fun two hours a summer, it's worth a watch. It's beautifully rendered and again, good performances, don't run. Walk, don't run.

Matt (1:03:12)
No.

Yeah, don't run to see it, man.

And if you're an Edgar Wright fan, see it.

Tug McTighe (1:03:23)
If you're an Edgar Wright fan

or a Stephen King fan or a Glenn Powell fan, it's great. Yeah, it's worth a watch. I've watched a lot. Hey, I've watched a lot of shitty movies for this podcast. Yeah. Ha ha, Burn.

Matt (1:03:26)
Yeah, for sure. I said-

100 % most of the ones you recommend. I'm kidding.

It's I do wish there were more of the traditional Edgar Wright directorial flourishes. It just wasn't it didn't feel like his movie. It's like he was just kind of

Tug McTighe (1:03:43)
Not like it, not like,

yeah, not like, like I said, Edgar Wright adjacent. Yeah.

Matt (1:03:47)
Yeah, he didn't own it. ⁓ He

didn't he didn't mash up genres. It's not bad. It's not amazing. But but again, it was well acted and well shot. I can't I can't find a ton of fault with it. It just wasn't a life changing movie. So. Yeah, they can all be bangers. All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening to Cinemissas.

Tug McTighe (1:03:59)
No, it wasn't a banger.

They can't all be bangers. Alright!

Matt (1:04:07)
If you like what we're doing, please help grow the show by subscribing, share some episodes, write a review. Really do that and tell your friends like if you like this, I heard from a good friend, ⁓ Andy Moore, a.k.a. Andrew James Cookie Monster, a guy I went to school with. And he had mentioned our show to another guy, Clint Hummel, who's an actual actor.

Tug McTighe (1:04:29)
An actor?

Matt (1:04:30)
Yes, and talked about maybe he comes on the show and tells us what it's like to be an actor. yes, share the word and we want to hear from you. Follow comment on socials. We're on Instagram. We're not really actually we're only on Instagram and Facebook because I ran out of gas on Twitter, but you can drop us a line at cinemassagemail.com with ideas to make the show better and recommendations for moves we might want to cover. And you can go to our website at cinemassage.com.

Tug McTighe (1:04:34)
That'd be awesome.

We're going to pick up TikTok here pretty soon. problem.

Matt (1:04:59)
and visit our sponsors, Little Bear Graphics, who tug does such a nice job of doing spots for and a new one, Casey laser engraving dot com. Casey laser engraving will engrave anything you can engrave with the laser. So. Pretty great if you want to. You know, it's not lasered. So we can do custom shirts, tumblers, hats, leather patches. I just tell me what you want and I'll laser it.

Tug McTighe (1:05:14)
That is a great tagline. If you can engrave it with a laser, we'll engrave it. If you can't engrave it with a laser, we will not.

Matt (1:05:26)
Anything you can imagine it's printed or lasered we can make it and people love wearing and using stuff that's custom for them. So get some.

Tug McTighe (1:05:34)
There you go. Wow, that was our 30th episode. Who knew we would not tire of talking to each other through a computer? But we're not. ⁓ I always have fun. So we're gonna take a couple weeks here and plan what's next for season four. So we'll be back sometime in June.

Matt (1:05:40)
I think that's impressive. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (1:05:48)
⁓ Thank you for staying with us. Thank you for being part of this little thing Matt and I love doing we're unbelievably appreciative of anybody who ever listened to it or told a friend or brought it up to me or brought up to Matt or commented on a Instagram post so we we love doing it and We're gonna keep doing it and we hope you'll stay along on the ride with us

Matt (1:06:07)
Absolutely. I do want to give a quick shout out to friend of the show Trey Morgan who got in touch with us this week motion graphics animator Yeah, hi Trey motion graphics animator movie buff. He gave us some good suggestions for future picks including Gattaca brick and moon Featuring our favorite guy Sam Rockwell and nobody's favorite guy Kevin Spacey So thank you Trey and everybody else get your suggestions in and we're give away some swag next season to listeners who participate

Tug McTighe (1:06:13)
Bye Trey.

Matt (1:06:35)
by getting in touch with Gmail or on the socials.

Tug McTighe (1:06:38)
on social.

All right, thanks for joining us on Cinemisses. We'll be back soon. I am Tug.

Matt (1:06:42)
I'm Matt, that is a wrap.

Tug McTighe (1:06:44)
Running Man!

Matt (1:06:45)
Running man. Nice job, buddy.