The Brothers Howell

Episode 3: Movies These Days - WTF

• Michael Howell

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In the third episode of 'The Brothers Howell,' hosts Steve and Mike delve into the current trend of movie remakes and rehashes, lamenting the lack of originality in Hollywood. They discuss personal movie experiences, including Mike's recent viewing of a Led Zeppelin documentary and their mutual disappointment with many modern remakes. They highlight some effective remakes like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'Cape Fear,' while criticizing poorly executed ones such as 'The Longest Yard' and 'Footloose.' The episode also touches on the issue of studios prioritizing profitability over creativity, attributing the rise in remakes to financial safety and shareholder expectations. Ultimately, they express a desire for more original content and better-crafted remakes, urging studios to put more effort into storytelling and dialogue.

Steve:

Hello everyone, to all you vets and newcomers. This is episode number three of the Brothers Howell. You've got me, Steve, and my brother. Mike. Say hello, Mike. I am here. Hello. And, I, I think we're gonna talk about, movies and remakes and rehashes and how that's going these days.

Mike:

Yeah, and I, I try to come up with clever names for these episodes I see the other podcasters out there. They wait till the end of the podcast and they, they like, we should call it this because that's what we talked about and something clever came up, but I am gonna call this one movies these days. What the fuck?

Steve:

I, that's that pretty much, that's a great summation even for a beginning because it, yeah, that's kind of the attitude that's out there now with all the, all the remix. There's not, there's not very many original ideas, if any, out there now, and we're, we seem to be getting, a, a menu of the same stuff over and over and over again.

Mike:

I'm with you 100%. My latest, well, I, there's a lot of movie experiences and, and we will go into all of this, right? I stream stuff. I stream old stuff. I stream new stuff. My latest in the theater that I went to was becoming Led Zeppelin, and I thought that was interesting. For one reason, I like Led Zeppelin. I like the history of music. I'm a big bass player, so I wanted to go see everything I could about John Paul Jones and how that band came together. And it was interesting from that standpoint. But theater worthy movie, hell no. It was a Hulu documentary at best, to produce that in a theater and to try to get audiences to go to that format to go see that we have lost all ideas of content in any way, shape, or form to make things interesting.

Steve:

Yeah, and that's, that's kinda like the stamp it out, cookie cutter kind of approach to things. And a lot of that stems from, of course, being no original ideas. But a lot of it is also because, you've got studios now who are. Who are owned by bigger corporations and answer to shareholders, and they want, something proven something where the, the cost and the, and the return is gonna be built in. And they look back to the past and call from the stuff that made money before and, Hey, let's do that again. Yeah.

Mike:

Absolute calculation people were, and, and especially probably now with ai, probably even more analysis around it than they could have done in the past. And here's the model that's gonna make you money. What did this movie do at the box office? And I think there's a couple of things around that, right? One is, let's capitalize on whatever that box office thing made and do a sequel maybe, or I think you're gonna come up with prequels here in a minute and we can talk about that. And then the other thing is, you know what, it's been 20 years, there's a whole new audience segment for that. We're gonna redo the exact same thing in some other format.

Steve:

Yeah. This stuff is easy. It doesn't take much to put together, a new movie based on an old script when you've got it all in place already. And then there's the ones that can be remade. I. And, and largely acceptable. It would be like classic literature. I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. Those get made over and over again because it's, I agree, I agree with that. It's kind of good to update that stuff for, for the pure literature sense of it. But then when you are, I. You're remaking stuff, especially when it was made five, 10 years ago. People have barely forgotten the one that, that, that did exist. And now they've moved on to a new version of it that frankly is not as good.'cause it, you don't get the same input into it financially, and you, you don't really get the same effort, I don't believe.

Mike:

I agree. And I do think, if things are made that too quickly back to back, you still have that one, maybe even the same generation, just older. But the, the people that saw it to begin with. Yeah. And then see the second rendition of it, you lose that audience'cause they're kind of married to the first one already. I think that's probably a little too soon to grab that new audience Yeah. That they were trying to grab.

Steve:

Yeah. Well there's, there's certainly logic to, introducing something. To new generation, particularly if it's good, something that they can relate to that we wouldn't because it, it has their modern day stars, their modern day, aspects that we wouldn't appreciate as much as they would. I often wonder why they keep going back and doing some of the same things over and over again. And some of the low hanging fruit when there is so many hundreds and hundreds of movies from the, even going back as early as the thirties, forties, fifties, where there are scripts there that are plenty good enough to be made into something that might not seem like a remake. It'll seem fresher, but why not use some of that more unknown material than keep going back to the stuff that everybody is familiar with on a day-to-day basis.

Mike:

Is that the risk, is that the problem?

Steve:

I think doing a remake of anything is less risk than doing something epic. Surely nobody wants to take a chance on a billion dollar epic anymore because the risk of failure is too great. Yeah, so we don't get the epics anymore.

Mike:

Is it cheaper though, maybe these days to make what used to be a big epic, expensive movie

Steve:

yeah. And then you got, I guess CGI too, which is gonna save you some money, I suppose. Yeah. And then. Location. Location, yeah. Filming and things of that nature. But now you're getting into that territory where if the epic was that big to begin with, is that something you really wanna tackle? Can you really live up to it? That's a good point.

Mike:

So you talked about the CGI thing. So the movie before becoming Led Zeppelin that I saw, I just don't go to the theater that much anymore. Right. But the one I saw was, was it called Gladiator two, the sequel of Gladiator, gladiator

Steve:

two it was a, a sequel, but it was almost a remake. Really.

Mike:

Well, they continued a story with the son, right? Yeah. Of, the, of the sister of, I forgot very forgettable. Caesar guy, I forgot what his name was. I don't remember. Yeah. That, that Joaquin played, but, but that was the continuation of that story. But very CGI, generated. Yeah. Which maybe, maybe these younger audiences, that's all they know and they don't care. That's okay. And that's probably

Steve:

true. They have no expectations where that's concerned because they're not really. Most of them are interested in going back more than 20 years anyway, so they don't really know the old stuff.

Mike:

But it was funny you mentioned it's okay to take the classic literature and remake and remake and remake and I, I don't know if I call this classic literature, but one of the things my wife Tina loves is the storyline of Pride and Prejudice.

Mm-hmm.

Mike:

Right? And there has been so many. Remakes of Pride and Prejudice? Yes, there is. And she loves every single one of'em because they come at it from a different backdrop. Yeah. I think one of the latest ones was done in space. It was basically pride and prejudice in space. Yeah. And, and all the different houses had a different starships and what have you. The one before that was Pride and prejudice zombies.

Steve:

Yeah. Pride and prejudice and honor. I remember that. Yeah.

Mike:

So that there's some campy cleverness around that. I'll give them that.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah. Well that's kind of an original idea. I, yeah, I like that. I can, I can kind of relate to her on that. One of my favorite movies of all time, and it's, it's classic literature, it's Charles Dickens and that's, A Christmas Carol. Absolutely. There are multiple versions of that. I love pretty much every one of them. I mean, the, the creme de la creme is, is the Alistair Sim version, the black and white versions in 51. But, but, the Jort c Scotland's good. Even the musical with Albert Finney was good. They've all been pretty good. I, I'll watch'em all every Christmas season.

Mike:

You're not gonna give me Henry Winkler and American Christmas, Carol,

Steve:

I've got that one. I didn't know where to bring that up or I've got that on DVD now. If, if you had to pick out a worst. That would be the one. It was the

Mike:

worst, but I love him.

Steve:

It's still watchable. I'll watch it. I love Henry Winkler.

Mike:

He is probably one of the nicest actors I've ever, ever, seen, interviewed, and done different things, I love him. I think I watched it like five years ago. It was not easy to find and I found it and streamed it and I'm like, wow, this is absolutely terrible.

Steve:

Yeah, that's, that's, that's pretty much me right down the line too. I liked it when we were younger. I. I watched it a second time after I found, I actually found the, the Blu-ray, in, in a thrift store and purchased it. And I watched it and, eh, yeah. It left a lot to be desired. Yeah. And, but it's hard to go wrong. I mean, I love anything Charles Dickens anyway, and at Christmas Carol, in particularly, it's the greatest redemption story ever written. And it, it's, it's just hard not to like, it

Mike:

It is so funny that you just said redemption story, And I knew we were gonna talk about movies, and I know, people that have probably listened to our first two podcasts, they don't have a great feel for where we go. But the idea is that you, I wonder. Yeah, we we're not in your, we're not in your mindset yet, but we talk about a little bit of absurdities, right. And personal fronts, and we try to turn stuff into that. Not everything works out for that, but we do. So I wanted to start looking how many stories can possibly be told. Okay. Because I mean, how many movies do we have to put out every year for people to keep their jobs, generate business, have the studio stay up, all that type of stuff. Given the fact, and I think it's a fact there, I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's refutable, that there might be only seven basic plots in the entire world.

Steve:

Mm-hmm. And you've ma mapped'em all out.

Mike:

I can absolutely tell you I did nothing, but I can look up stuff and I can research things.

Steve:

Well, there's, there's a lot, lot to be said for that. Not to give excuses for taking the easy route, but, a lot of it is done outta necessity'cause there's really only so many stories. There's a saying, I think, I think it comes from being, band around by comedians that there. There are no new jokes, just new applications to old ones. And I think you can apply that to just about everything, including music, including, movies and entertainment and, and just the written word.

Mike:

I absolutely agree with that. In fact, I was listening literally to a podcast today. I'm not trying to advertise other people's podcasts on air, but there's many that I listen to that I like, oh, they'll help us. And one of my, and one of my favorite guys, he said, and I told a joke last week. It wasn't my joke. And we got a lot of people, that was the funniest thing I ever heard. And I had to pull over the side of the road. I was laughing so hard. And he's like, that wasn't my joke. I didn't even try to play it as my joke. Just part of the story that I was telling. And it was an old Henny Youngman joke, right

Steve:

boy. Or my own car.

Mike:

Take my wife please. Right? Yeah. The king in a one liners. My wife asked me, take me someplace I've been before. I took her to the kitchen.

Steve:

Some of the old stuff, it all comes back around sooner or later, but,

Mike:

and that's old school, talking about wife and what have you. But you, like, like you said, you could take that joke and apply it to any new situation.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's, that almost has to be done because it's pretty much, it pretty much has all been done. I think where, I, I think where the problem is, is the frequency you do it. And how many times you go back to the same material when there's others to choose from.

Yeah. Agree.

Steve:

And, and which ones should just be left the hell alone? Because you're not going to be able to supplant it, let alone equal it, just leave it alone the Exorcist, you're not gonna remake that, you're not gonna remake the the 10 Commandments or Apocalypse Now, citizen Kane, it's a wonderful life Key Largo, and the list goes on and on on some of those things. You just cannot remake those because you're, you can't, you, you got a lot of balls to try it, but you're a fool to try it too.

Mike:

I agree with that. The one that really, kind of hits home with me is Apocalypse Now. Yeah. So. APOs Nail, I think is the absolute quintessential story of one person in their quest within the Vietnam War, right? Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

And if you try to redo that and call it Apocalypse Nail, you will fail.

Steve:

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Mike:

And, and quite frankly, I think if you try to run parallel with it, with that same kind of, one person stories and that quest within that. You'll probably fail. And that, that actually came from, I think it was the book Hearted Darkness, right? Yeah.

Steve:

Joseph Conrad. Yeah. Classically, which wasn't

Mike:

Vietnam and it was about going down to Congo and Africa, I think. Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. But, but it was told beautifully and it was done very well. Yeah. So you don't challenge that. But I do like Vietnam movies as a whole. I wanna see more of'em and, and not, I don't wanna see more made, but I like looking, I like watching them.

Steve:

Yeah, I do too. I do too. Especially if they're well done. Especially some of'em are pretty poor. But, yeah, if you're gonna, if you're willing to take the risk and put the money into it, but then that gets us right back to where we were before.

Mike:

Yeah. It could, it could be a major

Steve:

financial failure.

Mike:

So a great take. IWI wouldn't say is a take on Apocalypse Now necessarily, but What was a Tropic Thunder? Did you see that?

Steve:

I did. It's been a while. Yeah. Okay.

Mike:

So the comedy version, without being too. Campy or two slapstick about, we're not gonna do a movie about apo. We're not gonna do Apocalypse Nail movie in the first person. And the challenges thereof. Mm-hmm. We're gonna do a satire movie of making a movie that that is about that guy in his personal journey. I thought that was pretty clever.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah. It was. I dug that.

Mike:

So you say what you want about the actors in that. I, I thought that was a clever take on that and I thought that was one. We, we can put that on the historical movie shelf and it's valid and it's okay.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

I wanted to get back to these plots. Okay. The seven. That I understand. I'm not here to do credits for, others and what have you. So I don't want to go into that because I'm not trying to be a trustworthy resource of knowledge here, but this is not me saying this. Okay. So I've done some research around this where I hear that there's basically, and it's arguable, I'm sure, seven plots in every story you ever tell. Every story it's ever been told, every movie it's ever been made has, doesn't have to stay to these, but there's no way to get out of it. It's just what they are. And one was a overcoming the monster. There's some called monster. Whatever you want. Is it an entity? Is it a force? Is it something else? But you gotta overcome it. The other is rags to riches. So again, you could almost put that in Overcoming a monster. What's the monster? Well, I'm in rags, right? The quest, I'm on a journey I gotta go discover. There is a voyage, the other one's a voyage that I go on and then I return from it. And what's changed since I got back comedy? That seems pretty general. But you know, you could take almost any, any plot we talk about and turn it into a comedy. Sure. There's a tragedy, I think. Yeah. That's kind of weak. That's kind of a weak one. But, comedy and tragedy, you could put anything under that. And then there's a rebirth. I, I rediscovered myself and now I'm a new person.

Steve:

You talk about the rags to richest thing, as a matter of fact. I came across this little tidbit about, Brewsters Millions has been remade eight or nine times. I

Mike:

love that fricking movie

Steve:

now, the 85 version with, Pryor and, wild.

Mike:

No, it was prior and it was, candy. Oh, John Candy. Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah. That's actually very good. I, I like that at that time. And, and for a long time after that, I thought that was an original movie, but that, that was like the seventh or eighth version of that movie to be made. I did not

Mike:

know

Steve:

that. Yeah. And it goes all the way back to, the teens, I think was the first one.

Mike:

That's a, so that's a great point. Right? So other people that probably knew that story and watched it are thinking we're idiots, right? Mm-hmm. Because we loved Richard Pryor's version. Yeah, that's a great point of that. So first, I got points around that, but I gotta talk about Bruce's Millions, one of my, I think it's one of the funniest movies

Steve:

ever. It is a funny movie. I love it.

Mike:

It's, I mean, Richard Pryor, back when he was still acting and was on point when he was doing the other movies. Like you said gene Wilder. Gene Wilder. Yes. Yeah. And those were great too. Stir crazy, all those awesome. That was his prime and his character in Brewster's Millions is just fricking awesome. And the plot, I didn't know, again, I'm sure it meets Rags are riches. Yeah. But I didn't know it was a redone, remade movie, but I absolutely love that movie. Yeah. And that's, that's one I will buy. And Restream. Oh, I, once a year. I would, I would

Steve:

definitely, I would definitely, I'm a, I'm a more of a physical collector than you are, but if I ever see that, that Blueray sitting out there in the wild somewhere, I'll pick it up.

Mike:

Well, you're a classic collector. I just buy stuff for entertainment, so I have a, I have an online stream thing that I own. I actually do think I own that movie. Yeah. Like in Amazon.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah. And my favorite thing about that movie is, is of course mailing the, the rare stamp, the rare airmail stamp course. That price always the one

Mike:

case smarter than we thought he was. Right? Like, what was it, like a$2 million stamp?

Steve:

That was freaking awesome. Went right back to the source. But you know, there are also in, I don't know about how recent history, but in our recent history, like going back 30 years or so, there have been some really good remakes and in some cases where the remake is better than the original. Some of that, like, I don't, do you remember Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Did you ever see the original, the remake? I never,

Mike:

well, the only one I know is the one with, Donald Silver one. Yeah. Donald Silver one. Yeah.

Steve:

Okay. That was, that was the remake.

Mike:

Okay.

Steve:

The original was the Kevin McCarthy, black and white version in 55 or 56, which was also great. The original was great, but the remake was better. It was very good. Like, the Haunting,

Mike:

so before, before you go on. Okay. So that one, I think. I was relatively young. My preteens maybe. Yeah. Maybe just teens. Yeah. And I think you took me to that movie.

Steve:

Yeah. Did, did we go with Lyle Woodard? Maybe. Do you remember Lyle? I think so. Yes. I think it back.

Mike:

I think it was, yes. I think it was the

Steve:

three of us. We went to Bradley Theater to see that. Yep. Where all would eventually work when I was in high school. And then there's Dawn of the Dead, George Romero's second. Zombie movie. Okay. He gets two categories here because his second zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead, you remember we couldn't go see that one night because it was actually given an X rating. And we went with Dad, I remember, wouldn't let us in. And I

Mike:

remember something about that having an X rating.

Steve:

Yeah. And that, that one was very good. Done on a real low budget. Like all George Romero films are. But the remake that came in the nineties also real good. No, no big cast. I think the biggest name in there was Ving. Rames, but it was great. So sometimes the second one is better.

Mike:

Which one was the one you that was X-rated? Was that the black and white one?

Steve:

No, that was the, that was the color one Dawn of the dead. I. It came out with an X rating.

Mike:

Okay. So the, the first one was Night of the Living. Dead

Steve:

Night of the Living Dead. And that's where another also fits one of our categories. The first one, the black and white Classic. They actually re remade that movie in color Frame by frame. Absolutely the same. Why?

Mike:

That's a good point. And it was terrible. I think Night of the Living Dead. I remember seeing it. Is it, did we see that the drive-in.

Steve:

Maybe,

Mike:

maybe may I don't know. But it scared me for years,

Steve:

was, yeah, nothing he did was fantastic.

Mike:

It, it was done really, really well.

Steve:

And, and George Romero did everything really cheap and he did it in his immediate backyard in the Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh area. And he used actors from right around the area, local. Some of'em didn't even have acting experience in most of his stuff. Well, you're a

Mike:

zombie, so

Steve:

Yeah, you're a zombie. What

Mike:

do you need to do? Yep,

Steve:

that's exactly right. And then you have stuff like, Cape Fear Original, fantastic remake. Even better,

Mike:

I will say, I knew there was an original when I watched the one that I watched with Robert Dero. Right. The Robert De Niro one was very, very good.

Steve:

Yeah. Outstanding. He and Nick. No, I can't say

Mike:

I'm a huge Robert De Niro fan, but, well, I used to be, his acting is good. And that was a great movie.

Steve:

His acting's very good. I just wish he stopped going for the money and stopped, taking every script that was offered him. Yeah. So the first half of his career he was very selective and did, did very noteworthy things.

Mike:

So before I forget, you have more examples of this?

Steve:

A couple more like, desperate Hours. The original with Bogart. Very good. The remake with Mickey Rourke. Fantastic.

Mike:

I don't know that, I don't know that you ought to check that

Steve:

out because especially the remake is very, very good. Anthony Hopkins and Mimi Rogers and Shawnee Smith.

Mike:

I'm always looking for content, so I will do that.

Steve:

Yeah. That's a great one. And then, I don't know about the Day of the Earth stood still. The original was classic. Fantastic. The remake with Keanu Reeves.

Mike:

I'm sorry. Both of those, I don't like,

Steve:

you don't like the original?

Mike:

No, not really. Okay. I mean, I like, I like the concept of it, and I like the, I liked the storyline, I didn't think it was really done that well.

Steve:

Yeah, either. I, I'm a sucker for old classic black and white movies anyway. Like I, Eileen, my wife will not watch anything black and white, neither will my daughter.

Mike:

I think if somebody came to me and said, let's do a movie or a story, whatever, and start with a story, make it a movie that said, aliens are coming down and telling us to fricking figure our shit out, or they're gonna destroy us. Mm-hmm. I could write a better story than that movie. Under that

Steve:

guys maybe. Yeah.

Mike:

Yeah. I, I just didn't like either of'em. So I was gonna ask you, the thing,

Steve:

I was just coming to that one. Yeah. Okay, cool.

Mike:

We're on the same page

Steve:

again. The original Fantastic. The remake much better. Great

Mike:

story. Great storyline. The original. But it was, the special effects are absolutely horrible.

Steve:

Yeah,

Mike:

right. Yeah. It's like a ve we're getting attacked by vegetables or something. It was, it was,

Steve:

It was, it was the, the gun smoke guy, the Marshall Dylan was the monster.

Mike:

Oh, was he? I never knew that.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

That's hilarious know. But, but I mean, Kurt Russell is like the main character in the next one. And, when they did those special effects for that movie at the time it came out. Yeah. The holy, I think they still hold well now

Steve:

and talking about going, dipping back into the, dipping back into the past. I'm hearing there's another one coming next year and Kurt Russell's in it,

Mike:

the thing,

Steve:

yeah.

Mike:

So it's gonna be not a remake, but like, something that ties into the original.

Steve:

Yeah, I, I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it is, it. I mean, it gives you what little I know about it. It left me with the idea that somehow Kurt Russell survived that and now he's going back as an older man.

Mike:

Well, he never, you never saw him die?

Steve:

No, those two. He and, he, Keith. David.

Mike:

Well, and they were like, who's gonna kill? Who thinks it's gonna turn the thing? Yeah, yeah. Right.

Steve:

Waiting for all the, waiting for everything to get cold and all the fires coming out. Okay.

Mike:

Is that the list you got any others? Like, because I got some,

Steve:

we did speak of Shawnee Smith, and here's another one. The original blob with Steve McQueen and then the remake with Shawnee Smith and Kevin Dillon, the Blob. I don't know. I don't know the remake. You don't know the remake? It's, it's actually, if you like Shawnee Smith and you like either one of the Dillons, you'll probably like, like that too. I mean, it's, it's cheap. It's cheap entertainment, but it's good. Cream de la creme of, of driving movie fodder for that period of time.

Mike:

Abso, it was the original fonzi jumping over the shark. It was, you gotta watch it. Yeah.

Steve:

But did you notice the theme throughout all of that? It was almost everything that we brought up that I brought up individually was almost all horror or science fiction. And those two genres get remade over and over again. And there's big money in that because a lot of times it is better than the original'cause you can do more with

Mike:

it'cause of the effects and and stuff. Yeah. That's a good, that's a really good point. So that does bring me to, so first I do have a tangent and, and then I'll try to tie it back into what you were saying with, w the only good remakes, kind of what you said is, you can do horrors more easily, right?

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

But my tangent is this. So I had time last night, like I got some time to fill and I wanna watch something. What should I watch? We mentioned this on our last podcast and I looked it up and I watched it. Capor one.

Steve:

Did you really? I did. I rewatched it again, I think. Oh, it's probably been five or six years ago.

Mike:

I will tell you I was thoroughly entertained.

Steve:

Yeah, I was too. It

Mike:

really was. And I think that, you know why, I think it still holds up as a story. It's a great story, right? Yeah. We're fak it. We're, we're faking not, we didn't fake everything before, but for this particular mission, and we need faith from the government that, we can pull off a mission to Mars and we're scared that we really can't do it, so we're gonna fake it, right? Like, great, great storyline, right? Mm-hmm. And they didn't go crazy with the special effects of where things look fake.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

Yeah. So, so I think that's what makes it hold up to where you can watch it and not feel like this is stupid. And I will tell you, Elliot Gould was great in it. Yeah. And I forgot how much I like him as an actor.

Steve:

Yeah. He, he, well, at that time, at that time, he was at his, the peak of his powers. And he was just about right up there. The, the one, two or third, third guy as far as leading men in Hollywood goes for a short period of time there. And he was kind of big. And most of that was coming off the success of mash.

Mike:

Oh, okay. Sure. From the movie. Yeah. So, oh, that goes back to another one. You just tied back into something we talked about earlier with the remakes and what have you. We haven't really broached this one, Mash the movie mm-hmm. Versus Mash the show.

Mm-hmm.

Mike:

Great successful movie. We turned into a show. I grew up on the show. Went back and watched the movie. Yeah. Right. I will tell you that the generation above me thinks the movie is King.

Steve:

Well, I think they're both great, but they're not really compar comparative other than the fact that that, Gary Bergoff was both versions. They really didn't have a whole lot comedy. Yeah. He's, yeah, they're both, to me, they're both standalone. It was great television and, maybe at least one of the top five television shows ever at least as far as comedies go. But the movie was, the movie was meant to be a standalone thing in the beginning. And it, sure it still holds up today. Every time I, I see it scrolling through, I, I usually stop on it. It's very good.

Mike:

And it's funny, so my wife, who doesn't watch a lot of tv, and she's younger than me. Her go-to, like, just put it on and I'll do stuff. Is Mash

Steve:

the TV show?

Mike:

Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah. That's, it's great comfort television. I did that for years. Yeah. It used to always be my go-to. We, in one of the early shows, we were talking about late night TV and waiting for Johnny Carson to come one. I'd be on channel five watching reruns of, of mash and the Odd Couple, just over and over again night after night, year after year.

Mike:

That's interesting to say. Odd couple'cause we, I don't want to get too much into that. Odd couple did not comfort me. There's something about that show that I did not relate to and maybe it's'cause I missed it by a couple years of these guys. I didn't understand.

Steve:

Yeah. Well in that case too, I liked the TV show, but the movie was much better. The movie was fantastic.

Mike:

I'm sure that generation above me would say the same thing.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah, the movie really was good. I

Mike:

do like, I like, I like Jack Klugman. I thought he was, I thought he was. They did,

Steve:

they did great casting, both versions.'cause they, they nailed it on both accounts, I think.

Mike:

Yep. Totally agree.

Steve:

Now the later version with, Matthew Perry, that TV show, eh, I don't if you ever watched that. I've never saw. Yeah. Not, not too great. Matthew Perry was, CL was Kligman's role. He was Oscar.

Mike:

So I did want to bring up a couple things. I remember when I was in my twenties, so not that long ago.

Steve:

Yeah, me either.

Mike:

Yeah, I was looking for some content to watch and, I think we had the same conversation I had with some friends then all the new movies the plots are just redone if you really want to see good acting, you need to watch this movie. And I went and watched it, and it was called Sleuth.

Steve:

That's a Donald Carland movie, right? Is that Donald Sutherland?

Mike:

It is Michael Kane.

Steve:

Michael Kane. Okay. Gotcha.

Mike:

Mm-hmm. And, I'll expand on this in a minute so our listeners understand. The reason they suggested is it's all about acting. Mm-hmm. It has nothing to do with special facts, backdrops, anything. It's in one room, the entire movie it is two people acting back and forth. I won't, bore you with the plot, but they're basically trying to accuse each other of different things and trying to figure out this and that. And who did what

Steve:

is that the one with Chris with, Superman. What was his name?

Mike:

It was, no, this is pretty old. Right? Okay, so this is 72. It's with Lawrence Olivier and Michael Kane. Okay. Well,

Steve:

yeah, if you put Olivier in it, of course it's gonna be a top-notch acting movie.

Mike:

Well, no, but I mean that's what was cool about. I didn't think I would like it. What do you mean it's one real, I, I want some action. I want no explosions. I don't get it. Why would I watch that? And I watched it and I was like, that's what it's about. Yeah. And then. I looked up other movies that were like that and I didn't realize how many were so, so much about just the acting and not the backdrops, any special effects. And one of the top ones that comes up is 12 Angry Men.

Steve:

Yes. And they made the mistake of remaking that movie too.

Mike:

So I agree with that.'cause that was originally, was it a play originally?

Steve:

I, I would only be guessing that. Yeah. I'm not sure.

Mike:

I'm not sure. But I, we actually did it as a play in my English class in high school. Really? And even, the acting as we did it, it kind of chilled me a little bit. That is a great story.

Steve:

Yeah. And I is a great story. My point

Mike:

is, we've gotten away from that.

Steve:

Yes. And, I am not. In agreement with the rest of my household. Nobody agrees with me on this. I would much rather watch something dialogue driven than have any kind of action or explosions in it. I get mesmerized by the written word and by the spoken word. And when the dialogue is good, I'm totally engrossed. The problem is with that when I'm watching that, everybody wants to talk to me. This is all about the dialogue. I can't talk to you and watch this too.

Mike:

Oh my God. It it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Yeah. This is why men make man caves with their tv. I mean, I'm dead serious. I go through content pretty quickly. I don't like to waste it. Yeah. If something's good, right? Tina or my, my kids, Julie or Tony will come talk to me. I'm like, pause, okay. Yep, yep, yep. Well, why are you pausing it? Now I feel like I have to hurry. You're not paying attention to me. You're just waiting to get back to it. That's'cause I am. And I mean, I am waiting to get back to it, but I can't have you talk over it'cause I'm just gonna miss it and I'll have to rewind it.

Steve:

Yeah. I don't know what it is. I, you would think that it would be just common sense, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that gets though, if you keep talking to me and I miss this 30 seconds, I've just lost the whole movie.

Mike:

Exactly. And so when we watch stuff together, it's even worse. So Tina and I gonna watch something together. Right? Let's watch it together. That's fun. If anybody's out there that is streaming new stuff right now, there's a series that I really love and it's called Clarkson's Farm. And he's the guy from, I used the English guy that does all the cars and stuff. Forgot the name. I forgot the name of that one, but besides that, that'll be one that Tina and I'll watch together. But her watching is, I'm gonna put it on and I'm gonna like stuff on Facebook. I'm gonna respond to these 50 text messages. I just got, I'm watching. Because it's good content. Yeah. Yeah. And then she'll talk to me about the, about the, the text message you just got and I'm like, I'm glad to talk to you, but I'm rewinding it because I didn't hear that.

Steve:

Yeah. But then you're always the culprit, even though what you're saying, oh,

Mike:

oh. When I rewind something. Things get outta whack in my household. Yeah,

Steve:

yeah, yeah.

Mike:

So we're getting off topic a little bit. Yeah, we are. We're,

Steve:

Getting back to, to the remake thing a little bit, I think we haven't really touched on stuff that has been remade and absolutely should not have been remade. I got a

couple

Steve:

You, well, yeah. You and I talked about one. What was the one we talked about just the other day?

Mike:

Longest yard.

Steve:

The longest yard, yes. First and foremost, worst

Mike:

remake I've ever seen in my entire life. It was terrible.

Steve:

And, and why, why Burt Reynolds even Rea associated himself with that, I'll never know. But, first and foremost, who on this earth that has any knowledge of sports whatsoever, is ever going to accept Adam Sandler as a star NFL quarterback?

Mike:

No one that,

Steve:

no one I've ever met.

Mike:

Yeah.

Steve:

No

Mike:

one I've ever, I've ever met or would ever consider has a real opinion to me. Yeah,

Steve:

that's, that's a reason not to watch that movie right outta the gate. There's no reason to even entertain it. Give it

Mike:

to him. Don't, don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna hate on Adam Sandler. He, he's made people's careers and I think people do like him. He's, that role was the wrong role. He should not have been in it. And quite frankly, him doing it and watching that movie,'cause I love Longest Yard, one of my favorite movies ever. Yeah, it's great. And it, it wasn't the best movie ever, me, but I just love it. Yeah. And he, he phoned that in, who did Absolutely phoned it. Adam

Steve:

did. Adam Sandler. Yeah. Yes. So what was the point in it to begin with? Was it, was it a contractual commitment or just He just, I think himself.

Mike:

Absolutely contractual commitment. I don't know the exact things around that one, but if you look at all the new stuff he does on Netflix, that's contractual commitment. I, I don't know what the commitment was, but it's to say like a EOS six things, yeah. So that's why you see it keep

Steve:

a couple, kind of the same reason John Lunan did the rock and roll album for Capital Records, capital and Apple Records. That was just a album of cover of old fifties tunes. And basically he said, okay, you want my obligation here it is. He just kind of mailed that in too,

Mike:

It wasn't even as good as Freedom Rock.

Steve:

Oh no, no, nothing. Nothing's played law. But in spite of the fact that he nailed that in and that was just him kind of thumbing his nose at, at the record company, his version of Stand By Me is still the greatest I've ever heard. Better than Benny King, guy. Anybody.

Mike:

Okay. That's cool. Well, okay. I'm gonna thumb my nose at you and I'm better than anybody that's ever done it. So Good.

Steve:

But there, there are other examples. Getting back again, we we're really getting off track now, but I

Mike:

like getting off track.

Steve:

It's funny. Yeah. It's not a bad thing. Content is content, right? As long as, long as somebody's listening, I'm sure there's somebody out there that like,

Mike:

we had three, we three or four people over 10 listeners just, just stopped. Well, we're on

Steve:

episode three. I would think you have at least four by now. I hope they're all family, I'm sure, but at least we have them. You remember the movie Fright Night?

Mike:

What do I know about Fright aid? I think I've seen that,

Steve:

that was kind of a campy tongue in cheek comedy. I, I remember, and Roddy McDowell was in it. He was the, he was the late night movie host that got canned and a real vampire moved in next to the kid, and, and he, nobody would believe him. God, you remember that one?

Mike:

I, I know I've seen it. It was a long time ago.

Steve:

Well, it, it was great. The original was great. You should, you should reengage with that. I

Mike:

think you told me that. And I, and I hadn't gone back.

Steve:

They did a remake of that and it, and, Colin Farrell, I believe was the guy who played the, the kid part, I think. And it was terrible. How

Mike:

long ago was that?

Steve:

A kid? That was 10 years ago maybe. And do

Mike:

it for Colin 10 years ago.

Steve:

Mm-hmm. Maybe it wasn't Colin Farrell. Oh, it might be 20 years ago he did that. It might it. Okay. 20 years ago,

Mike:

bye. 10 years ago now.

Steve:

Yeah, maybe he was older than that. Tom goes by so fast for me now. I'm not sure. But yeah, the remake was terrible. The Fog Steve, the classic, John Carpenter movie with Jamie Lee. Okay.

Mike:

If you put, Adrian Barbo in any movie, I'm watching it.

Steve:

You're watching it. And that was probably the, at least for me personally, I think that was, that was the top of her career. She was very good in that, and, and she was, I.

Mike:

I think that's when you did work at the theater. I got in free and watched that movie.

Steve:

Could be, yeah. As a matter of the fog did play while I was there, but they remade that movie too with the, with the guy. I think his name is Tom, Tom West or something like that. The guy who was the star of Smallville played the young Superman. And it was, I know of,

Mike:

I know of it. I never watched it.

Steve:

Yeah. I watched, I watched the whole series on DVD and it, it, and the series was okay. It was filler stuff. It was okay, and this guy is okay too, but that remake was terrible. The, remake of Footloose that never should have been done

Mike:

footloose. So I'd be curious of, like, at this point, I'm sure there are no young listeners listening to us in any way, shape, or form. I hope you would because, we have a good perspective on all of it. But, I'd be curious if. Younger listeners know anything about the original Footloose.'cause I thought that was a great movie.

Steve:

It was a very good movie and I kind of tried to resist it when it was originally out because it wasn't, I did too. I didn't, it wasn't, it wasn't

Mike:

cool

Steve:

For our age being guys, movies like Footloose and Saturday Night Fever were not cool. You don't go to that. And they're both great movies.

Mike:

Totally agree. Totally agree.

Steve:

If you do go to it, you don't tell anybody. And if you listen to the B Gees, you don't tell anybody that either, but it turned up be great.

Mike:

Say what? What'd you do this weekend? You don't say, I went to Footloose. Yeah,

Steve:

that's right. And if you did go to Footloose, you better have had a date.

Mike:

Actually, ah man, my girlfriend made me go to this movie. I don't even remember what it's called.

Steve:

Here, here's one that's a little bit more obscure. You may remember it I'm sure not many people will, but Escape to Witch Mountain, that was a live action Disney movie. Oh my God. Was that, was that the, the Family Affair kid? No, it was the, it was the young, oh, Kyle Richards, the girl was Kyle Rich, Kyle Richards. No, I,

Mike:

I can picture the girl, I had no idea

Steve:

what her and Eddie played. The guy who had the camper and got him back. Green Acres, man, We saw that movie when we went to visit friends in Richmond and we were there for the weekend over Easter and we all went to the movies together.

Mike:

But why are you bringing this up? You're dating us. We've lost I know. Hundred 40 years

Steve:

old now. I, that movie. I still do. They made a, they did a remake of that with the Rock, and it was garbage. Hold on.

Mike:

Wait a

Steve:

minute.

Mike:

I did not know that. Yeah, they made, they remade escape the witch mountain.

Yeah.

Steve:

Well, not really, because that kinda goes back to the point I made before where it's, it's relatively, little known material that could be something fantastic doing it today, but they didn't do a good job. It made remake,

Mike:

but it drives me bananas soup. That's exactly what this episode's about. Can't you do something interesting and original? I mean, come on that. Are we gonna see Candle Shoe? Is that coming out next year?

Steve:

I, I might give that a shot if it did. I like the original

Mike:

and that is the guy from Family Fair, I think, isn't it?

Steve:

That was Jody Foster.

Mike:

No. And, No. Jody Foster was, yeah, you're right. That was, that was, that was candle shoot. Yep. Maybe I'm thinking of Sigmund in a sea monsters zone.

Steve:

Now that gets us in, now we're into the Disney realm. And, and you've talked about Disney before and,

Mike:

I have some things about Disney.

Steve:

Yeah, I think I know what you're gonna say, but go ahead. I can get you started with another remake. They did a live action remake of Dumbo, about in 2019. God, I don't know why they did it. Oh God. Oh God. But now I'm gonna give the stage to you now, because I know this really gets into your crawl.

Mike:

Well, I got a, I got a lot of things around this, and it is not just Disney. Okay. So a live remake of Dumbo. Yeah. So I, I'll play devil's advocate here a little bit. That is a very classic tale. Yeah. Right. And one of Disney's. So maybe there's some merit to remaking something around that one. Okay. Yeah. And what is that? The elephant with tears mm-hmm. The flying elephant over the years, all that. But we realize that you have a special skill and, you know, cool. Love. The other ones, I think what you were pointing me towards, I don't, are they Disney? Like, I think Lilo and Stitch is Disney. Yeah. Is train your drag? How to train your dragon Disney? I'm not sure. It might not be, what we're seeing now in, in the market right this minute is the live action remakes of, yeah, I won't even call'em classic cartoons. They were cartoons 15 years ago. Maybe a little more than 10. Mm-hmm. 10, maybe 12 years ago when my kids were younger.

Yeah.

Mike:

It's one of those things where you take your kids to see a movie and they put some, like, Easter eggs in for the adults, so you're not completely like, why am I here? You're not just there for your kids. You got a little entertainment out of it. Right, right, right. And now already they're not continuing the story, they're just redoing it. Yeah. In a different format. Exactly. And it's the exact same dialogue, and that is the formula that you were talking about that's just gonna make'em, they put it through the AI machine and said, if we do this, we'll make this much money. Let's do it.

Steve:

Yeah. That's exactly it. And Disney goes to that well a lot. I was looking at a, I was looking at somebody's YouTube video. I can't remember the guy who he is. He may be nobody of any consequence really. I don't know. But he was talking about that this YouTube video came from 2020 or 21, and at that time he had said there were already nine animated classics of Disney that had been remade in the live action format. And that was. Four or five years ago, we know at least one more has been done. And that's, snow White in the Second Wars. So they keep going back to that. Well over and over again.

Mike:

So I'm wondering, now that we've getting towards the end of our rant, I guess, what are we arguing against? I mean, they're gonna make money. Right. Yeah. As

Steve:

long as, as long as there's money to be made, they're not gonna care how much we complain because people will keep going.

Mike:

So I think what we want, we want more creativity, is that what we're saying?

Steve:

Yeah. Okay. Creativity. I, think I would just, I would just like to see where they put more effort into it. The stuff I'll watch over and over again. It looks to me like there's not a lot of effort put into what, what they're doing. That's, I would like to see some kind of crafting. That's a point I wanna see a crafting.

Mike:

Maybe that's what it is. I think you nailed it right there. Put some effort into it in the job that you have taken upon yourself to entertain us, and we're glad for you to make money and make it a business and do what you gotta do. I'll pay my share to get entertained. Can you make it interesting for me?

Steve:

Yeah. just don't throw it, just don't throw it out there and put it up on the screen when you know that we're gonna see it, know that you probably haven't even seen it yourself, that's a good point.

Mike:

I wanted to fit this in and this is probably like, uh, I'm, I'm slugging this in too hard'cause it's not a natural tangent. Go back to stories and plots what the hell is Star Wars again. There's only so many plots, so many storylines. It's a Western.

Steve:

It is a Western, yeah.

Mike:

Instead of riding horses or riding starships, the farm boy become cowboy. Yeah, the cowboy out there, that is, you know, a rule breaker, I'll give a couple props around that, franchise that Disney bought and what they're continuing with, some of it is so campy. First off that some of these offshoots of shows and what have you, I just can't take. Mm-hmm. But. If anybody hasn't watched and or watch it, awesome, awesome series. I

Steve:

watched the first two episodes and I really liked it. I'll continue to watch that through all the way through. It

Mike:

is a true spy thriller set in the Star Wars theme without the campiness.

Steve:

I actually had Star Wars, the original Star Wars. What it was it actually called a New Hope. I think the first one was called A New Hope. Yeah. New

Mike:

Hope. Well, the episode four. Yes, episode four.

Steve:

I did have that on my list of stuff that should never be touched as far as being remade. You can't remake that. I mean, you can do, like you're talking about like they made the Western in, in space. They could, they could take that kind of aspect from it, but they can't remake it. Remake Star Wars under that name. Again?

Mike:

No, no. If they did that, I think they would fail immensely.

Steve:

The only Star Wars stuff I've seen that I, I've truly not liked were the second three movies, which is really the first three stories. The

Mike:

worst, campiest, things I've ever seen in my life. What

Steve:

was the, what was the banks thing or whatever that thing was called?

Mike:

Jaja Banks. I want them to remake that and I want Jaja to come out with his. Addiction that doesn't, that that doesn't gel with any kind of population on earth and I want somebody to pull out a laser and blast him in the first scene as soon as he shows up.

Steve:

That never made any sense to me. That was like taking his Star Wars, plot and throwing a Jim Henson Muppet into it. Why? Why do you do that?

Mike:

There's the latest one, I forgot what it's called, and it has, the English actor in it. And I think it's the same English actor that I forgot two episodes ago that I couldn't remember his name either. But, he's in it and I gave it a, gave it a chance because of him and, it's just all Muppets. Oh, you talking about Jude

Steve:

Law again?

Mike:

Yeah, Jude Law. Yeah. Okay. Why can't I remember that guy? He leaves a very poor impression on me. Apparently.

Steve:

Whenever you have that problem, just call me and say that English actor and I'll just respond. Jude Law. How's that?

Mike:

You should do that for now on. Yes, because the ones that I like, I remember, I don't have anything against him. I think he's pretty good at a lot of things he does, but I just can't remember his name. Alright, so, let me see. I thought I had a couple other things. The Star Wars thing was one thing I wanted to bring up. I didn't go into storylines. There's a finite, number of storylines. I won't go into that here, I don't think it's a limit. Like we can't do anything different. There is nothing different than Yeah. Very, basic plots and storylines. The only thing they can do different is the backdrops of it. Right? So put Western in space, star Wars, and the only thing they can do to make it good is like what you said is dialogue and writing.

Steve:

Right, right. Yeah. Just, just break a sweat. I'm gonna ask you to recreate greatness. Just break a sweat and put an effort into it. That's all.

Mike:

I agree. Don't, don't put it in chat GPT and have it make your movie for you.

Steve:

Right,

Mike:

exactly. Alright, so what do you think? Did we, exhaust this enough? We're we're hanging on to one listener maybe now.

Steve:

Yeah. I don't know if that's my daughter or yours, but at least we've got one.

Mike:

The brother's, how, what the hell is this? They're all over the place.

Steve:

Yeah. Just keep going. Sooner or later somebody will pick up and like it.

Mike:

I think it will happen. So the one thing I will ask, and we haven't done this in the previous episodes, is, please, if you're listening to this on whatever platform you're listening to, like us, it's not that hard. Click on it like us. It helps to keep us delivering content, we'll probably do it anyway. Because we like doing it, but if there's a way that we could put more effort into this and less effort into our day jobs, we would love it.

Steve:

Honesty is the best policy.

Mike:

Absolutely.

Steve:

that about it.

Mike:

I think that's about it. I appreciate everybody tuning in. I appreciate everybody listening. Steve, you have an outro for us,

Steve:

Just to say thanks again for listening and I hope you will do it again next time. It shouldn't be too long, and I've, I have heard that, most podcasts don't make it past 30 episodes. Well, we're gonna make it past 30 episodes. It might be 31 or 32, but we're gonna get there. So keep listening and well keep loose along.

Mike:

And you know what, we'll just keep putting episodes out there. We might get the 500, but it doesn't mean we made it.

Steve:

Yeah, that's right. That's right. We'll keep doing it until we reach somebody.

Mike:

Yes. Alright, Mike. Alright. Thanks everybody.