-Philing
We love to think and rap about our love of cinema. We are ideaphiles, storyphiles, and cinephiles. Our aim is to share those loves, and understand their value and importance in our lives, with each other, and everyone who listens.
-Philing
002 Matinee
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In this episode we review Joe Dante’s 1993 movie Matinee starring John Goodman and Cathy Moriarty.
Welcome to Filing, where we love to think and rap about our love of cinema. I'm Sean Patrick, and I will be joined by Brandon Mitchell. We are ideophiles, story files, and cinephiles. Our aim is to share those loves and understand their value and importance in our lives with each other and everyone who listens. Before we get started, some disclaimers. Our discussion might be a broad and detailed spoiler, so if you haven't seen this episode's movie, stop listening to us right now, go watch it, and then return to filing to hear our thoughts and feelings. Please note there is some occasional static and unintended noise in one of the audio signals in this episode. It is quiet and occasional and shouldn't interfere too much with your listening experience. The discussion might also sound a little different from what I sound like right now, and that is because we updated the microphone that was causing the static and noise. These first several episodes of the Final Cast can be described as experimental discussions as we improve our communication and refine the precise framework we'll be using to discuss topics. So if we meander around the topic and confuse you, please bear with us as we refine our process. As always, these talks are in part an educational and developmental exercise. But if you need a more entertaining way to listen to us, I recommend turning your listening experience into a drinking game. Every time one of us ends a sentence with and stuff like that, take a shot. Of course I'm joking. If you play that game, you may suffer from alcohol poisoning. So make it a themed reaction game where every time you hear us say and stuff like that, do a somersault or five jump squats or something. This episode is the first of the After the Life inspiration series, which is a collection of movie reviews intended to inspire the production of an original movie titled The After the Life. The After the Life, the movie, is currently being produced and will screen at an event called The Fest 2026 on July 18th. Go to thefest2026.com for details about the event. So without further ado, episode two.
SPEAKER_00Don't call it a podcast. This is broader than pods. We're rapping about gods in the movies we lost, talking about the art, meaning of sending my fiends. The filing cast is finally in between your ears. Filing stories, movies, styles, styles, styles.
SPEAKER_03This is the this is the filing podcast. I'm Sean Patrick, and I am with my friend Brandon Mitchell. Here you are. Hey. Don't call it a podcast, but anyway. Um today we're gonna be talking about the 1993 movie Matinee, direct by Joe Dante, starring John Goodman and Kathy Moriarty. Not to be confused with Faye Dunaway from Chinatown, which I am prone to do. You may or may not have heard of this movie. I remember seeing this movie when I was probably the age of the stars of the movie, like 13 or 14 years old. This move this year in movies was pretty big. Great movies like Melvin Van People's Posse came out, and I believe that was his directorial debut. And first one I think of.
SPEAKER_05I think in 1993.
SPEAKER_03Hell yeah. And uh Polly Shore's son-in-law, and uh Sliver, Sharon Stone. So all the hits sleepless in Seattle. So you you know, you may not have had an opportunity to see Mine, or even perhaps you didn't even hear of Matinee because of all these heavy hitters that came out that year. Um in all seriousness, some great movies came out that year. Carlito's Way, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Fire in the Sky. I don't remember if that was a great one, but I remember enjoying it. Yeah. So, but we're not talking about 1993, we're talking about Matinee. And so we both watched the movie, and I gotta say, this movie is pretty overwhelmingly awesome.
SPEAKER_05Nice.
SPEAKER_03So it's gonna be it's pretty challenging for me to talk about it because it's what one might describe as a meta movie, a movie about a movie. It's a movie that has a movie within it. There's actually multiple movies within it. Uh at least three, perhaps four, maybe as many as five. Um there's also it's also a period piece. Takes place in the 1960s, and it mixes media with television as well. And I would want to watch that movie from start to finish with the sound off and just make notes of the production design. It's that it's that amazing. Yeah. It's also a I'm I'm trying to search for the right word to describe it. I want to say it's romantic about movies.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think so, definitely.
SPEAKER_03But I don't think romantic is the right word. And so it might be nostalgic about movies, but it's not just nostalgic, it just there's there's scenes in that movie that place that place moot the reason for watching movies, the benefit for watching movies in very high regard. And the main character, John Goodman, or Lawrence Woolsey rather, played by John Goodman, has a couple of scenes where he explains the value of a movie. In particular, scary movies. Ultimately, they make you feel more alive because you get past the scared part, and then the benefit becomes you got through it and you feel great after it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and this movie like takes that almost to the extreme, which is cool. Because everyone gets scared beyond the movie. Like they're totally afraid for their life. And so when they come outside at the end, just to you know, jumping right to the end, that's like a a huge moment of him kind of proving his point. Um, that they all come outside thinking that the world's about to explode and uh they come out of the movie and everything's great, and little kids are going, I'm gonna go see that again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you think do you think Woolsey now at when he takes that movie on the road, he has to um do that ending? I don't know if that, you know, because that was come up with in the moment, which is amazing. But um yeah. It'd be hard to replicate that theater after theater.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It'd be very difficult to replicate that theater after theater. He has to put all the buzzers in every single chair.
SPEAKER_05Well, I'm just saying with the mimicking the nuclear explosion in the screen. Right. Because that's not part that wasn't part of the original movie idea. I think it was actually. No, it's not.
SPEAKER_03It's not forwarded to No, but he had all the he had all of it shot already. I think he makes the decision because he thinks he knows he has to, he's trying to get people out of the theater. And so he makes the decision to like fast forward. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05I think I thought it's to me it seemed like he was like c coming up with stuff on the fly and using another reel that was maybe from the beginning or previews or something like that, and going like, set up this camera, start playing this while this other thing's playing, and just making that effect happen with multiple uh projectors, you know.
SPEAKER_03You may be you may be right. You may be right, but upon repeat viewing, I was trying to figure that out, and I didn't have the opportunity to really focus on that transition. Yeah, so it's a little unclear to me like what decision was made and how did he pull it off. He definitely moved projectors around and made some sort of effect happen. Bizarre thing about that effect, when that explosion happens at the end of the movie, a big hole opens up in the screen, and then you see something behind the screen, which is the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. But there's a shot that is a bird's eye view shot once the explosion happens, and you're looking down from the ceiling on the audience, and and a gust of wind is like blowing through people. Which suggest I'm like, I was like, I don't know how he pulled that specifically off. He did have a shot of like an air blower earlier in the movie. And then when they're doing John Goodman was like, hey, put that thing down. He was talking to one of the technicians and he puts that thing down. Right. And so I'm thinking that's what caused it, but I thought he actually blew a hole in the actual screen in order to get that effect of actually directly blowing it on the audience. But he never he never I don't think he ever reveals how that blower is positioned and how it actually effectively uh blows it on people. But therein lies the magic of the actual movie Matt Nee. It just kind of like throws information out at you and it's like you can just piece it all together and accept it. Yeah. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because I mean like when the in in the one of the final sequences of Mant, when the ant is huge on the building and they're shooting missiles at it, like they have an effect in the theater of little smoky explosions actually happening in the theater that kind of have some momentum to them. So probably part of that effect has the blower on it and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, maybe.
SPEAKER_05But I I was thinking that the uh it's it's funny we jump like right to the ending. Know the ending first. Yeah, right. Spoiler alert in case you haven't seen it. But yeah, I I was it well, so the my memory when I watched it as a kid, um I definitely was I was similar to you, probably the same age as the kids in the movie, and so I really experienced the movie from that perspective, and that's how that stuck with me forever. So it's been a long time since I watched it, and then watching it as an adult, it is a very different movie because you're like when you're a kid, you are living the movies more while you're watching them, you know.
SPEAKER_03I'm still living them more. Yeah, I'm still living them. But the first viewing them I always get sucked in.
SPEAKER_05But I was I was like I was that type of kid when I was that age. I was reading magazines about movies, I thought special effects and that type of stuff was everything to me. I thought it would seem like the funnest job. And so watching this movie when it came out, I was just like all in on all those aspects, you know?
SPEAKER_03And um and now So you were Gene sifting through monster magazines, finding Herb Denning? Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I don't know if I would have been that smart, but uh I probably would have been friends with the dude that was that smart.
SPEAKER_03That's pretty smart. You would have been Stan. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_05That's me Stan.
SPEAKER_03I think we were all Stan growing up, to be honest. Yep, definitely. Maybe not that.
SPEAKER_05Definitely looking for the girl who had a boyfriend who would be super intimidating, and I'd try to stand up to that dude, and then probably get punched in the face, and then you know, and then if it not being a movie, I probably wouldn't end up with the girl, but inside the movie, that's the beauty of that type of character. You can get the girl, like at a high rate of success.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, it makes it easier when a girl, movie girl or real girl, really, really wants it. Which is what the character Cheryl, I think her name's Cheryl, uh, how she is depicted. Her character is hilarious.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's so crazy because she's so she comes across super innocent, but then everything she says is like, yo, I know everything about getting it on. My older boyfriend taught me how to appreciate my body and all this stuff. You're like, whoa.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because the Stan character who acts like the man with his boys gets really thrown off his game by the girl being aggressively. It's not even like I don't know if it would I would describe it, it's aggressive in certain ways. It's not overly aggressive, it's just I would say it's forward would probably be a way. She's forwardly but subtly sexual with him. And because she doesn't, she doesn't, and this is a testament to the writing, she's just not using words that are crass or terribly direct about sex. She's she's kind of thrown around ideas that are pretty sophisticated for like a 14-year-old girl to know. And so in that scene when she's telling Stan that her previous boyfriend taught her how to be a woman, and she learned a lot about her body from being with him, Stan is completely thrown off his game to the point where he won't look her in the eye and he's like scowling the whole time. Like you can tell he's really concentrating on what's going on. It's like as if he doesn't understand what's happening.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, which is cool because that's it's a pretty realistic depiction of that age and what is going on. There would be some teenagers that are more experienced and others that have no idea but understand that what they're talking about is sexually related, and you're trying to get that info, but you're also simultaneously trying not to be perceived that you don't have any clue what they're talking about. So it's like a very interesting time period for kids, and the movie like really, I mean, it gets into it like kind of shockingly when you look at it from as an adult, because you do know every well, you know, you do know a lot more than you do as a kid, but um when I like I really connected to that stuff as a kid because I felt that way, I think at the time, you know, and at the same time didn't really know what I was talking about, just like I it was more like you just start growing older and you go like I have these feelings of I want certain things, I don't know what even that is, and so like if you get with a girl that has had more experience, it is you know, it it it it is kind of nerve-wracking or something like that, but also you you want that, you want to be in that situation or something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they set that scene up, they set that scene up so well with Stan because every scene with Stan before that has sexual innuendo expressed by him, but in a very confident way. So it kind of sets this character up as sexually confident, and then he's put in a scene where he actually has to be that way, and it's just confusing to him. Like the first scene where he's introduced in the cafeteria, he makes this makes mention of like leaning over and putting his hands on his or touching a girl in the chest, but he's like bumping his elbow into his schoolmate who's beside him, and the guy across the table is like, that's not how you do it, you know. And then the next scene is him walking in the hallway and with Gene telling him how you gotta act with girls, you know, like you just gotta tell him you're going with me to this monster movie. You don't have to worry about that monster. It's me you should be worrying about, you know. And then, like, the next scene he's in, he's at his house listening to a Lenny Bruce record with Gene, and it's that bit about tits and ass where Lenny Bruce is just repeating over and over again tits and ass, tits and ass, tits and ass. And these like 13, 14-year-old boys are just like cracking up at that scene. And then the mom comes home, and it's I gotta turn this off because I know it's bad. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that's not the best one. The best one is right after that, where the mom, mom is telling mom comes in off frantic, and she's telling Stan and Gene, it's crazy out there. Everybody's in a panic. The military's driving up the A1A, it's crazy. And Stan's like, oh, sweet, this is awesome. Let's go check it out. And so they go check it out and they walk to this beach where there's this huge military buildup, and they're standing right on the edge of the beach in the road, and they're pointing at things, and they're like, What's that? Oh, those are a bunch of missiles. What's this? And they're and kind of Stan's asking questions and Jean's answering them, and they're kind of just looking around and then being real serious, and then suddenly Stan goes, Oh, you see that over there? That's the spot I hooked up with Denise Rich Rogers last summer. Like every single scene, he's like sex on the mind, which is which makes sense, and especially at that age, and then he has that scene with uh Cheryl, uh the forward girl. It's it's just such a great setup, yeah. You know, and then like Stan switches though, because it's like she kind of like prefaces that whole conversation as being like real serious. They're like walking down the street and she's like, Oh, I need to talk to you about something. And he immediately like dials in to be like, Oh, this is a serious conversation, let me like really listen. And she's like all over the place talking about her past experience with her boyfriend, and starts being sexually forward, and then a real cool thing is she talks about like her previous boyfriend was saying, like, the world's gonna end, so we should just do it, you know, and you know, have sex and enjoy ourselves, and like she's using like her previous boyfriend's tactic now on Stan, right? And Stan just kind of looks away and he's like, That's crazy, and she immediately realized it's not working, and then They kind of like he kind of like starts explaining to her like what he thinks is gonna happen with uh the broader story, which is uh the nuclear Cuban missile crisis in the 60s, and she kind of like talks her talks her down. She's like, Yeah, that makes sense when you explain it that it's not like that big of a deal. And so I thought that was a pretty cool thing, pretty cool like lesson, especially dealing with sex and kids of that age, where it's like, don't be manipulative with it, you know, but it's easy to get manipulated and then continue to use those tactics if you find they work and it's you're trying to get something that you want, especially something as pleasurable as sex, you know. And so I thought that was I mean, just the writing of that to me is it just floors me. Like how well it's written, how well it's performed, how well it's directed, and how subtle it is. Because it's like when Stan starts to explain to her why he thinks it's crazy, why he's like, I don't think this nuclear missile crisis is gonna I think we're gonna get past it, blah blah blah. And she's like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. There's a tracking shot that's introducing Harvey Starkweather, right? Right behind him, yeah, yeah, yeah. So amazing. It's like such a seamless movie. And so the first time I watched it, I thought Stan was a really interesting character. And um he continues to be. And you know, then he he ends up just to just to like let's just just to talk about Stan's arc since we're on Stan. Right, you know, he like he then gets like confronted by Harvey Starkweather, and Harvey Starkweather tells him, like, I'm gonna stab you, basically, if you keep going out with this my ex-girlfriend. So he ends up calling her on the phone and says, Hey, I can't go see these this choral exhibit with you um because I have to put sandbags up at the all-purpose center at the school. All purpose center. And which is a straight up lie, he just doesn't want to get stabbed. Right. You know, which makes sense. And so she catches him then at the Mant uh preview or at the Mant Mant premiere, and then they get all mad, and then Stan recruits his buddy Gene to then go talk to her, and Gene like straight up lies to her about Stan's reasoning for lying and for you know, coming to the movie theater, and you know, he basically is like, he just wanted to be here to be here for my little brother since my dad's on a navy ship outside of Cuba. He's really here for my little brother, right? You know, and he just you know what I mean, and so that was interesting. That's that's that's an interest that was an interesting decision. Um but they needed to do that, you know, because they needed to somehow figure out how to get those two back together so that when Harvey Starkweather in the ant costume comes into the theater to scare people, he sees them making out and then flips out. Yep, you know, and then carries the action forward. But it's it's interesting, like they made a plot decision that didn't necessarily make sense to either Gene or Stan's character arc. Because up until that point, Gene seems like straight laced, straight arrow, straight and narrow kid, really um commendable, you know. He's a good big brother, he's a good son, um, he's a good friend, smart kid, you know, and then he does this manipulating thing with his friend in order to so he can, you know, make out with this girl. So and that doesn't ru that doesn't really get resolved in any way. You just are like, oh that's kind of that's kind of fucked up, but you know, you know, the plots more important, I suppose, like than the character art.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, I mean you know, there's like varying degrees of lies, I guess. Is that sometimes like I guess white lies are once uh there's a a big nuclear crisis that happens, probably some some little white lies that end up in she's not with dark weather, she's with Stan. That's not necessarily a bad thing from what we know about those guys. So you know that's a good point. Good point. Good point. You know, and yeah, and I think they're all in the movie. So they can you can learn you you like once you become, I don't know, sometime around seven or eight, you start learning about lying, you know, because you don't want to get in trouble by your parents. And then throughout your adolescence and all that stuff, as you start becoming like a man, you start learning the lines, you know, like that lying's not gonna always work out or not the best telling the truth is sometimes like or usually like the fucking way to go. And you learn that as you grow, you know. So this time period for these characters, that's when they would be messing around with that type of stuff. So I you can see from who these guys are that you know that he wants to help his boy out get this girl, and so if he's gotta sort of make up a story, he does that. And uh I think through all of this, he Gene seems to be a dude that he's gonna be a pretty honest guy when he gets older.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. And Stan is a cool kid, you know, he's a nice kid, he's kind of funny, you know, and you know, he kind of does make a decision where he's like, I gotta protect myself because I don't want to get stabbed by this psycho, so I'm just gonna steer clear. Uh, I got out of that situation, might as well go to this Mant movie since I'm free now, and then he gets caught, and then he's like, Oh man, but I like this girl, or I think I like this girl. I don't really know her, she seems kind of crazy too. But you know, sometimes you gotta like roll the dice with relationships.
SPEAKER_05So anyway, um I love the shot where they talk on the phone and it does that sideways split screen and talking about production design, like her bedroom and outfit and everything contrasted with his. It's so cool looking, that whole shot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. Almost as good as the lightning bolt wipe during the Dr. Diablo shot in the introduction. Yeah. So let's talk about this introduction. Yeah, yeah. Because this it this introduction is ridiculous. Yeah, you love this intro. This introduction is so cool. And I watched it again, and I wrote down the entire shot list for the entire introduction because I needed to know how they did it. And so, you know, there's the standard introduction where it's like, okay, universal pictures, motion graphic, and then it but once the movie starts, the camera is facing the movie projector light. And the title graphic, Matin A, streaks right through the light. And so, and then it the screen blows white. And then it fades out to a black and white image of a mush the mushroom a mushroom cloud in the desert. And then it cuts to like standard like stock footage. Yeah, nuclear bomb stock footage of like houses exploding that you've probably seen a hundred times. That one shot of a forest of trees getting pushed by the um what do you call it? The afterwave or something?
SPEAKER_05Aftershock? Is that what that is?
SPEAKER_03Aftershock, yeah, yeah, something like that. And the trees get pushed like 45 degrees, and then it cuts to a two shot. It's in black and white, and it's the beginning of the Mant trailer. And the two shots crazy because it's like it's it fades into that from the nuclear stock footage. And there's on the right third of the screen is Lawrence, uh like a silhouette of Lawrence Woolsey's profile. He's sitting in a chair like Alfred Hitchcock with a cigar sticking out of his mouth, and then on the left third is the shadow of a cameraman sitting on a crane with a film camera shooting him. I was like, it's like that shot is fucking awesome. And then there's a slow push on Lawrence Woolsey, and then into a close-up of Woolsey, and then he turns to the screen and the lights fade in on his face, and he starts talking. And he starts talking about genetic mutation from the result of a nuclear uh nuclear radiation exposure, and that goes right into the Mantt trailer, and it goes right into Ruth Corday getting cornered by Mant, and then it cuts to a high-angle shot of people running in a s in the street away from Mant. Shout out Kathy Moriarty again. She's freaking awesome in this movie. Yeah, I love her. I thought she was Faye Dunaway, but she's not. She's Kathy Moriarty. Anyway, then it cuts to like um you're in a movie theater, and this is a shot that Joe Dante uses over and over and over in the movie, where you see the audience in the movie in the lower third. It's almost shot like a POV from an audience member. Back through other yeah, with yeah, with other audience members in front of them, and then in the upper two-thirds of the frame is the movie screen, and you're continuing to watch the Mant trailer. So when it cuts to that shot, there's this slow panning right, like a dolly shot that's moving through the theater. And there's another close-up of Ruth Corda's screaming. And there's a title graphic that I thought was hilarious on this that came on the screen at that point where it said, only screams can describe it. Talking about Mant. Mant is half man, half ant. Um, a man, you know, became this from uh, you know, being exposed to uh nuclear radiation. Okay, so then after that trailer shot, it cuts to a crane shot uh push-in of the two brothers, Gene and Dennis, sitting in the movie theater watching the movie. And then it cuts to back to Woolsey warning the audience that Mant is based on scientific fact that appears on national magazines, and this part's hilarious because it cuts to like a medium shot and he's holding like all these national magazines, and he just kind of like waves them like real quick in front of that. Yeah, yeah. So if you can imagine like a guy standing there, he's got magazines, and he's like, Mant is based on scientific facts that appears in national magazines, and he just like waves it through.
SPEAKER_05Exactly.
SPEAKER_03It's so funny. And then it cuts to Ruth, another Ruth Corday close-up, high angle, with a manclaw shadow on her face, and she, of course, is screaming again. And then it cuts to the brothers in the theater again, and Dennis, the little brother, is getting real scared, and then it cuts to a shot of the movie screen with Woolsey on the screen explaining his new technology Atomovision on camera, and then and then the Mant trailer pushes in. Okay, so this is like that POV from the audience member again, and so you're seeing the screen, and the screen is like a push, like the movie within the movie, there's a push-in on Woolsey as he's explaining about Atomovision, and there's a crane in the crane shot in the actual movie that's starting to pan left during all of that. So there's like all this movement that looks awesome in this theater, and then he turns back into his uh Alfred Hitchcock pose, and the lights fade out, and he's and it's again a silhouette of Lawrence Woolsey again, and then comes the lightning bolt wipes into a shot from another movie called I don't know what it's called, they say it later in the movie, but it's like something about this character Dr. Diablo, and so like lightning bolt wipe into this guy who looks like a magician, his name is Dr. Diablo, and then cross-devolved, and then a hypnotic spiral cross-dissolves into the screen, and Dr. Diablo saying, like, watch this movie, it's amazing, or something. And then it cuts back to Gene, the older brother, pretending to be hypnotized and choking his little brother Dennis. And then it cuts back to the man trailer, and Ruth Corday is like walking through this house and she's just looking around, and then this man claw just emerges from the foreground. And this is a hilarious shot because she's walking, it's a wide shot or like medium wide shot to like medium shot, or her just like walking in this house and the camera's kind of in front of her, tracking her, and then suddenly this huge claw comes out in the foreground in the lower third of the frame, and you're like, she obviously would have seen Nant prior to that, but she doesn't get scared until the arm comes into the frame. It's so funny, and so she screams, of course, again, and then it cuts to Gene, the older brother, actually jumping in his seat scared, and he gets caught by his little brother Dennis, you know, and so like it's interesting because it's like even if you're familiar with movies, and this is what I talk about all the time, it's so easy to get sucked into a movie, even if you make the choice, I'm gonna study this movie and I'm just gonna try to break some things down, or I'm gonna examine the production design or the soundtrack or whatever. You just it's very easy to get sucked in because movies are designed to suck you in. So a movie that's designed to scare you, even if you know all the tricks, you can get sucked in and you can get tricked real easy, you know. And then it cuts back to the Mant trailer, and Ruth Corday is now sitting in a dentist chair with a dentist bib, which they go back to later in the movie. Um, but in this moment you're like, why has she got a dentist bib on? You know, and it's this guy working on them, and uh the dentist bib, so she's got this dentist bib, and then a mant claw is like moving closer to her as she screams. That's the whole shot. She's just sitting in this dentist chair, dentist bib, mant claw in the foreground, moving, we're tracking, pushing into Ruth Corday. She's just screaming her head off. So fucking funny. And by that time, you know, you've seen about five or six shots of Ruth Corday, and in every single one, she's just screaming her head off. And then it cuts to a wide shot of people running in the trailer with uh the title graphic Atomovision and then the title graphic Rumble Rama coming onto the screen, and then it cuts back to the POV audience member, and the trailer shows Ruth bent over, and the man moves closer and grabs her ass, and then of course she screams again, and then it cuts to Gene, scaring Dennis one last time, and then the opening scene is done. Then it cuts to the exterior of the theater, which is a really nice shot. I mean, there's like an orange quality to the lighting, it's the exterior of the theater. You see the marquee, it just looks so amazing, and it looks so different from all of the black and white trailer imagery you saw from the Mant trailer and all the darker imageries you see in the movie theater of the audience members. Which I always remark myself whenever I go to see movies and I'm in there for two or three hours, like walking out of a theater is always an interesting visual experience, you know, because you're walking back into reality from a mostly black and dark scene um or room with just getting blasted with all kinds of colors and different types of lighting. So that's the introduction. And it's so fast and so dense and so fun. Yeah. And so funny. I just I I love that introduction.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so the um the dude, it's funny because uh the Woolsey character um is actually based not on Hitchcock so much, but this other director from back in the day, William Castle. And um so when I went to we in college, like in film school, I saw I was shown like one of the William Castle movies, which was called The Tingler. And it was and he would do this type of stuff. So the Tingler, when that got released, he would put buzzers in the seats. So when the Tingler was like some sort of bug, I think, that you know, it would like crawl up someone's back and then he would buzz the seats in and like everybody would freak out. Like all his movies, I think, were kind of in the style of Mant. You know, they're like B movies for their time. You know, so um yeah, I just when I was, you know, watching Matt Nay this time, I remembered the tingler and looked that up and saw that it was William Castle, and then just started looking into him and pictures of him, and he's a cigar smoker and and all these type of movies. I was like, oh, that's he it's definitely more based on him. And that's why there's that scene at the gas station where the guy gets his autograph and he says, Thank you, Mr. Hitchcock. So it's like referencing that they probably already know that everyone's gonna think either they're gonna confuse this guy with Hitchcock, or maybe that maybe Hitchcock, you know, took some took some cues from William Castle. And it was sort of bringing that up. I don't know. Because Hitchcock did, you know, in his his TV show, he would do that exact same intro style where it would c he would be a silhouette and then it would f fade from his graphic of his silhouette to him actually there in the silhouette, his face matching up with that, and then he would talk to the audience about what's gonna happen in the show and stuff like that. So there's definitely some similarities there, but I think the uh all the gimmicks and all that stuff in the theater is probably more of a William Castle thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I'm checking Were they contemporaries or was um I think around Hitchcock?
SPEAKER_05Uh they were around at the same time, I think. Castle because Hitchcock Hitchcock made a number of sounds. Yeah, he had a whole era, I think, before the you know, definitely like Psycho was like way deep in his career. You know? And I think I I think like he probably made I don't know, just guessing like at least ten movies or something like that before the birds and all that. So but yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Hitchcock was definitely a pre uh he was a predecessor. Hitchcock started in nineteen twenty two making silent movies. And then his first sound film was nineteen twenty nine.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they were definitely making movies at the same time then.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well yeah, they were. At the same time, but Castle came a little bit after. Because he started making shorts, documentary shorts in 1999. So he came of age during World War II. Anyway, so I never heard of William Castle before. That's a fun discovery. Yeah, so I wonder if Joe I wonder if Joe Dante watched all of William Castle's.
SPEAKER_05So Joe Dante his job before he became a filmmaker, he would cut trailers for like for like Roger Corman and shit. And so that was his job. So that's kind of why the opening, I think, of this movie is the way it is with a trailer, because that was like how he got his start doing those type of things. With like all these low budget movies, just like getting all the footage and sitting in there and trying to figure out how to turn it into a little trailer that would entice people to go see it. You know, and so it's just like so the movie's probably partially based on him too, a little bit.
SPEAKER_03A little behind the scenes, way behind the scenes, which is appropriate, you know, because you're talking about a nostalgic movie about movies that's a period piece. And so the filmmakers are obviously influenced by a wide variety of artists, mainly filmmakers from the past. And Alfred Hitchcock, definitely one of them, especially in that area era. Like filmmakers who were successful in the 70s and 80s, people like Brian De Palma cite Hitchcock all the time as being one of or the primary influence. You don't hear much about it.
SPEAKER_05I don't think William Castle, you know, made a leap into, you know, I mean, it's like the stuff the the type of movies that uh Hitchcock made became you know everyone that's into film later on would get influenced by that, and it wasn't so niche, it was like evolving the world of film and the language of it and stuff like that. And I think, you know, the castle stuff is B movie coming from you know, like old school monster movies like Dracula and Frankenstein and stuff like that, and just turning it more into what other kind of monsters can we make? And do just probably just it's all pure entertainment and stuff like that, you know? Like like uh Castle would never do do some experiment like the movie Rope. You know?
SPEAKER_03Right, right. And by entertainment, you mean Yeah, just going to the theater, like cheap thrills, that type of stuff.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And and when you talk about the nostalgia of it, it's that's it's like I watch it now, and there's almost like two levels of nostalgia in this movie now, because when it came out, it's just the straight up nostalgia of being a kid in the 60s, and those type of movies are coming out in the theater, and you're just you know paying 50 cents or whatever, and you can sit in the theater all day and just watch these things, and that's what you do with your friends and all that stuff. So it's like nostalgic for that era, but you watch it now, and you can be nostalgic for the 90s of like getting to watch movies like Matinee come out and stuff like that, and and just Joe Dante movies in general, you know, seeing gremlins or inner space or whatever, and just how fun that was was to see movies like that back in the day. And it's like going to the movies now, it's completely different. So I just noticed like the double level of nostalgia when I watched it this time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, be like being in a crowded movie theater. I can't remember the last time I was in a crowded movie theater. It would almost feel kind of weird if I was. You pretty much have to go on opening night or opening weekend of a movie.
SPEAKER_05That's my problem. I go Tuesdays at like 12 p.m. Because that's that's the only one movies that I can afford. And and popcorn, you know, it's like 10 bucks for any size popcorn in a movie. Rather than you go on the weekend, it's like 55 bucks a person. Yeah. But you miss out on the the big crowd experience. Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I'm just taking a moment to feel the nostalgia wash over me. Yeah. Cause I I mean, I'm I mean, one of the greatest movie experiences I ever had in my life was in 1993. It wasn't 99, but it was Jurassic Park. And I remember being in the theater and just being floored by the sound design. Like feeling it in my chest and feeling terrified. And I don't think I've ever had that experience since. Yeah, that's a that's a huge one. That was a groundbreaking movie in a lot of ways. Yeah. But that was 1993. So, you know, if you didn't see Matt and A to my earlier point, you know, that might be why. Because some great movies came out that year.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, just in for uh Jurassic Park, the suspense, the level of suspense sequences and how expertly they were pulled off, that's what I remember blowing my mind in the theater when I first saw it. So, for example, like I think there's there's a scene where they're all up in a tree or something, and there's a a Jeep dangling down above them, and they have to escape that thing. And just like that type of sequence just it like stopped my heart, you know, or the Tyrannosaurus Rex. That wasn't that was in the that was in the first one. The two kids are up in a tree, and I think Sam Neil's trying to maybe get the kid to jump or something, and there's like a jeep that's hanging above them that's probably attached to some vines or some wires or something, and it keeps slipping down, and it's one of those type of sequences, and then they just move out of the way in time for it to fall all the way down the tree and break every limb and smash on the ground. And it's just like I love that type of stuff. And Spielberg just could crush it that, especially at that time, you know, and because and the you know, the raptor scene when they come in the kitchen is similar, like the um the amount of suspense building and everything in that just yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yep, yep. Yeah, and then he repeated that exact scene in War of the Worlds with the aliens coming into the basement looking for Tom Cruise and his dog.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it didn't hit for me the same.
SPEAKER_03I'm not sure why. I'm just saying, it w it it worked so well in Jurassic Park. I'm just gonna get it.
SPEAKER_05It's like Lost World again, which I hated because that has a sequence similar to the one with the Jeep falling, where they're in a Winnebago or something, and that's dangling. Yeah. That's dangling off a cliff. Yep. Julian Moore something falls on the glass and then it's breaking, and that scene starts to crack, sound design of that is pretty cool. Tech like conceptually should work just as well. Yeah, but it didn't work for me at all when I saw that in the theater. I thought it like just went on too long, and I thought some of the shots and editing seemed so like fake or something like that, you know, where it's like you can shoot shots where you're like, okay, what we need to see here, Julianne, is you need to look behind you, and then you need to look basically straight at the camera and make a face like you're scared. And so she does that and they go, cut and then they put it in exactly like that. And it just seems like I don't know if that makes sense, but it it seemed more like I could feel the editing and the script saying this is what the shot needs to be, and then I could feel a director going, okay, action, do this, cut. Okay, we got the shot, plop it in there, you know, versus I think the way it all flows in the original Jurassic Park, it's just beat after beat. You're just it's it's remaining slightly ahead of you all the time, you know, to where you don't have a chance to think about it. But I think Lost World, it just had too much space, it wasn't tight enough in the editing. It just kind of so it's a fine line being a masterpiece and a disaster.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you can spend tens of millions of dollars to try to manipulate the audience to feel something and it just doesn't work. Yeah, just a testament to how difficult movies are to make. But there could have been some desensitization, if that's a word, or desens whatever. Yeah, yeah. Desensitizing. Yeah, there could there could there could have been some desensitizing. Well, it's like you learn tricks with the sequel, the Jurassic Park bec Well, no, because uh well, my point is Jurassic Park was such a powerful movie and people were floored by that, then you try to duplicate that. It's right you can't duplicate it because it's a sequel. You can't give people that an first experience of seeing the most realistic dinosaurs on screen in a movie theater again. You already did that once in Jurassic Park the original. Now you're trying to do it again. It's just not gonna be the same. People are gonna be like, that's why making a sequel.
SPEAKER_05So you gotta come harder. It has to do like T2. You can't do it, you know. Terminator came out, was a low budget movie from some director nobody knew, and was like, Oh, that's a pretty damn good science fiction movie. And then they go, All right, we're all coming back, we're doing it again, but you gotta give them something totally different. So they switched Arnold's Now the Good Guy, like the new bad guy is a totally different thing than the bad guy from the first one, and so it's got it's gotta be a new movie, right? And aliens, he did the same thing with aliens, just like, okay, we're gonna do a sequel, it's just gonna be tons more aliens. It's an action movie now, it's not a horror movie, you know. So right, right, right, and Joe Dante with gremlins. He's like, I'm not gonna deliver this like scary, like this scary kids movie to everybody. I'm gonna make a flat out Looney Tunes comedy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And it worked. Hey, I'm gonna give you some some credit there. Bringing it back around. The Joe Dante. Just when you thought we were lost in you gotta watch out when you start bringing up Spielberg hypnotic in the hypnotic spiral of 1993 movies. We bring it back around. Or you bring it back around. I was trying to figure out how to do that, but you just did it. So good job.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so there's you said earlier there's multiple movies within movies, and I think you said four. So I the all this time I've been trying to figure out the four, and so I know the third is Shook Up Shopping Cart.
SPEAKER_03Yep. About a girl's Uncle Cedric getting a spell put on him that turned him into a shopping. And then she's yeah, yeah. Do you remember that scene? So she's like name play by Naomi Ross, by the way. She's I checked it out. It is male friend.
SPEAKER_05It is it is her first movie, so that's her first role ever.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Alright. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Playing some woman, I don't remember her name, with she's got some friends, she's exiting her apartment with this friend. She's like, We gotta find my uncle Cedric. He got turned into a shopping cart. I mean, the dude's like, what the heck? And then as soon as she explains everything, these two robbers come up to him, and immediately are trying to rob him. And and they like, and then the shopping cart comes out of nowhere and like rams itself into one of the robbers, and then the male friend wrestles the gun from the robbers, and the robbers scatter. The first robber runs into a ladder that has a painter on it, and all this paint spills on his head, and the other robber runs around a corner and he runs into a baker just walking down the street with this six-layer cake, and the cake like falls all over him. And then it cuts back to the Naomi Watts character with this dude who's holding a gun, and she and like the shopping cart or Uncle Cedric is like jumping up on the dude's leg like it's a dog. And she's like, Thank you so much, Uncle Cedric. And the dude's like looking at the dude is basically the audience watching this whole scene because you just watch those two robbers run into paint and and a cake, and he's holding his gun, and the shopping cart's jumping on his leg, and Naomi Watts is like, Thank you, Uncle Cedric, and he's staring straight ahead, and then he just looks slowly down at the shopping cart, like in total shock, and then the movie cuts to the brothers, going like, Yeah, this movie's whack. You want to get out of here? Totally disagree with the brothers. And we had talked earlier. Like, I want to see that movie.
SPEAKER_05I want to see that movie for sure.
SPEAKER_03Yep, yep. Yeah, so then that's the fourth movie because the main movie is Matinee.
SPEAKER_05Matinee, Mant.
SPEAKER_03And uh yeah, Madine, and then you have Mant, and then you have this Dr. Diablo movie, and then you have the Shook Up Shop shopping cart, and then I think there's one other trailer somewhere, yeah, okay, but I can't remember it. Yeah, sweet. Yep. The shook up shopping cart. We should look that up and see if they can.
SPEAKER_05I did look up Mant, and on YouTube you can watch just Mant straight through, and it's awesome. Yeah. There's a there's a I think it's like 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_02How long is it?
SPEAKER_05Maybe not quite. Um, I feel like there's a sequence in there that I don't remember, but um, it's hard to say. And and one of them that they show in its entirety is the scene where it's like the wolsey magic is happening. It's not what's great about this scene is how complicated it is. So there's a scene in Mant where everyone basically starts looking at the camera, describing what they're looking at, and it's the man going around and terrorizing people, yeah, and all you see on the screen is them looking out, and so it's like Woolsey is that's where he designed the ant comes up in the theater, grabs the nurse, and stuff like that. But the reason it's so complicated is the timing is off because Starkweather is going crazy at this point, and so it has this tension of oh, Woolsey's whole deal, his whole idea for this movie, and that I don't know if it's breaking the fourth wall, it sort of is where the ant, yeah, I guess it would be like the ant coming out in the theater, you know. That's such a cool idea, I think, and to try to time it with the movie. But since it's all getting fucked up with Starkweather, it's just you know what's happening, but it's not timed up correctly, and it's just and but that's the way it's supposed to be. It's super complicated, like to make sure that that point gets across. You know, I just love that whole scene, it's it's awesome. But anyway, going back to the Mant movie, when you watch the YouTube version of Mant, it's you get to see that whole scene, which is just all these actors staring right at the screen, just going like, oh no, he's gonna get her.
SPEAKER_04Oh no, now he's got that person, you know, like and it's just cool watching that.
SPEAKER_05I I love uh looking at it because the actors are so good, even though it's just such a long take of guys staring straight at a camera, being like, on the other side of this camera, all this action's happening. So you get to see all that.
SPEAKER_03But I think there's you're talking about so that's the man movie on YouTube.
SPEAKER_05It's just the footage of man edited together in in chronological order, which is you see mo you see pretty much all those sequences in the movie. Um just watch it without it cutting back to any matinee stuff, and it's so good. Okay, like it's a perfectly constructed short movie, yeah, you know, setting all that up. But like the turns in it are so awesome when Mant is in jail, and then the dentist is like starts hitting on his wife, being like, I know you wanted this all along, and he becomes the bad guy. And then and then he gets bit and Mant goes crazy, and then yeah, she ends up back at the dentist office and is like, Why did you reschedule our appointment after all that's happened? And he's like, humans always want to push their appointments back because he's turning into an ant because he got bitten. She's like, Why is your hand behind your back? Because it's not my hand, and then you hear the that ting or like whatever that insect noise start building up in the soundtrack, and then he reveals that he's got the ant hand.
SPEAKER_03Well, there's no discussion about Matt Nay that I think can happen without discussing Harvey Starkweather. Yeah, agreed. Harvey Starkweather is the ex-boyfriend of Cheryl, and he looks like he's straight out of the movie Grease.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03Leather jacket, greased up hair, curled up, has a way of speaking. I don't know how to describe it. Do you know how to describe the way he speaks? It's kind of is it like I don't know. Is it like New York or is it like Brooklyn accent? He kind of comes across, starts to come across as this tough guy, you know? Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_05It's probably just kind of copied from yeah, I mean, if he if he's going off a grease, then it's sort of like uh look at the John Travolta. Yeah, straight up probably I like his casting because he definitely comes across older than the main kids, yeah, but when you look at him just on his own, he looks like a young kid still. You know, like so I think the casting's awesome. Yeah, I think you're right about that. And his yeah, his character is amazing because he is portrayed almost like he's testing the waters of being one of these bad guy types. And he's not quite one of them. You know? And I noticed this time watching, because I had kind of, you know, I I had had some. Some problems with the movie, not big ones, but just like the um it's there's a lot of almost coincidence that happens to make sure all the characters are in the right places and uh to experience what they have to experience in the movie and stuff like that. And him being hired as the ant, the live ant character, I always thought was like kind of a jump. Like it doesn't explain really how he interviewed and got the job and stuff like that. But I did notice that the um John Sales and the dude from Gremlins that are working with Woolsey as the uh guys that try to create a commotion outside the theater. Like there's a scene I forgot about that Starkweather goes to this bar and those guys are sitting there and he attempts to pickpocket them. Which since those guys are kind of they've been in the game a long ass time, they know like that he doesn't know what he's doing, and they immediately corner him like in a back alley or something, get their wallet back, and tell him he should get a real job because he's not good at being a bad guy. Right. And so they do, I just didn't never realize, but they do kind of cover it that maybe he took what they said to heart, he felt a little embarrassed by trying to get one over on these guys, and they immediately, you know, came back at him, and then he goes and tries to get a job, but because he kind of he gets all that info to run the Atamo vision like so fast and it's so overwhelming, but he tries to do a good job at it, and it really isn't until he runs out to do his job in the theater and sees his ex-girlfriend making out with Stan that that throws him back into a rage. Yeah. So I think now when I watch it, it all makes sense.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, I'm trying to think of where it how it transitions from that scene where he gets caught pickpocketing to having a job with Lawrence Woolsey. I don't remember that.
SPEAKER_05He comes in their um Woolsey's doing, I think, one of his speeches to Kathy Mariarty explaining how all this is gonna be dope. I think that's what's going on.
SPEAKER_03And how did he get introduced to Woolsey?
SPEAKER_05He walks well, he already got the job. So he walks out. How did he get the how did he get the job? It's just something that happened off screen.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you they don't even Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's because it's a a reveal. You know, so when this be backstage thing conversations happening with Woolsey, then the ant in costume walks in kind of almost in like a little surprise appearance. Like he just pops in and you're like, oh, look at this crazy ant character that Woolsey's gonna put in this movie. Then when he takes his head off, that's when you see it's Starkweather. Got it. So it's like that's how it's revealed that he's gonna play this ant guy. But you know, I thought that was a big jump of, you know, since you never saw Woolsey being like interviewing people or him coming in and saying, like, hey, do you have a job here or anything like that? I thought it was kind of like a jump. But I think with those guys that work with Woolsey, uh like kind of cornering him and being like, yo, dude, you're not meant to be some sort of bad dude, criminal, criminal guy. You're not like this, get a real job and do some real shit. So it covers that maybe he went and did that, you know. But then when he flips out and he actually tries to rob Woolsey of the ticket money. So, I mean, he has like a cool arc of starting out as this ex-boyfriend, then being bad because he's threatening Stan and trying to pickpocket these dudes. They turn him around. He goes back to like, maybe I shouldn't be a bad guy, I'll get a real job. He tries that and then can't resist flipping out when his girlfriend has another boyfriend and he instantly turns back into like trying to be the big villain, you know. And so that's kind of cool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, almost as cool as his poem in the first scene, you see him, which was so hilarious I had to write it down. So in this scene, he confronts Stan because he's got a crush on Cheryl, and Cheryl's kind of got a crush on him, and he saw them walking together, and so he confronts him, and he's trying to threaten him, but he's threatening him in veiled ways, and he's trying to come across as tough and crazy, mostly by using the word crazy. It's mostly everything he's saying to Stan is very confusing, and then he says, like, this is what's gonna happen, you know, you're gonna get hurt. And Stan's like, Well, it doesn't have to happen that way. And he's like, it does have to happen that way, and that reminds me of a poem. And then he takes, and then he moves, he moves, and all, and he starts, he's no longer looking at Stan, he's kind of like looking at the world and expressing this poem he wrote, and the poem goes, Destiny, it's like a crazy river where you see different people's boats that they have going by on it. But the moral, the moral is a knife, the moral's a big knife. That's the poem. And then Harvey's like, you get it? And St's like, sort of, and he's like, it's abstract, Stan. Yeah. Yeah, man. It's a great Starkweather. He's trying to be a poet. He's trying to be a poet, and the whole movie's just kind of like making fun of pretension in that way, you know, but I don't know. No, but to speak to speak to the character though, you know, it kind of it it expresses like a sort of innocence about the guy. Where he's like, he's trying to figure something out, he's trying to figure out how to express himself in an artistic way. I mean he's compelled to do that, he's doing it. And so there's, you know, it's an interesting side to the character that makes you believe like he's not a bad guy. You know? Because he's but he's also maybe not the smartest guy, but also he's just trying to figure it out.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah, man. I feel bad for him.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, me too. He makes some he makes some crazy turns at the end there. You know, and it's all over a girl.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03You know? Be careful out there, boys and girls, with your emotions. You know, you could end up pulling a knife on a nurse and punching a kid and almost running over a crowd of moviegoers and crashing it into a car and getting arrested.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_03And losing the girl. And ultimately losing the girl, because you're you're a crazy river. But you know, that's um there's some there's some philosophical subtext there. Yeah. You know, be careful with determinism as a philosophical worldview. You know? Be careful with the nature or the concept of destiny. You know, things aren't destined. You have choices, but you gotta think through it. You know, but sometimes life gets stormy. Sometimes the weather gets stark. Which is why his name is so great. Harvey Starkweather. I love that character. Yeah, that is a great name. Yeah, he's a really fun character.
SPEAKER_05Woolsey is a good name, too, for that character. It's a little more subtle, but I think it it works to some degree. Having his name be Woolsey.
SPEAKER_03What's the significance be behind that name?
SPEAKER_05Uh I don't know if it's intentional or or what, but so I looked up Woolsey, and it means something like a wolf. Um so there's definitely like, I mean, one, that's a horror movie character, like a wolf man. Um then I feel like I mean, he has somewhat of like a friendly wolf quality. Like he has an intensity to him, you know, but he's not he's not a big bad wolf, I don't think. Um but then and then I was also thinking of like the phrase pull the wool over someone's eyes, and that's it's kind of what he does in his profession. So it's just you know, you write a character, like have a try to find some reason for his last name, you know, or some connection with who the character is, and their last name is a way of giving a hint to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't know if I'm right about any of those things, but you're a hundred percent right. The wolves eye. Yeah, yeah, because he's a master manipulator. Yeah, you know, he's he's a movie maker.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Is there I mean, there's a whole bunch of other scenes that really stand out to me in this movie that I just think are funny scenes in and of themselves. Is there anything else in this movie that you think we haven't covered that you think is really great?
SPEAKER_05We we definitely haven't covered uh John Goodman, I don't think, at all. No. And he just crushes in this movie.
SPEAKER_03It almost has to like go without saying. I know he's he's just he's phenomenal. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
SPEAKER_05I think he he he definitely like his speeches are are definitely kind of like the thesis of the movie in a lot of ways. And and he just delivers them so perfectly, I think. Yeah. Where you you hear his speeches and you almost want to stand up and applaud because you're like, I agree.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we need this kind of showmanship, yeah. You know, it's important. Yeah. I mean, really touching on the core value of movies and really the core value of art in those speeches is the the beauty of it, and that's I don't know. I mean, it's it's nice to watch a movie that is almost like a big ad for movies. Yeah. You know, because it excites you to watch movies and it reminds us by saying it, but also by doing it. Yeah. Why movies? It could be a genre. Why movie why movies are it could be a genre, it could why movies are so important. Yeah. What would you name that genre? The meta movie ad genre?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, or like the we love movies. We love genre. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Because there there's definitely a number of movies that are that, you know. So this is this is a fun one though. This one hits home.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and then we gotta talk about the Kathy Moriarty character, Ruth uh Corday. Um supporting character, pretty much disheartened, disgruntled in the whole movie.
SPEAKER_05Looks perfect in every single shot, I think. Makeup and everything, lighting on her, costumes, everything about her is kind of unbeatable. You you like when you talk about watching the movie with no sound on, so easy to do if she's in a scene.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no doubt. And I remarked like previously that when I initially was watching this movie, I thought it was Faye Dunaway because she looked like Faye Dunaway from Chinatown because she's wearing really nice dresses, they have a similar look, like similar facial structure, like really pronounced cheekbones, they're blondes, I think their eyes are similar. But I don't know, Kathy Moriarty has uh I think a more of a stunning quality to her, and it's subtle in this movie because she's so disheartened, the almost the whole movie.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, something about that's part of the magic, like her attitude in this movie. Yeah, there's something about it I don't I can't even articulate because she's she's only happy in the last shot, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And um, we talked about this before, but I think definitely a a a clue to why she is the way she is is the way that like the her character in Mant is talked to. Did you check that out at all anymore? Like with the um Doctor character that comes in and the way he always uses lines saying like he's definitely gonna go through metamorphosis or change her.
SPEAKER_03Or he has to re-recess a more simpler word when he's when he's saying them in the company of Ruth Cordoy because she's a woman. She obviously can't understand that. These these these words have too many syllables, they're too complicated, so only dumbness down for this word. Right.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, that's it's it's so common or something like that, especially in that movie, but maybe it's saying all these types of characters, if there's a woman in a movie, it's like this is a way to explain to the dummies in the audience what we mean, and it's let's make sure the woman character in the movie understands what we mean. And so if she's a smart woman in Hollywood having to have those roles all the time, you could just see somebody being like, fuck all this. Yeah, love this business, why am I in this business or something like that?
SPEAKER_03That that really contributes to it, but also, you know, she's with Lawrence Woolsey, probably because she is in love. Well, she's probably in love with the guy or loves the guy because he is a romantic, and because he is so apt at expressing the value of movies and why we watch them, you know, the benefit is it makes our lives better when you get scared out of your mind, and then you calm down and you realize everything's okay, and you go into your life, and things are great, things are better, you know, like a caveman back in the day, which he explains. Uh-huh. Um, you know, getting scared by a caveman, and you go back to your cave and you draw this um picture of a woolly mammoth with huge fangs and huge tusks in heightened in a heightened sense because it scared you, but you survived it. It didn't kill you, and now you you you went through ex uh a moment of exhilaration, and now you're still alive, and that feels amazing, you know, because you almost died, or he felt like you almost died. And so he has this vision of what the experience is and what the experience can be. He just it's implied that he is a little ignorant or lacking in business savvy because he's broke and he's always looking for money. And he she told him straight up in the opening scene with them where she was like, if this doesn't work out, I'm gonna be getting out of the business, I'm gonna be looking for something else. And he straight up asks her, he's like, You're gonna leave me because of the money, and she's like, No, not because of the money, Lor Larry, because of all the people chasing us, or all the people we're ducking from because we owe them money. So it's like, you know, it's like treading water, you know, it's it's an anxious, shitty feeling when you're constantly in debt and you don't know what your next where your next dollars are gonna come from. So it's just stress, you know, and like even though even though you're a a romantic and you have this vision and you pull it off from time to time, or at a particular point where it's like it's just too much for her. And that's it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but I think I think he you said he he pulled it off, and I think that's the key component of his character, is that he can improvise through situations and you get the sense at the end that no matter what's happening, yeah, he'll find a way to pull it off, and that's the magic.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's a great scene that demonstrates his improvisational skills, and it's when you first get introduced to the theater manager who's who's been looking for him and he's freaking out because of the background storyline, which is you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's freaking him out, and like, what are we gonna do about this showing and blah blah blah blah blah. And John Lawrence Woolsey, John Goodman's character, is just rolling with the punches. It's like whatever the guy says, he's he spins it as positive.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_03And and you know, he's with Gene at that time, the young kid, and they're walking away, and Gene's you know, response to Lawrence about that theater manager was, man, what a jerk. And John Goodman's like, I kind of liked him. You know, it's like it speaks to like the soul of the guy. Or he's like, he's not getting bothered by people freaking out. He's not getting bothered by or he's not showing that he's bothered on by it. And he's not focused on being bothered by it. He may, underneath the surface, be bothered by it. He may even show that in the movie from time to time that he's a little bit bothered, but then he like makes a choice to figure it out or just move on to the next action, which is I gotta get this movie screened and I gotta get this whole thing set up and pull this off. Because that's that's the focus. So he's a really admirable character, you know, because in the face of all of this angst and fear and craziness, he stays the course. And he, like you said, pulls it off. And I think even when things change, when they think that there's because he makes a makes a decision to try to get everybody out of the theater because they're concerned, I guess, about something. I don't remember what.
SPEAKER_05Is it when the um balcony is starting to crack?
SPEAKER_03Is that what compels them to?
SPEAKER_05I think so.
SPEAKER_03That he needs to figure how to get the kids off the balcony w without panic, without making them panic or something? What do you I mean he ultimately causes a panic by pretending there's a nuclear explosion, so I don't think that's it. Um not causing a nuclear explosion, but pretending. Yeah, you know, proje projecting on screen that there's been a bomb dropped on Key Blessed, which is where they are. Um anyway, I don't know how that unfolds, but to speak, you know, just to close it on the character, real commendable character for the most part. Um I can't think of too many things, or if anything, that is really bad about the character, other than, and it's as subtle as he may be so much of a romantic that he just goes for broke all the time, which is which is something that he can he can manage, but it eff has like bad effects on his relationships. You know, especially his main lady.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. But it ends pretty happy.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_05It does. It does. They drive away in the sunset and she's Leaning on his shoulder, seeming like, cool, we got through that adventure. On to the next one.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yep. Which is the best way for movies to end. Uh-huh. You know?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, especially kind of like a Hollywood movie trying to talk about how Hollywood movies are the shit.
SPEAKER_03Right. Straight up.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, word. I've uh I think the only thing that I wanted to make sure we cover is just the joke. I think my favorite joke in the movie is in Mant when she says, she's such a good actress in the Mant movie, too. It's like, I love every scene she's in. But when she when he's in jail and she says, Bill, you need to listen to the man in you and put the insect aside. And he goes, Insecticide! Insecticide? Where? That's me up so hard. I just I like rewind rewound that part and had to watch that scene again because it took me so by surprise and I loved it that I had to watch it again knowing that it was coming so I could really enjoy it.
SPEAKER_03I have a funny scene too that I want to mention. Um, it might not be as funny as that one, so maybe not the best way to end this talk, but because that's really funny. Um there's a scene at Gene's house where his little brother Dennis is watching the TV, and for some reason this kid is watching the UN speak about the Cuban Missile Crisis. He's like a six-year-old dude. It's like straight up.
SPEAKER_05It's probably all that would have been on TV, though. You know what I mean? He probably was watching Oro or something, and then they cut to that, and you're like, ah shit, now I have to watch this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you're probably right. He's sitting there, you know, in his Hottie Dootie hat and he's watching this, and Gene's in the background behind the couch eating like a bowl of cereal, and the scene cuts immediately to the TV set, and then it cuts to uh Dennis Washington, and then it cuts back to the TV set, and one of the men uh in the in the UN is is just saying randomly, like, and I will wait for an answer until hell freezes over. And then Dennis, this little kid, is like, Gene, he said hell. And Gene's like, it's okay, it's a crisis. Yeah. And then the mom, and then the and then the mom walks in. And then the mom walks in, and she's like, What are you watching? And she's like, You guys need to go out. You need to go to why don't you take Dennis to the movies? And Gene's like, There's no monster movies playing, mom. She's like, Well, you guys can go see a non-monster movie. And then Dennis looks up at his mom and he's like, No monsters. And she's like, Yeah. And me and he's like, oh hell. And then the mom's like, where did he get that? And Jean's like, the UN. And then the movie cuts. I mean, I could speak about that little kid, Dennis, a bunch of times as like a cool little brother. He does that a couple of times where he repeats what he hears throughout the movie. Um, the second scene of the movie after the introduction, it's like the first scene of the movie after the introduction, Dennis and Gene are walking on a promenade, and Dennis asks old asks Gene, hey, could could could that man really happen? And Gene's like, it did really happen. There was a guy got caught in a uranium mine, and he ended up crossing with a click beetle, and he's now half man, half, half beetle, poor bastard. Or I think he describes it, he's like, some poor bastard got stuck in a uranium mine with a click beetle, and then he finishes telling the story, and his little brother's like, oh, poor bastard. And there's other scenes than him where he gets confronted by his boy Andy, who's like, Let's go shoot frogs with this gun, and be like, No, that's disgusting. We're not gonna do that. And Dennis is like, Yeah, that's disgusting. It's just a perfect, impressionable little brother character written so well. So and I was a little brother, so maybe I just relate to that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I still am a little brother, technically.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, man. Well, there's definitely probably always more we could talk about, but I I know.
SPEAKER_03Like we didn't even talk about the production design of like seeing a sign as they walk into this grocery store and seeing something that says grape grapefruit eight for 39 cents. The score, yep. Speaking of the score.
SPEAKER_05Score's great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the scam. Harvey Stark weathers cue, music cue. But yeah, the soundtrack's great.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so where where are you at on Joe Dante? What do you think about that dude? Uh, I love him. Yeah, have you checked out most of his movies?
SPEAKER_03I've seen Inner Space, I've seen the Gremlin movies. I don't know if I've seen anything else of his, but I'm compelled to. Um he hasn't produced anything since 2018, and he like co-directed a movie. And so um he did The Burbs. I remember that coming out with Tom Hanks. I don't remember seeing that. Uh he did Twilight Zone, I saw that a really long time ago. Um but yeah, I'd be interested in checking out some of his more obscure movies. But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Matt Nay is his masterpiece.
SPEAKER_05Oh shit.
SPEAKER_03It's so good.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I don't know. Kind of partial to Gremlins 2. Yeah, I understand. I never saw Looney Tunes back in action.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, me either.
SPEAKER_05That I feel like that's like his last movie or something like that, but I don't know. But yeah, you can see just by his style, it's like there isn't much nowadays that gets made that's like a Joe Dante movie. Right. You know. But yeah, he's pretty dope. Definitely into kind of like creature-y special effects, cheesy ones. You know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, um, I'm definitely intrigued to watch more Joe Dante movies. Big shout out to John Goodman, and big shout out to Kathy Moriarty, huge shout out to Joe Dante, and props to Charles S. Haas, the screenwriter. Who also wrote Gremlins 2, The New Batch.
SPEAKER_05Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_03And not very many other movies. He was not he didn't write a lot, but I thought this was a really pretty good script. Yeah. And uh it's worth referencing if anyone is trying to write a screenplay. So I would give Matt Nay an A-I think it's top-notch. Nice. And that's all I have to say about Matt Nay. You should go watch it, everyone. Yeah, watch it. It's in it's important for you to watch it. It's an important movie.
SPEAKER_05That's gonna be we're gonna have to figure out our um our rating scale. We got so we'll we'll figure it out as we go through different movies. But one of the levels is important. You know? And then we'll have trash or something like that, and then we'll have mind blowing or who knows what it's like. But we gotta have like all these levels, yeah. Matinee rates important.
SPEAKER_03All right. Go file it.
SPEAKER_01Don't call it a pup!