Twilight Zone: the Movie

Hey hey movie lovers and fascism haters!! Our latest Barred Movies episode features Kelly Swails, Brandon Wilhelm, and movie nerd extraordinaire Brice Puls discussing the not-banned-but-very-controversial 80's movie Twilight Zone: the Movie, including the tragic helicopter accident that killed two children and one adult during filming. Highlights include:

• Cocaine-fueled New Hollywood directors
• Auteur theory
• The genius of the original Twilight Zone series
• Powerful rich men getting away with literal murder

We paired this one with two cocktails. In "honor" of John Landis and the rampant cocaine use in 1980s Hollywood, we chose a cocktail called California Cocaine. We left out the pineapple juice and poured it as a shot. It's terrible and we can't recommend it.

1/2 oz blue curacao

1/2 oz light rum

1/2 oz Southern Comfort

1/2 oz amaretto

Shake over ice and pour into a shot glass. Drink at your own peril.

And since caffeine is our current stimulant of choice now, we went with an Espresso Martini. There are literally dozens of recipes for this out there in cocktail land, but ours is as follows:

1 oz espresso (decaf is fine here!)

1 oz Mr. Black coffee liquer

1 oz vodka

dash of chocolate bitters

Shake over ice and pour into a chilled coupe glass. This can be endlessly modified. Want a bit more body? Add 1/2 oz amaro. Sweetness? Add a bit of simple syrup. Into licorice? Sub out the vodka with ouzo and use orange bitters instead of chocolate. Don't have an espresso machine? Use strong cold brew. You get the idea. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome to Bard Movies, the podcast that mixes banned movies, booze, and conversation into one delightfully chaotic mix. I'm your host, Kelly Swales. And I'm your other host, Branda Wilhelm. And today's episode is on Twilight Zone the movie. Now, this movie's never been technically banned, but it's controversial as fuck. So buckle in, gang, because it's gonna get a little fiery in here today. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, we've got a guest in the house today, and I'm gonna let him introduce himself.

SPEAKER_05 1:17

Hello, uh, my name is Bryce Fulz. I'm a video game designer and uh an interactive artist, but I'm also a huge movie fan and a uh a deep, deep lover of the television show The Twilight Zone. Uh have a cultural fascination with the Twilight Zone movie and everything that's kind of surrounds it. So I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Well, hey, welcome Bryce. Thanks for joining us today, man. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is gonna be a lot of fun. Here's the thing we obviously pair a cocktail or beverage with our discussion. And today I'm decided I've decided to pair two. In honor of John Landis, who's going to play a major, major role in this episode. I've decided on a shot called um California cocaine. And uh it's got blue carousel in it, and it's likely going to be terrible. So uh cheers, guys.

SPEAKER_05 2:09

Yes, this is the color that alcohol should be.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

It is. I haven't uh drank a drink this color since 1995.

SPEAKER_03 2:18

Nope. No, it's more blue.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Oh, it tastes like cough syrup. Tastes like college.

SPEAKER_05 2:25

Oh my god. Oh wow, it does have like a real Robotus and after taste. Yeah, it does. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

That's I I can't recommend that. I mean, I guess unless you're 20. Nope, that's in the back of my throat. And it'll never leave. And it will never leave. We might need to do some alore to watch that show. Okay. Uh the second cocktail is um an espresso martini, which is sort of like cocaine, but not. So uh cheers, guys.

SPEAKER_05 2:53

Yeah, yeah. Some more stimulants.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's that's a that's a fun pairing. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:03

Uh two drinks that have never been drinking together.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

No, no. Making history today. We are making history today, and nor should they. No. Nor should they. No. Unfortunately, both of these recipes will be on our website at FrozenShoulder Productions.com as well as our Patreon page and the socials, you know. Um, if you want to try California cocaine, I'm going to say, not that I'm advocating for actual cocaine use, but maybe really have California cocaine instead of that shot.

SPEAKER_05 3:31

Better aftertaste at the very least.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

At the very least. At the very least. All right, so the movie today, Twilight Zone the movie, as I said in the intro, hasn't ever been banned outright. But uh yeah, there's a ton of controversy surrounding it because of a helicopter accident during shooting that killed two children and one adult. The two children just happened to be working illegally at the time. It's a bonker story, which we'll get to, but first, let's discuss the movie overall. This is an anthology movie, meaning it's four different stories, each based on a classic Twilight Zone episode tied together by a prologue and an epilogue. We'll talk about each section before getting into the absolute garbage human being director and producer John Landis is. Brandon, you want to get us uh get us started?

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Alright. Well, thankfully, our Twilight Zone movie starts with a very long prologue involving Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks singing Credence Clearwater Revival. Took me right back to the 80s, man. Uh they then play a game of TV theme songs, and then they start talking about the Twilight Zone, which finally gets us where we need to be.

SPEAKER_05 4:44

This sequence is actually not a Twilight Zone parody, though. It's a parody of Night Gallery.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the 70s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:53

This is an episode of Night Gallery about two guys that are driving on a lonely road, and then one of them turns out to be a monster.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

I do appreciate the callback.

SPEAKER_05 5:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_05 5:01

I didn't uh I thought it was written specifically for the movie. I didn't realize that. Yeah, it was this part was written for the movie by John Landis, but it is based on it is parodying a Night Gallery episode.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Oh, interesting. Cool. Well as you know, uh they they jabber back and forth a while like a uh Boomer Kevin Smith movie, and then uh Dan Acker turns into a monster. And that's pretty much it. It's not that great. Very bad monster. Yeah, not a great monster. We'll see much better monsters in this movie.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

We will see much better monsters in this movie.

SPEAKER_04 5:30

Kind of makes me think of Howie Mandel in uh was that Little Monsters with Fred Sanders. Oh sure, yeah, like a garbage kale kid. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, overall I found this segment uh kind of long, boomer-oriented. Um it is interesting as maybe that first line of uh Boomer nostalgia that really kicks in in the 80s after Back to the Future. Listening to like two guys in their 30s just talk about old TV just really makes me think of what the 90s became with the references and whatnot.

SPEAKER_05 6:02

Yeah, uh, and also it's a very obvious, and maybe you don't know this pretty this is the only part of the movie that was shot when the incident happened. Oh really? Yeah, so this was shot before John Landis started shooting his segment, and nobody else had started working on their segment. In fact, at this point, uh Steven Spielberg is working on a completely different Twilight Zone adaptation that he ends up not doing. I think it only exists still in the movie because of it has an outro and it was already shot. Right. Otherwise, once people knew what happened when this movie came out, and I don't think that's how you'd start this movie.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

No, probably not. So the second section, or I guess the first like actual story of the movie.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

Uh this is a sort of original story, also written by John Landis called Time Out, which follows Vic Morrow, who is a horrible racist who delivers a racist diatribe in a bar. But when he leaves the bar, he finds himself stuck in three different time periods. Uh as a Jewish person in Nazi Germany, as a African-American person in the KKK South, and as a Vietnamese person during the Vietnam War, which doesn't entirely quite work, but well, they had to do something.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Yeah, you know, I appreciated, I appreciated what this section was trying to do. It's just it's it's weird because since this is an anthology movie and each section is only 20 to 25 minutes each, they don't have a lot of space to do what they're wanting to accomplish. At the same time, they're they're structuring their stories more as movies and not as a television episode. So the two don't quite work because they're not quite doing a short film, you know, in my in my opinion. I thought Vic Morrow was good. I mean, he's you know, I think he plays a rest uh uh a racist asshole quite well. But overall, I was like, I just kind of found it kind of ham fisted in what it was trying to do. Just yeah, I didn't quite, I kind of bounced off of it.

SPEAKER_05 8:08

Yeah, this is the weakest for me. And it's not not just because three people died. Not just from because three people died. Um, it's the one where the budget is most evident. Uh, this movie was independently financed. Yeah. It only cost like $7 million. And it was largely just a passion project of Steven Spielberg's because he wanted to work with John Landis, and then he was developing Gremlins with Joe Dante, and he had just seen Mad Max 2. You can really tell, especially with the parts that were cut, that clearly were the big spectacle of the thing, you are on a studio back lot, you're on Universal Studios tour the entire time.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the sets are like, I understand, right? Okay, obviously they don't have the budget to go spend a week in a backstreet in Paris or whatever to shoot this scene in occupied France or whatever, but it's like, could we have done a better job on the set?

SPEAKER_04 9:02

It's something I thought about watching. I was like, this actually looks like a really cheap TV show, which is funny because you're making a movie out of a TV show, and I was wondering if that was on purpose, but I don't think it was. I think one of these is Charlie Fenn on purpose, but not this one.

SPEAKER_05 9:17

I would agree, yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

I would agree, and actually that one that I think you're thinking of is really great, and I loved it.

SPEAKER_05 9:22

Oh, I love it too. Um the other thing I'll mention is that while we'll talk about what happens uh later on during the production of this, there is still a shot of this movie in which Vic Morrow almost died. Um do you tell? I don't know if I saw this in my research. Um so uh when he gets to the Vietnam sequence and he's walking in the river and there's all the plants behind him, and then the soldiers show up and start firing machine guns at the plants. That was the third time they tried to shoot that. The first time they fired at the plants with rubber bullets, and like the plants shook, but nothing much happened. John Landis didn't like that. So he asked for a more powerful uh weapon, and so they brought out like these more hardened rounds that would go through the fleet leaves of the banana plants, but John Landis is like, no, I want these things. I believe the quote is fucking shredded.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Right.

SPEAKER_05 10:13

Uh so he wanted to look real or whatever. The SFX, the lead of uh the SFX lead and two of his friends went to their car and pulled out three shotguns with live ammunition. And uh the way that that scene works is that Vic Morrow is standing there, he doves dives underwater, and there is a stunt man standing right off camera who pulls him underwater away from the shot just before they start firing live rounds into all of these plants in front of their lead actor.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

There was a lot of cocaine happening, right, on this set.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

I have to assume. It was New Hollywood, and uh it was I'm pretty sure John Landis was big into the cocaine.

SPEAKER_05 10:55

Yeah, and a lot of impulsive decisions that come off of that, but like it had worked for Blues Brothers, even though like that has its own history of things that happened on that set.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 11:04

Uh yeah, overall, you can tell that something's been changed from this. It just kind of ends. It doesn't really make sense how it ends.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Right, right. Like he's back in uh Nazi-occupied Paris and then gets carried off because he's been labeled a Jew and he's being carried off to the camps. Which, you know, considering that this character is like a racist asshole, maybe you're not so you don't mind so much.

SPEAKER_05 11:30

There's one really cool stunt, I think, in those segments, which is during the KKK part, he's running, he try he escapes and shoves one of the KKK clan members into the Burning Cross. Yeah. And then that guy runs into another guy who also catches on fire. I'm like, I've never seen that.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

That's a really like a ricochet fire.

SPEAKER_05 11:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah. And and of note, did you catch a young John Larrowquette?

SPEAKER_03 11:56

I did not.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's actually kind of like the, I don't know if I call him the lead KK guy, but he's the one that gets in Vic Morrow's face.

SPEAKER_05 12:05

Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

A young John Larrowquette.

unknown 12:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

That's half the fun of watching these older movies. It's like you get to see all these actors, you're like, oh, I know that guy.

SPEAKER_04 12:15

Um I also, since this is kind of sort of based on two old Twilight Zone episodes, I went back and watched the original two. Uh one is just kind of the wraparound, like it's literally the beginning of it.

SPEAKER_05 12:28

It has nothing to do with the rest because it's about what would you do if you could change things when you go back in time.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Right. And that and that episode, I don't know if you've seen it lately, I just watched it today. That episode features the guy who played the professor in Gilligan's Island. Oh, wow! I was super nerding out about that today.

SPEAKER_05 12:46

No, I I I rewatched all of the terrors at 200,000 feet, but I didn't have the chance to go back and watch the ones for those.

SPEAKER_04 12:53

Uh yeah, and then the other one, uh, Quality of Mercy, um, I thought was like I found with all of these stories, rewatching the original Twilight episodes were they were way better. It's really good. It's way more thoughtful, had way more um th they were thematic, they were saying things, they had social commentary, and these are just um short little horror films, which I find doesn't really represent Twilight Zone, it more represents Tales from the Crypt or something like that. And I had mentioned earlier to Kelly, I wonder if Warder Brothers was looking over at Creep Show and like, hey, what do we have that can make money too?

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Hmm, let's make some money. Yeah, it was interesting. Uh, I think Brandon and I are gonna record an episode just for the Patreon subscriber. So, hey, here's a plug for the Patreon subscribe, where we talk about kind of compare and contrast the older episodes with what came after, just because it's interesting, I think, from a storytelling standpoint. And just a broad overview of watching, rewatching those Twilight Zone episodes. A, I forgot how fucking amazing Twilight Zone was, or was, or is, and B, without exception, every single episode I think was better than the remake. With a possible exception of with a possible exception, and I bet Bryce and I have the same one. I think they're though both both the original and remake of that that segment, I think, are really great, but for different reasons. Uh so okay, what what do we rate out of the four? Where do we rate this first section?

SPEAKER_05 14:30

Uh this is my dead last.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

I agree. Number four.

SPEAKER_05 14:35

Oh, really? This is my second to last. Okay. You're on one uh when Roger Ebert reviewed this movie, he reviewed each segment in step.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:45

As opposed to an entire movie. So you are in lockstep with Roger Ebert. This was also his second to least favorite.

SPEAKER_04 14:53

Ah. Um, yeah, overall, I think it's interesting what Landis is trying to do, but he doesn't do it near as well as the original Twilight Zone, and it really comes off like, I just said racism's bad. Isn't that great? On with my life. Where's the cocaine? Like it just doesn't have any resonance, and it doesn't really make me feel like, oh, I should maybe change my ways.

SPEAKER_05 15:15

And it's really strange because like this is the only one, like the other three segments are written by the same guy, by Richard Matheson. John Landis is the only person who wrote his own segment. Uh, so like this is clearly what he wanted to make. He wasn't choosing from a list, which I'm just like uh it almost feels like a complete reversal. Like, because uh uh on this point, like Steven Spielberg has just come out with Raiders of the Lost Ark, but was just recovering from 1941 and realizing maybe I can't direct comedy. And it's almost like John Landis trying to direct something serious and learning maybe I can't be serious.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

Yeah, yeah, I can see that.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Should we move on to section two?

SPEAKER_04 15:55

Sure. Yeah, I know. Alright, well, the segment two is called Kick the Can. And it's uh what Spielberg reverted to when filming his original idea wasn't going to be possible anymore.

SPEAKER_05 16:10

Yeah, he was gonna adapt one of the all-time greatest episodes of the Twilight Zone. It's a good one. Monsters on Maple Street. That's a really great one. It's really good. That one I rewatched recently, but uh, I don't know where in the process he chose to do a different one. But then he basically has the screenwriter, Richard Matheson, rewrite this. And then he's working on ET at the time, and has Melissa Matheson, no relation, come in and do a rewrite on this. Did it turn out?

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Oh no. Oh well, Brandon, give us give us the quickie plot synopsis.

SPEAKER_04 16:44

Uh well, as almost as if to undercut what Landis was trying to say, we open on an old folks' home where uh uh magical Negro turns everybody into children, and then they decide they'd rather be old, except for one guy who talks like Peter Pan and flies up into the night.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Yeah, that's that's basically the long and short of it.

SPEAKER_04 17:04

I mean it's it's it's Scammer Cruthers. Scatman Cruthers is great. Nothing against him, but we got about five seconds into that one, and Kelly went, is that a magical name, bro?

SPEAKER_05 17:16

I did say that. The wild thing about this one is like it is very it is Steven Spielberg ripping off Steven Spielberg, it almost feels like.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

A little bit.

SPEAKER_05 17:26

Where like he is a man that is very much about being in touch with your childhood and remembering what it's like to be a kid again. This is immediately after E.T. It was to say, especially this era of Spielberg. Which is like the best movie to ever capture that feeling. Yeah. You watch that movie and you're 10 years old again.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:44

It is written bad, it is acted poorly, it looks bad, which is almost the most surprising part about it.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

I, you know, for me, it was just I don't know, it was kind of schmaltzy. It was sort of uh yeah, it just I just it just didn't land with me. It just didn't land with me.

SPEAKER_04 18:05

It made me think of like, oh, this is that Schnobird Schmaltz we see now, only back then. Like, okay, it's like watching Warhorse again. Great.

SPEAKER_05 18:15

Yeah, but he's done it, he's done two closed encounters already, he's done ET already. Um he's done this so successfully, maybe better than anyone has ever done it. And I just I it it truly feels like, and there's some reporting to this because you know, this this production ends John Landis's and Steven Spielberg's friendship to never talk again, but it feels like he is checked out, he's done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Yeah, yeah. I can I can understand where after an accident of that magnitude, I'm actually kind of surprised, and and we can touch on this again later in the episode, but I'm actually surprised that they went ahead with the project. I'm surprised that the studio, well, well, no, you said it was independently financed. I'm still surprised though that they just were like, yeah, you know what, we're cutting our last losses and not completing this picture.

SPEAKER_05 19:02

The distribution rights had already been sold. The studio that had it, which I believe it was a subsidiary of Warner Brothers, they wanted to put Steven Spielberg on a poster.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

They wanted the next Spielberg thing.

SPEAKER_05 19:17

And Joe Dante has repeatedly said, like, there's no way that movie continues to be made except for the greed of some corporate executive who's like, we can be the next Steven Spielberg movie out of the gate after E fucking T.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

From a business standpoint, yeah, that makes sense. But also uh from a human fucking being standpoint, maybe check that.

SPEAKER_05 19:38

Oh yeah, unfortunately. Entertainment industry.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Are you the throwing thing off? Are you saying studio executives or human? Well, okay, I am making assumptions. I am making assumptions. Yeah, there's just not a whole lot to say about this section. It's it for me, it was a little another instance for me where it's like, here's a feature-length movie storyteller that is obviously very adept at that medium already early this early in his career, who is maybe just not great at the short form in like in this instance. And it's so fascinating to me because obviously everybody involved with this project loves Twilight Zone and that's why they're doing it. But again, none of them really lived up to the promise of the original show. And this one probably, like on paper, probably felt like it had the most potential, and it just didn't.

SPEAKER_05 20:29

Yeah, it it really feels like uh a man who has lost his way and is probably getting over something. Because already, like, he is not directing the one that he'd been planning to direct this entire the one that he talked about when he came up with the idea that this should be an anthology movie.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Right.

SPEAKER_05 20:46

It is a guy that's entirely checked out. Question for the group. Does anyone before this know the rules to the game kick the can?

SPEAKER_02 20:54

I still don't fucking know the rules to the game kick the can.

SPEAKER_05 20:57

So it's hide and go seek, right? Sort of. But there's a can involved? And if you get to kick the can without being seen, you win?

SPEAKER_04 21:06

Sure. I think that's the general idea. I've never played kick the can in my life. Uh but yes, it seems like it's hide and go seek, but the person who's it has to also guard the can while finding people. People who grew up in the 1920s, get us in the comments.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Right, yeah. Yeah. They're in Podcast Landia. If you know how to play Kick the Can, let us know because what the shit, I couldn't figure out the game.

SPEAKER_05 21:33

Uh yeah, and also the segment ends with a 4-12 break, which at that point I was just come on.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Yeah. Yeah, this uh again, uh rewatch the old Twilight Zone, it's way better. Way better. Way creepier. Way creepier because they don't need like somebody magical to come do it. They do it themselves. So when you get this point at the end of the Spielberg where this guy's going Take me with you. It makes no sense because you haven't really met this guy. You just know he's old. He's done nothing. He stayed in bed. In the original one, the guy who stays in bed realizes the magic worked and they became kids again, and that's why he wants to go with them. In this one, it's just like, I don't know, there's some kid talking in a British accent. Take me with you. Where? What's that kid? That kid's not going to be able to go live his life as a 13-year-old in the wilds of 1980s California. I don't know why you think this is your escape.

SPEAKER_05 22:40

Like in the new one. I'm just like, that is not how I would ever react to that situation. I'd be like, there's a bunch of kids in here.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah, no. Yeah, it was just all around. Well, like you said, Bryce, there's no there's no heart in it. Yeah. There's no oomph, oof, there's no oomph to it.

SPEAKER_05 22:55

Yep. I like it a little bit more because it is a complete story. Uh it has a beginning and a middle and an end and a plot structure.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

The other one doesn't. It's a morality tale without any like change for the character.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Right. No, like well, and only as like he may have a dawning epiphany at the end, but only because he's about to be gassed. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 23:19

He doesn't like learn anything about the experience of any of these people. No. Which is then an insult to the original, which the original one, just to be clear, is about two soldiers who switch sides of a a war, uh as opposed to like so it has a lot more of a direct like take a walk in their shoes, sort of uh yeah, still still.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

No learning or change in our protagonist, which is sort of like a storytelling maxim.

SPEAKER_04 23:44

Right. That goes to a uh I remember reading uh James Baldwin talking about how he was sick of books about he called them problem books because they showed black people as a problem rather than showing them as humans. Right. And that's exactly yeah what the Landis segment does is it doesn't show any humanity or why he's wrong. It just throws him in like, oh, no, you're hated too, meh. It also doesn't show black people. No, yeah. Well there's there's there's one of the Vietnam War soldiers is black. Uh and the guy in the bar, uh the guy who decides the prologue, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's uh he has two lines. And they're angry, he's angry at N-words being thrown around. So you don't even see him as a human.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Oh, and what's his name? What's his name was one of the Vietnam news actors?

SPEAKER_04 24:32

Um, uh Al Leong from uh I might be saying his name wrong, from uh Genghis Khan from Bill and Ted. Oh also, if you're Andy Sederis fans, he shows up in a couple of those and he's pretty great. He has this great line where he and another guy run into two of the good guys and goes, heh heh, put the guns down, Steve. Let's finish these guys up with our hands.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Oh, Andy Sederas. Oh, all right, Brandon. You want to take us into the Well, wait, no. So I see think this is my third fake for a third favorite. Uh I Bryce, you're the same, and this is your least favorite, Brandon?

SPEAKER_04 25:09

Yeah, this is my least favorite. I I feel like there's just nothing here. You're right, it does have a beginning, middle, and end, but it it's so perfunctory and so just like Spielberg, like, I don't care. Just fucking whatever.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:23

Yeah. I am usually not a person who is averse to things that are like sickly sacrine or sweet, because I I I find myself to be a pretty earnest person. Sure. This is that first shot version of this move of a movie. Like, it is way too sickly sweet.

unknown 25:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah, yeah. It's it's the liquid campaign of this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the blue cursel of Twilight Swim Shorts.

SPEAKER_04 25:46

Oh, I also wanted to point out how long it's been since I've seen this movie and what I remember about it. I had two false memories. In the Landis one, I thought he's you still had that battle, and the battle was what threw him back into Nazi times, which is not the case at all. And I thought in the Spielberg one, the uh the head of the house, the Cox lady, she came out and she just heard laughter and the can was being kicked by invisible kids. And now I have no idea what that is or why I was thinking that happened. That sounds like the ending to like an Are You Afraid of the Dark episode? It might be. Maybe you're complaining. Or it might be one of those 80s Twilight Zones for all I know.

SPEAKER_05 26:32

Here's a false memory that I had because I was doing a little bit of research beforehand. And I have seen all the original Twilight Zone, I've seen all of the most recent, but I've only seen smattered episodes of the 85 and the 2002 reboot. I have a very specific memory, and maybe this was just in the commercials or something, of the 2002 one just being called the zone. Everywhere I see it's just called the Twilight Zone. So I'm just like, I need I would have to go through like old commercials and be like, did they ever just call like next up the zone?

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Is this like your Berenstein Bear Shazam thing? Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_04 27:05

For the fourth winter care would have called it zone. I mean, I could see that because that was at the time when it was like things are cooler when they're less cooler. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:14

It's just the zone now. We don't put the E in extreme anymore.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Okay, moving on to oh, sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

One last thing is uh about halfway through this one, I turned to Kelly and was like, this reminds me of one of the really lame amazing stories. Because it had that same look, it had that kind of orangey-yellow lighting. In like the really soft focus.

SPEAKER_05 27:40

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it is impossible to ever get to Stephen Spielberg to talk about this movie ever again.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Oh, I'm sure not.

SPEAKER_05 27:47

Oh, yeah. But I would love just to like, even if you could just get him to agree somehow that you're gonna divorce this entirely from the tragic events that happened. Yeah. I'd love to know what he was thinking and what he was feeling. And I'm sure he doesn't think it wouldn't write either.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Oh, sure. Um But no, from like a but from a filmmaker storyteller standpoint. And this is the Twilight Zone is so special to him.

SPEAKER_05 28:08

Yeah. Roder Solomon gives him his first job on Outer Limits. That's his first directorial debut is the 69 episode of Outer Limits. He's reverent to the Twilight Zone, and like this is his stamp on it.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:22

I I I don't know. He's gotta have feelings about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 28:27

He's pushed him down deep inside.

SPEAKER_05 28:29

Sure. Much like I want to feel uh if those are where those feel things are, then we'll get a movie about them in about 20 years. He seems to be emotionally processing now.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Right. When was that movie about his childhood? Like Feelings? Yeah, two years ago. 2022. Yeah. Well, four years ago, Jesus Christ. Okay. Time is a flat circle.

SPEAKER_04 28:51

Alright, so uh the third one. Now we're getting somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Now we are getting somewhere. A young Kathleen Quinlan, ladies and gentlemen.

SPEAKER_04 29:01

RJ Fletcher from UHF.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:03

Yes. Uh and the voice of Bart Simpson. Oh, and that's her cart range there, too. Uh so this one's about Kathleen Quinlan, who is uh driving from one town mentioned in an old Twilight Zone episode to another town mentioned in an old Twilight Zone episode, because Joe Dante layers this one with lots of references that make no sense if you're in unless you're an aficionado. Uh she stops at Diner, and there's a kid who's changing the channels with his mind, and she winds up taking the kid home, and it turns out he has turned his house into a place where he holds a family hostage to do his bidding.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Yes, it's it's revealed throughout the story that he can control the world and like with his mind. If he wishes something, it comes true. And basically his holding everyone hostage, and everyone's like continually kissing his ass so they don't, you know, end up in a monster's mouth or whatever. Yeah, it's uh it's great. You know, it's it's it's definitely my favorite. Spoiler alert, it's probably my favorite of the four. Oh, yeah. I thought the set design, I know that we said with the other two, it's like, yeah, this these sets look like kind of cheap and they're like just mate, like TV set cheap, you know, TV show sets or whatever. But for this, before this segment, I think that really works.

SPEAKER_05 30:25

Yeah, because it looks like a children's cartoon.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

And it looks like something that a that a 10-year-old would make.

SPEAKER_05 30:32

Right, exactly. It looks uh, it uh uh looks like the children's show from UHF. It's all lit insane. It's lit like a Star Trek episode in which there's just seven different point lights of all different colors pointing every single direction. It makes no sense.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yeah, yeah, it's really kind of surrealist in it in the visuals. Um the story, I think it's cool, is cool. I think the the little kid acting, I think he did a really good job. This is another one where, or this is one where it's told differently than the original episode on which it's based. It's told more in a show-don't tell fashion, like movies are, but uh in this one I think it works within the time frame. Um and they and that I think is a credit to the acting and the directing.

SPEAKER_04 31:25

Yeah, um, I think uh it definitely has more of the Tales from the Crypt vibe, but I don't care because it's so well done. Like I think when they go up to the second floor, that almost looks like a Tim Burton movie. Yeah. Oh, the black and white.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

And the hallway and all the doors and stuff, yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_04 31:45

The sister with no mouth, just like which also is directly out of a Star Trek episode.

SPEAKER_05 31:50

Oh, sure. It reminds it's funny they mentioned Tim Burton, because it also is the same plot of Beetlejuice 2. Oh, really? I didn't see it. Okay, yeah, the second plot of Beetlejuice 2. Spoilers for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Jump ahead, 30 seconds. The boy, that Jenna Ortega's character is dating that movie, turns out to be a ghost who killed his parents, but now has like fake facts similarities of them downstairs acting like it's his normal life still.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_05 32:20

Interesting. Which did this kid kill his parents, right? Or he just sent them away to like this weird boy room.

SPEAKER_04 32:27

Yeah, he sends them to the cartoon world in this one, I think.

SPEAKER_05 32:31

Well, he sends the one girl to the cartoon world, and at the very end, everybody that was in the house with him, he says he he sent them back to where they were.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:40

So he does seem to free everybody, but the initial starting point is did he kill his parents?

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah, you know what? I never really got the sense that any of these people were his actual family, with the exception of his sister. Right, none of them were. Right. But I don't know that we ever learned what actually happened to those people. I really I really dug the ending where Kathleen Quinlan's character, and I know I didn't get the sense from her performance that she is like trying to figure out a way, like, okay, I'll get him out of here and then like kill him or whatever. But she's like, no, we're gonna figure out how to use this power for good and not evil kind of thing, and I'm going to teach you how to do that, and then you're going to teach me.

SPEAKER_05 33:21

Yeah, because the kid seems receptive. Like when he she explains nutrition to him, he's like, none of you ever told me about this.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I think, a departure from the episode that it's based on, because it's very clear from the outset that that little kid's a little fucking psychopath, and there's no redeeming him. There's no like getting through to his empathetic nature because he's not got any. Whereas this kid in this section does have empathy that he can probably be reached.

SPEAKER_05 33:53

Yeah, he just needs to be a kid that's been enabled by all these people that he has brought in to create his new reality based off whatever traumatic situation happened. Right. The rabbit monster.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:06

That's pretty great.

SPEAKER_04 34:07

So good. And I like that. I liked all the special effects on this one. Yeah, like the almost Tasmanian Devil thing. Yeah, the certain thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:16

You can definitely like, oh yeah, Joe Dante's gonna direct a Looney Tunes movie.

SPEAKER_04 34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

Yeah, I liked how it makes it all look cartoony, like real book cartoony. It kind of reminded me of what Zemeckis did later in Roger Rabbit.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

A little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:30

Specifically in the cartoon gun he has when they show him holding the model that had that same look as like the monsters did in this one. And I'm like, oh god, Joe Dante was kind of doing that before Zemechis, huh?

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Yeah, a couple years.

SPEAKER_04 34:45

Um very close, but yeah. Uh also uh uh Red Dante said this. Uh he and Miller were pretty much left alone to do whatever they wanted because at that point they're all so worried about Landis and the court cases.

SPEAKER_05 34:58

Nobody wanted their name on the movie anymore, but they wanted the movie to come out. So every producer stopped producing. And they were like, well, you have your budget, you have to go turn in your segment. Goodbye. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Your segments do in our offices by May 1st. Have fun! That's kind of cool. I mean, it sucks for the movie overall, obviously, but from like Miller and Dante's standpoint, that's kind of cool that they were just able to do what they wanted without a whole lot of interference.

SPEAKER_05 35:28

Especially for Joe Dante, where like, you know, you got Spielberg and John Landis, they're doing all right. George Miller's on his way to doing all right, Mad Max 2 has just come out in the US, he doesn't need another big boost. But Joe Dante, like this is like Joe Dante's essentially debut in terms of like being a big time director. Gremlins comes out, you know, four years later, but he's already working on Gremlins at this point with Spielberg. So just having it as a calling card was like, oh, this is very nice.

SPEAKER_04 35:55

Yeah. Had he already done Piranha or like Prana, okay. I could not uh I was like, wait, did he do Piranha or not?

SPEAKER_05 36:03

Yes, I uh I believe Prana and Prana 2 this uh have already come out.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

Um I think this one's interesting because it's the only one I think takes the original and reworks it into something worthwhile. Like he actually goes full almost like Tales from the Dark Side or uh what's the Crypt Keeper one?

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Tales from the Crypt.

SPEAKER_04 36:26

Tales from the Crypt. That's right, yeah. He leans into it and he takes the story that was originally kind of more about like authoritarianism and cowardice in the face of it, and turns it into a horror story that actually still has kind of those themes.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Like Yeah, kind of those themes, but yeah, like to your point, the original kind of focuses more on you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 36:51

And this one's more table kids will turn out to be Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Yeah, a little bit. And we're back. All right, Brando, fourth, fourth segment.

SPEAKER_04 37:08

Oh, I Oh no, yep, yep. Well, I'm gonna say I think it's pretty clear this is all our favorite segment.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yeah. It's your second what? Okay.

SPEAKER_04 37:19

Well, now we're on the segment four. Bryce's favorite. And until this viewing, I probably would have said was mine. This is John Lithgow Is on a plane. It's the it's one of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes ever made. John Lithgow hates flying. He looks out the window, and there is a monster on the wing of the plane slowly destroying the engines. And no one will believe him, and he turns into a screaming madman about it. And it's directed by George Miller, and it's really well done.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:49

Specifically. It's a gremlin on the wing of the plane.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

Specifically. They do mention Gremlin like three or four times in the episode.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

Dante's like there's a very good little reference.

SPEAKER_05 38:01

This has nothing to do with the show, but there's a very good reference in the Lego Batman movie where a bunch of literal Lego gremlins tear up the wing of a plane and it crashes.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

I don't know if I caught that reference. Amazing. Yeah, I mean, this was this was very well done. Again, I like the episode that it's based on a little bit better, but not by much. It's not like a wide, wide margin between my like of both of these properties.

SPEAKER_05 38:26

Yeah, it's interesting because like Terra 20,000 feet is one of my favorite things, but favorite pieces of media of all time, the original. I think it is directed by Richard Donner. It's one of his first project, William Shatner. It is one of the only things that I think has been remade three times by what I consider like modern masters of cinema. So Richard Donner directs the first, this one's directed by George Miller, the third one is directed by Jordan Peel.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_05 38:54

Which we can talk about the 2019 one. It's very different from this one.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Okay. Yeah, I've not seen it.

SPEAKER_05 38:59

Yes, it's Terra at 30,000 feet.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

No, well, you know, the planes are bigger than me.

SPEAKER_05 39:03

And it's about podcasts.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

What?

SPEAKER_05 39:05

It sure is. Uh Adam Scott plays the the man this time. I love this version of it for two reasons. John Lithgau is amazing. He's so good. He's so good. He's better than Shatner was.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Yeah. You know what though? I would my I would push back slightly on that. Not that I think that Shatner's not bad. Yeah, Shatner's not bad, but I think that Shatner is playing to the era better. Having said that, I very much like Lithgau's performance better.

SPEAKER_05 39:38

The cinematography in this is insane. It is so good. And it's even crazier when you realize it is all on an airplane. It's all like in a six-foot tube. The camera moves that they make in this thing. When the man is trying to break the window with the gas canister, and the man pulls him to the floor, it's one continuous shot where you're close on Lithgau's face, and it tracks Lithgau's face as if he's not moving, but the background beyond behind him is moving until he reaches the ground and the air marshal is like trying to wrap around him. The shots of him in the bathroom, all these things that you can do, like it is the one of the best representations cinematography-wise of an anxiety attack.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:22

Or a panic attack. Like you are locked in with how this guy feels because the camera is also just freaking you the hell out.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Yeah, well, it's it's got it's got definitely got that claustrophobic nature for sure. Yeah, it captures that.

SPEAKER_04 40:35

Uh yeah, and it's interesting you brought that up because um that's one of those shots like Darren Arnofsky got a lot of credit for in his movies, but it it had always been used pretty sparingly. Like they use it there, or there's a scene in Mean Streets where Kaitel's hammered and they the background moves, but he doesn't because he's hammered. Um but yeah, it's a good way to make it unsettling and weird. And uh you've got Lithgow giving this over-the-top but also controlled performance that is right where it needs to be for the story, but also never as like laughable or okay guy, come on.

SPEAKER_05 41:11

And it's also like very indicative of like what George Noodle Miller will eventually do later in his career. Like, there are shots like that in the Mad Max movies, especially Mad Max 2, but like after this he does Witches of Eastwick, and then he does Lorenzo's Oil. Like both of those are pretty staided films in terms of their cinematography. I guess the end of Witches of Eastwick goes pretty well, but some of this really does feel like Fury Road. Oh, yeah, or you know, 3,000 years of longing or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Like, I'm not surprised that the same director made both of those things, right?

SPEAKER_04 41:41

Right. I also thought uh it kind of reminded me a little bit of Sam Raimi with like all the zooms and close-ups. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just the love of abusing the hell out of your main character. Yeah, yep. Yeah, in terms of like comparing it to the original, uh, obviously the original is much more focused on the psychology of Shatter's character. And uh the monster in that is much goofier, but I think I believe you can see the zipper. You can. Um I but it reminds me of old Doctor Who's, where as silly and cheap as the costume is, it still does weird things, like it'll just like throw its hands in the air and float away into the sky. And it's like, that's weird.

SPEAKER_05 42:22

But this movie does this movie. This installment also doesn't shy away too far like that. At the end of it, the monster shames John Lithgow here shying to shoot it. He goes, uh-uh-oh.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Uh-oh, what are you doing, bro? Yeah. Yeah, that that's I yeah, it's it's a it's a real good one. It's also the one that's closest to the original. Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_05 42:44

Yeah, it doesn't defer too far from what exactly happens. The 2019 version is about a man who gets on a plane and finds an iPod in his seatback pocket with a podcast on it and starts listening to it and realizes that the podcast is an episode about the disappearance of the flight that he is on.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

Oh fuck.

SPEAKER_05 43:06

Yeah, weird.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

Dude, that's really cool. I mean, that's a completely different story, but that's real cool. Right.

SPEAKER_05 43:12

Uh where there's I mean, is this there's still a monster on the plane because you're trying to figure out the last thing that the pilot says in the recording before the flight disappears is uh goodnight New York. And so it's about him trying to get to the pilot to force him to not say goodnight New York.

SPEAKER_02 43:28

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_05 43:29

Uh so it's like, oh well, he's the monster on the site. Uh I want to spoil for what the twister that one is, but uh I don't know if the Jordan Peel Twilight Zone is watchable anywhere anymore anymore. Yeah, with the billion mergers that have happened, but Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

I've never seen it, so I would like to check it out if it's if it's available.

SPEAKER_05 43:47

There's some really good episodes. There's some terrible ones too, but there are some really good ones.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Sure. That's always the that's always the thing with like those sort of anthology series. It's like there's going to be some clunkers and then there then there's gonna be these. Amazing, massively beautiful, wonderful episodes.

SPEAKER_04 44:04

Yeah, uh, it's like the 80s one, which we watched religiously when I was a kid. I can remember two or three of them. And I'm sure if we watched them now, I'd be like, uh, yeah, this is definitely an 80s remake of Twilight Zone.

SPEAKER_05 44:17

So you're Steven Spielberg, and it that this project is ending, and you have been given all four of these shorts. Right. How do you order them? Do you do what he did and do like worst first and then end on a high note? Yeah. Eat your vegetables and then have some fun.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Here's here's here's okay. So I've actually edited several, as I'm just going to shamelessly plug myself, I've edited several short story anthologies. My general approach to that was to start strong, have a have a real strong middle, couple middle stories, and end on a real big fucking banger. And then the rest can just be, you know, maybe grouped thematically or however else you want. So start strong, middle strong, the last one's your high note. If it were me putting this together, I probably would have put I think I would have kept the 30,000 one at the end.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Uh, because that episode is so famous.

SPEAKER_05 45:12

And no matter what, just stylistically, it is your blockbuster.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:16

It's the most tense, too. Yeah. So for an edit, it's about a plane crash.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

And there it's like I think I think I might have opened with the um Dante one. Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:28

Because then I'm just like, then you're like sitting there for 40 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Well, yeah. Like you're like you think you're going to go and go for this ride, and it's like, okay, yeah, that sucks, but now but you haven't left. That's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Oh, and then the uh uh it ends with Lithgow being taken off the plane. Uh they find evidence of the uh damage done by the gremlin, which in the original it's just hinted at that they will find it. And then uh Lithgow is in the car in uh ambulance with Dan Aykroyd, who says the famous line, you want to see something really scary?

SPEAKER_02 46:05

How would you order them, Brandon? I I kind of keep it the same, I think. Oh, do you?

SPEAKER_04 46:11

Yeah, like you have to almost. Yeah, we'll take those first two out of the way, and then we can kind of relax into the good ones.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Yeah, no, I think I I think I put the Dante one first and then keep the Spielberg one where it is, and then the Landis, and then end on where it ended.

SPEAKER_05 46:31

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 46:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:34

I just have to think about it where I'm just like someone had to make that decision, and someone was hanging in that room being like, alright, how do we do this? Because originally the concept was supposed to be that there were going to be a character or a theme that runs between every single thing. Right, and they were and they were gonna all have the same actors, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Yeah, they're all gonna have the same actors. Which I'm I'm bummed that they couldn't or didn't stick with that because I think that would have been cool.

SPEAKER_05 46:55

I just have to imagine in terms of like that nearly quadruples your shoot, because instead of having four movies at the same time being so much shot at the same time, you have to wait for actors to come from the last short to shoot yours.

SPEAKER_02 47:07

Logistically, it's a nightmare.

SPEAKER_05 47:10

I love Terror at 20,000 feet. I think it's so fun. I think it's it's one of the things, and the other thing, Joe Dante's episode gets it too, that a lot of people don't remember about the Twilight Zone or just kind of like is not in the popular lexicon Twilight Zone. It's like Rod Sterling's pretty fucking funny.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Oh yeah. Yeah, he really is. He really is. And I think that Rod Sterling just had a really, I think, pragmatic way of looking at the world. You know, like he wasn't trying to blow smoke anyone up anyone's ass or anything. It's just like, no, this is the world we live in, and here's here's the morality tales that that we have to have or whatever. Um, where it's just like, wow, you know, humans just haven't changed all that much, have we? You know, just since the 50s or since probably the beginning of time, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 47:58

Oh yeah, like the monsters on Maple Street, like that's still pretty relevant today. We're seeing it happen right outside our windows.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

Oh, yeah. Well, as we were watching it, it was like, oh yeah, no, this is like misinformation, right? Like you can just rile up anybody against their neighbors if you show them enough memes.

SPEAKER_05 48:14

But based on a kid, like I read a comic read a comic book once that all the electricity went out because aliens survived. And everyone's like, well, that's gotta be it.

SPEAKER_04 48:25

That's it. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? That happens literally on the Joe Rogan show every episode. It's true.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

So I think we've finally gotten to the time where we gotta talk about the controversy surrounding this movie and why this movie is so so in the lexicon of history of just being like this, I don't know, black spot, I guess, on the industry.

SPEAKER_04 48:47

Uh yeah, I was gonna see if uh, since you've read the book, would you like to go over the events?

SPEAKER_05 48:53

Sure. I'm gonna be referencing a lot from the book Outrageous Conduct, Art Ego in the Twilight Zone Case, written by Stephen Farber and Mark Green. I highly recommend it. It is pretty impossible to find without paying a decent price for it. So as there is no way to legally give money to the writers of it and pay for it legally, I will reference that there is a PDF copy of it on the internet download and read. And it's better read than completely lost because it is one of the great books.

SPEAKER_02 49:24

Yeah, and this is something Hollywood filmmaking. And this is something that should not be Lost Media.

SPEAKER_05 49:28

No. Uh so thank you to the film critic Scott E. Weinberg for recommending it to me many, many years ago. This happens on July 23rd, uh, 1982. They are on their second day of filming this big scene. The end of this movie originally is going to be that Vic Morrow is running, is being identified as a member of the Viet Cong, and an American helicopter is coming in there, and he's trying to wave them off, yelling that he is a soldier, that he is a GI. Because you hear earlier in this show, in this episode, that he fought in Korea. And he's waving at this helicopter saying, No, no, I'm a GI, I'm a GI, please don't shoot, and then the helicopter fires. When John Landis is writing this script, he adds uh a way to morally redeem the character a little bit more, which is that he picks up two kids and runs away with them to avoid the helicopter fire.

SPEAKER_04 50:26

Sorry to interrupt you real quick. Um I've read conflicting accounts. Was that Landis' idea, or was he kind of forced to do it by the producers? No, it was Landis' idea. Okay. According to the book.

SPEAKER_05 50:36

Uh so take it up with Steven Farber. He explains the script change to one of his producers, and his producers are like, we can't do that because kids can't work nights. Um, and so it'd be illegal to shoot this scene. Uh during the entire production of the film, he then works with some of his producers and one of his personal friends to keep this entirely secret. The kids are paid off the book. Uh, it's originally two of his friend's kids that uh he eventually pays $200 to for being standby because they don't look Asian enough.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

He finally has talked about survivor skill.

SPEAKER_05 51:15

Yeah, Hollywood, everybody. Uh he has his friend who's a dentist, asked in front of his friends in the Asian community to audition, and they're like, Well, we're all Chinese. And John Landis is like, nobody knows the difference between a Chinese and a Vietnamese person cast who we'll take whoever.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

Right.

SPEAKER_05 51:34

So he finally finds these two kids that he likes, whose names are Renee Shen Yi, uh, Renee Sheny Chen and Mays Din Li. Micah is uh is Vietnamese, Renee Shen Li is Taiwanese. Before the day before that this ever this scene was supposed to shoot, uh Frank Marshall gets a call from one of the producers being like, hey, uh we hear that there are two kids in this scene. Uh is it okay that we cast non-union kids to work in this scene? And Frank Marshall's like, I haven't heard anything about any kids in this scene. Um, but I'll I'll I'll ask for you. And this producer is asking innocently because she believes that since there are kids in this scene, that this is being shot on a stage or as day for night. Right. And Landis is like, no, we are shooting this at night.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

This I feel like this is just like a fucking horror movie, man. And it's like, don't go up the stairs.

SPEAKER_05 52:28

The same day, a check for $2,000 ends up in a man's hand addressed, uh signed by Frank Marshall, and this guy believes that it is payment for off-the-books uh child acting, um, and he reports it, but then is told no, there is no kids on the set, don't worry about it. There are two kids on the set. Um, the very first day, uh, they shoot a lot of the interstitial stuff, um, them running through the water and whatnot, um, but they run out of time. So the very first day there was an incident in which a mortar in the water went off, and the mortar was so powerful that water, dirty water splashed on the windscreen of the helicopter, and they almost lost control. And the two uh cameramen or the one person firing the gun, and then the cameraman in the helicopter both are like, we felt like we were inside of a fireball. Like the heat was so strong that I had to like dive to the other side of the helicopter. Otherwise, I swear I would have been burned. Uh they keep the kids on set that day until 3:30 a.m. Then Landa says, No, we're not shooting it. Next day, we're walking through the they're walking through the set. The pilot who's uh also gets charged with uh uh manslaughter is had already done a walkthrough to make sure that things were relatively okay. He was had never been on a film set before. He was a helicopter pilot that primarily just did transit and pickup, but he had over a thousand hours flying in Vietnam, dropping off and picking up troops. Uh but this was his very first time being on a film set. A lot of his coworkers who turned down this movie because they heard about how low the helicopter had to be to the explosions, uh, are doing movies and he wants to really get into the business. Right. So he agrees to do this. Well, I mean, he's it's sure, he's got like a really specific skill set. And the world's most coped-out, angriest man is telling you what to do, and you're scared to talk back because you want to.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

Want to be in the industry. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 54:30

Uh, which is so many of the people in this story.

SPEAKER_04 54:32

That's maybe something to point out. Like, Landis is coming off of like one, two, three punch of Animal House, Blues Brothers, and American Werewolf in London.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

So I had to write his own ticket at this point.

SPEAKER_05 54:45

Right. Um, and especially because Blues Brothers had its own series of incidents and injuries, and there's a whole lot of reporting, especially done by the Chicago Tribune at the time, about how tense and problematic that set was, but it worked. And it worked so well for everybody involved. And so a lot of people are kind of looking the other way, also because it's his passion project with Steven. He's finally working with his friend Steven Spielberg. Right. During the walkthrough, uh one of the um stunned or one of the uh explosive experts noticed that someone's placed in a mortar mortar under one of the huts, which he was explicitly told not to do by the pilot, because that will just send debris straight into the rotor and that could take these things down. There is a point in the original script in which Vic Morrow has to throw something at the uh helicopter, but uh he's like, just use a piece of balsa wood, the helicopter will just blow it right down, so don't worry about that. But if the whole bunch of it's coming up explosively, it's gonna be a problem. So at 2 30 a.m. on the second day, the pilot comes in, he comes in a little bit lower than anticipating, but John Landis has very clearly said that he wanted 20, he we he wanted 20 feet. The pilot comes in at 25 feet when he's supposed to be coming in at 30 feet. Uh John Landis does not say anything or cut because this means that he gets Vic Morrow, the explosion, in the helicopter, all in one shot. Hits the pyrotechnics, the houses explode, a piece of uh debris hits the rear rotor, another piece of debris hits one of the top rotors, uh still causing like the main rotor to fail and stall, and the helicopter crashes into the ground, immediately crushing one of the children and beheading the other as well as Big Morrow.

SPEAKER_02 56:33

Just Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_04 56:35

And uh that footage is available. I you don't see them die, but you see the copter go down.

SPEAKER_02 56:43

No, nope, don't need to see that.

SPEAKER_04 56:45

It's uh just knowing what happens is kind of awful enough.

SPEAKER_05 56:48

Yeah, the the jury, uh fast forward a little bit, we'll talk about it, but John Lannis was uh indicted for manslaughter and was put on trial for this movie. They did show 28 minutes of outtakes to the jury in which they showed the full incident as well as shots of a bloody rotor and a dismembered head.

SPEAKER_02 57:09

And they still acquitted him. They sure did. What the fuck? I'm just I'm like sitting here in shock, man. It's man, I like how, how, how, how they acquitted OJ. Well, yeah, that's a whole different thing. Well, I don't want to say a different thing, but it's there's a lot of like race and shit involved with that.

SPEAKER_05 57:33

I mean, partially this was like John Landis immediately went into a pretty strong control mode.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

Oh, sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:41

While this was like a big national story and a trial was a constantly recorded, um, his lawyers were very adamant that this got become like a star-stded affair. Right. So, like, he asked none of like John Landis' friends to come show up to like support him. Some people did, anyways. Jeff Goldblum was there a lot, David Frontenberg was there a lot. John Landis kept talking about how much Eddie Murphy wanted to come to support him. And I'm just like, you guys are about to have a bad time in a couple of years. I don't know how much Eddie Murphy is really begging to come to the trial to support his buddy John Landis. The prosecutor in Rachley tries to go for first-degree murder and say that he is responsible.

SPEAKER_02 58:22

Oh, I think, well, I mean, obviously it would have been a mistake because he couldn't even get manslaughter, but I don't know that you can you could don't you have to have intent for first degree?

SPEAKER_05 58:33

Yeah, uh, and well, you don't have to have intent, but you have to like have made an action that put a person intentionally in harm's way.

SPEAKER_02 58:43

Yeah, that's a that's a tough, that's a tough call.

SPEAKER_05 58:46

So they get him on the they they they charge him with manslaughter, and he does eventually get off. Uh but yeah, it's uh a tragic story that did lead to a lot of change in terms of safety regulations in Hollywood.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:59

But in terms of uh the the court said the person who was guilty was the person who pressed the button on the prior tech mix who has never been identified. And the pilot had to, I believe the pilot got to talk down, like got it. Yeah, and had to agree to have his pilot's rights of license revoked for the rest of his life.

SPEAKER_02 59:21

You know, I just the story may this is obviously a tragic story. And okay, we can talk about the good that came out came out of it in terms of changing safety standards in Hollywood and hopefully exploiting people less by paying them under the table and working them illegally, hopefully. But goddamn, can we just talk about how rich people get off and then this this dude that was just trying to like break into the industry, he's the one that has to like suffer? Is is how often how often does that happen? Like all the fucking time.

SPEAKER_05 59:57

And there's so many things, like if you read the book and you just read the chapter on what happens the two days of the shooting, there are so many things that have to go quote unquote wrong in order for like this incident to happen, but they are all directly lead back to choices that John Landis made. So one of the things was over the walkie-talkies on the set on that day, um, they were always saying, you know, bring in the kids, don't, you know, or we'll get the kids or whatever, because they were off to the side, you know, not they were not standing on set waiting, obviously, because it was cold and dark.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:29

One of the producers recognized one of the firefighters that was there that day from the volunteer fire department, um, and recognized that he used to be a child protection teacher for kids on sets. And so he told John Landis, hey, this guy might get clued in that there's kids here, and he knows that there's not supposed to be kids on this set, so don't call them children anymore in the walkie-talkies, call them the Vietnamese. And so there was a code word that day to make sure that no one even referred to the fact that there were children on set.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:03

Yeah, it's like there's a whole bunch of people knew that there was shady shit going on, and we're trying to hide it from the people who can get us in trouble. You know, like, okay, so I'm not I'm not going to go too far on the left field. I'm just going to say this. I used to work in a hospital laboratory, and I've been involved with and also adjacent to incidents that happen, right? And every time there's an incident that happens, you do the post-mortem, and every single time there's 12 things that could have gone wrong that did go wrong. Like that all 12 things had to go wrong in order for this thing to happen, and all 12 things did. And it's all about risk management and how do you not do that again? It shouldn't have happened the first time. How can we make sure it doesn't happen again? And that's what this sounds like, right? There are 12 things here that were clearly illegal and shouldn't have happened, but everyone just kind of went along with it because John Landis is John Landis, and we're just fucking following, following along. And no one's going, no one's got the balls to be like, no, I'm not fucking doing that.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:05

And no one wants uh Landis to turn into uh Klaus Kinski on him, so everyone just sort of lets him do it and plays along.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

Does he have that reputation for having that sort of technological?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:15

Yeah, he's mad at people and scream and yell.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:19

Um I will say that there's a part of the is directly speaking to the point of just like rich motherfuckers can get away with anything, powerful motherfuckers can get away with anything, in which like immediately after the incident happens, he's deposed by the police and the safety coordinator, I can't remember exactly who it is, uh, testifies to the fact that he heard John Landis when they were practicing the helicopter fly in on the first day. He heard John Landis repeatedly yell fucking lower, lower, lower, lower, fucking lower. And John Landis agreed to this testimony uh when he was first uh given a deposition during the trial. He changes it to, I can't recall.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

No, of course not. Of course, of course. Um and that reminds me, uh, yeah, John Landis saw himself as uh, and I guess this will lead into autour theory, he saw himself as the dictator on set, and everything goes through him and he's in charge. But yeah, once he got to the trial, he's like, well, I hired experts, it's up to them, not me.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

You know, this makes me so fucking angry because I've I've I've encountered this in in my own dealings, just in my own professional life. I've encountered this, you know, not personally, but like reading stories or you know, like listening to anecdotes from other people, where it's like, there's the dude, and it's usually a dude who's at the top that's calling the shots and they're doing everything, and everyone like jumps through hoops and walks on eggshells around this motherfucker, you know, just doing what he wants to do. But the second something fucking goes wrong, hey, you know, my team was around me and you know, well, no one stopped me. It's like, no, motherfucker, no one stopped you because you've got a history of firing anyone who tells you no.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:57

Right. You'll just replace another person that will do it, which is why it was that pilot, and not the three other pilots who said, No, no, whatever in the world when I do a stunt like that. See also the Trump administration. Yeah. But yeah, as to the dictator stuff, you know, the book does kind of mention that this is like a kind of a breaking point for that as well, in terms of like new DGA regulations that come in after this movie, which is that like it obviously still happens because we have our controlling asshole directors still in this world, but as a generality, the director is no longer the dictator. There are people that have to approve decisions like that that the director can no longer control. There is outside coordinators for handling children on set, there are outside coordinators for stunts and safety, there are outside coordinators for medical detention. Those are jobs that are now not under the purview of the director, but under the purview of the studio or the financier.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:52

I mean, as it should be, I think, well, I know like we mentioned it earlier, right? Like absolute power corrupts absolutely, but also just the idea that John Lannis, like to your point, Brandon, by this point and in his career, he's made a whole bunch of people a whole lot of money. And there's not a whole lot of people that are gonna get in his way because they want to be a part of the next John Lannis picture. And it's this is just such a tragic, tragic, preventable, preventable tragedy. And it makes me really angry that this asshole got to keep making movies.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:26

If you're in a fucking party when you got it when you got acquitted, if you're in a party.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

That's so gross. That's so gross.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:33

Yeah, and all for a segment in an anthology movie that isn't even really that great. Like, it's him being like, I need this giant war scene in this most of the budget.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

Oh, well, I was about to men ask like, how much of the $7 million budget did he take?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:51

He was the only director that took a cut of the budget and payment. I believe he was paid $150,000. Steven Spielberg took no money but got five points on the back. He never made any money because this movie didn't make money. And then Joe Dante and George Miller's got more paltry sums. Yeah. But yeah, John Landis was the only person to take a direct paycheck out of this movie.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:11

Yeah, just makes me so angry. So I can't remember who which one of us mentioned autour theory a little bit earlier. Maybe, Brandon, it was you. Okay, let's touch on that a little bit because I'm not exactly certain what autour theory is. Just from what I understand, it's just basically the idea that the director is the director and they're the final stop, and everything he says goes, or she, I should say, every every anything they says goes, and then that's it, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:41

Uh yeah, kind of. It's uh it starts in kind of in the 50s in France, and it's this idea that the director is the author of the film.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:49

Right. Which I mean that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:52

And it kind of it's those people who kick off the French New Wave, which then leads to New Hollywood in America, and the 70s, even though it's kind of my favorite decade in American film, and there's a million great movies that come out of it, it also breeds a lot of really shitty directors who are just pricks.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:12

It is a very ramshackle production era, too, because you're coming off of like the end of the studio era in the 50s, where everything was so stayed and structured and controlled by very rich people, but all within like these very tight literal studios. In like boxes, right? Right. And the person who was in control was the head of the studio. That was the person who was directing the stories of all the pictures.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

Yeah, like the studio system. Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:37

Then the 60s happened, which is kind of the Wild West. It's a little bit trashy, no one really knows or is doing anything very like it's it's it's very random shackle. And then the 70s come around in which we start getting directors like George Lucas, like Steven Spielberg, like you know, any of these people, but that see a space for them to essentially walk into and take control because they grew up watching movies in the studio system and all these sort of things, and they have their own ideas and they're counter-cultural in their own way. But what with those counter-cultural uh practices lead to a lot of DIY and uh a lot of uh lower budget things that end up you know being uh a prime breeding ground for these individual directors to kind of take control and all of a sudden they are they are the narrative. These movies come from people, this person's new movie as opposed to a new movie from this studio. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

You know, it's not it's not on the face of it, I don't disagree with like the I guess the underpinnings of Ontario Theory, which is like the you know, the director being the author of the movie, because that's kind of how I think of movies watching watching movies now. It's like, oh yeah, it's the new Villaneuve, of course I want to see it or like his stuff, or whatever. But the idea that there's one dude or one woman, uh, one person that's like the end-all be-all on a movie set, I don't think that's cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:02

I mean, like, I even don't think it's true in a lot of ways. Um, I think it's true very specific for very specific people, I think you can point and be like, yes, that person clearly has like a vision that ties through all other movies. But like when I was talking about earlier about Terra at 20,000 feet, and this, like, George Miller directed that, and he does an amazing job directing that, but that movie is, or that's that uh installment of this anthology is my favorite because of the cinematography.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:30

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:31

It's a completely different person's choices and decisions. You know, it's the camera pieces and it's the AD, it's the cinematographer that I think really uplifts that.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:39

I would agree with that for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:41

I don't think this is the complete and total like this ended New Hollywood, because you got a lot of things like Heaven's Gate, where suddenly these directors who have made like Michael Chemino makes the Deer Hunter. It's huge, it wins Oscars, they're let they give him a blank check, and he destroys the studio. So you have a lot of that. We're already moving away from it, and you have Landis killing three people, and I think Spielberg even gave an interview where he's like, it's time for this to be over.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:09

And also at the same time, like money is coming in, outside money is coming in. Like people are pointing into the movies and being like, oh, this entertainment industry is something that we can capitalize on with product placement and product tie-ins and marketing and stuff like that. Right. You know, Coca-Cola buys a movie studio.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:32

Yeah, when's the Ishtar F? Is that banned?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:36

You know what? It would not surprise me at all, actually, if it were banned in one of the foreign countries.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:41

Isn't that a video nasty? I like Ishtar if you get frustrated.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:46

Uh, you know what? I remember not hating Ishtar. I've never seen it, so I have no opinion on this matter. Um, all right, so what do we think? Obviously, this movie wasn't banned, but price is a question I ask at the end of every episode: should this property be banned? My answer is probably 100% of the time going to be no. But I think for this one, we can probably ask: should it have even been released? Does the does the idea of like this art being a piece of art that they've you know paid for and sunk money into and everything, should it? I mean, three people died. Like, should this be even should this have even been released?

SPEAKER_05 1:11:25

I think about this, like there was a very specific era of streaming. It actually even goes back to like the Looney Tunes DVD box sets, where we did this for a little while and we don't do it anymore, where like at the beginning of Looney Tunes episodes, if you ever watched any of those DVD compilations, they'd be like, there are racist stereotypes portrayed in this film. There are they were not okay then and they're not okay now. We present this to you unedited, an archive of what was created.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:55

I 100% agree with that route.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:59

Just put a little title card in the front, being like, we recognize the tragedy that occurred on this film set and are you know deeply upset for everyone involved.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:11

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:11

So and so, this is what we're done to change things from now. Right. But we will present this movie to you as a product of what these artists have created.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:21

Yeah, because you know, hundreds of people worked hard on this film or whatever, and they deserve to get their flowers. Um, yeah, I think something like that, something of that nature, like acknowledging the tragedy and saying, like, hey, you know, this sucks, but you know, we're still going to present this film. I think something of that nature would have gone a long way toward uh alleving my feelings about my my own icky feelings at watching them, watching the movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:49

Or you uh could just cut Landis out of it altogether. I know that probably wasn't gonna happen being a producer on the movie and everything, but I mean, considering how it ended his friendship with Spielberg, and Spielberg sort of was just like, yeah, we're done. Yeah. And uh I want to say, um, I read something too that Miller kind of walked off of prose production after seeing it all go down. He was just like, this is insanity.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:14

Yeah, I have to say that before we watched the movie, as I was kind of putting this together, and before we watched the movie, I'm like, man, I don't know. Like, if I'm I I felt a little icky watching it even, just knowing what had happened, and it's still like, okay, well, I guess we'll give you some money, I guess, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:30

Yeah, and like we didn't talk about this much, but like where this comes at Vic Morrow's career, where like this is a dire point, Vic Morrow as an actor. He had been a very popular actor during the 50s and the 60s. He had had some attempts at bringing going back to stardom, but had never really taken off. Sure. So he was languishing in TV movies for a while, and then he was doing what was considered the absolute like rock bottom of being any sort of known quantity in the 80s, which is you do a fantasy island and you do a love boat. Oh, sure. Yeah. And he was so excited for this movie. He was like, This is my big break. He had been pretty deep into alcoholism and had been drinking a lot, and he quit drinking for this production. He got himself back into shape, he was so ready to do this and be like, I'm gonna be back in Hollywood. I'm gonna be in a movie directed by John Landis and Steven Spielberg. I'm gonna like I can come back from this and I can be somebody again.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:28

That just stabs me in the heart even harder.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:31

It's uh um, I think also why he didn't really speak up, because he was kind of like, I don't like this at all, but he's in the same boat as everybody else.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:40

Yeah, yeah. He needs this. And he knows that he's working for a man that will take it away from him in an instant.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:47

And he can't afford that.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:49

Yeah. As John Landis, like, he very specifically said when he was casting this his episode, like, he doesn't want any faces. He doesn't want anyone recognizable, which is why he went to Big Memorough. But that's also why Big Morrow knew he was very replaceable.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:03

Oh, yeah, right. Because you can just get some other old wash-up guy, and then that's that. What's William Channel up to? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:10

No, he had Rathicon.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

All right, guys, final thoughts?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:18

Uh, you know, final thoughts. I mean, I really feel like the smoothie is mostly just remembered for this controversy. Like it kind of came out, it, like you said, it didn't do great, didn't make a lot of money. Uh, that's why, as I've realized as I've grown up, uh I thought all the movies that played on HBO all the time when I was a kid were all these big hits, and it turns out no, they were all the flops, and HBO bought them cheap. That's why this was on all the time. I like I said, I think it has some merit. I think the Dante and the Millers are really worth checking out. Although, like the entire movie this time, by the time we got to Miller's part, I was like, okay, are we gonna come on? So I can't really say it's a great movie, but I think it has a cultural impact. And uh especially if you're a Twilight Zone fan, you should probably check it out just to see.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:12

It's two really great 30-minute YouTube clips that I'm sure you can watch online. Uh that's fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:19

Yeah, yeah, you can probably find those segments floating around online.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:23

Just ignore why uh Dan Ackroyd shows up at the end of a turret 20,000 feet, and you're perfectly okay. Yeah, I mean, nobody wanted to touch this movie with you know a 20-foot pole after it came out, which was you know very disappointing just in terms of like Twilight Zone as a franchise and for some of these people's careers and whatnot. It was not advertised, it barely had a box office release, you know, it was really just you know dropped out in the theaters as a requirement of to the distributor. I'd be interested to see if somebody would do like a re-release of this movie with more context. And it probably doesn't happen until John Landis dies. Probably not. But like if somebody like a Criterion Collection or an Aero Video or whatever remastered the movie syndrome, Vinegar syndrome, and then got interviews or did documentaries and shorts about not just the incident, but kind of like the entire history of the movie and treated it a little bit more as like an archival piece. Yeah, I'd get into that. Yeah, I'd be very interested in that. I can't tell anyone to be like, well, yeah, sit down, pop it on, it's on Tubi right now. Like it's it's it's not a it's not a good sit. But you know, it it it it it killed the Twilight Zone for almost 20 years, and it's everything about it just sucks.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:45

You know, for me, I like I said, I I had some hesitancy going into it, just knowing a little bit about the history, and I I felt icky watching the movie, but after having watched it, honestly, I'm glad that I did. A, because obviously it's just always better to know than to not. And and B because I really appreciate that and then and made me want to go watch the original episodes on which this these uh installments were based. And then now I'm like, you know what, I just need to re-watch Twilight Zone, right? So I'm glad that I watched it just because it reminded me why I like Twilight Zone so much, and I'm really looking forward to like revisiting the original series. So that's what I'm getting out of it. I'm just I'm looking at the positive.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:32

Yeah, yeah. And I'll use this as a point to say, like, people check out the Jordan Peel Twilight Zone. It got a bad rap when it came out, and there is one episode that is particularly egregious and like one of the cheesiest things I've ever seen in my life. But there's some really good stuff in there, and like I was so excited for that show where I'm just like, that makes the most sense in the entire world of like who is a diehard Twilight Zone fan who is in the peak of his career that can make anything happen, that can get some really good writers and directors to bring an anthology series back.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:07

At that point, it was definitely Jordan Peel. Yeah. Check out the original series, check out the Jordan Peel one. Tell me if the 2002 one was ever called The Zone. If you're there, give me a real board, check out that 80s one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:23

Great theme song on that one.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:24

Well, hey Bryce, thank you so much for joining us. This was so much fun, and I'm so glad that you did it. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:31

As fun as it's gonna be discussing three people getting killed.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:34

Well, that. But also, you know, Bryce was a film nerd, and I like talking to him. Yeah, and he's read that book, so it's uh thank you also to all the listeners out there for hanging out. Be sure to check out our Patreon page. Subscribers get a sneak peek at our lineup and can listen to the podcast before the rest of the peons can. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And hey, tell your friends about us, why don't you? This is Kelly Swales. And you've been listening to Bar movies. Catch you next time.