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Screen Generation
A show covering the films distributed under Sony’s label Screen Gems. Join host Evan Hughes every week for commentary on films that are forgotten, and some that spawn franchises.
New episodes every Saturday
Screen Generation
Limbo
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The first episode, Limbo by John Sayles. Starring David Strathairn, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Kris Kristofferson.
Starting in three, two, one. Alright, alright. Hello, and thank you for listening to the first episode of Screen Generation. It's a podcast about the movies that were distributed by Sony under the label Screen Gems. And I'm picking something up. What am I picking up? I can hear two.
SPEAKER_06Dude, what the hell? Great Scott! Oh, I'm very sorry. He'll be fine. He'll be fine. Doc Brown from the Movie Kid. I heard you were doing a podcast about movies.
SPEAKER_07I I I I was. And what is this one? Uh um, the movie's uh Limbo. It's uh it came out uh June 4th, 1999.
SPEAKER_06Well, would you like to go? Um to to 1999? Yeah, we have a time machine. Uh uh. Don't mind the smell. I was just in the middle ages. I mean, not my first question, but cool. So what happened to the Deloitte? We are headed to 1999. And this year is a spooky summer line. It's equal parts, dangerous, and cool. Now be careful. What happens to fucking lot? I know it's uh it's June, but it seems a lot cooler. Let's jump globally. Hold the earth is whatever you say. They're crazy. They're crazy. It's 1999. It's like you're living a crazy life. A movie theater. I spell the popcorn distilled. No, there's a lot of things you can catch this week. Like what? See Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace. Ooh. You could see Notting Hill, which probably is a lot more black people than I'm not gonna justify them. Then you should see I I don't know. The mummy, the good one? The pronounce in that movie, the good matrix, the original matrix. I hope that doesn't get misreading. What is limbo?
SPEAKER_16Tickets, please.
SPEAKER_06Oh, thank you, good man.
SPEAKER_16Third theater on your left.
SPEAKER_14Welcome to Alaska, America's last frontier. A land that for centuries has lifted its siren call to the bold and adventurous.
SPEAKER_13He shot a fish. It was like a gangland execution.
SPEAKER_09This summer, acclaimed director John Sayles invites you to experience Limbo.
SPEAKER_02Look it is, you're all right where I left you six years ago. Same bar stools and everything. So you've uh sung in a lot of places.
SPEAKER_0836 states and the territory of Puerto Rico. Oh I put my kid through a lot, though. Moving all the time.
SPEAKER_12You're the first guy that's ever asked me to come and watch fish thrash around and die. Hate it when they're stranded out in the air and they have that desperate look on their face.
SPEAKER_14Oh, they're drowning.
SPEAKER_08I'd make it.
SPEAKER_14This has been for us, like for so many people before. A land of opportunity.
SPEAKER_02We have this job for you. We want you to go out. To go out, go out and fish.
SPEAKER_11Jumpin' Joe Gaston. Any yours? Not exactly.
SPEAKER_08Mr. Dark and Moody killed two people. Took them out on his fishing boat and they both drowned.
SPEAKER_14So I gotta I gotta ask you a favor. Need somebody to crew for me.
SPEAKER_08This would be fun, huh? It's like a nature thing.
SPEAKER_09Think of Alaska. This one big theme park. Oh, listen, Joey, we got a problem. What's going on? It's complicated. Whatever happens, follow me.
SPEAKER_12I think they killed him.
SPEAKER_14Yeah. What are you buying when you get on a roller coaster? The illusion of risk. Think we're over the edge of danger, but knowing that you'll never have to cross. We're gonna need to feed this a couple of times a day.
SPEAKER_12And then we hope that somebody sees this. Somebody who doesn't want to kill us.
SPEAKER_01Well, nobody's gonna show for a while if it keeps up like this.
SPEAKER_12Somebody lived here. Papa and mother and I have come here to live in the great outdoors. I expect it will be a hard life, but it should be a great adventure.
SPEAKER_08It's the only time she lets me hold her anymore.
SPEAKER_12You don't think we're gonna get rescued, do you? Papa calls it limbo because it sure isn't heaven, and it's too cold to be hell.
SPEAKER_09You can't always save people. Limbo. Rated R.
SPEAKER_07Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to the first episode of Screen Generation. It's a podcast about the films distributed by Sony under the label Screen Gems. I'm your host, Evan Hughes, coming to you from beautiful Las Cruces, New Mexico, where we grow the finest cannabis and make some okay movies. We've established I can't do voices, and I'll try to keep that to a minimum. Sometimes my show is gonna have guests, sometimes I'll spend a morning just doing sound design and making a joke. But depending on the film, I want to be fluid with the format. I'm hoping to keep this fun and not repetitive. Um, but we do have to start somewhere, so let's talk about this week's movie. Also, later on in the episode, um, I'll have some sort of mission statement to explain why I'm doing this. But for anyone who actually just wants to learn about this movie, that's what this show will be. I'm just talking about the movies that have been released by Screen Gems. So Limbo. It's a film written, directed, and edited by John Sales. And it's sort of clear that it was the unfortunate victim of coming out in a crowded field with a limited release. And I think Sales was so excited at the beautiful landscapes and the community he encountered in Alaska that he thought he could recreate the magic of Lone Star. And then he overlooked the issues production would have. Now, in this series, this is gonna be the only film he directs that we'll cover. He doesn't stop making films, he just changes distribution. So, say for like his next film, it's released under Sony Pictures Classic, which is Sony's more prestigious label. The last film he made was released in 2013, and since he's published a bunch of books, but it looks like he's gonna be making a major Chris Cooper Cowboy Picture later this year. When that news dropped, I noticed uh a small discussion amongst the community that frequents the blank check subreddit R. Blankies, and one individual by the name of Confidence Stunning59 said this of sales. One of the most important American directors since the 1970s, a leftist filmmaker who stayed true to his principles, a filmmaker who helped pioneer modern independent film, who used to work as a writer and script doctor for Spielberg and Ron Howard to fund his own movies, a genius grand awardee, a Corman collaborator who crossed over with Joe Dante and others, a talented actor who plays one of the biggest pieces of shit in City of Hope, a man ahead of his time in so many ways. City of Hope is basically the blueprint for The Wire, who experimented with genre, who has stayed with the same woman, his producing partner, for almost 50 years, who wrote and directed Lone Star, one of the great American pictures, the pride of Senecty, New York, who helped give the world David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Matthew McConaughey, and Joe Morton, and many, many others. Who had such a bad time making Baby at Zoo that he walked away from the big studio filmmaking and said, never again. A guy who never once compromised on the art, thus setting the tone for filmmakers for decades to come. A novelist who has recently applied his film gifts to prose, who is finally getting to make another movie. And the guy who wrote the best Jurassic Park sequel never made, the one where it's the dirty dozen with dinosaurs that talk. Conference stunning 59, you are as advertised, and I thank you. It sums up better than me just saying that he's a legendary script doctor and an actor's director. I'll give an honorable mention to uh a script that I know touched me. Um sales um worked on Guillermo do Toro's first English film, Mimic, which terrified me as a child. I still don't like cockroaches, and I'm not sure if you remember this time period, but between Mimic, Men in Black, and Fear Factor, it was a pretty dark time in our nation's history. But if you also want to hear what the two friends have to say about sales, I think this is the only thing I can find.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_10I've never seen Passionfish. Neither have I. Yeah. Uh I should. I should do a John Sales movie. I was gonna say sales is a bit of a blind spot for me. I've seen various John Sales movies. He's just got quite a lot of them. Yeah. Because he was uh, you know, an indie king. I've seen like Meta One, which I think is amazing. I've seen Lone Star, which is amazing. I've seen Lone Star, I've seen Eight Man of the City.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, you know anyway, okay. But to say Sales is an actor's director, and this movie has a strong, small cast. Limbo stars, Mary Elizabeth, Master Antonio, eight years after Prince of Thieves, and ten after the Abyss. David Strathern, who I think, as far as I can tell, has never had a lowliness career. In fact, the year before, in 1998, he had was in five movies, and I thought that had to be like a career high or the most, right? But in 2004, he's in eight films. He's a prolific character actor, and in a role like this, or Good Night and Good Luck, where he actually gets to be the lead, he shines like a diamond. Chris Christofferson's also in this picture as an aviating silver fox of Alaska, and that's strange. Wait. Hold on, pause the podcast. Yeah, he plays Whistler in Blade the year before. And looks older than Dirt in that. But he's he's great in this. Some things must be in the water because he's swatting away all the single women in this movie. And anyways, restart the podcast. As I run into the sporting cast, I'll shout them out. Sales, like, you know, Martin Scorsese or Wes Anderson loves to reuse his talent, and this movie is all about the setting and the performances. And we're probably not done talking about sales on this podcast. Just because he took a break from directing doesn't mean he stopped influencing and nurturing other filmmakers. But that can wait for our girlfight episode, where as far as I can tell, he secured the budget for. So let's go over the plot of this thing. Limbo opens on fish, a great shot of salmon running upstream almost going nowhere, which is not intended to be symbolic at all. This movie is I I compared it to Lone Star, but this movie is not a one-to-one Lone Star in a small town in Alaska. But it's a similar cast of characters who, in this case, are in a state of arrested development. There's no real antagonist to this movie, so I'm quickly just gonna go through what happens and act like that's a plot. But um, Shattern is our uh one of our protagonists, and he's a guy doing odd jobs at an events venue, where we meet Master Antonio as the lead of a wedding band, and her daughter is a depressed server also working at the same event. The father of the bride is a wealthy businessman who is selling people on the idea of Alaska being a destination attraction. It's weird because he's kind of like a less ambitious John Hammond. Uh and like, however, this was written by sales. So if the twist was that this is Jurassic Park but with like moose, then I would be declaring this movie a masterpiece. But by all rights, this rich guy, as he's pitching them turning Alaska into a tourist designation, is correct. He uh tourism has exploded, especially in the cruise industry. And this movie is a major plot point in that the cannery that the people in the town work for is being closed down and the machinery being sent off to China. It's fun to see sales get some stuff right and other stuff wrong because we have had 25, 26 years to look at it. And so just the moment as I open a very expensive tin to smoke muscle. Little snack rant coming. And don't worry, I'm not gonna eat on the microphone. Snack rant. This tin cost me $8 at Whole Foods. It's produced by a lovely outdoorwear company called uh Patagonia. So canned seafood is such a good business that clothing brands are getting involved. And so, why is this popular again? A lot like filmmaking, trends in you know, uh fashion is cyclical, and uh small fish and filter feeders are a sustainable source of protein. They're full of vitamins, fatty omega-3s, they kind of rock at a picnic. And this movie came out in 1999, and in the early 2000s, there was a big culinary fad called the New Nordic Trend, and that featured smoke fish, ways of preservation, and fermented foods really heavily. So, snack ran over. Let's get back to it. Back at the wedding, Master Antonio breaks up publicly with the band leader and current boyfriend, and uh he's a handsome fellow with an accordion, so you know he's bad news. Strathairn, who is restocking the caterers with wine, gives her a ride and helps her move out of her apartment. And this is a part where I start to uh like I I don't know if I start to like the movie or uh turn on it, because you're to assume with a few belongings at her age, it would be a huge red flag. The audience is supposed to like judge her. I mean, she's j just she also forgets a bunch of her daughter's stuff, so she's not really well put together. But um it and also when her uh daughter learns about uh them moving out, it's it's so clear that this has happened a bunch. So uh I I actually start associating with her because I have so much crap around me that I cannot get rid of. She's a free spirit, she doesn't have things tying her down. And if it for their case she had to, you know, just leave town, go to another bar and start singing, she could do it. And it's established that Master Antonio has no trouble finding rooms to sing in, but her daughter resents her for her relationship failures and how it makes it like, I don't know, Rocky at home. So Noelle, the daughter, who is played by Vanessa Martinez, um, who was also cast in Lone Star and has continued to act, uh, most notably of late was the Cheeto movie, um Flaming Hot, uh directed by uh Yvelong Goria. Um in that movie she portrays a fictional daughter of the guy who claims to have invented the Flaming Hot Cheeto. And I thought the first example of this phenomenon was gonna be black and white, which is uh third on our list of movies to cover. But I love when actors work with each other in different projects. I mean, extra points if it's in the same year and you can tell they just wanted to do more stuff together. But score two for Lone Star, and we're not done. It's hinted the daughter Noelle is infatuated with Stratharin. Who but like who wouldn't in this town? He's like sad, quiet, and handsome, and it he he begins to frequent the bar that Master Antonio is now singing at, and that's the appropriate age relationship. Noelle's crash is like unrealistic, but it's a source of tension for 20 minutes. The ladies who own the venue offer a newly acquired boat. The uh just the boat is from a character played by Leo Burmeister, who, if you think he looks familiar, it's because he's also from Lone Star, and he was also the crew in the crew in the abyss as catfish. Now, I just said this is my favorite thing. How does this happen? Did they have like the same agent? Did Sales see the Abyss and was like, I'll take those? I I'll just never get a satisfying answer, but it's my joy to notice the degrees of separation that casts have. A Redditor friend mentioned that he worked under Roger Corman. So did James Cameron. And I have a feeling they watch each other's stuff. So looking into Burmeister, I'd God rest his soul, I learned that he passed away in 2007. But strangely, in 2013, a shelved movie uh that also featured the departed Chris Penn uh called Aftermath was dusted off after nine years and released. He's great in this movie. Uh not aftermath, I haven't seen Aftermath. The movie Limbo, he's great in. Um he's actually the paste that keeps the cannery, the wedding venue, and the bar. And shoot, even his boat in the story. The ladies give Strether in the boat so that he can supply them with fresh fish. And for a while it seems like he's got his groove back. He he's dating, he's back on the water. It seems like every night the townsfolk are getting drunk at the bar, despite the events previously in the film. It does seem that most people are either bettering themselves or at least reflecting on their lives. Alright. Enter Chris Christofferson or smiling Jack Johansson. Damn it. Pause the podcast again. This is why you don't give me the remote control. Alright? His name is Chris Christofferson. Couldn't you call him Jack Jackson? Like, do you think that was gonna take us out of the movie? Would we not be able to suspend his belief? Like, call him Jack Jackson. Do it, coward. And I know sales is gonna hear this, but still, I'm sorry about that. Okay, restart the damn yeah, restart the podcast. Chris Christofferson, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna just go on repeating his name as much as I possibly can. Chris Christofferson, who now brings it to three main cast members from Lone Star. If Lone Star were Beetlejuice, Matthew McConaughey would jump to the wall like a Kool-Aid man. Alright, alright, oh yeah. Wait. Are we like a true crime podcast now? That sound doesn't belong here unless the Jack Jackson thing is some sort of misdemeanor. We learned Stratharon was a basketball star and a fisherman growing up. Sales does this thing most screenwriters avoid. Uh, I'm calling it tell me, don't show me, because for most of the exposition it's overheard in a bar as locals gossip about people in the town. Here's an example.
SPEAKER_11Like Rudy Bannister. Rudy Bannister? He's up in the Fiord Longlining when the whole front of the glacier breaks off. Makes this wave four or five stories high by the time it hits his boat. Gone. And Sonny McCarthy. Sonny gets caught in the riptides trying to shortcut through Rimsky Channel. They hit the rocks, two guys stay on board, two guys jump.
SPEAKER_07And it's assumed that is why Shritheron doesn't sail anymore. So, um, we still don't have any conflict. Not really. But then man comes to town. And this man is Shritheron's brother, a strange brother, who looks nothing like him and is so obviously lying through his teeth about being a successful boat, man, sailor. I Stratharin agrees to join him on a voyage, bringing Master Antonio and her daughter Martinez. I'm blown away that most of these supporting actors are not just versatile but also like lean into the trends. So the 90s had a big Western renaissance, probably credited to like unforgiven in 92. But also, I think TV programmers were always still kind of sticking out west. Most of the so most of the sporting cast were on either Briscoe County Jr. or Walker Texas Ranger, some of them on both. But Distance Yourself, this is also like a small golden era for modern country music. And uh because of the waning in popularity of rock music and the favorability of hip-hop rising, country kind of capitalizes in the vacuum. And then two years from now, it's remember it's 1999, in two years, the entire genre will be rebranded as a propaganda wing for nativists. Or people so patriotic they're racist, you can choose. All I wanted to say is that when I went in this direction, his brother played, was played by Casey Samasco, who forgive me if I said that wrong, who definitely was on Briscoe County Jr., but also does a lot of voice work for rock star and GTA like country properties or Western properties. So um, like Red Dead Redemption, he did voices in both those games. In the most recent Grand Theft Auto, he did voices. So hey, back to the movie. Anytime the camera is alone on Martinez, uh, I would expect you to get a little sad. Um, the only time we see her at school, she seems to excel at storytelling and self-harm. And even at opportunities to socialize around her mother and you know, adults, there's something I find a little too relatable where her mother is trying to be funny, and the only thing she can muster is like recounting embarrassing things that have happened to her daughter. And I now have friends like this uh who have lost a lot of their identity because they became parents, and it's not usually a bad thing. I don't think it ever is. It means they're invested in their children. But I think you notice this like in a comedian, your material changes, usually not for the better, if you're just hanging around with your children with I don't know, just anyone else who you're teaching. You're gonna teach them to be you, and then you're not gonna get much stimulation and stuff back, right? Being clear, Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio is not a horrible mother. Her love life is introduced as a mess, but she's a very capable provider, and as a musician, I think that's pretty rare and commendable. Later, she's considered a job on a cruise line, which goes to reiterate the point of the rich brick was trying to make at the wedding. People in hospitality are thriving in this town. So we're an hour into this two-hour movie, and on my first watch, I was begging for something to happen. But if the movie were just living in the community and drinking at the bar, I would have been so much more happy. Um, there have been Jim Jarmush movies that are about less and are satisfying to watch. So I I also said earlier that sales wrote, directed, and edited this picture, and that's the three times you make a movie. One of my favorite experiences in college was an entire class editing the same footage with creative freedom, and all of our finished videos were different. It demonstrated the power of editing. So in the studio system, screenwriters put out scripts, directors execute them for the division, and then the editor gives you the most commercially viable product. At least that's the way I usually see it. Sales has total control of the story. So let's finish it up. Bad Brother takes like no time to fess up to being a drug runner and being in trouble. Shhtherin goes below deck, and drug dealers descend on the boat. I'm sorry if I made that sound exciting, but it most certainly is not. Faceless bad guys, off screen gunshots. Our heroes escape the boat in some what I expect is freezing water, finding refuge on a nearby island. And then they have a very bland series of surviving sequences that are faded into another. It's a really bizarre choice. And I will get To talk about the technical aspects of the film, and the editing is pretty inexcusable. It's it's not Star Wars wipes, but it loses all sense of time, which I do understand is probably intentional, but it's not a fun watch. Noelle is reading slash improvising a diary that she's found at a small shack that they're crashing in, which is played to be a reveal, but it's not surprising. Eventually a smoke signal gets Chris Christofferson, who should be called Jack Jackson, to land a seaplane. He gives him a weak reason that he can't rescue them, and I think he meant to assume that he's cooperating with the drug people. And then Sales said in the commentary that he directed Christofferson to be unaware of his motives. And I mean, what are we doing here? I mean, imagine the conversation between them. So what am I supposed to do when I jump out of the plane? I mean, this is your third scene. You're either the good guy or the bad guy, but you don't know. And it's like, dude, why would Okay, I've established I can't do voices, and I'm sorry about that. I know what sales sounds like, so I just had to do something very different from Chris Christofferson. Don't judge me. The last shot of the movie is the survivors looking up at a different plane coming over the horizon, and the screen faints to white. Then it jumps to black, so their credits can roll, which are in white. It's a strange editing, and it's uh it's not a satisfying third act. And uh you're left to decide for yourself, which I'm guessing you're supposed to decide something negative because the second half of this movie has lost all steam and uh the beautiful metaphor that sales crushes in Lone Star with the border town and the cultural divisions is nothing like limbo. Not being an accomplished or legendary director like sales, but number one. Chris Christofferson's name is unforgivable. Number two, the paste. Leo Burmeister should be used in the end. Make him the bad guy, make him the good guy, make him redeem himself and save the castaways. The guy is the unintentional leader of this movie. You can tell, like everyone, he was a fisherman at one point. Then times got hard and he had to sell his boat. Then he gets a job at the cannery, then that closes. And he's portrayed negatively because he's taking out his frustrations on the polite same-sex couple who's not from here. But at the bar, in the company of his adopted family, the man is actually a historian of the town, and his life has just been constant loss and change for the worse. If and uh fanfiction here, if Strathairn and the ladies get stranded on the island and Chris Christofferson can't save them because of his nefarious drug acquaintances, why not have him tell Leo Leo steals back his boat and saves the dang? Okay, that's enough fanfiction. Well, the crew experienced a few production difficulties in shooting on location and Alaska. I remember an account of Robert Zemekis uh when he was shooting Castaway, saying that it was the hardest thing ever, which is another survival movie with a like a famously painful production. He said he would never do it again, and yet we have Send Help, which came out recently, and it seems like he's gotten over his production issues. Now Sales was very smart about shooting this movie with like uh two cameras or double coverage in documentary style, and it does not look like it. Um we're gonna have some examples of movies that look horrible that I'm gonna cover. And um the thing is, it'll the big thing is that the jump from film to digital, and this is the time for it. But um, this is shot on film. This looks amazing. This movie is shot by Haskell Wexler, the dude who shot one flew over a cuckoo's nest, which also has good sailing sequences, the guy who convinced George Lucas to go to film school, and later would support American graffiti. Throughout the movie, settings are tricky live venues with conversations going on, live music, and people talking in cars. But the cars were so loud that most of the dialogue needed to be ADR'd, and the one set that they had control over was accidentally built next to a helicopter launch pad, and they didn't know whether or not uh you would have a landing or a takeoff during the take. It's constantly raining, but that doesn't show up on film. So uh after a couple takes, you have like these soggy actors, and then the crew is sort of a fight with ravens. Like every time they sit up on the shoreline, there's just a murder of big crows that keep cawing and you know making noise, and so it's ruining all of their ambient sound. And this is my favorite thing: one shot and secluded in the movie is a day-for-night shot that whales photobomb. Like there's a uh big blowing spout ho, and it's just uh it, you know, the rare nocturnal whale. I'm I'm so glad they kept in the movie because it's a it's a very funny shot. Now, this is a little off topic, but if you haven't seen the high school production of Alien, it's on YouTube and it's amazing and probably better than this show. But now, when I see a movie that has limited locations, a small cast, I always wonder could or should it have been a play? In the Alien play, they use multiple people to puppet the xenomorph, and it's product production value dynamite. This movie has no action, wedding, boat, bar, shack, like four real locations, and maybe has nine speaking roles. I I even like think live, the response would have been kind of the same. Like, well, before the intermission, you guys were cooking with gas. After you were kind of running on fumes. Also, I'd like to say, I don't think this movie has a more satisfying ending. And if it did, it wouldn't change the film's fate. It came out against the most expensive and visually compelling films in what is arguably the greatest year of American cinema. So even if you fix this movie, it would still have a difficult time measuring up to the competition of June in 1999. Now, a big part of her performance is Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio singing in this film. And what do you think of it? Well, fooled you, that's not Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio. That is Corinna Murray playing Tango de la Rosa in Casablanca, which is regarded as perhaps the greatest film of all time. So, with that in mind, I'd like you to grade on a curve.
SPEAKER_08How does she sound behind the wheel with your arm around your sweet one in your old mobile, barling down the boulevard, looking for the heart of Saturday night.
SPEAKER_07So, in order for Master Antonio to not appear to be lip syncing, Sales shot her singing a cappella while bar patrons and wedding guests interacted, speaking normally on a few well-composed tracking shots. The musicians are basically shooting a music video, and the backing track is being piped in after. The commentary by John Sales has almost nothing to do with plot editing, but he can talk about location sound, ADR, and fully work at length. Here's a breakdown of uh him shooting a bar scene.
SPEAKER_01I actually cut things down quite a bit. It's a it's a difficult sound scene. I would have uh oh our tour guide there actually speak up to a certain line, and then when Leo's line is about to come in, she would lip sync but not make any sound so that they wouldn't overlap each other. Then I would have her off-camera complete that line so that I could later on crossfade their dialogue. This is a scene about the stories that people tell about themselves. These Alaskans are are talking about shipwrecks and plane crashes and shootouts, and they're kind of saying, we Alaskans are the people who take risks, we're the people who live with danger. And I just kept cutting these stories shorter and shorter and shorter because it's not a scene that's really about the punchline of any of one of these stories, or about any one of these stories, but the fact that everywhere you go in Alaska, people are telling these stories, and it's one of the main ways that they not only entertain each other, even though most of the people in the room know these stories, it's a way of saying who you are, of identifying yourself. And then you have this kind of joke.
SPEAKER_07On the commentary, Sales also mentions one of his first jobs working was in a sausage factory, which conveniently cues up one of the only things I currently have to promote is the audiobook I recorded with New Mexico State Senator Bill Soles titled The Sausage Factory. If you'd like to know the ins and out of New Mexico politics, or learn a recipe for pork summer sausage with sage, this is the audiobook for you. Now back to limbo. So while the ending of this movie is not quite a home run, I don't think this was a bad movie. Um for my opening bit, it's clear it would be hard for the movie to stand out in theaters, but it does check the boxes for what a Screen Gems project is. It has a niche audience. And I say that lovingly. This movie is for adults. It was an official selection at Cannes in 1989. It was made by a proven filmmaker, and the cast is sexy as hell. Its budget was 10 million, and as far as Screen Gems go, that is a sweet spot. A budget of 15 million and below is a perfect Screen Gems picture. The incredible strategy if it didn't cost a lot to make, we can acquire it cheap and distribute it with low risk. The payoff on that will not happen immediately, but when it does, screen gems very much can justify picking these niche genre movies, and that's the point of my show. Scouring through the trash to find the treasure. Some movies start franchises, and some films are forgotten. I also want to say I don't think the show is picking on misfit toys either. Gems are valued and considered precious, but they are stones. People working hard on people worked hard on this movie, and I can appreciate it, knowing some of the films I have to come up and cover. I think it would be useful to establish a criteria for what I judge to be a good movie, though. At least so I can try to keep consistent in my ratings between these movies. One question will you ever watch it again? I'm very grateful to have no Oscar Beatty films in this lineup, but I don't think a movie should be difficult to watch or an emotional experience that you need to prepare for. And I can give you an example. Um, Twelve Years a Slave is probably the most incredible film made in the last 20 years, and I'm never watching it again. I don't think it's purely about the subject matter. I mean, Spotlight is about the worst thing in the world, priest touching kids, and it's incredibly rewatchable. So the question is, am I ever gonna pop it in again or show this to somebody? And I think yes. I think if we're grading out of 10, Limbo's a seven. It's surprisingly refreshing watching a movie with zero digital effects, it looks beautiful, and the chemistry between the casts is real. So it will be joining my DVD collection, making it slightly larger, and making the stack of films I have to cover slightly shorter. Thank you for joining the screen generation. My name is Evan Antonio Hughes, and this has been my show. It's a labor of love. All opinions and music uh used is my own, and uh copyrighted material is fair use under parody in journalism. Yada yada, refuse AI, resist the administration, remember the good times. Join me next week for Arlington Road. Let's go ahead and play the trailer, and I'll be back next week.
SPEAKER_05In an instant, they were gone forever. More and more of us are joining the ranks of a resistance, average, normal, educated people. Thank you, neighbor. We're having a 10-year-old next door. This is Brooke.
SPEAKER_17It's really nice to meet you too.
SPEAKER_04What kind of work do you do? I'm a structural engineer. He had this blueprint. It was an office building. This project is taking forever. Why already told me it was a mall? Why would you lie? I've got a possible name change.
SPEAKER_03The death certificate. What do what does it say? He's changed his name to the name of a person who died the day before. Yeah, why? Do it to hide the person you were. I didn't know you taught a course in terrorism, Michael. That's a pretty frightening subject. It deals with extremist groups. Seems he got one everywhere.
SPEAKER_02Are you listening to me? Your neighbor is a terrorist. That is the blowing up buildings. There is a blueprint in his house. He does not want me to treat. Michael! You want yourself out! Something is being planned! Our house is your house. Yeah, and you know, in a spare time. This is normal, Michael.
SPEAKER_00We have to own this guy now. Because if this is the one you got, you need to stop teaching that class.
SPEAKER_15I don't know what I'd like to do this time.
unknownWe're having a party.
SPEAKER_15You're more than welcome to stay.
SPEAKER_07Hey, um, is it just me or does the limbo trailer like at the end of it? Does it sound like a counting crow song? Hold on, play it again, just the ending. Yeah, it sounds like a John Woo soundtrack version of Mr. Jones. I don't know, you wanna hear it? Check us out. Gotta be open-minded, alright?
SPEAKER_16It's like Nicholas Cage and me! Take each other's faces off and we shoot it into the mirror. I'm aiming at him. Oh no, he's aiming at me.
SPEAKER_17Why devils fly in the slow-mo.
SPEAKER_12Just realized I'm John Truffold.
SPEAKER_17Your madness got badass so quick. Don't think I put it at the top of the show.
SPEAKER_06Well, you heard it.