The Black-and-Chrome Action Movie Pack and ‘Onslaught’ With Michael Biehn and Adam Wingard!

0:00I'm Sean Fennese and this is the Big Picture a Conversation Show about onslaught. Today on the show we're having a very metal episode of the Big Picture because we're discussing a very metal movie, Black and Chrome metal. Adam Wiengard has a new movie that throws back the Halcyon days of sought-off shotguns, unkillable super soldiers, desolate American survivalism, government conspiracy, and insane action set pieces. The movie is onslaught and it's a loving homage to movies like T2 Judgment Day, the road warrior and many more. Chris Ryan is here to talk about it and to help me build out the Black and Chrome action pack later in this episode. I'll be joined by Wiengard as well as one of the stars of his film, the action movie icon Michael Bean, you know him from the Terminator, Aliens, Tombstone, and many more films from the 80s and 90s. Wiengard shared the crazy

1:01personal story that inspired onslaught and Bean shared tons of anecdotes and wisdom from 50 years of making movies in Hollywood, the highs and the lows. It's a great chat, definitely stick around for that. But first, some movie news with CR. This episode is presented by State Farm. You know the feeling long day, good meal, you finally sit down and now you're just staring at your screen. Slasher, romcom, period drama, psychological thriller, but some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help. Like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan, bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Covered options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with the good comedy, the cozy blanket arriving with prime, what pairs with the nail-biting thriller, snacks arriving with prime, what pairs with the big game on prime video that new couch arriving with prime, whatever feeling you're after, prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast

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3:10Tremphaya is a new story that is nine days old. Let's do it. The Jason's Stay-Them Vehicle Mutiny. Tremphaya is a new story that is nine days old. The film premiered in movie theaters last weekend to modest interest. It was revealed that one of the reasons why this film may have premiered to modest interest is because the film was accidentally shared on Amazon Prime for two hours for users. I think the day before it was released. Yes. It's a real Doug from Title move if I can invoke a watch character. During the watch, Lauren. Yes. What title? I can't remember what album they either did or didn't successfully upload to the service. We imagined a sweaty middle-aged white man, much like myself named Doug, working in the offices and pressing the button or not pressing the button as a man. Maybe he was in Magna Carta Holy Grail. It was something like it was some J-thing or

4:11Beyonce thing. Where is it? Title, you still have that? Don't I heard the fidelity on their audio is quite good though. Yes. I think that was true. Eight years ago. My audio on little white pods, that was a good point. So Jim from Amazon uploaded Mutiny and the pirates came in. This is a film that takes place on a ship. There's a pirate quality to the film. Great premise on this movie. Jason Statham plays a bodyguard who is a former police officer who has formed a bond with a shipping magnet of some renown. Okay. This shipping magnet is selling his company because it's not for his son. His son doesn't want to work in this business. He wants to try something else. Okay. So he's selling the business on the eve of the sale. This man is shockingly murdered in front of Jason Statham and Jason Statham will have his revenge. And his revenge is on a boat. And so he goes on the boat to

5:13figure out what's really going on with this very entertaining Statham movie. I can already guess what who's behind all of this, right? Well, I won't spoil any of this. Please don't. Yeah. Nevertheless, this movie, you know, it's a question I think of Statham's box office power, maybe not as strong. He was in a film earlier this year called Shelter, which also did not perform that well. But like I said, one of the reasons why maybe it didn't perform as well is because it was up online and people might have pirated it. Yeah. And do you think that's a, like, has a meaningful impact on something like box office? Because piracy is not something we talk about often on this show. You know, the two things I thought about here was the dangers in which in housing films, specifically in a world where in the same sort of compartment that you would house albums or TV shows or anything else is that you're essentially then gambling with the theatrical financial performance of those movies anyway. Now this movie has written all over it, wait for it to hit streaming in three weeks. So I don't think they made a big push being like for the next 90 days,

6:18if you want to see Mutiny, you're just going to have to bring your ass down to the theater. But I definitely think that like, look, man, you could take a cursory look at X. And you will be quite surprised by the things that are being uploaded there to be viewed without even download. And I think that we don't talk about it as much because most people, I think like us are like, I'll just pay the $15 or whatever the fee is per month to have access to everything anyway. It's about ease of use. But for a lot of people out there, it's both financially expedient and kind of a cheap thrill to be still still trafficking in this. Yeah, I think you're totally right. I think there's obviously an entire underworld of this sort of thing happening as probably meaningfully harmed a number of movies over the year, including movies that we deem incredibly successful. I mean, this is a huge issue for streaming networks several years ago. And I think it continues to be in terms of uploading episodes to foreign markets, like usually it's going to happen with thrones when it would go up in country X.

7:20And it would get pirated. Now it would also not even be live. It would just be like, they've uploaded it into the backend server. And it would kind of be like when we used to write about rap, where they would tell us like essentially once a record went to the CD printing plant, there was really nothing they could do to stop it. There was a long period time. Some guy getting paid $9 an hour somewhere along the line who's going to be like, you wink and that's all you take it. It's just these one. Yeah, it's so interesting because for in that period of time, it felt like there was a music needs to be free mentality. And I think a lot of pirates think about culture that way. And obviously there are a lot of safeguards in the world of entertainment that just allow for that. And in the era of streaming both music and movies, we think that's not possible anymore. Yeah. But it is and it can have an impact. It's fascinating. Mutiny, you know, you waiting the three weeks, I think would be fine. Yeah, we were talking when I think Bill was on to do the flops draft. We talked a little bit about the kind of psychology around modern movie goers. And to what extent they're seeing things. And they're like, that's

8:22definitely a renter now. And the renter would be something that you can do in four to six weeks instead of going down to the theater versus what's like a, you know, an event film that you want to be either in a theater full of people because you want to feel their reaction or because the spectacle is so grand that you want to appreciate it on a big screen like Odyssey or Spider-Man or would have you. You know, it's funny. We're going to probably talk about a Netflix movie Whisper Man, which is sort of right and right is right kind of in the in between of those two things to me in terms of the experience of it. But I was wondering how you were kind of thinking about the the instant VOD market these days. Yeah, I think a lot of the big studios have changed their windows. So Universal for a period had a 17 day window for films that I think failed to garnered $50 million and it's first two weeks of release. And since change that and they've extended them, there was a lot of pomp and circumstance. It's a cinema con about this in April. And it seems like most of the studios have been pressured to lengthen their windows. But not all

9:22of them. Like I noticed that the film The Wrong Girls, which is the new Kristen Stewart, Alia Shaw, Comedy, Stoner Comedy hit VOD this week like a week and a half after its release. That was really fast. Now it didn't perform very well at all at the box office. But this is a new Kristen Stewart comedy that had a 10 day window. And I guess there's something fascinating about that being a normal for a certain level of movie. Yeah. Whisper Man, which we should talk about, is sort of the inverse. I'll print down a little bit. Whisper Man, Whisper Man, sort of the inverse. So Whisper Man, it's a new feature film directed by James Ashcroft. Sorrow Thriller, I guess serial killer thriller. Yeah, it reminded me at least in intent a lot of reptile, which came out a couple of years ago on Netflix with Nietzsche del Toro, a little bit of the empty man. That vibe that like very, very indebted to Fincher, the Whisper Man features a

10:23explicit homage to Zodiac early in the film. So, yeah. So, curious movie. Now I say it's sort of in between these two things because when you look at the stars, Robert De Niro, Michelle Manehan, Adam Scott, are the three leads. Amish Linklators in the film, there are a couple of other more notable names that I won't spoil for people who haven't watched this movie at least. Not quite yet, but some big cameos. And this is a pretty celebrated collection of actors. And it's a film that I think relative to other Netflix titles like it, like Shot on Real Locations, and has a lot of craft applied to it. And it does, it did feel to me like Netflix attempting to kind of match a narrative movie to a lot of the true crime serial killer content that they make up on the nonfiction side. And the premise of the movie is essentially that Adam Scott's character is a novelist whose wife has died and he's moved to a new town with his eight-year-old son. And his eight-year-old son is abducted by the Whisper Man. Yes, whoever that is. The latest in a number of young boys being

11:31abducted in and around this town. Yes, turns out that the Whisper Man was also at work 30 years ago and that Adam Scott's character's father was a police detective responsible for putting the Whisper Man away. Yes. And that detective is played by Robert DeNier in one of the quietest performances I've ever seen in a movie in my entire life. Yes. He never goes above this tone of voice for in a two-hour serial killer thriller. Except for the one moment where he rescues Adam Scott from Drug Dealers in Jersey City. That is the truth. Shades of the stomp out scene in the Irishman in there. You know, Robert DeNier is getting old. But he's still putting in the hours, putting in the time. What did you think of this movie? This was one of the first films in a long time that I've seen that I was like, that should have been a TV show. I actually thought that the pacing of it and the way that they tried to kind of shoehorn in a couple of things towards the back half of the movie and the third act especially probably would have worked great over six to eight episodes.

12:35And instead, it just sort of seems to come out of nowhere, especially the Hamish Linklater part kind of is in the background of somebody saying his name and then you're like, what you guys need to Hamish Linklater is in this movie. Yes. And Hamish Linklater, I think it's amusing to note plays a collector. I bone collector. A collector in scholar of serial killer artifacts. And I seem to be having a grand old man. Sure. Everybody does seem to be I guess, I guess he especially seems to be enjoying himself there probably could use one more ham in this movie. Michelle Monahan playing it very straight. Adam Scott playing it very straight. Robert DeNier playing it. Yeah. Michelle Monahan's character for instance, not an important plot point to note is a quaker. And at one point, Adam Scott goes and confronts her at her meeting house and she's just like, please don't yell at me in this house of worship. That's a cool detail. Like what this should be, this would in any other story like probably be a little bit more

13:36expanded upon like this woman, her faith, whatever led her to being a detective. There's a there's a few elements of here where I could feel maybe some development happening in this in the way of like, hey, this could be a pretty good like like white knuckle like presumed innocent style thriller that then they they turned into like a lengthy two hour movie, I would say. Yeah, I would say especially in the final third, it really drags. That's a smart take. I think I agree with you. I've never watched that show. It's always the other way, right? You're always watching TV shows really guys. Guys, this would be an awesome movie. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And I'm not sure if the mythology itself could withstand eight episodes, but that hasn't stopped many TV shows before from elongating to do that kind of work. It's a fascinating. Something feels often part of it is I think that this kind of movie, which is as you said, heavily indebted to Fincher and the silence of the lambs and this wave of movies that came in the aftermath. You mentioned the bone collector taking lives in the 90s and 2000s. This was a very dependable

14:4275 to 120 million dollar kind of movie where adults would show up on a date night to watch it. They would have some thrills. They'd get to see a movie star save the day and they would feel satisfied that the killer would go behind bars or be killed in a moment at the end of the film. Yeah. And we don't have those as much anymore, right? I do think True Crime is kind of replaced that idea. And I would say even True Crime is making incursions into our beloved horror genre. I was watching a movie called Manfine's Tape, which came out I think was dated for 25. Yeah. And it very much like I am both a victim of this crime, but also a podcaster documenting it kind of like, you know, am I also making a documentary about the found footage that I found? Yeah. So there's like, there is like this kind of uncanny valley happening where I can't tell like is this, did somebody decide to make like a found footage horror movie out of a True Crime podcast that they were developing and whatever. It's certainly

15:43emerging genre. As far as like the streaming movie aspect of it, the thing that surprises me still is, and I know how to get around this, it's just like the Friday night thing where like seven men you know have watched Whisper Men on the same night because we're just all home, you know, and it's like, come on, have a good time. I'll give it a try. Yeah. And the same thing happened with Devil's Malfe, the Shark movie from a couple of months ago. So yeah, that phenomenon is I just don't know how to recreate that or recapture that at the theater of like, I'll just, it's a five o'clocker. It is, there's something interesting happening inside of me at least though with movies like this, which is last night, Eileen and I watched an episode of Furious, which were really enjoying. And after it was over, Eileen said, should we do one more? And I was like, I think I have to watch the Whisper Men. And she was like, what's that? I explained it and she was like, I'm not watching that. Even though the Furious and the Whisper Men have some things to comment.

16:43Yeah. And so I was like, all right, I'll just, I'll go watch the Whisper Men and you can go to sleep. And halfway through the Whisper Men, I was like, fuck, I wish I had watched Furious. Like, I, this was not, now we're getting this podcast segment out of it, I guess. Yeah. But there felt something kind of instantaneously disposable to me about the movie, whereas with a show, and as you know, I don't watch nearly as much TV as I did say 10 years ago, with a show I really like, as you and Andy have talked about many times over the years on the watch, there's something really enjoyable about going on a journey with a show. And you can't have a journey with a mediocre movie that you know is mediocre and that is just going to go into a text chain for 48 minutes with six other men and then never spoken of again. And I don't, it's an interesting confrontation with my time. Isn't that all of that it's replaced the utility of television in that way? Like, the streaming movies are what you would say, okay, it's the end of the night. I've done my work in the great temple of cinema. Now I'm just going to throw on whatever's on HBO or whatever. And

17:45instead, you're like, I rather than do the work of being an ally and being present for female trauma. I'm going to go watch the Whisper Men instead. Yeah. I don't really know how to reckon with that. I think it's probably a testimony, at least for me, to the fact that I'll just watch any movie. Yeah. There's not really a kind of movie that I won't watch at this phase of my life. We're going to find that out by the end of this podcast, I think. Yeah, maybe so. I'm going to celebrate that. I will push the edge for sure. But I just mean like no matter how bad it is, I'm kind of curious. Sure. And with TV, my shield is up. I'm like, I really need seals of approval from many sources while also knowing I like that people involved. I like the kind of storytelling. It's back. You know, like, jack me around like on episode five. And it should just end there. But instead, there's five more episodes. And I don't want it to be a show that could go on for eight seasons. Then I have to wait nine years to watch eight seasons of a show that I'm only kind of invested in. Nevertheless, I like that comparison that you made. Well done. Thanks. Um, onslaught could only be a movie. Mm-hmm. There's no, there's no TV show for onslaught. Many are saying

18:52that only two men could really podcast about onslaught. Well, yeah, they put it in a lab for us. I remember vividly, I don't remember if you were at this screening. I remember vividly going to see 2012, 2013, whenever the film was released, the film, the guest at the Ace Hotel. Couldn't have been me because I saw the guest with the people. Okay. Well, I was with people. A lot of people as well. It was not a premiere. It was just the special screening of, of, it was the Ace Hotel theater, which I think is now called the United Theater. And it was a big, big crowd and Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett. And I think Dan Stevens all spoke after the movie. And you and I love your next and we loved the guest. And I think that was a real season tickets moment for Wingard movies. And then immediately after that, he takes this pretty dramatic turn to make Blair Witch, Death Note, and two King Kong versus Godzilla movies over his last ten years. This new movie is what I'll call a return to form. Do you so? What what form that is we can debate?

19:55Yeah. But on slot stars, Adrienne Arjona, Dan Stevens, Reunion, Eric Wareheim, Reginald Ville Johnson of Diehard fam, and Family Matters, of course, Michael Bean, guest on this podcast, Drew Starkian, Rebecca Hall. The premise of the movie is an army sniper living in a trailer park struggles to protect her family from a trio of super soldiers who have escaped from a secret military facility and are killing everyone in their path. That's a very accurate description of what this movie is. What do you think of onslaught? I felt so deeply pandered too. Not even saying it's like the best movie ever made or anything like that, but the core elements of this movie really scratch a niche for me. And even some of Wingard's fetishes are not my personal fetishes. Like what? Like some of the sexual stuff in this movie that I'm not a big BDSM dominatrix guy. Oh, good to know. But I, I'll die defending his right to do it. You know what

20:59I mean? Absolutely. And that sequence is quite memorable. It's sometimes it's kinky to watch other people do something that they think is kinky. And this movie does fuck. This movie does fight. This movie doesn't really have a story. Does it love? I think so. It's about a love between a mom and her daughter. Right. And it's a love between Drew Starky and several women. And I just really enjoyed myself. I think that for fans of scratched up covers of VHS films from the 80s for fans of Cameron and Carpenter. And we're going to get into like a kind of very specific action subjama that we may or may not be weaving out a full car. I just thought this was super enjoyable. I felt the same way. I don't think it's the most high-concept movie. It is a very loving homage. And if you're not interested in the homage part, it may not be hold up. Yeah. In the Andrea or Hona character, there's a lot of Ellen Ripley. We just did the rewatchables of Aliens. Super Sarah Connor here. There's a lot of Sarah Connor in here, sort of single mother,

22:02trying to figure out how to stay alive in the face of some killing machines. There's some assault on precinct 13 here in terms of the sort of like the noise and the fear of being confined in a place like trapped and fearing a violent end. Lots and lots of Cameron's ideas about the way that the government kind of like hyper manages its populists with violence. And it's also the other kink I think is I love the way that Wengard unleashes actors who would otherwise seem to be prestigious, respectable figures like the Great Rebecca Hall, like Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens, and just turn them in the little freaks, you know, little weirdos. We can add Drew Starkie to the list. Drew Starkie who, one of the stars of Outer Banks, who appeared in Luca Guadagnino's queer. By your stock now. He's doing some stuff in this movie and he's doing some stuff over the next two years and it's really it's quite exciting

23:04to see him in this film. When he showed up you and I like we didn't fist bump but there was a psychic fist bump where it was like this man has made a choice. This is a strong choice. According to Wengard too, he had some ideas that he wanted to put into the character. Great. The showed up on screen. Great. Which is what I want to hear. Like I want to hear that there's an actor who's like, sure, this character's kinky but we can go a little further. And Starkie plays as you put it the other day, the sort of Winston the wolf of government, conspiracy, management. He's the fixer for when super like soldiers or government secret programs go wrong. He's there to clean up the mess. Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall play a husband and wife team won a doctor of super soldiers. They're both sort of not so crypto Nazis. There's a white supremacist bent to their point of view. And they are interested in creating killing machines without conscience. And reviving dead soldiers and removing that conscience and allowing them to just do what the government wants them to do

24:08which is just kill. Adriana is a woman suffering from PTSD who is a mother whose daughter has been dropped off unceremoniously by her father at her house and which is a trailer park in New Mexico. And she managed the trailer park. She's like a super. Okay. And the super soldiers eventually find their way towards that trailer park. Great action. Not totally sure I understood all of the motivations of all the characters. There's a 90 minute film probably could have used like a little bit more seasoning on the characterization. And yet like I was thinking about this because a friend of ours said that they didn't really enjoy this movie. And I was like, well, how did I feel the first time I watched they live or the first time I watched the Terminator? Yeah. Yeah. You know, like the first time I watched a movie and I was like, there's something kind of like handmade and a little dingy about this. But I like that. And maybe this isn't Howard's end. But it's not trying to be. No. And I think that

25:09Wingard really knows how to get the most out of what is probably a relatively limited budget. And he did this with the guest. I think this is fairly explicitly taking place in the guest verse or in the idea that this kind of stuff is happening. And I think it's really worth mentioning too that this is essentially a Western that takes place at night. You know, this is about a team of small town trailer park folk teaming together to fend off super soldiers, which is basically the plot of half the Clint Eastwood movies in the 70s just without super soldiers part. And he just really like, you know, if you're going to shoot in New Mexico for tax breaks or whatever, like make it New Mexico, do it. Like, like take advantage of of the surroundings and he really does. I thought that there was probably like three full different movies in this movie. There's the our our Honyapart, which is pretty on the nose straight forward, like, an Arnold Schwarzenegger plot about like a guy is just trying to be a good dad, but it gets pulled back into the world of violence.

26:13Then there is the almost cartoonish, pretty awesome Michael Biann, Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall, side of things that's all about government experiments on soldiers. And then the Starky part, which kicks in about midway through the movie and is just an absolute jugular adrenaline shot to the whole thing kind of made it for me, because I was just like, first I guess like I have seen it before, but I was like, I have not seen a movie do this in a while where it's just like this guy, we gave no notes to. And so he is, we should we talk a little bit about what his character is up to. Yeah, sure. He's interrupted in the middle of a BDSM session. House of pleasures. Yeah, I mean, no judgment. No, of course not, but he's like kind of leashed up while women were in Gimp masks, but new. And otherwise new. Yeah, otherwise new tease him. And we find out quickly that

27:14when the government interrupts this vacation session, not unlike the one in Bourne, where Carl Urban is just doing mad vodka shots. Yes. In the middle of the day in Moscow. And they're like, we need to kill Jason Bourne. You know, again, to start, he gets pulled out of this. He is rolling on pure MDMA. And he is for the rest of the film. And it's just a delightful character trick. I don't I don't know what to say. Well, he finds himself in a convenience store to certain point. And I guess like you do when you're rolling, he just kind of zones out for a minute, but the camera never moves off of him. And you can kind of feel him losing touch with reality while also being plunged into this really violent, hyper emphasized world of superstolars. He is investigating a mass shooting, but stops to inhale a bottle of water because his body is so dehydrated. Toxic shock. Don't take this movie too seriously. But I thought like that was just like a really

28:14good slider to throw. There's one other thing that I really liked that I didn't totally see coming, which is that, you know, Wingard is really a genre, Maven. And he does turn the third act into kind of a slasher. Like there are a lot of overt homages to horror movies that I think through the first 80 minutes, I was like, well, this feels like kind of a down the middle military movie that along the lines of a lot of the films that we'll talk about. But he does get you some Texas chainsaw and some hills have eyes and like some components of sort of like in the middle of nowhere, there is a violent force that can take everything from you that I thought was also pretty effective. I had a good time with the movie. Not a masterpiece. But he can't see around the edges really well. I thought where I was really funny. He was funny. He was really funny. He was really funny. Reginald Vell Johnson, it was really cool to see. I can't remember the last time I saw him. Yeah. 20 years, 30 years when is he still working? I don't know, but he plays a tool for this shit vet who connects with a harmonious character.

29:14And it's just, what do you think of her? Great question. She's him right now, right? Like she's getting a lot of like big roles. She all accounts is Wonder Woman. She's rumored to be Wonder Woman. Yeah. She is. A man and I talked about him many times. Just stunningly beautiful. And almost to the point of distraction. And it used that to such great effect in Hitman that like her alluring quality. Almost like explains the movie. Yeah. Like of course this guy would do all this crazy shit. So that he could allow for all this to transpire. I will see about Wonder Woman. I have no idea what to make of like what's happening at DC. Yeah. Like it seems like that could go in any number of directions right now. Who knows if there will actually be a Wonder Woman movie. There's a lot of speculation about like what happens if Man of Tomorrow doesn't work. But she's going to be in Man of Tomorrow. Sure. I think she could do a lot of different kinds of things. I think the fact that she's very comfortable in a movie like this.

30:14And pretty credible holding a giant gun is cool. Yes. I mean, it was funny to watch. I saw a video of her talking about her experience making this movie where it sounds like she was essentially up for six weeks in the middle of the night shooting guns in the freezing cold in New Mexico. And then Starkey came in for like three days at the end and got to be on ecstasy and like putting cigarettes out. And that was she was like must be nice. Basically. Yeah. He's begging for a spin off. Yeah. Begging. Yeah. There's a very obvious. If this is happening in the guest first, there's a way to kind of keep expanding that. I don't know if this is the most commercial movie of all time. Yeah. It feels like it's being kind of slid into a quiet part of the calendar. Sure. This is to our earlier conversation of VOD Bang or though. It is. I think you should see it on a big screen because some of the photography is wonderful. And like I think it the vistas and the way that they kind of do the western stuff is a really awesome time. And you guys hear guns go boom. But yeah, even Wingard himself said in not so many words like I've designed this to be a cult classic, you know, like he has he really has that pitch down.

31:15Now whether or not that's like a. A pitch that has valued all people is kind of an interesting thing to think about for me because sometimes the keys are jingled in my face and I'm mad about it. And sometimes they're jingled and I love it. And I'm only human. I can't really. This is my subjective experience. But this was one where I was like, God, I fucking love John Carpenter. Like I just love those movies and I think they're so smart and so dumb at the same time in a way that I find so appealing. Those are our and we're going to about to mention a couple of them. Those are my comfort movies. Like I if I'm trying to fall a bit to sleep and I'm not doing the things I should be doing like reading and and you know, calming down, I will put on the Trumelow China or Prince of Darkness and I just love the music and I love the photography and I love the way that people talk and act and that shit that happens. I totally agree with you. I don't know what to say. It's just how they made me. No, I want it's something we've always bonded over. So it's funny to watch someone, you know, who is effectively our age who had basically the same experiences growing up watching movies.

32:16He talks about his relationship to aliens and how it kind of like expanded his mind as a young kid in the interview. But I'm just a fascinating like aspect of what he did here is that we don't have a lot of people who are making programmers to use a term that is probably way outdated. But the idea of making a innings eating modest but really fun movie that can be watched over and over again over the course of five to ten years. But really it's just there to be the third thing on a marquee somewhere. Well, that's why this is I think this is kind of an interesting trio of films to discuss that mutiny and the whisper man and this movie all kind of occupy the same action thriller whatever. Yeah, the same kind of category, the same kind of phylum of genre movie where it's like there is a star attached to the movie. There is like a veneer of prestige associated with it but it's also quickly dispensed with

33:21that prestige. It's almost like knowingly like don't take this too seriously at times. All three will be received in different ways and seen and experienced in different ways which will be the most remembered. I would imagine it's going to be on slot though. I don't know if it's going to be like an all-time classic or anything like that. I don't think it quite gets there. But there is still like a strain of this thing but our expectations of those movies have been significantly reduced. Yeah, or I mean I think that partially because like we talk so much about the box offers performance of films now that like in a way that I think was is different than maybe perhaps what it was viewed in say the 80s of the 90s when a lot of these movies thrived that we look at something purely as to whether it connected or not rather than whether or not it's like kind of cool and people might dig it down the road. I was having a very fun exchange with a buddy of mine who was like I like dog stars. How about that? Now it's just like honestly you may you might you know what I mean because I was like if I was just going to dog stars as a dude I might dig it you know a little bit more. Have you seen the 1991 film Time Bomb?

34:28Remind me what this is about. I'm not sure as the director. Act science fiction action starring Michael Bean, Patsy Kenseth, Richard Jordan. It's about a watchmaker who runs into a burning building to save a woman and then eventually becomes ensnared in a secret government conspiracy. Okay. And I had them talked about this and being being the star of it and how to add him when he saw that movie he was like this is it and it was a reference for him on onslaught based on the action. Yeah. I've never seen this movie. I've never I mean MGM put it out in 1991. You think I would have some familiarity with it. It cost seven million to make and it made $64,000 at the box office. It's a true you know sent to the dust bins of blockbuster. Yeah. Kind of a movie and I never pulled it off the shelf and neither did you but there are all kinds of movie history is littered with titles like this. So it's really fascinating. So we'll talk about the black and chrome action pack which will include some extremely well known classics and some lesser known films right after

35:30this. This episode is presented by State Farm. You know the feeling long day good meal you finally sit down and now you're just staring at your screen slasher romcom period drama psychological thriller but some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan like a good neighbor state farm is there prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by the autograph journey credit card from Wells Fargo the autograph journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book your favorite hotel site your go to airline and more you get five times points with hotels four times with airlines three times on restaurants and other travel and one point on other purchases whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway from booking your state of that first meal when you arrive you're turning your trips into rewards with the autograph journey credit card from Wells Fargo learn more at Wells Fargo dot com slash autograph journey terms apply

36:35okay so black and chrome is inspired at least in part to me by the title of Mad Max Fury Roads black and white edition yeah which was eventually put in theaters and then included on the Blu-ray and 4k discs and that indicated almost like the color coded idea of these sorts of movies yeah which is not to say it's post-apocalyptic or science fiction or military or alien focused or you know conspiracy focused but like all of it everything I wrote down some stuff here kind of stream of consciousness to give people an idea of what we're talking about future set and or future feeling militaristic fetishistic sci-fi leaning percussive pulsing gritty action has to have some sort of vehicle preferably a motorcycle definitely souped up leather jackets are cool drugs are cool being in the special forces but also having a heart is cool in this in this

37:37way so like you just kind of have this I would also say that extreme settings are also work really well jungle desert etc we like to have a great backdrop for these love that and yeah definitely sense of humor works in these I do you think about the heroes name with no name um push to streams can kind of redeem themselves if they do the right thing with this last mission or this mission in particular what if they're women that's even better yeah why do these movies not really exist anymore like did something change in in the culture you wonder why the discontinued I think people play video games of them that's it because that's what all so many games are now yeah is this kind of environment and experience I think this is like a lot of call of duty and a lot of halo and a lot of take your pick I mean maybe even going back as far as metal metal gear and Resident Evil like I

38:41I am not an expert but I know that it's pretty awesome to smoke cigarettes and drink beer and play these games and that used to be what I would do is just rewatch they live a hundred times you know it's such an interesting observation I think you're totally right there's something about that like primal feeling of letting your weapon rip but I think the movies like allowed for and now they have been supplanted not like any weird yeah no not a handgun like something because I'm think sort of artificial and imagined but also seemingly very destructive yeah I think that's right I mean I think there's something else about how action was sort of suffused into larger more comedic versions of you know 10 pole movies you know that comic book movies and and Jurassic and fast kind of fantasy kind of and fan yeah sure fantasy too but like they kind of sucked all that energy up and like yeah

39:44game of thrones lower the rings these these these films you know we're reading Harry Potter right now for the first time and even in Harry Potter there's like all these notions of vengeance and fate and when will there be the epic showdown you know this classical storytelling tropes and um these movies do seem to be really out of fashion um and I guess you could make the case that maybe like John Wick is working in the tradition to some extent that feels more elevated stylized to me than some of these movies are yeah no it's funny there's a couple of sequels we have on this list we're about to give folks and like weirdly ballerina would be like would be blood and crumb to me but like Wick maybe not yes I don't know why I say that but like that the intent of ballerina feels very much like let's self consciously make of John Wick B movie I totally agree with you and if that movie were discovered on cable as like 16 as are mis just fucking killing people for two hours yeah

40:46great scene when she's I think she's in Scandinavia somewhere as all the grenades yes like that that stuff is so fun but when you're sitting through a two hour ballerina movie that is like very very loosely connected to John Wick and like it seems like a wasted time and also you know our traditionalists and I think a lot of these movies start to taper these movies start to taper off when we become a little bit over really intelligent on CGI and that's true I think the VFX and ballerina felt a little unfinished to me and some of the like scenes that are preposterous are preposterous because well like nobody would live through this like in any way shape or form and so her throwing a bunch of explosives around just doesn't really feel the same way it feels to watch like a giant big rig truck full of super soldiers like bearing down on a on a on a town like it does in onslaught what's the single best example of these kinds of movies my take it would be roger warrior um because it's like building the fashion and aesthetic of these kinds of movies out of nothing because it is

41:50like all scraped together both like the film itself being kind of an instant cult sensation anyway but the football pads with leather jackets with crazy Dodge Chargers with feral kids with like who the fuck that guy was in the desert for roger warrior name I think it's like galactic as maximum as something yes yes um yeah I got I would probably say Terminator 2 is my Platonic ideal again but leather jackets soup dub shit super kill yeah I think I lean ultimately it's funny because word warriors also post the popular future telling story but I think the desert versus the kind of dying city scape I think I lean dying city scape more and maybe that's why I'm more of a carpenter person because a lot of his movies take place in those kinds of environments though not all of them obviously there's a lot of desolation some of his films too likewise for Robocop and total recall in the Verhoeven movies where there's like just this kind of

42:51glimmer of comedy in the storytelling that I really enjoy um and I think Enselot is doing that you know not just at the Wehrheim character but with like some of the sarcasm that a lot of the characters just speaking in or some of the outlandish performance styles that like Dan Stevens is rocking with aliens falls right in the middle yeah I think it has a lot of the hallmarks just because of the colonial marine stuff but then it's sort of separated by the the classic kind of survivalist like one woman protecting a child against a monster are there any other all-time classics that go in this because I you know we've got three tiers here of movies and I can certainly make arguments for Starship Troopers or for Snowpiercer you know movies that have that feel that those colorways that Dienginess that I was talking about and sometimes very comic sometimes very absurd but to me there is a there is a distinct difference between aliens and Starship Troopers even though they're totally related to each other there's a nice for for Carpenter fans they'll know these but

43:53they're probably lower on the power rankings for most people's Carpenter films but John Carpenter's vampires and Ghost of Mars are both about incredibly cynical bands of brothers taking on the supernatural um and with incredible settings either in like I think what vampires takes place in like the Great Plains or something or like Texas right I thought it was in the desert yeah in the desert and then Ghost of Mars is on Mars and it features Natasha Hens Strait Jason Statham and Ice Cube and Pam Greer fighting cannibalistic uh they're not aliens are they can go some Mars they're like they've been like taken over by a yeah they're not really ghosts no they're really more zombie-esque yeah yeah um yeah I think I mean I love vampires love John Carpenter's vampires I think is way underrated Ghost of Mars I have I'm less interested in but maybe actually fits this even more in a way yes um because of some of the story elements and some of the acting styles yeah yeah and you know there's something about him trying to do his

44:58like Mario Bob is planted at the vampires like that's really what he's trying to do is those kinds of like 50s 60s movies press yes totally yeah um universal soldier sure yeah I think this one has been a little bit for GVD yeah yeah JCBD Dolph Lunggren very similar story idea to onslaught like clearly a direct influence and you know did Adam mentioned this as like a he didn't a totem for him no he didn't but you know it's Roland Emmerick it's very early Roland Emmerick who went on to make Independence Day and many other big big big noisy blockbusters over the years gods illa remake etc um and I remember really liking it but it's exactly what might what Adam is talking about on the podcast what you're talking about which is I saw it in the attic of my of a friend of a friend's house when I was 11 and we weren't supposed to be watching it yeah and we snuck it up there and maybe with mom and dad's blockbuster rental and we went and we watched it and I was like god damn it this is cool this is such a cool idea such a violent movie can barely understand

46:01either these men speaking to each other but I'm really enjoying myself so I feel like that movie and because that movie has spawned like a VOD paradise yes of spin-offs and sequels of really like incredible incredible action set piece some of them yeah the John Himes one is particularly good um tier two yeah I like what you got here with dread and upgrade I put Kerr Russell soldier on the list yeah and then there's some some sequels rather look down upon sequels and I think are worth mentioning yeah particularly McGee's Terminator salvation which is probably lives on because of Christian Bale's viral meltdown but is actually probably as much blood and chrome as the first two I agree and then predators which was Robert Rod regezes was it him or would he produce the Nimrod on tall and Nimrod on tall directed it with Adrian Brody Lawrence fishburn Alice Braga

47:02Walton Goggins all super killers dropped on a planet to fight a predator yeah literally criminals right who from prison who have been dropped on to this planet um yeah I think there's other movies like I do think that the pitch black chronicles of riddock movies are in this zone for sure V for vendetta is a movie that I think is you know maybe more politically charged in matrix movies in there I think reload there's a case for reloaded in tier one because reloaded is such a pure action film yeah and it does have the leather jackets no that's a second second the second one which has the sequence on the highway oh yeah and some of the like more bravora action sequences in the film where you've got the two albino twins and meo really going full blown yeah I have a leather trench coat yes hear me roar it's kind of his most Arnold performance as well um there's something like self conscious and fun about it but also very super serious I really I like reloaded a lot so that I think those are there and then there's like a third wing yeah of like maybe less respectable or less quote unquote good movies I got

48:05creative with this one yeah we were brainstorming I added a few two yeah I think there's two tracks I think there's pure sci fi and there's pure military sometimes they cross over they cross over in the tomorrow war yeah did you like the tomorrow here more than I thought I would for a what was it like a day and day or like an amazon prime straight to prime blockbuster right with Pratt as a teacher who then becomes a future super soldier against a robot army right I mean this could happen to you any day now you could get called up see aren't we need you the Pratt battalion if you wanted list we'll bring you in buvaya draft how would you do in the tomorrow war I think you know Chris and I could talk a lot about young Washington some of its pros and cons you think he's re I think he's seen young watching but I will watch it I also haven't seen the brink of war which is about Reagan and Gorbachev if we did an angel studio special do you think it would do numbers angel studios Hall of Fame yeah I don't

49:05think it would do no I mean I don't think the audience is really caught up on those titles I watch some of them yeah what was the gym kovizel hit that he had well I don't know but he just put one there's a trailer out for one where he just goes around like breaking the arms of human traffickers did you see his film where he portrayed Christ the passion of the Christ yeah you know what I actually don't think I saw the passion of the Christ should we watch it on Easter sure sound of freedom that which was a mega sensation yeah a few years ago and kind of an indicator I think of where certain things were going like you can draw some connectivity to like obsession or amazing digital circus yes where it's like we are hyper targeting a niche there's we actually know that there's a huge audience for this yes tomorrow where I threw in there without remorse an absolutely appalling movie from Stefano Salimo my goat with Michael B Jordan with a screenplay by Taylor Sheridan and yet somehow is the most like morbid dark kind of dull Tom Clancy

50:08reboot you can possibly imagine not sure I don't think he is going to continue into the Jack Ryan verse old plan was rainbow six with him and Jamie Bell and then I'd look say that's dead right now yeah but we shall see I mean he did make the Thomas Crown affair for Amazon sure he seems like he's still in business with them I'm just saying like it I think we would have heard a little bit more he's got Miami vice in 28 we we have to we have to clear all the other calls until then rainbow six done properly fits neatly into this package there's a lot of movies like ultraviolet the miliovich sci-fi action movie is like this and flux which doesn't really work but has all the release one yeah has has all the trapping so do you watch the and flux animated series on MTV I think I've seen it as like I this is on MTV for 15 to 20 minutes I'm not not down with that I'm pretty cool that I just don't sit down to watch it why you're being a little defensive no I just mean like I think that my reputation precedes me as a cartoon hater and oh I see what about the head did you watch the head I'm sure I did but I can't think of like

51:12even what it's about watch beevison butthead for sure yeah did you important guys for me you didn't watch the simsons I did you did yeah but during the hermins head simsons live in color era not not just recreationally see more of a beevison or more of a butthead who's the red head there are no redheads in beevison butthead there's a blonde guy and there's a brown-haired guy you don't think he's redhead you know these not ginger you're redhead yeah is that what we were asking oh what's one time I always really appreciated their critique of pavement it may be look inwardly no but some of my taste yeah yeah and they're like why don't these guys do something do something there is an interesting note in in one of Matt Bellany's newsletters recently about my judge trying to claw back the rights to beevison butthead because they are crossing I guess the 35 year threshold for which creators can revert the rights can revert back to them okay and 2027

52:13will be 35 years since they first appeared on I think liquid television didn't they try to reboot didn't they try to bring beevison butthead actually be active right now the thing is is like to me what was truly wonderful about that show was not the plot machinations episode by episode but the music video stuff is mystery science theater yeah that was the best part um but also we're a music door so what do we know uh tron legacy where do you land on that six score fun to look at uh don't remember a ton about the plot they're probably not going to make another one of these even though they seem to be kind of cool classic so I almost want to put these in blood and chrome just because did you did you watch aries tron aries aries okay it's not very strong wouldn't recommend it do you think that franchises dead for now although there is a tron ride it does new world yeah and the tron video game continues to to do numbers I bet do you think that the like guys trying to get the rights back to their to their franchises or get the rights to their franchises is going to I

53:15saw this really stuff where he's like I'm going back to alien it's I'm coming back for my my corners yeah what what about it what are you asking like how feasible is it even for that to happen like it depends on how much power and influence you wield yeah you know I mean well you be coming back for take hunter ten years from now yeah maybe you should right yeah what else would you come back for I would come back for anything that allowed bevison bloodhead to view my work should we honestly about it should we send a strongly worded letter to Josh tomorrow about the ownership of the sea is dope and how can we get that back in your hands yeah because that's valuable IP sure off-sighted hugely influential how to real tone and I like it's almost like time bomb it's like if you if you know you know and maybe like 20 years from now some guy will be like you may think that I've been influenced by corn mac McCarthy but in fact it was this blog post on grandland that you have to google specifically to find you think that'll still be up

54:16in some capacity if we still have an internet yeah it's all out there yeah you know just kind of grab it thank you see her thank you okay let's go now to my conversation with Adam Wengard and Michael Bean for adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms every choice matters trumphaya offers self injection or intravenous infusion from the start trumphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks if your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphaya proper training is required trumphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur before treatment get checked for infections and tuberculosis

55:17tell your doctor if you have an infection flu like symptoms or need a vaccine explore what's possible ask your doctor about trumphaya today call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trumphayaradio.com every game day you show up for your team now it's your time ask your prescriber about Wigovie some maglatide injection 2.4 milligrams a GLP one call 1-833-4 Wigovie or visit Wigovie.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about Wigovie why wait? We go need! In Gartar here incredible moment Adam I know that you grew up loving Michael and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the first time you saw him on screen or not on screen and how you developed a relationship to his work? Well ear muffs Michael because this is embarrassing

56:20to talk about you know I don't know weird amount you know actually he's heard me tell this story a lot of times this is part of our mythology now but yeah like it kind of goes all the way back to when I was a little kid back in the early 90s I was at a Walmart with my family and they had just released a toy series of aliens and the toy series consisted of like the space marines and all these like different versions of like the alien figures and I had never heard of the series up to that point and so when I mean my brother saw them at the store we were just like fascinated and for whatever reason my parents weren't a good mood and they you know it wasn't every time you'd go to the toy store they would actually buy you a bunch of shit and so like we actually walked away with you know a couple space marines and a couple aliens and you know specifically I picked up the Hicks figure you know which is Michael's figure and you know it became literally

57:22my favorite toy you know and I still remember the toy actually I have another one that I had Michael signed it on his podcast it's my most treasured item that I have but you know like the figure is really interesting he had like a bazooka I don't know why you didn't have a bazooka in the movie but and it had one of his hands for some reason was kind of like one was straight and the other ones kind of like this you know but it was like that was like the toy that like you know I didn't just strictly like when I bought toys it wasn't like G.E. Joe's go over here he man's go over here it was like they all kind of work together you know so that Hicks toy you know he interfaced with a lot of the other toys you know so you know like we we we got these toys we were obsessed with it but we hadn't seen the movies right and like I grew up in a really small town called Mary and Alabama and the one video store we had was like part radio shack which is like I don't even know if that's like like a legal kind of thing that they had going but it so it was like half radio shack and half

58:25you know video rental store and we go there and they had just a copy of the first alien and I think maybe alien three was just coming out it was right there at the beginning of the 90s and um and so we got both of those and then we're like wait a minute these don't have the space marines like what's the deal like so oh it's the oh it's aliens that's the one we needed to see you know and so we go to the the head of the um video store his his name was Tommy I think and um like can you get a copy of you know aliens and we looked everywhere like at the time for whatever reason aliens was like kind of out of print hard to find and so like you know Tommy he goes and like orders a copy of it and it doesn't come in for like a week right and then we keep going back in the you know like pretty much every day like it was like every day we'd go in it his aliens been his aliens yet you know is it here yet and this went on for a long time at least like a month or two right and um and at a certain point I think like somehow like Tommy just got tired of us like

59:28coming in there asking about aliens and so you know he went out and somehow tracked down a copy and we rented it from him and we had we had it in our possession for an entire month and I lost count of how many times we watched I think it was like 24 times or something we would just watch it constantly I would have been probably like 10 you know something like that you know uh nine or 10 and um and so yeah which is pretty young to be watching just the alien films you know but um where I think we're the exact same age and that's probably exactly when I saw it too yeah well that's like you know like I was always too afraid to watch horror movies and I always felt like the alien movies the terminator films those are sort of like the gateway movies into getting into horror because they're still sci-fi and like weirdly I still kind of think of like terminator and aliens as being for kids you know like but like they were marketed to us yeah they wanted us to see it yeah so I'm watching this movie and I'm like you know you know for the very first time and I remember the whole

1:00:29time it was like which one's Hicks which one's Hicks you know I just wanted to know you know and like you know Michael comes on and he's like so cool in the movie you know he's got his like like to keep this handy for closing cameras and you know all his cool lines and you know he's so cool he's falling asleep in the drop chip you know on the way down and um so totally lived up to the expectations you know and around the same time you know me and my friends were really discovering terminator for the first time so we became obsessed with Michael Bean this is all in Alabama and we created what we called a Michael Bean fan club and I still remember writing it down on a piece of paper you know like that like we were just like all thought that Hicks was like the coolest guy and just like all your roles really and and we didn't really know how to say uh Michael's last name either because we're going to like Hicks from Alabama so we used to call you Michael Bayhan uh I'm sure you got a lot of it's not the first time yeah I've been called Michael Bayhan um and so you know like

1:01:32flash forward you know many many years later you know we're developing uh onslaught and you know I'm sitting there with Simon he's writing the script and you know we get to this character Baylor and we're kind of just like doing our wish list of like you know who do we want to cast and or who do you want to kind of write with our you know thinking of in this role and uh at that time Simon and I would have really obsessed with the movie called um uh uh time bomb yeah and uh which is like a lesser known film have you ever seen time bomb scene it no oh man yeah I mean when I brought it up to you you were like oh yeah nobody's mentioned time bomb in a long time you know but uh it's it's a cool movie actually it was uh it was directed by a guy named Avi Nesher who had uh directed a movie uh about uh the English being involved in uh the Middle East and kind of getting thrown out and it was like a really really really good movie and so I I saw that movie

1:02:34met Avi and um uh I I said I would do it uh Rafael Dela Rentes produced it and um they cast Pat She Kenset in it and um you know um knowing smile yeah yeah she was she very attractive but she played a uh say collegeist in it and uh it was a small movie and it it didn't do any business um uh and it wasn't as good as I thought it was but Adam brought it up when he wrote me a letter um introducing himself and he brought it up saying you know I love the action sequences in this I'm going to have my stunt team go through watch this movie because I like the stunt so much and um you know so you know something that I hadn't thought about for a long time and I didn't really

1:03:39think about I thought a patchy for a long time and I I didn't think about um I didn't think about the movie for for a long time and that came up out of kind of nowhere well yeah because like Simon and I were always talking about it with it like you know my film The Guest it's like you know at one point I was like actually interested in seeing if we could get the rights to time bomb just to like tie it in and make it in the same universe literally as the guest like for like a sequel because they feel like it's the same thing it's like a super soldier kind of program yeah you know he's sort of like a almost like MK ultra super soldier that like has like his memory wiped and stuff and um uh you know so Simon and I really obsessed with that and that's why we kind of like you know Michael was really on the top of our minds when we were doing it and he's right it's like the it's kind of an interesting film because it's got like a lot of like B movie elements to it but that the action in it is like fucking like unparalleled I mean like I don't know what the deal was like with who the action choreographer was but it's some of the coolest stuff and the action scenes

1:04:43are all pretty short right yeah but they're just these like insane bursts and they I took a lot of inspiration because like I like how you guys in that film like anytime you're shooting a machine gun you're always screaming and there's something very primal and realistic about that because it's like hey you get the feeling like it's like the character is like like almost trying to like threaten as he's like firing was that like your idea was that sort of the choreographers uh that's just me having fun you know you know if I'm out on a range someplace and I got a machine gun I'm screaming at the same time you know yeah no character no character development there oh I didn't want to ask you though when did you know when you were working in the 80s and 90s that kids like Adam had that relationship to your work did you have a consciousness of being idolized and that there were fan clubs like obviously they were successful films you know what I don't um I think I'm just different than um a lot of actors I I came out to LA to to work I needed you know I needed right

1:05:48a way to get a job so I could not work at the manual labor job that I had and so I started in bits and pieces and television and I never I never it never dreamt in my wildest dreams that I would end up in some of the movies that and work with some of the people that I work with I thought like if I could be on a soap opera for 10 years and get paid a hundred grand a year I would have sold my soul for it you know getting a commercial was a huge deal getting into the screen actors guild was a huge deal getting a like a modeling job that the picture showed up in playboy'd run home and show my parents and like my expectations were really low I've talked to a lot of actors I knew ever since I was you know three or four that I wanted to be an actor I didn't at all I went to college I did go to other dudes of you in playboy what's that that's playgirl yeah you should know

1:06:53I think you do so I don't so I I never it was always about the work to me and it was I just would go from one job to another job to another job and I was very very serious about the work and I never had a publicist I was never I never I felt a little bit better we did the red carpet for his his his movie and what's your call on so on so we so we and I felt a little bit more comfortable but I never really felt comfortable doing press and doing the red carpet and doing pictures and going to parties and stuff like that so I I was not aware I mean 10 years ago 15 years ago they they started calling me iconic and so I had to get my dictionary yeah okay and I just

1:08:01have a different type of a person when it comes to the the movie star element and the actor element the actor element I've always been very serious about and always been very very passionate about the movie star stuff I always felt uncomfortable I'd go in like the morning show and I are going done Johnny Carson show and I just I just it just made me feel uncomfortable and so fun better now because I have a podcast and it's easier when you're doing three minute bites you know and you got to get something out to promote your movie and be cute at the same time that's like what I was never very very very good at felt very very uncomfortable and standing I still even standing that line they might go over here over here you know it all just seems a little

1:09:03you know I like the work okay I like and I really really really enjoy the work and collaborating and one of the reasons why Adam and I got along so well is we took his words and we mushed him and we played with them and and and and I had some weird ideas and well what about this and what about that yes Michael and no Michael and the most important thing for me and the most fun thing for me is and you don't always get this experience but when you are able to have a writer director uh and actor and the words okay you start with that a lot of times that's what you just end up with you know you go do a movie and those are the lines and that's the director and I do my job he does his job and those are the lines but in our situation and it was the same with me with with

1:10:06Jim Cameron it was the same with me with Billy Friedkin it's been the same with me the the the funnest of it for me is being able to go like hey all right this is cool what do you want to do with it you know well let's push this over here what do you think about this idea I like that idea let's go with that idea what about this not so much you know but but being able to mold it and and be collaborative is the for me it's the high of acting it's the the highest part of acting and we did we did quite a bit of that for a role that doesn't have an extraordinary an extraordinary amount of screen time we worked a lot on that and we had fun and we made some changes to what I think that I thought what we were going to be doing when I came in and maybe what Adam thought we were going to be doing when we came in and I thought you know it worked out

1:11:08really well and yeah and so that that that to me is the the the important thing yeah well I kind of wanted to ask you about you know not just that sequence but the whole vibe of the movie you spent about 10 years in an IP world you know making making big movies where there's a lot of I guess interested parties probably that have to say the least yeah and I really fell in love with your movies with your next in the guest those are the you know those are my favorites of your films and and this feels like a real return to that very conscious return to that I was learning maybe you could talk a little bit about why you pivoted back to doing a movie like this and maybe why these movies are so important to you I mean I guess it kind of you know like started back in 2021 you know like this was like you know during the pandemic and you know the world was in an apocalyptic state and you know I you know we we managed to squeeze out God's a lavers this Kong and it was

1:12:09you know still successful at the top of that year and that was just you know just such an intense situation and you know in some ways I I think back to that time and I'm like would I have done you know another sequel to God's a lavers this Kong right away if the pandemic hadn't happened but because there was this feeling of like you know it felt like movies could just go away and it was like you know and I had a great time doing God's a lavers is calling it was a lot of work and I was at the end of it just like I felt like I was going to be really burnt out but really just like after like a short period of recoup and you know the fear of the industry going down it was sort of like hell I'm ready to throw me back in let's do another you know and so I instantly the second that we were able to develop another one I did and so you know we started that process towards the end of the year of 2021 and and you know at that time I had been working on a lot of other little stuff and I'd had a lot of movies set up you know I was like attached to face off to and thunder cats and

1:13:10a movie called hard cores just all these big studio projects you know so all my development was kind of in that direction but I really wanted to do something a little smaller a little bit you know more my thing but I didn't really have that story quite yet you know and then at the end of the year I was over at Simon Barrett's house he lives like just a couple blocks from me on the other side of Losfield is Boulevard which is a pretty you know the traffic goes pretty good good and fast down there and so we had we finished our our day of working on a face off too and you know I remember I was like about to walk across the street you know and I thought oh you know I should go to the grocery store and get some tacos like some stuff to make tacos and so I started turning around and I started walking towards the grocery store and I thought you know I'm gonna go get my car I was I was picturing myself with like bags walking up the street you know and so I was like fuck it I'm gonna go back to my house and so I went back over to the street and then the light turned green you know or the the crosswalk like turned on and I took like two or three steps in the road and

1:14:15a car just piled right into me you know and I like flipped over the the hood of it you know like basically the way that I can describe it is like I never actually saw the car and the car never stopped by the way it just kept going and like it was like I went from being like thinking about I'm gonna go make tacos for dinner you know I thought it was my last thought to suddenly it was like I couldn't really see anything but I was aware that I was getting hit by a car and it was like I was in a like a tornado is what it felt like you know so I don't know if it looked as impressive as it felt you know but it was interesting because everything does go in slow motion you know like I didn't feel any pain but I was I knew I was being hit by a car you know wow and like I landed and the first feeling I had was embarrassment weirdly of like oh my god that was my fault you know because I didn't even think about the fact at first it only occurred to me later I was like no I had the the right away somebody just ran a red light you know but I like pulled myself out of the

1:15:18road and I thought oh my god I was like am I paralyzed you know so you know I tried to stand up and and then all the pain hit me right and it really it felt like somebody took a gigantic paddle and just like just like the size of me and just hit this side of me you know and it was just like all this pain surge I couldn't get up you know and you know but I was kind of doing this like check you know like the scariest thing when you do something like that is it you're sort of like okay is my neck okay you know am I paralyzed can I move my legs and you go through this process you're like okay I'm in a lot of pain but I'm okay and I just felt like it like all this blood on my face you know and this guy runs up to me and he's like oh my god are you okay I was like I was like oh my god I was like I thought that my whole face had gotten ripped off you know like that's what it felt like you know and I was like oh my god do I have a face you know and he was like yeah yeah you're all right you know like I know and and so you know one of the bystanders that came by they called like an ambulance and stuff and so like I got them to like go get Simon Simon comes out from his apartment you know

1:16:21when he comes over he's like oh yeah you look all right man and like you know so like the ambulance comes against me it takes me off long story short you know like I'm really fucked up for a little while and I started that Godzilla movie in a cast you know like because the pre-production officially started two weeks after that and so I didn't have any time to heal at all you know and then you know six months later my partner gets pregnant and this was like a totally unexpected thing and then so suddenly I'm thrust into all these like I'm thrust into this new reality or I'm a father I'm recuperating from this accident you know I'm making another you know 150 million dollar movie you know all the pressures that come with that and the stress you know I ended up having another little physical problem that I don't want to go into right now but um and so you know like once I finished that Godzilla movie and I was in post-production I thought well you know what's interesting is now I'm in a place at weirdly like you know because I've been in franchise

1:17:24IP land for so long you know I didn't really have a story to tell you know it was like I didn't I was all my movies for so long since the guest were focused on you know just building my career and so that's why they were all sort of like these are the available movies that I can get made you know and I could put myself into them but they weren't my story and so I was like I knew that I wanted to do a story about a parent you know a reluctant parent I knew I wanted to do a story about kind of PTSD in a way you know the military thing just became like a way to do that because I felt like I was working through my own things and you know so this movie even though it's like when you watch it it's just like a good time and it's like fun and you know you know sometimes it's ridiculous and sometimes it's funny and it's got a couple disturbing things and you know it is about a character dealing with like past trauma and stuff like that but um you know you know I wanted to do something that I could put myself into it's very personal it sounds like oh yeah that's a crazy story yeah that's wild it's funny I was thinking as I was thinking about

1:18:29talking to both of you guys I was trying to think about how to characterize the kind of movie that it is and the way that like you're really even being used in the movie as like a like a talisman like a symbol for this the history of these movies right like the Terminator and Aliens and a lot of these films represent and I kept thinking of black and chrome like that was the thing that's like the color the images the ideas that struck me and those movies are defined by their action you've made a lot of action movies you've made a lot of action movies I was hoping you could maybe demathologize like what makes a good action movie and how do you know you're making a good action movie if you do because what we see on screen is obviously so dramatically different from what it's like to be on set of one of these movies you can talk more about you know shooting action you know I'm just like where do I run you know where do I jump you know I don't I don't really know the basics of of of of shooting action but you can talk do you know when you're making one that it's working well

1:19:32you know every shot that you do whether it's action whether it's an action shot or whether it's just you know talking most actors at least I know when it's working and when it's not working and you know some we rely on our director at the same time you know the action sequences for me really got you know real when I you know did the Terminator and you know Jim was very intense and very focused and because of his intensity and his focus and his passion you know I I wanted to please him and so I you know I did a lot of running and jumping and there are a few stunts in there that I that I didn't do I you know I when it comes to action for instance when when Adam said oh you know I just saw this movie that you did called time bomb and the action and it

1:20:37is incredible I'd seen time bomb in a rough cut and I was like very disappointed because I'd seen this guy's previous movie so I I just know I I know when when things work and when they don't work and mostly action sequences I think are a lot easier to make work than than some of the other stuff yeah my wrong I mean from a director standpoint that might be completely different but well you know I was really delighted when we did this one because you know we you know like your character doesn't have a lot of action but there's there's some pretty there's there's there's an intense moment that you have to do and and you definitely insisted on doing it and and we didn't use a double four year anything at all I don't think we did at all no because you you fell back on the pad and everything and by the way like on set like you know we had to put some squibs on Michael and like there's like a moment where like when we did it just like kind of around everybody he took his shirt off and everybody was like I guess looking at this is like he still got it

1:21:42and I was like everybody's on jealous and shit um you know it's funny it's like people ask me all the time about like I was like oh you you know you look like you really enjoy doing action you know is it really fun to be doing that stuff and the answer is absolutely not actions never fun because you never have enough time to do it you know and it's like it's fun in the sense that like you know when you're rolling and it works it's like yeah everybody's like having a blast you know in that moment but it's just like you you know action requires so much coverage most of the time and and even more difficult if you're trying to do it in a longer take you know it takes even that much more prep and you know in a movie like this a lot of like the the choreography is tied in with like gunshots and all this stuff and um so you know action is one of those things that like it's I love it but um you know uh yeah it's it's yeah yeah it can be a pain in the ass are you ever surprised after you finished something that you maybe if you were more unsure if something was working or not when one of these movies goes on to be iconic like I know you've

1:22:45talked about tombstone right where that was like a little bit of a more complicated production well he hears the thing is that um um people don't realize they won't realize with this movie either there'll be a bunch of people come out and review it and they'll say this and they'll say that about it but they don't really have to know okay terminator came out terminator came out and um it it did well at one the first weekend and nobody really expected that but terminator was not in the top 20 movies box office the year it came out okay so it wasn't this you know now we think of like the terminator of course it was this huge hit it wasn't it wasn't and um uh uh uh nobody was like clamoring to get me in their movies and luckily I was able to work with Jim a few more times and um

1:23:52uh now you know people talk about the terminators being iconic being you know changing the way that you know people you know shoot shoot movies and tombstone is another example of a movie that we made we had a lot of problems making it uh the movie came out nobody gave a shit nobody cared um I can remember the New York Times in uh review was just horrible a lot of bad reviews um nobody ever I just want to read my own reviews see what people say New York Times LA Times the reporter the variety San Francisco Chronicle the Texas nobody even mentioned Johnny Wingo didn't didn't even get a mention and uh and when they were everybody said Val was good but most people didn't like that movie okay so the people's immediate reactions to movies reviewers and um um when they have to all of the sudden write down oh I like this movie for

1:24:58these reasons and I didn't like it for these reasons I really don't think that that applicable to really how good the movie is people don't realize you know Shawshankers another example of a movie that like nobody cared about nobody cared about it now it's coming like with the guest I mean like that's probably like the movie I was most identified with in a lot of ways um and you know like on that one we like like we got like good reviews out of the festivals but like nobody saw that film it was just telling someone I saw it had a screening at the ASTH theater out here in LA and it was blew the doors off like you would have thought it was the Terminator when it played but then you know it's also about how many people will a movie reach in any given time and then how they find it like you told the story about going to the video store to find aliens like that's how I saw a lot of your movies I don't think I even saw tombstone in theaters I think I saw it on video and like I think the shelf life thing continues but one thing I was worrying thinking about with you is you saw that over the course of 10 or 12 years of your career

1:26:00like yes the Terminator becomes increasingly more popular in the 80s did you find yourself trying to chase parts like that or movies and no I I was trying to make a living and I was like trying to take you know the best roles that came along um I was I've never really chased anything I'm just like I got sent scripts and if I like them I I did them um a lot of them I didn't like it with my big mistake in in with my career was I would get a script like Navy SEALs for instance and I would get it and say like oh uh well this is not not really what I was expecting what Charlie Sheen's doing it oh Charlie Sheen's doing it oh okay um who's directing it Lewis T Lewis T what's he done a woman in red oh a woman in red oh that was good like I yeah I like the

1:27:02woman in red that was that was really well done who's you too come on who's well coo jo yeah okay and so so I needed that push and um so I so I said okay I'm in and then I found he didn't direct a woman in red that was Gene Wilder to direct to the woman in red he directed a movie called a lady in red so uh but that movie like it needed a lot of work and um unlike Adam unlike Jim Cameron unlike Billy Friedkin um they they had the clams down on that script I don't know what they wanted to make some comedy or something like that um it's like four movies in one it's it's all it's all it's all they're all over the place and and we had the Navy behind it's going like yeah you want to shoot on an aircraft carrier shoot on the aircraft carrier you want to fly in jets we will fly in jets you want to do helicopter stuff we'll do a helicopter stuff we have a Navy SEAL the double each

1:28:04one of you we got underwater stuff and that that was my biggest disappointment I kind of forget your your your original question was was really but it makes me think of something that's true for both of you guys in your careers like Navy SEALs now has like a $50 4K and people love that movie so even if you worked on it you're like I don't know it didn't work you know and you know the the guest story loves that movie you're surprised when I know where you're getting your information on the tell you what no Navy SEALs love that movie that may be true and you know your early films too like maybe they more huge box office successes but you like they these things they build cults around them especially genre movies they really have these massive cults like what is it like to kind of experience that having made something and feeling like maybe it didn't totally reach as many people as you wanted well you know it's funny it's like you know back then it was probably pretty disappointing but more from the perspective not just of the individual movies

1:29:04but more what it meant for the longevity of my career because for me for many years it was always about like getting the next one set up you know because you know like that that's really where like it hurt me more you know because the reviews were good in those early movies but the but the box office wasn't good and but you know I have to admit like you know after doing those God's ill movies in H24 probably doesn't want me to hear me say this but like when I was setting up this film I was like this is not a movie that's about opening weekend for me I mean you know you hope for the best and everything but for me it's like you know kind of selfishly as a director I felt like I needed to kind of solidify who I am as a filmmaker because I think like I felt like I was kind of getting lost in the franchise IP thing and you know even though those movies have my personality in them and some of my style it's like you're still playing by pre-established rules at those IP and stuff dictate you know and so for me the mission statement was like I want to get in there and I want to do my movie and you know hopefully it's successful when

1:30:08it comes out but I I felt like if I'm doing my thing it's like this is a calling card for another 10 years if I'm not able to convince somebody to make me make another one of these for a while you know and and you know and that's an important thing that you know filmmakers you know like especially if you get kind of sucked into the studio system is that at a certain point you know like if you're able to step away it's like you kind of have to you know you have to like force yourself to get back in there and and you know do the movies that are you know kind of all about your your own thing you know and you know for also for me too you know tombstone would come out and I didn't look at it is like oh it's not doing you know like I was too busy trying to make a living I've got five boys have been married three times I you know I just had to work I was just like working and so for whatever reason I'd never sat back and thought like I didn't realize box office was even important in any way until I did Grindhouse and when I did Grindhouse it was the very

1:31:16first time I remember looking at the opening weekend and thinking oh that's weaker than than I expected but before I'm so busy doing the acting part of it that the career and that icon of whatever all those words and that just just just just just happen there was no there was no like well I'll do this movie and if I do this movie then that will happen there was no planning on being I never thought a movie star or or eat a film actor working with people like Adam and Jim and and all sorts of good people and working with great actors it never dawned on me never thought that I would ever work in that in in that in these environments and so I it's hard for me to explain but I just never thought of it as a career

1:32:18as much as a job and there are guys like Johnny Depp and like Brad Pitt and numerous numerous people Denzel and Richard Geer numerous people that are great movie stars and great actors too but I felt like I did a really good job acting but the movie star stuff I just I didn't pay attention to it and I didn't feel comfortable it's funny that you put it that way because I want to ask you a little bit about how you're really able to get I think what could be otherwise perceived as sometimes more prestigious actors to really let their freak out you know like Dan is so good and you're literally in this one we get a lot of truth but like Rebecca and Drew Starki is so so good and so magnetizing in this movie why do you think actors want to play like that in your movies what do you what is it about that you see in them that you want to see that from them I don't know maybe maybe yeah that's an interesting question I mean I think you know I'm a very collaborative

1:33:19person not just with actors but across the board with you know everybody I mean the funny thing is about when you're making films the directors oftentimes the you know least experience won on set you know and I remember like back in the mid 2000s a friend of mine was writing a movie and it was for a film I won't say which movie it was but it was I think the budget was about a million and a half you know and so we were right out of film school and so it was like oh cool you know they're doing this big movie out in New Orleans or wherever it was and so we went on set and the guy directing it was a writer up until that point this was his first movie he ever directed and and so he really didn't know what he was doing and it self admittedly he didn't know what he was doing he even said like when we showed up he was like he was like yeah you know like you know like I didn't know really like what a director did like when I came on set the first day I was like do I tell him where to put the lights or whatever you know and he's telling us this stuff and I'm just like what you know what I mean

1:34:22like and then it kind of hit me I'm looking at like this guy doesn't know what he's doing admittedly doesn't know what he's doing and you got all these professionals around him that do know what they're doing right and you got all these jobs and it suddenly hit me I was like a movie is designed so that even if the director has no idea what he's doing it will get done it may not be a good movie yes but it will get absolutely absolutely and sometimes that works is sometimes there's a magic to just the pure creativity that somebody can bring and it can you know even if they don't really know all the ins and out of directing you know it you know it can still come turn into something too stone was a lot like that and tombstone is a bee loved movie yeah but these days that that movie 30 years ago nobody cared about now everybody absolutely loves it but that movie had Kevin Jar for four weeks they threw out most of his material they brought in George Cosmodels who was a shooter they had no idea what the story was about what the characters were about or whatever

1:35:27they shot it they got it to a good editor and you know it didn't really have a director people ask about Kurt directing it and Kurt was totally responsible for we had a script there was 160 pages and he tightened it up and a lot of actors lost scenes and he had to be the person who was in charge and he's a great guy and a great leader this gonna have to go Michael this gonna have to go powers the wives this is gonna have to go but it was a mess it didn't have a director it had a series of people that were sort of directing it and and and and when it came out it didn't do anything now 30 years later that's that's that's that's just kind of typical of you don't need a director my 11 year old son could be a director because he could because deep he who come to him and say

1:36:30you want the cameras over here over here and you say put him over there okay you want that actor that actor I'll take that actor you know you want to like so we run this scene yeah go ahead all right with shoot it like this yes are you happy you know like truly yeah truly yeah well and you know like with with me I really like working with repeat actors you know I think that's like that rapport that you can build is is great like I mean for instance Rebecca Holland dance Stevens like I couldn't have started my experience with them with this movie for a lot of reasons you know and it was the you know they trust me and and and I trust them and it was almost like we were challenging ourselves to do things that they'd never done before yeah because we had that familiarity you know and you know I think it's the same with Michael I mean it's like this was our first kind of testing ground but by the end of it like we were already really kind of having a lot of fun like there's a sequence in this movie where you know we're Michael's like sort of like offending dance Stevens character and in the script he's sort of just like you know you know

1:37:34I was actually picturing it one way which was a little bit more straightforward like it's kind of written in a way where he's sort of just like you know you just ate shit doctor and he's sort of just like talking down to him you know and on the day Michael's like he's like you know like like I want to try something you know like what if like I'm like totally humiliating this guy and I'm just laughing at him I'm just laughing myself and I was like you know and I'm thinking okay this could work but if it doesn't work I need to make sure that I have like an out you know like but I want to you know I want to give it a shot you know so you know I tempered the expectations I was like all right let's try it I was like but listen at least do it the way it's scripted and you know just in case you know and then you know he did like take one of it and I was like okay forget the way it's scripted this is for getting you let's do that yeah and so I'm looking forward to our next one I mean you can see you know I got Michael to you know he's scruffier than usual this is this is because I'm watching too and you know so we can't say what it is yet you know but

1:38:38you know right away I was like okay can you will you grow your hair out like this and he texted me yes sir and I was like yes Michael I want to ask you about that because what Dan is doing in the movie is is pretty big and you've been opposite like Paxton and Aliens is big so when you're acting and you know and actors making a big choice and the way that they're performing like how do you respond to that is that something that is discussed before you start shooting you know I usually it's always about the words it's all from an actor's standpoint it's always how good the words are you know and this was an extremely well written script okay um the reason why I made that choice was um this was described early on I don't know if it was you or a 24 as a gonzo something or other you know which is to me just meant like anything goes you know like playing an Alzheimer's person you know I could just say anything I want here and you know like uh and I I thought um I'm

1:39:41not even sure where that came from I just thought um wouldn't it be fun if if instead of you know it's staying in that sort of realm of of of I'm disappointed for the company that I'm working for that this didn't work out that this whole thing was just insane and it's just struck me as funny and I didn't think he would go for it I didn't think he would go for I just didn't I just but this is the thing about Adam I think most good actors and I heard that Drew was this way too come after you would come after you what about this what about this can we try this can we try that what do you think about this okay well let's let's give it a try and uh Jim is also good that way you know just like yeah okay well as he'll say and he'll say no to me not eight times out of ten but two times out of ten and he'll say well let's try it or once you know like yeah this really works and that that to me is a very collaborative

1:40:47what makes movies fun for me is not showing up on the set not showing up on the red carpet not learning my lines it's getting together with a group of two or three or four people including your DP and your sound guy you know and saying well like how are we gonna mold this to make it even even better you know and how are we gonna kind of make this like you know jump and um I think that we took you know when I first got the role Adam sent me a letter and uh said that he was a fan and and and when I do this and uh I immediately went on and saw the gas and I was like okay I'm done yeah and definitely gonna do this for sure not that I would wouldn't of anyway but um then I watched two king congresses godzilla said that he made and I'm not the guy kind of I'm not gonna watch king congresses godzilla that's just not my fucking you know that's just not my wheelhouse you know but I watched it and right from the very beginning I thought oh just kind of interesting

1:41:52they're fun look at yeah you know this is a lot a lot more there was a lot there that I didn't even realize because I hadn't given in a chance and so you know so you know and then I signed on and um you know it was um it was great and uh the the thing also that was happening is that uh Adam had already shot the rest of the movie so you know the movie and you know that I work with with Dan in that sequence that entire sequence that takes place with the helicopters coming in and and us coming up and that was all so he already had shot his movie and he looked really fucking confident yeah he was like he was really happy with what he already shot you know and that that and I asked him also like you know how did go go great Michael going great you never know if it didn't though yeah no but it was this was a great shoot this was like the smoothest shoot that I

1:42:57ever had so that it was authentic well you said you described it as a calm set but this is not a calm movie this is like a rip-roaring movie he's calm okay he's he is a leader that leads I would say but by example but but he's calm he's and I'm sure inside of his head he's intense but he's not running around dis and that you know he'll we'll finish a shot and then he will walk over to the next place he's gonna shoot and his crew just kind of follows him over there and he's he's he's very calm and um maybe it's because he knows what he wants but I've been telling this story I got to tell the story because I this is this to me is about um like collaboration okay so I found out because I talked to your DPS today the party and I found out something but anyway so I just I had to go

1:44:02often do another movie so Adam shared me the movie about four months ago and I was like when I went to see the movie I was I was like when am I gonna say if it's like it's not as good as I you still think about that because you've been in that position before well I have and the problem with me is I'm really honest I told Jim Cameron I thought the third act of aliens had some not the abyss the third act of the abyss had something chunky about it you know something really he had just you know and uh uh uh so so anyway so this is kind of this collaborative thing that I'm talking about I'm shooting a scene and uh I'm waiting for the doctor I'm waiting for the doctor to show up and so I say to Adam like I'm fucking it's just standing around here waiting for the scene to open he give me a phone just so I've got something that I'm doing you know the phone ends up being like

1:45:03kind of part of the care yeah yeah so I take the phone and which was not scripted or anything so I take the phone and I'm doing this and we had a real good prop guy real good prop guy and he took the phone and he did some stuff to it and made it look kind of military not that it makes any difference but maybe it would help me or whatever so I'm looking at the phone and I'm doing the phone and then we're getting ready to shoot what I would consider like a master and although he doesn't really shoot masters per se but what I would consider shooting a master and the next thing I know he is like down on the phone and the phone is the beginning of the shot okay and then he pulls back to reveal me and then he pulls back even further to reveal the operators so if I hadn't said to him hey can I have a phone and this is like a director who's you know he's got a story boarded he could

1:46:07shoot in 20 different ways but because I asked for a phone he thought hey maybe we'll do it like this and we did so when I saw it last night I realized I thought like I thought I saw that the first time and then your DP told me oh he's the shots in there but it's just when it's pulled back a little further but my point is is that me being able to say hey that shot wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for my input which was not input it was just hey can I have a phone yeah it that's what's exciting you know about do you think that's something you would have done 15 years ago I mean I was even more seated the pants really really oh well yeah because you know like my first movies were all and that's probably where this comes from is you know my first movies were we didn't even have scripts we we just improvised the whole film because I was part of a movement that people called mumblecore you know and those mumblecore movies were

1:47:11entirely unscripted just actors kind of riffing and you know you just shoot a ton of footage and then you kind of put it to a movie together and so that was a good lesson though for me because it does teach you to sort of like not be rigid I'm you know I've never been the type of filmmaker where like I'm like just shoot the boards you know I mean because like I want that kind of like the realism the spot nudity and again I want to be inspired by the people around me you know like the actors the crew and all that kind of stuff and you know the shot you're talking about like we knew we wanted to do a shot with like you're waiting and we and we had all the guys like shooting up and all their stuff but we didn't really have a beginning to the shot and so whenever I saw you on the phone I was like oh this is interesting that this it also said something about your character because it's like you know this guy's in the middle of this like you know crazy military exercise and he's busy you know what I mean and he's the only guy that gets a phone at this place you know but there was also a two-fold thing too is that because it was the beginning of the shot we were able to kind of like just kind of subconsciously stash one of the like the cockroaches one of the main

1:48:16killers his mask over there you know so that it gave the audience one moment to see that mask before we put it on the character and it's one of those things you you probably don't even really notice it but it's it's in there so it's like you know part of the shot is a mask in the background and then the phone and then you pull back and see you on the phone and then it's the rest of the guys and so you know like I mean maybe I also just didn't have a really good plan that morning and I was just like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I ask you about it and you said like well no you you know you have it all storyboarded out anyway and you there were probably 15 different ways that he could have shot that and being the director that he is other people that I work with and I've worked with some good people that are also similar but most people come in and they they know before I walk on this set they know where I'm gonna be and they know where their camera is gonna be and you know it just okay so I come in I do my lines try to do the best I can with the

1:49:22other actors and there's a difference between that and exploring a scene from a filmmaking standpoint from an acting standpoint from a DP standpoint where everybody's kind of like you know going in and saying well what if we put the camera Michael if you could take one step over this way then we could make the camera work and that is to me the most fun about make that's why I get my car I drive under my set get the makeup chair put the wardrobe on walk out on the set usually wait four or five hours before I walk out on the set in my trailer because you know always want me there Don and to work at one in the afternoon but come out and it's that moment of collaborating with with Adam especially on this show that it's just like it's thrilling for me it's thrilling to be able to it's like being part of a painting you know and I like that you don't also like you

1:50:28don't actually go back to your trailer between shots like you know it's really funny because like when we you know first you know our first day working together it was like the it's like a big exposition scene so it was a very difficult scene we had a lot of pages and stuff and you know and there's a lot of like walking and talking and it was very complicated you know so it was kind of a hard scene to kind of like start you know a character off and a relationship and all that kind of stuff but it went really well but like you know once we did our first sort of blocking you know like we sent everybody away and you know the crew starts going and you know Mike is just like hanging out and I like I look behind like a door and he's like sitting there and he's like sitting there like this like it was just like it was such a funny video I have a photo of it too you know you just had it out but like he likes to just hang out he doesn't leave the set ever I don't know were you always like that or no I wasn't always okay you just have a lot more fun in my trailers and

1:51:33the day I find now listen what I'm doing in my trailer is the same thing that I'll be doing two hours from now at home I'll be sitting on the bed like going like this on my phone you know and I I like the energy of a crew I like the crew to know that I'm interested in them and I kind of get to know them at the same time I talked to them a little bit and I like them to know that I appreciate what they're doing and that I'm watching them and you know it's like actors like people watching them and I and I'm genuinely interested in okay what's the shot gonna be oh he's got a camera here and he's got a camera here okay well I'm gonna walk behind this camera and see what where he sat on this camera and I'm gonna walk behind this camera and then I'll talk to the guys is the camera gonna move and I get a better idea than just walking onto the set being an

1:52:38actor I know more about what the shot is going to entail what it's gonna look like what it's gonna feel like whether the camera's gonna move and I I enjoy the camaraderie you know making a movie is a lot like being I grew up playing sports and you know we all want to win the Super Bowl and we're all playing to win the Super Bowl and everybody has a position he's the coach you know I might be you know the tight end Dan might be one of the running backs we've got lineman we've got and it's it's a it's a team team effort and so I like to I like to be out in the field not in the locker room you know this has been great the movie is a lot fun we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen you guys see anything just just out of you know I I don't know if you call it great but I have

1:53:45trouble finding movies you know I've been around for so long that I've seen all the great movies like 10 times but I had I seen aria had done a movie with Glenn when Paul yeah and I saw that and I'm like okay she's very sexy and I think that was successful where but I watched a movie called El Frico's El Friex you know that oh yes yes her film yeah yeah and I saw that I wanted when I met her I didn't get a chance to talk to her but I wanted to say I saw this movie she's on it as a producer I have a feeling that movie wouldn't have got made if she yeah very small film very small movie shot supposedly in Cuba yeah and you know I if you're familiar with the movie it's just a little tiny movie about people that were so desperate in Cuba that they would inject themselves with the HIV virus to you know get away from the the sugar cane

1:54:53fields and in the horrible life that they were living in in in the city and she was great and and she's there's a scene and you know the scene where she's chasing the car out her husband out like just love her and by the way like she is like phenomenal and and Drew is fucking phenomenal he makes them like really interesting kind of like really interesting choices really interesting movie with a bunch and every time you showed a bond screen we turned and looked at each other like yeah loose freaky is this the name of the movie that you're talking about yeah yeah yeah and uh so I I've heard her talk about talking to Adam I wasn't sure if I could do this I wasn't sure well in that movie at one point one of the young kind of star of the movie is lying about having HIV and she finds out about it and she just gets fucking she goes fucking like she goes to her ex

1:55:54husband and you know you know no you could she knew she could do that I'm looking at Jason mammoa taking pictures and I'm like I don't know how Jason is you know she's she's she's she's a fiery I was spit fiery he said she was just a pleasure to work with a lot of fun and good man I wouldn't want her mad at me I've been lucky I've had almost only good experiences with actors and the one I've only had like one season actor that I work with that I had a bad experience with and uh but what are his initials so it isn't man yeah so um like the you know it's funny with me it's like I'm like always like so far behind because I I end up rewatching movies more than I watch new ones like I just get obsessed with like repeat viewings you know and um and so like whenever I'm gonna watch a new movie it always feels more like I try

1:56:59to take as safe of bed as possible because I hate more than anything the feeling of like walking out of a movie and you know being disappointed or like bored during the film and that kind of stuff and um but this year's been pretty good like I really like pillion and um I thought that was a really great experience really like it I was the the ending really through a curve ball up yeah I know I was really um which pillion she there's so much kind I'd love for Adam to explain the premise of movie to you it's like the scene with Rebecca Holland dance Stevens but like the gay version of that for like for two hours yeah um it's pretty amazing it's like nothing I've really ever seen before it's actually it's actually pretty funny I mean it's like it's like a it's like a romantic kind of sweet movie for a lot of it in a weird way it's called pillion yeah pillion like it's like the I guess it's a reference to like the seat on the back of like a motorcycle oh yeah okay that one and also back rooms I mean I love obsessions uh you know

1:57:59or obsession and I love back rooms but like back rooms like I don't I've always been obsessed with like the liminal space thing and so to see somebody do a movie on it it was I was like really you know like kind of blown away just like the visuals of it and um kind of jealous too you know because like I've always thought like oh you know if like like let's say like I retired today like I think the the thought that I've always had is like I'd love to just get like a shitty um digital camera from like 2002 and just like drive across the country and just like find liminal spaces and and like do a photo book of it yeah yeah because I just there's something so cool about that so you know I was really really into that and I was just you know it's it's been a cool year for horror and all that so right on Michael Adam thank you so much for doing this yeah thank you thanks to Adam and Michael thanks to CR thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on today's episode thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support I'm headed to tell you ride Amanda is already in Venice when we get back we will have our festival reports we'll tell you all

1:59:02the movies we saw what you should see we'll see you on