(upbeat music) - Welcome to Rise Smile Films, the film review podcast that mixes cinema with fine spirits. Journey with us as we encounter new, old, and strange films with the occasional dabble into sports and music. Proceed with caution as these podcasts feature spoilers and some mature language. This is Matt and this is Jesse. - Today on Tap, we have The Shadow, starring Alec Baldwin, John Lone, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Boyle, Ian McCallen, Jonathan Winters, and Tim Curry. Based on The Shadow by Walter B. Gibson, screenplay by David Kep, and directed by Russell McKay. Welcome back to Rise Smile Films, it's time to get back on track with our Not Quite Ready For Prime Time superheroes, particularly from the 90s. - Yeah. - And coming at you this week, we got from 1994, The Shadow, as has been discussed in the last couple of episodes, my most rented movie of all time. - Hey, we can talk about it. - Yeah. - I know why I liked it. I mean, even me watching it now, I was like, man, I was renting this weekly crazy, but I honestly think it was a Batman quotient. I mean, I had 89 returns, Batman forever. And so this was just kind of like a placeholder until I got another bad adventure, another season of the animated series on Fox Kids or something, 'cause there's a lot of parallels between both of these characters and their personalities, their attributes. - Yeah. - But did you see this in the theater? I mean, Universal, I think, was really banking on this, like launching a franchise. I think it was July 1st, '94. So right in the middle of summer, did you see this in the theater? Was it later rental? - Saw in the theater. - Okay. Yeah. You're just like, I gotta go check that out. - Well, it was on that. You said that that early period where the superhero train was kind of getting rolling and it wasn't a very Batman-like holdover. - Yep. - Yeah, we saw it in the theater. Alec Baldwin, young Alec Baldwin. Yeah, we definitely saw the theater. - Yeah. - It's the same year as the crow. I mean, just kind of looking at the numbers, I'll relay those a little bit later, but stiff competition from the Lion King, which dominated the summer and then the mask. I mean, you're in the summer of Mr. JC, Mr. Jim Carrey, 'cause he had that. And then later in the year, you'd have Ace Ventura and then Dumb and Dumber. So the box office is kind of not dominated by dark and brooding. It's dominated by slapstick. - Yeah, exactly. And there's nothing slapstick about this movie. But let's see if we can find, you know, some things in there, some nostalgic elements. And hey, I know we're gonna have a fun time talking about this one. - Yeah, here's to you. - I think a pretty appropriate whiskey for this week, Hudson Whiskey, New York. Fantastic. - It's a great bottle. - Exactly. Let's get started with our flight question. (gentle music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) - Chef's got a pretty cool little theme song. Jerry Goldsmith, you know, he's a top fiver for me, but I thought we could have a little fun with the flight question this week. You know, being that this is my most rented movie of all time, I thought we could tell our top three favorite video rental stories, movies, just things from your childhood nostalgia. I mean, taking it all the way up to when you first started with VHS to maybe rent in some DVDs, rent in some red box. And then eventually those all closed down, they all go away. And I mean, we live the streaming life now and there's something just not as fun about it. It's easier for sure. - Yeah. - But browse in the aisles of a video store and just taking a chance on, ooh, that cover looks kind of interesting. Let me read the synopsis. That's pretty good. Oh my God, this movie was ass. - Yeah, exactly. So yeah, let's just round rob in three, three. I think this could be a lot of fun. Checking in at number three for me, horror, no surprise, Fright Night actually. Just kind of a funny story because, you know, we've talked often about my irresponsible babysitter and my road to thriller with her at another irresponsible babysitter and she took us to go see Fright Night, came home, my mom found out about it and fired her that night. True story, but that didn't stop us from renting that movie a lot. So Fright Night checks in at number three actually, this will be in order, this is number three. - Okay, great night. I don't know if minor, if minor ranked end or maybe I'm telling them in chronological order, maybe there's kind of a tail being told here, but I got two in this slide just 'cause, you know, we did one of these movies a long time ago. My first R-rated movie that we ever brought home that I don't think my parents knew was R-rated and we kind of were able to sneak it under the radar was Deep Blue Sea and that was monumental for me. I was like, "Oh my God, there's an R in the house, what?" And I remember I was really tripped out by that scene in the movie when the shark chomps Dell and Scars guards arm and he's like running around getting blood everywhere. I had never seen like gore gore like that before. So that kind of tripped me out a little bit and then I had a great time with the rest of the movie. I mean, that movie's beyond stupid now, but as a, was that 99, nine year old? Getting an R-VHS tape within, it's a creature feature. I had a great time with it. Slash, Dumb and Dumber. Now, speaking of '94, they weren't taking me to see that. My parents, when that came out, I'd have been five. But somehow that tape made its way home and you know, I thought the beginning was funny, but I didn't have the span to sit down and pay attention, but my Godfather and my dad were watching the movie, well, my cousins were over and I just hear laughter on high coming from the living room and I'm like, what's going on there? And they're like pounding the carpet. And this Jeff Daniels blowing out bad toys. And I was like, what is this? And so I started watching it and I was like, oh, I gotta see this. And that kind of became a little recurring rental in the household. - Pretty bird, pretty bird, pretty bird. - It's a really funny movie, but it's so stupid that it works, right? - Yeah. - And primarily because of those two actors, they play so well together. - For really brothers? - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - That's a strange conversation around them. - Hot, hot, hot, that kingpin. - Well, they follow up, yeah, they follow up dumb and dumber with kingpin and then there's something about Mary, pretty good, a little trifecta and then that diamond flick. - The truth about something about, the one with Renee Zalweger, where Carrie's a split personality, that's-- - Me, myself and Irene. - Me, myself and Irene, yeah. And then stuck on you was great keneer and that diamond. It's really coming off, the rails are really coming off. They did that live action Three Stooges movie, which is a movie I should love, but I can't. And I never saw the sequel, the dumb and dumber or two or whatever, so, but legendary rental in the household. - But Jim Terry actually, across the board, his rentals played pretty well in my house. Liar, Liar, Ace Ventura 1, Saw Ace Ventura 2 when nature calls him the theater, so he was pretty popular in the household. - Yeah, I think everybody, right? I was at the top of his game and he was hilarious. - PG-13, I wanna say, pseudo-safe comedy, but could still push the envelope a little bit with the 13 rating. - Good. Number two for me, Hoosiers. I loved it, I have nothing bad to say about that film. I still love it, it's one of my, like maybe three favorite sports films of all time. - We'll do it one day. - I love Hoosiers. - Yeah. - So it was Hoosiers. - What made you come back to it? Was it just the basketball aspect of it? - Loved basketball, just loved basketball. I think that, you know, we've talked about it a little bit, but in sports films where you really start to struggle is watching these athletes try to play. Those dudes can really play. It wasn't even to me so much the matter of this little town that couldn't taken on these behemoths. It was that championship game and the way that it is shot, it's so beautifully done. They were really able to squeeze all of the drama out of these scenes that they possibly could, which if you think about it is what sports should be. And that's why we like sports, not blowouts, but nip and tuck close affairs. - Yeah, right to the wire, right? - Yeah. - So yeah, Hoosiers at number two. - Great choice, thanks. My number two, maybe I've told this story on the podcast before when we did the Home Alone episode, but I got into a real bad routine with my rentals where I only wanted to rent Home Alone and or I wanted the movie to be like Home Alone. Like, essentially I just wanted to see people get hurt. Or just fall down in crazy ways. So my mom was just really trying to get me out of this. I wanted to see a movie called Camp Nowhere, which is a little kid power Christopher Lloyd Camp movie that's actually terrible. And I think my mom brought home the wrong movie, but the movie she brought home became an all-time classic favorite with me. And it's heavyweights with Mr. Ben Stiller. Man, I was like, mom, why did you bring that? Take it back, take it back. And I loved every second of it. And I still do to this day. It was Ben Stiller's pre-tryout to White Goodman in Dodgeball, that's Tony Percuss. He's on another level in that movie. And it's the type of Disney movie that would never be made today 'cause we would just think you're just batching these little kids at a fat camp. I mean, you could just never do it again. And it was written by Judd Apatow, it was an early Apatow. And it was one of the first movies that you know, my friend Carson, when we really started hanging out in high school. I mean, we had mutual friends, but like, we never did stuff just us. And so one time we were just hanging out at lunch, me and him. And I was like, what do I talk about with this kid? And that movie came up and he had seen it and he had a love for it. And there starts a friendship right around ridiculous movies. And I owe heavyweights a lot. So thank you, mom, for that one. - Oh, how about that? - You've never seen it. - Really? - I should check it out. - It's really silly. - Number one. - Number one. - The Golden Child. It's terrible. It's absolutely atrocious. - And the reign of Eddie Murphy, right? - Yeah, right. Smack dab in the middle of it. And that is one piece of shit film. I don't even know why I really liked that movie so much. It's like, 7th, 8th, 9th grade kind of a time for me. - Yeah. - Uh, mysticism around child, what I'm just bad, real bad. - We really tried to like fantasize or... So that's number one, yeah. Kung Fu action around that time 'cause "Big Drum and Little China" was the same year, the year after that one, much better movie. But yes, it's weird trying to do some weird stuff with that genre. I think we've only seen it once or twice. Didn't really leave much of an impression on me. So, but you kept going back to it for something. - I did, so I liked something about it. - Yeah. - And that's, you know, I mean Eddie Murphy. So there's that. We did this with Beverly Hills Cop. I don't know what it is. It kind of came on not too long ago for a little while or I've streamed a few minutes of it. It was really, really, it's trash, it's terrible. It's a really horrible film, man. I don't know what I ever saw in that. - Yeah. Maybe you need to rent it again. - Oh, man. - Yeah, the golden child, how about that? - Ben. - I want the knife. - There you go, man. All righty, my number one. So kind of in the chronological order. Now I'm in college and said friend Carson, his house was the perfect for watching movies 'cause he had like a media room and like a separate wing of the house. So his mom's bedroom was like on the other side. And so we could act like complete maniacs back there and she could somehow still sleep through it. - Yeah. - So it was perfect. We would, someone would bring a tape over or a VH disc like, we're gonna watch the thing tonight. We're watching like prom or we went, we cycled through dozens of movies. But the one movie we had talked about it, no one knew what we were in for. And we finally brought it to the table and it has become kind of a staple with my little group. And I highly recommend it to people that haven't had the experience before, but it is Tommy LaZoe's The Room. We rented this on Netflix DVD. Remember when you get her mailed in? So maybe the last stages of the video rental, right? And man, we didn't know where, but it was laughter from beginning to end. We kind of did our own Rocky Horror thing, you're supposed to throw spoons at the screen when there's a spoon on screen. And it was just complete hilarity. So kind of talk about just like from the tapes to the DVD to like that group atmosphere of renting something for, and no one knows what they're in for, that's kind of a fun experience. - That's cool. - Yeah. - Those are the ones I really like is, what were only made that better if I had known what they were in for, 'cause I'd have gotten a lot more pleasure out of watching them react. So that's my favorite type of viewing experience. - Good thing it was such a quality, well-made film that you listen to. - Exactly, how about that? - I did not hit, I did not. Well, hi, Mark. - Yes, yeah. - Have you ever seen it? - Pieces. - Yeah. - Yeah. To watch the whole thing is just like, how did this happen? How did this man get money and make a movie? And then they made a movie on how did they made it with James Franco as Tommy was so. - Yep. - So that's my number one. - But man, I gotta tell you, I truly miss the video rental stores. Hollywood video was one that I frequented often and they just had thousands of tapes and they had the movies or the video games as well. Top of that, I mean, when you rented a video game, I did this often where you'd rent something and you didn't wanna be stuck with it for a whole week if it was complete garbage. So I would take it back and be like, oh, the disc isn't playing. I would pull that gag of like, can I just switch it out for something else? 'Cause you had played it for 30 minutes and we're like, oh, this is ass. I can't be stuck with this for my whole spring break. - Right, yes, I mean, it's up to good. - Exactly, so let's switch it out. And I gotta tell you, the DVD rentals was a bit of a crapshoot because unlike the tape that could just kind of go in and out of hundreds of VCRs, the discs took some wear and tear and if they were overly scratched, you kind of knew, man, I don't know if this is gonna play from beginning to end here, I might be stuck. And that happened the first time I saw Alien, that happened. Yeah, like right before the chest burst you're seeing that it just froze right there and you couldn't get past it. You couldn't even get a little bit ahead of it to like get past the scratch. So now you just, it's all up to your internet speed. - Yes, but something's lost in that, right? I mean, yeah, you can watch anything whenever you have an inkling for it, but I mean, I think it built, maybe why I rented this a lot too. It kind of built up the anticipation. I'm like, I kinda wanna watch that shadow again. I need to make a trip to the video store and let's rent it, but hey, let's talk about it. Let's talk about whatever's in the water that was making me watch this thing, but let's get to our review breakdown of the shadow. Here it goes. (screaming) - Show yourself, fella. - You murdered a policeman, Duke. - Who said that? Duke, who said that? Shut up. - The weed of crime bears. - I don't like this. The stinks, let's get the hell out of here. - Shut your hole, Maxi. - Did you think you'd get away with it? - Come on, Duke. (laughing) - Did you think I would know? (laughing) - All right, we'll get to that scene a little bit, but let's start in Ty Bet. Host World War I and we're in the opium fields, baby. Some sort of drug fields, drug trade fields, opium, heroin, whatever, they're shucking here. And we meet the drug den of Yink Cow, Le Monde Cranston, but man, this guy's living lavish. He's letting his hair go, he's letting his fingernails go. This guy's looking ratty. They bring a guy in that wants to talk to him about how unfair the drug trade business is, that he's killing his men. And man, it's none other than James Hong, Mr. David Lopez himself. Usured in by Al Young, the guy that was electrocuting Martin Riggs just three short weeks ago. - That's right, yeah. - And he's really pissed off, but we want to show that Yink Cow, Mr. Cranston is evil, he is power hungry, he's war hungry. He just killed God knows how many people in the war of this ex vet. Yeah, just shoot through the both of them. Shoot through my assistant and shoot that guy. I don't need him anymore. So this is a bad dude here. And then he awakens in the middle of the night, he's abducted and he's taken to the temple of, I gotta get these names, right? The Tulku, holy man that exudes otherworldly powers. But it's hard to kind of distract because man, Alec Baldwin's chest hair is out of control. - And it's a hairy man, right? - What do you think of this opening? I mean, the shadow, I mean, this is, I would suppose, this is our opening scene to lead into our inciting incident. There is something I do like about it, but there's also something, some things perplexing about it is, this is a weird way, I think, to start the movie. But much like the crow, I mean, if we want to just not cut the bullshit and just like get right down to it, I mean, this guy's gonna be the shadow in about seven minutes. I can appreciate that. I mean, think of all the Marvel movies we've watched or we gotta get through it an hour before Ant-Man puts on the Ant-suit or Tony-- - Steve Rogers. - Yeah, Steve Rogers becomes the hulking cap Steve Rogers. I mean, both of these movies are just like, no, get him in the suit, let's get down to some action. And we got a pseudo kind of explain, you know, how they get their powers. Okay, excuse me. (laughs) My history with the shadow goes all the way back to my father. And he used to sing "It's Praises on High" to me and my little brother about the episodic element that they tuned into religiously-- - On the radio. - On the radio. And so I knew about the shadow going into this film, but with very little knowledge of what it was other than the shadow was sort of like this town-y vindicator Merck, essentially, that had the ability to use disguises to disappear. And okay, I guess I never really got it, but I sort of got it. And even back in those days, when he would talk about the shadow, I still said, that sounds like Batman. He's like, well, kind of, but that's where Batman came from. Okay, I don't wanna get into the, you know, Bob Finger and all this other-- - Bob Kane, Bill Finger, it doesn't matter. - Well, it's interesting that he brings that up because this watch specifically I was like, there's a lot of similarities between these two characters. So I was like, well, which came first? I mean, "Shadow" in 1931, Batman 1939, right? So, and Kane has said the shadow was an influence on that character. We're gonna see Lamont Cranston doing his best, Wayne Manorite bit later. But I go into this film and I see this completely irredeemable asshole and I'm thinking to myself, wow, is this really who we're gonna turn into the shadow? 'Cause he needs a whole lot of manscaping. And, right? 'Cause he didn't need a sweater and winter 'cause he's got plenty of fur. And we've gotta figure out what the skill set is gonna be and we've gotta go through what is a necessary element in all the creation of superheroes, which is death and rebirth. Like you said, seven minutes later, we're gonna don the mantle of the shadow. And I'm not sure any of the questions that were ever posed to me when my dad introduced me to his version of the shadow were answered. And I guess I don't matter, it doesn't matter. I don't care if, once we become the shadow, it's such a compelling story like I'm willing to forget the past. That doesn't happen for me at any point in the film, any point. And instead, I just kept thinking like, what did he go through other than having a fight with a pen? I'll tell you what he went through. He went through a scroll is what he went through. And I'm gonna read it for the audience here in a second because yeah, I mean, he's ushered to this temple. First of all, he doesn't see it there and then it appears. So we're kind of alluding to this power of the clouded mind doesn't see the true truth, right? 104, is that the runtime on this film? - Yeah, so not terribly long. - No, no, we kind of like that space especially for superhero films. I don't know why once he ascends into this temple to where he's going to be remade in a better version of himself, we punt on that because you might argue that in the first act of any superhero film, the training montage, might be the most action that you care about maybe until the midpoint with the first introduction of that hero versus the first introduction of the bad guy. - Yeah, imagine watching Batman Begins and Christian Bale ascends that mountain and Liam Neeson beats him up and it was like, you will learn the truth, the path of the League of Shadows. And then we just cut to a scroll and then we cut back and he's Batman and got to see. - People would lose their minds. - Oh, I would have lost in the theater. - Yeah, so as someone who, I'm sure as someone who's familiar with this movie, and has a special nostalgic place with these older films and films we live, we have to forgive some. - Yeah. - Yeah, nostalgia goes a long way, yeah. - Does it go far enough for you? - Yeah, I gotta tell you, let's just do this opening. Are you pulling your hair out here? Are you okay with the Teethi gold? - Well, that thing's ridiculous. That's out of like a Mortal Kombat movie. Pruba, the knife, I do have to say, there's moments when the effects look kind of all right for '94. - Yeah, I agree with that. - But he's talking to this mystic here, this the Tuku, who's like this little boy with the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch, and he's telling them Lamont Krant, you're gonna learn the true path like the decadent ways. It's all done through dialogue. So if you're not paying attention to that, you're not gonna know why he's choosing him. He's a bad guy and he needs to set him straight. Why he picked him is never told to us. - Right. - And then we just cut to the scroll. Now, me now, I would love to see, yeah. What does the training of Lamont Krantzden look like? What type of training is Alec Baldwin doing to? I wanna see the training montage of how he learns the power to change his face. Like, I wanna see that scene because everything's just shown to us later. And I was like, I guess that's another power that this guy has. As a kid though, yeah, get me out of Tibet. You couldn't get me out of there fast enough. Get me to a place I'm familiar with, New York City. Okay, good. And let me see some shadow business here. Let me see a guy that's at least somewhat resembling a superhero because this ain't it. What's puzzling about this to me is you have already had a blueprint laid before you on what audiences we'll put up with. And let's just compare it to Batman for a minute. - Yeah. - Batman number one. It takes a while to really get into the teeth of the Batman bit and that. I don't think anybody was ever super upset that it was too much Michael Keaton. - Yeah. - You know, too much Wayne and not like it was fine. And that movie made a fortune and people loved it. And I would also argue it even sort of plays in the same art deco space a little bit that this one does. This one is a bit more vibrant, but they are sort of in that same kind of area. - Yeah, more period set, yeah. - I mean, the Batman is certainly darker, but there is a garish color used in both from time to time. So I think it's got some things working for it. A blueprint that shows how to make a successful film like this, an amazing color palette. But then you get to the big question. Is it because, and I'm really serious about this now, is it because the casting of Alec Baldwin at a time when the name sort of mattered a little bit came to be synonymous with like that fucking guy can't act the same thing with everybody in the family. So we got to give him a voice over and very, very little screen time 'cause no one's buying this guy after he opens his mouth that he is Bruce Wayne. - I don't know if it's that, but then I also wondered too, I was like, well, did Universal not have enough money for these scenes? I also don't think it's that either. Did David Kep not write these scenes? - Yeah, right. - Con, maybe. - Yeah, I don't know. I could call this guy's screenwriting into question many times, right? He did give us most a Spider-Man though. - Yeah. - Yeah, I don't know. It's just, yeah, do it in a, but it's not even a voice over read by the shadow. I mean, it's just scroll. I'm gonna read it for everyone. - Get your popcorn. - The price of redemption for Cranston was to take up man's struggle against evil. The Tulku taught him to cloud men's minds to fog their vision through force of concentration, leaving visible the only thing he could never hide, his shadow. Thus armed Cranston returned to his homeland, the most wretched lair of, I may as well say, scum and villainy. We know as most icy spaceport, oh no, New York City. So that's kind of a fun little reveal. I mean, a lot's told to us there. I mean, the power to cloud men's minds, I think it's pretty, as a pretty cool power. I mean, it's not mind control per se. It's essentially confusion. Confusion that you're not seeing things that you are seeing things. You're seeing what that person wants you to see and believe, which is, it's like an X-Men power. - It's, or Mysterio. Okay, so I'm good with all that. - Yeah, illusionist. - Yeah, so that the first line in that scroll, I think is important because it leans into this, the price for redemption. So he's got to go through some trials and tribulations in order to make himself over into the shadow so that he can atone for his ill, begotten gains and previous debaucherous lifestyle to take up the cause of the innocent, or what? - Yeah, or just, yeah, just be good. Don't be an opium emperor anymore. - I mean, you see the way he disposes of anybody that he doesn't agree with in his opium dins. - Correct, yeah. - Why? Like, what is chape, what, or what, or what? - I think we would need to know more about the Tulku and why he's some sort of, why he's plucking these people. 'Cause we're gonna find another one of his students later in the movie, right? John Lone as Genghis Khan's ancestor. - Yeah, so, I mean, is it kind of a trial and tribulate? Is it Mr. Glass looking for a diamond in the run? Who can go fight my veil of do-goodery? Maybe, I don't know, maybe we need to know, a little bit more about that guy, but we're never gonna see that guy. And maybe we never know, 'cause maybe in the television, sorry, the radio series, maybe they never got to that either. - Maybe not, I don't know. I mean, I've listened to some of those. I had some cassettes of some of the repurposed shadow. I mean, there was books and comics, there was serials, there was movies. But the characters, you know, been in a lot of different formats. - So, this gets to the question where I was trying to take us a little while ago, and I'm glad we got here now in this. Again, I don't have enough history with the character to say, "Oh, well, in season five, an episode bla bla bla bla bla." - Yeah, no way. - On the radio, we finally got to what the Tulku or whatever the hell his name is. - Yeah. - If that was never defined, and you're at a space where there is still plenty of fodder for the not quite yet ready for primetime superhero cast of characters, the one, and like this is a disaster dude 'cause they do do it later and ends up being a disaster, but it might not have been then. Why was this chosen instead of the spirit? - Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's another thing. With another clear, almost crow-like origin story, right? With even a cow, it kind of looks like Batman. And Will Eisner was a way better writer than whoever the hell was pinning the episodic pieces for the radio back then. - Absolutely, but you're right. That movie is also shit. - Might be worse than this one. - It might be. So they both failed terribly. - Sure, yeah. - And maybe it's around this time too where just like Universal's like, "Look, people don't have the patience "for like an origin story. "Let's just get to like show the people the goods, right?" - My dad would always quote, "Only the shadow knows." And I just watched in this film, I tried to go back and granted enough grace to sort of be cliffhanger weekly or nightly, probably weekly, maybe twice weekly, I don't know what the cadence for the program on the radio was, episodic radio programming where there wasn't any entertainment. So you're not gonna have to be as discerning as you and I are being known. At that point, you're just glad you're not having to play fucking shoots and ladders again, right? - Yeah. - So you're happy to have it. And with that, do you not have this spectrum or the lens of completion to look at it through because it was just feed the beast tonight. So it's a cliffhanger and then the beast will be hungry again on Sunday night. And if that's kids, then we never find out about the Tuku. - Yeah. - But again, in 1994, audiences had grown up and it's also Jesse, why there wasn't radio programming like that anymore. 'Cause it went the way of the dinosaurs. And so, universal, I think they know what they're doing when it comes to film. - Sure. - There's a legacy to prove it. - I don't, I wanna know what the conversation was to get this film off the ground, Greenlit, and in the studios, I think that's very, very interesting. - Yeah. - You got Russell McKay, who? Yeah, he's the guy that did the Highlander movies is where I know him from. But yeah, it's not like a Spielberg or like one of the name that attached to this project in the 80s was Robert Zemeckis and another director that I'll mention later. But yeah, it's an interesting kind of road and whatnot. But this scene on the bridge here that I played, you know, a little bit earlier where, you know, they're about to kill this Japanese-American professor. He's Peter and C. Mende, who's like a dick-tracy death. They're gonna go, and the shadow just starts cackling on the bridge here. And yeah, I gotta tell you, you know what, I think the laugh works for me because it almost sounds maniacal. And if I was one of these gangsters and I'm on a bridge and I hear that, I think I'm getting out of there. I mean, I'm not gonna just dump this guy. I mean, that's, and we can't see the guy doing it. So him and this guy get into some fisty cuffs. The guy shoots up the bridge, doesn't really hit anything. And then the shadow emerges. And I do kind of like how he's revealed, which is like silhouette on the bridge. And then he's standing there with, you know, his trench coat and the fedora and the bandana. And those guys get out of dodge, right? So then we go to Roy Tam. And I love this bit where he pulls out his guns and it looks like he's gonna kill this guy. And he just started shooting at this guy, just like, "Oh, no, no!" And he's only shooting the C-men blocks. And then we get to this interesting scene here. - Thank you. He fell as a probably fisty. You can just scrub me off anywhere a lot. - You're Dr. Roy Tam, a professor in the science department at NYU. - This? - I've saved your life, Roy Tam. It now belongs to me. - It does? - You'll become one of my agents, like dozens of others all over the world. - Could I, uh, ask my wife about this? - No! - Mr. Shrevenet's here will instruct you in the way in which I will contact you. Should I require your help? When you hear one of my agents say the sun is shining, you will respond, but the ice is slippery. This will identify you to each other. Do you understand? - The sun is shining. - But the ice is slippery. - Tell me one thing. How did you know what was happening to me? How did you know who I am? (laughing) The shadow knows. (laughing) - Lot going on right there. Where do you wanna start? - Um, well, my favorite line of that is, can I ask my wife, he goes, "No!" - Yeah, what was that? - Protect, you must keep her out of this. - Do not tell her about this deal here. - One thing I do like about it is, okay, so the shadows do in his, it's almost like this trickle effect of do-goodery, which is, I am now gonna descend upon New York, I will help that guy getting robbed there, but now he's, now he owes me, now he's gonna be a part of my network of people. So he's got these agents all over the city, all over the world, he says, so I mean, he's got people that he can page at any time. What I find fascinating about that is, then Lamont Cranston, the great, great name, by the way. - Yeah, he doesn't have to do it all himself. He doesn't have to be the expert in nuclear fission. He doesn't have to be the expert in museum antiquities. He can call upon these people to do him a service. He's almost like the godfather, right? Like when the time comes, your ring's gonna glow, and I'll get in touch with you and repeat this phrase after me, but the ice is slippery. I think that's a cool way to have fellow assailants kind of hidden within plain sight, right? We're gonna meet a cop later, there's this kind of network of this kind of like call center of the red ring wearing headlights. - Yeah, the psych doctor at the end is wearing, his cabbie, is that? Look, so he doesn't ship knits or whatever his name is? - Yeah, Peter Boyle, man. - Yeah, young Frankenstein. - He doesn't even have to drive-- - Drive Frankenstein, yeah. - He doesn't even have to drive. He just calls this guy, and this guy owes me, I want to know that story. Like, why does he owe him, or he just has to drive him everywhere? That's kind of cool. - And I think the reason why people wouldn't, you know, just, well, forget that guy, I'm not listening to that, I'm not putting this piece of jewelry on, is because this guy's like partially insane, I mean, he's laughing, he's heckling like a hyena in here, and he looks kind of mysterious and creepy. Yeah, I might listen to what this guy's telling me, I don't want him to show up in my bedroom in the middle of the night, so I think there's an element of fear and intimidation, again, the Batman factor, right, of why you would listen to him in the first place. - I am absolutely with you on expanding the shadows footprint by these people that he's saved from coast to coast, because then it removes a major obstacle, which could only be the more difficult without the red line of travel and movies, but on radio, cut to-- - 'Cause what year is it, 30? - Yeah, 30? - I think it's probably pretty contemporary. So if he has this team that he's assembled, then you have a very far-reaching base that comes in handy. We have gone back and forth on this, and it's such a good point, you're the one that makes it more than me, and that is the hero who's just like the bond effect, who's really good at everything, speaks Russian, and is a Jhin Ninjutsu master, and knows how to, you know, got a CDL, and every, you know, like every, it gets to be-- - Too much, yeah. - You don't have to do that now, and it also shows, because these people wearing this red ring, just how long the shadow has been doing it, and also, how many favors, like you said, are owed the shadow, and what did he do to get them in that favor position? And I think, Jesse, that's the story. Here's the problem, though. The sun is shining, but the ice is slippery. I mean, where are we going next? The ship is in the harbor, but the freight is on the dock. I mean, what are we, what, come on, man? Like, we're using gold, yeah, Jesse, this ship is in the harbor, winky, winky. How about just the red ring, but then that presents a problem, and I'm trying to think about this through the lens of radio? - Yeah. - What does a red ring look like on radio? - Nothing. - No. - I mean, what, right? It's a sound effect. - Exactly. - So, again, shadow dumb, 'cause I haven't spent a minute listening to it on the radio, but then we get in, so another question comes up for me. One of the things that drives me crazy when I talked about film with people is this. Yeah, it was good, but I liked the book better. It's not the fucking book. - Exactly. - The book is the book, the movie's the movie. - I don't like that argument either 'cause books, music, art, video, they're all different mediums to be interpreted in different ways. - Right. - So, the argument that it played better on the radio, or-- - Can we talk about the book argument real quick? - Oh, yeah, sure. - Because when people read books and they're like, wow, what a great book that was. You visualize it in a certain way. In my brain, I'm so filmic in my head. I'm castin' who's playin' those characters. So, when I go see the movie and someone says that, it's almost like, well, what did you expect that person to like, read your mind, to make the movie you saw when you were reading the book? And did you read the book in 90 minutes? 'Cause the movie gave you 90 minutes. And then I think us coming from that screenwriting perspective, the stuff that gets cut is usually like, well, they cut out this scene or that scene. Well, just like, oh, this is probably the reason why they cut because we can't be sitting in the theater for four hours. - Exactly. - So we gotta expedite things a little bit. - So that same argument about, well, the book was better than the movie. Also applies here, the radio program was better than the movie. Man, I don't even know about that either. - Yeah, no. - And I certainly am not gonna delve into those waters to figure out. So what I'm getting to is the prior knowledge that I think is necessary for me to grant this film the grace it would need was not something that I would argue many people in 1994 were willing to go through. Like, my dad didn't see this movie and he was the biggest shadow guy on the planet. - Yeah. - So in a lot of ways, it falls into the unbreakable trap. - Sure. - Not nearly as well made, but out of time, it's not. - Who is this movie for? - Thank you. - Okay. - Apparently it was for 10-year-old Jesse. - No, not even, dude, I was-- - Six-year-old Jesse. - Five to six. So it was very non-disserning, six-year-old Jesse. - Right, exactly, yeah. - And it wasn't made for that guy either. - Yeah. - You were just weird. - I was just weird. - No, I'm still weird. - Yeah, I mean, complimentary. You were just film weird at a young age. - No, watching this movie, I was like, oh my God, I sat through this movie. - 25 times. - You know more than 50? - 30 plus, not 50, but like, it baked the question why my parents never just bought me the movie so that we could stop at the video store for it, but like long scenes of just like hanging out in labs, hanging out in rooms, hanging out at the cobalt club. I'm just, what was I watching in this movie? I mean, like there's like four shadow scenes in the movie. We just talked about one of them. He's not gonna show up again for another 50 minutes. - And it couldn't have been some sick fascination with Penelope Ann Miller, I would bet at that point. - No, no way. - But I do gotta say, she's pretty good, and she, I don't know if her character's good, but she, beautiful woman, right? - Yeah, and they dress her awesomely in this. - Yeah, she looks like she got plucked right out of a film noir, I mean, she looks great. - Hey, Stanwick, to the point where I was like, hey, hey, hey, Baldwin, still with Kim Basinger, she better watch out. You might beat her up too, or maybe kill one of them. Anyway, that's a bad joke, but it's the truth. Okay, so I'm just very perplexed. - Yeah, me too. If Universal really did have plans, like you said, which was we're gonna launch this baby, and we are going to make the shadow a franchise. - Well, they're looking for the next Batman, right? - Sure. - Yeah. - I don't know at what point they didn't go like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's a lot of holes in this story, and we can fix them, just slow down. - I think they should have taken some lessons from Dick Tracy because I think the same thing befell that. I mean, talk about another old character in a movie that looks amazing, cast amazing. - And it's not great. - Yeah, and at the end of the day, it just kind of glimpse across the finish line, right? I mean, again, Disney looking for our Batman. And I think the lesson in all this is, there's only one Batman, and he's still doing it to this day. I mean, he's one of the most unique characters in all of pop culture. He's stood the test of time since 1939. So I don't know what they're looking for here, but yeah, of course you want to start a franchise. I mean, we're in an era where like, we need to have some Batman money here. We don't have access to DC, so let me get the public domain to the shadow. - Don't you see the story though, as not as grand as taking on a Genghis Con descendant, but the acquisition of a team by rescuing them, I'm sorry I'm asking this film, and we could do this for a long time. - Rescuing these people from the clutches of some street level mafioso, which is kind of how the film starts, to be honest with you. And then as you do it, they become part of your team of red, ring, wearing helpers. And then you also have, so we have the Batman blueprint. We have the color palette Art Deco blueprint. And now you also have the Vito Corleone blueprint. And you're not having to take these huge leaps and story that radio may be answered or didn't, but who cares, 'cause no listens to the radio like that anymore. And he creates a team to take down. - A drug kingpin? - Yeah, women gambling drugs, something. Instead of fucking Genghis Con, dude. (laughing) - Let's go to the Cobalt Club here, so. - Let's do it, Jonathan Winters, how odd. - Very interesting, I do gotta tell you though, so Lamont Cranston now is the Alec Baldwin of '90s. Alec Baldwin, he enters this room, and he comes in and I'm like, I'm watching him, and I'm like, I gotta play Batman. He looks pretty good in the tucks. I mean, I was like, I can see Bruce Wayne. I mean, he's already doing a voice. He had to have been in the conversation for the Tim Burton movie, right? - Had to. - A name thrown about. I mean, then he would have worked with his wife, right? Or, no, they started, I think they got married the year, this movie came out of the year before. He would have met her there. - Yeah. - But I thought that was like, he could have done it, but hey, man, not taking Keaton away. Get outta here, right? - Get outta here, right? - Yeah, Jonathan Winters, his uncle, who's the commissioner of Gordon of this universe, just eating steak this whole movie or something ribeye. I don't know, it was a lot of red meat for Jonathan Winters in this movie. I love Jonathan Winters. That's a mad, mad, mad, mad world connection for me. And again, we see the power kind of come in here. So now I gotta put George Lucas on the stand because his eyes go, they do the light trick. - Yep. - You are not going to form a task force. You are gonna forget everything about the shadow. - And those are not the droids you were looking for. - It's a Jedi mind trick, right? Man, George Lucas got some explaining to do, hidden fortress, the shadow. I mean, come on, where did Star Wars come from, George? Yeah, yeah. All right, what do you think about that? - So I guess we're defining, defining, come on Matt, defining character or skill set. I'm good with that. - I think it's pretty cool. And he's gonna use it several times to get himself out of a jam. And then it's not gonna work because he runs into the Margot Lane enters the picture, looking like a smoke show, right? And he's like, I'm gonna send her over a wine, the exact wine that she's thinking about. And then he's like, I had this strange craving for peeking duck. Oh, that's what I wanted to eat right now. So they go have a little date and she's able to kind of, she's answering questions that he's not really asking. So she has some sort of telepathy or mine, whatever. I don't know. So he's like, oh, I better play my cards safely with this one. I can't, you know, psych her out to my will. But again, I think the last time we talked about Penelope Ann Miller was Carlito's way. And we had to have talked about the career that was maybe stolen from her from Nicole Kidman or Naomi Watts or whoever. But, bye for, yeah. I think she's good, she's fine. She's absolutely beautiful. It's just those roles went to other people and the shadow just didn't amount to anything. Carlito's way was more of a patino and Sean Penn vehicle. How could it not be? But I think she's an interesting presence here. I mean, the telepathy, I don't know if they play as much into that, maybe later when she saves him. But I kind of wanted to know a little bit more about that. Like who was her, like, like, did Ian McKellen have that kind of element? Because that guy's a buffoon of all sorts, right? But, yeah, what do you think of all that? It's an interesting first date. And I got to tell you, this is a long night that we're in here. So we saved a guy on a bridge. We went to the club. Now we're on the date. Now we're dropping her off. And then Genghis Khan's going to come out of her. It's not Genghis Khan, but Khan Khan is going to come out of Shiwon Khan is going to come out of his sarcophagus. All in this same night. I mean, this is busy night. Let's talk about the Penelope and Miller character. Margot Lane, Margot Lane. I kind of wish they had leaned in more to the Friday element than the Melanie Daniels element in this. There does seem to be a bit of a backdrop with her father that Jonathan Winters warns Lamont Cranston about. Oh, you know who her dad is, don't you? Which then we're playing into that. Whereas Friday and his girl Friday, I think meets Carrie Grant better. And let's be kind of honest. I mean, Baldwin is kind of grant-esque in this. Is that Rosalind Russell? Yeah, Rosalind Russell, Rosalind Russell. And becomes, I think, from the get-go more ally than frenemy? Because by the end of the film, and we're going to get to that water tower scene a little bit and you're going to have to help me. She kind of ends up there anyway. Yeah, his charms aren't going to work on her. I don't know, Jesse. She's like with what they've given her to work with and the mannequin that she is on the screen the way they ornately. I've never seen an off-green pea-green dress look as a mat like this beautiful as it looks on that woman. Yeah. She is, they do a fantastic job outfitting her. Absolutely. So that's absolutely working. It's just an odd pairing because like, okay, I read her mind, I give her her wine, we take peaking duck, and then we don't go to bed? Yeah. What? Well, probably he'd be like, I gotta erase this evening from her brain, but I hope he would do it, I don't know. But he can't, so I mean, she's his equal in a way. Do you think they have chemistry together? Sure, yeah, some. I think, yeah, I think it's, I don't think the movie lets them until like the very end though. Until it's too late, right? And the movie's wrapping up rather quickly. She walks in and the fish stops women. And Lamont Cranston even speaks like, oh my God, who is that? You know, like the bolt of lightning that rips through him. And then he dates her in this very seductive way and then just moves on? Just moves on? Yeah. I don't get it, man. What are we, like, what are we doing? I don't know. This was the first time I realized I was like, well, how did Lamont Cranston get all this money? I was like, oh, because he was a drug king thing in Tibet. It was like the first time that dawned on me today. Is that right? I guess I didn't even consider it. Is that where he got his money from? He had to have been. Yeah, he was an opium kingpin. Obviously he had some wealth and riches. So again, that would have been another like, well, why is this guy just suddenly wealthy? Has it come from family? I was like, no, that's how he did. It's very simple right there. So he sends himself up, kind of looks like the sanctum santorum in the middle of, you know, Midtown here. And he has himself a spooky dream where this flame talks and he's like, someone's coming. Cut to the museum and this mysterious sarcophagus shows up out of nowhere. No one knows where it came from. They're reading the thing and they're like, well, that dangest con. Like, someone get onto the manifest. We must find out where this is from. And we get this. - We're closed. Join me, or die, excuse me. Join me or die. This is, this is private property. Your mind is weak. Don't come any closer. Fall to your knees. Put your gun to your temple. Sacrifice yourself to me. Yes, my God. - So now we can see how this clouding power can work for a bad guy, right? Well, just kill yourself. And then later, he's gonna tell that guy from Mahaland Drive that got scared by the dumpster woman, tells him to jump off the Empire State Building, right? But yeah, okay, yeah, this is a big villain here. So this is the last descendant of Genghis Khan. He is coming his grandpappy's sarcophagus. And his goal, I guess, is to finish what Genghis never could, which is world domination of sorts. I'm gonna use these powers that I learned. I was a student of the Tulko as well, while Montkranston. But this is, I guess, a pretty big villain now, right? I mean, part of it's fish out of water for him. He's in New York. I mean, everyone's like, what's this guy doing here? I love how he sacrifices that cab. He just drives him into a gas tank. And then mine fucks all of New York so they can't see this gigantic hotel right in the middle of nowhere. This is his base of operations. And now we're gonna build a weapon of mass destruction to start our annihilation here in New York City. But what I do like about that part is, I mean, he tries to get the shadow to come to his side saying, look, I know you're a bad dude. I knew about the stuff he did. I mean, we've learned that in grade school. Come over to my side and he's like, no, I ain't joining you, Khan. But what do you think about this character? I mean, I guess I probably forgot this is supposed to be some sort of Genghis Khan ancestor. That's pretty wild. Again, I think it's misdirected. I don't think this, not Genghis Khan. Just make it Genghis Khan. Yeah. Why go like third cousin? Go get Genghis. It's great, great, great, great, great grandson. And if you're gonna play in the Genghis Khan myth, then it's conquest. So I guess world domination fits, but you know what, conquest was more appropriate and is missed because we didn't figure out the Penelope Ann Miller, Alec Baldwin. Yeah. The conquest of his woman. Yeah. And especially if her dad is this media tycoon and he learns the power of propaganda and what it like, a battle for her that leads to immense, yeah, control of mass people's minds. Yeah. Because now I can use my little magical eyes and whether that's through television or print or both, I can all of these people to carry out my will. So I'm Robin Banks and no one's like, I'm doing whatever the hell I want. But the key to that is the media conglomerate or the tycoon that is Margot, what the hell's her name? Why can't I remember her name? Margot Lane. I was in a car Margot Sloan. It has Margot Sloan, Jesse. I don't know. Margot Lane's father. But I got to get her first. And then we're playing what I think a much more reasonable axis of conflict. Not take over the world five minutes after you showed up and you don't even what clothes people are wearing. Yeah. But the conquest of the woman. Yeah. And you know where they can draw from that? So again, I'm looking back at classic fiction and literature. It's Dracula. Yeah. It's Dracula. And even they're even in a Dracula hypnotic place. It doesn't have to vamp her. Yeah. I just, I don't. And universal doesn't know Dracula? Yeah. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Man, that's frustrating. I'm mad that it's not Genghis Khan. And then I'm just going to show up in the world's my eye stir because I can do this magic trick with my eyes. Man, I don't know, dude. OK, so it's hard to say this is universal's fault. I mean, they signed off on this for sure. I mean, they take some blame. This is David Kepps' fault. I mean, this is the screenplay he wrote. I mean, what's David Kepps' best screenplay? Incompletion. Probably Jurassic Park or Spider-Man, the Spider-Man one. Like about what? 82, 85% of Spider-Man from what I understand? Yeah, but there's some Cameron in there and there's some other people in there. And by the time they got to two, they were just like, hand the keys to Alvin Sargent and what-- And him and Raimi will take care of it, right? Let's go, right. And the dress park's good, but I mean, he's adapting a pretty good book, right? So I don't know where Kepps, it's just-- I'm hitting Miss with him quite often. Sounds like mostly Miss. Yeah. I'm trying to think of the awful of Kepps' filmography because it's a name. Everyone has seen this guy's name show up in the credits, right? Again, we're talking about script-- Oh my god, Vision. --and the Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yep. Keep going. OK, dress park. Ooh, Carlito's way. The Shadow, Mission Impossible. I like that movie. Stir of Echoes, well, he directed that pass. Panic Room, Spider-Man, Secret Window. He directed that pass. War of the Worlds, pass. Crystal Skull, Super Pass, Angels and Demons, Super Pass. Premium, Jack Ryan, Shadow Recruit. Yeah, Super Pass. Oh, he did right. He was a writer on the Tom Cruise Mummy movie. Him and what's his name? Kurtzman or Sierra, whichever one did that thing. He'd also worked on Dial of Destiny. So yeah, I mean, it's a lot of big stuff, but it's not like the good versions of the big stuff, right? It's not like he's doing-- But there's a few smashes in there, too. Sure. Some terrible misses. I don't hate Jack Ryan, Shadow Recruit as much as you do, by the way. I think those Jack Ryan films are actually OK. But neither here nor there. Speaking of Alec Baldwin, right? Yeah, this is basic, dude. This is basic storytelling. Yeah, is this just a gig? I mean, it's just-- You know, and if you're going to go ahead and do the research to bone up and read Jurassic Park, then adapt that in a way where the book resembles the movie and it fits story-wise. Wouldn't you have had to do that with the Shadow? Did he just get bored with the Shadow radio? And think, fuck, I'm five episodes into this. And I can't do another one of them. So I don't know where it came from. We're going with it. Maybe. Maybe, right. But at some point, how did somebody not go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're going to use Genghis Khan's fifth nephew? Yeah. No one gives a-- like, he's still from the past. Yeah. So why-- Make it Genghis. Make Genghis. Why are you going to use this arrival in New York City? And I figure out in, I don't know, one chance encounter with a cop that I can take over the world. How about start with New York City? If the scope is just too big for the movie that doesn't want to provide any landscape to use the scope of lens to look through? Sure, yeah. A very, very small window. Yeah. And yet we're trying to paint this massive, massive backdrop. Absolutely. Let's talk about two other people that are in this movie. We have Ian McAllen, who's working on some sort of science research here. This is pre Gandalf, pre Magneto, Ian McAllen, where he was just in movies. And I really being offered a lot, right? I mean, apt pupil, I think, is a little bit more of like, you know, in the spotlight. But like, this is just a kind of a thankless supporting role. Yeah. And then Tim Curry here. Just do what is Tim Curry doing in this movie. Then Tim Curry, Tim Curry kind of thing. Yeah, but he's playing Farley Claymore. They're working on this project together. It sounds like Ian McAllen is working on some sort of mechanism for energy. And Tim Curry is built this beryllium sphere, which is going to be the conduit to make that happen. So they're working together, but they don't get along. It seems like. And he's too busy fawning over Penelope and Miller. What a fascinating woman. Well, a lot of people in this movie, man. And then-- so we cut to the next day, finally. And we're investigating the museum. And one of the shadows agents is a police officer. And he sends word. What do you think of the mail system to get letters to the call center so we can alert the shadow and agents of the shadow that you might want to go investigate this? I think now it's ridiculous because if it was set today, yeah, just text them or email. But in 1932, I think it's pretty cool for 1932. It's just like super condensed to mail system, right? And maybe I don't know a lot about how mail and correspondence was used in big metropolitan areas. They might have used similar systems to get stuff to buildings to buildings. This might have been a real thing. I have no idea. So Matt, what does the slug line look on this? Is it interior, shadow, mail system, day? Or exterior, shadow, mail, deposit, or-- yeah, I don't know. That's a great question. And he ends up at this guy who's got a lot of pipes coming towards him. I think that's kind of cool. He's almost like an oracle of sorts for the shadow. So then his ring starts going off and he's like, oh, man, I've got to get-- Hey, Mo to the sanctum. And so he's got this offsite thing where he goes into, and he's got all the monitors and stuff. The back cave? Yeah, the back cave, right? Kane? Kane? Come on. And there's Khan waiting for him. And he's like, oh my god, who's this guy? The one line I did like from all this is where you learn his plan. He wants the shadow to come to his side. He says, no. He knows the real yinko is a barbarian, right? The one line I do like, do you have any American bourbon? I'd rather have a taste for it. Hey, pretty cool. Hey, last two. So you, she won Khan. But he throws him a little coin. The bobbin. And he's like, what's this strange nugget here? So let me call in a favor. Let me call Roy Tam, this guy just saved on the bridge. Can you tell me where this metal is? So now we're doing, we're doing a lot of stretching here. But they find out that this metal is bronzium? For bronzium, yeah, bronzium? Yep. And it's, when he puts it in the dish, it just instantly, you know, and in the reaction agent just shatters the Petri dish. Well, what's that if that was used, you know, in some sort of what would that be? And this is just wild here. I mean, essentially we're gonna build an atomic bomb ten years before Oppenheimer does it. You talk about a real Manhattan project. Yeah, right. But again, kind of to what you're saying, like even this time realizing I'm like, this is pretty big, McGuffin for the movie, right? I was just like, can we just like fight Genghis Khan and his Mongol, like warriors? Now we're bringing a bomb into this thing. And so now the hypnotization. So are you ready for another long night here? Oh, okay, so cut to Ian or like, I wonder if anyone's working on a beryllium sphere thing. And we cut to Ian McCallen tinkering away. It's already been established that Ian McCallen's eyesight is terrible because he can't tell greens from reds and he's just very, he's a confused old man. He goes out to have a smoke and the sign starts talking to him. Rhine hard to lane. Who is that? And now he's under the guise of the Khan, right? So yeah, I want your weaponry. Then we cut to, you know, the Cobalt Club again. And you know, Jonathan Winters is eating his like fifth prime rib of the movie. And yeah, the shadow business is all very confusing. And Margot comes in, what have you done with my father? He won't talk to me. He's not going to see me anymore. He's speaking Chinese. And Lamont's like, oh, crap. Yeah, yeah, I got to get out of here. What do you think? And so he gets out of there. He tries to hypnotize Margot before he leaves. It doesn't work. And he gets into the, the cab. And I love Peter Boyle looking in the rear view of like, look at this. I want to watch this guy change his face again, because I'm still not over it. The stretches we are going through. It just lets you go for like four or five minutes or trying to piece this story together. The stretches we are going through to get from this event to this event or beat to beat are so long that to do this adequately. The film would nearly have to be two plus hours if not longer. We are taking huge leaps in impossibilities because the movie hasn't explained how this became this. And when did the shadow become so other than his own skill set? Become so knowledgeable about mind control that it can just be mentioned rather off-handedly from his not girlfriend's lips to mind control God's ears. And he's able to deduce that not Genghis Khan is going after her father for what? Like we are just taking these huge leaps that if you just take a second. I think that the line dropped at the Cobalt Club there is my father's working on this weapon. I think it peaks him because him and Tam were just talking like, oh God, it's her dad's making the weapon. So that's where Kukan's going after. But yeah, it's a lot of talking to explain how these things are connecting together. But what I wanted to ask you, do you think it's a no-- because I kind of think, I mean, the fedora, the bandana, the trench coat, I think are enough. What do you think of the facial disguise? I mean, he's got these bushy eyebrows and the long nose. He kind of looks like William Baldwin. He really does. Matter of fact, I thought that's who they had cast as the shadow when he showed up. You can get another Baldwin to play the shadow. To play me. Don't call Billy. He won't pick up the phone. He's too busy making the usual suspect. Exactly. What do I think about that? I mean, it's completely ridiculous. Why? Why? Because that's what he looked like in the comic or the Pope magazines, is he had that long nose and face. And maybe it was in the radio dramas that we didn't listen to that. He was also clouded in people so he could hide his identity. When I think the bandana does enough of that already. Right. That's how it's going to get to. If that's what you want, then you have to let him look like that the whole time. Because if he looks like Lamont Cranston does, and then goes through whatever mind control, contortion to become the shadow. No one is going to put those two guys together and go like, hey, that's the same because they look so different. And then Andy's doing a voice, too. So then you ruin the effect of the bandana, which mostly is just covering up his lips anyway. So I don't even know how effective that's going to be. Yeah. I'm really, really distracting. And I get that you want to honor the legacy of the shadow by showcasing him in that manner. But again, it gets back to the question, for whom? My dad's going to watch that movie and say, if that's not what the fucking shadow looks like, let's go, son. For whom? I don't like, where did he become-- It's got to be a power in the thing, right? I mean, right. We're literally wrote, you know, he disguises his face with the power to cloudment. That has to be part of it because if it's just-- It has to be. It's medically, it's completely ridiculous. So again, back to the same problem that I had, when did telepathy become as expansive as Lamont Cranston slash the shadow is able to exercise it without some instruction from the Hutu, Hutu, or Tulku from whatever the hell his name is, Tulku. And again, we're just taking this large leap. And that's fine if it's just fun. And it's just popcorn and splashy. But this movie is also so dialogue heavy. I can't really say that it's fun. At this point, we watched this, my me and my family. We watched this. And we were all looking at it like, oh my god. It was looking at me like, Dad, are you kidding me? Really? Yeah. And I said, we got to watch it for the show. Dude, I'm tackling the shadow, man. And so then I end up just going downstairs and finishing because they wanted to watch Only Murders in the Building, which we have to talk about, by the way, off mic. I don't know, Jesse. I don't even think any of that doesn't work. I think all of that can work as long as you give me just enough to buy it. Sure. I'm on the same page as you. I'm trying to stretch, like, how are we getting from here to here? The Khan's Mongol army is coming from a kellen. I'm like, where's the-- I mean, again, to the patience of six-year-old me. I'm waiting for this guy to show up in the shadow. I hit the timer. It's-- we're 50 minutes into the movie. And he hasn't been to shadow. Luckily, we're going to get some shadow action here because he's on the roof. And, man, you want to talk about a line that completely went over my head as a kid. He rides this Mongol warrior down to a gargoyle, and he goes, next time you get to be on top. What was that? Oh, risque. Right. It's not my little Jesse's ears. It's just like, oh, more shadow action. On top of the gargoyle, that's crazy. What's that going to look like? That looks so cool. Yeah. I've run around the living room just as the shadow. I did. I had, like, a bandana. Y'all get your neighbors next time you get to be on top. I had a bandana and a fedora, and I had, like, a Batman cape, but it was enough to be close enough to the shadow. I was into this. I mean, maybe I just-- Your parents are saints. Absolutely. I mean, they put up with a lot. Boy, oh, boy. Had I grown up in the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? You know, talk about being spoiled. I got a Thor and a man. I got a Black Panther. I get a suicide squad. Like, what are you talking about? In the day, I had three Batman movies, three in the '90s, one in the '80s, so four. I had a dick tracy. I had a shadow. I had a phantom. And I had a blank man. And that was it, man. And four of those are just one specked three are from the 1930s, I mean, like, what are we doing? Marvel's in bankruptcy. The best they can offer me is a cartoon on Fox. Yeah. I got nothing. OK, that's fair. So I'm going to watch this to death. I'm going to watch this to death. Right. He goes into the lab here, and I think this is a pretty interesting sequence where he's tossing these guys left and right. They're fighting air, and they see him on the wall, so they shoot him. I think kind of a cool thing where he kind of like comes out of the shadow, like he's been wounded, so now I got to like come out of my visage, and then just murders all of these guys. So you want to talk about another thing where like, you know, Spider-Man's saving everyone, latter Batman's saving everyone, Superman's saving everyone. Dude, the shadow's murdering people, and he doesn't care. So let's give it some credit here. Yeah, yeah. When we first meet Lamont Cranston as the opium lord, and we see him shoot his own man to kill the guy, you have set a level of violence that has been proven to the audience. We're not afraid to go there. And when it's Genghis Khan Jr. coming up and making the cop below his own brains out, and now we have the shadow coming in and just laying waste to 10 guys in the room, at least it's consistent. We're not afraid to knock a few blocks off and, you know, let the bodies hit the floor. Yeah. So I will give a credit there. Same with the crow too. Same with the crow too. I mean, the crow is the shining jewel, and I think a lot of this, but I was too young to see that. Honestly, the crow probably just looking at him would have freaked me out. I do have to tell the story of how I came to the shadow because I don't know if I've told this yet, which was the year before earlier in the year, maybe early that summer, May, my family. And this was one of my earliest movie theater memories. We had family in town, and we were like, we got some time to kill. Let's go to the movie theater. And we were like, oh, yeah, great. We're going to see the Flintstones with John Goodman, Rick Moranis, Kyle McLachlan. Have you ever seen it? No. It's all right. I mean, Goodman's a fantastic Fred Flintstone, but that was in that era where we were adapting any TV show-- The Jetsons. Macales Navy. I mean, the mod squad, The Avengers, the one with Uma Murman. Yeah. You want to talk about a bad movie? Yeah. And in the trailers, this trailer came on. And it scared the hell out of me. Really? I ran into the lobby. They had to come retrieve me and tell me that the trailer was over so I can go back and watch the movie. So this came from a place of fright. So then when we go to the video store, and I'm like, well, there's that movie that really scared me. Maybe they could look at that. And then I didn't. Then I couldn't stop after that. So the origins are, I was running for the hills. I didn't want no part of the shadow or entry before you ever even really knew it. Absolutely. There was something about the bandana. I was like, well, that's a scary man. Interesting. Yeah, so in the laughing, I mean, right? Huh. But-- Well, you came out of the womb. Yeah. Horror. I was ready to go. That's right. It's a good boy, Jesse. Yeah. I love that to you and that. Thank you. Thank you. Go check out the Flintstone in '94. Yeah, Rick Moranis plays Barney Rubble. Yes, not a bad cast. It's all right. He gets at-- he kills all these guys. Then Margot Lane comes like, oh my god, where's my dad? She gets hypnotized by the cigarette sign next. Margot Lane. She goes and meets the con. He gives her a revolver. Go kill the shadow. Erlomont Cranston. So Lomont's like nursing his bow and arrow wounds. And she comes in and he's like, what the fuck is going on? So he dispatches her as easy as can be. Get out of this thing. And I need to go figure out what's going on. So ladies and gentlemen, it's the same night. I mean, it's the night that little man. He goes walking down the street, notices a Mongol warrior tailing him. Oh, no. Lo and behold. Yeah. Goes into an alley, hides, blocks his mind for a second. The guy walks past. So then he follows him into Chinatown. And then he ends up in a building, and then we come face to face. [MUSIC PLAYING] My Mongol warrior aren't terribly bright, but they are loyal. Except the truth. There is no light without shadow. And you and I are their shadow. I will soon destroy a Rembrandt and kill you. For the last time, will you join me? You cannot fool me. You cannot defeat me. Your mind is an open book to me. Then learn how to read. [MUSIC PLAYING] [GROWLING] Beeply. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] This scene is insane. First of all, it's another-- it's essentially the scene from The Sanctum, part two. They talk about the same things. Join me. You know I'm going to stop you, Khan. And this is where he shows the knife. So we do learn some new things. Oh, I got the knife because I pulled it out of Tulku because I killed him after I learned all his ways. Yeah. So he's like, oh, this thing again. And then they're holding him at a gun point. He distracts the guard, takes his gun, weakling. And this scene, right out of John Woo's face off, they just shoot bullets into each other. This is slightly a comedy now. Yes. And then Khan blows the window out. Does a triple windy out the window. When I'm like, this is crazy. And so we got to tell this guy. Move, tell him. And we end up at this abandoned empty lot. And we're like, where did he go? I don't see him. So essentially showing that Khan's powers are stronger than the shadows because he's not seeing this thing. New York isn't seeing this building right here. Yeah. But we're not done yet. We go back to Lamont's house. Margot's passed out there and he's like, you can stay here in the east wing. I'm going to my quarters. And then these two fall asleep. And he has a dream. I got to tell you, for six-year-old me, this is kind of creepy. I mean, he has a scene where he goes into a room and it looks like he's going to kill her. And then he goes to the mirror and just starts poltergeisting his face off. And he's like in there. So to the makeup's credit, this looks pretty cool. And he wakes up and he's like, oh, bad dream. Agreed. That's pretty awesome. But then the scene that just had me howling, just because I'm just trying to think of little innocent me, he goes to Margot's room the next morning. And she's in the sheerest nighty-- That's ever nighty. Never nighted, right? And she's not even under the cover. She's on top of the covers. And he says, good morning. How did you sleep last night? What did you dream? Oh, I had a dream where I'm on the beach, and the waves and the sun are beating on my naked breasts. Yeah, the sun's crawling my toes and the sun's caking my body. She's having like an orgasm while telling this story. And it's so seductive. And I'm just like, oh my god, what is little all me? You think I'm like, oh my god, get to the shadow again. Oh, that's boring. Yeah. And then Cranston's like, I had a dream where I peeled my face off. That's kind of ridiculous. It's kind of funny. I love just the juxtaposition of like this sexy story, like, I had a dreamless night where I ripped my face off. Yeah. But watching that was like completely eye opening to me the other night. Then we get the scene where we got Con and Ian McCallen on the Empire State Building. The blast radius is going to be this big. There won't be anything left. This is where he kills the guy from a Holland drive. And then they do another, I think, unintentional bit of comedy where the guy jumps and he's hidden every fold of the Empire State Building. And then when he hits and dies, they cut to Alec Baldwin. And the scene's just continuing with this guy just plummeting to his death behind him. I don't know. I'm so sure. Wax himself pretty hard on that one awning too. Why not, right? Sure. But this is where they mentioned the word beryllium sphere. Like, yeah, my dad's partner Farley-- I want to call him Farley Granger so bad. Which you want to talk about a movie I watched recently. "Strangers on a Train." Yeah, incredible. It was a great rewatch for me, which we want to kick the tires on that one day. You want to watch them do any hitch? Yeah, hitch part three? Absolutely. OK, I'll go investigate the sphere. I'll pay this Mr. Granger a visit. Find out what's going on at the corner of Roosevelt and whatever. OK, so you wanted to know what's going on in this scene? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Tim Curry goes into this sphere, and the shadow is waiting for him. You're not good to kill me, shadow. And so he just turns the water on. So it's a water-- I don't know what the sphere's for. I don't know what the spheres for, because I don't understand the energy project that they're working on. All I know is that the material is the core that's going to house the bomb later. It's a miniature version of what houses the bomb. But here, yeah, it just looks like a water tank, right? Right. And so he drowns him, sees that he's puddling about, shoots him, and then blocks him in. Weird. OK, so I missed all that. I thought this was just some random water tower that he just tried to trick the shadow into following him into, so he could trap him. This is where he's doing his part of the project, yeah. OK. Yeah. And so he gets recruited over because they need that shell to put the bomb in. OK, so this poses a really interesting question, then. Why would you make this sphere, the housing agent, for the beryllium blah, blah, blah? A water tower. And why would you set it on stilts, like a water tower? Unless Farley Cunningham is this mastermind that is hiding it in plain sight so that no one knows what project is being done? Because it really does just look like this stuck into a water tower. I think the thing is it's not supposed to be a tiding in plain sight because I think it's supposed to be a good project, like an energy war department project. It's not a bomb project. Boy, oh boy, Jesse. Con's turning it into a bomb project. OK. But what it feels like to me is it feels like we didn't-- we haven't had enough action in this movie or it feels like just kind of another scene shoved into this movie. He gets out of there. And then George Lucas, you're on the stand again. Lomont calls for Margot Lane. Hear me. Leah, we have to go back to Cloud City. I have to save my brother. We essentially do that, right? He calls her. She freaks out drives like a madwoman to come save him. And he's drowning out in the thing. And they just all just burst out of this thing. And then he's unconscious. I guess for the evening has some barbarian dreams of his past self. But essentially, they've decided, oh, that corner. I found out that corner was an old hotel. It was never built. Well, let's go check it out. And that's where he finally sees it. And so he's like, it's here. I can't believe he's done it. He's hiding it from everyone. We make our plans tonight. I'm going to get-- I'm going to get Khan tonight. And then so the call goes out to all the agents with their assignments. The only assignments we know that have taken place are Peter Boyle's that has to just be waiting, right? Yeah, the limo driver. And he writes them on invisible ink there. My god, we are so far. OK. Right. But we get to the hotel. As a kid, I mean, this was my favorite scene of the movie, which was like, let's get the shadow doing some shadow stuff here. And so we get the scene with Tim Curry here. Did you think you'd never see me again in the morning? [LAUGHTER] I'm right here. All around you. Everywhere around you. [LAUGHTER] God. So sick. So sick. Come out of here. I don't fight like a man. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] You're a fool, Claymore. [LAUGHTER] Get out of my sight. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] There's your exit, Claymore. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] [LAUGHTER] So I do like these shadows. I'm not arresting this guy. Kill yourself. He just jumps out of this window. Yeah. I do got to tell you, this is completely silly, but it's true. The line, you're a fool, Claymore. Pops into my head at least once a week. It's just, that's how ingrained this movie is in my psyche. I've seen it enough times where I'm just part in my brain and just on a random Tuesday at 2L, be like at the computer and just you're a fool, Claymore. I'm like, oh, I didn't shadow. This is a crazy scene because Tim Curry is just chewing up the entire movie here with his skin. And I do like, though, when the room just darkens up. And so the whole room becomes shadow. And it's like, yeah, he's coming for this guy. That's pretty cool. I mean, this character's just here to get killed, right? I mean, we don't know what part-- what his machine does, what his part of the project does. He's just here as like, he wants to be part of-- he's like Otis, right? Superman. He wants his own Otis burg once they destroy. He wants to be a king or a prince or whatever. Something a little bit more than fodder because we're tired of watching the cons-- you know, Mongol army get destroyed. So this has a little bit more gravity. And I guess we assume maybe a little bit more strategy. Oh, OK. What about Tim Curry, Jesse? It's surprising that he would take this. In general or in this movie? Let's do this move for some dude, Jesse. I mean, he doesn't have much to work with. But isn't this, dare I say, below him? Sure, to take this role? Yeah, I mean, when you read the cast of this movie, you're like, oh my god, I can't wait to watch this movie. I like, look at all these names. I mean, they got names. And then he's just like, yeah, I mean, he's has three scenes in this movie. The tank, this, and hitting on Penelope and Miller. Yeah, it is, you know, below him. And it's just, I mean, but I mean, if he's-- there's like, I mean, if kept giving him nothing on the page. Nothing. He's got nothing to work with. He's doing something with it, right? If it's, you know, unhinged maniac, you'll never get me again, shadow. Like, I can appreciate that. I like to-- I think I do like Tim Curry. And I know health-wise now, he's in really bad shape but is it MS? Or, yeah, some sort of condition that has just left him, like, really debilitated. But Rocky Horror, which is something I do not love, but he is fantastic in it as Frank and Ferner. Sure. Pennywise, I love him in Home Alone 2. Lost to New York. Him joint-- Legend. Yeah, yeah. That's the big devil thing, right? He's good? Yeah. Even watching him cackle out, I was like, this guy could have played the joke or whatnot. I mean, he would have been great. Clue? Yeah, I forgot Clue. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's got this sneaky, really good filmography. Maybe he was hurting for a gig. He never quite got there. Well, just-- I take the gig just so I stay in the conversation, right? Yes, and maybe he thought this is going to be a big smash, so a lot of eyes are going to be on it, and so people just-- This is going to be a big smash. They had to have thought that. They had to have thought that. Yeah. And then they saw the movie. I'm like, oh shit. Oh, I don't know about that. But I'm only in three scenes. All right, let's get to the confrontation. So he confronts Con, you know, you're a Finnish Con. No more chit-chat. I'm taking you down. And he loses his disguise right away because he throws him about, like, some sort of forced trick, and then the knife shows up again. And so now he's fighting the knife. Can I be stronger than this knife? This knife gave me hell seven years ago, right? And this thing hates me. I've got to take it down. That scene where he's holding it, and he's trying to, like, learn the control of-- I've got to be stronger than Con, and it's like, he's letting it slice his throat a little bit, but not like Michael Meyer style. I mean, it's just like making the surface, and then I'm going to control it, and then I'm taking this guy down, and when he does, I mean, the massage of the hotel falls down. But we want more of a fight. I mean, if we've been building this up, I mean, this isn't enough for us, but I like parts of it. What do you think? Yeah, sure, it's finally some good action and some good shadow showcasing of skill set. Yeah, it's fine. Do you like the thing they do with his eyes? It's almost as he has marbles in his eyes, or it's like-- Yeah, were they black out? Like, if you saw, like, a cat in, like, the dark? Yeah, yeah, I like that. It's what the shadow looks like. Yeah, this works, and this is a good enough final showdown between these two with a cool apparatus that has at least been set up, which is quite something for this film, The Knife. My second favorite line of the movie, so once he's being stabbed and screaming, and the windows are blowing out, and everyone's seeing the hotel, and Ian McCallen is in room 327, 237, right? And he just goes, "Mar, where am I?" (laughing) Yeah, nothing for this fairy-talented actor. I mean, he's just here to just, like, sleep through this character, and so he meets up with Margot. They meet up, "Dad, Margot, what are you doing here?" And like, and they see that bomb, and he's like, "Oh my God, who built that?" "You did, Dad, oh my God." And then they dialogue to work with them. This colorblind man, I mean, he tries to cut the wire on it, and the timer starts, like, shooting down. 'Cause we had about an hour left, and now we have two minutes left. And then this bomb takes a journey through the hotel, and they're chasing after it, and I had to rewind it a couple times, 'cause I was just, I was cackling watching this. They end up below it, and they're like, "Oh my God, the bomb's upstairs." So they go up the stairs, and it's coming down at them, and these two stunt actors just leap over the railing? They were like, "I was dying." I was just like, "Yes, babe." Look at that, I mean, yeah, it's bad, but like unintentional comedy, and this thing makes a stop in the elevator shaft, and we'd get this. - Which wire? - I don't remember, I just don't remember. - Take one! - Oh, well, what the hell, it's usually green. - No! - This is green, that's good. - I've gotta try to remember that. (laughing) - Thank God, yeah, thank God he was color blind, right? And then we cut to, I guess we're in the basement of this hotel? Well, there's a bunch of mirrors, like a hall of mirrors. Why that's there, I don't know. Why there's all these antiques there, maybe the cons, you know, collecting stuff, but I think this seems pretty cool where he's like, "I'm gonna shatter all these mirrors," and he just starts like shaking, and they all start hitting the con, and then he sends that sharp piece right to his forehead? Kind of cool, it's kind of a cool shadow power. Yeah, force-like, right? And Jonathan Winter shows up, he put his stake down, and he's like, "I better go be the police lieutenant," or whatever, and shows up here, and he just starts drinking, he's like, "Oh my God, I clicked the wrong day to start drinking." Nothing for him either, right? I mean, this is a nothing character. Cap, what are you doing here? It's either. Okay, so Cap limped this screenplay across with all these characters, but then Mikey in Universal cast a pretty good cast. How do you not bring in another writer to pepper some of this up? I mean, Tarantino's floating around at this time, Josh Whedon's floating around, get in a script doctor, a ghost writer, punch up the dialogue, punch up something, or give these characters a little bit more, 'cause then I think we're talking about a completely different movie, even if it's just 15 minutes, so we take it to like 120. So we're 104, yeah, 140. So we take it to 150, 152, that's fine, because you're gonna flesh out these characters, and you're gonna, at least through some dialogue and some action, I hope, patch some of these glaring holes, and then you don't have such a schlockily, poorly edited. Did we cut too much from this film? Where was that piece kind of feeling that the movie leaves you with? There are some action bits that worked when you're talking about it at the end, with the glass is pretty good, the hotel bit's pretty good with Tim Curry, but then there's a lot of stuff in there that, you know, I think it plays as like dark comedy, like when that sailor jumps off the top of that skyscraper at the cons behest, and like is crashing on the awning as he falls down the building, and we watch the shadow in Margot, or Krantz in Margot just sort of preambulate through Times Square, wherever the hell it is. It's kind of funny, but the movie doesn't set up to be funny the way the tone originally begins, which is like I'm gonna shoot you, you're my helper, 'cause the guy's behind you. So it's just very unbalanced, and I think 15 minutes make a huge difference, and we never say that, but it needs 15 more minutes, or maybe it doesn't, yeah. And the movie itself looks good, I mean, I always say this on the podcast, I would never want to make a movie in circa 1920s, 30s, because think of all the architecture and vehicle work you gotta do to make things look good. The movie looks good, I mean, I know this movie was filmed on the Universal Backlot, 'cause I've seen some of these cornerstones before, so I like that, but the matte paintings, the when the males traveling, or the cons hypnotizing, Reinhardt Lane, we got like models, like the Crow again, or we're flying through it, it looks good, it actually looks decent. So there's some thought put into this, you got Jerry Goldsmith did the music, a really great score, I think. So there's stuff here that you know, other people gave it their all, and just other people didn't. We wrap up the cons in a psychiatric ward, he's trying to psych out this doctor, but then we do kind of a fun reveal where we realize the map is brain is missing, huge stitches scar, here on the forehead, we had to remove the frontal lobe, but now it's all right, no one uses that, but yeah, these people use it for shadowing. So this guy leaves in all the crazies, like I am Genghis Constancester, I'm Babe Ruth, I'm Bill Shakespeare, I'm Cleopatra, kind of funny. And this guy's just cackling, and he's an agent of the shadow, right? So I'll watch over this guy, that's my gig, right? Got it for you, shadow. So then Margot and Lamont are making out in the street, they're gonna meet up later, and he's like, I really know him, oh, I'll know. And then he bocks down an alley, he's gonna go shadow it up and maybe we'll see it for a sequel, but no, it's the end of the shadow. And then our end credit song, "Original Sin" by Taylor Dane. - Wow. - We're in an era of just like, we're putting interesting songs at the end of, we got Prince doing Batman music, we already talked about all awesome the Crow soundtrack was, we're not touching that, but I mean, we could have ended with some more Jerry Goldsmith music, I listened to this song for a little bit, it's not great. No, I fast forwarded it a little bit to the end, I was like, well, let me see if we get to some score, and we do it at the tail end of that. A couple little anecdotes for you here before a couple of questions I have to ask for you. So I already mentioned, yeah, Bob King cited the shadow as a major influence on the Batman. Yeah, we noticed, Bob, I mentioned the box office competition, oh, talk about a lot of these things already. Yeah, David, okay, so Robert Simekis was involved in development in the 1980s, that could have been something, I mean, he's a competent filmmaker. And then another director's pitch was ignored, but it was allowed to develop an original treatment, we'll talk about that here in just a second. And then David Kep was hired in 1990 to write a new draft, so it still took them four years to get the movie made, right? And then the coolest yet most infuriating piece of this, so I mean, when these movies came out, I mean, the Batman changed the marketing space, t-shirts, action figures, serial, everything, right? I mean, video games are a large part of the marketing, and I read in there that the Super Nintendo made a shadow game that was completed, but after the poor box office receipts, they never released it. It's a game that's never come out. And I'm like, I would love to play that. It was like a beat 'em up, like double dragon, or like final fight, like just like a side scrolling, just like punch it. I'd play that, a little shadow beat 'em up. That sounds great, so you gotta be able to find that on some sort of torrent video game site somewhere. But the movie bombed or didn't do as well as we wanted to, so maybe he pumped the brakes on that shadow game. Interesting, so they just put it in a vault of video game destruction with ET for Atari, huh? Yeah, they just wrote it off, which, so shot on the Universal Backlot, the set of mirrors was destroyed by an earthquake in California, so they had to rebuild that set. I thought that was interesting, so '94, Northridge earthquake, probably, pretty interesting. But what's your favorite tasting note, seeing sequence moment of the shadow? I think you mentioned it, the onset of shadows as we take down Tim Curry. I think that is kind of showcasing the expanse of what the shadow can really do. I think aesthetically, too, it looked really well. Like, I sort of had been waiting for that the whole film, and it finally got a sniff of it. Absolutely. I think I'm gonna go with that attack in the lab, 'cause that was always my favorite scene as a kid, and something really cool. I was always a rewind moment of him reaching through the shadow, and kind of coming out, and kind of seeing all these people around him, and then he just, boom, boom, boom, boom. You're all done. That'll be mine. What's the... ♪ Oh my God ♪ Moment of the shadow. And it's not even close. It is the water tower scene, not only because it is ridiculously stupid, but after he gets capped in the shoulder, it bothers him for about 20 seconds, and he just goes ahead and swim normally, and open the door that's gotten barricaded in normally, and twisted normally, and it's like, "Yeah, this acting shit's for the birds. Who needs to worry about my arm?" That scene is awful. Walk out of the movie theater bad, awful. Yeah, awful. Yeah, and it does feel kind of shoved in. Well, and it's like, "Oh my God, did you not even remember "you just got shot? "It's a big deal. "Your blood is all over the place. "It's what made you be revealed "and come out of your shadowness." Yeah. And I fuck that. I want to use my left arm, never mind. There you go. Just bounced off me. Yeah. Terrible. Terrible. Ricochet, ricochet. And honestly, I think that that's Baldwin. That's all on Baldwin. Yeah. You got to honor your wound, man. Yeah. Yeah. Or McKay, the director, and tell him, "Hey, remember your shot. "You were shot. "You just took a slug in the left arm, asshole." Yeah. I don't know. I think a pretty okay movie. Yeah, sure. Highlander to the quickening, one of the worst things ever. So this guy's barometer is all over the place. Yeah. My oh my God, in actuality, it's that guy jumping off the Empire state and tumbling down his way down. Yeah. In reality, it's my realization of Margot Lane's orgasmic dream on the beach. I was just beside myself. And I think it's relieved with a really decent, comedic, I tore my face off last night. He got a kind of chuckle at that. Who's the master distiller on the shadow? Oh God, I don't know. I don't know. I guess Tim Curry. I'm not an Alec Baldwin fan and I never have been. So I think he's in the atrocious sector. If you haven't deduced that by now. I guess Tim Curry, he takes chicken spit, makes chicken salad out. There you go, man. Two weeks in a row. Two weeks in a row. I guess Tim Curry. I'll give it to you. Yeah, not bad. Maybe Penelope and Miller. Yeah. Hey, even the bad movies get, so you got to put someone in there. I think even Battlefield Earth has a master distiller. Were you going to go to Penelope and Miller? No, no, no. And I'm going to take her just because I think that part has more teeth than Curry's part. So I'm going to give it to her. Sure. Okay. Yeah. I got to give to Jerry Goldsmith. You know, I mean, I'm a music guy. He's a top five composer for me. And I think he's laid this score. I want to get this thing on vinyl somewhere. I think it would be a nice, you know, collector's item. Sure. How are you going to rate and grade the shadow? We have Rocka, well, call single barrel and tippy top shelf. You want to go first? You want me to? You go first. You kind of know. Sure, yeah. I'm not going to go all the way to Rocka. It is too pretty to be Rocka. Rocka is the Battlefield Earth, that kind of stuff. And it's not that. Yeah. It is call minus though. But this was, I mean, I haven't said it in a long time. But if it had not been for the show, I would have walked the hell out. I was bored. I found myself not caring. I felt myself thinking more about how we could fix the story than I was even paying attention to the story. I thought the skill set of the superhero, if you want to call him that, was tepid at best. I was pissed that they didn't just use Genghis Khan because it's like, what did they say in the writing room? Like, you can go back in time, but not that far back in time. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of a bad film. Yeah. This is really, really old Jack Daniels with a whole lot of Coca-Cola and maybe you can choke it down if you already sent my drunk kind of bed. This call minus is a bad film for me. No. Do I say call minus? Yeah. No. Well minus. Well minus. Okay. Well minus. A teetering. Yeah. I think I prepped this last week. And I'm sorry if that hurts you because I know some important films. Oh no. No. No. I'm not dying on the Hill of the Shadow. Blade Runner and some other movies. But yeah, dude, you're not offending me at all. I think I said last week I was like, I kind of got to give this single barrel because of how much I've seen it and how I can see that. I think kind of important it is in terms of just my ability to sit through things. And there was something I really liked about this. And I don't have that Alec Baldwin, uh, uh, disfinity that, that you do it that there are a few things. I really like them. Glengary Glen Ross is one of them. Uh, I think it's pretty good here for, you know, whatever, Kep is writing for anybody. Yeah. Uh, the score is great. The design. I mean, again, the, the costumes. We talked about Margot Lane's costume, but everyone else is dressed pretty sharp. Sure. Uh, the cars, the sets, the matte paintings, there's some work went into making this thing. What do we say? Lipstick on a pig, right? Yeah. Uh, looks great. But yeah, it's, it's a call movie. I mean, this is January or July 4th. Let's go to the movies and then like we're never going to think about this movie ever again. And I think there's a, I mean, the Blu-ray that I have, I at least have the Blu-ray now. I don't have to rent this movie anymore. Uh, there's no special features on this thing. There's not a making of. There's not the trailer that scared the shit out of me is not even on there. Wow. So even universal, like it's just like, yeah, whatever, but I think, you know, you know, for the, this particular era, I think is special for superhero movies because this is what we got, right? Mm hmm. I mean, Batman's Batman and that's a diamond in the rough that turns into a turd and the roughed by the time he gets to Batman and Rob and sure, but we didn't have a lot. So I could see, you know, this having kind of like a cult following much like the crow, but there's a two very different audience. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, it's single barrel in my heart, but it's just, it's just a palatable call, call minus movie. It's just all right. Um, with some good stuff in it, but yeah, this movie's not, it's not, it's not winning. I don't say it's winning razzy's, but it's not winning a war. It's just stuck in the middle and it's just, it's just okay to watch, right? Okay. Uh, but then, but juxtapose, so the crow's the same year, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. The crow bull is this movie out of the water. Let's not even beat around the bush. Like the crow is a master, a masterpiece compared to the shadow. It's just, I mean, I've seen the crow four or five times. Mm hmm. I've seen the shadow almost 40 times. So yeah, we're talking about two different movies here and sometimes that's okay. But don't feel like you're offending me here again, like, I mean, we'll save that for Blade Runner, but someday we're going to have that discussion, we may not be as offensive about as you are. I could honestly see myself in that going single barrel, but for a completely different reason. Absolutely. For historical purposes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Sounds great. I wonder what goes through a composer's head when they're like watching the film and they're like, wow, this is awful, but I'm still going to give it my all because Hans Zimmer did the same thing in the amazing Spider-Man 2. He's like, wow, this movie is so busy. I don't know what to do. I'm going to kill this score and just, so to composers who just have no affinity for like, well, because the film's poor, I'm going to do a bad job too. I'm still going to do a good job to our musicians. That's kind of awesome, right? I love Goldsmith. It's just, yeah, what a fantastic career that guy had. The Omen, Alien, Star Trek, it's, yeah, he's a legend. Absolutely. Yeah. Nightcap, so obviously 1994 is the shadow, isn't the winner and it didn't launch the multimedia franchise that Universal was hoping, but I think there's some fruit left on that pine. There I say that if a talented filmmaker and actor wanted to step into a reinvention of the shadow, that it could work. I guarantee you though, ladies and gentlemen, you won't see that shadow for an hour into that movie. I'm not getting the seven minutes of this movie. Yeah. It's going to take a while, but what director actor combo would you like to see bring this back to the big screen? Do you want to do it both or do you want to do director, director, actor, actor? How do you want to do this? How many do you have? Just two. Just two? I mean, I have one, one of each. I have three, but I'll say that is the last one is an horrible mention. So, yeah, let's do the first one. So I want David Leach to direct this and I want David Leach to be in full charge of Hugh Jackman. Ooh. I think that could be terrific and can't you see Hugh Jackman really pulling off the Lamont Cranston? For sure, yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And I think that space for him is everything that we've seen Hugh Jackman miss at in those roles, whether it's film noir. And if you make it very noir-y, yeah, and you take the Margot Lane character and cast it like with my, you know, especially Blake Lively now, because I'm sure he knows her phone number. Yeah. As that that I've wanted for a long time, then let's go. I got another one too. So if you want to do that, I got another one for you. Yeah. Let me do. I'll say that one for the other. Okay. So, mainly because I want this filmmaker on the right footing again, because I love him so much, give me David Fincher and Benedict Cumberbatch. And guess what? You don't need to give him the makeup because the Cumberbatch already has a very prominent nose facial structure. Just make the Cumberbatch and he's got the voice for it, right? So good. And then Fincher with like his pulpy, noir-y, seven aesthetic. So good. That could work. And that guy needs a win. I mean, between Mank and the killer, I mean, I don't know what he's doing, but there's so much talent there that just needs to pick the right projects. Love that, Jesse. That's terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. One more for me. Okay. I want John Krasinski directing, ready for this himself. Let's talk about it, but actually kind of a version of himself, but a lot older. George Clooney. Okay. Let's give Clooney another shot at the superhero thing. Yeah. And I think with the Clooney versus a Hugh Jackman, you're really going to have to play into the shadow element, the more of the sneaking and clandestine and quiet versus the rough and tumble. Otherwise, buying Clooney is punch him up, fight him up, kick him up. Sure. But I think the shadow either has to be really rough and tumble and super bad ass or has to be almost ninja-like. And I think you give me those two. And if you don't like those two, we can flip it. And we could do the rough and tumble with Clooney directing and Krasinski starring. I like either. Right? Could work either way. Yeah. I mean, Clooney can play Cranston. Let's be honest. For sure. Yeah. But I'd like to give him another shot at doing a super because I think he's got it, but I would love to see Krasinski in the role, too. And I mean, he missed out by a millisecond on Captain America, right? So, and Clooney directed. That could be good. Either. I like both of those guys. So go. You have two more. I do. So I'll give you the one that I don't think would ever happen just because we just got it. But give me these guys again, Christopher Nolan's the shadow with Kelly and Murphy playing Le Mans Cranston. Let's go. Let's go. Again, you don't got to do a lot of work to the face because he's already got an interesting looking face. So. Yeah. And then the one, this is just kind of like my hot guys at the moment. I want. Yeah. What? Yeah. My hot guys at the moment. My hot man at the moment. Give me Robert Eggers in the director's chair and Austin Butler is Lamont Cranston. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could have thrown Glen Powell in there. I would say here comes Glen Powell. Here comes Glen Powell. But no, Austin Butler, I think he could be kind of an interesting swab Lamont Cranston. Robert Eggers is going to direct a hell out of that movie. So. Oh, yeah. No, Ari. You can make it black and white if he wants. I don't care. I mean, that could look. That could look great. So let me give you one more just for a thought experiment. Okay. Okay. Give me Redford in the director's chair. Okay. With Kinnaman as in Joel as Lamont Cranston, I'll take Joel Kinnaman with any of the directors we mentioned. Doesn't have to be Redford. I just want to see that guy again. We're dying for him, aren't we? Yeah. This ship might have passed on like big roles, but he can still show up and have his moment, right? Yeah. I mean, the killing, it seems so long ago. That was 10 years ago already. Jesus. Yeah. And I mean, everyone thinks a robocop remake will be your vehicle to start them. But not when everyone loves the original as much as like I do. Right. Right. So, but give me Joel Kinnaman with Fincher, with Eggers, with Nolan, with David Leach. Those will win. Yeah. I mean, that could be good. Yeah. I just think I think that the lesson at the end of the day is this, I think it's an interesting character with an interesting skill set with the right story and casting and attention. This could work. Yeah. And maybe it'd be more acceptable now post unbreakable, right? Where we can take a chance on off the beaten path superhero. I mean, in the 90s, I mean, we're trying hard to make these work. And I think it's easier now. But not for the, if you're going to play on the redemption piece, because then he's tortured. Yeah. You know, we talked about the heroes and like Spider-Man and the Batman element, like I'm trying to make up for my parents' death, I'm never going to be able to, trying to make up for my uncle's death. I'm never going to be able to. If Lamont Cranston has a lot of red in his ledger, thank you, you can't ever get rid of it. So you are forever indebted to making up just to get back to ground zero and in the process of getting back to ground zero, because the shadow seems to be far more violent than Marvel would or DC would allow. You're killing these people, which is still bad, but they're just not quite as likable. And it's boy, you just, I really really troubling what was a tortured, tortured hero. What would also be interesting is if maybe the opium plays into the powers. So if he's got to like take an opium hit and that's how he's able to cloud mines. I mean, so now he's like high when he's fighting, so he's a flawed character dealing with his own demons and still a bad guy that's killed people and trying to do good, but he's compromised while he's doing good. That's kind of an interesting character. So love that. Maybe one day we'll get the shadow, but maybe let me tell you someone who I think really, really liked this character and they just wrote this guy off because he was a nobody. Not to me or you, but Zemeck has got a crack at this and a little old filmmaker in the late 80s gave universal his pitch for the shadow and they didn't even listen to it. The director Sam Raimi and, but I think they liked him, his tenacity and they said, well, you can take your pitch and turn it into your movie and spec it out. And that movie became dark man. Oh, man. Sweet. And we're going to do dark man next week. What a nice segue. Good job. Yeah. You've done this before. Exactly. So yeah, from 1990, so four years before this movie, Sam Raimi does his own spec version of the shadow with Liam Neeson and Francis McDormand and I think he loved the shadow in 2006. So in the middle of his Spiderman run, he tried again to get this off the ground and the appetite wasn't there for universal. So I think he likes this. Maybe he was like your dad. He listened to the radio dramas. Maybe he did. Maybe he gets it like he got Spiderman and maybe he has a way to get it across. But I mean, so the crow was in a graphic novel. The shadow came from the radio. Now we're covering in speculation, superhero from Mr. Raimi from 1990. This is the last time you've seen this movie. One time ever. Yeah. Long time ago. Yeah, I don't even know. This is going to be fun. This is again, Liam Neeson before Schindler's list, Francis McDormand before Fargo. I mean, talk about actors, Larry Drake's in this thing. The cast is wild, but at the heart of it is Sam Raimi's filmmaking style, the evil bed of the dark of the superhero. This is his audition to like, maybe I could do Spiderman one day. This will be fun. I think if we can line it up, we should watch this one together because this segue nicely for us and then into the later stuff. It's coming. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, I read that and I was like, I mean, in retrospect, you know who Raimi is and what he's going to become. But in '88, you're just like, I'm going to hire the kid that made that gross movie. Right. It's not what we want here at Universal Studios. No, give me the guy that did Highlander instead, which yeah, big miss, but this will be a lot of fun talking dark man will wrap up this cast and honestly a cast we could come back to because we didn't talk about the Phantom blank man, blank man, mystery man, a steel which should kill him, but that's DC, right? But I think, you know, if we really did some digging, I know there's Flash Gordon. Yeah, there's some other just like, yeah, the ones that aren't from the major brands that are quote unquote superheroes, right? Yeah. Hey, I got to get going. I was going to say, I need to go rent this movie again, but I told you, I already rented it, but you want to go help me find that super Nintendo game because that could be a lot of fun. I'll find my E.T. and we'll make a night out. All right. Sounds good. We'll see you all next week, everybody. Have a good week, everybody. The Dark. The Shadow is property of universal pictures and Breakman Bayer Productions Inc, and no copyright infringement is intended. Until next time, cheers. [MUSIC]
