I do not like the men on this spaceship. They are uncouth and fail to appreciate my better qualities. I have something of value to contribute to this mission if they would only recognize it. Today over lunch I tried to improve morale and build a sense of camaraderie among the men by holding a humorous round robin discussion of the early days of the mission.
My overtures were brutally rejected. These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday.
Nobody even said happy birthday to me. Someday this podcast will be played and then they'll feel sorry. It was too good an option not to do because of how unmasked for tape, perfect. But I just want to share the other one I wanted to do, which David, fuck, where was it?
You would have had to give me the alternate lines here. But the other one I wanted to do was, what are you going to name it? What? The new star, what are you going to name it?
Who cares, don't bother, right? I was bothering me. Right, new broadcast, yes. Because that is the first question right off the bat.
I want to get into this right off the bat because David and I are texting about it, but Ben and our guests are not part of this conversation. I'm a little bit curious to hear their opinion. This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin David. I'm Griffin.
I'm David. And it's a podcast about philanthropies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy projects they want. Sometimes those checks are clear and sometimes they bounce baby. And this is a new mini series on the films of John Carpenter and David texted me about two hours ago and said, what are we going to call it?
What are we going to call this? This baby just got born. What are we going to call it? He said, what are we going to call it?
And I didn't say I don't care. I gave him two options. And David seems to have a preference, but I'm curious to hear. I don't have a strong preference and I need to hear them out, set out loud and you guys can figure it out too.
And I'll figure this out. Okay. May I share an idea I'm having? Please.
How do we feel about the podcast? How about add one letter? They podcast. Oh, oh, baby.
The podcast is actually funny. Actually, that's what I feel like, this is the thing with you and I. You love to just, to just strangle into the most ridiculous, awful sounding. I want to be slammed, and cast into something that's right.
Big bottle in little cast. Well, well, I think I have a better dome here. I don't know. I'm just stiff falling.
I think I have a better angle on the same structure. But yes, I like a Louis Armstrong title where you're having to dab beforehand. You're out of breath. Yeah.
So you proposed to me two options. Say them out loud now. Okay, option number one. And well, let's just say we're officially adding they podcast is option number three, okay?
Sure, yeah. Option number one. Podscape from Newcast. Which is the first one you proposed to me with confidence.
Yep. I mean, this is what I think. I got it. I didn't buffer it.
And you just said wow. Your response was wow. I mean, that sounds positive to me. But my second, my second, which I'm a little partial to, my second pitch, pod trouble in little cast.
Hey, pod trouble in little cast. Emily doesn't like it. Emily looks disgusted. Ben looked a little sharp.
I honestly feel like a syllables are the key to this thing. And I think- No, my turning China into cast. Is that what you're saying? Like turning two syllables into one?
I think it's like big trouble in little podcast. I know that's not as spicy. That's the thing. That's the thing where I don't mind a podcast away.
I don't mind a clean sounding. You just, you know, you got the word podcast in there. That's fine. So like, if you told me in the podcast of madness or whatever, you know, like, I'd be like, there's something thematic there.
They podcast, that's pretty funny. The two times we have covered a filmmaker who has a movie title with cast in it. I have let you win. I've let you come up with podcast news and podcast away for the cleaner, the cleaner option.
I wanted to do what pod to the future cast or fucking whatever. But future cast, you know, a future cast. I think I'm just kind of into pod trouble. I think pod trouble is funny.
I mean, we've all been in it before. We've all been in pod trouble. Do we think it feels like maybe podscape from new cast is the consensus option? Oh, yeah, that sounds like it's the consensus option.
It sounds like everybody loves it. Podscape. Podscape from new cast. Yeah, that's terrible because do you cast?
I'm like mopping up the floor right now. Like I'm hot salt on casting 13. No, no, no, no, no, no, get that out of here. Griffin, no, no, get that out of here.
Get that out of here. You're the killer. I just blocked that into the fifth row that's not allowed. Let's percolate and we'll know by the end of the episode.
They podcast takes it. They podcast is pretty, I don't know. I hate to like give, like, I'm no I'm biased and I came up with it. But I do think it's the best idea.
I mean, I'm going to suggest the dangerous thing. The poll. Should we do the Twitter poll and see at the end of the episode where it stands? We've already learned our lesson.
We're not doing the Twitter poll. No more Twitter poll. I'm going Twitter's good. Twitter's good.
What's the problem here? Also, I'm not on Twitter anymore. So I won't be able to participate. I won't be able to like run a shadow campaign, which I'm starting right now to be clear.
I was telling Emily before we recorded how much good shit she's been missing on Twitter. Oh, oh, it sounds cool. Sounds chill and very like understandable, like logical emotion, like I can follow the emotional through line really well. Even keel, very even keel.
Yes. Our guest today is, of course, the mother of Blinky's herself, Emily Yoshida. Oh, my God. Hello, my little babies.
And they're two big things I need to set up. Emily's coming in hot today. Emily's got like, it's not, it's, well, now it's 10 in the morning. I was going to say it's nine in the morning, but sometime past, but I mean, not to, not to, you know, I, I don't know if we're trying to keep this on the rest, but I am actually in person here in my Hollywood Hills dance with the pro doer himself.
Yes. Ben Hoseley. So if I sound a little bit like charged or like there's an electric energy over here in LA, it's, it's for that reason chronologically other episodes will have come out at this point chronologically, this is the first time one of us has been in the same room with anyone else for a record. Yeah.
Yes. And it's, um, we've had an eventful morning. We've had an eventful morning. We've discovered the whole like thing of like, well, actually, when you record by yourself at home, it's just like you just turn it on and go as like having multiple people in a room.
It's complicated and things come up and you need adapters and whatnot, but we made it and Luckily I invested in like an audio studio's worth of like XLRs and adapters and stuff here at the beginning of the pandemic. So it's like, I guess I'm just doing this for the rest of time, but we should also mention just to explain energy, a play that Emily had a near-death experience making coffee this morning. I texted then who's like, I'm going to come at eight 50 in the morning. I was like, Oh, God, damn.
Okay. I guess I'll make coffee. Smiley face. And then I like proceeded to have a, I was telling that Griffin David, like it was having a who frame Roger Rabbit as experience in the kitchen this morning involving scalding water and broken pots, cleavers and they're really missing you forming an outline of your body against the wall.
You got locked in the fridge at one point. Yeah. It's yeah. So I'm babies crawling on a hot stove top.
My baby. Yeah. So I'm the adrenaline is running high over here and then I was running extremely late. You know, I'm already really living up to that LA sort of life of just like being delayed because of traffic.
You know, the traffic. I mean, oh boy, don't get me started. We were on the, I don't remember the name of the road, but you're probably on the 134. That sounds right.
Terrible traffic. Oh, man, God. And just just wanted to say my Uber driver scary. Yes.
Driver. And how you felt like he was putting your life at risk and I asked you if he was a Toretto. Now I want to write off the bats because of this, say two things and then we will get into the meat of this episode, John Carpenter's debut film, Darkstar, but one, Ben, you come on to this zoom, not from Emily's house, but in Emily's driveway wearing sunglasses clear blue on your phone, you on your phone, just going like, Hey guys, what's up? I think it is.
What's up? And then also being like, Hey, Emily, do I have to do something to the door to get in, like making weird, like it was really, and then I came out with my laptop already logged into the zoom. And then we had double, double Ben on the screen. Look, dark star as finagle and the whole meeting.
Yeah. Close the holes and transmission. None of us remember how to be in the same room as another person. We've all forgotten.
Yes. But I just want to say I do think this occasion calls for it because this trip really seems to have been transformative for Ben, a new nickname. I think he is perhaps now, Hoslewood, okay, I'm into that, but this is the other order business I want to get off right off the bat before we dig into Carpenter, then has, of course, graduated to a series of different tells across the course of different ways. No, wait.
I'm not doing the full list. I'm not doing the full. I didn't do all the fucking nicknames, but it is just a fact. It is a fact.
It must be acknowledged that he has graduated to certain tells of the course of different main series, such as Obi Ben, Kenobi, Ben, I trauma on Ben, say, say bank, dot, dot, I'll take this opportunity to say, you know, Ben's with a dollar sign. Oh, thank you. I really, again, we kind of rushed into this. No, sorry.
Continue. I was struggling to remember Warhaas. Okay. Sure.
But yeah, I didn't. Quickly. Yes. Mr.
Ben credible. Lovely home. I wish I could show you the kitchen. It's in a bit of a state of disarray right now.
I forgot a Purdue or Bain. Purdue or Bain. We're really down. We're really down.
Yeah. Yeah. They're Jews. They're Jews.
What was the Nancy Myers one? The Hasla Day. The Hasla Day. And the thing is, it's still public.
Yeah. Public enemies. Public enemies, of course. I like the idea that instead of me having gone Hollywood and you know, you know, it's like a through line.
The beginning of pandemic last year. Really? That's okay. Honestly.
Okay. God. People love listening to this. This is one thing.
I'll bring down the nickname part way. Oh, okay. We're going to mix the shit out of this. Oh, yeah.
No. The people like people can. If they want, they'll have a separate cut where they can. We're not right.
Guys, I'm going to be honest. My brain is starting to break. I can't do all this stuff. It's great.
No, I can't do it. I can't do it. Did we ever come up with Elaine May? We don't have Elaine May or Singleton ones that I know.
Okay. I was just going to say Singleton is Ben's and the hots done. Fair enough. Okay.
Sure. Ben's and the hots. Let's just get it over with. I think so.
Okay. You think you're just making it over with that? That's my official decree. Okay.
Uh huh. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. What's Elaine May?
Newly if it doesn't look like there's anything there. Finish tar. It's sweaty. The hot spray kid.
The hot spray kid. Yeah, sure. That's what it is. But also weigh in guys.
You know, you know, you're putting in a bar back here. Right. I think Ben's in the house. Let's just keep it easy.
Right. I think we can do better than that. But I do not think now is the time. He used to spell his name with a Z.
He put Z at the end of it. It's right there. That's true. That's true.
That's true. Maybe a bit changed into like one of the names that I feel like we haven't done that. Worked out. And of course has rebranded in 2021 to be all about chains and bones.
Not that there's one thing before. He's wearing a literal hat that says bones right now. He's wearing a hat that says bones and the letters are made out of bones. Wait, is this a congratulations?
Uh, production? It is not. I wish I could claim credit for it. So somebody just really had your number.
Yep. That's great. I know. It's just like my personal brand.
Uh, let's also mention Emily is wearing a directed music by John Carpenter hat. Music by. Yeah. It's great that we are all wearing like really, you know, visually important, uh, articles of clothing for this audio format.
I'm wearing, I'm wearing a Forky hat and an oracle t-shirt. So I'm just fucking self-parity. I know we've been on for many years, but surely there's some new listener tuning in being like, oh, they're covering John Carpenter. I love the films of John Carpenter.
Yeah. 20 minutes in. They're just like, why would anyone listen to this show? Well, David, let me tell you something.
John Carpenter was born on January 16, 1948 to Milton Jean Howard Carpenter in Carthage, New York. Yes. He was born in the North country. That's true.
Yes. Correct. John Carpenter, by the way, a winner of our March Madness this year. That's why we're covering him.
Obviously a long time mold candidate for us, but. Yes. Long time coming. Yeah.
And in our completely flawless March Madness tournament this year that had no hiccups, no problems. It was so normal where we did all the host choices against each other, who of course was John Carpenter being championed by, but Mr. Ben Hosley, the people's champion. Yes.
Ben, this is your series in a way. This is a Ben's choice. It's really. It's like a long time coming.
Please Emily, what's up? No, I was going to say, but you hadn't, you haven't seen the inaugural film, which I was very excited for you to see personally. Like I just knew. Okay.
So I want to clear something up also. Like I'm, this is like through the fog of war from the March Madness tournament, but I know that maybe some fans are out there like, why is Emily kicking off this series? She campaigned pretty hard against Carpenter. And this is the spirit of March Madness.
I love John Carpenter. I'm wearing a freaking John Carpenter hat right now. I have his albums in my cabinet. I have a fucking dark star poster on my wall.
Like I love him and I just feel like he's a very over-discussed filmmaker, but that does not mean that I'm not excited to hear you guys discuss it because I know it'll be different. But also this movie I feel like is under-discussed, so that's why I wanted to lay claim to it. Let's also say like a majority or at least a large quotient of the people who picked other competitors in March Madness are going to be guests in this mini series. Like there is not animosity in the Blenck check community.
People had their champions, but they understood most of us like most of these filmmakers. Yes. Yes. It's all goodwill all around.
All alone. And there's like, I mean, if it wasn't a dark star, there'd be like five other movies I would have. But you said you wanted dark star. Yeah.
I know. I think that they live would probably be my next top choice. I think that's my favorite carpenter. It's definitely the one I've seen the most.
And I just think it has a very interesting... It's legacy continues to evolve. So I think that's always interesting to do. Yeah.
Big trouble in little China. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What a fun.
I mean, you guys are going to have so much fun. Like I'm going to party pooper over. You guys are going to have a great time. No, you're not being a party pooper because I think like with my picks, like carpenter by far was like, I think probably the most like populist and just like, I feel like he's just like an all around like guy that so many people can get behind.
But I think we're going to like, we're really going to, we've got a researcher team now, right? We're going to be like coming in hot with new hot takes. In fact. But also, I think we have like good guest pairings for these movies and Ben, many months ago, you and I went to a drive-in double feature in the pandemic of Robocop and Escape from New York, a very griff and Ben Knight.
And it was in the midst of March Madness and in between the two movies, you turned to me and you said, I feel a little guilty about the fact that John Carpenter is like steam rolling everything. Is that going to be an uninteresting series? Like you were sort of saying, like, he's such a populist pick. He has so many big movies.
They're so discussed. Is that going to be an interesting pick? And I was sort of saying to you, like, I think his films are very discussed and he is very discussed as a guy. But within our format of covering everything and going week by week, the arc of his career is very fascinating.
And it's particularly fascinating when you consider that he's a guy who's, it's not covered that much on this show, which is like one insane outside hit at the beginning of the career and then the rest of the career is failing to sort of reignite in that way. He got to make movies that are very personal and are distinctive. But you know, he always openly complained about the fact that he had to like fight tooth and nail for everything. He never got the budgets he wanted.
He never had another hit on the same level as Halloween. He never had the studio support. It is just kind of fascinating when you look at like the, this movie, which is a student film that then gets expanded to get a theatrical release, right? That's a lot of the tension of this movie that we'll get into is that they, he and Dana Bannon had made this 50 minute student short film that was in this nether realm where they were like, it's a little long for short.
It's a little short for a feature. It could either be the most incredible like student calling card fun with all time or you can make it shoot, you know, another half footage and put it in theaters. And they did and both of the guys kind of regretted stretching it out to feature length and how they've talked about it in the decades since. And it was like complete like, it was just, I mean, I know that it had like a proper premiere in L.A.
But like, was it distributed outside of L.A. or was it, it's theatrical release just here? Yes. Mostly after Halloween though.
Like it had its little release before. But after Halloween, they brought it back out in like 1979 with like a post alien. So they could advertise it as writer of Alien, director of Halloween, you know, there was a space movie they both made and that's how they tried to sell it. I mean, this movie is, oh, sorry, go ahead.
No, just gonna say, I mean, it sounds like it got a release, but it was like a crappy kind of grindhouse release. Right. Yeah. But it did play.
It was distributed by a porn company. But here's the thing, Ali, if you look at the reviews, most of the good reviews come from the re-release. When it first came out, most critics didn't even touch it. Right.
Yeah. I mean, I, it's funny that it got released after Alien, that makes a lot of sense because I, I love the film is like the first Carpenter film and I love it is like the primordial soup of so much stuff to come, but I love it as a pre-Alien movie. Fascinating on that level because there's like so few examples of essentially a comedy being remade as a more serious film, you know, like this movie has kind of the same relationship in a way that like airplane has to zero hour except it's the other way around. Right.
Yeah. That like they make this comedy. I mean, the story is that like Dan O'Bannon goes to one of the houses where the movie is playing an opening weekend with John Carpenter and they go to the manager and they're like, is the audience liking it? Like are they laughing?
And the guy goes, what audience? And they open the door. It's like opening night. They're four people in the theater and they're stone silent and they realize that no one knew it was a comedy and that when they released this the first time they had tried to like this crappy sort of porn distributor had tried to in like an Ed Wood style like, you know, pre-packaging like sell the genre elements, tried to sell it as, oh, this is the next 2001 in space, honestly.
So people went assuming it was going to be this sort of like a solemn meditation on space and then they just thought, oh, this is bad rather than understanding it was intentionally funny. I mean, it has a very like its title suggests something more foreboding and austere than it is. Like I, the first time I saw it, I didn't know what to expect at all from it. And I just thought it was going to be like a, you know, scrappy, yeah, like a scrappy, spooky space movie, which it is, it's just like a very, very different tone than what one might expect.
Yeah. I watched it last night for the first time and had that exact experience where until it started, I didn't realize it was a comedy. I had always assumed that it was like, oh, it's the bootstrappy, like, oh, look at how resourceful we are with special effects and production values movie, but that it was a totally straight serious thing. Yeah.
Oh man, I loved it. So yeah, I also just watched it like literally this morning for the first time. The sense of humor is so off kilter. It's yeah.
I love it. I love future stuff. Right. I mean, I love the VFX.
It's so effective. Like, again, low budget, like all of the lettering, all of the like screens they create for the consoles. It's like amazing. Yeah.
But there it's just like, it's like a weird stoner, like space crew who all are all kind of like just like morose and like half dead. It's hilarious. It's a ship event. Great.
It's a real dirt bag spaceship. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah.
It's like they just won't fix parts of the ship and they've just given up on life. It's hilarious. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, I don't know.
I said like dirt bag spaceship and I was also thinking of like stuff like I don't like fucking Firefly and stuff like that while I was watching this. And I was like, but this is like funnier because none of these guys are being sold as cool. Like it's just like this is actually how depressing and how like sapped of life you would be after 20 years in space and basically like a like small panel with like a toilet like it just like kind of sucks. Yeah.
Yeah. So as right, as we know, this movie is written by Dan O'Bannon and Carpenter, right? No band and goes on to make Alien and Alien is the movie where space is a job and these guys are blue collar. Yeah.
But this is that magnifying. This is Carpenter. What's his line where it's like, it's about like, what about how do you like washer underwear in space or whatever? Right.
Right. Yeah. Like, you know, that's what I care about. How do you clean your underwear when you're on a spaceship?
Because he'd seen 2001. He was like, what's all this religious mumbo jumbo? No, I want to know about just like having the fucking plumbing look on the spaceship. Well, to roll back to sort of general Carpenter table setting for a moment, I feel like you sort of go like what are John Carpenter's defining characteristics, right?
He is like aggressively unpretentious while being this guy who sort of did high minded genre. He always like has been very saucy and sort of spoken out against other filmmakers and other popular films of the time and sort of hates any movie that's highfalute and self serious. There was a clip that that was being circulated during March Madness when he was up against my competitor, Robert Altman where he was just like fucking body slamming Altman giving him the people's elbow just saying like, he's just like a messy, messy, lazy, self-indulgent, like asshole. He's like talking a lot about.
Yeah. He's also like, there was a recent interview where he talked about how like David Cronenberg acts like he's like too classy for Carpenter now and he resents the fact that like Cronenberg felt the need to like remake himself as a prestigious filmmaker and all of that. But you know, aggressively unpretentious, aggressively, unsentimental, very sort of politically minded or, you know, at least socially politically minded and incredibly resourceful. Yes.
Although he's always like, I'm resourceful because no one gives me any money. I don't want to do all this shit. Like he's also very unpretentious about his the fact that he edits and scores and, you know, he's like, look, if I could hire Jerry Goldson, if I do it, but no one ever pays me enough money. I mean, our research researcher, Jay Jay Jayber pulled up in here this quote where he was like, not only saying like, I only do the music because I'm cheap.
I only edit because I'm cheap, but saying like, I hate writing. I wish I could never write a screen play ever. Yeah. Here's his line.
He said, I would love to give up writing films. I hate writing. I hate editing. I'm only doing it out of self-defense because there's no one else who can do it to my liking.
And the reason I've done the music on my films is because I'm the cheapest and the best I know for the price. But he's also just like, one of the best, like, I know, like, and he's clearly proud of himself as a musician. Like, he does like DJ sets, he releases albums like concerts with his son on tour and plays all of his soundtracks. Yeah.
I mean, he has to, at this point, at least have reappraised that because clearly, I don't know. I mean, people love it. His father had a PhD in music was a session musician for big ass people like Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison. And his dad was an army band leader, organist, acquired director, principal violence and national symphony.
And he kind of Tony musician background and Carpenter started out with music at a very young age. I think that was sort of push on and he took to it and then movies kind of became the hobby and it was sort of a coin flip between movies and music for him. He started going to University of Kentucky, Western Kentucky, where his father taught, right. And then he decided to transfer to USC to do film.
So I mean, you know, music is not a dalliance for him. I mean, a very bad fact about him is that he was in a rock band called Kaleidoscope in Kentucky. That just sounds like something Ben would do in the 70s or 60s or whatever. He's also, he is this generation, like the first generation to grow up with film cameras in the home.
You know, he said the African queen was the first movie he saw, which is another interesting thing to consider that like, oh, right, for so long, kids movies didn't really exist. And the first movies kids would see when they were four or five would be adult movies, would be Humphrey Bogart, like a fucking arguing with Catherine. Yeah. And that's what your parents take you to when you're a toddler.
But he also like he, but the things he liked was like he saw it came from outer space and that blew his mind, right? Like things like that. Like the thing from another world, obviously is King Kong, right? Like, you know, it's the genre of movies that the kids could engage with, right?
The earnest appreciation of genre movies, not like claiming them, like reclaiming them in some sort of trash camp way, but just like, this is the world I want to live in. Howard Hawks is his all time favorite guy. Rio Bravo is like his favorite movie of all time, which he sort of remakes with assault on precinct 13. But he talked a lot about how like, that's the filmmaker he wanted to be.
Like they're interviews with him in 1978, like right after Halloween, that's absolute peak of his career where he's like, I'm out of step with all the filmmakers in my generation and the industry at this time. I wish I could be transported back to the 1940s. I wish I was a guy who could make five movies a year for the studio and have access to that equipment and those stars and all of that. David, what's the matter?
I'm going to share for you a horrifying tale of killing. Whoa, and suffering. Whoa, this is scary. It's a tale of human error, a failing on my part.
Tell me. We went to the Wisconsin Film Festival. Sure. Visited our dear researcher.
JJ Burch. I'm scared already. Participated in a screening. We dined out.
We had fried cheese curries. We drank Wisconsin beer. What was the mistake? Tell me.
I forgot to pack my age. Oh, Jesus. You didn't bring your age to Wisconsin. This is a fuck.
This is an ad read. They got the travel packs because the thing I love about age one, they give you different form factors. They give you different ways to handle it. I forgot to pack in the age one.
I was there for 72 hours. It took a week to undo a week to undo. I'm not going to get graphic about this, but it just goes to show as I always say in these ad reads, age one has really become load bearing within my life. Yes.
Age one, of course, it's a daily health drink. It's clinically shown to support your gut health, fill in some nutrient gaps. It's got 75 ingredients, including five clinically studied probiotic strains. Yes.
So it's replacing need for like a multivitamin probiotics and more. For you, it is a pillar of existence. Anytime I get thrown off of the routine, I'm reminded just how helpful it is to me getting through any day. Yes.
Spring brings daylight savings, pack calendars, and changing routines. One scoop, 20 seconds. That's all it takes to keep your gut routine steady so you can reset, recharge, and embrace the season without missing a beat. You get the starter kit to give you like a tin tub.
They give you a scooper. They give you a shaker bottle, right? You get the monthly or however, what are cadence subscription cadence you want to set, but you get the delivery of the bags of powder and it's just like I pour that into the tub every morning. Just one scoop, eight ounces of water into the shaker, shake it up, drink it's a world of difference and summers drawn here.
People are going to be going on vacations. Sure. They're going to be traveling. Those travel packs really make a difference.
Well, AG1, clearly, very important is a ritual in your life. Yeah. Go to drinkagone.com slash check to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3 plus K2 for your free AG1 welcome kit. I love to drop in that K2.
With your first AG1 subscription order, that's a $72 value yours free only once it applies last. Go to drinkagone.com slash check. David? Yes.
They say that the eyes are the window to the soul. They do say that. What does that make? Our glasses.
I don't know. The curtains? Yeah. The curtains.
The point is if you are a glasses wearer like I am or like our own producer Ben is true. It's a big decision. Sure. Because this is how you introduce yourself to the world.
This is how you engage with other people. You make eye contact through the frames. Sometimes it's just time for a refresh. Totally agree.
All right. Well, so what about zany optical? Oh, look at those zany glasses. The eyewear.
They got fun shapes, sizes and colors. They got a lot of colors. Right. Statement pieces.
Bold statement pieces. Right. And they're inexpensive, I would say. They're an online eyewear shop with prescription glasses on glasses.
Blue light lenses. All starting at under $30. That's crazy. That is very low.
I feel like glasses often cost more than $30. Way more. But you go to zany.com, you pick a frame, you upload your prescription, they ship it to your door. No appointment, no store, no self encounter.
Easy. And that price? Yeah, something kind of shifts. You're not like, do I need new glasses?
You're like, why don't I try something fun? Right. Sometimes you got an old pair. They got a scratch on them.
It's annoying, but you're like, am I going to go through the hassle? Or the screws start to get loose and you find yourself taking out that microscopic little screwdriver over and over again to tighten them up. If this price went up, just get another pair. Then I ordered a pair of the Magoo.
I think this is funny. Okay. We all know from Mr. Magoo, the cartoon character who can't see and zany is saying, let's solve that problem.
Let's give you glasses called Magoo. They're blue and green. Two of my favorite colors, a nice boxy frame. I also ordered a pair.
I got crystal sand oval sunglasses, very reminiscent of a Kurt Cobain-esque looking pair for glasses that I feel like you also were in the film pavement. Very similar. Yes. Yes.
Someone inspired by you. Yeah. And I got these great sunglasses. They're sort of clear frames with a greenish tinted lens.
I'm wearing the Magoo as just everyday optical prescription glasses and let me say, I'm having the opposite of Mr. Magoo experiences. I'm seeing everything clearly. I'm walking the right direction.
You don't see me accidentally up on some steel beams. Exactly. They've got a hundred and fifty thousand five star reviews. Yeah.
And if you've never run glasses online before, they have a virtual try-on so you can see how some look on your face or you commit. If your glasses are overdue for refresh now, at the time, go to zany.com slash podcast and use code POCAS15 for 15% off your first order. The style sellout. So don't sit on it.
That's ZE and I.com slash POCAS promo code POCAS15. Yeah. It's funny. He's a new Hollywood generation guy, but not.
He feels a little anomalous. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, like this coming out two years before Star Wars or whatever, and you know, he goes on to make stuff that's pretty populous, but like in a completely different way than like a Jaws or whatever, yeah, this came out in 75. So it's like, yeah, I mean, it feels like both aware of that wave of filmmaking and like completely on another like wavelength.
I don't know. I mean, here's a really good quote from him talking about like his love of Howard Hawks, right? He said, I believe shot should tell the story first and foremost so much because when you use the camera to express an emotion by an exaggerated angle or something, that's fine. But if you have to do it because what's happening on screen is not interesting or compelling enough, then you're in trouble.
If people are talking, that's more important than the director saying, Hey, look at me. I'm a director. I can do all this. Who cares about that?
Anyway, the audience cares about what's on the screen. Films will allow me to grab the camera and zoom in and out and show off. I hate show offs and I hate pretension. Like he's like, I got all that experimentation out of my system.
You make the movie in the most like direct, clean way possible and you think about like against his contemporaries. There's so much experimentation. There's so much like very visible in your face, sort of like a style in new Hollywood, right? You have all the still like run off of the new Valvog influence and you have these genre directors coming in and like trying to reinvent the language and make everything really splashing and also like push forward special effects and he's just kind of a guy who like gets it done.
That's also way it's funny. He says he like doesn't like writing because I think, I mean, when you said that, I was like, I think I like John Carpenter as much if not more so as a writer, that as a director. I mean, like whatever he's a great director, but like I think that especially funny carpenter is some of my favorite shit in the world like writing wise and humor wise, timing wise, all of that. No, you're right.
He's so funny and he's usually take 10 years ahead of the joke in terms of Hollywood. I feel like that is why so often he sort of flops with the studios because he'll make him a movie like Big Trouble in Little China. And then like for years after he'll just be like, nobody got what I was going for above me. People like who saw the movie eventually got it.
You know what I mean? But like the whole, the whole time the studio is like, wait, why isn't this like points to you know, mainstream hit? Like, why isn't this like that? I thought that's what you were giving us.
He's like, no, no, no, like that's boring. Like, and Darkstar, this movie feels like 50 years ahead, like if this movie came out now and looked, you know, fancy or whatever, but was the same, like, this would still be an insanely clever bit of commentary on like HBO Max original baby. Yeah. Oh, God.
This movie would take it to the max. Absolutely. No, but it is interesting that he's like, I wish I was in the forties and then he makes all these movies that don't get appreciated till like 10 or 20 years later. He's like, on board from the time he's making them and he's both like behind and ahead of the movements.
But it's also funny. He's like, I hate this visual, like the splashy show option. It's like, dude, you invented like, you know, voyeuristic, steady cam shots, you know, there's like all of your language is like baked into modern cinema. Like, yeah, you could be a flashy director, but he's not a, I know, what's the word?
He's just not like a braggy director. That's not quite the word I'm looking for. But he's not pretentious. Not pretentious.
When you think of like, De Palma working at the same time, someone who's like really showing off his understanding of like, cinematic language, he's not pretentious. I mean, you know, like, you know, like, all these quotes JJ pulled up all these interviews like from 1978, you know, where he's just shitting all over close encounters in 2001 and he's like Spielberg fucked it up. Like, here you go. What's with all this?
Like, morose shit. But this is the other thing we have to say, this will come up in every episode, I'm sure. He is Hollywood's all time shit poster. Yes.
We'll just give an interview to Fangoria or who, you know, like anyone who calls up basically and just growl at them. Since he was young. It's not like he did that now in retirement. He's gotten more salty.
He's always been salty. Like he loves to be salty. He's a salty old space dog. Man, I would love to have hung out with him when he was just like a chain-smoking young guy in the 70s.
He seems like he was such a character. No, of course, but I'm just like to see him and his prime, like, he's just strikes me as such a like, he's like in a weird guy in that he's like very like, artful, but kind of a tough guy. I don't know. That's like a real type that I love, you know.
He also is one of these guys where like, he looks so incredible now. Like this is how he's meant to look his entire life. And then you look at photos of him in like his 20s and you're like, that's a really, really young looking old dude. Like it doesn't.
He never feels like a young man. It feels like he just aged into what he was supposed to be. Like he fits into that horror director thing where you're like, that looks like what a horror director should look like. Yeah.
It's like, it's this guy about to warn me not to go down that road. He looks like a guy at the gas station who's like, well, I've been in a lot of trouble for the young guys, the young kids out here. Right. And he has this sort of like visible bitterness on his face at all times that he can't hide.
But also when he does interviews down, people are like, well, you ever make another movie? And he's like, I don't care. I'm old. I'm just going to become the best at playing Xbox.
That's my goal now. I just want to get better at Xbox. Right. But he just always says like, that's my only thing.
He's up there with Miyazaki as far as like, kind of like ship host sound by old guy directors. And I love them both. Like I want them to be my grandpa. And they're both guys that like, I feel like people come to them on their knees being like, you are my idol.
I need to just like smoke a cigarette. And they're like, I am, you know, I'm nearly a plumber. Anime was a mistake. Shut the fuck up.
I made a good sandwich yesterday. That's the only thing you should respect about me, like resentment towards anyone who respects them too much. I want to be like that something. I feel like, I feel like we will have achieved like gender parity and cinema when there's, when there's, well, I guess Elaine is kind of like that too, in a way.
She sort of. I think Elaine has got some of that. Claire Denise got some of that. Certainly when she bodied David in that interview, that's sweet.
She didn't bodied me in the interview. She bodied me prior to the interview. Wait, what did she say? Can't we should we take it off air?
I've told the story on Mike, but basically I tried to bond with her over our sweet green orders because we were eating the same sweet green thing and she looked at me like I was a worm as she should and said, aren't you just supposed to ask me questions? You tried to bond with Claire Denise over your sweet green orders. I mean, I just tried to begin a dialogue with her. But you know what?
I think we both had harvest bowls. I can't remember true mommy. Imagine presenting a true mommy to her and being like, what this is called is a true one. She would she'd melt you.
She'd melt you. You mommy, the face. This is this movie is a real true mommy. It's so dark.
So Emily and I are the only ones who've seen it before. I saw Darkstar. I think I also expected when I watched Darkstar. I think I thought it was a straight up horror movie.
I think that's and it had that poster of the frozen guy. I know it has. It's scary. It's got a very scary poster.
It's it's a scary poster. Right. Yeah. So I think maybe I thought it was like people getting picked off on this and it's called Darkstar which sounds and then I cue it up and I'm like, it is a student film and like that's their take where they're like, this was like the best student film in kind of a mediocre movie.
Right. It should have been a student film forever. It's the top of the heap as a student film. That's what a carpenter O'Bannan think.