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My name's Renee, and I'm bad at movies and wrestling! It's already hot in here. So I'd love to introduce my special guest today. He is the host of his very own podcast on the Second Wind Collective. So many bits. Please welcome Bill Nielsen. Hello. Hey, guys. I just want to do a good lucha thing for you just right now. And I'd also like to welcome my co-host, my co-bed habitator, and just general all-around good guy, Pete Byrne. Hi, Pete.
Is that a good enough introduction for you, Pete? That is true. We sure do. So usually what we do with this podcast is I will watch a movie that I've never seen before, and there's a lot that I have not seen before. In this case, this is The Fact for They Live. Bill, you have seen this before, correct? I have, yes. This is a cult classic, and I really, really like watching this every one to two years. It's interesting, to say the least. It is, yeah, yeah. I mean, before this, like Roddy Roddy Piper, you know, he'd been wrestling for a long time. This is like his first big dive into cinema. I mean, John Carpenter had obviously been doing this for a while already, and he'd like specifically hand-picked.
Rowdy Roddy Piper to do this role. Yeah, that's what I heard. He was at a WWE thing and saw Rowdy Piper and was like, this guy's good. I'm going to have dinner with him and talk to him and see if he wants to do a movie with me. And after they got done dating, yeah, then they made the film. So, you know, I don't know much about movies. And honestly, I don't know where to start with any of this stuff. So I was trying to find a way to just get a little bit of info about the movie before I actually watched it. So I turned to Amazon and thought, you know, maybe my peers on the internet would have a good idea of whether or not I'd like this movie. So I'm going to go ahead and read a five-star review of They Live to you guys.
from Michael M. Dogg with two G's, Norris. Let me just say, none of the words are capitalized, none of the letters are capitalized in this, and there are two periods in the whole thing. It's mostly a run-on sentence, so I'm going to read it like how I thought Michael M. Dogg Norris would want it to be read. They Live is great sci-fi cult classic from John Carpenter. It's about thinking that the world, as the way you do, that we live in a peaceful society, and we are alone.
Then comes along the drifter played by WWE Hall of Famer Rowdy Piper who discovers a pair of sunglasses and it exposes the truth that we are not alone after all and he fights to convince Keith David to see it as well and they plan to stop or expose the world before it's too late to hit an alien invasion that's been among us for years. This movie inspired Men in Black. That's the end of the review, guys. I learned a little something and boy, that got me hyped to watch the movie, I'll tell you that much. I didn't know that this was the inspiration for Men in Black. I sure didn't either.
Yeah, that seems a little bit of a stretch. I had pretty much a love-hate rollercoaster with this movie even before we started watching it. Because I had never seen this movie before. I knew nothing about it. Right. And I thought it was a wrestling movie. That's why we were watching it. And then I was like, oh, it's a John Carpenter movie. This is going to be pretty awesome. Sure, yeah. And then we started it, and it was pretty terrible. And then when he finally said one of his catchphrases, he was like, oh, this is going to get good. And then it was really bad. And it just never lived up to what I wanted it to be. Yeah. I mean, I liked it. I think that it's a bit rough. The pacing, it rushes around a little bit. Sometimes it's too slow, like at the beginning, where he's just like.
working for the first 20 minutes of the film and then they kind of just smash forward into shooting up a bank but I feel like that they were trying to hit this theme of like subversiveness and like media control and all that and they got it like they were going for that and they got it yeah I think like the big point of the movie is that there's like aliens among us right and they're all these like yuppies in society like the highfalutin people the cops the politicians all this stuff they're the one percent yeah the one percent and it's so you watch it and you think okay like the special effects are pretty shitty and a lot of this movie is cheesy but the message is still there right guys sure but it takes a long time to get to this message so for those of you that haven't seen it here's the first half hour of the movie he's a vagrant And he goes to a construction site to get a construction job and lives in a weird... Chanty town. ...feature chanty town. And there's weird stuff happening at the church. And when he gets invited to see what's going on, he doesn't go in. And then he finds sunglasses in the garbage, and when you put them on, you can see aliens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he just decides, like, oh, no, I need to kill all of them. And then that's the rest of the movie. It's just killing them. Let's talk about that. Sure. When he decides to start killing aliens. Because at first he puts on these sunglasses, and he sees, I guess he assumes they're aliens immediately, but he kind of just insults them.
He just calls them ugly. And then all of a sudden he has a shotgun and shoots up a bank. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it goes downhill pretty fast. And like even when he takes this woman hostage, Holly, and when he finally gets like a moment alone with her to like say like, no, I'm really trying to help the world. She's like, you just shot up a bank. What were you thinking? How is this going to help anyone? Yeah, I feel like he definitely would seem crazy, but he really doesn't even just say, hey, these sunglasses make you see aliens. Like that would really help people he's trying to convince. Oh my God. I mean, the whole fight scene, the reason this movie is so good and the reason it's great that there is a wrestler in this movie is just the...
hilariously long fight scene that happens in the movie between Roddy Piper and his friend Keith David. I don't even remember his name in the movie. But, like, the whole argument is put on these sunglasses. No. Put on these sunglasses. No. Okay. And, like, just keep beating each other up until he finally puts on the sunglasses. There are so many spots where you think the fight is going to end. Like, after a minute, like, he knocks him down. He knocks Keith David down. And it's just like, okay, well, that was the end. And then he gets back up and starts punching him again. And then, like, a minute later, he gives him, like, a belly-to-back suplex. And it's like, okay, that was the end. And then he just keeps going. Poor Keith David knees Roddy Roddy Piper, like, in the nuts three consecutive times.
And Roddy Roddy Piper no-sells it. I mean, come on. It's not like these are exciting fake-outs. It's just, like, kind of a disappointment that the fight is still happening. The location never changes. Right. It never really seems to escalate in any way. They're just, like, tiredly hitting each other. Then they stop for a second. And they're like, well, I guess we should keep going. Either one of us is knocked out. And I don't really know the motivation other than put on these sunglasses. Yeah, well, and they're friends with each other. I think that was something. I actually read that when I was looking into stuff for this movie.
So John Carpenter made it a point. He was trying to copy the style of another movie, but he was like, the difference is that they're not enemies. They're friends fighting each other. So it's more important. I mean, I think it's supposed to be he breaks the window in his car. That's what I assumed. He breaks the car window. He's like, oh, I'm so sorry. He laughs for a second, and then they just keep fighting. Yeah. At no point he could be like, whoa, whoa, okay, let's stop. Let me explain what these sunglasses will do. I mean, really, no one does that in the film, though. Everyone is just like, I only believe what I believe, and there's no way you can persuade me to believe something else without me experiencing it.
Myself. Which seems pretty relevant today, guys. I mean, if you think about it real hard, it's like modern day, not even the Reagan era anymore. Nobody changes what they think these days, even with stone cold hard facts, a.k.a. sunglasses. I provided sunglasses to all of my guests today, just in case we needed to spot any aliens. You have mine on and I have your cheetah. Yeah. Deal with it. Who are these? Oh, that's our dogs. Good deal, good deal. I felt those were the most Roddy-esque. They're pretty silent. I can see Roddy wearing these. Bill, we really don't know much about wrestling. Right. You do.
example your t-shirt yeah great shirt tell us a little bit more about him as a wrestler and why he might be the choice for this character in this movie well sure so uh rowdy rowdy piper i mean he began wrestling in like the mid to late 70s and he wrestled around in different like territories around the country before wrestling become like a national phenomenon and then in the mid 80s around like 83 84 he joined with the wwf and that's where i mean he'd already been sort of famous up to that point but then he became really famous as like the big villain to hulk hogan and he i mean Roddy Roddy Piper is not a small dude. Like, he would tower over me. But compared to Hulk Hogan, he's tiny. And so the thing that he had was he could talk. He could make a very good promo and come up with a bunch of insults and stuff for the other guys. And he would do that with all the other characters that couldn't maybe talk as well. Like, they were good in the ring, but they weren't as good at talking. So he would build up the drama and add the stakes himself.
And so he was in the main event of the first WrestleMania, and that was in 1985. And in the second WrestleMania, he boxed Mr. T. Nice. And for the third WrestleMania, that was going to be his retirement match. That was in 1987. He was going to retire. They Live, I believe, came out in 1988.
And that was going to be it for him. And so he won his last match against adorable Adrian Adonis. And he was gone forever. Except he never really left wrestling. He would keep coming back. And like he stayed. I mean, for me, I started watching in the 90s, in the early 90s.
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And at that point, he was kind of sort of retired, but he came back in 95, 96, and he would go on to feud with Hulk Hogan again later on for WCW. And he would stay there pretty much until they closed. And then he came back to WWF. And he became a tag team champion with Ric Flair. And in 2005, he became a WWE Hall of Famer. Nice. And then he even kept wrestling after that. His last WWE match was in 09 at WrestleMania 25, where he, Jimmy Snuka, and Ricky Steamboat wrestled one guy, Chris Jericho, together. And, I mean, at that point, they were all, like, 60 years old. Chris Jericho was a spry, like, 38 at that point. And so why is he in this movie? Because John Carpenter, up until that point,
had cast Kurt Russell in a lot of stuff. They had that big connection. They still have the same haircut. It's like, oh, it's a blonde Kurt Russell. In an interview with Nerdist, John Carpenter was saying he really liked that Rowdy Roddy Piper was more of an everyman kind of guy, which I guess in the world of wrestling he kind of was. He was the little dog in the fight. Even as a bad guy, he was more of an underdog. And he really liked that appeal that he had as sort of a working class guy. And so he specifically sought him out to do this film.
He literally made him a working class guy in this movie. One of the first scenes with him with his oil chest shirtless fixing stuff on the construction site just kind of swinging a hammer at him. I didn't think he was that bad. I thought he did an okay job. Yeah. That shot was just for the ladies. Ha-cha-cha. Yeah, his acting was good too. Yeah. Well, you were mentioning his one-liners. There were some killer lines like Pete mentioned also. It took so long for him to get to that point of just throwing out those really, really funny lines. We saw some in the trailer and I wrote some down too.
I got a really interesting little tidbit of information. So John Carpenter had set up the scene in the bank where he went up and said, you know, I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass and I'm all out of bubblegum. So John Carpenter was like, okay, you're in a bank. This was all improvised. You're in a bank. You're not going to kill a lot of these people. Just think of something to say. You're not robbing the bank. Think of something to say.
And so Roddy Piper had like a little book of one-liners that he used for wrestling and, you know, just to like have something to say off the cuff. And that was one of them was the bubblegum line. So he just came in, said that line. They're like, good, we got it. We're done. I mean, it's the funniest line. And you've heard it like I've heard it in other places besides this movie. This wasn't the first time I'd heard that. I recognize that line from Duke Nukem. I was like, wow, this movie stole from Duke Nukem. That's weird. This movie came out first. I get it.
Like, it was probably a little tough for Piper because he was used to playing a character, the character of Roddy Roddy Piper, but he couldn't do that in this film. He had to, like, come up with a new thing. And one of the things that Carpenter talked about, too, was, like, he had to help him with, like, coming up with, like, secrets for the character. That's like an acting thing. Like, you have secrets that you carry with you, and only you know, and the director doesn't. John Carpenter's like, I don't want to know them. Just think about them and keep them close to you.
I want to know what those were. I feel like one of them was the fact that he's married and doesn't talk about it. He's wearing a wedding ring the entire movie, and I don't remember him mentioning, like, a wife. His friend does. Yeah. When they're about to fight, he's like, hey, man, I can't be around you. You shot up a bank, and I have a wife and kids. And he's like, well, where are they? And you live in this weird shanty town with him. Where are they? Where's anybody but you guys? Well, because he said in the first scene, like, they were in Detroit, and he got all the steel mills closed, and he had to move down to wherever they are now and get a different job. Yeah, where are they?
Is it L.A.? It is L.A. It is L.A.? Yeah, I feel like, well, it definitely was shot in L.A., so I feel like it's, you know. So we don't know. I know. It's L.A., Pete. So early on in the movie, cops show up with a bulldozer. Oh, yeah. I didn't know what was going on. They're all, like, sleeping and hanging out, and then the cops show up with, like, a riot squad. They have shields, and they have a bulldozer, and they just destroy the entire town. And I wasn't really clear what they were looking for or why nobody was, like, running away. They all seemed to be running in circles.
They then, like, beat the shit out of some people? Yeah. Can you clarify that? Yeah, so in that opening scene, they're, like, running the resistance out of that church that's over there, and, like, some of the people from the resistance are living in the shantytown. So, like, right before the police show up, you see, like, three people come out of the church, and it's the blind preacher from earlier, and two of, like, the guy from the TV, and the guy who could get you anything. I forget what his name was, but the three of them are, like, running away, and they're trying to get them. That's why they go through, and they demolish the town. Gotcha. And, like, later on, you see them. The police are beating them up, and the poor blind preacher, he has, like, a pipe, and he's swinging the pipe back and forth to, like, ward off, like, six police officers. Yeah.
So basically in this movie, the aliens are putting out a signal in the form of TV so that everybody can't see the aliens. So they're sleeping, yeah. Right. Because we sleep, they learn. So his whole mission is to find where the signal is coming from and turn it off so that the people can see the aliens without wearing the sunglasses.
I don't know why they couldn't just, like, mass-produce the sunglasses. That seems like an easier option. In hindsight, it was a really bad idea for that collaborator to be like, huh, I have never seen you two guys here before, but I assume you're on our side. Let me show you where the signal is. Yeah. Come with me. I'll show you the deepest, darkest secret. So eventually they, like, figure out where the Resistance is, right? Yeah. Well, kind of the Resistance figures out where they are. Like, the one dude just walks into the hotel, and he sees Keith David there, and it's like, hey, you want to be in the Resistance? I mean, they haven't been, he said they haven't been good with recruiting lately, so I think he was just asking everybody he saw. But, so, they find out the aliens have watches, right?
They're two-way radios, as they say, a communicator. And they can also push a button and teleport somewhere. And they steal a watch, and it falls and hits the ground, and so it makes a portal in the ground, and then they go somewhere. It's just like underground tunnels, but is it like interdimensional tunnels? I didn't understand what the fuck was going on. Because they're in a tunnel, and then they show up in a concert hall where basically the 1% are applauding themselves for making money by supporting the aliens. It kind of felt like it was... I thought it was just like a hole in the ground. It literally just fell down into a facility.
Was that? I don't know. I don't know. There's no way for us to know. It was still in L.A., I think. That's because they go outside later, and then you can still see the same buildings and stuff, I think. But eventually they go. It was in the trailer. They find that spot where it's like a portal to outer space. So I felt like it was not underground L.A. because you can't see space from underground. You see what I'm saying? I do. I do. I'm strained to do some explaining here. Grilling Bill, man. He wrote this movie. I mean, how did you know? And where did you find my time machine?
That's a good question. I thought the pacing of this movie was very strange. Like, you know, they spent so much time just setting up. what the whole world was like and then the end of the movie whenever they finally get like the whatever you call it the signal down that keeps people from seeing all the aliens then it's just like maybe two minutes at the end of the movie where they just show people can now see what the aliens look like oh and they show boobs too finally a lady having sex with an alien being like what's wrong with your face yeah and then the movie ends and then it's done nobody seems that alarmed like anybody that does see an alien in this movie is like whoa They're pretty disgusting. I would scream because it just looks like they just have muscle. The face skin is taken off and you just see muscle and teeth. Like an eight-year-old corpse. Bill, when have you seen an eight-year-old corpse? Are you saying a dead child? No, no, no. A corpse that has been deceased for at least eight years. Much better. Thank you. I'm glad we clarified that. In terms of pacing, the trailer gets it right. There's essentially no climax to this movie. There is, but it's the least exciting part of the movie because he shoots...
Apparently, the signal, I'm going to ruin the movie for you, but the signal that's controlling the entire planet is just like one little satellite dish basically at the top of PBS. And he shoots it with one bullet. Yeah. It's like a Derringer. It's like the tiniest gun. Yeah. And it explodes. Right. And then it's over. I mean, so actually, there's a short story that They Live is based on. Oh, good. Yeah, it's called 8 o'clock in the morning. And that's where that short story ends, is that he does the thing to stop the signal. And then the very last lines are like, oh, everyone finds out that there are aliens among us. And that's where the war started. And that's where I died.
So, I mean, I guess he's being true to the source material. So this whole movie really should have been the first five minutes of its own movie. And then, oh, so Men in Black is the war. Yeah, that's it. Maybe that's like the part after the war, because now it's like mostly peaceful on Earth at that point. We were missing the middle part of the trilogy. Well, you know, I saw Men in Black 3, and that goes back 30 years, and there still was no war, so I don't know when the war happened. And this movie's in 1980, what, 8? There's no war.
That's the big lie. I feel like there should be an in-between of a short film and a feature-length film, just so that they could have just smooshed this movie together a little bit. Like a TV show? Maybe, like a TV show. They should redo They Live as a TV show. I don't think so. They should. They should do it. I'm going to produce it. I'm going to do it. If they do it, who do you cast? By the way, the main character doesn't have a name. Nada. In the credits, he's listed as Nada. Because nobody ever addresses him. Because he's the everyman. Nobody cares to talk to him. He represents anyone. Who would you cast as him in the TV show? Bill? Oh, yeah. Bill first. A fake tough guy.
Phil Brooks. I think I would cast Guy Fieri. He seems like the everyman, right? Sure. With Donkey Sauce and Flavortown. It'd be pretty cool to see him shoot up a bank.
In a movie, you know? I was going in another direction in my brain, and I thought Vin Diesel or Dwayne The Rock Johnson. But I don't think either of them would do it. Honestly, if they remade this movie, that's what they would do. They would put The Rock in it. Yeah, right? You know the remake in Jumanji, and instead of Robin Williams, it's The Rock? Oh, no. I didn't know that. Yeah, I heard the audible disappointment in the audience. That's real. And the police officer is going to be, oh, gosh.
Jack Black and Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart, Jack Black and The Rock. Oh, I have a real answer. I think Daniel Bryan would be a great choice. I know who that is. I'm so proud of myself. I know who that is. Yay! He's very socially conscious, and he's got kind of an everyman, underdog appeal. I could see it. I could see it. That would be cool. I'd watch it. I would watch it. Yeah. So this movie is a John Carpenter movie. Who is also directed... The Thing. The Thing. Oh, I forgot about that. Those are all good movies. What happened? It feels like... Again, what year did this come out?
88. All of a sudden, John Carpenter's like, you know what? I got some shit to say. And I don't have time for metaphors. So here we go. Not only do you see aliens with these sunglasses, but you see what all media is actually telling us to do. Oh, I wrote down some of it. You want me to read it out? Okay, so there's a woman in a bikini on a billboard, and then when he puts on the sunglasses, it just says, marry and reproduce. And then there's magazine racks, and it's showing consume and obey, and then they show money, and it says, this is your God. I looked at a screenshot.
from the grocery store when he puts on his glasses, all the booze bottles just say sleep. Sleep? Interesting. I wish there was more of that. Yeah. Of the just, like, stupid message things. Like, man, if they remade it in 2016, what would all the apps and websites say when you put the glasses on? I mean, there are, like, all the same thing. There are whole networks now committed to, like, control of the media and giving spin on the news. Like, so you could definitely incorporate some of that and, like, echo chambers and, like, how Twitter influences news and stuff like that. What's an echo chamber?
It's where you get a bunch of people who share the same ideas as you and you only listen to them. So if you have a bunch of liberally minded people and you only consider their points of view, your point of view will also be liberally minded. Like when you block all your dumb friends from back home on Facebook for saying that they like Trump. Like that? Kind of like that, yeah. I guess I've created an echo chamber for myself. Because at the end of the day, they're 40% of the country or whatever, so we'll have to work with them at some point and collaborate on stuff.
I've made a huge mistake. Bill, you said you met Piper. Yes. I did. I did. So I was seeing an improv show in Toronto at this bar called The Comedy Bar, and they were doing a set, and then...
One of the performers was like, oh, we've got two people here who know how to deal with bullies. And me being the nasty improviser I was, I'm making air quotes for the radio audience. I was like, well, that was a dumb move. There are no more performers to come out. And then they open the door and now comes Rowdy Rowdy Piper and Bret Hart. And unfortunately, so first off, Bret Hart unfortunately has suffered a stroke and has dealt with post-concussion syndrome. And both of them had been drinking.
So Bret Hart, unfortunately, was very inaudible. And Roddy Roddy Piper told a story of how he wore half blackface and tried to cross the border to Canada. So back in like 1998, he was wrestling an African-American wrestler known as Bad News Brown. And to play mind games with him, he painted half his body black. And if you're wondering how does that influence the story or like ad drama, I don't know. But he did it. Right. So the setup was he knows how to deal with bullies. And the story was he painted half his body black. Yes. And they also legitimately kicked one of the performers. I heard him complaining about it afterward.
Wow. Yeah, it was good. Wasn't Rodney Piper like a bad guy in wrestling? Like, he is a bully. He doesn't know how to deal with bullies. He is one. That was a big continuity hole afterward. I went on Facebook and I really ripped him a new one. I talked about it in art improv, but very passively aggressively. I didn't mention any names or shows. I mean, I think the message was he's learned how to deal with himself. That is so good. That was good. I met Mick Foley.
Yeah, but I was like seven, and this was in Hershey Park, Pennsylvania, and I was with my family, and we saw a very large, hairy, plaid man. And like I said, we didn't really watch wrestling, but I'm from Rochester, New York. He must have been on television a lot in Rochester for some reason, because we all knew who he was, and we really only went up to him because we didn't know what his name was. And my dad was like, can my son have your autograph? We didn't really want it. We just couldn't remember what his name was. That's clever. It was very hard to read. And you said you were at Hershey Park when that happened? I did.
Okay, I mean, that makes sense. Nick Foley is, like, supposedly a huge amusement park fan. I thought he was, like, a roller coaster guy. That's it, too, yeah. Yeah, they had just built a new roller coaster at Hershey Park, and he was, like, waiting in line. My dad's like, hey, can you sign this? I don't know what your name is. I'm sure he's got much, much weirder requests than that. Don't worry, probably. I've never met any wrestlers. Would you know? Probably not. No, you're right. I probably wouldn't, unless there was a crowd around them. Right. And then I'd do the autograph trick, like you taught me. Yeah. My only real experience with wrestling growing up was my babysitter, Miss Monica, watched it on our couch late into the night and would also talk with her.
I think her sister, like, on the phone as wrestling matches were happening to, like, go over, like, whoa, that was cool. Whoa, hey, did you see that? You put a camera in front of that. That's YouTube 2016. They have whole shows devoted to that on Bravo now. Oh, my God. Just watching people watch TV. They do? Yeah. It's called the People's Couch. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What else you got on your phone there? I was just looking at, so let's talk a little bit about Keith David. Yes. Because he's, I mean, he's had a bunch of parts in different films. He was in The Thing. He was in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But for a person like me, a nerd.
He is a huge voiceover guy, which means he's done a bunch of stuff. Like, he was Goliath on Gargoyles. He was the Arbiter in the Halo series. Although I don't think he was back for Halo 5. I think. I don't know. No? No one? Big upset. He was Captain Anderson in the Mass Effect series. And then, like, really recently, he was the president on Rick and Morty. Oh, really? He was also... He was the Shadow Man in Princess and the Frog. He was, like, the bad guy in that movie.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I thought you knew more. That's it. He's the voodoo top hat man. Yeah. He's got a movie about cooking and becoming a frog. Well, because it looks like him, too, because he's got the little gap in his teeth. His voice is incredible. Yeah, he's got a voice. He's going to cash checks until that voice just falls out of his throat. It's so syrupy, Basie. I love it. It's happened to so many before. Can I also talk a little bit about John Carpenter? No, I don't think so. Okay. John Carpenter is a huge video game fan. Nice. And actually, I'm going to bring this up here. A couple years ago, he contributed his top five games of 2014 to Giant Bomb, and I'm just going to read them off.
Number five was Murdered Soul Suspect. Four was... That's a game? That's a game. For what? It was for, like, PS3 and 360, I think. Murdered Soul Suspect? You were a dead cop, and you would have to, like, go as a soul and, like, investigate crimes. It's spelled like that. Yeah, soul, S-O-U-S. Number four was Borderlands, the pre-sequel.
Three was The Evil Within. Two was Far Cry 4. And he puts in parentheses, despite loading screen issues. Of course. Big upset. And number one was Assassin's Creed Unity. Gotcha. So I don't know about his tastes. Is he saying those are the best games that came out in 2014? Or as of 2014, those are his five favorite games ever? Those were his five favorite games of that year. That's fine. Yeah. Other interviews talk a bit about how he loves the Assassin's Creed series and the Far Cry series. He really liked Dishonored. Apparently, he's really big into video games. Well, I was telling Rene that Metal Gear Solid, the guy that made it, Hideo Kojima, stole...
a lot of stuff from Escape from New York to make Metal Gear Solid, like the name Snake, main character, Snake Plissken. So it's funny, they both like video games, so I guess there's no hard feelings about him stealing ideas from Carpenter. Can we talk a little bit about the fight scene and the parodies that have come up? Yeah, absolutely. So there was this South Park episode, I believe it was titled Cripple Fight, and in it they have pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the fight between Timmy and Jimmy, two of the handicapped characters on the show, and it's just like, everything is the same.
Like there's the suplex is the same. The knees to the groin are the same. And it's the same thing where it's like there's no music. It's all just silent and the people talking, saying the same lines and everything. Well, except for Timmy. That's true. Timmy, Timmy, Timmy. Well, yeah, you told me that. I didn't know what you were talking about. This is before I saw the movie. And you're like, did you ever see the South Park episode? And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then we found the YouTube clip and they have it.
side by side. There's chunks missing because the fight in They Live is so long. It's like six minutes long. And we're going to watch it now. It's really unbearable, so let's queue it up. And then they redid it sort of again in this game called Saints Row 4. Of course they did. In this game, the game starts with you are the President of the United States and aliens invade Earth and abduct you and all your friends. And they plug you into the Matrix, basically.
You and Keith David, not the character Keith David played in They Live, but Keith David are in the cast. And you meet Roddy Roddy Piper, not John Nada, Roddy Roddy Piper, who has to fight Keith David and bring him back to his senses. What? That sounds awesome. I played the demo of that game. It's insane. You're the president of the United States, but you're like the president from Idiocracy. Oh, cool. I don't know if you have cut off sleeves, but you might as well. Well, that series was known for getting crazier and crazier because, yeah, at the end of the third game, you become president as, like, you take over an entire city and, like, make this multinational corporation for yourself.
Classic gameplay. So Bill, okay, I'd love to talk a little bit about your podcast. So Bill is a huge video game fan, if that wasn't already apparent. But do you have any favorite wrestling video games? Yes. I really like, there were these games for the Nintendo 64. There were two of them. Well, there were a bunch of them, but I would like the most, WrestleMania 2000. I was a WWF guy growing up, so that was my favorite. There were like four of them all made by the same company called Aki. And they had two things going for them. They were like a pretty good fighting game, which most wrestling games were not. And then they had this really big career wrestler where you could make a bunch of moves for your guy.
He could do all the different entrances and have a bunch of different costumes and stuff. So you could do a whole Royal Rumble of 30 guys and have them all be your random guys that you made up. Nice. You know what? I'm pretty sure my cousins had that game. Because now that you say you could have the Royal Rumble, I think there was one specific Christmas Eve where all my cousins just played that the entire night. And everybody was taking turns making the wrestlers and then complaining that it was taking too long. And then we would fight, and then somebody would complain that the fight was taking too long. You know, just a lot of classic Christmas fighting.
Yeah. And WrestleMania 2000 was, I think, the best one. After that, they made another one called No Mercy, but they made the frame rate too slow. When you had four people on screen, it was unplayable. Bastards. I know. I think I read your Amazon review. Yeah, that was something I also wanted to mention. When I was looking at Amazon reviews, I was like, oh, I'm going to find some real gold in the one stars. And it was all like...
the format wasn't right. It didn't download correctly onto my PS4. Oh, no. None of it was about the movie. And I was like, why are you writing a review about this movie just saying that it didn't work on your system? That's what most one-star reviews are. Especially, they're just one-star reviews of games that haven't come out yet. They're like, don't buy it, it looks bad. Yeah. Sweet, thanks, man. What do you do for a living? This is it. There's a great Twitter account for that which just finds one-star Amazon reviews of movies. Nice. One was of Air Bud and it's like, a talking dog is sacrilegious one-star.
I'm going to need to see that. I just recently read an article that was one-star Yelp reviews for national parks. What? Where people were like, it was cloudy, couldn't see anything. Or like, we've been to a lot of parks, and I've got to say this one's pretty disappointing. Like, that person is stupid, but then also I'm just picturing somebody else reading that being like, oh, we probably shouldn't go to Yellowstone then. Martha says it was cloudy, and we should not go. Like, the mountains really weren't that big. As if somebody's to blame for that. God's to blame. God's to blame for that. Yeah, you're right.
So I don't know if anybody in the crowd has any questions or comments about the movie. Dan Schiffmacher. That's a great question. So why are the aliens on Earth? Do we know? They don't really say. It doesn't really seem like any of them are doing anything wrong. I mean, a lot of the aliens are just kind of having pleasant conversations with humans. They're dating.
They hold steady jobs. I think they're just there to make sure that the human race stays compliant, but I don't know what benefit they have. It's like the whole point is for them to just kind of make people obey what they have to say, but I don't know what they're gaining. I honestly felt kind of bad for the aliens. They're like, we're just trying to live, and if the humans know who we are, they're going to get rid of us. They sort of give an explanation, and it's like they're treating Earth like America treats other countries. We're like, we're their third world country, but that's about as deep in as they go. Does that answer your question?
Which I would expect. Yeah. Oh, we've got another one. Were there any unique ways in which any aliens were killed? Ooh, any unique ways that they were killed? They were all just shot. Right? I'm pretty sure, right? He really didn't kill that many. Yeah. There was the bank shooting. Did he kill anybody in the grocery store? No, he just insulted them. He insulted one. Made them want to die. Because of his mean insults. It was pretty cruel, yeah. I was surprised by that because it was a John Carpenter movie and I was like, oh man, I've seen the thing and it's pretty gory. There wasn't much blood.
Even when he shot them in the face, there wasn't much blood. No. I guess. This one's not about the violence, okay? This one's about the aliens. No, it was pretty boring. Nothing clever happened, really. Other than the one-liners, which we'll get to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had the one, but then the guy teleported away before he could get shot, so it was kind of a wasted one-liner, really. Well, I've got to take my sunglasses off for a second. Are there any more questions in the audience? Or we can go to our wonderful one-liners right now that I wrote down.
I think our sunglasses are appropriate to end the show. I would also just like to say thank you so much, you guys, for being here. And thank you so much, everybody, for putting on PodSlam. Such a wonderful, wonderful cause. And I'm so glad that we got to be part of it a second time. This has really been a very fun experience for all of us. But so we're going to end the show with reading some of Rowdy, Rowdy Piper's delicious one-liners that he gave in the movie They Live. And I'm thinking, I have them written down. There are six of them. Oh, perfect. So we can take turns reading them. Yes. All right? So I'll start with the classic.
I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I am all out of bubblegum. You know, you look like your head fell in the cheese dip back in 1957. Mama don't like tattletales. I take these glasses off. She looks like a regular person, doesn't she? Put them back on. Formaldehyde face. Brother, life's a bitch. And she's back in heat. It's my favorite.
When did this happen? Bill, do you want to be the cop? Sure. Where did you get those sunglasses? From the Tooth Fairy. You're actually missing one on the list. I think it continues from formaldehyde face, right? All right. It's like, he's taking his glasses on and off. There's another lady. So he's like, she looks like a regular person, doesn't she? This one looks pretty good. That one, what is it? Like shit? Fucking ugly. Real fucking ugly. That was it. Thank you guys so much. Have a great night.