The Rewatchable is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we can find the watch with Chris Ryan. Sure can. Pops on the big picture from time to time as well. I do.
And about nine of the Ringer Podcasts. I honestly am keeping it to the big three right now. But I'm always open. It's always special.
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It's still New York City Month. It kind of just fell into New York City Month. I saw you did that. Five episodes in June, though.
We have to find two more New York movies after this. Twist my arm. Marathon Man was an easy one. We've been circling this one for a while.
You've kept nudging me. I'm begging to give it that just here. I forgot to bring the book. I was going to put the book right out there.
But anyway, Marathon Man is next. Dustin Hoffman, Lawrence Olivier, Roy Shider, William Duvain, Marta Keller. It's safe. Easy and safe.
Marathon Man, a thriller. Rated R. This episode of The Rewatchable is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Prime is more than just fast delivery.
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The greatest movie villains we will ever have. Well, this is from The Rewatchable. We just peek. We're just never going to top it.
There's nothing better. If you have a chance to get a Vice Angler in the movie, you got to do it, man. It's just, you know, you can have all these different types of villains. You can make them as evil as you want.
You can make them as intimidating as tough as you want. But then you throw in Nazi war criminal walking through the jewelry district, hoping nobody recognizes him. And I'm like, we've peaked. Yeah.
I was thinking about the, basically Paul and Kalkal, this is a Jewish revenge fantasy. But I was thinking about what's like the top of the line for that. And Glares Basterds is probably number one. That would be the apex.
Marathon Man is in there. Munich, for sure. Raiders? Well, he's not Jewish.
But yeah. But Nazis are the villains in there. Yeah. Are you talking about Nazi villains?
Yes. Just being in somewhere in the vicinity where at some point you're watching the movie, we got to take these guys down. Yeah. And this one has probably the single best villain of all those villains, which is weird because he goes with the Wilds and Basters.
It's tough. It's tough. I think Christian Zell, because of what he's got one move. And that move is pretty arresting.
The dental work thing is like you take that. Oh, I thought you were going to say that I've suddenly have a razor coming out of my head. He's got two moves. Yeah, so he's got two moves.
But Wilds in, Landa is pretty amazing. And such an orator and just an incredible character in general, but Zell. Better entrance. Zell, are those those entrance with the opera with him folding the shirts?
Shaving his head? Yeah. Pretty solid. Yeah.
But Wilds's first scene is pretty great. Yes. I don't know. They're in the finals.
What works out? Social, Nazi villain Mount Rushmore. I want to find out who's the number 35 to 43 rank. You know what's funny?
We can't have them anymore. Because now it's that you couldn't do this in the matter of course. It's been too far away. They're making a whole shift.
You need that grandchildren of the War Villains. It just doesn't have the same, in my opinion, the same kind of zest. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that when you're watching this film, we talked about this, I think, on a pod recently, and I can't remember which one it was.
But it's crazy to watch this movie that's four years old. And there's so much closer to World War II now in this movie than we are even to this movie now. I know. And so it's a very living, breathing thing.
And the idea that this guy has come out of hiding and his actual victims are like, holy fucking shit, the devil has come back. He's like one of the most terrifying, arresting moments in movie history of me. And everything Olivier does with the character. And I can't wait to talk about Olivier.
By Larry. Yeah, Sir Larry just. I think what's so great about the characters, he's fully evil. Yeah.
The torture scene, you can just see it. You're like, OK, I get it. I get that this guy is as dark as we can get as humans. But then when there's a couple, like he's getting off in the airport, he's in the jewelry district.
And he's got the right level of like, I'm actually nervous for my own safety. You don't see like vulnerable evil villains that often? Well, he bounces it perfectly. I think it was a case of the filmmakers playing into the realities of the actor.
So Olivier is sick while making this movie. He's old. Like he can't do a lot of physical stuff. He can't do a lot of stunts.
He can't move around that much. But then every movie he makes and everything he does takes on this huge amount of importance. So they like played to his remaining strengths in the film itself. And the dentistry scene, which is one of the most horrifying things in movie history, is actually doesn't require a lot of him, right?
Like he's just sort of like pacing around this room a little bit and asking this question over and over and over again. One of the greats. Sir Larry. Yeah.
Yeah, because you think by all accounts, one of the greatest stage actors who ever lived. I don't know if he's one, two, three where he ranks. And the pyramid. It's like him and Barry Moore.
He has to be mentioned. He has to be mentioned. If you're just being like, hey, who are the great stage actors? He's always has to be mentioned.
But part of I think what made him great when he's playing like Richard III, things like that, is he's got this physical presence walking around the stage. So by the time we get to marathon, man, and there's been some unbelievable writing about this movie. Goldman has a whole chapter about it in his book about how physically frail he was and how hard it was for him to stand. But he's still an imposing guy.
So he's just the perfect balance of old, frail, scary. I actually still believe he could kill Hoffman. Sure. And it's just an awesome performance, which of course he does not win.
But he was inspired. His character in some movies is the White Angel. But it was inspired by Mengele, who was the angel of death. And it was the same thing in the concentration camps.
He would just see him with the white hair, and they just knew. So it's based on that. Yeah, Goldman's idea. So this is based, Goldman wrote the screenplay based on his own novel.
And I think the genesis for the novel was what if Mengele had to come out of hiding or go to New York to get some sort of something. What happens when you put a character like that in play, a person like that in play? And then he builds out the world from around that. So he writes the book, he publishes it in 74.
That's less than 30 years after World War II months. Still pretty fresh. I think about it now. 2025, that's 95.
So that's basically the OJ trial. Yeah. Which doesn't seem like it happened that long, right? Even though Craig was born that year.
I would have loved to hear Christian Zell's takes on the OJ trial. He probably would have been able to get a better confession at OJ. Goldman writes the book, knowing it's going to be a movie because it just reads these movies, sells the film rights for 500K, bringing our guy Big Shopop. Yeah.
So it's Ali McGraw, the kind of legs that can stop a room. It's a wonderful picture. There's a making of, this is not going to save this for what's age the best, but there's a making of marathon man on YouTube. I can't believe I missed it.
20 minutes. And so I think it's also on the 4K. It's Robert Evans, his foot's up on the chair. He's got a Navy V-next sweater and a perfectly like starched white shirt underneath.
And he's standing there with his glasses and he's just like, and this is like, came to Paramount. We love to make incredible pictures for everybody's entertainment. You'll see in the waterworks, we recreated that in Paramount. It's no expense.
It took up two sound stages. I can hear him say. And the entire wall behind him is just pictures of Robert Evans. Yeah.
He was like a parody of a parody of a parody. Yeah. Pat and Oswald did the greatest ever Robert Evans impersonation, but it's actually beyond impersonation. If you watch this video, I wish producers still did this today.
I just think the 70s weren't just the apex of unintentional comedy. I don't think we'll ever even come 10% close ever again. No, the combination of cocaine and everything else is just incredible. You know, when you would manifest itself in some ways, like basically everything that we saw was just go check the Battle Network Stars the first couple of years, just there's a lack of self-awareness all over the place.
But Bob Evans was the ultimate producer for that. It would be no self-awareness. It would be fucking incredible though if we did the backdrop for you is just 100 pictures of you. I think LeBron might have done that for my game.
I might have talked him out of it. The book reads like the movie movie of all time. I regarded it as a cheap investment because you don't often find books that translate into film. This is the best thing I've read since the got five.
I knew I never should've let Ellie McGraw leave with Steve McQueen. I knew I'd never get a back. That sort of a bitch pack of off. Two months with Steve McQueen.
Even I would've folded. So anyway, we'll go. Then Bob Evans. And then they're like, let's just get a bunch of awesome famous actors and not to step on casting what if but they went.
Bob Evans said they actually went five for five with the people they wanted for the movie in the roles they wanted and just got off them because everybody loves this script. Yeah, there was some rumors about if this person said, no, we might look at this person or like, John Schlesinger or the director might have wanted this person, but it sounds like Evans got his first graphics. Dustin Hoffman, Larry Olivier. I like that they call him Larry.
I can't wait to talk about my Lawrence Olivier deep dive in the Indian airport on Saturday. William Devane. You did Olivier into doing Harper tape? Yeah, I'd finished my marathon man research and then went right into four hours of YouTube.
And our guy, Russ Shider. Yeah. Big time for him. I'm pretty glad I'm in the 1980s.
I love that guy. But the command action stuff. Still recovering from Sean saying he wasn't handsome. Member Sean Solta.
He's not conventionally handsome. He's got that nose. Sean's just down to him. We're right.
Shider can't even defend himself. Just not handsome enough for Sean. Hoffman's the lead. He's coming off of Lenny.
This comes out same year as all the president's men. He loses 15 pounds, runs four miles a day. And Evans said Hoffman would quote, would run just for a take. He would run for a half mile.
So he came into the scene and he would actually be out of breath. This was the height of Dustin Hoffman. Difficult method actor guy. Sure.
Yeah. He pressed Olivier with it. He did. So hold that because I want to get into some of those stories because we had to do Olivier too.
This leads to all the president's been marathon man. The straight time in 78, you like that movie? I do. Agatha Kramer versus Kramer.
That's 79, right? We covered that in the rewatchables. That's my favorite Dustin Hoffman movie in performance. Three years off, Tootsie.
Three years off, Death of a Salesman on TV. Two years off, Ishtar. He's doing a lot of stage stuff. Have we ever really had Dustin Hoffman?
How much did you like him? Conversation? We haven't. He's probably of that cohort of 70s actors, 70s associated actors.
I would say not necessarily. I go down to Duval, like Paspicino de Niro Duval, Hackman. I get pretty far down the 70s before I'm like, Hoffman's great. I think you can see.
It's an interesting point in his career because he can impose his creative choices on the material rather than the reverse. So if you read the book, Babe is much chattier, much more fun year and is kind of this nervous, but he's also supposed to be like six foot one and kind of a piece of rock, a pretty big athlete. And Hoffman makes him into a much more damaged, much more nervous, much shire kind of character, I think. And that was obviously not against it.
The other side would have been pretty different. It's a different kind of movie. It's a little bit more playful. And I'd say the novel is more playful.
It's weird. I'm with you. I could list a whole bunch of 70s actors and 80s actors before I'm like, and then Hoffman. I don't have a lot of conversations with people.
They're like, my favorite actors, Dustin Hoffman. That's my guy. I ride with Hoffman. Do you think it's like, I bet he agrees he's really good.
He's almost like an athlete where you're like, yeah, I really respect him, but not a huge fan. Do you think maybe some of his films, like I mean, all the President's Men is like basically 50-50 him and Redford and Ang. And he's awesome. He's awesome.
But he's almost like he needs someone to play off of. And it really depends on who he's playing off of is kind of where it goes. Yeah, you wouldn't want to see him in the Revenant. No, I would not.
Just quite mean to a bear naked. I feel like that's the second Revenant. I wouldn't want to see him in the Martian. You wouldn't want to see him in the Martian.
You wouldn't want to spend two hours with him and Mars by himself. I wouldn't want to be on Castaway with Dustin Hoffman. I wouldn't really want to be in a buddy cop movie with Dustin Hoffman. No.
I think there are particular things that he's really good at. But I always feel like he's Dustin Hoffman in the movie. He's not one of those people who gets lost in a role. How can I feel like as we get horny hacks?
That's true. We get Hoosier's hacks. I feel like he has different moves. But the Kramer versus Kramer guy versus this guy, are they that different?
They're also re-roll. I think they all have a certain nervous energy. Yeah. So re-roll nervous a little bit.
He's totally unconventional looking guy. Right. I mean, he's tiny. Yeah.
So it's a lot of these 70s stars with the exception of Redford. And I guess Beatty. But even Beatty was kind of a weirdo. Have a really, really, really particular energy.
It was a moment where guys who maybe in other times in Hollywood history would have been character actors would become the biggest movie stars in the world. Well, one of the I'll step on casting what is. One of the reasons he took the movie was because he heard Pacino wanted to do it. And I think Pacino and Hoffman were on each other's corner in a bunch of different ways.
He was up for Michael. Wasn't he? I just feel like you had the Redford side of leading men guys over here in Newman and McQueen. And then you had kind of the Hoffman Pacino, maybe D'Nara a little bit, but the little artsy or actor guys.
And I think Hoffman and Pacino, Pacino did a better job of stretching parts and kind of falling into characters and losing himself in character. I feel like in some movies, to me at least Pacino's cooler, he can be cool. Hoffman rarely is. But it all worked out for him because he became, he's definitely in the first sentence with all those guys.
But I just think he was a little more limited than some of those other guys. I don't think he could have been Tony Montana. That would have been really funny. I don't know if I would have wanted to see him in Dog Day Afternoon.
I don't know if I would have believed him as Serpico. I don't think he would have been fun as Vincent Hannah. He's a straight time. Which I think is a really interesting movie.
I wish he had made like three more zags. I guess Lenny is a zag, but that's a pretty dated movie. And then Lenny is not a funny one. And all that jazz, that's what Bob Fosse is editing.
So when he keeps looking at the standup footage, it's supposed to be Lenny. Even if he'd been the Shider part and all that jazz, that would have been really fun. If he had been the lead in Jaws, I don't know. It just seems like he was very particular about the parts he took, but this is like a classic Dustin Hoffman part.
Yes. It's perfect. He gets to be the hero. He's a little damaged.
He gets the stutter into energy. It's full cent. He jogged. He lost 15 pounds.
He probably wore a prosthetic fucked up teeth after the dental scene. He immerses himself. Craig, you have Dustin Hoffman thoughts? I just think that I can't tell if the reason why there's not a lot of Dustin Hoffman's now is just because we need people who fit into more traditional buckets like, you know, action star or comedy guy, or if it's more just that the movies he was in aren't as popular now and don't get made now, which is why people like him aren't as famous.
I don't know which one is. It's kind of what we're talking about with Beatty. You know, we're like, how come Beatty's movies, how come Beatty doesn't, like I don't feel like his name has the instant recognition or the associations that Redford does? Cause there is no Hoffman comp right now.
Like I don't know who I would pick. Because the movies that Hoffman is starring in that made a lot of money back in the day that made him famous aren't making a lot of money today. The closest thing I can think of is Jesse Eisenberg, but he's not as intense as Hoffman by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, that's a good one.
But Kieran Colkin honestly has some hobbies, qualities, but like if you put the two of them together, maybe it's like Hoffman, but I don't know. Well, by all accounts, pretty polarizing as a hang. Yeah. In some of these sets and some of the movies, and Goldman was not a fan.
He was not. And Goldman was not shy about a couple of the actors that he didn't like. Well, Hoffman was apparently a big part of why the ending of the movie got changed and they brought him Robert Town. Yeah, hold on.
I still have a part for that. We gotta hit a livery really fast. I think one of the great 20th century actors, you've clinched that one. He went to, he went to an Oscar and two honorary Oscars, went for Hamlin in 1949.
He went five prime time Emmys. He was knighted in 1947. Yeah. They said that the two greatest things you could have seen him in were Othello and Richard III.
Goldman wrote if he could have seen two performances when he was younger, one of them would have been Othello. There's that awesome anecdote in a, adventures in the screen trade where Olivier keeps referencing his, the last time he's been in New York and he references like these years and Goldman's like, I realized that like he's calling it 51, but that's actually like when he was doing Glass Menagerie or whatever. Right. And he's like holy shit.
He's already listening off Super Bowl locations. Yeah. He's like, I've been in Indianapolis before? Yeah, I was in New Orleans.
So anyway, by the time we hit the 70s, he's, he thinks he's dying of cancer, takes the role to make more money for his family to leave some stuff behind and he's on pain meds all the time. Rob Evans had to get loads of London to ensure him. And one of the great shares of me, Ty was at the Toa to Lloyd himself. And, and he does the movie and then recovers and then has this really weird IMDb stretch afterwards where he's in a bunch of TV movies, he's in a bridge too far, he's in the boys from Brazil, he's in a little romance, which is a really good movie that's dying lanes first movie.
He's in Dracula. He's in the jazz singer with Neil Diamond, which is one of the worst movies of the early 80s. He's in Clash of the Titans in 81 at Zeus. So all of a sudden he's grabbing some paychecks near the end there.
But I mean, the reverence that everyone talks about acting with him, I don't know who that is now. Where it's like Olivier's in our movie. This is, I'm sucked out. It would be Daniel D'Aless probably.
Like 15 years from now. Yeah, if DDL came back and was like, you know what, I'll make a couple of, I'll just make it like five more movies. Yeah, I'll play Zell. That out the chair.
Oh my God, that's DDL. Devain Golden had this thing. I'm just gonna read it. He's talked about, they broke from a scene.
I cornered Devain who was bright and very articulate. I told him how wonderfully he'd done. And that's what it was like rehearsing with Lawrence Olivier. It doesn't matter, Devain replied.
I didn't know what and how he was talking about Setso. This is rehearsal, Devain said, it's nothing. When the camera starts to roll, give me a little of this, it'll give me a little of that. And you'll never know I'm in the movie.
No one's gonna be watching me. That's Olivier, man. That's how everyone thought about him, except for Hoffman. He's like, let's fucking improvise.
Larry, let's go. And he's like, Anthony Edwards, he's like, I don't care. Well, so that, Goldman tells this long story of him making Olivier rehearse Hoffman and making him stand. And it was clear to everyone in the set that Olivier was trying to really fade and improvise.
And everyone thought it was like this power play. And then Hoffman said, after the story was a true, I'm gonna go with my guy Goldman, because he doesn't make shit up. But this leads to, I'm gonna put this category right here. The Steven Seagal's shitting on a sofa word for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot.
He goes to Lawrence Olivier. So, portrayal is under the fifth. So the story was, there's a method acting thing. And Hoffman was up, this is the story.
I'm not saying it's true. Hoffman said he was up three days to try to simulate what it would be like to be up for three days. And he's telling Olivier about this. And Hoffman, he was just rubbing Olivier the wrong way.
And Olivier finally said about method acting. My dear boy, why don't you just try acting? And everyone this said was like, oh, it was just this huge cut down. And this became a legendary hobby.
Yes, it's gotten told in 13 different ways by everybody who was a part of it. From Goldman to Hoffman, you slash ander, everybody has got their version of how it happened. Hoffman was joking, whether he was serious. Hoffman's version is he had been going to Studio 54 a lot and that he had been partying a lot.
And the problem is Studio 54 wasn't open until the year after. That's where his story falls apart. Because it opened in 1977, year after the movie came back. Johnny Cochrane.
Sorry, sorry, Dusty. He said it inside the actor studio, the exchange was distorted and he had been up all night at a nightclub and Olivier was merely joking. Yeah. It's too famous of a story.
I also don't think there's a lot of people like protecting Dustin Hoffman at this point because he seems a little prickly. Yeah. So, he also said Hoffman on the last day shooting, Olivier visited him. He brought him a book, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and then proceeded to read scenes from some other plays.
For Hoffman and Hoffman said he was an absolute delight. They loved each other. And then he said Goldman made up this stuff or exaggerated it because he was mad because they changed the ending. Yeah.
Again, I'm gonna go with Goldman. Yeah, it's incredible. We don't really have enough of this anymore where I think for like several decades, Hoffman and Goldman were essentially like trash-talking each other whenever they would be asked to talk about Marathon Man. Yeah.
And simultaneously, he was also trash-talking with Redford. Yes. I don't know about this whole alternate version of how all the presidents man allegedly happened. Exactly.
Yeah. So, I mean, that's the most famous movie book anyone's ever written, his first one. And both of those guys really resented it. Sure.
And I mean, for Goldman, it's his novel. It's his screenplay. And then the star has his ending rewritten. But I like arguably the only screenwriter who's bigger than him, Robert Town.
So who do you believe? I like Goldman's version better. And I think he would make it up. He's like a very prideful guy.
He remembers everything. And I think he's also pretty like honest about his shortcomings and the times he's fucked up. Right. He's very self-deprecating.
And he's the first one to criticize himself. In this case, they change the ending. We'll get in all the pictures. I can't remember which one in adventures in the screen trade where he's like, I screwed.
Like, was it right stuff? Where he's just like, I just didn't do this well. Yeah. And then they completely like saved it.
So he's honest about his failures. Yeah, no question. I mean, he went into like huge writing slumps and all kinds of things. So listen, it was the 70s.
And these guys had huge egos. And studios were cowed down to them. And all of them took advantage of it. And that was it.
But I'm team Olivier and team Goldman. So, Olivier was nominated for best supporting actor. He did not win. But it's quite a category.
Robards wins for all the president's men. That's a good with Robards. Stacked category. Robards is amazing.
Yeah, you're good with that, right? Yeah, I think Beatty is like in third there behind Olivier. And then Hoffman did not get nominated. But he did for president?
No. Nothing. $6.5 million budget made $28.2 million. And we should mention that sooner.
The kind of movie that just doesn't exist anymore. No, this would be a big deal. And then he's going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, this prestige TV show by far. Or it would be like an Apple movie that they hired two huge stars for.
It had a huge budget, but it was almost too big. I mean, if you made this movie today, you just nobody would. I was just thinking about all the scenes that are outdoors in Paris and New York City. Like I don't even know how much that would cost.
Like they shoot on the street in New York. There are scenes where it's like, they must have had different rules about extras back then because people are like looking at the camera. You know? So it's obviously they're just running around these cities, handheld with Hoffman and Shider.
Yeah, they just seemed like in the jewelry district with 500 people. Yeah, I don't know how they do it. It's incredible. Yeah, so it would probably be, you read probably a script.
But it's also a perfect 70s movie in a lot of ways. It's certainly like the place where our interests converge. It is a political conspiracy thriller meets a revenge thriller. So it's about like all this like pent up historical anxiety, the Jewish factor, the Nazis, but it's also about a guy who's been living inside of his brain for a long time, who's forced to like step out and become a physical force and defend himself, which is basically what a lot of like we talked about with death wish, but a lot of the reviews and often it's made other movies like that with straw dogs and stuff.
Yeah, and we should have actually said this sooner too, but the paranoid piece of it, it's just so specific to this era. And it's so good. It's like, so all my wheelhouse. Tell me something about the vibes of these movies, where it's just like, don't trust anyone ever.
Everything is shadowy at night. There's never people around. It's always dark. You just never know who's coming around a corner.
There's always could be like some sort of henchmen, even in a park. Yeah, just some henchmen could just mug you and you know what their intentions are. Yeah, they make the everyday seems surreal. Like you can shoot at the Library of Congress and all the President's Men or you can shoot somebody's apartment in Harlem in Marathon Man and make it seem like the German expression is kind of saying that the entire world is pushing down on these characters.
It's honestly one of my favorite kinds of movies, is these 70s throwers. Yeah, we've talked about it. It's a specific era. It's coming out of Watergate.
It's coming out of Vietnam. It's coming out of the JFK assassination, the JFK assassination, and just people not knowing what to believe anymore. Yeah. Who were the good guys who were the bad guys?
And you can see a movie like this where you could feel like you could be babe. You're just studying for some exam or something. Just a station, yeah. You're in your bathtub and all of a sudden somebody's breaking down your door and trying to get you.
Isn't it an interesting turn over where because we did Star Wars and I think the thrill of Star Wars is every kid who watches it can say to themselves, what if I was Luke Skywalker? Like what if I saved the galaxy and I was the special person? But the thrill of these movies is like what if every dark fantasy I had is true and everybody is out to get me and the government is following me. I mean, it's just a weird changeover in the seven, just one decade.
They change over to like, no, no, no, like what if the galaxy, like you could fix it all? Yeah. And then it moves into the 80s and everybody's like, you know what? Colleen Rich is moving about that.
Here's another movie. You know what I've been alien came to you by me? Yeah. All right.
Six point five million budget, 20 point two million makes it. And Ebert goes three stars. He said, if holes and plots bother you, marathon man will be maddening, but as well crafted, escape is entertainment is a debacle thrower. The movie works with relentless skill.
I'm going to give this. It's like a half fucking rush. Yeah. I keep robbed that of a half star.
Should we start giving stars to you? Yeah. Star Wars. Just about to say that we have to review.
I think this is a two star review for a three star movie that we actually think is four stars. It's listen, if you want to say three and a half because there's a couple of plot holes, I would have been upset about it. But I like if this movie came out now, we would be like, oh my God, they figured it out. Movies are back.
And this was just like another movie in 1976. That was really good. But we were just cranking these out 10, 12 a year. Yeah.
And even when they didn't work, it was like Black Sunday, which is like a really cool movie that doesn't totally work, but it's still fun to watch. Ebert said something earlier in his review that's paraphrasing is just like, on a moment to moment, it only matters. Thriller is only, it only matters if a thriller is believable on a moment to moment basis. Like on any thriller, you can step back and be like, what the fuck is this vertigo about?
Like, come on. And you can do that with this movie. But when that music comes in, the Michael's small music comes in and the shadows and the weird moments and just like everybody kind of milling around and you don't know who's a spy and who's not. It's just like, who cares about the plot?
It's so funny when you read the reviews, especially Paul and Gail. Yeah. Everybody's expectations were so high for every movie. It's hilarious.
Yeah. Ebert's just like, ah, they're going to get there. Like Lord's Libby, playing an evil Nazi is like, I don't know. Three stars.
Solid. Let's take a break and then I will do the categories. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is full of decisions, big and small.
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Most we watchable scene. We got to start with the crazy car chase accident. Old Main Road Rage. I, this also wins the Ruffalo Hannah Ruben and partridge over acting word for both drivers.
Hey, fuck you. I have a different winner for Ruffalo. Okay. It's for me.
It wins it. It just goes on and on. It's very 70s. I think this would be a much more exciting car accident 50 years later for coming up, but very fun to watch.
The drive into the oil truck is a little like a little like a fish. You guys could have broke. Yeah. Little naked gunners.
The hotel fight scene. Just all of the Docs Nuff in Paris. Rose Shider. Looking like a bag of leather.
You know, what's your move when somebody comes around with you with the piano wire? I mean, there's only one move. You got to do this right away, right? Yeah.
Because if you fuck that up, you're just a meter done. Yeah, you're dead. So you got to do this, but then what's the second move? Elbow?
I know, but I never have to find out what my second move. Yeah. I thought you had, but so up headbutt. Maybe like lifting the legs, trying to kick in the balls.
Yeah. Yeah. You see the piano wire. I think the single most underrated.
And then I was like, stop. Your divers got treated. To the Giants. It just happened.
His war was a little over there. I think piano wires is the single most terrifying thing. Next to dental equipment. I'm saying like when the bad guys come in, they could do numb trucks.
We've seen every sort of device. It doesn't go out because you're getting hurt, even if you're stopping it. You're still getting like eight stitches in your hand. The way his block is hurting.
I don't like that. God, God. You're just slicing tendons. I also love the old guy in the balcony across.
Yeah, the watcher guy. Yeah. So these are two scenes together, but I'm putting them together. They're both for Shatter.
Dock drops in on babe, and then Dock goes to lunch with babe and Elsa. Love the one scene. That combo. When he drops in on Hoffman, it becomes a play for like four minutes.
Mm-hmm. And it's just crackling dialogue. It's just really good. Try to try them up, throwing some pitches at each other.
Yeah. Also you just learn so much about them from Dock's reaction to babe writing about their dad. I want to see this shit. You learn everything you need to know about those things.
Then with Elsa, she's like just rope it up, sir, and then he goes, I've made all this up. There is no verb here. There's no cloth, sir. She's like, what?
Pretty fun. One rope it up, trick. All right. Dock goes to see Zell and then babe and gets stabbed to death and then shows up all bloody.
Yeah. Get a good Hoffman scream. Here we go. Hoffman and the bathtub right into the torture scene.
I think this is most relatchable for me. Yeah. I mean, it's a tough watch. Him and the bathtub is about as good as it gets for what would I do if I was in this situation.
Try to crawl out the window. Everyone's fair, just being naked, if you're about to be murdered. Just be like, I just got to get some pyjamas up before you kill me. Hold on a second with the piano wire.
Just give me one minute here. So I get some pants on. Yeah. But then the way they're screwing the door frame, that's like, all right.
And then the window's not big enough to get out of. And then we get right into the Olivier. It is safe. Yeah.
Is it safe? It's safe. It's safe. It's safe.
It's safe. I think that's another good scary movie device when somebody's just saying this incoherent sentence over and over again that you don't have an answer for. So Craig, had you heard of Is It Safe before you saw this movie? No.
What did you think of this scene? I thought it was incredible. Yeah. I think the bathtub scene is one of the scarier, most dispensable scenes I've seen in a long time.
And this movie is quite in a lot of moments. And it's terrifying. Also, I think nobody lays in baths anymore. No.
Nobody's really. I'm the only one. I invented baths. They didn't have them before I started taking them.
I did. I did. I invented them. I invented them.
Pass or out before I started taking them. You still take baths? I do. Wow.
It's good for my lower back. That's good. No, I still read there. You used to read books.
I would bring the iPad in there and read that. Retweets. Don't do Twitter. X.
Did Elon do anything today? Oh, crazy one. Elon. Yeah.
Is it safe? I love scenes and movies where you're watching going. And Tarantino, I think very smartly, some of the stuff that he kind of, some of his like torture stuff. Some of the stuff he borrowed from the 70s, or things he liked, one of the things he was really good at is I don't know where this scene is going, but I know I should be scared.
And I have a charismatic somebody who's up to something. Michael Madsen dancing with the razor. That's basically a marathon. Right?
And you're just like, what? So in this, it's like, why does he keep asking? He should say, what the fuck is this guy up to? It's almost like, I don't even know if after the first 10 or 15 times I saw this movie, if I even thought about what he was actually asking.
Because it's basically like, am I going to get robbed at the bank? But you're just like, this is such an existential almost unanswerable question. And this is the moment where this is why you get off. It's like for every scene where you're like, I got a dust and you're dialing it up a little bit or like you don't have to run Larry in circles here.
This is the scene where he is as scared as any normal friend would be. I mean, like, I can't, how can I possibly answer questions? I don't know what you're asking me. You're like, um, John Henry caught when he called me about the devil trade.
He wouldn't tell me what it was. He just kept asking if it was safe. I was like, John Henry, don't train her best. Oh, fuck.
Well, the other torture scene after the rope adobe from William Devain, my guy. Yeah. Two lot of rope adopes in this movie. And Olivia says a live freshly cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive and you're just like, just fucking can you just be about just kill me?