Are we rolling? Should I start this simply? Should this be there? This gold again? It's actually kind of like got gold yead and not gold. Yeah, And uh there was a guy a bunch of people came down. It's running Chris Christmas time. So a lot of people there and we used to go as a family and we had other families we meet there and stuff. And there was one guy there who was always trying to work. You know that crowd. He's always trying to meet people and like a network.
And as you left, the place was on Saint John. You had to take a boat to Saint Thomas the airport, and he was talking to some guy. I guess he had been chatting out for business. And as he's walking there, uh he he says the guy, we were like, we're walking behind him. He says to the guy, Oh, well give me let me get your numbers, so uh so I can uh give you home on in the city. We have munch, right, it's okay. And then he looks around. Here have a pen and he turned to his
wife. He says, you have a pen, can be a pen. I need a pen. Come on to be a it's business. He says with his teeth bread business. Always loved that. Like my brother and I every now and then say that to each other, like Hey, could you can you hand me those pretzels? It's business, Hey, defense council use that blackboard. Yes, thank you yours. Ola. You should never assume, because when you assume, you make an ass Hey, we're closing on
the end of January. And this is glop culture on John Punwar. It's in New York. Elsewhere in New York Rob long I Rob Hi John, And in Washington d C. Jona on Goldberg, Hi Jonah, Hey John, guys, I think I sent you the other day the single greatest discovery I've ever made on Facebook. And I have a bunch of bunch of all these like weird show busin nostalgia groups. Yeah, and uh. There's a guy named Cliff Nessarof who is a historian of comedy Canadian and he just did
he finds things you can't possibly imagine. So he finds this thing. Somewhere in Ontario in like nineteen seventy, the McMaster players a production of The Odd Couple, and there are these two pictures of these two guys that look dimly familiar but very very young and it is Eugene Levy and Martin short In the Odd Couple Wow in nineteen seventy the McMaster players in Ontario. Now, there are many reasons to want there to be a time machine. Many things you
would like to see that are traded up. Maybe you want to see the Battle of Agincourt. Maybe you would want to see, you know, the parting of the Red Sea. There are all kinds of things you want to see. I myself, I focus on the these minuscule moments in pop culture, Like I would love to go to the production of The Odd Couple in the McMaster auditorium somewhere on Tario with Martin shortyar the jam Levy what year Now,
it's weird. I was alive in nineteen seventy, So I think if I went back on a time machine to nineteen seventy to do that, I would create that temporal anomaly that would blow up the universe because I would be in two places at the same time in the same Well, you don't visit yourself. You can't visit yourself. You can't if you can, if you can be in the same timeline at the same time, what does it matter whether you can visit yourself or not the temporal anomaly has happened. I am
not making a point of physics. I am making a point about the rules of virtually every sci fi and content movie, right, is that it's fine to go back in time, but you can't interfere with yourself. That's all right. Interfere with yourself is like another of a fantastic euphemism, because if you could go back in time, you would it would be interesting to you know, yeah, to interfere with yourself. Just with that, I don't even know what that would mean to Hey, let me tell you something I
think you'd say. I think you you would say something like, you know that moment that you went up to that girl at the high school dance and you asked You're there's going to be a moment five years from now you're move up to a girl at the high school dance and you're going to ask her out, and she's going to laugh in your face, and it's going to haunt your nightmares for fifty years. Okay, Like you know, Elizabeth Krueger, don't go up to her, Okay, because then you're not You're not
like changing history. You're not doing anything except sparing yourself pain, right, just don't you. So you're you're going to use the technology that life universe changing technology of the time machine to go back into time and inspire yourself to an act of cowardice. No an act. Don't do that. No, no, no, no act of an under prudence. Not go back and say, hey, listen, don't let moral self care is what you're talking That's what I'm talking about. I am saying that I love myself enough to
spare myself unnecessary pain that has no growth element to it whatsoever. So I really I don't want to. I don't want to overly pick it up the scab about like do overs with females and stuff. But if I were to go back in time there, mine would be more of the Remember that girl you asked out and she said yes, but you didn't think she really wanted to, and so you didn't go out with her, and then it turned out that she really did want you to go out with her, and you
blew that opportunity. I would say, follow through on a bunch of those kinds of situations that I got myself in back. Yeah, which is a little different, But yes, I got a question but no, but but
see, then you could materially affect your timeline. You really could. All you're doing here, it's like, you know, there's a there's a there's gonna be a crack in the sidewalk, and you're gonna trip and skin your knee, and I just strip over the crack in the sidewalk, and then you won't skin your knee, and then you won't have Scarberry Like you'd still come back in the world to be populated by dynasas because you because you did
something to fly people, because you did something to a butterfly. If you did, I'm going to assert I don't you know, I don't like to feed your ego, but you are more consequential than a butterfly. And if I went back in time and spared you a blow to your ego in some way, blow to your vanity and you became a more confident person, heaven forbid, who knows? Who knows what could happen to the world. So you're saying you could be in the fourth term of the putt Arts administration multiple
multiple time. I just love the idea that you're going to use time machine technology instead of to go back and strengthen yourself and tell yourself, you know you're all right. I know you're gonna feel bad about this, but you're all right. You've got a lot going for you got a big future head. Instead of that, you're gonna say, okay, this is an opportunity
for you, just just a cower to hide. Do not get your neck, because if you never believe yourself this this person, old person shows up and says you're gonna be all right, and you're like, well, who the hell are you? And you say, well, I'm you and you're like, I don't how do I know I'm You're you? You could just who the hell are you? But if you just say, look, there's gonna be this moment where there's this girl, you're gonna just don't do it.
Literally the saddest time, frankly, but anyway, no, because you can't. You don't know what the consequences of strangling baby. You don't know what the consequences of positive interference might be. That's what I'm saying, Jonah, you just said you don't want to strengthen me because God knows what I might do. I'm just saying, spare yourself a little, a little curious little multiverse stuff which would show that you wouldn't actually change your future, you
would create a new one. But anyway, that's fine. I have a question. I assume Martin Short was cast as Felix. Well, I don't know. First of all, Martin Short has ended up a really superb theater actor. He won a Tony, He's a he was a comedy star in the nineties. He did this show Little Me. He was amazing. He was in The Good By the musical l Eugene Levy. I don't think no, I'm just saying I don't know, because I think Martin Shark could have
been either. And if you look at the pictures, either of them could have been either. It's very hard to tell. Well, it doesn't nineteen seventy, Yes, I think it's better to say in nineteen seventy neither one was much of an Oscar. The boy could have played Felix, but neither the Oscar was Jonah and I Jonah in alternate universes and my universe. Actually I might have come pretty close had I taken a different path. Jonah and I were clearly Oscars. We we we were, we are, we have
the me and we have the form Walter math had I had. I actually pulled the you know, pulled the trigger and tried to be a serious actor and try to make you go that is a career, which was something I thought about very deeply in my late teens. Walter Mathow was my model. So I certainly yes, So you would go back in time to tell yourself
to spare yourself the lifelong humiliation and mortification of the one moment rejection. One rejection, and you're there and then within I really, how long does this po get going on? Within thirty seconds, you're saying, I kind of want to be an actor. Do you understand just the amount, the sheer amount of rejection. Well, why do you think I didn't become an actor. I literally, in my life teens, I said to myself, in my late teens, I'm going to be a writer. That's a given.
I'm going to face rejection. I had already started doing things like submitting short stories to The New Yorker and getting rejected. I can't have two careers in which I'm going to be rejected ninety percent of the time. That would just be soul killing. But I am saying that I think we're kind of Oscars, You're kind of a Felix. This is the backstory Rob. Rob is a little bit of a feeling Rob. If you were in the Odd Couple, would you be Felix? Yes, yeah, I think so. I
think that's that's I would think I would prefer to you. I mean, which which part would I prefer to play? Or which part do I play? In real life? So I'm not terribly neat in real life, but I think a great story is that Walter math Now Neil Simon sends waltermouth at the Odd Couple and Simon and he says to Simon, you know, I love this play. I really want to play Felix. And Simon says to math owt Walter, act on your own time. You are obviously gonna play
it is it is a fantastic story. So, and so I'm saying, I don't know who you are in real life. I mean you're not. I wouldn't describe you as like fastidious and antal, I mean unfortunately not but I but but you are I would say you are Okay, yeah, I agree with that. With that, okay, so maybe we should do that. Maybe we should do a glot and then you and I could be Felix and Oscar and Jonah could be Murray the cop. What do you think? I don't know Murray the Cop. It's a good part, particularly on the
TV show Murray is a great part. Yeah, oh yes to the TV show is stick his nose into the you know, to the the greeting hole on the door. When you could look at the door, you called it greed. Remember what what do you call that? You know? The thing? John, I know, I know, I know. It's not a
greeting hole. I literally didn't have one on my door. But it used to be in New York apartments who had this little round thing and you would pull it up and you could look out and there's a yeah where someone rings on the door and you know, wearings the doorbell and feel that. You know. Oscar goes to get the door and he opens it and he says, who is it? And then this nose appears in it, so they know it's it's Murray, Murray the Cops. You don't have that kind of
SNAs. You don't have that kind of none of us has, none of us. I think I think you get you a I could be speed a prosthetic. You could be speed. I'm kind of speed on this podcast. I'm constantly impatient with you guys, like why can't we get back to the game kind of thing. Yeah, that's that's sort of more of my speed
speed. But since we're talking about casting and or miscast, So the other day I'm I catch Back to School on TV, which I love, right, the Rodney Dangerfield movie, and and I literally say out loud to myself, the kid, the kid who's cast, the guy who's cast as the
kid is the worst past actor in modern cinema. And then like yesterday or today, my friend Doug Anderson text me totally out of the blue and says, for no praier reason, total non secretary, and says, you know the kid that they the guy they cast as the kid, and Back to School is the worst casting decision of American cinema. So like it was just like this weird serendipity, and I don't think there's ever been a character worst
cast. Imagine this in terms of the casting of Back to School, such which was directed by a guy who never did anything ever again, I think his name was an Alan Mettter or something like that, so who knows who he was he probably didn't really direct it right. But so they bring in
all these young actors, which means they're all up for any part. That's how that's that's like, you know, it's like you can have him for this that it's like when they were casting a Godfather and everybody read for everything. So who's in the supporting role and back to school is Robert Downey Jr. Who plays the friend. Robert Downey Jr. Could have been Rodney so well, the idea is, of course, sensationally good actor no matter what the idea. The idea behind that, of course, was that you wanted
a nerdy guy that that needed. It was a contrast to Rodney and there was a little bit too much offbeat cool to Robert Downey Junior at the time. I mean, I mean Keith Worton actually ended up becoming a pretty good director. That's kind of where he wanted to be anyway. But it was a hard part to play. It'd be a good ad because it has one
of the worst lines of dialogue in all of cinema. Tread carefully, counselor it's one of the worst life as at the For some reason, it's it suggests that there's a university on Earth in which the diving team is whatever he turns out for, like, oh my god, you go to a big diving meet and of course there's a big bully played by the young actor who's always playing the big bully. And he turns to I, right, what the setup it? Hey, that's the star of Cobra Kai right, right,
it's right. And he turns to Bill starts the shirts of Keith Gordon and he says something like your father is just an embarrassment and a loser and a jerk and he's a failure. And h Keith Gordon says, well, you know what, I happen to love the guy. Yeah, Like, how are you gonna like wa gi him on? I came on, you could be I don't know. Daniel day Lewis couldn't sell that line. It's
not his fault, so I wouldn't blame him. But your story before you want to see Billy's, I've got to take the back of his head and drown them in the pool. Yes, yeah, in the yeah, during the big diving the big intercollegiate diving match. But the story of Rodney goes crazy. There's a great story about that, but somebody, uh. At some point they sent the script to Jerry Belson, who was a great a
great comedy writer, and they wanted notes on it. And it was a different kind of a different movie in which Rodney it was the same kind of Rodney Datsfield character, except he was like a just a plumber, you know, when he's going the plumber goes back to help his kid deal with the snobs. And the script didn't work and so Rodney so Jerry had three words, three three word billion dollar note, which was make Rodney rich and change
the whole movie around. But even then, it's like, but if you see the movie, what I love about it, it's just how incredibly how
they just didn't even think about making it real. It was like Sally Kellerman plays the the English professor who lowers the drugs of the poetry and the movement everything, and then her her boyfriend is uptight your thought and Monuscule the third he's some kind of professor and he drives out like a weird kind of old tiny kill bear cat and ned Baty is one of ned Baty's single greatest roles as the President because because he's not but yeah, because he's not playing like
a backwoods guy or like a slob, right, And there is that grade line. It's like, I can't believe that you're allowing this school to be sell out to this kind of vulgarity. And then that baby says, well, in all, uh, in all, it was a very big check, and thinking about thinking about what what the presidents of Harvard, ken m I T and Columbia I've done to their schools. It's like, please tear
up the very big check. But then later when there's the there's still pushback, and Baby just says, I really don't think you're appreciating the amounts involved. Great, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just love the guy that they're just like they You could just see they had no time for you know, no one in the room or in the story conference that you know. I really want to know if we could activate that character a little bit more,
maybe dig a little deeper. He just seems like he's riding around in an expensive antique car with it he's wearing plus fours all the time for some reason, and goggles. I think he's goggles and his bearcat. So but yeah, but my point is, like every character in that movie, you watch it and you just enjoy seeing them on the screen, except except for
the sun. Right. Yeah, my friend whose roommate in college, they went to Emory and Kurt Vonnegut came to speak at Emory, and then there's this long line for everybody to sign Slaughterhouse five or whatever, and he brought the vhe to schoolsool. But the greatest, the greatest joke in Back to Schools, of course, the Kurt Vonnegut writes the paper on Kurt Vonnegut and he gets a bee. Yeah, he gets a be. Do you know
nothing? If I would, I would like to like I would. I think I would want to have that met a moment, the kid in line at Emory with the vhs of back to School and then some plummy, you know, monocled professoration. Don't care you bring that ridiculous video cassette to this literary event. How much? How how circular, how you can make the how many you can get it? How yeah, how you can follow it? Follow it back? You know? I told speaking of college apropos nothing
and not my own college. I finally told this story on the commentary podcast. I'm going to tell it here because I think it is so hilarious something that Alan Bloom, who was my professor at the University of Chicago, and of course became a world famous as the author of the Closing the American Mind. And then you did the Tripley. But that's a different story. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, it almost killed him. It
almost killed him, the Triple Lindy. Anyway, So Alan Bloom was a professor of political theory and and political philosophy and taught Plato and taught Rousseau and translated both of them and all of that. And he was a very colorful character, gay, barely in the closet, very flamboyant in his own way, and chain smoker. And he would also he would he would he would wear these thousands of dollars suits and then he would drip ash on them and
burn holes in them and stuff like that. I hate talk like this. And he was very compelling and very funny and very he told the story. He was a kid at the University of Chicago in the forties. Chicago had this crazy Charlotte and president who wanted to bring brilliant kids who didn't need high school right to campus, right to college. Why were they wasting their lives in high school. He would take them, pull them out of tenth grade,
bring them to school. They were the young scholar, young geniuses and lead the world. And Bloom, who was from I think Cincinnati, was one of them, in the first class of these like Chicago geniuses, and Susan Sontag was another. Wow. So Susan Sontag and Awn Bloom were freshmen together at the university. They're both fifteen years old, right under age the Epstein's island but uh, the elect version right. Well, so Bloom told this story and he was not out of the closet yet, so, but
of course Sontag was. Sontag was known to be a lesbian by this point, though she had been married to this famous professor, Philip Reef and had had a son, but she was by this point servant out lesbian late seventies. I guess when he told me, told the story, and and people who knew Blum and I knew he was gay, but he didn't say he was gay. And Ballah, so he's like, well, I you don't know this, but not my first date was with Susan Sontag. So I
said, really, your first day was with Susan Sondag. He was like, yes, well, we we went to we went to a dance together, and we were at at the dance and I said to her, do you want some punch? And she said yes, I love to have some punch. So I went over to get punch and I came back and there she was dancing with a girl. She was dancing with a girl, and I thought we were But that was the first time I didn't know that girls
could could dance with girls. And I guess that was Susan expressing her true feelings, and of course Blew himself was so I just loved this idea of Alan Blum and Susan Sontag closeted gay and closeted lesbian teenager is on their first date together and then you know she can't even like hide it for forty five minutes. That's why, though, if I were blueing, I would go back in a time machine and say, you know, when you asked Susan Sontag to the dance, don't do that. Maybe for a great story,
Maybe you don't want to do it. Maybe the date though, was so terrible for both of them, they both decided, you know what, it doesn't work. It is not for me. This is not for me. That's how bad it was. It's sort of like that movie with Geene Walder and Richard Pryor where one's blind and the other one's death. It's meant el what's a great movie. I remember seeing Hearing No Evil and there's a moment, there's a there's a huge plot flow on it, and I only remember
it at that moment. What happens natual Pocket for a while. Here's why you'll understand why what I tell you what it is because I don't remember the plot. But there's some moment at which it becomes clear. I think Prior is the blind guy. I believe he's the I believe he's the blind guy. Yes, okay, And like there's a there's a thing where he and he and wildraft to get out of some predicament or something, and for a
minute you can see that he can see. He like does something that a blind person couldn't have done, Like he turns a corner something like that, and everybody in the theater went, oh like that, Like a hundred people were like, hey, wait a minute, I thought you said he was blind, you know like that? So so that's all I remember except that Kevin Spacey was the villain. That's was the villain in that. Really Wow, it has one of it has. That's actually great. I don't know
if I ever have I ever We've talked about this joke already. This is great joke where they're driving somewhere and uh, for some reason, Richard Pryor they're arguing over who's blind, who's deaf and what that really means? And Richard Pryor says, are you sure you're one deaf? Like if somebody yelled really loud in your ear, has anybody ever done that? And want to? Says I'm deaf? Okay, no, no, no one's ever yelled in my ear, but no, I'm deaf. And then Prior says,
well, is it okay if I try it? And he goes, yeah, you can try it, and then Richer Pryor yells as loud as he can into Gene Wilder's ear. Can you here this? Yells at screeps, and then Gene Wanter goes, wait, do that again? He does it again because oh my god, I think I heard something. To it again? Does it again? Juny thing? I think I think I heard something.
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supporting glop and also for supporting us the morning after. So we've now talked about We've talked about a movie from like nineteen eighty five, and then a movie from like nineteen eighty eight. This is this is the most contemporary glop ever. Had you guys seen anything, Because I saw poor things which got eleven nominations, and I hated it so much. Yeah, my wife and daughter though it, and it sounds like it would enrage me, so I
didn't see it. I mean, it's a movie about how, you know, there's like a like a fanciful Frankenstein's creature incepted in the form of Emma Stone, and what she discovers is that she loves sex. And then you have like an hour of her having sex and having sex as a hooker, and having sex with vegetables, and having sex with Mark Ruffalo and really enjoying
sex. And there came a point at which she's like a producer on the movie, and I had this moment of this is maybe the single most exploitative movie I've ever seen of any individual human body that I can remember, and she's maybe gonna win an Oscar for it, and I sort of thought we
were beyond past this. It's like it's almost as though we're back. It's like some weird throwback to you know, in like Flint or something like that, where women are just paraded as sex objects for the entire move It's supposedly it's empowering, and I didn't think it was funny. And I really hated it, and it got nominated for eleven Oscars. But I saw Killers of the Flower Moon and despised it, I mean really despised it. And now, why didn't you despise it? Well, so look, I haven't read
the book, but my wife read the book. A couple of my colleagues read the book. We did a Dispatch book club about the book. It's supposed to be a fantastic book. It's a thriller. It's kind of a who Done it on page turner? And first of all, it was an hour too long. But second of all, you know who the murderer is
in the first thirty minutes. And there Look, every movie, there are lots of movies where there are some scenes that could have been in a different order, But in this movie, it's like eighty percent of the scenes you could have just thrown up in the air and put it in the reverse order and it would have been the same thing. Oh, another Indian got killed.
That's sad. And the main character, Leo DeNardo Leonardo DiCaprio character is a terrible character who, like we're supposed to believe, both loves his wife and wants to kill her and we never really get what's what's unbelievable about that? And uh yeah, and it basically it, you know, like it takes. I have no problem with movies to tell us that white men did bad things in America in the past, but like I've you know what,
you know what, I've heard that before. And so if you're going to make a movie, pret you could get three and a half hour long movie with basically no character development. All of the characters are unpleasant to watch, you know, the the Native American lady, she was a good actress, did a good job, but she's kind of yeah, but you know, root you only root for her because she's kind of pathetic and sad and and
and a victim. There's no one to root for. There's nothing to root for because you've or to like, I wonder how it's going to turn out. So it's just it's just it's like a plane circling an airport where the captain is just keeps telling you white supremacy is bad, capitalism is bad, America did bad things, and it's like all right, you know, but like this is not entertaining. So I saw it, and here's my thought about it. First of all, all we ever hear about it is,
Oh, Martin Sca say he's a master. It's such a master. The man is a master. He is the master. Now he has more Oscar nominations than any living director, and he's a master. And in the last third of the movie there's a trial, and it turns out when they start cross examining people that there are three different geographical locations in which the story is
taking place. Three different towns, have three different names. I did not know that until three hours into the movie that they weren't all living kind of like within three blocks of each other. And there's this whole thing about how well, we can't arrest him here because he's in Pixley and he's not in Petticoat Junction, and they don't establish that Pixley is over here, Petticoat Junction
is over there. It's like elementary storytelling one oh one, where you say, these people live here, these people live here, these people live here, and the people that live here are going to do something. People will live over here, then they're going to go back and hide over there. And so, first of all, I thought it was incompetent exactly what you describe, which is the scenes are in kind of weird order. DiCaprio is literally twenty five years too old for his part. He is playing a returning
World War One veteran and he is forty eight years old. Yeah and so and she's I don't know how old she is, lily glad some of the places. But he's supposed to be a pretty boy that she in like a sex object for her. And granted, Leonardo DiCaprio is a very a movie star and a very good looking guy. But I didn't see anything like this since since like James Stewart at the beginning of The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance is supposed to be like twenty three riding out to the West for his first
posting, he is like sixty years old. And you know, john Ford is so old he didn't even like they couldn't even figure out makeup and now you could dage people and stuff like that. But DiCaprio just looks like he's like closing in on fifty. Yeah, just back from the war. You know. It's like, are you kidding me? And he wasn't supposed to play that part. That's the great story of the movie. The great story of the movie is they were going to make the movie as as David Granton's
book is written, which is it's about the foundation. The founding. One of the founding events of the FBI was an investigation into this this death spree in Osage County in Oklahoma, that an agent named Frank White was sent out to Oklahoma to investigate and figured out that these that this family mafia was marrying and killing off women who had land rights or oil rights to lands where oil was located, and they were seizing them essentially through marriage and then killing off
the women. And this was such an amazing feat of investigative brilliance that it may helped make the FBI. And that's the part that DiCaprio supposed to play. And then literally Black Lives Matter happens, and he and Scorsese look at each other and they're like, we're telling the wrong story. We're telling a
white savior story. We can't tell it. We had to tell a story about the viciousness and monstrous behavior toward the Native Americans, and therefore we have to turn this around not introduce the FBI until like two and a half hours into the movie. And then Leo, you're still the lead, because you're the reason we can sell the movie to Apple for two hundred million dollars.
You have to play the villain who's an idiot, unattractive character and uninteresting, and he's like okay, And the movie is then rewritten, yeah, into this story about a moron and his vicious uncle doing terrible things to these o sage women that they also supposed to are supposed to like for three and a half hours. Yes, it's a disgrace. The other thing that I really resent, right because there are a lot of people there's a cult of Scorsese,
and scorsesees made some great movies. I think he's made a mistake and putting DiCaprio in like seventy five percent of them. But that's another story. Remember the Seinfeld where Blaine just rebels on the fatwah that everyone must love the English patient Patient. Yes, every time DiCaprio comes out with the movie,
not the Dicabrio. Wh every time Scarcese comes out with the movie, I'm told in advance I have to love it or I don't know anything about film, and I resent it and the way he lobbies and does these media campaigns to get an Oscar nominations and to get Oscars. It just feels like manufactured
consent. It feels like sort of cultural bullying, and I resent it and it makes me dislike some movies that I have to watch like years later and without that resentment hanging over me to like finally like like a little bit more. Well, my favorite party, by the way, is ahead. Sorry. Sorry, My favorite part of it was just the the announcement and the
Hollywood Reporter. The original version of the original paragraph of Holly from the Hollywood Reporter before they changed it when they announced that, like Lily Gladstone was nominated, said, Gladstone is the first acting nominee who hails from people indigenous to the land now occupied by the United States. Occupied by the United States. Yeah, f Richard Rushfield said, his guess was the J. Penske, the owner of the Hollywood Report, said, what the hell is this?
Well, we don't know that because that's what the United States. Yeah, okay, yeah, okay. I will say this one thing, which is that Robertson Narrow Will looks very good. He's eighty, he looks fantastic, look very handsome. It's good glasses. He's wearing very cod agrees with him. He he does an accent, and it's many things, but I don't think it's an Oklahoma accent. It's kind of like if I asked my thirteen year old son, after watching five episodes of The Dukes of Hazard, to
imitate one of the Dukes of Hazard. That's what it sounds like. It's like, you don't know where they're gonna come get you there, layo, I don't know how what Oklahoma's you? Like if you look at the credits, when the crawl runs, you get the screen or it's easy to stop and freeze it, says dialogue coach Dick Van Dyke. So that's how you know. So it anyone outraged by the Oscar snub of Margot Robbie. I
love Margot. I love Margot Robbie. I thought she was adorable in In Barbie and I certainly I thought it was a better performance than Carrie Mulligan's and Maestro she who got nominated who was you know, florid and terrible. But you know, there's no outrage like who gives a this is the Oscars for God's sake, Like it's a bunch of show business morons trying to you know, dare guess at what are you a voter? I'm I'm not an Oscar voter. No, so I don't include you are therefore not included in my
denial. Well, but I say, how dare you? Because that's what we say in show business with how dare you? It's it's an institution. Yeah, yeah, you're right. But my favorite Oscar voting quote was from I think it was from Anne Miller. Remember, and no ambulism. You know, now she's to cease, but she's some ancient show business figure from a million years ago. And when they were but this is like in the early days when they weren't setting out. Everybody wasn't getting video cassettes or see
DVDs or what we get now are logins for these for awards season. And somebody said have you seen them? Because the scandal was that they're all these old people, these old academymbers, just voting for who they liked, and they weren't seeing the movies. And so someone you know, cornered Anne Miller at a party and or at a red carpet or something event and said, hey, Anne Miller, have you seen any of the movies this year? And she said, no, I haven't seen any of them. I said,
well, are you going to vote this year? She said yes, it's just so important to the young people, so she would go. She would just kind of vote, Which is why that whenever you know, you could just you can sometimes predict everyone who's going to get nominated. Everyone's gonna win, you know, just based on you think, just what would a who would have really old Ann Miller vote for? And that's usually who won. Robert, you're going to read an ad. I'll be happy to read
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take control of your health. And we thank ag one for being a spawn of podcast and also for a terrific product. All right, So, the big news in television over the last couple of weeks as far as I can tell, uh for people who you know for watching Prestige TV, is the return of the HBO show True Detective. The season four which is called Night Country and is set in a town in Alaska that has just gone dark, uh for you know, it has really it's so far north that it descends
into into into perpetual night. And they've just discovered there's a sort of scientific research station and something untoured is going on there and the cops in town who are Jodie Foster and John Hawks, the great character actor and a couple of other people are all that Dagger's drawn with each other. Episodes have come out, and I don't think either of you guys have seen it yet. So I'm I, I really I'm enjoying it. Have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it. I just hear it theorters. Okay, but
I don't know. Well, I'm really enjoying it. But here's here's the thing about it. So if you remember the first season, which was like a total sensation. It was Matthew McConaughey and Woody Howson and the whole thing was there. There were there were three there were two or three timelines.
You saw them young and fifteen years later or something like that. And there was this murder, unsolved murder over fifteen years, and there seemed to be a supernatural component to it, and there was a lot of supernatural their hints,
and there's cult and all sorts of stuff. And then everybody went crazy with the theories and the theories about the cults and everything, the articles about it and blog posts about it and all of this, and then and then it just turned out there was some backwoods guy who like was having processed with this there and captured people and and and just and and shot shot matthewmcconaughey a
bunch of times, and then and then everything was right. And so I think this is going in exactly the same direction, which is there's a lot of supernatural stuff, and were supernatural hints, and like the great trick reveal would be that they're happening right, not that they're not happening, but some
turns out somebody has left the walkie talkie behind a wall or something. I heard a bunch of writing teachers want to talk about, you know the there there were students ever, and one was I think was taught some e you see like CENTIY class and mystery writing said that the worst, the worst mystery reveal they ever read in class was, you know, this person was reading the last couple of scenes of the mystery and then all the all the suspects
are in a room and the cop is going through the you know it's going to be that big scene where the copp reveals you did it, and suddenly the door opens and an unknown person runs in. This person they've never seen before he goes, I'm the one who killed that girl, and he jumps out the window to his death. I think it's kind of a great it's a great way out of the problem, which is you gotta figure ou who did it. I have not watched the Addictive yet. We're saving them up
so we can watch them, you know, in rapid Fire. But started the latest season a Fargo. Well, I'm really enjoying, Like it's interesting, holds your attention. They're doing some interesting sort of callbacks to the movie, but not doing it in the way that you think. John Ham's really good in it. And I can't remember the name of the actress. She's the Temple, Yeah, Temple, who's from Uh gosh, my brain is not working today. She was in Soccer Coach movie TV show London, the
English ted Lassos ted Lasso. She was in the Offer. Yeah, she's the publicist, the sexy publicist in ted Lasso, and she does well. And it's I don't I think it's pretty good so far. And I love Reacher. Have you guys watched Reacher? Oh? You love it? Really? I do, because it's great. It does not ask a lot.
I like the first season and I really don't like this season because so this season he had a bunch of his old army buddies get together to investigate the fact that one of their number of somebody's killing friends was like was dropped out of literally dropped out of an airplane. And and I think as as as our friend Sonny Bunch has said, the thing about Reacher is the books, which are the lead Child books, which I've read a bunch of. The
whole thing is he's this giant man. He like, he's like he wanders into a town, he goes to a he goes to a two other goodwill, and he buys a pair of pants and a shirt, and then he just kills everybody who does bad things. And then he leaves and he goes on to another town. And this one is like he's with a group of friends, and I'm not interested in Reacher with a group of friends. I want him to come to town. I want him to figure out that there's
some crappy stuff going on. He's got to pick up a girl and have sex with her the motel room, and then he's gonna like figure out how fully dollars out of an ATM, and then he's going to kill the rich man in town who is being bad to everybody, and then hitch a ride out out of town. And so there's too much. Sure you're asking, but you can imagine the meeting though, when they, like, you know, they're sitting around doing the you know, one more season of Reachers.
Hear the executives doesn't have to be anybody saying, I guess I want to know more about him. I think we want to know more about him. What's his what makes him tick? What's his wound? Yes, so here's my question to you guys about Alan Richson who plays Reacher. Of course, famously, Tom Cruise made two movies as Jack Reacher, which was hilarious because in the books, Jack Richard is six' five, two hundred and thirty pounds. He is a man mountain who can like literally like take a car
and tear in half. That's that, that's who he is. And Tom Cruise played movies and Tom Cruise is four foot three and weighs one hundred pounds. He struggles with those meters every day. So the whole gimmick was people underestimate him because they think he's little, but then he beats them up or whatever. So they find. They found this guy who has actually been bouncing around Hollywood for fifteen years. He was one of the hundred Team babies. I saw him the other day and I was like, oh, Reacher.
Yeah, So I have this question for you. Is he a really good actor playing you know, this very unusual part in which he has an inner life we're not really privy to and that's the whole point. Or is he the worst actor who's ever lived and he just like landed in, you know, in the perfect He's just the perfect specimen for the part and he's like an AI generated character almost. I don't know which the answer is, because he's very effective in the part, But I think he's a terrible actor maybe,
or maybe he's not. I don't know if you guys watch much community, but yeah, yeah, remember the actor who plays Ned Ryerson from groundhegh Day. Yeah, he's the he's the cinema teacher professor at at Greendale Community College and he teaches a whole class on whether or not Nick Cage was a good actor, and it's fantastic, and trying to figure it out nearly kills
abed. That's kind of how I feel about it. It's like it's it's it's much better casting than the kid from Back to School, and so far as like it's a low bar, you know what, I actually because I think you're both I think you're both being unfair because I saw this is obscure, But I did see a production in which the Reacher guy played Oscar and Keith Gordon played Felix, and they were both terrific. They were both terrific, and he played the dinner. Yeah. The thing about that is,
I say, like it is not an unusual part. It's a very usual part. It's like these days, that's why these these shows are like, I mean, that's why they work. They're so good. It's like a guy comes and he's mysterious and he's sort of unkillable, and if you could only get his phone number and you can only be where he is, he's the equalizer. He's you know, it's taken, but he's not you know, it's not his daughter. It's a sound of Freedom, but it's not
some random kid from you know, Columbia. It's a it's like somebody, it's somebody in your life. And that that's incredibly, incredibly attractive. Just the equalizer movies, I think they have four of them or five of them.
With Denzel Washington make goadjillions of bajillions of kajillions of dollars. And I'll tell you, if you have a Friday night and you're kind of like feeling like you've got the flu or something, as I did a few weeks ago, you can order up some really really great food from around the corner and
door dash, well you can. You can double dash it and have the dasher pick up your food and then go to ben Lewin ice Cream and get you some ice cream and he'll bring you all the things you need, plus uh two or three episodes of The Equalizer, and you're thing is done and it's a fantastic eating So and if we went back in our time machine to nineteen ninety eight and lived in New York, we could use Cosmo dot com, which would not only bring you the food and not only bring you the
ice cream, but would bring you the video for the video store all together. It was the greatest thing ever. It marks for one hundred million dollars, and then it closed because there was no revenue stream. It was just here, let us bring you a video and some food, and you pay a dollar surcharge because we're trying to corner the market with no actual revenue, so we'll burn through the money. But there was now you have to have
all these multiple things you got to do. You got to like find it on your streaming service and which streaming service it is, and all that very annoying. I watched Equalizer three on a plane. I liked it. Don't which I liked it. No, I really liked it, but I thought I thought was And so this one is he's in a town in Italy, right, That's that's the story of this one is. And so he goes this town and he's this very o CD sort of autistic guy. But somehow
he connects to the people in this town. He learns to love to help them, and he learns and he wants to help them. And then there are of course these terrible mafiosian And one thing about the villains and movies like this and like John Wick and stuff like that is it's always like, I don't care how many people are going to be killed. Destroy that man. You know, you see didn't you see that in the last scene he's singlehandedly
murdered twenty people. Like rudents might be a what maybe you want to like booby trap his car, or like don't come at him, don't come at him front, like this is not him for tax evasion exactly exactly right, right right right? Get get him on reliable on those charges, yeah, you know. And then also the idea of all these guys like get him, they did the last john Wick to get and they're all on their own.
They all have these motorcycles like like go to the go to that garage where we have seventy five motorcycles that look alike and they all are fully armed in the same way, Like what were you what were you planning to do if john Wick hadn't showed up? Like what what is all this ordinance for?
And then of course yeah none if it works, Yeah, well John john Wick four is a is a masterpiece of some I mean, it's incredibly stupid, but there there there has where I mean it is just the scene at the end of john Wick four where he just rolls down the parents over and over and over and over again, I mean, and has to keep trying to climb up them like a bugs Bunny car. It's like an combining
a bugs Bunny cartoon with a really really beautifully filmed action sequence. Well, it's the it's the it's the action sequence of the the Laurela Hardy music box right right exactly, the piano, the stairs. So the thing. So for I love the John movies, particularly the first one and the fourth one. I love that because one dude killed a guy's dog, thousands of people must die. Yeah, which I just I want I want that to be a lesson throughout the culture. But you can tell how successful they are in
beguiling you, but in sourceling you into. The whole premise of this thing is that by the fourth one, you don't even question that they have these perfectly tailored, utterly bulletproof Italian suits that all you have to do to stop a bullet is hold up your lapel right right. Jacket doesn't even like it ends very much when it gets in my bullets, you know, I mean, it's very impressive. It also feels like that's speaking. I'm obsessed.
I always obsessed with the meeting that must have taken place to get to that. That's when someone says, uh, you know, after the meeting, Okay, great, we're gonna go to Paris. We're gonna have the thing and the go around the Dartsy Tree office to be great. We got a question. All those people like they're shooting and shooting and shooting. It's like, you know, it just feels like one of us bullets has got to hit john Wick right, like even if it bounces off of something like it's
like the intern. It's like the the pa is bringing them all their lunch, their turkey wraps and saying, have you guys figured out how the workichtes don't hit john Wick yet? And they'll can look at you and go, okay, it's a special kind of suit. It's a magic suit. Get out of here, you're fired that yeah. Uh, you know. I'm reminded of of a friend who he was a movie producer and he was he was asked to consult on another friend of his had made this little independent movie
called Safety Not Guaranteed with Aubrey Plaza and Jake Johnson. It's all about a journalist at a paper in Portland who finds a crazy person who says that he's figuring out again like how to travel through time or build a spaceship. I
can't remember what it is. And he's he's a conspiracy theorist and she's going to be a portrait of this guy and he's a lunatic and then she kind of like falls in love with him and they're each have trauma and all this and that, and then the movie ends, and my friend was asked what his note is and he said, well, you can't. You can't leave
it like this. I mean, he's got to be right, he's got to be right that a spaceship is going to they're going to go off into the stars together, like otherwise, very just has to end with Santa being Santa, right, right. So so, and this, of course was a little indie movie that was supposed to be heartwarming and whatever and be sun dancy, and so this science fictional ending or fantasy ending wasn't the sert thing
that was attached to it. But my friend's advice was heated. They went back and they shot a new ending, and the new ending they fly off to the stars together or something like that. And the director of that movie was Colin Trevora, and as a result of making that movie, he then got Jurassic World, which was a you know, and is now the director of the Jurassic World movies. And had he been left to his own devices.
He would have made this movie with Aubrey Plaza and Jake Johnson. That would have made one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, and Steven Spielberg wouldn't have seen it and said, that's the guy I want to do to make Jurassic World. Anyway. That's the what if True Detective actually becomes a supernatural story, Like that's actually where it should go, because there are too many red herrings they're supernatural, and that would actually be a trick because is like
you've seen before that they haven't done that. You know that they've gone this way. It's always a Scooby Do ending. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I can also see that too because you think, oh it's Scooby Do ending. It feels arbitrary. It feels like, well, once
you do that, then you then you're basically telegraphing to the audience. There's no way you can have figured it out to begin with, and a lot of people are trying to figure it out, so you kind of you know, every ending that isn't that isn't uh instantly apparent from the minute it's revealed, ends up feeling like guy running in the room. I'm the one that
killed that girl. And then up Sometimes they stick the landing sixth sense stuck the landing, right, yeah, And the ultimate landing stick, of course, is Back to the Future, which, yeah, and you saw it and I probably saw it opening night, and you would never seen anyone pull this off. Right. He goes back in time and told himself not to ask that. And the whole thing is you're not supposed to do anything to interfere with that thing, right, No, No, we're familiar with the
theory. Yeah, we discussed it. Yeah, recaller just a short while ago. Right. Anyway, if you went back in time, did that
future stuck landing the way? I don't know that any movie had ever quite stuck a landing before, because it imagine, imagine, imagine John Fodoritz having done that, like and coming back you'd be we would you'd be talking to us from your swank bachelor pad like weird esquivel music in the back, and you'd be smoking it's a little time I want to thin cigar cigarillos and saying this is this episode of glop has brought to you by Tommy John Underwear.
I of course don't wear underwear. It would have been like So, speaking of stick and landing, I'm curious, do you guys think the ending and spoiler for people out there it's a twenty five year old, thirty year old movie, No Way Out where it turns out Kevin Costner was Ivan at the end? Yeah, do you think that they gave you enough hints that that
was going to turn out to be true? Or do you think, as my father did at the time, they could have had a reveal where it turned out he was from the planet Kleptu because there was there was no suggestion that that was what was going on. Well, I mean they weren't searching the planegon for an alien for the planet Cleptu, to be fair, Yeah, fair, Okay. I thought it was a great ending. And actually,
if you see it a second time, there are clues. They're very there are there are clues the second they're slight and and I I liked it so much that I forgave it the horrible geographic mistakes that they make. One anyone who lives in DC always talks about that. Yeah. The journey of Kevin Costner in the various chase scenes is very upsetting. Yeah, it's very
upsetting because it violates all rules of space, time and the metro. But I've seen it since and there are a couple of things about that movie, and the main thing is that Gene Hackman, we're one of the great actors and one of the most subtle actors that therever was, has this moment in it which is the perfect act perfect moment depicting Washington ever, which is that he is introduced to Kevin Costner, who's in his white uniform, by his
aid and he's the Secretary of Defense, and they're in the ballroom at Ashorm Hotel, and he shakes his hand and he doesn't look at him because he's scanning the room to see who else is there, to see who's more important that he has to go talk to. And it is the best, HOLLYO is the best Hollywood depiction of Washington that has ever been done. That one. That's Hollywood dipiction of ten By the way, there you go, fair
enough. But this ten second moment, which is every person's experience at every party in Washington ever, unless you are the President of the United States, if you are having a conversation with somebody, that person is immediately looking to see if there's somebody else more important that he should go suck up with. It could be your best friend, it could be your sister, it could
be your mother. It doesn't matter who it is. There's got to be somebody more important to talk to. And that's that's why I love that so much. Are we done with the oscars? We have nothing else to say, nothing to say about the oscars. Not really. I mean I'm eager to see all of the the animated shorts. Our uniform interested in that. Funny when you see the list of them, it's like every now and then someone will say to me like, oh, you've meet this first, or
packed pachyderm, would you meet this? They have like three oscars. Three oscars for what it's usually things like it well, best animated short, the
best live action short, that's action documentary short is the category. It's like he spent three years right on a mountaintop in Carpathia, right, you can always follow and the most the most pretentious actor in the in the oscars had to tell us the most pretentious one, you know, the Mark Ruffalo of the will be the one applauding the loudest, like it was a wonderful film.
You did not seat or our uniform. I feel bad for like, you know, there's always some guy, whether it's actually clamation or the equivalent thereof, but somebody who actually spent like years moving the left hand on the clay thing, taking a still shot another still shot, putting it together alone, eating soup out of a can, and he doesn't win. You know, it's like, what are those fours? Well, at least he got a trip to you got a trip to Hollywood because he's probably from Romania and
he got to he got to see Hollywood. So that's one. That's one. One. Great to see some guy take a dump outside of Grammin's Chinese Theater, yes, which is by way. You can see it any day of a week, exact. Yeah, yeah, but you know it's it's special, it's very it's very special. So Jonah, are you where can people see you? Or are you one? Are you doing the Chris Wallace Show? I do it intermittently. I'm oh, I am the third conservative
who subs in either It's always been so far for Kristin Sultan Sanderson. But it's either Ryan or Christ is exactly how I would have it. So I don't have to do it every week, and so I don't know what I'm next on and I'm on CNN in the evening a couple of times next week week, but you know, it is what it is, Rob Martini Shot.
Every week. You can read it, you can listen, but I prefer you to listen to it because reading it it doesn't I mean, you can read if you want, but it's kind of choppy because I just basically write what I say and that doesn't always make sense on the page or anywhere else. But you listen to it. It's available from the Ankler. It's also available from Apple podcast wherever you get your fine podcast. Martini Shot. It's only I keep them fourteen minutes, I promise. Yeah, I try
to keep them nice and short. You can listen to two of them if you have to, but you can also just fit it in with the rest of your day, right Joe, of course, twice a week Remnant, Ruminant all that, and I'm I'm daily on the commentary magazine podcasts as as as people sadly must know and because like I just keep talking and hey, you keep listening. It's business. Think Scott in in Hardcore Turn it Off it's see hw spare M wanted you to join me in a little reality break.
Okay, just because you're in love with doctor Turner, that does not mean you're going to pass her course. And you've got a major paper coming up on Kirk Vonnica. You haven't even read any of the books. I tried. I don't understand a word of it. How are you gonna write the paper? Then? Huh? Hi, I'm Kurt vonni I'm looking for Thorton melon. Yuh when we come in, dad mhm