ANTHOLOGIES ATTACK! - Four Rooms

We're waits. Welcome back, Midnight viewers to Anthologies Attack, where

Since I was out in the undoves and the outland and the no, yeah, I haven't watched The Road Warrior, no very long time. How you doing, father, Good to see.

You, Good to see you. You've been busy.

I have been busy.

We've been playing some film festivals with our short film at Living Ben, which has been pretty cool. We just won the care Film Awards, which is I believe in West Virginia. We did really well with that and we're getting ready now to just relax for the holidays and get back into the into the in the new year.

Right on. That's exciting news and other exciting news, ladies and gentlemen and smith mars. This is our one hundredth episode of Midnight Reviewing as such were. We've decided to do a very special movie, and by that a very terrible movie. This is all happenstance. If I had planned it better, I would have had something fucking awesome for us to talk about. Instead, we're going to talk about a pretty good movie.

Now.

Came out on Christmas Day nineteen ninety five, written and directed by Alison Anders, Alexander Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino. This is for Room this year.

The Merrimax Films takes great pride in extending to you an advance invitation to celebrate Lou Yu's Eve at the most senior hotel, when a dozen of the most unusual guests ever.

Will check in.

We have resbis.

And alone Bell Hop named dead on his first day on the job.

All you have to do is hold the fort the night's cake.

Okay is in for the night of his life.

Kaya, what's the problem.

I haven't got a problem.

I've got problems, plural. My children are staying here tonight watching TV. Something happens to my children, they wouldn't want to be you.

The five of us are a coven, a coven of.

Witches, oven full of witches, a cover of witches. Jimmy, that's not a face you can trust to this hotel by myself. Are you saying, my wife cheese?

I've got to.

Want you to. I am not gonna cut off long as little.

Hell a night, aren't.

I'm starting a situation here which I can possibly begin to.

Explained Tim Ross, Antonio Banderes, Jennifer Bials, Olaria Golino, Madonna, Ioni, Sky, Lily Taylor, Marissa Tomae and Tamlin Tomita in a new film from directors Alis Anders, Alexander Ruckwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino Four Rooms.

I've had a real bad night.

Oh Rimmy.

This is the anthology I feel that every genexer and every millennial has seen.

In every boomer, I guess if you're over thirty, you've seen this movie.

I think it is most probably the most quintessential anthology from the nineties, I guess, and more than anything, it's like the.

Most cliche nineties movie ever made.

If there's a trope or a cliche or something wacky from.

A nineties movie, this has got it.

I think the only thing that's missing is someone walking around with interviewing people with a high eight.

Camera, and that person should be played by Steve Buscemi. The only other Indie Darling missing from right, he's sky at.

It and Lily Taylor and Antonio Bandeiras and just like everybody, Paul Calderone.

It was an indie fest extraordinaire. Let's just set the thing up. It is New Year's Eve, completely unrealized New years If. In fact, if you didn't tell me that it was news, if characters didn't say it a few times, I wouldn't know. It was New Year's New Year's Eve at the Mont with the mon Signor hotel where the new bell hop Ted played by Tim Roth, is experiencing his first night. And we get four rooms, four stories, four directors, each chronicling what happens to poor Ted before that.

I don't remember.

I'm sure I must have because my college, Oh, we had just started college.

I don't know if I did. I think this might have been a videotape on I don't know. I don't remember seeing it.

I showed this film as a projectionist, and so I've seen this movie one thousand times. I've seen parts of this movie one thousand times. I've watched one segment of this movie one thousand times. Okay. To score this total nineties package, they picked the perfect recording artist. The entire score is performed by Combustible Edison, who were the lounge heroes of the early nineteen nineties. They were the standard bearers. I certainly had I swinger their nineteen ninety four debut.

No, it was they weren't really my thing.

I guess I was still obsessed with smashing Pumpkins and Beastie.

Boys when they broke. I remember when Richard Cheese started breaking.

But no, I after Bustle Edison, Aside from the quintessential nineties name, really.

Didn't leave much of an impact on me.

I think I thought the music was just there. It didn't really stand out. It would have stut out more if they would have brought them, like some weird Italian jazz or something like that in it. If they would have brought, like when you were talking, some weird, some cool ass like Japanese jazz from the sixties or something like that, Yeah, that might have been a little bit more memorable.

Yeah. Ultimately, they are a gateway drug to the originals. If your if lounge music is you're seeing, and in my case it really really is. But I still appreciate their place in history. In fact, I saw them perform in Los Angeles a million years ago. They were great. They've been broken up since ninety nine, just like the entire nineties. I guess they had to go out with that century because I.

Get into the nineties, it was this like that, and then the swing thing a couple of years later, Like it was the nineties were a weird time, Like you want to try to explain to kids that we were all really into swing music for six months, like we all at least bought one of those shirts and said money a lot.

But the nineties did feel like a time of pillaging every decade that had come previously to pull out the coolest thing that we'd all get obsessed with for exactly ten minutes.

Yeah, there was a lot to be like it was something and this was all baby Internet period, you know what I mean. There wasn't any anything really connecting anybody except for zines, reallyccasional AOL chat room.

So like the way this stuff just exploded, it was weird.

And all of a sudden, one movie comes out and everybody's dressing like Vince Vaughan and talking like that, and then all of a sudden, nope, we're into raves now.

They started to us.

Just the funny thing about the entire swingers movement was By the time that movie came out and I went and saw it, I thought, and because that was the scene in Los Angeles the entire time, So in my mind, that was the rest of America. So when suddenly everyone is dancing to jump jive in and suddenly gap ads are featuring swing dancing, I was like, really, I don't know. It just struck me funny that they were just chronically what was going on around them, and then that affected everybody.

Yeah, I think they just My writing partner matchhof Run and wrote we wrote a nightclub movie set in the early two.

Thousands or whatever.

I think, if you're twenty five and you're out and you're about and you're trying to get laid and have a good time, you're going to write a movie about it. If you're is that one was saying, right, yea a nascent filmmaker, you're gonna write movies about your experiences. And swingers was really Jon Favreau. Hey, I'm out in LA I'm a struggling actor. Here are my struggling actor friends, and we stink of getting late or I stink it get late, and there you go.

He built his career on it.

Yeah, that was ultimately one of the benefits of the independent film scene that was burgeoning in the early nineteen nineties. That was a good that was a good product, a poor product. Let's say starts with an episode entitled The Missing Ingredient in the Honeymoon Suite here at the Mond Senior Hotel. This one has written and directed by Alis and Anders. This one stars Ione Sky, Madonna, Valeria Galino, Lily Taylor, basically all the female wondered darlings. They're a

Yeah, I didn't even remember that.

I just I think I remember I was just crushing so hard on Madonna in the early and mid nineties and late eighties. They're pretty much what the two thousand anyways, she was I loved Madonna was.

Yeah, and then a Rubbert dress and I'm just like, oh, I'm all for that.

And I remember there was boobs. Ione Sky boobs, I guess, but wow, it really doesn't play anymore like I'm like, Wow, these are all white ladies and they're annoying and there's not a lot of interest going on here. I thought it like Agatha all along did that that segment better on Disney Plus last month. That was much They were much more entertaining, which is on that show than this.

But this was one thing before we even get into this whole movie.

What I noticed about every filmmaker in this is they all reverted back to film school or that I'm going to be experimental and try all of the wacky shit that people do in short.

Films that really don't make any sense and make short films. They all did them in this movie. The only one that really works is the Rodriguez.

One, and the rest of them wow, and the Rodriguez one barely even works, but at least it's entertaining. But I think they just all fall back and everything was really gimmicky, and I don't know.

There wasn't a lot of soular charming, which is weird because she's really good.

I still think about Grace of My Heart and what a great movie that is, or how I like or harsh vida loga is she's a good movie maker.

Oh and the sublime gas food lodging and the gas food lodging.

Yeah, so I don't know. I think they're just ah.

I think they just all got hide is some cocaine and we're gonna just do whatever. Because this wasn't exciting at all, and the ending was like really abrupt, Well here's the girl now.

And then cut.

The last day that Reservoir Dogs played at my theater, Quentin Tarantino and Alice and Anders attended, and they came out into the lobby and I was speaking with Quentin Tarantino for some time and then stepped back while somebody else was talking to him, and then I noticed that Alie and Anders was standing there, and I said, I'm so sorry I haven't acknowledged you. This be really annoying that everyone thinks he's the genius. And she said, no, he's just really hot, right, So she was very cool,

Yeah, it's nineteen ninety five. I'm pretty sure. I remember nobody was apprude.

In nineteen ninety five, So I don't know why they're trying to be cute. I feel like she's going for like almost a cartoon of some almost like a high these stilts cartoony situation, much like Rodriguez did with his Maybe that's it.

I don't know, but yeah, it was like the.

Jokes were stale, that nobody had any chemistry with each other, and it was just really weird, and everybody too poos Madonna as an actor. But Madonna's like breathless mahoney, so anybody could kiss my ass. Breath's mahoney is amazing in her weird kind of Madonna kind of w So I know Madonna, can I know Ione's guy, okay, But Lily Taylor is fucking amazing and she's boring and she's.

The most interesting one.

I like Ioni's guy a lot. Actually, Yeah, the thing is, you're right. I think the script is written as a cartoon. It's not directed like a cartoon though not just the fact that it's very sort of standard setups on what is clearly a set. That's a big fucking no on midnight viewing. It don't make it look like a set. This is a fucking major motion picture too. We're usually

But I liked the montage You're right, I did. It was pretty, but it wasn't a lot going.

No, And that's pretty much it. Oh, let's stemp back for a second. Talk about Tim Roth here because he is our character. He starts off effectively silent, as if they're doing We're going to get the Bell Boy with Jerry Lewis, where he's just going to wander through the frame, and that's what I was expecting. But that goes out the window almost immediately. He starts talking crazy. But his performance in the start and in this episode in particular is so frenetic and weird.

It is weird. I remember liking it when I was a kid. I'm thinking, man, he is just a ham and cheese sandwich in this thing. Like he is all over the place and getting progressive more British as the movie goes along.

Now that I actually like the like the more he gets worn down by these fucking horrible gets. The accident, Yeah, the accident just goes out, like all pretense goes out the window. But he's so ticky, and I don't know, it's a lot of actorly business going on here. It's a lot of attempting to be like Alec Guinness in the early Ealing comedies or something and just not quite nailing it.

I did.

I took British cinema one summer in college and we watched a couple of those the Lady Killers. Yeah, I'm gonna take a break here and I'm gonna do the

And Tim Roth as as Fade or whatever his name.

He is, dare I say, magnificent, and it annoys me that he hasn't played.

More of those roles because he is unreal in it.

I'd love to see him do a Batman villain or something like Cobra commander or something like so stupid and over the top that I know that he would just make it delightful. I have loved him and carry Oldman obviously, since Rosencrantz and Guildensterner are dead. As a high school nineties theater kid, that was like you had to watch that movie or else you weren't allowed to be in the class you so like. I watched that movie repeatedly as a kid, and I watched it last year on Prime.

It's oh yeah, it's well, it's a great play to begin.

But I don't care. There's so good in it that I don't.

It's a performance piece and you're not going to be let down.

And this one, I think it's the different directors handling the same character, giving inconsistent direction to him because he's all over the book.

It is just frantic his performance.

And had he just played it like Jerry Lewis or even better in a more buster Keatney wide eyed innocence and I would I.

Might might have played a little better. Oh, four directors is a lot, man.

I don't know about anthologies and different director So I like one director making five different little movies in there.

Maybe that would be an interesting thing. I don't know. I'm just talking out loud, I guess thinking aloud.

But I'm in my mind. I've been doing this long enough now that I'm of that mind that for an anthology to truly work beginning to end, it has to have the same director at the helm. If he wants to change the style of each segment, fucking fantastic, go for it. But it's a little much when you task four separate filmmakers to come up with four separate plot

Yeah, that's a little that's a little more makes them more sensible. That's why pulp fiction is a classic, because it's an anthology one vision though.

That's why creep Show works so well.

That's why creep Show works well. That's why the Ballad of Buster Scrugs work so well. And those are four different movies in there, four different styles. One's a musical for Foxakes, but man, one of them is no exit basically.

But like Antonio, we really ought to be doing Buster scrugs for the hundredth episode here.

But no, I think doing I think four rooms is appropriate because I think this is one that everybody has seen and it's fun. Sometimes it's fun to take the piss out of something. But yeah, that alex and Anders bit just fell flat. But Tim Roff has moments of greatness in here. There are little splashes of great Tim Ross stuff in it, but for the most part he's just hamming it up with no guardrail.

He gets a little bit better in Room four oh four, The Wrong Man. This is Alexander Rockwell's contribution here. We have okay. The setup is he gets a call to come to room four oh nine. It's actually room four oh four that he enters, and there's a party going on with Lawrence Bender turning in a terrible performance in a film littered with terrible performances, Tim Roth, Ted finds

Wackiness and susan Oh. I love Jennifer Beals has been in.

My heart since I was nine, ten, eleven years old. But I saw The Bride, which is a really cool take on the Frankenstein movies, and I recommend that I haven't seen it in a million men. I was in love with her and that everybody's all flashed as I'm.

Like, no, The Bride, She's so pretty in it.

And then she's Clancy Brown as the monster in The Bride. Right, he calls himself a victor.

Yes, and the guy David David Rappaport David Rappaport.

He eventually committed suicide, didn't he?

He sure did?

And I remember that it's a drag.

Yeah, it's a real drag. It's a good actor too.

I love that movie The Bride as well. I've liked her off and on that it depends on the role, depends on the performance. Having rewatching this, I loved her here. I thought she was fucking great. I remember from initially seeing this movie that the first two segments were okay, The Rodriguez one was great, and the Tarantino one sucked. That's what I took it away, And now I took away the Alice and Andres one is potentially the worst one here. This one's really good.

Yeah, you know, I found myself enjoying this one a little bit. You're Richie from the Sopranos. I just every time I see him, I just like, oh, Richie, all right, he's gonna be a comeback.

Let me enjoy it.

It was some weird twists in there. I thought the gay stuff was, like, there's a lot of weird gay jokes in this movie, like the like even beginning with the Aleixan Anderws one, She's like, you're not my mother.

She's like, yes I am, and why are you sleeping with me?

And then it just keeps going through the Tarantino one, We're not gonna ask you do any weird gay stuff?

And then this one if I slept with another man? I don't know. It was a lot of that was that just the nineties everything was gay jokes.

So yeah, that was that's everyone getting used to gay talking about gay people all the time, you know.

Which is we because like Alexan Andrews movies are pretty queer, so like I don't.

Like, yeah, I don't necessarily think they're slamming gay folks here. I don't think they're punching down at them.

But I think this is the first time folks that they're getting used like you say, they're getting used to.

It's entering the conversations now, even in hostage situations with potential cuckholds.

But Jennifer Beals like her performance in this movie Reminded is probably the best one in the.

Movie, absolutely insistant. She her character reappears in the final sege too, and just reinforces what we're saying right now. She's definitely the best performance in the way. You know how good her performance is. She's good with the gang because she has.

The prettiest brunette eyes in the world. They just and she uses them so well and she just tells a story with us. Yeah, she's really good. I was happy to see her on The Mandalorian? Was it she on the Mandalorian or Boba Mandalorian a couple years ago?

I might have been Boba Fet.

Was Boba Fet? She played a madam on it and Star Wars.

Yeah, and then they like killed her and.

They blew her up and I'm like no, And she is got to be pushing sixty and looks good as she did in the nineties. Man, she's a beautiful lady, and I'm I've always been sad that she isn't Julia Robert.

That's a really good point.

You're right, because she's such a good actress and she's so endearing and she's so lovely. I don't understand why she wasn't in a hundred rom coms. I don't know why she doesn't have an oscar or anything like that. She's Yeah, I don't.

People wrote her off because she didn't do that dancing and flash dance.

Yeah, they wouldn't let her. Who could do that dancing?

Other could do that dancing and flash dance. Look, ultimately, they just should have cast the dancer to perform the dancers role and cast Jennifer Bial's in some other thing later, which she would have done. Anyway, do you find that.

With There are certain actors and you wonder, man, why weren't they bigger?

What did Julia Roberts do that she did they get those parts?

I'll tell you, I'll tell you what. Julie Ryanberts has a smile that is wide enough to fill up a television screen.

That is true, but Jennifer Bial's eyes are big enough too for that, So I don't know.

A smile conquers eyes A a an inviting smile over a smile with the eyes. A smise, if you will, will win every time. So that's why a big dough eyed person like Mary Elizabeth Winstead is only going to get so far. But someone with a smile so wide that it seems like the top of their head is going to fall off will always get more attention.

I think that's a fair assessment. I do.

We'll get to my other another one who I hold in kind of the same level as Jennifer Bial's when we get to that intlude when Ted makes a phone call. But I'd like to get back to finish up this one because Alexander Rockwell, I don't know.

That should have been Kevin Smith, probably, I think in retrospect. Yeah, I mean he was making some making some movies at the time Lewis and Frank and no, what did he do? Oh you know what, I'm sorry, I take it back. He did in The Soup, which at the time, with Seymour Cassell and Steve Buscemi, was as about Indie nineties as you can get and it's a really fucking good movie.

Okay, there you go.

So I think off of the back of that is what he got. Also, Seymour Cassell came to my theater to see In the Soup because we put it out and we put and I did this, actually, I said, put his name over it. Seymour Cassell in in the Soup, and he came into the theater specifically to thank whoever put his name above the Title's great. And then a month later, when the marquee came down and we put up something else, he came in again and was like, what the fuck happened? Where's my name?

He is such an underappreciated character actor in Rushmore.

Oh my god, is his dad?

Hearts The Dad is the most beautiful, heartbreaking, understated and solo performance. You wouldn't think the the delivery of a line do you like that mustache? Are you fond of keeping? It would be so magical, but that man.

Somehow managed to make that simple line sound like Shakespeare.

Like, oh my god. He's just such a lovely actor.

Yeah, And if he was in an episode of Flight of the Concourd's called the Tough Brents where they're trying to form a gang. So he's a representative of old school gangs what they used to be in New York. He used to be part of the Little Enchanters, which I highly encourage everyone to go check that one out. Yeah, that's how Alexander Alexander Rockwell got involved.

Ultimately, he was married to Jennifer Beald at the time.

Was he really?

He? And I googled him watching it After watching.

It, Thank god he was, because whatever got him in this movie was the right choice. Like I agree with somebody like Kevin Smith or and he does, and the other independent filmmakers might have filled in here. And Kevin Smith was at Mirramax too, so it's weird that they didn't just poured him on over.

Yeah, Kevin's I've always felt that, like people love or hate Kevin Smith, and I've always really admired him because even though not everything he's done is perfect, but he just made stupid shit about stuff that he liked, and he got in there, and I feel like he would go home pretty early while these people were out partying and cooking up stuff like four rooms, he was already passed out, or he was back in his room with his wife or whatever girlfriend he has, you know what

This film does feel like four people sitting in a room together at a party, going, yeah, I got an idea. Well, I got an idea.

I got an idea, So I think maybe that's it. I got my tarantine. It was for me.

It was that trinity of filmmakers at that age. It was Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Kevin Subith. Those were the three guys that that said to me, go be a movie maker. I give you permission to say the Screw the fact that your folks don't have money to send you to a great brad school, Screw the fact that you don't live in LA and don't really like living in LA because it's big. If it's scary and you're very anxious, you can still do it. Wherever you are, you can do it.

You can.

It took me a while to figure out how. Twenty years later, I finally okay.

Not I forget it.

But they set you on the path.

They set you on the path, and to them, so anytime they make anything.

I will always be there for that. Tarantino has probably had the more consistent of careers.

Even I've been hanging out with some more filmmakers lately and some younger folks, and they're like.

Oh, I didn't really Guarantino. I'm like, really, how did?

Is it just our generation that just want bananas for them? And then everybody afterwards don't like him.

I don't know.

There's hope, there's hope.

I'm the Kevin Smith front. He's they're finally going to re release Dog Book.

So that's my favorite movie is real.

Yeah, I was a Catholic school kid, so I liked all that Banana's Catholic school stuff, even though the movie suffers in spots and Clerk's is a masterpiece.

But I have a really.

Soft spot for Well. I have to have a conversation about that. At another time, I was like Red State a lot, but I liked I think Red States is the best thing.

Yeah, Red State is should do more stuff like that. But anyways, back to this one.

So we've gone through Alexander Rockwell saying we know that that Richie from.

The Sopranos, what's the actor's name? David is so menacing and so silly.

How is that pot?

Yeah, I don't know how that works. And his chemistry with Jennifer Beals is great. So this might actually be the best movie out.

Of the bunch.

I kind of think it is.

Yeah, now that I watch it as a grown up, I'm like, Okay, this is a more mature film.

There's more, it's a more complete film.

And speaking to the what you mentioned about the Alison Anders thing, each of these segments is written like a cartoon, but only Alexander Rockwell and Robert Rodriguez understood that they needed to make that visual as well, because there are flights of fancy moments here, like when Ted first walks into the room, he gets cold cocked with a gun and suddenly he's drifting and we get a scene of him floating in the clouds holding a baby who's also

Yeah, it's trying.

Stuff, and it's trying to it's not half assing it.

I kind of hear.

Alison Andrews's bit was a little half assed, and Tim Tarantino's bit was just shot on cocaine because I can't.

And that is the most half assed thing I've ever seen. I'm like, I can't believe who directed that. I can't who shot that.

Oh we'll get there.

Yeah, but back to this is more very I think he understood the assignment. It's not perfect. It drags a

It plays like a proper screenplay.

I have a little screwball comedy.

Yeah, And it's a little screwball comedy and even has a nice surprise at the end as I was faking it but I know you love me, and then they have this kind of weird reconciliation and then it ends all wacky.

Yeah.

I enjoyed that one. I found myself. That's the one that I've forgotten had existed.

And this one is plain speaking and frank when it comes to sexuality. Where the last one was being all COI, this one could have been koy and gotten away with it instead. When Jennifer Beals gets the gag out of her mouth and she's like, come on, Ted, when she's trying to get revenge, She's like, quick, come my, whip out your cock. He's got a huge cock Like suddenly everyone's speaking frankly like adults.

Yeah, and she delivers that so, oh.

My god, she's killer in that scene.

And she is, which is weird in them, like she's got more agents, see that the witches do. Yes, she's a more confident woman and a better written woman than the witches are, which is weird. She's not very well written in the Tarantino part and she's just a Tarantino woman and that scene.

But well, yeah, her presence.

Carries absolutely sorry, no, it does carry over now because having rewatched it as adults, just like this one is so much more elevated in my mind than previous. Just her presence in the Tarantina one made me like that this much more just this much. You can't see, folks, but the fingers are very.

Close toge like I'm crushing your head exactly.

Mid crush. Okay, speaking of crushes. From three to nine, The Misbehaviors, written and directed by Robert Rodriguez, not going to take anything away from this, even if I'm pumping up the fame of the wrong Man is the best segment in this movie. This one's pretty fucking great.

This is the most memorable one.

This is the one that everybody remembers as being the good one.

I think that the raw call one.

I guess you gotta appreciate and look back through another lens or what have you. But this one, yeah, this was the one that I remember liking. I didn't like it as much this time. I thought it was really uneven and sloppy, and the jokes weren't funny.

Yeah, it's it needs another pass through the editing process. Even though this is at twenty four minutes, the shortest segment of the entire thing, you can always tighten it further and further. Running time is a big issue here, and we'll talk about that sort of near the end. But the story here is Antonio Banderaz and his wife played by Tamlin Tamita, are going out to a New

Oh wow, really is it? I need to go see that again. I don't even pay it. I didn't even notice that.

It's all I noticed her immediately and when yeah, when I first saw the movie. And so I've seen this segment a million times. I don't know how much of the story I've seen. I'm just always scanning for the TV.

This is right before Dustill Dawn.

Now you talk about the editing, and it's Robert Rodriguez is a really good editor. So that's shocking that it's not as good like it's the pacing is off.

Some of the stuff is great there, like when the.

Little girl's dialing the phone and he does those really quick insert I love that shit. It really gives you that Rodriguez flavor to it. And Antonio Benderis is like at his coolest and he's and he's an underrated actor.

He's very good.

He's got great timing, man like, his comedic timing is great, and he's good with those kids. You basically this is the audition for Spike Kid. This short because everything that happens and then short happens in SPI kid.

I will say this until the revelation of Jennifer Beal's fantastic performance here, Antonio Bandera's performance was the one that I always remembered. The close up of him saying behave it lives in my mind. I hear the word behave or behavior, Antonio Banderas is there to say the word.

For me, and his mustache is spectator.

And he's really funny here. And I just on the roundup. I just talked about the movie Thirteenth Warrior where he did it way underrated and he's fucking great in it.

That online and in conversation that moved for some reason and was like, oh, that's garbage, and I'm like, i'mber watching.

I guess it isn't flopped, but I remember saw this is fucking great.

At the time, the budget was reported at one hundred and fifty million, the producers claim it was ninety million. It ended up only making sixty million, So yeah, it was a flop and it was easy to dismiss, but I don't think it was because of the quality. I know that it was a troubled production and that the

It made its money back eventually on the lucrative home video market that no longer exists in its murdered Hollywood. That's why where everybody's broke the studio system. They don't have DVDs, VHS tapes to sell anymore, and like all you got it goes.

It goes from the movie theater to HBO in three months. What is that?

I had to wait a year before it was on HBO and I was like six months it came out on video.

Yeah, like that was a great system, and then you had to buy it or rented.

These studio system has become a corporate, a corporate thing, and when that when the pandemic hit, they attacked it like a corporate thing and just gave us everything we could get in and start spending money. But then realize that, yeah, now we were spoiled. We want Netflix only now we don't want to go out to the theater and we don't want to wait six months for video. Can just get it on Netflix. My TV's one hundred inches long now or whatever it is. I've got a movie theater in my house.

Who cares.

It's gonna be hard to get a movie like Four Rooms made. I'll tell you that, it is absolutely hard.

I don't know.

Netflix seems to throw money. It's an established filmmaker, but they were all they had, all were established indie filmmare so it was a different world. Like the indie scene in the nineties was Magic Man. It was awesome. Granted there's a lot of evil behind it now, and you would learn about Harvey Weinstein and his.

Yeah, but Mirra Max was a big part of the indie scene. But they weren't the only party only ones.

Yeah, No, I took I remember when I first started. I took meetings at Artisan That was the other early one. There was a bunch of little houses. It was cool. But the idea was like, you can make a movie and get it into sun Dance and someone could give you a million dollars for it, and now you've got money.

To make another movie. And it's that pipeline.

Now is Yeah, only sun Dance is the only place that you're gonna play and you can get a job at it. But even then you're not gonna necessarily to get a million bucks. Netflix will buy it. That's the thing. Though maybe Netflix will buy it. But it's not the same. It sucks because like Little our House cinemas were cool, Like it was a great date on Friday night. You go to the movies and you go get coffee afterwards, and it wasn't expensive. It was for everybody. No, it's

The twenty dollars.

They get in there and everything is I don't know, it's not the same anymore.

It's not cool anymore.

If you were to sell something at Sundance, would you then be the Man from Hollywood? Here in the Penthouse. We've reached the Penthouse. In there the Man from Hollywood, written and directed by Quinton Tarantino.

Before we get to the Pendhuse, though, we've got to get to Betty.

Oh my god, Betty. Yeah, okay, let's talk Betty.

Because out of nowhere, I'm talking about the other one from the Jennifer Mike almost like my Jennifer Beals, like the little she got a little further.

Than Jennifer Bials.

But the great, the beautiful, the multi talented genius of an actor, Maurrissitomee.

That's the other one.

Why was she not Julia Roberts And she wanted Oscar right up the bat and she was consistently good. But she always has starred and stuff and was but not Julia Roberts level, not halle Berry level or whatever it is, that little f step above.

I'm comfortable with where marisitome ended up, honestly, like she's always doing consistently fucking good work. Check her out in the Wrestler. She was fucking great in that.

Do you want an Oscar for that?

No?

She got nominated for an.

Oscar as well. She should. There's a to me. This movie is wildly underrated, crazy stupid love with Steve Carell and Julianne Moore. Marisa Toomey plays a teacher who has an affair with Steve Carell in it, and she's fucking hilarious in it.

And people talk about my cousin Vinnie and her winning in Oscar, All that was bullshit. Have you seen my cousin Vinnie? Have you seen how incredible that performance of hers is?

Like my cousin vic for one thing is an underrated movie, Like, yeah, it's supposed to be always a goofy comedy. No, it's a really brilliant courtroom movie that's disguised as a wacky comedy, and that's really cool.

But she is unbelievable in them.

He's one of the finest comedy comedic performances any actor has ever given. And for a comedic performance to win an oscar, that's something else, something else.

I do think that part of it was the Four Brits in the One American. I think if anything was influenced that regard, it might have been that. But that I'm not taking anything away from hers.

She even got nominated for that though. Yeah.

So the sequence here, the sequence here talking about here is when The Misbehaviors finally ends with a beautiful tableau.

Yeah, that is what the dead girl and the Yeah, I will give Rodriguez that, So like the Rodriguez, he's there, but it needs another cut.

Yeah, but that leads us to Ted quitting basically, so he goes and calls his boss at her home. But apparently there's been some raging New York' save party and everyone's out and the only people left are stoned and playing a Rambo video game. Sitting in the middle as Marissa Toome. She answers the phone she gives great stoned.

Yeah, she does.

I feel like somebody is drawing from experience there. She lit that thing, She lit that pipe and just kept looking at the video game and was still on the phone, like I've seen that.

That's exact thing.

I wish there was more of her.

I do too. You figure, why couldn't she be fit more in This is a Tarantino wrote this segment.

I feel like that could have been a framing sequence. Have gone back to her more than once in the movie, and I might have given a bit more of a uniformity.

To it, given us Ted a little bit more of his own character where it's not just reacting to people but giving us his opinions on what he's going through.

And then Betty is Kathy Griffin sure.

Is this is not her first role though I was in pulp fiction.

Yeah, A knowing Garantino, it's the same.

Character, Yeah, probably, But yes, we.

Get to Tarantino's bit. Now the Penthouse.

Now, I said it's written by Tarantino, but really it's written by Roald Dahl. Roll Doll had a short story adapted into an Alfred Hitchcock presents called The Man from the South, and that is what they're playing on here, We've got a rich asshole Hollywood. I guess he's a movie star. He's not. Is he a director or a movie he's a movie director.

He's basically yeah, I think he's a director. They don't really explicitly say.

They just say his you movie opened at and his next one is going to open that.

So I'm assuming he's playing a director.

Yeah, I don't know. It's vague. But here's the thing. So it's spoiled filmmaker, film actor or whatever having his New Year's Eve party. They've placed a bet based on the Man from the South story the Man from Rio and which is in the Roll Doll story. This man has a lighter and he's pretty proud of that lighter. And this old man says, hey, I bet you can't do that lighter so many times. I'll bet you my car. You can have my car, and if you lose, I'm going to chop off one of your fingers and keep it.

So he's basically doing a meta remake of the of the Alva Hitchcock Presents that he saw when he was like that Bewitched movie with.

If Cairella is paul N's character, Yeah, that.

One and Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, so where they're the actors doing a remake of Bewitched and she's actually really a witch.

It's like, okay, okay, so I get where he's coming from. I didn't realize that was actually the thing that he sucks.

This is terrible, Like he should be ashamed of himself for that, And like the deep peat is.

Andre Andre Sekula.

Yes, and it looked like a college kid shot it.

Speaking of sets that look like sets, what the fuck?

Yeah, I didn't even look like a hotel room.

It was like the lighting was really it was all really really harsh shadows that were like not very attractive and camera work was shit, and he's I'm gonna put the camera in the corner of the room and I'm gonna like awkwardly move it around and I'm gonna walk backwards, and I'm like, this is a littit at all, and I don't think of.

This guy's There's a moment early on where Tarantino plays the lead character by the way, everybody, In case you needed even more reason not to watch this one, there's a shot where he is walking toward the camera and the thought being that Ted is behind us, because that's where his eyeline is the entire time he walks up, and for the first three or four lines he's talking off camera, presumably to Ted, and then he turns to the camera and continues talking as if were Ted. It is so weird.

Yeah, there's a lot of that in there.

But okay, so you hear me like, I just want to love folks like well, I have just up at arms about the cinematography and it because, like I mean, this guy' shot all fiction.

This guy shot what else? He shot reservoir dogs.

He did a whole bunch of homicide Life on the Street, which is fucking great.

I remember that show absolutely so like he's got He's done a lot of things.

I don't know. This is just Terry made.

Guess as his agent slash manager popping into the frame. Every once in a while we get Bruce Willis, Yeah.

Who's uncredited in this movie? Because us sad?

Why isn't Bruce Willis the man from Hollywood? Why isn't he playing Tarantino's role? Why hadn't they switched? If they had switched, this would be ten times more tolerable, right.

A lot better.

So the thought I was having watching is is Tarantino lampooning.

Himself that's what he wants us to think?

Or is he just acting himself?

Because have you heard that anecdote from oh Fiona Apple, Yeah, about him and pt Anderson Hi on cocaine, just talking about how many.

They are and she's just oh my god.

And she ended up breaking up with Betterson anyways, but she's being just like a gas on how pompous and full of themselves these people are, and how up their own asses they are.

She described it as hell on Earth.

I believe Hell on Earth, and I'm just like, wow, I wish I would have read this when I was twenty two years old, or whatever, because I might have maybe given myself a little more agency as a young guy thing.

I'm not as good as the Magnificently.

No, they're just assholes who got lucky with something really good. They get one really cool thing and they won the right place at the right time, and the right guy saw that.

Over on midnight viewing the horror anthology podcast We Deal With, We dealt with Night Gallery a lot. Night Gallery had a habit of doing blackout sketches, and now anytime an episode of whatever we're watching, they have the one basic premise that they've stretched out to twenty two minutes. We just call it a blackout, and this is that he saw the Man from the South on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and thought, wouldn't it have been better if the light

Yeah, Like it was a short film written by a college kid.

I feel like that's somebody's master's thesis at some twenty four year old dudes master's thesis or his production three with me like it reminds me of a guy I will name, But it was the guy who we used to go to school with and wrote. His shorts were basically, Oh, I heard this joke that Tarantino did in a movie, and I wanted to make that into something like a short, and it was like one a one note thing like that,

Why did you write this just boring dialogue.

It's a poorly directed Paul Calderon is just overacting, Bruce Willis is on the phone literally phoning it in, and then Jennifer Beals has just wasted, wearing the exact same outfit that Thurman was wearing at one point in pulp fiction, with the nose shoes and there's the feet, just like you're not letting her do anything and it's all up to her to do it with her.

Eyes, which she does what she does, but.

Man, yeah, what a waste. It's just so disappointing. It's weird. Tarantino's makes really good movies. But when when he sucks, he really sucks. Now.

I mentioned earlier that there was a running time issue for this movie.

It was a half hour longest short.

The initial cut of this movie was two hours and thirty minutes. Okay, word came down. You can have an hour and forty five minute movie, right. That means forty five minutes need to go. Robert Rodriguez turned in a twenty four minute segment. They're not going to touch it. Tarantino refuses to cut anything. The forty five minutes has to come out of Rockwell and Anders ouch.

But but like Tarantino's is the one that probably could have used the most cutting, because he really just like, how long does that money?

The money counting gag? Tho?

It's like a ten minute gag. I got one hundred dollars and then they just keep counting more money, but it just never ends. And I'm just like, who's editing this?

Why is this taking so long? Why that should just be like three shots?

You're done so well, stack one money stack, big bigger stack of money, big giant stack of money. Reaction shot, So you need to tell that story. I don't know why he goes on and on and on.

And ten minutes to that's what that should have been ten minutes.

And you know what else this reminds me of.

It reminds me of every bad Tarantino ripoff movie from that came out after pul Fiction.

It does feel that way with.

These, like with the long theories and the long like dialogue about nothing shit. Okay, look we get it, ROYAUI cheese.

But everything is that.

It was like ten hours of everything he cut out, of all the shit from his other stuff. Oh, I really want to use this, this treatise on whatever he's talking about.

I can't even remember. And I watched it this morning and I read him and he's such a shitty actor.

He really is.

He like, I can't say how much I love and Glora's Bestard. I love that movie.

I love Hate Fulate like I love a lot of Tarantino movie.

But man, he cannot act it. When he goes up in pulp Fiction, it's unbearable. I think he just wanted to say the D word on screen.

There's no reason that his dialogue should have gone on that long.

And now to cast himself as the lead in is Ooh. But in his defense, he never did it again.

I think that he recognized that this opportunity doing an anthology film was the only time that people were going to accept him as the lead, so he went for it. And I admire that, but it didn't help.

No, because then from here, I take it back, he did do it again, because obviously his most famous movie role is next.

In Dustill Dawn, and he's good in that. I think he's a terrible actor, but I liked him in that movie.

But I don't know how they I guess I guess since he's playing his brain isn't quite like he's probably a little under underdeveloped, a little undercooked, because I can't imagine him and George Clooney being brothers.

But then he also he turns into a Frankenstein monster instead of.

To Frankenstein vampire.

And then you know he did write the I'm going to write the Hottest woman in the Universe's role to put her foot in my mouth.

Listen, any of us would have done that.

I would have picked something else.

Oh sure, depending on how well I knew Salama right.

Oh my god, I don't know how I've been able to direct. I don't know, like I can't help. But I'm a hopeless romantic, I really am. And man, I'm a hike as something else still to this day, and if you aren't anymore, she's really good actor, spectacular actress. Yes, absolutely everything she does is spectacular. Her comedic timing is wonderful, even in those in like those stupid grown ups movies,

How could that? She's fucking awesome, I mean, you know, and look at her. Yeah, and just on top of everything else, because she's she's a really good actress, right, and the great producer and you look like that. Stop it, just stop it.

On thirty Rock when she plays the.

Nerd, oh my god, I'm gonna have to do a Sma cast.

Yeah, Salma cast. Oh my goodness. But this bit is such a disappointment at all levels. It's just too bad. I'm glad they had fun making it.

I guess evidently there there were some like let's say bruised egos here now, because you two have to cut your shit down. In fact, Antonio, there was a there was supposed to be a stinger at the end that harkened back to the Alice Anders story. There was another bit with the goddess that was supposed to occur, and Tarantino announced he would be directing that and Alice and Andrews was like, well, it's my segment. Why would you be doing that? And he was like, I just I'm

I yike, oh, I don't know who was the goddess.

Diana was played by Amanda They cut an it. He's a presenter of the Big Breakfast.

It's a weird move.

I don't know how I even count. It was like almost it was like not even finished. The best part of the movie was the cartoon stuff. It was the animated at the beginning. She just made the whole.

Movie a cartoon.

Yeah. It's set a vibe that the rest of the film could not handle to it.

I think it wanted to be that and it couldn't, and that's a hard thing to do.

Like we did a we just did a forty eight hour film challenge.

We've never done that.

Like we're really meticulous filmmaker, That's why we don't have a huge flungerings. We take forever on everything. So I'm like, let's see if we can just bang it out. And we did and we got through it. But it's funny and it works. Making shit funny is hard and it's not for everybody. And I don't and I don't see

He's a four unfunny filmmakers making a comedy. This is Steven Spielberg making nineteen forty one.

Yeah, this is a.

This should be a Marx Brothers movie. This should be a Jerry Lewis movie.

Like that's exactly what it needs to be. Like like I said, this pakes this takes place on New Year's Eve? Where are the festivities others? Like in one room where it just seems like a bunch of assholes screaming over music. A.

Lawrence Bender has the same credit in this as he does in Pulp Fiction. What is long haired Yuppi's come?

He does seem that way?

Good on him. Though he made a lot of movies.

Is he's producing still Larry's bastard? He did Capone, he did Goreta. I's got a movie coming out called How Kids Roll?

He made my college years. His movies made me happy.

With the Golden Raspberry Award, Oh did it? And well deserved no, because they gave it to Madonna. Yeah, but I can think of a thousand other worst things worse the outfit? How about the set decorator? How about they get the fucking award.

I've seen shorts shot at hotel rooms in vegasm.

Most of these don't look cinematic at all. Alison Anders and Tarantinos, the book ends of this just seem like they're from television series.

Yeah, they're really flat. And I'm thinking again the pedigree, like you just guys, the guys that just made pulp Fiction, come do this. I just assumed cocaine.

He assumed something alcohol. Yeah, cocaine seems like that that the movie would have energy. This movie has no I.

Have any energy. The only one who had any energies Tim Roth, and he had.

A little too much energy at the start too.

Yeah, he was like doing this whole like physical thing where he was just I don't know, honestly spastic that right word, but it looked like he was having sea shows as he was walking around.

It was really weird. Man.

This is just proof of anthology model. You're gonna have ups and down, and in some cases the downs are so down that you might not even recommend the movie. Do you recommend?

No, no, no no.

For Alison Anders, I go recommend I he is a guess who lodging? I love Brace of My Heart? You know, definitely that. What should we see from Alexander Rockwell.

Instead in the soup? Check out in the soup immediately it's great.

What about Rodriguez? What's your favorite one from him?

Ooh? Might be from Dustill Down.

Honestly, yeah, I was gonna say Dustill Don is great. I'm a big fan of Once upon a Time in Mexico. It's a neat It's an interesting movie.

I like these spy kids movies.

Yeah.

I like Sin City a lot. We did an episode of yes, but from Dustill down is I think it's really cool. It's a jarring transition in there, but man, it's I think I always thought it worked. I always thought it was really unique and it played really well. I don't think I don't think Tarantino gonna directed that though.

Oh no, no, for so that's rodrigueze it Tarantino recommend over this.

I think Glorious Bastards I love and glorious Bastards. I also am very fond of Jackie Brown and I am fond of those two Kill Doll movies.

But if I were to recommend to Quentin Tarantino movie, I would do it once upon a time in Hollywood.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

Thank you, pretty best thing. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you once again for joining us here at end Folingu's Attack an Tony. When you're not here and you're not out there slugging it out in the cinematic universe, where can people find you? If they're looking for you?

You can find us on Instagram, at Swamp Media Group and at swampmediagroup dot com.

Or if you're interested in watching.

Our movie online, you can see it at our movie space Detective.

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