Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Repo Man (1984), Roadside Prophets (1992)

in Fusco Fest. I'd say look at the works of screenwriter John Fusco. So far, we've gotten to Crossroads and Young Guns, got those out for your listening pleasure. This Friday, we're doing Young Guns too, and it is a blast. I urge you all to tune in then or more business. If you want to hear it right now, head on over to patreon dot com slash Father Alone. Subscribers get everything early and commercial free, and you'll have my eternal

gratitude sincerely. Anyone paying to hear my nonsense is Toppermost of the popermost and if you join the Patreon you never have to hear me use that phrase again. Here's a fun fact. Did you know that film production companies logos, you know, like the universal logo.

under the studio logos. I don't know why more filmmakers aren't doing it, considering every film now starts with three minutes of production logos. What's even better is then after the logos end, we get three minutes of credits with the same goddamn logos just in font form. You know what now that I'm starting to rant, what part of your movie is so inessential that you let the names

of the filmmakers play over it? Seriously, if you haven't designed a credit sequence, and are just letting credits play over action. What are we supposed to surmize there? One or the other isn't worth your time? No such worry

with our first pick. It's repo man meets auto.

to the reader, and reader only. That description isn't going on screen, but they want you to know that the title has horrible connotations. These are protagonists, not heroes. What protagonists? I'm glad you ask. I'm gonna play Auto's introductory scene, which not only features Xander Schlass as his pal Kevin, who is at least a good argument for parallel thinking when it comes to Napoleon Dynamite, not saying those guys ever saw one of the most popular cult films of

all time before making their film. But I digress.

a year later when I was entering teenagerdom. But if it was punk and fun and dancing on the fringes of culture, I was on fucking board. And here's a movie that's all those things and a lead character that's just as fucked up in directionless as any of the lifers he ends up associating with. And at one point Emilio Estevez sits by himself and drinking a six pack and singing TV Party by black Flag. I love this fucking movie. Which lifers? I'm glad you asked about them.

Harry Dean Stanton Is he the greatest character actor of all time? Yes, the end, and one of the reasons, A major fucking reason this movie works as well as it does, because if Harry Dean is taking this lunacy seriously, you all better start doing the same. And not only is but a true goddamned American with a genuine code he lives by. He has some of the most quotable lines in film history.

Special shout out to sy Richardson, who shows up in all of Alex Cox's movie and is always effortlessly cool, except maybe for this one bit in Repo Man where he happens to say one of the uncoolest things. Ever, how many times have you heard someone lay this one on you?

But really the film is an excuse to send Auto into more and more dangerous scenarios while being ultra philosophy by the dregs of American society. It's really intoxicating. You know how as you get older, when you revisit a favorite piece of fiction, you find yourself responding to different aspects. I'll give you a really fascial example. When I was a teenager, I fully responded to Rorshak and the Watchman.

Then in my twenties and thirties, I really grew to identify and I realized how horrible this sounds with the comedian of late as I get closer to a century in age, doctor Manhattan has his hooks in me well. As a kid, I found Harry Dean Stanton's furious outlook to be one of my own, but he's too earth bound he's too the comedian. There is at doctor Manhattan equivalent in this film. That's Tracy Walter, and I kind of think he's a genius.

cosmic unconsciousness. We love Acid Miller back in the hippy days.

fellow named Tom Richmond. I loved Tom beyond the beyond, one of the single coolest human beings I've ever had the pleasure of knowing Tom is no longer with us, so once again, fuck everything. But when I knew him, Tom shared a home with Alex Cox. Alex was forever in Europe, but the strange cinematic family that they all belonged to seem to float in and out of that place.

It was an odd circumstance, let me tell you. Going from essentially having my brain wired by art and then hanging out with the artists, I felt weirdly at tuned, though it's hard to describe. The first thing out of my mouth to Abby Wool was a marriage proposal. Abby was the co writer of Sid and Nancy. Just between you and me and all the aging old krusty punks out there, Abby wrote that movie. She turned me down,

but she did it really, really sweetly. And we're gonna be talking a little bit more about Abby right now. With the Ripley's pick h to the p K, Thank you HP. We've got to figure out the audio equivalent of the thrill cam. Speaking of movies that are as indelible to me as I don't know what is like Goonies for rest of gen X? Is that it? What's it for millennials? Cabin Boy? That's what those kids love, right, awkward humor and puppets? Wait a minute, was Chris Elliott

the father of postmodern comedy? That's worth exploring, though not by me. I love Chris Elliot, don't get me wrong, but something we should all agree on His greatest achievement is his daughter, Abby Elliott. But we're not talking about Abby Elliot, though there would be worse ways to spend a half hour. Note, we're talking about Abbi Wool already told you she air quotes co wrote Sid Nancy, a movie I've already covered on the round up. You should

go back and listen to that right now. We'll wait, but by way of recap, Sid and Nancy is the most romantic film of all time. I want to go on, but I've already said enough. But you know what, No, this is the kind of romantic flick that it is. It's an early morning in the world. Isn't awake yet, including your significant other? But it's like they have got their arms wrapped around you while you're watching that movie?

Does that make sense in no fucking way? Well it doesn't matter, because Abby Wall's follow up to that goddamned masterpiece is another minor miracle, her directing debut. Shot by

Tom Richmond, starring John Doe of the absolutely seminal La Punk band X and Adam Horovitz, also known as the King ad Rock of the Beastie Boys. It's the most purely American movie of the nineteen nineties. This is roadside Profits.

are go on a road trip. Don't have a car, You have a friend who does, and they haven't seen you in a while, and it would be fun. But choose good surroundings. That's important. Now. This entire show is in my humble opinion, So keep that in mind, no matter what I say, even if it's something I like or you like, Oh nobody likes.

to God pass. You have to ascend a pass to get to the high desert, where things just turn weird and arid, and away you go, and all civilization gives way to the desert and then it's just you and the rubber and the road. And the sky above and the music surrounding you. And at the end it carved out of the nothingness is a city shining bright enough to bounce its light off the moon. Imagine doing that besides someone you adore. Such is the journey our heroes

are on. In Roadside Profits, Joe befriend's Dave, a guy at the refinery they both work at playing dig Doug. That's a rough way to go. Even video game nerds have got to know the shame of a dig Doug death. Joe knows nothing about the guy except he loved the town of Jackpot, Nevada. So Joe sets out to deliver his ashes there. Along the way, he's joined by a tag along kid with no real direction, and they encounter

those aforementioned profits of the roadside. You heard their names in the trailer, By the way, Peter Cullen Optimist Prime doing the trailer narration from sidon Nancy's Abby Wool Rollout, Joe and Sam encounter a dozen or so desert eccentrics. I mentioned the Americana of it all, traveling down a ribbon of highway and running into the likes of Arlo Guthrie,

Timothy Leary, and David Carridine. Those guys are the sixties counterculture, and they deliver some appropriate philosophical musings in their scenes. It's the latter day profits of the roadside that are a little less well known but way more interesting and cynical, particularly a couple played by Bill Cobbs from Hudsucker Proxy and Lynn Shay, who's had a renaissance recently with the

Insidious films. His character is dying of cancer and hers aids, and they found each other and are living together in their desert home, making art and spending their remaining time together. There's a line from their scene that has stuck with me. It's ad Rocks Response test.

Let me know there is still a Cafe Fifties. One fifties diner that is definitely still in operation and I think is the basis for the one seen in Roadside Profits can be found outside Calico ghost Town in Yermo, California. It's Peggy Sus that is a sprawling diner where going back in time to the fifties wasn't enough. It's still all Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis inside, but the outside has become a mini Jurassic Park with dozens of

dinosaurs everywhere. I don't think anyone saw the thunder lizards coming, nor would anyone have guessed the gigantic ice cream cup that would spring up just a few miles distant. This is all true. There is a certain craziness to the High Desert that has to be experienced to be believed. Also in the movie, Joe and Sam meet Casper, a Symbionese member played by John Cusack. Cusack starred in Tape Heads produced by Michael Nesmith and Peter McCarthy, and McCarthy

is the producer on this. Casper has my favorite joke in the film as he lets Sam and Joe know that he's Symbionese. He winks conspiratorially, but Casper has an eye patch over one eye, and that's the eye he winks with. That ride from La to Victorville to Baker to Vegas is a magnificent one and it will deliver said craziness. But to get the real desert of oddity, you have to go north north, Miss Tesmacher. Are there any fans of Superman two that don't think Miss Tesmacher

after someone says north, you know you do? Just north of Las Vegas is where every town gets smaller and all the vistas get larger. It's where you will get lost in red rock canyons, and you will find yourself dumb struck at the sheer void in some places, and you'll run into towns like e Lee, where you can have a damn fine snake while seated in an authentic jail cell from the eighteenth century. It was delicious and a disconcerting. The higher you go, the more desolate the surroundings.

And while I've never been to Antarctica, the poll to go there for me is the idea that for a brief time there'd be nothing but the land and you and whatever deity happens to exist, and you can get that feeling somewhere north of Lundon, Nevada. Places that make you realize how easy it would be for anyone to disappear completely. The border between Nevada and Idaho where you

find the actual town of Jackpot. It's where poor dead Dave's ashes are being delivered, and it's where our heroes are met with their final crushing defeats that the road trip has planned for them. Ay Man, sometimes songs end in a minor key. It's not a sad ending in any way, though certainly not as somber as the ending of Easy Rider, the road trip from which all others

must be measured. Fucking boomers. Now, I take that back, particularly because Peter Fonda is in my Palcardi's film Love in a forty five, playing a variation of his Captain America character from Easy Rider. And that's a good movie, Easy Rider and Love at a forty five. But about Jackpot. It's a one strip town, like one lane highway that speed zones you down to fifteen miles an hour for about one mile like one mile, with a few dozen

buildings lining other side. The two main buildings being casinos with attached hotels on opposite sides of the road. It's as way station a town as you can get, and it's really just an excuse for Idaho people to come gamble or people going to Idaho to have at least one last good time. Do you know that the speed limit in parts of Idaho are eighty miles per hour? Even the highways know you want to leave. One time, I was coming back from a gig in Spokane, Washington.

It was a full day's drive to get to Jackpot, where I had booked a room site unseen. So I pull into the appropriate casino hotel combo and slept my way through the bitterly cold air. This was in November. I believe in the wind out on those planes fucked man. So I go into the reception desk and they inform me that the hotel is full and I'll be across the street at their overflow. And I'm like, the other casino is your overflow and he says, no, no, no,

behind the casino, that's our overflow hotel. So I drive behind the other casino, which is the casino featured in Roadside Profits, and there's this squat looking hotel building. The parking lot is completely empty. There's a key card entrance, but the wind is so violent that the hydraulic doors

never get to close. As soon as the door gets whisper close to relocking, a gust of wind wrenches it open, and clearly a door somewhere else open because some of those violent gusts are coming from inside the building, so basically anyone could be in there except staff. There's no staff at all. It's like a Romero film, just abandoned Apocalypse.

That same wind is causing a door somewhere in the building to bang at irregular rhythms, the effect of which is to sound like someone running down a hall and getting closer. My stay in jack Pot, Nevada marked the only time I've ever shoved the hotel room's chest of drawers in front of the door. But it has a happy ending because I woke up after my forty five minutes of frenzied sleep. I was that scared to find

that the whole world had been blanketed in snow. It was gorgeous, and thus began a treacherous drive home over unplowed snowy desert roads that made the previous night'sphere seem like a day at Disneyland. Nothing like that happens to Sam and Joe. They find each other out in the desert. They find themselves and what's left of America the oddball, insular freaks, and philosophy, you know, the stuff that makes this country actually great. No, not great, cool. No country

was ever great, but god damn it, we were cool. Yes, you are still cool yourself, little lady. All right, that

will do it for this week's a round up. Like I said, tune in on Friday, it's actually Thursday. Don't tell anybody. For our look at Young Guns two in our continuing Fuseco Fest. Thank you all for joining us. I'm gonna leave you with a bit of dialogue, naturally. It's coming from no not repo man ha ha. I actually like roadside profits a little bit better.