Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - The Studio (2025), Action (1999)

are packed away? I'd say that was possible, maybe even exactly what's happening right now? Okay, before we go further,

we have a bit of business like how out of order everything has been lately. This past Friday was supposed to be Fusco Fest, where HP from Noise Junkies and I are discussing the filmography of screenwriter John Fusco and

we were supposed to bring you Thunderheart. But that movie is really really good, And at the same time, I didn't want the show to be another couple of suburban white guys discussing Native American politics and their mistreatment over the last few hundred years, you know, centuries to that end. We've got an indigenous friend of mine coming on, but

her availability is limited. So instead of the chronological way we've been hoping to review those films, we're just gonna plow ahead and this Friday we'll be taking a look at the next film in mister Fusco's oover. That would be The Babe, the John Goodman flick about the Sultan of Swat Babe Ruth, whose delicious legacy can still be sampled in Candy Bar Farm. That's gonna be this Friday, And then we'll get Thunderheart out to you, and then we'll get back on track. We've got two segments to

update simultaneously.

Who he has nominated the Dennis Potter series The Singing Detective. Does that count? I mean it's more of a jukebox musical and it's kind of a TV series, But I'm game. I've only ever seen the Keith Gordon directed remake with a Robert Downey Junior and that's like a ninety minute movie, whereas it's a TV series in the UK that Robert Downey Junior rule was originally played by Michael Gambon. Now I'd be lying if the idea of a mini series wasn't daunting. But at the same time, well, two things.

It'll force HP to watch like six hours of depressing Douglas cirk like melodrama interspersed with hits of the day, the day being like the nineteen forties, and I get to watch Michael Gambon dance. That's pretty damn tantalizing. So now it's in your capable hands, midnight viewers. What do you want us to watch? What do you want to hear us talk about? Is it American Pop or Little Shop or The Singing Cop Cast your votes, drop me

a line. I'm at father Malone for all the socials you can find me there, or father Malone seven to one at gmail dot com for all the inquiries and questions and the what have us. And now the weekly question are you watching? And or fellow Americans, are you watching? And or it's wrapping up this week and there's gonna be a huge hole in my rebel heart. You need to watch and or oh my goodness, we have a

new segment. I love a new segment. When I was a kid, if I was reading a magazine, it was probably Fangoria. That was the horror entertainment monthly of choice. It came along at exactly the right time for me, when I was already bristling at the limitations of the likes of Starlog or Cinefantastique. Yeah, I love spaceships and genre movies in general, But where was the fucking blood? Where were the creatures? The masked killers? Fangoria that's where

they lived. And my favorite feature in the magazine was the terror teletype. That's how antiquated things were when I was a kid. Horror movie news came by a Morse code at the offices of Fangoria. Robert England is returning for the third Elm Street Movie, and it's going to be written and directed by Wes Craven. Thing on things right about as much as your local weather man. I'm still waiting for Apartment Living, George Romero's film about a

cent in apartment building that feeds off its tenants. But what it lacked an accuracy, it made up for in enthusiasm. Just watching the list of potential projects grow month after month, year after year made the genre feel legitimate, and it promised a longevity that could not be denied. In the spirit of the terror teletype. Here at the Weekly Roundup, we offer you the Frightening Facts Machine. First, we get

the teaser for Predator bad Lands. That is Dan Tracktenberg's follow up to his film Prey, the film that should have been released theatrically about a Native America warrior battling a predator in the eighteenth century. This one's a little different. It's an alien world and a young predator out to prove his medal. As such, being young, he hasn't got his dreads yet And I guess a lot of nerds are crying about that. Shut the fuck up, nerds. That

last movie was great. This movie is going to be great. El Fannings shows up as a whalin Utani android for a healthy Slice of franchise crossover. That one's coming out in November. The perfect film to go and ignore your family during the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm really looking forward to this one. In other Predator news, is this the year of the Predator? With this administration? Oh political predator? Killer of Killers, also from Dan Trachtenberg, is an animated anthology,

so you know we're going to be covering it. It tells different tales in different ages, all involving a predator, maybe the same predator. There's a Viking tale, a Ninja tale, and then a World War II fighter pilot tale, kind of like the Animatrix, but you focused and less of a commercial for the next film in the franchise, Last Flight of the Osiris or whatever the fuck that was. Killer of Killers is out in June and it's streaming. August will bring us the follow up to Barbarian from

directors Zach Kreiger. Weapons. That's with Josh Brolin and Julia Garner and Benedict d Wang and Alden Ehrenreich. It's about a class of children that one night the whole class get out of their beds, walk outside and disappear. The trailer is creepy as fuck. I am not looking forward to this. I mean that in the best way possible. The trailer creeped me out. In Stephen King news, don't try and cancel Stephen King. In fact, stop canceling each other.

There are real fucking problems in the world. We don't need to be canceling a fucking stalwart standard bearer. The guy on top of the hill fucking urging us on anyway. Francis Lawrence, who made that fucking excellent Constantine and a whole bunch of Hunger Game movies that I couldn't get through, is here adapting the Stephen King novella The Long Walk, although technically it's a Richard Bachman novella. King's pen name there for a while. Have all the Bachman books been adapted, No,

and they are never going to adapt Rage. Here is a simple story, much like Bachman's other book, The Running Man. This is a game show of sorts. You volunteer for the Long Walk to win millions. The rule is you walk at an unbroken three miles an hour. If you fall short, you're given three warnings and then you're executed. It's kind of like speed mashed up with they shoot horses, don't they? In a dystopian future. Okay, let's jump back in time, shall we? To April of nineteen ninety two.

I remember a very sultry Friday night at the Cineplex odeon on Fairfax in Los Angeles, the same theater that a few months later, a friend of mine would get the print for Batman Returns for press screening a full week before that movie came out, so he was going to screen it that night, but he told too many fucking people, so by the time we got there at midnight, there was an entire block of hundreds of expected people

out onto the street. On a random Thursday in June, they've canceled and sent everyone home, and then we watched it a two am haha. But on this night, several months earlier, the theater is fucking packed, and because of the sudden heat outside, the ac hasn't had a chance to catch up. So it's this weird, humid, two cold atmosphere. And the first trailer is for Glengarry Glenn Ross, which is just a giant brass ball swinging back and forth in Alec Baldwin's speech, and then they reveal the brass

Balls prop. But then after all the coming soons and the pick up your trashes and the no talking admonishments.

Robert Almans film The Player Unspooled. That's Altman and screenwriter Michael Tolkien's poisoned love letter to the then contemporary Hollywood studio system that was packed to the fucking gills, with celebrities of every stripe and strata popping up to lampoon themselves in the entire twisted industry, anchored with a lead performance by Tim Robbins as studio head Griffin Mill, who accidentally kills a screenwriter that he believes has been blackmailing him,

and the frantic attempt to cover his tracks and still maintain tenuous grasp over the control of his company. It is a wide eyed, black hearted gaze into everything terrible and fantastic in the film industry. I was surprised we didn't see follow ups over the years, brief chick ins with Griffin Mill to see how he's doing. The Player was a novel, after all, how about a sequel, mister Tolkien? Oh wait, never mind, seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have picked up that particular ball. This is the studio.

currently airing on Apple Plus, and I think Rogan and Goldberg would be the first to cite the influence of the Player on their show, not just the setting and the cameos and frantic nature, but the jazzy, improvisational sounding score, the adherence to the longest takes possible and handheld takes it that and overall the underlying and deeply felt love

for Hollywood. Though in that regard, the studio kind of has it over the player, because while you sense the characters and the player are trapped in their situations, the characters in the studio are happy volunteers. You know, these days, when people talk with the preservation of and continued endurance of cinema, they're talking about people like Scorsese or Christopher Nolan. Even Tarantino was part of that with his adherence to

celluloid over digital. By the way, David Cronenberg came out swinging this week about the superiority of digital to film. You got to love when an elder sets you straight about the good old days. I once met Franklin Jella, the actor who played Dracula. He's fucking huge, by the way, and I told him I thought his Dracula was really scary. And he put his hand on my shoulder and he leaned him very close, and he intoned, you were very young,

which was true, and he's right. It wasn't a scary performance, but it's a great performance anyway. You can name all the current greats and all their self seriousness. The pt Anderson's the Damien Chaseell's that fucking Eggers guy. And you could say the future of cinema is secure, it's in decent hands. And I'd say maybe, who knows, But I know the future of Hollywood is secure. And it's not

because any of those fuckers. It's seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg leading the way, and they've been doing it for decades. They've managed through all the high and low ends of the dramatic spectrum, from gross out nonsense to absolute refinement. Certainly that's on display here in the studio, and they've managed the greatest trick ever. They've done so with genuine characters interacting in realistic ways. So yeah, they wrote a high school party movie that's really a story about two

childhood friends who are terrified of losing each other. In fact, friendship is a predominant theme in their work. Probably why Theirs is the best adaptation of the teenage mutant Ninja Turtles,

where they were, you know, actual teenagers. They've done a clutch of movies and TV show togethers, and dare I say, while everyone has been getting superhero fatigue from watching the same Titans, duke it out talking about DC versus Marvel, and sometimes Marvel versus Marvel whenever Sony needs to extend a copyright. Rogan and Goldberg have been like Dark Horse or Image Comics, just pumping out the most exciting comic book stuff ever. They produced and sometimes wrote Preacher, a

great adaptation of the Garth Ennis title. Then they pret The Boys, and if that's not the best parot of superheroes ever, well it is. That's the end of that sentence. And on the other end of the same fucking spectrum, they're producing the animated series of Robert Kirkman's Invincible. I know you're watching The Boys, but you gotta watch Invincible. It's fucking incredible. I really think these guys are the standard bearers for New Hollywood, because a new one is coming.

But if you want to watch the way old Hollywood is dealing with the transition, then The Studio is the show for you. Rogan plays Matt Remick, the newly anointed head of Continental Studios, pushing out former head Paddy Lee, played by streaming service Lucky charm Catherine O'Hara. This and the Last of Us so greedy, But then again, there's

not enough more O'Hara. Are you here. He's assisted, if you can say that, by Matt's friend and VP of production, Sal sapristein that's the name you're gonna really remember by the end of the series, played by Ike Barnholtz, as he tries to battle the encroaching tide of IP mania that is consumed the entertainment world. That IP the intellectual property, is king these days, and they deal with it right out of the gate, with Continental securing the rights to

make a kool Aid movie. How do you balance that commerce with art? Is it possible? Is anything art anymore? I suppose you can hire Martin Scorsese as they do here, and he can try to make a biography of Jim Jones and the Jonestown cult and call the whole thing kool aid. That goes down well kind of like kool aid. If I'm being honest, I kind of hated that beverage, except for the blue version that came out in the late eighties. Oh man, that was delicious. A picture of

blue drink in Castlevania. That's an evening. But that's just episode one. Rogan's Matt is a self described cinophile, which is a dangerous thing to be in the current climate. So when he allows a filmmaker to shoot on film with much grand standing and a real goes missing, it isn't just a fuck up that insurance will cover. It's one of a million potential pitfalls that can bring the whole studio down, which might have seemed hilarious back in

the day. But studios are falling left and right these days, which makes what would have been a trifle into an important statement, even a document of the final days of the studio system. I should also mention that the series

is very funny. This is a comedy, and they squeeze the juice wherever they can, from cringing desperate attempts to be thanked at award shows to an entire episode dedicated to a woner, a shot in film typically that goes on for an inordinate amount of time, like I don't know the opening of the player, and then they cleverly made the entire episode a woner itself. That episode also features Sarah Paully. I love Sarah Paully, just wanted to

put that out there. At the time of this recording, we only have eight of the ten episodes run available, but there hasn't been a misfire and it has been picked up for season two. If I have any criticism, it's about the cameos. It's kind of the same problem that they had in The Player. By the way, the actual head of the studio in the Studio is played by Brian Cranston. His character is named Griffin Mill, which

is Jim Robbins's character's name in the Player. Anyway, we accept Rogan and Barnholdts as distinct characters, and then we get a cavalcade of as themselves cameos Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard ice Cube, Adam Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Quinta Brunson, and on and on and on. So when David Crumbholt shows up as an agent or Rebecca Hall as a surgeon, I know this is a quibble, but it's really jarring,

and I also know there's no solution for it. But anyway, in the plus column, Continental has a backlot, so the series is filled to the brim with tons of walking around or golf carting around past the sites you always want to see but you never actually get to on a backlot. I'm talking about cowboys mingling with showgirls while camels are led past. In the background, all that dream factory goodness. What it's not dark enough? Aren't things dark enough these days? Guess not hit at hp.

pick is the dark twin of the studio. This premiered back in nineteen ninety nine on Fox, lasting one season. It's called Action. It was created by Chris Thompson, who'd written on Laverne and Shirley and Bosom Buddies before escaping the TV ghetto with Jumpin' Jack Flash and Back to the Beach and then back to the TV ghetto with Larry Sanders Show and The Naked Truth before producing Action.

That's the story of Peter Dragon, a Joel silver Like, a mega producer of big budget action films whose recent flick Slow Torture was one hundred and fifty million dollars bomb. The series follows Dragon as he tries to claw his way back to the top with the help of a former child star turned high priced call girl played by Ilianna Douglas. Of course it is oh and Peter Dragon is Jay Moore at his absolute best. I don't know how to describe what that best is, but it's on display. Actually,

you know what it is. He had this cocky swagger that seemed a bit unearned, but you still appreciated it for its exuberance. All of that works perfectly as Peter Dragon, that same kind of self importance that you're always wondering if they can actually back up, you know, the kind you see in well Joel Silver. By the way, Joel Silver, executive producer on the show, This is a bitter show. I dare say it's a hostile show, and I'm shocked

it was on network television at the time. It strained at conventions, but was hamstrung by them, and it probably should have been on HBO. You can't really build up any steam criticizing corporate bullshit in between commercials for soap. You dig a bitter irony. Considering HBO wanted the series, but Fox offered a higher budget and the potential to make the actual film being made in the series, So Peter Dragon spends the entirety of season one attempting to

get a movie made called Beverly Hill's Gun Club. At the end of season one, Fox would then air the actual movie, Beverly Hills gun Club. Who could resist that? In the end, Fox would air only eight episodes of the Sea before canceling it, which is a drag. It would have flourished over on home box office, But then maybe that's for the best, because it would have kept its story editor in place and we'd be all the

worse for it. Will Forte, one of the genuinely weirdest writer performers to ever come out of Saturday Night Live, was the story editor on Action and he wrote three episodes of very funny episodes. Also funny is how all three properties I've mentioned, The Player, the Studio, and now Action are all predicated on panic. These are frantic stories about people just trying to keep their heads above water, like we're all doing these days. I believe Action is on Prime if you want to check it out, it

might be on YouTube for free. I think it's a hell of a book. End of the Studio, both of those books, by the way, sitting on a bookshelf called the Player. Maybe you should just check out the Player. That's going to do it for us. Thank you for joining us once again. I've got to get out of here. I got to try and repair my e bikes back tire. Never dealt with a fucking there to bullshit anyway. God help me this Friday. Like I said, Hpver joins us

on Fusco Festa talk Babe Ruth. That's that's I'm that's gonna be good. It's gonna be something next week on Round Up maybe and er, I don't know, maybe something else. Here's a bit from Action.

biggest explosion the budget will allow. But most importantly, Senator, they want to walk into a theater and for ninety minutes, forget the fucking mess that you have left of this nation.