Scott Willis on Repo Man

kind of do more of these here and there. It would be nice if, at the end of this whole thing, if I had most of the departments and jobs represented in some way, shape or form, because it's always cool to hear about these things, and I'd love for you guys to hear about these kind of unsung jobs. And today is specially an unsung job because I had Scott Willis. He goes by Sparky Scott, Sparky Willis in here. Craig, my buddy Craig who crushed out the thing, hooked me

up with Sparky. He works in special effects. Uh. Sometimes he is a shop performan. Sometimes he is a special effects technician. Uh. It was cool to talk to him about that job. He does everything from uh building, he builds stuff everybody. He builds ramps for cars to jump, He builds roll cages inside of cars for when they have to flip um. He constructs things, and he and

his team construct things out of thin air. They invent things. Uh. And he makes us a point of saying this in the in the in the conversation we had about how the fact that you can't just run down to the to the store or the shop and buy the things that you need to do for most of these shows and movies because it's usually something that's never been done before quite like that. So they have to build the

stuff and it's really cool. It's a cool job, very unsung. Uh. And it was fun to get to talk to him about that as well as his movie Crush Repo Man cult classic from which I know as a favorite movie of a lot of people. I had never seen it, believe it or not. We talked about that, and we talked about the movie itself and his connection to it. And here we go with Scott Sparky Willis on Repo Man. That's a cool shirt. What is that? Oh? I see what it is? Is it japan It's not Japanese? Is it?

Is it Japanese? Back to the future. There's a place online. I can't remember that. I feel terrible. I can't remember the name of the store. But my lady friend and my best friend are big fans of this guy he makes. He's like Japanese mashup. Yeah. Sure things. I've also got one of the thing that's really good. Well for people that are listening at home. This is a yeah pull that just kind of right in front of your mouth. Um, it is a clock tower. Is Marty sliding down the

clock tower? But it also it's gonna be Doc right. Oh yeah, I guess that would be Doc. Sorry Marty never Tower Jesus Christ. But it has also got a very Japanese sort of Godzilla type movie poster. Yeah, it's like the Japanese imprint that's really hard to find, you know, it's the real rare edition. That's awesome. Yeah, I was. I've got a Repo Man shirt that's a like a Repo Man black flag mashup that I was tempted to wear this morning, but it kind of felt like wearing

the shirt of the band you're about to see. It's that like going to the concert and wearing the big shirt. I contemplated for a moment, even though it's it's a podcast when but now that would have been cool actually, So I feel like I've been researching like this is homework. I feel like I'm sitting for a test. Now, you'll be fine. And I have been researching too, because uh, well we'll get the repo. Man. I'm gonna say. I was talking. I was talking to Craig this morning. He

just assured me, you know, just be super nervous. The stakes have never been higher. It all hinges on this. Where are you from? Do you have a map? Uh? Well, it's a bit of a story. I was actually born in Vancouver, Canada, that is yeah, right. Um, we moved down to the States when I was real little though, so I grew up in California. So, uh, elementary, middle school, high school in California, all right, formative years exactly part

of California, mostly southern California. We lived in the Bay Area for a couple of years when we first moved down, but we moved to Venture County in House my folks are still at So that's where that's where I mostly grew up a right, And that's where you spent your formative movie years. Well no, actually, well I didn't really get into movies until later. I feel like, yeah, I wasn't super I'm gonna be talking more about it. I guess it was never like a movie kid so much

growing up. It kind of developed around the time I like went to college and all that sort of stuff. As I they were like early germs of it, but it didn't really really didn't become a thing until I was about twenty or so, like nineteen twenty. What was your jam muse Um, where are you into? I guess when I was a kid, I was really Uh. I played a lot of hockey. Canadian Canadian kid growing up in California in the Gretzky era, Like, I played a lot of hockey, and hockey was kind of a big

part of my identity. It was really into aviation when I was a kid. For a long time, I was gonna be a pilot um, and then that kind of took a bit of a bit of a sidetrack. Um. So I grew up in southern California, went to university in Arizona for two years, studied aerospace engineering. Decided very abruptly one day I didn't want to be an engineer for the rest of my life. Yeah. My brother was

an aerospace major at first and also got out of it. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff I really liked about it, and then there's a lot about the kind of culture and just the idea of like what what my day to day life would be. It wasn't. I don't think it was really what I wanted. So I left there kind of abruptly. Thankfully. I made that decision really late in semester, so I couldn't transfer anywhere, and I ended up the following summer moving to Boston on a bit

of a whim. I moved to Boston with like a duffle bag in twelve bucks to help teach high school march band. Wow, Yeah, so you musician or well I played? I was in marching Man when I was in like high school and stuff. I wouldn't. I haven't picked up an instrument since then? Would you play back? Then? Uh, clarinet and then saxophone a little bit later on in the jazz band. A really cool seventeen year old Yeah, no, dude, I was never I was never very good, but I

was very much into that. It's the thing I've been doing since I was like an elementary school. And you kind of your circle of friends and it's kind of, you know, it's a very social thing. Yeah, the end up as part of so I enjoyed that part of it. I was never really that great a musician. I loved kids, man, I was. I was not good enough. I played saxophone when I was like eleven for a year, but it was not good enough to play in band, but I was. I have a lot of my friends are band friends.

Actually cool that we're in high school band and jazz band. So that's why you have the Boston phone number. I saw you had a Boston exchange exactly. Yeah. So I I ended up moving to Boston on a bit of a whim h. Not really sure what I wanted to do. I had this vague idea that I wanted to work in the film business and make movies, but I was about as specific as it was. So moved to Boston, got a job working in an oil change place. Uh. Did that for two years, various little like auto shops,

and then I went back to school. Uh, with the idea of being a film major doing something with movies, but it wasn't really it was wasn't well defined yet. Yeah, but you were interested in the medium. Uh did you know people that did that? Nope, not at all interesting. So I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah, I mean a lot of people either like the familiary story you hear a little more often is when I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to like

be in this business. But you were, I guess into your twenties when you sort of gout or late teens or early twenties. Yeah, early twenties when I really started getting the film. I would say, what was it about about your current job? And uh, special effects? Like how did it? How did that all come about? Um, I kind of I don't want to say stumbled into it, but maybe stumbles the right word. So like I did, feel for is a film school and uh, I won't say the name of school because I I want to

be able to disparage them a little bit. Okay, the program I went through wasn't very well geared towards people actually getting a job doing that. It was very geared towards When I say art film, I mean like experimental single filmmaker, black and white film, no sound, no story, no care. Like it's very it's more kind of collage

as film than it is like narrative storytelling. Yeah, and you know, aside from that, I know that some film schools get UM criticized for not being as career not focused, but like, literally there should be classes on like how to get a job totally, Like if you want to work in this business, you need to teach people about sort of the business side of things and not I mean the creative has to be there obviously, but you should also take classes and like how to get jobs

and what career paths are. No. Absolutely, And I actually I butted heads a little bit with the administration when I was there because I had one teacher who had actually worked as a narrative filmmaker, had made an actual studio film, and was very adamant about teaching people who wanted to learn, like this is the process, is what the different departments are, these are what the roles are. But he was very much the outsider in that in

that world. So put a petition together and got everybody in the film department to sign it saying that like, we want classes to teach film business, we want classes that teach us production skills, we want all these things. Cause it's a little bit of a got a couple of classes out of the school because of it, UM, But we were very much like butting heads with them the entire time. Uh. I was really adamant that when I got out of school, I needed to get a

job doing something in the movie world. If I got out of school and went back to working in an auto shop, then it was just four years of waste. And there were so many people that I went to school with who when they got done, their part time job became their full time job, you know, and it's like maybe they would make video art on weekends or something, but yeah, and that's not what I wanted to do. I was really adamant that, like, I need to get a job doing this, and you'd be able to pay

the bills doing this. Um, So got out of school, got on set as a p A in Boston, did uh did a couple of little commercials which are kind of you know, at the time, we're super exciting to get to work on a commercial, having never four years of film school, never being on a proper step before, right, and it seems like such a there's like a magic and an aura to it. And then once you actually step through that boundary and realize like the nuts and

bolts of like how doable it is. Yeah, um, it breaks through a lot of that mystique real quick, and you realize it's it's a job, and there's you've got different roles and tasks and it's just just a job like any other job. Just gotta get done. Yeah, totally, man. I remember sort of having that same experience when I first started working on commercials and paing and be like, oh, this is how it's done, and most of the jobs are kind of the same. Yeah, it's still totally one

great job. Oh no, I love it. So I'm not I'm not bagging on it, but I think the mystique have your onto something there. Yeah. Um, And I guess the other really important thing that happened to me is the summer between my junior and senior year. A bunch of kids who are a year ahead of me, who are also big fans of this one teacher put together and try to make a feature film during the summer, and so I helped them the work. I think I worked as an assistant camera. I was like the number

two camera guy. I wanted to be a camera operator. Camera cinematography was kind of my cam from the last couple of years of school, and so I did that for a couple of weekends in the summer, and that was a big thing that broke through the idea that this is very doable. And I think prior to that, I was contemplating going to grad school because I wasn't really sure if I had the skill set yet to

work on set. You know, It's like I've been looking back, right, you know, you've been going to school since you were a kid. You know how to go to school. This is a whole foreign world and I'm not sure if I'm ready for it. But then just getting that little experience. And the funny thing is the film never got released or anything because we've shot at all digitally. And then that summer the hard drives crashed and they lost everything and they try to send it to like recovery started,

recovery labs and whatever and just which is super expensive. Yeah, and it was a point total shoestring budget. It was supposed to be proper like, full on, full on future film. Um, totally lost. Was it any good? You think? At the time it seemed it right something. I mean, the stuff we shot on set seemed to be pretty cool. Yeah, I struggly remember exactly what it's about. It this guy having a mental breakdown with his family, real, real fun stuff.

Yeah that seems film school, Yeah it was. It was ambitious though, you know, for what it was and for what we were doing, but that helped just to get your just to get in that world and realize like, this is totally doable, and you look around you see the other people doing this thing, like I can. I can at least figure my way through this. This is

no longer this huge obstacle. I just gotta do it. Yeah, especially coming up through the world of digital filmmaking, it is really democratized it and open down to so many people to be able to do things. You can shoot a movie with your iPhone now it's wild, which is great I think ultimately, No, I totally agree. Yeah, um so I did that. Graduated from school, is very adamant, started working as a p A. And the big thing that happened is I ended up on this non union

Discovery Channel show in Boston called Time Warp. It's kind of like a MythBuster ease science e show, our whole gag because he had these high speed cameras like phantoms when phantoms are brand new. Totally remember that. Okay, Yeah, the SloMo Super SloMo when it was right at cutting edge and that you can do anything at that speed and looks amazing like popcorn Colonel's going off glass breaking and we were that it looked amazing. Yeah, it was a great. Uh, it was a great show to work on.

But it was also a terrible show to work on. Uh. They had no art department, zero zero art department. So what they did is they got a studio space in Boston, like an old warehouse, built it out as a sound stage, dropped like three corps of the budget in the lighting grid, and thought, Okay, we're just gonna bring people in the space. They're gonna do their thing, and that's it. We don't need an art department. We don't need anybody on hand

to build anything whatsoever. And that that test failed, like the very first day when the directors like, I want a table this size over here. There's nobody to build a table. There's nobody to do Yeah, and uh, they had like the first a d was also the production coordinator was also getting props was also it was one of those kind of things. Has So I got on as a as a p A and you know, I was getting dunkin Donuts and taking the tapes of FedEx the end the night and just kind of running around

doing whatever and they needed to do. And they quickly ranted these obstacles were they wanted to set up really simple things and had nobody to do it. So I kind of raised my hand and jumped in. It was like, well, I've been I've been mechanical since I was a kid. I went to engineering school. Not that it really matters, but like, I can problem solve, I can figure out

how to make a thing work. So I started doing that stuff a little by little, and Uh, the really big thing that happened is that there was a tremendous turnover on the show. Uh. People are getting fired left and right, quitting left and right. Everybody was changing out, and I was I was low enough down on the

total pole that just yeah, exactly. I was like one of myself at the end of season two, myself and one of the camera guys the only crew members still around from when I started, apart from the on the on camera but the people. Yeah. Um, But so we got a new director in and uh he's kind of he's like the doctor Emmett Brown to my Marty McFly. He's like I described as like a mad scientist type. Uh. And he's since become a really close friend, and he's he's been a filmmaker since he was a little kid.

He's been he's a chemist, he's a cinematographer, he's a film guy. He is very much about the process. He's coming. He's from that like older world of like I'm gonna make my own camera rigs. I'm gonna build the things I need to build to get the shot kind of guy. And he had this idea for making these movable lighting rigs because we're losing our entire day moving lights around. It takes so much light for like ten thousand frames

a second. It's final because it's all exponential and it's not you got lighting guys who are used to working narrative film where you use like one or two lights, and this like we need an eight K like twelve inches away from the subject kind of thing. So he had this idea to put two lights on a rolling stand.

And he thought, with these two rolling things and a little hand crank, one person can operate either of them, we can light light our whole day like that, and we can start knocking the stuff out because we're just dying every day. The producers hated him and said, absolutely not, it won't work. We're never gonna do it. So, being him, he just ordered the steel and went to home depot and bought a welder off the shelf and yeah, I just started building it, like gotta pop up tent set

up outside and just started welding ship. Oh can I swear in this? I don't sure? Okay, sorry? Great? Um. I remember we came back from set one day because this kind of thing that they got multiple directors trading off episodes or whatever. Come back from set. We're unloading the box truck and John's out there welding under a pop up tent, which I'd never done before. I always

wanted to learn. So I finished my day of work and I go over to him and ask him what he's doing, and uh, he shows me what he's doing. He's like, okay, so, like, you put those welding mask on and watch what I'm doing. And he says, uh, you know, if you do it right, it's kind of like a big hot glue gun. So he says, watch me. So I watched him and then he has me do it. He says, okay, you're better than I am, so you're gonna do all the welding out. And from that day forward,

I did all the welding on that show. I had no experience whatsoever. Every day was just trial by fire, like just being thrown in the deep end. And between the two we built these lighting rigs and then they worked. They worked great, and the producers hated us for it. And there were like these competing groups within the production between like the people who were kind of on the side of like myself and John the director, and the people who were on the producer's side. It was wild.

So you guys were smart people accomplishing a task, and the other side was not. Yeah, and uh it was only because of the chaos of that show that I had a chance to do any of this. On any real real I know, right on any real production, no p A would ever be allowed to pick up a welder, let alone be taught by the director how to weld um. But in the kind of wild west of that show, it gave me an opportunity. And uh so I started went through two seasons of that show. By the end

of it, that's all I did. But I think by the end of the first season, all I was doing was fabrication, and like I said, I had a mechanical background but didn't have specific experience. Did you get a pay bump or did they still pay you as a p A. They gave me a little bit of a pay bump one season two, which I thought was huge and in retrospect, oh yeah, in retrospect it was what I mean, it was what it is. It was to

get you know, to get the experience. Um. And so in the course of that show, I started building stuff and building and the more things I built, more things that they found for me to build and stuff like that, and like pretty much all the gags that you see in that show, I had some hand in. I was involved in like every day of that project and it was a lot of fun. We got to a lot of a lot of great stuff and the full time. In the back of my head, I'm still thinking that

I want to be a cinematographer. I'm still thinking about the camera world, um, and I'm feeling myself kind of being pulled away from that direction. And the most important thing that happened on that show is we had to do us. We were doing a breakdown of like stunt action. We had like stunt guys going into glass, and so we brought in had to bring an actual pyrotechnician to to pop the glass breakers for the temperate glass to go. And so I got to meet an actual effects guy.

And that was a big moment for me. I think prior to that because I didn't actually know how productions worked at all, and I didn't know what had to be built on any given show. I didn't know there was an effects department. I didn't know there was an entire world of people still building physical objects and gags and mechanical elements. And so meeting him, and what's funny is that, like I still work. All these people that I'm that are in the story are still like a

part of my life. I still talked to on the Red still work for I was just the pyrotechnician guy. I just did a show up in New England with him. That's like a couple of weeks ago. Um, So I met him, and I met another couple of guys like oh my god, like this is this can exist outside of this one show. But that's for people listening. That's the secret or relationships, and you know, that's how you navigate through. I mean that's how you navigate any job

to a certain degree. But in the film and street, it's really about the relationships that people you meet. You being a p a who can jump in there with a skill set, and there is a hierarchy. But there are also productions where they're like, I don't care what it says on the call sheet. If you can help

me and you can do this, then do it. Yeah. Yeah, So you start to work in that area special effects from visual effects, special effects, and then once uh, once I do that show, and then once I meet those other guys and realize that this is a thing that exists outside the orbit of this one little weird TV show, then like that was it. This is this is all I wanna do day and day out. Um, so what is your most of your work now? Like, what's what's

your current job title? Um? Special effects technician. Okay, sometimes I'm a forming on a show. Depending on how big of a show it is and what kind of stuff are you doing? Um, we do. We do a lot of stuff. It's hard to kind of describe because it's sort of it's effects. It's kind of a catch all. We do, Um, all the atmospheric effects they see on production, right, so wind rains, smoke, snow, all that kind of jazz that has seen how that works behind the scenes. It's

always super cool. We also do We do a lot of metal fabrication. We do a lot of car work. We do like when stunt guys are crashing cars, stunt guys are the ones driving them. Uh. Picture Car Department make sure that the cars start and run the way they're supposed to. But anything above and beyond that becomes an effects responsibility, like putting role cages in the car. If the cars have to flip over building, the ramps the car is gonna hit, or the building the mechanism

that goes in the car to flip it over. Um, that's all effects work. Um. Like I said, we do a lot a lot of steel fabrication, a lot of problem solving, a lot of a lot of big mechanical things that don't necessarily like you don't watch the movie and realize like, wow, they must have been on a on a hydraulic platform that was being actuated against the

screen screen. Yeah, Which is an interesting part about your job is because sometimes when you're doing it best, you're the least noticed absolutely, you know, because it wants it has to appear organic and real, and you can't see the I mean, growing up watching movies in the seventies and eighties, you've seen some of this stub done poorly, you know, like even the car ramp where it's just like it can't be so clear that it's a car ramp sometimes right, and this is the a couple of

cardboard boxes stacked in a straight line right in front of it or whatever. Yeah. Um so in some ways it's sort of a unsung uh job. I think on the set it's a it's a little bit of a dark art, yeah, I think. And even the people, even the people that we work with on production don't really they don't. They only see the part that comes to set.

They see that like last five percent. And if you if you do your job well, you show up the set with a gag whatever it is, you set it up, you press the button, it does its thing, You clean it all up and you go home. Right. Do you get that thing though? Where the production is like, oh my god, they get the invoice and they're like they spent twelve days. Oh it's not only saw them on one day and all they did, was do this one

thing right exactly. Uh, it happens all the time. And unless unless you actually come to the shop and see, like the testing that has to go into all the prep work all the time, all the gags you have to build that don't work right, you have to then scrap and start over. You if if we're doing everything right, you only see you know that that tip of the iceberg or whatever analogy you want to use, You only

see that little bit of it. And it's really hard unless you actually come to watch the other part happen to understand like what's going on, yeah, and how much goes into it. Yeah. And for folks listening, when you say the word gag, which you've said a bunch of times, I know what that means. But as far as a gag isn't a practical joke that you're playing on set, a gag in the film business is I mean it could be a stunt could Yeah, sure, um usually would call that a stunt. But what would you say a

gag is? Um if i'd give like a definitely just an event, yeah, a thing, a note that happens in the script. Yeah, there's not you know, a chandelier falling from the ceiling, right, the chandelier gag. Right, So that would be and that's kind of the terminology that we use internal. We refer to them all as gags, which is a and it could be it could be something as simple as that, or it could be a it could be an extended sequence of a car flipping over

thing and going into into a bus. Right, that would be the car bus gag, the car bus gag. The classic what is some um, like, what's one of the coolest things you've done? I thought about that a lot. I think I'm sure that's a I mean, such a obvious question. But do you remember the movie Flight? Uh? Yeah, Washington, Yeah, that was here right, yeah. Yeah. We shot most of that over at UM screen gems. I thought that was

pretty good movie. It was. It turned out great. Um the early part of the movie when the airplane rolls over man, that was amazing. We built a giant steel gimbal to put the cockpit and section of the airplane in that rolled around and literally circle. That's probably it's probably the coolest thing I've had a chance to be a part of. How long did it take to do

something like that? For instance, we did that in an amazing I think we built we built that rotisserie which is the gimble flipping over, and we built this massive air bag platform for the aircraft to sit on. I think we built it all in like four or six weeks with a really small crew. We only had about four,

say four or five effects guys working on that. It's such a cool job because any you know, it's a p a I would I would get to peek inside these worlds sometimes, whether it was uh running an errand

over to the shop or whatever. And I always love these sort of um off to the side, like you were saying, departments where you're busting your ass offsite in some warehouse for weeks and weeks and weeks to show up on set and do something that, uh, you know, it could be a gag that you shoot in an hour, or it could be imagined something like that's pretty complicated that you shoot over the course of days or whatever. Yeah,

they're playing Gimble. We used that for a couple of days because we and we put we put the cockpit in and got sections with the principal actors, and then we put sections of the airplane in there and got you know, had forty stunt people in there and slipped them upside down and all sorts of crazy things. It's just it's a testament and one of the coolest things about the film industry to me, and the magic. I know it sounds corny, but the magic of filmmaking is

all these people. Uh and to the uninitiated who have never been around sets and don't know anything about it, they might look at the list of credits and just been like, especially like these Marvel movies and like, are you kidding me? Like how many people need to work on a movie? But everyone's got their their job right from tiny things two huge things And if you guys, I mean you're off figuring out the literal nuts and bolts on how to accomplish something. That's just one of

the coolest things to me. And with like that airplane Gimbll for instance, Um, the guy who was the lead sort of engineering that was an effects guy named Andy Miller who's retired, actually just saw any the other week. Um, it's funny. I still like keep in touch with these people. That's like coming in and out of my life and its family in a lot of ways. And Andy and he had built a lot of gimbals over his career.

He built a lot of the gimbals on Titanic. Make that that whole thing happened, um, But he had never built this exact gimble before. So like every time we build something, it's a prototype. Everything is that you're drawing off your previous experiences. But there's no like, we didn't go to the gimbal store again. We need the seven thirty seven half part three turn. I'll take the Titanic Junior. Yeah, yeah,

I just go ahead and have it delivered overnight. It So every everything thing exactly and everything is a prototype and so there's always that that learning curve involved in anything that you build. And like I said, sometimes you're more familiar with that. Sometimes you have a lot of experience building these things, and sometimes it's sometimes you gotta build it three or four times before you get it right right because ultimately your safety is a big part

of what you do too. It's huge, Yeah, it's huge, and it's really easy to forget how dangerous this stuff is until it gets away from you, right. Um. And you like even on the airplane gimble, we because we think we we ran it for I want to say three days on set, and we ran for three days without issue. Like they never waited on us. We didn't have a problem. We never had to shut our stuff down. It never didn't work when I was supposed to. And we start off day one and we have a big

safety meeting. We remind everybody like this is gonna be our protocol for starting and stopping. Nobody else goes near it until we give the all clear we've got any of these certain steps are gonna follow. And for the

first like day, people were pretty good about it. And then by the third day, while the thing is still moving and come to a stop like you got grip and electric trying to come in to move a flag or something, give it three seconds because I know it moves really slow, so it looks really safe, but it's a lot of momentum, it's a lot of energy, and it if it catches you, it's not gonna hick up.

It's just gonna yeah, yeah, bad. Yeah. I mean again, for the benefit of listeners, it's uh for any kind of gag or stunt or even having a prop guns on set, there is always a safety meeting and that involves everyone. They have to tell everybody like the protocol for everything. And it's remarkable that. I mean, you've seen what goes down on film sets. It's pretty remarkable how few tragic you know, deaths have occurred on film sets.

It's always big news. It's always very tragic and sad, but it's it's a testament to how safe of an industry it is. Yeah, someone doesn't die on like every movie. No, it's wild and a lot of the things that we do are we're playing with a lot of a lot of big energy, a lot of forces, a lot of these like hydraulic and pneumatic systems that we're using for like tearing a wall down and flipping a car or these crash things. If they get away from you, Uh yeah,

it can it can go bad real quick. Yeah. Um. Actually, one of the guys who kind of mentored me on my first show got uh ily, he got crippled on an accident on Green Lantern And it wasn't even on it wasn't on production. It was a test at the effect shop and it was never hear about that in the news. No, it was it was a gag raa box truck. I think it's like superheroes are having a fight or something of them slams one of them into this box stuck in this box truck from stationary like

does like a barrel world. So they were testing it at the effect shop. A bunch of things went. With any disaster story, it's never like one big thing that goes wrong. It's always a series of small things that compound.

This was a day where a bunch of little things went wrong and people were not in the right place, and you know, all these little things kind of compounded, and on one of the tests, the rear axle of this thing breaks loose, flies off eight degrees from its line of travel, and hits my buddy right in the mid section. The fact that he even survived as remarkable. And yeah, and so that's like, that's a that's a daily reminder for me when I'm when I'm at work

that like, I remember what happened to Johnny. You know, I wasn't there for it, thankfully, And I'm really glad I wasn't, because knowing me, I would have been standing right next to him. Well, you just it's it's a job where you have to be so on point. You can't ever shortcut anything or be lazy or forget all the protocols, right, because this big, heavy, dangerous stuff. Yeah. So, as one of my buddies like to say, it's like we've got catastrophically hanging over our shoulder keeping an eye

on us. Oh geez, what did you just shoot? What's like the most recent thing you did? The New England thing? I just did two shows up in New England. I went and helped out on Season to a Castle Rock just finished up and I think it is released now. And then, um, this AMC show called nos Ferat. Yeah, it's also season two. Fun stuff. Pardon fun stuff you were doing? Oh yeah, I really enjoyed working on it. Yeah, it was a really good time. So it's a good crew.

I like being in New England whenever I can. Um, not huge, not huge shows by any stretch as far as effects work goes, but there was enough stuff to keep us busy and enough kind of interesting, challenging stuff. What what makes for a good job for you, aside from just a supportive production. Um, like being challenged and having to figure out the the impossible. Yeah, exactly. I think getting to build stuff for the first time, getting you know, to uh to design and fabricate things and

do stuff that maybe we haven't done before. Um, and just that that problem is solving and that challenge is what really kind of it's what drew me to this discipline, and I think what keeps me in it is the challenge of it. That's awesome. Um, the atmospheric stuff I can kind of take or leave. I don't really like running a smoke smoke machine. Um, I really don't like

doing snow dressing. Snow dressing is so tedious. Oh man, did a you know they shoot so many of those stupid Christmas car commercials in l A of all places, and there's this one I think it was it might have been Warner Brothers. I think it's where they shut Desperate housewise, but there's a sort of a cul de sac that they use for a lot of ship And um, I feel like I was always shooting like Lexus Christmas commercials and all that fake snow, which is, as you know,

just a nightmare everything. And for these commercials it never looks good movies it does, and TV shows it can think you have to look more authentic, but like those Christmas car commercials never look it never looks like it's snowing. Yeah. Never. Um so all that stuff was. I mean, I'll do whatever we need to do to get the job done. For me, getting to getting the design and build stuff is really that's really what I enjoy doing the most.

And over the last I've been doing this about ten years now, so I feel like more and more of my day to day is focused on that kind of stuff, which is great. Yeah, and stuff as you progress in your career, you can um hopefully like steer yourself more towards that stuff. Yeah, And that's kind of the direction I'm pushing towards. Like I don't I don't think I ever want to be a coordinator, the head of the

effects department. I'm sure it's more money. It's more you get your name at the top of everything or whatever. But a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of paperwork. You've got to be the person to go to the meetings, you gotta talk to producers, you gotta deal with the budget. You want to build it, You've got to manage people. It's a whole different job, you know, And I just want to build it. Yeah, it totally that's what I

really enjoy doing. I used to love on set, seeing the satisfaction that goes largely unnoticed after a good, well done kind of seamless gag, because I would always see you guys, there are three or four of you that would pull it off, and it's a very small group of people that feel very proud of each other, absolutely, and I think a lot of times the rest of their crew was just like, yeah, these the weird tattoo guys showed up every every like once a week, and

no one knows their names, and and uh, why did it take him this long to build this thing? I remember my and I feel sorry for the kid. My very first job, the first movie I was working on, which is The Town Sean the ben Affleck talking off Fenway Park. It was a great movie. H that was a huge show for us. Effect he directed that too, right he did? Uh yeah, and he was great. Yeah as a director, I really I really liked working on

his set. I thought you could tell he was under a lot of stress between starring in it, being one of the writers directing it. He had a lot of a lot of things, pulling a lot of direction totally, but he was always very he was He was never agree on set, you know what I mean, Like you never took it out on anybody. I'm sure you've worked with those directors to yeah. Um. But so we're on set,

it's been like it's been a really busy show. We had we had to put cages role cages in like thirty or forty Crown Vix or something because the cars crashing all over that. And we have been working really long days, really long weeks in the shop. We were doing like six day weeks. We at a certain point of the show, we moved like fifteen hour days, six days a weeks just to catch up on all of

the fabrication work we had to do. And then we would we would take chunks of things and go to set for a day shoot those gags, and then everybody treat back to the shop and keep plugging away. And a month set One day and one of the p a s turns to me, he's like, oh, it must be really great to work in effects because you guys only have to work like one or two days a week.

And I looked to him, it just you know, and I've got that like that, you know, I'm tired, like I've put in like ninety hours in the last six days. Just you're like, yeah, it's great. Yeah, all this stuff that you see, like we built all of this from scratch, like we order steal and put it together. There's no did you explain all that or did you say, yeah, it's great to work one or two? You're right. I think I said something gruff to him. I can't remember.

I'm gonna go back and sleep again. Yeah. But and you know that's kind of the if you only exist on set and you just view it through that lens, that's all you know, that's all you see. You just like you said, these weird guys chauffeur a day and doing some stuff, and why they've been on pay roll this whole time, Well they only want dude. I always I always knew what was going on. Well that is super cool, man. I know that listeners love to hear from different crew members. I was glad to get you

in here. Um, I've had writers, directors Craig and UH props and set deck and his wife Karen from wardrobe. So I need to get like a I don't know, I need to get locations in here, maybe a music supervisor there. You go, just keep expanding this this UH film crew thing. Yeah, so repo man, Oh yeah, you're cult classic. It was a cult classic about a month after it was released. It was one of those rare movies that somehow existed kind of only in that world.

From the beginning, it seems like, uh, and here's my dirty little secret. I had never seen this movie, no kidding. Oh wow until last night. Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, I felt like I had seen it, but I was like, wait a minute, I've really never seen Repo Man. It's so in the public consciousness. And I worked at the cool video store and Athens and like it was everyone's favorite movie, and I was like a Repo Man, But I never fucking saw Repo Man. And I'm gonna admit

it right here. Oh that's amazing. So I got to have my my debut experience last night with it. What did you think? I loved it? I mean, it's um. I love movies from the early eighties that didn't have a lot of money. I love early eighties movies period, but there's there's a certain thing to early eighties films that were low budget. Sure, it's just there's a kind of weird magic to those. For me. Um written directed by Alex Cox, his debut feature film. He has had

an interesting career. I don't know how much him uh he. I mean he came out of the gate with With This, then Sid and Nancy, and then straight to Hell, which is a kind of a Gangbusters way to start out your career. Maybe not huge box office films, but all three regarded as sort of classic cult classics. And then

he kind of, I don't know, not went away. But I looked at his filmography last night and read some interviews with him, and I think just a lack of support and funding and it just never kind of went the way that we all thought it might for him. Yeah, totally. Is that a fair statement, I think so. I'm sure that there's a lot of projects that he had in mind that he never got to do. Yeah, and there's maybe people out there being like, oh no, dude, you should see like the movie he did three years ago.

It was amazing. I don't know, I have Yeah, it's definitely not on my radar. Yeah, it's not on my radar. He's a very interesting guy. I watched a lot of the interviews, and I felt like I was studying for a test for this, So I watched I watched the movie like half a dozen times, I've got the Criterion collection. I watched like all the special features. That's because of the cover of that. I got it. I brought it just so I could show you. I've seen that poster. Um.

It is not the movie poster. It is the I don't know who did that, but it's the skull with the overlay, the skull with the overlay of the um. How the movie opens in the title sequence with that sort of fluorescent green map that is just looks fucking badass on the screen. And then like the inside of the the inside of the sleeve or all these like

a show flyers with references to the movie. They're so well done, so they look like punk band they're all and you start reading them and they're all just inside references that I mean one of the bands called Auto Parts. Um, they're so well done. Whoever did the artwork on this is deserves a gypsy dildo. Very nice. No, that's fantastic. Um. And I did a lot of research on it too. Uh so, I'm sure you know most of the stuff that we'll talk about, as far as trivia and stuff

like that. They wanted him to cast Mick Jagger. I heard something about that. Yeah, that did that would have been And I think he wanted Dennis Hopper And this is for the Bud character Harry Dean Stanton Um. But Harry Dean is just such a treasure, he really is. And it's funny that this in Paris, Texas for the same year. And I think that it sounds as if I think Paris, Texas was shot after this. I think so. Um. But both, Yeah, both Harry Dean and Robbie Mule and

the cinematographer go straight from this to Paris, Texas. Oh did he shoot that too? Yeah? Yeah, And you know, for a low budget um. And this is still a studio movie, but the weirdest studio movie maybe of all time. But for a low budget film, there are some really beautiful shots in it. Absolutely. Cinematography is gorgeous. Yeah, it

really is. Um. Like a few things that come to mind are the scene with uh Tracy Walter's character I can't ever, I can't remember his name, the sort of wise sage, yeah Miller, when he's when they're burning in the in the big trash can. That's such a beautiful scene, it is. And the dialogue in that scene is great too. Yeah, play shrimp his Yeah, it's a very like kind of classic monologue. And he's such a classic character actor period, Like just put him in anything and he's still around. Yeah.

Some of the so many of the shots are so gorgeous in the film, and I think that's one of the things that weirdly makes it stand out from just being a low budget Yeah, whatever are these little these little kind of gems, Like the cinematography is so good. Harry Dean Stanton's this, I mean, I think you put this up there with Paris Texas is like the two movies that really define him as an actor totally, because everything else that he does, he's kind of a big

character where he's got a really small part. Both these two films, he is sort of leading roles, leading role and really really kind of grabs hold of it. I haven't seen Paris Texas and so long. I need to dig back into that one. I think the cinematography is better than the storytelling in Paris Texas, but I remember liking it. It was sort of one of those early when I was first starting to get into independent films and stuff in college, one of the early like movies

that I watched. Yeah, I want to say, like Kirk o'bain Listened is one of his favorite movies, so gave it a certain a certain bump with a certain demographic, right, Um, And I think someone else was going to play leaving of the punk band fear. I heard that. I think Alex Cox, Because clearly Alex Cox was um familiar with the punk scene. And I think that's why so much of this feels authentic, right, Uh, it felt kind of real. It didn't feel like some Hollywood version of the punk scene. Yeah.

I mean we should probably just dive right into that, like why this movie, Like when you ask punk kids like to list like your favorite punk movie, this always up to the surface, and at first glance, it's not. The story is not really a punk story. It wasn't like Alex wasn't setting out to me a movie about punks, agreed he and if you listen to interviews with him, he was actually trying to make a very different movie.

Then I think there's a disconnect between the movie he thought he was making, the movie that got made, in the movie that he thinks he made. All three of those are very different points in space. And I think because the way that the punk stuff is is shown and the way that, well, I could take a step back. So what's the guy? What's the actor? Dick Rude, the actor who plays Duke, his best friend, right, who was

originally supposed to be play Auto. I guess way why because this movie went through a bunch of different incarnations. Originally it was gonna be a student film and then yeah, so I went through all these different He pitched as a comic book too, yes, or made a comicieve, yeah, I believe there's like a three or four page comic. I could read it, but like as part of the

trying to get the movie made process. So I guess dick Rude had written this other screenplay or maybe a short or something that got incorporated into the repo Man script, and I'd be curious to know which parts or because Dickery doesn't have a writing credit on this. He gets a writing credit on Sitting Nancy and some other stuff, but he credit collaborated with Alex Cox quite a bit

through his career. Yeah, Um, so I think because they weren't trying to make a movie about punks, it wasn't like it wasn't just gluing mohawks onto actors and throwing them out there. It was almost by accident. It was just writing about what they knew and what the experience that I think resonates so well with people. You know that it doesn't it doesn't feel like you're going to

a show for the sake of having a show seen. Um, you know the scene where they're just hanging out in the parking lot listening to the circle jerks and dancing around, right, dude, that was one of my favorite parts of the movie because it just it. It showed a side of l A that was, um, not even like a criminal underbelly, just sort of I mean, you've spent time in l A as um l A is. You know, there's Beverly Hills, and there's the Hollywood Hills, and there's the glitz and

the glamour. But there's also the reservoir and the l A River and the back alleys and the side lots and the valley And like Paul Thomas Anderson has always done a good job I think of showing like the valley side of l A, the sort of dusty hut industrial Los Angeles, but that's a that's a lot of l A. And they really captured it here. They really did and it's a very l A film, Like it feels so much like like Los Angeles is almost a

character in the movie. It's so strong, but in a way that other movies where l A was a character, because people will say that about like, well l A story was, It's like l A is just a character. It is. But this is an l A that you don't get to see a lot because it's kind of dirty and dirty and yeah, rough and like yeah, all sorts of dumb shifts happening. Yeah, but there. I mean l A is full of green grass and palm trees and pretty birds of paradise plants, but it's also a

parking lot in waste land and other parts. Yeah. No, definitely. Um So just starting the movie off the energy um with that opening credit sequence in the music, and it was such a big part of this movie and a big part of why it got released. I think like they released it and it didn't do anything, and then the soundtrack became a big hit, so they brought it

back to the theaters. Yeah, that's what I had read, and I think they got the movie got caught in some like power struggle at Universal between people leaving and people coming in the Door, the Universal and like not want to be part of like the past person's projects. Yeah, I guess the theatrical release was really limited and kind of lackluster. And then the soundtrack is really what gave it traction. Yeah, and it's a while. I mean, it's

incredible soundtrack, is it really? And it captures that kind of moment in the the l A punk scene so well and I think, like to this day, it's a soundtrack that I haven't listened to. Yeah, it's great. And Iggy Pop did the score, uh, and I think was given kind of carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to do. Yeah, And there's a great story about Iggy Pop being like in l A in the early eight and being broke and not being not knowing how he's

gonna make rent next month. Yeah, this was sort of post stages and Alex Cox kind of showing up as this crazy, wild eyed British guy wanting him to write this song. And yeah, Iggy kind of tells a story that he kind of saved him, you know that, like he didn't he really didn't know how he's gonna make rent the next month, and then his thing just kind of like falls on his lap. Yeah. And Alex Cox, Um, I did the math. He was, I guess making this

in his late twenties. He was thirty when it was released, so he was making it when he was like probably, which is you know, that's young to me. Suicidal tendencies Circle Jerks. Circle Jerks very famously have a cameo. That's the kind of lounge act. It's so good and one of the this movie is full of so many little subtle jokes that they don't they just kind of drop in.

Like when they go to the lounge scene and you know, Circle Jerks are on stage playing whatever dumb lounge song that is, and it cuts to otto, he is like, I can't believe I used to like these guys. I know. That's great. It's yeah, it's such a little it's such a great moment. Uh. And it's such payoff if you actually pay attention to what's going on that it's really

easy just kind of breeze by and not notice. Yeah, totally. Um. And and I think it's a movie of the time, like it's a it's it's a it's a statement in a lot of ways. And we'll talk about the various kind of social statements he's making. But it's very subversive.

It was Reagan's America and this movie, I think, and it wasn't super obvious about like politics, but you know the subtle things like this burnout pothead parents giving all their money to a televangelist, and there are all these sort of little subversive elements sort of flicking the finger at Reagan's America. Yeah, and they make references to revolutions

in Latin America. Yeah, I guess there was. Originally there was going to be a There are a lot of different endings of the movie, but one of the endings involved Auto going to Salvador and becoming a revolutionary, which I think is why the Rodriguez brothers were also running guns,

which they kind of reference but then never talk about again. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like there are a lot of storylines at one time, we're going off other places that never got completed, so we just have a little weird bits and pieces of him and left in the movie. No, but it kind of works for the film somehow, Like there's not a ton of um, traditional character development or backstory, like the way, um, the way you just jump into it. Yeah, the way the Auto even meets his girlfriend if I

guess you want to call her that? Uh, I mean he says my girl a couple of times. You know, he's driving down the street and he's like, hey, baby, you want to ride knocks over some trash cans. She gets in the car and then you know they have that fast motion love making. That seat is so goofy,

but it all kind of works. There's a a punk rock feeling to the movie that I don't think he was even setting out to say, like I'm gonna make a practical and I think that's what's so earnest about it is that it's not trying to be that thing. It's just becomes that thing because that's kind of who he is and that people he's around. It. It It feels so organic in a way that so many other movies

try and all and become a bit embarrassing. Yeah, there's a there's a magic to this movie that's hard to define, right. I think that's why I resonates so well. I think you're right, um here, I'm gonna There's a couple of quotes here from a couple of write ups. Roger Ebert, in to his credit, said, I saw repo man near the end of a busy stretch on the movie beat, three days during which I saw more relentlessly bad movies

than during any comparable period in memory. Most of those bad movies were so cynically constructed out of the formula, out of formula ideas and commercial ingredients, that watching them was an ordeal. Repo Man comes out of left field, has no big stars, didn't cost much, takes chances, dares to be unconventional. It's funny and works. There's a lesson here, and then this guy Todd Gilt gil Christ gil Christ,

this was a recent thing. Like if you type in repo Man revisited, there's a lot of articles over the last few years as it had. I think it's thirtieth anniversary where people have gone to sort of uh dopeeck in. But he said, Repo Man feels like the platonic idea of a cult film inspired by punk culture William Burrows

and R. Crumb, among dozens of other obscure liminariaes. Alex Cox's Breakthrough is a funny and oddly profound sci fi odyssey, tapping into ideas the zeitguys seemed to barely know existed. That kind of sums it up. Though it does, it didn't feel like he was trying to make a thing. Know what's funny is that when you watch the interviews, and I mean listen to Alex Cox talk about what he thinks repal Man is about, it doesn't what does he say, uh, that it's about the neutron bomb, that

it's about nuclear proliferation. It's a A yeah, that's in there a bit. It's it's in there a little bit. But I don't know anybody would walk out a repal Man and be thinking seriously about like nuclear ars, like we really got to do something about radiation. Um, And it's almost like this other stuff almost. I don't want say it happened by accident, because that's not that's not a fair way to put it. But it's not that

it's not what he was in ending to say. Like I said, in all, in all the interviews, like it seems like kind of muddled. There's this one interview he does where he was the guy who actually worked on the actual neutron bomb and they watched deleted scenes together and discuss whether or not they should have been in the movie. It's so bizarre because he was a big fan of it, right, Yeah, apparently so, yeah, I guess he wrote to Alex or something to talk about how

much you like the movie. It's and it's like you're trying to learn more about the thinking and the thought process behind the movie. And if the more you find out about it, the more confused to become and the less clear it is. It's so bizarre. And then so all these interviews, and there's one with the Iggy Pop, right nigg He's just in his backyard and he's got a he's got button up T shirt that's like buttoned up to there, which is probably more of a shirt

and his worn in a decade. He's wearing a shirt and he's he says like it's you know, it's a simple film about the times and the people in those times just trying to get through. And he says, you've got old man, young man. Crazy shit happens. And that's the most concise, like clear vision, Like that's what the movie is about. The old guy, young guy. Crazy shit happens.

And it's a lot of fun along the way. And there's yeah, and any of the larger points that Alex is trying to make about nuclear weapons or about social uprising in the Latin American don't really land yea um, but all the stuff that happens in between is so good. Yeah. The consumers and aspect is uh is kind of played out with these generic um grocery store products, which I think a lot of people who have seen this movie think like, oh, that's so smart and funny that he

went out and made all this stuff. Uh. And you might know this, but that was mostly real stuff from Ralph's. Yeah, it was. It was I guess the stuff that was all expired that they couldn't sell her. Yeah. Just when I first went to l A in nineteen ninety was when my brother lived there. That's when I first took my first like three visits. Uh, they still had that stuff Ralph's. And my friend Eddie and I UM and

my other friend Chris and Jim. We all went out there for spring break one year and stayed with my brother and went to the grocery store and freaked out with the generic beer and that's all we drank the whole time, was the light blue can that said beer beer, the white with the light blue stripes. But that was the stuff. And I think the ones that said just food they made, yeah, as as a statement of like,

you know, it's about consumerism to a certain degree. Ah, and advertising I think, and uh in film maybe even like product placement. Yeah, and I think, but I think even more than that, they were just kind of having fun. I think whatever consumers statement they were trying to make, maybe Dix yeah, um, but yeah, I mean it's just Otto sitting there eating the can that says food and his parents, his mom saying you should put it on a plate because you'd enjoy it more. It's like I

couldn't couldn't enjoy it more if I tried. Yeah, that whole scene is pretty interesting to disconnect with he and his parents and asking for the money to go to Europe early how about if you just gave it to basically saying kind of a thousand dollars. But that sort of kick starts the whole job that he gets. Yeah, because like crash cut from that into him in the car with Harry Dean, like on day one, as Harry starts to give him his Uh yeah, that was cool.

Apparently that was originally going to be multiple scenes realized Harry Dean stands idea to kind of merge it all into one kind of month because it was one daytime and a nighttime. Yeah, if you try to follow the daylight contuity, it goes all over the place. I don't even try, so yeah, it's yeah. Their wardrobe keeps changing. There's all sorts of little things that are Auto's earrings change as goes on, and he gets he gets more

square by the end of it. Oh totally. But it works really well as one scene that kind of breaks through all the time things. I agree. Um, And and that another great smash cut is when he talks about doing speed. It's a smash cut to them, like cutting out lines on the mirror in the car and hear anything. He's just like, whoa, Yeah, that's good stuff. Their relationship is awesome. Um, it is sort of mentor student. Oh absolutely, little father's son thing going on, because he's clearly disconnected

from his dad. But again he's not. I don't think Alex Cox wanted to make some to overdo it as far as that goes. And that's probably so organic about it and what he feels so genuine. I totally agree. Yeah. Oh you know. Harry Dean Stanton played almost every week in l A played music at the Mint that was one of his things he did for years, and when

I was living there, he did that and I never went. Man, And it's one of those things my big like l A regrets is never going to see Harry Dean Stanton perform. Oh that's wild. I didn't realize that. Yeah, he played, I mean his own he was just doing his Harry Dean Stanton thing on stage playing acoustic music. Oh good him. That's apparently it's pretty cool and weird. I believe it. Um. That's one of the great things about l A. Though. You can go see Herry needs Stanton like every Monday

night for you know, eight dollars if you want to. Uh. And Amelia Westebez was so awesome back then. I kind of forget how much I loved him, um, and how this sort of worked as an antidote to his character in The Breakfast Club, you know, just polar opposites his characters. But I mean, I love them both. I love Breakfast Club too, but this, this whole movie was almost I don't think again it was a conscious thing, but it's it's the anti John Hughes movie and kind of every way.

And it's hard to imagine if Amelio and Harridan Stanton are a part of this. It's probably not you know, probably doesn't resonate, It probably doesn't hit the right notes in the right way. There's something about the chemistry between the two of them that works so well. It's hard to put like you know, like I guess, Dick rude. Like I said, it was originally supposed to play auto and it's hard to It's hard to picture the guy

who played Duke as the lead. It feels like it would feel more like a student film where you just have your buddies in it, which it would have been. Yeah, and there's there's a certain magic about it about those two characters. To get those two actors together. Yeah, I think that's that indefinable magic of casting. Yeah, time and a place that just it all worked. Um. I love the helping hand office that I'm not so you hard, I guess, but the impound a lot office, just that

whole vibe in there. It's just so weird. You've got this sort of off duty cop just sitting in the corner. Who figures or whatever. Later on he kind of he turns on them in the end, right, he pulls a gun on her at the end. Yeah, she kicks so much as in that scene really does. And another great little like inside joke that all the all the people work at Helping Hand all named after beers or all

beer related Ide Miller and Light and just I love Light. Yeah, just a little like undercurrent, just a funny thing to throw in. Yeah yeah, And then the light is, uh, it's it's funny because Harry Dean Stanton has all this talk about the code and Light is just like constantly breaking that code about hot wiring and you know with

the gun and everything. When he pulls in the Mustang scene when they're when they're boosting that car is so great because he starts getting fired up from inside the house and the car pulls up with light and you think like he's just gonna get in and write off, but he won't open the door and just fucking unload the magazine into this random house and it's like, get in the car, man, get in the car, that badass Mustang.

Yeah great, the Chevy Malibu is it turns out. I mean there there is this plot of aliens that is kind of a red herring in some ways because it's all through the film, but it never like the aliens never really come into play. There's no payoff on it. There,

there's no there's no resolution that whatsoever. And you're not really sure like what actually is in the trunk of the Malibu Well, I mean it's presumably aliens, but you're right, you don't see it, right, And there's like radioactive aliens, right, radioactive aliens or neutron bomb. It's also implied to and I guess there was there was one ending where the Rodrigue brothers open up the trunk and it's a neutron

bomb and it blows up Los Angeles. Oh. Interesting, there's Yeah, it seems like maybe the filmmakers were sure what was really in the trunk either, which would explain why it's explanation is convoluted at best. Yeah, it's probably best, like the more you think about at the last sense it makes, but it's still kind of works. Yeah. Yeah, Um, you know who who's the guy that's driving it around? What's

his character's name? Oh man, Yeah, the guy who's the who was clearly suffering from radiation poisoning as happens more and more throughout the movie, people getting sick, throwing up. But yeah, he's he's lost it. He's driving this Malibu around that everyone wants because it's worth but the repo aces like they're not great repo men, Like that car is all over the place and it keeps swerving in

front of them. They never gave get old. Apparently the guy they cast to play that role couldn't drive, So it's a big problem throughout the production that like they had to keep probably had to use like driving doubles that didn't match them at all. A bunch of times it was Alex Cox driving it himself because the one time the actor actually drove, he drove into a bridge or something like that. They just had so much, so

many issues with it. And then the then the Malibu got stolen, the actual car during during filming, Like I guess Alex was using it because he didn't have a car, so they said, want't you just drive it so they can show up that every day, and then it got stolen from his It got stolen while they're having a meeting or something, so they had to try to find

another one that was close enough. Did they ever get it back, Yeah, they recovered it during production and then then they had to thank because they brought in every replace but it was like, is that kind of show? I guess man, that's crazy the director driving the hero picture car and then it gets stolen. What's more fitting for a movie about cars getting knocked off? Right? Then? Like exactly, it would have been better if it had

been repossessed. Um I did notice the bad replacement driver and that very first scene with the highway patrolman where he gets zapped. Um the shots from the rear of the car, I'm like, that is not that. Yeah, but all that stuff kind of adds through the charm. There's a certain roughness to it that he is endearing. Yeah. Absolutely, this is not a movie you go see if you want flashy, perfect continuity. No, it's not gonna be in the Marble universe. Um. I did think it's interesting and fun,

though how much he uh how much, Emilia? How how much? Auto sort of went from this fuck you give the finger to the security guard with a gun in your face punk to really meshing with this new sort of square family in the in the Toe office. Yeah, and he was, you know, more than anything. He's a kid trying to find something to do right, Like, he's totally

disconnected from his parents, he's bored, he's bored. His friends aren't that great, you know, as you know, the only one really sticks by him is Kevin Um and yes, this is being in the circle jerks, right. It's so weird.

And I guess, I guess when he was on set, he like introduced himself to them, was like, hey, I'm I played the nerd and they were just like so yeah, when you even give him the time of day or whatever, Yeah, he ends up playing with him for twelve years or sounds crazy, what a world, But yeah, it's like Auto's he's just a lost kid right in this world, trying to find something, and he ends up, you know, by happenstance, ends up with these guys and very much like falls

into he buys in in a way like he doesn't. I mean, he rejects his friends in a lot of ways. Yeah, um, I mean, granted, his one best friend did cheat on his h he cut holded him when he and he went to go get a beer. The twelve seconds that it took him to get a beer. He ends up in bed with his girlfriend, which is great. Yeah, so but yeah, he does reject his friends and um kind of goes a little square and a little more. It's funny for a repo guy, it's like going straight or whatever. Yeah,

for a punk well. Yeah, And even at the end when they have after the shootout in the convenience store or whatever, and she's pulled the gun on him, he asks, you know, any chance for our relationship At this point, he offers to make her a repo wife. He's bought in so much at that point that scene. Man, that was crazy because there's not a ton of violence in this movie, or like overt violence, and then that movie kind of went over the top with it in like a great I just really went for it. Yeah, a

great B movie sort of way though. And you noticed the thing about where they smashed the ketchup. I guess it was something where they were worried about the m p A A rating and so something to do like if they smash the catchup and get ketchup everywhere, then it adds a layer of ambiguity. Was or not it's blood or catchup or something silly like that. Wow, that's pretty genius actually, Yeah, creative work around. Um. I love the l a river chasing, right, that's kind of one

of the things that sells him on the job. Yeah, he's so excited about that afterwards. It's really sweet. Uh. And you know, if you've ever been to l A, the l A River, I mean that's technically what it's called, but it is a concrete river. Yeah. And I mean even if you haven't, if you've seen Greece and Terminator too and all the who He's like, keep coming back to that. Yeah, it's pretty iconic. Yeah, it really is. This is one of the best uses of it though.

I think, Uh, this and maybe T two. Yeah, that's a great chasing and that one. Obviously this was a little more fun. But um, the Rodriguez brothers, Yeah, they there were another interesting part of this movie because they end up teaming up with them, Yeah, towards yea, towards the end, and you don't really know why. All of a sudden they're on the other side, like you had just seen they were like swinging baseball bats at them

and threatened to assume or what all sorts of crazy things. Yeah, and I feel yeah, I think there's some some narrative parts that but again part together. That's part of the charm in that there wasn't some scene where the Rodriguez brothers decided well, we need to flip sides here and help them out because of some repo code or whatever. It just kind of happens, just kind of happened, and it works. Old guy, young guy, crazy shit happens. Um So they actually boost the Malibu and have it for

a little while. The car is literally hot, which is kind of one of the funniest means. It's like, and then that's where this whole other subplot of the punks um Otto's friends on this crime spree. Yeah, they steal it for a little while and they running like one of the great physical gags of running into the trash can. It's just such a stupid thing, but it's so funny. It is just that Archie character is always running into things, even when they're leaving a liquor. Story runs right in

that point. Yeah, it's those little bits I think that they pepper in. Yeah, that that that make the movie work so well. You can tell that they're having fun when they do it in it it translates on screen. Yeah, and I think Amelia esteveez um. I think his agents didn't eat, like try to hide the script from him

early on when he was getting courted. I heard something about it because they were like, no, they were only doing big budget, like he's not gonna see this, And then he got it to him, like to a friend or something, and he was like, yeah, man, this is like I gotta do this movie. I'd be so curious to know his thoughts on the movie. This many years later,

I wasn't able to find any interviews with him. How interesting it was, like everybody else on the crew, like looking back, Yeah, I'd be curious to know, like what he thinks about the movie in the context of his own career, and like, like, I don't know what his relationship was in the in the early eighties taming those bands.

I didn't write he was familiar with them or well, I do know that he was not familiar, because I did read one interview where he said that he was not a part of the punk scene or didn't know much about it. But I think his not Charlie. Did he have another brother? Is there another I think, yeah, sure, I think Ramone or no, wait, or is that Martin

Sheen's real name? I get lost. I do too. I think he either had a brother or a friend or a friend's brother that was in the punk scene that he kind of leaned on for help on this, but he said he got into it a little bit after this. But I don't know how I would think he looks back with fond memories about this movie. I hope so, you know, and people are still talking about it, yeah, all these years later. I mean, it has its place I think in Hollywood history, uh, in a pretty big way.

You know, it's on It's constantly on top lists of cult films. I think it's on in the top ten list of like l A movies of all time. Yeah, it's incredibly enduring, and it it holds up to multiple viewings, you know, like I watched it half a dozen times in last week or whatever. I didn't I didn't find myself getting sick or tired of it in any way. Like there's something about the energy and the humor of it that just there's Yeah, there's something adhesive about it

that's hard to really describe. And then also the way that shot. Yeah, it's beautiful, so beautiful. It is not jokey, but there are a lot of fun and funny moments. Yeah, in quotable lines. One of the interesting things that Alex mentioned one of the interviews is that he wanted to make it so that he thought he was making a funny movie, but he wanted any any still from the film to look like a serious drama. And it kind of does. You know, like there's no there's nothing like

visually goofy about it. You know, there's nothing, there's no like shot in the movie that feels like humorous shot.

I think if you freeze framed the when the trunk is opened and people go to skeleton owing skeleton, that might seem a little hokey, but maybe, but it's a great effect for what it is for the time in the budget it reads yeah, you know in the end, you know with the uh, the floating glowing car, right, which they actually painted that way, right, Yeah, parent of it was like six hundred bucks a gallon or something for this like super super fluorescent paint they used on

signage or something. I don't think they realized how much it was gonna cost when they got into it, and so that turned out to be like a five thousand dollar paint job or something. Cheaps off. Yeah, but you know, he he knows that he's uh Otto even has a line You're a suburban white suburban punk just like me. Yeah, you know, and that kind of says it all. It's one of the best lines of the whole thing. Yeah, he has no illusions about who he is. Yeah, as

Duke is dying, Yeah, there's a lot of deaths. Yeah, and that's ano little funny. More like Duke is on the ground, like coughing and bleeding out, and as Auto walks away, was like, oh, you'll be fine. Yeah. Fine. I wonder how much of this was superscripted and how much was sort of on the fly. It seems as though there was a lot of stuff that was on the fly. There's a lot of stuff they were kind

of making up as they went. I know, the plate of shrimp scene he wrote sort of I don't know about on the fly, but I don't think that was in the original script. No. I read that that was actually a mono like he wrote for auditioning. Oh interesting, Yeah, and that the characters liked it so much they wanted him to include in the movie. Yeah, And I mean that's one of the I mean, it's on of the best monologues in any film. I actually I have a

played a shrimp tattoo in my thigh because of it. Yeah, way, me and my buddy both have it on our leg. It's yeah, it's one of those weird things you keep coming back to all the time. Yeah, I mean there's a shrimp or played or play to shrimp, and yeah, he is the sage in the movie. Uh. And it's not like it's not throw away stuff, Like I don't want to say that, like it gets really profound and deep. But man, you look at a couple of Miller's scenes

and monologues, it is a little profound, it is. Yeah, And I mean he's also the one to go. He tells first, tells Auto about the car air fresheners. Find one in every car you'll see another recurring bit. Yeah, and I think the story is they got just a bunch of those for free. Yeah, it was like the

only product placement they're able to swing. And then so after he says that, it cuts to the motorcycle on the side of the road as they're doing like the the cleanup of the first the opening sequence, right, and they they've got the Christmas tree air freshener on the motorcycle, which I think is such a great gag. The idea of having an air freshener on a motorcycle. There are

so many little fun jokes like that. Um. One of one of my other favorite lines is when they come back the Malibu after auto has found it, secures it in a lot, comes back the next day and it's not there. Um, and the g men come into the to the office and they're getting their asses kicked, and she is the chair above his head and the one guy goes, not my face, and then she smashes one on him. Anyways, you hear that great off camera like oof sound. Yeah, that's so good, and again that works

better than seeing it happened. I think it's just definitely hearing that sound effect. Yeah, not my face. Because the GMN are all like these kind of kin doll models. Yeah, even though they're kind of shadowy figures, they're all handsome, like blonde haired yeah, and they all got the super reflective sunglasses. Yeah. And then the lady too, who leads that crew with a weird and they never really explained why she's got a robotic hand or what that's all

supposed to be about. But I think again though, part of the weird charm of this movie because people can then speculate right about, like what the funk that was all about. Yeah. Yeah, and there's something I keep saying organic. But you know, life is not Life is not full of neat and tidy storylines, so you always know what's going on. There's always a little like that, how was

that about? You know, you're only ever getting bits and pieces of things in real life, and it the scattered nature of the narrative kind of reflects that, probably unintentionally. I don't think he's I don't think he's set out to make that. You know, it's what end up happening in the process, which is part of what filmmaking. You know. It's this first it's his first feature. Yeah, I totally agree.

The Happy Accidents, Um, this movie that is kind of about an area fifty one like government cover up of aliens, but again, it never really dives into that too deeply. Um, because he has this girlfriend that's somehow is it on this plot? Yeah, that's never explained, but she's running from the g men. Yeah that's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah, this seems like a movie that like, like a cool college kid would get as much as their twelve year old,

uh younger sibling. Like it works on an elementary level. I think in some ways that and not to slag it. No, no, no, not at all. Yeah, there's something so endearing about it, the way that it all comes together. What else you got over there? I'm just looking through mind. I want to make sure didn't miss anything. I think we think we hit on all the points. I think so, man, uh oh, did you know that he tried to get Muhammad Ali in this? I did see that. Tell the

story it's pretty great. So I guess when they were filming the last scene where uh where buggets shot from the helicopter and where the where the Malibu lifts off into space, they found out that Muhammad All and they were supposed to shoot a couple of days earlier at a different location and the weather was bad or whatever. So I ended up doing it back at the parking lot at the Repalmand lot, and they found out that Muhammad Ali was like training down the street or something.

So Alex Cox had this brilliant idea that as part of like the procession of like the Holy Man coming to the car and then being rejected by the car, he wanted to get Muhammad Ali in there as well as another you know, human dignitary to come to try to get on the car to be rejected by I guess Muhammad Ali very politely listened to his speech and then politely declined that the sweet story, because that's a

very first time filmmakery thing to do. Is like, I think that you can actually get Muhammad I'll need to be in your movie because he's just down the street. But you never know. I mean that is that sweet naivete of a young filmmaker is It's like, hey, man, if you don't ask. And the flip side of that isn't Jimmy Buffett is in the movie. Yeah, I read that, but then I never spotted him. I only figured it out by watching the commentary track. Is one of the

man he's one of the when they burn the body. Yeah, I don't remember the guy's name now on the on the bed, the bench, Jimmy Buffett is one of the guys the camera taking one of the g men taking photos. So random, it's so weird. It's not like you, it's not like you see him close enough to identify him. And also like for all the cameos in a punk movie, like Buffett, it's pretty funny yet somehow completely appropriate. Yea,

it's like the most anti punk guys. Somehow works. Yeah, somehow, there's nothing there's nothing about it that feels forced or it's just whatever it is, it is and it it's somehow magical. Oh man, it's good stuff. I love a movie that is sort of inexplicably great, um, because you can't point to any classic conventional way is that this is great? Um, Like oh my god that like the script is amazing, or the story is just so tight

and moves. It's like it's just one of those movies that works right, and it wouldn't work in any other like this is a book, this is a graphic novel, this is a this is a podcast, doesn't work. But there's something about the magic of movies that somehow brings those all all those things together the right. It's yeah, you have it's a movie you have to I mean, it's still I think it's a movie you have to watch, unlike all the movies you don't watch. But no, I

know what you mean though. Yeah, And people are excited about this because I posted a do like a little coming soon things so people can watch movies ahead of time, and Repoman is getting a lot of love. People are excited about it. It still holds up. It does. It does because it's a it's a slice of time and

just encapsulates nine and eighty four. So well, yeah, uh, you know, because it's not like there's a bunch of different ways of doing that you can do like fast times at Richmond High and really the suburban mall culture of l A. Which that nailed that too, but this is a different l A and a different subculture it is. And it felt like the way he was just trying to put in the things from his life and the things that are around him. It didn't feel as if he set out to do that. He wasn't trying to

make a time capsule. He wasn't trying to make a movie about what it was like to be a shitty kid walking around l A. But he kind of accidentally ends up making that, and it's it's really beautiful for what it is. Totally totally agree. All right, man, Well that's good stuff. Thanks for coming in and enlightening us. Are you Are you relieved? Yeah, it's okay to be relieved. You did great. I feel like once I got into it, now that's fantastic. Yeah, And people love hearing about the

different jobs too. So Anothery're gonna love the first part of this one too. Yeah, it's great to get a chance to actually talk about that because so much of it feel, like I said, even the people we work with. It's it's a dark art. It's yeah, it happens off some other places and sung heroes of the film business. Nice work. All right, thanks dude, Uh, come back another time. We'll talk about something else, all right, Alright, folks, hope

you enjoyed that. Sparky is a cool dude. Very nice of him to come in here and share a little bit about the job that he does on set, get a little insight into special effects and how that works,

and uh what he thought a repo man um. He he watched a bunch of times everybody, and did his due diligence that has always appreciated because he came in here well armed with with facts about the movie as well as his take on this really unique, um strange, weird cult classic that still holds up after all these years. Really enjoyed watching it for the first time. I love talking to Sparky about it, and he's welcome back anytime.

So thanks for listening to this one. I hope you enjoyed it, and we will see you in your ear holes next week. Boe Crushes produced, edited and engineered by Ramsay unt Here in our home studio at Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.