Episode 22 - D.C. Cab Special

Weird being way media night, mister Walters can see that guy with it now, he's an actor at all. I'm a driver and the only camp driver in his place. Good evening and welcome tonight, mister Walters Taxi Podcast. I'm your co host HP and with me as always is my co host, Father Malone. Father Malone, how are you this evening? ESP? I need you to know something right now. I do not record on January the

eighth. That's Elvis's birthday. That's Elvis's birthday. Now that should be your clue those of this is not going to be your typical episode of night, mister Walters. We're in that sort of a time between season one and season two, so Father Malone and myself thought we would do something a little interesting given that we haven't started season two yet. We're going to be looking into

a what I would call a taxi adjacent movie called d C Cab. Some of you may be familiar with it, but this movie came onto my radar as a result of hearing a discussion about the DC Cab soundtrack on the Amazing Billion Dollar Record Podcast, which I would recommend anybody go check out. It's hilarious. Anyway, in chasing up more info on the movie, I was struck by the fact that professional Andy Kaufman friend and sometime Tony Clifton, Bob

Zamuda appeared in DC Cab. He's not featured prominently, but he's in it enough. He's in it enough to make me hate him. The character. I mean, not Bombsa Moody. He's doing a good job, but I hate that fucking character. The interesting part of it is, I've been seeing this movie here and there over the course of what the better part of thirty years maybe more and what are you nuts? Eighty three? Brother, and all of this time I never put together the fact that that was Bob Zamuda

playing this character. So I was really shocked to find out that he was in this. And of course the tie in, as I said, is because Andy Kaufman is in Taxi, of course, and they were buddies at the time of the production of this movie, DC Cab Taxi, the TV series was still in production at that time. It would have been I think

around the fifth season, the final season of Taxi. Not to say that there was any sort of Taxi influence on DC Cab, but it is sort of interesting, and there are some parallels to be seen, whether intentional or otherwise. I think they're unintentional. DC Cab was on cable a lot when father Malona and I were kids. We saw it many many times. I probably I would have been about ten when it was on, and certainly coming

from a rather unsupervised childhood. As far as watching cable, I probably saw this when I was far too young to really understand a lot of the humor and certainly a lot of the sexual situations. Let's say, in a box tucked neatly away, there is a video tape with a handmade label that was typed by me that says DC Cab. Somewhere in my sphere. If I chose to find it, I could. But yes, I've seen this movie, not only from the onslaught that was delivered to us by cable television at

the time, which was again pretty severe. This movie was on a lot, but I also video taped it so I could watch it when it wasn't on. I'm almost certain I videotaped it as well. But for me, I would videotape things and I would just put them on in the background, like the fish tank. It wasn't necessarily that I'd watch it with great intent. I would just put it on while I was doing other things because it was a known movie. It was a funny movie, at least for the

time. In light of our examination of Taxi the TV series, we thought it would be interesting to take a side trip here and delve into a Taxi adjacent project like DC Cab. So let's get into DC Cab a little bit. Now. The stars of this movie. This movie features one of the more prodigious casts of the eighties. Oh it's an ensemble, baby, It's actually a remarkable ensemble when you look at it. We have Max Gail, who, of course is best known as Wojo from Barney Miller Mister t which

we'll talk a lot about coming up. Adam Baldwin, who was in My Bodyguard. That's what I know him from, Gary Busey, from just being Gary Busey, the nuts stop that Gary Busey Academy Award nominee for Buddy the Buddy Holly Story. Yes, he's in this movie. This is true. And I would actually say that his role as Joshua in Lethal Weapon, I thought he was very very good in that because it was playing against type, right, Are you implying that Gary Busey is not a fucking phenomenal actor.

I'm implying that the Gary Busey the character has supplanted Gary Busey the excellent actor. Right. Well, I maintain that up until I can't remember the title of the film with Rutger Howard, the Surviving the Game. Up until Surviving the Game, we still get focused good performances from Gary Busey. After that is when he becomes Gary Busey the Wooo I'm crazy all the time guy,

And I think that's fair. Actually surviving the game that was? Was that the one with iced tea where it was sort of like the most dangerous game? It was an update. Yeah, that was a good movie. Ernest Dickerson directed that, goddamn right, Spike Lee's long time cinematographer, frequent director of photography of Tales from the Dark Side. Yes, he probably made his bones as a director on Tails from the Dark Side, Right, certainly did

so. In addition to Gary Busey, we have I would say a very young but let's face it, all the actors in this are are really young. Bill Maher is in this. He's so baby faced it's funny. Online and weird looking. And it's very easy to forget because he's been Bill Maher, the talk show host and firebrand for so long that he was a comedian and he was an actor. He made a go of it, So it

was shocking to see him in this. I forgot that he was in it House two, or he's in House two the second story, or that he was in Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. Bill Maher was out there. He was working man. His smugness has finally swallowed him up. But for a long stretch in the eighties and nineties, I was a big fan of starting here. I think I would totally agree with you there. For a time he was a welcome sardonic presence in film and on TV.

And I think you're right. I think his ego and his sort of stick swallowed him up. And now it's indistinguishable from the real person. It's become the person. So also we have Charlie Barnett, which we'll talk about this really interesting stuff with Charlie Barnett. Otis Day from Animal House. Otis Day in the Nights. He's in this movie. Paul Rodriguez. Adriguez, remember fucking Paul Rodriguez. In the eighties, he had a sitcom what was it

called Aka Pablo aka Pablo. Yeah, I remember that was like a very highly touted series. It went nowhere. So you have these really up and coming comedians like Rodriguez and Barnett and mar but you also have Wittman Mail from San frances Son Grady, and you have the this might be the debut of the Barbarian brothers David and Peter Paul. I could be wrong about that. Got love those barbarians. Man Marsia Warfield is also in this movie. We

could mention her Jill Shalen Scholan, Shalen Sholin, I don't know. I think it's Scholin. I think it's well, I'll go with Schildin. Then she she's a huge eighties mainstay. She's a horror maven, extraordinary. She never gets mentioned, but she's like she was a big scream queen. One of my favorite sort of discoveries as I was rewatching this is the Dispatcher. Missus Floyd is played by an actress named Gloria Gifford who you've seen her.

She's been in a bunch of stuff, But for me and maybe for you father alone. I most fondly remember her as the airport security officer in This is Spinal Tap who stops Derek Small's when he tries to go through with the foil wrapped zucchini. When she says, do you have any artificial plates or limbs? That's that's Gloria Gifford, which I love it. There's a few discoveries I made during watching this, and that was one of them. And

Devo and Salvos also in this movie. I'm sorry, I'm just remembering the cast and you're not naming a bunch of the bunch of them, and I just need to mention some of them. They're all real good, Like this is a true ensemble movie, and DeSalvo actually appeared in Taxi. Eventually we will see she plays. I believe she's like Tony's fiance or eventual fiance or something. I think they get paired up. That's right. They like she's his equal, Like she's basically the female Tony. Yeah, she's very tough.

I think that was her stock in trade at the time. She was a tough talking New Yorker. Want to talk a little bit about Charlie Barnett because I confess I didn't know much about Charlie Barnett before or even going into this movie, and then I did a little bit because I wondered, he's so prominently featured in this movie, but you haven't. I can't even think

of another role that he's had a prominent role, Are you crazy? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. I remember him very prominently on Miami Vice. See I didn't watch Miami Vice multi episode and yeah, I and I thought he was going to be a huge, huge star as well, because he is prominent in this movie and he's very, very funny in this movie. And I'm sure you're gonna spill the SNL

beans here. You know exactly what I'm getting into here. He was a young comic on the rise in the late seventies in New York and he auditioned for SNL in September nineteen eighty and evidently then producer, notorious producer Gene Dumanian, this is that Laurene Michaels has finally left SNL after his four year run, and Geen Dom his assistant right at the time. Yeah, yeah, she used to take over the show and has to restock the cast and ends

up. You know, some of them were pretty good cast members. I mean, she did pick Joe Piscopo, who ended up being a good cast member. She picked Gilbert Godfrey and who never got a shot on the show, but he would have been good. And Tony Rizzano is that her? I think? So there it was. Denny Dillon was another one of the cast members. Gilbert right, Charlie Rockett sadly faded. He'd like to know who the fuck did it? So, you know, I just that was

the Charlene Tilton episode. I just rewatched that recently. She came into SNL in a very unenviable position. But anyone who's read any of the many books that have been out about the history of SNL knows that I said she was notorious, and she really was. I think the nickname that the cast members had for her was the Iyatola Domanian. Among other things. She was looking

to hire as part of this new refresh of the cast. She was going to high Charlie Barnett, But Barnett was he had very poor reading skills. I guess he was next to illiterate. He must have been dyslexic or something

like that. That's also a possibility. You know, it's possible. I mean this was we're talking forty years ago, fifty years ago almost that it's possible that he who knows what he had going on, but he had very poor reading skills and he was tremendously self conscious about it, so he didn't show up for his second audition, and lo and behold, Eddie Murphy gets

hired in his place. Barnett would harbor great jealousy towards Murphy for years and years because he always believed that his spot on SNL and his eventual rise to fame should have been his. He might have a case actually, because Eddie Murphy was going to explode no matter what happened. It's an interesting what if because who knows what might have happened with Charlie Barnett. So what I also

found out was Charlie Barnett was Dave Pelle's mentor. Dave Chappelle was also a young comedian, didn't have a lot of experience, and Charlie Barnett's thing was he would go and perform outside. He would perform at Think in Central Park and he would pack them out outside and he actually brought in Dave Chappelle taught

him the ropes a little bit, how to you know. I'm not going to say he taught him how to be a good comedian, but Chappelle has gone on record as saying that he was a big, big influence on him. And in fact, before Chappelle walked away from The Chappelle Show, there was a deal in place to do the Charlie Barnett Biography, a film biography of Charlie Barnett that he was going to be involved in, if not starring. When Dave Chappelle walked away from everything and just quit the show, that

project went away with him. I'd like to watch that movie. It would have been interesting because I'm sure this guy's life. I'm reducing it to just the paragraph, but it sounds pretty amazing. Oh it's pretty harrowing there at the end too. So Barnett would meet a very sad end. He died of AIDS. Dude to being an intravenious. He was a heroin addict and he would die of AIDS in nineteen ninety six. So it's one of those great what if questions about what he could have achieved if he had had that

opportunity. He's fantastic in DC Cab. He's very funny, he's a manic presence, He's great. It makes you wonder what could have been watching him. I should mention that DC Cab was written by top of Carew and Joel Schumacher, and it was directed by Joel Schumacher directorial debut. It was not his directorial debut, well, no, he wrote He directed The Incredible Shrinking

Woman before this, Yes, the year prior. Yeah. Yeah. This was only the second major film directed by Schumacher, the first being nineteen eighty one's Incredible Shrinking Woman with Lily Tomlin. He would of course become a prominent director in the mid to late eighties and into the nineties. He directed Well, Saint Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Falling Down, many many others. Batman, So that was Batman and Robin Did he direct that?

And Batman Forever? Yes? And Batman Forever. So he's widely credited with killing that Batman franchise, basically unfairly. Yeah, that's it was always going to crumble in the nineties, and once Warner Brothers figured out that it was a merchandising machine, there was no way anyone was going to have a good vision for any of those movies he was. You know, they got exactly what they needed at the time, which was a pop cultury, you

know, candy colored looking thing. Joel Schumacher. This is the second film. He's a very sure footed already. I gotta say it's very well directed. He actually co wrote it as well, so it's sort of interesting. I knew him primarily from his eighties and nineties heyday and I've seen this movie many times without realizing who directed it. But I was kind of surprised to find out that he was so prominently featured as a director and writer. I

thought that was kind of cool. We have to mention mister T. Mister T was hugely famous at this time. I mean, he'd just made his debut in Rocky three the year before, but he was still one year away from his best performance, which I think we both can agree was in nineteen eighty four. Is Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool? Oh my god, he's so good in that one. His performance of the song mother will bring a tear to your eyes. Other there is no other, I think the

fool that you have to explain who mister T is to you. It's really impossible to overstate how seismic Mister T's debut in Rocky was. With the mohawk, with the gold chains, with the attitude. He didn't look or sound like anyone else. The pop culture explosion around mister T was tremendous. He was on different strokes. He was on the eighteen was a tremendous hit. He was at the White House with Nancy Reagan on his lap. God bless him. He's still around now. He's not as active as he once was.

The man must be in his late seventies, if not older. But he's still got the mohawk, he's still got the chains, he's still got the you know everything. I mean, he's mister T is just one of those pop cul sure icons. And this was only his second feature film, so that was kind of cool. Right now. He was a huge star when this movie came out, and this movie was made before I think he became mister T. What's interesting is the character that he plays is this character

called Samson. Out of all of the characters in this movie, there's a lot of wacky characters we'll talk about, but Samson. You could make the case that Samson is essentially mister T. Oh yeah, they picked the right character for mister T to play in this movie. He effectively is playing mister T. So I couldn't imagine Bill Maher in this role and mister T and Bill Mahers. It really does play to all of mister T's foibles. He's

relentlessly positive, He's dressed just like mister T is in real life. He is concerned about the drug dealers and the pimps in the neighborhood, and he's trying to make something better. So this is really the mister T, the public persona depicted in a movie. You could forget about the name Samson.

He's playing mister T that for all intents and purposes. I Son interview with him for this movie, where the interviewer said that she was disappointed because he has so many young fans and this is an R rated film, and mister T vehemently agreed with her and said that he did everything he could to talk to the director and the producer to cut out the foul language because that was

what was getting them the R rating. But he's at least proud to know that his character was upright and forth right, like he went through the mud,

but I came out clean. That was an actual quote. The character of Clubber Lang his debut in Rocky three, the thing that put him on the map is probably the thing that's furthest from the person that he at least likes to portray himself as here's a question, if any team had to hit first and he had blown up as mister T and gotten the serial and the cartoon series, would he have accepted the role of Clubber Lang after the fact,

like had Rocky three come after See Rocky three was in eighteen eighty five and they said, we want to get mister T to be the villain in this, I bet he would have said no. He probably would have said no because a cynic might say that he's just doing this to portray who knows what he's like in real life. But I actually really suspect I don't know the man, I've never met him, but I suspect that he is like that in real life. He's somebody who's very conscientious, likes to portray himself

in a certain light. And that's actually a very interesting question. I agree with you. I don't think he would have done Rocky three. It is such a heavy character and a scary character. Really. I mean, he's very much a villain in that movie. There's no doubt about it. He basically kills Mickey right. You know, people will say Drago, but I think Clever Lang was the most frightening and fearsome villain in the Rocky universe. He was, and it was like the perfect time for that perfect actor and

the perfect part. It was really a lot of It was an interesting confluence events that took place that made him into this superstar who is still known and recognized today. He well, he really. I mean even as a kid, I remember seeing that movie. He was a scary dude. He could, he would. You know, he was tough, he didn't care, he was proudly defiant, and he whooped Rocky's ass. Yeah, you have a prediction for the fight. Pin. Do you remember when mister t first

got celebrity before Rocky, he had won a strong man competition. It was like a big deal. It had been televised and such. I heard that it was like a bouncer was It was like a toughest bouncer competition. I've never seen it. Yeah, that's what I mean. I don't maybe I miss mistitled it necessarily, but yeah, the world's toughest bouncer. Basically I knew that he was. That's what he did for work. He was a

bodyguard and he was a bouncer. And believe me, if I saw somebody being guarded by mister T, I'd stayed all away from them because that dude looks tough and he's big. Separate from this, I don't. Just coincidentally, I was going down a rabbit and I found mister T famously did a WrestleMania I think it was it WrestleMania three. Yeah, I know it's WrestleMania. It was the original baby yeah, Oh, mister T versus Rowdy Ronnie Piper and mister wonderful Paul Orndorf. For Christ's sake, HB no, your

history. I don't. But what I do know is the night before Hulk Hogan and mister T were co hosts on SNL. You Little Things there they go about me Fernando Hideaway. What I had been curious about is the cold open for that episode was they had just done We Are the World. They recorded it just recently. Oh my god, yes, the Prince sketch right, I am also the World that's exactly right. So Prince didn't make it to We Are the World. And if you watch there's this documentary on Netflix,

which is actually pretty good by the way, fatherm Alone. If you have it's not long either. But the word at the time was Prince had to bail out a bodyguard because he had gotten into some trouble. So the cold open for SNL was what you said, I Am also the World. It featured Billy Crystal as Prince and it was basically them recording We Are the World, but the bodyguards come in and every time, like Paul Simon goes to the microphone or Willie Nelson or any of these, the bodyguards come in

and put him in headlocks and beat them up. So everybody gets beaten up except for Prince. Basically Billy Crystal's in blackface for this, you know, which might have been acceptable at that time, but certainly now it's shocking to see it. But I did find it. I thought maybe the Internet had erased all vestige of existence, but it is there. You can find it. It's not very funny, but you do get to see mister t and

Hulkogan in their prime, which is kind of cool. There's one good sketch, and that's Christopher Guest as a guy trying to convince a family to send their child to Camp Crystal Lake for the summer. I don't remember that, so it's a the thirteenth thing. Yes, Oh, okay, I'll have to I'll have to try and check that out. During Hulk Hogan is Jason at the end. Oh, he's got the mask. Okay, point if you go and watch this clip that it's the incorrect hockey mask. And even

at a young age, I went, that's wrong. It's one of those triangle holes all over the entire mask, right, I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah, that was I believe that was a Gary Kroeger season of SNL. Also, that was just I don't think that was still pre I think who. I wonder who the producer was at that time. Dick eversall, you're absolutely right. Okay, let's get off and back to d

C cam, shall we. That's right. So DC CAB is really another in a long line of slobs versus snobs kind of movies that were super popular in the seventies and eighties. You have Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, and so on. The film stars Baldwin is Albert Hawckenberry, which is a name that I've never forgotten since I saw this movie. Hackenberry. It's a great name. So he's Albert Hackenberry. He's a young haysee who comes

to DC to make his fortune. His father served in Vietnam with Max Scale's character Harold, and he comes looking for Harold to get his help to make his fortune in the cab business. And is he Yeah, I have a theory. H do tell Albert Hackenberry's father in Vietnam went by the code name

Animal Mother. I was actually just leading up because there's there's this great scene where Harold and Albert are catching up their bonding over like pictures from Vietnam and relics from Vietnam and and this all Vietnam by Jimmy Cliff is playing should be pointed out, yes, which which is a It's a great scene because they're putting on gas masks and drinking beer through them, and they have flamethrowers and helmets and all this, and uh, honestly it did it looked fun.

I mean, they're drinking beers, they're reminiscing. I wanted to pour through all that old surplus. No, it looked like a lot of fun. Animal Mother is of course a reference to the movie Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Full Metal Jacket, which featured Adam Baldwin in the role of Animal Mother. So I actually, I think that's a great tie in. I didn't think of it in those terms. Father Malone, but yeah,

you'd probably maybe his father was Animal Mother. Animal Mother's last name was Hackenberry. We just never heard a fucking movie, that's all. He's good in it. He's very, very good in it. But yeah, he's that's I'm gonna go with that. Hockenberry was Animal Mother. That's perfect. Do you remember the first motion picture but we attended to, or attended rather theatrically, that would be Beetlejuice. It wasn't Full Metal Jacket, No, not

at all. It was a sneak preview of Beetlejuice. Oh, that's right. But we did see Full Metal Jacket together, Oh, of course, absolutely, absolutely we saw it. I don't recall the theater. It was that twin that turned into the Hollywood theaters across from the Liberty Tree Mall. Yes, it turned into Hollywood Hits you're absolutely right. Was it a general cinemas It could have been. I couldn't tell you for sure. It's also

where I saw the feature film Superman. I saw Superman as well, but I saw it there was a cinema in Peabody near the North Shore Mall. That's where I saw that. Oh yeah, another two screen. Yes, yes. DC CAB is filled with broad and over the top performances by eccentric performers. I have to say Max Gail gives such a grounded, soulful performance as Harold, it's almost like he's in a different movie entirely. Don't you agree? I have one agree. I think he's first of all, I

think he's great in the ensemble of this movie. But he's so good that it ends up hinting at a better movie that's just out of reach. Like there, Look, we're gonna give into the nuts and bolts of this goddamn third act eventually. But Manx Scale's presence and gravity and genial. You just

like him so much and you want him to succeed. And there's a very sweet human story between him and Albert and Marshall Warfield's character, and there's a lot of good human drama going on here, and then there's a lot of crazy fucking bullshit, and the crazy fucking bullshit really takes over the movie at the end, and the third act whelms it overwhelms it too. It's yeah, you said it. You love the character of Harold. He's just so likable, he's you feel the fact that life isn't going his way. You

feel bad for him, and you want him to succeed. Like you said, he's he's great in this and that the stuff that establishes his connection to Albert where they're talking about Albert's dad and at one point Harold even calls Albert by his dad's name, and it's interesting moment. It's it, really he keeps the movie, like I said, grounded. There could have been a very different movie had they had the tone matched Max Gale's performance that he was

giving. But he's never not welcome. It's just the movie goes off the rails despite him. Basically, the movie is frequently going off the rails,

and that's fine, but then it gets too much. But Max scale there's a moment in the movie which has always stuck with me, where Harold and Myrna have kind of a tiff over the fact that Albert is there, and Albert suggests that he can leave and go get a hotel, and Max Scale says, as long as you're in DC, you're staying with Myrna and me, and he seems so heartfelt, like you can always live in this house.

That yeah, that's it's just part and parcel to what we're saying about Max Scale and this sort of not really DC cab performance going on a cab and he's the kind of person that you would want as your boss, somebody who would go to bat for you. We'll talk about it, but he basically gives everything he has and more to try and get the company to succeed and to bring everybody along with them back. Scale is so underrated and he's

really fabulous. In this movie. Harold owns this ramshackle cab company and it's populated by the kinds of characters that one only ever sees in movies. This is These are these actors that we've been talking about. Gary Busey plays an unhinged tabby named Dell, but really he's just playing himself, or at least what we've grown to expect from Gary Busey, the kind of crazy ole. You know, you never know what he's going to do, and it has

to be said the language primarily that comes from. And I'll just say the character of Dell is so offensive to modern ears. I'm not going to go into it, but there's some really offensive stuff going on in this movie language wise. Look, it's a product of its age. We're not condoning any of the problematic dialogue or situations or anything else from the bygone era of nineteen

eighty three. Look, some movies just did not age. Well. We don't want to revisit Revenge of the Nerds at this point, and it's complete rapy ending. You know, it's a little harder to watch. And this isn't that bad. I don't feel guilty watching this. I just kind of WinCE every once in a while, remembering how casual some people were with some

terminology. Mister t As we said, he plays a character named Samson who's just a really He's a really muscular, tough guy that's trying to keep his niece and the rest of the kids of the neighborhood from worshiping these ever present pimps and drug dealers. They always seem to be turning up in the neighborhood with these really fancy cars. So he keeps saying, you know, when he's tied, it's the car, it's the car. I got to get

the kids away from the cars. He also holds the record for the worst simulated driving of a car in a movie, because there's a lot of driving in this and they're all it's we're not talking about the poor Man's process that we've grown to love and Taxi the TV series. These are cars that are getting towed and being filmed from the outside, so it looks like the Cabby's are driving, but mister t and none of them are really that good at it. I disagree. Paul Rodriguez is really good at it. You think

he's good. Maybe I didn't focus on him enough. Paul Rodriguez is good. Everyone else has been on low. I will say either Peter or David Paul driving backwards is doing a good job because they never stop looking forward and backward and forward and backward to see where they're going. That's a good point.

I didn't give him enough credit for that, because he does. There's a scene where he's just the cap can't drive forward, and the whole scene takes place and he's talking to Albert while driving backwards down the streets of DC, which is actually a laughing at it because it's kind of a funny scene, a good scene. They're good in it. They're charming, those two. There's such a punchline because they were the Barbarian brothers and they made all

these really bad direct to video movies in the eighties and nineties. But they're affable. That's the best I can say. Affable. Bill Maher, he plays I guess he's a frustrated musician named Baba Yeah. And I only know that because there's a scene where he's supposed to be playing like a synthesizer in the garage to convey the fact that he's got all this talent but he's wasting it as a as a cab driver. He's like an electronic kind of a

musician. He's like he's trying to break through in the music scene, Like I don't know, somebody like Georgiomeroder. We're going to get to him too. Wittman Mayo, As I said, he plays an eccentric street person named mister Rhythm who speaks in riddles. He'll go up to one of the cabbies and they'll give him a dollar and he'll tell them some sort of fortune or

a riddle. Don't let you dick run your life right? Or the one that I always remember is he Albert says, oh, what's the good word, mister rhythm, And he says that that can make you will also break you. If you make it through the night without committing suicide, you're doing okay. I guess nowadays he'd be called an unhoused person. He lives in a derelict cab outside the garage. He's got it made right there. He takes everything, all this, all the forgotten, lost and found stuff out

of the cabs. He's doing all right. Everybody loves him. Otis Day from Animal House, Like I said, he plays a Jamaica obsessed rosta cabby named Bongo. Listen, he is not not Otus Day here. He's Dwayne Jesse still here. I think he was credited as Otis Day, right, incorrect. Sorry, I gotta go to IMDb. You're certain of this, You're willing to stake your reputation. I will bet you something or other on

that. Yeah, sos Otis Day on IMDb. Oh as Dwayne Jesse Okay, you're right, I guess I watched the actual movie with the credit. Speaking of credits, Speaking of credits, yellow credits. There's a little little taxi sort of tie in, but it has one of my favorite credits of all time, mister T's credit, which comes up as mister and then it scrolls R S T and then stops on T. The credits were interesting. Some of them are like little stylized stencils that will be spray painted and then

the person's name is left behind. It was actually kind of cool. Yeah, those credits are just like, we are the eighties, motherfuckers. They scream eighties absolutely went around the clock. Another amazing casting discovery I made was at one point there's a ski masked robber who keeps mugging Marsha Warfield's character who's called Ophelia, and eventually Albert foyles the robbery attempt and the robbers arrested. The robber was played by a man named Dennis Stewart. He was crater faced

from Greece. The Squaw is doing here. It was I was like, wow that because his mask is ripped off at one point. He was all over every eighties television series the action wise. I know he probably tangled with mister T a few times on the eighteen. He probably did. He had a sneer and he had a lane that he was very good and he's there's another tax he tie in because he raced Danny Zuko for pink Slips in Greece with Jeff Conaway Bobby Wheeler from Taxi, so that the hits just keep coming.

See that, folks, We're not just dicking around here with doing a DC Cab episode. We're tying it back to Taxi. This all works. DC Cabs main competition in the movie is the Emerald Cab Company. I hate them. It's an upscale garage. They're Emeralds, so they have green everything. The cabs are green. They wear these green satin jackets instead of the

traditional yellow checker cabs. And this is where Bob Zamuda comes in. Bob Zamuda plays a character named Cubby. Perfect perfect name for that character right below harm. He's the real Cliff Claven, Like if Cliff Claven actually existed, he would be that guy. Oh that's a good call. He's very officious. He drives for Emerald and he really delights in keeping the DC caves in their place. He has a partner. But I don't know the other actors.

I've seen him in other things. Jim Moody. I believe it's Jim Moody. Okay, what was he? What else was he in? You know? You don't know. I remember him been something where he was very earnest and very nice, whereas as opposed to hear where he's very not very nice. Am Samudat Like when in his opening scene like makes fun of Man

Scales character makes fun of Harold because he was in Vietnam. He's he's singing the fucking Green Beret song at him, like taunting him, Like what In Dick, they're constantly trying to poach Marsha Warfield's character Ophelia away from DC Cab, Like they'll go to the equivalent of Marios in DC Cab where they go to have breakfast, and these two sort of slimy Emerald cabbies will come over and go when Ophelia, when are you gonna come over and drive for Emerald?

Get away from these suckers. And she is under a lot of stress because, as I kind of alluded to, Ophelia is constantly getting mugged by this one guy and a scheme, and it's taken her to the breaking point, and at least in one case she says she's gonna quit. I think that's the scene you were talking about fatherm alone, where yeah charms, Yeah, I still have a drink and talk about this. Harold is barely keeping

things together, trying to keep the garage afloat. They're constantly under pressure from the head of the hack bureau. He keeps trying to shut the garage down. The hack investigator, that's it. And the actor I didn't I don't have the actor's name, but he's also he's this little sort of diminutive guy with a mustache who's always trying to stick it to DC cab. Here's the thing, because now we're mentioning the antagonists of the piece, right, these

are the antagonists. Where they go in the third act of this fucking movie is absolutely bonkers. It's like, I know Joel Schumacher was totally sober at this point in his life, but what the fuck? Man. But up to this point, the plot makes sense. The garage is under thread of being closed down. There's cabvies that are threatening to quit. Things aren't going well, but Albert comes in and he's bringing this fresh enthusiasm. He's trying

to get the Caves to make something of themselves. Let me make a taxi crossover possibility here. Albert Hackenberry. If they had hired him instead of John Burns, Albert Hackenberry would have lasted five seasons. His name character. He's a rube right up from the South in the big city, trying to make it in the cab company or whatever, like whatever thing they would have given him. But this guy in that role, stick him in the taxi.

I think it'd work. The difference is he's a rube. But there's nothing childlike about Albert Hackenberry. He's very focused on what he wants to do. He's come to DC to make his way and it eventually he wants to break into the cab business, so you know, and he knows when he comes in he's got to be realistic. He's got to start from the bottom.

He's got to get his hack license. A big part of the movie is almost episodic, where he's driving with each and every one of these Caves and learning from them and getting their perspective and frankly, their perspective is usually about where to pick up women or how to do things the easy way instead of the right way, but that's the movie, being a comedy, what are

you gonna do? Eventually, good fortune smiles on Harold's garage as they find a rare violin that was left in one of the cabs, and the cash god so hacky, very hacky. The reward is ten thousand dollars, but Harold's greedy wife, Myrna, takes the reward money for herself, and all the cabbies are understandably upset by this. But Albert, being the good guy he is, puts up six thousand dollars of his own money with the stipulation that they reinvested in DC cab and they get some They fix up the cabs,

they get a new paint job on the garage and everything. Now now the thing of it is six thousand dollars. It's a lot of money, but it doesn't seem like the life changing amount of money today. So I did the research. In twenty twenty four dollars, six thousand dollars from eighty three is worth approximately eighteen thousand, five hundred and seventy nine dollars and thirty

four cents, which is a good amount of money. They could do something with that, certainly enough to fix up all the cabs and put up the sign and paint the bit like everything we see. That revitalizes the company. Yeah, definitely, imagine what's done with ten ten thousand dollars. I'm glad you asked. Would have been worth thirty thousand, nine hundred and sixty five dollars and fifty six cents, So that would have been crazy. They could

have had division advertising for that kind of money. That's true. But Albert, because he's that kind of guy, he's winning everybody over. He puts up his savings back into DC Cab and there's a great eighties montage of the garage getting fixed up. They're getting new fancy yellow satin jackets with DC calb on the back, with the satin jackets of the nineteen eighties. Man, it look great. They look like a gang. It was a fantastic sequence.

And they're finally are able to make payoffs so they can drive customers to the airport and it's great. They upgrade the garage and the fleet. Things are looking up for DC Cab, but mainly beyond that, Albert's using his youthful enthusiasm to motivate the Cabby's to make something of themselves. Even Samson takes his share of the reward and he upgrades his cab. I think it's supposed to be a Rolls Royce. It's a Rolls Royce cab kind of smashed together.

And he drives it to the neighborhood where the drug dealers parked, and of course all the kids now flock to Samson and he smiles because he's doing good work or whatever. Yeah, haven't mentioned the best feature of the car, which is a little bubble dome on top that says DC cab is shaped like the Capitol Building and it has a little airplane on a spindle that's spinning around the Capitol Building. All the rest of the gold filigree nonsense that he's

plastered all over the cab is unnecessary. All he needed was that plane. So things are looking up, like I said. But and here's where the third act comes in. Trouble strikes. Now this is DC, and one of Albert's roots is he has to drop off I think it's Tyrone's grandmother or aunt and cousin or something. He has to drop off two family members that

work at an embassy school or something. They're housekeepers at the embassy and nanny's and housekeepers and yeah, but we're never told what country they're from, because the kids speak perfect English. I assume maybe it's Canada. I don't know what country ambassadors children. Oh my god, I hate every part of this sequence. Through the movie, you see him dropping these housekeepers off, and these two little brats are always there, this boy and this girl, and

they're always there waiting with eggs to start pelting the cab. It doesn't make any sense. They're just kind of assholes. But one time, Albert's dropping off these ladies and the kids get kidnapped by John Diegel from Fumyvice. Like there's a Miami Vice connection here. I don't know if they're supposed to be radicals, because they seem like crazy radical type people, but I think they're

held for ransom. I think that's why. So they kid they kidnap the kids, and in the ensuing craziness, Albert gets kidnapped as well, and they get taken to some farmhouse. The police believe that Albert was involved in the kidnapping somehow. I don't know how they made that, because there's witnesses

to this kidnapping. Here's the tension here, Here's the plot of the movie, evidently, is that Albert gets kidnapped, he gets framed for the fucking kidnapping, and then these cavvies have to go save him while they're under suspicion. It's a mess, man, It is a mess because within this whole thing that's happening is because Albert is suspected of being in on it. They close down the garage so they're out of They've reached their wits end. No

one wants to They just want to give up. And it's mister t who rallies the troops with this patriotic speech that he makes. I think it's in front of the Lincoln Memorial or something. Id damn right, truth is Mark. He marshals the troops. They finally find where they're holding Albert, and it's actually kind of funny because all the cabs line up outside and through the whole movie, Harold has this bullhorn that he's using. I think it may

be another thing from Vietnam or whatever. When the kidnappers hear someone's outside and what the cabbys have done is they've all lined up. They have their headlights on so they can't see them, but somebody has found red and blue lights, so to the kidnappers it looks like they're surrounded by the cops. One of the cars has like pylons on top of it, like those are lights.

Okay, look. The third act is a mess, but there are some charms, including when he's talking to them through the bullharn I think Gary Busey says, tell him you're Batman's some funny interesting moments. There's even a part where at one point Albert escapes and gets to his the radio in his cab, but no one's in the garage because it's been shut down. But mister Rhythm intercepts the message and he's talking to mister Rhythm and he's saying, I don't know, I'm in a farmhouse, is a windmill, and I

see Bruce Lee. Mister Rhythm gets this message and then he meets up with the other cabbies and he says, yeah, Albert talked to him. He said he's here and he saw Bruce Lee. And they're all like, Bruce Lee, what are you talking about? So like one one group led by mister t finds a farmhouse with Bruce Lee l E I G H on a mailbox outside, and they're not sure. Look, this is the best part

of the entire sequence. These three idiots pulling up to this house where it says Bruce Lee l E I g H. And one of the barbarian brothers it says Bruce Legg. And then the family just kind of calmly eating their meal when the three of them crash in, one from the door and two from the win windows on either side, and they just look up and go

wrong house and then leave. That's a great sight. Gang. But eventually Tyrone, who's also looking for Albert, he realizes that there's a drive in screen, a movie screen not far from there from the farmhouse, and you see him. He's screening Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee, and you see on the screen. I don't know what. I don't think it's a real Bruce Lee movie. It's absolutely not a movie. They realize that the farmhouse is in view of a drive in cinema not far so anyway, craziness, Hi,

Jenks and Sue. They end up rescuing Albert. It's a high speed chase. They pull him through the window and the van that he's being held, and eventually they rescue them, the kidnappers get arrested, everyone figures out what was really happening, and the movie ends with it's a literal ticker tape parade in DC to honor DC CAB, not the original thing. I understand if you notice the Barbarian brothers through the whole movie, I have beard,

but for this parade they are clean shaven. And it's my understanding that there's some parts of the movie that either weren't filmed or are missing that explain why they're all of a sudden clean shaven. But that might go towards what you're describing. Yes, Evidently, the original ending of the movie took place at the White House where Irene Kara is performing and has invited Tyrone, who invites

the rest of DC CAB, and that was the sequence. So it was her performing the title song while they're all there together, and that's the end. And then they decided they wanted something more dynamic after the movie had been already shot, so when they got back, the Barbarian brothers were clean shaven, and there's nothing they could do about that. That makes sense, I should mention we didn't talk about this. We'll talk about the soundtrack in a

minute, but you did mention Irene Kara. Irene Kara, who at the time was red hot. She had done a bunch of movie soundtracks. She won an Oscar for the theme to Flash Dance. I think she was the star of Fame Man. That's true. She was super popular and she was really she had all kinds of songs on the charts. She appears in the movie as herself. The character of Tyrone is obsessed with Irene Kara and ends up picking her up, taking her to her hotel. And I guess to

your point, they have made a connection. Maybe she would have invited them to the because she says, I'm singing at the White House. But nothing else becomes of it on the cutting room floor, like the famed ending of the Shining was it film? Though, I guess it might be okay. There is a still. I haven't seen any footage of it, but there is a still of Irene Karen and like kind of a red dress performing that's attributed to the film. Was a promotional shot that was released. That makes

sense. Actually, while we're talking about Irene Carra, we might as well talk a little bit about the soundtrack. The soundtrack for DC CAB was by Giorgio Moroder, who really was on a remarkable movie soundtrack run of his own. At this point. He had done Flash Dance, Cat People, Never Ending Story, Top Gun. They all either were spearheaded by Moroder or heavily featured his contributions Electric Dreams. Also, he did My God Forever in Electric

Dreams. Yeah, I just heard that the other day. It's Crazy danger Zone, La Model's Never Ending Story. What a feeling. These are monster soundtrack hits. Soundtracks were routinely in the top ten of the charts. All mery man, Georgio Moroder did that. Yeah, Yeah, call me from the Richard American Jigglow movie. Yes. In addition to his contributions to electronic music in general, he was super hot as a soundtrack producer. We're always

in good hands, Georgijomroder's name and the credits you know. In fact, when the when his credit came up here, I was like, I lost my mind. I was like, oh, what a treat. I had no idea, I will say, aside from the songs that are recorded for the soundtrack, like you have like El DeBarge does a song and a few other bands, but the instrumental music, I don't know about you. I found it really really shrill and kind of annoying. There's a lot of like

did like as cars are racing around. That was a little much. I think it's totally in keeping with how bullshit the fucking ending was. The lead single for DC CAB was a song called The Dream subtitled hold On to Your Dream. This was Irene Kara singing this was their big supposed to be their big hit, and I remember it being on MTV a lot because I recognized the song. But apparently it peaked at number thirty seven on the Billboard Hot

one hundred. It didn't really make much of an impact. I think this might have been the beginning of the end of Irene Kara and Georgio Moroder's dominance of the soundtrack sort of charts. You know, it's weird and electric dreams. On that soundtrack, there's a song called the Dream Boy George performs, Yeah. It's just so when I hear the Dream I automatically think of that, which is also tied to Georgia a Moroner. That's just an odd coincidence.

I really really liked the Electric Dreams soundtrack. I remember at the time watching that movie, and that's a fantastic sequence. There's a sequence where the computer, I think the guide brought the computer so it would design an earthquake proof brick. Yes, And while the computer is working on this brick, that song the Dream by Boy George is playing. It's a wonderfully mellow kind of ethereal song. It's beautiful. It's a gorgeous sequence, and it's the

best part of that movie. Honestly. I mean, look, there are the charms in that film, like Bud Court clearly is just so wonderful. He's tremendous. Yeah, that sequence in particular, I agree, it is just a delight. So that's the movie in a nutshell. Like I said, we've covered the actors and everything else, and I have to say coming into it, we're not going to rate this as we would that there's no

yellow lights here. We didn't talk a little mentioned some things that I enjoyed about the movie, So I've given I've talked a lot about the nuts and bolts of the movie, but let's get into some other things funable and what else did you come up with? In your research. No, no research at all. This is just something I liked about the movie because there's a this is an ensemble movie, and I really liked hanging around with them. That I will say that it feels like and this is obviously not the case.

This was written as a feature film originally, Liberty Cab. I did research that was that was the original title, and I got to read a couple of the early pages of the script, only a little sample. I give them credit for setting this movie in Washington, because it was It would have been so easy just to say that this was taking place in New York,

because all you need is basically an inner city, right right. But having said that, despite the fact that I think it's cool that they went with a different type of setting, aside from the fact that these kids that are kidnapped are children of ambassadors, it doesn't really figure you're in You could very easily have said this is in New York and no one would have batted an eyelish. There's nothing unique about this. I disagree with you on that.

I like that it's set in DC, and I like seeing all of this the sort of regular landmarks, but then a lot of these sort of local landmarks that you would seek out if you were there. I think they use those neighborhoods pretty spectacularly. And the point I was making earlier about the screenplay is that because the Thurn Act is so goddamn jarring, what it feels like is a pilot in a first episode, but we never got a resolution

to the pilot before we got this second crazy plot. You know, like this seems like, if anything, it could have been the sequel plot, like had this movie been a hit, where we're just dealing with the Cabby's and whatever little problem they've come up with that the Hack Investigator or the Emerald Cab Company, like some sort of it's just so ooh. I'm sorry. I don't mean to keep returning to it, but here's something I did like.

The sense of camaraderie and these characters is really infection, including this game that they all play with each other, the sort of hide and seek where they're all dressed in masks, hunting a particular mark for the night and while all the time playing the Mission Impossible theme on their shitty tape decks in their cabs and singing along to it and then singing over the mic to the point where they can't, like the dispatcher can't even find a cab to go pick

up an actual customer that I loved. I was thinking about this as I was watching this movie This Now. We saw this when we were super young, and there were a lot of movies like this where it's like in us against Them type of thing where you have a tightly knit group of people working somewhere or friends like Revenge of the Nerds, they're all in the same frat, and this kind of in a weird way, this kind of warped my thinking of what it was going to be like once I got a job later

in life. Like in my mind, like wherever I worked, I was going to be part of a crazy band of people. We're all going to love each other and support each other. And I had this impression that I was going to be best buddies with everybody that I ever worked with wherever I decided to work, and that's obviously I learned later that's not the case. But this movie conveys that idea very well. These are very different characters, but you can tell they all love each other, they support each other,

and there's something spectacular about in nineteen eighty three. The diversity on screen here that is true. It's never even really discussed as being odd or progressive. They're just all friends and they don't care. There's like the Rasta guy, there's the Gary Busey, crazy white guy. There's but they don't really call out their differences in any interesting way. They all go to this like at one point, all the cabbys go to like a male strip club to try

and pick up women. They don't care. They're just going to have a good time. The only person that gets excluded is Albert because he's the odd man out, he's the new guy. And there's also we didn't actually mention there's this subplot involving this waitress at or this girl who works at a restaurant, the Cabby Jill Scholin. I think her, I don't what's what's her name, Claudette. Her name is Claudette, and Albert is it's love at

first sight. Albert is struck with love, but dumb her aunt, her controlling aunt, who runs the coffee shop, will not let her deal to date any cabby, and she's right to do that. God. They're also gross and crazy. They're constantly getting into fights and jumping out windows in this fucking diner, standing on tables and yelling at each other, like I wouldn't

let her date them either. A bunch. She has conditions that someday someone's going to walk through that door with flowers and chocolates and some other gifts and going to ask properly, and Albert fucking does it, man, And that box of chocolates look delicious, and I want to look through that book of Great Homes of the South. Albert is a good guy. He's fucking charming in this movie. Like, I really like Albert Hawckenberry. I wanted to

be friends with Albert Hackenberry. He was so good. In My Bodyguard, he plays Linderman, the scary character in the school where Clifford Peach is getting bullied and Clifford Peach realizes he better hire his own bodyguard to keep the bullies away, and Linderman, being the scariest dude in the school, played by Adam Baldwin, is hired and through the course of the movie, Clifford and Linderman they really they become friends, and he learns about Linderman and why he

is the way he is. He was really good in it. It's a total one to eighty from Albert Hackenberry. He has to be sullen and depressed and angry, and these are I don't think any of those adjectives would describe Albert Hackenberry in the least. I watched Full Mental Jacket last night. I haven't seen it in twenty years. Yeah, I mean neither, Yeah, a long time. He's terrified in the movie. He's really good. His opening scene, the cadence with which he's speaking to Joker when he first meets

him, this sort of weird, laconic, threatening but soft. It's really off putting, like he throws you way off kilter. And that follows through the rest of the movie. Man like, it just gets more aggressive and horrifying. As I said, it's a masterpiece anyway. But he is really good in it. Everything I've seen him and I didn't granted I didn't watch Firefly. I didn't watch and I understand that he's like a cult favorite from

that TV show is a lot of the anc He's a solid performer. I've never seen a bad performance by the guy, but he's really good in this. There's no subterfuge with Albert. He genuinely wants to succeed and take everybody with him. They all eventually because he comes in and they're all they'll ignore him. They all give him the cold shoulder, like, nah, you

can't drive with me. But they see what an earnest, hard working guy that he is, and he nuinely wants the company to succeed that he wins them over, even Tyrone, Like Tyrone is the hardest nut for Albert to crack. Everybody else eventually comes around, but Tyrone just there's something about Tyrone and that character that you learn that he I think he went to college, but he realized that he couldn't make it because the cards were stacked against him,

and he just decided to become this crazy guy. But Albert doesn't care. Albert's just trying to make something of himself, and they eventually become friends, and Tyrone is the one who leads the charge effectively to find Albert when he's been kidnapped. I have to say, Charlie Barnett, we've talked a lot about his sad history. He's really good in this as well. He's really funny. He's not only really funny, he's good in the dramatic moments

too. He's solid throughout this entire movie, Like, I don't know why he didn't just blow up immediately. It sounds like he had already inked a three picture deal with a paramounter, one of these companies. I just don't know what became of it. Was he just too crazy that maybe people didn't want to work with him, or I don't know, But I do wish that Dave Chappelle's movie Bilepick of Charlie Barnett had gotten off the ground, because

I think there's a really great story there. There's a tremendous what might have been with this guy. Imagine if he had if he had gone on to start him on SNL, he might have for all we know, he might have still flamed out. He might still have not amounted to anything. But we'll never know. One of the casualties in that season, most of that

cast got fired immediately. I don't know. It's heartbreaking to see somebody who has such a prodigious talent and to hear what a sad end he came to was was really a bummer because he's so vital and so exciting in this You've got the sense that he was making the most of this opportunity in this movie because this was his first movie. Everybody really is for what the movie is.

They're good and looking at this as kind of a hangout movie. It's not really a hangout movie, but you do, you know, these are affable, funny characters that you would like to spend some time with. They're always doing crazy things. Like you said, they're playing this sort of fox Hunt game at the beginning where they're chasing each other in cabs and wearing masks, and I love it a fucking blast. Yeah, it looks really really fun. I want to play the game that dell At wants to play.

You take a beer bottle and you spin it, spin the bottle, and then whoever gets that has to take it and they shake it up. They shake it up a real and then they put it right next to their face. You know, I don't think that's in the script. I think that's just Gary Busey bring in that. You know, That's the thing. We have the benefit of forty years of Gary Busey antics to look back on,

And honestly, I wasn't kidding when I said that. It seems like he's essentially playing himself in this which is funny because he's had other parts like he was in Like, I can't say that about Point Break. He was fine important Break as the cop in this one. It just feels like that's who he is, based on seeing him in the public eye over the past twenty twenty five years or so. You know, it's not a stretch. I

could see that being something that wasn't written. Maybe Schumacher's like, hey, remember that story you were telling me Gary about you know what you used to do with the kids in the neighborhood. Whenn'd you throw that into the scene. I guarantee you it emanated from mister Bussey in some way. I might be wrong. Somebody will pull up the script and tell me I'm wrong.

But there's weird stuff. At one point, Albert's having a conversation with somebody and he looks in the bathroom and Dell is on his back in one of the stalls, and Albert goes like, well, what are you doing in there? And he goes, ah, I'm doing some intestinal yoga. He's a fucking lunatic. You know, what's the only thing wrong with oral sex? The view? It's good, it's good I'm recommending this movie. There's a lot of problematic Huber in this movie, a lot of a lot of

juvenile nonsense. There's a lot of fucking funny stuff too, Gary Busey front and center. Yeah, it's not unlike a movie like forty eight Hours, where a lot of people have contended that you couldn't make a forty eight Hours movie now because it's just so good. The way that Eddie Murphy's character is treated in the language is just so offensive. Now, you couldn't make it now because it's not now. That movie isn't now that it's of its time.

I look at these movies and yeah, I WinCE when I hear people say some of the stuff they're saying. But at the same time, that was nineteen eighty three, and so yes, you could not make DC Cab now. You could not make forty eight Hours. Now you could. You just would make it with the today's sensibilities, and that would be fine. There's some not necessarily precient stuff, but just like as a wake up call,

like how long this has been going on? When Albert and Tyrone like make their way back to the cab company with the fucking thief who's been pestering Marshall Warfield the entire time. When Tyrone gets the gun from the guy, they pull up to the cap, the cops grab Tyrone and wrestle him to the ground like he's the guy, and he's like that he's not the and he's just like, yeah, of course they're going to attack me. He says that. He literally says that I'm here with the gun, of course

they're going to tackle me. And that's kind of that's really sad that here we are forty years later and that's not only is that still happening, but it's no much worse now. At least everyone's woken up to it. Like there, it was like a punchline. I think to alter or censor something like this to make it more palatable to modern audiences, I think is to run the risk that you're going to forget that these things were problematic in the

first place. I'd rather go into it. And I'm not even suggesting you put on like I know some movies have a little lead card that says we regret some of the language. Look, but it was fucking forty years ago and everyone was an idiot out in the open. I think people should understand that this is nice. Eighty three things were different. Dell is there to let you know that the cops are lace and the bullets PCP. That way,

it looked like you were on drugs the whole time. I didn't realize how much of DC Cab is almost episodic, because a lot of it is just Albert going on rides with the various cavies and getting into sort of strange almost like encapsulated adventures. He goes with Dell and they drive a stripper to a topless club and the stripper stiffs them, so then Albert has to go in and try and get the money and he gets kicked out. Then Dell has to go in and he it's funny because he goes in there and he

rips off the bottom of one of the waitress that stiffed him. I don't know if you noticed this, but so he runs out. What else does he grab? He grabs like a handful of fruits. Right, well, look he runs out, he grabs the bikini bottoms. Yeah you don't see it, but he dives into the cab and he's holding this little white statue and it's really funny. Magic of Gary. It sounds like we're describing as

like an outrageous comedy, and there are certain elements of that. It's pretty grounded for a lot of it. There's a charm to a lot of it. And like I said, a big part of that is due I think to the direction, and I think Max Gale adds a nice vibe to the picture. Adam Baldwin his characters is great. We haven't talked about the cinematography, and for this I want to see the floor because I'm sure you have a lot to say about the director of photography. No, who's the director

of photography? Are you kidding me? No? This is one of the dingiest, dirtiest depictions of DC that you'll ever see. Every cab it feels like there's a funk inside of every cab. It's dirty. There's like soot over everything. You can practically smell it all over the garage. But worth noting is the DP of this picture was Dean Coundy. Oh my god.

Yeah, I'm so sorry. I feel like covered in shame here. Like, yeah, I did notice in the credits like this, I got so marvel I was marveling at like each credit after another that Yeah, it slipped my mind. Shame on me, because it is a spectacularly well shot movie. You're right, yeah, like nobody can shoot grime like Dean Coundy to make it look cinematic and beautiful and authentic at the same time, Like how do you make grime look wonderful? It came back to Escape from New York,

which I would say is similarly. I mean, we know that was not that was shot in Saint Louis, right, Yeah, And it looks and feels so authentically urban and dirty. I know a good portion of DC Cab was shot on location, but I also know that a lot of it was shot in Los Angeles. I couldn't tell you which parts, probably some

of the interiors, but there's a gravitas to the it's shot. I'll give you another example when where we're talking about Harold's house where Albert is staying, all you ever see is really just like it's like the living room where Albert is just sleeping on the couch. But it looks so real to me. It's sort of dirty. There's a part of the wall where the studs are exposed. You really, it just it looks like a lived in crap house in you know, in the middle of the city somewhere. I'm now thinking

of like three different Dean Coundie movies where he shot night scenes. So Escape from New York, which is so spectacular and like bright in a way, like all of those streets are like very well lit but realistic. And then we have this movie, and then we also have Back to the Future, which features a bunch of night scenes. Each of them are so delicate and

wonderful and perfect and of the movie. Like I couldn't necessarily say that that's Kundy's style on each of those movies because they're so well suited to each of the films. He's fucking fantastic, man, Like, why is he not more well sung? I mean, I don't know what his If he's won any Academy awards, I would hope so, But if not, at least he should be up for like a Lifetime Achievement Award purely for his work with John Carpenter of nothing else. Ay man, he shot the Thing and Roller

Boogie. You know what I'm saying. He's fucking fantastic, Like I don't we should start a Cundy cast. We were talking about Back to the Future. That's it. Couldn't be more different than the Thing or Escape from New York, but it serves the picture so perfectly, and I would say the

same thing is true for DC Cab. It seems silly to be delving into the aesthetics of a silly movie from the eighties, but damn if it doesn't look really, really good and it feels authentic, right, Absolutely, More often than not we run into these set bound things and the lighting is inelegant, and that's never the case with Dean Gundy. He can make anything look like you're in a real space, and not just some sets somewhere. He shot fucking who frame around your Rabbit Man. He made it seem like I

felt transported to nineteen forties Los Angeles. It never felt unreal to me. They were fucking cartoon characters, right, the man that was a magician with light and with sets and with everything it was. Let me think about this for a minute now. In terms of time frame, DC Cab, that was certainly after the Fog and after Escape from New York, So it's not as if he wasn't already an established in well respected DP. So I think it's actually kind of marvelous that he would do like a movie like dc CA.

I mean, I'm sure it's a job and he likes to get paid, but it's not like he coasted on his abilities. It looked and felt great. Whatever the other shortcomings of the movie are. I looked and was shot beautifully. Clearly, here's a man who just likes to shoot movies and fucking does not matter the genre or the budget. If he's interested, he's gonna go, and thank god he did for so many many of my favorite

movies of all time. I came into rewatching this movie and I feel like I've said similar things in our taxi discussions, but I came in thinking, ah, you know, I'm sure this is just going to be a juvenile thing that I fondly remembered as a kid. But maybe he doesn't hold up,

and there's certainly aspects of that. I'm not going to sit here and say that this is like a Citizen Kane of the eighties, but I will say, and we started to mention this a little earlier, is if you can see past some of the more juvenile and offensive bits of this movie, there is a charm and the cast is wonderful. They're all young, and some of them really surprisingly good for based on what they've done after the fact. I was charmed by this movie in a way that I wasn't expecting to

be. And I don't think that was just purely nostalgia. I think looked at on its own merits, I think it was actually kind of a successful movie for what it wanted to be. What did you think faught them alone? Yeah, I agree one hundred percent. I knew even as a child there are portions of this movie that were ridiculously juvenile, sub animal house,

like let's shock the audience because that's what they like. But there's also, like you and I have spoken on a Christasher's podcast of a culture cast about the film Heaven Help Us, similar kind of thing where there's a sweet movie in there and then it's kind of surrounded by Porky's like humor because that was the style of the time, and this film suffers a lot from that.

But there is a very nice human drama going on here between Max Gale and Adam Baldwin and just I don't know that there's a comfortableness with this film, Like there's a nice it's got a nice hangout vibe. Yeah, that's what I was alluding to earlier. It is it's fun to spend time in this garage with these characters, some of them off the wall, but it is fun that they felt like they had to, like there had to be a

plot at some point, Like we really didn't need it the movie. The problem is the actual ending to the movie is the end of the second act when Albert gives them all the money and they revitalized the cab company. That should have been the fun finale, Like, I don't know why they decided they needed to have intrigue. You said it, it really went off the rails when you have when you introduce these ambassadors kids and Albert getting kidnapped and

now it becomes a race to save Albert. It didn't need that. That to me, in a movie that isn't all that realistic necessarily to begin with. This just takes it that unreality to a whole other level, which I don't think it really. The spectacle of them driving down whatever street in Washington, DC as they're throwing a ticker tape parade for them was so unbelievable to

me and so silly. But even despite that, there's one moment where the hack inspector whatever his name is, gives Harold the plaque, and he picks up the plaque and he kind of shows it around. I don't know, it felt real to me. It felt like, wow, you know, this is how somebody who gets an award would re I don't know. In the midst of all of this story of man scale man, he's so good,

like he's so good. I confess I didn't watch a lot of Barney Miller as a kid, because if it wasn't it wasn't an action packed thrill a minute. It seemed boring an adult to me. And there's really nothing action packed about your average episode of Barney Miller, like a bunch of the built world wordplay like who Cares? Right, No, But it's been so highly touted as a good show and the actors is absolutely a great show. It's just not for ten year olds, right. And I could say the

same thing for Taxi. When I was a little kid, I remember it would come on just as I was getting ready to go to bed to get ready for school the next day. And there was a time where if I heard that end theme of Taxi or heard the start of the mash theme, I got this stomach of melancholy. Yeah, because you knew it's time for bed, it's I'm going to wake up and it's going to be school again tomorrow. So there was a time when that was anesthetical to fun for me.

But maybe I should go back and watch Barney Miller and catch up on hol Linden and the rest of the group. You know, Steve Landisburg, wasn't he in that? Sure was he was Steve. That's right, Fish, he was in it. You know ours over at weirding Way Media have a Shabby Detective podcast about this. No, that's the Columbo podcast. That's Colombo. Have a Barney Miller they do. Oh okay, I will have to consider checking that out again if it's not already clear for whatever passes for

yellow lights in this particular episode, we're giving DC caaba recommendation. He should definitely check it out. It's got nothing to do with Taxi the TV series, of course, but as an adjacent depiction of the Cabby lifestyle, it was pretty good between seasons. So we're doing taxi things. We might do a taxi driver who knows. I think that I'll do it for this particular special episode of Night mister Walters follow alone. When you're not discussing obscure eighties

comedies, where can people find you? You can hear me over at weirding Way Media. I host a show called Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology podcast with Mike White and Chris Dashu, where we discuss, well, we're now starting to discuss tannels from the dark Side. We've got our first Taisman Dark Side episode coming up where we have an interview with Robert Drape who's the director of photography for like sixteen episodes. And that's where you can find me over

at the Midnight Viewing. I am also proud to be part of the weirding Way Media network. You can hear me on the Noise Junkies podcast with myself, Father Malone, and Mondo Heather's Heather Drain. You can also hear I've done a few things here and there for Father Malone's Dark Destinations podcast, which I would encourage you to check out if you love great audio drama. I have a band campsite hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com if you want to check that

out as well, I'd appreciate it. But otherwise, thank you so much for listening. Please feel free to subscribe to the podcast, write a review, rate us. We would love to hear from you and any manner that you choose. For myself and for Father Malone. Thanks again and we will see you again next time. Ni