¶ Introduction to John Wick
While John wasn't exactly the boogeyman, he was the one you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman. John is a man of focus, commitment, sheer will. I once saw him kill three men in a bar with a pencil. A fucking pencil. End quote. Like, so, you know, if these two are not praise of the killer speeches, I don't know what is. Right. Right?
¶ Hosts and Drinks
You're listening to the Silver Screen Happy Hour. I'm Chris Wiegand along with my brother Jerome.
Still here.
He's a couple of shots and a beer in now. So uh, what movies are we talking about?
Really good whiskey. Let me tell you, really good whiskey.
¶ Episode Theme and Movie Discussion
So this is the second episode. This is the part two of our Wick Unforgiven episode, where we we did Unforgiven in the first episode and we're doing John Wick now. The theme of these two episodes is Are the uh, I was once a killer sort of mentality. So again, if you have not listened to the unforgiven episode, it sets up this one. So you should go back and listen to that one first.
So uh, really quick, what are we drinking? What movies are we doing? What are we doing here?
So, so we're doing Unforgiven and John Wick. Now, in the previous episode, I talked about, well, you go first. Go ahead.
Just drinking some whiskey. Don't mind me.
Alright, so, So, you, but you didn't say what you were drinking there.
I just went for some Jameson. Just what I had in the house. Yeah, it's a very nice whiskey. Very nice. Um, Probably should have went with old American whiskey or like you. Okay, you actually,
thank you for the lead in. So as mentioned in the previous episode, my neighbor, Eric, for my 49th birthday, which was just last week, got me this bottle of Blanton's. Original single barrel bourbon whiskey, and it's in a little round bottle, and it is literally the same bottle that's in the movie John wick when he's got the doctor in his room and stitching him up and he's drinking the whiskey. So thank you to Eric again. I gave him a shout out in the previous episode.
I already had this couple of these and my ice is melted now. But that's fine. I have my lightsabers here, my Mic ultra talls, but you know what? Just because I'm that kind of guy. We're going to do another small one here.
Do a small one. We got, we got to get through this second podcast.
Neat. No ice. And yeah, see this is, it's not much, it's, it's just a little bit there. And again, we're going to get fucked up. We're going to get fucked up. Hey man, as I said, the previous episode, these are two really fun movies to watch. All right. Now I say fun for a reason and not, these are both really great movies. You're going to find I have way more problems with John Wick than I had with Unforgiven.
With the script or what? With the script.
Now the structure is fine. But I just find and again I've forgiven these. plot holes with stuff like Star Wars. If I like a movie, I'll forgive the plot holes, but there is a shitload of problems I have with this movie, but we'll get to it when it comes. For all you John Wick super fans, don't get mad. It's just a movie. Uh, We all love Keanu. I love him too. Let's move on.
¶ John Wick Movie Specs
All right. Specs. John Wick 2014 directed by Chad Stahelski. Stahelski, written by Derek Kolstad. Both have made their careers, by the way, on the fuckin John Wick franchise. Stahelski's only directing credits are the four John Wick films. Wow. And Kolstad also wrote all four films, as well as TV spinoffs and video games that are all related to John Wick.
Wow. He has other writing credits, but it, I mean, it's, I think it's safe to say that there's a special place in these guys' hearts for this franchise. Running time is one hour, 41 minutes with a budget of $20 million. It was released on October 24th, 2014, and only made roughly 43. I'm sorry. Yeah, $43 million domestic, which.
Disappointing 79th place well behind movies like Muppets most wanted and horrible bosses, too However, it did beat out The Expendables 3 and Anchorman 2 So if you haven't caught on yet to how what kind of a year 2014 was, it was the year of the franchises and sequels. The top, here's the top five movies of the year. I'm going to, I'm going to do them in reverse order and you'll see it's loaded with franchises. Five. Transformers Age of Extinction.
That's actually the fourth movie in that franchise. It was the fifth grossing movie of the year. Number four, The Lego Movie, which was the first, but it's the Lego brand, you know. We already knew the Lego brand. Three, Captain America The Winter Soldier. It's a Marvel movie. We all know that. It might have been the tenth Marvel movie made by that point. 2, the number 2 movie of the year, Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1, which is actually the third film in that series.
And the number 1 movie of the year 2014, can you guess?
I don't know, what?
Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh, So now in all fairness, the guardians of the galaxy was the first movie. It's volume one. But it's still under the Marvel tag, you know what I mean? So it's still part of the Marvel list of 20 some movies that led to end game. Those were the five top grossing movies of the year. So John wick wasn't a franchise yet. It was the first movie. People probably looked at it as, Oh, it's another taken or it's another born identity or whatever.
I mean, here we are four movies later, you know, and you could, you could call John wick a pretty successful franchise.
¶ John Wick's Popularity and Trivia
I have some trivia, I have some trivia. It's not scientific trivia or anything. It's just something I know from my son actually. So like, I know like John wick gained in popularity after it came out. In part a lot of the videos of Keanu Reeves training. That came out on YouTube for the movie. My son, he kept showing me all these videos. And then finally he just said, all right, we're going to watch the movie.
So he, I, he came over, I bought the movie and that was, so that was my first experience with the movie. I know you're going to ask me that.
Wait, yeah, we're not there yet, but, but I was, but a lot of, a lot
of, a lot of people got turned on to the movie because they realized like from these videos that went viral of. Training for the movie. The shooting ranges and stuff and how he handles a gun. He's like one of the most well trained, you know, actors of, you know, with firearms in Hollywood because of this film. And that, and the Matrix, I should say, because he, that's where that, I think that really kicked off his training in this type of stuff.
But he, he went over, he did some overtime training for this.
Absolutely. In fact, one of the other trivia points, I don't think I even wrote this down. Absolutely. He did 90 percent of his own stunts in this movie. And and like you said, I was going to say this film got dwarfed by the giants.
That year as far as the franchise films, but this did become it like you said a cult following There was a cult following to this film much like how Terminator didn't do that huge at the box office But once it hit video, right all of a sudden it blew up right and then t2 was the most anticipated sequel Maybe in history at that time, right? Except for maybe Empire Strikes Back. Maybe t2 is huge. But anyway,
yeah
So so yeah, a lot of love for Keanu and again, Keanu had a time where after he got out of the 80s and he was in the 90s, he had films that were action films, but I want to say, I'm going to say this as delicately as possible uh, they were mocked more than they were loved, you know, like movies like Johnny Mnemonic, Speed, Speed, You know, whatever.
Like there's enough C4 to put a hole in the world,
put a hole in the world. Take my hand. The elevator is going to fall. Come on. You know, like, like just nobody was buying. Keanu then, but then a weird thing happened. He got older and he's hair grew out and he has a beard. And he went on talk shows where he said. mystical things and people were like, is this like Joaquin Phoenix described, you know, like this dressed up as Keanu Reeves. Like he started saying like things, people just started to love him. You know what I mean?
And he started to get this following where people loved Keanu Reeves again. And then John wick comes out. And his fucking dog gets killed! And it's like, I have to love Keanu Reeves now! And, and, and that, I, I have, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the strength of these four movies all started with this dog. Yeah. Like, I mean, You Harm a Dog, Fuck you.
What do they call that in filmmaking? Where you do something to give sympathy to the
Well, you mean the save the cat moment? Save the cat! Yeah, it's basically a save the cat thing, right? So again, our podcasts are laced after Blake Snyder and his trilogy of books. About the Blake Snedder Beat Sheet and the Save the Cat books. Yeah.
How do you get sympathy for an assassin? Kill his dog. Kill his dog? That his dead wife gave him.
Oh my god. Fuck. Now, we're going to get to that. Now, I was going to say, okay, it garnered zero Academy Award nominations. But, it did win the biggest surprise of the year award at the Golden Schmoes Award. Golden Schmoes? I'd learned about it today when I looked up the trivia. Okay this movie stars Keanu Reeves as John Wick, Michael Nyquist as Viggo Tarasov, Elfie Allen as Iosef Tarasov, his son Game of Thrones fans would know him. He has a long running in that series as Theon Greyjoy.
Willem Dafoe as Marcus, John Leguizamo as Aurelio, and Ian McShane as Winston. Also, Dean Winters, known as Mayhem in the long running Allstate insurance commercials. Plays Vigo's number two. His name's Avi, and Adrian Pilecki as Perkins, another assassin.
¶ John Wick's Plot and Character Analysis
All right, so when did you first see this movie? Now you can tell your story.
Yeah, I don't remember the year. What year did this come out? 14? This was 2014. So it came, I mean, I saw it, Several years after it came out, cause I didn't see it at the theater, and I, I bought the, I bought it on Amazon and watched it with my son at our house. So, and we, I remember, gosh, it was probably, I want to say 2018, maybe, something like that. 2018.
About four years after? Yeah,
four years. So I didn't watch any of them until, And you know, I just, just wasn't on my radar. and my son joined the army in 2018. So it was right around that time. I think maybe right before he went in maybe that's when he had me watch it, something like that. But he's always been into firearms and, you know, we used to do boy scouts and stuff. So he was always really good at that. You know, doing the shooting competitions and stuff.
And of course, when he got into the army he just continued that passion, with firearms and, and he actually paints his own guns. Some pretty custom paint jobs on some of these guns now. Really, really gets into it. Anyways, that was my experience with this. I'm guessing it was around 2018, somewhere in there.
So, guess when I first watched John Wick?
When?
About three weeks ago. Seriously? First time ever. It was one of those, we talked about this with Hugo.
It's unusual, usually it's me that hasn't seen the movie.
Yeah, this one just slipped through the cracks. Now, I had heard of it, obviously. I'm very much aware of John Wick. And I know it's not but I think with the saturation I felt of the Bourne movies and the Taken movies I just felt it was just the same of all those and if I've seen one I've seen them all and I just never I just didn't go to the theater I didn't see any I haven't seen any of the other sequels by the way,
right?
And then three weeks ago. I was like I saw it on streaming and I was like, ah, fuck it. So I watched it and after I watched it, that's when I text you and said we should do John wick versus Unforgiven. So then I watched it two more times to prepare for the podcast. So in all I've seen it three times and three times in three weeks. And that's my experience with the movie. That's it. All right, log me.
All right. This is a long one. An ex hit man comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters who killed his dog and stole his car.
Okay. So I don't know if you remember, I text you that we're going to do an exercise. Do you have your piece of paper and pen? Okay. I want you to write this. Did you already write it down? Yeah. Okay. You wrote down the log line, right? Yeah. Okay. Now grab your pen.
Yeah.
Okay. I want you to cross out the word gangsters. And right above it, write, Cowboys. Now, I want you to scratch out, Killed his dog and stole his car. And above it, write, Cut up a prostitute. And now read me the logline.
Okay. An ex hitman comes out of retirement to track down the cowboys who cut up a prostitute. Same movie.
Sound familiar? Sound familiar?
I know, right? Yeah. I kind of knew you were going to do that. I had a feeling. I mean, you know.
So, but again, but there's a reason why there's a million of these. The Bourne movies, the Taken movies, the Wick movies, Unforgiven. You There's a reason why we love this shit and they still make money. And all you got to do is say you could write the same fucking movie, just change it a little bit. And there's a reason why audiences will flock to it. We love this shit.
Yeah. Right. They did something really cool and you're probably going to get into it as you as you start breaking down the script But in this movie, they did something really cool with dialogue Like they they tell you so much without saying anything or saying very little
My god, I love the dialogue.
Yeah, they just say there's a little line and you're like, oh
Now do you remember when we did Oppenheimer? And I was like, Jesus Christ, like every line of dialogue is like a legendary line of dialogue. Like there's so many great lines in that movie. I might have problems with some plot holes in this movie, but God damn, I love the lines of dialogue. They are really spot on.
Well, it informs the viewer so much about this character, John Wick, without really saying much. Just the reaction of people.
Don't, don't, don't spill it. I got a whole segment on that. All right, let's go. All right. All right. Side note on this former killer thing that we talked about with Unforgiven. So with that similar of a log line that we just did the exercise on right? We can transition to what we talked about earlier as the similarities and differences done forgiven. There's a lot less spiritual regret of the past from John wick.
That William Money had he doesn't have these hauntings of his sins gone by thing and, you know, for John Wick, it's almost like he's finally tasting water after crawling through a desert for years. You know what I mean? Like, he's welcoming this return. William Money. Yeah. You know what I mean? Those are the, that's the biggest difference between these two.
¶ Script Issues and Key Scenes
So, okay, issues with the script. I, I'm saving most of these for later. I, I just have to say that I did enjoy this movie. I enjoyed it very much. I love the dialogue. Some of the sins of this movie are glaringly obvious. And, and probably could have made the film a bigger hit if they were addressed. But, I'm not, I'm we'll get to it when it comes. Okay, we have. The beats. Opening image. Slow driving, beat up car slowly crashes into building.
John Wick exits the vehicle bloodied and seemingly close to death. In media res, right? We talked about that in the Fargo episode. The story has already started and we're coming in halfway through. Actually, this is a fake in media res because they just took something that happens later and they edited it to show it at the beginning just to give the the crowd a little a little morsel of what might come. So I guess it's technically not in Meteor ez. But it immediately goes into the setup.
An alarm goes off, John wakes up on the day of his wife's funeral. We see this brief relationship, highs and lows through flashback montage, right? Um, Mm hmm. Who is it? Bridget Monaghan, I think plays his, his wife in flashback. A fairly big name actress. And she does the, this, I wouldn't say a courtesy bit. Yeah. I'll be in your movie for two minutes where you just show me in flashback and I have to do very literally zero acting. But anyway, it's, it's nice to see her again.
She's been in a lot of movies. It was fun that she played the wife. The image of the daisy starts making its appearance. It was a favorite of the wife's. It's on her coffee mug. It's on her bracelet. It's everywhere and it's a constant reminder of her. Uh, We get to the funeral and we meet Marcus. And it's established that John has known Marcus for a long time and he's a friend. While not necessarily Played by
Willem Dafoe.
Willem Dafoe, yeah. Now, not Did I miss that? Oh, no, I said that part. I meant that. And by the way, for anyone that's listening, the reason why I go through the cast and the characters that they play is because when we do these breakdowns, I only name them by character. Yeah. So if you don't know who I'm talking about, that's why at the beginning I mentioned Willem Dafoe plays Marcus. So when I say Marcus, you know, it's Willem Dafoe. Yeah. Just to give a little visual to it. But anyway.
So, well, not necessarily the theme. Marcus does drop a great line for anyone dealing with grief. He says, quote, there's no rhyme or reason to this life. Days like this scattered among the rest. And John replies, are you sure? So again, it's just, it's not the theme. But it's teasing sort of the theme a little bit. All right, here's where we get to the theme. John is home cleaning up after the funerals get together and someone is at the door. They are delivering a package to John, a puppy.
It's from his wife. We know this when he opens the card and sees the Daisy picture on the envelope. As he reads it, we hear her voiceover telling him, That she got him the dog when she knew she was dying so that he would have someone to love again. At the seven minute mark, she drops the theme stated for John Wick and for the entire rest of the film. Quote, now that I've found my peace, find yours. There will be a lot of push and pull for John trying to decide what is his piece.
What is the part of him that he needs back in his life now that she's gone? Again, it has three sequels. There's four John Wick movies.
You can
figure out what his piece was that he needed to get back to, but it takes the whole movie for him to get there, right? And we're going to get to that point at the end, the part that you were talking about earlier. All right, so he opens the cage and pulls out a dog. Her name tag states that her name is, unsurprisingly, Daisy. Cute little doggie, too. Little puppy.
Uh, Oddly enough uh, The, the first thing uh, I want to say is the next day he's wearing a white shirt with a brown leather jacket and it matches the dog's fur.
Coloring. Yeah.
Right. White and brown. Right. It's a mistake. That's all done on purpose. And he's got black hair, right? So, he's got black hair. Yeah. We learned a little bit more about John Wick in this setup as he loves his car. A 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 that he often takes out to the track and he drives fast and recklessly. It's a fucking awesome looking car. It's so great. Again, I always think about it. This is our show as we go off on tangents. And I always think of other movies.
When I saw his love for this car, I couldn't help but think of Josh Brolin in American Gangster, how he loves that Shelby he drives, and Denzel, when he gets pissed at him, he gets that car blown up, like he blows up his car! Like, it's kinda like, that's what you do to piss somebody off, right? Alright, so, inciting incident. starts at the 10 minute mark when we meet ISF and his two closest friends, Victor and Gregory, as they stumble upon John filling up his Mustang at the gas station.
They are particularly. ISF because he becomes interested in the vehicle and gets uncomfortably close to it. And John in a weird way for a stranger, right? Like he leans into his car and he's like, Oh, it looks nice. You know, like if I'm at a gas station and somebody does that to me, I'm like, dude, Get away, you're like uncomfortably close. Also we established here a few other things.
ISF and his friends are Russian and they speak the language casually, but John also speaks Russian and he understands them. That catches them off guard, but we learn a lot about John here. He speaks Russian. Right? Catalyst, 14 minutes into the film, Daisy's unsettling barks wakes up John to intruders in his house. It is Iosef and his friends, they came for the car. However, the unthinkable happens as they overpower John with bats and sadly, kill his dog.
It's very sad the moment when he wakes up and he sees this blood trail lead, like there's a line, like the floor has a, It has a blood trail on it. There's no other way to describe it leading up to the dog.
Well, the dog, that implies the dog crawled to him. Yes. As it was wounded, it crawled to be near him to comfort him,
right? Because when, when the, the assailants were attacking the dog, you hear it yelping.
Yeah.
It's, it's at least 20 feet away.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. So when he wakes up and the dog is laying next to him and the blood trail is leading 20 feet. Yeah.
I was like, Oh my God, dude, I don't even
have a dog. And I wanted to murder everyone. It's so bad. All right. Debate begins. John wakes up to the dead dog. He buries her and spends the next day cleaning while having flashbacks of his wife and the clear and obvious connection the dog has to being a symbolic wife replacement. I say clear and obvious because they. They commit a cardinal screenwriting sin later regarding this, and I'll get to it when it happens. Uh, About this time the criminals try to sell the car that they stole.
When their usual fence to chop the cars they steal, Aurelio sees the car and he obviously becomes fearful because he recognizes it. He knows it's John Wick's. He wants nothing to do with it. Naturally, John goes to see Aurelio because that's where you take stolen cars and he needs a replacement. Aurelio pretty much tells him, dude, I had nothing to do with it. They were here. I fucking told him to get out of here. But I'll give you a car as a replacement.
Aurelio knows he doesn't want to get killed.
Yeah.
Then we're introduced to Vigo, IOSF's father, and clearly the Russian mob boss. And his number two, Avi. When he discovers that his son stole John wick's car and killed his dog He's obviously worried too and has to educate his son and Avi about who John wick really is We're gonna get to more of this later. I just kind of want to go through the beats right now Yeah, this is a big part.
I am gonna talk about later, but let's just get through the beats as we go break into two like unforgiven the break into two isn't so much of a huge impactful scene and a lot of these ex killers coming out of retirement, these are mental, emotional decisions, and when John takes a sledgehammer to his basement floor to pull out all his old guns and money, we can assume he's made the decision, right? Yeah. He's gonna go after them.
So knowing he may have to go after the boss too, As well as the sun, right? If he tries to protect his son this is all intercut with Vigo, by the way, educating his son about John and around the 25 minute mark He's telling his son about who John Wick is. Two minutes later, he calls John. And he's like, Hey, buddy, how's it going? You know, he's trying to get, he's trying to get a feel for things, right? Like just so you know, that was my son. I'm sorry about everything.
But, and John just hangs up on him and that worries him. Obviously he turns to his number two Avi and Avi says, what did he say? And Vigo goes, enough
I know that's great.
He knows it's on now and he tells Avi, task your crew. And Avi says, how many? And Viggo goes, how many do you have?
I love it. He doesn't even say a word. How much, what did he say? Enough.
I know he said enough by saying nothing. Right. Yeah. Alright, I had to finish that whiskey. Woo! Damn, that shit's a ball kicker! Alright. B Story. Here Alright, so I mentioned an Unforgiven episode. I went in I saw B Story and I was about to get all mad. They actually do it right. It's Ned. The B Story here This is one of the issues I have with this script. There is no clear B story established at this point. The only argument for a B story would be Marcus.
Who not only was already introduced, which is fine. We've seen B stories, you know, introduced early before. I can't remember what movie we talked about, but the B story was introduced like right in the first scene. But anyway, that's fine. But when he's reintroduced in the early second act, he's hired by Vigo. To kill John. So we immediately turn on Marcus as a traitor. As an audience member, right? We don't we don't know what's going to happen later.
But at the moment, we're like, oh, fuck, John. Marcus is a traitor. And, you know, we don't learn that he's actually going to protect John until later. But once that is established, that he's a friend trying to help, you could argue he would Could be the one driving John to his spiritual goal, his peace, but the role is the B story. That's way too late. You know what I mean? There's not much
development there. And
yeah, so it's like, and again, we're going to get up to the list of my issues with this movie. Marcus is one of them. Funding games, Vigo tries to head off the issue and puts a hit out on John at his own house. Naturally, it doesn't go well. As the bad guys John dispatches all of them relatively easily one at a time. He then calls a very convenient cleaning service for the mobsters to clean up his house. I don't know if you know this, but the guy he calls, I think his name is charlie.
You know who that guy is? He's been in a lot of movies.
I don't know if you know him. Let me see.
He's In his younger days is David Patrick Kelly. I think his name is he was in remember that movie dreamscape? With Dennis Quaid back in the 80s.
Oh my gosh. He
was the villain in that movie. He was the villain in the movie The Warriors. He was oh shit, what else was he in? He was, he was, he was one of the bad guys in Adventures of Ford Fairlane with Andrew Dice Clay.
What, what, what was his name in the movie?
In which, in this movie?
Yeah.
I think it's Charlie. I think his name was Charlie. I'm
trying to find him.
The actor's name is David Patrick Kelly, I think.
Yeah, yeah, he's got a ton of stuff.
So anyway, so he calls him, and it's great because he's like, I want to make a reservation for 12. And at the time, as an audience member, you're like, I don't know, what, what the fuck is he doing? He's calling for restaurant reservations? But then these guys show up and you're like, oh, I get it, it's a cleaning service.
Yeah. And, and what's also funny about this, and I did like this part, that while I'm watching this happen, I'm Not the cleaning service, when I'm watching the killings happen. They're smashing windows in his house, they're smashing his furniture, there's blood everywhere. I remember thinking, he's gonna have to leave that house. Because it's unlivable now, right?
Yeah,
but when the cleaning service comes They make it like nothing ever happened and I was like, well, fuck that was convenient, right? Like i'm gonna let
you get through the beats But I want to comment on on the cleaning service and the whole back culture of the killers. Yeah
Well, I don't have anything else on that. So if you want to do it,
well just it was kind of a a clever technique, I guess, to write this story where there's this whole backstory of this culture of all these assassins and they have this, this gold currency that they trade whenever they need something, right? That cleaning service, a room, you know a surgeon, they all trade in these gold coins. It was clever because nothing was explained. If they just, yeah, they just kind of like push forward and you're like, oh, oh, okay.
So this is, this is a. You're catching up to the story. Basically there's something going on. Yeah.
When WIC opens up that case that was under the concrete, you see the left side is all his old guns and the right side is filled with those gold coins.
Yeah.
So, and I am going to touch on that a little bit later, but yeah, I liked that aspect that he calls a cleaning service. He calls it, make, I want to make a reservation for 12. That way he tells them exactly how many bodies they need to clean up. Right. So I did like that. I thought that was a funny one. All right. 41 minutes in, we meet Wednesday. at the Continental Hotel, which is kind of like a way station for assassins.
Yeah.
And the rule is you just can't conduct business here. You can't conduct business here. That's the only rule. Winston runs the place and he gives a great line of dialogue that feeds into John's spiritual arc theme. He first asks John, have you returned to the fold? John replies, just visiting.
Right.
Still fighting his spiritual goal, obviously, right? Right. And finding his real piece. And then Winston says, this is a quote, have you thought of, have you thought this through? I mean, chewed down to the bone. You got out once you dip so much as a pinky back into the pond, you may well find something reaches out and drags you back into the depths. Yeah. End quote. Winston eventually does tell John where he can find IOSF. And that uh, And, and that battle leads to the midpoint.
So here we are at the midpoint scene, the battle at the red circle. By the way, in that part, we meet Addie, the bartender, and she's only got like that scene, I think, isn't it? Is that the only scene she's in?
I think so. I
think maybe she shows up at the end, maybe, I don't know, but that's really her only real big scene. And it is fair to note that in the scene that she's in and she sees john for the first time She gives him a kiss and she says i've never seen you like this and he says what and she goes vulnerable So again, that's you know tying into his Emotional back and forth. Is he back in or is he still gonna be the nice guy that his wife created, right?
Right, right.
All right midpoint scene the battle at the red circle This is john's false victory because he finds isf finally and although he takes out victor One of the men who was involved in killing his dog and stealing his car isf gets away Despite a moment where john is pointing his gun at him and has him dead to rights. He doesn't shoot You More on that later. That's one of my issues. Anyway. Bad Guys closing in.
Now officially in the second act of Act 2, a recovering John gets a disturbing wake up call when Marcus fires a bullet through his window and hits his pillow. Essentially waking him up to fight. The oncoming assassin who happens to be his old friend Perkins Who is knowingly breaking rule number one of the continental by the way, you're not supposed to conduct business there That's what she's doing. It's ms.
Perkins.
Sorry ms. Perkins but god, she's so beautiful, isn't she? But she's doing it for the two million downy for two million dollar bounty that vigo put on john still She's breaking rule number one
and didn't he say he would double it if she broke the rule?
Yeah. He was going to give her 4 million to break the rule. John takes out the Russian church that was holding all the money, business, blackmail info, everything for the Russian mob. Even the gold coins are in there.
He
burns it all down. And then he goes up on a roof and he waits for everyone to gather and collect there and respond, right. To see who's there. And then he starts pegging them all off. Now the all is losses. When this plan seems foolproof. Of course, nothing ever is. He goes down there and although he's taking out people left and right, he's trying to get Vigo and ISF at the one hour, six minute mark, he's knocked out by a car that hits him and he's taken hostage.
Now, normally this would be it for him. It should be right if you're that afraid of this guy once he's down like that you kill him
Yeah,
but they don't because it's a movie right? They just take him hostage. What the fuck dude another half an
hour to fill
Well, no Again, we're gonna get to my list of problems and that's one of them They should have just put a bullet in his head right there But they don't they tie him up and they put him in now that we get to the dark night of the soul Captive john considers his next move. He has You know, if he has one. Tied to a chair and being prepped for execution, Viggo is face to face with him and adds an element to the theme.
With several lines like, quote, And then you left, and the way you got out, lying to yourself that the past held no sway over the future. But in the end, the lot of us are rewarded, sarcastically, for our misdeeds. Which is why God took your wife and unleashed you upon me. This life, this life follows you. It clings to you infecting everyone who comes close to you. You are cursed. You and I, end quote. A lot of that harks back to unforgiven, doesn't it?
Yeah. As I talked about, about how the past, right. And again, in that movie, William Money. He didn't suffer from his past. He was never he was never punished for his sins until Ned dies. Right?
¶ The Spiritual Significance of John Wick's Dog
Right. So in here, he's saying your sins where God took your wife, right? And my sin. He unleashed you upon me because he know he knows the second the second in the first act he finds out his son Killed John wicks dog and stole his car. He knows he's going to die He tries every moment to get out of it, but he knows what's gonna happen.
Yeah,
right. He just knows John has his retort which is him grabbing a hold of his spiritual goal. Again, more on the timing of that a little bit later. And while I love the second part of this statement, I hate the first part. And this is the part I was talking about earlier. When he says, this is a quote, When Helen died, I lost everything, until that dog arrived on my doorstep. A final gift from my wife. In that moment, I received some semblance of hope, an opportunity to grieve unalone.
And your son took that from me, stole that from me, killed that from
¶ The Worst Line in the Movie
me. I hate that line and I'll tell you why. We don't know, we didn't need to hear him say it. Yeah, we already,
yeah, we already knew it. Yeah, we
know that. I hate when movies try to nail stuff on the head. Yeah. And say the obvious thing. Like, don't say the obvious thing. We know the obvious thing. We know this. Viggo knows it. Everyone knows it. In fact, Viggo wouldn't have reacted that way if he didn't know it. Right,
right, right.
So, the mystical spiritualism attached to the dog is obvious, and it's diminished when a character has to spell it out for the audience. Right, right. It's clear what the dog represents, okay? This line is unnecessary, and I hate it. It might be the worst line in the movie. But, in fact, even Viggo scoffs at it when he says it!
Yeah.
He says it, and even Viggo's like, Ugh. I wonder if the actor was scoffing at it, not the character. That's how bad that line
¶ John Wick's Iconic Comeback Line
is. But thankfully it's followed up by John's spiritual gold declaration, which might be my favorite.
favorite line of dialogue in the whole film when he says quote People keep asking me if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer, but now yeah I'm thinking I'm back so you can either hand over your son or you can die screaming alongside him I'm in my recliner with scotch in the hand And I'm watching that scene and when he gives the first line, I'm like, Oh dude, no, don't, we no. But then when that line happens, I was like, I almost jumped out of my recliner, like kill these fuckers.
You know what I mean? Like, I'm all about it at that point. So that they redeem themselves with a great second part of that dialogue.
¶ Break into Three: The Turning Point
All right. Break into three. While suffocating because the henchman put a bag over his head, John is saved by Marcus once again. He gains the upper hand on Vigo who can't believe he's alive. He's like, almost like in shock that he made it out of that. And he's forced to give up his son at the one hour, 14 minute mark.
¶ The Anti-Hero Father: Viggo's Betrayal
I say forced cause that's in his nature, self preservation, right? Any normal father would protect his son and take that bullet. And just say, no, you'll have to kill me. I'm not going to tell you where my son is. You'll have to kill me. Oh no, not Vigo. Vigo, Vigo. It's like an almost anti save the cat moment.
Yeah. Right.
He's cooking the cat at this point. I'll tell you where my son is. He's at this spot and you can meet him between five and eight. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, he basically. Yeah. All right.
¶ The Five-Point Finale
Five point finale. Gathering the team. John arrives at the safe house in Brooklyn where Homeboy is, where IOSF is. And he gears up. While we are intercut with Vigo smoking pot seemingly to get over what he's just done Like he's in his office. He's like I just gave up my son. I better smoke some weed, right?
¶ The Humane Execution of Iosef
Storming the castle john takes out everyone including gregory and of course iosef relatively abruptly before making his escape once free of everything he thanks marcus for his help now before we move on to the five point family Just want to make a little note A little point here, he kills Iosef so quickly and swiftly, like he shoots him in the belly and then he falls and as he's walking towards him, which in a lot of the posters for this movie is that poster of him walking towards Iosef.
Iosef starts to say, He his line was supposed to be it's a it was just a fucking dog He only gets to fucking he's like it's just a fucking and then john wick kills him. Yeah You know that there were reddit comments that were like that was too humane. He should have tortured him first.
Oh my god
I know That's how much Dogs are important, man.
Like
people wanted ISF to suffer more, but anyway, okay.
¶ Hightower Surprise: Marcus's Fate
Hightower surprise. Cause everything at this point, everything's worked out good. Again, he goes to the bridge and he thanks Marcus for his help. Hightower surprises. Perkins sees this move by Marcus rats him out to Vigo and Marcus has him taken and beaten and killed. Right.
¶ Debate Begins Again: Seeking Revenge
All right. Debate begins again. A lot like unforgiven when Ned died. He accomplished his mission, he could just go home. Just like William Money could have just gone home. But Ned died and here Marcus died. So now there's a debate begins. John, you know, he did what he wanted. He took out ISF, but once he finds out about Marcus, he has to make that decision. Does he want revenge? And I'm sure you can guess where it goes from there.
¶ Execution of the New Plan
Execution of the new plan. John takes out everyone. And I mean, everyone that's left, including Vigo. He even allows himself, this is interesting in the fight he has with Vigo. He allows himself to get. In order to get the upper hand on Vigo. Right? If you watch that fight scene, he couldn't get his hand free. And he's like, oh fuck it, I'll let him stab me so I can get my hand free. And then I'll be able to kill him. And he does! It worked and he kills Vigo.
¶ Closing Image: A New Hope
Uh, Closing image. where the movie started. A wounded Jadwik is bleeding and near death. He comes out of the car and we find out that the building his car crashed into was an animal shelter and he saves a shelter dog. To replace Daisy and he walks off life with a new dog, a new semblance of hope and to grieve on a loan.
Yeah, perfect. Closing it. Notice the type of dog he gets though.
It's like a pit bull.
That fucker ain't going down without a fight. Well, I think it was symbolic that. Yeah. He, he, he's, yeah. That he is back. He's back. He's back. Yeah. It, it wasn't a, this wasn't a little precious, little beagle. Yeah. Now, I, I get it pit bull lovers are gonna be mad at me, I mean, you treat a pit bull, right. It's gonna be a beautiful dog.
Yeah. And I've heard that argument. I've heard that. I have heard that argument.
But the symbol. The symbol, everyone knows that's a killer.
Yeah. And again, and I get it. I've heard that, that, that argument that stopped making the pit bull a villain, you know, it's all in how they're raised and how they're treated. I had a roommate in North Hollywood when I was renting a room out of my buddy Blake's house. She had an American bulldog, which looks a lot like a pit. But if this thing was muscular when it stood it looked like Schwarzenegger But this thing had a heart on it like it's fur It's it was a white dog, but it had brown spots.
One of the spots on its back was in the shape of a heart
Oh my gosh, and
this dog by the way, the dog's name was lovey and this dog Was so lovable like and it's true It's all how you treat a dog and how you raise a dog. There is no dog that's angry all the time Except for Chihuahuas, but we're not going to get to that. But, but, but so yeah, so I get that. It's unfair to say he got a pit because the pit is deadly, but I, I agree with what you're saying. It's the symbol,
it was a cute dog. It was a, you know, it looked like a young, you know, young dog puppy. Yeah. And you know, but yeah, it wasn't a little, it wasn't, it wasn't like a harmless little, little beagle.
Yeah, it was a people. All right,
¶ Plot Issues in John Wick
here we go. I'm going to give you my list of plot issues. All right, here we go. Hang on, hang on. I got to grab another beer.
I just poured some more whiskey.
All right. Plot issues. There's a stark difference in quality writing between Unforgiven and John Wick. To be fair, Unforgiven built the world around them of simplicity. They had horses to travel. There were no phones. Stories spread by word of mouth. Technology didn't exist. It was at a minimum. They didn't have NyQuil, they had whiskey, et cetera, et cetera. And John Wick exists in our world, the world of stylistic eye candy and technology that lends to issues with the developments, right?
Like we, I get that. I'm, I'm going to say right off the bat. That I acknowledge that difference. That it was easier, quote unquote, to write Unforgiven than probably writing John Wick. However, here we go. Number one. This is sort of an important plot issue. At least for me, alright? Maybe not for everybody else, but at least for me. If he truly has given up on his old life, why buy or own a car that attracts attention?
If an ex assassin wants to disappear into normal life, why does he even live in the same fucking town? Unforgiven doesn't make this error. William Money did all his old school killings in Missouri. After all, he's known as William Money out of Missouri. But when he meets and marries Claudia He finds a little ranch out in the middle of nowhere in Kansas to start a new life.
That's why he's startled at first when the Schofield kids shows up and even tells him, he's like, I thought maybe you were someone that came to kill me for something I did in the old days. John wick stays in the same town, has the same name, has a car. Everyone knows, which to me seems foolish. I mean, I mean, if you're somebody who's made enemies over the years. Everyone treats him like he's the fucking prom king. I
thought it was funny that he used his real name when he went to the hotel.
Yeah, I mean like, Like everyone seems to love him and they want him to come back like everyone knows him and knows where he is knows his car That's it just seems weird to me, right? I just didn't buy any of that number two since we're on the subject major plot point number two How the fuck does Iosef the boss's son or Avi the boss's right hand? Have no idea who John wick is
Yeah, right, if he's such a big deal.
Right, he worked for them in the past. He worked for them for years. And he wasn't out of the game for a decade like William Money. He's only been out of the game for a couple of years. Wick has been domesticated for a couple of years, fine, I get that, but John knows who Iosef is. How does Iosef not know who the fuck John is?
Yeah.
Plot issue number three. Speaking of Avi, he is the number two to his boss, his henchman, his number one henchman, who is the leader of all the other henchmen. And he yet seems to have a very weak stomach for this line of work. When Viggo is hitting his son and excruciating uncomfortable like, he, I mean, he acts like he's watching a snuff film. He's just like, oh my god, ugh, do you want me to leave? Ugh, I can't watch this. Like, dude, you're the number two.
You can't take me beating on my son. In fact, every time Viggo wants to get rough, there's a shot of Avi not taking it well. What kind of henchman is this? Number four, plot issue number four, and we're gonna stay on Avi for a minute. He doesn't speak or understand Russian. Does he know who his boss is? Why wouldn't Viggo, why would Viggo even hire this douche? Why can't, he can't speak their language. Why wouldn't he hire somebody?
Because he's mayhem.
Because he's mayhem. And they use it as comical bits like you know, he's like, Oh, Vigo, speak Russian. You know, I don't speak English. You know, I don't understand Russian. But to me, I'm sitting there again in my recliner scotch in hand and I'm like, why the fuck is he the number two? He has a weak stomach. And he doesn't understand the language. He should go back to his fucking all state commercials. All right.
Plot point number five, the Continental it's comical by the way, it's a home for killers, right? A hotel that's made for killers. The hotel clerk is very helpful, but when he learns there's a 2 million bounty on John, he doesn't bother to tell him he doesn't say stay clear of all these other people for hire.
Yeah.
Like that hot ass miss Perkins
who are staying at this hotel.
Yeah. Who are staying here, including miss Perkins who wants your blood more than your cock.
He could have gave my heads up the, Hey there's a motel six down the street.
Yeah. Like, I mean, I get that there's not supposed to be business conducted there. There's an open bounty on a guy who's staying in a place filled with people who fill bounties. Why would he stay there? And why wouldn't anyone tell him?
Yeah,
all right plot point number six Marcus goes through all this elaborate sabotage to protect John. At one point, firing a bullet into the pillow next to him so that he wakes up and can fight Perkins, a would be assassin. Here's an idea, Marcus. Shoot Perkins! Like, why does he shoot the pillow? Like, why did he just wait for Perkins to come in and kill her? Like, as if, like, what?
Yeah, right.
Alright, plot point number seven. And probably the biggest plot issue of them all. Wick needs Marcus to survive. Marcus saves his ass twice. Once from Perkins, and the other from Viggo's henchmen. Doesn't sound like the myth of somebody necessarily to fear. Without Marcus's interference, Wick would have been dead two times over. Another aspect Unforgiven got right. While Ned might be there to stitch his wounds, William Money never is down dead to rights and never needs saving.
He crawls himself out of little bills. Yeah, even when his gun jams. Yeah, he strengthens up, gets back on his game, and in the end, he walks straight into the lion's mouth and pulls up a chair. Plot point number eight. Speaking of dead to rights, Wick has Iosef in his sights at the red circle. In that shootout at the midpoint scene, he has his gun drawn, and they lock eyes. And Wick decides not to shoot. Why?
Yeah, yeah.
What? I mean, what? I went on Reddit to look this up and a bunch of comments were like, 'Cause it's a movie and it's way too early to kill the bad guy. Well, you know what? Then that's shit writing. Yeah, right. And it's not, and it's not realistic.
Should have showed me something different then.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it would have been better if like, he couldn't get his eye on him. You know what I mean? Like, he kept, he kept sneaking just out of the way and I can't quite get my gun on him. That's a horrible scene. He looks right at him, the guy that killed his dog and stole his car, and he just shoots a henchman instead.
Yeah, I thought the same thing.
I was like, what the fuck, man? why didn't he shoot him? So these a lot of these elements, Unforgiven gets right. And John Wick gets wrong.
¶ Praise of the Killer: Building the Myth
Now we're going to move into a segment. We're going to get off of her. All you fan boys out there that want to fucking lynch me right now. We're going to get off John Wick hatred and we're getting into something that's kind of cool. It's called praise of the killer. Robert McKee coined the term. Although I'm going to be honest. I didn't know the term praise of the killer until I heard here's my shout out. I didn't hear it until Jimmy George used it on his bright writer's blockbusters podcast.
Yeah. I think I, I think I listened to that one. Cause I remember they use it.
They use it all the time.
Yeah.
It's when others speak of the villain and tell you all about their power. And to let the audience know how really deadly the guy is. Common examples to mention since, you know, since we're, we're going to talk about it, we might talk about it in the future. Let me just get this out. Here's three perfect examples of praise of the killer. Quince Indianapolis speech in Jaws. Yeah. Specifically when he says, and this is a quote, sometimes that shark looks right at you, right in your eyes.
The thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at you, he doesn't seem to be living till he bites you. And those black eyes roll over white. And then uh, then you hear that terrible high pitch screaming, the ocean turns red. And despite all your pounding and hollering, those sharks come in and they rip you to pieces. End quote. Here's another one. Ash hyping the xenomorph and alien. The first one. Oh yeah.
Yep. You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? A perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. I admire its purity. A survivor. Unclouded by conscience. Remorse or delusions of morality. Yeah. I can't lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.
How about the Terminator?
I was just, Oh my God. It's like you're in my brain.
Yeah. My mind went to what's his name? Reese.
So I was, the third one is Kyle Reese and the Terminator. Listen, and understand, that Terminator is out there, it can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Dude. So, that's, so for you beginning writers out there, that's the praise of the killer. Now, mostly it serves for the bad guy.
But in these two movies, Unforgiven and John Wick, they are loaded with praise of the killer for the protagonist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right? Others speak about them with stories that would make you fear them. In Unforgiven, several stories about Will's past come up throughout the movie. We already talked about, you know, the myth versus reality in this case. Reality was worse than the story. Specifically, at the end, after the audience has already heard all these stories to build up William Money, here comes Little Sue on a horse, right?
Delivering the money, and she tells him how Little Bill beat Ned to death, and in his dying moments, he told who William Money really was. This is a quote. He said how you was really William Money out of Missouri. Little Bill said the same William Money that dynamited the Rock Island and Pacific in 69, killing women and children and all. And Ned said you'd done a lot worse than that.
Said you was more cold blooded than William Bonney, and how if you hurt Ned again, You were going to come back and kill him like you killed a U. S. Marshal in 70. End quote. At this point, even the Schofield kid gives this astonished look at Will, like, Fuck, I haven't even heard those stories! Like, like, it turns he's way too Way more deadlier than his reputation gives. And John Wick Alio knows him. Vigo knows him. Yeah. Everyone. But the son seems to know him, right?
At one point, Vigo is trying to explain this to ISF, he says, and this is a quote, he once was an associate of ours. We called him Baba Jaga. The boogeyman, the boogeyman Well, John wasn't exactly the boogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman. John is a man of focus, commitment, sheer will. I once saw him kill three men in a bar with a pencil. A fucking pencil. End quote. Like, so, you know, if these two are not praising the killer speeches, I don't know what is. Right.
Right? So, for you beginning writers out there, again, if you're writing a villain or a horror film, The examples of Jaws, Alien, and The Terminator are perfect examples. But even if you're writing one about the protagonist being a badass, you can add a praise to the killer's speech about your badass.
Oh yeah. All right. Great. I loved it.
¶ Trivia and Final Thoughts
Trivia. The filmmakers originally wanted to have Perkins nose broken after her fight with John, but the studio said it was going too far. Producer, producer, David Lee said, quote, they were like, you have two women in this movie and one of them is dead. You really want to break the other one's nose?
That's funny.
The filmmakers acknowledge that in the real world, here's the part of one of my plot point arguments, the filmmakers acknowledge that in the real world, a retired assassin Probably would have changed his name But they they liked the idea of this world being similar to that of a comic book
Yeah,
you know, so at least they were aware of the glaring plot hole that I ranted about.
Yeah They went out this went all in on it.
All right last trivia point screenwriter derrick coles they completed his first draft of the script in just one month Now I want to caution writers With trivia like this, we've heard the same fantastic story about Stallone writing Rocky. Oh, he woke up in the middle of the night and he wrote Rocky in three hours. Look, look, these are stories. Okay. And they're just as exaggerated as our myth versus reality that we talked about in both of these movies. Right now.
Okay. It might be trivia that that was his first draft. The movie you see in theaters, Stallone even said this, right? Well, wait, before we get to Stallone, the movie that Derek Colstead wrote, John Wick, I guarantee you, it went through several rewrites before it ever hit theaters. And as far as the Rocky story goes, Stallone said he wrote a draft in three days, which in and of itself is amazing. I'll give him that.
But he even said 90 percent of that draft he wrote Never made it into the film. Wow. So that shows how much rewriting and rewriting and rewriting goes into pre production production and even in the editing room, the writing never stops. The process never stops. So that's a reality check for you. Beginning writers. Don't think you're going to pen Casablanca in a week. It's not going to happen, right? Just accept that there's, it's a collaborative art.
The editors, the writers, the actors, the directors, EVERYBODY else is gonna have a piece of your screenplay and are gonna make it into something. You didn't want, right? But they might make it better. They might make it worse. Gremlins is a perfect example. If you read the original screenplay for gremlins, it's a lot different for the movie and the movie is way better. All right. What do you got before we get to six degrees?
Oh, not much. I just remember one of the things my, my son pointed out, was it when miss Perkins was killed Yeah, I didn't even mention that actually. Was it, was the scene where she was killed where he puts a pillow over and shoots into the pillow?
No, she, no, she kills, she kills the guy, the guy that's keeping her captive. She escapes, shoots him through the pillow.
Yeah. Well, the funny thing about that, my son pointed out, he's like, yeah, that, that doesn't muffle the sound when you just put the barrel of the gun on a pillow, which it did.
Yeah, it's great to have real gunsmiths watching movies.
Well, I mean, it makes sense. The explosion happens back in the chamber, not down at the end of the barrel, you know?
Right. But they do that all the time. You see that in so many movies where they put a pillow over somebody and then, and then shoot.
Yeah.
But what was interesting, I didn't even mention how Perkins gets killed. She tries to leave the hotel one night and Winston shows up in McShane with all his hence men. And he says, you broke rule number one, you conducted business at the hotel. Your privileges here have been revoked. And he walks away and Six dudes lay lead into her to start shooting her.
Yeah, I forgot that's how she died.
In execution style. Yeah. So Ian McShane has like two scenes in the whole movie and they're both great. They're both awesome. So again, like I want to reiterate, despite all my plot holes that I was mad about, it is a fun movie. John Wick's a fun movie. And what makes it fun, not only is Keanu Reeves, And, and the acting and the action sequences are really cool. The fight scenes are so cool. It's, it's got great lines of dialogue. You know, I love listening to these people talk.
You know, It's a fun movie. It's to me, it's not as good as unforgiven. I'm forgiven. I think is one of the greatest Westerns of all time, if not the greatest, it's in the top three and it's in probably, what did I say? I text you, I text you at one point. Is it top? Did I say it was top three films of the 90s? It might be. I gotta say Schindler's List and Silence of the Lambs. Schindler's List, Silence of the Lambs and Unforgiven. That might be your top three in any order.
I don't know what order you put them in. But Unforgiven, Schindler's List, and Sound Slams might be the top three movies of the 90s. And here's the funny part. They came out in three straight years.
Hmm.
91, 92, and 93. And although the 90s are filled with great movies, it was top heavy, man, right when we get into the year. And Goodfellas is 1990, by the way.
Yeah.
So, I mean, Unforgiven to me is one of the top three movies of the decade. I gotta get on. I gotta get Goodfellas in there. My bad. Okay. Top four. It's top four. Yeah, it's top four. Goodfellas is in there somewhere, but it's top four.
¶ Six Degrees of Separation Game
All right. So six degrees,
six degrees.
All right, Six Degrees, why don't you tell me who you tasked me to combine?
Yeah, you know, I always try to make it difficult and when we do Six Degrees, the, the goal is to see if we can figure out if there's two actors that we cannot connect within Six Degrees, right? And the added difficulty with our game is you cannot use the movies that we are talking about. So, I chose what's, what, how do you pronounce your name? Aileen Lezavour? Yeah, Aileen
maybe? Aileen Levasseur? Levasseur,
that's Penny Money. That's the little girl, Penny Money in Unforgiven.
Yeah, she plays William Money's daughter.
Yep, and Bridget Regan? Or Regan? Who plays Addie the bartender, right?
And the bartender at the Continental. Yeah. All right. So this was actually easier than you thought, but it took a lot of research. So for those of you that are like, well, that's cheating. He used IMDB. This isn't a stump Jerome game. We're actually trying to see if two people can not be connected. Right. And we have yet to find where two people cannot be connected. So, um, Aline Levasseur only was in three movies. Unforgiven was one of them. Another one was Bye Bye Blues in 1989.
In that film she was with Luke Reilly, who played a character named Max Gramley. He was in Private Parts in 1997 where he played Don Imus. Howard Stern movie. Yeah. In that movie also was Adam Lefevre, who played sales manager. You know him. If you looked him up on NDB, he's one of those guys who, you know, his face has been in a million movies. He was in the babysitters 2007 as Mr. Brown with Bridget Regan.
Stop. So? Was that three?
Three. Stop. Three. Man. Three. Bye Bye Blues, Private Parts, and The Baby Sitters. You know,
some of these kids, they only were in a few movies, but sometimes they got big names in those movies, you know?
Yes, they do. And we didn't even use Unforgiven!
I know. Yeah. Good job. Well, this was fun, man. I uh, totally enjoyed this.
I love this one. I love them all, but sometimes I get really geeked about movies that I learn a lot about. Right. And as much as I love Unforgiven, Man, I really learned a lot when I really dug deep into the, into the breakdown. And I realized that William Money's real sacrifice was, was Ned dying. Like that, that was his payment for his past sins. Like, I never thought of that before. Yeah. You know what I mean?
But I was like, damn, that makes so much sense when he's, when he feels like he's dying from the fever.
Right.
And he's like, I see the angel of death. It didn't occur to me that it was like, Oh, no, your sins are you're going to lose Ned. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. And then uh, with John Wick, I mean, it was my first time seeing it just three weeks ago. So yeah, man, I love, I love this kind of discovery with movies like this.
Yeah, absolutely.
anything else?
Yeah, I just want to say if you would like to reach out to us, you can do it through our social media channels if you'd like. Facebook, Instagram X, we're there too. You can also email us at
silverscreenhappyhour@gmail.com. Right.
So, so the shout outs, I know you gave a shout on the last episode. I shouted out as well, my neighbor, but the other shot that I was talking about, I did mention the Writer's Blockbusters podcast for you writers. I cannot tell you what a fountain of information that podcast is. It's you know, Jamie Nash, Bob Rose and Jimmy George. so much. And Jimmy, I name dropped about the praise of the killer.
I actually we, we occasionally trade emails every now and again, or Instagram messages about movies and stuff. And we'll talk about the podcast and stuff. And I actually asked him, I was like, man, you talk about praise of the killer a lot. And I realized it was Robert McKee who actually coined that term. But like I said, Jimmy talks about it a lot. So I, I actually think it's a Jimmy term more than a Robert McKee term just cause he loves to talk about it. so thank you, Jimmy.
And uh, the Writers Blockbusters gang for your fountain of knowledge and screenwriting. And again, beginning writers, if we scratch the surface, you'll get a lot more crap from those guys. We don't really dig into craft that much. We Snyder's beat sheet. That's the main crux of our show. Yeah. Just, just, just so how most films can fit into
the Blake Snyder beat sheet
and hit those points and they hit them in order. But yeah,
Oh, I got one more shout out. This has nothing to do with our podcast or movies, but I guess I could say that the director of this music video does have an IMDB page. But the some friends of ours are in a band called the Native Howl.. And they, they, they kind of coined this term thrash grass to describe their music because they combine bluegrass with thrash metal.
And if you know bluegrass, it's a high tempo type of music and so is thrash metal and it works beautifully with the banjo and the speed and acoustic guitars and stuff. Well, they just did a Johnny Cash cover. That's, I think it's a freaking masterpiece. So if you guys Would like to go check this out uh, the Native Howl.,
God's gonna to cut you
down. It's a Johnny Cash cover and they just knocked it out of the park. I've been playing the song on a loop because the song alone is worth, you know, just putting it on a loop and listen to over and over. But the video is a fire. They did a great job. So hats off to the
guys at the Native
¶ Upcoming Movies and Final Wrap-Up
Howl. And you
know what, speaking of that, and not, this is not that this is any sort of a shout out, but because you, you got me thinking about you know, upcoming movies, Timothee Chalamet, who we know from the Dune movies, right? We did it, we, we did a Dune episode. He is portraying Bob Dylan. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In a movie that's supposed to come out this year called, A Complete Unknown.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
And, dude, I am so, I saw a trailer for it. Yeah. And I'm so fucking I think I sent it to you. You might have, and in fact uh, uh, the reason I missed it, because you reminded me, Boyd Holbrook, an actor, he's playing Johnny Cash in the movie. So when you said Johnny Cash it reminded me of that.
I'm just pumped man because I love that guy Timothy Chalamet and of course one of my favorite if not me number one favorite singer songwriter of all time is Bob Dylan, and I've heard, I don't know if it's true, but I've heard that Timothee Chalamet is going to do his own singing in the movie. I think I heard that too,
so yeah, it should be interesting.
And didn't Joaquin Phoenix do that in Walk the Line? Didn't he sing Johnny Cash's songs? He did,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he did. Yeah, I mean that too. And he did a good job, yeah.
Yeah. So I just see on IMDb. It's actually set to be released on Christmas day of this year.
Really? Okay. Yeah. I know what I'm doing that weekend.
Yeah. I know what I'm doing Christmas day. All right. Wrap it up. Let's land this plane.
All right. Well, you know what we say at the end of each of these episodes, go support your vocal cinemas,
keep drinking and keep watching.
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