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They come from the balls up now. It's the Dana Gould Hour. Hello and welcome back to The Dana Gould Hour Podcast. Summer is in high duchin. The news is a roller coaster. The asphalt is too hot for the dog to walk on and all the good drive-ins are two hours away. That's the reality I'm struggling with. I'm trying to adapt and I assume that you are too. And so I offer this. This high summer audio oasis.
Cometian Drew Landry is here. Drew is one of my favorite comedians here in Los Angeles. He's a buddy. He's super funny. And he has a new special out called All My Friends Are Dead. Drew started doing stand-up at 13. Which means that even though he's only 30 years old, he's already a worn-out tired husband. No. Cometian Drew Landry. Come on, Acha!
Additionally, now you've probably heard of the criterion collection that high-end library of our cinematic heritage. But have you heard of Vinegar Syndrome? Vinegar Syndrome is basically the criterion collection for exploitation films and drive-in movie fair. They are archivists, film restoration experts and curators of our rich exploitation cinema heritage. They have a new box set out called The Lost Picture Show.
Which features titles like The Las Vegas Strangler, Violated and the Sex Serum of Dr. Blake, also known as Voodoo Heartbeat. From Vinegar Syndrome, Dino Preservio and Oscar Becher are here. True Tales from Weirdzville takes an unflinching look at a movie you may not have seen, but you have definitely heard of.
Colligula, starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, and Sir John Gilgud. What's the one thing that all of these actors have in common? They all wish they weren't in Colligula. Find out why. Me? Where am I going to be? Well, on Saturday, August 10th, I will be in Seattle at the Triple Door. And on Friday, August 16th, for one show only, I will be in Beautiful Irvine, California at the World Famous Improv.
September 5th through the 8th, I will be at one of my favorite clubs on the planet, the Acme Comedy Club in Beautiful, Minneapolis, Minnesota. My good friend, Dr. Z, will be performing live at GalaxyCon in Raleigh, North Carolina on July 27th. And in Tarrytown, New York at the Sleepy Hollow Film Festival, in a special live show with Mystery Science Theatre's Joel Hodgson.
On October 10th, the Sleepy Hollow Film Festival. All this, and so much more. Go to the live shows page at DanaGoole.com for details. As always, as we like to remind you, this show is brought to you by you. If you enjoy it, please consider becoming a Dana Goole Tower Sky Cadet. Go to DanaGoole.com, sign up for our Patreon, and for five bucks a month, you get some junk. And now, it's on to our filthy business. It's the Dana Goole Tower, podcast. The Dana Goole Tower, free and worth it.
It's a beautiful sundapl day. Hi, I tap the mall hall and drive view shelf here in Southern California. Summer starts. Grey and murky. It's a thing. And I've been out here forever, and I forget it every year. It's called June Gloom. And what it means is it's gray and overcast until about one to two in the afternoon. And then it burns off. And it's fine.
And yesterday was the first day you woke up to a blue sky, and it was hot. And it's already hot as balls. And how do I know that summer has started? Friend of the podcast, Ken Daly yesterday saw the first Halloween decorations up in a store. That's how you know it's the beginning of summer here in Southern California. But that's why I live here. Now, speaking of June Gloom, my guest today has a comedy special with sort of a dark title, but which made it appeal to me.
But it's brilliantly funny. He's a really good friend of mine, full disclosure. The special is called all my friends are dead. And the comedian is Drew Landry. Hello, Drew. Hey, thanks for having me. And it's also we should say you can see the special on is it on YouTube? Do you post it? Yeah, it's on YouTube. And it's an album. It's an album on comedy dynamics that you can download.
It's great. And I'm not blowing smoke up your ass because I can't listen to a ton of comedy. And actually like I was at the taping of this. You know, I was familiar with it, but it's it's really it's really great. My favorite thing is Mary Landry lying to people about the government. We'll get into that spoiler alert. But what I liked about it would appeal to me and narcissistically because it minded me myself is that you've got some hot problems that you talk about.
And some things that aren't like typical stand up comedy fodder. And you go there, but you it's not dark. It's not morose. Like you you figured it out right out of the gate that you can talk about anything. It's how you talk about it and the tone of and the tone of the show. But what made you you started off in Baltimore? Yes. Okay. And that's why you sound like Marshall Mathers when you talk. That's exactly why.
And I think I just listen to too much Marshall Mathers and it just went into my brain. Well, that's it actually now that I have you just for the sake of my for my own edification. Can you give me a 60 second breakdown of the Drake. What's the Drake and Kendrick? Yeah, the Drake and Kendrick and Brolyo. So here's the the log line. Here's the foot notes. So basically they had been subtly dissing each other, but not saying each other's names for the most part for like 10 years.
And then this year long story short, they started really dissing each other. And essentially there have been rumors for years of Drake being a pedophile. And Kendrick mentioned them in songs and kind of seemingly destroyed Drake because now there's the song not like us about Drake being a pedophile. And I mean, it's like it's like playing at fucking bar mitzvos. Is that they're not like us? Yes, they're not like us. Yeah.
Here's the thing. I'm not familiar. I'm not overly familiar with either one. But it seems from what I understand that Drake is grossly outmatched. Oh, severely, severely. And I think Drake is talented, but it just I mean, it's it's insane to see what Kendrick did to him. It's insane. Yeah. I mean, there have been plenty of times where something happens to an entertainer and I'm like, they don't come back from this and they totally do.
So obviously there's a high chance. We'll come back from this. But I feel like there's a difference between being called a pedophile and being called a pedophile in a super catchy song. Yeah, this will follow this will follow Drake. Like Richard Gears, gerbil. Yeah, exactly. It's always going to be an asterisk. And it's funny because these rumors have existed for years. And for a long time, I had a OVO shirt and OVO is Drake's label. The icon is like this owl.
And I've been posting a lot of jokes, you know, just making fun of Drake and making fun the whole situation. And his fans are going through my Instagram and finding a picture of me with a Drake shirt and like hosting it like it's a picture with Jillian Maxwell. Like is this you? Like it's this damning and barricing like I can't escape this picture now. How dare you own that, you know, that will that shirt is tacit as it. Yeah, I burned it.
Yeah, it's basically genocide. You love genocide. You're you on a Drake shirt. Yeah, that's that's the thing to take away from the. It's so insane. But but don't they also and then I'll move on. But don't they also in that music world. They don't even occupy the same kind of world like Drake isn't in the same genre so much as Kendrick Lamar. Is he isn't Drake. Drake seems a lot more mom and dad friendly.
Drake is very pop, but he can really rap as asshole when he wants to and Kendrick can rap as ass off. But he can make pop songs if he wants to and this song not like us was kind of him proving like I can diss you and call you a fucking pedophile and also make it a catchy pop song. So I can do what you do while calling you a predator. It's brutal. It's brutal and honestly it's very funny. Like it's really entertaining to watch that. Well, that's what I mean.
It's it's so well done and so funny and it like that thing that a minor thing is like. Yeah, that's classic joke. When the feud started, everyone was kind of on pins and needles like it's Kendrick going to call them a pedophile. Is this what's going to like really or does he just have inappropriate friendships? I have no idea. It's just that rumor. He's had so there's the Millie Bobby Brown thing. Right.
And they were friends. They were friends, which is weird, which is weird when she was like 15 and choosing like yeah, I'll text them about boys and it'll give me advice. And it's like, what are you going to talk to it? But there's that and there's this old video of him from like 10 years ago dancing with a 17 year old girl on stage and kissing her. And he's like, how old are you? And she's like 17 and the crowd's like, oh, and then he keeps grinding on her and kissing her.
Yeah, there's a few others. So it's like, it's been bread crumbs for the past 10 years. And I think everyone's been waiting to see if it's all rumors or if there's going to be some kind of reckoning. It's so funny because like you used to have songs like, uh, thank heaven for little girls and things like it seems like only recently. It's like in the past couple of years, humanity in general went maybe dating underaged girls is bad.
Yeah, well, I remember years ago when I watched the Woody Allen documentary, you know, they talk about Manhattan. And it's an objectively good movie, but that movie was a classic for like 50 years. And then all of us at the same time were like, wait, this is horrifying. Oh, yeah, I know it's funny because that's exactly right. Manhattan specifically, which is a beautiful, visually beautiful movie. And it's and there's a couple of things in that movie that are so fucked up.
Yeah, it's no one caught at the time. Uh, there's another scene in that movie where yeah, he's dating Maryl Hemingway who's at the new Susa high school student in the movie. Um, there's a scene where he's lying in a couch recording his, uh, diary or whatever. And he's it's so pretentious. It's it's nauseating. He's talking about, you know, the things that make life worth living. And I just one of them is those pills by season. But he doesn't mention his son.
His character has a son and he doesn't mention his kid and the things that make life worth living. It doesn't even crack the top 10. And that doesn't make it in. It's a solid backseat to those pairs by season. That movie, it's like his if I did it. It's just littered with clues. It's so funny. No, have you seen, uh, have you seen, uh, as a daddy? I love you. Is that the one? Oh, the Louis CK. Yeah, the one that one like it got canceled, but it leaked online. It's out there.
A friend of mine saw it and said, I'm sitting there thinking, you know, you're recording this. No, I, I watched it online when it leaked out of curiosity. I mean, you can't see it. You can't see it. Yes. And I mean, this might be an objectively good move, but it wasn't even a good move. That move is horrifying. Yeah. You can't always be, you can always be great. It makes man hat and look subtle. Yeah, that's, that's what I understand. And it's also like, you know, we, we, you know, it's unfair.
Like you condemn, you condemn Louis. And I've known Louis. I, I think he's brilliant and, um, have difficulty with, with what he did. Um, but I don't think he did anything Chuck Berry didn't do. Oh, yeah, it's just James Brown or, yeah, it's just a, it's a different, it's a different lens. And you, you can't go back. John Lennon was a, I don't know if he ever had a, he was a very violent guy. He early before the Beatles broke, he beat the fuck out of a guy.
And damn, I think fucked him up for life. Um, it's, uh, you know, there are, uh, it, it, it's just a different, uh, uh, uh, world. And you can't go back and just yank, art, you know, it's, I think that Bill Cosby's comedy is important. Yeah. Oh, it's, you know, it's the, you know, it's the eternal question separating the art from the artist. But I, yeah, killer, great painter, great painter. Amazing painter. I'm not a fan of his hobbies. There's my Hitler so much better than the dress.
I say, like, I've been on a hitchcock binge. And if he's cock again, super fucked up, dude, yeah, day three of pelting tippy hedgerin with Kroes. Oh yeah. Oh, and it's just weird. We're like, it's like a few, and once again, I think so many of these people are bastards, but you can't throw their art away. And it's like, there's this cutoff where if they died decades ago, you can't, but if hitchcock was alive today, there'd be a stigma with watching his movies. And I think you're right.
Yeah. It's just, it's interesting how society changes and probably in a good way. Yeah. Well, yeah, again, it, it moves, uh, it moves in a positive and, you know, there's the political world. And then there's the, the social world and they move at very different speeds, you know. Well, and I've, I've thought about if Bill Cosby died a year before that stuff came out, he probably would have went down in history as a great man. We probably would have never talked about it or found out.
Are you the one that does the juggeroy, Hugh Heffner? Yes. Yes. What is, what is that? Yeah. What is that? Hugh Heffner died a month before the Me Too movement. Does anyone else find that suspicious? And I was thinking earlier, if you remember, when we were at, uh, JFL van Kuver, and I was writing my set list, I never, I'd never left America and we were in Canada, which is obviously, it's like diet America, but I, yeah, I radically, radically different.
But I, I said to you, I was going to maybe do that joke. And I was like, did they know who Hugh Heffner is here? And you're like, Drew, we're two hours away from Seattle. My friend, uh, Dave Higgins was shooting a movie in Seattle, a really brilliant movie called The Wrong Guy. And this is back in the, because I might have even been in the 90s or the early odds. Uh, I think it was in the 90s and they would be driven to the set, you know, and Dave would get in the car and go car set.
And they go, oh, you don't have that here. I'm sorry. Never mind. Yeah. No, it is weird. I mean, I, I am waiting for the book about the, the last, the last year or two years of the Playboy man. And that's got it. Like great expectations with Viagra. Just this. Bro, gothic. Well, I haven't seen it, but there is a documentary about Hugh Heffner and the Playboy Manchin. Like on the two documentary that came out a year or two ago.
And I saw, I read this article, it was like the 10 most shocking moments from the Hugh Heffner documentary. And one of them was like, he jerked off a dog or something. Oh, gee. And it's like, it's kind of, it's so twisted, but how are you going to put something that hilarious in the middle this horrifying? It's like, it's so weird how it's this heinous crime that's also very cartoonish. He must have been a very good boy at whatever. He was an animal lover.
Would you rather he abuse dogs or make them happy? Well, you know, it's this thing sometimes when they have doggy prozac now and you just want to make sure that even if he's on prozac, everything will still work. When my, my first wife was in the hospital for something and I went to visit, you know, she's there for two days. And there was this weird guy across the hall with a, with a, with a two-pay on that was so bad. I didn't realize what it was at first.
Like it was so like it was, it was way too much hair for him at that age. And it was on like at a forward-handed angle. I'd really, I looked like a wedding cake hat. And it was Bob Guccioni, the publisher of Penthouse Magazine. And I was like, oh my. Yeah. And he was like walking up and down the hall on a walker and it was just like, oh, how the mighty have fallen. Yeah. And it's like, who do you think you're fooling?
Do people, do you think people are like, wow, that old man has an amazing head of hair that's totally real. No one knows, no one knows. Yeah. I have, I do, I do wonder, I think the way to do it is the, is like the Sean Connery. Like he would wear it when he had to wear it at work and then he would take it off. Do you, do you watch, I think you should leave? Yeah, I have. I've seen some of it.
Did you see the sketch where it was an ad for pit men that wear two pays, but they're sick of it, but they don't want to just immediately become bald. So it's a service that sends you increasingly smaller two pays. So you can go bald in front of your friends. That's fucking yeah. Jason Alexander told me that like he did try wearing it to pay for a year and to be a poor like Jason, what are you doing? Yeah, we know you. But Shatner saw him and went looking good.
That's not a joke. That's not a joke. Oh, I've reviewed. Yeah, that's really funny. I have to say I've seen Shatner a lot because he's in the neighborhood. And he is, he looks so much better. He looks great for 93. He looks amazing. And he looks better in person than on TV. Really? Yeah, like he looks really good in person. And whatever that system is, it's totally fine. And it seems like he's there mentally, right?
Totally, totally. Yeah, no, he's just, and one of the, I mean, he still does conventions and things. And the reason he does them is like, yeah, I got to keep working. I got to keep, I got to keep moving or, you know, or I'll die. Yeah, I'm interested. Well, this one, funny. This will get us into your special. I'm interested to see what will happen with my father because my mother passed. And now, you know, my dad is 90, same age as Shatner.
And his whole thing was going to visit my mom every day in the, in the facility where she lived. No, nursing home, not prison. And, and now that he doesn't do that, I'm interested. And the other thing that he does do, which is I can't, I can't go near this for though. My mom's remains are in a, what's called a duplex urn, which is a cremation urn with two chambers. The other chamber will be for him. And it's on the mantelpiece.
And he sits there on the couch and goes from the TV to that and back to the TV. And looks, and it's the most Edgar Allen Poe. One day, they'll put my body in there. What do you like to walk, chalk, we? I mean, there's something very beautiful and poetic about that. I'm afraid that my brother will just try to stuff him in without even waiting. How do people do this? Doesn't fit. Do you like roll him? What do you? Yeah, I don't, yeah, I just, I wouldn't, I don't want, I don't want anybody.
I don't want anyone's remains in the house. I feel the same way. I don't judge people that have a loved ones remains in their house at all. But I could never, something, but it just, I wouldn't like it. I find the whole idea of burial and saying, I was, you know, I grew up, I've talked about this before, I grew up on Cemetery Street. That was my childhood address. And it was the street and it ended in the gates of the town cemetery.
And we played in the cemetery more often than the park, because the cemetery was at the corner. And that's where I learned how to ride a bike. That's where we would play army. That's where we played hide and go seek. That's where, you know, since we, you know, we went on cemetery. And, but I'd never seen a bar, a coffin, like lowered into the, and I just did a year ago at a, my wife's grandmother or something. And there's a giant cement box.
And then you put the casket in the box. And then they put the cement lid on the casket. And then they bury it. And I'm just like, I'm not going in that. I'm dead or alive. I'm not doing that. But the whole thing is like, and then what? Okay, we're never going to need this again. You know, Steve, Steve A.G. Do you ever realize that underground were just surrounded by skeletons wearing suits? That's so true. It's so true.
I have this really, really, really weird irrational fear of the idea of being buried or my brain goes, what if there's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, less than 1% chance that when you're dead, your brain is still working. Oh, I hear. Oh, I hear. And then you're buried and you're just awake in a way forever. And that's, it's this weird fear that I have that specific fear. I want to be cremated just in case. Yep. I'm the same exact way I could not be more on point with that.
Yeah. Or like 72 hours after you die, you come back. Like, what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I just, you know, and that's the thing. And I've said this to my, to my kids like, I, you can't leave your family without a plan. And I want my remains scattered by the Mulholland lookout. But I don't want to be cremated. I want to stay a source of excitement. Which brings us to your special. All my friends are dead available on Comedy Dynamics. Your best friend died when you were eight.
Eight. He was also eight. Yeah. He was 42. But he was, it was an elevator, correct? Yes. He was, so he was with an adult. He was with his family. They were on vacation in a hotel. And they, they had this, I guess, old elevator. And he was crushed to death by the elevator. Which is, which is great fodder for comedy. Oh, yeah. And how is his family? I mean, so they, you know, they, they sued the elevator company. I don't want to get too into it because it's not my story to tell.
But, you know, obviously was excruciating for them. And then, you know, and the specials about him and his twin sister, Ellie, was my other best friend up until 2021. And that's when she passed. And the, so he is, so that was his sister. That was his twin sister. Yeah. And we kind of, because I was her only friend that she had had for that long that also knew her brother. So it was very much like a sibling relationship. Sure. So the special, that, an album is kind of about that whole saga.
Yeah. But it's fun. I mean, it, it, it is funny. Well, you know, my, my goal was I wanted to make sure that it didn't necessarily feel like a one man show like, it doesn't, which is great. Yeah. How can I do this without, you know, getting, I didn't want to part where I get real for two men. No, you don't. And it's, it's really the great things because the things you talk about are, are on the, the, the wave length or the bandwidth of stand-up comedy.
You, you don't get creepy about it, which I think would be, I wouldn't want to see that one man show because I don't think there's any heavy, I don't think there's a heavy lesson to be learned from that that people don't instinctively know already. Yeah. It's kind of like talking about how much you love the pairs by saison. Yeah. There's a word for that at rhymes with blaster blation. And so funny, but I didn't realize that Ellie was his sister.
So I imagine that the both of you sort of were haunted by that, especially if it was a twin. Oh, absolutely. And she was obviously I wasn't there. She was there. Yes, I can't even begin to have them. That's not a, and the thing is, you know, just the kindest person I've ever met. So whenever someone is an asshole and people go like, they've been through a lot. It's like, well, I know someone that watched their twin brother get to capitated and they were the nicest person I knew.
So I don't like excuses. Wow. Yeah. Insane story. Yeah. Insane, truly, truly, truly bananas. And you told a really funny, you tell a really funny story about how old was she when she passed? How old was she? Yeah. She was 28. Okay. And so she lived to adulthood. She sort of processed that, but it seems like she never really got, I mean, I don't think you can never get past it. Exactly. You just sort of find a way to incorporate it into, you know, Ellie 2.0.
And how did she, and how did she pass away? Through alcohol poisoning. Okay. So she basically, yeah, it's, you make a joke about it, but it's final destination. It is. You know, it really is. It's like, I missed my bus. I've got to get it. Yeah. And it's, yeah, I mean, it was all the whole thing is just horrifying. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. And the parents, the parents, they're happiest people in the world.
No, the parents, I mean, that family, they have two other kids and they are the strongest people I've ever met. I mean, they are, they are like super heroes with how, I mean, yeah, they have to be. But we're close with their family. I got their blessing before I did the special, of course. Yeah. And I don't know if all of that, I don't want to send them the special like check it out. It's really funny. But I'm very close with their, they didn't die in vain. Look how funny the special is.
I'm very close with their other sister and I got her blessing. And I was, I knew she would watch it. And I was terrified of her watching it. But she ended up liking it a lot. And the final destination, Joe, that was the one I was most worried about. It's like all the material about what happened to Tucker, that was the one I was most worried about offending the family. And then that ended up being her favorite joke.
Sure. Sure. Well, I always said, you know, people, I always said this about people that live with that kind of trauma. Like Ted Kennedy, when he was alive, got a lot of shit for being drunk a lot. It's like, yeah. He had, he had four or five siblings that were murdered. Like his oldest brother was killed in World War II. His next older brother was shot in the head. His younger older brother was shot in the head. His sister at a botched brain surgery. His other sister died.
It'd be fucked up if he wasn't drunk. Yeah. Yeah. It's a give the guy a fucking break. Yeah. It's just, it's been it's been it's been anus to me. And I you really cannot. Under appreciate the weird, weird connections that twins have. You know, it really is a spooky connection that people don't understand. Oh, totally. I know the parents of twins and they had like, this is not powerful. This isn't something I heard on a podcast. This is something I heard from the parent.
They had when the kids were little, like two. One of the kids had a close call in the pool. Nanny like turned her head. Kid was in the pool. Was in there a bit of time. Got him out. Everything was fine. But it was a close call. The other twin was not there. The next day, the other twin went to the back door, not knowing what happened and screamed for his brother to get out of the pool. Jesus Christ. I think it's something that I don't think a non twin could ever fully begin to grasp.
Yeah. It feels borderline supernatural. But I think it's believed. I truly believe they do twins do have a connection life. Yeah. No, they absolutely do. Absolutely do. For that to happen to not only your brother, but your twin brother, I can't even begin to comprehend it. I would always, obviously, hurt and I would talk about talker all the time. And I would almost, because obviously, you know, I got PTSD from the situation, but it paled in comparison to hers.
You're a JVPTSD. So I would feel unbelievably guilty when we would talk about it, because I would feel bad being like, yeah, fuck to me up. Cause I mean, sure it did, but I, not on the level I did to her. Sure. I wasn't there. Wasn't my twin. No, my twin, no, my problem. Yeah, no, that was, it's truly amazing. Another thing that they go through that you don't think about, I know twins, identical twins. They're just a fraternal, I guess it's called. I know identical twins.
And one of them said, yeah, but when you grow up, you realize that you spend your entire life talking to people who aren't sure you're you. Yeah, that must be really weird to have an identical twin. Yeah, it's, it's pretty weird, but the greatest story is Elvis, who had a twin in the womb. Oh, right. He absorbed. He ate him apparently. No, I don't know what happened. And I forget his name. I can, but his name was Elvisant.
He, yeah, he died in the womb and out, so like you're born with survivors guilt. Oh, totally. Yeah. It's, it's so, it's so not so they haven't seen the special but they're like, yeah, great. No worries. Um, I don't know if they've seen the special. They're back in Baltimore. Uh, yes. And I know their, their sister has seen the special. I don't know if the rest of the family has. I haven't asked them to watch it because I just asked if I should know you know, yeah.
And I was very nervous to ask them, but they were, they were very, I thought they were going to be like, oh, okay, sure, but they were very emphatic and excited about it. But they, so their sister got married last year and I was supposed to give a speech at the wedding about Ellie, but I got COVID and couldn't go. So I recorded a speech on my phone and sent it to them and they played it on speakers. Oh, God. Yeah. That's so weird. Yeah. That's so weird.
Yeah. But that's also like COVID helping you out of an awkward situation. Oh, because I would have been so nervous. I was nervous in the recording. I'm nervous and I was recording it alone in my room. Yeah. Like my voice skips and, uh, uh, yeah. So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, what else? What else? But I, yeah, I don't know how you, yeah, it is one of the things that you just sort of incorporated into your life. Like, yeah, this is, this is what I do now. Yeah. This is who I am. This is who I am now.
Do you find that, um, so it was like Tucker was your best friend? Yeah. And then, uh, Ellie was very close to you. Yeah. Well, I, um, do you find that other people don't want to get close to you because they fear they'll be next? I can't remember who, but, uh, a comic brought me on stage. He was like, uh, he has a new album called All My Friends Are Dead and I'm scared because I'm his friend to give it up for Drew. Yeah. Well, it's like that. I'm like that with Bobcat.
All the Bob, Bob, Bobcat's close friends get picked off one by one. I do feel like I, be care. You might be next. There's a final destination element to that. Yeah. The other really funny, uh, thing, uh, that you talk about that's kind of like, oh, man, good for him. Is, uh, you talk about being diagnosed with bipolar and your, uh, and your mother's attempts to, uh, to put you at ease. So how old were you when you were, uh, diagnosed with bipolar and how were you diagnosed?
I was 18 and I was, uh, switching between medications, trying to find the right cocktail. And I think it was well buterin, uh, made it way worse. I talked to my psychiatrist about it. And what are the systems that you're dealing with? What are the, what is the, uh, it's, it's, I say this is somebody who's, uh, I'm, uh, there's been on meds since 19. Yeah. It's kind of a roller coaster between severe depression and weird media and to, and sometimes a mixture of the two.
And I think a lot of, there's bipolar one and bipolar two. I bipolar two. I think with bipolar one, like that's what like, say Kanye has where when you have mania, you like think you're a god. You think you can fly with bipolar two. And you have mania, you're just really erratic in your brain. It's going too fast. You're too loud. You can't sleep. So it was a roller coaster between those two things and then a mixture of those two things.
So I was basically just telling my psychiatrist, my psychiatrist, everything. And he was like, yeah, I think you have bipolar disorder. So it was a long conversation where he concluded that essentially. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So that's, uh, I think I'm sure that everybody, uh, I think I'm sure that everybody who hears that thinks, oh, that sounds like me. Oh, it's infuriating. Yes. But it's like, no, you don't understand the level. Yeah. It's not what, yeah, because I have a joke in my act.
How a friend of mine was like, don't worry, man, everyone's a little bipolar. And it's like, I get, that'd be like if you walked up to someone that was HIV positive. Like, hey, everyone is a little bit of AIDS. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know somebody, I know somebody that has bipolar two. Now, granted, I'm lucky in that, you know, I went to a lot of therapy, found the right cocktail of meds. So for the most part, I haven't mostly under control.
But it's, you know, it's, it's a lot when I got diagnosed, I was relieved because everything made sense. It was like the end of a movie when the twist happens and you see all the clues. Oh, yeah. No, when I, I been through it myself with a panic disorder when they just put it, no, no, no, it's this. Yeah. It makes it easier to, I don't know if conquer is the right word, but for lack of a better word, easier to conquer because now you know what you're fighting against.
Yeah, I mean, I've told this story a hundred times. 1994, I stayed awake for 11 days. And I thought the part of my brain that makes you sleep did not work anymore. And then I was just going to stay awake until I died of exhaustion. And no, and then finally get to the right doctor. No, you have some nambulous dikipovalence. It's a form of PTSD. Here take this. And it was literally like the whole the spear out of my chest. It was like, oh, yeah, it's life changing. It's a relief.
It really is like in the, I can, I know the moment. I can pinpoint the moment. And yeah, it's just like you realize that it's just a thing that's wrong with you that can be fixed. Exactly. It's like, it's like a stomach ache. You know, it's a chemical thing. And when you look at it like that, it's a little easier to at least try to make sense of 100% 100% yeah. But what you tell the specialist when you told your mom she was bipolar, what did she do?
And the special I say she Googled cool celebrities that are bipolar and she goes, look at all these awesome people that were bipolar, Kirk Cobain, Robin Williams, Sanford E. Bourdain. We were talking about earlier. It's like, I wonder people like famous people in history, they probably all had something. Oh, yeah. Just before it was popular, it's not the right word. But before we were very conscious about mental health, I'm sure so many. I'm sure Da Vinci was probably bipolar.
And we just like, we only got the high mania stuff and we didn't really know about him water, brown and robe. Exactly. Yeah. They also say, like I know and Brian Wilson's case from the Beach Boys that he has a schizoaffective disorder. And they say that before the onset of it, your brain literally just has this like burst of crazy genius. Yeah. And like that coincided with him, writing, you know, that sounds like, oh, that was his brain like flourishing before the crash.
Well, Kanye would talk about how he's bipolar. And obviously it's sad to see what he's become completely different now. But he would talk about how he didn't want to take a meds because a lot of his brilliance would come from his manic stages of bipolar. And it's just this weird kind of just compromise with yourself. Where it's like, do I want to make this amazing art or be normal? And that's an unhealthy way to look at it because plenty of people that got help in their talent.
Yeah. I mean, I never thought, I mean, I was so, I can only speak for myself, but like, yes, like if I go to therapy, people like compromise my art. I was like, no, fuck art. I also think it's a minute doesn't it? You know, being a more effective communicator doesn't dampen your art. No, not at all. Yeah. Does Kanye know that he's no longer Kanye? I don't, I don't think so. It's so sad to watch. I was married to a naked woman from what I know. Yeah. And that's all I know.
And he, he like pulled a vertigo where he's dressing his wife like his ex-wife and she's getting plastic surgery to look. It's like, oh, really? I didn't know that. I almost see older Kanye and current Kanye is two different people. So the point where I can listen to old Kanye because it doesn't even feel like separating the art from the artist because it feels like a different dude. He's always been super unwell, but it's just, it's, it's, it's on a completely different level at this point.
Yeah. Yeah. To be the weird member of the Kardashians is such an accomplishment. To be the craziest member. To be the member that's so toxic, they have to kick you out. Like you're ruining the Kardashian name. You have besmirched the great name of Kardashian. I, I don't know what it is about her. I don't follow it that closely, but it was like, Pete Davidson must have been like a cold beer on a hot summer's day. He's like, oh, he's fine. Well, I, I care.
Remember who was someone tweeted is like, let me get this wrong. Kanye thinks Hitler was a good guy, but we shouldn't forgive Pete Davidson. The specials of the album is out. Netflix and the Netflixization of show business. I say Netflix like people say Kleenex. It's streaming and that, that venue of that platform of community has, has not only changed, the movie industry and the television industry, it's changed stand up in the way people do stand up.
How has that affected your sort of generation of comedians? Like I see a lot of people, for an example, people don't want to post, people have to post every day or every other day, but people don't want to post their material. So they just post crowd work. Yeah. And that is resulted in people coming to the shows, expecting it to be nothing but crowd work and coming with their set list like your walk on stage. Yeah. Clop foot like they want to. It's so true.
It's that and you go to so many shows now and it'll just be nonstop crowd work to the point where and comics are paying attention to the other comics. So they're asking the front row all the same questions. Like are you guys together? It's like, we just said we're together to the last five people. Right, right, right. Yeah. It's this. I do love lazy crowd work. So what do you do? I'm a pediatric oncologist. What's that second dick? Well, that's the children that are sick.
I think, I think, well, first off, I think crowd work is a really, really, really impressive skill when you're good at it. I can't do it. I'm bad at crowd work. I can't do it all. I can't do it at all. And I'm not, I'm not that interested in the, yeah, I don't care what you do for living to be honest. Yeah, but good crowd work is so fucking impressive. But the problem is because crowd work is the trend right now. Everyone thinks they can do it. So you see comics that are not good at crowd work.
And once again, I'm not good at it, but that's not why I do it. And lately, a thing I see a lot in a viral, uh, crowd work clips is that they'll ask leading questions that are destined to get outrageous answers. And the clip, the humor from the clip, doesn't come from a thing. The comic says the humor comes from the audience member giving an outrageous answer in the comic being shocked.
So the questions will be like, you got any fetishes where it's like no matter how they answer that, you're going to be shocked. And they'll be like, you know, yeah, uh, what a feat. And I'm like, see that's gross, man. And it's like comic destroys pervert in the front row. And it's like, you asked them. So I think that's a big issue is it's, it's leading questions. And I think I know I'm very, very sick of the crowd work. Have you ever played with your own poop? Well, you have.
They'll like, they'll ask someone a question where there's no right answer where they'll ask a couple. If you guys ever done anal, it's a trap. If they say yes, they're gross. If they say no, they're lame. Like, and then, and I always wonder so many of these. Yeah. And so many of these crowd work clips, there's a camera on the people's faces. And it's like, these are people that didn't consent into being in a viral video.
Now there's millions of strangers watching them answer if they've had a three summer not. And people, the other thing is setting people up. Yeah. Oh, it's, it's so annoying. It wants to get, can you ever go anywhere with your car? No, I don't believe you. comic destroys. Well, and the other thing is, so I, I see a lot of people. Comic crushes auto assassin. I see a lot, and I know this is a loaded name to bring up in front of comics.
Comics blame Matt Reif for the, I think he caused the rise in crowd work, but I don't really, I think he's one of the main catalysts because he blew up from crowd work. But I think he's an interesting case where he blew up from crowd work. But I don't think he was trying to start a trend. And he's amazing at crowd work. And I kind of see Matt Reif as like the Oppenheimer of crowd work where I like to picture him, like the end of Oppenheimer where he's seeing all the crowd work that's happened.
And it's just doing it in all his face. And he realizes he ruined the world. Well, it's funny because somebody was talking about Sam Morrell who, and they didn't, yeah, they didn't know that I was friends with Sam. And they were, and they were saying, yeah, I hear about this guy a lot. But I don't know if he's good because all they see online is crowd work. And I was like, no, he's amazing. Yeah, he's unbelievable.
But you don't, they just don't want to post, he doesn't post his stuff because he's doing special. I don't care. Like I'm just like at this point, it's like, yeah, you'll see a bit. And then if you see it in the special, you saw it twice. Yeah. And like I said, dirt, and you want to see people want to see like I used to go see George Carlin all the time. I wanted to see bits that I had seen. Oh, you want to see the hits?
Yeah. You want to hear the new stuff, obviously, but you want to hear the, but I also want to hear the hits. Absent. Yeah. And like I said, there are Sam Morrell is one of them. There are so many comics that are amazing at crowd work. He's an example. There's a lot of examples. Like I said, the issue is, that is material is better than it's. Oh, exactly.
And he's a real, and obviously I'm not on, on his or your level where I have specials on TV or something, but I've recently tried to get over the burning material thing. Just because they say you got to post a lot of clips. I've compiled like 70-ish clips that I want to post for the next six months. And I'm just trying to tell myself like you're not burning material. It's not like everyone in the world is going to see this clip.
People are going to see me at a show and be like, I saw a clip of this joke seven months ago. Right. Fuck this. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to pop to me after a show like, you know, these, the weird, you know, because of social media, everyone's a critic. Really great show. Really great show. I heard a couple things last time. Oh, coming. Yeah. And. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the, yeah. Yeah, I saw you here before. Yeah. You're also repeating. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, I feel like there's a fine line.
You have to keep writing. And obviously it depends on what level you're at and how well known your stuff is, but you also have to have an act like you don't, you don't have to have a new hour every two weeks. No, it's people that are still things that something Woody Allen said that actually was not ridiculous. You know, the, an hour of standup is the creative equivalent of a novel. And it really is. It's like you put as, you put as much into a tight hour as a writer would put into a novel.
It takes, it takes a year of full time work. To get a tight hour. And you know, the, the, and really, Carlisle is the person that sort of established this sort of work schedule is your career path. You do an hour, you record it and you start your next hour. Yeah. And. Uh, it's so funny. I was, I just recorded a special and then I was like, okay, well, that hour is to bed. Now I have to write a new hour.
And I just thought, well, I will live my life and things will happen and I will talk about them. So it will be fine. And then my dad called and said, your mother died. I'm like, I didn't need material that bad. I was thinking, maybe I'll buy a new car. Yeah. I could have talked about traffic. Yeah. The dog might do something. But thank God I have that chunk.
Yeah. I don't think that people are, are so averse to hearing things that, that, you know, people like stuff that you, they absolutely want to hear new stuff. But it's not like if people, it's like when you go to a band, you want to hear the songs you like. And I think one thing could stand up as rise than popularity so much over the past few years. And I think one upside of that is a lot of fans who just aren't comics.
They're kind of in tune to how stand up works because they've listened to, you know, podcasts, they listen to Marin or, you know, comedy podcasts. So they come to see you. They know they'll hear old jokes, new jokes, stuff you're trying for the first time. Right. People are very in tune with that right now for the most part. Because you get these people, like you look at Burke, Kreischer, like at Richard Pryor's peak, he was not selling out venues that size.
Yeah. You know, gold weight just open for Adam Sandler at a 18,000 seat venue. The last, the last performer in that venue was the who. Yeah. And, and it's just like prior in Carlin, never performed to that many people. I think Steve Martin was playing 2000 Cedar Reenas and thought it was too big. Well, not only that, it's interesting. Like in the mid 2000s, when Dan Cook was selling out stadiums, he was the only comic on the planet selling out stadiums.
And it felt like this is the peak of, yeah, this will never happen again. This is it. Now there's like 50 comics that sell out stadiums. Crazy. It's, it's, and it's very cool to see. I like it, but it's interesting that it's, it's rose from like, you know, we'll never see this. I remember seeing an old comic's had him, but in 2007, I saw Dan Cook at the United Center in Chicago. And it just felt like I'll never see a comedy show in a stadium again. This is unreal.
Since then, I've gone to like five more in the past 10 years. Are there laps? Or is it because Marin called it, they're more, it's more like a rally. It's like, it's interesting in the laughs. They sound different. So when everyone laughs in a stadium, they're laughing, but it doesn't sound like laughter. It's just this, this wave of noise. Yeah. And I can't imagine that like for the performer, because I've worked big venues just on a show that was big.
And there's like the three second delay on everything, you know, it's like you get a joke, the laughs issue because it goes that it takes them a beat to hear it. Then they respond. That response goes up and then that is bounced back to you off the rafters. So and it's an interesting dynamic because I feel like the vibe of a show at a stadium, I saw Malini at the forum. I think like two years ago, amazing show, but the vibe of the show, it doesn't feel like a comedy show feels like a concert.
And there's a hot dog in a beer and they're whispering to each other during. And I do not, I realize I do not envy the opening acts at a stadium show for comedy because everyone is just chatting and like filing in slowly like the openers were fucking hilarious, but no one was paying a lick of attention to them. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks to do comedy in a bar and no one's paying attention. Imagine you do a comedy for 20,000 people and they're not paying attention.
Yeah. I mean, I love, to me, the best place to do comedy is I, and I, this is not where I, I mean, I've certainly worked in these venues, but the Lenny Bruce era, like when it was like a jazz club, like you're in a basement, low ceiling, it's like 150 to 200 people at tables, all crowded together. You know, everybody's in suits. You know, like that, that was to me, that's like the ideal laboratory for a stand-up comedy. It feels intimate, but very official. It feels very professional.
Like we're all here for a show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're hanging out. We have suits and cocktails. So like this is real, but we're having a good time and just fucking around. Places like the seller in New York, you know, that's, that, that to me is, is like we're comedy belong in the basement. Yeah, you know, in a weird room, or the low ceiling, yeah, that's why that's really, that's really what you want. I was, I remember I was with a friend of mine, Mike Carano, really, really funny guy.
He was not a comedian, but he worked for the improv and management. And we were going into, I think it was the braille improv. We were just driving around in the area and he stopped in for something and exactly the manager and the manager was like, we're going to put a, you know, all those rooms as, as Drake say, they're used to say you, you can't see the back of the room because of the curvature of the earth. And the guy was like, we're going to put us, we're going to get a chandelier in here.
And he's like, why? Why are you giving anyone, anyone, anything to look at other than what's on stage? Yeah. You know, it's just this, it's this weird attitude of everything. It has to be the bigger, the bigger, the better. No. Yeah. You don't want distractions. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a, there's a vagacy, there's a vagus kind of belief that I guess is, you know, it's like, I like the idea of Laxina, like a big show. Yeah. You know, it's a real, so where are you? Are you touring?
Are you, what are you? So I have a show at the improv that it's called Saltae F. It's in the lab. I'm tinkering with the idea of making another special in the near future. You know Kyle Deesod, right? Sure. Her and I have been co-headlining on the road a lot and we're going to. Oh, great, great, great. That's a great show. That's a great show. And we're going to Seattle in October, I think, in Minnesota in November. And what venues are you for? A walling?
Are you going to like, hack me and helium instead? It's, I haven't written down somewhere. I honestly forget the names of the clubs. Let me see. You will need to know those. Yeah. But yeah, just kind of figuring out road dates with Kadi Asad, who's one of my favorite comics tinkering with the idea of a new special. And just, I mean, it's been about a year issue a little more since I put out this special, but I still am. But the album came out pretty real.
Yeah, the album just came out recently and I was excited because it's in an excuse to promote it again, because I just, yeah, I like this special. I've been wanting to push it as much. It's from your number one on iTunes. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And that could mean, I mean, only like five people use iTunes. So it might not be that. Are you, is it, are you getting played on a serious? They said they let me know comedy dynamics.
I don't know if I will get played on serious just because you've seen the special. A lot of the bits don't work out of context of the full special. Yeah. I just get here. One of the bits in the middle while you're driving to work. Why is this guy talking about a kid getting crushed by an elevator? It's one of the foundation. Yeah. You have been smurched the name of raw dog comedy. You have the smur, sir. You have brought Callumny down on the good name of raw dog comedy.
Yeah. Have you seen a bird christian show? I haven't. I've seen bits and pieces of his stuff. I think he's super funny. Yeah, he's super funny. I saw him at, I watched the Tom Brady roast on Netflix and he was funny on everything. I've seen it. And he had a shirt on right? He kept the shirt on the whole time. He did. Everything I've seen. It would be terrible if he had to take a shirt off in recent situations. Yeah. What I've seen is funny.
I don't know a lot of his stuff, but he seems very funny. No, I'm just a man. I've known him forever and he's a super great guy. And then just to see something just gopics. A load like that. Yeah. And it's, I mean, I'm, and people say you chose no, it's fascinating. Yeah, I would be jealous if he was doing my act. Yeah. But other than that, it's I have no connection to it whatsoever. I'm picturing a shirtless bird christian, a stadium talking about your mom dying. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, he's a preferring to ask my mom. So then to any ghoul's mom died. Again, with the fake mic. Yeah. I thought you have a real mic. Well, where can people find you online as they want to why, as they want to investigate? Yeah. So my Instagram is Mr. Drew Landry and my tiktok is spelled or a MR. Oh, MR, MR Drew Landry. And my tiktok is just Drew Landry. And the specials on YouTube, the album is on Apple music, Spotify, anything else. Great. And it's called All My Friends Are Dead.
All My Friends Are Dead, yeah. The hilarious All My Friends Are Dead. Yes, there's an air about hot coffee that's hard to resist. Whole-bodied, refreshing hot coffee makes any time a pleasant interlude. Won't you have some now? It's coming. Here it comes. It's intermission time. Time to visit our concession stand. There's your day from weird to tails from weird to and there's your. Can you or a hard stand, the shocking facts?
Playboy magazine began in 1953 in Chicago, Illinois, the brainchild of the University of Illinois Psychology graduate named Hugh Hefner. Now by the 1960s, Playboy magazine had become an American publishing and pop cultural institution, combining the cheesecake photography of men's magazines like Stagg and Wink and Gent with nods towards serious literature, serious journalism, real commentary, imagine the New Yorker with a naked lady in the middle.
Imitation being the highest form of flattery, the imitations came fast and furious. That said, Playboy didn't feel any real competitive heat until a magazine called Penthouse hit the stands. Penthouse was the brainchild of a guy named Bob Guccioni, born Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccioni. His driver's license was two feet long. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930. He grew up in New Jersey, decided to become a priest, decided against it and got married at 18.
Had a daughter, got divorced, went to Europe to become an artist, got married again, and four more kids. Guccioni and his new family moved to London, where he took on a number of odd jobs, I would think so, with a family that size. Among them was a mail order business that sold back issues of old men's magazines like the aforementioned Wink Stagg and Gent. Now that business lost money times Rituff, Guccioni's second life left him took the kids, inspired by the success of Playboy magazine.
Guccioni founded Penthouse magazine, which was basically Playboy, but more so. The articles were more transgressive, the photos were more explicit. He created a promotional brochure for the magazine and sent it out to the wrong mailing list. Or did he?
According to an article on Guccioni in the New York Times, the brochure, which included samples of the nothing left to the imagination photography style that would become Penthouse's trademark, was sent to and I quote, clergymen, schoolgirls, old age pensioners, and the wives of members of parliament. That stunt, intentional or accidental, did not go over well, or did it.
You see, although the fine-foresending indecent material through the mail was a little under 300 pounds, the resulting outrage generated enough publicity to assure that the entire first printing of Penthouse magazine sold out. Now this was 1965. Four years later, in September of 1969, Penthouse magazine hit the stands in the United States. It was a huge success, and Bob Guccioni, now on wife number three, was well on his way to becoming a very, very rich man.
Now he was larger than life to begin with. If you had to cast someone to play a 1970s adult magazine publisher, and the guy came out of the wardrobe trailer dressed like Bob Guccioni, you might send them back with, uh, gee, guys, it's a little on the nose, don't you think? Guccioni in his heyday in the 70s and 80s, when he was in his 40s and 50s, was fond of leather pants, gold chains, satin shirts open to his belly button, he was the Italian stallion long before Sylvester Stallone showed up.
And as Penthouse magazine grew in popularity, Guccioni became very rich. He branched out into collecting art, fine photography. As a company, Penthouse invested in several high profile motion pictures, including films like The Longest Yard and Chinatown. But Guccioni didn't just want to invest in other people's movies, he wanted to produce his own. And not just any movie.
He wanted to make a mainstream blockbuster movie that broke the boundaries of what was then considered acceptable for sex on screen. He landed on an epic. The story of the Roman Emperor, Caligula. The real-life Caligula ascended to the throne at the ripe old age of 24, and by all accounts, he was wholly unprepared for the responsibility.
He was popular at first, doing what he could for the people of Rome, building them race tracks and theaters, holding free gladiatorial matches, repairing the roads, repairing the ports. But such was the structure of the Roman government at the time that he did have to deal with the Senate, and he did not like this. Early on in his reign, he suffered a serious illness.
It may have been a nervous breakdown, it may have been epilepsy, but whatever it was, he emerged from it a wildly irrational and unpredictable tyrant. Now it may very well be that he was always a wildly irrational and unpredictable tyrant, even that his illness just exacerbated his psychological descent we don't know. But we do know this. For lack of a better term, the Emperor Caligula declared war on the Roman Senate. He had senators executed if he felt threatened by them.
He made his horse a senator, some say he made his horse a priest, why argue. He did declare himself God, and purportedly liked to make out with his sister. Eventually, he was murdered by his own guards, the end. Now there's a story there to be sure, and Guccioni began shopping at the writers. First up was the German art house darling Lena Vertmuller, but her script was rejected. And he gave the property to novelist Gore Vidal.
Lena Vertmuller, Gore Vidal, Bob Guccioni's Caligula was shaping up to be a prestige project. He offered the film to John Houston to direct Houston past. Frederico Felini and Nicholas Ray were considered, but eventually the directorial reigns fell into the hands of Tinto Bross, who had just made a film called Salon Kitty, which was based on the truth is stranger than fiction account of a World War II story, where the Nazi SS took over one of Berlin's most popular brothels.
Replaced the prostitutes with female SS agents, there's a promotion you don't want, and began cataloging the pillow talk of the German high command. But it was exactly what Guccioni was looking for, a prestige film with sex that was intrinsic to the story and all over the screen. With the script by Gore Vidal, a hot art house director and a producer with bottomless pockets, Caligula attracted a lot of big-name talent.
Malcolm McDowell, the star of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, was signed to play the lead Peter O'Toole, Sir John Gilgood and a young Helen Mirren all came on board for what looked like a high-brow examination of how power corrupts. The film intended to show the decadence of ancient Rome as an allegory for the decadence of modern Western civilization. The problem started immediately.
Peter O'Toole, who by all accounts, was never not fabulously drunk on set, did not get along well with director Tinto Bras. Neither did screenwriter Gore Vidal. Gore Vidal also didn't get along with Bob Guccioni, and that got Gore Vidal banned from production. The sets, on the other hand, whether Gore Vidal could see them or not, were amazing. Fred Rico Follini's production designer, Daniel Denotti, was handed a blank check and said, recreate ancient Rome. And so he did.
Tinto Bras filled the screen with sex, but it was dark, angry, depraved sex. In other words, it was this sex as described in the script. This to illustrate the point of the story that power corrupts and that that corruption infects everything. Unfortunately, that's not the kind of sex Bob Guccioni wanted. Even though it was, what was written in the script, Bob Guccioni wanted sexy sex.
He wanted the screen to be filled with high-paid actors and beautiful lavish, expensive sets, but more than anything else. He wanted sexual sexiness, and he wanted it administered by sexy hot chicks. Tinto Bras cast local Italian actresses who looked like regular people. Which was historically accurate and cost-effective, as they were in Italy and normal Italian actresses were in high supply.
That Bob Guccioni published Penthouse magazine and he wanted the women to look like the models in Penthouse magazine. So he flew them out from California. The problem was the director didn't want them. He was making a film about ancient Rome with a cast of Shakespearean-trained British stage actors. And these girls looked like they had just walked out of, well, Penthouse. Which they had. Bob Guccioni had a problem. His director was shooting the script, but it wasn't the movie he wanted.
He'd flown a bunch of hot chicks in to have hot sex on screen, but the director was cold to the notion. The budget was already through the roof and firing director Tinto Bras was out of the question. So Bob Guccioni happened upon a solution that was as audacious in its simplicity as it was completely fucking bananas. Director Tinto Bras spent his days shooting the film Caligula with the script and the cast that had all been previously agreed upon. At the end of the day, they would all go home.
And then Bob Guccioni would come in on the same sets, on the same costumes with a bunch of Penthouse pets and local sweaty fuck dudes and filmed them having super-ranchy porn sex and super-grossed violence. Guccioni would take the film that he shot and make sure that Bras never saw it. And the director continued to work on the film completely unaware that the other half of the film was being shot while he slept.
When the films wrapped, Guccioni took all the footage into the editing room and locked the director out. An article on the making of the film on the website Sinna Outsider, which was one of the major sources for this piece by someone named Slarek, I assume that's his blogger handle and that he's not a Vulcan, pointed out that, oh yeah, Bob Guccioni had never edited a film before. Oh well, no worries.
Bob Guccioni made sure that his hardcore material featured in almost every scene, whether it belonged there or not. It was basically really, really hardcore, hardcore pornography and hardcore torture porn. And occasionally, some really famous actors would have scenes, almost as if they'd mixed up the reels of this movie with another real movie that was playing somewhere else in the cineplex. The final cut of the film saw Tinto Bros' director credit reduced to director of principal photography.
Gore Vidal, one of his name, auth the movie, the real actors in the film, Malcolm McDowell and Company, refused to discuss the film much less promote it. The film got an X rating, which meant it could not be advertised nationally and could only be shown in porn theaters. Now this movie cost about $73 million in today money, and it could not survive with that kind of distribution. So Guccioni went back and cut an R-rated version. The people didn't like that one either. In fact, they hated it.
Variety called it a moral holocaust. Here are some excerpts from Roger Ebert's review. Angela is sickening. Utterly worthless, shameful trash. If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful. People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty, disgusted and unspeakably depressed. I walked out of the film after two hours of its 170 minute length.
That was on Saturday night, as a line of hundreds of people stretched down Lincoln Avenue, waiting to pay 750 a piece to become eyewitness to shame. I wanted to tell them what did I want to tell them. What I'm telling you now, that this film is not only garbage on an artistic level, but that it is also garbage on the crude and base level where it no doubt hopes to find its audience. Now, it should be noted that Roger Ebert was no prude. He wrote Russ Meyers Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
This movie shook him so badly that his review ended with a sad comment on human nature itself. To quote Roger Ebert, the human being is a most curious animal. Surely people know going in that Caligula is worthless. Surely they know that there are other movies in town that are infinitely better, yet here they are at Caligula. It is very sad. My friendly recommendation is that they see the great Santini to freshen their minds and learn to laugh and care again in a movie. People learn fast.
This movie, said the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain, is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen. Now of course, Caligula did make its money back and it went away, but it was never forgotten, securing its status of so bad they're good cult legends, even though it's not really good. Bob Gucioni passed away in 2010 from lung cancer.
And then, last year in 2023, an editor named Thomas Nagovan decided to completely recut the film, taking the 96 hours of original footage and sifting through it to see whether or not there really was a movie in there. What emerged was Caligula, the ultimate cut. More than anything, Nagovan tried to rescue Malcolm McDowell's performance, to unearth the arc of this character, to somehow put Caligula into the movie Caligula.
There's something moving about Nagovan's quest to honor McDowell's performance.
There's not much the recut can do about the script and the iffy camera work, which are all part of its charm, but Nagovan has unearthed at the very least Caligula's character arc, taking him from a young man kneeling before Peter O'Toole's Emperor Tiberius, knowing full well that Tiberius is mad as a hatter, to a new, bright-eyed Roman Emperor, and then his own slow disintegration into madness, madness caused by the corruption of power. Is Caligula the ultimate cut better?
It couldn't be worse, but you can only work with the film you've been given. An article in the Guardian by Catherine Bray on Nagovan's version sums up the issue better than I ever could. The strengths, the elaborate sets, particularly the head-chopping machine, the OTT costumes, the beautiful way that it is lit, are still present and correct. As are the multiple orgies, the infamous fisting scene, the copious nudity, and the genuine shock of some of the violence.
At the con premiere of the new version, there were some walk-outs. This followed the scene where Caligula rapes both bride and bridegroom at a wedding. Anyone expecting a purely silly cult movie may be surprised at how dark and upsetting some of it is, and always has been. They spoke of it first in whispers, then it took the media by storm. I have existed from the morning of the world, and I shall exist until the last star falls from the heavens.
Although I have taken the form of chaos Caligula, I am a god. Bob Guchionri and Penthouse Films International present Caligula. No kids, you can't watch it. Symbols, we're all familiar with them. There are shortcuts to vital information. That's why to familiarize you with the movie rating symbols which will be used by this theater, we present the following guide for parents and young people. It is designed to inform parents about the suitability of movie content for viewing by their children.
G, all ages admitted, general audiences. G, P, all ages admitted, parental guidance suggested. R, restricted, under 17 requires a company parent or adult guardian. X, no one under 17 admitted. And now, on with the show. The mighty and resilient Maramack River, carving through the communities of our great region. My name is Linda Lorden, proud president of Maramack County Savings Bank, and like the river that serves as our namesake, we're a constant yet ever-changing presence.
Because to us, it's bigger than banking. It's about powering communities and putting people first. It's about knowing where you came from and where you're going. That's Maramack style. Visit us at themaramack.com. It's a sundapl day, hi, it's out the Mahol and Drive View shelf here in sunny Southern California. Everyone knows.
Mostly everyone who is listening to this podcast knows about the criterion collection, which is a high-end film restoration and preservation outfit that is, although they have a channel, they concentrate a lot on physical media, owning a DVD, owning a Blu-ray, taking films that are of value and restoring them and preserving them. It's an important part of our cultural heritage.
What you may not know about is a company called The Vinegar Syndrome, which I call the criterion collection for the drive-in. Basically, I'll let the pros explain it. I'm joined today by two people from The Vinegar Syndrome, one of the archivists and chief preservationists. And Dino, what is your gig there? What's your position there? I'm not really sure.
I work in the archive, I work in the, not the film archive, the store, the archive, and just kind of keep my hands busy with all kinds of behind-the-scenes miscellaneous. Okay. So, it's Oscar Becker and Dino Preservio. I did it. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. This is very cool to be here. And thank you for the German pronunciation as well. I want to appreciate it. My wife is Swedish, so I've spent a lot of time in that neck of the woods. We went to our honeymoon.
We went to Berlin for our honeymoon. I went to school in Berlin, so I knew it well. Oh, yeah. It's an amazing city. It's an amazing city. It's an amazing city. Well, Oscar, when you think of a film archivist, you imagine an old gray beard, Scorsese-type, you're a young dude. How did you get into film preservation? And why a company like vinegar syndrome and not the criterion collection? And for example, just so you know, where is the criterion collection?
Well, we're talking about the criterion collection will preserve an archive, the films of Werner Herzog and all of those great stuff. Vinegar syndrome is just released a box that we're going to talk about called The Lost Picture Show. And the films featured in it are films like The Lost Vegas Strangler, The Last American Hobos, Boudou Hartbeat, Redmond. How did you get into preserving the Al-Adamson level film work? Yes. So, first off, thank you very much for having us.
And thank you for saying that I'm young. I just turned 30s, so I don't feel like I'm young anymore. But yeah, don't fucking rule Oscar. Yeah. So, with how I get into film preservation? Yeah, it's a, I don't know, it's very tricky. My father was at film preservation. I said no, no, my grandfather was forced into it. No, I kind of just came into it because I loved watching movies and I got obsessed with really good looking movies.
And I kept noticing that the studio films, when they were released through these like Universal or MGM, they always look a little bit like the movie. A little bit better than some of the other stuff that I'd come across. And the early stuff, which is mostly like public domain or an archive, it's nonprofits.
So I got kind of closer to it by basically attempting to find out what sources things were taken from and eventually found my way to what I like to call as like the Hogwarts for film nerds, which is basically just the Selznick School of Film Preservation, which is in Rochester where Kodak was situated. And they basically just threw us into the deep end and we had like learn how to not fuck up films. Okay. Right. So the name vinegar syndrome is specific to the smell of decaying nitrate.
Is that correct? Of course. It's the smell of decaying triacetate, which nitrate is pre-1950s. Everything in Russia can go into the late 50s, but like 60s, anything that you know from the 60s, 70s, 80s, that's going to be on cellulose triacetate, which is I'm not going to go into chemistry. But you want to, but I do want to. I can see it in your eyes.
I'm going to say my eyes, that's, you know, it's a whole complex process, but in order to make cellulose, celluloid plastic, they use specific types of chemicals. When those chemicals decay, it smells a crazy amount like vinegar. And it's very pungent, very acidic if it can knock out your senses smell for like a week if you open up a can and just are too eager and stick your nose in the film came so that's where we came from. Yeah. So that's where we came from.
And that's what we have to smell all the time by having to work. Yeah. And there is a way to save and clean up films that are beginning to decay. And because I'll give an example of why I think, you know, just for my own dumb layman's view. We talked on this podcast about the hormones. And we had Jimmy Macdonough on to talk about his book, The Exotic Ones and the Blu-ray Package equivalent. And one of their films I forget, which one it was, they shot in New Orleans.
And I believe 1969 and they weren't permitted and they're just running and gunning around New Orleans. But that shows you New Orleans in 1969. And you see it's despite the story of the film, it's living history. It's like, this is what it looked like. This is what it was like to be in New Orleans in 1969. I imagine Red Midnight, which I've yet to see, which is in the, the, the your box set, will show you what it's like to be on Cape Cod in probably the same year.
1969, 1970 in Cape Cod in New England and that amount of time. And it's, it's a, it's a view to the past. It's so, it's, it's so vital and, and so important. And you also get what you know, which, which criterion doesn't serve, although their work is so incredibly important, independent filmmakers from that period of time and drive in, and drive in culture. How did, how did vinegar syndrome choose that? You know, why do they, why do they shop in that store?
Why do they, why do they go down to that way? From what I understand, it was originally to preserve old X-rated films. Well, yes, I, it really, we don't draw too many distinctions between feature films, pornographic or otherwise. And we definitely started with an exploitation angle. Like you said, criterion really covers a lot of the more art house and higher budget, higher ticket. And Janice, Janice films and that stuff. Yeah, Janice being the, Janice is there, theatrical releasing arm.
Whereas we were looking at independent films and exploitation. And Janra films is really the best way to call it, to refer to them at this point. And just not looking at any lines, not, not, not differencing between pornography or independent film was all worthwhile independent film. And we started really looking at interesting exploitation and actually, sex exploitation, filmmakers were kind of lapsing into dramas early on.
And then it's actually expanded into more exploitation titles, more genre film titles. And then further and further into horror. But at this point, we, you know, the, the, the companies put out over 500 movies licensing from the universal MGM, et cetera. We put out movies from the 40s to the early 2000s. Pretty much, chewed our tight to our name, vinegar syndrome, focusing on celluloid or whatever Oscar's chemical combination is.
We pretty much look at, at any form of movie as being valid, especially the stuff that tends to be overlooked, things that fall through the gaps. If it was made on film, it matters to us. We should just say the film, vinegar syndrome was found in 2012 by two guys, Joe Rubin and Ryan Emerson. And it is interesting because when you go to the starting in the late 50s, I guess, what we think of as X-rated films, it's not adult content as people know it today.
There was an attempt at drama, and it's easy to see how things, how a filmmaker would evolve into telling a better story and telling a story. Let's, a popular example would be Glen or Glenda, which is, it was not an X-rated film, but independent film made by Edward. Although we know now it was his attempt to tell the story of his cross-dressing and dysmorphia, whatever you want to call it, then distributors padded it out with strip tease numbers, weird SNM, Irving Klaw footage. And at the time,
it was released, it was just simple exploitation. Then it became an object of kind of mocking derision. Now, I was talking to Scott Alexander and Larry Karazowski about this the other day who wrote Edward the film. Glen or Glenda is not funny anymore. You can't laugh at Glen or Glenda now. And it's much more of a, it's a much more important cultural
artifact than people give it credit. And also for 1952 and 1954, a very naked, honest representation of a subgroup and a plea for tolerance that was incredibly rare for that era. And one of our early releases was, you know, kind of, we're kind of always trying to bridge the gaps because there's a lot of, especially with genre films, our genre film people, my particular hangout, this is always horror film people, a lot of them, especially
people focused on slasher's. So they're surprised. For people who you think would be attracted to outsider movies, they can be surprisingly narrow and rule based. One of our earliest releases was the Lost Films, which are kind of goofy exploitation movies of Herschelgården Lewis. So there's always that point where we're trying to push a little bit further beyond like the lines of, well, I like horror, but I don't like, you know, I don't like
smut. To your point, and Glender Glenda is a perfect example. I think you have a copy now of take it out and trade, which is an Edward movie from, I think from 1970, much to the same point. And maybe actually I would argue much more progressive than Glender Glenda. It not only shows, it not only shows Ed in cross-dressing regalia, dressed his natural state at that point, it shows a surprising number of what are shown to the audience as
normal relationships, lesbian, gay, etc. It just as being completely normal. But just like you said, it's always those commercial forces of show business. That movie is padded with an enormous amount of nudity for some reason, female nudity, where someone clearly said, well, we have to make this sellable from 1970 audience. And in traditional Edward fashion, he had no idea what was bankable at that period of time.
Right. Well, he was, he was an otor. He was telling his story and you're welcome to come along a film that's worthy of preservation that needs to be restored, but there are elements of it that are missing. One of the first ones that vinegar syndrome did was a 1984 film called New York Ninja. But when you, when you got it, it wasn't fully, you had to kind of finish the film. Is that fair to say? Yeah. So basically, well, I personally wasn't the one, all credit
to that one goes to one of our film restoration artists, Curtis, who's also a filmmaker. We have people from a wide variety of different backgrounds here. And he found all these roles for film cans, just random film cans. They're essentially daily's where they were titled New York Ninja, a title that didn't appear anywhere on the internet. There is no information
about it. All we knew is that every single piece of film that was ever shot for this mid 1980s movie was here by John Liu, a very famous martial arts star who was known for his very high kicks. But like the rockets, he's the rockets of martial arts, the rockets of a Hong Kong. Yeah, exactly. But but essentially, it was so much film, it was thousands of feet of film and no one knew what to do with it. Obviously, we are a restoration company.
So the different people of different expertise is there's a restoration section, an archive section, a shipping section, business. Right. And there was no audio. There's no, but there is, but yes, but there was no film production section. So essentially, because of the fact that it was just negative and the fact that the, if there was audio shot, there was on set audio shot, but it was lost. It probably, sound materials go bad incredibly quickly, probably
thrown out in the like 90s or something like that. But essentially, we Curtis had to piece together this actual film, try to construct a narrative. We were looking for a script, anything, couldn't find anything. And then had to re record every single piece of dialogue. And in that case, it was such a, you basically, you, did you have the script or did you have to what he wrote? I think you're only okay. Did you have, did you know what the dialogue
was? Or are you lip reading and recreating? So in this case, there was, I think there was talks about going to a lip reader, but in the end, the Curtis actually learned how to lip read because he was watching the footage so closely. So he was able to come up with such a tighter, better script that actually followed the narrative that when we, it's insane. And essentially what ended up happening is we, someone ended up who was doing extras
for the release when we finally were able to put it out. They found the script. And the funny part about it was the script almost matches perfectly Curtis the script. So that just is like a, I don't know, props, props to him and his skill level, because that's learning straight from the bottom. You have to figure out how to piece together a movie just by what you have. But again, for people that don't know that, you know, only know
New York from the 2004, New York in 1984 was a completely different animal. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like I remember being in New York in 1984 and Times Square was dangerous. It was, it wasn't like downtown Disneyland. It was, it's a, it's a, it's a rat. No, I mean, I'm flexed. Yeah. No, it's a radically different place. And, and the culture of the, the
Grindhouse cinemas that were popular in New York at that time. And that's something that vinegar syndrome serves really well is, you know, before in the world before streaming when it was just TV and TV had, you know, seven channels. The movies were, and especially now when we're at a time when the, the, the future of cinemas cinemas has physical structures is called into question because of media media companies, fucking it to death. That people
would go to the movies much more often and there were different strata of movies. There was, there was drive in movies. There was Grindhouse movies and then there was mainstream movies and all of these things needed product. So you had an entire world of filmmakers, you know, you're ormons, you're all out of cinemas, you're a virtual Gordon Lewis's that were just pumping out product to fill these, to fill these theaters. Do you see an equivalent
for that today? Like, where do you see that filmmaking today? I'm going to ask the young guy. I figured out a way to live in the 20th century as long as possible. So I got it. Yeah. Good point. To that point. I mean, I think I think it's kind of coming with regards to bringing that exploitation ground up a single person pushing it forward mindset. I think I, I, I do think a lot of the boutique labels like, like, I do, I do count us in
with that vinegar, sever and arrow. A lot of these companies are just run by really passionate people who are, the truth of the matter is it's about minimizing costs and creating a product. But our cost here is truly, we have a film archive in house. So we never have to pay for chipping when we need to go for another, from another archive, or we don't have to pay someone to scan something unless it's a studio title. But I don't know. There are
a lot of like equivalences. I think podcasting too is like a, a modern method of doing that, do it yourself. It's not encounter intuitive because it used to, everything used to be on film, right? So you'd have to have a lot of film. And now it's digital. And it seems like there's a slight bit less of like a, do it yourself mentality and filmmaking. In terms of distribution, I mean, we all know this, but the democratization of all this
has just created a flood of way too much stuff. And it's hard to get it out there. But of course, creativity is still there, just still fighting against everything else to create the public. Yeah. And with the increasing corporatization of film companies and film product, it is the nature of grass to grow through the sidewalk. I know you'll always get independent voices, independent films. And it's just trying to find a way to get them
to the public. There'll always be that sort of DIY impulse to tell a different story. So it's, I talk about it now because it's an interesting time because to live in Los Angeles, which is, you know, purportedly the film capital of the United States. And it has so few actual movie theaters anymore. We went to see Furiosa, which you would think would be a pack, you know, we went to the Chinese theater and, you know, the day after opening
day. And there's six people in the auditorium because it's already streaming because people know, I'll just wait and watch it for free in three weeks. And the same company that does that, the same company that says it's in theaters on this day. And it's on your TV for free 14 days later. Doesn't understand why people don't go to see it in the theater. That's created some really weird, some really weird phenomena from my perspective. I was
a, I was a host for Alibou Draft House for five years. And just what I got to learn about exhibition, the business of exhibition, my roots are in, are in the music industry. My roots are in like music promotion. And I work with records primarily. But looking at all the options people have and how to consume movies at this point, it's a maddening process.
And to make it even weirder, you know, what Oscar just said in terms of this constellation of boutique labels, there's now also this issue where yes, we are trying to save movie theaters. We are trying to save theatrical exhibition. But you also have these purists. And some of these people are like 25 years old, developing a purist mentality where they think anything but a 35 millimeter print, regardless of how good the quality is, they
won't go see a movie in a theater unless it's a 35 millimeter print. In many cases, those prints are true grind house quote unquote prints. They're destroyed. They're in bad shape, et cetera. But they Joe Rubin, one of our, one of our founders here, and he refers to this as the print cult. It's amazing to think about like there's so many options for movies at this point and to try to second guest them in terms of a commercial sense.
Maybe the best thing we have is what we do here. This was not meant to be a promotional turnaround on that phrase. But maybe the best thing we have is the packaging, the new packaging of older movies. What we do or other companies do to get it out to either subscribers or people who buy them from us because there's so many weird options like, like just like you said, so as you brand new movies should have a good following in the theater. And
sometimes it doesn't. To talk about Furiosa as an example, you know, Mad Max Furry Road, one of the reasons it was so popular and one of the reasons that the films that any film you will see with a vinegar and vinegar, so it puts out what you see on screen is what happened. And there's no digital, there's no digital magic in terms of creating things that aren't there. You might restore the picture, but you're not creating things that aren't
there. And Furry Road was a very, very, very practical effect movie. There was cleanup in whatever. It's physical. Yeah, it's physical. It's physical. Yeah. And your, and your I will know. And Furiosa looked less physical and audiences didn't respond, which is one of the things that is interesting about another thing that is so great about the films that you guys will that you guys work with and distribute is what you see is what happened.
And maybe I'm only speaking for myself, but I can always tell when there's CGI and it pulls me away. It pulls me away. Well, similarly off that topic too, I think there's been more, much more of like a reliance recently or more of an emphasis on what AI is going to do, what digital a software now. But it's just like you can tell if something has been
touched by AI, like people have reacted to photos looking differently on their phone. But if you are actually caring about these movies, you want to see them exactly how the filmmakers intended them to be seen. So, you know, even even with us, our overhead is basically we have three restoration people working around the clock. They get through one real a day, pretty much 20 minutes of film a day to make sure that they remove only scratches, only
dust and nothing else gets messed up. And it's because we really do care about the film as an actual material. It's that materiality side of it where we don't want to add anything that wasn't there. We don't want to, you know, with regards to like the practical effects, you can see so much more of the actual way a film was shot and conceived if you can actually look and see the actual film. Yeah. There's always going to be guesswork in digital.
And you'll see people online who go like, look, this commercial was made completely by wrong or whatever the name of the program is like, no actors or nobody was involved. Like, that's not good. Who are you? Why are you happy about this? Well, it's just like I understand that I, you know, as I always say, you have to remember half the country went to war because they thought it was a good idea to own someone. You know, it's like
you always have to remember people look at the world differently than you do. But what's good about that? You know, we've taken artists out of it completely. Great. You suck. Congratulations. I think, I think what is, I think what is great about that? I think look, I'm between your age and Oscar's age. And, and, and I feel very fortunate to have been able to get involved, like I said, in working in theatrical, you know, I presented
movies, I hosted movies at an Alamo draft house. I hope you did it in the guys of a character like Count Percipio or something. Yeah. I sure hope there was a slash like top hat involved. Let's see, I once wore a rabbit outfit to host mall rats on Easter. Sure. And I, I played it as, um, actually it's listed on drinking with the outfit on. And I played it because it was at night. I played it as, it just, this just seemed logical to me. I played it
as a completely fed up foul mouth rabbit who was tired of working all day Easter. So I, I may have made, yes, I made glass. I'm full support. I've been full support. Most of the time, honestly, I approached movies like, um, like texts like, uh, you know, I have something of an academic background sort of, uh, I approached movies in the sense of like,
we should respect these because, you know, like, because I'm not a MST3K fan. Um, we should respect these because these movies are, are valuable regardless of what people tell you
about them. But I, I, I say that because I had to learn how to look at movies through the lens of someone younger than me, like I always think about like a 20 something or a 30 something, like when they're seeing movies that aren't completely CGI, aren't AI would have you, like they're seeing something that didn't really, that they'd have to find. It, it, it doesn't reflect the majority of the commercial mainstream product that they
grew up with. And some of those people, like being able to, it, it takes work, obviously, being able to be open minded enough to understand, hey, those people are going to show me something about those movies I can't see. Um, it's part of the reason why, like one of our biggest sellers here is a movie that I remember seeing in the theaters, uh, in the 90s and I remember how many people hated showgirls. And it has been completely reclaimed. It is a totally
different movie. And we put it out in like a deluxe package and it's still one of our biggest sellers. Of course. How did you guys get showgirls? But we, we have that, we have, um, we have licensing deals. Uh, there's, there's movies that we own. There's movies that we like. But that's like, I don't equate like showgirls with the last American hobos.
Like you went, no, we're going for showgirls. Well, at, at this point, you know, in part of the reason that the, the, the, the, the, the lost film show, the, the lost picture show is a 10 year, like, uh, kind of, uh, a 10 year celebration for us. It's because we've grown so much at this point. Right. Um, and, uh, and yeah, that we, we have sublavals like a vinegar syndrome, uh, ultra whereby we do something like showgirls or, um,
Sure. Cloak and dagger. We did a beast master. It just really nice 4K packages. But we, we, we have all the genre film stuff slashers and jotts. And what have you in our main line, we have separate lines for different things. We put out little darlings on disc for the first time, which has been lost. Yeah. For a long time in a separate line, in a separate, like, um, imprint that we have. As I said, I was talking to Larry and Scott the other
day. One of the things that OJ Simpson did after his, uh, acquittal was he got into a dust guys and went to the Beverly Center to see showgirls because he couldn't wait. Yeah. And, you know, we watched, we were just, you know, like, uh, my wife and I just threw something on last night. We watched fight club last night. And, you know, the, the, the interesting thing about fight club is that's a time capsule. That's 1999 or 2000 or whatever year that
I came out like, yep, that's very, very specific to an era that is now historic. You know, and, uh, and so an attitude and an era and, uh, and, you know, the interesting thing about fight club that you can see now, uh, is with, you know, the assent of like the, sort of the Joe Rogan of it all. No one got the joke. People never got the joke, you know, the, the, the right has adopted snowflake as a derogatory term for people that are empathetic.
Uh, snowflake comes from the book fight club, which was written by a gay gentleman as a parody of macho culture. They never get the joke. Showgirls is a, I think, a good example of people not getting that it was a joke. Um, I, you know, if you look at Starship Troopers, you know, what Vera Hovans trying to do. If you look at any film that he's done, you know, clearly, I think it, at its inception, it was a parody of, uh, America's arrested
adolescents in terms of its attitude towards sex. Um, it's, it's a, it's a very emeri, a juvenile American. I don't think everybody in the film got it. I'm sure the studio didn't get it. Um, uh, I think the film is famous if nothing else for the most aggressive and violent eating of French fries on film. Um, but, uh, yeah, it, it, it is an example of people didn't get the joke. And I think, I think like Glender Glenda time is, time is
going to be kind to it. You know, you were talking about, uh, Dino, you were talking about a younger person's attitude towards film. My, uh, my oldest daughter who turns 22 today. Oh, congratulations. I've been birthday. I birthday, Lou. Um, she, uh, took a film class in, in high school. And she had to watch some, you know, cause it's very hard to get kids
to watch older stuff, you know, I don't, I loved it. I don't know why, you know, my favorite movie when I was growing up was The Wolfman, which was, you know, made 25 years before I was born, but it's hard to get kids to watch things that are brands, bank and new. And it was interesting to see her attitude towards a lot of films. Her review of the Godfather was, they could have told this story in a half an hour. Yikes. But John, I'm sure
they would have looked at that. I'm sure Robert, I was trying to do it. But, um, but watching John's with her was really interesting because the first time she saw the shark, she went, it is so fake. But by the end of the movie, she was screaming, stabbing in the eye, stabbing in the eye. He got her and she was, you know, she was, she was caught. So, um, it's fascinating to see people get, you know, you can get sucked in by a good story. Uh, you know, it's
all a good story. Oddly, the only black and white film they completely fell into was, uh, it in Costello, Meat Frankenstein. That must have made you happy though. It was great. And I was just stunned to see them laugh. I have three kids and they were howling at it, which it was just like, it was, it was great. And we talked about, um, you know, as I said earlier, you know, when you see these films, uh, it shows you an America, uh, and by a large
America, um, that is, that is, that is gone. You know, um, so much of the disease of our culture is people, you know, dealing with their insecurity by wanting to return to a past that never existed. And um, America has been a, it's like a book in its chapters and it's always been a drastically different culture. I don't think any of us would understand America in 1950. I think you, you know, because what you think of, there, there was so much
other stuff going on that would leave you completely freaked out. I don't know if any of you have seen bike riders yet. I have a, yeah. The really amazing thing about bike riders is they capture how people talked and they spoke differently. You know, it's really, well done in that, in that regard. Um, but, you know, the dispossessed, which is now, you know, every city now because of our economic inequality has a homeless issue, houseless
issue. There used to be hobos, which was a completely different, it was the different version of the same thing. And, and, and what there's a film in the box set that you've released the last picture show made by a guy named Titus Moody. I swear I've heard that name before in a historical context. He's, he's got all these different creds within exploitation film. And I think he usually wasn't a director. And sometimes appears as Titus
Mo, E, D, E, like a German name. Um, I think he worked in all different, he's one of those every man of like, of genre film independent film of like the 60s and early 70s. Yeah, to me, I hear Titus Moody. I think, well, I, he was something in the Civil War. Oh, okay. It sounds like somebody else, but he, he is a film called The Last of the American Hobos. Um, uh, Oscar, tell us a little bit about what people will see when they watch
The Last of the American Hobos. Lastly, American Hobos is a 1970. I believe it's 1970. It's a semi documentary. So it's kind of pseudo doc, but it is narrative elements. And it has these very straight like Leonard, not unlike Leonard. Yes. Yes. Very much like it accepted. It seems like he had this obsession over the course of many years with hobo culture. It, it's essentially like a response to the vanishing of the American hobo, that very famous article.
Um, and the dying of the dying art of cooling pies on a windowsill. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you can't leave pies out anymore. Yeah. Hankertchief on a stick. Yeah. And, uh, it's called a, it's called a bindle. Okay. Sorry. Thank you, Dana. I was just close. I'm 30. So I don't know. We used to have a, we used to have a thing on, um, I worked on the Simpsons and we used to have a thing in scripts that whenever we would reference
hobo, it would have to say in parentheticals with bindle. Right. And if God helped the script supervisor, if they left out with bindle because they would be called on the carpet. Nice. Yeah. But yeah, essentially, it's like, uh, it, it is the stereotypical view of that hobo culture where you have the five o'clock shadow. Sure. Uh, and basically there are, it's every single hobo song in the hobo song book is probably referenced if not played during
this movie. Right. Um, and the movie had become lost for very many years. Um, very episodic, a half home movie too. Um, and the only way to get it would be to actually write Titus and you'd say the, the typical way apparently the people would get the film not from him is I'd say, I've always wanted to see, uh, this movie. Uh, it's on a list here. And then he would send you a nice letter back with a VHS copy of it. Wow. And that's
the only way that this actually entered circulation. And that actually came through Bob Marowski at Grindhouse. Um, and the original elements completely vinegar. It's completely, you know, there, it's almost like a pool of nothing. Right. But all we have is a print. Yeah. It's just soup like sticky soup that just smells like, uh, vinaigrette. And, um, he still has
that original element, but the only surviving print we have here. So at this point, uh, yeah, I think it was one of the most overlooked, uh, films on the actual set because of the fact that it wasn't exactly exploitation. There's nudity in it. I guarantee you that. Oh, my God. But, uh, hobo, hobo nudity. That would be right. The film contains smoking, harsh language, hobo nudity. It's an idea for a future block box. The homing and do
anthology. I'd watch it. I would like to be involved with the curating. But, uh, I, I, I think that one is a really special one. It also has a line which I'm going to butcher. Again, it says, I, I wish, uh, that everyone in this world could be hobos because it's
such a great way to be. Well, hobos seem happy with their lot. One thing that I know from my, my own interest in hobo culture is that there was a code, a visual code that they would write on like if you had a, if you were kind to a hobo, somewhere prior to your house on a tree or a post would be a code that would say the house up ahead is friendly, they will feed you. But it would be in a weird code that you wouldn't know what it was
if you looked at it. Yeah, hobo marks. Sometimes it would be a mean dog lives here, things like that. Yeah. Crazy, crazy. And again, you get to see in the last American hobo, somebody who lives in Los Angeles now, you get to see a lot of old LA, um, which is I, I cannot get enough of. I could, I could watch that stuff all day. There's stuff you'll see on YouTube of just like a drive down sunset Boulevard in 1966. And it's just somebody
had a eight millimeter camera. They stuck it out of the front of their car or the back of their car on the drone on sunset. And I can watch that stuff all day. It is just, it is just fascinating to me. Um, another city that is so drastically different, um, and to use 1969, 1970 is the change in Las Vegas, which brings us to the, uh, the sex serum of Dr. Blake also known as voodoo heartbeat. When you hear voodoo in a title, you don't think, well, clearly,
this movie is said in Vegas. Um, but voodoo heartbeat was made by Charles Louis Nisei. Is that the correct pronunciation? Yeah. Yeah. Charles, I, I say, I say Nisev because I always imagine that an American would want the tea pronounced. Uh, but, uh, yeah, that one's very cool. So that had two different versions. Uh, I had a very classic way of becoming lost, where essentially, they cut an original version, um, and then recotted for an international audience. So, uh,
currently what we have on that set is the sex serum of Dr. Blake. Um, but there is a hard cut, which is still lost to this day. The only thing that we have, the only footage that we have, was actually sent to us a few months back by someone who was a vinegar syndrome, uh, subscriber, I believe he purchased our stuff and he bought it off eBay. He saw it and then he scanned it, paid for scanning and then said, wrote to us directly and said, do you want this? I think it should be in
the archive. So we have this beautiful symbiosis of people, like actually being archivists themselves, which is very important. Yeah. It's a very wild one. Lots of blood sucking, lots of like, uh, uh, uh, eternal youth. Uh, yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. The poster for it. There's a, there's a booklet that comes with the box set, uh, and there's an article, there's a, and there's a piece written by
a guy named Stephen Throer. My apologies if I mispronounced his name. Uh, the poster for, uh, voodoo heartbeat reads warning, be sure you are mature enough to witness the shocking details of this motion picture. And the review that, uh, or the piece that Stephen Throer writes includes this following passage that I'm going to read. Thanks to this unexpected blu-ray release from vinegar syndrome, we can finally see what lies behind one of the most mysterious titles in US
exploitation. It appears to be the original cut with bloody limb-lopping, gory heart removal, lots of pre hardcore female nudity, a lingering full frontal shot of the portly will long and glimpses of testicles during a new threesome. Enjoy. Now you see why I work here. Yeah. I, I, I, I get it. And, and again, it's, uh, so much of exploitation is, is glancing up against hardcore, but not hardcore. Um, uh, to that end, there's a film called What's Love, which is literally
the tagline for the film was very erotic, very artistic, but not a porno. Yeah. Um, that one. Yeah. And that one's very cool. It's what's amazing about What's Love is it starts again in Bill Cable. And I want you to tell us a little bit about Bill Cable, but it's filmed over three different periods. You get to see this guy age in this movie. It's fantastic. Tell us a little bit about
What's Love, which is also in the box set. Well, I, I feel like you'd know about Bill Cable more than why I just know that we, we did put out a, I can't speak too much on What's Love, but I could tell you that Bill Cable does appear, uh, on, on, on P.B.s playhouse, if I'm not mistaken, later in his career, but we did put out by the same director. He's in basic, he's also, he's in basic instinct. I really, okay. There you go. He played, you see the film,
basic instinct, he plays Johnny Buz. Yeah. And so yeah, I, I have to look for him in that, but I do know him from a hardcore release by Carlos Stovalina. We ended up with most of the movies at Tovalina made and he had a whole empire. He owned, um, I think it was the Aztec theater. Yeah. Yeah. And he owned, he owned a whole chain of theaters. So he was making so much money with his theaters. He just said, now I'm a director. And he started making movies.
He's gonna do that. Yeah. Some of which are laughably bad. And so he made one that's like a porn film that's a least 180 minutes long, like preposterously, like, like, like, intermentable almost, um, but he, he made one called jungle blue. And I believe Bill Cable's the lead in that. But if I'm not mistaken, there's inserts of, um, of John Holmes. So I don't think, I don't think Mr. Interesting choice of words. Well, I, I'm, I'm this close to a bad joke about
the word cable, but anyway, I was doing insert, but you go ahead. Good man. What's love? Speaking of John Holmes, you might not know this. You go out that window right behind me. You go down the hill about 40 seconds. The scene of the Wonderland murders. Oh, wow. Yes. Yeah. It's right down the street. Um, rough. And I had a Lou Wagner on my podcast, on this podcast, who played Lucius in the original planet of the apes. And he lived down there during the
one of them. He just, yeah, we just, I just woke up and there was a street with full of cop cars. Just like I love these historic events. He's just, no, it's just a pain in the ass to get out of the street. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, the thing about the lost, the thing about the lost picture show is that the whole concept was to, to, to take 10 movies that either people had never heard of, didn't even know existed or didn't even believe existed. Like, um, the final Albert Zugsmith movie
of Violated, right. Right. And the, and a couple together from our different sources. And the fact that we have so much material here and, and with the, you know, allied entities that we work with to put together 10 movies, good, bad, inexplicable, or downrighting, raging, yeah, just put them all together, uh, as a set, uh, Violated, which I believe at one point had the not great title, the rapist. Yeah. Yeah. Good, good, good change. I good change. Sometimes notes are good.
When something is so fascinating to me, I always say, oh my god, it's like porn. It's like, oh, I can't get, you know, it's like, it's so fascinating to me. Just the characters. Uh, there's a guy, there's a movie in here called Beware the Black Widow, which was made by a guy named Larry Crane. Yeah. Who had a great title. All women are bad. Yeah. But like a lot of guys,
how did they start in the business as a puppeteer? Naturally. Yeah. It's just like these, all these got, or the hormones or Al Adamson or, um, like the gasoline one, um, um, um, and Milligan, Andy Milligan, Andy Milligan, and they're so American. These stories are so American. Um, uh, all of these people just, uh, uh, making something out of nothing, you know, absolutely. The, but where the black widow was the title that I knew, I knew that Larry
Karrizuski had fixated on from his childhood. Um, and I couldn't help myself where I was started, I started communicating him with him directly during the progress of like scanning the movie. And I got to see that. That's hilarious. And that I couldn't help myself because he was, and he seemed to genuinely, uh, it was just, you know, the, uh, the direct messaging. He seemed genuinely not just excited, but like grateful. By the way, you mentioned Violet. We did an in-store
with, um, with, uh, uh, Frank Hennenlater. And I'm the, I'm the token or one of the, yeah, pretty much the token New Yorker here. I drive to Bridgeport from where I live in the suburbs of Westchester County. So I actually, they said, would you do this? Okay, fine. I actually show for Frank Hennenlater. I spent the whole day driving, I drove into the city, picking him up,
brought him up here for an in-store, then drove him back. So we have these great conversations where like Frank, the director of, of, of, of Frank and Ocarnair are having like a really the in-depth conversation while I'm driving him about like the best Zilly Wilder movies, which is unbelievable. Yeah. Well, these guys know, well, these guys know. Yeah. And he's somebody who was excited for the last, the, for this film set. And I engaged him on this. And one of the things that really
stuck with me, I'm, you know, he's a bit opinionated guy. So there's a long story. But, um, but brilliant as well. And, and really, really passionate about the movies he cares about. He said, hey, did you notice in the beginning of violated Eugene Roche is in it? And I said, I, I loved Eugene Roche. What are you talking about? He's done that movie. Here's the thing. They stole a shot on a sidewalk. I believe in Hollywood. And he just happened to be walking, but Eugene Roche,
resplendent in a pair of bright red pants, seems to have just left a record store. He's got like a record in a carry out bag. He's on the sidewalk. He looks up the main characters like a woman to his, to his left that were supposed to be focused on. He clearly looks up. Notice is there's a camera on him and then very casually walks out of frame. So he's in the beginning of violated. And, and of all people, Frank Hennellotters, the one that, yeah, I noticed this stuff was amazing. Yeah. And,
and violated, which was made by Albert Zugsmith. Albert Zugsmith is a real guy. I, he made touch of evil. He made a, I have a poster of the beat generation up in, uh, in my own, in my own. Um, yeah. If you look behind us, you'll see one of his movies, uh, which is still lost to the steve, I believe, uh, movie star American style. But, uh, yeah, we, we really like Zugsmith. We,
we tried to champion him here. I feel like it's been violated. It was kind of the last, yeah, real one that, uh, but we did, we did put out his version of Fanny Hill, the Russ Meier made. The Russ Meier's most boring film. Yeah, pretty much, but we, hey, we put it out in the world. The, huh, what I find interesting about, uh, films like What's Love and even showgirls is, is a, is a great analogy. It is a great, uh, other example is so much of exploitation,
glances up against hardcore, but isn't hardcore. You know, uh, it's always about, it's always about sex, but they're always trying to thread the needle, no pun intended, um, with its mainstream, but it's sexual and it's gonna, and that was, um, that's what What's Love is trying to do. And I, and I do believe it was sincere in, in, in its, in its attempt. Um, showgirls was supposed to be the first big mainstream NC 17 film, you know, it was supposed to be like, we're gonna be
able to show you sex until a real story. And we can't do it because we're in America and not France, you know, um, the, the, the, the title that, that should be included with showgirls, and it's a film I'm wondering what you guys talk about is Caligula. Like that's sort of a forgotten uh, cul-de-sac of that type of cinema. And it's actually, I forgot, I think, um, Rella in, in, in, oh, it's really easy. Um, it, another company is putting out a, a jumbo
package of it right now. Oh, I haven't approached it. I haven't approached it, but I certainly have strong memories of perloined, uh, penthouse magazines from the 70s. I, the actual spread, you, you might have seen my, I saw it. I'm exactly where you are. I never saw the film. I do remember the penthouse. It was a girl on the cover with a horse behind her. Sounds about right. Yeah. And your joke here. But, but, uh, but it's not gonna double. Like it was real. And I think
some other big names are in it. And, uh, Helen Mirren, I think, said, uh, I don't care what you say about this movie. It bought me a house. Yeah. Well, that was, that was, uh, Michael Cain's comment on Jaws the Revenge. I've never seen the movie, but I saw the house. But, I love that. Yeah. I mean, I think going off, going off of that example, it's very funny that
you brought it up because I, that is a good example. I think, because currently what they're showcasing is the ultimate cut, which is essentially, uh, made of, uh, outticks and they re-edited outticks. So famously, there's no original shot from the original film in it, um, in that version. Oh my god. Showing, but it's the ultimate cut and people seem to respond very kindly to it, which is good. But the truth of the matter is the ocean is still lost. And that is the, what is the ocean? Oh,
sorry, the original camera negative is still lost. Oh, it's lost. It's lost. No one knows where it is. We think we may know what it is. But the truth of the matter is, uh, there's so many enormous titles, so many important titles, which are, uh, it could least for going against the rating systems and changing the actual structure and landscape of film history, which people aren't fighting for.
And the easiest method, oftentimes, is to like, I guess the method in this case was to find the outtakes, find a lesser generational element, put it out. I'm not, it's like, this is nothing, this is nothing against them. But the truth of the matter is film preservation is about bringing people closer to how things were originally screened theatrically. That's the, that's the,
ideal. It's the goal. And we want to see things, how people reacted to them, whether positively or negatively so that now people can kind of take what happened then and people to bring things and whether or not it's bad or good. We want people to make their own opinion. You know, I think that's something which is super, super important, especially with Collegula, which my dad also introduced. He told me I should see his collegula because I was watching movies and he's
like, this is, you should watch. Here's where I should, here's where I should state that Oscar is, like, of a general, comes from a family of artists. So that wasn't entirely obvious. But, uh, you know, it, just the idea of a collegula and how much of a phenomenon it was and whatever, it just, we keep going back to this, like, say, maybe decade of Pornosheak, you know, from 72 to
maybe 82, but these things kind of happen. It's, there's two factors I figure. First of all, I mean, at this point in time, first of all, we can look back at all vintage stuff, pornography or not. And it's, it's now quaint compared to whatever the modern day of that is today. But also the amazing thing for me and part of why I love what we do because we, you know,
we, we do pornography. We do sex exploitation. We do all everything in between is just that these things are still cultural factors that complicated and like upset people and arouse people at times. They're still just as valid as they were in that period of time in some ways because we still can't really, like you said, where they had it stayed. So we still can't really deal or confront so much of sexuality. There's this whole, the two sides of Hollywood, the porn side of the non porn side.
And it is, yeah. And it is, and it is, it is like magic where once, once, once you explain, it's like, showgirls is a great example of like, we're going to show you everything, but it's, it's all about the thing that we can't show you, but you're going to get as close to that thing as possible in a respectful way. But all you need to do to see that other thing is look at this other thing where it's completely available. But it's not interesting. It's, it's like,
when, then you get to the thing is like, yeah, okay. You know, it's like, it is like magic. It's like the magic, it's better to have all the magic. Someone once said, you know, the magic should stay in the hat. It's all, it's about what you can't see. I was just going to say, you know, it goes back to the old, I think it's probably from the 40th of exploitation, the old, the, the old guys who did this, it's the old, uh, dictum, it's, you sell the sizzle, not the steak.
It's, it's still that old line. It's like, yeah, nothing changes. Yeah. And as always, in culture, the people who are loudly and publicly against it are actually the people who have the biggest collections. It's, yeah. It's, it's, the hypocrisy of few, of, of humans at sexuality is never going away. Yeah. And as, you know, it's like, we, uh, as, as the Chinese curse says, we live in
interesting times. And, uh, um, you know, at, at a time when we're being dragged back, uh, culturally and being equipped with technology that we're not emotionally equipped to deal with, uh, it's, you know, it's like, let's give these champs flame throwers and see what happens. Right. It's
probably not going to be great. But the, but the nice thing, you know, to go back to something, you said, the nice thing is that you can still show humans, uh, you can still, show to people elements of humanity that they'll react to, like CGI and AI, it's, it's, it's, it's there and
it's maybe good for something. But for people, even if they're young people who didn't grow up with, you know, some of this stuff from the 50s and 60s, they can still look at something and they can see human flaws and identify with it and immediately feel like there's something there for them. Yeah. Where can people, uh, access, uh, the products and, uh, uh, the vinegar syndrome? Uh, where, how can people enter the world of vinegar syndrome? And what do they have to look forward to?
It's all vinegar. Oh, at vinegar syndrome.com, we're available at, you know, social media, at just at vinegar syndrome, uh, spelled normally. Um, we have, uh, well, vinegar syndrome.com for, uh, for regular, you know, releases and mel you seen me, l us i n e.com for hardcore and sexportation. They have to be two separate sites for logistics reasons. Oh, I didn't know that, I didn't know that. It really comes down to a completely, again, we're talking about sexuality,
hypocrisy, our culture. Yeah. It really comes down to, uh, payment processing. There is payment, there's a payment processing schedule for what is considered high risk payments, which is gambling, probably at when it gets figured out, uh, marijuana payments and so forth. Okay. Anything that touches, port, anything that touches pornography. Oh, okay. So, whereas people, you know, you could, oh, it's a moralistic thing. It's like, uh, it's, uh, it's a, it's a tire than us. It's payment
processing. We're trying to like showcase more of our, uh, a lot more of our films and being more regular with like, uh, adding trailers to weird shit that you never thought that you'd actually really like. Right. So, uh, definitely, if you're, whatever you're viewing this on, definitely check out, um, the YouTube channel, because there's some wild, wild stuff. Oh, that's terrific. It is a vinegar syndrome. Uh, it's vinegar syndrome on YouTube. But also I go through, every once in a
while I go through like educational, and it's like showcasing different elements. So that may be helpful to people who would also be interested in learning more about film preservation if you care about something. Yeah. Once in a while, I get to participate in these videos, including the time I got to be credited on screen as Jello Thrower. Um, but I, I do an obscure movie podcast called
I eat movies as well. Oh, terrific. I eat movies. Yeah. I did just, uh, I did just attempt to do some justice to, uh, the 1967 casino royale Oscar Becher and Dino Persepio vinegar syndrome.com. Uh, vinegar syndrome, the YouTube channel definitely pick up, uh, the last picture show DVD box set and avail yourself of the podcast I eat movies to be continued. Oh, the podcast feeds for the sky, Dana Gulbaugh with badly tried.
Oh, the this has been the Dana Gulzauer brought to you by the internet music by Andy Paley with Jake Posner behind the board produced by Jeff Fox graphic design and web production by Spencer Hunt and Seagun friend sound editing and post production by Jelinda Palmer and Joan of the Tano Tom Kenny speaking. It's time to gather loved ones together for all the holidays best spread. Lens has great prices on all your favorite Thanksgiving items from delicious turkey with all the
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