#50. 'The Many Saints of Newark'
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The main review is The Many Saints of Newark, David Chase's Sopranos prequel, which opened in fourth place at $4.7 million the same weekend Venom: Let There Be Carnage set a pandemic-era record with a $90 million debut. Sonny frames it as two movies stapled together — a Sopranos nostalgia-fest reintroducing young Silvio (an "SNL"-level distracting impression), Uncle June, and a terrific Vera Farmiga as Livia, laid over a more compelling story of Dickie Moltisanti and Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr., strong) set against Newark race relations in 1967 — and argues Ray Liotta's dual performance as Dickie's father and uncle embodies Chase's two competing visions of how his audience received the original show; Michael Gandolfini gets praise from all three despite Sonny calling the casting "deeply unfair" to him. JVL, surprisingly, loved it without reservation, ranking it above the show's first season and reading it as a Shakespearean tragedy about environment versus personal choice, while Vic — the group's biggest Sopranos die-hard — comes away comparatively cold, feeling the film shortchanges his all-time favorite series even as he scores it a Quadrant A overall (plot B, duration B+, action/violence A to A+, sex/nudity A+). The long opening stretch covers JVL nursing a Hardywood peach ale amid an "emotional roller coaster" of unspecified big life changes, a 90210 tangent about the actor who played the Peach Pit's owner, Sonny's disorienting visit to an AT&T-headquarters Clint Eastwood exhibit in downtown Dallas (complete with a security guard permanently stationed to redirect lost visitors), and Vic serving as confirmation sponsor for his nephew Robbie before eating an abandoned child's leftover Happy Meal McNuggets at the reception — a bit defended at length via his "food instincts" — plus a report on backyard chili peppers that turned out shockingly spicy. Weekend box office also gets its usual rundown (Venom's record haul, an Addams Family 2 re-release, the looming No Time to Die) before the crew turns to Newark, and the episode closes with an outtake in which JVL half-jokingly asks Vic whether the film's screaming-match domestic scenes ring true to "his people," which Vic waves off as accurate, if compressed.
From the show notes
Sonny navigates Downtown Dallas. Vic steals a kid's food. And the gang talks The Many Saints of Newark ! Some surprising likes and dislikes on this one. And make sure to tune in Monday for a special bonus episode: the first in a series of podcasts about Netflix's Squid Game ! These'll only be on the Patreon, so make sure to tell people to sign up if they want to listen while we podcast the Korean sensation.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00What do you want Richard? I'll be honest with you. I want my money. I want to do a good deed.
Vic00:00:22Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends and don't forget about the Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. In fact, holidays are just around the corner. Perfect time to buy everything at the Sub-Beacon merchandise store for all of your family and friends and yourself. Treat yourself. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what is going on with you?
JVL00:00:56I don't have a lot in the tank to tell you. It's been an emotional roller coaster the last two weeks and I'm in some big life changes. And so I have just cracked open a Hardywood peach triple. Wow. And I'm going to let you guys tell me about your lives.
Vic00:01:15Is that a fruit drink? Is that like a, is that, what is it? It's a, it's a, it's a trappist, a trappist ale with peach. I don't know if it's actual peaches
JVL00:01:26or peach pits. It's, I don't know what, I don't know what it is, but it's, it's delicious.
Sonny00:01:30I don't know how beer works. You throw everything in a thing and it ferments.
Vic00:01:34It ferments. It's too bad we're not doing something on 90210. What can I say? Speaking of a peach pit.
JVL00:01:38Oh, the peach pit.
Vic00:01:40Who is the actor who, who ran the, the act? They always had a, he was like the last name on the credit, on the credit scene in the intro, who was the guy who ran the peach pit. Do you remember his name?
JVL00:01:51I don't, but he was 20 years older than everybody else, right?
Sonny00:01:53Yes, he was because he was like an adult. I mean,
Vic00:01:56Michael E. Tata.
Sonny00:01:58Oh. Yeah, nice Tata.
Vic00:02:00Oof-ah. Okay, oh. All right, Sonny, how are you boys? Sonny, yes, how are you? How are you, Sonny?
Sonny00:02:06Uh, I'm fine. I'm fine. I went to, uh, I went to, uh, see a new exhibit on, uh, Clint Eastwood, history of Clint Eastwood at the AT&T headquarters in, in Dallas, which is, uh, an interesting kind of holdover from their, you know, AT&T owned, well, still owns, I guess, Warner Brothers. Yes. So, occasionally, they do these, like, Warner Brothers exhibits at the AT&T headquarters.
Vic00:02:37Oh, that's interesting.
Sonny00:02:38Um, uh, and they're, they've got one up right now for, uh, for Clint Eastwood celebrating 50 years as a director.
JVL00:02:45Do they have him holding his, his old cock?
Sonny00:02:48Yes.
JVL00:02:49I mean, I mean, the rooster. I'm sorry. The macho. I meant the prop cock. Oh, the macho. Yeah, he's no. The macho.
Vic00:02:55Yeah, he's no. He's no chicken. Uh, is it like Planet of Hollywood with lots of props? Do they just have things on display cases?
Sonny00:03:01Yeah, it's, it is kind of like that. It's, it's, it's a little, I mean, it, first off, it's, like, tiny. It's, it's very, it's very small. It's worth, like, going to, to check out, but you can, you see the whole thing in, like, three minutes. Um, but it was, it was, uh.
JVL00:03:13What did you see?
Sonny00:03:14It was kind of, it was, you know, they've got the, they've got Dirty Harry's gun. Oh, yeah. Dirty Harry's gun. Do they have the rascal that he used on the set of Gran Torino?
Vic00:03:24Terrible. He didn't do that. I, he was, he was younger. He was younger then. He was, like, 70, 78 then.
Sonny00:03:31He was, you know, still in his, he was still fine.
Vic00:03:35Uh-huh. Very nice.
Sonny00:03:36So, uh, I don't know, man. Uh, getting around downtown Dallas is weird, uh, because I don't know it at all, because I never go, I never go to downtown. I never drive to, into the, like, into the actual heart of the city, uh, so, like, just, just driving around there was, like, an adventure. I got, I, I, I got on the, I was, like, on the wrong side of the building. And, uh, apparently this happens a lot, because I was just following, you know, the Google Maps. Uh, there, it happens so much that they have a guy, that AT&T has a security guard who is stationed there permanently on the street to be, like, nope, you want to be on the other side. You want to be on the other side. Wow. It's, it's the other side of the building. So, and it, like, and it, like, dead ends. Yeah. And you can't, you can't, like, it's the dumbest, it's the dumbest thing in the world, but you have to, like, back up and then go down an alley and then go around. It's...
JVL00:04:24It might be cheaper for them to just get... Get in touch with Google and have Google fix, fix the maps. I would assume it's... Terrible.
Sonny00:04:30I would assume it's Google spiting them.
JVL00:04:32No.
Vic00:04:32Um, my, my sense is, uh, like, Dallas, Dallas, when I was there, uh, during a weekend, it's like Roslyn, there's nobody there. Like, they're only there during the day in downtown, like, in, in, in downtown.
Sonny00:04:44Yeah. I definitely, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know, because I never go, I'd never go. You wouldn't go there on a Saturday afternoon. I would never go there on a, on a, on a, on a weekend, uh, just hang out. So, hard, hard for me to say, for sure. Um, but it definitely, it definitely, like, I feel like a lot of city cores are kind of like that. I, in, certainly in, uh, in Texas, I remember we went to, I can't remember if you, this was, I think, before your time, Vic, but, uh, Aaron Harrison got married in Houston. Yes, I was not there. I didn't, I didn't. That's where his, his lovely, uh, wife is from. And, uh, and like downtown Houston on a weekend, because we were saying, you know, we were staying there on a, on a Saturday or whatever. Just like a ghost town. Yeah. Like we, we drove, like we, we walked around a little bit and there's just like nobody there. It was crazy.
JVL00:05:34Well, this is true for new cities. It is not true for old things. So Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the, the old cities have real downtowns. It's these new places.
Vic00:05:52People live near where they work. In the weird ways. Yeah. I mean, obviously in the city, you know, you're just one Avenue over here or there. And the zoning is different, obviously, than in, in, in new cities as, as JVL is mentioning. Yeah.
JVL00:06:03Uh, Victorino, what are you going, going on? How's, how's things? Uh, things are fine. So, uh. Are you a hundred percent recovered? Do, do, do, do, do. Uh, yeah.
Vic00:06:13Well, for now, you know, the lump is still there, but the pain is gone. And so I'm back to sort of running and it's, and, and, and it's, and, and back to normal. So I don't know when I'll lose that, that thing, but it's, uh. It's otherwise fine. It feels fine. I don't know what's there. I had a little bit of a flare. Uh, I had the, a tinge and then it went away and that was scary. And it's because I, I did have one beer. So I really need to stay away, uh, from, from beer and stick to the hard liquor.
JVL00:06:39You should only have martinis.
Vic00:06:41That said, I have never had a, uh, uh, for your health, a gout problem because of a martini that a gin martini. Absolutely. That's right. So over the weekend, I was actually, uh, the sponsor for my nephew, Robbie. He's confirmation JPL.
JVL00:06:58Is it because when you think about sponsor, I immediately was thinking of a different sort of sponsorship. And I thought you, I don't think he'd be a very good sponsor for that sort of thing, but for confirmation, that's great.
Vic00:07:11Oh yes. Well, thank you. Thank you. Gifts, gifts of the Holy spirit, Sonny. And it's, uh, as I told him, just do the opposite of what I would do. For example, uh, at the reception back at the house, uh, there was a little girl who had. Had a happy meal and she had a bite out of her McNuggets and then she just left the whole thing open.
JVL00:07:31You can't let it go to waste.
Vic00:07:33Yes.
Sonny00:07:34As you know, that's my principle and you'd be surprised by the way of the shelf life of the McNugget, you know, because a number of things, you said she had a bite out of her McNuggets. You mean she had like one, she took a bite out of one McNugget and put it back.
Vic00:07:50Yes. And then the other five were untouched.
Sonny00:07:53Gotcha.
Vic00:07:54So. Uh, in principle, I should be able to defend that and say, Hey, I'm just going to have that because she's going to throw it away. But I actually felt sort of self-conscious that other guests were there and they would see me take it. And they, I would think they would think that's weird. Would you think that's weird?
JVL00:08:14No, not among like family, the kind of family to confirmation.
Vic00:08:18She was, she was a friend.
JVL00:08:19I didn't know who she was, but did you just pick it up and pretend like you were going to throw it in the trash? And then when you got into the kitchen and you were right around the corner, you reached in and grabbed him out.
Vic00:08:30You know what? That's my next time. That'll be my strategy next time. I actually tried to wait till people migrated to somewhere else, either in the house or in the deck. And I actually came back and finally, like an hour or two later, we were still sitting there. Then I went to town and the girl saw me, but she was small.
JVL00:08:48And I was just like, what are you going to do about this?
Vic00:08:51You can't, I'm going to, I'm having your meal.
JVL00:08:53All she cares is that. She cares that you left her toy for her. Yeah, that's right. As long as you leave the toy, they don't care about the food.
Vic00:08:59Yes. And I forgot what the toy was, but it's something like Philly. They still make them. And so I just had that.
Sonny00:09:04Wait, wait. All right. I'm still trying to, I'm still trying to visualize this. So you're at a house. Yes. You're at your house.
Vic00:09:11No, my, my nephew's house. My, my brother-in-law.
Sonny00:09:14So you're at, you're at another person's house and a child leaves their food. Yes. And your stance on this is as soon as. As soon as the child vacates the general proximity of the food, it's free game that anyone can just go and.
Vic00:09:30I was 99% certain she was no longer interested.
Sonny00:09:35How did you, how, how did you ascertain? Did you ask her if she was done?
Vic00:09:40It's, it's a, it's a hunch based on my sort of food instincts. I'm sorry.
JVL00:09:45Has any child ever come back to a happy meal once they've abandoned it? That's right.
Vic00:09:48They, yes, that's right. That's right. And there were cookies and stuff. So she was, she left. Yeah. Thank you, JVL. Vic, I'm with you. You're exactly, you're safe on this. So that's one thing on there. And then the second thing. Wait, wait, wait. Yes.
Sonny00:09:58I'm still, I'm still trying to, I still, I still want to, so you, all right. So the, the, the food is, is sitting there for an hour and a half.
Vic00:10:06Yeah.
Sonny00:10:06About two hours, let's say. And you just, you, at this point you say, all right, now I'm going to go. I, our second question is, did you have anything to eat?
Vic00:10:19Yeah. There were other things like, you know, cheese and crackers and stuff.
Sonny00:10:22Was there food for adults? Yeah.
Vic00:10:23There was. There was cheese and crackers and cookies until we, we later on had grill. We were doing hamburgers and hot dogs later, but I can't wait. I can't wait. Sonny, you can't let it go to waste.
Sonny00:10:32There was going to be, so there was going to be an actual meal of food. Yes. Grilled meats and the sorts later on. Yes. But you couldn't wait.
Vic00:10:40That's right. And, and I didn't want to go, I didn't want to see it be thrown away and I couldn't wait. And I think really, I was just really hungry and I, but I didn't really, I didn't care if the kids saw me. It was really the adults and I waited for the adults. Well, you can always just say she's a liar. Obviously the mother, because I don't know the mother at all.
Sonny00:10:57You can always just say that she's a liar. She's lying about you eating her food. Right, exactly. If she dared. You're the sponsor. That's right. You're the unimpeachable source.
Vic00:11:05Who's going to accuse a sponsor of doing something like that? Stealing, I asked Kate and she said, no, it's easy. She said, go ahead. It's like stealing candy from a baby, she said to me. So anyway, that was that. In other news, we're at the end. Do you guys have a garden in your backyard? You know, we have a little garden of stuff. Do you do anything like that? You growing anything?
Sonny00:11:27No, because it's not World War II and I'm not trying to grow vegetables to support the troops.
JVL00:11:32Thank you. We have a garden, a raised garden bed, which I made, which is boss. But we have given up on growing things in it because we have too. No, we just have too many other things to do with our time. Every day we're going to gymnastics or swimming or baseball or. French class or Latin class, but it's a never ending cavalcade of things. So, you know, do we have time to spend an hour a day tending so that we could get a one bowl full of lettuce at the end of the week?
Vic00:12:06No, no, we do not know, but the only thing that's really survived our garden is the, is the peppers. Animals seem to want to eat all the tomatoes, but the peppers, I'm going to try that next time. So these were those super Chili's salsa, Riffick. And, but we're reaching that time now in the season where they're not not, they're no longer, they're green. They haven't turned red and I don't think they're going to anymore. Yeah. You just reached that. So I harvested them and I cut them up and I decided to add them to my prick dog. And, uh, I was curious, um, about the, the green ones. If they were, I didn't think they'd be as spicy as the red ones. I literally just had the tip of one of them and it blew me away. Uh, so the answer is anyone's interested in this sort of thing, I don't, my question is if they know what it eventually turned green, a red on its own. Even if I, after I take them out. And the second thing is even when they're green, those sauce revics are extremely spicy. As I found out, uh, uh, when I ate it. And then of course the next morning.
JVL00:13:11Have you ever had prick down at a cock fight?
Vic00:13:14No, I'm going to try that next time because you know, it's, it feels like the kind of thing that would just organically happen, but anyway, uh,
JVL00:13:22all right, listen, if we're going to keep this episode under three hours. Yeah, because we got to move along because the people want to hear
Vic00:13:29you talking about this transition, but the moment has passed. It had to do with the next morning in the bathroom. But anyway, speaking of carnage over the weekend, venom, let their venom, let there be carnage, took a huge bite out of the box office. I was going to say spun a web, but of course this has nothing to do with Spider-Man does it. The resemblance is coincidental $90 million. Followed by Adam's family too, with 17.3 million and in third place, Shang Chi still hanging on with 6.1 million box office thoughts. I have, I have a question is Adam's family too. Is this, uh, Adam's family values? Is this the one with MC hammer doing the song?
Sonny00:14:12Yes. It's a re-release it's Adam. It's Raul Julia's second to last movie. Farewell street fighter killed him.
Vic00:14:20That's right. That's right.
Sonny00:14:21Before street, before street fighter murdered his soul. And he, he gave up what a way to go out.
Vic00:14:25Uh, 90 million. What do you think?
Sonny00:14:29Uh, it's the biggest, it's the biggest, the biggest opening of the pandemic era. $90 million. It's funny. I, it was, so when the, the initial estimates came out and Sony was saying like, oh, like $60 million, I was like, they're low balling this. They're intentionally low balling this because like every theater that I was going to, uh, uh, that I was looking at screenings for on, on the Thursday night, it came out was, uh, none of them were sold out, but they were all like 70% full, which is a lot of, which is generally pretty full for a Thursday night showing and the theater I saw it in was probably 50% full. I saw it at, you know, nine 30 or something like that, uh, at the draft house. Um, and I was like, this movie, this movie might break a hundred million. Like this, there's 60 million numbers. Bullshit. It's, it's like obviously low balling. They're trying to, they're trying to make it seem like a big win when it does much better. Sure enough, like the numbers as they were coming in through the weekend, kept creeping up 70 million than 80 million and finally 90 something million. Uh, so, you know, good numbers. This movie is in fact related to Spider-Man. There's a tag, there's a tag at the end of it. Spider-Man on the screen, the Tom, Tom Holland, Spider-Man Venom's like, Ooh, look at this guy I want to be, I want to be friends with him or something.
Vic00:15:51So that's exciting. So, so that means that they finally were allowed to is what, uh, I mean, who knows?
Sonny00:15:59I'm not, I, I can't speculate one way or the other about how Sony and Marvel and Disney are working all of this out. Uh, but the, um, the, the, the interesting thing here is that obviously Sony is trying to make their Spider-Verse a thing, which you, and you'll remember, I, I, I went, I, I went to see Venom and there was a trailer for Morbius. Remember Morbius with Jared Leto? And in the trailer, Michael Keaton's vulture shows up. Oh, right. He's like, Hey, Dr. Morbius, what's up, doc? It's a funny joke because it's a reference to things.
JVL00:16:33A pretty good Michael Keaton voice.
Sonny00:16:35And it's Michael Keaton. And he's like, what's up, doc? And it's like, it was like, okay, well, they're, they're trying to make this. It's all happening. It's all happening for Mark, for Sony. They're really, they're really, I mean, it is crazy. It is crazy that like, uh, that Venom is the thing that can firms Tom Hardy as a like actual movie star, as opposed to an actor who is respected and is sometimes in movies that gross a lot of money. Like it is, he is, uh, it's not for the movie where he was the driver, you know, it's, it's, yeah, it's not for lock. It's not for, it's not for, uh, you know, the drop or, uh, Tinker Taylor, soldier spy, you know, it's Venom. It's the dumb nineties, grim and gritty suit. Spider-Man right thing. Question. Like the thing, the worst, we'll get one. One second. The, the, I, I contend again that the problem with these venom movies is that venom doesn't make any sense separated from Spider-Man. Like the only reason venom makes sense as a character is because he's like pissed off about Spider-Man rejecting him. And like, without that, none of, none of nothing that happens in this movie makes sense. I w we're probably not going to talk. I'm sorry. What's your question? Do we know?
JVL00:17:45Why does venom have a white spider logo on his chest?
Sonny00:17:50Great question. Nobody, no reason.
JVL00:17:52You could. You could have venom separate from Spider-Man. He would just be all black. Yes. It's a, it's a very simple fix to make. You just don't put the logo on his chest, but it's the choice to keep the logo while divorcing him from Spider-Man makes sense.
Sonny00:18:07The big white spider.
JVL00:18:09Yeah.
Vic00:18:09So, but the spider thing in the chest, you're right. That's very, very, uh, strange. So in the first one that we saw, that was also there or no. Oh, come on. That's come on now. So is this a sort of retcon because. Because they were supposed to be the same age. Right. But obviously Tom Holland's a kid compared to Tom Hardy.
Sonny00:18:28Well, I mean, I, like, I don't, the age, the age, I don't, it doesn't matter. None of that, none of that matters. Like you could have Eddie Brock be an older guy that, but like the whole point again,
JVL00:18:37the whole point is that like venom, venom only exists because, uh, Peter Parker destroyed
Sonny00:18:43Eddie Brock's career and Spider-Man rejected the, uh, symbiote and the, and they come together and it's like the perfect, it's like the perfect villain to go up against Spider-Man. Cause he negates all of his, you know, spider senses and stuff. But like now there's just no reason, there's no reason for him to exist except now he's like, I, I don't know the, the, the weird thing that there are a bunch of weird things about this movie. I assume we're probably not going to review venom on the show cause there's so much other stuff coming up.
Vic00:19:10We went through such a trispell where there was no movies and now it's an embarrassment of riches. There's like a million things coming out.
Sonny00:19:16But like this movie does a lot of really weird things. Like for instance, uh, Woody Harrelson plays. This is Cletus Kasady who becomes Cardage, right? And Woody Harrelson, I don't know how old Woody Harrelson is, but he's probably like 60, right? He's, he's like mid fifties. Yeah.
Vic00:19:32If you see him in the highway, man, he's old.
Sonny00:19:34Mid fifties, maybe, maybe 60. I mean, he was, you know, he was in his twenties when Cheers was out and that was 30 years ago.
Vic00:19:41That's right.
Sonny00:19:41That's right. So. He played Nimitz. So he's gotta be, he's gotta be almost 60, right? In this movie, which starts with, which has a scene in 1995 that like sets the stage for everything. His character is like a 15 year old boy and like the, the, uh, and the 15 year old Cletus Kasady, the teenage Cletus Kasady, they dub Woody Harrelson's voice over and, and have him saying the kid's dialogue. It is, it is frankly bizarre. Like it is, it, there, and this movie is just filled with weird choices like that, that people not understanding what was happening in this movie, but whatever they did, I guess it doesn't really matter because this sort of, I mean, when you gross $90 million opening weekend, that's just, that's a critic proof fan friendly sort of thing. So big opening. I'll be curious to see if no time to die, uh, beats its neck beats, beats its opening weekend. This, I think it probably will. Right.
Vic00:20:48Which comes out on Thursday.
Sonny00:20:50Comes out on Thursday. It comes out. It comes out yesterday. It came out yesterday. Yes, it came out yesterday. Because people are listening to this on Friday. How about that opening? So yeah, it comes, it came out. Wow. Remember when it came out? I do remember that. And the, the Thursday night numbers were brr, brr, brr. Yeah. I mean, it was crazy. Crazy that they did that sort of numbers.
Vic00:21:07JVL, did you have any box office thoughts on this? No. No, you don't. Okay. Well, you know what?
Sonny00:21:12Are theaters back, JVL? Are theaters safe? Are they gonna, are they gonna live forever now?
JVL00:21:16Uh, it's, I mean, well, yes, they will because, uh, AMC will just start minting. NFT tokens of, of their CEO walking around in his boxer shorts and they will sell enough of these tokens that it doesn't matter whether or not anybody actually goes to the movies.
Sonny00:21:35Lots of people are going to the movies, so look at these numbers. Box office numbers.
JVL00:21:38It's a, it's great. No, I, not great for Black Widow, right? See, see Venom doing 2X Black Widow almost. So they settled. Not quite 2X.
Sonny00:21:51Black Widow, Black Widow did 80 million. And it's opening weekend and this is doing 90 million. I mean, it's not, it's not.
Vic00:21:57How much more it would have done.
Sonny00:21:59Black Widow did $80 million and it's opening weekend and Venom is doing, it did $90 million and it's opening weekend.
Vic00:22:04Is there a schedule for the streaming of Venom?
Sonny00:22:07No. So in theory, this is a thing I read on, on the very, on the, the Hollywood blogs and the trades, the trades, as we say in the biz, that Sony has committed to a longer than 45 years, uh, theatrical window.
Guest00:22:25Wow.
JVL00:22:25It's almost like they'll make more money that way.
Sonny00:22:28It'll be in theaters for a while, but it is weird though, because it is going to have a lot of competition. I mean, it's got no time to die, uh, this week, this weekend, it's got, you know, Dune and a couple of weekends, you know, I like, there's, there's a lot of stuff in theaters coming up.
Vic00:22:44That's going to be big. You know, what didn't do so well is the movie that came in fourth place. Uh, the many saints of New York with $4.7 million. That's sorry.
JVL00:22:52The many saints of where?
Vic00:22:53Newark.
JVL00:22:54Oh yeah.
Vic00:22:56And, uh, it's, uh, the prequel to the Sopranos that came out at the same time as on HBO max. Uh, so not exactly the, not exactly the scroll, if you know what I'm talking about. Oh, I don't understand.
Sonny00:23:11I don't know.
Vic00:23:12Scroll scroll. I don't know what the scroll, the sunny, how about a big boy review is, oh, is S like
Sonny00:23:18escarole, the leafy vegetable.
Vic00:23:20Yes. And it's sort of like, you know, interesting.
Sonny00:23:23I, there's a, there's a recipe that we, that we make sometimes at my house that calls for escarole and that nobody ever has it. So you can sub in spinach. Well, they never had it in Alexandria either. It was not a, it was, it was a rare, relatively rare.
Vic00:23:37You can get that up at Jersey.
Sonny00:23:38Thing. Uh, so escarole is escarole, which is the green leafy vegetable. That makes sense now. Yeah.
Vic00:23:47I mean, and if you don't have that, you can get broccoli Rob, you know, one or the other. When I was up, whenever I'm up in, in, in Tom's river, the shop, right in Tom's river, there's a whole section just the aisle. It just says Italian food.
Sonny00:24:00Anyway, what's the difference between broccoli Rob and broccolini?
Vic00:24:05Oh, well, that's a good question because they're both sort of long, long, thinner broccoli. They're all part of the mustard family.
Sonny00:24:12Is baby broccoli the same as broccolini?
Vic00:24:15I always think of broccolini and broccoli Rob, I think are very similar. Bitter.
Sonny00:24:20Also, it's broccoli Rob, not broccoli Rob A.
Vic00:24:23No, Rob.
Sonny00:24:24Correctly, Rob A. Like you just got robbed. Yeah, Rob.
Vic00:24:28Okay, go for it.
Sonny00:24:31The Many Saints of Newark, the prequel to The Sopranos, which has been kind of pitched to people as the story of young Tony Soprano. Look at young Tony Soprano. He's played by Michael Gandolfini. He's his father's son. He's young. But that's really only like a quarter of the movie is young Tony Soprano doing his thing. Really, this is the story of Dickie Moltisanti, who is, of course, the father of Christopher Moltisanti, who narrates this movie as a ghost from beyond the grave. He's telling his story. It's his Soprano story. And he's telling he's telling a story about his father and how his father and Tony Soprano kind of their their fates intertwined or whatever. This is two movies in one. The first movie is a Sopranos. It's a nostalgia fest that is like, hey, look at young Silvio Dante. Hey, look at young Big Pussy. Hey, look at young Tony Soprano. Look at you. Look at young Uncle June. Look at all these guys. Look at the young Livia. Look at young Johnny Boy Soprano. You know, look at look at all these guys.
JVL00:25:41They're so young. We're doing.
Sonny00:25:43And some of that stuff works and some of it doesn't. The stuff that doesn't work is like the guy who's playing Silvio, which is like a SNL acting job. Inexplicable. But I like I love Jon Bernthal as Johnny Boy. And I and I thought Vera Farmiga did a incredible job as Livia. Corey Stoll is close to being a parody as Uncle June. It's very it's very close. It's very close. But but Michael Gandolfini is good. And, you know, whatever that that is what it is. And there are interesting Sopranos things here. We can talk about some of those a little bit later. But like, that's just just keep in mind that basically it is nothing but a nostalgia for Fest. There's not an interesting storyline here at all. It is it is simply an excuse to say, hey, look at these guys. The second story is more interesting to me. And it's the story of Dickie Moltisanti and his relationship with his father and his father's brother and and and set against a backdrop of race in Newark in America in 1967 or 68, whenever this is set with the Vietnam War raging. This is more interesting to me, and it's doing a couple of different things. Again, I feel like this is the story David Chase really wanted to tell. David Chase wanted to tell a story about race in America in the 1960s. And this is the only way he could get to do it was by cramming an hour of Sopranos bullshit into it. So all everything is everything gets short shrift. He doesn't he can't really spend a lot of time focusing on any of this. But Leslie Odom Jr., who is playing the black gangster Harold McBrayer, is really good. I liked him. He does does does a good job of showing the kind of frustration the black community had with the Italian gangsters and how, I don't know, unfair the crime syndicate was, I guess. It's like it's, you know, whatever. It is what it is. I enjoyed that that part much, much more. And I loved Ray Liotta's kind of dueling performances as Hollywood Dick Moltisanti, who was playing Dickie's who was Dickie's father. And then Sally Moltisanti, who is much more interesting and is in prison. And our friend John Podhortz text me. He's like, he's clearly a figment of the imagination.
Vic00:28:02I was going to say question Dickie because of that weird scene at the end where he talks about being a volunteer.
Sonny00:28:08Sure, you could you could make all you could make all sorts of you could make all sorts of arguments about this. I don't think he's I mean, when David Chase does a dream sequence, he doesn't do it subtly. And this would be way too subtle for him to be a fake character who doesn't exist. But, you know, never mind. What's interesting, this is the last thing I'll say on this. What's interesting to me is that Sally Moltisanti is essentially playing a David Chase stand-in. He is the guy who looks askance at all of these people who says like, like when when Dickie is trying to explain how, you know, he coaches the blind kids baseball team and all of the parents are like, you're such a saint. You're such a saint for taking care of these kids. And he's like kind of this is an actual dream sequence where he's like kind of gaudily remembering these people praising him. And Sally just walks out, just just walks, just leaves him at the table to to wallow in his nonsense.
Vic00:29:00That's your that is versus the pod theory, which is that is right.
Sonny00:29:04So that all the time that is that is that is David Chase walking away from Dickie Moltisanti and saying, you know, this is fucking ridiculous. You're all you're all bad people. You're all terrible people. So I don't I liked it. I could see why some some folks might not. And I could I think it is also very clearly a back. You're a pilot to a Harold McBrayer television show with some like Sopranos characters sprinkled in from his perspective. But we'll see. We'll see what happens with that. David Chase apparently signed a first look deal with with HBO and Warner Brothers like last week when the movie came out. Is that right?
Vic00:29:39Because he was also very unhappy, wasn't he?
Sonny00:29:41That he found out super pissed, super pissed that this was coming out in in theaters and on HBO Max at the same time. That's right.
Vic00:29:48That's right. And it would have done, I think, marginally better. But I don't know how much more. I don't know.
?00:29:51I don't know.
JVL00:29:52Victorino. JVL. Was it your everything?
Vic00:29:55No, it wasn't.
JVL00:29:56But we'll get to that in a second.
Vic00:29:58What? And I do obviously have thoughts for somebody. I would say this. My thought was if you didn't watch the series. And you were wondering what all the hype was that you watch this movie, you would be very disappointed if you think that the whole series was basically something like this. And and my you know, and it's not. And so I do feel it does a disservice. It in no way sort of, you know, represents how good. And I still think of this as my favorite series of all time. And so because of those expectations, I was rather let down. But what did you think of it as a movie qua movie?
JVL00:30:40It's funny. I I went in really wanting to hate this and to rag on it. And like, you know, hey, look, it's Jake Lloyd. It's the Phantom, the Phantom Mafia. Right. It's a prequel, which is showing you other. Look, there's there's Yoda. But now he's young. Right. Yeah. But I think important to say. So I am not. It's not like I don't know anything about the Sopranos. I am Sopranos adjacent. So I watched the first season of it. I know about as much about Sopranos as Sonny knows about watches from just from hearing you talk about it over the years. Right. So in the way that you guys have picked up a little bit on watches, that's how I put it. I picked up on Sopranos. I didn't like it. I loved it.
Vic00:31:26Wow.
JVL00:31:27I thought it was great. I thought it was way better than the first season of Sopranos. I thought that if if the Sopranos was all this good, then I would like go back and watch it. You know, so Sonny, you said it's funny. You use it, too, is really good. You said it was two things at one. I think it's through. It's four things, actually. In addition to being the fan service and the soft pilot for for the Aaron Burr series. Um, it's it's a conversation with with Chase having with his audience about being misunderstood by them. Yeah. Like, I mean, he's literally rebuking the people who loved the Sopranos. And that's what the really other thing is. And then it's this Shakespearean tragedy about Dickie and Tony and about the idea that environmental we are all products of our environment. And there's no way we're going to be able to do that. There's no escaping that, except that we are also our own choices. And so the environment can't be your alibi. And it's really quite deep, I think. And it's, you know, it views murder as a crime against nature. I thought it was great. Wow. I loved it. I. Wow.
Vic00:32:46Yeah. There. I'm sorry. Maybe this is a wrong opinion. No, no, no, no.
Sonny00:32:49I'm totally with you on. I wrote I wrote this. This is what I wrote. I wrote in my review that the the dueling Ray Liotta's are David Chase's two conceptions of the of like how the show should be viewed. And like the the vulgar, grotesque Ray Liotta, who is, you know, throwing women downstairs and is like cursing in front of priests and like, oh, sorry, father, but not really like that. That is the bad. That's the bad fan. That is the that is, you know, the fan that David Chase hates and wants nothing to do with. The the Ray Liotta that's in prison and wants to just wants to listen to jazz and wants to wants to spout his Buddhism. You know, that is David Chase. That is David Chase looking at these people. And again, like the scene, the scene with Dickie talking about the blind baseball team is like the most it's it's it's on the nose. I mean, there's a lot of really on the nose stuff in this, like when baby Christopher starts crying in Tony's arms and like the old crone is like sometimes babies remember things from the other side. And it's like, Jesus Christ, it's the most obvious thing in the world.
JVL00:33:56I love Christopher. I did. Yeah. So that moment where she says that I don't need just the fact that because I know that I know that he kills Christopher.
Sonny00:34:05I mean, this is but I but I also think I also think that this is this to this like over explaining is David Chase like like really condescending to the the like Sopranos masses. Like I think I think doesn't he need to. I think he resents. I think he resents that this has to be a Sopranos movie. That the story that he is telling here has to be a Sopranos thing. And I do think that that part of that.
JVL00:34:30Well, he's still mad that people were upset that Tony got whacked at the end. Right. I mean, this is he views the end of the Sopranos as the logical and moral end point for that story.
Sonny00:34:42Well, maybe he got whacked. We don't know. Just no, he's he said that. I think he said it to the Republic. Right.
JVL00:34:48To the New Republic. He said, yes, members only kills him.
Sonny00:34:52No. Well, no, that New Republic story was nonsense. But he in an interview with Matt Zoller. That's what it was. He describes he describes that scene as a death scene, though earlier in the like in the in the context of the conversation, he like is saying, like, you know, maybe he dies. Maybe he doesn't. Whatever. It's it's it's complicated. It's it's intentionally ambiguous.
Vic00:35:13The whole thing about the the two kinds of fans. I mean, it's interesting. You should bring it up. It reminds me, JVL, many years ago of my my interview with my good friend. Uh, Joey, Joey, Joey Pants, who played, of course, Ralph Soffaretto from season three into four, I think. Uh, and I had the good fortune of interviewing him, uh, the day, the morning after the episode air where he died. I don't know that the timing was uncanny and it was one of those interviews. I used a an old tape recorder with the micro cassette and I literally I had to flip it over. So there was part. I was missing, but it was so I could have listened to him forever. And in the first part, I was just talking about his book, um, uh, his memoir. But then, then he let me talk about, ask about the Sopranos and then it was off to the races. But one of the things he talks about is about how so many people, you know, he, he says you have to earn something. He said something about, you'll have to go back into the archives, uh, about, uh, how, you know, to be a, to be a true fan or a true pre, you have to earn it, you know, and that there were so many people who don't and that it's just, you know. And, and that it's much more than, than what people think in this whole thing. But I remember he said about earning it, you know, and that is sort of the amount of work that gets put into viewing it, I guess. Um, but that's interesting. Uh, first of all, the, uh, the quadrants, uh, these are pretty obvious. Um, the, the plot I gave that I gave the plot B, I wasn't sure if there really was quite a, a firm plot to this. I felt like it was going in a couple of different directions, but I give it a B duration is a B plus, uh, it was two hours on the nose, two hours. Uh, action violence is an A plus, uh, I would say that it, it was an A and then it went up to a plus with that poor guy had the lug ripper in his mouth.
JVL00:37:02Oh, oh, that was, I couldn't watch that slightly.
Vic00:37:05I watched teeth and yes. Yeah. And it was slightly derivative of like the head vice scene and casino, but that's okay. It's a lug ripper, uh, and sex nudity and a plus it's been so long.
JVL00:37:17When's the last time you saw a woman naked on screen having sex was at least like the weapon to, I don't remember the weapon to, um, show girls.
Vic00:37:26Well, yeah, it's true that it's been 35 years. We did the, we watched the, the re-release, uh, uh, and so a big, uh, big points to the wonderfully, uh, uh, Kayla de Rossi, Michelle de Rossi, Michelle de Rossi, the very supple, Michelle de Rossi. I, she's just something else. Thank you. Supple. She's supple.
JVL00:37:49Um, she's great in this. She is great. She's great.
Sonny00:37:52Can I, can I ask you a question though?
JVL00:37:54Is her character the mistress or the wife? Well, she is.
Vic00:38:00Is Dickie married to her? She's Hollywood. She's Hollywood.
JVL00:38:03Hollywood's wife.
Sonny00:38:04She's married to Hollywood Dick. Right. Technically the step. And she is the mistress. Yeah. She's the Gumar.
Vic00:38:09Yeah. Gumar slash stepsister.
JVL00:38:11But then why does Christopher have his name?
Vic00:38:14Not stepsister, but you know what I mean.
JVL00:38:15Yeah. If, right. So she's, so Christopher is the, the child of her and Dickie.
Vic00:38:21Yeah.
JVL00:38:22Not Dickie. Dickie and Joanne. Is that, is that, who's, I don't know. Who is Dickie's actual wife? Do we meet her? Oh yeah, you do. You do. You do. You do. You see her, but you know.
Sonny00:38:31But there is, there's a line in the movie about how she can't, she can't have children.
Vic00:38:35That's right.
Sonny00:38:36But I, it, it was, so this is, this is not entirely, it was not entirely clear to me as I was watching it. Now that you mentioned it, JBL, if the, who, if, who is the, but I, I, I assume it was Joanne because it would have been a bigger deal to like, what are they going to do? They're going to like. Introduce. Like how, how would they, I don't. Yeah.
Vic00:38:56And she didn't look pregnant. There was no scene of her being pregnant. So you just assumed.
Sonny00:38:59This movie also like skips through time, like pretty. Yeah.
JVL00:39:03When she winds up in bed with Leslie Odom Jr. And they're like, wait a minute. How did they even like, you know, they, she's sitting in the car when the, when Dickie drives up to the gas station and she and Leslie Odom Jr. Look at each other. And the next, you know, they're banging it out and like, wait a minute, hold on. I feel like I missed.
Sonny00:39:21But they also met before. Before that, remember at the, the Italian restaurant.
JVL00:39:25They were in the same room together. I wouldn't say that they met. I mean, how would they find one another? They do not have the internet.
Sonny00:39:32Doesn't Dickie tell her to, doesn't Dickie tell her to like not spend, not stare at those people? They don't like it. Sure.
JVL00:39:38He does. But again, how did the, like, you know, like he couldn't just like look her up on Facebook and friend her. Like how did they, that just didn't make any sense to me. And suddenly they're in bed.
Sonny00:39:49Because mobsters aren't allowed to be on Facebook?
Vic00:39:52So anyway, I know what you're saying, but that's usually how things escalate with me and my women. It usually is that quickly. Suddenly it's there you are. Ray Liotta, by the way, best performance since Shantix.
Guest00:40:06No, he was great.
Vic00:40:08He was great.
Sonny00:40:09Smoking commercial. He did. I don't know. Oh, Shantix.
Vic00:40:12He got replaced by a turkey, but he's fantastic in it. And I worried about him in those Shantix commercials because he sounded very slurry and then was replaced by a sea turtle. But no, he's fantastic. He looks well. And there's two different versions of him. There's one that's the heavier set. And then there's one that obviously looks a little bit thinner. No, I thought he was terrific. I like this movie mostly until the end. And I felt like the fan service got to be a bit much. And the turning point for me was the later Silvio with the hairpiece. Suddenly he's moving around with the shoulders. I mean, he's he that was silly because he was old, not because, you know, like when Sylvia was young. I can't. I can't imagine that he moved around with the hunch, like walking around like Ed Sullivan.
JVL00:40:56I just Silvio Steven Van Zandt. Is that? Yes. Yeah.
Vic00:40:59Yes. And there's no way. The other thing that surprises me is, I guess Tony is younger than Silvio, but I didn't think he was that much younger than him or he's a little kid doing doing the math on
Sonny00:41:12all on the ages of all these guys is very it takes it. You very quickly get into a situation where you're like, was was Tony Soprano like twenty five.
JVL00:41:21Right.
Sonny00:41:22In the first season. Right. Like how he's, you know, he's he's like forty in the first season. Right.
JVL00:41:27So I think it helps not to have seen the show then, because all of this stuff, which I knew was fan service, just washed right over me because I didn't give a crap about it. Right. And having no investment in being part of the fan community made it very easy to just let all that go as just what it was like water washing over you.
Vic00:41:49Yeah. And it's weird. It's we're talking about three generations. Three generations of Maltesantis getting killed either in or around a car. Right. Because he beats his father to death in it. And then, of course, he gets shot in the trunk.
JVL00:42:02And then, of course, Christopher, who kills him. So Uncle Junior has ordered the hit. But who is it? Who pulls the trigger? So why? Because because he laughed at him when he laughed at him when he fell off.
Sonny00:42:13Well, this is this. So this this is this is part of the reason the movie feels like two seasons of the show compressed into like two hours, because that should be that's like that's like a second six episode arc right there where like no insults piling up does not need to be piling up, piling up.
JVL00:42:28And then it does not need to be a six episode arc. This is what I'm saying. This is why like who needs a whole fucking like 13 hours on of this this stuff, all the pathos, all the drama, all the symbology, all the things that you need from the Sopranos are right here in two hours and you're done. OK, great.
Sonny00:42:49OK, so who is that guy? My. So. Like in the show, Dickie is killed by a corrupt cop, right? That's like.
Vic00:42:57Yes, it was unclear. And that's what they claimed. And I was never fully convinced that that was the whole story that that this guy actually did it. And in fact, maybe they wanted Christopher to just do a hit and came up with the idea of, well, he'll definitely commit if we tell him that he had to do with his dad's murder. It was unclear to me.
JVL00:43:15OK, so we weren't supposed. I just want to make sure that I wasn't supposed to know who that was calling Uncle Junior to say, yeah, it's.
Vic00:43:21No, that's right. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah.
JVL00:43:24So because I thought that maybe this was somebody who was in his crew who was going to do because the same car drives past twice on the street while he's standing there talking to whoever he is. And so clearly somebody is circling the block waiting to do him. Right.
Sonny00:43:39Yeah. The the level. Did you guys watch this on TV? I watched it on TV. In the theater. Phone. Watch it with Kate.
JVL00:43:46My phone. It's I'm sorry. It's on streaming. So therefore, it is just content. And so I treat it.
Sonny00:43:51Well, you're. Pelotoning.
JVL00:43:52I 100 percent watched it while I was pelotoning.
Vic00:43:55Oh, I watched this on a TV with Kate and the level of fate. What did Kate think? She she thought it was OK. But again, she didn't like.
JVL00:44:05Wanted more nudity.
Vic00:44:06Yeah. You know how she is. The ending, particularly the very end where the song they cue up the song, the theme song of the Sopranos. And then they do the, you know, the pinky promise.
JVL00:44:17I loved it.
Vic00:44:18No, I thought it was too much. You didn't like that? I did not like it.
JVL00:44:21The A10 or whatever.
Vic00:44:22No, I was like, OK, this is too much. But there are so many levels of fan service. And I thought about it in case you were wondering that I picked up. And I'm sure there's a lot more. There's a bird reference, right, about, oh, you saw a bird and the bird is an omen for bad luck. When Christopher in the Sopranos, he becomes he goes through his getting made ceremony where he becomes a made man. He looks in the window and there is the bird, you know, and it's like this bad omen. It's like a crow or a raven or something. Yeah, that's right. Also, they. He likes they like the swivel, you know, the swivel, people from not from not from that part of Italy would pronounce it swivel and it's a pastry and they make reference to it. And Moltisanti makes reference to this swivel, but they would say swivel or swivel. And it's it looks like a it looks like a lobster tail that's or a clam that's filled with sweet regard. Sorry. So it's similar. I mean, it's a sweet cheese. It's a delightful pastry. But there it is again, the swivel reference. And Holston's, the diner, that's where Tony was. That's where he gets whacked, right? Supposedly killed, right? And that's where he's hanging out. And so they're all hanging out at Holston's, which is not that close to Newark.
Sonny00:45:33There's a there's a really great shot in this in this movie where Tony, a younger Tony, is like standing outside of Holston's and there's a crossfade. There's like a dissolve where Dickie Moltisanti is like standing in an alley. And it's like Dickie is superimposed on Tony. And then Christopher Moltisanti is like reading some some some, you know, narration or dialogue or whatever on top of that. And it just like it's like the whole hinge point of Tony's existence.
JVL00:46:04It's great, isn't it? The stuff the stuff with Tony and the school psychologist when she comes out to his mother and talks about how, you know, he remembered reading that book and all the little. Yeah, that is such a nice job of both explaining but then refusing to alibi him.
Sonny00:46:22Sure, it's really I just you know, like the simple view of all these is just to take one
Vic00:46:27point one view or the other and this and she's messed us both and she's there's a I did like how, you know, she it's a brief moment of her trying to be nice, but that's just not in her nature. She can't, you know, she can't Sonny. Did you get that other two on the nose reference when they're talking about Tony wanting to play football and then Uncle Junior says doesn't have the makings of a.
Sonny00:46:52Right. Come on. Or a professional.
Vic00:46:54Right. And that's all. It's just it's the same line that's literally repeated in the series. So, yeah, really.
Sonny00:46:59The most on the nose thing, I think, is when they set up the TV in the funeral parlor and then they kick it over and smash it up. They're like, don't you have any respect? Again, it's David Chase smashing up a TV saying TV. I hate TV. He hates TV. He like has always said that he resents like the fact that he couldn't get movies made that he had to make this Soprano show on HBO and like is for forever. Associated TV because his later efforts.
Vic00:47:25I mean, nothing else has panned out for him since then. What was that show about? It was rock music and Andrew Dice Clay was in it. Yeah. You see that? And that was on HBO.
JVL00:47:36Alessandro Nivola's greatness, isn't he?
Vic00:47:39You know what he would play? He could play like he could like like a biopic of Andrew Cuomo.
JVL00:47:44I have not seen him on screen since Face Off. This is the first. He's he's the cage's brother. The little brother.
Vic00:47:52Caster and Pollux.
JVL00:47:53Caster and Pollux. That's right. You're kidding. I have not. This is the first time I've seen him since then. He's better. He's absolutely great.
Vic00:47:59No, no, no. I thought he was good in that. I agree. And I do like Corey Stoll by and large.
JVL00:48:05I'm really surprised you guys aren't higher on this.
Vic00:48:08And I think I think JBL, it turns out that there's some benefit to not having not being a Sopranos aficionado because then the little things aren't going to bug you the way it bugged me particularly. I liked it.
Sonny00:48:21I liked it. I just thought it was trying to do too many different things at the same time. I just think it is not. It is trying to do too many things in too short a period of time. And as a result, it doesn't do any of them exceptionally well. It does some of them fairly well, but it doesn't do any of them.
JVL00:48:37I just I think it does all all of them except except for the fan service, which I can't again speak. Right, right. So that might have the idea that Tony is the son that Dickie always wanted and he tries to do right by Tony. But then this only actually pushes Tony away and drives him towards the light.
Vic00:48:57It's it's a it's a bizarro Bronx tale. It's the ending.
JVL00:49:01It's great. It's great. And then Dickie is this guy who is a bad guy who thinks he's the good guy, you know, because that kills his dad, which is righteous.
Sonny00:49:10And then but that's I mean, that is that is literally the entirety of the Sopranos is a bunch of guys who think that they're good guys and are actually monstrous.
JVL00:49:19But here's here's the real question, though, you know, so he thinks. He's a good guy. And when he kills his dad, that's a righteous thing. But the question is, is the act of murder there what then make turns him evil, right? And turns him from being a guy who actually is a pretty good guy who giving in even to righteous murder like that justified murder then becomes the type of man who also can kill his mistress.
Sonny00:49:44But he's not. There's no there's no reason to suggest that or for us to believe that this is his first murder.
JVL00:49:52What I'm saying is I'm saying it raises these questions because it treats again, it treats murder really seriously.
Sonny00:49:59And it does treat murder really seriously. But like, again, the show has always done this. This is not like this is this is the whole the whole crux of the show.
JVL00:50:07You can do it all in two hours. Then you don't have to do seven seasons.
Sonny00:50:10You can't, though. It's the problem. You can't. It doesn't work. You need I barely remember the first.
Vic00:50:16I barely remember. I remember a handful, a couple episodes from the first season. I really like the second season. I really like the second season of Sopranos, if ever in the future. I mean, you're probably like me. I get people telling me to watch a million shows every day now. Like, oh, have you seen this? There's so many things to watch. I just can't get to them. Although I finally did, because we were going to talk about it in some future episode, I did start Squid Game.
Sonny00:50:43Holy fuck. Anyway, we'll talk about that in the bonus episode. We're going to do a bonus episode on that folks. One of the grounds I if you're if you're if you're a fan of Squid Game, you're going to get it good. But if you're not, you got to go go sign up.
JVL00:50:55I got a question about Harold. Is that the character's name?
Sonny00:50:59Harold McBrayer. Oh, sure.
JVL00:51:01Does Chase view McBrayer as the same sort of monster he views Tony? Because he seems to be, again, like Tony. He's a man who's a product of his environment and his times, right? And so you see him getting radicalized by the Black Power movement, right? And going from a guy who is just happy to be a runner to thinking, wait a minute, Whitey is taking all of this from us. But his, his view of justice is not to kick Whitey out of the black community. It's to take Whitey's place as the oppressor of the black community.
Sonny00:51:36Right.
JVL00:51:36Which is fascinating. And I couldn't quite tell if Chase was alibying him for that. Uh, or if Chase views him also as evil.
Sonny00:51:46I would, uh, my, my sense of this is that again, I, I really think of this movie as a backdoor pilot to an Harold McBrayer TV show and that given time to actually get into Harold McBrayer and, and what he is doing, that you would end up seeing a very Tony like arc where he is justifying, uh, increasingly terrible things to himself that are unjustifiable.
Vic00:52:14I mean, one of the things I find so, you know, uh, infuriating, but in a very sort of, uh, a good way because it's compelling, uh, in the series is the accumulation of terrible things, um, Tony Soprano has done and wishing that if only his family knew exactly who's responsible for how many people's deaths, Jackie Jr., Christopher, I mean, it's endless. Um, uh, and again, because, and, and, and pod mentioned this as well, because, you know, you, we have the inclination to wanting to like these people. They're funny. They're, there are funny moments with a lot of these characters and then they do just unspeakable things because they're all psychopaths.
JVL00:52:54What'd you guys think of Michael Gandolfini? I thought he was good. I was worried about it.
Sonny00:52:58It's very good.
Vic00:52:59I was worried.
Sonny00:52:59I thought it was deeply, I thought it was deeply unfair. I was going to say unfair. To cast him in this role, frankly. Um, and I thought he did a good job with it.
Vic00:53:06I assume he wants to be, he's going to be acting in other things, but, uh.
JVL00:53:10A good job or a great job? Because it is not clear to me that he can act, but he can sure as hell channel his father. Yes. In a way that was. Really interesting to watch on screen. Again, I just, a triumph, a total triumph. I loved everything about it.
Vic00:53:30He, uh, he, he was there when his father died. He was there in the hotel room. It's very strange. Remember the last thing he ate was prawns. I love prawns.
JVL00:53:40Now, let that be a lesson to you.
Vic00:53:41Let that be a lesson.
JVL00:53:42I can't believe you guys aren't higher on this.
Vic00:53:45I know. I, I, maybe it's because we love the nudity. I, I, the, the graphic violence, but a lot of. I, you know, no, no. I mean, it scores an A in the quadrants. There's no question about it, especially the nudity.
Sonny00:53:56The quadrants remain a lie. No. Quadrants are the quadrants. This, this crushes all the quadrants and yet it's like, eh, B. I can't help it. B minus.
Vic00:54:03No, it still gets an A. I average it out. It's an A. But me personally, eh. I mean, I didn't read. I know the LA Times is a big thing and everyone's talking about it, like what they got wrong or something like that. But I mean, obviously other people feel this way.
JVL00:54:15So this, this is toxic fandom. If you come to a production like this. And you are judging it by picking what it got wrong in continuity. You are literally no different than the Marvel nerds and the DC nerds who sit around going, but the Sword of Grabthar is got a four gems and the hilt, not two.
Vic00:54:40Probably.
JVL00:54:41Right.
Vic00:54:41I mean, it's. Sure. Sure. And I wouldn't know that because again, those movies, I, I, I don't have the background that other people do. Some people. Some people, especially the DC. I mean, it's crazy. I just like watching that like a movie. Okay. Wow.
JVL00:54:57Great. People should go watch this thing. It's, it's an absolutely underappreciated gem.
Vic00:55:02Maybe I'll, when it's, when it's on, I'll, I'll catch it again and see.
JVL00:55:06You don't have to wait for it to be on cable, Vic.
Vic00:55:08It's already right there on HBO Max. You can watch it. I, it's not the same. It's not the same as stumbling upon it. I don't know. It takes energy to actually turn it on. I don't know. Okay. Do we have any thoughts moving right along? Fine. Uh, spirit of the week corrections, shout outs. Do you have anything? Um, I, I have a little thing, which is, um, yes, you have your beer and, uh, the, the kind folks at Savona, uh, communications again, sent me this wonderful little flask of kill bacon. It's a little flask. It's the kind that I keep in my pocket for things like confirmation and stuff like that. Uh, I'm just kidding. Uh, kill bag or work work. It's a, what? It fits perfectly. Uh, it's an Irish whiskey. And they had it, uh, timed, unfortunately, a little late, uh, for national coffee day, which was October one to make a wonderful, uh, Irish coffee. And, uh, and you can use it with whipped cream and they recommend also, um, some brown sugar, uh, or brown sugar syrup, and you will have yourself a party. Uh, okay. So thank you very much for the kill bacon. And that is all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Matus. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on Patreon. Just go to subbeacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL00:56:37Victorino.
Vic00:56:37Yes, sir.
JVL00:56:38I have a very sensitive question for you.
Vic00:56:42So I wanted to save it for outtakes. Okay.
JVL00:56:46Are some of the depictions in the many saints of, of Newark, of, how do I phrase this? Your people?
Sonny00:56:57Are, are they offensive?
Vic00:56:59I didn't realize there were that many Filipinos in there. What, offensive?
JVL00:57:02Are they offensive in the way? No. In particular, in particular, the scenes of domestic conflict between the men and their women. When, when Anthony's father comes home from jail and they have everybody gathered and the two of them. Just start screaming at each other and throwing stuff. And I don't want to say that this is a slur against the Italian American population, but it sure seems a little over the top.
Vic00:57:39No, it is again.
JVL00:57:41And your people aren't like that.
Vic00:57:43Are my people and it's, and it's sort of compressed though, because, you know, I mean, again, you're dealing with a movie, not a series. So it's like, oh, very intense. And the fighting is happening all there. At once. And I think I made, again, unfortunately, it makes me think about the series and by and large there, you know, they, they, those people, meaning those specific, that specific subset of people, if you will. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, that, that would, that was very common in the series, except for Johnny sack who loved his very large wife. So no, I found it amusing and it's, it's very specific because Olivia is just a really tear. It's bizarre how that the two of them are together. Cause she's really messed up, but it happens again. And John Bernthal is fantastic. I didn't have, I was fine with that.
Guest00:58:33I was fine. I'm sure it's fine.
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