#65. 'House of Gucci'
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With JVL out, guest host John Podhoretz (editor of Commentary) joins Sonny and Vic to review Ridley Scott's House of Gucci, and the three split hard on it. John delivers the "big boy review," calling the first 45 minutes — the Lady Gaga/Adam Driver courtship, the disco-and-melodrama energy — "a gas," but says the film collapses once the family-intrigue plot kicks in and becomes impossible to follow; he ranks Scott as a director who's brilliant with a strong script (Alien, Gladiator, The Last Duel) and a mess without one (Blade Runner, and now this). Sonny is much harsher throughout, calling the script an outright muddle and dismissing Lady Gaga as a one-expression performer, while John pushes back hard in her defense, calling her "dazzling" and citing A Star Is Born; Vic largely sides with Sonny on Gaga but was won over by the opening. Vic's Quadrant scorecard lands at Plot B, Duration D, Action/Violence C, and Sex/Nudity an enthusiastic A-plus-plus, for an overall B-minus. Jared Leto's 250-pounds-of-prosthetics performance as Paolo gets extended "so bad it's good" treatment from all three, along with riffs on the movie's wildly mismatched accents. The opening stretch is classic Sub-Beacon sprawl: an extended doppelganger bit about JVL's priest lookalike, a Time-travel-movie tangent (Tenet, Time After Time), a long detour into 1970s San Francisco mayhem, a heartfelt Sondheim tribute from John (the composer had just died) that Sonny, a self-professed musical-theater philistine, mostly resists, a box-office rundown (Encanto #1, Ghostbusters: Afterlife #2, Gucci #3 at $14.4M) that spins into a Ghostbusters product-placement/Gremlins 2 digression, and a Jamie Farr/height-of-movie-stars tangent. The episode closes with John's disco-era stories (a teenage brush with a gay disco, a cocaine encounter with Robert Kagan at the Limelight), the recurring sump-pump/gout check-in, and Sonny recounting a Twitter fight over depiction versus endorsement in art.
From the show notes
Update: There seemed to be some sort of error on Patreon's end and the episode ... only uploaded for some people? Adding it again to see if that fixes the problem. John Podhoretz sits in for JVL. He fills Sonny in Sondheim. The gang discusses House of Gucci . Sump pumps are mentioned! All that and more on this week's episode.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Gucci
Guest00:00:01It was a name that sounded so sweet so seductive Beat the family everybody. This is Patricia and this is my family They had it all worth style power who wouldn't care for that
?00:00:30You
Vic00:00:34Hello and welcome to another edition of the sub beacon I'm Victor Mattis along with Sonny Bunch and in for Jonathan V. Last is our good friend the editor of commentary John Podhoretz Just a reminder the sub beacon is now available through patreon go to sub beacon comm you'll easily find us Please subscribe tell your friends and don't forget about the sub beacon merchandise store at T public.com The holidays are upon us Hanukkah is happening right now speaking of which John welcome back to the show
Guest00:01:06Well, thank you, are you are you making some kind of a Insinuation as my as to my faith tradition. Yes. Yes your your heritage your heritage Well, you know as I'm I could mention, you know, my good friend father McClanahan Jonathan out like Jonathan is you know apparently socializes Solely and exclusively with men you two and then men of the cloth men who look exactly like him Yeah. Oh, yeah, this is apparently the very strange Doppelganger effect. It's a sliding doors. It's the eyes. It's the eyes So, uh, yeah, Jonathan sent me a Text one day and he said Okay Just are you sitting down and I said yes, and then he sends me this picture and I said to him What what are you doing in a clerical collar? And he said it's not me It's some priest but he looks exactly like it's it's uncanny
Vic00:02:16It's like it's like when people think that I'm Shang Chi when I walk down the street because we share just similar body
Guest00:02:28You said you were Benedict Wong last week. That's right. That's right the Have his neck apparently I have his neck size apparently to you. You all look alike. I get confused
Sonny00:02:41I get confused myself. If JBL grew a goatee, would that make him the evil priest would make him like a mirror universe?
Guest00:02:48Oh, you mean like the Spock priest? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, like yeah, that's a that's an interesting Now I had a doll. I told him that I had a doppelganger And it was a very very weird experience in 1993 when I was the TV critic of the New York Post I went to the TV critics Press tour which is a three-week gathering then of like all the TV critics and the country would go and they would stay at the Universal Sheraton Hotel in LA and the television networks would peddle their wares for the fall and give people a chance to Meet and greet with creators and actors and you know try to seduce Us into saying nice things about their their show so they're about 80 or 90 of us then in the good old days Yeah, when there were newspaper critics and and I I showed up and then I went to things we were like hey Phil Phil how you doing Phil? What's going on Phil? I'm like I what I'm Phil And there there was a critic for the Chicago Sun-Times who is now Then went to the Chicago Tribune and then took a buyout. I don't know he's doing now and if you looked him up you wouldn't see this then you wouldn't see it now because but We looked astonishingly like his name was Phil Rosenthal not the Phil Rosenthal who made everybody loves Raymond But sure Phil Rosenthal the TV critic then sometimes I was the critic of the New York Post So that's you know first city second city And we we we did indeed look very much alike, and it was extremely disturbing
Sonny00:04:25Did you did you meet him in person at this?
Guest00:04:27I did I met him we spent we hung out together. It was really strange as I say whatever whatever Commonality we had then Vanished like I haven't seen him in 25 years
Vic00:04:41But I hope you didn't touch him because that's the rule right if you touch him Then you is what is that wasn't that matter anti-matter? Yes matter. Oh, you're saying about like crossing the streams Yes, and that what yeah, then it's a time cop time cop. That's what I was gonna say
Guest00:04:54Oh, is that time cop if you taught what happens and you become the other person? There's something terrible I never saw universe explodes. I never I never saw a time cop
Vic00:05:02Oh, you can I don't think you're missing that time. It's a it's all you need to see is that see they push them into the other guy And it's like you know, it's something horrible habits. Well good good to have you here. Well, thank you very much. Do you guys think that?
Guest00:05:17Outside of Back to the Future that there is actually a defensible time travel movie
Sonny00:05:24Tenet You're
Vic00:05:26Forgetting tenant already very funny speak very funny
Guest00:05:29Yeah, tenet is the best time travel movie because it get it affords people the power Yeah to make bullets Go back into a gun into the back into the guns very you know, that is just feel it Don't try not to think your way through it. Just feel that is not entropy. That is not what I mean backwards It is not what entropy means time going backwards. Anyway, it's gonna be 15 minutes later We're still Aside from tenant. I have one. Is there a defensible time travel movie? Yes
Vic00:06:05The the movie that had to change its name for some reason and it was originally I think Time after time and it became the time machine or was it the time machine and it became the one with HG Wells and Jack
Guest00:06:16The Ripper that's time after time. Yes, and Mary Steenburgen
Vic00:06:21Right. I love that movie Did you like that movie John, but I I love
Guest00:06:26I absolutely no. No, it's great. It's it's it's fantastic. So HG Wells in fact constructs a time machine and Jack the Ripper who was one of his friends who I think is played by Christopher Plummer or David Warner David Warner David Warner comes they both end up in contemporary San Francisco and Wells falls in love with Mary Steenburgen as in fact Malcolm McDowell fell in love with Mary Steenburgen in real life and they got married and they had kids and they got divorced and Jack the Ripper starts being Jack the Ripper in San Francisco and you know in 1980 and they have this great confrontation scene where big Jack the Ripper says I Belong here. This is this actually is kind of like this is what this is what I you know in London in 1890 like no one was getting killed like this, but here it happens all the time
Vic00:07:18Like I don't know what you're worried about. This is my milieu, which was San Francisco in the late 70s Yeah, yeah, which is nothing like today obviously
Guest00:07:29There is a book by David Talbot a person I don't like the I mean generally speaking thought very little of the Korea the founder of salon But he wrote a book that's a history of San Francisco the title It's called season of the witch which is a history of San Francisco, and it's actually really good and it is worth reading because It reminds you of how psychotic America in the 1970s was and though we keep it What was going on in San Francisco from like? Really until Jim Jones as People's Temple, you know hide off to Guiana and then everybody killed themselves What happened in those ten years was a kind of social? barbaric Pop politicized social barbarity that is almost unthinkable and that somehow it just
Sonny00:08:31Happened like in real time. Yeah, I mean I I remember reading David Frum's book on the 1970s a Few years back. I maybe maybe five years ago and just thinking like oh this all sounds terrible This is this is just the worst place on earth
Guest00:08:47It's amazing. I grew up in New York in the 1970s, and I'm saying like San Francisco, New York was like a Paragon of good common sense and social stability compared to San Francisco where you know Black Panthers were killing each other and then people were going around and hunting white people black Criminals are going around hunting white people for sport hippies invented their own Kind of script they they created a currency that that you could use in the hate to Buy free medicines, and then of course all the junkies came and stole all the medicine and then of course Harvey Milk was killed by the crazy The 22 city councilman, you know one one city councilman kills another city councilman and the mayor of the city is assassinated by the same guy and Then of course comes the People's Temple which was like this Very politically very important considered the People's Temple Jim Jones's temple got George Moscone the guy who was killed elected mayor They are given credit by almost everyone for being the get out the vote machine that got George Moscone elected mayor of Sam the guy Who got assassinated by by Dan white? That's how important and powerful they were and then and then they and then again they could they go to Jonestown and then 900 people commit suicide drinking the Kool-Aid That that was one City Oh Patty Patty Hearst. Oh, yeah another one Patty Hearst kidnapped in San Francisco SLA I mean
Sonny00:10:31And the Zodiac killer and the Zodiac haven't even talked about the zone
Guest00:10:35Yeah, I mean this all happened in one and it's a relatively small city, you know, it's like 500,000 people. It's not you know, I mean And it was like just something got loose, you know, like everything Got loose and of course AIDS also, of course was basically Incubated and generated in in San Francisco. Yeah
Sonny00:10:58John one of the I one of the thing is just moving slightly off of the craziness of San Francisco What are the one of the reasons I was excited to have you on today was to talk about? Stephen Sondheim because I'm not I'm not a musical theater person. No, you don't know you're not
Guest00:11:11Because I was about to ask you I don't I don't have you know, I don't I don't have what your favorite Harold Arlen show
Sonny00:11:19formed Thoughts on Stephen Sondheim, so I'm Hoping you can make make the case for Stephen Sondheim to me a Philistine in the the the world of musical theater
Guest00:11:32well, so Next week West Side Story opens this new version of West Side Story opens, right? 2021 right the end of 2021 Sondheim wrote the lyrics to West Side Story in 1957 when he was 25 years old Wow So 54 years ago 64 years 64 years ago, so he was 25 years old. He wrote the lyrics to West Side Story which include some of the greatest American songs Second show is a show called Gypsy which many people consider the best musical ever ever ever done With a score by Jule Stein he had studied music composition At Williams College what had already written the music and lyrics to a show that didn't get produced Thought he was going to be a composer and lyricist But took these two jobs as a lyricist on these two enduring shows that are in fact the biggest hits He would ever be involved with or the most the biggest classics He would ever be involved with and then he wrote his own show which was also a huge hit a funny thing happened on the way to the forum this burlesque Roman farce then he wrote a flop called anything can whistle Anyone can whistle and then five years after then he wrote a show with Richard Rodgers, which was a flop And then five years later he revolutionized American theater He wrote the first the music and lyrics to the first was known as a concept musical. So it's not a plot. It's about marriage, it's a musical about marriage as told through the eyes of a single guy and His married couple friends and why it is that he can't commit to marriage because he sort of Seeing them and seeing how their marriages don't work And then he had this run of shows in the 1970s. He had company then he had a show called follies, which is a which is a which is a sort of show about a Theater that is being torn down that was once housed the great sort of like romantic theater musical Spectacles of 40 years ago. It's a show about the acrid quality Of nostalgia the dangers of nostalgia the horrors of memory or a show called Pacific Overtures, which is about the American opening to Japan or the American forcible opening of Japan's borders in the 1850s he then wrote a show called a little night music, which is a adaptation of an Ingmar Bergman movie called smiles of a summer night a kind of bittersweet romance about a Man and the woman that he was once in love with And then he wrote the greatest work of American theater Sweeney Todd Didn't write the books to any of these shows Sweeney Todd is an opera basically, it is an opera with it with a deranged subject based on a Victorian melodrama about a Vengeance melodrama about a wrongly imprisoned man who was transported to Australia By a judge who covets his wife and he returns from Australia after being on a shipwreck Sets up shop as a barber and then Starts killing people and his deranged landlady chops them up makes them into meat pies and sells them So I'm describing all of these shows
Sonny00:15:04So that's the that's actually the only one I've I've actually saw the movie because I saw the movie so the movie, okay?
Guest00:15:11So what is it about him? And then he wrote but I mean so he had this career. He basically stopped producing shows in 2008 which is pretty late for I mean he was in his late 70s and yeah, yeah, he put on a show called bounce that or Roadshow had different names that didn't really go anywhere and He wrote an astonishing variety of songs Hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of songs. He was the most productive Person in some ways in the history of the American theater You know a 50-year career 45 year career and The shows are often unsatisfying the songs are insanely witty amazingly moving it's at times incredibly powerful at other times and You know, he he I don't know how to make the case for this without Without anybody having sort of familiarity with what he did, but he was he was a wordsmith of unbelievable facility There were only two lyricists in American history who can even rival Him those are that's Cole Porter and Loren's heart for sort of cleverness wordplay You know triple rhymes interior interior rhymes That kind of thing and he wrote these amazingly powerful songs about You know disappointed in the voice of a disappointed middle-aged woman full of self-loathing who does nothing with her life, but go to lunch a song called the ladies who lunch or this astounding song from his show Pacific Overtures, which is Maybe the greatest single number in American theater history called someone someone in a tree Which tries to recount? the negotiations between the Japanese and the Americans on reopening Japan from the perspective of The men of a of an old man Who is who is singing a duet? with his ten-year-old self Who is in a tree? Oh watching the action from afar? Which he cannot hear because historically there is no record of what went on in this treaty house where they did this negotiation But he is describing What happened? physically as these people's moved around the room and then he has this moment in which he says You know, I am part of the event If I weren't here who's to say that what happened here would have happened here, you know, sort of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle in song and again, it's hard to describe songs. Yeah in that way but
Sonny00:18:13I Guess here's I guess here's my question. So I a lot of the people I saw Eulogizing him said he without him modern Broadway doesn't exist That that his He he revolutionized how the the modern musical theater works and I'm just I'm I'm just curious on From your POV like is that is that true? And like if so, what was it specifically? Was it just the quality of the songs was it like, you know, I Because you say I mean I might might take away from a lot of these obituaries was that The individual plays were not super successful often that it was
Guest00:18:53Yes, some of the shows weren't successful and and they have had a second or third or fourth life like like anything like movies You know That we know They are, you know Just the initial public response doesn't doesn't just doesn't mean that they're right about it, you know It's just that they were the show like for instance with tenant exactly, so So it's like it was too ahead of its time or it was too sour in a way that doesn't really bother people when they See it ten years later. So the shows are often ahead of their time. I like some of them. I don't like others of them There's There's never been anybody like him The only great song right the only the only two songwriters in American history for theater who wrote words and music and Did the kind of thing? That he did over the course of a career were Cole Porter and Irving Berlin He had a longer in some ways. I mean he kind of had a longer career than both He was far more innovative Than either although Irving Berlin was basically the founder of the American popular song So it's a little hard to say that he was less innovative than Irving Berlin But he was a boundary pusher. He was he never repeated himself He was always trying to Write something new and different and interesting and the variety of songs the hundreds and hundreds of songs Not a bad one Not just the songs that he wrote but also the songs to which he wrote lyrics It's like without without pure and without parallel the only last thing I'll say is that he was I said this on the commentary podcast He's it like American mid-century was this very self-confident roaring Culturally confident place that was making an announcement to the world that it was now the leading power It's it's it's fiction was more energetic. It's painting dominated everything. It's theater took over from British theater Obviously the cinema, you know, which was all considered the you know European cinema was considered far superior and far more sophisticated that all ended that that nonsense Idea that somehow American cinema was inferior to European cinema. It was a bold self-confident Annunciation of American self-confidence and he was one of the primary figures in that assertion of American centrality and sort of the arts and culture and the American century and his passing Reminds us that you know with the maybe the exception of somebody like Lin-Manuel Miranda. There is no there are no such figures anymore There are no such, you know, there's no leading American novelists I mean, there's no Lee and this kind of Ross Douthat's point in the decadent society like we're not minting New people who are sort of like saying hey, this is us. This is America This is we're sort of like everything is smaller and shrunken and much more
Sonny00:22:07But I mean, isn't that just a that that's just a function of the shattering of the monoculture though, right? I mean that that is as much as anything else like we have infinite Choices and infinite right avenues. I mean look I'm looking I'm starting to make my you know Top ten list of the year and half of the movies On it will probably gross less than it's gonna say. Can you get to ten fifteen million dollars?
Guest00:22:29You know, but you know, that's that's fine. Look, you know, you think about leading writers of the 1950s, you know When when they said a book was a bestseller You know when the adventures of Augie March by by Saul Bellow was a bestseller. It sold 27,000 copies like we're not sure it's not that there there was a monoculture and it was very possible for some people to become dominant Figures in it. I'm not talking about success somehow. I'm just talking about a kind of National like a spirit that even though these people were all anti-american and they didn't like, you know They hated America and they liked Europe and all of that. They were Infused with this spirit that they could do anything They could say anything that the world was their oyster that these artistic forms were something that they could dominate that they had no sense of modesty or you know reticence about like swinging for the fences and I Don't see that
Sonny00:23:27Anywhere anymore a nation of Kanye West's
Vic00:23:31Sunny does this make you now more inclined to want to see musicals after listening to John?
Sonny00:23:37No, I mean my problem with music I mean look we can talk about this more when we when we do the West Side Story episode. Are we really? I would assume
Guest00:23:44We are
Sonny00:23:46But but I mean my my issue with musicals is that I just I simply don't understand the form I like my problem is I I can't hear I've discussed this maybe on this show certainly on across the movie aisle But I can't I can't parse lyrics as dialogue, right? Like I just can't do it. I mean this story. Yeah, the story. I always tell people is my wife My lovely wife bought me tickets to see What's the musical by the cats of the Book of Mormon? Oh, yeah bought me Tickets to go see the Book of Mormon which I which is everybody love South Park guys Which is you know, very funny which like it should be right up my alley if I was ever going to like a musical It would be that one and I came out of it and I was like, I'm just I'm bored
Guest00:24:29This okay, but wait, so forget those forget those as muses fritz stage musicals Forget that like the when you were a kid like the Wizard of Oz Could you make sense out of like the Scarecrow song or the Tin Man?
Sonny00:24:42Yes, okay, but those are so
Guest00:24:44Different I mean Disney like the little if you watch, you know in Canto with your kid or you watch Moana
Sonny00:24:51Those are I've always I've always I've always drawn a distinction between like cartoon musicals and and real-life musicals I for whatever reason I just it doesn't it it it doesn't affect me the same way
Guest00:25:03Look, look, I totally understand the notion that There is a hump that you either get over you don't get over when people just sort of burst out into song. It is a It is a highly problematic Thing and in some sense unless you were inured to it or you even like it as you like the artificiality of it it it's difficult and and and if it if if you never you know, it's like it's like I Can't read the Lord of the Rings. I have tried to read the Lord of the Rings seven or eight times I tried to read it to my son recently and when Tom Bombadil starts spouting
Vic00:25:43It's a long stretch. That's a okay, but I am I stopped reading after Goldberry, okay?
Guest00:25:49Yeah, no, but they're like they're like and then they're going up a hill and they're going down a hill and they did then they they they they they dined on on on Kippers and pheasant and then they slept in the woods and then they got up and all this and you know These are the most popular books of the 20th century by most reckoning's not and I can't and fantasy that kind of fantasy Just I see one name like you know the I was trying to watch this wheel of time on Amazon It's like you know we are of the ace to die, and I'm like okay I'm done like you are that is so stupid like you. Why are you using it?
Sonny00:26:29But I'm but I mean tens of millions of people like it. Yeah, you loved him, huh?
Guest00:26:34And yet you love dune I love dune because dune and I like Game of Thrones First of all Game of Thrones is about the is about 15th century England actually so That's why I like Game of Thrones. You know why I like story of the war the rules
Vic00:26:46I like Game of Thrones. I do like a them because of the story Emilia Clarke. This is a story
Guest00:26:52Yeah, no you like watch for the music. Yeah, yeah, no, but I like I like stories of palace intrigue and dunes that now But it doesn't dune doesn't have the you know and then when they have to go find the blar blar in the you know There's something wrong very well the ridiculous words of fantasy
Vic00:27:12That totally start a car yeah, and then shy halloo well, and then they know but those and then sorry about subtitles
Guest00:27:18They have subtitles which I appreciate the genius of Frank Herbert, and I mean this Honestly is he wasn't making up gibberish. He was using essentially Islamic and Hebrew that's right words and for me things that were familiar to the human ear whereas all
Sonny00:27:42Fantasy sounds like a town in jr. Tolkien Jerry jr. Tolkien is literally a linguist It was I mean he was I am aware of that from from old ye olde English, and yeah
Guest00:27:53Well, I don't speak ye olde English And no one does but I mean I I'm not I'm just saying that I appreciate Your difficulty with musicals. I have the same difficulty with
Vic00:28:07Fantasy so yeah, that's understand Sonny what I think you needed to have happen to You in your life is you needed to have gone to a good musical with great and catchy songs with a good Actor this happened to me many years ago when I went to Broadway and I saw guys and dolls with the legendary Broadway performer Jamie far
Guest00:28:31That is beautiful Jamie far. Do you know that I have an autographed copy of Jamie Farr's?
Vic00:28:38Autobiography I know I didn't know It's called
Guest00:28:43Just far fun It's a kind of a title. I would have come up with it make sense I I do not I don't oh just for oh my god I don't like signed book like, you know I've known writers all my life and people are always signing each other's books and I kind of don't like I It's considered like a great honor and I you know, like whatever. It's a weird thing I don't like but I get a trash Ola showbiz book Something like my wife got Barry Williams To sign growing up Brady. Oh my gosh, that book holds a treasured place in our family library
Vic00:29:28I hope that right next to the site are fun I I hope that Jamie far talks about his experience playing a chic in cannonball run, which is because his background What is his ethnicity? He's Lebanese. I think Lebanese
Guest00:29:41Yeah, he's like Casey like Casey Kasem. Yes, like Casey
Vic00:29:45And Hank is there. No Hank is areas. There is a Syrian Jew
Guest00:29:49So that's a whole that Casey Kasem would like to kill would have liked to kill Hank Azaria Before his family or his ex-wife killed him. We don't know who killed him. Yes. That is a right tastic
Vic00:30:00That's a whole life. That's you don't want to end up like no, he kept his feet on the ground and the rest of his body Sorry, you mentioned Under the ground, that's right Now it's so funny. It's interesting John You mentioned in canto because guess what over the weekend it was at the top of the box office with 27.2 million followed by Ghostbusters Afterlife with 24 and a half million and in third place House of Gucci in third place with 14.4 million dollars. Do you guys have box office thoughts? I
Sonny00:30:35Have a box office thought which is that Ghostbusters Afterlife Has held very well and will probably end up grossing more than the 2016 version But I what I what I what I do find very interesting is Still just kind of how soft the the box office is I mean in canto is a family movie in theory this should be a big A big Thanksgiving season hits people should be going to see this and nobody nobody's interested now Maybe maybe that just has to do with the fact that in canto is like not I hear it. I hear very mediocre Things I haven't even gone to see it yet. I don't I didn't know about this movie until I saw the trailer Yeah, but it's it's the whole box office remains soft I mean House of Gucci did you know 20 million over the five days? Which is twice as much money as the last duel made which? Also, I'm director Ridley Scott, so you know that that in theory. That's like a that's a good sign But everything remains just just very very soft But I I do think I you know I was I was texting with John about this the Ghostbusters afterlife the Family friendly hit of the the winter season people people love it. It held well. Yeah, I think it'll I think we'll keep going
Guest00:31:48Yeah, because people are stupid
Vic00:31:51So good. It's so you know what just give me the last 30 minutes
Guest00:31:55Can I just can I share with you the following? Observation I made like two weeks after seeing it like it's like let's read the Scully a like I finally saw everything that was wrong with the movie in this one thought okay, so of course according to Ghostbusters after life Ghost but the events of Ghostbusters happened right they were 30 years or 40 years in the past and they happened Though the fact that they proved the existence of the supernatural seems not to have affected anybody in any way shape or form
Sonny00:32:28No cell phones back then yes another note no, but I mean
Guest00:32:32The supernatural was proven to exist in the universe in which goes much of that and and everybody Everybody and Phoebe the heroine says I don't believe in ghosts
Sonny00:32:43Which I'm sorry this in the second Ghostbusters in in Ghostbusters - literally just five years later after a giant Marshmallow man was walking around downtown Manhattan The the people of New York were like I we don't believe in ghosts. No those busters are fakes
Guest00:32:59No, there were no the Ghostbusters were this is a great conservative point the Ghostbusters were driven into poverty by lawsuits by But horde action against them after they saved the city and but any people are sad because it was being possessed By ill feelings from the river of slime in the subway anyway. I don't want to defend this Here's the only thing I wanted to say was this There's a moment the big product placement moment in in Ghostbusters afterlife is Paul Rudd is in the supermarket And he's but it were Walmart, and he's buying marshmallows, and they're like little stay puffed marshmallow men That dance out of a package and they also come to life and this by the way is another thing which is stood utterly stolen from gremlins - the whole bit is like Joe Dante or whoever it is that made gremlins - should sue because the scene is an act of utter plagiarism all the all they're doing is what the Gremlins - by the way is one of the best overlooked movies ever made wild crazy comedy about About oh, I didn't see the seek. Oh my god Vick, this is this is an actual assignment for you to watch with your kids. It is fantastic
Vic00:34:15I loved the first one. It is so much better than the first. Was that Chris Columbus? It might have been Chris Columbus. No, no, no. It's Joe Dante.
Guest00:34:21Anyway, it's it's fantastic and bizarre and crazy and like a wild Bugs Bunny like cartoon movie. Anyway, so the Stay Puft Company According to Ghostbusters Afterlife is still in business Who on earth is gonna buy Stay Puft marshmallows after they manifested. I told you this Sonny.
Sonny00:34:45I disagree with you on this. I disagree with you on this. You cannot buy that sort of product placement You cannot you cannot buy that sort of brand awareness. No one has been named Adolph. No one has been named Adolph in 75 years. Yeah, but the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was much happier than Adolph Hitler He had that big grin on his face even as he was accidentally stepping on the table. He was stepping on cars and churches and people, you know, people love that guy. People love that little guy, big guy.
Guest00:35:14All right. Okay. Anyway, I don't know why we're going on with this except it's so bad and people are going to see it.
Vic00:35:20But that, yes, and that is not the movie we're talking about. Although we basically did talk about it in this episode again as well as other movies. We talked about many movies in this episode, but the main movie, believe it or not, going 36 minutes into the show, House of Gucci. House of Gucci by Ridley Scott. John, as our guest co-host, would you like to give a big boy review?
Guest00:35:44So House of Gucci tells the story of the doomed relationship between Maurizio Gucci, the diffident son of one of the two brothers that run the Gucci fashion house, one who lives in Milan, played by Jeremy Irons, his father, Adam Drivers, played Maurizio, his father, and the other, Al Pacino, his uncle, who lives in New York and has a son named Paolo, who also lives in Milan, played by Jared Leto, under about 250 pounds of makeup. And Maurizio, at a party, runs into the up-for-any-fun wildcat, Patrizia Reggiano. played by Lady Gaga, and she sets her cap for him and kind of gets this diffident law student in an open field tackle and seduces him and they fall in love and become a couple. His father disowns him, he finds the first happiness he's ever had in his life working for her father's trucking company, but Patrizia didn't marry Maurizio to end up working, spending her life in her father's trucking company, and engineers an entente between him and his uncle, Al Pacino, who decides to bring Maurizio back into the fold and try to stage some kind of a reconciliation with his father. Maurizio ends up becoming a power at Gucci, and at this point in the movie, let's say we're about 45 minutes in, and up to this point, it's a gas, in my opinion. It is a lot of fun, it's lively, it's like an old-time trashy melodrama about rich people who behave in whatever way they want to and have lavish parties and wear great clothing and there's good music on the soundtrack and they're disco-ing and they're having sex against walls and it's like, you haven't seen a movie like this since Dallas and Dynasty ended the world of the trashy big screen melodrama like 45 years ago. And then the plot kicks in, which all has to do with the intrigue over what's going to happen to the house of Gucci now that Maurizio is part of it, and at this point, and there's like two more hours of the movie, it falls completely apart because you cannot follow the machinations. It's based on a true story and so the story is obviously very complicated because it all involves family members suing other family members, efforts at getting control of boards or stock options or stock certificates and lawyers double crossing their clients or siding with new investors and this one and that one, and throughout the whole thing, Patrizia is giving her husband very sound advice about how to be Machiavellian and take over the company that he follows. And then trouble erupts between Jared Leto, the idiot son, and Al Pacino, the kind of sybaritic father, and Al Pacino ends up in jail, and all of a sudden for no apparent plot reason, except that this is what happened in real life, Maurizio, Adam Driver, turns on Patrizia, decides he doesn't love her anymore, throws her out of the house, and then the movie then rushes to the real life denouement, which I won't spoil. But, basically, you don't know where they're living. You don't know whether Maurizio and Patrizia are living in Milan, or they're living in New York. They keep going back and forth, and sometimes they're visiting, and sometimes he's on the board. He seems like a very diffident, kind of shy person, then we're told that he spends five million dollars on his wardrobe and bills it through the company, which seems completely out of character, and even the craziest aspects of the real-life story, which involve a relationship between Patrizia and a TV astrologer, this is a true story, a TV astrologer lady who becomes her closest confidant- Pina. Played by Salma Hayek. Played by Salma Hayek, and with whom she then engineers a very destructive and crazy plot, again, of the real thing that happened. They don't even get to that. That's the juice of it, is this lunatic thing that happens that is absolutely horrifying, and the movie basically just sputters through its last two hours, and it reminds me of this fact, which is that Ridley Scott, who is now 83 years old, he just made The Last Duel, which is a fantastic movie, I think. And why? Because it has a good- Solid, strong, through-line, spine screenplay that makes total sense. And if you look at his history as a filmmaker, if he doesn't have a good screenplay, he thinks you can just film good scenes and kind of fix it in the editing room, or find the movie in the editing room, or something like that. And his movies are often terrible, beautiful, but terrible messes, and when he gets a good screenplay like Callie Corey's in Thelma and Louise, or Ted Griffin's in Matchstick Men, or Alan Scott's in Gladiator, or Alien, which is probably his best movie, he's amazing, an amazing realizer of these visions. And when he's got a problematic screenplay like Blade Runner, he spends 35 years cutting it and recutting it and cutting it and recutting it to try to get it into the proper shape, even though Blade Runner is a visionary masterpiece of a kind, but it doesn't make any logical sense and they had to layer over a terrible narration to deal with the fact that nobody watching it for the first time could figure out what the hell was going on. And Hasaguchi is a little like that. So that's my big boy review.
Vic00:42:20Thank you. Thank you, Jon.
Sonny00:42:22Sonny. I have some thoughts on this, but first we need to get the people's opinion.
Vic00:42:26Oh, the people's opinion of this is interesting.
Sonny00:42:27What did the quadrants make? Because I feel like this movie is a million times more complicated than Tenet.
Vic00:42:32Okay. Well, no. Okay. So first of all, the general plot is a B because it's pretty under, it's easy to understand. It's about power and corruption and jealousy. Okay. That's easy. There are a lot of plot holes. There are a lot like, uh, they don't explain how they caught the criminals in the end. Uh, that was sort of rushed. Suddenly you're in court and I'd like to see that, but that would have been another 30 minutes mean that leading to my next quadrant, which is duration. That's a D that was over to, you know, what's an F would be like. No, like the, it was an F would be like return of the King, which I believe was 17 hours long.
Guest00:43:10The, the director's cut, uh, you want to know what's long is that Beatles documentary hole.
Vic00:43:15I'm still watching it. I'm still watching it. You are. I am. And I'm like, I can't believe I'm watching it. And then I'm like, I got to turn it off now. And then I feel like I'm there.
Guest00:43:23It's turning me off on the Beatles. It's like, I used to like the Beatles, but like Jesus Christ, like I life is too short.
Vic00:43:30Quick, quick, quick tangent here. I feel like I feel like Yoko. I feel like I'm sitting there with the other musicians, not really having anything to contribute, but just listening, maybe having a sandwich like she's doing. I mean, it was like, really, I'm drawn in. Okay. Um, action violence is a C, uh, although it's glamorous, I mean, a lot of action, the skiing, I wish I was in Sam or it's sex nudity, a plus plus that trailer scene was, is she nudity though? Slash.
Guest00:44:02There's you need to understand, you don't, you don't, I think it was pretty good. I don't agree with you. I thought that was a, that was a, that was a, that was a throwback. That sex scene. It was.
Vic00:44:15And there was, there was a head between legs.
Sonny00:44:18When's the last time you saw that broadcast TV from the mid-aughts? What we, where are we on the clothes on?
Vic00:44:29It's nonsense. Does not matter.
Guest00:44:31Okay.
Vic00:44:32So you're saying, so the overall grade is about a B minus C plus B minus.
Guest00:44:37That is a very generous grade for this movie.
Sonny00:44:38I'm sorry. I found myself. The quadrants are alive.
Vic00:44:41No, you just don't understand the quadrant Sonny. And they speak for themselves and you cannot question the quadrants. Also I agree with John that, you know, I got drawn in by that opening too. And it's, if, if the only thing is, if only he didn't tell her his last name, he wouldn't have been in this thing. And he comes off. Adam driver comes off as so. Uh, you feel like, you know, the guy in the beginning and then all of a sudden it's like this other thing. Okay.
Sonny00:45:07Sonny, go ahead. So here's, uh, this movie has, this movie has a number of an enormous problems. Uh, as, as John kind of gets at the, the script is a mess. I, or whatever, whatever happened in the filming process to the script is, is a mess because I was frequently confused as to literally where they were. I didn't, I didn't know what country they were in. I didn't know what was going on. Um, but like worse than that, there were just like the actual basic plot mechanics of things that were happening. Like for instance, I don't know when the police are supposed to have discovered that the certificates weren't signed when, when did all of that happen? I like, I didn't just like, again, just very basic plot points about what is actually happening in the movie did not make any sense to me. Another big problem in this movie is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. It doesn't know if it wants to be a comedy or a tragedy. It doesn't know if it wants to be, uh, over the top and ridiculous and, and part of that has to do with the, the casting. And I, I have to say, I have, I have always been, I've been a Lady Gaga skeptic, uh, in terms of her acting. And I feel like I have been justified. No, no, no. I liked her in this.
Vic00:46:22She's terrible. Sonny Bunch.
Sonny00:46:24She's out of place compared to everybody else. She has one look and it's this. Sonny Bunch. What? No one can see because you're on a podcast. Her eyes just get very, very big. And that's it. And that's her one movie.
Vic00:46:39That's her one movie. Okay.
Guest00:46:41John, go ahead. She is dazzling. And you are bananas. She is.
Sonny00:46:45She is. She is. The interesting thing about the movie. I love her.
Guest00:46:49She is mediocre to look at. The interesting thing about the movie structurally, if Scott had been competent in telling it, is that she is the. Innocent person enter, you know, you know, the classics or thing where somebody new enters an already established world and it is through their eyes and their perspective that we learn about how that world works and what's wrong with it and why it needs to be destroyed or something like that. Like that is the classic way you structure a movie like this. And what's interesting about this is that she is that character, but she's also the bad guy or she's going to be a bad guy.
Sonny00:47:33She's the bad guy the whole time, but she manipulates and moves him into, no, I'm sorry. She, she comes, she, she, she Adolfo or Rodolfo is right the whole time about Rodolfo is the father. Money rubbing. Yes. Jeremy played by Jeremy. She is a, she, she is a, she is a money grubbing digger, a gold digger who was trying to worm her way into the family.
Guest00:47:54However, uh, her uncle. In law played by Al Pacino recognizes her as the spark plug who is going to pull his, who is going to help bring some life to this desiccated family. He's got an idiot son, Rodolfo, his brother played by Jeremy irons is a sort of withdrawn dead death and life person and Maurizio played by Adam driver is going nowhere. He's sort of idly going to law school, he has no drive, he doesn't really know what he wants to do. It's I don't even know how old he is. I mean, that's the other movie is you don't know how old anybody is like, like, I think he's like 22. But of course, Adam driver is like pushing 40 at it. It's like one of those things where right, you know, so his way of playing young is to like sling fling his arms around, you know, like he doesn't have control of his arms or something. He's a very good actor. And he is an extremely interesting screen. Yeah, I think he's great. You know, I still think that his performance in Marriage Story is the best American performance of the last 15 or 20 years. But you are wrong about Lady Gaga, because what I was gonna say about her is that she's the bad guy. But unlike you, I found her I hate this word, but relatable. She is the only person who is react her character and the way she embodies it. She's the only person who is reacting normally to normal. circumstances. She's in this family, they're sort of running the business into the ground. She has interesting ideas about how to save it. She knocked off spotted the knockoff Gucci's.
Sonny00:49:40But she wants to get rid of the knockoffs, which is the only thing keeping the company afloat. And this is alright. So this is the last big problem with the movie for me is that it has no interest in fashion. It has it has absolutely no interest in like what Gucci does or what they make, or how they appeal to people or what the brand means. Just, just in the world of fashion in general. And it has, it has very little, it has a slightly more, but it still has very little interest in the actual business of fashion. And like those are, those are, again, those are, those are two things that could have tied this whole thing together. You know, Devil Wears Prada style.
Guest00:50:17Imagine a Scorsese makes a movie like this, right? I mean, it's not fair to, you know. But it's like there would have been a scene in a Scorsese version of this movie in which it would somehow have been walked through in a montage. How the Gucci.
Sonny00:50:32You would have started with the cow. You would have started with the cow and wound up on, on the shelf in New York City.
Guest00:50:37Right. Or you would have this explanation of how the company, which is really not very solvent or is just basically just selling old wares in stores, is actually making tens of millions of dollars that it's hiding from the government by selling knockoffs of its own work. And therefore, on the one hand, tarnishing its brand, but on the other, like making a fortune off it, which would all be fine except for crazy reasons. Again, this is the real story. In order to keep investors from knowing that they were profiting off the, the knockoffs, they kept it off the books and therefore when a family member, and I don't really know what the real story is because it's very unclear in the movie, when a family member decides Yeah. To drop a dirty dime on Al Pacino, who is profiting off this, you know, off these knockoffs and, you know, basically get him for tax fraud, you know, it's like crazy that he did it at all. Like, you know, all he needed to do was report it to the, report it to the IRS and he would have been fine, but they were worried that it would make the, it would tarnish the brand. Anyway.
Vic00:51:50I was, I was thinking, you mentioned this in your review, John, about Jared Leto, his performance. Is it so bad or is it so bad it's good? Also, you want to talk about age problems. He's the son of Al Pacino, but he kind of looks like David Crosby. It's so, I mean, it's like, it was Al Pacino 15. What did you say, Sonny?
Sonny00:52:13Well, he's a grotesque. I mean, he's playing a grotesque. I mean, it feels like borderline, borderline mentally retarded and like.
Guest00:52:19So the hilarious thing about the movie, and everybody's talked about this, if you read
Sonny00:52:22about it, is the accents, because no one has, all the accents are very different.
Guest00:52:26Like freewheel Adam Driver is doing a very light kind of version of an Italian accent. And, uh, Lady Gaga sounds like she's from Transylvania and, uh, Jeremy Irons sounds like Jeremy Irons, except every now and then he says, you know, grassy and Al Pacino is sounds like Al Pacino, except that he's also like, come in, we'll have some boo that, you know, like that, he does that, you know, like sounding like Don, you know, like he, you know, like he picked up his accent from Don Cheech, you know? In the Godfather, in the Sicily scene.
Vic00:52:58Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah.
Guest00:53:00And then there's Jared Leto and Jack. So remember they're all speaking in accents, but they're theoretically, they're all speaking Italian to each other, right? Because they're living in Italy, Italians are speaking Italian. Jared Leto speaks Italian as though he's speaking English. He's an Italian person who just learned English and doesn't speak English very well. So it's sort of like the, how am I? How are you supposed to, you know, he sounds like there was an actor named Vito Scotti who played like Italians on sitcoms in the 60s and 70s. Oh, I know him.
Vic00:53:36Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
Guest00:53:37And then actually, and then actually is an Italian in Godfather Part II is one of the guys, the first guy who realizes who young Don Corleone is and comes in and apologizes to him and like scrapes and bows and all this. But, you know, he did the kind of, oh, come in. And so that's Jared Leto who, and he's, he's, he has these lines of dialogue like you are treating me like a pigeon, but he's supposedly speaking Italian.
Vic00:54:07Right, right, right.
Sonny00:54:08So where, and so. He's, he's, he's the best person in this movie. He's the only one who understands. So bad it's good is what you're saying. He's, he's the, he's the only person who understands what movie he's in, which is a ridiculous movie. Right, right. And, and he, he, he treats, he treats the role ridiculous. Now, what's interesting about.
Vic00:54:25He's the same like a before.
Guest00:54:27Now, what's interesting about that is that Ridley Scott, I think completely agree. Ridley Scott is in love with that Jared Leto performance. Like a normal edit of this movie would basically have probably eliminated most of Jared Leto's scenes because it, they don't contribute to the through line story, which is what's going on with Maurizio and Patrizia, but they're like, there's like 10 or 15 minutes of stuff between. Al Pacino, the best Jared Leto that doesn't advance the plot always where it's like, you
Sonny00:54:59are the best scene in the movie is, uh, when, uh, Paolo, the Jared Leto character shows up at, uh, Rodolfo's house with all of his drawings, Jeremy, Jeremy Irons shows, he shows up with all the drawings and he, he lays them out and he flips them over one after the other. And Jeremy Irons is like, you can never show these to anyone. And first, at first he thinks that because they're so good, somebody will steal them. And then Jeremy Irons is like, no, because you're an idiot and you will bring shame upon our entire house.
Vic00:55:32I think he says something to the effect that you are like a, a, a champion of mediocrity or something to that effect.
Guest00:55:38But Jared Leto, Ridley Scott so loves Jared Leto, right. Who is like 2000% committed to this demented performance that he's giving that he even stages. I don't know if you guys notice this bizarre. Cameo moment, there's a fashion scene at the end where the new Gucci line under the direction of Tom Ford, the man who saved Gucci is shown in Milan and it's a huge triumph. And if you've seen these scenes in movies, when they do these fashion show scenes, they show backstage how there are these guys who are rushing people onto the stage. They're rushing the models onto the stage and they're standing no closeup is Jared Leto, himself, the Jared Leto unmade up with his beard and his long hair. And he's one of the guys going, go, go, go, go, go, because Ridley Scott wanted to give him a cameo as himself because Ridley Scott is in love with Jared Leto. He thinks the take away of this movie is that he's in love with Jared Leto.
Sonny00:56:43Ridley Scott. He's got an eye for talent.
Guest00:56:45And as I say, Jared Leto, I don't know what to make of this performance because it is camp. It is the campiest thing that you have ever seen. And again, this is why you're so wrong about Lady Gaga, is that she had a role that could have been camp and she played it perfectly as a person whose every motivation you can understand, including when her heart starts breaking because Maurizio turns on her.
Vic00:57:18Yeah, she felt like a spurned and she's there begging and he's like, you're embarrassed.
Guest00:57:23I don't like I was never a fan of hers, didn't like her music, found her antics nauseating. The meat suit, all the PC stuff and her month, all her monsters, the people she said were her fans and all that. And then she turns up in A Star is Born and that was a knockout performance. And in my view, this is a knockout performance. And you know why I'm right and Sonny is wrong because Sonny likes Tenet and I don't. And that's why. That's why I'm right about this. Discussion.
Sonny00:57:55No, no, no. This is the. This is all. This is.
Guest00:57:59This is.
Sonny00:58:00You know what?
Guest00:58:01I want to ask you. I really do. What is a good female performance this year?
Sonny00:58:06Tell me. Like what? Jodie Comer. I thought Jodie Comer was great in The Last Duel.
Guest00:58:10Yeah. Okay.
Sonny00:58:12Okay. Okay. But who else? Well, I don't know. I'd have to.
Guest00:58:17I'd have to go. You don't like movies about what do you like?
Sonny00:58:19I don't. I don't like. I don't like movies about women.
Guest00:58:22This is a movie about a woman. She is the subject of this movie. Maurizio. She is the through line of the movie. The movie begins with her and it ends with her. She is the active mode of force. It is.
Sonny00:58:35And that is. You know who's good? Is Elizabeth Debicki in Tenet. That's a. It's a good performance. A towering performance.
Guest00:58:41Really. A towering. Yeah. Yeah. The main thing about Elizabeth Debicki is that if you need somebody for your basketball team.
Sonny00:58:50I was gonna say. She's about like.
Guest00:58:52See I don't even know who she can play.
Sonny00:58:55I would love her to have a love scene with Tom Cruise. Would that be the best thing ever? With Tom Cruise?
Vic00:59:00If she was like in a movie with Tom Cruise. He'll be on stilts.
Sonny00:59:03She's wearing like stilettos the entire time. She's like. She's actually like 6'9" in that movie.
Vic00:59:08How is she supposed to be Princess Diana? It's gonna be very challenging unless you get some. Well Princess Diana was tall.
Guest00:59:12She was. Princess Diana was 5'11".
Vic00:59:14They're gonna need a tall. They're gonna need a tall guy.
Guest00:59:17She's a very good actress.
Vic00:59:18I mean.
Guest00:59:19Yeah. I like her too. She's so good that she has actually managed. Yeah. To survive her height. Yeah. Which is a. Yeah. You know there's a whole. There was a whole list of actresses in the 90s who only succeeded and only got big parts because Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox were so short. Elizabeth Shue. Elizabeth Shue. This is actually true. Elizabeth Shue. Gabrielle Anwar. Oh Gabrielle. Gabrielle Anwar. Because like. Gabrielle Anwar is the same height as Herb Villachez. Julie. Julie. Did you know that John? It's the same height as Herb Villachez. Oh my God. Julie Warner who was in Doc Hollywood. Like. It's tiny. Tom Cruise is like 5'5 or something like that, 5'6 and you know Michael J. Fox is I don't know 5'4 or something like that so they could never hire normal height actresses.
Vic01:00:02No. That's right. Yeah. The secret of my success was pushing it with Helen Slater. Helen Slater. She was taller. I think she's pretty short. She's pretty short. I don't know.
Guest01:00:11Yeah. She had like a. Oh that's right. She had like a. There was actually the make out scene with him.
Vic01:00:16Yes.
Guest01:00:17And he's gotta like tilt his head way up.
Vic01:00:18And he's gotta look.
Guest01:00:19Yes. That's exactly right. I mean that is the highly problematic there. I mean the star of the 40s and 50s was like 5'2 and they used to have to. He would literally stand on boxes in love scenes.
Vic01:00:29That's amazing.
Guest01:00:30So that because they couldn't find Veronica Lake was the only actress short and she was like 4'11 was like the only actress short to play against him.
Vic01:00:39It's full of midgets, Hollywood. Before we run out of time, John, I wanted to ask you because you said how you were drawn into that opening with the disco scene. Were you a disco guy yourself? Did you go to Studio 54?
Guest01:00:52I did not go to Studio 54 but I will tell you this that my, I didn't have a prom. I went to a very small high school and in my class was America's foremost masturbator, Jeffrey Toobin, as you may know, who is off today as we're talking, giving very stern words about the Supreme Court abortion case, having desperately tried to make his mistress get an abortion. Some high character then as now. Anyway, at our high school we did not have a prom. We had just a party and we had a dance party and somebody went and found a disco for us to go to. The idea was it was a working disco and we could have it like from 8:00 to 11:00 or 8:30 to 11:30 or something like that and come and dance. It would be ours and then at 11:30 it would open up to the general public. And so we went. It was a place called Harad. It was just south of Lincoln Center and we went and we danced and it was in 1978, right? So it was like the height of everything, you know, Donna Summer and all this. Oh, yeah. And then at 11:30 the regular crowd shuffles in and the regular crowd is the village people. This is a gay disco, pre-AIDS gay disco and we're standing there and there's a turn around and there's like a guy in leather. There's another guy in chaps. There's the, you know, there's a guy in an Indian headdress, you know, men are grinding into each other and it was an eye-opening, it was an eye-opening experience for me. That was my key disco. The only other disco story I can tell you is, I think like 1982, 1983, involved in also in the story, Robert Kagan, the notable intellectual giant. Yes, of course. So Bob Kagan and I and our friend Joe Rose have a night out in New York and we go to a disco called The Limelight, which is in a deconsecrated church on 6th Avenue and 21st Street. And I don't, I like sensory overload. It was too noisy. I didn't know what was going on. I couldn't stand the dance floor. And so I go to find the bathroom, which is like off on, you know, it's a church. So it's like, I'm going through like the rector, the names and, you know, the alley ways and stuff like that. And then I found the bathroom and I sort of like, there's an end of the hall and there's like a guy standing like at the end of the hall. And I'm thinking, oh, he must be waiting in line for the urinal and the, and he feels my presence, you know, in that weird way people have when they feel like their, their, their space is being violated. And he turns to see to on me. And I swear to God, like out of some ridiculous cliched movie, he is holding a mirror in his right hand. And he has a rolled up dollar bill in his left nostril. Oh, that's why this actually was a real thing that I was a real thing. It was a real, it wasn't, this is not made up. So that's my, that's my, that's my, my, I think that I feel, I feel that I have interrupted you from like, you didn't do your, how are you and how are you and oh, no, that's okay.
Vic01:04:14No, no, no. Did you run? Did you, did you take a run? How's the sound? How's the sound? How's the sound? How's the gout? Gout was fine. Gout was fine. I had about 10 scallops wrapped in bacon on Thanksgiving. Is that scallops are bad for the gout? Shellfish. Oh, shellfish. Shellfish is a bit much, but no, other than that, no, we enjoyed having you. And Sonny, wait, Sonny, what about you? Sonny, what about your, I need to know like, was there a problem with your sun pump?
Guest01:04:40Everything fine?
Sonny01:04:41What's going on? No, I, I, what is, what is, what has happened in my, oh, there, we did, we did have a plug in. I have a plumbing issue. I see some pump.
Guest01:04:51I said there was going to be something with your sump pump.
Sonny01:04:53I had, I had a feeling there's, there was a plumbing thing, but we, we, we fixed it. It's it's all good.
Vic01:04:59And that is all the time we're giving to this episode. Again, we want to thank Jon Podhoretz for joining us also. He is the host of one of my other favorite podcasts, the commentary podcast. I don't know how he does it five days a week. By the way, John, do you notice really quickly, I'm even interrupting my own outro, how your guests say your name with different intonations.
Guest01:05:20Do you notice this every time I, I don't notice it, but it's, it's a, but it's, it's become a meme. Like if there were me, if there were audio memes, I guess it would become a bit, it would
Vic01:05:29become a meme. Yeah. It's like, it's like one of them will say, hi John. And then the next person will say like, Noah will say, hi John. Yeah. And then, and then Christine will say, hi John. Yeah. It's always a straight down and then up. Okay. Uh, thank you for joining us. Questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Mattis. Uh, John, you're still off Twitter.
Guest01:05:50I'm off Twitter, but I read it. So, and I know, and I, so I'm, I read it because I need to know when Sonny is about to express. Yeah. Yeah. It's about to just push somebody's button. Okay.
Sonny01:06:02Good. Well, it happens. I will tweet something and get, I will tweet something and get a text from John, like four minutes later. Like why are you saying this?
Vic01:06:09Sonny also has me replies to people he doesn't know who try to put in their two cents and he's so mean. Again, be sure to subscribe to our channel. Subscribe to us on Patreon, please. Uh, don't be, don't be a, don't be a cheapskate and wait two weeks from now. You got to hear this now. Just go to subbeacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends until next time.
Sonny01:06:33It's funny you, you mentioned the, me being mean to people, uh, and I, there was, there was a guy today, there was a guy today I tweeted something like I, uh, hold on, let me actually pull it up here. Uh, people, I tweeted people who write about culture for a living and still do not understand the difference between depiction and endorsement are utterly baffling to me. And this guy, Jared Ozareko replies, I think how you depict things matters. The hero shouldn't be able to do something evil without either suffering for it or having any, uh, another sympathetic character object. And I just replied, that's completely fucking idiotic because it is, that's, that's an idiotic. That's an, that's a fucking idiotic thing to tweet at me. First of all, but also just to think, just to think in the world that like, I need somebody in my art explaining that this bad person is bad. Where's the guy telling Hitler that he shouldn't kill all the Jews without that. I won't have any idea like fi like learn how to read, learn how to read a book, learn how to watch a movie, learn how to learn how to listen to a song. You idiot. That's how I feel all the time on Twitter.
Guest01:07:42That was a, I think a relatively civil. I know. I would've just hit the heart. I mean, he was just engaging with the thought saying he believes that, you know, like there should be consequences for immoral actors in art. Tolstoy thought that too. Tolstoy said that Shakespeare was bad because he didn't punish the bad characters in his really awful book. What is art? So you, that man is Tolstoy and you, I don't know who you are. Who are you, Sonny? Who are you, Sonny? Well, I'm, I'm fine. You're the man with a bone Tomahawk poster behind your head. It's a good movie.
Sonny01:08:23Better than anything. Better than anything Tolstoy ever did.
Vic01:08:27I'm sure it's fine.
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