#244. 'Road House' (1989)
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Sonny, JVL, and Mike gather for a rare three-way rave over Road House (1989), the Patrick Swayze bar-rescue classic, watched against the new Jake Gyllenhaal remake. Sonny declares it "the most 80s movie ever made" and the thesis film for a whole strain of gloriously trashy-but-philosophical 80s moviemaking, casting Dalton, the NYU-philosophy-grad bouncer who preaches niceness right before punching everyone, as a clear prototype for Jack Reacher; JVL, who barely remembered having seen it before, agrees it's "great, trashy fun" built on real practical stunts and real explosions and calls Sam Elliott's mustache-less mentor (a dead ringer, he says, for a young Shawn Michaels) the thing that lifts the film above B-movie territory; Mike, watching cold with his wife, resisted at first but came around once he clocked it as a Western in the Shane mold, and names Elliott's "you want to fight, dickless?" line his favorite in the film. All three pile on the remake's nausea-inducing "four-pass" fight choreography, agree the Jeff Healey Band's cover of "Roadhouse Blues" beats the Doors original, and JVL notes the small role played by Red West, Elvis Presley's real-life bodyguard turned tell-all author. The first third is the usual opening banter block: JVL ranks his top five masses of the liturgical year (Christmas Eve midnight mass at #1, the Chrism Mass a surprise #3), Sonny and Mike needle him about it, they dig into a Ronald Acuña Jr. Players' Tribune essay and MLB's apparent post-Ohtani marketing pivot amid new soccer-gambling allegations from handicapper Brandon Lang, and Mike recounts a Dollywood/Great Smoky Mountains spring break trip where high winds shut the national park with zero warning and an unhelpful ranger. They close with JVL soliciting real movie picks for a boys'-night with his sons Flash and G Money, landing on a Con Air vs. The Rock debate before Sonny suggests just screening both versions of Road House back to back to illustrate how a good movie gets made versus a bad one.
From the show notes
Be nice.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice. Well, uh, how are we supposed to know when that is? You won't. I'll let you know. You are the bouncers, I am the cooler. All you have to do is watch my back and each other's... ...and take out the trash.
Mike00:00:30Welcome to the Sub-Beacon podcast. I am your co-host, Mike Warren, and joining me are my two co-hosts. For that line of work, you'd think they'd be bigger: Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Become a patron. You can get exclusive first access, I guess not exclusive access, first access to episodes every Friday and exclusive access...
?00:00:59Pretty exclusive.
Mike00:00:59...to those Monday episodes, those bonus episodes that we'll get back to doing eventually. We'll find something to do.
Sonny00:01:06For now, for now, the Friday episodes are pretty exclusive because I'm not putting them on, I'm not putting them on iTunes. Oh, you're not? We're not doing the bonus episodes. Nobody, it's, the whole thing, I'm so bad at getting people to sign up for this thing.
JVL00:01:21Well, you do have 19 podcasts that you do.
Sonny00:01:24It's, it's so hard. This is the other thing is that, like, I almost feel bad, I almost feel bad about, like, promoting another... ...other show that's on, like, a different network. It's like, we got, I got this other thing. It's, it's, I got a lot.
Mike00:01:36Well, a little look behind the curtain, folks, as we, as we discuss this. But go to subbeacon.com anyway, sign, tell your friends and family, comment on episodes, and we'll see you over there at subbeacon.com. We are going to be talking about Roadhouse 1989 later in the show, but first... Guys, what is going on? Where should we begin? Should we, do we need to just institute a, uh, okay, JVL, let's start with you.
JVL00:02:08Come to me, because we are taping on Thursday night. I have just come back from Holy Thursday Mass, and we have not done a ranking on this show in a year or so. All right. I am ready to rank top five masses of the liturgical year.
Mike00:02:27Let's hear it, JVL. I want to hear these top five masses. Wait, wait, starting at five? You always start at one, right? But I want to, I want to start at five. I want to get down to the number one mass.
JVL00:02:35Number five, Christmas morning. Okay. You show up on Christmas morning, everybody's, you know, just jonesing to open some presents and pancakes, and the kids are excited, and the Christmas morning mass is tough, because you got to do it when the kids are the exact right age. You can't do it too young, and you can't do it too old, because too old, you will have been to another mass, which we'll talk about in a second, but there is a sweet spot where Christmas morning is delicious. The Easter Vigil, number five. The Easter Vigil, you go, you settle in for a good six or eight hours, because they got the catechumens, and they got people getting received into the church, and they start with a bonfire out front, and then they do the light show, and whenever there's pyro involved in the mass, because you got, you got a bonfire to then can, Sonny, you must be fascinated in all of this, because this is your future.
Mike00:03:24He's got a different, he's got a different ranking, JP.
Sonny00:03:26He's got a completely different ranking. During the light show, do they play Dark Side? Dark Side of the Moon?
JVL00:03:31No, no, they, they, they, I mean, Jesus has his own entrance music, if you will, and so the pyro from the, the chorus of the altar.
Sonny00:03:40I am a real American. Jesus was, frankly, very American. Coming down the aisle, strumming the guitar.
JVL00:03:47Everybody's got a, got a candle, and they're lighting everything from the east. It's tremendous. Tremendous. Okay. Number three, the chrism mass. Oh, I love the chrism mass. People sleep on chrism. It's made up. Chrism. People sleep on chrism.
Sonny00:04:02Now you're just making, you're just making things up now as a bit.
JVL00:04:05Michael, you've been to a chrism mass, haven't you?
Mike00:04:06I don't think I've, I know what chrism is, but I've never been to a chrism mass.
JVL00:04:09So the chrism mass is where they bless all of the lotions and potions for the whole year.
Mike00:04:18Oh, yes.
JVL00:04:18Okay. Yeah. And you go, you, you want to have a good time, Sonny? Let me tell you. You go down to your cathedral or basilica for the chrism mass on Holy Week, and it is, like, a shriner's convention for the religious because the priests are there and the nuns are, they don't even really like letting lay people in. I mean, you can do it. You can show up, but you're really just, you're relegated to the sides and it's like being a convention with the friars and the monks and the sisters and they're all just catching up and having a good time and it's infectious.
Sonny00:04:51Sorry, guys. I, the only, the only chrism mass I go to where they're doing the lotions and the potions is at Cheetah's.
JVL00:04:59Number two, Holy Thursday. Okay. Oh, man. Which you just returned from. Which I just came back from. One of my favorite masses of the entire year. You're washing the feet. You're doing the procession.
Mike00:05:14Also known as Maundy Thursday, by the way.
JVL00:05:16The last, right? Maundy, which I've never understood. Never understood.
Sonny00:05:22It's called Ma-deeb Thursday?
JVL00:05:24Ma-deeb, yes.
Sonny00:05:25Ma-deeb? Yeah, that's the set.
JVL00:05:28You get to wash Shawnee's feet. You see, the Old Testament is actually all Bene Gesserit stuff.
Sonny00:05:33That actually makes a lot of sense, frankly.
JVL00:05:36So, I just, I love it. It is Jesus establishing the priesthood and, you know, whatever I do for you, you will do for the least of my, oh, it's beautiful. And number one, number one, Christmas Eve midnight mass. There is nothing like it. The greatest show on earth. Jesus is being born. You're up. You're up late at night. When you get home, you're wrapping up the last presents and it is magic. It is magic. There. Top five masses.
Mike00:06:09All right.
JVL00:06:09Michael, can I get a verdict? What do you think? Can you rank my rankings?
Mike00:06:13Is it okay to rate my rankings? Christmas morning, no.
JVL00:06:18We're just not into Christmas morning mass.
Mike00:06:20Wrong age. Wrong ages. I guess so. But it's just, it's such a, I mean, we're also not at the right age for midnight mass either. Right. So, we end up going.
JVL00:06:28The children's mass? On Christmas Eve? The Christmas vigil mass is what we did.
Mike00:06:32Yeah. And we had to do it not at our parish, but. With the pageant? No, there was no pageant. But the reason why, we didn't do it at our parish because the bishop. Sonny is going to fall asleep. The bishop was coming to our children's mass at our parish and we're like, no way. It's going to be chaos. So, we went to the parish, which is actually technically closer to our house, for Christmas vigil mass. Pretty good list. I got to say my number one mass, and it's not a specific mass. It is just a general. It is when our priest, Father Ignatius from Africa does mass because he has the shortest homilies. And those are always my favorite because it's just.
JVL00:07:19Oh, look at this.
Mike00:07:21Vic Matus' successor here. We get everything done in 50 minutes. That is a win. That is a real win.
JVL00:07:27Sonny, what are your favorites? What are your questions? Sonny, you must have questions.
Sonny00:07:33About what? About what? I don't. I don't. I like. My understanding is I don't even know that there were different masses. I thought it was just like you go in the preacher does his thing and then you get the. The preacher.
JVL00:07:46Preacher. The preacher. The preacher does his thing.
Sonny00:07:48You get your crackers and your juice and you go home. I don't.
JVL00:07:51Father Harrison, I'll let you set him straight. All right. So that was the one thing I had. But the other thing I had was Ronald Acuna. We are at opening day. We're taping on Thursday.
Mike00:07:59Although Friday is technically the opening day for the Braves because of the rain delay. But yes.
JVL00:08:06Ronald Acuna had a long form essay in the Players' Tribune. I didn't read it. Did you guys see this?
Sonny00:08:13A long format. He wrote an essay?
JVL00:08:16So this is the fun. So here is the fundamental problem of the Players' Tribune, which I think is insipid. I like Ronald Acuna a lot.
Sonny00:08:28What is the Players' Tribune?
JVL00:08:29Michael, would you like to explain it?
Mike00:08:32It is a digital publication. Owned by Derek Jeter? Is that who owns it? Yeah. I don't even know.
Sonny00:08:40I can already tell this sounds like a Jeter thing.
Mike00:08:43Yeah. Where athletes write their own essays. Like they're not op-eds. Right. Oh, yeah. Just like presidential candidates write their own memoirs. It's very much the same. Profiles in Courage was definitely written by JFK. And I'm sure this essay by Ronald Acuna Jr., who definitely speaks English as a first language and writes English as a first language. Oh, wow.
JVL00:09:12I'm sure he wrote it as well. So I am a huge Ronald Acuna fan, as I'm sure you are, Michael. He is one of the three generational talents from his cohort. The three generational talents are Otani, Trout, and Acuna. Each different in a way. This essay is charming in so many ways because it's him telling the story of how he got here. The story that nobody ever asks for. About growing up in Venezuela and how the most important things to him were newspaper and tape. And it was easy to find newspaper, but tape was hard. He was always running down to the market to buy tape because he would just sit and make baseballs out of newspaper and tape. He'd make like 25 at a time because he and his friends were using them to play. Stickball and they would just get anyway, it's charming and it talks about his journey in baseball and how it was really hard and there were times when you know, like scouts just they'd come and they'd watch him and no matter how well he played. They just weren't interested and there came a point in his in his young days when he was really actually he was ready to give up now. His dad was a professional baseball player, but he was he was. Absolutely ready to give up and it was only the very last Scout that called in and he had told his mom. He's like, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. And she said no, you gotta you gotta persevere. There's go to this last Scout and he went to the Scout from the Atlanta Braves. This is a wonderful story except that at the time he's 15. So he has hit his limit of life. He's like, I just, you know, I can't believe nobody's signing me yet. He's 15. He goes goes to America to start playing at 15 years old. And then he has this really, you know, it's very hard. He's on the road and living at the Fairfield Inn and he would just eat the same two meals all the time because there was like a Pollo Loco across the street and lobster and steak and there was a Chinese buffet. And so it was it was just. Just, you know, chicken and rice back. Right. And so it was really hard and wondered if he would ever make it. And, you know, but then he finally got the call and it was the happiest day of his life when he was 18, 17.
Mike00:11:44It's just like the rookie.
Sonny00:11:46It's just like we should do a version of Bull Durham, except that except that the Tim Robbins character is is the like, I'm trying. I don't even know. I don't even know how you would do. Like Tim Robbins would be the the the the Kevin Costner figure in this.
JVL00:12:05So what's funny about this is that it is it's a it's a exercise in perspective because the way the superstar professional athlete sees it is he sees his story as a Horatio Alger tale where he is like up from his bootstraps and just kept plugging away and putting in the work and persevered and then finally it paid off. And the way any rational outside observer. Would look at it is this was the golden child. This is a kid whose father played professional baseball and who was so good that the scouts were watching him from the time he was 12 at a baseball Academy because that's what he was at. Like he went to a normal school until he then went to the baseball Academy and then was signed at age 15 for $100,000 and then two years later was in the bigs. That's that's the natural. He doesn't see it that way.
Sonny00:12:58Did Acuna's dad. Play in the Major League Baseball or was it in a Venezuelan league?
Mike00:13:03No, no, he only played. I think he only got to the minors if I recall.
JVL00:13:06Yeah, he was in the US. I don't think he made the bigs. I think he was triple. Anyway, it's just, you know, charming. It's just the professional athletes get to a point where they can't actually see the world. Correct. Rationally, right? It's like the end of layer cake when Michael Gambon is saying, you know, you're born, you take shit, you cry a little higher, you someday you can't even remember what shit. It smells like that's where Ronald Acuna is. By the way, good for him. I love him.
Mike00:13:33It's not just it's not just his father. His his uncle was Jose Escobar, who played a season for the the Indians.
JVL00:13:42So, you know, yeah, I mean, it's not like his father was a street sweeper and his mom was a maid and he just had a dream.
Mike00:13:52Ronald, stop dreaming. Stop dreaming of playing baseball.
JVL00:13:56You're the son of a street sweeper. You always be a street. Everybody around him from the time he was six saw this kid is unbelievably talented.
Mike00:14:05Yeah. Well, all I can say to that is go Braves. So, Sonny, thank you, JVL. Sonny, what's so what's going on?
Sonny00:14:14Do we want to do we want to do an Otani update?
Mike00:14:16Yeah, let's do an Otani update.
Sonny00:14:18All right. So big news. The big news that I have seen. There may be more news, but Otani has Otani has first. He is denied that he is. He says he says this money was stolen from me, taken by a trusted friend. But but on the sports junkies, the the Washington, D.C. area sports radio show that when I left town was on still on one of six seven. I don't know. I assume it still is. I would assume I love the sports junkies, by the way. I grew up listening to this. I would listen to the sports junkies at like the in the not the initial iteration of the show. Well, I guess. Yes. Also, the initial. So the show. It used to be like on weekends. It was just like a Saturday and Sunday night show. And then they got Monday through Friday at like 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. And that's what I listened to. A most was was that anyway on the sports junkies show famous sports handicapper and better Brendan Lang, who was played by Matthew McConaughey in two for the money, said the bets are by Shohei Otani. He's got a source. He's got a source in the in the in the investigation. And this source has told him. That Obani Otani was betting on soccer. He was betting on soccer games and the amounts as much as four point five million dollars, maybe more, maybe more than four point five million dollars. So I'm just going to I'm going to throw this out there. I get let's let's take the broad view here. Let's say this is totally true that he lost almost five million dollars on soccer gambling. Do we think that's a big deal? Because soccer is not baseball. Yeah, I think it's a big fucking deal. Just a rich guy who's betting on degenerate.
JVL00:16:01Are you to bet on soccer? What sort of degenerate bets on soccer? Come on, man. We're talking about soccer, not a game, not a game.
Sonny00:16:14Soccer, soccer, soccer is a soccer is a very popular around the world. Lots of people love soccer. They watch it. They make it.
JVL00:16:22What do you what do you bet on in soccer? How many how many how many touches? Every over under is point five. Well, every every over on this point for I bet that he is three corners in there. I bet Wrexham gets three corners in this match. Oh, I bet they only get two corners. What the fuck do you bet on in soccer? I don't know.
Sonny00:16:46I don't I don't know. But I just imagine the little the little street urchin yelling up to Scrooge on Christmas morning. It's it's I can't even I can't even do that. I can't.
JVL00:16:59I won on penalty, sir. I haven't missed it.
Sonny00:17:02I don't know. Whatever.
JVL00:17:03I I whatever. I I I think it is clear that we will never know what Otani did because baseball is going to have the Yakuza murder. Everybody who's connected with this story. Well, to bury it because the Major League Baseball needs Shohei Otani.
Mike00:17:21So did you see did you see Sir Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner and a real stand up guy said is that sarcasm?
Sonny00:17:28I don't I don't. He said today I versus, you know, look, I'm just a reporter.
Mike00:17:33I'm just a reporter. I'm just telling you what Mike is straight.
JVL00:17:37Sonny.
Mike00:17:39He said that he hopes that the investigation he believes the investigation into Otani will be short.
Sonny00:17:46No, I bet it will be. I bet it will be the shortest investigation. I don't know. I asked him. I said, on your honor. You know how you know how these people are about honor. And I said, on your honor. Did you do it? And he said, no, no, I didn't. I didn't. We got a new translator. We got a new translator. We brought him over. It's Carrot Top. Carrot Top is sitting there with a big blow up balloon. He says he didn't do nothing. It's fine. Let him let him play baseball. I'm imagining.
Mike00:18:16I'm imagining Manfred walking in and saying, all right. All right. All right, Otani. Do you have the receipt from your from your gambling? And Otani will say no. And that will be. That that will be the end. But I will say this. So this is from listener, a listener of ours, James, sent me a text and he pointed something out, which I think is very interesting, which is suggests that MLB is looking for a post, if not a post Otani future. A post Otani is the center of everything we do marketing wise in an MLB. And I will send this to you guys.
Sonny00:19:02Why would they be looking for that? He's only been the center of the league for like two seasons.
Mike00:19:07So it is a tweet or an X post from MLB.
Sonny00:19:13Don't ever call it X. Do not ever. It's Twitter. It will always be Twitter. Do not call it X. On this show, on this show, we call it Twitter dot com. We retweet things. Do not bring your Elon Musk brain. Landing into this house. It is a temple. The temple. Are you done? No. Don't. Don't you dare. Don't you dare ever do that again.
JVL00:19:42Wow.
Sonny00:19:42Now I'm done.
Mike00:19:43Anyway, on X, MLB posted MLB posted in all caps. We are back. Hashtag opening day to celebrate opening day. And what they posted was a photo collage. A very nice photo collage. It's got it's got sort of a star representative of of every team on this poster. So you've got like a photo of each team represented by one star player. So, for instance, the very top of it's kind of got a it's kind of a pyramid of sorts. You have Ronald Acuna Jr. at the top representing the Braves. To the left is the representative of the Dodgers. And it's not Otani. It's Mookie. It's Mookie. Now, Mookie is a perfectly acceptable star.
JVL00:20:33But Otani hasn't played a game as a Dodger yet. I think it's fine. I would have put Mookie. All right. All right.
Mike00:20:40Mookie's the captain, man. All right. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Listener James says MLB pivoting hard in their materials.
Sonny00:20:45Well, and Otani.
Mike00:20:46Glaring absence here and in other places. So I submit that to you.
Sonny00:20:52So Otani also like he had he had the Tommy John, right?
JVL00:20:57Mm hmm.
Sonny00:20:57And but he's he's still. Batting this year. He's just he's the D.H. Yes. Because now the NL has I get I realize this happened several seasons ago, but the NL having the D.H. will never not be weird.
Mike00:21:10Yeah, this is this is this is this is why Manfred is terrible among many.
JVL00:21:14Well, I thought you were just I thought you were just. Well, you know, I had I had to I had to say this question. Is the translator ever seen alive again? I'm 100 percent serious. I wonder if he has to be.
Sonny00:21:29He has to take the fall. He has to he has to go on television and that is where he will pull out the short sword and he will put it right here.
JVL00:21:38I think, you know, he'll leave a note or something and we just I did it, but it'll
Sonny00:21:44be typed. It'll be typed on a computer. I did it. I did all of it was it was all me. They signed.
Mike00:21:51Yeah, it will be a great episode. Great season of Miami Vice or Tokyo Vice.
Sonny00:21:57I tell you, Tokyo Vice. Isn't I love Tokyo Vice. I'm watching it. I don't know if anybody else is, but we're still in season one and I love it. I love it for two reasons. I think I mentioned this before that like the thing I love most about it is just a reminder of how terrible it is to be a junior reporter at a it's like the it's very that's very amusing, but I also just love I love the Japanese ness of it all. I love that. It's actually like in there actually shot everything in and around Tokyo it like it it feels like a Japan is amazing Japan is pretty cool.
JVL00:22:29I want to go to Japan so bad.
Sonny00:22:31We should do a we should do a live show from Japan. Yeah, that's a good idea. Three three in the morning America time.
Mike00:22:39Anyway, any other Otani talk any other thoughts about Otani? No, no updates.
Sonny00:22:46That's all I mean, I was just telling you what Brandon Lang said. Yeah, on the sports junk.
Mike00:22:51Well, I think you could take his his his word, you know to the bank.
Sonny00:22:55I think I think he's an honorable guy. You know, he's. He's made amends for his.
Mike00:23:00Hey, hey, hey, hey, when you know when when crime reporters are out trying to find out what's going on, you know, like do you think some of their sources might be criminals as well? You know, I mean, I'm just saying like he knows the world. The guy is going to have some good intel. That's all I'm saying. All right. What's going on with you? So I we I we are taping this just hours after me and my family have returned from our spring break trip spring break. And I will say so. I think on this show I have already complained about at theme parks. The fast pass kind of have I done that? Have I have I complained about this? I believe so. Yeah. OK, so I so I will not where you guys got my time here to complain about that. So I believe last summer I talked about this at Legoland New York this spring break among the things that we did. Was we went to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and I will not talk about how the their version of fast pass annoyed me because Dollywood is otherwise a wonderful place. It is the nicest, cleanest, most kind of well-maintained Dolly.
JVL00:24:20Can you just back up? Rewind 30 seconds. I've lain Dollywood to me. I've never. I understand the idea is like Dolly Park has a theme park. And in Bumblefuck, Tennessee, but like, what is it? Is it? Is it a bunch of of like roller coasters or is it like you go through dioramas of Dolly's life? What is it? All right.
Mike00:24:45Can you set the scene for me to give me a sense? I think to to tell the story properly, we've got to go back to before it was Dollywood. OK, so. OK. So Pigeon Forge. Pigeon Forge is in East Tennessee near the Smoky Mountains, near Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I'll get to that later. Great Smoky Mountain National Park is the most visited national park in the country. And at some point, about 60 or so years ago, the areas around the Smokies in Tennessee, there's also North Carolina side, but Tennessee's more popular side, Gatlinburg, which is right by the main entrance to the Smoky Mountains. Great Smoky Mountain National Park. And just a little bit up the road toward Knoxville from Gatlinburg is a town called Pigeon Forge. Very quickly, it became a place where what you would call tourist traps kind of came about. Like, basically, you get a bunch of...
Sonny00:25:51Balls of yarn and the such?
Mike00:25:53Not quite. More like, you know, those random kind of roadside... Rickety roller coasters.
Sonny00:26:00World's biggest tire fire?
Mike00:26:01Some of that started. Exactly. And one of those attractions was a steam train. And somebody came up with, like, an attraction around a steam train that they had a track for, and they called it Rebel Railroad. And it was a theme park.
Sonny00:26:23This is like the most 1950s America story I've ever heard.
Mike00:26:26It was 1961.
Sonny00:26:27We got a train! We got the Rebel train, and people want to ride it. Let's charge admission.
Mike00:26:33So a couple of name changes and ownership changes over the next couple of decades took place. By the mid-'80s, it was owned by the same people who owned Silver Dollar City, which is in Branson, Missouri. And it was called Silver Dollar City, Tennessee. And at that point, Dolly Parton bought a majority share into that company. They rebranded the theme park, which by now had a few more rides, as Dolly would. And Dolly Parton said, basically, when I was little and extremely poor, I said, if I ever made it big, I would come back to the place where I'm from and do something for this area. And that's seemingly what she has done. It's an incredible thing.
JVL00:27:24Is she from East Tennessee?
Mike00:27:26Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay. I don't know if she was technically from Pigeon Forge, but from one of the small towns in that in that area. And what she has done is transform this what I imagine was pretty rinky dink, you know, roadside theme park into, as I said, the most beautiful, cleanest theme park I've ever seen. There are, you know, maybe 10 roller coasters, a number of good rides, I would say it is it is a on par with, say, Six Flags over Texas or Six Flags over Georgia. The original real Six Flags really big. It's it's pretty big and it's growing. It's very clear. So they've just added the most recent roller coaster in the last year. And I think that brings it up to 10 or 11.
Sonny00:28:20Let me ask when you say roller coaster. So when I when I imagine a roller coaster park, I think something like a place like Paramount's King's Dominion. Yeah. Or just. King's Dominion now or Cedar Cedar Point, which is like the big one in the Cedar Point up in up in Ohio, Ohio, where like my my mom's family is from like 30 minutes away from there. So we I've been I've been a bunch of times. But when I when I think of roller coaster parks, I think of like I think of like roller coasters that are 200 feet high and like like real like actual thrill rides as opposed to Disneyland or Disney World, right, which are more theme parks. Now, some of the rides are pretty. Pretty good. But like the point is the theming of it. And it's not it's not really a thrill ride park. You don't you don't you don't go there for like the again, like there's no 300 foot roller coaster at Disney World. That's not that's just not what they do. Where does Dollywood fall in that scale?
Mike00:29:17So it's it's an interesting it's an interesting point on the on the graph. So it really is. Everything it not everything. It is either kiddie rides or serious roller coasters. There's really nothing in between. So in the roller coaster realm, it is not Disney World. It is much closer to Six Flags on the roller coaster. So they have they have one roller coaster. It is I want to say it's called Eagle's Flight or something like this. It's one of these like wings winged roller coasters. I think they are. And it's. It towers over the rest of the park and you're sort of like flying is that, you know, it's like one of these flying roller coasters where you're suspended.
Sonny00:30:07Is it one of the ones where like your legs dangle?
Mike00:30:09It's like your whole body is suspended. So like you're like kind of laying down on your chest. Oh, OK. And like your feet are out behind you. Gotcha. That kind of roller coaster. And, you know, so I would say it's got a hot it has it is very well regarded by. Coaster enthusiasts. OK, but there's also it is also very heavy on the theme stuff. It's again like Six Flags. It has different kind of themes and they're all sort of tied to elements of East Tennessee or Dolly Parton herself. You know, so there's like a logging and timber area. There's an area that's like some kind of grove with with with plants and plant themes from from East Tennessee. There's a kind of 50s America, you know, with like old gas station themes, 50s diner themes, which is kind of like, you know, her childhood era. And and it's it's great. It's like I said, it's beautiful. It's in terms of like the well manicured foliage and landscaping, which is part of what it's known for. They also have like birds of prey shows and birds of prey, like a bunch of bald eagles that are like in a preserve there. I think rescued like bald eagles are rescued. A lot of them come to Dollywood. Anyway, it's beautiful. It's extremely well run. Just the the nicest people working there. Everybody willing to help. At one point, my nine year old had left a jacket in a bathroom and he and I ran back and the jacket was actually still in the bathroom. But I while he was looking. In there, I asked a custodian who just walked out and said, did you see what he could, you know, did you see a jacket in there? And he's and he's like, no, but let me tell you everything you need to do if you can't find it. And if somebody picked it up here, they took, you know, so just this very enthusiastic attitude about helping people, everybody there, you know. So what are they called in Disney World? They're called cast members. Yeah. So at Dollywood, they're called hosts. Everybody's a host because it's other hospitality, you know. So loved it. Uh, I wish my kids were more daredevils. We basically, we didn't ride any roller coasters. Um, which killed me.
JVL00:32:35Is your oldest even tall enough to do that stuff? Oh yeah, yeah.
Mike00:32:38Really?
JVL00:32:38He's big enough to get on the coasters?
Mike00:32:41Oh my gosh. Yes. My six year old is big, big, big enough to get on some of the coasters with an adult. Wow. Um, so, uh, but that's actually not what I wanted to talk about. So, because that actually wasn't the real reason we went down there. We wanted to go to the national park and, uh, because it is a family goal to go to a as many national parks as a family, as we can. And, um, so that's disgusting. You're disgusted. Yeah.
Sonny00:33:06Uh, and so, and we're going to all the national parks, we're going to get, we're going to get little badges to put on. We've got a passport.
Mike00:33:13We've got a passport. You get a little stamp on it. So, so we stayed in an area outside of, oh, by the way, the last thing I'll say about Dollywood is so everything in Pigeon Forge, it's what I call it, Pidge Vegas, because it is just insane. In terms of just all the tourist traps, Ripley's, believe it or not, as a corporation is, uh, is, is sustained by the existence of Pigeon Forge.
JVL00:33:39That's all I'll say about that.
Mike00:33:40Um, and, but it all goes to, it all goes back to Dolly. Basically Dolly Parton is a wonderful person. The last person that everybody in America, famous person, everybody in America loves. And, uh, she deserves it because she's.
JVL00:33:53Dolly's and Diane and Steph Curry. That's right. Exactly.
Mike00:33:56The last three people we can all agree on. Um, okay. So back to the national park. So we stayed outside of that. We stayed in this nice little town that was very close to one of the other entrances to the, on the Tennessee side to the park. The idea being is very close to this part of the park that we were going to go to. And you, you drive through and you basically stop. It's like an old, it's like a Cove in the mountains, in the Valley, um, that was settled and is no longer settled. And, but it has all these old sort of preserved buildings and good hikes, some great waterfalls to see. Um, and I just have to lodge a complaint with the national park service. This is the place to do it. Yeah, exactly. If, if not here, then where, um, because NPS is scrambling right now.
Sonny00:34:43We got, we got, we got one, we got five alarm. Get the, get the secretary, get him.
Mike00:34:49Here's the problem is I don't think even if I did went through all the proper channels, anybody would care, uh, about this. So high winds. The evening that we get there, uh, bad storms, high winds. Um, and the next day is when we are planning to drive into the park and go into Cades Cove and check out of this whole area. And, uh, we get up in the morning, we got everything going. We got the, the, the, the toddler backpack, you know, to wear and everything is, uh, I think that we borrowed it from somebody. So I can't write. I think it might be a Kelty. Um, I have a Kelty. I have a Kelty backpack from my old backpacking days. Um, anyway, uh, so we pull into the, uh, we go, we just drive down the road. It's 10 minutes away, uh, to get into the park. And, uh, all of a sudden these cars are all turning around. The road is closed because trees are down. So we're looking at the NPS app, no indication that anything's closed. There are no, there are no signs to indicate. Hey, this is closed. So we go on a two hour journey to every entrance to the park that we can, including the main entrance in Gatlinburg in order to get into the park. And at every step of the way, we're checking the app, uh, we're, we're calling the number. Basically we're getting like the vaguest, these roads are closed. Well, I don't know what those roads are or where they go, or does that impede our ability to do our plan to go to this part of the park? Um, there were no Rangers to ask directing traffic. So we get to the entrance. I'll, I'll get to that. JBL. We get to the entrance, the main entrance, the sugar lens visitor center. And by this point it's raining again. And the, the visitor center parking lot is overflowing with cars of people running in. They've got every single Ranger they can spare in the visitor center with people lining up there to answer the question. And you know what they're all saying? Yeah, pretty much the entire park is closed today. High wind advisory. No, uh, you know, none of the roads to get in are open. Um, it turned out there was one parkway that is kind of outside the rest of the park that we were actually able to end up driving on. And we had did a great hike and we actually had a very fine afternoon and it was all fine. But I got to like the front to talk to the Ranger and. Like he anticipated the question I was going to ask and yet didn't answer it for me with any kind of like sympathy or understanding that like, you know, gosh, I know you've driven all this way to do this. It was kind of like, I said, so is there any way we can get into use? Nope. I said, well, well, do you have any idea of when things might be reopening? He goes, maybe tomorrow. And I thought, do you not want anybody to come here?
JVL00:38:03Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Sonny00:38:04Of course he doesn't want anyone to come there.
JVL00:38:06The National Park Service views people as an inconvenience that the parks are to be preserved for the parks for Mother Gaia. Totally. And it is only because the federal government forces them to allow people into the park. So their, their job at the National Park Service is to protect the parks from people. That's their job.
Mike00:38:29Well, it was certainly protected, but I actually think that's not always the case because I have had, uh, interactions at other national parks that have been terrific where people have, where the people working there have been extremely helpful where the responses or like the updates on the app or whatever are very, you know, so maybe something's going on at Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I don't know, but I was pissed. Did you ask to see his manager? No, I didn't care in it. Thank you very much.
Sonny00:39:04Did you take it? Did you take his picture and put it on Twitter?
Mike00:39:07No, I clearly didn't do that. Ranger Rick here won't let us into the park. I saved it all for this podcast. Okay. Oh, and P.S.
Sonny00:39:17Right now is scrambling. They're like, we got to find this guy. We got to find him and give him a medal.
JVL00:39:20Respecting the content, Michael.
Sonny00:39:22We got to give him. We got to give him a medal for keeping these people out of the park. It's great. He gets a badge on his walk. Anyway, you guys still have those like, you know, I think they do.
Mike00:39:32I don't I don't use any of that stuff. I'm I am a I am a dad enthusiast of going out and seeing some cool waterfalls. I am not some crazy, crunchy guy. I don't like care about, you know, doing any of like, you know, the extreme, you know, free soloing El Capitan or anything like that. I just I just want to take my kids and be like, oh, my God. Like, isn't this amazing that we have these parks and we can see wildlife and we can see, you know, the natural beauty of God's green earth preserved here. And you get an Oculus.
JVL00:40:11You can do all that from your living room.
Mike00:40:12Exactly. Well, anyway.
Sonny00:40:13Yeah, I don't. Why don't you just put BBC's Planet Earth on your TV?
Mike00:40:18Listen, guys, we have gone on way too long. Yeah, I don't time to move on. I didn't want to talk about Dollywood that much, but 40, 40 minutes.
Sonny00:40:26What?
JVL00:40:27I know we've we've gone on. We've gone way over. We got to cut, cut, cut. You know what? Cut the entire ranking of the massive. No, I think that could be a bonus episode right there.
Mike00:40:38All right. So why don't we just move on? Is there anything to talk about box office wise while we go once before we go once more to the 1980s to talk about movies since the box office is so dismal? Sonny, anything to talk about?
Sonny00:40:56No, there's nothing that interesting to talk about. Um, uh, but I do think it's funny that we, we have now two weeks in a row done the, done the old version of the thing instead of, instead of the new version.
Mike00:41:08I watched the new version too.
Sonny00:41:10I watched both. I haven't seen the new one.
Mike00:41:12I haven't had time, but, uh, well, why don't we just jump right in there? Well, okay. Hold on. The only thing I'll say about the box office, Ghostbusters, Frozen Empire, whose, uh, original movie we reviewed last week, number one of the box office, $45 million. And it's first weekend. Any thoughts before we move on? No. All right. Sonny, why don't you give us a big boy review of the movie we're talking about this week? Roadhouse from 1989.
Sonny00:41:40Roadhouse. 1989 version starring Patrick Swayze directed by Rowdy Harrington. That's a real name. Rowdy Harrington. Directed by Rowdy Harrington because, uh, you know, punches McGee was busy that week. Um, all right. So, uh, Roadhouse. So I have a full disclosure to make about Roadhouse. I have a full disclosure to make about Roadhouse. Uh, I had only ever seen the movie on basic cable. I'd only ever seen it on TNT, TBS, you know, whatever the, the various Turner networks, uh, because it was on all the time and I'd watch, I, I, I don't even know that I'd ever actually watched the whole thing front to back.
JVL00:42:20I don't know that I've ever seen it. I, I had thought that I had seen it and then like everything in it was basically new to me. I remembered like. Like two scenes from it.
Sonny00:42:29So, so, so this is not, not far off. I mean, I, I, I had most of the beats down. I knew the throat ripping, you know, uh, and I, uh, but I had, I had never, I'd never actually, again, I, I had never like, I'd never rented it from Blockbuster. I never had watched it on HBO or anything. It was always very purely a basic cable classic. I didn't know. Sure. And so I watched this movie and it was, it, it was, it's, it's, it's a fascinating picture for a couple of reasons. Number one. So the producer on this movie is who Joel Silver. Joel Silver is, uh, a very famous producer, a big, uh, kind of big actiony type Pirates of the Caribbean. Uh, well, no, that's Bruckheimer.
JVL00:43:14That's a, Oh, that's a, that's a Bruckheimer Simpson.
Sonny00:43:17My bad. Um, uh, but the, uh, but the, but Joel Silver, like 48 hours. Yeah. So, so I'm watching, I'm watching, I'm watching this movie and the thing that jumps out at me time and again, I am struck by is how many sequences are designed specifically to introduce the possibility and then the fact of casual nudity. Just like, just like every, and so, and so part of this is part of this is done for story building purposes, right? So the, the, the plot here is pretty simple story. The plot here is pretty simple. Uh, Patrick Swayze plays a guy named Dalton who is a legendary, he's basically the John Taffer of, uh. He's a cool, a cool of, of bars and restaurants. If you got a bar, it's a little bit out of control. You get, you get Dalton, this John Taffer figure to come in and he, he straightened straightens everybody out and gets the, gets the menu back in order. And everybody's, uh, everybody's good and happy afterwards. Um, and he, so he starts in one place and he's like, I'm done. I'm out of here. I'm going to this new place. He gets in his Mercedes and he drives. That's a nice, this movie is filled with nice little touches. Him, like getting rid of his beater car because you're like, oh, this is just some schlub who works at a, you know, he works at a restaurant who, but no, he's actually the best schlub who works at a restaurant. And he, that's why he drives a Mercedes. He drives a Mercedes to the new town, but he gets to the double D. That's what it's called, right? That's what the double deuce, the double deuce, he gets to the double deuce. And, uh, every, every woman in this bar is just taking her clothes off all the time. Just like, just no reason, no reason really. There's a guy at a table. He's like, I'll give you a five bucks if you want to rub my wife tits, and the guy's like, I'll rub them. And then he's like, where's my five bucks? He's like, no, whatever, whatever my wife's tits, whatever. The point is, the point is I don't have 20 bucks. This keeps happening over and over again. And again, there's a story purpose here. The story purpose here is to show how out of control this bar is. And, and, and Patrick Swayze is going to come in there. He's going to clean it up and there's going to be no more. Tit kissing in this place. It's going to be just shots and beers and some dancing we're going to get all this sawdust off the floor. We're not going to have people bleeding and teeth everywhere, yada, yada, yada. And so, and so there, there, there are like two angles to this. The first is the cleaning up the bar angle, but then there's also a, you know, it's, it's essentially like a 1980s, uh, rich kids versus the poor kids movie. Right? Like, it's like a, it's like a, uh, we got to save the rec center from the rich kid, but hard art, but hard art, right, right. And, uh, and, uh, and that the, the bad guys played by Ben Gazzara, who, uh, he wants, I, I don't even remember, he wants to demolish the bars. No, he doesn't, he doesn't, he just, he just, he just wants to be in charge of the town. He just wants to be, he just wants, he's the head of the neighborhood association and wants to keep getting his, his, his, his protection, um, uh, and, and, and that's, and that's the long and the short of it. And I, the, the movie's fascinating because it's, it is. It is unrepentantly trashy, but also has these kind of pretensions to depth. Like for instance, Dalton's character, he is a wandering NYU philosophy grad who rolls into the restaurant and he tells the people who work there, we're going to be nice. We're going to be nice to everybody. We're going to be so nice. We're going to win them over with our niceness until it's time to not be nice. But except, except for the fact that everybody immediately in all of these situations goes immediately to punching. I mean, it's like zero. It's like zero to throw in guys out on their face, which is what you have to do in a situation like this. It's not. So there's all this, there's all this amusing philosophizing. And there's also, uh, and there's also Sam Elliott, Sam Elliott as the mentor, Sam Elliott as the mustache list mentor. He's just got like a five o'clock shadow. The whole movie, no mustache, just the, just the five o'clock shadow.
JVL00:47:23Do you know who he's playing in this movie? No, who? He's playing Shawn Michaels.
Sonny00:47:28Yeah, he does. He does look like Shawn Michaels.
JVL00:47:30He is now, he is Sam Elliott in this movie is, is being Sam Elliott at the same time that Shawn Michaels is Shawn Michaels, but it's young Shawn Michaels. Shawn Michaels has not yet become what, so Sam Elliott is giving you what Shawn Michaels is going to look like in seven years.
Sonny00:47:46Well, he's giving, he's giving you what, he's giving you what, uh, Shawn Michaels will turn into after the rockers when he's the heartbreak kid.
JVL00:47:53Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Sonny00:47:55That's, um, uh, so anyway. I, I, Sam Elliott is great in this. And again, like there's this, there's this very funny character introduction moment where, uh, Dalton is on the phone with Sam Elliott's character. He's, he's, he's on the phone, but it's not even a strip club. It's just a bar that's having a G string night. And then the G string is like, it's like crossed out. It's like, it's like topless night. Wet t-shirt, wet G string. The wet, the wet t-shirt is crossed out and then it's just wet G string. And so he's on the phone having this heart to heart with Dalton. And like, it's, it's the, the blocking on this. Shot is immaculate. You got to give Rowdy Harrington and cinematographer punchy McStabface the real benefit, real credit to their, their professions here.
JVL00:48:37They know how to get tits in the frame.
Sonny00:48:39You got Sam Elliott on the phone and he's, he's got a, he's got a wry grin on his face and he's telling Dalton, you know, a, you gotta, you, you know, if it's time to get out of there, you gotta get out of there. Nothing's worth, you know, blah, blah, blah. And over behind them, just, just, just ladies shaking it. Shaking it up there. And then there's, and, and then we see though, we see how serious he is because a guy tries to get on the bar to touch the ladies. Like you got to get down from there, son. You can't get out. So we, he goes and does his job. He's dispensing advice and protecting the ladies of the, whatever ridiculous club that is. Um, the movie, the movie is fantastic, uh, on virtually every level. There's no, there's nothing, um, there's really no critique that you can level against this film that would stick. I mean, yes, it's dumb, but okay. That's fine. Uh, yes, the fights are, the, the, the fights are actually for kind of mid 1980 or late 1980s. Uh, you know, um, uh, they're, they're, they feel, they feel, they feel like they were put together by somebody named Proudy Harrington. I feel like it's the best way to describe that. Uh, I don't know that I like it. This movie is big, dumb, fun, and Patrick Swayze is, is delightful. There's a, Patrick Swayze has such a weird and fascinating career because right at the same time he's making this, he's also making Ghost and Dirty Dancing. I think Ghost is the year after, Dirty Dancing is the year before. Uh, and, and, uh, then he's got Point Break like a year or two after that. And then, and then it, his career just like evaporates. It's like from, from Red Dawn, from the Outsiders and Red Dawn through Point Break, there's this 10 year, 10 year, 10 year stretch where he like really is this, this unparalleled mixture of like sex appeal guy and also action guy. Like, I don't know anybody else who I, I, I, I, like, I honestly don't, I don't know, I don't know that there has ever been an equivalent of this combination. Like I, I just, I like, it's, it's a fascinating period of time and then his, and then his career is just kind of not over. But, but it, it does, it, it, it disappears. I don't know.
JVL00:51:02Well, didn't he get, didn't he get hurt?
Sonny00:51:04Well, he got sick.
JVL00:51:06I mean, his back got hurt. Didn't he hurt his back?
Sonny00:51:09Yeah.
Mike00:51:09Yeah. Didn't like he fall out of a tree or something?
Sonny00:51:11I have no idea.
Mike00:51:12A tree fell on him or something. It's something like that. Something bad like that. Anyway.
JVL00:51:18Yeah. It's a, I mean, it's the most eighties movie ever. It combines monster trucks, karate, dirty dancing, and fake tits. Can I, this is going to sound weird, but when was breast augmentation surgery like discovered? Because this, this movie has, I don't know, 30 different women in it taking their shirts off and all but one of them have the worst boob jobs you've ever seen. And it's like, you know, somebody had just discovered how to do boob jobs and everybody in Los Angeles had rushed out to like. Get the cheapest plastic surgeon they could find, but nobody really knew what they were doing yet. It is, again, it's very of its moment. But here's what struck me. Dalton, the Dalton character played by Patrick Sweezy, is actually a prototype of Jack Reacher. So he is this calm, semi-mysterious badass who goes from place to place with no attachments to anything. And he is incredibly competent and the baddest guy on the planet. And he's, you know, he's got a very particular set of skills. And I, once I sort of saw that, I couldn't unsee it. I was like, oh, yeah, this is, there's a lot of Jack Reacher drawn from the Dalton character. You know, I mean, I'm not saying it's carbon copy, but there are elements of it which are
Mike00:52:53drawn from it. Sure.
JVL00:52:54And I, like I said. I thought I knew the movie, but the only, like, I remember the scene where he's stitching up his, uh, his shoulder. I remember the, the scene where he rips the throat out. Almost everything else I have no memory of. And it's great. Like, it's great, trashy fun. And he is, Patrick Swayze is, he's a movie star in this thing. And he is quiet so well. Like, he, he really is. He really does quiet very, very well. And, you know, he doesn't play smart all that great, but he plays quiet and brooding well. And, uh, that compared them with, with Jake Gyllenhaal in the, the remake of which I watched a fair amount of before I just shut it off. Cause I couldn't stand it. Um, like I, Jake Gyllenhaal is a better actor, but Patrick Swayze does just sort of silent intensity better than Gyllenhaal does.
Mike00:53:56There is many tits. In the new one.
Sonny00:53:59No, there, well, so this is, this is fascinating because like, I, this is, so this is the big difference between the two is that, you know, the, the, the only real nudity in the, in the new one is you get, uh, a shot of Conor McGregor from behind twice, both as the, as he's introduced in the movie and as he's exiting the movie.
Mike00:54:18It's like Patrick Swayze in there.
Sonny00:54:20You get a, yeah, Patrick Swayze's hanging dong, but the, uh, but the, uh, but I, I, I actually like Jake Gyllenhaal. I like Jake Gyllenhaal a lot just in general. And I actually like him in this movie because I've, I've always found the whole, I found the Jake Gyllenhaal, uh, persona to be amusing for a long time. I really like him in Donnie Darko, for instance.
Mike00:54:44There's some poetry, which, cause Patrick Swayze has a, has a cameo in, uh.
Sonny00:54:47Right, right, right. Um, and, uh, but there, there's something fascinating about him in this movie where it's just like, all right, what if you took that like nerdy twitchy kid and put him in the steroids? The steroid machine for, uh, six months and saw what came out. And like, that's, it's, it's, it's exactly what you would imagine. He's like kind of weird and twitchy and a little bit shy. Um, and, and I, I think it, I think it basically works, but it's, it's such a, it's such a nothing of a, I didn't hate the new one. I didn't hate it, but it is, it's such a nothing of a movie. It's so, it's so.
JVL00:55:19He's a bouncer, not a cooler. And one of the most interesting things about the, the 1989 version is, as you say, the bar rescue stuff that's in it. The movie is fascinating because it's like you're being dropped into a world that actually has lived in like, Oh, this is a thing. There are people who know how to take bars and turn them into profitable enterprises. Uh, and that's what he does. And sometimes it involves violence and sometimes it involves watching the guy running the cash register. And sometimes it involves dealing with suppliers and the new one, Jake general is just like, Oh, he's a UFC guy who's washed up, who comes in and. Kicks out the bad guys.
Mike00:55:59Look, I don't know.
JVL00:56:00That's not interesting to me.
Mike00:56:02No, I didn't see the new one, but I, I agree with you that the, the, all that, like you said, the bar rescue stuff is the most interesting. Did you like it? Like, so, uh, my wife and I both saw it for the first time together, uh, and did not watch it on cable beforehand. So we were, we were coming in cold, uh, on roadhouse, uh, a few thoughts. One, I never knew. That Missouri looks like Southern California. Uh, that was, that was fascinating to me. Yeah.
JVL00:56:34A lot of palm trees in Missouri.
Mike00:56:35It just, it was amazing. All the mountains in Missouri, you know, that, that the Ozarks. Yeah. They look just like the Ozarks. Um, I also like that, uh, apparently in Missouri in 1989, nobody ever goes, Hey, should we like alert the attorney general of the state that. Ben Gazzara is like extorting this entire town and burning places down.
JVL00:57:03Like he drove big foot through an entire car dealership. Nobody can, you know, what a press charges on that.
Sonny00:57:08I feel like Buick itself would have rolled in at that point. Like Buick, Buick leadership comes down and like, what the fuck is happening in our stores?
Mike00:57:16It's not like 1939. It's 1989. Come on. Um, by the way, so that all, that all does like, as when we finished the movie, my first thought was. This is a Western. This is a Western movie before anything else, right? This is like Shane. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, um, I appreciated it more once I, that I kind of made that realization. Um, I, I, more tits.
JVL00:57:47Shane had very few tits in it.
Mike00:57:48Uh, yeah, a few, just not enough. And, and I think this corrected that, that, that, that problem.
JVL00:57:54Some would say overcorrected.
Mike00:57:55Uh, I wouldn't, but some might. Um, I, uh, I love the idea that there is this, the movie, the movie makes you take seriously the idea that like everybody working at this podunk bar and podunk Missouri would know who the best cooler in the business is.
JVL00:58:16He'd worked, you know, he and Wade had also worked with the blind musician. Who's the house band, right? You just, in a weird way, it reminds me a little bit of John wick in that. It's like, Hey, here's an entire. Universe of people who exist in a world where they know each other because it's all part of their profession and you straight normie don't know any about
Mike00:58:36anything correct, correct. And I, I thought, I thought the movie does a great job of just, of just trusting themselves and trusting the audience to go along with it. And, um, and, and, and that's a real credit to it because it's so ridiculous. And they just, they, they just make it work. Uh, you brought up, uh, Jeff Healy, uh, who is the blind guitarist who the band is fantastic. Every single song that they play is terrific. And, um,
JVL00:59:09Michael, who's the band in the very first shot where you're at the bar Patrick Swayze is at.
Mike00:59:15So, um, I think it's like a, it's, it was a, a, a sort of probably well-known in LA kind of band. I don't, I don't know exactly who they are. Um, I read this afterward. It's some, it was some sort of rock band. Uh, they were also quite good. They were, they were terrific as well. Um, but like the, the roadhouse blues, uh, sequence, um, where they were the, where, uh, Jeff Healy's band does the, the doors song. It's, I mean, it's better than the doors version by a long shot. It's terrific. Um, so love that. Uh, I love how everybody has knives and like, just, just like knives coming out of their boots and just not like this knife that they didn't
JVL00:59:57have ninja stars.
Mike00:59:58Exactly.
JVL00:59:59Uh, the eighties, baby.
Mike01:00:02Uh, so, uh, I loved all that. I loved the way that the, these other kind of random characters, uh, in this town, like Emmett, the, the, the, the redneck guy who rents his barn to him, like they're just, they're, they're all kind of interesting and given these little touches and again, they're all kind of ugly. Which I feel like you can't do anymore in movies. Like everybody has to be like, everybody's looking, um, Kelly
JVL01:00:36leash, convincing doctor I've ever seen.
Mike01:00:38I mean, would you let her do brain surgery? She came back. She came back to her town. JV. Okay. She came back. Um, interesting thing. So red Kelly, uh, Kelly Lynch's uncle who runs the auto parts store. Do you guys know about him? No. So. The actor who plays red, uh, Webster is a guy named red West. That is a real stretch for this guy. He was a body man for Elvis. And like a few months before Elvis died, this guy became famous because he published a book. In which he detailed all of Elvis's drug problems as a, basically like a, I couldn't get through to anybody or certainly to the king himself. So I'm going public with this. And four months later, you know, he was, he was on the John and dead. Um, so just kind of like, again, it's just, that's wild. It's not wild. Um, I just, so I just love all those side characters. Like the, the guy who runs, who owns the double deuce, um, uh, only time I've ever seen that
JVL01:01:50actor in a movie and he's not been a villain.
Mike01:01:52Yeah. Well, yeah, he looks like, in fact, I thought he was going to be a villain. Uh, Kevin Teig.
JVL01:01:57I mean, he's, he's like a, a John sales regular and John, he's, he's, he's always a bad guy. His whole face just screams weasel.
Mike01:02:08He's the, he is, isn't he the, isn't he the guy who, who cheats on in, in what's eating Gilbert grape? He's like, he's like, he, he cheats on somebody on his wife, like with, with somebody, or maybe his wife is the one who cheats on with Johnny Depp. Anyway, um, it's. So I, it was fine. I mean, it was, you had to be in the mood. Like it has to, like, you gotta be in the mood for some trash and it is trash, but it's enjoyable trash and it's well done trash. So it feels almost like a B movie.
JVL01:02:41Yes. Like it's, it's, it's inches up to the line on it, but it's, how do you like those real exploding buildings? By the way, it's been a while since I've seen a building blow up in a movie and it's so different. I mean, this, this movie did not cost $200 million. But they blow up three different buildings and every one of them looks like an actual building exploding.
Sonny01:03:04Well, and there's, and there's like actual gunshots with actual squibs going off. Like everything looks real and tactile in a way that so much of.
JVL01:03:12I, I, one, one complaint, only one complaint. So the, the, the movie culminates with all of the townspeople, uh, coming and shooting the bad guy whose name is Wesley. Um, and they, they all, it's like murder on the Orient. They all show up with shotguns and they shoot him up with shotguns. And 30 seconds later, the police roll in and say, what's going on here? Because they see this guy's dead body. And he's, these, these bunch of townsmen say, I didn't see nothing. Did you see nothing, Edmund? No, I didn't see nothing either. I was like, I'm sorry. In Missouri, they don't have the, the gunshot powder, gunpowder residue tests for people's hands. They don't like what? This is the most preposterous thing.
Mike01:04:00Wait, wait, I'm sorry. I've ever seen that. Okay. So that is the most preposterous thing. Yes.
JVL01:04:04That was, that, that was the moment where I just thought, oh, come the fuck on. That was where my suspension of disbelief left.
Mike01:04:15But otherwise it's, it's great.
JVL01:04:16It's a great, trashy, fun movie.
Mike01:04:20By the way, how many dispensable guys does Ben Gazzara have? Because it's like. So many.
JVL01:04:26There's, I would say my complaint. He's a really tall dude. Yeah. Like he looks like a tall professional wrestler. He's kind of like Jaws. Then there's a really fat dude who gets. Yeah, Jaws. He looks like Jaws. The guy who gets pinned under the stuffed polar bear. I'm under the polar bear.
Guest01:04:38He's great.
JVL01:04:39There's the. There were too many people and I couldn't keep them straight. The vaguely gay menacing guy who's the karate master. Yeah. Who first says.
Mike01:04:46I fuck guys like you in prison.
JVL01:04:48And before that, to say this to Patrick Swayze, your ass is mine. Like just everything about that guy is like weird. Like panic and mixed with. Yeah. It's a whole thing.
Mike01:05:02Yeah.
JVL01:05:03Okay. I liked it in a way that I. Here, let me say this. Sonny, I found what I turned. The reason I turned off the remake with Jake Gyllenhaal was because the two fight scenes that I stayed for were shot in such a way that it made me nauseous. There's this weird thing they're doing where the camera's going from first person where you're like in a. First person shooter game to then swinging out and a it feels stitched together like the whole thing. It feels like if I had asked an AI generator to give me a fight scene in a bar or something and I just admit I didn't like it.
Sonny01:05:44It's shot in a very specific way. I think it's called the four pass shooting style. But basically, like they they they shoot the each of the punches four different times and and they do. They do it with like the guy punching into a pillow and then they move the person to where he's supposed to be to take the hit and then they like put it all together. It just I don't like how it looks either. I don't like how it looks either.
JVL01:06:08But I found it visually unsettling. Like I didn't mean that I didn't like it stylistically. I meant that I I had to turn it off because I it made me feel a little queasy.
Sonny01:06:17Yeah. No, I don't care for that. Did you make it to Conor McGregor? Was he?
JVL01:06:21No, I didn't get to Conor McGregor.
Sonny01:06:22He is he is he Wade? He's no, he's he's. He's the he's the he's like the gay karate guy. Oh, OK. Basically of this movie. He's he's the guy who gets called in to take out Dalton. But the but he's he's wonderful in this movie because he plays every single scene. I'm going to do something visually that you're not going to be able to hear out in podcast land. But he plays every single scene like this. Crazy eyes like he has. He's got he's got this like crazed coke grin on his face the entire time. And and like he's like talking in this Irish gibberish. And like I like it's it's it's I mean, it's literally like it's it's it's it's one of the most bizarre performances I've ever seen. It's so it's but it's deeply amusing because I can't tell how much of it is on purpose and how much of it is just like they told they told Conor McGregor to pretend to fight a guy. And this is what happened. I like I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know. But he's he's delightfully insane in it. And it's the thing that it's the thing that almost. Makes the movie worth watching. But again, the problem is, it's just so rote and paint by the numbers. There's nothing interesting or unique about it compared to the original, which has like five different sequences where you could be like, yes. There's nothing there's no equivalent of Sam Elliott with the five o'clock shadow giving life lessons in front of the nude G string dancers by like there's just nothing. There's nothing nearly as memorable as that.
JVL01:07:55Can I say the youngest I ever saw, Samuel?
Mike01:07:57I mean, he's he's done some I think he did some Westerns before this.
JVL01:08:04I'm just saying me like I don't think I've ever seen him on screen before this. Right.
Sonny01:08:08Well, he also looks younger because he doesn't have the big handlebar mustache. I mean, like like he just he has it. It's it's the only time I think I can think of having seen him on screen without his look. I mean, it just looks so different.
Mike01:08:22Can I say about Sam Elliott? Like you guys like this movie a lot more than I did. I liked it. But I would say what what made the movie, I think, elevated beyond B movie was Sam Elliott. Like once he once he is in the movie, I like got on board with it where I was kind of not sure as I was watching it all. And then all of a sudden he's there. And like from the moment he's there, you almost feel like, OK, there's a grown up here. And like this feels like a real movie now. And and he delivered my favorite. And my wife's favorite line, which was when he's fighting the mountain, the Jaws guy. And the guy goes, you want to fight Dickless? And he goes, well, I sure ain't going to show you my dick. Fantastic. So funny. Loved it. That's my last thought on that. Any final thoughts on. Yeah, one more.
JVL01:09:17One more. You like a little foreshadowing of Dark Knight with with Wade or Wesley saying, you know, you have to choose which one of them you want to say. Yes. Joker style. Yeah.
Sonny01:09:29Yeah. I did.
Mike01:09:31I guarantee you Chris Nolan is a Roadhouse fan. Isn't Roadhouse like well-liked among among like Hollywood people?
Sonny01:09:39Like it's well-liked among everyone. Yeah. Well, people it's beloved. It's a beloved cinematic classic.
?01:09:44All right.
Mike01:09:45Any final thoughts?
Sonny01:09:46Rowdy Harrington, number one film director of 1989.
JVL01:09:50When did he win his Oscar?
Sonny01:09:51I don't know. He was actually he was he was the first guy to have to do out of Africa and they called it.
JVL01:09:58Did he direct anything else that we might have seen?
Mike01:10:02So I looked this up. He directed Gladiator, not 2000s Gladiator. He directed the 1992 movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. And let's see who else. That's about prison fights.
JVL01:10:16Yes. That movie is about prison fights. Yes. Yeah.
Mike01:10:19He directed Striking Distance. Oh, Striking Distance. Yeah. Bruce Willis. A Murder of Crows. Once again, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Tom Berenger. And he directed The Stick Up starring James Spader in 2002. You guys don't remember that one?
Sonny01:10:38I'm excited. All I have. We're done with this. We got to get out of here. But I will just say that along these lines, the thing I'm most excited for is when the Crow remake comes out in a month to go back and do the original Crow movie with you guys. Because that's going to be that'll be fun.
Mike01:10:55All right. Well, that is all the time. We are going to give to this episode. Join us over at Sub-Beacon dot com. If you made it this far, we really appreciate you listening. Tell your friends and family. Give us a comment and we'll talk to you next time.
JVL01:11:14All right. Before we get out, I got a question for you guys on spring break. I'm going to have one night where the girls will all be away and it'll be me and the boys. So I need two movies. One movie that I can watch with Flash and G Money that they will both love that the girls would never have any interest in seeing. I'm thinking Happy Gilmore.
Sonny01:11:40Roadhouse.
JVL01:11:42Movie number two, something for just me and Flash to watch. Same thing. But now we don't have to worry about the constraint of G Money, who is seven. And so I'm thinking maybe Con Air show girls. I would like any. Real suggestions from people.
Sonny01:12:00Con Air or The Rock? Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison are both fine. Con Air, The Rock, Armageddon. What about Armageddon? I would say Con Air or The Rock. The Rock is a perfect action movie. I mean, it really is.
JVL01:12:14It's not funny the way Con Air is.
Sonny01:12:16What are you talking about? The Rock is hilarious.
JVL01:12:19It's okay.
Sonny01:12:20It's much more dramatic than that. The Rock is just very funny. The Rock, greater sign, Con Air.
JVL01:12:25That's my opinion.
Sonny01:12:26The Rock is a much, much better movie. It's a much better movie.
JVL01:12:27Yes. The Rock is a better movie. Is it as fun a movie? No. It's a better movie. It's a better pure action movie. But Con Air is a romp with a little bit of action in it.
Sonny01:12:38I mean, Con Air is a, it's more, it's a funnier movie, I guess. But I would say that there is still a better mix of action and comedy in The Rock. Which, again, is a perfect, it's like a perfect action movie.
Mike01:12:52Sonny, it's not us watching it. It's JVM. Is Happy Gilmore acceptable for some people? Oh, totally. Totally. Yes. I think Happy Gilmore better than Billy Madison for the seven-year-old.
Sonny01:13:01I mean, that's the other thing, though. Like, what is going to appeal more to a seven-year-old? And I think Billy Madison actually might, because it's got the whole school thing, like going through the school grades.
Mike01:13:12And it's, I'm just trying to think if the, well, I don't know what level of, like, sex joke you're comfortable with. I feel like Happy Gilmore doesn't go as kind of.
Sonny01:13:24Happy Gilmore, the only real sex stuff in Happy Gilmore. Happy Gilmore is the dream sequence with Julie Bowen, where she's got the pitchers of beer and she's in her lingerie.
Mike01:13:34But that's fine. You don't see it. It's no Roadhouse. It's fine.
Sonny01:13:37No Roadhouse. You should just show them both. You should show them both of the Roadhouses as a way of explaining how a good movie is made and how a bad movie is made. If Rowdy had directed that.
Mike01:13:48I'm sure that'd be fine.
?01:13:51Yeah.
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