#321. Super-Sized Robert Redford (ish) Episode!
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This is a Robert Redford tribute episode, prompted by his death earlier that week, built around a draft of the crew's favorite films from his career rather than a standard review. Sonny leads off by arguing Redford's biggest legacy wasn't his string of 1970s hits like The Sting, All the President's Men, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but his founding of the Sundance Institute in 1981, which reshaped independent film and launched figures like Steven Soderbergh and Kevin Smith; JVL adds that Redford was a movie star rather than an actor, always withholding something from the camera the way Paul Newman and George Clooney did. In the draft itself (an odd non-snake rotation that Sonny tries to complicate with a one-movie-per-decade rule nobody else follows), JVL takes All the President's Men, Spy Game, and The Horse Whisperer (mostly for Kristin Scott Thomas); Sonny takes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Sneakers, and All Is Lost; and Mike takes The Sting, Three Days of the Condor, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with all three praising Redford's late-career turn as a Marvel villain. As usual the episode opens with a long stretch of banter before Redford comes up: JVL nearly buys a shockingly cheap secondhand Bentley off eBay before discovering the whole "airport Bentley" secondary market is a money-pit scam for suckers, Sonny diagnoses his LG OLED's random shutoffs as an overheating/thermal-paste issue he's nervous to fix himself, and Mike discovers his dead tree limb is infested with wasps 30 feet up, prompting Sonny to propose a solution involving a cherry picker, a machine gun, and a bonfire. They also run through the box office, marveling at the outsized opening of the anime film Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle against modest counterprogramming from Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale and The Conjuring: Last Rites. The episode closes on a bit about the deflating oil-conspiracy reveal at the end of Three Days of the Condor, which Sonny compares to the similarly bathetic twist in The Nice Guys.
From the show notes
OK, we wanted to talk about Robert Redford but we didn't want to limit ourselves to Robert Redford. So you got kind of a grab bag here. Also, we talked Bentleys, thermal paste, and how to kill wasps with an unlikely implement. Nearly 90 minutes! Pretty goddamn good episode if you ask me!
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome to the Sub-Beacon podcast. I'm your co-host Mike Warren. Joininging me, as always, are my two co-hosts. Raindrops are falling on their head. They're searching for deep throat. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Tell your friends and family that they can only listen to this show at Sub-Beacon.com and they can only listen to it at Sub-Beacon.com if they are a patron. New episodes every Friday morning. Join the conversation in the comments. Always a lively chat there. And you can only do it at Sub-Beacon.com. We're going to be talking about the career, mostly the career, not really the life, the career. The career of the late, great Robert Redford later on in the show. But first, what is going on with you guys? JVL, I'm going to peek behind the curtain here. You said you've got something epic to talk about.
JVL00:01:06Boys, I am busting to share the news.
Sonny00:01:11Busting loose?
JVL00:01:13Bursting. Bursting to share the news. I think I'm getting a Bentley. What?
Sonny00:01:21I assume this is not the actual automobile of Bentley.
JVL00:01:25Oh, this is the automobile Bentley. This is a 2006 Bentley Continental Flying Spur four-wheel drive. Sorry, all-wheel drive sedan. It's in black pearl. Okay. All right. Stop. Stop right there.
Mike00:01:43Okay. Explain yourself.
JVL00:01:46Let me rewind. Yes. We started in medias res. This is. This is a. You're probably wondering how I got here.
Sonny00:01:54This is the hangover. This is the hangover. And JBL is calling us Bradley Cooper style from his Bentley. You'll never guess where I am.
JVL00:02:04So earlier this week, Flash committed to a college for baseball. I'm very excited about this. And then I was figuring out how much it's going to cost me. And I wrote Flash a memo in which I explained the economics of college. And I was. I was trying to concretize him for him the difference between going to where he is going to go and going to a cheap run of the mill state school. And what I what I what I wound up doing is I want to put it in terms that he could understand because I think dollars are just too abstract. And so I said, here's the deal. In order for you to go to this college and for it to be worth it. Then on graduation day. After you get the diploma. You need to be able to say to me, Dad, I am glad that I had these four years. Because and I would if if I had offered him to go back in time, Kang style. To go to State University for the same price, I could be handing him the keys to a 2007 Ferrari 644. OK, which just in case you're curious, goes zero to one hundred and twenty five. Five miles an hour and eight point three seconds.
Sonny00:03:23I am curious.
JVL00:03:24And so I wanted to as I said, I want to he's very into cars right now, having just gotten his license. And so I went to eBay Motors and just looking up exotic cars to to see what I could find that would like really make this point come home to him. And I found a 2006 Bentley Continental Flying Spur all wheel drive in Black Pearl. For twenty two thousand five hundred dollars. It has fifty one thousand miles on it. It is in immaculate condition. And I just went swing because I have to tell you, twenty two thousand five hundred dollars is very close to what I paid for my two year old Kia Forte that I bought just a few months ago.
Mike00:04:07Yeah.
JVL00:04:08And and so I thought this isn't this is amazing. I can't even believe this. And then I went and found another. Bentley, similar model, there's a two thousand and. Four Continental Flying Spur, similar mileage for twenty seven thousand dollars and then another for twenty nine. The early aughts Bentley Continental Flying Spur can be had here in America with low mileage between 50 or really 50 and 70 thousand miles for roughly. Twenty eight to thirty thousand dollars. Mm hmm. Question.
Mike00:04:53God, because I have answers going, what is going on? I know. Oh, I know. What what is going on in this period? Because because there are moments in a car manufacturer or even a car model's lifetime that are considered the the low moments, right? The the sort of nadir of that, right? Like Jaguar for a long time was like was in. In. The dumps like you didn't want a Jaguar from a certain period, I think, like in the nineties or so, because it was they were they were all lemons or they were all just crap. Is that what's going on with these particular.
JVL00:05:33That. Oh, it's much more interesting than that. So I decided to go do some digging and I went down the rabbit hole and found an article from Car and Driver saying that the headline on this piece was what's the deal with the $30,000 airport Bentleys? And it turns out. That this is a thing in the New York metro area, in Florida and in California, there are always a number of early aughts Bentley Continentals for sale. From small independent dealerships near ports and airports, aha, here is what I learned, boys. So in the early aughts bent. Wait.
Sonny00:06:21Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, before, before you do this, can I make, can I, can we, can we make guesses as to what's going on? Oh, sure. I've got, I've got a hilariously racist one. It's all, it's all, it's, it's like Arab oil traders coming in and dumping their cars off that they drive for like two years and don't want to, don't want to have anything to do with anymore. That's not racist.
Mike00:06:41Michael, what is your guess? I mean, that is something like what I was going to guess. Some kind of off the books, gotta offload it.
Sonny00:06:50Some sort of chic situation.
Mike00:06:51Yeah. Or like a mob situation. I don't know. Some, something is going on where people are offloading cars. They just want to get rid of them. And it's happening at these, at these, uh, you know, international ports.
JVL00:07:05Boys, it's the other direction. Step back in time with me into the early aughts when Bentley was expanding its presence in North America. And in the early 2000s, they reached the highest level of production and sales. In the United States, in the company's history, they were often selling as many as 4,000 units in America. 4,000 whole cars? 4,000 whole cars. This is up from like a high of like 600 cars. Right. Pre early aughts. So there is by these terms, a glut of those cars. However, at the ultra luxury level. And again, these were, these were selling in. Early $2,000 for north of 200,000. So these are, these are, you know, your, your base trim was a 200 K car in 2004, $2,005. Yeah. These things are bought by people who do not hold onto cars. Right. They, they simply drive them for a year at most two years, and then they want to get the next cool thing. And it turns out. That the secondary market for Bentleys is absolute dog shit. Huh? Huh?
Sonny00:08:30I can see that.
JVL00:08:30Huh? Is this a maintenance issue? They're hard to maintain. Why would that be? You ask yourself. And that is because maintenance on a Bentley routine maintenance on an annual, an annual basis. Low five figures every year repairs on a Bentley. The Bentley Continental spur is notorious for having a $600 taillight. So if you, if you need a taillight for it, $600,000, if you get the convertible model and you wind up, needing a new top for it, that item goes for $25,000 and because of this, they are impossible to ensure because nobody will write an insurance policy on these things because if you get the tiniest scrape, your deductible is as of nothing, right? The tiniest, tiniest scrape is tens of thousands of dollars of damage. And so. These become money pit sucker cars. And so what you see as I started traversing through the title history of many of these cars.
Sonny00:10:02Wait, let me let me let me just I want to interrupt again here. I'm sorry, because because I can imagine I can imagine exactly what happens over and over again. If somebody sees $25,000 Bentley, yes. And does not does not do the research.
JVL00:10:19That is exactly. Exactly what happens. And so you look at and these are cars which in only 20 years, which again and 20 years and again, in most cases, 30 to 60,000 miles have had seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 owners. These are not fleet vehicles, right? These are things which after the initial owner who buys it and drives like 8000 miles. Maybe 5000 miles over the course of the first year or two years, the next you then wind up seeing the next owner will own it for 10 months and drive it for like 1000 miles. Owner number three will own it for 14 months and then it has a lien on it and the number of liens put on the titles of these things over the course of the year and you can just see the suckers and so these things get passed down. And down and down through auctions and whatnot and not to mention the ones that are frank and cars where the titles have been like so fucked up that uh that no but again because the tiles are so fucked up because they've been involved in so many liens you also can't get a loan to so you have to buy these things in cash because that nobody will write a loan for them and they're uninsurable and so they eventually wind their way to these airport electric car dealerships where they are waiting for somebody from overseas typically from south america or the middle east although sometimes asia sometimes like vietnam to come and fly in look at it and say yes i'll take it and then just have it shipped shipping a an automobile from california to china turns out to be about a thousand bucks yeah incredibly cheap incredibly cheap to do and so if you are one of these airport uh exotic car lots while you're waiting to sell it to the person who's going to take it off your hands for forever you can also sell it to a sucker like me and then wait for me to come back and pay you even more money to take it off your hands because holding it is like holding onto kryptonite it's sucking the life force out of you in dollars
Mike00:12:49it's so much more of a scam than i even thought it's amazing but i i do have to i did i i efforted this a little bit uh JVL because i wanted to know you you mentioned the tail light costing is this the tail light of the tail light bulb whatever it is the tail light
JVL00:13:07itself so if somebody taps you in the parking lot and cracks the tail just the plastic tail
Mike00:13:12light assembly see but i i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to uh to call you out on that because i went to advance auto parts and i put in the 2006 bentley continental flying spur and you can get you can get a uh well maybe it's not an exact match but one for 13.99 really 14 dollars four four stop tail turn light female pin red it's exactly i'm sure it looks you won't even be able to tell someone someone should buy one of these and
Sonny00:13:42then make and do all of the repairs themselves with like off the rack advanced auto parts like stuff and just like have a have like a like you say franken car have like a real franken car real franken car like just just kind of stuff stick it off the side they actually
Mike00:13:58do have an exact match on the cabin air filter so oh there we go an oem cabin air filter
JVL00:14:06anyway the whole thing just struck me as fascinating and i wanted to share this all with you because
Sonny00:14:12holy shit what a scam that's great that is that is funny that is funny it's you know so when i was when i worked at the washington times i did um a story about there was some some famous lamborghini car tester who had come to america and they were showing they were showing the news and like they were like would journalists at the print newspapers like to come drive lamborghinis and i was like i guess you shall i guess for this job for the story for for the for the for the story so i went i went and i like drove around you know this i i don't i can't remember the guys did they let you drive it or did you have to sit in the passenger seat oh yeah what oh yeah well they were they i i swear to god they like this is a whole story but i signed i like they send out the press release and they're like hey we want somebody from the washington times there because like even a shitty newspaper like the washington times when it has a print edition all publicists are like look at these print hits we got and it like it's so i got to do a lot of like weirdly fun stuff at the washington times just because publicists need to hit their numbers anyway but this was one of those things and i was like sure i'll come and i get there and you know i like go and i do i there's no check-in or anything it's just like uh hey here's the flack uh and they take me to the the desk or whatever and the guy's like you can drive a stick right did you just say oh yeah and i was like and i could i can i can drive a stick i have i was like yeah i can i can i drive a volvo 240 manual transmission he's like yeah that's fine come on let's go and like so i'm here again with this like legendary lamborghini test driver he's in the passenger seat i'm in the driver's seat and he's like you're gonna want to ride the clutch a little except it's like a very italian accident i'm not even gonna try he's like you're gonna want to ride the clutch just a little bit to you know because otherwise you're gonna stall it out immediately i of course i immediately stalled it out and and we're driving and it's not it wasn't on a racetrack we weren't we weren't like on the test track we were in like tyson's corner not quite midday traffic i mean it was it was like it was real stop and go occasionally you could you could get out a little bit um but it was i mean whatever it's fun it's fun driving a lamborghini and he's like all right do you want me to drive it now and i was like yes i do want you to drive it so i would i like literally pull over to the side of the road we get out we swap he gets in and he looks and he looks and he's like okay and zero to sixty in about three seconds on this side street in tyson's corner just just doing fucking fish tails in the road like i was like this is the most thing i this is like i'm in a movie right now it's it's wild but it was very fun it was funny and i i only i only bring this up i got sidetracked i brought this up because when i went there i talked to the guys who worked in the shop at the lamborghini shop and they were like the guy who i was talking to was like i love working here i used to work at the bmw shop and the bmw shop sucks because the people or no it wasn't a bmw it was lexus i used to work at a lexus shop and the lexus shop sucks because the people who buy lexuses they have money they have enough money to buy a lexus but anytime something breaks on it it puts a strain on their budget and they don't like it and they fight me on it at the lamborghini dealership when somebody's car isn't working they bring it to me and they say fix it and nobody ever asks any questions nobody nobody ever says well how much is it gonna be it's just like fix my fix my car because those people have the money that it's not it's not an issue it's never an issue i can only imagine i can only imagine the look on the person's face the first time they take it in to get the oil change at the bentley dealership
JVL00:18:10thousand dollars yeah and the thing is because these are these are exotic v12s and so i don't know that you can just take it to right to ron down the street i mean maybe ron down the street can work on it i don't want to impugn him but uh like i don't know i feel like
Mike00:18:30i don't know i don't see these as much but when i was growing up i always remember you know there were like european car shops and japanese oh yeah yeah i've seen those yeah i think i think mechanics have like it's it's become it's like sort of dumbed down now and like they're easier you know but like especially the european cars right like they they were difficult to in you know you had to sort of specialize so you'd probably have to find like a european car place anyway fucking volvos the swedes right yeah the volvos that's the worst that's what i brought for you boys i brought some candy thank you thank you jvl sunny
Sonny00:19:03what is going on with you i have i have a tv problem maybe i may have a tv problem which is not which is not ideal uh so uh a few weeks ago maybe a month ago a weird thing started happening when my kids were watching tv when they were watching disney plus they'd be flipping around they'd be like going from show to show because they can't ever watch one thing you know they go they gotta go from from thing to thing and they would do this and the tv would like freeze and go black and turn off and and this never happened this this never happened when i was using it it was so i assumed they were doing something i assumed they were doing something weird with the apple tv and like something something was going on so i i didn't really think much of it i didn't think much of it until a couple weeks later when i was watching i don't know football or something um with my wife and and our kids and the same thing happened and i was like okay well now this is good now this is a problem so i start running the traps first thing i do i un i unhook the apple tv because i think it might be the apple tv because it this has never happened while i've been watching a movie on my 4k blu-ray player it's never happened while i've been playing video games on the playstation 5 it's only a thing that happened while i was while we were using apps yeah while we were streaming on apps so i unplugged the apple tv and uh download the apps onto the regular tv you know through the smart through the lg web os or whatever the fuck it's called and and watch stuff that way and this seems this seems to solve the problem for a little bit this seems to it stops happening at least stops happening at least until again it happens it like a week later we're when we're watching again watching football or something so i'm like okay well it's not the apple tv maybe it's the sound bar maybe it's because the power runs to the sound bar so again running the traps and like it it seemed it the more the more i'm doing the more it's becoming very obvious that this is a tv issue and so i start i start doing some research and i discover the oled so yeah this is the oled so i discover that the lg oled cx series has does have a known issue with basically um uh it kind of there there are two things it could be one it could just be the whole motherboard the whole main board needs to be replaced which is like a 350 part plus if you get somebody to come out and do it it's actually i looked i looked how to do it it's actually not that hard it takes like five minutes to remove the back casing you just have to you got to be careful because you're messing around with you got to put the screen anything you got to put it you got to put screen down and you got to like take the thing out and you got to make sure you plug everything back in right it's not it's not idiot proof but it's it's not hard i feel like i could probably do that but again it's not it's not a cheap part it's like a 350 part yeah i gotta buy a new one and you got to buy a new one you well no you gotta buy a new mother but there's a second on your tv well so here's i would i would prefer not to have to do that you take this one down to the airport
JVL00:22:36electronics store offloaded there and you wait for somebody from vietnam to come in and say yeah i'll take that lg oled uh just ship it back to me five-year-old oled 400 400 for you
Sonny00:22:51um so uh so the other thing you can do is if there's there's uh basically what is happening is it is overheating the it's overheating and it's kind of shutting everything down yep so the there's a uh there's a therm so the way these tvs are constructed there's not like a solid heat sink there's like a thermal paste i don't know nearly enough about this is like a this is like a right this is a thing that people who build their own pcs do apparently a lot work with thermal paste to kind of distribute heat etc etc i don't know anything about this but there is like there's a there's a cheaper and apparently just as effective fix where you remove the old thermal paste and put new thermal paste on and it should be fine again this seems very complicated to me i do not trust myself to do the first thing is just unplugging cables and plugging things in i think i could probably do that the second thing i do not think i could do at all i'm curious if there's anybody out there who has any experience with this sort of thing let me know uh but i'm uh the the good news is the good news is that again when when like the air conditioner is on and the house is cool it does not happen so i'm i i i this is not like a thing i need to take care of immediately but it is it is a problem and it's something i'm going to have to start efforting here over the next uh few months the problem i jbl i would love to just get a new oled tv but they're still expensive they're still like it's still like a thousand bucks at least i don't really want to spend a thousand bucks i i don't want to spend 350 dollars either that will then lead to me having to spend a thousand bucks when i it up
JVL00:24:42but i don't know wow that's pretty easy so where do you have to apply the thermal place so so talk to me about this right so where is the heat emanating from the processors it's it's there's
Sonny00:24:57like there's like it's it's on the i believe it's on the motherboard you you you take it off there's like a it's like around the the big main processing chip i think is again i i have to where the cpu is
JVL00:25:11where the thermal paste goes it's a it's a gel it's very very ah part of me wants to part of me
Sonny00:25:22wants to try the thermal paste just because it would be an interesting thing to do and if it if i fuck it up then i'm gonna have to get a new one anyway i like get a new mother motherboard anyway
Mike00:25:32so like you know but i don't know this is this is this is making me uh yeah this is wigging me out of a little bit i don't i i don't like me i'm if i don't like it you know i this is not this is
Sonny00:25:48not and again it's not it's not it's not and this is the frustrating thing too is that it is infrequent enough that it's not a mandatory fix right it's one of these things where it's like i if i'm doing this it's a choice to do it
JVL00:26:02i'm looking at the intel website talking about uh jvl's effort thermal paste applications situations to avoid make sure to use the correct amount of thermal paste which is roughly the size of a pea or grain of rice an insufficient amount might not cover the surface area needed too much reduces the efficacy of the paste might be tempting to spread the thermal paste onto the cpu yourself we recommend letting the pressure from the base plate or water block being installed do it for you i don't understand correct manual application can cause air bubbles to form in the paste which the thermal conductivity oh yeah i mean it's uh it's man it is there and there look again you gotta go between the cooling you gotta go the the paste between the the cpu base plate and the cooling plate which means you might have to separate them i don't know man abort abort
Sonny00:27:05just just i don't think so there youtube is a wonderland youtube is like kind of a wonderful wonderland because like there are people who literally not my exact television but like yes basically the same model are like oh my motherboard was broken and i did this i did this quick fix with the thermal paste and then walks through the whole steps and i'm just like that looks that on the one hand i'm i'm glad that you are able to do this so easily i'm very happy for you but this looks this looks like a little dicey looks like it go it looks like it go wrong about a million different i wouldn't i wouldn't do surgery on my child this is like a child that has never disappointed
JVL00:27:50me up until now this is like the best child you've ever had right up there with the dog look at the blacks look at the quality of the blacks pixels do your other children give
Sonny00:28:02you contrast levels like this no do my other children broadcast in dolby vision no they do not hdr absolutely do not do that and frankly i'm a little bit tired of it a little bit tired of their their uh their gold breaking yeah michael what are you that's where i am all
Mike00:28:22right well good luck with that um yeah i mean i don't know so we've got an issue where we have a we have a giant limb on a tree in our front yard which is dead and needs to be taken down and uh my lovely wife um had somebody come and they said they could do it uh for six hundred dollars and she was able to uh get it get the price down uh from there um to get this giant limb the limb is it is essentially the the thickest limb on this giant tree um and it is uh if it were to break and fall it would either crush our fence our neighbor's fence or land on our neighbor's uh uh roof so we need to get it done so the guys go up there uh this is the middle of the week uh the guys go up there to start cutting it down it's pretty simple pretty straightforward they're not taking the whole tree down just this one this one branch uh and they are immediately attacked by a a bunch of wasps of some kind oh so they come down and they tell my wife uh you're gonna have to get rid of the wasps first um which is totally understandable she gave them some tylenol she gave them some things to because they got stung um so then i call out my pest guy and i know this is gonna cause all right i have like up is this uh the okay so the point in which the wasps appear to be uh entering the tree limb this is not on the tree limb this is in the tree oh oh they're inside they're inside they're inside the tree um is probably 30 feet
JVL00:30:25uh it's pretty high you're gonna find a pest guy who will climb a tree
Mike00:30:31this is not unusual oh really okay apparently but what here i will tell you what is unusual because i call my regular pest guy we have a guy come and he treats the outside of the house quarterly and um anything you know anything that we have an issue with pest wise that has to do with the structure of the house they will come back in between the quarterly test and and take care of yeah uh this is not and i knew this this was this will not be cut out as i'm gonna have to pay some more so i'm explaining to them over the phone what the issue is and i have that experience where it's like you know like the girl that answers the phone goes hold on and she's like i gotta get you to our to our wasp guy so then oh boy i get him on the phone
Sonny00:31:17our specialist that's right the specialist that's steve irwin the the wasp guy and so
Mike00:31:22good day mate i'm explaining it to you you got some wasps right and it's very clear like this is a guy who's used to people calling and being like there's a big old wasp nest in my garage can you come take it down so i explained to him and he's like hold on stop they're they're in the tree and i said yeah and it's like about 25 feet 30 feet i don't know and he's like okay i'm gonna have to send somebody out there to take pictures to give you an estimate i need a home visit so uh we scheduled that but that's probably free right yeah no it actually is free what we have we have a relationship oh you know there you go okay i like that you know
Sonny00:32:02wait do you not have a bug guy jmo oh i have a bug guy
Mike00:32:07yeah he's great yeah well if you ever need something like this they'll come out for the free estimate um so the guy comes out there and he i point i was home when he got there it was early in the morning and i'm pointing to where it is and he can see the wasps and he's like he he's like he can't believe what he's seeing and i don't think it's like the biggest deal it's like the most unheard of thing but it's it is shocking to him which makes me nervous um he says it's clear they are uh they are pale-faced uh hornets or wasps the problem you get into this by the way i've learned is like the terms wasp yellow jacket hornet they don't mean as much as you think because people interchange what that you know like everything is a wasp right and like yellow jackets are wasps and hornets are wasps and some things that are called hornets are not hornets you know and so it's very what about mud daubers mud daubers are also wasps yes um and all kinds of daubers um and so he says these they look like what they're doing and the way they're acting they look like uh uh what did i say pale-faced hornets or pale-faced wasps um he says but they're not acting they're they're not doing this one thing which is the standard paper uh you know the the the the paper nest that they which is supposed to hang down from an eve or from a branch it's not there they're it's inside the branch and so he can't figure out what's going on here so i have yet to hear back the estimate um i have to call back tomorrow because i was supposed to get a call today and did not get one um but i'm a little concerned that like this like this was not this is not your run-of-the-mill just bug guy who's coming to spray a bunch of stuff this was a guy who's like who knows his wasps and he was the wasp guy i gotta tell you i mean it's
JVL00:34:12it's like the it's like the tv i think you just gotta take the whole tree down get a new one but here's i don't think you can stop i mean the wasps are in that one branch how do you know the tree isn't riddled with them well yes those pale face motherfuckers question yes sonny how much
Mike00:34:29would it cost to rent a flamethrower i don't know i haven't looked into that yet that's a good idea
JVL00:34:36could you wait until winter because i believe insects can't live in the winter yeah because it's too cold and they're all hibernating yeah so we just wait until it's like 30 degrees out
Sonny00:34:47and yeah but if that if that limb is like dead if this is like an ice storm my concern is that
Mike00:34:54it's dead and it could fall and also i've been now that i know they're all up there i've been watching them and like my kids play under that tree like like jimmy stewart and rear window
JVL00:35:05sitting in there with your binoculars watching them melissa melissa the pale faces are at it
Mike00:35:13again oh the pale faces are there the pale faces oh they're having dinner again that's nice no look out so anyway i will have to update you on whatever but anyway but they yeah i so again the problem is you can't take the whole tree out because they got to cut here because here's the other thing they said they might have if it had been a smaller branch and had it been out of the way they might have because the initial plan was to go up there and cut it into pieces you know you cut it at the end and you cut it all the way down to where it hits the trunk if it were in a different spot or smaller they could cut it at the trunk but if they did that it again would fall on the house so they
JVL00:35:56really need michael i'm sorry you're gonna have to move yeah i got i mean i thought that you'd be able to take the tree out but actually you're gonna have to sell the house no don't tell anybody about that wasp that the wasp hell tree you pay you pay your bug guy to destroy the records of his visit i'll give you a little consideration if you just make sure you shred those records i want deniability you were never here all right all right what all right no i do i actually have
Mike00:36:24i have a solution for you i got a solution for you oh you do you're gonna thank me but go ahead
Sonny00:36:29i'm gonna thank you're gonna thank me later what you're gonna do what you're gonna do is you are going to go and you're gonna get a cherry picker you get cherry picker and you're gonna go you're gonna you're gonna bring the cherry picker up to where this hell limb is and you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna wrap you're gonna wrap some chains around it you're gonna put you're gonna you're gonna attach that to the cherry picker and you're gonna leave that there you're gonna come down you're gonna go and you're gonna get one of our friends we've got friends i'll tell i'll give you some names offline you're gonna get one of your friends to come out with an automatic weapon and you're just gonna shoot that limb down you're gonna shoot the bullets right at the tree up into the air you're gonna shoot the limb steven all the way down you're gonna shoot the limb you're gonna shoot it until there's nothing left and it won't crash to the ground because it'll be attached to the cherry picker you see and then you can just lower it then you can just lower it very gently into a waiting uh bonfire and then you can get your your binoculars out and you can watch all the little fuckers burn you have a burn burn wasps burn i will say thank you for that sonny i appreciate that i um
Mike00:37:42i'm so i'm here solving problems you are this is a good solution i will say i have speaking of youtube i've gone down the um the rabbit hole or uh or the you know the or the hornet wasthole of youtube videos of people who go and like um and and kill like wasp nests and it's fascinating it is fascinating because these things but bees and wasps and stuff they're fascinating creatures they're terrifying but they're fascinating because of the all of the like the social elements to how they act and how they react to stimuli different stimuli and like they're protecting the queen and but then like some species like kill their queens and the new queen that's like there it is if they were human size they would be the most terrifying
Sonny00:38:33creatures in the universe so anyway that's all all insects should die i i don't i do not care for insects i understand we need them to remove the waste from the planet or whatever but i if i could i like i really dislike i really dislike stinging insects and and biting insects oh yeah like they're they are they are the worst kind of monsters just awful things no all right this is why you get guns to kill the bugs i don't think it works that way um very small shot
Mike00:39:10not with that attitude all right uh okay that's all for me let's move on and talk about the box hell of a show yeah we're not even to mr redford yet i bet robert redford would approve of my gun gun murdering the wasps yeah well let's just let sleeping dogs lie um so number one at the box of this week i've been waiting i've been chomping at the bit to say this one number one of the box office this weekend demon slayer kimetsu right kimetsu no yaiba infinity castle pretty good job is that pretty good okay number one i assume this is this is anime or is our friend vick would say anime anime is this anime okay yeah um number two the conjuring last rites we talked a little bit about last week number three downton abbey the grand finale um it is there was an snl uh ad like when the last out nabby movie came out uh like a sketch where the premise of it was basically it's the most uh boring movie in in and you know where nothing happens all the stakes are low um but it's like what something every mom you know will go see and i found out from my mother-in-law that she took her sister and their mother to see a movie and my wife did not even have to ask what the movie was downton abbey the grand finale it's mom movie so it's number three of the box office uh any thoughts on
Sonny00:40:37this week at the box office i mean i i somebody on twitter asked me if there are any comps for demon slayer kamitsu no yaiba infinity castle and i can't i literally cannot think of one i i cannot think of i cannot think of a foreign i i can't think of a foreign franchise that does anything like this foreign franchise of any sort but a foreign animated franchise in particular um is the these are unheard of numbers they're they're just unheard of numbers uh you know and i talk a lot about how crunchyroll and anime have uh and this is sony pictures which owns crunchyroll there's some there's some relationship there but like i've talked a lot about how anime is kind of underappreciated box office force you know they they put these things in american theaters for one weekend and they do 15 to 25 million dollars that's that's not irregular um but this sort of this sort of uh this sort of box office performance is really just sui generis in a way i i i have a hard i i just don't i i can't i can't there's no good comp for it this is this is a totally unreal and unusual thing i mean compare it to the numbers that neja too did the other other week right so neja too is the highest gross like two it grows like two billion dollars in china it they released it in america with a chinese uh subtitled uh subtitled people in china who didn't go to see it five times were sent to
JVL00:42:21the gulags right well yes i mean this became like a point of national pride that we're going to make
Sonny00:42:27this the highest grossing movie ever right there's some there's some numbers box office numbers from china are always a little bit weird and uh you you you don't necessarily want to put full faith and credit in them um but the uh but like whatever it did very well nobody nobody really denies that it did very well uh and it came to america and the the chinese language uh english subtitle re-release uh here in the states grossed about 20 million dollars and then a24 released an english dubbed version that grossed like two million dollars um a couple weeks ago and so like that is a much more standard sort of release like this i you know the numbers on this thing are in you know sony sony lowballed the projections at 35 million uh rival studios were saying probably closer to 45 or 50 million but even like the the amateur box office watcher that i watch on twitter was like this movie's gonna do 65 to 75 million dollars and he got it perfect. He nailed it. Um, uh, and, uh, I don't know. I don't like, it's not going to hold the, the business is entirely based on first weekend. Um, the walkup, there's no walkup business for this thing. It's probably going to drop 85% or something next weekend. Um, it's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna crater, but like, that's fine because that's, you know that's that's that's what it's supposed to do um i i have no i i i have no grand thoughts about this it's just very weird it's very weird you never see anything like this what that's it what is what is the movie it's like a is it like a mike mike i could not possibly begin to explain anything about this it's a series it's a movie that's based on a series it is it's like an anime series right it's not it's not a standalone film it's the this is like i think this is the second it's the second or third i think it's the third in theater release of this series but you know it's it's a it's a series on crunchyroll like it's very popular and anime is incredibly popular in the united states just you you it it is underrated for how insanely popular it is but
Mike00:44:44but but is it all like is it all like kind of like martial arts based like fantasy action like what do like a lot of that okay okay all right a lot of that uh i mean
Sonny00:44:58yeah there's there's other i mean there's other you know there are there but it's mostly you know fighting there's there's one there's a there's one coming out next month maybe it's later this month chainsaw man it's about a guy with chainsaws for hands that'll be in theaters that'll probably gross 15 million dollars in theaters no nobody knows what fucking chainsaw man is in america unless you're gen alpha or gen z
Mike00:45:23i'll have to ask my gen alpha kids uh if they know what chainsaw man is ask them i would be curious they know about there's a manga that they are aware of because other kids are into it that they go to school with and it's called like one one piece is this
Sonny00:45:40familiar to any one piece yeah sure yeah yeah that's a huge hit on netflix one piece oh so it's
JVL00:45:49a movie too which i believe began as a as a tabletop card game that's the cards maybe it was a manga before it was a card game he was a manga first i don't know i don't know i don't
Mike00:46:02know um any other thoughts on the on the box office should we should we move on no okay uh all right well we uh decided this week to rather than seeing one movie although i did see a movie for us this week and for this discussion in anticipation of it uh we decided that we would have a kind of a tribute or a discussion about uh the career of robert redford robert redford uh died earlier this week after uh really kind of a one-of-a-kind career in hollywood sonny do you want to talk to us a little bit about robert redford before we we jump further in the discussion uh robert redford
Sonny00:46:47thank you i'm hoping that's what i was looking for uh robert redford um so i look i i in my in my obituary for robert redford i did not focus on his acting roles though you know obviously everybody loves his great performances and his great movies like all the president's men and um uh now i can't i now i can't think of it the sundance kid uh you know three days in the condor etc etc so like i um i but i didn't want to focus on those i wanted to focus on what he did as what he did for like the world of filmmaking and independent film because you know he so robert redford is the biggest movie star in the world in 1974 or whatever right if you go go back and read william goldman's book he's got uh adventures in he does these kind of five-year snapshots of who the biggest box office draw is and in 1974 it was i believe he was number one number one top of the top of the list and that's not surprising because again movies like all the president's men and uh i don't understand the the natural and you know jeremiah johnson natural isn't out then but jeremiah johnson right right so he's got he's got all these he's got all these huge enormous hits right he's got all of this critical success he's making he's making the sting did you know that the sting is the 21st highest grossing
Mike00:48:23film all time adjusted for inflation i did i did see this when i was reading up on him and it's because it was like it was in theaters for a really long time yeah anyway um am i okay for
JVL00:48:39you guys or am i kind of cutting in and out no my you're fine michael is am i bad a little i'm
Sonny00:48:44a little okay it's okay all right no no i just want to make sure that you can you can hear me all right um but but like again like huge biggest star in the world and he sees hollywood uh starting to turn he sees hollywood uh moving away from the kind of new hollywood uh tourist driven stuff that he was making and he was making with paul newman and you know they were making with um sydney
Mike00:49:14paul
Sonny00:49:14with sydney pollack and william goldman is writing these movies and he's and he's he sees he sees the world changing he sees the world changing away to franchise fair and this i mean this again this is early this is like he sees this in 19 the at the end of the 1970s early 1980s he sees the world that jaws and star wars has wrought and he's like i don't like this i don't like i don't like how the studios are all kind of condensing into these conglomerates held by holding companies i am going to i'm going to do something about it and he founds the sundance institute and i think it was 1981 he founds the sundance institute in 1981 and the sundance film festival like he picks up a couple years later it's not like it started immediately but the sundance institute was dedicated to getting getting money and getting help to people who wanted to make movies that were of the sort of movie he liked to make now robert redford was never an indie film star he he just did not he did not make them like the closest thing really is a movie maybe i'll talk a little bit about later a movie called all is lost which came out in 2013 and that's like the closest he really gets to kind of doing indie film for most of his career uh but he's not like he's not an independent film guy he's a movie star he is he but the the for as good and as memorable as all of his movies are as good and as memorable as sneak is or i don't know indecent proposal right or the natural or a bridge too far or whatever else the biggest impact he made on the world of film was the founding of sundance because you like regardless of how you feel about sundance now and how it's kind of turned into a marketplace more than a place where film is made and kind of celebrated and you know how it's kind of oscar baity and like how that has all collapsed too like sundance is no longer really the the powerhouse it used to be it's a very different world he he changed how things were made and bought and sold in hollywood um i think mostly for the better i think mostly for the better it's you know again it's debatable about you know the commercialization of independent film blah blah blah the role miramax played in all this and then in the late 80s and early 90s etc you we can we can argue about the the benefits and the the costs and the the the the debits there but the um but the the the truth of the matter is that again for as big a star as he was his most important gift to the world of filmmaking was sundance and and i i think that we don't appreciate that uh enough i think i think most people don't most people don't care most people don't care they like they they just want to watch butch cassidy and the sundance kid and they want to watch all the president's men and they want to watch the sting um i watched the sting for the first time like two or three years ago very fun movie i still don't quite understand how this is the 21st highest grossing film of all time after uh after inflation um but it's played for forever i get it but i don't know so i i think uh you know robert redford uh huge movie star obviously but bigger than that in ways that are uh ways that are not fully appreciated i think by people who
Mike00:52:51even really like robert redford question yeah um who on that i think that's very well stated sonny who would you say are sort of the the filmmakers the artists who have benefited the most or sort of robert redford or or sundance's children right
Sonny00:53:13i think of like stephen soderbergh right soderbergh is is is the obvious uh stephen soderbergh is the obvious answer uh because you know sex lies and videotape comes out in 1989 um and he makes a bunch of stuff that goes that goes to sundance some of it does well some of it doesn't i think schizopolis did too um uh other stuff um and you know he he's i think soderbergh still goes to sundance for with a lot of his movies i couldn't say for sure the the festival world is also shattered now right i mean it's like it's not just sundance uh i mean khan was always there venice was always there but like you know you you have tiff now up in toronto and you
Mike00:53:54have tell your ride and but like if we were to ask stephen soderbergh and maybe he's talked about this since since uh since redford's passing like would he sort of point to what you just described as as really kind of uh as helping launch his career i'm curious like who are the people who
Sonny00:54:13yeah i don't i don't know i don't know i mean you know who who would probably say that is kevin smith kevin smith uh obviously um uh clerks is is a big hit in sundance and gets picked up by miramax which then leads to uh you know mall rats and the mall rats of course was a an enormous commercial flop which forced him to go back to sundance with chasing amy um and he kind of stayed in that that pond for a while um miramax again the miramax part of the story is fair enough is is very very large and like often very dirty and nasty uh peter biskin's book on this subject is very good if you're if you're into if you want to read about the like ugly indie scene of the of the late 80s 90s up through the the early aughts that you should read i think it's called um down and dirty pictures or something like that okay uh who oh there was one more the that i wanted to say and now i'm uh blanking maybe it'll come back to me um but the uh but yeah i mean i like i don't know i it's it's also just a place where like for a long time if you there if you were a legitimate oscar contender a lot of the times you and you were an indie you would start at sundance the most recent one of course is coda coda which won best picture uh during uh the the post-covid year it was i think it was the best picture winner in 2022 um was a sundance movie ended up getting bought by apple for 10 or 20 million dollars or something they won best picture with that movie um so you know that that is a uh that is that it's not it's sundance is not dead as a force but it has definitely
JVL00:56:02been diluted by kind of everything else in the world boys have you seen a bridge too far
Sonny00:56:13i've seen i've seen like bits and pieces on it was always playing on like tnt
JVL00:56:17when i was a kid can i just read you a partial cast list so i have never seen this movie it's a richard right here is a richard appenbarrow co-written by william goldman robert redford okay lawrence olivier okay uh all good so far um let's see we get to uh sorry max million shell oh i've heard of him okay uh anthony hopkins james khan michael kane oh hold on gene hackman ryan o'neill sean connery oh this is the biggest cannonball run but it's for a movie that i have never seen and barely ever heard of elliot and also elliot gould john ratzenberger it's a little known fact that i was uh in a uh movie what uh i i kind of want to see it now just uh just to people watch well it was
Sonny00:57:29it was it was supposed to be like um the longest day kind of except like the 19 the like late 1970s kind of dyspeptic downer version of it because it's about right because it fails right it's a
JVL00:57:42it's a very 70s take on world war ii we're going to take this great triumph of world war ii and because of the 70s we're going to tell you how it all sucked right right yeah right um yeah well i
Mike00:57:54don't know like what what else we want to talk about with uh with robert redford so because i mean we could just jump right into our draft and and be able to talk about the draft can i
JVL00:58:04just make a point first i i there's one so i only have one small thing i want to say about him because robert redford is not an actor he's a movie star yes and those are very very different things and actors are people like robert nero ralph pacino and here's the the big thing i want to point out robert redford always has a secret on screen right like everything is very very reserved you don't have a whole lot of insight as to what's going on behind the eyes right he does a lot of eye acting but it's also he's always holding something back from you and this is a movie star thing i think paul newman was a lot like this frankly george clooney yeah a lot like this and that's different than actors actor actors don't do that uh it's like daniel day lewis is never withholding on you neither is pacino right they're they're they're showing you things but that's different from being in a movie star and that when you show everything to the audience that they might they might really love it and enjoy it but the lack of mystery prevents you from becoming a draw in the way that like robert redford is able to he he leaves everybody wanting more yeah they really he really really does
Mike00:59:28by the way it's kind of amazing by the way you you mentioned eye acting also great phone acting robert redford's always great with like holding a phone or like looking at something while talking on the phone and like you know grabbing
Sonny00:59:42for something i mean it is it is uh i think we've discussed this a little bit before on the show but i have always i've always like vaguely resented all the president's men despite
JVL00:59:52a great movie yeah kindest casting in the history of the world one of the great one of the great
Sonny00:59:581970s movies undoubtedly no one would deny this but come come the fuck on like that's not what there's no washington dc reporter who's ever looked anything like that like he could look at
JVL01:00:12hold hold the phone even dustin hoffman is unbelievably kind cast totally total 100
Sonny01:00:18the kindest we've seen both those guys we know we've i know we know nothing like that come on uh no but i but he looks like that is the journalistic equivalent of christmas jones
JVL01:00:31that's dr christmas jones dr christmas jones nuclear scientist
Sonny01:00:37i believe all right well or physics i don't know it's something like that uh anyway no he he holds the phone and you're just like oh that's the sexiest man who's ever lived of course he's a journalist correct now shattered glass gets it much much closer
Mike01:00:51bunch of grubby grubby assholes um so okay well why don't we do why don't we do uh our our plan all right our plan being we came up with the last minute was to do a draft uh yeah we're doing a
Sonny01:01:05draft i want to make i want to put one rule in one rule into effect one rule only one rule again this is all very last minutes i'm throwing curveballs here i'm keeping everybody on their toes one rule only one movie per decade this should be easy we're only doing three rounds i can't do that that's we're only doing three rounds i can't one movie per decade yes you can
JVL01:01:26it's very easy because i just know if we had a uh no because how many like that means we each have to pick just one different movie from like the 2010s no no no i'm saying three rounds three rounds we're
Sonny01:01:41only doing three rounds but you can only pick one movie per decade so it doesn't have to be that
JVL01:01:46requires way too much foresight and planning we are doing by the same if you want to do that you can hold yourself to one per decade but i i ain't agreeing sonny sonny you you drop this 70s 80s 90s
Sonny01:01:58aughts there's six decades there's six decades that you can choose from you've only got we're
JVL01:02:03picking nine movies no we're only doing three rounds he's saying jvl three rounds there's three
Sonny01:02:08of us no no i'm saying each of us each of us only gets one you can i'm saying i'm saying you can only pick one movie from the 1960s only one movie from the
Mike01:02:191970s only one movie from the 1980s what i pick sonny sonny you you're you're pushing your luck you drop this draft idea we accepted it it's a great idea first of all but but i think you just
Sonny01:02:33hit the randomizer sonny i've already done the people what they want i've already done the
Mike01:02:36randomizer instead of we're not doing a snake draft i learned from last draft we're just gonna this order and then uh so we're gonna start jvl then sonny then me for the first round and then sonny gets to pick next and then me and then jvl and then the last round i'll pick first and then jvl and then sonny what sound good how is this any easier than a snake how does it start i've got a
Sonny01:03:03jvl you go first then sonny then me all right so it's jvl then me and then mike and then in the
Mike01:03:11what's the what's the random order here no then the next order is you went second the first round so you go first the second round that's fine let's do it so who goes second i do
Sonny01:03:23and then jvl goes last and then jvl goes last yeah and then we bump up and then this is tremendous content i can't believe and then mike and then mike goes first and then jvl goes second and
Mike01:03:36then i go last yes everybody gets this is what everybody gets a chance to go first it's fine everybody complained about the snake draft last last time it's fine
Sonny01:03:45nobody complained about the snake draft nobody complained about the snake i got some i am not
JVL01:03:50picking best movies i'm picking my favorite movies not even picking best performers just being my favorite movies all right and uh with the first pick i select all the president's men because it's fucking great it's great it is the rare movie which lives up to the rare classic which is truly as good as it is and it's telling a story that everybody knows and yet you you know the story you also know how the story ends nothing happens in it nobody gets shot there's no way and it's fascinating and tense and interesting and there's never a dull it's fucking great if you haven't seen all the president's men
Sonny01:04:28go see it streaming on the criterion channel you can watch it tonight there you go uh sonny you're
Mike01:04:35uh do any other discussion of all the president's men i i'm glad you love it jvl i'm i remember when i first saw it i was a little underwhelmed but that's why it's your pick that's why it's your
Sonny01:04:45pick sunny i mean you you were underwhelmed by it yeah i was kind of underwhelmed it's it's fine all right it's real it's a real fucking vick mattis comment all right uh butch cassidy and the sundance kid okay butch cassidy and the sun i mean this is this is the movie that may like it changes it changes everything for robert redford uh and it and it changes everything for uh william goldman and it's just like it's one of the it's one of the great um it's one of it's like one of the great modern westerns one of the great neo-westerns and it is just it is there there are only a handful of really perfect pairings in cinema like teams of actors in cinema history and robert redford and paul newman is a perfect pairing um and they they you know they they get together a couple more times they're in they're in the
JVL01:05:45sting together they're in can you think of another pairing of two movie stars of that magnitude that
Mike01:05:52works the way this does because normally it's like a movie star and a straight man right would you would you consider um which would you consider like shanghai noon obviously is the other shanghai
Sonny01:06:07noon is the other shanghai noon and shanghai nights shanghai night right
JVL01:06:11just like the two of them in the sting and in that's right that's right it's kind of the same way i was gonna say chan and owen wilson i was gonna say in all seriousness affleck and affleck
Mike01:06:20and uh damon but i don't think it i don't think they compare well i mean that's close but it's
JVL01:06:26when they're young before they're movie stars right and they're not paired equally it's just i mean goodwill hunting is affleck's there is is damon's movie right yeah but also i mean i guess they show up together and yeah i take it back they show up together
Mike01:06:40in air they show up together yeah george george cooney and brad pitt oceans 11 yes that's yeah
Sonny01:06:45the oceans the oceans movies definitely that's the calm um but also it's interesting because you know redford is not a huge star when butch cassidy and the sundance kid correct comes out he's he's a known actor he's a known quantity but he's not an enormous star and he's not paul newman right paul newman he's not paul newman paul newman paul newman is like you know very much first bill in that film i don't know uh but no i like it's it's it's it's really interesting uh anyway uh mike you're uh well i'm just
Mike01:07:19gonna take the sting since uh to continue our discussion of paul newman and robert redford um i i loved this movie i love this movie more than butch butch cassidy um and i was obsessed with it when i first saw it probably like 10 years ago or so um i i honestly want to rewatch it uh this week but i i decided to watch a different redford movie this week which maybe i'll get to to picking um but it's just it captures that same magic of those two um and in you know a few decades in uh ahead of where butch cassidy and sonny's kid was i love like hustler movies and it's just i love that i love the um uh i love the the entertainer which is the kind of the musical motif throughout that throughout that movie um it's it's it's i know why it was uh the 21st highest grossing movie not only because it was in theaters for so long but because it's delightful from like the beginning to the end like it's just
JVL01:08:21you're watching a general audience like literally everybody can see anybody can see it and it's
Mike01:08:26like i just it's kind of like what a movie should be i think it's it's kind of great so it's really great uh sunny you're next uh i'm gonna go with sneakers uh sneakers
Sonny01:08:40sneakers is kind of an interesting movie for me because it's one of these again i mentioned a bridge too far earlier but sneakers is another one of these movies where i i probably watched like 10 minutes of it uh every time i watched it until it kind of all came together and i eventually did like sit down and watch the watch the whole movie um but sneakers sneakers is this great movie uh for robert redford in 1992 or 1991 where whenever it came out because he is it's it's you you see him kind of moving kind of gracefully into that middle age older age period and a lot of a lot of actors of his magnitude do not make that transition as well do not he like he was he is not like all chopped up his you know his face is looking basically the same right and he is doing he's doing it with a group of guys who are not exactly the same age as him but pretty close like dan akroyd ben kingsley um uh sydney poitier is i think a little older but uh it is uh it's a it's a good group of guys it's it's also just a very fun movie it's a fun it's like it's a it's ultimately a fairly silly movie but it's a it is a it is a very fun kind of spy um thriller type of thing uh it's just it's great again it's like basic cable classic it's one of those absolute all-time rewatchable like oh yeah i'll watch 10 minutes of this and then 30 minutes later you're still watching sneakers so sneakers excellent um i guess is it is it uh it's it's my turn next you mike you this ridiculous order
Mike01:10:18i it makes sense to me uh okay um i've thought a lot about this and i'm also jettisoning the can only pick one per decade uh rule here that only sunny is following um and i'm gonna go with a movie that i just saw this week the three day three days of the condor um which i've been hearing about for years knew it was a movie i need to watch but i just never got around to it so i said i'm gonna watch it uh and be able to talk about it a little bit um it is uh also it is fun in the way that that uh paranoid 70s thriller movie can be fun um there is uh you know there is a sort of moment about 10 to 15 minutes into the movie probably 10 minutes into the movie where it just starts it just starts in in the sense like there's the setup you kind of get to know who uh the who who turner the condor is in this little outpost of the cia and then the thing happens that kicks it off and then it just goes for forever i mean it really only slows down uh during the kind of the love scene um but otherwise it's just kind of go go go um so i really i i think it it's it's this hilarious thing where robert redford is supposed to be bookish and like not you know the most attractive man to have ever worked at the cia um and and i it's that's hilarious to me
Sonny01:11:52one of the one of the uh people were passing around a still uh redford in that movie wearing like an overcoat with the collar turned up yes sunglasses and it's like again it's just like oh that's right he's the coolest and hottest man who ever lived
Mike01:12:09well it's especially that that the moment when and that uh in that scene where he's doing that it's sort of like that look is is signals his transformation from like a code breaker who like reads texts in this office and and sort of you know writes these reports into like a real spy type person and uh but which you never believe like it's like he was always that guy
Sonny01:12:37yeah i know it's like it's like the it's like in uh you know she's all that or whatever where he instead of taking glasses off and you're like oh yeah oh yeah this this this girl's a babe it's like oh look at this overcoat he just put on
Mike01:12:50oh yeah that's right oh he is cool um two uh real quick things uh other actors in the movie uh faye dunaway is i think an acquired taste but she's great in this movie um uh no i mean i think
Sonny01:13:04i think she's i'm i'm jbl can i get you to weigh in why your taste
JVL01:13:09fate faye dunaway is an acquired taste well it's it's true you have to be a man who's breathing and if you if you're a man who is breathing oh i'm sorry and also interested in women are you are you a straight man who is alive well then yes you would you find faye dunaway faye
Sonny01:13:30dunaway unbelievably frankly i think even the gay even the gay men are probably into her i i don't
Mike01:13:34know i was not talking about attractors in fact that was what i was about to say is that she looks fantastic in this movie um she's she looks very hot in this movie i was gonna say oh so she's just a shit actor is what you're saying kind of uh wow i mean mommy dearest mommy dearest uh strong disagree a little bit of overacting but she's great in this movie i love her in this movie and uh finally my favorite uh actor that i didn't realize was in this movie is cliff robertson plays like the deputy director of the cia um and and younger viewers may know him as uncle ben from the sam raimi spider-man movie so it was great to see him okay jvl spy game
JVL01:14:17one of the best movies that uh he's ever done it's not even a great movie it's just a good movie um it's deeply fun deeply deeply fun it is a weird passing of the torch movie because uh i gotta say brad pitt is as close as we get to a second coming of robert redford and it is a moment in which so brad pitt who is both a movie star and an actor he is a rare guy who kind of is but is both there aren't a lot of guys like him and this is the movie where brad pitt really learns how to be a movie star who is also playing second fiddle which is a thing that we get so he does this the same year he does oceans 11 and uh you see this as a recurring thing i mean it's like this once upon a time in hollywood right he can he can be in a movie he can be the number two guy in the movie and still be as bright as the sun which is a really rare guy i i just think brad pitt is criminally underrated i actually don't think brad pitt is properly rated as an actor that's probably right uh and i i love spy movies and i love spy game all right all right spy game uh no i i was gonna pick it i i that i'd
Sonny01:15:39love that i love that i love that movie all i was gonna say is i he made redford made two movies in 2001 um and didn't make movies like three years before or three years after that he made two movies in 2001 and i really like both of them i really like the last castle the rod lorry a movie where james gandolfini is like the corrupt warden of a of a an army prison and uh like that that the making of that movie is really interesting because redford kind of came in and like signed on for a villain role he was like he was he was not supposed to be like the good guy in that movie right right right and then it kind of he kind of like kept tweaking it and tweaking it and eventually it was like him against the system you know kind of standard redford stuff classic red but i still like that movie a lot
Mike01:16:27um all right well i think i have the last uh first you go first um i'm gonna pick i think i think there's gonna be a steal sunny i'm gonna pick captain america the winter soldier
Sonny01:16:38you did this just to spite jvl you shouldn't have sat on it jvl you gotta take it you had
Mike01:16:45to get spy game i take winter soldier um just because it's it's so funny sunny you mentioned all the stuff about about you know his embrace of indie uh independent filmmaking and noticing that you know the the the industry was turning toward franchises and big budgets and all that stuff so of course like what does he end up doing in the you know the very last years of his career is he stars in a marvel movie um and he's just i mean what can you say it's it's the best you've said this i know you guys have said this it's it's basically one of the best of the marvel cinematic universe movies um it's one of my favorites uh and it has robert redford in it you know and and playing a bad guy it's just uh it's it's it's awesome can i just say a word about met him in this so he is
JVL01:17:38the bad guy he's a barely on screen bad guy like he's he is tangential to the movie the movie isn't really about him the movie is about bucky and uh steve rogers and really also about black widow and it's about the three of them sort of on the run moving through paranoid 70s style things which is a very familiar home to redford and yet redford is so grounded in this movie like he he is a just feels real and it doesn't feel like there's any artifice and also again he's an aging actor and he's but he is so much of a movie star that there's only one other person who can really be on screen with him and it's scar joe that's a good like when she sort of holds her weight on screen with him in a way that chris evans simply does not like chris evans you feel him getting smaller every time he's in the frame with redford in ways that i think are amusing to watch like he's shrinking back to his pre-captain america yeah almost like he's becoming like priest pre-super soldier steve rogers um also great
Mike01:18:57suit that uh robert rufter wears in this movie just he just looks great in a suit i mean what can you say um all right uh jvl i think you are uh you're next
JVL01:19:08you guys are not gonna like this horse whisperer so it's the other robert redford scarjo pairing yeah do you guys remember that she's like 12 years old yeah she was like fantastic is this her first movie no she had been in like ghost world i think um and like i'm sure she was in
Mike01:19:28some kid movie oh no she was in she was in north that was her first movie the terrible the terrible she was in north yes she was um wasn't she it was it was a very it was a very small part um but she was in it sorry go ahead sorry i didn't mean
JVL01:19:43that so i i uh i gotta make a confession for you to you guys um what i love about the horse whisperer isn't really robert redford i i very much like scarlett johansson's performance and i i think i remember saying to to vick after like i saw the screening for this i was like this is one of the best child acting performances i've ever seen like i don't know who this kid is but she'll she might as well retire now because she'll never be as good as this huh who knew what really makes it for me is kristin scott thomas yeah i knew you were gonna say that who uh i have i have exactly two actress fetishes and what both of them are like middle-aged actresses and it is kristin scott thomas and then uh oh god help me australian hella who she plays hella she's no no hella in the four movies kate blanchett kate plant middle not young kate blanchett middle-aged kate blanchett and middle-aged kristin scott thomas oh son i don't know what it is again it's a very strange thing i'm not proud of it i feel a little bit like
Mike01:20:57troy mcclure and the fish but fair enough there it is i'm just being real with you if you watch tv you should watch the uh apple tv plus uh show slow horse
JVL01:21:08horses because she's uh i love see i haven't done it because i like the book so much
Mike01:21:12i really like the books quite a lot you should watch the show it's really good it's a great show
JVL01:21:16is it yeah oh my god to ruin the book is it going to be like a lousy version of the books
Sonny01:21:21well i don't know i haven't read the books i don't i don't read books no but uh but uh
Mike01:21:26gary oldman is fantastic he's perfectly fantastic perfectly cast all right so i like the horse whisperer for my reasons all right it's sunny last but not least
Sonny01:21:37uh little scene movie from uh 2020 omnibote a fast boat fantasia in which uh robert redford voiced lokiya the dolphin master is my no why didn't you take the all is lost no i'm kidding i knew that i am i am take i am taking all is lost okay there we go is my last thing uh all is lost is almost nobody saw it um directed by jc shandor and this again is like the closest thing that he gets to making an indie film really it was not a it was not a big big production but it is it's kind of like have we have we discussed the tom hardy movie lock where it's just tom hardy in a
JVL01:22:18car in a car talking about the concrete pour talking about the concrete pour great movie
Sonny01:22:22absolutely wonderful movie this movie is like that except there's even less talking he's not even talking it's it's literally just a camera on robert redford's face as the universe tries to murder him for like a hundred minutes and it is riveting it is riveting you know jbl you say he's not a good actor and that's he's not an actor he's a movie star and that's not a good actor i just know i know i know i want to i want to be i want he's not an actor he's a movie star there and those are two different things but this is very much a movie where he comes in as a movie star and uses all of the movie star tricks to get you to watch him for again a hundred minutes uh alone on screen the famously the shooting script for this was like 30 pages long um which if you know anything about screenplays they're basically a minute a page um but this was again it's a it's a hundred and five minute movie something like that um 30 pages long uh and it's just again it's just like him in the midst of him on a sinking ship trying not to die in the middle of the ocean um and it's it's totally riveting he is uh he is really compelling uh just to watch on screen and to go back to captain america and the winter soldier real quick one thing that's interesting about that movie is that like he he parachutes into this movie for what like 15 or 20 minutes he does not have a lot of screen time he does not have a lot of screen time and solely through the force of both his kind of gravitas and his history as an actor he got every critic in the country to say wow marvel made a 1970s paranoid thriller it's a movie where a flying spaceship crashes into the potomac ocean or the potomac river right like it's not right it's there's this is the furthest thing you could get from a 1970s paranoid thriller right it's not it is not it's got it's got men in flying suits shooting each other like it's not a it's not a it's got a guy with a bionic arm punching things a 1970s spy thriller but but it has enough of the trappings of the 1970s spy thriller and it has robert redford in it and people are like oh yeah i see what they're doing here and that is that is that is movie stardom folks that is how you do it that is like the nay plus ultra of movie stardom is like you show up in a movie and you define that movie despite being the guy with the and at the end of the credits you know right
Mike01:25:07all right so do we want to sum those up just so listeners uh so yeah yeah you got
Sonny01:25:13all right so jbl yeah jbl took all the president's men spy game and the horse whisperer uh i took i took butch cassidy and the sundance kid uh sneakers and all is lost uh and mike you had the sting three days of the condor and captain america the winter soldier
Mike01:25:37for everybody out there that's a that's a pretty even match there that's a hard one so tell us in the comments tell us in the comments who you think won uh that that draft but i think i think we're pretty evenly matched that was a good i mean you're picking from great options here there's not a lot you know these are all great options so not a lot of fat on those bones um no no a little
Sonny01:25:58bit in the a little bit in the 2000s interesting nobody's reached nobody's reaching for lions for
Mike01:26:02lambs interestingly nobody picked anything from the 80s he didn't make a ton of movies in the 80s but there was the natural there's out of africa um he directed ordinary people um but interesting nobody picked anything yeah the only the only one of those movies i
Sonny01:26:17would have picked potentially is the natural frankly yeah yeah so um you didn't talk about
Mike01:26:22his directing no right what a river runs through it uh well he directed the horse whisperer didn't
JVL01:26:29he handsome american handsome american movie did he direct the horse whisperer yeah oh yeah oh well there you go i didn't even realize that i had uh picked it yeah i'm so distracted by kristin scott thomas she goes running he's like are you going out for a jog she says i don't jog i run uh hello mommy i have to say one stinker in the uh in the directing
Mike01:26:51uh filmography legend of bagger vance just it did not age well that's not a very good movie not a very good movie um but uh anyway uh all right well uh any other thoughts no happy gilmore um uh any any more thoughts on robert redford anything else we want to say
Sonny01:27:12no no no this this show has gone on this has gone way too long episode uh get all you pay for it
Mike01:27:19all right that is all the time we're giving to this episode join us over at subbeacon.com tell your friends and family leave us a comment and we'll talk to you next time
Sonny01:27:28here can i say something about the
Mike01:27:36reveal of like the big reveal at the end of three days of the condor like the you know what it all was about um there was something like caught brought me up short and there's something so funny because of just like what you know about robert redford and his political activism all the stuff it's like the big reveal from like the guy inside the cia he's been running this shadow cia cabal and and whatever is it was all about oil it was all about oil and it's like it's like
JVL01:28:06thrown out there like the audience is supposed to be like oh that's what it was i can't believe it
Sonny01:28:14and it's just it's very what's like it's like the nice guys it's like that you remember the nice guys the the same black movie where like the last 30 minutes it's like oh yeah by the way this is all about evil car companies and pollution like wait what it i thought it was about i thought it
Mike01:28:29was about dead hookers and cars right what's going on it just falls very flat um anyway that's all i
Sonny01:28:34have i'm sure it's fine
?01:28:36Thank you.
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