#344. 'Scream' (1996)
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
With Scream 7 topping the box office, the crew heads back to Wes Craven's 1996 original, and the verdict is near-unanimous adoration: Sonny calls it the high-water mark of the slasher genre, arguing it "did to the slasher film what Seinfeld did to the sitcom" by perfecting and then destroying the form (a point he credits JVL and Mike with helping him articulate), and singles out Drew Barrymore's rule-breaking cold open, Kevin Williamson's meta-aware script, and the cast (Neve Campbell, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard) as still holding up decades later. JVL agrees but frames it as a movie utterly "of its moment," tying its aspirational, too-clever teen dialogue to the same late-90s Kevin Williamson/Joss Whedon/Amy Sherman-Palladino WB-era patois that produced Dawson's Creek and Buffy, and connects the film's total annihilation of the traditional slasher to the rise of "elevated horror." Mike, watching it for the first time with his horror-skeptical wife (who loved it), is most struck by how thoroughly it transports him back to mid-90s suburbia, right down to the now-obsolete landline/9-1-1 plot mechanics and David Arquette's fully-formed, pre-8 Legged Freaks screen persona. Along the way they dig into the Scream 7 casting drama (Neve Campbell's contract holdout and reported $7 million payday, Melissa Barrera's firing over Israel/Gaza comments, Jenna Ortega bowing out), riff on Harvey and Bob Weinstein's outsized shadow over 90s Hollywood (with a Jeffrey Epstein/Jeffrey Katzenberg tangent via the Behind the Bastards podcast), and trace the post-Scream teen-horror boom (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Final Destination) through torture porn to today's supernatural "elevated horror." The opening third is a long dudes-chatting stretch: Mike vents about his sons' overlapping basketball/baseball seasons and a snow-wrecked second-grade coaching campaign, JVL marvels at how Division III baseball pitchers (unlike position players) routinely get drafted based on pure velocity/spin-rate metrics regardless of team success, and Sonny announces he'll miss next week's show for a long-dreaded family trip to Paris — sparking a run of bits about Euro Disney, French pickpockets, a "royale with cheese," his wife's recent cancer scare that delayed the trip for years, and a detour into the Chinese zodiac (2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse) prompted by Zootopia 2's massive China box office.
From the show notes
Not to be confused with 'Scream' (2022)!
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00What's that noise popcorn you're making popcorn uh-huh i only eat popcorn at the movies well i'm getting ready to watch a video really what oh just some scary movie you like scary movie
Mike00:00:13Welcome to the sub beacon podcast i'm your co-host mike warren joining me as always are my two co-hosts who definitely know the name of the killer in the original friday the thirteenth jonathan v last and sonny bunch join us over at sub beacon.com tell your friends and family if they want to listen to this show. They can do it at sub beacon.com they can only do it at sub beacon.com new episodes every friday join us over at sub beacon.com we are going to be talking about scream the thirty year anniversary i guess we're several months before the thirty year anniversary of scream but we're all so old i know right we'll talk about that in a bit but first we're going to talk some dude i mean i i i think we should talk dudes chatting here but you guys kind of broke the mold last week without me on the show you guys dudes chatted out just all dudes chatting it was yeah it was oops all dude on dude action hot dude on dude action well i wouldn't say that uh but uh but you said that um how are you michael you should go first and tell us what you've been up to i mean it's been like an oddly busy time and continues to be so we're at that period where like basketball season is butting up against baseball season and they should have in a perfect world have all like basketball season should be over but um my 11 year old's team has two makeup games this weekend like otherwise the season ended last weekend but his two makeup games this weekend uh double header with an hour break in between the games uh but then has scheduled baseball practice like literally when his basketball second basketball game ends the baseball practice begins so like that's just all that's all of that um my season with the second graders uh did not did not end on a particularly positive note but um what happened the kids all had fun did you throw a chair bobby knight style i was i was this close to bobby knighting it um a couple of times particularly these last few games what happened oh oh i just just we at the end of the day we had for you know when when you factor in the number of weeks of the season to include the practice before christmas because there were no games until january but we we had practice before christmas okay take out the week of christmas where there were no practices scheduled and started like the second week of december so we had like three or the first week of december three weeks of practice in december and then all through january and all through february we may be we didn't not get to half of the scheduled practices because of snow of holidays we were all on mondays uh which in retrospect you know i wasn't thinking it was just sort of like i'll take whatever day they give me i think i i i blocked out one particular day which wasn't going to work and it ended like monday ended up being the worst we didn't have that many practices so i think after like the second week of january like basically since that big snowstorm we had zero two weeks of consecutive practice um and there's just it's just no way to no continuity there's zero continuity there's like we had one practice where we worked really really hard kind of midway through the season on a little bit because we because my assistant coach and i realized like the kids don't know what to do with the ball once they get it and and and like oh well we've got to like kind of give everybody a plan like a thing to do there's not a ton i mean sonny you'll know this from from your son's basketball uh he's a year younger but it's like there's not a lot of passing because any pass is going to be stolen yeah or like missed you know there's so you can see a little bit of passing here and there um it's starting now but it was just like give everybody a place to go you know give the big man that that forward position to just kind of stand under the basket and try to the rebound give the other kids something to do so we worked on that for like one week and i was like okay this was good we can build on this and it won't be perfect when we when we have our game this weekend but but they'll see it in action in the game and then we'll build it and of course like the next week we had practice canceled for one reason it was like another snow thing and so then it was start over all gone it was all gone and at one point at our last game i'm like yelling at our my son is one of the big kids and then there's another
JVL00:05:13one um and i'm yelling at the other one to just like just get on the blocks just get on the blocks
Mike00:05:20like get on the bag brandon and i'm like at a certain point i was like what am i doing like there's like this is it's over so um but the kids had fun i think my son had fun but my my older son uh is having a great end of the season he was like the team i mean i'm just bragging on him like he was the team's top scorer in his game on saturday like scored almost half of their points in their win and it's like i know yeah he's just he will chamberlain he's like a real power forward you
JVL00:05:49know he just went home with five co-eds oh yeah right um no so not not all the way just like will chamberlain in some ways not in others exactly on the court on the court um so anyway
Mike00:06:02so it's so that's been fun and then my son also bridged over from cub scouts to boy scouts on
JVL00:06:08monday and that was a very well chamberlain on the court ac green off the court oh there we go i like it a little uh laker pole for you sonny yeah i was gonna say that's uh that's that's deep
Mike00:06:20laker lore i guess probably shallow shallow yeah it's the shallow end of the lake of the lake of lore um anyway and it's just and so now we got baseball starting up and that's all it's just it just one rolls into the other and there's all kinds of stuff happening and there's never like a okay now we have this weekend to like relax or take a break or do yard work or something so you know dad life that i live and i i don't know how much more uh i can wring out of this but uh what's
JVL00:06:50going on with you guys jvl i i get something just short i don't want to spend a ton of time on this um but uh i so flash went to see the home opener of his future college team yeah and uh it's you know it's division three baseball but there is a weird thing i forget if i texted you guys about this or not i i believe that division three pitching is unlike anything else in major american sports because there were two major league scouts at this game because the starter for flash's future team uh sits at 95 miles an hour and when you throw like that uh you get looked at and every single year there are several division three pitchers who get drafted like it's not it's not like you know every two years you get one it's like every year you're going to get 20 to 30 of them drafted uh i don't think there's any other sport like that and it is only true for pitchers no position players get drafted from division three that is a thing that happens and it is also the case that division three pitchers will transfer for their final year to a division one program and then get drafted and that happens all the time and so if you include those pitchers in with like the guys who just stay division three all three again i just don't think there's a comp for this and it's interesting and it shows how
Mike00:08:37totally weird and sub-specialized pitching is what what accounts for that jvl with what is it about pitching that that allow why why aren't for instance why aren't they playing up at
JVL00:08:49division one or division two so uh a lot of it is that the differences between pitchers uh emerge kind of late yeah and so like the guy who who was their opening day starter when he showed up to as a freshman he his max velocity was 84 and now he sits at 95 like these are things that develop over time um the another thing is that they don't move up because they know they don't have to because they you know like if you are good enough to get drafted you're good enough to get drafted basically no matter where you are right and the weird thing is that pitching can be looked at and evaluated completely in a vacuum yeah with zero regards to competition and that the things which are getting evaluated are just objective measures that have nothing to do with outcomes so nobody's evaluated because of their era they're not being evaluated because of their wins they're not being none of that it is what is your spin rate what is your max velocity what is your your vertical drop what is your arm slot angle and those things can all basically be done with a with a series of cameras and guns and you don't even need to see them right you could just look at the stats right and see and that is really not true for like hitting right like it division three hitting is not you cannot compare right because you're not seeing the guys throwing 95 every day right the way you do if you're advanced like if you're in vandy you're seeing guys who are really really tough pitchers every
Mike00:10:30single day right question yeah uh does that then influence for instance i i know kind of nothing about how college pitchers develop um you know do they develop new pitches or develop pitches that they you know specialty pitches that they've been working on or does it discourage that and just has them throwing fastballs and curveballs and change-ups and like and and and that's it like what how does how does it affect the way that they
JVL00:10:59play knowing that they could be called up and and drafted so uh i am guessing here i don't i don't know sure sure for sure but my intuition here seems to be the lot of it really depends on what your ambitions are and your upside is and there are you know so it's not division three but last year uh university of pennsylvania had a kid drafted um he was a pitcher he uh was not even a starter he was a short reliever so he was not the the best pitcher on the team by any stretch uh he was not valuable to that team in ways that their starting pitching was um their starting pitchers were a lot of guys who could give you just loads of innings who could give you 90 pitches who could throw at a real high strike rate and command the ball uh and and those things are important for that team winning but in terms of what is important for moving on to the next level those things matter not at all right and so there's this weird dichotomy which again i just don't think it exists in i don't think it exists in basketball i do not but you see junior college guys going to the nfl and you see junior college guys going to or foreign players going right right
Sonny00:12:23the nba well but this is this is this is the the real subtext here right is that there there is no nfl or nba minor league i mean there's the d leagues whatever like when you're a major league baseball team you have to draft for not just you're not drafting for your team you're drafting for your affiliates really you're drafting for like five or six other teams you know smaller smaller teams that are all over the country so like you just need you a you need more players but also b you need more specialized players right
JVL00:12:53yeah yeah i think that makes sense yeah i think that's what it ultimately is about anyway i just found it interesting and like a weird thing and it just shows that even at the level of like division three baseball everybody there is playing for different reasons like you know some kids are there because they're looking to play in the pros and some kids are there just want to be on a team and anyway it's just i don't know i just found it interesting did flash enjoy it did flash enjoy the game yeah he said it was great he loved like the huge huge crowd because uh this college baseball is the big sport it's the main sport that people come and spectate at and uh beautiful field and everybody just a good time so good great sonny what's going on with you
Sonny00:13:43i have i'm i i'm doing something i really do not want to do next week i'm not going to be on the show next week next week i have off i'm just telling you guys right now telling everybody
Mike00:13:51right now i will not be here you're gonna have breaking news here you should do it you should
Sonny00:13:55do an all movie show like no dudes chatting just movie movie lightning round um but the uh i will not be here because i will be i will be in france with my family taking the family to france i don't speak any french so it's gonna be a real problem but the uh but the will be gonna wear a hat i should i i i don't know what i'm gonna wear i honestly don't like i haven't started packing yet i haven't started doing any i haven't like i i don't even anyway um like i said i this is i i am not looking forward to this trip i'm sure it'll be i'm sure it'll be fun i'm sure i will look back after it is all done and we will have had a great time man i have so many questions
JVL00:14:41can i interrupt you to ask them or do you want to talk first
Sonny00:14:43please go ahead is this a religious pilgrimage yes uh so you're gonna you're gonna go to lords and the conversion is gonna happen there or notre notre dame is that happening you're gonna go to
JVL00:14:52lords and finally okay are you going to paris belly we're going to paris we're going to paris
Sonny00:14:57we're staying in i think the sixth arrondissement oh the sixth is i don't i don't know or maybe the eighth i don't know i honestly again my wife is my wife's made all this and my my wife has planned all of this because she has wanted us to go me and her to go for like five years now she's been angling for a trip and we were going to go we were gonna go and then covet happened we were gonna go and then you know whatever um we were going to go two years ago um and we were gonna have my parents come and watch the kids and or her parents come and watch the kids and um and then my wife uh but i didn't talk about this on the show because i but my wife my wife had cancer and she got she got better it was it was like stage zero they caught it super early right um but of just like that everything gets stopped then you know reset the clock you know there's no you're we're not we're not going then and so she she she has recovered fully uh again it was not um it was not life-threatening uh but it was you know but it pauses those kinds of things you know it's yeah but like you just you just can't do it so because we have paused so long now though the kids are old enough to go which means the kids are going with us which means which means it's i just i cannot imagine anything i would it a close second would be taking the kids to las vegas in some in terms of like something i would less rather do like i would i wouldn't mind going i
JVL00:16:26don't really want to go to paris fancy pools i don't i don't really want to go to paris because
Sonny00:16:31i don't speak french like if we were going to spain or something i could kind of wing it or england obviously would be fine but the uh you know because i speak arabic so i would i'd fit fine uh it's funny london remember londonistan um anyway the uh but but french i don't speak at all i i have like my the extent of my french is like bonjour merci j'aime la personne vin rogue vin blanc like that's that's about all i got for you um i'm not even a sucker punch uh anyway so so now so now this has transformed like over the years has transformed into a trip for us into a trip for the family and that is obviously a very different trip and i'm uh i if if people have recommendations on things lego land paris what's that lego land paris we're we are going to do a day at at disney yes we're gonna be we're gonna we're doing euro disney uh we're gonna be there we're gonna be there on uh like we'll be there on a sunday lots of things are closed on
Mike00:17:54sunday so we're like we'll do we'll do euro disney make sure sonny make sure you tell as many parisians as you can that that that you are doing that that you were going because i think they love they love what is a disney world pair at disney disney paris it's a big point of pride in in paris it's uh
Sonny00:18:13looking at i was looking at some of the like the disney influencer sites and there's this there's this sub there's this like sub genre of disney people who are like i only go to euro disney because it's cheaper to go there than to fly to like it's cheaper to fly to paris and go to euro disney than it is to go to like uh disney world or um disneyland's cheaper a little cheaper but like the tickets are so much cheaper and like the the hotels are so much cheaper anyway um so yeah on property at euro disney no no no we're staying we're staying at a hotel again in the
JVL00:18:48that's that's a day trip basically are you staying in one place the whole time you're staying we're staying in one place the whole time okay uh are you gonna go to notre dame
Sonny00:18:56no problem i mean maybe we'll walk by it i don't know it's just been fully restored yeah you should
Mike00:19:02absolutely go it's it's an incredible place even i was there before it burned down but go to mass
JVL00:19:08are you gonna go to lord's are you gonna i don't know what that is the lord's um we're not in normandy you're gonna take a take a bus to normandy go no too far away too far we want to
Sonny00:19:17do things we can like walk to or or take a take a train we're like we're only going to be there for like four days it's a very quick trip like the the the again the question what's on your itinerary yeah what are you planning on i don't my my wife has this all planned i don't i am i'm just
JVL00:19:36following what she does so do you have a water park you should find a water park to go to find
Sonny00:19:43it's gonna be kind of cold it's gonna be like in this the well indoor 50s and 60s or water parks there right i know the great wolf do you think they have a great wolf lodge in paris great wolf
JVL00:19:53lodge i so loop here's the loop i lodge the loop i do not know if uh the french are into this but i believe the germans have a lot of indoor water parks yes that sounds right they also
Mike00:20:09have theme parks in germany they love like roller coasters and all that sort of thing yeah
JVL00:20:13you should do it and maybe find a shopping mall go to the mall while you're over there basically do everything that you would do in america in america just do it in france that sounds like the way to do this find a mcdonald's get this get a royale with cheese get a royale with cheese
Sonny00:20:27if i actually that's a good idea that that would be a funny bit just uh go and get a royale with
Mike00:20:33cheese my uh when when my um brother-in-law and his wife went on their honeymoon to europe i part of it um uh she my my my sister-in-law is not um very adventurous of food and she's got some reasons like some medical reasons for that but she's just like very not adventurous and so my brother-in-law sent us pictures this is like over a decade ago uh of him like at some famous kind of i don't know i don't know what you would even call it it's like one of these shops in paris where you've got like all the cured meats and all the cheeses and it's you know and he was like getting all this stuff and uh and then they're like eating it in a park and then his wife had like a bag of mcdonald's next to it it's just like it's just like that's that's yeah that's what it was uh in all seriousness uh mo march and uh and the eiffel tower just be aware of the the people trying to put little things on your wrists uh or get you to like uh buy some little trinket and uh and then they you know they've got like their they've got like other people like watching all those like touristy trap places like i've paris has been the one place where i've seen that the most and they're the kind of the most aggressive so just just be careful yeah i'm saying they pickpocket no they like what they do is like they'll so like uh so like at the at the moon march uh which is like the big hill with uh with the sacred heart uh basilica on it um they like when i was there they tried to put like uh a little bracelet on your wrist and they sort of like don't really ask you or they like ask you as they're trying to put it on and then like it's like the french version of the bolito what is the bolito i don't know what that is uh sonny's favorite movies the counselor
Sonny00:22:32oh it's the haven't you seen the counselor where they put the thing around the neck and it cinches
Mike00:22:38and it cuts your head off no no it's not like that no what they want what they want to do is put it on you and then demand that you pay them for it and demand that you can't give it back um you know i i don't i can't really i didn't i don't see that kind of ethnic uh you know i'm a citizen of the world as i as everybody else is did i ever did i ever tell you guys
Sonny00:22:59about the time i almost got robbed by gypsies in prague no no but that tracks i well i mean very very quick story here i was uh i was i was in prague uh and i was uh i was like walking down the street and then uh like some i like some some young floozy came and started talking to me and of course i was interested because i was you know 20 at the time um and like we're we're like you wouldn't be interested now we're chat we're chatting and a a friend of mine like comes out of the store that he had been that she had been in she comes out and she like she's like hey what's up and she like kind of looks behind me and there's somebody who is like coming right up behind me to like pull my wallet out of the my you know out of my pants and they these two these two girls like run off like immediately it was it was just it was a very funny moment uh and it was like i was like this is like this is like something out of a whatever the czech version of that is sure um i but it's uh but it was it was just one of these very funny moments where i was like it was like oh this is like this is i i'm the dumb tourist here i'm getting i'm getting robbed you're like a caravan i need i need to pay more attention to my
Mike00:24:12surroundings you liked eggs you liked eggs i do a lot dogs all right uh well have a great time sonny enjoy it it's gonna be great i'm gonna take pictures i'm gonna send them in will there be an opportunity i guess not four days and and like you don't know anybody there but like it's you're gonna be with the family the whole time there's no opportunity for
Sonny00:24:34you oh yeah there's not gonna be any i'm not gonna get to do i'm not gonna get to do anything i'm not gonna get to go to like the english language bookstore you know i'm not gonna get to go to a movie theater like i get why would you want to when
JVL00:24:48you could be in the city of light enjoying it with your elementary school-aged children
Mike00:24:51it's gonna be great it's gonna be great all right we'll have a good time uh all right well thank you uh let's move on and talk about uh the box office because this week number one movie at the box office is scream seven uh earning just under 64 million dollars over the weekend what an
Sonny00:25:12enormous hit 64 million dollars 60 biggest biggest opening of the series what is the what is the
JVL00:25:18theme that we've hit on here jvl horror cells horror cells uh how much is the of a big opening
Sonny00:25:26is this over scream six i want to say it's like almost 20 million more which one was not called
Mike00:25:33scream the number was it besides the first one was it i think the fifth scream was just it was
Sonny00:25:42okay uh well and there was a joke the running the running joke of that movie was you know because all of these movies are like comments on the running joke of that movie was that it was basically like the force awakens of uh the scream movies in the movie the stab movie within the movie was right uh was basically a force awakens style um reboot or but then there was also a joke that like fans were mad because the knives out guy was directing it and he was doing a bad job because it'll last you know it's like it's working on so many commentaries there was some commentary there
Mike00:26:18ah well well we'll get into that we'll get into all kinds of commentary in that series uh but yeah strong strong opening uh number one of the box office uh number two of the box office we haven't talked about this movie but goat is uh is on its third week uh in theaters and i mean it's just i mean it's it's it's not doing great right like 70 74 million dollars over the
Sonny00:26:42it's doing fine it's doing fine for what for what for what uh i think so like it's really interesting i it's it's a family film and it's an original family film and what we have found or at least what i what i what i have found over the last five or six years or so at least since the pandemic is that the original the the original family films um are not doing as well uh though holding pretty well i mean it's dropped i want to say it's dropped like 30 each of the first two uh weekends yeah so first weekend dropped 38 second weekend i dropped 28 so it's holding fine it's it's doing fine it'll it'll end up you know probably around i if it keeps holding like this it'll probably end up around 120 million or so domestic something like that um which is fine uh but like the it's it's not the it's not the original films for families that are that are popping off it's the zootopia two it's like the stuff the stuff that people the kids have been watching on disney plus or whatever for the last 10 years uh and then the the sequel so like moana 2 does huge numbers right like moana 2 does huge numbers uh inside out 2 um zootopia 2 zootopia 2 still in the top 10 you know so zootopia 2 again i like i i've brought this up several times gonna be one of the top 25 grossing movies of all time unadjusted for inflation yeah i if it's not already amazing i mean it's gross it's grossed almost it's grossed 1.86 billion dollars worldwide why not i like i genuinely if you why not you had if you had asked if you had told somebody before the the the beginning of the year that uh zootopia 2 would outgross avatar fire and ash by 400 million dollars they would have thought you were they would have either thought you were saying what else could you have gotten on that i don't know i i i would that should have i should have started a cal sheet contract on it you know but the uh i am
Mike00:28:47looking at a list by the way of the highest grossing films not adjusted for inflation of all time um zootopia 2 is number nine on that list yeah behind why not behind an all-time
JVL00:28:59classic that people will be watching re-watching and talking about for decades no i know it's it's
Mike00:29:05catching up to a little flick you guys may remember from the 90s called titanic um so
Sonny00:29:12it's interesting i mean again i like so much of this is driven by uh chinese box office right like china um what what's the actual china number hold on yeah china so china has done two six hundred fifty million dollars uh for zootopia 2 which is a you know that's that's a that's a huge number that's more that's 50 more than it grossed here in the united states so um the chinese people love zootopia it's and this is like there are weird things that that there are things that i am suspicious uh about in china like in terms of box office grosses what grosses what and what you know kind of dies but the chinese people seem to genuinely love zootopia too do they look at zootopia like it's
JVL00:29:58a wet market and they think oh interesting you know all these all these different food options
Mike00:30:02what uh by the way what is what year are we in uh in the in the chinese zodiac um it's such a good question it's the five it's the year of the fire horse apparently um that sounds fake i know well that's what google
Sonny00:30:18what google yeah it's the year that wasn't that wasn't on that wasn't on the chinese buffet matt that i would get when i went into the china you guys remember this when you would go when you'd go oh yeah i have i wait i have i have actually serious question for you guys when's the last time one of you went into a chinese buffet oh gosh i can't remember i cannot remember
JVL00:30:37it's been years it must have been close to 30 years for me yeah like i was probably 23 years old when i did that last time i will say uh so i i i'm
Sonny00:30:50trying to think i think we may have taken our kids to one once because i was like i want you know we'll get them a bunch of different things and they'll try and of course they ate none of it and i was just like this sucks never i'm never doing this again so i i haven't i haven't gone back but uh but no the the best thing about going to a chinese restaurant was the little mat and it had the whole little chinese zodiac around it and you saw what year what year was fire horse was not
Mike00:31:12a not on that sheet it's the horse but it's like it's like specific i don't don't ask me to explain the uh the lunar calendar what's going on out there but it's the year of the horse on the zodiac and apparently specifically this 2026 is the fire horse which whatever that means but um no i wanted to know if it was like the year of the rabbit in which case like there was a rabbit in you know this is my own this is what a cultural chauvinist i am where i'm like oh it must have something to do with the chinese zodiac but it's it has nothing to do with that i'm sure i'm sure they just like talking animals like do you think
Sonny00:31:46all other people actually care about the chinese zodiac do you think that is that is that like a thing they actually uh are interested in or is that just something we uh we because of the the placemats in the chinese restaurants we all just kind of assume that they're into i don't know
Mike00:32:01the only you know i took three semesters of mandarin in college and uh taught by like i did not know that yes yes and i got a well by the way i could rant about that for for just like 30 seconds because like a couple things one my grade went down every semester and that's why that's part of why i dropped it but it really was quite unfair because half of the class had parents from china and you think that that's not an advantage because you know a lot of them were i mean almost all of them i think were born in the united states they weren't like like fluent mandarin speakers but let me tell you like compared to non-mandarin speakers or people who aren't every single day of their lives in their homes like the way that you can pick it up and just know certain like way because there's different phonemes and stuff in mandarin it like put every white kid in a disadvantage in that class it was just like oh like we and let me tell you the lauches the professors they didn't they did not slow things down for uh for for us uh for us
Sonny00:33:05americans so where what were you gonna say there felt like you were going a different no no no
Mike00:33:10that's all i was always gonna say um guys actually i don't know what the pejorative term in mandarin that's how bad i was well here's the here's the funny thing about mandarin is um there is there's something very uh almost patronizing about the way they talk about like america in the language itself like the name for america the united states is magua which uh literally translates to beautiful land or like beautiful which seems like which seems like a real patronizing kind of kind of move there it's like oh beautiful country you guys have over there yeah america beautiful country i don't know it just it
Sonny00:33:51always struck me as a little uh it sounds to me like they're jealous of our beautiful
Mike00:33:55country maybe well well jung war which is mandarin for china is a central country so
JVL00:34:01um yeah what is the uh mandarin for japan uh you know this is uh we we try to we try
Mike00:34:12to be open as i've demonstrated this podcast try to be open-minded and citizens of the world on this podcast we try to engage in bigotries and that sort of thing do you think
Sonny00:34:20the french chinese restaurants have the zodiac menu if i go to if i go to a chinese restaurant in paris yes sorry this is my new tell us yeah that's your restaurant we gotta we gotta
Mike00:34:34move on we gotta yeah we do have to move on uh so we gotta talk about screen because scream seven is number one in the box office and so we decided to go all the way back and watch scream the original film from nineteen ninety-six um and uh sunny do you want to give us a big
Sonny00:34:49boy review of west craven's scream scream west craven's nineteen ninety-six movie written by kevin williamson of uh all the teenage show dawson's creek et cetera fame uh is probably the high water mark of the slasher genre at least in the sense of it it took all of the ideas of the ideas and the tropes and everything and then and then made it and like did a kind of a meta analysis of them and turned it all around and and kind of destroyed the genre after this like the the the genre of the slasher never never quite recovered from scream at least in the sense of um of what it you like there's a reason that jason and freddy and michael myers basically disappeared for a long time afterward and there's really only been since scream came out there's really only been one successful effort to bring those characters back and that was like the david gordon green halloween movie in 2018 whenever that was um which is which is kind of saying something anyway scream did to the slasher
Mike00:36:05film what seinfeld did to the sitcom yes yeah basically that's basically it out of my head
Sonny00:36:12that is that's a that's a really good way of putting it um anyway scream uh and if i
JVL00:36:17could just extend the metaphor yeah what you wound up getting in its place right we have the nuclear winter of sitcoms after seinfeld until the three camera i'm sorry until the one camera show was like typified by rest development reinvented the sitcom and that's what elevated horror is so the genre of elevated harvard with horror which now is like everything is what had to grow up in the place of the scorched earth of slasher movie i want
Mike00:36:47to talk about this later but but sonny go ahead yeah well i i we well why don't we just
Sonny00:36:52talk about that because i like again the the plot here is is pretty straightforward you got you got a girl in trouble you got a guy killing a bunch of teenagers um and then you have like kind of a greek chorus of characters explaining all the rules of the slasher movie and like this is you know laying bare the things we all kind of knew about slasher movies things like if you have sex in a slasher movie you end up dying if you say i'll be right back in a slasher movie you do not come right back if you go outside to uh examine that weird noise you're gonna die like it the whole movie is is breaking down breaking down these tropes step by step and and getting into them and pointing them out to you like and pointing them out to you and so the the uh the reason the movie the movie still holds up is because a it is it is genuinely very clever and it does this very clever thing in the opening 12 minutes where drew Barrymore is um drew Barrymore who was in all the ads and like everyone was like oh this is a very more movie drew Barrymore movie and in the opening 12 minutes of the film she is killed and that does two things one it shows you that this is a slasher movie that is not playing by the rules even as it is explaining the rules to you um but also b it was just it was just a really well done well written sequence and Kevin Williamson like as I mentioned Kevin Williamson because he was like the king of the teenage show the king of the teenage movie at this point in time um and the dialogue all sounds so I I'm I'm actually kind of curious to get JBL's take on this because he was he was he's older than than me obviously and like is a little bit removed from it when I saw scream as a 14 or 15 year old or whatever I was like yes this is what we sound like. This is we are all smart and sound clever like this and I'm not sure if it if it that is just what I thought because that's what I wanted to think because I watched the new one which is written and directed by Kevin Williamson again he is like returning to the series in Scream 7 and I will say that none of the dialogue sounded like things kids today would say I don't and I it wasn't clear to me if he's just like lost the ear for it because he is older and more removed from it or what but uh anyway rewatching it rewatching it
?00:39:12again.
Sonny00:39:12This weekend or this week I was I was really struck by just how how well it holds up and how clever it is and how it really did kind of perfect it perfected the slasher in a way that left left the entire genre nowhere to go which as you say JBL and Mike you you guys both got this better than I did I I wasn't sure how to phrase this exactly but you're right it it leads to all of the elevated uh horror stuff. It leads. It leads to um you know the it there there was this weird bubbling moment of meta horror that Wes Craven did twice actually he did this also with a new nightmare which came out I think two years before this two or three years before this which was this kind of meta nightmare on Elm Street movie that was about like Wes Craven played himself in the movie he was making a new movie about Friday the third or uh nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy was like coming to life in his dreams and like the real actress was. Anyway. It was it it's an interesting film but this this version of the meta breakdown is a million times better it like it it really does kind of destroy the whole genre so yeah I I love I still love this movie I love all the I love Rose McGowan is so great in this as the ditzy the the the ditzy young hot uh victim uh Nev Campbell is is fantastic and Skeetle Rich is like the demented killer. Um Matthew Lillard as his demented killer for I like I just the it it all it all holds up really well it all works really well so love Scream still love Scream JVL Scream your
JVL00:40:53thoughts it is so dated in ways that I I don't mean that's date is the wrong word it is so much of its moment of its moment of its time I said the same in part because the cast is filled with people who are of that moment. And who are not durable stars and so uh with the exception of Drew Barrymore and Courtney Cox you get Nev Campbell Skeet Ulrich remember when Skeet Ulrich was the next Johnny Depp yeah Matthew Lillard Rose McGowan Jamie Kennedy these are people who who really had a moment all right around this mid to late 90s and then disappeared they were not durable and so they. They're notable enough that you're like oh yeah I remember them but we don't have a continuing relationship with them as actors in the way that we do with like a Tom Cruise uh or a Amy uh whatever you know you know what I mean and that is interesting to me it is very knowing in ways that now feel cliched but only because this kind of invented the cliche. Uh and as for the the dialogue stuff I think it was aspirational. So this was another thing that was of the moment and I think about Amy Sherman Palladino writing for Gilmore Girls uh Joss Whedon writing for Buffy the Vampire Slayer uh and then Kevin Williamson doing Dawson's and who was it who
Mike00:42:35did Felicity? Who created Felicity? Yeah and who was the the uh that was um writer uh that was uh Brian Grazer when I know uh hold on well you effort that but
JVL00:42:50the point is Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams J.J. right and so these guys were writing teen dialogue at a moment when to understand teen dialogue it was all happening on the W2B network like which was a very real cultural I mean that was for teen culture. What like HBO became for proof you know for for prestige television and uh they developed among themselves like a patois of how kids talked in ways that was different from the way kids talked in like the eighties comedies of real genius and and Caddyshack and stuff like that and it was never real. It was always aspirational. The you know the actual sixteen year old would never talk that way cuz they weren't that clever but because of this this culture, we all wanted to think that this is how we and our friends interacted. You know that we were snappy and dialogue and that dialogue was king, right? This is I mean there became an obsession in movies around this time with dialogue over plot right where where movies came out and be like, oh, the dialogue and it was just fantastic.
Sonny00:44:10Right. The Tarantino effect.
JVL00:44:12Yeah. The Tarantino. Yeah. And this is all all happening at the same time. This is this is the mid to late nineties. Yeah. And it's fascinating to me and uh and interesting in that it I I am interested. I had no idea that it grossed 64 million dollars and the fact that this is a heritage version, the the new one and it brings back all of these people uh cuz that's right I'm just looking at the IMDB for Scream 7. Uh it looks like they've brought back Nev Campbell, uh David Arquette, it's Courtney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Courtney Cox, I mean it's like they're all they're all there. So this scene maybe this result because it's a heritage movie and all the people who are our age went to see it.
Sonny00:45:00Well but so Nev Campbell so like this the back story here is that Nev Campbell has been in all of them. She's been in all of these in all of these movies except for the most recent except for number six scream six. She wasn't in. It was a contract dispute. She wanted more money. They didn't want to pay her. Um it came out the movie came out and it was like it was actually a pretty big success without her. I like a I think it opened a 44 45 million dollars something like that and did did very well. Um and then after that movie came out the the producers fired the there was like a big fight where like Jenna Ortega didn't want to come back for scream seven anyway. Like she had been in the previous two. She's too big now. She's doing Wednesday and other things. She didn't want to come back. Um Melissa Barrera, who was the other uh female star, um basically got fired for after October 7th coming out uh and saying that the Jews control the media and that's why we can't talk about how terrible.
Mike00:45:53Oh, so the Jews fired her.
Sonny00:45:54Yeah. So she's proving proving. So then I well I joked about this at the time I was like I don't know if that's the tech you want to take with it anyway.
JVL00:46:02Um but the uh but the Illuminati really showed her.
Sonny00:46:06Yeah uh but but that but so then that caused there was like a bunch of backlash in the fan community and they were like how can you do this and so they're like fine we're bringing back Neve Campbell. Neve Campbell was like you want to bring me back it's gonna cost you. She reportedly got paid I think seven million dollars for this which like isn't frankly even that much I I would say for a movie for a movie that opens to 65 million dollars. Yeah. Um like her being the star of it. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask. So anyway um that's the that's kind of the back story here.
Mike00:46:38Oh all right. Fantastic. So so we watched it um my wife had actually never seen it um so I was she's not a huge she's not into horror so but she was game to do it I was like well do you want to watch it with me I've I've seen it before but do you want to watch it and she said yes and she really enjoyed it and I mean we were laughing the whole time because it's it's actually a very funny movie um I mean it's not just satirical it's it's also funny and uh it's enjoyable uh in that way. My you know I I want to associate. Myself with uh the remarks of my two colleagues on this podcast but uh and everything that you said about what it did for the genre and all those things but the thing that I was struck most by similar to you JVL in terms of like the the time that it that it was it was really of its time and you could see that on the screen um is just the the overall aesthetic and feeling that I got watching it was like more than any movie that. We've gone back and watched that was made at some point in my lifetime like it transported me back to you know 1996 1997 when I did not see this movie I saw this movie later because I was too I was too young to see it yeah yeah but I was looking up like what else came out around the time of it and you know it so it all kind of transported me back to like when I was going to the movies uh and seeing you know I think this was around the same time that like the the Glenn Close one hundred one Dalmatians. Movie came out which was a big movie uh when it came out in in 1996 I think and and like I was like well I remember seeing that in the theater and I'm sure I saw the screen poster and I remember I have a memory it's interesting of another Neve Campbell horror movie that came out this year the craft I remember seeing that poster I remember that that poster was like it's like etched in my memory of like yeah yeah yeah it was yeah it was JBL um and and just sort of being so it transported me back. Not just as a movie watcher and be like oh yeah like that kind of time when it was just it was exciting and there were movies and they're like people's older brothers and sisters were like talking about when they saw scream and and all that sort of thing it just even just the the sort of heightened um look on screen like the houses they were all living in which are all beautiful by the way it's all I think it was filmed in Northern California somewhere right like like Napa or Sonoma or something. It's all beautiful but just the phones that they were using which by the way phones are so important in this movie um and that was an interesting thing I was like oh man that that that doesn't work anymore as a as plot devices what did you guys make of the uh the early 9-1-1 internet call I love that that was so funny the phone is cut so I gotta get
Sonny00:49:35on the internet I'm gonna I'm gonna type 9-1-1 into my computer and it will connect me to
Mike00:49:40the operator it was like send help it was like Ferris Bueller in 1986 changing his grade on his computer it's like I don't know if it would work that way exactly but go ahead um so uh no I uh so I just I appreciated the way it it felt like I was watching a world that I was very familiar with because it's also in suburbia right like there's a suburban element to it which is you so it's a world that I'm familiar with and that doesn't exist anymore but that I have like a living memory of and a very strong memory of because of the age and all that so well but
Sonny00:50:21it's it's interestingly kind of both suburban and semi-rural like it's it's not it's not there they're so there the houses are so far apart and there is like isolation but there's also a little town center and there's you know there there are there are other places where houses are close to
JVL00:50:40so can we talk about the Weinstein aspect of this sure go go right ahead so names are quite prominent in all the credits they they are and this is where I suspect Harvey Weinstein begins overlapping with Rose McGowan yes which marks her life tremendously I mean she very I thought about
Mike00:51:04that a lot JVL it was like hanging over me a little bit watching this yeah and this is one of
JVL00:51:10those things in which so I do you guys do either of you listen to the podcast behind the bastards no so I love it it's fantastic and uh host Robert Evans does he does these potted histories where you know it's like five hours of history that he just like researches and then tells the story about people and he is doing or he just finished a series on Jeffrey Epstein which wasn't about Jeffrey Epstein himself but was about all the ways in which Jeffrey Epstein was weirdly central to stuff happening in the world around us like for instance uh Jeffrey Epstein was key in the development of in-game micro transactions for digital gaming so uh you you are part of you you play world of warcraft in the late 1990s and you you know buy gold so that you can upgrade your armor or whatever like Jeffrey Epstein was connected to that and there's all sorts of shit like that Jeffrey Epstein was very early on 4chan Jeffrey Epstein was very early on bitcoin and crypto like he's he's like the wealthy pedophile forest forest cop yes yeah yes and the wine scenes are like that in Hollywood and like with movies and culture our our modern Hollywood landscape without the Weinsteins totally you kind of can't imagine what it would have looked like without them.
Sonny00:52:39Yeah.
JVL00:52:40And there is something like weird and disturbing to have monsters be so central to like the
Sonny00:52:48development of a culture that's a real downer and not wrong no I'm going to I'm going to say another name here and I want to be clear that I'm not comparing him to Harvey Weinstein in any way like different he's not a monster at all but he is also like like he keeps popping up in places. In histories of these this time that I read it but it's Jeffrey Katzenberg so Jeffrey Katzenberg shows up over and over he was there at Paramount when Paramount switches to like that the kind of high concept big budget you know tentpole filmmaking and he's there with Michael Eisner and then they go over to Disney and he's key in the resurgence of like the Red Little Mermaid the second golden age of Disney animation and then he goes to Dreamworks SKG. Like has like is basically at war with the Weinsteins for you know periods of time and
JVL00:53:44then Quibi. I mean we wouldn't even have Quibi without Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Sonny00:53:49Exactly exactly Quibi like the thing about Quibi is it's so funny because Quibi was basically right. Yes. Quibi like the great irony of Quibi is that it was it was functionally the right thing to do. The problem was it was just insanely it was way too expensive because you can get all the shit for free on YouTube.
JVL00:54:07People make it for free on YouTube and TikTok. Just let the TikToks do it.
Sonny00:54:11Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, but it's I think I do think I think about the Weinsteins a lot because they do show up there all over like the biscuit histories of this era and and everything else and like their Harvey in particular is a very bad person. His his brother you know how much of it was him just how much he knew and how much he didn't know you know is up for debate but I think he is also probably a pretty bad person
Mike00:54:39and you know hey I I I know we gotta bounce I just wanted to say one more thing about the horror movie landscape after scream because it's interesting Sonny the way you point this to be the end of the slasher genre and you're probably right in a macro sense but from my perspective scream is like the origin story for this whole trend for like the next six seven years of teen oriented horror films that like I know what you did last summer which written by Kevin Williamson um and um but even like remember uh remember urban legend and all the final destination final destination totally yes totally I'm not I'm not saying I'm
Sonny00:55:20not saying those movies don't exist anymore after this I'm just saying that they're they're all in some ways um derivative an imitation of what's either an imitation of or an attempt to co-opt
Mike00:55:33what scream was doing but so like slightly different things I totally agree and um it it's it's um it's it's just a sort of defy yeah I I totally agree with that it's just a definitive of horror for me like that was like when I was watching horror films and going to to the movies and watching horror stuff like that's what it was and it was interesting to me now we have what you guys call elevated I think of it like supernatural horror like all the conjuring stuff and all of that no but that's different that's that's different no
Sonny00:56:04that's different from when JBL says elevated horror he's talking about like uh like the witch or hereditary it's stuff like that okay sinners right get out get out get out okay well
Mike00:56:16I would say the more popular uh the more popular sort of populist horror right is like all of the supernatural stuff and what I think is interesting is it's clear like if we were to put an end point on this like what I'm describing like the teen slasher not always teen but definitely like slasher focused would probably be right like either the original saw or the original hostile where like what do you how do you elevate to use that word the slasher stuff like it has to get gorier those are torture porn I guess but to me that to me that's an end point though for all that maybe yeah I think that's a good point but but then but then like so then you you have nowhere else to go but supernatural right that that's like that seems to be that's just my theory of of all this I could be wrong
JVL00:57:03it almost is like the evolution of pornography from like 70 movies like boogie nights right like yeah we're making real movies that have sex in them too we got a video with Johnny Doe who cares just do it all right well that's all the time we are going
Mike00:57:19to give to this episode join us over at subbeacon.com tell your friends and family and we'll talk to
Sonny00:57:23you next time so wait what did uh what did your lovely wife think of the scream uh she really
Mike00:57:35enjoyed it we had a good time sort of like talking about it afterward and um uh i think she was tickled by the uh the kind of just the metaness of it right it was i mean she knew that that's kind of what it was going in but i think it was it was maybe funnier to her than she thought it would be um and that's you know the other interesting thing is david arquette is so like he is fully formed in this like he is like he is for better or worse for total yeah i mean like he is what he is like i don't mean to say he's like some great great you know actor or anything but it's like there he is he's that's you could see the straight line from that to like eight-legged freaks and some of the other like ridiculous david arquette roles it's just and it's it's funny it's funny to see him that way it is it is funny and it's
Sonny00:58:28also funny that like so you know they courtney cox marries david arquette after this like right
Mike00:58:33but it was their on-screen chemistry is is you could tell that they've got the hots for each
Sonny00:58:38other well so it's so funny because i was uh i was listening to the um i was listening to the rewatchables episode on ace ventura they did they so was i i was i listened to the same one and and there's this very funny bit where they're talking about how like you know the in in the movie it's totally unearned that courtney cox's character would be into ace ventura that like he's just like constantly insulting her he's just like a real jerk all the time and she's like totally in love with him by the end of the movie and then they're like but then off off you know behind the scenes courtney cox was constantly talking about how like into um jim carrey she was and how like she was like totally in love with him and like i was just like and like once i heard that i was like oh oh david arquette actually makes so much more sense now that like that whole that whole thing she loves really coming together really coming together yeah anyway i'm sure it's fine
Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →
Comments
Loading…