#12. Are Movie Twist Endings Overrated?

2017-01-26 · 51:37

Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now

Reviews: Sonny reviews Split (M. Night Shyamalan) — positively; James McAvoy plays a man with 23 personalities who kidnaps three girls; "successful camp." The surprise ending links the film to the Unbreakable universe.

Dudes Chatting — Are twist endings overrated?: Triggered by Split, the group maps Shyamalan's career arc: strong early period (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village), disastrous middle stretch (Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth), and comeback (The Visit, Split). JVL argues against twist endings as a gimmick, defining a good twist as "tumblers falling into place" — revelatory rather than merely surprising — using The Usual Suspects and The Dark Knight Rises (the Miranda Tate/Talia Al Ghul reveal) as examples. Favorite twists: JVL picks The Dark Knight Rises; Vic picks No Way Out (1987, Kevin Costner as Soviet spy Yuri); Sonny picks Shutter Island. A listener sci-fi ranking game produces Sonny's order: Arrival > Interstellar > Gravity > The Martian > Solaris. Brief discussion of the newly announced Star Wars: Episode VIII title The Last Jedi. Episode opens with discussion of Trump inauguration weekend. Corrections included. Spirit of the Week: Bushmills Irish Whiskey.

Full transcript

Vic00:00:00Hi, this is Bill Kristol. Why are you listening to The Substandard podcast? It just encourages them.

?00:00:26I see dead people.

Vic00:00:30Hello, and welcome back to The Substandard. I'm Victorino Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. I'd like to remind you all that TheSubstandard is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at our podcast, search for Substandard, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Many of you have, and we're grateful. In fact, a recent reviewer, HWWF, LDJ, almost gave us five stars, but said quote, some of the humor is a little uncomfortable, and can we possibly, quote, do a cleaner show? I'm all for that, I just don't know how to stop. Thank you.

JVL00:01:15He, she, they are talking about you, Victorino. To be clear, this is

Sonny00:01:19not a Sonny problem or a JVL problem, this is a Victorino problem. This is definitely a Victorino Matus issue. So HWWF, LDJ, if you

JVL00:01:27could just confine your four-star thoughts to Victorino, Sonny and I both deserve five stars. I don't know what you're

Sonny00:01:33talking about, anyway. I mean, really, it should be 4.6666667 stars, which rounds up to five. Really, we should bump that up to a five-star review. That's true.

Vic00:01:46Anyway, keep on giving us reviews, because that helps us pop up in feeds and things like that. I'm not saying that Sonny Bunch is going to suddenly pop into your inbox, or me in your outbox, but... See, this is what the reviewers don't want.

Sonny00:02:03What am I saying? There's a fine line between double entendre and single entendre. You just are just vulgar.

Vic00:02:12Again, all I'm saying is, please leave a review. It really helps. And gentlemen, how are we? We survived the inauguration and protest weekends. Are you inauguration

JVL00:02:23people, Jonathan? You know, I used to be. I've been to two inaugurations. I was to the first Clinton inauguration in 93, to the second one in 97. Both times, I was in college for the first one and had just gotten to Washington after graduating for the second one. And I was with a friend who was family friends with Evan Bayh, Democratic governor from Indiana. And so we got really great seats. And we were all the way up front in the frontmost section by the Capitol, close enough to be able to see actual people standing on the steps. And I mean, I was interested in politics, but not especially political. Like my five or six friends that came down, they were all wearing Kemp 96 buttons. This is in 1993, which they thought was incredibly clever. And I thought this is why none of you get laid. And it was amazing. As opposed to JBL. No, for me, there were other reasons why. I was not. That wasn't the reason. But so we then walked to Hamburger Hamlet from the Capitol to Georgetown, because the idea of paying for a taxi was the most unimaginable decadence you could imagine. And like every I remember that night we had called we went to the Four Seasons in Georgetown. Wow. To have like a cup of coffee at the bar, which is the only thing any of us could afford to do. And Mark Russell, the political satirist, was doing a thing on the piano. CNN had set up. CNN was shooting a live feed of some show. And I think it was Judy Woodruff was there doing the show. And we just thought that this we were at the center of the universe. You have arrived in Washington. Everything was happening. And we thought it was really the coolest thing in the world. And today, I would not go to an inauguration if it was Bruce Wayne who was being sworn in and you offered to pay me $10,000. I just I would not leave

Vic00:04:12the house because of the crowds or the weather or

JVL00:04:15what? All of it. All of it. The security, the crowds, the transportation. I mean, we had just taken the train down from Baltimore. So it's easy to train to Union Station and walk from Union Station to but to come from where I live in Virginia up to get to there and with A million people. The security is so much different than it was in 90. I mean, in 93, the security was walking onto the mall. It was that it and then there were like a couple cops looking at your tickets before you they let you through the gate. Anyway, and so for all those reasons, I would I wouldn't know I will never go to an another inauguration under any circumstances.

Vic00:04:48You know, you could put this in their show notes JVL in The Simpsons, the episode where Lisa goes to Washington. They have a quick bit with a Mark Russell character, playing the piano. And I think every song he does ends in the Capitol Rag, you know, very anyway, we'll have to look for that fact check. True. Yeah. Sonny, how about you? Are you an inauguration person? Have you done them before?

Sonny00:05:12I believe I have only been to one inauguration in person, which was the second George W. Bush inauguration, which I can't I I remember it being just bitterly, bitterly cold, just cold. And I was like, kind of miserable. But I was also warmed by the words of freedom that he uttered on that, you know, it's the undying ideal of American exceptionalism and yeah, just exporting, exporting freedom by force wherever we want to. It's the really warms the that was a genuine cold, cold cockles of my heart. And I would say that like JVL, I would never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever go to another inauguration again. I was actually so I was actually I had to come back to D.C. on the day before the inauguration. I got into Union Station at like one thirty in the morning. I was taking a train down from New York and it reminded me of just how awful it is because I had to drive all the way through the city to avoid all of the barricades and all of the parties that were going on. I had to go all the way. So for people who don't understand the geography of D.C. from Union Station, there is a quick way to get out of the city. You just go down the third street tunnel. Basically to 395 and that takes you right out of the city. That was closed. There is a moderately longer way to get out of the city, which is the 14th Street Bridge. You just go down to 14th Street, you hook a left and you go right out of the city. Just a straight shot. It's perfect. That was closed. I had to go all the way out K Street to 66 and like loop around Roslyn, which is where my my office is now, to get home. It was a real pain because, you know, they don't. Oh, heaven forbid, the inauguration. The inaugural party revelers not just be able to wander around the streets of D.C. when, you know, poor commuters like myself are trying to get to get home. But I like JBL says, you know, just the the it's I think it's one of these things where if you do it once, once is enough for anyone.

Vic00:07:16I've been in this town now for I've been in this town now for 25 years and I have not gone to a single inauguration, believe it or not. I've been to inaugural ball, like checked it out and my buddy Shane Larson got invited to, I believe, the Texas or Arkansas ball in 93. And that was at the Mayflower Hotel. And what I remember from that were a lot of women in leopard skin. Wait, what year was this?

Sonny00:07:4393. And it was the Texas or Arkansas inaugural ball. Were they wearing like like hooker heels or like what are they?

Vic00:07:49Kind of the whole deal. The whole deal. You know, the tights, the whole deal. Had they just seen Pretty Woman? I'm not sure. But, you know, I'm sure they like she wears. I'm sure the newly inaugurated president love

JVL00:08:01that. So you and I were wandering around the same space at the same time. For all I know, like I mean, I remember bumping this guy with an enormous head when we're on that day in January of 1993. But like the details of the shift the gravity of

Sonny00:08:15the earth when you did this, like, did we spin slightly off our axis when I bumped into a guy

Vic00:08:20said, Oh, excuse me, sir. And then I realized it was a woman because I looked down at the jeans. And it was kind of this like, Oh, yeah, Prada. She was she, she, she, she was wearing Prada. She was I said, Oh, wow, that's weird. It's excuse me. So that was that was awkward. But I always remember that moment. I was actually at the White House, the day after George HW Bush lost. I had interned at the Justice Department that summer. Did you run around going in your face? Oh, I was, I was, I was, you know, I was a college Republican. So I got into the South Lawn. And this was when HW arrived by helicopter on the lawn, and all the supporters were there to meet him with flags and stuff like that. And I got really up close, I was in the front of this, this long line and, and Bush comes out and it's raining. And people are, even though it's raining, there are people in sunglasses, because they were crying. And I remember a woman who was in tears saying, you know, it's one thing if it was Paul Tsongas, but not this man, not this man. And so it was, of course, for Clinton. And and, and, and, and Bush came by and, and he said something like, gosh, you know, with all support you would thought I, you know, I won or something. And there's probably a line written by Andy Ferguson or John Podhoretz. But, you know, and, and everyone's cheering and crying at the same time. And, well, God bless. Wait, so were you interning in the White House then? No, no, Justice Department. Justice Department. Under Attorney General Bill Barr. But I wrote POTUS letters as a, as an intern. So like the president had to, you know, send a letter to DARE, Drug Abuse Resistance Education Programs. And it's like congratulating them on a job well done. And that was me. That was my letter.

JVL00:10:06Were you, were you writing the presidential fitness winner letters?

Vic00:10:08Stuff like that. Stuff like that. You know, there was a lot of, it was stuff related to like. There are hundreds of children across the

JVL00:10:14country who thought they were getting real President Bush signatures and letters. And it was you.

Vic00:10:18Yeah, yeah. I signed Lamar's handwriting. No, just kidding. Anyway, and God bless George H.W. Bush because, of course, he was in the hospital, but now he's back out. And doctors say that it's a testament to his health.

Sonny00:10:32Given your history of what happens to celebrities after you mention them, maybe you should just stop talking right now.

Vic00:10:37Well, Sonny, I was about to say, I was about to say, you know, it's almost like the president was unbreakable. Speaking of which.

JVL00:10:46Oh, my God. And that is a legitimately great transition.

Vic00:10:50Thank you, JV. I worked over the weekend.

JVL00:10:52The first one, it took 12 episodes, but

Vic00:10:54you got one. Nailed it. Yes, thank you very much. So, speaking of unbreakable, Sonny, you went to see an M. Night Shyamalan movie last week. What was it? And tell us all about it.

Sonny00:11:04The new M. Night Shyamalan movie, Split, starring James McAvoy, better known to most of you as Professor X. The new Professor X, not the Captain Picard Professor X. It is about a man who has 23 personalities, who kidnaps three girls. It takes place in the city of Philadelphia. It revolves around their efforts to escape from this madman and his efforts to subdue and have his way with them sounds wrong. That's not quite what he's what he's up to. I would say that, so I don't want to, I don't want to talk too much about it in terms of plot, just because I don't want to spoil it, because there is a great twist in the last 90 seconds or so. And that if either of you, I know you two haven't seen it, if you've looked it up, don't spoil it for people, don't.

JVL00:11:59I've resisted thus far. I read a piece by Sonny Bunch which spoiled the crap out of

Sonny00:12:04it. But there were a lot of spoiler warnings in that. I'm kidding. We'll put that in show notes. You know what, I actually

JVL00:12:08don't care at all about spoilers. Spoilers to me do not diminish the enjoyment of

Sonny00:12:12something at all. So this is, this is like science has proven this. You're, you're in favor of science then. The science has shown that most people actually enjoy things more when they know what happens at the end of it. Well it's because my enjoyment is not predicated on being surprised. Right. I think that is, that is, again, this is what science has shown. I feel

Vic00:12:31that way mostly, except for his movies, because I feel that they're more, well I don't know if I could say anymore, more often than not, but it's a pretty good payoff. Yeah. In his type of movies. Right. So I

Sonny00:12:41would say, you know, M. Night Shyamalan, I will go to bad for here, here a little bit. You know, his first four movies or so are really, like I would say amongst the best, like first four major films that a filmmaker has just about ever done. Unbreakable, or I'm sorry, The Sixth Sense.

JVL00:12:58Unbreakable. Don't go over ratings. Don't go, the best first four filmmakers anybody's ever done. Like this is, I'm

Vic00:13:07sorry, continue. And before you do so,

JVL00:13:09also, just saying, his first four films

Vic00:13:11are really good. He also had a couple small films. His first four films. He had a couple small films

Sonny00:13:15before The Sixth Sense. Yeah, yeah, I know. First four major films. That's why I said major. That's why I, I, I conditioned it that way. They're the best first four films that have ever been made in history, by man born of woman. He, he, so The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable and Signs, which is, I know, I think has, has gained in appreciation a bit over the years. And The Village, which is, which was, which was slightly vilified at the time and I would, I would go to bat for as a, a great movie about community. It's a movie about, you know, Rod Dreher talks about this Benedict option of, like, withdrawing from the world and, and creating smaller, you know, more intimate communities, where people who share ideas and ideologies can exist together. And it is very much a movie in that vein. It's a movie about this idea that, you know, the village, some sort of unity. Yeah, yeah.

Vic00:14:10That's like, well, it's like people who, you know, go into compounds and stuff

Sonny00:14:14like that. Right. Yeah, it's, it's, it's similar. And, and so, and then, and then he had a decade of real, just crap, just real, like, the, the, what's the one where he's

JVL00:14:24the story? Lady and the Wall. Lady and the Wall. In the water. In the water. So bad. It's, it's so bad, and it's, it's, it's so bad that it's, like, shockingly bad. It's really, it's really, I remember. And it's narcissistic, too. Like, the hero in the

Sonny00:14:36movie is a storyteller. He's there to save the world. And who plays the storyteller? Oh, that's M. Night Shyamalan. M. Night Shyamalan plays the storyteller who needs to save the world. And then you have The Happening, which is kind of like a byword. Don't forget, don't forget the

JVL00:14:48critics. For crap. Who are demonized. Oh, the critics, yeah, the critics who are, who

Sonny00:14:52are the worst people in the world. Paul Giamatti's the, he's the, the, like, maintenance man. And the, it's, oh, it's the Bob, Bob Balaban? Is that who it is? Is the critic? Anyway, terrible, that movie's terrible. The Happening is awful. It is, like, the, it's a, it's a, it's a byword for totally terrible, failed camp.

Vic00:15:13Is it, like, kind of a Stephen King ripoff? Is that basically? Yeah, so it's,

Sonny00:15:17it's about, all these people are killing themselves. Nobody knows why everybody's killing themselves. It's because of the plants. The plants want us to do it because of the plants. It's because of global warming or something. So that was awful. And then people thought, like, okay, maybe he can get his groove back, because he's got to, he still has a good eye for imagery. He's, he's, like, he's good with motion. He can, you know, frame a scene. So maybe we can give him some, like, projects that he didn't write, you know, some, some, some, some, some, like, work for hire director stuff. And that was even worse. You had The Last Airbender, and then you had After Earth, The Will Smith slash Jaden Smith bomb. So, just off, both of those films are terrible financial and artistic. Wasn't there a movie with an elevator, a devil in an elevator? He produced that. Produced it. And that didn't do well either, anyway. It did okay. It did fine for what it was. It was a small budget. Right. But then he got his groove back with The Visit, which was, again, it's a small budget, very small budget, five million dollars, movie from the Blumhouse people, who were the ones who made, like, The Conjuring and The Purge movies. So, these are people who know how to do low budget filmmaking and get it to audiences. Huge hit, made almost a hundred million dollars. Worldwide, off a five million dollar budget. He follows this up with Split, another very small budgeted movie, which made forty million dollars this weekend. So, I think it's safe to say that M. Night Shyamalan is back. Go see Split, everyone.

Vic00:16:39Is this a vehicle for a James McAvoy Oscar? Well, he would have missed the window for the Oscar, but he's going to get one.

Sonny00:16:47It would be for next year's Oscars, but no, no, the movie is too trashy, to be light. It really is, this is, like, a successful campaign. It's a successful camp, whereas the happening was failed camp. I mean, James McAvoy's playing all these different characters, and they're... Is he playing it too over the top? Is that what you think? They're very over the top, but I mean, they're intentionally over the top, and they're, like, fun to watch. I mean, it's, again, this is, this is successful camp, insofar as it's, like, silly and crazy, but also fun and entertaining, and like, self-aware. JVL, you were going to

JVL00:17:14say something, or no? No, I mean, you know, I'm torn on Shyamalan, because I, I want to like him. I mean, he's, he makes the types of movies that I, I like. He is from Philly, and he reps the Philly world that I grew up in, in beautiful ways, and I really like Unbreakable. Yeah, yeah. I think Unbreakable is a great movie, and he's got a amazing visual sense. I mean, a really, really beautiful visual sense. On the other hand, no, I actually don't like Sixth Sense all that much. I think Sixth Sense doesn't, I think it's one failing is a really serious failing, which is in a movie like that, you can do anything you want, but you have to adhere to the rules that you set up in order to make it work, especially when you're relying on a twist ending to put the entire movie into context, and the rules, he sets up these rules for ghosts and then violates

Vic00:18:13them. How so? Like, you know, so

JVL00:18:16ghosts can't touch anything except for the scene when Haley Joel Osment is in the kitchen, and all the, the doors in the kitchen cabinets and drawers are pulled open in five seconds, presumably by a ghost who touched them. And, you know, there's, there's the breathing, the cold stuff. And the bruising. Which only happened. The bruising and the cutting,

Sonny00:18:32right? Right. But I don't, I don't think that, is that actually a rule that the ghosts can't touch anything? How was that, how was that rule established? I

JVL00:18:38believe this is, this is part of the thing, like, you never see Bruce Willis touch anything, right? Because if he touches it, it wouldn't work, and then, you know, he wouldn't be able to open the door, right? I mean, but he does, but he

Sonny00:18:48throws, he throws, like, a brick through a window or something, remember? Yeah, he causes a glass to break. I, I think, I

Vic00:18:53think what JBL's getting at, though, is

Sonny00:18:55there's no, there's no touching of other humans, there's no interacting like that, is what you're saying. I think, I think that the ghosts can only interact if they get really angry. Yeah. I, I think

JVL00:19:03that you have to use... So it's not really a rule, then, it's just a suggestion, right?

Vic00:19:06You know what it is? It's the Patrick Swayze ghost rule, which is you have to learn to manipulate, and many ghosts don't, and then he went, Patrick Swayze and Ghost went to the subway. What movie

JVL00:19:14is that? What movie is that? In Ghost. In Ghost, and he goes, yes, the... Is that one of your favorite movies? Which I've

Vic00:19:19seen it, like, twice in the last, like, month, and it just happened to be on. Wait, I'm sorry. By the way, that is Demi Moore at her best, by the way. She's at her all-natural best. Short hair still

Sonny00:19:30works on her there. We need to just pause the M. Night Shyamalan discussion for one moment and discuss why you were watching Ghost twice in a month. My wife

Vic00:19:42was watching it. I walked in, the TV was on. I just happened to sit on the remote control. Plagues! Locusts! Anyway, but, you know, he goes into the subway, and the angry ghost who was either pushed or committed suicide, he is the master manipulator ghost, and then he learns from him how to move objects. So maybe that's what's going on in The Sixth Sense. Sure, whatever. But

JVL00:20:07here's the thing. So Shyamalan turns out, like, even his visual sense, like, he's only got a couple tricks, and he comes back to them again and again. My single favorite shot in Unbreakable, early in the movie, is there's a ghost that's there's a scene which is shot almost entirely, you know, as a, through the reflection of what's actually happening in the room, off of this gray-green curved glass television tube. And it's amazing, except that this is a trick Shyamalan uses over and over again, shooting things off of curved reflective surfaces. He does it the iconic... He does it in signs. In signs. Right, in signs. Over the village. In Sixth Sense, with the brass doorknob, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Iconic shot. So he has these crutches, and the twist ending. And relying on the twist ending is... It's like, it's like being a gimmick wrestler. You know, like, a wrestler's got like a gimmick that everybody loves, and it turns out they're like, oh, like, that's that's all they've, that's all they've got is that gimmick. And I just, as a rule, I don't like twist endings, because as often as not, storytellers become obsessed with the twist, and then they lose sight of telling the story well. That's a good point. And so the twist becomes the, the, the point of it. And this is, I would say this is true of The Crying Game, it's true of Primal Fear, it's even true to a certain degree of Memento, although Memento to me is not a movie so much as a demonstration project for the Nolans to simply show we can, we can do this thing with an unbelievably large degree of difficulty, so give us money to make a real movie. And I don't, I don't even know that they would think that that is an unfair characterization. So a good twist, and I spend a lot of time thinking about this, what does a good twist do? When a twist is executed properly, you are not surprised by it. Right, you, you, you, what it does is it actually makes immediately everything behind it make sense. And so it is revelatory and not surprising. You're not confused by it, you don't have to sit back and scratch your head and go, wait a minute, hold on, right? Okay, I guess that, okay, okay. Like everything has to immediately, it should be like the tumblers on a lock falling home when the twist is executed. And I think that The Usual Suspect is a perfect example of this. You could have the twist ending of the, of The Usual Suspect, you could eliminate that so that you could know in the beginning, going into it, that Verbal Kint is Kaiser Soze. And it's still a really interesting story because it's an interesting story about this criminal mastermind named Kaiser Soze. You could, The Dark Knight Rises, which is another one of my favorite twists, the Miranda Tate as Talia Algol. It's done so perfectly that everything makes sense the instant you know it. And you know, I watch that movie like, you know, once every couple weeks. It's your ghost. It is, it is my ghost. But, you know, I would say knowing that it's going to happen does not diminish anything about it. So, the twist is, a movie which executes the twist well still has very high degrees of rewatchability. And knowing the twist does not, it's like we were talking about spoilers, does not take away anything from it. You're not there just for the initial electric shock of the surprise. And I think with a lot of Shyamalan movies that that is simply not true.

Sonny00:23:13So, I will disagree with you slightly on Shyamalan. We can come back to that. But I would say that no one in the Nolan right is probably the best example of somebody who consistently does the tumblers falling into place thing, right? Like the prestige. The prestige when you find out that Christian Bale has a brother. And that's how his magic trick works. It kind of changes the whole tenor of the rest of the film. If you go back and watch it and you can see how all these things are coming together.

JVL00:23:42But he doesn't, that's not clutch for him. Like The Dark Knight does not have that. Batman Begins does not have that. The A little bit, but for me, I mean we could have a whole episode about Interstellar someday. I still don't understand the end of Interstellar. Like I still don't understand exactly what happened or why. That's a moment where actually. He was

Sonny00:24:00using gravity to send information back in time. It's very simple. We'll talk about

JVL00:24:04this later. It was a time loop. But for me as much as I revere Nolan, the twist is

Sonny00:24:10that the Nazis win at the end. It's actually a sci-fi. Vic is going to love this

JVL00:24:14movie. God, Vic is going to love this movie.

Vic00:24:16You know, it's so interesting in the six cents. For me, one of the most poignant moments of the movie, I mean it was an interesting movie, but for me one of the most poignant moments is when they're at the end stuck in that car and there was a traffic accident and a cyclist was killed. And then Haley Joel Osment tells his mother, played wonderfully by Tony Collette, you know, he finally tells the secret that I see dead people. And then he talks about grandma and seeing her and the whole thing. And he does, and he plays it up so well. And talking about her coming to her recital when Tony Collette was a little girl, even though they had a fight. And the question, the answer, the answer is every day. And what was your question mom? And the mom says, you know, you know, are you proud of me? I don't know if Shyamalan wrote all that, but I thought it was just, that was a, that was very intense. And I thought to myself, why didn't this, why wasn't this kid in The Phantom Menace? Did you cry? I'm crying right now. I'm crying right now in the studio. I would say, so the,

Sonny00:25:13the, I would disagree with you a little bit on Shyamalan's twists insofar as I think that the twist often has the effect of kind of radically shifting your perspective on the film in ways that are good. So I mean, like The Sixth Sense then becomes, for me at least on second and third viewing, became a kind of a much more poignant film about coming to grips with loss and coming to grips with, you know, how, how, how we experience losing loved ones. Which is something I, you know, fortunately have not had a huge amount of experience with and it is, you know, that, that changed that a little bit. Unbreakable I think becomes a, again, a kind of, it's, it's, it's probably I think the least effective of his twists on second viewing, but on first viewing it's so good. I still get goosebumps thinking about the, you know, the handshake at the end. And Signs doesn't really have a twist. I don't know. I don't think it's fair to describe what happens in Signs as a twist. It's just kind of, this is the progression of the story. But again, The Village I think becomes a much better movie the second time around when you're watching it. You're understanding what these people have done. You know, friend of the podcast Adam Kuyper is a big fan of this movie and he kind of turned my whole, my thinking around on this whole thing. The Village, which I thought was like kind of, like I, it was to the point in Shyamalan's career where I saw the trailer the first time and I was like, okay, so the twist is it's modern day, right? Like that's what is happening. What did

Vic00:26:51you figure it out? No, literally from the

Sonny00:26:54trailer. I was like, from the trailer I was like, okay, so what could be the most twisty thing? Okay, they're definitely in

Vic00:27:00modern day. What made you think that though? I mean. Just because I was like,

Sonny00:27:03what is the opposite of what is happening right now? That's literally all I thought. So, so like even like, but again, that doesn't really count. It's not like I deduced it from watching the movie. It was just like, okay, what, what is, and this is again what JBL I think was getting at earlier, the weakness of relying on the twist. The, the, the but, but that being said, once you've accepted the twist, once you've experienced the movie the first time, and you go back and you watch it, and you watch this kind of, this, this again, sense of community building, community creation. It, it, it is a stronger film, I

Vic00:27:32think. I found, you know, the ending of The Village I thought was for me, for the M. Night Shyamalan movies, one of the most sort of stunning. It's sort of the, it's a great reveal when they go into the room and they open up that little chest while she's going out, when, while Bryce Dallas Howard is going for the medicine. Yes, going to the town. Crawling up the, yeah, yeah. And the only problem is you've got to sit through an hour and a half of The Village in order to get to that part. I mean, if you're going to watch the movie, I'd say the last, like, 20 minutes is the best part.

Sonny00:28:01It's also constructed with the fake twist, right? Yeah. Where the, you were like, oh, the monsters are real. Oh, wait, the monsters aren't real. It was just, it

Vic00:28:08was just. And, you know, and if I lived there, I would be like, oh, where are you going? Oh, I'm going to the towns. I'll be right back. You know, every, like, weekend I'd be going away. You'd be going to the

Sonny00:28:16towns. Well, this is why nobody wants you in their village, Vic. I would have been

Vic00:28:21shunned. I would have been that cloaked

JVL00:28:23monster with the claws. Do we all remember that it's Misha Barton with a big part in The Sixth Sense? Yes! Yeah, as

Sonny00:28:30the daughter. The point, the, the, the, the,

Vic00:28:33the, it's like the, what do I kind of, what do I think it has to do with, uh, with murder. Then she's murdered by the mother

JVL00:28:39who was, like, feeding her castor oil or what? Uh, pine, pine cleaner or something. Pine cleaner, awful. Yeah. And this is, I would say, so this is, I would say, I feel bad bagging on Shamlin because on the other, you know, on the one hand, he, he makes beautiful movies that only diminish when you look at all them together. I would say it's, it's the full body of work which makes you go, oh, come on now, this is a little, a little much. If you just take each, if he would just, if he'd only made one movie in his life or, uh, you know, and it was any one of those movies, you'd look at it and say, yeah, okay, that's a, that's a pretty good movie. In the case of The Sixth Sense, it's a, it's a very beautiful movie. At the time, you have to remember when it came out, right? It was a sort of ground breaking. He brought, I don't know if it's fair to say that he brought back and made child actors respectable again. Again, again. I think he probably made child acting respectable again. Well, we actually

Vic00:29:26discussed this JVL at the time because we were comparing it to, uh, Jake Lloyd. Oh, that's right. You know, it's like, geez, you know, I mean, it turns out that

JVL00:29:34they're all not like that. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel, I mean, do you guys have favorite twist ending movies? I, I do. What's your

Vic00:29:45favorite? Well, you know what, I probably, a bunch, but the one that just jumped out, uh, for me was, uh, 1987's No Way Out with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman and Crazy Sean Young. Um, and that was the, uh, lockdown, uh, search for the, uh, killer inside the Pentagon, right? So, Kevin Costner's The Navy. I don't know if you'd seen this movie, uh, JVL. It's so fantastic.

JVL00:30:10I think I rented this on VHS when I was in seventh grade or something. Oh, my gosh.

Vic00:30:14That's the only memory I have. It, it, the, the ending is, for me, it, it's a real stunner, but it's, uh, uh, Kevin Costner. You can spoil it. It's, it's 30 years old. It's such a great ending, but, uh, Kevin Costner is a naval attache agent, and he's having, uh, he, he starts dating a woman, uh, Sean Young, who happens to also be the mistress to the Secretary of Defense, played by Gene Hackman, and so there's a lot of in and out, so to speak, you know, coming out of the townhouse, you know, and Kevin Costner literally has to go through the out, uh, the back door, and I mean, because you know, because Gene Hackman was coming through the front, and then what happens though, is, um, they get in a fight, and Sean Young and Gene Hackman, and Gene Hackman kills her, uh, but then they make it look like an accident, but of course the only person who knows who the killer is, is the naval attache, Kevin Costner, who's now been assigned to work for, uh, Gene Hackman, and so the whole point of the movie is Hackman then, uh, assigns, uh, tasks Kevin Costner to search for the killer, and he's trying to figure out and he comes, and, and, and, uh, Will Patton, uh, is, uh, Gene Hackman's right-hand man, and they said, we'll come up with a, um, a story that, uh, it, this, it has to do with a Russian spy named Yuri, because he's always, you know, the CIA is always talking about him, the director of the CIA is played by Fred Thompson, it's great, and they said, you know, it's, uh, Yuri is in the building, and we gotta figure out, and, and, and we could, you know, just blame it on this spy person, the whole thing, and then, you know, becomes this big chase throughout the Pentagon, and everything else, but at the end of the movie, um, Kevin Costner manages to escape, and, uh, the, the kicker was, uh, he goes to talk to his landlord at the end of the movie, Kevin Costner, and all of a sudden, they start talking in Russian, and it turns out he was Yuri, and that Will Patton, he was right all along, I mean, it's just like, phew, you know. That's pretty great. That's a great ending.

JVL00:32:07That is great.

Vic00:32:09Oh my gosh. Yeah. I'm gonna have to, is the rest of the

JVL00:32:11movie that good?

Vic00:32:12Yes, yes, except for that there's a metro stop at Georgetown, and that, that hasn't happened yet. Yeah, well, that's.

JVL00:32:16Then I would not have had to walk from the Capitol to Hamburger Hamlet in Georgetown.

Vic00:32:19Right, right, no, it leads right to Georgetown Park. Yeah.

Sonny00:32:23Uh, my favorite twist in, that I, that I've watched recently, I mean, it's, it's always hard to choose, but I, I think the one that I, uh, my favorite that I've watched recently for the second time, um, I've re-watched it for the first time, uh, was Shutter Island, the Scorsese movie, which, like.

JVL00:32:43God, that's the best movie.

Sonny00:32:43I mean, isn't it, isn't it just the best, he's the best director, but it was, it was, but it was, it was great because Martin Scorsese is not a director who does twist endings, so it never, never, I never suspected for a second that Leo, you know, was, was the real killer, or the real prisoner all along, so it, that, that is one that really worked out for me. Let me ask, oh, first, uh, your favorite twist ending, JBL. JBL.

JVL00:33:06Uh, yeah, probably Dark Knight Rises. Okay. And this is why, it's so effective, because I actually, I knew that she was Talia Al Ghul, like, the whole movie, from the minute she showed up, and I was like, oh, okay, so, Marie-Anne Cotillard's character is obviously Ra's al Ghul's daughter, and, uh, you know, I knew this just from, like, Batman nerdery. Yeah, yeah. And, even so, it's... From the blogs. Yeah, sure, we'll say that, from the blogs. That's the respectable answer. Um, and, uh, and it did, it diminished my enjoyment of that movie, not at all. Mm-hmm. So.

Sonny00:33:39Mm-hmm. Okay. Uh, also, the revelation in Batman Begins, the Liam Neeson turning out to be Ra's... Was, was a pretty good twist, I thought.

JVL00:33:49Only, again, if you had no idea about that. No, exactly. I mean, anybody with half a brain... If you hadn't read... No, but you don't even need to have read it, all you have to do is see Liam Neeson with the Dick Van Dyke beard. Yeah, yeah. Not Dick Van Dyke. The Van Dyke. The Van Dyke beard.

Sonny00:34:01To know that he's, he's obviously Ra's. Okay, so, we should also, should we, should we draw a distinction between the twist ending and the successful thriller? Right? Mm-hmm. Like, would you say that Basic Instinct, for instance, has a twist ending? Where...

Vic00:34:17Yeah, yeah.

JVL00:34:18Sure. But it's a twist on a thriller, so the twist is, is sort of a cherry on top there, but is not into a... Right? I mean, that movie is successful even without the ending. Right. But the ending is what turns it into a cult classic. Right. Right. What about... Aside from Sharon Stone turned that into a cult classic. Well, Sharon Stone... All on her own.

Sonny00:34:36Yeah, Sharon Stone was, speaking of people at the peak of their powers, Sharon Stone and Basic Instinct. Okay, now let's, let's take this in a slightly different direction. Like, Psycho has a twist ending. Yes. That's right, yes. But what other, like, do most Hitchcock endings really have a twist ending, or are they just kind of thrillers that build to a conclusion that you're, they're like a whodunit type film?

Vic00:35:05I think it's more that.

Sonny00:35:07I think it's more, they're more whodunits, right? And like, a whodunit can't really be a twist, almost by definition, because you're working the whole time trying to figure out whodunit.

JVL00:35:15Right, or just trying to figure out, is he going to get away with it? Right. Rear window is not a.

Sonny00:35:20Shadow of a doubt is not a, is not really a, there's not like a twist ending.

JVL00:35:24North by northwest, you're not, there's no twist to it. Rear window is not a twist. Yeah. You're just, yeah. Yeah, case of mistaken identities and more like that.

Vic00:35:32Yeah, yeah.

JVL00:35:33Yes, I would agree. Okay. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of other, other great twists. This is why I do, it is a gimmick, and as you say, it's best used sparingly. Sparingly. Yeah, I would say. And this is the thing about Shyamalan that I think is what drove audiences, turned audiences against him.

Vic00:35:48It was the only twist ending for the director of No Way Out, Roger Donaldson. The other one here, well, it's based on a novel, but nevertheless.

Sonny00:35:55What else has Roger Donaldson directed?

Vic00:35:57This is really interesting. He did, in 1984, the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty called The Bounty. And if you haven't seen that one, that is, it's actually really good. I liked it, maybe because I'm a child of the 80s, but I really liked that remake. Captain Bly was played by Anthony Hopkins. Fletcher Christian was played by Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson's right hand man was Liam Neeson, and Anthony Hopkins' right hand man was Daniel Day-Lewis. Those four right there. That's a lot of talent on screen.

Sonny00:36:25That is a lot of talent. Is the end of Apocalypto a

Vic00:36:29twist ending? Oh, yeah. Well, it's not a twist, it's just a surprise arrival, if you will. Sort of, oh, here they are.

Sonny00:36:37Speaking of twist endings, Arrival, that's a great twist ending.

Vic00:36:39I guess, Sonny, I'm still trying to figure it out. Oh, my God. And speaking of the Arrival, boy, I've got all sorts to say. We received a feedback, a tweet from a request from a long-time Substandard listener, Robert Little. Jonathan, you want to take us here?

JVL00:36:59Robert Little tweets, Weekly Substandard pitch, place in order Arrival, Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian, Solaris. I love this game, and I would encourage anybody else

Sonny00:37:11who wants to play this game

JVL00:37:12should play along with them or send us lists like this. This is a great game. This is something I would frankly do every single week. If you send us, send us.

Sonny00:37:21So I actually wrote down a list, and I left it at the office. Can I just look at your computer real quick? Yes. Place in order. Arrival. All right. From bottom to top. No, no, no. Go top to bottom. From best to worst? Best to worst. From best to worst. Yeah. From best to worst, I would say Arrival, Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, and Solaris. Now, the part of the problem with this list is that I think Gravity only really works as a ride. Gravity works in IMAX 3D with a booming sound system, blah, blah, blah. Watching it at home, I would probably, I would maybe even put Gravity after Solaris. The original, not the remake, but I would probably put it after the remake as well.

JVL00:38:09Like with Avatar, that is a movie that is format dependent?

Sonny00:38:12Yes. Absolutely. I mean, Gravity is a great, great film to watch. On a giant screen with the, you know, giant speakers ringing in your ears. I remember walking out of that film feeling almost woozy, like literally like I had gotten off a roller coaster or something. Like I was like, I kind of like staggered a little bit down the street like I was a drunken fool, but I was just drunk on movie. Okay.

Vic00:38:41For me, I would say Interstellar, The Martian, I'd say a tie between Gravity and Arrival. I haven't seen Solaris, but I would probably rank Soviet Solaris over George Clooney Solaris.

Sonny00:38:54You're just saying? You would just...

Vic00:38:57Yeah, the originals tend to be better.

Sonny00:38:58That's really good. Thank you.

Vic00:38:59That's good critical work there. Hey, I'm honest and upfront. How about you, JVL?

JVL00:39:03Haven't seen The Arrival. I would say The Martian.

Sonny00:39:06Well, you've seen The Arrival, right?

JVL00:39:08The Charlie Sheen?

Sonny00:39:09Yes. But you haven't seen Arrival.

JVL00:39:11I haven't seen Arrival.

Vic00:39:13Oh, no, you saw The Wrong Arrival.

JVL00:39:15The Martian, although truth be told, I haven't I have a hard time disentangling my love for the book with my like for the movie. I like the movie quite a lot. I love the book like crazy. Interstellar, which I like a ton, even though I don't actually like the movie all that much, it's a tremendously, for me, a tremendously interesting failure. Then Gravity, then Solaris. So entirely possible that I would choose Arrival first, once I see it in 2025.

Vic00:39:40Okay.

JVL00:39:42Thank you. Do you want to do Spirit of the Week now or Corrections?

Vic00:39:44Well, I was going to say it really quickly, but if you wanted to talk about, did you have any thoughts on the Star Wars name, Last Jedi? Just throwing that out there.

Sonny00:39:53My only real thought is I hope this means that we're finally going to wipe the Jedi out. This is the last Jedi and they're dead at the end of this movie. No more Jedi. JVL?

JVL00:40:04Brad Jackson, a friend of mine, friend of the show, says that obviously this is a reference to the Yoda line, when gone I am, the last of the Jedi will you be. However, he says that it's interesting to note that Jedi is both singular and plural. Yes. So it could be anything. And I mean, what we all hope for is that Rey is killed in this movie. Because if you want to save the Star Wars franchise, kill Rey, save the franchise.

Sonny00:40:33Kill the cheerleader, save the franchise.

JVL00:40:37Yeah, that's exactly true. And Brad actually also said that he wonders what's going to go on because of Carrie Fletcher. He says Brad follows his stuff even more closely than we do, says that she seems to have been an integral plan for the next movie, and that they are likely going to have to do a lot of rewriting to figure out what to do with her. They've already committed to not Tarkinizing her. Right, right, right. Which is wise. I believe that is wise. So that is interesting. I do hope, though, part of me holds out hope, that they will take the lesson of Rogue One, that it's okay to kill off characters.

Vic00:41:12I guarantee you that's not going to happen. I bet you that Rey lives as Luke dies, and they'll have a big firefight in the end, the two of them with their lightsabers going crazy against lots of stormtroopers, and he passes on her powers to her. Or something. Yes. I guess. That's what I say.

Sonny00:41:30Just shoot me now. I really- Come on, Snoke. Do us all a favor. Do us all a solid-

Vic00:41:36Me's are going to die. Sorry. That's my-

Sonny00:41:38What if Jar Jar Binks is

JVL00:41:40the last Jedi? Oh my God. There you go, there you

Vic00:41:42are. See?

JVL00:41:43I had to say, I really got- The first thought I had was, oh, Lucas named this one. This is like their make-up to him for-

Sonny00:41:52I don't think The Last Jedi is a bad name. I don't think it's a bad- No, but then it makes you wonder-

JVL00:41:56Is it worse than The Force Awakens? The Force Awakens is a non-threatening- The Force Awakens is fine.

Vic00:42:03But if that's The Last Jedi, then what would the last installment be, right? Because that's eight, and there's one more after that. The Last Jedi? There's going to be a

Sonny00:42:12Star Wars movie every

Vic00:42:13year until you're dead. I know, as you mentioned this in a previous episode.

Sonny00:42:15Yeah, there's no- There's no ending. There's no escape.

Vic00:42:18It'll be like the first something else.

JVL00:42:19There's no escape from the

Sonny00:42:21world that we have created for ourselves. The prison.

JVL00:42:25More interesting than that is that I think this week, did you guys see that Woody Harrelson is now signed on for the Han Solo movie? Yes.

Sonny00:42:30Which is great.

JVL00:42:31I'm really looking forward to the trans Han Solo. I think that this is going to be a great moment to be inclusive, and I hope that Disney really understands what the audience wants.

Vic00:42:40Yes. Yes. And of course, it's with what's-his-name-is, the lead in Han Solo. I just saw him yesterday on Halsey's- Alden Ehrenreich.

Sonny00:42:48Yeah, Alden Ehrenreich. Shocker. He's a big fan of Ehrenreich.

Vic00:42:56Let's just move on, then. Okay, fine.

JVL00:42:58You know, I have a picture of Vic's bookshelf, his bookcase from his office, that I was going to post to show notes.

Sonny00:43:02You've got to put that in show notes. You've got to put that in show notes.

JVL00:43:04I don't quite know. The entire bookcase is full of Nazi books. Nazis.

Vic00:43:09But the shelf above is all Stalin's, so you know, really, it's all good. It's all good. It's the authoritarian wall.

Sonny00:43:16Vic is stuck in the Molintov, Rippentrop era.

Vic00:43:19Those days, yes, yes, yes. Let's move on to corrections, if we can. And, you know, a comment I made about radio DJs in the last episode, and I said, oh, when the music starts playing and the DJ's still talking, but they have till technically the vocalist begins, and sometimes they actually, you know, overstep that line, and I said, oh, DJs call it hitting the wall or hitting the fence. But long time substandard listener Just Carl, who's on the show, points out the term is hitting the post. So, thank you very much for that. I was only a DJ once, and that was at an ice skating rink in Tom's River one night. Thank you.

JVL00:43:56I'm always fascinated by the entomology? Etymology. Etymology. It's insects. Insects, right. The etymology of phrases like this, and so this must have to do with phonographs and turntables, right? It must be the needle actually hitting the post in the center of the, right, or something like that. What's a turntable? You know, actually, that's, no, see, that doesn't work as humor, because you're a millennial. God. You'd be like, God, I love my vine.

Sonny00:44:20I know, they really, they're the worst.

JVL00:44:22Yeah.

Vic00:44:22I'm an entomologist, which is an expert on I have a couple

JVL00:44:25corrections. Pastries. Only one for me. I said that Lex Luger was dead. He's not. He's very much alive, which really makes me very happy. I loved Lex Luger as a kid. My brother and sister and I used to do wrestling all the time, and our favorite thing to do, because I'm a lot older than they are, my favorite thing in the world to do was to put them in the particular, he'd be like four years old, and for some reason he thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and so I would have him on my shoulder going,

Sonny00:44:52ah, the human torture rack, and my little

JVL00:44:54four-year-old Moppet brother would just be laughing his full head off, and it was great. So Lex Luger is alive, which is great. The lovely Miss Elizabeth is relentlessly still dead, and she did die, in fact, at his house.

Sonny00:45:08The big correction, though, is for Vic, who began the show

JVL00:45:11by saying, hey, this is our 10th episode. Oh, no, no, no. Baby Elizabeth. Well, if I could correct your correction, go back

Vic00:45:17to listen to it. I'll say, last week marked our 10th episode is what I said, so there's a correction to your correction.

JVL00:45:24Is that what you said?

?00:45:25Bang.

Vic00:45:25Thank you.

Sonny00:45:26Oh, boy.

Vic00:45:26What do the kids do? I'm doing this.

Sonny00:45:28Blowing his head up.

Vic00:45:29I'm using my fingers.

Sonny00:45:30I said, last episode marked our 10th episode. Wow, now you guys have to correct fight. Boom, there's the dynamite. You gotta get on Twitter and fight each other about this correction. I will say this.

Vic00:45:39One other correction I had, a self-correction when we were talking about 90s ballads on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Sunday. Sunday Brunch. Taking back Sunday. Sunday Brunch mentioned Meatloaf, right? And the song. And I forgot the name of the song. We figured out, of course, as you said, it's I would do anything for love, parentheses, but I won't do that. I thought it was I won't go there. But basically, I always thought there was a controversy. Where's there? Well, that was and I won't do that. Remember that? That was a controversy at the time. What was he referring to? I won't do that. This is why we get four stars. Vick, what do you think he's talking about? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's something to do with somebody's outbox. Okay, Spirit of the Week. The Spirit of the Week. I have no corrections. I know. I just skipped you because I knew. I have no corrections. I knew it.

JVL00:46:26I'm sorry. Hold on. Rewind 15 seconds. From which end is Meatloaf referring?

Vic00:46:34Oh, I see.

JVL00:46:35Sending or receiving? When he says he won't do that,

Vic00:46:39you clearly have a theory. Just say it all. No, sending. He was, you know, he was sending. You say it clearly

JVL00:46:44involving a woman. You say it clearly because you saw Fight Club, right?

Vic00:46:46I did. I did. Our Spirit of the Week is brought to us by our producer, Michael Graham, very kindly, of Bushmills Irish Whiskey, which is the oldest whiskey distillery from 1608. As he points out, when you make whiskey that long, you have enough time to fix the mistakes. So it was a lovely whiskey. And that's all the time we feel like giving you today. How do you like that? Yes! Vic, you have crushed this podcast. That is five-star hosting. FTW. Five-star hosting. Thank you. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matusstanbul. Challenges. Tweet about us. Challenges. Send them to us. Requests. Yes, please. At Sonny Bunch. Even at JV Last.

JVL00:47:36No, don't do that.

Sonny00:47:38Mostly JV Last.

Vic00:47:39Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard on a podcast and we're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. I was thinking about election stories, but this actually took place during the campaign in 1992 when I was with College Republicans in Georgetown. We went to some rally in Maryland and Bush, Barbara Bush, both of them were there at the rally, so I thought it was very exciting to see them in person. And we got really up close closer to the front. And after they got done, they decided to come down and work the crowd. And it was really exciting. I got all of a sudden, there were so many people pushing because they're like rock stars. Everybody wants to touch. And I got separated from the rest of my group and I got pushed into a group of Asian businessmen for Republicans for Bush. And I was with all these women, in fact, but I got really up close. I let him in, so I got really up close. And I just got so excited that when people are shaking hands with Barbara Bush, I was just yelling at her face. I was as close as a foot away. I'm saying, Barbara Bush! Barbara Bush! And my mouth had got so dry, a big ball of white spit flew out of my mouth and landed on her dress. You spit on the first lady of the United States. I spit on Barbara Bush and then I just stopped. And I just looked at it and I said, ugh.

JVL00:49:07Did you turn around and pretend it was the guy next to you?

Vic00:49:08Yeah, I kind of snuck back. Did she give you the stink eye? Did she have any idea? I believe she had no eye contact with me. She seemed horrified that, you know, I mean, the reactions were kind of nutty and to have, you know, the stink fly out of my mouth. Sorry about it. So, if Barbara Bush is listening to the podcast, my apologies.

Sonny00:49:26If Barbara Bush is listening to the podcast, I hope she leaves a review. That'd be great. Please. One star from B. Bush for one. This is for spitting on me all those years ago, Mattis.

JVL00:49:39I like to think of her as Steve Buscemi from Billy Madison just sitting there with her list. People, she's been waiting. Yeah, I know. Waiting for 25 years to get you back.

Sonny00:49:50Just imagine her waving at the computer screen after writing the review.

Vic00:49:53It's bothered me for years. I've rarely, I've rarely talked about that moment until now. God, that's so great. That's so great. So, wait,

Sonny00:50:02did you actually read my spoilerific? Of course I did. I don't, spoilers don't bother me at all. Without spoiling it for the people who care, what is your theory on the end of Split? Do you, thumbs up or thumbs down?

JVL00:50:16Thumbs up, thumbs way up. Actually, the first thing I thought was, hmm, I wonder who owns the intellectual property for that universe.

Sonny00:50:22That's exactly what I thought. That's exactly what I thought. 100% what I thought.

JVL00:50:26I'm getting really intrigued.

Sonny00:50:27So, anyway, you should go see it. You should see it. You should go to the theater and see it.

JVL00:50:31Yeah, because there's no chance of that, but I will watch it on a treadmill when it comes out on video in six months.

Sonny00:50:36I'm going to send David Lynch to your gym to slap you in the face.

JVL00:50:40So, this is a true story. I'm in New Hampshire, covering the primaries this past January, and I was a good boy and went running every day while I was up there, and I went to the little gym and did six or seven miles on the treadmill, and I text Sonny from the gym, hey, Sonny, I'm watching Mad Max Fury Road on my phone.

Sonny00:51:06Did I just send you the video back of David Lynch? I'm pretty sure I did.

JVL00:51:10That is exactly what she did, which is, I would say, probably of all the movies released in the year of our Lord, 2016, Fury Road is the last one to be seen on the phone.

Sonny00:51:23The one that needs to be experienced on as big a screen as possible. How was it to watch Mad Max Fury Road?

JVL00:51:29I would say that movie's so good that even on the phone, it was fine.

Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →

#12. Are Movie Twist Endings Overrated?

Comments