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#40. 'Pirates' Sails, 'Baywatch' Sinks, and More on the Latest Substandard
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Dudes Chatting — Johnny Depp, IP mania, and the future of theaters: The episode's connective tissue is the state of Hollywood franchises and the celebrity economics behind them. The Johnny Depp discussion is extensive and specific: Vic admires Donnie Brasco as proof of Depp's genuine ability; JVL and Sonny catalog the excesses reported in Depp's divorce proceedings — $3 million spent blasting Hunter Thompson's ashes from a cannon, 14 residences, $30,000 a month on wine. JVL uses the Pirates opening to walk through Edward J. Epstein's The Hollywood Economist framework for understanding how studios actually make money, arguing the theatrical window is increasingly a loss-leader for ancillaries. Sonny pushes back on full streaming surrender, invoking the music industry's collapse as a cautionary tale — he fears studios will optimize away the theatrical experience entirely and destroy the communal event that makes cinema culturally significant.
Reviews: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales — Sonny calls it incoherent but notes a CinemaScore of A-minus and a trajectory toward $800–900 million worldwide, suggesting audiences don't share critics' reservations. Baywatch — JVL opens with a mock-serious review before going real: the film is tonally inconsistent, relies on too many crude jokes, but Zac Efron is strong and The Rock is the best thing in it, even if the movie can't make it work.
Box Office: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales opens to $77 million over four days; Baywatch underperforms badly at $23 million — JVL had predicted Baywatch would win the weekend, a call he owns.
Corrections segment addressed. Spirit of the Week: George Dickel Rye.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00The Weekly Standard is a production of The Weekly Standard, a podcast on movies and pop culture hosted by Victorino Matus), and Sonny Bunch, with editor Bill Kristol.
Vic00:00:30The Weekly Standard is a production of The Weekly Standard, a podcast on movies and pop culture hosted by Victorino MatusSINGING and Sonny Bunch, with editor Bill Kristol. The Weekly Standard is a production of The Weekly Standard, a podcast on movies and pop culture hosted by Victorino Matus?) and Sonny Bunch, with editor Bill Kristol. What do we particularly like? Sonny.
Sonny00:01:33I was a big fan of J.S. Van Norman, May 28, 2017. Title, Wife Not Impressed. Five stars. To quote my wife, do you really listen to this? And frankly, there's no higher compliment than that. Strong. So anyway, Mr. J.S. Van Norman, please drop me at Sonny Bunch or at J.V. Last or at Victorino Matusbrance. It's a tweet, and we will figure out how to let your wife know that you listen to us all the time.
JVL00:02:08I love him. He's sassy. He speaks his mind. There's nothing sexier. Give him a shirt.
Sonny00:02:13Yes.
Vic00:02:14Which, by the way, we have.
Sonny00:02:15We have some shirts now. That was the big surprise. I was trying to keep a secret from everyone until they started getting their prizes and tweeting about them or whatever. But I haven't sent any of the t-shirts out yet, so this is my own fault. They're in the mail, guys. I don't know.
Vic00:02:30I don't know how that works. You'll have to explain it. Okay. In addition, I just want to remind everybody that the Substandard show notes posted by Jonathan Last are available every Friday at 11 a.m. Not every Friday. Have we missed them?
Sonny00:02:43I got a text message from JBL on Friday at like 3 p.m., and I was busy, so I didn't see it until like 7 or 8 p.m., saying like, oh, crap, I didn't do show notes this week. Available most Fridays. Available most Fridays. It's all right. I'm sure it's fine.
Vic00:02:59I think I'm fine. I've got some links I can send over.
JVL00:03:01Okay. How are we doing, JVL? Great. I had a fantastic weekend. I got a new watch. I'm a watch guy. Are you a watch guy? I am such a watch guy.
Vic00:03:12There are people who, I don't think there's anybody in between. Either you have like one or two watches, or you have like ten watches.
Sonny00:03:18So I have not owned a watch since I was probably 18 or so. Whenever I started carrying a cell phone all the time is when I stopped wearing watches. Because watches... Watches are one of these redundancies that modernity has chosen to eliminate. And yet, some people persist.
JVL00:03:36I love it. I've been a watch guy since I was like eight years old and got my first watch, which is a video game watch where you're a tank trying to make it across a bridge while planes drop bombs on you.
Sonny00:03:47Are you the bridge? You're the tank.
JVL00:03:49I don't understand how does that... You're trying to avoid the bombs and get across the bridge. And I went to Quaker school. And part of Quaker school was you had to sit for an hour every week at Quaker meeting on Wednesdays. And for an eight-year-old, that is an interminable amount of time. And so I figured I'd wait to mute the volume on it and sit by myself and move the tank.
Vic00:04:07Were your hands below the desk just like that you were doing just now? No, you're in the meeting house. You're in the meeting house. So you're on benches?
JVL00:04:15You're on benches, but because the teachers can't move around, they're sitting. And the teachers were actually into it and meditating and praying and doing whatever.
Vic00:04:20A meeting house? What am I picturing a scene from The Crucible? A little bit like The Village. It's a little bit like The Village.
JVL00:04:27But yeah, it was great. And so I'm a watch guy. And I... One of my buddies, Jason O'Connell, who I met just through email through the show and even before the show, he is also a watch guy. And the two of us constantly, four times a week, email each other pictures, like just watch porn. Like, oh, look at this new bouquet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, the Patek Philippe Turbulent.
Vic00:04:52That's watch porn or watch porn? That's what I want to know.
JVL00:04:55If Jason and I both wind up single, man, and alone, it's going to be because... Because we goaded each other into making horrible life decisions that have to do with horology.
Sonny00:05:04This is somehow even worse than the comic book collection. I, this is, you know... Do you own a pocket, JVL? I don't understand.
JVL00:05:13Do you own a pocket watch of fob? No, but I tell you this. Someday, I'm going to find a way to get some publication to send me to Baselworld to write a piece about Basel. I want to do, in the way that everybody discovered Comic-Con 15 years ago and started doing mainstream pieces about, oh, look at Comic-Con. Comic-Con, it's this crazy thing in San Diego with all these nerds. I want to do that for watches, because there is, the Comic-Con of watches is Baselworld in Switzerland. It is every year where all the watchmakers bring out their new things, and it's just insanity.
Sonny00:05:44But the difference is, I mean, the difference here, of course, is that, you know, at Comic-Con, they're rolling out things that, you know, tens of millions of people are going to be watching in the United States, whereas Watchworld is for, like, 17 people who buy 1,000 watches each.
JVL00:05:59Right, but the price point works out. Wait, wait, no, I'm not, I'm not saying... I mean, some of these watches are... Now, my watch, my new watch is entirely responsibly priced, Sonny. I will have you know. I'm not saying... Hi, honey.
Sonny00:06:11I'm not saying that the economic disparity is enormous, though I'm sure it is. I'm just saying that, like, the sheer number, the numbers of people who are interested in this will...
JVL00:06:21Sure, but think about it this way. What makes a great piece is an examination of people's obsessions, right? These are, so many great essays, long-form essays, are about examining, the peculiar obsessions of subsets of people, which is why I think, hello, Vanity Fair editors, a piece about the nutcases who go to Baselworld would be really interesting.
Sonny00:06:39Vanity Fair heard this, and they are now sending Michael Lewis. The Hive. Sorry.
Vic00:06:45It's already a bit funny because it's true. Actually, Ben Mesrich wrote it, and it's now a movie by Aaron Sorkin. He just wrote the screenplay, so it's... Good idea, though. Yeah, thanks. It works that fast, by the way, from the author of The Social Network. Did you own a Swatch?
JVL00:07:02No.
Vic00:07:03I did. Really? Oh, I did, too.
JVL00:07:04No, I owned my go-to watch back then was the Freestyle Shark, which was... Is that like a Timex? No, it's a low-rent, entry-level surf watch. Before I was a surfer in high school, when I knew that spiritually I wanted to be a surfer. So before I started surfing, I wore that. I've had a lot of watches over the years, but not enough watches. You need more watches. I've already got my eye on the Grand Seiko Snowflake. I have a question.
Sonny00:07:34I do have one.
JVL00:07:37I'm the guy who watches the James Bond movies, not for the girls, but for the Omega Seamaster, to see which Seamaster he's wearing.
Sonny00:07:44I do have one question for you that may be too personal. Feel free not to answer. Yeah. What would you say is the upper limit on the amount of money that you can justify spending on a watch? We'll have to bleep this.
Vic00:07:55We'll bleep this if Shannon's listening.
Sonny00:07:58As an adult... With many children who has family responsibilities, what would you say is an irresponsible amount of money to spend on a watch?
JVL00:08:06I will answer that offline.
Sonny00:08:08Okay.
JVL00:08:09If you're curious about this, tweet at JBLast.
Sonny00:08:12Yes, exactly. Just let him...
JVL00:08:14You know what, Jason? I will let Jason tweet at you the answer. Okay. The proper answer. I have a guess, but I'm not going to say. Sonny, how are you?
Sonny00:08:23I'm good. I'm good. We went to the zoo this weekend. Sesame Place two weekends ago. The zoo last weekend. Look at the father of the year. Totally. It's really fun. It was actually very exciting. We were looking at the elephants, and Katie's like, oh, look, elephants. She's not actually saying anything. She's just kind of like staring mutely because she's little. She doesn't really know. But it was very exciting because I'm standing there watching, and all of a sudden, I saw an antelope go running by the elephants. And I was like, oh, that's very... I'm thinking... I'm thinking to myself, oh, that's nice. They have, you know, other safari wildlife in with the elephants. Oh, wait. And then I realized, no, that's actually a deer. A deer has jumped from Rock Creek Park into the elephant enclosure. And we missed this because we moved on. You know, we had things to go to. But, like...
JVL00:09:16They had to drink it, right?
Sonny00:09:17But the elephants, like, freaked out. Yeah. They're like... You know, their trunks are in the air, and they're, like, circling the herd because, you know, they're terrified of this interloper in their deer. The den. But, yeah, it's not as... I don't think it was as traumatic as when the deer got into the lion enclosure at the National Zoo a few years back. Oh, that's fresh meat. That was bad. But this was... I mean, the deer... I mean, the elephants aren't going to, you know, like, stomp the deer to death. They might, but I don't think they could catch it.
Vic00:09:46Do you think they might be... But is it like a mouse thing? Are they going to be scared or freaked out by the deer? Like, oh, what is this?
Sonny00:09:51Elephants aren't scared of mice, Vic. This is, like... What is this?
JVL00:09:55Everything Vic knows about this comes from Tom and Jerry.
Vic00:09:58Yes! What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Sonny?
Sonny00:10:01I don't know. I mean, I think that deer... That's how the stampede happens. I think the deer were scared, but they were probably scared of getting Lyme disease from the disgusting deer that are roaming the D.C. in its suburbs. Lyme disease is rampant. Honestly, the fact that we have to deal with this large rat infestation known as the deer herds in D.C. is really... Like, marks us as a third world city.
JVL00:10:21What is your daughter's favorite animal at the zoo? She...
Sonny00:10:24Well, she really liked...
JVL00:10:25This is a progression of age. Well, she really...
Sonny00:10:28So you can tell what age a kid is by what their favorite animal is. She really liked the sand cats because we were in the small mammal house. Oh, yeah, sure. And she is like... I mean, she's only like two feet tall or whatever, so she can barely see in there, but the sand cat was right at her eye level, and it's like running back and forth in front of her, and she was like, kitty cat, kitty cat, kitty cat, over and over again. We tried to go to the next exhibit where there were other cats, and she was like, no, no, kitty cat. So we had to stay there for like five minutes.
JVL00:10:56Did you get her a little sand cat stuffed animal?
Sonny00:10:58No, we didn't get any stuffed animal. You don't do stuffed animals? We do some stuffed animals, but she was pretty tired and out of it by the end, so she wasn't clamoring for something.
Vic00:11:07I once did jury duty with one of the guys in the jury. Yes, tell this story. Yes, one of the guys on the jury worked at the National Zoo, so I said, oh, yeah, we were there for several days, so I had all, in panel, so I had all sorts of questions for him, and one of the questions I had was about orangutans, and he says that, in fact,
JVL00:11:29because they have O-rings, can you make this clear, so people who don't understand the National Zoo, they have this system, they call them the O-ring system, which are high giant poles connected by heavy cables, which allow the orangutans to move around throughout the zoo, suspended above the air. Above the people. Sometimes the orangutans decide to come down.
Vic00:11:53Yes, so how they prevent that is it's electrified, and either, so most orangutans, oh, I don't like that feeling, but one day, he says, orangutan decides, I can deal with it, I can deal with the pain, because he realizes- I can take it. Yeah, they're problem solvers. Oh, no, sorry, that was the philosopher. He was testing, he was testing. He was testing the perimeter. The perimeter, yeah. Yes, and so he decides to come down onto the main level, the path where all the tourists are, and everyone freaks out and runs away, and he just had his sort of, he had his, you know, way in the zoo, and he was taking, dumping down garbages, and just going through things, and what the guy said is, you know, you have to be very careful with the orangutans, because their grip is so powerful inside their, where they live, indoors, the orangutans oftentimes would take these giant iron bolts that were screwed into the wall, and they would unscrew them with their bare hands, and just, you know, spend a whole day trying to unscrew these giant steel bolts, and then bend the bolts. And so, one time, this guy was, on the jury, was telling me, orangutan decided to go after him. He didn't expect it, and just latched on to his hand, and what you do is, you just have to go completely limp, because, I mean, they will just, you know, tear you apart. And then he called for help, or maybe screamed for help, and I think by the time the other zookeepers came with their things, however they, you know, pacified the orangutan, the orangutan had already ripped the guy's pants off. It was just like, what's going on here?
Sonny00:13:25So he grabbed his hand and ripped his pants off? Yeah, yeah. Is this?
Vic00:13:29Is this some sort of courting ritual?
Sonny00:13:31No, no, no, I have no idea.
Vic00:13:32But he's like, oh, I wonder what else I can do, you know? And it, I mean, it's like, and that's how he's just, with it. When you read about chimp attacks?
JVL00:13:40Oh, terrifying. That's one of the places. They're terrifying. So they go face and genitals. Yeah.
Vic00:13:44Ah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:13:47It's funny that you mentioned the trash cans. Just one more thing. There are little signs, there are little signs on the trash cans that say, you know, we turn our waste into energy. And, like, one of the signs is, you know, one can of trash can power your television for three hours. And so in my head, I was calculating. I was like, okay, well, that means that approximately 70 or 80 cans of trash equals one day of work at the weekly, or at the Free Beacon, at the Washington Free Beacon. So I was like, that's, you know, turning your trash into content every day. That's a good way to think about it. The Free Beacon motto. Your trash is our treasure.
JVL00:14:18It's sort of a perpetual motion machine, if you think about it, isn't it?
Vic00:14:22That's fantastic.
JVL00:14:24Well, it sounds like, anyway, that's it. The Free Beacon makes more trash, and then the trash powers the Free Beacon to make more trash.
Sonny00:14:29Just the cycle of life. The cycle of life. Anyway, Vic, how was your weekend?
Vic00:14:34Oh, my weekend was nice. On Saturday, we had to watch our nephew and niece, that would be Captain Bill Dwyer's kids.
JVL00:14:42Captain Bill Dwyer, what does he do for a living? He's a firefighter. A firefighter? He's a real man. A fire marshal?
Vic00:14:47Does he ever edit, though? You know what? If he saw a dangling modifier, I'd be surprised. He would never know what to do with it. He would know what to do with it. No, it's very sad.
JVL00:14:55Not a real man, is he? No, not like what we do here. Inside the studio. And so, we took the kids out. Four kids all at the same time? Four kids all at the same time. That must be crazy.
Vic00:15:07All within the range. How do you do it? You have no idea, JVL. Between the ages of seven and ten. And so, he said, let's just go to BGR, since we were talking about burgers the other week. We went to BGR, and Bill's son, Robbie, is ten, and he's an eating machine. And he's thin as a rail. He plays hockey, but he is an eating machine. So, I said, you know what? I'm curious. Let's just get what everyone else is getting, and we'll see what happens. So, I get them the kids' sliders. And he's got the two sliders, and he just plows through that. And I said, are you still hungry? And he kind of nods sheepishly. And I said, okay. I go up, and I said, I want to really see how much this kid can take down. So, I just said, get me like the adult-size cheeseburger, the big one, and the large fries. And it was taking like 11 bucks. And I just plopped down the tray in front of him, and I said, all right, here you go. Get at it. And he took it down, like without any problem whatsoever. That cheeseburger was gone. And you can't tell where it went. And you look at him, and you're like, where does it go? And I just miss that. Because if I did that in one sitting. Right to your hips. Would it go right to your hips, Vic? You know, a muffin top. And I would have like a distended belly. I mean, I would be in pain. I mean, the whole thing. The gout. The gout would be flaring up. You know, and it's like, gosh, I wish I was 10. That was envious. Anyway, but it was a nice weekend. I'm sure Vic wishes he was 10 again. 14, really. Okay. So, you know who didn't have such a great weekend? It was Baywatch. The four-day estimate was a paltry 23 million. On the other hand, Pirates of the Caribbean. This is the four-day estimate. Pirates of the Caribbean, part five.
Sonny00:16:55Wait, is it Pirates of the Caribbean or Pirates of the Caribbean?
Vic00:16:59Caribbean Queen or Caribbean? Well, if you ask Billy Ocean, it's Caribbean. But I've said Caribbean. What do you say?
Sonny00:17:04I say Caribbean. Pirates of the Caribbean.
Vic00:17:06Caribbean. Okay. So, Pirates of the Caribbean, five, did $77 million. And you guys predicted this, right?
Sonny00:17:15Well, one of us was pretty sure that Baywatch was actually going to be the big breakout surprise hit of the summer. Who was that, Sonny? Triumphing over Pirates of the Caribbean, which is old and tired and played out. It wasn't Sonny. Oh, who was it? Who was that? JVL?
Vic00:17:32I was wrong. Wrongity, wrong, wrong, wrong. Okay. What happened? You saw Baywatch. Okay.
Sonny00:17:42Which do we want to discuss first? I would like you to discuss Pirates of the Caribbean first.
JVL00:17:47Because the answer, I mean, this is a two-part answer as to why I was wrong. Okay. The first part of the reason I was wrong is because people are terrible and they're idiots and they have garbage taste. Well, that answered my question. Okay.
Sonny00:17:56So, Pirates of the Caribbean, which is... Pirates of the Caribbean was out in theaters now and, as Vic mentioned, had a relatively big opening weekend. It's down from entries past, but it still did okay. And it made like a quarter billion dollars worldwide in its first weekend. It's going to make a ton of money. Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men Tell No Tales, starring, once again, Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, who is being chased by the son of Will Turner? I believe is the name of the kid. Orlando Bloom. Legolas is his father. And he is trying to find Johnny Depp so Johnny Depp can help break Legolas' curse. I don't understand that. He's like under the water. So here's the thing is I've seen the first one, and I liked it quite a bit, and I haven't seen any of the sequels because they were all denounced as uniformly terrible. So I skipped all those. I've seen the original. And the last I knew, Legolas and Keira Knightley were like living in harmony, whatever. They were having a great time. Apparently he's now cursed and under the ocean and can only come up like every year or something.
Vic00:19:04Does he look the same, or does he look like his father, Stellan Skarsgård, like with barnacles on his face?
Sonny00:19:09No. Yeah, he has barnacles on his face. Right. He's got the barnacles on the face. Like father like son. No, no, no. That's no. Legolas has the barnacles on his face. But like, yeah, Will Turner's son does not. Right. Anyway, also chasing Captain Jack Sparrow is Thaladar, played by Javier Bardem. Was that with your Castilian accent? Yes, Castilian. It's Captain Jack Sparrow.
JVL00:19:33I couldn't tell if he was saying Jack Barrow or Jeff Sparrow. So Javier Bardem speaks with the lisp.
Sonny00:19:40I mean, he just, that's what he sounds like. And like, and it works fine. I mean, he like sounds kind of mysterious and, you know, and intimidating and it, but whatever. It is also very annoying for somebody who doesn't speak with a Castilian accent, who doesn't have the lisping S's and whatever. And also. There's a very progressive woman who is denounced as a witch because she believes in science, guys. She believes in science and nobody else. None of these other men do. And she is just going to, she's going to show them all. Of course, she's proved her, her faith in science has proven to be wrong when they start seeing ghosts and stuff. Oh, so in the end, the patriarchy wins as usual.
JVL00:20:20So, so in a way, this is a subversive.
Sonny00:20:23This is a very subversive movie about the evils of witches and educating.
Vic00:20:28Is she a famous actress who plays? No, I didn't know. Does she look at all like Keira Knightley?
Sonny00:20:32She looks a little bit like, I mean, she's hot. She's like a hot, she's like a hot skinny girl in a corset. So like, I mean.
JVL00:20:38A sexy tomboy beanpole.
Sonny00:20:39She's a sexy tomboy beanpole. So you need, yeah, you need that though. I, you know, the movie is like, it is, it is incoherently plotted. And I'm not sure if that's just because I'm not like up on all the mythology. I don't, you know, last I saw Jeffrey Rush was Barbossa being defeated by Jack Sparrow. But now the Black Pearl. The Black Pearl is in a bottle in Jack's jacket. I mean, like it is, it is, it is incoherent in ways that, again, I'm not sure if it's just because I haven't followed the series or if they were so sloppily plotted that it was just moving from point to point without any connective tissue. I think it's that one. I think it's probably that one. I think it's probably that one. So, you know, audiences gave it, of course, either an A minus or an A on CinemaScore because audiences are human trash and, and it made a quarter billion dollars worldwide. And it's well on its way to making, making another billion dollars. Johnny Depp can buy more cannons to shoot the remains of his friends into the atmosphere.
Vic00:21:37Can you elaborate on that?
Sonny00:21:38So one of the, one of the, look, Johnny Depp takes a lot of grief from certain progressive types because he beats his, his, his wife, you know, which fair, I think is Amber Heard
JVL00:21:50fair in which direction him, him taking grief.
Sonny00:21:54Oh, good. Gotcha.
JVL00:21:56I thought myself, wow, you really, you really That's a hot take, Sonny. That's a very hot take.
Sonny00:22:02Jeez, guys, come on. That's, that's just, so anyway, here's, here are some of the things that Johnny Depp has spent his hundreds of millions of dollars on. Over 75 million to, this is from Vanity Fair. You can, you can find it if you, if you just Google it. Over $75 million to acquire, improve, and furnish 14 residences, including a 45 acre chateau in the South of France, a chain, a literal chain of islands in the Bahamas, multiple houses in Hollywood. Well, I mean, fair. All of those are great. I am on board with all of these expenditures so far. And a fully functioning house farm in Kentucky, which is the weird one for me, frankly. I, like, if you have all these other-
Vic00:22:39Sometimes he feels like I want to, you know what, I want to get back in touch with real people. Yeah, sure. And so he does that.
Sonny00:22:45Over $18 million to acquire and renovate a 150 foot luxury yacht, millions, just a generic millions, acquiring and maintaining at least 45 luxury vehicles, at least. There could be more, hard to say. $30,000 per month on wine. $30,000 per month? Per month on wine. So- Vic, you could do that in a night. $360,000. Heading on the bottle. Let's see. Oh, here's my favorite one. This is, of course, the best. Over $3 million to blast from a specially made cannon the ashes of author Hunter Thompson over Aspen, Colorado.
Vic00:23:25Was this because Hunter Thompson requested that?
JVL00:23:29I-
Vic00:23:29Sure, why not? Or he just acquired it?
Sonny00:23:31I feel like this is definitely something Hunter S. Thompson would have asked for.
Vic00:23:35Because did he become friends with before he died? Is that what happened?
Sonny00:23:38I believe they were friendly, yes. Because they got to know each other while shooting Fear and Loathing Las Vegas. And I've never actually really liked Johnny Depp's take on Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's an agglomeration of ticks more than anything else. But anyway, maybe that is also what Hunter S. Thompson was like. I didn't know him before he put- Shotgun barrel in his mouth.
Vic00:24:00Before we go on to Baywatch, if we could talk a little bit more about Depp, what do you like him in? Or what did you like him in, if you could pick one or two? Can I just briefly- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, JVL.
JVL00:24:11No, no, no. I only want to say that I would pay cash money to have had Matt Labash out there chronicling Johnny Depp shooting Hunter S. Thompson's remains into the atmosphere. Well, sure. That would have been the most amazing essay ever.
Sonny00:24:24To be fair, though, I'd pay cash money to read Matt Labash do anything. Yes. Write him right about anything. What do I like Johnny Depp in? I mean, I actually like Johnny Depp as an actor, and I thought he was clever as Jack Sparrow in the first one, and it just kind of is now he's doing the same kind of mincing about falling around. He's the movie. He's drunk. He's drunk. Oh, it's funny. It's funny because he has a real drinking problem. Nobody actually seems to want to address this, but he trades away his last possessions for like a bottle of rum, and that is actually what frees Captain Thalathar from the- The cove of sadness that he's trapped in, or whatever it is.
Vic00:25:02Are there flashbacks? Because I thought there was like- There is. Yeah, there's definitely- So these CGI where you look young, right? They did this in Guardians of the Galaxy- Yes. Where Kurt Russell is a young guy in the beginning. Did they do the same thing with Jack Sparrow where he's-
Sonny00:25:13It's unclear to me if it's CGI de-aging of Johnny Depp or if it was younger. I mean, what they do is they definitely voice over the actor with Johnny Depp, but I'm not sure if it was de-aged or what. I don't know. Who knows? It's all magic. Movie magic.
Vic00:25:31Do you know where I loved him best, Johnny Depp?
Sonny00:25:34Nightmare on Elm Street?
Vic00:25:35No, I was going to say Alice in Wonderland.
Sonny00:25:37Oh, yeah. I actually like him as Alice in Wonderland. I like him in all the Tim Burton movies. I like him, you know, I like him fine.
Vic00:25:44Nightmare on Elm Street was very upsetting because I really liked his character and he has like the worst death because you can only stay up for- Remember how it happens? He gets sucked into the bed and then- Yes, and then shredded and then the blood goes all the way up into the ceiling and then it melts through the ceiling and then it's dripping into the bed. The living room and they have to put a bucket at the parents. It's awful. Yeah. It is. And I saw that movie as a kid. When you were five years old. No, no, no. I was probably, I forget what year it came out. It was on HBO. We were all my parents back. One, two, Freddy's Gonna Get You. Remember this?
Sonny00:26:15It was like, what was that, 1984?
Vic00:26:17Five, six, Grab Your Crucifix. Okay, it was disturbing. 84. Right, the girls. What are the girls doing? I don't know. So, no, I was going to say Lock Your Door. Thank you. So, what I liked him in was Donnie Brasco. I was just going to say, that's your movie. You love that movie. I love it so much. It's a mob movie. It loves it. Well, A, it's shocking. It's crazy. But it's a mob movie, but what I loved about it was-
Sonny00:26:41Would have been better if it had been directed by Scorsese, let's be honest.
Vic00:26:44Instead of, I can't remember who directed it. That's interesting. What I really liked about it, though, was- Mike Newell. Thank you, Mike Newell, who did a Harry Potter film, didn't he? He did one of the Harry Potter movies. What I liked about Donnie Brasco was- Aside of being a true story, was that it was the story of the crisis of somebody stuck in middle management, meaning Lefty or Al Pacino, so he plays this guy Lefty, and he meets Donnie Brasco, and he brings him up, and he says, hey, stick with me, kid. I'll show you the ropes. You'll be a friend of mine, and then you'll eventually could be a friend of ours, but I know what to do here. And then, of course, Donnie Brasco gets picked. He's the rising star, and all of a sudden, they go on that yacht with Santo Traficante, and suddenly, Santo wants to meet directly with Donnie and with Sonny Black, and once again, Al Pacino's character Lefty is left without a promotion, staying where he is, doing the same job for the rest of his life.
Sonny00:27:51And I felt that was so affecting. Vic, how could that possibly appeal to you? I don't understand how you could identify with it.
Vic00:27:57No, neither do I. Why am I crying right now? This is very upsetting. Anyway, that scene on the yacht is one of the most affecting things. I said, oh, he got him the card, remember? He says, oh, I'm going to give Santo Traficante this card. It's like, hey, between friends or something like that. And it just, it went to my heart, and I don't know why I feel like that, but, you know, I'm old, and Vic's crying. Oh, you know who else was in that movie? A great cast, the late Bruno Kirby, Michael Madsen, and Paul Giamatti is an FBI guy. My wife's high school classmate, Gretchen Moll. That was one of her first movies she did as Sonny's girlfriend. That was her credit, was Sonny's girlfriend.
Sonny00:28:36I guess Rounders was like the year after.
Vic00:28:38Right after, yeah, that's right, that's right. So that's what I liked him in. JVL, do you have other depth thoughts? Never really liked him as an actor, Lee Presence.
JVL00:28:49You know, there are a bunch of roles in which I think he's fine. It just leaves me cold as an actor. Nothing against him.
Sonny00:28:56Do you not like Tim Burton?
JVL00:28:58I don't.
Sonny00:28:59Actually. That makes, I mean, that doesn't surprise me.
JVL00:29:01But anything, like Nick of Time, 21 Jump Street, the TV series. He has never, Benny and June, these things are all fine. What's he doing, Gilbert Grape? They're all highly mannered in ways that I don't care for.
Vic00:29:16Yeah, I can understand that. Is he famously difficult on set? Do we know that or no?
Sonny00:29:20Well, one of the things in this Vanity Fair story is that apparently he just refused to learn his lines on the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and had a headset that they were piping, piping everything into. So, I mean, I have a feeling that as he has accumulated That's what happens on the show, by the way. massive, massive amounts of wealth, he became more and more difficult to work with. And I think especially on something like this, as opposed to like Black Mass, where he was getting to do a little more, you know, something more.
Vic00:29:45That was decent, but
Sonny00:29:46I didn't, I didn't love it. I really wanted to like it because I love that cast. Joel Edgerton is in it. He's fantastic. And it's another interesting story. Yeah, another like true life mob story.
Vic00:29:55I wonder if he was, I wonder if it was just the, the specter of the departed, you know, over him that thinking, I really have to play up this role because otherwise people are going to be thinking of, you know, Jack Nicholson.
Sonny00:30:05I mean, the real, the real problem is, the real problem is that movie is just a mess. It's like poorly, poorly plotted and like kind of all over the place. And it doesn't really, it felt like it was never sure if it wanted to be a movie about Johnny Depp's character or about, you know, like, anyway.
Vic00:30:20Do you remember the Onion headline, Johnny Depp now completely made of scarves and bracelets? It's good. It's good. Anyway, so, but as it turns out for all of us, all the flops he's done, and even though this movie, nobody, we don't really like this movie, it's going to make him a lot of money.
Sonny00:30:35Yeah. Oh, I mean, it's well on its way to grossing in the 800 and 900 million dollar range worldwide.
Vic00:30:41And I'm sure he gets a nice percentage gross, I assume.
Sonny00:30:44I'm sure he, I'm sure he got like 30 or 40 million bucks just in salary and then probably gets a couple of points on top of that.
Vic00:30:49So, well, it sounds like a smart choice for Johnny Depp. You know what else is a smart choice? The Dollar Shave Club. You will get a great shave at a great price, conveniently delivered. Delivered right to your door. It's a no-brainer choice. You no longer have to schlep to the store to buy a cheap disposable razor that gives you a cheap shave, or spend a fortune on razors with gimmicky shaving tech you didn't need. When I use my Dollar Shave Club executive razor with their Dr. Carver's Shave Butter, the blade glides ever so gently and gives me such a smooth shave. Plus, their Dr. Carver's Shave Butter is transparent for a more precise shave, helping prevent ingrown hairs and fight razor bumps. Now, listeners to The Substandard can make the smarter choice. By joining Dollar Shave Club, for a limited time, new members get their first month of the executive razor with a tube of their Dr. Carver's Shave Butter for only $5 with free shipping. After that, razors are just a few bucks a month. That's a $15 value for only $5. In your first month, you get an awesome weighty handle, a full cassette of four cartridges, and a tube of their Shave Butter. After your first month, replacement cartridges ship automatically at their regular price. There are no hidden fees and no commitments. Cancel any time you like, but why would you? You can only get this offer exclusively at DollarShaveClub.com slash Substandard. That's DollarShaveClub.com slash Substandard. Baywatch. You both saw it. I did not. Your thoughts?
Sonny00:32:12Well, JBL, you said you wanted to review Baywatch, so why don't you go ahead and review Baywatch?
JVL00:32:16I would like to try on my professional movie reviewer pants. Oh, this is exciting. Please do. Go ahead. Baywatch is the film adaptation of the legendary syndicated TV series, which made movie stars out of Pamela Anderson, Erica Eleniak, Nicole Eggert, Jason Momoa, and Angie Harmon in the spinoff Baywatch Nights. In the movie, The Rock, Dwayne Johnson plays Mitch Buchanan, the head lifeguard at Emerald Bay, and his close-knit family of lifeguards takes on three new trainees, one of whom is disgraced former Olympic swimmer Zac Efron. They save one person from drowning and two people from a boat fire, and then they spend the entire rest of the movie investigating a drug smuggling operation being run by a Bollywood actress who is playing a Mexican narco, which is some sort of washing, and I'm not sure which color washing it is, but it must be bad. The movie is the first big-budget film from documentary film star Seth Gordon, who directed King of Kong. It is also his last. It stars a bunch of very beautiful people and one very not-beautiful person named John Bass, and it is not a good movie. How is that, Seth? That's right. Is that real? Was that just real? Did that just happen?
Vic00:33:31I thought you liked it, JBL.
JVL00:33:33No, no, this is bad. This is a very bad movie.
Vic00:33:35I thought you just said you liked it. When did I say that?
Sonny00:33:38For the record, Seth Gordon also directed Horrible Bosses.
JVL00:33:40Not a big-budget movie.
Vic00:33:43A grown-up movie, but not a big-budget. Before we taped that, I didn't realize you were being sarcastic. So, anyway, about Baywatch. But as a review, quality review.
JVL00:33:51That was great. No, you could write that and post it.
Sonny00:33:55Okay, now do your real take. What's your real take?
JVL00:33:58No, this is amazing. It's a mess of a movie. Okay. So, as Richard Rushfield said last week in The Ankler, which you should subscribe to if you don't, because it's awesome, that if the Dwayne Johnson for president thing peters out,
Sonny00:34:13this is going to be the reason.
JVL00:34:15This is a bad movie. It's a mess. The big problem is tone. Tonally, this movie is all over the place. For the most part, it shoots to be the same tone as the movie 21 Jump Street and the movie Supergirl. Which is to say, broad comedy, which incorporates and uses and leans on some action movie tropes. Except that for like half the movie, it veers away into earnest action movie stuff. Like it's a subpar Fast and the Furious. For instance, there is an extended bit in the first act, which involves John Bass's character getting his junk caught between the wooden slats on a beach chair. And it's really funny. It is something, the whole thing is played with vigor and the sort of, almost like something about Mary. And I think it really kills, it works. And then all of a sudden we have Zac Efron's character messing up but feeling legit bad about it, needing to be redeemed in his relationship with The Rock. And it's, I don't know, like the movie spends an inordinate amount of time actually trying to solve a crime that nobody in the office could care less about. I mean, it's a mean, we're here to spend time with this crew of people and instead they split the crew of people up so they can, chase bad guys and have a showdown that, again, nobody cares about. You never quite know what movie you're in. The comedy sort of works well for the most part. The action stuff is too generic to be interesting. And even the comedy stuff isn't great. I mean, this is ironic. I understand this. But this is a movie with too many dick jokes. And you know how we feel about dick jokes here on The Substandard.
Sonny00:35:55We're big on dick jokes here.
Vic00:35:56And it is a movie which relies...
JVL00:35:58Love dick jokes. ...too much on the F-bomb for its comedy. And again, I know, I realize what I'm saying. But the idea that if you're going to go to the well once, twice, or three times in a movie where the entire punchline is that you have a character dropping an F-bomb in an unlikely situation, that's fine. They do this like 11 times in a movie. It's just weak writing all around. Like, Alexandra Daddario has nothing to do. There are a couple things in it which are good, I guess. Zac Efron is really good. I was surprised that what he... He's like a leading man.
Sonny00:36:30Zac Efron is an underrated comic presence in movies like Neighbors and this. I think he's pretty good. I think he's actually a solid comedic actor. Yeah, I agree.
JVL00:36:42No, he's a great straight man in this. I have a question.
Vic00:36:45What was audience reaction? Were they laughing it up, too, or were they also like... Well, there were eight people in the theater. Okay, well...
JVL00:36:52That's $23 million. Stonily silent. The people in my screening were just dead reactions.
Sonny00:36:58I chuckled out loud twice. Not like actual laughs, but like... Wait a minute. That's what you say when I tell most of my jokes. Well, you should have seen the meeting that Vic led at the Free Beacon office this morning.
JVL00:37:14Oh, I mean... Oh, wait. No, my problem with this movie
Sonny00:37:17is that the best joke that it plays, the best joke, the best gag that it has is the joke that it plays on the audience. So, to wit, you have this... You have an R-rated version of what is generally considered to be a TNA show, right? But kind of a PG TNA show, originally, on TV. And they take the R rating, and what do they use it to give to the audience? Dick. A corpse dick. Dick, dick, dick. A corpse dick. And then the dick in the slats, as you mentioned, and also a fat guy's ass. That's the R rating for you. Right. And it's not funny in any... serious way.
JVL00:37:59It's more beefcake than cheesecake. I mean, it really is. I mean, it's like... The shots of Zac Efron, the lovingly slow-mo shots of him working the salmon ladder. And that guy has spent a lot of time in the weight room. I assume...
Sonny00:38:12A lot of lean meats and repetitions.
JVL00:38:15Now, he looks high rep, low weight, skinless chicken. And somehow he comes out looking like Rick Rude from the late 1980s.
Sonny00:38:22I mean, the guy is astonishingly cut
JVL00:38:28in ways which...
Sonny00:38:31So, anyway. Yeah. Anyway, the joke...
JVL00:38:33Hollywood doesn't test people, right? For actors. For roids. I'm just saying.
Sonny00:38:40What would happen if they started testing for PEDs? Who would get suspended in Hollywood?
JVL00:38:44Sylvester Stallone would never work again.
Sonny00:38:47No, he was working on his... He was building up muscle mass on his own. Not like the cheating Russians. Not like the cheating Russians shooting up Ivan Drago full of drugs commie.
Vic00:39:00He worked out in a log cabin. JVL's a commie.
Sonny00:39:02I always do it.
JVL00:39:03Can I tell you? I have a superficial gripe, too. The CGI David Hasselhoff and the CGI Pam Anderson they used were really distracting. It was a lot like the Grand Moff Tarkin. And I just thought it was unnecessary fan service that I didn't need.
Vic00:39:16Is that like my Princess Leia joke?
JVL00:39:19Yeah, you're going to feel really bad when one of them dies next to you. You know what I'll say? Here's what I thought. So David Hasselhoff appears on camera briefly and is a shell of himself Pam Anderson appears incredibly briefly and they never shoot her even full on. She does not speak. She doesn't speak.
Sonny00:39:35She doesn't say anything, does she? No. Or maybe she just says hello. No, she just is in slow motion and this is the joke. This is the funny joke, guys, that she's in slow motion.
JVL00:39:43No, but she's in slower motion than other people. Stupid. Here's what I thought. I actually thought about The Force Awakens when I saw the two of them on screen and it's a really jarring... I would say that these actors were not well served by this movie. Yeah. And it makes you appreciate all the more Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford is asked to carry the load in The Force Awakens really sort of as a movie and he's an old guy. He is not the guy that we grew up with and his presence on screen is great. There is nothing off, but he is aged, he is an old guy and he looks old in ways which we are comfortable.
Sonny00:40:20He does not look like somebody who has just had... But he also looks good for a guy who is almost 80.
JVL00:40:25Sure. And I'm sure he's had a little bit of work done here and there, but he does not look like he has spent thousands of hours in the doctor's chair injecting and clipping and snipping and stitching. And it really... If you want to age in Hollywood, I would suggest the Harrison Ford path, not the Baywatch path.
Sonny00:40:43We all can't be as lucky as Harrison Ford. But I would say that I saw the movie with a friend on Friday and he was like, God, they should have had Pamela Anderson doing more. And I was like, are you kidding me? She would have... I mean, like, she looked worse than most of the extras in that movie. Wow. Like, just didn't look good. And it would have been really awkward and uncomfortable, I think, for her to be on screen for a significant period of time. And as you say, this is a shallow thing to say, but, like, she just... It is what it is.
JVL00:41:19And can we talk briefly? Do we have time to talk briefly about the IP mania? Sure.
Vic00:41:24That's what I was going to ask you about, guys, is that we seem to be stuck in this quagmire of sequels and reboots like Guardians, Aliens, Beauty and the Beast, Fast and Furious, Power Rangers, what's coming up? Spider-Man, Transformers, what's happening here? Dunkirk, World War II. Oh, no. Thank God that's coming up.
JVL00:41:41Of the nine big movies so far this summer, seven have been existing intellectual property plays. The only new ones, like new artistic creations, Snatched, Boss Baby.
Sonny00:41:55Boss Baby based on a board book, based on a children's board book.
Vic00:41:57No. Yes, we'll talk. Never mind. I'm sorry.
JVL00:42:00So it's eight of nine. Eight of nine. Eight of nine, then.
Sonny00:42:03Yeah.
?00:42:04Wow.
JVL00:42:05And we use, so the new Hollywood uses intellectual property to create movies out of theme park rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, video games like World of Warcraft and Assassin's Creed and Hitman, board games like Battleship, toys like Transformers, books, TV shows, Power Rangers, Baywatch, remakes of old movies, live action remakes of animated movies, and of course, comic books. And there are a host of reasons for this. I would encourage everybody to understand that there are only, there are two types of movies from an economic point of view. The first are films which are really films and have the economic life of a film like Gosford Park or something like that. Just, the movie's the movie, you put the movie out, the movie makes what it makes and then it has to sustain itself in that way or not. And then there are movies that are intellectual property plays. And for this, people should read Edward J. Epstein's Hollywood Economist. Which is an amazing book.
Sonny00:42:57It's slightly out of date now. I think the international has overtaken it. But yeah, it's only very slightly. It's fantastic. Everyone should read it.
JVL00:43:04What Edward J. Epstein says is that Hollywood is in the business of intellectual property. They're not in the business of movies. A movie is just a wellspring of IP and it creates a river of economic value that flows downstream. But you start with the movie, then you get ticket sales, then foreign gross, product placement within the movie, then eventually you move on to home video rental and streaming incomes, then cable TV rights, product placement, product licensing, theme park rides, toys, balloons, lunchboxes, the Broadway adaptation, and eventually a feature film sequel. So you renew the cycle all over again. This is why there's a mania for franchises. And what we see now, the mania we have for these is because movies now, what the Hollywood's decided they're going to do is they're going to treat their movie versions as the second step in the IP chain rather than the first. And I think this is just a hedge. And it's a hedge because the cost of movie making has gotten so expensive that it is all things being equal, it is better to be the originator of intellectual property and own the rights yourself. However, because it now costs for a big movie a minimum of $200 to make it than another $150 million to make and another $150 million to market and present it. To hedge it, you want to have something with a little bit of pre-existing brand awareness and even more than that a pre-existing type of story which leads me to say this is why we have comic book movies now. It isn't that we have comic book movies in a world of IP. It's that we have IP movies and then comic book movies springing out of that because comic books are of all these things we've talked about for pre-existing intellectual property, they make the most sense to bring movies from them because they're essentially a fully storyboarded out version of a script treatment.
Vic00:44:46So what you're saying, JVL, is there's no hope to get out of this vicious cycle? This is it. Well, I don't know
JVL00:44:51that it's bad but, I mean, economics of Hollywood are going to change radically over the next 20 years. We've seen this now with, with things like Popcorn Time, right? It was a popcorn, what was the, no, Screening Room, which is the attempt to let people stream on demand first run movies in their home. Like, at some point we're going to have a huge showdown between streaming and the theaters and we're going to have to have a definitive winner or like an up-down vote on whether Hollywood is going to allow this to happen or not. And that makes change.
Sonny00:45:20Streaming will win.
JVL00:45:21You think so? I don't think so.
Sonny00:45:23I think, because what will end up, so my fear is that, what will happen to the movie industry, what will happen to the movie industry is what happened to the music industry where people, enough people, especially young people, said, you know what, screw it, we're not paying for CDs anymore. We're not paying for singles, we're not paying for any of this, we're just going to start downloading it and streaming it at our house and watching it on our laptops because we don't really care about quality, we just want to watch it because we want something to do while we're playing online poker or whatever. And, and as a result, the Hollywood studios will panic and say, we need to bring streaming to the homes right now and they'll do it and it will be a disaster for everyone. And will lead to the total collapse of the movie industry.
JVL00:46:12I agree that that would be a disastrous decision. I think the Hollywood people are smarter than that because there are lessons learned. They're different from the music industry in that they have multiple revenue streams in the way the music industry really didn't. But they've also seen what happened to the record industry.
Sonny00:46:27They've also, knocked out the legs of at least one of those revenue streams. DVD and Blu-ray sales are just through the basement. And all that revenue is now... But they have foreign grosses that they can lean on.
JVL00:46:40I think they have enough diversity of income to be able to limp through this era and be very judicious about what they do. I don't think they're going to make a snap, stupid decision the way the real people do.
Sonny00:46:52Well, no. I mean, I don't think they're going to decide it tomorrow, but in five, ten years. See, that's why I meant by snap.
JVL00:46:58I meant, like, over the course of five years to panic and say, oh, we have to... Internet. Information wants to be free, which it doesn't. It's a lie.
Sonny00:47:06Information can't want things because information doesn't have free will. You know what? You know who has free will? It's thieves.
JVL00:47:12The thieves who steal. Sonny, what would you do if you caught an Internet thief yourself stealing things? How would you punish them?
Sonny00:47:20Well, my theory on thievery is that the Saudi Arabians have always had it right. Just hands right off. You get caught using that mouse to download...
JVL00:47:30Could it be a finger? If you're... Because you steal with your finger by clicking with your finger. No? Well, I mean... Only if it was all 10. For Saudi,
Sonny00:47:36it would have to be all 10 fingers. Five fingers. You know. Because you can click with any finger.
JVL00:47:41And then would you post pictures of these people with their hands cut off in public spaces? Like Amazon does?
Sonny00:47:46Well, what I would do is I would take the fingers and I'd make a necklace out of it and I'd make them wear the necklace so everyone would know that they're a content thief.
Vic00:47:57Piracy equals dismemberment. Wow. That's good. You know, really briefly talking about Baywatch and this surprised Jonathan that I'd never seen an episode of Baywatch on TV. I just never knew when it was on. I mean, I never was watching it.
Sonny00:48:10I'd say, oh, floating because it was Channel 29. It was in syndication so it was everywhere and nowhere.
Vic00:48:15Everywhere and nowhere and it was when I was in college. I didn't watch much TV when I was in college and so I remember sometimes thinking, oh, I think this is Baywatch and why are they on bicycles like cops on the beach? Oh, wait. That was specifically. Pacific Blue with Mary Lopez.
Sonny00:48:29Can we just, I just want to throw one thing. You mentioned, you mentioned Rock's presidential ambitions being dashed by this movie. This is like his Chappaquiddick.
Vic00:48:37Is that what you're saying, David? Sorry. No, I will not say that. Okay, not that bad.
Sonny00:48:40I do wonder if The Rock isn't slightly overrated. He's a solid box office draw but not an overwhelming or phenomenal one. If you exclude the Fast and the Furious movies, it's hard to say how much of that is his but like the movie Central Intelligence, for instance, did 135 on a 40 or 50 million dollar budget. This is going to do 60 or 70 domestic, maybe 200 worldwide on a 69 million dollar budget, which is a very nice budget. The, the, you know, I'm just, I'm just, I do wonder, my thing about The Rock is that I like him a lot. I think he's a fantastic personality. I love like watching him interact with people and even on screen, even in this movie, which is not good, The Rock is the best thing in it by a country mile, I would say. Just him kind of being The Rock and doing his rock shtick. I think, I, I, I feel comfortable saying that. But like, he, he, he's made a lot of really bad movies.
JVL00:49:36His project choice is a little suspect. Like Hercules?
Sonny00:49:41Not very good.
JVL00:49:42His project choice is suspect. That said, The Tooth Fairy?
Sonny00:49:45Yeah. Where he makes his play to be the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy action guy? Not very good. That said,
Vic00:49:50as the voice of Maui and Moana, I thought he was great. Tremendous. He could sing too. He could sing! And I, You're welcome.
Sonny00:49:56My thing is, I want him to actually do more acting. Like, in, what was the, Be Short, Get Shorty? Was that, or Be Cool? Whichever one he was in.
Vic00:50:03I think he was in Be Cool. Be Cool.
Sonny00:50:05He was in Be Cool. He's like the, he's one of the best things in that movie. Southland Tales, where he's playing a, like, a kind of Manchurian candidate Republican operative, is like, one of the more interesting performances I've seen in, in a long time. And, and The Rundown, where I think is actually a severely underrated action comedy film from the, the mid-aughts. And, like, should have been a giant franchise. But you people are too stupid to see what's good. So you, you let it fail. You let it fail. You failed The Rock. And now he's doing crap like this. Anyway, I, I like, I, I wish he would pick better movies.
JVL00:50:42You know, I actually wonder if, because I agree, as a, as a presence on screen, he's fantastic in almost everything he does. He, the, the problem is his project choice. I wonder if, if the real problem here, though, is that he, doesn't take an active enough, an active enough role in the producing aspect of it. Because, Baywatch, the project here, the project conception is solid. The problem was the execution, and the execution beginning at the script level. And, Six credited screenwriters. Yes. That's insane. Yeah. The, a movie star who, one of the, like Tom Cruise, we've, we've said this like 15 times on the show. He's a very active producer, and there's a reason that his movies are not bad. I mean, there's a guy who just, just cares about getting things right. And he's not doing it himself. But the point is, he knows what works on screen, he knows what doesn't work, and he pushes every, he pushes the team around a movie to get the project to a place where it's ready to shoot. The Rock does not do that, I think. Now, maybe he doesn't have the, the juice to be able to do that in the movie world yet. I don't know. But he should have it. I mean, if I, and maybe it's, maybe his time is split too much. I don't know. But this is a real question. Does the economics, because you're right, he's not, he's overrated as a movie star. In the economic sense, not as an actually present sense. Right, right, right. He is a movie star.
Sonny00:52:01I think he's clearly a, he has star presence.
JVL00:52:03Yes. Yeah, but I wonder if he runs for president, how much that matters. Oh, well, none of that matters. The economic stuff. None of that matters. People just, he's a famous guy.
Sonny00:52:12Nobody's gonna say, oh, I'm not, I'm not voting for The Rock because Baywatch made $57 million domestically.
JVL00:52:17I'm sorry, I don't mean that people wouldn't vote for him because of, I just meant if the, the economic reality of that is that people like him less than they think they like him. Maybe. That's what I mean, if that makes sense to you.
Sonny00:52:28No, I see what you're saying. Okay,
Vic00:52:31corrections, additions, JVL.
JVL00:52:35Well, the correction is there was no show notes last week and the other correction is that Baywatch is a turd
Vic00:52:40and Pirates of the Caribbean
JVL00:52:41is gonna make a ton of money,
Vic00:52:42but other than that, I was perfect. Good. Wonderful. I got an email reminding me that when Liz Taylor was drunk and announced Gladiator's best picture, it was for the Golden Globes, not for the Oscars. Yeah,
Sonny00:52:54that didn't seem familiar to me. I wasn't sure what was, I wasn't sure.
Vic00:52:57she goes, Gladiator. I think that's my Liz Taylor impression. Speaking of which, that email was from Michael Caine. Oh, Michael Caine. He would know. He would know. He goes to these award things. And as mentioned with The Boss Baby, we learned about this from our loyal listener, Ann Continetti. Yes. That is a children's board book called The Boss Baby by Marla Frazzi from 2013. And as you mentioned, it is still in the top 10. It's number nine.
Sonny00:53:23They're making a sequel.
JVL00:53:25I bet Alec Baldwin takes more money home from Boss Baby than Johnny Depp does from this Pirates movie.
Sonny00:53:31I don't think there's any way that's true. Really? I don't think there's any chance that's true.
JVL00:53:35You don't think Baldwin has written into that contract that he has some giant percentage?
Sonny00:53:40It's just, I mean, even if he has, let's say he took 10% of the gross, which would be an insane, unthinkable amount of money, that's still like maybe $30 million worldwide? I don't know. I like, Johnny Depp got $30 million for walking onto the set day one at, Pirates of the Caribbean. I guarantee you.
Vic00:53:59Okay. Okay. Also, listener Kevin 0.05 on Twitter complained. I'm sorry. Hold on.
JVL00:54:06Instant correction. You are certainly right. The Boss Baby Gross is half of what I thought it was. Yeah. It's going to be like $4.32 at the moment
Vic00:54:12or something like that. Yeah. Kevin 0.05 on Twitter complained, Substandard Discussion, In Re Dangerous, New Jersey Theme Parks, no mention of Action Park. For me, JVL, I would say Vernon, New Jersey is so far up north from Tom's River, whereas Great Adventure was next door in Jackson. That's why I just never went. Same thing? Action,
JVL00:54:32yeah, never.
Vic00:54:32Action Park is a North Jersey thing. But people didn't die in Action Park.
JVL00:54:35They just got hurt. There was a great documentary about Action Park a few years ago. And the owner of, this is how they tested safety for new rides. They would build a new ride. The owner would gather the park staff together after hours. And he would hold out a $100 bill and say, who wants to try it? And he would pay like these 16-year-old kids working minimum wage for the summer $100 to try out a ride. And their measure was, if the person could get down the ride intact, then it was fine to open it up to the public tomorrow.
Vic00:55:04It was like concrete slides. Sure, why not? You know what? Also, by the way, it was a different time. Yes, it was a different time. Also, I did not, I did not, besides Action Park, I also didn't go to Brigantine Castle or the Castle at Long Branch. Not because they were far, but because the commercial scared the shit out of me. Brigantine Castle, too scary. Oh, never going there. Spirit of the Week is George Dickel Rye, which is very nice, sweet, and smooth.
Sonny00:55:28The best rye for making Manhattans with. Yep, there you go. We may have done this one before, but it is, if you just, two ounces of George Dickel Rye with one ounce of sweet vermouth and a couple dashes of bitters, throw a maraschino cherry in there, you have yourself a fine cocktail, my friend.
Vic00:55:44Going back to rye old fashions, rye Manhattans, those are great. I believe that's all the time we are giving to this episode, so questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Study Bunch.
Sonny00:55:55At JV Last.
Vic00:55:56Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard on podcasts, we're there. Leave a review, tell your friends, don't forget Substandard show notes. They'll possibly be up on Friday at 11 a.m. Hard to say.
Guest00:56:07Until next time.
JVL00:56:20There may not even be any music, so you just... Oh, that's a good one. I thought that was the music right there. I had all sorts of stuff planned out to talk about Amber Heard, because I'm never going to turn that direction on Johnny Depp. That's okay.
Vic00:56:32No, no, no. I was going to say, I only have one anecdote
Guest00:56:36of Action Park,
Vic00:56:37and it's a friend of a friend worked there, and he worked the entrance collecting tickets, and so he's a teenager in the 80s, and what he did was, for any sort of decent and above-looking girl, he would just say, hey, you want to make out later? And of course, you know, these girls are like, ew, gross, disgusting, but the law of probability because you're going through hundreds if not thousands of people every day. Eventually, he was making out every day with somebody.
JVL00:57:03Again, it was a different time. It was a different time. Today, you do that once. Somebody tweets about it. Five minutes later, you're fired.
Sonny00:57:10Yeah. Not only have you been fired, but you can never work again. Right. Anywhere. Literally anywhere. Anywhere. You're a ghost. As it turns out, it's not fine.
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