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#62. The Substandard on It, Why Horror Sells, and a Sweater Ranking
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Dudes Chatting — sweaters, horror economics, and It: The cold open involves a debate about the NFL Red Zone channel, which rolls into a White Stripes / "Seven Nation Army" riff and a prolonged discussion of Steve Bannon's notorious layering aesthetic. This spirals into a full sweater and layering ranking — the hosts debate the ideal number of layers, the vest question, and which outerwear categories count. Sonny then reviews It (2017) at length: he's enthusiastically positive, calling it a successful fusion of coming-of-age drama and horror comedy in the vein of Stand by Me, and praising Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise as genuinely frightening. JVL admits that horror simply does not work on him as a genre regardless of quality. The group debates the economics of horror — Blumhouse's low-budget model, why horror consistently outperforms its budgets, and what The Dark Tower represents as a counter-example of the model failing. Sonny references It's then-historic opening.
Reviews: Sonny reviews It (2017) — positive. Effective horror-comedy with strong ensemble of child actors; Pennywise played by Bill Skarsgård is legitimately menacing; the coming-of-age framework gives it emotional stakes beyond the scares.
Box Office: It opened to approximately $117 million, a historic number for the horror genre. Home Again placed second.
Spirit of the Week: Kahlúa sombrero.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00Hey, Bill Kristol here. I just got back from The Weekly Standard cruise and this joke of a show is still going on?
Vic00:00:30Hello, and welcome back to The Substandard, brought to you by Dollar Shave Club. Stop spending a fortune on gimmicky shave tech you don't need. Make the smarter choice by joining Dollar Shave Club. Get your first month for only $5 with free shipping by going to dollarshaveclub.com slash substandard. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you that Substandard is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Just look on our podcast. Search for Substandard. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave her a view. In addition, we'd also like to remind you that Substandard show notes posted by Jonathan Last are often available on Fridays at 11 a.m. at weeklystandard.com. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what's going on? You were at the shore. You're back.
JVL00:01:24I'm great. I was at the shore taking a little bit of professional surfing, which was great. And I am wearing today my backup headphones, which is awesome. I took the old ones, which had been worn by somebody else for cleaning.
Sonny00:01:39Hold on. You have two identical set of Status Audio headphones?
JVL00:01:44Uh-huh.
Sonny00:01:45I can't even tell if this is shtick or if you're being serious. Oh, he's being serious, all right. 100%. Wait, but you already had two sets of headphones? Did you buy a second one?
JVL00:01:59That would be to say that I went and bought a second one, but I did not. I already had a second one. And that's my backup pair. For home? Mm-hmm. And I brought that in, and the other one has been thrown away.
Vic00:02:10No, it hasn't been thrown away. You could have given it to our permanent co-host. He would have liked it.
JVL00:02:16Put it on eBay.
Vic00:02:20Okay, great. When you were in Bel-
JVL00:02:22Do you remember that episode of Seinfeld where it cuts to the scene opens with Seinfeld with his handout and a belt, and he drops it into a trash can? And the girlfriend of the episode says, what's that all about? And he says, oh, I got a little overzealous in the bathroom, and the tip of it hit the urinal. And so he goes, well, she says, you're insane. And then the door opens, and it's Kramer. He says, well, it's a sliding scale. But that's about- I would throw away a belt to touch the side of a urinal.
Sonny00:02:49Well, he did the same thing in a- The side of the urinal? Like the outside of the urinal?
JVL00:02:54You know the partitions on either side of you? Yeah, yeah. The metal partitions bolted into the wall? I would throw out a belt to touch the urinal. I would touch those.
Vic00:03:00No. But do you remember in Seinfeld, he did the same thing with the shoelaces? He was throwing out- He was taking out the shoelaces because it had touched them. I would say, oh, yeah, it's understandable.
Sonny00:03:08Did we, a few weeks ago, discuss various urinal situations? We did. We talked about the trough. The trough, right. I still find it amusing slash horrifying whenever I go into a bathroom that doesn't have the partitions dividing the urinals. Like, I don't- Oh, yeah. Why would you not spend the, like, $10? $10 per piece of wood to get those installed? I literally don't understand it.
Vic00:03:33I remember a former colleague here, and you'd go up there to the urinal, and he'd come over and say, how's it going? And just look, you know. I remember that. I remember that guy. Like, hi. Oh, by the way, it's really cold in this bathroom. Yes. So, but that's, whatever.
JVL00:03:50That was just where I am today. Over the weekend, I was in the car.
Sonny00:03:53Wait, are you going to buy another backup pair of headphones? Good folks at Status Audio get a lot of business out of the Substandard. So, that's all I'll say.
JVL00:04:05Don't let Warren use my headphones again. Don't do it. I don't like other people using my things.
Vic00:04:11The funny thing is, he said it in such a way that I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay. I think he said I could use it or something like that.
JVL00:04:16It is grotesque. It is literally no different than using. They're not earbuds. No, it's worse. These are cups that your ears fit inside.
Sonny00:04:26All right, first off, that's, you're insane. Earbuds are a million times worse. Earbuds go inside the ear canal. They get all the ear wax and sweat and stuff. These just go on top of the ears.
JVL00:04:36They are both the worst. I would not use earbuds that somebody else had used. I would not use earbuds that, like, no. Just no. Anyway, let me go on, because I actually had something to contribute. I spent a lot of time in the car.
Vic00:04:47Please, Howard Hughes, continue.
JVL00:04:49Anyway, I, as a father of four, I try very, very hard to watch my language around the kids, and it's funny, because for years, years, I managed to never curse in front of our children. And this is funny, because in real life, IRL, I curse all the time. My wife, who IRL never curses, was the one who would curse around the kids. Yes. Always because the children had driven her to it, and it was sort of funny. About two years ago, the flood, the dam burst for me for some reason. And now, I curse in front of the kids much more than I should. And I feel bad about it. I don't say this as pride or anything. But I may have dropped an F-bomb to my nine-year-old over the weekend, and his response was to look at me and say, Mark it, 2035, you're the one who's got to bleep it. Wow. They learned so fast. That's impressive.
Vic00:05:53That's very impressive.
JVL00:05:54And I laughed and laughed and laughed. It was very funny.
Vic00:05:58It's like the equivalent of a swear jar, really, when we say Mark it down. It's like a swear jar. By the way, when you were up in Belmont, did you go to the Great Pizza Place? What's it called again?
JVL00:06:06Federico's. Federico's, of course we went to Federico's. And we went to Point Pleasant. Were you there with the whole family, or? Sorry. Crazy question. I didn't go anywhere with the whole family. There's too many of them. I took the two older kids, and my seven-year-old went hard at Point Pleasant. I mean, she wanted every run, no matter how scary. I don't know how scary the ride was. What is Point Pleasant? Oh, it's beautiful. It's on the shore. On the shore. It's a town on the shore with a big boardwalk with rides and carnival-type stuff. And great bars. Martel's. Sorry. So they went to do The Mouse together.
Vic00:06:43Tradewinds.
JVL00:06:44Oh. Oh. And my seven-year-old, who had been, as I say, just going, no, please, clink your ice. The people want to hear that, Vic, had been going very hard. And she was like, yeah, let's do The Mouse. Let's do The Mouse. And The Mouse is, for people who don't know it, a tiny sort of roller coaster, but terrifying, because it's built with duct tape and bailing wire. And so I have pictures of her as they depart and then get dragged up the thing, and then pictures of them 30 seconds later as they are coming to the end of the ride. And my seven-year-old girl is like, get me the F out of here. She says, I'm never going on that again. It was funny seeing the quick change.
Vic00:07:24I remember going to a bar in Point Pleasant, with my buddies, and I'm in the car, and my buddy Steve Yostaris is driving. We get out of the parking lot at the end of the night, and there's a sobriety checkpoint at the corner. And my first piece of advice was, quick, turn around.
JVL00:07:40The cops never realize. The cops never notice that. Especially if you go fast, you turn around.
Sonny00:07:46No, no, no.
JVL00:07:47That guy must have forgotten something.
Sonny00:07:50Yank the wheel hard left and pull the e-brake, and you'll spin out, and it'll be fine.
Vic00:07:55Well, thank God he didn't listen to me. They were right through. They waved us through. They probably looked in, saw two Asian dudes, and thought, what are the odds? And actually, he didn't even have his headlights on. Anyway, but, hey, I'm here now. I'm here now. And Steve is doing a stretch of 15 and counting. Yeah, he is, he is. But you're fine. He's missing a leg. Sonny, how was your weekend? Was that enough time for you to think about what you did?
Sonny00:08:19Oh, yeah. You're trying to kill some time. Behind the scenes, I was like, I got no idea what I'm going to talk about this. No, I was just really excited that football was back. I spent, like, literally six hours parked on my couch watching Red Zone and kind of absorbing just play after play after play. I mean, Red Zone really, I think, we may have talked about this last year. JBL, I think you hate Red Zone, right? Well, I don't have it, but in theory, I hate it. Yeah, it really is like crack. It just, it gives you, like, pleasure point after pleasure point after pleasure point with football in record time. I can't recommend it enough.
Vic00:08:58Is Red Zone, like, cut to the chase? It just cuts out all the extra stuff?
Sonny00:09:02Red Zone is live. It's live, and they go game to game. Anytime a team, like, it's called the Red Zone because in theory, it's like anytime a team is inside the Red Zone, they cut to that game. Boom, they're watching that game. And you're watching, like, you're watching the scores, but they bring you all the touchdowns basically in real time or right after.
Vic00:09:16As opposed to watching the injury cart get rolled out. You're right, exactly.
Sonny00:09:20Or as opposed to watching that awful Redskins-Eagles game. I watched that.
JVL00:09:25Can I cure you of your Red Zone? Red Zone-philia? No. In one sentence?
Sonny00:09:29Yeah, sure, go ahead.
JVL00:09:30There is a straight line from the Red Zone to avocado toast.
Sonny00:09:34I don't understand what that means. That doesn't make any sense.
JVL00:09:37People who just want instant gratification right now with no need to save up to buy a house. I know what I am. Or appreciate the fun of living life. I already own a house.
Sonny00:09:45I already own a house. I can do whatever I want now. I can eat all the avocado toast and watch all the Red Zone. No, but, like, it has destroyed, like, this is, football will probably be dead in 20 years and it will be dead by its own success because, you know, on the one hand, fantasy football is killing people's interest in their own, you know, hometown teams, right? Nobody cares about, or, I mean, people obviously care about their team, but, you know, you're also, like, deeply invested in your own fantasy team. And the Red Zone channel has set it up so even if you still want to watch your home team, it's really hard to ignore the pull to go over to a channel, 861, and watch, you know, all of the action happening at once, especially because the NFL, again, extremely successful, filled with ads, just nothing but ads in every individual game. And then, of course, there's the fact that children don't play football anymore because of all the concussions. Nobody wants to ruin their children's future
JVL00:10:47by putting them in the line of fire. JVL. So the Red Zone is interesting in that, ordinarily, I would say this is another, for example, the NFL putting short-term profit maximization over the long-term health of the business, just like expanding to nearly every day of the week, which I think is, in the long term, going to be very, very bad for the sport. They should keep it, keep the product scarce, keep interest level high. But what's interesting about this is they can, the Red Zone belongs to them, they could kill it any time they want. So if they've defined that the Red Zone is actually hurting other ratings, or it's bad for them, they just take it away.
Sonny00:11:25Yeah, well, I am actually, I don't understand how it works for them, money-wise, because it is a commercial-free channel, and it's on a tier of pay channels. Like, you pay an extra five bucks a month and you get all the sports channels, but it's not like you're paying five bucks a month for Red Zone.
JVL00:11:42They must be getting paid by the cable companies.
Sonny00:11:45I mean, they must be.
JVL00:11:47The direct revenue must be the cable company pays the NFL cash money to be able to dangle that in front of customers to sign up.
Sonny00:11:53No, they must be, they must be doing that, because the... I have to imagine there's a giant drain on ratings for the network games from people switching over. Maybe there's not, I don't know. Maybe it's like, maybe I am one of the rare people who actually uses Red Zone, but as far as I can tell, everybody I know watches Red Zone.
JVL00:12:12Well, the NFL is not getting paid per game. My understanding is the NFL gets their money up front from the networks via the terms of their deal. They sign multi-year, billion-dollar deals. Right, so whether the ratings are up or down on a given game, the NFL doesn't see any of those advertising dollars anyway. They get their cut up front, and it's up to the networks
Sonny00:12:32to try to make money off of them any which way they can. But I'm just saying, for the next deal, I can't imagine that's, you know.
JVL00:12:37Yeah, well, but they may be thinking to themselves, well, if we can keep the ratings basically where they are with the Red Zone, then all we've done is add another revenue stream from the cable companies. But again, I think this is short-term thinking, or maybe medium-term thinking, but probably not good for the long-term health. You should definitely check it out, though. Yeah, I'll do that. I have a lot of time this weekend I'm planning,
Sonny00:12:57you should just sit in front of the television with your children. You can put two kids on each side and be like, this is how Daddy wants to spend his time, and then make them sit there, because that's how kids act, right?
JVL00:13:07I'm going to go camping this weekend, Sonny, with my children, so I'm going to be outside in a tent with bears. Well, first off, that sounds awful.
Sonny00:13:15It sounds like literally the worst. There's no sand. It sounds like literally the worst thing that anyone could ever do. But I just would like to say, to thank my daughter for grabbing her plastic toy hammer and hitting it against the TV after I'd had it on for like three hours watching football. She was like, no more. Did she break any pencils? Thank God, no.
JVL00:13:33But you've never seen me move as fast
Sonny00:13:37as I did to get off the couch and scoop her up. None of that. Did you yell at her? The toy toolbox went away. It went away forever. That's not coming back. Kids love that toy toolbox. Did you yell at her? Did she cry? No, she laughed. She respects your authority. She was like, Daddy,
Vic00:13:57silly. I had a nice weekend. Actually, our neighbor decided that we finally did our much belated, delayed 4th of July fireworks on the street. What was the date? It was September... September 10. No, 9. September 9. So only two months late. Yes, only two months late. People were just out vacationing. No one was around at the same time on the street.
Sonny00:14:24Wait, wait, wait. So you just started shooting on the street? We were shooting off fireworks at the beginning of September for no reason.
Vic00:14:30In the middle of the night. We waited until it was dark. He had all these fireworks, and he puts them out on the street.
Sonny00:14:36You're garbage people.
Vic00:14:38No, you're awful. You're awful trash people. Yes. Well, I think we do a pretty good job of telling the neighbors. I'm pretty sure we tell the neighbors around us that there's going to be fireworks. At least we got the text, and that's why we came out. There was a kid down the street. I would have forwarded that text right to the cops. The dad came out later. He goes, yeah, we were in bed reading stories, and as soon as he heard the first bang, he just jumped out of bed. He goes, I gotta go. And went down, and there's the dad sitting there like, well, I guess we'll read later on. And then everybody came out and watched the fireworks. The big one is something called The Joker. And it sort of misfired, so it sort of was like a giant explosion all at once, and that was pretty exciting. It's not the kind that tips over and then shoots at people, but it did go pretty high. In the sky, and that was very exciting, so special thanks to our neighbor, Trent Tyma, who had that show for us. He's not actually our neighbor. He lives three doors down. Speaking of three doors down, folks really seem to love our 90s music episode. Did you notice that? I worked really hard on that transition. Three doors down. Did they like it? As far as I can tell, everybody hated the last five shows that we've done. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about this dumb show.
Sonny00:15:56But in any event, I'm only doing it so we don't have to talk to JVL on text.
Vic00:16:02Oh, it's so worth it.
Sonny00:16:03It's a callback. It's a callback to the
Vic00:16:05mini-episode. The mini-episode we did
JVL00:16:07way many days ago. Several days ago.
Vic00:16:09Several days ago. I gotta say, I am legit...
JVL00:16:12I'm legit bothered by the way this show is impacting our actual real friendship. I feel it's healthier.
Vic00:16:21I feel it's healthier that way. I've always
JVL00:16:23said less is more. I'm gonna let people in on a little secret about me. I don't have many friends. Find that hard to believe. For the most part, it's because I don't want them. Well, I find that very easy to believe. But I have you guys as friends, and I like you as friends, and I treasure and cherish you as friends, and I feel like this stupid garbage show is getting in the way of that, and we're gonna have to kill the... I think the sooner we can all get our heads around the fact that we're gonna have to kill the show to save the friendship, the better.
Vic00:16:51Well, you know, this is episode 43. Episode 50 could be a... I believe this is 44. Instant correction. Really?
Sonny00:16:58Is it? I don't even know what episode it is. I'll check. It doesn't matter. I don't know about that. I mean, we always said we were gonna finish it after one year, right? I mean, really, we only have so many ideas.
Vic00:17:09We do every week. I think we took two weeks off. That was it.
JVL00:17:12We said we're gonna end it after the Wonder Woman sequel. Well, we can't. I mean... We gotta go through the Wonder Woman sequel.
Vic00:17:21Oh my gosh. Help us out from under Wonder Woman. This morning... Victorino! Very nice. Thank you. You're a wonder, Wonder Woman. This morning on the drive and talking about music, you know, so I tried to listen to Spectrum, because it plays the old stuff and the new stuff, right? And the old stuff is great. It plays classics, you know, Bowie and whoever else, and they played new stuff, and I heard a new song, so I'm just trying to get with it, and I wrote it down, because it was so, like, earworm. It's called Seven Nation Army, and it's by a new band called White Stripes. Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. I think it's gonna be big. You know what?
JVL00:17:57I bet, you know, I can't believe
Vic00:17:58people, like, sports teams should, like, use it.
Sonny00:18:03You could play it in stadiums and really get people
Vic00:18:05amped up. I don't know why they don't do that, because it's gonna be really something else.
Sonny00:18:08I'm just, I'm only half kidding. The White Stripes are, like, Jack White's fourth best band, by the way. Wow. That's the ranking
Vic00:18:14of that. I actually do know who Jack White is, because I saw him on an interview on CBS. Speaking of CBS, Steve Bannon did a 60 Minutes interview. This whole, there's, I've got a ton of transitions,
Sonny00:18:27for the show. You really did go into the office on Sunday to work on this, didn't you?
Vic00:18:30I go in on Sundays, and I do my notes. Speaking of CBS, Steve Bannon did a 60 Minutes interview last night with Charlie Rose, and perhaps On Sunday night. Sunday, Sunday night, what perhaps was most disturbing was, not so much what he said.
Sonny00:18:44Maybe we just kill the show today. Not so much
Vic00:18:47what he said, but what he, yeah. You spend so much
Sonny00:18:49time on the transitions, but you don't get the timing right, because, you know, you write it. I actually
Vic00:18:53lost, I didn't. You write it, and here we are, it's Thursday morning, we're taping it.
Sonny00:18:57And you're like, and you're just using the notes that you typed up four days ago?
Vic00:19:01Five days ago? I'm so glad the hurricane is over now. Okay, perhaps what was most disturbing was not so much as what he said, as perhaps what he was wearing. Is that right, JVL? It wasn't disturbing, it was awesome.
Sonny00:19:15You could say what you... So you're on this
JVL00:19:17side of, you're on that side of layering. You're on that side of layering. You can say what you want about Steve Bannon, but that man, his layer game, is strong. It is very strong. He will pull the two-button-down shirt.
Sonny00:19:30We have to describe...
JVL00:19:32Explain what's happening. He's wearing a button-down shirt, with a button-down shirt over it, and then a blazer on top of that. That is a strong... And that's not even his best.
Vic00:19:43Not since Chandler Bing on Friends. It's awesome,
JVL00:19:46and I respect the hell out of it. And especially as a guy who, I'm no slouch myself with the layer game, especially now that we're in September and the weather has turned, which frees up all the ability to go with the vest route, so you can over... Like the vest you're wearing now. Right now, I'm wearing a basic three-layer three-layer game. T-shirt,
Vic00:20:05button-down, vest. Is that like a... Is that the middle of the layering, or is that like low or high-end layering? That's what I want to know from you. I just want to... Is it your basic three?
Sonny00:20:13I just want to explain to people that he's not... The triple? He's not talking about a vest like a suit vest. Like a Sonny Bunch vest. Or a sweater vest, or something like that. He's talking about a quilted North Face vest. He basically... A winter, winter. Right now, he basically looks like Marty McFly from Back to the Future. This is the North Face Thermoball vest. Did you jump ship, kid? That is... That's what he looks... He looks like a 1980s science fiction character.
Vic00:20:39With the headphones, too. It's really...
JVL00:20:41Well, the headphones obscure my small head. No, this is a layer... Sonny, I'm surprised you're making fun of me. You are a layer guy yourself. I'm pro-layering. You're super
Sonny00:20:51pro-layering. I'm not making fun of you. I'm just trying to paint a picture with my words. The word picture? Well, when we're doing Facebook Live, you won't need to do that. Well, we're never going to do that. I'll tell you, this show will... I do want to keep the show running so I don't have to talk to JVL via text message, but I also don't want to have to do Facebook Live, so I'm going to have
JVL00:21:08very competing
Sonny00:21:09imperatives coming up soon here. No, I think that's great. I mean, it's a great look. I wouldn't personally wear that outfit because it looks very outdoorsy. It's the sort of... You've got your watch on and everything. I wouldn't, like... I just... I wouldn't wear this because it's not my style, but it's a great example of layering. This is... You have the t-shirt on top under the button-down, under the vest.
JVL00:21:31It's great. So I learned from the master, and the master of this was Cedric Chung. I don't know who that is. Cedric Chung was my roommate, freshman, sophomore year of college. Mm-hmm. Okay. And Cedric would... Was this at Georgetown? You want to make me go at it, don't you? Wow. Even I didn't say that. You're trying to make me say something. No, no, no. I don't know what you're talking about. But I'm going to hold it in. Go f*** yourself. Oh, 21-55. Cedric's default option was a quad. Oh. I'm not even kidding. Quad. Okay. So, undershirt. T-shirt. Mm-hmm. Polo shirt. Mm-hmm. Button-down, button-down. That's default. That is your basic, I've rolled out of bed, it's a Wednesday morning, and I need to go to class. T-shirt.
Sonny00:22:21Throw it on. I'm sorry. T-shirt, polo. T-shirt, polo shirt, button-down, button-down.
JVL00:22:26And he would often throw, then, a sweater over top, a v-neck sweater, or a v-neck vest, and then in the winter months, go coat on top of it. And I'm telling you, when I say it made some sense, it sounds ridiculous, but on Cedric it all looked totally cool. It was really, it was just, it was a coherent look, and it was awesome.
Sonny00:22:47So this was, like, 1990. 94. Let's get a little
Vic00:22:51perspective here. But I know, I do look at certain episodes, I say, I can't imagine wearing this, and then I'll see somebody, for example, like our friend David Skinner, one of the original galley slaves. He is a layerer, and I think, I'd never think of doing that, and he'll put stuff together, you know, and also colors that I don't think that match, but it works on David. But I can't imagine, I am not a layerer at all. I am mostly, it's hard for, I rarely get cold. I'm gonna paint another word picture here, because it's cold.
JVL00:23:14You can't fit anything over your head.
Sonny00:23:17It's like the Seinfeld episode. He doesn't, you know, nobody wants to sell him a cashmere sweater, because they don't want him to stretch out
Vic00:23:22the crew neck. By the time you wear it, you'll be showing your collarbone, you know, it'll be towards the shoulders, which is, my neck size is like a 17 and a half, okay? 17 and a half, sometimes 18, if I really want to feel comfortable. But I'll go for a little discomfort. At a 17
JVL00:23:37and a half, your carotid artery is bulging.
Vic00:23:39No, it's like me and LeVar Arrington. It's like Bane, when he's pumping venom. Yes. So, you know, I am not going to do that. It's, you know, again, I get too hot.
JVL00:23:49I'm gonna say, this is not a criticism, you are a very traditional kind of dress guy. You don't stray. The closest I've seen you doing something is you have a sweater with sort of shoulder patches and then elbow patches.
Vic00:24:05I don't have any elbow patches. I have no elbow patches.
JVL00:24:07I'm thinking the military green one with the shoulder patches that looks kind of like British World War II commando sweater. And that's about as
Vic00:24:15eccentric as you get. I think I know what you're talking about. Unlike you,
JVL00:24:19Sonny, who is very natty and has like an actual sense of style. Sonny is, Sonny. You are rocking. How many layers are you going today? Just three? But you're doing an interesting three. Well, once again, I thought we were going to dress
Sonny00:24:29up for the show. You know, we're going to show off our layering in the studio. And I get to, I see Vic standing outside the office today and he's wearing a blazer and a tie that's like loose and a neck that hasn't, a neck that won't button. And I'm just like, god damn it. You don't want to see the button neck. It's not pretty. No, but I, well, I'm... I'll be like the guy from Scanners. So we were talking on Twitter where all great conversations happen in the modern era. It's the Agora of our time. And, and, or Agora? Agora. Agora. And we, and Jonah Goldberg, our friend Jonah Goldberg, chimed in and he said, you know, the problem with sweaters is that it opens up the opportunity for the Rick Santorum, which of course is the sweater vest by itself on top of the Oxford shirt. And it's a bad look. I mean, it just doesn't, it doesn't look good. But the sweater vest itself is not an issue. The sweater vest is fine as long as you always wear a jacket on top of it. So myself,
Vic00:25:27right now, I'm wearing. I don't know, I like, you mean like a sleeveless sweater, you
Sonny00:25:31mean? Yeah, a sweater vest. That's what a sweater vest is. A sweater vest. This is just a vest. This is just a vest. It's a zip front vest. I don't know, I like doing that. No, that's bad.
JVL00:25:41No, you don't. It's a bad look. Oh no, you do. I have a blue one. From Banana Republic. I believe that's the only one you have. Yeah, it is. The blue sweater vest.
Sonny00:25:49Yeah, it is. No, but I'm. I like blue. Most of my colors are blue. The problem, the sweater vest is totally fine. Oh my god.
JVL00:25:55Sorry. Sorry, Sonny. Go ahead.
Sonny00:25:56You complete me. This is why. This is bad. It's just.
JVL00:26:00Gotta keep the show going, God. I can't quit. I can't ever quit.
Sonny00:26:05The, no, but the sweater vest itself is fine. I'm actually wearing a sweater vest right now. The trick is you can just never, ever take off your jacket. You can't ever take off your sport coat. You have to leave it on all the time. And so, as a result, I'm actually very hot right now in the studio because I'm wearing a, I'm wearing a. It's too much.
JVL00:26:20I'm wearing a houndstooth
Sonny00:26:22tweed jacket. You are. In September. On top of the gray gray, the heather gray sweater vest, which is on top of a button-down Oxford, uh, button-down collar Oxford with a, with a nice skinny little Jean Barbados tie. So I,
JVL00:26:36from the moment the weather turns from summer to fall through like mid-spring, I will wear a vest every single day. And I will wear either my North Face Thermal Ball or my Patagonia Retro X vest, which I really, really like. And, uh, I just, I just like, I like keeping my core temperature toasty. I find it comfortable when I wear it around the office. And...
Vic00:26:59I'd rather be cold all day.
JVL00:27:00Last spring when the weather turned, one, and I made the, the transition out of vest for my seven-month vest period, one of our younger colleagues came in in the morning and saw me and said, oh, JBL's not gonna wear his Thunder shirt anymore. And it was a moment when I realized that, oh, the young colleagues talk about us and make fun of us the way we kind of did with our older colleagues when we were
Sonny00:27:2923. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, for me, again,
JVL00:27:33I get... We're old. I'm an object of fun. Yeah, a figure of fun. A figure of fun. That's how we... That's bad.
Sonny00:27:39That's how we kids say it.
Vic00:27:41It gets so hot, and I always complain about this, that it's rare for me to get cold, even outside. It's almost like, Caldwell's this way, you know? He rarely wears Chris... The extra gravity...
JVL00:27:53From Boston. The extra gravity fields emitted by your head
Vic00:27:57causes... It's like a heat shield? Well, they keep the warmth in. It actually
JVL00:28:01holds like a black hole. That is
Vic00:28:03what... It pulls everything to itself, including even heat. That is one theory, JVL. The other thing that people keep telling me is, well, you know, it's your island blood. Yes. Who's told me this? Hmm, let me think. My wife. Her mother. Her mother. She got it from her mother. Well, it's your island blood. Okay.
Sonny00:28:22It's not... I mean, it could be right. I don't know. I don't know how Long Island? I don't know.
Vic00:28:26Long Beach Island? Further west. Or east. Or east, shall we say. Far. Far east. Anyway, so the idea of me layering, I think, would be... He's inscrutable. I think the idea of me layering would be a poor choice. But you know what's a smart choice? Are we done talking about sweaters? Oh, what? Really? Are we done? You want to talk some more?
JVL00:28:45I thought we were going to talk about other people's layer game.
Guest00:28:47Yeah, no. I thought we were... Girls do it. Do your ad.
JVL00:28:50Do your ad. There is girl layer game, too. Like, when the thing happened with jeans, skirts over jeans a couple years ago. Remember that?
Vic00:28:58That became a real look. You know what was big in the 90s? Like, when we were in college, when girls were not... Oh, like warmer stuff. You couldn't tell what a woman looked like because they had so many layers on. It was like burkas on campus. You know, like the long, the flannel, the jeans, bag, everything. Now I'm glad I didn't go to Georgetown. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Got a lot more action at Hopkins, I'm sure. Oh, yeah.
JVL00:29:17Yeah, you can't even imagine.
Vic00:29:18Okay. Go ahead. You want to talk a little bit more about layers?
Sonny00:29:22I was like Caligula. Please. I just want to... All I want to talk about is the... Can we just quickly rank sweaters? Can we do that? Can we do that quickly? Go ahead. Number one, shawl collar. False. Shawl collar cardigan. False. Shawl collar cardigan, number one. Number two... I'm sorry. Is there a way to do a shawl collar pullover? Yeah. I guess there is, yeah. Both wrong. Shawl collar cardigan, number one. Number two, v-neck. Number three, v-neck cardigan. Number four, crew. I think that is... I think that's the basic, the very basic ranking, but if we want to talk about all the various varieties of cardigans, the v-neck cardigan, of course, would come above the regular v-neck. You know, we got a lot of different options here. The v-neck is the king
JVL00:30:13of the sweaters, because you can then put it over anything. Yeah, but you can
Sonny00:30:17put a shawl collar cardigan over anything. Yeah, and if you're Cary Grant, it'll look great.
Vic00:30:21So what's a shawl collar? And if you're not... Explain the shawl collar, please.
Sonny00:30:25The shawl collar is like, it's the one with, like, the big kind of fluffy collar at the top. Nobody is listening to this show anymore. It's great. You know who's listening is Comfortably Smug, our friend.
Vic00:30:35He's a big layering guy. Women would wear a cowl neck sweater? Is that one with a really, like, a very loose turtleneck? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Sonny00:30:43No, it's just that you accept them. Is it a button-down? I have, like, five of these. You'll see them. You'll see them through the year. Don't worry. I like
Vic00:30:51a fleece.
Sonny00:30:52I wore a shawl collar the other day. You mentioned that I was wearing a cardigan. Oh, yes. That's a shawl collar. Yes, I think I called it something else.
Vic00:30:59What I don't like is a turtleneck. Oh, my gosh. No, the turtleneck is no good. JVL has a Google image of something. No, I'm sorry. That was something else. Okay. No, the turtleneck for me... Our corporate safety software
JVL00:31:12is preventing me from going to see the image of this shawl neck sweater on J.Crew because it must be pernicious.
Vic00:31:21Sorry. That's really insane. Sorry. Continue. Please, continue. No, I'm very anti-turtleneck. For me, you know what the feeling is like? It's like the kid in Game of Thrones when they put the rat on his chest. That's how I feel like. I would pay cash
JVL00:31:34money to see you wearing a turtleneck.
Vic00:31:36Not since 1982, maybe?
JVL00:31:38It would be astonishing. Not since 1982. That was probably an adult turtleneck. When you do a turtleneck, would you fold it down or let it... Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Vic00:31:47It would get claustrophobic that way. I'd have to fold it over. I mean, as little as possible. Mock turtleneck, maybe.
Sonny00:31:54Mock turtleneck, even then,
Vic00:31:55I'm not a big fan. I prefer the zipper sweater thing. There's so much going on above
JVL00:31:59the shoulders for you that you've got to be
Sonny00:32:01very careful. The only good turtleneck is the tactile neck, as seen on Archer FX's. Archer, no one. You guys don't watch it now? No, that's all right.
JVL00:32:09Is that a TV show? It's a TV show.
Sonny00:32:11People watch it. It's pretty popular amongst our set.
JVL00:32:14Yeah, I know. I like Larry Lane. Look, The Fall is about pumpkin spice. Yes. And layering.
Sonny00:32:23That's what this season is all about, gentlemen. I mean, the three great things about Fall, layering, pumpkin spice, and pumpkin beer. Pumpkin beer, obviously, is just the king
JVL00:32:32of beers. What is your favorite pumpkin beer?
Sonny00:32:34It's probably the Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale.
JVL00:32:36I like that a lot. That is, I like most Dogfish Head, and I hate the Dogfish Head Pumpkin. Really? Doesn't do it for me. Too much spice, maybe? I don't know. I like beer that
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JVL00:34:03While you were doing your read, Victorino, I just got an email from REI, the subject header being Camping is for Everyone. I showed it to Sonny. Sonny expressed his displeasure, which you will see when we move to Facebook Live starting next week. He's doing an SMDH.
Vic00:34:15That's not going to happen. Okay.
JVL00:34:18Moving. I've got to buy a bunch of new gear for this weekend, too. It's going to be awesome. Okay.
Vic00:34:23Now, over the weekend, Stephen King's It crushed it at the box office.
Sonny00:34:30It was not clowning around.
?00:34:32Sorry.
JVL00:34:33Please give us a Gene review. It ballooned its way to the top. Please give us a Gene review.
Vic00:34:38$117 million is no laughing matter. No, he didn't see it. Gene did not see it. Gene didn't see it? No, no, no. Too scary. No. No, no, no. I would see it. I didn't have time. Instead, I watched something even scarier, which was the Eagles-Redskins game. Okay. So, in the box office, that comes in at $117 million. And what comes second? More than Wonder Woman. Boom! Wow. And Home Again came in. Home Again. Did you see this, Sonny? Do you know what it's about, Home Again?
Sonny00:35:10Not only did I not see it, I didn't even realize it was coming out. Is Home Again
Vic00:35:13like Sweet Home Alabama again? I guess.
Sonny00:35:16It does star Reese Witherspoon. I don't know. You couldn't pay me to watch a Reese Witherspoon rom-com. And I literally get paid to watch movies, so.
Vic00:35:25She came in at $9 million, followed by The Hitman's Bodyguard at $4.8 million. But here's another interesting thing. In fourth place, it's September now, in fourth place, Annabelle. Creation still. With $4 million, it is now totaled $96 million. Okay, so what's going on here? Sonny.
Sonny00:35:42Well, it... I don't know, but maybe a month ago, the first tracking number started to come in for it. And it was tracking extremely well, high awareness in all quadrants, as they say. And they were talking about a $60 million opening. Like, a $60 million opening. And I scoffed at this. I scoffed at this in public, which is always a terrible decision, because I'm always wrong. So I was like, an R-rated horror film opening in September? There's no way that movie does $60 million. That's crazy. That's super high. And then it went out and doubled that in its opening weekend. And I just, I am blown away by this. And I don't know exactly what to make of it. The movie itself is fine. I liked it. Tell us about it, please. So, it is the story of, in the film, the film is the story of seven kids who come together to fight the evil presence that is haunting their town, Derry, Maine. And it opens with one of the kids, his little brother, gets his arm ripped off down a sewer drain. And you know, basically, the movie is about this evil presence, which is seen most often as a clown, as a kind of creepy scary clown, played by Bill Skarsgård, the son of Stellan, and brother of Alexander, I believe. Wait, they're all related? I'm pretty sure. Could you effort that, just so I'm not we might need an instant
Vic00:37:10correction. I'm going to say yes, but there was a time, who knows, Skarsgård could be like Smith. Well, that's what I was thinking. But I'll look this up. I'll look this up. I always thought, by the way, JVL, I think, felt the same way many, many years ago, when we were children, that Audrey Hepburn and Catherine Hepburn
JVL00:37:28were sisters. Totally. I was 30 years old before I realized that didn't happen. We were at the standard, and somebody corrected us. Okay, go ahead, Sonny. John Podhoretz, I believe.
Sonny00:37:36Anyway, I liked it fine. It's very much a coming-of-age movie with, it's very much a coming-of-age comedy, almost, with horror elements. It is very, it's actually a surprisingly funny. It's laugh-out-loud funny in times. You have this very real kind of stand-by-me feel to it, where you have these kids coming together and going on a journey, and one of them is the foul-mouthed one, and one of them is the kind of brave, adventurous one. The weak nerd. You have the weak nerd. You have the kind of token-town Jewish kid, the token-town African-American kid. You have the, in this, as opposed to stand-by-me, you have also a girl. As part of the group. It's scary in the kind of cheap horror way that these movies are often scary, that movies like Annabelle or the other Conjuring movies are scary. It's a lot of jump scares, a lot of spikes in the soundtrack, and scary images to get you to kind of
Vic00:38:35involuntarily twitch. Or they speed up the film, the effects, so
Sonny00:38:37all of a sudden it rushes at you. So, there's that, and I much prefer the kind of mood horror of a movie like The Witch, or you know, I don't know, some of these other movies that a lot of people don't like actually, that a lot of audiences don't like. Did you like
Vic00:38:51The Others with Nicole Kidman?
Sonny00:38:53I thought it was okay. I mean, I liked it. It was fine.
Vic00:38:58Now, with the new It, the new iteration of It now, because the original, I saw the original, the one from 1990 starring Tim Curry and Richard Thomas. Do they update it so that the present day when they're adults is now in the
Sonny00:39:132010s? So this is one of the big changes from the book to the movie, is that there is none of the adult stuff in it. So if you, people who have read the book and people who have seen the original ABC miniseries will remember that you kind of hop back and forth between two time periods. The formation of the Losers Club, as they're called, in the 1950s and then it hops ahead to the 1980s, where they have to do battle with It again. And it's very creatively done. It's probably Stephen King's best structured book, or at least most interestingly structured book. He kind of hops back and forth between times. And it, he does it in a way that, like, increases the stakes and also makes it more universal. Like, Derry is very much kind of a stand-in for America writ large. And it's, I can't stress enough how well done it is. And I was very skeptical of the new It going in, because I knew that it was just going to be the kids. They were not doing the time-hopping. And frankly, you can't do that in a two-hour, even a two-hour, 15-minute movie like this is. It's a little long. As it is. So I could understand cutting some of that stuff just for structural purposes. Now, the closing title card of the film is It Chapter One. So they had already kind of planned, I think, to do a sequel with the adults. And they're definitely going to do a sequel now with the adults after, you know, this movie made its, I mean, almost certainly is almost profitable already. Even after, you know, theaters take their cut and you factor in marketing and all that. I mean, it's probably pretty close. Because this was only a $35 million budget.
Vic00:40:51Wow. So it's called that in the credits, It Chapter One? It Chapter One.
Sonny00:40:54Wow. Okay. So Chapter Two will probably be coming in two or three years and it'll be The problem with doing it this way, though, is that it is kind of the same basic story twice. I mean, this is the genius of the book. Yeah, sequels never do that. Right. Well, but, yeah, I know. But I mean, this is the problem, is that it's going to be so it's going to be so sequely. Anyway, so it is huge. I was wrong to doubt it. Right. To doubt it. And the future is horror. And the future is horror. This is cheap. This is... I do wonder if this really is, like, the future of film going, is these kind of movies that play well to young people and are cheaply made and relatively cheaply advertised and work better in big audience situations where all the screaming and the yelling kind of adds to the atmosphere of it. You know what I really wonder
Vic00:41:44is what is Stephen King's piece of the deal in terms of what he gets.
JVL00:41:50It's gotta be good. Can you think of another instance of a novelist having two big budget film adaptations opening within a month of one another?
Sonny00:42:02Did it ever happen with Michael Crichton? When did, like, Sphere in Congo come out?
JVL00:42:07That's the only other... Two great movies. That's the only other possibility,
Sonny00:42:10right? I mean, that would be... That's the only one I can think of off the top of my head. I wouldn't know... It's pretty wild to have two king properties coming out and performing so wildly differently at the box office as the other. And I think it's very instructive to see why one worked and the other didn't. Like, it actually makes sense as a young adult kind of coming-of-age horror comedy movie. That is in the source material. It makes sense. You have to excise a bunch of stuff as it is. So you cut down to, like, the bare essential essence of it. And it is a... It's a story about friends coming together to fight evil. So that makes sense. And The Dark Tower didn't work because they tried to make it a young adult action film and that is not at all supported by the text, really. Like, you... They jammed in an idea that we want to have this adventure movie about this young kid trying to, you know, make sense of his life and we're going to stick the gunslinger and The Dark Tower on top of that. And, like, The Dark Tower doesn't have any of the elements that it has. It doesn't have the humor. It doesn't have, like, the kind of love interest subplot, you know, for the kid. I mean, like, it just doesn't... What they did with The Dark Tower is, like, you can just see everything that is wrong with it if you watch it and look at everything that's right with it.
JVL00:43:27Or the alternate view of this is this is the value add for good corporate management and Sonny's terrible corporate management of The Dark Tower caused it to be a disaster and the pretty good corporate management of New Line allowed it to succeed. This is New Line.
Vic00:43:47That's good. JVL, you're not a horror guy. You had no
JVL00:43:51desire. You said this on text, in fact. You said you couldn't pay me. Yeah, and neither of you responded.
Vic00:43:57I looked at it. I nodded. I said, uh-huh, okay. It was good to know. And then you thought to yourself, let's save it for the show.
JVL00:44:03I'll respond now, as in Thursday. Okay, so... Briefly, before we move on. No, no, go ahead. Stellan and Bill Skarsgård both... I'm sorry. Peter Skarsgård? Who's he? Alexander and Bill are both the sons of Stellan.
Vic00:44:21Yeah, that's what I said. And then there's Peter Sarsgård, which is unrelated. Peter Sarsgård.
Sonny00:44:25Peter, that's not Skarsgård.
JVL00:44:27That's right. Chuck Lane.
Vic00:44:29That's right. Chuck Lane from The Great Shadow.
Sonny00:44:30So I was right, though. Alexander and Bill are brothers. Yes. And Peter is the father. Yeah. Stellan is the father. Well, you got me
Vic00:44:43confused by throwing Peter Sarsgård in there. All right. Here we go. On the spot. I'm just going to catch you on the spot, so you've got to think quickly. Favorite. Ready? Favorite Stellan Skarsgård. Roll right now. Go.
JVL00:44:53You know, I would actually probably say the Frankenheimer movie, who's Ronan. Oh, Ronan. Yeah. That's good. He's great in Ronan. Yeah, that was good. But he's great in everything. He's great in Hunt for Out October.
Vic00:45:05Hunt for Out October is such a small part. But you. I was going to say Hunt for Out October has such a small part. I like it when he plays those kind of roguish characters versus Good Will Hunting friend. Yeah. You know, it's nice, but
Sonny00:45:16Sonny. Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Wow. Okay. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo remake. It's Fincher, so I assume it's pretty good. I mean, it's dark. I mean, it's dark and intense and Fincher-y. It's very much in I wouldn't. It's actually very different from Seven, but it's in that kind of same tonal region. Yeah, I
JVL00:45:35love the crap out of him as an actor. He can do just about anything. Oh,
Vic00:45:39and he is in Borg McEnroe coming up, isn't he? He plays Borg's coach,
JVL00:45:44and he speaks. So we've got Borg McEnroe and the Bobby Riggs, Emma Stone, Steve Carell movie. The golden age of 1970s tennis movies. How do these movies get greenlit? Because these are movies that I am a you're not going to find a bigger tennis nerd than me, and there is no way in hell I would show up to pay for this. I would watch Borg McEnroe. You would go to a theater and pay money to watch Borg McEnroe? Yeah, not the other one. I'll believe it when I see it. Oh, no, why not?
Vic00:46:14Except it's a foreign film, that's how it got greenlit. It's a foreign film, and it has that feel to it.
Sonny00:46:17I'm just excited that they're making the Battle of the Sexes movie because it's about time we had a movie come out where they explained how Bobby Riggs
JVL00:46:24threw it. I was going to say, do you think
Sonny00:46:26that they have incorporated any of that stuff? No, this is 100% just going to be a triumph of the
Vic00:46:32And also, Bobby Riggs was not exactly at the height of his career. So if people don't know this, after having
JVL00:46:38big investigative reporting on this by, I believe, Sports Illustrated or ESPN the magazine, one of them. I think it was SI. It is now clear to everybody, except for Billie Jean King, that Bobby Riggs threw that match because he was in deep with the mob, and he was being forced to do it. And the article is phenomenal. And her responses to it are pathetic. I mean, she is clinging to this thing that happened 40 years ago, and, I beat him, and I beat him for you. I looked to me like he was trying. And the best tell in all this is that 12 months or 11 months before this match, he had beaten Margaret Court like 6-0, 6-1, or something like that.
Vic00:47:20So there's no mob element in this Borg McEnroe movie? There's no revelation? We'll see. Well, the Borg McEnroe movie is different. Sorry, not Borg McEnroe.
JVL00:47:28The Battle of the Sexes. Billie Jean King is such a shrew. Okay. We gotta move on. We gotta move on.
Vic00:47:35I was not a big Pam Shriver fan.
JVL00:47:37That's who I didn't like. She's the worst. You know who's the best, though? Mary Carrillo. Mary Carrillo is
Vic00:47:43so... You did? Yeah, I got her autograph when I went to the US Open. No. I did. I said, thank you, sir. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't say thank you, sir. She was great. That's horrible. I know. I'm kidding. Totally untrue. She's really good.
JVL00:47:54She is lovely, and she may be the smartest professional athlete of the last 40 years. She's an actual normal person. She is so awesome. One of my dreams is to do a profile
Vic00:48:05of her. Her, Bud Collins, John Newcomb. Remember John Newcomb? Yeah. Because John Newcomb said, can I help you? And I said, yeah, I'm looking for John McEnroe.
JVL00:48:13That's what I said to him when I was a kid. I had no idea he had won tournaments on his own. Did you go up to Patrick McEnroe and ask him about his progress?
Vic00:48:18Yeah, with Slovut, to Slovut, by going to Patrick McEnroe. John, can I...
JVL00:48:23Oh, you're Patrick.
Sonny00:48:24How many times did he get that? I'm surprised they actually let you in to the stadium. Well, he's a doctor's kid. Well, right, right. But I was just thinking, like, again, the weird gravitational forces around the head would deflect the flights of the balls. And, you know, this is what tennis players... Look at the wicked slice he put on that.
Vic00:48:40Oh, no, there's that kid with the big head sitting on the sideline. It's almost like the Parabola guy with the microphone thing. You know, it's sort of similar effects. Okay, we gotta move on. On our last episode, we talked about ice cream, and there was some... Wait, I thought
JVL00:48:52we were talking about horror movies. Oh, we're done.
Vic00:48:54Like, that was it? We're done talking about horror movies? We're at almost 50 minutes now.
Sonny00:48:58Vic really was just... I'm watching the clock. This episode is overproduced. It's overproduced. Too many topics.
JVL00:49:04We literally did not have a single conversation about horror movies. No. You reviewed it, and then we just moved. I thought you were done, JBL. We moved on to tennis. Yeah. I thought you were done. I don't know. Maybe we can talk about this all over text, just us then. Okay. Because I had a lot of, like, things I wanted to talk to you guys about with horror movies. But maybe we can have this conversation outside of the show. I love it. Why don't we... Or next episode.
Sonny00:49:25Yeah, why don't we actually finish the horror discussion and save ice cream for the
Vic00:49:29next episode? I was surprised. I didn't think we had enough gas in the tank for this. We always think we
Sonny00:49:32don't have enough, and then we were at, like, an hour, and we were like, I'm sure it's fine! I'm sure it's fine! Gotta finish it!
Vic00:49:38Alright. Thank you, Sonny. I didn't realize we had... JBL? And then you rushed everybody through it. JBL. I didn't realize there'd be a sweater ranking, also. I didn't know there'd be a sweater ranking. JBL, did you have some thoughts about
JVL00:49:48horror movies? I agree with you. Horror is... But here's the thing. So horror is obviously the most commercially viable form of cinema. Because you can do it on a budget. Horror movies don't need stars. Alone among the types of movies that can be made. But also, this is not new. I mean, this has been true for 50 years, right? I mean, you go back to the Cat People and... The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the whole era of 70s exploitation,
Sonny00:50:17Night of the Living Dead... Basically, all the movies... Even going to the 50s.
JVL00:50:20Like, you know, what counted for horror movies in the 50s, like Night of the Living Dead. And so, there's something interesting...
Vic00:50:27No, so this makes...
JVL00:50:28Why is it... What is it about... Because this is something that is totally lost on me. My interest in horror is negative 50. But people love it. And it's a cathartic thing that people need to experience.
Vic00:50:40Did you used to watch horror and decided, JBL, that you didn't like it, or you just never got into it?
JVL00:50:44I tried to make myself like it, like in high school, the way everybody does, and I just couldn't... It did nothing for me. I actively disliked it.
Vic00:50:53In the sense that it made you feel uncomfortable, or you're just, like, just not fazed by it at all? Because I think a lot of people like that moment of, let me, you know, get out of my comfort zone for the next hour and a half, and then at the end of it, I'm glad it's over. But, much like a rollercoaster, you know, just this moment of... I didn't like rollercoasters either.
Sonny00:51:11I mean, horror is fundamentally pornographic, right? It is like
JVL00:51:16the... So why didn't I like it? But you are, you are, well, I mean, you just don't like that.
Vic00:51:20Are you saying you didn't like Runaway Train and Great Adventure? You didn't like Runaway Train? Sorry.
Sonny00:51:23But it, you were, you are, it's, like, designed to create, it's a call and response. It's like, here is a, here is a, like, uh, uh, emotionally stimulative uh, idea or image, and here it is real fast, and in your face, and that's, like, that, that is, and it creates adrenaline and, uh, you know, endorphins and all that stuff, and that's why, I mean, it doesn't work on everyone, obviously, or all of these movies would make a hundred million dollars every weekend, but, like, it works on enough people that you can, uh... Clearly it works on enough people. Yeah, no, I'm not saying,
JVL00:51:57like, oh, yeah, I'm just saying, I don't get it. But the other thing is, horror as a, as a genre is so variegated, variegated, what is the... Variegated. Variegated. I mean, you could count Rosemary's Baby, which is art and cinema, I would say, as horror. You could count The Devil's Backbone, which is fancy pants, intelligent,
Sonny00:52:19artistic filmmaking. Which one is The Devil's Backbone? That's the Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro. You could
JVL00:52:23count Open Water, which is a sort of low-budget exploitation flick as horror. Uh, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You could count Jaws as horror, I think. And Jaws is a... Alien. The first Alien. You could count Alien as it. So, I mean, and these are all, I mean, you would say, yes, the genus of them is all horror, but the individual species are radically different types of movies, I think. And that is, again, just interesting. I think it's a underexplored genre, although it's probably not underexplored. Probably a million master's thesis is written on horror every single year. Yes.
Sonny00:52:55No? I mean, I do think that that is true, but I also think it is an underappreciated and underrated genre that is underappreciated and underrated, because a lot of it is actually really bad. I mean, like, you know, most... The Conjuring movies, which are like kind of the height of the whole jump scare ghost phenomenon in recent
JVL00:53:19years. Is that paranormal activity?
Sonny00:53:20No, the paranormal activity movies are different. Those are the found footage
JVL00:53:26horror films.
Sonny00:53:29The Conjuring ones are the... I mean, there's The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, and they starred Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as this husband-wife team of, you know, and they go around and kind of investigate. But, like, those two movies... And that's where Annabelle is from? Those two movies came out, and then there's Annabelle, which is... Right, a weird spin-off. Which is the movie about the killer doll, and is literally, again, like, a scene in the first film tells the whole story of Annabelle. Literally just tells the whole story. Right. And then they made a whole movie of that, and then they made a prequel to that. Like, it is... These movies print money. They made a billion dollars.
JVL00:54:04Yeah. I mean, this is true. And then, you know, Paranormal Activity, $15,000 to make $200 million. There's at the box office. Blair Witch did something like that during his time.
Vic00:54:14Does it all go back to the Blair Witch project? It was at the beginning of the... Well, that was like the first found footage. Yeah, that's the first found footage.
JVL00:54:20But, I mean, back in the late 60s and early 70s, these movies made money hand over fist. Friday the 13th movies made a ton of money. Halloween movies made a ton of money. That's why these things all have seven and eight and nine entries into the franchises. They wouldn't make it if they weren't making money. Yeah, and there is... And maybe this is cinema as theme park ride. In the purest sense. More pure even than action movies. And there may be something about it which is really physically different seeing it in a group. Sitting in an audience doing it rather than sitting watching it at home. Which could be why this survives and nothing else does. If you want to make whatever the Hotel Magnolia, Tulip Hotel movie was, 10 years from now. Tulip Fever. No, not Tulip Fever. The best Marigold Hotel in Texas or whatever that was.
Sonny00:55:10The best exotic Marigold Hotel.
Vic00:55:12That's the best little whorehouse in Texas. Yes, I know. That's the joke.
JVL00:55:15This is the material Victorino. We're like
Vic00:55:18an hour in now. You want to stop at some point?
JVL00:55:20Can we move on? I'm just saying, 10 years from now that movie will have to be direct to streaming. Whereas you probably won't have to do these movies direct to streaming if you don't want to. That's all. Corrections editions. My wife had a whole bunch of corrections for you guys, but I don't remember them.
Vic00:55:34Oh yes, I remember one. It was the one where you said back when you were cool. Oh yeah. That's a good one. I think she went on Twitter for that one. So that was out there.
Sonny00:55:41That's all the records. Put you on blast as they say. I'll
JVL00:55:45have this on an edition when I was at Jenkinson's. Jake's, but yeah, of course. With the Jake's. When I was at Jake's getting some ice cream after having ridden the rides. They had a sugar cone dipped in white chocolate. I thought, Sonny, we're here. That sounds amazing. Normal dark chocolate and milk chocolate dipped sugar cones, but I've never seen a white chocolate dipped one.
Sonny00:56:07And they had it. Sonny is Mr. White Chocolate. I would, you put a giant scoop of strawberry ice cream in that and I would eat it all day long.
Vic00:56:17You know, we talked about, you talked about Chili's last episode. Did you see the news? Chili's is reducing
Sonny00:56:2140% of their menu. Yeah, I really appreciate everybody sending me this as if I don't have enough Chili's trauma in my life right now. I had to eat, I ate all of my meals at home like a schmuck this weekend because I didn't, I didn't want to go to Dogfish Head. I didn't want to go to, I couldn't go to Chili's. New Chili's. New Chili's.
Vic00:56:37But they're, I think they're only getting rid of the extra stuff. 40% is a lot though. I mean, 40% is a lot.
Sonny00:56:43No, but, I mean, the menu was a little bit bloated. They need to get down to their core competencies like prime rib tacos.
Vic00:56:51Okay.
Sonny00:56:52That's a thing that exists, JVL. Or at least existed. I don't know if it's still
Vic00:56:55on the menu. Yeah. At Ditka's in Chicago, there's pot roast nachos. You know, pot roast nachos. I would definitely try those.
JVL00:57:01You guys aren't even trying with corrections anymore. And frankly, me neither.
Vic00:57:05Corrections? Like, have we had a legit
JVL00:57:07correction in weeks? No, no. We don't make mistakes. We don't make mistakes. We'll just have to kill the segment
Vic00:57:13then. Flawless. Okay. Spirit of the week, because it's a little early on a Thursday. Yeah, we're taping Thursday morning. Kahlua and coffee, or I'm making a sombrero myself with some ice and some cream. It's delicious.
JVL00:57:28I'm going to put a little wall around it. I should...
Vic00:57:30Per your mother-in-law. It looks like, yeah. No, it... And my mother-in-law loves a sombrero.
JVL00:57:37They're so helpful. As long as it's come over here legally.
Vic00:57:41It's a hard-working drink. It looks like a Senora Butterworth. That's what it looks like. It's okay. She doesn't listen to the show, Vic. Yes, she does. No. Yes, she does. Okay. And her son does, and he'll report to her anything you say. Hi, Mrs. Dwyer. That's all the time we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch.
Sonny00:58:05At JV Last. Nope.
Vic00:58:07Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher. Just type in Substandard on a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. And don't forget, Substandard show notes might be up on Friday at 11 a.m. Probably not. Until next time.
Sonny00:58:33Good show, guys. Good show. A lot of tension. Tension in the room. You know? You, you, with your you come in on Sunday.
Vic00:58:45You tell me what we're gonna do on the text. I put it down on the f***ing script. And last show for me. I'm not joking. I'm done. I'm probably done by 50. That's actually true. I'm probably done by 50. Every year he gets like this. Every year. We've been doing this for so many years.
JVL00:59:02And Mike Warren can do it after that. Are you gonna give him his headphones?
Vic00:59:06Your headphones? Yeah, you know what? It'll be fine.
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