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Both reflecting and challenging 1996’s Hollywood tropes
The Long Kiss Goodnight is a high point in the mid 90’s rough waters. Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Renny Harlin, and Shane Black all find amazing ways to shine, while also subverting Hollywood’s tropes. They are mostly successful.
Listen, is there a helicopter out of nowhere? YES. Does it cut to the White House out of nowhere? YES. Does it make literal sense throughout? No. But 2 out of 3 isn’t bad.
Also: Drinking Games, “Signs you might be a Great Bad movie if…”, Important Questions, Joe’s Back of the Box, and more.
Joe’s Back of the Box
Samantha (Geena Davis) is your garden variety school teacher and homemaker living the American dream. Except she cannot remember her life past eight years ago… A car crash one snowy night kicks loose some terrifying memories of her life. With the help of a private detective (Samuel L. Jackson,) she slowly uncovers her violent past as an assassin for the CIA.
Bodies pile up as they uncover a terrorist plot. Can Samantha (now Charly,) put all the pieces together in time to save her family and the country from catastrophe? In this explosive shoot em up, all your questions will be answered.
The REAL Back of the Box
This might be the third best Christmas movie ever made, behind Die Hard 1 and Die Hard 2. This movie could easily live in the Die Hardiverse or the last Boy Scoutiverse. Witty 80s and 90s banter pelts the viewers with a strong cast of (pretty miserable) characters who don’t like each other and you don’t really like either.
There’s some fun action scenes and some genuine explosions, only slightly enhanced by CGI. All in all, it is a fun movie with a big asterisk for when it was made and who wrote the script.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week. Geena Davis discovers that she has hidden talents that she didn’t know she had because she’s suffering from amnesia. My question for you is, have you ever discovered hidden talents that you didn’t realize that you had?
Joe: I think we discovered this together when we were roommates. And our hidden talent was always knowing the correct order for an album and always being annoyed with all of the music that we listened to and the artists we listened to, that they did not put the album in the correct order. Honestly, to this day I feel like we still have that hidden talent because there are many albums that we talk about where it’s like, why did they put this in this order?
Joe: This is the best way to start this album. That sort of thing.
Greg: I, you know, when I was in a band, I feel like I even did this right. But what is it about every record that even just if you swap two songs, it’s even better?
Joe: I don’t know, they’re just not talking to us. I think it’s the biggest problem that they have. They just need to bring us in at the end to listen to it and put it in the right order. The order matters more than you’ll ever know. I’ve often thought about trying to create a playlist that you can play on random, and every song goes well together, no matter the order.
Joe: That’s really hard.
Greg: So how would you accomplish that?
Joe: I’m not sure.
Greg: Is there a certain consistency to the songs? Are they a certain tempo or.
Joe: Is probably a vibe and an energy? And when we lived together, we had what we you had this magical setup where you can record two CDs at the same time and fade them in and out. Yeah, and I often wish I had that because there are songs that need to fade into each other as another one is fading out.
Joe: Yeah. You know, you don’t have that ability. And these Spotify and Apple Music to to do that. So these are.
Greg: Just software companies. You know they have this figured out. They’re just not letting us do it.
Joe: I know it drives me crazy. So, Yeah, that’s our hidden talent. Do you have a hidden talent that, that you’ve thought about? Oh,
Clip: Nope.
Greg: Let’s get to the show. All right.
Joe: Nailed it.
Clip: Hello, girls. Caitlin, come help me in the kitchen. Hurry up, because I forget where it is. That’s her. She’s got it. Michelle, what if you couldn’t remember your real name? Your first kiss or your last goodbye? I don’t remember. How do you have an E.T.A. on that cure? Stop it. And then suddenly you do this. I’m gonna show you without warning.
Clip: Give me something else. Sorry. Oh. All your memories. Name is Charlie. I’m coming back. Came flooding back to you. One bullet at a time. My name is Samantha Kane. You don’t want to get off that. I’m in the game. Then quit. They’re assassin working for the United States government. Back when we first met, you were all like, oh, phooey.
Clip: I burned the darn muffins. Now, if you go into a bar. Ten minutes later, sailors come running out. What up with that? This far? Honk if there’s any trouble. Yeah. So, miss Daisy, be honking if you have plans for a calm, quiet evening. It’s time to kiss them all. Good night. Gina Davis, Samuel L Jackson. The long kiss good night.
Clip: Directed by. Ready. Harlan.
Clip: In the year.
Greg: 1996, director Renny Harlin decided it was time to step back up to the plate. Just ten months after the disaster of Cutthroat Island, Renny Harlin and his then wife Geena Davis put together a movie called The Long Kiss Good Night. We’re talking about Geena Davis, Samuel L Jackson, Brian Cox, a man named Craig Bianco in his very first movie.
Greg: Today we are talking about The Long Kiss Goodnight, written, obviously written by Shane Black, the guy who wrote, the last Boy Scout, lethal weapon.
Joe: Kiss, kiss bang bang.
Greg: Write kiss kiss bang bang. The nice guys, he wrote. Lethal weapon two.
Joe: Iron man three.
Greg: Wrote and directed. Iron man three. That’s right. Joe. Sky. Tucker. This is weird going back to the 90s right now. This is exciting. Joe. Guy Tucker, why is the Long Kiss Goodnight a great bad movie?
Joe: Oh, this movie is so fun. They don’t make movies like this anymore. It definitely feels like it’s in the universe of either the last Boy Scout because it is Shane Black or in. I could totally see it in the diehard averse. It’s definitely wanting to be in that world. They don’t have dialog like this anymore. It’s kind of rough at moments.
Joe: It feels, you know, like the characters aren’t very nice, aren’t very good, and there’s a lot of barbs and kind of cutting banter that they have back and forth, even the good guys. So, you know, it’s it’s really, I would feel like it feels like a classic 90s action movie in that vein. There are some really fun scenes that I hadn’t seen in action movies, kind of until that this time.
Joe: So Renny Harlin, one of our favorite action movie directors, did cliffhanger, Die Hard, two movies that we really like. So there are some fun scenes in it. It’s a classic kind of, odd couple action movie on the road. You know, Geena Davis has amnesia and of course, wakes up to find out that she’s a CIA assassin.
Joe: So, a lot of stuff to like about it. A lot of silly stuff in it, too, but some things I had never seen before. So I think one of my favorite scenes is there’s a shootout in a train station. You know, it’s classic 90s. As soon as people are start shooting, there’s papers flying everywhere, right? Bullets are flying.
Joe: Things are exploding on impact. It’s awesome. And then they they get blown out of a window. Over. I’ll make a frozen lake that they shoot down into as they land, which is just spectacular. I wanted more stuff like that, but, So, Greg, sweetheart, I pose it back to you. Why is The Long Kiss Goodnight a great movie?
Greg: It is amazing that we’re already back to Renny Harlin and our fifth episode. And he directed cliffhanger. He, signed on and got the studio to buy this movie in 1994, the year after cliffhanger and, after they had paid $4 million to Shane Black to buy this script, the highest anybody had ever been paid for a script.
Greg: He and Gina Davis then told Shane Black, oh, by the way, we’ve got to go make this pirate movie first. So, that kind of bumped it back a year. But this is a special kind of great bad movie. This is a movie I didn’t see back then, and yet very much like, Man on Fire. A couple of weeks ago, that movie people kept recommending, oh, you got to see Man on Fire.
Greg: Like, it really stands out. This is one of those types of movies where, for whatever reason, I didn’t see it in 1996, but it kept coming up and it continued to come up more and more as time went on. And I feel like it, it’s really looked back upon as, kind of special movie from 1996. And in that year it actually didn’t do very well.
Greg: It yeah, they spent about $65 million on this movie, and it made something like 35 million in America. It was not an appreciated movie at the time, but the reason we’re watching it is because it’s a movie that both kind of reflects what Hollywood was doing at the time with Shane Black, Renny Harlin movies, but also kind of challenged Hollywood at the time, with Gina Davis being the lead of this movie, continuing with what she had started with Thelma and Louise and I suppose, Cutthroat Island, which I’ve never seen everybody in this movie wanted to kind of subvert the mid-nineties tropes.
Greg: And Shane Black specifically said, I’m just not going to make a movie about some over Macho Man. I’m going to make a movie about a suburban mom who doesn’t realize she was a CIA sniper. Well, what was she like? Special agent.
Joe: Specialist, and counter assassinations, whatever that is. So which is after assassinations, which is the best kind of thing in the world, you know, and it’s interesting because it I remember watching it, I did watch it in the theater when it came out, I loved it. I feel like this is a continuation of Samuel L Jackson character in from Die Hard.
Joe: Three. Die hard with a vengeance. So I feel like. Oh, interesting. So I feel like there has like that was when he was kind of on the rise as kind of the sidekick in an action movie and is hilarious in this movie. He’s great, steals every scene he’s in.
Clip: Excuse me. Do you normally curse as much? What are you, a mormon? Yes, I’m a mormon. That’s why I just smoked a pack of Newport and drank three vodka tonic.
Joe: But I do feel like Shane Black’s dialog is it’s you. Once you hear it, you just. It. You just always recognize it. You know, I feel like we’ll probably get to the last voice I got, which is a really dark movie. This has shades of it. I think, where I feel like it could wear. It’s a bad movie.
Joe: Sometimes it needs to pick away, and that’s like, it’s trying not to go too dark in the Shane Black world, but it also misses because it’s not quite, you know, it’s like pick a lane. I wanted more of the bad guy in this. I think it’s Craig Bianco. You said it’s his first movie. He’s he’s awesome in this.
Joe: He also steals every scene he’s in, but he’s not in enough. You know, and then they have some fun things that I feel like if they made it today, and I know I’m jumping ahead a little bit on, like how to fix it, but there are things I wanted a little bit more of. There’s a scene where Gina Davis straps on ice skates.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And and tracks down the bad guys and kills them, and it’s awesome. But today they would have turned that into, like, a 5 to 10 minute chase scene through, you know, down a frozen river, you know, and it would have been awesome. So, but, you know, I think they’re, they’re, they’re points to it that are awesome. And then there also the that point where it’s like, that’s a little rough.
Joe: There’s some there’s a lot of casual sexism and.
Greg:
Joe: And sexual harassment in it, right of the time. So you kind of give it a little bit of like, okay, well, that’s what they were doing back then, but it also feels a little odd in this day and age, too. So.
Greg: Wouldn’t happen now. Yeah. In the movie. Yeah. And I think they were saying it to be shocking. It feels like, you know, when people say things that are sort of offensive and they think they’re being funny, but really they’re just being offensive.
Joe:
Greg: I think that’s kind of a lot of what Shane Black did in his, in his scripts. You know, this will be funny because it’s offensive. He hadn’t quite figured out entirely how to just say things that are funny. Yeah. Although that said, I mean, his batting average of things that are funny in in the scenes of this movie, this movie really reminds me of, something like, like an Aaron Sorkin show or an Aaron Sorkin movie where you could just tell that he’s the one writing it all the way through and you’re consistently reminded, oh yeah, that’s right.
Greg: This is Aaron Sorkin banter that we have going on here. That’s kind of what this is like. He really has his, his imprint on, I don’t know what the word is. The brand of this of this movie. It’s consistently funny all the way through.
Clip: This ain’t no ham on rap, pal. What the hell are you doing? Saving your life. I would have been here sooner, but I was thinking up that ham on, right?
Greg: Like it really holds up as far as the humor goes. It also really holds up with the filmmaking. Renny Harlin is doing a great job here. He and, his his cinematographer, who was, a guy who had worked with Guillermo del Toro a bit, but had just newly come to Hollywood from Mexico. Guillermo Navarro is his name.
Greg: There’s just a lot of really noticeable camerawork and lens choices and things like that in this movie, where he’s constantly kind of doing little jump scares, little reasons to be afraid for little reasons to be tense. So there’s there is true greatness to this movie. True greatness. That said, it also is quite dated.
Joe: Again.
Greg: You know, this is a very 1996 movie. And while it is a standout of that era, some things about that era are a little a little rough.
Joe: Yeah. I think, you know where Shane Black definitely has, you can you know it when you hear it. And he’s got it. Definitely. He’s got a style and he’s a good writer. And it is funny start to finish. It is sometimes hard to listen to. It’s a little, not a little. It’s a lot sexist and different places and.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You know, the jokes are pretty much at somebody’s expense throughout the movie. Even the, the, good guys are Geena Davis and Samuel L Jackson like their relationship together now, it was kind of like that, you know, buddy cop of the time. But, you know, they’re not supportive of each other. They’re really pretty much putting each other down, sort of joking air quotes around, joking there.
Joe: Sure. There are some, you know, ridiculous plot points in this from the fact that she lost her, you know, she has had amnesia for the last eight years to the fact that she’s, like, videotaped at the Christmas parade. And that just happens to be that the person who’s in jail for murdering her sees her randomly on television and escapes from from jail, you know, fun stuff like that, which is great.
Joe: So there are definitely some, some loopholes in the plot. You know, but I agree that from an action standpoint, it’s great that there’s some great explosion. Like I missed that, like there’s there’s some CGI work that you could see, but, you know, I love a proper explosion in a movie where they really, like, set it up and like, you know, car barely touches another car and then big explosion.
Joe: It’s awesome. And so you have a lot of that in this movie. Yeah. What about you? What are some reasons why this is a bad movie in your mind or a great bad movie?
Greg: I guess a sign of a bad movie is when I notice that plot is making big leaps. Like you’re talking about. How did that guy just suddenly escape from jail after seeing her on the news? Yeah. And the but the by the way, the news anchor was saying some pretty sexist stuff about Geena Davis on on the news.
Greg: And, you know, maybe I want to say that maybe that was, to show what a sexist world this is. And it was why Geena Davis would be, a CIA assassin and have a chip on her shoulder. You know, maybe, maybe part of that was trying to create, motivation for her character. The definitely kind of startling when you hear it, there is an absurd amount of blood on the characters in this movie.
Greg: There’s actually, they were filming this in Ontario a lot. The snow stuff was actually up in Ontario. And, there’s a scene at the end of the movie where Geena Davis is kind of passed out on the bridge, and her daughter is waking her up trying to get her to move because the truck is about to explode.
Greg: I can’t believe I’m saying these things out loud.
Joe: All good signs. All good signs.
Greg: Right? So Renny Harlin told the story where he was kind of saying, okay, action. And Geena Davis was trying to get up, but she was so hurt because of all the action that had come prior. She was having trouble getting up. And at first Renny Harlin was thinking, wow, this is a really good, believable acting moment where Geena Davis can’t seem to stand up.
Greg: But then he said, okay, we, you know, for the film, we probably need you to stand up a little faster. And she said, I can’t. I’m frozen to the bridge in the fake blood that she had had all over her, had frozen to the ground, and she was unable to disconnect herself from the ground to stand up.
Joe: I have to awesome.
Greg: I, you know, it’s a bad movie because in the 90s there were just shorthands for what would make a good guy and what would make a bad guy. And Craig. Craig Bercow’s opening scene, he plays a character named Timothy, which is dangerously close to Jacob from Lethal Weapon. As the bad guy. Timothy is like killing a guy in the guy.
Greg: Has his hands kind of, like above his head, and he’s kind of dangling there, much like Martin Riggs, did. And Lethal Weapon. And, he just kind of proves that he’s crazy. He proves that he’s funny, and then he kills the guy. Not, like, gratuitous. Not like a gratuitous kill or anything. You don’t see anything, but still kind of like, okay, I guess, I guess we had to have this.
Joe: Yeah. Like that. The the charismatic bad guy that’s kind of irreverent and silly and making jokes and he’s like, oh, hold on, let me. I got to take this call to like, the guy that can’t move like class, right?
Greg: Oh, and he apologizes to you like whisper. Sorry.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It says like a Baywatch Nights joke on the phone call. I want to say.
Joe: You know, it’s a good movie when they’re referencing Baywatch Nights, which, for those of you who weren’t alive in the 90s, was a spinoff. Yeah, the show Baywatch, where David Hasselhoff fought crime.
Greg: So something you wouldn’t know about the 90s, though, was, Craig. So this was his first movie. He had been on the stage, in New York. He had been offered a part a couple of years before he was offered the part of Chandler Bing on friends, so he decided he should turn it down, even though two of his friends were telling, like, imploring him, this is a bad idea, you should not turn this down.
Greg: And those two friends were the actor Hank Azaria, and another one of his best friends, Matthew Perry. Oh.
Joe: Interesting that Matthew Perry. Yeah, tell him to turn this movie. No, no no.
Greg: No, you’re saying don’t do it. That’s a mistake.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So because of that, as you’re watching this movie, you really do see a lot of Matthew Perry kind of charm and Craig Burke, I think they were good friends. They might have been roommates. Might be remembering that wrong. You know, we’re kind of dancing all over the place right now. I feel like maybe, you know, there are probably some people who haven’t seen the last The Long Kiss Goodnight, Joe.
Greg: Let’s pretend that we’re walking down the aisles of of Blockbuster Video right now. What would the back of the box of The Long Kiss Goodnight read?
Joe: I’m glad you asked. I have just I have it ready to go.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. Samantha Gina Davis is your garden variety schoolteacher and homemaker, living the American dream. Except you cannot remember her life past. Eight years ago, a car crash when snowy night kicks loose some terrifying memories of her life. With the help of a private detective, Samuel L Jackson, she slowly uncovers her violent past as an assassin for the CIA.
Joe: Bodies pile up as they uncover a terrorist plot. Can Samantha now Charlie, put all the pieces together in time to save her family and the country from catastrophe in this explosive? Shoot them up. All your questions will be answered.
Greg: I think I rent it, yeah, I grab it.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, I’m in, I’m in on that.
Greg: But, you know, sometimes the back of the boxes that you read, they were pretty, you know, they were written by like the marketing people at the company. Joe, what would the what would the real back in the box say from Joe, this guy Tucker.
Joe: This might be the third best Christmas movie ever made behind Die Hard one and Die Hard two. This movie could easily live in the Die Hard diverse or the last Boy Scout averse. Wedding, 80s and 90s banter helps the viewers with a strong cast of pretty miserable characters who don’t like each other and you don’t really like either.
Joe: There’s some fun action scenes and some genuine explosions, only slightly enhanced by CGI, all in all, it is a fun movie with a big asterisk for when it was made. And who wrote the script.
Greg: Yep, we didn’t really get to every Shane Black movie. It takes place at Christmas,
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That’s I think every single one, including Iron Man three, including the nice guys.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. He just really liked the inherent drama that came from, that time of year. It’s like a sadder time of year. It’s a slower time of year. It’s more anxious. Time of the year.
Joe: I’m in on Shane Black Christmas movie, so. I mean, he’s probably written now five of the best ten that there are. There are so.
Greg: We’ll we’ll get to Christmas movies. Yeah. This movie has what I’ve decided is maybe my favorite, my favorite thing that could happen in a movie that isn’t a surprise helicopter out of nowhere. And that is out of nowhere. The movie suddenly cuts to the white House.
Joe: Yeah. Exterior shot of the white House. And then, like, the worst set in the world. Like, are they in the basement? Like, they’re in, like, kitchen. Like, where are they? In the white House and. Yeah, like, and and they don’t really acknowledge that that’s the or supposed to know that that’s the president very well. Right. It is.
Joe: It’s an awesome moment.
Greg: And I mean, the white House out of nowhere has to be one of my very favorite things that could happen in a movie. And they are talking about Geena Davis. Basically, they’re selling the good guy is what they’re doing in that scene. They’re telling us how she’s one of the best they ever had. And she went off the grid eight years ago and now she’s resurfaced.
Greg: Why is she resurfaced? Just amazing. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, I like that. Any any is a CIA assassin or counter assassin. Whatever she is. Sure would be known by the president. Like that’s how you know. Right. And it ends with her talking to the president, too, and like. And the president doing a favor for her. So it’s it’s it’s it’s awesome. Those are though. And what’s.
Greg: What’s the favor he gets. He he spot on Larry King he more.
Joe: He mentions Jackson. Yeah. He mentions Samuel L Jackson as being integral in the saving of the world from the terrorist plot. And so that propels Samuel L Jackson to fame and fortune. So.
Greg: Right. Okay. And he now is in better standing with his ex-wife and son. Right. Kind of a sweet scene at the beginning of this movie, by the way, with his son. And, we kind of discover through the dialog and through there just, you know, kind of amazing acting, honestly, that things aren’t so great in the family right now.
Greg: All three of the actors in that scene, by the way, Samuel L Jackson, the son and the mom, all three of them were in Die Hard with a vengeance.
Joe: There you go.
Greg: Samuel Jackson asked to be in this movie. He found out that Renny Harlin had secured the script and said, I heard you bought that script. Can I play that character? Just like, walked up to him at a party and Renny Harlin said, yeah.
Greg: This is like right after Pulp Fiction came out that he estimates.
Joe: That’s awesome. I mean, he’s perfect in this. He’s the best part in this whole movie. Yeah, it’s his character in that he’s hilarious. The best character piece for me of his, as he basically starts wearing all of Brian Cox’s clothes in it because. Yeah, and then he keeps wearing them for the rest of the movie. And even after it’s over, because he likes them and he looks awesome.
Joe: So oh my.
Greg: Gosh, that did not even occur to me. So that happened. I didn’t mention that David Morse is in this movie. I don’t think in the intro for.
Joe: A second he is in it, but then he’s one of those people. He’s in everything. You’ve seen him and everything. Never usually the star, but always either a bad guy or like the friend of the good guy. But he’s got but he’s in it for like one scene.
Greg: How many just if you had to guess how many movies is David Morrison that we’re going to get to on this show? If you had to put a number to it.
Joe: I would say 25 to 30% easy.
Greg: But it’s weird that he hasn’t been in a movie, is what you’re saying?
Joe: Yes, exactly.
Greg: So we’ve got David Morse, we’ve got Brian Cox, who is not in a lot of things, before this. And then Samuel Jackson asked to be in and Gina Davis is in it. The reason, that Renny Harlin said all of these amazing people were in it was because the screenplay was so good. The screenplay was kind of known and sought after in Hollywood.
Greg: Renny Harlin said that this is his favorite movie that he’s ever made. He said, for me, it’s very simple. It’s a movie that had a really good screenplay, which meant that I was able to get a really good cast.
Joe: I really won. It is a great script, and I think it’s an interesting it’s got some interesting things in it are with the plot and kind of the terrorist attack that they’re trying to, to break up in it. I feel like sometimes it’s like a bobs along the surface a little too much. And that’s why I like why I wanted to pick a scene where it’s like it’s kind of like an action movie, but then it’s got the like that terrorist attack pieces of it, which is an interesting thing where they’re basically the one person in the US government is staging a terrorist attack to get more funding, to kind of do more,
Joe: to fight more battles and get more funding, basically.
Greg: To get more budget. Yeah.
Joe: Which I think is an interesting idea, but that’s kind of I feel like glossed over. And then there are kind of action scenes or I wanted, I wanted a little bit more like, I feel like today’s action movies know how to put together a really strong 2 or 3 scenes. You know, I wanted that shootout in the train station to be like twice as long.
Joe: Yeah. You know, and then it ends on that awesome shot, which I don’t know that I had seen that ever before in a movie, you know, with the shooting into the ice as they fall. Like that was awesome. Those are, those are the moments I remember, you know watching these birds. I had never seen that before. So awesome.
Joe: Yeah. So those are the things I wanted a few more. I wanted them to extend them out a little bit, me and Lee, in one way or another and then, you know, and then there’s also. So I will get it in some of the, the, the drinking games a little bit later. But I noticed like the Renny Harlin in the snow shootout.
Joe: So yeah, he loved shades.
Greg: Of Die Hard to.
Joe: Die Hard, two shades of even, cliffhanger where sure, they’re oh yeah, it’s true, they’re still edited with light where you’re not quite sure why there should be like there is no. Yeah. That’s awesome. So there are moments like that where I can. I can see Randy Harlan’s fingerprints over it. And I wanted just a little bit more.
Joe: I wanted it to, you know, have a little bit longer action scene where they’re really getting into it. But all in all, it’s really fun.
Greg: It kind of sounds like you’re talking about a modern Mission Impossible movie where the scene would go a little bit longer. Yeah, that’s a good point. That scene, by the way, really reminded me of the train station scene from The Untouchables, which we we talked about Brian De Palma last time. He was just copying a scene from I think, Battleship Potemkin.
Greg: Yeah. I’m not going to drag it back to Brian De Palma. We cut a lot of that out of our last episode.
Joe: I don’t know if not now when.
Greg: Well yeah it’s good. Right. Something went wrong the day that they were going to film that scene of The Untouchables. And he had to make up that whole scene that morning because some budget thing had fallen through. And so they came up with a to film a different scene and said, okay, well, why don’t we just do a Patinkin?
Greg: But I kind of felt like in the train station scene in The Long Kiss Good Night, suddenly it did kind of look like the 50s or something. It was all happening in slow motion as well. I guess there was no baby in a carriage going downstairs, but it it just really kind of felt like, oh, this really feels like The Untouchables.
Greg: That’s crazy.
Joe: Yeah, I feel like they could have raised the tension in that moment. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Like if they did that again, they would have stretch it out. You know I’m imagining John Woo with 30 cameras and lots of slow motion and then like wind where there shouldn’t be wind and stuff like that. But it’s still a fun scene that’s still, you know, it’s like that’s nitpicking.
Joe: Now I feel like in some ways on this movie because it is it’s great for what it is. Yeah, it’s a great mid 90s action movie.
Greg: And one of my biggest problems with this movie is Gina Davis is so believable as, Samantha Cain, who’s kind of just schoolteacher mom at the beginning. And then when she starts to remember who her alter ego is, it really feels like she’s kind of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hiding. And you know, where Charlie is a trope unto herself, where she she says things in like, a really low, like, sinister voice, like, it’s not, it’s not me that I’m worried about.
Greg: It’s you or, you know.
Clip: That’s like, I’m not going to hurt you. It’s not me. I’m worried about.
Greg: The way that she bounces back and forth with those two characters. It’s it’s a little. The chasm is just a little bit too big for me. I feel like the Charlie character is ridiculous, and I don’t know what statement they would be trying to make with that other than, you know, macho men in action movies are ridiculous.
Greg: But I was just so on board with, with who she was, as in the beginning as Samantha Kane and having that character authentically discover, you know, who she was. Without suddenly becoming just like a trope festive.
Joe:
Greg: Of, of overtly dramatic line readings. And I realized that one of my biggest problems with this movie is it was just done. That aspect of it was done so well five years later in The Bourne Identity. This basically is The Bourne Identity. Yeah. And The Bourne Identity books had been out. They were in airports everywhere already at that point.
Greg: But, it’s hard for me to watch this movie without thinking, man, they really kind of handled Bourne a little bit better where he’s an authentic, sympathetic character and discovering his superpowers, you know, and being afraid of them and saddened by them. And I don’t know, I think I just kind of wanted this movie to be that every once in a while.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Which maybe that’s unfair.
Joe: It could be unfair, but it’s like there’s no nuance to any of it. It really is kind of a black or white moment, you know, I think. Yeah. So I mean, we should say that this was a rare occurrence to have a female lead in an action movie in the mid 90s. I, I’m, I’m hard. It’s hard for me to think of another one that isn’t Geena Davis.
Joe: I mean, Cutthroat Island before this. Thelma and Louise, maybe, but I don’t know if I would call that an action movie.
Greg: Sigourney Weaver is the.
Joe: Sigourney Weaver.
Greg: The face of female led action at this point? I think.
Joe: Yeah. If you take Sigourney Weaver out of it, this might be the only, you know, one of a handful at the time. There’s more now, but at the time it was it was a revelation to have this sort of thing and so on. I kind of get what Shane Black is doing with like, it is like total corny action line that she’s saying, but.
Joe: It does I agree with you. It, it kind of once you kind of you hear it once it’s like okay I get it. And then you have the, the half of the movie where it’s where we’re kind of stuck with it with this character that kind of feels one note in a lot of ways.
Greg: Yeah, it’s a bummer. But, you know, aliens came out ten years before this movie.
Joe:
Greg: Yeah. So, well I guess you can only look to Jim Cameron movies. You got Linda Hamilton and Terminator two.
Joe:
Greg: And what was that 92.
Joe: Yeah 92. Yeah. Other than that Slim Pickens.
Greg: So just the best movies. Yeah. Just the best movies of our at that time. But the rest had not learned that lesson.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: A great sign that this is a bad movie. A great bad movie. I’m sorry. The president describes her as a relic of the Cold War. I don’t think anybody in the room understands why he’s saying that or what that means, but that’s a sentence that has to be said in order for me to be interested in a great, bad movie.
Greg: At some point, she has her luggage and discovers in the bottom of her luggage that there’s like a full sniper rifle taking apart Joe, and she was putting together that sniper sniper rifle. What came to mind? Does anything come to mind when a character puts together a sniper rifle in a movie for you?
Joe: I feel like shooter comes to mind.
Greg: That’s the only movie that came to my mind. I’m watching that scene and I’m just like, oh my gosh, shooter was a great movie. The shooter was a great bad movie. Yeah, we are definitely getting the shooter.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. And, Samuel L Jackson, surprisingly not too upset that he almost got killed, like.
Greg: Well, he did quit.
Joe: Yeah. That’s true. Okay, I that’s right. Drove away and then she talks him back and do it. So that’s all right. That’s right. Okay.
Greg: Right. I don’t remember why she says this in the movie, but at some point she says bingo. That’s the thing that says you might be watching a bad movie at some point. Somebody does somebody learn something and says, bingo! In the beginning of the movie, when when she starts to have flashbacks, she gets in a car wreck. She’s driving somebody home in an icy roads, and they hit a deer, get in the car wreck, and she gets thrust out of the car, out of the windshield, into the snow, and from the fall starts to have flashbacks to her alter ego.
Greg: She also goes over to the deer to put it out of its misery and like, break its neck.
Joe:
Greg: When she did that, I just thought, I really hope that’s not John Wick’s deer that she’s killing, because she’s going to have a whole other thing coming. Yeah, and I don’t know that we ever really discovered if this was in the John Wick a verse or not.
Joe: Yeah. Wow. So spoiler alert, it should be the.
Greg: She’s in John Wick five. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah. If that doesn’t happen.
Joe: Renny Harlin directs John Wick five. Absolutely. Yeah.
Greg: Let’s see, this movie had just a delightful amount of 1990s Fords.
Greg: There’s just Ford Tauruses everywhere. Yeah. How do you think Gina Davis’s daughter is doing at the end of this movie, after all the things that she’s seen and she is in, like, a metal box connected to a truck that flips on its side.
Joe:
Greg: And is seems fine.
Joe: Honestly. Gina Davis and her daughter seem to be impervious to any sort of car crash.
Greg: Like. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Joe: And you know, nothing hurts them in a car crash. So you know, honestly, if she was, you know, she should be terrified and have horrible PTSD, but she seems to be fine. You know, her her acting rage kind of consists of staring.
Greg: Right.
Joe: Wistfully.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: And saying mama or something like that. That’s it. Like so, yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty, pretty impressive that, she does not get any scratches on her whatsoever.
Greg: They overdubbed mommy. I hit my head after. She would just be she would have had 17 concussions in that truck.
Joe:
Greg: Yvonne Zima, who were talking about, I think she was maybe six when they made this movie.
Joe: Okay. Makes sense.
Greg: And Shane Black cast her in both Iron Man three and the Nice Guys later on. So I think she was on a, she was on a soap opera for a couple of years. She’s had like a, thriving career. When we meet Samuel Jackson, he is running a scam on a guy.
Joe:
Greg: And it is Trevor’s from cliffhanger.
Joe: Get that right, I miss. I knew he looked familiar, but he wasn’t screaming at the top of his lungs, so I did not recognize him.
Greg: Yeah, I’m sorry, Mr. Travers. That’s it. Travers.
Joe: Sorry. Yeah, that’s Mr. Cross, please.
Greg: That’s why you didn’t know who I was talking about at first.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Rex Linn is the actor’s name. I welcome Mr. Travers showing up in any movie I watch.
Joe: Absolutely. I get this, have that, Renny Harlin drinking game. Any time Mr. Travers shows up.
Greg: He’s like a lower level. Stanley Tucci, who? I also just want to pop up in every movie that I watch. Yeah. The final part of this movie, the truck ends up at the border.
Joe:
Greg: We get a beautiful shot of a helicopter going on over Niagara Falls. We are at the Canadian border right by Niagara Falls, which the way she gets the truck from downtown to the border crossing geographically doesn’t make sense. But emotionally, it does.
Joe: Might be the best line ever in the history of this podcast.
Greg: But yeah, the the truck that was supposed to be part of the terrorist plot that CIA was doing to get the budget lands on its side and the bomb is about to explode, and the explosion of this bridge at the end of this movie is, is something that people talked about with me before anything else? People.
Greg: People like we’re talking about the explosion at the end of this movie as the reason to watch it, and it is bonkers. I mean, it is ridiculous.
Joe: It’s awesome.
Greg: It is clearly fake.
Joe: Yeah, it’s.
Greg: A fake model, I should say like a miniature. But, I found out it was 100m long. The model of this bridge, that’s like, what, 300ft?
Joe:
Greg: A 300ft model of this bridge that they blew up.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: And Renny Harlin told the story introducing this movie. I think maybe in the last year at a festival, he said that he didn’t like the he didn’t like the explosion. The first explosion. That didn’t happen in the order he wanted it to. So he asked them to rebuild it and he was happy with the second one.
Joe: That’s awesome. I feel like that’s also, a mid 90s. Michael Bay did this a lot. You know, I was like. And on the biggest explosion you possibly. Yeah. Let’s save up our budget and we’re just going to blow some shit up. And that’s what they did at the office 100%.
Greg: I wish I remembered the name of the, the film festival that that Renny Harlin introduced this movie that he introduced cliffhanger at it maybe the year or two before. And in the cliffhanger one, he was talking about the intro scene, the cliffhanger, and he said, we were so proud of it. But what we realized was we couldn’t top it for the rest of the movie.
Greg: And so if you’re an aspiring filmmaker, maybe save it for the end, because the all of cliffhanger can not live up to its intro.
Joe: That’s true. It’s the best. It’s. Yeah, it’s the best part of the movie.
Greg: And so with this movie, that explosion is at the end and it is just there’s no place to go after that.
Joe: Explosion.
Greg: That happened in the first ten minutes of this movie.
Joe: And honestly, the explosion is so big that nothing would be alive for like five miles around it. But somehow, because they’re traveling fast enough, Samuel L Jackson was able to navigate them through, and then the falling car is exploding. That they’re also dodging was a nice touch, and I feel like I’ve seen that in another movie, but that might be the first where, yeah, I saw that, that stunt.
Greg: And the daughter and the daughter’s in the car and she says, don’t hit the cars. And he just looks at her like, that’s a moment in the movie that we should not have a joke. Yeah, but but it’s such a subtle thing. He just kind of looks at her like, what? Of course I’m not going to hit the car.
Greg: So that’s not helpful in this moment. That’s that’s the through line of Shane Black all the way through this movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Brian Cox’s intro to this movie. Do you remember how Brian Cox was introduced in this movie? He’s sitting next to, I think, his mom.
Joe: Yeah. Then they get a phone call or something.
Clip: You want to call us, please. Your dog Alice. It in my appetite, a mutually exclusive. Whoa. What’s wrong with the dog? It’s simple. He’s been licking his toe for the last three straight hours. I submit to you that there’s nothing there with more than an hour’s attention. And I should think that whatever he is attempting to dislodge is.
Clip: Has it gone for God to stay, or did you agree?
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: Because either gone for good or there to stay. I would be open to every character in the movie having an intro like that.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And some sort of ridiculous. There’s no reason for it. Yeah, but you know what? This is a Shane Black movie. It doesn’t need to be a reason for it.
Joe: Exactly as it’s clear. It’s not as mother because he calls her by her name. So.
Greg: Alice.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Who’s Alice?
Joe: Yeah. Don’t worry about it.
Greg: This just feels like a note card that Shane Black had on his wall. You know, funny moment with Alice’s dog. Yeah, that needs to be in a movie. I should probably intro global treasure Brian Cox. Yeah. With it.
Joe: He has not aged at all from that movie to now. Like, no, he’s like, yeah. What’s his name? Oh, Morgan Brimley or Wilford Brimley or Morgan Freeman do. Or like Morgan Freeman has always been, like 60 forever. Yeah.
Greg: David Morse is uncomfortably young in this movie and he’s like 43. Yeah, yeah, he’s about to become 50 for the rest of his life.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: So, Joe, that’s what we thought of this movie. The critics. You know, what’s interesting is I looked at the Rotten Tomatoes score for this movie two years ago, and it was at 70%.
Joe: Right in our wheelhouse.
Greg: And tonight it’s at a 68%, apparently. And negative review might have come out. How about this movie?
Joe: Who was the last couple years?
Greg: How do you feel about 68% being the critic score on this movie critics.
Joe: Score that honestly, it seems a little high for this movie. Audience score at 7068 to 70, I would totally buy. I feel like critics score. That feels a little high, but.
Greg: I feel like it’s a little low. I think it should. I think it should be bumped up maybe to maybe like 70.
Joe: Wow. I mean, yeah, I mean, I can’t I can’t argue with that.
Greg: But yeah. Yeah. The audience score on this movie is 70%.
Joe: Nailed it.
Greg: Perfect. Perfect. Great. Bad. Yeah. Best case scenario. Late. Great.
Joe: Yeah. For us.
Greg: Yeah, there were many. So that means there were many good reviews. A lot of the a lot of them are actually quite positive. Like, Newsweek said, The Long Kiss Good Night is the fall’s best summer movie.
Joe: That’s a good that’s good. I’ll take it.
Greg: I think I think every October we need a long kiss good night. To be honest.
Joe: Agreed.
Greg: But despite the good press, the budget for this movie was 65 million, and, it made 33 domestic and worldwide. It made, 95.5 million. So it did not profit. And, I think Harlin had to fight his way back with some super smart sharks. Yeah, obviously we’ll get super smart.
Joe: Sharks for sure. Yeah.
Greg: Okay. Okay, Joe, I need to let you know we’ve talked about this a little bit off mic.
Joe: But.
Greg: There are great bad movie parties happening out there in the world. There have already been two on our first two episodes, down in Portland. So we just think, you know, this should be a thing that happens globally. You know what you need to do? Get together with your friends.
Joe:
Greg: And, assign some drinking games. Yeah. And, and have a great time. So, that being said, should we get to drinking games?
Joe: Let’s not get to drinking games because, you know, it doesn’t have to be. Alcohol can be water. Coffee. If you’re watching this in the morning, there’ll be, oh, duels. What beer drinkers drink when they’re not drinking beer, you know, whatever it is. So these are some of our drinking games that we put together, our stock ones and then some that we’ve came up with for this.
Joe: So if you are having a party, hats off to you. Here’s to the Portland party. I’m excited to start this one off because this has one of your favorite drinking games ever.
Greg: Oh my.
Clip: Gosh.
Joe: Yeah, the silent helicopter right off the bat. This is the classic silent helicopter.
Greg: Out of nowhere.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Gina Davis and David Morse are having just a delightful conversation that is not impeded in any way by a helicopter right there. Yeah. It cannot be overstated that there is a helicopter directly next to them. And there’s a guy with a gun. Yeah.
Joe: And then like, seven trucks pull up and, like, 20 people jump out. It’s so awesome. So a classic could not be more spot on. Like, if you’re creating the template of a silent helicopter in a movie, this is it for sure.
Greg: So and I also need to point out, I’m not sure how silent or out of nowhere it is, but at the at the end when they’re on the bridge, another helicopter shows up, with a guy with a gun.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And there was quite a bit going on, so we don’t know if it was like peaceful and quiet and then suddenly helicopter noise. But I’m going to give it to you. There are two silent helicopters out of nowhere in this movie.
Joe: Take two drinks or you know, double it up. We do not have a push in and then hands. No, there’s no kind of silent suffering and explosion ringing in the ears. Or people sharing a slow motion look in the middle of chaos.
Greg: Should have been.
Joe: Should have, should have missed opportunities for that one for sure.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Does the opening credit scene lock and, place with the what? The the title lock into place with the sound card? I’ll give this one to you. It doesn’t really. There’s kind of writing that’s happening underneath it. As you know, you find out that it’s that it’s she’s writing her full name. Charlie something. Baltimore. Over and over again.
Joe: So you can. That’s a kind of, dealer’s choice on that one. Does it flash back to dialog two minutes ago or longer? Not really. Now another missed opportunity with, someone with amnesia remembering things, but. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Crazy CGI car flipping and bad smash. Over-the-top special effects. Absolutely. Yeah. Take a drink.
Joe: There’s some. At the last scene, especially. There’s clearly a green screen of them in the car as the explosions happening behind them. And there’s some other moments. But you should drink. Yes. Great. Bad shots. Oh, so many great bad shot.
Greg: So many.
Joe: Are the streets inextricably wet? No, but they. I’ll give this one to you because of the snow. So they’re they’re a little frozen, a little frozen. So, Yeah, there is no. Give us the room. Missed opportunity. And then we have added a drinking game. For those of you who are playing along at home, there’s there isn’t in this one, but any mention of Interpol going forward as part of our stock drinking game, because it is such a awesome piece that is thrown into so many movies that we watch.
Joe: So, those are our stock drinking games.
Greg: Hold on. You’re adding it on a week when we watched a movie, when they didn’t say it. Yeah.
Joe: That’s that’s how that’s how it.
Greg: It’s an anticipatory.
Joe: It is. That’s right. It’ll be there. Okay. I mean they’ve already talked about it in Man on Fire and fast more. That’s true.
Joe: So, All right, now it’s time for our drinking game. Very. Greg, lead us off. What would one of your drinking games that you had?
Greg: Okay, any time you wonder why on earth is she wearing that all of a sudden? Take a drink.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: There’s, like, some damsel in distress moments where it’s like, why did Gina Davis, like, change into, like, a nightgown all of a sudden? What happened here? It’s ridiculous. Okay. What’s yours?
Joe: I have every time they make an amnesia joke and the first, like, 20 minutes are like, ten different amnesia jokes. So take it. Drink?
Greg: Yeah. When she. When Charlie comes through, and she’s suddenly Charlie like she is to her daughter saying like, suck it up, kid, or something like that. And she over she acts overly tough as Charlie. Take a drink.
Joe: Okay. That’s a good one. I have anytime there’s jazz saxophone on the score, take a drink.
Joe: Perfect.
Greg: Anytime a Christmas song plays.
Joe: Oh, that’s a good one. I have every time there’s a Christmas Carol or there’s caroling, because that happens multiple times. And then. So.
Greg: So yours is nicer than mine, I think. Is what you’re saying. You limited it. Yeah.
Joe: Well, I think that there’s there’s Christmas music and there’s also caroling that happened. So.
Greg: Right, right. Okay.
Joe: They can be both. They can drink drink. Just drink. That’s. Yeah.
Greg: It’s a big it’s a big party. Yeah. One person having can have one. Another person can have another. How about any time you see Mr. Travers from cliffhanger?
Joe: Oh, that’s a good one. I have anytime she says chefs do that. Or she should have said chefs do that because there’s a couple moments where she should say chefs do that after she’s killed someone with a knife. I totally and that’s, that’s, 100% missed opportunity. So.
Greg: Any time they say the name dateless.
Joe: Oh, that’s a good one.
Greg: Which I think was David Morrison’s name.
Joe: I think so.
Greg: I was confused.
Joe: I was to.
Greg: The details. Yeah.
Joe: Every time she looks in the mirror, take a drink.
Greg: Oh, that’s great. That’s a good one. Anytime they say the name Timothy.
Joe: Oh, nice. I have every time someone yells at a kid, take a drink.
Greg: I have any time. You think that’s an excessive amount of blood on that actor?
Joe: That’s awesome. I have every time there’s a squib. Exploding blood. Take a drink. Yeah.
Greg: Anytime we randomly cut to the white House.
Joe: Oh. So, I have, Charlie’s amazing ability to avoid getting hurt in car crashes. Take a drink because it happened about five different times. Or she’s in a car that crashes and does not get hurt at all.
Greg: So any time somebody says, I can tell when someone’s lying to me.
Joe: I have, anytime you have the Renny Harlin Night shootout. Silhouettes.
Greg: Take a drink like lights in the background. Yeah. Silhouette. Everything. Yeah, exactly. Solid. My last one is anytime somebody says chefs do that.
Joe: So that is, I have. I have two more, I have one. Take a drink. Anytime. There’s just casual sexual harassment that goes. Sure. And then, anytime there’s a shootout where papers go flying, take a drink.
Joe: It’s great. All right, so now let’s get to our tropes, which I have also renaming signs. You might be watching a great bad movie, if is probably the best way to think about it.
Greg: Okay, so no longer Joe’s trope lightning round.
Joe: But you might be watching a bad movie if.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: So this is a new one that I just added, but anytime in a movie, someone cuts their own hair and then in the next scene it’s a $300 haircut. Yes. So, yeah, we have revenge as the driver of the protagonist in this one. An odd couple or unlikely partnership. We have this one is a kind of, it’s, almost one.
Joe: But as a friend or colleague, usually, a person of color who dies early in the film, that could have been Samuel L Jackson. I think he he was originally written to die in this movie. And he did?
Greg: Yeah, they screened it.
Joe:
Greg: And, people in the audience said, you can’t kill Samuel Jackson. And so when they shot it so that he was still alive, he yelled, you can’t kill me.
Joe: Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. So that one, you could kind of give it a half of one, charismatic, bad guy. I really like the bad guy. I wanted a little bit more of him. Could have been a little bit, you know, a little bit more of the bad guy. Focus. But, explosion on impact for a car crash or happen so often, it’s awesome.
Greg: Amazing.
Joe: Duffel bag full of guns. So there’s definitely that. Sure. This is a new one that I’m also adding in. Any time a movie ends with a helicopter or crane shot. That’s a trope. So they do that. And then I’ve added in, false bottom in a suitcase because with a gun. Yeah. So that’s for sure going on to our trope list.
Joe: But that’s our trope list or signs you might be watching a great bad movie. That’s awesome. Okay.
Greg: Joe, we have some important questions about this film. Should we get to important questions?
Joe: We got to get to these the most important questions. So let’s do it.
Greg: Did this movie hold up, then?
Joe: I think it held up.
Greg: Then you saw it back.
Joe: Then I saw it back. Then. It did to me.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: Sort of. It’s on the edge, but yes.
Greg: Does it hold up now?
Joe: Not quite as well as it did then. I don’t feel like. I feel like it’s a little. It’s a little rough in spots. And the places it’s rough are real rough.
Greg: So it’s a high watermark in a rough patch of movies. Agree on a rough season of movies? Okay.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: How hard do they sell the good guy?
Joe: They do a pretty good job. Any time you know, the cut to the white House.
Greg: Relic of the Cold War.
Joe: Relic of the Cold War, you know? Yeah. So they sell the bad or sell the good guy or the good girl in this? Pretty well, I would say.
Greg: How hard do they sell the bad guy?
Joe: That has not that much. I so I’m not quite sure who the bad guys are. Exactly. There’s Daedalus and then there’s the bad guy, Timothy and Timothy and yeah, so not a lot. They’re not doing it as well as they sell the good guy or the good girl.
Greg: And really, just the plot point of how is it that these people are working together?
Joe: Yeah, a little rough. Yeah, a little rough. That’s like two throw away lines about wow, that’s a new day, right? And that your friends, your enemies are now your friends or something like that. Okay.
Greg: Right, right. Joe, why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: It’s annoying. It’s to show that she has, you know, moved on with her life and is living a normal suburban teacher’s life. So it’s not too big of a plot point. So I’ll let it pass this time.
Greg: And what did you think of her boyfriend? I’m forgetting his name.
Joe: He is like he’s that guy in lots of movies. He’s one of those people that I recognized as, oh, I’ve seen him in lots of things that I can’t pinpoint.
Greg: So Tom Amandas oh, yeah, is his name. I think we could have had potentially better chemistry. It seemed like a good spot for a known actor.
Joe:
Greg: But I didn’t hate their relationship. Let’s see. Joe, are we bad people for loving this movie. Did you love this movie?
Joe: I loved it when it came out. I like it a lot. I don’t know that I love it, but we’re probably bad people for liking this movie. I don’t know if I would say it’s hit cult status, but it’s definitely probably aged better than a lot of movies from that time and action movies from that time. Their movies that we’ve gone back, I’ve gone back and watched and I liked at the time, and then watch it again.
Joe: And they just don’t hold up. And this I feel like it doesn’t hold up as well as it did when I first watched it, but I feel like it still holds up and there’s still a lot of good stuff to it. And it’s there’s, on balance, a lot more to like than not like about it.
Greg: I would say that it has gained cult status. There have been a lot of, anniversary pieces on this movie and, how it has stayed in the conversation, over the last couple decades.
Joe: Nice. All right. Yeah. I stand corrected.
Greg: And one of the reasons it stayed in the conversation is because, the people who made it continually bring it up as one of the favorite things they’ve ever done. Samuel L Jackson a couple of years ago on The Tonight Show said this is his favorite movie he’s ever been in. Wow. And it’s his favorite one that he will still watch.
Greg: Renny Harlin says it’s his favorite movie he’s ever made. And Shane Black, quit the business for ten years.
Joe: After this one.
Greg: It’s like I don’t know what that says.
Joe: Is going out on top. That’s what it says.
Greg: Okay, does this movie deserve a sequel?
Joe: I feel like there’s many sequels. If if we look at what the landscape of sequels out there, this movie for sure could have 3 or 4 sequels easily.
Greg: So yeah, I think it kind of has had an unofficial sequel in that Timothy’s relative, Natasha Leone also can tell when people are lying, and Ryan Johnson made a show about her called Poker Face on on Peacock right now. So I think this movie takes place in the poker face of hers.
Joe: Okay, sweet.
Greg: Yeah, there actually is a sequel that has been put together for this movie. Samuel Jackson is 100% on board and Renny Harlin has it all figured out, and it’s in a spot right now where either Warner Brothers will make it, or they will let them take it someplace else. Doing here with the sequel is.
Joe: Yeah, 100%.
Greg: Renny Harlin says. In a nutshell, the story is, in the opening sequence, Gina Davis, his character is murdered.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: And her daughter, who is 5 or 6 in the original but would now be in her 20s, is in university. After her mother dies, she receives this mysterious package, and there’s something in it that she doesn’t really understand. And now all the government and a couple of bad guys are after her because they have a hunch that the that Gina Davis sent her some kind of item, some sort of MacGuffin.
Greg: So now she’s on the run. She has no one to turn to, and she’s in over her head, and the only person that she knows could maybe help is Samuel Jackson’s character.
Joe: Perfect.
Greg: And then it basically becomes a road movie. It’s Sam and Gina’s daughter on the road. What do you think?
Joe: I mean, I’d watch it and especially if they call it the Knock list, it’s like.
Greg: Well, the last page of the script said there will be a sequel to this movie, and it was called, I think, The Kiss After the Lightning. That’s Shane Black. Put that in the script. Okay. Does this movie deserve a prequel?
Joe: No. Stop it, stop it with prequels. For the love of God, I’m.
Greg: With I’m with you on this one. All right? I did not feel like going back and over explaining where Charlie came from. Yeah, mostly because it would ruin the the sudden cut to the white House in this movie.
Greg: And I needed to keep that as pure as possible.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Joe, how could this movie be fixed?
Joe: I have a I have a couple thoughts. Maybe we have Shane Black from the Iron Man three time period. Kind of. Right. And direct it kind of a little bit further along. Maybe bringing in the Russo brothers to direct, kind of, I can see that. Pump up the action scenes. You know, if you did it today, maybe there’s, you know, I could see, you know, Scarlett Johansson or Margot Robbie in the in the title role, I could see Charlize Theron.
Joe: You know, any of those? You know, Samuel Jackson is ageless. He’d be perfect in this, you know? He’s great. So what about you? How would you fix this movie?
Greg: I think if if she was a little bit less intense and trophy as Charlie. The disparity between those two characters really bothered me. And the cliche ness of Charlie also kind of bothered me. Maybe it was needed in the 90s, but, definitely doesn’t hold up now. Joe. This question drove me nuts. This week. What album is this movie?
Joe: I don’t know that I have a good answer. We may have to just kind of talk about the kind of album it is, or you know, the kind of movie it’s like in referential of kind of 80s and 90s action movies. It isn’t a 90s action movie, but it’s also trying to be a little different and kind of twist the tropes around.
Joe: The best I could come up with was, a band from the early 2000, which was doing something that was like being referential to the 80s kind of glam rock. And that was the Donohoe.
Greg: Well, the Dallas okay. They’re going to say the darkness. Yeah.
Joe: No, the donnas I like the darkness, too. The darkness is probably a little better. But I came up with The Donnas, which is the best I could come up with. So what about you? What album did you come up with for this one?
Greg: Okay, I, I don’t have a great answer for this this week, but here’s the question that plagued me. What’s an album where a band seemingly forgot who they were and tried to be somebody else? And there are lots of times, you know, in the last, I don’t know, 40, 50 years where bands have done this, but I didn’t.
Greg: I wanted to be making fun of somebody.
Greg: Because it’s kind of a negative question like, oh my gosh, this band forgot who they were, and they tried this other thing, like, you could say that, Liz Phair kind of made a, a like a almost like a skater punk pop record when that wasn’t who Liz Phair was. But she. But every time I would think of a band that had or an artist who had entirely changed, I supported it.
Greg: I think people should be able to do that. And, you know, maybe they were becoming showing a either a different side of themselves or more of who they actually were or, or whatever. Right. So I, you could definitely say that, like when Radiohead made kid A, it sounded like they forgot who they were when they made okay computer.
Greg: But today is incredible. Yeah. So so I’m going to say that this album is Ghost Stories by Coldplay, which by the way, it’s a great Coldplay record because it’s a breakup record. And usually, a rule of thumb is bands that make breakup records, the breakup records are usually the ones that they mean the most. But there is a song on that album that is just, people who liked Coldplay really disliked that.
Greg: They made this song called A Sky Full of Stars, and it’s co-written and produced by, a VC who was a DJ, if I’m remembering that. Right?
Joe: Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah.
Greg: And when this album came out, it’s a very mellow breakup album. But then there was this kind of like pop hit and, I can’t tell you how many people I talked to that said, this is just so cynical that they’re doing this, I hate it, I hate everything about it. And so it was as if Coldplay forgot who they were.
Greg: The problem that I have with listing this is kind of like that song. So I guess I’ll say this as a positive sometimes bands, you know, forget who they are. And and I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to specifically call out Coldplay’s Sky Full of Stars, as a song that there was a significant backlash against the, the snobs out there.
Joe: And I was just like, I.
Greg: Don’t know, guys. I kind of like it. It’s of a good song. So. All right, so both of us failed the what album is this? This week I was.
Joe: Talking about the tough one. I feel like.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. The other thing I was going to say was, the new Olivia Rodrigo, album where she’s kind of like doing, like, female led grunge songs. The breeders are actually opening the tour.
Joe:
Greg: But, see, that’s cool. Yeah, I love that Olivia Rodrigo is doing that. So, you know.
Joe: I know I kind of like it. I’ve, kind of guilty pleasure. Is Olivia Rodrigo. I kind of like her stuff, so. Yeah, like I. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: So I don’t know why I think it has to be a snarky negative. Yeah, but I just feel like I should be making fun of the. Oh, you know who I did think of, though? Sorry. This is kind of dragging on, but do you remember when Vanilla Ice is second album came out in the 90s?
Joe: Yes I do, we’ve and I remember we played that opening so many times.
Greg: And he was no longer like white MC hammer now. He was like, he was in Cypress Hill and smoking lots of weed. And he had a song on his album, Mind Blowing, called Roll Him Up.
Greg: And there was just these gang vocals. Roll them up, roll up the Hooli, Mac booty back.
Joe: I need some money. Since I just.
Greg: So I can feel like this, which we were fairly certain was never what we had ever been called before. Yeah, like he was trying to invent a new term, so we could say Vanilla Ice is a follow up album.
Joe: I think that’s, Yeah, that that works. We’ll take it.
Greg: But honestly, could we say that Ice Ice Baby is who he authentically was? No.
Greg: So, I don’t know, he just the thing kind of starts to fall apart. Yeah. Okay. Joe, our show is called great Bad Movies, but sometimes we watch a movie that’s just a good, bad movie or an okay, bad movie, or even a bad, bad movie or worst case, an awful bad movie. How would you rank the long kiss good night?
Joe: I feel like this is a generous rating for me because it’s probably an okay, bad movie, but I have it as a good, bad movie. Yeah, no. And that’s always when we start talking about them. I end up liking it more than I, you know? So my original rating, when I watched it again, I was like, oh, this is just okay.
Joe: But then we started talking about it and I started thinking about all that, and I was like, no, this is a good, bad movie. It’s, you know, there’s a there’s a lot to like about it. So that’s where my rating is. What about you? Where’s your rating?
Greg: Yeah, I’m right there with you. I think it’s, it’s on the high side of good. I sat down to watch this movie and thought, this is going to be ridiculous. And it was a lot better than I expected it to be. And now, you know, almost 30 years later when you watch it, it really stands out as well.
Greg: They should have made 20 of these a year. Why is, you know, this movie with Geena Davis as the lead action protagonist? Why is that such a game changer when that should have been happening all the time? But unfortunately, in 1996 it just wasn’t. So yeah, I would say a good a good, bad movie as well.
Joe: Yeah, seems about right.
Greg: But I do love Renny Harlin, and I think this is probably the best movie he made front to back.
Joe: Yeah, I would agree.
Greg: Directorial.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This is the best film direction, you know, and maybe the batch of movies of his that that will be visiting.
Joe: We have not done the second best Christmas movie yet so I just want to put that Renny Harlin caveat. Die Hard two.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: I love that movie.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: Totally. And so once we have done that and we’ll have done three Renny Harlin movies by that point, we will be able to make a declarative statement about Renny Harlin.
Greg: Absolutely. One of the most entertaining, directors to listen to in a director’s commentary. He is not someone who is afraid of making fun of himself. He watches his work. Yeah.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: All right, Joe, we did it.
Joe: Hell, that we had the conversation that needed to be had about the long kiss good night.
Greg: For almost 30 years, people have been talking about this movie, and I think we’re probably done at this point.
Joe: Yeah, I feel like we can ring the bell. No more conversations really need to be had. This is it. This is the penultimate of what’s what’s happened. So.
Greg: Oh, my gosh. I just noticed the clock I this has been. Listen, this has been great, but, I should probably get going. I’ve got to, go scam Mr. Travers out of some money with a friend of mine.
Joe: Okay, that makes total sense. Anyway, I got to run to. I have to go figure out why I’m called Frank in New York, and Ernest in Chicago, so.
Greg: That makes complete sense. Okay. Oh, actually, no, I actually need to go as well. I need to go give Brian Cox very little to do in a movie.
Joe: Oh. That’s that’s interesting. I I’m late. I got to go to my ice skating lesson. My teacher hates it if I’m late. In fact, the last time I was late, she broke my arm, so.
Greg: Oh, wow. Yeah. Not just a fracture.
Joe: No, not just a fracture.
Greg: Oh, sorry. I’m getting a text from a friend of mine here. Oh, it’s, it’s John Wick. Oh, he can’t find his pet deer. It’s gone missing. That’s okay. I’m going to go help John and see if I can help him find his.
Joe: Yeah, that’s that sounds that sounds dire. Anyway, I’ve got to go give myself a perfect haircut while also on the run from bad guys, so.
Greg: Oh, that makes sense. And honestly, I should go, too. I just found out that, Well, I don’t know if I told you this. We’re heading up to Canada right after this.
Joe: Nice.
Greg: And, apparently there’s some trouble at the border. There’s some trouble with a bridge.
Joe: Yeah. Anyway, I have Renny Harlin coming over. He’s going to light a shootout in the snow at night for me. So.
Greg: Yeah. Well, okay. Well, while you’re doing that, I am going to go have a meeting with, this movie studio actually trying to sell them a script for $4 million.
Joe: All right, I gotta run. See you soon.
Greg: Okay. I’ll, I’ll see you soon.