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This week, on Sexism in Survival Situations:
We are joined by our inaugural guest, the hilarious Scott Erickson to discuss a fake movie about a billionaire who uses his money to pursue his selfish goals. Not really a thing that happens IRL. We’ll dive into the real questions: What ice cream does Joe spare no expense on? Should Neapolitan ice cream be equally chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry? How has Jeff Goldblum somehow made sweaty chaos theory sexy? There’s obviously a LOT to talk about.
Also, we get to the real MVPs: Timmy, the trolling younger brother, Newman’s Barbasol can, Samuel L. Jackson’s off-screen demise(?), and that poor lawyer who just wanted a quiet moment on the toilet. From velociraptors who learn how to open doors to a T-Rex that follows no rules of physics, we’re covering all the glorious nonsense that makes Jurassic Park a high-budget disasterpiece. So grab a flare, hold onto your butts, and let’s see if life, uh, finds a way… to make this episode worth your time.
Scott chose this movie because he talks about the Jurassic Park series in his hilarious book and show called Say Yes: A Liturgy of Not Giving Up On Yourself
Joe’s Back of the Box
When an eccentric billionaire resurrects dinosaurs and tries to turn it into an amusement park, a group of scientists must race to save themselves and all those still on the island. Compounding the challenges is a massive storm bearing down on them all. With the power out and vicious dinosaurs on the loose, can this rag tag team of scientists get to safety or will they become just another victim of the hubris of man?
The REAL Back of the Box
Watch as the creatures who ruled the earth millions of years ago clash with humans in a modern day retelling of Icarus. Will there be a safety net or will we all crash into the earth? Or is this a retelling of The Emperor’s New Clothes where no one will tells rich people no and it has massively dire consequences for everyone? Or is this the best dinosaur disaster film ever? The answer is yes on all fronts…
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week, a smart, humble, intelligent, attractive, dashing man has to go into unknown wilderness to save two children. Now, if you were to name one person out there who could come help the two children that host this podcast out, who would it be?
Joe: Besides me, besides you, it’s probably Scott Erickson.
Greg: It’s got to be Scott Erickson. Right. Let’s get Scott Erickson in here.
Scott: I’m ready to save those kids.
Greg: I’m ready to save the skins. A first guest on the podcast.
Scott: Oh, what an honor. What an honor to be to be on the show with such mentions of movies. Years of movies. I can’t believe that wasn’t taken.
Greg: Scott, you are the Tom Hanks you are. I don’t know, is he the first guest on Conan O’Brien? We’ll say yes. George Clooney was the first guest on a bunch of things.
Scott: This is I mean, the listeners are scrambling right now. Yeah. Bill Murray.
Greg: Was the first guest on Dave Letterman.
Scott: George Carlin on SNL. I know that one for sure.
Greg: You are the George Carlin to our SNL critic.
Joe: No pressure.
Scott: I got a whole bunch of shellshock jokes ready for you guys.
Greg: Here we go.
Joe: I prefer battle fatigue so.
Greg: I can.
Joe: Lean into that. Okay.
Greg: So this is a podcast about two friends from way back catching up. And Scott, you and I are also two best friends from way back.
Scott: That’s true. Oh, man. We just need a latte and clean and hill to walk around. And we’re good. Absolutely. Substitute it with these beers and sitting on chairs. That perfectly describes getting older.
Greg: All right, let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Clip: There it is.
Clip: Welcome to Jurassic Park. We have made a living biological attraction so astounding that they have capture the imagination of the entire planet. The most phenomenal discovery of our time. How did you do this? Becomes the greatest adventure of all time.
Clip: And they touch it? Sure.
Clip: Steven Spielberg film.
Greg: Senses are feeling all over the park. That’s nice. Gotta go and adventure. Out, down. I can’t get Jurassic Park back on, like, 65.
Clip: Million years in the making.
Clip: Jurassic Park.
Scott: The year is 1993.
Greg: Steven Spielberg stepped up to the plate and said, you know what? It’s time to make an adventure. 65 million years in the making. Joe Skye Tucker with Scott Erikson. We are talking about Jurassic Park today. We are talking about Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, B.D. Wong, Samuel L Jackson, Wayne Knight, famously, Newman from Seinfeld. Joe Skye Tucker what makes Jurassic.
Greg: Park.
Greg: A great bad movie?
Joe: Oh, so many things. This movie is amazing. It is probably a near-perfect disaster film in my opinion. It combines everything that you love about Steven Spielberg movies, which is the perfect building up of everything. Everything. On the soundstage, you have real dinosaurs. You have so many iconic moments within this movie, it builds perfectly to I will say, one of the best action scenes you will ever find in any movie, ever, anywhere.
Joe: I defy you to find a better scene than the T-Rex scene. I just want to put a pin in that, because I’ve seen this movie so many times that it took me till the last, like three to notice some glaring continuity holes in that scene.
Joe: So we’ll get to those. But it’s a really fun movie. It’s dinosaurs. It’s dinosaurs. Run as fast as you can. You have so many leaps and logic, like there’s no way that they know how velociraptors hunted 65 million years ago, right? Yeah, and yet it is used to great effect to humiliate a small child early in the film.
Greg: Sure. We’ve all been there.
Joe: Yes. I mean, what else are you going to do about velociraptors? So I will stop and toss it to you, Scott, because you have also thought about this and some of the other sequels with Jurassic Park, so I’d love to get your thoughts on why Jurassic Park is a great bad movie, or a great movie, or a great bad movie, or a bad movie.
Scott: I mean, nobody had really tried to bridge the gap between the old claymation land of the lost cartoon dinosaur movies that we had seen. Maybe that movie, baby. Remember that movie baby about a baby dinosaur? No. Oh, and it’s kind of, people in costumes and, like, lo fi animatronics. Nobody had really decided to make something that wasn’t going to be claymation oriented.
Scott: And there’s actually, like, a really amazing story from the guys who were at, Lucasfilm, I think, who really pushed to have the computer graphics for it to be CGI. So we had never seen dinosaurs in this capacity. I’m a big dinosaur fan like as a kid. I love dinosaurs, and I read Jurassic Park, the book like I was a high school nerd who took that like 800 page book and was like, this book is amazing.
Scott: And so then I remember the experience being in the movie theater, like seeing when they turned Sam Neill’s head and he takes off his glasses. So it’s, you know, like, I can’t sit on my glasses, you know, and turn for Darren’s head. I remember, like, losing my breath, just like mouth agape in the movie theater. It was fantastic.
Scott: And then it made $1 billion and they’re like, let’s do it again. And let’s keep going even.
Greg: Even though.
Scott: I thought the point of the film was it’s a bad idea to do.
Greg: This.
Scott: And then they double down with another trilogy going, yeah, they didn’t do it right, but we can do it right this time because Jurassic Park is in the history of the Jurassic World series. So you have the three Jurassic parks and the three Jurassic worlds, and then we have an upcoming.
Greg: Jurassic World Rebirth. Is that what it is?
Scott: Yeah. Side note it’s not a prequel. It’s just kind of like, oh, yeah, we should go back there again. Maybe we’ll find something and won’t die.
Greg: I’m like, even though everybody died.
Greg: What if it’s just great? What if they’ve totally figured it out and the dinosaurs are just like, yeah, now this is good. Let’s just get some cereal and live together.
Scott: I love this idea. Then we’ll be back on this podcast talking about it. Absolutely. Here we go. Scarlett Johansson is the one. You can take us there. I believe in her. She’s like the main lead in that movie.
Greg: And David kept the guy who wrote Jurassic Park after Michael Crichton had, like, taken a first stab at the screenplay. This is his idea. Rebirth is his idea.
Scott: Oh, really? Yeah. No, that that gives me a lot of hope that.
Greg: So there’s something there. I heard him talking about Jurassic World, that trilogy. He was kind of like, they kind of, I don’t know, they did something I wasn’t super interested in. I had I had a different idea, but they didn’t go with it. And that’s, I think what they’re going with now.
Scott: Yeah. I mean, so I think Jurassic Park was a great movie because all of us who kind of grew up with dinosaur books and dinosaur cartoons, land of the lost, totally. Then as adults, saw dinosaurs in a context we had never seen, which was fairly realistic CGI computer graphics. And because what you were saying, Joe, about Steven Spielberg really pushing on on the animatronics and trying to have as much of the T-Rex or the velociraptors being kind of puppets, it wasn’t all just kind of digital pixels.
Scott: It was actually like practical puppetry that made it really fantastic. Big puppets, like a huge T-Rex, is taller than a car. It’s unbelievable.
Greg: Yeah, I mean, we had never seen it before. The only thing that we had seen before this with this kind of special effect was Terminator two. And then before that, the abyss. I mean, this was like the third thing was like, oh my gosh, how are they doing that?
Greg:
Greg: Okay. I have to ask you guys a very important question. And then I’m going to thank you for your time. I think we’re gonna end this early. I mean I until this afternoon I was dead set that this is a great great movie. How dare I even call this a great bad movie. And then this afternoon, I kind of had a change of heart, honestly.
Greg: And so I’m wondering, was this ever in contention for a great, great movie for either of you? Joe, what do you think?
Joe: Absolutely. The first ten times I watched this, I would have gotten into a fight with anyone who said that this wasn’t one of the greatest movies ever made, and I still hold it up like it’s on the top ten of my favorite movies I’ve ever seen. Yeah, Steven Spielberg does this amazing thing where you kind of know that there’s the kids are never going to be hurt in this.
Joe: You just know that because Steven Spielberg is never going to hurt a kid. Yeah. And yet that T-Rex scene and the velociraptor scene are riveting. Like, you’re just. I remember in the theater, the first time I saw it, I was shocked at how well it was done. But then the more I’ve watched it, the more there’s like, you can see them setting up the shot and then it’s like, and now we’re acting, you know, and.
Greg: Then just.
Joe: Know. Blume does this weird John Wayne walk as he says, now that’s a big pile of shit. Like a thing like. So there’s these moments where it just feels really set up, where you can kind of feel the like the crew just on the edges of it. And so to me, the last few times I’ve seen it now like 3 or 4 times in the last year, each time it’s like there’s a great movie.
Joe: I love every second of it. And also I can kind of feel some of the silliness of it and that it hasn’t aged perfectly. But all of that said, it is still spectacular when it needs to be dinosaurs chasing you in a Jeep. It’s still the scariest thing in the world, and it’s so awesome. So I definitely think it’s a great bad movie.
Joe: It’s definitely one of our movies, and we talked about it before, like you weren’t quite there. Yeah, even a couple months ago. I’ve also watched this on edibles, which really helped me see the great badness of this.
Scott: That’s just a different way to, like, see things, the different perspective. Yeah.
Joe: Totally experienced it.
Greg: And what drugs were you on when you watch this?
Scott: Got probably Diet Coke. No aspartame I get what you’re saying about it doesn’t hold up, but I feel like that’s always with movies from the past because they’re part of kind of like a certain kind of way that society or culture are making what’s happening. So like, I wonder if we brought it into I mean, I know that we’re going to get into this later.
Scott: If we brought it into making it now, what kinds of lessons we’ve learned in filmmaking or what we’re looking for in filmmaking would affect it. But yeah, there is some like campiness. There is some like kind of really obvious jokes. Jeff Goldblum’s character, Ian Malcolm is, yeah, a sexy scientist, you know.
Greg: Like a rock star. Yeah, like a rock star who.
Scott: Can’t play instruments. We’re really good at dripping water on people’s hands. So, yeah, it’s just kind of. There’s certainly, like cultural or timeline moments that are there. But yeah, I think it’s a great, great film.
Greg: Oh, you don’t go great bad, you go great, great.
Scott: No, I think it’s great. Great. Yeah.
Greg: Wow. Okay. My whole childhood was obsessing over Steven Spielberg. I bet the reason I love movies is because of Steven Spielberg. And so I was kind of like, well, we can’t talk about our first Steven Spielberg movie on this and have it be Jurassic Park and have it not be a great, bad movie. But as I was watching it, I was again, I was kind of like, this movie doesn’t hang together the way jaws does, you know?
Greg: And this was kind of largely like his next jaws. And I realized, and this is the problem with Steven Spielberg movies, the only reason Jurassic Park isn’t the greatest movie I’ve ever seen in my life is because I’m holding it against other Steven Spielberg movies.
Scott: You. Totally.
Greg: So I’m fine with calling this a great bad movie because, you know, some of the plot stuff is a little bit stitched together. You know, it’s kind of like set piece after set piece. You can see them kind of like, we don’t have to worry about this part. We’ll skip ahead, you know, or whatever. And thematically it’s like a Disney movie.
Greg: And then it’s like a horror movie. And I’m not as accepting of all the tone shifts that it does. You know, it’s like really sweet. And then it’s a monster movie. So I feel like it doesn’t hang together as well as as jaws does in jaws. In my mind is like a perfect movie, even though, I mean, I grew up as a kid hating scary movies, yet I watched jaws so many times a year to try and I guess, grapple with my fears.
Greg: I guess. I don’t know why I watched it over and over again, but I was trying to figure out what this director was doing to make me feel this way.
Scott: Yeah, I still have a hard time in the ocean. Well, and if we’re putting it, I guess I was putting it in the genre of other dinosaur films. So then if.
Greg: We’re if we’re putting it in the,
Scott: The lane of Steven Spielberg films, it’s not his. It’s not as great as one. No, it’s not even though is it the highest ranking one probably of all his films?
Greg: Gosh, you got to go. Raiders of the Lost Ark, jaws.
Scott: ET. Maybe it’s the highest grossing film of all of his movies.
Greg: Oh, maybe that could be the reason we have the term blockbuster is because of jaws. It was the first blockbuster, and they called it that because there were lines around the block in every theater. Yeah, and jaws was in theaters for a year, like a full calendar year. Jobs was in theaters.
Scott: Which is crazy nowadays. Like, I remember hearing a guy who went to saw Star Wars and he’s like, yeah, it was out for a year, and I saw 11 times because you didn’t know where it was going to go after it left. So they just kept it in there. Now it would be, I guess we’ve seen that, there was a film recently that stayed in the theater for like a long time.
Scott: What film was that?
Greg: Top gun Maverick.
Scott: Yes. Top gun Maverick. Yeah, top Gun Maverick was. You got it.
Greg: That’s it. That’s totally a similar experience. But star Wars was two years after jaws, so, like, jaws was like The Godfather.
Scott: Amazing.
Greg: Anyways, I think because of some of the pacing and some of the, some of this, the mood shifts that it just these wild swings it takes. I’m going to say it’s a great bad movie, but I have a million reasons that I absolutely love Steven Spielberg and John Williams and so many people involved in this movie. Let’s talk about the stars of this movie.
Greg: Joe, what’s your take on Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in this movie? That they were like a pretty good trifecta of indie actors.
Joe: Pretty much. I mean, Jeff Goldblum is probably at the time, the biggest star.
Greg: Yeah, Laura.
Joe: Dern and Sam Neill was kind of independent stuff and then stuff, you know, obviously in Australia. Yeah, I think I liked all the actors, and I would want to go back to the kind of the great bad conversation, like the only character that has any sort of arc to them is Sam Neill’s character.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And basically he goes from hating kids to tolerating them sleeping on him. That’s his character arc. You know, it’s a classic disaster film trope. It’s like, you know, they’re just trying to get away from the creatures of the bad guys or whoever it is. And so that’s what we’re up against. Then it really does reference lots of the old, you know, claymation and stuff like that.
Joe: So especially like how he shoots at the shadow. There’s a lot of like kind of noir shots within, you know. You know, Wayne Knight is a bad guy. You almost know who they are. And this is a spoiler alert for one of my drinking games, based on the kind of hat they wear, demonstrates the kind of character they are.
Joe: Interesting.
Greg: Go on.
Joe: So you have like, the girl with like a hat that’s like a little too big and doesn’t fit her well, and she’s kind of like nerdy. And then you have from like Saturday morning cartoons, the Australian. Yeah. Person who’s like the game warden essentially who could be like cut out of, like 20 different Looney Tunes cartoons type of stuff.
Joe: You know, Sam Neill has his hat at the beginning. So there’s these, like character tails that they put into this movie, which are referencing these older movies that I grew up on. So I love all of those sorts of things that I didn’t really catch the first time I watched it, you know, and then you have amazing dinosaurs and, and pretty true to the book.
Joe: I read the book as well. So I’m one of those nerds that read the book, you know, and wish that they had done more conversations about chaos theory, because that’s a big part of the book. And yeah, there were pieces of it that I wanted more of in that because they get into it a little bit. But you have all of that kind of as the backdrop, and then you kind of add in where we are in cinema at that moment.
Joe: And it was just everyone was ready for a Steven Spielberg disaster movie.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: So while I think it’s a great bad movie, it is right on the cusp of a great, great movie. It has taken me 15 times of watching it to like, get to the point where I’m like, oh, I can see why. It’s why we’re talking about it on this podcast.
Scott: So you write about the in the book was a lot of it is about if we can get genetic material and we can bring things from the past. Yeah. Should we?
Greg: Well, yeah. The structure of this movie is like an hour of wonder and scientific explanation and philosophical discussions of what should we do if we have the power to do it with science? And then the second hour of the movie is mostly either horror, movie or comedy to break the tension and the occasional Disney moment, because we’re hanging out with dinosaurs that don’t eat people.
Greg: They eat plants. But like the first hour is pretty lengthy, and the conversations they definitely sell the bad guy. When Sam Neill is talking to that kid in the Badlands scene at the very beginning, when they’re on their dig for dinosaur bones.
Scott: Yeah, it just looks like a big turkey.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. And let’s listen to what he says.
Clip: Because velociraptors are pack hunter. You see, he uses coordinated attack patterns and he is out in force today, and he slashes at you with this six inch retractable claw like a razor on the middle toe. He doesn’t bother to bite the jugular like a lion. So no, no, he slashes at you here or here.
Clip: Or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines. Point is, you are alive. When they start to eat, you. So, you know, I try to show a little respect.
Scott: Okay?
Greg: I don’t think I thought about dinosaurs in this way at all when I was growing up. And dinosaurs really were a thing when we were growing up, right? Yeah. Like, what is it about kids and dinosaurs? I could not get enough dinosaurs like, in second grade.
Scott: I mean, they’re big monsters.
Greg: They’re just awesome.
Scott: Yeah. They’re huge lizards. I mean, maybe the elephant is the closest thing that we have. That’s like a a giant, overwhelming thing that’s like, and then that has been used as, you know, the wooly mammoth or the OnlyFans and Lord of the rings. But yeah, like anything, anything massive. And so you were told that we had these giant lizards walking around that just and they look like they’re from another planet.
Scott: I mean, the Stegosaurus, the triceratops, they’re just fascinating. I mean, if we had pets, maybe we’d be like, boring old Brontosaurus.
Greg: That’s.
Scott: I think it’s the I think it’s the huge monster, the spectacle of it.
Greg: This is kind of a monster movie, but at the same time, they never kill the monster. Like at the end of jaws, they blow up jaws at the end of every monster movie, basically, except for maybe King Kong. They kill the monster, but in this one, and it’s kind of a regular thing throughout. The dinosaurs always win.
Greg: It’s like, trying to treat living creatures ethically.
Scott: Like at the end of the film they have a thing that goes up in the credits and it says none of these fictional animals were harmed in this.
Greg: Movie or oh.
Joe: I remember a Steven Spielberg produced, TV show about dinosaurs. I don’t know, maybe ten years ago. Had time travel and I can’t remember what it was, but there were strict rules that people could not hurt the dinosaurs. And I think he’s got those sorts of rules, like the dinosaurs can hurt each other, but people cannot hurt the dinosaurs.
Joe: Right. And so that happens throughout this movie as like the the T-Rex can kill the velociraptor, but we can’t hurt them. They do lock one in a freezer, but probably got out, you know, with it. Super smart for sure it got out. I mean, this could be in the super smart animals category probably for us though.
Greg: Like Deep Blue Sea.
Joe: Yes. Yeah. This is this is really just a remake of Deep Blue Sea.
Greg: Three years, four years.
Joe: Before Deep Blue Sea. But that’s.
Greg: Right.
Scott: He had a vision. He’s like, I got to get it out before Deep Blue Sea.
Greg: Renny Harlin is just nipping at my heels. Samuel Jackson was like, yeah, I’m in that one too.
Scott: It’s the same arm and.
Greg: So I was going to say that like this movie, honestly. Like when they’re on the tour, which is like, I don’t know, 40 minutes in, they are talking about how disappointed they are in the tour because they’re not really seeing the dinosaurs. And it takes a really prolonged dip, and it’s like pointing out at how boring things are, how slow this is getting.
Greg: They really, like, slow this thing down to like zero miles per hour until the T-Rex comes and then they floor it you know.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Unbelievable structure of a movie. It’s very much like Die Hard. You know, where it’s like you don’t see the bad guys for a really long time. They just kind of set the table with a bunch of conversation and relationships before Hans Gruber shows up.
Scott: Yeah it’s brilliant. I mean, I think as the viewer you’re kind of bored as well. You’re like, where’s this going? Why is this? And you really get like, you’re in that Ford Explorer and it’s raining outside. I still think today there’s this scene where Alan Grant, somehow he has he got a canteen. And he’s holding it out the window to get some water.
Scott: And I’m always like how wet was his hand. How much water got into the window. Into the car to fill up. Enough to share a drink. I just I think about that all the time.
Greg: Just sharing it pushes it over for me because we.
Scott: Live in the northwest and it rains and you’ll roll your window down and be like, oh, and then it’s everywhere. It’s wet. Yeah. I was like, that guy filled. I mean, partially a canteen with rainwater enough to share.
Greg: That’s crazy talk.
Scott: That’s how bored they were. They were like, I’m willing to get wet to get some water because we’re so bored.
Greg: Totally.
Scott: Even the audience is like, is this where I go to the bathroom? And then, oh, no.
Greg: And then 20 straight minutes of T-Rex and falling off a ledge, and then a Ford Explorer is in a tree and we’re climbing down the trees of the Ford Explorer. Doesn’t crash on us. Amazing. Timmy’s in the car. This is the first time I’ve ever watched this movie, and I was like, Timmy might be my favorite person in this movie.
Greg: Timmy has the greatest minds. He’s totally trolling his older sister the entire time. Yeah, yeah. Timmy is the best younger brother of all of the Jurassic series.
Greg:
Joe: Were you reliving your life as having older sisters here Greg. Because I was.
Greg: I had two Lexi’s growing up. Oh my gosh.
Joe: And did they, you know Unix based systems to like restart computers and all of that.
Greg: So was that in the book.
Joe: It was. But what I remember from the book is that the daughter is basically the worst character in the world. Like she has no redeeming qualities. And basically, like Timmy does everything and then she’s just kind of a foil to be kind of annoying throughout the book. And yeah, and the movie, they kind of give her more meat.
Joe: Yeah.
Scott: Because they in the movie they make her that. Like, I haven’t done anything but kind of screamed and been annoying. But one way that I can restart the computer, which is going to save us all. So we each have a task. We each play a part in saving each other even though we’re annoying. But yeah, yeah, yeah, they all serve a function.
Scott: What’s Timmy’s function is to kind of bring back the childhood wonder of the dinosaurs. Like everybody. And the connection is Alan Grant has it and him have it. But Alan Grant isn’t like kids. Tim’s there to, like, pull that. You’ve loved dinosaurs since you were a kid. Pull that out of him to get him to stop being so adult about his career, which is to take petrified talons and slice bellies open as kids.
Greg: And.
Greg: Just have that in your back pocket that your back pocket all the time.
Scott: What if you did that all the time? And so then it started into that scene because instead of her going like, oh no, she’s just like this again.
Greg: Like it’s like.
Scott: She’s so bored with it. It’s always his go to with every kid.
Greg: I she was basically like in David Lynch movies before this. That’s how I knew who she was. And I was not grown up enough to watch David Lynch movies. This was the first movie I think I ever saw her in. So this was like her. She had always wanted to be in Steven Spielberg movies, but she was in all these indie films.
Greg: Same with Sam Neill. A lot of Jeff Goldblum kind of sort of indie. I mean, he was in The Fly, which that’s Cronenberg.
Scott: He was an Earth girls are easy.
Greg: Sure. Yeah. He was all over the place. But ever since this movie came out, like every three years we see Jeff Goldblum be Jeff Goldblum in a movie. He’s kind of like Christopher Walken in that way. He’s kind of the same person every movie. And my thought is always like, oh good, Jeff Goldblum is in this. But I don’t think, oh, he’s a character in this movie.
Greg: It’s like, oh, Jeff Goldblum is here. Yeah, just like Christopher Walken.
Joe: Are we ready to have the conversation about the T-Rex scene? I’ve been dying to talk about this.
Greg: I think we are. I think.
Joe: We are. Okay, so they pull up, they come to the T-Rex place twice. You assume that they’ve had to go around loop because they leave, they find the triceratops and then they come back. So they have the goat that comes up.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Nothing happens. They leave, they come back, the goat is gone.
Greg: Right.
Joe: Then they go where’s the goat? Classic hits the roof of the car. Bloody leg. T-Rex is right there at that level. And then you have that amazing scene where the breaks trying to break into the car. And then for somehow where there is level ground where the goat is and the T-Rex comes through, is now like 100ft drop?
Joe: Sure. And so now there’s a cliff.
Greg: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So right.
Joe: Ten times of watching this movie, never noticed that. And so that now completely bothers me.
Scott: Yeah.
Joe: But now they’re like swinging the the Ford Explorer is coming over the edge into the tree and then coming down like, sure. What happened to the level ground and where was the goat supposed to be? There’s like this total continuity error. And it’s brilliant because when I watch it, I’m just like, riveted every single time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Greg: That amazing.
Joe: You’ll never be able to watch this movie again and not notice that I know you were.
Scott: You ruined it. You really did that. That’s really funny. But you’re not. You’re not paying attention. You’re just like. It’s so terrifying. Yeah, because it was PG 13, right? Yeah. Jaws was PG high as before. PG 13.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Scott: It’s so terrifying to think of being in front of like, a monster like that. And it’s raining and it’s muddy and you can’t get out and and then we find the one weakness is Ian freeze. You know, or like that whole thing, like he can’t see the movements. So that’s the one way to get out of that scenario.
Scott: But so I just don’t think you’re like, thinking of geography at that moment.
Joe: No, it’s totally not. And that scene is so brilliant for that because when he runs back to the car, he’s like, Jeff Global, how are the kids doing? It’s like, oh, they’re fine, whatever it is. Like, yeah, you know, are they scared? And it was like, I don’t know, they should be fine. It was like, I didn’t say it.
Joe: I was scared. So they’re like setting up that these kids are about to be terrified. And then you have the flashlight. I remember in the theater, when the flashlight is goes off and the T-Rex and you learn that the T-Rex is movement and it’s the most scary thing and breaks through the glass, which I think is actually an outtake.
Joe: It wasn’t supposed to break through the glass, it was supposed to just hit the top of it and it actually broke through. And so, like, there’s screams are real in that moment.
Scott: Oh my gosh, when they’re like holding the fiberglass panel up like.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Scott: Wow. Oh. Because that little bit between that mouth and them is that’s so terrifying.
Greg: That must be like the strongest class in history to stop a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Greg: From.
Greg: Being able to get down to those kids.
Scott: I like, too, that they were with the lawyer. You know, they were stuck in this, and he’s. And he bails on. He’s like, I’m out. Yeah. This is this is like he left. He left.
Greg: Us. Right.
Joe: Steven Spielberg must be going through some litigation because there are so many unnecessary lawyer jokes in this movie.
Greg: It’s just I mean, this the shark in jaws was named Bruce on the set, and it was named after his lawyer.
Greg: Okay.
Greg: So lots of lawyer jokes. Mr.. Steven Spielberg just incredible the way that they were able to take the animatronic T-Rex when they were up close and then in the same shot, have a CG Tyrannosaurus rex walk away. And usually we see the CG through like the windshield of the car. We’re inside the car. And the way that they switched between, like the real life animatronic and went to the CG dinosaur is pretty, pretty good stuff.
Greg: In.
Greg: The usual like Marvel movie these days, there’s like 2500 computer generated shots. This movie has.
Scott: 64.
Joe: That’s bonkers.
Greg: And it’s so much better in my mind than anything we watch now. It almost holds up to scrutiny today.
Joe: I feel like if we watch it on the big screen, yeah, like that doesn’t hold up and I give it a little bit of grace for that, just because I know that the graphics are not going to be. But even with that, it’s still there moments where I noticed that. But for the most part, I was just in the movie.
Scott: Yeah, yeah. I mean, they used a lot of puppets. The, Dilophosaurus. That’s a lot of practical. Obviously, the big ones are all CGI. No they weren’t. They had 25 people standing shoulder to feet, shoulder to be just all the way up that neck.
Greg: Just Stan Winston going around. You made every monster and every movie when we were growing up. Yeah, yeah, whenever you see it, like the whole thing walking. Yeah, that’s CG, but I mean, it’s it’s a lot more like practical stuff than you think it’s going to be.
Scott: There’s like two more. Well, there’s a few more T-Rex scenes, but like, yeah, the second one happens at night when they’re chases after the Jeep, but then there’s like two daytime. It kills like one of the galley mimics or something like, or some other dinosaur. And the kids, like, look at all the blood. But the T-Rex in the daytime does not look as impressive as T-Rex at night.
Scott: And then the final whole like scene with the velociraptors. But the first time we’re introduced to the T-Rex, it’s this really brilliant combination of CGI and practical modeling. And so it’s it’s really impressive.
Greg: It’s unbelievable. And yeah, I have to point out, there’s a big theme in great bad movies where a storm is rolling in. The storm rolls in so fast. In this movie we are just like, clear skies, green pastures filmed in Kauai. And then just five minutes later, sun has gone down. It is raining so hard and the T-Rex show up.
Greg:
Scott: I will say I, I’ve lived in the South twice and it does happen like that. It is like nice. And then all of a sudden you’re, taking some stool samples from a triceratops and you’re a little thunderbolts. You’re like, oh yeah, there’s something coming.
Joe: Yeah. And there Jeff Goldblum have an uncomfortably like, unbuttoned shirt when you’re doing that as well.
Greg: You just.
Scott: Glistening. He was there like laying on a Jeep, just like, we gotta go, we gotta go.
Greg: Yeah. There’s that moment kind of later in the movie when he’s just like, sitting in a weird way, kind of leaned back with his shirt open. And why didn’t any character say why are you sitting like that?
Scott: There’s a bar in Port Angeles that has a big painting of him, and that was.
Scott: It’s amazing.
Greg: That is.
Greg: Incredible. That’s how Joe’s sitting right now.
Greg: Yeah, exactly. Just glistening. Yeah.
Greg: I mean, Jeff Goldblum is incredible. In this movie. You were talking about how Lex was saying he left us. He left us because we weren’t supposed to pick up on the subtext on our own. She’s just going to say it to us. He does that as well in that one scene where after he’s been attacked or he’s sitting in the Jeep.
Greg: Yeah. And the the T-Rex is coming back. He’s just talking to himself. And this is right after the intense 20 minutes of basically horror movie that’s happened. I feel like he’s the one that lets us know, you know, at the hour 20 mark. Hey, we can still have fun. We’re going to be kind of like joking around a lot, using humor to kind of break the tension.
Greg: It’s not all going to be like that. Yeah, I appreciated that.
Scott: You now that you say that scene, that scene is also so scary with nothing happening until it comes out, because we’ve all maybe been in a dark place all by ourselves. And you’re like, it’s so scary. And he’s like, wounded in the back of a jeep. The hunter and the doctor leave and he’s just by himself. And then does he hears some footsteps?
Scott: I can’t quite remember, but he’s just like, we should we should be going. We should be staying here, which is like, hey, that’s kind of your inner monologue. If you’ve ever been in the woods by yourself, like, I don’t think I should be here right now, I should, I think I should be moving, I should get into my car.
Scott: We should, we should go, we should go.
Greg: I was so struck that he was like, clearly like lightning up the mood after pretty intense 20 minutes. So I recorded it. Here’s here’s Jeff Goldblum lightens it up.
Greg: Anybody hear that?
Greg: It’s an impact. Here’s what it is. Fairly alarmed here.
Greg: Come on, come on, come on. We gotta get out of here. We gotta get out here now.
Greg: And then they drive away and, chases behind them.
Scott: So. Great.
Greg: I want to ask you guys a question. I want to play this clip to you. This conversation that happens in this movie, this movie is largely about should science do things? It’s about Sam Neill being kind of a Luddite, you know, not knowing how to, like, even use a seatbelt at one point.
Greg:
Greg: And it’s just like change happens in the world. And should we go along with it or not? I want to play this for you and see if there’s anything in today’s world that it reminds you of.
Greg: If I may,
Clip: I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re that you’re using here. It didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read what others had done, and you and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses, to accomplish something as fast as you could.
Clip: And before you even knew what you had, you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox. And now selling it. You want to sell it?
Clip: Well, I don’t think you’re giving us our due credit. Scientists have done things which nobody’s ever done before.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Clip: But your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could. They didn’t stop to think of.
Greg: They should.
Greg: Joe, what does that remind you of in 2025.
Joe: For fear of taking us to political? This reminds me of Elon Musk to a tee. I feel like he’s got an island where he hunts people for sport and.
Greg: What did you think of Scott?
Scott: I mean, it sounds like he’s talking about AI.
Greg: That’s what I thought too.
Scott: We’re creating this. He’s like, you created this new technology, but you haven’t earned the wisdom of it. You didn’t have to suffer through what it takes to get to this. You just kind of stood on the back of others. And and then you put these things together and so the rest of the movie is like, this is the consequences of earning the wisdom of what it takes to make this.
Scott: Yeah.
Greg: I mean, there are thoughtful people who have been working on this for decades and trying to be thoughtful about it, what the next steps should be. But then business started to take over. And this is where I remember in 2024, there were just all kinds of conversations of, well, the companies are just in a race to get their thing out now, and they’re not thinking about the implications of what they’re doing.
Greg: They are Jurassic parking all over the place. And luckily, 2025 has not really borne out to where, you know, people last year were saying they thought it would go so quickly, but we still could be heading there. And speaking of Elon Musk, you know, he like got Ahold of all of our, tax info at the Treasury. Do you think they’re coming through that without the use of AI to make decisions?
Greg: Right now they’re totally using AI to make decisions, and then they’re figuring out where. I mean, I’m sure we’ve all done this where you use AI and you’re like, this is totally wrong. That is not at all what a real dinosaur looks like. You know, or a shark doesn’t have that many fins, or what on earth is this thing even talking about right now?
Greg: Relying on that to make actual decisions is pretty rough. So I don’t know. I feel like this is an allegory that worked in 1993 with science, and this is just a human truth that we can ride on the backs of giants like this without thinking, just because we could. We didn’t stop to think we should. Yeah, it’s amazing that that concept is so universal that it works as well on me this week as it did in 1993.
Scott: I mean, thinking of this whole franchise, they acknowledge that Jurassic Park happened in Jurassic World. But what’s funny to me is that the same scientist who is the genetic engineer is there.
Greg: And he’s like, so corrupt.
Scott: And hasn’t learned his lesson. And so he’s just like, sure, let’s throw some, frog in there and let’s follow some. What’s the one that can camouflage itself? Let’s throw that one in there and make the Indominus rex.
Greg: Like, just like, so the buffoon.
Scott: Who’s like, I kind of know what I’m doing, but I’m just throwing things in there. But hey, we’re here to make money.
Greg: Making money and getting power. Yeah, keeping.
Scott: Power and keeping power. Now I need to go have a good cry afterwards. Thanks.
Greg: Wow. Listener. The three hours just went by and Scott has finally stopped crying.
Greg: Okay, Scott, let’s peel back the curtain a little bit on this episode. I reached out to you and said, do you want to be the first guest on this show? And you said, yeah, let’s do the last world, let’s do Jurassic Park Part two. And we were like, absolutely, let’s do it. That’s got to be a great bad movie.
Greg: And then I watched it and it like, we have like a minimum level of greatness. Like you have to enjoy a movie. I don’t think I’ve ever actually enjoyed The Last World, but part of your take on it is it’s so bad that it’s good, or they were trying so hard and it just kind of failed. Give us your take on The Lost World, since that’s the movie you wanted to watch for this episode.
Scott: Well, okay. I mean, I get it that you watched it. Did you watch it all the way to the end? Because the and it’s almost like they reverse engineered.
Greg: They totally did.
Scott: Yeah. Which was what is the thing we’ve always wanted to see. It’s dinosaurs in our neighborhood. Yeah. And specifically it’s dinosaurs in San Diego. So and there’s a scene in there where this kid is like trying to go to bed, and then he looks outside because he hears something, and there’s a T-Rex.
Greg: Just standing in this window looking at him.
Scott: And he goes and like, talks to his parents. He’s like, there’s a monster outside my room. And they’re like, go to bed, honey. And I think as a kid, I remember that kind of fear looking out the window, expecting to see a monster. Yeah, really loving dinosaurs. And so that image became really profound as like, whoa, they did it.
Scott: They visualize the thing that I always wanted them to visualize. But yes, how they get there, how they get the dinosaurs to San Diego is ridiculous. Steven Spielberg did direct this film, which is not great. There’s some early stuff. I mean, you got Julianne Moore. Yeah, you’ve got Vince Vaughn, who’s kind of great in it. Yep, he’s Vince Vaughn, but not to his full potential.
Greg: Yeah. It’s like right after swingers right.
Greg:
Scott: Yeah I think it was kind of his first big movie after that. A guy from West Wing I don’t remember his name.
Greg: Richard Schiff.
Scott: Richard Schiff that’s place Toby.
Greg: Yeah I love Richard Schiff. He was also in speed by the way.
Scott: Oh yeah. He dies awfully in that movie. Ripped in two by two. T-rexes. Yeah. Then you got the. And then you got Jeff Goldblum kind of taking the lead from the former cast. So. Yeah. And his daughter, who can do gymnastics and that movie’s more about like, there was this horrible thing, but let’s harvest all this stuff and then put it into a Disneyland type thing locally around everybody, because we’re going to be okay because we learned our lesson and it’s utterly ridiculous.
Scott: But yes, I guess this really laying into like the greed of we put so much money into this asset, we got to make it work. And then they go there and then all hell breaks loose. I mean, there’s some really great scenes of trying to capture the T-Rex chasing all the guys, and then they go into the field with the velociraptors and they’re all kind of they show the pack animals coming to them.
Scott: There’s some pretty great moments in that movie, some really scary moments. But I made a show this, like, kind of one man show that I would tour, and I talked about that specific scene about the dinosaur being outside your window, and I meant I had a drawing that was like, how did this movie get made? Here’s the white board and the production meeting, which was dinosaurs on an island, dinosaurs in Southern California.
Scott: How do we get there? And I was kind of like them trying to plan out the movie. It was meaningful to me. But yes. Then when we talked, I was like, you’re right. It’s it could be a good, bad movie. It’s like it’s like, you know, I don’t know, maybe if it was like a 2:00 afternoon movie or like.
Scott: Sure.
Greg: I mean, I watch it every couple of years, I’ll be honest. Yeah, but it’s maybe my least favorite of every Jurassic Park movie because it’s so heartbreaking to me.
Scott: Yeah, even the third one.
Greg: All right. The third one’s good. The third one’s like, what if it just all started five minutes in and then it’s running, running, running, and then it’s done. It’s like a 90 minute movie.
Scott: Yeah, well, it knows what it is. Yeah. It’s just like we got to save our kid, and that’s all we’re doing. We’re not trying to have any philosophical talk. Although the very beginning, where they’re like parasailing and the the boat goes into a cloud and then comes out and everybody’s dead, and you don’t know.
Greg: Why that bird.
Scott: That’s like, right at the beginning of the movie. And I’m like, oh my gosh. But I will say this as a designer, because the Jurassic Park logo and font are really epic.
Greg: Oh my gosh, iconic.
Scott: Jurassic Park three is the only movie that substituted out the T-Rex in the logo. It has the Spinosaurus in the logo which was trying to like make a scarier version is that the T-Rex is not in the third one, the Spinosaurus, which was a bigger dinosaur which could swim, which was one of the worst or most terrible, like carnivores that’s ever to walk the earth.
Scott: So it was like, that’s a bad guy, but it has a big fin and you’re kind of like, I don’t know, doesn’t have Rex at the Spinosaurus.
Greg: So I watch all these movies every couple of years. I for some reason, I have to watch a movie if it has dinosaurs in it, even though I know it’s going to be horrible. I’m like, it’s okay if it’s bad.
Greg: But William.
Scott: H. Macy alien. Yeah, Sam Neill comes back for that one.
Greg: Sam Neill yeah, and Laura Dern’s in it for a minute. She married somebody else. Yes. Which ties back to Jurassic Park one. They’re kind of together. And that.
Scott: Movie. Yes. And then goes all the way back to Jurassic World Dominion, where they kind of post-divorce get back together. I fall in love a bit.
Greg: I forgot about that. It’s time for me to rewatch all.
Scott: Oh, so there is love in this movie. There is love in this franchise. Really. The whole franchise is about Alan Grant and Ellie getting together eventually.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Wow. You just ruined it for Joe. Joe’s out.
Greg: Yeah. I’m out.
Scott: And Ian Malcolm becomes the highly acclaimed lecturer. Still wears all black.
Greg: Amazing. Joe, the last world. Where do you stand in the last World?
Joe: I’ve only seen it once in the theater, however many years ago that was.
Greg: I think it was like 1952.
Joe: I liked it, you know, it was a classic sequel. They upped the dinosaurs. Spielberg does his thing. I agree that when they get to San Diego, it’s ridiculous. It’s just like super dumb. But that velociraptor and I can still see in the field. Yeah. And running. And then the gymnastic scene, it’s pretty silly, but it’s also kind of work for me.
Joe: So it’s like I was.
Greg: And David Kemp worked on that movie also as a screenwriter. I heard him a couple of years ago in an interview. They’re asking you about that. He said, you know, the last road was a weird thing because while we were filming it, Steven Spielberg decided that he wanted the T-Rex to go to the mainland, so we had to re-engineer the whole movie.
Greg: I don’t think that’s in the book, no. So while they were making it, they were figuring out how to make that happen. It was Steven Spielberg kind of coming up with it as they went. And so he said it was a lot of like, we’re just going to do this. And then telling the screenwriter on set to like, make it happen, which I think happens in a lot of movies.
Greg: Steven Spielberg was like, David, okay, she’s great at gymnastics. So, you know, we’ll have the scene where there’s like parallel bars, but it’s trees. And David Kemp was like, I mean, we probably shouldn’t write because, you know, and Steven Spielberg just goes, okay, so when we do it, we’re going to and just completely moves forward like it’s going to happen.
Greg: You can have your take whatever, but we’re totally doing this. That was just Steven unchecked, Steven Spielberg in 1996.
Joe: I mean, even in the in the scene when they’re climbing the tree, it’s the most evenly spaced tree branches you’ve ever seen.
Greg: We all wish we had that tree in our backyard.
Joe: Yeah. And that falls. That, like, car is falling perfectly down.
Greg: But okay, so we’re talking about Jurassic Park. They’re climbing the tree. Tim has crashed in the car into the tree, and Sam Neil is climbing up to get him. He gets to the car and Tim just looks at them and says, I threw up, which for the longest time I was like, oh man, that must have been really stressful.
Greg: But now that I’m a parent, I was like, oh my gosh, he must have gotten a concussion. But they they never do that. It is just really stress. But then I googled it in the book. It’s a whole journey of Tim got a concussion in the book. Do you guys remember this?
Scott: No.
Greg: Oh my gosh, that would have ruined this movie for me. Like a kid got a concussion. I can’t handle it anymore.
Scott: Next year’s dream.
Greg: Steven Spielberg understood what was up. So anyways, he gets Tim out, then the car starts to dislodge. They have to climb down the tree. Why didn’t they just move to the side and let the car?
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: It’s like the classic thing. But anyways, they’re going down and there’s a shot where we’re looking up. We see Sam Neil, he has a big branch right behind him and the car crashes into the branch. And this is all real. Like this is all happening on a soundstage, but it’s like a real car being held by a wire that’s dropping down onto this thing.
Greg: And that shot, yeah, while it was done for real here, has been done with CGI since then. That has been like the classic CGI close call that we are obsessed with. It happened like from 2000 to 2009, a hundred times in every movie. But in this movie, it happens for real. And there are so many times in this movie where there are like the blueprint for CGI close calls, but it’s 1993, so Steven Spielberg is doing it for real.
Greg: This movie is the blueprint for so many movies. They came out, but they just were like, well, I don’t know what to do with a computer. It’s no big deal. Yeah, like that exact shot is in my head for that exact shot is in next with Nicolas Cage, which is a movie that Joe and I are obsessed with.
Joe: One of the greatest movies ever made.
Greg: It’s unbelievable. Have you seen that movie?
Scott: I know the poster. And I remember the trailer.
Greg: Scott, what if you lived in the world where you could see two minutes in the future at all times.
Joe: And you’re Nicolas.
Greg: Cage, and you get the director, Lee Tamari of Die Another Day, the worst James Bond.
Greg: Movie.
Greg: To direct it. It’s awesome. Amazing.
Joe: You have no chemistry at all with your costar, but you’re supposed to fall in love.
Scott: Oh my gosh.
Greg: I cannot overstate this. We will be getting to next.
Joe: In fact, you have to promise us that in the next three days you’re going to watch next.
Greg: Oh, I guess.
Scott: I’ll look up where I can watch it. Yeah.
Joe: I will Venmo you for dollars if you need. Thanks. Thanks so much.
Greg: Yeah, this pays 3.99, but it can only go towards the rental up next.
Scott: So he can see at all times two minutes ahead. Yeah. He just has flashes of a window.
Greg: So when you’re chasing him he knows exactly where to stand because he can see two minutes ahead and always avert like the cops chasing him. It’s so hilarious. And amazing.
Scott: MIT two minutes is really specific. There’s a lot that can happen in two minutes. Totally.
Joe: A lot does happen.
Greg: Okay, okay, okay, okay.
Greg: It’s an adventure. Two minutes in the making all the way through the movie.
Greg: Okay. At the beginning of this movie, lawyer slipping in his like suit with his Timberlands on. Pretty good. But he gets to this place. He gets to Monos de Diaz, the amber mine in the Dominican Republic. And we meet dog no, the guy who is like finding the mosquitoes in the amber, Miguel Sandoval. And watching it this time, I was like, hold up, why don’t we just stay with Miguel this whole time?
Greg: This guy is unbelievable. His character’s name is rusty, which is, by the way, what I’d like you guys to call me from now on. I think that’s a pretty good name guy, right? Obviously, that guy was in, like, Get Shorty. He was in clear and present danger. Most recently, he was in The Diplomat on, Netflix. I think a missed opportunity is a total spin off of a stock.
Greg: No, I think that guy understood what was up.
Scott: I also remember that scene because then they show it in the video of, like, how they find the mosquitoes in the amber. Right? The whole technology is based on that. And it was just like a zig zag, like a Dig dug video game like. And then they just come across this, like small stone shaped object in the entire Earth.
Scott: Is the.
Greg: World. Sure.
Scott: Like there was how those guys just look like they’re zig zagging. Like, I hope this works. We’ll find a mosquito and amber as if there’s so many of them.
Greg: When they show. Like, this is how it happened. And they show like a gallon of sap going that a tree and capturing this like no tree.
Greg: In all.
Greg: Of Earth’s history 65 billion years ago. Is that excluded from this sentence? Has ever had that much sap at one time?
Greg: It is so right. And what was the.
Scott: Mosquito just like? Oh well, I was sorry that was snapping.
Greg: By the way, at the very beginning, when he holds up like the amber thing that they’ve mined and they show the mosquito in that, check out the music that plays as they show this mosquito. Oh, is that what you guys hear every time you see a mosquito because I do.
Greg:
Joe: That felt very Raiders of the Lost Ark to me at that moment. Yeah.
Greg: Got acquired for like that one part. Yeah. We’ll get the mosquito choir. It’ll be I’m guessing.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of like the room where they put the, the staff of RA.
Greg: The. Yeah, totally.
Greg: Might have been the same thing.
Scott: Yeah. The map room. Just a little different.
Greg: So John Williams has done the music for almost every Steven Spielberg movie. He I don’t think he did dual like his first movie. And he has more seen dual Steven Spielberg’s first. It was like a TV movie. Basically joyride, Jersey, that movie joyride, where there was the truck who was after Paul Walker.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s basically a movie where there’s a truck that is the shark from jaws. Okay. But it was a TV movie. But then they added a couple minutes to it and released it in theaters in Europe. And they were like, hold up, what’s this like did really well over there. People were like, what is this movie? His first theatrical movie was The Sugarland Express, and I think that was with John Williams.
Greg: What’s your take on John Williams?
Scott: He’s like the Beatles, the. Yeah, soundtracks, like so many hits. Yeah, so many melodies that I’ve ingrained in our life. I mean, and this movie, just how many times have you been, like, done? Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah. So simple but catchy as hell. Because I think like, I mean, you know, used to be a part of writing pop songs.
Scott: Sure. I mean, I know maybe we were just normalized pop songs as a jingle or it’s epic and stuff like that. But then to take out words and you just simply have an orchestra, it’s so magical to have, like the Raiders, it’s stuck in your head or Star Wars or, you know, all of these amazing soundtracks. Like, it’s for me as a non-music maker, I’m just like, I have no idea what you’re doing.
Scott: I don’t know how your brain works. I don’t know how you think about this stuff. Yeah. What kind of deals with the devil did you make it so aggressive?
Joe: Here’s the soundtrack to my childhood. And a lot of ways. Yeah. You know, he’s the second person I think of when you think of Steven Spielberg. I think of John Williams.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, because.
Joe: It’s just like they are. They are linked together to me in my mind. And so many perfect moments. I remember being in Costa Rica at like this place. I just was like I was waiting for a dinosaur to come out. And I was whistling the Jurassic Park theme and it was, you know, but I was like, he’s the Hans Zimmer before Hans Zimmer.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Of movie soundtracks.
Scott: You’re saying he did all the movie soundtracks, so he did like the music for Poltergeist and War Horse, and I know he did hook. I’m trying to think of like other Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List. Did he do the soundtrack for Schindler’s List?
Greg: He did. Yeah. You got the he got the Oscar for it. There might be a movie or two that he hasn’t done, because he was busy with either Harry Potter or the Star Wars movies, but I think I think it’s all of them.
Scott: He did all the Harry Potter movies.
Greg: He did the first one and maybe the second one, and then they kind of followed in his footsteps.
Scott: Yeah. So he kind of created the. Yeah. The jingle. Amazing.
Greg: It’s nuts. There’s a great documentary on Disney Plus right now about him. Oh I’ll totally watch that. And it is like get ready to have music. Like just bring you to tears. It’s like, oh, this is what my childhood sounded like. This is unbelievable. But like, there’s so many themes in there. It’s like Star Wars, the Superman theme, when you hear you’re like, oh, I had Superman to that soundtrack growing up.
Greg: You know? But like, I was such a Steven Spielberg fan that I followed him all the way throughout the 80s. I mean, he was the first person I noticed had a director credit. You know, when I saw jaws, I was like, how is this movie making me feel this way? Even though this is a big, stupid broken shark in this movie that you kind of can’t see, how are they doing this?
Greg: Like a magic trick? Yeah. And part of it was John Williams was putting that music together. Yeah. And so you just kind of can’t disconnect him from those things. So like, I owned the Empire of the sun soundtrack. Like, I was the kid that had Empire of the sun. The poster on my wall growing up. I think the reason that I’m a graphic designer is because I fell asleep every night and woke up every morning staring at movie posters on my wall, just picking out how they were created.
Scott: Can I tell you a quick story about music? Of course. When I lived in Houston, a friend of mine did a lot of work with the astronauts down there, and he goes, hey, I’m going with one of the astronauts, Mike Masimo, and we’re going to the Switchfoot Goo Goo Dolls concert because.
Greg: Mike.
Scott: Took a Switchfoot album up into space, and we’re going to give it to the band. Do you want to come? And I was like, the answer is obviously yes.
Greg: I have so many questions.
Scott: So we go to this concert and we go backstage. Sure, we’re in this room, and then Switchfoot comes in, okay, the nicest dudes, and shake hands. And then it’s so that he shows photos. I have like pictures of this, of their album, like in a window, looking at the planet Earth.
Greg: What album are we talking about?
Scott: Beautiful letdown was the.
Greg: Album that is incredible.
Scott: And then he says this. This is the part he goes, astronauts see sites that very few human beings have ever seen.
Greg:
Scott: And he’s like, music is actually really important to us because we’ve seen such unbelievable things. And then when we come back to Earth we’re trying to remember those things. And he’s like, music is actually a way that really helps to remember how you felt when you were seeing those sites. And it becomes a placeholder for those experiences.
Scott: Wow. And as you’re saying that, I’m like, that’s exactly what a soundtrack is, because I, I had the Raider soundtrack on a cassette tape and we’d go on road trips, and I watched Raiders so much that I could play the soundtrack and play the movie in my mind while I was sitting in a minivan driving through like, Oregon somewhere, you know, like I it became a placeholder for that experience of watching that movie as a soundtrack.
Scott: I think they become that kind of holder for those emotions and those experiences of seeing it on a big screen or seeing that movie for the first time, and that kind of always pulls you back to that.
Greg: Well, we went to space.
Greg: And back.
Greg: And that story switch was.
Greg: Switch foot was involved. That was on the Amazon.
Greg: And that was.
Scott: Us.
Greg: So Johnny Resnick, give us some Johnny Resnick stories.
Scott: I don’t I mean, I didn’t meet them. They were backstage, I didn’t meet them. But here’s if you don’t know, everybody kind of knows who the Googoo dolls are. Yeah. From their radio hits. But that’s not.
Greg: Who the Goo Goo Dolls are.
Scott: Greg knows where I’m going with this story. Johnny Resnick has a brother, who looks like this is so bad. He’s a beautiful human being, but he looks like worm tongue from the Lord of the rings trilogy. He is the Danny DeVito to Arnold Schwarzenegger twins, and so half the band is his music, which is not radio pop hits, right?
Scott: It is kind of this, like punkish, kind of badly sound like you. You want to go disco with me? And Johnny Resnick loves it. He plays lead guitar along his brother. So half the concert is like most of the people there are people who have heard Black Balloon or On the Fly listen on the radio. And so during those songs, they’re like standing up singing, and then they’ll go into the brothers song and you just slowly watched the audience sit down.
Scott: And by the time everybody sit in, Johnny wrestling is like, come on.
Greg: Babes, that blew me. I never say.
Scott: Never, but gets back up.
Greg: Again. Amazing.
Greg: One guy in the back is like, your songs will never go to space.
Greg:
Joe: Just a side note on, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s one of my favorite movies that, someone mentioned. This is the years ago with Harrison. Ford’s character has actually no bearing on the outcome of that movie that, like, he could remove him completely from the movie. And it’s the same ending.
Greg: Scott’s thinking about it for the guys on arms feeling no, defensive?
Scott: No. I’m thinking it through because all the Nazis would have died anyways.
Joe: Yeah, because they open up the Ark.
Scott: He captures it, but they steal it off the boat. Yeah, I guess the only thing is he contacted them about what was happening. So then that the Americans could get it versus it just resting in an island desert. I don’t know, that’s really funny, though.
Greg: So it’s funny.
Joe: I haven’t watched it since then, but it’s because I love that movie as a kid. I still love that movie, and it’s definitely a movie we’ll do on. So we’ll have you back for Raiders of the Lost Ark and we’ll see.
Scott: I love it, I will say Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s like what you’re saying about Jurassic Park when you’ve obsessed with the movie and you’ve seen it so many times, then you start filling the holes in it.
Greg: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Scott: And you’re like, oh, that wouldn’t have worked out.
Greg: I just my only pushback to this is that if he hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have learned a little something about himself. Yeah.
Joe: That’s right. It’s about the friends you make along the way.
Greg: Yeah. He never would have, like, reconnected with Marianne.
Greg: Yes. That’s true.
Greg: Okay, so here’s the first thing I thought when I saw Sam Neill in Jurassic Park. I guess Harrison Ford said no.
Greg: So we’ll put on the hat. Yeah.
Greg: I don’t know who this guy is, but, you know, he’s basically another Harrison Ford. But then I actually really, really, really love Sam Neill. I really love him in this movie. I love him and everything I’ve ever seen him in. I’ve seen him in a bunch of movies. I think Sam Neill bring something to this that Harrison Ford couldn’t have.
Greg: Yeah, because.
Scott: Sam Neill is not a brawler, right? Yeah, that’s a good point. Like, how did he get the lead of this movie?
Greg: That’s a great question. I have no.
Scott: Idea. Which became huge because he’s like a gritty archeologist, but he’s like a academic too. Yeah, yeah. Like everybody in this movie is really smart. Maybe not the Hunter guy, but he seems like he’s like a trained, experienced, like Hunter, ex-military. Even the guy who, like, betrays them all. He’s a genius. Samuel Jackson’s very smart. Like, everybody’s really smart in this movie, which is a funny, because then they’re also smart that they were dumb enough to make a park with.
Greg: Dinosaurs, right? Right.
Greg: Muldoon. That’s his name.
Greg: Muldoon. Yes. Muldoon. Shoot.
Scott: Shoot. Great for a sequence.
Greg: Great for a sequence. Just like jaws.
Greg:
Joe: Yeah. I remember trying to watch this movie with my son when he was like three.
Greg: Oh, no.
Joe: We couldn’t even get through that scene. Yeah. And you don’t see anything. It’s like a classic spellberg. Right. All like weird smoke in in the trees and back lit and you don’t see anything, but it’s scary. And we’re like, okay, we’re watching something else.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is so much light in this movie. That’s one note I have about this movie from 1993 is what were they thinking with the lights in this movie? There’s so much light everywhere. It’s. I think it’s overlit in my mind.
Scott: You mean like at night with, like, the big lamps and everything’s just every scene?
Greg: Is Overlit the cinematographer on this movie? His name’s Dean Cundey. And he only made two movies with Steven Spielberg. He made hook, which was this movie before this, which, you know, divisive movie for people, and then this movie. And this year, in 1993, Steven Spielberg released two movies, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, and on Schindler’s List. Steven Spielberg met Janusz Kaminski.
Greg: Like the famous DP they’ve worked together on, I don’t know. Let me just read those here. Oh, yeah. Everything Steven Spielberg has done since then, he been a DP ever since.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: So Dean Cundey was not around and he Janusz Kaminski is such an interesting DP. If you watch Steven Spielberg’s movies in like the last 15 years, it’s like, where is that wall of light coming from? Actually, you know what, I don’t care. It just looks so rad. Yeah. Let Janusz be on English.
Scott: Yeah, I heard an interview. It was when, Steven Spielberg was on, Smart List, and he talked about while he was making Jurassic. He had been thinking about Schindler’s List, and it was like while they were in, like, post-production, he didn’t even finish doing, like, all the final stuff. He, like, gave it to his assistant because he knew he needed to do Schindler’s List, like, right away.
Scott: They had kind of finished editing it, but they needed to do some, like, sound and other things like that. And he, like, immediately started on pre-production of Schindler’s List.
Greg: No, I think he went to go shoot it.
Scott: Or so they were making it at the same time.
Greg: Yeah, like all of the post-production on this movie, which was pretty extensive. After they decided we’re going to do CGI, that kind of pushed it back quite a bit, even though it was only like 60 something shots. It took him two years to do those, and it took it takes like one year to do 2500 shots on a movie now because computers are so amazing.
Greg: Yeah. So I mean, like the post-production of this movie, he was basically doing Schindler’s List, which, oh my gosh, how can you as a person, first of all, do that back to back? But like, how could you be filming Schindler’s List and being like, oh yeah, that’s right. I got to get some notes on my dinosaur movie. Unbelievable.
Greg: So he takes a three year break, and then he makes The Lost World and Amistad in 96.
Scott: He just likes to put sci fi and sad historical realities together.
Greg: Yeah, it’s like a little.
Scott: Like, balancing act. Yeah. What a talented man. Maybe it helps in the contrast. I don’t know, you know, I could see how that was, like, going in on science and fantasy and this other thing, and then just go, I want to go something that’s like, really personal, really like about people and reality and kind of like spanning both of those, those things.
Scott: Maybe it maybe it’s like a really it’s cathartic to kind of move from one to the other.
Greg: He’s 18 years after jaws. He’s like 20 years after Duel and Sugarland Express. So he knows how to do this. In fact, like when he was making movies, you know, leading up to this, his 80s were pretty crazy. Like Quincy Jones got him to make The Color Purple, which was a lot of book, and he kind of gave like the watered down.
Greg: He only did the stuff he was comfortable with from that book, which meant like, he kind of didn’t do the whole book. Yeah, but Quincy Jones was like, if we want this movie to really get made and get put, put out, let’s get Steven Spielberg to make it. His famous thing is, he always has like five movies ready to go.
Greg: And then when it seems like the lightning is going to strike one of them, he takes that and shoots it. But like every movie that’s ever been made in Hollywood history, in the last 50 years, Steven Spielberg was originally attached to, interstellar was written for Steven Spielberg. Wow. He worked on it for years, which is why it’s like the most Spielberg Nolan movie.
Greg: Yeah, I just think it’s amazing. After, like, Empire of the sun, he, you know, makes a super emotional movie. He discovers Christian Bale in that movie, a young Christian Bale, but it didn’t make any money. And critics were like, it’s perfectly made, but what on earth is this? And I was like, who cares? I’m a little kid and it’s about a little kid.
Greg: Let’s do this.
Scott: John Malkovich is in there.
Greg: Yeah. Wow.
Greg: Good.
Scott: Paul, I remember watching that movie. I kind of want to revisit it because it’s been such a long time. It’s about British prisoners during the war between China and Japan. Yeah, and it’s at the prison camp.
Greg: Yeah. It’s like through the eyes of a kid. Yeah. Anyways, this all leads up to, Harrison Ford was not in this movie. Sam Neill was in this movie. Indiana Jones hates snakes. Sam Neill, the whole movie is just talking about things he hates. He hates kids. He hates trees. As he’s climbing that tree, he says, I hate trees, I hate climbing, and I hate heights.
Greg: It’s like just three all. He’s like a I’m better than Harrison Ford.
Greg: For things.
Greg: That he goes up in that tree and they’re doing wide open shots to bring wonder again. Because, you know, the dinosaurs that visit them, they eat trees, not kids. Although those dinosaurs totally should have killed them while they were sitting in the tree, right?
Scott: Oh, man. But if they’re asleep and then just plumes like, their legs gone, and it’s just like chewing spits it out.
Greg: But we got Disney movie music on, so it’s all fine.
Scott: I mean, one of them sneezes on next.
Greg: So yeah, that’s what you get for being an older sister. But then how many days later is it while he’s sitting in the tree from when he was talking to that kid in the Badlands at the beginning of the movie? Is it like two days later?
Joe: Probably two.
Greg: He’s had that raptor claw in his back pocket the entire time in the movie, and it’s just now starting to bother him while he’s sitting in the tree.
Greg: Yeah, I was like, what’s just now?
Greg: It’s a mess for Greg.
Joe: Obviously it.
Greg: Is.
Joe: His hatred of kids is in that claw.
Scott: Oh yeah, that is it. That is it.
Greg: It’s amazing that he throws away in that scene, actually, because that’s the real way. I think if you.
Scott: Gave it to the kid, yeah, he would have been like, oh my gosh, what a great souvenir.
Greg: But like this island has like fake dinosaurs on it, you know, that are part frog that was like a real one. Why would he get rid of that?
Scott: I mean, at least be a middle aged man and put it on a necklace and tie it around?
Greg: I don’t know, like.
Joe: That’s totally a souvenir. You get it? Like Margaritaville.
Greg: And.
Greg: Wait, can I tell you guys a marker? Reidsville. Sorry.
Scott: Absolutely.
Greg: So my work gets together once a year. Everybody works remotely at the company that I work for. One time, we got together in Palm Springs at Margaritaville, which was the old Riviera. Who’s the guy that Margaritaville is based on?
Scott: Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Buffett.
Greg: So it’s like, Jimmy, I don’t know anything about Jimmy Buffett as a person, but it’s like Jimmy Buffett. Instagram posts on TVs everywhere, like what Jimmy’s up to today.
Scott: Oh my gosh.
Greg: And it’s just all like Jimmy Buffett it out. And I don’t really understand that world, but everyone that is there except the people I work with are the whole time I’m there, I was like, who is this for? I don’t understand Margaritaville at all and means really nice to be in Palm Springs. This place is great, but who is Margaritaville for?
Greg: And then on the last day we were there, it was like the day we were going to fly out. I decide, you know, I don’t need to like, dress up. I don’t need to have like a button up shirt anymore. I’m not really gonna see anybody from work. I’m just going to fly out. And so I put on some shorts and some flip flops and a t shirt.
Greg: Because I’m in Palm Springs, it’s kind of warm, and my shorts are like the old shorts that, like, you don’t really want anybody to see you in anymore. They were like camo cargo shorts.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: So I put on these camera not even thinking they’re just like my this is what I do the yard in. And so I put on my camo cargo shorts and flip flops t shirt. I step out the door with my bag and like a hundred people who look exactly like me, walk by my room in that moment, like 100 men with cargo shorts that are camo and flip flops like, man, I was like, oh my gosh, this play for me.
Greg: Oh no. Is this what I am?
Scott: You’re wasting away.
Greg: I’m wasting.
Scott: Away, wasting away.
Greg: Yeah. All right. So Joe, start this from the beginning to set the scene. Okay.
Joe: So we find out Sam Neil is on the run with the kids, and they discover the eggs, and they discover that the dinosaurs are breeding, and then it’s like, oh, because they’re using amphibian DNA and amphibian DNA comes from male, the female or female to male. That’s all well and good. Why does he smell the egg shell? It is so gross and unnecessary.
Greg: I collect that as well.
Joe: I don’t know what’s going on there, what the thought process was, but it was off putting for sure.
Scott: Oh, I got to think that it’s because in a career where everything’s millions of years old and it’s just fossil, there’s no smells, there’s no visuals, there’s no. So he’s just like taking it all in. Even the grossest stuff, like he probably like, you know, like hugged that triceratops and then was like, I mean, you know, fingertips to his nose, like, what does it smell like?
Joe: Like all right, I’ll allow it. All right, I’m back in. All right. There’s also a scene when they’re in the lab and the egg is hatching.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And they’re all uncomfortably close together. Like having this conversation.
Greg: Yes.
Joe: It’s like no one has a conversation that deep, that close together.
Greg: So I totally thought like, oh my gosh, it must be so uncomfortable to be an actor and have to pretend like this is a normal conversation when you’re inches from two people’s noses.
Scott: Oh, that’s so good.
Greg: Yeah, I guess there’s all kinds of videos on YouTube about film school of the Visual language of Jurassic Park. And, apparently whenever the people are together, they share a frame in a certain way to show community or something. And whenever there’s a dinosaur, they take like the bottom half and the dinosaur is like taking up the rest, and it’s all big wide shots.
Greg: And whenever they have an idea, there’s a light behind them.
Joe: Awesome.
Scott: Oh yeah. Like during the dinner. And so the projectors are lights behind them. That’s a great looking scene. That scene is amazing looking.
Greg: But why are there projectors in that room?
Scott: And they’re just showing like old pictures of dinosaurs. And then the drawings of the, like, hotels and stuff like that.
Greg: Yeah. There’s like a Continental Airlines.
Scott: There’s never like, here’s all of our dinosaurs, you know, because Sam Neill’s character would just been like, hold on was you have that one, you have a nuclear swords. Whoa.
Greg: It’s like a sales presentation that they’re eating dinner in the middle of or something.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s the timeshare at the end though.
Greg: Yeah.
Scott: This many points a year staying in one of our many luxurious dinosaur hideaways.
Greg: But still kind of cool. Probably a soundstage in London but whatever.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Spared no expense. Can we talk about spared no expense for a second. Sure I love it. I love it every time he says it. We haven’t talked about Richard Attenborough.
Joe: Yeah, I mean, if you’re playing, I mean, that’s got to be a drinking game. If you don’t have that as one of your drinking games, then did you even watch this movie?
Greg: Wow. I feel a lot of shame right now.
Joe: Yeah. You should.
Greg: Yeah, I had that. I have that in mind. This guy’s.
Greg: Writing something.
Greg: Down.
Greg: Here’s why I loved it though. At the end, when they’re sitting eating ice cream because they’re sad, they’re eating their emotions. And she says, that’s pretty good or not bad. He says, we spared no expense. And I was like, damn straight, you you spent big on the ice cream. That’s right. You’re a proper gentleman.
Greg:
Greg: What’s the most expensive ice cream you guys buy.
Joe: Bubbly Ben and Jerry’s.
Greg: Yeah. Not on sale.
Scott: I got like a good Tillamook. Tillamook I love that neopolitan so good.
Greg: It’s the it’s a triple threat. Yeah, it really is. That’s the original trilogy.
Scott: Although Holly did eat out all the chocolate and, well. And that is in The Simpsons where Homer’s like looking for ice cream. That’s right. And then there’s, like, two Neapolitans. The chocolate’s gone. And then he looks in the other one. The truck is gone. He’s like, Marge, we’re out of ice cream.
Joe: Hold on. We need to have the conversation. It’s bad about ice cream for a second because, as you know, Greg and I met scooping ice cream.
Scott: Oh that’s right.
Greg: Yes, yes.
Joe: What is the right proportion in a Neapolitan of chocolate to vanilla to strawberry? Because it is not, in my opinion, a third, a third, a third.
Scott: You’re right. Yeah. You should you should definitely make more chocolate. But we’ll see. My daughter loves the vanilla and the strawberry. I like them all equally, but I would love to see some tests where we kind of maybe go 70% of that. We’ll.
Joe: I think it’s at least 50% chocolate. And then you can kind of play with the vanilla and the strawberry.
Scott: But no, I think you’re exactly right. Did we just make ourselves $1 million?
Joe: Which is I think we did it.
Scott: It’s it’s a free podcast.
Greg: I don’t think it’s called Neapolitan. It’s called Stop it with the thirds. There is a moment when you’re eating Neapolitan and you’re like, oh, me and vanilla again.
Greg: Yeah.
Scott: How would that scene been different if it was other kinds of desserts.
Greg: Instead of ice cream.
Scott: Like it was? Cakes might be a have done it, but what if it was like all creme brulée?
Greg: Then it’s just.
Scott: Like breaking tap tap tap tap tap tap. And it’s pretty good. Spared no expense.
Greg: Who is the chef? Was it Alejandro?
Greg: Because the chef. Yeah.
Scott: Oh, I don’t know. Does he die too in the remake?
Joe: He does because he’s there like with his little blowtorch on the creme brulée. And then he’s a he’s raptor made for sure.
Scott: At least as a weapon against the dinosaurs. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, that’s way better. The spoon. Jeni’s. Have you guys ever had Jenny’s ice cream from Columbus, Ohio? Absolutely. Joe, do you know what we’re talking about right now?
Joe: I don’t. You had me an ice cream.
Scott: Oh, man. They had it in Austin when I live there. It’s amazing.
Greg: It’s in Nashville. It’s all over the South. Yeah. You need to get to the store and, buy some Jeni’s. I think they have it at Qfc here in Seattle. It’s like $9 for a pint. It’s often on sale. And get the peanut butter and chocolate. It’s pretty good. Okay, so Laura Dern, she goes from talking to Richard Attenborough, and then they go to like, that bunker, and she has to go find Samuel Jackson.
Greg: We haven’t talked about Samuel L Jackson yet. Yeah. He was going to go like reset the the parks to get the fences going again.
Scott: And he doesn’t respond. So she has to go right.
Greg: How did you guys feel in 2025 watching a movie from 1993 with Samuel Jackson. Just be like, oh my gosh, this guy has been incredible our entire lives.
Scott: Well, his like breakout performance was in 1991, in Spike Lee’s film Jungle Fever. So he had been acting, but kind of Jungle Fever was like his big moment.
Greg: You don’t count school days,
Joe: Or Do the Right thing.
Greg: Or mo better blues.
Scott: According to the internet.
Scott: That guy that was listing when people became famous after their 40s, he was like 43 in Jungle Fever. And that was kind of like. When did Pulp Fiction come out? Was Pulp Fiction after this.
Greg: 94.
Scott: 90 fit? Okay, so he had been acting and stuff, but like Jungle Fever was like, whoa. And then he gets in this film and then he probably gets in Pulp Fiction. So yeah. So to look at it’s Samuel Jackson. Yeah. But you’re like, oh, you’re just the you’re the black computer guy who’s like the first one to die, the first one to know the lawyers, the first one.
Greg: Well, no. In the opening scene, we see a guy. Oh, yeah.
Scott: I got this.
Greg: Yeah, that causes the lawsuit. That brings the lawyer.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Sam Neill says, you know that Samuel Jackson is going to die because he’s smoking. And that’s rule number one in dinosaur movies. If you’re smoking the whole movie, you’re going to die.
Joe: Yeah. I have to say, as a former smoker, I was paying attention more to his cigarets the entire time. Yeah, than I was, because.
Scott: It’s just dripping off that lip.
Joe: Yeah, and I didn’t like that. I. And there are people that could do that. I was not one of those people. So yeah.
Greg: I respect people that can. It’s a that’s an art form.
Joe: It is definitely an art form. And there are clear moments where I was paying more attention to that of like the continuity of the cigaret and how much had been smoked then?
Scott: Yes. Me too. Yes.
Joe: How many takes did they do in this scene, and how many cigarets did Samuel L Jackson have to smoke in there? So that’s where I was. And all of his scenes, basically.
Greg: I wonder if he must smoke, right? So he was just like smoke the whole time. This will be the best moment. Like, he’s famous for only being in movies that has a golf course nearby.
Greg:
Greg: So if there’s a golf course nearby like he’ll golf the whole time they’re filming the movie and go to set when they need them for something. That’s why he was in Deep Blue Sea. There was a really nice golf course close by by the way.
Joe: It’s on set for like three days.
Greg: And like.
Joe: Seven rounds of golf.
Greg: Oh my gosh, his whole career is.
Scott: Actually why he was in all these movies is just because of golf courses, not because of the script.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Unbelievable. He’s so awesome. I think he’s great in this movie. I think he’s incredible. It’s no mystery why Samuel Jackson became Samuel L Jackson. When you’re watching this film, do we ever hear if people actually did hold onto their.
Greg: Butts.
Greg: We never followed through on that. Should be that should be a post-credit scene.
Scott: Guys, I was a camp counselor at my kid’s, summer camp this year, and it was Jurassic Park themed, was dinosaur themed. Oh, wow. And our cabin name was hold on to Your butts.
Greg: That’s awesome.
Scott: I wanted to make t shirts of just Samuel Jackson with the cigaret hanging out.
Greg: And that was.
Scott: Our captain’s shirt. Got struck down.
Greg: They said, no, that’s ridiculous.
Scott: Everybody should try to do that one time.
Joe: Smoke, I agree.
Scott: When I was in my 20s, I backpacked Europe with a friend, and we had this card game that we do to pass the time between trains. And like one time I remember we were like, okay, we’re going to play this whole card game and you can’t take your cigaret out of your mouth. You just have to do the whole thing, smoking all the way to the end without you.
Greg: Ever taking it out of your mouth.
Scott: It’s very hard to do it.
Joe: It’s very hard to do.
Scott: Yeah, there’s a lot of,
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Speaking of, like, traveling in train stations, I was on a Greyhound bus between Seattle and Bellingham one time. We stopped in, like, Arlington or Mount Vernon or something, and a woman who was sitting in my row on the bus got off the bus and sat down. It was really hot day. And when they turned off the bus at this stop, it was really, like uncomfortably warm inside the bus.
Greg: But we’re going to leave in a minute. So I didn’t get out and I was watching her through the window, and she was sitting down and she smoked a cigaret where every time she breathed in, she breathed in on the cigaret and then blew out like, what’s that called again? Change.
Scott: I just, like, changed.
Greg: Well, she smoked a two cigarets.
Greg: Wow.
Greg: In. Out in out in out. And as I was watching her was so warm in the bus, I started to feel ill because I’d never seen somebody do this before. But then I was just like, this is kind of an honor to watch. Like, this is not something that you can just, like, I don’t even know if you could pay somebody to do this.
Greg: Like, this is just. I’m so lucky that I get to see this. But then when she got back on the bus, I was like, I might be a reason not to do it, because this.
Greg: Whole bus.
Scott: Kind of just reeked. Just reeks so bad.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Man, that’s like me with coffee. That’s how I drink coffee in moments. I chain smoked coffee. All right, Laura Dern, she, is about to take off and see what’s up with Samuel Jackson. Richard Attenborough starts to have kind of a moment where he is like, maybe I should go and not you. And, a kind of hilarious moment happens.
Greg: Let’s just do it.
Greg: You don’t. For me really going. Why? I’m, And your eyes and locks. Come on, let’s go. We can discuss sexism and survival situations when I get back and just take me through this step by step. I’m on channel two. But you.
Greg: I feel like sexism in survival situations was a better title for this movie.
Greg:
Joe: Maybe for this podcast too, you know, great.
Greg: Name for this podcast. We haven’t talked about the stunts in this movie. This is something we celebrate on this on this show. Scott.
Scott: Okay, okay.
Greg: It turns out that I love movies and Joe loves movies. And a lot of times it has to do with the actors. A lot of times it has to do with the director. But a very consistent thing in all of the movies that we love is they will have the same stunt coordinator or second unit director.
Scott: Oh wow.
Greg: Okay, people are actually filming the action scenes. This movie had a second unit director and stunt coordinator. His name is Gary Hines, and he later worked on like speed to Sudden Death with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Yeah, Batman Begins the town. I mean, this guy’s this guy’s resume is a mile long, but most, most, most importantly, this guy worked on Fast five, the fifth Fast and Furious movie.
Joe: The best Fast and Furious movie ever made.
Greg: Will be getting a fast five. Are you kidding me? So, Gary Himes, nice work. We got cars falling apart. We got, cars going over edges. We got cars going down trees. Gary brought it, and we appreciate you for it. All right, Joe, it occurs to me that there’s a chance that some people might be listening to this episode, and they have actually never seen Jurassic Park, so let’s pretend like it’s 1993 and you’re walking down the halls of your local video store trying to figure out what VHS tape you should rent.
Greg: You’re picking up the boxes off the shelf. You’re reading the back of them. You’re trying to figure out, I don’t know, what am I in the mood for tonight? That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. When an eccentric billionaire resurrects dinosaurs and tries to turn it into an amusement park, a group of scientists must race to save themselves and all those still on the island. Compounding the challenges is a massive storm bearing down on them all, with the power out and vicious dinosaurs on the loose, can this ragtag team of scientists get to safety?
Joe: Or will they just become another victim of the hubris of man?
Greg: Oh wow.
Greg: You’ve got a very deep.
Greg: At the end. I think I rented yeah.
Joe: Yeah. Hell yeah, you do.
Scott: That should have been on a crew shirt at this filming. Die of the hubris, man.
Greg: All right, well, I think I rented every time that I read the back of that box. That was perfect philosophical marketing right there. But, Joe, let’s get your honest take on what Jurassic Park is. Let’s get the real back of the box.
Joe: Okay? Watch as the creatures who ruled the earth millions of years ago clash with humans in a modern day retelling of Icarus. Will there be a safety net or will we fall and crash into the earth? Or is this a retelling of the Emperor’s New Clothes, where no one will tell rich people? No. And that has massively dire consequences for everyone?
Joe: Or is this just the best dinosaur disaster film ever? The answer is yes on all fronts.
Greg: Wow, man, that’s solid.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: I didn’t even think about the no one will tell the rich no while I was watching this. That’s a solid thing to call out there.
Joe: Yeah, he’s just this weird billionaire who’s like, come to my island, I have to show you something. And everyone’s like, okay.
Greg: Yeah.
Scott: It’s only it’s like one of the last lines of the movie where he’s like, I’ve given my recommendation. It’s a no or something like that. And then he’s like, I agree. And then they drive off. So they have something like that. It’s like the only time they say.
Greg: No, it should have been, I agree for three years. And he stares at the camera and winks, think.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: I’ll see you on The Last World.
Scott: Until the Indian board of directors has something to say about this.
Greg: And I agree about sight a.
Greg: I.
Greg: Guess side view is a different story. Oh my gosh, they get to say B being a thing so fast in the last world. I famously don’t read books because I’m always waiting for the movie. But when we were talking about doing The Last World, I started listening to the Last World book as well. After watching it. You know, guys, books are kind of amazing.
Greg: Well, it was pretty good.
Greg: I was like, there is really something to this. I might want to look at this.
Joe: It might be another t shirt for you.
Greg: Books are kind of amazing. All right, let’s get into, the box office and the reviews of this movie before we get to drinking games. This movie, it had a budget of $63 million, which in 93 was a that’s a lot of money, not quite like cliffhanger budget, but pretty high. It grossed $978 million worldwide.
Joe: Oh wow, I did.
Greg: Well, it’s like you’re saying so.
Scott: Well, Joe.
Greg: What do you think the tomato rating is on Jurassic Park? On Rotten Tomatoes? What do the critics think of this?
Joe: I mean, it feels like a 70 for us.
Greg: Yeah, probably a lot of people liked it, but some didn’t.
Joe: Use.
Greg: Like a 70.
Joe: But honestly, this has got to be like 93, 94.
Greg: What do you think, Scott?
Scott: Well, I kind of want to. Price is right you. But I think I’ll, I think I’ll go 87.
Greg: Scott Erickson, who famously was on The Price Is Right 91%. Wow.
Scott: You went over so I win.
Greg: That’s how I, I.
Greg: Mean, who knows what it was back then? I feel like there’s a lot of positive and negative reviews. You know, there’s a rose colored glass when it comes to, looking back on Jurassic Park on Rotten Tomatoes these days, but there are 250,000 people who have rated it on Rotten Tomatoes. What do you think the popcorn meter is, Joe?
Greg: The audience score.
Joe: This is like a 96.
Greg: It’s a 91.
Scott: Wow. 91 to 91.
Greg: 91 to 91.
Greg: Interesting. Let’s talk about what some of the critics said. We’ll start with our hometown paper. Jeff Shannon of The Seattle Times said, Jurassic Park is an astonishing success in one sense. In one sense only, it is the monster of all monster movies guaranteed to challenge weak bladders, flutter heartbeats and win automatic Oscars for the tech guru.
Greg: Awesome. Nailed it. Pretty good. That’s pretty good.
Scott: Test weak bladders.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: It’s got a bladder rating on this thing.
Greg: Oh.
Joe: Let’s see, your urologist is what this movie says. No.
Greg: Seattle Times getting straight to the chase on the bladder rating on this one thing.
Scott: I wear my oops, I crap my pants, I watch no.
Greg: Adam Mars-Jones from The Independent said an economic necessity of securing a PG certificate for what is essentially a horror movie that has been allowed to intervene in the storytelling so that the tone is consistently disrupted by an incongruous reassurance.
Joe: I think they missed the point on this movie.
Greg: Really?
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: My heart doesn’t say that, but I think my head did. After I watch this, I’m like, wow, we are all over the place with the tone on this one. Yeah. The Washington Post back then said, this is jaws with huge scaly ridges. At times it’s more frightening.
Joe: I think jaws scared me more than this movie.
Greg: Yeah, because jaws could happen.
Scott: In a water is like not your natural habitat. Whereas like walking around is where Hawaii is.
Greg: Yeah.
Scott: Shaka bro and their fictional characters. Even though jaws is supposed to be a megalodon or just a really big, great white shark. Yeah, it’s still real.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Let me read a couple more Empire magazine said clinch or no, there’s no getting around it. Quite simply, one of the greatest blockbusters of all time.
Joe: I agree with that.
Scott: Agreed.
Greg: Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1993, said, you want great dinosaurs, you got great dinosaurs. The Los Angeles Times in 1993, Kenneth Turan said, do the dinosaurs work? Indeed they do. Does anything else? Not really.
Greg: Wow.
Joe: Shots fired right there.
Greg: All right, Joe, should we get to drinking games?
Joe: Let’s do it. All right, so we have our stop drinking games. Silent helicopter. Oh, yes. Low flying helicopter. Also, conversations on a helicopter with no headphones all over the place.
Greg: In this movie.
Greg: Whispered conversations.
Joe: Yeah. Whispered. Yeah.
Greg: Needlessly low. Flying just over the water.
Joe: We have pushing and enhance for I gave that one to you for the storm coming in when they are doing the storm tracker and they’re looking at, you know, is it going to hit the island or not? I don’t have, two people sharing a slow motion look in the middle of chaos. No explosions or silent suffering in the ears.
Joe: We do have the opening credits or the opening title locking into place with a sound at the drumbeat in the score.
Clip: Oh.
Clip: This.
Clip: Oh.
Joe: So good.
Scott: That’s very Indiana Jones. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: We do not have flashback to dialog. I did give us CGI close calls, although this movie does it better than most. No great bad shots. There are no like real guns in this. There’s one in the opening scene. Yeah. And then I have inexplicably wet Jeff Goldblum chest.
Greg: Yes.
Greg: Hundred percent.
Joe: That’s okay. No, give us the room or Interpol. And so those are our stock drinking games.
Greg: How did no one say give us the room?
Joe: Missed opportunity all over the place.
Greg: Must be in the deleted scenes.
Scott: Have you ever in your life said, give us the room.
Greg: Oh, my gosh, I think it in every room that I’m in.
Greg: And I actually have said it when I walked into like, a company, you know, like meeting room full of people I’ve never met yet, people I hope to work with professionally in my future. I was like, hey, guys, can we get the room? I’m just joking.
Joe: All right, so I have a lot of drinking games, but I’m going to turn it over to you, Scott, to give us our first one.
Scott: Okay, great. This is the first thing I thought about when only one eye of dinosaurs showed.
Greg: Perfect. Can I explain this for a second, Joe? Just for anyone who hasn’t know our show before it, if you’re at a party and you’re assigning drinking games, you know Scott is assigning one person to the room, has to take a drink every time that happens. And we’re going to give you 100, seven more.
Greg: Games.
Greg: That you can assign to your friends in the room. Everybody gets their own drinking game in the room. Joe. What’s yours?
Joe: I also had shots of a dinosaur’s eye. Okay, so close up of an eye. Yeah, I have unnecessary smoke in the jungle as a drinking game.
Greg: Totally. Yeah. 4K doesn’t help this. And it is so overlit.
Greg: It’s just.
Greg: Ridiculous. I have any time we see from the camera sees something from the dinosaurs perspective. Occasionally the camera becomes the dinosaur just like it did the shark in jaws. Not a lot of times though. So that’s, it’s a pretty solid one for someone who’s going to drink like 3 or 4 times. What do you have?
Scott: Scott sang the full name of the dinosaur.
Joe: I love that I have any time. There’s, unnecessary close up of somebody’s mouth. Take a drink.
Greg: To,
Greg: Yeah, any time there’s the impact tremor on some water.
Greg:
Greg: Take a drink.
Joe: I had that as well.
Scott: Anytime you see a mosquito in the amber.
Greg: Oh I love it.
Greg: That’s awesome.
Greg: Solid.
Joe: I have the classic anytime they say spared no expense.
Greg: Oh that’s my next one.
Scott: That’s a great one.
Greg: Any time you see the Jurassic Park logo.
Scott: Wow. It’s
Greg: Kind of pops up. It’s on lunchboxes. It’s on jeeps?
Joe: Yeah, on things falling as they’re running out of the room at the end. Right. I have anytime they insult a lawyer, take a drink.
Scott: I have any silent expression, like overly done. It could be horror or even wonder. But when they like the glasses, like, like wide eyed or the velociraptor or like, yeah, anytime a maybe I should say a silent, wide eyed expression.
Greg: I love it, I love it. Any time a dinosaur kills someone.
Greg: Or.
Greg: Take a drink.
Scott: Okay, so right at the beginning you’re going for it. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Why did you kind of have an hour to recover?
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: I mentioned this one before, but obvious use of hats to describe a character’s like motivation. Take a drink.
Greg: Is that going to be obvious?
Joe: I think if you looked at everybody’s opening shots and the hats that they’re wearing, you go, okay, I know what that’s what the archetype of this character is.
Greg: I’m guessing her name is Lex based on a hat.
Greg: Yes. Good.
Scott: That’s actually my last one was anytime Malcolm makes Science sexy.
Joe: Oh, anytime. He speaks basically in this movie.
Scott: Anytime. He’s, like, talking about science, making it sexy.
Greg: My last one is every time Malcolm does a laugh, it’s like, ha.
Greg: Ha ha ha.
Joe: All right, this is going to get boring because I’m going to talk a lot now because I’m going to go through all of mine. I have, anytime there’s obvious product placement. So, like, anytime you see the barbasol shaving cream, can you take a drink any time you see Jeff Goldblum’s chest, take a drink. Right. Anytime he goes, before he says a line, make a drink.
Greg: It’s called that gold blooming.
Joe: Yeah. Gold blooming. I have Samuel L Jackson smoking. So like, when you’re just, like, paying attention. I’m smoking the entire time. I have shoes that that are clean, but shouldn’t be washed. So there’s a scene where Jeff Goldblum is sitting in the back of the Jeep. Yeah, they are running through the mud. Yep. But he’s sitting there and his shoes are completely clean.
Greg: Just totally fine.
Joe: And then there’s another scene where they’ve been running through like the jungle, and it’s clear that they’re on a soundstage and they’ve never worn these shoes except for that shot.
Greg: So oh my gosh, I love it.
Scott: So this is like a Long Island iced tea drinking game. Just like two good ones. Yeah.
Joe: Okay. Yeah. Exactly right. I have anytime you see tapping of talons of the dinosaurs toes take a drink. I have also snorting dinosaurs. So the velociraptors do a lot of snorting. And then. Sure.
Scott: Yeah.
Joe: And then this last one is a shout out to Laura Dern’s makeup artist. She is running around in this movie like crazy. But she’s never doesn’t have a bit of sweat on her, a bit of dirt. She has perfectly made up in every single shot. So this is just a shout out to her makeup artist.
Scott: That’s so good.
Greg: It’s very noticeable on the flight home at the end that she has not one scratch.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: It’s pretty ridiculous. By the way, she did go to that shack and like an arm falls on her. It was very much like that. The leg and jaws where you only see the leg. Yeah. And she says that it’s Samuel Jackson’s character and then it’s just the arm. Are we positive.
Scott: He was dead? Well, no, we don’t know. He’s dead. It just lost an arm.
Greg: I mean, he’s armless. We can say that much. All right, guys, let’s take a second and let Joe have the floor. It’s time for Joe’s trope Lightning Round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: We don’t have a lot, and I feel like I need to add or create a whole new trope list for, disaster films, but I put this kind of broadly into. But we do have friend, colleague, family member, usually a person of color who dies early in the film. I could be Samuel L Jackson. It could be the first person who dies.
Joe: Or you do have medical care from a partner, loved one or so. Jeff Goldblum’s injured. They make a comment about him getting shot up with morphine. I have the downloading a file under pressure, so restarting the computer under pressure.
Greg: Oh that’s close.
Scott: Great one.
Joe: Yeah. And then the storm coming in. So you know that’s kind of the last one. But not a lot of tropes in this one. Or at least not a lot of action movie tropes. Yeah it’s its own thing.
Greg: All right guys, I don’t even know if you’re ready for what’s about to happen here, but are you ready to answer the important questions about Jurassic Park?
Scott: Absolutely, yes.
Greg: Did this movie hold up then in 1993?
Scott: Yeah.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: 100%. Yeah, 100%. But does it hold up now?
Joe: Yeah, I think it still does. Not quite as much, but the falloff is not that steep in my opinion. But Scott, what do you think of that.
Scott: Yeah I agree with you. I mean it’s hard when it is a foundational piece to all movies we’re seeing today. Sure. So you’re like, oh, that seems kind of trophy or that’s been done before. It’s like, yeah, because this is where it came from.
Greg: Yeah. But this is still effective because it’s Steven Spielberg.
Scott: You know, a lot of times cars will be out of date, but we still see Jeep Wranglers all the time. They’ll see that version of a Ford Explorer, maybe not as much, but like, there’s not a lot of tech that’s like throwing it off. There’s not a lot of like cell phone use or anything like that that makes it go, I think they use like walkie talkies and stuff, but.
Greg: There’s still a lack of expense sparing.
Scott: Yeah. So there’s nothing that makes it look like so old because it’s tech wise. It just is like, yeah, here’s these people. They went to this place. Sure, there’s some older vehicles, but it doesn’t throw. It still holds up.
Joe: And I think I mean, we didn’t talk about it a lot, but there’s the iconic scenes of hearing the footsteps and then the water, and the scene where she’s eating the Jell-O. Yeah. Those are just iconic scenes that are referenced. AD nauseum now and everything else. Yeah, but you play that like, I get vicariously, like, nervous when I see that.
Joe: And The Simpsons, I think I’ve done this to like a million times over of just like the water drop. It’s so good. So.
Greg: In most movies that we watch, there’s a cinematic boom just for no reason. This movie, it’s happening because there’s a T-Rex walking around and that gives it extra points.
Joe: Exactly.
Scott: Did they ever learn how to tiptoe? I mean, how would it be if you just everywhere you walked, you’re just making glasses?
Greg: Yeah, that’s an adventure. 66 million years in the making.
Greg: Okay, give him.
Greg: A second, Scott. Come on.
Scott: I sneak T-Rex just like.
Greg: He played on.
Scott: Floorboards.
Greg: All right, guys, in Jurassic Park, how hard do they sell the good guy with dialog? Do they sell Sam Neill or Laura Dern or Malcolm Gladwell? Malcolm Gladwell, you knock them?
Joe: Not as much.
Scott: I can’t think of a Sam Neill monologue that’s in There’s No doctor, Alan Grant. Here’s my philosophy about everything. I mean, in fact, I would say Ian Malcolm does the the biggest one, which is just like the clip that we played. So he’s kind of like the I love this thing so much. I’ve dedicated my life to it.
Scott: And then I interacted with it and then I saw the terror of it, but I came out going, I still love it, and now I love kids.
Greg: I guess that’s the that’s that’s the.
Scott: And I’m not going to endorse your park.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Okay. But how hard do they sell the bad guy? The dinosaurs.
Scott: Oh, so harm.
Greg: Yeah. So much. It’s glorious in that way.
Scott: Which do you think they kind of try to redeem in the second one? Because they make them parents and you’re like, there’s two of them, but they’re parents. So yeah, you’d be mad if somebody stole your little T-Rex.
Greg: Oh yeah.
Scott: And then in Jurassic World, the fourth one, the T-Rex is like the savior.
Greg: Yeah, well, and he saves them at the end by getting the Raptors at this movie.
Joe: So really, the T-Rex might be the good guy. And this all long.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: The T-Rex is kind of like the King Kong figure, it turns out. All right, Joe, I feel like I should ask you this question. Why is there romance in this movie? Oh.
Joe: It’s beautiful. There’s hardly any, and that’s great. And then there’s Jeff Goldblum being list of total, like, douchebag sleazebag, like trying to hit on Laura Dern, which is awesome. So I’ll allow it in this movie. Just barely for the Jeff Goldblum exception.
Greg: So it’s like a pretty much a best case scenario. Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Greg: No, I don’t think we are.
Scott: No, we have good taste. Yeah, we have full hearts. We have.
Joe: Childhood wonder. That’s right. Can’t lose.
Greg: Yeah, we can’t lose that.
Scott: Put it all on black. Wesley Snipes is bad at all. I’m black. Is that okay? To reference quotes of Wesley Snipes on this about this movie?
Joe: Are you kidding me? Passenger 57.
Greg: Yes.
Joe: Always bet on black.
Greg: If there was ever a podcast to talk about passenger 57.
Joe: This is we got you.
Scott: Don’t worry, I knew it, I knew.
Greg: It a movie we will definitely get to a rare no for that question. Guys, does Jurassic Park deserve a sequel?
Joe: Deserve. Yes. Does it have the sequels it deserves? No.
Scott: Oh yeah.
Greg: Joe nailed it. Yeah, yeah I agree. Does it deserve a prequel? No. Scott never got to thinking about it.
Scott: Because, like what? What would the prequel be like? Another tragedy. It wouldn’t make sense. Jurassic Park when it makes sense. It would be a lot of mining and building infrastructure would be the prequel. It’d be like a making of documentary. How did he make this theme park?
Greg: So they actually watched the prequel on the tram?
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: I don’t know. I feel like if this really was an adventure 65 million years in the making, there probably a few good stories in the 65 million years.
Scott: Just straight dinosaur footage, like no people.
Greg: It’s like that movie flow that won Best Animated Feature this year, where it’s just a cat kind of experiencing the world, and it’s like that.
Scott: What was that Terrence Malick film that had Brad Pitt in it? But there’s like a whole dinosaur sequence in it. Tree of life? Yeah, it’s just that it’s just dinosaurs not talking.
Greg: But Brad Pitt, I’m in.
Greg: He’s there for some reason.
Greg: Maybe that’s what F1 is. It’s coming up the summer.
Greg: All right. Should this movie have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars? This is the year that Schindler’s List did win Best Picture, right? Yeah, but should this movie have been nominated alongside Schindler’s List?
Joe: I would have allowed it.
Greg: I’m a hard yes on this.
Joe: And for putting it up against Top Gun Maverick. Absolutely. And the Top Gun Maverick, except that this movie is so far superior that that movie.
Scott: Wait, did Top Gun Maverick get nominated for Best Picture?
Greg: That’s where this question came from. Joe was so livid that it was nominated for Best Picture that we had there included it was.
Joe: Oh yeah, I mean, I could spend another hour talking to you about how annoyed I am that Top Gun Maverick got a Best Picture nominated.
Scott: Oh my.
Greg: Gosh, it’s Hollywood.
Joe: And I love that movie. I love Top Gun Maverick. Like it’s great, but please stop it.
Greg: Steven Spielberg, when he saw a Tom cruise, he said, you saved Hollywood. And when he saw the first digital T-Rex walking or no, it was a flock of dinosaurs that he saw running digitally. He said, this is the future. And I feel like this might just be how Steven Spielberg talks all.
Greg: Day, every day.
Greg: He’s just captain hyperbole.
Greg: He gets.
Scott: Like a morning cappuccino, and he’s just like, you save coffee.
Greg: Because.
Greg: Best friend is like, well, you said that that day. But he also said it 100 other times.
Greg: I just have a feeling that everyone around Steven Spielberg just rolling their eyes constantly.
Scott: Or they’re like, I feel so encouraged all the time. Okay.
Greg: Guys, let’s get to some really difficult questions here. How can this movie be fixed? Which is hard for us to answer without also including who should be in the remake.
Joe: This is a rare moment for me. This is a perfect disaster film. I can’t think of anybody else I’d want in this or anything I’d change in this movie. So I would say keep it as it is, let it live on as what it is. Which is the best disaster film probably ever made.
Greg: Okay, what do you think, Scott?
Scott: You’re right. I mean, yeah, I thought about this today. Just like they tried to remake it and they put Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard and who are all phenomenal in their own right and what they do. And it’s a it’s a magical cocktail of Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum. Like they’re really great. And those kids. And it’s a great cast.
Scott: Yeah, it’s really hard to like imagine now because we have so much extra. I think they would have put like more tech in or other kinds of little things like devices, or I just think that it’s just like people on an island, on a Jeep and a Ford Explorer. I guess they did have the like, night vision goggles.
Scott: And yeah, that was the technology back then.
Greg: And the lysine deficiency.
Greg: Yes yes yes yes yes.
Joe: Greg, how do you make this movie about it. You probably have a good answer for us because we’ve totally sidestepped the question for you.
Greg: I don’t know, I would reign in the wild swings of the tone. I would also probably see if Janusz is available to do the lighting for the remake, but otherwise I think it’s pretty great. Yeah, so that’s how I would fix it. But I think if they were going to do a remake, what if they were able to use some blood from an old dinosaur bone that lets them now recreate prehistoric mosquitoes?
Greg: And you kind of do, a flip flop of it. And there’s just a movie where two people are sitting there having dinner and they’re just slapping their necks the whole time because, like, prehistoric mosquitoes are there in their arms.
Greg: Yeah, well.
Greg: They’re talking about something boring. I think we call it, my dinner with Andre to. And I think the person who’s talking to Andre is Samuel Jackson’s character, because he’s just talking the whole time about. Listen, you find an arm and you don’t think the the rest of the person is still around?
Greg:
Greg: I was there the whole time, guys.
Joe: That’s right. And he doesn’t. We clearly doesn’t need an arm to smoke, so.
Greg: Yeah, it’s fine.
Greg: That was harmless practice the whole movie.
Greg: Yeah.
Scott: I think if you’re going to, you don’t need an Andre. But if it was like two Sam’s for the Sam Rockwell and Samuel Jackson having a conversation while prehistoric mosquitoes attacked in The Greatest.
Greg: And they’re just slapping their neck in their arms whole time.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: All right, guys, what album is this?
Joe: I can jump in first. I have three. Oh, I have two from my wife, Jillian. Okay. She said the first one to just be the soundtrack to Jurassic Park because it’s so good.
Scott: Yeah, that’s.
Greg: Great, 100%.
Joe: She said. The other one to be rid of me by PJ Harvey, which is my favorite PJ Harvey album. Wow. Because you’re not rid of me. As in dinosaurs speaking to the dinosaurs.
Greg: That’s really.
Greg: Big.
Joe: Yeah. And then on my album is Dinosaur Jr Where Have You Been? Which came out 19, 1993. So those are the those are the options. So top of that is all I’m saying.
Greg: Yeah. Jay Mascots and new Jersey just showed up in our in our podcast. Scott what do you have.
Scott: Man this is the the question I was most intimidated by. Yeah. Because I know you guys are music benches. And I was just going to be like, I’m going to say something really like mainstream.
Greg: And
Scott: So I’m just going to go with it. So for you guys, I was thinking of this doesn’t fit in the way of like a new because like, Jurassic Park came out and was like, whoa, what a whole new genre. Yeah. The first thing that came to mind was like Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. And I think it also ties in with Life Finds a way because, you know, fun, live life, long live living.
Scott: But I felt like that album had such movements in kind of song types, minors and then like big ballads and then kind of a song that’s like half of one song and half of another kind of slam together. And I felt like the movie because it has such big swings and stuff, did it. But I remember like being in a coffee shop in Seattle when the album came out and just like everybody, like working, but listening to it and just going like, man, Chris Martin has he’s so good in this.
Scott: Like it’s just was just like this. Yes, this is good. This is enjoyable. And I don’t know, I just kind of remember that moment. And that’s what it made me think of.
Greg: When I was thinking about Jurassic.
Scott: Park. And then it was death and all his friends is how it ends, you know? It’s like everybody’s dying.
Greg: That’s awesome. Didn’t, they wanted Brian Eno to produce that album?
Scott: Yeah. So Brian Eno, they asked him to produce.
Greg: It, and he said no, he was like, I already done you two. Are you crazy?
Greg: Aren’t you guys? You two?
Greg: And then they just hounded him. So he’s like, okay, but I have to like, I get to say no to everything you want to do and I get to drive it. And they’re like, that’s fine. And so Brian Eno kind of like orchestrated that.
Scott: Oh, I didn’t know that they.
Greg: Had Chris Martin in one room in the studio writing songs on his own, and he had the rest of the band in another studio, like jamming. I think that’s how they did it. And then they would bring those two worlds together.
Scott: Interesting.
Greg: Anyways, okay, so it’s a movie that, like was amazing back then and is still amazing now. It mostly holds up, it’s still incredible, and I will watch it for the rest of my life. And I’m like surprised at how well this movie holds up. Honestly, it’s probably got to be, you know, Steven Spielberg and John Williams just doing their thing.
Greg: So it was definitely the beginning of something that still happens today in every movie. So I’m going to look back to 1993, just like you did, Joe. And I’m going to say that a movie that started something back then and is still amazing in a lot of ways, is Snoop Dogg’s first album, Doggystyle.
Joe: Wow. All right.
Greg: He did a song from Doggystyle on the SNL 50 like a couple weeks ago. Wow. Sometimes when I listen to that album, I’m like, oh my gosh, is that lyric always been in this song?
Greg: However, not really considered what that lyric was before, but I still have a soft spot for five songs on this album that will just culturally be relevant for the rest of time. So I feel like most everyone on the planet feels the same way about Jurassic Park, and I feel like most everyone on the planet feels the same way about Doggystyle.
Greg: So I’m going to say this movie is Snoop Dogg’s doggy style.
Scott: Great answer.
Greg: If you want to hear the songs that we picked for every movie, you can go to Great Bad Movies music, our playlist on Spotify and you will hear the most amazing.
Greg: Mix.
Greg: Of songs. Joe. Ever since we met, we’ve argued that like albums are in the wrong order. I wondered if you wanted to go to that playlist and like, put it in the right order.
Joe: Occasionally. Okay, I can do that.
Greg: Okay, great. Thanks. So it will be a Joe Skye Tucker curated order of Great Bad Movies music, which is about as good as it gets. All right guys, it has come down to it. It’s time for us to rate this movie. We have a scale. Great bad movie, good bad movie. Okay. Bad movie, bad bad movie. Worst case scenario that we have never used breaking glass in case of emergency.
Greg: Awful bad movie. Let’s start with you, Scott. What is Jurassic Park on this scale?
Scott: I’m going to say great, great movie, great, great movie.
Greg: You’ve already declared it.
Scott: Yeah, great. Great movie. I would watch it over and over again. Yes, I think it’s great.
Greg: That’s fair. I respect it, Joe. What do you.
Joe: Say? I am on the edge of great, great movie and great bad movie. I think I’m going to stick with great bad movie, but I could be talked into easily that this is a great, great movie. This is it’s one of a kind. It’s a movie that everyone should watch at least once. Where are you with this, Greg?
Greg: I hate being a tie breaker between you two because I agree with you both. I’m gonna say great bad movie.
Scott: Keep with the brand.
Greg: That’s right.
Joe: It’s good work, Greg.
Greg: All right, guys, we did it.
Scott: Yeah, we did it.
Joe: Had the conversation that needed to be had about Jurassic Park. I don’t think anyone should talk about this movie again. Nope. They’ll give you.
Greg: Like, 32 years.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: There’s no need to talk about it anymore. Oh, and we should say, as always, spoilers for Jurassic Park. And if you don’t want, you know, to hear more about this movie, I would press pause here, go watch the movie, and then come back to us once you’ve watched the movie. Yeah. Hey, if you have enjoyed this show, wherever you’ve listened to it, if you can take a second and, rate it and review it on your podcast app, we would very much appreciate that.
Greg: If you don’t feel like doing that, just tell a friend about it. You know, talk about some great bad movies with a friend. If you didn’t listen to this episode on an app, find us on your podcast app and, follow the show. We’ve got some amazing things coming up, including spoiler alert our next episode is going to be the best episode we’ve ever had on this show, so now is the time.
Greg: Hey, before we head out, Scott, do you have anything you need to plug?
Scott: Yes. I got a, book coming out October 7th. Amazing. And it’s called, in the lo and it is, collection of helpful words and images for the season of depression. There you go. It’s like a contemplative companion during low times, so it’s great. It’ll be available where all books are sold.
Greg: Amazing, right? When days are getting shorter.
Scott: That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s right, that’s right.
Greg: Awesome. All right. Oh my gosh guys listen this has been great. But I just realized my trees outside have this obscene amount of sap going down to them. And I need to get out there and figure out what on earth is going on out there. I need to go.
Greg: Oh, man.
Scott: Wow. Look at the time. I got to go. I just found out my daughter made valedictorian. Clever girl.
Greg: Clever girl.
Joe: Awesome. Yeah. Listen, anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to shave. Has anyone seen my can of barbasol shaving cream?
Greg: Okay, that works for me because I. I mean, we all have raptor claws in our lives, right? I put a raptor claw in my back pocket many days ago, and it just became incredibly uncomfortable for reasons I don’t really want to talk about. So I better.
Scott: Go, oh, man, you know, I got to go. I got hit with a rather under ripe eggplant and it left a bruise.
Greg: Veggie sore tag, I guess.
Joe: Anyway, I’ve got to go. A butterfly just flapped its wings in Tokyo and just made me have to leave, so we’ll see.
Greg: I didn’t even want to.
Greg: Okay, well, that works for me, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Jeff Goldblum has been sitting right next to me this whole time. We’re actually hanging out afterwards, and I need to go because he’s been sitting in this super weird pose with his shirt open the whole time. And as a friend, I just need to let him know that the glistening has been a bit much.
Greg: So I’m going to go that tracks.
Scott: Oh well, I need to go. Wow. Air is calling me about, a payment issue. It turns out I got a, I had a flat tire and they fixed it, but I accidentally didn’t get charged for it. Spared no expense.
Greg: Did you mean triple A?
Scott: I said, I did, I said, what did I say?
Greg: He said, Alcoholics Anonymous.
Joe: It’s okay. It’s even better if Alcoholics Anonymous is calling you out.
Scott: AA also has a roadside assistance program. You totally aa spare no expense.
Joe: Yeah. That’s awesome. I’ve got to go eat some jello. I sure hope a velociraptor doesn’t interrupt me. And then I drop it.
Greg: That works for me because I don’t know about you, but I am suddenly feeling like I should go check all of my barbasol cans just to make sure there isn’t dinosaur DNA in them.
Greg: Back then. Yeah, yeah.
Scott: I got to go because I’m setting up my next art show. It’s a series of family portraits as circus clowns, and we’re displaying it in the hall of a ship. It’s called Galley Minus.
Greg: Oh, my gosh.
Greg: That makes sense.
Joe: A billionaire did invite me to his private island. It should be fine. Worst case scenario, he hands me for sport. Best case, he’s broken all the lives of the scientific community and cloned dinosaurs. So win win.
Greg: Okay, that totally works for me. Because I’ll be honest, watching this movie reminded me of some horrible things I said to a kid on one of my digs in the Badlands, back when I used to dig up dinosaur bones a long time ago. I think I should probably call him and apologize. So I’m going ahead.
Greg:
Scott: I mean, speaking of good bad movies, I got to go because I’m seeing a special preview for Human Centipede four. Hold on to your butts.
Joe: That’s awesome. I just want to show off my new.
Greg: T-Rex.
Joe: Early warning system. It’s brilliant. It’s just water. It’s just water in the hand. It only works if they’re really close.
Greg: So it’s a puddle.
Joe: It’s a puddle.
Greg: Amazing. I don’t know if you guys have noticed this. I’m a little concerned. All the cameras filming me during this episode have gone from a wide shot to a close up, and that can only mean some evil dinosaurs are going to be nearby really soon, so I should probably head out.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: That’s amazing.
Joe: I’ve just been mauled by a T-Rex. I’ve got some morphine. The only thing left for me to do is have my shirt unbuttoned for an uncomfortable amount of time. Now I’ll just leave it open until I say to close it. So don’t worry.
Greg: Too much glistening, Joe. Too much glistening. All right, well, that works for me. So I will see you guys soon.
Joe: See you soon.
Scott: See you soon.