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If you can get past Janice to join us for this episode (and that’s a BIG if…) Greg and Joe’s conversation will feel a lot like your missions in Cairo: A cake walk, thanks to the training. So hop on your horse, walk it into an elevator, and get to our level 😀
It’s time for you to start lying to your spouse, and then tell them the truth, so that they can join you in your secret life. In the end, and this is important, you’ll probably dress up and dance the tango together, because that’s adorable. True Lies is 30 years old, so it’s finally time for the conversation that needed to happen.
Joe’s Back of the Box
Mild mannered salesman to his family, anti-terrorist super spy by night. When worlds collide, can Harry (Arnold Schwarzenegger,) his rag tag team keep their missions straight? With the clock ticking how will Harry save his wife and daughter and stop the bad guys at the same time? You may have paid for your whole seat but you will only need the edge of it, as this movie will keep you guessing right up to the last explosion TRUE LIE.
The REAL Back of the Box
You ever watch a movie that feels violently American? True Lies is that movie. Perfectly of its time as the big dumb action movie was at an apex, this movie spares no expense, leans into every stereotype, and if it were a punk band it would be called Atomic Phallus. If you want a time machine back to 1994 to relive the movies we watched way back when, then this is for you. And sadly, for me because I love this movie and I hate myself just a little bit more each time I watch it.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week, Arnold Schwarzenegger was not nervous at all about filming the action or the comedy, but he was most worried about was realistically dancing the tango. We haven’t seen each other for a long time. We didn’t do a lot of dancing back when we were hanging out. So I guess I don’t know.
Greg: What’s your take on dancing?
Joe: I would say I’m in a interesting phase with dancing and that, and through my 20s I went to like clubs all the time and dance really had a great time. I loved it, and now I kind of danced like everybody’s uncle at a wedding and a white man’s overbite all over the place. But we did live with Dan Schreiber for a brief moment.
Greg: We did.
Joe: And he was a disco dancing fanatic.
Greg: The bar was raised a little too high for my liking.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, he and I. Did you come with us to this? I can’t remember. We went to a disco night in Vancouver, B.C. one night. 19 was the drinking age up there so we could. We are all underage. And I have to say, he was magnificent.
Greg: That’s incredible.
Joe: And if you met him, he is like the classic skater. The coolest guy in the room. Yeah. And then something happens when that disco music hit and it was the most amazing thing to watch. So shout out to Dan if you’re listening in Iceland. I hope you are. But that is one of my favorite memories of him. And he was like, I was really tired and I don’t know, he had all these crazy moves.
Joe: It was pretty wild. But what about you? What’s your take on dancing these days?
Greg: Okay, wait, so you do dance and you still dance?
Joe: I would say what I do now is not considered dance.
Greg: But you’re out on the dance floor. Maybe you’re participating. Sometimes.
Joe: Sometimes.
Greg: Okay, that is not what I expected you to say.
Joe: Okay. Sweet.
Greg: I did. I never dance. I remember I was out at a club with my wife. Is before we got married. This one, we were just getting to know each other. And I was so relieved to find out that I liked dancing more than she did. And I really dislike dancing.
Greg: It’s like when you really like, neither of us really like roller coasters. And once you find somebody like, wait, you don’t like them either? So that’s fine that I don’t like them. Great. Yeah, but I think one reason I don’t like dancing is because I have DJ at a million events. And so I was the one kind of making people dance.
Greg: But I had this other thing I was working on. Where I played music forever and I was, you know, you can’t dance when you’re like sitting down at a drum set. So like, I feel like I was contributing to a roomful of people dancing, but I was never actually doing the dancing.
Joe: Right.
Greg: And now I just it’s like when music starts, it’s like, well, that’s not I don’t that’s not something I do. We got to get down in here. We gotta we gotta fly in Reykjavik.
Joe: Yeah. Let’s start, let’s go.
Greg: But, you know, and so I guess I can relate to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was really nervous about this. He did? Of course he related it to weightlifting. He just said, I got to get in a bunch of reps so that I’m not nervous about this by the time we film it. So he just practice for like six months to learn the tango, and then he passively does the tango in this movie.
Greg: Not amazing.
Joe: But not horrible. No, I think he holds his own in those. You know, those are fun scenes and this. So I appreciate that.
Greg: Here’s my final question. If you don’t feel like dancing. What song will absolutely get you on the dance floor?
Joe: It’s probably like House of pain.
Greg: Oh, yeah.
Joe: Jump around. Okay. You know, cause it’s got that that horn opening. And then it goes in to the beat and that’s at wild. And you don’t have to dance and you just got to jump like just play on the beat. You’re fine with that song. So.
Greg: Totally. And there are Terminator like Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s a lyric.
Joe: Yeah. That’s all right. That’s right.
Greg: Do you also have more rhymes than the Bible has? Psalms.
Joe: Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was just like the prodigal son. I’ve returned. So.
Greg: You always say a word to every mom. Before we start any of these podcasts. Before I press record.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: And you also come to drop bombs. So. Yeah, obviously not, because it rhymes with bombs. Just coincidentally. Yeah.
Joe: Totally coincidental.
Greg: All right, let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Greg: For 15 years, Henry Tasker has been leading a double life. Rehnquist. Harry Rehnquist. Now they’re.
Joe: About to.
Greg: Collide. May I see your invitation, please? Sure. Here’s my invitation.
Clip: What’s the task? His office. Hi. It’s Helen is here. Is in a sales meeting. Starscream. It’s not like he’s saving the world or anything.
Greg: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Clip: True lies.
Clip: The year is.
Greg: 1994, Joe. We’re headed straight back to the mid 90s to talk about true Lies, the questionably classic movie True Lies from 1994. We are talking about James Cameron teaming up with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Paxton, also a frequent James Cameron collaborator, but also Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Tia Carrera, Art Malik, Charlton Heston and Eliza Dushku. True lies It has been a long time since I’ve watched this movie, so I am so curious to hear what you think of this.
Greg: Joe Skye Tucker. Why is True lies a great bad movie?
Joe: Oh my God, so many reasons. So this is I feel like in some ways the apex of a couple things of like, 90s big dumb action movies of this vein. Yeah. You also have probably Arnold Schwarzenegger’s high water mark as a star and a movie. So on The Wire, it’s great. You have James Cameron, the action director, who is pretty bonafide to me in terms of his ability to direct an action movie.
Joe: Sure. And he delivers in this movie. Yeah, action scenes are great, real explosions. I love that there’s lots of fun things that you haven’t seen on the other side of it.
Greg: Well, so that’s end of story, right? Nothing more to talk about.
Joe: Yeah. End of story. Yeah. We’re done. On the other side of it, you have James Cameron, the writer, which I always have struggled with. Yes I have and spoiler alert for my drinking game, just the total casual sexism that is just laced across this movie. Yeah, from how they have the women dress to how they talk about women in it and the total Islamophobia of the bad guys and what they’re trying to do, and the total one dimensional bad guys that are just here to be terrorists and blow stuff up.
Joe: So it is a mixed bag. It feels very much of its time. So I saw this in the theaters and yeah, I loved every second of it. There’s still parts of me that love this movie. Yeah, I love parts of it. And then there is watching it through the eyes of how old I am.
Greg: Now we’re on the 30th anniversary.
Joe: Of the 30th anniversary. Yep. And going each. Yeah. I can’t believe they said that. I can’t believe that this is happening. Yep. It was not the easiest watch, but it was also, there were some fun moments in it. And you know, it’s like anything when you kind of if you can turn off some of your maybe ethics, you can watch this movie with these.
Joe: So I turn around. Greg, sweetheart.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: What are your thoughts on this movie?
Greg: Okay. Well, when this movie came out, it was the most expensive movie ever made. I think it was the first movie to cost more than $100 million. And so that was kind of the story when it came out, and I had very mixed feelings about it. When I saw it in the theater, I was kind of like, I don’t know, I think I had expectations because of how much it cost and because of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Greg: And I was on rocky footing with Arnold Schwarzenegger because of the last action Hero. And this looked like kind of an action comedy follow up to The Last Action Hero, which really broke my heart because John McTiernan directed that movie, and Arnold Suo Stinger was in it. So I don’t know that I’ve ever loved True Lies. There’s been something uncomfortable about it.
Greg: And sometimes this happens with movies. This definitely happens with music for me, where I will not like a record when it comes out, and then I’ll listen to it again a year later and I’ll be like, this is the greatest record I’ve ever heard in my life. And so sometimes, you know, you go back and you watch a movie from 30 years ago and you are able to kind of wipe the expectation slate clean.
Greg: In fact, the bar is pretty low for me on this one. Like, well, I don’t remember loving this movie anyway. And so here’s how I watch this movie. I watched this movie in three different settings.
Joe: Okay, I.
Greg: Watched the first half hour. And my review of that was oh okay.
Joe: The James Bond movie first half hour. Yeah. It’s great.
Greg: Lots of fun. Arnold Schwarzenegger is definitely like owning what this movie is. He’s a spy but he’s married, has fun work friends. He can handle James Bond like snow scenes. And they’re looking for lots of moments to keep it light and funny. And some of those moments really worked on me. And then I was kind of like, okay, I gotta go, gotta go do something else.
Greg: So I’m I’m not like super stoked to continue watching it, but it’s not like a, oh, I have to watch this movie. So then I watched the second half hour of this movie and my review of that was oh okay.
Joe: Can I ask where is the action scene. Where are they. The big one where they jump from a building or that in the first setting or the second setting?
Greg: I think that might be at the 30 minute mark. Actually, no. Okay. I turned it off while they were on their way to that scene. So first half hour. Oh okay. Second half hour. Okay. And then I did not want to finish the movie after I watched the second half hour, but we had to record this episode.
Greg: So I sat down to watch the last full hour. So this is like a two hour, 20 minute movie or so. So I watched like from the one hour mark to the end and loved it. And so maybe, maybe I’m just responding to what James Cameron has created in a, in a first, second and third act, which I’m open to considering.
Greg: But my review of the third setting of this movie was like, oh, okay, so three very different. Okay. As for me, as I watching this movie and men sort of like the first part really disliked the second part. Very uncomfortable with kind of the whole what they’re doing to Jamie Lee Curtis, arc. And also, yeah, it’s it’s pretty rough what they’re doing with the misogyny and, just the world politics.
Greg: They were looking for generic terrorists. And in 1994, this is what they came up with. But then it’s just so much fun from like the one hour mark all the way through to the end. So very mixed bag. But at the end, after we’ll get to kind of all the stunts and everything. But at the end I just thought, how do you not love parts of this movie?
Greg: You know, I it totally reminded me of do you remember the movie Moneyball? I’ve seen the movie Moneyball.
Joe: I do know that I have not seen the movie Moneyball, but I do know it.
Greg: Yeah, it’s a great, great movie. We might cover it if we watch, like just a soul crushingly bad movie on this show. We need to, like, cleanse the palate. We might watch Moneyball someday, but it’s not like an action movie or anything. But there’s a scene where Jonah Hill is giving a baseball story, a random Feel-Good baseball story that you think is horrible and embarrassing, but then it turns out to be great.
Greg: He is giving that story to Brad Pitt, and Brad Pitt says this.
Joe: How can you not be romantic about baseball?
Greg: That’s how I felt about this movie. I literally said to myself, how can you not be romantic about great bad movies? I mean, this is such fun to watch. And there’s there’s so many people doing so many great, high level best that it’s ever been done stuff in this movie. But you do kind of have to accept some things as far as tone goes, like, okay, this is going to be a lighthearted movie that still has great stunts, is basically what it is.
Greg: This is going to be a lighthearted movie that is pretty punishing towards women, and then I’m open to the idea that they were doing that. To show how far of an arc Jamie Lee Curtis had to go to get to the other side. It wasn’t just like she was in the dark about how her husband was a spy, but she was a woman in a world that was misogynistic.
Greg: And so for her to, by the end of the movie, join him as a spy by his side. Like that was a really long trajectory for her to take. And so there’s more excitement at the end when she’s made it. You know, part of that could be true. But I also think, you know, if you look at James Cameron’s kind of 70s and 80s movies, there’s also just some troublesome misogyny going on there, especially with the military kind of stuff that he seems to kind of traffic in.
Greg: So I think it’s probably both.
Joe: I think it’s probably both. And I think I agree the second act of this movie, labors, is trying to figure out what it is. It’s like you could cut the whole like, I love Bill Paxton. Like, yeah, he makes every movie he’s in better.
Greg: Yep. Old friends with James Cameron.
Joe: Yeah. But if you cut out that subplot.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And it is just the first I mean, the first 30 minutes, as you say, and the last 45 minutes are great action movie. Everything you’d ever want.
Greg: Yep, yep.
Joe: It doesn’t disappoint. It isn’t trying to be something deep, and it is trying to be an action comedy kind of thing. Tom Arnold is really funny in this. Breaks up some of the monotony of of kind of what this could have been. But yeah, it is, it is a mixed bag. And so it’s like there are moments where it’s a real hard pill to, to sit through and go, yeah, yeah.
Joe: You know, and I will be the first to admit I am not a fan of James Cameron. Really. To me, he all of his movies that he writes are really stereotypical from avatar, which is just a white savior. Dances with Wolves in Outer Space movie of the, you know, white savior coming in to save the indigenous population. Yeah, this movie is like whether he going through a divorce.
Joe: Was this when Kathryn Bigelow left him? And so he just hated women. And so he just decided to, like, make them so one dimensional and just like, sex objects and the way they talk about it. So it was those were the moments that I really struggled with. But yeah, if you just look at the action scenes, which again, he is one of the best action directors ever.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: It is spectacular. So that opening scene, I still remember watching, I was like, wow, this is referencing every great James Bond opening ski scene that I’ve seen.
Greg: He shows up in a wetsuit and takes off the wetsuit to be in a perfectly dry and pressed tuxedo. Yeah, which is how Goldfinger opens. I think Goldfinger opens that exact same way.
Joe: You know, I love that he’s coming in through that way when there’s like a million different ways he could have entered that compound.
Greg: Right. Tom Arnold and what’s his name, Faisal. Faisal. They’re in a van that are just like right to the side of the house. Everyone in the house can see the van and them staring at the house from the van.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He could have just walked from the van to the house and been fine. Yeah, yeah, but you can’t get James Bond in there.
Joe: Yeah. So I mean, it’s like referential to those sorts of movies, which I appreciated. You know, you have one of my favorite things, a new trope that I’ve added is, you know, when there’s an explosion, all you have to do is dive away from it into water and you’re safe.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: That’s so that’s that’s such a bad time. Die hard with a Vengeance has that in it as well. Yeah. So just lots of like, fun, kind of silly action scenes. You know, when people are shot, there’s a rope attached to them jerking them out of the frame. It’s, you know, so ridiculous.
Greg: Right? They are looking for every opportunity to have fun as well, though Arnold Schwarzenegger is, as he’s walking through the party in the very beginning, he arrives via wetsuit, then takes off his wetsuit. He’s in a tuxedo, walks in to this party. Every interaction he has with people at this party is funny. Like he’s taking a drink and then he’s asking another person to hold it.
Greg: They’re really looking for every moment they possibly can. He’s walking towards the guy that he’s there to see some foreign arms dealer maybe.
Joe: Maybe, or oil baron or I’m not sure.
Greg: What, but he says, why are billionaires always so short?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: As he’s walking up to him, which is a funny line. So anyways, they’re clearly setting the tone at every turn, which is nice, I thank him.
Joe: I appreciate it. You know, I feel like this movie walked so fast and furious can run of sure, like crazy jumping from one building to another with, you know, a motorcycle that happens and, I remember when in the movie theater when I, when I first saw it, and he’s going to jump with the horse, I’m like, there’s no way he’s going to make it.
Joe: If they do it like, I’m out. And I love that the horse like, stops and he right flies over. So there’s a there’s a lot of fun stuff within that. If they had just kept it. Yeah. As an action movie I wouldn’t have such mixed feelings. Like we are definitely bad people for liking this movie.
Greg: So are you saying take the humor out because this was based on a French farce? And then they added all the crazy action to it. It was all mellow action in the French movie that came out three years before this one. La total, I think, is what it was called. A lot of the same plot points, though.
Joe: I say keep the action as it is and take out really the, I think you can still write Jamie Lee Curtis as character so that she has the arc and she gets kidnaped and all of that. Yep. But really tighten up the second act where it kind of drags a little bit. I feel like if they reedit it to be like slightly less misogynistic.
Joe: Yeah. Would be a lot better. Maybe give some depth and dimension to the bad guys. So you kind of have some idea that they’re just like generic Middle Eastern bad guy trope or archetype or whatever the right word is for that, right? There’s nothing that’s really given to them. You know, they’re not charismatic. There’s nothing about them that is really interesting other than they have nuclear weapons and they’re going to blow them up.
Joe: But if you’re just wanting like a great action movie, you could trim this down easily to, an hour and a half hour. 45. Yep. And keep all the best parts of the action scenes. Maybe it’s not quite as charming in certain ways, and also not probably as problematic in lots of other ways.
Greg: Well, let’s talk about the misogyny then. The first time. Well, when they’re talking about Tia Carrera, who he meets at the beginning party, they’re a little bit ridiculous towards her. And, what she looks like and the way they talk about her kind of back at the office is something the first one that really made me kind of go, what’s is when they go to their meeting with Charlton Heston, who’s dressed like Nick Fury from the Marvel comics, like I watch and everything.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And the reason Charlton Heston is in it, James Cameron called Charlton Heston and said, I’m asking you to play this part because I need someone. Who? Arnold Schwarzenegger is intimidated by, and you’re one of those people. And so he has his back to like the meeting table that has Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Arnold, Feisal, I don’t know that actor’s name.
Greg: And then there’s a woman there, and he said, he says to the woman, you can leave now. And she kind of gets up from the table and leaves like he’s just like kicking the woman out of the out of the meeting. And when he does that, Arnold Schwarzenegger looks at her like has eye contact with her before she walks out.
Greg: And then he looks at Tom Arnold and they have like a that was weird. Or this is a weird moment kind of thing that happens as Charlton Heston is turning around and I thought, oh, are they flagging that like, women aren’t included in this? So that later on in the movie women can be included in it? Is that what we’re doing here?
Greg: Like, why on earth did they just kick her out of the meeting? And that was the first time I thought, oh, maybe this isn’t just horrible people. Maybe they’re actually trying to, like, create an arc here. But then the terrorists, you know, slaps your career.
Joe: She got slapped a lot in.
Greg: Fact so much slapping.
Joe: Drinking game I think that I missed every time to your career. Right. You take a.
Greg: Drink. Right. But she also is like it’s a good thing you’re paying me so much money. Like she does retain some power in that conversation where she’s about to, like, go off on him, but then she doesn’t. There’s an interesting balance that happens in in her performance in that scene that I noticed the second time I watch that because I was like, what is happening here?
Joe: Yeah, there’s some comment that Tom Arnold makes about women. And because it’s like when Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks his wife is having an affair and he’s some kind of maybe about to. Right, and it’s kind of funny, but it’s also, a little bit, you know, and then some of the things that Bill Paxton says, and I know he’s an over-the-top character.
Joe: Yeah, preying on women and, you know.
Greg: Yeah, scumbag.
Joe: But then to me, some of that can be forgiven in terms of like if they are trying to make an arc with Jamie Lee Curtis as character, though, she has a scene where she’s even repeating this makes the plots so ridiculous, but basically she’s kind of been enlisted sort of to help card in the end. So she’s going there and that’s really Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to, like, bring some passion back into their marriage.
Joe: Right. And so she is in this black dress and she rips off the sleeves and the bottom, and it just becomes this slinky black dress with massive cleavage. And then she has to, like, strip and dance for him. And it’s unnecessarily, uncomfortably long.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: What I remember from it. Yeah. And then she’s basically in that dress for the rest of the movie.
Greg:
Joe: Yeah. And it just has like.
Greg: Yeah that wouldn’t happen. No.
Joe: No.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And it’s.
Greg: Barefoot I want to say she’s barefoot for.
Joe: A lot. Yeah. She’s barefoot and in this dress that’s really low cut and short and. Yeah. Oh my God how can they. And they just take advantage of that. I feel like constantly through the rest of the movie, to me that’s the most uncomfortable part is like the last act and like her wardrobe and the last act of this movie.
Joe: Yeah, is the most problematic part of this. And it just it was distracting for me as I watched it of like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They could put a put her in anything at that point would have been better. Sure. Or just like totally James Bond it up and put her in a bikini because man with the Golden Gun or whatever, you could reference that.
Joe: Like just like go totally over the top, but it feels like it’s just. Yeah. As uncomfortable and unpleasant. That’s the only way that I can describe it.
Greg: With the new 4K release, there’s a, there’s like a 40 minute making of and they talk about this. And Jamie Lee Curtis said that she had a dress that she added some ruffles to, and then kind of figured out how she could pretend like she was tearing the ruffles off. So she took that to James Cameron and said what do you think of this?
Greg: This is a dress that I like. And then I can like pretend to tear these things off to do this. What do you think it he’s like I like it. And so then the, the wardrobe person just made a bunch of those dresses. So that was her dress, you know, and maybe they tweaked it one way or another, I don’t know, but she was like, it was a it was like an evening dress that she had that she thought might work the dance that she does was hers.
Greg: She came up with that. There was no choreography, the music that’s playing, she requested, and then while she’s doing that dance, it was supposed to be in the dark and she was supposed to be wearing nothing. And then they decided, she said, well, why don’t we keep the lights up and I’ll wear this. And so they said, great, let’s do that.
Greg: And then James Cameron said, what if you accidentally fell at one point and they didn’t tell that to Arnold Schwarzenegger? So when she falls and he, like, gets up for a second, like he’s going to help her, but then he goes back that was real. He thought she’d just fallen. And there was another moment. Like, he is using a tape player where it’s like a guy with a French accent is telling her what to do, and he drops it at some point.
Greg: Yeah, it was real. He did accidentally drop it and James Cameron left it in.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: Yeah, super uncomfortable scene. But like, it was it was hers. She turned it into what it is. Which is interesting. And when people expressed what we’re expressing about this movie, James Cameron said, you know what’s weird is women love that scene because they see it as empowering. The only people we’re getting this feedback from are dudes. So interesting.
Greg: Yeah, but super uncomfortable. And I would I would lose it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I was uncomfortable because it was towards the end of that whole arc of he’s manipulating her to try and bring some spice into her life by tricking her into thinking she’s part of some spy thing because that’s what Bill Paxton’s character was doing. Man, I feel like we should walk through parts of this movie, but for the people who have not seen this and probably are not excited to watch it after our first part of our conversation, maybe we should tell people what this movie is about.
Greg: Let’s give them a little bit of a synopsis, as if they were walking down a store in 1990 for a Blockbuster Video. They’re picking up VHS boxes, I guess at that point. Yeah, and trying to decide what movie they should rent. They’re reading the back of those boxes to see what they’re in the mood for. Joe, I think it’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. Mild mannered salesman to his family. Antiterrorist super spy by night, when worlds collide, can Harry Arnold Schwarzenegger and his ragtag team keep their mission straight? With the clock ticking? How will Harry save his wife and daughter and stop the bad guys at the same time? You may have paid for your whole seat, but you only need the edge of it as this movie will keep you guessing right up until the last explosion.
Greg: Right up until the last true lie.
Joe: That’s right. Missed opportunity.
Greg: Amazing. I’m renting it. Obviously, I don’t even need to read the back of the box in 1984. It’s like Arnold Schwarzenegger has a new movie that James Cameron is directing. I’m in. Yeah, but it’s 2024. It’s a 30th anniversary. Yeah, maybe it’s time to write a more reflective real back in the box. Let’s let just Guy Tucker be Joe’s guy.
Greg: Tucker. What’s the real back of the box for this?
Joe: All right. You ever watch a movie that feels violently American? True lies is that movie perfectly of its time as the big dumb action movie was at its apex, this movie spares no expense, leans into every stereotype, and if it were a punk band, it would have been named Atomic Phallus. If you want a time machine back to 1994 to relive the movies we watched back then, then this is for you.
Joe: And sadly for me, because I love this movie and I hate myself just a little bit more each time I watch it.
Greg: Yeah, I will sign on for all of that for sure.
Joe: If you have not seen this movie, my favorite scene in it is theirs as the bad guys are leaving in a helicopter. The main bad guy straddles a nuclear weapon as it takes off, and it’s a most just like blatant maybe trying to reference Doctor Strangelove and how I learned to love the Atomic Bomb, but it’s to me an atomic phallus.
Joe: That’s what came to mind. Wow. In that moment.
Greg: So yeah. Art Malik really straddling the back of the Harrier jet and then he falls and his, like, his coat gets stuck on a rocket of some kind, and he flies on that rocket to the helicopter that the bad guys are in to blow up the helicopter that the. Yeah. And it’s so fast. It’s so French farce.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: They don’t shy away from it, which I think when I was watching it I was like, what are we doing here?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Why do we spend all this money on this? And now it’s like, yeah, we can be silly, it’s fine. And what does he say?
Joe: I think you’re fired.
Greg: You’re fired.
Joe: Yeah, there’s lots of those. Arnold Schwarzenegger one liners in this, but that’s like the best one for me of. And to me, I guess as I think about it, as a farce, they needed to lean a little bit more in, you know, and just turn up the volume a little bit more on it. And I think then, because you’re at the farthest and maybe of being a satire, it would read differently than what it comes across, because I think that farcical nature sometimes misfires.
Joe: And to me, a farce is like, you kind of start with an outrageous premise, and then you just kind of keep dialing up the pressure on it and taking it further and further and further. Yeah. To make a point, a broader point about society, hopefully. And, and, and a satirical point. And I think that’s where it misses the mark.
Greg: Having said that, it is pretty silly all the way.
Joe: Agreed. Yeah.
Greg: The worst line in this movie is Tom Arnold saying women can’t live with him, can’t kill him.
Joe:
Greg: Which in a basically glowing New York Times review that Janet Maslin wrote that’s one of the things that she was like, this is probably the worst line in this whole movie. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of reviews for this movie when I was looking at Rotten Tomatoes today. Before we continue talking about the movie, why don’t we go through some reviews?
Greg: Because they kind of allude to what we’re doing. First of all, this movie cost 100 to 180 million and its box office was worldwide, about 378 million. So it was a moneymaker. What do you think the tomato rating is on this movie, Joe?
Joe: It feels like a 70 to me. Like, you know. Yeah. Honestly, I feel like this is probably beloved, so I’m guessing audience score somewhere around 80 critics score. Probably pretty close to that.
Greg: Critic’s score is 70%. Okay, so finally nailed.
Joe: It because.
Greg: It feels like a 70.
Joe: If I’m on like a 70.
Greg: Yeah, the audience rating is 76%.
Joe: Feels about right. All right.
Greg: It’s surprising, honestly, to me after you watch this, like, wow, that’s, the nostalgia must be running pretty deep on this one.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Roger Ebert gave this a three out of four stars. He says on the basis of stunts, special effects, and pure action, it delivers sensationally a great if you’re just judging it on those bases. The Washington Post says True Lies, far too technologically bloated for its cartoony plot, overestimates the human tolerance for high tech mayhem.
Joe: I don’t know if I agree with that. I feel like it feels pretty just like a good action movie. Like it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to do too much high tech stuff. I don’t know what they’re talking about.
Greg: I’m with you. They’re. Entertainment weekly says the fun of an elaborately scaled comic suspense thriller is that no matter how spectacular the stunts are, the hero always seems to be operating out of the purest pragmatism. And so craziness is happening all around Arnold Schwarzenegger in this movie. But if you watch him, he is, for the most part, just making sure his daughter is fine.
Greg: You know, like at the end when just craziness is happening, madness is happening. He’s really kind of being a dad in that scene. Like more. So then I recently watched Commando, which came out nine years before this. And I mean, he has almost zero character in that movie. He is such an amazing actor. Nine years later, compared to Commando in 1985.
Greg: And he was attracted to this movie, and he actually brought this movie to James Cameron because of the character, nothing else. James Cameron said. He was really surprised. It was the first time he had heard Arnold Schwarzenegger talk about a part because of the character and not something else. This one’s pretty good. From Empire magazine. Caroline Westbrook proves that throwing everything at the camera sometimes works.
Joe: I would agree with that.
Greg: Yeah, well, she says works a treat and I don’t I don’t know. Yeah. Must be a British thing. Sometimes throwing everything at the camera sometimes works a treat. But you know, I translated it to American for you.
Joe: Appreciate that.
Greg: Four out of five though in Empire magazine. It’s interesting. So I felt like there weren’t enough reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. So I actually just started looking them up at different newspapers. So Janet Maslin, who’s probably one of the best movie critics in the last 100 years, maybe. I don’t think that’s hyperbole, she says. The director, James Terminator Cameron, has accomplished many a neat trick on screen, but nothing to match this, turning Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis most delightfully into the Nick and Nora Charles of the heavy demolition set by the end of True Lies, the long awaited escapist high of the summer movie season, these two stars are gamely tango ING on the dance
Greg: floor and looking proud of their fancy footwork. As well. They should. She loved it. Here’s the last. You know when you read like real reviewers, the last bit is usually like the they really hit it home. Here’s what she says. The look of True Lies is straight, straightforward, frankly exciting, never aggressively stylish, and a movie season dominated by showy special effects.
Greg: That simplicity is especially welcome. It’s obvious that Mr. Cameron is an absolute command of the technology his film utilizes. When a filmmaker’s idea of mind boggling mayhem is this sensational, it’s quite enough.
Joe: I like it, it’s interesting because Terminator two was the movie he did right before this. Yeah, which is also a great action movie in and of itself, but does rely on CGI pretty heavily, and the kind of new CGI I remember when I remember watching it in the theater. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I had never seen computer graphics like that before, and that was a big part of that movie.
Joe: And they really kind of lean into that where this there’s definitely CGI stuff that’s happening, but it’s a pretty straight forward, real explosions and straight up action, you know, great bad shots everywhere. And yeah, all of that. But it’s a different, very different than Terminator two in a lot of ways in terms of how it uses technology. I feel like.
Greg: I remember being uncomfortable with this movie because I couldn’t tell where the CGI was being employed, and a lot of that is because there are a lot of things in this movie that you think would be CGI, and they aren’t.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: They’re shots of Jamie Lee Curtis shot from the perspective of inside a helicopter. She’s dangling from a helicopter, and that’s really her dangling from a helicopter flying over stuff for 25 minutes. They shot stuff. Maybe she was on there for a whole day. I don’t know, but like, she’s really there. She’s really attached to a helicopter. There’s a wire that they took out, but she’s really it’s you can’t fake that.
Greg: And when they did fake it back then, it was pretty noticeable.
Joe: I think they really did that stunt where they pull her out of the.
Greg: Yeah, it was her stunt double, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Her remote control limo is about to go over the edge of a bridge down in the Florida Keys, and that bridge has been destroyed by some Harrier jets. Don’t worry about it.
Joe: Yeah, just don’t think about it.
Greg: And, she’s in this limo kind of standing outside of the sun roof. The helicopter comes down, grabs her. And this was something that James Cameron wanted to do. He wanted them not to pull somebody out of the car and, like, lift them out. They wanted the helicopter and the person to remain level, and the car would drop from them, which is just so awesome to watch.
Greg: And his idea was the car would fall into the Grand Canyon. But story wise, he couldn’t get them to the Grand Canyon, but he was able to get them to the Florida Keys, so he did that. But, we should talk about this in this movie. James Cameron, he watched the French farce that Arnold Schwarzenegger sent to him.
Greg: Lots of towel and then just made a list of action sequences and then applied them to the story and gave it a little bit more to Jamie Lee Curtis character to have more of an arc. You know, she becomes a spy by the end. That didn’t happen happen movie, I think. And so that’s that’s what he did, came up with the list of action scenes and then just tried to get the story to those action scenes as much as they could.
Greg: And so, you know, they did like a James Bond scene in the snow at the beginning. And, by the way, just an immaculately lit snow at night. There’s just like everywhere.
Joe: They talked or any harlins group from.
Greg: This year. After a cliffhanger.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And I want to say there is some crossover between these two films in the crew, something they did that the cinematographer did in this movie that is just so awesome is there was light that was not touching the ground, but was horizontal to the ground. So when a squib would go off, like somebody’s shooting a machine gun and they’re running and they’re having great bad shots, meaning people are able to outrun a machine gun.
Greg: When the snow pops up, it enters that beam of light. Mister, the light isn’t where can’t really see the light until snow rises up into it from the great bad shot. Yeah, that happens so many times in this movie. I was just like, that is such a fantastic idea. I don’t know where that light is coming from, but it looks so awesome.
Greg: And since they really filmed this on film, it must have been very bright to register the way it does.
Joe: I know that they have like the skiers that are coming after him have lights on their chests. It’s awesome. Sure. Yeah. You know, and then the the snowmobiles that explode on impact are just perfect.
Greg: Chef’s kiss.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, and I can’t say it enough, I really do struggle with James Cameron in a lot of ways, but as an action director, he is in the top five to me of greatest action directors ever. And just what he’s able to do is amazing. And they’re tight. They’re great. They’re fun. I wrote down when I was taking notes, I was like, this movie was so John Wick could run.
Joe: And then I thought of, you know, some of the other ones that they have a great fight scene in a bathroom, which. Yeah, like Mission Impossible six does. Casino Royale does a take on.
Greg: Oh, yeah, except James Bond and Ethan Hunt, they don’t put somebody’s head into a urinal and say, cool down.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: So missed opportunity.
Greg: Missed opportunity, obviously. Yeah. Cool off. But yeah, totally. You’re right. Although this movie does have an old man in one of the stalls that we keep cutting to because this is a farce. And of course, there’s you know, Mel Brooks is in a stall somewhere.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, just moments like that that I feel like I’ve been now done as, like an homage almost to this movie and yeah, the scenes and.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And it’s one of those movies I feel like the final action sequence really delivers because it is. It’s a 45 minutes. It goes all over the place. It has some crazy, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting 100 people.
Greg: Basically it’s Commando basically is where it starts.
Joe: Yeah. And then flying a Harrier jet and saving his daughter who’s for some reason climbing out onto a crane with the key for the nuclear weapon. Again don’t don’t worry about her too much. Just go with it.
Greg: Yeah well yeah. He saves Jamie Lee Curtis. He’s dangling from that part of the helicopter. It’s like that’s scene. So I married an ax murderer. You know that part? You know the part underneath the thing where it lands.
Joe: Do you, do you know the parts? I know that I’ve never hung on to that. Yeah.
Greg: He dangles from that to get Jamie Lee Curtis. And then. And then he has to go save his daughter.
Greg: Do we talk about that moment at.
Joe: The end like that’s. Do it.
Greg: He saves her. The Harrier jet lands on the freeway and as it’s coming down, the camera is dropping down and and shows a sign that says don’t park on the shoulder because they’re just doing moments like that at every turn in this movie. But then he has a really nice, genuine moment with Jamie Lee Curtis. You probably hated this part of this movie.
Greg: I loved this part of this movie. I think the story between them as a couple is really kind of amazing. You know, it’s really a two hander. It’s really the it’s really a story about their relationship and all the other madness is just could be emotional subtext or what’s happening in their relationship, for all I know. But anyways, so, they’re kind of like having a moment.
Greg: And then Tom Arnold says, you know, hey, we need you. They’ve got your daughter and Jamie like, what does she say? She says, like, go to work.
Joe: Something like that.
Greg: And what does he do?
Joe: He says by that he runs off. I sent you a text of this moment because the way he says bye as like, I think I said this was like a ten year old running out the door to play with his friend. It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
Greg: So I didn’t really respond to you because I wanted to save it for the ring. I want to save it for here. But I paused and laughed for no joke. Two minutes.
Greg: I laughed so hard that I recorded it, even though the audio version of it does not at all explain what we’re doing here. Hey, Harry, here.
Joe: Go to work. Okay, bye.
Greg: Okay, so.
Greg: It’s like he did, like. Okay, we’ve got it. But do you want to do something for fun? And he does it and he clearly here’s my read on it. He’s clearly trying to make her laugh like he’s just being silly. Like he is being a ten year old boy.
Joe: Yeah, she.
Greg: Is married to Christopher Guest, so she is used to being around people who are just bonkers. Like the funniest people amongst us. And that is, I think the look on her face like, that’s fine, I’m around this all the time. I live with Kristen. Yes. Are you kidding me? I know the funniest people on this planet. I made a movie with Monty Python before this.
Greg: Like, yeah. So anyways is the hardest. I’ve laughed in a in quite a while.
Joe: I had to rewind that scene a few times and I could not believe we said goodbye.
Greg: Oh my gosh, maybe we can put this on on our web page at Great Bad movies.com. We’ll have the trailer and hopefully we can find this scene on YouTube and put it on there because it is in credible. You mentioned the bathroom fight, and during the bathroom fight, I was pretty struck by this movie has the most incredible punch sounds you know, you usually get from really pulpy movies like Indiana Jones has a hilarious punch sound.
Greg: I want to play some audio from three punches in that bathroom. Now, these are three punches by a human being’s fist into another person. Who is Arnold Schwarzenegger? These are just person’s fist punching a person.
Joe: Okay, I’m ready for.
Greg: Now there’s like metal. I want to say in that second, let’s hear it again. Oh, I like.
Greg: That’s a person punching a person. Yeah. That’s how turned up. This movie is unbelievable.
Joe: My favorite part about that whole scene where that’s like, he fights two guys in the bathroom, and then there’s the whole chase where the person is on a motorcycle and he’s on a horse again. Don’t worry about it. He’s on a horse and they’re driving through a marriott. Yeah. Marriott or something like up to the top floors to.
Greg: Get in a theater.
Joe: Not one police officer comes. There’s no sirens.
Greg: Right?
Joe: They are shooting guns, beating people up. People are being killed, right? No police ever. He actually takes the police officer’s horse. That’s the horse. Yeah. That’s the only interaction with actual law enforcement in this is he steals a horse to chase the bad guy.
Greg: So it’s so remarkable that this movie is 30 years ago because he is doing this in his home town, and no one knows that he’s a spy yet. He is just spying completely out of the closet. Like, yeah, everyone would be filming him with their phone.
Joe:
Greg: But you can’t tell me that through the, the tourist areas that he’s going through, through the, the Marriott that he’s like riding his horse through. Nobody has a camcorder. The, the pre cell phone camera. That was around. How is it that this isn’t all over the news. And they aren’t showing him. It seems like Jamie Lee Curtis would have known that her husband was a spy.
Greg: Is what I’m getting at.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: They sort of allude to this at the end where they’re like, we couldn’t quite get a shot of the guy who was riding the Harrier. But some shenanigans went down.
Joe: Yeah. There’s reference to what happens because Bill Paxton uses that. But it’s like a throwaway article like deep in the newspaper about do unidentified people found in the Marriott or something like that. And that’s all that is of that. Right? I kind of assume that the whatever agency he was working for was using their power to cover up anything that came out.
Joe: But sure, it’s got to be at that point, right? With, with an Instamatic camera that could have taken a picture while he’s.
Greg: Working for the Omega Sector, and they’re the last line of defense, so they must have some real pull over the local media.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: I kind of want to work for the Alpha sector, which is like the first line of not even defense. It’s the first line of passive aggression. That’s who I want to work for, right?
Joe: Yeah. Are you really sure you want to be a terrorist?
Greg: If I can be a terrorist, go ahead. Go on, be a terrorist. That’s fine with me.
Joe: Yeah, I’ll just be over here living my life.
Greg: So I definitely want to be in a prequel of this movie where I work for the Alpha Sector, which is the first line of passive aggression.
Joe: I allow it, and it’s like every letter in the Greek alphabet until.
Greg: Right? Yes, totally. Okay, so he is riding a horse, which Arnold Schwarzenegger learned how to do from the Conan movies, and James Cameron knew that. So he was like, we’ll throw him on a horse, that’ll be great. And then the horse will chase a motorcycle through a hotel, right?
Joe: Obviously.
Greg: Then it will get in an elevator to go to the roof of the building, I guess.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And this horse actually gets into an elevator when they’re these two old people in the elevator.
Joe: Awesome scene. Really funny.
Greg: The two old people that it gets in the elevator with are actually horse wranglers. If you watch them in the scene, their hands are all over the horse, like pushing it and wrangling it to make it do what they needed to do.
Joe: I miss that.
Greg: They’re just dressed in like a gown and and a tuxedo, but they didn’t actually close the door and go up with the horse, because if the horse, like, freaks out, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to, like, get smooshed against like the roof of the elevator. So that was a fake horse in the elevator as it was going okay, but once it goes up, the guy on the motorcycle jumps from one building to the pool of another building.
Greg: And then an old Schwarzenegger is supposed to maybe attempt to do this with the horse, like jump the horse from one building to another, but the horse stops and I have to play this for you just to show you what a farce this is. Here’s what it sounds like when the horse stops and isn’t willing to jump over the side of the building, can like, oh, it has screeching tires.
Greg: I kind of want to hear it again. I like, oh, this is a mel Brooks movie that we’re watching.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then he gets angry at the horse, like, what were you doing? We had him. You let him get away, you know, like, has a conversation with the horse. Okay, so in that scene, Arnold Schwarzenegger was actually on a horse at the edge of that building, 90ft up. And they built, like, four extra feet on the side of the building in case the horse didn’t actually stop where it was supposed to.
Greg: But there was no, like, rail, there was no anything. And one of the camera operators accidentally hit the horse, like in the nose or the face with an arm of a camera rig or something. And the horse freaked out and almost jumped off the side of the building. Oh my God, with Arnold Schwarzenegger on it. And so he realized what was going on.
Greg: And there was not there were dealing in feet. Well, this horse is freaking out like it might throw Arnold Schwarzenegger off the side of this building. And so he slid off onto the ground and his stunt double was there and grabbed him and dragged him. And then they got the horse. But he almost like the way he says it is this is almost the last movie I made.
Greg: Like I was a couple feet from falling 90ft.
Joe: That’s crazy.
Greg: Isn’t that crazy?
Joe:
Greg: Which just, you know, 1994 they’re actually up on this building. There’s no safety, there’s no net. Anyways we should talk about Eliza Dushku. 12 year old Eliza Dushku is playing 14 year old. I’m forgetting her character’s name, but she’s 12 for 14. In this movie. Which what 12 year old is playing a 14 year old? But it totally works.
Greg: She does seem 14, like when her boyfriend shows up on the motorcycle and she hops on. I was shocked to read that she was 12 when they were making this movie, and she becomes famous because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She’s kind of in the Joss Whedon universe. She was on a show called dollhouse that he created, and she’s been in a few other things that were on TV and movies I’m forgetting.
Greg: Was she in Bring It On? She met him in and Bring It On.
Joe: Yeah. She doesn’t bring it on. Yeah. My favorite part about her character, it’s 1994. And she is listening in her headphones on on her Walkman.
Greg: Walkman. Sure.
Joe: To Sunshine of Your Love, which is a song that came out, I believe, in the 60s. I don’t know any 14 year old. In 1994 that was listening to Sunshine of Your Love.
Greg: Seriously, seriously, that is Jim Cameron directing a movie. Yeah, but here’s something that I wondered if you would catch. Did you catch who was doing the cover of Sunshine of Your Love?
Joe: No, I didn’t go that deep into it. Who has it?
Greg: Who in 1994 with Joe Skye Tucker would be the most excited about covering Sunshine of Your.
Joe: Love, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers or some band like that.
Greg: It was living color.
Joe: Really. Oh, awesome.
Greg: One of your very favorite bands in the 90s.
Joe: It’s true. So. All right, I’m back in on that. Okay.
Greg: I did clock it to like, get out of here. Although, I don’t know, we were listening to old music. Yeah, when we were teenagers, so I don’t know, maybe.
Joe: Maybe it was just one of those, like, they write her character to be like. Yeah, like the hip.
Greg: She’s wearing a flannel.
Joe: Yeah, like 1994. She’s hip. And then. Oh, yeah, of course she’s listening to Sunshine of Your Life.
Greg: I remember when this movie came out and she was wearing like a flannel around her waist, and I was like, that’s what somebody in LA thinks, that people in the northwest are dressing like, yeah, that’s not what anybody in the northwest looks like in the 90s. But I thought she was great. I thought she did a good job.
Greg: She really held the screen. She’s 12 years old. It’s just unbelievable what some kids can do.
Joe: Yeah. Oh, I have to say, there’s a moment. So when they’re selling the bad guy, They come up with the his nickname is the sand spider. And they go, well, why? And like Charlton Heston says, well, why do they call him that? And the answer is probably because it sounds scary. Is the answer like, that’s the most ridiculous line in this whole movie?
Greg: Yeah. He turns around and says in their meeting, well, first of all, we need to say on their walk into the meeting with their boss who’s dressed like Nick Fury, but it’s Charlton Heston. They have to go through this hallway. That’s very kind of Mission Impossible. We also kind of total recall where they. There’s kind of like a hallway, that’s all x ray.
Greg: So they can of see if they’re carrying anything. So you’re like watching some skeletons, you know, walk and it turns to the camera, says, hi, Janice. And Janice is the woman who’s like, making sure that people go through all the authentication before they go into the meeting area. And when they get into her area, she has a huge pistol underneath her desk that she grabs with her hand in case something goes down.
Joe: Yeah, I.
Greg: Just feel like Janice. Janice has one of the best shots.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Just grabbing the gun and telling people to, like, authenticate themselves with their retinal scan or whatever. You know, she’s grabbing that. I was just like, I want to know, Janice is story in this movie. That’s that looks like a pretty good job to me.
Joe: It’s totally Mission Impossible seven when he’s sneaky and.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: To that meeting and they’re basically rehashing all of the stuff about the Impossible Mission Force. And like that movie we might have to do that before the Mission Impossible eight comes out.
Greg: Oh, absolutely.
Joe: Because it is a great, bad movie. And honestly, every single drinking game that is our stock drinking game is in the first half of that movie. It’s amazing.
Greg: I’ve said this a million times. I’ll say it again. Right now, I just feel like we’re seven months away from the nine Mission Impossible movie. That’s basically all I’m focused on right now in my life. Anyways, they get in this meeting, Charlton Heston turns around. None of the Marvel movies have happened in the world yet, so he but he is just dressed as Nick Fury because James Cameron was like comic book sketch artist or something.
Greg: And he says, Sweet Jesus, Harry, you sure screwed the pooch last night. And that immediately made me wonder. Joe, when was the last time you screwed the pooch?
Joe: That’s a good question. Not as bad as Harry does know.
Greg: Yeah, but.
Joe: I don’t know. That’s one of those terms that I’d love to know. The the etymology of that term. We probably don’t have time for a deep dive into it for this episode, but coming up, we will.
Greg: That’ll be a bonus episode.
Joe: Bonus of the history.
Greg: Of screwing the pooch. But the way that they talk to him in that and the way that he talks to them is pretty funny. You know, he says something totally went bad. And they’re like, well, you know, there’s there’s a range of totality. You know, there’s a whole spectrum of totality. Anyways, it’s pretty funny. They do a pretty good job in that scene.
Greg: After that scene, they realize that Tia Carrera, who he met in the opening scene of the movie at that party, is close by and is somehow tied to Khalid, the guy that they think is maybe trying to bring in some nuclear weapons into America. So they start a scene where it’s where it’s near. Is that his keyboard at like some standing desk?
Greg: And Tom Arnold and Faisal. They walk up and I wish you could see what I saw. It’s, it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger type acting, but he just has one finger on his keyboard and he’s just, just, just one finger on a keyboard just doing this until they walk up and he’s like what do you guys got. Is he type acting?
Greg: But he’s not actually typing. He’s just hitting a keyboard with like a limp finger. It’s it’s the funniest thing you ever seen. It’s unbelievable. Anyways, should we have a conversation that needs to be had about Tia Carrera?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I feel like it’s going to be short. She’s straight off of Wayne’s World in this movie, which everybody saw 37 times in the theater. Yeah, a city career has now like one of the most famous young people in America. And then she shows up in this movie, and she is always an evening where I think.
Joe: Yeah, she.
Greg: Is always pouring champagne.
Joe: Yeah. Also true.
Greg: And I think in every scene she’s in, she’s pouring champagne or almost every scene she has like, you know, one of those champagne flutes and she’s pouring.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And she’s like an art collector. What’s the conversation that needs to be had about a career ago.
Joe: I thought when she was in Wayne’s World that she was the next, it girl. Yeah. And she was going to be in everything.
Greg: Yeah. And she was funny movie.
Joe: Yeah. And she’s awesome in it. And then she does this movie and then she’s in some other stuff, but just kind of hits the B movie circuit basically.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: But I’m a big fan. Loved her in Wayne’s World, like everyone who saw that movie. And sure, you know, that’s one of those just classic movies that all of it works. And someone who loved Wayne’s World when it was on SNL. And yeah, Mike Myers, they were just kind of shooting scenes to be silly and stitching a movie around it.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And that is part of the charm of why it’s so hilarious. And so it just works. And it’s just a it’s like a perfect movie and she’s great in it. And I just think she’s now a star and she really kind of doesn’t become a star. And I don’t know why that is or what happens. Or, you know, sometimes that just happens with people.
Joe: But I’m a fan like her. Hope she’s doing well off the royalties of what she’s done. And yeah, and she’s great in this and she is kind of playing it straight to be kind of the art dealer that is helping smuggle in the nuclear weapons for lots of money and kind of a bad guy, not, you know, kind of on that one of those kind of not the bad guy, not the good guy, but kind of in the middle and kind of gets her her comeuppance at the end when she’s in the limo that crashes into the water after the fight scene with Jamie Lee Curtis in there.
Greg: So in the limo and that fight scene was in front of a, like a green screen that was so clearly just happening on a gimbal somewhere else. Soundstage. Yeah. Which is surprising.
Joe: Yeah, but what are you what’s your take on Tia Carrera?
Greg: I mean, I expected to see her in everything forever, honestly, after Wayne’s World and then after this. Although in this movie, she’s not really given that much to do. Yeah, except I have a feeling the note for her was just be a bond villain. I feel like she’s just being a bond villain the whole time, and I thought she did that pretty well.
Greg: Apparently she was on a show called The Relic Hunter for 66 episodes. I don’t know where that aired. I don’t know anything about that show, but it was from 99 to 2002. Not really a time when I was watching TV. So I don’t know. Yeah, I’m surprised that she hasn’t been more visible, honestly. And but, you know, if you go through her IMDb page, she’s worked really consistently.
Greg: So it’s not like she’s gone anywhere. She just wasn’t a leading person in movies the way I expected her to be. She did have three episodes on, Curb Your Enthusiasm. So you can just retire after that?
Joe: Probably. Yeah, probably. Yeah.
Greg: Anyways, I was surprised that, she kind of disappeared when she disappeared. And so seeing her in this movie was like. Oh, good. And then I was like, oh, they didn’t really give her that much to do. All right, well, that’s a bummer. She is kind of like working for kind of the main terrorist. Art Malik is his name.
Greg: He’s pretending like he works for her, but she really works for him. And, he was from The Living Daylights, a James Bond movie, actually, now that I think of it, he was kind of an ally of James Bond in the Living Daylights, where he was in charge of the Mujahideen, I think, and he was helping bond fight the Soviets, probably the Soviets.
Joe: And probably the Soviets.
Greg: Yeah. And so he was a good guy in that movie. And then a couple of years later, maybe he felt all right being the bad guy in this, we should probably get into like the geopolitics of this movie. Because the day after Janet Maslin wrote her pretty stellar review, like, you should go see this movie. It’s made by people.
Greg: We should be taken seriously. That’s July 15th, 1994. The next article in the New York Times, July 16th, 1994, is Arab Americans Protest True Lies.
Joe: Fair. Yeah. They should.
Greg: Yeah, probably should. And so what James Cameron said about this was I was just going for generic terrorist. And in fact, in the script they were Irish. It was the IRA. And then there was a leak from that movie blown Away with Tommy Lee Jones. And was it Jeff Bridges and that movie? Yeah. And the Big Bad.
Greg: And that movie was Irish. And so they changed true lives to be another generic terrorist group, and they just happened to strike a chord with Americans that just happened. It’s so yeah.
Joe: There’s so many air quotes around that.
Greg: Right? Right. And it’s especially noticeable after 911, you know, that’s when they just stopped doing this altogether. So pretty rough.
Joe: There’s also that movie with Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. It’s about that IRA around this time there, right. The Crying Game, which centers around the IRA. So the IRA, I mean, I get, you know, that was the main terrorist organization that I kind of grew up with remembering. Yeah, I feel like it’s also in one of the Tom Clancy books, maybe, and movies that they do.
Joe: So I get the protest. But yeah, I feel like what happens, like the fall of the Soviet Union happened right around this time. Yeah. They were just like the bad guy and everything. Yeah. Forever. And then we’re, like, looking for the next generic people we could have. And then so there’s IRA a little bit for terrorists, and then we just kind of settle on Middle Eastern terrorists.
Joe: To me, this, this movie really starts that trend until you say 911 and then we coming. Oh, maybe, maybe that’s not such a good thing to do. So between that and the sexism, that’s what is the hardest part of this movie.
Greg: Yeah, I agree.
Joe: Again, I could get past it to a degree if they gave the characters in it anything to do, but there is no depth of character in it at all. Yeah, they’re just the bad guys and I get that that’s what they were going for. But also 30 years later looks, I mean, and 30 years ago looks bad. Yeah.
Joe: There’s no way around. It cannot sugarcoat this. There’s no like yeah, well, maybe or is it that. But it is that bad? It’s as bad as you think it is. And the sexism is just as bad as you think it is.
Greg: Yep. Yeah. There’s a lot of moments in this movie, like every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where he is just screaming commands at people. Like, here he is telling someone to get to the car, to get to the car. It’s, and this is my favorite one. This is where he’s trying to get the helicopter to go down so that he can save Jamie Lee Curtis out of the limo.
Clip: Get down to the limo. Come on, take it down. Let’s go! Get down! It’s down! Take it down!
Joe: If I remember correctly and I feel like I do. He’s not wearing headphones or a headset in that scene.
Greg: He’s on the outside of the helicopter, hitting the door, yelling at them.
Greg: That’s a great point.
Joe: There’s a few moments when we get to our drinking games with helicopters and Harrier jets of conversations that are happening where there’s no way that anyone could hear anything that is being said.
Greg: I love it so much. That’s incredible. I love when Arnold Schwarzenegger is riding around on the horse how polite he is. He is saying sorry to everyone throughout this movie. He is constantly apologizing. And when asked about this, James Cameron said, oh yeah, that’s because I’m Canadian and I wrote the script constantly apologizing. Yeah, Bill Paxton, I don’t know how much of him I would cut out because he is pretty entertaining, which I think is probably the problem.
Greg: They had with this. You know? Turns out he’s a fake. But Jamie Lee Curtis has a crush on him because she thinks he’s a spy. And then they start bugging their conversations. Tom Arnold, Arnold Schwarzenegger listening to a lunch that they’re having and they’re realizing, oh my gosh, this guy’s a total fake. And and then Tom Arnold kind of turns a corner and starts to like him, which is pretty funny.
Greg: And year. But Cairo was a cakewalk is what they’re talking about. He had been to Cairo and it it was no big deal. So let me let me just play this. It’s pretty funny.
Joe: I really can’t take credit. Why not? It’s the training.
Greg: Takes you into a lethal instrument. You react in a microsecond without thinking. I’m starting to.
Joe: Like this guy. Oh, we still got to kill him. I mean, that’s a given. Yeah.
Greg: Should we have the conversation that needs to be had about Tom Arnold?
Joe: I think.
Greg: So what was your take on Tom Arnold when you first watched this movie? When he enters the movie? I mean, do you remember kind of how you felt about Tom Arnold in that moment in 1994?
Joe: Yeah, I thought one how did you get this part?
Greg: Totally. Yeah.
Joe: Don’t ruin this movie.
Greg: Right.
Joe: What the hell are you doing? And then he is so perfectly charming.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: That that just works. And he kind of makes a lot of this movie what it is and a lot of way. He’s the perfect sidekick.
Greg: He hadn’t been in a movie really up until this point. He was kind of running the Roseanne Barr Show, Roseanne. He was very publicly divorcing Roseanne, and he was all over the tabloids, I think. When this movie came out, but while they were making it, they were still together. And has he been in a movie where you think, oh yeah, Tom Arnold was great in that movie.
Joe: Since then I would say no.
Greg: So I mean we kind of need to attribute this to Tom Arnold and Arnold Schwarzenegger for just being a good team. And the reason Tom Arnold got the part was because their chemistry, when they just hung out was great, and they became best friends after this, but no one else seems to know what to do with Tom Arnold.
Greg: The studio really didn’t want Tom Arnold and neither did you or I. We would have never put him in this movie.
Joe: No.
Greg: James Cameron said he would quit the movie if they didn’t put Tom Arnold in the movie. He was the guy for the part.
Joe:
Greg: And they were like okay okay. He was right.
Joe: Yeah. He was 100% right. Pretty great. He’s hilarious in this. He, he brings the comic relief what you get. But also helps move the story forward and is an integral part of this. Like this movie isn’t as good and as best moments without him.
Greg: Right. Right.
Joe: And I don’t know how much of his scenes were ad libbed, but I feel like half of them feel like he’s just making shit up in the moment.
Greg: There things on line, who knows how much you can trust them. But apparently he would walk into a scene and say something different in every take. Like one of the things he improvised 15 different ways was when he walked in and saw Dana Eliza Dushku, his character wearing the motorcycle helmet. Boy, I remember the first time I got shot out of a cannon.
Greg: Yeah, like that was take 15. And so they he just gave them something different every single time. I mean, he was on the Roseanne show, which was a pretty well written sitcom on TV that had a pretty. Judd Apatow was a writer on that show, like he was. That writer’s room was nuts. So he was around very funny people pitching jokes all week long.
Greg: So I bet that muscle was pretty well trained for him. But also, there’s that scene at the beginning when he’s dropping off Arnold Schwarzenegger and he gives this snowglobe gift to Arnold Schwarzenegger to help him pretend that he was traveling right for his, like, computer sales job or whatever. And he says, oh, here you go. I got this.
Greg: And he says, what’s this? And he goes, it’s for Dana Stoop. And Arnold Schwarzenegger looks at him like, what did you just say? But, you know, they just kept it in you know, you could tell that, he was like, what? I’m sure that’s a lot of he was the Gary Busey of this movie, or he’s just doing whatever the whole time.
Greg: And that role continued in movies like this after that. Like, what was the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger where Rob Schneider was the Tom Arnold of the movie, and he was surprisingly better than we expected him to be. Was that Judge.
Joe: Dredd? Oh, that’s, Sylvester Stallone as a Judge Dredd.
Greg: Yeah. The year after True Lies, he was Fergie and Judge Dredd, and I think he was kind of the Tom Arnold role. Like, now we have the funny guy who can improvise next to the Big Heavy.
Joe: All right, I’m thinking of Johnny Mnemonic, or we have Denis Leary in that movie.
Greg: Yeah. Okay. Same thing.
Joe: Yeah. Bringing in people who are just like, yeah, up and coming comedians to just bring a little levity and unpredictability to the movie.
Greg: Yep. There’s a pretty funny moment in this movie where they go to take Bill Paxton and Jamie Lee Curtis out of his trailer, and he’s using government funds to basically mess with his wife. It’s very disturbing. But Bill Paxton is pretty hilarious when he’s being dragged to the van or whatever he’s telling them. Take her, not me.
Greg: Yeah, basically.
Joe: Yeah.
Clip: Take her to the curb.
Greg: I don’t know if that was in the script, but, man, Bill Paxton just like an alien’s just killing it. He and James Cameron go way back, by the way. There’s like. Like, almost like student films of the two of them working together from way back.
Joe: That’s awesome. Yeah, he steals every scene he’s in. And we’ve talked about the I mean, edge of tomorrow. Here he is, pitch perfect in his moment in that movie. Yeah. In this movie the same. He plays this kind of character just perfectly. I’ve just kind of like the loser who’s just kind of figured something out and is kind of annoying.
Joe: And you don’t like, but also there’s a weird charm to him, so it’s like it’s one of those roles that could easily have slid into typical smarmy whatever, dude. And this that’s trying to take advantage of Jamie Lee Curtis. And he has all of those things, and yet you’re still kind of like him, which is just this, you know, it takes a special kind of actor to be able to kind of ride that line of like, he’s despicable in every kind of way, but also like a little bit likable and gross, but also, like, I get it.
Greg: He says that James Cameron’s theory on that character was if he’s too cartoonish, it would make Jamie Lee Curtis judgment look bad. And so it needs to be just earnest enough that she’s not a fool for believing him. Yeah, entirely. And so he when he’s talking earnestly, you know, there’s a little bit of humanity behind it. And that was on purpose to make Jamie Lee Curtis look good, which is interesting, the kind of the chest they’re playing with the characters.
Greg: Yeah. It’s when after she’s done her uncomfortable dance and then the bad guys come in and take both of them, she yells to Arnold Schwarzenegger, let me handle this like she’s the spy in the scenario, not him. That made me laugh.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: So there’s all kinds of hilarious stuff. It turns out the art that Tia Carrera is importing also sometimes has nuclear bombs in it.
Joe:
Greg: So there’s that.
Joe: Obviously.
Greg: She’s like this is priceless. Absolutely priceless. Pity she almost says it like Doctor Evil. I guess this is five years before Doctor Evil. Yeah. She’s like 50 and and then they take the nuclear bombs out of it. Then Crimson Jihad is filming like the video to prove that they have this nuclear power now in the battery dies on the camera.
Greg: Pretty funny. Yeah. I don’t know. All of these moments. It, you know, and he’s sweating because the guy filming it is sweating because he doesn’t want to tell his boss that the camera is out. So anyways, now Jamie Lee Curtis knows about Arnold Schwarzenegger. They get tied up and he’s given some truth serum. And now there’s a scene where she gets to ask him questions because the bad guys walk away for a little while.
Greg: Yeah, and he’s being truthful at that point. I feel like the movie gets great, and I’m resentful of the journey we had to take to get there.
Joe: Yeah, agreed.
Greg: But at that moment it’s like, okay, these two are really good together. You know, she’s like, Harry, have you ever killed somebody and what does he say.
Joe: Yes. But they were all bad.
Greg: But he says it in such an endearing way.
Joe: You know.
Greg: And then it’s just like because they’re in the Florida Keys, it’s just all, it’s just all commando. It’s basically. Yeah, she even says I married Rambo at some point as their as they’re doing this, they go into this like warehouse and Arnold Schwarzenegger is shooting and she’s trying to shoot them. But then she drops her machine gun and as the machine gun drops down the stairs, it kills everybody.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And she has this just, like, totally childlike, like, Look on your face that I was just like, I sent you a video of it, right? It’s like, oh my gosh, she’s incredible. Yeah.
Joe: She’s perfect in.
Greg: This movie, Jamie Lee Curtis is the greatest. And she says this movie was made entirely for her. Like everything that she is good at, she gets to do in this movie. And Arnold Schwarzenegger said the same thing. I was born to play this character because it’s funny, it’s heartfelt. I’m a husband, I’m a dad. I get to be both of those things, and then I also get to be ridiculous.
Greg: Action hero.
Joe: Yeah, she is awesome. I feel like everybody, even Arnold, who like, I know he gets dinged for his acting, but this is for him. He has definitely improved from his early 80s roles.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: To now and has figured out how to, like, be funny and have depth to him that you don’t see in earlier roles. And this is everybody kind of at the top of their game. Yeah, I wouldn’t change any of the cast of this, or there’s nobody in this that stands out as missing the mark on their role. Or are there as an actor in this?
Joe: Yeah, everybody is perfect, and it takes people at the top of their game to kind of take some of the ridiculousness of the script and of the plot and make it some sort of believable. We’ve talked about this of like great actors elevating really kind of mediocre dialog is as an artist, the.
Greg: Secret to a bad movie.
Joe: Yeah. And they have great actors being great in this kind of despite all of it. And I’m not going to say Arnold is going to win an Oscar for Best actor.
Greg: No, but he is doing some impressive stuff. For Arnold the Barber.
Joe: Arnold. Yeah.
Greg: Might be a little low there.
Joe: So it’s kind of like the Keanu Reeves. Like, you know. Yeah, he’s on a different curve and we love him. But to me, it’s it’s the same thing with Arnold in this movie. He’s doing things different. He’s being funny. Yeah. And it works. It just works. You know, the chemistry seems. It does seem like they really like each other.
Joe: They’re getting along well. You can always kind of tell to me when people get along on the set.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, just.
Joe: How it feels. And allowing Tom Arnold to say 15 different things and 15 different takes like that takes some trust from the director and the everybody else in the room on it. So it all just kind of comes together in ways and and I agree, if we can figure out how to get to that scene, like the first 30 minutes in the last 45 minutes.
Joe: Without some of the really problematic parts, this movie I think would stand out better than it does to me. I still come back to like 30 years removed. I look back and go, oh yeah, there are moments that are rough, some lines in it that they say just about and I can’t remember them just verbatim, but just pretty, just negative misogynistic things about women and wives and divorce and, and those sorts of things that make it problematic.
Joe: And yet I still love it.
Greg: Exactly. But then there’s a moment where Tom Arnold shows up in some helicopters to pick up Arnold Schwarzenegger from the island or whatever, and everybody’s dead. And Tom Arnold said, I thought this looked like your work or something like that, because he, like, had a flamethrower at some point. Then he was just like, that’s a great bad movie line, right there.
Greg: Yeah. Somebody saying that’s selling the good guy, actually.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I heard this on the radio. This sounded like your work or something like that. But this is our movie.
Greg: Totally, totally. The bad guys are in a truck with, like, a rocket launcher. They don’t know how to use it. That’s used for comedy. They don’t realize there’s going to be kickback when they use this rocket launcher, and it shoots one of the other terrorists at the front window. It’s like it’s like it’s the Three Stooges.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Except that guy, when he goes out the front window, he’s then run over by this truck that’s driving down the road. Then these Harrier jets come that actually were loaned to them for $100,000 by the Marines, I think. And James Cameron, I think his brother was a marine. That’s why he always uses Marines in his movies. Anyways, they take out this bridge and then of course one of the bad guy trucks stops and the two front wheels go over and that’s dangling and it’s going to tip over, but then it doesn’t.
Greg: And then, like a big bird lands on the front and makes the whole thing go down.
Joe: Yeah. And then it explodes as soon as it hits because, you.
Greg: Know, it causes explosions. Yeah. Trucks hitting water. Yeah.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: Oh my gosh. Schwarzenegger gets to hang from that part of the helicopter. He saves Jamie Lee Curtis. That shot of them saving her out of the car was done once. It was a one and done. It was a remote control limo driving down the road. And then the helicopter dropped the stunt woman into the sunroof and then tracked with the car as it went over.
Greg: Right. So the helicopter had to be going the same speed as the limo. Drop her in. And they did it once one. And that’s.
Joe: Awesome. Yeah it’s a great scene I.
Greg: Mean that’s incredible. Yeah. It’s worth watching the movie to get to that point. Yeah. Even though there’s a lot that you could fast forward if you want. Yeah. We’re talking about how much we love Bill Paxton. Yeah. We think he should have largely been cut out of the movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So we understand the plight of the film editor.
Joe: So we have the scene before Jamie Lee Curtis goes into the room to dance for Arnold Schwarzenegger and yeah, he doesn’t know. And he’s like, adjusting the dress and ripping stuff off of it. Yeah, my take on that is her changing the dress is the equivalent of in any movie where they give themselves a haircut and they give themselves a $500 haircut by themselves and their hotel room.
Greg: And like a hair dye.
Joe: Yeah. And a hair dye. And then they look perfect coming out of it, like, not like they cut their hair at all. Right? Is exactly what that scene was reminiscent of. So I was like, that is it the equivalency for me of in this movie of her changing her dress, which there’s she rips it apart and then it’s like a perfect dress right now.
Joe: So. Right. It’s exactly the haircut of, oh, nice job of giving yourself a perfectly styled. Yeah, $500 haircut.
Greg: Sure. With water from a vase.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: So James Cameron wanted to have Jamie Lee Curtis in this movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t want her in the movie. He said she’s too beautiful. No one would buy her as this character of the housewife and James Cameron said, we can we can fix that with like, wardrobe. And I’m a great actor, you know? He’s like, let me deal with that.
Greg: That’s fine. You know, we can take care of that. But they kept trying to find somebody, kept trying to find somebody. And then somebody gave James Cameron a VHS tape of A Fish Called Wanda, and he was going to watch just the first 5 or 10 minutes, and he ended up watching the whole movie, and he was just like, this movie shows me that she can do everything we need her to do in this movie.
Greg: She is that character. And so he got together with Arnold Schwarzenegger and just said, how much do you trust me? And Arnold Schwarzenegger said after a long pause, I trust you completely. And he said, okay, it’s Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Sauce. And he was like, okay, let’s do it. And Jamie Lee Curtis in her contract for this movie, there was one stipulation that when they were editing the movie and when they were maybe done with the edit of the movie, James Cameron contractually had to call Arnold Schwarzenegger and ask him, can we put Jamie Lee Curtis above the title in this movie?
Greg: Could it be a co build movie above the title? Arnold Schwarzenegger could say no, but this phone call had to take place for the deal to be signed. And so he’s in the editing room, he’s finished editing, or he’s almost done editing. He calls Arnold Sportsnet. He says, listen, I’m calling you because I have to. It’s in the contract for Jamie’s deal.
Greg: You can say no and we can be done. But in the contract I’m supposed to ask you at this point in the process, would you share top billing with Jamie Lee Curtis? And apparently there was, like, a long pause on the phone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was very resistant to sharing that top billing. If you look at all of his movies, it just says Schwarzenegger above the title.
Greg: And he said, this movie wouldn’t be this movie without her. She is my co-lead in this movie. She’s so incredible at something like, she was so incredible. She absolutely deserves co building. And so it says Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis above the title. And in the opening credits, it says Arnold Schwarzenegger Jamie Lee Curtis, True Lies.
Joe: I did notice that that’s that is awesome. Yeah.
Greg: For them I thought that was pretty cool. So Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t want her in the movie and by the end gives her co billing.
Joe: I mean, they do a lot to dress her down with like, wardrobe. Yeah, being very dowdy. Housewife. Bad hairstyle.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: Glasses, glasses. The classic tropes of every teen movie of like, right. You’re going to take the nerd to prom. What are you crazy? And then, you know, not another teen movie happened. And then she is perfect and beautiful. So but she plays it really well. I mean, all credit to her. And she is perfect in every.
Greg: So funny. Yeah, yeah. And then she’s emotional. She sells that really well. And then she’s just like incredible in the action scenes, especially at the end.
Joe: She had.
Greg: Literally dangling from the helicopter.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: The day before she turns 35. Yeah. She is dangling from a helicopter.
Joe: That’s awesome. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah it is pretty awesome.
Joe: Yeah. So I am in full support of Jamie Lee Curtis in this movie, even though I feel like there are problematic parts about. Yeah, everything.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Not to put that. Yeah. I have to put that caveat in everything.
Greg: Yeah, totally. It’s James Cameron.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And Arnold Schwarzenegger, I suppose. And Tom Arnold. Yeah. Just the men. Let me deal. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. No big deal. Difficult.
Greg: Okay. I need to bring us down a notch before we move on. Okay. And that is, you know, we usually talk about stunts. The guy who was one of the lead stunt people who actually was, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Stunt double Eliza Dushku accused him of molesting her when she was 12 on this movie. And there are other stories came out.
Greg: This is like in 2017, 2018, some pretty dark stories about this dude came out and he claimed he was being, you know, totally straight forward. He did admit to some things, didn’t admit to other things, but then other people were like, absolutely not. No, we have multiple people around. You said that’s that’s not what happened. So immediately, Jamie Lee Curtis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Cameron, they all came out, supporting her.
Greg: And, Eliza Dushku had told Jamie Lee Curtis about this. A couple of years before she said it publicly. But, Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron hadn’t heard about it until that moment. So anyways, there was a MeToo kind of moment for this movie, which is super sad because it, you know, puts a pretty dark cloud on a movie that already has a couple dark clouds in my mind.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But like seven years ago, the truth came out. Six years ago, the truth came out.
Joe: So there’s that. All right.
Greg: And he has not really worked since then. He has not worked for some good.
Joe: Well, yeah. So the least that can happen I guess. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. So those articles are out there, you can read them, but it is, horrible that it happened and nice that it’s out. Yes I agree okay. Joe, do you have anything you wanna say about that before we move on?
Joe: I don’t think so. But just know that this is going to be a rough transition into the rest of our show. So, you know, I’m only like, yeah, we apologize, but also, I feel like we should mention these sorts of things and we’re not we won’t shy away from them, but it just will make the next part just feel a little.
Joe: It’s a little bit of a hard speedbump to get over, but we’ll go forward to our.
Greg: Should we get to drinking games?
Joe: Yes. Let’s do it. All right. Oh, I love that so much.
Joe: Again, doesn’t have to be alcohol. Can be water, coffee, whatever your favorite soft drink is, if you want to drink soda pop or whatever you call it to be a milkshake, it doesn’t matter. Just whatever you whatever you have handy. So we have our stop drinking game for both of those, and then we’ll go through the fun part of our the one that we came up with through this so silent helicopter or just low flying helicopters, all over this movie.
Greg: Yeah, there’s that one about an hour into the movie where it just suddenly pops up and is following Bill Paxton’s character.
Joe: Yeah, I love that so much. It’s it’s like Silent Helicopter. It’s so awesome.
Greg: Does Bill Paxton address the fact that there’s a low flying helicopter right behind him?
Joe: I can’t remember.
Greg: I don’t think so. And James Cameron is the voice of the pilot.
Joe: So saw. And then also lots of conversations happening with helicopters and Harrier jets at full bore. No headphones, no nothing. Then everyone just kind of accepts that you can hear what’s happening. So yeah.
Greg: That’s hundred percent.
Joe: This is kind of like a dealer’s choice. So you can drink or not. There really isn’t a classic push in and enhance, but there is some stuff of like looking at, you know, the terrorists when they’re in the Omega sector and they’re up on the screen. So I sometimes count that I didn’t count at this time, but you could drink for that anytime.
Greg: There’s like surveillance footage or something.
Joe: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, okay sort of thing. But yep, there isn’t. And there are ample opportunity. But I didn’t find any where two people are sharing, slow motion. Look in the middle of chaos or an explosion with silent suffering and the ring in their ears.
Greg: They got close, but it didn’t happen.
Joe: Yeah, that doesn’t happen. Opening credit scene where the title locks in place with a sound. I gave this one. Oh, there are special horns in the score that that rise as the title comes up. So that’s.
Greg: True. So when a title of the movie shows up, someone has to take a drink.
Joe: Yes, exactly. There isn’t a flashback to dialog in this movie. No, I didn’t give the, over-the-top CGI in this. I felt like there are moments you could have given it, but really, it’s pretty straightforward. And how it does it.
Greg: The Harrier jet seems like it’s pretty CGI, but it actually kind of wasn’t. Yeah, it was actually just hanging from a crane, and they were filming it from a helicopter flying around it with a long lens to make it seem like it was moving around, but it was actually just hanging on the side of a building from a crane.
Joe: Like you said, there’s a fight scene in the limo. There are clearly some moments where they’re in front of a green screen.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Yeah, but that’s all right. You can drink if you want, but I didn’t give it. Great. Bad shots are all over this movie.
Greg: Everywhere, everywhere.
Joe: Everywhere. Every bad guy that is shooting at them, that’s that’s terrible.
Greg: Misses. Yeah.
Joe: Are the streets inextricably wet? Yes. There is a scene with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold and there is no reason for the streets to be wet behind them. They’re like outside a van.
Greg: Is this when they they see, like a car is tailing them? Three cars back on the inside lane, and then the camera looks back and there’s a car just like in between the two lanes. Doesn’t quite get the memo that it’s supposed to change lanes. It’s just the most obvious station wagon in the middle of two lanes.
Joe: Yeah, there’s that. And then they get out of it. Yeah. So there’s that. We do not have a give us the room or an Interpol reference.
Greg: Well he does ask that one woman to leave.
Joe: That’s true.
Greg: So she gives them. It’s not that everybody gives a small group of people the room. It’s one person gives the large group of people. Exactly.
Joe: Yeah. So if you’re, you know, wanting to drink for Charlton Heston being a misogynists, then go for.
Greg: If the Portland crew usually assigns, give us the room to a certain person. That person has to take a drink.
Joe: Yes, exactly.
Greg: Referencing the crew in Portland that listens to our show and follows our drinking games.
Joe: That’s right.
Greg: And we love you guys.
Joe: Yes, and to the Portland crew, if you have any drinking games that you want to add to our stock drinking game, we are all ears. So yeah.
Greg: Let us know. You know great bad movies show on Instagram. That’s how you can get Ahold of us are great bad movies show at gmail.com.
Joe: So Greg Steinhart, what is one of your drinking games that you have?
Greg: Every time Arnold says, sorry, oh, I love them. And I feel like he sort of takes on a Jim Cameron Canadian story. There’s a little bit of a little bit of a story going on.
Joe: Yeah. My first one is I have every time you see kind of old 1994 technology. Take a drink.
Greg: That’s a good one. Yeah. So every time Tia Carrera is pouring herself a drink.
Joe: Oh, that’s a good one. I have another one particular area I’ll get to in a second. I have. Okay. Every time there’s just casual misogyny. Anything. Take a drink. Yeah. So you’ll be drunk by like ten minutes into this movie.
Greg: Every time Arnold says a one liner.
Joe: I have, yeah, I have that one. Do I have? Every time you can see a man’s face?
Joe: Because especially in the motorcycle and, horse riding scene.
Greg: Yeah, it’s.
Joe: Blurred, but it’s very clearly not either of the actors.
Greg: Right. This is something where. Yeah, the 4K transfers of these movies isn’t very forgiving.
Joe: No, not at all. It’s rough, but it’s it’s awesome. Do I.
Greg: Want to say when the guy playing the bad guy gets hit by the car and then gets up, I want to say the stunt man’s kind of like high forehead, bald cap is almost coming off.
Joe:
Greg: After he’s hit by the car. Yeah. Anyways, every time Jamie Lee Curtis looks sad. Oh, take a drink.
Joe: You’re drinking a lot with that one.
Greg: And if she kisses the air to nobody, take too.
Joe: Perfect. I have. Every time you hear the tango theme, take a drink.
Greg: Oh. That’s good.
Joe: It’s only a couple times, but you need to finish your drink, if you will. Sure.
Greg: Every time Arnold is yelling for people to do something, get to the car.
Joe: Get to the chopper. Which is.
Greg: You know. Yeah, it’s all just delusions of get to the choppa.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, I have every time someone is shot and they fly backwards, take a drink.
Greg: I have every time Eliza Dushku is in a scene. Oh, nice. Just like a handful. I took, like, a good amount of scenes.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. My last one is every time you think Tia career is hair. Can’t possibly get any higher. Take a drink.
Greg: In my notes I have, I’m just assuming her character’s name is big hair.
Greg: Every time Tom Arnold has a scene in the van, this is much like the Eliza Dushku. Anytime she’s in a scene. You know what? I’m sick of being in the van. You guys are going to be in the van next time. Anytime. Tom Arnold is in the van. Guy in the van. Take a drink.
Joe: Yeah. Awesome.
Greg: And then I also have my last one is every time Bill Paxton pees himself.
Joe: Some twice in this movie. But it’s worth it.
Greg: All right. We have something called Joe’s Trope Lightning Round, which is also signs you might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: We don’t have as many as I thought in this one. Yeah, but we do have. I gave him the best at something, so he’s like the best kind of spy action guy. We have revenge as the driver, the protagonist. Especially when they kidnap him and his wife and his daughter. Yeah, we have explosions on impact for car crashes.
Joe: We have some conversations in the middle of a car chase. So in the opening scene, they’re in the van and they’re driving to get him. And they have, like, earpieces in and they’re having a conversation in the middle of all of that. Right. Awesome. And then I have the new one, which is diving away from an explosion means you’re safe and nothing bad can happen to you.
Greg: Wait, didn’t you also add downloading something or waiting for something? We upload? Because that happens in this movie as well.
Joe: Downloading under pressure?
Greg: Yes, and it’s encrypted. So he’s going to need a couple minutes.
Joe: Yes, exactly. So downloading under pressure downloading a file under pressure is in this one as well. So totally.
Greg: Hey, I should mention that opening scene was actually much, much, much longer. They had like a whole thing where like 100 snowmobiles were going to be traveling down the mountain chasing him, and he was going to roll up, I think, like a crashed plane over the side of a mountain and then hop in and use a rudder of the plane somehow or something, maybe as a helicopter to ski down the side of a mountain.
Greg: There’s like a whole thing. And it was so cold and it was so hard to get the crew and everything where it needed to go. They had all the snowmobiles, they had all the crane stuff to make sure that the thing could go down the mountain, whatever. And Jim Cameron just said, this is such a nightmare. Let’s just see what we can get in one day and then we’ll be done with this.
Greg: And so they just filmed a bunch of action stuff in like the woods and whatnot, and then they just had him end up on the road and they pick him up in the van and take him away. And so they were just like, he was just like, let’s just abandon this whole thing. And so he said that opening action scene actually went down to about 10% of what they were ready to do.
Greg: And but it was so cold and so out in the middle of nowhere that they were like, let’s just get out of here.
Joe: Interesting.
Greg: Yeah. All right, Joe, are you ready for some important questions?
Joe: Oh, more than anything.
Greg: Okay. Awesome. Let’s do it. Did this movie hold up then?
Joe: I think barely. It held up then.
Greg: Okay. So a little bit, then.
Joe:
Greg: 30 years later, celebrating its 30th anniversary doesn’t hold up.
Joe: Now the action sequences hold up now. The movie, doesn’t hold up for me. I don’t know, how do you feel about it?
Greg: I think that a farce about a husband and a father who’s also a spy, that could be a movie that’s made right now.
Joe:
Greg: The way that they handle the misogyny and kind of the geopolitics, the world politics of it, that’s a little rough. Agreed. So it’s so funny because when I see a movie that’s clearly so dated and misogynistic like this, or when it’s racist, you know, things like that, I always think back to what it was like to watch Mad Men when it was on TV.
Joe:
Greg: And it was like, wow, it is so horrible how things were in the 60s that this is really what it was like, you know. And so I think I’ve said this before on the show, but part of watching movies like this, it’s kind of like, wow, we’ve come a long way. I guess in a way it’s sad that we’ve had to come a long way, but also it’s nice to see that we’ve made some progress in the last year.
Joe:
Greg: So I think there’s some real asterisks, but I think the foundation that this movie is, is on could be made today. So I think that part of it does hold up. Yeah. Okay. How hard do they sell the good guy.
Joe: They kind of show they don’t sell them. But yeah. And that opening scene is like selling the good guy and yeah you know. Yeah not as much as they could have. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: How hard do they sell the bad guy?
Joe: Not that much either. I mean, there’s kind of a moment where they’re, you know, in the Omega offices talking about the Crimson Jihad. Yeah, but.
Greg: Like reading his file.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, not not to the degree we’re used to.
Greg: Why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: It’s only so that they can have a kiss in front of an atomic bomb explosion. It’s my. It’s my take on. Yeah. You are the more romantic. Yeah. Movie person than I am. So why is there romance in this?
Greg: I think the romance is, at the end of the day, the whole point of this movie. Yeah, that I love it.
Joe: Yeah, I agree, I kind of I like their relationship too. And I’m rooting for them throughout the movie.
Greg: But speaking of this, I wanted to ask you, have you been watching the Netflix show Nobody Wants This with Kristen Bell and Adam Brody?
Joe: I have not. Is it worth taking the look on?
Greg: I mean, I’m much more in the rom com world than you are. It’s a great rom com show.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Yeah. So I would say yeah. Watch one. All right. He plays a rabbi and everyone calls him hot rabbi. And I. It made me wonder I wonder why nobody calls me hot rabbi. So you might wonder that. Why don’t. My Greg doesn’t get hot Rabbi. Okay, okay. Joe, does true ladies deserve a sequel?
Joe: I feel like all the elements are there for a sequel. It’s honestly thinking back, surprising that there hasn’t been a sequel to it. We’ve had a TV show that had one season. Sure, but yeah, it does deserve a sequel to be probably multiple.
Greg: Okay. You addressed a couple things there. You’ve watched there was a show called True Lies. That Jim Cameron produced and you watched one episode, is that right. Yeah. I couldn’t track down an episode to watch. How was it.
Joe: There was no way to tie it to the movie. Oh, okay. In any appreciable way. It’s just like a spy action TV show.
Greg: So perfect in every way.
Joe: Perfect in every way. Yeah. It’s not like high brow quality TV. It’s, CBS cop show that could run for ten years, but it didn’t. So, yeah, I watched one episode and it was mediocre, but exactly what I needed in a hotel room in Portland as I was trying to fall asleep.
Greg: We should have a versus third of the TV shows. True Lies versus Lethal Weapon versus shooter versus taken or.
Joe: Lethal Weapon to me is the best of all of those. I’m sorry, I’m spoiler I love those show. I love that.
Greg: I love that show so much. Okay, okay. We don’t need it. That was our resources out right there.
Joe: Yeah you’re.
Greg: Right.
Joe: Everybody nailed it.
Greg: Okay. The second thing is does it deserve a sequel? The truth is it probably does and did. But there’s an interesting quote that gyms, gyms that gyms Cameron gave didn’t get around.
Joe: Yeah, I call them gyms.
Greg: He said that they basically wrote it and they were planning to make it, and they worked on it for quite a while. And, you know, they were having some trouble, but it wasn’t like the script wasn’t done, but they were trying to get there. And then after 911, he said he just could not get it to be funny.
Greg: So they decided not to do it.
Joe: That’s interesting. I feel like they could have gone a million different ways with it anyway. But what I will say about James Cameron, as much as I struggle with his writing and he knows what people want to see.
Greg: Him.
Joe: I mean, his movies.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: On balance, have been incredibly popular. He has a pulse on what people want to see. So I get it.
Greg: To the last hour of this movie, remind you of the last hour of avatar two?
Joe: Well, I’ll never see avatar two, so.
Greg: Oh, okay. Okay.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Does this movie deserve a prequel?
Joe: No, never. There are no prequels that need to be made about any movie, quite frankly. Start where the story starts. Stop going back and making prequels. Stop rewriting history.
Greg: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if that’s how we could possibly get more good Tom Arnold, then yes, my answer is.
Joe: Okay, okay.
Greg: I don’t know how we do that 30 years later.
Joe: The age him like they’re doing everything everywhere. Yeah, totally.
Greg: Joe, are we getting on to the next question? Are we bad people for leaving this movie?
Joe: There is no way around it. Yes, it’s like this is the hardest. Yes. This is the, like, fastest. Yes.
Greg: I think I completely agree. We cannot slide out from this in any way. There’s no getting around it. No. Okay, Joe, how could this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake? We have trouble answering these two questions as two separate questions. So yeah, let’s bring them together. How can it be fixed? And who should be in the remake?
Joe: Basically, I feel like the remake has already happened on Netflix and it’s the show foobar with all sorts of Iger, right? Yeah, it’s a little different. But basically how I fix it is Eliza Dushku is the star, and she hasn’t told her dad that she’s a spy. And that’s basically the plot of foobar, that show where his daughter is a spy.
Joe: And then they have to kind of work together, and he has a mundane job that he he works. So it’s already happened. Netflix beat us to the point on this, but that’s how you fix the show. How do you fix this movie? And who should be in the remake?
Greg: I’ve never seen that show, but I really want to and I’m really surprised. I’m looking at his credits right now. I’m surprised that James Cameron had nothing to do with it.
Joe: Yeah, it’s a fun, silly, stupid show.
Greg: Yeah, I need to watch it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: To fix this movie. I think James Cameron needs to go for an even more generic terrorist, obviously. And if he’s going for like generic terrorists in 2024, I think the bad guys should now be new wannabe Silicon Valley CEOs and flip flops and hoodies. And they are acquiring a Chinese algorithm for TikTok to show that they can be players in the Silicon Valley world and ruin everything, just like the big boys.
Joe:
Greg: So man yeah I know, I know I’m still bringing you like a real nation into this. But ByteDance and making TikTok has been just so effective and controlling our world that I feel like we can use them in 2024 as, people who are good at manipulating. And it’s just douchebags who are, trying to bring that to America.
Greg: Okay. In the remake, I think it’s a reimagining, and I think Harry is now Harriet.
Joe:
Greg: And played by Charlize Theron.
Joe: Oh I’m in.
Greg: Her husband is played by Nate McKenzie. The comedian.
Greg: And they don’t have a 12 year old daughter. They have a ten year old son played by Martin Short. And this is an unofficial sequel to his movie Clifford, which is a movie that came out a couple months before this where he was a grown man playing a ten year old boy. So I’m just assuming that America still has Clifford Fever.
Joe: When has it died down?
Greg: Because the last 30 years. Because 30 years ago. That was a deeply unpopular movie. And I’m assuming that America is still on fire for it.
Greg: Charlize Theron’s boss at work is obviously Samuel L Jackson in full Nick Fury costume.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Yeah, Tom Arnold’s part goes to Emma Stone because she’s hilarious and would make a great person in the van.
Joe: Yeah, and.
Greg: Also, I think we could probably only get her for a couple days, so we need to film her in a van because that could be filmed, you know?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Wherever she is in the world and it doesn’t matter. So that’s. That’s what I have. That’s the remake.
Joe: All right, I’m in. I will watch that movie 100 times out of 100.
Greg: So I really think Nate McKenzie is. It’s time.
Joe: It is time. Yeah.
Greg: Joe. Second, the last question here. This is not just a question, though. This is a very important question.
Joe:
Greg: What album is true lies? What was this movie?
Joe: I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what album. This is the way that I have this movie in my head for Arnold Schwarzenegger. And kind of this kind of movie is is the high watermark of big, dumb action movies of this era. And so what is the album that is that? And then equally misogynistic, I have this is warrant cherry Pie.
Greg: My gosh.
Joe: The high watermark for hair metal bands before Nirvana changes everything.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: And so that is the album then. This is.
Greg: What is the Nirvana movie? You know, Nirvana changed rock and Warren was out of a job. What movie came along that made True Lies out of a job?
Joe: I feel like this is like the birth of the rebirth of the independent film of this era. They kind of have, like the Quentin Tarantino grittier, darker. I would even maybe put Mission Impossible one in this category. Like the Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bruce Willis. The Bruce Willis kind of has has more bona fides around independent film and some other stuff.
Joe: And like Sylvester Stallone movies like, yeah, this feels like the last big movie of that era.
Greg: This is the peak.
Joe: Yeah, this next.
Greg: One is eraser, which was successful, but not.
Joe: Yeah. And so this to me is like that album. Warren Cherry Pie is like stupid awful that I can see the video and hear the song, but it’s like we didn’t know what was coming, but.
Greg:
Joe: Basically that kind of music disappears as soon as Smells Like Teen Spirit hits the airwaves. And so that’s the album. What is your album for this?
Greg: Okay, so the way I approached this was looking at the geopolitics of this movie. They were troublesome in 94, but then it was like officially ruined by nine over 11. So I’m going to pick an album by a band that was also ruined by nine over 11, and that is one of my favorite bands from the 90s was named Job Ox and actually their best album.
Greg: My favorite album by them was called For Your Own Special Sweetheart, and it came out a couple months before I realized it. But then they broke up and the singer went on to create a band called Burning Airlines. And Burning Airlines was on tour in September of 2001, and after nine over 11 venues stopped putting their band name on the venue, even though they were probably going to sell out clubs and they broke up a couple months later.
Joe: Interesting. Didn’t we see Dropbox?
Greg: I didn’t, I was working at a camp. You saw them with Chad. Okay, yeah. You went to, like a high school gym somewhere. Where was that? Do you remember?
Joe: I’d have to. I can’t remember, but.
Greg: Yeah. I can’t believe I missed that show. I’m so bummed. Anyways, I didn’t see burning airlines with cam, the third roommate, when we lived together. Cam. And it was one of those shows where I was really, really sick that day. But I wasn’t going to miss Jay Robin’s coming through town again. That’s the singer. And so I drove down to Mount Vernon, where cam was living.
Greg: I told him I wasn’t feeling well. He said, okay, well, I’ll drive and here’s let’s make you some HRT. So I, we, we put two tea bags of echinacea tea, and I sipped that on the way down to the show, and I really wasn’t feeling well. And then during the show, I felt 100% fine.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: You know how adrenaline can do that? And then we got some Dick’s Burgers in Seattle for the drive home. And by the time we got home I was no longer sick.
Joe: Awesome. Yeah.
Greg: So that’s the recipe. Jay Robin’s show.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Double tea bag of tea and obviously some Dick’s burgers.
Joe: Yeah. All right. All you need.
Greg: Oh so what song. I guess it’s just cherry pie right.
Joe: It’s just cherry pie okay. This is nice. So as in my violently American movie that is like.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Violently hair metal stupid awful song.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: But it’s.
Greg: Yeah. So you’re adding that to our playlist that we have on Spotify?
Joe: Unfortunately, yes. You’re having to listen to warrant cherry pie.
Greg: Great bad movies. Music is the name of our playlist. Yeah. Spotify. You’re welcome everybody. And I’m going to put on Pacific 231. It’s a great song with the most ridiculous drum part potentially in music history.
Joe: Awesome. You as a drummer would know. It’s so,
Greg: It’s so overplayed, but it’s so interesting. If you listen to the song and try to ignore the drums, it’s really good. And once you do that, then you kind of allow the drums back in, you fold the drums back in and it’s, you know, you just kind of, you ride just the busiest drum part in history and it’s pretty good.
Joe: All right.
Greg: All right, Joe, it has come down to this. It’s time for us to rate True Lies. We have a scale. Great bad movies, good bad movies, okay, bad movies, bad bad movies, and worst case, awful bad movies. Where do you rate True Lies?
Joe: This is this is tough for me. I went back and forth from. Is it a great good or. Okay, that was kind of the three. I kind of landed in the middle. This is a good, bad movie. Yeah, there are very problematic parts that we have talked about ad nauseam in it. But on balance, to me, the action scenes push it over the edge into good.
Joe: I can’t look myself in the mirror and give it a bad movie rating. I just can’t, can’t do it. Yeah, but it’s a good, bad movie. What about you? Where did you write this movie?
Greg: I’m right there with you. I could not give it anything better than a good, bad movie. But, you know, much like that Moneyball quote, how can you not be romantic about some of the things on this movie? Yeah, by the end, it’s done enough to make me glad I watched it. Yeah, but there’s some past. Fast forward, and that’s probably what a good or okay or bad or awful bad movie.
Greg: Yeah it’s you the couple fast forwards.
Joe:
Greg: Okay Joe. Well as always we should say spoilers for True Lies.
Joe: Yeah. If you haven’t seen it in 30 years watch it.
Greg: Press pause right here. And watch it and then come back and listen to the rest of the show. Right Joe. Well we made it.
Joe: We did it. We had the conversation that needed to be had about, you realize why anyone else would talk about this movie 30 years later. They don’t need to. We did it.
Greg: Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that it’s probably his favorite movie he’s been a part of.
Joe:
Greg: Jamie Lee Curtis has said that. Tom Arnold has obviously said that.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And, now it’s our turn to talk about it. And I think we’ve pretty much put a lid on it at this point.
Joe: Yeah. Nailed it as far as I’m concerned.
Greg: Oh, you know what that reminded me of? Oh, actually oh my gosh. Listen, this has been great, but, I’ve got to go to Korea. Just pour yourself another drink. And she is wildly overdressed for a random Wednesday night, so I’m gonna go see if everything’s okay over there.
Joe: Yeah, that. That’s okay. I gotta run. Anyway, I’m late for my tango lesson so far.
Greg: Okay, okay. Well, I’ll see you later. Actually, you know what? That works for me. Because, Tom Arnold just walked in and is telling me I should lie to my wife a lot, so I’ve got to figure out what that’s all about and see if that’s good advice or not.
Joe: Yeah, that’s probably good advice. Tom Arnold knows a thing or two about marriage. So anyway, I’ve got to head out to I’ve got to get more hairspray so that I can make my hair as tall as possible. So.
Greg: Sure, sure, that makes sense. Okay, well, that works for me because oh my gosh, I need to head out. I’m I’m headed to Cairo and, I think it’s going to be a cakewalk thanks to all my training.
Joe: Yeah, probably. I’ve got to go. I’m thinking about getting an iPad so I can run a covert spy agency. So.
Greg: And at the last line of defense. But like the. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: The second, the last line up.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well that works for me because actually, I don’t know if you noticed, my phone is kind of going off the hook right now. Work is calling me right now. It looks like somebody wrote a horse into the elevator again. I gotta go take care of that mess.
Joe: Typical. Typical. Anyway, I’m blowing up a nuclear bomb so I can have a kiss as it goes off. As radioactive material covers us. I’m sure it’ll be fine. It does, but it’s very romantic, so.
Greg: Totally fine. Yeah. Seems a little close. Yeah. By the way.
Joe: And as long as you’re 12 miles away, I guess you’re fine.
Greg: I guess we’re good. So maybe that’s what happened to Florida. Now that I think of it. Well, hey, that works, because I’ve got all this, like, all these ancient pieces of art online from a museum. And it just occurred to me I should probably start taking them apart to see if there’s some nuclear bombs in them.
Joe: Oh, that’s I agree with that. Anyway, I’ve got to go to practice. I’ve created a new sport. It’s called diving into a water as an explosion happens behind you. I’ll be fine. I’m diving away from the blast. Sure. It should be in the Olympics very soon.
Greg: It’s like breakdancing.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s you versus the fall guy versus. Yeah. Okay, well, that really works for me because, oh my gosh, you know what I’m going to say next? Janis just accidentally shot someone going into the meeting room again.
Joe: Typical Janis classic. Janis. Anyway, I’m running late for my job as a used car salesman, so I should be.
Greg: Looking like the BGS. Yeah. Nothing makes you more of a failure in the 90s than listening to the BGS, apparently. Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, I should go. An old man just had a heart attack in a toilet stall and in the building that I’m in right now, I think a fist fight was happening in the bathroom, so.
Joe: That sounds dangerous. I hope he’s okay.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: I’ve got to go steal the ignition key for a nuclear bomb. Yeah, I know, right. But instead of escaping or getting rid of it, my plan is to climb up a crane with no options other than falling to my death. But I’ll be fine. Yeah, sure. Okay.
Greg: Okay. Well, that works for me, because, I mean, you know that it is political season. We’re recording this mid October of 2024, and I need to go film a bunch of, political ads for this ballot initiative we have in Washington, because it turns out that guns don’t kill people. Guns falling down stairs kill people. And I think it’s time that we tightened up some stair laws.
Joe: No more stairs.
Greg: No, Stephen. The problem all along.
Joe: That’s right. That’s interesting. I’ve got to go to a party. I’m scuba diving in, so, But I’ll be wearing a tuxedo. I’ll be. I’ll be fine.
Greg: It’ll be me. You’ll be fine. Yeah. I mean, it seems like you should go then. I’m actually going to go as well. It’s time for me to put on my eveningwear and constantly pour champagne to make my world domination official.
Joe: Awesome. I’m out.
Greg: Okay, I’m out too. Well, that sounds great. So. Hey, Joe, I will see you soon.
Joe: Yeah. See you soon. Be everybody soon.
Greg: See everybody soon.