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This week, on Pumped-up and Staggeringly Dishonest but Exciting Just the Same:
Our most-requested movie is celebrating its 30th anniversary! It’s the kind of movie where a cable car inextricably flies straight up into air out of nowhere… A scene so amazing that Isaac Slade calls in to premiere a sequel to his Fray hit “Over My Head (Cable Car)” right here on this episode!
We also have a brand new segment called “When was the last time David Hallgren watched this movie?” that we think will really go places.
What if Quentin Tarantino wrote the Nicolas Cage parts, Aaron Sorkin wrote the government scenes, Sean Connery hired British writers and basically just played James Bond, and somehow it all came together into the only Michael Bay film in the Criterion Collection? The Rock absolutely should not work — and absolutely does.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watch this week. Nicolas Cage plays a chemical weapons expert. Is there something that you think you have expertise in, or that you convince yourself you have expertise in?
Joe: I was pretty convinced when I was a teenager, and I was playing tennis all the time that I could be transferred from my high school varsity to the courts of, like, the US open. And I could hold my own.
Greg: Right to Wimbledon.
Joe: Yeah, right to Wimbledon. And like, under the right circumstances, I felt like I could totally I could totally win this.
Greg: Check it out for me.
Joe: So.
Greg: Not true. So. Oh, it’s not true. Okay.
Joe: In hindsight, I thought 100% I could do it.
Greg: You were just killing it. It’s a community college. So this. I’m surprised to hear this.
Joe: I know, I mean, I’m just as surprised as you are. What about you? What kind of expertise do you have or think you had?
Greg: No one on the planet thinks that this is expertise. I should probably preface it with that.
Joe: Good start.
Greg: But I think I could take any 17 songs you throw at me, and I could mix them together in the perfect order.
Joe: Oh, no. I think that that is an expertise. And I totally agree.
Greg: You could. You think so?
Joe: I do, and I think together we would come up with the best order for those songs. Yes.
Greg: Okay. I just need to point out that I have not convinced myself that I have this, but I apparently have convinced you that I have it. And that’s all.
Joe: Because that’s all that matters. That’s what being an expert is. It’s not about your expertise is about convincing other people to believe in your expertise.
Greg: All right, well. Oh, Sean Connery.
Joe: You’re hanging out here.
Greg: That’s a surprise. You know what? You’re retired. You don’t need to be here, man. You can. You can head out.
Clip: Oh, it’s been a long time since I’ve said thank you to anybody.
Greg: But thank you. All right, you got it, man. All right, Joe, let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Clip: Alcatraz.
Clip: The Rock. It’s so tough to escape. The most awesome prison in America.
Clip: No other prison in history was more carefully constructed to make escape impossible. What’s the matter, fellas? Something wrong with the torso of a bomb? But now the only way to stop the unimaginable. I come straight to the point. 81 civilians are under my control as of this moment. A battery of gas rockets is presently deployed to deliver a highly lethal strike on the population of the San Francisco Bay area.
Clip: Is to get the one man who broke out of the rock. I have a unique knowledge of this prison facility. I was formerly a guest here. To lead a chemical weapons specialist and a team of Navy SEALs.
Clip: To break back in.
Clip: Over pressure.
Clip: From Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, the producers of Top Gun and Crimson Tide and Michael Bay.
Greg: The director.
Clip: Of Bad Boys, Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris this summer get ready to rock.
Greg: The year is 1996, and writers David Weisberg and Douglas Cook sell a spec script that they’ve written to the mega producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. Those guys decide to reteam with Michael Bay, who directed Bad Boys the year before. They decided to make a movie called the Rock. We are talking about Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, John Spencer, David Morse, William Forsythe, Michael Biehn, Vanessa Marcil, John C McGinley, Claire Forlani and of course, this movie came out in the mid 90s.
Greg: So Philip Baker Hall shows up uncredited as FBI Director Womack. This is a huge one for us. Yeah, this is one of the most requested movies we have had. This is one of the top movies. When I describe what this show is to people, they say, oh, you mean like the Rock?
Joe:
Greg: What makes the Rock a great bad movie?
Joe: This movie is so of its time. Yeah. It’s kind of the birth of the out of retirement special ops guy.
Greg: Oh interesting.
Joe: You know.
Greg: Kind of a Liam Neeson and taken kind of.
Joe: Scenario. Yeah. Kind of.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: It’s the beginnings of it. We don’t have like the full on what we have today, which is now it’s almost a trope in and of itself.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: There are some problematic parts of this movie. But for the most part, this movie sticks the landing and is like I struggle with Michael Bay movies and we sure famously tried to do it before and I had a moment. Yeah yeah I couldn’t even get through it. No this time I was able to get through and was like, okay, I can see why people request this movie.
Joe: It is beyond ridiculous. The hardest thing to believe about this movie, honestly, is that Nicolas Cage is a doctor of like, chemical engineering. Sure, easier to believe that he can see two minutes into the future than he has a doctor, right? Quite frankly. And the last thing I wanna say before I hear what you want, what you want, what your take on this movie is, is.
Joe: Yeah, this is the full Nicolas Cage experience. This is him turned up to 12. No line read is safe. There are random. Just like screams and yells. And he is either having the time of his life or he has no idea what movie he’s in. Just watching Nicolas Cage in this movie be completely ridiculous. Yeah. Is worth the price of admission.
Joe: We have to overlook the blatant sexism and homophobia that is in this movie. And yeah, you know, the fact that there are no women in there, whatever. But yes, this is a movie of its time. And if you take it with those grains of salt, it’s a pretty fun ride. But what did you think of the rock 30 years later?
Greg: Oh my gosh, man, I enjoyed watching this movie way more than I thought I was going to. Yeah. 30 years later.
Joe:
Greg: I mean, we considered watching this movie a long, long time ago and it just didn’t feel right. I don’t know what had happened. I think we were watching enough bad movies in a row that it started to kind of hurt our souls.
Joe:
Greg: But the show has turned into a celebration of movies. Yeah. That are truly great and meant this movie in so many ways is truly great. I think this is the best Michael Bay movie.
Joe: Yeah I agree.
Greg: It’s a very short list of what his best movies would be. I would put I probably want to watch Bad Boys one again.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I think Michael Bay probably was at his peak before he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. And I think that happened immediately after this movie when he made Armageddon. You kind of can’t tell what’s happening in Armageddon. Yeah. In this movie you can tell what’s happening and it’s very restrained. Michael Bay, which is a hilarious set of words to put together when you’re talking about the Rock.
Joe:
Greg: But it is the perfect intersection of, Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson making big, stupid movies. Finding a director that would absolutely deliver that for them and with them, but was not entirely unchecked yet as a human being.
Joe: Right? Yeah.
Greg: So what else is on that list? I know a lot of people really love that first Transformers movie. And that’s the only one of those movies that I would be willing to revisit that he directed. People Love Bad Boys two. I don’t love Bad Boys, too.
Joe: No, I hated Bad Boys. So that was a it’s a tough movie. Like his action directing. Again, he’s in the top ten to me of action directors. So like his action scenes. Yeah. He’s in that pantheon to me. But just like I have always said he’s kind of got a soulless quality to his movies. Yeah. Yeah I would say probably this is probably his best one then.
Joe: Armageddon. But I did love the first Bad Boys, the first bad boys. Yeah, I, we watched it together. I remember watching it in your basement in Bellingham. Yep.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: It was a great watch.
Greg: So there’s one other movie that I have not seen that I think is probably on this list, and it’s from four years ago, ambulance with Jake Gyllenhaal. During a cursory review of Michael Bay’s films, it’s kind of like there’s something there. I think we might need to get to an ambulance.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: So I’ll add, Armageddon. I don’t want to miss a thing.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Having said that, we’ve lived with so much crazy Michael Bay in our life, you kind of forget that the Rock is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, it’s a tight movie. Yeah. It’s like. Yeah, yeah, it’s filled with every that guy actor ever.
Greg: Oh my gosh, every scene.
Joe: It’s like, oh, that that guy and that guy. That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s kind of hard to believe Sean Connery is this amazing action star in this moment. And then brings him back to us. There’s a great car chase that culminates in a trolley in San Francisco. Yeah, blowing straight up in the air.
Greg: Yeah, I have a car that.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. So clearly there’s like, a wire that they cut out or like a machine that like, like literally straight up in the air. Straight down. It was awesome.
Greg: Doesn’t it hit like a truck and a meter made little mobile?
Joe: Yeah. And that’s.
Greg: What makes it explode and go straight up and they’re.
Joe: Straight up in the air.
Greg: Being a cable car and being that our friend Isaac Slade has been on this show, do you think that he would write a sequel to his song cable Car about this scene in the.
Joe: Rock? If he doesn’t, we should commission it right now.
Greg: Okay, I’m going to ask him this question. I’m going to send him the scene and say, would you be willing to write a sequel to your song about this scene? And if he means send something back, I will drop it in right here.
Isaac Slade: Okay, guys.
Isaac Slade: Let’s let’s about to take off.
Isaac Slade: I got a to.
Isaac Slade: I have been working with cable car for two. You know.
Isaac Slade: Just watching the right scenes. Like saying, I just have this idea. So throw in a little.
Isaac Slade: Bit of a.
Isaac Slade: Beat here and my flight takes off about seconds. So.
Isaac Slade: Here’s what I got. Just drop it like it’s hot…
Isaac Slade: Like look at this. He’s kind of spike everyone’s opinion of him. If there is a cable car is too heavy. So we’re not to hit a parked car with a super expand.
Isaac Slade: Fuel tank of some kind, maybe a foreign or in place. Yeah.
Isaac Slade: Okay, I’m off to rethink that.
Joe: Might be. My dogs also agree that that was the most amazing performance I’ve ever heard of a bespoke song. So thank you, I think thank you.
Greg: I totally and I’m assuming that’s part two of a trilogy. There’s going to be a third cable car eventually.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we we watched enough movies with cable cars in them that we’ll figure it out. But my gosh, I can’t wait.
Greg: All right, let’s get back to the show. So you just said like 3.5 hours worth of things that we need to talk about with this movie.
Joe: Okay, let’s unpack it.
Greg: Let’s start with Nicolas Cage. This is the first movie released after he won best actor at the Academy Awards for leaving Las Vegas.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This is the beginning of Nicolas Cage as we know him now. Yeah, he had been a serious actor up until now. Obviously, like a crazy one sometimes. Yeah, but he went from winning Best Actor in Leaving Las Vegas to then making back to back the Rock, Con Air and Face/Off.
Joe: Yeah. This is his pivot to action star.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: Because he was serious and like comedic. Yeah. Raising Arizona actor.
Greg: Incredible and raising Arizona. We should say that yeah one of the best movies of all time.
Joe: It’s probably his best performance in a movie.
Greg: And that’s saying a lot.
Joe: Yeah. We’ve seen next.
Greg: Yeah. And he knows two minutes ahead of next which I’ve always been jealous about. Yeah. The thing that I love about him in the Rock is he basically turned his character into someone who doesn’t swear, like, says like fake swear words throughout the movie. And is scared of everything.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He totally inverts what should be happening in this movie, but it gives everybody else something to play off of. Yeah it’s a perfect call on his part. I don’t think that was in the script originally. The script was originally offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger to play Stanley Goodspeed.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: And he turned it down because he didn’t like the script.
Joe: That would have been a terrible idea. And so many ways.
Greg: Then you have Ed Harris, who demanded his part be rewritten. He was pretty adamant that his character should be fighting for something that was noble. Even if he was doing it in a, a reckless way. Right. It’s a really interesting movie where it’s like is he the bad guy.
Joe:
Greg: What’s Ed Harris’s role in this movie.
Joe: So he is a bad guy through most of this movie with noble causes and then realizes at the end that his cause was flawed. Yep. You know that he has gone too far or that, you know, he’s kind of lost control of it. They called our bluff. And so and then he, you know, he kind of dies at the end.
Joe: He dies in this. Spoiler alert. Ed Harris, the bad guy, dies in this movie. But it’s in a way to kind of save others as I remember it. And he doesn’t like his death, signifies his redemption. And in a way, and it’s interesting that you you talk about Nicolas Cage. He’s is kind of meek throughout this whole movie.
Joe: And it it works because there’s just this swirl of, like, kind of toxic masculinity around him. Right? Yeah. But he is not kind of falling victim to it, but he is kind of holding the center of the movie, even though there’s all this chaos around him.
Greg: I think this movie is a straight up miracle. It should not be as good as it is. It really does hold up in so many ways. You’re right. It is. There is just it’s totally toxic masculinity. It’s homophobic at times. It’s, it’s misogynistic. Maybe some of the guys who are are doing those things in the movie. It’s a shorthand that they’re like a bad guy or something.
Joe: You know.
Greg: Which seems like a 1996 thing to do and a Michael Bay thing to do, and a Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson thing to do. But I think everybody who worked on this movie, when you look at the writers, when you look at the director of the producers, and then especially those three stars Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, Sean Connery, who all demanded that their stuff be rewritten, and that their characters be more fleshed out in a certain way.
Greg: And then those three characters really do anchor this movie in a really entertaining way. I think.
Joe: You yeah.
Greg: It turns into a movie that is is bigger than the sum of its parts in my mind. Usually when I’m looking at movies, I really like to find like the auteur, you know, like we love to find the stunt coordinator or the second unit director or the director or the writer who we can kind of pin a movie’s greatness on, you know, almost like a producer of a of a record that we love.
Greg: Yeah. On this movie, you really can’t do that, except it’s a lot of our auteurs working together in concert. Sean Connery decides I want to have some British writers rewrite all of my lines, and I think I’m going to basically play this guy like he’s James Bond.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And so there’s a whole theory of he’s playing that John Mason is actually James Bond, who was arrested and put in a jail cell after Doctor No. And that’s basically what Sean Connery is doing, and he’s having a blast doing it.
Joe: Yeah, I think he.
Greg: Was playing a lot of golf while they film.
Joe: This. Yeah.
Greg: But Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage got along really well and really liked each other. And I think respected each other’s acting chops and craft. And I think they lightened up the movie by just enjoying what they’re doing a lot.
Joe: Yeah, it’s a movie that shouldn’t work as well as it does in 1996. Even their chemistry, Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage’s chemistry is really good throughout the movie. Even being able to feel some of the like, creative tensions within it, I think makes it stronger. There are some movies and, you know, even just in life, you know, you have creative tension that can bring out the best in people, and sometimes it brings out the worst.
Joe: Sure. And this kind of brought out the best in everybody.
Greg: It’s just unbelievable that this came together. This is probably the only movie we will ever do on great bad movies that is in the Criterion Collection.
Joe: Now, is this movie like. Anyway, yes, I agree with that statement.
Greg: Well, we’ll get to that. But I mean, like Roger Ebert wrote something that was accompanied with the submission. He really loved this movie. And I mean he said he agree. He would agree with everything that we’ve said so far. This movie is so ridiculous. Yeah. But it does hang together in kind of an amazing way. Here’s the spec script that was written and the initial pitch of this movie, Die Hard on Alcatraz.
Joe: I can see that.
Greg: I mean, it’s just so obviously there, but yet this movie is so much better than Die Hard on Alcatraz that you don’t really think about it.
Joe: Yeah. How did I not think of that?
Greg: Yeah. Hans Gruber basically takes over Alcatraz, holds hostages and asks for money. Yeah. And people are stuck on this confined space and they’re trying to save, I don’t know, the East Bay, I guess.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Which is close to my heart. That’s where I’m from. Yeah.
Joe: And if I’m poking holes in Ed Harris’s case here.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: So he’s known for precision. It’s like one of the most respected generals in the Army.
Greg: He’s very own shot in that way.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That’s his code.
Joe: And then he brings on board for the most important mission of his life, people he’s never worked with ever.
Greg: Totally totally.
Joe: Bad. Turn on him at the end like you would expect them to. Yeah. That’s the that’s the biggest pothole in this whole movie.
Greg: That was maybe like a teachable moment for him.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. You know, that’s his fatal flaw is he trusts. It’s too trusting.
Greg: Too trusting. Yeah. Speaking of people bringing recognizable A-game, let’s talk about the writers of this movie. So the two people who came up with the story, David Weisberg and Douglas Cook, they get a lot of credit because they wrote, you know, the initial draft, the spec script. But then it was worked on by a million people. This is kind of what Bruckheimer and Simpson would do.
Greg: They would bring on a million screenwriters and just let them throw ideas everywhere, and then they would just kind of like, weave together the best ideas. They bring in Quentin Tarantino to write on this movie.
Joe: Of course.
Greg: He’s uncredited, but he did do, I think, a lot of the stuff that Nicolas Cage says in this movie is Quentin Tarantino also, there’s the plot point of somebody who has to stab a needle into their heart, which is super Quentin Tarantino.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: There’s also that that scene at the end where all the bad guys are shooting guns at each other in kind of Western style. They all shoot each other.
Joe:
Greg: That happens in true True Romance, that happens in Reservoir Dogs I think.
Joe: Yeah. Reservoir dogs, true romance.
Greg: So Tarantino is.
Joe: Just everywhere on this.
Greg: Yeah. Leaving his mark.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: They decide that they need, someone to beef up the dialog for everyone who isn’t on the island. All the government people.
Joe:
Greg: And they bring in Aaron Sorkin to do that. Aaron Sorkin writes all of the scenes.
Joe: Oh, my God, I can totally see that. Yeah, I can’t unsee it. Yeah.
Greg: John Spencer from The West Wing is in this movie delivering it just like you would as Leo from The West Wing. And so there’s all those meetings of like, you know, generals and, and people from the white House, political people arguing and being stupid, but also recognizing that Ed Harris is a patriot, blah, blah, blah. We even cut to the white House at one point in this movie, and we get like a speech from the president that has to all be Aaron Sorkin.
Joe: That’s wild.
Greg: And all of these aspects are making this movie better. In my mind, they are all complimenting each other, just like Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris did. Yeah. And then Sean kind of brings in into British screenwriters to write all of his dialog. But Sean Connery is playing James Bond in this movie, which is so fun to think about.
Joe:
Greg: There’s another guy who’s uncredited in this movie, Jonathan Hensley. That, Michael Bay was really upset that he didn’t get writing credit because he did so much, but he wrote Die Hard three. He wrote next, he wrote Armageddon. He wrote The Saint, Jumanji. More recently, he wrote The Ice Road with Liam Neeson, a movie I’m assuming we’ll be getting to.
Joe: Probably.
Greg: And more importantly, Ice Road to Vengeance, I think, is what it’s called. It’s just incredible stuff going on in this movie.
Joe: I feel like the editors and the lighting need a a not.
Greg: Oh, 100%. Yeah.
Joe: They’re like shot like it’s an old like 40s noir film moment. There are weird shots of like people like basically restating the plot of the movie really fast as the camera zooms in on. Yes, yes. Like his only line in the movie, Mike Lee, it’s like, let’s just say what’s happening for everyone who wasn’t paying attention up until this moment.
Greg: Speaking of lighting and lenses, John Schwartzman was the cinematographer. This is pretty early on in his career. He has made a bunch of visually striking movies, though he did Armageddon in Pearl Harbor with Michael Bay, he made Seabiscuit, which did not win Best Picture, or it was definitely nominated. Yeah, kind of a famously beautifully shot movie. He’s done a bunch of stuff with my guy, Paul Feig.
Greg: A Simple Favor and another Simple Favor. Most recently he did The Housemaid, which just came out a few months ago. Really talented cinematographer. And we also have to mention the editor. You mentioned the editing. My guy, Richard Francis Bruce did it. He edited seven.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: He edited Dead Calm, which we talked about a few weeks ago. Yeah. And he edited a movie called Air Force One. Which totally explains why in one shot over the shoulder of a bad guy shooting directly at Sean Connery and Sean Connery is shooting directly back, and neither of them are hits.
Joe: It just like.
Greg: In Air Force One. Yeah, my guy Richard is all in on that. Sean apparently.
Joe: And everyone is like, sweaty, especially on Alcatraz. All the bad guys. And like.
Greg: It’s Tony Scott for.
Joe: Sure. Yeah. And I feel like special shout out to what I am now calling Michael Bay slo mo versus we have The John Lewis Show and we have the Tony Scott slo mo.
Greg: What is Michael based limo? How does it distinguish itself?
Joe: It’s usually a flag and it’s really rippling above the camera as you’re like panning under it. Sure. With with like cornets playing okay.
Greg: You’re talking about the opening of the movie. So I feel like I should probably set the scene with what is playing under the opening of this movie, which is.
Greg: Just so solid. This is so. Yeah. Simpson Bruckheimer right here.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: We’re just seeing studio logos. Their logo has lightning in it and thunder. So you’re going to hear that in the second.
Clip: There it is.
Greg: Solid.
Joe: Where are the trumpets I know they’re there somewhere. Yeah.
Greg: It’s about to turn really patriotic and sweet.
Greg: We can’t. And we go to basically flashback there of Ed Harris’s backstory.
Joe: Yeah. We have in that opening shot a silhouetted helicopter.
Greg: Yes.
Joe: I thought of you. And it’s not a silent helicopter, but it is. It is showing the gravity of the moment.
Greg: Was it in slow motion?
Joe: Yes, obviously. Yeah. Okay. Of course it was. I think also the last shot with Nicolas Cage when he has the flares and the planes are flying over is also slo mo like slowed down a little bit. What a.
Greg: Beautiful.
Joe: Shot. Yeah.
Greg: There is so much good work in this movie.
Joe: To me, Michael Bay is like is the best at those iconic yeah moments shots in movies. Then you’re gonna remember when I think of the Rock, I think of that shot Nicolas Cage. Yeah, shot from low up flares in his hands out, arms outstretched, jet planes flying over the head over that. It’s just like you cannot get more patriotic than that moment.
Joe: Yeah. It’s so good.
Greg: Let me. Let me play this for you. This is the tour that we get when we arrive at Alcatraz. In the movie.
Clip: The Rock is the most.
Clip: Famous and was the most feared prison ever built. Is it really true that there’s never been an escape? That’s true. From 1936 until 63, when the prison closed, there were 14 attempts.
Clip: No one is believed to have made it to Sure alive.
Greg: Inmates in 1996 to get a tour on Alcatraz. I don’t even know why they put that in the movie, because. Did something else come to your mind?
Joe: 100%. So I married an ax murderer and Phil Hartman 100%.
Greg: Right? Yeah. All right, so let’s listen to that.
Clip: Hello, everyone. I am a park ranger, and I will be leading you on the tour. All of the park rangers here at Alcatraz were at one time guards, myself included. My name is John Johnson, but everyone here calls me Vicky. Will you please follow me? I love Vicky, he’s. He’s great. He’s the best. Oh.
Greg: There’s just no point. Everyone’s thinking about Vicky that whole time.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So that’s that’s one fail.
Joe: That’s what that’s all. Yeah.
Greg: This movie has one thing in the bad column and the great bad movies and it is that.
Joe: Yeah. And needed Vicky.
Greg: Made Vicky where it was, where it was Vicky.
Joe: The rest of that tour and so I married ax murderer is hilarious. It’s probably the best part of that movie, honestly.
Greg: Some friends of mine, were on a tour and they were in San Francisco, and they bumped into him. Was it in San Francisco? They bumped into Phil Hartman somewhere in public and said, Will you recite the lines from so I Married an Ax Murderer. And he was like, I’m so sorry, I don’t remember it. And they said, well, we have it memorized.
Greg: So they fed the lines to him and on the sidewalk he said it back to them, and they said it was the most amazing thing.
Joe: That is so awesome.
Greg: Phil Hartman, the voice of everybody on The Simpsons.
Joe: Yeah, the guy.
Greg: On SNL for so many years.
Joe:
Greg: This movie is also quite funny at times. Nicolas Cage being a bit, I guess I don’t know what the word is, but maybe like post-modern, pointing out things that are happening in an action movie. He’s kind of walking through horrible situations and saying what we’re all thinking, like, here’s a Sean Connery is just like shot down, like an air conditioner, and it’s landed on the bad guy, and the bad guy basically is crushed.
Greg: And this is what Nicolas Cage says.
Clip: Oh, yeah, okay, that’s just about the most obvious thing I’ve ever seen.
Greg: And that guy, his leg is, like, twitching and and.
Joe: Yeah. So horrible. Yeah, yeah.
Clip: You’ve been around a lot of corpses. Is that normal? Well. The future. Yeah. The funny thing happens. I’m having kind of a hard time concentrating. Can you do something about it? Like what? Kill him again. Listen, I’m just a biochemist. Most often I work in a glass jar and lead a very uneventful life. I drive a Volvo, very sure, but what I’m dealing with here is one of the most deadly substances the Earth has ever known.
Clip: So what do you say you cut me some slack?
Greg: Okay? He’s restating who he is. He says he drives a Volvo, a beige one. That has to be Tarantino, right?
Joe: Yeah, it’s got to me.
Greg: And he’s also showing again and again in this movie that he is. He says fake swearwords, which I thought was the funniest thing.
Joe: That had.
Greg: Ever happened. Everyone around him is so foul mouthed and he isn’t.
Joe: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I loved it.
Greg: I still love it. I love that about his character.
Joe: Yeah. Stanley. What? Stanley Goodspeed. Yep.
Clip: What do you see? We cut the chit chat a hall.
Greg: That made me laugh, I think harder than I ever had it whenever I watch this movie the first time, that was unbelievable. I really want to talk about Ed Harris and his demands in this movie. I just need to play this and ask you some questions. Okay?
Joe: Okay.
Clip: You alert the media. I lost your gas, you refused payment. I launch the gas. You’ve got 40 hours till noon, day after tomorrow to arrange transfer of the money.
Greg: So he gives them 40 hours to get him the money? 40 hours? Is that the most 1996 thing you’ve ever heard in your life?
Joe: It could be.
Greg: I’m pretty sure you could Venmo $100 million in three seconds in today’s world.
Joe: 40 hours. Yeah, we needed we needed some time to get the gang together. And we needed at a time, not 48 hours. Right? Right. 40.
Greg: So then the government, after that phone call, I’m laughing about 40 hours. And the government is kind of like, oh, well, we could put this other stuff on a jet and maybe get it there. And that would save everybody. Here’s that timing.
Clip: What’s it going to take to equip a flight of F-18s with Thermite Plasma within the next 36 hours? An act of God. You’re excused. All right, we can try.
Greg: It’s going to take an act of God to get it in 36 hours.
Joe: Yeah, that would.
Greg: Be like 15 minutes in any other movie that it’s made.
Joe: Now. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my.
Greg: Gosh. The timing in this movie made me laugh. So hard.
Joe: Yeah. They hadn’t realized that Hobbs and Shaw travel logic was an option, right? How do like, you have three hours to get us this money, or we’re going to blow up San Francisco? Nope. We have 40 hours noon tomorrow.
Greg: But like, the the internet didn’t exist the year they made this, right? Like, we didn’t know there was no internet in 1995. I mean, I guess the military had because they the internet was made for them, but still so funny.
Joe: Yeah. That’s why it’s wild to think about what their technology was then too, because it wasn’t where you could just instantaneously send money anywhere.
Greg: Yeah, a PayPal world.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I’m going to say that if there is one thing in this movie that proved that it should be a great bad movie, it’s that the morgue team had not checked in in a while.
Joe: Okay, sure.
Clip: Morgue team has not checked in.
Clip: Blackbird one and Blackbird over.
Clip: I heard one worker come in. Goddamn it!
Clip: Somebody’s still here.
Greg: They know that the good guys are around because the morgue team has not checked in. Well, great. Bad movie. Yeah, but, Joe, it seems to me.
Joe: Okay, wait.
Greg: We can’t get to this. I have to play the president giving a Sorkin monologue for a second. Can we.
Joe: Do that? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Clip: You need a decision, Mr. President. These past few hours have been the longest, darkest of my whole life. How does one weigh human life?
Clip: 1 million civilians against 81 hostages. And in the middle, Frank Hummel.
Clip: That we have ignored, abandoned or marginalized a great soldier like Frank Hummel. And that American boys have paid for that neglect. Blood is equally real and equally tragic. They are at war with terror. Fighting war means casualties. This is the worst call I’ve ever had to make.
Clip: Airstrike approved.
Greg: That’s the president basically speaking to himself in a room like he’s like the Theodore Roosevelt.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It is the greatest.
Joe: It is the greatest. You would expect that that to have been broadcast out to the entire world at that moment. But it’s like to him and like his secretary basically. Right. It’s so good.
Greg: Oh my gosh, I love it. Okay, Joe, you’ve got a brand new segment that you pitched for this episode. What is it? Hit us with it.
Joe: This is the greatest segment in the history of the world. It is when did David Hallgren last watch a movie that we are doing for the podcast. As we have found out, it’s within a ridiculously short amount of time, given all of our movies.
Greg: This movie came out 30 years ago. Let’s put a wager on it. How recently do you think David watched this movie?
Joe: I say within three months.
Greg: Within three months. Okay. And what are we betting right now?
Joe: Our our standard, $2 bet.
Greg: I love it. Okay, let’s, I’m going to drop it in right here.
David: Hey, Greg: and Joe, this is David. Good to hear that you’re doing the Rock. I did watch the Rock last summer. I remember I was out in, Bellingham and I was on East Coast time, so everyone was asleep. So I was out probably, like, 6 a.m., and I thought, well, what should I do now?
David: Nothing else to do. I should watch the Rock. I’m not sure it held up for me, so I’m excited to hear from you guys. I did thoroughly enjoy it, and it was not a waste of a beautiful morning in the Pacific Northwest. I hope you’re doing well. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
Joe: Oh, we should have taken that over 11. We can go.
Greg: All right, let’s get back to the show. All right. Well, Joe, it occurs to me that there are probably some people that need a little bit more time to get to the rock. 30 years is not enough time.
Joe: I don’t have time.
Greg: So if we could just help those people who out, who who have not seen the rock. Let’s pretend you’re walking down the halls of blockbuster Video in 1996. You are picking up boxes of VHS tapes, trying to figure out what movie it is that we’re going to rent in the pre-digital world. So they look at the back of the box and they decide, is this a movie I want to rent?
Greg: That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. Alcatraz has been taken over by a general in the US Army hellbent on getting recognition for his fallen soldiers. To do so, he is holding San Francisco hostage. Our only hope as the deadline fast approaches, is the one man Sean Connery to have successfully escaped from the Rock many years ago. He must team up with FBI agent Doctor Stanley Goodspeed Nicholas Cage to stop the chemical weapon attack.
Joe: It’s going to get messy as these to duke it out with each other and the bad guys all the way up to the dramatic conclusion. I say it’s not my best work. I don’t feel like this movie deserves a little better.
Greg: I feel like you’re lowering the bar so that we can clear it with what’s coming next. And that is Joe’s guy, Tucker, going on down to Honest Town and reading as the actual real Joe’s guy. Tucker back in the box.
Joe: This is the full Nicolas Cage experience. No line read the safe from his random growls, yells and screams. It is like he has no idea how to modulate his voice. And so every time he speaks, it feels random. Throw in Michael Bay, making what can only be described as U.S. military propaganda, and you have a movie that should not work, but somehow does.
Joe: The script feels right at home in the buddy cop odd couple tropes of the 80s, half the lines feel screamed and no one is likable and the plot is chaotic at best. Having said all that, it somehow sticks the landing. And I didn’t even mention that Sean Connery is in it and he’s awesome.
Greg: And Michael Burns in it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That’s true. What is Michael being doing in this movie?
Joe: He is cashing a check and what he’s doing, and if he’s.
Greg: Not in it very long.
Joe: Now.
Greg: That’s kind of.
Joe: The side characters are in it. None of the those that guys that we talk about are in it that long.
Greg: All right, Joe, are you ready to get into the box office and what the critics said about this movie?
Joe: Absolutely. All right.
Greg: Let’s do it. This movie came out in June of 1996, June 7th to be exact. It had a budget of $75 million.
Joe: It’s pretty big back then.
Greg: Pretty good size for 1996. This movie made domestically 134 million that summer. Okay, in no small part to just get Tucker internationally. It made 202 million, so it made $336 million worldwide. This is also a pretty key time for the home rental market. And we actually have some numbers for that finally in our lives, between VHS, Laserdisc and I think that the next year it was an early DVD that had the kind of crazy sound mix, and it became kind of a reference DVD for a lot of people.
Greg: And later Blu ray sales, it’s estimated that the Rock generated over $150 million.
Joe: Oh, wow.
Greg: And it was added to the Criterion Collection for many reasons.
Joe: Reasons we can’t probably list here.
Greg: Well, I think we kind of can list them here. The reason I mentioned that is we’re about to get into what the critics said. So, Joe, what do you think the Rotten Tomatoes score for the Rock is? Now we only have 74 reviews aggregated. This is before Rotten Tomatoes. This is before the internet existed. So, we don’t have like, every, every review.
Greg: So we have 74 reviews. I will say this is the best reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes. I think for Michael Bay.
Joe: I mean, feels like a 70.
Greg: Oh, it really does have an algorithm, doesn’t it?
Joe: Yeah. But I’m going to go 84.
Greg: 68.
Joe: 68. Wow. Okay. So I should have stuck with my guns on on the seven.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: But we do have 250,000 ratings from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes. So what do you think the popcorn meter is? What’s the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes?
Joe: I’m going to stick with my guns. 84 on that.
Greg: 85. Okay. Amazing. Yeah.
Joe: All right. It’s a crowd pleaser. It’s not. Maybe critics don’t. Didn’t get it. The populace did.
Greg: Well, let’s hear what some of those critics thought. We always start with our hometown paper, The Seattle Times. Doug Thomas was writing for it. Back then. He says you might need to take Dramamine before entering a Michael Bay movie. The one time music video director has an annoying habit of finding the tightest shots, editing the heck out of them, and scoring the works to loud music.
Greg: Two out of four stars.
Joe: I mean fair.
Greg: By the way, I.
Joe: Don’t work to.
Greg: Prepare for this. I went to a list of all the videos that he directed.
Joe:
Greg: And many of them are just the worst videos you’ve ever. I was like, I’m not going to watch a winger video, but that totally checks out that Michael Bay was directing a winger video as.
Joe: 18 in life. Is that what it was?
Greg: No, it was what was it called? Can’t get enough.
Joe: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don’t think.
Greg: I’ve heard that song. I’m very happy to say I have not heard that song. Yeah. The Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum says very entertaining action hokum that benefits hugely from the uses made of the three stars. Very entertaining action hokum, I feel like could be.
Joe: A ring a bell.
Greg: Absolutely. What are you talking about? All right. Jeff Strickler of the Minneapolis Star Tribune says, for action adventure fans, it just doesn’t get any better than the Rock. Four out of five stars.
Joe: I think he gets it.
Greg: The Chicago Tribune says, since the plot is ridiculous, the Rock works best when it’s most light hearted. I just like that one because I like it when people point out that our movies are ridiculous.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Great ridiculous movies might have been a better name for our show.
Joe: Oh, yeah, they ring the bell.
Greg: Time magazine says slick, brutal and almost human. This is the team spirit action movie. Mission impossible should have been.
Joe: Oh, wow.
Greg: Shots fired.
Joe: I don’t know if there’s a name in there, but maybe.
Greg: I think slick, Brutal and Almost Human is a pretty good name for a.
Joe: Lot of movies we watch. All right.
Greg: Empire magazine Chris Hewitt says entertaining action, nothing more nor less. Four out of five stars.
Joe: Yeah, I would ring a bell for that one.
Greg: Oh you would.
Joe: What would you?
Greg: What’s the name in entertaining action?
Joe: Nothing more. Nothing much.
Greg: Love it. It’s in Los Angeles time, says slick and forceful, largely unconcerned with character, eager for any opportunity to pump up the volume. Both literally and metaphorically. The rock is the kind of efficient entertainment that is hard to take pleasure in.
Joe: I feel like there’s maybe a movie title on our podcast, I mean, there, but I’d have to search too hard for it. It’s it’s probably not worth it.
Greg: I really feel like while I don’t agree with that for this movie, that could be just a blanket review for Michael Bay’s work.
Joe: Yeah, 100%.
Greg: All right, we have to go to the greatest of all time. Janet Maslin from The New York Times says, pure why not bravado pumped up and staggeringly dishonest, but exciting just the same.
Joe: Yeah. And. All right.
Greg: I want to finish with Roger Ebert because this was part of the submission to the Criterion Collection. So I have a little bit more from Roger Ebert that I want to read. First of all, he gives it three and a half stars out of four.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: He says the Rock is a first rate slam bang action thriller with a lot of style and no little humor, which I think he’s saying there’s a lot of humor. It’s made out of pieces of other movies, yes, but each element has been lovingly polished to a gloss. And there are three skillful performances in Connery, Cage, and Harris.
Greg: These are good actors, and they approach the material with the deadly seriousness that a plot this absurd requires. Many movies are not really about their stories at all, but about how they tell their stories. That’s an interesting point. Many movies are not really about their stories at all, but about how they tell their stories. That’s interesting.
Joe:
Greg: The movie is a triumph of style, tone and energy. It’s interesting to see how good actors like Connery, Cage and Harris can find a way to occupy the center of this whirlwind with characters who somehow manage to be quirky and convincing. Watching the Rock, you really care about what happens. You feel silly later for having been sucked in, but that’s part of the ride.
Joe: I don’t know, I could have said it better in this era was there are action stars, and they’re like, you know, dramatic actors and they don’t really didn’t really cross over.
Greg:
Joe: Yeah. And now we kind of have more actors that blend genres. Well, I think of, Charlize Theron as like she’s a great actor, but then she’ll do these action movies. Yeah. Yeah. Ryan Gosling to me is another example of like he’s kind of in a little bit of an action movie, but it was like slice alone. Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger are action stars.
Joe: Yeah. And this movie kind of breaks the mold a little bit on that. We may look back and go, the Rock was like one of the first that had actors that you weren’t expecting as action stars. And I didn’t appreciate it until this moment of kind of thinking and kind of putting it into context.
Greg: All right. Let’s get to drinking games.
Joe: Let’s do it. All right. So we’ll start with I start drinking games again. For anyone playing along at home. It doesn’t have to be alcohol can be whatever whatever whatever your beverage of choice these days we’ll start with silent helicopter. No classic silent helicopter. We do have the silhouetted helicopter at the beginning. Yeah. As they’re doing the flashbacks, we have pushing and enhance.
Joe: I gave this one to you. There’s a there’s a little bit of that when they’re showing and I think the Situation Room, the general and some of what he did here, when two people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos in the car chase, that happens a lot. Explosions, silent suffering, ringing in the ears when the trolley explodes, as I said, straight up in the air.
Joe: Right? Yeah. There is a moment when the trolley driver drivers kind of has ringing in the ears opening credits scene where the title locks into place of the sound. There’s actually a an explosion.
Greg: The title of this movie makes no sense. You see, like flames behind the words the rock.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then the camera kind of zooms into one of the letters to go to the flames, and then just cross fades to something else.
Joe: Yeah, but.
Greg: The sound is kind of amazing. We should hear it.
Greg: But traveling through.
Greg: We kind of growled through it a little bit.
Joe: Yeah. That’s it. Flashback. I did have flashback to dialog. I think that’s oh, it’s the green flare was the note that I have. Yeah. So I did not have the bat I don’t feel like there’s, there is special, there are special effects shots in this, but I feel like they’re pretty well into the movie. Like they feel.
Joe: Yeah. They’re not classic bad CGI. Yeah. Great bad shots are everywhere as you mentioned the the editing shot of them shooting at each other. But completely missing.
Greg: Slightly missing.
Joe: Are the streets inexplicably wet? Oh, yes, they are. Early on in the movie, especially in the streets of San Francisco. They are wet.
Greg: It is raining so hard in the first part of this movie.
Joe: Yes, rain the like. If you walked out in it, you might drown like that is how hard it feels like it’s raining in this movie.
Greg: There’s also something that should be, I could only describe as intermittent magic hour, where the sun is setting and then it isn’t, and then it is, and then it isn’t.
Joe: That’s so good. We do not have a give us room Interpol or a cell phone smash, because this is pretty cell phones, really. So hold.
Greg: On.
Joe: Oh, wait, did I miss something?
Greg: Did miss something? David Morse and Ed Harris need to have a conversation. So, major.
Clip: Captain. Step outside. Oh, talk to me, sir. Captain, step outside.
Greg: It’s only one person giving them the room. It’s way funnier when you’re asking, like, 40 people. You want to leave the room? Yeah, but it still happens.
Joe: Damn it. Okay, so there is a. Give us the room. All right. I toss it to you for your first drinking game. Greg:, sweetheart.
Greg: Any time there’s slow motion, take a drink.
Joe: I have patriotic slow mo is my first.
Greg: Oh, that’s not bad.
Joe: Drinking game as well.
Greg: Okay, I’m going to say two. Two drinks for a patriotic then.
Joe: Yes, I’ve.
Greg: Got some extra juice. My next one is any time Sean Connery says the words the rock. You want to know something about the rock? Take a drink.
Joe: I have any time. There’s noir lighting.
Greg: So what would that be? That’d be like bright lights across somebody’s eyes.
Joe: Kind of. Or like. Like half their faces in shadow. There’s a lot of. Or, like, just their eyes are lit and everything else somehow is and is dark and like, there’s a lot of that that happens in this movie.
Greg: Interesting. We need to watch the black and white cut of this.
Joe:
Greg: See how that works? I have anytime someone goes underwater, take a drink.
Joe: That’s awesome. Oh, I have anytime there is sweat or water on people’s faces. Like a drink I have.
Greg: Anytime someone comes up from underwater, take a drink.
Joe: So I have, any time. And this happened in the, car chase a lot, different people are crossing the street, so there’s, like, an old lady that’s crossing the street. There’s someone in a wheelchair. That’s the thing. That’s totally, totally thing. There’s, like, probably some kids that are crossing the street, always worried about them getting hit by a car.
Joe: So, yeah.
Greg: Probably like a stunt guy with a mustache.
Joe: Dressed like a kid. Yeah.
Greg: I have anytime Nicolas Cage says a fake swear word. Oh, I love that drink.
Joe: I have anytime the music reminds you of the music from Pirates of the Caribbean. Take a drink.
Greg: A classic Zimmer.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Any time someone yells clear. Oh, I can take a drink.
Joe: Some I have anytime there’s a close up of the, like, glass ball of the,
Greg: That’s really good. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.
Joe: They’re in the most precarious contraption possible in the. Yeah, in the missile. And me. Like, when you take them apart, then there. It might as well be grapes that you’re pulling out of a bag of.
Greg: Totally. So my next one is anytime somebody says, sir, take a drink.
Joe: Oh, my God, you’re drinking a lot. And this one. Yeah. I have anytime there’s, like, a low slung shot that is like, move. The camera is moving. He likes to have a lot of shots to, like, are at people’s knees as they’re walking through and then action. So.
Greg: All right, my next drinking game is anytime someone starts a fight by throwing their gun to the ground, looking at the other person and saying, let’s play.
Joe: My next one is anytime a some someone is thrown through a window or thrown through a wall.
Greg: That is exactly my next one off. Amazing.
Joe: So many people are thrown through windows.
Greg: And if you hear a growl as they go through the window, yeah, two drinks.
Joe: Actually.
Greg: This is my last one. Any time a location is typed onto the screen. Oh, I.
Joe: Love that one. My my last one is anytime a trolley flies straight up in the air, you finish your drink. Just like straight up in the air. I cannot stress how amusing I found that this trolley is sliding down a hill like a million miles an hour, and then it just blows straight up in the air. Up and down is awesome.
Greg: And I mean, the thing super heavy doesn’t go up five feet.
Joe: No, we’re.
Greg: Talking like, 30ft in the air.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right, Joe, let’s get to Joe’s trope. Lightning round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: All right, so we have someone who. Who? Someone’s neck gets broken really easily. Sean Connery breaks someone’s neck really easily. We have body cams or sensors. Not classic, but they do have some body cams that they’re showing. We have someone saying you’re making a big mistake. Like Sean Connery says that to, the FBI director. The name of the movie is said by a character, Sean Connery, as in the drinking game, says the Rock a lot.
Joe: That closes the eyes of their dead comrade, as the guy who gets shot and falls down in front of them. We kind of have a ragtag crew. We have the trope of jumping into water or going into the water and the sound disappears. The best at something kind of a reluctant hero. And Nicolas Cage, if revenge is the driver of the protagonist for Sean Connery, a little bit of redemption as well for him coming out of retirement and an odd couple, unlikely pairing.
Joe: And then we have the bad guy or girl whose death signifies their redemption in order, as they do things. Right. So we have, Ed Harris as he dies. Kind of does the right thing. Explosion on impact of a car and a trolley. Conversation in the middle of chaos. So Nicholas Cage, while in the middle of a car chase, is talking to someone at the FBI about how to track down where Sean Connery is going.
Joe: It’s awesome. There are no women in this except for the daughter and the love interest, and they’re in it for all of two seconds. You find out a critical piece of information right at the end. And we have a duffel bag full of guns or a table full of guns, checking if a gun is loaded, disappearing behind the bus, and the protagonists are captured but not killed right away.
Joe: And then they’re saved by their while. So they, Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery both captured and then escape again from Alcatraz. That is a our trope. Lightning round. There’s a lot of tropes. This is a trope heavy movie.
Greg: Yeah, they weren’t going to shy away in the rock.
Joe: No, no, they leaned heavily into this.
Greg: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Joe, there’s so many elephants in the room right now, and I’ve had it. Let’s get to important questions.
Joe: Nice. Let’s do it.
Greg: First important question, Joe, did the rock hold up in 1996?
Joe: Yeah, 100%.
Greg: Hundred percent. Yes. Does it hold up now?
Joe: Mostly in my mind there there are some 1996 isms about it and some of the like the sexism and the homophobia and the homophobic kind of character that we have in it, that if they made it today, that wouldn’t be in there. Yeah, but I think if you can look beyond those and if you can’t, I support.
Greg: That. That makes sense. Yeah, totally.
Joe: But I think it holds up better than you would expect with those caveats. Tony, I think.
Greg: I you know, it’s funny, I feel like 100%. Yes, in 1996. I really enjoyed it this week despite those things. But a while back it was a tougher hang for me. Yeah. So I feel like there’s a little bit of a little bit of a swoop in this one. All right Joe it’s not an if it’s a win.
Joe: When they sell.
Greg: The good guy in this movie, how hard do they sell the good guy.
Joe: Yeah, really hard night.
Clip: Yeah. He play. That’s a good speech. James Womack. Pleasure to meet you, sir. Thank you. You come very highly recommended. B.A., Columbia, Ma, PhD, Johns Hopkins, biochemistry, toxicology. All. I’m one of those fortunate people who like my job, sir. Got my first chemistry set when I was seven. Blew my eyebrows off. We never saw the cat again.
Clip: Been into it ever since. What do you know about the gas? Liquid filled pesticide I discovered by mistake in 1952. Actually, it’s kind of like champagne that way. The Franciscan motility were making white wine somehow. The bottle of Carmen, abuela, champagne in the whole class. That’s a disgrace. It’s very, very horrible, sir. It’s one of those things we wish we could just invent.
Clip: This isn’t a train exercises. Oh, that’s a good speed.
Clip: It’s not a training exercise.
Greg: There is so much going on there that’s got Quentin Tarantino in it with. We never saw the cat again. It’s got Aaron Sorkin. Maybe. I just think everything John Spencer says because of all of his years. Yeah. With Aaron Sorkin scripts, the late, great John Spencer. And then it ends with electric.
Joe: Guitar, bass guitar.
Greg: So that’s that’s definitely a selling the good guy in my mind, he’s literally reading the dossier to the good guy. That’s classy.
Joe: Yeah. Very classy.
Greg: All right Joe, next important question. How hard do they sell the bad guy in this movie?
Joe: Again in the Situation Room.
Greg: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Joe: So hard.
Clip: Three tours in Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Desert Storm, three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars and the Congressional Medal of Jesus. This man is a hero. Well, I think legend might be a better description, Mr. Sinclair. Well, now we can add kidnaping and extortion to his list of accolades. Mr. Sinclair, general Hummel is a man of honor, general.
Greg: It’s him that’s got to be the best Boston accent in history. Yeah, I don’t know who that guy is, but I am his biggest fan.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right, Joe, this is a hard question for me to ask you every, every week. And I apologize in advance for asking.
Joe:
Greg: Why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: There’s barely any romance in this movie. So it’s all right. Yep. It’s really to raise the stakes so that when his fiancee, who’s carrying his baby comes to San Francisco, we know that there is something that he needs to protect from the from the nerve gas that is potentially going to rain down on everyone. That’s all him.
Joe: That’s right.
Greg: Then is it a better movie.
Joe: Because of that. No I cut that out completely and I would be fine with it.
Greg: I think the fact that I disagree, I think it’s like his motivation checks out. It’s not just, well, it’s just the right thing to do. It’s like, well, my fiancee is pregnant and is over there. Yeah. Sean Connery with his daughter.
Joe:
Greg: And then Ed Harris acting out of love for the people that he is trying to honor with what he’s doing. I feel like there’s a lot of love in this movie that, that is a pretty good driver for the story in my mind.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Joe, are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: I mean, yes, absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
Greg: There’s no getting around it on this one. No. Okay. Very important question though. Does it deserve a sequel?
Joe: I am shocked it doesn’t have a sequel.
Greg: Yeah. Me too.
Joe: I would watch any sequel to this movie. It feels like a missed opportunity to me.
Greg: I think it’s better that it doesn’t.
Joe:
Greg: But, Michael Bay did have an idea. Here’s what he said. The sequel that I have in mind for this movie is basically after Nic Cage is married to Carla, they drive off. Nic Cage has this microfilm with all the bad government confidential info like who killed JFK. The government comes after Nicolas Cage with a vengeance. It turns into more of a thriller.
Greg: Nic cage has nowhere to turn because he’s been stabbed in the back by the government, and they’re after him. I’d really like to separate Nic and Carla and have Nic try to employ the help of Sean Connery, basically taking the rock exactly where it left off.
Joe: I’m sure I would watch that.
Greg: It seems like a good movie.
Joe:
Greg: I think they should have made it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: What do you think of the ending of this movie by the way?
Joe: I liked it, yeah. I thought it was like kind of silly, kind of fun. Kind of fun. Yeah.
Greg: The reason Sean Connery was in jail the whole time was because he wasn’t saying where the secrets were that he found.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then at the end of the movie he tells Nicholas Cage where those secrets are and they get them.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Nicolas Cage has said, that he really disliked that scene while they were filming it, and he thought it was really dumb. And he really told Bruckheimer that he he did not like it. And then when he saw it in the theater with an audience, and he saw how much joy the audience had with that being the coda of the movie, he, in this interview, he said, it just shows you that Jerry Bruckheimer really gets it.
Greg: He really understands how a movie is going to play. He was like, I was complaining that whole day we were shooting that. And it’s a great ending to the movie.
Joe: Jerry Bruckheimer knows crowd pleasing movies. Yeah. There’s just yeah, I would put him almost in a category, all of it all his own in terms of he knows what people want to see. Yeah, yeah. And you know, you can kind of question it. But his track record speaks for itself. I think he’s probably one of our best action producers ever.
Joe: Yeah I put him above Joel Silver, which is probably the would have been his main rival contemporary.
Greg: Yeah, totally. Speaking of Jerry Bruckheimer, I think yesterday it was announced Top Gun three is in the works.
Joe: Yeah, I saw that.
Greg: What’s your response to that, Josh guy?
Joe: Tucker as long as it’s not nominated for a freaking Oscar, I’m in it.
Greg: They don’t have any control over that.
Joe: I don’t know. I wouldn’t put anything past Jerry Bruckheimer at this point. Yeah.
Greg: All right, next important question. We snuck in an extra important question there about Top Gun three, I like it. Does this movie deserve a prequel?
Joe: I mean, don’t we have every Sean Connery movie as James Bond as a prequel for this?
Greg: We do. So stealing my answer.
Joe: Yeah. Okay. Awesome. So yes, it does deserve it deserves however many movies you made for James Bond. But you probably know the answer to.
Greg: Oh yeah, I think it’s, seven if you count never say never again. Okay. Because that was just Thunderball again. Six official and one unofficial.
Joe: All right. So seven prequels as allowed.
Greg: Well, I think that we should film the prequels. I’m not talking about the past anymore, Joe. I’m talking about the future. I’m looking.
Joe: Forward. Okay?
Greg: Okay. I don’t want to talk about where we’ve been. I want to talk about where we’re going.
Joe: Okay?
Greg: When we make this prequel right.
Joe: I’ll make sense.
Greg: All right, so I think there are 1,000%. Should be a BBC style show about John Mason. Have you watched the show? Hijack with Idris Elba?
Joe: No, I haven’t.
Greg: Oh, my gosh, you really should. It’s on Apple TV. It’s basically like, what if BBC was making prestige shows for Apple? But I think they’re like eight episodes each in the season. So I think we make two seasons, eight episodes each. Then there’s like a feature film at the end to like cap it off. But I would love that takes place in the 60s.
Greg: It’s like him getting into the British.
Joe: And MI6 or Special Forces or. Yeah.
Greg: All right. So next important question. I’m really hesitant to even ask you this. Should the Rock have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 1997?
Joe: Probably not. But what was it nominated again? All right.
Greg: So back then, there were only five nominees.
Joe: We’ve got shine.
Greg: A movie. I don’t remember Geoffrey Rush. I think it is. Yeah.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Jerry Maguire.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: The big winner was the English Patient. Okay. Secrets and lies was also nominated.
Joe: I’ve heard good things about that.
Greg: Okay. And, Fargo.
Joe: I would take the rock over Jerry Maguire every single day of the week. Okay, so, yes, it should have been nominated. Yep. I think you’re right.
Greg: What wins?
Joe: I think Fargo has got to win.
Greg: Yeah. That’s why I was going to say it’s a.
Joe: Movie that I watched every couple of years. And every time I watch it, I’m. I am always shocked at how good it is.
Greg: Next important question, Joe, how can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Joe: All right, I have part of an answer and I need your help. Okay, so I have reconfigured a few things. So. And the new one, we have Matt Damon as a Jason Bourne like character in the Sean Connery role. Oh, okay. And we have Michelle Rodriguez as the bad guy. Bad girl. Okay. And this.
Greg: Solid.
Joe: I want Sam Hargraves to direct. Yeah. And I don’t know who plays the Nicolas Cage character. Maybe it’s Nicolas Cage. We just bring him back.
Joe: As the same character. But I got stuck on who would be the right person to play off of Matt Damon and the remake of this, whatever kind of version of that. So that’s right as far as I got. But I know I want those three in there for sure.
Greg: That’s really good. Who plays Stanley Good. Speed’s fiancee.
Joe: It’s a good question. Let’s go with Sabrina Carpenter.
Greg: Yeah it’s great.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: All right. So I think I think we need to make this into a season of a TV show.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: And I think each episode is like an hour of this incident shown in real time. So that’s right. This is also a reboot of the show 24.
Joe: Awesome. I mean.
Greg: Except we need to keep Ed Harris’s hilarious time frame intact. So this show is now called 40.
Joe: Yeah. All right so far perfect.
Greg: It stars a Stanley Goodspeed John Mulaney.
Greg: All right, so John Mason Anthony is the same John Mason in this movie?
Joe: I think so. Okay, yeah, let’s go with it.
Greg: Well, on the remake, he’s called John Mason, and he is played by Pierce Brosnan, who is also playing James Bond.
Joe: Awesome. I love that.
Greg: This is his chance to make the role what he always wished it could be in his bond movies. The Ed Harris role is now played by, I think, Josh Brolin.
Joe: Oh, that’s really good.
Greg: I think he’s like endearing, but also really tough. Like he was in Sicario.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: If he’s not available though, I think I need back up offers to go out to Kyle Chandler.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Or John him. All right. FBI Director Womack is now played by Allison Janney, since it needs to be played by somebody from the West Wing. She is the only person I’m willing to cast in that role. Okay, if Janney is out, the show isn’t happening. No.
Joe: 48 and Aaron Sorkin is writing all of her lines.
Greg: Right? Secretary of defense is obviously JK Simmons.
Joe:
Greg: And for that guy who has the thick Boston accent.
Greg: I think we recast him with anyone with a thick Boston accent.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: It’s going to be a pretty easy spot to fill, I think. Yeah. For Hummels crew, who play a pretty key part in, you know, things going bad, I think Donnie Wahlberg is the crazy one.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Yeah, I think Mark Wahlberg is the angry one. The leader.
Joe: Guy. Yeah.
Greg: And to round out the rest of the crew, I say we just get the funky bunch.
Joe: I agree. Like this. How much you need? 300 million an episode. 400. I’m in.
Greg: Carla is now played by Zoe Kravitz.
Joe: Oh, I love that.
Greg: And here’s why I’m choosing her. Because she will only take this role if it is 8000 times more interesting and fleshed out. So we need to make Carla such a good role in this show that even Zoe Kravitz would be willing to take it. Carla was robbed in this movie.
Joe: Yeah, I agreed.
Greg: And 30 years later I think we could do Carla a lot better.
Joe: But since we’re doing a prestige show, I think we can really flesh out this character. Yeah.
Greg: And for the daughter, I say we just bring back Claire Forlani. She was only in one scene in the movie.
Joe: Yeah, I feel like.
Greg: Claire Forlani. I feel like she could have done a lot more in Hollywood. Yeah. And so I say, if she wants it, it’s hers. If she doesn’t want it, I get.
Joe: That, yeah.
Greg: But if she wants it, it’d be great to have her back.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right, so 40 is happening on ABC next season.
Joe: Game.
Greg: All right. Joe or on Fox was 24 on Fox.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: I’m moving it over to HBO okay. 40 is going to be a show that happens 40 weeks in a row on HBO.
Joe: Listen, I’ve got the greatest show for you. It’s 40 episodes. I’m not taking no for an answer.
Greg: All right, Joe, next important question. What album is the rock?
Joe: I spend a lot of time thinking about this. And based on Michael Bay’s and Jerry Bruckheimer, is patriotism. This is any Ted Nugent album? Wow. This feels like 70s rock. American rock. It’s what this okay, this movie is to me and Ted Nugent. I like that epitomizes that for me. So what album is this for you?
Greg: What I was looking for was a band, a divisive band that people don’t really like, but maybe they had an album that is just so good. People are like, well, you know, some of the songs on that one are pretty good. And so this band can have more hits than just this album.
Joe: I think this is.
Greg: Night Visions by Imagine Dragons.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Like, you could probably sing along to 5 or 6 of the songs on that album. Even if you’ve never press play on an Imagine Dragons record and Imagine Dragons, you know, have had hits since then. I don’t know if people like them or not. I think there’s some undeniable stuff in there, but I think that first album is is the one that’s I think that’s the Rock.
Joe: Yeah, I think they’re better than people remember and think. Yeah, like I remember Milo kind of went through a phase when he was really young. They surprised me. I was I was ready to just, like, dismiss them out of hand. And I was wrong. I was wrong about Imagine Dragons, though.
Greg: 100% my story with them as well. Yeah. I was like, well, good that they got that one album out. Yeah, we’ll never hear this band again.
Joe: Yeah. We were totally wrong. Yeah.
Greg: Do you remember that band Vertical Horizon?
Joe: I remember the name and I could not tell you any of their songs.
Greg: They had a couple huge hits and then we never heard of them again. And when Imagine Dragons came out, I was like, this is the next vertical horizon.
Joe:
Greg: Totally wrong. All right Joe, it’s come down to this. It’s come down to the rating of this movie. We have a scale. Great bad movies. Good bad movie okay. Bad movie bad bad movie, awful bad movie. Where do you rank the rock on our scale?
Joe: I think I have to go good bad movie. Okay. There’s some greatness in it. I think some of the glaring issues with some of it stick out. But if you asked me to watch it again, happily, do it. But I’ve also, like you, had moments where I’ve watched it in the past and really struggled to get through it.
Joe: So for that reason, just putting in the caveat that I, you know, I may change the next time I watch it. Yeah, I think it’s a good, bad movie. Where do you reckon.
Greg: I’m going gonna I’m going to join you there, because that’s exactly my experience. I hold this one lightly.
Joe:
Greg: I mean, the idea of, fast cars and explosions and cable cars going up in the air.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, for.
Greg: The most part it’s pretty bulletproof in my mind.
Joe:
Greg: Nicolas Cage, his performance, the way that it came together, you know, I’m always fascinated by the creative process of these things. I just really like this one. It’s a good bad movie.
Joe: Yeah. It’s a good bad movie. Yeah. I would even say that I think the last time I watched it, it was a great bad movie to me in that moment. But I’ve had momentary it was a pretty bad movie when I watched it. So yeah, I totally agree. I think we’re we’re in alignment. So nailed it.
Greg: I mean, I loved it this week.
Joe:
Greg: But I think it was because the last time I tried to watch it, I was kind of like, I don’t know, I don’t know about this one. Yeah. So the bar was very low when I walked in on this one.
Joe: I guess it’s like just the temporal nature of of watching movies. Like, sometimes you watch it and you love it and sometimes don’t. It’s not the Gray Man, which is great every single time you watch it.
Greg: But this week I was in the mood for a big, dumb movie.
Joe: Yeah. Coming here. Yeah.
Greg: All right. Yeah. Well, Joe.
Joe: Yeah, we did it. We did it. Yeah. Finally had the conversation 30 years in the making about the Rock. I don’t feel like anyone should be talking about this movie ever again. Quite frankly, we. This is the definitive conversation.
Greg: Like, absolutely nailed it.
Joe: No notes.
Greg: We’re putting a flag in the moon like the beginning of Transformers two Dark Side of the moon.
Joe: And if you’ve enjoyed this, reach out on Great Marvel. The show on Instagram are great Bob movies.com. Find us.
Greg: Oh, I just knows the time. I’m so sorry, Joe. Yeah, listen, let me start with the positive. This has been so great. Yeah.
Joe: Appreciate that.
Greg: Don’t don’t let anything I say after this take away from what I’m saying right now.
Joe: Okay?
Greg: This has been amazing. We finally got to the rock.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: One of our most requested movies. Having said that.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This part of the podcast was written by Quentin Tarantino. So for some reason, I need to stab myself in the heart with a needle. Am I reading that right? Yeah, I guess I better go.
Joe: I was thinking the set after that was like, listen, great, but I hate everything about you and I’m never speaking to you again. But again, this again. I also want to start with a positive, wonderful, great time. Oh, yeah. You know, it’s been really good.
Greg: Yeah, it has been really good.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. But I have to run outside and stumble a little bit and then lift some flares in the air. Wow. I’m sure while planes fly overhead. So. And slow. Yeah. In slow mo obviously the.
Greg: Green smoke looks fast. Yeah. In slow mo. Yeah. Okay. That works for me because. Oh, hold on, I’ve been hearing some pages here. Looks like a very long walk and talk scene that’s been written for us by Aaron Sorkin. Oh, about how the federal government works. And just. I think you and I need to go and, work on working on these lines here.
Joe: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s good. That’s good. Because I’ve. I’ve got to run. I’m running late because the trolley I was taking exploded and went straight up in the air, so. Oh, it was very straight, just like straight up in the air.
Greg: So yeah. It seems like you should go then.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: Oh, Jesus. My phone is buzzing right now. I’m sure we’ve talked about this in the past, but I run a backup cable car company and honestly, I’ve forgotten a call before, but apparently one of them just crashed into a meter maid mobile, and things got pretty crazy pretty fast. That might have been the thing you were just talking about.
Joe: That might have been. I might have been. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Okay, well, I got to go.
Joe: I’ve got to run to, I’ve got to go see if Michael Bay is done filming American flags. We’ll be sure.
Greg: In slo mo and Thelma. Okay. Well, that works for me because I, I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m recording this from a very nice hotel that I demanded I be in during this episode, and, I am running a little late for my haircut out on the balcony, so I’m going to go.
Joe: Oh, yeah. Be careful. I know you don’t want to get thrown over the edge. Okay. Finished of ropes. That was.
Greg: Like only the.
Joe: Hands off one.
Joe: Hundred percent. That’s okay. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go watch something that doesn’t, that has some women in it. My toxic masculinity meter is beeping, and so I’ve got to write something with emotional depth, something that’s a little bit more deep than an oily puddle in a in a Walmart parking lot, which is what I feel like I’m in now.
Greg: So what is the perfect balance to the Rock for you right now?
Joe: The movie that jumps to mind is like Little Women or something like that. Although I hate that.
Greg: Oh no, the new one’s good.
Joe: Oh, is it okay?
Greg: It’s really good.
Joe: Yeah. Okay. It’s probably like Atomic Blond or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good call.
Greg: I know that I’ve held it together really well, so far. I don’t want to brag, but, the dead guy next to me has been doing this leg twitchy thing the whole time we’ve been recording, and it’s really starting to bother me. So I think I’m going to go and see if I can figure that out.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. I should just warn you, that’s totally normal. So don’t don’t worry. It happens. Anyway, I need to go set up my noir lighting and fake sweat, look for the next shot. So I’ll be right back.
Greg: Okay, well, that works for me, because, That’s funny. You’re you’re kind of doing some production stuff. Yeah, I’m actually late for an audition. Oh, I don’t want to. I’m kind of getting some callbacks.
Joe: Fingers crossed.
Greg: Fingers crossed. You might be looking at the new Vicky in the sequel called so I Married Another Ax Murderer. I don’t want to jinx it.
Joe: I really hope you get that part. You’d be perfect. And anyway, I got to go. I’ve got to go, slowly sink underwater with my Navy Seal friends, so.
Greg: All right, well, that works for me, Joe. So I will see you soon.
Clip: I’ll see you soon.