This week, on Fairly Low-Tension Yet Satisfyingly Off-Kilter:
Listen, Will Smith was just trying to buy Christmas presents for his wife and son. But then Jon Voight murdered a senator and a guy studying geese accidentally gave him the tape and now the entire NSA is tracking him with satellites. I don’t know if you really need to know more than that, but it’s basically Three Days of the Condor if Robert Redford was replaced by the Fresh Prince and the whole thing was directed by a man that paints the camera lens orange.
Tony Scott, who we have controversially said was the better Scott, continues to keep his batting average up for one of the hosts of this podcast. The other one has… Some thoughts.
Also Gene Hackman is playing the same character from The Conversation 24 years later but nobody can legally say that. It’s all pretty serious stuff in this movie, but the case is bizarrely all the future comedy stars from the 00’s. Somehow it all works, for one of us at least.
That’s right, it’s time for 1998’s ENEMY OF THE STATE.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week, Will Smith hides his Christmas presents, but his wife and his son eventually find them and go through them. Has anyone ever found a gift that you were going to give them before you gave it to them?
Joe: One time, this was when now my wife and I had just moved in together. I had actually bought the ring very early in our relationship. We ended up getting engaged for like four years. So like, I was nervous because she kept telling me that she was going to say no. Like if the proposal wasn’t right, like 3 or 4 people had proposed to her already and she told them no.
Joe: And so I was terrified.
Greg: Wow. 3 or 4.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That’s amazing.
Joe: But she found it. And then it was really sheepish and was just like, I think I found the ring is the ring. And I was like, nope, you found my my drug stash.
Greg: Did you buy the ring from your dealer?
Joe: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was made out of crack. So great. I should have led with that. Yeah.
Greg: This was a time in the East smoke. We should have said that.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah. So she found it, and then she believed me. Years later, I did admit that she had, in fact, found the ring. You know, it was one of those in the moment. I was just like, all right, what’s more believable that you found the ringer? That I’m doing drugs? Clearly, I think.
Joe: So. Her response.
Greg: Was, that explains so much.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. And here’s a 12 step brochure. So yeah. Yeah. What about you, Greg?
Greg: I don’t think anyone’s ever found a gift that I was going to give them, but I found some gifts growing up. I want to say I was maybe in third grade, fourth grade, and I was fully fishing around for my birthday gifts, and I found them in, like, my mom’s closet. Then I didn’t admit to finding them, but I had changed my birthday list to be everything I saw in the closet.
Joe: Oh, clever.
Greg: And it wasn’t like the usual gift. It was a bunch of really random things. I was very vague about one of the gifts that I wanted for my birthday, because I wasn’t quite sure what it was. It looked kind of like a calculator, but it wasn’t a calculator. And I was like, yeah, and I kind of want a calculator, but I don’t want it to be a calculator.
Greg: My parents were just like, what? Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I’m still this obvious in my life.
Greg: All right, let’s get to the show. Let’s do it.
Clip: Yeah. So, Julie, I’m going to finish up my Christmas shopping.
Clip: Robert Clayton Dean, he’s a DC labor attorney. Take us around on the other side. Focus on the drop. Is it a tape?
Clip: A powerful man has been murdered. A hidden camera recorded the crime.
Clip: None of this goes beyond us. We don’t need any more problems.
Clip: Than we. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
Clip: Take his wife and kid. He give it up for them. Target switching.
Clip: Directed by Tony Scott.
Clip: Why are they after me? Two targets. Rooftop. You have something they want.
Clip: We’ll see you in a minute.
Clip: Enemy of the state.
Greg: The year is 1998, and director Tony Scott decides to direct a movie called enemy of the state. We are talking about Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet, Regina King, Stuart Wilson, Barry Pepper, Jake Busey, Scott Conn, Jason Leigh, Gabriel Byrne, Jack black, Jamie Kennedy, a lot of comedians, and that’s been Jamie Kennedy. And the list goes on.
Greg: Joe, we are going back to the 90s with our guy, Tony Scott. I wonder if there are any helicopters in this movie. So I’ve never meant to ask you this more than I do right now, Joe. What makes enemy of the state a great bad movie? It’s a Tony Scott film through and through. Yeah, his action scenes are so good.
Greg: The cast, as you say, is crazy. Who is in this movie? It kind of feels like another one of his movies, True Romance, where it’s just like every scene is not just. It’s like known actors, known people, and that then go on to do bigger things, bigger and better things. And like Gabriel Byrne shows up for two seconds in this movie.
Greg: Yeah a scene. Yeah. So there’s a lot of that within this movie. It’s a little ahead of its time. I feel like in terms of like its plot and it’s like, what if the government was could like, watch everything? What what I noticed about it is like, the technology that they’re trying to stop in this movie is, you know, basically the government can see everything and they can move satellites all around.
Greg: If you watch any of the movie or TV shows today, like FBI or CIA on CBS. They use every single one of those tricks as there’s people in a room with cameras looking at facial recognition software, and they’re tracking traffic cameras, and it’s ridiculous how much this movie I feel like was ahead of its time. That said, oh, the plot, the bit of a mess Tony Scott, I feel like doesn’t necessarily know how to end his movies.
Greg: Like he’s really good, like Man on Fire. I feel like missed this ending. I don’t I didn’t really love the end of True Romance. This movie just like takes the True Romance ending and just does that. Sure. So there are a lot of fun parts with it. I hate to admit this. I don’t know that I’m the biggest Will Smith fan.
Greg: Like I realized like I didn’t like him or his character. And I don’t know if it was like a good acting job because I didn’t like his character, but it’s also just kind of the character. He always plays a little more vulnerable in this one little bit. But yeah, so I struggled with it. There are some things, but I’ll turn it around to you.
Greg: Greg, what did you think of this movie? You know, this is a movie that feels old to me. It just feels like a simpler time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the conceit of the movie is, what if you could track people with their metadata? Not necessarily like, you know, actual footage of them, but like, you know, with their phone records and all the data that they’re emitting.
Greg: And in a pre cell phone world, I guess maybe cell phones were just kind of coming out at this point. Yeah. Now it’s like we just willingly give all that information to almost. We’ll get in line for hours to give people that information. It seems like. So it’s a very different time. And I feel like the premise that this whole thing sits on, it feels like it kind of instantly moved to TV after this movie.
Greg: Yeah, but here’s what I love about this movie. It’s an updated version of my favorite movies from the 70s. I love 70s like paranoid thrillers, so I love Three Days of the Condor, I love The Parallax View. I love like slow moving 70s movies like that, and this was just the perfect update to that. You know, even though it was a long time ago now in 1998, and Tony Scott is such a brilliant choice to do it.
Greg: And in 1998, he would have been my last choice to make this movie. And now I realized what a brilliant stroke of genius it was to hire someone who was so frenetic. Because the data only gets more frenetic after 1998, and so his visual style, he’s basically making Three Days of the Condor. He’s basically making a 70s paranoid thriller, but he’s using just this total frenetic thing to show how crazy things are getting and what people can do to track people.
Greg: And so, I mean, obviously, I’m going to watch every single Tony Scott movie that was ever made forever. Yeah, repeatedly. This guy can make a car pulling up to a building. The most entertaining thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Like there’s a scene where, like, when the NSA pulls up to, like, a hotel and gets out of the car, the camera is inside the hotel, but it’s quickly tracking the car outside the hotel right before it parks.
Greg: And it’s just nuts how they did this. And it was probably like the fourth time I saw this movie where I realized, hold on, that camera’s just going through lobbies in that car is outside, but it’s like going the speed of the car. I love Tony Scott so much, and we’re watching this movie because it was the color palette slash cinematography template that was used on Mission Impossible three, so it was super fascinating to watch with that in mind, because as Dan Mendel, the same guy who shot Mission Impossible three, eight years after this.
Greg: Yeah. And it has so many of the same colors. It’s like super blue when we’re talking about technology, and then suddenly it’s just all orange. One of my very favorite things about Tony Scott is his use of just paint on the lens, or on a thing in front of the gates. He does a thing where like, it’s constantly sunset in the top part of the frame, and it’s because he actually paints the top part of the camera orange.
Greg: And so, you know, the cameras on a building for a second. It’s like, why is the sun setting on that building? And then it goes to the sky and it’s like, oh, Tony Scott painted on the camera again. Yeah. Which I guess is what he did all over in Top Gun. So I loved watching this movie this week, but it’s not the movie I remembered it as.
Greg: What did you think this movie was before you sat down to watch it this week?
Clip: This is a movie that I have seen a few different times, and I have no memory of it. Like every time I watch it, it’s like I’m watching it for the first time and then I’ll get and I have I don’t have that with very many movies. There are moments where it’s like everything is really crisp and beautifully shot, and then everything gets like fuzzy and blurry.
Clip: And he’s able to do, like, make it interesting, like kind of frenetic. It was ahead of his time. It’s like we’re pretty. I’m pretty used to seeing that now. But like, there’s just there’s so many scenes of like Jack black talking, you know, adding a line here that’s then cut into. But it’s works. It’s fascinating. So there are really there are parts of this movie that I really liked.
Clip: I wish I liked the hero more like that was what I kept coming back to is like, he’s just not a likable. But then I also felt like they’re trying to take him down a notch. So he kind of starts off as this cocky lawyer who can kind of fast talk his way out of everything. And then, yeah, you know, he’s they basically just systematically take everything away from him.
Clip: Through the course of the movie. And he’s sort of humbled by the end. I don’t know if that arc lands for me as much, but, you know, because it’s a it’s a B movie that is punching above its weight is what it feels like.
Greg: 100%. And that’s the classic equation for great Bad movie. Get our best actors to sell just the worst exposition. Yeah. And then have some people running around. And basically you’ve got me for the rest of your life. I’ll buy it on every format it has. Exactly. Jason Robards is what is he like, a congressman or a senator.
Clip: Has a senator.
Greg: In Jon Voight is as well. And Jon Voight goes to visit him. And in the first two minutes of this movie, we basically get like the whole premise and it’s given to us basically just in grumpy Jason Robards, which is which is my very favorite thing.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: Jason Robards of All the President’s Men, one of my very favorite movies. He plays Ben Bradlee in that movie, and he’s kinda grumpy in that one, too. Yeah, maybe Jason Robards is just a natural grump.
Clip: Yeah, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him in any movie where he wasn’t, quite frankly.
Greg: If he was happy in a scene, everyone on sets just like this is so uncomfortable. What’s happening?
Clip: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: But let’s listen to the opening scene of enemy of the state.
Clip: What the hell are you doing here? This is not the office. This is my private time.
Clip: Five minutes.
Clip: No, I said no Tuesday. I said no last week. I want to keep saying no to you. Hear me? I bet it’s.
Clip: Mr. Chairman. That’s all I ask. Five minutes once we’ve coffee.
Clip: No, I don’t want coffee. I want to play with my dog.
Clip: Look, I’m not asking you to vote for it. I know you can’t just release your people. Let them go the way they want.
Clip: Telecommunications Security and Privacy act. Vision of privacy is more like it. You read the post. This bill is not the first step to the surveillance society. It is the surveillance society.
Clip: A liberal hysteria.
Clip: All this. And I’m not going to sit in Congress and pass a law that lets the government point a camera in a microphone, in anything they damn well please. So.
Clip: Look, I don’t care who bangs who what cabinet officers get stoned, but this is the richest, most powerful nation on earth, and therefore the most hated. And you and I know what the average citizen does. Not that we are at war 24 hours of every day.
Clip: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Clip: Do I have to itemize the number of American lives we’ve saved in the past 12 months alone, with judicious use of surveillance intelligence?
Clip: Thomas, cut the crap. I’ve got three major employers in the Syracuse area alone who are going to get just killed by this bill.
Clip: I promise to get you funds equal to or greater than whatever those companies gave your last campaign.
Clip: I’m not talking about campaign contributions, damn it. I’m talking about my constituents being out of work. Jesus, man. Wake up. National security isn’t the only thing going on in this country.
Greg: Joe, I have a very important question for you that I need to ask you. Well, of our infamous section called Important Questions. It’s the late 90s. It’s government style exposition. What uncredited writer did a pass on this movie for those kinds of scenes?
Clip: It has got to be Mr. West Wing. Why am I blanking on his name?
Greg: Aaron sorkin.
Clip: Aaron Sorkin.
Greg: Yeah. Same thing with the Rock. A couple years before this, Aaron Sorkin did a pass for the government scenes. This scene ends in kind of an interesting way. They’ve been kind of disagreeing. And then when Jon Voight realizes he’s not going to get what he needs, this is what he does.
Clip: God.
Clip: This conversation is over.
Clip: I beg of you, fill. Please don’t. I’ve been there for you in the past, haven’t I? There have been times, personal situations when you needed my assistance and my confidence.
Clip: Are you blackmailing me? You.
Clip: I’m sorry. We can’t find a common ground on this one, Congressman. You’re a good man. People of your district are lucky to have you representing them.
Greg: What a creepy, non-sequitur way for Jon Voight to just immediately change course at the end of that. That’s just good writing, I think. Yeah. They cut to Jason Roberts. You kind of just looked at them like, what? Because okay, I’m going to leave. And it’s such a good stroke of writing. I think I have to assume it was Aaron Sorkin.
Greg: Just completely changes in the middle of a scene where the intentions change between the actors. Unbelievable writing there. Plus, I just love that grumpy Jason Robards is just telling us the name of the act that this movie is about.
Clip: Exactly. For me, like, there’s where we are today, but what happens? You know, we have 911 that happens. And then we have the Patriot Act, which actually brings in a lot of the, like, what this movie is warning us about. It’s fascinating. And this movie also has one of my favorite tropes. I’m not quite sure how to bring it in, where you have incredibly competent bad guys up to a point where they miss a trail cam that captures the entire murder on tape.
Clip: Yeah, like you would think that they would know all of these sorts of things, right? And then you have Jason Lee, who is the studying the geese that the trail cam is supposed to be watching. Yeah. Who is somehow connected to Will Smith?
Greg: I think they went to school together.
Clip: Yeah, but there’s no like their connection means nothing. It’s. Those are the points where they’re like. They needed Christopher McQuarrie to come in and Freeman things to like make it make sense. Because that opening scene to me is the best scene in the movie in times of credits.
Greg: Roll right after that scene. Yeah, it’s.
Clip: It’s almost like a perfect short film. Like, you could just take that. It’s got a beginning, middle and end. You know, you have that decision point that you point out where Jon Voight realizes he’s not going to change his mind, and he kills him and credits roll. It could be like a five minute movie, you know? And it’s well written, well acted.
Clip: And then the the rest of the movie kind of goes haywire is probably the best way to put it. Yeah. You know, there are some great moments. There’s some great action scenes, but we don’t get a lot of that sort of exposition again. And I wish we had a few more scenes like that, I think.
Greg: I think I liked this movie more than you.
Clip: I think you did.
Greg: Yeah. But this is also kind of like, right in my wheelhouse, you know, like I watch Robert Redford movies from the 70s, like every 18 months, I watch All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor. He had a great movie called The Candidate, where he kind of like runs not to win, and then he wins at the end.
Greg: It’s great 70s movie. Michael Ritchie directed it. The Parallax View I love all of those movies. And so this is the kind of movie where we don’t understand why something is happening to Will Smith, and he doesn’t understand. Well, we understand why it’s happening to him, but he doesn’t understand why. This is also kind of like what would happen in like, a Hitchcock movie where people are after Cary Grant and he doesn’t know why.
Greg: And, you know, his character arc is he’s in control at the beginning, like you were talking about, and then he just kind of isn’t in control, which is a really interesting choice for Will Smith to play that. Let’s listen to him in control. And then I want to talk about where Will Smith was in the 90s.
Clip: Sounds like you guys need a labor lawyer. What happened.
Clip: On Lewis two nights ago? I use the bathroom in these two. We don’t joke.
Clip: I prefer we use the term Italian Americans.
Clip: Whatever. But they were really going to work on me. The kids got serious. Then Larry Cash came in and he went after him.
Clip: Larry Cash.
Clip: Is in the hospital with a broken jaw and a ruptured kidney.
Clip: This is becoming a criminal investigation, Robert.
Clip: No, it didn’t take years to see that thing through. Besides, these people have families that are living through this every day.
Clip: Hey, Julie, can we send a case of over to Larry Cash? Larry cash. Jessie’s at Saint Luke’s and send some flowers to his wife, Brenda. They’re both in the Rolodex. Yes, Mr. Dean.
Clip: Well.
Clip: Why don’t you guys just head on home? I’m your lawyer. I’m in the process of dealing with these, Guido, motherfucker. Doesn’t stand a chance.
Greg: Pretty good intro to Will Smith. Kind of showing how smooth he is, how in control he is. He’s got people in a Rolodex. This guy has it all figured out. Yeah. And then as the movie goes on, he’s in less and less control and kind of more exasperated. Okay, so Joe, let’s talk about Will Smith in the 90s.
Greg: 1995 he’s in Bad Boys, right? 1996. He’s in Independence Day, 1997. He’s in Men in Black, 1998. He’s in this movie enemy of the state. This is a really interesting move for him as an actor. What would you have thought Will Smith should do next after Men in Black? He’s got three blockbusters in a row, basically.
Clip: Yeah, he’s on a run. He’s on a.
Greg: Roll, overconfident. He’s put out getting jiggy with it. The big Willie style kind of shiny suit rap is out there that he was doing.
Clip: Hype Williams directing the video probably, you know. Yeah, all of that. I think that this is a good move for him career wise to work with Tony Scott. Yeah. You know he’s got Tony Scott. He’s got Jerry Bruckheimer. And it is almost playing to his all of those movies of what his character is. He’s a brash, smooth talking, always in control.
Clip: And then this movie strips all of that away.
Greg: I think it’s a fantastic move for him.
Clip: And I like all that. I think I just don’t like that character. Yeah. You know, even like my favorite Will Smith movie, I think is probably Independence Day. And that’s a disaster movie with a massive cast and a kind of, you know, another ridiculous premise. Independence Day and Six Degrees of Separation are probably my two favorite Will Smith movies.
Greg: Yeah, Six Degrees of Separation was what was that, 94?
Clip: Something like that.
Greg: That was before Bad Boys.
Clip: Yeah, that was really his first actor role where it wasn’t just, you know, Fresh Prince, you know, as a serious role. It’s a pretty small part in the movie. Dramatic and.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah, I thought he was good in that movie.
Clip: Yeah, he is good in that movie. But it’s a totally different character than we’ve ever seen him play as well. Yeah, but yeah, I think it’s more just my own, you know, they’re just some actors I just don’t like. You know, they’re just like their character, their persona on screen. I don’t think he’s bad in this movie. I don’t think he gives a bad performance.
Clip: I think that this, you know, if you’re casting someone for this role, I can’t really think of another actor of the time that I would put in that role.
Greg: Oh, and enemy of the state. Yeah. This movie was offered to two actors before Will Smith.
Clip: I’m dying to know.
Greg: Who the first person who was offered to is, the first person everybody goes to. And he had worked famously with Bruckheimer before.
Clip: Oh, is it Nicolas Cage?
Greg: No, it’s Tom cruise. But why wasn’t the cage in this movie?
Clip: Yeah, or Denzel Washington would be the first. I mean.
Greg: He had already been in Crimson Tide, right?
Clip: Yeah. So they have their Tony Scott connection.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, it should have been Denzel. It was offered to Tom cruise. He said no. Then it was offered to Mel Gibson. He said no. And then Jerry Bruckheimer had made Bad Boys and he was like, let’s get let’s see if we can get Will Smith. Will Smith only says yes for one reason. Actually, before I get to that, let me agree with you.
Greg: I don’t think he’s necessarily amazing in this. I think because he did get better as an actor later. And so now I’m kind of judging him against who he became, which might not be fair, but I appreciate what he’s going for in this. But I think he got better at at acting, you know, and like that non bravado kind of Independence Day way.
Greg: But he says yes to this movie for the same reason. Just about everybody else says yes in this movie. This movie has an incredible cast. And it’s because everybody in the movie wanted to work alongside Gene Hackman in 1998. Everybody wants to work with Gene Hackman.
Clip: That’s awesome. I mean, he’s great in this movie. He’s great in everything. Like he’s one of those I’ve never seen a Gene Hackman performance I felt like was phoned in. He’s also grumpy in everything that I’ve ever seen him into.
Greg: But in the greatest way.
Clip: In the greatest way. Yeah.
Greg: And Gene Hackman wasn’t the first person that they offered that part to. It was first offered to Sean Connery after the Rock.
Clip: That would have been awesome, too.
Greg: He says no. And you know, Sean Connery was incredible in the Rock because he was basically playing James Bond. And to bring that to this movie, I don’t think really would have worked as well as it did in the Rock. Here’s what’s amazing, though. Do you remember what we talked about in the Rock episode where Sean Connery, for legal reasons, couldn’t say he was playing James Bond, but Sean Connery was playing James Bond in that movie.
Greg: Yeah, that exact same thing happened with Gene Hackman in this movie. Gene Hackman was playing his character from 1976. Is the conversation interesting? I’m sorry, it was from 1974, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which I have constantly said in my life. The conversation, followed by enemy of the state would be the best double feature in movie history.
Greg: But the craziest thing about the conversation in 1974 is Francis Ford Coppola wanted to make the conversation so bad that he said yes to The Godfather so that he could make it.
Clip: Wow.
Greg: Kind of a one for me, one for them. And then immediately after the conversation, he makes The Godfather Part two. No one talks about the conversation anymore, but it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.
Clip: I’ve never.
Greg: Seen it so incredible. Oh, it’s it’s it’s so slow. It’s like a 1974 spy thriller where Gene Hackman plays this guy who’s a spy. His name’s Harry call. He’s basically doing, like, surveillance with microphones. This whole movie, Tony Scott and the writer David Marconi, they’re alluding to the conversation the whole time throughout. And Gene Hackman actually himself is playing that dude, even though he can’t have the same name because it’s a different studio.
Greg: So it’s the exact same thing. We need a term for this, Joe. This was before we started doing regret episodes. This was my biggest regret from the Rock we didn’t coin. I think we need a term for when.
Clip: We do need a turn.
Greg: When Sean Connery is playing James Bond in a movie but can’t say it, and Gene Hackman is playing the same character 20 something years later and can’t say it. What is that called?
Clip: I have.
Greg: Like.
Clip: Cloning or I don’t know, they call it like stealing a scene in a movie, like when they don’t have all the permits. And there, you know, that that scene, that famous scene with Dustin Hoffman where he’s like, I’m walking here, I’m walking here. That’s a that’s a stolen scene on the street. That’s a real cab driver that almost hits them.
Greg: Like a stolen shot.
Clip: Yeah. Stolen shot. So it’s like a stolen character. Almost. Maybe we should put this on our Instagram at Great Bad Movie Show. And let’s see if we have some some suggestions for what we call this because it needs a term. Because I feel like we’re going to run into this. Yeah, more and more.
Greg: I hope we do. You know, I mean, the greatest thing is when you’re connecting directors work to previous directors work or but this is just about the greatest thing ever. When you can connect Gene Hackman to a previous role and do a double feature, it’s like a legacy sequel. Except he can’t say it’s like a Ghost Legacy sequel, you know?
Clip: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: He can’t say who it is, but he actually is playing the same character. Okay, well, we need a term for it. Stealing a shot. Stealing a character. Ghost role. I have no idea what it is. That’s what he’s doing in this movie. And when they cut to facts about him, they’re doing facts about his character from the conversation.
Greg: When they cut to his shot in his file of an old picture of him, that’s like a production still from the conversation.
Clip: Wow.
Greg: That’s an enemy of the state. And like, the gear in his like, Faraday building is exactly the kind of stuff he was doing in the conversation to was just perfect. It’s so awesome. So I love it for that reason so much. And I also love the conversation for Francis Ford Coppola, because I think Francis Ford Coppola has been fighting for something, and everyone else has been fighting for something different from him.
Greg: It seems like. Yeah, but I love the conversation for him because it happened right in his wheelhouse, right in his heyday, and it is exactly what he wanted it to be. And it was he was just going full Francis Ford Coppola in 1974 with that film.
Clip: That’s awesome. I mean, he just had the movie a couple a year ago. What was it? The one that he’s been trying to make with an Adam Driver was in it.
Greg: Yeah. Was it Megalopolis?
Clip: Yeah, Megalopolis it was. I have not seen that. But it’s divisive among critics. But it was it was a movie that he has been trying to make forever.
Greg: Do you think it was called The Meg? And then he was. He couldn’t use that anymore, so he changed it. Do you think they called it The Meg?
Clip: Yeah. They better, I hope so.
Greg: Is it the unofficial Meg three?
Clip: Yeah.
Clip: If it’s not, it is now. It is the official now.
Greg: The trilogy. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s showing up in a box set of three when you order the trilogy. And I’m sure Francis Ford Coppola is like, Adam Driver is playing a shark. What are you talking about?
Clip: Yeah, yeah, he is a shark. He is just.
Greg: All right, so let’s go back to the genesis of this movie. Okay? An executive is sitting in his office wondering what he should work on next, and he’s staring at a poster of North by Northwest by Alfred Alfred Hitchcock. North by northwest, isn’t it Cary Grant, who’s, like, running from a plane by Mount Rushmore or something on the poster of that movie?
Greg: He has this idea. What if the thing he’s running from is technology? People are using technology to find him rather than, you know, whatever else they were doing in that movie? It’s an updated version of that. He pitches that to Jerry Bruckheimer. Jerry Bruckheimer, Don Simpson had this whole way of creating and developing movies. They didn’t sit around waiting for the right script to show up.
Greg: They actually came up with a concept and then would usher that concept into existence. A movie needed to have these three things for them to work on. It won a 32nd pitch. The premise had to be so clean, unique, and basic that you could pitch it to a studio executive or a moviegoer buying a ticket in 1 or 2 senses.
Greg: This is so key. I think for anything we do in our life, you have to be able to say in a sense sentence or two. The second thing is the what if hook. It was entirely driven by a striking, easily communicable situation rather than complex character development. For example, what if a hotshot fighter pilot falls for his instructor, like in Top Gun?
Greg: Or what if a regular guy’s life is systematically dismantled by the NSA? That’s enemy of the state? What if people were trying to break into Alcatraz versus breakout? Yeah. And so then the third thing is the look, hook and book strategy. They polished a formula where the movie was sold almost purely on a striking visual esthetic, a massive pop rock soundtrack and an easily identifiable star, making it a guaranteed event.
Greg: So they would look for things that were happening culturally in the world. Where is culture going? What is brewing under the surface? And then they would make this super high concept Hollywood movie to represent that thing that everyone’s feeling but haven’t they haven’t quite put their finger on yet. So it would be like making a movie about AI, you know, eight years ago, or algorithms and social media, you know, 15 years ago, those kinds of things, what’s happening in culture right now.
Greg: And then Bruckheimer would just go nuts with it and he would hire he would hire just the craziest people. There was one person who wanted to make this movie and direct this movie the most. They almost made it. But Bruckheimer eventually said, no, I don’t think he’s our guy. And that is Oliver Stone.
Clip: Oh, I could totally see the totally different film.
Greg: Yeah. What is it? In 1988, JFK has come out. Natural Born Killers had come out. What movie does he make? Is it like three hours long? Oh.
Clip: Three.
Greg: Hours long.
Clip: It’s three hours long. Yeah, it’s. I mean, I think Tony Scott and Oliver Stone are cut from the same cloth in a lot of ways in their, like, visual style and how they shoot films. Sure. Tony Scott’s a little bit more commercial friendly, like action movie, and, you know, Oliver Stone’s kind of got that a tour like. Yeah, tortured genius.
Clip: Sure. But I think aside from the length, which is it’s definitely three hours if not three and a half, you know, honestly, it’s a very similar movie, I think. I think the ending is better for all of the stones movie, because I think.
Greg: Probably a little bit more cynical. Probably.
Clip: Yeah, a little more cynical. Okay. And not as fun to watch, but it’s probably like has more meaning behind it and is, you know, trying to say something about the culture where there’s, you know, Tony Scott is a little bit more like and we’ve talked about this in past Tony Scott films. I think he and his brother Ridley Scott are kind of, you know, Ridley Scott is kind of held up as like the artist.
Clip: But I think Tony Scott’s a really talented director, that the topics of his movies kind of get in the way sometimes of how good he is as a director. But it’s definitely a more cynical movie if Oliver Stone directs it. But I think it is. I think they’re very similar.
Greg: So Bruckheimer says no to Oliver Stone and calls Tony Scott, and they had worked on Top Gun together. By the way, you said that this was a budget true romance, true romance cost less than this movie. How much less do you think, percentage wise?
Clip: I think it is like, I’m going to guess in this range. So I’m going to guess the True Romance was made for like 10 million, and this is made for like 60 million. Like that is the difference. Like one sixth is what I would go with.
Greg: It is like one eighth. Oh my God, that’s the budget of this movie. Yeah. But when you say budget, are you just kind of saying it doesn’t hold as many ideas? It’s not as impactful of a film.
Clip: Yeah. I wasn’t talking about the money that I was. You know, the True Romance kind of comes out. Quentin Tarantino was like hit the zeitgeist at this moment. So like, his scripts are all over. He’s ghostwriting on things, but he’s not able to direct all of his movies. So like Natural Born Killers was a Tarantino screenplay really completely augmented?
Clip: So really he only gets credit for, like, the story and then True Romance. Tony Scott directs. But that’s also like the heyday of independent film of the 90s to me, and maybe jumping the shark a little bit into mainstream of like, what? You know, because Tony Scott directing True Romance as an independent film is probably a misnomer. And yeah, the look and feel of True romance, I think it’s a better story start to finish.
Clip: Although the ending again kind of very much shades of this and all kind of Quentin Tarantino films up to that moment and really all of his films, everyone’s got to have a gun pointed at each other at some point.
Greg: We’ve all been there.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: We talked about this on the unstoppable episode. I think Quentin Tarantino had two scripts. He had Reservoir Dogs and he had True Romance, and I think both of them were sent to Tony Scott. This is before Quentin Tarantino had had anything made. And Quentin Tarantino gets a call like over the weekend from Tony Scott, and he says, I love this script, reservoir Dogs, it’s my next movie.
Greg: And Quentin Tarantino says, oh, I kind of, I want to direct that one. And Tony Scott goes, okay, well, I’ll make the other one. And that’s how he got to be directing True Romance. He read those two scripts. I think it says a lot about Tony Scott. He was willing to make a movie for an eighth of the budget of this one.
Greg: I’m not giving you the number because we haven’t gotten that part of the show. We have rules.
Clip: Strict rules on this podcast.
Greg: Very strict rules, obviously. But he was willing to make True Romance for basically an indie budget. He doesn’t care. He could make a good movie out of nothing. He used to do, you know, British commercials forever to get his start. Let’s go back to Will Smith for a second. Do you think that you dislike Will Smith’s acting? Because he had to get jiggy with it and you’re just constantly jiggy with it.
Greg: There’s no getting in the process.
Clip: Yeah, I’m already there. I’m peak jiggy.
Greg: You’re just consistently jigging. I hold that against him, too, because I’ve known you for a long time, and I feel like it’s. Yeah, when you’re around Gigi, someone’s telling you you have to get jiggy. It’s like, yeah.
Clip: Pretty. There I get with the program. I’m not working for this. This is this is natural.
Greg: So no, no, no, no, Joe, let me ask you the question that everybody is wanting me to ask you about enemy of the state. And that is is this a Christmas movie?
Clip: It could be. It needs a little bit more like Christmas carols in the background as he’s, like, running through stores.
Greg: Totally, totally. But there are Christmas decorations.
Clip: Yeah. Christmas decorations. Yeah. You know, it needs a little bit more of what’s that, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sinbad movie? Go all the way, jingle all the way, and needs a little bit more like leaning into that. And then you totally, totally is a Christmas movie. And it needs, you know, the ending to be a little bit more like, feel good Christmassy.
Clip: Where he walks, he walks in the door to his family’s Christmas on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and like, has the presence and everyone runs and hugs him. Something like that. Then perfect movie.
Greg: If we swap out Will Smith for Sinbad, what’s your take on this movie?
Clip: That might be the most amazing recasting ever of this movie. Sinbad goes and plays a totally straight not for comedy at all.
Greg: Yep, it might be like one star better.
Clip: Yeah, I think it might be.
Greg: At the very least, it’s just a lateral move. There’s no losing here. No Will Smith though, when he’s like in a scene with people and he’s not freaked out, he’s kind of just enjoying himself. Like when he’s with his, his son joking around with his son and his son’s friend. And then I can’t believe we haven’t talked about Regina King yet.
Greg: One of the best actresses of our time. Regina King is in this movie. Yeah. And she’s incredible when she’s in this movie.
Clip: And she’s given so little to do. She is just the wife, and she she is bringing all of what Regina King can offer.
Greg: It’s all.
Clip: There in every scene. So, yeah, I like how they got her, how they got this cast together. I is I feel like there’s a behind the music of how they cast this movie because it is insane. But she’s amazing in this and I love her.
Greg: And just like every behind the music, there’s just nothing but drinking problems at one point during the story.
Clip: Yeah, start of act two, the music changes, you know?
Greg: Let’s hear Regina King and Will Smith connecting for the first time in the movie when we meet.
Clip: Him dead.
Clip: Are you staying for dinner tonight, Dylan?
Clip: It’s okay with you.
Clip: Got any money?
Clip: He’s kidding. I’m gonna. Superbad. Dylan’s okay.
Clip: Did you ask.
Clip: Your mother? I was going to, but she’s too busy yelling at the TV.
Clip: Oh, well, there goes the Fourth Amendment. What’s left of it.
Clip: Hey, Maria.
Clip: Hello, Mr. Bobby.
Clip: Don’t you honestly doubt that the average citizen. Hey.
Clip: You’re about a bark and a half from being homeless.
Clip: Baby, listen to this fascist gas bag.
Clip: And freedom of always existed in a in a very precarious balance. And when buildings start blowing up, people’s priorities tend to change.
Clip: It’s got a point there, sweetie.
Clip: Bobby, right?
Clip: I mean, who is this idiot?
Clip: He is talking about ending personal privacy. Do you want your phone tap?
Clip: I’m not planning on blowing up the country.
Clip: Well, how do we know until we’ve heard all your dirty little secrets.
Clip: You’re just going to have to trust me.
Clip: Oh, I know, we’ll just tap the criminals. We won’t suspend the civil rights of the good people.
Clip: Right?
Clip: Then who decides which is which?
Clip: I think you should.
Clip: You know, Bobby, I think you should take this more seriously.
Clip: I think you’re taking it seriously enough for both of us and half the people on the block.
Greg: And he’s making something with his blender, his favorite blender, which, by the way, is so quiet you can hear the TV over it, which really floored me while I was watching this. Like, what is that blender?
Clip: It really isn’t that slender.
Greg: There’s a little bit of like story kind of exposition going on in this conversation, but they’re also pretty great together.
Clip: That’s a great little scene. Set up the characters, how they relate to each other. You know, a little bit of foreshadowing on the trust me, because, you know, there’s been, you know, issues in their relationship. And again, thinking about where we are now and like, we all have a phone in our pocket that literally is tracking our location at any moment.
Clip: Yeah. Tracking everything we buy, everything we type. It’s not the government that’s tracking. It’s somehow even worse. It’s like people trying to sell us stuff and we’re just like, sure. Yeah. Here you go. Here’s all of my information. So it’s it is foreshadowing in the real world what is actually happened. It’s kind of wild to to look back at like 1998 going, this is what we were worried about.
Clip: Here we are.
Greg: Yeah. It’s kind of quaint. It’s kind of quaint. Yeah.
Clip: Yeah, definitely has that quaint feel. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have a police state that was monitoring us at every for every second, like.
Greg: Oh, it is so fascinating, though, that like, if someone was to actually tap your phone, that takes a warrant, but getting who you called and who you got a call from and the time that happened, the metadata of the situation that’s legal. And I think that’s what this movie is really hinting at. You know, you can understand a lot about a person based on who they’re getting letters from in the mail, you know, who’s calling them at what time.
Greg: It’s interesting. It’s interesting stuff. Yeah. But talking about Will Smith kind of in his like home base, their house gets broken into and people kind of ransack it. And then he is out with his, his buddy from work, and they’re talking about what the people who broke in did to his house or stole from him.
Clip: They thrashed.
Clip: My computers. My big screen TV, took my blender.
Clip: What about jewelry?
Clip: Nope.
Clip: About silverware? Nope.
Clip: Just my blender.
Clip: Blender,
Clip: I love that blender. You know.
Clip: Edit stuff when I was a kid. You’re not breaking and entering, but, you know, stuff.
Clip: Hey, we all did stuff. I just wish they hadn’t stolen my damn blender.
Clip: Some little attached to this blender. Robert.
Clip: Yeah, well, some people meditate, some people get massages, I blend.
Clip: You’re really weird, you know that?
Greg: He is, like, the most likable person. Yeah.
Clip: Not me. No, I’m not feeling that.
Greg: You’re not feeling it.
Clip: I mean.
Greg: It was fine. Yeah. This movie is the natural precursor. Like, the hitch is the logical conclusion to Will Smith in this movie.
Clip: I can totally see that. And they shoehorn in the blender at the end where it’s like in a van.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Clip: That was the that was the like check please moment for me. Like I understand that they mentioned the blender and you know if it’s not on your drinking game it’s definitely on my drinking game. Then they mention the blender. Yeah. But then the have the blender in the van and like like why in the van did they put the blender.
Clip: So it was you know maybe it really is a nice blender of the time, but.
Greg: Well they stole it from him. And then as they’re surveilling him they’re using it. Yeah. Which is so funny. I can’t believe we didn’t mention this. Seth Green is in this movie from the.
Clip: South.
Greg: Korean, and I’m going to blame that on IMDb for not putting him up top with the rest of the crew. There was like a crazy amount of indie comedy gold in this movie. We’ve got Seth Green, we’ve got Jack black. I mean, in the 90s, we’ve got Jamie Kennedy was a big deal.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: We’ve got Jake Busey, we’ve got Scott Conn and Jason Lee. I mean, yeah, if you’re going to make a movie like this, I think this is exactly how you do it. You just get a bunch of comedians, and these guys are mostly serious. Yeah, but they’re pretty fun. They can’t avoid from having kind of fun energy even when they’re trying not to.
Clip: Yeah. I would love to see the the blooper reel on this film.
Greg: Oh, totally. Totally. You know, what I just realized is there’s a ton of scenes of Jack black just watching surveillance in this movie and not really going full Jack black, but it’s just fun that he’s in the room and he’s there. Yeah, but he totally does. The Iceman move from Top Gun where he, like, hits his teeth together.
Clip: Oh, yeah.
Greg: Yeah. And when he did that, I was like, why don’t you just do an ice man? I bet because this movie was directed by the same director and produced by the same producer.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: He’s totally referencing Ice Man.
Clip: Yeah, I missed that.
Greg: That is doing that. An enemy of the state.
Clip: Yeah.
Clip: That’s awesome. I have two things that I need to bring up.
Greg: Okay.
Clip: One, I think we know that Jon Voight is the bad guy, obviously the first scene, but there’s a scene where he’s home with his wife, and before bed he gets a glass of milk. So my question for you, Greg, is, yeah. When was the last time you poured yourself a glass of milk and drank it?
Greg: Oh my gosh, 15 years ago. Yeah. I never would ever do that.
Clip: That was to me like, who is who doesn’t even like, yeah, it’s got to be like, I was never a big milk drinker. I think in cereal was like the main.
Greg: Way the best.
Clip: And now I just, I have almond milk or cashew milk or, you know, and it’s not even that I’m allergic. I’m just like, yeah.
Greg: Like a regular bag over here.
Clip: I know. And so, you know what? You know, maybe it’s some oat milk, you know, you never know. But yeah.
Greg: Maybe, maybe it’s time for a party. An oatmeal party.
Clip: Yeah. Could be, but I still don’t pour a glass of those and just, like, drink it like that just feels like sociopathic behavior. I think it’s what they’re trying to say. They’re.
Greg: He’s so evil. He pours himself a glass of milk. Yeah. What kind of monster.
Clip: I know. Seriously.
Greg: Wasn’t it nighttime? It was like the evening and he was in his robe. And isn’t that. Don’t people drink milk to fall asleep in movies anyway?
Clip: Yeah, in movies, I think it just was so odd and such a dated reference to me. Yeah, it stuck out. And like, who of our dear listeners has like, please find us on Instagram and tell us the last time you pour yourself a glass of milk and drank it. I want to know the other thing that I realized watching this movie.
Clip: Everything I know about sewers is based solely on action movies. Like I don’t know what they actually look like, but every action movie that they’re in the sewer is my reference point for what happens when you open a manhole cover and you go underground. So that is what I just assume it is, but I have no idea if that is actually what sewers are like, or that’s just what action movies have decided that they are for me, in my in my world.
Greg: Okay. Hold on. Do they go into a sewer in this movie? And I’ve forgotten.
Clip: Yeah. There’s a scene where he, like, goes under ground into a manhole cover and gets away and then comes up into into traffic and then runs. Right?
Greg: Yeah. Okay. Okay. What movies were instructive in your sewer life? Are you thinking The Fugitive? Obviously. I guess he’s in the. Doesn’t he kind of do that in The Fugitive?
Clip: There’s the fugitive. I feel like in Total Recall, there’s also an extraction, which I just watched as a scene when they’re in the sewer. I feel like Kindergarten Cop has a scene where they’re in the sewer, like, okay, I feel like it was such a trope of like, the late of the 80s and 90s to be in the.
Greg: Sewer and in the background. Yeah, yeah.
Clip: But I was realizing as I was on my walk with my dog today as I walked past like a manhole cover of what? Whatever the politically correct term is for that now, like, I have no idea what’s under there. What did my head is every action movie where they end up in a sewer and they’re, you know, it’s a big circle with like a trough down the and yeah, they’re running away from the bad guys to get into some secret lair or whatever.
Greg: So yeah.
Clip: I don’t know. So I pose that again to our listeners, is that what a sewer is really like, or is that just an action movie trope? Maybe.
Greg: I feel like you’re kind of passing something you could easily find out by yourself onto our listeners. I think it’s time for you to jump down in a sewer and find out.
Clip: No, thanks. Hard pass.
Clip: Where are the talent? We need people to. We need lackeys to do do the research for us.
Greg: I mean.
Clip: An intern is what.
Greg: We need. We need an intern to watch Total Recall to remind you of what sewers are like. Yeah. All right, Joe, there is one more ghost writer on this movie that was not credited. I wouldn’t have guessed this one, but in retrospect, it’s pretty spot on. And that is Tony Gilroy of the Bourne movies and Andor, also writer director of Michael Clayton, one of the best movies of all time.
Greg: He wrote the like the cold clinical realism of the surveillance stuff. So like, guys in the van and like, right, what they were doing and this movie is basically like Washington people talking and surveillance, those are basically the two different kinds of things, this movie. So I feel like Aaron Sorkin and Tony Gilroy kind of brought the magic.
Greg: I agree in this movie.
Clip: Yeah. And then the rest of it is this Will Smith running for him for his life through a right, through the streets, through hotels, setting himself on fire. That was the scene that I needed the most. I watched that scene a couple different times because I was so confused. He basically is like locked in a room and they’re about to get him, and he his big idea is to start a fire to set off the alarms.
Greg: Classic.
Clip: And it seems like a very risky move because he almost dies. I don’t know if I I’m questioning his decision making in that moment to have the fire department rescue him.
Greg: I feel like you need to ask the intern to do this as well, just to see what it’s like.
Clip: Yeah, we’re just passing the buck totally on all research and all on doing our jobs.
Greg: I bet they’ll just set a sewer fire and take care of all of these things at the same time.
Clip: Yeah. While drinking some milk. And it’ll.
Greg: Be great. I feel like that’s an old man at night trope is milk. What was that movie? Was it quiz show? It was like the 90s. Robert Redford directed it.
Clip: Yeah, yeah. Ralph Fiennes and.
Greg: Ralph Fiennes. Yeah. And his dad is like, eating pie and drinking milk in his robe and slippers. Robe and slippers, by the way. Yeah. So I don’t know if this is, like, too much information, but are you a robe and slippers guy?
Clip: I’m not. I’m not a Roman slippers guy.
Greg: I’m neither. Yeah, I have no use for a robe or slippers. I’ve tried a few times and. Yeah, it’s nothing that likes some socks in a sweatshirt. Can’t handle. Exactly.
Clip: Yeah, I agree, I’ve even when I’ve been in fancy hotels and there’s a robe, it’s like, yeah, I’m. Yeah, I’m wearing it. And now I’m going to put on clothes because this is kind of uncomfortable.
Greg: So. All right Joe, this movie has some amazing opening logo sounds I think we need to check out now. There’s the spy thriller. And so of course this is what happens. This is what it sounds like at the beginning of the movie. Of course, the Bruckheimer movie. Now there’s lightning little things of lightning. Yeah, that’s where it hit the tree in the logo.
Greg: This is very much like the rock right here. Let’s get let’s get to some thematic music here.
Greg: This is so much like the rock.
Greg: We need Ed Harris talking over this right now American flags. Obviously I’m like.
Clip: A trumpet.
Greg: Playing.
Clip: In the background.
Greg: Yeah. By the way, how many times on the screen does something print out hunt for Red October style?
Clip: If you’re wondering if there’s a drinking game associated.
Greg: There are so many times that it prints something out, like Jimmy’s house. And then there’s a weird time like 1147 and I there was never one time, plot wise, where I understood why we were getting the time.
Clip: Had law and order come out. I feel like that’s the first time I noticed the date and the time on screen where it was.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, odd.
Clip: So I was just kind of oblivious to that.
Greg: But Lon Order started in 1990, so we were eight years in.
Clip: My God, that’s crazy. That’s.
Greg: Yeah. So that is just about the greatest sign for me. Yeah. When that kind of vibe is being said at the beginning, that confirms that we have chosen the right movie in my mind, like, instantaneously. All right. I want to play for you what scenes with Gene Hackman is like. Gene Hackman is the costar of this movie. Build number two.
Greg: The reason that everybody’s in this movie, we kind of don’t see him for like an hour, and then we mostly don’t get a scene for like an hour and a half.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: So Gene Hackman is doing what we all should do, and he’s making a gazillion dollars and not working very much.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: So here’s the first time we meet him.
Clip: We had an arrangement. No contact. You broke the rules.
Clip: You got to be heading for the roof. Everyone, we need to establish visual on the rooftop. Northeast corner, chambers and light.
Clip: Copy that. Rooftop northeast corner.
Greg: We have to pause there for a second. We are cutting from the van to a helicopter throughout this entire movie. Why are we talking to a helicopter? That they’re in a building. Why is there a helicopter other than it’s a Tony Scott movie?
Clip: And when they’re in the scene in the building, do we hear a helicopter or is it a silent? Not at all. Yeah. Yeah. No. What a crazy question.
Greg: No, it is a silent helicopter. I think this I think this was the movie where Tony Scott just pulled out his checkbook and wrote a check for $50,000 so they could have a helicopter fly by. Awesome. And the helicopter in. Not in this scene, but in the next scene, a helicopter flies by. So close to Will Smith, it’s ridiculous.
Greg: Okay, let’s continue with the scene.
Clip: With these quiet chambers in life.
Clip: I mean, federal agents you had following you on that ferry.
Clip: I don’t.
Clip: Be working.
Clip: For you. Talking about not.
Clip: Worth.
Clip: This about me. My at target here. Do they know me? Who is that? Do they know me?
Clip: I don’t know.
Clip: What you’re talking about.
Clip: Either very smart or incredibly stupid.
Greg: So we’ve just met Gene Hackman. Basically, for the first time, they’re in an elevator, and he’s like, pulling all these bugs off of Will Smith. And here’s one of my very favorite things about this movie. You know how we talk about an aliens they had, like there was some command center where they were looking at all the soldiers on a screen and seeing their vitals.
Greg: And, you know, they’re all being killed in this movie. We have that, except it’s basically just where they’ve planted bugs. And the amount of times we cut to a list of things on a computer screen that says, like, shoes, pants. My very favorite thing in this movie is that the word pants is stressful, shown on a computer screen so many times.
Greg: That has to be one of my favorite things that’s ever happened in movie history is just we cut to the word pants so many times.
Clip: We also may need to add a trope of you’re either incredibly stupid or incredibly smart, like those dichotomy questions that they’re like assessing the hero with, because that happens in a lot of our movies.
Greg: Or yeah.
Clip: You’re either the smartest person in the room or the biggest idiot. You know, that happens so much in our movie.
Greg: So I will say, while I felt like Will Smith kind of wasn’t as good as he was going to become in movies, in the scenes that he’s in with Gene Hackman, he was pretty solid. Here’s another scene with Gene Hackman.
Clip: How did you find out about the ferry? You set that up for you?
Clip: Rachel did. Wait, who was that other guy?
Clip: What did he say exactly?
Clip: I said he was brill.
Clip: Did he say it or did you say it? And he picked up on it. Come on.
Clip: Think I said it?
Clip: God damn it! You see, that’s why I have rules. That was.
Clip: All this about Pantera.
Clip: You think the mob uses devices like this in your phone? Was a GPS sat tracker. Pulse is a 24GHz.
Clip: I don’t know what that means.
Clip: It’s like a low jack. Only two generations better than what the police have.
Clip: And what does that mean?
Clip: Do you speak English? Obviously not that well. Kind of a jerk, aren’t you? It means the NSA.
Clip: Can read the time off your wristwatch.
Clip: All right, enough.
Clip: Of this bullshit. Right now, you. Either shoot me or.
Clip: Tell me.
Clip: What the fuck is going on.
Clip: Jones, you take the stairs.
Clip: Call the perimeter.
Clip: Come into my signal.
Clip: The National Security Agency conducts worldwide surveillance, fax phones, satellite communication. The only ones in the country, including the military, could possibly have anything like this.
Clip: Why are they after me?
Clip: I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Here they come.
Clip: I thought these sad.
Clip: Dishes would scramble.
Clip: Their signal.
Greg: It’s important to know that a helicopter is just flying in the air. And they just assume that that is a helicopter that is flying straight for them. And by the way, it does fly straight for them and gets within like five feet of Will Smith. Yeah.
Clip: Just repeat coordinates.
Clip: 105 Chambers Avenue.
Clip: You’re transmitting. They still have a signal on you. Your collar, your belt, your zipper. Get rid of your clothes all up. And then what am I supposed to do? Nothing. You live another day. I’ll be very impressed.
Clip: Two targets. Rooftop, north side.
Clip: Understood. Two targets. Rooftop. Maintain visual, please.
Clip: You have something they want. We got to have anything. Maybe you do and you don’t know it. You stay away from Rachel and you stay away from me. You come there. Either one of us, I’m gonna kill you. Get rid of your watch. Well, wife gave me this flower anniversary. Then keep it. Stay off the.
Greg: Phone, then keep it.
Greg: At that moment, a helicopter flies by and has totally seen Gene Hackman. I don’t know why he’s even leaving. He has totally been made, but apparently he thinks he can walk away and be fine. Okay, they keep talking about Rachel. There’s a couple of elephants in the room that we need to talk about. Lisa Bonet is in this movie.
Greg: Joe? Yeah. How many movies did you see with Lisa Bonet in it?
Clip: Not many.
Greg: Yeah.
Clip: Me either. High fidelity.
Greg: Oh, yeah.
Clip: And maybe this. Yeah. She’s one of those actors that I am always happy to see her, you know, made famous by The Cosby Show, but kind of rejected fame because she also had A Different World, which was a spinoff which was designed for her character that you ended up walking away from.
Greg: I think that was one season.
Clip: Yeah, one season. She was on the first season. But yeah, I’m curious. I feel like she is an under appreciated, underutilized actor of our time.
Greg: Yeah, she’s had Zoe Kravitz at this point. She’s married and divorced from Lenny Kravitz. Yeah, just wasn’t in that many things. Zoe Kravitz was in the remake of High Fidelity. Did you watch that?
Clip: I watched the first episode. I was like, yeah, that’s okay.
Greg: Oh, I loved it. I loved that show. Yeah. Lisa, boning is pretty good in this movie. Her scenes with Will Smith pretty good. Yeah. She’s just relaxed and confident and great. And he is kind of like trying to get to her level. I feel like in those scenes. Yeah, but she’s not in the movie that much. But I remember when I saw this movie, I was like, oh my gosh, Lisa, Bonnie needs to be showing up like this in movies.
Greg: This needs to be happening more often.
Clip: So how’s the trout?
Clip: Tastes like fish.
Clip: It is fish.
Clip: No, I mean, it tastes like every other fish I’ve ever had.
Clip: Okay.
Greg: Well, Joe, it occurs to me that we’ve been talking about this movie and there’s a chance that, like, people out there that are listening have not watched enemy of the state from 1998. So how about for just a moment, we pretend that we are walking down the video store aisles that you and I would have been walking down in 1998 were picking up VHS boxes.
Greg: Is that what it would have been in 1998?
Clip: Probably.
Greg: And we are trying to figure out what movie we’re going to watch. That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Clip: It’s the back of the box.
Clip: When a lawyer, Will Smith, unwittingly gets his hands on a video exposing a government conspiracy, suddenly his life has turned inside out. Now fighting to clear his name, protect his family and save his life. Can he escape before they catch him? Can he live when he is an enemy of the state? Tony Scott delivers another tour de force action thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final shot or shots.
Greg: Just in case there’s more than one.
Clip: Yes, and there are.
Greg: That’s amazing. I think I rent it ten times out of ten. Yeah, but Joe, you obviously didn’t love this movie as you were watching it. And so this is my favorite kind of back of the box we’re about to get. Let’s get to Joe’s real honest actual back of the box.
Clip: Yeah, I wish I liked the main character more. I’m not a huge Will Smith fan, so maybe that colored my opinion. The cast is a who’s who of up and coming comedy actors chewing the scenery. There are two women who dote on the main character and are never given much else to do. The movie feels like a low budget sequel to True Romance.
Clip: Tony Scott knows how to direct action scenes and yet somehow does not know how to end his films. This movie is a bit of a mess. It gets a B+ for amazing action scenes and a D minus for the rest. So when I wrote this, I was super down on this way. It’s probably a D plus thou. For the rest it would be my like revised grade, you know, after everyone complains about their grade and then they bump it up a little bit.
Clip: So but that’s, that’s how I felt when I wrote this, oh, 20 minutes before we started recording.
Greg: Has it changed at all?
Clip: I think I like it a little bit more, like always when we’re talking through.
Greg: More than a D plus.
Clip: But if you average, I mean most like the action scenes again are just so good. Really good. They’re so fun.
Greg: Lots of running the wrong way in traffic. Yeah.
Clip: It is worth it just for the action scenes and everyone coming up to Gene Hackman’s level. Yeah. You know, I was like, yeah, they all want to work with him and they’re going to give their best in every scene that they’re in with him, because he is not taking a scene off in this movie.
Greg: He’s really good. I mean, he only has to be there for probably like three weeks, but whatever. Yeah. And he’s wearing like old clothes from a movie from 1974. Probably don’t fit as well as they used to. Yeah. All right, Joe, should we get to the box office in critical response.
Clip: Absolutely.
Greg: Let’s do it. This movie came out in November of 1998. This is a fall Oscar contender, basically. Oh, this budget was around $85 million. Okay. And it opened to about $20 million. It actually came in second that weekend behind, I think, a Rugrats movie. But it hung in there internationally as well. It made around $250 million worldwide on an $85 million budget.
Greg: So this movie made money, and it was the 90s, and it was very well rented in 1999 when it came out on video. And so it’s estimated it made about 60 to $75 million in video purchases and rentals.
Clip: That’s pretty wild. So it made a good chunk of money for everyone involved.
Greg: Good chunk of money. This is a big hit. All right, Joe, what do you think the critic response on Rotten Tomatoes was for this? Now, this is before the internet basically was invented, before Rotten Tomatoes was around. So we only have 82 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Clip: Or David Hallgren. Feels like a feels like a 70. I mean, why we’re doing this movie.
Greg: No. Yeah. It does. It does feel like a 70. There’s like good stuff. But then there’s also maybe not some great stuff. Yeah.
Clip: I’m going to go 65.
Greg: 71 right in our wheelhouse. Yeah. Now there are over 250,000 audience scores on here. So what do you think the popcorn meter is on Rotten Tomatoes? The audience score percentage.
Clip: I’m going to go 78.
Greg: 78%. Nailed in believable. All right. So let’s hear what some of those critics said. There’s no Seattle Times review that I could find online and the Wayback Machine. So we’re going to go straight to Janet Maslin in The New York Times. To start out, Janet Maslin says it has a hurtling pace, nonstop intensity, and a stylish, appealing performance by Will Smith.
Greg: Four out of five stars Nell Minow from Common Sense Media says it’s a decent thriller not suitable for kids three out of five stars.
Clip: It could be a title for our podcast.
Greg: Interesting. Okay, ring the Bell potential name for our podcast. All right. Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve heard a lot of good reviews from him on this show. He says hard to sit through two out of four stars.
Clip: Unfortunately, that also would be good.
Greg: Peter Travers from rolling Stone says, what do you say about a movie that sends you home in a frenzy to search for bugs in the new age of Big Brother? That’s entertainment. Four out of four stars.
Clip: Wow. I loved it.
Greg: He reliably loves popcorn movies. Yeah. All right. Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan says, practically an elder statesman compared to the techno brats Bruckheimer usually employs. Scott also pays attention to the acting, and it pays off. Four out of five stars. Los Angeles Times like this movie? Yeah. Washington Post says my mistake was bringing my head into the theater in the first place.
Greg: Four out of five stars.
Greg: Michael O’Sullivan just admitting he was wrong and still loving the movie. All right. Andrew Collins in The Empire magazine says, a truly substantial looker for the holidays. It’s that rare Bruckheimer project in which style is matched by content. Four out of five stars.
Clip: Wow, this is much better than I anticipated with our reviewers.
Greg: Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, says the movie is fast paced, centered around two big chase scenes and ending in a clever double cross that leads to a big shootout. Three out of four stars with a huge spoiler.
Clip: Yeah, I know. Geez.
Greg: All right. The Chicago Sun-Times says watching this movie is like being wired to a TV set on permanently channel surf mode. Didn’t really like it. Roger Horton from film. Com says how idiotic.
Greg: That’s the whole review.
Clip: So fan.
Greg: Yeah, he was into it. What do you think, Joe? What do you think?
Clip: I think it might be a name for.
Greg: All right. And let’s finish with Dennis Lim from The Village Voice, who wrote. The net result is fairly low tension yet satisfyingly off kilter. Positive review.
Clip: Oh, that’s definitely a title for the podcast, too. So.
Greg: All right, Joe. Should we get to some drinking games?
Clip: Absolutely. This edition of Drinking Games is dedicated to everyone who is drinking milk right now. So, in fact, only milk is going to be accepted as the drink for this. So starting with our stock drinking games, silent helicopter and helicopters in general, I mean it is Tony Scott. It’s our it’s our guy. He’s going to have it. And they’re everywhere.
Greg: So it’s a delightfully innocent time where there’s only one helicopter.
Clip: Yeah, only one helicopter. On screen, we don’t have the full Tony Scott in effect here. Right. Push in and enhance all over this movie everywhere.
Greg: Yeah. We’re pushing in from satellites. We see the satellite, and then we push in.
Clip: Yeah. It is glorious. We do not have that. I remember a when two people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos. Oh, that that is. Tony Scott does a lot of that, but not in this one. That I noticed an explosion with silent suffering ringing in the ears. Even though, of course, Gene Hackman’s character has rigged his lair to explode.
Clip: So missed opportunity.
Greg: Blows up as they drive away. Yes.
Clip: Glorious opening credit scene where the title locks into place for the sound, not the classic, but the the score comes in heavily when the title comes across the screen.
Greg: So here’s what it sounds like right? When this starts, that’s when the title hits.
Greg: No title goes on glitched in the sound effects of the opening of this movie. Oh yeah.
Clip: Every every time you see something on the screen, there is a sound effect to to denote its entrance.
Greg: 100%.
Clip: It does. Flash back to dialog two minutes ago. So we flash back a lot. Great bad shots are everywhere. The streets. Not only are they inexplicably wet. There are moments when it’s like there has been. Not just like a light dusting of rain that comes, but like a torrential downpour in different scenes. So it’s great. No, give us the room or Interpol.
Clip: But I did give us a cell phone smash for them, smashing all of the bugs.
Greg: Yeah.
Clip: That’s nice. And I think there is an actual cell phone smash in this as well, so.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah.
Clip: I toss it to you. Greg Weinert, what is your first drinking game?
Greg: Every time someone is given something in an envelope, I think money changes hands. Some different things change hands in this movie and it’s in an envelope, and that’s glorious. I need that many times in my life.
Clip: I love that I have anytime. Words on the screen are accompanied by a noise.
Greg: Take a drink. I love it. Any time a place and time types onto the screen is my next one.
Clip: Oh, interesting. So any time a camera is on a tilt or on an askew angle, take a drink. Especially in the first 30 minutes of this movie. It feels like every there’s like they are playing with that effect a lot.
Greg: Yeah. So yeah, I have anytime Gene Hackman blows something up, take a drink.
Clip: Awesome. This one is. And again, this is probably why you should be drinking milk for this one. Anytime there’s shots of people in the van. Take a drink.
Greg: Oh, wow. Gene Hackman has a cat that they save, and this cat is given many different sound effects throughout. Basically like 1 or 2 scenes. Yeah, this cat meows many times over the course of a couple of minutes. So anytime the cat meows.
Clip: I have anytime that dog barks or growls.
Greg: So good. That’s good.
Clip: Pets are used to great effect for comic effect, usually in this movie for sure.
Greg: So I’m assuming that you’re watching this in a room with your friends and you’re all playing these drinking games, assigning a drinking game to a different person in the room. Anytime someone in the room out loud exclaims, that is an incredibly low flying helicopter, everyone in the room has to take a drink. That’s a full room drinking game.
Greg: Yeah.
Clip: Anytime a blender is mentioned or shown on screen. Take a drink.
Greg: Wow, wow. That’s both. That’s incredible.
Clip: Yeah, we’re just drinking milk, so it’s. No one’s getting in. No one’s going to go to the hospital over this one.
Greg: I’ve got to say, I really did love that they stole the blender, and then they were drinking it. Yeah, in the van. That’s pretty funny. Okay. Anytime you see a Christmas decoration, take a drink. I’m going to say enemy of the state is a Christmas movie. Awesome, I love it. It might be the reason for the season. I haven’t decided yet.
Greg: Okay.
Clip: Anytime you see a satellite, go past the camera with little, like, beeping noises and drink.
Greg: Yep. And it looks exactly like MTV’s.
Clip: Yeah, it might actually just be that ripped off from MeTV at.
Greg: This point. I mean, honestly, back then, Tony Scott’s biggest naysayers were this guy is just making MTV videos. I feel like he was probably kind of trolling them a little bit by doing that. Okay, the next one I have is every time a bug goes down on their team or on their computer screens.
Clip: I have that one too.
Greg: My very last one is every time on a screen you see the word pants. Take a drink.
Clip: So awesome. All right, I have. If someone is drinking a glass of milk, everyone just finishes their glass of milk. Anytime Will Smith picks up a dog or puts down the dog, take a drink. And then my last one is anytime Will Smith is catches on fire. Take a drink.
Greg: So that’s all it. All right, Joe, it’s time for Joe’s Trop Lightning Round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Clip: So we have sound effects on things that don’t actually make sounds, so like hacking and that sort of thing. Yep. Car chases through, you know, the streets where they’re running into everything, basically. Redemption is the driver of the protagonist. Kind of an unlikely partnership. Odd couple with Gene Hackman and Will Smith? Yup. Friend or colleague who dies early in the film.
Clip: So we have Jason Lee dies early in the film.
Greg: Jason Robards. All Jason’s.
Clip: All Jason’s are in trouble in this way.
Greg: Yeah.
Clip: And Lisa. Bonnie also.
Greg: Right?
Clip: Right. We have a pretty charismatic antagonist. I think Jon Voight plays a really good bad guy in this.
Greg: Pretty good. Less annoying than usual.
Clip: Yeah, not all time great, but does this part, you know, women except for love interest or the mother in this? We have a duffel bag full of money. We have downloading a file under pressure. Kind of the classic Jason Lee downloading it, trying to get out, checking if a gun is loaded. Call trace timers all over this. There’s a literal call trace timer, and then we have someone disappearing behind the bus.
Clip: And that is our trope lightning round so heavily. It’s great. It’s a it’s it’s one of our movies for sure.
Greg: It’s perfect in every way D plus.
Clip: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: All right, Joe, listen, there have been some things we’ve been avoiding, some conversations we’ve needed to have. I’ve had it. Let’s get to some important questions. Joe, did enemy of the state. Hold up then. Did you see this movie in the theater?
Clip: I did not see it in the theater. Okay. I feel like I saw it within a few years after its release.
Greg: Okay.
Clip: So I think it did, I think, I mean, based on the critics, I think it held up. Yeah. I would say.
Greg: Follow up question, though. Does it hold up now?
Clip: Not as much. But the falloff is not that not that big is the way that I would put it.
Greg: Yeah, I’m glad it exists. I probably watch something else. Yeah. How hard do they sell the good guy in this movie?
Clip: Who is the good guy? They sell Gene Hackman. There’s a classic kind of scene where they dig in once they figure out who he is, but not that much.
Greg: Yeah, but when it comes to the bad guy, how hard do they sell the bad guy?
Clip: They have a moment. It’s kind of about Gene Hackman level selling of the bad guy. Once they figure out who it is because he works for the NSA, and then they have their own version of it. Gene Hackman does. But it’s not like what we’re used to.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. Joe, why is there romance in this movie between Will Smith and Regina King.
Clip: And is probably to show that they have mended their challenging relationship. You know, it is made very clear that he has had an affair with Lisa Bonet and still uses her for work related. She’s like an investigator. I don’t think her actual job is kind of mentioned, but she kind of gets information.
Greg: She’s like the go between for Brill. Who is Gene Hackman? Joe, to ask you a question real quick. Yeah, absolutely. Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Clip: Probably.
Greg: I think.
Clip: You’re right. Not the worst people. Not the worst.
Greg: Come on.
Clip: Yeah, yeah. Not great, but we’re.
Greg: Yeah.
Clip: We’re not terrible either.
Greg: We’ve got some community right here at this level of badness. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Joe, does this movie deserve a sequel?
Clip: I feel like it does. Actually, I’m kind of surprised that doesn’t have one. If I’m being honest.
Greg: At least one more. If not, at least for more. Yeah, yeah. Joe, does it deserve a prequel?
Clip: I feel like it has a prequel, and it’s the Gene Hackman movie. You’ve been referencing.
Greg: The conversation? Yeah.
Clip: Sure, I’ll allow it. Barely.
Greg: Barely in your anti prequel typically. So this is a big deal typically. But when we’re dealing with one of Francis Ford Coppola’s best movies, you’ll allow it.
Clip: Yeah. All out. One of our best directors ever to yes to make a prequel.
Greg: To, in his heyday.
Clip: An enemy of the state.
Greg: All right, I had that, but I had one other idea, and I want to run it by you as a prequel for this video. Okay. Lisa Bonet is in a sitcom about growing up with her dad, who is friends with Gene Hackman. It’s like a situational comedy. She’s like in middle school, and it’s like two middle aged men who are old friends from way back, and they don’t know how to be around a middle school girl.
Greg: And there’s, you know, she’s constantly mad at them and just shenanigans ensue. But I don’t know if this has ever happened in TV history. I think we might be stumbling upon something amazing here. The show slowly morphs from being like a three camera sitcom for like a season or two, to slowly becoming an hour long espionage drama thriller.
Clip: I love that idea.
Greg: And it finally ends like in season six at the end of season six. So starts three camera sitcom ends. Hour long prestige Netflix drama.
Clip: I love it.
Greg: Yeah.
Clip: I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like. Yeah we haven’t. Yeah, I would watch I would watch that every time.
Greg: There was a show with the woman from Schitt’s Creek called Kevin Can Go F himself on AMC. Did you ever watch that? It’s pretty good show.
Clip: I don’t think I ever did.
Greg: When she’s in the living room or whatever, she’s in the sitcom, and then when she leaves the living room, she’s in, like a dour drama.
Clip: I remember when it came out, but I never I never got.
Greg: Into it. This one’s way better. And let me give you all the reasons why this one’s better. Because Lisa Bonet is in it. Well, it’s it’s at least about this character from an enemy of the state. I don’t know if she’s actually in a digitally. Gene Hackman who’s no longer with us. So, yeah, we should we should say rest in peace.
Greg: Gene Hackman died last year at the at the age of 95. That’s incredible. Yeah. Okay, Joe, next important question. Should it have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 1999?
Clip: Okay. What’s it nominated against? But probably no.
Greg: All right. I’m going to start with Shakespeare in Love, which won Elizabeth nominated for Best Picture. Okay. Life is beautiful.
Clip: Okay.
Greg: Movie I quite liked that year and haven’t watched again. Saving Private Ryan.
Clip: Should have won.
Greg: Should have won. And the thin red line.
Clip: I would get rid of Shakespeare in Love, which is a good movie. It’s not. But it should not have won the Oscar. Yeah, I don’t know that I can put this movie in there, but I’m just saying. Shots fired at Shakespeare in Love.
Greg: Well, can I give you a movie that should be in that spot?
Clip: Yeah, of course.
Greg: The Truman Show.
Clip: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Truman Show should have been nominated in probably one. I mean, Saving Private Ryan. I’ll give it to Saving Private Ryan. I’ll give anything to Steven Spielberg for the rest of my life. But the Truman Show should have been nominated. Okay, well, I take your takeout. Shakespeare in love, and I’m going to raise you. I’m taking you out. Elizabeth.
Clip: Yeah, I agree with that. I would take.
Greg: I’m throwing in. Hold on. You’re doing more? Yeah.
Clip: Yeah, I’m doing more. Throwing more out.
Greg: What else we got?
Clip: We’re throwing life as beautiful out. Is that the one that Holocaust like? Yeah. Upbeat Holocaust movie. Yeah. Get rid of that. Yeah.
Greg: So we’re going down to four nominees in the mind. Yeah.
Clip: Okay. We should remember this, which we won’t for the next time we do a movie from 1998. That probably deserves it more. I can’t in good conscience put this movie in, but I’m sure that we will do an action movie from 1998 that deserves to be in there.
Greg: Would you give any Oscars to the people in this movie?
Clip: I would give Gene Hackman a Best Supporting Actor nod.
Greg: It’s good to be just nominated.
Clip: Yeah, I’m trying to think of any other actors in that role. This movie is I mean, there’s probably an actor that’s that can pull it off, but I feel like his gravitas as an actor. Yeah. And the fact that everyone wanted to work with him.
Greg: Pretty.
Clip: Cool, anchors the movie in a way that, you know, if it’s Jon Voight playing that character, it’s a different it’s a totally different movie. And it kind of falls into B-movie territory really, really quickly.
Greg: So if we can create a new category where we can lump together Jack black, Seth Green, Jamie Kennedy, Scott Kohn, Jake Busey as like one entity that’s winning for best group of randos in a different kind of movie. Best future comedy stars who are in.
Greg: Best movie with a member of tenacious D? Maybe that’s an Oscar award. I don’t know, but there’s something so inspired about all of those comedians and kind of the vibe that they bring to the movie, even though they’re not trying to be funny. By the way, is this movie better with Gary Busey instead of Jake Buck? Yes. Yeah, sorry.
Greg: Jake VC. No, he had it coming. It’s going to. Always going to be the answer, I think. Okay, Joe. Next important question. How can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Clip: I want Regina King, current age, to star in the movie. I want Will Smith to be the bad guy.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Clip: And I want Ryan Coogler to direct. That is what I want.
Greg: That sounds incredible.
Clip: Can we greenlight that right now? Yeah.
Greg: What budget are you thinking?
Clip: I mean, it’s got to be 150 million.
Greg: That’s great.
Clip: That’s great.
Greg: You know, is this like a straight to streaming or is this showing up in theaters?
Clip: I think it’s in the theaters. Maybe Netflix is in the back, you know, doing their like it’ll be in the theaters for a month and then they’re going to go straight to streaming. But yeah. To me, it could be the the sequel to centers of or the, you know, Ryan Coogler’s next movie. Yeah. How do you change this or how can this movie be fixed for you?
Greg: You know, I could not think of anything where this movie could be made in today’s world, and it would bring that paranoia. It’s just such a given that anyone could know exactly where we are. I mean, find my is on our phones. Yeah, like we know exactly where our kids are right now. I just I can’t think of the analog for what that would be in today’s world.
Greg: I’m sure it’s there. And I’m sure Jerry Bruckheimer could tell you and is currently making a movie about it. So if this movie is going to be remade, I think it needs to take place in an earlier time, like it needs to take place before any cell phones.
Clip: Oh, I love that.
Greg: Okay, Joe, very important question. What album is this?
Clip: I have landed on a band and I might need some help. Okay. With which album? Of course. As we have talked about the movie, I have grown to like it more, appreciate it more, but this feels like a poison album from the 80s.
Greg: Kind of.
Clip: Like fluffy deals. Yeah, it’s a deep plus, but there’s like some bangers on the album, you know? So it’s either like open up and say or look what the cat dragged in, and I’m kind of on the fence and maybe it’s, you know, or best of where there are some real detractors for it, but there are some real fun songs and like to me that’s like, there’s some really fun action scenes in this just, you know, action scenes you’re only going to get from Tony Scott, songs you’re only going to get from poison, which are just like the poppy hair metal.
Clip: Yeah, from the late 80s and I it sounds like a dig, but I had those albums. I had it on cassette tape. I think I had open up and say on on cassette tape. I really enjoyed those albums when I was that age, you know what, 14, 15? So I’m going to go with Open Up and say, and it’s probably every Rose has its thorn as.
Greg: Like.
Clip: The big the big song. So the D minus to be plus wings and songs on that album from what I remember. All right. What album was this for you? I feel like you’re going to have a better answer than mine. Mine was. I kind of landed on poison and this went, went from there.
Greg: So, I mean, every rose Has Its thorn is high praise. If you’re looking at poison, that’s like the high point. High water poison. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s that’s it’s a backhanded compliment. I feel like you just.
Clip: Yeah. I’ll take it. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fair.
Greg: All right, so Will Smith had come out with Independence Day and Men in Black and then kind of turned into a bit more of a darker movie. Even this movie doesn’t seem super dark in today’s terms. At the time, it was like, what’s happening here? And so I think Eminem had come out with The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, and those were kind of his Independence Day and Men in Black.
Greg: And then he came out with an album called The Eminem Show, which honestly, it had a couple of things about surveillance in it, didn’t it? Like there was like paranoia in there. White America, I think, was about the FBI. Yeah. Tracking him. Was there one called Square Dance on that album? It was like about him being tracked by anyways.
Greg: So I think he was showing as if, you know, some of the Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady stuff was pretty dark. This one kind of showed a paranoid side of a now super famous Eminem, but it also still had, you know, some fun moments on it. It also still had some like radio hits. I think this is enemy of the state is The Eminem Show by Eminem.
Greg: I think it kind of follows that trajectory. Yeah.
Clip: That’s a much better album. And that’s a I mean, like his his later stuff has been more, I think more dark in just in terms of like what he’s done and he is one of the best lyricists out there, but he had this ability then to like, have the dark stuff with the kind of lighter, like almost silly.
Clip: Yeah, songs, you know, the kind of this, that Slim Shady persona and, and that album is really a great album.
Greg: All right, Joe, let’s get down to it. It’s time for us to rate this movie. Great bad movie. Good bad movie. Okay. Bad movie, bad, bad movie. Worst case scenario break glass. In case of awful bad movie, how do you rank enemy of the state from 1998?
Clip: I’m going to stick with my gut. This isn’t okay. Bad movie. Yeah, it’s right on the edge. It’s almost a good, bad movie. And if it’s just the Tony Scott action scenes, it’s it’s a great bad movie. But there’s enough that I struggled with though. I’m going to go okay, almost good bad movie. Okay. I land on it.
Clip: Where do you land on this movie?
Greg: I’m just one notch up. I’m right at the peak of good bad movie. Almost a great bad movie. But it’s because this movie is in conversation with my favorite movies from the 70s. So yeah. And I just think it’s really fascinating how the filmmaking style also is representative of the world and the film thematically as well. That’s really interesting to me for Tony Scott, not just to be going nuts and having cameras everywhere and cutting like mad, just because in this movie, it really seems like it really kind of becomes something bigger than the sum of its parts.
Greg: So I’m good. Bad movie, almost great bad movie.
Clip: Okay, nice.
Greg: All right, well, Joe, we did it.
Clip: Yeah. This is the conversation that needed to happen almost 30 years later on enemy of the state. So you’re welcome. This is the definitive conversation. I don’t think people will actually need to talk about this movie. Just play this episode. You’re good to go, man.
Greg: What a world we live in where we have just, you know, so many good Tony Scott movies to to enjoy. Absolutely interesting to watch this movie after really adoring deja vu especially, which we deemed the winner of the Best Picture award at the Oscars that year, in 2006, eight years after this one.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: I can’t wait for our next Tony Scott movie. Whenever that happens. He is one of my very, very favorite filmmakers in history. Absolutely. So hey listener, if you enjoyed this show and you’re listening to us on a podcast app, would you rate the show and review it in your podcast app? That’s kind of one of the best ways that you can help us out.
Greg: And if you didn’t like this episode, you know, forget we ever said it.
Clip: So drink your milk in peace and yeah.
Greg: Put on your.
Clip: Slipper and everything. Yeah, get your robe and.
Greg: Get your robe. We assume you’re 65 years old and Robert Voight exactly.
Clip: Got the Evening Standard newspaper that’s been delivered to your door. And how about it?
Greg: Yeah, totally. You can track with us on Instagram. Great bed movies show. We’re also on YouTube. Great bad movies show. You can find everything about this show at Great Bad Movies. And please tell a friend about the show. Better yet, invite a friend over and watch a great bad movie. Tell us how it goes.
Clip: Yeah, we love that. We love to hear about all the shenanigans you’re up to and all the drinking games we may have missed in the in watching these movies, so please let us know.
Greg: Absolutely. All right. Well oh my gosh Joe, I just noticed the time. Listen, this has been great. I don’t want to take away from anything that has happened prior to this moment. Yeah, but here comes the. But I think but I think I need to go. I need to go put some dress shoes on so then Gene Hackman can take, take them apart by quickly getting the heel off and showing me that there’s a bug in there.
Clip: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I’ve got to run. I’ve got a trail camera set up, and I really hope a senator doesn’t get murdered on camera again. That would be embarrassing if that happened twice in a row. So I gotta I gotta go check the tape on that.
Greg: So, you know, your duck migration cams have been historically really unlucky for you?
Clip: Absolutely. This research has just been ruined.
Greg: All right. Well, that works for me because I recently discovered that my blender game is completely lacking. So I need to go out there and look for a better one.
Clip: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go figure out the ending to my movie that I’m working on. I think I’m just going to have everyone get shot at the end. I think that that’s the probably the winning formula at this point.
Greg: So that makes sense. That works for me because I learned in this movie that really there are two things that I need to do in my life. The first is I need to turn my entire house into a Faraday cage that electrical signals can’t get into the way. Gene Hackman right? But you know what? That can’t be bulletproof.
Greg: There’s a chance that’s going to go bad. So I also need to wire it up with with just a ton of explosives in case anyone ever discovers where I am.
Clip: Yeah, that’s that’s weird, because also, the building that I am is, is totally rigged to explode at any at a moment’s notice, too. So, you know, we should probably both check the wiring on that so that we don’t get in trouble.
Greg: Sure, sure. That makes sense. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but on my computer screen, this whole time we’ve been recording, words and times have been loudly showing up on my screen. I need to figure out what’s going on.
Clip: Yeah?
Clip: Yeah. You should. I’m. I’m so thirsty. I’m going to go to the fridge and get some milk. You hang on just one second. Sure. It’s gonna fake pilsner glass of milk. That’s what I need.
Greg: Listen, that works for me. I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve been sitting here with Lisa Bonnie this whole time, and it’s probably time for me to get some lunch with her. She needs to ask me how I like the fish. And I also have this envelope full of cash that I’m showing you right now, and I need to slide that across the table to pay for some things.
Greg: So. So I better go.
Clip: Yeah, yeah. That tracks, that tracks. I’m stuck in a in a closet right now. So I’m going to set myself on fire so that I can be rescued by the fire department. I think that’s the only way to get out at this point.
Greg: So yeah. No, that makes sense. That works for me because I’ve just broken into a hotel room where there’s an older couple and I need to start taking off my clothes in front of them, the way Will Smith did in this movie. The older woman seems into it, which surprises me. I usually don’t get that response.
Clip: Yeah, absolutely. I was just in that room and I’m climbing out the window right now, so.
Greg: Okay, okay, that makes sense. I should go because the word pants keeps showing up on my screen.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: And that’s so much more entertaining than this conversation. So I better get out. Yeah.
Clip: Yeah, yeah, that tracks up. My son just stole the Christmas present that I didn’t know that I had gotten for him. That Jason Lee had accidentally dropped into my bag on purpose. That also had a murder on it on the film. So I got to go track him down at his friend’s house, so I’ll be right back.
Greg: Okay. That makes sense. That works for me because I’m going to go talk to Gabriel Byrne for three seconds and then never see him again.
Clip: Yeah, okay.
Clip: That’s great. Because of my my maid nanny is here and I’m going to carpool to work with her, but she can’t know that I’m in the in the back seat of the car because we’re being tracked by helicopters and satellite footage from above. So.
Greg: All right, well, that works for me. So, Joe, this was fun. Thanks for watching. Enemy of This Day with me and I will see you soon.
Clip: On the. See you soon.