Listener Suggestion... Falling Down

Falling Down

Dan: We are the bad dads, all three of us.

Reegs: Yes. There's three of us here tonight and we're is away. But we thought we'd get together and chat about a couple of listeners suggestions. And tonight

Dan: say side is way you've just skirted

Pete: should we talk about why he's away?

Reegs: Yeah. Okay. Well, it's yeah,

Dan: he's a bit of a hero he's cycling for epilepsy research to go from London to Paris on a bike, on a

Pete: He's not no epilepsy research. Aren't going from London to Paris. He is, yeah.

Dan: in support of them and to, to raise awareness, which is what we're doing now is talking about is heroic. So today he went from London,

Pete: Greenwich to Dover in six hours, 81 miles.

Dan: It's moving.

Reegs: and he was the first.

Pete: he was first was just goes.

Dan: on side.

Pete: That is that it's amazing. I think it was about an hour ahead of everybody else, so well done side,

but we we're feeling his his absence here. Cause we're quite shambolic

Dan: Yeah. We, we don't know if anybody's gonna get to hear this if it's recording

Pete: it's like the 18 without Hannibal.

yeah.

Well we still got

Reegs: Oh, the spice girls without baby. Yeah, so we thought we would pick out of a metaphorical hat some listener suggestions.

And the first one that cropped up was I think it was Andy Conley's suggestion. He wanted us to take a look at 1990 threes falling down.

Dan: falling down. And I reckon I saw this probably in the nineties last time I saw this and I remember it being a guy that I was at college with his favorite film at the time, he was just really, really loved this film.

Reegs: Yeah.

Yeah. It has developed a bit of a fandom. Maybe we can, we can get onto that. It's a 1993, Joel Schumacher film. And prior to this, he'd done a couple of TV movies and then 1981, the incredible shrinking woman sinned Elmo's fire in 1985.

Yeah. And then a couple of NXS music videos, and then flat liners, which was the 1990 Kiefer Sutherland one.

And then this, this movie falling down and then obviously notoriously went on to murder the Batman franchise with a Batman forever and Batman and Robin,

Pete: Oh, is he responsible for those? Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. So but this is Michael Douglas is really,

Dan: Mickey D

Reegs: yeah.

Dan: I I'm, I'm a Michael Douglas fan. I like Kurt Douglas as well.

Pete: yeah,

Dan: The Vikings that's a, mid-week mentioned for, for one time, but

Reegs: well, this was his first role after being in basic instinct.

Dan: Oh, right.

Reegs: Yeah. So a bit of a different turn for him.

Dan: different haircut. He's got this kind of flat top thing going on. Isn't he

Pete: sort a N.

Dan: so rigid and flat. Yeah.

Pete: haircut, isn't it? Yeah. This film completely passed me by. I knew I'd never seen it. I knew nothing about it. The only time I'd ever heard it mentioned was on recording episodes of this podcast.

Somehow just totally passive because I saw fights and attraction, you said was the previous one that he'd made.

Reegs: were basic instincts,

Pete: Oh, sorry.

Reegs: was before that

Pete: Right. Sorry. So I'd seen, I've seen both of those. So so wall straight, a long, long time. And

I knew all about Michael Douglas and who he was. And obviously I know I was a big fan of romancing, the stone and jewel of the Nile. But yeah, totally missed this.

Reegs: And he said it was one of his favorite performances as well, which is interesting too, but, so it'd be cool. It'd be interesting to get your take on this now because it's gone through several passes at being interpreted, I guess, this movie.

And there's a lot to think about in it, I think.

Dan: so.

Reegs: Should we get into it?

Yes

Dan: It starts off with a real closeup of a guy in a car. With tons of traffic behind him. Tons of

Reegs: you can just hear is, is the whistling of the air through his nose at

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's hot. It's sweaty. And everybody's had enough there's cause of. Beeping and you can almost taste and smell the fumes that are going disease under the bridge there isn't, he, he's just kind of pulling under the underpass or overpass.

Reegs: everybody's an asshole as well. Some guys yabbering on a massive mobile phone, the size of a briefcase, and there's a noxious bumper stickers around like, eat my shit and all this stuff, like

Pete: hanging out of a bus window bin balance.

Dan: And it's clever because the camera is starts with that closeup. But then as you say, it closes up on a few other little points to just, to, to set the scene.

And the tone of is really fucking hot. Everyone's an asshole

Reegs: There's a big traffic jam nobody's going anywhere. And it all like loops around until it reaches a kind of crescendo doesn't it. And and then he just abandons his car.

Pete: what I liked about this start was that loads of other films would have started with maybe him, you know, at home making the coffee and then getting in the car, you know, even during the opening credits or something, just like a bit of a, like a buildup to this, but it almost goes straight into.

Into the story. It doesn't deal with anything that's ever gone before. And I guess the purpose is to then kind of like leave you guessing about what's going on in this guy's life. This is a, this is an annoying slash stressful situation that he's in immediately. It kind of puts you almost a little bit in this first person experience of it, but it could have showed him driving through suburbia, getting to the freeway and then hitting all the traffic and everything.

But it's you just write in it straight away with no real backstory or no backstory or explanation.

Dan: I really liked that about

Pete: fucking good. It hooks you in straight away,

Dan: straight away, but he, you know, in, in this case, when, when directors do that and they make you try and feel what the character is feeling,

Pete: although you've,

you've said in previous

Dan: I hate it as

Pete: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, I do. But I, I appreciate the skill in, in making, you know, some reach through the screen and making somebody feel that just through the shots and the things you don't like to say could even smell and taste the pollution. And the

Reegs: joy. It's the great thing about movies. Isn't it? It can do that or it can touch your heart or whatever, it's the, yeah.

Dan: But in this case, yeah, you're, you're bought in and you're feeling hot and pissed off as well.

By the time he is and he, he gets out, does an

Reegs: well, he abandons his car and he says he just wants to go home. And it's kind of relatable a little bit. It certainly through the perspective of the movie. And then now. Robert Duvall turns up Pendergast Prendergast, and there's a motorcycle copper and a kitchen salesman guy.

And they're trying to move the car out the way. And we noticed the number plate defends,

Dan: And it's, it's his car that they have to move out the way. And the vow is on the last day he eats he's a cop and it says last day on the job. And he says this to the. The, the traffic cop, who's helping him rolled a car out the way we originally doesn't want to even do it.

Does he? He's like, oh yeah, no, we're not going to do it. He has to get the Badger and says, look, let's just keep this moving. We'll roll it to the side. And we'll sort out afterwards,

Reegs: there's even a little comedy moment where they're holding the car and he has to move away the cop, his bike falls over. It's like a moment of levity.

Dan: well, it says on the on the

You got it on time. You know what I mean? On the description.

Reegs: synopsis,

Dan: Yeah. That is a dark funny film, but I remember. It not having any real humor when I first watched it, I didn't remember it thinking, oh, that was a funny movie or even, but there are some moments in this where I think that, that, that dark humor maybe I, I recognize more now than when I was a younger, more innocent man.

Reegs: So foster, as we'll later find out his name, it's Douglas, his character, he phones his house just his wife answers and then hangs up straight away. Yeah. Well, you don't really know exactly what it is, but

Dan: yeah, he's a w yeah, well, he's, he can't pick up the phone and we find out little bit down the line. They've obviously been married, but that's all off the cards and he's even to the point there's a restraining

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit of, a bit of a troubling seen that one because the copper is kind of doubting the the validity of whether the restraining order should be. And she says something like, oh, I think the judge wanted to make an example of him. So we're already being set up in the movie. You know, he's a bit of an antihero sort of thing and things aren't on his side.

In the meantime, he wants to go and get a Coke. And this is a pretty infamous scene, I think in general. And doesn't play out now in 2022.

Like it

Pete: Well, he, I think he wants, I don't think he wants a Coke necessary.

He wants change for the, for the payphone. Cause he's just because it connected the call, but then didn't like, didn't talk. So his money, his money got sorted, but then he said he wants more money. Cause he, you know, he wants to make that call again. So he wants to break. He wants to break a note or whatever it is.

The guy behind the counter, who a Korean guy

Reegs: Korean

Pete: says, no, you have to buy something. And unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything in the shop that he can buy that's then going to give him the change that will afford him the phone call.

Dan: one of those shops. Things a, it's not a corner shop. You know, it's a convenience store. It's not a big supermarket where you're going to get the cheap kind of drinks and everything it's is somewhere. They put on an extra 20, 30 Pence or cents or whatever it is to stuff.

And he's just lost it. Isn't he? I mean, he's

he's totally

Pete: aback by the fact that it costs the Coke would cost 85 cents, which

Reegs: well, he says it should be 50 cents, but the price is 85 cents.

And you know, he, he rages about it and he tries to barter it and then he starts mislabeling him as being Chinese. And then moaning about welfare to his country. Do you know how much money my country is given to your country? And the guy says no. And then he looks confused and says what? It's probably gotta to be a lot.

So obviously he doesn't know. And then the shopkeeper asks him to leave and it doesn't, then there's a baseball bat and they struggle for it. And you know, suddenly the Korean guy is on the floor and he's shouting at him about not pronouncing his words properly. And then he starts saying, Good sir, overpriced.

So he says, how much is this donor dollar 22? He says, no smashes. This guy is a Korean immigrant. He's just smashing up his shopping. It's supposed to be this like big fuck you to the man. But the man is you know,

Dan: Any sympathy you had for this guy's tough day, because we've all had tough days. You are dicey. Oh fuck. You know? Yeah. But you realize now that no you're backing the wrong horse.

If you've got symphony this guy, because he's, he's just gone off on one here and he's, you know, he's,

Pete: I think what's important in this scene.

Because straight away, I going into this completely cold as I did, I was trying to work out like, is this the hero? Or is this the bad guy? So that's what I was trying to work out, which I think is a theme of the film. And we'll come on to that later. But I was questioning, you know, is that like, obviously they specifically.

Pizza, you know, a guy to play a Korean shopkeeper. Is this, you know, racially sort of motivated on undertones hair? There's certainly some of the things he's saying are.

Yeah not pleasant, but again, I was thinking, oh, is, is he someone who's like this, there's going to be other minorities as he goes along, and this is going to be a theme or whatever.

And it leaves it ambiguous as to whether he's just a guy who's pissed off who's lashing out, or whether the fact that this guy's career is making it even worse because there, you know, he feels some senses of injustice and so on. And it doesn't actually really sort of clarify that in this. And I think it kind of sets the tone for the rest of the sea.

Cause it's, it's almost like little scenarios that he finds himself in where each one, you kind of like question. W, you

Dan: What's he going to do which way?

Pete: to do? What's

Dan: way is he going to go?

Pete: on. And I think it kind of like deals with it later on in the film, but it certainly, for the rest of the film, I was thinking, it just got me straight into that mindset of like, I'm my men are like this guy eventually, you know, is he just hard done by, and he's having a bad day.

And his last Chanel I named him, I meant to kind of like sympathize with him or is he just a fucking like badass asshole? Who's. Just doing a load of wrong shit.

Dan: about 15 minutes into this film at this stage. And already Michael Douglas is, cause it hasn't been a.

a,

lot of dialogue, you know, there's not been long conversations or anything. But already he's putting in some performance here because he is asking all these questions just within his, his acting is his general kind of delivery of lines and things.

So

Pete: straight away he's, he's delivering presence is making you feel uncomfortable and intimidated as, as a viewer, let alone, you know, the person actually in the scene interacting with them.

But yeah, it's, it's a stressful. Like star out the gate in terms of, by way of a performance room.

Dan: It seems to.

Just galvanize his thought process.

If anything else, he just seems to think right on I'm in the white, but he walks out this time with the bat

and his

Pete: pays for the Coke,

pays

Dan: for the Coke. He still, in some thing, he goes, this is all I want

Pete: sell a moral code

Dan: there's a mole code. And he, he then he moves on and he's, he's heading through gang land.

Pete: in suspect like punctuated with all of these kinds of scenes is the re the

Reegs: Prendergast He's also having a bit of a shitty day. He's got a kind of His wife is kind of emotionally damaged. I think it's not clear, but she's suffering from some mental illness and they lost a child which, you know, obviously was devastating for them.

And he's retiring kind of on a hour of kind of guilt and to care for her. And, you know, he's also having a shitty day because his colleagues also kind of. I think he's a bit of a joke he's old school and

Dan: his

Pete: well, straight, straight away, I kind of, it became apparent quite quickly, you know, Douglas and devalue the two main players in this, in this story. And the fact that they've almost already kind of met on the, on the highway freeway, wherever it's called. And I think what it's, what I was getting from it is that, you know, this, these are the two sides of the, of the same coin in the, these are two guys who are both having bad days, both under pressure, both have a thing that they need to be doing that day.

And they are dealing with it in very different ways.

Reegs: Yeah, I think there's definitely there. Foster now has got a hole in his shoe and he's in a bad part of town. And we know he's in a bad part of town. Cause we see two Hispanic guys in here. Some cops

Pete: has, as we pointed out

Reegs: you've pointed out

Pete: if it's nineties films and there's Hispanic guys with ponytails, then these are definitely the bad guys.

Yeah.

Reegs: And he's sitting down and the guys kind of, they go up to him, they say he's trespassing on their property. And he's got a pay, a taxi sort of tries to deescalate the situation, but he does throw a few insults back of him, his own, and the guy say should pay a toll. Grabs the briefcases. If he's going to give it to him and then he's got the baseball bat behind it and he hits one of them and he throws the baseball bat and the other one, which is a weird thing to do.

Cause the guy could have just picked him up and smashed him. Anyway. I hope the guy would pick him up and beat the shit out of him, but he didn't. And he runs off and now he's got a butterfly knife. It's kind of like a video game. He's gone from having his fist to having a baseball

Dan: keeps on trading up and he does that

Reegs: still on go in through the movie

Dan: scene as he a scenario eventually leads into having a bag of guns.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, at the, at the plate, the stories do start to tie get together again, because at the police station, the Korean guy turns up and he tells Prendergast about this guy in print, a Gar starts thinking it's weird. And he says the Korean guy says I had a baseball bat. What for defense?

He says like the number plate, you know, it's a good little drop for

Pete: And he describes the, the, the, the, the assailant was wearing a white shirt and a tie. So that's what he's got to go by. But then as you say done, there's these guys that he's beaten up, decide that they're going to go. Got that gun. Let's get a few heavies together, getting a vehicle and go looking,

Dan: They're going to do a drive

Pete: for

Dan: shoot out.

And this is a gnarly kind of thing that happens because they see him making a phone call on the high street and think, right. That's him. There's a girl in the

Reegs: Well he's phoning to say that he's coming home. He tells his wife, Beth, I'm coming home for my daughter's birthday. And she says, you can't and all this, like, you know, but yeah, go on.

Sorry.

Dan: They the girls saying, look, don't do this, don't do this. But they said gala car, and they've all got guns. And they shoot everywhere along this street, apart from him.

Reegs: And a lot of people die. A lot of people are shot. It seems five, six people are shot and you hear people crying,

Dan: bystanders, just coming out the shop and, and everything. And they.

Their community like he's is that the only kind of white guy within that street and they miss him and he's just, doesn't even seem to notice the shootings gone on.

He just stays there and puts the phone down, picks up his

Pete: yeah, he's very like

Dan: and walked on. Yeah, he's absolutely.

Pete: that this has just

Dan: He's absolutely. Well, there's this scene here where he just, it's almost like. This I'm having a shit day. Like, you know, this is what happens. It's, he's just unaffected by the fact he steps over people, he looks and he walks straight up to the car.

Pete: Well, th the call has gone round a corner and crashed

Dan: which

Pete: quite severely. Like there's, there's a,

Dan: there's a up.

Pete: yeah.

And there are a couple of these guys seemingly dead.

Reegs: the

Dan: Calls on its side bag of guns is next to one guy who's calling out with broken bones in a bloody face. And then he just Bali, he does a wave in doesn't. He just kind of teases him with a shot and says, oh, I missed.

And then gets in with the next one and walked off down the street with his bag of guns. As you say, reads, he's kinda then traded up again. You know, he's gone

Pete: at this point. He's still got his briefcase as well.

Dan: Yeah. And as you, as you pointed out, there's another scene now, which tests is resolve again because a guy comes up to him in the park and asked, why have you got two bags?

Give us some change, give us a change in year.

Got away this guy, and

you

Reegs: he says, that's a hell of a way to treat Yvette. And he says, you're an animal

Dan: Oh yeah, that's it. He he's he's not taking any, any shit. And he says, oh, don't show me your driving license. You drove all the way from there. I didn't come on a driving license.

So you drove all the way without driving. Show me your car. You ain't got a car and he

Pete: And he calls him out for his age and saying you're not old enough to be a veteran of

Dan: Vietnam. No, I meant the Gulf war.

Pete: So

Reegs: but eventually it does give him the briefcase which the guy opens and it's completely empty apart from a sandwich and a banana, I

Pete: an apple.

Reegs: an apple, is it? Yeah.

Dan: is

Pete: Cause he throws the apple M and he left. Well, he lets it roll past seven again, as he walks off just with the bag of guns. Now the apple rolls past him and he just get, he just boots the apple for good measure.

Reegs: So it's the remnants of his old life.

Dan: Who is

Pete: and uses right foot is a right foot, right foot player, Michael

Dan: He just tucked it in behind the bin and then marched on.

Pete: again, it's like, now that we go back to.

And there's obviously reports coming into the, to the station now about a much more serious crime or a drive by shooting. There are people that are dead and seriously injured and so on.

And again, the, this, this time there's the description is that there's a white male with a white shirt and a tie on, and nobody else seems to pick up on that, but.

Then kind of re reaffirms with the Korean guy. Oh, it says, what was the description?

Reegs: When he draws it up on a map, doesn't he, he's got a map and he plots it on the wall and he sort of shows like a journey you can see from where he suspects that he starts because he's tied at, in with the car and all that stuff.

Cause he's still got that hunch and he points at the map and there's a McDonald's proxy. And then we cut to this and this is again, another pretty infamous scene and it starts off pretty passive aggressive. Douglas orders, a ham and cheese, one lit with wham fries. But they've stopped serving

Pete: I couldn't stop thinking of whammy from and, and interesting enough that there's a song by the playing Les schmooze,

Reegs: which was

Pete: a cheering. Yeah. Recently featured on the midweek mentioned CBS.

Reegs: I really enjoyed that. That was

Pete: good. Yeah.

Reegs: So yeah, she says, Sheila, I think her name is says we can't serve you breakfast. It's after 1130. So he asked to see the manager, you know, anybody who asks to see the manager is probably a prick. But anyway, they asked the manager and he confirms they've stopped serving breakfast.

And he's trying to talk to him. It's very passive aggressive. Everybody's using their first names. He even pointed this out. I don't want to be your buddy, Rick. I just want a little breakfast. And he's talking about, have you ever heard the phrase? The customer is always right. And he says, I'm sorry, you know, and foster says, I'm sorry, too.

And then he pulls out a machine gun, which of course in America is completely normal. I think that is how you order breakfast now in McDonald's you certainly get one with a happy meal. It's a happy meal gets a free AR 15. Isn't it with every happy bill.

Dan: It seemed to be the same. Diner is the one they used in pulp fiction.

Pete: Similar to vibe. Yeah.

Reegs: McDonald's

Pete: What, what I could say is I actually could relate to this scene because.

I am partial to a McDonald's breakfast far more than a lunch. Then like the burgers and stuff, not, not that bothered, but I'll do like a sausage and egg McMuffin meal with an extra hash brown.

And

Reegs: that is disappointing when you

Pete: it. And what happens is, and now what, what

Dan: for balance I'd like to say McDonald's is bullshit.

Pete: Yeah. But it makes socio-economic muffins taste. Great. And the. So what happened is it used to, they used to start serving breakfast at 10:00 AM. And a couple of times, I've, you know, I've missed that window for a minute.

Past 10. I haven't then turned the gun on anyone, but I felt that had I had a gun at that point in time, possibly that might have happened.

What

Dan: the more reason to

Pete: they address that. I think that they probably felt my angst and now it's 11 o'clock is the breakfast time cuts off. So

Reegs: There has to be a cut off time at some point for various reasons. So way too tedious

Dan: It rolled in at about 1132.

Reegs: 1133, it was done. I checked, I actually went back and looked he's three minutes.

Dan: Right.

Reegs: But late is late, is late. And you don't have to be an entitled prick about it. And then when he does get his breakfast after scaring the whole place he complains that it doesn't, you know, this limp looking bullshit, breakfast

Dan: after all.

Didn't he? And he,

Reegs: no, he gets the warm that they don't get him the warm and it's a piece of shit.

It doesn't look

Pete: what he does,

Reegs: important because it's a metaphor for the thing. Isn't it? Because it's not what it was advertised. Like his life, it's not what

Pete: yeah, yeah, yeah.

But part of the reason why we haven't said that he's, he's got this. Fucking, you know, semiautomatic or whatever it is like gone. And he holds it up in the air and he's kind of intimidating the people around him, but seemingly with no intention of using the gun and then it just goes off and he fires a load of times into the ceiling because the trigger is really kind of sensitive. And then that's obviously now escalated that from like a bit of a, a bit of a scene to a,

Dan: it's, it's alive gun. Yeah. It's, he's armed with

Pete: Which is probably what convinced them to just give him a bloody breakfast anyway,

Dan: and that guy, it was quite a scene. Wasn't it? And they talk about the, the S the, the funny, the dark humor, because Rick, our, our whammy burger manager is frozen is absolutely frozen.

And I think he's Sheila or is a. Is that the governor she's got to put the cause he wants him to get it in. So he's getting it forced into his hands, which you're just still held up, you know, above his head. And he's just got to go and put that on there, the burger, and that was a little kind of light hearted

Reegs: No, he's a piece of shit.

Dan: yo, he's a piece of shit, but I

Reegs: there just service staff, not just service that you can tell a lot. Now you can tell a lot about a person by the way. They relate to people in those situations and him and acting like an entitled douche bag is just a real metaphor for his character in the fucking boomer generation that this hopefully is critiquing.

Otherwise, you know, fucking psychos latch onto it as a kind of. Rallying call movie, which it isn't at all.

Pete: But I th I think again now, by the time this gets called back to the police station, and Duval's already kind of like trying to work out that he's worked out, that there's a guy on a bit of a rampage here, as soon as he hears this, the first thing.

Well, the first, yeah, for the first, the first thing he says is like, this has happened. He goes, find out what the guy was with. 'cause he w he's got a strong suspicion that this is cause he he's like, where is it? Or it's there? That's on the same path. Find out what the guy

Dan: going on there with the violin, the much younger female cop, there seemed to be a connection. There was quite a friendship

Pete: think it was like a friendly sort of father, daughter kind of relationship rather than anything.

Dan: Yeah,

Pete: And a thing naughty.

Dan: there were, I mean, she's constantly getting into trouble cause she's actually on the case and he is just trying to do the admin for his last day. He's already had to give his gun in isn't it yet. And and so there's, there's all this going on and he's also being goaded a little bit by people that he's not in the field

Pete: Yeah. It becomes apparent that he is basically been a bit of a, a desk jockey and has, you know, he's, he's, he's holding the admin and everything

Reegs: He was injured on duty

Pete: right? Yeah.

Reegs: say that.

Pete: So it's kinda, it's like intimated that he said, like, they almost think

Dan: about that. Yeah. For the real data, even put all sand in his. Juul and the add his photo photograph of his, his kid in there and his

Reegs: life is desperately sad. You know, injured on duty ridiculed at work, his wife is unstable. He lost a

Dan: He's moving to a place. He doesn't really want to go

Reegs: to.

Yeah, it's

Pete: th this, it reminded me a little bit of the film we watched, was it nobody with with

Reegs: uh

Pete: Him? Yeah, we're almost like he was like, he's obviously not a policeman, but he was like derided by everyone that he didn't just fucking like be a badass and fucking shoot people and kill people.

And do Val is getting the same treatment. I don't know if. I don't know if that's suggesting that culturally, that that is the way of things in America. I know these are films, but this that's like this. And these are just two films where there there is. And there's more examples of this where it's like the guy who sort of sits in the office and does.

Presumably a very good job. The fact that he's not out there on the front line, he's less of a man. And that he's, which I just don't think culturally, I don't think it exists where we live, but this seems to be a bit of a

Reegs: force is kind of a match show type environment.

Maybe. I don't know. Certainly

Dan: I would say over

Pete: I wouldn't know, because again, it's not like, you know, oh, how many fucking punks have you taken down this week?

And like everyone, like high fives. You do in your job and in an ideal world, there'd be no punks to take down, but it's inevitable, but I don't think that there's like kudos left right. And center for the guy that fucks up the most, like, you know, crims

Dan: how many punks do you take down? Generally? Day-to-day

Pete: only, only half a dozen or so. But yeah, but I don't want, I don't need praise for it. It's just, it's just what I do.

Reegs: So where are we? There's a guy protesting outside golden state loans, holding a sign, saying he wasn't economically viable.

And then

Dan: It's almost a kindred spirit. Isn't he at this stage because

Reegs: He's also in a white shirt.

Dan: Douglas is is, is walking along and he he's caught his eyes.

Now he's already given one bag away. So he's just got a bag of guns.

Reegs: And he's now he gets a snowglobe $3 he's in transplant. It plays my fair lady, which was the same tune that printer guards sang to his wife to calm her down earlier on the phone.

Pete: I didn't pick up on

Reegs: There's a cool little jump scare where it looks like foster is back at best, but it isn't, it's just another copper with glasses.

Dan: Yeah that's right

Reegs: which was a nice little

Pete: At first, it was forced up. And then I

Reegs: they did. I think they did

Pete: Right. Okay. Yeah. I didn't know if that was my, my mind playing tricks on me. The, the, the guy that's holding up the sign that says,

Reegs: economically

Pete: no, I can't remember medically viable. When he gets caught off by the police, he looks at Michael Douglas and says, remember me,

Reegs: something like that. Yeah.

Dan: Has he been in other stuff as well? That guy I seemed to recognize him, maybe I don't, but

Pete: He only has a

Dan: yeah, he does. Yeah. It's only a small part. I always look at these films though. You look at some of the support and actors and things. And occasionally they've gone on to other films that you've seen is

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah, I go there's. I am DB could be quite cool to look at how things are connected and all that. He's phoning again, home and it's troubling now because he's constantly phoning and being a bit menacing.

And some guy gives him hassle about using the payphone. He is really having a shitty day with assholes today. And so he just blows it up with his machine gun.

Dan: Got no qualms about using the gun now to scare people. And he, he's not necessarily firing innocent people as he would say. He does have this code still. There is, he's not just shooting any way. We each just doing it to anybody. That stops him getting home or slows him

Pete: Yeah. He's now gone into complete single-minded that his mission is to get to what you call.

It keeps calling it home, but it turns out he doesn't actually live there. But that, that's what he's got to do. And by this time, Robert Duvall is clocked on to the fact that he's plotting his path across the city and has found out that this is where the Australian wife lived. And he now basically devel was worked out that that's where foster is.

Reegs: I haven't, I can't remember. I haven't quite got to where we get, where he pieces together, Foster's name. Cause I don't think we've learned that yet. But where foster is at the moment is he ends up in the military hardware store to go and buy shoes.

He wants hiking boots and he's basically immediately identified as a potential Powell by the completely overtly, like everything discrimination. Ori is all everything you can. He's racist, homophobic hates

Dan: And he's been listening in on the police radio and knows that a guy is at large who fits this guy's description, Michael Douglas description. And the, he hides him

Pete: this bit was a little, not a plot hole, but it, it just irked me that there's a whole fucking city and, and yeah, they can zero in on where he's been and where he's going. But the police just happened to go into that very shop that he is in.

And just saying, I mean, I dunno if you're expected to think that they're going door to door, but you know, there's, there's not, that would take a long time to do that. And they just happened to go into their shop and yeah, it's an

Dan: there is a longer version where they

Pete: where they go in, every shop

Dan: Yeah. It's

Pete: get a lot of rejections and yeah.

yeah,

A lot of dead ends But obviously by this time, the, the shop guy has worked out that the fellow that's trying on the hiking boots and the changing room is the guy that's at large, but he shoes the police away and then thinks he's got a kindred spirit that he can go and show his special Nazi room to.

Reegs: He's like, here's a bit sukkah, go, go up and blow up some black people. You know, that's basically what he says and here's my Nazi room. And then like, so yeah, like, so then the total lack of sort of nuance and everything that go, cause it just starts spitting out. And what actually sends them over the edge is when he looks at a picture of.

On the wall. And then suddenly stabs the guy in the

Pete: With it, with the butterfly knife thing that he'd obtained from

Dan: who was handcuffing him at the time. I

Pete: I wondered if he was going to try and rape him.

Dan: Well,

Reegs: he was talking about it.

Pete: but

Dan: not him raping him.

What he

Pete: Oh yeah. He's saying you're going to go to prison and this is what's going to happen

Dan: going to happen. And

Reegs: I think it adds a layer when you know that the director I think is homosexual. So it's the, because it's two gay guys that are in the store that kicked the whole thing off as well. So that seems to be the final limit for him is homophobia. And then, like you say, there's a suggestion that our Nazi, you know, ill-fated Nazi his home homosexual himself underneath it.

Or would there scene where he's talking about being buggered in the showers and stuff

Pete: And again, this is what, this is what the film does. It.

But at this point, you'll start to think, well, now foster is just an asshole, but then there's a guy that's kind of worse in a lot of ways. He's far, far more like, you know, bigoted and and so on. And because he, he doesn't join in with his, his fucking rhetoric and all of this, he, and he ends up killing him.

You think, oh, okay. Well maybe this is where the star of like a bit of a redemption might be happening and you might sort of come back to being not likable necessarily, but you know, he's, he's back a bit more in your good books because he's killed the guy that is a fucking absolute monster of a person.

Well, certainly verbally anyway. Yeah. And so, yeah, there's, this is where I was like, you know, as this kind of like journey of like, my men are like him. No, I'm definitely not. Okay. Now he's killed this horrible person. So I guess I meant to like him a

Reegs: because the movie keeps telling you is, so the movie keeps telling you, he's got a point, he's got a point, he's got a point in the restaurant and it's like, stick it to the man.

He's got a point when he's in. And the grocery store beaten up that guy. He's got a point in a minute when he beats up a construction worker and blows shit. And it's like, no, he doesn't, he doesn't have a point. The movie keeps telling him he does, but he doesn't.

Pete: And, and up to this point as well, this is a bit of a, like a sub kind of narrative of loads of things that are wrong with, you know, whether it's like, you know, America or.

yeah, there's

Dan: analysis going on.

Isn't there

Pete: showing all the things like how the world, this world, this city or parts of the city are really fucking ugly and there's some horrible parts of it and there's poverty and there's crime because of poverty and all of that. It's like a bit of a, a message there as well, running alongside this, this main story.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: I mean, at one point he says where to sane, doesn't he this a Nazi going? He goes, we're not the same. You know what I mean? All the things that from. You know even shouting at the gay guys in the in the store earlier, he didn't like that. He didn't even really, you know, he said, why did you do it? Why did you hide me away first?

And this guys you've got the wrong end of the stick. He thinks that he's, he'd gone into that place and shot everybody in wame burger because they're black where you know that wasn't the case. It's

Reegs: It's just because they

Dan: the burger. Wasn't good enough. Or the, yeah, the breakfast wasn't ready.

Reegs: So yeah, now more tooled up and in camo gear, like it really is video gaming now. A black kid teaches him how to fire a busy.

Uh

Pete: So that, that, that is a bit of comedy in this, like you were saying before, is, is it matters that that is a slightly sort of comedic scene in that he's

Reegs: it takes a comically long time for anything to happen. Cause he sort of fires it into this tube and it goes along and you're like, well, and then suddenly there is a big

Pete: w w we haven't said, but the, the guy he just wants to walk down the road, but the road is closed.

So he has another confrontation with this worker. Who's just sat, minding, minding the whole, who's trying to do. You know, imposes all authority by going are you can't come here, the roads being closed. And again, foster now as questioning is going like, you know, you're just justifying your, your budgets. This road, there's nothing wrong with it.

Two weeks ago, I walked down here. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this road. Admit that you've, this has just been closed just to sort of like justify your position in the budgets and everything. He's like, no, what the fuck are you talking about? Blah, blah, blah.

Reegs: He's just some guy digging up the road,

Pete: but then it takes, when he, when he started, you know, he sees that he's got guns and a fucking bazooka.

He's like, yeah, no, I've met it. That we just closed it. There's nothing wrong with the road and everything. And then he just get shown out to use the bazooka and off he goes and bang. Some more, yeah. There's another big scene.

Reegs: Yeah, Prendergast is tracked foster down by the number plate to his mother's place. She's another person who is represented as being mentally ill by association with like little models and glass figures.

There's a few people like that in this movie. And then foster goes on a golf course where some pastoral, huge douchebags hit balls out. As he's walking across the fairway and then he pulls out a huge shotgun destroys the golf cart, which goes down into the lake and it's got the guy's heart pills in it.

So he sort of watches him die.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. The guy has a heart attack as you

Reegs: In fact, he says, now you're going to die wearing that stupid little hat, which is a quite funny

Pete: again. Yeah. This is a comedy.

Reegs: We find out that he worked at no tech, which was a defense plant. And he's been down for a long time. And you know, he spends a lot of his time looking at remnants of from a happier life.

But he was fired over a month ago and he's just been doing that thing who there was a British TV series. I think it was sort of a tragic comedy about a guy who was sort of fired and just went off and did nothing. Wasn't. Now I can't remember Dan it's, I'm

looking

Dan: Yeah, no, I, I, it recalls something I can't remember.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. So now he like goes up through some rich guy's backyard. He finds out the. Oh, he's in sense that they've got barbed wire. Cause he cuts his hand really savagely and he finds this guy's house. It's a plastic surgeons and this family are having a barbecue there and they're all edgy straight away because they're actually the caretaker.

And they've sort of just come in to use the facilities while the, the couple who actually own it, the plastic surgeon or a way, and foster kind of takes them. He grabs the little girl's hand, quite forcefully and he stands next to her and it's clear. You know, now he's really crossing any kind of boundary.

Pete: He sort of takes them hostage without I think, meaning to really take them hostage. What he wants to do is question them about how, you know, how unfair it is that someone's got this fucking house, you know, who lives there and they fight, he finds out it's a plastic surgeon. And then again, like it's a, it's a.

Another kind of like sub narrative where it's like, oh, you know, someone who does something as superficial as plastic surgery can, can have all of that. And he was making, you know, he was doing what he thought was a very noble, like, you know,

Reegs: protecting America,

protecting

Pete: America and everything, and he's got next to fuck all.

So he's incensed by that. But he does, you know, there is a moment of, of consciousness where he sees the blood on the girl's shoulder and thinks that she's.

And let's immediately like, lets her go and they're all like, you know, frozen with fear, but then they point out it's him, that's bleeding. And that kind of brings him back to his,

Reegs: where he's told this chilling story as well about that. He's like saying about what the birthday party will be like. And he says, you know, are there we'll all be together and then we'll all go to sleep.

So he's basically saying I'm going to kill everybody. So that's his end game. Now he's going to go and find his family and kill them

Pete: He makes it to his house or his house, what he refers to as his home. But his wife is, is by this point has realized that, oh, I think he calls her from like a market that's very close to the home.

Reegs: And he says about ice cream that they used to

Pete: So she tweaks the, that they that he's very close to. And this, this was the part of the film that I had a bit of a problem with because he then goes, she leaves the house. He gets to the house and starts watching old footage of them together as a family. And then remembers that her favorite place is the payor, which you can see from the

Reegs: house.

Pete: It's almost like they've, they've made that convenient for the plot

Because

Reegs: goes there, it's a ridiculous place to go anyway

Pete: anywhere, but she just happens to go to the place that is her favorite place that she would know that he'd know that's her favorite place. So

Reegs: yeah, we also see in those home movies as well, that he was definitely a bit of a prick, you know, it wasn't all peaches and, you know, he was quite aggressive towards. Daughter and,

Dan: Yeah. You can see the first.

Pete: Yeah. Well, she, she alludes to it in the exchanges she has with the police that she calls that come round and they say, well, you know, what, what is he? Is it, you know, did he beat.

Did he like, did he attack you? Did he beat you? And she was like, well, no, not really. But you know, basically it's like psychological fucking bullying and trauma that she's inflict that he's inflicted on this family.

And she can't really explain that. So that's why they don't, the police don't take her particularly seriously. Well, if he's not like fucking raping you and beating you and stuff, like what, what's your problem. But actually we found out through watching the film that it's not necessarily worse, but just as fucking bad, what he puts people through

Reegs: a pattern of abusive behavior.

Pete: psychotic behavior.

Yeah.

Reegs: So Torres, Torres, detective Torres.

That's the young. Well partner. Yeah. And Prendergast go to the house. Prendergast doesn't have his weapon and she gets shocked. Yeah. It's like renter ghost. So she a Torres and rent a ghost break into the house, rent. It goes, doesn't have his gun anymore. It was confiscated earlier. She shot off camera.

So he grabs her. And then, I don't know. How does he figure out that they,

Pete: he he doesn't he see it in the, in the home movie or something?

Reegs: something really silly like that. Yeah. It's a bit

Pete: bit got flimsy.

Reegs: And he runs off and eventually there at the end of the pier, the family and Prendergast,

Pete: I may have, I don't remember this, but maybe like, Like police radio.

There's a, there's a scene at the, on the pair and that's why he ends up there. But anyway, cause it's, it's just around the corner where you can see it from, from the house, but then we have the final showdown

Reegs: and they, they start talking. He tells him about rent a ghost, tells him he used to fish there, but you can't even swim there anymore. And he tells him about it being his last day and moving to Arizona, he flashes he's gone to the wife.

So she sees that he's got a pistol, but foster doesn't. And he tells him his story of his life, about how you know, his wife wasn't cut out for motherhood. She did it all for him. And when they had this daughter and she died of sudden infant death syndrome, Just awful, awful story. And he's almost diffused the situation and then some other cops turn up and completely blow it.

Don't they? Yeah. So a friend of our rent goes, pulls the gun on him.

Pete: there's a bit of an interaction here between Renzi ghost and foster. Where fosters, almost explaining why he's there and why he's done what he's done and everything.

And it kind of, it brings it right back. And I'm glad that it was like a firm's that it was that's what you've just said. That's bad, but it's no fucking excuse for what you've

Reegs: been doing.

Pete: doing. Because without that, a still thing that would have been some ambiguity about whether this guy is meant to be a bit fucking

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because that's what the movie keeps telling you. It might be a bit of a hero, even though he's not, and eventually he, even, he realizes I'm the bad guy.

How did that happen? I did everything. They told me.

So they, he says, he shows me he's got a gun and he offers him a draw, like a, you know, sheriff style, shooting the villain and you know, it he's got eventually,

Dan: already up and it's on him. He just wants to

Reegs: well, eventually shoots. He goes for the drawer and he's got a water pistol.

Pete: Yeah. So what, so it becomes apparent there that he, he gets what he wants her bitch. His own game was that he knew that by the end of the day, he was going to end up dead. And presumably his plan was to, to offer his wife and his ex-wife and child as well.

So it, it seems to be point.

diff like diffused it and you're going to cut him off to prison and he can still have a life and everything. And he's like, well, you know, see, you can go, my daughter can visit me while some behind bars and everything. And then I think as foster loses control of the situation, again, he tr he takes final control of it by saying I've got a gun and starts reaching for it, which forces a renter goes to, to, to shoot him.

Ah, you know, we, we talked about this briefly before we started recording, but surely police, especially someone is experienced as this guy taught and trained to shoot for the legs, the shoulder, like a part of the body that is not going to kill you.

Dan: But

Pete: So like, especially a guy it's not like, you know, he's got someone using as a human shield or anything.

He's got a clean shot at a guy who's like 10.

Reegs: the head dizzy.

Pete: No, no, no. In like the, in this yeah. In the

Reegs: cause he falls, but it's the fall into the sea really? That finishes him

Pete: But he's been shot in the chest and that's the point that you, you know, that he's going to die and he just breaks through the barrier and falls into the sea. And he's a gunner by the time he hits the water.

Reegs: Then you

Dan: I mean,

Reegs: the biggest target

Dan: the viral breaks,

Pete: Sure. I mean, I don't know. Maybe people listening to this can, can treat in

Reegs: American and you've killed someone,

Pete: well, particularly like a, you know, a police officer or whatever are they trained to where possible just, you know, debilitate the person by shooting in legs, arms, that kind of thing, which is presumably not going to kill or do you just go bang this as a free for all this guy gets, has to die.

Dan: The other part of may I was wondering about this, it seems that the guys that actually did the drive by didn't take the rap for it. I know they all ended up in the thing, but he got kind of blamed. I remember that the girl goes in and says, oh, it was a guy in a suit. Foster gets blamed for it.

And it seems that rent, it goes kind of that agrees with his theory. This guy is on the rampage. Yeah. Okay. I believe you. It was, it was him, but how

Pete: She eventually admits that it was her

Reegs: Yeah she does

Pete: the shooting. Yeah. But there was, but they were shooting out this guy because of the attack from print, from, from previous, yeah.

Reegs: I rent a ghost story, then finishes out the captain. Who's been addicted to him the whole time.

He's only too happy to be talking to the media about what a great job they've all done. And then print rent. It goes tells him to go fuck himself on camera. And we see Torres. She was shocked, but she's okay. And then he basically tells his wife to make him dinner, like kind of aggressively stands up to her.

It's supposed to be a bit of a hero moment. Isn't it

Pete: Yeah, he's already T when he goes out for the final sort of light showdown,

Reegs: have my

Pete: her to shut up and so on.

But which I think is probably a good way of handling someone who's got clear light,

Dan: he's having a day as well, I guess, you know,

Pete: it suggest that he's not gonna, that actually might. So if he's only retiring because she wants him to, and that he might carry on, but he goes back to the house. Where wife and child there encourage, encourages her to still hold, like, hold the birthday party as the friends show up, which I'm not sure is a great

Reegs: Yeah. But also telling, telling, you know, telling a dad died on her birthday is also a bit of a

Pete: I know, but what would you put yourself

Reegs: in

Pete: shoes of the mother? Would you go, oh, you know what? Let's just carry on as normal.

Reegs: Where are we doing the pie though?

Is it at my house

Pete: that the, is that the house that cause the guests have arrived and the other kids have arrived.

Surely you'd go listen.

Reegs: It's a crime scene now really? Isn't it

Pete: the daughter, listen, we're just going to

Dan: they going to get cake everywhere and it's just going to be little sticky fingers all over there, all over the

Pete: Yeah. I didn't, I didn't think that that was the best advice.

Dan: Wow. So yeah. What do you think, Pete? And this is your first time through.

Pete: So I, I don't know why the film was made. I think it was a common trait, a bit of a social commentary of the time, perhaps.

And I, I was kind of left a little bit confused at the end, although subsequently of, of, of, I got like found closure in myself that he is just a guy who's damaged and yet like lots of negative and unfortunate things have happened to him over the course of, you know, his life let alone that day.

But that he is just a fucking asshole. Who's like snaps and got on the ramp. A bit of a weird film, like foot to make. I'm not sure something like that could be made now and be a successful film, but

Reegs: because it tries to make you think he's got a legitimate beef, doesn't

Pete: yeah,

Reegs: And it's like,

Pete: and maybe at the time, and again, I don't know, I've not you know, I don't live in those types of areas and I haven't had those kinds of things that have happened to me and I'm not so.

It's any of it is justifiable, but I, my biggest fear is that there is a big following for this film where people get together and go ice. Fucking cool as fuck. Isn't he like Michael Douglas, his character, like what a fucking hero, like just doesn't care anymore. He just goes around. Fuck, like really fucking traumatizing people.

Reegs: It has happened. There's been a few light nutters who've cited. This movie is, you know, I wouldn't even bother to say names because, but if you go, you know, you can find that sort of thing out.

Dan: catcher in the rye movie.

Reegs: Yeah, but this is way more over. And it's really about, you know, this is about a racist white guy with a machine gun and, and it's about unchecked entitlement and it's about, you know, there's a bit of misogyny and stuff thrown

Dan: he was racist? What was he?

Reegs: He was talking, he was saying to the Korean guy at the beginning, he's saying, if you can't eat, first of all, he's success, you're Chinese.

Then he's like you don't speak properly. Don't pronounce your words properly and all this lay at the scene, he looks pissed off and it's, he's trying to get on a bus and there's a load of black people. He can't get on the bus and it's definitely a load of black people and he's definitely pissed off.

It's definitely set up with racial tension in a lot of scenes that Hispanic guys go to him. You know, it's shown that he's sometimes a little bit of a victim in those places, but he's also aggressive. He doesn't deescalate the

Pete: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's re it's a realistic kind of portrayal of somebody. I don't think that it cause obviously his

Reegs: well, he's horrified to think that he's the same as that guy, but he's not that far away.

Pete: Yeah. But his, his God, I can't think I'm trying to think of the word now. It will come to me, but his, his goal isn't. Get to get across town, but also to, you know, as many minorities or, or whatever that just happens to be part of it. And it, and you know, maybe he has felt put out by immigration and things like that.

And that comes out in the portrayal of the character. But I don't necessarily think, I'm not saying he's not a racist cause obviously the, you know, it's, it's, it's fucking wholly inappropriate. Deals with things and how he talks to people and so on. But I don't think that that's like part of his driving factor for the things that he does.

Cause, cause the asshole on the, at the phone booth and everything's just a fucking white PreK. The guys on the golf club, they're entitled. Why are assholes? Like it's almost like everybody is socially it's commentary on like social, socially and race. And all of these sorts of things like rolled into one and he's just a fuck up.

Walking through this like world, like taken out on absolutely everybody really,

Reegs: long as people see it like that and they don't see it, like you said, it's like being a poster boy for, you know, rebellion and all this

Pete: what I would like to say though, about this film

Reegs: It's good though in it.

Pete: film. Very fucking gripping. Michael Douglas, his performance, I think is fucking incredible.

He is

Dan: Did he get an Oscar nomination for this?

Reegs: The only thing I got is the budget and the box office. Dan I'm afraid. I didn't look. It did win a couple of awards. I know that is I saw

Dan: I don't know wherever he was nominated. Cause it was a strong performance. I mean you right from the beginning, the camera's on him.

It's it's only when it cuts to the, the there's another story to, to

Pete: never seen him in a role like this before he tends to play.

He played he's played assholes before and, and like, but he's always had played charismatic characters in, in all the films I've seen him and good or bad, he's been charismatic and an elements of him like that are likable. And there's nothing likable about him in this. And he's very fucking, like almost

Dan: in his hair and everything. Like that, I think maybe just to remove that natural charisma and personality that he does have any hours to almost act away from that to, to

Pete: Yeah. The, the only emotion that he shows his rage in this, there's no sort of like at no point, do you think, oh, you know, he's, he doesn't show any kind of like sadness or

Dan: no he's very, he's very easy. Very, even along most of it or it's

Pete: which in itself

Dan: Yeah.

Pete: quite fucking scary in a very different way.

It did remind me of of Robert de Niro's portrayal of max Cady and Kate fair, like very different sort of character, but that kind of like, fuck, he's just going to keep going and keep going. And he's he is not to be messed with no, like, you know, th you know, his gang fuck gangs. Gang members are ending up dead and shit, and he just keeps like plowing on like the fucking Terminator

Dan: believes his right. I mean, that's what it comes down to. He believes that he has some merit of argument and that more people should feel the way that he does that.

People shouldn't be happy about. Accepting crap burgers or, you know, whatever else, little things of irked him throughout his day. But as the vowel says in the end, you know, that's what happens and we do accept it. You know, we, we accept the lies. They say says even lie to the fishers, you know, they lie to everybody it's

Pete: Yeah. Yep. Yep. It's not, it's. Yeah. It's definitely not put out to be a message of how to handle having a bad day.

Dan: No, that's, that's fairly solid. And so is this movie

Pete: And yeah, you guys, how'd you feel about the film?

Reegs: I

like it's a really well made movie with great performances and some iconic scenes that have really like, you know

Dan: there almost

Reegs: big, big cultural impact. But it's got some troubling content really. I think

Dan: Yeah, it's a troubling film. I mean, it's not made to be, you know, I don't think it is made to be funny. And there may be some of those dark comment

Reegs: I think his ideas are quite dark for a mainstream movie really dark,

Dan: you know, there is on that kind of side of things. I, I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was I didn't think I would, as much as I did often not seeing it for so long.

I wouldn't have revisited it again, but I'm glad I did so. Thanks for the nomination as well.