Midweek Mention... Flatliners

Flatliners

Dan: effects to give you clues to

Sidey: is the start of bacon fortnight and that is sound effect will give you a clue as to what film we're watching first.

Dan: flatliners.

Sidey: Yeah.

all the way back from 1990. And I should point out that there's varying levels of Bacon in the films that we watched for the

next four episodes.

Some have a, a a lot more bacon than others.

Reegs: There's a great fucking cast of like,

Dan: Sutherland, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin.

Oliver Platt. Yeah. As well as Kev

Sidey: Bacon.

Mr. Bacon, yeah.

Reegs: and all assembled by Joel Schumacher Yeah.

Dan: Excitingly, I

would like to. To say in one of the bacon

podcasts we're doing, there will be a bacon and a bake off quiz.

Reegs: Brilliant.

I do look forward to

Dan: I, you'll have to listen into either this episode or another one

Sidey: on.

Okay, cool. I don't think I had seen this before.

I didn't, I didn't remember it very well when I was watching it. I've

Dan: done it again

Sidey: They had to, yeah, they

Cris: why I was so confused when you put it out there, because it's You know when you Google something and it tells you, Oh, Flatliners 1990 film with this and that, and then it shows, underneath it says, Flatliners 2017 cast, and it's like all these kind of younger actors, and I'm just Which one is it?

Because

Reegs: I've seen both of them,

Sidey: I

think, have you, Keith, for Sutherland's in the both,

Reegs: He is, yeah. In a sort of slightly incomprehensible plot point.

Dan: not actually seen the, the newer

Sidey: but this one here, right. So it starts off they're all junior doctors or med students.

Yes. And

they. Have a theory. I think it's mainly started by Kievan Sutherland. We see him and he says today is a good day to die

Reegs: he does. That's the

Sidey: that's his opening gambit

Reegs: outside that, like, abandoned church where a lot of the action's gonna take place and it's convenient for, like, all it's gothic architecture and all that

Sidey: probably not the most practical place To conduct medical

Reegs: Probably not,

Sidey: And Julie Roberts seems to be quizzing some patients about their

Reegs: Near death

Sidey: of near death. And I think one of the first shots we see is a corridor with the light at the end, sort of giving you that sort of reference again that we've all heard about.

Reegs: we get a quick introduction to all of them.

Really, we get to find that Kevin Bacon. What's his character's name? Dave Labracio. He's like the best

Sidey: To hell with the rules.

Reegs: is to hell with the rules. Yeah, they come in all that doctor talk. Give him 60 CCs of blur and eat.

Dan: Well, he really wants to help people.

That's it, you know, never mind the rules. I just want to help

Sidey: Yeah. But he

Reegs: an unauthorized surgery. That's going to get him booted

Sidey: Saves the life,

I think, of the patient. Yes, absolutely. But, but, is not as per procedure.

Reegs: And we've got Nelson, who is Kiefer Sutherland's character, clearly a kind of slightly egotistical. You know, got his eyes on, you know, it's sort of partly for the science and but maybe a lot more for the renown and glory.

Yeah. And we see William Baldwin.

Sidey: Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Reegs: Yeah, there's an early interaction with Julia Roberts where he calls her frigid and stuff so they're trying to set up those kind of characters.

Sidey: She won't sleep with him, effectively. Whereas it seems like he slept with everyone else.

Reegs: Yeah.

And,

Sidey: it.

Reegs: yeah, so,

Sidey: is just also there well. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: So Bacon is kicked out and I think in one of the more Verhoeven touches of the movie, he goes to get, find Kevin Bacon and to convince him to come and do this experiment that he wants to do.

And as he's doing it, he's abseiling out of a window.

Oh yeah, sorry, Verhoeven, Schumacher. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, indeed. He does. He tries to talk him into doing it even though that he's been the one that's kicked out of campus because he he trusts him and he knows that if anyone can help bring him back to life because that is what's going to happen. They're going to put him into, you know, kill him.

Basically, they're going to

Sidey: Yeah.

Flat line. Possibly flat line. But Keith Sutherland has said there's something else, there's something there. Something happens when you go and you

Dan: we

Sidey: we need to explore what that is.

Dan: So he is the the first one to lie down and be taken Everybody's kind of crowding around and they've they've got it all down to a tee. He's gonna go.

Is it a minute? I think he

Sidey: It's a minute of flatline they've got the temperature down all this sort of thing.

They've got a pretty solid plan and they're just gonna crack on with it

Dan: And they crack on with it. And he goes, he, he, they time it out and this works. He, he comes back to life, doesn't he? And he's, he's gone when he's, he's in this kind of,

Sidey: He has a vision, doesn't

Reegs: He has a vision, yeah, it's like zooming over a field, and at first it seems kind of wholesome and okay, and then it kind of goes darker and more intense and more angry as it follows like a dog, and there's like flashes of images of people falling and rocks being thrown, and a dog with broken legs and all that kind of stuff.

And he sees a kid in the tunnel as well, who's like, sort of looking at him and all that stuff. And then they do bring him back, I think. Do they use the defibrillator?

Sidey: it takes a little longer to get him back than they'd anticipated. So they're straight away like, Well, that's, this is fucking risky.

This is high risk stuff.

Dan: Yeah, it gives them the willy. But they're also Kind of excited by the fact

Reegs: Yeah. It's a triumph

Dan: back in Kevin bacon has this ridiculous army kind of, truck that they get him away in and and

Sidey: he doesn't disclose exactly what he's seen, does he? He says no.

'cause he, he's had it effectively a bad trip. Yeah. It seems quite traumatizing. And we're gonna learn why

later on. yeah, he's

but he doesn't, he doesn't tell them that it was. Not ideal So they're all like oh, wow, you did see something. Okay. Well, let's we won't have a go at that

Reegs: and they all pitch for like a longer time. They, because they, we were already told how competitive they were as medical students anyway.

But they all pitch for a longer 60

Dan: seconds, 65, 75, and they go, right, I'm gonna, I think one would go to 120 seconds

Reegs: Two minutes.

Dan: minute, and they're like,

and

being daft they think that the one that wants to go in under longest is the better one to go for.

Reegs: for. It's Baldwin I think who goes next and and his vision is all kind of like erotic and sexy and like you know women in stockings and looking at him and talking to him and all that stuff and that's what he comes back saying doesn't he's telling them and so they've had these very different experiences Nelson and and Hurley I think the character is but they've definitely had some post death experiences And I think Nelson does talk to him about whether there was anything negative and he, he denies it, but they both have had like a feel and edginess to that, to

Dan: And what about you at this stage? Are you feeling some kind of edge and feel to the movie at this stage as they go under? And,

Reegs: Yeah, because it's all really operatic and the cast are really good. Everyone's really believable in this. So, you know, and it's just such a cool premise as well.

Dan: well, I mean, it absolutely is because you've got You know, these young students looking to explore something that is, you know, a region that has never been explored in this kind of way. So the premise of it was really, really clever believable in the, in the fact that, yeah, you could put to sleep and then bring them back and

Sidey: Yeah, I think Julia Roberts character, her

Her thought process is that some people are having,

if they've, if they've had a, if they're mentally well at the time of death or the time that they flatline, they seem to have, they, they report back that they've seen the light in the tunnel or happy voices, and they've had a pleasant experience, but people who are, have mental health problems and are suicidal, they seem to have the opposite.

So she's like keen to explore it from a medical perspective about how can we resolve that so that people have a good death Whereas the rest of them, it's just ego and they

want to do it for their own.

Reegs: and that will come from her own personal story, which will come out when she goes under. But before that, some of the stuff starts to bleed into the real world, doesn't it? Nelson ends up like, through this like, tunnels and stuff, and it's all lit in blue, and the score's going crazy, and Billy the kid that we'll learn is Billy Mahoney from his dream, turns up and starts beating

Sidey: shit out of

Reegs: the nuts, and like, cracks him over the face and stuff, doesn't it?

And,

Dan: dog as well I think he sees but the three guys have all had these really Bad experiences when they flatline and then it's julia roberts

Reegs: Mm-Hmm.

Dan: And They have a big power failure she's going down and they can't get the defib thing working

Reegs: I think, isn't it? David goes It, isn't it? David goes next?

That's where he can.

Dan: And then so it's it's Kiefer Sutherland then it's it's Joe and then it's David, isn't it? And I think she goes next

Reegs: She goes forth.

Dan: the first the girls to go

and Yeah, she's that they try and shock her with a deep Defib paddles, but She's, not on, but they do manage to get her back to life.

And she's got this memory of her father. I think it is in it and committed suicide

Reegs: Yeah. She doesn't really understand that. She, she, she catches her father shooting up in the bathroom, but she doesn't really understand that as a child it's only in, but that will come right at the resolution of the movie.

Dave, his mission, his mission, he goes under before all this as well. And he has visions of a classmate. He bullied Winnie. And these experiences again, bleed into the real world. He hears her and all that stuff. And meanwhile, Nelson is getting beaten up more and more. There's like a hockey stick.

Isn't there? He locks himself in his room and

Sidey: Well, he just becomes just increasingly paranoid. And he keeps turning up I think one bit he walks up the stairs and his face is a mess.

He's been like absolutely pummeled

Reegs: The kid, like, flops on his face and stuff, like, it's really horrible. Hurley William Baldwin's character, who is fucking really sleazy in this has, he's like, he's, like, engaged or whatever, he's got a fiancée who, who's not around, and we'll find out that he's, like, Got a catalog of women that he slept with and recorded them without their consent.

And he watches the sex videos and that starts to happen in the real world as well when he's like watching telly with a friend or whatever

Sidey: It just appears,

Reegs: comes on. And yeah, so it's all going a bit crazy,

Dan: the, the spirit world is, is leaking back into the, the real world and, and impacting them in, in a physical as a mental

Reegs: But it's Steve, Kevin Bacon is the one who, who like, decides to kind of seize the

Sidey: Yeah, he's going to take some action, yeah.

Reegs: yeah, and he tracks down his old classmate that he was abusing Winnie. And he sort of, you know, gives it a kind of, for what it's worth, I apologize, type

Sidey: Yes, why are you coming to me like wait, it's just for you to feel better about yourself, to forgive yourself It's like well, I just wanted to do it, you You thought you might like to hear an apology type thing

Reegs: Yeah. But they, but he does also get a kind of closure from their conversation and feels a weight kind of lifted from him as well. And that's when he kind of, this is sort of like the, his theory that you're sort of compensating for something that happened, you know, some trauma maybe that you've inflicted.

Dan: that you've inflicted. Yeah, the after world isn't letting you forget these moments where you feel deep inside you've let yourself down or there's a trauma there and it's not letting you go.

So this is how these visions then come to life. Also different for each of them because they've had different experiences

Sidey: experiences. While he's been apologising though,

David has been locked in the van and because he's super paranoid and this is where the kid comes back this time and it's looks like maybe about to kill him.

I think he's got an axe or a crowbar or something.

Reegs: Yeah, Kiefer Sutherland's

Sidey: battering him in the back of the van and Kevin Bacon's able to get there and finds him and there's obviously no kid there. He's like got the thing on

himself. I think been stabbed in the neck. Hasn't he with a pickaxe?

Reegs: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, everybody, it's all going wrong. Hurley's life falls apart because his fiance turns up and discovers his infidelity and,

Sidey: finds the

Reegs: this horrible, which finds all the vids and his sleazy horribleness.

And Nelson, Kiefer Sutherland's character eventually comes to the conclusion that there's only one way that he's going to be able to compensate for what he did. He takes Oliver Platt and, and William Baldwin out to a grave to show that when he was young, he and Couple of friends had like bullied this kid and thrown rocks at him.

This kid, Billy Mahoney, that haunts him now, and he'd fallen out of a tree and died.

The branch had landed on the dog. I think his dog had broken

Dan: and they tried to convince him that he's a kid and it was an accident.

Obviously he didn't mean to do this, but Everything's strong,

Reegs: So he decides because Billy Mahoney is dead, the only way for him to kind of apologize and get his closure. Oh, because Julia Roberts gets some closure as well. She has some emotional like. Sort of thing with her kind of actual father in a vision, doesn't she? Yeah. Yeah. And then Nelson decides the only way he can apologize to Billy Mahoney is to flatline and go and do it that way.

So he does kind of,

Sidey: He does it himself.

Yeah.

Reegs: Puts himself under I think he tells the

Sidey: He phones her. Yeah. To say I'm going to do it. And they, they all kind of get wind of it. So some of them turn up and he's. He's going through these flat lines and when Julie Roberts turns up, she said he's been out for probably eight or nine minutes Because she had the phone call so she can kind of piece it back together.

So they're like fuck he's been gone that ages

Reegs: And he has been gone for ages, and in his vision, he has changed places with Billy Mahoney and, you know, he is falling in the tree, and falling to die as Billy Mahoney did, and they can't bring him back, and then Dave, what does Dave say, I wrote it down, he says cause it's a theme that runs through a couple of the movies we watched this week, I'm sorry God we stepped on your territory, isn't that enough?

And then he shocks him one last time with the defibrillators, doesn't he, and the lightning's going crazy. And they bring him back round and there's kind of a moment of forgiveness with Billy Mahoney as well in the afterlife.

Dan: That's right, I think Billy's forgiven him, and that allows that final shock to actually hit home and send him home.

Reegs: Yeah. And that's it. And he says, today wasn't a good day to die.

Sidey: Mmm.

Reegs: sort of arc words that

Dan: that bookend

Reegs: the movie.

Dan: Yeah, it was a, It

was a real kind of you know, big film, a huge hit at the time. Everybody at my school had seen it and everybody was talking about it. You had all these stars. If they weren't stars already, this film kind of further, further elevated them.

But I think most of them were

Sidey: probably only oliver platt.

That's not that

big a star these did them for further

Reegs: fairly new though, weren't they? I mean, they were not, none of

Dan: quite young. I mean, Bacon's 32 in this,

Reegs: Yes.

Dan: which is hard to believe because he looks the youngest to be honest, or one of them, but

It

still stands up for me. It's still, I still enjoyed the movie, still like seeing these young actors perform at this at this time, you know, it is atmospheric.

It has got a very nineties feel about it,

Sidey: little bit camp

Dan: trench coats, and, and sort of, you know, the smoke over and lighting at different areas at night that, that just

Sidey: Some of it, Keith of Southern looked like he could have been on the set of Lost Boys. He

Reegs: well that was Joel Schumacher as well,

Dan: He's got that otherworldly face though you know, where it's particularly at that time real pale look, perfect vampire but also a bit spooky from the afterlife.

Suits him quite nicely. I really like Oliver Platt in this as well. I don't think I've remembered him much of the time. But now I, I like him as an actor and

Reegs: good in The Bear as

Dan: Yeah, and you know seeing him a young guy there and now you go up to the bear it's it's quite interesting that That whole journey, but yeah for me it was it was still a decent movie

Sidey: Yeah. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I haven't seen the other ones, but I would say. This is still the best version of

Reegs: be really interesting

Dan: interesting to see that part

Sidey: a series

of it as well?

Is

Reegs: Oh, I don't know,

Sidey: there is something tells me there is but

Reegs: It's a great premise. It doesn't maybe quite stick the landing. It drags a little as well, touch long, but you've got to love how seriously it takes it all.

And it's like, it's like really operatic and gothic and such a great cast as well. Like say that too many times. And such a great premise.

Dan: Yeah, it could have maybe delivered a little bit more and it's why you would like to think that the, the newer one would have done. But. From any kind of reports or things that I read, wasn't to rush

Sidey: to. This

is the strong recommend.

Reegs: Yeah.