Ep. 14 - Sorcerer (1977)

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It's showtime, folks! Some bad hat harrys.

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_00]: What was the weight of the car when you got it out?

[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_00]: You're not right from wrong. You just don't care.

[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Benway!

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sons of bitches. I didn't know. I didn't know.

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna need a finger punch.

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Hello and welcome to episode 14 of The Complete Works Season 4.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_03]: A deep dive into the career and films of actor Roy Scheider.

[00:00:33] [SPEAKER_03]: My name is Mike Smith, and joining me on this journey across the Scheiderverse

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_03]: is my friend, co-host, and fellow Roy boy, Mike DiCreccio.

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_02]: How you doing today, Mike?

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing just great. I'm dirty and sweaty and covered in mud

[00:00:44] [SPEAKER_02]: and on a suicide mission. Like all guys want to be.

[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Sure, yeah. I mean that's just your normal state.

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_03]: But today it's because we're watching Sorcerer, right?

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Happens to be thematic today.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. Today we have got another major work in the Roy Scheider filmography,

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_03]: although I think it took a long time for today's film to be seen as a major work.

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Is that fair to say, Mike?

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_03]: A much delayed major work.

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. In fact, this movie famously bombed at the box office

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_03]: and was not all that well received critically either.

[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Really?

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, critics were pretty like mixed and negative on it,

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_03]: especially compared to William Friedkin's previous two movies,

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_03]: French Connection and The Exorcist.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_03]: For a while, today's movie lounged in obscurity

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_03]: and the home video release was actually delayed several times

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_03]: due to ongoing rights issues.

[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_03]: So a critical reassessment of the movie had kind of been building for a little bit

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_03]: and there was eventually like a VHS and a DVD that were eventually released.

[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_03]: But in 2014, the film was remastered for Blu-ray

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_03]: and that's when people really started to discover this movie on a much wider scale.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_03]: And I remember when that happened.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_03]: I remember being, I was in college at the time, you were as well,

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_03]: and being pretty attuned to, you know,

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_03]: there would just be like this kind of growing thing of like,

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_03]: oh man, this movie nobody's able to watch for like 30 years,

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer, it's finally been remastered and oh my God, it's a secret masterpiece.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's also a little bit of a,

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure some of the reaction was like, why are you remaking Wages of Fear?

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what are you doing?

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_03]: At the time it was made.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_02]: In the 70s, right, yeah.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And then we get further away from that and less people know about Wages of Fear,

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_02]: myself included, until I saw Sorcerer and other people were like,

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_02]: well, it's a rebit.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean the movie, it says, you know, based on Wages of Fear or whatever

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_02]: at the end of the credits.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, well, that's crazy.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, but I remember this being one of those things that I hadn't,

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_02]: a movie I had maybe heard of,

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_02]: but didn't like know is a William Freakin movie or anything like in the past.

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_02]: And then, and also being like, oh, the movie that came out the same weekend as

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Star Wars and that whole thing.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_02]: But then, but then as it was put out on Blu-ray and re-released and all that stuff,

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_02]: it was like, oh, like, yeah, but real heads know this is one of,

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_02]: this is actually Freakin's best, you know, kind of thing.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And so you start hearing stuff like that and you're like,

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_02]: well, maybe I should check this movie out.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_02]: And then you're like, holy shit, this movie's incredible.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. So that's right, Mike.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Today we're taking you back to the world of William Freakin,

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_03]: who Roy Shatter had worked with once before on the French connection.

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_03]: So after William Freakin directed French connection in 1971,

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_03]: which won best picture at the Oscars and then The Exorcist in 1973,

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_03]: which was the highest grossing movie of that year,

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_03]: he was on top of the world and he had his sights set on his next project,

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_03]: which was not Sorcerer.

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_03]: No, originally William Freakin wanted to make a movie called The Devil's Triangle,

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_03]: which was a UFO movie, which was set to star Marlon Brando,

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Charlton Heston and Steve McQueen.

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Never forget what they took from us.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_03]: But before he dove into that ambitious project,

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_03]: he decided to take this on, which he anticipated as a sort of stepping stone,

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_03]: something to make while he was in pre-production on his other film.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_02]: What a psycho.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_03]: So today's film is based on a novel by French author Georges Arnaud,

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_03]: a novel which had earlier become a French film called The Wages of Fear

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_03]: in 1953 directed by Henri-Georges Clouseau.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Freakin was a fan of Clouseau's film and the novel it was based on,

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_03]: but wanted to make his film as differently as possible,

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_03]: inventing new protagonists and employing the documentary like filmmaking style

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_03]: that he had become known for.

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_03]: The result is a movie that took a lot longer to make than expected

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_03]: and caused a lot more headaches for Freakin than he probably expected too.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_03]: He originally anticipated the budget for this movie being around $2.5 million.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_03]: The final budget was more like $20 million.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Production actually took so long that by the time the film came out,

[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Freakin had to abandon his idea for The Devil's Triangle

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_03]: because Steven Spielberg had beaten him to the UFO punch

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_03]: with Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_03]: And because Roy Scheider is reuniting with Freakin for today's film,

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_03]: we've got to talk about it. It is time to talk about Sorcerer!

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_00]: In 1974, he directed The Exorcist. It made history.

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Since then, Freakin has spent over two years in five countries

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_00]: on three continents creating his latest film,

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_00]: an unusual adventure into the realm of suspense.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Four men, condemned by their past, robbed of their future,

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_00]: trapped in a life that was also a death.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Four men take an incredible chance, face an impossible challenge

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_00]: and risk the only thing they have left to lose.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Roy Scheider in a new film by William Freakin, Sorcerer.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Now, Roy Scheider plays Jackie Scanlon in Sorcerer,

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_03]: a guy from New Jersey driven into hiding by the mafia

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_03]: who gets hired to drive a truck full of nitroglycerin in South America.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_03]: He is the lead of the film, but there were several choices for people

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_03]: who it could have been before it landed on Scheider.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't imagine Harrison Ford now.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_03]: I guess he hasn't broken out yet. So yeah, no, I mean, we'll talk about that too.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Freakin actually wrote the part originally for Steve McQueen,

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_03]: which that feels like a familiar chorus.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Like every time I feel like we've done that like two or three times,

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_03]: we're like, yeah, this role was originally for Steve McQueen,

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_03]: but he didn't want to do it. So Roy Scheider got it.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Know what role he'll turn down and get in there.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_03]: I guess so. Yeah, Steve McQueen apparently loved the script for Sorcerer,

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_03]: but he did not want to leave the country to film it.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And so he was he didn't get to do it.

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_03]: They then tried Robert Mitcham, who also liked the script,

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_03]: but similarly did not want to travel.

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_03]: I think he had a line that he said to Freakin being like,

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_03]: well, if I'm going to just fall out of a truck, I can do it at my house.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, right. I'd have to go all the way to Ecuador to do that.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Same thing with Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson.

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_03]: They also both liked the script, didn't want to leave the country.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_03]: They came close to having Warren Oates lead the world,

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_03]: which I think could have worked. That could have worked.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_01]: That would have been cool.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_03]: But once the film's budget got too big, they decided that he wasn't a big enough name to sell the movie.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg was the one who suggested Roy Scheider,

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_03]: who was just hot off his success from Jaws.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_03]: And Freakin and Scheider had kind of lost contact after French Connection,

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_03]: which we've talked about this a little bit before, too,

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_03]: because Scheider was originally supposed to play the role of Father Karras in The Exorcist.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03]: That was going to be his part.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_03]: We and Peter Blatty didn't want him in there, and so Scheider was let go.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_03]: He and Freakin had kind of a falling out,

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_03]: but they rekindled their relationship enough to make it happen here.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And it sounds like it was still a pretty tenuous relationship on set between the two of them,

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_03]: partially because of that, but also I think partially because it seems like it was a really tough time making this movie.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Tensions were running high.

[00:08:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I would love a Hearts of Darkness behind-the-scenes documentary.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_02]: That would have been incredible to know what was going on out there in Ecuador.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Right. You know, I mean, it's interesting you mentioned that because, you know, kind of reading into it,

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_03]: it does seem like at the time William Freakin kind of saw Francis Ford Coppola as a rival.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, just somebody who also kind of like broke out around the same time was making big beloved movies

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_03]: with The Godfather and The Conversation and around the same time as Freakin

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_03]: left the country to go be in the jungle to make Apocalypse Now for a couple of years.

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_03]: And so there's like parallels between the two careers in the 70s, which is kind of fascinating.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, Roy Scheider jumped in the movie because of Scheider's recent success with Jaws.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Universal was suddenly much more excited about this project and was able to put more money into it.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_03]: And Scheider's wife at the time, Cynthia, was working as an assistant editor

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_03]: and she was actually brought on board to help edit the film as well.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Look at that. Yeah.

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And she also is an editor on the 7-ups, which I didn't know and didn't mention in that episode.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_03]: So throwing that out there now, this is technically a Scheider reunion with his wife.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_03]: From there, we've got a Scheider reunion with Bruno Kramer, who was also in The French Conspiracy

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_03]: as Victor Manzon, a Frenchman who flees his country as his firm is accused of fraud.

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Then Francisco Cabal plays Milo, the Mexican assassin.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Freakin actually originally wanted him to be the bad guy in French Connection and got Fernando Rey instead.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Right. Yes.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Amidou, who also pops up in John Frankenheimer's Ronin, plays Qasem, a bomber.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_03]: And Ramon Bieri, who also appeared in the Jeff Goldblum movie Vibes, plays Corlettes, the oil executive.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Whoa. What is he in Vibes? I don't remember that.

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_03]: I think he's one of the bad guys. I think he's one of the bad guys in Vibes.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Probably. I think so. Yeah.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_03]: It's been a while since I've watched it. I don't really remember, but yeah, he was in it.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Then you got Peter Lapel, who is also in Willy Wonka and Paths of Glory.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_03]: He plays Lartique, Corlette's supervisor.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Friedrich von Libedor, who also played Queequeg and John Huston's Moby Dick appears as Carlos, the owner of the bar.

[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_03]: And we've got a couple more Scheider reunions happening here too, because Joe Spinell, who was also in the 7-ups, plays Spider,

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_03]: who is a friend of Ray Scheider's, who fails the driving test.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And Randy Jurgensen, a real life NYPD cop who also appeared in French Connection and the 7-ups plays Vinny, the friend of Scheider's who helps him escape from New Jersey.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_03]: We're reaching that point. I believe that Randy Jurgensen.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_03]: I believe he's the first three Pete Scheider reunion.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Wow. Good for him, I guess.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. So we got that going for us too.

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_03]: The film was written by Waylon Green, who had previously written Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was directed by William Friedkin four years after The Exorcist and just one year before his next film, The Brink's Job with Peter Falk.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_03]: The Brink's Job has not been reclaimed like Sorcerer has.

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think you've ever even heard of it.

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_03]: I was unaware of that movie's existence. I thought his next film was Cruising, which, cruising rules, people should watch it.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, did not know about The Brink's Job.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer was released on June 24th, 1977 and was considered a massive commercial failure pretty much upon release.

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Friedkin and several others placed most of the blame on Star Wars, which turns out, I think we've been saying it came out the same weekend.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't really the same weekend. Star Wars came out a few weeks earlier, but it just dominated the entire summer of 1977.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. And I think actively changed audience tastes for the kinds of movies they wanted to go see.

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer did get one Oscar nomination for its sound design.

[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Really? Yeah.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Which it then lost to Star Wars.

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Just to rub some salt in the wound right there.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Surprisingly, though, Star Wars, not number one that weekend.

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_03]: It was not the number one movie The Box Office. The Weekend Sorcerer came out.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Was it the re-release of some bullshit movie or something?

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_03]: No, actually, here's a sort of Scheider connected movie in a weird way.

[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Number one of The Box Office was The Deep, which is another water based adventure film based on a novel by Peter Bensley, the author behind Jaws, which starred Robert Shaw in the lead role.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_03]: What the fuck? Yeah, I've never seen The Deep.

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Never heard of The Deep.

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Feels like I should watch it. Yeah, sounds great.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. The Deep dethroned Star Wars for three weeks and then Star Wars regained the number one spot and then held it all the way through the end of October.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Just the rest of the like almost the rest of the year was all Star Wars, which by the way at the Roxie Theater right now as of this recording, we are playing Star Wars.

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_03]: We're doing sci fi summer all month long, and we're doing a full week run of Star Wars, a full week run of Empire Strikes Back and a full week run of Return of the Jedi.

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_03]: And I had to make the decision between watching a sorcerer at home or going to go see Star Wars.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_03]: And I decided to watch Sorcerer at Home, so I changed history a little bit for William Friedkin.

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Pouring one out for a real one.

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Good for you, you know?

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, Star Wars was of course the number one movie that year.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_03]: The rest of 1977's top ten consists of Smokey and the Bandit, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saturday Night Fever, The Goodbye Girl, A Bridge Too Far, The Deep, The Spy Who Loved Me, Oh God, and Annie Hall, which we covered on the Goldblum season of the podcast.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Big year in 1977.

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, a lot of stuff. And Annie Hall ended up being the best picture winner that year.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_03]: But I think Star Wars was nominated.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer was not.

[00:13:34] [SPEAKER_03]: But I believe Star Wars did get a best picture nomination, unlike Jaws did two years earlier.

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Jaws got the nomination, but Spielberg did not get the director one.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_03]: I think George Lucas might have got a director now for Star Wars.

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_02]: There's no way for us to ever know.

[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_03]: I guess I could look it up.

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_03]: But where's the fun in that?

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Where's the fun in that?

[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Academy Award for Best Director.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking at The Deep on here and it's got Nick Nolte, Robert Shaw, Eli Wallach, Jacqueline Bessette.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_02]: We've got to see this movie. What are we doing?

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to pause in this Sorcerer podcast now.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a deep podcast now.

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_03]: George Lucas was nominated for best director for Star Wars.

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Kind of crazy that Spielberg passed over for Jaws, but George Lucas got in for Star Wars.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Although Spielberg was nominated that year for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

[00:14:20] [SPEAKER_03]: The Deep, a Peter Yates movie.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, OK.

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Sounds like we should watch The Deep.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's going to be happening.

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to add this to my letterbox watch list right now.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_03]: The IMD flash synopsis for Sorcerer reads,

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Four unfortunate men from different parts of the globe.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Which is a great way to describe these men.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_03]: It's true. Yeah, very true.

[00:14:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Four unfortunate men from different parts of the globe agreed to risk their lives transporting gallons of nitroglycerin across dangerous Latin American jungle.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, Mike D, we have both seen Sorcerer before.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_03]: I had only seen it once before and it was like around the time it was getting that kind of reclamation.

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Right? Like it got that restoration and people started seeing it more.

[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_03]: And like there's a lot of sorcerer talk in the air in like 2014, 2015, which is when I saw it.

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_03]: When did you see Sorcerer Mike?

[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Someone recently. I want to say maybe post pandemic or post lockdown, like during lockdown for the first time.

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_03]: I remember you talking about it on the podcast, like in discussions or something.

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've seen it.

[00:15:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I've watched it a small handful of times since then, because sometimes you just want like a heavy movie.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're just like, I got to feel something kind of thing.

[00:15:23] [SPEAKER_02]: And this is one of those kinds.

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're the guy who's seen Come and See like four or five times now.

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Right? That's exactly March 2020 was the first time I logged in on Letterboxd.

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_03]: OK, so the pandemic hit and you were like, I got to watch Sorcerer.

[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I got to the sweaty summer of lockdown and I was like, I got to watch guys in a jungle.

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:43] [SPEAKER_03]: So you're a fan of this movie, it sounds like.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. Yeah, big fan. Yeah, it's incredible. Blows me away.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't believe I mean, I guess I can believe that this would have sort of been a flop or would be a flop

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_02]: because it is a sort of weird movie, I think structurally like, you know, I watched this before I had watched Wages of Fear by a couple of years.

[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_02]: I ended up watching that more recently and that is a very much more of a kind of straightforward conventional structure for a plot.

[00:16:09] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot more time in the town. You really get to learn about these characters and what they're doing and what life is like for them to be working at the refinery or the oil field or whatever, whatever it is, whatever they do.

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know for this oil company.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And Sorcerer is like the way it's structured where it's those sort of four vignettes at the beginning of the movie before they all ever get to the town where you get to see how each one of their lives falls apart and why they end up there.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like it's like I think it's 30 minutes before Roy Scheider reaches the town in South America.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, holy shit, that's crazy.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, and you're just totally unconnected and you don't know what those what was that with that assassin guy 30 minutes ago?

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And then fine. Then he shows up again 30 minutes later when they're in the town.

[00:16:52] [SPEAKER_02]: You're like, holy shit, that's crazy.

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, he doesn't show up for a much longer time.

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But the bomber and the French guy, like they're not all connected until like 45 minutes into the movie, which is kind of crazy.

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_02]: But it doesn't feel like a slog.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Something like this could feel like a really long drawn out sort of slow character study type thing.

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_02]: But because it's William Freak and it's just like boom, boom, like edge of your seat, edge of your seat kind of stuff, even though not a ton of like action plot stuff is happening.

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But it is just all gripping. I don't really know how else to describe it.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, big, big fan of Sorcerer. I'm happy for this excuse to watch it again.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_03]: So I like I said, I had seen Sorcerer once before and I liked it.

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_03]: But I wasn't like I had seen Wages of Fear before I had seen Sorcerer.

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_03]: And when I saw Sorcerer and I saw people talking about it a lot and like really like that restoration came out.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody was talking about it. It felt like or at least everybody on film Twitter, not everybody in my family.

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_03]: But like sitting around the table like, man, Sorcerer, what a picture.

[00:17:56] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, people are like online and all that stuff.

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_03]: There was there was a real reclamation of Sorcerer happening around that time.

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_03]: And so I watched it, thought it was good, but didn't love it.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_03]: And I preferred Wages of Fear.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think and I hadn't seen it since then.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_03]: But I had kind of grown in my estimation where I would think back on certain scenes and be like, man, Sorcerer, what a picture.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, it just sort of evolved into that way over time.

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_03]: And so now I am at a point where watching it again for the first time since then, I was like, yeah, Sorcerer, what a picture.

[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_03]: It's pretty great. It's really, really good.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_03]: I haven't seen Wages of Fear since I saw that first time many years ago.

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_03]: I still kind of think maybe I prefer Wages of Fear.

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_03]: But this is like a perfect remake of it because it's so different than what that movie is and is doing completely its own thing.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_03]: And it feels like a very American take on the subject matter.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_03]: One of the big talking points about this movie is how tense it is.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, yeah, well, it's not going to get like super tense until they're driving with the dynamite.

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_03]: And the movie feels really tense right away.

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Just every one of those vignettes had me on the edge of my seat.

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like shit, shit.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Sudden explosions and assassins that like sat stations that are happening, car chases, like all this stuff.

[00:19:05] [SPEAKER_03]: It's also expertly directed.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_03]: And so like you don't really know how it all fits together for a while.

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_03]: My memory of the movie was that like, yeah, they're in the town for a while.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And then like most of the movie is them driving the truck.

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_03]: The driver, it's only the back half of the movie that's the truck.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Like the entire first half of the movie is all built up to that.

[00:19:21] [SPEAKER_03]: And I had completely forgot about that.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And that to me was like some of the most fascinating stuff where I was like, I can't believe I forgot about this.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_03]: There's so much good stuff here.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think it's interesting the different levels of background.

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And then I think part of that or weight given to those vignettes.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that just goes down to like, well, Roy Shredder is the star of this movie.

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_02]: So he gets a big one, you know, whatever.

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_02]: But like that first that first assassination vignette is I'm pretty sure is like that guy's a Nazi hunter.

[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. It's like sort of the thing revealed.

[00:19:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just a guy like smoking a cigarette or drinking espresso at a balcony in a hotel in Veracruz or something.

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And the door gets kicked open and the guy just goes bang, bang, bang.

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And then he's out of the movie for 45 minutes.

[00:20:00] What the fuck was that?

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's awesome.

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And then, of course, you know, the the the bomber in Jerusalem and everything that that's so tense.

[00:20:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And that really has the documentary filmmaking vibe to it.

[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_02]: That's a shell, too. Yeah.

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_02]: There's a shot. It's like after the bus pulls away and you see the bag left against the building or whatever.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like a wide shot of the street as the bus pulls away.

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's like people walking directly next to the building and it explodes.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, I think William freaking killed those people.

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. Like, I did not see the cut.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't. It's crazy.

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's very intense.

[00:20:39] [SPEAKER_03]: So a story that I read about, they I don't think he killed those people.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_03]: I know. But they that was a controlled explosion.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_03]: It was a big thing in there.

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_03]: They filmed that bombing sequence while they were there.

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_03]: An actual bombing happened. What?

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Like while they were there filming this sequence.

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_03]: And so and he used like some of the chaos around that bombing.

[00:21:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Wow. For the movie, which crazy.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_03]: And there's so many stories about Sorcerer that are like that.

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh, yeah, this is like insane thing happened and we had to roll with it.

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_03]: That's crazy.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And part of the reason why the movie's budget ballooned so high is that he did insist on shooting everything on location.

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think the studio is like, OK, yeah, well, it will send you to Ecuador or whatever for a couple of months.

[00:21:23] [SPEAKER_03]: You can do that.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like, no, we got to do all these vignettes first.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_03]: We got to. Yeah, we got to go to Jerusalem.

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_03]: We got to go to France. We got to go to all these different places.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And suddenly the budget started skyrocketing as a result of that.

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, Ben is also stories like, you know, the bridge scene in Sorcerer, which is probably the most iconic scene in the movie where they have to like traverse across this very rickety bridge that seems like it will snap at any second.

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And they have to drive these like flooding river. Yeah.

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_03]: And they have to drive these like two gigantic trucks over this bridge that's like, how are they going to do this?

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_03]: That bridge scene, you know, they built the bridge in that area in the jungle and then they had to wait for it to rain.

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_03]: And it wasn't raining. It was like a weird summer where just like, well, normally this place is like flooding all the time.

[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_03]: And this year it's a drought. They had to like deconstruct it and rebuild the bridge elsewhere.

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_03]: I think they had to build like three or four bridges before they finally got to a place where they could do it.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Crazy. And even then, I think they had to do fake rain.

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Like they kind of had to fake a lot of the rain that was in the movie.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I think I don't know if I remember. I might just be making this up that they had to film it like with a dam or something like near a dam that they could like control, release a river kind of thing.

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_02]: That sounds weird like that.

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I remember hearing stuff, heard stories too that they that after they finished or whatever, the studio was like, oh yeah, we need some inserts to like do.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_02]: We want this, you know, studio notes. And he's like, OK, send us back to Ecuador.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_02]: They were like, what? He's like, no, we go back to the jungle.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_02]: We have to do it for real. Same kind of thing.

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, as a way to get them to say no so that they wouldn't get you wouldn't have to do their notes.

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But like fucking William Friedkin is a psycho is basically what we're getting at.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, that's that's been the recurring theme of the podcast.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, 100 percent. A beautiful psycho perhaps.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_03]: She was like, you get Sorcerer out of it.

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, but at what cost? A lot of this stuff in the movie that they're doing was incredibly dangerous.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's the actual actors just doing that thing, you know, driving these trucks across like very, very like difficult terrain.

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_03]: They all the actors are doing it themselves.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_03]: They had to act their own doubles because they couldn't do the swap just in terms of so like the actual stuntmen on the movie were like a little bit annoyed that like they weren't being used.

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Like the actors were in there. Yeah.

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_03]: And like Roy Scheider had to like actually like do special preparation for like how to maneuver this truck and like get the actual driving skills for it.

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_03]: And he described it as rehearsing to stay alive because, yeah, there's no like rear screen projection or anything like no trick photography.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_03]: He was very like specific about that. It's just like actually him in a truck.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_03]: He said it made made shooting Jaws look like a picnic is what he said.

[00:23:58] [SPEAKER_03]: And Jaws had a very famously difficult shoot to, you know, it's shooting on the water.

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_03]: It's difficult. Yeah.

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer was worse, it sounds like.

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, rough stuff.

[00:24:07] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, the sequence when they when they are doing the test driving or like auditioning for the to be able to drive or whatever that whole montage is like so and it's so funny when it's like that's just but no, like I never noticed him all the other times I've watched this movie.

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know that that was him. And the one guy breaks the gear shift and it's just like side eyeing the guy from the oil company like and all that stuff.

[00:24:29] [SPEAKER_02]: There's the one little I was getting that because I love there's like the little character moment, which is like what this whole movie is full of and what movies in the 70s are full of it.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Like they take the time 45 minutes to set up who these guys are and why they're here and why they're so desperate, desperate enough to do to accept this job for the eight thousand pesos or whatever it is.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_02]: When they're driving and the guy from the oil company just looks at Roy Scheider and he's like Teamsters.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And he's just like without without skipping a beat shift in gear shift and you're just Greyhound and it just keep going.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just like, man, what is chef's kiss character moment?

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_02]: We understand his entire backstory or whatever.

[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, even if that's all he's willing a lie, he's willing to tell him because we know he was a getaway driver from the beginning of the movie.

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_02]: But right. Just like so good.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. And yeah, I think part of the reason why they're all willing to risk their lives like for this for this money, I mean, it's a good amount of money for like living in that area.

[00:25:20] [SPEAKER_03]: It's not that much money in the grand scheme of that scheme of things, but they're all like at the lowest point in their lives and they're all like, you know, we're probably not going to make it back home.

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_03]: Might as well do this job. Like if we die, who cares?

[00:25:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Yeah. That's the whole like the thing they ask for outside of the money is also legal residency, like a pass.

[00:25:39] [SPEAKER_02]: We want a passport so they can get out of the country. Right.

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, so good. They're all so desperate. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_03]: And so, yeah, I mean, Roy Shatterer, obviously the lead of this movie.

[00:25:48] [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think of his performance, Mike? Oh, baby. He's got a I think the connection to to your apocalypse now is like he's almost got a Colonel Kurtz thing going on.

[00:25:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Like he's almost lost his mind in the in the jungle.

[00:26:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's so desperate to get out. He also looks awful health wise.

[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Like he looks so skinny and sickly. He's got the scraggly five o'clock shadow and all that stuff.

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, which compared to him in Jaws, he's like, you know, lively and he's muscley and all that stuff.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he looks great. So, yeah, he's giving an incredible performance, I think, of a man just at his wits end.

[00:26:22] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, somebody that had a sense of honor, it seems.

[00:26:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. You know, at the beginning when he says like, you know, I don't carry a pistol.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. With the whole thing with the cops are after the mob is after him because the guy, whoever that I forget, they killed a priest or whatever.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. When they were robbing the church.

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And so it seems like he's got, you know, one of those kind of like valiant criminals types.

[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he's the driver. He doesn't go in. He's not violent.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't carry a gun and he kind of ends up in the situation and it's just been destroyed and he's ready to do risk it all to the point where he's killing people by the end.

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, right. Very, very intense.

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I think he's really good. Yeah, I love the that opening vignettes where you kind of see him get driven to that point where he has to leave the country.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_03]: There's this great exchange where he's talking to his friend and the guy's like, you got a problem.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like, tell me about it. And he like turns around and his face is just all cut up and banned.

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Yeah. After the car crash. Yeah. Yes. Which is great.

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. That whole car chase is insane and awesome.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I think Rashad is great in this movie. I mean, it's it's such a great run that we've been on in this season of the podcast where it's Jaws Marathon Man now sorcerer.

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_03]: And if you like, I mean, she'll love me and also a great movie too, which is right before Jaws and seven ups.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's there's a lot of good stuff in Rashad or 70s run.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think like Jaws, Sorcerer, all that jazz are kind of seen as like sort of like the pinnacles of that maybe French connection to what he's like less of a main character in that one.

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, he's he's fantastic in sorcerer. It's really great to see.

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_03]: He's a great dude among dudes in this movie. Everybody is like a really good dude.

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a bunch of guys and I really believe that they're just guys that this has happened to, you know, nobody's too pretty.

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_02]: None of that stuff. They all have like it's just that that vibe.

[00:28:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's that's the thing. They're all actors.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_03]: These are all people who are like professional actors, but they're all character actors really or in some cases like, you know, not not familiar to American audiences maybe or that kind of thing.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Right. Like Graham is mostly in French movies and all that.

[00:28:19] [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I think they maybe it's because they actually like to stuck them in the jungle for three or four months and that's the thing.

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_03]: That could be part of it, but they really feel like they they feel like lived in people, you know, that they've really been through some shit.

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a movie that really makes you like it puts you right up there with them, I think.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think the camera work the freaking does does a lot to make you feel like you're on the journey alongside the characters or even just in the vignettes earlier.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_03]: There's the moment where the bombing happens. Yeah.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_03]: You see like crowds of people running through the streets, all that kind of stuff.

[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_03]: And the camera is like shaking and it's like running with the people as if you're like part of that crowd.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Right. And just like maybe like it's it's disorienting a little bit. It's really, really cool.

[00:29:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. And that happens also when they're in the town where after the explosion happens in the oil fields and they like bring the bodies back to town.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. And it's like a riot happens once the townsfolk see like what the oil company has done to their brethren or whatever.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. And yeah, the camera is just in there being pushed around and there's people screaming and it's it seems like what like, yeah, they're going to kill these guys for real.

[00:29:27] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's like we're going to witness some shit is what it feels like.

[00:29:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So like the movie really just ratchets for an hour, basically, or hour and a half or actually it's not that long, but like an hour or so until we get and then continues to ratchet on the truck.

[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like all the way the whole time. It's nothing but tension for so long.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, you would think like, OK, it's a movie that people driving a truck.

[00:29:50] [SPEAKER_03]: But it really does. I don't know. It places them in so many precarious situations.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_03]: And it is the fact that like it's that sort of ticking time bomb on the truck.

[00:29:59] [SPEAKER_03]: They have that dynamite on there that could explode at any second and they have to be extremely, extremely careful about how they drive the truck.

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_03]: One wrong move, it explodes. It's over.

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER_03]: That situation is so nerve wracking and so intense and has been the basis of other movies too.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_03]: We talked about Cold Sweat on the podcast a couple of years ago. Yes.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_03]: A South American horror movie, which we think is really great and is basically sorcerer, but with bodies instead of trucks.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, in a house where and the guys wearing a sorcerer T-shirt like they directly acknowledge.

[00:30:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. Yeah. The connection.

[00:30:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And we talked about to Ice Cold and Alex, which is more closely connected to Wages of Fear.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Less explosives, but not these.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, really good. Really good.

[00:30:41] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I mean, there's so many sequences.

[00:30:43] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, obviously the bridge sequence, but then there's, you know, just this cliffside road that you have to like really just really kind of edge over.

[00:30:50] [SPEAKER_03]: And one of my favorite moments in the movie, I mean, you know, there's moments where like, you know, a tree has fallen down and they have to kind of figure out how to move the tree and then get the truck.

[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_03]: One of my favorite moments in the movie is when the one truck explodes, the two guys.

[00:31:02] [SPEAKER_03]: It's yeah, it's the Frenchman and the bomber and they are in the truck together and they're kind of talking and they're and Bruno Kramer is talking about his wife.

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And like the last time I saw my wife, I had this she gave me this watch and you know, it's like the last thing I have of her truck makes one wrong move.

[00:31:16] [SPEAKER_03]: It cuts to inside the truck, but you see the dynamite shift and the truck explodes and you see Roy Scheider and the other guy just looking at it.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_03]: They see it explode and then they just move on.

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_03]: They have to continue. Yeah, there's there's barely any acknowledgement that like these two guys just died because the journey just has to keep going.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's brutal out there. Yeah, it's it's so interesting because there's even an arc there in that in their reaction to that where when they first cross the bridge, Roy Scheider is like, there's no way they make that bridge.

[00:31:46] [SPEAKER_02]: We're sitting on double shares like we're going to get forty thousand each.

[00:31:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh my God, what are you going to do with that? He's all excited that the other the other team is not going to make it because they're going to get double shares.

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_02]: But they've now been through so much shit together.

[00:31:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Scheider and that guy are so hollowed out by the experience because I love that moment when the when the truck explodes, it cuts to the I don't remember if you actually see it explode, but it cuts to Roy Scheider and the other guy who are way off in the distance, like fixing their truck.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And they just like whip their heads up and you just see a puff of a cloud like an exploit, like the aftermath of an explosion in the way off in the distance.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And they like don't react and they just go back to fix filling the radiator with water or something like that in the truck.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And then they're just silent and stone faced as they're driving by.

[00:32:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And they've they come upon the wreckage.

[00:32:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just like I feel like there's like an implication that these like because then there's like partisan guys or insurgent guys show up and hold up the truck that like they caused it.

[00:32:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Like is the road booby traps so that they could hold up oil company trucks or something like that?

[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_02]: There's some kind of my impression was they like stopped short a little bit and the look is like a tire blows out and they tip over the side of the thing.

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And then it explodes. Right.

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I don't know, because when they first roll up the second truck, the first thing you see is a dead guy with a gun before you see the wreckage of the truck.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that guy was caught in the explosion.

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. So, yeah, I don't know.

[00:33:07] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a weird I was wondering, like, you know, there's like all this weird world events, political stuff going on in the movie because it's about colonialism and oil company destroying this country, you know, robbing of its resources and all this stuff.

[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it is explicitly about that, I guess.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_02]: But not necessarily commenting on it in any way.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I don't know. It's like a weird, weird moment.

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And then they get held up by these partisan guys because they're trying to get the sabotage or rob the oil company trucks, which they think they are.

[00:33:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And then shit happens, man. Once that once that's going on.

[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, absolutely. The gunfight happens and yeah, it's intense.

[00:33:40] [SPEAKER_03]: And the other guy dies. Roy Shatter is the last one to he's the only survivor of this whole trip.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Yeah. I also did what you mentioned, the explosion of the truck and a couple.

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_03]: I think this movie may have the best looking explosions I've ever seen in a hundred percent.

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_03]: The explosions are unbelievable in this.

[00:33:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the one scene that I kind of forgot happens, but was like absolutely blown away by this movie is after the bridge,

[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_02]: she bridge scene when they come across the tree that's fallen across the road.

[00:34:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's when they all just like go insane or Roy Shider specifically goes insane.

[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, we only have to chop down eight trees and we can get around it.

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_02]: And he's like trying to hack his way through the swamp.

[00:34:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Get lost his mind.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And he's like rolling in the mud, screaming and all that stuff.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And I forgot about all that and how tense it is.

[00:34:26] [SPEAKER_02]: It's another montage of like a guy's fixing a problem that happens a lot in this movie where the bomber realizes he can use the nitro from one truck or one crate of it and blow up the log that's across the road.

[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And that explosion is crazy. I don't know.

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand how everyone's not dead that made this well didn't die making this movie rather.

[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Wait, I tell you about the story behind this explosion, Mike.

[00:34:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, no. Oh, no.

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_03]: So there was a problem with this explosion, I guess, when they were making the movie like the explosion wasn't big enough.

[00:34:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Like during this tree scene specifically, the guy who did the special effects for the exorcist, he was supposed to be the one responsible for it.

[00:35:05] [SPEAKER_03]: But it was like barely damaging the tree.

[00:35:07] [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't like doing enough of what it was supposed to be doing.

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_03]: So William Friedkin called up an arsonist from New York.

[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I heard this story called Marvin the torch.

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, showed up in the Dominican Republic three days after the call and started using every flammable material he could find.

[00:35:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And he obliterated the tree in one take the next morning.

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's the explosion that's used in the film.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Incredible.

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how many I don't know how William Friedkin knew so many criminals.

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Because there's a story about to live and die in L.A.

[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_02]: That they got like an actual counterfeiter to come advise.

[00:35:40] [SPEAKER_02]: And he allegedly used that money.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_02]: William Friedkin used the counterfeit money from that movie for years.

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_02]: I did not know that. That's incredible.

[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_02]: He had some story that like, yeah, like the Secret Service because they're the Treasury and do counterfeit money stuff like we're investigating him and tried to get him in for questioning and all this shit.

[00:35:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And he's like a real counter used a real counterfeiter used a real arsonist apparently to blow up this tree.

[00:36:04] [SPEAKER_02]: He's a nut job.

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_03]: I wonder if it was because he knew so many real life cops from French connection.

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe they had the connections to the criminal underworld as well just through them.

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, yeah, they were probably dirty cops on the probably French connection throwing that out there.

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_03]: How do you think this fits into the Roy Shider rules that we've seen so far?

[00:36:26] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like this is a little bit of a I can't tell if it's a return to form or departure because we were sort of talking about he's playing a lot of these tough guy roles and stuff like that.

[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And then he sort of he goes to jaws and he's it seems to be like directly commenting on a lot of his earlier roles that he's like a city guy, city cop that does that wants to get out of the life and all that, you know, right?

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Pivots more into these more friendly friendly persona type thing.

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And here he is just bottom of the bottom is rock bottom guys that could be.

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's there's a little bit of that.

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I guess that that's sort of the progression there where he's he's back in a form in his gritty William Freak and type main character.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[00:37:06] [SPEAKER_03]: I think he he feels very sleazy in this movie like he does in French connection or maybe in Marathon Man a little bit.

[00:37:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's you know, it's seven ups all that.

[00:37:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I think the difference in the character in this one is how just grime like literally grimy like covered in grime.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_02]: He is as compared to Baratheon Man and seven ups and French connection even.

[00:37:29] [SPEAKER_02]: He look he like looks pretty slick, slick and sleazy and not sleazy slick and sleek and like well dressed and well put together.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And in this he's just like a this this the destitute.

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, sure.

[00:37:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, the visual reference for his character was Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

[00:37:45] [SPEAKER_02]: OK, now that you said that.

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's all right there.

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, he's got like the battered hat.

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_03]: He's unshaven and sort of like, you know, sort of posturing as a tough guy and all that kind of stuff.

[00:37:55] [SPEAKER_03]: But he's supposed to be, you know, kind of like down in his luck and which have you seen Sierra Madre?

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_02]: I have not, but I've seen images from it.

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_02]: So like I know what he looks like.

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Sierra Madre really good.

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_03]: People should watch it. They haven't seen it.

[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_03]: We don't need the stinking badges.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_03]: That's the movie.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_03]: That's where that's from.

[00:38:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's from the Treasure of Sierra Madre.

[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_03]: And also, I think Blazing Saddles has a reference to it.

[00:38:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, it's from Blazing Saddles.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_02]: It's from Blazing Saddles.

[00:38:20] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, he's like modeled after Humphrey Bogart in that movie, which, you know, kind of supposed to be sort of an everyman, supposed to be that kind of thing.

[00:38:27] [SPEAKER_03]: It's weird. We're still kind of early in the Scheider career.

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_03]: It's only episode 14.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Got a lot of miles to go still.

[00:38:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, there's still plenty of movies to talk about and a lot of other stuff.

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_03]: But it is like most of his high profile movies are in this stretch of his career.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like we said, Jaws Marathon Man this next next week, Jaws 2 week after that.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's Last Embrace and then all that jazz.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot of big stuff happening pretty soon.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a weird movie where like this completely bombed when it came out.

[00:38:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody went to go see it.

[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody was seeing Star Wars for the 27th time or the deep apparently or or the deep, which sounds like a pretty good time.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_03]: I do want to watch that.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, everybody was seeing Star Wars.

[00:39:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody was seen Source for this movie.

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Completely bombed is sort of derailed William Friedkin's career a little bit.

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_03]: It's seen as such a failure upon its release.

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_03]: It's certainly not the only movie to fail upon release and then get like reclaimed years later or like find a cold audience.

[00:39:20] [SPEAKER_03]: But it really took a while for this movie to get that.

[00:39:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Now it is like kind of seen as like one of William Friedkin's best movies, if not his best.

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty interesting journey in the movie has been on.

[00:39:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a couple of movies like that.

[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking of is it Heaven's Gate or the movie Heaven's Gate, which is like it was such a big bomb.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_03]: It was like kind of the end of the new Hollywood era.

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_02]: He has like bankrupted United Artists or whatever the studio, whatever the studio was, I forget.

[00:39:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. So I mean, I guess this movie didn't have quite that much of a negative ripple so much.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it definitely took 30, 40 years before people were like, wait, maybe this movie is good actually.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think part of the part of the reason why, you know, it did come out a couple of weeks after Star Wars.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_03]: But I think part of the reason why these two movies are like talked about so much together is that Star Wars was so big.

[00:40:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Source for such a disappointment box office wise, Star Wars was so acclaimed, you know, got the Oscar nods, got critics, critics loved it.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And Source for did not. Nobody saw it.

[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody liked it. And it really feels like that's representative of like the shift that's happening in movies at that time.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Right. Yes. Yes.

[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Which we've talked about a little bit, which, you know, shatters in Jaws and that movie kind of kickstarted like blockbusters in general.

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_03]: Next year is Rocky and then it's Star Wars.

[00:40:32] [SPEAKER_03]: People are like kind of flocking towards movies like Jaws and Star Wars, and they're not coming to movies like Sorcerer as much anymore.

[00:40:39] [SPEAKER_03]: We've talked a lot about the 70s and this kind of era of movies where like, oh yeah, almost everything ends in a really down notes.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Everything is ends in a very bleak moment.

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't think of a down more downer note than this movie ends on.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Which I don't think I fully noticed there is a gunshot at the end of this movie.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's supposed to be either a gunshot or a blowing out of a tire.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_03]: I think you're not supposed to know what it is.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Interesting.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_03]: It kind of leaves you like, oh, well, maybe he killed himself or maybe they killed him or whatever.

[00:41:07] [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe nothing happens.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, you don't know.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, the end of the movie ends.

[00:41:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Roy Shatter is the only one to survive.

[00:41:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And he is a hollowed out shell because he that final 15 minutes is like it's like it felt like Fury Road, like a George Miller thing where it's driving through what apparently is literal hell.

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. Like he's hearing ghosts and he's seeing visions and he's like all that.

[00:41:30] [SPEAKER_02]: What is that? I don't know if it's a double exposure or whatever, where like it's the two images overlaid.

[00:41:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah.

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever that is called.

[00:41:37] [SPEAKER_02]: He's seen shit that would make you turn whites.

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_02]: He's got the dead guy in the back and he's hearing his laughing and his talking to him.

[00:41:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And he's then they cuts to him being dead and all this stuff.

[00:41:48] [SPEAKER_02]: And he delivers the case by hand of the truck dies.

[00:41:51] [SPEAKER_02]: And he carries it the last whatever and he survives and he gets the he's back in town.

[00:41:57] [SPEAKER_02]: He's got a straw hat like all the company men have now.

[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_02]: All that he's got his check with the pesos.

[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And before they leave, I want one last dance with the barmaid that like loved the French guy.

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_02]: They've had a connection with the French guy.

[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_02]: So he has a dance and then that cat pull out.

[00:42:12] [SPEAKER_02]: The camera pulls out to a wide shot of the town of a taxi pulling up at the bar.

[00:42:16] [SPEAKER_02]: And the two mob hitmen from the beginning get out of the car and walk into the bar.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And I always thought it just cut to black there.

[00:42:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I never noticed that sound until this till this viewing.

[00:42:26] [SPEAKER_02]: And there's apparently either a gunshot or a tire blowing out or some kind of loud bang.

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And then it cuts right to black.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_02]: So like damn what a downer ending.

[00:42:36] [SPEAKER_02]: So even though he wins, he loses.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. And that's very intense.

[00:42:39] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I can't imagine comparing it to Star Wars.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Does Star Wars end with the medal ceremony and all that?

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they blow up the Death Star.

[00:42:48] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, everyone's happy at the end.

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_03]: The galaxy is cheering.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. It ends at the medal ceremony.

[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_03]: The Trump and John Williams score.

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_03]: And you got to imagine like this movie is playing in a theater right next to Star Wars,

[00:42:59] [SPEAKER_03]: which is just packed with people who are just like going nuts.

[00:43:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, yeah, they did it.

[00:43:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And so imagine the bleed through like the other people cheering in the score.

[00:43:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And you're just sitting there watching like, what am I just what?

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Just one guy in the Source for a theater just with his fingers templed up.

[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, just like listening to the Tangerine Dream score.

[00:43:18] [SPEAKER_03]: And you're like, hmm, yes, quite cinema.

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:43:23] [SPEAKER_03]: That's so funny.

[00:43:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. I mean, that's sort of how it happened.

[00:43:26] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's it's the reason why Star Wars and Sorcerer are so weirdly intertwined is because they do represent, you know,

[00:43:32] [SPEAKER_03]: the beginning of a new era of Hollywood and the end of another one.

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, I think Heaven's Gate is really like the true like kind of demarcation point of like this is the end of the new Hollywood era.

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_03]: We're done like we're out of money.

[00:43:42] [SPEAKER_03]: We're out of money.

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_03]: We're done giving, you know, directors as much money as they want to make whatever shit they want.

[00:43:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Even though that is how Star Wars started.

[00:43:51] [SPEAKER_03]: That's basically, you know, that's what Star Wars was too.

[00:43:54] [SPEAKER_03]: The vibe definitely shifts in the 80s and it becomes much more blockbuster and franchise driven.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_03]: And we are still there 40 years later.

[00:44:02] [SPEAKER_03]: That's kind of never looked back.

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Never happened after that.

[00:44:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe, maybe, you know, maybe we're entering a new Hollywood, a new, new Hollywood era.

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Whoa.

[00:44:12] [SPEAKER_03]: And NU Hollywood.

[00:44:15] [SPEAKER_03]: And NU.

[00:44:17] [SPEAKER_03]: It's, it's exactly the same, but there's rapping over it.

[00:44:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but it's corn.

[00:44:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Corn is the only song, the only songs allowed.

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Just there.

[00:44:25] [SPEAKER_03]: Corn is the new tangerine dream.

[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_03]: They're scoring all these movies.

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Whoa.

[00:44:29] [SPEAKER_03]: I think you unblocked something.

[00:44:30] [SPEAKER_03]: I think this might be worth checking out.

[00:44:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Fred Durst was in I Saw the TV Glow.

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just saying.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Like anything, anything can happen.

[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Which incredible.

[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_03]: I just watched that this past weekend.

[00:44:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Wow.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_03]: What a picture.

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_02]: He's really good in it.

[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_02]: I think Fred Durst is very good in that.

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_02]: I saw the TV Glow.

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Is he the stepdad?

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_02]: He's the stepdad, yeah.

[00:44:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Whoa.

[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't notice that was him, but holy shit.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_02]: That tracks.

[00:44:54] [SPEAKER_02]: He's incredible.

[00:44:55] [SPEAKER_02]: He's so good.

[00:44:55] [SPEAKER_03]: He's great.

[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_03]: He's really haunting.

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Holy shit.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_03]: In any case, I think there is a, yeah, it does feel like the end of an era with

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer.

[00:45:04] [SPEAKER_03]: And it took a while for this movie to kind of get reclaimed as like a, you know,

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's pretty cool.

[00:45:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just want to highlight how weird it is that the movie is named after one

[00:45:14] [SPEAKER_02]: of the trucks.

[00:45:16] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think that also is what threw audiences off a little bit is that

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_03]: you hear the name Sorcerer and you're like, all right, medieval fantasy,

[00:45:23] [SPEAKER_03]: like some, some kind of like big thing.

[00:45:25] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm expecting like Legend or something.

[00:45:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:45:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Conan like I'm in let's go.

[00:45:29] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's not it's not that at all.

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_03]: The truck happens to be named Sorcerer.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_03]: But according to William Freakings, he's talked about the title of the

[00:45:36] [SPEAKER_03]: movie and stuff.

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_03]: The Sorcerer, as he kind of describes it, sort of like an evil wizard, you know,

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_03]: that kind of thing.

[00:45:42] [SPEAKER_03]: And in the movie, like this sort of evil wizard, as he describes it is

[00:45:46] [SPEAKER_03]: fate.

[00:45:46] [SPEAKER_03]: It's the idea that like, you know, you're kind of stuck doing this

[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_03]: thing.

[00:45:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:45:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's a one that the truck that is Sorcerer has like a face

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_02]: and it's scary and mean and looks intense.

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_02]: But the other truck, there's like a Pazazou painting on the hood, like

[00:46:02] [SPEAKER_02]: the demon from Exorcist, like the statue outline of the statue is on there,

[00:46:06] [SPEAKER_02]: which is so funny because William Freakin does not seem like one of the

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_02]: directors that would be like fun Easter eggs in my movies.

[00:46:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, but there is a demon painted on the front of his truck.

[00:46:16] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like how you watch Last Crusade and it's like a little hieroglyph of

[00:46:18] [SPEAKER_03]: R2-D2 and C3PO.

[00:46:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:46:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Like the red apple cigarettes and all the Quentin Tarantino movie,

[00:46:22] [SPEAKER_02]: you know, like, oh, this is fun.

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_02]: No, he does not seem like those kind of guy.

[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_02]: But there was 100 percent.

[00:46:30] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:46:30] [SPEAKER_03]: You're watching.

[00:46:31] [SPEAKER_03]: You're watching Pazouzi.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_03]: You're watching cruising and there's just like a face of looking defeated or

[00:46:35] [SPEAKER_03]: something.

[00:46:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Just put that that like one frame of you see of the demon face in Exorcist,

[00:46:41] [SPEAKER_02]: but just put it in all of his other movies.

[00:46:43] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, yeah.

[00:46:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Any other any other scenes in Sorcerer that you wanted to give a shout out

[00:46:47] [SPEAKER_03]: to Mike?

[00:46:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Anything that we haven't mentioned yet?

[00:46:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, all of it.

[00:46:50] [SPEAKER_02]: But the scene I tweeted about was just like one of those like,

[00:46:54] [SPEAKER_02]: fuck yeah moments.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just that montage once the drivers have been selected of them

[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_02]: just like rebuilding their trucks out of like the husks around the town.

[00:47:04] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like a two or three minute montage or something.

[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_02]: It's basically the sequence in Evil Dead 2 where Ash is building the

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_02]: chainsaw hand.

[00:47:12] [SPEAKER_02]: But it's like for real, like, you know, it's like a serious version of

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_02]: that.

[00:47:16] [SPEAKER_02]: And it just looks so cool and it's so intense and it's like such a,

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_02]: you know, we've been rationing up this tension kind of thing.

[00:47:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Like what's what's going to happen?

[00:47:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, you know, I mean, I guess it's all the things of the

[00:48:00] [SPEAKER_03]: movie.

[00:48:00] [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, so the movie, Tangerine Dream is fantastic.

[00:48:02] [SPEAKER_03]: And this was Tangerine Dreams first movie score.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Wow.

[00:48:05] [SPEAKER_03]: I think William Friedkin, that's like a German band.

[00:48:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Right?

[00:48:07] [SPEAKER_03]: I think William Friedkin, William Friedkin was in Germany and like

[00:48:10] [SPEAKER_03]: discovered them.

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_03]: And of course he was.

[00:48:13] [SPEAKER_03]: You had some sex club or some shit.

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_03]: And, and yeah, he brought on Tangerine Dream and you know,

[00:48:18] [SPEAKER_03]: it was their first movie score.

[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_03]: And despite the fact that movie bombed, they ended up being,

[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_03]: you know, they scored a bunch of movies after that.

[00:48:24] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, they did Sorcerer, they did Risky Business.

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Did a lot of Michael Mann movies, right?

[00:48:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:48:29] [SPEAKER_03]: I think Thief was a Tangerine Dream score as well.

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, and it is like, it's,

[00:48:34] [SPEAKER_03]: it's very much like that kind of synthy score that would become

[00:48:35] [SPEAKER_03]: very popular in the eighties, you know, but it's,

[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_03]: it's so it sort of feels ahead of its time in that way where,

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_03]: you know, it's, it's the kind of thing.

[00:48:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Like it sounds very similar, I think to a John Carpenter score.

[00:48:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, it's really, really cool of that.

[00:48:48] [SPEAKER_03]: And also wanted to give a shout out to the editing of the movie

[00:48:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Calibrated to maximum tension at all times.

[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_03]: And I wanted to specifically say, I mean, Cynthia Scheider,

[00:48:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Roy Scheider's wife was an assistant editor.

[00:48:59] [SPEAKER_03]: The main editor, Bud Smith just passed away recently.

[00:49:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Really?

[00:49:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. Just I think a couple of months ago, actually.

[00:49:05] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was, was William Friedkin's editor for most of his career,

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_03]: I think directed a lot or edited a lot of his movies,

[00:49:10] [SPEAKER_03]: including The Exorcist, not French Connection,

[00:49:12] [SPEAKER_03]: but I think The Exorcist was the first movie they worked on together.

[00:49:14] [SPEAKER_03]: And then they made Sorcerer together in terms of editing.

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_03]: There's not many movies that are better than Sorcerer.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_03]: I think, I think just watching every single one of those sequences

[00:49:24] [SPEAKER_03]: with the trucks traversing over difficult terrain.

[00:49:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Just so much of what makes those sequences tense

[00:49:30] [SPEAKER_03]: are the combination of the score and the editing.

[00:49:32] [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, wanted to give a shout out to that.

[00:49:33] [SPEAKER_02]: At first, like difficult terrain moment when the second truck gets to the,

[00:49:37] [SPEAKER_02]: like the sharp turn and they find the note that just says like,

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_02]: good luck or whatever that the first truck left for them is so intense.

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just like, oh my, like, you know, the tire,

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_02]: it's not really wide enough for this truck to make this turn and all this stuff.

[00:49:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, baby, the movies.

[00:49:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, absolutely.

[00:49:53] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking at Bud Smith's Wikipedia page.

[00:49:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah.

[00:49:57] [SPEAKER_03]: And he edited a bunch of Wikipedia, a bunch of William Friedkin movies.

[00:50:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Big Wikipedia guy.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Big Wikipedia.

[00:50:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Did a lot of William Friedkin movies, did like Flashdance, Karate Kid,

[00:50:07] [SPEAKER_03]: all that stuff, Dark Man.

[00:50:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And then he was involved in stuff up until 2013.

[00:50:13] [SPEAKER_03]: One of the movies that he's credited on

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_03]: and it doesn't say as editors, it says other is G-Force.

[00:50:20] [SPEAKER_03]: The Nick Cage movie where he voices a talking gerbil.

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:50:25] [SPEAKER_02]: He's basically doing the Pace Who Got Married voice or something, right?

[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_03]: But as a gerbil, which is what that voice is always meant for.

[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_03]: True, yeah.

[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:50:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And so I just wanted to give that a shout out because that's very funny

[00:50:35] [SPEAKER_03]: that we have technically covered a different Bud Smith film on the podcast before.

[00:50:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Shout out to G-Force.

[00:50:41] [SPEAKER_03]: We don't say it enough, but shout out to G-Force.

[00:50:44] [SPEAKER_03]: One of the big bombs in the Jerry Bruckheimer filmography.

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Any other scenes in Sorcerer that we should shout out, Mike,

[00:50:49] [SPEAKER_03]: before we move on to letterbox reviews?

[00:50:51] [SPEAKER_02]: No, I mean, just I just mentioned that last like Descent into Hell

[00:50:54] [SPEAKER_02]: sequence at the end.

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like holy shit.

[00:50:57] [SPEAKER_02]: That was crazy.

[00:50:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's so, so good.

[00:50:59] [SPEAKER_03]: And I completely forgotten about that too.

[00:51:01] [SPEAKER_03]: That's all.

[00:51:02] [SPEAKER_03]: It looks like they're on Mars.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_02]: How do they make movies?

[00:51:04] [SPEAKER_03]: It reminds me maybe just because I just watched this movie,

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_03]: but I recently rewatched 2001, A Space Odyssey at the Roxy.

[00:51:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh.

[00:51:11] [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, there's the whole final scene in 2001

[00:51:12] [SPEAKER_03]: where he's like kind of traversing through space

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_03]: and you're getting all these flashes of the past, the present

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_03]: and the future and all that stuff.

[00:51:18] [SPEAKER_03]: And it reminded me of that a little bit too.

[00:51:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Just the way like it's so many quick flashes

[00:51:22] [SPEAKER_03]: and so much of what you're feeling for this character

[00:51:25] [SPEAKER_03]: feels very similar.

[00:51:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe a precursor to what we'll see in 2010,

[00:51:29] [SPEAKER_02]: the year we make contact or whatever that movie is.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_03]: That's part of why I rewatched 2001 at the Roxy.

[00:51:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Also because I had never seen it in a theater before.

[00:51:38] [SPEAKER_03]: So I was like, well, I got to see 2001 in the theater.

[00:51:40] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's true. But I was like, and it's a good opportunity for me to rewatch it

[00:51:43] [SPEAKER_03]: because I haven't seen it in a very long time.

[00:51:45] [SPEAKER_03]: And that will prep me for our 2010 episode, which will be coming up soon.

[00:51:48] [SPEAKER_03]: And actually speaking of I did.

[00:51:50] [SPEAKER_03]: I programmed Sorcerer at the Roxy last year.

[00:51:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Really? And I wanted to go and I couldn't.

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_03]: And I was so mad.

[00:51:59] [SPEAKER_03]: No.

[00:51:59] [SPEAKER_03]: And the reason I couldn't go is because my girlfriend

[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_03]: wanted to go to the circus, which turned out to be a circus

[00:52:06] [SPEAKER_03]: for very small children like a circus is.

[00:52:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, like like often circuses are.

[00:52:11] [SPEAKER_03]: But sometimes there's like, you know, 18 up circuses or whatever,

[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_03]: which we which we did go to like a horror themed one

[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_03]: like a couple of weeks ago, which was pretty cool.

[00:52:18] [SPEAKER_03]: That's cool. But yeah, this circus was like, you know, meant for four year olds.

[00:52:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And we were there. We were watching, you know, the kids meet Elsa.

[00:52:28] [SPEAKER_03]: And we were and I was like, man, I could be watching a sorcerer.

[00:52:31] [SPEAKER_03]: I could be watching that bridge sequence right now.

[00:52:33] [SPEAKER_03]: But I did get to hear about it afterwards.

[00:52:35] [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I was the one who like really suggested

[00:52:37] [SPEAKER_03]: because it was right after we in Friedkin died.

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, we got to play sorcerer.

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_03]: We got to do something for William Friedkin dying.

[00:52:42] [SPEAKER_03]: And so we played sorcerer and a really big crowd came out for it.

[00:52:45] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was mostly people who had not seen the movie before.

[00:52:48] [SPEAKER_03]: And everybody that I talked to was like completely blown away by it.

[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Like it was just like a new favorite movie for a lot of them.

[00:52:54] [SPEAKER_03]: And that was pretty great. Love to see that.

[00:52:56] [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome. I would love to see this in a theater.

[00:52:58] [SPEAKER_02]: That would be so fucking cool.

[00:53:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm hoping to play it again at some point

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_03]: because I'm trying to do a series called Life is But a Tangerine Dream.

[00:53:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a great chef's kiss.

[00:53:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we could do like four or five Tangerine Dream movies.

[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it would work.

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Just sorcerer five times.

[00:53:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer five times. Baby, this is the way to do it.

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_03]: No, you do sorcerer. You do what are the other?

[00:53:19] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, thief, risky business.

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_03]: I think there was like one other like big one that I wanted to do.

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm blanking on what it was right now.

[00:53:27] [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm trying to scroll through Wikipedia so fast.

[00:53:29] [SPEAKER_02]: I always get and this feels like blasphemous to even say

[00:53:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Tangerine Dream and Goblin Confused that did all the like Dario Argento

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_02]: and like Jaloves scores because they're very synth heavy and sort of similar.

[00:53:41] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think you're right that the transition into like 80s synthy stuff

[00:53:45] [SPEAKER_02]: is much more the Tangerine Dream and the like kind of intense

[00:53:48] [SPEAKER_02]: gobbler horrory stuff is the Goblin thing.

[00:53:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Right. Goblin feels like I'm about to shit my pants.

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I think of the Suspirious score and be like, Oh God.

[00:53:57] [SPEAKER_03]: And they just scream, which I don't know where a couple of times in the movie.

[00:54:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, holy shit. Yeah, it's very creepy.

[00:54:04] [SPEAKER_03]: No, my Tangerine Dream series would be if we did four movies throughout the month.

[00:54:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer, thief, risky business and near dark or what?

[00:54:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Nice. But you could also do legend.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_03]: You could do Firestarter, which is a bad movie, but still three o'clock high

[00:54:20] [SPEAKER_03]: is a Tangerine Dream movie. Miracle Mile is a lot of good stuff in there.

[00:54:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I definitely every time I watch a movie,

[00:54:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I put on a movie and the open that I've never seen before or whatever in the opening credits.

[00:54:31] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like music by Tangerine Dream.

[00:54:32] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, yes. You sit forward and see your finger like, here we go.

[00:54:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Buckle up. All right.

[00:54:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Should we do some letterbox reviews? Mike, see what the people say.

[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_03]: What do they got to say, Mike? All right. Got some letterbox reviews for Sorcerer here,

[00:54:46] [SPEAKER_03]: the first of which is a four and a half star review from Demi

[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Adjoubibe, which reads perfect movie if you want to reorient yourself

[00:54:54] [SPEAKER_03]: on your couch and go, ah, Jesus Christ, every few minutes provokes such

[00:55:00] [SPEAKER_03]: a visual reactions. I'm aching to rewatch it with different people several months

[00:55:03] [SPEAKER_03]: apart. So my bones have time to settle between viewings.

[00:55:05] [SPEAKER_03]: It makes uncut gems looks like a vacation slideshow while I'm here.

[00:55:10] [SPEAKER_03]: William Freakins, a psychopath, right?

[00:55:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Drives me nuts that all the stories about his insane filmmaking antics

[00:55:17] [SPEAKER_03]: genuinely resulted masterpieces like, yes, he shot a car chase in New York

[00:55:21] [SPEAKER_03]: without a permit and fired guns on set. But out of that, we got the French

[00:55:24] [SPEAKER_03]: connection and the exorcist. These movies should have sucked to

[00:55:29] [SPEAKER_03]: teach us all a lesson. Real irresponsible feeling on the universe's part.

[00:55:33] [SPEAKER_03]: One human belongs in a cage and it's William Freakins.

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_02]: That's so true. I think we even talked about that on the French connection episode.

[00:55:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, everything he did is like is like pretty reprehensible, but

[00:55:45] [SPEAKER_03]: but if you look at these movies, no one died.

[00:55:48] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. Yeah, it's nuts.

[00:55:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Here's a five star review from a film for Tato, a cinema of

[00:55:56] [SPEAKER_03]: madness, pure physical detail. Damnation is a form of cinematic spectacle.

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Man with blood in their hands, fulfilling their death wish. What for Clu's

[00:56:04] [SPEAKER_03]: oh is social need for Friedkin is self-punishment. First world crimes re-imagined

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_03]: in a third world purgatory in amusement park of unforgiven nature. The beauty

[00:56:12] [SPEAKER_03]: is that everything is translated in pure action. Everything a matter of another form of behavior.

[00:56:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Among other things, this is Freakins most compassionate movie. Francisco Rabaul's

[00:56:20] [SPEAKER_03]: taciturn killer is the film's heart and Bruno Kramer's masochist banker. It's clear eyed soul.

[00:56:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Damn. Yeah, I like that first world

[00:56:28] [SPEAKER_02]: crimes in a third world purgatory is like wow. Holy shit. That's a good description of

[00:56:32] [SPEAKER_03]: the movie. Yeah, absolutely. Here's a five star review from Shane McGowan.

[00:56:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Incredible that Freakin destroyed himself and his crew to make a masterpiece and audiences were just like

[00:56:40] [SPEAKER_03]: this sucks. Let's go see Star Wars again.

[00:56:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think you're right. It's the vibes. The vibes are let's the shift

[00:56:47] [SPEAKER_03]: that happened. Yes, I have another review in a similar vein here. It's a five star

[00:56:51] [SPEAKER_03]: review from Joe. It's been 40 years since Sorcerer first came to

[00:56:55] [SPEAKER_03]: a South American jungle near you, but it's hard to imagine a time when it didn't exist.

[00:57:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Three sequels with many more to come. Three misguided yet often misunderstood

[00:57:03] [SPEAKER_03]: prequels. One Sorcerer story last year's Rogue One about the embezzlement

[00:57:07] [SPEAKER_03]: scheme that leads Sorcerers of Bruno Kramer into exile at the beginning of the movie.

[00:57:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Countless books, video games, animated cartoons and one infamous Christmas

[00:57:15] [SPEAKER_03]: special later. The pop culture crater left by sorcerers impact is so

[00:57:19] [SPEAKER_03]: large it makes the tree blown up by the film's heroes look more like a twig.

[00:57:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Poor Sorcerer. It's never going to get out from under that shadow.

[00:57:26] [SPEAKER_03]: It's always under that Star Wars shadow. Yeah, it's so weird that they're intertwined in this

[00:57:31] [SPEAKER_03]: way. I got one more review here, Mike. It's a five star review from Silent Dawn.

[00:57:35] [SPEAKER_03]: A descent into a vivid humid hell. One of these movies

[00:57:38] [SPEAKER_03]: where you can feel and smell it all. The beginning portraits of the four main characters

[00:57:42] [SPEAKER_03]: exude pity, horror, reflection and extremism, each feeding into the how

[00:57:46] [SPEAKER_03]: and why of the main journey. With Jackie, a getaway driver with a price in his head,

[00:57:51] [SPEAKER_03]: his calm demeanor is an external depiction of the madness lying dormant inside.

[00:57:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Victor is haunted by the last gaze aimed toward his wife and remembrance literally takes

[00:57:58] [SPEAKER_03]: hold of the wheel as the second truck tumbles off the side of the road with Kassam, a terrorist, along his

[00:58:03] [SPEAKER_03]: side. Nilo is the cackling existentialist ripping it all apart. An assassin

[00:58:07] [SPEAKER_03]: who kills just to get the gig of riding along in a truck loaded with nitroglycerin. He dies

[00:58:11] [SPEAKER_03]: by a bullet, but instead of the plain, inevitable expression of his victims, he smiles

[00:58:15] [SPEAKER_03]: and laughs, leaving an earthly hell for a place beyond bellowing oil rigs, rickety

[00:58:19] [SPEAKER_03]: bridges and otherworldly landscapes. Sorcerer is a distilled masterpiece

[00:58:23] [SPEAKER_03]: that with each rewatch seems like nothing less than William Friedkin's greatest achievement.

[00:58:27] [SPEAKER_03]: It howls and cries into the night, replacing exposition with movements,

[00:58:31] [SPEAKER_03]: faces and actions and Tangerine Dream is the lucid cherry on top, capturing specific

[00:58:35] [SPEAKER_03]: story beats with synthesizer sings and ghostly melodies. Its cumulative energy

[00:58:39] [SPEAKER_03]: is transparent and scintillating, taking rough sounds and spooky images and sending them

[00:58:43] [SPEAKER_03]: off into the jungle. They don't make him like this anymore only because we would go

[00:58:47] [SPEAKER_03]: insane if they did.

[00:58:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Wow. Ditto.

[00:58:54] [SPEAKER_02]: What they said. Yeah, you know what Sorcerer? Good movie. Good movie. Turns out. Good movie.

[00:59:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and that I think takes us to the end of our

[00:59:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Sorcerer episode. Mike, any final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, great. I still I think outside

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_02]: of maybe film Twitter circles under scene, I think I don't really hear like

[00:59:11] [SPEAKER_02]: my normie friends don't talk about Sorcerer.

[00:59:14] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think people should definitely check it out and also Wages of Fear if you haven't seen that

[00:59:19] [SPEAKER_02]: very good. I think they are different enough in terms of like original and remake

[00:59:23] [SPEAKER_02]: that like they're worth watching not together but like close to each other. Like they're worth

[00:59:27] [SPEAKER_02]: not one of those kind of like, well, I've already seen it. I think they are very different. Yeah, which is how

[00:59:31] [SPEAKER_03]: I did it originally. But yeah, Wages of Fear. Great. Also, there's a new version of Wages of Fear

[00:59:35] [SPEAKER_03]: that just came out actually. I heard it's terrible. Yeah, I heard it's really bad. On Netflix.

[00:59:39] [SPEAKER_03]: I think, right? It's like a French Netflix version. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a French remake of Wages of Fear.

[00:59:43] [SPEAKER_03]: So at least it's not like, you know, an English language remake. But then again, that's what Sorcerer is.

[00:59:48] [SPEAKER_03]: So also watch Cold Sweat.

[00:59:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Cold Sweat. Really under scene. You talk about under scene. Cold Sweat rules.

[00:59:55] [SPEAKER_03]: That movie is incredible. So yeah, people should check that out too. Yeah, no.

[00:59:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorcerer is, I think it's definitely grown a lot in esteem over the years, but certainly it's more

[01:00:03] [SPEAKER_03]: of like a cult object than anything else. It's not like, you know, William Friedkin's like career

[01:00:07] [SPEAKER_03]: among like the populace, among pop culture in general. It's probably defined

[01:00:11] [SPEAKER_03]: by The Exorcist. I would imagine. Yeah, for sure.

[01:00:14] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I mean, other great movies in there too, including French Connection, which we've talked about.

[01:00:19] [SPEAKER_03]: And Sorcerer deserves to be talked about right among them. It's really fantastic among his best

[01:00:23] [SPEAKER_03]: works. And so yeah, I'm glad that it's gotten reclaimed over the years and

[01:00:27] [SPEAKER_03]: that we got to talk about it for this podcast. I'm glad I got the opportunity to watch it again. Well, and you

[01:00:31] [SPEAKER_03]: missed it in theaters. What a shame. I know. Yeah, I got to work. I got to work out

[01:00:35] [SPEAKER_03]: some kind of way to get Sorcerer back up the rocks. Yeah, you'll figure it out.

[01:00:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. All right, Mike D. Where can we find you online this week? You can find me at

[01:00:44] [SPEAKER_02]: MDFilmBlog on Twitter and Letterboxd and Bluesky.

[01:00:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And if you'd like to donate to support the show, you could do that on our Ko-fi page, which is

[01:00:51] [SPEAKER_02]: ko-fi.com slash Mike and Mike Pods where you can donate fifty dollars and pick

[01:00:55] [SPEAKER_02]: a bonus episode for Mike and Mike. Go to the movies, get on over there, pick a topic. We'll talk about

[01:00:59] [SPEAKER_02]: it. And if you want merch, we have merch available on our Redbubble, which is Mike and

[01:01:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Mike Pods dot Redbubble dot com. That's right. You can find me online at M. Smith Film Blog on

[01:01:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Twitter, Mike Smith Film on Letterboxd and Radio Mike Sandwich Instagram. Thanks much for

[01:01:11] [SPEAKER_03]: listening to Complete Works. I'm Mike Smith. That's my decree show. Don't forget to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts

[01:01:15] [SPEAKER_03]: or any other podcast app. And if you want to contact us, you can tweet at us at

[01:01:19] [SPEAKER_03]: CompleteWorks by this W-R-K-S no O in the word works and you can find the rest of our podcast

[01:01:23] [SPEAKER_03]: and Rapture Press alongside many other podcasts, all kinds of comic books and movie news and all that good stuff.

[01:01:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Our theme song was created by Kyle Cullen who you can reach for your own podcast themes at

[01:01:31] [SPEAKER_03]: Kyle's Podcast Themes at Gmail dot com. And our logo was designed by Mack V or

[01:01:35] [SPEAKER_03]: at Fearless Guard on Twitter next week. Roy Scheider is contractually

[01:01:40] [SPEAKER_03]: obligated to reprise his role as Chief Brody due to the failure of Sorcerer.

[01:01:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Jaws 2 is coming up next week. Wow. Can't wait.

[01:01:48] [SPEAKER_02]: I was going to say can't be excited, but that's not right.

[01:01:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Can't wait. I am excited because I haven't seen Jaws 2 in

[01:01:55] [SPEAKER_03]: decades. Yeah, I have seen I've seen Jaws 1 a million times

[01:01:59] [SPEAKER_03]: and I've seen Jaws 2 exactly once.

[01:02:03] [SPEAKER_03]: And so I'm excited to revisit it because I know it has gotten

[01:02:06] [SPEAKER_03]: like not as reclaimed as Sorcerer has or anything, but it's definitely been reclaimed as like

[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_03]: you know, a fairly strong kind of like slasher movie sequel where Jaws

[01:02:15] [SPEAKER_03]: is the slasher. And that sounds pretty fun. And I remember

[01:02:19] [SPEAKER_03]: nothing about Jaws 2. So I'm going to be going in basically completely fresh. Also,

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_03]: I just finished reading Jaws, the book which I had not read when

[01:02:27] [SPEAKER_03]: we did our Jaws episode. And so now I have even extra context

[01:02:31] [SPEAKER_03]: now. Now I know Brody's wife and Hooper had an affair.

[01:02:35] [SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't lying. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's wild. Also Hooper both

[01:02:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Hooper and Quint die in the book. It's a weird thing where like you did

[01:02:43] [SPEAKER_03]: tell me about that and I was like, OK, that's going to be a pretty minor part of the book. It's

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_03]: like half the story. It's a whole subplot. Yeah, it's a long

[01:02:51] [SPEAKER_03]: stretch of it. Like the entire middle stretch of the book has nothing to do with the shark

[01:02:55] [SPEAKER_03]: and it's just about the affair they're having. And weirdly, it's kind of the most interesting

[01:02:59] [SPEAKER_03]: part of the book because I already know about everything else that happens. But I don't know anything about this thing.

[01:03:03] [SPEAKER_03]: What's this all about? So yeah, we'll talk more about that in our Jaws

[01:03:07] [SPEAKER_03]: 2 episode coming up next week. Also remember to check out our other podcasts. Mike and I go to the movies

[01:03:11] [SPEAKER_03]: for all kinds of other movie related stuff, including recent releases, ranked list, general

[01:03:15] [SPEAKER_03]: discussions and a lot more. So thanks so much for listening, guys, and thanks for taking

[01:03:19] [SPEAKER_03]: a ride on the Shiders side. When with that one, because it's

[01:03:23] [SPEAKER_03]: it's taken a ride like riding in a truck. Oh, we're riding in a truck. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:03:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not not we're not in Shiders this episode. Right. We're not in Shiders

[01:03:31] [SPEAKER_03]: this episode. We're not reading between the lines. We're taking

[01:03:35] [SPEAKER_03]: a ride on the Shiders.