#5. Cold Pursuit and Dan Mallory
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A rare three thumbs up: everyone loves Cold Pursuit, which was sold as Taken meets Mr. Plow and turns out to be something much stranger. JVL says he hasn't guffawed in a theater like that in years, that he just loves the crap out of it, and that he was finally watching "the Wes Anderson directed revenge thriller that I've always wanted my whole life" — praising how the script gives real personality to five or six of Viking's henchmen, the 100-foot ballroom hideout with a chandelier lying on the floor, and the reservation gag at the posh hotel front desk. Sonny calls it a clear improvement on the Norwegian original In Order of Disappearance (same writer-director, streaming on Netflix), with Tom Bateman's Viking legitimately terrifying where the original's was merely a douchebag, though he'd cut the entire cop subplot as ten minutes of police explaining the plot back to us; JVL counters that the cops serve an ideological rather than narrative function, hammering the film's anti-legalization, deeply reactionary politics. He frames it as the successful mirror image of last week's Serenity — a bait-and-switch that lands just inside what an audience will accept and delights them — while Sonny is crushed by its B-minus CinemaScore, explaining that anything under a B-plus means audiences felt shortchanged, and concludes "people are garbage." They agree the Liam Neeson interview flap (the blackjack story, told as a warning that revenge is poison) was aggressively misconstrued by outrage aggregators and didn't move the box office. The other half is Sonny's Washington Post piece on Dan Mallory, the A.J. Finn fraud from the New Yorker profile, asking why a reader of novels should care; JVL argues The Woman in the Window is commerce rather than art and Mallory a corporate climber whose real victims were the co-workers he knifed, unlike a teenage Paul Thomas Anderson stealing film equipment in service of actually creating something. Elsewhere: a five-star review from a 19-year-old British undergrad praising "JVL's militant Catholicism" and Vic's ribald humor, sparking a pronunciation fight, and JVL sending Shannon to Rome for ten days as a Valentine's birthday present while he sets a $1,500 over-under on the Lego store.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest ribald episode, the Sub-Beacon discusses Cold Pursuit  and the Dan Mallory controversy—Sonny...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Sub-Beacon, a podcast on movies and pop culture hosted by Sonny Bunch, Jonathan V.
Vic00:00:30I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you that Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at our podcasts and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, leave a review. We are definitely new and noteworthy.
Sonny00:00:46We were briefly the number one new and noteworthy in the TV and film subsection of iTunes. So it's really, this is better than anything.
Vic00:00:55It was a magical moment that I took a screenshot because I said, you got to get it now because any moment it'll change. I haven't checked since. I think we slipped to like seven, but we're still new and noteworthy after.
Sonny00:01:08We're on the homepage of that weird subsection that nobody really listens to. TV and film. TV and film is definitely, as best as I can tell, I don't know if it's the least trafficked section of the iTunes empire, but it is, I think, well, it's certainly well below politics.
Vic00:01:23I think people love it. Or true crime. Yes. No, people love that. But, you know. You know what I mean? Part of that is also under the TV and film kind of like making of Murderer
JVL00:01:32or whatever it is and, you know, the good place. Honestly, the opening of last week's show with you going down to the 25th floor to blow it up with a bomb, that was true crime. That was a true crime.
Vic00:01:43Well, not as bad as that story somebody had sent about, was it at a Lowe's or a Home Depot where the guy said, oh, you better get out of here. I'm about to blow this place up. And they thought that he had a bomb threat, but he meant that he had to go to the bathroom. I don't know.
Sonny00:01:57I'm pretty sure that guy was. He was actually making a bomb threat.
Vic00:02:00In any event, talking about reviews, if I may, we've received so many reviews, and so I decided to look back on just the latest ones, and I found what I believe is the nicest, sweetest review we've ever gotten, at least recently in our eight, now nine, episode existence, titled I Shouldn't Like This and You Will Too. I'll give you the short version, okay? I'm a 19-year-old female who just started her first year of undergrad in the U.K. In other words, I have no idea why I listened to this podcast or why I've listened to it for the past three years, to be honest. So she was 16 when she started listening to it. I love, I'm going to cut to the end. I'm cutting to the end. True crime. Excuse me. I love Sonny's misanthropy, JVL's militant Catholicism, and Vic Jean's ribald sense of humor. Ribald? Ribald. Ribald. You don't know how to pronounce it.
Sonny00:02:56How have you been a journalist for all these years?
Vic00:02:59What did I say? Ribald? Ribald. You said ribald. Ribald. I always say ribald.
JVL00:03:04Ribaldry. I think it's ribald.
Vic00:03:05Yeah. No. Yes. John Lovitz would say it on CNN, on SNL all the time, with the ribald sense of humor. We'll have to talk about this. Sonny, how are you the editor? Let me finish. I know too many inside jokes to escape now, and it's a nice way to relax walking home from a two-hour Russian tutorial, even if I get strange looks trying to muffle my laughter. There's also something intensely comforting about hearing familiar American voices 3,000 miles from home. Even if that's Vic making his 5,000th Bohemian Rhapsody pun, Bohemian Rhapsody pun, I'm sure it's fine, says M. Thatcher, five stars. Question. JVL.
JVL00:03:46Why didn't you read it with the British accent?
Vic00:03:49She would have had a more elegant, she's not from the, I'm sure she's not from the east side. She's not from Eastland, right? It would have been like, you know, there's also, there's something intensely comforting about hearing familiar American voices 3,000 miles from home. Okay, that's how she would have said it, gently. So on that note, happy Valentine's Day, fellas, because that's when we tape, every Thursday. Every Thursday. JVL, you must have big Valentine's Day planned for you tonight.
JVL00:04:18Huge, huge, happy birthday, Shannon. Hey, happy birthday. It's a Valentine's Day baby. Wow. And she. Every year, huh? Every year, and she is having a big, special birthday, and to celebrate it. Oh, boy. I am giving her the greatest present you can give your wife. I'm sending her to another country by herself. Oh, wow.
Vic00:04:45That is kind of like a great present. I understand.
JVL00:04:48So she departs this evening for the Eternal City. Roma. She will be there for 10 days. I will be at home with our wife. One, two, three, four children by myself. If we can spend under $1,500 at the Lego store over the course of the next 10 days, I will view that as an accomplishment. I'm going to put $1,500 as the line for the over-under on how much money we drop at the Lego store for the next 10 days. Would you care to take the over? I'm taking the under. What was the number? $1,500.
Sonny00:05:23I don't understand how you can spend that much money at the Lego store, frankly. So you're taking the under. I'm taking under, too. I mean, you're deranged, so I can see you getting over. I don't understand how you're going to go over.
Vic00:05:37And half of it's going to be for you.
JVL00:05:39No, no. No, no, it's not for me. No, it's literally for the kids because you throw Legos at them and they take care of themselves. How long is she away for? 10 days.
Vic00:05:4810 days, my goodness.
JVL00:05:4910 days is a long time. No, it's not. It's a long time. Look, you can't go to someplace like Rome for less than 10 days, right? You lose a day each way traveling. You lose a day just in jet lag when you get there. It isn't even worth doing for less than 10 days.
Vic00:06:04I did a Rome trip last June with, I think, some of the same people. Yes, our friends. And it's amazing. It's great. And I gained no weight because we did all this walking.
JVL00:06:17Well, and Shannon, who lived in Italy for a year and speaks fluent Italian and knows she's got that city wired. She's going to have the greatest time. And I'm going to miss her, but it'll be lovely with my kids. And probably no one will die. And everything will be just fine. Sonny, did you have anything you wanted to say to my dear wife, who is a huge fan of yours? The thing I like most about Shannon is how quickly she can read.
Sonny00:06:40I've always been impressed by her speed reading ability. So that's a nice thing that I can say. Is that good?
JVL00:06:49Is that acceptable? She reads close to 90 books a year.
Sonny00:06:52I don't understand how she does. I read a book a week, like two years ago, just to see if I could do it. And I could, but it was like a death sentence. I don't see how she does it.
Vic00:07:00She's an insane reader. I will almost only now read if I'm writing about it or getting paid to write. That's the only books I'll read. So if I have to read five books in a month.
JVL00:07:10You mentioned that as if it's a change. Yes. Was there ever a point in which that was not the case?
Vic00:07:16In the last 21 years. The last 21, 20, oh my goodness, 23 years. I think those are the only books I read now are things I'm going to write about or do a review on or get paid for. Other than that, I'm like... And everybody, this has happened to you because you fellas are jerks. You have family and friends who tell you, you've got to read this book. No, I'm giving you this book. You have to read this book. And then there's just a bunch of books that you just never get around to reading. Nobody ever does that to me.
JVL00:07:39Really?
Vic00:07:40I get all sorts of books.
JVL00:07:42Really? Very rarely. You know what I'm talking about, JVL. Absolutely. And you're like, okay. I started re-listening to Brideshead Revisited this morning on the way to come to the show and the reader of the new edition, the new Audible edition I just bought is Jeremy Irons. Oh, it's so good. Wow.
Vic00:08:01Oh, it's so good. Kate read Brideshead Revisited on a weekly standard cruise many, many years ago. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That would have taken me like years to read. It's not that long. If it's more than 200 pages. Brideshead Revisited?
JVL00:08:16Brideshead Revisited isn't that long. It's long for a WAA novel. It's long for a WAA novel.
Sonny00:08:20Have you read it? I read half of it and I got bored and I put it down.
JVL00:08:25If you read the other half, he'd be a different person, JVL. And you wouldn't understand any of it. I read half of it.
Sonny00:08:32Of course you're bored. Because it's a Catholic book. I read half of it and I was just like, I don't care about any of these people or any of the things that they're doing. And there's still like 200 pages left of Very Small Type. I'm done with this. I have to stop. And I really like WAA. TLDR. I actually really like WAA. I've read a bunch of his novels. Do you like the comedies? I like the comedies. I like the satire. Scoop. But Handful of Dust. Black Magic. But I just, I could not. I couldn't get through Brideshead Revisited. I was just bored out of my mind.
Vic00:09:01Are you a Dan Mallory fan, Sonny Bunch?
Sonny00:09:06Early transition. Early transition. Yeah, so I don't really have anything to talk about. Can you set the table on this? Because I would like to talk about it with you. So the piece I wrote for the Washington Post this week was about Dan Mallory, who there's a big profile of in the New Yorker. It's like one of these classic New Yorker pieces. It's 12,000 words long. It starts with a thousand words of like, this is, this guy is having a great. Success. He's a, he's a master of his, his realm. And then, and then it does the kind of standard New Yorker shift where it's like, but something wasn't quite right. And the whole piece is basically about how this incredibly successful novelist, Dan Mallory, whose book is, I believe, called The Woman in the Window, is, is essentially a massive fraud, at least in terms of his personal life, right? He's a, he lies to everyone. He pretended he had cancer. He told friends then. He told co-workers that his mother and father were dead. He, he seems to have impersonated his brother over email for an extended period of time to his co-workers to convince, again, convince them, the co-workers, that he, Dan Mallory, had cancer. So anyway, it's this, it's this kind of, it's this. Brain cancer. Brain. What he was telling people is that I have like 10 years to live. Well, yeah, he said, I have brain cancer, but I'm, I've got 10 years to live. So he, it was the brain cancer, but also then spinal cancer, because he gets the lumbar. It metastatized. Yeah. Did, did you read the piece, JVO? The New Yorker piece? Oh, yeah.
Vic00:10:33So, question, question. So he's a novelist, but Woman in the Window is not a novel. No, it's a novel. Oh, I think. It's a novel. But it's about him, or it's not about him? No, it's not about him at all.
JVL00:10:43So none of, so this is, so this is.
Sonny00:10:45All right, this is the thing. This is the thing, right, is that this, there's this big giant New Yorker piece about how this novelist has lied about his life, and it's fascinating on its own terms. It's the sort of New Yorker piece that is fascinating, as I, I believe I was G-chatting with, a friend of the show, Catherine Miller, you know, she, she, she chatted, she said something like, I would read a 12,000 word piece in the New Yorker about, you know, controversy at the CVS checkout lines. Like, this is, it's the sort of thing they do very, very well. It's, it's really well told. It's interesting. It's about interesting characters. It's about a business I don't know that much about publishing, despite kind of working adjacent to it or on the periphery of it for many years. So it's all very interesting. What I was, what I was left wondering, though, and this is kind of what I wrote in the Washington Post, is why should I, as a reader of novels, care that Dan Mallory is a fraud? So it's one thing if he's lying in a memoir, right? And it's one thing if you, you have this guy who has all of these weird, this, who's clearly like a shady creep, and he's written a history or something, you know, then you're wondering, oh, well, if he's this unreliable in his own life, how could he write a reliable history? But he is a novelist. He is writing stories that are made up. For entertainment value. And if you enjoy these books, I've not read them. There's only one. There's only one. Well, he's signed a contract for two books. So he's written one book. And it's massively popular, by the way. It's the, it was the best-selling novel of last year. It debuted at number one. It's, somebody in the story says it's the first debut novel to, to debut at number one on the bestseller list in like 15 years or something. Anyway, he's a massive, huge, enormous success, right? I am, I am struggling to understand why, if I was one of his readers, I should care that he is a fraud. Okay. And, and there's, this gets into ethical questions about rewarding bad people with your money, right? This gets into the question about Bryan Singer. Is it immoral to go see Bohemian Rhapsody and be one of the people who puts a penny in his pocket that gets him the $40 million bonus that he got because that movie grossed $800 million?
JVL00:12:55Right.
Sonny00:12:55But it's not really like that because he's not hurting. The people he works, he's not twisting arms and raping young children in his industry in order to get ahead.
JVL00:13:05I mean, I, like, it's, it's, you know.
Sonny00:13:08Allegedly. You have to remember. As the Atlantic, as the Atlantic has reported, not, this is not, I have no personal knowledge
Vic00:13:13I meant as the chief legal correspondent of Right Writer, I'm always remembering these
Sonny00:13:18disclaimers. So, but I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm kind of torn. Now, JVL, I get the sense that you, when we were chatting over text, you have a slightly different view of this.
JVL00:13:27Yeah. So I, because. Victorino, did you, have you, did you. I read Sonny's piece. I mean, you weren't being.
Sonny00:13:32You read Sonny's piece.
JVL00:13:32He read my, he read my 800 word piece.
Vic00:13:35And that, and that took me like a good amount of time. Okay.
JVL00:13:38So first of all, I would say the New Yorker is very, very careful to not say you shouldn't like this. This affects the art. This is, I mean, it is not, the New Yorker piece is very much a piece about a story about an interesting person. That is, it is not an expose of, and it is. It is telling something which seems to have been essentially common knowledge, or if not common knowledge, then a very, very poorly kept secret in the publishing industry. One of the things you learn in it is that Dan Mallory published this book under a pseudonym,
Vic00:14:12A.J. Finn.
JVL00:14:14Sold it under a pseudonym as well. His name comes out halfway through. So put the book up for auction, a bunch of houses are bidding on it, and midway through it is revealed who he is, and then everybody drops out except for one. Half the houses dropped out. Was it? Half? Half. Okay. Well, a bunch of the houses dropped out when they heard it was him. So people in the industry knew what this guy was. So the first piece of pushback I would construct against your argument is that there is a difference between art and commerce. This difference is incredibly hazy, right? I mean, it's very, very hard to look at any creative endeavor and say, well, this is 100% art or this is 100% commerce. But like porn, it is the kind of thing that you basically know it when you see it. The emoji movie is not art. It's commerce. It is commerce. So it is a corporation was looking around for product that they have to create. They see what they believe is an underleveraged piece of intellectual property. Emojis. Emojis. And believe that, okay, well, we can create a product out of this intellectual property and then make money out of it. And then the next tertiary level concern. It becomes, so what should the product look like? Right? I would suggest that this book, The Woman in the Window, is more commerce than art. And that Mallory is more businessman than artist. There is a reason. This is the first thing he's ever published. Right? I mean, this is so. And here is where I would say that you frequently see creative types, especially in film, who the charitable way would be to say it would be are piratical. So people who lie and cheat and steal in the service of creating stuff. Paul Thomas Anderson was like this. So when Paul Thomas Anderson was like 15 years old, he was stealing film equipment out of lockers because he had some access to it and sneaking into sets because he was dying to create film, even if it was only like, you know, eight millimeter film that he and his five friends were putting together. Right? I mean, this was everything was about. The creative act and their piracy was about the creative act. Mallory is a corporate climber and all of his deceptions have been about furthering himself as a business commodity inside publishing. And there are victims. The victims are the co-workers who he was knifing and crawling over. And because this stuff is the publishing industry is a very zero sum game. There are, you know, you, you come in as Dan Mallory. You want this job. There are 15 other people trying to get it and you get. The job by playing on the sympathies of the boss by saying, you know, I only have 10 years to live, so I got to really do this. And you guys know this. You've been like, this is my class struggle. You have been around people who are suckers for bad actors who are manipulating. And so all of this, the end point of all this is that Mallory's books like Mallory's novel. There's one of these every year, right? This is it is an assembly line for. Middle-aged women who buy. This is not all that dissimilar, frankly, from like there's always some movie every year that becomes a giant hit with 14-year-old boys, right? Because the 14-year-old boys are the primary consumer group for big popcorn action movies. Women are the primary consumer. Middle-aged women are the primary consumer group for crime fiction. Right. Crime fiction. So whether it's the lovely bones or her sister's keeper, whatever, like there's always there's a book like this every freaking year. Every year. And Mallory was positioning himself so that he would be allowed to have the product that was that product for the year. He is not an artist. He is not a guy who spent his life creating and stuff like that. All of this was positioning himself to be allowed to do that product. And whether this makes the product any better or worse, I think it probably does not impact that at all.
Sonny00:18:23Okay.
JVL00:18:24But that's my point. No, I mean, I'm agreeing with that. I would say you are viewing it as a creative act. And I think that's probably not the way to look at it. It's a piece of commerce. This is more like looking at somebody who has stolen trade secrets in the business and then pushed a product out to market. And so should you like Widget X any less because the guy who invented Widget X actually stole Widget X from another company or something like that?
Sonny00:18:54Well, you know, the New Yorker piece does kind of get into the fact that this is a totally derivative. Work of art that it's derivative of the Gillian Flynn books. It's derivative of the girl on the train and it's derivative of Hitchcock. It's derivative of they it has this weird little subsection on the movie.
JVL00:19:09Even of Talented Mr. Ripley.
Sonny00:19:11Of the Talented Mr. Ripley. And there's what a pastiche. It's yeah. OK, so my takeaway from that bit of the story was the New Yorker's effort to denigrate this as a work of art and to to essentially say. Look, this this guy is stealing and he's bad and therefore the work itself is bad. And not worth not worth reading or defending, but that's kind of beside the point. All of this is beside the point because what's on the page is on the page, right? If I'm a reader of books, if I'm a reader of these this type of dumb novel, I am I am I am I remain unconvinced that any of the things that you said or any of the fact that it's pastiche, the fact that it's hack work, all of that, none of that is really. Of any interest to me, because it is still the work is still what it is.
JVL00:20:02But you're just going to buy whatever the next one of these things is. So the answer is like, who cares what you think? The audience for this is really the other people in the publishing industry who may look at this and say, you know what, we'll just give that slot to somebody else. Right. Because, again, it's a factory.
Sonny00:20:17This isn't this is not factory products are varying in quality. So the fact that he can make a very good factory product. And one that is undeniable, again, undeniably successful. It's he's good at what he does, which is making crap for bad readers. I can't see anyone in the industry being like, you know what, we're going to turn down the next three million copy selling book that he does because people love his stories. Well, because people read his stories.
JVL00:20:49We'll we'll see if he can do it.
Sonny00:20:51Nor should they, is my other point. I don't think that the industry has any obligation to say. You know what, on moral principle, we're not going to work with you are fighting against
JVL00:21:03a straw man. Nobody is saying that. Yeah, but, you know, every again, everything is zero sum. And if you are a little brown and you can gift this slot of being the big nonfiction true crime book or that we are going to push this year and you could give it to any of these people and you know that any of them are going to sell three million copies, you can put your resources anywhere. But not any of them are going to sell three million copies.
Sonny00:21:25I don't I think that I think that's a straw man. I think that is a. That is a, you know, these these things, it's basically do not. These things do not always happen. You do not always get the the giant seller like that. Every house has one of these up here.
Vic00:21:40Little brown. I find that very offensive. I don't know what you're talking about. The Franklin. Come on. It's it's complicated because it's not a straightforward a million little pieces situation, as you mentioned in Washington Post. It's not the straightforward. This guy. It's not even I mean, another. You know, a greater dilemma is, you know, loving somebody like Joe Mitchell, the New Yorker essayist. And you realize something like, you know, old Mr. Flood is what they call a composite. People love doing these composite characters. He's a composite of two or three different people. I met plus my imagination. That's also one of the composites. And I'm just going to, you know, so it's not that what it is more complicated.
Sonny00:22:17One of my favorite bits of the New Yorker story is the way that the author he worked with as an editor who is now doing the Agatha Christie novels, wrote him into her Agatha Christie. I mean, there's like, there's all sorts of little, there's little bits and pieces of the story that are just fascinating. Again, the New Yorker piece is really, I'm sure better than the terrible novel that everyone has read and worth reading, worth reading on its own. Again, my, my only question here is like, what, what is my obligation as an ethical consumer of art?
JVL00:22:49You don't have, you don't, but so you would not consume it either way. And so why could you not then stand there and say, yes, this is a bad person. It's not effective. It's not affecting your choices, right? You wouldn't, you're not going to not buy it because it's a bad person. You were going to not buy it to begin with. So why can't you, while you're standing there, not buying it and say, huh, he's a bad person.
Sonny00:23:08I think I might buy it just on principle.
JVL00:23:10Look, we all, everybody has seen people like this in the workplace. Sure. Right. Like people who don't do any actual work, who don't produce anything of value, who are just knifing others in the back and sucking up and spinning sods. So I mean, this is. And they got away with it. And well, and most of the time they do. And he is one of these guys. He's Rolo Tomasi. He's the guy who gets away with it. Very good. Thank you. All right. I'm doing fine. In case anyone's wondering. No. I'm not. Well, thank you very much. What are you guys doing tonight? We're just getting some Thai, if you know what I mean.
Vic00:23:44It's literally true. We're actually getting Thai food because nobody feels like cooking. And I hate going out on restaurants on Valentine's. It's a total sham.
JVL00:23:51When you put the eye bolts into the ceiling. Oh, for the swing. For the swing. You've got to really make sure it's in a joist. I just. Because otherwise. Otherwise, if it's just in the drywall. Something could break. It'll fall right out when you put too much stress on it. That's very dangerous. When you get the rotary motion. Thank you.
Vic00:24:06And you're spinning the Thai love swing around. What are you talking about? No. So, but I'm trying to. My big thing is I just realized looking ahead at my own calendar. I've got yet another semi-annual. Semi-annual? Twice a year? Is that semi-annual? Bi-annual. Semi-annual. Semi-annual. Check up. And yet another. I think at the beginning of next month. And so I don't know why. I mean, my doctor actually said to me last time. She goes, you know, I could probably let you go a year, but I don't trust you. So come back in six months. She actually said that. She's not wrong. She's right. So I'm trying to lose weight, but I'm not losing weight.
JVL00:24:43Is your doctor younger than you?
Vic00:24:46We may be about the same age.
JVL00:24:49Okay. That's okay. It starts getting weird when your doctors are younger.
Vic00:24:52It's a matter of time. It's inevitable. I've had other doctors who are younger than me. But I'm trying to lose weight, and it's not happening.
JVL00:25:00Why do you need to lose weight? You look fine.
Vic00:25:02I think you're very kind. You look great. No, you look better than fine. You look great. Oh, you're very kind, JVL. I work out three times a week, but I go and I run three times a week for 30 minutes. And then I check on the scale, and I'm, like, staying the same. So I'm not – like, 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, if I did this kind of workout regimen, I could eat whatever I want, and I'd lose weight. Now everything is like this. It's not just the exercise. I actually have to – You know, diet. But what am I – I don't know.
JVL00:25:31Past a certain age, the exercise doesn't do anything. No, this is what's terrifying. And it's all diet. So, I mean, like, what's the point? So when you're younger, like, you can eat anything you want so long as you exercise. Yes. And when you get older, you can exercise as much as you want, and it doesn't matter unless you change your diet.
Vic00:25:46That's frightening. Kill the carbs. So that's what you are. Right? That's your thing is kill the carbs. You've got to just kind of kill the carbs. Like, you reduce the carbs or you kill the carbs.
JVL00:25:53You want to keep them under about 50 grams a day.
Vic00:25:58Okay. So, like, I had a bagel for breakfast. It's like 500 grams of carbohydrates.
JVL00:26:03But it was with lox and tomatoes. Oh, so, well, you know, fish oil actually – It's good. It turns – Yes. Weirdly enough, fish oil turns carbohydrates into antimatter when it mixes with your stomach acid. So that's okay. Wow, good. Thank God. So it just disappears? It just disappears.
Vic00:26:18Wow. I thought so.
Sonny00:26:18As long as it doesn't come into contact with any matter. Right.
Vic00:26:21So you're all about – Protein. You love protein. You can't – That's you. Yeah. You're just 100% protein. Love protein. Love those amino acids, the building blocks of every protein. Speaking of building blocks, over the weekend, the Lego movie, too, the second part, took the top spot at the box office with $34.5 million. I guess you could say it broke the glass ceiling, followed by What Men Want with $19 million. Broke the glass ceiling. Thank you. Hey. That's from listener Ken Hite told me. Better use that or I'm not listening anymore. So to listener Ken Hite – Now owe us 10 listeners. Yeah, because glass has fallen to fifth place, interestingly, all the way down to five. So What Men Want came in second with $19 million and Cold Pursuit in third place with $10.8 million. Are those good numbers for Lego 34.5?
Sonny00:27:18No. It's well under what the first one did. It's well under what the Batman Lego movie did. It's well under expectations. The studio was hoping for in the $45 to $55 million range, I think. So those are not good numbers. The problem is there's just been too many of these dumb Lego movies. Well, the good news is I'm going to prop up Lego through another one of their revenue channels this weekend. One of their ancillary revenue streams, the actual toys.
JVL00:27:46Does this mean we don't have to have any more of these dumb movies?
Sonny00:27:49No, I don't think so. They'll keep on doing it. I mean, they've been making these video games for like 15 years now, right?
Vic00:27:56Oh, the ones for like the Xbox and stuff. Yeah, my kids love them.
Sonny00:27:59It's insane. No, we'll keep getting these in movies.
JVL00:28:04I'm glad we're not talking about it. Did they do the sequel? Hold on.
Sonny00:28:11Yes.
Vic00:28:12Well, they wrote it. Okay. I also noticed that they're doing the Lego movie time with a car commercial. Did you see that one? Like Chevy. It's like a truck commercial, too. With Chris Pratt. He must get paid a lot for that, just to do that. But we're not actually going to discuss the Lego movie. Neither of us saw. Instead, we're going to talk about the movie in the third spot, Cold Pursuit. We all saw it.
JVL00:28:35Who saw it? I saw it.
Vic00:28:36I saw it, too.
JVL00:28:37I saw it. Did anyone else see it?
Vic00:28:42Cold Pursuit is not Gene's kind of movie. The easiest thing to do. It's exactly Gene's kind of movie. You know what you need for this kind of review? You need Mr. Freeze from Batman. That's all you need. Did Mr. Freeze see it? Did Mr. Freeze see it? This man cometh. What killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age. Let's kick some ice. None of this has anything to do with Cold Pursuit. It doesn't matter. It's so good. Those are just ice puns. Everybody freeze. You know what I mean? Cold party. If you go to YouTube, it's sick. Go to YouTube and type in Mr. Freeze puns, and it's the best of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Sonny00:29:26It's just a super cut.
Vic00:29:27It's a super cut, and it reminds you how horrible that movie was. It was just a horrible movie, and it reminds you how much money they paid Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? I mean, it was insane.
Sonny00:29:39$20 million, yeah. If I remember correctly, Jim Carrey got $20 million for The Riddler, and I don't think Tommy Lee Jones did. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The point is the movie's bad.
Vic00:29:54Yeah, and in fact, they had to do a reshoot, and I remember people. I remember people at the time writing about how much it cost to get Schwarzenegger to do the reshoot just because, you know, they got a problem to spray on.
Sonny00:30:04Well, this is the most interesting part of the Edward J. Epstein book on the economics of Hollywood is that he got access to one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's contracts and just how it, like, spells out dollar by dollar. Like, if you want Arnold to come back and shoot this many days of reshoots, it's this much money. Like, he gets this many dollars off the top gross of the film, not the watered-down studio take. It's fascinating. I mean, he was just swimming in cash in the, like, 90s.
Vic00:30:34And I bet, I mean, he looked over that contract, you know, I mean, he's that kind of a guy. I mean, I bet you he had that thing mastered. And it reminds me, you know, if you're a lawyer, you're never, I don't think you're ever out of work because they always need people for stuff like this. That'd be a great thing to do, I think, be a lawyer.
Sonny00:30:50A little bit late, isn't it?
Vic00:30:51Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Sonny.
Sonny00:30:54But then you wouldn't be able to do this podcast. Oh, that's a good point. But I would have been a real. It's new and new. I would have been. New and not worthy podcast.
Vic00:30:58The real chief legal correspondent.
Sonny00:31:00So how about a real review, Sonny? Cold Pursuit has been sold to audiences as something like Taken Meets Mr. Plow from The Simpsons. And it is that kind of, but it's actually much more than that. So the story starts with Liam Neeson, who plays a plowman in a small town outside of Denver, Colorado. Winning Citizen of the Year Award. And he gives a short speech about plowing the streets and moving forward. I'm sure there's some sort of metaphor in there. I zoned out. But the real action starts when his son is murdered by a group of drug-dealing gangsters who are angry that he has helped somebody else steal a kilo of Coke. So kid dies. Dies of an OD. Liam Neeson's like, my son was not a drug addict. I can't believe. And then he sets out to find out who actually killed his son. And there's, you know, revenge, all that stuff. What's interesting about this film is that it is kind of like two or three takings in one. There's the Liam Neeson trying to get revenge for his son being killed. But then also there's a drug dealer who is this kind of amusing green stereotype. He drives a Tesla. He hates high fructose corn syrup. He wants his kid. He wants his kid to eat nothing but, you know, organic vegetables and grass-fed beef while he's dealing heroin and cocaine to the people of the world.
JVL00:32:36Do you notice where his bodyguards are drinking, like, green smoothies? Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's all fantastic.
Sonny00:32:40It's all fantastic. And he has his own kid, and he's trying to teach his son about how to be a model in the world. And you can tell his view of the world is a little bit skewed because he gives the boy a copy of Lord of the Flies as an instruction manual, not as a warning. It's everything you need to know about life. Everything you need to know about life. And then on top of that, there's a third father and son story. A tribe of Native Americans is also running drugs in the back hills of Colorado. And there, the son of one of the chief is killed while trying to make a drug run by the folks who are running the drugs out of Colorado. Anyway, I'm making it sound more complicated than it actually is. The whole point of this film is it's about fathers and sons and teaching people how to live in the world and what it means to be a community. All of which is to say is that it is more than Taken meets Mr. Plow. There's a lot of different things going on here. Now, what's kind of interesting about this film is that it's an Insta remake of a Swedish, I believe.
JVL00:33:51Norwegian.
Sonny00:33:51Norwegian film, the original of which you can actually watch on Netflix right now. It's on Netflix. It's called In Order of Disappearance. It stars Stellan Skarsgård in the Liam Neeson role. Is it in English or is it in? No, it's in Swedish or Norwegian.
Vic00:34:07I'd like to hear Stellan Skarsgård speak that. I think that's interesting.
Sonny00:34:10It's Norwegian. I just want to make one brief point about the difference between the Norwegian and U.S. versions of this film. In the U.S. version of this film, there is a weird subplot involving the police, which is totally unnecessary. It takes up five to ten minutes of screen time, but it is literally just the cops saying all of the things that we have seen happen on screen. It's just the cops explaining the plot to us. It's more than that. Okay, you think there's more going on here than that. Okay, well, in terms of the function of the plot, it's just the cops saying what's going on. And it is totally unnecessary, and it's a total addition. Very brief moments with the same characters in the Norwegian version, but it's like 30 seconds of screen time. And I think you could have lost all of that and streamlined the movie and made it a more efficient hour 45 minutes instead of an hour 55 minutes. But apparently I have missed something very important, JVL.
JVL00:35:20I think the cops are making a crypto-conservative argument.
Sonny00:35:24Well, the whole film is making a crypto-conservative argument.
JVL00:35:26Right, no, but I'm saying the cops are... I think the cops are underlying that. There's a whole thing about the legalization of pot in Colorado, and the cops are 100% against it. And I should say, the good cop, the Emmy Rosen cop, is totally against it and makes a thing about, oh, so we just want to have stoned people walking around the streets? Yeah, I got that. It's ridiculous. How can I get that? I thought it was underscoring the politics of the film. The politics of the film, they don't help the story.
Sonny00:36:02They don't serve a narrative function.
JVL00:36:03They serve an ideological function.
Sonny00:36:05They do not serve a narrative function, and therefore they could go. Because the rest of the film is still deeply reactionary. Yes. I mean, this is, again, the most obvious thing is the green drug lord who is murdering people and all that stuff. But then there's other stuff. The interplay between the Native Americans and the gangster. And the interplay with the Native Americans themselves. There's a very funny scene, a very, like, kind of – it's hard to tell this joke without it being problematic on my end. But let me just try and do it anyway. It's the scene – the Native Americans have murdered one of the white drug dealers. And they're trying to get rid of the body. And, you know, they say, hey, why don't you – one of the guys points to this woman. We're working on a computer. He's like, hey, can you get rid of this body? And she says, no, make the Indian do it, pointing to the Indian American, not Native American fellow. The gentleman from Southeast Asia. The gentleman from Southeast Asia. So, like, there are lots of little wordplay moments like that that I was –
JVL00:37:16You need a reservation.
Sonny00:37:17You need a – the whole reservation scene is hilarious.
JVL00:37:20I have not guffawed in a movie theater like that in – I don't know.
Vic00:37:24There were a few times where I found myself out loud making a noise.
JVL00:37:27What happens – we should say maybe spoilers. Well, we've already – Where the – so the Indian – the Native American drug cartel needs to hide out a little bit. And so they go to the big, fancy, posh resort to stay for a few days. And they go to check in. And at the front desk, the woman says, I'm sorry, you need a reservation.
Sonny00:37:51We're all booked up. We're booked up weeks in advance.
JVL00:37:53And there's just this silence. And it's like – Five or six seconds until it dawns. They don't say anything. The Native Americans don't say anything. It dawns on her what she has just said. And that actress who just does it at one seat, she kills it. It is so funny. And she's like, no, no, no, no.
Sonny00:38:13I mean, you need to book ahead. And the Native American who's speaking for everyone says, what I heard you say was we need to go back to the reservation. And that's what I'm going to put on Yelp. And he says, that's what I'm going to put on Yelp. That's what I'm going to put on Yelp.
JVL00:38:28Yeah, Yelp.
Sonny00:38:29That's funny. It's the whole thing. Again, it's like a deeply reactionary, regressive sense of humor that I find, I'm shocked that critics have liked it as much as they have given. So the critics like it. More or less, yeah. I think it's 70 to 80% fresh somewhere.
Vic00:38:43The actor who says it, by the way, I love that guy. Raul Max Trujillo is his name. And he was the great villain in Apocalypto. I'd say he was the father. It's amazing.
JVL00:38:52And he's old. You know who he looks like? If Walton Goggins. Was old and Native American. Yeah, you like that? Look at that. There you go.
Vic00:39:03So.
JVL00:39:04Thank you, Sonny.
Vic00:39:05But it's not doing well.
Sonny00:39:08No, it's not doing well. I mean, it's.
Vic00:39:09And the question is why?
JVL00:39:11Well, here I have a cinema score question, Sonny. Yes. Because this movie is a little bit like Serenity, which we talked about last week, in that you are given something that is different from what you have been promised. Now, I think the movie does a pretty fair. Job of prepping you for that in the theater by opening with a title card. Yes. Giving you an Oscar Wilde quote where it opens by saying some people bring joy by and when they enter a room, others bring joy when they leave. And when that card came up, I was really puzzled. I was like, what is this? Why that is totally out of there.
Vic00:39:50But it did set the mood in the theater. Plus the music. Plus the music.
Sonny00:39:55The advertising campaign was also hinting. At the jokiness of it. In the trailer for it, there was the shot where Liam Neeson is choking a guy and he thinks he's killed him and then he comes back alive. Liam Neeson has to choke him again. So there was this sense that it's taken, but a guy who doesn't actually know how to kill anyone. So there might be some hijinks involved. But I was not prepared for how shockingly funny it is. How deeply funny it is. And I'm frankly kind of surprised. After watching the original, I'm kind of surprised. The original is funny too, kind of. But this takes the humor up a whole other level and does it in ways that are actually impressive within the American context. Which is kind of surprising because the same guy directed both films. Same guy wrote and directed both. So there's like, he has a very good sense for American idioms and American humor.
JVL00:40:51I was also struck by how placed everything is. It has a particular feel. All of the sets, all of the location shots, where the Native Americans, their sort of hideout is. It's like a giant ballroom that's big enough to, you know, 100 foot ceilings. But one chandelier is lying on the ground. And the entire time I found myself thinking that this, I was finally seeing the Wes Anderson directed revenge thriller that I've always wanted my whole life.
Sonny00:41:27I would say I agree with that. It's almost man, like it's a mannered, a highly mannered revenge movie. Totally.
JVL00:41:33That would have felt very au courant in the years immediately following Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Back when these types of movies were being made all the time. But I haven't, we haven't seen something like this in like 20 years.
Sonny00:41:44If it had come out then, it would have been dismissed as a QT knockoff. Yes. It would have been like, oh, another one of these Quentin Tarantino knockoff films where the guys have funny conversations about, you know, getting made. Getting maids to blow you in the hotel rooms and, you know.
Vic00:42:01And speaking of being a QT knockoff, the other interesting thing is, of course, the ending, which reminded me of the end of True Romance. You know, so you have a shootout involving third parties and True Romance. That's Quentin Tarantino, isn't it? Did he write it?
JVL00:42:15He wrote it. He wrote it.
Vic00:42:16Oh, did he write it? That's right. He wrote it. So, I mean, or the ending of Enemy of the State, speaking of which, which is also a third party comes in as a variable and then people, you get caught in the crossfire. And sort of that sort of an idea. But I don't mind that. I like that. And I thought it had a hilarious ending, which I won't give away. But at the very, very end, I thought it was really good.
Sonny00:42:36Again, taken from the original. Just speaking briefly to JVL's point about how precise everything is. Again, I was watching the original yesterday. And there's this fantastic shot where the drug dealer, the green drug dealer, is in his home. And he is sitting in these kind of like scoop back white chair. It's like the sort of chair you think. Based on how the camera angle is. Like from Men in Black. You know, when Will Smith is trying to do the test. But then the camera angle reverses. And you see the back of the chair. And you realize it's actually a face. And it has like little holes cut out for the eyes. And he actually looks through one of the holes in the chair at somebody. And it just is this perfectly almost Kubrickian or Wes Andersonian kind of framing. Framing of a shot to emphasize the weirdness of it all. But also it just looks great. And everything in this film looks great. I'm blown away by it. I'm actually really impressed.
Vic00:43:41I also agree, Sonny, when you were talking about the cops in this. Because when you first meet the cops, you start to sense that this could be like Fargo. Or this could be perhaps like cops who are one step behind. Like in Misery, for example. With Richard Farnsworth. Or No Country for Old Men. They're just missing these things. And in fact, it's not that at all. I mean, it just doesn't get there. You just don't get there. I mean, they are one step behind. They're more than a step behind. But it just doesn't develop. However, that said, and you mentioned her already. You could have said, you know, the poster could have been Cold Pursuit starring Emmy Rossum. I would have seen that movie.
JVL00:44:18You like using Emmy Rossum.
Vic00:44:20I love. I thought she was going to be the next Jennifer Love Hewitt. That's how good I thought she was. Like she sings. Did you know she sings? She's a drama girl. Yeah. And then, Sonny, you mentioned Shameless. She's in the show.
Sonny00:44:32I think she's on that Showtime show, Shameless.
Vic00:44:34Yeah. So I went to check it out on Google. Oh, did you? A Google image. It turned out. I pressed the wrong button. It was Google image. Anyway, I'm sold. I haven't seen the movie, but I give it five stars. So I love that. The TV show. Yes, the TV show. Really, the clip. But it also has a great cast. So I don't know the name of the actor who plays Viking. He's a Brit. He was also in Murder on the Orient Express. So who is? Unexpected. He carried.
JVL00:45:04His performance there is so fantastic because it's a very mannered performance, but without being hammy. And he's got, man, his voice. His voice is amazing.
Sonny00:45:17His voice does all the work. Tom Bateman is his name. I'm enormously fond of his performance. I do think it's a little bit mannered. It's a little bit jokery. I could see that guy playing the Joker if they weren't committed to giving the Joker to every A-list actor that rolls down the pike. But his performance is humorous and also kind of terrifying. And another big improvement on the original film. The original film, the guy is just kind of a douchebag. In this film, he's actually legitimately terrifying.
Vic00:45:51In the Scandinavian version, is there also a gay twist?
Sonny00:45:54Yes.
JVL00:45:55And I found it worked. How much did you love the way in which the script gives personality and meat to all of the Vikings henchmen? So one of the jokes is that everybody in this movie has a nickname. Yes. Nobody has real names. Everyone says Wingman or Viking or Poncho or whatever because they're all gangster types. And so the Viking, who's the lead heavy, has seven or eight guys around him. And I would say you learn a little bit about it. At least five or six of them. And it's enough to actually be kind of invested in them. There's this great moment when they're at a diner and two of them are in her diner. An attractive waitress comes over. They're ordering breakfast. And one of them is the younger gangster is very flirtatious and funny. And she walks away and he says to me, my old man told me, you should try to bang every waitress you ever meet. On his deathbed, I think.
Sonny00:46:52Like the last thing my father ever told me.
JVL00:46:55It's fantastic.
Vic00:46:56And he tells that. To the actor David O'Hara, who, of course, first became famous in Braveheart as the crazy Irishman. And then he's also in The Departed as well. Terrific. Again, a terrific cast. I also liked Dominic Lombardozzi, who I mentioned, who's the gay lover who's bald. Oh, he's great. The bulldog. And he really does have a personal, like, you feel like you know him. And he seems really nice.
Sonny00:47:18He's like a surrogate father to the kid.
Vic00:47:19He's a surrogate because he's nice to the kid. And you develop that connection. I said, it totally worked. It also strangely worked with the American Indians. The head of that tribe, who is basically a drug lord. But you kind of like them, too, in a weird way.
JVL00:47:35There's this great moment where you're talking about, again, the themes of community. And this is what's, when we say conservative movie, I mean, it really is a movie which favors the status quo. It says the changes from deviations from the old ways and from the old deals and the status quo is dangerous inherently. Because the movie, you have the father. The fathers of the Viking. The Viking's father, who is a drug lord of the Denver Territory, had struck a deal with the Native American gangs out in Kehoe and given them that territory.
Vic00:48:07And through a series of miscommunications, these two families go to war.
JVL00:48:12And that war is bad. But the old Native American guy says, you know, we had a deal. And it was a good deal. It wasn't a great deal. He says, I should have bought a casino like my brother.
Vic00:48:24Yeah. That's basically going legit. That would be the thing to do.
JVL00:48:28But everything about it, I just love the crap out of this movie.
Sonny00:48:32Yeah. It was not what I was expecting. I was pleasantly surprised.
JVL00:48:36So this is the question. We talked about cinema score and the compacts that you have with an audience and how you cannot advertise Bambi and give them hostile. Right. Which is kind of what Serenity was. This, I think, is actually a study in the successful way to bait and switch an audience. You are bringing them in thinking they're getting something else, and you're giving them something different, but just the very outer edge of what they're going to be willing to accept and delighting them with the difference. So the difference winds up being a delight to them instead of a source of consternation.
Sonny00:49:16It's still got to be minus.
JVL00:49:18Okay.
Sonny00:49:19People are garbage. Can I just explain briefly? In the world of Cinema Score, if you... If you give people what they want, you will get a B+. All right? And if you give people what they want, and it's very good, you'll get an A to an A+. Right? Anything below a B plus is a disappointment, I think it's fair to say. So a B minus isn't a disaster like Serenity, but it is also a suggestion that audiences were displeased and did not receive the thing that they wanted to get. And we're not pleased by the just adjacent superior thing. That kills me.
Vic00:49:56Okay. The other question is this. Did the interview have any impact on this box-off on the movie's- I don't think so. You don't think so? I don't think so.
Sonny00:50:04So what Vic is referring to is Liam Neeson in an interview with, I think, The Independent said that he was talking about revenge and how revenge is poison and how revenge is bad. And he told a story about how he wandered the streets of Dublin with a kosh. Kosh! With a blackjack, basically, and said he wanted to- A friend of his had been raped, and the only thing she knew about the rapist was that he was black. And so he walked around the streets of Dublin for a week or two with a blackjack, hoping that a black bastard would come out of a bar and he could bonk him on the head and kill him. And so this gets spun up into, you know, the daily outrage of two weeks ago.
JVL00:50:50The funny part, of course, is that he spent a week in Dublin and couldn't find a black person.
Sonny00:50:57This gets spun up into the daily outrage of Liam Neeson says he wanted to commit racist murders.
Vic00:51:03I can't believe he feels this way now.
Sonny00:51:06The whole point of the story was revenge is bad. It's poison to the soul. It is. It is. And he may have told it slightly awkwardly, but it was misconstrued, aggressively misconstrued, I think, by by the aggregators looking to score some easy outrage clicks.
JVL00:51:23Is this actually helpful to have? Is this actually helpful to have a non-controversy like this flame out? What do you mean? I mean, for something like this to emerge and then it actually doesn't have any effect and... You think it's helpful for the movie? No, no. Helpful for the culture. Helpful. No. Our culture is broken. So that the next time we, you know, somebody tries to peddle, are we slightly immunized by this to then be able to say, oh, look, this is just another garbage thing like the Liam Neeson thing. This is let's not. This is not an actual outrage. Let's move on.
Sonny00:52:00No, maybe. But I don't think people treated the Liam Neeson thing as not an actual outrage. I think a lot of people were legitimately angry about it.
Vic00:52:08Yeah. No, I do. And the thing is, also, you forget when you watch this. Liam Neeson is really good. And he started off doing drama. Then he became action. But then, you know, and he can do both. And I remember him from The Mission. And he played a Jesuit. And then, of course, as Oskar Schindler. And then, of course, then he becomes this really... Sort of like aging action star. Qui-Gon Jinn. Did not have to bring that up. Qui-Gon Jinn. I did not have to bring that up.
Sonny00:52:33Is that the start of action Liam Neeson, really? Yes. Because Taken comes out in 2008. Oh, yeah. Like 10 years later, almost. Yeah, yeah.
Vic00:52:43So, I guess he showed off he had moves even in his age.
JVL00:52:45Well, people forget. I mean, he's a stage actor. And like many stage actors, he understood stage combat. Yeah, that's right. He's this big athletic guy who knew how to do stage combat. Oh, and Rob Roy, of course. Rob Roy, right. He could do swords.
Vic00:52:56He could do swords. He could do swords. But also comedy. And if you can, you know, what was that show he did with Ricky Gervais and Warwick Davis, Sonny?
Sonny00:53:03Oh, yeah. I only saw one episode of it. I saw that episode. The Liam Neeson episode.
Vic00:53:08And he's fantastic in it, being who he is. If you haven't seen it. Yeah, totally deadpan and wonderful.
JVL00:53:13Okay. Any other Cold Pursuit thoughts? I love, did you have favorite scenes? And one of my favorite scenes might be when he's trying to beat Santa Claus, beat information on Santa Claus. And this guy is a legitimate tough guy. And so he's been beating him. He's beating him and beating him. And eventually he falls down in the snow next to the guy he's beating because he's exhausted. And he is in basically as bad shape as the guy he's been beating. And the two of them just start laughing together. It's just, again, everything about this movie is, well, it's like Wes Anderson. And the funny is, again, Wes Anderson style funny. It's very, it's very dry and dark.
Vic00:53:50You can see bruised knuckles on Liam Neeson, right? It's not like a lot of action movies where people just punch away and everything is great. You know, he's in. As you mentioned, he's in a lot of pain. But it worked. I liked it.
Sonny00:54:00I liked it, too. I don't. I mean, again, it's JVL's right. It's a weirdly conservative movie. And it has a kind of weirdly regressive and reactionary sense of humor. And I am disappointed that more people aren't going to see it. But such is the world in which we live.
Vic00:54:20So three thumbs up. There you go, listeners. You should see this movie before it's gone. Okay.
JVL00:54:26This movie is going to find. An audience in streaming.
Sonny00:54:28You think?
JVL00:54:29I predict that this movie becomes a minor cult classic.
Sonny00:54:32Like Serenity?
JVL00:54:35No. Serenity will only be a artsy classic amongst people who are young cineasts.
Sonny00:54:41Okay.
JVL00:54:41All right.
Sonny00:54:42No, I think it's great. I hope people do find it.
Vic00:54:44Yeah. Corrections, additions, anything? Everything's good? Nope. All righty, then. That's all the time we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments. Tweet us at Victorino Matus. Tweet us at Sonny Bunch. At JV Last. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Sub-Beacon under Podcasts. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. Thoughts?
JVL00:55:16Two things.
Vic00:55:16Yes, please.
JVL00:55:17Two things. First of all, I want to show off to you guys my mug, my championship mug. This is insane. From my good friend, Lara, who is... This is weird. She is a lady, but she's also a lawyer. She's a lady lawyer. A lady lawyer. I didn't know they allowed lady lawyers, Joe. She's like Ally McBeal.
Vic00:55:35Yeah, her, Ally McBeal, and my sister. Okay, continue.
JVL00:55:38And this is the best JVL knows that the Empire is good. So from the Tournament of JVLs, Lara was the Tournament of JVLs organizer. The Empire is good JVL was the ultimate champion of the JVL. And they made a mug with a Death Star on it, and it says the best JVL. It's just... Thank you, Lara. You're amazing.
Vic00:55:57And she also gave me legal advice, too. Oh, hey. That's always good. She's great. We really need a Sub-Beacon store to sell all the merch.
JVL00:56:06But we don't need Sub-Beacon merch. That's the funny thing. We need the fan-made merch. The fan-made merch is the best merch. It's really good. So that, and again, before we sign off, do you guys have anything?
?00:56:16No.
JVL00:56:17No? Go for it. Happy birthday, baby. I love you.
Sonny00:56:20Aw, happy birthday, Shannon. Happy birthday. I'm sure it'll be fine out in Italy. To celebrate your birthday. Is that, are we done? Yeah, I'm sure it's fine.
Vic00:56:31I'm sure she won't meet any Italian men out there. I'm sure it's fine.
JVL00:56:45Rippled. Rippled.
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