#29. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Word Processing!
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Everybody loves Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and they love it for different reasons. Sonny argues it's pointless to describe the plot because the film is atmosphere rather than story, and that Tarantino's real fixation isn't feet but signage — the accoutrements, the posters, the Sunset Strip dressed back to 1969 at a reported cost that helps explain the $90 million budget, and Rick Dalton's house as a museum to his own fake filmography. His central claim is that the man once dismissed as a filmmaker obsessed with films has become a storyteller obsessed with stories: as Inglourious Basterds made film itself the instrument of Jewish vengeance, this one wrests Sharon Tate away from Manson and Polanski and gives her back her own life, right down to date-and-time chapter breaks that mimic the layout of Bugliosi's Helter Skelter. JVL calls it "a shambling mess in many, many ways" and loves it anyway, but disagrees on the theme: to him it's old Hollywood saving new Hollywood, preserving the moment just before Tarantino became conscious of the culture, and he spins off into a long, affectionate riff on the LA scene that produces men like Cliff Booth — the trailer by the oil derrick, the weight bench outside, the hangers-on waiting to become famous. Both call this the best work of DiCaprio's career, a double performance operating on four levels at once, with Sonny raising the possibility that Cliff — a man ruined by an unprovable story about his dead wife who then saves the day by beating two women to death — is Tarantino riffing on Me Too. Vic, who was obsessed with the Tate murders as a kid and picked up Helter Skelter at a B. Dalton in the Ocean County Mall, says it's the first film in ages he actually enjoyed sitting through, and puts it in his Tarantino top three; JVL will only rank favorites and says he'd seek out just this and Pulp Fiction. The opening act is an audible on word processing: Sonny defends Microsoft Word out of pure habit, JVL evangelizes Google Docs as the lightweight answer to a bloated legacy product and describes the "sick voyeuristic thrill" of editing a writer in real time, and Vic admits he got through Georgetown on a Smith Corona word processor while Robert Novak filed to the Standard on floppy disks. There's font talk (JVL: Arial 12 at 125 percent; Sonny and Vic: Cambria), a Beacon writer caught pasting Pages files into Word to hide the evidence, and JVL's haul from a friend's attic: Journey into Mystery 83 and 85, the first appearance of Loki, which a comic shop offered the owner fifty bucks for.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode, sponsored by Quip and Blinds.com , we discuss Once Upon a ...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00My hands are registered as lethal weapons. We get into a fight, I accidentally kill you, I go to jail. Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight, they go to jail. It's called manslaughter.
?00:00:30You're in love with me, and cut!
Vic00:00:47Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon, sponsored by Quip, Electric Toothbrush, and Blinds.com. I'm Victor Matus, along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you, The Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Just like on a podcast, and search for Sub-Beacon, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? Sonny Bunch, happy birthday! Belated.
JVL00:01:12Belated.
Vic00:01:13Belated. When was your birthday?
JVL00:01:13You missed it. I don't keep track of your birthday. I keep track of Victorino's birthday very closely.
Vic00:01:19Facebook told me. Facebook told me. Thank God for that.
JVL00:01:22And Sonny's not even on Facebook.
Sonny00:01:23I'm barely on Facebook. I, like, I, seriously, there were... It came up, though. There were a bunch of, like, very nice messages and stuff. From people on Facebook that I'm just ignoring. Because I, like, I just don't, I don't do Facebook, really.
Vic00:01:34You don't even, you can't even hit like? Like, thank you for wishing me?
Sonny00:01:37Nope. Nothing? I thought about doing a post. I thought about doing a post that was like, Thank you for all of the birthday wishes, everyone. It's so nice to feel loved, blah, blah. But, first off, I don't want to lie to the people. I don't want to, I don't, I don't, I don't actually want birthday wishes from anyone. You don't. But, but mostly because I don't want to be back on Facebook. I don't want to post anything. I'm just, the profile is just there. Yeah.
JVL00:02:00What if, and I'm just spitballing here. Okay. Lord Bezos were to buy Facebook. Mm-hmm. And combine them so that when it's your birthday, Amazon notified your friends through the Amazon site and said, Hey, it's Sonny's birthday. Why don't you buy him something? Just one click here on something from Sonny's wish list. Oh my gosh, that's brilliant. Or somebody will send it right to him.
Sonny00:02:22No, that's a terrible idea. I think that would be the greatest thing ever. I don't think that would be the greatest thing ever because then I would feel obligated to buy things for other people. Only if they're your friends. Nope.
JVL00:02:34I think we need an Amazon social network.
Sonny00:02:37One of the nice things about being a guy is that you don't actually have to buy gifts for your friends on their birthdays. This is a thing. This is a thing that you've never quite accepted as a man.
Vic00:02:46No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not true. Back in the day, Jonathan and I used to treat each other to breakfasts. Take each other out for breakfast afterwards. On our birthdays. Yeah, you just wake up. After we got to the office.
JVL00:02:57Right. Sorry, I meant after we got to the office, we would go out for breakfast on our birthdays.
Vic00:03:01We did.
JVL00:03:02I'd roll over and I'd say,
Vic00:03:03Hey, what do you want?
JVL00:03:04Roll over to his office. Right. From my apartment, I'd roll over to the office and I'd say to Vic,
Vic00:03:10Hey, neighbor, do you want breakfast sausage? Do you want a banger in the mouth?
JVL00:03:16There you go.
Sonny00:03:16Let's go to the Waffle House.
JVL00:03:18I forgot. Here in America, you yanks say a sausage in the mouth. Very good. So that was uneventful?
Sonny00:03:26Yeah, it was fine. Fine.
JVL00:03:29It was fine.
Vic00:03:30Okay, it's over. JVL, what's going on?
JVL00:03:33You know, I had two other things I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell you guys that I had taken a carb springing. Is that like a Ruma springing? It is, but for carbohydrates. But for carbs.
Sonny00:03:46Wait, wait. Does that mean you just binge on carbs? It was like 10 days of nothing but carbs. Only carbs. No proteins. Only carbs.
JVL00:03:53No proteins whatsoever.
Vic00:03:54That used to be the thing, remember? Only carbs.
Sonny00:03:56That used to be a thing. You went to the big city and you saw the strip clubs and you were like, I'm going in there. And then you just went right to the buffet and you grabbed rolls. You just grabbed rolls and like grains and cereals.
JVL00:04:07So I was going to talk about that, but then I was going to talk about my brother-in-law went to a Phillies game and saw some amazing things. He has never been to a Philadelphia sporting event. It was great.
Vic00:04:15You mean the enthusiasm.
JVL00:04:17He was blown away that we are 72 games into a 2,000 game contract with Bryce Harper and the Philly fans are already booing him mercilessly all game long. He was like, what? I said, I told you JVL is always right. But instead, I would like to talk about word processing programs. Oh, this is exciting.
Sonny00:04:39We called an audible on this one.
JVL00:04:42Sonny, you said.
Vic00:04:43A lot of people are hitting the forward button now.
JVL00:04:45No, they aren't. Because like dishwashers, word processing program is a thing that people feel very strongly about. Okay.
Sonny00:04:53Yeah.
JVL00:04:53You guys are old enough to remember the word perfect versus word. Yeah. And then there was like the Lotus. One, two, three. Or the Lotus notes. Lotus notes. Who were essentially the stitcher people of word processing. Right? The stitcher audience of word processing. So there were five of them, but they were very into it. They were so into Lotus.
Vic00:05:10Lotus notes. Yeah.
JVL00:05:11And so you, Sonny, you said you were going to take notes using Microsoft Word. Right.
Sonny00:05:16And my head kind of snapped back. I don't have any paper here. So I need to just write down times and the such. I love Microsoft Word. You do. Well, I mean, I don't love it. I just am used to it. It's what I use. It's what I've always used. It's what I enjoy using. And you too, Victorino? I find Google Docs is not, Google Docs does not have all of the things I want on it. What is it missing? I don't know. It just, it like formats things weirdly. I like, I like being able, I just like how I know how to use Microsoft Word.
JVL00:05:48Okay. So just fear-based. You are, there's an economic term for this. The pain of having to change. This is the sunk cost. Like, for instance, when Twitter, you don't know this.
Sonny00:05:59Twitter recently changed its homepage design for no reason, for literally no reason. It's, it's, it's. Does it make people act nicer? It's probably, it's probably exactly the same, honestly. In, if you were to join Twitter right now, you would be like, okay, this is fine. It does all the same things that people have told me Twitter does.
Vic00:06:15They did a story, by the way, you should look into it, where they celebrate the new, the people, the people responsible for the design of Twitter. Sonny's smiling.
Sonny00:06:23Three women. It's like, it's, it's harassment, make, writing a story about these poor ladies because they have, they've redesigned Twitter for, again, no reason whatsoever. It does nothing differently or more efficiently. It just changes everything to like different parts of the screen. I see. And so everybody's lost.
Vic00:06:38I see the gears turning and everyone, everyone's just lost.
Sonny00:06:41And that's kind of how I feel with any other WordPress assessing document is that they all do basically the same thing. Some of them have other features like the, the, the app, the value added for Google Docs is that you can share things instantly with people much more easily than Microsoft Word because it's in the cloud. And it's falling, you know.
JVL00:06:58That is, that is. That is only one portion of the value add. That, well, that is the other. That's the value add to me. Oh, you like the simplicity. Yeah. So here's, here's my question. Are you guys, have you always been Microsoft Word people? No, I used to use WordPerfect. You're a WordPerfect guy, Victorino?
Vic00:07:14I guess I don't remember what we, when we started at the standard in 1996, when I started there in 1996. In college, when you were writing papers. Oh.
JVL00:07:20Did you have to write papers at Georgetown? When you, when you had a, when you had stone tablets.
Vic00:07:22Yes, I did, but I used a word processor, a Smith-Crode word processor. No. There was a little liquid screen. And then you are. You can press the printer. Are you kidding me? No, I did not use.
JVL00:07:30You're only one year older than I am.
Vic00:07:32I know, but it was like a generation difference. Did you not have a computer when you showed up? Senior year.
JVL00:07:37What?
Vic00:07:38Yeah, I used a word processor.
JVL00:07:39You went to college without a computer? Yeah. Wait, wait, when did you graduate? Old man, that is.
Vic00:07:44Ninety-five.
JVL00:07:45I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, no, I brought my abacus for your one required math course. There's no, first of all, there's no required math course. Oh, my mistake.
Vic00:07:54No math or science for SFS, safe from science. No, yeah. I had a Smith Corona word processor, so it had a liquid, it had the screen. The LCD screen? Yeah, the LCD screen.
JVL00:08:03That's what I had in sixth grade.
Vic00:08:04Yeah, I know. I can't believe. That's nuts. Yeah, and so I did without it until, I guess, until senior year, and then when I had a Power Mac, and that had the wonderful, I think that's the wonderful world of text edit. That's not even Mac, because you have to pay, and that's not even Word, rather. You have to pay to get Word installed into a Mac. It doesn't come, so.
JVL00:08:25It's software. You understand how software. Software. It should be automatic. It should be automatic, and so. Oh, you would just take an extra one. Yes, yes. I went to buy my computer, and so I had an extra helping of word processor with it.
Sonny00:08:36I went to buy my computer, and.
Vic00:08:37Well, believe me, there are ways around this.
Sonny00:08:39And I couldn't use my computer, so I just took what I wanted to make it work. It's not stealing. It sounds simple.
JVL00:08:45No. That's not stealing. You know me. Well, you know me. The person at the other end of the software bar knew I was taking it, and didn't charge me for it, so. Can we talk about.
Vic00:08:52Believe me, we'll get to that in a little bit. In a little bit.
Sonny00:08:54Are we allowed to talk about how the priests condemned you?
Vic00:08:57We'll get to that in a second. We'll get to that in a second. But for the word thing, so what I hate is Mac has text edit, and it is extremely primitive. They may have 10 different fonts to choose from. It's all rich text. Yeah. And it's like there are basic things. If you go in, I'm like, how do I enlarge it? Because I can't see, right? I want to make it 150% the view. I don't want to enlarge the type to like 28 point. I want to enlarge, you know, I want to increase the view, the zoom. How do I zoom? And you type it in, how to zoom on or how to enlarge on text edit. You put that into Google, like a Google search, and it's a very convoluted process. How to enlarge.
JVL00:09:34It has to do with it. It's a very interesting, interesting result.
Vic00:09:38There's like, I don't know. You have to go like the rap page. It's really how to enlarge.
JVL00:09:43Those are must be excellent Google searches you're doing.
Sonny00:09:46It's funny. Text. How to enlarge the text is what I mean.
Vic00:09:51So I hate that about text edit. And then you have to. You have to spend whatever, a hundred something bucks to get the office, Word Office, you know, the office. Microsoft Office.
JVL00:10:00You went to Microsoft Office or you went to Word Perfect?
Vic00:10:04I don't remember. Also, what is a word? There's also, you know, there was like Word Doc and then there's Word Doc X.
Sonny00:10:10Well, that was just a different format.
Vic00:10:11You know, whatever. And I'm like, okay, whatever. But I guess I was, I did Word Perfect. It was fine.
Sonny00:10:16I do remember, I do remember being a, being a like a junior editor in the, you know, early to mid aughts. And still having. To like monkey around with different versions of these files. Because writers would send like something in Word Perfect. And I'd be like, how do I make this? WPD, right? Yes. And the rich text.
JVL00:10:35There's DOC versus DOCX versus RTF. Some people would send it. RTF.
Sonny00:10:39Frankly, I just prefer the authors who would send a typed manuscript. And then we would have to type it ourselves.
Vic00:10:45I had to do that at the standard for. All the time. I had to do it for Noemi. Noemi Emery. How did I say Noemi? Noemi Emery. And you know what else? Robert Novak would send in a floppy disk.
Sonny00:10:54That's awesome. Not a hard disk.
Vic00:10:57Not a diskette. Not even a diskette, but a floppy disk.
Sonny00:10:59I want to say I may have had to do that for PJ or work ones, but I can't remember. Yeah, I think that would be a typed faxed pages. Yeah.
JVL00:11:05So I am the opposite of you, Sonny, in that I am essentially a polyamorous. No, no, polyamorous in terms of word processing. I hop from word processing platform to word processing platform.
Sonny00:11:20You're hyper word processor. I guess. I don't like word processing.
?00:11:24Oh, my God.
JVL00:11:24I'm always, I should say I'm always monogamous once I'm with. Monogamous. Right. Once I'm with my platform. But I have gone through, I mean, I had a dalliance with open source word processing for a little bit. I don't even know what that is. Wow. I tried when Apple like 20 years ago decided they were going to like going to challenge Microsoft on the word. I tried the Apple program. Was it Pages? I think it was Pages. That is a very bad program. It's bad.
Sonny00:11:51It's a terrible program. And we had, so at the Beacon, just. I'm pulling back the curtain a little bit. We actually bought Microsoft Word for everyone in the office. We bought Word. We bought Word licenses for literally everyone in the office. And people.
Vic00:12:05$10 million.
Sonny00:12:06It was actually, it was, it was, we, we had to fire someone to free up the cap space. But the, but we bought it for everyone in the office. And like, I don't know, maybe six months in, I started getting weird formatting errors from one of our writers. I won't name them. And I was trying to figure out what is going on and what they were doing was writing it. In pages, then copying it into Microsoft Word to try and trick me that they were using Microsoft Word. And I just went to them and I said, if you ever do that again, uh, you will never publish anything else on this website. Cause this is the most maddening, having to go through and fix all of the little, little things that don't copy.
JVL00:12:42The person who used Apple pages worked here. What are the odds? That's amazing.
Vic00:12:49The one person who I really want to know who it is.
JVL00:12:54So, so here's, here's my pitch though, for, for Microsoft, for Microsoft, for Google docs is that Microsoft Word is a classic example of what happens with a giant corporation legacy product. So every new iteration of it, they never take away the old stuff. They always just layer new stuff on top of it. And so you would notice this, like as the installs back when people installed it from disks went from, you know, the first version of word I used was like really quick. And then like two years later, there's a new version of it. It was like three CDs.
Sonny00:13:27And then by the end, it was like 15 CDs.
JVL00:13:29It took like an hour and a half to install because the program was enormous. Uh, don't you just, you weren't just downloading the programs from the cloud that is here under your computer, but before the cloud before, back when you used to buy software in a box, a lot of, a lot of install, a lot of installation. And so, you know, it was just a huge program and it froze all the time and there was too much stuff, you know, I would use one half of one percent of Microsoft words capability. Oh, there's a million things you can do, right? And it made it clunky and slow. And Google docs is essentially because Google just wanted it to run as fast as possible on the cloud. That meant by necessity, they had to strip it down to the elements. And that is what I love. It's incredibly lightweight. And for what we do, we're not putting together giant multimedia presentations. You don't have to like embed video in your word document that you're then sharing with PowerPoint, right? Uh, it's great.
Vic00:14:24I got a, I got an important question for both of you. Yeah. Font go aerial 12 point.
JVL00:14:31Ooh, for editing. Yes. My editing, my editing, I cannot edit in anything except for aerial 12 point with 1.25, uh, as the space between lines.
Sonny00:14:43Cambria, 12.1 50%. Uh, screen.
Vic00:14:48I do 1 25% screen. We're closer. I'm Cambria as well. 14 point, 150% increase. I could do 200. Well, you need the large type.
JVL00:15:01You need the large type old man.
Vic00:15:02I can't see they're no longer our sponsors. I can't see anything anymore. I can barely read my script. That's really, that's very, very interesting. Cambria. I like Cambria. I like the other.
JVL00:15:12So the other thing that you can do on Google docs, which is kind of a, this is like writer porn writer, porn talk that on Google docs, you can have the experience of editing somebody while they.
Vic00:15:24Write like simultaneously, they're on it, they're on it there.
JVL00:15:28So they're writing and they're like three paragraphs ahead because it's like breaking news.
Vic00:15:32Oh, right. Right.
JVL00:15:33So, and you are coming in behind them, editing as they go or the other way around, which is like, you're the writer and you file and you can then sit and watch the document and watch the editor working on you. And there's like a weird, sick voyeuristic thrill to both of these things. It feels forbidden. Do you, do you see really? When, when, when, and yet also like kind of good. I don't like any, I don't like any of that.
Vic00:15:58When you're watching it happen, do you take pleasure in getting edited or do you not want to get edited? The whole thing is, you know, I want to, he just deleted a sentence.
JVL00:16:06It is sick and perverted. And yet also there's this like frisson of like, you're not supposed to be able to do this. Yeah. This violates the entire like integrity of the writer, editor, the natural order. The natural order. It is a, in our business, there's a natural law thing that the writer's right and yet it's edit. The editor's edit. And this, it brings everybody together. And it's just crazy. You got to try it once.
Vic00:16:30That sounds immoral. Speaking of immoral, Sonny, you wanted to ask about the supposed stealing and the priest's lecturing about the, whether or not it was okay for me to take the extra chicken and not report it.
Sonny00:16:42They said it wasn't.
Vic00:16:42Well, no, I think there was a split decision there. No, no, no, no, no.
Sonny00:16:45Once we explained the actual setup and how it worked.
Vic00:16:49Father Anthony, we had lunch with some substandard clerical friends of ours. From the clerical podcast recently. And I think there was a split. And I think Father Anthony was with me. Don't have to report that. That's their responsibility. As he said, you don't know what's going on behind the camera. There are reasons for things.
Sonny00:17:06There are reasons. On the mochi, there was no split. On the mochi, you were clearly in the right. No, no, no.
Vic00:17:10Well, this is great news.
Sonny00:17:11You're clearly going to hell.
Vic00:17:12No, this is great news. I remembered why I took the extra mochi.
Sonny00:17:17Oh, you just. Oh, okay. Are you ready for this? Go ahead.
Vic00:17:19I was angry and I was seeking justice, economic justice, because when I went to pay Sonny, the normal routine, you know how it works over there. It's a normal routine. All of a sudden, new thing. The, oh, can you run it, swipe the screen, and then they flip the screen to me. You need to sign it and also add the gratuity yourself now.
Sonny00:17:41And it's like. Well, that's how they used to do it. No, no. They stopped it. Well, so when the place first opened, that's what they did. Yes. And then they stopped it for a while.
Vic00:17:48And I could swear that the minimum gratuity on the thing to opt, the option was 20%.
JVL00:17:52I mean, 20% for you.
Vic00:17:54I'm not sitting at a table and you're not waiting on me. You're just doing the scooping.
Sonny00:17:58This gets back to the old conversation about tipping.
Vic00:18:00And our other friend, our listener friend, Dan, said the same thing. He panics and whatever the maximum is, I'm very uncomfortable about it. So I might have hit.
JVL00:18:09If you're not comfortable, you say no tip.
Vic00:18:11I said, so I must have hit like, I don't know, 20, 25, 22%. And they're like, you know what? Forget that. I'm getting, I'm hitting that tip and I'm taking the extra mochi. So now we're even. That's still stealing.
Sonny00:18:21No, now we're even. That's not even. That's not even. We're even.
Vic00:18:24Moving right along.
Sonny00:18:26You're, you're just, you're just.
Vic00:18:27Have you gone to confession yet?
Sonny00:18:28You were, you were, you were, if, if this was the movie Seven. I would confess that as a sin if that were a sin. If this was the movie Seven, Kevin Spacey would have you strapped, strapped to a board with mochi stuffed all the way down your gullet till your stomach exploded.
Vic00:18:42Like the guy with the cans of spaghetti. The Spaghetti-O's guy. The Spaghetti-O's guy. Okay, go. Just really quickly.
Sonny00:18:48Wait, is that more gluttony or wrath though? Because you said you were angry. You were angry. And you, you would actually get called out to the desert. Be like, what's in the box? What's in the box? And you'd open it up and it'd be just one scoop. Just one scoop of the, the salmon.
Vic00:19:00Don't, don't take it. Don't. No, I gotta take it. I'm gonna take it. That would be me. That would be me. I'd also be the guy with the strap on blade.
JVL00:19:13He made all of the, I think of all the things.
Vic00:19:17That, that poor guy. That poor guy was traumatized for life. Okay. What, we know this movie too well. It's a terrible. Terrible thing. Okay. I don't want to say. I like that, priests. Yeah. Talking about the seven deadly sins. Talking about seven in the next episode.
Sonny00:19:31Speaking of deadly sins.
Vic00:19:32There you go. So, I didn't want to say. I have a, let me get this in quickly. And I will have a, I promise you there's a transition coming here somewhere. How are you, Victorino? Oh, thank you, JVL. I'm doing well. So, an interesting thing. My son has been spending some quality time with both his uncles in the last couple of weeks. He was. Learning how to be a man. Well, we'll get to that in a second. He was up in Jersey and my brother-in-law, Steven, took him to work at the construction site up in Jersey and then also did stuff in the office because my brother-in-law is mostly doing a lot of management now. And he had him, like, for example, make a phone call, call Dave at the asphalt plant and get a price check on asphalt for the runway. So, you got to figure out.
JVL00:20:19I got an asphalt guy. I can get it for you at cost.
Vic00:20:21Well, this is the thing. So, and then he's like, okay, we'll have to figure it out. How do you do that? And apparently, there's some equation you use to input these numbers to get the number and the answer was 4,700 tons. So, he said, okay, call and get a price check. But then as my brother-in-law, who's Dutch, told me, he said, but I called Dave earlier and he knew that, you know, he was going to get this call from your son. Also, I told your son the order number was 69. He's learning all sorts of things, isn't he? Believe me, the jokes he hears in that office, it's going to be like good boys. Okay. So, there was that. And then. And then, the last two days, he's back now, he was hanging out with Captain Bill Dwyer. And Captain Bill Dwyer took him shooting to the shooting range. And apparently, my son is a dead shot. I saw the videos. He was doing like double head shots from a distance, like with an inch, like half inch of each other. And then hitting steel targets 100 yards away with a .22.
Sonny00:21:16Look at that.
Vic00:21:16So, he could be like the next Charles Whitman. John Wick. Oh, John Wick. Very, much better. So, but anyway, my only concern is that. He may be getting to think that his uncles are more men than. Come on. I am. Come on.
JVL00:21:33I'm sorry. Do they know how to edit?
Vic00:21:35I was thinking about.
JVL00:21:37Have they ever used a Smith Corona?
Vic00:21:38I was thinking about like what it will be like for, you know, take your son to work and I'll be like, okay, you need to watch Velshi Rule for the next hour and see if something, I need a 400 word squib. You know, I just want to make sure that he looks up to me. Like, I don't know, like Simba looks up to Mufasa. Something like that. Speaking of which, over the weekend, the Lion King remained king of the box office.
Sonny00:21:59Too obvious.
Vic00:22:01I can't do this anymore. The Lion King remained king of the box office with $76.6 million as of August 1, 932 a.m., Sonny Bunch.
Sonny00:22:12Good, good, good, good. Look, this is, that's a difference. That's a different figure than you would have gotten if you had done this on Monday at 9 a.m.
Vic00:22:20Followed by Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with $41 million. And in third place, Spider-Man, still with $12.5 million box office thought.
JVL00:22:32Sonny, what's that percentage drop on Lion King? It was about 60%. A big drop. Big drop.
Sonny00:22:38I mean, it was a big drop. Crazy, right? Big drop, but also like not out of line for a movie that grossed almost $200 million. Yeah, right, and worldwide billion. We're much more into the week two to three. Right, it's already grossed a billion dollars.
JVL00:22:49Am I right in believing that the more significant percentage will be the week two to three
Sonny00:22:54drop? I mean, maybe. I don't know what you mean by significant.
JVL00:22:59You mean larger or? No, no, in telling us how it's going to perform in the long term. Yes, I think that's a more important figure. Because Aladdin's pattern was like this too, right? Aladdin opened very, very wide, not $192 million wide, but pretty wide and pretty big.
Sonny00:23:13I mean, Aladdin only dropped 53% first weekend and 42% second weekend, then about 30% in 23.
JVL00:23:19So it's a much better hold week two to three. Yeah, right.
Sonny00:23:22That's what we would expect.
JVL00:23:24Here, we'd expect a significantly better hold.
Sonny00:23:26Yeah, Flying King holds 40%. I mean, I don't know. The movie's already grossed a billion dollars. Somebody was pointing out that Disney has or had the five highest grossing films of the year domestically all at the same time. They don't quite anymore, but they don't really only because of a technicality, because Spider-Man Far From Home is technically a Sony movie. It's not a Disney movie. So, I mean, really. They, like, the only reason that movie is as successful as it is, is because it is an MCU property. Correct. And if you look at that now, that means the Disney, I mean, Disney essentially, again, technicalities, Disney doesn't actually get any of the money from this. My understanding is that the...
JVL00:24:11I thought they were getting...
Sonny00:24:12My understanding is that Disney-Sony partnership is that they both get... Sony does not get any money from the Avengers movies, and Disney does not get any money from the... The Spider-Man movies, is my understanding of how that works. Okay. But I don't know for sure. Anyway, but the top six movies of the year right now, domestically, are all essentially Disney properties. It's crazy. And they've all grossed... They will all have grossed more than $350 million by the end of next weekend. So, that's... It's shocking. It's shocking. It's very shocking in a very... Yeah, but Netflix has this new series.
Vic00:24:54The Red Sea Resort. The Red Sea Diving Resort. I read a very brutal review about it. I'm not going to get into it.
Sonny00:25:04But anyway, so, I don't know. The box office is dominated by Disney and Disney adjacent properties. As it should be.
JVL00:25:12That is the natural order of things. That's the circle of life.
Sonny00:25:15That is the circle of life.
Vic00:25:18We're actually going to talk about the movie in second place, aren't we? Which is Once Upon a Time... Dot, dot, dot. One other short thing.
Sonny00:25:27So, if you look at... It's Buena Vista. Not Disney is the name of the studio. But if you look at the Buena Vista releases this year. Hold on. It's very funny. You have Avengers Endgame, $856 million. Captain Marvel, $426 million. Toy Story 4, almost $400 million. Lion King, $376 million. Aladdin, $347 million. And then Dumbo. Big drop. Big drop for Dumbo.
JVL00:25:56Down to $114 million.
Sonny00:25:58I forgot about that one. I just imagine Tim Burton getting the spreadsheet of the Disney and being like, God, did you really have to include every movie? Did we have to go all the way down the list? So, anyway, we're talking about Once Upon a Time.
Vic00:26:13We are. Did you see it, JVL? I did see it. Oh, good, good, good, good, good. Who else saw it? Just me. I'm not making those jokes. But Sonny. Yeah. How about a big boy review?
Sonny00:26:27This is one of those movies where I kind of wish I had written a full review before I start talking about it. I've written something for the Washington Post, but it's not up yet. We'll see what happens with that. It is a very interesting movie in that it is kind of pointless to describe the plot of the film because it is not really a plot-driven movie. It's more of an atmosphere. Like moment in time, snapshot in pseudo-history sort of movie. And in that sense, it is very, very good. It gives you that kind of sense of a shifting Hollywood and the kind of decline of the studio area, the rise of the new Hollywood. And it captures the feel and look of that era in Hollywood so amazingly. Everyone talks about, Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish. But what he really has is a sign fetish. He has a fetish for accoutrements and the kind of signage and posters. I mean, I love one of the little small things I love about this movie is Rick Dalton. So Rick Dalton is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He has his loyal Man Friday, Cliff Booth, who's played by Brad Pitt. Rick is a kind of fading TV star. He's been reduced to playing the villain on, like, every new show that comes through and is contemplating taking a gig out in Italy to make spaghetti Westerns. But the thing I love about Rick is his house is like a monument to himself. And he's got all of these great posters of his these great fake posters of these fake movies that he was in. And I just love each and every one of them. I love the design care that went into all of them. And the whole house is just like it's like a museum, like a museum. A museum of kind of action posterage. I don't know how to describe it exactly. Anyway, so I love I love all of the little touches like that. The Sunset Strip being remade. Apparently, one of the reasons this movie cost 90 million dollars is because Quentin Tarantino dressed the whole Sunset Strip like it looked in the 19, the late 1960s. Basically, so you could see Brad Pitt driving up and down it and it would look like the 1960s.
Vic00:28:53AGI.
Sonny00:28:54Yeah, no, apparently it was all like it was actually set dressed. I kept wondering about that. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, I mean, as a period. It's expensive. Yeah.
JVL00:29:03It looks it looks amazing. It looks amazing. Really great.
Sonny00:29:06So there are there there are lots of little things to like about the story. What I what I want to talk about here is the idea that whereas can you give them a little story, though?
JVL00:29:21Just for obviously spoiler alert.
Sonny00:29:23Yeah, we should we should we should. I feel like you need to give people the story. I want to. All right. So I want I want to make this very explicitly clear. If you have not seen the movie, I think it would behoove you to stop listening now and not not to be spoiled. I think if you are going to watch the movie, there is something to be said for going into this one. Spoiler free.
Vic00:29:44So, you know, blinds dot com and quip. OK, you could stop now.
Sonny00:29:48So the story is essentially you have Cliff and Rick. Rick lives in the house next door to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. Cielo Drive on Cielo Drive. The the. Address, of course, is is where the Manson family shows up in in early August 1969 and kills Sharon Tate and several of her friends who had gathered there to have a little a little party. It's not the big part. Everyone talks about the Manson family showing up at a party, but it wasn't really. It was just like. People hanging out at a house in those murders, but you were unsolved for months and months and months and months.
JVL00:30:32Nobody knew who did them. It was only after the fact when Manson family members were arrested for something else that there was a break in the case. So this this thing back in the late 1960s, this was a crime which terrorized Los Angeles. Right.
Vic00:30:44There was the murder of the grocer, the supermarket guy and his wife after. Yeah.
JVL00:30:49And she was pregnant. It was like a pregnant starlet eight and who is murdered. Everybody is stabbed. To death, except for one guy who shot. So it's like a big event in L.A. History.
Sonny00:30:58So that's that's what happened in reality. Correct. In this movie, that is not what happens in this movie. The the Manson family, who we see in an extended bit in the middle of the film when Brad Pitt goes to the Spahn Ranch, the Spahn movie ranch and sees that the Manson family has kind of populated, has taken it over from the old man Spahn, who Brad Pitt's character knew from from many years ago. And it's very creepy. Somebody I saw somebody on Twitter describe it like Quentin Tarantino's homage to the birds.
JVL00:31:30And that feels kind of right, like where you have all of these weirdo hippie types perched on the street, just kind of staring at him as he walks down with their dead eyes, their dead soulless eyes.
Sonny00:31:44So anyway, Manson's very creepy. The at the end of this movie, the Manson family does not decide to attack the Sharon. Taint Roman Polanski address. Instead, they see Rick Dalton. Rick Dalton actually tells him to get out. Get out, you dirty hippies with your loud cars. And they say, we're going to go kill Rick Dalton to show the effect that violence has had on us. This is what one of the characters says. Kill the killers. We're going to kill the killers. We're going to we're going to go in there and we're going to show them the impact that television violence has on us. You know, this is a thing I've been thinking about. It's almost like listening to a 20 something. Who works for the now defunct Mike dot com come up with a think piece on the fly in the back of a car. This this woman's like, you know, I've been thinking about this, man. They show they show all this violence on TV and they think it doesn't have any effect on us. But we're going to kill the killers, man. We're going to like. So anyway, it's very it's very clearly it is very clearly designed to be Quentin Tarantino having a bit of fun with the idea that violence in movies contributes to violence in real life, which is a question he has always asked and he hates being asked. So anyway, instead, they decide to kill Rick. Rick's man, Cliff, is in the house and Cliff instead, in incredibly brutal and gory fashion, kills the killers. He is the one he takes. This is the the element of Tarantino ask revisionist revenge where he is avenging the murder of Sharon Tate on on film for us. Well, I haven't really talked about Sharon Tate or Margot Robey, who is the who plays Sharon Tate in this movie. And I the one thing I want to say is I do think that the the sequence in the film that is most important is about the 90 minutes or so in the middle of the tracking one day in the life of all these people. So Rick is on set shooting one of his his cowboy shows, trying to re rediscover his mojo as an actor. Cliff goes out to the spawn ranch and sees the creepy. Manson family and kind of sets the stage for the last act and then the the third story that we follow is Sharon Tate Sharon Tate goes essentially to watch herself in a movie theater. Very sweet. And it is it is it is very sweet. As Vic says, she gets so excited to see people reacting to the laughs that she is trying to provide. She kind of goes through the little kung fu moves that she learned from Bruce Lee, apparently, you know, that we see. And we see we see the effort and the craft that goes into making even junk. This is kind of the whole point of the Rick Dalton Sharon Tate portion of this. This little bit of the film is to show the craft of acting and to show how much effort goes into making something that is even not very good necessarily. Like Rick's fake TV show or like this very real movie, this Dean Martin kind of spoof of 007. And this is, I think, the most important part of the film to me, because what is what is. What Tarantino has Tarantino used to be dismissed by people who wanted to dismiss him as a filmmaker who is obsessed with films, a filmmaker who is obsessed with putting in with doing nothing but aping what he has seen and by like loading his films with references. And I think he has evolved into a storyteller who is obsessed with stories. So, like, I think that he is he is he is obsessed with the power of stories. This is what we see in Inglorious Bastards, where the the. The face of Jewish vengeance, right, is it's not actually Shoshana, it is film, the face of the face of Jewish vengeance against Nazism is the medium of film. They are there forever, except for a few very weird people, one of whom may be in this in this office right now. Nazis are the villains, you know, most people, most people think most people can say you just wiped your brow because you're sweating.
Vic00:35:47You're sweating. I played the allies the last time I played D-Day access and I won as the. Allies, thank you.
Sonny00:35:54But it's it is very much.
Vic00:35:56It is a difference between the Wehrmacht and the party, two different things.
Sonny00:36:01OK, Nazis, Nazis, film, film will forever portray Nazis as the villains. They are they are the villains of all time. The Hateful Eight has a very kind of similar riff on the power of storytelling. The the letter that Major Marquis Warren has from from Lincoln, the supposed Lincoln letter, it's it's a story that he tells to people to earn their goodwill and their trust. But it's. Totally fake, you know, and this is this is about changing the story of Sharon Tate's life. The story of Sharon Tate's life is always told in relation to Charles Manson and Roman Polanski. She's the victim of a horrible murder. She's the wife of a pervert, and she doesn't have her own. Nobody, nobody thinks of Sharon Tate, the actress. Nobody thinks of Sharon Tate, the woman. And this is this is this the whole point of this movie down to the little bit at the end where. She invites Rick into her house and they have a nice little moment together and over that plays the title card. Once upon a time in Hollywood, it's a fairy tale. It's a recrafting of her story. It is an it is an attempt to humanize her in a very real way. And I think it's it's it is deeply sentimental and sweet in a way that Tarantino never is. And I find it fascinating. I find this whole movie fascinating on a variety of levels. But that is that is. Where I find it most interesting.
Vic00:37:25Thank you, Sonny. I'm glad you pointed out the things about Rick's house. I felt exactly the same way with the little appointments, the furnishings, the tchotchkes, even the window coverings. Speaking of which, when you need new blinds, there's only one place to go. Blinds dot com with 15 million windows covered and over 30,000 five star customer reviews. Blinds dot com is America's number one online retailer for affordable, quality custom window coverings. Whether you're looking for energy efficiency, you just moved or want to refresh the. Look of your home, blinds dot com makes the whole experience so fast and easy. Plus, every order gets free samples, free shipping, a free online design consultation. Just send them pictures of your house and they send back custom recommendations from a professional for what will work with your color scheme, furniture and specific rooms. They'll even send you free samples to make sure everything looks good in person as it does online. And every order gets free shipping. And this is the best part. If you accidentally mismeasure or pick the wrong color. If you make a mistake, blinds dot com will remake your blinds for free. They've really made it easy for you. So there's no excuse to leave up those mangled blinds. And for a limited time, our listeners get twenty dollars off at blinds dot com when you use promo code sub beacon. That's blinds dot com promo code sub beacon for twenty dollars off forward blind cellular shades, roller shades and more. Blinds dot com promo code sub beacon rules and restrictions apply. JVL, what did you think about this movie?
JVL00:38:54Uh, it's so it is a shambling mess in many, many ways. And yet I really, really liked it for all of the reasons Sonny said at the very end there. There is a very real sweetness to it. But I disagree about what it's really about. So it does reinvent as a fairy tale, which sort of reinvents a happy life for Sharon Tate. But ultimately, I think what the central. Remus of it is, is old Hollywood saving new Hollywood, literally saving the life and creating a an alternative universe universe for new Hollywood where they are untouched by this, because this is the moment again, so that this whole thing happens. Essentially, Tarantino just misses this, right? And he is not quite a boy. I think when all this stuff is going down in 1969, he's like probably three years old or something like that. So it's not even. Really his childhood. It's that moment right before he becomes aware of the world and the culture around him. And he has, uh, so it's not nostalgia for it, but he has a romantic affair with that period in Hollywood and wishes that he could have made it better because all of Hollywood changes. If you go back and read anything about the tape murderers, one of the things you see is that this was a real cultural event in the world of Hollywood. People started all of a sudden gating their houses. Leaving LA, uh, in a way, I mean, LA is a scene and if you, if you haven't spent a little bit of time there, you did difficult. Yeah, I, I did, and my brother lived there. So I, I sort of have an appreciation for this, but there are little pockets of cultural life where things become scenes and where you just sort of, you can't really understand it if you, if you don't like aren't there. So like, you know, like the punk scene in New York in the late 1970s. Right. Or. Or in the movie scene in, in LA was just, I mean, there are people like Cliff. So Cliff is this, this former stunt man who now is just sort of a gopher for, for an aging TV star who lives in a trailer out sort of next to an oil Derrick. And he's got a weightlifting bench outside of the trailer, because this is a thing you can do in a place where it hardly ever rains. And Holly, you cannot go to Cincinnati and find people like Cliff, people like Cliff are everywhere. In Los Angeles, like this is a, it's just a thing that, you know, it's the weird combination of it being a one company town where, you know, the company is Hollywood, where the nature of the employment industry is cyclical and people cycle on and off and where the incomes are so crazily astronomical that there's just a lot of surplus wealth hanging around. So you get like Cato Kalins, right.
Sonny00:41:45Or, or, or this is just a thing.
JVL00:41:48And even when I was, you know, a kid and would go out and bang around Hollywood, you would see. You would see people like that. And you'd be like, so wait a minute, how does this person support themselves? What is your job? And they just don't really have jobs. They're just kind of there and part of the scene. You don't have to. And the other thing you find is. Hangers on. But you then also have a whole class of people who aren't like Cliff, but are, who are basically just waiting to get famous. So you'll have people who, like Amit Zappa, who, you know, when I was, I hung a little bit with him for a couple of nights when I was out there and he wasn't famous yet, but he was like Dweezil Zappa's kid, I guess. And so he had money. Frank Zappa's grandson. Sorry, Frank Zappa's grandson. No, Frank Zappa's.
Vic00:42:25He would have been the other, he would be the other sibling. He would be Dweezil's and Moon's sibling. Right.
JVL00:42:29Wow. And so he was just sort of like, you know, he had enough money. He didn't really work. He was just sort of waiting to get famous because he knew, yeah, at some point I'm going to be famous. And so you see that, like Chloe Dykstra, I think it's kind of like that, right? The actress Chloe Dykstra, who's just her, her father is a famous film editor and sort of, you know, hang around, you know, just part of the scene waiting till eventually you become famous. And this is a.
Sonny00:42:53All of that starts changing after Tate, right? One thing, just jump in there. Somebody made a very interesting point that almost all of the actresses and actors in the Manson family on the movie ranch are either child stars or the children of actors. Like Dakota Fanning. Yeah. As Squeaky Fromm. Lena Dunham. Lena Dunham. Lena Dunham's great. Margaret Qualley, who's been in the business for like five years now.
Vic00:43:20You know, I didn't even recognize her.
Sonny00:43:21Lena Dunham is, I mean, she has like four lines. And she's great.
JVL00:43:23I was going to ask you what you thought about Margaret Qualley, Victorino.
Vic00:43:26The answer is yes. I'm not going to tell you what the question was, but the answer was yes. Margaret Qualley is fantastic in this. Great.
JVL00:43:32Yeah. Great. In many ways, like, steals every scene she's in. She was a hot heavy. And just like the weird sort of lithe physicality of her is kind of great. I don't know. I loved everything about it. And the weird. So here's the one question I have for you, though. Okay. So Brad Pitt's character. Cliff, who is not quite the hero of this, but, you know, almost kind of a hero.
Sonny00:43:58Part of his backstory is that he murdered his wife and got away with it.
JVL00:44:02Well, and we see a very ambiguous flashback where he is sitting on a boat with her and she is bitching and bitching and bitching at him. And he's holding a speargun.
Sonny00:44:14He's holding a speargun that's aimed directly at her. Right. Us, actually, because it's any. So here's I want to correct you slightly. Story is that people think he murdered his wife. Correct. People say he murdered. Correct. And he was not convicted. I wasn't. Was he actually tried? Did he like. I don't believe it. Well, I don't know whether they tell us that or not. So. So here's. So there were two things on my mind in this one. Was there. Was there a Natalie Wood reference in that scene? Oh, I don't know. I didn't get it. But there's only one person there. So that's number one. But number two is. Is this, again, Tarantino rather explicitly riffing on Me Too? Because here's what you have is a guy who has a story told about him that cannot be proven or disproven one way or the other. And it ruins his life. Right. People have made up their minds. He can't work anymore. He doesn't get to work because everybody thinks he killed his wife. And then this person who has been excommunicated on the assumption that he has committed. This terrible crime against women winds up saving the day, winds up. Yes. Winds up being the hero of the story by beating two women to death, by beating two women very
JVL00:45:32viciously and violently to death. So and another.
Sonny00:45:35And well, he beats he beats one because I think only three go to the house. Right. There's the woman. I'm sorry. The woman attacks. So so he finishes off the other Leonardo DiCaprio tortures one. The other one is Susan Atkins.
JVL00:45:47The idea of using a flamethrower on somebody who's in a swimming pool. Right.
Vic00:45:50Also, it's very Chekhov. Chekhov's rifle. Chekhov's gun. Yes, there's a thing.
Sonny00:45:55Because you see it earlier in the clip. You see it in the clip and then you see it in the storage shed. There's actually a shot where you can see it in the in the storage shed. I didn't notice. Chekhov's flamethrower. Chekhov's flamethrower.
Vic00:46:06He went in. I'm still wondering, what is it? Why is he going in there? And then he comes out and you can hear the whole audience get it. You're like, you make this. Oh, yeah, right. That's exactly the noise they made.
Sonny00:46:14It was great. So Victorino. Was your guy's audience into it?
JVL00:46:18Yes. Oh, my audience was was very. It was also very small. Mine was packed. The theater was packed at AMC Courthouse.
Vic00:46:25I think there was everyone like me was tense because not knowing how he was really going to handle the ending. I mean, I kind of understood already from what I've read that it was going to be inglorious bastards. You know, he's going to rewrite history, but you're still not sure. And having known and been obsessed with the Tate murders when I was I was a kid that you're like, you know, right up to the day where they're giving you the, you know, the hour by hour, I'm getting nervous. And I look around and people seem to be nervous about it. But when it happened, I think people were. I mean, yeah, I mean, people were into it.
Sonny00:47:00Another another reason I want to kind of frame this as a retelling of the Sharon Tate story is because what is what's the most what would you say is the most famous retelling of her story? It's probably Bugliosi Helter Skelter Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, right? This is like on the cover of the book I have. It's, you know, the best selling true crime book of all time. And the it is interesting to consider the way that Tarantino in this film ditches his kind of customary chapter titles. So, you know, like in Kill Bill, he's got the chapter and in Pulp Fiction to a lesser degree. I mean, it's mostly in this starts like being a real thing in Kill Bill, I think. And then Inglourious Bastards and The Hateful Eight. In this movie, he ditches those for just straight dates, dates and times. And it mimics. I so I had listened to Helter Skelter. I didn't I didn't actually read it. And I got a copy of the book so I could look something up. And it actually mimics the way the the book looks. The chapter breaks are all dates. They're dates and then times. And it is. Again, I think this is who I mean, who knows if it's a conscious choice or if it's a if it's just a if it's just happenstance. But it is another way in which he is kind of taking the story that we know and reframing it.
Vic00:48:17I remember picking up that book at B. Dalton's when I was like. Ten or eleven at the Ocean County Mall. And, you know, you would spend it because, you know, you got an hour or two hours to kill, you know, with my family on a Sunday and you eventually end up at the bookstore. At least I did. And then in that section. And then there's aren't there pictures in that from the crime scene, too?
Sonny00:48:36I don't know. And I listened to it. I haven't actually.
Vic00:48:40So that really bothered me. And then, of course, I saw the made for TV special Helter Skelter, which was from the 70s. But they re-aired it, obviously, in the 80s. And that was awful. But you couldn't turn it away. You know, so you end up watching it. So, I mean, I was really pensive about it. But you said this, JB, about, you know, you enjoy the movie. And I did, too. I feel like it's been a long time since I've wanted to see a movie. You know, like we go see Aladdin, movies that are making a lot of money, whatever. But to actually go and enjoy seeing a movie and not have to look at my watch and think, OK, you know, when do we get through this?
JVL00:49:14You know, honestly, I think I'll enjoy it more the second time, not knowing that the knowing that it has a happy end. Right.
Vic00:49:22I was going to say, so you haven't seen it a second time yet. I've been thinking I want to go with Kate. I want to go see.
JVL00:49:27Have you, were you struck by how large Charlie Manson looms over the proceedings, despite
Sonny00:49:35the fact that he's in it for half of five seconds or something? He is, he's in the, he's in the movie for about two shots, three shots, maybe. There's the shot of Brad Pitt looking down on him from the roof and he gives him the creepy way. And then he has essentially one line where he walks to the house and says, Hey man, he's
JVL00:49:56is the, is Terry looking for Terry?
Sonny00:49:59I'm looking for Terry.
JVL00:50:00That actor, by the way, is great. He played Dewey Crow on Justified. Yes. Yeah. That's yes. That's true.
Sonny00:50:06He is really good. Is somebody, again, this is another thing. So him and Tim Oliphant. This is another thing I saw somebody talking about is, was Quentin Tarantino a huge fan of Justified? Must have been. And I wonder because he's, Oliphant's got that great, that great bit. And then Dewey Crow. So anyway, it's interesting that neither Manson nor Polanski really is in the film very much. I mean, I don't think Polanski has any lines. I don't, I don't think you hear him in the distance. You hear him talking, but it's indistinct. But it's definitely, and there's that, that weird and great scene with, what's his name, playing McQueen. Damien Lewis.
JVL00:50:40Damien Lewis playing McQueen is so good. Yeah. Because it's so understated. He doesn't have to do this over the top thing.
Sonny00:50:47And again, it reframed Sharon Tate as the white man. The wife of this weirdo director who raped a teenager, you know, and, and frames her as somebody who had somebody who really loved her and who wanted to be with her. And Jay Sebring gets, gets 10 times the screen time that Polanski gets, 20 times the screen time that Polanski gets. He gets lines. They actually have a relationship together. You can actually see them interacting with each other.
JVL00:51:18I mean, I, no, and McQueen sort of poisons. The, the well for Polanski in that scene, the playboy mentioned, he says, you know, as sure as God made little green apples, uh, Polanski is going to hurt her and do it wrong.
Vic00:51:28And he'll be there then to, he also has a lot about how she's, how, you know, like a tater's into guys who look like, you know, 12 year old boys. And he goes, I didn't stand a chance. That's fair.
JVL00:51:37So I have a question for you boys about DiCaprio. Has he ever been better than he is in once upon a time? He's really good. This is, so not as a movie star, but as a, just as a pure actorly thing, I think this is, he's always very good. I think this is the best thing I've ever seen him do because he is doing like, he's operating on like four different levels. I mean, he is on, you know, when he's on set, he is acting, you see why he was a star when he's offset, you see this sort of very subtle insecurities of him and then when he turns it on, I mean, this is the beauty of it is when we get, spend that time on the set where he's guesting on the Western. Evil Hamlet. Evil Hamlet.
Vic00:52:27He gives a truly great performance.
JVL00:52:30Right, yeah. Yeah, he gets into it. Of the sort of schlocky material and you, anyway. It's a double performance. I agree. It's really something.
Sonny00:52:38I would put, I would put it up there with Wolf of Wall Street, which I think is an underrated DiCaprio performance. There is.
JVL00:52:44It's very showy. I mean, that's an easy, that's an easy part if you're a movie star.
Sonny00:52:48Is it? The physical comedy. The physical comedy in the Wolf of Wall Street, the scene where he takes the lewds and has to get to his car is actually better than most comedy. That was impressive. Most, most comedy in actual comedy movies. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a bigger, broader role. I think this, that he's doing more subtle things in this. And it's, it's way better than the Revenant, which I didn't care for. I thought the Revenant was, was not, was not particularly good. But no, I mean, I like, I, I would have no objection to that. I would have no objections to saying that this is the greatest performance of Leonardo DiCaprio's career. And Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt is like, Brad Pitt is much more reserved. He's like more withdrawn, I think, but he's still clearly like right there on the surface, ready to break out. Like the scene with Bruce Lee is just great.
Vic00:53:36I was going to say, speaking of, speaking of Bruce, Mike Moe, who is the guy who plays him, I think he is great. Obviously a very, very cocky interpretation or portrayal of him, which has apparently caused some controversy. Did you see that?
Sonny00:53:49Well, it's very problematic because, you know, no, no lame stuntman would ever be able to take the great Bruce Lee.
Vic00:53:56Well, there's that, but also like the daughter said, he was very white fiction, but he was more humble fulfillment. I think his daughter Shannon said in the trainer said he was not like that, but you know, but, but Mike Moe is great. I mean, obviously looks like him, sounds like him. And even I saw an interview where he talked about Mike Moe himself as a Taekwondo guy. But then in that particular portrayal, he's not doing Taekwondo. He's actually mimicking Bruce Lee's fighting style, which was. It was like Wing Chun, but then he's doing his, but then Bruce Lee created his own style after that. And he's doing that. And that's impressive. How old is Brad Pitt? 50 something.
Sonny00:54:30It's got to be in his fifties.
JVL00:54:31When he takes his shirt off up on the roof and he's in his mid fifties, he's a man. Is he because he essentially looks like Rick Rude at like the height of his Rick Rudeness. If people remember him, Rick Rude, ravishing Rick Rude, ravishing Rick Rude is Brad.
Sonny00:54:49Is Brad Pitt doing that with low weight, high reps and skinless chicken? So here's a thing that somebody tweeted, a screenwriter. He said that eventually in sometime, probably in the not too distant future, I don't think specifically in relation to Brad Pitt here, but that at some point in the not too, not too distant future, Hollywood is going to have a real reckoning with steroids and the way that essentially every actor has to look like. That now, like the, what he was talking about was what he had tied it to was Rutger Hauer's dying. So Rutger Hauer dies, RIP. Vic, did you mention him recently? No, not before I did. Rutger Hauer dies. Earlier episode. You know, there's, there's a, there's a shot of him shirtless in Blade Runner where he's just, he's like a big guy, right? He's a big guy and he's clearly in shape and he's like strong, but he's not, he's not cut like a, like a, you know, no, it's that beefy look that you get from Lloyd's or like he's not a, and he, the, the comparison was to Joel Kinnaman, Joel, whatever, who is like, just, he was like an average nobody, just like replacement level, uh, kind of actor, uh, action actor and who, who looks like a, like, uh, I don't know, Armani model essentially with the, the abs and the, you know, and it is, it is, it is, it is not a skinless chicken.
JVL00:56:13Well, but the difference is out in LA, this is all being done under medical supervision. I mean, so it is not like the NFL where people are hiring like some guy with a box, right? Give me a shot. This is, this is when they, when you are out in Los Angeles and they have doctors who specialize in anti aging medicine, that means steroids like that's, that's, these guys are loading up on HGH and all sorts of stuff and then they get on the juice. So, but this has been the case for, I mean, Sylvester Stallone, you remember what Sylvester Stallone looked like in cliffhanger, right?
Sonny00:56:44But it's, there's a different thing. He was like 62 years old and he had short arms, the size of the ultimate warrior, but I mean, there's a difference between you had, you had like the guys like Arnold and Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren and whatever. And then you had the other guys, you had guys who were more like Bruce Willis. Right, right. Um, and now everybody is like the Stallone body type. Yes, basically. Yes.
Vic00:57:06Oh, you also really quickly, you talked about life in LA. I would, you know, I've never done that. I mean, I've been to LA when I was like, I don't know, 14, but I would have loved to have done that. And you know where I would have go, I've never been there, but I keep on it. It keeps on coming up. So I'm obsessed with Musso and Franks. So that keeps up. That's where they hang out. Apparently the food's terrible, but that's like the place to be.
JVL00:57:26The Brown Derby.
Vic00:57:27Yeah, yeah, yeah. Musso and Franks also birthplace of the fettuccine Alfredo.
JVL00:57:31I didn't know that.
Vic00:57:31Yes. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford brought it there. I know everything, but yet I haven't even been there, but I want to go there. Okay. Do you have sort of, I'm not going to ask for a ranking, but where does once upon a time in Hollywood fit into the Tarantino movies, top three, top five, top five. Certainly top five, Sonny.
Sonny00:57:50I don't know. I have a hard time ranking all these movies because I think basically everything he has done is between the three and four star range on a four star scale. So I have a hard time.
Vic00:57:59JVL, thoughts on that?
JVL00:58:00I couldn't do best. I could only do favorite. And you know, in a weird, there are only two Tarantino movies that I enjoy going back to. And it isn't because the other ones aren't good. Like Django Unchained, I made it through once and it's great. It's a great movie. I have no interest in ever watching it again. I didn't go. I didn't see Inglourious Basterds or Hateful Eight simply because of Django. It was just too brutal for me. Can I bet? Jackie Brown. No, I like Jackie Brown.
Vic00:58:30I'd go back to that. That's what I mean. You'd like to go. I'd go back there. I would go back there.
JVL00:58:34Channel surfing, Jackie Brown's on. But movies I really would seek out, Pulp Fiction and then this. I will see this movie at least two more times.
Vic00:58:43Agreed.
JVL00:58:44Agreed.
Vic00:58:46Where are you? No, yeah, definitely. I think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is definitely top three. I like Jackie Brown. The more you watch it, the better it is. I remember the first time was interesting, but I thought it was very slow because he's very deliberate. I mean, the pace. That was the follow-up to Out of Sight in a Weird Way. No, no. It's an Elmore Leonard thing. No, no.
JVL00:59:03It was the follow-up to Pulp Fiction. I believe that was his first Pulp Fiction. That's right. So the expectations. The expectations on that were insane.
Vic00:59:09Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown. Right. Okay.
JVL00:59:11He's going to change cinema again. And Jackie Brown, because this is the thing. Pulp Fiction changed cinema for a decade. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But it also happens to be a great movie. Right. Like, it isn't just, you know, the most influential movie. And I still haven't seen The Hateful Eight.
Vic00:59:23Would you recommend I see The Hateful Eight? I haven't seen it. That's what people say.
Sonny00:59:27I like it a lot. So I personally really like The Hateful Eight, and I have probably made the mistake of taking it more seriously than I should. If you remember when this came, so The Hateful Eight came out in what, like 2015? It is, I wrote this in my review, and you can go back and, people can go back and read it if you want. But I think it is actually. It is actually the only very good film that has been made about Black Lives Matter. And it is, this is, again, this is like, it's, I don't really want to get into it right now because it's a whole thing. But like, it is essentially a movie about race in America, but that isn't, that doesn't foreground. I mean, it's like, it is, it is, it is a, it is, that's just what it's about. And that's the milieu in which he's working. And if you look at the difference between drafts from when he started and when, and what actually appeared on the screen. There's a, there are some fascinating changes that reflect what was happening in America in that moment.
Vic01:00:24Okay. Right. I need to see the Eight for Late and I probably need to go back and watch Reservoir Dogs. I guess I got to brush up on my Tarantino JVL.
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Vic01:02:45Thank you, JVL. Transitions, shoutouts. Listeners tell us the beach volleyball scene in Top Gun 2 trailer is in fact beach football, so it is different.
JVL01:02:54I have a bunch of corrections.
Vic01:02:55Okay. Also, the James Earl Jones character, yes. He has cancer.
JVL01:02:59Joe Crystal says that. Yes.
Vic01:03:01Clear and present danger, not Patriot Games.
JVL01:03:04And Connor Sweeney writes in to say that Sonny referenced Richard Attenborough, the director of Gandhi and the great role in Jurassic Park. What he meant to say was David Attenborough. His brother.
Vic01:03:14Is he his brother or is this like the Hepburns?
JVL01:03:17They're not actually related.
Vic01:03:18That's what I said. I asked Connor that too. No. Brothers. Brothers.
Sonny01:03:21I had actually, I actually made that mistake in a piece that I submitted to the Washington Post and one of the lovely copy editors there caught it. So.
Vic01:03:28That's what they do. Also, a shout out to, are you ready for this? Are you ready for this? Listener Ryan Schinkel, who sends us three books. What? JVL.
JVL01:03:39Look at this.
Vic01:03:40I have my props here. Look at this. Oh, geez. A man and his watch. Look at that.
JVL01:03:46This is beautiful. Ryan, I am so grateful to you for this, although I do have to say that listener Tanya gave this to me like two weeks ago.
Vic01:03:54I'll take that book.
JVL01:03:55So I'm actually going to let Victorino have it. Oh, thank you. It is a beautiful, lovely book about watches. And thank you, Ryan.
Vic01:04:03And Sonny, because he said you had questions about the Catholic faith, he got you a book from Father Joseph White, The Light of Christ, An Introduction to Catholicism. I know you're going to read that tonight.
JVL01:04:13Does he realize he was baptized at lunch? Sonny doesn't.
Vic01:04:17Sonny doesn't figure that out yet. No, he doesn't know that. Much like babies.
Sonny01:04:20Yeah, I'm sorry. Am I a Jewish child in the 1600s? We didn't kidnap you.
Vic01:04:26And for me, he sends Leopold Classic Library, The Tender Toe, Essays on Gout and Its Affinities and The Treatment of the Gouty, The Goody, The Gouty. That's awesome. Okay, thank you, Ryan Schinkel. That's all the time we are giving to this lengthy episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Mattis at Sonny Bunch. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes. Google Play, Stitch, or just type in Sub-Beacon at our podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL01:05:01Anything? I have something. Good. So my wife's aunt texts me two weeks ago and says, hey, I have a friend, an older lady. She is moving. She was cleaning out her attic and found a bunch of comic books. She took them to the local comic book store. Old shoppy. Ye olde comic book shoppy.
Sonny01:05:19Ye olde comic book shoppy.
JVL01:05:20And asked them if they were worth anything. And the guy looked through them and said, well, I'll give you 50 bucks for them. And then said, would you mind having a look to see if, you know, he's taking the piss with her, as they say. And you don't have to write that down. You can say that. That is a thing they say. It's a thing they say. It's fine.
Sonny01:05:43Okay, fine.
JVL01:05:43It's a bodily function. That comic book. Guy. Yeah. He. Taking advantage.
Vic01:05:51Really trying to take advantage. So, what'd you find?
JVL01:05:54There's the first five issue of Metal Men. There's a bunch of very early Justice Leagues. A bunch of Golden Key comics, which are weirdly valuable. But the two crown jewels, Journey into Mystery 83 and Journey into Mystery 85. 83 is the first appearance ever of Loki. Oh, wow. And A5 is. A5 is the birth of what they call the Marvel Universe. And so, look, the conditions on them are not especially good. This is not tens of thousands of dollars or anything like this. But it did make me think that, you know, comic book guys are the worst. They are scumbags. That's all I have.
Vic01:06:36I'm sure it's fine.
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