#38. Joker, TV Dinners, and DIY Plumbing
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Joker opens to $96 million and gets the full treatment. Sonny went four of five, calling it spectacularly well-crafted and marveling that Todd Phillips made it; his big argument is that Arthur Fleck is the forefather of Antifa — the film ends with masked rioters carrying resist signs and murdering the billionaire politician who wants to make Gotham great again — and that it deliberately recalibrates The Dark Knight's "Batman created the Joker" reading into the Joker creating Batman, with an unwitting symbol proving more potent than Heath Ledger's criminal mastermind. His one complaint is the didactic TV-studio speech, plus a suspicion of directorial cowardice in never showing us that Arthur killed Zazie Beetz. JVL says he loves essentially everything about it and still feels vaguely unsatisfied by the soft ending; he thinks Joaquin Phoenix is "doing a lot of actoring" and could stand five fewer minutes of laughing, but calls the silent bathroom dance the hinge of the entire movie, a butterfly leaving its chrysalis, and geeks out over period detail down to a male anchor tossing to "my co-anchor" for a standup. Vic gives it an A and singles out the unbearable tension of the scene where Arthur lets the little person go, unlocks the door for him and kisses his forehead. All three are furious at the pre-release press coverage, which Sonny — a believer in contagion killings — describes as an effort to spark a mass shooting in a theater, and none of them can fathom the Rotten Tomatoes score sliding to 69. Around the review: Sonny's ode to the internet after fixing his own toilet with a YouTube video and a $5 part, Vic's barbershop fame and glasses hyperextended past anything a factory builds for his head, his father-in-law who once repaired a Cape May trolley mid-tour, a loving digression on Swanson TV dinners and the correct order to eat them in, and a closing report on Flash's two-inning save in which he struck out four and hit three batters.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode of the Sub-Beacon sponsored by DoorDash, we tackle Todd Phillips's Joker . Is Joaquin P...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize it's a comedy.
Vic00:00:26Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon, sponsored by DoorDash. I'm Victor Matus, along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Look on our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what's going on? I'm fine. We're pressed for time. Sonny, what's happening?
JVL00:00:50I have a flash update, but I'll give it to you now. It takes more time. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I'm ruining everything here.
Sonny00:00:55Box office! Thoughts? I have an ode. Shout-outs!
JVL00:00:59Very briefly. Corrections!
Sonny00:01:00I do have one dude's chat and thing. I just want to offer up an ode to the internet. This last weekend, actually, I had to fix my toilet. I was able to fix my toilet instead of just calling a plumber and paying $300 for him to come out and fix the $3 thing, because I was able to Google what the toilet part was, watch a YouTube video of how to fix it, and then order it via Prime and get it next day for free for like $5. So the internet has saved me hundreds of dollars. Thank you. Thank you, Bezos. Thank you, Google, engineers, et cetera. I love the internet.
Vic00:01:44You saved yourself how much? Yeah, I know. You saved yourself a lot of money.
Sonny00:01:46I mean, well, think about it. You get to call a plumber. But instead, I was able to figure out what the problem was. I was able to figure out how to fix it. It was a very easy fix. It didn't actually even need tools. It was just a five-minute fix. It literally just like I had to unscrew a bolt, like take out the piece, put it back in, screw it back in, like literally five minutes.
Vic00:02:04It reminds me of, I think it was Rob Long who talked about Fred McMurray, the actor, who of course was an insane millionaire. I mean, he had a lot of money, but he was very, very stingy. He didn't do that many roles, but he made a lot of money on other things, real estate investment and stuff like that. And he was playing golf with Bob Newhart at the Beverly Hills Country Club or whatever it is, and he was late. And Fred said, I had to wait for the plumber, he said. You know, because there was something wrong in our basement, and we had to wait for the plumber in the basement bathroom. He comes in, 15 minutes later, he says, the plumber fix it? He charged me $50. And that's when I thought, you know what, Bob? We're in the wrong business. Said Fred McMurray. Something like that. Somebody could correct the details, but that's basically it. I am doing fine.
Sonny00:02:49Yeah, Vic, how are you?
Vic00:02:51It's that time. Thank you. It's high and tight. It's that time. By the way, when I... I was at the barber. I'm getting the haircut, and the other barber who's sitting there says to me, the brother of Habib, says, customer was here yesterday. He said, you mentioned us on podcast.
Sonny00:03:09I said, oh, really? Did he say it like that?
Vic00:03:11Yes, he did. And he said, oh, he said, no, no, it's good. It's good. Thank you. I said, good. Thank you. Yes, you know, wait a while. He's got the open, the open raise, you know, the... The straight edge. The straight edge around your jugular. There is a customer. Oh, he... Oh, forgive me. I think he just moved up here from Texas, and he actually sent out a tweet asking if I go to this particular barbershop, Willie and Habib's. I said, I do. And he said he figured he knew it was me. Also, because as I was leaving the barbershop, I said goodbye to everybody.
Sonny00:03:41You did a grip line? I do. Yeah. I see individual. Hey, Bob, how's it going? How you doing? Farewell. Make sure you come out to the polls on Tuesday. We really need your support.
JVL00:03:51Do me a favor, Victorino. What? Can you take your cans off for just one second? How do those glasses even stay? They don't even stay on your head. They're not even, like, tucked behind your ear. They're stretched so far. There's so much there. They are so far hyper-extended. I know.
Vic00:04:03They don't even touch your ears. They were not built that way, but now they have stretched out. And I'm telling you, I've always said this about, there's no glass machine that is designed for my head. Like, you would have to go to a factory and recalibrate everything to make it custom. I mean, really. Custom glasses. Because even, there are websites for large-headed people, and I did a measurement for glasses. This is big head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exactly like Ned's thing. Big head. Big head.com. It was like melonhead.com or something. But anyway, and I did a measurement with a ruler about inches from where the bend is on my ear to where, you know, the temples and stuff like that.
JVL00:04:40And it's- 17 inches.
Vic00:04:41Yeah. So I go, I do the measurement, and it's beyond the max, even for the large-headed thing. So it is really quite something. It is really- You and Jerry signed that. Yes. And Oprah. Okay. But I was going to say, it's that time of the year when my in-laws, the Snow White Snowbirds, if you will, Virginia Snowbirds, are back in town or coming back into town. And my mother-in-law came first, so she was at our house, and we're sitting around, and Kate was complaining about all the stuff she has to do with the house, the holes in the wall from the pipe that burst, and we have to- Not burst, but broke.
Sonny00:05:13Is that still not fixed yet?
Vic00:05:14The pipe is fixed. But, you know, there's still holes. The unsightly holes in the pantry cabinet, the carpenter was there, but we've got to patch up those holes and things in the basement. And my mother-in-law says, don't worry, your father will be here soon. He'll fix everything. And I'm like, I'm right there. I am right here. And I didn't tell her that upstairs in the bedroom, my computer was on, and I was about to take over Carthage, but I just didn't get into that. Does he do drywall work, too? Everything. I don't think there's nothing- Wow. We were once, when we were in Cape May, we were in a trolley, a Cape May trolley. It broke down, and the lady didn't know, and he fixed the trolley. And there was a man who was in a wheelchair, because he couldn't use the ramp, you know, for the, there's a little ramp for wheelchairs, and he fixed the axles, he literally, and I handed him a wipe. And then he healed the man in the wheelchair. And then he healed the man in the wheelchair, and he now walks. He put his hands on him. And he now walks. But I just left him, and I handed him one of those wet naps. That was my job.
JVL00:06:06You know, drywall is one of those things that is easy to do, but hard to do well. I bet he does a fine drywall.
Vic00:06:13Yeah, no, there's no doubt in my mind. But that's not my value. As you know, my value in the family is not as Mr. Repairman. I make all the jokes over the weekend. Woo, Joker took the top. Top spot at the box office with $96 million, followed by Abominable with $12 million. And in third place was Downton Abbey with $8 million. Box, office, thoughts. Downton Abbey, man, just keeps on going.
JVL00:06:43Sorry.
Vic00:06:44Box, office, thoughts. Sonny, shake it.
Sonny00:06:46I don't really have anything particularly. It's big. Does it surprise you? It didn't surprise you, the number. The only interesting thing that jumps out at me. Is this a bigger opening than Justice League?
JVL00:06:55Justice League was 97. 7 million? It's close. It's like right in the same range. You know why? They use the same font.
Sonny00:07:02That trick.
JVL00:07:03That trick. I believe this is exactly true. The Joker font and the Justice League font are almost the exact same. Are they? I don't think they are. I don't know.
Sonny00:07:12Same concept. I'm not a font person. I will defer to you on this one. So I don't even know what the difference between Seraph and Saint Seraph is. So, you know, it's the only thing I'm looking at the box office chart right now, and the only thing that jumps out at me is the same thing. The only thing that jumps out to me is a statistical oddity, which is that Ad Astra and Rambo Last Blood in their third weekend both dropped exactly 58.1%. I don't know. I don't think this means anything. I'm not suggesting. But it is amusing to me.
JVL00:07:39You're checking out the grocery store and your total is exactly a dollar. Yeah, yeah. $58 exactly.
Sonny00:07:45Yeah. It's one of these things that jumps out at me because I like symmetry, and this is very symmetrical. I don't know. How did this do relative to tracking? I had seen a huge variety of numbers. I had seen people suggesting it could go as high as like a 110 or 115, which always struck me as ridiculous. But the number that I had seen most regularly was like 80 to 85 million in that range, which is about what Venom did. And this did 20% better than Venom. So I don't know. And Venom was PG-13, right? They like wussed out and did a PG-13. I'll effort that while you talk about it.
Vic00:08:29Why would Venom be R? I'm trying to think. I don't think the violence was language. No, PG-13. PG-13.
Sonny00:08:36Yeah, so they wussed out and did a PG-13 Venom. And this is a hard R joker.
JVL00:08:44Is it a hard R?
Sonny00:08:46Ah, yes.
Vic00:08:46The moments of... They're not many moments, but the moments that are.
Sonny00:08:50So it's an interesting film. We'll get to it in a minute.
Vic00:08:53The fist is a nightmare. Knife in the eye, by the way. I don't want you to think it was something else I was doing.
Sonny00:09:00No, I mean, I would say the moments of violence. It's a very languid film punctuated with moments of extreme hyper-violence. That is the sort of violence that is our violence as opposed to like, you know, bullets going into people.
JVL00:09:14They could have made this a PG-13 film with 15 seconds worth of cuts.
Sonny00:09:20No, I don't think they could have. You don't think so? I think there's also just too many. There's also a lot of language.
Vic00:09:26The psychological subtext is very disconcerting. You feel very uneasy. You can't obviously write something like that R, but it has such an R feel because it's so unsettling. I think the word for me is it's so unsettling. Effectively unsettling. The score. The score of it is an R score. Who did the score? It's not our man Hans Zimmer or anybody like that. I don't know. It sounds a little bit like it. I'll effort while you continue to talk. Do you want to continue? My question, I do want, but I do have one question, which is in terms of the numbers, do people want to see it again? You know, Avengers was three hours. People didn't mind seeing that again.
Sonny00:10:10Although that movie dropped more precipitously than people thought it would. It struggled to get to the all-time box office record, you know. It's still in theaters, by the way. Bad problem to have.
Vic00:10:20So what about with – I mean, I can't imagine people –
Sonny00:10:22No, I don't know. I don't know what the repeat value of this is. It's going to be interesting. I think the drops on this film are going to be interesting to watch. I do wonder if it will – it got a B-plus from CinemaScore, which I was kind of surprised by.
JVL00:10:36I thought it was a B-minus or a C-plus.
Sonny00:10:39I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about Taxi Driver. Like, if Taxi Driver were released today, what would audiences make of it? I think they would hate it. If you just put, like, regular audiences in a theater to see Taxi Driver, the same exact movie, just like you released it. Yeah, they'd be like, what is this? This is awful. What's happening here? But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong.
Vic00:11:01Although it is technically a happy ending. Yes.
Sonny00:11:04Yeah, right.
JVL00:11:05Hildur Gunnjadottir. Just like Gunnjadottir. Oh, right. From Iceland, who also scored Arrival and Sicario.
Vic00:11:13Okay. Interesting. Good. And The Revenant. Wow. Good. Now, why don't we just get to the big boy review? Sonny. Sure. It's going to be a 15-minute episode this week.
JVL00:11:24We're actually done.
Sonny00:11:25We overconfident. We're overconfident. We're overconfident. We're overconfident. Joker. So, Joker is the story of Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix. He's a part-time clown who goes to stores that are going out of business and holds up those wacky signs. You know, going out of business, come in here. And he is crapped upon by the world just at every turn. Everyone spits on him and thinks he's a lunatic. And he doesn't help himself because he is a little bit crazy. He's got a... A mental problem. He laughs. A little bit? He laughs when he's stressed. And, you know, also imagines relationships with people, etc. Spoilers, by the way. We're in spoiler territory. Look, here... So, Joker... I find it an intensely interesting movie. And I know a lot of people are saying that it's too dumb to be boring or provocative or, you know, too lame. People are saying... What is the critical response to it? So, the critical response was interestingly split. The people out of Venice... So, Venice has cultivated a relationship as kind of a provocateur's film festival. There was a big piece in The Hollywood Reporter about how they don't have... You know, how dare they invite Roman Polanski to, you know, their ceremony. Why are they giving awards to this incel movie Joker? You know, why can't they be more responsible like TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival that has 50% women, you know, blah, blah, there's not... Wait, Joker is an incel movie? Well, so we'll get to that. We'll get to that in a second. So, there was... The initial response out of Venice was very good. It was rapturous. It wins the Golden Lion. Standing ovations and stuff. And then at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was seen by kind of more standard, you know, regular, more liberal film critics, they were like, oh, this movie sucks. It's boring. It's a parody of what a smart person thinks a movie is, blah, blah, blah. Or it's a dumb person's version of a smart person's movie, you know, was a thing that I saw several times. So, the response to it has been interestingly split. It started very high in, like, the 80s or 90s on Rotten Tomatoes. It's down to... It may be below 70 now. Really? Yeah. So, it's taken a dip. I thought the movie was spectacularly well-crafted. I thought... Like, I was not expecting Todd Phillips to put together a film like this.
JVL00:13:52We're going streaking! Right.
Sonny00:13:53So, like, I actually like Todd. I like Todd Phillips a lot. I do, too. I think the Hangover movie... I think the first Hangover movie is very good. I think Old School is, like, just fantastic buddy hangout comedy.
JVL00:14:07One of the two best comedies of the last 30 years. There. I said it.
Sonny00:14:11I don't know if I would go that far, but I like it a lot. I like it a lot. And I like Road Trip. And I think he does interesting stuff in those movies, but he is... I wouldn't say he's, like, an interesting visual director, right? And there's a lot of stuff in this movie. There's a lot of stuff in this movie that looks really, really good. It just... It looks... I don't know if it's the cinematographer he's working with. I don't know, you know, if he's imbued with the spirit of Martin Scorsese as executive producer, if Marty has that sort of power. I don't know. I don't know what the... You know, Marty and Bobby get together and they're like, all right, we're going to give him our powers. We're going to give Todd Phillips our powers. I call them Marty and Bobby because we're good friends.
Vic00:14:47You're good friends. Well, you're in that world now.
Sonny00:14:49Yeah. We're good friends. And it is a relentlessly dark movie that is... It is languidly paced for long periods of time and punctuated with moments of extreme violence. And this is why I don't think you could have just edited it down, edited those moments of violence, the knife to the eye, the gunshots on the TV set, away to get to the PG-13 rating. I think there's just like an oppressive sense in the whole film of a person who has been... Who has lived a life in which society has... Has broken him. He's a broken person already and we can talk about that a little bit more. Since he was a child. So there is... And there was a political context to many of the discussions of this film. When the ads were out, the ads come out and everyone's like, this is an incel movie about white males who can't get laid and they take out their revenge on the world. And when you watch the movie, it is very... I have... I wrote this in a piece for the Washington Post, but he is actually the forefather of Antifa. I mean, at the end of the film, the end of the film ends with people... He has inspired people to run around in clown masks, rioting, carrying resist... Carrying resist signs and murdering the billionaire politician who just wants to make Gotham great again. I mean, that is literally what happened. That's what happens in the film. I mean, when I realized what was happening, I actually laughed out loud in the movie theater. Because I was like, holy crap, Warner Brothers has put together a $60 million movie.
JVL00:16:35How ironic, you laughed inappropriately at the movie theater watching a Joker. A movie about a man who laughs inappropriately.
Sonny00:16:40Exactly. I'm the real Joker. That movie made me into the Joker. We live in a society. In fact, Sonny's hair has that power.
Vic00:16:47He dyed his hair green today, everybody.
Sonny00:16:49I don't know. I think it does interesting things with the Batman mythos. Everyone talks about how this isn't a comic book movie. That's like what Warner's, this isn't a comic book movie. It's too dark to be a comic book movie. It's a character study of a man. No, it's a comic book movie. It's very much a comic book movie. It has Thomas Wayne and it has Alfred and it has Bruce Wayne. That was a young Alfred? That was a young Alfred. And it deals with, we once again see Thomas and Martha Wayne murdered. But it recalibrates the discussion over the Joker and Batman away from where it had gone in The Dark Knight. Now, we've discussed. We've discussed this before on the show, JVL, that The Dark Knight, many of the youngs, many of the youngs who see the movie now say that Batman created the Joker, right? It's his fault. It's his fault. This is, you know. And who's to say that Batman's the good guy? Who's to say that Batman's the good guy? Joker's just out there telling his truths and, you know, he's showing the hypocrisy of society, blah, blah, blah. But this movie recalibrates things very explicitly. It says, no, the Joker made Batman. The Joker. You know, it is a reactionary film in that sense. The Joker's inspiration of violence led to the creation of Batman. And speaking of inspiration, I think this Joker is actually a better version of the Joker than the Joker that Christopher Nolan was trying to make with the Heath Ledger Joker. In the sense that that movie is about symbols, right? Batman is like, I wanted to be a symbol of good and inspire people, blah, blah. And the Joker's like, okay. I'm going to show you that it just takes one little push and these people will turn on you in a second, right? And then what actually happens in this movie is he is not a mastermind. The Joker, the Christopher Nolan Heath Ledger Joker is a criminal mastermind who has gangs and minions and they're running around. They're creating these intricate plots. And he says, oh, I'm just a dog chasing a car. I wouldn't know what to do if I got it. But that's nonsense. He spends all the movies, he spends the whole movie creating these plans.
JVL00:18:53Executing a single master plan.
Sonny00:18:55Executing just intricate piece after piece. And whereas Arthur Fleck is very much just a symbol. He is an inspiration for violence. An unwitting symbol. Right. That sends the city spinning into chaos and anarchy. So, I don't know. I think there are a lot of interesting things going on here. On top of it just being an intensely intense and intensely well-made film. I don't love it. Five stars. I don't love it. I went four or five stars. No laughing matter. The one big misstep, I think, is the speech at the end in the TV studio. Really? I thought it was too didactic, but also too poorly done. It was too scattered.
Guest00:19:45Anyway.
Sonny00:19:46So, anyway, that's me. I've now talked for like ten minutes.
Vic00:19:49Victorino, what did you think? Well, it is interesting. Man of the people. Well, I'll get to that in a second. To say, people talk about this now, and I think some of our listeners have discussed this about do we need to get into the psyche of what makes these villains bad and trying to gain sympathy for them when, in some cases, evil is just evil. I could be wrong. Was that maybe perhaps Father Harrison Ayer or somebody getting into a discussion about, oh, it's gaining sympathy, basically, for these people. And I don't know. I mean, in the end, these people are still responsible for their actions, obviously, but I found it interesting. And you are. You feel bad. I mean, this guy obviously had a bad run of luck from the time that he was born. You know, I mean, he was a kid. He was beaten, you know, by the mother's brain injured, sexually abused, and the mother's nuts. And, of course, he's nuts in the whole thing. And yet he's taken. And the other thing is because he can't even live his own life in sort of a Norman Bates thing where he's got to take care of his mother until the mother dies. But in this case, well, in this case, he kills the mother, but he's taking care of her. He's got to go home. He's got to feed her and all I can think of is if only. The mother can get her food delivered to her. Long day at work, tough day at school, still stuck at the office. Treat yourself to the meal you deserve and have your favorite restaurants come to you, Penny, with DoorDash. DoorDash connects you to your favorite restaurants in your city. Ordering is easy. Open the DoorDash app. Choose what you want to eat and your food will be delivered to you wherever you are. Not only is your favorite pizza joint already on DoorDash, but there are over 340,000 restaurants in 3,300 cities. So you can get your food delivered to you wherever you are. You might find a new favorite, too. With door-to-door delivery in all 50 states and Canada, order from your local go-tos or choose from your favorite national restaurants like Chipotle, Wendy's, Chick-fil-A, and the Cheesecake Factory. Don't worry about dinner. Let dinner come to you with DoorDash. Right now, our listeners can get $5 off their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code SUBBEACON. That's $5 off your first order when you download the DoorDash app. From the App Store and enter promo code SUBBEACON. Don't forget, that's promo code SUBBEACON for $5 off your first order from DoorDash. JVL, what did you think?
JVL00:22:08You know, I'm glad that we are together to work this out because I have this incoherent view of Joker, which is that I basically love everything about the movie and yet feel vaguely unsatisfied by the movie. And this isn't a criticism of it, I guess, but this is the problem with doing a whole movie around the Joker, is that when it's over, you feel as though the loop on the story has not really been closed. Does that make any sense? I don't know what you mean. It doesn't make any sense to me. Well, so there's a lot to, I mean, there's a lot to talk about. Where do we want to start? Do we want to start with talking about Joaquin Phoenix?
Sonny00:22:55Sure, let's talk about Joaquin Phoenix.
JVL00:22:57Because, so... What's his diet secret? My goodness. Jon was very, very tough on him in his review for The Free Beacon. Oh, our Jon, Pod Horace. Yeah, Jon Pod. Very, very tough on him. And it is true that Joaquin Phoenix is acting so hard. He's acting so hard. He's doing a lot of actoring in this movie. Actoring, yeah. So much actoring.
Sonny00:23:20Now, to be fair, did you see a preview for Motherless Brooklyn before? Before my screening of Joker was for Motherless Brooklyn, which is the Ed Norton movie where he plays the guy with the verbal tics. Is he acting harder? Oh, he's... No, that's a classic Ed Norton thing. It is just the worst look I...
JVL00:23:38Did he act hard, Bruce? Did he act so hard? I could have done with probably five minutes less laughing. Because there's a lot of letting Joaquin Phoenix laugh.
Vic00:23:52That said, his physicality...
JVL00:23:55His physicality is so amazing. And the best Joaquin Phoenix acting in the movie comes when he is silently sort of dancing and shuffling the hinge of the movie. So after he... Again, we've said spoilers. So after he commits his first murders, he...
Vic00:24:15Which was self-defense-ish, except for the last guy.
JVL00:24:18Self-defense-ish, right.
Vic00:24:19Yeah.
JVL00:24:20But he clearly is getting ready to do it. It's pretty gets-ish, yeah. But that's it. So this is, yes, he's absolutely perfect. He's Bernie Getz. Yeah, yeah. And our younger listeners will not even know who Bernie Getz is.
Vic00:24:29Which was at the time, well, it was in the 80s, but still.
JVL00:24:31But it was the legacy of the 70s. His whole movie is... Younger people will not understand. That is the New York City that you and I grew up with. Yeah, yeah. Like that literally, the Gotham of this movie looks exactly... I remember all the graffiti on the trains. Graffiti everywhere, the trains where the lights go in and out. Crazy people, trash piling up everywhere.
Vic00:24:48A fight broke out in my subway car when I was like, I don't know, because we visited my aunt all the time in New York and it was 9 and everybody just... He came in and he just punched a business guy who was reading the paper. And then everybody got up and moved to the back. That's how it went back then. He kills him.
JVL00:25:05Which is, to take a brief detour of political politics, it is amazing to me that Rudy Giuliani, who is essentially responsible almost single-handedly for turning New York from that, from what you see in the Joker, into the playground it is today, will someday be remembered for nothing other than his Donald Trump defense. That's an amazing thing. Yeah, right through 9-11. But, so he, that scene where he, after committing the murders, he goes to a public restroom and he locks the door and he then begins doing this Tai Chi slash dance in front of a mirror. And at first it's a little like, hey, what are we doing here? Right. But then you realize this is like a butterfly coming out of his chrysalis. It is, it is Buffalo Bill. Oh, yeah, I know. Yeah, tucked it in. That moment, which is silent and is not classical acting, but is really just the physicality of his acting, is so good and to me is the hinge of the movie. And that sells every, everything that follows that scene is established wordlessly with him dancing in front of a mirror. Yeah.
Vic00:26:15So Oscar nom is what we're saying.
JVL00:26:17I don't know if I'm saying that, but I'm saying I, I think. I thought it was true. There were parts of it which, yes, were overblown, but the parts which I think were more subtle, were so good that. Yeah. I don't know. Did, did you guys not like when he's dancing on the steps at the end?
Sonny00:26:31No, I, I thought all that.
JVL00:26:32Every, the way he moves with his hands. Yeah. And that was Shea Whigham is one of the, one of the cops, right? Do love, do love Shea Whigham.
Sonny00:26:37Yeah, that's great. No, I, I thought it was, I loved all, I loved all that stuff. And again, this is like, I've seen people like kind of make fun of this, like, oh, this is like fake art house stuff. You know, why are they like critics who like art house movies are like, this is, they're stealing our stuff. They're like, you know, they're like, ah, this is, you know, what? This is doing in a Joker movie. It's bull, it's bull, bull hockey.
JVL00:26:59Well, you know, but as I've been saying on the show for three or four years now, the genius of superhero IP is that it is infinitely flexible and you can tell superhero stories with it. You can tell heist stories with it, buddy cop stories, road stories. You can do dark stuff and noir, and you can even do seventies auteur movies. Cause that's what this is. This is, it's taxi driver. This is a seventies auteur movie.
Sonny00:27:25I would say the biggest, the biggest knock on this movie is it, it is wholly derivative of taxi driver and king of comedy. Uh, I mean, like, have you guys seen king of comedy? Yeah, I love it. It's great. And it, this movie, this movie, this movie doesn't just, you know, kind of rip the ideas and like pieces of that. It like takes the actual actors and like, I mean, putting, putting Rupert Pupkin in the, the, uh, the role of the talk show host, you know, is, you know, what else?
Vic00:27:54Network. It takes from network. So at the end of the network and Howard Beale gets shot on TV and then, uh, Marie Franklin gets shot on TV and then there's a scene with the TV pulling back, pulls back and then you see everybody tuning in.
JVL00:28:08That is a direct from the degree to which this is a, uh, just a stone cold, perfect period piece is also really, so even to the point, the, the onscreen graphics used in the newscast are perfect. The pattern normally. TV, fake TV news patter in a movie almost always sounds wrong. All of this sounds exactly right. All the way down to, I don't know if you picked up on this. It could have been Roger Grimsby, but I bet you did. Yeah. I bet you picked up on this. There's a scene in which the male anchor says, we're going to go to, or he's my co-anchor Stephanie or whatever down on, you know, outdoing them. And this is very much a thing that was happening when they were starting to put women on the anchor desks, but they would still be sent out to do the standup. Sure. They made a point. They made a point of saying, you know, they're not just like, we're going to our, our standup correspondent. They was my co-anchor, Andrea, whatever. That that's a tick, which no longer exists. Nobody would do that anymore. Oh my God. But is it very right. And they would just now say, we're going to Nora O'Donnell at whatever, but the very self-conscious now to my co, all of this stuff. Yeah. Really organically.
Vic00:29:14No, it has a, it has a feel of, you know, with the birth of eyewitness news and especially in the 1970s and Bill Butel and all those guys. Yeah. It has, it definitely has a feel to it.
JVL00:29:25And so, and the other thing I loved about it is I have been begging, and finally somebody listened to me, begging for more out of continuity comic book movies because, and, and there's a reason I think that Superman and Batman lend themselves more to out of continuity stories than anybody else. And it's because their history is so sprawling that you just can't, you know, like there's so much, so much storytelling wrapped up in them over the course of 80 years. A hundred years that you just have to give up the idea of continuity. And so here we can have this story, which is totally out of content out of all the continuities that have been put together on film for the Joker yet, right? Including the most recent, this is even out of continuity for the current DC cinematic universe, right? This is not the Jared Leto Joker who would be 50 years younger than this guy is. And they just leave, just do a story, tell a story. And so they're doing that. They're telling a story. And I, I applaud, I applaud everything about it. I just, again, was left. Vaguely unsatisfied, unsatisfied in what way though?
Sonny00:30:28I like what, what were you hoping for at the end?
JVL00:30:31I wasn't hoping, hoping for anything. I just felt like it didn't really end. I felt it was a soft ending.
Sonny00:30:39Yeah.
Vic00:30:40He escapes from Arkham in the end. Well, he doesn't really, he doesn't escape.
JVL00:30:43He murders the woman who's talking to him, which is a beautifully done. And you can't see the footprints at first. The first scene you see is him walking and you don't get the footprints until he's all the
Vic00:30:55way, like, you know, 20 feet into the frame. Okay. I gave it an A. And if you want to go back again to my criteria, number one, time, two hours, just two, it's a big sprawling. Yeah. It's a big movie and you can press that into two hours or a little over two hours as Sonny says. That's great. B, the violence. Wow. Again, it's not like everywhere, but it's also, you know, there are a lot of movies where, you know, millions of last blood. Yeah. Yeah.
Sonny00:31:22And yet it's so there's much. There's less total violence, but it is impactful violence.
Vic00:31:29I mean, this is in his apartment when he kills, when he kills the fellow comedian and bad clown, the bad clown. Wow. And also you're terrified for the short.
JVL00:31:41Well, that's one of my favorite moments in the film. Yes. I thought he was going to kill him. I was embracing. But the moment where he comes over to gesture and he, the midget, he said, you can leave,
Sonny00:31:53you can go. And so the midget, like, terrified. He terrifyingly walks over and realizes he can't reach up.
JVL00:31:58And then you think, oh, my God, he's going to kill him now. And he unlocks it for him, but then pulls him back over and kisses him on the forehead and thanks him for being there. That was, again, just such a pitch perfect joker. I was so tense. I was so tense. It was great.
Sonny00:32:11Here's a question. Do you think that that was a cop out on the part of the filmmakers? Because I thought, I wonder, I wonder if they were, they were tipping the scales a little too hard to make us like him because they, because in the movie, we only really see him as one of the people who have wronged him. That's right. And we don't even see, we don't even see him kill that social worker at the end. Like we, you know, we just see the footsteps. We realize what he's done. Well, he killed Zazie Beetz and her daughter.
Vic00:32:35No, no, we don't know that.
JVL00:32:36We don't see that.
Sonny00:32:37We don't know that. Don't do this to me. Don't do this to me. I agree with you. I think he does, but we don't see it and we don't know for sure. Or at least the mother. I think it is, I think it is, I think it is 100% directorial, I don't want to say cowardice, but I do think that they are, I think, I think he is, I think he is tipping the scales in a way that make us sympathize with him in ways that we probably shouldn't.
JVL00:33:08I, I, I just disagree. That was my question.
Vic00:33:10Does he kill the girl?
JVL00:33:12So there, there are essentially four different canon takes on the Joker, each of which is canon in their own way, but one thing they all share is a base irrationality and unpredictability and that is the first moment where we really get to see the unpredictability of him in the midst of violence and so that's, that's great. I, I, I liked him letting the little, the little person off, but he, and I even liked Todd Phillips's decision not to tell us that he killed Zazie Beetz, although I think it is strongly implied.
Sonny00:33:46I don't, I don't think it, it, I think it is strongly implied because I came out of that scene thinking he totally killed her. 100% killed her. And, and expected there to be like. Like cops rushing to her room or something, you know, that we saw in the background.
Vic00:33:59And there's nothing, there's nothing in the end, there's, I didn't stay to the end end. They don't do, did they do stingers? I assume they didn't. I don't know. I don't think there were any.
JVL00:34:06But I, so this is, you know, so we've now had four, so here are the four canon jokers. Okay. The four canon jokers are, there is the original joker who is just sort of a. Caesar Romero. Sorry. Kind of a nasty bastard murderer. Then there is the 60s version of him, which is clown prince of crime. Then we have. Just psychotic, crazy person. And then we have evil incarnate, right? And these are in the course of the 80 years of the joker in the comics as well. Yeah. We've gotten now three of them on screen. We've got Jacqueline Nicholson's clown prince of crime, Heath Ledger's evil incarnate.
Sonny00:34:40I don't really quite know what Jared Leto is. Jared Leto. The problem with Jared Leto is that he is nothing. He's just a guy in clown paint. I guess that's right. I mean, this is, this is, I was thinking about this the other day is that, you know, the, the other versions of the joker all kind of resonate because they. You pick up on something in society. So in the Tim Burton, uh, in the Tim Burton Batman, his joker is fascinating to me for the, the scene. It's the scene where he's like hijacked the press conference, right? And you have all of the Gothamites who are just like going about their daily business while this is happening on, like all this craziness is happening on TV. He's like sliding images over and he's showing, you know, and he's calling out the Batman and everybody's just kind of going about their day and they're like, ah, who cares about this? And it's not until he says, I'm going to throw the parade and I'm going to give everybody $20 million that they all pay attention to the screen. Right? Like he's, he's reflecting that kind of, uh, ambivalence about. It's a very end of history joker, isn't it? Uh, the nineties. Right. Yeah. And then of course you have Heath Ledger with his, you know? Yeah.
JVL00:35:36No, but so, so Heath Ledger is in opposition to society. And then the, this joker is more weirdly in sync with society, you know, or society fault finds itself in sync with him. This is, you know, so father Harrison made a very, very deep point in a, in a, in a series of emails we have with each other, but this is really talking. There are two very, very big points about this movie, very deep intellectual points. One of which is a sort of enlightenment versus pre-enlightenment argument about the importance of symbology over rational argument with Thomas Wayne being the rational argument and the joker unwittingly becoming a symbol and it turns out the symbol is just way more important. Yeah. Right. This is what people rally to. But the other is about the mimetic nature of man and how we are born to imitate and people find the symbol and then are drawn to imitate to it because this is how we were designed to be. It's really, I don't know, again, all the, and I didn't mind any of the non-canon stuff like turning Thomas. I think you liked it more than you did. No, I told you, I loved it. I loved it. I just didn't, I don't know if I loved it enough to see it again. Maybe once.
Vic00:36:42Well, I was going to say, and the other thing that I liked about the movie was easy to understand. It was very straightforward. Okay. Well, he's going on the show now. I know what's going to happen.
Sonny00:36:50You weren't confused when it turned out that he wasn't actually dating her the whole time? What are you talking about? I said, oh. You weren't, you weren't confused when it was, when it was hinted that he was Bruce Wayne's half brother.
Vic00:37:02I thought that was real because I didn't read the comic books. Okay. Now I have a question regarding that. Oh, the first one was, I, I appreciate they do a flashback. It's almost Shyamalan like of the, oh, well he, all these instances where he imagines having a conversation with his girlfriend, but he's alone, you know? Okay, good. Thank you for the extra effort for me to remind, okay, this was all in his mind. A long bit. Yeah. It's like, to bring me along, a fight club type thing. Okay. And then the other thing was, yeah, what were we just talking about? What were you just saying?
Sonny00:37:33The half brother.
Vic00:37:34Yeah. The half brother. So I, because I don't read the comic books, is there, two things, is there any hint in the comic books that he thinks he's related to Batman? And also Thomas Wayne to me does not come off as a nice guy. Is that also the case in the comic books?
JVL00:37:52No. So, so both of these are non-canon. Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, so Bruce Wayne is 10 years old in this movie, Thomas Wayne seems to be about 65 and his wife seems, Martha Wayne, Martha, seems to be at 70, right? Does Martha look like she just had a baby 10 years ago? No, no, no. No, she looks like his grandmother. Yeah. So there's non-canon stuff happening. You know, Alfred is a dick. Right. And kind of a puss too. Yeah. Yeah. Like I, but again. Husky. That doesn't bother me. I, I didn't mind any of that. I thought, yeah, I thought that was very good. Because they're telling a story. Yeah. Like they're, they're allowed to depart from canon for, to tell their story. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Did you love the Dr. Ruth kiss, which is straight from the Frank Miller Dark Knight?
Sonny00:38:30Yes. Well, I wonder, I, I wondered if they were going to go full Frank Miller Dark Knight. I was gonna wonder that too. I killed the whole audience. I wondered that too.
Vic00:38:38Elaborate for those of us who have no idea what you're talking about.
JVL00:38:40Oh, come on. You read the Dark Knight when you were a kid.
Vic00:38:43No. Never.
Sonny00:38:45I didn't do DC comics. Really? At all. In, in the Dark Knight, Joker is released for Markham. He goes on David Letterman and he kills everybody in the crowd with poison gas.
JVL00:38:53Oh. But Dr. Ruth. Yeah. With the guest immediately preceding him. And when he walks into the studio and they do the, the shake thing, he kisses her while, and it's very uncomfortable. Right. Right. Right. Which is where that scene is from. Oh. I like the little module like that. The, the homage of him in the back of the police car, which is a straight tip of the hat to Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight. So there was just enough in that while it was still very much its own thing. Yeah. And here, let me, let me throw something. So we're saying that this is a derivative of a taxi driver. What if taxi? Taxi driver is derivative of the Joker.
Sonny00:39:27Whoa. Mind blown. Mind blown.
JVL00:39:30Mind blown. What if Travis Bickle was just the seventies auteur version of the character, the Joker,
Sonny00:39:36which dates back like 1937? That's a good point. It's good. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I hadn't really thought of it that way.
Vic00:39:43I also liked the music. You were talking about the music, like the score, but I'm also talking about the soundtrack, which is all very, there's nothing, you know, great after its time.
Sonny00:39:51Great Gary Glitter track.
Vic00:39:52Oh yeah. There was Gary Glitter. That's appropriate. Geez. Geez. Uh, but also Jimmy Durante. And also I was impressed that they actually used Frank Sinatra, which is extremely expensive. I don't know. Half the cost of the budget is probably because they had to play Frank Sinatra.
Sonny00:40:06I, uh, I don't know. I, I liked it.
?00:40:09JVL.
Sonny00:40:10Do you have any thoughts about the efforts to the, the efforts in the media to essentially
JVL00:40:17spark a mass shooting at theaters? Have you followed any of this? You know, I, I followed it only from a distance, uh, and it. I found it deeply irresponsible. Deeply irresponsible.
Sonny00:40:31Yeah. Deeply.
JVL00:40:33I mean, we're talking about. Like so much so that I didn't even want to talk about it while it was happening, because this is.
Sonny00:40:36No. We're talking about the memetic nature of man. And like, I, I am a big believer in the idea of contagion killings that like, if you show if, if there's a mass shooting, there's more likely to be more, uh, in short order afterward. And it felt very much like there was an effort to spark a contagion here and it like, I was, I was. I was absolutely angry. It's one of the few times. I don't, I don't do like angry at the media. That's not my default mode, but I was furious, uh, about the coverage of this movie. I thought it was deeply irresponsible.
JVL00:41:04Yeah. I, I do too. And I.
Vic00:41:07And it's on the back of your mind as a result.
JVL00:41:09I can say the Rotten Tomatoes score that you tossed out was at 58%, 62%, some of it. I find that almost unfathomable.
Sonny00:41:17No, no, no. It's dropping below 70. It's at 69 right now. How could it be at 69?
JVL00:41:24I mean, this is. It's just, look, you could not care for the movie in some ways, but how could you not, if it is a straight thumbs up or thumbs down. Yeah. I will, I find it in fathomable that anybody could, could not go thumbs up just for the ambition and the craftsmanship.
Vic00:41:37But to go with the fear, I mean, did you have any fear when you went into the theater? Did you think to yourself, oh, I hope nothing happens here. That kind of a thing. Did the thought cross your mind? No, no, no, no. I sat in the back corner, but then again, I sat in the back corner for Hustlers too.
Sonny00:41:49So. Sat in the back corner, stroking your tech nine. And Mean Girls. Stroking your tech nine. Oh my God. Oh my goodness.
JVL00:41:55Oh. Sat in the back corner. Tech nine. Yes. Sat in the back corner for Mean Girls too.
Vic00:42:00And Aladdin. It's kind of your spot. Aladdin. Well, that's an interesting one. Okay. How are we doing on time, Sonny? We, we gotta move on. Six minutes. Okay. Let's move. Oh man.
Sonny00:42:11Sorry, kids. Okay. Well, you guys, you guys can keep going. I just gotta duck out.
Vic00:42:15I just gotta duck out for a call. I'm sorry. I'm sorry guys. Okay. I think we, we, let's go over to corrections and shout outs then. Okay. I have, and then we can always fill in stuff at the end if we have extra time here to kill. Uh, a shout out to listeners, Anthony and Martha Piccirillo, Martha, Martha, who recently told Lauren McCormick that they would pay to go on a Sub-Beacon cruise. Top dollar. They would be so excited. So I think that, uh, down the Potomac, let's say we do a cruise down the Potomac. Yeah. Uh. Get one of those riverboats. Yeah. The riverboats.
JVL00:42:46The booze cruise.
Vic00:42:47A riverboat booze cruise. We could get the pirate ship. We could, we could make some, I don't see that one. I think that would be funny.
JVL00:42:51Why don't we do that?
Vic00:42:52Maybe just a DC ducks. Yeah. And then they take, do they take you from, is it, is it the booze cruise also takes you, do they drop you off like an old town and you can go in a bar crawl or is it just goes around the river and back?
JVL00:43:03We gotta make sure it gets us out past the international waters mark. Okay.
Guest00:43:07Well.
JVL00:43:08So we can have our monkey knife fights. That's right.
Vic00:43:11That's right. Okay. Great. Uh, anything else? Corrections? Anything else?
JVL00:43:17No. We're good. Spirit of the week. Did somebody mention spirit of the week to you? Cause this is the second week in a row that you miss it. You just miss it. You miss, you miss the bit. I, I miss the bit.
Vic00:43:24I mean, you know who doesn't miss it? My liver.
Sonny00:43:26Yeah. Well, I was gonna say like it, it, it, it's, it was a good bit when we were taping the show at like noon on a Tuesday, it's, it's less of a good bit at like nine 50 on a Wednesday morning, which is what time it is right now.
Vic00:43:39I'm gonna hit the fence here. So I'll, I'll, I'll just move on. I had a thought on that.
JVL00:43:42Hit the post. I was gonna hit the post.
Vic00:43:44Hit the post. It's the, uh, you know, the, I, did you notice the authenticity? Standing online. In online, the scene where he gives his mother the TV dinner, that was a Swanson's TV dinner. That was a Swanson's TV dinner.
Guest00:43:52Did you, did you have that growing up?
Vic00:43:54I had that too. I loved it. In foil.
JVL00:43:57In foil. One of the best. What was your favorite? Uh, the apple cobbler dessert. Was it?
Vic00:44:02But that came with fried chicken.
JVL00:44:03But the Salisbury steak was great. The Salisbury steak was great. It was very gummy. I, and nothing in that was either Salisbury or steak. I don't know what it was. But it was delicious. I ate it.
Vic00:44:10I ate it in order. And the mashed potatoes. So I ate vegetables first, then Salisbury. And then mashed potatoes. Then mashed potatoes. And then dessert. Yes. Thank you. Right here. Fist bump. Uh, it was so good. It was so good. I was seven years old. Just to tell her. I said, "Hey, Antipi, you don't, you won't believe what I just had for dinner." And I told her and I hung up the phone. I was a messed up kid. Okay. That's all the time we're going to give to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us @SonnyBunch, @VictorinoMattus. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher. Just type in SubBeacon of the podcasts. We are there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. I'll take care.
?00:44:46Bye.
JVL00:44:51All right. What's going on? So had a classic Flash performance on Sunday. They were playing the other first place, they had tied for first place in their fall league. And Flash was brought in for a two-inning save. He struck out four, hit three batters, gave up no runs. Wow. He beamed them. It was pure nuclear rouge. He was totally unhittable and also terrifying to the other players. The other guys.
Sonny00:45:22It was very Nolan Ryan. It was. It was.
JVL00:45:25I think no walks. I think he basically decided like, "Yeah, why should I spend four pitches walking guys when I can just hurt them and send a message to the next batter?" But he was very good about it. He checked on the guys and made sure they weren't crippled.
Sonny00:45:37Appropriately apologetic at the end. I'm sure they all were saying as they were in their hospital suites, you know, with their bandages around their head.
Vic00:45:46As Martha Stewart would say, "I'm sure it's fine."
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