#57. Pandemic Movies, Social Distancing, and Hollywood in Chaos
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With Hollywood coming apart in real time, the guys skip a review and book-club pandemic movies instead. JVL's list starts with Outbreak, a reminder that you could once build a Wolfgang Petersen summer tentpole around Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Cuba Gooding Jr., and a Rene Russo twenty years his junior, and runs through The Andromeda Strain, every modern zombie movie, and War of the Worlds, which he reframes from the aliens' side as the inverse of the Native American encounter — a species that crosses to a new world and is eradicated by smallpox. Sonny calls Contagion the best and smartest of the bunch and tells the story of watching it on demand, deciding his chills were psychosomatic, and nearly dying alone on his couch with a 102-degree fever and walking pneumonia while his wife hosted a bachelorette party. JVL argues Stephen King's The Stand gets the culture right rather than the epidemiology, with DJs joking about Captain Trips until a switch flips from denialism into abject panic overnight, while Vic says the real subject of War of the Worlds is mob versus individual behavior, which he ties to the Times story of people buying toilet paper because other people were buying toilet paper. The industry news is grim: JVL relays Richard Rushfield's prediction that one or two legacy studios won't exist in their current form by the end of 2020, Sonny warns Regal's debt load could simply fold the chain, and A Quiet Place Part II's delay comes over the transom mid-taping. Onward opened to $39 million, The Invisible Man held at $15 million, and Sonny nominates The Hunt as the unluckiest movie in the world. Up front, Sonny recounts a Dallas ER visit where the flu test came back negative, strep came back positive, and the doctor admitted CDC rules forbade testing him for the obvious thing; JVL turns up in sunglasses to keep from touching his eyes, hoarding sanitizer and 500 rolls of toilet paper; and Vic delivers a fond obituary for Palm manager Tommy Giacomo, which prompts JVL's story of a waiter dumping a baseball-sized glob of French dressing into a web designer's big hair.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode sponsored by DoorDash and Calm, we discuss pandemic movies like Outbreak and even
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00on day one there were two people and then four and then 16 in three months it's a billion that's
Guest00:00:07where we're headed they're calling out the national guard they're moving the president underground people will panic get away it will tip over
Vic00:00:14hello and welcome to another edition of the sub beacon sponsored by doordash and calm i'm victor along with sonny bunch and jonathan v last just a reminder the sub beacon is available on itunes google play and stitcher look at our podcast and search for sub beacon you'll easily find us please subscribe tell your friends leave a review uh gentlemen how are we i can't believe the show somehow survives even even if there was a uh a zombie apocalypse i i guess there's going to be an episode at least for now sonny how are you feeling did you put yourself in self-imposed isolation
Sonny00:00:55No. Well, I did for a day. I did for a day. You sound better. You know, very stuffy and coffee and stayed home from work that day. But on Saturday, I felt a little bit better, felt a little bit better after some, you know, some round of Dayquil and Nyquil and that sort of thing. And then Sunday, I felt much worse. I had like I finally got a fever and that sort of thing. So Sunday night, I went to a local ER and and they they put Parkland. Did you go to Parkland? No, no, I went to some like I went to some like, like private ER thing. I don't. You know, it's on it's it's on Mockingbird. It's probably going to end up costing me like five hundred dollars, I assume, because it's like but but whatever. What did they say? So I went in and, you know, the nurse comes in and gives me, you know, runs me through the questions and blah, blah, blah. And I tell her all, you know, kind of the the the the way the symptoms of have kind of come and gone. And she was like, OK, so the doctor comes in and doctor is very, very nice. And he's like, OK, let me check you out here. You got a smile. You got a slight fever. You got a, you know, we're going to we're going to run a couple of tests here. We're going to run flu test and a strep test. Let me ask, you know, I feel, you know, this is you're showing symptoms for coronavirus. Let me ask, have you traveled at all? Have you been out of the country? I was like, no. It's like, OK, have you been around anybody who has it? And I just like threw my hands up in the air. I was like, I have no idea. I don't know if I've been around anyone who has it, because every day we're hearing about random people in random places getting getting positive. Tests like how how could I possibly know whether or not I've been in contact with anyone? And he just kind of smiled and was like, yeah, you know, what are you going to do? So doctor comes back in and he says the the flu, the flu came back negative, which is good. That's good. You don't have the flu. So you mean the as in the flu or the flu test, the flu test, the flu test, the strep came back positive and he was like, I don't think you have strep because. You are coughing and that is a sign that you don't have strep. Actually, coughing is a is a is a negative indicator. So I was like, OK, well, then maybe maybe it is this other thing that we've been talking about. And he's like, yeah, it might be. But on the other hand, we can't test you. We're literally not allowed to test you because of the CDC rules and regulations. I was like, well, that's ridiculous. He's like, yeah. It's probably not that. I'm just like this is like I have, as I said, get too close to politics. So as I said, as I said, I just I have no confidence whatsoever that anyone at any level of the government or the medical establishment has any idea how many people in America have this thing because they cannot test people who are literally symptomatic for it. So anyway, cheers. I hope. Everybody is doing OK.
Vic00:04:27So you're over it now, though. This is it.
Sonny00:04:29Well, so this is the thing. This is the thing. It probably wasn't coronavirus because I started taking the antibiotics and the antibiotics have worked, worked their work, their wonders. So it was it was probably just strep.
JVL00:04:40It was probably just where did this guy go to medical school? Did you ask Wuhan?
Vic00:04:44He went to.
JVL00:04:45Yeah, he went to. He went to Beijing, Beijing International.
Sonny00:04:50He went to Dr. Nick's school, Dr. Nick's correspondence school. OK.
Vic00:04:55Well, I'm glad you are all feeling better. Do people care about it in Dallas as as much as here or do they feel like, well, we're down here? It's not as big of a deal.
Sonny00:05:04I definitely.
Vic00:05:05It's warmer.
Sonny00:05:06I mean, I don't know because I'm I'm very insulated from the larger Dallas community.
JVL00:05:11I would say that like I would say that.
Sonny00:05:13Yeah, I already had done that. I practice social distancing as a matter of course, just just just because. So I think I'm I think. I'm probably OK. No, I don't know. I get the sense that people are probably slightly less freaked out. But I also think that people are kind of freaked out. And I think that I think that especially in my in my line of work in the movie business, people are like are growing increasingly freaked out. I just got news that Quiet Place 2 has been delayed. That that just came over the transom.
Vic00:05:51Does this does this does this affect your plans to travel to Cannes? For the film festival?
Sonny00:05:56I don't think Cannes was in the cards, but Venice might have been. And Venice, Venice isn't until not in the car. Venice, Venice is not until October. So who knows? Maybe everything will be better by then. Or maybe maybe we'll have maybe we'll have collapsed into a pre pre feudal hunter gatherer state by that. I don't know. Hard to say.
Vic00:06:18You know, this is a great opportunity to return to those times. Maybe the Doge will take over Venice again. And then we'll have like the Doge.
JVL00:06:24So we. We're taping on Thursday morning. Last night, I taped an episode of my other show, The JVL Show, with Richard Rushfield. And we spent a lot of time talking about the implications for this in the movie industry. And Richard believes that this is so significant that at least one and possibly two of the major legacy studios will not exist at the end of 2020. In the way in which they exist now.
Vic00:06:53Unless they get built.
JVL00:06:55So, he thinks it's a real, like, everything is going to change because of this.
Sonny00:07:01I think that is a possibility. I think the bigger danger is for exhibitors, right? I feel like, I mean, like, I feel like there was a story, there was a story on Deadline or one of the sites today. It was the CEO of Cinemark, which is the, or I don't know, whatever the, whatever. The parent company of Regal is now. And he was like, we're okay for now. But the headline was like, their debt load is so big that, you know, if theaters shut down for an extended period of time, there's a very good chance that Regal will just fold. That it will go bankrupt and that nobody will replace it. And I do.
JVL00:07:46But it might become a distressed asset to be taken over now that the Paramount Consent Decree has been rescinded. Yeah, sure.
Sonny00:07:52Regal Disney. Regal Disney. Presents.
JVL00:07:55Or, honestly, so Disney is so exposed because they have the theme parks, the cruise ships, and the movies and the theaters. Even Disney could all of a sudden become an acquisition target. Like, what if Apple just decides, you know what? We had thought about buying Netflix. Screw that. Why don't we just buy Disney?
Vic00:08:18Yeah, we'll just buy Disney.
JVL00:08:19And that's not as crazy as it sounds.
Sonny00:08:22It is not. It is. I mean, this is. This is kind of a textbook Black Swan event where nobody, nobody, as much as we all could say, like, oh, we've all, like, thought a disease is coming. We all nobody is prepared for this and nobody is prepared for the what the actual the actual stakes are here. And nobody is prepared for how to actually deal with it. And nobody is prepared for the way that this will change consumer behavior. I mean, that's the real the real key here, because it's not just the government saying we're going to shut all the movie theaters. Down. I mean, that that is an issue that that is potentially. But it's it's, you know, losing the 15 percent of the audience share that's above 60 forever. It's losing the you know, it's losing the families who don't want to expose their kids.
JVL00:09:11What do you mean by lose them forever, Sonny? They're watching in Netflix. No, no, no, no. I don't mean they'll be streaming.
Sonny00:09:18I don't mean that. I don't mean they'll be in the ground. I'm just saying they'll be too scared to go to the theaters. You know, I and also dead. We'll all die. Well, I mean, we had a big impact. Look, you know, everyone laughed at Tom Cotton. Everyone laughed at Tom Cotton when he was like, oh, what? You know, what if the Chinese built this in a lab? But if you were going to build if you're going to design a virus in a lab in a way that was meant to distress the domestic theater or domestic hospitals. Right. What would you do? You'd have it target old people and you'd have it you'd have it like lay them all up.
Vic00:09:49And I'm just throwing that out there. You know, I had drink your.
Sonny00:09:55Scythia people.
Vic00:09:56My Uber driver says he believes that the coronavirus did not originate in China, but rather CIA. No, no, no. I was expecting that was like, here we go. Iran and that it was Chinese exchange students in Iran who got it there. Then they went back to Wuhan in western China. And that's where it spread. But he says, you'll never know because of the regime. So there you go.
JVL00:10:18It's an interesting possibility. What ethnicity was your Uber driver? He was Turkish. Yeah, no.
Vic00:10:25And there's some cooperation there. I'm not really sure. JVL, how are you feeling? You're not panicking about any of this, right? You're thinking like this is completely overblown, a total overreaction. People, if we had Facebook, if only we had Facebook Live for the whole show, they would see you were wearing sunglasses. You've got all sorts of paper towels and things around you and your hands are in your pockets and you've got a bottle of Purell. This is just for shtick.
JVL00:10:54Yeah, no. It's shtick. I'm not going to be crazy and waste any of my surgical gloves from my supplies on this show. I think the odds are good enough for me coming here into a high traffic area of the Washington Free Beacon that I can get by just using paper towels to touch things so long as I have my handy dandy hand sanitizer with me, which you guys can't get any more of because I have it all. Hoarding. Hoarding the hand sanitizer.
Vic00:11:23The shore is spending thousands of dollars for a six-pack.
JVL00:11:24I believe we have close to 500 rolls of toilet paper in my garage right now. Just saying. Just saying. Is that why I can't find it? That's the currency of the future.
Vic00:11:33Are you prepared for how long?
JVL00:11:35I think 12 weeks. I am prepared for us all to be hunkered down for about 12 weeks. Three months. Three months. Yeah. Until the summer. Yeah.
Vic00:11:44But this is a – when you say that, like, for example, you're getting the – Protein shakes. Got a lot of protein shakes. Is it the – are you suggesting the possibility? Is it the possibility that, like, supermarkets would be closed or that just there would be shortages? Shortages. Okay. Shortages. Because they can't do that. That would be nuts. Supermarkets will remain open.
JVL00:12:02Sonny, you laughed at me last week when I said that I thought it was very possible that four to six weeks from now theaters would be closed. We – the NBA has now suspended its season. And March Madness. The March Madness is going to be played in front of closed – no crowds and empty auditoriums. And that's if it gets played at all. That's now. I think it's entirely possible March Madness doesn't happen. Yeah. Because a bunch of schools pull out the way University of Missouri just did.
Sonny00:12:28Yeah. Well, I – the thing I was –
Vic00:12:30Georgetown just pulled out as well.
Sonny00:12:32The thing I was – the thing I was most skeptical about was whether or not the government would shut it down. That is – and I remain skeptical that the government will, like, essentially enforce martial law and say, like, nobody can gather in groups larger than 100 or groups larger than 10.
JVL00:12:50I think the theaters are going to have to shut themselves down. I think they're going to have to voluntarily do it. I think it's – All schools are going to be closed. Yeah. It's possible. It's certainly – it is certainly possible. Right. I mean, kids are being sent home from college and moving out of their dorms this weekend.
Sonny00:13:04That is – that's the craziest – that's the craziest part of all this to me because, look, say what you will about this disease, but it does seem to not affect – it does not have an enormous impact on the people in the essentially under 30 age cohort. Now, there are some – there's some discussion about, like, whether or not they're going to – whether or not people 20 to 30 can get it and it will impact their lungs, blah, blah. But, like, I feel like if – I feel like it is almost safer just to keep all of the college kids on the – in the dorms, keep them – keep them there, let them – if they get it, they get it, but keep them away from, like, going back to their homes with their old parents.
JVL00:13:44What if we went in the other direction? We locked them all in their dorms and just kept them there indefinitely and we exposed them all, you know, like chicken pox parties where we – Yeah, like chicken pox parties. Expose all the college kids. You have a lock-in.
Vic00:13:54An orgy. Sorry. That's how I'm imagining what it would be like. Is it a mixed – oh, it's not? Oh, still. Okay.
JVL00:14:02So, what this is all about is it's about flattening the curve of the uptake, right? I mean, this is – so, the problem in everything is the rate of infection and if you have five million people sick over the course of five months, that is not a big deal. Five million people sick over the course of four weeks. Is a very big deal, right? Because you wind up breaking the healthcare system and that is when your mortality rates jump and spike because you just can't treat people. And so, this is why I think it is not crazy to be taking drastic measures early in an attempt to flatten out the curve. Right. And, you know, I would say the South Koreans seem to have had some success with this so far. They took very draconian measures and they basically shut the country down. Italy did it, I would say, early but not as early as the South Koreans did and they staggered into it. Nobody ever looks back on a situation like this and says, yeah, you know, we did too much.
Sonny00:15:13Without venturing into the world of politics too much, I do wonder if we live in such a like weirdly fractured information environment now where you will, if, let's say, let's say we get this thing under control, right? And the deaths are pretty manageable and the health care system doesn't get overrun. At one point in like, I don't know, September of 2020, do people start saying, you know, this was all overhyped by the media and we didn't need to do any of this and it was all a plot to blah, blah, blah. Like I, I, I, I mean, two months before the election. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying, JVL, that nobody should be saying that. I do wonder if we have like reached. A point where it, that is not necessarily what will happen.
JVL00:15:59Well, I, I agree that it will happen. I think, I think even if like a hundred thousand people die, there will be people who come September and October say, see, it was no big deal.
Sonny00:16:10Yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:16:11You know, I mean, or, uh, it was all a plot or it was the, the real, I'm just asking questions, just asking questions here. The real villains in all of this are the media.
Sonny00:16:24The Russians, the Russians did it. The Russians released this. The Ukrainians. No, the Ukrainians.
Vic00:16:29The Russians were innocent. I did my own very terrible math because, you know, I don't do math. But I was looking at the number of cases in Italy, which is 12,000 plus. And I was looking at the number of death, which is 600 something plus. And the number I came up with was 6%. Is that correct?
JVL00:16:45I don't believe so.
Vic00:16:46Less than, more.
JVL00:16:47I believe it's less, less than.
Vic00:16:49Yeah. Which is awfully high. Yeah. Based on that. But again, so this is. What does it mean?
JVL00:16:55So the mortality rate in Italy will be higher than it should be in the wild because the health care system has been overrun, right? So you can't, you can't treat everybody who is sick over there the way you would if it was one sick person. Right. And so you're going to have a mortality rate higher than it should be. Got it. The scary thing is looking at the maps on the rate of increase in diagnosed cases and to the extent that we are mirroring the Italian version of this. Which is to say, so this is Megan McArdle wrote a good piece about this. Did you guys see that? Yeah, yeah. The problem with people, it is a cognitive problem with human beings that they can understand arithmetic sequencing, but they cannot conceptually understand geometric sequencing. It's just a cognitive blind spot we have. And so when something is happening in a geographic, geometric manner, you know, you are two steps away from being overrun and you still can't. You can't even really see the problem. And that's where we're headed. I mean, four weeks from now, it's going to be different than it is now. It's bad. It's all very bad. And we should all, you make fun of me, but I'm going to be bringing a microphone over to your house next weekend and we're going to set up and we'll probably all be doing it from quarantine in our own homes. It just occurred to me why you're wearing the sunglasses. Droplets. No, no. It should keep me from touching my eyes.
Sonny00:18:21Oh. Oh.
JVL00:18:22Yeah. No, I'm wearing the sunglasses. That's not going to protect me from aerosolization. No, no. It's just from touching my eyes.
Sonny00:18:32Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me Oakleys aren't air pressures sucked to your face? These aren't Oakleys. Oh, they're not? I don't know.
Vic00:18:40They look like, you know what they are? You just assumed they were Oakleys.
Sonny00:18:42They look like Oakleys. They are under armor. Oh, I'm sorry. Under armor.
JVL00:18:46Baseball tuned. These are baseball specific sunglasses.
Sonny00:18:49Well, this is why I assumed they were Oakleys is because remember back in the 90s when all there were like Oakley sub-variant Donruss cards? I had the whole set. It's worth so much money now. I'm retiring on hand sanitizer and Oakley Donruss cards. That's good.
Vic00:19:06Did you ever want, I mean, you know, we watch all the news about the cruise ships, by the way, right? And they keep talking about the cruise ships, but they never asked the important question to me, which is what sort of activities and entertainments are still in operation when they're stuck on the cruise ships? I think you're all confined to cabin. Oh, come on. You're telling me that there's no... There's no midnight buffet.
JVL00:19:25I can't imagine, because don't forget, the passenger is sick. The crew is going to be sick, too. What about like the shows?
Sonny00:19:32Did you guys, did you guys, did you guys see that they have great reviews? I'm sorry, Vic, Vic, Vic, Vic, did you see that they closed the buffets at the MGM properties in Las Vegas?
Vic00:19:44Oh, no.
Sonny00:19:45Yeah, it's the worst. It's the worst thing that could happen.
Vic00:19:48It was bound to happen because nobody follows my strict rules on buffet etiquette, as you know. We've talked about this in past episodes. People who go in, forget about the tongs, forget about the tongs, they're grabbing it, like, don't worry, I'm not going to touch anything else. I'll just pick this roll up myself.
Sonny00:20:03Mike Bloomberg made a video demonstrating how you should use the Vic Matus method. Did he? No, no. Didn't you guys see that? The video of him like licking his fingers and like putting pizza back in the box? It was the most horrifying thing I've ever seen.
JVL00:20:17You know, speaking of things that would terrify Vic, we have a new development in Vic's Super Power, Sonny.
Vic00:20:24Oh, yeah. From human to, wait, Max Fonsaito first. So you killed Max Fonsaito. I made a joke. Somebody died that I had mentioned, and I said, oh, come on, that's ridiculous. And I said Max Fonsaito as a joke, but he was already old.
Sonny00:20:39Yeah, so, you know, that probably wasn't you who killed him. You're the coronavirus of this show, is what it comes down to. And go ahead, JVL, what?
JVL00:20:46Last week, what did we open with? Talk about the Accela. Oh, oh, there is no more Accela, is there? It's gone. I was like one of the last people on that train. I couldn't believe it.
Sonny00:20:57So, wait, wait, wait. Have they closed the Accela entirely, or is it just the nonstop? Washington to New York Corridor. Just the nonstop?
Vic00:21:04No, no, no, no, no. There are no more Accela trains. Washington to New York Corridor is shut down, which is what I took. And then I spoke about it.
JVL00:21:11I bet you the lounge is shut down, too.
Vic00:21:14Again, as I described what was going on at Penn Station, the Accela lounge with people, I don't care how much they paid or what sort of elite level they are. They're all grabbing. And for the free M&Ms.
JVL00:21:25And they're not using the spoons.
Vic00:21:27And they're not using the spoons. It's someone where you turn. So, if you turn the knob, then it just comes out, and you have to catch it in a cup. But, of course, it's not all. So, it's all over the counter, which is just terrible. We're doing. I'm doing okay.
JVL00:21:40I'm fine. I'm fine. I actually. You're not wearing your black armbands today? I'm not wearing. Somebody you didn't kill who passed away this week.
Vic00:21:49Oh, Tommy Giacomo.
JVL00:21:50Tommy Giacomo.
Vic00:21:51That's true. Good man.
JVL00:21:52Tommy Giacomo. Can you talk a little bit for our audience about Tommy?
Vic00:21:56Tommy was the longtime manager of the Palm. He, I think it was his father, got him and his brother to build the Palm, like in the
Guest00:22:031970s. He always talked like this. He was a big smoker.
Vic00:22:07And so, it was like in the 70s, and they built the banquets and everything. But, you know, they did it themselves, and they just so happened to have the luck of being in the ground level of the building, which it still is at, where Arnold and Porter, the law firm, was. And so, they were. People would start to come down and just go there, is what happened. And they'd bring all their clients, and then one thing led to another. But it was different back then. I mean, the palm itself started as an Italian restaurant, right? In an Italian. You never knew that. Yes, yes. And so, it was Italian. That's why they have an Italian section on the menu that's actually good, and not just like we got some tokens, like we have to have a pasta. No, they actually have been doing that. And then, they would order things like roast beef hash and stuff that's not on the menu anymore. And so, but it was Paul Porter who made it. It was made famous, and Giacomo was the gatekeeper. One of the things he told me when I did the interview with him at the time, as we can't talk about, is Paul Porter's death, because he died at the palm. Which is not a bad way to go. I could see myself dying there, and that'd be pretty good, you know? He had choked on lobster. He choked to death? Yeah.
JVL00:23:14In the palm on lobster? Wait, sorry, who was this? This is what the fall of Rome looks like.
Sonny00:23:19I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I missed, I actually, I missed the name. Who was that that died? Paul Porter. Who's Paul Porter? I don't know who Paul Porter is.
Vic00:23:26He was the namesake of Arnold and Porter, the law firm, which was in there.
JVL00:23:31The named partner at the law firm dies at the restaurant downstairs, choking to death on lobster.
Vic00:23:38You know what? Chew your filter. Chew your, a lobster is a, you know, it's tricky. You know, you're, it's not a swamp. The swamp is real.
JVL00:23:43The swamp is real. It's not a swamp. It really happened. The other funny thing. So did you like Tommy? Because I always thought he was a total D-bag.
Vic00:23:51And I was, I was totally scared. I was scared of him, right? And intimidated. Because he carried himself like a mafia or so.
JVL00:23:56Yeah.
Vic00:23:58Oh. And, and so it was, it was like, well, you know, you know, I just want to get to my table and I was not like, hey, what's going on? Be my, you know, normally I am be my friend, but even he scared me by just, you know, no nonsense. But over time, started calling me by name, then started getting friendly, then started getting chatty. And then we became friends. So, I mean, the whole idea of him being the scary guy is not true unless you do piss him off.
Sonny00:24:21He, he.
Vic00:24:22Like Tucker. Tucker. Remember? He had a big falling out, you know, for a stretch. He was on the blacklist.
JVL00:24:26Tucker was on the blacklist. He was blacklisted at the Palm, right?
Vic00:24:28And all of Tucker's friends had to go in and like beg Tommy, let him back in. They literally had to broker a peace. They brokered a peace.
Sonny00:24:34They brokered a peace. I have to say, so my, my, my, my main impression of Tommy is, is seeing him essentially sitting in the waiting area and just like resting there like king of the castle. And that was near the end already. The Don, who everybody had to like come up and like kiss the ring before you go to your table, like, oh, Tommy, so good to see you. Thank you. Thank you for the nice basket of flowers you sent to my, my son's grave after you had him murdered. You know, it was like, that, that was like the, the look of the guy.
Vic00:25:05You know, it was, it was, you know what? There was an engine problem in the car. That's how it exploded.
JVL00:25:08This is the type of populist stuff that drives me crazy because the idea of just, you got to kiss in order to have the privilege of buying overpriced steak and french fries. You need to go kiss the ring and suck up to this guy. But you remember, no, you could just go win.
Vic00:25:27I mean, people wanted to, but you weren't going to get, you know, they already had a manager. He was not like, when we saw him, he was basically semi-retired, but people still like to say hi and pay their respects to him and stuff.
JVL00:25:39Can I tell, can I tell my Palm story, Victorino?
Vic00:25:41Oh yeah, this is before, this is before when we were nobodies.
JVL00:25:44Go ahead. So you've, you've heard this a dozen times, Sonny, and you've probably heard it once or twice too, but I have a hate, hate relationship with the Palm. Mostly I just hate it.
Vic00:25:54Oh no, not anymore. You love it now.
JVL00:25:58Tolerate it. When you show, when you showed up as a special person at the Palm, like you were a buddy of Tommy Giacomo, then you would get lubed up like you couldn't imagine from the minute you opened the door over there, you know, running around the little dais to shake your hand and how are you doing and how is Clarice and all the, you know, we got your special table ready for you. Here's John, your server. John is the best. And when you walk in as just a normal person wanting to pay more money than you should for a steak at a lunchtime restaurant, which is really no different than Chipotle.
Sonny00:26:38Oh, bulls**t. Whoa, whoa. Just f**k you, JVL.
JVL00:26:43Mark it. Mark, we're 31 something. Mark it, Paul. I'm just saying. It's just a lunch place like any other. It's just a place to get food.
Vic00:26:53Okay. You know, it's people with attitude like you that deserve to be treated like s**t at these restaurants. That's all I'm saying.
JVL00:26:58Whoa, whoa.
Vic00:26:59Don't get me started.
JVL00:27:00So I'm in there with the people who were designing the first iteration of the Weekly Standards website. So it was the design team. We had, there were me, Terry Eastland, Catherine Lowe, and I think one other person from the standard, and then four or five people from this web design firm, one of whom was a lady with very unfriendly. Fortunate big hair. I mean, like big, big, big hair. Like New Jersey big? New Jersey big hair. And as we are sitting and being served our lunch, the waiter who is bringing things around makes a mistake where he tilts something over and pours a giant glob of French dressing into this woman's hair. And I don't mean like a little glob, like the size of a marble. I mean like the size of a baseball. And because her hair is so big, she doesn't immediately notice it. And I look up at this guy because I'm the only one at the table who does notice it. And he has noticed what he's done and is clearly going to just move along as if nothing has happened. And I had to go, excuse me, dude. And he then looked like, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't notice. Let me get a napkin. We'll clean that up for you. Because, you know, if all you're doing is there to pay sixty five dollars for your little piece of eight ounce filet mignon, then they're happy to just like drop a vat of salad dressing into your hair and not even care.
Vic00:28:30Can I say something now? Yeah. OK, three things. Number one, she obviously had it coming because she had the big it was her fault. OK, number two, to blaming. Yes. And number two, they don't do that thing anymore with the salad. That's very good. They change that because, you know, you can have these unfortunate incidents.
Sonny00:28:49Because people got salad in their hair.
Vic00:28:52That waiter is no longer working there. Let me say, when I am at the Palm, which is often, I will see my favorite waiter, John, and tourists come in, new people come in, and I carefully listen to see how he's like. And he is the same and friendly to them as he was as he is with me. So it might have been just that one time, JVL. You know what?
JVL00:29:13What you don't understand. Moving right along. Vic, what you don't understand is John being nice to other people within earshot of you is part of his service to you. No, no, no. He knows I'm listening? What it is you like. He knows that you want to feel as though the guy who's being nice to you is nice to everybody.
Vic00:29:29That's not true. And so he continues the act. That's not true.
JVL00:29:31It's like Gosford Park where Helen Mirren says, you know, the true gift of service is knowing what they need before they even know it.
Vic00:29:39Who am I in Gosford Park?
JVL00:29:41Am I Michael Gambon? Oh, right. Michael Gambon. Right, Philby. I'll take that. I'll take that.
Vic00:29:46I remember. One final funny story about Tommy was... Jack Kent Cooke, the former owner of the Redskins, would come in and he had his wife at the time and then so, you know, they had his face and they had the wife's face on the wall, right? And then... Like you. Like me. Yes, that's correct. And then... Because you have your face on the wall at the Palm. I do, which has no bearing on my reviews.
JVL00:30:12Much like the man of the Palm who owned the Washington Redskins. Just like the billionaire Jack Kent Cooke. Yeah, and Roger Stone.
Vic00:30:19So then, but later Cooke comes back. And he says to Tommy, I want her face off the wall. The wife, who he was like fighting with. And so you better take it off the wall. So they take it off the wall. And then like some other occasion, he shows up with her. And the first thing the wife notices is that her face is not on the wall. And she goes, what happened? And immediately Jack just turns to Tommy and goes, yeah, what's the matter with you? Where's her face? You know, and of course... And what did Tommy do? Well, he put it back on the wall because it's Jack Kent Cooke.
JVL00:30:48Of course. No, but I bet he took the bullet too. He was like, oh, I did that. That was... I know. I know.
Vic00:30:53He said the scariest person, though, he... Most intimidating person, one of the most intimidating people to deal with at the Palm, he said was Carolyn Fortis. Strangely. Abe Fortis' wife, the Supreme Court Justice.
JVL00:31:04The Supreme Court, no kidding. That's very interesting.
Vic00:31:07How many Palm points do you currently have, Victorino? I don't keep track. It's all online now. It's all online. And in fact, they were showing me about how it was being automatically deducted for discounts. I got invited to the kitchen to look at it. Five digits or six? Don't recall. It's moving right along. No, it's four digits. It's four digits because it's like on a roaming basis.
Sonny00:31:28Yeah, I was going to say, does it deduct whenever you get a card out?
Vic00:31:34The last time I was there, it was very weird. But, you know, they have this new system, technology and all. I did want to say, JVL, with all the sort of fears of coronavirus and everything, I, you know, spending more family time and also this is connected to Lent because I'm not playing Civilization, I played the board game with myself. My son, Axis and Allies, 1941 edition. They made some changes, so they don't do the super weapons thing anymore, which was the best thing. Sorry, Sonny, you could take a break. Go ahead, write a piece. I'll be done with this.
Sonny00:32:03Yeah, I'm just going to mute my mic so I can do some typing.
Vic00:32:07So I gave my son the choice, who do you want to be? And he he chose Axis again. I said, fine, be that way. From you, Dan, if I learn it from watching you. So it is so much easier being the allies. Allies, especially because when you're done with America's turn, then it's Russia's turn. It's just back to back, you know. And his mistake was he was obsessed, obviously, with trying to take Russia because it looks like easy pickings. It looks like easy pickings. So easy. And then he had changed his objective from like Russia, the caucuses. And then and then with just enough people, you know, just deciding to go all out and he he had me on the ropes. It was like down to Russia. But of course, you know, great. Britain, America, transport's coming over. It's happening.
JVL00:32:56In order to go after Russia full bore, you've got to leave the whole Western front. You just give it up. That's exactly right. And this is the fool's gold, right? You should never you can't do that. What you do is you box the Russians in, leave a pile of infantry there so they can't come out. And then you turn your your pullback. That's right. Pull back to the pre-war lines and then turn your attention to the British.
Vic00:33:18Once the Americans and the Americans as well. I did in Southern Europe and whatnot. And of course, North Africa. Then, of course, he's completely distracted. Like which way to send. OK, leave a couple of people behind. Then send a couple of people for it. Leave a couple behind. And then the next, you know, Germany's gone. And then it was just a matter of Japan. How did he play with Japan?
JVL00:33:37What did he what did he try to do with them?
Vic00:33:38Oh, man, he was right. He almost took India. And that's a big one. And he didn't. He decided it was it was it was great. He made it. He made a crazy move, which was rather than protect Indochina.
JVL00:33:50I was just going to ask about Indochina.
Vic00:33:52Yeah, no, he took all those forces and he was obsessed with trying to take the Philippines, which is not bad, but it's sentimental and and he failed. But it left the continent wide open. So then the British were able to move in and then move up. And then the next thing you know, the only. So he focused on Asia. He didn't go east to the US. No, he did not.
JVL00:34:12He was focused. Did he attack Pearl Harbor?
Vic00:34:14No, no. He never went after Pearl like he was Manchuria. He went. He took over China. He eliminated the American presence in China. Remember how America has American supported forces?
JVL00:34:24You have a fighter and two infantry.
Vic00:34:26Right. Very good. Good memory. It's the Flying Tigers. Sonny's actually asleep. Sorry. I know. Sorry. Hello, Sonny. And so in the end, we just finished the game yesterday. I just had a ton of bombers, fighters, aircraft, everything. Japan was surrounded. The only difference is there's no atomic bomb option. So it really is like the invasion of Japan. And he almost held out. A lot of people died. It was terrible. Anyway. But we'll have plenty of time for more board games because, you know, this is really a time to spend with your family and probably no better time for the restaurants to come to you. That's right. With a selection of your favorite flavors from across the globe, you can order with World Cuisine from the comfort and safety of your living room with DoorDash. DoorDash brings all of America's flavors to your door. 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 300 10,000 restaurant partners in 4,000 cities. So you might find a new favorite, too, with door-to-door delivery in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Australia. You can order from your local go-tos or choose from your favorite national restaurant chains. Wendy's, Chick-fil-A, the Cheesecake Factory. With DoorDash, you'll never have to worry about your next meal. Right now, our listeners can get $5 off their first order or $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter code SUBBEACON. That's $5 off your first order. Order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter code SUBBEACON. Don't forget, that's code SUBBEACON for $5 off your first order with DoorDash. Now, moving onward. Over the weekend, Onward took the top of the box office with $39 million, followed by The Invisible Man with $15 million, and in third place was The Way Back with $8.2 million. Those are some small numbers, and I guess they're only getting worse. We already started talking about box office thoughts, but please continue.
Sonny00:36:21You know, my big thought is that The Hunt, the movie The Hunt, is the unluckiest movie in the entire world. First, it gets dragged by the president, and the studio freaks out and cancels the release. And then they move the release date to essentially the last moment that we live above ground before we move underneath into our pods with the social distancing. I don't know. The box office is weird right now. And this last week is like going to be the last normal week for a while, I think, because I just don't know what they're going to do. I don't know what they're going to keep putting out. I don't know if they're going to put Mulan out. I can't see Disney actually doing that at this point, despite having the world premiere already. I feel like this is a very, very... very strange moment in the history of the movie business. And it's kind of interesting to watch it happen in real time. The big question for me is, you know, I don't know.
JVL00:37:41I honestly don't know.
Sonny00:37:42It's unprecedented. I have a million questions and I don't know. We've never seen anything like this. Never seen anything like it.
JVL00:37:47What was Onward tracking for?
Sonny00:37:49Onward was... Well, Onward was not tracking. Well, to begin with, anyway, people weren't excited to see it. So this is like, this is on the lower end of tracking. Yeah, I like had actually kind of forgotten there was a Pixar movie coming out.
JVL00:38:01And it's Pixar. Yeah. Because here is my proposition is actually that either last weekend or the weekend before will be looked at as the final normal movie going weekend. Yeah. I actually think this weekend, if we are not already in decline starting this Friday, like precipitous decline at box office due to the virus, then it will already have started last weekend and onward will have been the first casualty.
Sonny00:38:30I don't think it is a totally, I don't think we're in a disastrous place yet. Because if you look at the other weekends, so like The Invisible Man dropped only 46%, which is great for a horror movie. Sonic the Hedgehog in its fourth week of release has dropped just 52%. And that's a family movie. That's like, you know, in theory, that's something that would, that would have cratered. Call of the Wild, another family movie dropped only 49%. You know, Bad Boys for Life, despite losing 800 theaters was down only 30%. That movie just keeps going. So, I mean, I don't think it is a, I don't think we are looking at a situation in which everyone has like decided, okay, not going to the theaters now just yet. Onward was not, was not tracking well. People didn't seem very excited for it. Um, and it, it doing $40 million of business is, I, I can't even, I don't even think it was necessarily on the low end, uh, but it was, but it was not tracking above like 50 million, certainly, uh, or even 45 million, I don't think. Uh, so I don't know. Um, I, I do think I, I will be very curious to see what The Hunt does because The Hunt as of two or three weeks ago was tracking between eight and 10 million. Um, and if it does like 2 million this weekend, uh, that's, that's a
JVL00:39:51It's The Hunt. I've never even heard of this movie. Oh, you know this one. You, you, you just forgot because there's so many names.
Sonny00:39:55The Hunt. It sounds familiar. The Hunt is the movie, uh, about the, the wealthy elites, the wealthy liberal elites who hunt the deplorables.
Vic00:40:04And they had to suspend the movie because it was such an outrage.
Sonny00:40:07The movie got, yeah, the movie got canceled. It was supposed to come out in October or November of last year and it got, it got canceled. Betty Gilpin from Glow is in it.
Vic00:40:15Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:40:16She's, she's, she's the big star there too. And then is this, is this one of your Sinistate movies? No. No. No. Okay.
Vic00:40:22It would have been a good fit. It would have been a good fit because what people, they were so outraged. Oh, how can you have a movie where the end of the deplorables are being hunted?
JVL00:40:29Wait, are the deplorables the heroes though? Yes. I assume they're the heroes.
Vic00:40:32But of course, because no one had seen it and they don't, and, and, and, and, and they're like, you know, the whole point is that in the end they fight back. So it would be, you know.
Sonny00:40:40Well, yeah, but I mean the, the, the deplorables are also like, like actual racists and stuff. So like, you know, there's like, there's like a sense that, you know, maybe they had to come up. So the elites, have you seen it? I've not seen it yet. I'm going to go see it tonight. I'm going to go to a movie theater tonight. F*** you, coronavirus. You can't stop me from. Glasses.
JVL00:40:56Poor Paul, marking it down like this is a Free Beacon podcast. Glasses and a mask.
Sonny00:41:00What's that?
JVL00:41:01And gloves. Glasses, a mask, and gloves.
Sonny00:41:03Yeah, that's, I'm going to wear my, I'm going to wear my Oakleys because I don't have the Under Armour. I have the Oakleys, but you know.
Vic00:41:09I might go, I might go in my usual outfit, the sweatpants.
Sonny00:41:12Hold on. I've got to mark that down. I've got to type. Hold on.
Vic00:41:16All right. All on your end. Okay. VVL, are you suggesting that you are not going into a movie theater anytime soon? Nope. I think you would be crazy to. Don't you think the reverse might, don't you think the reverse might actually work because nobody is that you'll have free reign to go anywhere you want, like in those apocalyptic movies where there's nobody on the streets. Like I Am Legend. Nobody in the streets. Yeah, or like I Am Legend.
Sonny00:41:40Or like Charlton Heston and the Omega Man. Yes, thank you.
JVL00:41:43Watching Woodstock. That's right. I don't think so. I don't think so, no, because there's always some, the problem is that people are terrible and so there's always some idiot somewhere who shows up thinking, yeah, this stuff, it's all a hoax. Me. That's me. I heard me on Fox News. I'm wondering why. Hey, come on now. And they show up and they are going to decide, you know, like, this is totally fine and then they sneeze and they're, the scariest word in the world. It's aerosolization. You think that these, you know, you sneeze on one end of a banquet room, you can travel like 60 yards, right? Because these little tiny droplets just get suspended in the air and they float and float and float and float. And even when you're not dealing with a pandemic, this is what happens in the bathroom. People think like, oh, yeah, bathrooms are clean. No, aerosolization. That's all it is. You know, you pee into. Oh, yeah, all the urine is just going. No, it's not. It's hitting the thing and aerosolized. Look at Sonny's face floating all over the place. It's happening. It's real.
Vic00:42:56Not where Sonny is. It looks like very clean over there where Sonny is.
Sonny00:42:59Yeah, I'm actually in a bubble right now.
Vic00:43:03Sonny, when you hear the word pandemic, is it just, I keep on thinking of pandemic standing on a street corner, WMD. No, it's just me. What is that?
Sonny00:43:12Is that from The Wire?
Vic00:43:13Yes, very good. The different drugs, they had the different names for them. Pandemic was one. Okay. We did think that we, oh, sorry. I messed up, didn't I? Anyway, my advice to you was, there goes the transition. My advice was just- I thought you were done with transitions. No, I forgot that I was, but I just wanted everyone to stay calm. Oh, hey, JVL.
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Vic00:45:16We wanted, we were thinking, we don't even have to, but we were thinking about movies that reminded us of this sort of unprecedented situation, but movies about pandemics and viruses. Is there one that comes immediately to your mind, JVL?
JVL00:45:30I thought we were going to like book club and talk about our favorite or least favorite pandemic style movies. Go for it. The ones that immediately come to mind if we're going to book club them, Outbreak, obviously. Yes. Once upon a time, you could have a wolf. Gang Peterson directed action movie where the star was Dustin Hoffman. You just think about that. Yeah. Yeah.
Vic00:45:52And best supporting actor, Kevin Spacey.
JVL00:45:55Yeah. Cuba Gooding Jr. Cuba Gooding Jr. All right. Donald Sutherland. Patrick Dempsey. Patrick Dempsey. Yes. Who dies very early. He does. And Rene Russo. Rene. Rene Russo is the love interest of Dustin Hoffman. At that point in their lives as 1995, she's got to be 20 years his junior.
Vic00:46:15Not only that.
JVL00:46:16But I assume that she was in five feet taller and he was in lifts. OK. So we got Outbreak, Hot Zone, Andromeda Strain, a classic, Contagion. All zombie movies are essentially Outbreak. All modern zombie movies. Right. World War Z, I Am Legend, 24 Days, 24 Weeks. 28. 28. However many there are. And even I would throw onto this list War of the Worlds. Look at this, JVO. No. Right there. War of the Worlds. Look at that. Which is a pandemic movie where the pandemic works for us. Yes. A happy ending. A happy ending. And Morgan Freeman, of course, assuring us. It's a genocidal. You know, the other way of looking at, I would say, from the alien perspective, War of the Worlds is a story about a group, a species, which goes to see a new world and then is eradicated by smallpox. It's the inverse of the Native American encounter. That's right.
Vic00:47:16In the new world. That's right. That's right. Sonny, did you have thoughts as well?
JVL00:47:20So I'm happy to talk about any and all of these.
Sonny00:47:22I mean, we're basically out of time. Do we maybe want to save this for next week again? We have 10 minutes. The best of these movies is definitely Contagion. And I have a Contagion story. I think I've told this story before on the podcast, but maybe I'll remind people in case they've never heard it. So I saw Contagion, I don't know, a couple of years after it came out on On Demand. Just watching it at home. And after watching it, like literally like an hour after watching it, I started feeling not great. I was like sniffling and coughing and like, and I was like, oh, I think I might be getting a fever. I don't know. And I was like, no, this has to be psychosomatic. This is nonsense. I'm fine. I'm fine. I just watched this scary movie about like how life would really look in a pandemic. I should be okay. And then like the next and then the next day, my wife had to go out of town to she was going, I can't. I can't be here at conference or something. And and or no, it's bachelorette party. It was a bachelorette party that she was hosting. So she had to go. She was like, she had to go. I was like, I'm fine. I'll be I'll be okay. It's whatever. And then like she she leaves and my body just like collapses in on itself by like by by six o'clock that night. I had like one hundred and two degree fever and I was like I was like shivering on the couch and like wrapped up in a blanket and trying to eat soup and like spilling it on my face and burning it and whatever and like and and I had to take the dog out because I'm the only one there. So I go to like take the dog out. This is back when I lived in up in Columbia Heights in D.C. So I like I take the dog out and I realize about halfway to the door that this is a terrible idea because I'm like leaning against the wall because I can't really walk because I'm like so I'm so feverish and can't breathe. And I get out. I get outside and the dog like the dog goes to the bathroom like, OK, we got to go inside right now. And and like I somehow was able to like drag myself back to the apartment and just like crashed on the couch and did not get up. We're meant for like 24 hours. There's like a 50 50 chance I could have died that night.
Vic00:49:19Yeah, you just like straight up found you. Just your wife could have found you dead.
Sonny00:49:23Just straight up. Just straight up died. But the the the good news is I did not die. And my my big takeaway from this was don't don't let yourself get fooled by watching one of these things into thinking that you don't have whatever the disease is because you probably actually have it. It's not psychosomatic. It's real question. You caught it from the movie.
Vic00:49:43What did you have?
Sonny00:49:45I had walking. I had walking pneumonia. Actually, I had walking pneumonia. And when I when I got to the when I got to the doctor, they were like, when I got to the doctor, they were like, yeah, you should have come earlier than this. I was like, yeah, well, you know, live and learn, I guess. I just watched Contagion. I thought it was psychosomatic. That's literally what I told the doctor. I was like, I had just watched this movie. I was like, there's no way I'm actually sick. It's got to be it's got to be all in my head. And he was like, yeah, it clearly wasn't, though, because you had one hundred and two degree fever. It's like, well, all right, thanks. I know that now. I didn't didn't at the time. So anyway, if you feel after watching Contagion, if you feel sick, go to the doctor, people.
Vic00:50:24You know, do you have a favorite of these? You know, War of the Worlds is so interesting because I always feel like the alien aspect of it is really just tangential. I mean, the main issue is about human reaction to crisis, individual reaction versus crowd reaction and mob reaction. And really, at the end, I think the lesson is have a gun because I think that's the only also know about cars because, oh. You know, after the EMP, everybody was stuck and he knew about it and he got the guy with the one car and the engine and the whole thing got to work and then got to go. But it really is about how people have mob mentality versus individual. People talk about this all the time. It's terrifying because it doesn't have to be. It could be for any situation, including the one that we are in reality living through now. How do people react? And the story in The New York Times about people buying toilet paper and then saying, I don't know why, but other people are getting it. So I'm getting it, too. And it becomes this thing. And so I find that I found that, you know, War of the Worlds was harrowing in that sense. You know, they're trying, you know, we have, you know, on a basic level of, you know, compassion for other people. And then all of a sudden it's every neighborhood for itself, every family for itself. And then eventually it's just every man for himself. You know, it's an awful level. Right. What do you think?
JVL00:51:41Yeah. Yeah, it is. Right. No, I'm I'm as interested in the idea of. Quarantines and. I mean, so I think Contagion is generally accepted as the best and smartest from an epidemiological perspective of all of the pandemic movies, and so is thus the scariest because it gets almost everything right about how these things work. And what is terrifying is the spread. Right. This is the you know, in a weird way, though, you know, what else also gets the cultural side of this, right? What? The stand. Oh, because when you read the stand, the initial reaction.
Vic00:52:24OK, let me know what it's a movie for.
JVL00:52:26The initial reaction of the the the culture is to make a joke about Captain Trips, right? They they they're the D there's all this DJs, right? You know, joking about man here. Captain Trips is pretty rough out there. And there's a song about the disease and everybody is just sort of waving it away. Something that's happened far away. It's not. It's not a big deal. And then it's like a switch flips and people go from stupid denialism into abject panic overnight. And I think that that turns out to be really pretty true to life. There is not, you know, at the beginning of these things, when you try to take them seriously, everybody says, yeah, we should not. Don't. Why are you panicking? You're trying to panic. Everybody are like, no, I'm trying to take these things seriously and understand what the challenges are. And then when you get a little bit further down the road and everybody's freaking out, when you try to tamp down panic by being reasonable, people start yelling at you, well, why is the government just trying to cover it up and blah, blah, blah, blah. And the answer is you need to have a balanced outlook on these things all the way through. And I, reading The Stand, I remember thinking to myself, yeah, this is an exaggeration. American culture wouldn't really react like this to something. To a pandemic like that. And it turns out, actually, eh, pretty close. Yep, that's about right.
Vic00:53:55My other point, I do have, you know, when you talk about outbreak. I watched some of that last night. What is the lesson of outbreak? And I'll tell you what the lesson is.
JVL00:54:05Fuel air bombs. What?
Vic00:54:07Fuel air bombs. I know, I was thinking about like daisy cutters and stuff like that. No, besides that, don't make a monkey your pet. That was a terrible idea. And that's how it jumps, really, right? It squirts out of it. It spits out directly into Patrick Dempsey's eyeball, you know. And it reminds me, in general, it's a bad idea. Have you ever seen the Comedians in Cars episode where Seinfeld is with Eddie Murphy? No. It's so fantastic. And they're driving around. And Eddie Murphy's talking about when he would visit Michael Jackson. He had him over at Neverland. And he said he walked in and he saw this, you know, crazy, you know, chimpanzee. Going nuts in a cage. And he's like, wait a minute. Is that Bubbles? And Michael Jackson's like, don't go near him, Eddie. Don't go near him, you know. Stay away from Bubbles. Because, you know, eventually it's no longer a cute pet.
JVL00:54:58Oh, yeah. No. And chimpanzees are wildly aggressive. And you know what they attack first? Face and genitals. Face and genitals is what chimpanzees do. Yeah, you know, Outbreak is. I had forgotten that Outbreak was Wolfgang Peterson. Me too.
Vic00:55:14You just reminded me.
JVL00:55:15And it's not a great movie.
Vic00:55:21You know, there was kind of a turning point with him because I love Das Boot is amazing. And I mean, it's a tragic story. A tragic story in the end is a tragedy. They just made it back to Doc. And then, of course, in the line of fire, I think is just terrific. I remember not being completely wowed by Air Force One.
Sonny00:55:41What?
Vic00:55:42And I mean, I'm like, OK, this is unrealistic. Get off mine.
JVL00:55:45Honestly, there's a part where he's holding on to the plate with one hand, I think. Yes. Thank you, JVL. Parachuting down, kicking her legs.
Vic00:55:53She thought it was a lovely ride. It was like, you know, something out of Six Flags where you do the parachute. And that was what it was like. But I was like, this is too much, even for me. So I did not appreciate that.
Sonny00:56:03All right. I agree that it has it has that one silly moment, but it also has a couple of really fantastic action sequences in it. Like, I mean, everybody forgets the storming of the palace in the first five minutes because it's not on the airplane. But that's actually a really effectively done action sequence. Like, it looks like what a what a what a raid of that sort would look like. And also just the taking of the plane by Gary Oldman and his team is just really, really well done. Like from from the storming through to the like shooting the first captain, you know, shooting the co-pilot and then trying to get the thing back off the ground. I the whole thing is is really, really well done. I think I think you're crazy. You're crazy.
Guest00:56:46I don't disagree.
JVL00:56:48There are elements of it which are good. The descent to which so outbreak people forget was a big summer movie. That was a like 1995 summer tentpole flick.
Vic00:56:57Was it Ebola? Did they actually call it Ebola or is something else?
JVL00:57:00No. So it's a hemorrhagic fever. They call it something else. But it is a it is a yes, it is a form of Ebola. You will be surprised. And it mutates and goes from being non-airborne to being airborne.
Vic00:57:13The scene in the movie theater is the worst, I think, scene. Because you can see all the particles going in and out of people's mouths. And they're all laughing. So it must be a really funny movie. Because when's the last time that's ever happened?
JVL00:57:22There is a subversive moment in it where somebody says, how did they get it? And it cuts to Dustin Hoffman staring straight into the camera. And he goes, they got it from going to the movies.
Vic00:57:35You can just see like it's.
JVL00:57:38Back in the day, you'd be in the theater. Yeah. So it was the most obvious attempt to sort of. Wink and pull at the audience. And I thought it was sort of charming in its own way. It felt like an anachronism.
Vic00:57:51Believe it or not, I actually read the book before the movie. Richard Preston's book, The Hot Zone, which I believe it was based on.
JVL00:57:59Is it based on The Hot Zone?
Vic00:58:00I always thought it was.
JVL00:58:01I thought The Hot Zone was a different movie.
Vic00:58:04Oh, no. Well, maybe it is. But there's actually a book. And I read it in the summer of 95. Wow. Did you like it? Yeah, it was really good. And it does talk about real. It was about Ebola and the Marburg virus. Really awful stuff. So that was really interesting. I don't think it was. I cannot. I can no longer remember if he had sort of novelized it or if it was a straight on story about following this thought. I can't remember anymore. But I did like it. And it was the last time I read a book.
JVL00:58:30Kidding. I'm kidding. So I read Andromeda Strain not so long ago. And that was the book where I finally figured out that Michael Crichton had no idea how to do endings.
Vic00:58:40Oh. Because. Wasn't that one of his early ones, too?
JVL00:58:43It is an early one. And he. He does a whole bunch of quasi interesting stuff. And you can see he's building a very cinematic world. And then the end of it is just like, oh, and it turns out it's all right for it to get out in the wild because these things mutate. And, you know, nature finds a better nature finds a way. The end. The end. Okay.
Vic00:59:03Yeah. Congo. That was a great movie. Okay. Any other thoughts? No. We'll see if we survive another week. Okay. Corrections and shout outs. I have two. Thank you. Samuel Finlay, Sam Finlay, who sent me his book Breakfast with the Dirt Cult. I get books all the time and I try my.
JVL00:59:25Do they know that you don't read?
Vic00:59:27I get books all the time. I try my best to say something like you will. I was surprised. So I get this book and I don't know Sam and he came across me on Twitter or something and he sends it to me. It's really good. And I started in the office. I don't have time. It's my problem. But I probably went through the first 20 pages, which is already remarkable, in one sitting in my office when I should be doing other things. And it was a real page starter. I had to find out where he's a guy who's being deployed. It's based on real life, but it's novelization, if you will. And he is going to Afghanistan. Before that, he goes to Montreal and goes to strip club, falls in love with a stripper. It's really good. Let me just tell you.
Guest01:00:08It's good.
Vic01:00:08And so he said to me, it was on the quadrants. He's crushing it. And so he's and he said to me, he goes, now, I just wanted to warn you. I just wanted to warn you because, you know, you seem like a really decent fellow. The language is kind of graphic. I'm like, you obviously do not know. He doesn't know anything about you, does he? Exactly. This movie, this movie, this book is a great book. So check it out. Publishers Weekly, by the way, they liked it. So it's not like I've read the first 20 pages and then and then I'm going to say, you know.
JVL01:00:37You can always trust publishers. Publishers Weekly. No, but it's not like. They called me a racist.
Vic01:00:41Oh, besides that. Aside from that. Aside from that.
Sonny01:00:46But to be fair, they still give you a starred review. Starred review.
JVL01:00:49No, no, no. It was not a starred review. I was joking. It was an anonymous review. Publishers Weekly called me a racist in an anonymous review. There wasn't even anybody I could crack back against.
Sonny01:00:59Son's a bitch. Just great.
Vic01:01:01Just great. On that note, that's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments. Tweet us at SonnyBunch, at VictorinoMantis, JVL. Were you back? You're not back. You appeared and people got excited. Nope.
JVL01:01:13OK. It's not me. Again, there are like seven different people who have login credentials to my account. I don't post anything.
Vic01:01:20Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher. Just type in Sub-Beacon at a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Hopefully. Until next time.
Sonny01:01:34What did you have in mind?
JVL01:01:37Well, I do think we should be prepared to do this in three different places starting next week. And I have already ordered a microphone. I have a microphone for you that will be delivered today.
Vic01:01:47You can walk me through it, I guess, and tell me. No, I'll come over.
JVL01:01:51But I will use my glove when I come to your home. And I'll have my mask on because I have a limited number of surgical masks at home. And so I wasn't going to waste one on coming into the Beacon. I'm going to wait until things are much worse. And anyway, I think it will be easy enough for us to do. We'll sort of do a three-way Skype the way the SSEU show does. And it will be great. Are you guys prepared to be quarantined?
Vic01:02:15Power Mac, I hope it's okay. Are we prepared to be quarantined? Are you prepared to be quarantined? I mean, to be confined to homes? Because that's what it's going to be. I tried. Listen, I tried this yesterday, right? It did not really go well for my wife because, you know, she works from home. And so suddenly I'm in her space. And I'm trying not to. Well, besides that, believe me, we were both hungover. Thank you. Thank you, JVL. Can't work, Vic.
JVL01:02:40I can't work.
Vic01:02:41Again, reasons why she doesn't like me at home. And so. I'm just trying to keep it. You know, it's weird being. I don't know. I don't normally do it. So it's weird for me. Like, if you're not actually working on something, you're working on something in the house. And the next, you know, I'm like, what am I going to make for lunch? What am I cooking? And she's bought a lot of food and stored up, obviously. She knows what's going on. But it reminded her of, she said, that movie, This is the End. You know, where it's the end. Danny McBride wakes up and he cooks the entire food for breakfast. Like, hey, I made everything for everybody. Here's the bacon.
JVL01:03:13And that was what it was like with me yesterday. Can I just say that the way this is going to all actually play out, the movie version of this, is that Amazon realizes that they're the only ones who can save America because we can't go out anywhere. Oh, my gosh. But they can't have people in the warehouses. And so Lord Bezos goes, purchases Boston Dynamics, like, next week, and personally engineers all the robots to take over the warehouses and delivery, at which point we then merge genres and the robots. Take over the world. So it becomes both a robots take over the world movie and a pandemic movie title.
Sonny01:03:51I'm sure it's fine.
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