"Rambo: First Blood Pt II" (1985) vs. "Commando" (1985): Part 1

<v Speaker 1>This week on Shirley You Can't Be Serious. He was
<v Speaker 1>a decorated Vietnam vet who couldn't go home. He was
<v Speaker 1>a special Ops agent who couldn't leave home. It's Rambo
<v Speaker 1>versus Matrix this week on the Shirley You Can't Be
<v Speaker 1>Serious Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>All right, do you have an idea for an intro
<v Speaker 2>on this episode?
<v Speaker 3>Why are you wearing that? Because you told me if
<v Speaker 3>I wore the arny inflatable dinghy suit that they would
<v Speaker 3>kick us off of YouTube.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for sparing us the speedo. At least you
<v Speaker 2>have your shirt.
<v Speaker 3>On though, Yes, exactly, exactly. No scars to show off today.
<v Speaker 2>Well, very good, Well everybody, welcome to this So the
<v Speaker 2>Shirley Can't Be Serious Podcast. We are talking today about
<v Speaker 2>the nineteen eighty five classics Rambo First Blood Part two
<v Speaker 2>versus Commando. This starts the Schwarzenegger versus Stallone war that
<v Speaker 2>we have throughout the eighties.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, a fantastic combination. And as you mentioned when we
<v Speaker 3>were talking earlier, Stallone was the man of the hour
<v Speaker 3>at this point. I mean, he had reached his pinnacle
<v Speaker 3>when he hit First Blood, and he could show that
<v Speaker 3>he could do something other than Rocky, he was the man,
<v Speaker 3>and this is Arnold's first non caveman role. Really, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I mean he's terminator. Yeah, but he's a robot, you
<v Speaker 3>know for sure? Yeah, I mean this is one that
<v Speaker 3>he's actually a human being that's not just a grunt
<v Speaker 3>killing machine, although obviously he does become a killing machine.
<v Speaker 2>I've got a great story for you from screenwriter Stephen
<v Speaker 2>Desuz on that very thing, which I'll tell you here
<v Speaker 2>in a minute. But for those of you who don't
<v Speaker 2>remember or those who don't know, Rambo is a sequel
<v Speaker 2>to a nineteen eighty two movie that I mean, if
<v Speaker 2>you're like me, most people kind of jump on board
<v Speaker 2>with Rambo. But actually First Blood is the first Rambo movie.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I hadn't seen any of them. You hadn't seen
<v Speaker 3>any of them, have not at the moment that we
<v Speaker 3>decided to do this, At the last time that we
<v Speaker 3>recorded an episode, I had not seen First Blood, I
<v Speaker 3>had not seen Rambo, and I had not seen Commando.
<v Speaker 3>I have since watched all three of those movies. I
<v Speaker 3>will give you my opinion on them. I can't wish
<v Speaker 3>our final judgment. I do have one question for you. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>have you ever seen Stop or my mom will shoot.
<v Speaker 3>I have not ever seen that movie.
<v Speaker 2>No, I don't think I have either, but now after
<v Speaker 2>studying all this stuff, I kind of want to.
<v Speaker 3>So if you don't know the story on that, the
<v Speaker 3>script was one that was regarded as one of the
<v Speaker 3>worst of all time, despite the fact that it was
<v Speaker 3>written by the guy who wrote Save the Cat, which
<v Speaker 3>is one of the best selling screens. Yeah, yep, same guy.
<v Speaker 3>Of course he passed away, but there it is, right
<v Speaker 3>there on your shelf, Save the Cat. We love it. Anyway,
<v Speaker 3>Arnold had heard how bad this script was, but to
<v Speaker 3>throw off Stallone, he expressed interest in it because they
<v Speaker 3>had obviously also approached Stallone about it, and when Stallone
<v Speaker 3>heard that Arnie was interested in it, he was like, no,
<v Speaker 3>I need to be in this movie. And it was
<v Speaker 3>a It was a dupe that worked.
<v Speaker 2>It was the old whoopsie do head fake? Actually, I
<v Speaker 2>have a timeline of the Stallone Schwarzenegger war Oh fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>That is super interesting, I think. Okay, it's a breakdown
<v Speaker 2>by dates. Okay, you want to you want to hear this?
<v Speaker 2>Should we start off with this?
<v Speaker 3>I don't know if we should start off with this too. No,
<v Speaker 3>I think this is perfect all right.
<v Speaker 2>So January nineteen seventy seven, Stallone and Schwarzenegger meet at
<v Speaker 2>the thirty fourth Golden Globes gala. Okay, yeah, say that
<v Speaker 2>three times past right. Okay, So both take home awards.
<v Speaker 2>Stallone wins for Rocky, Schwarzenegger wins for pumping Iron.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Now, Schwarzenegger wins the Newcomer of the Year award, and
<v Speaker 2>this is the year that Rocky comes out.
<v Speaker 3>Stillone's kind of like, for what, when does it? He's
<v Speaker 3>not even acting, he didn't write anything, he just was himself.
<v Speaker 2>Right, But when he still ends up winning like the
<v Speaker 2>big award for Rocky, and when that happens, he chucks
<v Speaker 2>all these flowers that go up in the air and
<v Speaker 2>land like all over Schwarzenegger kind of kind of a
<v Speaker 2>over celebrating whoops, I throw these all over you.
<v Speaker 3>Huh. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Interesting, So that's nineteen seventy seven.
<v Speaker 3>Side note. Yeah, Stallone went to that alone. He invited
<v Speaker 3>his mom to go with him, and she was like,
<v Speaker 3>can I bring my friend, like June or whatever, And
<v Speaker 3>he was like, who's June. She's like she's my hairdresser.
<v Speaker 3>It's like, no, Mom, this is just me and you.
<v Speaker 3>I don't have another third ticket, you know. And she's like, well,
<v Speaker 3>if I can't bring June, I'm not gonna come. And
<v Speaker 3>so she did not come to the Academy Awards where
<v Speaker 3>he he won for Best Picture, of Best Screenplay, all
<v Speaker 3>that stuff. That's incredible because let her bring your hairdresser.
<v Speaker 3>You know, Rocky.
<v Speaker 2>People forget Rocky won Best Picture and Stallone wrote it
<v Speaker 2>and started Yeah, I mean he was people forget. I
<v Speaker 2>mean he's done all these crazy action movies, but he was.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, Rocky's a drama. Really, it's a love story
<v Speaker 2>and Best Picture. Yeah right, and it's worth and it
<v Speaker 2>should have won.
<v Speaker 3>It's great.
<v Speaker 2>I told you, Oh, it's fantastic. I told you before
<v Speaker 2>we started this. I said, First Blood is kind of
<v Speaker 2>like Rocky and Rambo is kind of.
<v Speaker 3>Like Rocky four. Yeah, they just skipped all the middle stuff.
<v Speaker 2>You just ramp it up to number to eleven, right,
<v Speaker 2>and then you get Rocky.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>So okay, let's let's keep on going. So oh yeah, sir,
<v Speaker 2>October of nineteen eighty five. Okay, So Stallone is he
<v Speaker 2>does all these wonderful great movies in the early eighties.
<v Speaker 2>He's the rocky guy. And Schwarzenegger is mister Olympia. It's
<v Speaker 2>not like he's nobody, right, but he's still trying to
<v Speaker 2>break into acting. I think he did that hell Nita
<v Speaker 2>movie where he uh what was that called.
<v Speaker 3>I don't remember, Like you're talking about the Black bart
<v Speaker 3>with like Kirk Douglas, Yes, yes, which I've got another
<v Speaker 3>Kirk Douglas story later on for this one, okay, but
<v Speaker 3>uh yeah, where he was he was handsome stranger and
<v Speaker 3>I'm thinking Margaret, and Margaret was the beautiful lady, that's right.
<v Speaker 3>And it was all just this like Coyote and Roadrunner
<v Speaker 3>farcical stuff, that's right. And then he was Conan, of course,
<v Speaker 3>he was Conan, the barbarian. Yeah, and he was the
<v Speaker 3>Terminator right right.
<v Speaker 2>Which he didn't get to stretch his sort of dramatic skills.
<v Speaker 2>He was a one man or. He was a robotic
<v Speaker 2>killing machine with no emotions. Doesn't feel fear or pain
<v Speaker 2>or pity, right, okay. So and part of the appeal
<v Speaker 2>of Commando was that he could kind of express those emotions.
<v Speaker 3>So we'll talk about that. Harrimett be super Dad, that's right.
<v Speaker 2>We could make waffles and feed the deer. In October
<v Speaker 2>of nineteen eighty five, Arnold does press for Commando and
<v Speaker 2>in this interview he didn't really understand that he could say,
<v Speaker 2>I need to tell you this off the record.
<v Speaker 3>Now.
<v Speaker 2>Apparently this really upset him because he sat down with
<v Speaker 2>this interviewer and just dished all this bad stuff on Stallone. Well,
<v Speaker 2>she had a recorder in her pocket, and he would say, so,
<v Speaker 2>this is not for the story. Well she was like, well,
<v Speaker 2>he didn't say it was not on the record or
<v Speaker 2>off the record. Oh, and so she printed all of it, okay,
<v Speaker 2>And he said things like I'd be angry hearing my
<v Speaker 2>name in the same sentence or same breath as Stallone
<v Speaker 2>and Stallone uses body doubles and I don't and kind
<v Speaker 2>of kind of trashed him. Yeah, this after Rambo is
<v Speaker 2>this huge international success.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. Now.
<v Speaker 2>In November of nineteen eighty five, Stallone hires Stulf Langren
<v Speaker 2>to play Drago for Rocky four. Some people have said
<v Speaker 2>he's big, he's muscular, he has an accent. Of course
<v Speaker 2>he is Russian, but it's basically Schwarzenegger boxing Stallone in
<v Speaker 2>the movie.
<v Speaker 3>Now.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen eighty five, Sylvester Stallone marries Brigitte Nielsen. We
<v Speaker 2>talked about her in the Beverly Hills Cop two episode. Yes, well,
<v Speaker 2>Schwarzenegger had spent all summer banging Brigitte Nielsen.
<v Speaker 3>You can't say banging on banging.
<v Speaker 2>Her brain's out on the red Sonya set. And he
<v Speaker 2>goes on to marry her. So Colone does, Stillone does.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Some people said that they think that Schwarzenegger set them
<v Speaker 2>up to.
<v Speaker 3>Get rid of her. Right, that's great, So she's nuts.
<v Speaker 2>What better thing to do than just poison this guy
<v Speaker 2>by setting them up together?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, all right.
<v Speaker 2>In January of nineteen eighty eight, in an interview with Playboy,
<v Speaker 2>Arnold says that he's tried to be friends with Stallone,
<v Speaker 2>but Stallone just gives off the wrong vibrations.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>He also made fun of him in this interview. In
<v Speaker 2>February of nineteen eighty eight, News of the World runs
<v Speaker 2>a story called Hollywood Stars Nazi Secret.
<v Speaker 3>Did you hear about this? No?
<v Speaker 2>In this article, it says that Arnold has fervent Nazi
<v Speaker 2>and anti Semitic views, and the author's secret source Sylvester Stallone.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, dang.
<v Speaker 2>In August nineteen eighty eight, they actually meet to hash
<v Speaker 2>out their differences. But I mean, at this time, I
<v Speaker 2>think it's okay to say they hated each other.
<v Speaker 3>Oh for sure, I think they've said it. I don't
<v Speaker 3>hate him, that's pitied to fool.
<v Speaker 2>So Schwarzenegger's trying to knock Stallone off the top of
<v Speaker 2>the mountain, and Stallone resents the fact that he's trying
<v Speaker 2>to do that.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So in September of nineteen eighty eight, Stallone enters a
<v Speaker 2>New York dance club and on the wall there's a
<v Speaker 2>picture assigned picture from Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he demands that
<v Speaker 2>it be taken down and never be put up again,
<v Speaker 2>or else I'll never come back here ever again.
<v Speaker 3>Oh wow.
<v Speaker 2>And so the club owner's like, yes, sir, yes, sir,
<v Speaker 2>I'll take it down immediately.
<v Speaker 3>So not petty at all, right, gosh, okay, okay.
<v Speaker 2>December nineteen eighty eight, in the movie Twins, Arnold comes up,
<v Speaker 2>he sees a poster of Rambo three, checks his guns,
<v Speaker 2>and then goes, ah, right, yeah, short, little jab okay.
<v Speaker 2>In December of nineteen eighty nine, Stallone takes a jab
<v Speaker 2>at Schwarzenegger in Tango and Cash, where he beats up
<v Speaker 2>a guy in prison and said, this guy's like a
<v Speaker 2>caveman looking guy. He's like I loved you in Conan
<v Speaker 2>the Barbaria, right, okay. In March of nineteen ninety there's
<v Speaker 2>a book written about Arnold that shows him poorly and
<v Speaker 2>it was a hit with Stallone. When he talked to
<v Speaker 2>the writer, he said, honey, this is better than getting four.
<v Speaker 2>In March of nineteen ninety one, Entertainment Weekly reports that
<v Speaker 2>there's an idea floating around that Schwarzenegger and Stallone may
<v Speaker 2>start a movie together about cross dressing cops.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, okay.
<v Speaker 2>October of ninety one, they opened Planet Hollywood together with
<v Speaker 2>Bruce Willis. With Bruce Willis, right, yeah, so they actually
<v Speaker 2>did become somewhat friends.
<v Speaker 3>Second, because I mean we talked about on our Diehard
<v Speaker 3>episode that John McClain basically killed John Matrix and John
<v Speaker 3>Rambo because he was the everyman hero that everybody wanted
<v Speaker 3>to see after seeing these absurd action hero guys. That's right,
<v Speaker 3>that's right.
<v Speaker 2>Here you go for February of nineteen ninety two, the story
<v Speaker 2>you talked about Stopper, my mom will shoot uh huh, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>Arnie dupe him totally, into taking that role.
<v Speaker 3>Which is ridiculous, stell Geddy.
<v Speaker 2>In June of nineteen ninety three, in the movie Last
<v Speaker 2>Action Hero, you see a like a cardboard cutout of
<v Speaker 2>Stallone as the terminator.
<v Speaker 3>Uh huh. And so it's just kind of a little
<v Speaker 3>nod from Arnie to Sly.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen ninety four, during the movie True Lies, Jamie
<v Speaker 2>Lee Curtis says, I married Rambo January of two thousand,
<v Speaker 2>they start looking to do a project together. And August
<v Speaker 2>of two thousand and three, Schwarzenegger runs for governor, okay,
<v Speaker 2>and Stallone helps him on the campaign trails. So they
<v Speaker 2>actually they forge a friendship after all this time, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>In March of two thousand and five, Tarantino wants them
<v Speaker 2>to be in the movie in Glorious Bastards.
<v Speaker 3>Well, that would have been interesting, right, Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>In March of two thousand and five, Stallone contributes to
<v Speaker 2>Arnold's re election committee. In August of twenty ten, they both.
<v Speaker 3>Are in the movie The Expendables. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>And then I found this really interesting, Okay. In September
<v Speaker 2>of twenty ten, this is after they hate each other.
<v Speaker 2>They were arch rivals, mass competitors, right, Stallone tells the
<v Speaker 2>La times. When people ask me, who is the most
<v Speaker 2>extraordinary guy I've ever met, always answer Arnold Schwarzenegger.
<v Speaker 3>Nice, pretty fascinating, right, And they were in a movie
<v Speaker 3>like Escape Plan, right, Yeah, they were in they were
<v Speaker 3>in Escape Plan. What year that was? I feel like
<v Speaker 3>it was maybe twenty twelve, not I mean thirteen years ago,
<v Speaker 3>but you know, definitely more recent. It's been a while.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but these guys hated each other and then slowly
<v Speaker 2>over the years they became friends.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, okay, so we were ready to talk origins of
<v Speaker 3>the movie. Let's talk origins when we want to start
<v Speaker 3>with By the way, everybody, welcome to the Shirley. You
<v Speaker 3>can't be serious podcasts. I don't know if we even
<v Speaker 3>said that. If you don't know where you are, Hey,
<v Speaker 3>how's our merch store coming? We got a merch shore.
<v Speaker 3>Listen man, Etsy wants a blood sample, some urine, the
<v Speaker 3>rights to my firstborn child. I don't know what's going
<v Speaker 3>on with them. I can't make them like open my
<v Speaker 3>store back up. I don't know what happened. I've done
<v Speaker 3>everything I can. Just give me time. I'll find another way.
<v Speaker 2>Well, coming soon, we will get to win this time
<v Speaker 2>we get to win this time.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. So, as we've said, this movie is Rambo a
<v Speaker 3>sequel to First Blood, Yes, First Blood Part two, which
<v Speaker 3>I when I was a kid, I'm like, why did
<v Speaker 3>they just call it second Blood? Wouldn't that have been easier?
<v Speaker 3>But that there's a there's a meaning behind first Blood.
<v Speaker 3>So yeah, so now they're going to call it Rambo,
<v Speaker 3>and then they get to Rambo three, which takes First
<v Speaker 3>Blood right out of the whole thing. Whatever. Anyway, So
<v Speaker 3>it's based on a book by David Morrel, yes, called
<v Speaker 3>First Blood. By the way, it's interesting because we've got it.
<v Speaker 3>There's a similarity for the origins writers on both of
<v Speaker 3>these because David Morrell, in addition to writing First Blood
<v Speaker 3>and a whole bunch of other books, also wrote a
<v Speaker 3>Captain American series called The Chosen that ran from like
<v Speaker 3>two thousand and seven to two thousand and eight, which
<v Speaker 3>I thought was pretty cool. And his story is supposed
<v Speaker 3>to have taken place in Madison, Kentucky. In the movie,
<v Speaker 3>it's Hope, Washington, I guess, which I think they actually
<v Speaker 3>filmed it in Hope, British Columbia. Yeah, so he's got
<v Speaker 3>that story and a guy named Michael Cazell, who had
<v Speaker 3>done mostly television shows, had done like Colchak and McLeod
<v Speaker 3>and Coach and Quincy Emmy. He's the one that writes
<v Speaker 3>the screenplay. He also, of course, he was the creator
<v Speaker 3>of hill Street Blues. I think we may even have
<v Speaker 3>brought him up when we were talking about our best
<v Speaker 3>theme songs of the early eighties about Hillstrey Blues. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So this is the writer of First Blood. This is
<v Speaker 3>the screenplay writer of First Blood. And then you've got
<v Speaker 3>William Sachheim, who is also a TV writer but had
<v Speaker 3>been writing for like decades and one of his stories
<v Speaker 3>nineteen fifty three, one of his movies was called Sky Commando. Interesting, Yes,
<v Speaker 3>all right, yeah, okay, And so you have that story,
<v Speaker 3>and you have a movie that comes out that, when
<v Speaker 3>it's ultimately produced, is three hours long. And Stallone calls
<v Speaker 3>his agent and says, can we buy this film? Can
<v Speaker 3>we buy the negative and burn it? Yes? And they
<v Speaker 3>wouldn't sell it to him to burn it. They were
<v Speaker 3>insistent upon making the movie. And now keep in mind
<v Speaker 3>the producers on this thing. They wanted it to be
<v Speaker 3>more like Rambo. They wanted more explosions, they wanted more violence.
<v Speaker 3>They want a higher body ca out like, but Stallone
<v Speaker 3>pushed back and it's like, this needs to be a
<v Speaker 3>story about the difficulties of being a war veteran coming
<v Speaker 3>back from Vietnam and the struggles and the emotional struggles
<v Speaker 3>that they go through. He said when he watched the movie,
<v Speaker 3>it was just absolutely unwatchable. Said that he had a
<v Speaker 3>line at some point in the movie he kills an
<v Speaker 3>owl and says, take that, you mother effing mouse munching
<v Speaker 3>something or other, and then it was so he says,
<v Speaker 3>how about we cut out all of my dialogue? Uh
<v Speaker 3>huh except for that very last, you know, breakdown scene
<v Speaker 3>that he has in the movie. Yeah, And it worked, right.
<v Speaker 3>It goes from three hours to ninety three minutes and
<v Speaker 3>he becomes not this absurn one liner guy like Arnold
<v Speaker 3>is in commando. Let me stop you right there. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So I did hear a story about this. I did hear.
<v Speaker 2>He talked about how at the very beginning of the
<v Speaker 2>movie when Brian Denahey is like, you know, where are
<v Speaker 2>you going or whatever, and he's like, you see an
<v Speaker 2>easy writer.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, He's like, I'm walker, Like, what does this studios
<v Speaker 3>that mean?
<v Speaker 2>So they cut that ridiculous line.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I will say that the fact that he cut all
<v Speaker 2>the one liners made it a more serious story, but
<v Speaker 2>it did kind of take out some of the personality
<v Speaker 2>of Rambo, which he doesn't have a great deal of personality.
<v Speaker 2>And that's exactly what Schwarzenegger pumped up.
<v Speaker 3>So yeah, pumped up, very good, very good. Yeah. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>I think that we should ultimately talk about the things
<v Speaker 3>that are wrong with all three of these movies. And
<v Speaker 3>I want to spend too much time on First Blood.
<v Speaker 3>But they ultimately release it as the ninety three minute
<v Speaker 3>version and it is a huge success. Okay, and so
<v Speaker 3>when it comes for time for part two, as you mentioned,
<v Speaker 3>the producers are like, okay, now it's can we do
<v Speaker 3>the explosions now? And it jumps from Rocky one to
<v Speaker 3>Rocky four in one veil swoop. That's right, it does.
<v Speaker 3>So that's that's how we get to Rambo and John,
<v Speaker 3>I want you to try to forget the war for
<v Speaker 3>the mission. The old Vietnam's dead, sir, I'm alive. It's
<v Speaker 3>still alive. Now. What's interesting on Rambo? We talked about
<v Speaker 3>this before. Obviously you have to have a new story, right,
<v Speaker 3>and so who do they hire to write the new
<v Speaker 3>Rambo story. A poor like up and garving, yes, starving
<v Speaker 3>director who has been delayed on his very first big
<v Speaker 3>budget movie is trying to scrape by while he's getting
<v Speaker 3>past these delays. He's working on the sequel to two
<v Speaker 3>different movies. One is a sequel to the movie Alien, Yes,
<v Speaker 3>and the other is a sequel to the movie First Blood. Yes.
<v Speaker 3>And this young up and coming director's name is James Cameron.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this is the guy who just got fired off
<v Speaker 2>of Piranatu this morning.
<v Speaker 3>He's literally starving to death.
<v Speaker 2>He said he was eating dog food Like I think
<v Speaker 2>he's kidding obviously, but he.
<v Speaker 3>Was eating the food off of other people's other people's trays. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>at the hotel, the to go trays. Yes, he was
<v Speaker 3>starving to death. And he was the director of that movie. Yeah. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So we talked about Parana two with the film by guys. Right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>go back and list that episode. That was a lot
<v Speaker 2>of fun. James Cameron. Yes, the James Cameron is writing Titanic.
<v Speaker 2>Excuse me, Titanic, not yet. He is spending time writing
<v Speaker 2>The Terminator, Aliens and Rambo Part two.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yep. All at the same time, right, and so
<v Speaker 3>Stallone gets a copy of James Cameron's script. James Cameron's
<v Speaker 3>script involves a sidekick with some funny lines who they
<v Speaker 3>ultimately were going to have John Travolta play that part,
<v Speaker 3>which is interesting because Stallone had directed Travolta in Staying Alive.
<v Speaker 3>It's a masterpiece. Saturday Night Fever. Check out our Saturday
<v Speaker 3>Night Fever episode. We hated that movie. Yeah, and Stallone
<v Speaker 3>is like, no, I don't want somebody else taking all
<v Speaker 3>these comic lines. So they basically they cut out all
<v Speaker 3>the comic lines. There's no all. Yeah, they said, when
<v Speaker 3>they screamed the movie, there was one moment when they
<v Speaker 3>got a really big laugh, and that was when what's
<v Speaker 3>your name was killed? Po gets killed and he's like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>and it's like it's it's the end of Rocky No,
<v Speaker 3>it's the end of Superman. Like when he when Lois
<v Speaker 3>is dead, is like no, and he's screaming and it's
<v Speaker 3>like iking across through the canyons and he said the
<v Speaker 3>entire audience erupted and laughter, and you don't need to
<v Speaker 3>have a laugh at that particular moment, like that's coming out. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>we got to get rid of that.
<v Speaker 2>Hey the way, by the way, just talking about that
<v Speaker 2>sidekick idea. Okay, so I do want to go to
<v Speaker 2>the alternate video store. I want to check out the
<v Speaker 2>movie with Stallone and Travolta. Yeah, I'm not sure he's
<v Speaker 2>perfect for that that part, but it sounds ridiculous that
<v Speaker 2>Rambo would have a sidekick who is kind of like
<v Speaker 2>joke cracking, you know, in the jungle and blah blah blah.
<v Speaker 2>But then I think, I think about Private Hudson and Aliens.
<v Speaker 3>It was funny. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>It didn't lessen the action in any way. Nope, it
<v Speaker 2>in fact, it added realism and.
<v Speaker 3>Depth and yeah, it made it more enjoyable, absolutely more enjoyable.
<v Speaker 2>And I absolutely trust James Cameron. So it's although it
<v Speaker 2>sounds ridiculous, I trust Cameron to pull it off.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Just another quick story on the Cameron origin of this idea. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they brought him in, you know, still done.
<v Speaker 3>Brought him in.
<v Speaker 2>He was recommended by David Geiler, the guy who wrote Alien.
<v Speaker 2>I think, okay, yeah, they brought him in, and Stallone's like,
<v Speaker 2>what are you thinking about this story? It's like, wow,
<v Speaker 2>be really cool if he went back to Vietnam and
<v Speaker 2>looked for po W's.
<v Speaker 3>So I was like, great, do it. That's what that's
<v Speaker 3>his interaction with James James Cameron.
<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, that's how it. That's how it kicked off.
<v Speaker 2>Just one sentence. What do you think about I think
<v Speaker 2>it'd be cool if he went back and looked.
<v Speaker 3>For po W's. Okay, So I found this little nugget today. Actually, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>So there's a guy still alive. His name is Colonel
<v Speaker 3>Bo Grits. Okay, Grits, Bo Grits. I love that name.
<v Speaker 3>And he was born in Enid, Oklahoma, just you know,
<v Speaker 3>hour and a half north of this right. Uh. He
<v Speaker 3>was a commander of the B thirty sixth Detachment of
<v Speaker 3>the fifth Special Forces Group Airborn. He served in Vietnam
<v Speaker 3>and in the early eighties he undertook a series of
<v Speaker 3>private missions to locate POWs with other Special Forces members.
<v Speaker 3>Let's go. He had donors, including Clint Eastwood and Ross
<v Speaker 3>Perraut to help fund these missions to go try to
<v Speaker 3>find the POWs. Yep, he was a little controversial. I
<v Speaker 3>don't want to come off like he is actually John Rambo,
<v Speaker 3>but it's a very similar kind of storyline. He actually
<v Speaker 3>got he got convicted in Thailand for illegally importing radio
<v Speaker 3>equipment and his attempts to do things through laos they
<v Speaker 3>created a lot of controversy, just like you know, the
<v Speaker 3>suggestion is would be created had POW's actually been found, right, Yes,
<v Speaker 3>So he laid would run for president. What he later
<v Speaker 3>ran for president. He tried to become a member of
<v Speaker 3>the US Taxpayers Party to be their presidential candidate, which
<v Speaker 3>I have a storied history with myself as a as
<v Speaker 3>a young man, and I won't go into that. But
<v Speaker 3>he didn't get the nomination for them, so he ran
<v Speaker 3>under the Populist Party and his slogan was God, Guns
<v Speaker 3>and grits. How do you not want to meet this guy? Right? Oh,
<v Speaker 3>this guy sounds like Rambo man, right exactly. So I'm
<v Speaker 3>thinking he had to be an inspiration for Cameron's storyline, right,
<v Speaker 3>you know at the time of filming this movie, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>people forget we were only just we were within ten
<v Speaker 3>years of Vietnam. There were twenty five hundred Vietnam vets
<v Speaker 3>that were still missing in action, yeah Pow, Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>so we didn't know where they were, could have been prisoners,
<v Speaker 3>should a chance.
<v Speaker 2>Their prisoners let's go get our guys and bring them home.
<v Speaker 2>I mean that was you know, and Reagan was the
<v Speaker 2>kind of the guy to do that, you know. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>So it's a it's a curious time in our history.
<v Speaker 2>And of course, on this side of it, Cameron did
<v Speaker 2>say though he wrote the action, when Stallone took over
<v Speaker 2>the screenwriting, he added all the politics.
<v Speaker 3>Right, So back to that, back to that story. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>So Stallone gets Cameron's script, isn't very happy with it,
<v Speaker 3>so he HiT's up a guy named Kevin Jarry. Do
<v Speaker 3>you remember talking about Kevin Jarry before, Yeah, Tombstone, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>so Kevin Jarry wrote Tombstone. If you guys go back
<v Speaker 3>and check out our Tombstone versus Young Guns one and
<v Speaker 3>two episode. I love the matchup. But he was a
<v Speaker 3>guy who had he had started writing a script for Dracula, like,
<v Speaker 3>did all this research and said, oh, wen Ona writer,
<v Speaker 3>you should be in my Dracula movie. And she's like, now,
<v Speaker 3>I'm already in this other Dracula movie. And his movie
<v Speaker 3>got cut because of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. So he's
<v Speaker 3>writing Tombstone, finds out about Kevin Costner, who he wanted
<v Speaker 3>to right. It finds out that Costner is making White
<v Speaker 3>RP doesn't want that to happen again, so he gets
<v Speaker 3>it made as quickly as he can, comes in his director,
<v Speaker 3>and after like two weeks they're like, this guy's out.
<v Speaker 3>He's a terrible director. We like the script. And who
<v Speaker 3>do they bring on to replace him as director? You
<v Speaker 3>mean other than Kurt Russell? Well, yes, so the under
<v Speaker 3>the covers it was Kurt Russell who was probably calling
<v Speaker 3>all the shots. But the named director for Tombstone is
<v Speaker 3>George Cosmotos, same guy who died Rambo two.
<v Speaker 2>Tombstone and Rambo connective tissue there.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's incredible. I love it. All right, I've got
<v Speaker 3>something for you real quick. Okay. I found this interesting.
<v Speaker 2>So the body count was a way of Arnold and
<v Speaker 2>Stallone competing with each other. Uh huhkay, Now before Stallone
<v Speaker 2>realized he was in a competition in First Blood. You
<v Speaker 2>know what the body count is of First Blood? I
<v Speaker 2>don't know, Like twenty one one person dies in First Blood?
<v Speaker 3>Can you think of which guy? Well, I was gonna
<v Speaker 3>say the guy that falls from the helicopter dies, No
<v Speaker 3>other guy's nobody else dies. Wow.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, Brian Denney's character is being taken away in
<v Speaker 2>a hospital or in an ambulance. Yes, he could have died,
<v Speaker 2>but we only know of one. And really you could
<v Speaker 2>say that was an accident. Yeah, he threw a rock
<v Speaker 2>at the helica rock guy and the guy fell he
<v Speaker 2>lost his balance, right, Okay? The kill count in Rambo
<v Speaker 2>part two eighty one, in Rambo five, yeah, seventy five,
<v Speaker 2>that's right, and in Commando eighty one, and in Rambo
<v Speaker 2>three one hundred and fifteen, in Terminator two.
<v Speaker 3>None zero zero because he can't kill people. Remember he
<v Speaker 3>you live.
<v Speaker 2>He was talking to Cameron, right, Yeah, he was talking
<v Speaker 2>to Cameron and he's like, what do you say, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>nobody dies, I must get this huge body count. And
<v Speaker 2>he's like, no, it's gonna be even cooler. Nobody's You're
<v Speaker 2>not gonna kill a single person.
<v Speaker 3>There you go, there you go? All right?
<v Speaker 2>Do we want to get into Castle. We want to
<v Speaker 2>talk about the beginning of Commando.
<v Speaker 3>Well, let's talk about the beginning of Commando. So we
<v Speaker 3>know that this you know, this is a part two, right,
<v Speaker 3>it came out in was it April or May of
<v Speaker 3>nine of eighty five October Commando. I'm sorry, Rambo.
<v Speaker 2>Rambo came out in May of ninety eighty five.
<v Speaker 3>So Rambo comes out in May, so the Commando comes
<v Speaker 3>out in the same year, just later that year, October fourth, Yes,
<v Speaker 3>And so I have to ask a question. I'm like, well,
<v Speaker 3>how much influence did Rambo really have on Commando? Because
<v Speaker 3>they had to have started shooting Commando well before Rambo
<v Speaker 3>was released, that's what you would think. But the thing
<v Speaker 3>is is that Hollywood people talk to each other, and
<v Speaker 3>so they knew about all of the stuff that was
<v Speaker 3>going on with Rambo, and so they were like, let's
<v Speaker 3>let's up the action, let's up the explosions, let's do
<v Speaker 3>everything that we can, as you say, to dial this
<v Speaker 3>up to eleven, right, right, And that's their vision with Commando.
<v Speaker 3>You've got to pump it up, and you've got You've
<v Speaker 3>got Joel Silver Joel Silva, Joel silver Go. I don't
<v Speaker 3>even remember which, which which one. We talked the most
<v Speaker 3>about him on LEI the Weapon die Hard. He's I mean,
<v Speaker 3>he is a man of editor, I think action eighties movies, right, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>And so, like I said, both of these origin writers
<v Speaker 3>have a history with comic books, and so the writer,
<v Speaker 3>the original writer for Commando is a guy named Jeff Lowe. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>do you remember us talking about him before? Kind of
<v Speaker 3>what it was? Okay, Yeah, So here's his backstory, right yeh,
<v Speaker 3>because when when this movie was released, he had to
<v Speaker 3>his name as far as movies were concerned, teen Wolf
<v Speaker 3>and an episode of The Hitchhiker. But here's here's the
<v Speaker 3>writing history that he did have. He was a major
<v Speaker 3>comic book writer. And I realized that this happens later on,
<v Speaker 3>but I mean he he had written for spider Man, Batman, Superman, Hulk,
<v Speaker 3>Captain America, Ironman, Daredevil, Supergirl, and the Avengers and I'm
<v Speaker 3>not naming them all. And he was the one that
<v Speaker 3>wrote Batman Hush and Batman The Long Halloween. Those are awesome.
<v Speaker 3>I've read those. We talked about Batman The Long Halloween
<v Speaker 3>when we were talking about Matt Reeves. Matt Reeves was
<v Speaker 3>a student in Jeff Loeb's screenwriting class. And if you
<v Speaker 3>don't know who Matt Reeves is, he's the guy who
<v Speaker 3>wrote and directed The Batman. How about that? There you go,
<v Speaker 3>that's fantastic. So this and this is another great connection.
<v Speaker 3>So Jeff Loeb is writing this. He the first time
<v Speaker 3>he writes it, his character that he's got in mind
<v Speaker 3>is Sergeant Rock. You remember when we talked about Sergeant Rock.
<v Speaker 2>Predator Predator, because that's the comic book that Shane Black. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>you can please see him on screen reading the Sergeant
<v Speaker 2>Rock comics.
<v Speaker 3>Yes. And if you doubt that it was based on
<v Speaker 3>Sergeant Rock, Sergeant Rock's full name was Franklin John Rock.
<v Speaker 3>John of course is John Matrix, right, and then we
<v Speaker 3>have Franklin Kirby as the guy who's calling him back
<v Speaker 3>into duty. So he got Franklin and John first names
<v Speaker 3>of Sergeant Rock as the two major characters in the movie. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>that's awesome. Yeah, I love it. Okay, Okay. So he
<v Speaker 3>writes it the first time, and the guy he has
<v Speaker 3>in mind for John Matrix is Gene Simmons. I know,
<v Speaker 3>that's hilarious. Gene Simmons, and you imagine.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, and he's like an Israeli, like a massade soldier, right.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. So Gene Simmons sees the first script and he's like, no,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not gonna do this, and so he rewrites it.
<v Speaker 3>When he rewrites it, he has Nick Nolty in mind.
<v Speaker 3>Uh huh. And I mean you compare the physique of
<v Speaker 3>Nick Nolty and Arnold Swartzenegger, and it's like, Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>he's a formal special Forces guy, but he's letting himself
<v Speaker 3>get out of shape in big time retirement, right, right,
<v Speaker 3>But still the same idea, you know, out of the
<v Speaker 3>game until his daughter gets kidnapped and he has to
<v Speaker 3>save her.
<v Speaker 2>That's a little more so it sounds like Liam Neeson,
<v Speaker 2>like the Taken movies, you know, right, And so they
<v Speaker 2>have they ultimately have this script that Jeff Loeb wrote
<v Speaker 2>with Sergeant Rock and Nick Nolty in mind, and ultimately
<v Speaker 2>they say, we got to touch this up.
<v Speaker 3>I think it's got to be Joel Silfer. But you've
<v Speaker 3>got a story on this, right, So I do.
<v Speaker 2>I got I've got to talk about Stephen Desuza for
<v Speaker 2>a second.
<v Speaker 3>Steven Desusa, who we've talked about so many times.
<v Speaker 2>Stephen Desusa was one of the writers for die Hard,
<v Speaker 2>and he's the guy who put in the line you
<v Speaker 2>pkamfor and I was partial to Roy Rogers, and yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he's the guy who molded die Hard okay and made
<v Speaker 2>it funny and made it funny and fun right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And he's the one who said they don't need to
<v Speaker 2>be terrorists, they need to be bank robbers that look
<v Speaker 2>like terrorists.
<v Speaker 3>So anyway, Stevensusa, great writer, also says that Diehard is
<v Speaker 3>a Christmas movie, by the way, and he's absolutely right,
<v Speaker 3>and and he created by charts to proof such. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So the interesting thing, so Stephen Desusa wrote when he
<v Speaker 2>was a kid and kind of became known for his writing,
<v Speaker 2>and he gets a job in Hollywood.
<v Speaker 3>It gives himself three months to make it as a writer.
<v Speaker 2>Ends up he writes for The Incredible Hulk, the Six
<v Speaker 2>Million Dollar Man, and a TV show called The Renegades, okay,
<v Speaker 2>and so he kind of makes his name in television.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Well, they bring him on board to help with this
<v Speaker 2>old script on forty eight Hours.
<v Speaker 3>Ah okay.
<v Speaker 2>And the script was so old that the old cop
<v Speaker 2>was Robert Mitcham and the young cop was Clint Eastwood.
<v Speaker 3>That's how old that script was. Okay, Oh, that's great.
<v Speaker 2>And so Walter Hill is this guy who is going
<v Speaker 2>to be directing in forty eight hours, and they brought
<v Speaker 2>in Stephen Desusa to pump up the humor and kind
<v Speaker 2>of make it fun. Well, they wanted to bring in
<v Speaker 2>Eddie Murphy and they needed somebody to help liven the thing.
<v Speaker 2>He's actually the guy who brought in the idea of
<v Speaker 2>letting Eddie Murphy's character be the heavy at the honky
<v Speaker 2>talk bar.
<v Speaker 3>Right, you know what I mean.
<v Speaker 2>So the interesting thing is that Joel Silver was the
<v Speaker 2>producer on Forty eight Hours, Walter Hill was the director,
<v Speaker 2>and Stephen Desusan was the writer.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Well, Walter Hill did not like Stephen and Susan, and
<v Speaker 2>so on their next project, he was emphatic that they
<v Speaker 2>cut him out on another on their next, the very
<v Speaker 2>next project, after forty eight Hours, Oh okay.
<v Speaker 3>So it's Walter Hill and Joel Silver and they do
<v Speaker 3>Streets of Fire. Okaya.
<v Speaker 2>Streets of Fire is a complete smoking crater, right right?
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Well, Joel Silver, who had been ignoring Stephen Desusa like
<v Speaker 2>Steven and Susan, is like, I just wrote forty eight Hours,
<v Speaker 2>like I should be getting jobs.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>Well, Walter Hill's trashing him all over town. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And so after Streets of Fire is this big bomb,
<v Speaker 2>Joel Silver contacts the Stephen and Susan and says, I'm
<v Speaker 2>sorry I couldn't talk to you. Walter hates you, and
<v Speaker 2>so in order to make it up, I want you
<v Speaker 2>to come on board and do it, do a movie
<v Speaker 2>with me. And I think we can talk Arnold Schwarzenegger
<v Speaker 2>into doing it with us.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I've met him.
<v Speaker 2>He's charming, he's funny, he's energetic, he's he's the type
<v Speaker 2>of guy that would be great for a movie.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>And so what happens is they give him five movie
<v Speaker 2>scripts that are dead right, like five projects that are
<v Speaker 2>you know, we've got these, we've bought them.
<v Speaker 3>But they're in development. Hell okay.
<v Speaker 2>And so Steven Desusa takes them and looks at them
<v Speaker 2>and he says, well, look, one that's closest to becoming
<v Speaker 2>like a Schwarzenegger type of vehicle is this movie called Commando, right, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and so, but there's all these problems with it because
<v Speaker 2>originally it was written for Gene Simmons, and.
<v Speaker 3>So is this is Raeli soldier. He's like, well, that's
<v Speaker 3>not gonna work, right, a German accident that's an Israeli soldier.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, right, And he said, like on page fifty
<v Speaker 2>the wife gets killed and the daughter gets kidnapped. He's like, no,
<v Speaker 2>we got to speed that up. And they say, well,
<v Speaker 2>we got an appointment with Arnod Schwarzenegger. He's like, why,
<v Speaker 2>I haven't even had time to look at this script.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't had time to think about it or mess
<v Speaker 2>with it.
<v Speaker 3>And they're like, well, you figured it out in the
<v Speaker 3>car on the way over. Figure out in the car
<v Speaker 3>on the way over. Oh my gosh. So they go over.
<v Speaker 2>They go over to Arnold Schwarzenegger's office, they sit down
<v Speaker 2>with him. He's got a picture of his father, this r. Schwarzenegger,
<v Speaker 2>got a picture of his father military military, and he's
<v Speaker 2>got a German shepherd on a leash. He's in his
<v Speaker 2>soldier outfit. German shepherd is lunching at the camera so
<v Speaker 2>much so that it's blurry right, And Steven SiZ says, interesting,
<v Speaker 2>he goes, that's your father. He's like yeah, he goes,
<v Speaker 2>I've got a similar picture of my father, except they're
<v Speaker 2>wearing different uniforms. So that broke the ice, actually, But
<v Speaker 2>Steven and Susan's like, look, here's the idea. We want
<v Speaker 2>to make this fun, exciting, action packed kind of spills
<v Speaker 2>it out for Schwarzenegger, and Swarzenegger's like, I like this, He's.
<v Speaker 3>Not a robot.
<v Speaker 2>From the future and he's not a caveman from the past,
<v Speaker 2>but he's a thinking man. Yeah, he's like a father.
<v Speaker 2>And I get a chance to do this, right, So
<v Speaker 2>Stephen Desusan and R. Schwarzenegger hit it off right off
<v Speaker 2>the bat, and he even does the eyelied line right
<v Speaker 2>and Schwarzenegger laughs and they think it's funny.
<v Speaker 3>And then he's like, let's do this.
<v Speaker 2>And so Steven goes back to this studio and they're
<v Speaker 2>like what he say and he's like, well, he's going
<v Speaker 2>to do it, and they're like great, get to writing,
<v Speaker 2>and they he turns around to the other guy and
<v Speaker 2>he's like start building sets, like because there's a writer's
<v Speaker 2>strike that's happening and pencils have to be down May fourth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 3>Do you hear about this?
<v Speaker 2>No?
<v Speaker 3>This is good. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So they are under the gun, uh huh, and the
<v Speaker 2>Susan's got to get work on fixing the script and
<v Speaker 2>literally has to turn in his script by five pm
<v Speaker 2>on May fourth.
<v Speaker 3>They can't write because if you write on a strike,
<v Speaker 3>they'll kick you out of the Writer's Guild and that's
<v Speaker 3>bad now, that's right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So he has to be completely done May fourth,
<v Speaker 2>five pm.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So he gets to work on it. Thank you.
<v Speaker 3>That was my twelfth my twelfth birthday, okay, October fourth
<v Speaker 3>would have been the day after my tenth birthday. That's
<v Speaker 3>right there, you go.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So the Susan says, listen, guys. He goes, I
<v Speaker 2>have a computer at my house. This is before computers
<v Speaker 2>at work, right, like they had typewriters. He's like, I've
<v Speaker 2>got a computer. I'll get more work done at my house.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna go home and work on this. And they
<v Speaker 2>say great, just got to be in five pm May fourth,
<v Speaker 2>that's it in the story.
<v Speaker 3>So he's like, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So he's finishing up, you know, and he they the
<v Speaker 2>studio sends a courier over and it's like.
<v Speaker 3>Three fifteen on May fourth.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and he's like, okay that and that should do
<v Speaker 2>it right there. Boom, okay, completely done, three fifteen pm
<v Speaker 2>May fourth, he says, right over the hill from the studios,
<v Speaker 2>not very far at all. And he says, so he
<v Speaker 2>goes and he hits print and he said, and then
<v Speaker 2>you hear like and he's like, oh my gosh. He
<v Speaker 2>starts to panick. He realizes this old crappy dot matrix printer.
<v Speaker 2>It's never going to get this printed out in time.
<v Speaker 3>I knew CYD makes printer in nineteen that's right.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, so he's panicking, right, and so he calls
<v Speaker 2>the the Writers Guild and he's like, listen, I have
<v Speaker 2>to register the script. It's done. I am in the
<v Speaker 2>process of printing it off. I'm never gonna make it.
<v Speaker 2>And they're like, well, sorry, you got to have it
<v Speaker 2>in by five PM, no matter what. And he's like, well,
<v Speaker 2>get me somebody there that understands computers. And so Steven
<v Speaker 2>Desusa gets a hold of somebody. He's like, okay, you
<v Speaker 2>understand that there's a computer like date and time that
<v Speaker 2>it cannot be altered in any way, and that way
<v Speaker 2>you can see I'm finished. So it's the first script
<v Speaker 2>that's ever submitted by a computer time and date stamp.
<v Speaker 2>He saves it to a floppy hands it to the
<v Speaker 2>courier on a floppy floppy discs yes, and then that
<v Speaker 2>was May fourth, nineteen eighty five. Is the first script
<v Speaker 2>ever submitted with a computer date stamp on.
<v Speaker 3>It, right, first one probably submitted by floppy disk instead
<v Speaker 3>of on paper. That's fantastic. There you go. Side note. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>there was a writing partnership in between Jeff Loeb and
<v Speaker 3>Stephen Etisuza. Okay, a couple of guys named Larry Gross
<v Speaker 3>and Richard Tuggle and I only mention their names because
<v Speaker 3>they don't even receive writing credit on this, but they
<v Speaker 3>they did try to rewrite Jeff Flop's script. It's interesting
<v Speaker 3>because Larry Gross was the original writer for forty eight Hours. Oh, okay,
<v Speaker 3>and Richard tuggall wrote Alcatraz, which of course had Clint
<v Speaker 3>Eastwood in it. Yeah, but he also wrote Out of Bounds,
<v Speaker 3>which throw back to our weird science episode just a
<v Speaker 3>few weeks ago. That was the movie that Anthony Michael
<v Speaker 3>Hall decided to do instead of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
<v Speaker 3>That's it. That terminated terminated his relationship with John Hughes.
<v Speaker 2>I did a whole episode on that movie with Jeff
<v Speaker 2>Johnson on the Film by podcast on their Patreon.
<v Speaker 3>On which movie out of Bounds? Nice, I've done that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that's awesome. So, by the way, just one quick thing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so Steven Desusa submits that floppy disc May fourth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty five. Yeah, the movie comes out in theaters
<v Speaker 2>October fourth, nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that would be five months to the day. That
<v Speaker 3>is a super tight window r. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, it's so tight that one of the sets,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the beginning, where Bill Duke and the other
<v Speaker 2>guy are driving the garbage truck and they assassinate the
<v Speaker 2>guy in his driveway.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's Stephen Desus's house. Nice. That's awesome. There you go.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, before we talk about the cast, I have one
<v Speaker 2>little thing I wanted to tell you. Okay, yeah, just
<v Speaker 2>keep this in mind.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>The top four grossing movies in nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 3>Back to the Future, Yes, number one, Rambo, number two, Commando.
<v Speaker 2>Commando is number twenty four.
<v Speaker 3>Wow. Yeah, wow, Rambo scored that much higher than Commando
<v Speaker 3>on the box office. Yeah yeah, okay, So what are
<v Speaker 3>three and four?
<v Speaker 2>Three is Beverly Hills cop Oh, of course it's covered. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>four is Rocky four. So you got two stallone movies
<v Speaker 2>in the top four.
<v Speaker 3>How did I forget that? Oh my gosh. This is
<v Speaker 3>why I still say nineteen eighty five is the best
<v Speaker 3>year of the eighties. By the way, but you know
<v Speaker 3>that's an entirely different discussion. I was not an option
<v Speaker 3>whenever you guys did your best year of the eighties.
<v Speaker 2>I still think we ought to do the sequel to that, and.
<v Speaker 3>I will I will advocate for nineteen eighty five all
<v Speaker 3>day long. Okay, very good, very good. All right, So
<v Speaker 3>let's talk about this the cast for Rambo. Okay, okay, yep.
<v Speaker 2>Now, before we get to the major characters, I just
<v Speaker 2>want to say, in order to find Vietnamese soldiers to
<v Speaker 2>get killed, right.
<v Speaker 3>So this they're filmed in Acapoco, filmed in Apol. They
<v Speaker 3>were at Tai They were in Thailand initially, but they're
<v Speaker 3>like this sucks. This is the real jumper. They want
<v Speaker 3>to be here, right. They've got some jungle in Acapoco
<v Speaker 3>and that's a much nicer place to stay.
<v Speaker 2>They said there were thirty minutes from the beach resorts.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right, yeah, So they went to Acapolco located Chinese
<v Speaker 2>restaurants to grab guys.
<v Speaker 3>Late. Wait, they went to Chinese food restaurants in Mexico
<v Speaker 3>to find the Asians to be killed by Rambo. Oh
<v Speaker 3>my word, I mean, where are you?
<v Speaker 2>Where else are you gonna find Chinese guys in Mexico?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's hard to argue with, right, Nobody else working
<v Speaker 3>in Chinese Foos restaurants in Mexico in nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 2>Hand of Guarden's let's go see what's happening in here?
<v Speaker 3>Oh my god, let's go over the Happy Walk next.
<v Speaker 2>All right, So obviously you have Sylvester Stallone playing John J.
<v Speaker 3>Rambo the War. Everything that happened here may be wrong, damn.
<v Speaker 3>I don't hate your country for it.
<v Speaker 2>At this moment, he had been in Rocky He had
<v Speaker 2>been in a Rocky two, Rocky three. Yeah, he had
<v Speaker 2>been in a movie called Nighthawks, which I don't think
<v Speaker 2>you've seen that one either.
<v Speaker 3>I haven't. No, I like that one. Okay. It's kind
<v Speaker 3>of a cop movie.
<v Speaker 2>Rutger Hower is the bad guy and his partner is
<v Speaker 2>Billy d Williams.
<v Speaker 3>Oh cool. Yeah. All right. So you've got two returning
<v Speaker 3>characters in Rambo from First Blood. Yes, You've obviously got
<v Speaker 3>Stallone yep. And then you've got Richard Krinna, who's Colonel Troutman.
<v Speaker 3>One more thing, what you choose to call hell he
<v Speaker 3>goes home. Yes, that's right. Okay. Now, before we get
<v Speaker 3>into casting for Rambo, I just have to say, did
<v Speaker 3>you know that Kirk Douglas throw back to Black Bart whatever.
<v Speaker 3>He was originally cast as Troutman in First Blood. Kirk Douglas,
<v Speaker 3>Kirk Douglas, Richard Douglas. So the day before they're supposed
<v Speaker 3>to start shooting, Kirk Douglas comes to stallone and Ted Katchef,
<v Speaker 3>the director of First Blood, and is like, Okay, I
<v Speaker 3>want this to be the end of the Okay, I
<v Speaker 3>want this to be the end of the movie. Right.
<v Speaker 3>He's like, I kill you and they're like okay. He's like,
<v Speaker 3>so imagine this. You see the cop car driving off
<v Speaker 3>into the fog, and then you see this hand reaching
<v Speaker 3>up for the rearview mirror and the camera pans up
<v Speaker 3>and it's me and I'm wearing your headband. This is
<v Speaker 3>the way. Yeah, thank you, mister Douglas. Get him out
<v Speaker 3>of here. So, oh my god, Richard Karna had to
<v Speaker 3>be fed his lines for the first few days of
<v Speaker 3>shooting because they were like, we cannot we can't do this.
<v Speaker 3>That's awesome. There you go, what a great story. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I got a little tidbit on Richard Crennan as well. Okay, yea,
<v Speaker 2>Richard Krenna. So he's kind of an older man, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>you know, sixties probably in first one. He is credited
<v Speaker 2>as starting a trend in Hollywood of hiring older actors
<v Speaker 2>to play teenagers.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, he was he the one hiring or was he
<v Speaker 3>the one hired? He was the one hired in nineteen
<v Speaker 3>fifty two. He was in a movie call. He was
<v Speaker 3>already old in nineteen fifty ten.
<v Speaker 2>He was twenty five in nineteen fifty two, and he
<v Speaker 2>was playing a teenager in the movie.
<v Speaker 3>Are miss Brooks? Okay, I've heard and.
<v Speaker 2>Now that is standard procedure to hire twenty somethings to
<v Speaker 2>play teens.
<v Speaker 3>He was the first one. Interesting, all right, Krenna. I
<v Speaker 3>wonder what Richard Krenna looked like at twenty five? Not
<v Speaker 3>much different than sixty five, I'm guessing it. By the way.
<v Speaker 2>He had been in Summer Rental with John Kindy, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>and The Flamingo Kid with Matt Dillon, which we've.
<v Speaker 3>Talked both about them.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's one of the first PG thirteen movies.
<v Speaker 3>Of all time.
<v Speaker 2>All right, Okay, all right, let's talk about Charles Napier
<v Speaker 2>for a second. Okay, we kind of flew by Sylvester Slowan,
<v Speaker 2>the greatest, one of the greatest action stars.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, if you don't know about him already. This
<v Speaker 3>is the podcast to find out. We'll do Rocky Do
<v Speaker 3>Rocky one of these days. Yeah, tune into our Rocky
<v Speaker 3>episode right, yeah, in the future. That's right.
<v Speaker 2>So Charles Napier, he's the guy who plays Murdoch Pambo.
<v Speaker 3>You can feel totally safe because we have the most
<v Speaker 3>advanced weapons in the world available to us. I've always
<v Speaker 3>believe that the mind is the best weapon. Times change.
<v Speaker 3>Some people coming for you, Murdoch. Yeah. I immediately recognized
<v Speaker 3>him from the Blues Brothers. Yes, gonna be hard to
<v Speaker 3>eat corn tob without any d see.
<v Speaker 2>I recognize him immediately from silence of the lamps. Oh yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he's the guy Hannibal Lecter gets his cuffs off, cuffs
<v Speaker 2>him to the jail cell, maces him, and then bites
<v Speaker 2>his face off.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, gruesome. Yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So Charles Napier, Yeah, good actor. Do you know that
<v Speaker 2>when he came in to read for the part, he
<v Speaker 2>saw Stallone in the hallway as he's walking. It's like
<v Speaker 2>kind of those one of those little hey, what's up, Hey,
<v Speaker 2>how you doing?
<v Speaker 3>He's like here to read for the part.
<v Speaker 2>Still, it's like sounds good, And when he walked into
<v Speaker 2>the casting directors. He's like, I just messed alone in
<v Speaker 2>the hallway. I think I got the part. Yeah, so yeah,
<v Speaker 2>pretty cool. Yeah, all right, Steven Berkhoff.
<v Speaker 3>You l he's low shape.
<v Speaker 2>He had a terrific run of playing baddies right at
<v Speaker 2>this little pocket of time in the nineteen eighties.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I mean, and if you don't know who that is,
<v Speaker 3>he's the bad guy on Beverly Hills Cop. He plays
<v Speaker 3>Victorm Maitland, the bad guy in Beverly Hills Coppie Simple twelve.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe you should tell him yourself. I think that would
<v Speaker 3>be bad. Why don't you go back to Detroit crawling
<v Speaker 3>to that little rock? But it wasn't just I mean.
<v Speaker 2>So he's popular in Beverly Hills Cop because it was
<v Speaker 2>such a big movie. But he had also he was
<v Speaker 2>the bad guy in Octopusy the year before. Okay, so
<v Speaker 2>you got Octopusy, then you got Beverly Hills Cop. He's
<v Speaker 2>the bad guy in Rambo. He's actually the only bad
<v Speaker 2>guy who speaks any English words in this entire movie.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, okay.
<v Speaker 2>And in nineteen eighty six, he plays the bad guy
<v Speaker 2>in Princes under the Cherry Moon.
<v Speaker 3>I kid, you not.
<v Speaker 2>And it's basically the same character.
<v Speaker 3>So you know that he wasn't the guy that was
<v Speaker 3>originally cast for this part, right, Oh tell me you
<v Speaker 3>know this? Oh my gosh. What So the person originally
<v Speaker 3>cast to play the part of Lieutenant Podofski is Dolph Lungren. What? Yes? Now,
<v Speaker 3>what happens is Sylvester Stallone finds out because he's not
<v Speaker 3>casting you know, he's involved in the movie heavily, but
<v Speaker 3>he's not making every single decision. They cast Dolph Lungren
<v Speaker 3>And he finds out and he's already cast him as
<v Speaker 3>Drago in Rocky four, and he's like, nope, no way,
<v Speaker 3>I am not losing him. You know, we're not going
<v Speaker 3>to have this double thing going for Rambo and Rocky four.
<v Speaker 3>And thank goodness because that would have been horrible. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that was that was better to hold him and be Drago.
<v Speaker 3>But he was like, pay off his contract. He cannot
<v Speaker 3>be in both of these movies. That's incredible. What a
<v Speaker 3>great story there. Yes, I did not know that. Okay, cool,
<v Speaker 3>all right, so quick quick side note. I just have
<v Speaker 3>to say this, so obviously the Soviets are more heavily
<v Speaker 3>involved in this than the Vietnamese. It was nineteen the
<v Speaker 3>nineteen eighties, right, sure, we got to make the Soviets
<v Speaker 3>the bad guys, right right, Well, this movie got released
<v Speaker 3>in the Soviet Union. Do you know this? Yes, tell
<v Speaker 3>me this story. So they it gets released in the
<v Speaker 3>Soviet Union, but they change it to where it's supposed
<v Speaker 3>to be taking place in nineteen forty three, and so
<v Speaker 3>Rocky is not fighting the Soviets, He's fighting the Nazis.
<v Speaker 3>And the Asians are not the Vietnamese, they're the Japanese
<v Speaker 3>and the POWs are World War two vets, and that's
<v Speaker 3>who he's going to rescue. That's fantastic. I gotta wonder.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, just with all of the computers and stuff.
<v Speaker 3>I wish I had known that when I saw the
<v Speaker 3>movie the first time, because I've been like, could you
<v Speaker 3>really believe this as nineteen forty three exploding arrow tips, re.
<v Speaker 2>Linatures and helicopters.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know so, and this was an international hit.
<v Speaker 2>It was a hit in Southeast Asia. You said it's
<v Speaker 2>the number two grossing movie of the year.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah it is. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Can we talk about Julia Nixon for a second.
<v Speaker 3>Not expendable smoke show dude.
<v Speaker 2>When she was playing the jungle soldier, I was like, Wow,
<v Speaker 2>that's a that's an attractive woman. And then when she
<v Speaker 2>turns into the her hooker up. Hello, how don't she
<v Speaker 2>grow her hair out like that? Have you seen her
<v Speaker 2>in any other movie? I don't recognize her for maybe
<v Speaker 2>how do we not get more of her?
<v Speaker 3>I think she did some TV stuff. I think she
<v Speaker 3>did quite a bit of TV stuff. But yeah, well,
<v Speaker 3>I mean it was a fine acting performance.
<v Speaker 2>What what be your lucky tom Wembo?
<v Speaker 3>You take me with you? You take me to State's weambo?
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, Yeah, it was pretty bad.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, when I saw her interview, Yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>she speaks perfect English.
<v Speaker 3>Of course she's not She's not Asian Hawaiians Hawaiian, Oh
<v Speaker 3>my gosh, my goodness. Yeah. Anyway, Okay, you know that
<v Speaker 3>who she married? I tell you this this week. Do
<v Speaker 3>you remember? Don't remember?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So she married a guy named David Soul who
<v Speaker 2>had one massive, one hit wonder song.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, okay, let me play the song for you. See
<v Speaker 3>if you know this one? Okay, don't give up a spabe,
<v Speaker 3>no sweet, come this fun? Can't we stay away the Angel?
<v Speaker 2>And don't give up on his baby big hit in
<v Speaker 2>the seven.
<v Speaker 3>He's probably before your time. Yeah, David Soul is his name. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>He played the main guy in the sale Lot TV series,
<v Speaker 2>which we talked about a.
<v Speaker 3>Long time ago. Halloween episode.
<v Speaker 2>Halloween episode, and he was Hutch in Starsky And that's right.
<v Speaker 3>So she married Hutch that's right, I remember that in
<v Speaker 3>part now, Okay, good, okay, one hit wonder all right.
<v Speaker 2>Then you've got Martin Cove, who we talked about in
<v Speaker 2>our Karate Kid episode.
<v Speaker 3>He is Crease is Cree Kid and Cobra Kai and
<v Speaker 3>Kari Kid too.
<v Speaker 2>He's kind of the nice version of the same character.
<v Speaker 3>In this Yeah well yeah, I mean he's not even
<v Speaker 3>that nice. A whole lot. He's pretty much the same guy. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it's a dirty you know. He's leaving rocket there he
<v Speaker 3>is right there. Nope, we gotta leave. Sorry, Sorry, I
<v Speaker 3>told you just to take pictures. How hard is it?
<v Speaker 3>Oh my god, there's three people in the world to
<v Speaker 3>qualify for this mission. Go take pictures? Are we? Are
<v Speaker 3>we the things that are yet? Okay?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, all right, And that's pretty much it for the
<v Speaker 2>Castle Rambo. Everybody else is a guy who is eating negrols.
<v Speaker 3>And they do not say that it's true. Or torturing somebody,
<v Speaker 3>some Soviet soldier torturing and then flying in helicopter. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>gets killed by a surprise rocket attack. Right right? All right?
<v Speaker 3>Is it time switched to Commando? Well, we gotta take
<v Speaker 3>a break here. You guys will have to come back
<v Speaker 3>for part two of this episode, where we're comparing Rambo
<v Speaker 3>and Commando. We're going to talk casting for Commando. We're
<v Speaker 3>going to talk tidbits, we're going to talk about music,
<v Speaker 3>and then we're going to give our final judgment on
<v Speaker 3>which of these two movies is the best action movie
<v Speaker 3>of nineteen eighty five. Come back next week, do you guys?
<v Speaker 3>Can I switch