A Nightmare on Elm Street 40th Anniversary with Robert Englund and Heather Langenkamp aka Freddy Kruger and Nancy + Movie Review: Joker 2 Talker Park: Red One

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie Podcast. I am your host Movie Mike. Big episode for you today, A Nightmare on Elm Street is celebrating its fortieth anniversary and we're talking to Robert England and Heather lang in Camp aka Freddy Krueger and Nancy. This is gonna be awesome. We'll also talk to director Juan Bablo Adiyas Munios, who is the director of a new movie called The Curse of the Necklace, which is available now in the movie review, one of my most anticipated movies of the year, Joker fo Le Adu, Was it good or was it terrible? And in the trailer park why I thought the new movie with the Rock and Chris Evans was a parody movie. Thank you for being here, Thank you for being subscribed. A lot to get you. So let's get into it now. Let's talk movies.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses from Nville Podcast Network.

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Speaker 3: This is Movie Mike Movie Podcast.

00:01:05
Speaker 1: It doesn't get more iconic than Freddy Krueger when it comes to horror. And if you look at the icons in horror, you have about five. You have Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason, Chucky, and Scream. And how Freddy Krueger is different from all those other characters is you actually associate Robert England's face with the character. Everybody else is a mask or a doll. So there's not really that one figure, that one actor we attached to all those characters. So in a way, Robert England is so much larger than life because he embodies the character. He walks around essentially being Freddy Krueger. I wonder if that's offensive for him at all. I'm going out in public and people recognizing me as Freddy Krueger. Some people are freaked out by me. We'll talk a little bit how the character has affected him. But A Nightmare on Elm Street is celebrating its fortieth anniversary. Wild At this movie is now forty years old. I remember this movie scaring the crab out of me as a kid, rewatched it going into this interview, and it's still up. If you want to check it out. It's available for the first time ever on four KUHD digitally now and you can grab a physical copy for all you collectors out there on October fifteenth. Joining Robert England in this interview is Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy in the original movie. They're actually really great friends, so having them together felt so special, and you can tell they both truly love this movie and love their characters. I love their friendship. So let's get into it now. I sit down with Freddy Krueger and Nancy, so I want to do a buy the Numbers interview. We're gonna see how many number related questions we're here to get in here, starting off with forty. It's been forty years since the movie came out. I want to know after the movie came out as a result of it, when was the first time each of you felt famous.

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Speaker 4: Gosh, I felt famous, probably way after Robert, but people continuously mispronounced my name. But when like, somebody really pronounced my name correctly at one of the wonderful autograph shows that I go to and there were a bunch of people there in the audience, I kind of felt that was the first time I felt famous.

00:03:03
Speaker 5: I was in Milan, Italy to receive an award for Best Supporting Actor or Ensemble, I can't remember which, for a TV series I was in. And we pulled up and I was in a rented tuxedo and I got out and the audience, the people in the piazza, the plaza in front of the scholar started chanting Freddie, Freddie, and they literally picked me up and passed, you know. And that's when I knew Freddie was international and that Freddie had taken off. And I was just beginning to enjoy fame from the TV series, which was science fiction. But it's that moment in time when audience has put your name to your face. That's true fame, you know. And for me, it was a combination of that, and I became an international actor overnight, and that's just a great gift. They never teach you that in school or what that's going to be like, but it's just this great adventure that becomes like a parallel to your career in Hollywood.

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Speaker 1: The next number is thirteen. That's the number of times Freddy says bitch throughout the entire franchise. I heard Jalil White recently, who played Erkele, saying that doing that voice has damaged his vocal cords. It's shredded because of that. For you, doing the Freddie voice over those movies hasn't messed with your real voice.

00:04:27
Speaker 5: Well, here's the thing. When I do the movies, I might only have one line a day.

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Speaker 2: You know.

00:04:33
Speaker 5: When I do these junkets like I'm doing here with you, or when I do morning radio shows and things like that, they want me to talk like Freddy a lot. And if I'm doing a lot of those, I can hurt my voice. But playing Freddy, I probably only have one or two lines a day, if any, because Freddy doesn't talk that much. So it never bothered me. Erkele he can't stop chatting.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, talking about the whole episode of the whole series. The next number is thirty two. The entire movie was filmed in thirty two days. Heather, what was your favorite day on set?

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Speaker 4: Oh? Gosh, Probably the days I didn't have a big makeup I mean a big stunt or something. I know, the day with Johnny when we're walking across the bridge in Venice, or the day with Amanda where we're at the party and where you know, first talking about Freddy. Those days were really luxurious because there wasn't a lot of tension acting and I could just hang out with everybody and have a great time. Most other days when we did do like the bathtub scene or chase scenes, all of those were really you know, you don't have a lot of time. You have to be on your mark, you have to know exactly what you're doing. A lot more pressure, a lot less time to hang out and just kind of have a great time on set with my co stars.

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Speaker 5: Any day when I'm getting the makeup off, yeah that's happy. But I got the makeup off one day and it was a couple of you know, Freddy boogers hanging from my ears and underneath my chin, and Heather and I wanted to see the revolving room and this was going to be the shot of Johnny Depp's bed exploding with all the blood coming out in a gusher like Old Faithful. And they had this great revolving room and it was the same room they used for Amanda on the ceiling, for Tina on the ceiling, but they had redressed it to become Johnny Depp's bedroom, and they had been working all night and they had it all ready to go and Heather and I walked out to watch it, you know, and I was still wiping some of my makeup off, and Heather was in her little pajamas. And I remember standing out there and they spun it the wrong way, and Wes and Jacques Heiken, our cinematographer, were inside in these Volkswagen bucket seats with the camera mounts so they would be upside down while the thing they erupted and came down so it would look using gravity to make it look like it exploded. That's how they did it. They got the idea from the shining. Anyway, they spun it the wrong way, and all the blood came out of the windows of Johnny Depp's bedroom and out the door of Johnny Depp's bedroom and covered west and Jacques Heiken and I remember standing with you and we saw this puddle coming at us. And I looked down and if you know anything about movie sound stages in Hollywood, they're all cables, electrical cables everywhere, plugged in. And I said, this doesn't look good of us. The two of us ran all the way back to the maker. Yeah yeah, but we didn't get like but that's like I really remember that I remember that, Yeah, because I was. I really thought something terrible was going to happen.

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Speaker 1: The next number is seven. That's the total number of minutes that Freddy was on screen in the first movie, Robert, based on your relationship with wesb seven minutes in Heaven, seven minutes based on your relationship with Wes Craven. Do you think that was more by design because he wanted to keep Freddy mysterious or was it more based on the budget of the movie.

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Speaker 5: No, I'll tell you what I think their true truth was, and it's because I got access to this right at the last minute. With the final makeup tests and more robe desks. Both Robert Shay and Wes were petrified about lighting the makeup. The makeup look great, but they were worried about the lighting. And what we discovered almost immediately, because I think I had a scene with Heather pretty quickly, is that I could not step into the kids lighting. They were lit traditionally and attractively. If I went in there, I became to my makeup look too white or too pink, and so we had to light me and it was incumbent upon Heather and Johnny Depp and Amanda whist and everyone to step into my lighting and which was more dramatic and darker, and that's how they solved that. But they were so nervous about the makeup and what it would look like, and they hadn't started seeing dailies yet or rushes yet that I think they just had minimized my screen time because of that, and there came a probably came a point where they probably wish they'd a shot more. But there's nothing in Nightmare one that I shot that's not in the movie except maybe a little bit on the ceiling dragging Amanda.

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Speaker 4: And also with Ronnie at the end in that burn scene, I know that that's. Yeah, it's pretty short, much shorter than I think what was shot.

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Speaker 5: Yeah. I think I went in there and substituted at the beginning, and then Tony went in to stunt. My stunt double went in and did the flame stuff. But I know there, yeah, because I remember being in that room. So I must have been doing something with Ronnie. I think I you know, I might have kissed her or pinned her down or whispered something in her ear and leaned up and then I combussed, and I think they substituted the stunt man and then that was a famous fire stunt at the time. But yeah, that except for that though, I got all the screen time that was there. But you know, no small parts, only small actors.

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Speaker 1: The next number is seventy nine. That is the total number of kills Freddy has throughout the entire franchise of this movie or out of any movie. What is each of your favorite kills that Freddy has done?

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Speaker 5: Heather, what's your favorite?

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Speaker 4: I have to say the most unique and disgusting kill was when he kills brook These in Nightmare four Who's the cockroach and she turns into the cockroach? And that one just is funny and disgusting and grotesque, and it's also one of my best friends getting killed.

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Speaker 5: Besides, it's also very Pafka esque, which really serves the surrealism and the Nightmare mayor thing. I think I like the boy with the hearing aid that was brutal part in part Yeah, in part six is so politically incorrect, and I always like Amanda on the ceiling. The ceiling is so disorienting.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's so unexpected too, the way it starts the movie, like you don't see that coming.

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Speaker 5: I remember she's the janet ly sacrificial lamb. Yeah, that's why the lamb's in there in that corridor school corridor.

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Speaker 1: And two thousand and three is the next number. That was the last Freddy movie that came out with you, Robert, When is the actual last time that you put on the costume? Just have you ever just been hanging out in your house like I want to feel like Freddy today.

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Speaker 5: Well, I did one appearance in Europe and one appearance in Chicago for the fans, and I wanted to make sure it was me, so I didn't wear the costume, just the makeup. And then so that was like you got to have your picture taken with Robert England, the actor that played Freddy Krueger as Freddy Krueger as opposed to just being a Freddie impersonator. And then I did do My agent's favorite TV show was The Goldbergs, and I got a beautiful five page letter from Adam Goldberg telling me this true story about how he had to watch The Nightmare and elm Street movies next door in his neighbor's house. And I love that actress Wendy on that show. I've loved her with since Aerno nine one one, and so I wanted to work with her because she's so funny, and we worked it out that we make too much fun of the Freddie character. We just you know, balance them out. So I did finally break my rule and take Freddie out of the series and do that show. But it was the right show because it was a celebration of the nineteen eighties. It was a celebration of Nightmare on Elm Street. It was a true story, and it was my agent's favorite TV show that he shared with his family. He and his family would sit down and watch it together. So I sort of had to do it for him.

00:12:26
Speaker 1: And finally ten minutes was the runtime of this interview. Thank you for making my childhood and nightmare come true.

00:12:32
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you so much.

00:12:34
Speaker 1: That's wonderful.

00:12:35
Speaker 5: Think you lot of math in that interview.

00:12:36
Speaker 3: There I go.

00:12:39
Speaker 1: So that was awesome. I'm actually gonna give out the secret emoji now, which is what I do every time I have an interview on the podcast. If you want to comment with the skull emoji on any clip I post on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram or X I'll take one of those comments and give you next week's Listener shout out of the week, So again the skull emoji. If you enjoyed that interview, let's get into our next conversation. I love talking to directors what movies inspire them and how their own culture influences their work, and that's why I wanted to talk to Juan Pablo Arijas Munos, who is the director of a new movie called The Curse of the Necklist. You can check it out and select theaters now from ESX Entertainment, or you can own it digitally if you want to watch it at home. Now that it's October when in that spooky season. If you're looking for a scary movie, check out The Curse of the Necklace. I'm really inspired by Juan Pablo's story. We're around the same age, both Latinos, so I really wanted to talk to him. So let's get into that interview now. Hey Juan, how are you today?

00:13:31
Speaker 6: Hey Mike good, how are you doing?

00:13:32
Speaker 1: I'm doing good. I want to know what do? What does everybody call you on set? JP?

00:13:36
Speaker 7: Usually, Yeah, that's the that's the name most people, so Kwanbaulo.

00:13:40
Speaker 6: That's also older people called.

00:13:41
Speaker 1: The that's the same thing.

00:13:43
Speaker 3: With me.

00:13:43
Speaker 1: My real name is Mika alonkile So anytime, like my parents need to call me, it's Miga alon Kileed. And I was like, ah, I don't like hearing that name because it reminds me of getting in trouble.

00:13:51
Speaker 7: Same same, it's it's the name my mom. My mom gets you whenever she's she has something serious to say.

00:13:57
Speaker 1: I want to get into talking about the movie, and I want to get to know more about you and the Curse of the Necklace. I was like, this is a movie just for me. I love anything that is rooted in anybody getting possessed. More specifically, anytime there is a kid talking to a dead presence that isn't there, that just rattles me for some reason. What is it about kids talking to kids that are either dead or not there that is so creepy?

00:14:20
Speaker 6: Oof?

00:14:20
Speaker 7: That's a good question for me particularly. I find it fascinating because as kids, we just sort of take reality as it is, you know, we don't we don't question it much because we're just learning what's real, what's the possibilities of the world.

00:14:32
Speaker 6: I guess so.

00:14:33
Speaker 7: I remember having those encounters when I was a kid, and it seemed pretty normal, and then looking back at those, you know, experiences, it was just like that was pretty messed up, Like that wasn't something at Towel was supposed to go through. That wasn't something that wasn't normal. I feel like it just reminds you of a moment where you'll when maybe you're the most vulnerable because you don't have this logic shield to tell you this is not supposed to happen, so maybe you should just you know, take it out of your sight or realm of possibility, et cetera.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: And then you also have two young actors in this movie. How do you kind of we're really great by the way, I've been following their work for a while now, how do you balance that as a director of putting these younger actors through something that's maybe a little bit darker.

00:15:16
Speaker 7: Well, I think you need to have the right collaborators for that. Violet and Maddie they're professionals, and they understand the work, and they're very technical, and they're very committed. So it wasn't it wasn't something that was difficult to get them on board with.

00:15:31
Speaker 6: I mean, they also have so much experience in the genre.

00:15:33
Speaker 7: And then the story just kind of dictate if the emotion is you're having a fight with your mom, or the emotion is you just saw something that you don't understand, then it's the conversation is about what are those what does that look like?

00:15:46
Speaker 6: What are those feelings?

00:15:47
Speaker 7: And I think the challenging thing about, you know, those extremes of how you're communicating with the dead, you're having a supernatural experience, is the I think the physicality of it. Very few of us you know exactly what it means to see a ghost and how your body reacts to it, And I think at achieving some truth in that physicality, I think that was the most challenging thing. But again, Mighty and Violate are really good at understanding that physicality, and they're very committed to get there. As soon as they came a strolling.

00:16:17
Speaker 1: I kind of took away from the film how there are these supernatural things happening, but at the root of the story it's about family. In this case, the broken family between the mom and the dad and the kids kind of coming to grips with that, and then it's this supernatural event happening on top of that, which is obviously the main focal point of the movie, but rooted in that is them trying to just keep this relationship and also like fighting with each other. So I think did a really great job of just making this movie about, Oh, this is how a family would overcome something that might seem totally bizarre.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that that was the heart of the film really is the emotions that this family, the crisis that this family is going through, and the horror just being a manifestation of that turmoil, you know.

00:17:04
Speaker 5: Uh.

00:17:05
Speaker 7: And at the end of the day, it's a story of how this family of three women come together and through their love for each other, they push through into the next pace of their lives. Right, So that's why it's all about love, and it's all about how they resolve their differences, you know. That's at the heart of the film. And then the horror is just an aspect that enhass those those difficulties between them.

00:17:28
Speaker 1: So talking about family here, I want to go back to your childhood growing up in Chile. What was your family like and if we went to your hometown, what would we see there.

00:17:37
Speaker 7: Well, if you went to my hometown, you would see a developed pink city. You would see some from Santiago, from the capital of Chile. Santio is a very beautiful city. It's in a valley, it's it's at the heel of the out of the mountains. So every time you walk down the street you've seen this beautiful, massive mountain range that in the winter there's you know, there's no it's it's filled with snow. And then in terms of my childhood, you would see something very similar to the to the movie. Actually, I was raised by a single mom. It was just me and my brother, who's older. My mom was a nurse, you know, she spent a lot of time working, and it was my brother and me, you know, in the house after school and mom would get there later. And I think that sense of you know, vulnerability and I mean not not really isolation. I could say isolation is something that's present in the film. You know, these two kids are not are not really seeing I do eye with each other, and they're also hardly see them, you know. So when I first read the script, that was one of the things that drew me to it is how similar their situation was to my childhood, you know. And that was with me not adding anything, that was just how it came to me. So I read that and I knew I had to do the film.

00:18:47
Speaker 1: Both of my parents are Mexican. They came from the United States from Mexico when they were teenagers, so I was actually born here. And having Mexican parents, I find that sometimes they struggle with anything in the creative being, Like growing up, I wanted to be in a rock band. I wanted to sing and play guitar, and they struggled with that, not because they weren't supportive of me, they just didn't really see that as a career because we grow up, they got to work in the fields, they got to do those types of jobs. They never saw anything in the creative field as something that you could go on and have, you know, success in. And then even me, they were really like kind of stressing that I go to college, and even when I started getting into radio and podcasting, they didn't really know what I was doing. And the first time I kind of blew their minds was when they came to one of my comedy shows and they saw me perform for the first time and they saw like people there and like, what is happening right now? I have to know, for you, growing up with a single parent, how was that support system. Was she very supportive of what you were doing or did you kind of have to convince her, like this is something I'm so passionate about and I'm I'm gonna follow my dreams and do this.

00:19:51
Speaker 6: I think it's a mixture of both.

00:19:53
Speaker 7: My family was the same me my generation the first artist, and as family are from my gener and I think it's because, you know, in earlier generations then your contract was if you don't work, if you don't get paid, you're you're gonna start. You know, you have to put food on the table. And luckily, not that we didn't struggle, but luckily my mother went to college. She was a nurse and she had worked, and my brother and I didn't really have to go through what she went through. So, you know, our universe sort of expanded in the sense of you don't have to it's not just about putting food on the table. There's there's other things in which you can concern your your mind with. And we both sort of became artists from there, you know, And I think that's what happens to family, is to usually artists, Like it is something that you see more in in in families of the elite because they don't. They don't know what to do with their time, so they just go make art, right. But I think it's harder for us. You know, we're being the first artist of the family to get your parents to understand it's a dignified way to live, it's a meaningful way to live. And you don't so it doesn't sell. Means that you'll starve to death.

00:21:02
Speaker 2: You know.

00:21:02
Speaker 7: The happiest people I know are at a work actors because they I mean, you know, it's it's struggled. They struggle, but they love their work so much, you know, and and they do they do what they have to do.

00:21:14
Speaker 6: I mean, gout of work.

00:21:16
Speaker 7: Writers, I know it's a struggle, but they also love to write and they can't see themselves doing something else. So that that happiness that you don't think I would tread it for anything. Or my family again being the first artist in the family, or like my brother and I being the first artist.

00:21:30
Speaker 6: In the family.

00:21:30
Speaker 7: The support was difficult to achieve again because there were there was no frame of reference. What does a filmmaker do for a living? You know, what does a filmmaker do for a job? You know, there's a Westen ninety five for a for a director. That's not something that my mom had had a thought of what that was. So I think when I first when I was twelve, I sort of like stated to the world.

00:21:53
Speaker 6: That I was going to become a director.

00:21:55
Speaker 7: I think in the first few years, my most like, yeah, sure, Like you wanted to be an astronaut two years before, and you wanted to be a singer two years before that. So I don't think she took it seriously until I was like eighteen and I was like, oh no, I'm going to I'm going to film school like that. That that was not a joke, and she didn't like that at first. I know that she just wanted me to to, you know, to study something a little bit more safe, you know. She she tried to negotiate with me, you know, when't you do like something with engineering, but with sound or something you know that that has a little bit more of a more of a shade. Luckily I did not listen, and ultimately she she was supported. I mean, it is her fault because you know, growing up she said, you can do anything you want. You you need to love what you do, and I grew up watching her loving her job so much.

00:22:43
Speaker 6: She loves.

00:22:44
Speaker 7: She loves being a nurse, she loves helping people, she loves making she loves making sure that the places she works in are run as efficiently and as dignified as they can for the patients. So just her passion was so infectious, and I just found that passion in myself, and I've been trying to live by the same moves again. She told me growing up, you can't do anything you want. There's nothing that you can't do. Don't let people tell you can do something. You're smart, you're special. And I just think that that confidence built in in a way that I I'm able to pursue my directing career today.

00:23:19
Speaker 1: So when you were twelve, what was it either the movie or the director that you saw their work and thought, that is what I'm going to do, that is what's going to make me want to be a director.

00:23:29
Speaker 7: There were two movies especially. I will say that movies were a part of my life since since forever. They were a very big part of my life. I loved watching movies growing up, going to Blockbuster with my family. That was like one of the events that we had on the weekends. You know, it was one of my favorite places, going to the movie theater. It was one of my favorite experiences on the weekends, but it didn't really click as something that I could do.

00:23:52
Speaker 6: Growing up. I just love I just rebuked and did by movies.

00:23:55
Speaker 7: But then when I was twelve, I got obsessed with The Mummy and I got obsessed with The Matrix, like those were two movies, and also around around ten years old, and I was just obsessed, like I couldn't stop watching these films, and every time I would come back to school, I would just go sit down and watch them again and I would learn them by heart. I would learn the lines and I could still recite the lights, and I just realized that at some point that's something you can do. You know, that's something you can There's people that are making these things, and I feel like that's something that might actually The anecdotist that my brother was walking by you saw me watching The Mummy again and he said, oh, you're watching the Mummy again for the twentieth thirtieth time. Why And I was like, I don't know, I just love love this film, and it's like, oh, maybe you can do something like that when you grew up, And he just walked away and that kind of just like that inception of an idea just stayed with me, and I was like, oh yeah, Like I realized, like, there are people doing this, and then you look at the cris like, oh, there's a director, there's a writer, there's that, and I realized them that that's what I That's something someone does, and I just wanted to be a part of that.

00:24:59
Speaker 1: So I watched a movie recently called American Fiction, and it really resonated with me because the character in the movie is a black author, but he writes science fiction. And he went to the bookstore and he went to the science fiction section and his book wasn't there. Instead, it was in the section for black authors. And I think I've been struggling with this lately because whenever I try to make art or make anything in the podcast or comedy world, I obviously want to include my culture in it, but it's not necessarily that I wanted to be labeled as, Hey, this is something just for Latinos. How do you kind of walk that line of I am going to make something and this is my art, and just because I am Lantino doesn't mean that it's going to be strictly Latino art. I just wanted to be the best art possible.

00:25:45
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that's a generalized problem in the industry right now. Right, I think it's it's so easy because it's I mean, I understand it's necessary for you know, managers, agents, producers to kind of label your between a box based on your interest R identity too.

00:26:03
Speaker 6: Can I get you work right?

00:26:05
Speaker 7: Like, if you're good at horror, then you should go and meet these horror people and I'll tell people that you do horror.

00:26:10
Speaker 6: I think it's it's hard, but.

00:26:12
Speaker 7: I also think that it's up to you to sort of maintain a balance between if you don't want to be known as someone who's like just doing strictly Latino content, which happens to me to a lot, you know, it's like, oh, you're a Latino director, then here sold these Latino stories and here's a you know, a movie from Mexico. And I'm like, I never been to Mexico before, you know, today was my first day in Mexico, I mean a festival. I don't know anything about Mexico that we share. You know, the language, but it's easy for people your Latino speak Spanish. You can be right, So I think it's up to us to make sure our work is diverse enough in its in its offerings, because if you only write Latino characters and the themes in your films are only Latinos in your writing, then you know, it's pretty easy to fall on back box. Because again, Hollywood really needs to put you in a box because they need to share who you are and what you do so you can go and keep doing it. So I think maintaining a balance between that. So if that's your passion, if you want to, you know, explore and reflect upon the Latino identity in your work, and that's your call, and that's great, and they should put you on that box. But that's not for all of us, right, Like I don't want to just be a Latino director. I want to be a director. So I've made an effort in my career to not just do a Latino card, right, And I've looked at sort of the human experience then I've made I've made as an artist. I tried to focus on the human experience and look at the human experience and make films about the human experience. So they're than my own right, and I think that's the right that every artist has, you know, So I've I've made a film about the when I was twenty four, about the human experience of a boy who watch you know, fourteen, who grew up with a abuse his father. I did not grow up with a father, so that's not my experience, but I was interested in this particular human beings experience. Then the history of monsters, all the short I made it's about a woman and about her struggles with you know, her thestires for intimacy and her self preservation. So and I'm not a woman. I don't know what the experience of a woman is in that, but it's my right as an artist to become interested in want to explore that, because I think there's something meaningful to say about the world there.

00:28:29
Speaker 6: And the only challenge is like can you bring truth to that?

00:28:32
Speaker 5: Right?

00:28:32
Speaker 7: If you do it as a as a strategy, if you're not bringing heart into it and you're not really bringing any truth, then it's not gonna work. But I think we're all human beings first and then we're whatever we are later, right, Like I'm a human being first, I'm a man's second, I'm Latino third, But then we can all just sort of resonate with each other on that human human being level. And maybe that's a long win good way of answering your question. But I think it's it's it's it's up to us really to to try to diversify our stories as much as possible so we don't put ourselves in them, right and and horror for me was like a good way to do that because I love the genre. I love horror, and I've done most of my working horror. So then my career sort of developed into that box. You know, it's it's into the horror and the psychological thriller box as opposed to you know, the Latin of Fhilwmaker box. No.

00:29:27
Speaker 1: I love that answer. And now that the movie is out, people are consuming it. I saw you posting pictures of screening selling out. What do you hope that people take away from this movie?

00:29:36
Speaker 7: Well, I think it's the most important thing is you know that people enjoy it, that people you know, have a good time in the theater, that they hopefully they can get scared. You know, that they that they get what they came for when they come watching in a theater, when they watch it for Halloween. Now when it's coming out in digital and I think for for me on a deeper level, just understanding this, this stroll in this in this family and hows as families, we we don't really ever see io eye, you know, and it's it's difficult, especially when when the when the foundations of our lives have been sort of broken down. We know in this family the dad left, they g also understand why that left, and they they are struggling with understanding why mom is doing what she's doing. And throughout the film you really get to understand those things that for children are they're being kept away from the truth, right, the abusive relationship, the they're being kept away from the truth of how mom brings feels and the efforts that she's going to protect them.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: Right.

00:30:41
Speaker 7: And at the end of the day, it's it's love. It's just understanding each other, and it's caring for each other that carriers carries us through those process of crisis. We could as human beings just give up and they blinded and not listen to each other and not see each other for our humanities and our flawed But at the end of the eighty slot, it is it is again our love for each other that carries us through those situations.

00:31:08
Speaker 1: Well, I hope everybody goes check it out in theaters, watch it at home, get freaked out like I did. Really enjoyed the conversation, so I appreciate it.

00:31:14
Speaker 7: No, thank you so much, Mike. This is great me and thank you. Yeah, thank you, thank you so much.

00:31:22
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. I have to do it. Spoiler free movie review Joker fole I do. I'm like so, I've never been. I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. That is how I feel about this movie. And going back to twenty nineteen, Joker was the first movie ever in the history of me reviewing movies in this capacity that I rated a five out of five. There was nothing I would change about that movie. I feel like it captured a moment in time. There was so much controversy surrounding the release of that movie. It went on to be a mega hit, wasn't supposed to, and for the longest time, I wouldn't even go back and watch Joker. I think it was maybe twenty twenty one, maybe twenty twenty two that I rewatched it for the first time because I didn't want to change how I felt about it, and even going into that film, Todd Phillips, the director, said I have no plans for a sequel. He didn't want to do it. He thought Joker was a standalone, one movie deal. And then it went on to make a billion dollars at the box office. And what happens when a movie makes a billion dollars at the box office, studio comes to knock and saying.

00:32:45
Speaker 3: You sure you don't want to rethink that.

00:32:47
Speaker 1: Jaquin Phoenix made twenty million dollars on that first movie. He won an oscar. Of course there's going to be a demand to make a second one. And you throw enough money into somebody's face, put it right in their lap, stuff it right in their pockets. Of course they're going to do another one. So then this other story came out after he said no plans for a sequel. That well, at the end of that one, Joaquin Phoenix said he wasn't ready to depart from the character, and that Todd Phillips said that he would do another one if Joaquin Phoenix said that I'm ready to do it again, and that they thought there was another story. Joaquin Phoenix apparently had some kind of Dream where Joker was singing and dancing, so they thought, what if we do a Broadway adaptation to a sequel? And when this movie got announced back in twenty twenty two, I was excited, even though I thought it didn't need a sequel. I thought, well, if they're gonna make a sequel, that means they had to have stumbled on a story that was great. And then when they said that Joker Too is going to be a musical, I thought that sounds terrible. I've said on this podcast that I don't like musicals. They're a handful here and there that give me every now and then, but I think as a genre people Americans moviegoers just don't really like musicals because they are very hokey and cheesy. And Joker Too is what is described as a jukebox musical, which I didn't really know that term going into this movie. But instead of having original songs made for this movie, they just randomly burst out into well known songs, not all of them that I know. And when I heard it was going to be a musical, I thought, oh, really, they're going to depart so much from what made the first one great, And that is my theory on this movie because I didn't like it. I didn't enjoy it. There were parts of it I enjoyed. The little peaks that we had to Joker one I enjoyed, But as a whole I didn't enjoy it. I don't think it's necessary. And when I heard it was going to be a musical, I thought, well, it has to play into the madness of Arthur Fleck, and that is kind of what happened in this movie. Every time things get a little bit too intense, he goes into songs, he goes into this fantasy land, which is what the first movie did, but it did it more subtly because in the first one you kind of question what is reality and what is going on in Arthur's mind, because he is a deranged he is crazy, he is a lunatic. This one pushed that a little bit further, and it really turned it into kind of a playground where nothing really mattered, wasn't based in any kind of reality, really wasn't based in any kind of Gotham. So I think what happened and why this movie is performing so terribly and why I left feeling so disappointed, is that Todd Phillips to do a sequel, wanted to do something completely different from the first one. Like any artists like Okay, I don't want to repeat myself. I also want to give audiences something new, which I think the reason most people hate this movie isn't the reason I hate this movie. A lot of people have a problem with the singing, a lot of people have a problem with the overall outcome of the movie. What I feel was just completely a slap in the face to me as a DC fan, to me as a Joker fan, is I don't feel like this story carried any kind of the qualities that a Joker in the movies or in the comic books has ever carried. It is such a departure that it doesn't feel like Joker whatsoever. It feels more like this movie should have just been called Arthur Fleck, Like it has nothing to do with the character of Joker. It is just using that banner and sprinkling in little details here to attach it to some kind of DC world. Harvey Dent is in here for no reason whatsoever. Harley Quinn, They just I feel they just gave that character the name of Harley Quinn, gave her a little bit of backstory, like she had in the comics. Outside of that, that character is useless in this movie. And my other big problem was they sold this movie in the trailer, in the promotional materials as a completely different movie, even in the description of it, if you go on Rotten Tomatoes IMDb of what this movie is about. It's supposed to be about him finding Harley Quinn an Arkham Asylum, and the trailer makes it look out to be like it is their rise to power, them taking on the world, them dealing with what the outcome was of Joker one, and going on this big adventure. There's none of that. There's no adventure in this movie. There's no action. It is a courtroom drama, Broadway musical, slightly reminiscent of a comic book movie, but not really. It is a huge swing from director Todd Phillips to do something really creative. That is what it is. And I can kind of respect that because, as somebody who talks about on this podcast, I just want something different. I want something unique. I don't want to go into a DC movie and have the same formula that has not worked time and time again. And I think to Phillips, here, did that a really big creative swing. But the problem is he struck out because at no moment in this movie did it ever get into a rhythm, did it ever find its groove. And even when I thought it found its groove where something actually started happening, I was like, Okay, we're getting somewhere here. There's gonna be a complete shift change, and it's gonna completely transform into a different movie. As soon as that moment happens in the movie, boof momentum is gone. It is just like, oh well, it was fun for me to imagine that, but the movie just completely took a nose dive going into that third act and closing it out. It kind of tarnishes. Oh I hate to say this, It tarnishes what happened in the first one. Because again I think joker Wood is a perfect movie. Nothing I would change for this one. I would change everything about it. And I don't want this movie to exist. I just don't because I think it's going to continue that representation of DC movies historically being bad. And I don't even want to put this movie in the same category of an aquamante of The Flash. I don't think it's bad in that sense that it's terrible writing or terrible direction. I think what makes this one unenjoyable is that it's so out there and such a departure from the first one. It is like they completely changed the formula. If you went to a restaurant and had a meal that was so good, the best meal of your life, and then you came back and ordered that same meal and they changed all the ingredients, and it's not even the same dish anymore. That's what happened here. So I came here looking for a double stuffed crust pepperoni pizza and I got chicken pop pie with lentils. Like, what is happening here? And for somebody who likes chicken pop pie with lentils, maybe you enjoying this movie. But for somebody who wanted that pizza, you're like, what this isn't what I ordered. And I also think Todd Phillips maybe it took all the criticism of Joker One and thought, well, this is what people didn't like about this movie, so let me completely change it on the sequel. People thought the first one was too dark, so let me liven it up with some musical numbers. I did completely hate all of the musical numbers. I think he needed one. I think that would have got the point across of what is going on in Joker's mind, how he and Harley Quinn interact with each other. I think you needed one moment. There were multiple moments throughout the entire movie, maybe ten moments at least, where they burst into songs. And it feels cringe worthy to see Joker doing this because the moments he did this in Joker One where you don't know if it's reality or fantasy, it had a different tone. It was more intense and more of like, oh, what is exactly going on here? Here? It was very clear you have Lady Gagaja belting or brains out, and it just did it fit. And none of those musical moments had any impact on the movie, any impact on the story for which there was very little story. It is Arthur Fleck dealing with the fallout of the events that happened in the first one. He is on trial. People wanted to fry for this. He has caused an uprise that is just bubbling underneath in Gotham, and now he meets Harley Quinn, who is now quote unquote the love of his life and he feels not alone anymore, and that is really all the stories. So I feel like there wasn't enough here to carry on a two hour plus movie, where if they would have just made it more like one given us, the exact same thing could have been a ninety minute movie cut all the musicals add some more substance to the story, but I don't think that would have been fulfilling to Joaquin Phoenix or to Todd Phillips. So I think they decided to make this thing that is just not resonating with anybody. So I think most audiences are leaving saying what was that? So I don't regret going to see it. I started to see some of the uproar and some of the review bombing come out early on, but I don't really let that change my perspective on wanting to see a movie. Sometimes I feel that once one person says something negative, it is so much easier for a lot of people to team up on something negative. But if you enjoy Joker one, I still would not tell you not to see Joker Too, because I love Joker one, and I still feel like I got something out of experiencing this because you almost have to see it and decide for yourself, and then, like me, try to start erasing this movie from your memory, because I don't think it was meant to be made. I think with the first one being so successful, we are just in that state of media right now where if something has so much success, to try it again. But this just didn't work. It was a big swing and a big miss for Joker. Fully, I do they put the rating in the title It is two out of five defense Attorneys. It is two out of five. You can just hear it in my voice. How sad I am to do this review. I did not think I would be sitting here at this point of the year reviewing Joker and giving it anything less than a four. Because even when that trailer dropped and the cinematography, all those still shots look amazing, this movie still looks good. It's still expensive, two hundred plus million dollars that it costs to make, so visually it is still there. The performance is the acting, I would say, is still there. It is still quality. It is just them doing something that you just don't really care about, and it just never hooks you in. So not in the same way that Aquaman two is so cringe to watch because there's cheesy, long, bad, cgi horrendous acting. That movie is flat with action. This is just bad because it doesn't even really feel like a movie. It feels very abstract. It feels like there's a lot of metaphor in it, which there is a lot about the human condition, a lot about how we treat criminals, a lot about how people follow people for doing ridiculous and crazy and criminal lacks. So there is that messaging in this movie, but it slapped a bunch of crap on it that nobody really sees that. So again for joker fole, I do I give it two out of five frown ne fuss.

00:44:41
Speaker 3: It's time to head down to movie. Mike Traylor Park The.

00:44:46
Speaker 1: Rock isn't an actor. He just recites lines and collects checks. And I used to be a big fan of the Rock. I grew up watching him wrestle. I liked a lot of his early movies when he was just an action star. But I feel like as his celebrity has grown, the time he can dedicate to movies becomes less and less, and that becomes apparent. Maybe not to everybody, but I can clearly tell when a project of the Rocks was merely a just a little blip on his calendar, which I imagine he is in high demand all the time, traveling around the world doing all these events. He has all these companies he's involved with, and it seems to me that there was a point in his career where movies were at the forefront. That is what consumed a lot of his time. And I would say in the twenty tens, he put out some good movies that maybe on paper, weren't the best movies ever, but there were movies that resonated at least with me because they were exactly what I wanted from him an action star. The Jumanji movies are good. Oh maybe the first one second one is kind of the exact same thing, But after that just feels like he showed up on set that had some lines maybe slightly remembered before he sat down, walks into the room. There's even a point in this trailer where it feels like he just walked onto set to deliver a quick line. So I don't really feel I've ever had a true acting performance from the rock maybe back in the early two thousands when he was like really trying. I don't want to say Scorpion King, but maybe Walking Tall, the movie he did with Johnny Knoxville, which was a remake, but I think that was the Rock at his best, and I think it was his involvement in Black Adam and how long he was attached to that movie. And since then, it just seems like he uses his celebrity, his followers on Instagram and TikTok to promote his movies. And yes, that is still going to make people aware of his films. They'll still perform moderately at the box office, but I don't think that is going to be around forever. And when I saw the trailer to Red One, which I've been seeing it now in theaters for a while, it is one of those movies that just feel fels like an advertisement. It feels like they spent two hundred million dollars on this movie and are now just saying, can we advertise this movie enough to make our money back? And they're gonna spend so much money on marketing. The movie is coming out on November fifteenth, so I guess hoping to get people into the Christmas spirit before even Thanksgiving hits. It seems like they're going for the younger demographic here when it comes to the writing and the characters, especially the polar bear character in this movie. But what the movie is about. There's a super villain. He kidnapped Santa Claus, who is played by JK. Simmons, So shout out to JK. Simmons for getting his bag. The Rock is, of course, the big musty guy who is the head of this elf organization who has to join forces with Chris Evans's character, who is this hacker slash tracker, and his job is to team up with the Rock in order to find Santa Claus and save Christmas again. This movie is coming out on November fifteenth. I thought it was a parody before I get into more. Here's just a little bit of the Red One trailer.

00:48:01
Speaker 6: Welcome to the North Pole, Come again.

00:48:02
Speaker 7: Last night Red One, also known as Saint Nicholas Amyra was abducted.

00:48:07
Speaker 5: Are you saying Santa Claus has been kidnapped? You're the best tracker in the world. You're gonna help us find him?

00:48:14
Speaker 8: I work alone, you used to. I'm not gonna like you. I can tell right away. Out of everyone here, I like you the least. Garcia.

00:48:25
Speaker 1: What the heck should we did the thing.

00:48:27
Speaker 5: I'm afraid we're gonna have to.

00:48:30
Speaker 1: Listen to that delivery In those lines, Chris Evans trying so hard to sell this movie. I almost feel that his role was intended to be more of a Ryan Reynolds, like that is maybe who they thought would play alongside The Rock. But I feel like, even though they said they get along now their time together on Red Notice, which is another Red movie, I don't think they really like each other anymore, because it seems to me like Chris Evans is kind of playing that sarcastic, witty character that I don't know, I'm completely buying into by just the look and feel of this trailer. But they're also working with a really, really ridiculous script here, so maybe he's just trying really hard to say it. And I'm gonna go out on a limb saying that this is probably gonna be the worst movie ever made with Red in the title, and I hate that movie is like this contribute to the fact that people think that movies just suck now because on paper, this feels like a legitimate movie. You have The Rock, you have Chris Evans aka Captain America, you have Lucy Lou you have JK. Simmons, you have all these recognizable and reputable actors in the movie. So you see this trailer and you think, oh, take my family to go see that. It should be a good movie. And then you are handed this. So then you get bait and switched and you're given a bad movie with bad acting. The trailer itself tells you everything you need to know about the movie from beginning to end, and that is a bad sign. And then we actually get a Latino actor in this movie. But what does he do. He's voicing a polar bear. Could you imagine him getting a call from his agent, Hey, got you some great work. You're gonna be in a movie with The Rock. Oh, that sounds awesome. Also, Chris Evans is in this movie. This is great. What character do I play? Well, you're gonna play a polar bear and we're not even gonna see you on screen. Ah, I'll take it. How much is it paying? And this was initially going to be a straight Amazon Prime movie and then it got shelled for a while and now I think in order to make some of this money back is the reason they're putting it out in theaters. The Rock is also taking home a pretty good payday for this movie. I think he's making twenty million dollars, and he negotiated for some money on the back end, So I think that is the big push to get this movie out in theaters because he wants it to do well. He wants to have more money on the back end. And I can't hate on him for that, but I just feel like there should be somebody in his life that you're at this point in your career where he is trying to branch out a little bit. He's going to be an a twenty five movie. He's not gonna be able to get away with doing quote unquote acting like he is doing here. It's gonna have to show some emotional range in his characters and prove that he could not just be the exact same person in every single movie, delivering these half baked lines time and time again, and that people are still going to come back just because how big of a celebrity you are and how many followers you have on Instagram. The moment this trailer lost me is whenever they have this slab match, which is a funny, ridiculous sport. I go on TikTok and I see these insane matches that seem so brutal, and I can't even believe this is a real thing that people do because you have no defense when you're just standing there and taking a full slap to the face, full force, with no way to protect yourself. And the fact that they were able to work that into the plot of this movie just tells me all I need to know about how ridiculous it is going to be. And this movie will continue to test the theory that star power alone will get butts into seats, and I think over the last couple of years especially, it's proven that it doesn't work. You still have to evoke some kind of emotion in audiences to get people there and want to pay money to see these movies. And this just isn't it. It's gonna be a movie that comes out in theaters tanks and more people will end up watching it whenever it goes to prime video. We just gotta stop making movies like this.

00:52:18
Speaker 3: And that was this week's edition of Movie by Frame or.

00:52:22
Speaker 1: Par and that is going to do it for another episode here of the podcast. And speaking of we gotta stop making movies like this, still wild to me how much joker iiO bombed at the box office, came in like fifteen twenty million dollars under what they thought it was going to make, only made forty million dollars on a two hundred million dollar budget.

00:52:44
Speaker 6: That is wild.

00:52:46
Speaker 1: All Right, Enough about me being upset about movies in the last couple of years and movies coming out of the rest of this year. Gotta give my listeners shout out of the week, which I do every single week. This week, I'm going over to YouTube where you can check out individual movie reri. You can also listen to and watch the full A Nightmare on ELM Street interview that'll be up tomorrow on my YouTube page YouTube dot com slash Mike Distro, where you can find the link in the episode notes. This week's listener shout out is Nacho Blazer, who commented on my Substance review and said, I love the Substance. If you like weird, uncomfortable but creative body horror, you should go see this movie. The message of the movie might also be important to some, so appreciate that Nacho for watching over on YouTube, for commenting, and that review in particular kind of took off more than I thought it would, so I'm glad people are showing some love to that movie. I hope more people will give that movie a chance after me talking about it. So thank you for watching, thank you for listening, thank you for being subscribed. Remember the secret emoji is the skull emoji. Go over to my TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all the things, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later