The Bit Players

The guys are born to kill as they head into the jungles of Vietnam with Private Joker for this week's podcast on Stanley Kubrick's1987 film Full Metal Jacket. They talk about the film in comparison to other war films, particularly with how realistic it handles the psychological effects of war, and whether or not that's really all that fun to watch for a podcast. One of the more interesting things about the film is its structure; Kubrick puts his privates (Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Arliss Howard) through the ringer before throwing them into the war itself, so the film has two distinct halves. This seems to be the most conversation-worthy aspect of the film and how it sets up the physical terrors of war with the psychological ones of R. Lee Ermey.

Featuring "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen

The guys head back in time to the glorious Roman-Aussie empire to do battle alongside Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's 2000 film, Gladiator. The film follows a general who became a slave, a slave who became a gladiator, a gladiator who probably never told a joke in his life, Maximus Decimus Meridius as he attempts to thwart the purely evil Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and lay the smackdown on CGI tigers alongside tag team partner Juba (Djimon Hounsou). Though the film is largely gratuitous action, it took home Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and the Bit Players try to reconcile how the film holds up with the incredibly high praise it received at the time, thinking about how it would be received were it released today. After all, the only things keeping this movie from feeling a lot like 300 are dynamic Richard Harris and Oliver Reed performances. The discussion on Gladiator becomes a bit of a reckoning as it slowly dawns on the group that this movie, though totally badass, just might not be that good.

The guys bust out the ruffled tuxedos and pig blood buckets for this week's podcast on Brian De Palma's 1976 Stephen Kingadaptation, Carrie. They talk about King's affinity for over-the-top bullies — a group of which featured in Carrie among his most psychotic, fronted by John Travolta and Nancy Allen — the touching and incredibly acted performance from Sissy Spacek in the role of the title character, and the ways in which the film brings baddies from both within the home and without, a feature that continually pushes forth a very claustrophobic and caged-in representation of a high school girl being sent deeper into herself over the course of the film. Lucky for her, and pretty unlucky for just about everyone else — from her mother (Piper Laurie) to her prom date (William Katt) to the only authority figure to show any sort of compassion, despite beating the hell out of everyone else (Betty Buckley) — what Carrie finds when she ventures deeper inside of herself is a super-power. Not bad. It's just too bad that an entire school of people had to die for Sue (Amy Irving) to learn her lesson about tampon-tossing.

Featuring "I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me" by Pino Donaggio

03:00 Number-Crunching
12:20 Carrie Introduction
14:30 Stephen King's Affinity for Losers
18:00 Carrie vs. The Untouchables
20:50 Sissy Spacek's Performance/Carrie's Vulnerability
24:00 Seeing Carrie for the First Time
27:10 Why the Film and Novel Resonate
32:20 What are the Ingredients for Movie Magic?
36:00 Clark's Corner: Blu-Ray Combo Pack, Genre Game, Lestat-Approved?
41:30 Ratings

The guys take the coast highway to Bodega Bay with pockets full of birdseed on this week's podcast on Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film, The Birds. The Bit Players discuss the interesting ways the film subverts audience expectations around every bend, with Tippi Hedren'sMelanie Daniels character playing the coy débutante taking things into her own hands, meeting various characters like love interest Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), and Hitchcock's umpteenth reimagining of Jacosta in Jessica Tandy's Lydia Brenner in very unique and interesting ways, to the fact that those character interactions somehow take center stage in a film about killer birds dive-bombing into eyeball sockets left and right. The guys talk about their first experiences with the classic film and other of the director's iconic works, how it both conforms to and rejects what could be considered a typical Hitchcock narrative, and the cultural relevance of the film today given recent controversies around other predatory male Hollywood figures. They try to make sense of the art vs. artist discussion in terms of Hitch the man and Hitch the director.

Featuring "The Wee Cooper O'Fife"

03:07 Number-Crunching
13:18 The Birds Introduction
13:50 First-Time Viewing Experiences
16:50 What Does the Film Do That Isn't Done Today?
18:00 The Melanie Character
22:00 How The Film Subverts Expectations
26:00 How We Would Take Down the Birds
27:20 The Restaurant Scene and the Ornothologist
30:00 Sparse Human Interactions
31:48 The Sound of The Birds
40:00 Does Hitchcock Ask Us To Think Critically About the Film?
42:00 The Environmental Themes in the Movie
49:39 The Art vs. The Artist
57:25 Clark's Corner: Recasting the Remake, Blu-Ray Combo Pack, Shyamalanian Twist, and More
1:07:00 Ratings

The guys head to a secluded Spanish wartime orphanage for this week's podcast on Guillermo Del Toro's 2001 film, The Devil's Backbone. The film is somewhat of a spiritual predecessor to the highly revered Pan's Labyrinth a few years later, so much of the Bit Players' discussion is spent on comparing the two films, while trying not to let the perfection of Pan's Labyrinth bring down their perception of the older work. They do have a lot in common, however: the Civil War backdrop to a fantastical story (in this case a ghost named Santi, played by Junio Valverde, rather than woodland creatures), an oppressive and frightening world in which Del Toro's child characters must find solace, and a rotten-to-the-core villain in Eduardo Noriega's Jacinto. The most striking differences are visual — The Devil's Backbone's desert landscapes and surrounding emptiness provide a sense of isolation that runs counter to the promise of a world beneath the woods in Pan's Labyrinth — and in character development — the orphanage caretakers Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi) provide a sense of warmth and caring that could easily be absent in a ghost story such as this. The guys talk about all this and more, including the film's interest in the theme of these lost children like Carlos (Fernando Tielve) and Jaime (Íñigo Garcés), left to live their lives in war without the parents taken by it as another real-life representation of Del Toro's concept of ghosts, doomed suspended in their death state forever.

Featuring "Yo No Se Que Me Han Hecho Tus Ojos" by Carlos Gardel

03:05 Number-Crunching
14:47 The Devil's Backbone Introduction
16:29 A Ghost Story & Comparisons to Pan's Labyrinth
21:05 Favorite Characters & The Making a Jacinto's Villainry
28:30 "The Devil's Backbone"
30:00 Guillermo Del Toro's Fascination with the Supernatural Interacting with the Real World
39:05 The Subtle Use of Violence in Del Toro Films
44:00 Unpacking the Film's Visual Metaphors
47:41 Clark's Corner: Recast, Netflix Search Query, Genre Game, Porno Version, Most of the Budget Went To....
1:01:40 Ratings

They're here! The guys go into the light on this week's podcast with Tobe Hooper's 1982 spooky haunted house film, Poltergeist. The film's directorial credit has always been shrouded in mystery, and it certainly does have producer Steven Spielberg's fingerprints all over it, but no matter whose name we slap on the poster, it's a fun, scary time. The movie has everything you'd ever want in a horror experience: questionable parenting from Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams, a creepy kid, a clown doll come to life, buckets and buckets of goo, and Zelda Rubenstein as a quirky exorcist spouting paranormal mumbo jumbo that also happens to be 100% accurate. In this podcast episode, the Bit Players talk about the incredible relationship and chemistry of Steve (Nelson) and Diane (Williams) Freeling, how the entire film gets kicked up quite a few notches when Tangina Barrons (Rubenstein) enters the picture — with jammed frequencies and all — and, of course, the controversy surrounding the authorship of the film. Though it feels like a Spielberg picture through and through, there's something dark and twisted there that can only be Hooper, and the guys talk about the pros and cons of each of those faces of the film.

Featuring "Star Spangled Banner" by Jerry Goldsmith

03:40 Number-Crunching
12:04 Poltergeist Introduction
13:40 The Lack of a Legacy
16:30 Comparisons to Stranger Things
17:00 Family Life in Poltergeist
20:00 The Film's Authorship
27:00 E.T. and Poltergeist's Running Threads of Suburban Family Love
30:00 Tangina Barrons
35:50 The Tough Decisions of the Family/JoBeth Williams' Performance
39:30 Any Reservations?/Final Thoughts
46:10 Clark's Corner: Recast, Porno Version, Shared Universe
58:48 Ratings

The guys wake up from a great 57 year nap in space, only to go on another bug hunt with Ripley on this week's podcast on James Cameron's Aliens. The continuation of Ridley Scott's original 1979 film sees Sigourney Weaver return, this time with plenty of rest, as she's ready to attempt to end the Xenomorph plague once and for all with a new rag-tag group of soldiers, featuring some of the most amazing characters that have ever been thrown together for a bug hunt: Bill Paxton as Hudson, Michael Biehn as Hicks, Jenette Goldstein as Vasquez, Al Matthews as Apone, and Paul Reiser as Burke, the necessary corporate presence for such a rescue mission. Things don't seem so bad at first, when they only find a very dirty child named Newt, played by Carrie Henn, but they begin to find more and more that is really not all that pleasant. Namely, a nest of acid-bleeding monsters ready to rip some guts and spread some goo. The Bit Players talk about how Cameron takes an already beloved film franchise and puts his own genre stamp on it, how truly remarkable it is for two films to be so wildly different yet both so consistently good, and the things that Aliens gets right that maybe Alien didn't. Ripley's progression as a character is — aside from, of course, every single thing Paxton's Private Hudson says — what makes the sequel stand apart as its own masterful work of cinema, and the guys break down the seeming differences in the ways that Scott and Cameron view both humanity and technology through their respective films' robotic/human heel turns.

Featuring "Bishop's Countdown" by James Horner

02:34 Number Crunching
14:09 Aliens Introduction
14:53 Sequel Continuation and Alien Franchise's Authorial Reach
18:20 The Film's Introduction and Director's Cut Content
20:28 Military Element and Ripley's New Crew
22:52 James Cameron's Playing with Franchise Expectations and the Difficulties of Making a Sequel
24:30 Aliens as an Action Film
28:36 Ripley Takes Charge and Her Character Arc
33:20 Newt
37:18 Jarryd's Cinema Experience
40:14 The Role of the Synthetic and the Differences in Ridley Scott's and James Cameron's Filmmaking Philosophies
46:57 Clark's Corner: Recast, Blu-Ray Combo Pack, Porno Version, How Does Daniel-Lay Lewis Prepare to Play the Xenomorph Mother?
57:07 Ratings

The guys wake up from a great 28 day nap in a deserted London on this week's podcast on Danny Boyle's 2003 horrorclassic, 28 Days Later... The Bit Players look back at how the film went on to expand and influence not only the zombie film genre but horror as a whole, whether or not the film's dissonant halves ultimately mesh well or not, unfortunate child acting, how Boyle's choice to shoot the film in low quality digital video makes for more poignant (if pixelated) scares, and more. They spend a lot time comparing the zombies of the film to others across film's history, pitting them together in a battle royale of brain feasting.

Featuring "A.M. 180" by Grandaddy

03:55 Number Crunching
16:22 28 Days Later... Introduction
20:00 The Film's Opening Moments: Post-Apocalyptic Peen
24:07 Unique Guerrilla Style
28:00 What Makes These Zombies So Spooky?
31:38 The Humanity of the Zombies
36:30 The Evolution of Selena
39:51 Jim Rages
43:30 The Zombie Battle Royale
46:00 Danny Boyle's Social Missteps
51:42 Clark's Corner: Recast, Blu-Ray Combo Pack, Porno Version, How Does Daniel Day-Lewis Prepare for the Role of a Zombie?
1:02:28 Ratings

The guys venture two years into the future for this week's podcast on Ridley Scott's classic 1982 sci-fi mind-bender, Blade Runner. The Harrison Ford-helmed film asks some big questions about what it means to really be a human in a world with synthesized humanity, a question that is just as poignant and perplexing now as it was when Philip K. Dick wrote the source material in 1968. The Bit Players consider that question, among many others of equal weight, such as how M. Night Shyamalan would twist this thing up, what the porno version of the film would be called, and how many times Daniel Day-Lewis would have sex with a robot to prepare for the role should he have answered the call for Rick Deckard.

Featuring "End Titles" by Vangelis

03:55 Number Crunching
17:00 Blade Runner Introduction
18:00 Ridley Scott's World-Building
23:33 How is Rick Deckard a Good Blade Runner?
26:00 Harrison Ford's Performance
32:20 Are Replicants All That Different from Humans?
40:04 Rick Deckard vs. Roy Batty
41:26 "Tears in Rain" Monologue
45:46 Is Deckard a Replicant? Probably Not.
50:54 Clark's Corner: Blu-Ray Combo Pack, Recast, Lestat-Approved, Sleepover Seal of Approval, How Would M. Night Shyamalan Provide a Twist?
1:00:09 Ratings

The guys head into the Danger Zone with Maverick and Goose on this week's podcast for the big episode 100 on Tony Scott's 1986 film, Top Gun. The Bit Players celebrate this listener-selected movie by talking about the film's seemingly limitless cultural reach, the film's iconic soundtrack and moments that go with the songs, as well as the incongruous relationship of critical and audience response. The guys give a big upside-down middle finger to the first 100 episodes and look forward to 100 more.

Featuring "Playing with the Boys" by Kenny Loggins