# A Life In Movies: Shea Serrano

An episode of [All The Right Movies](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1471502633), 1 Feb 2025, 56 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6074459891.mp3

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## Transcript

[0:04] All the right movies. Hi everyone, welcome to a life
[0:38] and Movies, the interview show from all the right movies.
[0:41] My name is Luke. On the show we talk to people in
[0:43] entertainment about three of their favorite films.
[0:46] And today I'm talking to a journalist, podcaster, New York
[0:49] Times bestselling author, TV writer and producer and all
[0:52] round man of the people. It is Sheer Serrano.
[0:55] How you doing Sheer? What up baby?
[0:58] I'm great. How are you?
[1:00] Yeah, great. Thank you.
[1:01] Where you talking from? I'm in San Antonio, TX.
[1:05] Is that your permanent base or do you move around a lot?
[1:07] Oh. No, no, no.
[1:08] This is my permanent base. I was born here.
[1:10] I left for a little while. You know, you like, wander away
[1:12] from home for 15 years or whatever when you're becoming an
[1:16] adult. And then I found my way back
[1:18] here a couple of years ago. Where are you?
[1:21] I mean the northeast of England, just outside of a place called
[1:23] Newcastle. Have you ever been to the UKI?
[1:25] Don't think so. Wait hold on, does Paris count
[1:28] as the UK? Not these days, no.
[1:31] OK, well then no. What about Italy?
[1:34] Italy. No, I mean it's still like a
[1:36] three hour flight to get to Italy.
[1:38] OK then. No, I've not.
[1:39] I've not been to the UK. Those are the only places.
[1:42] Those are the only places in Europe I've been to.
[1:44] We went there a few years ago when my wife and I celebrated
[1:47] our 10 year wedding anniversary. We never got to go on like a
[1:51] honeymoon because we had all these complications that came up
[1:55] around the time of the wedding, like medical stuff.
[1:57] But till 10 years we wanted to go somewhere.
[1:59] We didn't go there, We didn't go to the UK.
[2:01] Turns out I thought we did. Paris and Italy is better, I
[2:07] think. Where did you go in Italy?
[2:09] We went to Venice. I mean, it's probably the
[2:13] greatest place in the world, so I think you chose the right.
[2:15] Place It was so cool, dude. It was so cool.
[2:18] It looked like in all of the movies, like everybody was
[2:20] cruising around on boats. All of the people were super
[2:24] like handsome and attractive and and like cool looking.
[2:27] It was great. It was a wonderful time.
[2:30] OK, so coming to you live from San Antonio, we're going to talk
[2:33] about 3 movies that she has chosen.
[2:35] Are these your all time favorite share or just personal
[2:39] connection or just ones that you plucked out with in there?
[2:42] These are these are movies that I love.
[2:44] You could put, you could put them all three of them on my all
[2:47] time favorites list there. If I were to like organize them
[2:50] into my 10 favorite movies or 20 favorite movies or whatever, all
[2:53] three of these would 100% be be in there.
[2:56] I don't think that would be the top three, but they would be in
[2:59] there. Yeah.
[3:00] I mean, it's difficult to do a top 3, isn't it?
[3:02] Difficult to do a top. Three, it changes so much.
[3:05] Yeah. It's like every single time I
[3:07] think I have it pinned down. And then the one that I know for
[3:10] sure, my all time favorite ever movie is this movie.
[3:14] I had this giant poster behind me, this framed poster of the
[3:16] movie called Blood in Blood Out, which is like a Chicano gangster
[3:19] movie from the early 90s. That's my number one favorite
[3:23] movie ever. I love it so so much.
[3:27] Right. I know that one's number one.
[3:28] I don't know Numbers 2 through 20.
[3:30] You have you've not seen it? No.
[3:31] Oh my God, you got to see it. So.
[3:33] So the tricky part of this one is, is Disney owns the rights to
[3:37] it. Right.
[3:38] But it's, again, it's like a gangster movie.
[3:41] So they're not going to put it on Disney Plus.
[3:42] No, no, or whatever. But is it not?
[3:45] Streaming anywhere you can't. Watch it anywhere.
[3:47] It's not on streaming anywhere. Every like every couple of
[3:50] months somebody will upload a version of it to YouTube and you
[3:54] can watch it on YouTube for free like just, but that's the only
[3:57] way you're going to catch it on streaming.
[3:59] Otherwise you got to have a hard copy of it, which I prefer.
[4:02] I prefer. I don't know if you're a hard
[4:03] copy guy like a physical medium like I like you're Avhs.
[4:07] Guy, aren't you? Yeah, VH.
[4:08] I like VHS tapes the most. DVDs are cool as well, but for
[4:12] some there's something special about VHS tapes to me.
[4:15] Yeah, the same for me. I think it's, I think we're the
[4:17] similar age. I think you're 42 and I think
[4:20] it's just nostalgia for me. Yeah, that's for that's, that's
[4:23] got to be a big part of it, I think #1 nostalgia #2 they just
[4:27] look cool. They look like, I mean, they're
[4:29] like little movie posters, which I appreciate.
[4:31] Also recently I started collecting them like several
[4:34] years ago, like 2017 or something, right?
[4:37] Just like I was in AI happened to be in a thrift store.
[4:40] They had a like a big bin of them for sale.
[4:43] They're like 1/4 each or something like that, $0.33 each.
[4:46] And I was like, oh man, I've not seen these in so long.
[4:48] And I grabbed a couple and I just had them on my bookshelf in
[4:51] my office. And then I just slowly started
[4:53] buying more and more of them. And then so I at this point I've
[4:57] collected maybe like almost 600. I have like 600 of them, right?
[5:02] And and and in the last like couple of weeks, I bought TV
[5:06] like an old Zenith 9 inch VCRTV combo for my office and I'll
[5:12] just put it on like I'm in a fucking blockbuster or whatever.
[5:16] It's just playing on this on the side.
[5:18] And it makes me so happy, like to you to like pull the cassette
[5:21] out and put it in and you hear it like Rev up and like and then
[5:25] it starts. It's so I love it man.
[5:28] Yeah, like one of the very early VHSS that the VCRS that I had
[5:33] must have been early 80's. The remote was on a on a lead
[5:37] and the lead connected to the VCR and you could.
[5:39] Only do it that way. That's great.
[5:42] That sounds. Amazing.
[5:44] OK, cool shit, let's get into it then.
[5:47] First film, Which one have you picked out?
[5:49] My first one is is white men can't jump.
[5:52] Yes, from 1992. Written and directed by Ron
[5:55] Shelton, White Men Can't Jump stars Wesley Snipes and Woody
[5:58] Harrison as Sidney Dean and Billy Hoyle, 2 mismatched street
[6:01] basketball players who spark of an unlikely friendship on the
[6:04] courts in LA while trying to keep their relationships afloat.
[6:07] The supporting cast is sprinkled with ex pros and an unbelievable
[6:10] turn from Rosie Perez as Billy's girlfriend Gloria.
[6:13] We're in Sidney Dean's house now.
[6:15] Cher, why have you chosen White Men Can't Jump?
[6:19] I think white men can't jump is it's my it's my favorite sports
[6:23] movie ever. I think it's the greatest sports
[6:25] movie ever. It's so much fun to watch,
[6:29] especially again, this you you mentioned this came out in 92.
[6:32] So that means I probably saw it. I didn't see it in a theater.
[6:35] I just saw it like on TVI probably found it around 94 and
[6:38] 95, right. So that puts me at that puts me
[6:41] at 1314 years old, which is right around the same time that
[6:45] I had like come across a basketball player named Reggie
[6:47] Miller, who was the first basketball player that I ever
[6:50] loved just as like he played for the the Pacers.
[6:53] Of course, he was just this like this sort of shit talking
[6:57] underdog who was always like sort of picking verbal fights
[7:01] with people and he's out on the court and he's running and he's
[7:04] shoving people and, and, you know, doing his thing.
[7:07] And I just thought he was the coolest person that I'd ever
[7:09] seen play basketball. And then I come across this
[7:11] movie and the whole movie is that.
[7:13] So the first time you watch it? The first time I watch it, I'm,
[7:15] I'm a teenager and I'm like, man, this is the coolest shit
[7:18] that I've ever seen. This is like all of the stuff
[7:20] that I love all at once. And then you watch it like I,
[7:24] I've watched it probably in my life 50 times.
[7:27] And each time you watch it, especially as you age, you just
[7:30] like pick up different parts of it.
[7:32] You realize what it when you're an adult, like this is a movie
[7:35] about friendship. You think when you're a kid, oh,
[7:37] this is a movie about first you think it's a movie about
[7:40] basketball, and then you think it's a movie about love.
[7:42] And like this relationship that doesn't work out between Billy
[7:45] and and Gloria. And then you realize at the end,
[7:47] like, Oh, no, this is a this is about Sydney and Billy, like
[7:51] warring best friends who like enter this new phase of life
[7:54] together. Like it just it touches on all
[7:56] of the things. It's it's expertly paced, It's
[7:59] wonderfully written. It's so smart and clever and
[8:02] just like, it's just, it just does all of the things I want in
[8:06] a movie. I just, it's fucking awesome.
[8:08] Yeah, I, I hadn't seen it for a few years, and when I came back
[8:12] to revisit it for for this conversation, I couldn't believe
[8:16] how well it held up. The scripts really, really
[8:18] smart. All the beats really work well.
[8:21] And Wesley Snipes has got like bucket loads of charisma.
[8:24] Oh my God, he's incredible. He's one of my favorite actors
[8:27] ever. He of course has a ton of
[8:30] movies, but he has this like this stretch beginning in the
[8:33] early 90s with like, I think the first time I saw him was in
[8:36] Major League and I was like, this dude, this is is so
[8:40] incredible. And that's the first movie I
[8:41] saw, man. The very like the very first
[8:43] actual thing I saw man was was he shows up in in the bad video,
[8:46] Michael Jackson bad video. He's like one of the street
[8:49] Tufts that gives that gives Mike a hard time, right.
[8:52] But even then you're like, man, what is it about this person who
[8:55] I just want to see more of them. He shows up in Major League, you
[8:58] know, like man, this rules. And then he gets like a big
[8:59] feature starring role in new Jack City a couple of years
[9:02] later as as Nino Brown. And just like everything he did
[9:06] for like 10 years was just incredible.
[9:09] He he has a string of action movies.
[9:11] I'm a big action movie. It's passenger 57, boiling point
[9:14] rising sun, demolition man. Like he just as he teams back up
[9:18] again later with with with Woody and money train.
[9:22] He just has like this electricity in his bones that
[9:25] when he's on screen, you have to like negotiate with your own
[9:29] eyeballs to blink because you don't want to miss a single
[9:32] frame of like the thing that he's doing or the OR what he's
[9:36] at. We didn't even talk about when
[9:37] he gets to doing Blade, which is, which is an all time
[9:40] character. Like like just I just even today
[9:44] as a grown adult 42 year old husband and father and I just
[9:49] love him. I just love when he shows up on
[9:51] the screen. I'm like, yes, give me more of
[9:53] that. Give me as much Wesley as I can
[9:55] get. He's absolutely incredible.
[9:58] I said at the top, Rosie Perez, I mean, she's, she's
[10:01] outstanding. Yeah, yeah.
[10:03] It's like, so you have those three that are, that are leading
[10:06] the movie, Woody, Wesley and Rosie, and every single one of
[10:09] them is just totally dialed in and like ready to make this an
[10:15] an all time great performance. Like it never feels like one of
[10:18] them is trying to steal from another one in a scene.
[10:20] It feels like they're they're they're all playing, I mean, to
[10:24] stay on theme, they're all playing like a perfect three man
[10:27] weave on a fast break sort of situation.
[10:29] You know what I mean? Like it's just boom, boom, boom.
[10:32] They set each other up so many times.
[10:34] We we have moments in the movie where they each get to be like
[10:38] the star. They each get to be the hero,
[10:40] they each get to be the asshole, they each get to be the foil.
[10:43] Like it's just, it's so great to watch.
[10:47] Doing a bit of reading up on the film, apparently it was one of
[10:50] Stanley Kubrick's favorite films, which I was stunned to
[10:53] read. It's got to be everybody's
[10:56] favorite. I feel like if you watched it
[10:57] then you loved. It yeah, I mean the.
[10:59] Only way you don't love this movie is if you didn't watch it.
[11:01] Yeah. Fucking Stanley Cube.
[11:03] Fucking Cube Cube. Loved it, man.
[11:05] Come on. So have you got a favorite scene
[11:08] from the film, Cher? My favorite scene is the is the
[11:10] opening scene when we get introduced to Billy, when we get
[11:14] introduced to Sydney, billions of hustling Sydney the first
[11:17] time because it, it's stretched out over like 20 minutes, right.
[11:20] Yeah. And you, you get to watch Wesley
[11:23] play basketball. You get to watch Billy play
[11:24] basketball. You get to watch him doing his
[11:26] like, shit talking thing. And it's pretty, it's so pretty.
[11:29] And you go, you're watching all of this happen.
[11:31] And then they and then they bring in Billy.
[11:33] Like he steps in when a player gets injured and he plays like
[11:36] the last two points of the game and his team ends up winning,
[11:39] but he doesn't shoot the ball. And that ends up becoming this
[11:42] competition, this this conversation where he's like,
[11:44] yeah, you're probably right, Sydney.
[11:45] Like, I probably am no good at basketball.
[11:47] I probably can't shoot a lick. Like, whatever.
[11:49] What's it worth to you to find out?
[11:50] And then it becomes like, oh, I see what's happening here.
[11:53] They're about to have shooting competition.
[11:54] And now it's just those two guys.
[11:56] It's just those two matching charisma, matching shot for
[11:59] shot. You sort of know what's going to
[12:01] happen, but also you kind of don't know what's going to
[12:03] happen. And it's great.
[12:04] You also have Kadeem Hardison in there just tossing grenades, end
[12:08] of the scene. And it's it's so good.
[12:11] You get this great turn when they're shooting.
[12:13] If somebody's listening, you've not seen the movie, they do a
[12:16] shooting contest. They're going to shoot five
[12:17] shots from the top of the key and they're going to alternate.
[12:20] Wesley goes first, he buries his, then Woody buries his and
[12:23] Wesley buries his second one and then Woody.
[12:26] And then they just alternate like that.
[12:27] And as they're going, you see Wesley, his confidence as the
[12:32] scene goes on, starts to deteriorate.
[12:34] He realizes, oh shit, I'm in the tank with another great white
[12:38] shark, right, is what's happening.
[12:40] And and all the while Billy, who's presented as his dork the
[12:43] whole time, you watch his confidence grow and grow, grow.
[12:45] You watch him become you. You watch his character become
[12:49] like who he is in the movie, which is just like this brash
[12:52] braggart who just can't help himself.
[12:55] And he just is running his mouth more and more and more until
[12:58] until we get the turn at the very end.
[13:00] When Wesley's about to shoot his last shot, Woody leans into his
[13:04] ear and he's like, don't worry, Sydney.
[13:05] I've hustled a hell of a lot better players than you don't
[13:08] put up no brick. And then it it all comes like
[13:11] crashing down on Wesley's head. I think I mentioned that Wesley
[13:14] goes first. He lets Billy go first anyway,
[13:16] but it's just this like, great turn.
[13:18] And then he's walking off and the guy's like, man, you got
[13:21] lucky or whatever. And he tells Luck's got nothing
[13:23] to it's like every single line in this scene is is incredible.
[13:26] It's 20 minutes of just movie perfection.
[13:30] I have three sons and one of them is like super into
[13:33] basketball and like he like like plays for the the school team or
[13:37] whatever. And like when white men can't
[13:39] jump showed up on Hulu and I was like, sit down with me.
[13:43] You need me to watch this whole movie son.
[13:45] I'm not even going to tell you got to watch this whole movie.
[13:46] Just watch the first scene. Watch the 1st 20 minutes with
[13:50] me. And he sat down and watched it
[13:52] and just pulled into it and I'm like, all right, you can go.
[13:55] And then he just disappears off into his room.
[13:57] And then he went into his room and watch the rest of it on his
[13:59] own. Amazing in his room.
[14:01] And I was like, that's fucking incredible.
[14:03] If you can get a 15 year old kid to not be on TikTok.
[14:06] Yeah, like you're doing something right.
[14:08] Yeah. And man, what a great, great
[14:10] movie. Oh my God.
[14:11] Incredible. Oh shit, what is hard God damn
[14:18] work being this good? Shut the fuck up.
[14:22] Oh, Rabbit is am I starting to get to you, Sydney?
[14:24] You aren't getting to me. You're just making my eardrums
[14:26] hurt. See, The thing is, you guys look
[14:29] at me. You see the backwards hat, the
[14:31] grey socks, the funky outfit, and you say now this guy's a
[14:34] chump. Am I right?
[14:35] Fucking geek. I'm fucking geek.
[14:37] Exactly. All right.
[14:38] What you don't realize is that it ain't easy.
[14:41] It is hard. God damn work making something
[14:44] this pretty look like a chump or a geek.
[14:48] So I must be doing it for a reason.
[14:49] Well, you got me convinced, whatever the reason may be.
[14:52] Cool, SO1 down. What's the second film on your
[14:54] list year? Second film training day.
[14:57] Oh, from 2001, Training Day was written by David Ayer and
[15:01] directed by Antoine Fuqua. It stars Denzel Washington in
[15:05] his Oscar winning performance as corrupt detective Alonzo Harris,
[15:08] who breaks in a rookie officer, Jake Hoyt, played by Ethan
[15:11] Hawke, and takes him on a day in the job that he'll never come
[15:14] back from. This one's got a great
[15:16] supporting cast as well, but King Kong ain't got shit on
[15:18] Denzel. Share.
[15:20] Why'd you pick this one? I picked this one because I was
[15:24] trying to do a thing. When you said we were going to
[15:26] do 3 movies, I immediately got very excited and I tried to, I
[15:29] wanted to touch across different, different genres.
[15:32] So we get one from the one from the early 90s, one from the
[15:35] early 2000s. Here we also have Denzel
[15:39] Washington, who is the greatest actor who has ever lived, the
[15:42] number one actor of all time. We have him and his and as you
[15:47] mentioned in his Oscar winning performance as the villain.
[15:50] Up to this point, we've really only ever seen him as the like
[15:53] the the heroic hero of the situation.
[15:56] He shows up here and just puts on a firework show.
[16:01] Like immediately, immediately when the, the the movie starts,
[16:05] it's it's Ethan Hawke in his house, calm.
[16:08] And when he's like nervous for this first day, he's going to
[16:10] meet this new training officer and whatever, whatever.
[16:13] And then he gets a phone call and you hear like the edges of
[16:15] Denzel's voice on the phone call and he just sort of is real curt
[16:19] and hangs up on him. Eventually, Ethan walks into the
[16:21] diner and sits across from Denzel.
[16:23] And Denzel immediately is like, I'm in charge of not only the
[16:27] situation, but of your life from right here going forward.
[16:30] Like I'm in complete control. I'm going to do everything I can
[16:34] to keep you off balance. I'm going to be intimidating and
[16:37] I'm going to be cool and I'm just going to be smarter than
[16:41] you and and better than you in every single respect.
[16:44] I don't know if you can say that this is the best performance
[16:46] he's ever had. I think that's always going to
[16:48] be Malcolm X When he showed up in there, which you which you
[16:51] should have won the Oscar for in in 92.
[16:54] But he he comes here with a whole new thing.
[16:57] Watching him do it, it felt like you were seeing a new person.
[17:00] Because if we look, if we look at like Malcolm X, we'll just
[17:04] list off a few. But like Malcolm X, Pelican
[17:07] Brief, Philadelphia virtuosity, even something like fall in or
[17:12] or or he got game or or whatever the hurricane like they're like
[17:16] he was always using this like unflappable Denzel mode that he
[17:21] goes into this like like a very masculine archetype, but it was
[17:26] always aimed in a certain direction.
[17:28] It was always aimed toward good for the most part.
[17:30] And he took that and he and he aimed it toward bad and it felt
[17:34] like, holy shit, like this is so terrifying without him ever,
[17:38] ever really doing anything to terrify you.
[17:41] Just like a look or like a phrase that he says or when he
[17:44] present or, or when he like decides to give you a little bit
[17:47] of information. And it's like, God, this is this
[17:50] is an incredible performance from him.
[17:52] This incredible performance from from Ethan Hawke.
[17:55] This is one of the few times that somebody was able to sit
[17:58] across from Denzel Washington and like match him beat for
[18:02] beat. Like we saw Viola do it when
[18:03] they did fences and you're like, OK, this is great.
[18:06] We see we see Ethan Hawke do it here.
[18:08] Like we saw Tom do it in in Philadelphia.
[18:10] Like there are a few times when there was somebody else who was
[18:13] opposite him and and all that it did was make Denzel even better.
[18:17] And this is just this is a perfect movie for me when you're
[18:20] watching it. Oh my God, I saw that.
[18:22] I saw that theater multiple times.
[18:24] Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable what he does because this
[18:28] character is an absolute asshole from the from like from the jump
[18:33] off, like you said, straight away.
[18:34] Start. But then it's incredible what he
[18:37] does because he gives that character a lot of appeal.
[18:40] And I'm watching this film thinking, yeah, you know, he's
[18:43] got a point here when he says, like some of those things, he's
[18:46] saying, I think, yeah, yeah, I'm on his side.
[18:49] And that character's despicable. I can't believe that you come
[18:52] around to his character at certain points through the film.
[18:55] I mean, at the end, obviously not.
[18:56] But you know, Denzel. Incredible.
[18:58] Yeah, it's a it's it's wild to watch because even now, re
[19:02] watching it, you're with him up until he shoots Roger, like up
[19:07] until that moment you're like, like you're saying like he's
[19:10] making some good points. Like I get what I get what's
[19:12] going on. Oh yeah, yeah, this is how this
[19:14] this level of policing is. I get it.
[19:16] OK, cool. It makes sense.
[19:17] And then he shoots Roger. And then not only does he shoot
[19:21] Roger and kill Roger, he tells Jake, you're the person who shot
[19:24] him. And then he tells all of his,
[19:25] all of the soldiers, what did you see?
[19:28] We saw Jake shoot him. And then Jake is like, you've
[19:31] been planning this all day. And he tells him, I've been
[19:33] planning this all week. And you're like, Oh my fucking
[19:36] God. This is like, like this is like
[19:38] he's evil. He's actually evil.
[19:40] He's not just scary and intimidating because there are a
[19:43] lot of like scary, intimidating, but good people, which you think
[19:47] he's going to do in this movie. Because again, we have, we have
[19:50] a 20 year history, a 15 year history of watching him do that
[19:54] or whatever it was 13 years, right?
[19:55] We we're like, it's like he cashed in all of those chips,
[19:59] all of those chips in this one moment to to just become evil.
[20:03] And it's so it's so unsettling. And especially on the rewatch,
[20:08] There's a part in the rewatch where you're watching him just
[20:11] sort of set Ethan all on fire over and over and over again.
[20:14] And then? They had this great scene when
[20:16] he sits in the car after they shoot Roger and they sit in the
[20:21] car and he's like breaking it down for Ethan Hawke.
[20:23] And he's being soft with him and he's being warm with him.
[20:26] And he's like, listen, I'm sorry that I have to be the one to
[20:28] tell you to be this way, but this is how it is.
[20:31] And like, like he's like bringing him in.
[20:34] He's like taking care of him and, and, and consoling him.
[20:37] And you think, wait, is he still is he good?
[20:40] Is he like you, like you? He puts that that hint of doubt
[20:43] in there. But then of course, he takes
[20:45] them to the to the Mexicans to go get killed.
[20:47] Right. But but right before they sit
[20:50] down in the car and have that scene, we get a quick shot of
[20:54] Denzel in the car. Ethan is on the OR Jake is on
[20:56] the outside. He sees Alonzo on the phone and
[21:00] you can you hear it. If you turn the TV up, you can
[21:02] hear it. And he's like, yeah, just make
[21:04] sure that bathtub is clean. Like that's what he says.
[21:06] Like, he is right there telling him, hey, I'm bringing this guy
[21:09] to kill him. OK, do that.
[21:11] And then he hangs up the phone. And then he puts his arm around
[21:13] him and he's like, come here, I'm going to take care of you.
[21:15] I'm the father figure. You can trust me still.
[21:18] Like, it's unbelievable what's going on right there.
[21:21] That's a revelation on a rewatch.
[21:23] Oh, Oh my God, he's so just nastily evil in it.
[21:29] It's great. It feels really dangerous as
[21:32] well. I think Anton Fuqua does it,
[21:34] shoots it in such a way and puts you in situations that it feels
[21:37] really dangerous and it feels really authentic as well.
[21:40] It kind of like I love white men, obviously I love white men,
[21:44] Can't jump, but it feels like a different LA even though it kind
[21:47] of is trying to portray the same.
[21:49] Yeah, this, this feels closer to like the Heat Los Angeles and
[21:53] white men can't jump Los Angeles.
[21:54] You know what I mean? Like like every everybody is a
[21:57] wolf and you got to fucking be a wolf or you got to die.
[22:00] Like this is your only those are your only options.
[22:03] Oh my God, what an incredible, incredible movie.
[22:06] My favorite scene is going to I'm going to cheat a little bit.
[22:08] I'm going to give you 2. I'm going to give you that.
[22:10] My favorite, my favorite Denzel scene is the diner scene because
[22:14] I just love. I just love when a movie figures
[22:17] out how to introduce a character in a way that feels exciting and
[22:21] like, it's already like it's going 400 miles an hour, right?
[22:25] And that's what they do with with Denzel.
[22:27] He's just sitting in the diner at the table reading his paper.
[22:30] That's all he's doing. And you're like, Oh my God, this
[22:32] is going to be so good. I wrote a thing one time.
[22:35] I used to work his website called The Ringer, second pop
[22:37] culture website. And I wrote a thing one time.
[22:39] There was like an academic paper about movie scenes that Denzel
[22:44] did where he was sitting at a table because they're just
[22:47] special for some reason. You get Denzel at a table.
[22:52] You have him in in Training Day, for example, he has a table
[22:55] scene in the movie Philadelphia when he's talking to Tom Hanks.
[22:57] He has a table scene and the Equalizer when he's talking to
[23:00] with the Russian mob guy and he's like, what do you what do
[23:04] you think you see when you look at me or whatever?
[23:06] Like it's just Denzel at a table is great.
[23:09] But watching him again in 2001 and being like, Oh my God, this
[23:13] is going to be this is going to be so much fun is what it feels
[23:15] like when that movie starts and he had that first scene and he's
[23:18] just fucking harassing Ethan Hawke the whole time.
[23:21] That's my favorite Denzel scene. My favorite, like maybe scene
[23:25] scene of the movie is, is Jake at the table with the Mexicans
[23:30] and they're playing cards and you just it's you're so
[23:33] uncomfortable the whole time and you're so tense because you know
[23:37] something bad is going to happen.
[23:39] Yeah. You know, you know that terror
[23:42] is coming. They they're able to get the gun
[23:44] away from from Jake. They're able to get the bullets
[23:46] out of like it becomes this whole thing.
[23:49] And he he like takes the gun, but he doesn't have the bullets
[23:51] now. And he like, it's like, oh, it's
[23:53] time for us to go. And the smiley tells, I mean,
[23:56] there's nothing out there for you, dog.
[23:57] And he looks out the window and Jake is gone.
[23:59] And you're like, Jesus fuck. Oh, God, this is like, you do
[24:04] you do the thing of like, how is he going to get out of this?
[24:07] There's no way he's going to get out of this alive.
[24:09] There's absolutely no way. It becomes this whole big.
[24:12] They, they beat, they beat him up.
[24:14] They drag him into the bathroom. They get the shotgun.
[24:17] They're about to kill him. The water's running and then the
[24:20] and then they find the wallet and you're like, Oh my God, like
[24:23] that. Like it's just, it's so fucking
[24:26] good. I remember watching that the
[24:28] first time I watched this movie. I was in college, right?
[24:30] This is 2001, so I'm in college. It comes out at this point.
[24:34] I love Denzel Washington already.
[24:36] So I'm like, I want to go see this.
[24:37] My mom is in town visiting said mom, let's go to the movies.
[24:40] Let's go watch this training day movie.
[24:42] She's like, OK, cool. And we went and we watched it
[24:45] and just out and sitting in the theater, just like, like holding
[24:49] on to the armrest during this moment because you don't know
[24:52] what's going to happen. Like, are they really going to
[24:54] kill this guy? This is going to be crazy.
[24:55] Like I'm just watching it and being and being so twisted up is
[24:59] what I remember from that moment.
[25:00] And then we finished the movie and I'm like, like, you're just
[25:04] like metaphorically covered in sweat and you're like, oh, my
[25:07] God, oh, what a great movie. I can't believe that that turned
[25:10] out the way that it turned out. Right.
[25:12] And then we finish and then we go home.
[25:14] And then like my mom leaves. This is like on a Sunday.
[25:17] My mom leaves and then my girlfriend shows up the next
[25:19] day. She had been out of town, She
[25:21] went back home. She gets out on Monday.
[25:22] And I'm like, we got to go to the movies.
[25:24] You got to see this movie you got.
[25:25] We got to like the next day we went to go watch it.
[25:28] And we end up watching it like 3 times in the theater.
[25:31] But man, it's just, yeah, Fuqua's holding a knife to your
[25:34] throat for the whole movie is what it feels like.
[25:37] Like don't move. Don't you move.
[25:39] Oh my God, I love it. I love it so much.
[25:42] Like how it's Jake going to get out of this situation because we
[25:45] know these three guys just they won't crack.
[25:48] He's being taken there to be killed.
[25:49] So how is he going to get out of it?
[25:50] And you forget about that moment at the start in the alleyway
[25:53] with the girl and then you that comes down.
[25:56] Oh my God, it's so well written. It's so great.
[26:00] And then they do the thing where he calls her Jake is like, Oh, I
[26:03] that's I I saved that girl. She was about to be raped by
[26:07] like these homeless dudes and I saved her like I saved her like
[26:10] like he's already pleading for his life without pleading for
[26:12] his life in this in this moment. And and smiley doesn't believe
[26:16] the great Cliff Curtis plays this this scene perfectly.
[26:20] Doesn't believe him and he's like but he but he like well,
[26:24] let me check, let me verify this because if this is true, I have
[26:28] to spare you like he's got his own.
[26:30] Sort of moral code. Which they which they establish
[26:34] when he's talking about Alonzo and and he's like the other guy.
[26:37] Noel Gugliami is his real name. I think he plays like the Hector
[26:41] character in this movie as well. The ball, the bald head mix.
[26:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's like, Oh, Alonzo's a
[26:47] ruthless low down Vertibato like, but that's why I like him.
[26:52] And Smiley is like, no, I that's that's why I never shake his
[26:54] hand because he don't respect nothing.
[26:56] He don't respect Nala. Right.
[26:58] Like they established that that Smiley has his own coat.
[27:01] But anyway, you he finds a wallet.
[27:04] He makes the phone call. He calls the girl his niece and
[27:08] he's asking her, Hey, you know, how was school today?
[27:11] And and she's and she tries to lie in the beginning and you're
[27:14] like, tell, tell the truth, girl, please fucking tell the
[27:16] truth. Like you just are, you're
[27:18] pleading at the screen again. So well written, so well acted,
[27:22] so well directed. You love when you watch a movie
[27:26] and but you've seen thousands of movies probably in your life.
[27:30] Like we were like, it seems like you and I grew up just loving
[27:33] this thing and we're just going to spend so much of our lives.
[27:36] We've seen so many movies, right?
[27:39] And so you feel like often if I sit down and watch a movie, all
[27:43] right, 10 minutes in, I've got a pretty good idea of what's going
[27:46] to. Happen.
[27:46] I know where it's going to go. I know, I know what's going to
[27:49] happen. I know I'm feeling pretty
[27:51] confident, right? But there's some movies that you
[27:54] don't. When that happens, it's like a
[27:56] special feeling when you're in the theater and you realize I
[27:58] can't guess what's going to happen.
[28:00] And you have to give yourself up to the movie and just like, let
[28:04] the director, let the writers, let the actors take you where
[28:07] they want to take. A similar thing happen when I
[28:10] watch Get Out and get out gets going and like 20 minutes and
[28:14] you're like, I've no idea what the fuck is going on.
[28:16] And you just give yourself to Jordan Peele, right?
[28:19] The same thing is happening here.
[28:20] Like you just, you just give up. You're like, I can't guess, I
[28:23] don't know. And you give up and you just are
[28:25] watching it completely helpless. Oh my God, Oh my God.
[28:29] And then man, when they when they pull that off, when they
[28:32] pull off the switch and then they pull him out of the bathtub
[28:36] and he's like, it's just business.
[28:37] Like we're good, right? Like I need you to say we're
[28:39] good. And then he's they let him go
[28:42] and he's on the bus riding home. Yeah.
[28:45] Oh, you think he's riding home and he.
[28:46] Shows up at at Eva Mendez's house or the apartment and then
[28:50] they have the shootout and then it still leads to this great
[28:53] monologue that Jake has and the showdown and oh fuck, come on,
[28:58] come on. It's an amazing good act.
[29:00] It's amazing. I don't know.
[29:02] I want to watch it again right now.
[29:04] Shit. Hey, white boy.
[29:08] Yeah, it's me. Almost.
[29:09] But that's just of course, if you ask.
[29:11] I think Alonzo played you for a fool.
[29:13] Essay big time Holmes. Hey, where are you going?
[29:19] Where are you going? It's your deal.
[29:24] Alonzo pulled off a miracle. Him Times are tight.
[29:28] Scared up a lot of cash. What are you, Jack Holmes?
[29:32] I don't know. You jacked Roger.
[29:40] That's the fool. Alonzo's, I think he's a low
[29:43] down. Dirty.
[29:45] Ruthless, by the way. But I like that ones.
[29:47] I like that. No, no.
[29:50] That's why I never shake his hand.
[29:52] Home. You don't respect Nala.
[29:56] This episode of All the Right Movies are sponsored by Better
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[31:07] the Right Movies and to end share.
[31:09] What's your third film? 3rd movie The Social Network.
[31:13] Yes, Grantland, the Harvard years of Mark Zuckerberg as he
[31:17] builds his Facebook empire. The Social Network also across
[31:20] cuts the Jewel lawsuit brought to his door by best friend
[31:23] Eduardo Savarin and arch nemesis Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
[31:27] Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, The
[31:30] Social Network has a cast over spelling with talent including
[31:33] Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara, Justin
[31:36] Timberlake and Armie Hammer. We've made it to the final Club
[31:39] Share What do you love about The Social Network?
[31:42] Oh man, so this is this is our, our, our, our third era of
[31:47] movies. We do White Men can't jump fun
[31:50] sports movie from the early 90s that feels very much like that.
[31:54] And we do, we do training day. We get an evil one of the all
[31:58] time great villains and and then now we're we're going over to
[32:02] social network, which is a masterpiece of a movie and so
[32:07] many different respects. Like you mentioned, directed by
[32:11] David Fincher, who does with this movie what maybe like three
[32:15] other people in the history of the world can do with this
[32:17] movie, right? You have David Fincher just
[32:19] putting all of his muscle into this, just like doing all of the
[32:24] David Fincher things with the lighting, with the mood, like
[32:28] making the most static scene feel just like alive and like
[32:32] threatening. But I don't know how he does it,
[32:34] but I just know that he does it. I know when you when you plug in
[32:37] a David Fincher movie, there's going to be a moment where
[32:39] you're just like, fuck, like I'm up.
[32:42] Well, he's turning my pockets inside out right now.
[32:44] And I, and I and I and I don't know, I don't know how he's
[32:46] doing it, but you've got him doing that and you've got Aaron
[32:49] Sorkin who turns conversation into combat is what he does in
[32:53] this movie. And they do it immediately,
[32:55] immediately when it's when it's Rooney and, and Eisenberg at the
[32:59] table and they're going back and forth faster than humans should
[33:04] talk. They're just like, and, and, and
[33:07] Rooney sort of comments on it without like winking at the
[33:10] camera. That does all like being in a
[33:12] conversation with you is like being on the Stairmaster, right,
[33:15] right, which so many people have tried to RIP off what Aaron
[33:18] Aaron Sorkin does, but nobody can do what Aaron Sorkin does
[33:21] except for Aaron Sorkin. Like you just it's, it's great.
[33:23] And they they keep that up for the whole movie The whole time.
[33:27] Anytime somebody sits down to talk, it's just like pop, pop,
[33:30] pop, pop, pop, pop, pop like, like, like like a fucking
[33:32] woodpecker on the on the tree, just like, and they're all doing
[33:36] it going so, so fast. And then you have the score.
[33:39] Fucking Trent, Trent Reznor, one of the all time great movie
[33:42] scores. It starts from the very
[33:44] beginning after they finish our conversation at the start and
[33:47] and we got Eisenberg making his way back to the to the room.
[33:50] And it's doing that like I don't even know what that instrument
[33:53] is like some sort of strings that are just being like it
[33:56] just. Adds an atmosphere to
[33:58] everything, doesn't. It yeah, yeah.
[34:00] And it all feels like, again, this is this is just a movie
[34:04] about like a some guy on a computer is what it is.
[34:07] But it feels so alive and it feels like so much more than
[34:11] that. The first time I watched it
[34:13] because I remember seeing the trailer and being like, they
[34:15] made a movie about the the Facebook guy.
[34:17] Like, that's just going to suck. I can't, I can't wait to hate
[34:21] this movie, right? And then you go watch it and
[34:24] again, you give yourself up to it.
[34:26] You feel pulled in and it becomes unpredictable, but
[34:29] you're just sitting there. And it made me feel the same way
[34:32] that I feel sometimes when it's like late at night and I look at
[34:36] the moon, I feel, I feel insignificant.
[34:39] I'm like, fuck, that's like a like, look at that thing just up
[34:41] in the sky. Like I could just die right now
[34:44] and who cares? But is what it?
[34:46] I don't know what that is, what that is that's happening inside
[34:48] my my brain when I feel like that.
[34:50] But I remember watching this movie and being like, fuck, I
[34:53] could just die right now and who cares?
[34:55] Like it that, like it's just, it was just so moving watching it.
[35:00] Oh my God, I love this movie. I love it.
[35:02] I mean, I can totally relate to that year because I've I've
[35:06] loved it since it came out and love David Fincher.
[35:09] But like you say, it doesn't sound like it's going to be a
[35:12] great time about a couple of geeks who made who made websites
[35:16] like Who cares? And also to what you were
[35:18] saying, I can't put my finger on why I love this, but it does
[35:23] something, it makes me feel something, it makes me fizz, but
[35:26] I can't put my finger on what it is.
[35:29] Yeah, it's just everybody at the at their absolute best, they're
[35:33] all plugged in. They're they're all making the
[35:36] same movie. And that's really, that's a
[35:38] really hard thing to pull off is to get everybody, I mean, they,
[35:42] to use a rowing metaphor, rolling in the same direction.
[35:45] And, and they do it and they, they all get, they all get
[35:49] instances where they get like, again, little, little moments to
[35:52] shine in the movie, right? And some of them are small, some
[35:55] of them are big. Fincher, for example, he does
[35:57] this whole movie and it's just like, it's just like our
[36:00] conversation, conversation. We're in this, we're in this
[36:02] room, we're in that room. And then they do the, the, the
[36:06] race, the regalia or whatever it's called.
[36:08] And you've got the, the music going and we're cutting and
[36:11] we're getting some action. And it's just, it's 2 minutes of
[36:14] David Fincher in a fucking ISO situation where he's just like,
[36:17] give me the ball and get out of the way.
[36:19] That's all that it is. There's no conversation, there's
[36:21] no talking, there's no anything. It's just him with a bunch of
[36:24] people who don't even appear anywhere else in the movie.
[36:27] It's just, it's just like some guys rowing a boat and, and you
[36:31] care desperately about what's happening in it.
[36:33] And it's, it's, it's him doing that.
[36:35] It's, it's Aaron doing his thing.
[36:37] It's Eisenberg with the best performance of his career.
[36:41] He has always had this like this thing about where he just seems
[36:44] like, I don't know, I've never met him.
[36:46] I don't know if this is true. But when I watch him on screen,
[36:49] I feel like he looks like a guy who believes he's smarter and
[36:53] better than you are all the time, right?
[36:56] And he gets to do that in this movie.
[36:59] He gets to be exactly that person.
[37:01] And he turns the volume all the way up on it.
[37:04] And he just becomes such a menacing figure in the movie
[37:08] when you're like, man, I do not like, I want to be around this
[37:11] guy, but I don't want to be around this guy.
[37:14] Like I want like I see, I see that, I see that a grizzly bear
[37:18] over there. I see that fox over there.
[37:20] And I want to pet it. I want to pet it so bad.
[37:23] But I but I know what's going to happen if I do.
[37:25] Like that's what he is in this in this movie.
[37:27] It's just like it's incredible to watch.
[37:30] All of the pieces are just flowing right, Man, I really
[37:33] it's it's incredible. And David Fincher, like you're
[37:36] saying, is just so good. I see the Zodiac poster behind
[37:39] you favorite like I love it. That's another that's another
[37:42] diner scene when it's when it's Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal, Jesus
[37:46] Christ, and he's explaining it's 50, it's 50.
[37:48] It's fifty step like I. Is that true?
[37:51] Oh my God. Oh my God.
[37:54] It's so good. Fincher is such a good director.
[37:57] He's such a good director that I do not like a movie that doesn't
[38:00] have like an ending like like training day, Alonzo's dead.
[38:06] And then we hear the cover up. Like white men can't jump.
[38:09] They they beat the king and duck and then we heat and then we see
[38:14] Rosie is gone and like what Zodiac?
[38:18] There's no like they don't catch, they don't catch them,
[38:21] they don't catch them. And movies like that always make
[38:24] me like, oh, just answer the question, please.
[38:26] I'm begging you. Just do it.
[38:28] But that's that's one of them. Because it's David Fincher and
[38:30] because he's a fucking genius that it's, it's perfect.
[38:34] It's perfect how they do it in that one.
[38:37] And the social network is the the same sort of way.
[38:39] Like it just sort of it places you into this world and you get
[38:42] to be in it for a while. And you know, you can never come
[38:45] up with this world on your own. You're not smart enough, you're
[38:47] not talented enough to build this thing to exist here.
[38:50] But you get to you get to be in it for two hours or whatever it
[38:54] is. And it's just, it's so good,
[38:56] dude. Oh my God.
[38:57] It's amazing. I mean, it's going to be a tough
[39:00] one, but favorite scene? Oh my God, there's so there's so
[39:04] many. Again, I feel inclined to go
[39:06] with the opening scene just because I like Rooney and and
[39:09] Eisenberg, yeah, bouncing that ball back and forth.
[39:12] But I think on the rewatch, when I, you know, rewatch all these
[39:17] before we we sat down to do this and prior to the rewatch, the
[39:21] one line from the movie that always stands out to me that
[39:25] it's the first one that I think of whenever I think whenever you
[39:28] say does social network right like this happens with all great
[39:31] movies, you say, you say the name of a movie and a line
[39:35] should pop into your head. I say taxi driver and you're
[39:38] like, you looking at me, you know what I mean?
[39:40] I say Jaws and you're like, we're going to need a bigger
[39:42] boat. Whatever, Scott.
[39:44] Yeah. When you say the social network,
[39:46] I I immediately in my head, I go to Eisenberg at the deposition
[39:50] table. And then he's like, it's very
[39:53] simple. If you guys were the inventors
[39:55] of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.
[39:58] And then they just, and then they show who he just set it to
[40:02] and they're all like, oh fuck, he's right.
[40:04] He's right. We can't do what he did.
[40:07] If we could, we would have done it.
[40:09] And it's it's a fucking sword swipe across the chest when
[40:13] you're just like you're completely open.
[40:16] And and that part to me always is just like, Oh my God, that's
[40:21] who that character is. That's what that movie is.
[40:24] Yeah. In 10 words.
[40:25] Yeah. It's like it's just all of the
[40:27] pieces. That's the one right there.
[40:28] That one line. Oh, my God.
[40:30] This is the first time he mentioned any problem.
[40:33] Yes, it was. You sent 36 emails to Mr.
[40:36] Zuckerberg and received 16 emails in return.
[40:39] And this was the first time he indicated he was not happy.
[40:41] That's correct. He had 42 days to study your
[40:44] system and get out ahead. Do you see any of your code on
[40:46] Facebook? I could.
[40:47] Mark, Did I use any of your code?
[40:49] You stole our whole goddamn idea, fellows.
[40:53] Can I continue with my deposition?
[40:55] You know, you really don't need a forensics team to get to the
[40:57] bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors
[40:59] of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.
[41:03] I can't wait to stand over your shoulder in what you write as a
[41:06] check. No shit.
[41:09] Let's continue. So you've got loads of things
[41:12] going on at the moment. Share You've got a new book out
[41:15] right now, it's called Action Hero Scouting Reports.
[41:18] I've been lucky enough to read it.
[41:20] It's amazing. I absolutely loved it.
[41:23] What was the thing behind that? Can you tell me a bit about
[41:25] that? Yeah, the thinking behind the
[41:27] action hero scouting report was I really like basketball.
[41:31] Basketball is my favorite game, which we probably could have
[41:33] guessed based on the movies that we picked here.
[41:35] And when you watch basketball, when you play basketball, when
[41:38] you coach basketball, then you have scouting reports for the
[41:41] players like this. This player in this situation
[41:44] has this tendency. They're good at this, they're
[41:46] bad at this. Whatever.
[41:47] I always thought that was an interesting concept, so I wanted
[41:50] to apply it to action heroes. Like some of my favorite movies
[41:54] ever are are action movies, you know, Rambo and Die Hard and
[41:59] Hard Target, which is not a great movie, but it's super fun
[42:01] to watch. Yeah.
[42:03] Yeah. Kill Bill, like, like there are
[42:05] so many great action movies. Fury Rd. if we're looking, if
[42:08] you want like a bona fide masterpiece action movie, like
[42:11] Incredible, whatever. All of the movies stretch
[42:14] across. I mean, all the action movies
[42:15] stretch across the genre of types of movies that you're
[42:18] looking for. That's why I wanted to do a
[42:21] scouting report. But each scouting report is just
[42:24] an action hero. And we're going to look at this
[42:26] person. We're going to like go through
[42:28] the list of things that you need to be a great action hero.
[42:31] And we're going to, we're going to like gamify it.
[42:33] Essentially, we're going to make, we're going to make scores
[42:36] for each situation And, and then put it all together.
[42:39] So, for example, it's super easy to follow.
[42:42] Great action heroes is going to have six pieces, right #1
[42:46] they're going to have an inciting event.
[42:47] Every action hero is like, thrust into action by a thing.
[42:51] Yeah. Liam Neeson and taken his
[42:53] daughter gets kidnapped by Albanian sex traffickers, right?
[42:57] John Mcclane and die Hard. He he ends up trapped in a
[43:00] building when the German radical terrorists show up with Hans
[43:03] Gruber and his team or whatever. Like they all have a thing like
[43:06] that. So that's the first thing we
[43:07] look at. What was the inciting event for
[43:09] this action hero? If it's a really good one,
[43:11] really creative, then they get a high score in that situation.
[43:14] If it's like a pretty generic run-of-the-mill, whatever you
[43:18] they you get a low score. But there's the inciting event.
[43:21] There is the the skills training.
[43:23] What sort of skills training does this person have?
[43:26] Were they like Beatrix Kiddo and Kill Bill?
[43:29] Were were they trained by a literal Kung Fu master?
[43:33] Or is it like Antonio Banderas and and and desperado?
[43:37] Is he just like an angry musician?
[43:39] Like he didn't have any training.
[43:41] He's just fucking mad and he got a got a bunch of guns, right.
[43:44] So you have you have the skills training, you have the the like.
[43:49] This is a made-up thing, but we called it wishnificence, which
[43:52] is like the feeling you get when you're watching a movie when you
[43:55] want to. I want to be held mariachi in
[43:58] desperado for like 10 minutes it seems like.
[44:00] I feel like I want to be that guy, right?
[44:02] The more you want to be that character, the higher that score
[44:05] is. The less you want to be, the
[44:07] lower that scores. A good example is is is Jet Li
[44:10] in the movie and the movie Romeo Must Die?
[44:12] Not a great movie, but when you're watching it in the movie,
[44:16] he gets to flirt with Aaliyah and he scores a touchdown in
[44:20] like a park football game and he karate kicks a guy in the top of
[44:24] the head so hard that the guy's spine shatters.
[44:26] Like that's cool. I would like to be gently and
[44:28] Romeo must die, but gently and something like Unleashed where
[44:33] he's like a, they keep him on a leash like a dog.
[44:36] And then when they take the leash off, he goes crazy and
[44:38] they put the leash back. Like I don't want to be that
[44:40] version. I don't like that's a low wish
[44:42] wish significance rating. But so we have like 6 of those
[44:45] types of categories and we give scores to all of them and then
[44:48] that, that you, you Add all those up and then you get your
[44:51] action hero score. And that's basically what's
[44:54] going on in the, in the scattering report ideally.
[44:57] Or essentially all that I want to do was I just wanted to spend
[45:00] like 6 months rewatching all the action movies and then, and then
[45:05] I needed a reason to do that. So I'm like, all right, well,
[45:07] I'm saying right about it here. Here we go.
[45:10] Like, now give me some money. Yeah.
[45:13] Where can people buy it? Yeah.
[45:15] You can buy it at halfwaybooks.com.
[45:18] Halfway Books is the It's an independent publishing company
[45:21] that we started a few years ago. It's the only place to get it.
[45:24] You can't get it on Amazon. You can't get it in Barnes and
[45:26] Noble. Halfway books.com is where you
[45:30] it's where you can get it. Cool.
[45:33] Do you? Have you got any?
[45:33] I know that you're such a an action movie aficionado.
[45:36] Have you got any plans to do anything else?
[45:38] Do you want to re watch a lot of horror films for example, or a
[45:41] lot of romantic comedies? Oh, man, yeah.
[45:44] It's always fun to do, to do something like that.
[45:46] I don't know if you do the same thing, you just like get hooked
[45:49] on a theme, you know, like I'm going to watch a bunch of these.
[45:51] I did. I did a similar thing last
[45:54] summer. I was out in New Mexico, right?
[45:57] And I was there for for a couple of months on summer vacation
[46:01] when I was out there working, but it was during summer break.
[46:04] So I'm in New Mexico for a few months by myself and it's like
[46:07] I'm like a couple of hours from Roswell, which is like where the
[46:11] Area 51 is or whatever the the secret aliens are.
[46:16] That's. What they say.
[46:17] And I don't want to drive all the way to Roswell because
[46:20] there's like a few hours away. But what I did want to do is I
[46:22] did want to rewatch all the Alien movies and not just like,
[46:25] and I don't mean just like the like Aliens, Sigourney Weaver
[46:28] movies. I mean like any movie that had
[46:29] an alien in it, I wanted to rewatch it because again, I know
[46:33] I was going to be out there for a couple of months.
[46:35] And so I did that and I rewatched all of them,
[46:38] everything from like whatever close Encounters to like Fire in
[46:42] the Sky to which which is really, it holds up really well.
[46:46] Yeah, yeah. Like all VHS which has aliens in
[46:51] it, like out of nowhere. Like I wanted, I wanted to
[46:54] rewatch all of them. And what ended up happening is I
[46:56] was rewatching them and I noticed this thing that would go
[46:59] on where anytime there was an alien abduction, they would like
[47:02] get the guy up on the ship and he'd be like freaking out, Oh my
[47:05] God, what's happening? Aliens?
[47:07] I'm terrified, right? It was always the same way.
[47:10] They always like abducted a, a wimp.
[47:12] He'd get up there and there's a wimp and I was like, man, I want
[47:14] to watch a movie where they abduct a guy and he gets up
[47:17] there and it's like, oh, shit, we accidentally abducted like
[47:20] Rambo or John Wick or whatever. Like that's a, that's a whole
[47:23] different thing. And I, I looked around for it
[47:25] and I couldn't find it. So I was like, well, I'm just
[47:27] going to write that shit. And so then I like, I then I
[47:30] spent like a couple of months writing a story called the
[47:33] Abduction where these aliens abduct a guy and he gets up on
[47:36] the ship and then he just goes fucking nuts and is just killing
[47:39] all the like, just hand to hand combat killing aliens.
[47:44] Oh. Wow, I mean that's I would watch
[47:47] that film. I would watch that film too and
[47:49] that's why I wrote the short story.
[47:51] Maybe they make it into a movie one day, who knows, But that
[47:54] always ends up happening to me is always like get hooked on a
[47:57] thing and then I just watch a bunch of movies about a thing.
[48:00] It happened with Matthew McConaughey recently.
[48:02] I was on Amazon looking for something to watch. 2 For the
[48:05] Money came up. So he plays like a former
[48:07] college quarterback who is really good at picking sports
[48:10] gambling picks and Pacino runs a sports book and he gets them to
[48:15] come work for him and whatever. But it's McConaughey just being
[48:18] like McConaughey and he's super charming and like, man, I miss
[48:22] Matthew McConaughey. I'm going to watch a bunch of
[48:24] McConaughey movies and I was just like ripping through him.
[48:26] I was like, all right, let me watch Interstellar.
[48:28] Still great. Let me watch A time to kill.
[48:31] Still great. Let me watch Lincoln Lawyer.
[48:32] Lincoln Lawyers are incredible. So much fun.
[48:37] But that ends up do do you do that same thing where like you
[48:40] just end up hooked into like, all right, these are the movies
[48:42] I'm going to watch right now. Yeah, I generally do it if I'm
[48:45] watching the first film in a film series, like if I watched
[48:49] Saw, for example, then I mean I'm watching the rest of them
[48:53] back-to-back until I get to the end.
[48:54] Always do that. Did you do that for Dead
[48:58] Reckoning? Were you like, I'm going to
[49:00] rewatch all the mission impossibles?
[49:01] Yes. Before I go.
[49:03] Mm hmm, did that for the last one as well.
[49:05] It's such an investment. It just, but it makes it like I
[49:09] would have, I would have forgot all about Kit Ridge, for
[49:11] example. Yeah, like I would have forgot
[49:13] about him. Yeah.
[49:14] But then he shows up in Dead Reckoning and I was like, oh, I
[49:17] from the first one. Holy.
[49:18] Shit like this was just. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[49:22] It's so much fun, man. Movies are the best.
[49:25] Incredible. I always do.
[49:27] When I me and my wife went to LA in November, so it was about 6
[49:33] months before we went away of just watching films set in LA.
[49:37] That was it. That was the agenda really.
[49:39] There's no deviation from it. That's what we're watching and I
[49:42] don't care. Which which ones did you RIP
[49:44] through? Which one?
[49:45] Not all of them. Which one stood out to you as
[49:47] like? I don't remember this being this
[49:48] good. Yeah, well, training Day was one
[49:51] of them, but it wasn't like, I don't remember being that good.
[49:54] It was. It is such a gritty LA
[49:57] experience, and you don't really know that until you've been the
[50:02] place to live and die in LA. Freaking to live and die in LA
[50:06] was, oh, wild. But oh, man, he died a couple of
[50:09] days ago. Devastating.
[50:11] Yeah, yeah, that was that was pretty sucky.
[50:14] There was the Hal Ashby one and Christ, 10 Million Ways to Die
[50:20] 86, maybe 87. That's that's real sleazy.
[50:24] Love that. Yeah.
[50:28] Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal. Oh my God.
[50:30] That's incredible. Jake Gyllenhaal right there.
[50:33] Yeah, amazing. So I just went through that for
[50:36] easy six months and I didn't get sick and then I was really, it
[50:40] was relatable when I visited as well.
[50:43] It's, it's cool to do like if you're doing those and you're
[50:46] like, all right, I'm gonna do Nightcrawler tonight.
[50:48] And you watch it, you're like, this place seems awful.
[50:51] And then you watch like La La land and you're like, man, what
[50:54] magic? I want to beat it.
[50:56] And then like gone in 60 seconds or whatever.
[50:59] It's just like, how do they do that?
[51:01] How do they make the the cities feel the same city feel like all
[51:05] of these different, different pieces.
[51:06] Yeah. Dangerous and exotic and
[51:08] exciting and enticing all in once.
[51:11] It's amazing. What fun?
[51:14] I haven't heard you on the The Rewatchables for a while.
[51:17] Obviously I know you've been super busy.
[51:19] It's, I mean, it's a great show, great podcast.
[51:22] What's what's going on there? Will you be making any
[51:25] appearances? I love the the Rewatchables.
[51:28] I'll go on there if they ask me to go on there.
[51:29] That's usually how it works is they'll just be like, hey, you
[51:31] want to pop up and, and, and do this movie?
[51:34] I worked at the Ringer for six years and it was like maybe my
[51:39] favorite job that I've ever had. It's just like a bunch of really
[51:42] smart, talented people making really cool stuff and doing the
[51:47] re watchables is is is so much fun.
[51:49] I still listen to it all the time.
[51:51] I think my favorite version of the show is when when they do a
[51:55] movie that like, oh, I love this movie.
[51:57] Like I got mentioned, I was doing the McConaughey thing and
[51:59] then they did a time to kill and it was it was Bill and Wesley
[52:04] and I was like, well, fire. I got to I got to do this now.
[52:07] And like, just listening to smart people talk about movies
[52:10] is like one of my favorite things to do.
[52:12] Yeah. I love it.
[52:14] All I want is for them to do the movies that I love and I just
[52:16] want to listen to my my absolute favorite bit that they do now.
[52:22] I'm just like listening to the show because I just can't wait
[52:24] to get to this is at the end when Chris is on it, Chris Ryan
[52:27] and he does the the Wayne Jenkins thing every time.
[52:31] It makes me laugh every single, every single time.
[52:34] They did they did Alien and he does Wayne Jenkins and alien and
[52:39] the aliens and and I was like, all right, I got it.
[52:41] I got it. I got to pull my car over for a
[52:44] second and just replay this, this bit.
[52:46] It's so fucking funny, dude. It's so good.
[52:49] Yeah, it is great. I think the last time that I
[52:51] heard you're on there was Tango and Cash, which I was kind of
[52:56] woman. That was going to be one of your
[52:57] choices. Oh, Tango and Cash is is top
[53:00] level, top level Stallone, top level Curt, just great 80s
[53:06] action movie. So what's next then, Shay?
[53:09] What have you got going on? Any new books?
[53:12] Anything you're working on? Man, I don't have anything going
[53:15] on right now because we're still on strike.
[53:17] The Writers Guild for Hollywood, still on strike.
[53:20] We're on strike now with the with the actors.
[53:22] Yeah, today is officially 100 days and we're not doing any
[53:25] work until they give us a fair deal.
[53:28] So I'm just sitting around watching movies, going through
[53:32] all of the all the right movies Twitter threads.
[53:35] That's my favorite. Like I love, I love when that
[53:37] pops up and it's be like Predator came out and John
[53:41] Mctiernan, like great, whatever, whatever.
[53:43] But the story behind it is even bigger.
[53:44] And I'm like, let's fucking go, let's go.
[53:47] I know it's about to be 2525 tweets for me to read.
[53:51] And like it always sends you off into like offshoots of other
[53:54] stuff you want to you want to find.
[53:56] I think y'all are doing a y'all are doing great work over there.
[53:59] Thank you. That's all I'm doing is just
[54:00] hanging out with y'all and reading all y'all stuff.
[54:03] Cool, well, hopefully the door strikes will resolve soon and.
[54:07] Come on. Come on.
[54:08] Yeah, I'm a I'm a massive fan cheer and I really love your
[54:11] work. So yeah, hopefully we'll get
[54:13] something soon. I appreciate that this is a lot
[54:15] of fun. I thank you for having me on.
[54:17] Ah, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming on.
[54:19] I hope all goes well with the book and everything goes well in
[54:22] the future. Me too.
[54:23] All right. Bye bye.
[54:31] Big thanks to Cher for coming on the show.
[54:33] Don't forget to check out the action hero scouting report on
[54:35] halfwaybooks com. As for all the right movies, our
[54:39] latest podcast on classic and hit films is on Fight Club.
[54:41] That came out last week, and next week we're talking about
[54:44] Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, so make sure you come
[54:47] back for that. If you like the podcast, you can
[54:49] sign up to be an All the Right Movies Patreon supporter.
[54:52] You get access to all of the podcasts that we've created
[54:54] exclusively for Patreon and all of our Classic Podcast archive,
[54:58] which is stuffed full with around 130 episodes on classic
[55:02] and hit films. And that's not available
[55:04] anywhere else apart from our website where you can buy it
[55:06] individually. That's All the Right movies.com,
[55:09] but for Patreon there are other benefits available as well.
[55:12] Loads to get your teeth into. So go to patreon.com/all the
[55:15] Right Movies to support us and get access to hundreds of hours
[55:18] of great content. It'd be great if you could give
[55:21] us a positive rating on Spotify and have a podcast as well.
[55:24] In the meantime, we're everywhere on social media.
[55:26] Like Cher said on Twitter, we put up loads of great threads,
[55:30] loads of behind the scenes stuff, movie clips, pictures,
[55:33] and we are at AT Right Movies. On Instagram and Threads.
[55:36] We are at all the under score right movies.
[55:38] Join our Facebook group. Follow us on TikTok at all the
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[55:52] Thanks for tuning in everyone. Come back next week for the
[55:55] prestige. See you soon.

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