Feb 17, 2023 | Uncategorized
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Smack My Pitch Up 95 – Red Heat: Republican Mustache
Transcript at the bottom of show notes
Hobbit and Thandi start a new cold war as they fire of remakes and reimaginings of the 80’s action classic Red Heat starring Jim Belushi and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Transcript:
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Hobbit: [00:00:00] Hello geeks and welcome to another amazing episode of Smack My Pitch Up, the podcast that reboots remakes, reimagine sequels cycles, and adapts some of your favorite and least favorite properties from film, television, and whatever else we decide to do that week. And with me as always, my fateful companion into the realms of remakes.
We got Thandi Woodard here.
Thandi: How do,
Hobbit: How
Thandi: I wanted to say hello and Russian, but I could not remember what Hello and Russian is,
Hobbit: Yeah. I think I have was it nine? No, that’s German. I don’t know any Russian, actually.
Thandi: we all know Das Vidanya.
Hobbit: Yeah. Sag. Yeah. There we go. That’s all I’ve got and that’s about as close to Russian as Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this next movie that we are talking about, I’ll smack my pitch up.
I was about to say, he does his best. He doesn’t even try.
Thandi: Can I tell you that I I chose this movie and I’m sorry, like it’s not it’s not. I [00:01:00] remembered it being fun and it’s not unfun, but it’s not good. It’s not like eighties movies have their own vibe or whatever, and this is like the ultimate mediocre representation of mediocre eighties.
Hobbit: I know a lot of stuff happens in this movie, but it does feel like nothing happens in this movie. It’s just like they, they walk from point A to
Thandi: said, everybody’s. Just doing eighties. The Walter Hill’s you know what guys? Just do just be eighties guys. Just be eighties guys and that’ll be the movie that we put out as you guys being eighties guys. Just do that.
Hobbit: It should have been understood just by the casting that they had the lesser belu. In this movie, and that should have been enough to know that, okay, we’re just phoning this in. This is not nobody needs to really go for it on this one. Cuz Belushi, he’s clearly the comic relief character like the smart ass, grizzled cop from Chicago character.
But there’s nothing funny about him at all. Like he’s just he, it’s not, he’s not even annoying. He’s just a [00:02:00] non-existent
Thandi: And he’s supposed to be funny because he’s supposed to be like ably charming or whatever, but he’s n he’s just irritating and it is yeah. You feel what they’re going for with this as an eighties movie, and it just, it doesn’t all the way work. It’s not bad. It’s not terrible.
It’s just a wet fart of an eighties action.
Hobbit: I will say the best part of this movie for. Has to be hands down. Not that there’s a really big competition here, but when they’re playing chicken with buses, that was really, I’m like, okay, you know what? That’s new. I’m, I’ve not seen that there’s a whole movie about a bus driving fast.
Didn’t go against another bus. It was just one bus.
Thandi: sure. Why not? Yeah. Everybody should die here, but they’re not or whatever, and it doesn’t matter. Like I feel like the climax is really anti-climactic it, even though it’s a big set piece. It doesn’t go hard. It doesn’t feel hard enough when it ends, and Schwartzenegger just ends the movie.
He just ends [00:03:00] the Oh, the guy. Okay. You’re gone. Needs a fight or something like schwartzenegger and Belushi fighting like 50 guys or something.
Hobbit: That’s the thing. Schwarzenegger doesn’t even really fight a lot of people in this. He shoots a couple folks, but there’s not a whole lot of hand to hand. Yeah. And
Thandi: The naked fight in the snow, which is, it’s fun. That’s fun.
Hobbit: That’s fun. That is fun. Yeah, definitely. But we are talking about, if you didn’t realize from the title of this episode we’re talking about the movie Red Heat some classic eighties, Arnold Schwartzenegger. Buddy cop movie from Russia meets Chicago, I guess was the
Thandi: What are the most eighties that ever aided with the lesser belu?
Hobbit: also, this is like the tail end of the Cold War. This movie’s coming out and you’re rooting for the Russian operative this whole time, which is, that’s a weird, that’s a weird choice. There’s No. [00:04:00] So it’s not about rooting for the Russian operative. It’s about rooting for the police. He’s the police and you’re supporting the, it’s the, because even he’s ah, we are not politicians. It’s okay for us to be to like each other. Whatever. It’s about respecting the police and supporting the police.
Thandi: The working man basically. It’s the work, it’s the respect for the working man, whether they’re Russian or American or whatever. And the heroic eighties style police that don’t do anything wrong, it’s just they’re fighting against a corrupt world no matter what country they’re in.
Hobbit: I had a rollercoaster of emotion at one moment in this movie where they’re talking about drugs in their countries
Thandi: Yeah. Miami with, they’re turning into Miami. Yeah.
Hobbit: And Arnold is like in. Our country, we, you our country, I’m not gonna do it. Aye. Aye. Aye.
They were having issues with like drugs coming in from China. So they rounded up all of all the drug Addicts, [00:05:00] all of the drug dealers and took them to the square and sh killed them. Like just shot ’em.
And Belushi’s response to that wasn’t like, oh fuck, that’s hardcore. He was like, yeah, they won’t let us do that here. It’s unfortunate. Like the politicians won’t let us do that. And Schwarzenegger’s then you tie them up and shoot them first. And she’s huh. And so first he’s talking rounding up the drug dealers and the drug addicts and like shooting.
And I’m like, fuck, that’s hardcore. And then he is like, just murder the politicians. I’m like, That
Thandi: Yeah. And Belushi’s no we. We gotta kind of follow the law and it they make light of the American justice system as it stands to protect the citizenry. I, in this movie, basically it’s super hardcore like pro police state,
Hobbit: It really is.
Thandi: The, they’re like the world’s on fire because of darkies and foreigners, or, And the only way they’re protect it is to have this hardcore, [00:06:00] no rules, no holds barred.
Police state,
Hobbit: and everybody’s on board like that. That is, I really didn’t dive that deep into the thought process between the Chicago police and these Russians that are showing up that are the enemy of the country. But they’re all cops, so they’re like, oh, you kill innocence too. Cool. Great. Okay. We’re like, That is Buck Wild.
What is nice about a movie? Yeah. . With a movie like this though, there is so much room to build from it that it does make for an interesting choice, for a smack my pitch up. Because
Thandi: does because it you, you don’t have to respect the movie. There’s nothing to hold sacrosanct in this circumstance. You can go hog wild.
Hobbit: And one thing that I really wanted to dig into more with mine is That Russia and the states aren’t on the best of terms like that just kind of gets glazed over. If anything, it was more of they acted almost like they were buddies, but you still gotta be careful about your state [00:07:00] secrets.
That was the kind of energy that they were playing with each other. It was like don’t trust Americans don’t trust the Russians. And that’s it. I really want to inject a little bit more of. Cold War Energy back into this. Although my version is a modern take, it takes place in the modern day.
But I just, there’s so many weird choices in this movie for it to come out as just like a perfectly fine, mediocre movie. Tom or Jim Belushi,
Jim Belushi and and Arnold. Hanging out together. It was like the Kmart version of True Lies with Tom Arnold.
Got the the kind of like rubenesque like cop and then the the hardcore badass dude working together.
But True lies worked.
Thandi: Yeah. Yeah. The it’s interesting because Walter Hill has directed some of our favorite movies, including a movie we’ve done a pitch on before. He was the director of the [00:08:00] Warriors.
Hobbit: Oh, wow. This is so far removed from from the whimsy of the warrior.
Thandi: Yeah it’s so different from the Warriors. He was director of Streets of Fire. It’s different from that. He directed both 48 hours, which are actually pretty decent. But tonally are very similar to this. They just the stars, they work better. They have better synchronicity maybe, I don’t Because Arnold Schwarzenegger is a big freaking movie star. And actually Jim Belushi can be okay, as I remembered, cuz I saw this in the theater back in the day. I thought he was okay in this. But yeah, this is a little bit obnoxious. Maybe it’s just a product of so much time having passed, but.
Hobbit: I don’t know, but I am interested to see how we decide to build upon this this very simple structure. Basic gist is there is a Russian former operative or current operative that goes to the states to work out a drug deal to move Koch into [00:09:00] Russia. And Arnold is tapped to go get
Thandi: Oh, he’s a career criminal. He’s a career
Hobbit: oh, career criminal.
Yeah. And he’s mother Russia doesn’t wanna look bad in the face of the Americans and the rest of the world by having drugs like brought into their country. Arnold goes to stop him basically to get him without airing the dirty laundry of what he gets stopped for. Cuz he’s gets stopped for like an unregistered gun.
Right. Is that the
Thandi: Arnold goes after him because he killed his partner.
Hobbit: Sure. That’s why he gets, that’s why he gets tapped basically. Is that yeah you’re gonna do a good job here going after this guy. And and he kind of does. I like this. Injecting a little more plot into this. Mine is a modern day take it has a stylized action kind of vibe to it where everybody is able everybody looks good, nobody’s tripping over themselves.
It’s not like a it’s not so much comedic [00:10:00] as it is kind of fun and it’s approach. Some comedic moments, but definitely more of a just straight up, like over like stylized action kind of movie. For me, I, Ivan Danco was a very hard casting choice. I needed somebody that was, if not Russian, able to do a decent Russian accent.
So that required a little bit of research. I decided to go with a kind of a, you think of him like he would be an action star and he is done some action movies, but he is done more dramas than he’s done action movies is Tom.
Thandi: Oh, yeah, Tom Hardy is an action star and he’s a great dramatic actor. He’s both things.
Hobbit: And I think there’s a stoic sense that he has, especially if you saw Lawless. He’s really good in that that I think would lend itself to playing an Ivan Danco kind of character. And he was in a movie called Child 44, where he had a Russian accent and it was good. It was a decent Russian accent.
It wasn’t too over the [00:11:00] top. It. My favorite Russian accent, which is clearly John Malkovich and Rounders. That is definitely
Thandi: still made fun of today. Yeah.
Hobbit: I need to find the shirt. I found a shirt that it says on the shirt. I need that shirt. It’s brilliant. If you haven’t seen rounders, the movies, whatever it’s a fine movie, I guess, but
Thandi: Was it you that No, it was a YouTube video I saw recently. Who was in that movie with him? One of his co-stars.
Hobbit: There was oh, who was in it? Matt. Matt Damon was in it, I think. And it was Matt Damon. So. Malkovich is doing the pee Him he’s doing the horrible Russian accent or whatever, and everybody’s oh, yay, John Malkovich and Matt Damon’s what the fuck is this guy doing? And then there’s a they, this, there’s a scene break and Malkovich sees the confusion on Matt Damon’s face and he looks across the table at him and he is I’ll tell you a secret. [00:12:00] I’m a terrible actor. That’s it.
That’s incredible. That is incredible. Oh, that’s so good. Yeah. I thoroughly suggest, if you haven’t seen Rounders is worth it just for. Malkovich is bits in it, it’s so fucking good. But yeah, Tom Hardy can actually do a Russian accent play. Ivan Donk. This version of the film Ivan is drafted to go after a former military asset Victor Rust roti that, yeah, former former Ukrainian.
Picked up by the, by Russia to do cyber warfare. Basically, he’s a hacker type person. He, his estranged daughter and not wife. The Gina Ghan character, I switched from wife because they never even have any moments of chemistry or anything. And it doesn’t matter. I feel like a daughter has a little bit more like ooph [00:13:00] to it, and their relationship are a little different here.
He’s a strange daughter is young adult living in the America, is doing her thing. He really just has been absent from her life, wants to do stuff best by her, and is seeing this vast amount of corruption that’s happening within his country and also within the United States. Partly a cocaine shipment that is getting ready to be shipped to Russia courtesy of the CIA as a means of trying to like they did with KRA in.
In the in the eighties destabilization. Yeah.
what they don’t realize is that Russia’s already got crocodile. So Coke doesn’t do dick for them. Like coke, cocaine is like a cup of coffee. But
Thandi: could you sprinkle some bath salts on this?
Hobbit: right? But he decides since there’s this large amount of cocaine and money being exchanged between governments in a super secret way, that he has access to the information on where it.
He can steal it or, and use [00:14:00] that as a means of getting money from both governments, pitting them against each other and getting out a dodge with his daughter while they go fighting one another. He’s basically setting up the governments to blame each other for the disappearing coke and u and using the money that he gets from extorting to basically disappear off the map of his daughter.
That’s his. And it goes awry. It does not work. Ivan NCO gets sent out by the Russian government to stop him because if he gets caught by the Americans, he has a ton of Russian secrets that he would probably very handily hand over exchange for his freedom. So he’s a danger to the Russian military. And the CIA is doing something super fucking underhanded and he knows about it.
And so they want to quiet him before the word gets out that the c a is trafficking cocaine to Russia. So both governments are after him. Ivan Danco is kind of in the middle, not realizing after he gets to America that this is some dirty pool that’s being played. And Victor [00:15:00] Lev is a unhinged weirdo that he has to basically track down and try to get the information from without everybody dying.
So Ivan NKOs, Tom Hardy his partner played by Jim Pucci in the original Art Riddick. I’m gonna go ahead and do Chris Pratt for this one. He is married to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter. And I thought it would be kind of fun to cast him in this and just him putting on like a shitty mustache like he had in one of the Guardians movies.
He had a mustache for two. In one of the Avengers movies or something give ’em a shitty mustache, make them like a grizzled Chicago cop that’s trying to do one-liners, but they don’t land very well against Tom Hardy, who’s stoic and just not having any of it. And I think the uncomfortable nature of that relationship would make for actually really funny moments.
Thandi: That would be a man Tom Hardy would eat Prat alive,
Hobbit: Would eat him a [00:16:00] lot. Absolutely. Pratt would be like, stupidity, dude dance or something, and Tom Hardy would just stare through him be incredible. In the meantime, they’re trying to chase down Victor Roli, who is played by the incomparable Peter Stormeyer.
Thandi: Oh, perfect. That’s basically Peter Stormeyer of his career is playing that guy.
Hobbit: He is playing the big old weirdo like Eastern European guy. Don’t even give him fucking lines. Let him just make them up and it will be a better movie. Honestly. Peter Stormer, if you’re not familiar, he was one of the nihilists in the Big Lebowski.
He’s, he was the devil in Constantine. He did the, was it the VW commercials for a little bit, right? I.
Thandi: Did he
Hobbit: I think, yeah, he’s, he is done everything. He is incredible. He is such a blast to watch on screen. He’ll steal every moment. Then Lieutenant Stops played by Lawrence Fishburne in a horribly underutilized role.
They didn’t do shit with him in this movie.
Thandi: He was just there to be that [00:17:00] guy. wasn’t lo, he wasn’t Larry Fishburn yet. So But I wanted to give, I wanted to give the little more gravitas to the lieutenant in the fishburn can do don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to give the role a little bit more gravitas and still have an actor that can have that kind of intensity that you want from a lieutenant so Denzel all day make him like angry lieutenant.
Hobbit: And then the daughter, Kat Manetti is, her mother’s name was Manetti. She took her mother’s name the daughter of Victor Rostovetti. I went with Mia Kunis, who is actually fluent in Russian and is part
Thandi: has the.
Hobbit: and she has the look. So I think she would make for a good estranged daughter character to Peter store.
Mayor would
Thandi: Definitely I could a hundred percent see that, that relationship.
Hobbit: And with Chris Pratt with Denzel Washington stylized action movie. I [00:18:00] went with the director Anton Fuqua to set this up and hit it outta the park. Oh, that’d be a good time. And. It’s interesting cuz Anton Fuqua, I don’t think has ever made like a movie that has fun energy. I think his movies do have lots of energy, but it’s all threatening.
It’s all a little bit more intense, but he has done the straight ahead action film that doesn’t have a lot of depth to it, and he’s also done the really good. Thoughtful like borderline artistic action film as well. So I think him being able to play with the full speed ahead action film, but have an awkward comedic tone to it, I think would be, he got close with Magnificent seven, like he did almost get there just because of the kind of actors that he had in those roles.
This casting, I think he would be impossible not to get some funny moments between Tom Hardy and Chris Pratt, Peter store Mayer, [00:19:00] talking to Mia Kuni Mia Kuni talking to Chris Pratt and Tom Hardy and Chris Pratt flirting a bit, and Tom Hardy being very, not okay with it.
And just their, all the relationships I think would be very fun to see on.
Thandi: Now, there’d be some fun energy to see them play off of each other.
Hobbit: Yeah.
Thandi: little intensity there too. Anybody with Tom Hardy? There’s gonna be some some intensity.
Hobbit: absolutely, and that’s why I wanted Tom Hardy is to be the anchor of this, because with those other actors, there is a good chance that this would just get away from the director. But Tom Hardy, he’s a really good actor and he is able to play that intense character. And if he. Holds that down.
It keeps everybody at a level where the fun can still be there, but it’s still held down as a straight ahead action film.
So yeah, that is my pitch for for red heat.
Thandi: I would enjoy seeing that. I only have one beef, which is that you made old ass Denzel, a lieutenant. [00:20:00] He should be the police captain.
Hobbit: That’s okay. That is a fair assessment, but also police captains not going out and getting shotgun shot at him on the street. So yeah, he’s in the office asking for guns and badges for cops that do things their own way.
Thandi: turn in your badge.
Hobbit: turn
Thandi: You’re the best we got. It’s a damn shade. But we have rules in this department.
Hobbit: I don’t like, I don’t like how you do things, but Damnit you get results. Yeah.
Thandi: Oh, eighties. Captain you’re a treasure
Hobbit: why isn’t there a parody movie just called eighties Police Captain and it’s just this like wide open, disgruntled police captain would be fucking incredible. I’d be there for
Thandi: because not enough people still smoke cigars maybe. I don’t know. But yes, that would be a lot of fun.
Hobbit: Because Tom Sellek has retired his mustache and
Thandi: I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Blue Bloods, but Tom Sellek is awesome. Tom Sellek makes you want to be Republican. [00:21:00] That’s how
Hobbit: Oh wow.
Thandi: is like a, is like an old like state and respectable white man. You’re like, man, you guys have some really good ideas. Tom Sellek is good. He is good at his.
If you watched him on Magnum PI and you saw him now, you’d be like, wow, that is quite a transformation. But he is, he’s a joy to watch as like the respected you remember back when John McCain was running for president, you saw John McCain. You were like, you know what, I wouldn’t, I’m not gonna vote for you, but I respect you, John McCain.
I almost felt the same way about Romney. also, like guys who present respectability. Even if I don’t agree with their policies, I’m like, oh, you won’t be a monster. Especially now in retrospect when actual monsters have taken over the landscape of the right of American politics and yeah. Tom Sellek as a human being, as a callback to a different time. [00:22:00] You only use the N word at home in Tom Sellek’s world. It’s just you don’t take it out into public.
Hobbit: I pictured old Tom Sellek as living in a log cabin near a creek with his dog, and he wears like one of those puffy vests on Dewey, slightly chilly mornings as he’s out there fishing.
Thandi: Yeah. And then he comes down the street and he is you got some problems with your house. I see your roof needs some work. Let’s get up there. But I’m sleeping. I’m tired, Tom Sellek. I’ll be up on the roof. I’ll meet you up there when you get up and Tom Sellek like fixes your roof cuz he’s that kind of neighbor that’s the kind of Tom Sellek that lives in my mind.
Hobbit: That’s the one that, those Hallmark movies where there’s like the racist neighbor, but he’s not actually racist. He just he like treats everybody with respect, but he just doesn’t like, like blacks or something. But there’s no example of him being shitty at any point to anyone. But that’s just like a thrown in character thing.
That doesn’t make sense. That’s [00:23:00] Tom Selleck where.
Thandi: Yeah he is Clint Eastwood. If Clint East Wood’s characters didn’t actually actively complain about yellow people and black people
Hobbit: Oh man. Whew. I’m just thinking of grand Torino and some of the moments in that movie were, whew a lot.
Thandi: Man it’s kind of a shame, this is a little tangent, but it’s kind of a shame that all of our our grizzled like old school actors have been become monsters over the course of time. You can be that person. You’re old, of course you’re that person. That’s fine. Just shut the fuck up.
Just shut the fuck up and be awesome. You know who I think of all the time because I’m like, man, you are just a treasure on screen and you should be in real movies and not these things produced directly by like conservative interests. James Woods. James Woods is a, an incredible screen presence and the dude’s a monster.
It’s okay to be a [00:24:00] monster. Just be a monster silently and get your paper and continue to entertain us.
Hobbit: I don’t, I think he kind of showed his hand a little bit in John Carpenter’s vampires, cuz he was such a prick in that movie and you’re like, he’s doing this too. Like James Wood is a good actor, but he’s not, that he’s not that good of an actor. That was just him. Killing the vampires. That wasn’t, he wasn’t playing a character at that point.
He was like saying racist shit. Like he just smoking a cigar and just being an asshole at everybody. You’re like, that’s the, that’s actually the most real James Wood has ever been on screen
Thandi: incredible asshole. He’s an incredible asshole, but all right, tangent over my pitch.
Hobbit: Okay. All right. So
Thandi: got lost in the
Hobbit: doing the serious take. The remix is all on you.
Thandi: remix.
Hobbit: Wiki.
Thandi: So my inspiration for this pitch came from Schwarzenegger’s line that I mentioned earlier where he is it’s okay to like each other. We are not to politicians. And I’m like, but what if they were politicians? And so the angle I’m coming [00:25:00] at this from is because it’s not a good movie. I don’t have to respect anything.
I’m going batshit crazy balls to the wall. My movie takes place in a world where, what if they were politicians? But in this world, politicians are, they’re all Chuck Norris. Basically. Every poli every world leader is like Teddy Roosevelt or like Vladimir Putin. They’re like, oh, you could probably kill a guy with your bare hands.
And in this world, they come into direct conflict. So there’s like fisticuffs and tough, everybody’s like an eighties tough. With eighties tough guy interactions, direct conflict, like old white dudes and old white ladies beating each other up directly because that’s just the tone of this world, that the leader is the strongest person basically.
Hobbit: Like Sunday Church every week is the church scene from the Kingsmen. That’s okay. Cool.
Thandi: Whipping some ass. Yes. So in my skew of this movie what [00:26:00] if they were. Politicians. Basically what happens is that the premier of Russia who is played by John Cena and he is Russian premiere Victor Resta Rust is involved in a situation where he’s basically trying to get access to some crypto, and In that conflict, he comes into direct conflict with Mickey Rourke, who is the president of Belarus. Yuri Oga Carav, which was the partner of Schwarzenegger who got killed. And he kills him. He kills him with his bare hands and his best friend, the president of Poland, is out for revenge and what they find out is that the crypto keys are actually in America. The physical keys are in America. They’re stored on a server somewhere in America. That’s the information he has. So he does like what is kind of disguised as a a [00:27:00] political visit to America. John Cena’s character, the Russian Premier does, and the Polish president, Ivan Danko, who is played by.
Not doing a Russian accident or a Polish accident at all. Gerard Butler is Ivan Danko.
Hobbit: Yes.
Thandi: follows the Russian Premier to America and has a coming together scene with a former American president, former president, art Riddick. You son of a bitch. I need help. And they do the predator handshake, that kind of thing.
And art Riddick is played by will. Who is doing a very thinly veiled, basically Barack Obama Will Smith is playing action Barack Obama.
Hobbit: Yes,
Thandi: So they they come.
Hobbit: Because just to have a sidequel where it’s just a UN meetup and it’s just a royal rumble, like that’s all it is. It’s just royal rumble. Every time the UN gets [00:28:00] together, it’s just them in a ring beating the shit out of each other.
Thandi: Perfect for the world stage that I have set here. But so they meet in America, do the muscle handshake they bring in the former Secretary of State, Maxine Gallagher, who was Ridley’s partner in the first movie, Maxine Gallagher’s, played by Charlene Theron, and she’s basically doing Hillary Clinton.
Hobbit: Bill wishes
Thandi: They bring in this third to help huge action scene. She is killed by the premiere of Russia. So they get in a huge set peace fight, and he beats the shadow of her and kills her. And then that murder necessitates the involvement of the current presidential administration. Which is as President Lou Donnelly, who is the captain president.
Lou Donnelly is Liam Neeson. Basically Liam Neeson doing Joe Biden And he can’t help directly, he can’t be involved directly. So he gets his vp, his lieutenant to oversee [00:29:00] the the operation of these two world leaders coming together to, to try to take down the Russian premiere in America cover. His vice president Louise Stubs is Aisha, Tyler
Hobbit: Yes.
Thandi: So they have they have action scenes through DC into some other parts of the country back to dc in their little game of cat and mouse. Ross has American allies his American allies taking the place of the black nationalists or whatever they were in the original movie . Ultranationalist Whites known as the hard lads, and their uh, congressional ally is a person known as Porsche Adams Veld.
And so that’s their congresswoman that’s helping the Ultranationalist Hard lads help Raeli kills ve because she can’t actually help him. She fails in, when you fail a Russian, you get murdered. So he, she kills Veed or he kills. And the game of Cat and Mouse [00:30:00] continues, and then it ends with a big ass fight on the steps of the Lincoln Monument with Danko and Riddick tag teaming to beat the shit out of the bigger, stronger rust.
And they beat the Russian to premiere to death in front of the Lincoln Monument and And then Not enough. Not enough people get beaten to death in front of the Lincoln Monument. Really like I
what I’m saying. So the movie’s almost over and, but basically they’re like, oh, but what happened to the crypto keys? And then Danko finds out that former President Ridic had the keys all along. He passes them off to the Polish president, who then takes the crypto keys and the money that comes with that back to his country and scene.
Hobbit: Yes, I’m here for just, I want. A series of movies to exist in this world that you’ve created. You can just take whatever eighties action movie and just do a version of it in [00:31:00] this eighties action, hero politician world that you’ve created. I wanna see it.
Thandi: It would be big fun. And so my directors for this a lot of their brand is just like paring eighties action. Iconography, it drives a lot of what they find humorous. Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I’m thinking like a Team America vibe going through this movie and I was like, man the idea itself is very Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
So those are my directors for this project.
Hobbit: I am now realizing that the thing that the world has missed is them doing an action movie. They’ve done Team America with puppets, but I mean like a live action movie. I think the world is ready. I think we’re ready for it.
Thandi: Yeah, I would love to see, because it’d be a good time. They I don’t think they would do a straight action move. They’d still try to parody something and it would be a good.
Hobbit: Hell yeah. I’m here for it. Sweet. Red heat. I don’t know man, like this could be paired with basically any eighties action movie, especially buddy cop thing. I was thinking like running Scared [00:32:00] Oh, definitely. They could go on vacation. They could go on vacation for 40 minutes with the fellas in the middle of the movie.
I’ve always wanted to see that action movie where you just have two separate movies that come out around the same time and there’s just one scene that is in both movies where like they kind of enter into each other.
Thandi: kinda walked by each other. How you doing?
Hobbit: Or they’re chasing their own bad guys, but they end up driving next to each other during a car chase or something and looking at each other like, huh. And then they just trail off into different directions and then the movies continue. But there’s just that one shared moment in both movies would be incredible.
Thandi: Yeah, that would be incredible. That’d be incredible. I feel like that is the kind of thing that would take place probably in the past 20 years. I feel like there could easily have been a scene like that with the mocking of pop culture generally and also the crossover culture because crossovers bring money.
So, yeah,
Hobbit: Yeah, true. Very true. Hell yeah. We’ve got one last little bit to do here, and that is our trailer. [00:33:00] Some people’s favorites, some people’s least favorite from from the show. I’m gonna get some music together and we’ll get that going
From Visionary Director Anton Fuqua comes anew. Cold War this summer. Ivan Danko, played by Tom Hardy teams up with Hardened Chicago, detective Art Riddick, played by Chris Pratt as they try to stop the world from being handed a Coke this summer, Peter Storm Air plays Victor Roli, a broken man. Just trying to find a way to.
Insert himself into his daughter’s life and one big secret Coke deal could be the answer. Watch as Russia and America team up to fight the drug trade and that they also are facilitating a bit. It’s kind of a problem this summer. Red heat.
Thandi: Iran Contra,
Hobbit: [00:34:00] Yeah, part two.
Thandi: That is that is good times. I’m not ready for this at all. You know how I used to write all my trailers? I haven’t written a trailer in a while, so I am wing it yet again.
Hobbit: You wing it a little better than me though. So I still have faith. I used to say that I did the Justin Rowland thing, but I don’t think that is a phrase that I can use anymore.
Thandi: Ooh. Yeah. You should probably not say that out loud.
Hobbit: that loud . What I mean
Thandi: people will start looking at your text messages if you
Hobbit: Yeah, right. what I mean is that I just go and then stuff happens.
So let’s see. So you’re doing your wackadoo eighties action hero politician. Version here with Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Thandi: That is correct.
Hobbit: Excellent. All right, let me cue up the music.
Thandi: The 44 Magnum is the most powerful handgun in the world. No, the most powerful hand weapons in the world are these four fists. [00:35:00] Let’s get him from the minds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone coming at you. President Will Smith President. Oh God. Scottish guy, other president. Brain farting and Premier John Cena, Andrew R.
Butler are in a three-way conflict to make the world safe for cryptocurrency as they bring the red heat
Hobbit: You’ll the Scottish guy. I love it. I love it. That’s great. all. You have, you’ve done Russia proud with that retelling of their national movie red heat.
Thandi: Yeah, it is a national treasure. It’s like the Battleship Potemkin, and then red heat is a [00:36:00] close
Hobbit: Yep. Exactly. So that was a really good time. I think we, not that the bar was very high, but I think we actually outdid the original, much like John Carpenter’s the Thing. The, sometimes the remake is better than the original. We’re
Thandi: Yeah, I think we did.
Hobbit: jumping rope
Thandi: we should do more shitty movies I think. I think we should stop doing these darlings and just start picking stuff from the 99 cent bin. And that’s what we do. The pitch max on 90 site, 99 cent bin movies.
Hobbit: I don’t think that’s a bad call, but you do know that path leads to, at some point, doing battlefield Earth.
Thandi: Oh I don’t wanna do the Scientologist movie.
Hobbit: don’t either. But I think honestly there are a few movies where
the premise is decent, but the execution was terrible that we could possibly have a lot of fun putting our own little spin on.
So I think we’re gonna dig in a little bit deeper into this territory for future episodes.
Thandi: It’s a new podcast.
Hobbit: Woo. Thandi, thank you so much again for [00:37:00] joining me on this adventure through Chicago’s Mean Streets This time. Although not Mean Streets, that’s a far superior movie. But yeah. Make sure to rate, review, subscribe, all the things you do for podcasts for this show.
We are gonna be releasing regularly, so you can definitely expect a lot more weird and fun content coming your way from smack my pitch up. Make sure to check out all the other shows on the network at guipodcast.com. Make sure to check out Thandi’s other show.
Thandi: My handle is Jonathan Blade. It’s about the musings of internet citizen Jonathan Blade, who happens to be me. Me,
Hobbit: Me. So check all that stuff out and we’ll find you next time for another episode. I’m Michael Hobbit
Thandi: and I’m Thandi.
Hobbit: and uh, you just got this pitch smacked out of ya.
Thandi: Yeah, just like your communism bitches.
Hobbit: Get to the remake. Now that was terrible.
Check out this episode!
Feb 10, 2023 | Uncategorized
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NSFW
Smack My Pitch Up 94 – Fatal Attraction: Stuck In Crazy
Transcript at the bottom of show notes
Hobbit and Thandi visit one of the greatest sexy thrillers of all time as they try to suppress their… Fatal Instinct
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Transcript:
SMPU – Fatal Attraction
===
Hobbit: [00:00:00] Hello Geeks and welcome to another amazing episode of Smack My Pitch Up, the podcast that reboots remakes does everything. I lost track of that.
Thandi: the things. Yes,
Hobbit: All the things, all the redos of stuff that we have come to it’s all a blend at this point. I love it when it’s like a, it’s a Torch Pass movie sequel reboot. That they do now, where it’s technically a sequel, but it’s also brand new. It.
Thandi: there to make money. Yes. Love it.
Hobbit: Oh, it’s where everything’s got sub categoried so much that they don’t even make sense when you try to explain what it is now. It used to be just a remake or a reboot, and then that’s it.
Thandi: got one of the old guys and Timothy Chalamet, and we’re calling it a re-imagining sequel. What was it? Legacy. Lega Sequel is the big thing now.
Hobbit: Legacy . Yeah, absolutely. And we see it with the Ghostbusters is a good one. Creed is another one oh, a good one was the Ben Stiller Owen [00:01:00] Wilson,
Thandi: Oh Zoolander two
Hobbit: no not Zoolander two, the car one a Starsky and Hutch
Thandi: oh.
Hobbit: where at the end the original guys showed up and sold them the car and it was a, yeah, I don’t know.
2021 Jump Street was the same way
Thandi: Yeah, except
Hobbit: it’s oh, we were in Jump Street. Yeah, that was a really fun film. Speaking of a fun film no, this is a good film the one that we’re talking about this episode, but I wouldn’t go so far to say fun. It’s hitting a lot of fear points.
for for men, I guess. So
It’s definitely morality tale
Thandi: it is a morality it’s a straight up morality play, and that’s fine. Oh, and by the way, The other gentleman is Mike. I’m Thandi. We love you.
Hobbit: Oh, cool. Yeah, the intro stuff that we normally do at the beginning got so excited to jump
Thandi: Yeah. No it’s so, I love this movie. Like I hadn’t seen it in 20 years and I was into it [00:02:00] like I was in the movie theater eating popcorn. I was into it. Like I was talking to myself and going, oh, no, when I had all the anxiety of a dude watching a dude just do stupid shit, making stupid dude mistakes.
Oh, it was awesome. I thought this was a really good movie. I didn’t remember that. It was a really good, like the, I thought the cinematography was good. I thought that the acting was good. The storytelling was interesting. I was all in on.
Hobbit: and I feel they didn’t overexplain anything. It was just the information that you needed to get like through that part of the plot. It. I’m trying to over decorate the movie with a bunch of additional people or side. I was trying to think of side characters that I would need to cast possibly while watching this movie.
And there’s only four other people in this movie, beside the main
Thandi: that’s a, it’s a very small story.
Hobbit: ke Yeah, absolutely. But that’s all it needs to be. It doesn’t detract by keeping it small at all. It actually keeps it a much [00:03:00] tighter movie. And this is just under two hours. It’s not a short movie. It’s a standard.
Thandi: yeah. It’s a full story, but it kept me engaged the entire time. And, you know what and big up to Adrian Lynn for doing the same movie over and over again for 40 years and making it pretty great every time.
Hobbit: I’m the amount of sexy thrillers, that Michael Douglass has been in is just incredible to me. That j there was just a period of time, there was like a 10 year little spot. Michael Douglas was just like onscreen fucking
Thandi: people. Like they don’t do, they don’t do this kind of movie anymore for probably years, but he is manhandling, just manhandling what’s his CoStar’s name? Glen Close. He’s manhandling Glen, close. It is disgusting and awesome.
Hobbit: There is a scene where Glen closed, like pulls down her shirt into her first reveal of her nipple. And I swear in my [00:04:00] head, Michael Douglas went, ow, as he even and jumped on it. Just ready to roll. Just aggressive fucking in this
Thandi: Yeah, no it’s, it is a sight to behold. Like I said, they don’t make movies like this anymore. Sexy thrillers get made sometimes, but as far as like people pawing each other, that doesn’t happen like that anymore.
Hobbit: No I think the most recent pawing at each other sex scene that I saw was in Bros.
Thandi: Oh, do they have something like that?
Hobbit: something, but it was actually playing at the aggressive sex scenes a bit where they’re like, Shoving their feet in each other’s face and not in a sexy way, like pressing their head against the wall kind of thing.
Very funny. Very
Thandi: love.
Hobbit: But yeah. One thing I do miss about these sexy thrillers and something that just like you said wouldn’t play today, is that morality aspect of don’t cheat on your wife, cuz she might be fucking crazy. And the rule that we learned as teenagers from like [00:05:00] the, our older brothers and older friends.
There are some things that come with, as they said, and the time sticking your dick in crazy is that you don’t know what kind of results may come
Thandi: That was the saying, but as somebody from the restaurant industry, I had to, it couldn’t help it. It was part of my lifestyle.
Hobbit: look, everybody at a certain point in their life needs to have a whore phase male or female in between everybody needs. I think it’s important absolutely to. Really explore what you like, what you don’t like, what you’re willing to handle, and what you’re not willing to handle. I think that’s a super important thing.
There’s no shame in it whatsoever. Ever. I’ve had my time, my friends have had their time. Good for fucking them. But yeah, occasionally you’ll run across somebody that , oops, that was a bad idea. And this is definitely that
Thandi: and it’s the, and you knew. once she started spitting her game, and I was like, man, Alex has mad game, but it’s a little bit scary. Before they even got [00:06:00] into stuff, I was like, oh man this is way aggressive. This might not be a good scene for you, man, knowing it’s not gonna be a good scene for ’em, but yeah. Ooh.
Hobbit: When the moment hits where suddenly, and I think it was very deftly written, the turn in the conversation from it being very light. Nobody’s saying anything flirtation to being overt flirtation, where they discuss basically who’s making the call on which way this goes. And Michael Douglas says, that’s definitely your call, not mine.
And I’m like, bitch, you’re married like . What do you mean? That’s her call. She’s got nothing to lose in
Thandi: At that point, I think he was just having fun with it. He was like, oh yeah, we’re gonna fuck. And she’s oh yeah, no, we are, we’re gonna fuck. And he’s okay,
Hobbit: No, he was playing with it like the night before. What you know is gonna be a long day at work and you start playing with the idea of calling out. But you know, in your head you’re eventually gonna call out. Like you’ve already made that determination in your brain, but you haven’t really admitted it to yourself yet.
That’s the flirtation that he is doing with [00:07:00] fucking, like he knows. That’s where it’s going. 100%. But he is no, I’m a, I’m good husband. I wouldn’t do that. But what Would it be like? He already knows it’s happening. He already knows it’s going now even with Glen Close, like I haven’t decided.
Yes, bitch. Yes, you have. You have decided. What do you mean? No, I haven’t decided
Thandi: Yes, she has decided. That’s one of the the thing, the old pieces of wisdom too, is that she knows beforehand and it’s on you to f it up, but in his case, effing it up was actually going and doing the thing.
Hobbit: Yep. And. I was curious to see how it played for me as an adult. The turn from it being this mutual decision to hook up and fool around. That was like, he’s married, he can’t turn in anything and everybody knows to it being this weird stalker kind of story and man for it didn’t age poorly at all.
I feel like there was, it felt very genuine. Once you’re in it, it’s a different story than when you’re just [00:08:00] hypothetically discussing it.
Thandi: Yeah. So for me the thing that was striking because a lot of the movies very naturalistic, except for Glenn Clo, seems like a cartoon character. If I hadn’t engaged with people like Glenn Close, I would be like, man, she’s playing a cartoon character, but she’s playing people that I’ve met. This is a, perhaps not where it goes, but this is a very understandable relationship situation cuz I’ve seen it.
Hobbit: Yeah, I have. and yeah, this is definitely a turned up to 11 version. Great. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. It works. It’s not like a fast and furious movie where nothing makes sense. The human relationships here fit the way that they should to make sense.
So that being said, let’s ruin it. Let’s let’s take this movie word we’re very happy with that I don’t really see
Thandi: Yeah, cuz I feel like we can only ruin it like the the genre has been done to death at this point. [00:09:00] It was really interesting finding any angle to get a grip on. But yeah. I love this movie enough that I think it stands on its own whether we ruin it or.
Hobbit: This is really one of the top three sexy thrillers, right? There’s like basic instinct of fatal attraction and then maybe what, nine and a half weeks?
Thandi: Yeah. So my favorite before this, because I don’t watch sexy thrillers all the time, I never did was unfaithful, which is also an Adrian Lynn movie from like 2002 or something. It made me have a chub for Diane Lane until now, even as Ma Kent, I was like
Hobbit: diane Lane is aging well. She is. She’s doing a very good job there. And. Yeah, those sexy thrillers. There was a time in my life that I went through all of ’em. I like Jade was watching nine and a half weeks, of course. Basic, like I what was the one Body Heat? Do you remember? Body Heat, I think.
Was that Melanie Griffith? Was it, was that? I can’t remember. But yeah, th there was just a series of sexy thrillers and then that kind of [00:10:00] tweaked into it being more of the murdery aspect than the sexy aspect. And that’s where you start getting into Seven and taking lives and suspect zero. And all these like gritty crime thrillers, I feel are definitely a bastard child of the sexy thriller.
Thandi: But you know, the sexy thriller was, it was cheap to make, so it dominated like the nineties. It was this sexy thriller in courtroom dramas and just stuff that you didn’t have to spend a whole lot of money on. Sets or places that weren’t just people’s houses or, yeah it was a good time in cinema because the focus wasn’t on the spectacle.
You had some interesting scripts and some interesting characters,
Hobbit: And that’s why I’m interested to see what we’re exactly gonna do with this. We, if you didn’t listen to the last episode, we have tweaked to the format a little bit where instead of four different takes of the movie we’re talking about, one of us gets the re reboot or remake version thing that we think might actually be the best bet.
For the film and one of us gets the remix version, the [00:11:00] wackadoo, weird, fully out of the box. Take on this. Sometimes those two versions are actually pretty close as far as whether or not we wanna see these versions or not. And sometimes they’re wildly different, but you get the real take
Thandi: I got the real.
Hobbit: So I’m interested to see if you’re going with that sexy thriller vibe. If you’re trying to go more modern. Take what are we doing?
Thandi: So I am going full on sexy thriller. And with that as a thing, I had to find something to latch onto to make it interesting. So something that I noticed in Fatal Instinct, or sorry, fatal Attraction, haha, is that they were really casually racist. A couple times making fun of Asian people, cuz that’s the race that was in the movie.
But and then in addition to that, I watched this other thriller that was from the affair thriller that was from the early seventies called play Misty For me,
Hobbit: Yeah.
Thandi: really, it wasn’t racist at all, but [00:12:00] it had some really interesting relations to others in the movie because it was.
Early seventies, so they were like, oh, let’s put all these people in the movie. But they weren’t people, they were like set dressing. So it had a black person and another black person and a gay person. But they were just so they could have these things in the movie to be like, oh, what is America’s a melting pot?
But they weren’t important or really part of the movie or addressed as individual beings of, they were just people that were set dressing for the movie. So I wanted to address what race relations are like now with the from the point of view of white affluence, because those are the people that are in the original movie.
These affluent white people like living their wonderful lives. So I wanted to have these affluent white people living their wonderful lives, and I wanted to have race as a component that is not directly addressed, but I wanted [00:13:00] to see in real time. Basically having microaggressions, basically being casually racist in a way that people do not like, oh, I hate these people, or whatever.
Just the way people do when they’re comfortable and intimate. That kind of casual racism. I want to see that throughout the movie, but with it never really being directly addressed, just something that hangs over the movie. So in this modern version, this modern. On fatal Instinct. Dang it. On Fatal Attraction
Hobbit: No. Fatal Instinct is a movie and if I remember correctly,
Thandi: a parody
Hobbit: isn’t that like a, it’s a parody movie. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah.
Thandi: So my director for this version is Michael Moen, who directed the Voyeurs. I don’t know if you saw that last year, a really.
Hobbit: Oh, okay. I know what you’re talking. I hadn’t had the chance to see it, but I know what you’re
Thandi: So it is half of a really good movie. If they had [00:14:00] stopped at the Twist, then it would be a really good movie. But at The Twist, there’s like a whole half movie left and it’s stupid after that,
Hobbit: Oh
Thandi: But it’s a sexy thriller and I enjoyed that first half of it. So that’s the director I’m going for there.
And for my story, it’s mostly the same beats, but we bring in some things that are a little bit different. So instead of Stuart PanIN being the. We’re bringing in Michael Pena as Jimmy the Stewart Pan character,
Hobbit: Okay.
Thandi: as his wife Hildy. We have Mabel K, who was Noora in Wakanda forever. And their interaction with the couple, the Dan Gallagher and Beth Gallagher, the husband and wife, the lawyer, couple, the lead and his wife.
What happens inside the circle of trust, which is the casual racism that happens inside of the circle of trust, but it’s not really, it doesn’t look like racism because it’s inside the circle of trust. [00:15:00] Everybody is accepting of what’s going on there. If you watch it from the outs, if you see it from the outside, then it’s yucky.
It’s it’s like you hanging out with Steven or me and saying some things that are, it’s funny in the moment because it’s us, not racism. And not inappropriate in that moment, but if somebody from the outside sees it, it’s yucky. I’ve had this conversation about just being in podcasting. Is that something you have to be considerate of, is who’s listening your audience? It’s the clarity of message is that there are jokes that, yeah, like you said, we could make with one another because the intention is incredibly clear to one another.
Hobbit: We know each other well enough to know where the line is and what is meant by what is
Thandi: Yeah, I’ve had the circle of trust conversation with women where I’m like you, where I’ve said, where I’ve said things in front of people that I would say in front of a woman that I’m very close with. That’s completely inappropriate to say under that context. And it’s just something you have to learn. But we’re seeing this as [00:16:00] observers and we’re like, eh, and it’s just part of the That’s something that’s happening in modern day with social media, with the. Remote based relationships that we have is people are starting to misunderstand like where that line is as far as comfort level and what you’re should be able to say in mixed company versus close
Hobbit: That there’s some things that you need to change your clarity a little bit depending on your
Thandi: Yeah. Every conversation’s not for everybody.
Hobbit: exactly, that’s why you should, there’s some places you can’t say fuck it work and that’s reason.
Thandi: Yeah,
Hobbit: My job’s pretty okay with it, but But for my leads for my affluent white couple, we have Jake Gillen Hall as Dan Gallagher
nice.
Thandi: as Beth Gallagher we have Bree Larson, and as Alex, we have Lupita Nego, which brings in like just a whole bunch of. Not in your face, [00:17:00] but like implicit racism because Leedia Nigo is the one who Jake Gillen Hall cheats with.
I also wanted to change the dynamic of that a little bit, where Jake Gillen Hall is. Not just an innocent dummy. He’s actually he’s trying to pursue a thing. He’s trying to see how long he can make this go, not realizing that this person’s crazy and then it’s too late. It’s not two days.
And he is oh, this bitch is crazy. It’s like a couple weeks maybe where he is trying to like, oh, I can make this, I can make, I can juggle this, I can make this work. Oh no, she’s crazy. and In the scene, like it’s gonna have a lot of the same beats. So when the scene, they’re gonna sell their, oh, we’re gonna try ourselves to sell our house.
And when Alex comes to the house and Beth meets Alex, and after Alex leaves and she sees that that Dan, Jake Gillen Hall is very uncomfortable, she’s she thinks it’s because it’s a pretty black girl. She’s I know what you did in college. I know that you were into that in college or whatever.
And when she’s talking about what [00:18:00] he was into in college, he does this. This mock black woman accent, Adam.
Hobbit: No. Oh, no
Thandi: In inside their home is part of the circle of trust, but stuff that people don’t see and you don’t really see in movies like that either. But I want to expose that kind of thing, not as not as a pointed part of the movie, just as an uncomfortable background element that goes through the entire. then most of the story beats are going to be the same. Beyond that one thing that I will change is that her parents will be a little bit more involved as affluent whites. And when they find out that Dan has been cheating with this black, this African black woman the level that they’re unpleased and the way that they express that is going to be
Hobbit: Ooh. Yeah. Oof. A fog. Like a fart in a room. Just hover it in.
Thandi: so so because her parents are more intrinsic to the plot there I’ve casted [00:19:00] them for Beth’s mother, I have Michelle Pfeiffer, and for Beth’s father, I have John Corbett. And if you don’t know who John Corbett is, he was Aiden from Sex in the City. Chris from Northern Exposure, which is how I knew.
And then Ian from my big Fat Greek wedding, and he’s just a tall, handsome white guy, even it’s in the sixties. He’s a tall, handsome, white guy. Michelle Pfeiffer is still beautiful and older, and I wanted to like you to see the affluence just as like looking at these people. Oh, affluent whites, so
Hobbit: Yeah I love trying to differentiate between being a white myself understanding that I do differentiate myself between that and affluent white, which has a why at the beginning, the white. White. Yeah. That it’s a slight different inflection there. That does mean a lot . It does quite a bit.
Thandi: And that
Hobbit: and in, yeah, that’s
in the circumstance? Yeah, in the circumstance. I think it’s just the idea of [00:20:00] who grew up at a level of maybe income or status that they. Need or maybe desire hung out with non-whites, like actually have experience interacting with people that didn’t look exactly like them or have the same experiences as them.
And so don’t have that like absence of experience that creates awkward social situations on occasion. Just out of. Lack of depth of knowledge of how to act around people, which is literally just like yourself, but don’t try to cater to, and then you become more awkward. That’s like the white affluence things like in Get Out that I voted for Obama three times.
Why was that relevant to this conversation? Like why is that something you just blurred out? Brother, man. Yeah. That If you wanna see a perfect example of this, look at early television interviews [00:21:00] with Quentin Tarantino. When there’s a black cast member with him during the interview he starts talking
Thandi: starts to code
Hobbit: like he, yeah, he code switches my man.
Then I might like, he totally changes his inflections and it’s jarring like it’s so bad. I’m really glad that he got outta the habit. It’s really bad. Yeah, it’s. So, yeah I love those moments that speak to that. That’s great.
Thandi: And the uh, the only other thing I want to put in here for that pitch is that I want it to be old school sexy, and I want Jake Gillen Hall to grab two big pans of la Pita NGO’s Sweet, juicy can, and focus on that is like an objectification of that sweet, juicy can.
Much different than what his wife, Bree Larson has going on.
And yeah, just as part of the the underlying discomfort, he’s objectifying this big black ass [00:22:00] as part of his thing. But I want very little of it to be spoken out loud. I just want it to be like, felt throughout the.
Hobbit: I think that’s gonna really translate better anyway than trying to work in dialogue to explain that. No I think showing it is gonna work a lot more effectively For sure.
Thandi: And that’s the pitch.
Hobbit: sweet. I’m into it. It’s taking aspects it’s almost like an homage to the classy, sexy thriller the classic sexy thriller without trying to re.
Modern take with a nice deft handoff from the classics so great into it. I am not doing that. I am being way more overt in the way that I’m approaching not just race, but also otherness, I guess in this conversation. With Fatal Attraction being the starting point I was interested to.
Something that was troubling for me with Fatal Attraction [00:23:00] is rooting for anyone. The only innocent here is the wife. Like she, she didn’t do anything. She didn’t deserve this. She, for everything we’ve seen in the film, is a devoted and loving wife that appreciates her husband and doesn’t try to start fights.
Isn’t a banshee or terrible or hasn’t driven him into the arms of another woman. He’s just a scumbag that took advantage of an opportunity. And of course Alex the character Alex is a psychopath. So I wanted to
Thandi: She’s so
Hobbit: to like, change the direction on who we’re actually rooting for, have one of the main characters as somebody that we root for.
But to do that I had to really just determine what would give us that reason to root for a person. And I think it would be th this idea of otherness. Is discussed a little bit in Fatal Attraction. This is a single woman that is willing to sleep with a married man.
And so therefore she’s treated as disposable by the married [00:24:00] man and she calls him out and She did make assumptions that weren’t there for sure. But what I wanted to do is flip it on its head. Actually, this was inspired by. News about what is it Matt slap the conservative icon that there’s reports and text messages that back it up that he apparently groped a man in a car couple years ago and was called out for it.
And this is like hard. Yeah. And this is the story he told time and time again. So I thought maybe inspired. Switching the lens that actually Dan Gallagher is a conservative politician
Opposed to a lawyer. And his friend Jimmy played by Stewart kin, is actually just his lawyer that works on the campaign and stuff with him.
And, Dan is a closeted gay man. He has a wife. Didn’t want to put a kid in, in a dangerous position in this situation. So, and also gay man with a beard, they got [00:25:00] a greyhound. So that’s crazy was the random person picking your kid up from school scene by the.
Yeah, that Talk about a fucking power move. Power move. It was like, your kid is completely safe. Had a great time. Took her on a rollercoaster. She kissed me on the cheek like this.
Thandi: But also that’s a scene that would never work in modern movies cuz you couldn’t get into the school to get somebody’s kid just random.
Hobbit: Hell, that’s one thing that immediately flipped in my brain when that scene came up, is that, how did she just come and grab a kid? It’s oh, it’s the eighties. That’s, yeah. They weren’t checking IDs and shit at
Thandi: And the kid was like, okay,
Hobbit: the kid. The kid being like, come with me. Sure. Great. And the eighties parents just wanted to get rid of their kids, take her great.
Thandi: More time to drink for us.
Hobbit: Yeah, right. So Dan is a closeted conservative politician. His wife Beth is. It’s not openly discussed [00:26:00] between them, but it, she’s pretty aware of his proclivities. She just chooses to ignore them. She appreciates the lifestyle that she’s been given is completely content to have her own trists outside of the marriage um, and let him have his, and it’s just an unspoken kind of thing that they have between the two of them.
That the core thing is to make sure that they’re not caught. They are seen as a core family value type.
Thandi: Hillary and Bill action.
Hobbit: A little bit kinda a little bit of that energy. And then we have let’s see. The Ellen, yeah the daughter that’s a Greyhound, that’s just a dog. So instead of picking up the dog from school, it’ll be from like the kennel they kept it at while they were out of town, like doing politician stuff.
And then took the dog to the dog park, , like doing doggy fun things.
Thandi: Who frolics with the side piece in public.
Hobbit: Yeah, that’s, ooh, that’s rough. So this story is less so about [00:27:00] the cheating aspect and more about the realization that Dan and Alex, I don’t even have to change the name for the man that he has a trist with, doesn’t realize that Dan is a conservative politician when they have this experience.
and it’s shortly after this experience when Dan’s in town in DC has this tryst, with this dude. He lives nearby, maybe like Baltimore or something, relatively close, but not in DC. And then he sees Dan’s face on the TV as he’s elected, like he’s a, been elected or or his position. That’s where Alex decides to have some fun with this man that he had real feelings for and is against. Gay marriage calls it an abomination, gays are grooming that whole fucking party line shit. And it’s infuriating. But he also like, still has feelings for him. So it’s this confliction.
So he’s threatening to out him, to tell the press and all this stuff. And he has pictures of them together on his phone and all this stuff. And so Dan is a [00:28:00] mess. This can ruin everything, can ruin his political career ruin this very intentionally curated marriage that he has. Oh, let me name these people.
Actually. This is directed by John Cameron Mitchell,
Thandi: Who
Hobbit: who is best known for headwind in the angry inch. Also the. Movie How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which if you haven’t seen, is based on a Neil Gaiman and Short Story, and it’s a sci-fi weird piece directed at episode of Glow and a bunch of other TV shows as well.
Great director. I really wanted a queer director to speak to, like the experience of this closeting and like this whole story really. And Dan Gallagher is gonna be played by Matt Bomer if you are unfamiliar. He was the super spy in the Chuck TV series. Back in the day. He’s was also in Magic Mike one and two he was in the magnificent seven Nice guys boys in the
Thandi: Hold on. I thought that Chuck was Shazam.
Hobbit: Chuck is Shazam but his college roommate that was the super spy [00:29:00] that is who he gets mistaken for.
He he shows up and then gives Chuck the thing or whatever. That’s Matt Bomber. He’s the smooth spy guy that, yeah, the actual spy. Yeah. . Then we’ve got Alex. I wanted to really punch the otherness of this story by not just having like a queer actor and visibly not code switching.
Very clearly gay, but also I wanted a Latino actor as well, so I went with Wilson Cruz, and if you’re unfamiliar, he’s in. Star Trek Discovery as one of the doctors. He was in Party Monster as Angel and he was Ricky in my so called Life way back in the day as well. Great actor I think would nail this role as just like a kind of vindictive scorned lover that is trying to get back at this conservative politician that he had a tryst.
Thandi: Him being Latino works for that whole kind of [00:30:00] thing too.
Hobbit: And just the whole party line in general would be also just another condemning factor, and I want a line like that as it’s bad enough that you slept with a man, but he had to be, he had to be Mexican. He’s no, he is Puerto Rican, whatever. Just dismissive kind of energy from Beth Gallagher, the wife who’s played by Amanda sef.
Thandi: Nice. She was actually on my shortlist for wife.
Hobbit: yeah, I think she can play like waspy mean affluent white woman very well. And I just, great actress. I think she would have a lot of fun in that role. Jimmy is the lawyer friend that he goes to that has some experience in like family law stuff, and he’s Hey, how does this work out?
There’s no baby nobody’s pregnant in this version. It’s more about some information about his governmental dealings that he let slip during the tris that he had and how liable he would be if that came out if that was protected in any way.
And so he’s going to his friend who’s played by Jared Carmichael, who I was not very familiar with [00:31:00] until the Golden Globes this last Sunday where he host. and was brilliant wonderful and said super fucking edgy shit that like pissed off a lot of people and have a lot of respect for that.
And I would I was like, you know what? You get in my movie cuz you were
Thandi: he came out. So I’m sure that he would be all about something, a project like this.
Hobbit: absolutely. And he’s very funny as well. And I want this, and in that same conversation of otherness is that there’s this conserve. Politician that’s relying on what he considers a friend is really employee that this black lawyer that is one of the very few people that knows that he’s gay because Jared Carmel, Jimmy is also gay and is openly so like it’s fine, but it’s also like they work together.
It’s like one of that’s the comfortable in the room conversation that this conservative dude feels like he can be. More gay in the room with Jimmy than he could be normally, because that’s the [00:32:00] one connecting factor they have with one another, but he’s also still racist. So it’s like they, they never really get to a point of actually being friends.
Cuz Jimmy is like, no, I know you’re a racist. We’re not friends. It’s just I’m not gonna out you because I know how fucked up that is. I’m not gonna do that. So you’re safe. But then there’s a, the boss. Arthur from the original was played by Fred Gwynne, and I wanted Kyle McLaughlin to play the boss.
He actually was in a movie based on tiger King, , Joe versus Carol. He played Howard Baskin in that, and John Cameron Mitchell played Joe Exotic in that movie. So they have a connecting. But the twist, the main twist of this is that at the end or the midway point where in the original he tells his wife that he had an affair, that she’s pregnant, that she’s stalking him, and it’s this whole ordeal.
That’s the turn where now Dan isn’t the [00:33:00] aggressor in trying to get Alex to fuck off. It’s the. The wife takes this role of that’s the surprise in the story. The twist is that she’s known all along, he’s gay. She doesn’t give a shit. Don’t take away my quality of life. Don’t ruin this for me. Yeah.
And those, so she gets way darker and way more fucked up about trying to get this stranger to leave her family alone. And that’s where the, it almost like a tag team in a wrestling ring, like your turn and she goes after him.
Thandi: Yeah that’s beautiful. And actually I think in a practical marriage of a power couple marriage, I think that’s how it works. The face doesn’t do the public assaults. It’s the other shrew person who actually goes out and takes care of business.
Hobbit: Yep. So at the end of it, this is a love affair gone wrong. A conservative politician that is trying to cover their tracks. As a hypocrite, that is what they pretend to stand against. [00:34:00] And a trophy wife, beard wife that is willing to kill to keep her comfort. So I’m loving this. I’m actually, I’m loving this. How does it shake out?
It shakes out basically that the final scene in the original movie where she sneaks into the house to to kill them and stuff.
It’s. It’s actually that, oh, how do I put it? The vital proof of their tryst that was on his phone was stolen by the wife and brought back to their house. So Alex isn’t going in for revenge, is going in to get their phone that they have the locate feature on, and that’s how they find out that it was taken to get their phones.
So they have proof to try to blow it all outta the water. That’s the way that I’m safe is to. Tell people about this. So then if anything happens to me, they know who to look at. And so then it’s the fight to the death in the house. And I don’t want this to necessarily be like I think as unfortunate as [00:35:00] it is, cuz we are rooting for Alex at this point.
I’m making Alex the person that you want to succeed. I want the reality of the situation to be that’s not how it works. And that like during the struggle Alex is killed in their house and they try to play it off as a burglar like somebody that came into the house. Yeah, exactly.
And then you throw that otherness around as a final fuck you. At the end of it is that like even after all this shit, you can still just throw out ads, just some Puerto Rican and then the police will be like, yep, that we’ve heard of that before. And dismiss it is exactly that. Don’t look into it that.
But I would love to have something at the end where the phone gets into the right hands. So even though Alex dies at the end, the information, the outs, Dan and his wife for being pieces of shit gets recovered and actually gets out or it’s alluded to.
Thandi: Like the end of the Watchman movie.
Hobbit: A similar kind of vibe to it.
Yeah, for sure.
Thandi: I’m really into that pitch. I like [00:36:00] that.
Hobbit: I’m actually really surprised there aren’t that many. There, there just aren’t that many stories about conservative politicians that are closeted, trying to protect their image. There’s just not a lot of that out there. And it’s such a every like six months or every year, we have another story of that happening.
Thandi: Yeah, I think mostly it’s just a tacit agreement because these male sex workers make a lot of money off of these guys and if you’re a professional, you keep your secrets.
Hobbit: Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. But in the circumstance, I thought about the sex worker ed vibe as well for this, but I wanted it to be genuine, not he fucked me so good. I love him. Now, can I like ? I’ll give a, like in, we just saw True Romance recently where Christian Slater. Fucks her so good that she’s only three days into being a call girl.
And she decides I quit. Let’s get married. I didn’t want to give the conservative politician that kind of energy at all. But yeah, so that’s my version [00:37:00] of fatal Attraction is that the fatality was actually to the person that made the mistake of hooking up with a conservative.
Thandi: Which is how that works
Hobbit: That’s how that works. Yeah. . And also moral of the story is be with somebody that considers you, they’re equal. Not somebody that looks down upon your station.
Thandi: or is just fetishizing you.
Hobbit: Ugh. Yeah.
Thandi: was somebody who has not worked through their own issues. Ugh.
Hobbit: Ugh.
Thandi: I guess if that was the thing, we’d never, none of us would ever be with anybody.
Hobbit: Or for clarification, or is working through their own issues. Like it’s a constant, continual process. But yeah, you gotta put the work in though. So great. Yeah, I think these are both really actually possible versions of this. Mine is almost not fatal attraction anymore, but it’s still hitting those main beats.
It’s like the dawn of the dead remake. The only thing that, the only thing there is the mall is
Thandi: For the fun pitches inspired by is what we’re [00:38:00] going for, just generally.
Hobbit: Yeah. Let’s, if we got just a little bit left, we’re talking about our trailers that we gotta do now. So yeah I actually wrote out my trailer this time,
Thandi: I did not. So we’ll
Hobbit: Oh, nice. Nice little flip here. Okay, let me get us queued up here. We decided we’re gonna use the same track for both of ours cuz it’s a perfect, like sexy thriller back backtrack here. Here we go. Tandy, with your version of Fatal Attract.
Thandi: Happy wife, happy life, but he’s gotta have it. Lawyer Dan Gallagher, played by Jake Gillen Hole has everything except that. Sweet. Sweet. Can he craves. So he meets Alex Force, played by Lapita Nego, and ruins his own life. Join Bree Larson as his wife, Beth Gallagher, Michael Pena as his buddy Jimmy, and as best mother and father, Michelle Pfeiffer and John Corbett as they [00:39:00] try to navigate a crushing affair.
He gave it all up for the nookie that sweet nookie. And it will destroy him unless it destroys her. First, it’s Michael Moens, fatal Attraction. She will not be ignored.
Hobbit: Yes. Excellent. . All right. Let’s see how much I can screw up mine here. So I’m using the same backing track. I tried to use some punning in here so I apologize and ahead of time for how stupid it
Thandi: Make it fun.
Hobbit: Woo. this is definitely a more fun version with John Cameron Mitchell at the helm.
You can’t help but have it a little bit more. Ridiculous and big and a little silly. So here we go, man. Lives by the rule of law and his own morality. This March, Dan Gallagher wrestles with both as he [00:40:00] tastes forbidden fruit. Little did he know this fruit bites back with his political career on the line.
Dan will do anything to stop this fatal attraction starring Matt Bomber Wilson Cruz and Amanda Seyfried.
Thandi: So, so was the the double entendre Attentional or
Hobbit: Yeah. Th this fruit bite’s back definitely was part of it, and I was like sitting there being like, ah, it’s a lot. No, I, it’s the self ownership, it’s like I’m allowed to say it like it’s okay.
Thandi: It’s awesome.
Hobbit: Cool. So yeah, this is this is.
Really fun take on Fatal Attraction. I appreciate all the listeners for sticking around for it. Two episodes in a row. Who knew we’d be capable of
Thandi: a possible thing. Yes.
Hobbit: Yes. We’ll be trying to make it a threepeat here next week with another episode of smack My Pitch Up. Thandi, thank you so much again for joining me on this fucking escapade.
Here
Thandi: thank you, sir.
Hobbit: Make [00:41:00] sure to rate reviews, subscribe all the things you do for podcasts. Check us out at GUIpodcast.com for links to our social media and other shows on the network. You can hear coming I believe last week as of when this drops the final regular release of Geeks under the Influence we’ll have dropped.
And yeah, that’s gonna be a tear jerker for sure. And a lot of drunken revelry as well, so
Thandi: Yeah. Yeah. But you know, Bigger and better things. Bigger
Hobbit: There’s a whole lot
Thandi: everybody’s still here. We’re all still playing.
Hobbit: also playing and there will be occasional releases on the main feed. Still that’s not, we’re gonna every so often meet up and have our hahas. And and do a little like free play or something or special event kind of thing. So definitely keep, subscribe to that mainstream as well.
But yeah, also check out TeePublic for the new smack. My pitch up design or newish smack my pitch up design. The lethal weapon inspired design with Thandi and I
Thandi: look great.[00:42:00]
Hobbit: That’s a fun design. I’m really happy how that turned
Thandi: pretty inspired.
Hobbit: So, so inspiring that you almost didn’t get into an amusement park with it.
Thandi: Yeah it’s Danny Glover. Don’t you recognize Danny Glover? Yeah.
Hobbit: I wish I was a fly on the wall to hear this. The reasoning with the security that it’s just a picture of a gun on a shirt. It doesn’t mean that you’re like aggressing
Thandi: I had to pitch the show. I had to pitch our show to the people at the amusement park. I pitched it well enough. They let me in. So
Hobbit: pull it up on Spotify. No, see it’s real. It’s right here. Oh, that’s so
Thandi: I don’t get it.
Hobbit: So, yeah, you try your hand at getting into an amusement park with our shirt and let us know how it turns out. Pitch smacked on social medias for the most part, hashtag us pitch smacked, and we’ll see you next time.
I’m Mike the Hobbit,
Thandi: and I’m Thandi.
Hobbit: and you just got your pitches smacked all up and
Thandi: It’s a swing and a pitch and it’s smacked out of the park.
Hobbit: Well done. Well done.
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