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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

Yo, put the da bomb rap-rock mix CD on the Walkman, brush off your fly three-button boxy suit, and get your pre-9/1l cool on fo’ shizzle, home skillet, as TGTPTU breaks with its patent-pending temporal pincer movement to cover THE WAY OF THE GUN (2000).

Before he (strike as appropriate: ruined / renewed / continued) the Mission Impossible film franchise but after winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1995’s The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie would write and direct this (strike as appropriate: possible war crime / secret masterpiece / neo-Western action-thriller satire), and land in director jail. Unlike a highly successful sequel he’d write and produce two decades later also with “gun” in the title, McQuarrie’s directorial debut was not “top,” nor would it receive any Academy noms for Orig Screenplay or Best Pic. Instead, it would be twelve years before McQuarrie would direct again when he’d write and direct Jack Reacher (the one ((strike as appropriate: starring / miscast)) with Tom Cruise).

The Way of the Gun was purportedly McQuarrie’s attempt to unmake the antihero criminal movie popular by the late-90s by going further than other films had in making its felonious buddy protagonists not just unlikeable but reprehensible. Selected for the job, after many turned down the role, Ryan Phillippe who got a haircut and adopted a voice for the role of Parker (no relation to the Richard Stark series) and the always magnetic Benicio del Toro as Longbaugh. These two petty but also not-so-petty criminals happen upon a scheme during their brief road trip’s peeing in bottles, punching women, and distributing sperm to banks for quick cash, a plan involving kidnapping for ransom a surrogate mother named Robin (played by Juliette Lewis) who SPOILER ALERT whose baby doctor is her baby daddy who, despite having a different last name, is SPOILER the son of the expected father of the embryo that didn’t take and the plot gets (strike as appropriate: purposively complex / even dumber / more twisted / majorly buggin’) from there. Another Lewis, pod favorite and Juliette’s father Geoffrey, is introduced (strike as appropriate: losing / winning) at a complex variation of Russian roulette as part of James Caan’s Members-only posse who mount up for the film’s squibbiest moment, a finale at a Mexican cantina and whorehouse.

O.G. host Ken casts Jonah Hill as Jonah Hex in a McG remake of the film while hosts Thomas and Ryan introduce Natural Born Killers into the chat, wondering if it not The Friends of Eddie Coyle for the 90s. Guest host Jack defends the movie’s inclusion in Season 15 as all that and a bag of chips and not wiggity wiggity wack.

Next week is Robocop. Psych! My bad. That’s in the pairing after next. Follow and subscribe if you want the 411. Also, send an electronic mail down the information superhighway to thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com if you want Thomas’s copy on DVD. We outtie.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

What’s the rumpus? This week TGTPTU gives the Coen Brothers movie classic MILLER’S CROSSING (1990) the treatment as part of its Squib Season, see.

Lensed by Barry Sonnenfeld in his last frolic as the brothers’ cinematographer, Ethan Coen told the man with a golden eye that Miller’s Crossing should be a handsome film about men in hats, and Sonnenfeld delivers the goods with one spectacularly shot period piece from the Prohibition Era.

The picture stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan, the hard-drinking, harder-gambling Irish consigliere who knows all the angles, who’s having an affair with his boss’s skirt Verna Bernbaum (played by Marcia Gay Harden, who shortly after filming would originate the role of Harper Pitt in Tony Kushner’s two-part play Angels in America, see Season 7 of TGTPTU for more!).

Pod favorite John Turturro plays her brother Bernie, a conniving low-life crook who causes the friction in the ranks and can turn on the waterworks when needed. Jon Polito plays a loving dad allergic to the high-hat and with his right-hand J. E. Freeman playing the Dane (same year he’d star in Wild at Heart, see Season 4) they plan to take over the town from Albert Finney in one of his two roles as Tom’s boss Leo (the other appearance uncredited, spoilers during the episode for this Easter egg). Also, director and occasional second-unit-for-the-Coens-director Sam Raimi (and, can you believe it, brother of actor Ted Raimi from Hard Target covered earlier this Squib Games season!) shows up to plug a speakeasy patron grabbing air before himself getting gatted. And if you still haven’t had your fill, at this buffet of talent we even get a smattering of Steve Buscemi delivering ratatat dialogue for a scene.

This ep, Jack brings the book report, Thomas the Danish facts, Ken reenacts the experience of watching Miller’s Crossing with him by dropping movie quotes throughout the episode, Ryan brings up Gabriel Byrne’s acting chops, and all four hosts harmonize on the greater good.

Now get outta here. You’re stinking up the joint.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text

SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

Squib Games Season (S15) continues with an 80’s cable classic and special effects extravaganza, the eponymous F/X (1986).

Director Robert Mandel best known for his 1992 drama School Ties had no major studio film to his credit when he was hired to direct the two top tiered Bryans: Aussie sexpot Bryan Brown as the Hollywood special effects guru Roland “Rollie” Tyler, an immigrant framed by crooked law enforcement in an intricate double-fake out murder leaving him a marked man, and Brian Dennehy (returning to the action genre, see First Blood from earlier this season) as Detective Leo McCarthy who plays by his own rulebook and likely soon up for retirement who suspects Rollie might be innocent. Pod favs Diane Venora (Bird, Heat, The Insider) has a minor role as the aspiring actress love interest and Tom Noonan (Manhunter this same year) plays a tall goon. Surprisingly for an action-intrigue movie set in the 1980s, there are a pleasant number of professional women getting the job done, although those who pop most on screen are Rollie’s and Det. McCarthy’s respective sidekicks.

Mixing reveals on how effects are done in real life with FX in the reality of the movie’s world provides a great primer for this season’s gun play as well as lets the movie’s hero exact lethal revenge without having to hold a gun. Such a fun concept, the premise spawned a sequel five years later starring the two Bryans and five years after that a forty-episode, two-season Canadian TV series starring neither Bry/i/an.

The hosts this ep spitball alternate castings for turning F/X from a action-thriller into a b-movie gorefest; Ken’s feels safe to share his big glasses frame fetish; Ryan’s presents a theory on why straight women wore out copies of their VHS’s; and Thomas gets the opportunity to mention both The Rage: Carrie 2 and Psycho III in nearly the same breath.

Jack, this season’s visiting guest host and inspiration for Squib Season, is off again this week on some continental op but will return for next episode with the book report for Miller’s Crossing.

Fun final fact: F/X is the first movie since TGTPTU Season 4’s Cage/Uncaged to have a forward slash (or a “stroke” for our speakers of British English) in its title. That prior movie, of course, was our first John Woo film covered.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias