I'll do it.

For five.

What?

I'll pay you $250.

Now, I ain't cheap, but I can't be had. My minimum price for taking a stranded woman to a telephone is $400.

Will you take $375 in travelers checks?

American Express?

Of course.

Paul, that is so delightful. And who under 40 is going to understand what that scene was about at all?

Oh, the nostalgia of travelers checks.

I miss travelers checks so much. But I got to tell you, the thing I really I'm just struck by is what a great movie this is, how delightful it is, and how even though I haven't seen it in at least 10 years, I still can quote chapter and verse of this movie, right? I mean, what was your experience seeing this movie for the first time? Well, we should get to that after the credits, I suppose. But I'm so excited, Paul.

I'm so excited, you're excited.

Well, let's just say that, well, let's just get on with it and just start the show, so we can actually talk about the movie. Because unlike when we did Time Rider and we had some interpersonal business that had to be addressed, I think we're okay now, right?

We had intertemporal business.

All right.

Well, on that note, I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is.

Multiplex Overthruster, Summer of 84.

Okay. Paul, the movie is-

Javi.

The movie is Romancing The Stone.

It is.

A frequently, not forgotten, but frequently overlooked classic of its time. In my opinion. I don't know how you feel about it, but I am so high on this movie, I can't even begin to tell you.

It's fine.

Really? It's okay. I mean, I don't mind if you're a little bit more meh on it than I am, but I'm surprised that you're- are you being sarcastic or are you being accurate to your impression of the film?

A little of both. I think that maybe it had been unfairly elevated in my nostalgic memory.

Really?

A little bit. And I found that surprising. It is a delightful, breezy diversion. I was struck by- it's a little shaggy.

Oh, it's very shaggy. It's not like-

Yes.

And that's part of the charm, I think.

And also, like half or three quarters of all the dialogue is exposition. Like, it is just a feast of exposition, it feels like to me. It's all plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, plot.

I've watched this movie so much that I didn't even feel that.

But it's fun. It's very fun and charming. But I don't know that I would put it in the great category. But it's delightful. Also, I will say slightly destabilizing.

Why so?

Seeing these, this leading man and leading woman, these icons of the mid-80s, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Yes, who I recall as a child thinking, Oh, those are, you know, Grown-ups. Fully, yes, yes, big-time grown-ups.

They have sex and romance and stuff, yeah, and guns.

It's very strange. I hadn't seen this movie in decades. And seeing them so freakishly young, and younger than we are now by-

Yes, especially Devito, especially Devito, right?

It's very strange.

Devito, basically, after this movie, he sort of got into a place where he was basically 65 for about 30 years, right? And, but in this movie, he looks younger than we know him to be, and it is quite odd, isn't it?

It is, it is.

I'll tell you a story. A writer friend of mine called me. This is why this movie falls into the category of great for me, and I do completely, I don't know about the exposition, because I love all the dialogue in this movie enormously.

It's a lot of fun.

But for me, it's, it's, a friend called me and said, can you name a single movie where the male and female lead rescue each other on a reasonably regular basis, and the female lead is not as underpowered and undervalued as the male lead? And the first thing that came into my mind was this one, you know, and then my friend said, yeah, but don't the gross stereotypes of Latinos bother you? To which I replied, if that kind of thing bothered me, I wouldn't watch movies. Because that's what it's like, you know, when you grow up Latino, it's like, if you don't like stereotypes, you're fucked, you know?

So that is a fair point. I will say that was something that struck me harder now than it did in my youth, but it did open up an aperture of awareness of just reminding me how abysmally bad Latina representation was in the period. And this film basically asserts that anyone who's Latino is a drug runner or an evil corrupt.

Well, not evil. You've got some very nice drug runners in this movie. Well, it's local businessmen running the one business that's available to them in that part of the world. I mean, I don't know.

Once they connect uncannily, coincidentally, with their literary hero.

Don't spoil it. I want to get to that.

No, but the other thing you mentioned about the characters, Kathleen Turner, who will extol the many virtues of, she is wonderful in the film.

Oh, she's so good in this movie.

And her character, Joan, has a remarkable arc and a great payoff where they're not just, we're gonna spoil everything, but not only do they save each other, she surprisingly and quite wonderfully saves herself.

Absolutely.

At the end. Absolutely. And that is almost a revolutionary act for this film and this time.

Look, I would put, look, I know that you're not, I know you don't feel this way and I'm sorry, but I at this point in my life would put this movie, if you took out the first 12 minutes of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which are the greatest short film ever made about Indiana Jones, ever, I think this is a better movie for me. I think it's a deeper movie. It's a more fun movie, even though the action is not as big. I just, I'm honestly revisiting this movie. I was struck by, I was also struck by how when I first, and we should ring the bell, but I was struck by how, you know, when I first saw this movie, this movie felt a lot more adult than the Raiders movies because it is about a romance and it's a relationship that's a little bit, it's not romance the way Indy has romances. It's an actual romance with people kind of getting to know each other and a thing, you know? And I remember this movie feeling more adult and feeling more like a romantic comedy that had great, which it is. I don't know, for me, this movie has just sort of aged like a fine wine, but why don't we, let's get into it. Let's talk about Romancing The Stone, shall we?

Ding, ding.

Thank you, sir. Now, do you remember where you saw this movie, how you saw this movie, where you were, anything like that?

I only have a vague memory of seeing it. It was a PG.

Yes.

And it pushes that here and there. But yeah, I had just very fond, kind of nostalgic distant memories. It's not a film I've ever really revisited.

Really?

Not until now. Wow. But just the sense of vibe and fun. I probably saw it on cable and video in that successive era. But since then, certainly not this century had not seen it.

Now, I did not see this movie with, we're getting to the end of the era where I did not see movies with producer Brad. Once we get to like, past the summer of 84, pretty much everything is gonna be, well, producer Brad and I went and saw it.

The end of the summer of 84.

The end of the summer of 84 is when we...

We'll talk at the end.

Okay, we'll talk at the end?

The end of the summer.

Yes, we'll talk at the end of the summer. We will talk at the end of the summer. Okay, folks, we're talking about Romancing The Stone, a movie that I assume all of you know because I think it's such a great and classic film. It is the tender, heartwarming, thrilling adventure of Joan Wilder, a repressed romance novelist, who, her sister is in a little bit of trouble in Columbia. She gets kidnapped by these antiquities thieves, and because her husband had a treasure map. So Kathleen Turner's character, Joan Wilder, winds up traveling to Columbia completely unprepared for it, where she is double-crossed several times, winds up stranded in the middle of the jungle, as we saw in our opening clip, and she meets none other than Jack T. Colton, played by Michael Douglas, a near-do-well smuggler of rare birds, who winds up taking, what is it, $375 of her dollars in American Express Traveler's Checks to take her to Cartagena, where she's supposed to meet the bad guys and exchange the map for her sister. But they wind up having an amazing romance and a great treasure hunt together, and ultimately they defeat the villains, save the sister, and they get the stone, the titular stone, which we'll talk about in a second. So the movie begins with one of the greatest opening monologues ever, because what we learn at the beginning of the movie is that Kathleen Turner, Joan Wilder, I'm just going to call her Joan Wilder. This is the one movie where I'm actually going to call the characters, their names, and not the act. That's how much I like this movie. Joan Wilder is narrating what we realize is her romance novel that she's finishing, and the novel is Angelina Savage Secret.

The finale of her latest romance, yeah, but we are getting a very vivid cinematic imaginary adaptation version of it. Yes, our prologue.

This is her last voiceover. These are presumably the last lines of the novel, shall we, producer Brad?

Well, before we start, we should talk about you and I watched the movie together.

We watched this movie together?

Yes, we did.

Oh, like three days ago.

Yeah, last week. And as I was setting up the movie, you started quoting the lines from the beginning of the movie and did the first scene before the movie even started.

I love this movie, and I find this movie eminently quotable. Yeah, I don't know. It really imprinted on me, or I imprinted on it. Okay, let's hear it. Let's hear it. This is so much fun.

That was the end of Grogan, the man who killed my father, raped and murdered my sister, burned my ranch, shot my dog and stole my Bible. But if there was one law of the West, bastards had brothers who seemed to ride forever. But suddenly, there he was, my beloved Jesse.

Now what's interesting about this is she kills, she's just killed Grogan, the man who killed her mother and father, raped and murdered his sister, burned down her barn, shot her dog and stole her Bible. And she's actually thrown a knife, she had a concealed knife that she throws and uses to kill Grogan, which will come back later in the movie, weirdly. Watching the scene now as an adult, Paul, something that I found really interesting about it. So in my travels, I've gained a few friends who write romance novels. And they've all told me that one of the reasons in romance novels, you never see the faces of the characters, they usually cut the character's face at the neck, right? Is so that the reader can see themselves in the character, right?

Yes.

And I think it's really fascinating that the way this was shot, you never see Angelina's face.

Yes. Or much of Jesse's. Yes.

You see a lot of Grogan spitting tobacco and shit.

Yes. In vivid, sweaty detail.

Yes.

Yeah. I like this sequence a lot. It is clearly Zemeckis having fun getting to make a Western. Yeah. But as a short film on a studio scale. And that is the best that Alan Silvestri's score is, I think, in the whole film. Because the rest of the film is really a cheesy, sax heavy 80s score.

Paul, let's you and I have a real, let's have some real talk here, man to man, okay? Because I feel like this is something that has to be discussed. Now look, the saxophone as a tone color has gone horribly out of fashion, as we know. I believe to the detriment of music, but not everyone agrees, right?

Fair.

I think that what Silvestri's doing here, we're literally getting a score that sounds like John Williams' score for The Cowboys. I mean, it is like such a classic, you know, and it shows that Silvestri can do that. But I actually really like, I do actually really like the cheesy sax score in this movie, because it feels like what this movie is. Unlike something like Raiders that has like an orchestral score, because it's sort of evoking movie serial, to me, this movie, it's a romance. Now the other thing I would say is, I don't know if we're going to see this movie anytime, I think probably a couple summers from now, but Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome also mostly saxophone score, which is derided by many, but I think the presence of the sax should not be an immediate slam against the score. That's all I gotta say.

Now, and Paul, before you speak, I played-

We're talking man to man here, remember?

Yeah, I played sax in the 80s, so just be careful.

Oh yeah, producer Brad was a saxophone player, actually, yeah.

I had a neighbor for a number of years, who was an accomplished jazz saxophone player.

And he still tied up to the basement of the house he lived in during that time, because you hit the sax so much, clearly.

He would practice regularly, and thank God he was good, or he would not be alive. But no, I harbor no ill will toward the saxophone or its many masters and aficionados. But let me just, a little sax goes a long way. And there's a whole lot of saxy sax.

Of all the cheesy 80s scores.

It is so cheesy 80s.

But this is my favorite, and I love it. And I do love it.

If you love it, I am so happy for you. It fits this movie so well. Yes, it does. But we're getting here the setup that Joan has this contrast, as we then cut to.

Wait, are you Paul Plott or am I Paul Plott today?

Oh, I don't know.

I'm Paul Plott. You were Paul Plott on Repo Man because it's like your favorite movie.

Oh yeah, okay, go get that. I was going to draw the contrast, but we haven't gotten to yet in terms of like...

I can see you're feeling restless. You want to get on with this.

Yes.

Did you hate this movie this much? You still want to talk about it that much?

No, I liked it. It's fine.

It's fine. No, I'm so... Oh my God, this is the worst day of my life. Okay, so we cut from this fantasy sequence to, in fact, Joan Wilder, her New York apartment. We find out she is the stereotype of a female writer. She has cats instead of a boyfriend. She is very forgetful. There's notes everywhere. She's clearly just a very, she's just in her own mind, right? And even milk, she doesn't have milk, but then she finds the note reminding her to get milk, but then she uses the note to blow her nose, because then she finds the note reminding her to buy tissues. You're getting the sense that she's kind of feckless. She has a hard time adulting, I think, is what we're trying to establish here. But she has just weepingly finished writing this book.

Yes, yes, we cut to her in tears, finishing her voiceover, which she's typing.

She's not written something that drove them to tears, by the way.

In her typewriter. And we see her surrounded with an ab-

Paul, I got to ask, Javi, what have you written that's made you cry?

Oh, I don't even want to get into it, because I'll just come up sounding like Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard. It's horrible. There's no greater fan of my writing than me, producer Brad. No one is more moved emotionally by what I have to say than I. But do go on, Paul.

Sorry, Paul. So watching this scene was a very interesting experience. It's such a great contrast to the prologue, the old West imaginary fantasy, romantic imagery that Joan has conjured on her page, in her Smith Corona or whatever. But we see that she is surrounded by an abundance of literary romance novel awards. Yes.

They're very good at making sure we see those on the walls.

Yes. Very effective to telegraph that to us. Also, as you pointed out, a just staggering abundance of Post-It Notes.

Which were brand new at the time.

Then also, she has a whole cabinet full of little tiny liquor bottles.

Yes, she does.

Her own little mini bar. And her companion, she does not have a man in her life. She has a cat. And I will say, at this moment, I'm like, a little troubled by the stereotype, but it is in service of the arc the character goes under. And it is by a woman writer, who I think makes a pretty bold step into cliche and stereotype at the outset to then undermine, demolish it, re-engineer it and then triumph over it. And that is a really impressive bit of work, I think, in this film.

I would also make the argument that we were probably not as used to seeing female writers on the screen as protagonists of things. So I think that some of these cliches might have been less cliched in 1984. They may have still been cliches, but they might not have been as bad as they are now. So anyway.

Yeah, and the other thing, too, is that it shows that, okay, while she has had material success, clearly, she has a very nice apartment, all these awards, lots of little tiny bottles that indicate she's been on many flights.

Yes, or that she's an alcoholic who's used to concealing her consumption from her loved ones.

Maybe that, but that she has, she's clinging to this imaginary fantasy ideal.

Yes.

Of both a potential mate and a potential life of adventure, that she, nothing in reality could ever possibly, she thinks, match.

Well, it's just homogeneously incapable of living the life she writes about is what the movie is also telling us. But it's interesting because the next scene is exactly about that. She takes her manuscript and she's just finished and she's meeting one of the great human beings of all time, Holland Taylor, who was basically 40 years old for 60 years and to our great, great benefit as a society. And she gives basically the archetypal, because Holland Taylor has always excelled at playing sexually liberated women of a certain age, even when she herself was not of a certain age. So, the scene with Holland Taylor starts there at a bar, there at some New York Fern bar, and she's literally going down the line of all the men. Producer Brad, let's hear clip number two, because wow, I'm into it.

Wimp, wimp, loser, loser, major loser. Too angry, too vague, too desperate, God, too happy. Oh, look at this guy, Mr. Mondo Disman.

Oh, I actually used to date him.

Total sleazebuck.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold everything. Get a load of this character. Now, what about him?

No, he's, he's just not.

Who?

Jesse. Maybe it's silly, but I know that there is somebody out there for me.

Boy, talk about your I Want song just put in the most, like, and I love I Want songs in movies when they're done very elegantly. To me, yes, what I love about this is this, this is the to be or not to be of Holland Taylor. I mean, it really is amazing. And you're hearing, and you're hearing Jones desires, you know?

Yeah. Two things I do genuinely love about this. First of all, can you find two women actors with better, more luxuriously wondrous voices?

Oh, they are downright velvety, aren't they?

That you could just listen to all day saying anything. And the treat of having both of them is just such a joy. And I echo everything you said about Holland Taylor.

As much as I love every time Holland Taylor shows up in a romantic comedy, I remember her from Bussum Buddies. Remember the show that gave us Tom Hanks? And she was the head of the advertising firm. And of course, she had all sorts of unseemly adventures with men that would come up in conversation. I saw Holland Taylor recite the libretto for a Philip Glass opera during a performance by the LA Philharmonic of Akhenaten, and it was still great. And if she had thrown in the words Mondo Dismo, it would have been even better.

And also, I mean, I could go on so many Holland Taylor tangents, but the one that does stick out is her here being in Austin, Texas, playing the late great Ann Richards. The one woman show that played Broadway and toured, and she is just magnificent in it, and it is such a gift. But what's great here is that we have her as this self-assured, sardonic, just perfect figure of authority and confidence. And Turner very effectively is playing this mousy, insecure, self-conscious woman, writer, kind of introvert, who we are not used to when we think of Kathleen Turner.

We think of Kathleen Turner as the film noir femme fatale in Body Heat. Or we think of her as the femme fatale in The Man with Two Brains.

Or who she becomes over the course of this film. But to see her pull this off in the first act of the film, I look at that and I'm like, yeah, that's acting. This is good stuff.

But the plot does start in this scene because this is where we learn that her sister, Elaine, is in a little bit of trouble in Colombia. And it actually leads to a line that I really like, which is, well, let's do clip number three. This is part of the conversation that goes on in this Fern Bar between these two women.

Have they found her husband's body yet?

Just the one piece.

Uh-oh. And what we as the audience know, but these two women don't know, is that while they're at the Fern Bar looking at men, a very dark, kind of almost fake-baked guy is appearing at her apartment looking around and he actually kidney stabs the janitor.

A mysterious trench coat clad Latino in a hat.

With a mustache that could have its own movie.

Yeah.

And we have a quote describing this guy, so I don't want to get into it right now, but we find out that some very ominous people are after the map that resulted in Elaine's husband only being found, only the one part of Elaine's husband being found.

So yes, what we'll soon find is that the husband, before he was killed, mailed something, a document for safekeeping to Joan in New York. And it is being pursued by nefarious forces.

Nefarious forces. Now, because now also we cut back to Elaine. We actually get to see Elaine here early on. Elaine was actually, there's a great scene that follows this where Elaine is kidnapped by like a 12 year old boy. Elaine is in Colombia and there's these kids playing around and this kid's playing around with a bolo. And the kid like literally throws the bolo, hits her on the neck, knocks her out, gets into her Porsche, drives, it's like a Porsche or a Ferrari or a Corbece or something, and drives it to the location of Ralph and Ira, the international antiquity thieves we've talked about. And you know, let's get a little bit of a taste of Ralph and Ira. Let's do clip number three, producer Brad.

Somebody's going to get killed and you're farting around with prehistoric animals. Come on, Ira, let's forget this one.

I got a real bad feeling about it, real bad.

Will you stop worrying? Have I ever hurt you? I will never hurt you. I can't hurt you. We got the same blood. We're not two people. We are one person. Would I hurt me? Look at those snappers, Ralph.

Crocodiles are a huge part of this movie. Clearly, Ira likes them as pets. But they'll play a much bigger role in this film. So what we're finding out is Ira and Ralph are looking for the treasure map. Is the guy with the mustache with them? We don't know, but we know they're looking for it.

Yeah, I also just want to acknowledge there's some really good, fun, if somewhat clunky and obvious setups and payoffs in this film. And the Crocodiles as a setup have one of the best payoffs you could ever dream of.

This is Diane Thomas' first script. That was produced at least, and she'd written other things before. The mechanics of the script, even though the story is a little bit on the shaggy side, I find the planting and the payoff in the trip to be really quite great. Between the knife at the beginning, which we'll talk about later, just the fact that she's a romance not, by the way, the twist that we all know about that we're going to talk about later. Paul, I don't think I've ever been as delighted or surprised by a twist in a film ever, ever. And we'll get to it, we got to get to it. Anyway, Joan comes back home from her meeting to find that her apartment has been ransacked. The janitor has been shivved in the kidneys, right? And just as she's about to pick up the phone and call the police, she gets a phone call from Ralph and Ira. And, well, it's kind of laying out what the deal is right now. Would you like to play that, Producer Brad?

Honey, these are some kind of treasure map inside.

It says El Corazon.

I need you to bring that map to me in Colombia.

Colombia? My God, what kind of trouble are you in?

Tony, please, get to the Hotel Cartagena in Cartagena.

When you arrive, call this number, 645824. Are you writing to Sal?

Yes, and remember, you must tell anybody.

You think I can't go to Colombia?

Tony, they'll cut me. They'll hurt me.

Paul, just watching your expression as that clip plays, when the music kicks in, just the cheese factor kicks in, and you're just like, I can see you squirming. You really hate the score.

Well, it's not, I mean, the score here is fine because no sacks. But it is, you know, cue the Latino theme. We're going to Latin America. It sounds a little like, oh, we're going to go to an exotic place.

Look, I mean, they didn't break out the pan pipes, so I'm delighted. That's the other thing is like, you know, by the standards of our time.

It's just that like right out of the gate, the movie, and it's fine. I'm just like, it is absurd.

It is just ridiculous. Remember in Scarface, right? One of my favorite movies where like, they suddenly go to Columbia and it's like, it's like pan pipes and like bongos and shit. I mean, at least this is just more like jazz, right? I don't know.

Yeah, it's just the whole like plot construction, like out of the blue. It's like, oh, this is like...

Columbia is very much played as a developing country, without many of the things, although they actually make fun of that later in the movie.

They do, but right after this phone call where Joan is instructed not to tell anybody, this is very funny, we cut to her literally telling...

Oh, absolutely, telling Mala Taylor everything.

Because she needs somebody to cat-sit for her, which Mala Taylor agrees to, but with the caveat that she refuses to pick up the cat, to actually like hold the cat.

Also, we should point out that Elaine is played by Mary Ellen Traynor, who was Robert Zemeckis' wife until she wasn't. And then you know when she stopped being Robert Zemeckis' wife, because she stopped having cameos in his movies.

That'll do it. Yes, but also the excessive extremes within which Holland Taylor and other characters at every opportunity in turn paint the scariest, most stereotypical picture of Columbia. And I get it's the 80s and it's not whatever the same, but still it just it's...

There's a couple of things I want to point out. I understand that, Paul. And again, I don't want to defend the stereotypes, but there is a piece of planting and payoff here that is unseen by most of us, which is when Holland Taylor says, you don't know what it's like in Columbia. I do. Your books do really well in these macho countries, which is kind of awesome. But also, I love that Holland Taylor has this great line here, and it's a classic Holland Taylor on which she says, you get car sick, you get bus sick, you get plane sick, you once got sick in the escalator at Macy's. And Joan replies, a lot of people get sick in department stores. Which again, do people even know what a department store is anymore? I mean, so anyway, it's probably an online shopping joke at this point, right? Anyway.

No, there are. And that is again, and I kind of wish that I did not know the tragic dimension of this film, particularly when it where it has to do with the screenwriter, Diane Thomas, because this is a very fun script and there are so many little nuggets of joy and attention to detail that she deploys that does efficiently illuminate character. A lot of it is kind of having fun with exposition.

Now, Paul, we might as well address that now so that we don't get sad about it later. Diane Thomas sadly died, I think before the movie was even released, right?

I think a year after. I think after it came out. Yeah, it was like a carcass.

It was a senseless.

And she was 39. This was her big break.

Yup.

A huge hit and success.

Yup.

And tragically died in a car accident.

And if you read her Wikipedia page, there is a tantalizing sentence in there that kills me, Paul. I don't know if I want this movie to have been made, but I wish I could have read the script. She was hired to write Indiana Jones 3.

Yes.

Right after this movie. And apparently her Indiana Jones 3 took place in a haunted mansion.

Yeah.

Come on. I don't know if I want to see that movie, but I want to read that script really badly.

You know what? I wonder if it's in the WGA library.

Well, now we have a quest of our own, don't we?

We have a quest. I want to find out.

So here's what happens. She gets to Columbia. And the Colombian airport is portrayed as just like, it might as well be a farm, and people are carrying baskets and there's chickens everywhere, and she's trying to get in a bus. And of course, our mustachioed, kidney-shiving villain appears solo, solo, with a Z, not an S, not like Hansel. He's not solo like he's alone. He's solo like...

Not an X.

No, not an X. What do you mean?

Solo. Solo.

Wow. You're pouring out, you know, you're Chilean, not Central American. You're pouring it out a bit thick, here, my friend. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is she gets on the wrong bus. She winds up just, Solo winds up putting her on the wrong bus by giving her advice. He gets on the bus hoping he can jump her later in the thing.

So, okay. Point. And I know the answer to this question, which is that the movie would be over. But there is no, by any stretch of the imagination... Exactly. Exactly. There is no reason at all in this scene, in this moment, instead of just getting her on the wrong bus, that he couldn't just take the map. He sees the map in her bag.

Considering that he shivs the janitor and he straight up murders a couple of people in this movie already. So, it's not like he's afraid of being seen doing shitty crap in public, you know?

And then later, we find out he's apparently the head of the secret police.

Yeah, I've got that speech on tap.

So, I'm like, what the hell? But again, then the movie would be over. It would be over. But the fact that this stuff like this drives me crazy in movies, which is that, do not create this situation that then depends on inexplicable stupidity or unfathomable choices.

Look, I can buy that Zolo is in the middle of a very large crowd, and he does not want to assault an American woman in the middle of the International Airport of Columbia.

He's the head of the Secret Police. He could be...

He's also the Minister of Antiquities.

Sure. He's a man of many talents. But he could... there's no way he could just finesse a swipe.

I think you're absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right. But, you know, at the same time, like, you're stopping the fun train. The fun train has left the station, and you're like literally standing there stopping the fun train. You know, you can't stop the fun train.

Okay, I know.

You're like, you know, the fun train needed to stop and somebody needed to work out this plot beat, Javi, if that is your name.

And the fun train, or rather the fun bus she gets on to the mountains and the jungles is then also just full of...

Latino stereotypes.

Latino stereotypes. To the point of her stepping on a peasant's piglet.

Yes, yes, yes.

And then I'll let you take it from there in terms of what happens.

It is definitely a 1980s view from the United States of a very heightened version. I mean, look, I assume Columbia is also, you know, probably has its own rural qualities there and all of that. But I also have to say that, you know, like it is a very heightened 1980s vision of what this movie would be like as Joan Wilder's Nightmare, you know, because it is literally trying to find the biggest contrast between this mousy romance writer. And so I get it. I get it. And like I said, for some reason, the stereotypes in this movie didn't bother me because I found the movie so charming. And that's for me, maybe the magic of it. I don't know.

I think it is insidiously charming because it is unavoidably, it is a big studio film with all white leads set in Latin America, in Columbia.

Do you think they're trying to make us racist like a sikodin with charm? In any event, look, Joan realizes the bus is going the wrong way once they're like on a very narrow mountain pass. And she goes to talk to the bus driver, causing the bus to crash into a parked jeep.

It's very funny. This is very funny.

So, well, also the line that I quote most from this movie is in this, which is when she talks to the bus driver and the bus driver goes, Que? Whenever somebody speaks to me in English, and I don't want to hear what they have to say, I just do that. So everybody gets out of the bus. The bus is ruined. The bus isn't going to go on. She gets out of the bus. She's trying to figure out where if there's another bus coming or whatever. Right. And who gets out of the bus? Zolo. Mustachioed kidney-shift guy who then pulls a gun on her.

Yes. Once all the passengers have walked away, because they're just going to hike it. He waits for them to get a safe distance. And then he reveals his true intentions.

Yes, which is to steal the map at gunpoint. How he's getting away, I'm not sure, but whatevs. Anyway, and just as things look the worst for John Wilder, a man appears on the ridge and you can't see his face for any part of the sequence, much like Jesse.

He's in silhouette, dramatic silhouette.

John hides under the bus. This character, literally, he's wearing an Indiana Jones hat. He takes out his shotgun. He starts shooting at the mustache guy. They have a gunfight and mustache guy runs away. And this man goes under the bus to see who's there. And this is the first moment when Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas meet in this film. And it's just, you know what? I honestly think this shit is magical. I'm sorry, I'm a big fan.

It's really good. It's really good.

And, you know, so basically they have, and they have this interaction that we heard at the beginning where, you know, she's stranded. His birds have all have all flown away because they because they all got freed in the bus crash. He's out of everything.

It turns out, we find out later explicitly, he is an exotic bird dealer. That is apparently.

Thief and smuggler is what he is.

But I was being charitable. And the crash, the bus crashes into a parked jeep on the side of the road, which is his.

Yeah, with all the birds in it and the birds fly away.

Yeah.

And what's the one thing he saves from the jeep? Paul Alvarado-Dykstra?

His I Want song.

Yes. I love this so much.

Which is a framed photo of a yacht.

Of a sailboat. Not a yacht. No, no. Yacht implies billionaire douchebag. This is a sailboat that he can.

A very modest sailing.

Since we find out this boat can be held in a trailer, I would say this boat's about a 30 footer.

Let's just say it's a very impressive sailboat.

Yes, but I'd say 30 to 40 footer at most. Yeah. Okay, so they have this meat cute. He agrees to take her money and then it starts to pour. It just starts to pour and pour and pour. And she kind of expects him to take her suitcase and he just kind of drags it all the way to her and drops it right at her feet.

Not for $375. Maybe he would have done it for $500, which is what he tries to get. I will say that the best thing about this movie and it is total delight are the regular just stretches of banter between Jack and Joan. The two of them are just magic.

There's a reason they made a sequel to this movie that wasn't very good, sadly.

Right. Within a year, the next year they rushed out a sequel.

But Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas liked each other well enough that then they made War of the Roses, which was directed by Danny Devito.

Yes.

It's a really sad movie that I don't enjoy because it's just a little too dark for my taste. But these two were real, not a couple in real life. They were like a real couple in terms of Bogart and whoever, Hepburn. I mean, it's like they really had that magic.

A great screen pairing.

So here's what happens. Basically, it's pouring rain. She's carrying the suitcase. He just goes up to her and takes the suitcase and flings it off a cliff. Just as she gets really upset with him about that, the entire cliff dissolves into mud. This is one of the best sequence.

It's a great side gag.

They're both on a mudslide. They go all the way down the hill.

Well, but first, what's great is it is Looney Tunes. Because what happens is he tosses the suitcase off this cliff into the jungle, whatever, and it's pouring rain. And then, as she is mad and angry at him, the ground literally dissolves under her feet, and she just falls out of frame. Like, down, and then we see her slide down in this mudslide. And then he, like Wile E. Coyote, goes, oh, that. is standing there and goes, like, he knows what's going to happen, which is that then he falls out of frame.

Just take him a second to fall out of frame.

It is such a great comic timing and just direction.

Followed by an even better side gag, which is she, of course, falls first into the puddle at the end of the mudslide, right? And he literally falls face first between her legs, which-

Into her crotch.

But you know what? But again, it's funny. It doesn't feel lecherous. It just feels like-

Well, it's right there. It's right there. It's played light, it's light lechery.

But she has been such a prude up until now, you know, that it's a real sort of invasion of-

Yes.

I mean, obviously it's a violation, but not in a way that's played like- And it just feels like-

It's not prurient or anything.

It feels like a moment where the last line of defense, which is her long skirt gets breached and she's like just in the wilderness now. And that leads to the following line. Producer Brad, please give it to us.

Oh, god damn it!

What a ride, huh?

Ha ha! I'm telling you, this turned out to be one hell of a morning.

You okay?

I said, are you hurt?

What's the matter?

You paralyzed from the neck up? Are you hurt?

Look!

What's your name?

Paul, I'm to John Walder.

John Walder, welcome to Columbia.

What I love about this, Paul, and maybe it's just your light disdain for this film that has me so hyperbolic about it, but I gotta tell you, and producer Brad will attest to this, I was delighted watching this film just a couple days ago. So this is not just something I'm putting on for you. What I love about everything leading up to this is that Jack, right, his name is Jack T. Colton, we're gonna find out later, is the anti-Jesse. He's bro-y, right? He's kind of like, he's not the most considerate guy. He's kind of really rough around the edges and not in a romantic way, you know?

Yes.

And, but that friction is what actually leads for them to have this relationship, which is, I just love that. I just love how the movie lets these two characters become who they're gonna be, you know?

And it does create a very interesting meta-narrative triangle that only we and Joan are aware of, that Jack is oblivious of. Because there are three characters, even though there are only two physically that exist in this relationship. There's Jack and Joan, but there's also the imaginary ideal of Jesse, that Joan is carrying with her and projecting onto Jack, but in friction, in a collision, that he is not meeting that ideal.

There's a scene later in the movie where she just lays it out for him how he's not like Jesse, and I think we're going to have to find that quote because I didn't put it in, but it's a really important quote because she totally like, lays it out for him that he's not Jesse, and it is exactly the whole point of the movie is he's not Jesse. He's actually better, but he's also deeply flawed, and there are parts of this movie where he's allowed to be flawed in a way that you could dislike him for, so it's really interesting.

Yes, yes. And as you said, and this sets up the next scene as well, which is a great example, this film does physical comedy and gags.

Beautifully.

Very well.

So well.

And the next scene gives Danny Devito a great opportunity for this.

Yes, but the, so, well, oh, the next scene is-

In the police station when he's on the phone.

Danny Devito has wound up in the police station near where the bus crash happened because he's been going after the bus, right?

Yes, yes, he's on the trail of Joan.

Yes, Zolo is trying to, is getting to the police station because he needs to find his people, his weapons, like, really put together a posse so he can go after the map, right?

Yes.

So before Zolo arrives, Devito gets there and Devito gets on the phone to Ralph. And of course he receives to Ira and Ira, his cousin.

Yeah.

And his first line into the phone, he goes, Yeah, mom, it's Irving, which is hilarious because he's obviously. So, and while he's explaining everything that's happened and apparently the police station is a hub of activity. There's a lot of stuff. He says it's like some sort of spickle military mobilization for Iwo Jima. It's very insulting. And then, and then he sees his own wanted mugshot on the wall.

Yes.

And he's trying to get any falls off of the counter. He gets up on the counter to try to get any falls off the counter. It's hilarious.

It's a great bet.

But what we get, oh, no, wait a second. Paul, I'm sorry. I have, I have completely, because we forgot in our first clip. The way that Devito and Solo get to the station is that Devito has this car. Devito has been following the bus in this really rinky-tinky car. And who does he pick up as a hitchhiker?

Solo commandeers it.

Commandeers the car. So Devito is trying to not be seen. He's kind of holding his face to his hand, right?

Oh yeah.

Because he knows Solo knows who he is, you know, cause Solo is also Minister of Antiquities and he's an Antiquities thief, right? And so, so Solo wants to know who Devito is. And actually, can we get to, can we see line number six, Producer Brad?

No comprendo. I hate Americanos and scum.

I love this scene again, because the assumption, it literally zags. It's your tig. I mean, Zolo should figure out who he is and whatever, but instead he just asks, are you French? Like, Devito's subterfuge worked, but I don't know, Paul. I'm too busy being delighted by this to even clock your disdain.

I just have two words. El Scummo.

El Scummo.

It's so stupid. I mean, it is funny. It's this kind of thing that I feel like if you saw it on the page, you're just like, this is never going to work. It's so stupid. But Danny Devito-

He sells it so hard.

Can kind of make anything work because he's unhinged.

I think one of the reasons I love this movie so much is it's like an Indiana Jones movie that had a wild night in Tangier with a screwball comedy from the 1930s, you know? And this is like their mutant love child. It's like there are a lot of ridiculous characters in this movie that shouldn't work, but they do.

It's an Indiana Jones movie that got as high as Harrison Ford did.

You know, I have a friend whose job, he was a PA on a movie, Harrison Ford shot outside of the country, and his job was to go to the American Embassy and get the weed.

Yes. And again, speaking of the revered Mr. Ford's...

We're not telling tales in the classroom. Earlier days. They say he was a major stoner.

Yes, which he has, I think, fully and faithfully acknowledged.

I think he's fully and faithfully embraced it. I think he's America's stoned uncle. If it shows up on Jimmy Kimmel, you think he's straight?

I just want to be clear. I'm casting no aspersions whatsoever.

Look, neither you nor I could possibly ever cast an aspersion on Harrison Ford. That man is our idol. So here's what happens. Then we go back to Elaine, right? Because Zolo is mobilizing all of the local police to go on the hunt, right? And we don't know who Zolo is yet. So obviously, Paul, as you pointed out, there's a lot of exposition in this movie. Well, here's one of the nicest expository monologues in the movie, delivered by Ira, who is played by the great Zack Norman, an underappreciated character actor. And so he's going to explain to us the threat of Zolo.

And that third party I told you about, he's tagging along.

The man who killed my husband?

The butcher who killed your husband. A very powerful man with his own private army to back him up. And whether he calls himself Dr. Zolo, Minister of Antiquities, or Colonel Zolo, Deputy Commander of the Secret Police, he's still just a butcher. Look at those snappers, will ya?

He's got two crocodiles on a lead, two baby crocs on a leash in his yacht. I love this.

And again, all this scene is just unabashedly a firehose of exposition.

Oh my God.

And then capped off with just a little dose of foreshadowing.

Just letting you know that crocodiles are gonna play a big role in this movie. But Paul.

It's shameless.

But you know what, Paul, here's the thing.

It's fun, though.

And here's the thing, that the best advice, I clock your objections and I agree with them. I don't disagree with you. I'm not gonna tell you this is a dramatic scene other than that she's still scared of Zack Novavira, you know? Elaine is still scared of Ira, now we know this. So nothing has changed in the scene. There's no... So this scene comes after Ralph calls Ira from the police station, so now we know. And now we know who Zolo is and all of that. But you know, this reminds me of the best advice I ever received, the best teaching I ever got in writing, which is... Something he said to me by a guy named Ted Wiesner, who's a novelist, he's passed away, he was one of my teachers in college. And he said, good writing is whatever you can get away with. Yeah. And what I love about this movie is we can make all of these, but I feel, you may not, I feel like they got away with it. Like, I don't care that the scene is an expository monologue because the movie sort of stacks them up in such a way. So you see Zolo coming in, now he's marshaling all of the cops in a small town. So you're wondering who the fuck is this guy. He's not just some weird private eye, because he's dressed kind of like a private eye with a fedora and then the trench coat. Then you find out he's the minister of all of this. It's kind of stacking up in an interesting way because even though it's not dramatic, it is setting the stakes. So I don't know.

It is. I think that my taste, and again, this movie is a cartoon and it is fun. But I would, I think, have better enjoyed a version that was less telegraphing everything.

You know.

And kind of letting us discover things and revealing things in more unexpected ways than like, oh, now we have to tell you all of this.

But I don't know if that's this movie.

That's the thing. Exactly, I know. That may not be fair. That's very true. But there is then next an example of stuff that I do like better, which is we're back in the jungle. Yes, Jack and Joan banter. But also there are two things that happen here. Physical like things. One, Jack retrieves what? The sailboat, the picture of the photo, the photo of the sailboat.

It's covered in mud and all that.

And it's been beaten to hell, whatever he's got. It's precious to him. He does not have a photo in a locket of some far flung lover. He has this totem of what he's yearning for.

It's what he was gonna buy with all those birds that just flew south for the winter.

Exactly, exactly. And then he also takes it upon himself because Joan, woefully ill-equipped.

Joan is wearing low-buttons, like they're Italian. So she's basically wearing like Italian high-heeled shoes.

Yes, and so he takes his machete and chops the heels off.

And I love how she looks at them with just, it's like he killed her dog or her cat. She looks at them and she goes, those were Italian. And he goes, now they're practical.

Yeah. And then, but before we get anything else, immediately Zolo and his men start shooting at them from above.

And this is great because it's like literally, and here Jack has found out that, so Zolo is shooting at them and the men are shooting at them. And in the middle of this gunfight, he finds out, he asks, what did you do lady? And she says, I'm a romance novelist. And there's gun, what I love about this, it's sort of like an archer when like they're always having the most heartfelt talks in the middle of like really violent gunfights. They're actually getting to know each other during this gunfight. He's like, you're a romance novelist where I hope you're taking notes because you're into a real death scene here. And she's trying to get through this bridge, but the bridge is like, he calls it a pre-Columbian art and they're getting shot at. They're at the edge of a cliff and there's this horrible bridge.

But also before then, Jack's initial assumption, because he's in trouble with the law, is that they're after him. But once it's revealed and evident to him that, oh no, they're after her, he's like, deals off, lady. He is ready to just drop her and take off. But then they get backed against a cliff near then the rickety-est bridge ever.

He takes out his repeating shotgun, and he's like putting clips, putting caps into it.

And so he's talking to her, saying, stay behind me, but she doesn't. And this is really maybe the most critical turn of her character.

Yes, this is great because they're literally, he has told her, don't go on the bridge, and he's trying to hold off the men, and he thinks they're gonna get killed. And she goes on the bridge, and she winds up grabbing a vine and swinging over the chasm. And it is a chasm, it's like a huge gorge with a river that like, it's 200 miles either direction to cross it. The whole thing. So she winds up swinging, and she then falls on her butt. She literally lands on her butt, which is hilarious, because it's like a, and you do get the sense like this is the moment when, it's not when she becomes an action star. She's still gonna be kind of herself. But it's so cool that she just sort of winds up stumbling into the cliched kind of action beat of every swashbuckling movie ever made, right?

She has a moment of situationally demanded unexpected self-actualization.

Yes.

Where she discovers latent capabilities that she and no one in her life ever knew that she had, but are directly reflective of what she's been writing about in her romance novels. And now she actually has to seize the moment and to survive.

So what winds up happening is Mike Jack is shooting at the bad guys. He sees what happened. He himself goes on the bridge thinking he's going to die. He grabs a vine, but he winds up slamming into the rock face, by the way, a shockingly squishy rock face. If you look closely.

And also another just straight out of Wile E. Coyote shot.

Oh, absolutely.

This is such a cartoon. Slams right in the face of the cliff.

And he's not injured by it at all. No, because this is a cartoon. But what's great about this is right before that, he's giving this great monologue about he should have listened to his mother and become a plastic surgeon. He'd be making 500K a year. He'd be up to his necks and tits and ass. He actually says that, right? Then he swings over. And when he swings over, what he finds is that Joan has gotten up, but she's actually taken out one of her little alcohol bottles. And she's swilling it and he goes, drinking, I could have been killed and you're drinking. And then he takes the bottle and takes the swing himself, which is amazing. Again, they let him be kind of a bro. And it's the only time I will ever say that that's a great thing. Zolo is pissed because he's lost, but so he's going to go off to find more and better trained soldiers. And Joan and Jack are kind of trudging to the jungle. And Joan complains that they're not going fast enough. He hands her the machete and says, you want to start getting vines go right ahead. And the first one she hits uncovers a skull, literally a skeleton. And it's because the skeleton is the dead pilot of a drug plane.

She has a few tippet.

Just a few tentative ones. And when she finally gives a good one, yeah.

Then she gets through a bit of brush of the jungle. And yes, it gets a bit of a jump scare of this decaying pilot corpse that's leaning out the window.

And the movie takes a little beat for our characters to get to know each other because it's raining. They wind up camping out in the fuselage, which they find out is loaded with bales of marijuana. So Jack makes a campfire. Actually, producer Brad, can we hear... Let's hear clip number 10.

Is anybody else in there?

No. No, it's a cargo plane.

What is all this?

All this. About five lives in the States, couple of centuries down here.

Oh, marijuana.

Oh, you smoke it?

I went to college.

Again, a gag that, you know, in about 10 years, no one's going to get because marijuana will be legal everywhere and no one will care. But it's so funny. They make their campfire. They get into a little bit of an argument because all he cares about is her money, you know? And she not only cusses him out, she uses Holland Taylor's own words against him, which I think is... So she says all of this to him.

All I care about is my sister.

And that map is her life.

Like hell it is. Whatever is at the end of this map is your sister's life. Now we get our hands on this El Corazon. Then you got something to bargain with.

I knew it would happen.

You knew what would happen?

All you care about is yourself, isn't it? I knew that from the first moment I laid eyes on you.

Oh, was that the first moment when I saved your ass?

There, you see? There you go.

You have no finesse, no style. A real man doesn't have to draw attention to his actions. You're... you're just... You're a Mondo dismo.

I'm... what am I? I'm what?

You're a man who takes money from stranded women. A real man is honest and forthright and trustworthy.

And this is where we see, Paul, what you were talking about, Jesse being the third partner in this love triangle.

Yes.

You know?

Yes.

Because he's a total Mondo dismo, you know? He's not Jesse at all. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. She is challenging him slash judging him for not measuring up to her personal fantasy ideal.

That she has created over a series of fantasy romance novels.

That he is completely, at least so far, not for much longer, completely unaware of Oblivious 2.

He doesn't know she's famous. He doesn't know anything about it.

And yet, then, after she has unloaded on him in this diatribe, he does something right out of one of her novels.

He takes out a machete and decapitates a snake that's about to kill her. And she asks if it's poisonous and he says, it's a goddamn bushmaster. She goes, is it poisonous? He goes, yeah, but very tasty. So then they're cooking the snake over the campfire, over the marijuana campfire. And then, Paul, they get out of the plane and we get a cut to Solo finding his man and Solo finally gets his uniform.

I was going to say, yes, there's a very momentous, ominous shot at night where a caravan of army officers arrive to deliver Solo's uniform.

Solo's military with the yellow dickie, with a very, very important yellow neck scarf. And what I love about this is-

Just this side of Megaforce.

It, hey, hey, easy there. Don't, no, nothing compares to Megaforce. The dickie game in Megaforce is transcendent. I, okay, anyway. So, so here's what happens. So, but, but, you know, it reminds me of the scene where we, Arnold Tote in, in Raiders, you know, when he goes into the, into the tent and he does the thing with the, with what we think are nunchucks, but it's really the clothes hanger. This is kind of a similar thing. You know, somebody comes up with a clothes hanger. It's his unit's very like, you know, it's haberdashery based, but we know it's ominous, you know? So Jack Colton and Joan Wilder are walking around the countryside trying to get to Cartagena. They wind up in this village. And there's a lot of very, shall we say, disreputable rough looking men in this village. And as Jack and Joan walk down the midway of the village, they start following them. They ask if there's a car. And the one guy says, the only person who has a car here is the bellmaker. So they start walking toward the bellmaker, but the rough men start following them. And Jack is very concerned and Joan is very concerned. They knock on the bellmaker's door. And it doesn't go well, shall we? The bellmaker basically holds a gun through the peephole, through the little peep door, and tells them to go. Well, let's hear clip number 11, because this is where the bellmaker tells them to hit the road.

Oh, amigo, you don't understand.

Hit the road.

Señor, I...

Vaya con Dios, gringo.

It's cool. It's cool. Okay, John Wilder, write us out of this one.

John Wilder?

John Wilder?

The John Wilder? You are John Wilder, the Novelist? Yes, I am.

I read your books.

I read all your books.

Come in.

Okay, what you didn't hear there is that he literally turns to the rough men who are surrounding our characters with guns, and we're about to kill them, and he says, Esta es Juanita, la que escribe los libros que les leo a ustedes los sábados. Which means, this is Juanita, who writes the books I read to you on Saturdays. It's like literally this entire village has a ritual where they get together and the local drug lord reads John Wilder's romance novels to his henchmen. It's so good, Paul. How are you not utterly delighted by this plot? By the way, fully foreshadowed by Holland Taylor saying your books do really well in these macho countries.

Exactly. Okay. So this goes a long way to redeeming this film on multiple levels. This village does not have a cinema paradiso. No, it does not have a local theater company. No, it has a drug lord that reads American romance novels in Spanish to his henchmen. And they all melt at this revelation that the author has now descended from heaven.

Paul, did you think at any moment watching this film that they would be saved by her fame as a romance novelist in the middle of Columbia?

It's great. The other thing that's great is who is playing the drug kingpin?

I know his name.

It's Alfonso Arau.

Oh, that's right. Yes. Yes.

Who a few years later would direct Water for Chocolate.

Yep.

And is a noted actor and a lot of things been director and kind of an icon.

You know how you can tell he's a noted icon because he's really good in this movie.

He's very good. And he's having a lot of fun.

Oh, he plays his character. So basically when we open the door, he's in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. His hacienda is actually like it's got a state of the art stereo system. He's got like Michelob and Bud Light and he's got Coca-Cola. He has a butler.

He's a man of taste.

Yeah, he's actually like and he is so excited.

And very hospitable.

Oh yeah. He offers us, well, it's Joan Wilder, it's Juanita. And when we get to him and ask him about his car, he says that the men in the village tell you have a car, they're such comedians, they meant my little mule, Pepe. And just as you're thinking, oh great, another Latino stereotype, you find out that Pepe is a tricked out, lumped out Ford Bronco, right? And they're being chased by Zolo's men. It's a wonderful chase scene where he's treating this like a tour, because John Wilder is in his jeep. So he's like showing her, and over there, like little bullets are flying, and over there you can see our beautiful fields. You know, he's so happy to be there. And just as it looks like they're not going to be able to get away from Zolo, he activates Lupe's escape, because and he literally pulls out a remote control, pushes a button and a ramp appears on the riverbank. And they literally jump over the riverbank like evil can evil and all of the and Zolo. And then and then of course, they retract Lupe's escape and all of Zolo's men go in the river. It's that's how they get away. I mean, this sequence, Paul, I don't think that I as a writer and I'm a writer now back when I saw this movie, I was beginning my life as a writer and I was writing my little plays and all that. I'll tell you why this is so I love this so much. I don't think that as a human being with creativity, I ever thought that this scene could resolve this way, you know? We just write us out of this one, Joan Wilder, and he goes, Joan Wilder, D. Joan Wilder. Like, it's like literally like a hole opened in space time for me and I realized movies can do this. Which I know it's like, I don't know, I know it sounds weird, but I just, I found this plot just so delightful.

So this sequence and once this character is introduced and everything that unfolds that you just described, I will say unreservedly measures up to greatness. This is greatness and also just the meta-narrative that here is this guy who is living this life as maybe not the most noble of pursuits.

I don't think he's really a bell maker.

But yet calling to him from across the globe are these stories that he's getting, that are showcasing this mythical romantic ideal of maybe the man he could be, of maybe the life he could live if only circumstances were different. And then, lo and behold, like an angel descending from heaven, the author of these tales comes to see him, to literally look him in the eyes and validate him as a person. And then he has the opportunity to assume the role.

Exactly, he gets to be Jesse.

Of the hero of her novel.

Absolutely.

To save her.

It's the best.

It's glorious.

Yeah.

It's glorious.

Look, I don't think he was that self-loathing, you know.

Oh, no.

He's clearly a very happy guy, but it's, I love that he does, and that's the thing again, it's not Jack who saves the day, it's the bell maker. Jack is feckless and befuddled through all this. He can't believe for a second that, I mean, because the bell maker actually opens his cabinet. He's got all of her books there and he actually hands one to him.

Yes.

And he says, you haven't read it? And he goes, no. And he goes, keep it. I have many copies. Which, I mean, it's just delightful. And you're absolutely right.

And we, from this point on, we intermittently catch Jack.

Reading the book.

Reading the book. And so now he's catching up to understanding Joan and how her mind works, what her whole thing is and putting things together. But, and that's really nicely done. But there are the moments also where like at one point he's like, what are you, where are you going? Why are you going this way? You're turning around. Like at one point he, he doubles back and he's like, oh, I, I, I cannot harm our, our favorite, uh, I can't get our favorite, our favorite cow. Yes, our favorite figures. Because it's blocking the road. And even though it's harms way and then he goes this other route and he's like, why are you going this way? He's like, oh, I showed you this one field. I want to show you this other field. He's like, yeah, we got to escape, but also I want to show you off my village.

He's just so unabashedly happy.

He's happy and he's proud. He's proud of this community that he's clearly invested in, that he takes pride in and that feels like a paternal force.

The truck has the words Little Mule stenciled on it in pretty cursive writing. I mean, it's like, he's a man of the world and he's showing off his... It's just great.

Yes, it is. This sequence is gold. It is absolute gold and I wanted more of him.

Oh yeah.

We should take a moment and talk about the casting of this film because Michael Douglas did not intend to cast himself.

Oh really?

They went out to many other actors who all refused because the male role was not the central character and they didn't want to do it.

Interesting.

And he was willing to do it.

I think say what you will about Michael Douglas. He is the kind of leading man who is just enough of not a leading man because he is not perhaps as classically handsome as others or whatever. But he is the kind of leading man who doesn't bother him not being liked. And I think that actually has helped in things like Basic Instinct, Wall Street. He is always comfortable playing that kind of on the edge and I think that it works so well for him in this movie. But here is the thing. Jack and Joan wind their way to a town where there is a festival that is being put together. They agree to part ways. He is going to get them some clothes. She is going to get a hotel room. And they wind up having just a great, what is basically one of cinema's great dates. He brings her this dress.

Under the watchful eye of Danny Devito.

Ralph, Ralph who, while there is a wonderful scene here where he takes her dancing, you know, everybody is dancing. He gets her off. She doesn't want to dance. They dance together. It turns out he is a very good dancer. He is wearing this sort of Panama Jack outfit with like a Serapé or a sash or something. I mean, it is very, it is very sort of romantic. It is very much like, this is, I think, the moment when he kind of, more than in the action climax of the movie where he becomes her romantic lead, you know, because he is a good date. He takes her dancing. He brings her a nice dress. They have this wonderful dinner together, you know. And while they are doing that, Danny Devito is trying to steal the map from her bag. And of course, he gets bitch lapped by an obese Latino stereotype. But what can you do? And then Jack and Joan, they get in bed together and they talk about the treasure map. And they actually, they have sex. And after sex, he explains to her why the sailboat, what it means to him. So we get the full unpacking of his I Want song.

And then he talks to her about the map and, you know, yeah, he's been trying to persuade her to, instead of going through with the trade and handing over the map to get her sister back, he says, well, what would be better is if we actually follow the map and get the treasure, and then you'll have more leverage.

And you'll have real leverage.

But it's just pretty transparent that he just wants to get the treasure.

Right.

And he doesn't want to lose the map.

Well, that's really interesting.

Because also his argument makes no sense. It's like, why would that give you more leverage than the map? It's like, they both are equally valuable, interchangeable as far as negotiating leverage goes. Yeah.

I have to say, presumably, he thinks if they've got like the treasure, it's more valuable and it'll... But yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that I find this scene really interesting because they're in bed. They've just had sex. So they're having pillow talk, right? And she agrees to go after the map. And they have a moment where you feel like they're a real couple. And then the camera tilts down, following his hand, as he takes the map out from between the covers, not between the covers, between the mattress and the box spring and puts it back in her bag. And I think that's so interesting because the movie's letting you not find Jack likable. They're letting you suspect him a little bit. And yeah, and up until now, he's kept asking if he can photocopy the map. He's kept asking if they can go after the treasure. So you get the sense he's a little wily and he might not have her best interest at heart, right?

But he's not Indiana Jones.

No, he's not Jesse.

He's Han Solo.

Yeah. So Joan and Jack decide they're going to go after the map and they go after the map, right? When they were in, again, another great planting and payoff, right? There is a geographic feature called El Tenedor del Diablo, which Alfonso Arau points out to them while he's giving his tour of the village and the countryside. And it turns out El Tenedor del Diablo is near where the map is, right? Then they figure out, they fold the map a certain way.

Do you want to translate that?

The Devil's Fork.

Thank you.

Yeah.

The Devil's Fork.

Well, but first, there's a sequence where then we cut to morning and Zolo and his army minions arrive to the hotel like they've caught up with them. But Jack and Joan sneak out of the hotel. And then this is a very important beat.

Is it?

They steal a car.

Yes, they do.

Which happens to be Danny Devito's car, within which he is sleeping in the back.

Yep. And a car that we saw, a car that we have seen previously, cause this is a car Zolo got into earlier in the movie. He's still driving that little Citroen.

Yeah.

So now, so Jack and Joan do the whole treasure hunt thing. They fold the map, they go to El Tenerador and El Diablo. They dig up the stone. Well, they don't dig up the stone. They don't dig up what they think is the stone. But instead, it's a little cheesy Easter statue of a bunny.

And just like, thankfully, the movie doesn't spend too much time on the tedium of following a treasure map.

It just gives you a couple steps and you do it.

But we do get, you know, to a waterfall and then into these caverns. And they're looking for the mother's milk and it's this milky pool of cavern water that's collected. And they reach in and they pull up this thing that's mysteriously wrapped. And yes, it is a ceramic bunny rabbit.

But then, so just as Jack is thinking, somebody out there has a really sick sense of humor, Joan remembers that in one of her novels, the treasure was hidden inside of a statue. So they break the statue open to reveal the largest, most shimmering, emerald you've ever seen. Now Paul, producer Brad and I had a long conversation. Do you think the emerald has a little light emitting diode inside of it? Because it's very shiny.

It briefly made me wonder if this was a crossover and that they had found kryptonite.

Yes, or the crystal that summons Jor-El. Sure. But it's not Jor-El who shows up, it's Danny Devito.

Exactly.

It's Danny Devito who not only holds him at gunpoint and tries to steal the stone from them, but who also makes the argument that even though Joan Wilder thinks he's an asshole and a scumbag and a thief, he says, at least I'm honest. I'm stealing the stone. I'm not trying to romance it out from you under you like this guy, which is the line in the movie that then sets up what happens next because Zolo's people show up.

And the title.

Exactly. Romancing The Stone. What's really fascinating, so then Zolo's people show up, right? So Danny Devito has been in, Danny Devito is running with the emerald in the purse, right?

Yeah.

But he's running away from Zolo's men, but also like Joan Wilder and Jack are in the little Citroen chasing after him. Devito, who is about three feet tall and like literally his legs are the size of Vienna sausages, is running around the countryside and he's shooting at them. But he just sort of points his gun backwards over his shoulder and fires it randomly, which is a hilarious sight gag. Jack gets on the hood of the Citroen and grabs the bag from Devito. As Zolo's men are coming, they wind up at the banks of the river that Alfonso Arau told us, if you don't use Lupe's Escape, you're not, it's 200 miles on either side. Joan decides she's going to do Lupe's Escape, except he doesn't have the remote control and there's no Lupe's Escape here. She winds up crashing the car into the river. Joan is driving, which is-

Not just driving it into a river, she drives it into raging rapids.

Yes, and she tries to control the car with the steering wheel while they're going down the rapids, right?

Yeah, that's funny. And Jack is like, what are you doing?

What are you driving? And in one of the great, great set pieces of the movie, they go over a waterfall, which is wonderful.

Yeah.

And, but they wind up on opposite sides of, on opposite embankments.

They leap out of the car as it is plummeting over the waterfall. And yes, and then they end up on opposite sides.

You know, you might notice, Paul, we're an hour and 19 minutes in, we're close to the end of this, not to the end, but we're entering the second act. This movie, I think the pacing of this movie and the fun of this movie, it's so fleet, it's so lighthearted. And just like, we're not having a hard time moving past, just cause it's very like, I mean, whatever you may think of this movie, it goes down really easy, you know? It really does.

It is efficient.

Yes. So, now, Joan and Jack are on opposite sides of the river and they're arguing, and Jack promises her, go to the Hotel Cartagena where you're supposed to meet your sister, take the map, which you've got, cause it was in your bag, so you can use it for leverage. I'll meet you there.

Yeah.

Okay, so Joan, now we're with Joan, we don't leave Joan's POV at this point. She goes back to the hotel, she gets cleaned up, she arranges the hostage exchange for the map.

This is kind of a cool, unexpected twist. I did not remember this, cause I hadn't seen the movie in so long. But at this point, heading into the third act, you're splitting up your two main characters.

With Devito pointing out the fact that he's not trustworthy, even though he's told her his name is Jack T. Colton and the T stands for trustworthy, one of the thieves has said, he's not one of yours, he's one of mine, we're both thieves, and at least I'm an honest thief, right? We've seen him try to steal the map from her, right? And now he's on the other side of the river with the emerald. And Joan is having her doubts, which really sells it. And to drive the point home even further, once she's in the Hotel Cartagena, she picks up the phone and calls the front desk and says, has a man named Jack Colton checked in? And the voice on the other end goes, in the last five minutes, no. So you know.

Yeah, she's been checking incessantly.

Yeah.

And we also just kind of get a jump cut from The River Bank to her having somehow made it all the way.

To Cartagena.

To Cartagena. How? Like that's a whole other movie. But oh well, it's a big magic wand-y kind of thing.

I think she used the transition between the second and the third act to get there.

Yeah, that also to me just felt like a hell of a narrative cheat.

Did you want to watch Joan Wilder?

No, but I wanted to know at least it just seems again, it's so I know it's a cartoon, but it is with all of that they establish of how difficult transit is in Colombia, especially from the countryside, the rural areas to the city, then all of a sudden in a cut.

You don't believe that you suddenly found the high-speed train to Cartagena is what you're saying? Well, you know, I think, Paul, that you're just a harder and more cynical man than I am. That's all.

Not that I wanted this movie to be 15 minutes longer, but I'm just like, I'm not something that would have bridged that divide of implausibility.

Look, I am going to bet bucks to beans that in the editing room, there's a moment or there's a scene where the bus pulls up to the hotel Cartagena and Zemeckis was like, oh, we can lose.

There are a few things less exciting than people traveling in film.

So Joan connects with Ira, right? And with Ralph, no, not with Ralph. He connects with, wait, no, Ralph, Ralph.

Yeah, she calls Ira at the hotel to arrange the exchange that night. And then we cut to that night and there's still no Jack, no sign of her. She goes she goes alone to the to the lair because, you know what?

She's been through a lot and she's feeling her oats now. I mean, you can even tell in the way she's dressed, the way she's wearing her hair. She looks like somebody who's been through shit and who's got a little bit more confidence than ever, right? So she hands the map to, so we go to the exchange, she hands the map and look, this is not the best line in the movie, but I love the delivery, Zack Norman's delivery of this line so much. After she gives him the map, we go to clip number 12.

If this isn't genuine, if you've pulled a fast one...

I love that. You know, look, you said this movie, what is that? What did you say, Paul?

It's-

You don't like it?

It's funny, it's stupid in a funny way, because it's a cartoon. Yeah, it's right out of Looney Tunes.

But that's this guy's character. This guy is not Hans Gruber. You know, this guy is, he steals antiquities. He's kind of a, and he's kind of a funny guy. He's kind of a happy-go-lucky guy. He's got the pet alligators. He loves the snappers and all that. I understand why this character stops to do that, because of how they played him previously. Did I say alligators? Okay, sorry. Kamens. You know, he loves the Gary-alls, but no. I go to the zoo a lot. I have a six-year-old, trust me. I mean, I may not be able to tell the difference, but I know all the names of the different-

So this is such a cool, this is a very cool moment in the film, because Joan now has not dissolved into a puddle of despair that Jack presumably abandoning her and not being who she'd hoped he was when she chose to sleep with him and make plans to go live happily ever after, sail the world, is no longer the fearful, ill-equipped, mousy person we met, but now actually can go and succeeds in rescuing her sister and doing the hostage exchange on her own, on her own terms, and she wins. She saves her sister.

And what's great about this sequence now that Mary Ellen Traynor is actually in scenes with Kathleen Turner is when Elaine and Joan together, when we meet Elaine, Elaine is, you know, there's like the high-speed music is playing the semi-Latino drumbeat, Paul. The jazzy drumbeat is playing.

I take that as more of 80s synth.

Yeah.

I hear 80s action synth as opposed to-

Now, but I'm not saying it's authentically Latino. I'm saying that it is this stereotypical, like, pseudo-Latino approximation slash appropriation to only some degree of vague approxim-

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the point is, when you meet her, she's putting on this fedora that's like literally cocked over her eyes. She looks like Carmen Sandiego. She gets in a red Ferrari. You know, her husband found treasure maps. I mean, you get the sense that she lives in Colombia. You get the sense that Elaine is the badass in the family, right? You get the sense that and she and she, you know. So the way Elaine reacts to Joan through this whole sequence shows you how much Joan has changed us in the course of a couple of days, you know? So now now all hell breaks loose because Zolo, it turns out, captured Jack and Ralph.

This is the Zemeckis is good.

Zemeckis.

Like in the in the reveal of the camera pan down in the bed scene to the hand of pulling the map and there are lots of little things. It's like, oh, you're we're getting like primordial Zemeckis before before he's approached the full height of his power. But but this scene here, this reveal here, then I'll stop. But let me just finish the thought once like this exchange is done, then Jack emerges.

And you've got this amazing moment where you feel like Joan won.

And then, oh, and now there's Jack, but we first see him emerging, but then it's revealed that, oh, he's there at gunpoint. He is.

With Zolo and with Ralph, who's beaten up and you know, it's funny because Jack looks perfectly fine, but Ralph looks like he's had the shit beat out of him, which is hilarious.

And that is a great twist and a reveal. And again, it's showing that Joan has become the most effective, competent character and Jack has failed.

It's usually the female lead who's being held hostage in this kind of movie.

It's a total role reversal of the stereotype.

And this is another reason why I just, I think I have such a soft spot for this movie and all of that. It's like Paul, the two greatest callbacks in this movie are about to happen. There's actually three. Of course, all hell's gonna break loose because Zolo is there, Ira and Ralph are there, Jack is there, Jonah is there, Elaine is there. They're all gonna...

Crocodiles are there.

I'll get to that.

Yes. There's crocodiles in the... Yeah, there's all of Ralph's crocodiles and the big crocodiles that live in this castle that they're staying at. So the gunfight breaks out. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You're missing a huge important thing.

Oh, let's go on, please.

So you have all these opponents, these forces adversaries have now all finally converged in the same space. And Devito's cousin, Ira, thinks he's won, has gotten the map. Zolo takes the map and he burns it, revealing that we don't need the map. They've already gotten the stone, which Ira did not know. But they don't know where the stone is. So now they're going to torture that knowledge or threaten that knowledge out of Jack and Joan. And Zolo starts with Joan, because they both say that they won't tell them where it is. Jack says, it's in a safe place. And Joan does not know where it is.

So Zolo takes Joan and brings her over to the Crocodile Pit, which is there is one here, because Ira is a big fan of this castle. This is where he's staying. So he loves crocodiles. He slashes her hand and holds it over the Crocodile Pit. And he's basically telling Jack that, you know, crocodiles are gonna eat her hand.

And this is kind of a payoff to the setup of the first hostage phone call that Joan gets from Elaine, where Elaine is telling her, they're going to cut me. And now we see actually Joan getting cut.

And that's not even a callback that I noticed, there's so many great ones coming up. So, Jack won't say where the stone is. So one of the henchmen butts him in the crotch with an AK-47, and it makes a very weird sound. And then Jack does a weird kind of crotch shimmy.

It's a clunk.

Exactly. And then the diamond, the emerald was hidden in his underwear all along. It protected him from the gun butt.

I don't know that Jack wears underwear. I think all we need to know is that it's in his crotch. It's positioned in the crotch of his pants one way or another, and then is dislodged.

Yes. And somehow, and somehow it winds up on his foot.

It tumbles down his leg in his pants to his foot.

And he tells Solo, choke on it. And then he kicks the diamond over towards Solo. It goes on a big arc and it looks like it's going to fall.

Like Pele.

Yes. And it looks like it's going to fall into the alligator pit.

Yes.

But Solo, crocodile pit. Solo manages to catch the diamond in midair and he's holding it. And he's laughing his ass off because he finally won. He's got, I call it the diamond because my ex-wife grew up in Paris. And when this movie came out, the French title was In Pursuit of the Green Diamond. And that's why I'm calling it it. I know it's an emerald. Anyway, so Solo has it. He's laughing his ass off. And then in a great, great, great payoff to all the crocodile action in this movie, a fucking crocodile reels up from under the frame and bites his hand off with the diamond still in it.

This is amazing. Also, it's also amazing. This movie at this moment, there's no way this is a PG movie. That is a PG-13.

Oh yeah, no, that hand came off.

Amputation.

Yes, it is.

Graphically, gloriously, in bloody, stubby, prosthetic wonder, and it's so out of the blue because it is in stark contrast to any act of violence we've seen in the film.

This movie does not have any real violence. There's fights, there's guns, there's nothing.

It's pretty innocuous. Yeah, I mean, I think it's in the punch of this movie. There's like the knife, throwing knife and stab, like whatever, but like it's in the stabbing, but this is like, holy crap.

This is like Sam Peckinpah directed one day and it was this day.

It's right out of, I mean, it's right out of a Sam Raimi movie. Like, it's hilariously over the top.

And it's hilarious because you've been, there's been so much, look at these snappers, Ralph, look at these snappers, the last thing you expect is that one of those, it's just so out of the blue.

Yes. So the crocodile eats Zolo's hand with the emerald in it. Right. In it. Yes.

And now, so Jack goes after the crocodile, Joan and Elaine try to run off.

Well, so in this moment, Jack overpowers the soldier guarding him, takes his gun.

Takes his gun and starts shooting.

Joan takes the blade, I think it's a switchblade.

Yeah, Zolo has a switchblade, yeah.

Zolo cut her with and was threatening her with that he drops once his other hand is amputated.

He's in kind of pain. Oh, and also he takes off his dickie to do a makeshift tourniquet. While he's doing that, that's when we...

That's why you should always have a dickie.

This movie, look, it's no mega force, but its dickie game is strong.

Yeah, yeah.

So now we get what all great... Look, like this is something that I love and that few people can pull off well. A great third act action sequence that branches out into a lot of different sub action sequences that are all interdependent. This movie has some really, really good air traffic control in terms of how it handles all of this.

Yeah, Jack is tracking the crocodile.

Jack is still all about the emerald.

And in Jack's mind's eye, he is not seeing the crocodile. He is not seeing the emerald inside the crocodile. He is seeing his sailboat. Yes. And that is what he is in pursuit of. Meanwhile, Joan is trying to escape with Elaine.

Yes.

But Zolo is pursuing them.

Oh, he is going after her. He is not happy with her at all. Yeah.

He even takes the moment to light a cigarette at one point, which later will be part of his doom.

His downfall, yeah. Exactly.

And then meanwhile, there is just a firefight surrounding them all between Zolo's army, military forces and Ira's underground henchmen.

Well, Ira is getting away in a boat going to his yacht, leaving Ralph behind.

Yes, that soon happens, which is pretty funny.

So literally, Zolo is menacing Elaine and Joan at Knife Point. He is coming after them. He actually gets in a fight with Joan. Jack is trying to get his AK-47 that he took from the guard, but the crocodile is about to dive into the bay, and Jack is literally hanging on to the crocodile's tail to keep it from going. The AK-47 is just out of hands reach. Zolo is trying to fight Joan, right? So they're in a fight. Jack finally becomes a good man. He grabs the AK-47.

Classic dilemma is, is Jack going to stay, like, is Han Solo going to come back at the end of Star Wars?

Or is he going to stay away?

Or is he going to stay away and just look out for himself? Is he going to get the emerald in his sailboat, or is he going to save Joan?

And he tries to save Joan. He grabs the AK. Yes, and just as Joan and Solo get out of line of sight, so he can't save her.

Yes.

So now Joan. Yes.

And then he takes the shot.

Yes.

But he's out of ammo.

Yeah, he's that's right. He takes the shot and he's it goes click. I remember that.

Yes.

Again, a movie that does not let him easily save the leading lady because it is her arc.

So he's now failed in this moment to do either option. He's let the crocodile go.

Yep.

And he's failed to take out Zolo. And so now he has to scale the wall because he's down at a lower level.

That's right. And it's not and it's not and he's not good at it.

And he's not good at it. So he's got to scale this like stone work.

To try to get up to Joe.

Castle wall. Slowly as Zolo is.

Now, Joe, not yet. Now, Zolo has lit a cigarette. He's got his dicky tourniquet.

And he also has like this stick, this like board wood with like nail sticking out of it.

It's it's on. Yeah.

Yeah.

He so now at the beginning of the movie, Grogan says something to to Joan. No, I'm sorry to to Angelina. And it sounds a lot like Zolo's really his kind of his one of his three lines in the movie. Can we hear, can we hear the next clip, clip number 13, producer Brad? We grew and I think was like, slow like the molasses in Winner. So.

And it is a mere image to the showdown in the prologue, in the imaginary romance novel scene where the villain thinks he has the drop on the damsel in distress.

Yeah.

Who is.

But she has the switchblade, just like Angelina, she has a concealed knife and she hurls it at Zolo. By the way, and Elaine is shocked by this because she can't imagine her sister doing this. And just as the knife flies toward Zolo, Zolo holds up the board and intercepts the knife. And it's so great because you think he's going to go out like Grogan, you think, oh, this is it, the movie is going to be over. No, no, he grabs the knife. And then now he's going to have off. Yeah. Him and Joan have a fight fight. Like, you know, like, like they're literally on top, like like they're on top of a grate over the crocodile pit.

Yes.

You know, and he's about to kill her. And then she grabs his cigarillo.

Yes.

Jams it into his eye, which is awesome.

Yes.

And he winds up falling through the crocodile pit and being eaten by the crocodiles, which is Joan literally.

Well, no, no, no, it's not. It's better than that. So, so first he has her. Yes. Yes. He has her pinned down on this grate over that's, that's overlooking the, the, the crocodile pit. And it's like a split diopter shot. So we can see both fields, both her face and the crocs in the background in focus.

By the way, by the way, producer Brad will attest to this producer Brad, when they showed that shot, what did I say?

I honestly don't remember.

I said, that's a great split diopter shot.

See, we're, we're, we're brothers. And yeah, so she grabs the cigarette, stabs him in the eye with the burning end of it, then, then pushes him back. Then somehow he catches on fire. I don't know what he lands on.

Because the board is actually a torch, I think. The, the, the, this is the board he's carrying on fire.

I don't know exactly, but he, something, he, he's on fire. He's more flammable than one would expect.

You didn't know this about Latinos.

That is true. We are, we are a fiery people. We're a fiery people. Then as he, then he lunges to attack her.

Yeah.

But she's standing in front of the, the, the croc grate behind her.

Right.

And she like does a turn and just like does a perfect kind of a keto move. And, and he then tumbles into the grate, which I at this point thought was maybe metal, apparently was wood, not very sturdy wood. And he crashes down to his doom and is feasted on by the crocodiles.

And the crocodiles eat him quite satisfyingly, I might add. I mean, look, I know this guy is a massive stereotype, blah, blah, blah. I mean, but then again, if you've done any reading about Central American heads of secret police and at that time, he actually doesn't look that little like a secret, head of a secret police in Central America. I mean, you know, if you look, if you look at any picture of Anastasio Somoza, you'll find a bunch of dudes that look like this behind him. So yeah.

Yeah. My, my, my issue's not with that. It's just that balance is that a more varied representation that isn't so heavily weighted on the darker sides is preferable. And I have another thought on that as like later about how you could remake this movie. Um, but then at that moment, why would you remake this?

This is a great movie.

We'll get to this.

Oh my God, Paul. No, no, no.

So now Joan has defeated the villain.

Joan is Angelina. She's become Angelina.

She is fully bloomed as-

She's done more than Angelina had to. She's actually like physically fought and killed the villain in a way that Angelina never did. So she's awesome.

She's not a damsel in distress. She is now the hero who can save herself and her sister.

Dare I say she's Indiana Joan?

There you go. But on bum. It's at that moment that Jack finally succeeds.

Finally climbs the frickin wall.

In climbing this huge wall when there's nothing left for him to do, but embrace Joan and kiss her.

Do you think if Jack Colton and Jack Burton got together, anything would get done?

Now that's a buddy con.

I want to see that movie.

I would see that. I would see that. But the police are arriving to break all this stuff up, and he's in trouble with the law. So sadly, their triumphant reunion is short-lived, and he dramatically, right out of her romance novel, jumps off the parapet and dives into the Cartagena Bay, yes.

Into the inky darkness of the ocean, perhaps never to be seen again. But before he does that, we get quote 14, which is kind of great.

You're leaving me? You're gonna be alright, Joan Wilder. They always were.

I know that there's a lot of Alan Silvestri's score that you probably don't like while they're kissing during that scene, Paul.

The word schmaltz comes to mind.

Oh God, when did you become a hard-bitten realist? This is like the worst day of my life. How did this happen? The one day I need for you to be effusive, logorheic, addictive, abusing Paul. You're like a hard-bitten realist. It's weird. So I love that Jack acknowledges to her that she always had this in her. Yes. You know, that she's the hero. Yes. He's not the hero. It's like him saying, it's all you, babe. Yes.

And it's also this meta-conversation she's having with her, the avatar of her imaginary fictional fantasy hero.

Yeah.

Who is now telling her she doesn't need him. Yeah. She is her own hero.

Exactly. Yeah. Again, what's interesting about this also is that, you know, Angelina and Jesse, right? Angelina kills Grogan, Jesse kills Grogan's brothers. You know, so it's like the hero and the heroine are always saving each other.

Yeah.

Jack is actually not as good as Jesse because he's doing less of the saving than he should. But maybe we'll get to that. Yes. So from there, Jack dives into the inky darkness of the of the of the wine dark sea.

Yeah.

And and then we're back with Joe.

Now we cut straight back to her.

What did you want to see her on the plane in New York City?

No, no, I'm like, no, that demands no explanation.

Oh, OK.

OK. The other thing did at least something. But it's a great cut. It's a great cut. In terms of now she's back.

Mousy Mousy Joan Wilder sequence at the beginning of this movie. She's actually kind of accosted by a street vendor who's trying to sell her a monkey puppet. Yes. And she's kind of browbeaten, but she doesn't buy the puppet. But she really has a hard time getting away from the guy. The moment we're back in New York with her, we see her walking. No, no, no, no. We see her with with with Holland Taylor and we get the following exchange to give us a little bit of a of a because she's because actually in the time since she left Cartagena, this is a big time cut. She's written an entirely new novel that is entirely. I love this device, Paul. This one of my favorite tropes when the protagonist is a writer and they write the movie as a novel or as a movie at the end of the movie. I love that.

That makes me so happy. There's something else on top of it that this quote reveals.

I love the end where he dives off the high wall and swims away.

Then he meets her at the airport.

They sail off around the world together.

I was inspired.

Jodie, you are now a world class hopeless romantic.

No.

Hopeful.

Hopeful romantic.

This is just the most charming shit ever, Paul. I'm sorry, I love this.

This is great, and I will say, this movie, this movie has a great ending. And I think this is why people love it, because I am a firm believer that a movie is only as great as this ending. And the ending is so much better than the median of the film.

This is a great thing that happens in this ending. I understand where you're going with this, but I also want to-

And there are two endings here. But the one is in this scene, before we get to the next scene, is the revelation that Joan-

He's been gone for almost a year, and it takes up well to-

A, that he has been gone, but she wrote her own ending that she wanted for herself, her dream fantasy ending. But the only way she could manifest that was on the page, not in her actual life.

But here's the thing that's great about the way this movie ends. The next cut you see of her, she's going down the street toward her apartment, and there's not just one street vendor, but there's a lot of street vendors accosting her, and she just waves all of them away.

Well, but it's also fans, like, they're fans of hers.

No, they're street vendors, dude.

I think they're-

Yeah, they're just street vendors trying to get her to buy shit.

I think they're street vendors.

Yeah, and she-

Because they were at the beginning of the film, too, when she's walking through.

Yeah, they accost her at the beginning of the film, and she's totally cowed by them, and now she's just waving them away like Yoda with the palace guards, you know?

Okay, I got the impression that at least some of them were calling her by name, and knew her, and were, like, that she has now gained even more admirers.

That is a reading of this sequence that I had not expected, but I don't believe that's what it is.

It's her neighborhood, and they know her.

I think some combination, whatever, it doesn't really matter that much.

But it gives you a sense that she has grown.

She's more confident.

She's more confident, she's not getting accosted by anybody. And then, Paul, we find out that just as Joan is a better Jessie than Jack, Jack can write a better ending for a romance novel than Joan, because she gets to her place and looks up, and there is a 35-foot sailboat on a trailer.

It's a 43-foot sailboat.

Great. I said 35 to 40, I was close. And the boat is called, well, you don't find out till the end. And he lowers a ladder for her, and she goes up, and the first thing she sees are his boots, which are made of crocodile leather. And he explains that he did find the crocodile. It died of indigestion right in his arms. He was able to get the diamond, and now here he is to, and presumably it took him a while to fence the diamond. And he was so excited with it being the world's largest emerald ever. But he came back, and he read one of her books, just one, but he read one of her books.

And took some good lessons from it. The line then in response, again, it's so cheesy, but it's earned at this point, where he says, yeah, the crocodile died in his arms, and she says, I can think of no better way to go, or I wouldn't want to go any other way, something like that. And they kiss, and then they literally, in a great cinematic moment, they literally sail off.

The boat literally has its sails unfurled in the middle of a street in New York, and it's on a trailer, but whatever's towing it, they literally starts towing it down the street, and Paul?

Sail off into Manhattan.

Yeah, but then you see the back of the boat, and written on the transom are the words, is the word Angelina, and Cartagena. So he literally has a boat called Angelina and he registered in Cartagena, even though the cops here don't like his passport. And so he's literally done the ultimate end of a romance novel for her. And then, and producer Brad, I'm gonna ask you to get this clip so that we can fully see the full force of Paul's black hatred toward saxophones. I want you to play the end of this, the end credits scene of this movie.

So that's the thing, I would say, it is a perfect ending.

It is, it is.

Just with too much saxophone.

No, no, it demands saxophone. This is like cowbell for Christopher Walken. It's like, I have a fever. Here's the thing, at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, Paul, you know- I like it.

I mean, oh, you meant the sax? Oh, okay.

Yeah. The saxophone is kind of the sound of 1980s romance stuff.

Yes, of course.

It just is. So it's like, you know, it's like, so I feel like as far as like calling down the saxophone thunder.

You mean sexy sax from The Lost Boys?

Thank you, sir. No, I never mean that. Well, no, cause he was also the sax player for Tina Turner for Thunderdome. He's in all those, the videos for Thunderdome. So yeah, that guy. Anyway, I just think that this is the apotheosis of soaring 1980s romance-fulfilled saxophone. And whether one likes a saxophone or not, it is a platonic ideal that I will defend, much as I am now.

I'm very happy that you are-

That I have found this in life?

That you're able to cuddle in its warm embrace.

Paul, I am, as always, you are a barrel of surprised monkeys.

Yeah.

You're a barrel of surprises.

Or crocodiles.

Or crocodiles, yes. How will you die, Paul? Slow like the molasses in December? Or fast like a shooting star?

It's a delightful movie. Yes, it is. It's really good. I don't think it's great, but it has moments of greatness.

Look, I rewatched Temple of Doom in the last month.

I have not.

And I'm gonna rewatch it again for when we do it in our podcast. I shall. And I have to tell you that I don't think that I could imagine possibly saying this in 1984. But as far as a movie that I watched at that age and loved, and I watch at this age now in love, I don't have anywhere near the feelings of fondness for Temple of Doom that I have, except for the first 12 minutes. I literally got so much more as an adult watching this movie. And for me, it's a movie that has actually transitioned into being a movie that I can enjoy on its own merits as an adult, which a lot of our movies have.

Yes.

But this movie, I just, far more than I can Temple of Doom. I mean, it's like, and boy, I mean, if you want to talk, we're going to get into it with Temple of Doom, because damn, with the stereotypes.

Yeah.

Allow me to just say one more time, damn.

Yeah.

But no, I think this movie holds up better. I think it's just a better movie.

Yes. As I mentioned earlier, Yes. I think you could remake this film.

Okay. So what's your pitch for this alleged remake of this film that you want to make?

I say don't touch perfection, but then again, Before you pitch, we should acknowledge that there was an attempt in 2008, which did not happen.

Oh, thank God.

And then Sean Levy in 2014 was attached to write a TV version or direct a TV version of it, which did not happen.

No, thank God. Look, it could be the second coming of Billy Wilder. I don't want anybody touching this film. I mean, honestly, you know.

In 2011.

I haven't picked the filmmaker.

Yes.

But the two.

It's Bellatar, isn't it?

No. But the two big things that occurred to me as opportunities to do something different would be to take a very similar set up but then turn it on its head when they arrive in whatever Latin American destination and challenge and subvert all the bad stereotype cliche nightmare scenarios into something that is more surprising and real. And instead of a Michael Douglas showing up as the avatar of her literary hero or whoever, you cast a Latino.

You mean Diego Luna could play this part?

Yes.

All right. Now look, if you said you remake this movie with Emma Stone and Diego Luna, I might change my tune.

I mean, that could totally work.

Or Gael, yeah.

Yeah. There are a lot of interesting... I'm like that, that, and you put it in the hands of a Latino filmmaker and you challenge all these assumptions of... I mean...

Not in that way too, because they'll all die horribly at the end.

Yeah. I mean, Emma Stone, I don't know if it would redeem Emma Stone from playing a Hawaiian, but it would be an interesting cultural revision.

Who would you cast as Jo... Okay, look, I would cast... I would not cast Gaelle, because I think Gaelle is actually too leading man attractive for Jack. I would actually cast Diego, because I think Diego has like the right mix of being just a little bit disreputable.

Yes.

You know?

Yes.

And he plays that sharpness really well. But so who would you cast as Joan if you were making this alleged dream version of yours that will not be directed by Inna Reed or they'll all have leukemia or something?

Amanda Seifried.

Huh. Huh. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Legit. Legit. I loved her as Elizabeth Holmes. I'm in.

And she can play unhinged very well. And both mousy and then confident.

Do you need her unhinged?

I mean, in the situation.

Okay.

Like taking that journey. And I think it's just funny and delightful.

But you cannot cast either Josh Gad or Jonah Hill as Ralph. I will not have it. I will not have it.

No.

No.

No.

I will not have it. No.

I think they're all like, you just have a greater variety and diversity of great Latino actors and characters in this. And then you reveal a world that is not just the stereotypical cliched whatever, but is actually more nuanced and complex and multifaceted and interesting and colorful. And then you also kind of shift from the...

Well, we are very colorful people, Paul.

We are. But also that the anonymous romance, fantasy hero that is generally projected and presumed to be default white.

Yes.

We reveal to say, no, no, no.

It's Diego. His name is Diego.

Yes.

Now, Paul, now, producer Brad, I would like to know...

Are we going to do Scarface next?

No, we're going to...

What?

This is my Puerto Rican accent. Stop doing that. You spent half an hour with me and my parents. It's going to sound like this. I don't appreciate this. Producer Brad, now tell us, how did this movie go at the box office when it came out?

It came out on March 30th, 1984 as number four for the weekend with 5.1 million.

It came out at number four? Really?

Number four. The top three movies were Police Academy, Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan, and Splash.

None of which opened that weekend?

Greystoke opened that weekend as well as Misunderstood with Gene Hackman, Henry Thomas, and Rip Torn.

Okay. Wait a second. Now, Romancing The Stone, I remember this movie being a hit. I remember it being talked about a lot.

It played and played and played. Word of mouth, I think.

So, for the year, it was the 10th highest grossing film for 84.

All right. Now, we're cooking with gas. Okay. Or as my people say, ahora estamos cocinando con gas. Sorry. Go on, Brad.

Las cucarachas entran, pero no pueden salir.

No pueden salir.

Well, this is our last spring special.

Yes.

So, next week, it's Memorial Day weekend.

Wait. We're not going to do Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan?

You had your shot.

With Christophe Lambert?

You know, Paul, it's funny because if that movie wound up on the video store, we could watch that movie, but it's not called Video Store Overthruster.

And Andy McDowell, whose entire performance was vocally replaced by Glenn Close?

We're going to have a bigger conversation about this. So, producer Brad, what can we watch on Memorial Day weekend of 1984?

Well, it's a weekend where there's only one movie that opened, and that's because all the other movies steered clear, including Romancing The Stone, which opened up almost two months early to avoid this movie, because it's so similar. And I'll just play one clip to give you a hint of what's coming.

Fortune and glory, kid.

Fortune and glory.

Javi, I think you said-

Casablanca!

Javi, I think in our ET episode, you said, since the 80s, we've been living in George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's world.

Yes, we have. And we're back.

Yes. The middle child of the Indiana Jones trilogy.

It sounds like we're about to watch my favorite 12 minutes of Indiana Jones ever. Yes. And then there's going to be a lot of snark about racial stereotypes.

And also a lot of commentary of how the powers that be at Disney Plus have inexplicably committed corporate malpractice by not giving us an adult short-round series.

I think we have a lot to process, a lot to discuss. And now, let me ask you a question, Paul. Before we do that, just so I can, what if you got your desire, when he was teamed up with Willie Scott, who became his adopted mother? That was the only way they could get him into the States. It's going to be a rough one, guys. It's going to be a wild one.

It's going to be a rickety, underground, mine shaft roller coaster.

So we will see you at the Temple of Doom, or as we called it in Puerto Rico, el templo de la muerte. We will see you next week in line at the Multiplex.