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ELEPHANT (1st)

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

Episode 8 of TGTPTU’s Squib Games (Season 15) is a meditation on the film ELEPHANT (2003) written (in scare quotes) and directed by former Portland, OR native Gus Van Sant. Guest host Jack returns to discuss with Tom and Ken, each a generation on either side of the Columbine H.S. shootings, the 1999 impetus for this Van Sant slow cinema film.

Originally conceived as a HBO documentary and titled in misunderstanding as an homage to Alan Clarke’s film of the same name (to be covered later this season), Van Sant’s Elephant concerns a single day cut short by a school shooting as it follows different high school characters’ lives leading up to the active shooting event that will conclude the film.

The picture was shot at and edited in a studio built inside a Portland, OR public school, now demolished, along host Ken’s former running trail. Ken also brings to the ep extracurricular watches of the preceding JERRY (2002) and first quarter or so (more than most people can get through) of LAST DAYS (2005), the trio of which form Van Sant’s “Death Trilogy,” an improvised set of mumblecore-adjacent films based on real events and made outside of the Hollywood system, all lensed by Harris Savides whose scarf in his Wikipedia profile rivals any neck covering worn by legendary scarf enthusiast and Season 11’s subject Darren Aronofsky.

Follow us on the socials! Ken will follow you back, as we learn this episode that he likes to follow people. And not creepy at all! As promised in ep, Wikipedia strangely uses a photo of Ken in one of his gray suits as an image link for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBTQ_people_from_Portland,_Oregon.

Host Ryan is off this week playing piano and videogames but will return for 1993’s Hard Target.

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

Season 15’s temporal pincer movement is inverted with this week’s pairing to present its earlier film first. So, one week early, we present to you SCARFACE (1983) with returning guest Erik Van Der Wolf from the Blood & Popcorn podcast filling in for Jack who had a boat to catch.

After last week’s meager showing with First Blood, we return to the blood-filled squib in full force in a movie whose violent reputation Erik disputes, taking a chainsaw to arguments by contemporary critics and noting the various cutaways and reaction shows in lieu of direct onscreen violence. He also makes a case that director Brian De Palma shows uncharacteristic restraint in camera flourishes. What’s unrestrained— agreed then and now—is the profanity, clocked at 1.32/minute “f’s” given, timed by some film nerd and diligently regurgitated by one of your chin beard hosts who watched the Blu-ray commentary.

Typically, we make a halfhearted attempt here in the show notes for a plot recap, but we all know the story of Scarface who’s got his word and his balls. This 1980’s remake marks a rare confluence of film and actual contemporary events as its Scarface, aka cocaine cowboy Tony Montana played by Al Pacino, is a Cuban refugee, mapping the original immigrant story of the 1932 movie onto real Florida violence. The film is also credited as giving Michelle Pfiefer her breakout role (if one discounts Grease II) in portraying coke whore arm candy. And actual Cuban immigrant and total hottie Steven Bauer plays Montana’s bestie (and friend’s sister-fucker) Manny Ray.

Blood packets explode during a hotel drug deal gone wrong and again when Montana promotes himself over his boss’s dead body and then again when given cocaine super powers at the end of the film as Scarface holds off a mercenary army of hitmen, but surprising no squib explodes when Montana shoots Ray in a fit of rage for what could be interpreted as incestual cockblocking. But you knew the plot already.

Listen as adult boys who grew up in the VHS era (and Thomas) discuss a film that guest Erik loves and the others find a lesser entry in the De Palma 80s filmography. Guest Erik brings a reread of the Oliver Stone screenplay and filmic muscle memory to recite scenes from the formative flick; Ryan stays bullish on the original black and white gangster picture (and on the film Two of a Kind, the 1983 feature that reunited John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John after Grease I), mainly wishing the De Palma film was closer to the original film’s runtime; Ken warms to the film and to Erik; and Thomas might have an opinion after his first watch but is more interested in the sequel videogame for the PS2 and prequel novels by comic book and erotic vampire author L.A. Banks.

Next week, Jack returns to discuss the school shooter film Elephant.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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FIRST BLOOD

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

FIRST BLOOD (1982), a.k.a. Rambo I! Surely the best possible pick for TGTPTU’s Season 15 – Squib Season. An‘80s action flick, special forces, small town cops, a M60 machine rifle capable of firing 600 rounds a minute… Unless… Perhaps… Could it be the sequels changed the original movie, that actually the Rambo series starts not as the rah-rah patriotic killer of anonymous foreign brown peoples with knife, machine gun, and explosive-tipped arrows?

Affirmative. (Yes.)

After years in development hell trying to adapt an early 70s anti-war novel about a young returning soldier-drifter (perhaps even younger than pod host Thomas and season guest Jack) with PSTD from his time as an elite killer in Vietnam, the movie First Blood went through three production companies and eighteen screenplays--including pod fav and former 4x4 season director John Frankenheimer attached at one point and Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Steve McQueen (who liked the jailbreak+motorcycle chase), Eastwood, DeNiro, Nolte, and Michael Douglas all considered for the role--as a nearly a decade passed from the actions of the undeclared war in ‘Nam contemporary with the novel and the protagonist subsequently aged up in the movie’s contemporary Regan-era world. Other elements in adapting the book for the screen included giving Rambo a first name (John); omitting alternating storylines between Rambo and Sheriff Teasle; reducing the vet’s body count from intentional dozens killed in the forest and back in town to one confirmed death falling from a helicopter after John Rambo throws a rock (with three additional possible from a vehicle wreck and gunshot wound), and giving Rambo a good cry at the film’s end.

But while changes made, one thing unfortunate for the pod was maintained adapting the book into movie: Neither has blood squibs.

While a tree gets shot and a wall explodes in simulated gunfire, few people get plugged on screen in this action film, and those who do are sans exploded condoms of red liquid and juicy matter. Despite the franchise reputation to be parodied in pod fav Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), this initial entry in the Rambo film pentalogy is relatively bloodless. (Here might be a good place for a parenthetical on how this film was selected by bookworm Thomas who’s expressed subversive reservations about the violence inherent in this season of the pod.)

This ep: Jack returns to the pod, Thomas presents the book report, Ken postulates that shooting the picture during an unexpectedly cold Canadian autumn might be why the sequels take place in warmer climes, Ryan continues his disgusting habit of recommending other film podcasts, and Sidney Poitier’s Ghost Dad (1990) reenters the chat.

Note: Former presidential candidate Ross Perot’s involvement with Vietnam War POW/MIA in the 80s, playability reviews of the NES and arcade Rambo video games, and episode-by-episode recaps of the 1986 Saturday morning Rambo cartoon series were all cut for brevity.

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

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias