Episode 270
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
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ward: Hello, and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host,
Speaker:ward: Ward, back at it again with another film discussion from the left.
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Speaker:ward: Wherever you're listening, give us a rating and subscribe, and you'll get notified
Speaker:ward: of our weekly episodes that drop every Tuesday.
Speaker:ward: Now, on to the show. This week on Left of the Projector, we want to insist you
Speaker:ward: do not get wet or eat after midnight.
Speaker:ward: Unless, of course, you're not a mogwai. In that case, feel free to do whatever
Speaker:ward: you want, including subscribing to our Patreon at patreon.com slash leftoftheprojector.
Speaker:ward: Back to the movie at hand, we'll be getting deep in the goo with you to discuss
Speaker:ward: Gremlins 2, The New Batch.
Speaker:ward: Released in 1990, like the first film, it was directed by Joe Dante and starred
Speaker:ward: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, Robert Prowski, Christopher Lee, and Robert Picardo.
Speaker:ward: With me tonight are Bill and Evan. How y'all doing?
Speaker:bill: Doing okay.
Speaker:Evan: I'm good.
Speaker:bill: The goo,
Speaker:bill: that was an uncomfortable intro.
Speaker:ward: Yeah i like i i was reading it in prep i was like goo with you i was like he
Speaker:ward: he was really going for that,
Speaker:ward: he wanted the extra emphasis on goo i was like i'll give it to him i'll give it to him whatever.
Speaker:bill: Gremlins also can't get wet or eat after midnight it's not just magui.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah that's That's true. That's true.
Speaker:bill: I'm just saying, so if you're a gremlin, you won't listen to us anyway because
Speaker:bill: you're a gremlin and gremlins don't listen to anybody.
Speaker:bill: But, you know, we would request, please don't get wet or eat after midnight.
Speaker:Evan: Just to the general well-being of the people around you.
Speaker:Evan: And for anyone who wants to listen to an episode on the first Gremlins,
Speaker:Evan: you can go back and do that as well from, oddly enough, October 7th,
Speaker:Evan: 2025. And I think this might be coming out October 6th, 2026.
Speaker:Evan: So, perfect. Boy, this is the first time you saw this, so I want to hear what you have to say first.
Speaker:ward: This was a fucking trip. Yeah, I've never seen it. I've seen the first one quite
Speaker:ward: a few times. Like, I wouldn't say it like I'm a Gremlins expert.
Speaker:ward: it was like but oh this was just so wild just going into it it's like all right
Speaker:ward: you know gremlins pretty easy concept shouldn't be hard this should be a layup sequel like,
Speaker:ward: and then it just gets immediately taken so hard off the rails like halfway through
Speaker:ward: i'm just like what the fuck just happened yeah.
Speaker:Evan: The middle middle third to the final third are just yeah.
Speaker:bill: I the entire film it's.
Speaker:Evan: From the beginning it is.
Speaker:ward: Like even from the beginning it's definitely over the top and you're like oh
Speaker:ward: they're they're not going the exact same direction with this one than they did with the,
Speaker:ward: first one especially like you get that revolving door bit like pretty much right
Speaker:ward: off rip and you're like okay all right yeah.
Speaker:bill: I think simply when he shows up at mr wing's building his his business with a TV VCR,
Speaker:bill: to play a recording of the CEO of Clamp Industries, that is it.
Speaker:bill: You're two minutes in. And then he just goes, you can keep the TV and leaves.
Speaker:bill: Like right off the bat, it's just absurd.
Speaker:Evan: The premise, the very baseline premise of this movie is it takes place a couple
Speaker:Evan: of years later than the first one where we have the two main characters,
Speaker:Evan: Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates, have now moved to New York to work at this ridiculous
Speaker:Evan: building called the Clamp Center where Zach Galligan is as an...
Speaker:Evan: What would you say his job is exactly?
Speaker:Evan: Concept designer. Concept designer. Yeah, that's the right one.
Speaker:Evan: Whereas his girlfriend, or I guess they say his fiancée, Phoebe Cates' character,
Speaker:Evan: Kate, she is basically a tour guide in the building and wears a funny hat of
Speaker:Evan: the building. Oh, really demeaning.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, very demeaning. Her job is not cool. And they work in this building from
Speaker:Evan: this billionaire, Daniel Clamp, who owns a company called Clamp Industries.
Speaker:Evan: And let's, I need to throw out at the beginning what they're throwing at you
Speaker:Evan: is you already said that he's trying to buy up all this part of Chinatown to
Speaker:Evan: build his extremely racist Chinese concept building.
Speaker:Evan: And the logo for his company is a sea with a clamp around like the United,
Speaker:Evan: it's not the United States, the world globe.
Speaker:bill: The earth.
Speaker:Evan: Earth, like squished. Like they are just destroying the world like most companies do.
Speaker:Evan: And it just goes off from there.
Speaker:Evan: Gizmo, who is still at this little shop in Chinatown, ends up getting picked
Speaker:Evan: up by someone who works at a, what do you call it?
Speaker:Evan: He works at the genetics lab. Yeah, genetics lab in the building.
Speaker:Evan: So the building is not just an office building. It has a mall,
Speaker:Evan: restaurants, bars, and just ridiculous tenants. And then everything goes off the rails.
Speaker:bill: It's a mixed-use complex.
Speaker:Evan: A miss yes but the building is also residences in there yeah the resident and
Speaker:Evan: and very specifically the building is supposed to be high tech like the the
Speaker:Evan: everything is voice activated you get in the elevator you just say what floor you want,
Speaker:Evan: You, you know, it's, and this is 1990. This is pretty advanced,
Speaker:Evan: would be advanced for the time.
Speaker:bill: Yeah. The, so I think one of the most important, I, I don't think watching this
Speaker:bill: movie without knowing the backstory is an effective way to watch this movie.
Speaker:bill: I think you need to know the meta, like behind this film to really understand
Speaker:bill: what is like why it works.
Speaker:bill: Like, if you don't understand that Joe Dante didn't want to make this movie,
Speaker:bill: and then basically demanded full, complete creative control as a way to say,
Speaker:bill: fuck you to Warner Brothers and CEOs in general.
Speaker:Evan: He had Final Cut.
Speaker:bill: And Final Cut, yeah.
Speaker:bill: If you don't understand that, this hits way, like it has less of an impact.
Speaker:bill: When you understand that, you're like, oh, all of the choices that he's made,
Speaker:bill: are deliberate choices to mock people in power who are CEOs who work behind
Speaker:bill: the scenes and have no concept of how the real people live or how anything actually functions.
Speaker:bill: when you understand that you're like oh nothing about this movie is like this
Speaker:bill: movie did not make its budget back but it was a success because joe dante did
Speaker:bill: exactly what he wanted which was to skewer everybody in it.
Speaker:Evan: The fact that this movie came out is the success yeah that's and then the other
Speaker:Evan: thing too so one of the most hilarious scenes i actually tried to record it
Speaker:Evan: on my phone or i did record my phone i was going to post it online,
Speaker:Evan: but they have one of the appearances is a actual film critic named leonard malton who,
Speaker:Evan: so part of this building is also lots of film studios doing different shows
Speaker:Evan: which are all really funny but one is this film show where this guy is saying
Speaker:Evan: basically this film critic is saying like why would they make this stupid movie
Speaker:Evan: called gremlins about monsters that get wet and
Speaker:Evan: no one likes this shit and then he gets like destroyed by a bunch of the the
Speaker:Evan: gremlins like from behind and it's just yeah it's uh.
Speaker:ward: I mean that seems great because he's like talking about like why would they re re-release.
Speaker:Evan: This on vhs.
Speaker:ward: Like it wasn't that good of a movie in the.
Speaker:Evan: First place.
Speaker:ward: Like oh is this just like a heartless.
Speaker:Evan: Cash grab kind of thing.
Speaker:bill: It's fantastic dante specifically like so for you know for those who are unfamiliar,
Speaker:bill: So the original Gremlins was a financial success.
Speaker:bill: Warner Brothers asked Joe Dante to make a sequel right away.
Speaker:bill: Uh, Dante declined because he saw Gremlins is having a proper ending and he
Speaker:bill: literally was like, the only reason you would make a sequel is as a cash grab.
Speaker:bill: That's the only reason. And I don't see why it's necessary.
Speaker:bill: We don't need this. The only reason you're doing this is because you want to make money.
Speaker:bill: and as the creator you know the director i don't feel the point like and so
Speaker:bill: he literally like malton actually if i remember correctly uh,
Speaker:bill: let me look up real quick i believe malton also uh leonard malton also uh reviewed um.
Speaker:bill: The original he he had denounced the original gremlins in real life like he had panned,
Speaker:bill: it like dante held back nothing um,
Speaker:bill: and for this for that scene particular dante has been credited by at least one
Speaker:bill: person as one of contemporary cinema's great pranksters um literally everything about this so,
Speaker:bill: this was in i mean not development hell because It really never got there,
Speaker:bill: but it was, like, talked about for a while.
Speaker:bill: And basically, even in the end, Dante agreed to do this because,
Speaker:bill: like, this is—the level of pettiness is incredible.
Speaker:bill: The reason Dante agreed to make Gremlins 2 in the end was because, in his opinion—,
Speaker:bill: the public's attention or desire for a sequel to gremlins had so far gone that
Speaker:bill: this was bound to fail like he was basically like all right fine i'll do it
Speaker:bill: now because it's gonna suck,
Speaker:bill: you're.
Speaker:ward: Gonna.
Speaker:bill: Eat this like he literally waited until it wouldn't be a success to do it.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah they well and as we're recording this they've already released am i saying
Speaker:Evan: by teaser it's like basically nothing they're making a gremlins 3.
Speaker:ward: Yeah directed by chris columbus who wrote.
Speaker:Evan: The original who people know from many many.
Speaker:bill: That has been in production that is you could call that in development hell
Speaker:bill: gremlins 3 has been in talks or like pre-production for,
Speaker:bill: i think fucking like 20 years at least.
Speaker:Evan: Easily yeah and didn't they make a tv show about the show about gremlins i never actually.
Speaker:ward: So it's like an animated show i never saw it.
Speaker:Evan: I didn't either but you're right though the third one has been yeah go ahead.
Speaker:ward: Yeah no see i didn't know anything about that stuff that bill was just talking
Speaker:ward: about like the whole background to this like i don't know,
Speaker:ward: gremlins was cool i didn't wasn't overly hyped about it and then hopping into
Speaker:ward: this like i could definitely tell that there was something going on and i was
Speaker:ward: like i'm just gonna let it ride like this is this is a great fucking ride this
Speaker:ward: is so funny like i'm not gonna sit there and try to,
Speaker:ward: make sense of it all because this doesn't want me to but it it's a vehicle for.
Speaker:bill: Dante to mock ceos and production companies.
Speaker:Evan: But more than that, he mocks.
Speaker:ward: Does it well.
Speaker:Evan: There's so many small little bits that probably the average person sees it.
Speaker:Evan: And like, it's like, it's funny a little bit, but the first one,
Speaker:Evan: well, there's a lot of bits.
Speaker:Evan: One that like Billy's character played by Zach Galligan, he talks about like
Speaker:Evan: how he can't get promoted.
Speaker:Evan: And like, he's sort of the company just seems like it treats everyone like shit.
Speaker:Evan: The CEO like doesn't even show up to the office. He's always sending people videotapes of himself.
Speaker:Evan: Obviously, if this had been in like the era of Zoom, it would just be like him on a screen.
Speaker:Evan: They also have the building has complete mass surveillance. Okay.
Speaker:Evan: There's cameras everywhere, like the bathroom everywhere. There's just maybe
Speaker:Evan: not bathroom. Well, there's a lot of cameras.
Speaker:ward: Early up, it do be talking to you and in the bathroom.
Speaker:bill: Yeah. I think the bathroom is the only place that there are not cameras because
Speaker:bill: Billy does take Gizmo out of the toolbox that he hides in the bathroom.
Speaker:ward: Yeah, it might not be able to see, but they replaced it that they can talk to you.
Speaker:Evan: And then the maintenance guy is like walking along fixing the water fountain
Speaker:Evan: when Gizmo gets wet for the first time.
Speaker:Evan: And he's basically talking about how the fucking CEO of the company makes a
Speaker:Evan: bunch of money just in the bathroom doing nothing while he makes shit.
Speaker:Evan: that he's just throwing it in their face being like the ceo of warner brothers
Speaker:Evan: or and it's not warner brothers for this case right it's um no he's warner brothers
Speaker:Evan: warner brothers making millions of dollars and this guy on the set of this movie
Speaker:Evan: in one scene got paid probably like a hundred you know whatever
Speaker:Evan: whatever the lowest prices for someone.
Speaker:bill: The day right he got the day right.
Speaker:Evan: That was the word i was trying to think of but they're just constantly just,
Speaker:Evan: ripping on ceo and worker.
Speaker:bill: More than that, though, it is also like, so this was, you know, it was released in 1990.
Speaker:bill: So 1990, you know, was very early on in the computer era.
Speaker:bill: Um, and this movie is incredibly prescient in a lot of ways in terms of mass
Speaker:bill: surveillance, building automation,
Speaker:bill: um, the, and the man, the way in which companies use all those things,
Speaker:bill: but also like this movie exists before the term and shitification like was coined.
Speaker:bill: And it is already showing the concept of inshittification. It's basically, it's like, he.
Speaker:bill: Basically, like, predicted the idea of inshittification within home, like, automation.
Speaker:bill: And the way companies constantly shove this stuff into products and our lives without any say.
Speaker:bill: and it doesn't work and it makes everything harder than it should be,
Speaker:bill: and it's so prescient in the term you know like literally two days ago or a
Speaker:bill: day ago there was a headline,
Speaker:bill: which said uh consumers mourn the mourn spoiled food after samsung smart tv.
Speaker:bill: Update bricks their their refrigerators samsung update bricks their refrigerators,
Speaker:bill: and so it just shut off and all their food was destroyed,
Speaker:bill: so everybody with the samsung smart refrigerator who got this update it bricked
Speaker:bill: their refrigerator and they lost all their food and it's like,
Speaker:bill: this is 1990 way before any concept like way before there was any notion of
Speaker:bill: the smart you know like publicly like in like product, the concepts like smart,
Speaker:bill: like utilities or the appliances or anything like that.
Speaker:bill: And here's Dante and Haas, the writer,
Speaker:bill: very, very presciently like predicting exactly the kind of shit that will be
Speaker:bill: sold to us exactly the way it will not work.
Speaker:bill: and how it will be used against the consumer and against the worker.
Speaker:bill: It is, watching this today is incredible.
Speaker:Evan: You don't, there's only, I think only two scenes in the entire,
Speaker:Evan: maybe three scenes in the entire film that take place outside of the building.
Speaker:Evan: And one of them is their apartment that, you know, they go home briefly because
Speaker:Evan: the family who's in the original movie comes to visit them who had been terrorized
Speaker:Evan: by the original gremlin.
Speaker:Evan: and then there's also a scene i think uh maybe in the fudermans yeah the fudermans
Speaker:Evan: like there's also the scene where he gets attacked by the the the bat one in
Speaker:Evan: the and like in front of the cathedral,
Speaker:Evan: which i always was always like a scary scene to me as a child everything is
Speaker:Evan: everything takes place in that building everything is within work you're you're
Speaker:Evan: not allowed to really leave it feels like they're forced to
Speaker:Evan: you know billy has to get sexually uh you know harassed or assaulted really by his boss,
Speaker:Evan: at a weird restaurant everything feels yeah.
Speaker:ward: Yeah no i like i like how it work it's just it's just like bill saying just
Speaker:ward: so terrible it's like oh hey he has a nice drawing of where he grew up and it's like no no this is the.
Speaker:Evan: Corporate approved art that scene is crazy.
Speaker:bill: He has a plant and they throw it out.
Speaker:ward: Yeah. Throw away the plant because it could have an aphid infestation.
Speaker:ward: But at the same time, it's like what Bill's saying. It's like,
Speaker:ward: oh, he tries to make a fucking call on the phone. Phones doesn't fucking work.
Speaker:ward: Why does fucking Gizmo even get wet in the fucking first place?
Speaker:ward: Because they didn't listen to the janitor, the subject matter expert on which
Speaker:ward: fucking models they should fucking use for the water fountains.
Speaker:bill: Yeah. And I think the fact that Gizmo, Gizmo has like three scenes.
Speaker:bill: he's barely in it gizmo's barely.
Speaker:ward: In this movie it's honestly hilarious how little he is in this.
Speaker:bill: Movie and i really think that is also like it is never it is never indicated
Speaker:bill: it is never you know it's never stated by dante in anything i've ever read that
Speaker:bill: this is deliberate but i think that is i think it was deliberate,
Speaker:bill: that you know he's like fine i'll make this and you'll never see fucking gizmo to,
Speaker:bill: the yeah.
Speaker:ward: Basically you we think we're even going to get like a rambo fucking training
Speaker:ward: montage and it's like no you just get two extra.
Speaker:bill: Scenes yeah.
Speaker:Evan: They told i totally thought they're
Speaker:Evan: gonna because they showed the rambo multiple times in the in the movie,
Speaker:Evan: and you think oh like he's gonna do something sweet as hell and he just puts
Speaker:Evan: on the little bandana and he shoots his little paper clip bow and arrow once and he's like that's it.
Speaker:bill: Which I think is also a great scene because, so he shoots his paperclip bow
Speaker:bill: with the flaming arrow at the mutated,
Speaker:bill: gremlin, who's originally Spike.
Speaker:ward: Spider gremlin.
Speaker:bill: The spider gremlin. So, all right, to backtrack a little bit,
Speaker:bill: part of all of the chaos of all this is, so, as Evan stated,
Speaker:bill: Gizmo is found by one of the scientists that works for the genetics laboratory,
Speaker:bill: who we also find out later has cloned himself.
Speaker:ward: And who's in my notes as Allie Creep, and then later addressed as,
Speaker:ward: oh, there's two of them now.
Speaker:bill: That guy is super creepy. You know he's a perv. Like, there's no way.
Speaker:bill: That guy's a pervert. I'm sorry.
Speaker:Evan: You also have to add that the head of the lab is Christopher Lee, which is awesome.
Speaker:bill: Yes. Christopher Lee.
Speaker:Evan: Continue.
Speaker:bill: Whose last name is Catheter.
Speaker:bill: It's never addressed. It's just a great, just like, it's Dr.
Speaker:bill: Catheter. It is never addressed in the film.
Speaker:Evan: Cushing Catheter. Cushing Catheter. Yes, I'm sorry.
Speaker:bill: Cushing Catheter. It's just, it's great. Um, so he is, Gizmo is kidnapped after,
Speaker:bill: uh, Mr. Wing dies and they knock his building down.
Speaker:bill: Um, and with everything in it, nothing is empty. They just knock the building down.
Speaker:bill: Gizmo's in the building when they knock it down and he runs outside and alley
Speaker:bill: creep, um, or alley perv.
Speaker:bill: grabs gizmo and he says something incredibly i think classist which is i always
Speaker:bill: say do you want to find something weird go downtown which just feels there's
Speaker:bill: definitely something there um,
Speaker:bill: they bring him back to the lab they bring him back to the lab,
Speaker:bill: um and where we are introduced to what's going on in this lab which is they're
Speaker:bill: just doing all kinds of weird genetic experiments um in 1990 the notion of genetic experimentation was,
Speaker:bill: much in this you know public consciousness was a big thing um,
Speaker:bill: it was like the nascent kind of
Speaker:bill: thing i mean this is around the time of jurassic park all of that stuff um,
Speaker:bill: which factors heavily into the film later because the gremlins go into the lab
Speaker:bill: and then start to consume,
Speaker:bill: because apparently you could just bottle genetic manipulation and then just
Speaker:bill: you just you just drink it and it works.
Speaker:bill: Uh so you're thinking too much about this movie no i'm saying that's how it
Speaker:bill: works this that's how this is advanced science you you bottle it um i love the
Speaker:bill: lab they just have a cow walk through at one point with a like a uh,
Speaker:bill: a mind reading device that it can like it projects its thoughts and it's just
Speaker:bill: talking about making milk it's just,
Speaker:bill: mentally it's just they just lead a cow through the lab um.
Speaker:bill: And so they break into the lab and they start consuming genetic material.
Speaker:bill: So one of the gremlins consumes brain hormones. So he becomes super smart and he talks.
Speaker:bill: He also spontaneously grows glasses, which I love.
Speaker:bill: He goes below, he cuts out of scene and then comes back up with glasses on and
Speaker:bill: then starts speaking very eruditely.
Speaker:bill: One of them becomes electric. One of them becomes vegetables.
Speaker:bill: One of them consumes bat DNA, so he grows wings, and then brain gremlin gives
Speaker:bill: him genetic sunblock. So now gremlins normally die from sunlight.
Speaker:bill: This one does not, which is why it's able to go outside, fly around, and attack.
Speaker:ward: It becomes a daywalker.
Speaker:bill: Right, it's a daywalker. It's a daywalker gremlin. And he can attack Mr.
Speaker:bill: Futterman, once it's out there.
Speaker:bill: And then one of them becomes a girl.
Speaker:Evan: Is this a prequel to Blade?
Speaker:bill: And one of them consumes some kind of gender-switching genetic thing and becomes
Speaker:bill: a woman gremlin, or Grimlina, as they call her in the material. And then...
Speaker:ward: Grimlina.
Speaker:bill: Big bad one, who is Spike, later on consumes spider DNA and becomes a spider
Speaker:bill: gremlin, who later on Rambo Gizmo kills.
Speaker:Evan: I'm going to ask a question that is going to prove that I'm thinking about this way too much.
Speaker:Evan: In the building, they have, like, salad bars and ice cream place.
Speaker:Evan: Like, there's also a really funny scene where someone's ordering a bunch of
Speaker:Evan: ice cream. It's frozen yogurt. Oh, sorry. Frozen yogurt. And they're asking, like— Yeah.
Speaker:ward: I was about to say, why else would they say this is supposed to be health food?
Speaker:Evan: True, true.
Speaker:bill: Because the 1990s— Not that frozen yogurt. The 1990s was the original fro-yo craze.
Speaker:Evan: You're right. I was like, what is it? The Thank God It's Not Yogurt chain? TCBI.
Speaker:bill: TCBY.
Speaker:Evan: TC.
Speaker:bill: Yeah. What was that?
Speaker:Evan: What was it called? tcby but for some reason somehow the gremlins always would
Speaker:Evan: just pop out of the toppings and the salad bars yeah how did they get there
Speaker:Evan: in the first place there's no bottom it's just a sneaky.
Speaker:bill: Yeah they just they just crawled in there they hid.
Speaker:Evan: But no one saw them crawl in but they saw them crawl out i don't buy it dude.
Speaker:ward: The the janitor one of the arguably smartest most understanding characters rode
Speaker:ward: the elevator with three of them.
Speaker:bill: That's true.
Speaker:Evan: That's that's true.
Speaker:Evan: They're sneaky. I'm just being
Speaker:Evan: pedantic, but I just love that they're everywhere in the entire building.
Speaker:bill: They deliberately do that because they didn't want to be seen crawling in.
Speaker:bill: They wanted to be seen coming out because that's when it's scary.
Speaker:Evan: They were thinking of the people.
Speaker:bill: No, they were thinking of us
Speaker:bill: at home. They were thinking of scaring people because that's what they do.
Speaker:bill: All right. Which of the gremlins was your favorite gremlin, Ward?
Speaker:bill: Which is your favorite gremlin?
Speaker:ward: The googly-eyed one.
Speaker:bill: Okay.
Speaker:Evan: All right.
Speaker:bill: That's an interesting choice. All right.
Speaker:ward: He was just so ridiculous. And I was just like, he's the one who also just was
Speaker:ward: like, okay, yeah, we're really setting in tone for this movie.
Speaker:bill: Okay.
Speaker:ward: I can sit back and enjoy. I know I'm not going to have to really critically
Speaker:ward: analyze this. This is just going to be a great fun time that's self-deprecating
Speaker:ward: and self-aware. And, oh, there's also going to be shitting on other people.
Speaker:ward: Oh, I'm here for that too. Let's do this.
Speaker:bill: Which is the scariest gremlin, dude.
Speaker:ward: Spider gremlin?
Speaker:bill: I know Evan is Spider-Gremlin.
Speaker:Evan: Spider-Gremlin is the scariest. My favorite Gremlin, though,
Speaker:Evan: when I was a kid, especially, and I still think it holds up,
Speaker:Evan: is just the Brain-Gremlin, the smart one.
Speaker:Evan: I remember just watching the trailers and just seeing him talk.
Speaker:Evan: He does the little talk show later. I think he's funny. He has a funny voice.
Speaker:bill: He's hilarious.
Speaker:ward: He would have been my favorite, but then he sings. And so I was like,
Speaker:ward: I could have done it without the singing. I get it.
Speaker:bill: He does pay the ultimate price for singing, though.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. Wait, do you know who plays his voice? Oh, it's Tony Randall. yeah.
Speaker:bill: Actually do you know who plays.
Speaker:Evan: Great i just he's funny he's he's he's just funny like it's just he's the comic
Speaker:Evan: relief of like the things that are ridiculous but he's just adding a layer to
Speaker:Evan: it do you know who plays the voice.
Speaker:bill: Of uh spike.
Speaker:Evan: I think i do actually um.
Speaker:bill: It's frank weller voice of.
Speaker:Evan: Mechatron oh yeah.
Speaker:bill: Classic Transformers voice, Megatron.
Speaker:bill: My favorite was always the Bat Gremlin.
Speaker:bill: I always really loved the Bat Gremlin, and I love how he turns into a gargoyle.
Speaker:bill: And I actually always thought that the electrical one was the scariest.
Speaker:Evan: He could really fuck you up.
Speaker:bill: Yeah. I mean, he is the, you know, spoilers for the end. He's what kills all
Speaker:bill: of the gremlins in the end.
Speaker:Evan: Because he gets he gets stuck in a phone call on old which is so great that's
Speaker:Evan: like but it's such a oh god their phone system is so fucked up and they get stuck in the phone oh man.
Speaker:ward: That's just something you can only do with landline.
Speaker:Evan: Systems yeah complicated landline systems another thing that i thought was uh
Speaker:Evan: that we have to talk about because we're talking about being this movie is lots
Speaker:Evan: of layered satire and parody and all of that.
Speaker:Evan: One of the most ridiculous things that happens is that the gremlins fuck up
Speaker:Evan: the VHS. And this reminds me of Spaceballs, like a kind of a gag from Spaceballs,
Speaker:Evan: when they don't know where to find them, and so they get the VHS of the movie
Speaker:Evan: they're watching to find them.
Speaker:Evan: And it ends up being that they're at like a movie theater, and the gremlins
Speaker:Evan: are in the projector room, fucking with the film.
Speaker:Evan: So the people can't watched gremlins 2 in the theater once it's actually been
Speaker:Evan: released in the movie about that is gremlins 2 and then they had to ruin it with hulk hogan.
Speaker:bill: Unfortunately yeah but this was before we yeah.
Speaker:ward: That shit hit me like a flash yeah like holy.
Speaker:bill: Fuck that's all but that's before we knew anything that's before of course of
Speaker:bill: course this was for for okay oh yeah no for those of you who You are in the 1990,
Speaker:bill: Hulk Hogan was beloved and we didn't know he was a union busting racist piece of shit.
Speaker:bill: You know, nobody, nobody knew this. This was all, you know, this is before all,
Speaker:bill: you know, people knew about Hulk Hogan and he, so speaking of the janitor though,
Speaker:bill: do you know who the janitor is played by?
Speaker:bill: There are so many Caneos in this film, it's insane. He's a legend.
Speaker:bill: The guy that plays the janitor is a fucking legend.
Speaker:bill: It's Harry Astin, who...
Speaker:Evan: That's crazy.
Speaker:bill: Original Gomez...
Speaker:bill: Um, you know, uh, father to Sean Astin.
Speaker:bill: Um, yeah, he, this voice is the filled with cameo.
Speaker:Evan: They also have, well, do you know who is the voice for Gizmo?
Speaker:ward: Yeah. That was another flashbang that I got hit with when the credits rolled
Speaker:ward: and it was like, Howie Mandel.
Speaker:Evan: So funny.
Speaker:ward: Like, oh shit.
Speaker:bill: Bright light. Oh, bright light.
Speaker:Evan: Oh man.
Speaker:bill: It was my first voicing acting.
Speaker:Evan: It's so weird that he was like kind of a comedian guy in his early days.
Speaker:bill: Well, he did voiceovers. He did Bobby's World.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah.
Speaker:bill: Cartoon Bobby's World.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. And now he's America's Got Talent. Is that what he does now?
Speaker:bill: I have.
Speaker:ward: Why would I know that?
Speaker:bill: You know what I know about Hala Nantel? I know that I believe it was,
Speaker:bill: oh shit, was it Marc Maron? Oh no, I believe it was Bill Burr who went on his
Speaker:bill: podcast and basically called him a bad father to his face.
Speaker:bill: it was it was him or mark maron i can't remember who but like i know i think
Speaker:bill: it was bill bar who basically straight up told him he's like you're a bad father
Speaker:bill: because how mandel has a podcast with his daughter and on the episode he admitted
Speaker:bill: to taking the door off her room,
Speaker:bill: and he was like you're a bad father that's what that says he's like it sounds
Speaker:bill: like you fucking abused your daughter that's what it sounds like.
Speaker:Evan: That's so weird there's so many funny gags too in this i don't know,
Speaker:Evan: i i always when i was a kid i always liked i think because they maybe they showed
Speaker:Evan: in the trailer where one of them sets up a train in the toy store and they put
Speaker:Evan: gizmo on the tracks and it you know run that's like one of the all like the
Speaker:Evan: other one of the four times you see him in the movie he gets hit by the little toy train.
Speaker:bill: Because they're torturing him which again to go back to the when when gizmo
Speaker:bill: kills the spider gremlin phoebe cates's character says you know of like what happened to him.
Speaker:bill: And Billy, Zach Allingham, he says, I think they pushed him too far.
Speaker:bill: And I think like, I can't help but think that that is Dante specifically calling
Speaker:bill: out basically. It's like, he's like, Gizmo is barely going to show up in this.
Speaker:bill: Um, Gizmo is barely going to show up in this.
Speaker:bill: And when he is going to show up, he's going to show up. I'm either going to torture him.
Speaker:bill: Like you're making me do to my story and the character I originally wrote,
Speaker:bill: or he's going to brutalize something.
Speaker:bill: And then like commentary on that. Like it is so layered in my opinion.
Speaker:bill: Like it is incredibly layered.
Speaker:bill: And again, I think it is, it is much, it is so well served by understanding the story behind it.
Speaker:bill: Um, and again, like I, I honestly, I don't, I love this movie and I love the original Gremlins.
Speaker:bill: I, my name is Bill. The character in this is Billy.
Speaker:bill: I grew up on Gremlins and like, he's an artist. I grew up wanting to be an artist
Speaker:bill: like this. These movies meant a lot to me when I was, I had gizmo sheets.
Speaker:bill: As my wife said, there's nothing, you know, nothing more dear to a 90s child
Speaker:bill: than the character sheets they had, you know, and I had gizmo sheets.
Speaker:bill: And I've watched this movie so many times. I watched the original Gremlins many times.
Speaker:bill: and it's even having watched them so many times re-watching this now it is,
Speaker:bill: so incredibly prescient it is such an impact in compared to,
Speaker:bill: today's day and age with figures like elon musk and jeff bezos and the shit
Speaker:bill: and how you can compare them to daniel clamp people like that didn't exist in
Speaker:bill: the 90s, not in the same way.
Speaker:bill: And Clamp- Not publicly, anyway. No. Clamp-
Speaker:bill: They weren't public figures in the same way. And Clamp so perfectly embodies
Speaker:bill: what the tech oligarch has become in the modern day,
Speaker:bill: and so perfectly predicts the fucking dystopia we live in now.
Speaker:bill: Because make no bones about it, we live in a fucking tech oligarchy dystopia.
Speaker:bill: And Dante and Haas made a movie in 1990 that perfectly encapsulates the absurdity
Speaker:bill: of the fucking dystopia we live in now.
Speaker:Evan: The way they depict him too, I mean, obviously he wears like really goofy clothing
Speaker:Evan: and he's really eccentric, but he doesn't seem to, doesn't, he doesn't do anything.
Speaker:bill: No.
Speaker:Evan: He does nothing. And he's like, he's in, he spends the first part of the movie,
Speaker:Evan: in his penthouse office, making his secretary do work, who then gets murdered
Speaker:Evan: by one of the gremlins, which is a really funny scene actually,
Speaker:Evan: when the gremlin puts on her little sweater and is like typing on the keyboard.
Speaker:Evan: Poor guy. Poor, poor woman. Like, she didn't deserve that. But then he comes
Speaker:Evan: out and ends up fighting with it and like stuffs it into the paper shredder.
Speaker:Evan: And it's like the guy doesn't even, he doesn't know how simple things in an
Speaker:Evan: office work. Plus nothing works because his thing is all bullshit.
Speaker:Evan: His building is the Hyperloop.
Speaker:ward: And it goes back to the janitor's point where it's like, what does he actually
Speaker:ward: do that's worth all of that?
Speaker:ward: Just paces in his office going, maybe we'll do this.
Speaker:bill: Shred memos.
Speaker:ward: I'm bored. Yeah.
Speaker:bill: That's what he has her do, shred memos.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, which is probably like evidence of something, like some malfeasance he's done.
Speaker:bill: And then the next thing he says is that to, he says to her to, uh,
Speaker:bill: uh, basically, you know, take down, you know, the idea of putting on now that
Speaker:bill: they've destroyed Chinatown to put on a,
Speaker:bill: put on a cultural parade with those dragon things, you know,
Speaker:bill: the guys and the dragons to show the people how much they love what he did.
Speaker:bill: like literally that's what he says he's like we're gonna put on a parade to
Speaker:bill: show the people how much they appreciate what i'm doing.
Speaker:Evan: Do you think he was skewering trump or is it too early.
Speaker:bill: I think it was a little too early.
Speaker:Evan: He would just go on after probably the warner brothers ceo yeah i mean i don't know who it was but.
Speaker:ward: Even then like how much it parallels to the tech billionaires we have currently it's fucking insane.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah plus he has that little thing he uses to get out of the building he has
Speaker:Evan: that little pod the elevator thing it just shoots him out.
Speaker:ward: Yeah i didn't know if we should mention like secret tunnels in new york,
Speaker:ward: or not.
Speaker:Evan: I love that he has that though it just comes out outside and then you know,
Speaker:Evan: and then of course the uh the um what's his name um flutterman the friend like
Speaker:Evan: flutterman takes the murray takes the takes it back inside to then try and help them inside.
Speaker:Evan: And of course, they don't believe anything he's telling them.
Speaker:Evan: Both Billy and Futterman are both completely like, wait, why do you know about
Speaker:Evan: these weird creatures? And why should we believe anything you're talking about?
Speaker:Evan: Which is the perfect aspect of any monster movie, right?
Speaker:Evan: Some person knows the rules or knows everything, and then they don't take them
Speaker:Evan: seriously, and things get out of hand.
Speaker:bill: Futterman's storyline is actually really good, I think, because it very much...
Speaker:bill: It parallels the disbelief of everybody else,
Speaker:bill: and the incompetence of all of the higher, you know, like the basically like the oligarchs or,
Speaker:bill: the managerial class that is shown in the movie from Cushing,
Speaker:bill: including Dr. Cushing catheter.
Speaker:bill: and Futterman is he's a very much you know like working class kind of guy and
Speaker:bill: he's the guy that you know like he's a proletarian hero and he.
Speaker:ward: He's showing that.
Speaker:bill: All the positions.
Speaker:ward: Of supposed authority in the movie are wrong they don't know what the fuck.
Speaker:bill: They're talking about.
Speaker:ward: They said I was crazy no.
Speaker:bill: I'm not and he conquers his fear like he has a genuine terror of these things
Speaker:bill: and he very explicitly conquers that fear overcomes all,
Speaker:bill: the hindrances and challenges before him to rise to the occasion and save the day alongside Billy.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah.
Speaker:ward: Yeah, like he shows up on what's supposed to be a vacation, immediately gets
Speaker:ward: re-traumatized by Bat Gremlin.
Speaker:ward: overcomes that reaffirms his own beliefs and his abilities and says that he's
Speaker:ward: going to do something about it and then does it's fucking incredible this story is great he's.
Speaker:Evan: Awesome yeah it's like he's he's like he's yelling at the police in front of
Speaker:Evan: the building like they don't know what to do they want to just like go in there
Speaker:Evan: guns blazing and another thing that's also very thing that would same thing
Speaker:Evan: that would happen today is,
Speaker:Evan: the tech oligarch in this case clamp he He won't let the press or anyone inside the building.
Speaker:Evan: He wants to hide it so that no one knows what's happened and they can basically
Speaker:Evan: just, you know, pretend it never happened or whatever.
Speaker:Evan: Meanwhile, he, the character Grandpa Fred, played by Robert Prosky,
Speaker:Evan: like the vampire guy who does some like late night TV show,
Speaker:Evan: starts a broadcast of what's going on in the building during the whole thing.
Speaker:Evan: And I think that's all that.
Speaker:bill: Which, the only reason Clamp allows that to happen is because he can control
Speaker:bill: it. He owns that material.
Speaker:Evan: Yes, and then he gives him, he promotes him to like the anchor of the...
Speaker:Evan: whatever weekly news or something like that and he also,
Speaker:Evan: promotes at the end he tells billy that he likes his little drawing which is
Speaker:Evan: a picture of his hometown and his idea then is to build more quaint hometowns
Speaker:Evan: quaint like little villages,
Speaker:Evan: which is also really fucked up and also what these people will do,
Speaker:Evan: yeah also you know we've who we forgot as cameos dean norris and raymond cruise
Speaker:Evan: people obviously know who dean norris from breaking bad is hank trader he plays
Speaker:Evan: one of the swat guys like you don't actually see his face.
Speaker:bill: You don't even see him.
Speaker:Evan: No that's he's in it and i think that's funny.
Speaker:bill: That doesn't count as a cameo.
Speaker:Evan: That's before.
Speaker:bill: Anybody know who that's not a cameo that's his like first role in film wasn't
Speaker:bill: yeah that's like oh yeah jack black's in fucking demolition.
Speaker:Evan: Man this is a.
Speaker:ward: Like that doesn't really the janitor.
Speaker:Evan: Is john.
Speaker:bill: John aston is the janitor is a cameo that was a man who was like you know incredibly famous.
Speaker:Evan: All right fine,
Speaker:Evan: i just like that he's in this movie for no real apparent reason.
Speaker:bill: Yeah, because he was nobody at that time.
Speaker:Evan: No, I just was looking. The year that this came out, which was in 1990,
Speaker:Evan: he did one, two, three, four, five, six different films, including he was also in Tony Total Recall.
Speaker:bill: All of them guy in background, no lines.
Speaker:ward: Guy in scene number three.
Speaker:bill: Guy number four. That's not a cameo. That's a guy struggling to pay his bills.
Speaker:Evan: He's like the janitor man he's like fuck man i just wanna yeah i wanna live.
Speaker:ward: Yeah you think at the time he was like man i i really enjoy the passion that.
Speaker:Evan: This project.
Speaker:ward: Has i'm gonna hop in on it i'll take anything you got boss just put me on the
Speaker:ward: team coach i'm ready to get in there.
Speaker:Evan: He's calling vince gilligan for uh he's like hey you got any roles coming up for me,
Speaker:Evan: not really the same no and i i think what we we've like tried to portray the
Speaker:Evan: ridiculousness of the gremlins in it but every scene that they're in where they're just causing mischief,
Speaker:Evan: there's always something really fine i also really like the woman who has a
Speaker:Evan: cooking show which is just microwaving stuff yeah like her show is microwaving things.
Speaker:bill: And adding so much she's clearly she's straight up drunk it's microwaving with
Speaker:bill: marge also i just what I put out.
Speaker:bill: Nowhere in that thing does she microwave anything. She never microwaves anything.
Speaker:Evan: She just rolls up something inside of a piece of bologna and puts it on a platter.
Speaker:ward: And then she's got a huge stock pot.
Speaker:bill: Huge stock pot. Never microwaves anything. The only thing that is microwaved
Speaker:bill: in that entire sequence is a gremlin.
Speaker:bill: Oh, no, I'm sorry. It's a pile of cutlery that a gremlin put in the microwave.
Speaker:Evan: What's the person? There's some person who's on Food Network who I feel like is very similar.
Speaker:Evan: she'd it's like it's the one who makes like the hideous um do you know i'm talking
Speaker:Evan: about though right i do know,
Speaker:Evan: sandra lee yes sandra lee yeah she
Speaker:Evan: her whole thing was most of the stuff was packaged which i'm not like that's
Speaker:Evan: i'm not like mocking someone for using packaged foods it's just the way that
Speaker:Evan: she presented it was also just hideous and terrible it reminds me of her as
Speaker:Evan: like on if the future was her
Speaker:Evan: later on anyway she also was in a relationship with andrew cuomo for anyone out there who wants.
Speaker:bill: Sandra Lee?
Speaker:Evan: That's a, he's a prepackaged human being.
Speaker:bill: So yeah.
Speaker:ward: She knows what she does, she likes, all right?
Speaker:bill: She knows what she likes.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah.
Speaker:bill: Like, if there was ever a human being that could be equated to prepackaged,
Speaker:bill: like, lunch meat, it's Andrew Cuomo. I'm sorry.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah.
Speaker:bill: I'm sorry to prepackaged lunch meat.
Speaker:ward: I'm not prepackaged. I'm Italian.
Speaker:Evan: Oh but the the other thing person who's funny in this is the like the head of
Speaker:Evan: security who's a complete idiot and doesn't do anything except,
Speaker:Evan: you know spy on people and fire people like over a camera he fires some person
Speaker:Evan: who takes a like a casual break.
Speaker:bill: He takes a smoke break.
Speaker:Evan: Which is he take a smoke break in like a an alley not an alleyway like a tunnel
Speaker:Evan: or I don't know what to just you know like a stairwell or something and he fires him.
Speaker:ward: Comrades need their tobacco alright. Well. You should not have been fired for
Speaker:ward: that. That's extremely anti-worker.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. Oh yeah they're totally anti-worker. The head of security is the same
Speaker:Evan: guy who says we can only have art on our workstation that's approved art and
Speaker:Evan: it's like a triangle bullshit modern art thing.
Speaker:ward: Oh it's so bad.
Speaker:Evan: He throws his plant out and he's like.
Speaker:bill: He goes on to play yeah the doctor in star trek voyager uh emergency medical
Speaker:bill: hologram doctor who becomes sentient um one of my all-time favorite star trek characters.
Speaker:Evan: I did not realize he was in that. He was also in Stargate.
Speaker:bill: Yes, he fires somebody over. And because there is a constant, there is a security.
Speaker:bill: This really is, it's the, what's that thing?
Speaker:bill: The all-seeing eye, the prison thing.
Speaker:ward: A panopticon.
Speaker:bill: Thank you. Ward, I knew if I said enough words, you would give me the right word.
Speaker:ward: I was waiting for you to say enough words.
Speaker:bill: I was waiting for that. Yeah. It is truly Panopticon.
Speaker:bill: You know, we're like, there is a woman with a headset on and she's like,
Speaker:bill: sir, sir, unauthorized break.
Speaker:bill: Someone has stepped away and they are smoking a cigarette. And he steps away.
Speaker:ward: We got one. We got one.
Speaker:bill: Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Someone is eating an unauthorized sandwich during their lunch hour.
Speaker:bill: Also, the greatest thing that the security people also provide is the mockery
Speaker:bill: of the rules of the gremlins.
Speaker:bill: One of my all-time favorite sequences in the movie.
Speaker:Evan: Yes, love that.
Speaker:bill: So, for those of you who have not listened to the first episode and not heard
Speaker:bill: the rules for gremlins, or if you've just lived under a rock for,
Speaker:bill: you know, 40-plus years and you don't know the rules of gremlins,
Speaker:bill: so you have gizmo who is a mogwai mogwai cannot be gotten wet,
Speaker:bill: and they cannot be fed after midnight
Speaker:bill: if they are fed after midnight they become a gremlin if they get wet,
Speaker:bill: they sprout.
Speaker:Evan: No they don't become a gremlin they give birth.
Speaker:bill: To gremlins no no no if they eat after midnight they become a gremlin oh right
Speaker:bill: if a mogwai gets wet They sprout weird balls,
Speaker:bill: that become mogwai.
Speaker:bill: To become more mogwai.
Speaker:bill: If a mogwai eats after midnight, they become a gremlin. If a gremlin gets wet,
Speaker:bill: they make more gremlins.
Speaker:bill: And that begs the question, when does midnight start? When does after midnight start?
Speaker:bill: And so there is an entire extended sequence in which the security people are
Speaker:bill: like, so if a gremlin gets a piece of, if a mogwai gets a piece of food stuck in his teeth.
Speaker:ward: That's so good.
Speaker:bill: And then after midnight, it comes out and he swallows it.
Speaker:bill: Does he become a gremlin? What if.
Speaker:ward: Because he technically didn't eat it.
Speaker:bill: Right.
Speaker:ward: After midnight.
Speaker:bill: What if he's on a plane and he crosses a time zone while eating?
Speaker:bill: Wait, what if one of them eats something at 11 o'clock, but then he gets something
Speaker:bill: stuck in his teeth? Yeah, like a caraway seed or a sesame seed.
Speaker:bill: Whatever, right, right. And then after 12 o'clock, it comes out.
Speaker:bill: Now, he didn't eat that after midnight.
Speaker:bill: That's right. Look, I didn't make the rules, okay? Rules. I don't believe this.
Speaker:bill: Oh, wait a minute. What about this? What if they're eating in an airplane and
Speaker:bill: they cross a time zone? I mean, it's always midnight somewhere.
Speaker:Evan: I almost feel like the original joke in the original movie of that rule is was
Speaker:Evan: purely just this makes no sense.
Speaker:bill: Whatsoever yeah.
Speaker:Evan: It's a rule.
Speaker:bill: Yeah and it was never supposed to make sense it was never supposed to be like
Speaker:bill: built on and then they were like you have to make another movie and at that point he's like fine,
Speaker:bill: i'm gonna just not only am i gonna make this making fun of you I'm going to
Speaker:bill: destroy the very premise of the original movie.
Speaker:bill: One of my favorite things about this film, though, is that they agreed to all
Speaker:bill: of this, and then they released it.
Speaker:bill: And it just goes to show that these people have no dignity.
Speaker:bill: They will debase themselves.
Speaker:bill: They have lost any semblance of dignity or self-respect
Speaker:bill: or basic humanity, because if they had any of those things, they wouldn't have
Speaker:bill: allowed this to happen merely in pursuit of money. That's it.
Speaker:bill: Everything becomes sacrificed at the altar of making a buck.
Speaker:bill: Sure, you can make a movie in which you relentlessly and mercilessly mock me
Speaker:bill: and everybody I know, as long as I can make a single dollar.
Speaker:Evan: I have to add two things that add to this.
Speaker:Evan: Number one, that this has to be mentioned, at one point, they talk about how
Speaker:Evan: movies can only be shown on his TV channels in color, and they have a thing
Speaker:Evan: saying, what's playing tonight? And he says, Casablanca, now in color.
Speaker:bill: With a happy ending. Don't forget that. With a new happy ending.
Speaker:Evan: And then the second thing about money is that when, after the end,
Speaker:Evan: And after when Clamp is giving Billy a promotion raise and he sees Gizmo and
Speaker:Evan: it's like, oh, it's this mogwai.
Speaker:Evan: He immediately says like, oh, we should do a Macy's Day parade float.
Speaker:Evan: Have you thought about merchandising? He's like, no. And then he says like,
Speaker:Evan: yeah, we'll lose the headband.
Speaker:Evan: He likes the headband. But the idea that they're merchandising the thing in
Speaker:Evan: the movie about it, it's also very Spaceballs-esque.
Speaker:ward: Dude, having the suction cup car window one as the very first example. Yeah.
Speaker:bill: Which I grew up with. That suction cup gizmo.
Speaker:bill: Also, he calls it specifically the Macy's Day Parade, which-
Speaker:bill: I have called the Thanksgiving Macy's, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Speaker:bill: I've called it the Macy's Day Parade my entire life.
Speaker:bill: And I am convinced that this movie is why.
Speaker:Evan: Wait, but isn't that what it is?
Speaker:bill: No, it's the Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Speaker:bill: It's not the Macy's Day. There's no such thing as Macy's Day, Evan.
Speaker:ward: Macy's Day. Yeah. There's no day celebrating Macy's.
Speaker:Evan: Sorry, I thought you were trying to say that it wasn't actually sponsored by Macy's.
Speaker:bill: No, he calls it the Macy's Day Parade, which is what I have always called it
Speaker:bill: in my real life because I'm an idiot and because I watched this movie as a child.
Speaker:bill: And I'm like, yeah, it's the Macy's Day Parade. It's Macy's Day.
Speaker:Evan: But that's actually kind of perfect because he's just talking about the corporation
Speaker:Evan: that runs it, which is just like another hilarious joke.
Speaker:bill: I'm convinced that's why I always called it that.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I was trying to think if there's other moments where, I thought there
Speaker:Evan: was another part where they mentioned merchandising.
Speaker:Evan: Oh, but one other thing I want to mention is the name of the genetics lab is Splice-O-Life.
Speaker:bill: Splice-O-Life.
Speaker:Evan: And when they come to deliver the package, which is like, I don't know what
Speaker:Evan: they say, some kind of chemist, some test tube or whatever.
Speaker:bill: It's the flu. It's the flu virus.
Speaker:Evan: Oh, the flu. No, no, I thought they said they don't have the flu.
Speaker:bill: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, you're right.
Speaker:Evan: It's something else. Some other cold or whatever. But the way that they walk
Speaker:Evan: into it, it feels like you're walking inside of a carnival.
Speaker:bill: A hundred percent.
Speaker:Evan: Like a, yeah, it's very weird. Like a tent.
Speaker:bill: There's a camel there.
Speaker:Evan: This red hole. Yeah. There's a bunch of, actually a bunch of outtakes where
Speaker:Evan: they try to get the animals to run down the hallway and then they just stand
Speaker:Evan: there. Nothing happens.
Speaker:bill: Yeah.
Speaker:ward: Yeah, because they had a camel, didn't they?
Speaker:bill: Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Camel. A cow. A goat. A goat, maybe?
Speaker:bill: I know there's a camel and a cow. Oh, dogs. No, there's a couple dogs.
Speaker:bill: I don't think there's a goat. There's a couple dogs.
Speaker:Evan: I think it might be the camel or the cow that just stands there and doesn't
Speaker:Evan: go. Oh, also the monkeys that they released.
Speaker:Evan: There's multiple scenes where they're trying to get the monkeys to come out
Speaker:Evan: of the cage, and they won't do it.
Speaker:Evan: And they're like calling it. It's like, oh, whatever the monkey's actual name
Speaker:Evan: is. And yeah, they're doing some fucked up. And then they evict them.
Speaker:Evan: They're like, you can't be a tenant anymore in our building.
Speaker:bill: Probably the best decision made by anybody in management at that place. I got to be honest.
Speaker:Evan: So many hilarious things. Also, the boss, Billy's boss is named Marla Bloodstone.
Speaker:Evan: Another great microwave.
Speaker:ward: Like, every time he tries to, like, talk about, like, the safety of others or
Speaker:ward: anything, we're like, oh, he's going to be a good person. And he immediately
Speaker:ward: goes to, like, yeah, you know how many lawsuits it's going to be?
Speaker:ward: Yep. Like, he immediately brings it back to the dollar.
Speaker:Evan: Some of the notes I wrote down were also ridiculous. One thing that I thought
Speaker:Evan: was funny is early on when they are in a taxi cab and no, I think he, no, the,
Speaker:Evan: Futterman asked about taking taxi cabs and he makes some joke about them being
Speaker:Evan: Russian and stealing your state secrets.
Speaker:bill: Yeah, there are multiple references to Russia and Russia.
Speaker:bill: russian spies in this film it's.
Speaker:Evan: Truly of its time cold wars yeah 1990 yeah makes sense,
Speaker:Evan: there's no other funny none of the other names are that funny but it actually
Speaker:Evan: does say the person's name is microwave marge yep that's my that's the character's
Speaker:Evan: name yeah microwave marge named microwave which is weird because she would have
Speaker:Evan: been named microwave before microwave was invented it's kind of no she changed it oh okay legally yeah.
Speaker:ward: There's there's paperwork for that.
Speaker:bill: First name microwave last name.
Speaker:Evan: Marge,
Speaker:Evan: the opening thing with the bugs bunny and porky pig and daffy duck and then
Speaker:Evan: like changing the rules to me that felt like the idea of dante just being like
Speaker:Evan: i'm gonna do whatever i want i'm gonna,
Speaker:Evan: get rid of bugs bunny it's gonna be daffy duck doing the intro just sort of
Speaker:Evan: like a fuck you to warner brothers yeah just literally just making fun of them yeah It felt.
Speaker:ward: Like a fuck you right off the rip where it was like, cause like I didn't know
Speaker:ward: all the background, but it was like, oh, this guy got like full creative control.
Speaker:ward: He can, he can just rip whatever the fuck he wants. Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. I wonder.
Speaker:ward: So, cause why else would I be seeing this Looney Tunes intro for gremlins to the.
Speaker:bill: The, um, all of that was actually removed from the theatrical release because it confused audiences.
Speaker:Evan: It would be confusing. Honestly, be like, wait, am I in the right?
Speaker:bill: Yeah. They thought, because they were like, wait, this isn't,
Speaker:bill: I thought I was here for a live action film. It's not, you know,
Speaker:bill: they literally, they were like, they were confused. They were like,
Speaker:bill: okay, we have to pull that.
Speaker:Evan: I have, this is something strange. So in the, there's a review from this movie
Speaker:Evan: that came out later. It looks like it's from some guy named Video Hounds.
Speaker:Evan: golden movie retriever gave it three and a half bones out of four but his quote
Speaker:Evan: and this came out in 2007 so think about the time you said all those.
Speaker:ward: Things seven what you said you just said all those things those are.
Speaker:Evan: Like all those words in.
Speaker:ward: That order okay.
Speaker:Evan: This is real okay i'm just.
Speaker:ward: Making shirt because.
Speaker:Evan: What the fuck he he says that the gremlins is superior than the original
Speaker:Evan: and then he says it has a myriad of surreal tributes and scores to movies including
Speaker:Evan: the wizard of oz and a musical extravaganza including a donald trump parody
Speaker:Evan: take on tv news and body slams modern urban living
Speaker:Evan: i don't think he quite understood all of it but it's interesting that he also
Speaker:Evan: got a trump parody granted that he wrote this in 2007 but still where's the trump.
Speaker:bill: Parody I don't.
Speaker:Evan: See it. That, I don't know. I don't, um...
Speaker:ward: I didn't see it either.
Speaker:Evan: A bunch of people did like this movie. Critics did like it. And it got a pretty good rating.
Speaker:Evan: It just did not do well in the box office. Maybe you're right,
Speaker:Evan: though. Maybe he was right that it waited too long for a sequel. People got bored.
Speaker:ward: It's good for him.
Speaker:bill: I honestly, like, yeah, it was too late to capitalize on Gremlin.
Speaker:bill: But I think it was also too...
Speaker:bill: It was far ahead of its time in terms of what it was saying and how it was saying it.
Speaker:bill: Like, I know we, you know, we've talked about, you know, RoboCop and I know
Speaker:bill: RoboCop and, you know, Verhoeven in general, and we've talked about,
Speaker:bill: you know, like his, you know, political satire recently.
Speaker:bill: And listen, I think RoboCop is a brilliant piece of political satire and a brilliant
Speaker:bill: piece of dystopian media that has satirized the modern experience.
Speaker:bill: But I think Gremlins 2 is a far more impactful and depressingly correct prediction
Speaker:bill: for the world we will live in.
Speaker:bill: Like, we would be so lucky to live in RoboCop, okay?
Speaker:bill: But we live in Gremlins 2 world. That's the fucking future we got.
Speaker:bill: We got the future of Gremlins 2.
Speaker:Evan: We got both.
Speaker:bill: I don't know. We never, no, we didn't. I'm sorry. In what way did we get both?
Speaker:Evan: We have a violent police state, like in RoboCop? With a militarized corporate police force?
Speaker:bill: I think that Gremlins 2 has a violent police state as well.
Speaker:ward: Yeah, but we ain't got like people in them armored things. They're just going
Speaker:ward: to be sending robot dogs with IEDs attached at people like they've already done.
Speaker:bill: Yeah, it's not, in no way, we never got to the point where they're like,
Speaker:bill: you know what, we can actually keep people alive. and like you know things no,
Speaker:bill: we got the dumb future the dumb dystopia the fucking stupid dystopia.
Speaker:ward: We got flat cameras.
Speaker:bill: What's what's.
Speaker:Evan: Funny to me is that the you just you just said that we wish we had gotten the robocop which is also.
Speaker:bill: A comparison to this i just went in comparison to this not like you know okay,
Speaker:bill: if we had the options if these are the options okay if these are the two options,
Speaker:bill: we'd be so fucking lucky to have robocop future but no we got this shit the fucking dumb shit.
Speaker:ward: Yeah people at least take things serious in.
Speaker:bill: Robocop yeah yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah but the bad guy in robocop is way.
Speaker:bill: Like i feel like okay so like here that that is what i think actually that is
Speaker:bill: that and like i think ward is
Speaker:bill: right because the robocop future posits a future in which the population,
Speaker:bill: is still aware and angry about shit,
Speaker:bill: and like will push back the,
Speaker:bill: the future of gremlins 2 is one of complete complacency and docile
Speaker:bill: cattle like public who just fucking goes to clamp industries and gorges on frozen
Speaker:bill: yogurt yeah that's what we got.
Speaker:ward: I mean and that's what and that
Speaker:ward: is what we got we know about the fucking murderous pedophiles in power,
Speaker:ward: Ramping corruption, ice, more fucking illegal wars and war crimes.
Speaker:ward: And people are just fucking doing whatever, dog.
Speaker:Evan: There's lots of behind-the-scenes casual race that is now no longer...
Speaker:bill: Like, there's something inherently... There is something inherently hopeful
Speaker:bill: about Verhoeven's dystopias that I don't see in Dante's version.
Speaker:bill: Dante's version is far more cynical. and sadly more accurate.
Speaker:ward: Because i mean also how many times you hear about people where it's like oh
Speaker:ward: with ai it's going to be like terminator and it's like in the same vein at least
Speaker:ward: they take that shit serious there's no one in the fucking terminator universe going,
Speaker:ward: you know actually i think skynet's the good guys and you just need to hear them
Speaker:ward: out yeah actually i heard a podcast,
Speaker:ward: Joe Rogan had Skynet on early on. All right.
Speaker:bill: You know, I'm like now it's like, you know, if you criticize Skynet, it's ableist.
Speaker:bill: That's ableist. People use disabled people use Skynet to commit crimes,
Speaker:bill: you know, and it's ableist. You can't, you can't criticize it. No.
Speaker:Evan: I think the way we settle this is we have Paul Verhoeven on the show and ask him about Gremlins too.
Speaker:bill: No, we have to have both of them on Dante and Verhoeven. debate.
Speaker:ward: Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: I've actually tried to get an email address to send an email to someone related
Speaker:Evan: to Paul Verhoeven. I haven't found anything to even send an email.
Speaker:Evan: He's too famous. And he's also probably doesn't check his email.
Speaker:Evan: I'm sure there's no way that guy's got email.
Speaker:bill: He's 88 years old.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. He's an old guy.
Speaker:ward: Have you tried looking him up in the phone book?
Speaker:Evan: You know, if I still had a phone book, I would.
Speaker:bill: He's 88. And Dante is 79, you know.
Speaker:ward: Have you tried knocking on doors?
Speaker:bill: Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: I'm sure he doesn't live in the U.S. anymore. He's probably...
Speaker:bill: No, I don't...
Speaker:Evan: Paul Verhoeven, if you're listening. Dante?
Speaker:bill: Verho...
Speaker:Evan: Joe Dante?
Speaker:bill: Yeah, I believe... No. No, I'm sorry. Verhoeven lives in the United States.
Speaker:bill: He returned to the U.S. in 2022. He saw what was going on, and he was like,
Speaker:bill: this is ripe for my particular type of storytelling.
Speaker:Evan: So there was a... About two years ago, there was a rumor he was going to be making a new movie.
Speaker:Evan: and i don't know that it's going to actually happen i'm guessing not i think that he couldn't.
Speaker:bill: Get he is currently preparing he's currently preparing his next film young sinner
Speaker:bill: which reunites him with robocop screenwriter uh ever newmeyer uh it is an erotic
Speaker:bill: political thriller set in washington dc.
Speaker:Evan: But it's been stuck in development hell for.
Speaker:bill: Multiple he began shooting in 2024.
Speaker:Evan: No way. They actually started shooting it? I saw that, and then I saw that that
Speaker:Evan: wasn't true. I hope that you're right.
Speaker:bill: Listen, I'm just reading what the internet tells me. And as we know, the internet can't lie.
Speaker:ward: The internet's never wrong.
Speaker:bill: I'm just reading the AI something. No, I'm not. I'm not reading the AI something.
Speaker:Evan: In 2025, he said there was no guarantee it will happen.
Speaker:bill: Yeah, because he's 88. He could die.
Speaker:Evan: Well.
Speaker:bill: I got to be honest. I think it's when I'm 88 everything I do will be like there's
Speaker:bill: no guarantee this is gonna happen,
Speaker:bill: see I'm gonna be the opposite because I think it'll be so fucking funny.
Speaker:ward: Be like I promise I'll get.
Speaker:bill: To it.
Speaker:ward: I'm just gonna have all these unknown.
Speaker:bill: Promises when I'm 88 when I pass away nothing will be promised fucker.
Speaker:ward: Said he's gonna fix this.
Speaker:bill: For me nothing will be promised when I hit that point.
Speaker:Evan: We should do another one of his movies I know we've done all his like what i
Speaker:Evan: call the core trilogy but plus showgirls i think there's another one worth anyway,
Speaker:Evan: anything about gremlins 2 since we're at the point where we talk about other directors.
Speaker:bill: Unrecognized brilliance uh a movie so far ahead of its time as to be basically
Speaker:bill: made by somebody from the future.
Speaker:Evan: I hadn't watched it in a long time and i've watched it twice.
Speaker:ward: Yeah no this is such a fun time.
Speaker:Evan: And uh we will return for the third movie in october of 2028 presuming that it comes out though.
Speaker:bill: I don't think it's happening there's no guarantee i don't think it's happening.
Speaker:Evan: As paul romero would say.
Speaker:bill: Listen joe dante is currently 79 he doesn't have to guarantee anything anymore okay he's.
Speaker:Evan: Not involved but he's not involved it's being directed by chris.
Speaker:bill: Columbus i just want to point out joe dante new jersey born and bred.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah morristown i.
Speaker:bill: Believe.
Speaker:Evan: So go knock on his door.
Speaker:bill: He doesn't live there. He doesn't live in Morristown anymore.
Speaker:Evan: How do you know? If you stop by his child at home and- Yes.
Speaker:ward: Bill knocks on doors, all right?
Speaker:bill: Yeah, that's part of my job. I knock on doors. That's what I do.
Speaker:ward: And he looks people up in the phone book.
Speaker:Evan: For anyone out there who is under the age of, I don't know, what, 30?
Speaker:Evan: A phone book used to be a book with everyone's phone number in it.
Speaker:Evan: And they had a yellow one for the businesses and a white one for the people.
Speaker:bill: It is amazing. Joe Tante has an entire section of his Wikipedia page just termed
Speaker:bill: unrealized projects, and it is large.
Speaker:Evan: That's kind of bad.
Speaker:bill: There's a lot.
Speaker:bill: It is broken up by Dectate Decades, and it's a lot of stuff.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, some of this could have been like, oh, I had an idea that I said at
Speaker:Evan: one interview one time. It doesn't necessarily mean it got beyond that, but that's a shame.
Speaker:ward: How many of them are jokes that you're like, oh, somebody took me serious on that?
Speaker:Evan: Whatever. Some of them are actually hilarious because there's no real context
Speaker:Evan: about them, although I guess there's some sources you can look into.
Speaker:Evan: one of them is called ombra amore retitled from monster love a horror comedy
Speaker:Evan: written by greg peck about a werewolf and a vampire who fall in love who would not pay to see that.
Speaker:bill: I think i think ward's right and some of these are just random jokes this man
Speaker:bill: has said and they're like yeah we'll do that he's like yeah i'm gonna do that,
Speaker:bill: i'll get right on it i'll get i'll get on that fucking idiots he takes meetings in hollywood.
Speaker:Evan: Just to get like a meal and then.
Speaker:bill: He pitches a ridiculous movie and then they never call him fucking idiots oh.
Speaker:ward: Hell yeah he he hears about some fucking new restaurant he's like.
Speaker:bill: Oh keep that in mind yeah yeah oh wait yeah somebody wants.
Speaker:ward: To meet with me yeah yeah have them meet me here for dinner.
Speaker:bill: Yeah i'll i'll yeah i'll do a uh i'll do a film adaptation of the short story
Speaker:bill: casting the runes yeah sure sure simon penn Yeah.
Speaker:ward: No, I think I actually got a working idea. Hey, can we get another bottle of
Speaker:ward: wine, get the creative juices flowing?
Speaker:Evan: He said in the 90s, he said he wanted to do a live adaptation of the cartoon series The Jetsons.
Speaker:bill: Yeah, obviously. There's no way in hell.
Speaker:ward: Yeah.
Speaker:bill: There's no way in hell that wasn't just a dinner.
Speaker:Evan: And he claimed the person who was going to write the movie was the person who wrote Problem Child.
Speaker:bill: He also, in 1990s, a contemporary set film adaptation,
Speaker:bill: of Jack London's novel starring Tom Hanks or Steve Guttenberg in the 1990s? No, I'm sorry.
Speaker:bill: That was a meal ticket.
Speaker:bill: He was just like, yeah, yeah, Steve Guttenberg. Yeah, 1990s.
Speaker:ward: You got Evan over here. Oh, that's so sad. All these unrealized projects.
Speaker:ward: Meanwhile, I'm over here. Good for him.
Speaker:bill: Steve Guttenberg. At the height of his popularity in 1996.
Speaker:Evan: Why does it say in the 90s under his unrealized project? It just says Jurassic
Speaker:Evan: Park. Were they going to hire Joe Dante to do this?
Speaker:bill: Great question.
Speaker:ward: The more accurate question I feel that needs to be asked first is how many bottles
Speaker:ward: of wine before that idea was pitched?
Speaker:Evan: Oh, it's just an archive of an interview where he says what he would have done
Speaker:Evan: if he had directed Jurassic Park. That's it.
Speaker:bill: That's amazing.
Speaker:Evan: This guy is just, didn't he say he's just a prankster? This guy is just playing
Speaker:Evan: practical jokes all over the place.
Speaker:ward: Why not did you see the movie we just discussed yeah did you watch this did
Speaker:ward: you i know it was my first time but evan did you watch this.
Speaker:bill: The batman this.
Speaker:Evan: Dude just is clowning on.
Speaker:bill: That man starring john lithgow as the joker.
Speaker:ward: Oh my god he had so many good dinners let's have a movie with uh.
Speaker:Evan: With uh i don't know.
Speaker:bill: Jaws three people zero in early attempt of.
Speaker:ward: Another Jaws sequel pitched as a spoof.
Speaker:Evan: We're going to have a movie about a giant, super tall monster played by...
Speaker:bill: Danny, do you know? Yeah, so, yeah. This is a brilliant piece of film.
Speaker:bill: Masked behind the maniacal laughter, mere constant maniacal laughter of gremlins.
Speaker:bill: Mere constant. It never stops.
Speaker:ward: Yeah. It really doesn't stop.
Speaker:bill: It never stops.
Speaker:Evan: We didn't even say, most of them are puppets, and they all look really good.
Speaker:Evan: There's only a few parts where it looks a little bit off, but otherwise, incredible.
Speaker:bill: The only time it looks off is when the bat gremlin is flying over them outside.
Speaker:bill: And only certain scenes.
Speaker:ward: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Only very certain.
Speaker:Evan: There's another scene where one of them is dancing above the table or something,
Speaker:Evan: and it looks a little bit weird because of the way they did it.
Speaker:bill: It looks amazing. I love it. I will not criticize that scene.
Speaker:ward: It was perfect.
Speaker:bill: It was perfect.
Speaker:ward: It was perfect. Don't you dare talk about my baby like that.
Speaker:Evan: But everything else.
Speaker:bill: Oh, and we forgot to mention that one gremlin does live. It is Gremlina,
Speaker:bill: and she is in the process of,
Speaker:bill: Of what appears to be, she's in the process of walking down the aisle to marry the head of security.
Speaker:bill: And in the end, he's into it.
Speaker:bill: He's definitely on board with it in the end.
Speaker:ward: Yeah, it might start untoward, but she successfully seduces him.
Speaker:Evan: Can gremlins procreate the natural way?
Speaker:bill: No, they cannot. They don't have genitals. They're naked. did you notice any
Speaker:bill: genitals or even like a cloaca no they don't have genitals.
Speaker:Evan: So he just like which you think they would definitely.
Speaker:ward: Have like a way to defecate just due to the nature of being a gremlin.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah because i mean.
Speaker:ward: If they get to that no just the mayhem aspect.
Speaker:bill: Yeah i think they just throw.
Speaker:Evan: You think they'd.
Speaker:bill: Be a little shit.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah maybe they.
Speaker:bill: Just throw up they should have they should have discussed this in.
Speaker:Evan: The movie yeah,
Speaker:Evan: it's an it's an outtake yeah like how do gremlins take a shit.
Speaker:bill: This will be a patriot episode.
Speaker:Evan: Well i think we've reached the uh we've reached the peak of uh the gremlins
Speaker:Evan: lore here but uh myself bill ward we will smell you later.
Speaker:bill: I'm not saying.
