Brosnan’s Remington Steele contract reportedly prevented his earlier Bond casting; Dalton later declined a multi-film commitment, opening GoldenEye for Brosnan. — Bill Simmons
Casting What-Ifs reports Gibson, Grant and Fiennes discussions; Gibson’s age comparison is corrected to younger than Brosnan. — Bill Simmons
Law is a hypothetical timing alternative, Paul McGann is reported as a studio fallback, and the Zabka claim is plainly joking. — Chris Ryan
Casting discussion reports Hopkins and Rickman declining an older 006, and Porizkova/Herzigová declining Natalya; Scorupco divides opinion. Courteney Cox as Xenia is explicitly unverified and doubted. — Bill Simmons
John Woo reportedly declined directing; the hosts weigh losing Broken Arrow or Face/Off and praise Travolta’s villain turn.
Stanley Kubrick's The Killing; The Big Combo and Django for the torture scene; Jean-Pierre Melville's films; The Taking of Pelham One Two Three for the color names; Ringo Lam's City on Fire; John Woo's The Killer for the three-way standoff
Nerd Corner is a new category built for one host's reactions: Tarantino is quoted calling the film his take on Kubrick's The Killing rather than a rip-off of it.
Given thirty seconds on The Killing, he calls it one of the great Sterling Hayden performances with a top-three final shot in movie history, the film that let Kubrick leap from crafty photographer making B pictures to the most significant film artist of his time, and says its traces run throughout Reservoir Dogs. — Sean Fennessey
Joseph H. Lewis's The Big Combo and Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Django inspired the cop torture; The Big Combo is fine, Django is a better rewatch after Django Unchained, Tarantino has a relationship with Franco Nero rather than the rights, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has Django-esque flourishes.
Jean-Pierre Melville's tough-guy French films, Le Cirque La Rouge (as transcribed) and Army of Shadows, are recommended to anyone who loves Reservoir Dogs.
The color names come from The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3, a great homage with Walter Matthau, and the Denzel remake is not bad; the 1987 film City on Fire is so close that watching it raises whether Tarantino is good or just stole it, the one complicated thing about him, with critics saying he ripped off seven movies rather than paying homage.
He calls Tarantino a metatextual artist and himself a postmodernist. — Chris Ryan
Tarantino is not interested in human beings so much as weaving pre-existing stories together; City on Fire is a cool movie, Reservoir Dogs is a masterpiece; the three-way standoff is traced to John Woo films such as The Killer.
The opening diner scene is the first candidate: the Madonna 'Like a Virgin' theory leads into the tipping argument, and the clip of Mr. Pink refusing to tip because society says he has to is played.
A lot of guys came out of the movie with a new vision of the service industry; one host, who had worked as a busboy and waiter for two summers, was offended by Buscemi's character and says anyone who has worked food service knows you tip.
Mr. White is teased as woke for dropping knowledge that waitressing is the number one job for non-college-educated women; the scene is said to foreshadow the rat, since Mr. Orange snitches on Mr. Pink when Joe demands to know who did not tip.
A low-key favorite detail is the Budweiser bottles at breakfast; Tarantino scenes often happen in the morning with people behaving as if it were night, like the wolf arriving at six in the morning.
It occurs to one host that the crew, dressed in uniform right before the heist, should not be seen together in public; it is called ludicrous and parked for nitpicks, defended as pre-surveillance state, and the waitress they stiffed would remember five guys in black suits smoking like chimneys and drinking Budweisers at nine in the morning; Joe should never be seen with them.
A nerd question asks whether the roving camera around the table, shooting backs and sides of heads, was stolen from someone; Terry Gilliam loved it at Sundance, it is Scorsese-ish, and the handheld over-the-shoulder following of Madsen going for the gas can feels like a flex.
The Copacabana tracking shot in Goodfellas is the comparison, called the greatest tracking shot in movie history; a Goodfellas episode could run four hours and needs a live audience.
The shooting style is read as naturalism, putting the viewer inside the conversation, and the scene characterizes everyone at once: a beef between Blonde and White, jumpy Pink, Orange lying in the cut watching, Nice Guy Eddie showing who runs what, and Eddie Bunker as pop critic preferring the early stuff.
It is one of the hosts' favorite opening scenes; an opening-scene week bracket is floated, half of Tarantino's openings would qualify including Inglourious Bastards (as transcribed), and openings and kickers are what matter most.
Keitel versus Buscemi over the bleeding Tim Roth is the second candidate: a long, escalating, well-acted scene; it is argued as the best Buscemi performance, intense, neurotic and imposing, and the two guns pointed at each other was the first John Woo reference one host caught.
Buscemi rankings: this first, The Sopranos second, Domestic Disturbance third ahead of Fargo and Miller's Crossing; Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, remembered for 'boat drinks', Amongst Friends and Very Bad Things are recalled as the Tarantino rip-off era.
The ear-cutting scene followed by the unexpected Tim Roth murder is the third candidate; Madsen gets the gleam in his eye once White and Eddie leave, talks to the severed ear, and the cutaway to the graffiti above the door at the perfect moment is why the scene does not gross one host out.
Tarantino, for someone so violent, often does not show things: Marvin's head in Pulp Fiction is quick and the trunk dummy is obvious, though Hitler's body and Jamie Foxx's forty kills in Django are counterexamples; he also had no money and never shows the suitcase, and Mr. Blonde's speech before the torture is recited.
The movie does not get many Fraternal Order of Police screenings; Mr. Orange's unexpected murder of Mr. Blonde is a great twist nobody saw coming the first time.
Tim Roth performing the commode story, from meeting his boss at the diner through the different settings, is a candidate, with the 'panic hits me like a bucket of water' passage recited.
He had never seen anything like it at the time: the color palette shifts to the graffiti background and the movie comes alive, Roth's energy changes completely as he learns to be the character, and it layers Tarantino's recurring themes of story within a story, seeing Freddy instead of Mr. Orange, and the former actor's process of memorizing lines in the apartment with the Silver Surfer poster; the jumps between settings were unlike anything he had seen. — Chris Ryan
Roth gets to flex his chops with some of the most anguished yelling in a movie, but his accent is called very bad even though a dialect coach was on set the whole shoot; is he supposed to be Dutch? A rare bad accent inside a great performance.
Roth delivering the monologue in the bathroom to cops who stand still while the German shepherd watches showed one host that writing could do that.
Buscemi arguing about the name selections is a shorter but iconic scene, with the trade request and Joe's 'city council meeting' refusal recited; the Joe Cabot bit is saved for later.
Chris Penn doubting Mr. Orange's story, and Vic Vega's return from prison with the Scagnetti talk and the wrestling with Chris Penn and Tierney, are thrown in as further candidates.
The final choices split three ways: the commode story; the ear-cutting scene, taken as the whole twenty-five-minute stretch from the Mr. Blonde and Mr. White showdown to learning what a psychopath he is, since the shootings are never shown; and the ending with Chris Penn figuring it out in seven minutes, which displaced the opening diner for one host after twenty years. Three-way shootouts in general are loved and are said to have influenced one host's later work.
In ten or eleven Rewatchables the show has never had two stars pitted against each other, literally and figuratively, since Heat, where Pacino was named the winner; in the spirit of overacting one host goes Nick Cage.
Picks John Woo, since this was really the last time he got to make a heat-rock Hollywood movie before going off the rails. — Jason Concepcion
A tangent on Woo's later Paycheck with Ben Affleck, which nobody can quite summarize, filed with Reindeer Games among the Affleck films of six years that had the title first and the script later.
After the tangent someone says they also think Cage won the movie, which may be the first Cage voter restating rather than a new vote; the audience is asked and answers Cage in what is called a unanimous decision; it was a tough podcast for Travolta, who got beat up and lost in a lot of ways, plus the love handles in the movie.
Joan Allen: no, though a contender, and one host would feel so bad if this were her Apex Mountain.
Gina Gershon: no; Bound is suggested instead, and Cocktail (as transcribed) comes up with a don't-get-me-started.
Travolta: no way; he was the biggest star in the world, but this is a second, mini-pleasant apex era for him rather than the peak.
Nick Cage: a definite yes, this rather than the Oscar is his Apex, after the trilogy of those films in a row, followed by the movie where he plays an angel who comes back, after which it all fell apart.
Tangent: Travolta also played an angel, in 1996's Michael, whereas in Phenomenon he had an accident rather than being an angel and is remembered only for the poster pose.
After a joke asking whether this is the apex for smoking a cigarette without a face, the host wraps up by saying nobody had an apex, despite the definite yes for Cage moments earlier.
Cage and Travolta spent two weeks together learning each other's mannerisms; the film was originally set in the future, in space; the studio wanted the slash out of the title; the boat chase took four weeks to film; the special edition DVD has an alternate mirror ending; Castor Troy kills 20 people; a Metacritic score of 82
The corner is called half-assed because you cannot believe pretty much anything on the internet; according to it Cage and Travolta spent two weeks together picking up each other's mannerisms and learning to play one another, which the hosts buy, and then played really crazy dialed-up versions of themselves.
Buys the two weeks: that is the kind of thing you do when you are an actor to pretend it is a job. — Jason Concepcion
Whose idea was it, Cage's or Travolta's? 100 percent Cage, imagined inviting him to Bangkok or Thailand to hang out.
Originally the film was set in the future, in space, where face technology is better; Woo would not do it and said it needed to be more realistic, which amuses the hosts since space travel has actually been done while face switching and magnetic boots have not.
The studio wanted to take the slash out of the title and John Woo resisted, thinking people would think it was a hockey movie, Johnny Depp being the great example; the boat chase took four weeks to film, which makes sense because it feels like it lasts four weeks in San Diego.
This was a cool era of movies where desert, marina and big city sit within three blocks, like Seven with its constant rain and then desert; the 90s did not care about meteorology, and it lasted through Collateral with Jamie Foxx getting from the airport to downtown in seven minutes.
The special edition DVD has deleted scenes and an alternate ending in which Travolta looks in the mirror and Joan Allen gasps as she and the audience see Castor's face as his reflection; the studio nixed it, an atrocious idea now on the disc.
Guesses that Castor Troy killed around 20 people. — Jason Concepcion
The body-count quiz draws guesses of at least 24 and 20, with three kills in the first 45 seconds before he slows down; the answer is 20, close enough that the accuracy is called disturbing, Concepcion credited with nailing it after two hosts watched the film four times in a row.
A favorite moment: after they get Castor, Sean walks into the office, is told the CIA sent champagne, says he did not know they did catering, then bummed out suggests a drink and names anonymous extras shot in the first shootout, Winters and Finesco, whom nobody cares about; Winters had been on screen for 27 seconds.
The favorite killing: Castor holds an undercover woman out of the plane, shoots her, throws her off, she gets run over by the plane and he does the Jordan shrug; before that he makes a crude come-on about sending her flowers and rephrases it into something lewder.
They had been working to catch an international, apolitical, stateless terrorist operating in Los Angeles who had already assassinated a federal agent's child, yet all it took was the brother buying a plane ticket and an agent already in place; he was wearing a fake mustache.
Metacritic gave it 82 out of 100, which astonished one host; another calls that a low score for acting that has Nicolas Cage pretending to be Castor Troy pretending to be John Travolta pretending to be Sean Archer pretending to be Castor Troy, five levels Inception deep.
The early CGI and obvious stunt doubles; the father-daughter sexual tension and everything with Dominique Swain; the deception of Travolta's wife, named plainly as rape; the caress-heavy lip touching; the Pollux performance; the improvised sibling kiss
The CGI is early and needed to be better, especially for a scene shown later, and there is obvious stunt-double work where Cage suddenly has way more hair than three seconds earlier, looking like Kiki Vandelway (as transcribed).
The brother-sister kiss between Dietrich and Gina Gershon's character was improvised on set by Gershon and Nick Cassavetes, improv incest to add a little salt to the relationship, and the director (transcribed as John Lewis) reportedly said go with it.
There is a lot of weird touching of the lips of people you do not know, three different times; it is a caress-heavy movie. Pollux Troy was a nice juicy role where the hosts wanted more, did not think the performance was good, and note there is a reason the actor was not seen again.
The sexual tension between Cage wearing Travolta's face and Travolta's daughter is flat-out disarming and uncomfortable, not super comfortable in 97 and more uncomfortable as the years pass, down to putting on a Tricky album for Dominique Swain.
Swain's character is a Hong-Kong director's idea of a goth teenager: a little more eyeliner, a fake nose ring, blonde and otherwise a regular person, supposedly on the edge.
Travolta agreeing to switch faces has not really changed the world, and the film glossed over Travolta's big chin cleft and Cage's rat-like teeth, although the characters joke about the chin and tease each other about the love handles.
Says the whole father-daughter thing is an L for everyone involved, everything with Dominique Swain, down to the end when her father brings home a strange boy to replace the child who died and she suddenly dresses like she just went to American Eagle because everything is fine now. — Chris Ryan
Picks something from the aged-best list, the plot point in which Cage's character, wearing Travolta's face, has sex with the wife under false pretenses, which he names plainly as secretly raping her and says is literally what happened. — Shea Serrano
Others agree that is literally what happened and you cannot do that; in the 90s it was supposed to be funny and now it is not, and one host who is still going with the CGI is made to feel bad about it.
A rewatchable movie needs four or five parts you have to watch when flicking channels at the 30 or 50 minute mark, and this one has a lot: the airport shootout that leaves Nick Cage in NFL concussion protocol, the surgery face-switch scenes, the escape from a maximum security prison on Catalina Island where everybody wears magnetic boots, the Somewhere Over the Rainbow shootout with a little kid in headphones, the boat chase and the ending.
Asked for the most rewatchable scene, answers that it is absolutely the Somewhere Over the Rainbow shootout. — Chris Ryan
The shootout begins with Cage entering a trip-hop bachelor pad in an airport hangar, Tricky's Christian Sands (as transcribed) playing to date it to 1997, Castor's son present for some reason, absinthe and a hallucinatory out-of-body experience, and the child always in the line of fire with nobody thinking to put him in a bathtub under a cover; one host would rewatch the whole movie if it were only this scene.
Castor's henchman brings out a beautiful oak box holding Chiclets, prescription pills guessed to be an early Dutch version of molly, a dozen rolled joints and two gold-plated handguns, presented as if it were the Ark of the Covenant or a Kansas basketball signing; the two men then fake-laugh at each other unironically a year before the Austin Powers henchmen scene.
One host personally thought the prison escape was the most rewatchable scene, and another says they are with them on that.
Picks the Somewhere Over the Rainbow shootout as John Woo's victory lap, Woo announcing he is in Hollywood and spending money, with the kid in slow motion, a shootout kept being added to, and so many vases full of lilies blown up again. — Jason Concepcion
Two of the hosts share a love of prison movies, to the point of two-in-the-morning emails about a Vince Vaughn prison-movie trailer; the magnetic gravity boots are a good prison wrinkle every jail in America should have, and the film keeps adding: a shootout, then drugs, then a kid in the middle, then Over the Rainbow; a prison in the ocean, then super magnets, then electrocution.
The prison is like the Death Star, an impregnable super weapon undone by one trick, since all you have to do is get rid of the boots; Cage brings the four-billion-dollar prison down with one cigarette, fighting to keep it, getting sent to shock treatment, burning a guard and starting a full-scale riot.
Travolta switches faces and goes into the prison as Castor Troy, and Castor's brother Pollux is for some reason immediately suspicious; a host does the Pollux impression on request, and nobody can explain why Pollux would wonder whether they switched faces when he thought his brother was dead after the wind turbine.
Answers that if he had his college enemy Neil's face on his face, and his voice, his wife Laramie would never be convinced it was him; there is nothing he could say. — Shea Serrano
The clip of the prison fight is played, where Travolta wearing Castor's face has to convince the brother it is really him, shouting I'm Castor Troy (as transcribed Caster Joy) and crying; one host calls it their favorite scene in the whole movie, and the tears are joked about as post-concussion emotion or life without a nicotine patch, with Roger Ebert imagined comparing it to first seeing Bergman.
Did people take Cage at face value because of Leaving Las Vegas? The entire 90s came and went before anyone collectively asked whether Nick Cage is a bad actor; asked whether they want to change their minds on the scene, the hosts say no.
