Walkouts at screenings including Wes Craven and Rick Baker; a 2006 video game with only Madsen's likeness; actors wore their own clothes and Chris Penn used his own car; the soundtrack budget went to Stuck in the Middle with You; 272 fucks; no police traffic control for the carjacking; Madsen's aversion to violence; Roth peeled off the fake blood; the Vega brothers and the unmade Double V Vega; the title from Au Revoir les Enfants
Many people walked out of screenings, including Wes Craven and makeup legend Rick Baker; Tarantino is quoted saying the Last House on the Left director walked out of his movie and that it happens every screening because the violence or rude language is a mountain some cannot climb, which he wanted to be disturbing.
A 2006 video game for PC, Xbox and PlayStation 2 used only Madsen's likeness, which he needed for the paycheck, and GameSpot labelled it an out-and-out failure; the budget was so low actors wore their own clothes, Chris Penn used his own car, and Tarantino is quoted in 2014 saying the whole soundtrack budget went to securing Stuck in the Middle with You.
Guesses at the number of fucks run from 400 to 117; the answer is 272. With no budget for police traffic control, Buscemi's carjacking could only be shot when the lights were green, a dangerous true-indie move.
Madsen allegedly struggled with the torture scene due to a strong aversion to violence, which feels half-assed for a man in forty action movies; Roth lay in fake blood so long in the summer heat that it dried and he had to be peeled off the floor, which is how the hosts expect to feel at the end of the podcast.
Vic Vega and Vincent Vega were brothers, and Tarantino always wanted a prequel called Double V Vega until Madsen and Travolta got too old; the unmade Tarantino movies would make a good podcast.
The title came from a Video Archives customer who mockingly refused 'Au Revoir Les Infants' (as transcribed) as 'reservoir dogs'; such weird, oblique titles were possible before everything was optimized, Tarantino treats them as his artist's flourish, as with the Inglourious Bastards spelling, and this one means nothing since there is no reservoir where they live.
The category is framed as hard for this film, so the nominees mix lighter and darker scenes: the cold open first murder, called one of the crowning achievements of Fincher's career; the credit sequence that sets up the world with economy and panache, and the trolley of mail carrying the first Zodiac letter into the Chronicle as one of the only set pieces outside the murders; the Graysmith-Avery bar scene with the Aqua Velva; the Napa murder; the 'This is the Zodiac speaking' call with Melvin; the talk-show sequence; and the 'I am not the Zodiac' interrogation.
One vote and one honorable mention are offered: the honorable mention is the late scene where Graysmith lays out that Darlene Farron (as transcribed) worked at the Vallejo House of Pancakes less than fifty yards door to door from Arthur Lee Allen's mother's basement on Fresno Street, the only real 'we solved it' moment apart from the questioning of Allen; that interrogation in a factory break room, with Allen volunteering that the bloody knives in his car came from a chicken he killed for dinner and the three detectives silently registering his watch, is called spectacular and put at the top of that list.
The Napa lake murder is named the least rewatchable and maybe the best scene in the film: expertly done, horrifying in a slow-burning way, one of the most unsettling murder scenes, with the killer slipping behind a tree before you really see him approach; it is likened to the bear-suit figure in The Shining as an incongruous presence where sunny tourist-area safety is assumed, and the film is called a protracted tease with very little violence that hits harder when it comes.
The projectionist's-house scene near the end, when Graysmith goes down into the basement and the man pulls the chain to turn off the light before Graysmith scurries out, is called the scariest and most horror-movie moment of the film, almost Wes Craven; it arrives when the film seems to have let the audience go, and Graysmith then gets home to find his family gone.
Interrogation is stated as a pick; the final stated pick is the Graysmith-Avery bar scene, because the character interactions elevate the film beyond a phenomenal procedural: the exchange about Graysmith having just guessed that another message would come and the Aqua Velva, Graysmith on the line of being in on the joke and happy to be included, and the newspapermen cutting out at three o'clock to drink and smoke at Morty's, which rings true to a host whose father worked in newspapers.
For the first time in eight or nine episodes the hosts do not know who won the movie, so they go around the circle.
Picks the mask, and did not know the story of the filmmakers happening upon it, which seems like fate. — K. Austin Collins
The mask pick is praised as a top-critic answer; another goes with Lillard for what he did in every part, which made every later Lillard appearance, like She's All That, worth watching and even got a host to Summer Catch.
Picks the horror genre, revitalized and given a new appreciation writ large through the self-referential movie that sent people back to Halloween, Freddy and Friday the 13th. — Jason Concepcion
Wes Craven is offered for a specific reason, but it is not counted as a ballot because the 'But who's your winner?' that follows in 242 may be pressing the same voice, who then answers Lillard in 243: a professorial, sweet man typecast as a horror director, he used the leverage of Scream and Scream 2 with Miramax to make the sincere drama he had waited decades for, Music of the Heart, for which Meryl Streep got an Oscar nomination.
The last pick is Matthew Lillard, joining the earlier Lillard vote; rewatching, this host was stunned by how good he was, going to another level in a part that could have been merely fine and blowing people off the screen.
Lillard's pod with Andy and Chris about his career makes it sadder that the dominant guy in a $300 million movie that launched the horror revival did not go further; he never returns for the sequels and is uncredited in part two, pulling a Winkler.
The right movie for him might have been 13 Ghosts or a buddy cop film as the zany Martin Lawrence part, though he may be too good and suited to a wilder vibe; Twin Peaks reminded people of his energy, and whether the TV on his head officially killed him is doubted, leaving room for a return in a remake.
Earlier, Lillard is flagged as more in the Who Won the Movie conversation than expected, J.R. Smithian in his willingness to overperform.
Wes Craven could be argued but Elm Street is still his Apex Mountain; his amazing career spans the three stages of late-century horror, from Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left to creating Freddy and reinventing the genre in the nineties, and he is underrated, on a Mount Rushmore with Tobey Hooper (as transcribed), George Romero and John Carpenter; the movie still moves today.
The coming Halloween remake with Jamie Lee Curtis is asking audiences to forget some sequels, like Rocky Balboa waving off Rocky V, which is what 48 Hours should have done.
A confession that Nightmare on Elm Street was a shitty movie meets a fan of the first two and Dream Warriors; Heather Langenkamp is dismissed, and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, the meta Freddy movie, failed just before this, leaving Scream as a bit of a last gasp for his career.
Neve Campbell's nominees are this or the intervention scene with Bailey in Party of Five.
Another feels the same way about the intervention, called the saddest hour in television history with Bailey as the rock of the family, and it stands even against Scream's $290 million.
Skeet Ulrich is clearly at his Apex, with nothing else competing; he was in As Good as It Gets, went a couple of rounds with Jericho, and is now known to kids as Riverdale's Skeet Ulrich.
A tangent on Skeet Ulrich's first name becoming slang, popularized by Dave Chappelle, and whether his stage name was a bad choice slides into a crude callback to the Silence of the Lambs episode's Migs discussion.
Reader Howard from Calgary writes that Stuart Rudin, who played Migs, was in Sticky Fingers and has an IMDb of homeless men, winos and patients; Migs was his Apex Mountain, and listeners are invited to the mailbag.
Matthew Lillard: it has got to be, with SLC Punk raised; considering how good he is in Scream, this is his Apex.
Jamie Kennedy was forced on the culture with an MTV show after this and never took; his Apex Mountain is definitively dating Jennifer Love Hewitt, an achievement rather than a performance, which leads to a tangent on why women disliked her.
For David Arquette the reminder is that he held the WCW heavyweight title, a movie tie-in, the belt once held by Ric Flair.
Eight Legged Freaks is also raised for Arquette; Rose McGowan is a no, her later weirdness and dating Marilyn Manson jokingly called her apex, though she had a cool indie career, the Rodriguez Grindhouse movie with the gun leg, and is now a filmmaker and activist.
Courtney Cox is first a no, since it has got to be Friends and you cannot get higher; one voice later counters, unresolved, that the combination is her apex, since this came out during Friends season three when Monica was dismissed as having no personality and showed she could be the bitch too; her later characters are more Gail Weathers than Monica.
She reportedly pursued the role to play someone not traditionally nice and to get punched in the face; her later sitcoms were Dirt and the Bill Lawrence show about people in LA drinking wine, whose title nobody can remember.
Henry Winkler is joked to have been the mountain itself.
Earlier, while praising the cast, Drew Barrymore is followed by the garbled phrase 'I'd heard, like, Mad Love Apex' (as transcribed).
Santa Rosa High School refused to host the shoot and got a 'no thanks' credit; eight ratings submissions to avoid NC‑17; the Gainesville Ripper inspiration; Romero and Raimi almost directed; Craven's phone-hit cameo; the mask found while location scouting; Linda Blair's reporter cameo; a 21-day final scene with 50 gallons of fake blood; Craven told Drew Barrymore animal-torture stories; Williamson wrote it in three days as Scary Movie
Santa Rosa High School was to host the high school scenes and refused, so they shot at a community college, and the credits include a pointed 'no thanks' to Santa Rosa.
The movie was almost NC‑17 for violence and went back eight times; Williamson's script was reportedly extremely specific about organs dripping down legs, so the disemboweling was originally even more disgusting.
Williamson was obviously inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, who murdered students in Florida and was executed after the movie's release, one of the grisliest American crimes of the period; it was a ripped-from-the-headlines idea for a young screenwriter looking for anything to get a script sold.
George Romero and Sam Raimi almost directed; Raimi's version would probably have been a lot funnier, Romero never made a movie like this, and Scream is not thought improvable, only different; this was Craven's second act after peaking in the eighties.
Craven's one cameo is being hit by Drew Barrymore with the phone while wearing the Ghostface costume; the mask was found at a house during location scouting; Linda Blair cameos as a reporter who bumps into Sidney outside the school after the attack.
The final scene took 21 days of a roughly 60-day shoot for a $15 million movie and used 50 gallons of fake blood.
A return to research corner: to keep Drew Barrymore upset through the opening, Wes Craven told her real stories of animal torture, since she was an animal activist, and then turned the camera on.
Earlier, Kevin Williamson is said to have written the script in three days in Palm Springs under the title Scary Movie, after failing to sell Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and pitched it as a trilogy package.
Earlier, the opening death was reportedly worse originally, with the guts coming out, and had to be fixed to avoid an NC‑17.
