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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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FIRST BLOOD

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

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

Affirmative. (Yes.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

After five years, a ban has been lifted—momentarily. For this single episode, the pod’s ironclad rule against discussing a Quentin Tarantino film that has divided our hosts is broken. The director is set free. And Jack goes fugitive this week as TGTPTU discusses the all-so-deliciously-squibby DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012).

Set just a few years before the Civil War to allow Tarantino to have his favorite racial epithet spoken a stunning 110 times—yikes!—juicy bloody condoms burst all across the faux climax of this Neo-Spaghetti Western as Django (the “d” is silent, played by Jamie Foxx) takes his revenge on the Francophile plantation owner, phenology enthusiastic, and curator of the ahistorical bloodsport of Mandingo fighting viz. “Monsieur” Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) for the death of immigrant German dentist+bounty-hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) all lensed by regular QT collaborator Robert Richardson.

This ep, Ken takes issue with the treatment and ambiguity of sexual violence (not?) portrayed in the film, its lazy writing, and that the picture was made after and is not Inglorious Basterds; Thomas, who claims to be both a Boomer and German this episode, brings irrelevant and irreverent German Facts (an unused example: “‘Gesundheit’ is a German’s way of saying: How tall is your gay son?”); and Ryan violates the unspoken rule of keeping talk of Quentin Tarantino on the QT. At least all three hosts agree the triple-threat Actor+Writer+Director Tarantino is best as a just double threat.

So tune in for an episode that answers the age-old question: What if TGTPTU hosts finally take on Quentin Tarantino—and no one does an impression?

Next week Jack returns.

Content Warning: Django Unchained not merely contains but is brimming with a specific racial slur using a hard-r by characters of various races and classes as directed (and written) to do so by a White filmmaker. Django Unchained also contains, and glosses over, sexual violence.

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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY WILL CELEBRATE THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. REAL WORLD VIOLENCE IS NOT TOLERATED AND IS RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT DISTURBS SOME LISTENERS. SQUIBS CAN BE ART

BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat
About the third night
They're invited to fight by a
Sub gun's rat-a-tat
Some day they'll go down together
They'll bury them side by side
To few, it will be grief, to the law a relief
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde

- Bonnie & Clyde - Serge Gainsbourg

All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend
(Me and my girlfriend)
Down to ride 'til the very end, is me and my boyfriend
(Me and my boyfriend, that's right)
All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend
(Me and my girlfriend, look for me)
Down to ride 'til the very end, is me and my boyfriend
(Me and my boyfriend, talk to 'em, B)

- '03 Bonnie & Clyde, Jay-Z, Beyoncé

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JOHN WICK CHAPTER 2 (2017)

SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY WILL CELEBRATE THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. REAL WORLD VIOLENCE IS NOT TOLERATED AND IS RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT DISTURBS SOME LISTENERS. SQUIBS CAN BE ART

A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM GUEST EDITOR TERRENCE MALICK!*

Where was I? Oh yes, The ephemeral and elusive act of capturing memory. It has vexed me so the last 60 years as a filmmaker. How do you capture the furtive nature of memory in film? What happened is in the past and dead. All that has meaning is the here and now.

So it is I was contacted by this podcast to listen to raw, uncorrupted and truthful audio of a discussion of John Wick Chapter Two (2017) and edit it into a fine, pleasant and informative podcast. "Jaunty" they say they wanted and, naturally, they thought of me.

I have a tattoo of John Wick saying "I are thought I back" on my right calf so people see it from behind when I am at the gym on the treadmill wearing corduroy athletic shorts. I mention this to let you know I am a super fan of the series and when I listened to the raw, unfiltered audio and thought about the task of editing out co-host Ken's laugh and heavy breathing or Ryan's "Ums" or Zoomer Jack's ToikTok inspired chortles, I realized their special guest Patrick, who runs a record store in Portland, Oregon called "Tomorrow Records" and which I am assured by my vinyl brothers and sisters is a mecca for music, simply did not fit my idea of the episode or, indeed, the film itself.

So I cut him out.

Adrien Brody has won two - TWO - Oscars since I cut him out as the main character of The Thin Red Line. I feel the same fate will befall to Patrick once the sting of my removal has dimmed. What remains is as much a perfect podcast about John Wick 2 as can humanly be achieved.

Please enjoy.

(I have an edit in which the remaining hosts are also removed but I was told an hour of silence would not cut it outside of Apple Exclusive mindfulness podcasts.)

TM - June, 2025

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*not really Terrence Malick. Don't sue us, TM, we love you!

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Content Warning: Filmic violence is and will often be celebrated throughout Season 15 – Squib Season.

Second in the series and keeping to their unpatented temporal pincer movement, the enlisted four of TGTPTU storm the beachheads of Season 15 this week to liberate Squib Season’s earliest covered picture, the black-and-white WWII movie HELL TO ETERNITY (1960). (Not to be confused with To Hell from Eternity, which does not exist; To Hell and Back, which does and preceded in Technicolor this week’s talkie by five years; or From Hell to Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, which is actually the combined titles of two vastly different films released, respectively, 41 years and 35 years after this week’s feature.)

In Hell to Eternity, the 6’0”-tall, New Orleans-born Caucasian actor Jeffrey Hunter (yes, yes, nerds, we know he’s Captain Chistopher Pike, listen back to our The Searchers 4x4 episode but also listen to this week’s for an irony behind Hunter’s being replaced on Star Trek TOS by actor Sean Kenney in Season 1’s clips episode two-parter “The Menagerie”), then age 34, plays war hero and protagonist Guy Gabaldon in this biopic based on the real life events of the 5’4”-foot tall Latino Los Angelean of the same name when he was 18.

As in the movie, Gabaldon was raised by adoptive Japanese parents, learning their first language (and presumably, as in the movie, their stories about fish and love), and enlisted after Pearl Harbor as a translator. It’s with his language skills that Gabaldon was able to, as depicted at the end of the film, convince over 800 Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender, although further research would be required by the author of these show notes to know whether real-life Gabaldon adopted/stole a Japanese child to be his son as implied at the end of the film (IMDB Trivia does claim Gabaldon named one of his sons after Hunter as he was enamored by his portrayal of him, implying Gabaldon had more than one son) or if the eighteen-year-old short king had swell times in swinging Hawaii as shown in the film’s contentious, extended party sequence containing not just one but two apartment burlesque routines.

The film is lensed by Burnett Guffey who will go on to shoot (on film) our next earliest entry, i.e., BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) for which he’d earn his second Academy Award. His first Oscar win was for another flick whose title lends itself to easy confusion with this week’s, namely FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953). Also involved, Lieutenant (later Captain) Sulu (or the actor and activist who originally played the helmsman/fencing expert in Star Trek TOS). Also, hundreds of Japanese Imperial Army veterans and active-duty U.S. Marines who reenacted events from the Battle of Saipan on the adjacent island of Okinawa for the cameras commanded by Guffrey. And some squibs.

This episode, hear Ryan explain both what squibs are and, later, how a man got his start as a boy. Jack, subsequent to the latter, loses his mind. Tom spoils the surprise appearance by a famous and long-deceased sports announcer. And Ken, as impossible as it might seem, might actually change his opinion on mic, specifically about the seemingly endless Hawaii party scene.

Subscribe and listen as the Good Pod Boys give a 21-gun salute to this forgotten classic.

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REVENGE

Major Content Warning: Plot-related sexual assault is mentioned throughout this episode.

Minor Content Warning: Filmic violence is and will often celebrated throughout Season 15.

Salut! and welcome to TGTPTU’s long-awaited SQUIB SEASON (Season 15) and a return to the pod’s unpatented temporal pincer movement with the series’ first film covered being the most recent release: REVENGE (2017).

Distributed en Francais in France and Quebec as Revenge, the identically English-titled Revenge is Parisian auteur Coralie Fargeat’s premier feature film; her second was last year’s thrice Oscar-nominated THE SUBSTANCE, a.k.a. in Francophone countries as LA SUBSTANCE.

Fargeat’s début film follows a familiar rape-revenge plot to tell a deliciously violence-laden story. Its deviations from predecessors such as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) (and presumably its little-watched 2010s redux quadrilogy) are smart, sans salacious depictions of the abuse, and put the emphasis on survival rather than on its title as Italian model and actress Matilda Lutz shows no merci, pardon, no “mercy” upon her assailant, her murderer, or either crime’s bystander (a character renamed Jacque this episode for a passing resemblance to the French-Canadian skizzbag of Twin Peaks universe) when she’s backed into a figurative corner of a barren desert.

As host Jacque’s (“Jack” in American) pick, the film is no faux pas to start the season with. Its style possesses a je ne sais quoi freshness, lensed by regular Adil & Bilall collaborator Robrecht Heyvaert and scored by Caen-native ROB (né Robin Coudert).

Listen this episode as “squibs” is defined; Ken confuses his birds; and Ryan expresses a great liking for the picture’s ass shots while Ken and Jack like its shots through the head and Thomas is nonchalant. Also, Ken tries out a few bits for seasonal stickiness; enfant terrible Thomas ends up putting a chapeau on a chapeau by trying out a French accent; and although they’ve not yet reached their second episode to pair the oldest to-boe-covered with this most recent, the entire seasonal start this episode has a sense of déjà vu.

Bon appétit et au revoir!

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MYSTERY ROAD

It’s the end of the road for Season 14 as TGTPTU’s four White fellas travel across the world to the land down under for host Ken’s 1x1 flick pick and this season’s final film: MYSTERY ROAD (2013), sponsored this week by the Criminal Island’s very own Hoppy Joe Beer (Get Your Hop On!).

Directed by (and written by and lensed by and edited by and music with sound design by) Ivan Sen, this Aussie neo noir film that will launch a sequel and multiple standalone seasons of a TV season is the Australian filmmaker’s first genre film. Sen’s work is made with considerations to the conditions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (a.k.a. First Peoples, a.k.a. First Nations, a.k.a. Indigenous Australians), and when news of his making a crime fiction film spread, an all-star cast of Oz acting talent lined up to join, beginning with Australian Broadcasting Corporation mainstay Aaron Pedersen, for whom Sen wrote the part of the film’s protagonist Detective Jay Swan, with second cast Hugo Weaving whose star power from the past two decades of Hollywood IP films subsequent to serving the Matrix franchise as Agent Smith helped draw in Ryan Kwanten, Bruce Spence, and an early appearance by Samara Weaving, a pod fav who made an appearance in an early TGTPTU Halloween episode.

Plot: A local First Nations girl is found murdered, and Detective Swan freshly back in his hometown from time away catches his first homicide case and must reckon with his family left behind as investigating the homicide brings him into the town’s underworld of drugs and prostitution, a world not unknown to his estranged wife and daughter. Pedersen’s character also encounters alcoholics (it’s Australia after all) drinking themselves to death; a mysterious death of a rookie officer and, separately, a senile man’s pet; aspiring cop-killer children on bicycles; mutant dogs; fast barefoot humans; overt and covert racism; Chinese food; and two crack shots in H. Weaving’s and Kwanten’s characters.

This week Ken and Jack recover from a week-long cold; Thomas brings his comedic A (short for "Australia") game; and Ryan offers background on the growth of media by First Nations peoples in Australia and later demos next season’s theme song--all on this special, concluding, evening-record episode of TGTPTU. “Is that a fact?”

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