Road House

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[00:00:25] Learn more at cbp.gov. I'm Shannon Strucci. And today we're doing a very special episode because people have been saying this for a few months now that 2020 is going to be the year of Dude's Rock. And struggle session, you know, I think we were kind of founded on that ethos.

[00:01:41] Maybe we got a little bit away from it,

[00:01:43] but it's time for us to get together

[00:01:45] and realize just how much Dude's Rock notes but thank you so much for joining us again shawn yes my pleasure my pleasure left to talk about roadhouse obviously uh... while i mean where you know you are i would say maybe the pre-eminent like roadhouse expert you know maybe it like it would come just a body of work you must be right i think we're sure volume alone yet

[00:03:01] so i usually try to introduce the movie belay of the groundwork but clearly you

[00:03:06] have a better grasp of this one to and the finale would be like he finally gets the you know the bullies you know run out of town or something like that i guess it's kind of like that where actually he just thought all the bullies are get killed uh... this movie out like i i i haven't seen this for many years and uh... yeah it's it's it's a truly all-odd

[00:04:22] world yeah it's really just it like it actually i was saying this before we were Patrick Swayze's character is in fact, the gasp, his reputation precedes him. Over and over and over again. Yep, and he's the second most famous bouncer in America, which is great. It's like such a nice touch for the movie. His mentor Wade Garrett is technically the best.

[00:05:41] And, Shann, this was your first time watching it, right?

[00:05:43] Yes, I had never seen it in full before.

[00:05:45] I had seen a red letter media did a compilation uh... the constant tbs a rings which is all my friends who first show me this movie a lot of them had never seen it actually uncensored the rated r version they only saw you know the t-virgin all you have to do there's yeah so much new the uh... uh... i don't know how you can write rates of words where it's where it's where yeah

[00:07:00] and uh... you know but the thing about it is that i think everyone involved from

[00:07:04] the cast of the crew

[00:07:06] is really committed to the bit

[00:07:07] and the name, right? Uriost, I think. And separately or together, they worked on Die Hard, Predator, Commando, all of the big Verhoeven movies, RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, they did Tombstone, Lethal Weapon. Joel Silver was the producer who was the producer of the Matrix series and the Lethal Weapon

[00:08:22] series.

[00:08:23] The music supervisors, Jimmy Iovine, who founded when the writer Grant Morrison took over the Batman comic, he said in interviews

[00:09:43] that he was going to treat everything that had happened

[00:09:45] throughout the whole publication history of Batman are unavoidable. Some line readings are so goofy or some acting is so bad by the various stuntmen who fill out the cast. It is so bad it's good in some ways. But I just took it at Faith Value and I was like, okay, this is a real movie. All these things are really happening to these characters. It was so much more interesting to write about it that way

[00:11:02] than to be like, ha ha, look at this, look. He will say, you're the second best. I have to have you at my bar because my bar is a shity and my patrons keep killing one another. Which is so funny to begin with. It's funny that there's just like, I don't know that you even keep the bar open.

[00:12:22] You know what I mean?

[00:12:24] What you have to do here is you have business tyrant. It's too bad. It is really no way around that. I'm sorry. So Dalton he goes to this town this new bar.

[00:13:42] He meets his friend who's blind blues man. there too. So it'll be like Coheed and Cambria like one night and then the next night it'll be aky breaky heart tribute night or whatever. I should mention here that our apartment building shares a parking lot with one of the, I want to say, six Irish pubs within a one block radius of where we live. And it's called McCarthy's

[00:15:03] and pretty much every night there's like a montage of him cleaning up the place and training. The trainees and you know kicking out the guy who's skimming off the top or you know the guy or the waitress who's dealing drugs. But I have to say there's probably more violence that happens after he gets there.

[00:17:24] that looks like it was like, you know, from like a, like a Flemish painting of hell. Like it's so out of control.

[00:17:26] And like, you know, Terry Funk.

[00:17:28] Is this the one where the guy has the knife on his boot?

[00:17:31] That's a different one.

[00:17:33] Okay.

[00:17:34] Later.

[00:17:35] That's a later one.

[00:17:36] This is the one where they get mad at the band.

[00:17:37] Oh, right.

[00:17:38] Right.

[00:17:39] Right.

[00:17:40] Okay.

[00:17:41] Sure.

[00:17:42] Yeah.

[00:17:43] And Terry Funk launches someone through a table.

[00:17:44] He's in this movie, Wrestling Terry Funk, which is a cool.

[00:17:45] Terry Funk former NWA champion.

[00:17:47] Yeah. We get like a lot of action scenes in this movie like a lot and I was shocked by how good they were Patrick Swainzy is so good like the shit he's doing is like like Mu Thai shit like like really like in close elbows and knees and like these really precise quick strikes and I just love the way we want to continue filming this movie after this It's over we have to go a little easier on ourselves So he was again fully committed physically and I think it really comes through Yeah, he's like honestly I I don't really feel like I like fully appreciated Patrick Swayze

[00:20:20] I guess until this rewatch I mean I'd seen this and everything like that It's just really weird to do that to the world of bouncers It's just like like that. It's like this one really strange element in like what is otherwise like this could be you know

[00:21:42] like

[00:21:43] Like if you take all the same cast and like even a lot of the same scenes including Thermador at your local Ferguson showroom. This is like a Walker, Texas Ranger or something like that. He comes to town, like helps out with the issue. It really commits himself to it, you know, changes people and then leaves town. It's, I said before we were recording, I've been playing Yakuza Zero,

[00:23:00] and you walk through the streets

[00:23:01] and you just get attacked by like roving gangs of men,

[00:23:04] and you go and you help people with their problems.

[00:23:06] And it's all very, to point at everything that's so ridiculous. But really what this movie is honestly you said when you said it's a new sheriff goes down like this is like a Western this is them trying to do a Western just in like 1980s America. You know what I mean this is like and you know the villain is J.C. Penny coming to town and it kind of has the resolution that like a they do feature a cop and this you know CIA paramilitary squad like in die hard he makes a point of like he doesn't try to shoot the terrorists first like he wants to try he tries to arrest them and predator gone from the current action model, for sure. Honestly, I think a lot of that is just because like, you know, like it's spectacle creep is what it is. It's like they want movies to feel as big and bigger than TV. And so spectacle creep has to happen. And like the only way they can think of doing that is like, you know,

[00:27:02] more bigger special effects.

[00:27:03] And the only bigger special effects you can do are like, you know,

[00:28:05] is by it an army of old kutz shows up with shotguns and the climax of this film and the bad guy because finally after killing all of his henchmen one by one

[00:28:12] lot of it off screen for some unknown reason

[00:28:15] um... you know

[00:28:16] dalton has uh...

[00:28:19] brad wesley at his mercy and he has his

[00:28:21] hand pulled back to do this throat ripping maneuver that

[00:28:24] he first they were talking about is like this

[00:28:26] traumatic part of his past and then we going to blow him away because we don't want to have to put all of this on your conscience still Dalton. Yeah, it's time for us to share a little bit with the cast and how interesting the cast is with Sam Elliott Ben-Gazara To ranging to Terry Funk, you know the famous hardcore legend of wrestling The bartender who gets fired from skimming the till is John Doe from the punk band X, which is really interesting to you. Yep

[00:33:40] Keith Keith David shows up. Yeah this movie. Yeah, the type of place you sweep up the eyeballs after closing. He asked one of the old koots a question and the answer is obvious. The koot response, does a hobby horse have a wooden dick? Which is supposed to be like couple of, she's in like one of those raunchy private school, is that a movie? So I think she's in that. I don't know what else she's been in. Yes. But she has a moment, and actually this brings me to something that I really should talk about. She has a moment where she looks at Swayze's character

[00:33:43] as he gets up out of bed in the nude.

[00:33:45] And like the look of the bar who's played by Kevin Tai, who played John Locke's dad on Lost. He's constantly almost leering at Dalton, and the catchphrase that keeps coming up, I thought you'd be bigger.

[00:35:00] And the way he delivers it, it's like he's talking about his dick.

[00:35:03] He's like, I I thought it was cool. It was different at least. I really liked Sam Elliott, so I was happy to see him in a different role from what I

[00:36:21] was used to as well.

[00:36:22] Yeah.

[00:36:23] It's an action movie where Sam Elliott unbuttons So they, and that's the film I always thought it was. I really thought it was like very dancing too, you know, but I mean, there was like a giant monster truck in this that... Oh my God, how did I not bring up the monster truck?

[00:37:41] Yeah, that was like very early on in the, in the, in the writing process for the Roadhouse

[00:37:47] thing that I did. scene alone cost half a million dollars. Again, I'm like, who is this movie for? Like it has like sex scenes that feel better like, yeah, like feel very female gays. But then also there's like a monster truck scene that is like for like its world And that everybody is like doing it for real like yes There's goofy acting but there's not winky acting and I'm right acting so much worse than goofy acting

[00:40:21] That's such a good distinction. I'm gonna steal that. Thank you

[00:40:26] I loved it and

[00:41:25] You can find me on Twitter at the Shonti Collins. You can find me on Patreon at patreon.com slash the Shonti Collins.

[00:41:29] And my website where I try to link to everything that I write is shonticolons.com.

[00:41:36] And right at the top you'll find the Roadhouse project a link to it.

[00:41:41] So you just click there and you can read a whole year's worth of writing about Roadhouse.