[MUSIC PLAYING]
Told you he is, folks.
It's so time.
People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they
want cold sewage, a hot pop plorn, and no monsters
in the projection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Then it'll launch.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Every day, Jacob Singer goes to work.
That's wrong.
That's one of those tests.
And every day, he wonders what is happening to him.
It reads the pressure, Jake.
I like it.
Deepens, Jeff.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You're wearing a helmet.
But what a Jake.
Look at your hand.
Yeah, there is James Lines.
See, according to this, you're already dead.
[CHEERING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Sometimes wrong, Jake.
They're coming after me.
I don't know who they are.
But what they are, they're going to get me.
And I'm scared, Jake.
See, not too.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Maybe the demons are real.
20, 10, 6, speeders.
This is far better.
I can get rid of the demons.
Oh, I feel like I'm blocked the ladder.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[INAUDIBLE]
Who are you taking?
Well, but what do you want to go?
I'm a sazer of all your dead.
My dead.
What are you, then?
I'm all right.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome to the projection booth at my house, Mike White.
Join me once again, is Mr. Steven Scarlata.
Don't bury me.
I'm not dead.
Wrong, Luz.
I couldn't find a good one.
Oh, geez.
I'll also back in the booth is Mr. Yaneev Edelstein,
who completely forgot about the vanity intro, but high folks.
And this special episode of the projection booth,
we are looking at Adrienne Lines 1990 film, "Jick Obslatter."
It's the story of Jake and singer played by Tim Robbins,
who's platoon of Vietnam as attacked by unknown forces.
He suffers from flashbacks of this horrific event
in the 1970s New York, where he's left his wife
and is living with his coworker, Jisabel, played by Elizabeth Pena.
He is played as well by horrific visions of demons.
Is Jacob going mad?
Is he a victim of a government plot?
Or is it something else entirely?
Of course, we are going to be answering those questions,
ruining this movie for people that haven't seen it before.
You have been warned.
So Stephen, when was the first time you saw Jacob Slatter in what did you think?
Yeah, I was definitely aware this movie was coming out.
I was going to the movies a lot during that time period.
I saw the teaser trailer, which was very interesting.
And I was a huge horror fan, so I was excited for it.
It was in Fangoria.
I couldn't talk my friend into seeing it, so he went to see Marks for Death
instead, but after Marks for Death, I managed to sneak in
for a couple of minutes waiting for my ride.
And then I eventually watched it on VHS when it came out and I loved it.
And then I came on Showtime and they showed these deleted scenes.
They had this whole half hour special after it premiered and had the deleted scenes
and interviews.
And I was the first time ever experienced anything like that in like 1991.
There was no, I didn't have a laser display or anything.
And it was interesting.
I left the movie off there and I didn't return back to it until like maybe 10 years ago.
It was the fifth movie in a six movie marathon.
And seeing it on the big screen, that's when I really understood it.
And I got it.
You know, knowing the ending and being able to pay attention to it.
And it completely blew my mind.
Whereas in adult, as a kid, I liked it because I liked horror.
And it felt my liked adult horror.
As a kid when they put real stars in horror movies.
You'll call them thrillers.
But as an adult, that's when it really emotionally hit me.
And I was able to really concentrate on it.
And you know, how about yourself?
I'm the newcomer.
I just watched it.
We can have a go or something.
And it was very pleasantly deprived of how well it aged.
It was fucking scary.
It was a nightmare.
Like a non-ending nightmare of like endless unfolding or as it looked great.
The practical effects are all fantastic.
And the fact that you only get really tiny glintes of really horrifying things all the time.
So really fantastic direction.
I think I'm a new sort of convert to Adrian Linde and who was not a guy,
considered like a like I'm very impressed by his work.
Really impressively done like very meticulous and super scary and super creepy.
And just today I watched those deleted things today.
And even just those by themselves are fantastic things you're used to seeing the
deleted scenes that like sort of have sort of thrown together.
But this scene that he did scene with is horrifying ceiling demon was completely fucking nuts.
What a beautiful sort of insane horror ride of like ghost ride.
Yeah, you are a lay camera to this.
But I am quickly behind you.
I didn't see this until maybe about six months ago.
I remember maybe I saw it when it was working at the movie theater because 1990 would have been when I was working
at the start theater down Taylor Michigan.
I would do a lot of aisle checks, which is where you go in there looking for like you know people lighting up
or being loud or putting their feet on the seats and basically as an as sure you're making
just above minimum wage.
So all you do is you stand in the back.
You kind of look around a little bit see if there's anybody smoking and otherwise you're just watching the movie for a little while.
So as I watch this, I was like, okay, yeah, this is familiar.
I don't think I had ever seen this before.
This was such an unusual film for Adrian Lyne to do because at this point he had done flash dance nine and a half weeks
fatal attraction.
He would go on to do in decent proposal, a lead and it was so was all these like kind of a rotting thriller type of things like
fatal attraction, definitely in decent proposal kind of if there was just such a strange strange movie and then Jacob's latter right in the middle of this and it's like, okay, this is an interesting thing.
And this is the same year in 1990 that ghost is coming out written by the same guy written by Bruce Joel Ruben and so you're kind of getting like two sides of the same coin
between these like spiritual movies where you have your main characters are dead.
But they don't let you know that your main character is dead and Jacob's latter until pretty much the very end of the film.
So this is one of those puzzle films that procedures things like the sixth sense, though it comes after things such as a current at our creep bridge or a paranormal
of souls where your main character is going through a whole lot of shit and not realizing why he's going through it is that he's been dead all along.
I had the ending spoiled for me just by general pop culture.
I don't know that somebody spoiled it for me.
It just became kind of known that this is the movie where it's the incident outbreak,
bridge kind of thing in the movie, but actually it wasn't that bad that it was spoiled because it's not like the sixth sense in the sense that the sixth sense completely hinges just on the reveal at the end.
And it's just killing time, open for the place that the end.
This movie, having knowing that the twist doesn't ruin it at all because it's a bit such a specific house or horrors that just knowing that besides I think a viewer with our sensibilities in 2023.
We've stretched enough to realize it anyway right at the beginning, you know, he's on a, he wakes up on a subway car and it says hell on an ad and it's a little bit, I mean for today it's a bit on the nose.
It wasn't for the time. It's not a cheesy movie.
Most of it aged super well for me it's a detail. The fact that he's dead is a detail because a lot of it is open to interpretation so it doesn't ruin it.
And I hear, yeah, the funny enough was the ending was spoiled for me too and I was a kid because someone on my block, I believe sort it and he was just like, I'm really so stupid.
The whole thing is just a dream and he's dead. I was like, oh man, so I never got to experience it the way, you know, either being able to kind of bum me out.
But like I said, you know, as I sort it later on, knowing that in the back of my head and watching it, there's so much to digest. There's so many clues.
And like you said, the opening subway thing was something I noticed when I was a kid and twice saw later.
It's like, you know, immediately you have the hell thing. And then if you really look closely and pause it, there's also a thing about drugs in there and the saying that eludes to later on and the same thing with the other sign.
It's the big apple and the apple being a religious thing also religious symbolism. And then there's also the word die in that billboard too on the train.
And then also there's another symbol thing on the train, which is when he sees the homeless man above him is a sign that talks about the baby is dying in 3b, you know, and it's like again foreshadowing his son like it's so brilliant.
These little things peppered into this movie as you're rewatching it knowing the ending.
But I like even before that when we've got the scene of Vietnam and you've got the helicopters going and they've got one of them has like a stretcher and a meat it or like cargo underneath it and that's going to basically be him in a little bit.
Like he's going to be airlifted out of there after he gets stabbed in the guts by one of his fellow soldiers and just that scene itself is so terrifying where you've got the guys and they're just around bullshitting,
making fun of each other and it's so interesting to see like young things, young, a true killer Vince, young, airclaus, all of these very familiar faces and out of nowhere they just start having these fits in the one guy who just start spinning around like a durbish and you've got the other guys like slams down on the ground is having all these convulsions and you're like what the hell is happening and then it suddenly like a firefight breaks out.
And it's just mass confusion. I'd love the way that he shoots this as well with this canned held camera just running through all of this and you know like 1990 we're pretty in year to Vietnam films is just like oh okay and then when we.
I couldn't quote have you know show that it's a flashback but it's actually not when he wakes up on that subway car it's like oh boy there's another story about you know crazy veteran or veteran who had a whole lot of problems and he's brought those back with them to now.
When the movie starts I'm just like is this 1990 is this the year that the movie's coming out but then later on it's like oh you we haven't talked to each other in like five six years and they very specifically say this is 1970 at the beginning so I'm like oh this is a period piece but it takes me a long time because they don't really just like ham it up with like
this go music and trappings of 1970s you don't see you don't see like Nick Sairner forward on the TV you see Orson Bean on the TV and like a re while I thought it was a re-run but it was probably the first time airing up to tell the truth and it's like oh okay so this is mid 70s but line is really nice to not just like beach you over the head with it.
I know dude you're so right about that because for years I thought the movie was taking place and the time it came out and then eventually I found this note that Adrian what's in like there was a screenplay book of Jacob's ladder.
There's a note from Adrian Lynn to his like crew just kind of saying like yo this movie is set in 1975 Brooklyn you know and in for example if the New York Knicks won the championship in 1975 we should not mention it because Jacob would not be able to know that.
So he put out this note to like let the casting crew know that you know you know and like the song they use in that one dance sequence like everything he had a it's such a tiny detail but no one ever catches it either but it is there.
Well I guess some smarter than you guys because I figured it out and I did it all the five years thing I just I could tell that it's the 70s just because of all the cars and thought I mean you could assume it comes out of the subway it's a really filthy and but with especially comes out you can see all the cars from the 70s and it's like.
All the dirtier in New York but I guess I guess yeah I mean if you really want to go down that road then I guess if he died in 70 then it has to be 75 as imagined by a person who died in 70 you could have like whatever like a wrong details anyway.
Like you said you wouldn't know but the next they did bother with that too much there's like really filthy and all the cars are really old and and you know said he's going back up to this rats everywhere.
Which is just better for the stupid anyhow.
It was written in 1980s but it feels like he was a 70s movie you know they made it's like a 70s movie that was made and you know that was shot in 1989.
You know and so thank god New York still had that grime and grit to it production value and they shot it.
On one hand it's that but on the other hand it's also pretty modern but I think it's like.
But sure if it could have been a finance and be made if it weren't for like David Lynch I think the fact that we've held it.
And it existed and it was ahead then something like this could get finance because it's incredibly weird.
And it's a big budget sort of production for this kind of thing.
When you think about it they could have made the plot so that it was just a normal feet cong clash type situation and then all the crazy insane stuff is all happening in his head and was just a normal fight.
But they didn't do that they made even the circumstances of the blood bath be very weird and out there because in movies like this if you think like where's it evolves you know the edge goes back was all a dream and everybody's nice and everything's fine and gives you the sense of.
And it's much more unsettling that even the framing device of the insanity is by self also saying of this desire it turns out to be this drug experiment and how could he know it is a drug experiment it's like everything in this movie.
I mean I can see your neighbors frustration with like everything is a lie I mean everything is just being completely made up even though they have that title card at the end about this drug B.C.
Was that really the case or not I who knows he shouldn't know any of that stuff in his head that's weird that the only thing that didn't said well of me is that weird title card.
To sort of break away and let audience know something about the drug experiment which I don't understand it that's the only part that I don't get.
I didn't either and add something that drove me crazy too is like where did this is this imagined B story come through I mean he must have had full the round with LSD to you know Jacob himself for it to.
But he seems like very clean lace not to have done that but I think it's the ending when he does see that he was killed by his own soldier is what for me locks it in that it's all true because but that was something I was driving me crazy for a while too is like where did this this is the one thing that doesn't.
Exense for me but then I think that's really the cap of it seeing that dude.
The thing I was heard like growing up in the you know the 80s and stuff I mean Nancy Reagan and her old war on drugs was just insane like the.
to just say, no campaign was fuckin' everywhere.
It's like, you open up for conchating bar
and there's, like, it don't say no message in there.
Don't say yes or just say no, there it is.
Just say, there you go.
Message inside of there.
- Terrible message, and you still can't get it straight.
- Yeah, yeah. (laughing)
- You would hear those horror stories of, like,
"Oh yeah, don't do LSD because, you know,
" Station system forever."
You could like crack your back and then,
all of a sudden, you have a flashback.
And, you might freak out and jump off a building or something.
So when he goes to his chiropractor,
Louie, the Daniela Elocharacter,
and he gets an adjustment at one point.
He gets a good old crack and then,
"Ooh, it's like Vietnam flashback."
And I was like, "Oh, there you go."
But it's like, no, no, now he's actually
going from dream to reality.
And I'd love the way that they flip that
and make the Vietnam stuff feel like a flashback,
but it's always the present time.
And the way this will be placed out,
basically, you could be playing out in real time
between the time he gets stabbed and the time he dies.
It could be just less than two hours worth of time here.
- Oh yeah, and especially if you've done LSD,
the time that goes by when you look at your watch,
like, "Holy shit, that's only been 10 minutes.
I thought this been 40 minute, you know,
"cause just the fact that poor guy is dying,
"he's not only dying and going to really
"pergatory v's also on the most extreme LSD
"coverment, literally LSD, trip ever,
"combining both of those, of course he's seeing demons in shit."
- There is basis and fact with government experimenting
on its own soldiers and some like,
"Okay, well this isn't too far out of the realm
"of possibilities.
"I mean the whole MK Ultra thing,
"I mean what the experiments that the government did
"black people were sick of, sick of,
"slamine, and NEMIA and all this."
And it's like, "Oh, okay, so like the BZ title card
"at the end, I was like, "All right, I guess this is kind of like
"saying, "Hey, yeah, there were really experiments,
"but then it's just so weird to put it on a fiction film.
"It feels almost like lip service."
- I think maybe the studio forces on M
or maybe some kind of focus group thing or something
like it just doesn't sit right, you're right.
I was surprised that BZ is even a real thing.
It would make more sense if we were to police
them made up drug, but it's actually a thing from reality.
So what's the point even?
So bizarre.
- Yeah, I think the writer had an experience with LSD
like where he took it once,
it didn't have an effect, and I think it's his roommate
had a eyedropper of it.
And instead of giving them one drop, he gave him
like the whole entire dropper full of it,
and he had this intense trip out.
So I guess him being very influenced
by the drug itself is probably why it's so intertwined
in his script.
- That goes back to that deleted scene with antidote
where he has a dropper, he gives it one drop,
and then he forces the whole thing on him.
- And then that was the thing,
when I saw this movie years later at that screening,
I was waiting for that scene to happen and never happened.
And for me, that's like one of the,
I wish those alternative cut to this movie
that had that scene in it and then had another deleted scene
with Jezzy transforming at the ending.
I think those two scenes, I don't know,
we can get to that later, but I was so bummed
that scene wasn't in the movie when I came back
to watch it later, because there were these
definite two set pieces that people don't forget
that will probably get into, but for me,
that was like the third one,
that was like one of the ones that was so memorable to me.
- Well, this was really interesting
the whole timeline too when it comes to him
and his wife Sarah or ex-wife,
and it's like, are they not together in just the dream
that he's having or did they break up
before he went to Vietnam,
because there's this whole thing about his son, Gabriel,
dying, and I'm guessing I'm thinking that he must have died
before Jacob went to Vietnam,
and we have all of these flashes too,
and that's another mystery throughout the entire film
is how did he pass way, how did Gabriel pass way,
and you get all these little flashes of like,
when he's in the hospital, he sees this bicycle,
and you get just like these little moments of him talking
with Gabriel or like flashing back to Gabriel,
so it's like flashbacks within his flash forward
almost inside of his dream, which is great,
and there's that moment,
so he's like kind of living his life with Jezebel,
and we don't really know where she stands,
like she seems nice most of the time,
but when he wakes up with her
and she has these pictures and he gets really modeling
about these pictures of Sarah and his kids
and all this, and especially when he sees Gabriel,
who's played by a very young McColle Colkan,
and then when she takes the photos and throws him away,
I'm just like, man, that's the worst thing to do,
and she's just like, I don't want to see you sad,
I don't want these pictures making you sad,
I'm just like, what a horrible person you are,
and that's like, I really searched down her intentions,
but then like, I forgive her fairly easily through this,
I don't know if it's because of Elizabeth Penia,
so charming or what, but yeah, we're supposed to think
throughout this whole thing,
like maybe she doesn't have his best interests in mind.
But also if it goes back to this thing with Danielle,
it was a very angelic character, right?
And he says, if you're frightened of dying,
you'll see devils tearing you apart,
if you've made your piece, then there are angels
free in you from the world.
Right, so in that sense,
Jezebel burning the pictures,
Jezebel burning the pictures is an angel free in from the world
and helping him to pass on, in the sense,
in that sense, it's more of a purgatory narrative
than a hell narrative.
I like it better that Jezebel or Jeze isn't exposed
as a demon because I think,
also I like it more, more it stays mysterious.
I also love the scene of, of it going down.
It's like an incinerator fire and I kind of like the idea
of the fire underneath where he's living with her too.
I just love that whole visual.
Yeah, there's a lot of going upstairs coming downstairs
or even the elevator at the beginning.
And I love that shot inside the elevator
with all the pennies inside of this grading
that there is.
Because there's another moment later on in the film
where it's him and purgatory events
and they're out on the street and he sees a coin on the street.
And I was just like, oh, that's kind of
little cool call back and I don't know if that's
putting coins over the eyes of the dead type of thing
to pay the ferrymen to take you to the afterlife
or what that is.
But then I also like how he sees that coin on the street.
Oh, it's my lucky day.
And then that coin basically loan away
and the next time we cut down to the ground,
we have her Taylor vincices.
I guess it's like a sink Christopher metal.
So it almost gets replaced from coin to metal like that
and I thought that was kind of a nice way of just showing that.
And then also just how long it takes for that explosion
to happen for her Taylor vincice to be blown up.
And that plays into this whole other thing
that we have going on in the movie,
which is these series of assassinations
and this government conspiracy cover up
of all these secret men taking him and throw them in a car
or trying to run them down on the street.
And what is going on with this?
And we even have like a cover up with Jason Alexander later on.
It's just like, he really they do a great job
of wrong footing you in this movie.
It's like, no, this is actually guy fantasizing about his
afterlife about death type of thing.
But then it's like all of these adventures
that he's imagining in his head.
Yeah, totally love him saying it's my lucky day
and going for that coin.
And it's almost like it fly.
I always sort as it's flying off screen towards the car for some reason.
And I think you nail it with the ferryman thing where it's like,
that's the coin to pay the ferryman for him to go.
I might might the areas is that him and all of these other,
all of his other vets, they're all in the same
purgatory as him.
But that moment that was his time to go is when that happened.
That was my that's my theory on it.
For me, the let's explain that I just like it.
I mean, the park with all the veterans joining together to maybe
what higher Jason Alexander and then
prosecute the the Su the Marine Corps of thing.
It's the only like semblance of like a generic plot that this movie has.
But even that feels very off very weird.
And isn't it resolved in a traditional way, which is great?
The less and also one of the the other deleted scene with the antidote also puts a button on the whole.
There's an antidote.
There's a chemist.
I mean, the cab is to sell in the movie, but the antidote.
And you know, I could take a relief that part.
The more surreal it was, the more I enjoyed it.
Because it's very weird now without those deleted scenes when the chemist comes in and explains everything to him.
Because it's like the chemist explains everything to him.
And then he takes a cab and goes home.
And then it's, you know, the door man greeting him.
He goes upstairs.
And he goes in to the light.
And it's like it's like a solid after the guy after the chemist tells me the story.
It's almost like 15 20 minutes more of movie left where nothing else.
You know, crazy happens.
You know, it's just his acceptance.
But the antidote scene I like because it was just like, hey, here's your antidote.
And then he has this intense sequence.
Like I said, it's burned in my head forever.
And then of course, it doesn't work.
And then he has the confrontation, the final confrontation with the Jezzy.
And when he's looking at himself.
And I kind of like all that that leads him to his son going up this stairs.
Like I said, I wish there was no turn to the contigo watch with those deleted scenes.
But I guess there was like a lot of stuff.
Even more than there was deleted scenes shot.
There was a making of this movie that I saw.
And there was like a scene that takes place in a bathroom stall in the beginning with
two men that was cut out of the movie.
Also Adrian Lynn said there is the dead scene of the chemist that was cut out of the movie.
Where he goes back to see him after the antidote doesn't work and he finds his head.
He's severed head.
I mean, I'm happy.
Maybe I don't need all that stuff, you know.
But I think there's one more scene.
Yeah, there's like a bathroom stall scene with a glory hole that was also cut after he
does the antidote.
But I don't know.
I just think the ending now, no one deleted scenes and so strange for me.
It's just like you can see it.
I can see it now.
I couldn't see it earlier on.
I'm surprised there's not a fan edit of this with those scenes put back in just because it would
be very easy to do that.
But in my searches, I was not able to find anything like that.
But I'm glad that they keep all of that stuff on the DVD or the blue rage so that if somebody
wants to do that, they could because you know, they are pretty easy to put in.
And yeah, that script book that's out there, a brochure, a book, fantastic.
And I really like how not only does he include the scenes that were cut out because there's
a whole thing of like, I want to say one of his mentors, one of his philosophy mentors
that he goes back to and talks with and that character is completely cut out as well.
So you just get to see all of these different aspects of the story that were eliminated
between script and screen and even those things that you're talking about where it's things
that were shot that just aren't even on the deleted scenes.
Yeah, I would love to see all that stuff.
Like there's more like hell of the battle too in there as well deleted.
And I like seeing what the professor I get while it's not in the movie.
But the purpose of that scene is you're supposed to see how brilliant Jacob's mind is and
how he does fear the demons.
And you know, it was like a whole scene kind of to set him up a little bit more.
He's almost hiding in this movie when he is being shown as postal worker.
And it's like you have a PhD in philosophy and you should probably working in a much more
of an academic setting.
But no, he is he kind of exchanges one uniform from Vietnam into another uniform as the post
agent.
And I don't know for supposed to get this whole thing of like messages and delivering messages
because he keeps getting messages, but he doesn't really know what to do with them.
Woman at the party who reads his palm and is like, Oh, you're dead.
You're dead, honey.
He just keeps being told like you're dead, you're dead, you're dead, you're dead.
And then he just keeps asking, am I alive?
Am I dead?
What's going on?
And they're subtle, but sometimes they're not so subtle.
Like even, you know, Louis Black as his doctor after he has that whole thing where he goes
into that massive fever.
And he's just like, Hey, you must have friends of very high places.
And it's like, OK, yeah.
We are definitely talking, having him here quite a bit.
But I'm glad we're not talking real Judeo Christian, like the imagery and stuff.
We get some of that in some of the books that he's looking at.
But I like that line was more like, Oh, no, this is more natural.
Like the nurse at the hospital there.
So it's a little perturbrances at the top of her head that look like bones sticking out.
And it's like, well, that doesn't look like kind of looks like a horn, but it's not like
traditional, you know, little devil type horns come in out of her head.
If I never knew that was supposed to be a horn until I looked at this.
We were there.
They looked like a terrible injury.
Like some sort of weird skull fragment.
I think a lot of it makes sense to me as a guy who is shell shocked and Vietnam and sees horrible
corpses all over the place.
And the car's blowing up as well.
Like anything could be rigged exploded.
So you just, it's just a horrible PTSD experience.
Yeah, it resonated with me more than all the religious stuff.
You know, Mike's lying to that he asked, there's anybody want to come on this podcast and talk
about the Old Testament ramifications of some movie and the hammer.
Oh, I don't know either.
I don't know either.
But it wasn't a bit over the top with all the character names being biblical names.
Not just love biblical names.
If I had another little boy, I would name him Jason Caleb or Tav.
Super over the top.
Yeah.
Because you guys haven't even mentioned we've talked about the chemist, but his name is Michael.
And it's like, OK, we get Michael Gabriel.
Sarah, jess about.
Yeah, jess is like part of the biggest like it's so over the top.
Like, well, yeah, and like with Jacob from the Bible, I mean, he had a few things going on.
That only did he have that dream ladder where he saw figures going and coming down
so this whole ascension, desension thing.
But then also Jacob is the one that wrestled either an angel or God.
They don't really make it clear.
And there's that whole thing where he like hurts the other person hurts his hip.
And so that when Louie is like, oh, I know just your hip here and I'm like, OK, yeah,
got an old injury there from fighting with God.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know that.
That's pretty.
No, we knew there.
There was a lot of small and detailed.
It's not biblical, but it was very interesting that both when he meets Batham, Richardson,
on the steps of it was going to read his palm.
And also with Daniel Yellow, she says to him, give me your right head and he gives her
his left hand and says, no, you're right.
And also with the hand, he says, you left and right.
I think I'm that I got a wrong in one of the Daniel Yellow sequences.
He says to him turn, relived and he turns left and then he else has no left.
So he turns to the other way and it's actually wrong.
He'd like, Mr. Dio, my, this is the viewer.
But I think I heard somewhere that in dreams, you can tell left for right is that.
Is that right?
I didn't know that.
Wow, I see a call that that in dreams, you can tell left from right.
So I thought, so I think I don't like it.
It's just pergatory or just hell, I could also be a dream.
It could be different thing.
The part where he's told that he's dead could also be part of a dream.
I mean, we call it our different interpretations.
There is a scene in the opening where after the subway scene as Mike brought up the elevator
scene with the coins, he goes home.
He takes a shower and just jumps in the shower with him and then when it cuts back to
them, there's like range ripping on his face.
So it makes sense.
It's in a shower because he's just been rained on outside and in the same thing with the car
explosion, because I'm thinking, oh yeah, he must, there's always explosions going around
him and that like also seeped in.
But it was also in the original script when the car explodes, what's happening, he's in the
chopper and they're getting attacked.
Like there's bombs going off.
And I thought that was kind of interesting.
So I'm so grateful that Adrian, I took this approach where he let these different interpretations
go exist and didn't really hit us over the head of the hammer.
It's so much better this way.
You know that because the original concept was Bruce Joel Ruben said, my original idea was for a
20th century man to be attacked by medieval creatures and Lin came in and kind of scrapped
that and made it more like flesh based.
You know, I think originally I believe was it Ridley Scott was attached.
I think what I was one of the things he was into.
But it's interesting, if he would have made Jacob's ladder, he was supposed to make it around
the time he did the legend.
So it would have been weird for him to do the ultimate devil and legend and then do Jacob's
ladder.
Because the script, the creatures are more, their demonic creatures, they're not flesh based
as Lin said.
But I think he, yeah, what he did with it was was so incredible to shift the movie in that
direction.
The way that the demon effects are in this, I mean, it's these kind of weird masks or the
effect that he's doing where he's got people moving their heads at a probably regular
rate, but he's shooting it.
What for frames a second or something so that they're moving can currently fast.
It's like they're out of sync with the world.
I really like that.
And when Jacob sees those in the back of the subway or in the cars, the car, the train
run them down or at the party that I was just talking about.
There's just like all of these little moments where it's like, wow, and they just, they're
really super freaky.
We're the one at the hospital after he gets thrown out of the car and brought by Santa Claus
when he goes to the hospital and there's the guy who doesn't, I don't think he has any legs
and he just, his head is doing that thing.
He's like man, this super freaky, where the guy who's got no eyes that shoots him right in his
third eye and all those people at the hospital are just like, no, no, you're dead.
It's like, wow, all right.
And this is that massive contraption that he's in that they kind of spin them around and poking
right there and his third eye.
The guy in the hospital, I thought he was being ramed going through his own personal hell
because it's a kind of a built black gentleman.
He's got, and he's been like a Johnny gut his gun situation going through his own purgatory
in there that he sees because he does see the bike, the Linless people, which he's dealing
with in war, which we also see in the beginning, like, and dirty attack guys with losing their
arms and stuff.
So there's, yeah, and I love that, I love that contraption they put him in because I think
then Danny L. L. L. L. comes in and he's like, you know, what is this medieval barbaric thing
you're putting him in?
And yeah, he says like, why don't you just burn him at the stake and put him at his misery
again, telling the, you know, it's so brilliant.
Or you get that moment at the party where basically it's like a demon having sex was just
about the horn that pops out of her mouth, just like holy shit.
But let's go and hang here.
That was fucking nuts.
And the strobe effect, this isn't the movie for epileptics for sure, but it was so fucking effective.
Like he could, it's one of those rare things we see, practical effect, there's so much better
than anything ever done with CGI.
It just works so, it's so fucking scary and weirdy sexy and everything.
And also the choice of music like, Jane putting Jane's brown is that as a, like, for the
soundtrack about like horrifying, poor scene, it's so weird, that's scary music at all.
It's not even creepy or anything, it's just a funky, I don't know if it's kind of a weird,
we have a British director, like I think it's only a British director would put Jane's
brown on the background of that scene.
Now dude, the music choice is so perfect for that scene.
Was that your first time seeing that scene or have you seen it before?
Think of the only thing I ever saw outside of the context of the movie was him and the
ice bath and that's it.
Because that that that that scene is so phenomenal, the whole sequence is so great and that song,
it's out there that it's on an album called Hell, which is pretty funny too.
The James Brown track, I'm not aware of that song, but I think it's a perfect song for
that scene.
It's so good.
And that scene man, it was like nothing else I've ever experienced since.
It was just, I guess for me, when I first saw as a kid, the closest thing I can kind of
put this movie up against was like Angel Hart, which was I get it's just big budget.
It felt like a big budget horror movie with real actors in it.
You know, which always kind of puts it on a more of a top tier, because I was so used to
fry a 13th and Halloween, but that scene, just again, it's another scene from this movie that
has never left me.
It's like it's pretty brilliant.
That's funny because I think peritillir rins is also an angel Hart and he plays a
character.
It's two detectives, like, demo some phobos, the sons of Mars are one of his characters, one
of those two names.
Oh, shit.
You know, I need to rewatch it.
My dad gave it to me when I was a kid.
He's like, you got to watch this.
And you know, what?
I was kind of blown away by it, you know?
Because like I said, it's just like I liked it when like misery came out.
James Con was in it.
I liked it when you saw like real, I love horror films, but I just, you know, I was so used
to seeing, you know, the least stars.
You know, you know, you know, you know, when I would see a movie with like real, I could
guess I would say, a list actors in a horror movie, but they were always thrown off as, oh, no,
it's a thriller.
It's not a horror film.
It always just had, it seems like I had a bigger impact for some reason on me, especially
angel Hart.
Well, that movie was so controversial, especially with Lisa Bonne being in there and her being
still on the cows be show or just left the cows be show and on a different world.
I mean, it was so like, oh boy, America's sweet heart and it's like, all right, sure, you
can't have a sexuality.
These are the 80s.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, and after that scene of them at the party, that's when you get that famous scene of
him in the ice bath and just apparently he had a freak out at the party after seeing just
about like this.
And then we wake up.
I think there's a little Vietnam flash back in there and that he wakes up at in the
apartment.
One other thing, I should say is that he is constantly waking up.
So it's one of these like, you should know that he's dreaming because he is constantly waking
up.
So when he wakes up this time, she's just like, man, I can't believe you embarrass me so much
at this party and like read them the right act about being mortified.
And then he has a temperature of like 160 degrees and it serves this whole thing of this
ice bath going on.
And then this weird moment that just, it's the one thing in this movie that just really
gets me is he's in the ice bath and then suddenly he's back with Sarah.
And it's like we have gone off a whole other branch of fantasy where he's back with Sarah, not
only as he back with her, but Gabe is either now he's back in the past or Gabe is still alive
in this timeline that he's at.
It's like he's going through like different levels of dream type stuff.
And it almost feels like he's moving back and forth in time with this stuff.
And that ties in to the ice bath.
You know, you're talking about how things bleed from one timeline to another and that he's there
going like, oh, you know, it's so cold.
It's so cold.
You left the window open and that also calls to mind the whole idea of Dante's in Furno and that
many layers of hell are cold.
It's not just fire and broom stone kind of stuff that there's browns, those levels of hell
are some of them are super cold as well.
That's another great punishment.
I think I would probably be worse off in a super cold hell than I would in a super hot hell.
I'd be like, oh, yeah, bring it on.
I love the heat.
I didn't know that about Dante's in Furno.
Never read it.
I always kept thinking about like, when people are dying in movies to like I'm cold.
And so that's what I was going back to.
But um, and then right in one of his flashbacks, you know, they're giving him more drugs.
And I guess their push is guts back in at that point too.
So that's probably why it's such an intense experience for him that seen in the tub when
he's just looking up like Jesus Christ, like why wasn't he nominated for best act for this
movie because his performance is phenomenal.
Like his you feel for him because like from the opening in the Vietnam, he's very likable
because he's just laughing as the guys are breaking his balls.
You know, talking about I'm shooting all the time.
He's laughing. He's got that moment with the women singing post man.
But then he's got these, you know, like these quick emotional scenes where he sees, you know,
his son's picture before she throws out the pictures he's crying.
That scene in the tub that performance.
It's not saying anything, but it's all in his face and his eyes.
He's tearing.
It's phenomenal.
We mentioned a lot of the good stuff, but there's a, there's one unintentional laugh in
this movie where the first time we pulled out Gates picture.
And it's the colleague, Colton.
And out of context, it's just so ridiculous.
Chris, and this is also the year that home alone came out.
Like, it's a few months, a few short months away from every person in the world, basically knowing
who this kid is.
So, but ever, yeah, you got to laugh.
When you pick this picture and you just think, oh, so is this guy a huge,
the colleague, all in fan like, what's going on?
He carries this picture around and is all it.
Oh, Kevin, the calistar.
I remember you so well.
I love you and Richie.
Why did you come back for home alone?
You were right.
Why didn't you put Trump in the nuts and home alone, too?
So the most horrific scenes for me are, like you said, the party when the demon kind of
rapes just about.
And then when he is gets kidnapped by those guys outside of Jason Alexander's office and they
pull him into this car and are threatening them, you know, like, you better quit talking
about this, quit asking questions.
Again, we're super into like, Alan J. Piculita territory with this type of stuff.
And then, yeah, the throw nut of the car, Santa Claus comes along and steals his license.
There's steals his wallet, which then begs the question, I don't know why people aren't
writing all these articles is Jake and his letter of Christmas movie.
Dude, I was so afraid you were going to bring that stuff.
It's like in one way, it's like a dream logic.
Why is there a Santa here all of the sudden?
And then if you look at the original script, original script takes place during Christmas, like,
you know, when he meets up with his buddy, forget his name, the guy from identity, blows
up in the car.
I've been the script, there's like Christmas lights outside that bar, which by the way is like
the sickest location for a movie.
Like a lot of these locations, it's like, how are we going to have these two cats meet in
a bar?
That's like half color of money, pull hole, and the other half is like grocky too, sparring ring.
I fucking love that location.
But that Santa seems a trip because, yeah, in one way, it's like dream logic, but then
the original script, it was a Christmas movie.
But there's this great line afterwards where they ask about his wallet and the hostlies
is Santa Claus, Duket or something.
And it's just too good.
It's like the funniest line on the movie, the funniest attention alive, that to keep it.
And then the guys that pull him in the car in the script are army officials, and I kind
of like that change where they're just these guys.
They look like mobsters.
Like the guys that are hunting them down look like just mobsters to me, maybe because I'm
I'm part of it.
It's sort of like the FBI agent's sex situation and it's unmarked car, but they totally look like
mobsters.
I think it's just, again, messing with that sentence.
These really delicious ways.
I mean, one of the guys for sure has been in just the ton of mob movies and mob TV shows.
I can't remember the gentleman's name though.
If I could Jacob needs to stay away from cars because the alley scene, the car is going after
him and I thought was interesting about the alley scene is that Adrian Leann said that he,
you know, like Jacob's, you know, going back and forth, escaping the car and then he's
Adrian Leann said he v-shot it three times that and then he kept using different people looking
out the window because he shot it once and it didn't work.
He shot it again.
He wasn't sure and he shot it a third time.
So he blends three different times.
He shot it into that scene.
So that's why one second, it's like one guy, the verb rating zombie dude in the back, one
seat, you'll notice that doesn't match the other guy that's driving.
It doesn't match the guy that's looking out the window.
It's fucking, yeah, incredible.
It was incredible that he was able to do something like that.
You know, because I don't know if you'd have, you know, he had, I guess he had the pulled
to pull something like that off back then, which is great.
And he's back apparently after 20 years and just directed this, then I flick movie.
Yeah, I kind of liked it.
I know a lot of people didn't like it.
It's not for everyone, but I liked it.
I'm a fan.
And especially when you see this movie, man, it's just like, if you really, I don't know,
as a kid, I don't think I got flash dance, but it was such a cultural relevant movie.
The soundtrack was everywhere.
You know, on MTV, they kept showing the music video with the scenes from the movie.
But when I'm watching this movie, I just hits you, how much like, man, his aesthetic is just
so good.
Even though like in decent proposal, like I never really seen it, but you couldn't escape
the scene and the bed with the money and then just the premise of that movie.
Think like the premise of the movie, carry that movie too.
It's just fatal attraction.
The elevator sequence, you know, it looks so fucking good.
You know, it's like, "Oh boy, has an eye."
Yeah, that's weird because he's one of these guys that comes from that
same working and advertising that I don't remember.
I think Ridley Scott also was an advertising director and for sure, Tony Scott was.
And then when you look at his editor and his DP, it's like, there's so many crossovers
with Ridley and especially with Tony Scott.
It's like they just kind of glammed down to the same people.
Out of the, yeah, those three guys in the 80s, you know, when you saw Tony Scott movie, it looked
big.
Because you know, that was magic hour shots, you know, it just felt big.
That just the way he shot stuff.
All three of those cats totally.
Because I was struck by how similar the trajectory of Adrian Lyme and Ridley Scott is,
this, you know, well, British guy coming in and with this background of advertising, there's
a few more, like Jonathan Glaser's in your example.
So do you ever sense of how big this movie is called following is?
It's still sort of the hidden type of gem or is it or does tons of people know about it?
With it being coming out in the 1990s, you know, certain people of a certain age like me were
around when it came out like Steven as well.
I don't, you know, even I'm not going to speak for you as far as your age goes.
But, you know, I remember it playing and I remember it being pretty big at the time,
but then it just kind of got dwarfed by ghost.
You know, the same year, it wasn't a huge hit.
It was definitely successful, but it wasn't like the box office beast that something like ghost
was.
So think that it still must have a cult following.
I mean, we'll talk about the sequel or the remake, I should say, after the break.
But I don't know if having a remake necessarily qualifies it as having a big cult following,
because sometimes you're just like, why are they remaking this one rather than something
else too?
Because it's just so strange and especially with this one, it's like, why are you remaking this?
This is done pretty perfectly.
I don't think we necessarily needed a remake for it.
This movie is definitely had a cultural relevant because I watched walk through the of it.
I haven't played it, but silent hill uses a lot that the scary nurse is the same nurse.
Even the harness he's put in at the hospital, what he's the shake, the head shaking, and
silent hill.
And then when I was watching this again for this episode, the whole subway sequence, when he's
going into the tunnels, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I played video games where
I've been in those tunnels, you know, I can fall out and shoot like that.
I know video game people are definitely designers, you know, are definitely fans of this movie,
because they're always using this aesthetic.
And later on, you know, like, household haunted hill and so an episode of Hannibal are using
the crazy face.
I mean, I think Joe Dante did it first in inner space.
That was more of a comedic way, but what he did with that in this film was just incredible.
I hadn't seen any, even though I, you know, I didn't remember it in the space as a kid.
And then, oh, that's just like, now, in this movie, it just works as its own terrifying element.
But I think it definitely has cultural relevance, like it really seeped into people.
And it's probably influenced a lot of stuff.
We don't even realize.
Yeah, that whole thing with the subway and him not being able to get out of the subway.
I mean, that was the dream that Bruce Shorubin had that really set this whole thing emotion.
And I can't say it was a dream, it was a nightmare.
I mean, this whole idea of being caught someplace and not being able to ascend.
I mean, and that's the whole thing is like, Jacob's caught.
He wants to get up.
He wants to go to the next thing he wants to get out of where he's at.
And it's such a nice little metaphor for the entire film.
He couldn't go up to stairs, but he's eventually able to go up to stairs at the ending.
But the thing I noticed this, this, this viewing, I never noticed before when he gets
up the train, it doesn't say exit.
Like at the stairwell, it says exit in the tunnel, which is strange.
And that's where he asked to eventually go out.
I thought that was such a trip. I was like, I've never noticed that before.
And then, of course, he goes through the tunnel.
He dodges the train where we see the, the demons.
But we never see him get out of the tunnel, just cuts.
You know, the name of the station is visible, but it didn't sound like a real station name,
but did you?
Anybody check if it's an actual subway station?
You see the name all over the place.
And it's so, doesn't sound like a real name.
I'm a furniture.
Yeah, because, yeah, the tunnel scene.
I guess Adrian Lin said that it's the tunnel down there leads to hell in the commentary, but,
you know, he gets blocked from going down the tunnel from the oncoming train.
And yeah, and that kind of like, maybe think like, how many movies have like, I guess
movies that deal with spiritual have trains in them too, because you know, like,
spirited away has the sequence, which is on the train.
I think that's, I guess, well, it's not a train, but I guess heaven and
vehicles like heaven can't wait when he pears and heaven, they're all going aboard a concoord,
you know, and I believe is there a train in the Albert Brooks movie for some reason?
Oh, and defending your life?
I'm not sure.
Sure, too.
Some reason I thought there was something about, I hadn't seen that since I was a little kid,
so I, but yeah, but I thought, yeah, because there's a movie called The Heavenly Kid from
1985 that has this weird opening similar opening where he dies, playing chicken in the 1950s,
this dude, and then as soon as his car drives off, he wakes up on a train just like in Jacob's
ladder, and then when he gets off the train, he's not allowed to go up the escalator to heaven.
He's in his own purgatory in 90 goes back to the Ego's ahead into 1985, and he's got
to save his son's life.
And I thought that was a weird movie to this, even though it's made in 1985, and it's a silly
comedy, but I was like, kind of shocked at how, when I was looking at the head and we
had a look at a, or how straightly similar it is.
Okay, so I checked to the Bergen Street Station at surreal station.
All right, on.
I'm from the Yarka, shouldn't know that.
So Bruce Jo Ruben came from like, what a Christian or a Jewish background, and then he went
Jewish background.
Yeah, Jewish and then he went more, what Buddhist or, or, yeah, because he talks a lot in
the interview about the Tibetan book of the dead and the whole thing about what is called
bardos and just like how, and I know there's that movie that just came out called bardo,
but it's like basically like a transition from one to another type of thing.
So yeah, he's definitely very, very spiritual.
It was pretty cool that it, it informs so much of his work.
Because a lot of the interpretations we've been drawing around are sort of more Judeo Christian,
but I'm guessing he has more sort of like a Buddhist interpretation of death and what
read the combination or or some kind of something somewhere in the middle between the two.
Because it is a pergatory or hell of that situation, right?
Anyway, anyway, you look at it.
One then, yeah, his versions of demons and angels work much more.
Like you would see in a Bible class type of thing rather than this more natural line, said
the word "thulatomide" so like the whole idea of like birth to facts and just like the horrific
ways that flesh gets twisted. So like being more of like a natural thing with that woman's horn coming
out of her head or just like, you know, the people at the hospital where it kind of reminded
me a little bit of like the second half of Altopo with like all the people that are trapped
in that Altopo's trying to free like some of those people look like they have some of the
same afflictions. Like there's one guy who's like crawling along the top of the fence when
Jacob's going underneath it. I mean, it's like, wow, this is pretty great. In the way that he keeps
getting lower and lower and it feels like they're going deeper and deeper into the bowels of this
hospital and the parts where it's like just body parts laying around or blood just all over the ground.
I mean, that whole thing and mentioned how winded, re-shot the the car stuff just that he went
back and re-shot the gurney stuff so that he fixed the wheel so that it would shake like a regular
gurney rather than being perfectly straight and just that little touch of this gurney being broken.
It was like, well, that adds a real nice layer of bare-smillitude to it. It's such an incredible
descent that scene. A lot of doctors in this movie and because the first doctors that see a
mattress falls out of the car, they're just being such assholes to them and then they'll have a sudden
it's like they're bringing them to another wing of the hospital and it's like outside and the back
or something and then it starts that descent. Oh, and then to go back what you're saying like
the guy on in the subway, his tail was originally, there was like a storyboard in the
Senate fantastic of the original scene. The storyboard was like his tail was supposed to be more
of old-fashioned's devil tail with the swithy point and so they changed it to that phallic thing which
always as a kid. I never thought that was a tail. I just didn't you know it was just always
disturbed me because I can never figure out what it was. Yeah, you just get a glimpse of it and it's
really disturbing. It's this fainy demon shlawing from you. It's so smart to the way that they
end this with taking the cab up town, stem the door man, just like, "Oh hey, let me help you up there."
No, no, I got it kind of thing and when he's just hanging out at his old apartment and we have
Louis on the foysilver doing that again, talking about the mice, that cart quote and basically him
coming to peace and I watched this one day with headphones on. I think you can hear it without the
headphones but you can hear like up beating heart on the soundtrack and it's so nice that it's just like,
"Oh these are the last moments here of his entire life." And then when Gabe shows up and he's
just like, "Here let me help you." And it's like this nice echo of, you know, Gabe helping his father
move on and move to the other side and you know, like he and Gabe will be reunited and it's just
such a nice way of having him come to peace like that. Or he tells the tune itself on his death but to make him
feel himself feel better and the existence is meaningless. That's interesting, I never, God,
I didn't catch the heart at all, that's cool. I think it's pretty cool and pretty amazing how
is it added in the line doing no for sure? I think it's a line. It's a line. I think it's pretty
cool and pretty amazing how he, it's his only film I think, maybe I'd have a scene like
his early shorts that he did but I think it is only filmed the dabbles in horror at all right pretty much.
And it's pretty incredible how he outhawered so many horror directors were so obsessed with
this stuff and he I think it seems to me that he came to it with a very
meeting potato's approach of how can we make this really scary and how can we make this look
best and it's just like a, you know, a pragmatic approach to making and scary and he came up with
this, the surreal nightmare I'd that really puts to shame so many horror directors. Almost every sequence
you see a demon he's like doing is what I'm being like. Like I said the scene with the car tries
to run him over the faces or terrifying that the slender man looking dude on the back of the train
during the opening like there is so much haunted imagery in the set piece of the dancing,
the gurney scene we just talked about and that deleted scene of the trip out.
Dude those are fucking phenomenal set pieces. That's ceiling-beathed thing. I can't think of I mean you
think it'd be like cheesy or something but it's so fucking effective. Even that even later that
part of the shop where the light bulb blows out somehow is so affecting to me I don't know why but
just build the editing in the magnificent I think we should get more credit to ever edited I didn't check
but so fucking well edited everything everything here so well edited like baked everything is like
compelled they fun two or three more frames it wouldn't work as well like really meticulously done.
That was Tom Roth that did the editing for this one and he was also an editor on taxi driver
I filmed that we might have heard of before but yeah he had done a ton of stuff including
that's about the crossover black rain and nine and a half weeks. He worked with the line on that. He also worked
with Paul Schreider he did blue collar and hard core so this guy was all over the place for a while to
great job and then the more it's jarrer score I think is great too and it's not and true so
it's just like just enough to let you know like there's a score here but it's not just like screaming
violins and horrific things going on it's not like again beating you over the head with it I'd like
that this movie is so subtle and it's horror just like those little quick shots like that you're trying
about the tail from the homeless guy on the train with that was that you know and it's over so quick
and they're just not lingering on these things going oh look at this effect we spent money on this
now you have the look at it genius yeah and I gotta say there's a sequence this time I never
clocked before that actually did freak me out and this is like I don't know how many times I've seen this
mood you know I'd now I'd seen it for five times but it was after his journey through hell after
as you brought up he gets injected in his third eye which I didn't put together was his third eye
you're so freaking right about that when he wakes up in the hospital bed again waking up like
you said because family comes and visits him and let end and go in back early on as we were
talked about their relationship but Jezzy says that she she looks like a bitch I can see why you left her
I guess he left her but at the hospital as soon as she says that she loves him there's a voice
said dream on do that actually creeped me out this viewing of it like creeped me out I knew to expect
everything else of the movie but I had this unexpected jolt of creepiness and then because he
looks towards the camera and he sees something off screen and he's just like no no like almost like every
lovecraft book has that someone seeing something terrible off screen that we never see it was like
I never caught that before and then I was like wow since she says as she loves them it's the one
nightmare that that's not gonna get forgiven because early on in the movie like when you brought up
the he woke up in the room with her and she's explaining like you know he had this horrible dream
he was married to Jezzybel and everything the scene ends when like him I think telling her that he loves her
and then he just looks up at the sky with this look on his face again like every time
something is said about love between him and his wife it ends with something kind of you know unsettling
like it's like he's dying but he can't I fit some re I guess he can't apologize or something and that's
what's one of the demons that's killing him that's me though I don't know I could be stretching I want to say
that that dream online is in one of those deleted scenes as well and it's like it almost works so well
that they couldn't give it up you know or else they were gonna use a twice I don't know but it feels like
we like this so much and we're gonna pull it in and use it over here as well yeah I love that
where it's just like who is this what is this you know you mentioned the whole like glory whole thing and I
want to say it like has something to do with that as well it's just like yeah you hear from like the
other room type of thing it's so freaky oh yeah because yeah it's weird because that bathroom has
the glory hole and the other cutscene that you see very glimpses in the making of was that in
opening when he's walking around to subway and can't find a way out he go opens a bathroom stall
with two men in there one naked and one pulls a knife on him so it's like this weird thing with
public bathrooms in this with the remote cut out so it is New York in the 70s I mean I
try not to use public bathrooms now in 2023 alright guys let's go ahead and take a break and we'll be
back with a pair of interviews first up we'll hear from screenwriter Bruce Joel Ruben and after that
we are going to hear from director Adrian Line and we'll be back with both of those right after
these brief messages hi I'm Jason and I'm jewels and we do in filmographies we've compiled a list of
actors we draw a name at random and tackle their entire acting filmography from start to finish or at least
as much of it that still exists and hasn't been lost to time Jason loves actor Billy Crude up in films
like Jesus as son or almost famous but well he loved Billy and movies like Montyman Avenue or
world traveler no they're not good and jewels love actor rata Mitchell and films like hi art and pitch black
but will he love rata in movies like when strangers appear or love in other catastrophes you'll
just have to tune in to find out some of the names that pop up might surprise you some of the films as
well so join us every Saturday on the podcast app of your choice or via YouTube as we do in film
you could tell me a little bit as far as like the origin of that and even more that origin of you and
like what led to Jacob's ladder because I know you're very spiritual person and I know a lot of that
came out of spirituality I didn't start out that way I thought it was a spiritual anything I mean I
was observing Jewish kid from Detroit and that was kind of my life I was responsible to following my
parents to practice you know and we celebrated Christmas so we were very ecumenical and I kind of you
know enjoyed life and everything was fine and I ended up having a roommate in New York who was very close
to Timothy Lary. Timothy Lary was doing things outside of the university serving in Millbrook New York
experiments with LSD and my friend went up there regularly and tried it and asked if I would like to
try it I was I mean I was strangely uncarsher so I don't know why I said sure and he got me a
pill of about 65 micrograms I think I don't know what it was but it was sizable enough to
initiate something major and he said the day comes and you know it's right we'll do this I said okay
and it took about six months for me to arrive at that moment and interestingly on that very day a
man named Michael Hollings had arrived in our apartment from DeSando's laboratories in Switzerland where
the LSD is made with a jar of pure elitric acid that had just been produced and said I don't want to
walk around New York City carrying this can I put it in your refrigerator because my friend and he
were going to go to Millbrook to follow in there so that was there and then that evening I took my 65 micrograms
or whatever they were and nothing happened and all so my friend said we just happened to have
the jar of pure elitric acid in the refrigerator freshly made and I get an eyedropper and I give you a drop
and I want okay so he goes and he gets an eyedropper and he fills it and he goes to give me the drop and
he goes and the whole eyedropper so thousands of micrograms when shooting down my throat and there was nothing
at that point that one could do so I mean this could take up our entire interview the story of what
took place at that moment but it was a complete eradication of everything I ever knew about the world
about life about human existence about where we fit in the cosmology of a much larger universe and
that there was something so much bigger it was also very biblical in many ways up front because it was my
my Sunday school learning of things you know so there was a heaven in the hell and all these kinds
of things but they were just really it went on and on and so far beyond that it came to a place and
I tried to describe it in terms of time and I kind of say I don't know if it was like three or four
billion years but it was long and at some point in that I appeared to have died as far as I I mean
there was nothing there was no anything at all and it was fine it was like completely fine it was very
big and very non-despripped in a way but there was and I thought it was all there I mean there was no
me to think about it really but then there was a sensation of something dropping into whatever it was
I had become and it was like a like I did impregnated and then the next thing I knew parts of me were
reformulating like an elbow and part of the room and part of my head and then the wall the ceiling
body and whole thing reconstructed itself in a three-dimensional AI kind of but very real
news new emergence if you will and I was back in the world and I said why why am I back and this voice
came loud and clear to tell people what you saw and that was a directive and I had no objective
beyond that except the first thing I had to figure out was what had I seen because I had no way of
understanding it and my friend gave me a book called the Bhagavad Gita into song of God which I had never read
had I read it a week before would have been kind of meaningless to me reading it at that moment changed
everything and I suddenly understood there was a mystical universe that has been addressed by
it turns out Eastern and Western religions and philosophies but at that moment it was just Eastern for me and I
started reading that and I started reading Tibetan Buddhist texts and I was trying to figure out what is all this
what exactly did I see and why is it not what is it written down what are people talk about this thing
is mystical tradition and I ended up I was working at like NBC and I had a job as a film editor
and I decided I needed to go to India and I needed to check this out in much more profound way than I
read in reading so I quit my job and I began literally hitchhiking around the world there are
multiple bite stories and all this so I'm getting a bit quick and dirty but I made it overland through
you know like Turkey and Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan and all that to India and the poll I
lived in it to bet them on a stereotype or while I met lots and lots of teachers none of whom I thought were
really my teacher including I have to say is holierous the Dalai Lama which is a whole story in
and of itself but I went to see him and I had after a lot of sort of begging I got in and he and I just
talked for hours and at the end of our conversation he's offered to be my teacher and I said I don't
I don't think you're my teacher and I said I don't find my teacher would you be open to my
coming back? He said of course he laughed and he was wonderful and this I'm subterranean
way he may have been my teacher through this many many years I've had of what you might call
spiritual meditative practice I came back and to America never a wonderful woman married had a incredible
life children you know grandchild little that and a broader movie which I thought was kind of
trying to describe some of these experiences that I'd had and the movie was called Brain Storm and it
was not a wood-slast film and for reasons I don't fully understand it actually got made it had
out enormous difficulties being made and in the end you know of course you know the story
Natalie died before was finished and there was a lot involved in bringing it to conclusion but
the big thing that happened was that well it was opening and Holly would we went to see it with
no money and our pockets at all I mean barely forward to trip there and we had left with Brian
to Paul Mums and we'll put him in and you said you know if you want a career you got to move here
and we went back to Illinois where we were moving at the time and my wife quit her job and she said
room would be to Hollyward which was a terrifying scary situation but we did it with no money no
promises two kids everything and everything changed and what I realized is that this universal
thing was looking for my level of commitment to all of this when I made that commitment it opened the door
and but you had a proven you couldn't quite couldn't just say hey I want to be a Hollywood writer
but while I was in Illinois having had a film called brainstorm produced open clothes within three
weeks in a way having no impact whatsoever on my Hollywood career I woke up one night with a dream
of a guy on a subway and he was got off the subway at a station that had no exit there were
no all the doors were barred and he didn't know what to do and so he crossed the tracks very carefully
because he can be killed by the third rail and got to the other side and all the doors there were
barred as well and and he didn't know what to do but he had this sudden terror that he was in hell
and had to figure out how to get out and when I woke up I thought I have to write this as a movie
and in a way I had to write this and my journey out of hell and so that began Jacob's ladder
and I started thinking if I wrote the script right it would open doors and in a strange way it really
did the writing of the script was some writers will understand as I guess it was kind of delivered
I would sit there and go as I was writing as fast as I could trying to take the dictation of whatever
this was about my wife came in the room and kind of looked over my shoulder at one point see what I was writing
and she said what is that and I said I have no idea but I couldn't stop I couldn't stop it got me
an agent at the time and that was very valuable although she was no longer working as an agent
and not able to really move things forward but she was very helpful in the writing I'll pick up it
she kept pushing me make it better which I kept trying to do but she knew it was good and I felt it was
good I didn't know what what it would become or what to do with it but a couple of things started to
happen I got it to Marty's for says he who had been a classmate and why you and a friend and he
really loved it and a number of other people and then suddenly I got a call from American film magazine
from Steve Robello saying I'm doing this article on the 10 best unproduced screenplayes
and Hollywood and we'd like to include you really and I didn't know how he knew the bar I had no idea
how he knew about it but he put it out there and when I went out to Hollywood and I had finally
made my move with no anything people knew because of Jacob's latter not not brainstorm but she was
you know just another movie that had come and gone but Jacob's latter was script they knew me and
I had an agent for a short time during that another new agent but he said to me I don't want to
represent you anymore nobody wants to be movies about ghosts so I went okay and then I didn't know
what to do and I find this new agent named Jeff Sanford who said your script Jacob's latter is why
I got in business and I will make you will get millions of dollars you I will make you very successful
writer I want to represent you and he did all of that he made he change my life he put everything out there
in the world for me he got Jacob's latter going he got ghost going but he also had another kind of angelic
presence a woman named Lindsay Durand who was a vice president of paramount at the time and then
later a president of universal and a remarkable person and she transogs one of the people who recommended
Jacob's latter to the article in the american film and she said one of the said yes to ghost and
there came a moment while we were making ghosts friends of mine said I think we have a director
rejectives latter I went really cool and they said a good room line I mean I love it is work I mean
I thought powerful powerful filmmaking and they arranged to get together at a party where there was
a fight a what he called fight on forget who was fighting and wrote on television and he was totally into
the boxing match and I'm sitting next to him one is a talk about Jacob's latter and he's not doing anything
and and it was like such a strange moment I thought we're here and it wasn't coming up and then his
wife comes over and leans over to me while she's watching the match and she said he's going to make
your movie so I went okay and then if again we started to have a dialogue a relationship he became the force
of making Jacob's latter thought we were at that point going to do it a paramount thanks to Lensi
she immediately said this is great we'll make it here but then the president of paramount
left agon steel and she went to Columbia and suddenly we didn't have a champion in the that she
got that level and then the new person who came in to paramount didn't want to make it didn't
understand Jacob's latter didn't know why we should make it and so there's a long story about how
I got made it caralco the journey was a journey really ultimately between the Adrian and I over
then the interpretation of the script I will say in the end I'm very proud of Jacob's latter I think it's a
really um film and I'll say that if I'm following this directive of the LSD experience of telling
people what I saw it comes as close to a direct statement as I could get primarily because it depicts
the what's called into bet and terms the bar of state there's a movie out now called bardo but
this is this was a depiction of the life in the mind of a man who had died or was dying you can
look at it in your own way but it's a journey into reconciliation a journey into acceptance a journey
into arriving at a place of clarity and peace and understanding and a finding your way up the ladder
and that's where Jacob's latter is some people have never figured that out watching it but yeah
cut because for some people it's intellectually just too confusing but it really is the ride of the psyche
I believe with every human being at the end of the human journey where they are facing the existential
inevitability of everything and non-prepared with only like I had had a Sunday school education really
in what is all this it's a very scary moment it's a very confusing moment and you're dealing with
really really big forces I mean I can't even describe in nature of it but they know every animal
element of your being they are you're being in a way it turns out that if you move into this arena
of a meditative internal arena you can begin to actually access that space it's not hidden from us
it's actually driving our lives at every given second but most people in western society only see the
outer manifestation they don't see the un-manifest they feel it they feel emotion they feel thoughts
and that experience thoughts they have a feeling of something but they don't dive in and feel it
and therefore they are totally blindsided by it at the end when the finality comes and they realize
it's not final and that what's in front of them at that moment has never not been there but they have
paid zero or tension to that so because I had that LSD experience and because I was instructed to let people
know about this a little bit I think got the movie made and luckily Adrian came on board although
he also is not an introspective meditative person on the other hand he was very respectful of all of
that but I had written script that had an enormous amount of our biblical lake like imagery of
demons and devils and all the angels all that classical stuff and he said nope can't do that it's too
it's too familiar people will laugh at it they will not take it seriously but I said that's why
wrote the movie because it's that classical image that will I think to send almost people because
out of their you know Sunday school experience that's all they've got he said I can't go there and I
want to well I'm what it would do and we began a big search for the imagery that would work and in the end
a simple explanation is there was a woman on her so I had a hat that fell off and underneath
the hat were going to be horns like devil horns but he said I can't do horns he said let me show you
this and he shows me a picture of a person with a cancer with a growth growth cancer with
growth coming out of the top of their head and he said that's what we're looking for we're looking for the
biological we're looking for the thing that is not expected that makes people react the way you just did
when you saw an article that's what we're looking for and I couldn't disagree you know I just I mean
I mean I could have you know and but he didn't want to film to have any real biblical reference
which in a way was not wrong because in so many ways it's it was almost more of a Buddhist kind of
eastern movie but not because it's clearly deals with classical biblical imagery haven't hell
and things like that but he got the imagery right he did say however that at the end of the movie
which was Jacob's triumph in a way and going up the ladder into heaven so I can't do that
that's for Spielberg I cannot do that kind of imagery so I just I don't want to do it I don't like it
I mean I can't that's not my specialty you wanted it all real but I said I've wrote this entire
incredible ending which Jacob does battle with this person who is both angel and demon we can't tell which
and he's set on fire in a way and he ends up as a crisp charred entity and you think dead
and then you move toward it and you see eyes that are alive and then this person or a character in the
movie rips his flesh and light pours up and then more light they just rip off all his flesh and he's
nothing but light and then there's ladder that comes out of the sky and all these beings are going
up and dotted beings of light and they've back in him forward and he goes and he wants up the ladder
and he goes into the final whatever maybe final space that I believe in some way we all
are drawn to and perhaps arrive at and the movie and that life goes up there's you suddenly go to a
light and there's a doctor says he's gone his past he seems in peace the end that was how it was
supposed to go he said I can't shoot that and I went blah blah blah blah and so we had endless
dialogue so about how do we make that work so he's happy and I'm not getting happier because I'm
losing a big part of my story and my imagery and all of that stuff and he comes up with this idea
of his having a dead son who leads him perhaps and finally arrived at this upper staircase
and that it's symbolic of the ladder but it's clearly more material and real world so we did that
we shot the film like that he tried to do a little bit of some of the battle scenes that we had
and with the demon but I could tell you the way he was shooting it there was no continuity
it not enough continuity for it to ever make it into the film so we ended up losing that that was very
painful for me and the other hand when I would watch the daily's avian's daily's I could see a genius at
work his work was so stunning and it was interesting because I had the film ghost being shot at exactly
the same time and for a period in New York and in New York so I would go from the ghost set to the
Jacob's ladder set to the ghost set and then at night I would watch the daily's the film we shot that day
at technical and Jerry's looker who shot ghost was very precise and very this and we had half our
daily's Adrian had three-by-hour as a daily's and he would shoot okay let's move the camera on the
half an inch closer or half an inch closer half an inch with every take so that every actor had
maybe 40 takes of his line or more from a tiny little bit of a different angle I kept thinking oh my god
but the possibility from that level of opportunity to be able to choose from one take to another to
another to another if you have a good eye and if you are a good filmmaker which Adrian is that selectivity
is a gift you don't have to go this color paint this color painting have variable arena possibilities
so I could tell I was in good hands and the film really just looked amazing and felt amazing
and the performances of course with I think stunning you know Tim Robbins is the best person
they're very gotten for that role on the list of Pena and Danny Ahello who actually plays my
carer actor my carer practice name Louis Savason in New York and his name Louis Ford for him and
Louis was was a great feel-logent in it away and while he was cracking your body and your neck and
all that stuff he was giving you all this sort of feedback about the larger world and he delivers
the most important line Jacob's latter which is from my stericard or 16th century sea of logeum
and that line is really the essence of the movie and it is if you're afraid of dying you will see
demons tearing you from your flesh if you are open to dying those same demons are actually angels
freeing you from there that is the center piece of Jacob's latter and that's what it's about
and if I have a message to deliver to the world it would be that and it's not mine it's my
stericard you know but it's the right line and I got it in front of however many people I mean
not in the original version did many people siege it was later it was not it was not like a big splash hit
but I am told this is all you know perhaps who knows if it's true that in sophomore year of
college kids all smoke marijuana often sometimes for the first time and watch Jacob's latter and I don't
know if that's real but I've heard of some so many places and so many times and it's very transformative
so that may or may not be true but it's still playing it's still there you know it's 30 some years since
almost 33 years not every movie gets to live in the consciousness of the of the public that
long I don't know why it has but I'm going to say it's because the message is coming through to people
and the message in ghost I mean literally and every movie I've ever done and I try to say that every
movie is like a sentence and that my entire career is like a paragraph you know of saying something to
the world and I don't know if you know what its impact will be and you know I'm at a point in my
life where I kind of have no identity with any of it I just was a great experience you know I mean
Hollywood is really interesting ride I love it loved it and hated I don't say hated it but it's very
ego destroying you know you have all these other people sort of rewriting you much of the time and doing
all this stuff so you don't get your whole voice out there again my experience with Adrian was
the compromise that hardest had to do with other artists to get their films made and in the end I'm
proud of the work you know although Jacob had a lot of it we had some struggles even at the very
very very end I will tell you in the last month we were doing previews for audiences and and they were
beginning to think that the last fifth of the movie didn't have to be there it was like too long
and we cut it out for screenings of tests of audiences and they had the same result they said
that people liked it as much with it and without it and the studio decided we'll just cut out this
last fifth of the movie which over time I've come to understand was kind of the spinning of a wheel one more
time then it needed to spin and I didn't know that yet but movies are you know if you were smart they
they they're very cohesive and the extra moment may be pretty and interesting and things but a
and a lot of directors succumbed to them extra stuff but Adrian and the studio at that point decided
it should go oh and they asked my blessing and I said okay for years I would watch Jacob's ladder when I
did and the early days have missed it but then I didn't see it for like 20 some years and then I saw it
in the theater and I thought it was terrific and I didn't miss anything because I forgot what had been
cut out and it just worked so that was a great lesson for me you know among thousands of lessons
I learned at Hollywood Jacob's ladder was a great teaching experience and I really loved
I love what it is I love that it got done I love that it happened along the same time as ghosts
so we were too synchronistically impactful films and in different ways and it changed my life I mean
it changed my life a lot and I like all I can say is listen to the voices inside when they tell you
to do they're very directive and they they they are very supportive of you and but they will do
everything in their power to make sure you're on board because if you're not if you're not sincerely
there if you're not ready to risk everything to do their bidding whatever that may mean then they
don't use it but if you if you hand yourself over to something greater and again everybody has an idea
of whatever that might be but for me it's not an abstraction again the LSD gave me a direct perception
of wow and then 50 years of meditating with a wonderful teacher and an idea and I have come to
kind of witness that you will got the truth of the LSD experience as the core of the whole human
journey and that we're all on it and I don't meet a lot of people who know that but I meet enough
and I teach a lot of I teach meditation so I have students who deeply want to pursue this kind of
avenue and for me it's kind of like why are we here if not for that or maybe if you think you're just
here to get rich and laid and whatever else you think life may have to offer which is all real I mean
none of that an abstraction the thing that's you're here for is to face the thing that's coming at you
very rapidly every day and when you have to be my age you become aware of how rapidly what was that original
fifth that they took out the end of the movie involved and my mind I'm getting old so I can't
describe you the whole thing but there was an attempt to diffuse all of what Jacob was experiencing this
the guy that he met and tried to help him sort of get out of the hellish experience that he was able
to kind of a drug thing and it puts him in a hole on a hole in the journey you think he may have been
freed from the craziness that he was going through and then in the end you discovered that it didn't
do that it wasn't really necessary it was just a hope that he had found a path out and there is
a version of Jacob's ladder that has those scenes in it not as an extra I think a DVD so you can actually
watch them if you want to they're really well made of course Adrian made them but they they don't
expand the movie they don't they don't explain it in any greater depth they just give you a
moment where you hope he might escape this horrible thing that he's been going through and it doesn't
work but that happens anyway it was just 20 minutes of unnecessary spinning of the wheel but you know when you
shoot it cut it add it to the film look at it you love it and you think this is great and then you cut it
out you know there's something gone there's something missing and of course I had written it so
Jacob had a lot of those life straight cutting aspects in my life on the other hand again
which is spiritual button in life in many ways from the meditative side it's to let go of your
persona ego minded self and find the the watcher the witness the the underpinning being that
really is more the reason you're here than you believe Louis seems to stand out not just because of him being
this kind of very spiritual figure but also his name is different than almost everybody in the film
everybody seems to have a very very biblical name I mean are they very representative of the the
characters from the Bible I mean of course Jacob and Jacob Slatter and Jacob having the fight with God
it Jezebel but Louis seems to stand out a little bit the other characters were given kind of the
vocal names for a reason Louis was my friend and carer practitor now I was going to use his name
I took your DNA all the way there to learn how to become a carer practitor and he says good as
is Louis and he is he has all the mental reasons and if you wouldn't if I put them in the same room
together you would actually have to go because they were so so alike so in the end I he I wanted him to stand
out I didn't know he was going to be a hero of the movie my agent at the time
Claire Degnar Cindy Degnar said you know he's your hero he's the hero he's the
say and she had me become more dynamic in writing him as the guy the person who goes in the hospital
and gets it takes him out of the hospital and pushes nurses and everybody else away I loved that he did
that and to this day carer practitor when they know that I wrote Jacob's ladder her very appreciated
you seem to have a very good attitude about the film you enjoy it now you like it but I don't think
it was I was like that there was some bitterness in those interviews that I was reading back in the early
90s no it was a struggle it was a struggle it and I had he bit started every sentence with with all
due respect but and he was respectful but he was cutting my throat over and over and over and over he was
cutting out the heart of my movie in some ways in my mind changing the image changing the the nature
of the film and there was no proof and at that moment that he was making it better it was just making
it different and for reasons I didn't understand and I didn't know I didn't know what to do about it I was
you know your writers are very disempowered and Hollywood Adrian gave me some power but I have to say
you also to someone who listens to everyone including the script girl the producer the stage hands you
know what do you think what do you think better what do you think and I'm standing there you go
what do you mean what do you think I'm the writer and that it was not what he did he didn't the writer
was just another person in the mix that's very hard for a writer but do you understand that
most writers are not around what I'm movie is made they are not allowed to be on the set because exactly
the reasons we're dealing with here they don't agree with the director and you can't out of
bored at however many tends to 20s to hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute you know to let the
writer go no it wouldn't be like they can't do that and I understand it I don't love it because it's
not the way it should be I you know I did a musical of ghost the only play I've ever done we did it you know
I loved it in Broadway and the writers right there you know the writers big part of what goes on and theater
Hollywood know you were the writer it is nobody in the end and I describe it as a total of
pull and you think you'd be the low man and I said no no you're not the low man on the total
pull you're the party stick on the ground you're the thing that holds the whole thing up but there's
no you're not part of it and so I went through that with Adrian and a big way I had been going through
the opposite of that with Jerry Zucker on Ghost who was when Biden me in who made me a partner in many
many ways that he didn't have to do and we had an extraordinary journey once the film was scripted finished
I mean Jerry actually changed the script so much at one point and I was gonna leave the film but then he
had the intelligence I guess to keep going and we wrote after we I was at 10 drafts where I was going to
quit at night graph 19 we were at found ourselves in the best possible version of Ghost and move it
that got made that was a extraordinary experience and then I was on the set with him literally every
day except when I would go see Adrian and Jacob's latter from the very beginning it was the
opposite it was it was struggle and difficulty but I bet tight it's better to struggle with other
I still make sure who knows what they're doing and who we can kind of trust in the end that's not
always the case but I really I really did a trusted Adrian and we went through a biblical struggle
of trying to find a common ground for the film and I think in the end we did but with me screaming
pitching all the way how close to Jacob's latter get to being made before Adrian stepped into the picture
not close at all a lot of directors said yes that they were interested big ones would they
Scott I mean they're a whole bunch of a bunch of guys but it didn't happen for one reason after another and
mostly studios didn't want to make Jacob's latter they didn't understand with it didn't understand why anybody
would want to see this kind of a movie paramil was gonna do it because they were doing Ghost and Lindsey
was there and then Dawn Steel was there and it was all kind of a go and then when the new president
came in and said no fighting in our place to do Jacob's latter was really hard just nobody nobody was
willing it seemed to step up until suddenly the small company but they were that small or Carol Go
came forward and and they said they would do it they were not totally easy about for this I mean
old Hollywood stories but after a lunch world they agreed I got home and got a note saying the
only go forward if you are willing to cut your salary I think your feet on this film by quite a bit
and I didn't know what to do it was my my movie it was in a contract I had already been granted this
I relied on it and I thought oh my god and I had to call everyone I knew my agents my lawyers you
everyone no one was available nobody and I had to make the decision by five or clock they said
so I ended up calling Adrian and said look I may cost us the movie but I'm not giving up my feet
and he said I'm right on board with you which was incredible and I called Carol Gole and the
agents and everybody and said that they said you're making the biggest mistake of your life but I got the money
and the movie weren't forward so it was just yeah but a horrible play I'm very highly very
Hollywood I gotta tell you I'm weird I don't want to do bad stories on Hollywood but there are
there are many to be told and Hollywood served me very well and I've been you know very
forward comfortable in my life but they don't treat people well in some people I think are really damaged
in that situation unlikely I'd be opposite I was confident yeah Carol Gole is an odd
place for it just because they were known really by that time as being action action action action
yeah then they were like what total recall a lot of the check-in-nourous films and things were
all coming out of current they were like I step up from globe asking out yes they were and not exceedingly
knowledgeable I think they saw this is just a horror film and they had Adrian who they wanted and I
think that's why they made the movie and then it was interesting again I had a very very
minister role there until Gole came out that summer and Jacob came out of October and Gole said
"become within weeks the biggest film of the year" you know and suddenly they were calling me
how should we market our film what should we do what is your answer what do you think and I said just
call it an art film don't make it a horror film make it an art film and they tried to do that it didn't
truly succeed because it's not an easy film to categorize but they did open it and it did have
you know it had a run I will tell you my very my first experience standing outside the theater
in Westwood and Los Angeles waiting for the audience to come out of an afternoon screening to wait to see
their faces and their eyes and what they thought you know and before the titles were over some guy runs
off of the theater and he's standing there under the marquee and he yells at top of his lungs
"if I ever meet the guy who wrote this movie I'll kill him" and I went "okay I just turned and
walked back to the parking lot and got my car in droplet" that was that but I you know I realized
I had touched up I touched the button little fuse or something and somebody probably more than one
and you know I just felt I did what I was told I was I'm not responsible for the reactions to my
films and and I found in my life very rarely did I get a lot of attention from people I mean
other than family or friends I never would meet people who saw my movies and I just just a rare
desire kind of thing it was all the universe was just trying to keep me away from whatever that was because
it didn't want to inflate me as doing the opposite so I really saw people who saw the films
that were on a rare occasion when I did it was it was pleasurable it was a good it was helpful for me
but it was it was in small dollops not big scoops you know of appreciation and I've lived with
that my whole life really I remain I think I'm a rather obscure character in the world of whatever all
this is not the Hollywood thing but I don't I don't crave it on any level at all I just never was a need
I'm just grateful so I'm not they made you know 10/11 of my movie he's earned a that's
so actually in Hollywood terms is not about God record after he has like a third of my
old my old LSD helped you know expand your world it made such a huge difference for you and there's
that versus the drug that is administered annoyingly to Jacob and his entire troop you know such
a different experience between the two drug experiences and just that what is definitely very bad
and the other one really helped you out yeah you know even in this interview there want to be
a spokesperson for LSD what happened to me was anomaly it was an overdose it was a lot of different things
I have friends who have not had good experiences on LSD others who have so a cyber and other drugs
have had kind of a weakening aspect for people there's tribal involvement from various places around the
world where whole groups come together for a common initiation into the larger picture but um I did
I did want to make a Jacob someone who had taken a drug that had a strange altering experience for people
but it was it is fictional I wondered I thought it was fictional but I were discovering of
courses that such things have been done in the military that producer of the film wanted to put
that as a title on the screen I believe it's there and I said no no no this film is not about that
really it's just um it's a story of a guy trying to understand how he how he died you know and what
happened to everybody and he was he was banned that it really by guys who went crazy but he asked
the drug was a background to that but he wasn't killed by the means necessarily I mean to the degree
that we ever know the truth of our own device you know you can still buy a I've been very lying
we were able to play the soldier I don't try to advocate at all for drugs and I tried if I do say anything
positive other than that I had a life changing experience it's set be cautious a lot of drugs are
a pure a lot of drugs come at you from the wrong way wrong setting when you take a drug is really
disastrous wrong people around you uh it's just not it's not a play toy at all it's a it's a
sacramental moment and if you do it sacramental you can understand that great but if not I I don't I'm
not sure I would put that in front of me or for anyone on the other hand there are a lot of little
tastes of it marijuana you know being you're kind of a little glimpse of the bigger picture and you know
other but the things that people do but in the end I want people to look at this journey of
their own life that they're in from some altered perspective so it's not just kind of head on blind you know
doing the thing that will keep you financially comfortable or you know or take care of you have
been a little bit of a kid around people around you I mean all that's fine but it's an existential journey
from nothing to nothing or for or to um that I have a good call on John in the end it's the absence of all
of all three its impermanence it does you can't live a permanent life in an impermanence state and
you cannot look to the level of impermanence around you as for the answers because they don't hold
water usually the most they can do is point you to this place inside where answers do arrive
and not only that movies arise of music Beethoven you know there's something is arising from that place
and now is listening to Beethoven's fifth year the day just kind of lying there and experiencing
or a moment what are you missed to be like to hear that music for the very first time as you're
putting it on to notes you know and feeling what that feels like to be the recipient of
that that that the the you know what what is that and it's like so beautiful it's so beautiful we're
getting that every day we are getting grace notes at least if not symphonies all the time and if people
can connect to the grace notes it feels like it's really really beautiful that mean beyond belief
and and the journey here starts to quietly make some kind of sense not necessarily intellectual
mind sense but a kind of annoying of this is really pretty special kind of magical I really like how the
movie wrong puts us a few times with the disappearance of the psychiatrist the explosion of the
car with brutal events and it just an Alexander like no nothing happened I got a phone call it's very
much conspiracy theory through so much of it and makes us think that we're in a conspiracy theory film
even though we're not look at life things we know to be true so may our true the world as we think it is
isn't and if it is it is for a minute then it's not so you know Jacob's latter kind of plays with
those insecurities of knowledge of certainty you know because if anything I don't I think certainty
is a real problem you know it's a religious problem it's a psychological problem everything is
liquid in a way it flows in different ways and holding on to one thing as it's altering underneath you
and beneath you and around you is kind of kind of a waste of time in a way it's kind of sad but it's
very common even experience and now we're living in a world of such unbelievable transformative
sort of change of ability and not knowing what's what up what's up what's down what's real what's
not real so Jacob's latter just kind of puts a light on that you know and that's and and I think touches truths
a little more perfectly than than those a lock you into the happily ever after you know which I think
is kind of very comforting to the psyche but what is ever after and even ever after has has an end and
even you know people like me get old and things fall apart and you don't you know why me but of course
what a stupid question you know you show me somebody who doesn't why me and you know I would like to find
that so that's the reason Jacob's latter has a lot of undercoming of beliefs and truth and
and repositioning of thought mine from oh this is what's happening oh he's married oh he has
told always got a lover oh he's he's just you know what what is real and that's a really good
question what is real why the post office is it the exchange of one uniform for another I don't know
I was told post office I mean literally just said put them in a post office and part of the world
you talked about that journey of ghost I am curious how that changed throughout it because it's so
unusual with you know Zucker's background is so much more comedy and you're coming to things from
yes you can do comedy obviously but it's not really like the the thing that you're known for what is
that mash up of the two personalities and that journey of the script well the smartest thing I did
was when I was told that Jerry Zucker wanted to do ghost I didn't have a good reaction to that I was told
I was asked by Lindsay are you sitting down and I said yeah she said we have a director who wants to
do ghost and I'm taking skillbergs course as you know the couple of bullets and then she said Jerry Zucker
and my inside collapsed in a way because I thought you know be the juice that just come out and I
just thought we're all returning this one into a comedy somehow I don't know how but I didn't know
what to say or do but we arranged to dinner Jerry and I and I set a ground rule which I think was really
smart and I would recommend to other people I said we can talk about everything and anything except
ghost and so we just sat down and talked for hours and we became friends and we're still friends
this day and that just started things on the right track then when we started dealing with the movie
of course I got crazy like Hollywood stories do but all I could do was think um you know I got a stick
this out I got a stick and I tried as best I could and then at the breaking point was the tenth
draft then I thought well I could just leave now but someone else is just gonna come in and turn it into
something else I might as well be the one who does it so I stayed in the end he and I just found our
weight to the same place and it was really beautiful and it was a better movie than I would have written
that's really a better movie than he would have written we just found our way to what it should be
it's great we was that starting place for you whatever the differences between what you originally
came up with and what we see today it's very close to the original except you wanted more comedy he helped
me really I think it helped me understand the uh order may woppy gold bro character although I really did
end up getting her voice right I think and enjoy it fully so uh he wanted like a scene in the bank which
I didn't have where she goes to help get the money out of the bank but you wanted to have some juice
some joy at funnyness and then I and I like to think I was a play that my mother had been in when she was
young she was an amateur actress and I had had helped her with the lines of a play and it was about a
family we had a party and someone arrived at the party who nobody none of the people throwing the
party could remember who it was and this person was so familiar with them and so the man sits on
with the piano to play something the husband and and he goes I don't know who they are they are
are they are you have any idea idea and the woman goes oh I don't know what I mean so they're seeing the song
with this guy standing there knowing he thinks it's a song and so that's where the idea of the bank
comes in where order may is there with Sam and Sam is knowing all these things about the banker
that can't be known and an order may has all these stories about oh how's your family how's
everybody and she's naming names doing all that stuff and so I wrote this scene and Roder over to Jerry's
house one night and sat down stairs with Janet his wife he went upstairs to read it and I'm
hearing roaring laughter just roaring laughter and then he walks downstairs it comes over gives me a
kiss on the head and says we got the feel of the film really came out of his pushing that kind of
experience and it worked it just worked and it was real is a joy I mean really I mean think about ghost
other than if tiny very very little problems was just joyous to this second to this very moment
I mean everything about it is like a gift the history channel does this thing about what's the
most of the court invent and occurred on this day in the past period of time so the day was
July 13th of the history and they said the most important thing that happened on July 13th was ghost opened
in 1990 and I called Lindsay Durand and I said do you believe this she said Maraths Ab died on
July 13th. I can happen ghost be the most important thing that happened on that day and then I agreed
in the end but you know they're talking about it 30 some years later and not a lot of movies
were that happening I've written rather movies where people are not talking about them to this day they're not on
anybody's list at all you win some you lose some and the journey is kind of kind of kind of remarkable
ghost ghost had an impact and in about three from months ago it was somebody set me a thing it was like
question on jeopardy you know and it said there's a movie by Bristol Ruben in which is the plot
famed from a scene hamlet which is true because I saw a got the idea of a ghost saying we'd bench my
depth and they said what is that movie and of course you know the answer was ghost and somebody rubbed me
and said you're a hero you're a hero you're you're you're I think you're on jeopardy and someone said to me
no you're just you're just an incidental thing you're not important it's it's not an important
thing at all it's just you just happen to fill time on jeopardy what are we who are we what is
a matter you know in the long run but but it was funny that these that these events should occur in that
in that way and that you look back over a life and you end up as a quote on jeopardy and there's a
history channel saying you were an important event nothing of it's true you know it's a funny
it's a funny life Hollywood that's all I can tell you and the ride has proven to be really
really interesting several times to our conversation even today you've said oh that'll take
up a whole story out of that that's a whole other thing are you writing these down are you doing the
memoir yeah I have just I thought finished the memoir but the editor just convinced it's finished
my son isn't convinced it's finished people last week of changing certain things so it's probably
going to have another draft pretty soon but it doesn't memorialize most of these stories and many many
others and it add up and it's a you know it's a very strange thing because you know at the end of
life and again LSD gave me a picture of that you kind of have to stand naked in front of the universe and
stand up for the totality and be available to the totality all the hidden stuff gets very exposed so I decided
I would write this book with everything exposed to which is a little bit tricky and scary but I figured
when it comes to be my time to go into the afterlife I'm going to take my memoir and go here and if all
is if all is well it's all there I don't have to repeat it I don't have to hide from it I don't have to do anything
done you know and then go from there but we'll see how that works out so I imagine that's keeping you busy
what else are you up to these days I'm very much getting old I'm up to getting old I love I moved three
times following my grandchildren reality being an upstate New York I was living in uh Seattle I lived
in upstate California I had a house all that time in Los Angeles but it's a long story how
I got here but I'm here because I love my grandchildren I'm not going to move again because I'm just
getting too old for it but being here with them is pure joy my kids being well is probably more
important to me than my being well at this point my wife being well she's really the hero of my
life and she she's made it all possible I mean again I would never have moved to Hollywood she
hadn't quit her job and sold the house so you know that's been a very lucky moment and it really is
unfolding but I will tell you that I'm the key thing is that aging experience is so difficult so
profoundly what everyone tells you not for sisys idea and it really is the ultimate test of your
whatever it may be your reality your devotion your spirituality your lack of spirituality losing your body
and all of its faculties and then watching the world strangely go into chaotic mode around you at the
same time so you can't quite distinguish whether it's you or it and all of what's going on right now
is unbelievably challenging the only thing I have going for me is an meditative practice that's
ingrained for 50 years you know I was sitting in a up for mall it just office and they dropped up
dropped some eyes and we're waiting for for the drops to purpature what they do and and they left
the office and left me in the lawn and I suddenly had a panic attack and I've never in my whole life
had a panic attack I didn't even know where panic attacks were I mean I I feel you know I
didn't realize them but the experience is beyond horror for a fine had I began to apologize instantly
for every human being who's ever had one and but I didn't know what to do and so I just went to the
very core of my sort of breathing meditative exercise which is going inward and I found so much
help and release and comfort in that space the whole panic attack just were good like that
at what wow wow I can do that I have found as I have aged that the body is not easy on us and it's
as it does that the one thing I have is I can go inside and be observed of it without being caught by it
and learning to be a observer rather than just lost in the experience is wonderful but but in the
world we live in unfortunately in the western world there is no practice of internalizing
things it just doesn't exist we are not very much we're kind of out there in the world we don't have
quiet time usually so what I've come to and this is an interesting thing because it's the teaching
of the Dalai Lama which is why I think I have probably been a student of the whole time I've come to
two simple facts one is I don't know anything at all I don't really know anything and two the
simplest thing I've come to which is the core of the Dalai Lama teaching and the Buddhist teaching
and Christ teaching is the kind a kind person be good that's 50 years of meditating writing movies
living this life and all it's come down to is something that people have talked about for thousands of
years and to me it's the ultimate truth that all you can do and it really is a practice because being
kind means not being reactive to every single thing that comes up in some nuclear reactive way
you know you need to just say no to that response do not go there choose to be good rather than bad or
fine rather than not kind and see where that goes and that's the right I think I've been on my whole
life I thought it had a lot more grandiosity that I had light and mental awakening and all that kind
of spiritual stuff which is real and a way is all fine but it's easier to be enlightened and awakened
if you don't have children and grandchildren and a house to support if you just live in a monastery
we just sit under a tree for years that makes it easier and it's easier when you're young when you're old
and the structure of your body mind is collapsing that's when the work comes in and I hope people
who are enlightened can use that enlightenment to pass through that path that doorway but I've learned
since that Buddha even it may have seen turn eight he's struggling with so many things I'm struggling
with like back problems and all these other things and you know he did set he would just go
sequiler he told other people to teach and he would just go sit and try to go inwardly and like that
panic attack that was the one thing that kind of worked and you have to work it when you got
old because you got nowhere else to go except these horrible or old drugs you know that that turned you
as my own doctors said into a zombie figuring it out and how is the time to do it and films like
ghost and Jacob's ladder and god knows where ever else their time travels wife maybe my life
even brainstorm they're all they're all they're to teach you their way that there's no ending here
the ending is not about the end of the physical world there is something beyond it that's even bigger
than this and you should kind of pair the way mr. Rubin thank you so much for your time this has been
so great talking like you like I'm happy to do it I've learned something great lesson which is
don't say no I had no idea what today would be but I feel you've been so open and so
receptive and so wonderful and so available and so thank you for that and I'm glad I got to put this
out there and I hope you could watch it have some car go interesting response
you were an accountant before you became a commercial director and how did you make that transition?
yeah I was an article club coming love and love for believe I mean I knew love's absolutely
developed and got a clue where I was doing and my only interested in those days was playing a
trumpet I played the trumpet jazz beat for about 10 years and so some semi-pro than I would
play to a three times a week or whatever and I met somebody at the account and said
I obviously wasn't the other being an accountant he said I was a member he said if you don't know
what you should go out of advertising because they can also stop you can wire you can
I'm really a gear and I'm pretty sure they went into the old whatever you need to try so I went into
the mailing one of the javals Thompson and thought of wandered around it was like a
raba one down old hotel in the trip to men's actually I love being there and so I would therefore
the six months and I walked people like to look at John's slaving or working doing commercial
scene of success to grow that and I worked on a documentary and I graduated from that
sort of then I went on the production side which was the last one the latest idea of what I was
doing producing commercials and then ultimately I got a shot at directing I mean you do a third
the lady called Jenny Armstrong started a production company up to misciplied doing commercials
we did nothing for 18 months and we all sat around the king of jadda that each other in one room
and then eventually Adam Parker found in us left an advertising agency called CDP and he came and
made the company work this company called Jenny and girl because he was getting said work from CDP
and he immediately started working so I'm watching jallously while I try and I'm trying to learn to
type, understand carefully what she came working this way he worked him in week they commercial so you know
eventually I hadn't got the slightest idea what I was doing again no during one night somebody gave me
a test commercial on before a deodorant I remember that was sort of an interesting idea it was
like it was as I say for a deodorant and it was a couple making love but just on that hands you sort of
indicating what they were doing just by their hands and it was sort of fun and people liked it so I
gradually got this in pieces to do but it was a trial by fire you know I'm not a sitting
peers in the book because my shot they're still working in the laminate for you know so it was
a fairly agonizing until I did a couple of things that worked well I didn't a job still imagine
it was quite good calls called the table that people liked to these all shot in extreme clothes up
on the breakfast table and it was about a couple who were breaking up and sort of about geolity
and stuff and how their hands were flecked in their guilt or lapels it's quite interesting
you might be happy to know that they actually showed that and one of my phone classes one
I was in college. It's getting really yeah because they were talking about that kind of movement of
commercial directors from England coming over yourself, Alan Parker, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott
and just showing us it was the importance of close ups and they showed us the table.
Oh I'm glad you didn't want to help you like it it's not like that and all that interesting I think
what was because you know the visual was extended you know a lot of it was so emotional and
repeated the sound was quite interesting because it was also repeated you know the sentence was
sort of jumbled up in order to the visual. You saw them saying it was unrepeted and stuff and so
the time I think it was quite good I'd call you into the actual sound point if you were as well
on clarity like it. How did you make their transition from shorts and commercials to feature films
so? Well I was in in Los Angeles doing a commercial for revive that thing and I met David Hartman
who was working there at a company called Caster Blanker I think you know I'm many of
his objects and he's frung literally slung and he scripted me and said something was to think of
this he said he won't do it he said look it's for an American director but I read it and I
would say it was foxes it was a little of the story about kids growing up and you know the
delinquid kids growing up and the body shamp from that valley in or down to this so he somehow got
them to let me do it and that actually I remember there was one meeting where he started squeeney
and it didn't make a word of sense for you to say but people could see his passion to make
that thing and I guess they thought well in a fiddle goes wrong if his fault I did it and I did a
lot of research and I went into the into the valley and so the difference from between
Mr. Thos and the kid to the kids lived in the valley the exact answer says all or had long genes
and they travel on the end they were always too long and they always had tones in their back pocket
things like I sort of did a lot of research and they truly fast at the back of classes watching
these guys in school and yeah well Jody was I was quite focused so I started to show the
foster cried in a movie and and through such a professional she told I would worry about that she's
done he was illiterating or whatever and I really wanted her to put cry for real and and I got
a two on after a couple of hours so that's how he started there was the first one that Rukhu
won together and I found an Indian flash down so I was going to turn down a couple of times which
was difficult to do because I wasn't doing any else you know I'd trying to get things awesome and
unsuccessfully and then I realized that they actually were going to make it so I did it thinking
that maybe I could only the dance if you look good you know because that's what it was just
sort of a little bit of a theory and I wanted to fairy tale of the way fairy story and me one wanted
to do a wet dance you know where the water slide or through the ground I knew the lift
or the you know the potential for comedy because the water would drench the audience and also I knew
that the girl would look good because the water on skin or was obscured but I had not the lightest
idea how I was going to do it and I remember the deck test from the studio were all sitting on
breaches rather and I was at the box and with this poor girl he's dancer and I was winding a
hose around to sort of indicate some sort of idea of what this wet dance was going to look like and
that that figure had gone like it's good but I sort of knew that I didn't know that it would be different
know if as I said it it's like you get the water flying around and obviously you know she
look good with the soap on a skin and set you but right to the last markings really I mean you
don't you know like like there's so much water we were all wide which was going to break a nank of something
you know we're going to pull all of that water on that I remember taking forever to backlight me
the water I was just doing everything wrong I was trying to do it again to white bread background
which is absurd because the obviously the um obviously the water wouldn't show up against the white
background so eventually I turned it around and I did it with a follows spot you know that the
comedian you stepped in in the movie and in more but you know in that club and I still to still
rely clean from many from a Bob Fossi young and he was very sweet Bob Fossi put some he came up to me
he sort of stopped me out and said I really like to movie which is applied to you know you know
I'm a little too easy I mean all that jazz was so marvelous marvelous really he's delighted I said
I said I still do lighting but he took from linear I did the follow spot you know that made her
her head you know be hair on the water jump out and he said I know and then I meant two
producers of the chorus line and they want to me to do that and I was sort of anxious not to get
pigeoned hold it do you use a cool you know which is put me to feel it actually and they were to
these two old guys are a marvellous and one of them said you said you've got an abundance right
kid I was like you got an abundance right and I didn't know what you meant but what he meant
was the button at the end of the scene you got to go out you know with a water you know I know
you got to go out with some sort of kick to get you into the next scene and so that was nice
but I was getting it up I was fascinated the movie like god and now and then I got to have decent
one but I'd never been the critic sir darling for two weeks before the movie came out they thought
it was going to be a disaster paramount I couldn't get held of anybody anybody I mean couldn't get
anybody on the firm uh as curious that you know they thought and they filled out a front of their
interest in the movie just before the movie came out but to their little man after that yeah I guess
I had net points and nobody ever get anything but no and because nobody wanted any points and
it's looked sweet um I knew I did okay so with scenes like the foot sexy and in flash dance we've
got all of them and I have weeks so many good scenes of fiddle traction you're kind of getting a
reputation at that point of being like an erotic director almost and then Jacob's lighter it feels like
a total left turn and so curious how you came to that project. What a wood sort of is a beat and
a bit going in the way is that you know with a movie like um fader traction you know which would
sort of let's really really I get I guess it's not good I mean unless it's tiny for the
affection is that everybody remembers you know that when they have sex a little you know that sink you know
that in the kitchen or whatever but people were memories even though it's only two minutes out of
a two hour movie that's it's curious that's what they remember so it's not like it was a massive
of officer really wasn't but that's as I say as seems to be what they remember the audience with us.
I was curious about the path of that film to the screen as far as an uptime outfraid of the traction
I see remember there was something about the ending was changed the house soon before it was released
was that changed quite a while I was six months before or something but we're all due
with about changing it in a because we like the idea of using a sort of even the man and butterfly
sort of imagery in which he kills a girl because Michael Douglas's think of prints around the knife
that he puts down on the ledge before he leaves you know after that fight you know she tries to kill
him but because the fingerprints are on the knife he gets the blame for her telling herself
she kills herself death ala mother and butterfly and so she incriminates him essentially and he goes
he is arrested and then asks your finds a tape where she tells she's going to kill herself
which sort of will actually morph but it felt you know it felt like the movie was working until
the last ten minutes and then it just felt a bit flat so in the end I'm you know people would
think oh they're trying to just weed all the more money out of it or whatever but it really wasn't
my kind of just a question of trying to get something that would better dramatically work better in terms of
off of keeping their attention really because it was just me and Stanley and on fairy land senior
we were just you know just they knew each other when it went to terms just go with acting just saying
to pity because it really played well up to the last ten minutes twenty minutes so maybe it was a
better ending that what we found of him sure the was in the end I think it was the best way to go
then was the last coal gas she didn't want to do it at all I'm issues it rage that the idea of changing
the ending and she was concerned about being a sort of one-note villainous if you like you know
somebody coming in a wielding a nice and threatening Michael you know and she thought as a sort of
cliche but what got me excited was the idea which I'd used in the Louvre the idea of of cut coming in
and said that coming in the wielding this this dagger over a head or whatever but coming in and it's just
sort of it hanging down her side I want a lot I want I liked was the idea that she was sort of
picking at her dressing down as like that dancing and it was going through the material and but because she was
in another world she didn't notice that she literally was was hurting a death of making herself
bleed so I thought what was really exciting about that was was the jeopardy of it the idea that this woman
was so creative that she didn't feel that this knife was coming into her and so I'd
imagine it's starting because it's the way of doing it in a non-create way I am so curious though how
Jacob's latter came to you well I spent a Tracy Jacobs through a lady through a journey
of the triage and I tell him getting such awful stuff reading awful awful scripts and I say what
have we read over the last 10 years that is special and hasn't been made and she said this what and I
read it and the story reminded me of that Ambro Ambro's beer short story incident at our
quick I mean it was just a stunning little little film I know of the whole thing happened in the
head while he was dropping you know while he was dropping for while he was being hanged and so I
love that premise you know but obviously this was much more complex and I think it's the movie that
you probably have to steep twice to sort of fully understand you know you're dealing with a
man who is remembering his marriage while he's dying in Vietnam and imagining a life
with Jesse after the war so that's a lot we know remember you know when the movie came out a lot of
critics were saying it was global to and I mean literally so you know it's something that others
I think it sort of grown as the year but the year really are the movie and I literally talked to
to Bruce about it for four years and we lived for the days I didn't imagine doing that now
I mean we didn't really talk about it about the planets talked about the story for a year just talked
and talked and talked and we disagreed really over some fundamental see what he saw it in sort of
jeep the funny expression I don't like it much it would be Judeo Christian terms you know he saw
hell and heaven in a traditional sense equally angels and demons and I would very anxious not to do
movie where but put it was familiar because the imagery was familiar they would act in fear or
manage if you knew the imagery if you'd seen the imagery before if you knew the devil was a guy with a sort of
a tail and a cleft who's and you know that the traditional idea of the devil equally if heaven is
an ice to just with Bruce I'm talking about the the liberal archie version of heaven clouds and
pillows and this may you know and she's of Jacob rather being a lad of the girls on forever no I'm
with marvelous tactics um so I wanted to root it well you know when we dealt with the you know
with the demons etc I wanted it to be flesh based I wanted you never to get a clear look at it
because when you see it with clarity there's no mystery and there's no no fear but when you can't
quite grab it you know I'm saying like I love the imagery of a frots it's bacon painting
does because there was fear and and blood and you thought of in unimaginable stuff going under going
on undemise those bloods that your imagination is filling in like if you could if you could see it all
then there's so out with the basics here it always no mystery there's no danger but it has to be
something that's fleeting and so that's where what I did I and that image that blood sort of
in the trees that I did with by turning over the camera for frames that's all frames and
getting the act of stimoo around so it's just a way around and then we started watching it but I
think it worked well because it was because it wasn't did you to done afterwards where you really
all with all with knowledge know that it's that it has been done later that it's an optical it's an
effect and I think when it's not it's not so much more powerful we didn't do it literally we did
know optical sex at all but what was almost funny was that when you had a demon or somebody
and it was blood you know shaking or whatever it would look ludicrous at a second and silly at
two-thirds of that but that part of the second it worked and you couldn't get a you still know I'm saying
you couldn't get a fixed on it you saw what what the fuck was that and I mean it's it you know
also of the record with it I mean I have you seen no what I thought the nerve was you know I saw
it was terribly good for about an hour but when you saw that cabbage thing when it's clear
then somebody didn't work then order of a something and he'll you look you're looking at a cabbage you're
looking at a I don't want to you know I thought it's just you know you're me so I had you know I
hope I mean for particular something we'd had at a party a thing that had a stunt stunt van with
with like like words sort of I was called it for that solid a mind you know because it's
I'm that awful things that happen to them you know when they are willing to take him to the
other my during the sort in the fifth is that I think got six this early six this lady when they were
women who were pregnant took to a pit and terrible deformities and so I thought that was a more
interesting way to go then who are on the spot you know what we'd see before you know I use
imagery from the Joel Peter Wittkin you know one particular one was very startering and they
were a man without an in legs and a mask on over his head but what was so interesting was it was
a still picture mama's because the head was in was in a blur it was like it was in
in movement and it's in torment if you like I used that image and had had the head move
so it was as I say it was really trying to try never to think things totally but rather to have your
imagination fill them a bit of it because that's the best the imagination is always better than
anything that I could do yeah and I like the way they year introduce things was just the
homeless guy on the train with the tail that you can just barely get a glimpse of when it was
interesting because they brought to penis really and we started off what you saw in the movie
was it reversed it sort of called up the penis if you like now the way it was for real it was
who I don't know it worked but it something mechanical you know but it sort of shot out like an
erection and it was kind of funny to certain thing and but when we did it in reverse when we
shot it reversed it worked because it was first it you know it looked like this thing was
trying to hide away even though it looked like a penis in the end it was sort of veiny and but again you
couldn't quite get a handle on it it's fascinating with I mean I would block the else I had a
alim Marshall with the terrific producer because when things didn't work out would work out for me to
be able to you know I have a like I don't know a third of a day or something to watch out and do it again
you know like guys who are hanging out of the car you know nearly ran him down and that
kind of alley where he owned the bridge early on you know that and again that only works and very
very quickly you know if you were allowed time to take it in didn't work you always had to
fill the end with your imagination part of it. We're going to actually shoot the film. We shot it
not we shot it and we're just kind of thinking in Williamsburg we took an interior from
from Williamsburg which was just too small to shoot him and we had a two feet every way
making two feet wider and longer whatever and but he but it was exactly the stuff which I mean
in fact I think we took the props from the from the apartment it was just perfect you know that
and so he literally didn't stop from it but it was just in fact it was just too small to shoot him on the
on the occasion so we did it we did that and then the studio which I don't know I never liked shooting
the studio but we did that. I was just watching the movie funny enough when you ran out
I remember when he did that so the hospital and the guy ran and said they want to go home and he said
he knew our homes and he says he was dead and he said he said he didn't come out alive. The way he said
it was just heartbreaking and I remember sort of crying watching him doing you looking out and
seeing the operator was crying as well and I remember walking across the parking lot afterwards
with him and saying it's a team now you were really good and it was a long being you said
I know it's a fabulous feeling it we know when they and I was still there but they didn't have
a child themselves literally a chip toff of the better of them but they'll never have back you got it
you've got it in your movie and they'll never get it back and that's a marvelous feeling I think
there's another moment this while when he's lying in the bar after they pulled all of the
eyes saw over him and his eyes were blunt John and I didn't show and red and stuff and he really did
I mean look I did today everything out of it and it looked like it was in the out of body experience
of something he's extraordinary when he did with it really at the end of the movie there was way more
stuff but you know we tested it and the people were catatonic you know they were because
it offered him didn't understand it anyway a good the first time you see something like that you know
I think I see would be you know tucked one stem with what there was a whole sort of transformation
sequence one or two sequence this one was a sequence when he takes a kind of LSD and
and then if the monster comes through the through the feeling and it's quite good I know we've had
with an eye we used the eye this eye in giant and I think it worked quite well but we didn't know
what and leave only with all of it and then there's another one or there's another thing which
is interesting when the translation of Jesse you know when she really becomes essentially a demon
when she realized he realized that she's the devil if you like and there's a moment I remember
I used a belly dancer in a black velvet bag right on an obsidian old black so I showed it you know
for the longest time it was a dancer in a bag but there was about 20 frames I would say I remember
looking at and thinking what the fuck is that it became something else and I used that it
in it was in Marvers but again it's a matter of how long you use these things you know see you
the OSC just too little never too much talked about the conversations that you have with
Bruce Ruben I mentioned those got pretty intense after a while and he's a very spiritual man and
I'm not really I mean he's been you know he spent a lot of time in India I mean he was a
good partner when he was a dual real in self he's definitely lived with one or under one you know here
in some sort of a commune in I think in India and not particularly in I'm a nostalgic I guess you
know I didn't think of something else I think they're really so boring if it all stopped with a
kind of a full stop when we's perfect you know especially at my age now and so the more more of a
wife of it I know was then I did think the something I think a much too boring through it for us to be
nothing the world of somebody if that down with a sense of humor and said I'll make a two-cone
or make a giraffe or I'm they or I make a I'll make a seed horse be quite absurd to think that there
isn't some being that is creating the fee horse with a sense of humor you know I mean I mean with
wit I mean I don't believe that's just an accident so yeah you know we talk forever as I said
I didn't know when to say this with it but I'm imagining on the floor one end of a quite a big
world and he was the other end we were just sitting on the floor as well they need to get
the warm-eyed words as well yeah and you know I just talking and talking and then I saw stuff going around
if head and then how to describe like I suppose you'd say energy like sort of
curly lines or something you was something that was absolutely unexplatable and that's going to
make me sound instantly like a crackpot some of you for you but I don't know I'm a very pragmatic guy
and I told him and he said that a lot of stuff going on over you as well it was just sort of an energy
I mean it was but I remember being sort of fairly blown away by it he was particularly annoyed
about about the ending of an if going up instead I just might be idea that that heaven that's you
like is your home I just lump that as an idea you know that you want what's it going to some
of that thing you're sort of liberal artsy version of going up into the clouds or whatever I like it being
you know I like the fact that kid took him up must ask because the kid had done it before could
have been there before and sort of the kid took over I like that that he was rooted that it wasn't
you know something sort of mythical and then the plight of the whole movie really and it's been you
know interesting because I remember during the age for us it I remember people a couple of times
people contacting me and saying that they did movie had helped them with their partner with
died or whatever I guess that might be hard speech that Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel
may have made when he says that the you know the devil's it's feel that except them the devil's become
angels rather you know if you're resisting it them the devil's demons that was an interesting
street ducking I think he he was very important I think Daniel Daniel now I could take it what was
the actual shoot bike I remember it was in winter I think most of it now I remember in a walk
from on the windows freezing up creating sort of like that I said call something stuck in no man's land
where it was strange really but because having decided not to do any effects afterwards you know not to
add to anything you see I used that effect that that blurred effect before an assault film so I
taught him knew that that what to do with that although I hadn't used it quite the same way you know
that thing of getting the act of move around and sway around and then shoot while you're shooting
the forefrancing so it's essentially blurring and it looks really pretty obviously I mean you know
liking it's so important like like at that party you know I mean literally they were you know
they were birds were on a screen that somebody was waving around with a on a stick you know
on a thing I'm literally that they were real they were just paper birds on a on the stick because it was
the delighting was intimate to mitten you know that what's wrong with spoken like again you couldn't
feel clearly and say you've got away with it you know now you've got away with that tail thing
between which was which was literally I would say hilarious when we're doing it and you know I mean
the home thing and our mouth you know in the last bit obviously is that you know it was like a mask
of her you know it was a model of and then you just ran the thing up through it out of a mouth but
again it's so quick that you don't take it's not her and she wants to go well we cast kept forever
we saw her early on and saw she was really good and then we went and the stream was always all
everybody over and then we kept on going back to her she died and said she died very young and why I've
got more I was proud of the Vietnam footage I think not what brought a well you shut that down in
Puerto Rico is that right everybody who's being deployed or lived in Puerto Rico knows that
this book but because the sound of three folds I guess you don't get in the Vietnam when Jacob's
letter comes out how is it received with parliament a lot of people said it was published was golde
cube and they were in rage by the ending annoyed by the ending similar I mean I mean I mean I'm
sort of that draining a bit I mean it was all vast but I do think it's a movie that you need to be twice
honestly you know because this three time sequences I guess this is very or more you know what
it would would be the deaths and the dying and Vietnam and the imagined life would get the afterwards
and the remember life of him and and Gaben his it's why I also wonder what I should have left
all of the translation stuff and at the end but that thought it was quite I thought the shooting
of it was quite interesting the whole you know when he has the B LSD or whatever that it was
you know when he's with the that the farms they said I think that's the good good sequence you know when
the stuff comes through there the sequence run out but I said you know because of the trouble
with understanding of picture I think maybe maybe it was good to have left it out on and
because they the origin audiences would come down Catholic or other than nonstand remember my
co-star who is this sweet and sweet man he would produce that and we were going on how I mean
and how I mean about and how I'm about how I'm trying to know of Jesse which I liked
you know before he goes up there's with with with Gabe I remember him saying I'll just leave
him and he said he can back down on to down there anyway and I think I probably should have done
you know if I get the word for the graph of the hell doing it if come by the with a child like
he's lying with a child on on a bed you know I forgot famous famous picture and I remember
the copy exactly we'd drum his wife you know in the sort of flashback sequence we were lucky to have
a broken as name home alone kid McCoy Colkan we won a lot to me he's just me we did it
for and without a banana that the father was very used not an easy man to deal with how did they even
train him market a film like this what he marked it as a horror movie which is probably a
mistake mind you I don't quite know how they would would marked it you know you know I think
they may be they should gone a little more delicate they got so it's good to get to a three
click like it I don't know what I think it's the same thing I was thinking but to get some little
champion if he'd need to get that so it was a group with a move like that I think that's a group
so I thought I saw a horror hospital thing worked well we we as I think the real hospital
in stacking island I think you did most of it then you probably did it all there and those
civil guys you know that all those things on the it was the nights working you'd been good
different things but he's well to be at it and the guy you know the guy who was on the
civil the bad guy was only the bad guy who didn't have any practice it was beautiful kid again
he was just thrilled to be in the movie and I said nice to be there but just people talk a lot about
the wheels sticking on the journey you know put that out of barrels we made it so really they wasn't
hitting the ground properly so that sort of gave the gun a personality a made it a bit crazed
suddenly I mean I love layers like that you know when you add something that's also surprising
on strange makes a scene more interesting I had I had an old guy with a little dressed in wags
but I was who was done playing with a flesh his huge fish but we're sort of leaping around
on the floor I was thinking I shouldn't put that in and a martial was a marvelous producer that said
but because it already was instilling with the movie being called that you know when when he had
when the demons say I'm the car looks stupid and then he would work out how I could do it again
just to you know half a day or something I'm curious about the de-pointer how that came to be I just
rewatch out when as well well that's you know he's a pyramo the I mean because it was it was
Patricia Hindness and the the plot of deep water her deep water was was a man who was disenchanted with
his wife could through his fucking around and to refuge in his with his daughter we're dored but there was
no real sexual involvement at all between them so in the in the end her story was about somebody
getting more and more pissed off for their wife because getting embarrassed my her and then he bounced
her off at the end he killed her and I thought and he's got a rough and built off with the police
and I thought it was more interesting or more interesting but what I wanted to do was to get us
fans that there was a kind of complizically between the two a weird and and so that's what I tried
to do that and get a sense that she was half doing it for his benefit and that Janice jealousy was its
fighting to him but obviously disruptures in the end and and and and it is but I've always been
you know I've done a lot of the words of jealousy I think sister noob shit so then you know that's
what I tried to do I mean I don't want to get I mean flat darlin on the sister major I mean I mean
it wasn't the best experience in my life I'll go say not to the understatement on the year but what I
didn't want to what he would guess for to do and maybe it didn't want to do it I didn't want to have
a reason why the this relationship was as it was they wanted to see where it was playing that said
okay you can you can have your lovers you could do what fucking one but in the end you're going
to come back to me and and and I'm waking so essentially he was letting her do it now I don't
think of the drama and then and I I'm thought it was more interesting and I don't know say I
know what I don't know but I thought it was more interesting to just throw the audience into the middle
and and say get on with that and understand this is strange relationship but it was a choice
you know I got it now but now you know there's also things seen through I took out
think maybe I should have left in and then the audience wrote the prog Darple saw
of on a critics mostly thought the snail's in sort of sexual terms they thought it was
you know these briny things of she men that you know I'm saying that with that sort of take on it
and it was a lot of that in the book anyway and I had a scene in where the kids you know he left
to hold one of these little one you know and again I mean people want to me to take the snail
out might I thought that they were interesting just because it's strange and why shouldn't he be
fascinated by snail I think they're not but what do you recommend these days? Well I said this
a thought I'd do like called one neck which is about a serial killer coming to a path in the Hamilton's
and it's quite good it should be on the news if I do it right the audience should be watching it
in a state of complete hysteria sort of like uncut gems you know which is one of my favorite
you have twenty years that feeling of very funny movie but equally you're you're nothing
over your children the whole time to him you know that we're faster than skin you know there's a lot of
tension in it and I like that you know I like the tension in that in reservoir doves you know when
the guy's dancing around you know he's gonna lock that man's ear off and the off feeling is
hysterical sign for one but it's also gas-free as well so I've got to see that somehow that's
the mixed deal of the say hall that and the humor I've talked to do really let he did it beautifully
selling the animals down the well it's voicing the yon that to some very clever going back to
reading interviews with you from nineties and earlier and later I remember back in
at a guest of a star log in nineteen ninety when they were interviewing you about jica platter you said
oh I want to do milita and then there was a serial color movie is this the same serial color movie?
well it probably is yeah it goes back a long way I'm also the movie co-founder of so I mean
desperate to do and I may have made out today it's welcome moon and nothing that's just sort of
a interracial though I'm not story would over the race march as a background in the winter
she means she can't go it's it's very strong but I don't know I need it's not to be
out of the fake clothes to drink with the niana or see well mr. wine I can't thank you enough for
the time that we spent together really appreciate this if you need stop just ring me out I'm
going to do it I'm going to give that issue to you brother I am first no relationship please complicated
it was all my fault
this is brother I've explained it for over a year but I'm never saw his body now I have a situation
I know it sounds crazy he's at my house right now with Sam I just can't believe you here
we thought you were dead yeah why you were we got the perfect life you're down to be
as as I keep bleeding I got it I'm brother's not in a good way I don't know what he got
himself mixed up it
okay there's a different
I think something for how I look as I know are you certain it's him
take off I'm hearing things I'm seeing things faces
what are you doing demons they are coming after me because of us
Jake what is going on do you think I'm making this up you only think the birds and how they're all
in on it it was the part of yourself the prefuses to let go you will see that will stay
in your life alright we are back and we're talking about Jacob's ladder and
let me say this first this is like I was saying earlier one of many I don't know that I'm dead
type movies but this is also like this weird moment of time when
spiritualism was back at the movies like in 1989 you had always this year you had
mentioned ghost but you also had Joel Schumerke's flatliners in 1990 as well so it was like a
a really big time for the afterlife in american movies which was kind of an odd thing
and we just we go through those phases and everything and I don't know what what it was in the air in
1990 where it was like okay now we're going to talk about the afterlife and what can happen because
I think Jacob's ladder 1990 would be a really good double feature with flatliners because it has that
same nightmareish quality to it wow I totally forgot that he not the same year yeah and we both also have
like bad recent remakes oh yeah you're right I forgot about the remake of flatliners too I didn't
watch that one I didn't even know that there was a remake of Jacob's ladder until I started to do the
research and I was just like oh no this just has to be called Jacob's ladder because there's been a few
movies that are called Jacob's ladder that aren't you know this story but no 2019 there was a remake that
came out that apparently it premiered on dish network so it didn't get a theatrical release as far
as I know and nor should it I wanted to cut this movie some slack I wanted to like it but it felt like
they just kept making bad decisions and just like giving Jacob a brother and it had while Samantha and then
Annie who also plays an angel so Annie angel but it was tough man I think Steven you said that you
watch in like 15 minute increments just because it was so hard to get through yeah I had to watch it
15 minute tell like again I want to be negative towards movies because they're very difficult to make it but
it's like again like Mike was saying it's like they're just these movies sometimes I get
you made you're just like I get while you'll remake some movies I totally get it and like you know for
instance when I heard the remake an evil dead like how you gonna do that and then I saw a Q&A with the
director afterwards he was like yo Sam Raymy gave up because Sam Raymy was at his height he gave them
all this time to make the movie and gave them extra time to make the effects work and then when you watch the
movie you're like wow this is a good I think it's a great remake because Sam Raymy put care into
remaking that movie and gave them everything you know and it worked but when I see like for instance
martyrs remake was on my 2B and I decided to watch like 20 minutes of it to remake because I was curious
and again like within 20 minutes they started explaining things and in my mind I'm like
who is this movie made for is it like for some 16-year-old girl or one or 16-year-old kid to like
stumble across for awesome be like wow this is great but I know in the remake because like I don't get
why certain movies get re- like a movie like this get remade and I looked it up and it got announced in
2013 I had no idea this this really because coming out yeah and yeah so 2013 this was announced and
yeah and yeah when I watched it I could only handle it a little at a time and I think it was from that
opening sequence immediately knew I was like oh no feel bad because I like the lead actor he was in
this movie I saw in HBO where he goes to Vegas and she's on his girlfriend with Illarie Swank and then
she ends up being a cop that fucks with his life and he was awesome in that movie I forgot what
it was called but I like I enjoyed it it was like a nice yeah it was pretty cool he's a cool actor
I like him and I was just I just felt bad for him because this movie has no sadness fear that's the
problem it just doesn't that's no at when you're making a remake of movie that's such you know it was
so visceral you know you could smell the movie you know you feel kind of grimy at times watching that
Jacob's ladder but this one just it couldn't it didn't capture that and I had more of a David Lynch
lost highway, Mohon Drive, type twist versus Jacob's ladder twist the bat hub scene it's not even
Jacob going the bat hub it was like inputting his brother in the bat hub and I was like well that's
the thing is that so sorry first of it was Afghanistan it wasn't Iraq so my bat on that another
Middle Eastern country that the US has no right to be in anyway they split Jacob basically into two
characters they split him into Jacob and Isaac and so it's him and his brother and yeah his brother comes
in and you're just like oh no his brother supposed to be dead and so it's like all right this is brother
dead oh no maybe Jacob's dead and maybe because I want to say that at one point you find out that Isaac has
Mary Jacob's girlfriend maybe they would never wear Mary maybe Jacob never got in the picture and
all maybe he was just jealous of his brother they all were thought I'm now trying to overthink it to make it
make sense yeah we too because I wanted to like it also and I don't like yeah because we don't know what
happened behind the scenes we don't know what you know at least they were trying to do something different and I
kind of the guy they hired for the brother you know I can give him some props to and his performance
because he was unsettling but it just overall it just was just for me it didn't it didn't work
especially the ending and there I don't know I feel bad you know because I want to be bad on
somebody was a roevis can be bad it's part of life yeah you're right I just tiptoe around it
put the food around the fact that movies can be can be terrible yeah like I put it up with the
martyrs remake in a way of just being like what you know like who is this aimed for is it just
using the name to make money from it because you know I don't know it was it was it was tough
you made make a few extra shackles for all it I'm sure he must have well there's that that yeah did you
sit through it in one screening I mean one sit through Mike I watched the first maybe half hour of it
and then I turned it off and then I ended up going back and I kind of was watching it at work so not
giving my full brain power to it and just like kind of having it out of the corner my eye and just going
wait what are they doing out here and yeah it was I mean they were occasionally they were little things
or I was like oh well that was a little nice nod to the original but it was like do you want to be
the original do you want to be a brand new thing and they really couldn't decide whether they wanted to
stick with the original script if they just wanted to move past it and do something completely different
and I think you would have been better off to do something completely different in fact I think
even if they just didn't call this Jacob's latter it might have been something better for them because it's
so not related to the Tim Robbins movie Jerry's step letter I absolutely agree if it was called
something different because it was because they did the train scene like later in the movie but instead
of a tale the guy had messed up feet his feet were weird like he had swords in the bottom of his feet
and they didn't do the dance it was like wow they didn't do the classic dancing with the devil scene
but what what they did was it had Jake having sex with the devil that I think because yeah because
in which was weird towards the ending I guess that was their interpretation of it but
well if Jesse is the devil then he had said Tim Robbins had sex with her too but that's up to
interpretation yeah yeah you get those neat moments like when you see Jesse with the old black
icon tag type of thing going on or she's like whoa go on and really just again just like for
quick second you see the flash out it's like okay we don't need to linger on this kind of stuff
Jacob's latter too is just like what you said earlier we had this 1980s war boom and you know
platoon you know I think when platoon came out it kind of for me being a kid back then and made like
my dad watched all these war movies I didn't care about it when platoon came out it kind of made
war movies mainstream I felt like I wanted to watch it because Charlie sheen and it had these
cool people in it and then and then you know yet good morning Vietnam and four-middle jacket and
hamburger hill all coming out in 1987 and then Michael Dugacov platoon leader in 88 casualties of war
and then it's interesting is that casualties of war in 89 what does this war doing to people
and then you have Jacob's latter that caps this whole Vietnam boom where it just gets even more into it
it's interesting how we start from platoon and it kind of ends with Jacob's latter I don't know
so like when it came out it kind of because we were so had all these Vietnam movies it was like also this
nice I don't know it's just like you kind of watch this genre you know kind of morph and then
end with Jacob's latter what genre is Jacob's latter I guess ultimately you call it a horror film but
there's political thriller there's you know some eroticism going on there's you know spiritualism
there's just so many different aspects to this and then the question was two back in 1990 how the
hell are they going to market this thing are they going to market it as a street horror film where
people that are expecting like a you know Friday the 13th Jason Freddy type of thing come in here and
they're just like well this isn't more you know like what is your brand of horror this to me is much
more of that horror of like you know your repulsion or something where it's just like okay
what you're seeing isn't real and now you have to figure out what really is going on absolutely and I am
obsessed with box office so I was kind of curious how it opened and it actually opened that number one
when it first came out it made seven million second place was civil rivally civiling rivalry with
that actress has just passed away from cheers I forgot sorry I'm um spacing on a name if you're
so old christie yes and then third place was ghost which already made 180 million at that point
right palace was number four and marked for death was number five so it was number one when it came out
and then you talking about horror next week child's play two bumped it out of first place so I guess
people wanted more lighthearted horror film that'd be stabby fab yeah more focus this is like you know
like I said I think I feel like this is a I mean I think this feels like a 70s movie that we got like 10
years later so I don't think the new audience being trained with nice 80s movies wasn't you know like this was
uh this was a you know it's was pretty you know 70s audiences were used to such hardcore endings and stuff
like this I don't think maybe the audience in 1990 wasn't expecting this I have a really great story
that I was just telling my I found on the other day that I'm about to do a podcast about Jacob's ladder
and he's like I'm reading it he's like yeah that was Robin Lave was a licking on all of the
things and something else so he was thinking about Jacob the liar you know there's a movie Jacob the
liar so similar title but then he started thinking a name he went back but he said it was like
wait but isn't it a movie with something spiritual in it but something about the Holocaust so he
started going back and he realized that like 20 years ago he was working at a video store in Jerusalem
and people like teachers used to comment and like rent a movie to show on like Holocaust
members day and apparently he just realized that 20 years ago he tried to recommend Jacob the liar
to someone but he didn't Jacob the ladder instead oh god so it's how fucking many years ago some
poor classroom full of kids who were sitting down to watch Holocaust movie at five minutes into it it was
a kid was a full metal jacket meets meets David Private Ryan meets the Thekla Jace on Africa shit
oh my god imagine so that's my friend who's on that's his story I'm glad that you guys
brought up a current South Creek bridge as well apparently both Bruce Joel Ruben and Adrian Lyme were
familiar with that and they both kind of like met on even ground when it came to that particular movie or
that particular story but I didn't realize that it had been it was done by
one to say there was a movie version of it in like 1919 or something it was like really super early
and then there was oh sorry it was it was King Vittor and it was 1929 so not 1919 10 years after that
and then it would be done again as a short in 62 and that's the version I'm very familiar with they
actually showed speaking of showing things in class they actually showed us a current South Creek bridge
in high school I guess because we're studying American literature and we're talking about
Ambrose Bears and so this is like one of Bears's most famous stories it was a French film but no dialogue
so it's so an ended up picking it up and they kind of put wrappers with Rod Sirling at the beginning
and then they turned into Twilight Zone episode and so I think that so many people are familiar with
this particular story via that Twilight Zone episode. I had no idea about this at all it wasn't
until I started looking into it and for this episode where I kept seeing that pop up and then I
watched the short I found it online and it was yeah yeah I knew the ending unfortunately but
totally does feel like something they'd show to a class in the 80s pull out the projector string
the film because I watched some weird shorts too and class I wish I remembered when it was really
couple of them were pretty disturbing you know and I was like kind of shocked by them
like I remember one I watched where does this guy hanging out with his dying soldier for like
10 minutes of the short and then at the ending he finally kills the guy and then right when he stands
up there is two soldiers coming up to ridge with something to carry him away. They showed some and I
had one substitute teacher literally like if he had us for a week he just thrown a movie like one time
he threw a apocalypse now on and and Roman Planckis make bath which kind of blew my mind and
there is seen it before and go at it. They used to show the wave in schools but they stopped
do you know about the wave? No what is I said? No they'll buy it?
That Peter weir movie? No it's a movie. That's the last story.
That's the story. Sorry. It's a but it's a famous real-life thing that was made
into a movie later let me see who directed it and Alexander grabs off. I don't know
Bruce Davis I'm a bit about this charismatic teacher who it really happened in real life.
I don't know if I should spoil the ending for you now because the whole point of the
there has a see the ending of the spell. He starts sort of a cult following with his students. He
tells them about this great new wave that's going to come and you know and he gives them rags and
they all get super excited and this all really happened and then at the end like after months of
this he wits them up into this whole fascist group and he shows he's going to kind of show the picture
about a new leader who's going to lead us to this great new world and it's then he shows him a picture
battle of Hitler and they're rated the top made for TV movie that's super effective and everything and
they used to show it to kids and Israel I know they used to show it a lot of people got their minds
blown by this movie and sadly they stopped showing it maybe if they kept on showing it
wouldn't be where we are today literally being turned into a fascist country as we speak if you
knew the covered it for you but Israel is right now the courts are going to be abolished and good not
a ball away but yeah yeah there's a very nice little fascist who happening right now a judicial
cute cool yeah well anyway fun times yes I had heard of it but I didn't pay attention my I'm
doing a documentary about movie novelizations and the director posted on our novelization feed every
day is a new novelization he posted that they did a novelization for the way I just knew by just
wow yeah I had no idea about that movie what it was about but I just know that the novelization is
written by Todd Strasser who wrote Ferris Bieler's Day off novelization and like and Bill and Ted
which I read Bill and Ted's book is journey oh you did read that yes yeah that's that's why I know that
little old lady who's driving there at the end with the beehive that she was earlier in the film
at the bank when Ferris was trying to like what was a break his trust or something to take out all the
money to pay for the big day off oh really I didn't read a novelization do you know the
novelization explains that they had like yeah two brothers I mean had a brother and sister I would
cut out the movie because when Janie's walking around the house escaping this ceremony there's children's
drawings over the fridge you know like who does those and it's just the two kids that were kind of
the movie I had no idea about the old lady oh look at that I should check you out
still remember I'm back in like eighty nine when I read it or something yes that's that's that's
the beauty of them that's so cool anyway there's a wave novelization I didn't realize
I should have paid more attention to that book when I was posting it that's so cool I know that was
it now I got to watch this grass off version so I'm excited cool to question mark excited too I mean
it sounds great but it also sounds horrific an ABC prime time drama or he's he there's also
she want a lighter lighter thing there's a doll about the so about the real event you know the podcast
the doll up no no only those years listen the podcasts the doll up is great I can't recommend
about a highly enough so funny what sounds very much like the Stanford prison experiment where it's
like we're gonna put half the guys as prisoners after guys as you know in uniform and then we'll just
see how breaks down yeah a little bit accepted I mean yeah it was completely insane but it's
if you listen to the whole story the teacher like he tried it a little bit and was he like made it
up as he went to law he didn't necessarily have this endgame to begin with is there anything else we
want to talk about Jacob Slatter is what tiny detail that I noticed in the deleted scene with a ceiling
demon and everything it cuts to some flies trapped in cobwebs and right away after that Tim Robbins
goes help me so I don't know if that's a coincidence but it's a bleaker fly reference I didn't
just that's interesting the cobwebs because the cobwebs is the is the thing that we noticed before he
goes in the shower after he goes in the shower and it cuts back to him in the home and the rain's falling
on him he's staring up at a spider web in that scene and that's a beautiful shot the way that they
rack focused to it oh yeah the other thing is I don't know it's pretty random but just recently
it's like a very flattering comparison to Jacob Slatter movie I just watched recently was the new
shammal and movie and not get the cabin you guys see if he's heard about it just seen it heard about it
and I know it's already available on the man after just like a couple weeks it's not I don't recommend it
it is very well directed I mean you gotta give him props that just in terms of putting a movie together
he's super talented but it's basically a movie that is very religious at its core because it's just
presented with characters with a basically do you want to save your family or save all of mankind and
like okay so it's kind of premise that only a religious person could possibly relate to because it's
this mungo jambut I think but I like how Jacob Slatter deals with also to religious themes but it doesn't
does it in such a way that there's something in it for everybody yeah I mean as an atheist I'm just like
I'm fascinated by this stuff and I wasn't like oh yeah Christian mungo jambo clap clap kind of
stuff which you know I see so often or it's just like okay whatever but this one yeah I didn't feel
offended or on the outside looking in kind of thing it's not hitting you over the head like a Christian
movie would though those are a lot of fun I'm so curious to see the new left behind movie just because
those things are just such garbage in there's so, so funny well thank you so much guys for stopping by
so you need even Steven Steven what's the latest with you I'm finishing just finishing right now as we
talk documentary called shark's pletatian hopefully out this summer about the history of sharks in
cinema and we are gonna be starting our podcast again Josh Miller the co-writer of sonic the
hedgehog movies and violent night him and I do a podcast called best movies never made you can find us on twitter
at never made film yeah we do a podcast about movies that were never made and we're gonna be returning
soon we were just on a little hiatus because he had some script deadlines and I had to finish this movie but
yeah those are our my two things and also making documentary on novelizations as I mentioned earlier
Jim Coons is directing please follow us on Titan film on twitter and you need how about you well as always
on doing subtitles for your favorite neighborhood streaming giant into Hebrew so if you're watching me
Hebrew enjoy and raising my daughter in protesting against the fascist takeover that's how I spend my
uh free time very noble cause I really appreciate that well thank you so much guys for being
out of the show thanks everybody for listening if you want to hear more me shooting off my mouth
check out some of the other shows I work on they are all available at weedingwaymedia.com thanks especially
to our patreon community if you want to join the community visit patreon.com/projectionbooth
every donation we get helps the projection booth take over the world
I can make a my mind which one you are I'd like to wake up in my life
never in town there with every you are I'm answering I miss you I miss you never
I'm answering you never I'm answering you never I'm answering you never I'm answering you
you love like an angel your smile is the vibe what you keep me guessing
will you ever be mine double or in the please say you will be mine love me or leave me
I believe all of my mind never all in town there with every you are I love you I love you I love you
I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you
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