Total Recall

The year is 1990. Now this is the plan. Get your ass to Mars. Then go to the Hilton and flash that Brutepe guy at the desk. It's all there's to it. I'm counting on you, buddy. Don't let me down. The film, Total Recall. Hello everyone and welcome to Unspooled. Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We have checked off the AFI Top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. The Letterbox Top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDB Top 250, and the New York Times 1000 essential films. And you know what? We also will be chasing our own curiosity as well. We've gotten into this wormhole of is this life that we're living real? We talked about the Truman Show and that led us into a conversation about this Paul Verhoeven classic. So that's what brings us here today. I am Paul Scheer. I am an actor, writer, and director. And I have such a clear memory, Amy, of reading the Total Recall novelization, which I thought was the actual text that Total Recall was based on when I was home with Chickenpox. And what's so funny is it is based on a book, but I read the novelization of the movie, not the actual book. Well, only one of them has a lady with three breasts. Although Philip K. Dick did have women who just instead of wearing shirts painted their breasts and changed them different colors from orange to blue. So at least there was that. You literary child. Hi, I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times. And you know, I think I would take that cruise to Saturn that they keep pitching in here. That honestly sounds gorgeous. I don't see the point of wanting to go to Mars. I'm going to go to Saturn, show me some rings, take me on a chill-ass cruise. Sharon Stone can hang. I'm down. By the way, did you see that the crew of the Artemis were quoting Project Hail Mary? No, really? Yep. They said, amaze, amaze, amaze, the way that Rocky did when they were in that section of the film. They made time to go to the movies before they went into space? They were sent a private copy of it to watch with their family. The entire crew was able to watch it because they were training to go in space. That is the cutest thing on the planet. I'm really glad he didn't say one of them just ripped open their shirt and had fake breasts. Three free breasts. Or four, as was the original design. That's when they get a little further in the mission. That's when they definitely go a little too far. Or not far enough. Look, Amy. Hello. Yeah, let's jump into it. So you can stop covering up and start showing up with confidence. Let me tell you, Neutrophile now offers hair growth supplements tailored to men at every age. Because here's the thing, the root causes of hair thinning change over time. And your routine should too. 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I'm excited that you chose this film because I haven't thought about this film in such a long time like I told you I this is a big movie for me as a teen, a young teen, because it was crazy was a hard R, but it also was accessible. I looked on Letterbox and I saw that many people had that same kind of connection to this film as a movie that was very much a part of their childhood. Yeah, I mean, I never thought I remember the commercials because the commercials were very showy and we will get into how Arnold Schwarzenegger took a hand in shaping what they looked like. I didn't see these until I was in my 20s. We were having a weird Co-Wiz Lumber Party at my friend's parents house and really what I was focused on was the look of the movie. And also that my friend's mother was a spatula collector and she had like 30 different types of spatulas, spatulas for every holiday shaped like bats and pumpkins. That's a separate thing, but it connects in my head to Total Recall. I love that. More like a UHF thing because they had a whole spatula city. Oh, I love UHF. Oh, me too. A classic one. I do find it interesting that Total Recall has this like long tail, right? We're still talking about it. And this is a movie that almost didn't happen. They were trying to make Total Recall since 1974 and it took until 1990 to actually make it a reality. Yeah, 1974. That is the year that a guy named Ronald Jusett spends a thousand bucks buying the rights to this Philip K. Dick story. We can remember it for you wholesale. It's a short story. It's about an earth guy named Quaid. He's got this boring office job, a pretty cold wife. He decides to treat himself to a little memory implantation as a treat. There's a company called Recall. They will brainwash him into thinking that once upon a time in the past, he took a super awesome trip to Mars. But when the guy goes under, it turns out he actually has been to Mars. He wiped that from his memory. His boring life is the fake memory, which, you know, cool story, bro, or kind of part of a cool story. Because in Philip K. Dick's version, the guy stays on earth. He's like, oh my God. And he just asks if he can get his memory wiped again. Oh, that's really dark. Well, Ronald and the screenwriter, Dan O'Brien, are like, well, let's add to it and let's make him go to Mars, too. And with all the special effects, that version starts to get very expensive and they can't get the movie made. So what do they do? They write 1979's Alien instead. And that becomes, of course, a monster hit, a cultural phenomenon, and fully launches the career of Ridley Scott, who then goes on to make his Philip K. Dick movie, which is 1982's Blade Runner, which we also did here on the show. Just to put that in perspective, in 1982, the name Philip K. Dick really didn't mean much in Hollywood. No one had ever turned any of his stories into films. But with the success of Blade Runner, now he becomes this hot commodity. But unfortunately, also in 1982, Philip K. Dick dies, broke, and really with no idea that he'll ever be one of the biggest influences in science fiction, in film and literature. Yeah, in fact, we should get to mentioning that Philip K. Dick even inspired last week's movie, Truman Show, in part. But for now, back to Total Recall. This script, still kicking around, Dino De Laurentiis, he's the producer of Conan the Barbarian. He owns the rights, his Conan star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is very desperate to play the lead. For years, you're absolutely right. I mean, for years it has been on my mind. I've read the script the first time in 1984. I could not put the script down. I read it again a second time, and I felt that when I read it the second time, it was even better than the first time. And I just say to myself that I got to get this movie made. And Dino De Laurentiis says, absolutely not. This is a story about a normal guy who thinks he's normal, who thinks he's boring. Super average. That is not you. You are not a normal dude. But what if we put him in a plaid shirt, Amy? No one thought about that. No one thought about the plaid shirt. So as they move off Schwarzenegger, David Cronenberg gets attached. Now he wants William Hurt to star. Cronenberg writes a dozen drafts, the first scripts he actually ever wrote on a computer. And he adds all these mutants to it. I mean, it's Cronenberg. He got to add some mutants. But the producers are like, this is way too dark. This is way too Philip K. Dick, whoever that guy is. We do not want to do something like Blade Runner. That was actually a flop. We want to do Raiders of the Lost Ark go to Mars. So also, you're going to do this with Richard Dreyfus. What? And also, you should know, don't be too arse about this. David Lynch's Dune, that just came out. That was a huge flop. I don't even think we should waste the money going to Mars. Cronenberg quits. The project falls apart. D. Laurentiis tries to make it again with Patrick Swayze. By the way, not mad at that. They even start building the sets. And then that company goes bankrupt. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is stoked. And as he wrote in his autobiography, he was pissed off that Dino D. Laurentiis told him no. And now it's the late 80s and Arnold is a bigger star. Not Terminator too huge, but close. And within a day, Arnold convinces the company, Caracow, to buy the rights. He takes control of all the major pieces, picking a director. He goes with Robocops Paul Verhoeven. And finally, 16 years later, Total Recall is getting made with Arnold playing Quail. Yes, his name originally was Quail. It turns into Quaid, but it tells the story of a man who doesn't know that he's been to Mars. Sharon Stone is his wife. Rachel Tickenton is the rebellious Mars girl of his dreams, literally. Michael Ironside plays the muscle, the heavy and the great Ronnie Cox as co-hagan, the corporate boss man of Mars, who wants to suppress the rebellion and control the fresh air supply. And yes, it is very expensive. They shoot Total Recall in Mexico to save some money, but thanks in part to its groundbreaking visual effects. And also the deal that Arnold made in his contract melody has control. It is possibly the second most expensive movie ever made at the time. Some people say first, some people say second. Nobody can even agree on what it costs. The numbers range from 50 million to 80 million. But no matter, Total Recall was the biggest hit of Arnold's career to date. It earned approximately $261 million worldwide. It became the fifth highest grossing film of the year. And actually, you know that memoir that I mentioned that he was like pissed off at Dela Rentison. He used the word pissed off. You know what he called it? What? Total Recall. Nailed it. Nailed it. Nailed it. Total Recall also earns two Academy Award nominations, best sound and best sound effects editing. It loses those. It does get a special achievement Oscar for visual effects. Weird story about that. Visual effects is usually a normal Oscar category with five nominations, one person wins. But that year, no other special effects heavy movie, but Total Recall got the minimum support needed from that branch of the Academy for a nomination in the first place. Which is kind of weird because it was up against Back to the Future 3, Dick Tracy, Ghost. None of them qualified. So they're like, the best one is Total Recall. We'll just give it the award. Wow. Now, the most interesting thing is we did chase our own curiosity to find Total Recall. But it is also on the New York Times 1000 essential film list. So Amy, our curiosity paid off this week. We got a double click here because we were able to do something for the show and something for us. Yeah. Thank you, New York Times. I was going to bet $5,000. It wasn't in there and it was. All right. Here's the thing. I just want to address this before we get into any of the actual movie. It looks cheap as hell. When you tell me this is one of the most expensive films made at the time, I was watching the final battle sequence like where they're just in a room with pillars and going like, oh, I love how cheap and down and dirty this movie looks like. They must have just shot this for a song. Thank you. I feel the same way. I feel the same way. I'm like, wait, you're telling me that you built over 35 sets in a whole labyrinth that big that you could drive cars from one part of Mars to another part of Mars. But when I watched this movie, I just see you going from one piece, one set to another set. Oh, no, we got in the car again and whoops, we wound up in the exact same area of just like Venusville prostitute central. Like what? I mean, I think they're going for some sort of banality of the future, which I respect intellectually, but the banality of the future here with like the jack in the boxes and the Pepsi ads, it just kind of looks to me cluttered. Yeah. You know, I agree. And when you say the banality, I'm very curious because this is a movie that also just maxed out production resources. They apparently used every available light source in Mexico City and nearby areas to be able to properly like this film. And this is a movie that is mostly indoors and it has very much like a fluorescent lighting tone to it. I mean, not in the Martian City, but everything kind of leading up to it is very kind of bland. Yeah. This, if it's doing a Philip K. Dickie and thing, it's not following the Bladerner model of having like interesting clothing, kind of angles, dark, weird, stormy future. And granted, they went through a lot of ideas of how the future could even look. It's they're setting this in, I think roughly like the 2080s. So about a hundred years ahead of time. Yeah. First, I thought that they would even make this a version of Los Angeles on Earth, which is of course where the film starts. That looked kind of dreamlike and perfect. It was calm. They used solar energy. There were gardens everywhere. People was bike. People were biking. It would kind of be the, I would say like the Truman Show version of, hey, why don't you just live here and forget that you ever were a cool guy on Mars. But then they tried like a weird version of LA that was going to be LA after an earthquake where all the buildings were tight giant skyscrapers, but they hung upside down on shock absorbers. So like no matter what happened to rattle the earth, it would sway, but they wouldn't fall. That would be amazing. Cannot imagine how expensive this is. This is just like a kind of bland apartment on top of a subway, which in a way feels sort of realistic. I mean, yeah, they're always inside except for when he's like working his construction gig, which was an office job. But he's like, I got to show my guns. I mean, by the way, it makes more sense when you put him in the appropriate job. We don't ask that many questions. You know, I mean, I think it helps like when he's a sheriff in a small town is like, I've been here my whole life. No, you haven't know that to be true. So this movie does work on that one level. I do want to call out though that where the movie does take some artistic turns. And this is Verhoeven and this is just simply visually is that Martian red look. That was something that they really like manipulated very precisely because they wanted Mars to look very different. But they also had to make sure that it wouldn't mess with skin tones. So that red that's coming in is really done by an amazing DP and gaffers creating this look that allowed them not to have to fix every face in post. Yeah, I feel like in this little window from 90 to 92, we're almost trying to get to absolute zero. So the point when Hollywood changed from practical effects to digital effects, right, we're just here like, aren't he's going to go from this determinator to and then we're like over the line. You're right. This is expensive because it is so practical based. And you're seeing these interesting moments that kind of connect the two. Obviously, there are great puppets in this the the way that, you know, waddo pops out of the stomach the way that the mantis cab driver appears. I love all that. But then you get to see this other stuff that kind of feels in between really, right? Like when Arnold takes the elevator up to, you know, put his hand in the Velociraptor imprint. And that moment they they really like linger on this shot where you can tell it's like a cut out on a matte painting of an elevator raising. It's like, oh, right. That's that's this moment where we didn't quite figure out how everything fully worked together because it really does stick out even worse than a film like Star Wars. You can see it's a matte painting. God, it reminded me of that story I told you about how the one time I was in Kazakhstan, they have that gigantic building that's just it looks like a golf tee, but it's spiky. If you go all the way up to the top of the elevator, really the only thing there is a pedestal with the handprint that was the former president slash dictator adjacent of Kazakhstan. You know, the guy just won all the elections with 90% of the vote. Sure. And it's just his handprint up there. And I was like, uh-huh. Yeah. Everybody thinks that things that are actually symbols of strange futures are cool. Let's just adopt it. Why not? Now we've talked about Verhoeven on this show twice before on Starship Troopers and Robocop. Oh, they're talking stuff for Get Biss Against State. Oh my gosh, you're right. So we've really we've gone deep in Verhoeven and I love this film because it's a popcorn film 100%. I think you could put this with Commando or anything else that Schwarzenegger has done up until this point and it will pay off what those fans want. But where I think this movie is incredibly subversive is with the messaging of what this movie is talking about. But more importantly, that this movie can be viewed in two different ways. We could view this as this is the trip that Quaid took that he paid for at the beginning of the film or this is real. And that was delivered. Or you could view as two other layers on top of that because my favorite review of Total Recall came from Michael Wilmington who's at the LA Times. He said of Total Recall, view it as an Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It's a step forward. His best vehicle since the Terminator viewed as a Verhoeven movie. It's a step back from Robocop. Oh, that's interesting. I understand that on some level because I do think this movie is. It's not wearing a message on its sleeve, right? But I think it is at its core. Talking about a more interesting issue than I think most people are catching on to, which is like what we talked about last week in the Truman Show. This idea of, you know, this anxiety of am I making the right choices? Am I in this world the right way? Or am I a pawn? Right? Yeah. Or what do I do with the fact that I feel like I wake up every day, my partner doesn't get me? Is my boring life mine? Am I important? Am I a good person? I mean, that's really, I think, also here at Total Recall. He wants to believe he is a good person, even though like, no, you used to be a bad guy. He's like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Which is a holdover from the original story. Maybe in a way what we can say about Verhoeven is this is his transition to hiding the medicine better. So much so that when we get to Starship Troopers, people don't even realize that there's medicine there and they start to attack it because they don't get it. Yeah. One of my friends actually, we were getting martinis the other day and he was like, man, when I was listening to your episode, on Team America, I want you to say basically they did with actual puppets what Verhoeven did with human puppets and Starship Troopers. Just say that out right. And I was like, oh, you are completely correct. Can I just say that every now and then you get a product that is advertising on your show that you connect to so deeply. And this is one of those products. I am thrilled to tell you about the world's number one expanding Garden Hose and their brand new product. I am talking about the Pocket Hose Ballistic. Okay. Look, I bought hoses. They are hard to manage and it makes no sense that hard rubber it makes it kinks, tangles. I'm like unwrapping Christmas lights just to get a little water out. 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I do think that the reason why this movie has staying power and same reason why the Truman show has staying power or you know, even shows like severance capture our imaginations is because there's an element that we all share of What if I broke out of my reality like we put ourselves in our own cages and I don't think that that means that we're unhappy, but we follow the rules of society and these movies say, but what if you break them? Like is that good for you because we're told no, no, don't break the rules. Don't break the rules. And I think that this is a fantasy on so many levels. You don't have to be a hero on Mars, but are we putting ourselves in our own like prison? Well, yeah, I think it's asking, are you living a full life, which I think is just a fundamental question that we all think about, you know, there's a conversation early on in this movie between him and his wife. Sharon Stone, where she's trying to empathize with him and trying also to keep his life small. Laurie, don't you understand? I feel like I was meant for something more than this. I want to do something with my life. I want to be somebody. You are somebody. A man I love. And then as you're hearing, it gets into that question of every time we say to ourselves, wait, should I be doing something more with our life? There is discouragement around us, even loving discouragement. I mean, it was this wife character that made me want to do total recall after Truman jokes. I was just thinking, oh man, these blondes, these manipulative blondes, like keeping lives tidy. But then I actually, you know, I had known that part of like the very basic maybe sort of inspiration of Truman show a little bit, maybe in the back of the head, was that Philip K. Dick had written this novel in 1959 called Time Out of Joint. And the story in that is it's a character kind of like the Bad Schwartz nigger here, you know, the bad, bad one, the one who was like, I am manipulating this to serve the state where he was doing bad things for the government. He realized that the colonists, that the underdogs, the rebels were the heroes and he was the bad guy. He couldn't handle the guilt of it. So in this Philip K. Dick version from 1959, he decided to mentally regress to childhood innocence and the government to keep him working for them built this entire town that looked like the 1950s and hired all of these people to play along in costume to keep this guy pretending that he's an innocent kid, just sort of living his life doing these occasional thing like lottery kind of games. And it made him think that he was still helping the government. Isn't this also at the premise of the John Travolta film, The Experts? I've never seen that. Is it? Oh, The Experts is one of my favorite. Like, I don't know if it ever came out in the theater, but it came out in 1989. And I believe it is like Ari Gross, Kelly Preston and John Travolta. And the idea is like, like the KGB takes like two New Yorkers to to like Russia to put them in this like town to like help Russians be better at acting like Americans. And you have to rewatch it. But it but what you just described is it kind of moved to like a 1950s town and then bring like rock and roll there. And then they, you know, they bring down Russia. I think they bring down Russia. But Phillip K. Dick is like, what if you don't bring down anything because you actually decided that you like keeping your brain simple? Because that's what's happening here. Like this whole idea, the fundamental premise of Total Recall is that Earth people want to take vacations but also don't want to take vacations because they have been convinced that going on. Vacation is a hassle. You have to deal with taxi cab drivers, which at first you're like, really do you taxi cab drivers? But like that's a big problem. Apparently it actually really is from what we've seen this movie. But like, what if you just don't bother doing anything and you just pretend that you went on vacation, you buy these packages at Total Recall, you could stay at home but still tell yourself that you did a ventures things with your life. Talk to you a little more because it's a deeper implant. What's in the two week package? Well, first of all, Doug, let me tell you, when you go Recall, you get nothing but first class memories. Private cabin on the shuttle, the Lux suite at the Hilton plus all the major sites, Mount Pyramid, the Grand Canals, and of course, Venusville. But how real does it seem? As real as any memory in your head. Come on, don't bullshit me. No, I'm telling you, Doug, your brain will not know the difference and that's guaranteed or your money back. What about the guy you lobotomized? Did he get the refund? And I think this is to me the very interesting part of this film. I could go off for a long time and I think you would join me in deconstructing the film, The Drama, with Robert Pattinson and Zendaya. But I do think that there is something interesting here, which is that kind of got me about that movie that's also here, which is who are we? Because if Hauser's memories are overwritten with Quaid and then Quaid chooses to sigh with the rebels, then is Quaid just good then? Right? I mean, this idea that your identity is really in current action. And you know, it's like you can change. The smart rebel, yeah, the smart rebel even has a whole line about that right here. What do you want, Mr. Quaid? The same as you, to remember. But why? To be myself again. You are what you do. A man is defined by his action, not his memory. And I love that you're bringing that up because this is a place that's saying don't take any action. Just come here and pretend you took action. Come here and pretend you went somewhere. And I love the way that Philip K. Deck even writes about this in the original story, like the language of it is great. Like the salesman is like, so you want to have gone to Mars. Right. And I love the passive of that. And it finds out in the book that it costs just as much as going, but that they say fake going is better than real going because real memories fade and fake ones live forever. And I guess the question is, as you recall a memory, do you alter the past? And I think that that's probably more for, well, I guess it's in the book, the idea that like, well, now you are who they say you are. When you go on this recall trip, right? Because they're not fully uploading you. You're telling them, oh, I like this type of vacation. I like this type of woman. Like you are creating this thing. So in his world. Or you could upload you, but they're like, why bother? Why would you want to leave and take yourself with you? Well, I guess the question is in the version that we see in this movie, you know, Schwarzenegger picks a woman that he wants to be with. Now he is married. So in his memory, he'll be having an affair on his trip to Mars. So is he a cheater? Right. Exactly. And then this is why I'm keeping drama over here because I cannot go down that wormhole. But but that is something really interesting. Like, but is it? Is he a cheater because he cheated in his dream? Is he a cheater because he did this thing that's not real? Like, who is he? Is he a cheater because his memory is like it's a very thorny idea and and you know, Is he a cheater in his heart? Wasn't there a famous line about that? Was that like Princess Diana or something? I believe didn't I thought I was going to say I thought Bill Clinton had something about that. Oh, maybe it was Bill Clinton. Somebody was like, I have not done anything, but perhaps I have strayed in my heart. Now that is a good Schwarzenegger. No, but no, but there is something about that, like our memories recreate the past. And we've talked about this a lot. Yeah, I mean, I was not if my boyfriend wanted to go on a fake vacation with you instead of me, like, let me go on your fake vacation. Of course, you know, I would love it. But you know, I get that you'd be angry about it. But I think we also are putting on the side that one of the core things about human beings is the ability to dream to visualize. And whether that's positive or negative, it doesn't. If we're not acting on it, I think it's OK to have any sort of fantasy, right? Because we are finding this connection to something. It's it's the way I keep on going back to this and I've mentioned it a million times in the show and I'm going to mention it again. But Roger Ebert calling films empathy machines like movies are a chance for us to experience something that we probably wouldn't experience in our life, whether it's being chased by a bad guy with a gun, you know, having an affair with this person that you meet on a train, whatever it is, like you you are living vicariously through characters. Yeah, they're waking dreams in a way. Yeah, I will live this life of being Arnold Schwarzenegger. I will live these ridiculous endless shootouts of this movie. So essentially, the reality that we construct for ourselves based in the way that we interpret our past or facts really is true. It's I think not to pull it all the way to this point, but I think it's a natural progression to say. Alternative facts, right? That idea of, oh, well, I saw it this way. And for me, that's true. And where everybody had such an issue with that and still do is, well, that's not what really happened. But this movie is saying, well, whatever reality you create is true to you. And I think where we get a lot of pushback on alternative facts is then it's a person telling you that their reality is true for you, where everybody is like, no, no, my reality is true for myself. And that's the that's the part that you can't quite wrestle with because we're having two people just argue with what is real, but you only would know what's real by being in their brain. Right, right, right. Or even has Truman says at the end of it, you are never inside my head. Which I think is really like a fundamental concern of Philip K. Dick. I mean, this is a guy who did struggle with episodes. He had a lot of hallucinations. He imagined at some point that he was, I believe, like a very early Christian, living in the first century AD, like a person who was being persecuted. And so he had kind of imaginations of carrying another life with him, a second consciousness. And I think that that weighed really heavy on him and he expressed it in all of these different forms. I mean, you even see in something like like Blade Runner, you know, the fundamental question of that movie is if you are a replicant, but you feel you are alive, if you feel real to yourself in the form that you know, then yeah, you are justified in saying, do not erase me, even when the world wants to. And in Blade Runner, I feel like part of the flaw of that movie is, you know, Rachel, the main replicant is just so robotic and stiff that I don't care if she's human or not. And I find it insane that everybody doubts that she's like, she could be a replicant in the first place, like obviously she's so stiff. And I think I wrestle a little bit with that problem here because I think there's so many interesting ideas in Total Recall. And yet Arnold is unable to act any of the layers of them. I mean, really. Right. I think he's walking through them. Right. It's like walking through a museum that has a lot of great exhibitions and you have to kind of cull some of them down. Yeah, because when you have a scene that's like Kuwait, who thinks he's good, talking to a video screen of a past recorded evil version of himself, you want to see some sort of layers there, some sort of difference, maybe, maybe, but instead you're just kind of like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I think. Kuwait, if you're listening to this, that means that Kwado is dead and you have led us to him. I knew you wouldn't let me down. Sorry for that. Should have put you through. But hey, what are friends for? I would like to wish you happiness and long life old buddy, but unfortunately this is not going to happen. You see, it's my body of God there. And I want it back. Sorry to be an Indian giver, but I was here first. And on that level, I'm like, yeah, Patrick Swayze. I want to see Patrick Swayze. I do, but I also think that there's something about like his bluntness, kind of like, it's interesting because he's not doing that much differently between the two. I don't know if you watched the Colin Farrell version of this. Totally call. I did and I really just blacked it out because every time Colin Farrell does something that doesn't play to his strengths, I get upset. I know. But to a certain degree, you could argue that Colin Farrell doing this part would be similar to Patrick Swayze, right? Having the acting chops to kind of get both sides of it. Yeah, I can't remember if he even does that though, because I feel like when, I don't know if this is true, but I have this impression of Colin Farrell that when he's mad that he's in a movie that is beneath him, he just kind of glowers. I don't know if that's fair, but I don't think he's as good in that, Philip K. Dick, as he is in like Minority Report, which also, you know, weird tie of these two things together. Minority Report, in a way, was kind of positioned as a sequel to Total Recall, because you can see like the through line of like, here we have these mutant pre-cogs, they can see the future, they're all over Total Recall, and they kind of spill into the idea of like, we've rebooted, and now here are some of these people, they've tried to, it's so confusing what they try to do with like the quail character, quail, quade, whatever you want to call him. But yeah, like that was the kind of groove out of their attempts to try to make a failed Total Recall too. Well, I think also we can look at Memento as a good guiding post for somebody wrestling with who they are based on their memories, right? And how they're lying to themselves. Another movie that we did an episode on just a little while ago. And I think in that film, Guy Pearce is amazing, like he's playing all these different layers, but there's something about Schwarzenegger, and I think the way that I'm viewing it in this conversation is, oh, Schwarzenegger is Michael Ironside, he is the brute, he is the dumb guy, he's not co-hagan, he just came up with an interesting idea on how to bring it down, right? And in that way, it's way more interesting to me to see a brute, it's planned, actually gets subverted by his own ability to care, right? He's an asshole. He is like, let's, like, let's smoke a cigar, we did it, we tricked you. Like, I like that version of it, because I think when we see him in his plaid shirt, he is like, oh, I'm just a guy, I'm just a guy. But I think there's not much there, right? He's not a guy who's wrestling with this kind of inner turmoil when he is who he originally is. Yeah, he's not a guy who's questioning what he's doing at all. Exactly. But he is a guy who just suspects that everybody deep down wants to imagine that they're good. Like, it's horrifying, I would think, to be able to face the fact that you are a bad person and were as recently as six weeks ago. Right, but are, are the way that we are exposed to the world makes us who we are? And some people work really hard to change who they've become, some people work really hard to forget that they ever were a thing. And I think that we can see that like shedding of a past. So, in so many ways, and kind of even glorifying of a past doesn't exist. I mean, I'm thinking about, what was that author that Oprah put up who wrote the story about being in like a rehab clinic? Oh, was that James Frey? Right, like, you know, he, he told this story like it was a heightened version of his story, right, which is completely false, but also at the same time. You know, I don't know, I, I, you know, I'm not defending it, but I just feel like, oh, yeah, it may not check out. It may. I just got a crazy idea. Yeah. Okay. I'm so sorry, but, but on your thought that you're describing right now of reality being constructed by who you're around and what you're in the room. Yeah. I went on the tiniest little detail, like little detour of the change of the name change between Quail and Quaid, because it bugged me. And I was like, okay, sure. I bet that this was just Arnold Schwarzenegger being like, I can't be named after a bird that's famous for being scared. You have to be quaid. I gotta be, I gotta be hard, right. And then it occurred to me a little later. Oh, right. But this is also coming out when the vice president was Dan Quail. And so you don't want to have a quail. It's going to sound too pointed, blah, blah, blah. And then that I remembered the one thing that I know Dan Quail for, like two things. There are two things I remember us having a vice president named Dale Quail, Dan Quail for. It's not fair. Just how it is. My memories get shaped by Saturday Night Live. But the A, he was like some funnel, good looking guy that they thought would appeal to women because men never know what women think is attractive. It's so weird. And two, that he is the vice president who's famous because he couldn't spell the word potato. And I was like, what was that? Like what on earth happened? How did that even come up? So yesterday as I was researching this episode, I went looking for the video of like him actually misspelling potato to see like what happened. Have you ever watched this video? No, but you know, I'm ready to be. I'm ready to be mind exploded. Okay, I'm so excited. Okay. So what happens is Dan Quail is in a classroom, right? There's a bunch of kids. They look, I can't guess kids ages. I don't know 10. Sure. I can't even do it either. I don't know. They look 10. It's a school where they're all in uniforms. I think it's on the East Coast. He's standing by the chalkboard. There's a bunch of men in suits, probably bodyguards, maybe a couple teachers and a bunch of kids sitting down. Their kids are doing the spelling test. They walk up to the chalkboard. They write a word down and then they sit down. So a little boy walks up to the chalkboard. He has to spell potato. He writes potato and cursive. Totally nails it. Gets it right and doesn't really even pause. He's like nailed it. Erases potato sits down and then Dan Quail is like, wait, no, no, no, no, no. And he makes him come back up there and makes him write potato again. The kids very confused. He writes potato again and then Dan Quail is like, it needs a little thing at the end. And he bullies the kid into adding a cursive E at the end of potato. And now what's really effed up about that is that Dan Quail is creating a new reality in this classroom where he's convincing this kid that a word is spelled wrong, right? That he's done it wrong. The potato is spelled differently. But what's weird about that is that there are all these men around like these grownups in suits who probably should know how to spell potato. And yet because it's Dan Quail, they're agreeing with Dan Quail that you don't spell potato with just an O. They have to add an E and that's the screwed up part. The kid adds an E and all these men applaud and you're like, wait, what? Like just this presence of a vice president convinces the entire room that they're wrong. That's like a reality that really freaked me out when I watch that. Well, I don't know if you watched rehearsal season two, the Nathan Fielder HBO show. Oh hell yeah. But the whole premise. I love the weirdo's brain. But the whole premise of that show was that co-pilots don't speak up when the pilot is making a mistake. And that's why a lot of crashes happen. Like this idea of deferring to power. Exactly. And I do think that this movie is about, you know, this about power too. You know, like, yeah, the guy is like, if you don't do what I say, I will control the oxygen. I will raise the price of oxygen on Mars, which is exactly why nobody should go to Mars when Elon wants us to go to Mars to do whatever he wants us to do for him. Like, are you kidding me? Like this is exactly what will happen. This is what happened every single time a bunch of colonists go to support a rich dude. It happened when we came to America. It happens anywhere. You belong to me. You will do what I want or else. Terrifying. Don't do not go to Mars under his watch. That's insane. Well, I mean, it's so interesting too, because, you know, Mars in this movie is a corporation and right and they're controlling how you see it, right? Because we see it as this vacation destination. You know, we see it in the propaganda like that clip you played. But then when you see the real version of it, it's the CD area where people are literally marked and come mutants because they've been kind of bought into this society. And I think as our culture continues to evolve and there's more access to documents or even literally being able to talk to different people in different spaces, we can see like, oh, what's on the surface doesn't always match up. You know, when you see or hear about the plight of an Amazon worker, you know, that used to be saved for like a not 60 minutes, but like, you know, like a nightline special where it's like, I worked inside of a meat plant. And you had these hidden cameras on and this is what goes on. You know, we're always trying to feel like, oh, what's being sold to us versus what the reality is. And it's hard. And then you have to make you have to make your peace with that and decide like, well, how do I want to be? You know, and that to me is a really interesting level this movie has to is like, yeah, the power in this movie is controls everything around you. And they want to control and they then to keep these people down, they'll do anything. You know, when it would actually just benefit the entire planet to have fresh air. Yeah, exactly. And you see that stack up on all of the different areas in this movie. I mean, I really enjoyed the opening scene when he's like hanging out in bed with with his lovely wife Sharon Stone playing Laurie. And you just see her kind of subtly change the channel from the news over to like a beautiful screensaver. She is so good in this movie Sharon Stone. She's like phenomenal. The way that she's able to switch from like, I want to kill you and kick you in the nuts. Do I am your wife? Do I want to kill you and kick you in the nuts? Like here? Doug. Honey, you wouldn't hurt me. Would you sweetheart? Sweetheart, if you're reasonable, after all, we're married. Consider that a divorce. If Arnold Schwarzenegger had one-tenth of Sharon Stone's acting ability, I think this movie as cheap and weird and ugly as it is would be phenomenal. And I say cheap in the visual sense of cheap, not in the literal sense of cheap. Like she's amazing. It is no wonder to me that Paul Verhoeven finished this movie and was like, I want her to start my next thing. Basic and sting. Let's go. I agree with you 100%. I love the way that she plays this role. I think it's a really nuanced performance. And it's so interesting that this one role, which I think in many other directors' hands, could be a very black and white performance, like just a temptress and then a bitch, right? And is so much more nuanced. And I think he likes interrogating something like that. The fact that she's with Michael Ironside, and like Michael Ironside has to like give up his girlfriend to complete. Like there's so much going on. And I don't think another director would want to even touch all those elements. Like why bother? Let's just get to the action. Yeah, especially that for sure. And I love that she cannot just go from like sweet to cold. When she turns it back on, you're like, oh, I want to believe her again. Like she kind of keeps convincing you. And I found an interview with her right when this movie was coming out. And she is very excited. It's one of the first times she's played like a role people will pay attention to. And she seems thrilled to be able to actually show off what she's been doing. She's been hustling around LA for a long time at this point, like a decade. I don't have to try to be petite. I could be big, which is fun. And so I went in kind of big, kind of, I could feel like I could be bold. Where a lot of times I felt like I had to hold myself down because I didn't want to overwhelm the actor or the people in the room. Because I have kind of a, I don't know, I'm sort of a full tilt, booky kind of person, you know. And also, by the way, I wonder if part of what Paul Blair Hoven really puts some muscle into making this performance great or allowing it to be great is that he has this tick as a director when he's on set of wanting to play every part. Like everyone who worked on this movie has stories about like, oh, he was running around showing people how to shoot going bang, bang, bang. Even Sharon is like, when I have my scenes with Arnie in bed, Paul gets in the bed and he's like, here's how this should go. And we worked in the suite while there's a love scene in the movie, a love scene that I have with Arnold. So when we worked on the love scene, we worked on the love scene on the bed and it was funny because, you know, Paul loves to do the part. He wants to be every part. So Arnold's lying on the bed and he jumps on top of Arnold and he goes, and then, you know, I want you to kiss him. And I was watching them over there. It was really funny. And that actually even began in the audition process, which I'll tell you about in one second, because I also want to highlight Michael Ironside. And we mentioned Ronnie Cox as like the big bad, but these two men, Michael Ironside and Ronnie Cox, are not the typical brutes that Schwartz nigger, was up against up into this part in his career. Right. These are, I mean, I guess you could say Richard Dawson, but I, but to me, I think they're more thinking, more emotionally volatile characters. And apparently for Michael Ironside's audition, now Michael Ironside was in Robocop. Like, Verhoeven got the camera in his face. He said he literally got on top of him with a camera and pushed him into a place of visible emotional breakdown rather than tough guy badass. And I love that idea that he saw Michael Ironside's character as this emotionally upset, volatile, like, guys, almost too invested. Because I think if I'm reading it correctly, like, Hauser or Schwartz nigger is his boss. And then, you know, and then he's working under Ronnie Cox, but then like he had to give his girlfriend up to his boss. There's so much going on there. And I think that when you talk about Schwartz niggers acting being a little bit bland, Ironside's acting is great because you get these like little moments of him, just like flinching and losing control and obsessing over things. And it's not like, it's not hero versus villain. It's not like I must kill him. It's like, I want, I'm fucking mad. And that's why that moment at the end was like, well, he remember this and they're like, no, and he punches him in the face. I'm like, yes. Like there is something to these frenemies. I think they are frenemies, right? Like, they're not showing you that. Yeah, they're probably competitive back when they're at parties together. They've been like jockeying and stuff. Oh, yeah, obviously. Then for all we know, Bad Schwartz nigger probably knew Sharon as his girlfriend back in the day. And maybe Michael Ironside was like, I know he looks at my girlfriend occasionally, that I can use this to my advantage. She'll keep him happy for a little bit as long as we need. And you can tell that they're like competitive. And what's funny about Vera Hoven is I think he really does like casting villains who just look like guys, right? He doesn't do the swole. He does guys who look like they could wear a suit and be in an office. I think he finds corporation blandness, systematic average guys really freaky, which I also do. Yes, I mean, it's way more interesting, right? I mean, I think it means that like the big fights at the end can be a little bit clunky. Like, sure, Arnold's not going to beat up this guy, whatever. But like, it is interesting. I will say my beloved Bobby Wyghans, you know, who did all the interviews back in the day. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. She did give a Vera Hoven a little bit of grief at the time for saying that the elevator fight against Michael Ironside, she thought it was excessive. There and it wasn't excessive. And then I must say, Paul, that a couple of things really seemed excessive to me. Really? Yes. I guess I can go ahead and say it without ruining it. Absolutely. The arm getting chopped off. Right. Well, that was based in fact, that was something that I, I mean, it's not. I brought that in and it was based in fact on a use experience I nearly had and happily didn't happen to me. And when I was a kid, when I was seven or eight, I went into a little elevator, which were these things that are turning around. You get in and it turns around. And because I was a kid, I was playing around and put my my legs over the side. And suddenly there was exactly the same situation that the ceiling was coming and was nearly cutting off my legs. And unfortunately, fortunately, part of the ceiling, they had loosened up. So it flipped around my legs, but it was such a gruesome idea that it nearly happened that it obsessed my whole life. And then when I was making this movie and I, we got to this fight in the elevator, which was in the movie. And I suddenly this, this vision of horror, because it is, of course, a vision of horror came into my mind and I felt compelled to do it. I love Bobby Wygantz always has the best clips. I also feel like we need to talk about Rachel Tinkerton. It's interesting, right? Because she, you know, she's this character that's supposed to be the love interest. I found that part of the movie to be the most rushed. Like they go from, hey, who are you? Oh, yeah, we are friends. And then they like, there's like one scene where they run through. I mean, there's a lot of running through and things exploding scenes. There's so much running. And then, I mean, the ending is really, I mean, it's a great third act. It goes hard, but they are running. Yeah, I mean, I think the movie gets kind of lame after the halfway point, but yes. I can see, I mean, it just becomes like the full on Schwarzenegger action film. But I do think that this moment where they then they like hook up really quickly. It's like, okay, we got to sell this. But I do. I love this idea of in his dream, he sees this, you know, brunette, athletic, sleazy, demure, like whatever he described her as. That's so funny. Sleazy and demure. I love that. Sleazy and demure is hilarious. And what I love about that is, Veroven is like interested to show that yes, she could look that way or you could have your dream about her in that way, but she's way more complicated than that. Right. And that like, again, this movie is constantly putting you in this world of like the fantasy versus the reality, the fantasy versus the reality. And that to me, I like, I don't know, I think that that's a smart choice as well, right? Because she doesn't just see him and is throwing into his arms. I don't know. No, but do you think, where do you fall on the is she ever real or is she just a figment of his imagination? Because what I remembered how this film ended in that last little stretch, I thought, man, this is happier than a Paul Verhoeven film usually ends. Everybody's getting what they want. They can breathe. This is great. People are happy. Really? He's too negative for this. And then I was like, oh, right, there's a very good chance this is possibly all a dream. Well, and that's what's so genius about the final shot, like the way that the lens flare takes over like he's coming out of the machine. Right. Or I don't know if this is true because this is just me basing this on screenshots. But I have seen screenshots that say in the original VHS version of total recall in that shot, it was deliberately framed or you could see that the backdrop was hanging up by a hook. Wow. Later on they cropped that tighter. Hmm. I mean, I love the idea. I love the idea of this movie being about a man who is unsatisfied with his life, who buys a memory of being a hero. And in that memory, he kills his wife. He saves the day. He finds like this real love. But the question remains to me is when you wake up out of that. How do you live? I don't think he's waking up. I think I take this scene very seriously. All right. Let's say you're telling the truth and this is all a dream. Then I could put his trigger and it won't matter. Doc, don't. It won't make the slightest difference to me, Doc. But the consequences to you would be devastating. In your mind, I'll be dead and with no one to guide you out to be stuck in permanent psychosis. Doc, let Dr. Edgmore help you. The walls of reality will come crashing down. One minute you'll be the savior of the rebel cause and the next thing you know, you'll be Cohegan's bosom buddy. You'll even have fantasies about alien civilizations as you requested. But in the end, back on earth, you'll be lobotomized. That's Dr. Flatout tells him, if you kill me in this dream, if it is a dream, you're going to get lobotomy. And you know what? I think that I believe that he is telling the truth. And also, I think that's the best scene in the movie, honestly. When the doctor and his wife barge in the movie, they're like, honey, you're just dreaming, you're just dreaming, you're just dreaming. That scene has more drama to me than a thousand gun battles. Well, I mean, I agree. I love that scene and it does elevate this movie. I think that there's a part of you saying, well, why are we saying lobotomy so much in this movie? It's definitely a theme, right? So we have to pay attention to it. It's told to him when he's working at a construction site, he brings it up again when he goes in to have the first meeting. That's right. It's what he's worried about. Right? It's multiple times it's brought up. That's right. His buddy who warns him that he could get a lobotomy is definitely there as a plant knowing what's happening. He's probably talking about another agent and the same thing happened to them. Well, and so there's a part of me that goes, all right, so Edgimar does say, hey, you will live the... He wrecks the end of the movie, right? He just tells you what's going to happen at the end of the movie. Get the girls, save the planet. You know, and I think that there is something like the blue sky on Mars is in the recall monitors, right? That was never read. I didn't see it, but then I was doing research. I was like, oh, wow. And then there's another part of it that goes, well, hmm. If it was the end of a dream, would it fade to black? But because it's white, is that like your brain exploded? Like, is that a mental collapse? I mean, and if it's Arnie in a mental collapse, could you even tell? That's not fair. That's not fair. That's not fair. Arnie actually did it incredibly smart things here. He really hated the first trailer and he was like, there are no special effects in this. We have to show the special effects and like recut it. So it's opened. The trailer is open. Like he is so tactical with this. Like the trailer is open with the shot of the woman who is fake him and her head opening up on those little like zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip. So he could see his face underneath it, which I remember those trailers so well. And I, and I, and only now am I thinking like, wow, Schwarzenegger is just so confident in how to sell a movie that he doesn't even believe in spoilers. He's like, show people something cool. People will come. And actually, now that I think about it, there is something really neat and thematic in selling this movie with the image because her face is cracking open and revealing his face who is looking more stony than the waxwork. But it is a movie about this. Open your mind. Open your mind. Open your mind. Open your mind. Open your mind. Now that I think about it, I think like the designer of the special effects Rob Button really was like, this is opening your minds, man. That's what's happening here. I love that idea. I also will say that obviously Verhoeven wanted both of these sides to be equally open and waited. So there wasn't a leaning. It wasn't like the end of Inception where maybe one person knows and the other people don't. Or, you know, it's like, this is something he's actively trying to do. But I think if you pick the reality and say, okay, this movie is real, how could you ever be sure again that what you are living is actually you. And that to me is more of a scary sell than being lobotomized because at any point you could be taken away from yourself. Right? Like knowing that this is possible, what's to stop it again? Or what's to stop? I believe you would go into a kind of psychosis, you know, where you couldn't separate reality and fantasy. Well, yeah. And that to me is scarier. I mean, I think that's totally there. You know, I think actually maybe part of the, and I'm going to use the words schizophrenia just because the same movie that even calls it like sort of having it, what are they called? Like a schizoid fit or something. Yeah. I think part of that duality that you're describing though maybe comes from, I suspect the idea that just Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger disagree. Verhoeven is like, this is a dream. And I'm pretty sure Schwarzenegger is like, nah, man, I'm doing this. Right. And I think that that's okay. I think that that's like, I think everybody could approach it differently because Schwarzenegger should think it's real. Right? He shouldn't be playing it like a dream. I mean, honestly, I think my favorite thing about Arnold's performance just has to be all of his stupid yells. I mean, he just starts the film yelling real stupid and he just keeps yelling stupid. I want to play the first one just because it's hilarious. Oh, honestly, I think that might be tied sound effect wise and score wise with just the sound of the sleazy nightclub when they go to the sleazy bar. I mean sleaze. A day sleaze. How is anybody getting excited listening to this kind of music? And I can't, like that's music where you just like can't do anything but bite your lip and shake your fist back and forth. What? It's so lame. Inspired by jet engine silences. The Dyson Hushjet Purify powerfully purifies the entire room. Quietly. Capturing pollen, allergens and pet dander. Removing odors and harmful gases such as NO2. Day and night. Hushjet. Powerful, compact purification. That's quiet. Welcome to the realms of peril and glory. Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale. The paranormal mysteries of liminal London. And the cyberpunk chaos of cyborg. Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Ox Venture and No Rolls Bard. Search realms of peril and glory to find out more. I love this movie. I love that, you know, at the end of the day it's Ronnie Cox. You know, obviously we're already talking about Michael Ironside and Schwarzenegger kind of dueling. Which I buy a little bit more and I think that they kind of, they kind of tamp down on his muscularity in this movie. Although the minute fight starts, he's like, pop, pop, pop. He's like, he's just breaking necks. I mean, he's ready to go. But Ronnie Cox to me is such an interesting character because Ronnie Cox is again another alum of Robocop. But can kind of play multiple sides in a really interesting way. I love when he kicks over the fish tank. I love how- Those boys fished. And being the 80s, I really hope they scoop some up and put them in water when the scene is over and didn't just say, eh. You know, he, I think, represents something that is kind of fascinating in the sense that he is not this nice guy, right? He is not a nice guy, but he is somebody that you could trust, right? He has moments where he reveals that he is a monstrous. And I think that if you're looking at him, you want to trust him. You know, and what you kind of see is like, he's just petty. Like he's not trying to take over the world. He's not a James Bond villain. Like, you know, he's kind of whiny. He wants to go and eat corn flakes. I mean, right? I mean, is the layers of his character, do you think this is at all attributable to the fact that I just can't shake the idea that the people running the world right now watch these post-apocalyptic dystopian films and we're like, this looks like a great idea. We should definitely have robotic Johnny cars driving on the streets. You know, with my hatred of Wamos, I have to just get an idea at this absolutely moronic Johnny cab. I love Johnny cab. Hello. I'm Johnny cab. Where can I take you tonight? Drive. Drive. Would you please repeat the destination? Oh, anyway, I just go. Go. Please stay cost free and number. Shit. Shit. I'm not familiar with that address. Would you please repeat that address? But I do think that like the idea of playing with who the bad guys are and what these bad guys are is classic Verhoeven, right? It's companies, corporations. It's what Robocop was too. You know, that to me, I think is the most lasting impact that some of these films have. It's like it's coming from inside, right? It's, you know, we're talking about recall. We're talking about all these other smaller things that we just accept, right? What is this society? What are we accepting? What are we accepting? And I don't know that, that to me makes this film stay forever timeless. I agree. I mean, it's hard to shake the idea that when we are scrolling Instagram, we are living vicariously through other people's stories and memories, you know, seeing the world without going anywhere ourselves. I mean, gosh, I almost wonder, you know, think I think about a lot is, I don't know if you follow this little court of Instagram, but there are so many people who do makeup influencing who regularly shoot themselves just with a filter anyways to automatically look more pretty. And I always wonder what is that headspace like? You have a public brand of a face that's not actually your face. What is that? Right? And I wonder, am I not real? Like who is even being the face of this makeup brand? Like that, I think I find to be the most bizarre thing about living in the future of these movies and what they warned is that a lot of the solutions I thought were coming actually make stuff worse. Like the more we can have pictures and images and things somehow it's even harder to know what's true. Yeah. And I think that this is, you know, the world that we're going to constantly be living in and fighting for clarity from, which is what am I is what I'm seeing real is who I'm talking to real are my relationships real. There are so many things that we have to navigate now. Culturally. You can't just take anything for granted. And maybe that's why these movies start to connect with us more and more because as a reality of our daily lives, it becomes something that we have to navigate, you know, every part of there's no one trusted person. Yeah, I think there's a weight to that. I think there's a weight to where everyone's for, you know, fighting for ourselves and we have to surround ourselves with our group of mutants to take down the corporate overlords, you know, it's like and the same way that what I'd like to be one of your mutants. Oh, come in, come in, come inside. And I think but then also I look at like Schwarzenegger on the other side, the bad Schwarzenegger is a part of a mutant group too. They both think what they're doing is right and they're both doing it because of the way that they have lived their life or what they have seen there. And I don't know, I loved rewatching this movie. I loved it. And for an hour and 54 minutes, which seems a little bit longer than a typical Schwarzenegger movie, I was like, well, it flew by. I mean, I definitely was like, take away half these bullets. I'm really bored. Right, sure. But yeah, I mean, I'm down for everything, Bo-Hovind. I just think Bo-Hovind, he himself is kind of a pre-cog of what's happening in what's about to happen in the world. A jewel's verne of our future. Yeah, Philip K. Dick is king pre-cog. Like he died before knowing how right he was going to be about everything. And I almost wonder if he could have handled it. Like, what would you do if you saw the future just like he did everything that was happening and then it just came to pass anyways? Because people see cool stuff and they're like, that looks rad. I love that truck. Build me a Tesla Cybertruck. Let's do it. I mean, it's so nuts. I hope that more people find a chance to rewatch this movie because I think that anyone who thinks it's a dumb Schwarzenegger movie will be surprised. And I think this is not a blight. This is not even a marker staying on the Verhobin canon at all. If anything, I think it's showing that he can play ball with anyone. I mean, to get these themes out with Schwarzenegger there and get these performances out and cast around him in that way, pretty impressive. It is pretty impressive. And thank you for giving us Sharon Stone. Doug. Doug, there's something I want you to know. You were the best assignment I ever had. Really. I'm on it. I've never seen Devil Wears Prada. Devil Wears Prada 2 obviously coming out and it felt like a good chance to relook at this classic. It is a classic. I mean, I've heard it referenced a million times. I don't know anything about it. Nothing. I'm so excited. Well, if you like Michael Ironside as a complicated villain, just wait till you see Miranda Pracely. Well, this will be a treat indeed. I am excited to continue to look at the worlds in which we enter into willingly and obviously like this unwillingly. Well, we will be talking about that next week. Obviously, follow along on our sub-stack for more information about Total Recall. Maybe some of these clips that we've talked about will be on our page as well as follow us on our brand new YouTube page. Nothing's up yet, but just get that subscribe going right now because we have a bunch of fun stuff lined up. That is youtube.com slash at Get Unspooled. Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson. 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