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

Your TGTPTU hosts jump right into the Squib Season episode this week eager to discuss MONA LISA (1986), a neo-noir that’ll get squibby towards its end (or its original, comedic intro with its criminally bad British accents attempted in a reenactment of a forgettable moment from the film confiscated and presently being used as evidence by Scotland Yard).

Co-written and singly-directed by Neil Jordan six years before The Crying Game, the film stars Bob Hoskins (five years before Spielberg’s Hook) as George, a role originally intended for Michael Caine (also in the film but in a significantly smaller and more sinister role as George’s crime boss Mortwell) but rewritten for Hoskins to bring in his comedic background and general warmth, even when playing a working-class British bigot. Playing opposite Hoskins as the film’s femme fatale is first-time screen actress Cathy Tyson as the high-end call girl Simone on the hunt for her missing friend and former coworker mixed up in drugs and the streetwalking and larger sex industry that affords them. Also starring Rubeus Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies (Robbie Coltrane) as Thomas (people in the film don’t get last names unless they’re of Caine’s character’s stature, in which case they don’t need Christian names), George’s best mate and collector of weird objects.

The hosts do their darnedest not to bring up and discuss The Crying Game, instead focusing on amazing parts of the film at hand, including an elevated action elevator sequence and Hoskins’ acting. Also, how Jordan working on a tight budget reworked the London landscape to create a mood and show a side of London not typically captured on film. And in perhaps an episode first, sometimes provisional host Ryan does research!!! and is wrong about a music fact!?!

And then, before you know where you are

You’re sayin’ goodbye

-Boy George

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
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Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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

Yo, put the da bomb rap-rock mix CD on the Walkman, brush off your fly three-button boxy suit, and get your pre-9/1l cool on fo’ shizzle, home skillet, as TGTPTU breaks with its patent-pending temporal pincer movement to cover THE WAY OF THE GUN (2000).

Before he (strike as appropriate: ruined / renewed / continued) the Mission Impossible film franchise but after winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1995’s The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie would write and direct this (strike as appropriate: possible war crime / secret masterpiece / neo-Western action-thriller satire), and land in director jail. Unlike a highly successful sequel he’d write and produce two decades later also with “gun” in the title, McQuarrie’s directorial debut was not “top,” nor would it receive any Academy noms for Orig Screenplay or Best Pic. Instead, it would be twelve years before McQuarrie would direct again when he’d write and direct Jack Reacher (the one ((strike as appropriate: starring / miscast)) with Tom Cruise).

The Way of the Gun was purportedly McQuarrie’s attempt to unmake the antihero criminal movie popular by the late-90s by going further than other films had in making its felonious buddy protagonists not just unlikeable but reprehensible. Selected for the job, after many turned down the role, Ryan Phillippe who got a haircut and adopted a voice for the role of Parker (no relation to the Richard Stark series) and the always magnetic Benicio del Toro as Longbaugh. These two petty but also not-so-petty criminals happen upon a scheme during their brief road trip’s peeing in bottles, punching women, and distributing sperm to banks for quick cash, a plan involving kidnapping for ransom a surrogate mother named Robin (played by Juliette Lewis) who SPOILER ALERT whose baby doctor is her baby daddy who, despite having a different last name, is SPOILER the son of the expected father of the embryo that didn’t take and the plot gets (strike as appropriate: purposively complex / even dumber / more twisted / majorly buggin’) from there. Another Lewis, pod favorite and Juliette’s father Geoffrey, is introduced (strike as appropriate: losing / winning) at a complex variation of Russian roulette as part of James Caan’s Members-only posse who mount up for the film’s squibbiest moment, a finale at a Mexican cantina and whorehouse.

O.G. host Ken casts Jonah Hill as Jonah Hex in a McG remake of the film while hosts Thomas and Ryan introduce Natural Born Killers into the chat, wondering if it not The Friends of Eddie Coyle for the 90s. Guest host Jack defends the movie’s inclusion in Season 15 as all that and a bag of chips and not wiggity wiggity wack.

Next week is Robocop. Psych! My bad. That’s in the pairing after next. Follow and subscribe if you want the 411. Also, send an electronic mail down the information superhighway to thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com if you want Thomas’s copy on DVD. We outtie.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text

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

What’s the rumpus? This week TGTPTU gives the Coen Brothers movie classic MILLER’S CROSSING (1990) the treatment as part of its Squib Season, see.

Lensed by Barry Sonnenfeld in his last frolic as the brothers’ cinematographer, Ethan Coen told the man with a golden eye that Miller’s Crossing should be a handsome film about men in hats, and Sonnenfeld delivers the goods with one spectacularly shot period piece from the Prohibition Era.

The picture stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan, the hard-drinking, harder-gambling Irish consigliere who knows all the angles, who’s having an affair with his boss’s skirt Verna Bernbaum (played by Marcia Gay Harden, who shortly after filming would originate the role of Harper Pitt in Tony Kushner’s two-part play Angels in America, see Season 7 of TGTPTU for more!).

Pod favorite John Turturro plays her brother Bernie, a conniving low-life crook who causes the friction in the ranks and can turn on the waterworks when needed. Jon Polito plays a loving dad allergic to the high-hat and with his right-hand J. E. Freeman playing the Dane (same year he’d star in Wild at Heart, see Season 4) they plan to take over the town from Albert Finney in one of his two roles as Tom’s boss Leo (the other appearance uncredited, spoilers during the episode for this Easter egg). Also, director and occasional second-unit-for-the-Coens-director Sam Raimi (and, can you believe it, brother of actor Ted Raimi from Hard Target covered earlier this Squib Games season!) shows up to plug a speakeasy patron grabbing air before himself getting gatted. And if you still haven’t had your fill, at this buffet of talent we even get a smattering of Steve Buscemi delivering ratatat dialogue for a scene.

This ep, Jack brings the book report, Thomas the Danish facts, Ken reenacts the experience of watching Miller’s Crossing with him by dropping movie quotes throughout the episode, Ryan brings up Gabriel Byrne’s acting chops, and all four hosts harmonize on the greater good.

Now get outta here. You’re stinking up the joint.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias