Jen and Tim are joined by Rifftrax writer/producer and author Conor Lastowka to examine one of the only true auteurs in cinema. He’s James Nguyen, and he’s given us movie masterpieces like Birdemic, Julie and Jack, and Replica, as our guest knows all too well!
Tim and Jen are both fans of Conor’s podcast with Rifftrax/MST3k alum Michael J. Nelson. It’s called 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back, and it’s highly recommended to anyone who’s ever thrown a book across the room because it was so bad.
Jen and Tim ask Josh Lewis of the Sleazoids podcast (@thejoshl on Twitter) to provide his insight as a film programmer in a wide-ranging discussion of the dire state of movie exhbition.
According to Danny Peary in his book Guide for the Film Fanatic, “when director Michael Winner complained that Death Wish III [sic] was given an X rating because it had 63 killings while the R-rated Rambo [: First Blood Part II, 1985] had 80 killings, the woman at the Ratings Board explained that most of those killed in Rambo are Vietnamese.”
Paul Talbot, Bronson’s Loose!: The Making of the Death Wish Films
Have you heard of Interstate 60? It’s what we call a “Tim movie”—that is, a movie that only Tim seems to have seen. We go incredibly deep, even though the movie probably didn’t merit it. So much so that you’re getting a two-parter!
Interstate 60 was written by the guy who co-wrote Back to the Future and it’s tailor-made for dads who wistfully scroll through classics dot autotrader dot com on weekends.