Show notes
All of a sudden, whoa…there’s Beastman Once upon a time, there was a movie that told a story. A story of a rather dumb truck driver and his much more capable friend and their search for love, truth, and not-dying in the underworld of Chinatown. It was beloved by many, but not all. Today, dear friend, you will hear those who love the movie, and those who do not, attempt to tell why they loved, or did not love, this tale as old as…the mid- to late-1980s. Jackbox GamesBalderdashDune 1984Jordowosky’s DuneToto bandDavid LynchGhostbusters 1984Dirty Rotten ScoundrelsDamon LindelofDonald LiRandall ParkVictor WongChow Yun FatKim CattrallSamara WeavingDennis DunJohn ChoJames HongLucy LiuKurt RussellDax ShepardCommunity tv seriesGuillermo Del ToroJoaquin PhoenixDon CheadleJason SudeikisJoel McHaleChris O’DowdBill HaderThe Golden ChildChitty Chitty Bang BangMary PoppinsConan The BarbarianWillowRalph BakshiHercules in New YorkThe Last DragonArnold SchwartzeneggerDungeons and Daddies podcastJohn CarpenterJohn WayneDwayne The Rock JohnsonVin DieselFirefly tv showDennis MillerShanghai NightsShanghai NoonOwen WilsonJackie ChanChris TuckerScooby DooChewbacca Transcript Kyle: re maker’s mark episode 64, big trouble in little China. Hello again, and welcome back to remaker mark. Here we are in our 64th episode part two, in fact, where we are continuing to discuss big trouble in little China with me as always are my friends. Andy wicks, Andy, , speaking of a couple of things that were mentioned in the movie, how was that for a segue, uh, magic potion or six demon bag. Andy: your smoothest segue yet? Kyle: Thank you. Andy: Uh, I am well and always magically. Kyle: Hmm. Nice. You’re such a wizard at heart. Andy: Thank you. Thank you. Kyle: Jeremy Nelson, how are you and how about you? Magic potion or six demon bag? Jer: I am doing lovely. And I always go with the unknown. So six demon bag Kyle: I like a Jer: or bag, depending on what part of the country. Kyle: bigger bag. Get a big bagels. Jer: that’s one of the things that my brother-in-law from North Carolina consistently makes fun of my sister and my family for Kyle: Yeah, Jer: six demon bag. Kyle: That’s really weird. Lee white tiger. How are you tonight? And what about you? Magic potion or 60 men bag? Lee: I’m great. And a magic potion. Cause I don’t know what the other one is. Kyle: Um, all the more exciting. Andy: you don’t necessarily know what the magic potion is. Lee: Eh, that’s true. Andy: It’s really just like a suicide at the movie theater. Right. You know, we just a little bit, every, every poppy just chug it. You assume something magical happens. Kyle: we’re going to do a lightning round after this inspired by that, Andy. So, uh, just get ready for that. Okay. Uh, mark Joe sting. How are you and magic potion or 60 men back? Mark: I am. Well, thank you for asking and , I gotta go six demon bay because who doesn’t love surprises. You never know where you’re going to get you reach in, pull one out and see what’s chomping on your hand. They be a hit at parties where you want to murder everyone. Andy: it’s like if Quentin Tarantino directed. Mark: Yes, Kyle: No, thank you. But yes. All of the above. Uh, my name is Kyle will be your host once again, this fine evening. And I, I, yeah, I got to go 60 minute bag. I mean, you gotta figure that at least one of those will be incredibly interesting. You know, it could be world ending. It could be terrible. It could be kind of like cabin in the woods Z, who knows, but, uh, yeah. You know, from an entertainment perspective, uh, I really think you can’t beat it now. The lightning round inspired by Andy’s question of movie theater, uh, soda adventures. Let’s pretend we are in a movie theater that has one of those make your own Coke dispensers, you know, where you can kind of like, do you know, you can do strawberry Fanta, you can do, you know, or grape Coke, whatever. Okay. Going quickly down the road. What is your pick when you have infinite selections in the movie theater like that? Andy go, Andy: Vanilla strawberry. Kyle: Jerry. Jer: Mellow yellow with grape. Kyle: Ooh. Nice Lee go. Lee: , cherry with seven up. Kyle: Ooh, nice mark. Go. Mark: Always sickle orange and vanilla Coke. Andy: Nice. Jer: Oh, we got a winner. Kyle: Nice. That’s really good. One. We’ll usually do grape Sprite. That’s usually because we don’t want to get like crazy caffeinated and those things like even the smallest, like 197 ounces there a does. So yeah. Nice. Yeah. I got to go dream sickle, man. That sounds, Andy: The small is a Toyota Prius gas tank. Kyle: That’s funny. They got a good rate on them. Uh, Jared, this was your pick. So you, once again, get to give us a recommendation. What are you recommendation? Meaning us for. Jer: Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Um, my recommendation this week is inspired somewhat by the fact that we are approaching and in the midst of the holiday season and family, at least in my case is spread out in a very large geographic area. So we don’t always get a chance to see each other, every holiday and. , for Thanksgiving this year, we were supposed to get together, but because of some COVID related unfortunates, uh, we did not, but we did get to spend some time, , enjoying each other’s company with the help of an online, , game playing system called Jackbox games. And I’d like to recommend Jackbox games for those of you that want to get together, have some fun, have some laughs with each other and play some games. But, , you aren’t in the same room with each other. They have, , a pretty decent catalog of games. They’re all going to be kind of trivia or. , game centered around some of the classic concepts like Pictionary or Balderdash or trivia games or things like that, punch in your answer, try to fool everybody, that sort of thing. , they’re they’re great. The graphics are silly. The whole thing is silly and it’s just a reason to hang out in a Skype room with each other and, , and yuck it up for a little while. So Jackbox games is the, is the designer, the maker Jackbox games.com and they have, uh, like I said, a pretty robust games catalog for your online gaming, uh, social needs. Mark: do they facilitate voice chat as well? Such that, , you would need something like Skype in Jer: am not aware of that. , what we, what we have always done is, , my sister who has the account because she uses it in her classroom quite a bit. So she has a lot more things unlocked. , and so she will share her screen with us and then everybody else just downloads the Jack or goes onto their phone. They don’t have to download anything. You go onto the, whatever the URL is on your phone. So you’re playing on your phone and then we’re using the sort of the shared screen for the main game, plus our Skype video chat. Mark: Oh, okay. Okay. Yes, it does. Jer: But to answer your question there, isn’t an in game chat system, but there isn’t one needed to play the game, but it’s helpful to have some sort of shared screen of. Kyle: towards the tail end of when apple was working from home. And we were just like doing anything to get content, to fill days. Uh, we had a couple Jackbox party game, , hours. And that was really, really fun. I enjoyed that. I think if I’m, if my internet history is remembering, correct, uh, for those of you who were internet nerds in the nineties and maybe early two thousands, there was a great game called you don’t know Jack. And I think this is sort of the evolution of that Jer: I believe it’s sprang from the same company. Yeah. Kyle: Yeah. Yup. Yup. Makes sense. At least. So, yeah. I always love that game, so it makes it makes good. Jer: Yup. Yup. So yeah, if you’re not going to be able to make it home for Christmas or new year’s or whatever, then give that a try. Kyle: I think it’s pretty good for kids too. Like there’s, you know, I think there’s probably more suggestive ones, but overall I think it’s, you know, friendly for teen gatherings, if you will, or what have you, so Yeah. Jer: Yeah. I don’t know if there’s a filter or something that you can adjust for that, but I mean, the one we play. Which was kind of the Baldor dashi come up with the, the, the fact and, and if you fool people, you get points. And if you guess the right answer, you get points kind of idea. And some of them were a little weird and not necessarily dirty, but suggestive. Um, so, but I don’t know, there might be a way to kind of turn that off. Kyle: Cool, good pick. We will link that in the show notes, but, uh, I liked that a lot. Good. All right. So, uh, Jr. Since this was your choice, I am up next. So I get to pick the next movie, which I am very excited about. I didn’t know where the timing of this episode was going to land. I had an idea for this, uh, that I was very excited about, and I really hoped the timing worked and it didn’t quite work as perfectly as I hoped it would. , but I’m still pretty happy about it. the movie that I am picking to watch next is the 1984 David Lynch film dune. Uh, this will Lee: no, Andy: Wow. Lee: have to that one. Kyle: to uh, to hold her Huskies, dune the documentary. Uh, what was it? Oh, what’s up doc that we did. So, you know, this was mentioned there, uh, and then recently they had the Denny Villeneuve, , do, and so I’m hoping we can find a way to watch that if we hadn’t. So we can kind of do a, maybe like a third episode review of it, because it is something else. Uh, if not, no worries, but I thought that would be really fun. So, this movie is a trip. It is a. It is Jer: it like nine hours long. Kyle: no, it’s not too bad. It’s like two 30 or something. It’s not ridiculous. It does have my, my favorite title card of any movie ever, which is in giant, like almost kind of like kind of beveled Roman font songs by Toto. So, so just to get you excited as if, you know, you didn’t need to be already with David Lynch and everything, but, uh, yeah. Toto does some of the music and it’s, it’s pretty great. Lee: by trip, you mean turd? Right? Kyle: I, you know, we’ll, we’ll get into it. I enjoy this movie probably more than I should. Lee: a feeling I’m not going to. Kyle: If you’re able to enjoy it. That’s my John Madden ism of the day. Maybe a little hairy carry on there. I don’t know, but, , Jer: is this the first movie that we have done on this podcast that actually has already had a remake Andy: Oh, I can’t. No, I, no, no, no, I don’t think so. Kyle: I don’t know. That’s a good question. I’ll have to look Jer: may? Cause when we did the Ghostbusters episode, the new Ghostbusters hadn’t been done and that Kyle: Dirty rotten scoundrels. Hadn’t yeah. The, uh, which from a dinger rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway, dirty rotten scoundrels remake didn’t happen yet. Hmm. Interesting. So, yes. Uh, yeah, so I’m, I’m super excited. I think it’ll be really fun. Uh, I just love David Lynch. , I love what he brings to cinema. This is not one of his favorite films and I don’t think it is the favorite of many of his fans, but whatever, I’m still down, it’s got Andy: Has it hasn’t he tried to like actively have his name removed from it. Kyle: No, not really. He just doesn’t really talk about it. Like it’s not, he, he doesn’t love it, but he’s, he’s not really the kind of like, you know, deny my history kind of guy. He’s too weird for that. Lee: I think a hoarder Roski Jer: as bad as Damon Lindelof offering his fans to come and punch him or yell at him at cons for PR Promethease. Kyle: No, I enjoyed that movie. Uh, oh boy. All right. So, , that is my pick. I am excited about that. We will be getting into that very shortly here. Now let us focus our attention again on big trouble. In little China, before we get into our discussion of the film, let’s do a recap of the recasting here for the major characters. They were kind of all major characters. We had one that was more major than the others, but the first five were majorish characters for the role of Eddie originally played by Donald Lee. We went with Jerry’s choice of Randall park. Yay. Good job. For the role of eggshell originally played by Victor Wong. We went with Mark’s choice of chow Yun fat, which I just, I can’t wait for the makeup on that alone. Uh, for the role of Gracie law originally played by Kim Cottrell, we went with Lee’s choice of Samarra weaving. I love that, and Lee: Yeah. Andy: Eh, Kyle: for the role of weighing G originally played by Dennis Dunn. We went in with Andy’s choice of John Cho like that. I like Lee: Yeah. Kyle: for the role of low pan originally played by James Hong. We went with Mark’s inspired choice of Lucy Lu. I think that is so cool. I was so excited for that. And then finally, the, the big one of all of them, Jack Burton originally played by Kurt Russell, uh, in a tiebreaker. We went in with Andy’s choice of Dax Shepard, which I think is really, really good. I’m really excited for that. I think that’s a great pick. Well done. Uh, Jared, it sounds like you have some social media feedback. Jer: I have a little bit, yes. Uh, I knew that my friend group would be interested in this episode. , I wasn’t. Completely prepared for the backlash of how dare you use and leave Jack Burton alones. But I did get a lot of that. Uh, but after egging some people on, I did get some responses, , and they are thus, uh, Jonathan Lee first re his first response was the cast of community. And then he said, I’m going to think about this more and give you a real answer tomorrow. And his real answer the next day, , is high concept gritty reboot directed by Guillermo Del Toro with Joaquin Phoenix as Jack Burton. Kyle: Whoa. That’s interesting. That is high concepts. I don’t know if I love it, but I’m intrigued. Lee: I prefer the cast of community. Kyle: Yeah. Jer: Uh, then we’ve got Brent, said Don Cheadle. And which is interesting. I liked Don Cheadle. We don’t talk about him very much this podcast. We should, we need to cast him more. Uh, let’s see, there was a, leave it alone, leave it alone. Don’t touch it. It’s perfect. Uh, and tread carefully. And finally, , Heather Wirtz said, and I think that she was just listing off people that would play Jack Burton and not a full cast here, but she said, uh, Jason Sudeikis Joel McHale, Chris O’Dowd or bill Hader. Kyle: Interesting. A lot of different energies there. I actually really liked bill Hader. I think that’d be pretty cool. Jer: I like pretty much that full list and that, that those are all very interesting and yes, very different. Kyle: I kind of want to see a British big trouble in little China. That would be, that’d be pretty interesting. Jer: You can combine it with, uh, arrested development and have it big trouble in little Britain. Kyle: Yes. . Nice. Well, thank you to all who provided audience feedback. That’s awesome. So let us now dig into, in part two here, what we liked about the movie, what we didn’t like about the movie, what we would change, uh, some performances, all that kind of fun stuff, where we are starting here is what I think is the overarching thing. And then we’ll be, which is just kind of the vibe of this movie. It is just so interesting. So unique. We’ve talked about how there’s a lot of things in the melting pot that is this movie. Jerry, do you want to kind of touch on what that felt like? Jer: Yeah, I man, I could talk about this and have talked about this movie for a very long time. So if I just need to shut up, just tell me to shut up, I guess, but, , yeah, I, I love how this movie feels. It feels like that early eighties, just barely on the rails kind of kind of movie. , you’ve got John Carpenter. Who’s, who’s putting together that kind of movie pretty consistently at this point. and working in, in these constraints of budget and time and everything else. So he’s throwing out every w every little director, camera trick, and every practical effect he can to, to great success, I think. And it’s, it’s a story that barely makes sense. And it’s a cast that shouldn’t quite work an…
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