In this genre-spanning episode, the hosts delve into the fascinating origins of creative ideas and everyday choices; they explore the ever-evolving landscape of the restaurant business; they dissect the hilarious world of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"; and they reflect on the tragic murder of comedy legend Phil Hartman. The hosts then unleash their imaginative powers and develop a spine-chilling horror movie idea centered around a group of expert ice climbers who encounter a berzerk yeti on their perilous climb. Get a good grip and try to hold on as the Don't Encourage Us crew crams an entire season's worth of content into 70 minutes.
In this genre-spanning episode, the hosts delve into the fascinating origins of creative ideas and everyday choices; they explore the ever-evolving landscape of the restaurant business; they dissect the hilarious world of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"; and they reflect on the tragic murder of comedy legend Phil Hartman. The hosts then unleash their imaginative powers and develop a spine-chilling horror movie idea centered around a group of expert ice climbers who encounter a berzerk yeti on their perilous climb. Get a good grip and try to hold on as the Don't Encourage Us crew crams an entire season's worth of content into 70 minutes.
Check out the playlist for this episode here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/664JKNnTq7s9nsplu9xxfP?si=36139410a44946ac
Listen to the Gang talk about The Nightman Cometh! https://thealwayssunnypod.com/blogs/news/the-nightman-cometh-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia
Read more about The Dice Man (1971) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man
Head to CBS News to find out more about the Jon Lovitz and Andy Dick feud: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lovitz-speaks-out-on-dustup-with-andy-dick/
Get to Noma quickly before it closes and use this article to help pass the time on your flight: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/noma-restaurant-closing
Re-live comedy history on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/movie/too-funny-to-fail-the-life-death-of-the-dana-carvey-show-c6c29995-0c40-4442-aed6-156bd11e2d9e
Search and Rescue the hosts at DontEncourage@gmail.com
Discourage us on Instagram @DontEncourageUs
Jason: Featured actor as at least three different characters on the same show, and ultimately becoming a new permanent character. That's so unusual. I've never heard of that.
Steve: You know, this high-end restaurant concept is now not just the restaurant, but it's also the chef. Who runs that restaurant and how big of a media personality he becomes, or she becomes on something like YouTube.
I'm New Honey, and I'm here with my co-host Vic Vinegar. Hi Vic. Hi. How's it going? You good? I'm coming in hot today, Vic. Sounds like it. I got some good stuff to talk about. Uh, so on my list this week, I watched the Always Sunny Podcast. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? I, I haven't, no. So you know the show always Sunny in Philadelphia?
I do. Okay. Mm-hmm. So they're on their like 400th season or whatever it is. Uh, it's still on. Oh yeah, still running. They're actually, I think writing, finishing up scripts for the next season. Right now, season 16 maybe. I was just gonna say, is it
16 or 17 seasons? Right.
Wow. True fan. I love that. Oh yeah. Huge.
Uh, so they also have a podcast and, uh, it's ostensibly to talk about the making of different episodes and they completely go off topic every single time. They've got a little bit of a Seinfeld vibe on their podcast where I think they were supposed to talk about an episode that they recorded from season one, but in the podcast episode about that TV episode, they got more interested in breaking down doors.
So they arranged to have like a door that they could try breaking down different ways to see what would happen. Mm-hmm. So anyway, they go a bit off topic. So they did an episode of the podcast recently on probably one of the best episodes of the show. And I know it's a matter of opinion, but it is.
Absolutely a classic. Did you ever see the episode where the gang puts together a musical called The Night Man Cometh? No, I haven't really
watched that show to
Jason: be honest. That's so good. You would love it. Absolutely recommend it. Uh, let's see, it's season four from 2008, I think, uh, is when they recorded that.
So, night Man Cometh is a musical written by Charlie, who's the, uh, sort of the janitor part of the crew there at the bar. And he writes a musical for no reason apparently. And it's about a boy who is visited by a troll and the night man. And then he, the boy has to overcome this and, you know, uh, become the day man to fight the night man off.
So there's a whole musical around it. And the episode is about the gang making the musical, and it's got a lot of original music in it and performances. And of course, you know, Danny DeVito mm-hmm. Is a cast member and he sings a song and everything, and it's really, it's really funny. I, I highly recommend it.
So anyway, the podcast episode they did was about that and they were talking about the music and the production, and they had a special guest come on to talk about that episode. A, a super fan. That they brought on to talk about that. And it was Lin Manuel Miranda Really? Who was the playwright from Hamilton The musical.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. So he's apparently a huge fan and he was super excited to talk about how they came up with those ideas and the musical stylings. And it was really entertaining. It was really interesting. And I'm, you know, just thought I'd recommend it.
Steve: He's a pretty funny guy, Lin Manuel. He was on, uh, curb Your Enthusiasm Really for a few episodes.
Jason: Yeah. Huh? Was he playing himself? He was playing
Steve: himself, yeah. It, he's really good. He's has really good comedic timing and he was really funny against Larry, like, oh, that, that is fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. He should definitely watch that if you get a chance. Cause I always think of him as a playwright. I don't think of him as a, an actor, but obviously he's an actor too, cuz he was in, in Hamilton.
Sure. But you always just see, oh, the creator of Hamilton. The creator of Hamilton. But he's really funny, really
Jason: talented guy. Well, he was great on this episode and having never seen Hamilton, uh, it was sort of my first exposure to him. I thought he was great. He talked a little bit too about his, uh, history, like how he got interested in what he does and who he studied under and things like that.
And that was also interesting. So I, you know, I think a lot of people would enjoy this episode. I'll
Steve: give it a listen. I heard that he had created, um, Hamilton when he was reading the Hamilton biography, like on a vacation or something on the beach, but for some reason he thought, Hey, this would be really great as a musical with like a hip hop angle to it, which is pretty unique, like taking that.
Yeah. The concept of the Hamilton biography and turning it into, A musical in that way is
Jason: really fascinating. It's a very creative idea. Yeah. I wonder exactly what grabbed him and why, you know, the sort of various influences that came together mm-hmm. In his mind, you know, kind of clicked. Yeah. I wonder if
Steve: he talks about it in like an interview or, I'm sure.
Blog, I'm
Jason: sure. Right. I. I'm sure, but you know, you always wonder like how much of it is the story and how much of it is the reality? Not that people are always necessarily like impression managing, you know, to some extent they might be, but also just not really knowing and trying to construct some sort of narrative that makes sense.
It's sort of like, you know, your dreams, you know, people say they remember their dreams, but most of the time they probably just remember fragments. And then a fully awake, rational prefrontal cortex tries to turn that into a narrative. Yeah. You know, or a sequence that makes some sort of rational sense, at least by dream logic.
But is that actually what they experienced while they were sleeping? Sort of like if he tried to recount his, uh, moment of realization or his early creative thoughts around Hamilton, is that actually what happened? Or just his best ability to kind of retroactively create a narrative that makes sense to him?
Yeah,
Steve: that's a good question. Cuz it might have just been just fragments of an idea. Mm-hmm. Or maybe they didn't really make much sense until much later when he started writing it and then creating the narrative, like you said.
Jason: Yeah. Like, uh, I'm sure that happens a lot like, like stars, right? Or, uh, Christmas lights, right?
So points of light that may flash a close enough period of time that your brain assembles it into a pattern. And that's where creativity comes in, you know? I don't know.
Steve: Mm-hmm. Like a constellation. I'm sure we, we do that a lot with our lives too, you know, create these narratives constantly about our past that may or may not be true.
And we just really believe them. Cuz later on they've been processed for so long that there's a story behind it. How you originally thought about moving to where you live now, for instance, you know? Mm-hmm. It might have been a completely unrelated thought or something you saw that made you think of this place and suddenly you're there.
But if you construct the story, it's more, I thought about this, then I thought about that, then this thing happened and that's how I'm here. But that may not be the case at all. Well, maybe
Jason: you do that, but you have full narratives. I write everything down. I just flip a coin, like two face, you know, for all my choices, like, um, the dice Man.
Never heard of it. It's
Steve: about a psychologist who decides that his life is really boring and he needs to shake things up. So he thinks if I roll die, I'm gonna let the dye control my fate from now on. It's a really popular novel from the seventies. It's a cult classic. So he'll say, let's say for the number one, I am going, and it, it's all really over the top crazy stuff that he starts doing.
Like, I'm gonna go downstairs and have sex with the neighbor. If I roll a one, if I roll a two, I'm gonna walk outside and talk to a stranger about X, Y, Z. If I roll a three, I'm gonna do this. So everything becomes controlled by the dice and then he starts teaching this idea to other people and it becomes kind of like a movement.
Oh, it
Jason: sounds like a mix between, um, fight Club and Yes, man, with Jim Carey.
Steve: Very much so. They probably took a lot of their ideas from this novel and you could see how they did. It's, I think the novel's from 1972 maybe, or maybe 1969. So it's a long, long time ago, but I read it just recently and it was just a fascinating concept cuz he wanted to break free of all the constructs of society.
And he thought the only way to really do that is to let randomness take over or else he would constantly be doing what he thought he was supposed to be doing at any given moment. So it's interesting in that it puts him in really dangerous situations. He leaves his wife, for instance, and he starts setting up all his major decisions in his life around the die.
He
Jason: can blame the die for doing the things he wants to do. Yep. Yeah, yeah.
Steve: Basically. So he's working on the, like this idea of like, who is he really? Like how has his identity been formed and he wants to destroy that. Ah, and becomes something else completely. But he doesn't wanna set a path for himself that he's determined.
He wants to randomize it and kind of prove that you can be many different people and that who you've become is just based on this social construct in these experiences that you have had that are just drawing you to this one particular place. But what happens if you just throw all that out the window?
So it's, it's a really interesting read. It's a little re repetitive toward the end. You're like, I get, I get it, you know, I understand what's happening here. Mm-hmm. The concept, he kind of beats a dead horse toward the end. But, you know, the first three quarters of the book are really interesting how it happens and how other people are affected by those decisions, and how they also take on this idea of rolling dye.
And how it becomes a movement and how the psychiatric community really is against it. And some people jump on, other people are really against him in this whole idea that what are you doing? You're ruining people's lives. Cause you know, it'll be, you know, someone committing a crime or not committing a crime, and you're just putting that in the hands of, of randomness instead of making decisions that are moral or ethical.
Mm-hmm. So he takes all of that out of the picture. But you find it very interesting.
Jason: Yeah. It does sound like there are layers there, and depending on how the author explores them, you would hit a natural dead end for some of those layers. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I don't know. It could be, or it could be one of those things that masquerade as a bigger idea than it really is.
Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Yeah. It sort of dresses up a fairly simple concept. You know, because it's, it's like, well, how does he assign values to the numbers, right? Is that his id? Is that actually just who he wants to be? And he's afraid to be that person without the excuse of rolling a D. Right. You know, if that's all it is, then it's far less interesting.
Then if it's a interesting way for someone to deconstruct themselves and then explore alternative ways of identifying, you know, the self. That could be interesting.
Steve: Yeah. And I think that's really what it's exploring, but I think he has this big conflict within himself and during a lot of points. Like is he just doing this to do bad things or things he's always had impulses around and he's just using the dye to let him do those things, right?
Or is he deconstructing himself and creating a new version of himself? And you could argue that he's not really creating a new version of himself cuz he is, this is just random. So he's not really
Jason: No, but a more outward facing, he's changing the outward facing version of himself, I guess. And maybe internally how he conceptualizes himself.
But yeah, is he really fooling himself? You know what I mean? Like mm-hmm. There's not randomness truly here.
Steve: It dives into all of those questions in the book, and that's what becomes very interesting. All right. About the plot line. Yeah. But then, like I said, at the end, it kind of,
Jason: it needs like a murder mystery or something to cap it, you know, political
Steve: thriller.
It kinda of evolves, you know, but it, it just turns into, it's almost like he doesn't know how to end it correctly. Because once you get that point across about, you know, is it an identity thing? Is it a a randomness experiment? Is it an outward influences controlling his life? Or is it something that he's driving on his own?
Once you get through those topics, you kind of explored all there is to explore. Mm-hmm. So he tries to create more of a solid plot around it at the end. And I don't think it works very well, but the concept I think is, is fascinating and see why it's a cult. A cult hit. Mm-hmm. And I think there's a sequel too, and there might be two sequels.
Jason: Interesting. Yeah. So also a side note on that episode of, uh, always Sunny, the original episode with the play and or the musical in it, they did as a live show and they toured. Really? Yeah, they did that for a while and it was a big hit. Uh, and if you were on, uh, the internet anywhere, maybe YouTube Music or Spotify or Apple Music, you might find some fun covers of songs from that episode, like the Bumping Uglies and These City Limits did covers of the songs in very different styles and a lot of fun.
If you like that episode, check out that music. It's inspired a lot of people in a lot of ways, so good stuff. I also wanted to mention, uh, I don't know if you've heard this, you probably saw it, Noma, the restaurant is closing. I did see that, yes. Yeah. So longtime number one restaurant in the world located in Copenhagen, uh, has three Michelin stars.
Like they've been at the top of the pile and, uh, the owners basically said it's not a sustainable model anymore for reasons we can get into, but I think it's really multi causal. There've been a lot of shakeups in the restaurant industry, and so the creative vision here now is to transition the brand from primarily restaurant to like a, you know, focusing on their food lab and making products for online sale, whole Foods, stuff like that, and doing occasional restaurant popups.
So any thoughts on that?
Steve: That's an interesting direction. I went there probably, I. Over 10 years ago and tried to get a table. And I really, I remember it vividly. I walked in and I asked the, uh, woman behind the desk if there were any reservations available, and she kind of laughed at me and uh, and she said, yeah, and in about six months, but you can take our card.
And that was,
Jason: you can take our card. That was, that was my, uh, experience at Noma. That's hilarious. And you put your, uh, your backpack back on and shuffled out. That was out the door defeated.
Steve: Sorry guys. And I went to, uh, Chipotle that was. It looks like a nice place. Yeah. I think it might be the cost of ingredients, right?
Yeah. This is, you think it's a saturated
Jason: market in terms of this is one of those things where it's probably best for us not to get into it too much because it's not our area, but I will say that news, that's what we always do. No. Is it, I think news coverage is focusing largely on this idea of paying interns.
So as I understand it, again, not an expert, but a lot of the high-end restaurant, uh, market and maybe even, you know, mid-tier and lower tier, they rely on some free labor, some, you know, cheap labor because the people who do that get a lot out of it. Uh, you know, if you have an internship essentially and you're working for free at, at noma, you're probably learning incredible things.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, you may not be really contributing that much to them because you probably don't have skill skills on the level they need, but if you're willing to work hard for a certain period of time, you could maybe get up to the point where you're contributing and they, if they're gonna pay you to learn, then it really radically affects basically the cost of the meal.
Right. So they'd have to raise prices to crazy amounts that would just make it inaccessible to most people, um, without that free labor. Mm-hmm. So I think the rules have changed in a lot of places, and that's one of, I'm sure, many, many elements of why the high end restaurant model isn't working like it used to.
Steve: Mm-hmm. And their margins are typically very slim. I mean, that's the point. The restaurant
Jason: industry. Right. That's the point. Extremely slim. Exactly. Right. I don't know that people really want to drag themselves to fancy restaurants as much as they used to, especially since the pandemic and some of these restaurants are probably in a hole.
And I mean, there's just a lot of things changing and you know, also now, like if you have a food lab, like they apparently do, again, not my area of just what I've heard, then leaning into producing things and, and distributing them using, you know, the existing network that's out there that wasn't there even 10 or 15 years ago.
Makes a lot more sense now and probably people are interested in cooking or using better ingredients at home. So that also opens up some new opportunities. And I think they're just going with what they think the, you know, with where the opportunity is in
Steve: the market. I'm curious to see how that's gonna work because they built up such a strong brand name.
Around their restaurant. Mm-hmm. You know, and if they do go into places, specialty food stores, whole Foods, how people are gonna take that. Are they just gonna look at it as, oh, this is just a really high end Michelin star restaurant with some overpriced ingredients or prepared food? Or is it gonna translate from the restaurant experience or the idea of Noma into the home?
That'll be interesting to see cuz I've never heard of this. In the past a restaurant. I mean, there's certain restaurants that have, let's say, jarred sauces, et cetera, but they're mm-hmm. Not that I've seen at the level of Noma, which you would think they're gonna have to have a higher premium, a higher price point on those goods to make people really think they're coming from mm-hmm.
Such a high-end restaurant. And are they gonna be willing to pay for it? Yeah,
Jason: that'll be, well, I remember coming by your place and opening up the freezer and it was just stocked full of frozen pf Chang meals. Mm-hmm. So I know there's a market for it. I've got one customer,
Steve: but I still have to eat all those meals to make room for it.
So I'll let you know how that goes.
Jason: You gotta, yep. Those, uh, Friday go mozzarella sticks. Frozen in your fridge. Ready to go? Yeah. Um, I mean, I think. We'll see, and it's an interesting sign of a potential major shift that could really affect a lot of people's careers. I mean, people who might have scraped together enough money to go get paid or not get paid to live there and work, but learn and then go launch their own restaurants or, you know, uh, become a very successful, I dunno, pastry chef or something at a very high level.
They may end up moving to a different segment. Of the market, which in this case could be like shipping. You know, they might end up being a stock boy instead of cutting vegetables at, at Noma. And, um, and then where does that take their career? So, I, I don't know. You know, I think there's a, a lot of fluidity in the world right now.
People trying to figure out how to sustain certain products and, and, um, services while also respecting maybe or, or treating people who are new differently. I don't know. I don't know how to best put that in a way that's not gonna upset people, but it's definitely gonna change things.
Steve: Yeah, I think that whole industry is really being shaken up.
I think the proliferation of these food competitions that you see everywhere, all the, the different sh shows, like Iron Chef and mm mm-hmm. The Great British Bake Off and all these other Chopped, et cetera. They're having a huge influence on how people view restaurants. And this idea of the home chef recreating meals that they might have a, at a really high end restaurant, that's become a big thing now.
And having higher quality ingredients at home that you can recreate meals or having these boxes delivered with all the ingredients to make it this amazing meal that you can kind of put together yourself. And then on the other hand, with chefs now, it seems that they've moved from, you know, The typical cookbook model that they had in the past, and maybe they'd go on TV and do one or two interviews on a mo morning show, and you kind of know about them, but not, not to the extent where things are now with mm-hmm.
YouTube, them having their huge YouTube channels and TikTok and Instagram and all the social media platforms. So it seems that not only do you take, you know, this high-end restaurant concept is now not just the restaurant, but it's also the chef who runs that restaurant and how big of a media personality he becomes, or she becomes on something like YouTube that drives traffic to their restaurant.
Mm-hmm. So it'll be interesting how many more chefs come out of that model since it seems like content is shaking up everything right, when it comes to every, in industry. Mm-hmm. So if you don't have one of these outlets, like a YouTube. How successful is your restaurant is? Are you just dependent now on the food critics on your cookbook line, or is it now dependent on how big of a personality you are?
I would say how big of a media personality you are is really gonna drive and influence the success of these super high-end Michelin star
Jason: restaurants. Very interesting. And I also like the idea of popups because there's a lot of empty commercial real estate, and if you can establish a limited kitchen or get food delivered there and have a prefix meal, but you charge, you know, extra because it's a special treat, um, then maybe you just, you know, rotate around and do steady business that way because it's unusual in that particular area to have that restaurant or that menu.
Um, maybe there's a sustainable version of that too.
Steve: Yeah, I think that model is becoming bigger and bigger. The guy, um, who founded Uber. Also founded something called Cloud Kitchen, which is now this model where, let's say you're on Yelp and you're, mm-hmm. You wanna order, let's say Thai food. You order from the app and you get that food delivered to you.
But there's no actual restaurant that you're ordering from. You're ordering from one kitchen, where it may be the same chef is cooking Thai food, Chinese food, Malaysian food. Indonesian food. Mm-hmm. And that's become a big, big trend now where you'll have these facilities, where there's all these different kitchens.
You know, you're ordering food from all these different cuisines, but they're literally right next to each other. There's no seating. It's just all virtual.
Jason: Right. It's like an Amazon warehouse. Exactly.
Steve: For cooking. Yeah. Yep. So if you take a look at the address that they list, let's say on Yelp, it's listing the same address for, you know, let's say 15 different restaurants with different cuisines, but they're all coming from the same place.
Hmm. So that's revolutionizing the way that a lot of, especially chefs that are just starting out, how they think about restaurants and now it's not just the brick and mortar restaurant, it's this cloud kitchen concept that they have access to. They also have this, um, I guess food hall concept. Or you can go in and get all different types of food and the food truck.
Those three big things, I think are gonna kind of change the whole landscape of both eating out and delivery.
Jason: Absolutely. So I also recently finished a rewatch of news radio. Are you familiar with this? Have you heard about
Steve: this? Oh, yeah. From the, from the
Jason: nineties. Yes. 95. Joe Rogan's, uh, big breakthrough role as the, um, tech slash repair guy at a, uh, news radio station in New York City.
Uh, Dave Foley from Kids in the Hall. Huge fan of kids in the hall. Dave Foley's, I think that was his follow up role to kids in the hall. Uh, sketch comedy show. Canadians. Uh, did you ever watch kids in the hall? No, I've heard about it though. Classic stuff. Uh, Phil Hartman from Cy Live. Also, I think it was his follow up to Cy Live, uh, you know, one of the most successful casts in the history of Cy Live.
I think he was part of the first really successful breakthrough cast after the original cast. Mm-hmm. You know, with like Chevy Chase and those people. Um, and also Andy Dick.
Steve: Oh yeah, that's right. He did have a role on television.
Jason: He did. Uh, he actually had a few, he's had a lot of problems, which we'll talk about in a second.
Steven Root, um, what was that recent HBO show about the, uh, killer contract killer who wants to be an actor, Barry? Yeah, so Steven Root was featured on that as well. So, you know, all star cast a lot funnier than I remember it. I don't know if it's because now I get the jokes more, but certainly the first like three seasons, there were a lot of fairly subtle for sitcom TV, sex jokes that I don't really see anymore.
Certainly not with like, you know, kind of prime time. Not family comedy obviously, but it, I mean, it has that veneer of sort of family comedy, but there's a lot of like, you know, pretty body sex jokes implied, right. So very funny. I was laughing out loud, which I don't usually do when I watch watch sitcoms.
Um, it's certainly not from the nineties. Great show though. So I, you know, I watched the whole thing again, really entertained and it reminded me, I don't, do you remember the big, between the fourth and the fifth season? Do you remember what happened that Phil
Steve: Harmon was
Jason: murdered? Phil Harmon was by his wife murdered, murdered by his wife.
Yeah, exactly. That was 1998. Do you remember much about that?
Steve: Not too much. I remember hearing about it later, but I didn't really follow the, the
Jason: story too closely. Yeah. So I did a little digging because I was curious and a lot of it is now just sort of, you know, well-known fact. I remember when it happened, it was absolutely tragic.
I was a huge Philman fan and I was enjoying news radio at the time. Uh, obviously a little bit younger I remember is the footage from outside his home, the like live TV and everything like that. So anyway, backing up, Phil Hartman met and married his wife and this wife in 1987. She was a model and an actress when they met.
Um, and he was, you know, becoming more and more successful on Science Live. So he was already pretty big. And you know, he married this woman and from what I've heard, there was maybe some friction around a few things in their relationship. Like his success sort of eclipsed hers maybe was a source of a little bit of friction, but she also had developed a cocaine addiction.
And it had a lot of problems around them. I mean, obviously that's devastating typically for a marriage and, and a lot of close relationships because of what it does to you. But she had gotten clean. And had been clean for a long time until the holiday party, the, I think it was the news radio holiday party, and Andy Dick, apparently, again, allegedly I wasn't there, but allegedly gave her cocaine at their Christmas party in 1997 and five months later, she murdered Hartman in his sleep, uh, presumably while she was high.
Wow. That is such a tragedy. Wow. Yep. And so Andy Dick, uh, was, you know, I think hated not just for that. He apparently also has had a string of crimes that he's like sort of weird crimes that he committed probably while high or drunk, um, before that. And since then, and he's sort of almost gotten back on his feet.
I think he sobered up a few times and then had another meltdown off and on. He had a sketch comedy show on MTV briefly after News Radio. Um, but then I think it fell apart again when he relapsed. But, so I don't know if you remember who replaced Phil Hartman on, uh, news Radio. Remember that? I don't. No.
John Lovetts.
Steve: Oh, yeah. Now, now I do
Jason: remember that. A couple interesting things about that to me, anyway, I find this stuff interesting. First of all, John Lovetts had been on News Radio twice before at least playing different characters both times. And yeah, so once he was, uh, Phil Hartman was institutionalized, uh, his character was institutionalized on the show, and John Lovett was like another insane person or whatever who had, uh, I think he had delusions of who he was.
And so he was in that, he was featured in the episode, not like cameo, like he was a main character in that episode. And then they brought him back on, I think it was in season four, where he plays somebody who like hijacks the station with like a bomb on his chest and threatens to blow it up because he wants to get the message out about being mistreated by his employer.
And then not that long after, especially if you binge it like I did, he comes back as another character who is like a, a radio announcer and gets hired who was a supposedly a friend of Phil Car Hartman's character, and then he gets hired as the replacement. He's a featured character, a featured actor as at least three different characters on the same show, and ultimately becoming a new permanent character.
That's so unusual. I've never heard of that. Isn't that It's like disorienting. Yeah. It's almost like they don't really take their show that seriously, which comes across with the writing, which is, you know, like a legitimate strategy, but it's unusual.
Steve: How did, uh, Phil Harmon get written off? You said he was institutionalized on the
Jason: show?
No, that was just an episode where I think he got mad at a cop and then they thought he was crazy or something like that. So he was just treating, being institutionalized, uh, for a day or two or a week as a vacation. Mm-hmm. Uh, and the, and then the character comes back, but he was written off as having had a heart attack unexpectedly.
I. Um, after the finale of season four and season five, there's actually, it's a pretty touching episode, uh, where they remember him and everybody's sort of shocked and they have his memorial service and oh, wow. Um, there's some good, they bring back a character, an actor who had left the show earlier and the run who had worked with him.
And, you know, she talks about him and stuff, like they bring her back for an episode and so on. So it's, uh, it was interesting to see how they handled the loss of a main character. I mean, Phil Hartman's character is probably the second or third most important character on the show. I see. So the other interesting thing about Andy Dick is, uh, his behavior off screen was so erratic, apparently, and this is something John Lovetts has talked about in interviews.
So this is after Phil Hartman had been murdered and John Lovetts was now a permanent member of the cast. Um, and Andy Dick apparently made some comments about like, John Lovett's not belonging there. And John's response was like, well, I wouldn't be here if you hadn't done what you did and contributed to Phil Hartman's murder.
You know, like very confusing, sort of antagonistic relationship. And John said that Andy Dick came up to him just, you know, outside of the set, like at a restaurant or bar, like I think John Lovis was just sitting there and Andy Dick came up and said, I put the Phil Hartman hex on you. You're the next to die.
Wow. That's dark. Yeah. So a lot of conflict. You can do some digging if you're interested in learning more. There is more to the story, but, uh, yeah, really. Um, Disturbed time. In, uh, Andy Dick's life, I guess. Uh, hopefully he's doing better now, but I think about like losing Phil Hartman. I think he and John Lovetts were probably friends.
They certainly worked together for a long time on Saturday Live. Uh, I'm assuming that's partly why John Lovetts ended up a guest on news radio so many times and, you know, sort of different roles probably because of his relationship with Phil Hartman. In part, just a very bizarre part of TV history.
Steve: Very tragic.
Very, very tragic story. Yeah. What a loss. Yeah. You mentioned that cast, that SNL cast. Mm-hmm. So that was Adam Sandler
Jason: later. Yeah. He was like, uh, what is it, the 1.2 version of that cast of that? Yeah, it was, uh, Dana Carvey and, um, John Lovett. Phil Hartman, Kevin Neland. Um, but yeah, so really classic cast.
What is it? The original cartoons, Smigel cartoons, you know, insult comic dog, that guy, uh, he did those animated bits. Yeah. That was a good season. Mm-hmm. Or good cast, the Ambiguously gay duo. Mm-hmm. They say your favorite s n l cast is the one you grew up with. You know, it sort of, the humor is at a certain level, so when you're developmentally at that level, you love that cast.
Right, right. You know, that's what everyone says. It'd
Steve: be funny to, to go back and take a look at some of those episodes and see if they hold up.
Jason: Chopping broccoli, right? Yeah. Actually, as a side note, I mean I could talk about this stuff all day, but Dana Carvey got his own sketch comedy show. He basically, after leaving Cy Alive, they said you could do whatever you want.
Cuz he was such a big star and I think his movies didn't really click or work, or maybe he tried that first. But anyway, he was offered pretty much anything. You want a sitcom? What do you wanna do? He said he wanted to do a sketch comedy show and there's a documentary, I think it's on Hulu, about the Dana Carvey show.
And it is hilarious because his idea of what was funny was, so it was like silent live, but then another step out of the mainstream. Mm-hmm. And the understanding that I got from the documentary is that the people who were funding this and in trying to get him, they thought they were gonna get like a more mainstream version of Dana Carvey.
Like not quite as out there as Silent Live, but he took it. Way, way, way out. They talk a lot about this bit they did called Grandma the Clown. And it just, it's this woman and she's got a walker and she's dressed up like a clown and it's a children's birthday party and she's there to entertain. And so, you know, it's just this like bit that crawls on mm-hmm.
Where she's slow. She's got like, uh, giant clown shoes on the front of her walker. Right. Like she's doing classic clown stuff, but it's an older woman and the actress who plays the older, she is an older woman, she nails it where she's just doing these things but with like low energy and enthusiasm and the sketch just goes on and on and on.
And one of the writers who had been writing for Seinfeld actually quit Seinfeld after seeing that sketch. And he was like, that's comedy. That's where, that's the forefront of comedy. That's where I need to be. So it was just this amazing phenomenon. Really recommend that, uh, documentary, great stuff. What's the documentary called?
Too Funny To Fail The Life and Death of the Dana Carvey Show. And it's for somebody who loves TV history and you know that that cast ofs live and that time period where you had a lot of stuff, you know, TV was peaking I guess in a way. And when you see like what Dana Carvey was trying to push through and essentially primetime tv, some of the sketches that they did and it was way, way out there.
It's probably a lot funnier as a documentary when you have the context for what they're thinking than some of the actual sketches were so great stuff. Is
Steve: that around the same time period as Seinfeld? Cause Seinfeld, yeah. Wasn't that the first show that started like NBC Thursdays? I think so. Well like Thursday night lineup
Jason: or whatever.
I think it took a little time to build up to that level. But that like musty TV thing? Yeah. Like friends and, yeah. So I think Dana Carvey show came after. I wanna say maybe two seasons into Seinfeld. I mean, it was not quite at the peak of Seinfeld, obviously, but it was around that time
Steve: because that was a real phenomenon, right?
Mm. What was it? Mm-hmm. Friends Seinfeld. And then there were other shows there like Mad about You. Mm-hmm. I
Jason: think was one of 'em. Yeah. Actually crossed over with friends. Yeah. Yeah. And then there
Steve: was one more
Jason: whole was, see Brook. Brook Shields had a sitcom for a while. They tried to slide in there. Oh, that's right.
Uh, Jonathan Silverman had a friend style sitcom that they The single guy. That's right. Something like that. Yeah. The single guy, they tried to slide in there. Tim Allen's sitcom was a family sitcom, so it wasn't that like sexy, young singles type thing. Mm-hmm.
Steve: But when you said tool time, that
Jason: completely threw me off.
Yeah. Home improvement. Yeah, home improvement. Wow. That was close.
Steve: And then it moved into the whole, uh, sex and the City era kind of
Jason: dominated. Yeah. They moved out a musty TV and moved into scripted. Hour long dramas, I guess. Mm-hmm. Hco previously been, right? Soprano. Yeah. Yeah. That was, and they never really could recapture that friend's magic there.
I I, I think it'd be interesting, I've thought about this before, is pulling together a list of shows that got at least, you know, if, if as long as it was aired, at least one episode was aired, but a list of shows that were attempts to recreate friends, because I'm sure it's massive, you know? Oh, I'm sure.
And especially if you look internationally, I'm really curious if any of 'em are considered successes or like what the bar is because friends got such a high market share or a viewer share. But then again, also those numbers just were so fragmented by even probably the end of the run of friends. Yeah.
Steve: But you, but you can't really, it's hard to compare friends in those shows to anything that exists now and, and the fact that there were, the internet. You know, you just didn't have that many choices back
Jason: then in terms of Right, right. Well, in terms of viewership, but in terms of like Happily Ever After is obviously an attempt to clone friends.
They, they got, they tried to recruit well-known actress to be the lead. They started with a dynamic that was further along in the process. You know, part of the struggle of friends was I think, is that you can only sort of hit the same notes so many times. And since it was a lot about their relationships, they sort of hit a point where it's like, well, we can't just keep doing a Ross, Rachel will they, won't they?
That just gets boring eventually. So happily ever after tried to kind of start with a Post Ross and Rachel Dynamic. Did you watch that show? No. Okay. Never heard of it's, I actually really like it. I think it's funny. It was a good swing. At the friend's audience Who's in that? Alicia Cuthbert. Oh yeah. Happy endings.
Uh, premiered 2011. She had done a few movies. Girl Next Door, maybe. Yep, that's right. Girl. Next Door was a big one. Um, 24. She was the daughter. Right. So they recruited somebody who had some heat off of like film heat. So comparable to Courtney Cox. Right. Courtney Cox at that time, I think had some heat off of films and so sort of, you know, comparable in that way.
They set up a similar dynamic and they went after the friends audience with it. Um, but it just didn't, didn't hit. As much, I think it was a little too tongue in cheek or like the humor was too goofy at times. Mm-hmm. I'm not really sure. Or, or just there wasn't a centralized audience available. Maybe if this show had premiered 10 years earlier, it would've been a massive hit.
But I think it's, we're checking out if you're a friends fan, if nothing else, other than just out of curiosity for how friends influenced the TV market. Yeah.
Steve: And then they, they did the new girl. Which I think became, mm-hmm. Maybe along that vein,
Jason: this vein, no, I think new girls similar. Similar swaying at the same audience.
Yeah. But that was a pretty big success.
Steve: I think they ran for many seasons. Right?
Jason: It did. It also had some interesting challenges and surprisingly, or coincidentally, with how Happy endings, I don't know if you remember the difference. So they changed the cast after the
Steve: pilot. That's right. Wasn't it? One of the Way's Brothers
Jason: that was in, that's right.
And do you know where he ended up instead or why he left? I don't understand all the ins and outs, but no, he actually didn't continue because he took a permanent position with happy endings. Really. Huh? Yep. I did not know that. Yeah, it was probably a contract deal. I can't imagine he thought that Happy endings would be the more successful show.
Maybe he did, but I, I imagine it was probably some sort of contract obligation. And Zoe
Steve: de Chanel, she's also singer. Mm-hmm. She's relatively successful at it too, I think. Mm-hmm. And her sister was the lead in bones. Is that right?
Jason: That show Fox? Oh, fascinating. Yeah. All right, so this episode's getting kinda long.
I do have a pitch ready, so if you wanna do some story break, I can go through that. Yeah, let's do it.
All right. So this pitch came out really more fleshed out than usual, usual. I just have, uh, you know, a couple lines in my head and not much in the way of bones or connective tissue, but this one just sort of rolled out of me as a sequence. A lot of elements just sort of naturally tied together. So, uh, I just thought I would write it out and I'll just.
I, you know, read it to you as it came to me, or as I organized it in my head. And then I'll ask you some questions and maybe you can tell me what you think. And if we got nothing, we'll just call it a day and move on. If you, if it sparks anything with you, throw it out there and we will, we'll see where that takes us.
Sounds good. Let's do it. Okay. So in this story, global warming has opened a new path to a never before summited peak in the remote Himalayas. Three elite climbers set out to be the first and to document the entire experience for a documentary they hope will make them rich and famous. They hire the only person willing to guide them to the base of the climb.
An unstable local living apart from the village and who speaks no English. As they progress through the mountains, they come across isolated temperate valleys and unusual animal signs, which the guide dismisses. The four men reach their target and ascend to the last leg of the climb, a sheer face that will take days and require the three climbers to sleep in a special suspended tent.
They happily leave their disturbed guide at the base camp and begin the ascent of a lifetime. The men face ice walls that shatter on contact, freezing temperatures, thin air, and increasingly ominous sounds from the valley. At times, they catch glimpses of something or someone pursuing them up the cliff, setting them in on edge and arguing with each other, a suspicious accident injures one, slowing the group down, adding another night to the climb and bringing the unknown figure closer and closer With the summit, just over a day's climb away, the men wake to the sounds of ice and rock breaking.
They look outside the tent, and the guide appears from the miss below deranged, bloody, and armed with a single ice ax climbing towards them. The men tried desperately to slow him down by throwing rocks and extra gear while they prepped for a fast climb. Just as the guide reaches them, he yells something in his language and is snatched into a crevice by an large arm with a clawed hand.
Limbs and P pieces of gear are tossed out and tumbled down the mountain. The men stare horrified as a Yeti with black, gray, and white patches of fur climbs out. And stares up at them. It has visible wounds and dried blood. The guide's missing, acts broken and protruding from the Yeti's shoulder. The men flee upwards, but one by one die by their own mistakes or by being pulled off the mountain having lost the other two climbers.
The last remaining man gathers the broken remnants of their gear and takes advantage of a brief storm to construct what he needs to finish the climb and survive. Starting back up. During the tail end of the storm, the climber approaches the peak and stops dangling from a dangerous position. The Yeti approaches attacks and is ensnared by a trap the climber built using the last of the other two climbers gear, pulling one last knot.
He sends the Yeti off the face of the mountain, swinging in and out of the mist. With a noose around its neck, it dies flailing, eyes bulging and choking out howls the climber finally ascends to the peak. Looks out toward the Himalayan Mountains, then turns to see two Yeti standing behind him. I call it jagged.
I
Steve: like this concept. It's interesting, the climate, the whole climate change idea, cuz that's happening more and more, right? What's happening in the, the poles and finding the new viruses, et cetera. You've, you've heard those, those stories, right? Of these dormant viruses. I'm wondering if this would be interesting as a found footage
Jason: movie.
That's actually how I imagined it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I
Steve: think that would be really cool. I, I like the idea of the traps, but I think in order to have those traps be really satisfying for the audience, I think there'd have to be some setup around that earlier. In the story. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kind of prepare you.
Or maybe other times they've used it or used traps in different ways. Mm-hmm. Kinda just establish that character as someone who knows how
Jason: to Yeah. Well, when they stop by one of the temperate valleys, he could construct a trap to catch something, some sort of wildlife that they want to eat or whatever.
Steve: Mm-hmm. And how do you see the other characters? Do you have them
Jason: Less? So I, I had some ideas, and for this brief summary, I didn't want to waste a lot of time going off to tangents. That's actually one of the questions that I wanted to present to you. Just to briefly say that I thought the lead climber would be best friends with one of the other climbers, and maybe a little bit of this idea of he feels responsible for dragging the third climber out.
Who's the guy shooting the footage and maybe not as capable, or his best friend is maybe not as capable, right? Mm-hmm. To give it some heart. And some sense of loss, but I think the relationships are, are really key to making this, to giving it some depth. Yeah. I What are
Steve: your thoughts? Yeah, I think the relationships are key.
I think also the idea that, cause I know in the climbing community, from what I've seen, I'm not a climber, but I've seen some documentaries on it. It always seems to be this constant struggle between reaching the summit safely and not reaching the summit. So there's certain climbers that seem to take that risk no matter what.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which is very irresponsible a lot of times, dragging other people with them. So I'm thinking in terms of this script, it would be an interesting conflict to have during the whole thing. Like, is it worth summiting? Is the weather right? Can we risk it with this guy that you're talking is in his experience?
So those types of conflicts would be an interesting thing to see in the movie, and ultimately it gets them all killed, presumably. Yeah, I think there could be something there as well. I like this idea of like the DER mystery guide. Who's involved in fleshing him A little bit, fleshing him. I thought
Jason: about adding someone else.
You know, they have someone with them who, it's either like two guides, uh, but don't, they don't seem to get along and one of them speaks a little more English or you know, this one guy who knows the way is seemingly quite deranged and odd, but the other person with them who goes along that they also hire, doesn't really know the way, but is more relatable.
And so after they start their ice climb, which by the way to me is a big visual part of the film is right ice climbing. Right. So there's more than a little time dedicated to that. But anyway, as they, once they, you know, their first night up there, I was thinking about having them hear a struggle down below.
Yeah. And it, the implication being that the deranged person has attacked the other guide. Mm-hmm. Because I, you know, I wanted that to be sort of a misdirect. I see. Did
Steve: you see Midsummer? No. In Midsummer there's this kind of feeling of dread mm-hmm That constricts the main characters through the entire movie.
It's, you almost feel like at any point early in the movie, they could walk out of the situation they're in and be safe. But I'm kind of getting this from this movie where it's like, it would be interesting to show there's certain things that happen that make it, IM impossible for them to turn back.
Mm-hmm. Or leave the situation they're in. Cuz I think that would add a lot of drama and kind of anxiety for the audience. Mm-hmm. That they can't turn back. Like there's some missing equipment or there's not enough oxygen. Or like the ISACs, you know, that they're used to do X, Y, Z is broken to kind of add that extra fear and they're at a point where they can't turn back, they have to go forward.
Mm-hmm. And I found that interesting about the plot in Midsummer. It's like once they're caught in this, I don't wanna ruin anything. But once they're caught in the path that they're on, it kind of makes it impossible for them to break free of it. Cause it's just too dangerous. And what's happening is more and more obvious to the audience and maybe not so obvious to them.
So there could be an
Jason: element of that. It could build that kind of tension. Yeah. Yeah. Once they start the climb, you could build that in part, or maybe even a little bit before by introducing this idea that, yes, the climate change has opened a path, but it has also destabilized the ice and the rock in that environment.
So they're perhaps maybe our main character see signs of that on the journey to the base camp or to the, uh, base of the climb, um, but is ignoring it. Mm-hmm. And, you know, kind of pushing through. And pushing the others. Um, and then as they're climbing, there are indicators that it's an unstable environment, you know, I, and that this is a bad idea, but they're not trapped like you want.
Right. Like the, you like this idea. And I, I like it too, of the three of them feeling like, well now we can't stop. Mm-hmm. Much sooner than when I introduced it. I like
Steve: the idea of the environment being unstable. So there's your threat. Right. Okay. So you have to either keep going, like commit yourself to keep going, or you have to face that deranged guy.
Mm-hmm. So there is kind of like a natural trap on both ends going forward, forward once
Jason: they start to climb. Yeah. There's, there's multiple elements of that, but to capture what you want, we'd have to do something. Like early on when they're trying to find a guide to this path, they've identified via satellite photos, they encounter a community that lives on the edge of civilization in that area, who is adamant that they do not go through that area.
Mm-hmm. Um, and this person that they can get to take them is an outcast partly for that reason. Like that's why he will go. Mm-hmm. Because he's an outcast and because he has gone through there before and the rest of the community is like, No. And then as they're hiking, they see behind them glimpses of maybe more and more members of this community in the distance, like shadowing them.
Mm-hmm. Does, you know what I mean? So they feel pressured to continue. Yeah. Uh, by this like, growing number of people. And then at some point when they're close to the base of the climb, maybe those people vanish, right? Like there are fewer and fewer and than none. And if we've planted the seeds right at the conclusion of the film, there's an idea that this community is aware of this population of Yeti and has some sort of relationship with them, and was in the process of trying to stop these hikers or, you know, warn the Yeti or somehow, right?
Like somehow maintain a balance that has existed in the ecosystem between these communities. Does that make sense?
Steve: Yeah. It's similar to the plot of the ruins. That novel was, I don't know if you ever read
Jason: that novel. Wait, is that the one with the vines that Grow up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I read the book and watched the movie.
Yeah.
Steve: I I did, I did both too. I really enjoyed the book. But this idea, there's,
Jason: the book is good. Yeah.
Steve: That there's this like, sacred place and like the, the, the, the native people don't want to go there, but there's, you know, the explorers that kind of, oh, we're gonna go anyway. We don't believe in superstition.
That sort of idea. Yeah.
Jason: Yeah. Yeah. So it's a classic trope. Mm-hmm. In a, in a way. But by playing off of that, we can't introduce the dread and the, um, momentum mm-hmm. That you're trying to create. And so it also makes it more interesting cuz one of the things I wanted to talk to you about and get your thoughts on is that this concept is flat.
It's very, very flat and flushing out the relationships between the characters helps. But what you're talking about now, or what we're talking about now, also makes the concept less flat, because now there's another layer of, well, gosh, now that you think about it, you know these Yeti have probably been there for a long time.
They somehow have developed a relationship of some sort. Now there's more to talk about after the film. Was this, were there subtle signs that the community was sending them out as sacrifices, you know, that would explain this thing or that thing, you know, and just trying to herd them forward? Or were they trying to stop them or save them?
Or were they just curious what would happen because this is a longstanding border that has been observed and now they, they wanna know what
Steve: happens. Yeah, it's, I think it's a concept that could go, it could go many ways, but I think the two main ways being one where there's the, the community, the relationship with the Yeti and like were there signs, were there, were they being sacrificed, et cetera, or is it more straight up action thriller, like the descent, these cave explorers are in this environment now they're being attacked and they gotta get out.
So that's like a, but it was still a great movie. Yeah. And the way they built tension, you know, they didn't overcomplicate things. They did create a, the relationship between the characters in the beginning, but you didn't feel like it was, it was too long-winded. Mm-hmm. Really, the action that was happening between them and those creatures was really what was driving the whole plot forward.
And I see something like that here. Because you could have a lot of action sequences of them trying to escape the Yeti or this Ang guy as they're trying to climb this mountain and they're kind of trapped, they can't go back. And how do they escape from that environment? And you know, there's the whole idea of like, was this even worth it?
And they're arguing about that. And they're arguing mm-hmm. About the fact that one of them didn't even want to come in the first place. The other one brought them there, one of 'em was weaker than the other two. There's this tension between all the characters. So yeah, I think it's a good concept overall.
Jason: Cause I, it's, it's not a bad start, but it, it like, it needs these kinds of elements. Like for example, the conversation they have about, like, one of the ways the main character pressures, people who aren't quite ready for this degree of climb to go do it, or one of them is by noting or mentioning what exactly you said.
Like, well, as an expert climber, the point is to ascend safely or turn back. And so that is part of the promise. And then once they start ascending, that can, you know, the added difficulty or problem, the instability of the ice or the rock or other challenges can lead to an a debate around that very point.
And then once they perceive someone pursuing them, you know, that debate's over there, there is no like, go back down. It is ascend safely or not. Um, and so that adds some interesting elements to the dialogue and the dynamic between the characters and visuals as well. Mm-hmm. So stuff like that's really key, those kind of details
Steve: that come Yeah.
It's key to kind of move the plot forward in different stages, you know? Mm-hmm. Like part one, like who is this guy? Like all those questions right. That we're trying to answer, like mm-hmm. Who is this der guy? What's the role of this, uh, local community? Who is this guy in relation to them? Then there's the whole challenge of getting up the mountain.
Mm-hmm. Can they do it? And there's that one guy that's kind of dragging them down. So there's a lot to kind of move things forward in terms of leaving those open-ended questions that then need to be answered. Mm-hmm. Is he deranged? Yes, he's deranged, but he's fighting the Yeti now. The Yeti's the problem now there's only one guy because the other two guys died, so it could definitely work, I think is a plot.
But as you said, it needs to be fleshed out with all these other obstacles or mini obstacles to get that one guy to the top and then ultimately not make it. Yeah,
Jason: the characters need arcs as well, and so if it's a horror film, then the character's arc can be around, you know, his. Self-centeredness, essentially like his unwillingness to consider other people's wants and needs on par with his own.
And that can be contribute. Like there can be key moments where, especially towards the end where he, you know, they lose a member of the party because he's not willing to jeopardize his own safety. Right. Or wait for them, or slow down or account for their skill level. He just focused on himself and then he pays the ultimate penalty for that.
Mm-hmm. Um, but it seemingly doesn't, it seems like once he's on his own, he's at his best. That's why he survives because he is a survivor and he, those other people were holding him back, but then at the end he pays the price for that. But that also brings up one of my other questions, and you've anticipated most of them, which I appreciate, but one of them is, the ending is dumb.
That's
Steve: a good question. Trying to think how you could get to that ending, have it be the same type of ending, but have that be satisfying enough for an audience
Jason: type of ending. In what way? Like how do you think of that as a type, type
Steve: of ending where he gets to the top, but then he just, he ends up being killed by
Jason: the Yeti.
The ending in my mind, a type is like, does he survive or not? Right? Mm-hmm. And that's, that's an example of type. So he doesn't have to survive. He can survive. That's totally flexible. And may maybe, actually, this is an example of a story where the story can write the ending. You know, looking back, if you want to add metaphors or depth, maybe you then make a big decision about the ending.
Maybe it's too soon in the process and it's fine to have a filler ending, but it sounds like nothing's really jumping out to you as a better ending.
Steve: Yeah, nothing's really jumping out except I'm trying to think of a movie that was pretty satisfying that had a similar type of ending. I don't know if you saw Prey.
Oh yeah. It reminds me of
Jason: the ending of that in a way. Okay, so you want like Yeti spaceships to come. Yeah, they come down
Steve: and pick him up. No, but the, the idea that, or maybe he has another trap set for the Yeti.
Jason: Oh, for those two? Yeah. Oh, that'd be hilarious. That like, it seems like this self-centered jerk finally gets his comeuppance, you know?
And then he's like, ha, he is like a one-liner,
Steve: you know, like a diehard type of one-liner. And then
Jason: they fall up the mountain like a trip wire. Yes. Yes. It's just been revoked. Or he,
Steve: or they like, didn't notice that he stepped over this like thick rope or cable that the climbing rope. And like he jumps off the side of the mountain and he drags them
Jason: down with him, you know, or just slings them off into the distance.
And they're like with like a big boulder,
Steve: you know, he like pushes the boulder off the side of him and they get caught
Jason: up. Or an Indiana Jones ending where he just pulls out a pistol and shoots 'em both. Apparently he is had a gun the whole time
Steve: and he is like, huh. And then he blows his smoke off the tip of the gun and it's over ready for a sequel.
Jason: And then the, the last shot is just like four or five minutes of him slowly unscrewing his flask, like taking a drink, getting comfortable looking at, but it's, and it's a
Steve: product placement for like Jim Deam or something. What was the motivation for, for them to, is there a cash prize or something? No. So is it just
Jason: them glory?
No. The idea was these are, and I, you know, I just kind of tried to give the bare bones, but these guys are like elite climbers. They're part of that set that's always looking for the next big peak or climb. And they've realized that there's money. In a documentary or you know, making a name for yourself by doing something unique and new and so on.
And this particular climb has never been accessible and this guy's been studying it and maybe one of the guys in the group is, you know, an expert in this kind of topography or satellite mapping. And they found, oh, there is this, now you can, there's a passage that has opened up because of melting and weather changes.
And they think, man, if we, if we're the first and we film it, dollar signs in their eyes, that was my thinking.
Steve: Gotcha. And that would lead itself to the found footage idea. Like even if they had GoPros on their helmets or whatever, right. That could be something.
Jason: Yeah. And I don't think we have to explain the footage was found 400 years later or, yeah, because they don't even bother to explain that anymore.
You know, like
Steve: the uh, Swedish movie we saw it bends up on, on another earth 5
Jason: million years later. Yeah. I think the ending can serve other elements of the film once they're fleshed out.
Steve: It would kind of write itself, I think. I think so. Yeah. You could do, you could do the Cohen Brothers way of writing, which I think we talked about it a little bit, which is where they write themselves into a corner.
And all their, that's why their, their screenplays are so bizarre because their whole thing is to just not start out with your traditional outline. They have a general bare bones idea of who these characters are, and then they put them in these situations where like, they don't know how to get the character out of that situation.
They'll write until they stop and like, what's the most absurd way this character could get outta this situation? Okay, let's add that. And that continues the plot on, which makes for really creative screenwriting. So maybe something like that could happen here,
Jason: you know? Well that's, I mean, that sort of hearkens back to my concern that it's too formulaic.
You know, the concept is flat and formulaic. You know, this is, this could very easily, as I initially described it, or, or read it, this could very easily be like a sci-fi, you know, movie, like a relatively low budget cable movie with, um, I mean, I guess it's. Somewhat expensive to shoot ice climbing in any kind of realistic way, but you can always do tight shots and things like that and just film somewhere easily accessible.
But, and some of the establishing shots might be expensive if you don't use stock footage buthuh. Anyway, the point is, it's quite formulaic, you know, we could make some very significant changes or it could just kind of be largely as is with some dialogue thrown in and, and be acceptable. But it's, it's not super.
Unique or interesting, it could be like stallone's cliffhanger. I thought about that actually after I came up with the idea. I was like, oh yeah, it's a little bit like cliffhanger where they have a plot and they use a good bit of time to just show climbing. And I actually think that would kind of work with this, you know, like a thinner plot.
It's a fairly thin plot as is. So a thinner plot allows for more time with, you know, kind of cool shots and learning a little bit, providing some actual knowledge about ice climbing and what those people do. And I, I mean, I think that's kind of interesting. It's, if it's a mockumentary or a, not a mockumentary, but a fake documentary found footage style, then they would, that would give us an excuse as writers to have the characters actually demonstrate equipment or talk about things or, you know, explain challenges, um, that would require more research, but probably make the film interesting in a different way.
Steve: Yeah, I agree with that. I think. It's similar to what you saw on like Maverick when they're prepping for their mission or any of these special forces action movies where they're prepping the mission, telling him about the target, et cetera. But the target now would be the climbing and remember this gear.
And you know, maybe they're going through all of it with the, the guy who's a novice. You know, as he's packing his, there could be one of those scenes, like he's packing his stuff. There's more dialogue around their backstory. So that kind of adds that filler. Plus them maybe climbing on another mountain in the beginning.
Right. And then that's where they hear about this passage and then they get together. There's a lot of ways to kind of establish what's happening between them early, early on, and for a long period of time. Even like for the first 20 or 25 minutes, you could definitely fill that and then Oh yeah. You get them to the base and then you have all the other things that we talk.
It would actually, it could probably make a pretty long movie out of it if you had a lot of shots of like the actual climbing, the environment, they're prepping for it. All of that could also be part of the, the part of the movie. Yeah,
Jason: I have a lot of ideas of how to make the journey there more interesting.
And if we explored your idea or, or I guess our developing idea of the um, community, the locals having some sort of stake in this or role, that also leads to some good opportunities to develop character and introduce pieces that make the plot a little less than. So I think all that's great. There is one other thing that I have a concern about with this story, and maybe it's less of a concern now, but I wanted to get your thoughts on the Yeti appears really late in the story.
And for your typical monster film, you wanna start, like maybe you open with a kill, you know, by that creature. Maybe you get little glimpses of it or there, you know, throughout the, the story there are, there's evidence mounting and we can very easily do that. But I just wanted your thoughts on whether it's good to have him sort of pop up unexpectedly in the third act, or if you need to see that more in more hints or maybe even introduce it earlier, maybe in earlier.
Kill Any thoughts? It's a good,
Steve: it's a good question. I think I go back to that movie Prey and one of the things I think they did really well with that is kind of established this idea that the girl's a great hunter in the beginning. Mm-hmm. But then also establishing the alien. Mm-hmm. Or the predator. As also having this certain hunting style and being really capable.
So, you know, like what she's gonna be up against. Like there's that foreshadowing mm. You know, in the movie. But I think it's difficult to do when the plot gets overly complicated with, you know, different side characters. So we kind of have to decide, I think, is this a movie that's more simplistic? There's the Yeti and there's the, you know, the climbers mm-hmm.
Yeti versus climbers, or is this right? Yeti, the range guide, the native people, the environmental, the idea that they have a relationship with the Yeti and then there's the preparation for them climbing cuz it turns it, I think into a completely
Jason: different, well and the ecology of the area because it's an interesting part of the world that has, you know, elements to it that people don't see.
And also we're talking about climate change. Yep. So much
Steve: a more tradit that traditional way to Yeah, more traditional way to do it would just be climbers. Feature. Feature. Exactly. Yeti versus climbers. It's a range guy who can maybe even help them or knows how to like fight them. But there's very little backstory about like where he comes from.
Mm-hmm So it just becomes a very climb the mountain. Don't climb the mountain, argue about that. Then end, end up going. And then there's the problems between the, the three characters, but they know who they're fighting against. You know, like there's this risk that you might be attacked by Yeti and they don't believe it at first.
So there's that conflict that could make a 90 minute movie. Easily,
Jason: I think. Oh yeah. Yeah, I think the question is, and maybe this is for the people listening, hi mom. Hey mom. Uh, do you want a creature feature? Do you want your standard, you know, opening with a kill, but you don't really get to see the monster?
Then you cut to our main characters and they're doing a big climb and filming it triumphantly. And then as the film progresses and they begin their journey, there are more and more signs, and you have some cannon fodder along with them, some other locals or other climbers who get lost along the way because the Yeti's killing 'em.
And then in the end, there's more than one Yeti. Right? Do you want that? Or do you want like something more modern or complex where there are relationships between things and you're learning a little bit about climbing and about the environment and that part of the world in ecology and there's attention paid to the, uh, the way in which the Yeti are part of the, uh, you know, the ecology of the area and they're living creatures.
It's not a supernatural killing machine, you know, like Jaws basically. It's more of a, you know, a creature that has its own place or is part of a, a niche in that environment and they have the rules that they live by. Like, what's more interesting to you? Yeah, it's,
Steve: it's a really good question. Cause you can create a really interesting action movie, right?
That's more centered around the Yeti versus the,
Jason: the climbers. Beautiful visuals, you know, cool stuff. Yeah.
Steve: But you can also, I think it's interesting to watch a movie where you're getting more, this really, um, detailed information around ice climbing and what that's like and the preparation for it, et cetera, and maybe this tribe and their relationships to the Yeti.
That to me is more interesting. But I've watched, you know, more simplistic movies that are like The Descent, which I thought was highly entertaining. Mm-hmm. It's just one through line. There's just monsters versus cave explorers and they were able to make it highly, highly entertaining by having it be raise that tension so much can they get out of that situation?
So yeah, maybe that is one for the audience. Cause you basically make two equally satisfying versions of the same concept. Ah,
Jason: I don't know. I think it's a different, at least in my head, one is a very like popcorn laying on the couch on a Sunday. Mm-hmm. The weather's terrible and you just wanna see, you know, some people fight a monster and the other one is like something you actually talk about afterward because there's some ideas and you think about it and it's a little bit more heady.
So I think both can work. But they're different audiences or maybe the same audience, but at different points in their day or in their week. Should
Steve: we have people vote on our poll in the, uh, the
Jason: description? Yeah, we should. We should absolutely do that. All right, so anything else before we put this one to rest?
No, I think
Steve: that was a good one. Really good concept. There's a lot to think about, A lot for the audience to think about.
Jason: Definitely a lot of, uh, a lot of room to insert better ideas. How about that?
Steve: Always
Jason: good. Well, as always, thanks for listening. Uh, next week, what do you think? Uh, maybe we talk about the destroyer series.
Maybe we talk a little bit about reality tv. Maybe we talk about dead heat, perhaps always
Steve: dead. Heat's always in the running, so we'll roll the dice and, uh,
Jason: and find out. I guess we will. Until then, take care everybody.