Mentally Oddcast Transcript: Bryan Krystopowitz
Find an audiobook version of this episode here.
More from Bryan Krystopowicz here.
00:00:00.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are listening to the Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday Lee Friday, and we are brought to you by Sometimes Hilarious Horror Magazine. Do find us on Ko-fi. This week, we are talking to Brian Krystopowicz, and I hope I did not massacre his name.
00:00:17.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah He's actually been a regular writer for the movie section at 411mania.com, and he's been there since 2005.
00:00:26.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
His focus is on new and old B-movies, indie genre movies, and the people that make them.
00:00:30.24
Bryan
Thank you.
00:00:32.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
He is probably best known for the Gratuitous B-movie column, which he started in 2008. His first book is Not Coming to a Theater Near You.
00:00:45.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
his first book is not coming to a theater near you 50 great direct-to-video action flicks of the early 2000s. And it was just released by Bear Manor Media.
00:00:58.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah b Brian is graduate of Long Island University, Southampton College, with a degree in English. And he also wants everyone to know that B-movie is not a slur and that the world would be better off if everyone watched more B-movies. It just would be.
00:01:15.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Welcome, Brian. I very much agree.
00:01:18.28
Bryan
Well, thank you for having me, Wednesday. And I'm glad you agree.
00:01:20.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
It is a pleasure.
00:01:21.48
Bryan
Well,
00:01:24.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, here's the thing. We always start the show by asking guests to tell us about the first horror movie they remember seeing. But if you want to tell us about your first B-movie in another genre, you can do that too.
00:01:37.81
Bryan
no, I'll answer the horror movie question, because I actually had to think about this for little bit, because I had to think back to when my family first got Cable. And when we first got h when we first got HBO, so it was either it was either Poltergeist, you know, the Tobey Hooper movie, because because that movie was on constantly.
00:01:47.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
00:01:56.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Of course.
00:02:00.10
Bryan
And I remember my mom, who didn't like watching horror movies at all, she she always said, I don't like watching spook movies. um But she watched that movie like all the time. i think it was because she liked Zalba Rubinstein so much.
00:02:14.77
Bryan
and and she ended And shockingly, she ended up watching the the the other two Poltergeist movies as a result of that.
00:02:20.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh wow
00:02:22.69
Bryan
it was either So it was either Poltergeist or it was Jaws 3.
00:02:28.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow. Okay.
00:02:29.81
Bryan
And and the reason and and i had to think back about this is Jaws 3, because Jaws 3 had Manimal in it. And you know Simon McCorkindale.
00:02:37.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Yep.
00:02:39.46
Bryan
And Manimal was the shit back in the you know back when I was a kid. Like the greatest show ever.
00:02:44.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
00:02:45.00
Bryan
It still is. And I remember being bummed out of my freaking mind watching that movie because he ends up getting... His character, remember right? It's Fitzroyce.
00:02:55.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:02:56.02
Bryan
He ends up getting swallowed whole in that movie. And that freaked...
00:02:59.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, but then his corpse saves the day, though.
00:03:01.66
Bryan
Yeah, exactly. that freaked me out because... Because, you know, if you get eaten by a shark, I mean, you you know, you become like, you know, shark poop and whatever. But there he is, his body's inside the shark with the grenade that Dennis Quaid pulls the pin on and blows up the shark.
00:03:19.24
Bryan
It freaked me out.
00:03:19.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Spoiler alert.
00:03:21.03
Bryan
It freaked me out. And it pissed me off because you can't kill manimal.
00:03:27.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Yes, that is the point at which we should start questioning the actions of people in the Jaws movies at the end of three when they kill Manimal.
00:03:35.38
Bryan
Goddamn right.
00:03:41.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's awesome. That is just awesome. So, now I know you've been writing for 411 Mania for a long time and that is where you and i became acquainted.
00:03:52.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
um It's crazy to me there that it's even possible to be a web writer for decades. It just doesn't seem like that should be a thing, but it very much is, ah much in the same way that you have friends that you've had since LiveJournal, and LiveJournal is basically high school for the internet, you know?
00:04:12.08
Bryan
oh yeah mm-hmm
00:04:13.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
When, uh, when 411mania hired me, they thought I was a dude, and I don't think, I mean, I can't say with certainty that they wouldn't have hired me if they'd known I was a ah lady, but, uh, I don't think that they would have.
00:04:28.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um, when you when you go through the onboarding process, they ask you like trivia questions, like prove you're not a robot question, and they were all about wrestling.
00:04:39.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I know a lot about wrestling for a middle-aged white woman, but not for a a dude that watches wrestling. So I had to call someone to use my lifeline and to to finish my onboarding because I didn't know what they were asking me.
00:04:55.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Well, and you know, like I did watch wrestling back in the day, but it's it's been a minute. um So how's it going over there?
00:05:04.58
Bryan
Oh yeah.
00:05:06.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
You're still over there, right?
00:05:07.48
Bryan
Yeah. Yeah. I still, uh, I still write in the movie zone. Um, I still do the B movie column. I don't do it as, as often uh, I would like to necessarily, mostly because I'm busy with, uh, I'm busy with a lot of other stuff, uh, with like, uh, I do a lot of like indie genre movie, ah reviews in general, horror, science fiction, action movies,
00:05:19.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure. Sure.
00:05:34.10
Bryan
I do a lot of interviews for like different people that I work with. They're like ah
00:05:42.13
Bryan
like publicists, I guess you'd want to call them. And that takes up a lot of time.
00:05:45.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure.
00:05:49.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
are Are there women writing for 411 Mania right now?
00:05:52.88
Bryan
ah I had to look. I had to ask around. Because there's there's so many writers like in the ah the wrestling section. That's still like the biggest section. And there is one.
00:06:04.45
Bryan
There is one there. she does she She does previews for the various pay-per-views that are upcoming. And she does other things. i know But I know she does pay-per-view previews.
00:06:20.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. All right. Yeah, I was just curious.
00:06:22.53
Bryan
but but yeah but but um mean i had But I had to ask around because I remembered that you were there.
00:06:24.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's...
00:06:29.70
Bryan
And there were like maybe one or two others, but I couldn't remember their names.
00:06:30.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:06:34.23
Bryan
For whatever reason, 411 is it's very dude-coded. That may have to have something to do with how pro wrestling became very male-centric in its fandom, like through the what's called the Attitude Era, like the late 90s into the early 2000s.
00:06:55.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I think we've learned a few things about Vince McMahon over the years that sort of sharpens that lens a little bit.
00:06:55.28
Bryan
And...
00:06:58.57
Bryan
oh well, there's... Oh, well, cut Jesus Christ. Oh, it does.
00:07:02.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, oh.
00:07:02.77
Bryan
well like you know Well, Vince McMahon is like the like the one of the worst human beings who ever lived. my i just
00:07:09.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I don't know if you know this. We're not going to go off on a whole political thing, but there's been a rumor since the 70s that Vince McMahon is actually Don Jr.'s dad.
00:07:20.85
Bryan
I would not be surprised, truthfully.
00:07:22.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, no, because I actually, in my first book about Don Jr., that's not really about Don Jr., don't sue me, um I do make that joke.
00:07:29.50
Bryan
but
00:07:30.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the basically, I'm like, wouldn't that be a bite in the ass if he could have been a wrestler instead of, you know, a fascist? hit That...
00:07:40.21
Bryan
Well, he, he would, I would, I would think in that sense, at least like the early part of his career would have been cool because, you know, he probably would have been a guy who probably wouldn't have been like the million dollar man, Ted DiBiase, but could have been like a, like a, I like a Irwin R.
00:07:53.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:07:58.14
Bryan
IRS Mike Rotundo type guy. Oh,
00:08:01.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, no, he probably would have been something nature-y.
00:08:04.79
Bryan
oh well, oh yeah.
00:08:05.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, yeah if Ranger Rick was a wrestler.
00:08:05.55
Bryan
Well, there was a, ah cat Well, there there was a wre actually there was a wrestler. There was an Australian wrestler, Outback Jack.
00:08:16.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, that's right.
00:08:17.01
Bryan
he had He had that whole thing. And then Barry Windham.
00:08:23.46
Bryan
he He was... One of his last WWF gimmicks was the the stalker. He apparently told Vince McMahon that he liked to hunt, so McMahon gave him a hunter gimmick so he came out like uh in camouflage and he painted his face camouflage it didn't last very long because it was a terrible gimmick
00:08:44.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:08:47.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, they don't normally let that let that stop them, though. I mean, the Iron Sheik, come on now.
00:08:54.62
Bryan
well well the iron sheik the iron sheik was the iron sheik until the uh the invasion of kuwait then he became colonel mustafa
00:08:55.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
00:09:08.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, oh my god.
00:09:09.63
Bryan
and that was And that was insane because if if you if you go back and you watch the WWF from that time, everyone knows that's the Iron Sheik.
00:09:19.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:09:20.60
Bryan
But they're still calling him Colonel Mustafa. I mean you know, the Iron Sheik was former world champion, for God's sake. He main evented Madison the Square Garden and they telling want me to believe that... Plus he was he plus he was Iranian and now he's from Iraq. Come on.
00:09:39.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. So you have been an Internet writer for a long time. So what I am wondering is what you would say are the upsides to being an internet writer as opposed to, like, books, magazines, that sort of thing, Dead Tree format.
00:09:55.23
Bryan
Well, the the internet, I had thing to think about this. The internet is good for something like immediacy because you can you can write something and it can be up on a website like in five minutes.
00:10:09.32
Bryan
um if you If you write for something like a magazine or a newspaper, i mean a newspaper, like if you write for like a daily newspaper, if there is such a thing left in the world anymore, but like a daily newspaper,
00:10:20.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:10:23.99
Bryan
I mean, it's pretty immediate, but it's still, you got to wait, you got to wait for the, for them to set the, you know, so so set it up and distribute it, and you'll you'll get it maybe the next day.
00:10:36.57
Bryan
So, I mean, but the internet is good for immediacy, because you, and on top of that, everyone, well, everyone doesn't have the internet, but yeah everyone has the internet in their home, so it's available to It's, ah theoretically, it's available to everyone.
00:10:57.20
Bryan
You have to go out to the gas station or whatever to get the newspaper.
00:10:57.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
and so
00:11:02.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's true. And I mean, setting aside what an amazing advancement that was for humans that a newspaper would be printed once or or sometimes even twice a day in some cities and you'd have extras and stuff and get people the news.
00:11:13.54
Bryan
Oh, I, oh, I am.
00:11:17.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
like that That's huge. I mean, that's kind of like the USPS. like That is an amazing organization that I think people just don't have enough appreciation for.
00:11:26.59
Bryan
and they do They don't.
00:11:26.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
But... and and But you're definitely correct about the immediacy. You know, because when someone, like when a celebrity dies, we know about it within an hour.
00:11:38.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
If you're anywhere near the internet, you're going to hear about it. Not only will you hear about it, but you'll hear about like every great and every terrible thing that person has ever done.
00:11:47.64
Bryan
oh
00:11:48.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like that day.
00:11:48.43
Bryan
Oh, yeah. and if they said yeah and well And if they said something on YouTube, but that'll be everywhere.
00:11:53.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes.
00:11:55.16
Bryan
That'll be everywhere within seconds.
00:11:55.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:11:57.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, which is why it's, I mean, the thing is that that's great in some ways. It's great that we can know things right away, but it also creates, you know, a ah huge swath of problems like we're getting around before we know facts or all the facts.
00:12:17.28
Bryan
Oh.
00:12:17.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
um And then obviously propaganda, you don't necessarily need that much immediacy when what you're spreading is propaganda.
00:12:20.16
Bryan
Oh.
00:12:22.74
Bryan
the Well, exactly. Because, I mean, anytime anytime there's anything weird that happens, especially like in the news, you can you can go on Twitter or you can go on other social media platforms.
00:12:40.15
Bryan
And if you know where to look, you can see the bullshit like form in real time. You you can you can you can see it just appear out of practically out of the ether, out of nowhere.
00:12:47.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:12:52.32
Bryan
It's insane.
00:12:52.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:12:54.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, and especially since, like, the MAGA people, how they coordinate their messaging, because Democrats really don't do that. You know, but right before the shutdown, they were all just hammering in this idea that the Democrats want to shut down the government,
00:13:12.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
To give illegals free healthcare was their take. And they just suddenly all started saying it.
00:13:15.40
Bryan
ye
00:13:17.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like all the usual suspects. All the the Trumps and their people. And all the little sycophants. You know. ah Cat turd and all those.
00:13:27.25
Bryan
hu
00:13:27.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know. And they just kept repeating it over and over and over again. and every time they do that. I think to myself. How insulting. insulting. that they think people are ignorant enough to believe that bullshit.
00:13:38.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, oh, you all do. Oh, all the mega people believe it and they're mad when people try to tell them the truth.
00:13:40.81
Bryan
oh
00:13:45.09
Bryan
Yes.
00:13:45.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Great.
00:13:46.73
Bryan
Yeah, that's that's that's that's a million percent accurate because...
00:13:50.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and especially when it's things that don't even hold up to logic. First of all, Medicaid is not a payout. If anyone is getting Medicaid, it means they're not being left to die in a parking lot somewhere. That's that's the health care that they're mad about.
00:14:05.52
Bryan
Yep, and it's... Well, I mean, there's... There's... there's Proud... I call it... they're They're proudly ignorant and ah proudly racist.
00:14:19.41
Bryan
And at all it's like a mix of those two things. And there's... I don't know if there's a way to fix that or deprogram people in some way.
00:14:34.01
Bryan
um i don't know if we've really tried. Yeah.
00:14:38.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
As far as I can tell, what seems to turn these folks around is, is for some of them, money. Because that's how you stop some of this. You have to sue people into making them do the right thing.
00:14:50.24
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
00:14:50.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
But it seems like even when their own stuff is impacted, they don't necessarily change their mind. Like in 20, I want to say 2015.
00:15:02.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
te Um, no, no. It was before this last election. You know how Don Jr. Spent like two years courting and vetting JD Vance and teaching him how to, you know, do the MAGA bullshit line very well, by the way. I mean, he, if that was, that was his assignment, he aced it.
00:15:19.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
But, um, J.D. Vance founded a business, and the way that they make money is they sell distressed American farmland to foreign investors.
00:15:32.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
And even with that knowledge, because I was a Kamala ambassador, I told anybody who would listen to me that that was something that they were doing. and And all these farm people, I mean, I'm in Michigan. We're surrounded by corn farmers, dairy farmers. I mean, that's what we have here, and nobody believed it.
00:15:51.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nobody believed that Trump thought so little of them that he and his VP were going to screw the farmers over on purpose so that they could make money selling their land.
00:16:02.24
Bryan
yeah
00:16:02.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
And yeah, I mean, if you think those are good people, sure, you're not going to believe that because it's absolutely fucking ghastly. But yeah, that's that's what they're doing.
00:16:09.89
Bryan
well Well, I mean, it's it's it's part of that. um It's partly that, I think, and it's also just, well, it's not going to happen to me. And then also, too, I think, deep down, they they're totally fine with it.
00:16:28.36
Bryan
even though it's completely Even though it's completely destroyed them, even though it's completely destroyed their lives in a million different ways, as long as they get to feel important or above someone because of their white or their farmer or whatever whatever culture war nonsense it is.
00:16:28.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:16:47.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
what ah Well, it's the Southern strategy. Are you are you familiar with that phrase?
00:16:51.84
Bryan
Yep. Yep. Oh, yep.
00:16:52.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so yeah. So basically they expanded the Southern strategy To include all liberals.
00:16:59.29
Bryan
Yep.
00:17:00.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know. Like the dialoguing on that kid. That killed Charlie Kirk. Is that. He must be a liberal. Because he knows a trans person. And is kind to them.
00:17:11.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
So that alone. Is enough to make him. MAGA eyes. Oh he's a radical liberal. Because he knows a trans person. And doesn't treat them like shit.
00:17:21.38
Bryan
that
00:17:21.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Or avoid them like the plague. So whoa that must be liberal.
00:17:23.58
Bryan
Yep.
00:17:25.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like what the fuck.
00:17:25.48
Bryan
Yep. I know.
00:17:27.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, it's, but then they get mad when you say hate is ingrained in their philosophy.
00:17:29.17
Bryan
it
00:17:33.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, come on, you guys, you can't have it both ways.
00:17:35.84
Bryan
Well, there's well i mean, it's partly that and it's partly a religious thing, I think. um there's there's There there seem to be there seem to be people who are deeply religious and because they they are religious, they think they can't possibly be wrong, they can't possibly be hateful, they can't possibly be terrible because they're, know, they believe in God or whatever.
00:18:03.70
Bryan
And it's, I mean, it it's like they're impenetrable. They can't, they can they can't see beyond their own bullshit.
00:18:13.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Which is kind of terrifying since most of the stuff that they are sure the Bible says doesn't really say, or it says it right next to some stuff that they're just completely disregarding.
00:18:25.00
Bryan
Oh yeah.
00:18:25.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um,
00:18:25.48
Bryan
I mean, you know, the Prince of Peace, There's apparently some jacked dude on a horse with a machine gun. and it makes absolutely no sense.
00:18:36.05
Bryan
It's fucking stupid. But they believe it. you know they they They believe it 100%. a hundred percent They've made it their entire personality. And there's like no hope for them. I don't get it.
00:18:46.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, what's the joke? Like, going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going into a garage makes you a car?
00:18:54.41
Bryan
Yeah, they say, yeah, it's...
00:18:57.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, dude, this is going to depress me if we keep talking about it, so I want to move on and talk about your book. um I actually know the answer to this question already, but I'm going to pretend I don't. So, what led you to assemble your reviews into a book?
00:19:12.07
Bryan
Well, amazingly, it's you.
00:19:17.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
What?
00:19:17.98
Bryan
you you You gave me the inspiration for it because I had been i had been going through some floppy disks, old floppy disks, taking stuff from floppy disks to a thumb drive.
00:19:32.72
Bryan
And I had mentioned it on Facebook that I was doing that. And you asked me, oh, wow, are you going to turn that into a book? And i was like, I am now, cause i because I hadn't thought of it but before then.
00:19:49.71
Bryan
um and that's ah that's sort of the origin story of not coming to a theater near you.
00:19:56.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
So this is 50 great direct-to-video action flicks of the early 2000s. That is a very specific niche. Why is that the one that you chose?
00:20:08.48
Bryan
Well, ah basically there's two reasons for that. One, i genuinely like these movies. I love them. And I like them and love them unironically.
00:20:19.42
Bryan
A lot of times when when people discuss B movies and these kinds of action movies in general, there's sort of a, ah you're supposed to laugh at them a little bit. You're supposed to make fun of them.
00:20:35.69
Bryan
Sort of like, and you know and I don't want to, shit on stuff like Elvira or Mystery Science Theater 3000 because I love those things.
00:20:43.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:20:44.45
Bryan
But um I'm not... That's not what I do. that's not That's not me. I'm more of... I come from more like the Joe Bob Briggs school of...
00:20:57.61
Bryan
B-movie appreciation where you'll make jokes and you'll have fun and you but you'll be sarcastic, but you're you're also very much into the movies, you're into the culture of the movies, you want to appreciate them for, you know, what they are and what they do as movies because that's that's what they are, they are movies.
00:21:17.36
Bryan
um
00:21:17.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
I love that and I want to tell you why. You know on YouTube there's that channel CinemaSins and they go through movies and pick them apart and say all the little things that piss them off about a movie.
00:21:25.05
Bryan
Yes.
00:21:31.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that they do it to great movies. And my husband in particular, like every once in a while, I'll be like, oh, I hate that movie. I'll see why they hate it. um
00:21:39.96
Bryan
yeah
00:21:40.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
And my husband is like, why would you want to watch people crapping on someone else's hard work as a creative? And I'm just like, yeah. because I'm being a petty bitch.
00:21:50.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Don't call me out. But the thing is, there was a response channel, which is Cinema Wins, and they do the same thing and just point out all the little things in movies that are awesome.
00:21:56.94
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
00:22:02.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
And my husband, as usual, is right, because it is so much more fun to watch and celebrate things. And that's actually, that's a huge thing in fandom. Like when I was a kid,
00:22:14.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
A Star Wars fan was a person who watched Star Wars at every possible opportunity, bought every bit of merch they could, were constantly talking about the characters and the plot and how much they loved it, and they'd buy costumes and dress up, and they just love, love, love, loved it.
00:22:31.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
And now a Star Wars fan is often someone who just thinks they're an authority on why Star Wars sucks now.
00:22:39.18
Bryan
oh yeah Oh God, yeah. that's That's so depressing. i mean, i don't... you know I never got into the whole thing of... I think a lot of lot of this started with the prequels, with Star Wars.
00:22:54.38
Bryan
I love the prequels. And it somehow got worse in a slightly different way when the Disney movies came out. And the Disney movies, I think... I don't...
00:23:07.40
Bryan
like them necessarily as much as I like the prequels or the original movies, but they're not, I don't consider them bad movies. I mean, people, I've seen these Star Wars fans like lose their shit over,
00:23:21.39
Bryan
what is that, the the second one there, The Last of the, no, The Last of the Jedi, the second Disney movie, and I just don't know what the hell these people are talking about.
00:23:25.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
the clones.
00:23:28.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, right. Okay.
00:23:35.27
Bryan
Why, and you know, and then why are you, why are you a fan of this thing that you hate so much?
00:23:41.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and you know Marvel's going through the same thing. Like, if you didn't like the Peacemaker Season 2 finale, shut up and get away from me.
00:23:43.76
Bryan
Oh God. Yeah.
00:23:49.28
Bryan
Well, mean, well, I mean,
00:23:49.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay? Just like, what? Why would you say that out loud? but
00:23:55.58
Bryan
well, I think back to, uh, like, um, and with the Marvel movies when, uh, Captain Marvel was coming out and everyone was having a shit fit over that.
00:24:06.38
Bryan
And i was, i mean, I was, I was like momentarily concerned with Captain Marvel, uh, taking, becoming, uh, or what they say?
00:24:17.20
Bryan
Replacing Tony Stark in the Avengers.
00:24:20.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
00:24:21.03
Bryan
And I was, i wasn't, I wasn't like, that can't happen. That's horrible. She's a woman, blah, blah, blah. I was like, I don't know. Can she really replace, Robert Downey Jr., he seems pretty integral to what's going on.
00:24:32.91
Bryan
But then i went and saw the movie, and she was great. And I'm like, we got nothing to worry about.
00:24:41.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Yep.
00:24:43.47
Bryan
So, I mean, it's...
00:24:44.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but there's also ah a line of thinking among a certain swath of fans... That anytime you have someone headlining a movie that is not a straight white male, that it's in service of some sort of agenda.
00:24:54.79
Bryan
Oh, God. Yep.
00:24:58.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Which in and of itself proves why you need to have diversity because then people grow up. you know i don't mean to quote Charlie Kirk, but one of the things that he would refer to is taking a white man's slot.
00:25:14.55
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
00:25:14.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, like DEI and affirmative action give away white man slots to other people. And I wish that I could still ask him what the fuck a white man slot is.
00:25:27.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, what, where are these, what are these positions that are specifically reserved for white dudes? And then, you know, you watch Marvel because man, again, I'm in Michigan. So there were men literally having protest signs about Kamala K, Kamala Khan, like furious.
00:25:46.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
And granted this, this was a rather hilarious time to introduce a superhero named Kamala. I'm not going to lie. I enjoy that very much as a, as a liberal, but, uh,
00:25:54.19
Bryan
so
00:25:58.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, that that whole thing, like the same people that scream about how representation is just an agenda and it's liberal, this and that, think that because when they were growing up, everyone they were shown was a straight white male. And if there was a brown or a black person, it was the companion or the secretary or the assistant or, you know, the neighbor, the maid, whatever. It wasn't like...
00:26:24.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
People think the world is supposed to be like that because that's what they're shown. And that's why it's so distressing that Disney has made that sharp right turn into fascism because they were doing so well.
00:26:38.95
Bryan
yes
00:26:39.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then just suddenly they're like, okay, you know what? We're not going to do an Okoye show. You know what? We're not going to do a Princess Tiana show. We're not going to have a trans character. Yeah, you can still keep the actress, but we're going to switch it around. And guess what? All the kids are going to start talking about Heavenly Father.
00:26:54.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like Disney, what?
00:26:55.57
Bryan
Yeah, i mean exactly. I mean, this, this attack on stuff like diversity and, uh, it makes no sense to me at all. it makes And it makes no sense to me. Uh, it just doesn't make any sense because I mean, uh, what is, what is wrong with, uh, uh, I, you so I sometimes see this in like martial arts cinema, not as much, but you, you, you do see it when, uh, like Michael Jai White, when he, uh, he's, he's a great martial artist and a great actor.
00:27:33.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
h
00:27:33.03
Bryan
And, he doesn't get the op He doesn't really get the opportunities that he should. And that was even before all the diversity, the anti-diversity stuff. yeah he so He has to go out and make his own stuff.
00:27:46.51
Bryan
And that's just insane to me because he's a top-notch guy. he should He should be a bigger star than he is. But he isn't.
00:27:57.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah, we've we've talked about um on the show just like Hollywood and how, you know, basically product versus art, like that whole thing.
00:28:07.02
Bryan
yeah Yeah, but i
00:28:08.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I think that's that's one of the reasons that that happens, because people are using charts and graphs about what demographics have, how much money, and and who they're going to pay to see. And it's really a shame. We get cheated out of so much art because of that.
00:28:22.17
Bryan
yeah it's true. It's true. um Yeah, I mean, representation is incredibly important. um Because if you, I mean, again, if you watch all the old movies, there aren't any, there aren't as many gay characters, there aren't as many heroic black or Hispanic characters. There aren't as many heroic female characters.
00:28:43.68
Bryan
yeah And now we're starting to see more of them. That's not a problem. i don't I don't see that as a problem. The only problem is if they make bad
00:28:51.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so in...
00:28:52.93
Bryan
That's it. Yep, mean,
00:28:55.92
Bryan
you
00:28:57.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
right
00:28:57.21
Bryan
that's it
00:28:58.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, because if you're a woman director and you make a bad movie, you're not going to get another movie anytime soon.
00:29:04.40
Bryan
um
00:29:04.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Whereas if you're a dude, you could be flopping all over the place and somebody somewhere will still fund you.
00:29:05.23
Bryan
i mean oh
00:29:09.96
Bryan
Oh, yeah. i mean there's I mean, you go on IMDb and look at all the the movies certain directors have made, and have been complete flops, but yet they still get $100 million bucks to go make their next thing.
00:29:20.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah coughorsese Cough, cough.
00:29:21.13
Bryan
But if some woman director makes
00:29:24.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm sorry, but...
00:29:29.30
Bryan
is given fifty million dollars to make a movie and it only makes you know two hundred million well that's a flop Never going to work again. Woke.
00:29:41.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Exactly. And then every time there's a Barbie, people just call it a fluke.
00:29:42.09
Bryan
Just nonsense.
00:29:45.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, like what a movie is just impossibly huge and makes a gazillion dollars like, oh, what a fluke.
00:29:45.57
Bryan
Yep.
00:29:50.72
Bryan
Yep, well.
00:29:52.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Or their takeaway is that they should make more movies about dolls, you know, and they don't really see what part of it actually worked.
00:29:56.79
Bryan
Yeah, well. and Well, there there was that old, i always bring this up. There was an old non sequitur comic strip ah Years and years ago, back when Titanic was a move but was a big hit, and I remember the the the comic was, the the the lesson Hollywood learned from Titanic was that that people wanted to watch more movies about boats.
00:30:24.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. So, okay, so on that note, your book has 50 different movies in it. um How many of these movies are not led by white men?
00:30:37.51
Bryan
Uh, that's a, that's a thing. uh, there's a couple in there. Daryl Hannah Stark.
00:30:42.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, i'm i'm I'm sure you didn't categorize them that way, so there's not going to be an appendix with the demographics, but but broadly...
00:30:46.21
Bryan
No.
00:30:48.52
Bryan
No. No. Um, uh, most of them are, most of them are white dudes. Most of them headed by white dudes. I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a great movie called Juncture that's a female-led revenge, revenge action movie.
00:31:04.17
Bryan
Uh, she basically is, uh, I call it, she's playing, she's like the female Big Chuck Bronson in that.
00:31:13.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh,
00:31:13.44
Bryan
That's really good. There's a movie called The Job with Daryl Hannah. um She plays like this assassin, like this mob assassin who's having a ah crisis, a life crisis because she she gets pregnant.
00:31:30.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh wow.
00:31:30.21
Bryan
And so she has and she has to figure out you know what she wants to do with her life.
00:31:36.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
What year is that?
00:31:36.54
Bryan
The
00:31:37.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
That would have been before Kill Bill, right?
00:31:37.79
Bryan
That was, that was, yeah, I think it was probably made in, can't remember exactly when that year, when that was. It was 2003?
00:31:50.51
Bryan
Yeah, 2003.
00:31:51.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
So right around, that's right around the same time as Kill Bale. How interesting.
00:31:53.70
Bryan
So it could, so it could have been, it could have been made in conjunction with that. girl Truthfully, a lot ah a lot of direct-to-video movies, a lot of of B movies, especially in the action genre, tend to be
00:32:11.34
Bryan
not all the time, but they they try to piggyback off a like a bigger movie. sort Sort of like the, not not quite what the Asylum does with Mockbusters, but it's kind of like that.
00:32:16.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, right.
00:32:22.72
Bryan
Well, I mean, that's what Roger Corman, that's what like Roger Corman used to do back in the day.
00:32:23.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:32:25.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was just going to say like Carnosaur. That was the first thing that came to mind was the Carnosaur was released like six months before Jurassic Park.
00:32:30.35
Bryan
Oh, yeah. yeah
00:32:33.90
Bryan
Yep. Carnosaur's awesome.
00:32:34.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
I saw Carnosaur in the theater.
00:32:36.87
Bryan
Holy crap. That's awesome. i had to wait I had to wait for that for a cable.
00:32:40.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Well, there used to be this, this, oh no, we had this, this mall near us had a lot of B movies and the mall also had a bar. So cheap movie day, we would show up there and they would have buy one, get one Long Islands.
00:32:51.06
Bryan
sweet.
00:32:55.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
So we would slam a couple of Long Islands and then we went to see Carnivore.
00:32:55.87
Bryan
Ha, ha,
00:33:00.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
And by the time you get to the greetings, my green brother, i mean we were like on the floor laughing because it was yeah I mean, well, you see Carnivore.
00:33:04.75
Bryan
ha. Ha, ha, ha.
00:33:11.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's great.
00:33:11.71
Bryan
Oh yeah, that's all its it's great.
00:33:12.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
So.
00:33:13.35
Bryan
It is great.
00:33:13.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, yes, I'm familiar with that. Yeah.
00:33:17.68
Bryan
Oh, I mean...
00:33:17.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And that's kind of my thing. Like, when I think of B-movies, I think of horror movies. I think of giant ants and blobs and, you know, subpar writing that's made up for with, like, practical special effects and that sort of thing.
00:33:24.14
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
00:33:30.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I love, like, Velocipaster and, ah you know, Carnosaur, all the Sharknados.
00:33:35.55
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
00:33:36.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
I have Thunder Leaven's autograph. I mean, that's, yeah.
00:33:38.65
Bryan
Oh, wow.
00:33:40.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's a signed script, actually. It's the first Sharknado script, and and he signed it to me.
00:33:42.87
Bryan
that's That's fucking sweet.
00:33:45.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Isn't it?
00:33:46.20
Bryan
It is.
00:33:46.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Isn't it?
00:33:46.68
Bryan
Yeah, because he he's cool and the Sharknado movies are great. I love The Asylum.
00:33:51.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and it It's wild because the thing about the Sharknado movies is you can tell when he stops writing them because he wrote the first, like he I think he wrote the first two and then he advised on three and four, like they took his
00:34:13.15
Bryan
Call from Flintstone empty. Call from Flintstone empty. Fucking phone.
00:34:26.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I usually remind everybody to go on Do Not Disturb, and i didn't do it. I just put my own phone on Do Not Disturb. um
00:34:34.08
Bryan
And.
00:34:35.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so... Right, so so Thunder Lovin' wrote the first few Sharknadoes and then advised, but as of, like, after four, he was out.
00:34:47.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
And you can tell because the movies are still ridiculous, but they're not funny. You know, they're they just they stopped making me laugh at a certain point.
00:34:57.45
Bryan
Well, I think after 4, they tried to lean in a little bit too much into the the meme of it.
00:35:08.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, and just the craziness.
00:35:08.81
Bryan
and but you the It
00:35:15.16
Bryan
it's it was supposed to be fun and ridiculous, but they went too far.
00:35:20.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, because it's not it's not primarily supposed to be ridiculous.
00:35:20.10
Bryan
They went too far with it.
00:35:24.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's supposed to be secondary to a story about, you know, sharks in a tornado. It's a weather emergency, man. Weather emergencies are serious.
00:35:32.09
Bryan
Yes, they are.
00:35:32.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
okay i'm being i'm i'm Okay, I'm being facetious.
00:35:32.73
Bryan
That's true.
00:35:34.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
But but yeah, i have I have to ask you, have you seen Inhuman Witch?
00:35:40.98
Bryan
I have not.
00:35:42.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
It shows up on YouTube every once in a while, probably illegally. and They take it down. But I've also seen it on Prime. And I would swear to you that it is the most sincere B-movie that I have ever seen.
00:35:56.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
It looks... I mean, like, the backgrounds and stuff, it looks like the Little Rascals made it. Like, they're literally drawing drawing on cardboard to make the inside of a spaceship.
00:36:01.05
Bryan
yeah
00:36:05.55
Bryan
Wow.
00:36:06.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
It is fantastic. It is, like, unbelievable. Well, you know how... Some B-movies just have more heart than others.
00:36:15.57
Bryan
Yes.
00:36:16.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
And they get away with...
00:36:16.69
Bryan
That's...
00:36:17.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because because you know that scene in Velocipaster where they couldn't afford to do the special effect?
00:36:21.79
Bryan
Yep.
00:36:22.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
So they just showed you part of a street and it explains to you what the special effect is supposed to be?
00:36:24.75
Bryan
Yep.
00:36:27.16
Bryan
Yep.
00:36:28.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's the kind of heart that makes me love B-movies. That they're just like, you know what? If people are with us, they're going to not mind that we did this. And then just do it.
00:36:37.70
Bryan
Yeah, but that's that's that's always great. That's always great to see um because, and I mean, i've i've seen I've seen two movies. I've been on two movie sets and I've seen how difficult it is to make anything.
00:36:54.34
Bryan
it it ah It really is. When when people, when when you talk to filmmakers and they will remark that it's a miracle that any that a movie gets made at all, it really is because it's just,
00:37:08.40
Bryan
it's just and It's just incredibly difficult, especially when you don't have resources, when you don't have a lot of money or time, and youre you really you really are doing it by the seat your pants.
00:37:21.02
Bryan
<unk> It's not easy.
00:37:21.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and it being a collaborative art, you rely on so many people.
00:37:25.16
Bryan
Yep, that too.
00:37:25.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
So if any one part of that breaks down, it it causes, i but I was a theater major. So, you know, it's not movies, but it's the same concept. It's a bunch of people that have to get their job right or everybody gets screwed.
00:37:36.44
Bryan
Yep, that's true. Because, I mean, if the
00:37:38.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, you could be the best actor in the world, but if the spotlight's not on you, nobody's going to know about it.
00:37:43.40
Bryan
ye because i mean if the sound guy doesn't have his his machine on, the the mics aren't working, if the camera isn't right, none of it matters.
00:37:53.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Exactly. You know, and your costume needs to fit and your makeup has to jibe with the lighting or you're going to look awful. And, you know, there's just so many aspects of all of it. So let me ask you this.
00:38:05.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
So when you talk about ah cutting on special effects and doing things on a small budget, um how does that translate into an action movie? Like, what are the parts of action movies that are expensive? I really don't know.
00:38:18.25
Bryan
Well, what from what i've I've managed to learn over time is that in in terms of like the three major B-movie genres, horror, science fiction, and action, action movies tend to be the most expensive because they require the most production value to succeed. um and a lot of they They also take tend to take longer to make because...
00:38:46.59
Bryan
Uh, even if you have like CG effects and stuff, you have fighting, you know, like martial arts fights, fist fights, you have explosions, you have car chases.
00:38:58.03
Bryan
And to achieve all of those, it just takes more time and more resources to do it. And you can make an effective and scary horror movie, with your cell phone in your bathroom for like, you know, a couple hundred dollars, uh,
00:39:16.73
Bryan
it's you're probably going to be able to do that in general with an action movie just simply because it just there's too much there's there's two there's a lot involved with it that you the the you don't think about until you start thinking about it.
00:39:23.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I guess, yeah, like...
00:39:34.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, like stunts, I guess. Horror movies have stunts, certainly, but they're more optional. You can make a great horror movie without stunts if you want to, if the writing is there.
00:39:40.36
Bryan
Yep.
00:39:43.90
Bryan
Yep.
00:39:44.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
um I don't imagine you could make an action movie without stunts. Like, that's just part of the core of it.
00:39:48.97
Bryan
Now,
00:39:50.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then that also makes things way more expensive because ensuring everybody is so expensive.
00:39:55.32
Bryan
yep. Oh, yeah, because, i mean, you're going to, if you're going be, if you're going be filming a martial arts fight, ah even if you're careful, and even if you have masters, someone's going to get hurt.
00:40:05.92
Bryan
so you know so there's Someone's going to maybe break a hand, or you're going to get cut somewhere, or, you know, badly, or there's going to be you know Maybe someone's going to have to go to the emergency room because of laceration to the head or something.
00:40:21.49
Bryan
you know tip That doesn't happen as often and necessarily with horror movies or science fiction movies. ah But with action, that's going to happen.
00:40:29.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:40:31.22
Bryan
because yeah cause i mean A horror movie may end up having like one or two stunts. An action movie is probably going to have some kind of stunt every couple of minutes for it te were for to be really...
00:40:43.52
Bryan
ah really entertaining action movie.
00:40:45.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and i used to think it was so weird that there were like you know, stunt guys that, that actors will have their own stunt guys.
00:40:54.19
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
00:40:54.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
But the more I learned about film, the more sense it made that somebody would have their own stunt guy. But then to see somebody like Tom Cruise, just say, well, you know what? I'll take care of the insurance because I want to do my own stunts.
00:41:07.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then you see his ass just like climbing free handed up a mountain or some crazy thing.
00:41:13.07
Bryan
i
00:41:13.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, I mean, I'm, I'm pretty sure Tom Cruise is like certifiably insane in some way, but, um, The idea of, I mean, what do you think about that, about actors like doing their own stunts?
00:41:26.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Does that even seem that seems ill-advised? Because if you're not a professional stunt person, you're risking a lot of people.
00:41:29.99
Bryan
it is
00:41:32.47
Bryan
it it it It it is ill-advised in a lot of different ways because, i mean, they can, like the, we'll say like the eighty s um A lot of the action stars, like the big-name action stars, yeah beyond, like, you know, Arnold and Stallone, and you had guys like Chuck Norris and Jeff Speakman, Sho Kazugi, guys like that. I mean, they were mean they were athletes and martial artists, so they could could handle doing stunts pretty easily because they were, you know, they were...
00:42:13.54
Bryan
that was part of their whole thing so they could do it. But if you're, you know, but but if you're just an actor who then wants to do his own stunts, you better be, you better be an an athlete of some kind or you should have some sort of like athletic training.
00:42:25.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:42:30.84
Bryan
I mean, when you look at someone like Cruz, like Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise has become like Jackie Chan where he's, you know, he's become his own, his his own ah He's gone into business for himself like that.
00:42:46.66
Bryan
He's made himself into a stunt person because he's and he's trained...
00:42:49.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Well, like Keanu Reeves.
00:42:52.32
Bryan
we ye I mean, all yeah well that training from the Matrix movies, I mean, they transferred very well into the John Wick movies.
00:42:52.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
All that training, has has he he walks the walk now.
00:43:03.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, they do.
00:43:03.71
Bryan
I mean, mean John Wick wouldn't be John Wick without, a you know, 20 years ago when he was working with Some of the same people, like Chad Stowelski, his name is, the the guy who directed who's directed all the the John Wick movies.
00:43:21.24
Bryan
He was involved with he was involved with the Matrix movies.
00:43:21.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah hu
00:43:24.96
Bryan
so But yeah i mean you have to be yeah, have to be really and you have to really know what you're doing.
00:43:34.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, now I have to ask you this, because I'm sure you know more about action movies than I do, certainly.
00:43:34.85
Bryan
Because... now
00:43:40.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
um In the John Wick movies, I think it's John Wick 3, he beats up a dude with a horse. Like the horse is the weapon and he uses it to beat up a guy without hurting the horse.
00:43:54.42
Bryan
ye
00:43:54.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Do you know more about that scene than I do? Like how that was conceptualized? Is it is there CGI? Like what do you know anything?
00:44:01.66
Bryan
Yeah, there's a ton of... Yeah. There's a ton of CGI with that. um If I remember right, because it's on it's on the DVD, like the behind-the-scenes, it's on the DVD.
00:44:14.32
Bryan
If I remember right, there's quite a bit of CGI involved with that. Simply because it's a horse.
00:44:19.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:44:23.41
Bryan
You know, and...
00:44:23.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, horses in particular are like the first animals that we really legislated in film because they were doing so much messed up stuff to horses in the old westerns.
00:44:24.01
Bryan
you
00:44:28.96
Bryan
yep
00:44:31.35
Bryan
Yep. Yep. I mean, you can you can learn ah quite a bit about that if you read Hal Needham's autobiography. the
00:44:40.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, Okay.
00:44:41.52
Bryan
um he because Because he was, before he became director Hal Needham, he was a big deal stunt guy. And he talks quite a bit about horse stunt training in that book.
00:44:55.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I can't tell if I would be fascinated or infuriated. Probably both.
00:44:59.65
Bryan
Well, yeah, it's both because, I mean, it's it's it's it's crazy what they did, both in terms of what they actually did and the stuff that the the bad stuff that happened to the horses.
00:45:12.98
Bryan
Junior.
00:45:13.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
<unk> We're not going to cut out the dog because dogs are cute and everybody likes them.
00:45:16.84
Bryan
yeah Well, that's good. well my My buddy Junior, he's he's cute, but I wish I knew what he was barking at.
00:45:19.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:45:24.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
and He's barking at our incredible wit. He appreciates a good conversation, and ah you know i'm I'm glad he's here for it.
00:45:30.25
Bryan
Could be.
00:45:34.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
but So getting back to the book specifically, do you have an intended readership for this?
00:45:40.77
Bryan
um Sort of, because i mean one one of the things that I can, one of the reasons I sort of came to doing an action book is that I want it to function as a sort of a guidebook for people who are maybe interested in direct-to-video action movies that they see on ah various streaming services, or if they they they go to like a like a thrift store and they they see a bunch of like old DVDs and stuff, because they don't really have DVD sections in stuff like Walmart anymore. i mean, they're still there, but I mean, back when, during the the time period of my book, I mean, I remember going
00:46:28.95
Bryan
going to like Target or Walmart or something and there's like three aisles of DVDs.
00:46:34.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah Yeah definitely
00:46:34.81
Bryan
Yet now, you know, now it's maybe maybe an aisle. Maybe half an aisle.
00:46:41.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
But that's the thing about with streaming, like there's so many movies. And when I look, like I think I know a fair bit about movies and half the movies I've never even heard of.
00:46:51.94
Bryan
Yep.
00:46:52.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I think a book like this is going to be really helpful to people that are fans of the genre, but are just overwhelmed because there's so much stuff and it's impossible to tell what's worth seeing.
00:47:00.12
Bryan
Yeah.
00:47:02.66
Bryan
Yeah, because well, because, I mean, if you go onto these, like, Tubi, mostly it's mostly, like, the free ones, like Tubi and Plex and even Pluto, stuff like that, sometimes on Peacock.
00:47:07.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:47:11.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:47:13.53
Bryan
There are all kinds of movies on there that may star someone you recognize, like Steven Seagal or Michael Jai White or or Michael Madsen.
00:47:21.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Michael Madsen?
00:47:24.08
Bryan
And you may want to watch it, but you're not really sure because you've never heard of it. And is it worth my time? So kind of hoping that my my book functions as a guide book for that kind of thing where where someone may see the job on Tubi or the girl from the naked eye or any Dolph Lundgren movie like Command Performance.
00:47:57.08
Bryan
They and can go to the book and say, oh, all right. That movie actually is pretty good. I'll check it out. And then once they check it out, and if hopefully they like it, then they'll be a little more adventurous with
00:48:10.30
Bryan
other movies that they may see. they may may They may not need the guidebook to take a chance on something.
00:48:17.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice Nice So can we expect more time periods? Another book?
00:48:22.91
Bryan
um Yeah, maybe. If this is successful. I mean, I have but have other ideas for other other books probably would be pretty neat to do something
00:48:36.33
Bryan
either after or maybe a little bit before because there's all there's all kinds of direct-to-video movies from back in the day and and even even today there's still there's all kinds of stuff that's coming out that probably doesn't get the the audience that it deserves
00:48:45.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure, sure.
00:48:56.96
Bryan
Because people just don't, they either don't know about it or they don't, they're not sure about it.
00:48:57.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:49:02.04
Bryan
You know.
00:49:04.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Yep. Totally agree. Totally agree. Every ah holiday season. I tell people why it's important to watch Santa Jaws. And only a few people listen to me every year.
00:49:11.50
Bryan
Cut.
00:49:13.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
But that's it's a winner. It is a winner.
00:49:16.64
Bryan
There, there's there's a, there's a great horror comedy by Chad Ridgely. He's a, he's a standup comic and a, and an actor. It's called Massacre on Aisle 12.
00:49:30.63
Bryan
that's That's really well done. It's really funny. um
00:49:34.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:49:34.84
Bryan
I encourage people to check that out. I'm not sure where they i don't not not sure if where that is streaming, but it's out there, and it's a movie I think you should check out. I think people would like it.
00:49:45.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. All right. Noted. Noted. So you, I'm aware that you have an anxiety diagnosis and that you have also lived with prolonged grief.
00:49:58.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
um So what do you want to tell us about how all that started?
00:50:02.70
Bryan
Well, my the the anxiety that I have is something that I really didn't realize I had until last year, 2024. ah twenty twenty four Thirty years ago, as a matter of fact, the summer of 1995, I had
00:50:25.72
Bryan
basically a series of panic attacks, one right after the other. And that went on for months.
00:50:32.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh
00:50:35.58
Bryan
And I didn't really know. i really didn't know what was happening. I couldn't articulate what was happening to me. i mean, my parents took me to all kinds of doctors.
00:50:50.74
Bryan
And they were looking for like a physical issue, something like, you know like a tumor.
00:50:55.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
And how old were you?
00:50:57.54
Bryan
Uh, Christ. Uh,
00:51:01.38
Bryan
How old would I have been?
00:51:04.48
Bryan
16? 15, 16?
00:51:05.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
so Okay.
00:51:06.95
Bryan
Yeah, 95. Yeah, that's how. yeah um But i had i yeah so I went to all kinds of doctors, and they were looking for something physically wrong with me.
00:51:19.05
Bryan
And of course, they I mean, they never found anything.
00:51:22.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
okay
00:51:22.75
Bryan
And it was... um that That summer was just... pure hell because i mean I almost didn't take my high school final exams because I was just a complete mess.
00:51:39.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no. no
00:51:39.74
Bryan
And and there was one i mean there was one weekend where my parents took me to the emergency room. A surgeon was going to cut me open because I was like because i was like in such like pain and like freaking out and stuff.
00:51:51.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
00:51:56.52
Bryan
And of course, you know the surgeon didn't do anything because... You know, physically, there's nothing and there's nothing wrong with me. And that i stopped having the panic attacks basically like towards the end of the summer.
00:52:14.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
you
00:52:16.88
Bryan
And want to say I kind of like mellowed out.
00:52:22.95
Bryan
i never I've never had panic attacks as bad as then, but I still have experienced them from time to time.
00:52:33.67
Bryan
since then. um um i had i had a couple panic attacks when I was in college that that were like bad, and I lived off campus all four years I was in school.
00:52:46.53
Bryan
So you know driving back and forth was not not the greatest.
00:52:49.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
00:52:52.81
Bryan
um yeah and i had paid and And I had my old retail job
00:52:53.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, that's scary.
00:52:59.93
Bryan
I had at least two panic attacks there. And that's not... You know you know you don't want to have a panic attack on your when you when you're at your job.
00:53:11.58
Bryan
Not because it's not because necessarily it's embarrassing.
00:53:11.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Great.
00:53:13.94
Bryan
because it I mean, it is, in a way. um But it's just... you don't you know if If you're going to have a panic attack, you want to have it at home. Where you're mostly safe.
00:53:22.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, you want the situation to be as safe and and comfortable as possible, yeah.
00:53:25.88
Bryan
Yeah. Yeah.
00:53:27.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
And in it at work, it's a real crapshoot if you're going to get support versus people telling you that you're an inconvenience.
00:53:31.47
Bryan
Well, that I mean, like and I was part of the management team for a period of time, and I had a panic attack while I was in charge. So that's not it's not that's that's that's not something you want to experience, necessarily.
00:53:43.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yikes.
00:53:48.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
So you're out in the world living your life and you have a panic attack. What kind of support structure did you have?
00:53:55.95
Bryan
Well, and at the time, I mean i didn't really have any... support because again, I didn't really understand what was happening. It was mostly just calm down.
00:54:08.25
Bryan
You got to learn to calm down and try not to, be around as, uh, as stress, try to be around, try not to be around stressful situations as often, which is not easy.
00:54:24.32
Bryan
and cause life is stressful. Um, and that kind of thing. i mean, i During that period of time, I developed... I call them like a tick. Like a personal tick.
00:54:38.82
Bryan
First, I started having to constantly chew gum. That somehow soothed soothes me somehow.
00:54:46.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:54:47.56
Bryan
I did that for like two years. i was I would get like a like those ten packs of extra juicy fruit gum.
00:54:56.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:54:56.20
Bryan
And i would I would chew gum... Constantly. and if the If the flavoring went out of the ah gum, I had to get another one in there. I had to get a fresh piece. And I did that.
00:55:07.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yes. You can't use Fruit Stripe. You gotta use a good gum for that.
00:55:11.26
Bryan
and that happened for that that That went on for about two years.
00:55:15.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Okay.
00:55:15.66
Bryan
Then I started doing hard candy. It's like an oral fixation thing or something.
00:55:21.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:55:22.09
Bryan
Doing hard candy, like Werther's Original type stuff.
00:55:22.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Mm
00:55:25.65
Bryan
Constantly had to have something like that. that i moved to Then I moved to cough drops, like the halls, and like the the cherry halls and the menthol ones.
00:55:40.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
h
00:55:43.79
Bryan
I was constantly just, I constantly had to have those on me. I had to have like the the bag I was using plus an extra bag.
00:55:57.61
Bryan
And that then led to, that then led to Fisherman's Friends cough drops, which are much more potent cough drops.
00:55:58.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:56:08.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I was going to say, kind of escalating your game there.
00:56:12.25
Bryan
And then then it developed into, a which I still, I still do, I still have them now, icebreakers.
00:56:22.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:56:23.49
Bryan
I always have a, I always have a container of those around me. People think I chew tobacco.
00:56:30.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Oh, because they're round.
00:56:31.00
Bryan
that
00:56:32.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:56:32.73
Bryan
Yep, and quick yeah because I always have it in my front shirt pocket and they think i'm I'm doing chaw or something.
00:56:33.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Okay.
00:56:37.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
right
00:56:40.35
Bryan
it well I had that, and then i constantly have to have a drink with me. I carry around with me a, like when I go out,
00:56:52.00
Bryan
somewhere, like I go grocery shopping or something, I take with me, it's a small Gatorade bottle filled with ginger ale.
00:56:59.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
okay
00:57:00.72
Bryan
I don't drink, I usually don't drink anything from it, but if I don't have it with me, I get nervous. I used to get, I used to get shit from, and it was like, it it wasn't like, one was mean or anything, but it was like ball busting type stuff.
00:57:10.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Interesting.
00:57:17.73
Bryan
Because at my job, my old retail job, I used to walk around with that bottle in my back pocket all the time. And people would always ask me, why you you know why why do you have that bottle with you all the time?
00:57:30.84
Bryan
And I never explained it to anyone. I just said, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?
00:57:37.15
Bryan
But, um I mean, and when i go out to when I go out to dinner with someone or something, i have a my purse and that's what I said i carry a purse it's not a man bag it's a purse like George Carlin said it's a fucking purse
00:57:55.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, boxers fight for a purse.
00:57:56.13
Bryan
but
00:57:58.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
It seems perfectly manly.
00:58:00.23
Bryan
but um I have a i take usually take like three bottles of soda with me I don't drink them but if I don't have them it's like nerve wracking
00:58:13.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, I get that. I mean, that's not one of my things, but there are definitely things that if I don't have them with me at all times, um but you know what, though? I was told that was an autism thing.
00:58:25.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
And not necessarily related to anxiety, but like what person with autism doesn't have anxiety?
00:58:25.19
Bryan
oh
00:58:31.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's all a rich tapestry, right?
00:58:31.59
Bryan
that's Yes. Well, it's like last year when I realized what was happening, i was going i went out with a friend to a... We went to dinner and then we were going to this live music venue.
00:58:46.25
Bryan
I'm not usually a live music person, but this seemed like a fun thing to do. And i started to feel weird while i was driving to this place.
00:58:57.74
Bryan
And when I got out of the car and we were walking to like the entrance to the venue, I said, I have to leave. i can't i can't be here. Because it started happening. I started panicking.
00:59:11.23
Bryan
And ah probably shouldn't have driven home that day.
00:59:14.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no.
00:59:15.25
Bryan
But but i justified it at the time because I didn't live that far away. But when I got bit, I just got home and i
00:59:21.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:59:26.42
Bryan
i shaking, crying, threw up a little bit and stomach ache. It's just, it was, it was, it was terrible.
00:59:35.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, that sucks.
00:59:38.64
Bryan
And and i it's part of it is, is stress it is stress related. Part of it is just life related. um And actually kind of hooks into with the the grief that I've been living with. From 2020 2023, I lost
01:00:03.14
Bryan
four important people in life. 2020, twenty twenty three i lost four important
01:00:12.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no.
01:00:13.34
Bryan
in my life um and twenty twenty My dog, Dude, died. He had cancer and and he he managed to live about six months with cancer.
01:00:20.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Dang.
01:00:30.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
01:00:31.26
Bryan
and Then 2021, dad passed away October. then in 2022, my mom passed away.
01:00:38.82
Bryan
in october
01:00:39.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Dang.
01:00:41.24
Bryan
and then in twenty twenty two my mom passed away
01:00:45.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no.
01:00:46.90
Bryan
ah she She had a she had
01:00:53.42
Bryan
a lot of different health issues that were being managed until, and everything was fine until it wasn't. i was my parents I was my parents' caregiver um basically during the pandemic.
01:01:01.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:01:08.19
Bryan
So I was there i was there more like on the ground with my mother than with my father, but i mean it was basically the same thing. the Basically the same experience. And then in 2023, I had to have my i my older dog, Jake, euthanized because he had cancer.
01:01:33.36
Bryan
He had developed cancer that summer. And he he was, everything, again, everything was managed until it wasn't.
01:01:42.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that's so much. I mean, that's like, got I mean, that must have felt like most of your life just evaporated in ah such a short time. I mean, I i don't know how anybody would would escape that without grief and anxiety and and panic attacks. I mean, that's that's just so much.
01:02:05.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
And for men in particular, men are not encouraged the way women are to seek counseling to spend time with friends to to vent you know men just aren't invited to do those things with the same regularity and frequency that women are
01:02:13.32
Bryan
ye
01:02:23.39
Bryan
That's true. um Well, um there's there's also just, i mean, it's and it's ingrained into you socially. um You know, don't be a wuss.
01:02:35.23
Bryan
You know be a man.
01:02:36.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
sure sure
01:02:36.88
Bryan
Don't cry. Don't, you know, all that stuff. And even if you don't believe in it, and I don't believe in any of that garbage, but it still affects you. It's still, i mean, it's still still out there.
01:02:49.15
Bryan
It's a part of the world. It's part of the culture. It's ingrained in you whether you know but whether you realize it or not. Even if you fight it.
01:02:57.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that's the thing that the things that are taught to you that are like given to you and instilled in you, that's where your brain goes first.
01:03:05.86
Bryan
Yes.
01:03:05.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
The actual truth and what you really feel that comes secondary because you have to think about it to get there. So all of that stuff is really important because life goes so fast.
01:03:12.37
Bryan
Yes.
01:03:17.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
You don't always get a chance to sit and ponder every issue.
01:03:17.74
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
01:03:21.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
So the things that get ingrained in you are often the, it's just the first thing to come out.
01:03:27.00
Bryan
Yes.
01:03:27.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now, what I would like to ask you is in hindsight, what do you think would have helped you?
01:03:36.95
Bryan
ae I probably should have taken... i i wish I was... How do want to put this?
01:03:48.85
Bryan
I wish I had more friends.
01:03:52.03
Bryan
like Like more people in my life. I mean, have my siblings and I have my nephews. um And they're great, and they helped a lot.
01:04:01.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
But you're on the internet a lot.
01:04:03.77
Bryan
Yes.
01:04:03.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
are do you Do you feel comfortable reaching out about personal things on the internet?
01:04:07.84
Bryan
ah Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. um It's sort of like a case-by-case type thing, I guess you'd want to say.
01:04:17.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Okay. Okay.
01:04:18.75
Bryan
um i mean i eventually did... um
01:04:25.38
Bryan
I looked around for like grief counseling, and none of it really appealed to me, because a lot of it was religious. And I'm not religious.
01:04:34.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:04:35.58
Bryan
I mean, I'm not religious, and and I thought that if I went in with to some like church group or something, I'm just going to start arguing with everyone.
01:04:45.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:04:46.32
Bryan
Because a lot of that is because like a lot of that
01:04:47.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:04:49.96
Bryan
And I don't want to necessarily denigrate anything, but a lot of it ends up being like, you know, believe in Jesus and stuff. And that's just not me. I'm not going to take that as advice because it sounds weird.
01:05:03.24
Bryan
um
01:05:03.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, I mean, telling people to pretend their way out of sadness doesn't, I mean,
01:05:11.12
Bryan
But I mean, but I ended up, i ended weirdly enough, I ended up looking, thought about it.
01:05:11.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
01:05:18.93
Bryan
They're like, maybe I should look at this like an intellectual because that's what I claim to be.
01:05:23.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
01:05:24.03
Bryan
I'll go read a book. So I went to my local library and I started looking at different books. And I went to & Noble and and started checking out you know what's what's available, what's there.
01:05:38.10
Bryan
And I did find a book um by Megan Devine. It's OK That You're Not OK.
01:05:48.27
Bryan
And that book helped a lot. It helped me
01:05:55.88
Bryan
figure things out a little bit. it It helped me just deal with it in a more constructive way.
01:06:07.58
Bryan
um Partially because, as as she writes about in the book, a lot of times, in like Western culture, we don't really handle death that well.
01:06:19.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:06:20.34
Bryan
we we We don't really handle grief very well. we usually see it as ah an obstacle to overcome, and you have to you can do it right, and you can do it wrong.
01:06:27.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah but
01:06:32.02
Bryan
And if you're still experiencing things, like six months or a year later, that automatically means that you're doing it wrong and you should feel guilty about that because what the hell is wrong with you?
01:06:47.89
Bryan
That kind of thing.
01:06:49.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Yep, yep.
01:06:49.83
Bryan
um And basically the book helped me understand
01:06:57.50
Bryan
that not everyone experiences grief. everyones I heat ah hate the phrase grief journey. Grief experience. means more to me, makes more sense.
01:07:09.79
Bryan
Um, but everyone experiences grief differently. Uh, and you can't do it wrong. Some people,
01:07:20.73
Bryan
they, they're able to, I don't, I hate saying overcoming it, but I don't, at at the moment I can't think of any other way to explain it, but they overcome it or they deal with it quicker.
01:07:31.91
Bryan
And it's not as, uh, It's not as overwhelming necessarily all the time. um
01:07:40.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, it it for me, it's like just a way of incorporating that into your life.
01:07:41.06
Bryan
they
01:07:47.05
Bryan
Yes.
01:07:47.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
Being like, okay, I don't have this person anymore. I gotta figure out how to just, you know, but have a life, even though that's still the case and I hate it.
01:07:57.19
Bryan
Yes. Yes. you you Essentially, ah you learn to carry it with you. ah that's That's the phrase that tends to get used. And I agree with that. that's And that's what i i still try to do.
01:08:11.87
Bryan
Some days are better than others. The fall has become very difficult to to deal with. but Just to get through because so just about all of that happened in the fall.
01:08:27.33
Bryan
So anniversaries, you know holidays and stuff. It's all like incredibly difficult still to navigate.
01:08:42.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
So this being the middle of October, what what kind of coping mechanisms are you putting place?
01:08:49.51
Bryan
Well, I try to... Well...
01:08:57.91
Bryan
You try to do things that you like or that you love. um And you try to not think about it as as much.
01:09:06.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:09:07.25
Bryan
i mean, your brain's going to think about it no matter what. I figured that out, that you know that the subtext of your brain is always going to be boiling a little bit with that.
01:09:19.71
Bryan
But you try to you try to do things or participate in things that you like and that you enjoy. you try to surround yourself with people and things that you enjoy. um And I mean, that works.
01:09:37.29
Bryan
And sometimes it doesn't work. It tends to work a little bit more often than not. But you just have to take it as it comes.
01:09:48.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
ok Okay, okay. So, you know, that makes me actually think, like, I put movies on in the background while I'm living my life, cooking food, doing crafts, getting work done, whatever.
01:10:02.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Is that part of it for you as well? Just part of setting the mood with a a movie that gives you joy?
01:10:05.28
Bryan
Yes.
01:10:09.21
Bryan
Yes. Absolutely. theyre um When I need to to feel good or to feel better or to just not feel as bad, i will put on something that I that i really like.
01:10:25.15
Bryan
It could be a B-movie. It could be something else. um
01:10:31.28
Bryan
But yeah, that's what I do, too. I mean, I... I've watched Robocop quite often.
01:10:38.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
01:10:39.83
Bryan
Because I love that movie. And and like Escape from L.A. I love that movie. um The Trancers movies.
01:10:46.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
01:10:48.50
Bryan
The first five. Five and a half movies.
01:10:51.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow! That is hardcore, dude.
01:10:54.63
Bryan
and Well. Trancers is my favorite fra franchise period. Out of all franchises. My favorite horror franchise.
01:11:00.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow!
01:11:02.23
Bryan
My favorite horror franchise is Phantasm.
01:11:05.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:11:06.02
Bryan
um I love all five of those movies, but in terms of all franchises, if you you took them all into consideration, it's Trancers all the way.
01:11:17.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow. Actually, you know what low-budget horror thing I am just digging the hell out of lately are the ah the Hell House LLC movies.
01:11:28.55
Bryan
I haven't watched those yet. That's something I've got to see.
01:11:31.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
People feel different ways about them. They've got strong supporters and detractors, but honestly, i think it is... i haven't seen the most recent one. But it's four home runs.
01:11:42.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
The first four are just, they get better and better.
01:11:46.45
Bryan
Yep.
01:11:46.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
um i I really, because they do so much with so little, and it oil all boils down to strong direction, good writing, and and good performances from people that you've never seen before and probably won't see since.
01:11:55.35
Bryan
No.
01:12:01.57
Bryan
Yeah.
01:12:01.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, it's all unknown actors, and I mean, if you don't find clown scary, it might not be as scary for you, but I just think it's it's so well done.
01:12:09.80
Bryan
so
01:12:13.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
The whole series is so well done. and
01:12:15.47
Bryan
yeah
01:12:16.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
But...
01:12:16.08
Bryan
That's something I... there's There's a whole bunch of stuff I need to check out. i've I... I...
01:12:20.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
I know, I always feel like I'm behind.
01:12:22.80
Bryan
um well i I know I'm always behind. I developed this weird... This weird habit when I started writing on the internet... When I started writing for 411, like, all the time.
01:12:35.22
Bryan
um i had a... Had a difficult time watching something new that I wasn't going to review.
01:12:43.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:12:43.85
Bryan
Because... Because i'm ah I'm a note taker. i have to take a lot of notes when I watch something new that I'm going to review. And there were a lot of times when I would watch a movie at home, especially.
01:12:58.76
Bryan
Watch a new movie at home. And i kept thinking, well, why aren't you why arenin't you taking notes on this?
01:13:05.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:13:06.33
Bryan
but Don't you know you have to review this? Even though I don't, and I'm not going to.
01:13:10.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
And you keep making mental notes for how you're going to phrase how you feel about something that just happened.
01:13:13.86
Bryan
yep. ye so So there was a period of time where I just like didn't do that. And I just kept watching old stuff that I had seen a million times that I loved because I knew I didn't have to review it.
01:13:25.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Well, plus it's comforting.
01:13:28.80
Bryan
That too.
01:13:28.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, to watch movies that you've already seen before. People don't get that necessarily. People that don't do it. Like, I'll say, oh, I'm going to put my show on and just have it on in the background and chill. And, ah you know, it's just a nice nice, relaxing show that makes me smile. And it'll be, you know, Dexter.
01:13:44.64
Bryan
yeah
01:13:44.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like a movie where there are several murders in every episode. But, like, when I was a kid... reading or watching things about serial killers was not a popular hobby you were very much considered a freak if you walked around with a copy of helter skelter in your backpack and now it's like okay i'm sorry but netflix and hulu both owe me a fucking apology because that is their bread and butter now and uh
01:14:09.35
Bryan
Yes. I mean, I mean, 2020 is like that all the time. It seems like, and, their entire now, like networks that are just about that, that kind of stuff.
01:14:23.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I'm actually interested to know, um because you have anxiety, how do you think that impacts the way that you intake films and the way that you ah that you like sort of mentally dissect movies for review?
01:14:23.31
Bryan
And that's,
01:14:38.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Does it have an impact on that?
01:14:40.07
Bryan
I think it does a little bit. um I'm a firm believer in, i believe it was Wes Craven who used to say that ah teenagers watch horror movies because that's how they prepare to deal with life, because they're able to deal with scary situations in a controlled setting.
01:14:58.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Mm-hmm.
01:15:03.87
Bryan
And i think i i think I've done stuff like that over time. um
01:15:12.34
Bryan
That's why I i mean i try to learn about as learn about a movie and its background. If I know how it was done,
01:15:25.70
Bryan
like certain scenes and certain effects and stuff, it you know you know you understand the magic trick. So you can you can watch it in a different way. so you're not going to get you're not gonna get i don't get scared at horror movies anymore because,
01:15:40.23
Bryan
but least most of them Because I know how it's all done. Yeah.
01:15:43.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:15:44.41
Bryan
So I can, I can, I try, I watch it and understand it in a different, a different way. Action movies, uh, a lot of times in the same way, because a lot of times in action movies, uh, there's like a suspense component and, and suspense is great.
01:16:01.09
Bryan
You know, uh, being on the edge of your seat and all that kind of thing. But that also can, uh, in certain, so in certain circumstances, that kind of thing can induce, uh, stress or uh or uh it can trigger some sort of thing that you maybe have buried that kind of thing um so so yeah i mean i i probably have done that i haven't examined that myself like like deep down and like enough but yeah i probably do there probably is that like floating around
01:16:14.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:16:23.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, there's that.
01:16:41.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
So this is your first book. um Are you doing any ah any public signings, any marketing events people should know about?
01:16:48.34
Bryan
but not Not yet. I'm working on it. I'm working on trying to get some people, different people and different websites and stuff to review it.
01:17:00.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
So if i if if somebody wants to sign copy, how do they get one?
01:17:03.98
Bryan
They can probably ask me through my Facebook at the moment.
01:17:07.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:17:07.22
Bryan
I haven't figured out how to to do all of this yet. This is in um and about a million different ways. This is all very new to me, so I don't Don't quite know yet what i should do or need to do, or what I'm supposed to do, that kind of thing.
01:17:23.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:17:23.59
Bryan
um
01:17:23.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know what? A blog tour is is a good thing to do, especially with a book like this, because anybody that has a movie blog or a movie podcast will want to know about that.
01:17:31.73
Bryan
Yes.
01:17:33.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so basically, your first step should probably be to write a press release, letting people know why.
01:17:38.77
Bryan
Yep, yep.
01:17:40.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I don't know if you know how to like stage, how to how to structure a press release, but generally when you write a press release, you want to create a problem and then explain how your book solves that problem.
01:17:52.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, like like how like a news story where they'll be like, oh my God, is your orange juice trying to kill you?
01:17:52.94
Bryan
Yeah.
01:17:55.34
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
01:17:58.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then they'll tell you like what orange juice brands to avoid or whatever.
01:18:02.53
Bryan
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
01:18:02.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
You do that so that when you send out your press packet to people, They know like not just that you have a book coming out, but like why their readers should care that you have a book coming out, do you know, because just telling people, hey, I have a thing is not nearly enough to get them interested in it when you're trying to market a book.
01:18:23.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
There always has to be a why. Why do I want this book?
01:18:25.63
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
01:18:26.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
And actually, I think in this interview, we've gone over a couple of great reasons why a book like this is going to be valuable to cineast, particularly younger movie viewers or people that just didn't have time to sit and watch movies.
01:18:40.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like this would be a great book for a retiree, somebody who like just decided to stop working and now has ah a lot of time to sit down and watch movies if they want to.
01:18:51.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
But where do you begin? You know, there's so many years of cinema to to sift through.
01:18:53.56
Bryan
yep
01:18:56.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
So that's that's probably how I would go about it. And also approach people that do podcasts that are specific to movies. so
01:19:04.95
Bryan
Yeah, that's all good advice. That all makes sense. I'll have to do all of that.
01:19:07.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Do it!
01:19:11.52
Bryan
Well, um mike my excuse for it, though, is I didn't know exactly when the book was coming out.
01:19:12.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um...
01:19:17.66
Bryan
I knew it was coming out, but...
01:19:17.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, we... First of all, you don't need an excuse. You you do it when you do it on your own pace.
01:19:22.98
Bryan
Yeah.
01:19:23.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's what is so great about books now is that it's not, you know, you don't necessarily have a big six publisher breathing down your neck, making you go to to signing trips or telling you, you know, how you have to market your book.
01:19:23.97
Bryan
Well...
01:19:32.08
Bryan
Yeah.
01:19:38.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
You get to, well, first of all, you can call it your new book for a whole year. And then after the first year, you should probably start calling it your most recent book.
01:19:49.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
um because it it won't be new after a year. And, you well, you know, writers, we we're particular about the the nuances of the words that we use. But, yeah, I mean, I think i think there's a lot of ah value in in a book like this.
01:19:59.49
Bryan
That's true.
01:20:06.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Especially since, like, I think right now in history, this is a good time to remind people that when something is printed on paper, you can't go back and change it.
01:20:18.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know Like we were talking about all the good reasons that it's it's great to to write for the internet, but people can not only take your words down and pretend you never put them up, but they can also change your words and pretend like you said something different than you did.
01:20:19.02
Bryan
Yes.
01:20:31.96
Bryan
Yes.
01:20:34.26
Bryan
Yep.
01:20:35.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Which is why you have to be cognizant of that on all the different social medias, because some won't let you edit anything ever after the first 15 minutes you can't edit it but like on Facebook I could go and edit something I put up three years ago you know and and just pretend I never said it like first of all why don't more people do that they just say awful things on Facebook and then just leave them up like no yeah there's that well Facebook does Facebook would be like oh hey this meme you shared 12 years ago is really offensive and now you're in trouble
01:20:45.30
Bryan
ye
01:20:48.89
Bryan
Yes.
01:20:58.62
Bryan
Probably because they don't remember that they did it.
01:21:09.66
Bryan
yeah
01:21:12.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm going to okay, Zach. So we're actually, we're we're nearing the end of our list. I am wondering if ah there was anything you wanted to cover that we did not get a chance to talk about.
01:21:24.24
Bryan
ah
01:21:27.37
Bryan
No, I don't think so.
01:21:28.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, we covered a lot of good area, right?
01:21:30.81
Bryan
I think so.
01:21:32.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I think so too. um I do like to give guests a chance to ask a question if they want to ask me a question.
01:21:38.72
Bryan
Well, yeah, do you have what is your favorite B movie? what what What do you like?
01:21:45.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, i think, like, Inhuman, which is probably the most impressive B-movie I have ever seen, just because of the that the dedication.
01:21:58.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
um that That they show to the project and just how, how sincere they are.
01:22:02.26
Bryan
yeah
01:22:05.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um, but there, there are so many B movies that I love. I love, uh, I mean, is any hard, is any low budget movie, like any indie film, does that count as a B movie? Like, what is the precise aesthetic?
01:22:18.19
Bryan
um are you Pretty much. I mean, and and i mean i would I would consider star wars the Star Wars movies be movies, but that's like...
01:22:30.95
Bryan
lot of people wouldn't agree with that. But, I mean, in turn, B-movie is typically, it's it's it's low budget.
01:22:33.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:22:37.26
Bryan
it's ah It's some kind of genre-type movie.
01:22:43.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
And do we presume that it's something that means to take itself seriously?
01:22:43.25
Bryan
um
01:22:47.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
So like Lobster Man from Mars, for example, might not count as a B-movie?
01:22:47.60
Bryan
but but Well, it could be, nope no, no, no, either way, it can either it can either be aye not take itself seriously or take itself deadly seriously.
01:22:51.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:22:59.83
Bryan
I mean, Steven Seagal, like Steven Seagal, everything he does, is and even even when it's absolutely bizarre and ridiculous, he takes it incredibly serious.
01:23:00.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
wow
01:23:10.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, that that is okay.
01:23:10.45
Bryan
So...
01:23:11.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'll buy that. um Gosh. that's That's so tricky. because i mean For action movies, it's easy. because If you're talking about low-budget action movies, Death Race 2000 is like the king of that.
01:23:26.70
Bryan
Oh, yeah, that's awesome.
01:23:27.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then for something more modern ah for action movies, I think I would... Oh, you know what? I would say Hardcore Henry. henry Because I dug the hell out of Hardcore Henry.
01:23:37.54
Bryan
That was pretty cool.
01:23:37.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
That was... ah That was lots of fun. and But as as a horror person, i would be inclined to say something more like, ah well, you know, the Shark and Saw Prison Break ah nightmare that the the one with the had all the porn stars in it.
01:23:51.80
Bryan
Oh.
01:23:56.55
Bryan
the Yeah, I think that was it was think that was i think that that that was the Jim movie.
01:23:56.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
That one was pretty funny.
01:24:02.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, and but you know what? That was the same year that when SyFy did their alt-Shark Week, there was there was Swamp Shark and Trailer Park Shark and then something else.
01:24:09.62
Bryan
Oh, yep.
01:24:15.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
But then like the survivors of all of those movies were in another movie where called Nightmare Shark, where they were getting therapy for the PTSD that they had suffered from.
01:24:27.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
during the movies that they were in. Dude, i it blew my fucking mind. i Would I realize that's what was happening?
01:24:30.76
Bryan
i I remember that.
01:24:33.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
i mean, i like I had to pause it. I was like, wait, I have to go on the internet right now, because that's insane. I could not get over it. So that that was probably the the biggest, like, mind-blowing thing to me.
01:24:45.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
But there are so many great, like, you know Sharks of the Corn and and Doll Shark and Ouija Shark.
01:24:51.74
Bryan
Oh, yep.
01:24:53.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, can't...
01:24:54.28
Bryan
Ouija shark, that's awesome.
01:24:56.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
And Karis Hell with the, the like the, and Llamageddon. We enjoyed Llamageddon a lot. um Clown in a Cornfield. That was pretty recent. And that was surprisingly, like Shudder will serve up some of that.
01:25:13.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Those just cheap little.
01:25:14.04
Bryan
I still have to see that.
01:25:15.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh,
01:25:16.26
Bryan
That looks pretty good.
01:25:18.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
I really, we we watched Clown in a Cornfield just thinking it would be silly and dumb and we're kind of impressed. Because you know how every once in a while, like, Go Shark 2 is one of those movies. Like, wait a minute.
01:25:32.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
There were real writers writing this movie. This is a good script.
01:25:34.41
Bryan
Mm-hmm.
01:25:36.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
How is that the case?
01:25:37.91
Bryan
yeah while the other that happens sometimes i mean it a lot of times a ah make a movie it'll be whatever it's going to be and then they decided to make a sequel and the people involved with the sequel don't even take the first movie into consideration in terms of what they're doing.
01:25:58.84
Bryan
They may like include a character or something, and then they go off and make something that's like diametrically opposed to what that first movie was, and it's like a million times better. um House of the Dead.
01:26:10.89
Bryan
House of the Dead, yeah like the U-Bull movie with with Christian Slater.
01:26:11.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah, good good point.
01:26:15.44
Bryan
That movie is terrible.
01:26:19.92
Bryan
um But House of the Dead 2 is actually pretty good. It's actually, I mean it's it's Pretty well made. story makes sense.
01:26:27.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
See, I always thought that was happening because they were desperately trying to tie in a new movie that isn't very good with something that had more brand recognition, like Mila Kunis in American Psycho 2.
01:26:39.90
Bryan
Yeah.
01:26:40.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because like I think that movie would have done really well if they hadn't tried to shoehorn it into a franchise that it in no way should have been near.
01:26:48.14
Bryan
Yeah, because that movie... Yeah, that and that shouldn't have been American Psycho 2. It should have been American Girl Psycho or something.
01:26:59.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Shatner gets his ass handed to him by Jackie.
01:27:02.46
Bryan
Exactly. you know i mean, and Bill Shatner's in it, and you know what's going on here?
01:27:07.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Yep. Yeah. All right. Well, good news. Because it's time for the Mad Lib.
01:27:13.15
Bryan
Oh. Oh, great. Yeah.
01:27:15.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah. And this one has a kajillion nouns in it. So let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 singular nouns. my God. That's so many. nine ten eleven singular nouns oh my god that's so money All right, let's have them.
01:27:30.96
Bryan
Okay. Kitchen.
01:27:37.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Uh-huh.
01:27:38.53
Bryan
a Bike.
01:27:43.66
Bryan
Dog.
01:27:47.28
Bryan
Bathroom.
01:27:51.27
Bryan
Backyard.
01:27:56.91
Bryan
Can you do a name? Fred.
01:27:58.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:28:00.43
Bryan
fred Fred's a good name. um
01:28:03.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Agree.
01:28:07.47
Bryan
Wrench.
01:28:11.34
Bryan
Bottle.
01:28:16.33
Bryan
and Picture frame.
01:28:18.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
more.
01:28:23.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
two more
01:28:24.76
Bryan
a Pillow.
01:28:29.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah huh
01:28:30.03
Bryan
Soda bottle.
01:28:34.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. And now I need plural nouns. I need one, two, three plural nouns.
01:28:44.09
Bryan
Let's see here. Firks.
01:28:49.05
Bryan
Tires. Chairs.
01:28:58.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, okay, an adjective.
01:29:02.41
Bryan
Let's see here. Blue.
01:29:05.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
A part of the body.
01:29:10.03
Bryan
Hand.
01:29:16.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
right. And one more. Part of the body.
01:29:22.45
Bryan
nose
01:29:26.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. All right. um This is called, it's from the sports section of the Mad Lib book. And so this is called sliders, sinkers, and curve balls. A blue pitcher today can throw a variety of forks, each of which has a slightly different velocity and kitchen determined by the way he holds the ball in his nose.
01:29:52.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
The fast dog is the most common bike in baseball and can come toward a batter faster than a speeding backyard. Often registering 95 miles per bathroom on the radar Fred.
01:30:08.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
If a pitcher alternates a fast wrench with an off-speed pitch, one called a curve or breaking bottle, he can tie a batter up in chairs.
01:30:20.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
And if his bag of tires includes a split hand fastball and a knuckle pillow, he is bound to be 20 picture frame winner and probably end up in the baseball hall of soda bottle.
01:30:39.49
Bryan
Knuckle pillow.
01:30:39.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:30:40.25
Bryan
That is great.
01:30:41.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
There we have it. Right. So many band names and in every Mad Lib. Um...
01:30:46.45
Bryan
yeah
01:30:47.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, man. Well, Brian, I'm really glad you could be here. This was a great conversation. And I learned a lot of things about action movies. Um... We want to remind all of our listeners to find us on Ko-Fi. That's K-O-F-I.
01:31:02.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Sometimes Hilarious Horror Magazine does support the podcast, so the best way to support the show is to support the magazine, plus the magazine pays writers. So we do that with your patronage.
01:31:14.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
So give us your patronage! um Thanks so much. We'll see everybody next week.
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