Pinocchio Unstrung: An Interview with Robert Englund - Last Interview on the Left

[MUSIC] All right, that's our goal, Mr. England. We want to, we're goal is to choke them all out. >> Choke them all out. >> And your job, your, your help today? That's what's going to push us over the edge. We're going to literally attack other podcasts in their dreams. We're going to kill them one by one at a time. >> I like that kind of talk. >> Yes, very few times are the sacred audio hallways of last podcast and left grace by True Legends. But this time, one is here, do I mean on Zoom? Yeah, one's on Zoom. And we have truly, this is obviously a pillar of our world. The ultimate man of nightmares, the star of arguably the peak of his career. Pinocchio Unstrung is Robert England. Thank you so much for joining us today. >> Well, I don't think I've ever been called sacred before. I kind of like it. I think we have to give a, a little cred here to the great Richard break who's plays Jepetto in Pinocchio Unstrung because Richard's an old friend of mine and a previous co-star of mine in a little film with Robert Patrick and Hal Holbrook that we did together a couple of years ago. And I've just been such a fan of Richard's ever since, following him. Including his incredible turn on Mayor of Kingstown with Jeremy Renner. >> Right. >> Where he plays the white supremacist in J- >> He's terrifying in that. >> And spoiler alert, the best death scene in a long time. >> Just amazing, the guy knows how to die. >> Yeah. >> He is legitimately, we saw Pinocchio Unstrung. Honestly, I was surprised at the level of art and care that went into this movie, into this independent production. With the puppets and the visual effects, how'd you get involved in this? How they rope you in besides massive piles of cash. >> I think they, I wish they were massive, I hope they're not the piles. Anyway, getting old piles means something different. No, you know, I knew about the Winnie the Pooh and my generation, and this isn't horror, but in a kind of mad magazine, mad TV, SNL kind of way. We had a sort of beloved experience with a show called Fractured Fairytales, which back in the 50s and early 60s was part of the J-Word, you know, Rocky and Bullwinkle, all of that stuff with great voice work, Hans Conrad, lots of people were working for those teams back then. So I've always loved the idea of that. And then in college and also during the many years of my, my, my sort of, I'm going to say, intellectual interviews regarding horror, especially in Europe, I was reminded of all all of the stuff we talked about in school and later on with Bruno Bedelheim and Carl Jung and all of the really source darkness and Freudian sexuality and everything else that's in the actual fairytales. I mean, my God, Hansel and Gretel is a cautionary tale by the terrible parents to their children. If you don't, if you do not behave often, if you do not behave, go into the forest, into the black, dark forest, it's actually called the black forest and what happens when you're starving. There's a famine going on in Germany. What happens when you're starving? What's the first symptom? You hallucinate pie, oh, a great chocolate cake or perhaps a house with cookie shingles, you know, and made of food. So, I mean, this is all dark shit. I mean, also, I mean, Ruppel's still skinned. That's a nasty, nasty story. What's going on there? And so, I think that the fairytales after having been, and I don't say this as a criticism just as a fact, but after having been disnified for many years and cleaned up, you know, so we don't hurt our children, I think what happened is it's almost incumbent upon us to sort of return some of them to their source, their dark, dark source. Why are we literally so afraid to scare kids now? I know when I was a little boy, a lot of my favorite media also scared me. Yeah. Well, I think it was sort of a reaction to other aspects of the culture that perhaps, you know, put the cart in front of the horse a little too much. I know a couple of blocks from me and this has saved me from being pranked on Halloween where I live, but a couple blocks north of me, Oak Street, but all the dads, all the dads who love Halloween and had their helicopter moms, you know, all the beautiful milfs. And everybody, you know, is a little bit bougie, but great people and wonderful neighbors. But the dads were had it up to here with the kind of frozen princess Halloween. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Dress up. Halloween is monsters. Exactly. And the day of the dead and vampires and werewolves and Frankenstein's and ghosts and skeletons. And it's the dark side and they sort of had it with it with it going almost into some kind of ridiculous princess cosplay and they sort of took over their street and made it really dark, all the decorations for Halloween. And you know, I was when that happened, I was spared a lot of the sort of trick or treat traffic, but I remembered back to when I was a kid and there was always a couple of kids that would be popular culture. I think my parents, my liberal parents even dressed me as Fidel Castro one year. I mean, it is a true beer. Yeah. That is what worked for a time. Yeah. It was man of the year, you know, but that was a popular culture reference, maybe trying to win a costume contest or something at a neighborhood party, but but we all wanted to be dark. You know, that was the whole thing back then. And we, you know, and it was always bargaining with your parents about how much fake blood you could put, you know, on your costume and stuff and the pranks, you know, the sugar and the gas tanks and, and waxing screens, you know, and, and ringing doorbells and disappearing and all of that, you know, turds and paper bags being set on fire, all that good stuff. We're still doing dark night. It was a night of pranks. I'm not talking about vandalism, but, but good, good, all American fun and I think it got a little sanitized because some people did take it too far and Detroit in other places. So I think it got a little sanitized and now there was a reaction against that. And I think that also sort of is the, is the opening for a kind of politically incorrect fractured fairy tale. That's right. It really works. My favorite scene in the entire movie is when Pinocchio removes the guts from the person he went scooping all the guts out of the guy and then he's just kind of crammed all the guts back into his torso that was one of my favorite cause I was like, yeah, that is like, he is just trying to be a real boy. Yeah. No, that's what we do. Yeah. Yeah. But can I ask, this is not a criticism at all. But what part of Italy does this movie take place in the fact that a man is naturally named your petto? Well, I, I think the original, the Colodi, the, the original story, I know I've been doing horror movies and publicity in Italy since the very early 80s, and I love it. It's my favorite country. But you know, the Pinocchio puppets, you know, are ubiquitous. They're, they're everywhere everywhere. Yeah. They celebrate Colodi as an Italian. But I think it's extreme Northern Italy. It's all, which is a, which some people call the Tyrole, Tyroleian. Yeah. There's, it's that blend of Austrian Swiss, Northern Italy, a little German, the Tyrole, you know, leaderhosen and the food is a little different up there. There's the mountains have snow on them in the winter. Yeah. It's not the south. You know, it's not the Sofieloran Naples. It's, it's the north. It's very, you know, Italy's a big country and, and, and it's very, like the United States, Maine is as different from New Orleans, as New Orleans is, you know, from, from the coast of, of the state of Washington or Oregon, they're very different. They're different people that, they have different interests, different hobbies. And, and I, and Italy's that way too. Our PR tours easier in Europe than in America, like when you woke up before, are they easier or more fun in Italy? The difference for me was, and my first experience in Europe, I'm the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. I had a back-to-back science fiction mini-series, it was international. a horror movie within a year and a half. That was also an international hit. And I was international, meaning people knew my name overnight. And so I was there a lot. And it's, it's an interesting point of view in my first big astounding, you know, a thing that I recognized was the respect for horror as a genre in Europe. It's right up there with gangster movies and film noir and the western. They probably like it even more than the so-called romantic comedy. They leave a respect film. They have art. Yeah. But horror in those types of genre movies seem to really actually then put butts and seats. Well, just that, it's, they recognize that the stylistic director can really show his stuff when he's working in the world of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. And that's why, you know, they worship, you know, Dario Agento and, and, and, and the great Spanish vampire directors and, and, and, and some of the English directors in the world of Hammer Films with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and, and, and, and everyone, you know, Barbara Steele and everyone. So that world, you know, it has a kind of genre respect and they, they respect it like the graphic novel or as another idiom of film like like the western, you know, again, or something else. So it's an equivalent. It's not in America when I first started out and you were in horror movies. And I had done a fat 10 years of, of, of, you know, a list films working with the biggest stars of the 70s were Reynolds and Charles Bronson. People forget how big these people were. And, and, and, and, and, Barbara Streisand and a young Jeff Ridges and Sally Field, and Susan Sarandon and, and Peter Strauss, who was the god of TV movies along with Martin Sheen. But, but, you know, it was this strange thing, whereas in, they knew in Europe that this was a genre that had replaced the western and replaced the sort of Jimmy Cagney Edward G. Robinson gangster film. And, and it was to be respected. And, you know, it was, I had done the other work, but I remember, I might have been Paramount. But I remember the Friday the 13th guys, and, and we're stuck kind of over by the kitchen door, you know, with the portal and the way they're coming out with the tray, Boeing, bang, and in and out. The worst scene in the house. And yet it was, you know, a youth movie, Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, you know, with that nasty Susan St. George and Peter Fonda that I think saved Fox as a summer programmer, so that they had enough money to option Star Wars. And I think Friday the 13th really helped to fill the coffers after the debacle of King of the Gypsies. You know, the big Paramount flop. And, yeah. And so this is that thing, you know, the horror wasn't really getting respect, but it became a go-to moneymaker. And people forget B movie, you know, in the 30s, 40s and 50s and 60s, when you went to the movies, you got to see two movies for the price of one double feature, right? Double bill. And the, the, so many times the second movie was considered a B movie, but it doesn't mean bad or less than B means budget. Yeah. It just was on it. It, it, it, it, it was made on a different budget. Yeah. It's the other side of the scene. The other movie. Yeah. And, but many of those movies have come to be some of our greatest films in the history of Hollywood. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Cause they cut, they lasted this span of time. We are now running a movie podcast show. We just now been talking about the idea of those movies hold up way more than the last five years of movies, not besides Pinocchio and Strong. Yes. Yeah. Every, the last five years of movies, many of these movies are going to kind of be forgotten because of the way they're being made. I actually think that Pinocchio on Strong to be Frank is a good indicator of that kind of coming to the other side of people of our generation making movies that love puppets. Yeah. That love actual blood, love actual, yeah. Blood, blood, blood, blood and action and violence and all of those, those parts of the recipes. They're part of the recipe. I mean, you know, I mean, I don't want to live in a world that doesn't celebrate the original invasions of the body snatchers. Yeah. You know, well, I don't want to live in a world that doesn't celebrate them. Yeah. You know, the giant movie. It's right. You know, these are great. These are great films. And they, and they were, they had to be made with with a low budget. And so everybody was constantly on their toes from production designed through camera, through direction, through the actors to do a good job. No one set out, you know, to, to make a cheap looking movie. You know, just because your budget was limited. And you know, I've done recently, I, I did, you know, the Midnight Man with Lin Shae, which is sort of a one of those subset horror movies, you know, the games you shouldn't play. I don't play that game. I did another one, Urban Legend, which I'm very proud of. A lot of fun. Glossy, but great film and a terrific performance by Rebecca Gayhart. And, and, and everybody's in that Brad Dorf's in that movie and, and, and wonderful other actors. And then, you know, so, so I, I did one of those. And then I did a kind of a, a classic, kind of brined upon a 70s film called The Last Showing over in England. Uh, uh, yeah, which I'm really proud of. And I, you know, I, I, I did a little retro one for last Halloween, you know, Nady Knox for my friend Dwight Little, wonderful director who did me, did my Phantom of the Opera, and an old, old friend. But, but, you know, I've, I've done different kinds. And I realized I hadn't done anything down in dirty and nasty for a while. Yeah. Yeah. I knew about Winnie the Pooh. And I thought, you know, it's about time to, you know, put a little spice into my resume again. You know, so it was wonderful and easy for me to say yes to Pinocchio on strung, even though we can talk about it like the European critics would, you know, over a glass of wine and a cigarette in a hotel lobby in Madrid, we can talk about the, you know, the, the, the coming of age story that, that is Pinocchio, you know, but also we got the nasty bits. I tell you what, I, I, let's just say we all, we're huge fans of Guillermo del Toro, right? But I see huge fans, huge fans. But I, mimics one of my favorite movies. Love it. And I love Kronos. I love all of it. You know, all those, he's old movies. He devils backbone. He's incredible. Yeah. With a leger without it. You know, you're going to have a with leger without it. I love it. That brilliant actor that played the lead. God, so good. Yeah. But I think I will say my taste runs more towards a Pinocchio on strung. Look at the story because we've seen the big fancy Pinocchio a thousand times. We had what's his name? What's it, uh, Roberta Bonini? Oh, yeah. Remember when he was doing, he did his highfalutin Pinocchio. We've seen highfalutin Pinocchio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I understand that because Roberto Bonini was doing a salute to Italian culture and how they think of that story because they do. They celebrate it. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a national memory of a passage in childhood, you know, yes, where for us, for every kid that has a, a, uh, frozen as a, as a natural passage of childhood, there's also a kid that had the exorcist, you know, as a test, a passage of rights. And they're both, they're both to be celebrated. Don't get me wrong. I just don't like it when we have, when we tend to think we have to like tone everything down. You know, I think people can handle that. I mean, that's the reason we have ratings. Yeah. You know, in the original Pinocchio from 1941 is terrifying. As far as Disney movies go, I'm going to call it the scariest one. There's some mutation stuff going on in that. Well, I mean, I love night on bald mountain from, uh, of Asia. Yeah. But I got to tell you. And then there's that weird necrophilia in, in, in snow white. But I, I got to tell you know, I, I used to go for auditions at Disney back in the 70s. And we actors passed around, you know, over a couple of beers at the local pub in the Laurel Canyon. We would pass around that you go when, once you got that pass and you're on the lot for an audition and you park in that crappy lot, you know, in the heat of summer far away from everything you can walk up onto the campus of the original, well, not the original, but these studios of Walt Disney. Yeah. And you walk right in the animation building. And what our secret was, you walk up the stairs to the second floor and they had a constantly changing, evolving show of cells from all the Disney movies ever made. And I remember seeing the background cells for the island of lost boys from Pinocchio. Yeah. Pleasure Island. Wow. There was some cool stuff. And later on about another month later on a callback or something, I saw all of the mutation cells and original drawings for Pinocchio's transformation, you know, oh, yeah, just great stuff. They're great, crazy, dark stuff. And you'd see ones that weren't used, you know, a dark pencil drawing. It wasn't used, it was just a little too hard core, but still, they knew where to draw the line or they thought they had to at that time, their own sort of standards, you know. Yeah. It's terrifying that movie. I mean, when that transfer made, when Lampwick transforms into the donkey boy, he has a mental breakdown. It starts breaking the mirror and like, it's bleeding all over the outside. Yeah. It's like the opening scene of Apocalypse Now. And I remember seeing the pencil drawings of donkey boy, you know, and as a kid, that's terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Are there any like parts or like things that you either went out for or saw that you're like, man, I wish I could have fucking got a shot at that. Well, no. I mean, you know, we all, all of us and you that says what we thrive on, you know, it's our, along with a adrenaline, it's the ones that got away. I remember being called back several times for a film and it was I think the most expensive film being made in Hollywood that year called March or Die, a French foreign Legion movie with Gene Hackman, and I didn't get the part. And I'm not, I can't remember the name of the actor that did. He certainly didn't, you know, go on to do a lot of other stuff, uh, and nothing. Cause you murdered him and it's nothing against him, but I remember losing sleep over that. Yeah. And I remember losing sleep. I got called back a couple of times for the great Jack Nicholson film, the last detail for the young, for the young sailor, the young sailor, the young Southern sailor that goes to the brick. And I remember reading the book and in the book, I, I could be wrong about this in my, my memory could be failing me here, but I don't remember him as being big. I remember the boy. He was vulnerable. That's why Jack Nicholson and his MP partner kind of save him because they know he's not going to survive the break, you know, and I, you know, and listen, you know, recent history, you know, not withstanding Randy Quaid is a wonderful brilliant actor from the last picture show to Missouri breaks and beyond Randy Quaid is a wonderful actor. And he was terrific. He was terrific in that film, but I always thought he was too tall. Just did you end up seeing his sex tape? It looked like he could have, it looked like, well, it looked like Randy could have taken care of himself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. And more ways than one. Yes. Yeah. Whereas little, whereas little Robert England doing my little, you know, thin Southern boy, whose mom and mom loved him too much, you know, you know, I, you know, I, you would have worried about me going to the brick, the marine break, you know, God. And what I can survive talking about the past, I have to, one of the major comedy influences to me was the adventures of Fort Fairlane. I love that movie. I thought it was great. You were wonderful as smiley. How surprised are you to see Andrew Dice Clay become this like great actor? Well, here's the thing. And it was always an actor. Us, we actors. When I watched Andrew stand up back, I could see his recipe and there was a little bit of Fonzie. Fonzie cut a little bit of like if Fonzie cursed. Okay. So that's, so Henry Winkler obviously got it from one of those long Island guys, a little bit of joy, but a football. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that long Island guy, you know, that, that moment of time and the way those guys treated and addressed women and talked about them, which is crass and stupid, but also fucking funny, you know, and that's, he was doing a character. You know, he was doing a character of that guy. Yeah. Because he was an impressionist before that that you could laugh at and with and it's a performance thing. So when I saw him in his other stuff, I wasn't surprised that Andrew's got some chops. I used to go when I got a big residual to this gourmet market on sunset boulevard. And I had a lot of adventures in this market, you know, Christmas shopping one year, you know, stoned and things like that. But I used to see Andrew there a lot. I think he was driving a big Cadillac convertible then, you know, and he would be in the parking lot, you know, shining it, you know, and looking good for the ladies, you know, you know, all the milves that shop there from up in the Hollywood hills, you know, and I, this is way long before he was, you know, the clay, you know, he was, you know, the, you know, and, and so it doesn't surprise me. You know, I remember when he, I think I was in his dressing room talking about something, when he signed the contracts for his first home and he was like a big kid, he was nervous about, you know, that, that stack you have to sign you buy a house, you know, and, uh, so, you know, it's strange, you know, I mean, I liked Nora on SNL, but I think her, her protest against Andrew was a little misguided because that was a character he was playing, you know, I certainly don't think Andrew, you know, hates women or anything like that. And, you know, you know, Andrew went on to do Woody Allen movies and HBO showing lots of other stuff. And the last thing I saw her and was a toilet bowl commercial, so I'm, you know, and she's a wonderful actress. She is. Absolutely. She is. Such an unnecessary thing, you know, it's like you got, yeah, early on I learned, you know, you can't be envious or jealous or competitive in that kind of, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, you know, Sturm, uh, you know, where you, where you, where you seek failure for your fellow artists, you know, if you live your life, live it, I hate it. I hate it when any movie bombs, even if it's a movie I don't like, because it's bad for Hollywood. I mean, there's going to be less movies made. I want everything to be a hit. Exactly. And when I see actors, you know, make a lot of money that, that maybe they don't, maybe they, there's other actors that deserve that more, that doesn't make me hate them, you know, or like them any less, just because they hit the jackpot, you know, and that's just an unhealthy way to live. Oh, yeah. Very much so. And like Andrew Dice Clay, do you think that you, your persona as like the master of horror also sort of like paints how people react to you? Like do you think that like you, you, you, you, do you feel you disappoint people by not being a child murderer? Well, my, here's the thing. I had a fat 10 years in Hollywood before I ever did Freddie. Yeah. And in that 10 years, I did a dozen movies and starred in half of them. You know, again, you know, I starved Jeff Bridges and Sally Field and Henry Fonda Jeff Bridges. I do want to ask quickly, what was Charles Bronson like? Charles had a guy, an assistant who had a little miniature ticker tape with him. And he would be sticking, checking his stock market list, and he also, he also would tear out dialogue, you know, and keep it real simple, of course, and, and parse his lines down to smaller, clean lines of dialogue. And also I watched him and he would reach, he would practice reaching for a prop. So he didn't have to look at it when he went to get it. And he'd measure it off. And in a way, he moved and rehearsed his physical stuff like a dancer. He wasn't big. He was compact, but he moved beautifully like Lee Marvin moves beautifully or Kevin Bacon moves really well and interesting. They were each old John Wayne had that great, strange grace in the way he moved. And, and I watched him do that like he would measure his grip from coffee cups so that he could just keep talking to you and reach out a frame and bring that coffee cup in, you know, order him from that bottle, you know, and switch hands. And, you know, he just, he was great that way. He really moved. If you see some of his movies, Kato's land and things like that and watch him move. It's just beautiful to watch. We forget, you know, every how big Charles Bronson was, every culture in the world thought he was one of theirs. The Russians thought he was Russians, Polish thought he was Polish, well, kind of what, you know, Czechoslovakian thought he was Czechoslovakian, spaniard thought he was Spanish. Yeah. Well, he's also, he had that idocyncratic way about him to kind of cut through everything. Like, I feel like it's about, thing about actors we're missing a little bit now. It's like you, anybody can impersonate Charles Bronson. Anybody can impersonate Marlon Brando. You know, the voice so indicatively, well, this is one of the things we've lost. If you think about Jimmy Stewart's hesitant delivery or Henry Fonda's Midwestern accent or Brando or John Wayne, you, you recognized him when you heard them, let alone when you saw them. It was a signature voice. And I think that that's something that actors have to realize has is part of the component, you know, of an actor. You know, every once in a while, either certain actresses that have such beautiful, deep husky voices, you just love hearing them speak and it makes them just that much more fascinating or sad. or, or, you know, you just, you like that. Yeah, it's, it's the, they come with a full tool box, you know, so to speak. And we've lost that a little bit, you know, you know, and I think that people probably thought they could compensate by going to the gym, you know, or something, but you can, as long as you're taking your shirt off, but then you also have to sound right when you speak. That's, you know, it's so important. It's clearly you and Pinocchio on strong and it was, it was great to hear your curse. I mean, all I tried to do was avoid the Freddie laugh as much as I could because the Freddie laugh is an old class exercise from, from, from voice class, you know, that I had. And, and that was my go to thing because it's about the breathing on the diaphragm. Yeah, and so I, my muscle memory, I fall into the Freddie laugh pretty automatically. Now I have to consciously pitch it higher and breathe less, you know, to, to, to, you know, get, get, you know, if I wanted, if I'm doing an evil laugh when I'm doing a voiceover, you know, for animation or something, now I, I consciously have to pitch it high and bite off the air and turn it more into kind of like a demonic giggle or something. So I don't, so I don't remind everybody that they're listening to Freddie Krueger. Well, you've done many transformative performances like you, you're, you're working the mangler is great. You're just like, you're just a peer into that guy. And I love that movie too. And do you like, at this point, that's the great Toby Hooper again too, God, and if Stephen King loves Toby Hooper, Stephen King loves the way Toby treats the Stephen King cannon. Yes. If there was something about like, so coming back to like the idea of being now like a horror icon, you went through, we'll have an old acting career. Now you're a horror icon. Are you ever just like, Oh, fuck, I just want to be in a dove commercial, but everyone's so frightening. Everybody is shaking. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see how you shout. Well, you know, it's strange now, you know, it's, I'm going to be doing a sequel to a wonderful smart, smart horror film I did called Behind the Mask, The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Yes. It's one of those films that's slowly ascending on the cult market, but it still hasn't been seen enough. And I'm really proud of it. And there's a wonderful, wonderful performances in that film. But we had written a sequel for figuring Scott Wilson into it, you know, in a really big way. And God love him. Scott passed away, you know, and, yeah, we lost a great, great actor that I go way back with. And, and so we, they had to took them years to figure out another script for that. But I'll be in that doing my sort of homage to Donald Pleasant's again. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, you know, I'm lucky. I did a lot, a lot before I did Freddie. So I was established in Hollywood. And you know, a lot of Americans haven't seen them. But, you know, I've done nearly a hundred movies. And I've done dozens of movies in Europe, like, you know, on a level of behind the mask. The last showing is one, you know, for Phil Hawkins with a wonderful actor and at Fin Jones just as a great performance. And he was the gay night in Game of Thrones. But, yeah, but yeah, but it's really a good little sort of salute to Brian Dupamma, really a macular, great little, low budget film. And I've done a lot of that stuff, you know, in Italy and Spain and England and, and Russia. And I all over the, so I get to do that. You know, I play the old Prince or the old priest or the mad doctor, you know, or the old, old psychiatrist, you know, and I tell the backstory and I get to play with my skills, you know, doing a model. I even got to do the monologue, even though I was doing a Robert England makeup role, I got to do a wonderfully written cadence to monologue that really was a great intercut between this actual event and my telling it in stranger things. So yeah, I get to do that stuff, you know, you also work with complete madman J.J. V yard several times. I love that guy. I have done one project with him. I used to work for adult swim extensively. I'd love J.J. What's it? What's his prick? Can you honestly just tell me you give a little small little insight of what his process is like? Well, you know, it's so strange because I saw the anime. Again, I saw the pencil drawings because I played a guy, I played a gob of snot. And I think I played one of the three bears. I can't remember. Yeah. It was like a Goldilocks fractured fairy tale. And then he also did King Star King, which was great. Yeah. It was the gross out version. You know, it was gross out humor. But it's really off the wall. And, and you know, you get always you get pieces of it when you're talking to him. And, and you get, he said, because you want to be on the same page. But you got to wait till you see it. You know, and then it all comes together. It's just one of those things. I mean, you know, you imagine, look, I love sinners. I really love sinners. Yeah. But can you imagine the pitch to that? Now, you had the help of get out being a big hit. Yeah. Yeah. Which is maybe African folktale, you know, brought into contemporary concepts. So we have a whole new source material we can go after. But imagine trying, you know, even though it was a huge director at the time. Yeah. Pitching, sinners, you know, it's hard. Musicology, the history of American music, you know, vampires, slavery, voodoo, voodoo, African myth, slave myth, all of that. And you're going to make it and you're going to put it all into any one of those statements could be an entire movie. But to put them all in one movie and mash them up like that and have that kind of success when you just went on that ride. I remember that that musical number, which was like the history of American music and that moving camera, you know, and that dancing and all of a sudden, you saw one of the guys from the Funkadelix, you know, out of the corner of your eye and you're like, did I see that? Yeah. It's the ability to hide it, to blend it in the choreography over here. Later on, you got to close up of it. But it was like, did I, did I, am I hallucinating? Am I imagining that? Is this, is this dance? And yet it was, it was all intentional and all choreographed, you know, you know, within an inch of its life, and it was just brilliant stuff. But that's that thing, you know, is, is, when you have ideas that wild and you wonder, part of it is, you know, it's hard to pitch that stuff. And I think, you know, with, you know, I don't understand how, when they, when they describe some stuff, it gets, it gets bought because I, I wouldn't get it either. I wouldn't get it either. Then there's other stuff, there's other stuff that you, when you see and you watch it, you go, I don't know how that got made, you know, the flip side of that, you know, every day I say this. Yeah. Every day I scream that into the night. Well, I mean, you, after you go through your checklist, they made it for money, they made it because it's a sequel. They made it because those are popular characters. They made it because they thought they needed a romcom movie release this June. Oh, yeah. You know, you see that. But once you've exhausted all those checklists, you go, why did they make that movie, you know, yeah. Who is the target audience for that movie? I, you know, yeah. You've mentioned romcoms twice. And I got to say, being a horror icon that you are, I feel like horror is the only prolific genre over time. Everything comes and goes, romcoms are kind of out right now. Regular comedies are coming out right now. But I think we do have, we still have romance films. Yes. And we have horror, and we have action films. And it's fun. You know, it's so much fun to, you know, to go on Apple TV, or to go on Netflix, or to go on Prime Video, or somewhere. And then to Deep Dive, you know, and you find these great little wonderful action movies, you know, that, that, that, with, you know, European stars, or low budget, what's there's one I've, but there's two of them now. Can't think of the name. It's a, it's a, it's a foreign name, like a Finnish name. It's a, it's a director from Finland, and they're revenge movies. They're a guy. He used to himself on the system. Yes. The season movies are amazing. That, that guy's up there with George Miller. Yeah. Director. Yeah. And those are incredible. But the second one is almost road runner. It almost devolves into Russian Nazi road runner. Yeah. That's great. I mean, I watched it on the edge of my couch, but why aren't people talking about those movies? I mean, I'm, I, you know, I'd love to ask Tarantino, you know, we, if we could go to his little movie theater in Hollywood and have a double bill of those, you know, yeah. Do you ever see for everybody gourged? Oh my gosh. They'll be great. Have you ever seen the film The Last Circus? No. It is a 2010. I will, I feel like, I cannot believe I'm going to, I'm going to recommend you this movie. The last circus. I'm going to look at it. It is. I got it. Last circus. It is amazing. The director is amazing. He did another movie called Witching and Bitch and that's right on the money. It is amazing. It is a, the only way to describe it. It is a fascist clowns left behind in the, in the Spanish Revolution. And they have to save their service. by killing everybody. You have to, you have to look at the unit up. I will love this. This is right up your alley. Yeah. No. Sounds like it has a little bit of devil's backbone. It does. It's a little bit. Yeah. Franco and Franco in the regime and all that. No, recently, I've been a big champion of the guy that did blue ruin. Oh, yeah. No, phenomenal. Green. And he also did that one with, for me, the best shootout in the history of cinema is in the one with the scars guard and Riley Keoh. And the last and the Native American indigent. They're on the reservation. Yes. And they surrender their baby up to the cult. The Native American cult. You know, uh, something dark, something dark. I think he's near dark or it. Hold the dark. It holds the dark. Right. Yes. Hold the dark. Now here's the third one you put with that is rebel ridge. And all those three together are like slow burn revenge, but there are sequences in, in, in that film that are, that, that shootout with, with the highway patrol on the, on the compound, the Native American compound where he has the 50 caliber up in the barn. The coverage, the coverage is, is Orson Well Stanley Kubrick Sampeck and Pa. It's, you know, Don Siegel. It's brilliant. I mean, he's got a camera under the wheel of every car there so that you get to watch, you watch people die underneath the cars. Let alone what's going on. But, you know, and, and the, and the, the highway patrol vehicles are slowly deteriorating. You know, in sequence and continuity as it, as it progresses, you know, and just amazing. That is going on my list. Yeah. I love what a fan you are of everything. It is a, it's great. I'm a fan boy. I'm a fan boy. We got to, we're going to, we got to let man go. We got to let him go to the, let me go because I got to, I'll, I'll go do a con somewhere. I'm going to run up and tell Ron Perlman how much I love him. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just a fan boy like everybody else. Can we do a lightning round with you? Yeah. Because I, because you being a fan boy, I saw this one great interview with Aretha Franklin and they were asking her about all the, the, all the other great singers of all time and she was giving quick reactions to each of them and, and you are the Aretha Franklin of horror movies in my opinion. And more like, I would actually, let me say the Aretha Franklin. I'm just trying to have fun here. I'm after I have fun. I'm sorry. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to get your opinion on other horror icons real fast and rapid fire. Would you mind? I think, yeah. We just start doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I think we got it. I think we have to salute Richard break. Jeopardy. Of course. Yes. Richard is becoming a great face like John Karadine. Mm hmm. And, and, and I even think there's a bit of Christopher Lee. Oh, he's great. And 31 and Richard's, you know, in real life, Richard's tall. And so that, that's a great asset. Um, I love Anthony Hopkins. Yeah. You know, I can't get enough of Anthony Hopkins, you know, in horror. Um, I don't have, I don't have a Dracula, except for Gary Oldman. Really? Gary Oldman is my Dracula over Christopher Lee. No, Gary Oldman is my Dracula. Because I got, I've got to use mind's eye, you know, I've got to use mind's eye and the sense, his sense of period, you know, so I love that. But I got to tell you, and I don't know the name of it. And maybe it's four, five years old. You and I got to go online and figure out David Tennant, Dr. Who? Yes. Broad church. David Tennant. I saw him on West end. The guy is brilliant. But David Tennant, Dennis serial killer, a chain smoking serial killer, Nielsen. I can't, I don't know what the name of that Dennis Nielsen. It is, it is, it's in the center. Yes. Yes. Des, it's about the, it's, it's the movie's called des and it's about the series. Yes. It's about the serial killer, Dennis Nielsen. Well, he and, and I'll tell you right now, I love that show mind hunter. Yes. There were some performances on mind hunter that blew my mind. But that performance by David Tennant is incredible. Everybody should see it. These are the things that are falling through the cracks, you know, that we have to get everybody watching, you know, because what happens is they, they see so much hype. And I listened, I'm going to go see Odyssey this afternoon. I can't wait 70 millimeter. You have an extra stock with you guys. Do you have any extra tickets? Because there's still like tickets. There's so much hype about other stuff that we get, we don't, no one's spending money on these little gems. Yeah. Like, like des or, or, or, or to tell us about them, or, or, or, or, or to, or to hype them, or, or, you know, make them, or, you know, uh, after dark or whatever that was, you know, but, but we got these movies are great. I, I mean, I've never met anybody else except you guys that's seen, you know, blue ruin, which is just a perfect film. It's a perfect film. It's a perfect film. Yeah, a slow burn revenge movie. Oh my god. And that actor is brilliant. I've seen him in lots of stuff. Yeah. The guy that played the lead. I think I'm not sure, but I think all those guys, I think they're all from the North Carolina School of Performing Arts. Yes. Yeah. They're all from it's like same guy. And then they make one movie a year, you know, but they're really good. You know, well, I think Angela Betis, who's in that great movie may, I think Angela Betis is one of them, you know, in the crowd. They're just really talented, talented young people. What about the ultimate horror icon Dick Cheney? Dick Cheney, yes. And shoot me in the face. Classic film Roger Carmen, right? God, I'd love to see you on his dreams. Oh God, that would be amazing for you to crawl into his nightmares. Have you ever haunted your own nightmares? I have, I used to have snake nightmares. And I have, I have the actors nightmare, you know, where I still am worried about my lines for merchant events or something. I've hidden the script backstage, but I can't find it. I know. Well, honestly, Pinocchio on strong. It is going to be available for VOD. Skip the Odyssey. When you can't get tickets to the Odyssey, you'll see Pinocchio on strong. Honestly, it's a good way to get your charge stop. Get ready to go. You are going to love. Honestly, I think everybody's going to love the puppets in this. Yes. I can't believe it's all practical. For all the hardcore horror fans out there. And I know I have some. Yeah. Pinocchio, it is Pinocchio. But it's Pinocchio. Unstrung. We deliver the goods. You'll like it. New yourself a little, a little summer nasty horror fix. Go check it out July 24th. That is right. That's any day now. Yeah. And it's coming out, man. Come on. That's coming. Two days. I was like, yes, it's going to be at the theater in a couple of locations. You can check it out. Or VOD. Just watch it. It's so much fun. It's really fun. It's like the D's off. Get a pizza. Yeah. Crack a beer. I'm not joking along. I'm not joking. I've seen basically all of his movies, Reese's movies. And I think it's the best one. It is the best one. It's definitely, yeah. No, it's you can see I'm really getting ahold of things here. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. Well, they're fun too. They're fun too. Yeah. Absolutely. They got to go stand in line, you guys. Go get it up. Yes. Go get it up. Go make your turn. I got to find my shield and my toe guys. Oh, well, just, yeah, you're not wearing pants. What does it matter? My high heeled sandals.