Zorro! That guy with the sword!

This is an "I Heart" podcast. Guaranteed Human. In October 2021, my brother David was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A year later, he convinced me to make a podcast with him. This podcast. - My biggest fear is that I am afraid of being forgotten. - My brother David is the story of the last chapter of my brother's life. It's weird and messy and vulnerable, and I'm gonna share all of it with you. - Okay, so here we go. - Listen to my brother David on the "I Heart" radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - How do you know that cloud won't become manipulative? - This is a constant worry. - And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm gonna tell the user why. - I'm Walter Isaacson. I'm my new podcast, The Builders. I'm going inside the minds of the people shaping our future. - Listen to The Builders starting October 13th on the "I Heart" radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - Welcome to "Stuff You Should Know," a production of "I Heart" radio. (upbeat music) - Elaine, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. We call Jerry Zorro all the time, because Zorro is Spanish for Fox, and this is "Stuff You Should Know." - Did you, has Zorro ever said a lay? - Is that a Zorro thing? - No, that is a bumbling stereotypical American thing to say. - Oh, I would have said, "Weep, weep, weep." - Oh yeah, that would have been much better. - I don't think so, 'cause I didn't even do a Z, I just did three lines, I did it wrong. (laughing) So, yeah, we're talking Zorro today, and I have a question for you, Chuck. - No, boy, you know, people are before you go. There's actual Reddit threads about people loving the age old joshism of things like, have you ever eaten a peanut or whatever? Have you ever seen a grown man naked? - All right, fire away, what's this one? - Chuck. - Mm-hmm. - Have you ever heard of Zorro? (laughing) - It's such a letdown. - That would have killed us. - Oh, no, anything else would have been a letdown. That was perfect. Yeah, I know Zorro, and I guess I was into Zorro at one point, because after, this is like an hour ago, after two days of kind of looking into this, I remembered suddenly out of the blue that I went to Zorro for Halloween when I was a kid, one year. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - That's pretty great. I was Zorro one year. And then I also remember, I'm sure it's not a movie that I hate the term age as well, but I'm sure there's all sorts of terrible stereotypical homophobic jokes in it. But boy, when I was a kid, I love Zorro the gay blade a lot. - I think it's one big homophobic joke, isn't it? - Well, I mean, the plot is that Zorro is injured and his twin gay brother shows up to town to take care of business. - In what's his brother's name? (laughs) Oh, God, is that Bunny, Perry Winkle? No, what is it? - Bunny Wiggles' worst, Bunny Wiggles' worst. So dumb, I wanted to check it out again. I wonder if there's any sort of forward thinking humor at all. - I don't get the impression there is. I watched it when I was younger too, but everything was just right over my head. I was like, "That guy talks funny," basically, I was about at that age. And so I went back and read the Roger Ebert, like 1981 review of it. - Oh, what Ebert think? - He thought it was pretty dumb. He said that like they played it in all the wrong ways that it could have been funnier, but the whole premise was just not good because none of it was played straight. It was all played joky in that whole it off, you know? So he gave it a two out of four. So I guess he halfway liked it. - Yeah, well, maybe he liked the one brother 'cause George Hamilton played both. - Yeah, maybe too. He's like, "I like the Bunny Wiggles' worst character, but the Zorro." - And then I was also in the theaters for the 1998 and Antonio Banderas version and really enjoyed it. So I guess I was in the Zorro at one point. Was that because you had seen Desperado, the sequel to El Mariachi and we're like, "I like the say Antonio Banderas, Kat." - Which one was first? Was that was the Zorro? - Zorro came after Desperado like three years ago. - Did it really? - Oh, okay. I mean, I liked all that stuff. That was peak Antonio Banderas for me. - Yeah, I think Desperado launched Antonio Banderas to his peak if I'm not mistaken. - Great movie. I loved it. - So good. So good. Although I've always felt bad for the guy who was in the first El Mariachi that Robert Rodriguez traded up to Antonio Banderas from. - Yeah, and it was a weird sort of sequel sort of remake, but I liked him both. El Mariachi is great. - I don't know if I ever saw it. - It's really good. And he made it for like $8,000 or something. - No, I know that's like the legendary India film movie production story. That's what I was after story. You got there. - So yeah, let's get back to Zoro and Antonio Banderas wasn't the biggest tangent we've ever been on because he did play Zoro. He did kind of bring Zoro back for a whole new generation, but Zoro, my friend, has been around for more than 100 years. Zoro recently celebrated his 107th birthday joke. - That's right, because it came about for the first time in a Pulp Fiction serial in 1919 called the Curse of Capastrano and all story weekly written by Johnston McCulley, not what I expected. - No, Irish American journalist. I think he was a political journalist and he just wrote fiction on the side. And he had basically, I guess heard stories and legends of real life bandits and banditos in California's history. Specifically, there was a whole big podcast just waiting for us to do on the transition from Spanish Mexican rule to Anglo-American rule of California because that was a rough and ugly transition it turns out. And that's essentially where Zoro takes place because of those transitions, because of all the injustice. It was a little bit mixed and different, muddled up, I guess, as we'll see by McCulley, but the stuff that he based it on was taking place around that time and actually a lot of this stuff did happen in real life, although there was no actual Zoro. - Yeah, for sure. I don't think we have to go over all of these people that it was perhaps based on, but unless you want to, but we should definitely talk about Joaquin Marietta because that actually shows up in the Antonio Manderos movie version. - Yeah. - Oh, okay, yeah, so it's me, huh? So, Joaquin Marietta is-- - Wait, did you not get your script this week? - No, I didn't. I didn't get the, what do they call the last minute revisions? - Sides. - Sides, I didn't get the sides. - All right, Momo Adam. - Oh, no. - So Joaquin Marietta, that's probably my favorite first name in the whole world. - I like it. - He may not have actually existed. He was definitely a figure from legend. There is some support that he actually, that he might have existed, but for the most part, everything we know about him is legend, and then was based on a fiction novel that was based on the legend. But the legend goes essentially like this, that he was born in Sonora in Mexico in 1830. And when he was 18, he went to California to become a minor 48, or I guess, in the gold brush. And he became one of many Mexican prospectors who had a claim and had his own little mind, did his mining there. And everything was going just fine for two years until California became a U.S. state. And the Anglo-Americans were like, this is our state now. Give us your mind. - Yeah, I mean, this stuff has been going on a long time, all the way back in 1850. They said, hey, even though you've been here forever, we are here now. So that makes you a foreigner, even though you're in your homeland. And so we're going to pass the Foreign Miners Act. And that basically rids us of you because what it did is it required non-citizens to pay a lot of money to be able to mine in the state of California, which, you know, I imagine it wasn't every, every last Mexican prospector, but probably most of them had to hit the road. And as we'll see, this is, you know, possibly a Zorro influence. Marietta was one of those guys. And he was like, you know, it's kind of a Robin Hood type story. He was like, you know what? I'm not taking this sit down or standing up. I'm going to start robbing you guys for a little payback. And the governor saw this and he was like, all right, well, now you have a price on your head. And, you know, depends on whether you believe this is true, but there was a California Ranger. Like this is the real historical record in 1853 at California Ranger said, you know what? I've got him right here, but part of him only. I've got his head actually. and it's here in this pickle jar and this is myrietta. - Yeah, everybody's like, that's gross. You carry that around with you. He's like, "Yeah, check it out." - Yeah. - And yes, that is the only thing we know that's on the historical record. The governor did put a bounty on his head and a ranger did have a head in a pickle jar and he said was myrietta, right? That's all we know. Everything else we just said was legend. And the reason his legend continued is that in 1854, a novel came out that basically turned him into a folk hero. This legend, possibly real person, Joaquim Maria, became a folk hero because of the novel and then because the novel was written in 1854. As time wore on, stuff people knew from the novel became embedded into the legend and maybe it was taken as true. And that, just the fact that he existed, we know likely influenced McCully in creating Zoro. Like for certain, that's the guy who's most associated with him. I do feel like we should talk about Solomon Pico, though real quick, 'cause he definitely did live and he was a BA. - All right, so Pico was born in the San Juan Valley in 1821 and he was actually cousin of Pico Pico who was California's last Mexican governor. - Right. And he was given a land parcel and this, like we said, this is all true stuff. He was given a land parcel in 1844 and lost that land when that transition that you were talking about happened from Mexican California to Anglo-California. And he did like Zora would later do and like Marietta did. He's like, all right, it's vengeance time. And not only that is, I'm gonna wear your ears around my neck and a necklace. - Yeah, he's known as like probably the most violent outlaw or Bandito who ever lived, who actually who did live. So he would just basically go around killing Anglo-Americans as he came across them and that actually led to his execution because he saw what he thought was a white American guy in a restaurant and he went up to him and stabbed him to death and that guy was like, I'm British Gov and that was the end of Pico. So those two guys, and by the way, we just spoke about Pico in a very crisp and economical manner. Chuck, congratulations. And I think Pico's last words, was he executed for that? - Yeah. - I think his last words were, what's the difference? - Right. So yeah, so those two guys and then probably at least a couple others, at the very least their legends and stories. Somehow McCulley, McCulley heard about these and that's what he baseded Sora on. I think that's the upshot of what we're trying to say here. - Yeah, and as we'll see and we'll kind of get to why in a minute. Also the 1905 novel, the Scarlet Pimpernell. - Yeah. - I've definitely seen that that's pretty much verified by McCulley himself. But he's still alive. - No, I don't think McCulley's still alive. - Okay. - But he verified it when he was alive. - I got you. - His last words were, it was partially the Scarlet Pimpernell. And his widow went, I knew it, I knew it. - So for his book that he wrote, "The Curse of Capastrano," you mentioned earlier that he took some sort of license, I guess it wasn't really license 'cause he was just making a story based on legend. But he said it a few decades earlier before, it wasn't during that transition from Mexican California to Anglo-California. It was still a Spanish colony at the time that he set the first Sora story. And in this case, he really changed it up because Sora is defending the indigenous population there from Spanish authorities, not Anglo-Americans. - Right, so that makes Sora even more noble because he's not indigenous, he is white. He is directly of Spanish descent with no indigenous applaud in him. So him defending the rights of indigenous people from the Spanish authorities really kind of makes him like a hero character even more, you know? - Yeah, and for McCulley's side, he gets to avoid just the sort of mess of telling the story of the Anglo-Takeover of California. - Yeah, because he was writing this stuff for like an American audience, right? So he just kind of, you know, rejiggered a few things, I guess. - Should we take a break? - Yeah, and then we'll talk about the curse, "Capastrano." - If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. - I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, "The Builders." Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Derio Amade. Alex Carr, Feifei Lee, Palmer Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they feel, and where they think this is all headed. - Silicon Valley is always saying the cliché thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. - Well, yeah, it's up to us. - But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? - They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, who's imagination do we want to live in? - This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. - Listen to the Builders, on the iHeart Radio App Apple Podcast, or ever get your podcasts. - The first thing I hate about eulogies is they never actually tell the Turks. I'm Dave, and I've been a (beep) for my life. - In October 2021, my brother David was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This podcast. - We didn't know what we were doing, so we just started recording. We discussed cancer. Since the radiation I lost about 10 more pounds. - We fought. - Yep, pisses me off. - And we talked openly about the fact that David was going to die. - I am afraid of being forgotten. - The constant back and forth battle about how do I, how do I not just be alive, but I should live. - Listen to my brother David on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - Chuck, we're back. I wanna give a hat tip to Julia because she did a really great job of getting across the action adventure sense of Zoro in her article that she sent us. So hat tip to you, Julia. Okay, I just wanted to get that done. Let me check that off, great. - Yeah, we tip our sombrero to you. And if you're thinking, or didn't wear a sombrero, we'll just hold on to your sombrero because he actually did it first. - Yeah, in the curse of Capastrano, it's set in Southern California around Los Angeles, around the mission of San Juan Capastrano, which is where the name comes from. And again, the Spanish authorities are pushing the indigenous Mexican population around, taking their land, trampling their rights, like just basically being terrible people, and they're all doing this because the governor of California is instructing them to, right? - Yeah. - So the mayor of Los Angeles is his son, his name is Don Diego Vega. His first name is not Don. Don is an honorific that you would call somebody out of respect like Sir or Lord. So his first name is Diego, not Don. - Yeah. - For my kid, the godfather. - Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. I never put those two together. - Did you really not? - Zoro and the godfather are basically the same movie. (laughing) - Zoro, the gay blade and the godfather. - That's right, yeah. So Don Diego Vega, he's the heir to the family fortune. I'm not sure how the mayor made a fortune, but he is not Zoro. He's the antithesis of Zoro, Don Diego Vega is. - In modern parlance, you might call him soft. He lives a life of privilege. He's kind of a dandy fob. And his dad is like, oh gosh, this guy, this son. And so, disappointing to me, the women don't even like him. But this is all a ruse, everybody, because he is secretly Zoro at night. He's kind of doing that thing where, you play the opposite of who you are as a mass figure during the daytime, so no one can, no one would ever suspect that you are he. - Yeah, I mean, if this isn't like the Los Angeles, today is still fairly small. So I'm sure there's a small pool of potential. suspect who could have been Zorro, so he really had to take some some real steps to throw him off of his trail. And that's what he did. It worked too well as we'll see. That's right. So he's Don Diego during the day and then at night he goes down to the seller. He meets with his trusty assistant Bernardo. And he puts on Chuck. He puts on that sombrero, baby. He puts on a sombrero. I imagine, I'm not sure if this is in there, but the kind of sombrero with like the little colored balls that hang around down. Okay. That's the kind of sombrero I see when I imagine a sombrero. Oh, I see. I immediately pictured like the three-amigo style. But I like both. I think that I'm kind of talking about that. Okay. The little colored like fabric balls hanging around the the the rim of the brim. Hey, I know what you're talking about. I don't know. Those things have got to have a name. I just don't know it. If the things that are on the ends of a shoelace have a name, those have to have a name for sure. Yeah, exactly. So he also wears a purple cape in this initial iteration. His mask the black mask completely covers his entire face in this iteration. Yeah, weird. He's travels by horse, something that would carry over. And he's a swordsman. He does a little bit of whipping here and there, but his real calling card is that sword. And even though it's not as big of a deal in the book, it is in the book that he cuts that zee into maybe somebody's butt if they're been over and you want a little comedy, or maybe into their clothing or something. And if you want a little piece of trivia, Zorro's horse was tornado, tornado. That's right. Put that in your pocket everybody because that'll come in handy at bar trivia one day. That's right. Someday. Okay, so I said that the daytime thing is starting to get problematic posing as this lazy fob Don Diego. The reason why is that he's played it too well. His father is like, you're not going to inherit the fortune. I can't give this fortune to you. You're a giant disappointment. You're a planatismal at best. And he says, how about this? If you marry and basically get off the couch and go do something and marry somebody, I will, you can be my heir again. And so he starts looking around and he trains his sights on senior Rita Lolita, who is quite lovely, but she doesn't think very highly of Don Diego. No, she doesn't. She, well, he's a very off-putting person during the daytime. So she should not be attracted to him. You know who she likes. She likes a couple of people. One, Zorro, which is kind of problematic. And then Captain Ramon, who is one of the governor's henchmen basically. So he's in a bit of a pickle here because he's like, this lady senior Rita that I love actually loves the real me who is Zorro. Right. And this act that I'm doing during the days really turned to her off and now Captain Ramon is moving in on her. Right. I don't have the impression that she particularly like Captain Ramon, but I'm guessing he seemed like a good alternative to Don Diego at the time, right? Because he had his S together. I think, yeah. Even worse, there's now a bounty on Zorro's head and a bounty hunter's shown up in Los Angeles looking to basically capture Zorro. So all of a sudden Don Diego's life has just really gotten complicated. He's starting to rethink this social justice warrior thing. And then Bernardo, I think his presence really kind of steals and grounds Zorro because he is a, he's a Native American. He's indigenous. He's deaf and mute. And yes, he's a servant, but he's also a trusted sidekick who helps Zorro remain Zorro. That's right. And in that book, he does all those Zorro things. He robs from the rich, gives to the poor, returns land to people who had their land taken from them. He of course, whips the butt of that bounty hunter who came to get him. He takes care of Captain Ramon in short order. And then at the end, the mask comes off baby. Look who it is, everybody. It's really Don Diego and Lolita is like, perfect. This is, this is all I ever wanted. Too good to be true. And that's it. Ta-da. That's the, the curse of Capastrano. I don't know if we said they his foes called him the curse of Capastrano. Yeah. I don't think we did, but that makes sense. It does. So that was the first Zorro. And again, you said that the Scarlet Pimperno, which came out 14 years earlier, probably, you know, definitely, you said, influence Johnston McCulley, right? Yeah. He was a serpursi Blakeney in the book. He was the protagonist. He was an English nobleman during the French reign of terror. And he did the same thing. He posed as like a a spoiled little playboy during the day. So no one would suspect that at night, he was saving people from the guillotine, basically. Right. And he added his own calling card, a Scarlet Pimperno flower. Not a Pimper flower. No, those were disgusting. Not the Scarlet Pumpernicle either, because I remember that was a parody from the 80s, wasn't it? I think so. Yeah. I think it was a little adult for me. I just thought it was silly sounding. Yeah. He was also a swordsman. He wore a mask. He, like you said, had that calling card and he had a secret identity. So it, you know, definitely played into his writing, I think. So Douglas Fairbanks, right? The great American actor, one of the first like genuine movie stars in history. He read the curse of Capastrano and like seriously, within a very short time is like, I want to buy the rights to this and turn it into a movie. He wanted to play Zorro. This guy was like super athletic. I read that he used to just fool around and climb stairs on his hands. Like that level of athleticism, right? It's good trick. Yeah, definitely. I would love to be able to do that. I can tell you that I would just knock teeth out on step one. But he, he bought Zorro because he wanted to basically play different roles. Like I did not know this, but apparently started out in comedic roles exclusively. Did you know that? I did not. I didn't either. So this is where in Zorro, where he became the swash buckling hero that he's known and remembered as today. Yeah, 1920. It was before the talkies at this point. So it was a silent film with the mark of Zorro. And this is when he switches that hat. He's got the Spanish cordovan hat. And you might have been confused with those little balls hanging down because you will see those a lot of times on the cordovan hats. Okay, all right. Sure. Maybe. I don't know. Or on the interior of Cheech Marin's car. Right. I think he had the man. I can't wait till somebody tells us what those things are called. I can't either. And by the way, if you don't know what the shoelace things are called, they're called egglets. Guys, not you Chuck, I know you know that. Well, the only reason I know that is because it's a very common crossword clue. Oh, but we don't dare speak of crosswords on the show anymore. Hey, egglets in Anya. Yeah, egglets in Anya. That'd be a good name for a crossword book. Eglitz in Anya, Colin. Colin. My life is a mediocre crossworder. And it's a murder mystery. That's right. All right. So the other changes. He's got that cordovan hat instead of a sombrero, the mask from here forward. Because once you're trying it in film and people see it, then you're kind of like, all right, I guess that's order now for the most part. The mask only covers the top half of his face. Yeah. No more purple cape, but he does have a cape, but everything's black basically. And he is like, you know, he's super athletic because Fairbanks is and he wanted to show off and be like, get a load of this. Like show me some stairs and watch what I can do. Right. He would stand on one hand and sword fight with the other hand upside down. Did he really? No, I don't think so. But it sounds like he probably could have. He should have thought of that. Another huge, huge change was Don Diego's last name, Vega, was altered almost to where it's unrecognizable. It became De La Vega. That's right. And the Z that he would cut. And the book, it seems like it was not an afterthought, but just not the biggest deal in the world. Sure. And in the movies, it really became the thing because that's something that plays visually much better than in a book, I think. Right. And then in the book too, they kind of teamed it a little bit. And in the book, Zora would put a knee on his foes chest to hold them down and then hold the tip of his sword like a pen and really carve that z and slowly. It was much more graphic and painful, I think, than the one that Fairbanks came up with. Yeah. It got more swashbuckling for sure. So it provided a backstory, basically saying that Zora was European educated. His father had sent him to Europe to be educated in there. He learned sword fighting, but he also learned to value social equality. And his father was like Zora, I mean, Don Diego, this place, this Los Angeles is starting to get out of hand. It's getting corrupt. Why don't you come home and, you know, just be home. I'm not calling you home for any kind of heroic action or anything. Don't get me wrong. I just like you around the family farm. And so he did. He came home and And he saw this stuff firsthand in this, again, this Douglas Douglas Fairbanks movie. And he was so moved, he's like, I've got to do something about that. So he looked around. He found a sash, found a cape, found a mask, got his horse, Toronato. And he got down to business basically becoming the 1850s Californian Spanish Mexican Robinhood. That's right. And it was a big hit at the movies. It was very, very popular. So as soon as that movie becomes a big hit, what color he's like, oh, but I got to start writing more of these Zoro books. And the first one I'm going to write is I'm going to kind of expand the Curse of Capastrano into a novel and call it the Mark Zoro, because that's what that movie was called, right? And I need to capitalize on this thing. So he did that 1924, then wrote 60 more Zoro stories before he passed away in 1958. And then that mask of Zoro movie from 1920, the silent film was so popular, they remade it as a talkie in 1940 with Tyrone Power as Zoro. And then the next iteration after that was kind of a while. But 1974, when our old buddy, Frank Langella, comes in and made for TV movie as Zoro. Zoro then Dracula. Yeah. We talked about him a lot lately. Yeah. He keeps coming up. And as a reminder, I served him as a waiter one time at the restaurant in New Jersey where I worked, called the store in Basking Ridge and he ate steak for lunch and tipped me well. And I like him in the ninth gate. That's right. So that's our Frank Langella reminder slash update. Should we take a break or go on for another minute or two? Break. All right. We're going to take a break, everybody. And when we come back, we're going to knock your socks, clean off of your feet. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. Anyone must. Derrio Amade, Alex Carr, Feifei Leap, Almar Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they feel and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliché thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us. But when you say us, who's us, is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to The Builders, on the IHOT radio app Apple Podcasts, or ever get your podcasts. First thing I hate about Ulysses is they never actually tell the Turks. I'm Dave, and I've been it for my lunch. In October 2021, my brother, David, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This podcast. Okay, so here we go. We didn't know what we were doing, so we just started recording. We discussed cancer since the radiation I lost about 10 more pounds. We fought. Yeah, pisses me off. And we talked openly about the fact that David was going to die. My brother, David, is the story of the last chapter of my brother's life. It's weird and messy and vulnerable, and I'm going to share all of it with you. The constant back-and-forth battle about how do I not just be alive, but actually live. Listen to my brother, David, on the IHOT radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, everybody. I hope your socks are still on, because Josh loves knocking those things off. If you were sitting there listening to our descriptions of the early Zoro, and you're like, wait a minute, this guy wears a half mask. He does his work at night. He has got underground headquarters. He has an assistant, kind of butler type. He has a secret identity. He's a playboy by day. That sounds like Batman, when you're completely correct, because apparently Bob Kane and Bill Finger saw the mask of Zoro, and a couple of decades later, you know, we're influenced to write the great comic Batman. Mm-hmm. And apparently, it was not lost on Batman fans when Frank Miller brought Batman back in the Dark Knight Returns comic series, starting in 1986. As part of the origin story, when Bruce Wayne's parents are murdered, they're leaving a screening of the Mark of Zoro. Yeah, there you go. And then there was another, I think, just a single standalone graphic novel called Joker War in 2020. And Joker is basically trying to get everybody to a screening of the Mark of Zoro, so he can kill them all. Yeah. Nice of least, Rex. Yeah. Pretty cool, but also just to recognize, like, okay, the original Cape Crusader was Zoro, but it turns out the original Cape Crusader is the Scarlet Pimperno, which is mind-blowing to me. Yeah. For sure. So Disney came along, and they're like, hey, this guy seems like something we can make a lot of money and turn into like a massive pop culture phenomenon, which we think is Zoro today, because Disney came in. I mean, Zoro was already this enduring character, but also I get the impression in the same way, like, the man in the Iron Mask was an enduring character, or the hunchback of Notre Dame was an enduring character, like, they just, they, they'd come up and get remade or whatever. But when Disney comes in, they come in and they make it like a immovable icon from that point on, and that's what they did with Zoro. Yeah. 1957, you know, I mentioned the Frank Langella thing was the next film in 1974, even though it was made for television. This was actually a TV show in 1957, and it was much more of a Western-type thing. They turned Zoro into El Zoro, and he was a little bit more of a cowboy. I think the creators of the show even called it a Southwestern show, and it was very, very popular. Guy Williams played El Zoro, and this time he is fighting, and boy, they really went in the opposite direction here. This time he's fighting Mexican authorities, not the corrupt governor, and the other change they made was Bernardo, his sidekick is not deaf. He pretends to be deaf. He is mute, but he pretends to be deaf, so he can eavesdrop on conversations about Zoro. Right. And they really sunk a lot of cash into this. Apparently, a half-hour episode cost $80,000 to make, and an hour-long episode at the time averaged about $13,000, and I think a lot of that cost was sunk into the permanent set that they built for Zoro, which cost them about a half-a-million dollars in 1957 dollars. Right? So they really pulled out all the stops, and this was only on for two years, 1957, 1959. And still, they got almost 80 episodes out of this vehicle. 80 episodes over three years. Can you imagine being a TV actor back then? They just ran you ragged. Yeah. It was a lot of work. I just did the inflation for that. That's close to a million bucks in episode back then. Wow. And today dollars. And again, that's just for a half hour. So yeah, that was a big, big production. And they had a dispute, which is why it got pulled, because it was a huge, huge hit when it was canceled, 1959, because I think ABC and Disney had a little row about who owned the rights to Zoro. Yeah. And so that was it, but like you said, it made such a huge mark, I guess, a Z. It made me, if you will, that it just basically laid the groundwork for Zoro to keep coming up and coming up for the rest of the century, including that movie, which you said earlier if I'm not mistaken, is your favorite movie of all time. The market. There was also a Saturday morning cartoon. Did you know that? It was in 1981. So it would have been in your wheelhouse, the new adventures of Zoro. Oh, yeah. That probably had something to do with me going as Zoro. We had a Halloween trunk in our house. Did you have one of those? No. With like costume stuff? No. Yeah, I thought it was kind of common. In fact, I'd like to hear from listeners. We had a literal trunk in our house that just had a bunch of stuff in it where every year my mom would be like, well, you know, there's this, there's this hat. I could put it together with this. You could be a pirate. We got a little parrot with an elastic band that can go on your shoulder. Wow. So we just saved all this stuff. Now, we have our own Halloween truck in our house. And we utilize it in the same way. It's kind of a nice little tradition. But anyway, we had one of those Zoro hats, and I think that also had something to do with, I guess my mom would find stuff at like garage sales and be like, oh, this looks like it could be a future costume thing and throw it in the trunk. - Man, that's so cool. I wish I would have had one of those. We had an extension cord that we used as a jump rope. - Right. (laughs) And it made a pretty good whip too once in a while, but it's for the most part as a jump rope. - So, yeah, it was a cartoon, I definitely remember that. But it was 1998, was the Antonio Benderis version, again, a movie I saw in the theater, that I remember as being like a pretty good movie for what it was, and this was a big switch because Zoro, up into that point on film, had always been played by Caucasian American actors. - Right. - And, well, I guess in this case, that's actually half true because the elder Zoro in this movie is played by, and Don Diego is played by Anthony Hopkins, so Caucasian British actor, I guess. But he passes the baton to his son Alejandro Marietta. And if you remember that name, you're like, "Wait a minute, is that supposed to be Joaquin Marietta?" No, it's not. But that is his brother and his brother Joaquin's head is in a pickle jar in the movie. - So, is it pretty cool looking? - I don't remember. - Okay. - I would like to re-see this actually. In fact, this might be a fun family movie. - Speaking of a good movie for what it was, we talked about the mummy with Tom Cruise in the Universal Monsters episode. Did you go back and see it? - Yeah, absolutely. - Not yet. - I watched it, and I remember like we were talking about how everybody was like, it sucked so bad that it ruined like their whole plans for creating the shark universe. - Yeah. - I know, I really don't know what people were talking about. It was a fun movie that was really well made. It didn't get dull. There was no point where it was a slog. And all the little things like knowing that they were planning a dark universe franchise, you can see all the little things they were laying the groundwork for. And it's really sad that they didn't, they weren't able to pursue that because it would have been kind of cool, I think. - Yeah, that's a bummer. I still, I will watch that. - Yeah, I think you'll like it. Just go into it like it's a blockbuster. It's not high-order, anything like that. - Sure. - You're supposed to be. - Yeah, I like Tom Cruise. - He does greatness. - Yeah, I like him in movies. Let's just say that. - Okay, thank you. So you also like Antonio Banderas in movies specifically Zoro movies. And you were treated seven years after that. I guess epiphany you had when you saw the first mark of Zoro in 1998 when they made a follow up of the legend of Zoro, which I know for a fact you've said is your actual favorite. - You know, I don't actually remember seeing this. I probably did, but I don't know for sure because apparently he's married in this one and has children, which complicates the story and that doesn't ring familiar. So I may not have seen this one. - It's like Mr. Mom meets Zoro. - Right. He has to like sword fight with somebody while he's, while he has the baby on his arm, his other arm? - Yeah, probably. - I could actually see that now. As I was saying it out loud, I'm like, this was 2005. - Got a little onesie with a Z on it, right? So it turns out that Zoro is actually considered somewhat controversial. And it makes kind of sense if you stop and think about some of the things that we've talked about. Ultimately, it's that their, like his story was manipulated for different audiences over the images and to make it palatable actual history in the actual, like what the banditos who Zoro is based on were actually doing and why has been just brushed under the rug and instead it's Zoro and he's fighting everybody except the Americans. And in fact, apparently in the 2005 legend of Zoro, when California becomes a United States state, the Mexican residents all cheering are happy about it and that is the opposite of what happened as a perfect. - Yeah, yeah, that's what movies do a lot of times. They'll just kind of whitewash things and paint a rosy picture for an audience and that's definitely what happened in this case. - Right, and I was like, okay, well does that mean that Zoro was taken differently in other countries? So I found there was a 1974 Zoro movie produced and shown in Mexico and nope, he's fighting like I think the local military, Mexican military at the time. So no, it wasn't altered in that sense which I was a little surprised by. - Yeah, that's interesting. Zoro has been around, like there have been a lot of iterations since the Antonio Banderas version. One thing that had to do with that is it entered public domain in 1995. So there's been kids books and action figures. There's actually been ballet and video games, comic books, like all sorts of people capitalizing on the Zoro thing. And apparently between 45 and 60 movies all over the world about Zoro. - That's impressive. - James Bond can't even touch those numbers. - Who was it? Was it Dracula that's the most portrayed? I think character, we've talked about it before. I think it's Dracula. And it's not that many ahead of that if I remember correctly. So yeah, Zoro's up there. - Well, there's a new, and I reading all this, I was like, oh man, they should do a new Zoro movie 'cause it's kind of been long enough now. And we're ready for that new sort of big time Hollywood version. And I don't know if that's coming, but there is a movie coming out this year. I think it got us, it's getting a streaming release. It may be a show. I couldn't quite tell, but it's a French speaking film. So Zoro is French in this movie, which was a little weird. And it seems like it really leans into the comedy. - Oh yeah. - And Zoro's always had a lot like little comic touches, but this one seems like pretty, pretty heavily comic. - Gotcha. Kind of like Zoro, the gay blade level? - Nah, but different. - Okay. There's another, a lot of people have been calling for Zoro to be cast as a woman. And there's something that's still in development. CW and NBC supposedly are attached to it. And I saw that it's not dead. Robert Rodriguez was going to produce and direct it. And I don't know if he still is, but there's possibly that. But there's already been Zoro as a woman before. If you were in Canada, between the years of 2000 and 2001, and you had your TV tuned into the right channel at the right time, you could have seen Queen of the Swords, which is a straight up woman Zoro show. That was supposedly pretty good. - All right, I've heard of that. This sounds pretty good. They're certainly like at Geno Ortega. I mean, she's a little young, but if you kind of rebooted the character as a young woman, Geno Ortega would be great. - For sure. That's a great idea, Chuck. - If you can probably win today, Adam, she could play Zoro. - Yeah, let's get to it, Geno Ortega. - Oh man, there's no better way to end this episode than on that. So I say Chuck is time for Listener Mayo. (bell rings) - This one was really neat. Occasionally we do an episode where someone that's actually either tangentially tied or directly tied to the person of the story writes in and we love those. - Yeah, definitely. - And in this case, we got an email from someone named Lizzy Post about the Emily Post episode. And that is not a coincidence, everybody. She is co-president of the Emily Post Institute and the great, great granddaughter of the Emily Post. And she says this, guys, we were delighted by your recent episode on Emily. It melted our hearts to hear Josh and Chuck and Brace Emily, which she stood for and how she went about life. It was just beyond fantastic. And we are so grateful to you all, the stuff you should know podcasts for putting together this episode so well, sincerely Lizzy and that just made our day Lizzy. - Yeah, that was amazing when I saw that come in. I just immediately forwarded to you with the smiley emoticon if I'm not mistaken. - That's right, and I wrote Lizzy back. I think she wanted to send us something but I'm gonna see if Livia will accept that gift because Livia did such a good job with it. I think it should go to her. - I agree, I agree Chuck. That was very generous to make Nana miss of you. - Well, we'll see, I haven't done it yet. - Well, thanks a lot, Lizzy. We really appreciated that email. That was really great to hear and we're glad we warmed your hearts. And if we've ever warmed your hearts, other listeners out there and you wanna let us know about it, you can send us an email too. Send it off to [email protected]. - Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. 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