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BULLITT

Right in time for Father’s Day, TGTPTU with special guest Erik W. Van Der Wolf introduce their fourth of four directors for Season 17’s 4x4 HACKS with director Peter Yates entry into the Dad Film canon: BULLITT (1968).

Starring the coolest Caucasian cat to strut the silver screen, the American Great Escapee himself, Steve McQueen (no, Zoomer, not that Steve McQueen, he’s Black and a director, British and alive) plays the titular SFPD Lt. Frank Bullitt responsible for protecting against organized crime the DA’s witness who, no spoilers if it’s in the first act, gets got in his safehouse hotel room. Bullitt’s partner also gets the gat and instead of a this-time-it’s-personal, Yates plays the action procedural as Bullitt keeps his gun(s) holstered and his artist-architect girlfriend groovy and there’s that car chase action sequence we all know and love. Robert Vaughn plays the DA whose actions not villainous but smarmy all the same; Jacqueline Bisset plays the girlfriend whose uncertain whether Bullitt’s dark world and hers of hope and peace and beauty can coexist; and Don Gordon plays his normal role (as he would later in Papillon and The Towering Inferno) as second fiddle to whomever McQueen (again, Zoomer, the White dude who raced cars and defied death in his spare time and might have had dyslexia, not the enfant terrible of British designer fashion) plays. Also, Robert Duvall plays a taxi driver. Scored by Lalo Schifrin, the West Coast jazz sound really swings to make a film that vibes like few others.

This week, host Ken goes deep on McQueen, Ryan on Quentin Tarantino, Erik mansplains Dad Films to Thomas, and together guest and Zoomer develop a working dichotomy of Vietnam vs. WWII Dad-Films. We also learn !!!EXCLUSIVE!!! that Steve McQueen faked his death.

That McQueen’s one hep cat, daddy-o.

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As prefunk to next week's first Peter Yates episode, BULLITT, for his HACKS 4X4, we re-present our first Yates film, covered last year, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE. Coyle is so good and co-host Ken's befuddlement so severe that Yates also directed KRULL is what eventually led to this season of HACKS. Below is the sadly prescient original show notes for our Coyle episode written by show note genius, Thomas:

• The second 1x1 feature rounding out Season 14 and, chosen by Jack, the film is THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973). Directed by Peter Yates, whose career TGTPTU is unlikely to cover in a future 4x4 despite having Krull and Bullitt in his credits, TFOEC is an adaptation of George V. Higgins’ inaugural novel and notable as a unromanticized depiction of crime in artistic response to The Godfather, the Puzo book and Coppola film each preceding, respectively, the book and movie versions of TFOEC by one year.
• Higgins would take issue with the book as his debut novel. The former deputy assistant attorney general claimed to have written and burned 14 novels over 17 years prior to TFOEC and would go on to author over 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction before his fatal heart attack in 1999, but none with the impact of his first. As seasonal guest host Jack points out, nearly all the dialogue in the film is as it is on the page, and the pages are dripping with dialogue that creates the setting and action for this ironic story of “friends” who double-cross and live less than glamorous lives as Irish mobsters and criminals in Boston.
• Yates populates the film with faces, faces that we don’t see much anymore, distinct faces and every one telling a story, from the titular Coyle plated by Robert Mitchum who earlier in this life reluctantly left the assembly line to be an actor to actor Alex Rocco who starred as Moe Greene in The Godfather and helped Mitchum meet some of his old criminal friends whom Rocco had to leave behind after he (the actor Alex Rocco) was held for questioning in relation to the murder that kicked off the Boston Irish Gang War of the 1960s to James Tolkan before he’d lost his hair a decade prior to portraying Principal Strickland in the Back to the Future movies and Detective Hugh Lubic in the Cannon Films classic Masters of the Universe.
• For this episode, everyone did research: Jack and Thomas pair off for book report; Ryan covers the career of Mitchum; and Ken covers Yates and laments how now Hollywood lacks hacks as well as provides a new shaggy dog with The Pals of Charlie Brown.
• Make sure to wipe your prints clean on this one before listening with a friend.

NEXT WEEK: Peter Yates, HACK, Episode #1: BULLITT.

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Season 17 of TGTPTU calls a wrap on its third of four directors in its 4x4 this week with Ron Howard’s THE DA VINCI CODE (2006).

Starring Tom Hanks, father of musician and male model Chet Hanks but also known for leading roles in such earlier Howard films not covered on this podcast as Splash (1984) and Apollo 13 (1995), with a grotesque haircut as supersleuth symbiologist Robert Langdon from Dan Brown’s 2003 best-selling page-turner of the same name, the movie is a bunch of nonsense that got some Catholics upset for suggesting Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the disputed son of a disputed desert deity, had children, likely through consensual intercourse unlike the legend of his siring. Howard’s The Da Vinci Code also has great French actors used poorly in this flick mostly set in France and at least one Jellicle cat, one Sony Spiderman villain, and one Avenger (MCU, not BBC) actor of British lineage to help out the American Langdon in his quest for an ultimate truth that could rock the world to its core assuming it’s not flat (see Revelation 7:1 and Isaiah 11:12, ya heathens).

Holy host Ryan goes above and beyond in his research for this ep; the son Jack passes the season’s assignment; the father Ken is unimpressed by the chase scenes; and Doubting Thomas in real time processes that the female lead is the same actress as the titular Amélie (2001).

If you like anagrams and unstimulating action sequences, this might be the movie for you.

Skcus eivom siht.

P.S. You know that I am Opus Dei.

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TGTPTU’s olds take a break from handing out shiny nickels and Werther’s Originals warm from their pockets and yelling at clouds to join Gen Z cohosts Thomas and Jack for the latter’s third pick from Ron Howard, the child star turned hack director’s big studio, Industrial Light & Magic, four-quadrant blockbuster COCOON (1985).

Chosen due to nightmares it’d given to, and an insane plot retelling by, Jack’s friend, this first-time watch for him is remembered fondly as a family outing and rewatch by Gen X cohosts Ken and Ryan. That friend’s plot summary of extraterrestrials passing in human skinsuits abducting retirement home residents after seducing them with youthful lives of breakdancing and sexual congress does sound terrifying, but the film filters much of this through an all-star cast of Golden Age Hollywood actors (including this film’s Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actor Don Ameche and his four-out-of-four-star gams) and the youthful innocence of child actor Barret Oliver from The NeverEnding Story (1984) and the titular Daryl in D.A.R.Y.L. (1985). The flick also has a mid-twenties Steve Guttenberg in short shorts. Who likes the Gute in short shorts? We like the Gute in short shorts.

Exclusive to listeners of this episode, Ryan reveals the location of Atlantis; Thomas considers sex as an and/or with elderly person(s); Jack reveals his childhood-trauma-by-proxy; and Ken is unimpressed by the chase scenes but very into Gwen Verdon’s legs. Meanwhile, John Ritter’s testicle enters the chat.

This episode is, to borrow a phrase, “blue steel; a cat couldn’t scratch it.”

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TGTPTU’s good ol’ boys continue their binge with another director-hack four-pack, this time with that pilsner of directors, Richie Cunningham himself (Ron Howard) as we funnel a second watery intoxicant down our gullets and try not to puke with HILLBILLY ELEGY (2020).

Labeled a drama/comedy, this Netflix original is light on the latter, despite the normally exceptional screenwriter Vanessa Taylor being credited with the dramatization/adaptation of the 2016 autobiographical bestseller by the couch-copulating and at the time relatively unknown, already Peter Thiel-influenced, yet-to-be politician J. D. Vance. And also despite being lensed by pod-fav Maryse Alberti both initially and last discussed during Season 11’s The Wrestler when Aronofsky took a break from Libatique as cinematographer (S11, E2, Airdate 2/17/24).

Set primarily in two timelines (though no promises that a flashback did not have its own flashback or flashforward within), in one storyline the middle-school-aged J. D. spends most of his time in Ohio (FYI: Ohio is not part of Appalachia) with his manic mother before her mother (his grandmother) takes him as her charge and forces him to get some learning. The second timeline occurs over a few days as college-aged J. D. is a fish out of water at fancy, multi-fork dinner functions and must lean on his fiancée and an unlimited minutes cell phone plan to navigate the high society waters of Yale Law School (where she also attends). These two timelines thematically converge when J. D. must return to his Ohioan roots to confront his mother’s drug addiction, maxing out credit cards for gasoline and treatment, and teaching us a lesson that need-based college handouts and credit card debt are terrible things for other poor folks but if you’re the protagonist of a Ron Howard, triple Golden Raspberry nominated film, they’re what you need to be a best-selling writer and presidential lapdog.

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Season 17’s halfway to the finish line, and the TGTPTU boys are back from break revving their engines, ready for the next four in their “hack” director line-up. Jack’s pick coming in third is Ron Howard, starting with his first film in the big chair, the “smash-‘em-up” smash success (for a Roger Corman feature) GRAND THEFT AUTO (1977).

Howard’s only feature to co-write or to co-star in as director, the then-Happy Days star cut his teeth on GTA (no relation to the videogame) coming off the success as leading man-boy in the preceding Corman car chase flick Eat My Dust (1976). As part of Howard’s deal with Corman, the success of EMD put the boy who once played Opie Taylor in TV’s The Andy Griffith’s Show in charge of first and second units, stunt coordinators, helicopters, and his kin/fellow actors brother Clint Howard and father Rance Howard—all this on the day after Ron’s 23rd birthday.

GTA’s plot follows young elopers played by Howard and Nacy Morgan (who might be best known as John Ritter’s first wife), who’ve stolen Morgan’s father’s Rolls-Royce to avoid the pressure of her pseudo-arranged marriage to a rich dweeb. This theft leads Morgan’s father, a prominent citizen about to run for major office, to have his security detail retrieve his car (and daughter). Morgan’s jilted dweeb upon learning he’s not to be betrothed assumes she’s been kidnapped and calls a local radio station to put a bounty on her safe return before stealing a car to give chase himself, causing his wealthy mother to call the same station to offer a separate bounty for her son’s safe return. From there, cars go crash, clang, boom, and pow.

Start peeling off your lead paint and start snacking on its sweet goodness to revel in this 70’s film concept of comedy during what the hosts generally agree is a second-screener.

This ep, Ryan turns his head cold to his advantage as a radio announcer; Jack reveals this and Solo (2018) are the only Howard movies he’s seen prior; and Thomas and Ken recommend (re)listening to the Any Which Way You Can episode and dunk hard on regular Howard collaborating producer Brian Grazer’s hair.

CORRECTION: Jonathan Demme’s film for Roger Corman wasn’t Handle with Care (nor was it Woody Allen’s Radio Days) but Caged Heat (followed by Crazy Momma) when Demme was giving Howard some Corman-related advice.

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Season 17’s second four from a hack director concludes this week with the final film by Edward Dmytryk under discussion, a color saddles-and-stirrups flick WARLOCK (1959).

Arguably a better title of ≪L'Homme aux colts d'or≫ in its French-language release, Warlock as a two-hander Western covers the entry into the unincorporated community of Warlock by Henry Fonda’s Clay Blaisedell, a legendary gunslinger who owns a pair of golden six-shooters and, separately, the evolution of Richard Widmark’s Johnny Gannon from reluctant outlaw cowpuncher to sheriff of Warlock whose prominent citizens earlier lacking a sheriff had contracted Blaisedell to clean up. Homoerotic tensions arise between Blaisedell and Anthony Quinn’s Tom Morgan when Blaisedell decides to pursue romance with a significantly younger woman in lieu of their money-making vigilante partnering ways. Sheriff Gannon’s character also finds a love interest as the movie builds toward <> its final act, a post-shootout shootout between Blaisedell and Gannon with no Morgan to watch the former’s back. And no plot summary would be complete without mention of Star Trek TOS’s very own DeForest Kelley as “Curley” Burne, a member of Gannon’s former gang with some magnetism remaining in the character’s moral compass.

This week, Thomas expands on a list of movies whose misleading titles lead to disappointment; Ken expresses he’s not fonda Fonda in this film; and Ryan soft-shoes the homoerotic tension.

We’re taking a week off before shifting gears and entering the demolition derby that will be our next four in the 4x4 starting with Ron Howard’s debut film Grand Theft Auto.

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It’s calm seas and second helpings of strawberries this week as the TGTPTU boys cover their third of four curated Edward Dmytryk films, the multiple Oscar-nominated picture THE CAINE MUTINY (1954).

Saving its then “issues” producer (and subsequent to this movie an issues director) Stanley Kramer’s bacon, Dmytryk delivered a bona fide hit picture adapting the already popular book by Herman Wouk about a fictional mutiny during WWII among American seaman upon the titular Caine. Deviating from the Broadway courtroom play starring Henry Fonda (who’ll show up in next week’s Dmytryk film), the movie hews closer to the novel depicting on screen and in glorious Technicolor events aboard the ship leading to the mutiny, leaving the theatrical adaptation’s courtroom drama for the third act. The movie would also add Yosemite National Park as a romantic getaway between its Ivy League, very mid, blonde protagonist and POV character Ensign Willie Keith played by a now relatively unknown Robert Francis who died tragically at age 25 after a plane crash and his character’s fiancée May Wynn played by May Wynn who changed her stage name to that of her character on the recommendation of Kramer. And for more on the plot, there’s IMDB, Wikipedia, and further resources on the World Wide Web if you don’t have a great-grandpa around to ask.

The film would have seven Academy Awards nominations and no wins, with Bogart losing out to Brando (and Kramer to Spiegel) for On the Waterfront.

This episode Ken and his metaphor get sweaty towards the ep’s end; Ryan reveals the thuggish life of Joan Didion; and Gen Z’ers Jack and Thomas settle the TGTPTU style guide dispute over how to pronounce “gif.”

And now for an important announcement:

Despite what your lying ears have heard, there has never been a recorded mutiny on TGTPTU. The truths of each episode lie not in their incidents, but in the way these three hosts in the battle for the Pacific Northwest meet the crisis of their lives. Now sound the Star Trek Original Series whistle, we’re coming onboard.

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