00:00SPEAKERWhat are your favorite San Francisco movies?
00:02SPEAKERUm, I'm trying to think of any San Francisco movies.
00:04SPEAKEROkay, well there's like obvious stuff like The Rock.
00:07SPEAKERBullet.
00:07SPEAKERI started to say The Game, isn't The Game a San Francisco movie?
00:10SPEAKERI've never seen The Game.
00:11SPEAKERYou've never seen The Game?
00:12SPEAKERNo.
00:13SPEAKERWhat's it about?
00:13SPEAKERSome sort of game.
00:15SPEAKERI guess you could say that.
00:17SPEAKERMichael Douglas, David Fincher film.
00:19SPEAKERNo, I've never seen it.
00:21SPEAKERIt's been so long since I've seen it, hang on.
00:22SPEAKERI thought I'd seen everything David Fincher, holy cow.
00:25SPEAKERIt's one of his first, I think it's after the one he did after Seven, if I'm not mistaken.
00:30SPEAKEROh, so it's like...
00:31SPEAKERIt's like very early like...
00:33SPEAKEROkay, like early 90s.
00:34SPEAKERYeah, 90s, late 90s.
00:36SPEAKERYes, it is San Francisco.
00:37SPEAKERI wish I could remember the circumstances, but it's a very, it's a very oppressive atmosphere,
00:42SPEAKERa lot of intrigue.
00:43SPEAKERThere's very much like Michael Douglas on the run and not knowing who he can trust.
00:46SPEAKERI like that.
00:47SPEAKERAnd nobody in his life is who he thought they were type stuff.
00:50SPEAKERThat sounds great.
00:51SPEAKERIt's a good movie, but it is in fact a San Francisco movie.
00:54SPEAKERI'm gonna say the game is up there.
00:56SPEAKERThe Wedding Planner.
00:57SPEAKERI have not seen it.
00:58SPEAKERLow key, it's like the Wedding Planner is from the golden age of romantic comedies,
01:03SPEAKERwhen Matthew McConaughey was still youthful and a romantic comedy lead.
01:07SPEAKERAnd it had a coming right out of out of sight J. Lo at her peak acting, basically.
01:15SPEAKERAll right, that sounds all right.
01:16SPEAKERIt's very good.
01:16SPEAKERI was getting that mixed up with The Wedding Singer, which...
01:19SPEAKERWedding Singer, different movie.
01:20SPEAKERA very different situation.
01:22SPEAKERYeah.
01:24SPEAKERMuch more Adam Sandler.
01:25SPEAKERAdam Sandler was The Wedding Singer.
01:26SPEAKERJ. Lo was The Wedding Planner in this case.
01:29SPEAKERGot it.
01:30SPEAKERI think The Rock is hard to beat.
01:32SPEAKERYou got a good car chase.
01:33SPEAKERYou got some Alcatraz bits.
01:35SPEAKERIt's the obvious answer, but it's probably also the right answer.
01:39SPEAKERBullet is...
01:40SPEAKERIf you haven't seen Bullet, Bullet's a San Francisco classic.
01:42SPEAKERIt's Steve McQueen and peak cool Steve McQueen when he's still wearing turtlenecks and stuff.
01:47SPEAKERThat's lots of good downhill car chases and stuff, right?
01:49SPEAKEROh, yeah.
01:50SPEAKERThere's this car chase that starts out on the Bay side of the city, in the north edge of the city,
01:56SPEAKERand it goes all the way down to the San Bruno mountains and ends up in Brisbane.
02:01SPEAKERHe drives a '67 Mustang fastback that's like British racing green.
02:05SPEAKERIt's just absolutely gorgeous.
02:07SPEAKERKills a bunch of people.
02:08SPEAKERHe's a bad cop or bad PI.
02:11SPEAKERI can't remember which one.
02:14SPEAKERLet's see what else.
02:18SPEAKERI feel like there's some more.
02:19SPEAKEROh, there's a bunch of disaster...
02:22SPEAKERThe core has some good...
02:25SPEAKERThe new Planet of the Apes movies.
02:28SPEAKERThe redone ones with Andy Serkis as the Apes.
02:30SPEAKEROh, okay.
02:31SPEAKERThose are all based in San Francisco and are quite good.
02:33SPEAKERYou are going to smack your forehead in the way that I am.
02:36SPEAKERWhat did I miss?
02:37SPEAKERBig trouble in Little China or something?
02:39SPEAKERAs I scroll this list here, yeah.
02:42SPEAKERStar Trek IV.
02:43SPEAKEROh, yeah, of course.
02:44SPEAKERDirty Harry.
02:45SPEAKERThis is Doubtfire, the Maltese Falcon.
02:48SPEAKERThe Maltese Falcon is from a different San Francisco than we've ever experienced.
02:51SPEAKERYeah, I guess.
02:52SPEAKERI guess.
02:52SPEAKERInvasion of the Body Snatchers.
02:54SPEAKERSo, and also Star Trek IV, which I love, was not shot in San Francisco.
02:59SPEAKEROh, was it not?
02:59SPEAKERI mean, the park where the fucking Klingon Bird of Prey is,
03:03SPEAKERit's supposed to be in Golden Gate Park, is a park in West LA somewhere.
03:05SPEAKEROh, nonsense.
03:06SPEAKERTurn this podcast off.
03:18SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made at TechPod.
03:38SPEAKERI'm Will.
03:39SPEAKERI'm Brad.
03:40SPEAKERHello.
03:40SPEAKERHey, Brad.
03:40SPEAKERHow are you doing?
03:41SPEAKERI'm doing well.
03:42SPEAKERI'm excited for this podcast, which is a, is it fair to call it a rewatch podcast?
03:47SPEAKERI watched, I did not rewatch.
03:49SPEAKERWe're just going to talk about sneakers.
03:50SPEAKERYeah, we're going to talk about sneakers.
03:51SPEAKERThese go back and watch a techy movie from the past and talk about it.
03:54SPEAKEREpisodes are quickly becoming some of my favorites.
03:57SPEAKERWell, I, so I watched sneakers in the movie theater in 1992, probably on a date when it came out.
04:04SPEAKERI don't know that I can endorse this as a, well, it depends on.
04:09SPEAKERIt was a good date.
04:10SPEAKERIt was a, I don't remember any downsides.
04:13SPEAKERDepends on, depends on who you're taking.
04:15SPEAKERI mean, look, this kind of person who would date me in 1992 was going to be into sneakers.
04:18SPEAKERThat's fair.
04:19SPEAKEROkay.
04:19SPEAKERThat's, that's a good point.
04:20SPEAKERUh, but, but like I wasn't super computery in 1992.
04:24SPEAKERLike it was, it was right on the beginning edge of me discovering computers and like,
04:28SPEAKERI hadn't had any experience with modems or, or, you know, even BBSs or anything at that point.
04:33SPEAKERSo, uh, it was, it was an eyeopening experience and it was almost like watching a science fiction
04:38SPEAKERmovie for me.
04:39SPEAKERReally?
04:40SPEAKERYeah.
04:40SPEAKERCause like at the time I didn't know which, which of the things in this were real and which ones
04:44SPEAKERweren't.
04:45SPEAKERThat's interesting.
04:46SPEAKERCause it's in retrospect, it's also quaint.
04:49SPEAKERWell, I mean, I think it's aged incredibly well.
04:52SPEAKERYou think so?
04:53SPEAKERSo, so like, okay.
04:54SPEAKERSo 15 minutes into this movie, I literally opened up the document that we use to share,
04:59SPEAKERshare notes for episodes.
05:00SPEAKERIt was like, Holy shit, this is a good movie.
05:02SPEAKERUh, I, I had not remembered how tense and how well just generally I remembered it being
05:10SPEAKERfun in a genre way.
05:11SPEAKERI did not, I did not realize that it is also an incredibly well-made movie.
05:15SPEAKERYeah.
05:16SPEAKERAnd fairly prescient in a couple of ways that we'll get to, I think.
05:20SPEAKERWell, yeah, like it's understanding of post cold war politics.
05:24SPEAKERWe're, we're way far ahead of where any of like, I think most people were in 1992.
05:31SPEAKERAnd governmental abuses of power and things like that.
05:34SPEAKERBut we'll get to that.
05:34SPEAKER10 years early on that, it turns out.
05:36SPEAKERYeah.
05:37SPEAKERBut it's, it's the movie has, I mean, we're just going to assume anybody listening to
05:41SPEAKERthis has already watched it and knows what we're talking about.
05:43SPEAKERBut yeah, we're not going to worry about spoiling a 30 year old movie.
05:46SPEAKERIt's got such an interesting tone to it because like you said, in the, in the middle for a
05:52SPEAKERwhile, it gets very taught and thriller ish, but on either end of that, especially early
05:57SPEAKERon, like it's got this weird whimsical lighthearted vibe to it.
06:01SPEAKERWell, it's, it's there's yeah, it's more.
06:06SPEAKERIt's I mean, I guess this is the beginning of the four quadrant film era, right?
06:10SPEAKERLike they're trying to make something that appeals to everybody.
06:13SPEAKERYou know, the old people, the young people, the adults and the men and the women.
06:17SPEAKERIs that, are those the quadrants?
06:18SPEAKERI'd like you to pick whichever four quadrants you want.
06:22SPEAKERBut, but yeah, like it, it there's a scene you called out early on where, so, okay.
06:29SPEAKERSo the setup is that Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix, and David
06:36SPEAKERStratharn are basically like a white hat hacker agency made up of ex-cons.
06:42SPEAKERYes.
06:43SPEAKERThe crackers, I guess, crackers for hire.
06:45SPEAKERSneakers is what they labeled themselves in the game.
06:48SPEAKERBut, but like they break into banks, they figure out what's wrong with your security
06:51SPEAKERso that you can fix it before the real bad people do it.
06:53SPEAKERYeah.
06:53SPEAKERYeah.
06:54SPEAKERThey call it sneaking, like our latest sneak.
06:56SPEAKERYeah.
06:56SPEAKERAnd the cold open, my guess is that that's a compromise with the studio who didn't want
07:00SPEAKERto call somebody hackers or crackers for two obvious reasons.
07:05SPEAKERYes. And then cue what four years later when somebody was just like, fuck it, this movie
07:09SPEAKERis called Hackers.
07:10SPEAKERYeah.
07:12SPEAKERBut it, it, it opened, the cold open is them, is Robert Redford breaking into a bank, transferring
07:19SPEAKERmoney to himself electronically, and then coming in and withdrawing cash the next day, walking
07:22SPEAKERupstairs and handing it to the, to the executive board of the bank.
07:26SPEAKERAnd it's like, here's the problems with your system.
07:28SPEAKERWhere's my check?
07:29SPEAKERRight.
07:29SPEAKEROh, so this was before the, the quick kind of flashback origin story, which is him and
07:34SPEAKERhis friend Cosmo in a, I guess, a university?
07:37SPEAKERThey seem to have broken it.
07:38SPEAKERIt's, it's supposed to be like a computer think tank type university.
07:42SPEAKERLike what was it that was supposed to, it was, it was based on the one at Stanford, I
07:47SPEAKERbelieve, but I'm not sure.
07:48SPEAKEROkay.
07:48SPEAKERAnd then through a twist of fate, the Robert Redford character makes it out while his friend
07:53SPEAKERgets pinched by the authorities.
07:55SPEAKERHey, fun fact, the exterior facades of that university were the clock tower from Back
08:01SPEAKERto the Future.
08:02SPEAKEROh, wow.
08:02SPEAKERNo kidding.
08:03SPEAKERUh-huh.
08:04SPEAKERI guess I have to go back and look at that, but I guess I can see that real quick in that,
08:07SPEAKERin that scene that said in 1969, I believe.
08:10SPEAKERYeah.
08:10SPEAKERThey're using an actual monitor, like a terminal to hack into things.
08:14SPEAKERWere there, was that a thing where I thought people were mostly still on teletypes at that
08:17SPEAKERpoint?
08:18SPEAKERI don't have any idea.
08:19SPEAKERAm I nitpicking too much here?
08:21SPEAKERIt's best not to.
08:22SPEAKERSo, okay.
08:23SPEAKERSo the thing about this movie watching it now, knowing what I know now and not having a lot
08:26SPEAKERof period specific knowledge is that the vibe I got was that they did some of the stuff
08:31SPEAKERvery, very right, and then where they needed to, to make the story work, they just kind
08:35SPEAKERof hand-waved past a bunch of stuff.
08:37SPEAKERSure.
08:37SPEAKERYes.
08:38SPEAKERWhat I will say is that Len Alderman, who is the A in RSA, which was the dominant form
08:44SPEAKERof encryption for a really, really long time, multi-factor encryption, was the math consultant
08:48SPEAKERon the movie.
08:49SPEAKERInteresting.
08:50SPEAKERAnd he wrote all of the slides for the math scene where-
08:54SPEAKERYes.
08:54SPEAKERThere is a specific scene that it features a whole lot of equations.
08:58SPEAKERYeah.
08:58SPEAKERHe did all of that.
09:01SPEAKERThe director is Phil Alden Robinson, who also wrote and directed Field of Dreams.
09:05SPEAKERI did not know that.
09:08SPEAKERHe apparently worked on this script for a really long time, eight or nine years, according
09:12SPEAKERto some slate articles I read around the 20th anniversary of the movie 10 years ago.
09:17SPEAKERThey were also writing credits for Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parks, who were the co-writers
09:22SPEAKERof War Games.
09:23SPEAKEROh, okay.
09:24SPEAKERThat lineage is pretty obvious.
09:26SPEAKERYeah.
09:27SPEAKERI think the script is pretty perfect.
09:28SPEAKERThe other thing is the score, it's a James Horner score featuring a lot of Branford Marsalis.
09:34SPEAKERThat's really, I was waiting to get to this, I literally wrote under that in the notes,
09:40SPEAKERthat's where the weird whimsical lighthearted tone comes from for me in this movie.
09:48SPEAKERThe amount of Branford Marsalis saxophone in this, just that gently lilting sax all
09:53SPEAKERthe time makes everything just feel kind of goofy.
09:56SPEAKERBut then there's also some real moments of intense tension where it's like some James
10:02SPEAKERHorner-esque, James Horner business getting in there and getting in on the xylophones
10:05SPEAKERand stuff and you're like, "Oh wow, this is super nail-bitey."
10:13SPEAKERSo we talked about San Francisco movies in the cold open a little bit.
10:17SPEAKERIt starts as the most low-key San Francisco movie of all time.
10:20SPEAKERSo I felt pretty deficient here in my San Francisco recognizing-ness when I saw that
10:28SPEAKERin the notes because I did not pick up on it being in San Francisco until halfway through
10:32SPEAKERthe movie when there's a very conspicuous shot of, I don't know if that's the Ferry
10:35SPEAKERbuilding or it's one of the Pier buildings.
10:37SPEAKERIt's one of the Piers.
10:37SPEAKERIt's the Pier up by our old office on Front Street, I believe.
10:41SPEAKEROkay, yeah.
10:42SPEAKERWhere the Exploratorium is now.
10:44SPEAKERIt's the scene where he drops the black box with who he thinks are the NSA agents.
10:48SPEAKERYeah.
10:49SPEAKERAnd then he has to flee the scene quickly, but very obvious Pier shot across the street
10:54SPEAKERthere.
10:55SPEAKERBut prior to that, I did not, I mean, I went back and looked after I read that you had
10:59SPEAKERsaid it was a big San Francisco movie.
11:00SPEAKERAnd to be fair, a lot of the early scenes are shot at night.
11:03SPEAKERThey're shot pretty close.
11:04SPEAKERYou don't get a lot of really any establishing shots of big San Francisco landmarks or anything
11:09SPEAKERlike that for a while.
11:10SPEAKERAlthough there is a very obvious scene about 15 minutes in with a cable car right in your
11:15SPEAKERface that I probably should have picked up on.
11:17SPEAKERThe cable car is the first tell, but the place that I remembered was at that Embarcadero
11:22SPEAKERscene because I was like, "Oh."
11:24SPEAKERAnd also it was funny because it's Embarcadero when they were literally laying the tracks
11:27SPEAKERfor the light rail there.
11:28SPEAKEROh, yeah, it's very constructiony.
11:31SPEAKERYeah, the center medium is all plowed out because they're getting ready to put pavement
11:37SPEAKERdown.
11:38SPEAKERAnd because of that, I was like, "Oh, this is after the Embarcadero Freeway, which is
11:42SPEAKERmaybe the ugliest freeway ever built in North America and collapsed in '89, but before 1997
11:48SPEAKERwhen it was rebuilt."
11:50SPEAKERSo, yeah.
11:51SPEAKERAlso, I guess this was probably before Silicon Valley became a real household name, right?
11:57SPEAKERI think...
11:57SPEAKERI mean, look, 1992, the personal computer was rising, but it wasn't like...
12:02SPEAKERIf you had asked me in 1992 as a person who was kind of a nerd to point at Silicon Valley
12:07SPEAKERon a map, I don't think I would have pointed at Northern California.
12:09SPEAKERRight, right.
12:10SPEAKERLike to me, it's not until Netscape happens and things like that later in the '90s before
12:14SPEAKERthe Valley really became an iconic location, if that makes sense.
12:18SPEAKERWell, there was an early period when PCs were getting big, and then it kind of shifted north
12:23SPEAKERto Redmond with Microsoft for a long time.
12:25SPEAKERYeah.
12:25SPEAKERExactly.
12:29SPEAKEROverall, I'd say the performances were...
12:31SPEAKERIt's an unbelievable set of performances.
12:34SPEAKERI think everybody that was in the main cast, Robert Redford, Mary Macdonald, Dan Aykroyd,
12:38SPEAKERSidney Poitier, River Phoenix, and Ben Kingsley had all been nominated for Oscars.
12:43SPEAKERYeah.
12:45SPEAKERWhen I looked at the cast in this movie, and again, especially when I started watching
12:48SPEAKERit and I realized how sort of goofball it is in a lot of ways, specifically the presence
12:53SPEAKERof Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley, and Sidney Poitier in particular, those are people I
12:59SPEAKERthink of as sort of Hollywood royalty, very serious actors.
13:03SPEAKERHere they are doing this slightly cheeseball '90s hacker movie.
13:07SPEAKERTo me though, this is like... Robert Redford did a lot of... He did a lot of really tense
13:11SPEAKERstuff, but he also did funny stuff. The Sting is a comedy, right?
13:14SPEAKERYeah.
13:16SPEAKERAnd this is just... I don't know. The way the ensemble is used here is so good because
13:24SPEAKERyou have comic relief characters, you have a heart character, you have a wild card character,
13:30SPEAKERyou have the straight-laced center plot driving character in Robert Redford, and then you
13:35SPEAKERhave a really awesome villain with Ben Kingsley. And even the bit parts... I put Stephen Tobolowski
13:42SPEAKERin here because I absolutely love Stephen Tobolowski. You may remember him from Groundhog
13:47SPEAKERDay. He's Ned the Head, Needlenose Ned. He's like nerdy guy bit part in so many mid-late
13:56SPEAKER'80s, early '90s movies.
13:57SPEAKERI knew I recognized him when... He's the one that Mary McDonald takes on the fake date
14:02SPEAKERto try to get his voice print later in the movie.
14:04SPEAKERYeah, he's the patsy.
14:05SPEAKERI knew I recognized him, but I couldn't figure out why. And I guess that is the very definition
14:09SPEAKERof character actor.
14:10SPEAKERYeah. He is the epitome of nerdy dweeby kind of nebbishy guy.
14:17SPEAKERYeah. I felt a little self-conscious when they were talking shit about how safe a driver
14:23SPEAKERhe is as if that was a bad thing. I was like, "Wait a minute, I'm a safe driver? What's
14:27SPEAKERwrong with that?"
14:30SPEAKERI felt really seen when they showed his role... So this is another thing they did really well.
14:35SPEAKERThey did the social engineering stuff in this movie as well as they did in Hackers, I think,
14:39SPEAKERor better in some cases. So they showed the characters going through his trash. They went
14:44SPEAKERand pulled his trash out. They went through his trash. At one point, Mary McDonald holds
14:48SPEAKERup a perfectly rolled up tube of toothpaste. And it's like, "This person is very anal."
14:55SPEAKERI think that the obvious example of that is when we're kind of out of order here on the
14:58SPEAKERflow of the movie. But toward the end, when they're trying to get into the fake toy company
15:02SPEAKERoffice, the way that they staged like River Phoenix is a delivery man who is arguing with
15:07SPEAKERthe guy at the front office. And then Robert Redford comes in acting like he's supposed
15:10SPEAKERto be there with a cake and some balloons.
15:14SPEAKERNo, no. That's when they steal the McGuffin the first time.
15:18SPEAKEROh, you're right. That is much earlier on. You're right. I took that back. Yes.
15:22SPEAKERBut you're right. That is the perfect... Robert Redford establishes bona fides. "Hey,
15:27SPEAKERI'm supposed to get this cake for my wife. Is there a delivery?" The security guy trusts him
15:32SPEAKERbecause of this. He goes out, grabs the cake from an accomplice, comes back in with some balloons
15:36SPEAKERand a cake while River Phoenix is just working him over.
15:41SPEAKERRight. About delivering like 36 cases of Drano or something.
15:43SPEAKERYeah, something ludicrous.
15:45SPEAKERThe cake and balloons might as well be the classic clipboard of like,
15:48SPEAKERjust have something on you that makes you look like you're supposed to be there.
15:52SPEAKERAnd also it gives him an excuse that he can't reach for his card. "Can you just buzz me in?"
15:55SPEAKERRight. It's like that stuff, the bit with River Phoenix and Dan Aykroyd when they're doing the
16:01SPEAKERfinal heist, when Dan Aykroyd provides cover, he's basically just providing the security guard an
16:07SPEAKERexcuse to think he missed River Phoenix coming back. River Phoenix goes into the bathroom,
16:13SPEAKERhe's the gardening guy. He goes into the bathroom, he climbs up in an air vent,
16:16SPEAKERdisappears for the rest of the movie, basically. Dan Aykroyd, 10 minutes later, is standing outside
16:22SPEAKERin view of the security guard wearing the exact same clothing facing away.
16:27SPEAKERRight.
16:27SPEAKERSo the guard just thinks, "Oh, I must've just missed him coming out of the bathroom."
16:30SPEAKERYeah, it's good stuff. The stuff's executed very well.
16:33SPEAKERIt's really, really good.
16:34SPEAKERYeah. I enjoyed the kind of geopolitical backdrop of what was going on in this movie.
16:41SPEAKERYeah.
16:41SPEAKERIt had taken place directly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and they have a contact in,
16:46SPEAKERI'm not sure, is he working for Russia?
16:48SPEAKERHe's the Russian... He's a Russian consulate. Yeah.
16:52SPEAKERCultural attaché, I believe, is his title.
16:55SPEAKERObviously a former spy, though.
16:56SPEAKERRight. Right. But also his business card says, what was the loose conglomeration of states that
17:03SPEAKERcame about after the Soviet Union dissolved, something of independent states.
17:09SPEAKERYeah, yeah, yeah. CIS.
17:10SPEAKERYeah, the CIS, that's on his business card. He's like, "Oh yeah, new title." It's very clear that
17:15SPEAKERthe Cold War has just ended and nobody is used to it yet. Nobody's quite figured out what the
17:19SPEAKERnew balance of power is and who's actually working for whom.
17:21SPEAKERAnd also on a meta level, it's a really interesting time for this kind of movie because for the last
17:28SPEAKER40 or 50 years, Cold War intrigue, drama, spy, and heist movies have been a real staple for Hollywood.
17:37SPEAKERAnd this is the first of those scripts post fall of the Soviet Union that really was like,
17:45SPEAKER"Oh." I remember the year after this, George Clooney made The American with DreamWorks,
17:50SPEAKERand it was basically just a Cold War drama that was set five years in the past so they
17:54SPEAKERcould still do it. And this movie does something completely different and really swung for the
18:00SPEAKERfences. They embrace the change and just run with it. And you get different characters'
18:03SPEAKERperspectives on it. At one point, Robert Redford about Russia says, "We won, they lost." But then
18:09SPEAKERother characters have a rosier view on the whole thing. It's like, "Oh, we're friendly with them
18:13SPEAKERnow." It's interesting to see that mishmash of different perspectives.
18:16SPEAKER- The other thing that struck me watching, especially the first 20 minutes, is there's
18:21SPEAKERso much shared history built between these characters early on. These guys have clearly
18:26SPEAKERbeen working with each other for a really long time. They've known each other for a long time.
18:35SPEAKERThey don't tell the stories. They're very light with how they imply that there's shared history
18:41SPEAKERhere. But it's something you don't see as much in current movies.
18:44SPEAKER- Yeah. Well, they do a good job when the NSA, quote unquote, NSA guys come in at the beginning
18:50SPEAKERto try to hire them. And they just have a folder full of all of their criminal records. It's a nice
18:56SPEAKERtidy way to just very quickly introduce every one of these guys has gotten into some trouble,
19:00SPEAKERexcept for Robert Redford, whose folder happens to be empty.
19:03SPEAKER- Well, but yeah, but then they also hit on it in the conversations they have with each other.
19:07SPEAKERSidney Poitier and Robert Redford talk to each other at different times about things that have
19:11SPEAKERhappened in the past in the way that normal human beings talk to each other about things
19:15SPEAKERthat happened in the past, not in the weird expository way that happens in movies a lot.
19:19SPEAKER- Sure.
19:19SPEAKER- I, let's see, you called out the anagrams in the opening titles. I knew you'd love that.
19:25SPEAKERI was watching, I was like, oh man.
19:26SPEAKER- Literally the first thing you see after the universal logo is the phrase,
19:32SPEAKERa turnip cures Elvis. And it becomes very, becomes clear quickly that that is an anagram for universal
19:37SPEAKERpictures presents. I think I would have to double check, but they do that with a bunch of the
19:41SPEAKERopening titles and that immediately clued me into the kind of like info nerd experience I was about
19:46SPEAKERto have. - And then it opens with the throwback scene where Ben, well, it's not Ben Kingsley
19:56SPEAKER'cause they didn't de-age people in 1990, but. - Yeah, they just had to cast different actors.
20:00SPEAKER- Yeah, the person who Ben Kingsley plays cheats a coin swap, which hand is it in,
20:08SPEAKERso that Robert Redford has to go out in the snow and get pizza and then gets arrested for
20:12SPEAKERwire fraud and a bunch of what would have been in 1969, probably incredibly early wire fraud
20:19SPEAKERcrimes. Goes to jail and that's the last we see of him.
20:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel a little naive in retrospect, but I had completely,
20:27SPEAKERwe're getting ahead of ourselves, but I had like completely written that character out of my head
20:31SPEAKERby the time it became clear what was actually going on in that movie. Like I just assumed
20:35SPEAKERthat was an origin story that would not be revisited rather than the setup for the entire
20:38SPEAKERthing. - Well, and honestly, I remember like my bet is, I don't remember, but my bet is when I
20:46SPEAKERsaw that movie in the theater, I completely forgot about that scene by the end of the movie.
20:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, maybe that's just a testament to like how elaborate the setup is in the present day
20:54SPEAKERthat it's easy to forget about that stuff because there's so much going on with so many
20:57SPEAKERso many more characters. - But this movie has three of like the all-time best heist scenes. Somebody
21:03SPEAKERon Twitter, I posted about it last night, somebody on Twitter said, "Man, Sneakers is low-key like
21:08SPEAKERone of the best Mission Impossible movies ever." 'Cause it's got very much the same vibe, but like
21:15SPEAKERwith Mission Impossible where they have like all the resources of the greatest spy agencies in the
21:19SPEAKERworld, these guys are just hacking some shit together with stuff that they pulled out of the
21:23SPEAKERdumpster and whatever. - There's some fun, clever scrappy stuff in there, like getting a safe
21:29SPEAKERdeposit box at the bank and putting what I assume is like a smoke bomb in there to set off the fire
21:34SPEAKERalarm. - Yeah, I love, love, love the... Well, okay, so we have a list of scenes that we liked.
21:43SPEAKERThe social engineering stuff is all good. - Yeah, all the break-in stuff is fun and kind of a,
21:49SPEAKERespecially later on, which we'll get to, but it was kind of a Rube Goldberg way almost.
21:52SPEAKER- Yeah, like a good heist movie is always a Rube Goldberg machine, right? It's like,
21:57SPEAKER"Hey, this guy has to be in this place at this time." And then the format is the first one goes
22:03SPEAKERright, the second one goes right, the third one fails in a hilarious and amazing or amazing or
22:07SPEAKERincredible way, right? - Sure, sure. - That scene you called this out, I think, where in the opening
22:16SPEAKERone Robert Redford, like River Phoenix jumps over the counter breaking into the bank, Robert tries
22:23SPEAKERto jump over it. - He whiffs that jump and they just play it off so casually because he goes down
22:28SPEAKERhard. - Oh, yeah. - He literally somersaults in the air and looks like he might've might as well land
22:34SPEAKERon his head. - I guarantee you I didn't clock that when I was watching this when I was 19 years old
22:40SPEAKERor 17 years old, but man, I'm close to Robert Redford's age when he was making this movie now,
22:46SPEAKERand that fall would have fucking hurt. - I think that's why I laugh so hard at it is 'cause I am
22:50SPEAKERgetting older and understand physical infirmity to some degree now, but like, 'cause he's very
22:55SPEAKERgrumpy about it. Like when he's picking himself up off the ground, like he was just like, "I'm
22:58SPEAKERtoo old for this shit." - Yeah. - It's very, I don't even know how comical they intended for
23:03SPEAKERthat shot to be, but it's very funny to me. - Well, but there's a really lovely pace to the
23:09SPEAKERwhole thing where just when you're like, when you think you can't take the tension anymore,
23:13SPEAKERDan Aykroyd gets some crazy conspiracy theory line to trick, to piss off Sidney Poitier,
23:19SPEAKERand like the whole thing kind of has a humanity to it that's really lovely. - But I started to say
23:25SPEAKERthat Dan Aykroyd really got typecast as a conspiracy theorist, didn't he, except that he
23:29SPEAKERreally is just that person. So maybe it's just, maybe it's to be expected. - So one of the articles
23:33SPEAKERI read said that River Phoenix took this article 'cause he had just come off, took this movie
23:37SPEAKER'cause he had just come off of my own private Idaho, which was intense and awful and like left
23:42SPEAKERhim in a bad head space, so he wanted an easy paycheck. And that's why he played the light
23:47SPEAKERcomedy role, which I'm really bummed we didn't get more River Phoenix light comedy roles.
23:51SPEAKER- Sure. - But also Dan Aykroyd playing
23:55SPEAKERthis conspiracy nut super straight is so good. - Yeah. Well, especially, I think the reason it
24:01SPEAKERreally works is because he was working with a former career CIA agent. - Well, yeah.
24:05SPEAKER- Like that's really what it, and like Sidney Poitier clearly, I don't want to say he has no
24:11SPEAKERrespect for all of his coworkers, but he clearly is like highly irritated by them most of the time.
24:17SPEAKER- He doesn't have time for their shit in a way that like, yeah, like he just, yeah.
24:26SPEAKER- Like the friction between the guy like coming up with bizarre conspiracies about the government
24:30SPEAKERand the guy who has actually carried out conspiracies on behalf of the government is
24:34SPEAKER- Presumably, yeah. - Is pretty delicious. Well, like,
24:37SPEAKERI guess we could just get into it now. Like we alluded to this a little bit, but like the movie
24:40SPEAKERhas got like pretty grounded views on government abuses of power. And like the, you know, there's
24:46SPEAKERthat scene about the three letter alphabet soup agencies. And it's like, it's like the NSA is
24:52SPEAKERhiring them to do work for them. And they're like, why don't you just do this yourself?
24:55SPEAKERAnd they're like, no, we can't do that. We have to go through congressional approval. Only the
24:57SPEAKERFBI gets to do that. And they're like, well, what about the CIA? And it's like, I know they're there
25:01SPEAKERto topple governments and install friendly dictators, you know, like, like it's pretty
25:05SPEAKERin your face about its views on the way that governments, you know, meddle in the affairs of
25:11SPEAKERprivate citizens and other countries. - Well, I mean, Robert Redford, it has,
25:14SPEAKERit definitely, like, I feel like, like if Dan Aykroyd's conspiracy theory, love of conspiracy
25:19SPEAKERtheories bled over into the script, Robert Redford's dislike of conservative politics
25:24SPEAKERprobably bled over into the script as well. - That's fair. I guess he was a big enough star
25:28SPEAKERat that point to like probably have some pull in that regard.
25:30SPEAKER- I mean, like the fact that he's the only performer who got an anagram at the beginning
25:36SPEAKERsays something. - Definitely. He got the
25:37SPEAKERanagram billing. So yes. - Yeah. I was going to say the scene in
25:41SPEAKERCosmo's office, that's something I hadn't noticed before, but I, A, there's a Cray YMP in his office,
25:48SPEAKERwhich at the time was one of the fastest computers in the world.
25:51SPEAKER- Interesting. I did not recognize that. So let's, let's back up and lead up to that office scene.
25:55SPEAKER- Okay. - Because like, I feel like
25:57SPEAKERreally the, it's not the climax of the movie, but the definitely the most exciting part to me was,
26:03SPEAKERso like I said, I, it felt not a bad way, but there's something a little cheese ball about
26:08SPEAKERthe movie. - Oh no. Yeah. Always.
26:10SPEAKER- Again, that saxophone is a big part of it for me, you know, like Gregor, the, the Russian former
26:15SPEAKERspy is, is some, some comic relief. You know what I mean? Like it's pretty lighthearted movie.
26:19SPEAKER- It is, but it gets heavy. - That's the thing. The second that,
26:23SPEAKERso they get the box, they're, I don't even know if we've mentioned, like they they've been hired
26:27SPEAKERto go retrieve this black box that this math researcher has been working on, which turns out
26:32SPEAKERto be a cryptographic skeleton key for basically any information system on the planet. So they,
26:37SPEAKERthey get ahold of that thing and they are going to drop it off with the NSA agents who have hired
26:41SPEAKERthem to do so. - Well, but the night before they,
26:44SPEAKERthey drop it off, they start poking around at it. This, this, okay. So there's three key scenes in
26:49SPEAKERthis movie, right? There's the scene where they figure out what C-Tech Astronomy stands for and
26:54SPEAKERwhat the black box does. - The cross-cutting between Robert
26:57SPEAKERRedford and the Scrabble letters and the rest of the crew and messing with that black box,
27:01SPEAKERI thought was pretty good. - It's, it's exceptional.
27:04SPEAKER- Like, like him rearranging C-Tech Astronomy, trying to figure out what it means and getting it
27:08SPEAKERat the exact moment that they figure out what the thing does.
27:10SPEAKER- And then, and then the scene where they figure out the bridge where Robert Redford gets kidnapped
27:17SPEAKERand Whistler, who is the blind guy on the team is like, Hey, what Robert Redford gets kidnapped,
27:23SPEAKERchucked in the trunk of a car driven all through the Bay area. And Robert, Robert and the Whistler
27:28SPEAKERsays, Hey, what did, what did it sound like in the car? And Robert, it's like, well, you know,
27:31SPEAKERblah, blah, blah, blah. And that is an incredible scene. And then the final heist, the, like the,
27:37SPEAKERthe, the break in the, the through, I guess if I was really picking, I would say it's when Robert
27:45SPEAKERRedford gets kidnapped to the decoding of the, of the bridge. And then the final heist is just
27:51SPEAKERincredible. - Yeah. The stuff you're describing here is what I would say is the sort of like tech
27:55SPEAKERnerd engineering porn of the movie. Like the thing, those are all the scenes where they are
27:59SPEAKERsolving some complex system with like, like clever deductive means. - Well, but it's also the, like,
28:04SPEAKERit's the hard part of this kind of movie. Cause if they don't, if they do a bad job explaining this,
28:08SPEAKERthen it won't fly for the normal people who are sitting in the theater and have no idea what a
28:11SPEAKERfucking modem is. Like, like the fact that it sticks. Okay. So the Scrabble decoding scene is
28:18SPEAKERliterally Sidney Poitier, his wife, Mary McDonald and Robert Redford playing Scrabble,
28:21SPEAKERwhile the other guys are over there fucking around with the box and Sidney Poitier is like, yo, don't,
28:25SPEAKERdon't fuck with that. It's bad. That's a bad news box. Just leave it in the thing. They start poking
28:31SPEAKERat it. And they realize that it decrypts everything at basically the same moment that, that Robert
28:37SPEAKERRedford, beautiful minds, C-Tech astronomy into too many secrets. - Right. - Cootie rat semen also.
28:44SPEAKER- Yes. Also that. - Yeah. It was interesting. I read the, the Roger Ebert review of this movie,
28:49SPEAKERwhich he gave two and a half stars, but he criticized the depiction of the way that box
28:53SPEAKERworks because the only, the way they depict it really is just, they try to crack into some
28:57SPEAKERsystem and it's just a screen of gibberish text and all that text just very quickly, you know,
29:02SPEAKERkind of flickers into legibility, you know? - Yeah. - Like all the garbage characters turn into things
29:06SPEAKERyou can actually read. Like that's how they represent like, oh, this thing can break into
29:09SPEAKERany system in the world. But like, that seems like a pretty effective way to communicate that concept
29:15SPEAKERto people, especially in the early nineties, let alone now that would have had like basically no
29:18SPEAKERidea what cryptography and encryption actually were. - Yeah. Think about what you knew about
29:23SPEAKERcryptography aside from like enigma machines in 1992. - Right. So like just kind of showing
29:29SPEAKERgibberish text turning into real text, I feel like is probably a good visual shorthand for
29:33SPEAKERdemonstrating what that box does. Although that scene gets pretty dark because like,
29:37SPEAKERwhat is it that they, they basically they're like, okay, we got to make sure we know what this thing
29:40SPEAKERdoes. We got to put it to the test. What are some truly unbreachable systems? And what do they do?
29:44SPEAKERThey start with the federal reserve. - They hit the federal reserve, they hit the power grid,
29:47SPEAKERand then they go to air traffic control. - And like by the time Whistler is just like very
29:52SPEAKERblithely going like, hey, you want to crash a couple of commercial liner, airliners? I'm like,
29:56SPEAKERdude, this is getting dark. - Well, and like there's a real tension in the room at that moment.
30:01SPEAKERLike Sidney Poitier is pissed. - Like he practically jumps up and pulls the plug on the
30:05SPEAKERwhole thing once they get to that point, I thought. - Well, yeah, his wife and kid are there. Mary
30:08SPEAKERMcDonald is disturbed. Robert Redford is upset. But also they know he's joking, right? Like it's
30:15SPEAKERclear that it's just dark nerd humor in this case. - So I was going to say the moment the tension
30:20SPEAKERreally kicks off for me is the newspaper scene when they're doing the dead drop. But like you
30:24SPEAKERactually rolling back to the night before is good because once they realize what that thing does is
30:31SPEAKERwhen they actually realize what the stakes are, because that's when former CIA agent guy is like,
30:36SPEAKERthere is not a government on earth. Like, yeah, but I mean, like he knows because he's been there.
30:40SPEAKERHe's seen what governments do, right? Like he says like, there's not a government on earth that
30:44SPEAKERwould not kill all of us to get their hands on this thing. Like that's the moment everything
30:47SPEAKERturns very serious and all of a sudden they won't let, gosh, what is this? Like they won't let Liz
30:54SPEAKERgo home. Like they very like physically block her from leaving at that point because they're like,
30:58SPEAKERnobody leaves now. Like this is too serious. - Well, and also she was the only one who knew
31:03SPEAKERRobert Redford's secret, which the bad men knew. Now we obviously know later on that she didn't
31:08SPEAKERtell the secret because of how the NSA found out. I'm air quoting NSA here.
31:13SPEAKER- Yeah. But anyway, like, so yeah, cut to the next day when they go to drop the box off with the NSA
31:18SPEAKERagents and as he is sitting at the cafe table with them and then Sidney Poitier looks down and sees
31:24SPEAKERthat newspaper article, which that even felt like a quaint little, almost anachronism to me because
31:31SPEAKERlike in the current, in the modern information age, like there's no way the guy who you were
31:34SPEAKERinvestigating and whose office you just broke into could be murdered in like a weird suspected arson
31:39SPEAKERsituation. And you go most of the day without even hearing about it until you just look down
31:43SPEAKERat a newspaper, right? Like that would have been all over your phone. - Probably, yeah. Somebody
31:47SPEAKERwould have told you. - There's no way they would have gotten into a tight spot before they found
31:50SPEAKERout that they had been double crossed. - Wow. - The way that information travels these days,
31:54SPEAKERbut that was like in the early nineties, that still made sense. - But like the fact that he
31:59SPEAKERhad a car phone and like he figured out a way to get them out. Like I assume that the NSA/mob guy
32:06SPEAKERwas arming a bomb in the money suitcase, right? - Sure. - To blow them up or whatever.
32:11SPEAKER- Right. That was the moment like you said, the night before was some good ratcheting up of the
32:17SPEAKERtension. But that was the moment when he looked down and saw that the mathematician had been
32:20SPEAKERmurdered, that I was like, oh man, this is popping off. Like I am leaning forward in my seat now
32:25SPEAKERbecause I want to know where the hell this is going. And then it just turns into like,
32:28SPEAKERyou know, turns into not exactly car chases, but taught. - It's intense. - Intense car situations
32:34SPEAKERwith like, you know, there's fake government agents on top of fake government agents and like,
32:38SPEAKERwho can you trust? And like, then they just shoot the Russian attaché in the face. Like it ramps
32:45SPEAKERup. It ramps up fast. - The Russian attaché is saying, hey, do you want asylum? I can give you
32:49SPEAKERasylum. - Why did he not take it? I was sitting there like yelling at the TV. I was like, dude,
32:53SPEAKERjust say yes. He's offering you asylum. What are you doing? - Well, it wouldn't have made any
32:56SPEAKERdifference. - I guess not. Well, so at the time, well, so at the time you thought those were real
33:01SPEAKERFBI agents outside. Like you didn't know, you didn't know for sure that those were actually just
33:05SPEAKERmore bad guys. - Yeah. But, but like, well, I mean, it's like James Cameron says, sometimes the plot
33:12SPEAKERdemands that they make the bad choice. - Yes, sure. - So it would have been a real short movie
33:15SPEAKERif he got asylum and then went to the embassy and yada yada. - You're right. - So, okay, so that
33:21SPEAKERscene, the, the, the, the, they kill the Russian attaché, they kidnap Robert Edvard, chuck him in
33:30SPEAKERthe trunk. He drives around. He finds out that his long lost friend who went to jail and died in jail
33:35SPEAKERactually didn't die in jail. And he's basically the CFO for the mob. - That's what it is. That's,
33:40SPEAKERthat's why I had written Cosmo out of the movie in my head was because he says flat out that he
33:44SPEAKERdied in prison. - Yeah. He, it is a hundred percent clear that he died in prison. - I assume that was,
33:49SPEAKERI assume that was just some legitimate character building on the part of Bishop, right? The Robert
33:54SPEAKERRedford character. I assume, I assume that was just a legitimate part of his backstory that he
33:57SPEAKERfelt guilt about his friend getting jailed and then dying. - And that he had to go on the run
34:02SPEAKERand have no past, you know, as it would leave, leave his previous life behind. - But after they
34:06SPEAKERrough him up and also by the way, that Buddy Wallace guy, one of the fake NSA agents,
34:10SPEAKERhe's a real complete asshole. That guy was very good at being loathsome. Like I hated that
34:17SPEAKERcharacter. - Oh, he's super good. He's, he's one of like on the character actor hall of fame. Like,
34:22SPEAKERthat's the other thing is the characters in this movie are super good too. He, he has played the
34:27SPEAKERheavy in so many movies. Like you just see his face and you're like, oh man, he's going to be
34:31SPEAKERa real dick. - Both, both of those guys had me going. Like I had no clue until the reveal that
34:36SPEAKERthey were not actually NSA. - But when they flipped the switch, man, they get, they get really
34:39SPEAKERinsidious. - Oh, for sure. It's very sinister. But also when they put the whole thing together
34:43SPEAKERwhere like, oh, that building you met with them in was actually vacated by the government a month
34:47SPEAKERbefore and like is scheduled for demolition. They literally set up in an abandoned government office
34:51SPEAKERlong enough to have a meeting to sell him on the fact that they were government. - The homeless guy
34:55SPEAKERsaying they're taking away my home, man. And when he first walks up into that building and then
35:02SPEAKERthree days later, they come back, the building's gone. It's incredible. - Some, some good intrigue
35:06SPEAKERthere. But anyway, all that leads up to that scene in the office with Cosmo where it revealed that,
35:11SPEAKERin fact, his friends did not die in jail and is, is actually the villain of the whole movie. - But
35:16SPEAKERalso like has taken the, the full-on capitalism is bad. We've got to just burn the whole system down.
35:24SPEAKERWhat if there was no money? - Right. - It's straight up Fight Club business at this point. - It
35:29SPEAKERdid remind me of that stuff in Fight Club. But also again, it seems like hand in hand with the
35:35SPEAKERmovie's view on the way governments use and abuse power and stuff like that. - I mean, there's a
35:40SPEAKERstrong message. I don't know that I agree with all of the message, but there's definitely some
35:43SPEAKERof the message that is entirely accurate about money being the thing that exists to keep the
35:49SPEAKERpeople in power and power and yada, yada. - But that Cray before we move on from the office.
35:55SPEAKER- Yeah. The Cray YMP, big, big ass supercomputer from like 1992. - Is that what was in that little
36:02SPEAKERkind of what looked like an air conditioned room they step into to talk frankly? - Yeah.
36:05SPEAKERSo they went in there because those things were loud as hell and you wouldn't be able to bug the
36:09SPEAKERroom. - Right. - Presumably. The other thing that I noticed about that room that I'd never seen
36:14SPEAKERbefore is the white hat, black hat art on the wall behind his desk. He's those big, he's those big,
36:19SPEAKERhuge silhouetted guys. And one is in shadow and one is lit. So they look like a white hat and a
36:24SPEAKERblack hat. - Interesting. - Like super, super good. So that you go there, he ends up back at the
36:33SPEAKERoffice. There's another one of the great scenes in this movie when Whistler sets up like multi-stage
36:38SPEAKERcall so they can call the NSA and see if they can make a deal. Like, "Hey, is the federal government
36:45SPEAKERgoing to bail us out of this problem that we're in if we turn over everything we know?" And they
36:51SPEAKERroute it through like two satellites and nine stations and there's this stupid computer UI
36:56SPEAKERwith like the phone trace going back on the lines. - And they're using basically an improvised over
37:01SPEAKERthe phone lie detector. - Yeah. - Like there's some cheese in there for sure. - I mean, look.
37:06SPEAKER- It's fun. I'm not mocking it. I'm just saying like, it's a little bit goofy. - The call though,
37:12SPEAKERI wondered if you would get that it was James Earl Jones. - I didn't, somehow I did not hear it.
37:16SPEAKER- So Abbott, the guy that they call at the NSA and they have to like drop the code name for the
37:20SPEAKERproject C-Tech astronomy, which is what the mathematician who's dead at this point had called
37:25SPEAKERit. He picks up the phone and immediately I'm like, "Oh shit, James Earl Jones. I forgot he's
37:31SPEAKERin this." And they have this conversation about whether they can protect them. And James Earl
37:37SPEAKERJones is like, "Yes, we can protect you." And the lie detector flips out. And it's such a good moment
37:44SPEAKERin that movie. He's like, "Oh man, they are totally on their own. They're all the way ass out here.
37:49SPEAKERThey have to figure this out or they're done." They're all going to be end up dead at the end
37:53SPEAKERof this movie. - And I think that's why I didn't pick up on who it was on the other end of the
37:57SPEAKERphone was because I was just... It's a very quick tense scene, because you're watching the call get
38:01SPEAKERtraced as it's happening and the whole thing lasts like 30 seconds. And he only has maybe like five
38:07SPEAKERshort lines in that phone conversation. So we'll get back to that. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't
38:14SPEAKERfigure out who that was because it made a scene at the end much more fun, but we'll get to that.
38:17SPEAKER- Well, so then it transitions into them reverse engineering the path that he was kidnapped in the
38:22SPEAKERtrunk of the car. And that is, to me, the epitome of this movie. That scene with Whistler sitting
38:28SPEAKERthere with the synth, making the car sounds, making the sounds of the concrete seams on
38:32SPEAKERthe bridge, saying, "How many bridges are there? Was there a foghorn? Did you go through a tunnel?
38:38SPEAKERDid you hear this? Did you hear that? And did it sound like this or did it sound like this?"
38:42SPEAKERAnd them getting to the point that they could figure out all the way through to
38:47SPEAKERyeah, and then it sounded like I was driving through a cocktail party and Whistler is just
38:50SPEAKERlike, "Oh, I know what that is." It's kind of the magical blind guy as a trope, but also it works.
39:01SPEAKERI don't know. I found that to be absolutely spectacular. They get out to the reservoir,
39:06SPEAKERthey see the geese, they're like, "Oh yeah, okay, that does sound like a cocktail party."
39:09SPEAKER- That's what I meant about it being kind of engineering porn. It's watching a complex
39:13SPEAKERproblem be solved very effectively in really clever ways. - But yeah, and then the whole
39:19SPEAKERheist at the end is very good. I love the whole thing of like, "God, I mean, how many parts are
39:25SPEAKERthere to it?" Like you said, they went through his trash. She had to take him out to get his
39:29SPEAKERvoiceprint. - And his wallet. She had to steal his ID card, so Robert Redford had it.
39:33SPEAKER- Right, and his ID card. They had to break in and set the office to body temperature, 98.6.
39:40SPEAKERAlso, there was some, I don't even know if it's intentional, but some good physical comedy and
39:46SPEAKERRobert Redford only being able to move, what was it? - Two inches per second.
39:50SPEAKER- Two inches per second. Like he was literally having to walk in slow motion through this office
39:54SPEAKERfor like 10 minutes. - So I will tell you after I saw this movie, I tried to learn how to do that
39:59SPEAKERevery time I saw an IR motion sensor to see if I could move slow enough to not trigger it.
40:05SPEAKERDidn't work. - Didn't work. Does it work theoretically?
40:08SPEAKER- So some folks on Twitter said, hey, they actually learned how to do it.
40:12SPEAKERSo it's possible I was just moving too fast. - I wonder if I would assume modern motion
40:17SPEAKERdetectors have defeated that at this point. - Probably different mechanisms, yeah.
40:20SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah. But yeah, like that whole, I mean, again, that was another engineering
40:23SPEAKERsituation of just like, oh, we have to do this, this, this, and this, and do them all perfectly.
40:27SPEAKER- Yeah. - Which was fun.
40:29SPEAKER- So yeah, then that, the other one I liked was the moment when he hits the digital keypad lock
40:39SPEAKERand he's like, well, don't even joke about that. You can't get through those things, right? In
40:43SPEAKER1992, a digital keypad lock was probably terrifying and he's like, okay, here's what you do. And he
40:48SPEAKERnods and he nods and he nods and he nods, and then he just kicks the shit out of the door.
40:52SPEAKER- Yeah. - So that's the problem
40:54SPEAKERwith locks, I guess. Yeah, it was the heist, the payoff at the end of the heist, the surrender,
41:03SPEAKERthe whole, like the whole forcing his friend to shoot him, giving up the McGuffin that wasn't the
41:10SPEAKERMcGuffin, getting the thing getting away. The moment that I had completely forgotten about
41:17SPEAKERthat made me so happy is when Whistler, the blind guy, ends up having to drive the truck to do the
41:24SPEAKERpickup and rescue the three people that are in the building. And Robert Redford is talking him
41:30SPEAKERthrough it from the roof of this building and he's just bombing through the parking lot in this huge
41:34SPEAKERass panel van. It's very good. It's very good. - Yeah, that part made me pretty nervous, honestly.
41:41SPEAKER- Oh, it's terrifying. But there's such joy to it. It's such a nice payoff. The thing that makes
41:46SPEAKERthe script so good for me is that all the characters get the payoff, right? They all
41:51SPEAKERhave some sort of catharsis. And his is that he gets to drive the fucking car.
41:54SPEAKER- Yeah, well, he doesn't seem thrilled about it, but he does get to drive.
41:57SPEAKER- Well, he doesn't seem thrilled about it, but then he does seem excited about it. Like Midway
42:01SPEAKER3 is like, "I'm driving." - Yeah.
42:02SPEAKER- Yeah. - Actually, by the same token,
42:05SPEAKERthe F bomb that they give to Sidney Poitier, I thought was deployed very strategically against
42:09SPEAKERthe overtly racist security guard. - The shitty racist guy, yeah.
42:13SPEAKER- But is that why the movie is PG-13? - So they added cursing to the movie
42:18SPEAKERso it wouldn't be rated G. - Really?
42:20SPEAKER- Like, they intentionally added cursing so that they wouldn't be looked at as a kid's movie
42:24SPEAKERbecause of the title. - Oh, the title. I
42:27SPEAKERdidn't think about that. But I looked at the rating and I was like, "This movie is relatively
42:31SPEAKERbenign except for that F bomb, which has made me wonder if that's what pushed it into PG-13."
42:36SPEAKER- There's a little bit when they're spying on the mathematician and his girlfriend,
42:40SPEAKERthere's a little bit of sexy bits. - Some innuendo there and stuff.
42:44SPEAKER- But yeah, the slight piece on this in the 20th anniversary said that they explicitly
42:51SPEAKERshitted it up a little bit for bad language so that they would get a higher rating.
42:54SPEAKER- Wow. - The other thing,
42:59SPEAKERwhen he uses the Ronco Pocket Fisherman, that little collapsible fishing pole to lower the
43:03SPEAKERsensor down into the office at the end of the big heist, I had one of those when I was a kid.
43:07SPEAKER- Oh, wow. I didn't pick up on what that was. - I would never in a million years want to trust
43:12SPEAKERmy life to that thing being reliable. - Sure.
43:14SPEAKER- It's a phenomenal movie. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to go back and watch it again.
43:18SPEAKER- I enjoyed it quite a bit. And yeah, the James Earl Jones reveal at the end when he's actually
43:24SPEAKERthere was way better because I did not pick up on the voice earlier. What a baller move to finish
43:30SPEAKERthis kind of movie without some big action sequence or something like that, but just nine
43:35SPEAKERpeople talking in an office. Yeah, I was a little mixed on that, maybe because I had the expectation
43:40SPEAKERthat it would end in some bombastic way or something. But yeah, the last 10 minutes of
43:44SPEAKERthe movie is just them sort of hanging out and goofing. - Well, like working out the loose ends,
43:49SPEAKERright? - Right. Kinda, yeah. But I got very excited when James Earl Jones showed up.
43:53SPEAKER- When James Earl Jones shows up, there's the creepy scene with River Phoenix and the NSA agent
43:59SPEAKERthat's unfortunate where he's like, "All I want is this girl's phone number that he's literally
44:03SPEAKERjust met and hasn't spoken a single word to." - Right.
44:05SPEAKER- They gave a real phone number for whatever reason.
44:09SPEAKER- Really? - It's not a 555 one.
44:10SPEAKER- Huh, oops. - Yeah, the bit where
44:15SPEAKEReverybody asks for their heart's desire from the US government is kind of sweet.
44:20SPEAKER- Yeah, it was pretty good. - Dan Aykroyd's just like,
44:22SPEAKER"I wanna win a bagel, man." I feel like that's what Dan Aykroyd probably asked for from the
44:26SPEAKERmovie production too. - Sure. You know, being able to
44:28SPEAKERjerk the government agent, the secret agent guy around a little bit is some good wish fulfillment.
44:33SPEAKER- Yeah, like mildly irate James Earl Jones is pretty good James Earl Jones.
44:39SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure. - Turns out. But yeah, what did you think? Coming into this for the first time,
44:46SPEAKERwhere did you end up? Did you enjoy? Did you find it met your expectations? Were you overwhelmed,
44:51SPEAKERunderwhelmed? - I liked it. It was like hackers,
44:54SPEAKERbut to a much lesser degree. It was less kind of serious than I expected.
44:59SPEAKER- Yeah, kind of. - That cheese factor that I mentioned,
45:02SPEAKERand again, it's not a bad thing. There's a little bit of a difference in tone between what I
45:06SPEAKERexpected and what I got. And I wonder if some of that is just like kind of where mainstream '90s
45:11SPEAKERfilmmaking was at, at the time. - It was a weird time for movies,
45:15SPEAKERas I recall. - Yeah.
45:16SPEAKER- This was the year "Batman Returns" came out, I think.
45:18SPEAKER- Okay. - Which was a real hammy...
45:20SPEAKER- Yes, that does put things in a little perspective, I guess.
45:23SPEAKER- Yeah. - The big thing it got, though,
45:26SPEAKERthat I felt was very prescient was talking about... I think it was back to that scene where they were
45:30SPEAKERtalking about like, "Why doesn't the NSA just do this? Oh, that's the FBI's job. We can't do that."
45:35SPEAKERAnd they specifically say in that scene early on that like, "Oh, the NSA is for surveilling
45:40SPEAKERforeign targets. The FBI is for domestic enforcement," and stuff like that. And then
45:45SPEAKERat the end of the movie, when the NSA gets their hands on that box, and they're like, "Wait a
45:49SPEAKERminute. We already figured out that this thing isn't really effective on Russian codes or really
45:54SPEAKERanybody else's codes but ours. What the hell are you planning to do with this thing?" And it's left
45:59SPEAKERunsaid, but it's kind of exactly how it went, right?
46:01SPEAKER- Well, I mean, yeah, 10 years later, we formed the Department of Homeland Security and all of
46:05SPEAKERthe... And the NSA before that had figured out that if we just gave the technology that we use
46:11SPEAKERto spy on other countries to Great Britain and France, and they would spy on our people for us,
46:16SPEAKERand we would spy on their people for them. - Right, yeah. The allusions to American
46:21SPEAKERsurveillance, American government surveillance of Americans, I thought was pretty forward-looking.
46:25SPEAKER- It doesn't paint a very positive picture of the American government.
46:29SPEAKER- No. Yeah, which probably seems accurate, somewhat deserved.
46:33SPEAKER- I wished watching this that there was a whole cinematic universe of movies set with these people
46:39SPEAKERand them doing these movie things. - Yeah, they seem like they've had fun
46:42SPEAKERand lived interesting lives and there could be more stuff to do there, for sure.
46:45SPEAKER- Yeah. But the Cosmo twist on this, you didn't see that coming at all?
46:52SPEAKER- No, no, no. Like I said, when they said he had died in prison, that was it for me. I was like,
46:57SPEAKER"Oh, well, this is just backstory that establishes that Robert Redford feels guilty about that stuff."
47:02SPEAKERI thought the little sleight of hand, like he does it in the opening scene as a college student,
47:07SPEAKERand then he does it again. I think before you even see his face.
47:10SPEAKER- I think he's real early. - He's like standing in shadow
47:13SPEAKERin that scene in the office where he's like, "Does it hurt? Try aspirin." And he does a little sleight
47:18SPEAKERof hand with a little aspirin bottle. And before you even really get a good look at his face,
47:22SPEAKERyou're like, "Holy shit, it's his friend. What?" So it's a great reveal.
47:26SPEAKER- It's a moment that clearly the character has spent a lot of time thinking about how he wants
47:30SPEAKERto get back at his friend or reintroduced to his friend after 50 or 40 years of being dead.
47:37SPEAKERYeah. Anyway, that's a great movie. Everybody should watch it. I hope you did before you
47:40SPEAKERlisten to this because we spoiled literally everything about the movie.
47:42SPEAKER- Pretty much. Do you have any memory of the hype around it or how it was presented or marketed?
47:47SPEAKERIn that Ebert review, I'll just quote, he says, "The computer stuff in Sneakers has been widely
47:53SPEAKERtouted. The studio even released a press kit on disks," which I assume was a big deal back in 1992.
47:59SPEAKERYeah. I don't remember this movie coming out at all. Did you have any exposure to that stuff,
48:04SPEAKERlike hype around it being like a big computer movie?
48:07SPEAKER- I was not part of the conversation at that point in my life because I wouldn't have had
48:14SPEAKERaccess to internet or message boards or anything like that. The thing that I thought was interesting,
48:19SPEAKERI picked up the Ebert review as it mentions that Andy Anotko, who covered Max for the Chicago
48:28SPEAKERsame newspaper that Ebert worked for for a long time, Sometimes, I think, or...
48:32SPEAKER- Yeah, Sometimes.
48:32SPEAKER- Yeah. Said that it's a computer movie that achieves the neat trick of projecting
48:39SPEAKERimages from computer screens. Oh, no, that's the hacker's review. Yeah. I don't know. To me,
48:49SPEAKERI honestly probably went into this thinking it was going to be a screwball comedy 'cause it had
48:52SPEAKERDan Aykroyd in it. If I was making a guess, 'cause at that point in my life, I was 17,
48:57SPEAKERI'd just watched probably Stripes and Caddyshack and stuff like that, the R-rated comedies of the
49:02SPEAKER'80s. I remember coming out of it really liking the heists and not giving a shit about the computer
49:13SPEAKERstuff, which would have been right given the amount of computer stuff I knew about at that
49:17SPEAKERpoint. I think at that point, we had an old XT that I could play M1 Tank Platoon and stuff like
49:23SPEAKERthat on, but I really wasn't doing any real computer work at that point. So it was early
49:28SPEAKERfor me. - It's a fun one to go back to
49:31SPEAKERfor not just techy reasons, but also the geopolitical stuff. There's a lot of meat in
49:36SPEAKERthere to sink your teeth into, even in retrospect. - Watching it now, that's the thing that stands
49:41SPEAKERout to me more than anything else, is what an early post-Cold War geopolitical thriller looked
49:52SPEAKERlike that didn't rely on lost... The American was about lost... Or not the American, the Peacemaker
49:59SPEAKERwas about lost nukes. I referenced the American earlier. I definitely meant the Peacemaker, the
50:05SPEAKERGeorge Clooney, Nicole Kidman thing. And it's about the Russians losing nukes, and then it's
50:09SPEAKERabout two people chasing down the nukes and the nuke experts and all that stuff. And we've seen
50:13SPEAKERa bazillion of those movies. There have been Mission Impossibles and James Bond and all of
50:17SPEAKERthat stuff. I haven't seen a movie that was about taking down capitalism quite like this before.
50:24SPEAKER- Yeah, or particularly this early because this movie really gets it right. They saw it coming,
50:28SPEAKERand the Ben Kingsley character says it. It's a little on the nose, but he quite literally
50:34SPEAKERexposits. It's not about who has the money or who controls the weapons or the oil anymore. It's about
50:39SPEAKERwho controls the information. And that's, again, a little on the nose, but 100% right.
50:45SPEAKER- Well, in 1992, that was a revolutionary thought.
50:47SPEAKER- That's what I mean. They called it pretty early.
50:50SPEAKER- Well, and yeah, I feel like they did a good enough job with most of the stuff that was in
50:57SPEAKERthe movie that has held up really well. I think that's a good place to wrap it up. As always,
51:03SPEAKERthank you to our patrons who support the show. Thank you, patrons.
51:07SPEAKER- Thank you. Thank you.
51:09SPEAKER- This is, as always, a 100% listener-supported show. Brad and Will made a tech pod. Would not
51:15SPEAKERexist without the generosity of our listeners. And if you would like to find out more about that,
51:19SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod. Again, it's patreon.com/techpod, where you can find out more.
51:26SPEAKERWe have a question and answer episode coming up, so if you'd like to send some questions in,
51:29SPEAKERyou can post them. If you're a Patreon patron, Patreon patron, you can post them in the
51:35SPEAKERquestion-seeking-answers channel on the Discord, or you can email them to techpod@content.town,
51:40SPEAKERand we'll answer them there. But as always, thank you to all of our patrons.
51:44SPEAKERI really enjoyed this morning when we recorded this. It's gonna be old,
51:48SPEAKERbut one of our patrons was posting pictures and video from a cooking class they were taking this
51:53SPEAKERmorning, and it just looked really fun. I would love to go to a cooking class. I haven't done
51:58SPEAKERthat in a really long time. - Sounds like a fun relic of the
52:01SPEAKERbefore times. I would like to reclaim one of these days. - Yeah, maybe go learn how
52:05SPEAKERto make pasta or something. - Yeah, just go be in a room with people and do stuff.
52:08SPEAKER- Yeah. Well, hey, I got my booster. - Oh, yeah?
52:12SPEAKER- I'm boosted. - Oh.
52:13SPEAKER- Yeah, my daughter got her second shot. I'm boosted. Two weeks. By the time people hear this,
52:18SPEAKERI'll be good to go. - Yes, you'll have incubated.
52:21SPEAKER- Yeah. But as always, thank you to our executive producer tier patrons, including #bunnycrimes,
52:28SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Paddle Creek Games Makers of Fractured Veil, David Allen, Jacob Chappell,
52:34SPEAKERJames Kamik, Joel Krauska, and Twinkle Twinkie. Thank you all so much. We really appreciate it.
52:39SPEAKER- Absolutely. - And I guess you're,
52:43SPEAKEReven as we speak, on your way back from your voyages afar.
52:47SPEAKER- Yes, something like that. Or maybe I'm still out there.
52:50SPEAKER- Maybe you're still out there. We'll figure this out. We prerecorded some stuff.
52:54SPEAKER- Yeah. If something really big happened in the last two weeks, we recorded it before Brad left,
52:58SPEAKERso we'll get to it when he's back, I guess. - Yes, yes. If Apple bought Microsoft or anything
53:03SPEAKERand we posted an episode about sneakers. - Whoops.
53:07SPEAKER- Then you know why. - Yeah. Sorry about that.
53:10SPEAKERBut thank you all so much for listening and supporting the show. We really appreciate it.
53:12SPEAKERAnd we will see you next week.