Armageddon / Down Home Toasted Barrel Finish Rye ft. Noah Gittell

0:00 In 1998, director Michael Bay and * Bruce Willis gave the world a non-stop banger that transported the action genre into the outer realms. In 2024, we try a whiskey that I know absolutely nothing about. The film is Armageddon. The whiskey is down home Toasted Barrel Rye. And we'll review them both this is. The Film and Whiskey Podcast Welcome to the Film and Whiskey Podcast, where each week we review a classic movie and a glass of whiskey. I'm Bob Book.

0:52 I'm Brad G. Brad GI have been waiting for this moment for eight seasons, Not even necessarily because of the movie that's on the docket today, but because we finally get to talk about Michael Freaking Bay on the Film and Whiskey Podcast. I I feel like you have a secret crush on Michael Bay. Listen, there's been like a slight uptick over the last few years in the Michael Bay is definitely an auteur thing, especially like on film Twitter. And it's it's kind of accepted now that like, yes, he has a certain type of auteur. Like he he has a vision, he makes his movies and they are definitely Michael Bay movies. But I think honestly, he deserves to be taken a step more seriously than that. Like, his movies sometimes are trash, but like everybody makes a trash movie every like every now and then. I I think my my last movie was Trash Bob. All, all it was, yeah.

1:46 It was not your best. So I think that we deserve to look at him a little more analytically. We need to talk about the craft because there's definite craftsmanship here, and I don't know that there's a better movie to start with when talking about Michael Bay than Armageddon. A lot of people point to The Rock as maybe his his finest big movie. I I like. I like Armageddon better and I think that it is more Bay even than The Rock is. So Brad, I I'm really excited to dive into this one with you, man. I I feel like when we talk about Michael Bay, I I I was running a retreat for my work the other week and one of the gentleman there was just constantly talked about how he grew up in a place where they just put Old Bay Spice on everything.

2:32 And his question always was like how much Old Bay is on this. And I feel like that's a question you can ask about all Michael Bay movies. It's like, how much Bay are we truly getting here? How much Bay is on this? And the answer in this case is all of the Bay. All the Bay True Michael Bay Banger. It is. It is so much Bay, in fact, that the two of us are not able to review it alone. By we are not equipped for this much. Michael Bay We had to bring in our resident Michael Bay expert, our friend, author and critic Noah Gettel. Noah, how are you today? I. Got 5 words for you. Yeah, I'm glad to see you boys.

3:12 I like that. That's the old. Yeah, that's the only time Ben Affleck gets to accurately count something in the movie, too. That was 6 words, man, Noah, before we even dive into Armageddon. First of all, it's great to see you again. Thank you for joining us. You have been very busy of late. You've got a big project you've been working on. I don't know how much we can really spoil right now. It's been announced. You've written a book. Top secret. It's coming out in a couple months here. The book is called Baseball Colon the Movie. I am a big fan of this book. We're going to talk about it with you when the book actually comes out, but give us a little bit of a glimpse into your life having written this book and now preparing to drop this bombshell on the film book world. Yeah, well the book is available for pre-order right now, so let us spoil away and whet people's appetites. It's been a it's been a 2 1/2 year project basically from conception to getting an agent, to working with the agent on the pitch for publishers, getting a publisher writing the book and delivering it, and now working with publishers on an events plan and a media plan and and all that. And it's been amazing to be honest with you. Like people talk about how writing a book is torture. And I had didn't feel that at all. And I think part of the reason is that I picked a subject that I knew I was very happy to live with for this long. Baseball movies have always been my comfort food. I'm a baseball fan, a huge

4:43 baseball fan. I think I'm a bigger baseball movie fan. I really love the combination of these two things that I love. So it's just it's been an amazing process. Getting getting blurbs was great. Getting I got John Sayles to write the foreword like that was like, amazing. And it's just been a joy. And now I'm in this phase where I really just want it to come out and I want people to read it. And I hope people like it. I hope it means something to them, 'cause it is really, you know, it. It's a it's a biography of the baseball movie genre, but it really is a lot more. It's a lot personal. It's a personal book and if you read it through a specific lens, it's it tells you a lot about who I am and what I care about and how I feel about things.

5:26 So it does mean a lot to me and I can't wait to get into people's hands and and have them have them enjoy it. My my curiosity for you, Noah, is this. If you were to pitch a Michael Bay baseball film, who would be the star? What would be the basic premise? And how many baseballs would just like explode mid air for no reason? Well, but that's an interesting question for a number of reasons. There are some movies where baseballs explode, right, Like the natural he explodes a baseball. There's a Japanese movie called Mr. Go about a gorilla who plays baseball, and there's definitely some exploding baseballs in that one. So in a weird way, I feel like the Michael Bay baseball movie has already been made.

6:12 It's, it's a little redundant, but they do have a lot in common, right? They do share this sort of fetish for Americana. So like I I was surprised there was no baseball in Armageddon that somebody wasn't, you know, they weren't having a catch on the asteroid or something like that. It really would have worked. It would have worked really well. It feels like at the start, instead of him hitting golf balls off the oil rig, if he had like a pitching machine set up and he's just blasting baseballs, that that would have been missed opportunity, missed opportunity, Michael. Absolutely. I'm really glad that you said what you said about BAE and his Americana fetish though, because it it really does provide me a great segue from your book and what I really loved. I've I'm almost finished with your book. I'm on the last three chapters now. What I've really loved about it is that it's it's about how baseball films reflect Americana, but then also kind of inform Americana.

7:06 Like we have so associated baseball iconography with with the imagery of America at this point that certain movies are playing on that. And I feel like Michael Bay's kind of doing that with his films as well. There is so many random images of gigantic American flags. It's like the beginning of Patton at like most points of this movie. There's this guy standing in front of flags for no reason. But but you know that everything he's doing is for a really intentional purpose and I'm really excited to dissect this a little bit with you guys. As we get into talking about Armageddon today, we do want to say if this is your first time joining us on the Film and Whiskey Podcast, Welcome in each week we review a classic movie and a glass of whiskey. This season, what we're doing is we're looking at the highest grossing films from every year from 1988 to 2019. Now highest grossing.

7:59 Ish. Thereabouts, yeah. In 98, the highest grossing film was Saving Private Ryan. We have already reviewed that movie, and so we moved a couple down the list to Armageddon. And boy oh boy, am I glad we did. Because who needs who needs Steven Spielberg when you could go watch Michael Bay's Armageddon? Brad. Yeah. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg Please step aside. We have Bruce Willis, Michael Clark talk about this is an All Star case. I can't wait to talk about this cast. In order. In order to talk about the cast, though, we need to get to our first segment of the day, which we call, Brad explains. Brad's gonna give us the movie plots with only 60 seconds ticking on the clock, so let's go ahead and hear your take with this little segment that we call Brad explains. Brad Explains is the part of the podcast where Brad breaks down the plot of the movie that he has just seen, often for the first time.

8:51 Huge spoiler This was Brad's first time watching Armageddon. It was. Noah making a genuinely shocked face. Right now, Noah is aghast. At this moment he. Hasn't been on the show. Enough. There's there's no surprising me anymore. I'm just like, of course he hasn't seen Armageddon like. I couldn't believe he hadn't seen Sister act, but this is a whole other. Level. I was gonna say, guys, I think The Fugitive was the last movie of the 90s that we've reviewed, that I've seen. So we went in a row. From there we went True Lies 95, Goldeneye, Independence Day, Men in Black, Armageddon. What a freaking run we've been on, Brad. Dude, it it's been a wild experience. I feel like the last few weeks I I haven't been, like, wildly disappointed, but that, you know, they didn't quite live up to what I was hoping for in Men in Black in Independence Day. And I'll.

9:45 I'll just spoil a little bit of my final take. Armageddon definitely lived up to the hype. Here's the thing, man. Wait till you see it 9th and 10th time it gets even better. Oh, I I believe it. I like. I think at this point, I just want to try drinking different Americana beverages. Like, I like I need to drink Bud Light at some point, the whole movie and like just kind of keep trying different cheap American alcoholic beverages and it'll just be great. Just chug. Corn syrup and see, see what happens. Man. I was going to say, Brad, I didn't know whether this movie would, would continue the downward trajectory you've been on the last couple weeks. I was so pumped for you to watch Independence Day, a movie that I will admit is not a great film, but it is also a great film. You know what I mean?

10:35 Like, I, Bill Pullman gives his speech. I cried. I'm not going to lie to you. There's part of this movie where I cried and like. Here's the thing, man. Armageddon strikes the perfect tone that Independence Day doesn't like. Independence Day is just like kind of all over the map. Armageddon knows who it is from, from second one of this film all the way through the end, and it's it's committed. There is awesome. There is a Hollywood patina on Independence Day. There's a Sheen on that movie that this movie like it is, it is very highly stylized, but it is not what Independence Day is trying to be, which is like tapping into the old school blockbuster.

11:20 Bay is doing something very different here. And so I didn't know if you would get on board with it or not. It sounds like you were. And it's also time for you, Brad, to spoil this movie. Now folks, if you are in the small minority like Brad who has never seen Armageddon, please hit pause here. Go watch this 2 1/2 hour film and then rejoin us for the rest of our episode. But Brad? I'm not going to lie, I turned it on and saw 2 1/2 hours. I was like, wow, that's a lot of Michael Bay. But you didn't realize that what you were getting was not 150 minutes of movie, but 100 different montages strung together. And it it really makes the time pass quickly. Speaking of, you have one minute on the clock to give the full plot and spoilers and go.

12:04 Armageddon is a film about an asteroid. This asteroid is coming to blow everything to pieces. And guess what? Deep sea oil just tycoon Bruce Willis is going to go to space and blow this freaking asteroid up. Bob. And he does it. And it's awesome tycoon effect. Like, like we're sending, like Andrew Carnegie, to an asteroid to kill. Like, he's the best man. He doesn't know how to lose. He does not. I don't know if you know this. Like, literally everybody, including himself, tells you that I've never, I've never failed at anything in my life and that's how I ended up here on an oil rig and divorced, right?

12:50 Yes, all right. I want. To start, her daughter stayed with. Him. So she sure did. It's the winner. She really shit on her mom too. She was like, she abandoned me too, man. OK, I want to start talking about the movie, but in order to do that, I want to throw over to Noah, who's been patiently waiting through your 12 second explanation of the film. Brad. Noah, you had. Noah that that's a good explanation of the film, am I right? You left a few things out. I if we we had an opportunity for spoilers here. I mean we want to talk about what made you made us cry 'cause you did say you did say it made you cry. It definitely made me cry. You left out the the biggest cry moment when Bruce Willis sacrifices himself.

13:32 Of course the moment that made me cry me cry was a small moment but an impactful 1 when she says see that man on the TV? He's not a salesman. That's your daddy. Waterworks every time. OK, but why? Why? Why Armageddon, who I love about Armageddon? You know, when I when I talk about this movie, I sort of lose my critical faculties a little bit and I I turn into a fanboy and say stuff like, you know, it's just so funny and it's a thrill ride and it's just one thing after another. And and the truth is, to me, this is this is just a hugely entertaining movie that is sort of the platonic ideal of this type of 90s blockbuster.

14:13 It feels to me like there was a progression, you know, probably from Independence Day to this. And it was inevitable that this run of movies sort of end with a movie in which an asteroid is coming to kill everyone on the Earth because you can't go anywhere from that. And Michael Bay clearly knew that. And he said I'm going to make a movie that nobody can top and I think he really hasn't and and nobody has really, really topped this movie. And when I watch it, I just have an amazingly fun time. It zips from one set piece to the next, from 1 Montage, the next with, you know, incredible purpose and incredible speed. And you really have everything you want in a movie.

14:54 You do. You have, you have the heart wrenching moments. You have the laughs, you have ridiculous action scenes. You have a gun in space. But I do think if I want to put on my critic hat just for like a second, the reason this movie is sort of like quote, UN quote important, if you ask me. And you know, famously this was a Criterion movie. I think it was a laserdisc if memory serves. Or maybe it was a DVD. Yeah, I think it was boom eventually, yeah. They got a lot of guff over, including this movie. It was maybe the first time they really sort of took a chance and strayed from their prestige selections. And they, I know, have justified it by saying it's an important movie because it epitomizes this whole genre, this 90s blockbuster. And I think the 90s blockbusters are really important because they do feel like prototypes for the 2000s and 2010 blockbusters, like the Marvel movies and the superhero movies for a in a couple different ways.

15:53 One is, you know, we've got an ensemble here of people going to space with, you know, fighting this existential battle and with so much comedy in it. And to me, that's the thing that really separates Armageddon and sets the stage for movies like The Avengers and particularly Guardians of the Galaxy. Like this movie even has a 70s soundtrack in a lot of ways. And I think that I think that's really interesting but it's also the collision of another cultural force which is you know this the the 90s were were kind of characterized culturally by a couple different things. One of which is that it was this incredibly economically optimistic time when you know everybody thought the economy was going to be great forever.

16:38 And and I think that optimism is is in this movie not just in the amount of money that it cost but in in the vibe of the movie. You know, this is a a filmmaker and and a a film that acts as if everything is, everything is going to be great forever. The vibes are going to last forever. We can do whatever we want and they're not going to be any consequences. And on the other hand, we were approaching Y2K and there was this really like huge fear that something really crazy was going to happen in the year 2000 and there were genuine fears of the apocalypse and you got that in the movie as well. So it's this collision of kind of optimism and existential terror that that makes the movie great, in my opinion. Well, before we go any further, I think we just have to kind of dive in on Michael Bay a little bit. Like I said, this is the first Michael Bay film we've done on the show, which blows my mind.

17:30 Brad, we're almost 300 movies in, I think at this would. You say it's an explosion of your mind. Absolutely sparks. Like unexpected sparks coming off of my brain too. So Michael Bay, as with many directors of the 90s, gets his start as a music video director and some television as well, but primarily music videos, commercials. I guess the the closest analogue to him that we would all know would be David Fincher in that regard, both highly stylized visuals. Michael Bay, I think, pairs his highly stylized visuals with rapid cuts and montage approaches, whereas Fincher is a much more exacting he. He likes incredibly stabilized shots and he does a lot of panning.

18:17 He lets the camera linger sometimes. That's not Michael Bay like Michael Bay is. I am going to throw as much information visually at you as possible. That's the starting point with Michael Bay. Brad, I'm I'm curious to pick your brain a little bit because this movie carries over a lot of the 1990s music video stylings. Visually, Bay is known for like super high contrast lighting. It is not aesthetically pleasing to look at, like it's really harsh looking. And at the same time, I think that because the lighting is so I don't know, like high contrast, I guess is what I would say. The look of the movie holds up exceptionally well, like it's very 90s in the way that it feels. But it looks much more appropriate in the like digital filmmaking age that we're in now. And I don't really quite know how to parse that out, but I'm curious to know what you think.

19:14 Well, let's talk about high contrast. Let's let's contrast it with other 90s blockbusters that we've talked about before and and especially the look like look at a Robin Hood Prince of thieves and Braveheart right where everything like feels kind of dirty and Gray and washed out and and I know that those are historical epics if you will, but we. Talked about this, Yeah. There's like a flatness to the way that early 90s movies look, as opposed to the stylization of late 90s movies. Yeah. And and with this film, I do think you're moving more towards an early 2000s vibe. And and like you know, whether you love it or hate it like a later Michael Bay film, you you look at the first Transformers movie because that's the only one I've seen of of the bunch.

20:01 But like you still have that bright look that for me epitomizes that early 2000s movement in in cinema. No. Why Independence? Day is a is a good comp, I was going to say, because Independence Day came what like three years earlier, four years earlier. And it looks so cheap in comparison and and it looks so flat. And obviously there's a different, I mean, I think if you want to talk about Michael Bay's skill as a filmmaker, you can compare him to Roland Emmerich, who has a lot of big ideas but really doesn't know how to make a movie actually look good. And I just think there's a huge point of contrast between those two movies. Shots fired at Roland Emmerich. I do think though if if we're going to go that route and and shoot shots at Roland Emmerich the year, either the year that this comes out or the year after is when Roland Emmerich's absolutely awful Godzilla comes out. And it is so heavily influenced by this tip into a new visual aesthetic like even contrasting Independence Day to Godzilla. The way that movie is shot and lit, it's it's almost ripping off Bay at this point.

21:08 Bay and Fincher. And so I think that like you are on the forefront of this sort of music video, you know, tinged influenced look that you get with BAE now. I think his biggest critics have always said like he's never learned how to not make a 2 1/2 hour music video. I've seen a lot of people say that his movies feel like trailers. I don't really think that's the case. I think that what he really is good at is I am going to pack as much visual information into the 1.4 seconds that I let every set, every shot last in my movie. And so you get like people leaning out of a window at the end of the movie wearing like a tank top. And there's a red brick wall and there's a American flag in between the windows.

21:56 Because it looks like the kind of shot that you would see in Life magazine in the 1940s. And that's what he's trying to do. And that really works when you're trying to build a montage in a three minute, 3 minute music video. And so, like, you know, if I'm gonna criticize the guy, I would say he makes 2 1/2 hour music videos, but I would never say that he makes 2 1/2 hour trailers. I think that kind of misreads what he's actually really, really good at here. Yeah. And I don't think, I mean, to me, a 2 1/2 hour music video, that sounds pretty good. You know, I mean, I don't know why that's even a criticism. I mean, I don't watch this movie and I'm not like, you know, I wish who's Woody Allen, cinematographer Sven Nyquist or something. Like I don't. I don't wish that there was like a a, you know, an establishing shot of Ben Affleck and and Bruce Willis on the asteroid that went on for 2 1/2 minutes of them just like standing there talking. I'm.

22:46 I don't want that. I think this movie, his style, he insists upon it to such a degree that to me, you it doesn't leave you wanting anything else. He is so confident in his approach that I am more than happy to just go along with it and it is consistent. I mean, he doesn't let up from his approach and his vision for even a second in this movie. Though I don't understand how anybody could even want want this to be filmed a different way. You you don't want like an 18 minute children of men one or just moving through the asteroid and. How silly would that be in that movie? It would. It would. That would seem ostentatious in the. Movie. Yes. Yeah, yeah. 100%.

23:27 Brad, I want to pick your brain a little bit more about this. So what other Michael Bay movies have you seen? Bob, I've seen the first Transformers. I've seen Armageddon. Did you did I ever convince you to actually go watch Ambulance? No, I I want like, I'm curious about it. Bob, here's the deal. You have me watching a movie a week. That's not that many movies. That's one. One movie a week, dude. That's pretty good, man. I don't watch any TV. I I don't really do media that much, and one movie a week is a lot. So I want to like print a poster for the film and whiskey podcast with your quote. I don't do media.

24:13 Brad G host of movie podcast. All right, listen. So I was gonna. I was gonna drink that much whiskey either. Yeah, I know so. I'm just going to make a comparison to Ambulance and it's my first major criticism of this movie and. Don't. Don't spoil ambulance, Bob. I I won't let you do. It oh, of course I'm totally You're never going to watch. Ambulance has the barest semblance of characters in that movie. You get 4 minutes of character building, you learn that these two guys are brothers and that Jake Gyllenhaal's a sleazeball and that's all you need to know. You're in an ambulance at like the 8 minute mark and the plot is going. This movie, it takes them an hour to get onto The Rock.

24:54 And I just, if I'm being frank with you guys, I think the first hour of this movie is pretty not good and there's a lot of montages and it's OK, but it's doing the thing that you and I complained about with Independence Day. Brad like it's trying too hard to give all of these secondary and tertiary characters their fun little quirks, especially when you actually get on the asteroid and within 30 seconds half of them are dead and you didn't get enough build up to care that Owen Wilson is dead. And in fact, it made me angry that I had to listen to like 8 Owen Wilson, you know, quirky monologues and then he's just immediately dead.

25:36 Like, I just kind of wish we had tightened up that first hour and or spent more time with Bruce Willis, who I felt like was hardly in the movie for the first hour and 45 minutes. See Bob, I I you're probably right. But the only thing I really remember from the first hour is Bruce Willis chasing Ben Affleck around with a shotgun on an oil rig. And it might be my favorite part of the movie. I that just there was something about Bruce Willis running around with a shotgun on an oil rig that I was like, I'm in. If the rest of the movie is this, I'm sold. I I got my money's worth.

26:20 I split the difference, man. I I love the first hour and the second hour. I think they're both amazing. I mean, and part of what what I love about this movie is just it's excess. I mean, whatever kind of a scene you want, you're gonna get it. So you've got this sort of more intimate action scene. It opens with what is essentially a scene of Bruce Willis trying to kill Ben Affleck. I mean, that's the opening comedic scene of a father trying to kill a man who has slept with his daughter, which is pretty messed up. And then all of his employees saying, well boss, he's got a good reason your daughter's hot. And then following that up, she's hot. And also, we're all kind of her dad, if you think about it. And Steve Buscemi taught her how to use a tampon. I mean, there's a lot going on there in that first scene and and you know, and then you've got two training montages. I believe in a row, two separate training montages. Once they get to NASA, which I love them both equally. I love everyone of Owen Wilson's little Owen Wilson isms. I think my favorite line in the movie is when he asks what it's going to be like up there.

27:31 And when he describes the hellscape, he says, oh, so scariest environment. That's all you got to say. Scariest environment. I don't know. It all works for me. And then you get to the the asteroid and it is like a whole other movie. I agree with that. It is completely different than the first half, although they've managed to work in quite a bit of comedy, even on the Rock. But to me that's what that's what makes it great is that he doesn't say, you know what, we don't need that first hour, we need all of it. And I'm 100% on board. I I'm curious, we, we've talked about Owen Wilson a little bit being somebody who apparently has a giant blank for the 90s. How, like how popular was Owen Wilson at this point? Because like I watched this film in 2024 and I'm aware of like the kind of Owen Wilson's place in cinema history and like where was he at in the 90s?

28:22 Was he a a biggish star or was he like a somewhat unknown? What, like where was he at coming into this? I believe he had done Bottle Rocket, and this year he had a small part in Permanent Midnight, the Ben Stiller heroin movie. And I kind of think that was it. Maybe he had done was The Minus Man around this time. I can't remember exactly. But no, he was not a big star yet. He hadn't done the Jackie Chan movie yet. I mean, he was, he was a guy who was known in the independent film world, but to mainstream movie audience, this was probably the first time that they saw him. Jose as as a member of that mainstream audience, you just said the phrase Ben Stiller heroine movie. That's a phrase that Wow.

29:10 We we have course corrected and we're now talking about that movie for the rest of this episode. It's a good movie I've never seen. I actually did. Ever heard of that movie before? Yeah, it's based on the autobiography by Jerry Stahl, who was a writer on the TV show Alf in the 80s, and he was also a junkie at the time. And it's a it's a really good memoir, and I think the movie's pretty good, too. Ben Stiller's actually incredible. Then, all right, I guess we've got our let's make it a double for today, Brad. There you go, heroine and nukes on an asteroid. I think this is a good place, though, to start talking about the cast of this movie. And, Brad, you said it yourself, this is one of the most stacked casts of the 1990s, probably in film history for being honest because it pinpointed so many people who would go on to have really successful careers. Like, OK, I'm going to read down the list. Brad, Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, Bill Fichtner, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Stormare. You've got Keith, David and Jason Isaacs hanging out at NASA.

30:18 Like there are just so many that guys in this movie. It is just it's like the best cast money can buy and they're kind of also playing Moneyball, filling out the secondary and tertiary characters here. I'm curious, where do you want to start with this cast, Brad? I I think it's worth starting at the top, like there's so many names to talk about. I think it's. I think it would be easy to get bogged down in talking about a Michael Clarke Duncan for a while. But at the end of the day, like Bruce Willis is the star of this movie. He is dead at the end of this movie, similar to another famous film, and I think he's worth talking about.

31:00 Yeah, I agree. I think that this, I don't know if I put Armageddon on the Bruce Willis Mount Rushmore just for myself, but it's one of his. It's one of his most important movie. I'm not saying he's not good in this movie is. Is that a bonus episode in the making? I think it might be Willis Mount Rushmore. Well, I will say, you know, I've already said that I cry at the end of this movie, and it says a lot about how good Willis is at doing Willis in this movie. But also Liv Tyler's really, really great. I think Ben Affleck's really, really great in their emotional moments at the end of the movie. But there's now this this additional layer of poignancy to the end of this movie now that we know kind of what's going on with Bruce Willis in his personal life and and as his health deteriorates.

31:43 My wife was just saying something about this yesterday. There was a Bruce Willis movie on TV. She was like, man, it's just so sad to think about what's going on with Bruce Willis, and it is, man. And so to watch him kind of give his goodbyes to the world on a television at the end of this movie, it really hit me this time, man. I don't. I don't think I realized the attachment that I had to this guy as a movie star. And so I was really grateful to kind of be able to revisit this movie and and have that experience. Brad. Yeah, I I think that there's a talent that Bruce Willis has that is rare to come across in Hollywood. That like, I would almost call it like a Harrison Ford type of effect where like there's somehow that you can tell that despite Harrison, you know, fighting Samuel L for like top grossing movies of all time. Like you can tell that he was a Carpenter on sets before he became a star.

32:37 You know what I'm saying? Like with Harrison, and I feel like Bruce kind of has this similar vibe where you never count him as an elite, as somebody who's above and beyond the average movie goer. And I I think that when you look at Bruce Willis's entire catalogue, even in films where he might be critiqued for like, not wanting to show up, like, you know, we talked about that in The Sixth Sense a little bit. There's just something about his ability to move from nonchalance to I'm bought in, you know, with his characters that I I just, man, he sucks me in every time with almost any movie that he's in Bob. Well, you know, I think you know what you said about the final moments and and connecting it to, you know, what's going on in Bruce Willis's life now is really interesting. Because you mentioned earlier that he kind of gives this recessive performance in this movie, like in a weird way. Like he is the first guy you think about when you think about this movie.

33:41 But there aren't like that many moments besides the end where he really pops. He sort of cedes ground to this enormous, accomplished supporting cast that he has and he's not. He's not playing it big like Michael Clarke Duncan is, or Steve Buscemi or really everyone Peter Stormare. Everyone else is playing it really big. And he's doing the stoic kind of cowboy thing, you know, which he actually did in a couple movies. And in a way, the end of the movie, like in in your reaction to it, they're very, there's some synchronicity there because we do take him for granted a bit as an actor and a movie star as well. And I think knowing about his health troubles the last few years has sort of made everybody realize that and how much how much we actually love him and how long he's been in our lives and how important he's been to us. And the movie sort of functions the same way. And and you kind of forget how central he is to the movie until the end when you realize he's been watching everything. He's known exactly who he is.

34:38 He's known what he has to do when the time comes, and he just does it. And that's that working class thing that you're talking about, Brad. He's not a guy who's going to make a big show out of it. He's just going to get the job done. Yeah, I was going to say that that scene with Ben Affleck, when he does whatever he does to make him lose air and shoves him back in the thing and puts him up. And even in that moment, like, it's almost too cheesy. But like, he remembers Billy Bob Thornton and his like here. Like like he deserves this. Like, not me. And like even that is like in his dying moments, he is remembering somebody else and putting them above himself. And that's just like, at the end of the day, that's really endearing for a character and it, you know to go back to the Americana of it all. Like America just idolizes this idea of a hero who doesn't want everyone to know that they are the hero. And and at the end of all things, he just wants to talk to his little girl, tell her that he's proud of her and say like, go marry the guy your dreams and make the best life for yourself. And so for me, like I I'm crying at the end of the film, not when Bruce Willis is dying.

35:51 There was something about the way this film ended that just spoke to me like, like, it's a very clear Michael Bay has an idea of what's most important in this world. And you see it when the pilots land because what does he show? Slow motion montage after slow motion montage is like families being created with Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, and families being reunited with oh what? What's his name? The coach from. Will Patton. Thank you. What with Will Patton and his ex-wife and, you know, his strange son. Like, it's just this beautiful thing that I'm like, tearing up.

36:33 I'm like, yeah, man, my kids are the most important families, families. So important that This is why we're saving the world. OK, so this is what I was going to say about Michael Bay though is like, I understand the criticisms of Michael Bay. I don't agree with them because I think that if you really want to get like high level film criticism about Michael Bay, he is one of our most purely cinematic film makers in that he understands like the most primal version of filmmaking and how to use film techniques to manipulate you. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but like, every single thing about the end of that movie is like, if you have a cold, dead heart, that is like the biggest eye roll of a movie ending in the history of films.

37:19 It's just like this guy got himself a kid. He picks the kid up and he's hugging the kid. And framed directly between their faces on his bicep is an American flag. And it's just like, it's just like, OK. And he cuts to the shot of, like, three kids rounding a corner in rural America with little spaceships in their hands, and he pulls back and it's a picture of John F Kennedy's face. It's just like where, where does this happen in the real world? Yeah. Why are all the scenes in rural America? Why did they take place in 1961? Like even they're. Why are they drinking? They're drinking Coca-Cola out of glass bottles and sitting on 57 Chevys. This is something only Michael Bay would do. This is why he's an auteur.

38:02 It makes no sense at all. And yet it makes perfect sense. He has warped time and space to bring these children out of the Grapes of Wrath Dust Bowl with their overalls and no shirt underneath. It's just like it's, it's. I was looking for a hobo wearing a barrel. I was looking at that show. Up at some point. Here's the Here's the thing, though. Guys Like getting into my 30s, I've grown really tired of being cynical. And so, like a movie like this is something that I think I would have rolled my eyes at like 6-8 years ago. But at this point in my life, I just, I want to believe in something and and like America is not necessarily the thing I want to believe in.

38:47 And I I I know that America is poised. It's like, you know, we, we haven't talked yet about all the international shots of people around the world watching America save them, right? Which is ostensibly what's happening. I don't necessarily want to believe in that. Like I I don't think that America is just we we save everyone all the time and we can't fall. Like, that's a silly message. I think the key though is not that America is saving everyone. It's like, what are we being saved towards? And I think that's what really gets me about this movie, is like, I don't want to be cynical about America and all this other stuff and have, you know, difficult conversations about who we are in the state of the world.

39:31 I want to look at a family being reunited or a family being created and be like it doesn't matter where you're at in the world, where you're at in in history. There's always something really beautiful and important about families being saved and having a bright future. And I'm like, that's something that I I think we all hopefully can get behind. You know, whatever your family looks like, you want to have a bright future. And I think that's why this movie really sticks with me. Listen, man, even Steve Buscemi at the end of this film with the stripper Molly Mouse, yes, yes, literally says I want to have babies with you. Like.

40:13 And she just makes out with him when he when he makes that request. So I got to be. Honest It's going on my bingo card of Armageddon today. I did not have discussion of the teleology of Michael Bay and and the telos of all things on here but like take me there Brad you're you're you're preaching right now and I have to I have the unfortunate responsibility to pull us back from that for a hot 2nd to continue talking about this cast. I think we need to go a kind of a lightning round here but I want to just crawl down the list you know in in credit order here and I want to talk about Billy Bob Thornton who is also an actor that I don't know if we've ever had on this show. Brad in a in a weird way you'd think he would show up.

40:55 I don't know if he ever has. I'm going to make perhaps my most controversial statement of the entire episode about Billy Bob Thornton here. Billy Bob Thornton gives an Oscar worthy performance in the film Armageddon and it is it is like a pitch perfect example of why you need actors to take roles seriously in the context of the films they're in. It's like a Michael Michael Caine in Muppet Christmas Carol where it's like if he doesn't actually make you believe in that world, that movie falls apart. Billy Bob Thornton. In another actor's hands you could have had a guy playing a self serious man who's like a hard ass and and the role just doesn't work.

41:38 But the actor Billy Bob Thornton is playing this with as much gusto and as much of his own effort as he put in in like a Sling blade. And I think because of that, it's like the only thing keeping the first hour and a half of this movie anchored. Because you're like this guy is desperate, but he has an in ingenuity and he's thinking on his feet. And I trust him as much as I trust Bruce Willis. And like, the only reason I'm willing to go along with the preposterous preposterousness of this plot is because I'm bought into these two guys. He plays it with a He plays it with a the matter of factness that I think really works for the movie.

42:20 When everything crazy is going on around him. He very rarely seems flustered in the movie. He seems in control of himself and he seems like a man who has a job to do and and that's it. And I think he, Billy Bob Thornton is good enough that he can give you kind of hints of what is roiling inside of him. But on the surface, he is calm and he's Placid. The scene when when Bruce Willis asks him what the backup plan is and he's like, oh, we don't have a backup plan. Like there's there's no drama in it. He just says it like he's talking about any other task that he would have to do. But he's talking about if you guys fail, the world comes to an end. And I think it's a really smart choice by him. That sort of. It really does anchor the movie in a lot.

43:03 Yeah, I mean, and to go back to what you said way earlier, Noah, the the marvelization of this all later on, it's like he's kind of the Samuel Jackson character, right? He's he's bringing the team together while also holding 57 other things in tension and trying to accomplish the best goal for humanity. And I like, I think I think that Billy Bob sets a really beautiful stage for what comes later by, by playing that role, like you said, Bob, with with a gravitas, with a seriousness that you you can tell there's more going on under the surface. But he knows there's a job to be done. And you know, we can talk more about classic American tropes. It's like the soldier who has the job to do. You know, like we talked about Saving Private Ryan earlier, like that Tom Hanks type of we're going to get the job done no matter what.

44:00 And yeah, Thornton knocks it out of the park. Honestly, I I was going to come in here and say it as well. Bob, I think he's the best performance in this film. Yeah, I agree. I do think that I was really impressed by both Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler this time around. And Affleck has always been an actor that people do not give enough credit to. I just I really love what he's able to do, not just as a movie star, but as an actor. He is a super intelligent guy. If you've ever heard him talk, apparently he just soaks up film knowledge like a sponge. But he's always been really good at playing. Not necessarily like a dim witted guy, but a guy who is like one step behind the hero. Like he does it really well in goodwill hunting. He does it really well here and if you if you've ever listened to clips online, Brad, I'm sure I've sent some to you at some point.

44:50 He recorded ADVD commentary for Armageddon where he was famously drunk and just railing against the movie like he hated making this movie. You can't tell him. I don't think I've heard this. Dude, you got to look it up afterwards, but you can't tell in the performance. It's a really good, really committed performance. And that last moment, you know of him in that elevator going up as Bruce Willis is like my son. It's it's played so beautifully, man. I have to give the guy credit. I think he's really good at it and I I'm not the biggest fan of his acting to be honest with you. I sort of had a up and down relationship with him over the years and I was a big Chase and Amy guy. So when when he he followed Chase and Amy up with this I was like oh this is his big sell out movie you know and and it is a what I like about the performance is he's playing a guy who is young and is is saying stupid things and making kind of stupid decisions and he he plays that really, really smartly where you know he's a better guy than this.

45:50 You know there's a more mature guy than this underneath but when he's he's sniping at at Harry, you know whether it's on his on his new oil field or whether it's during the training montages and stuff. He really plays him like a hurt kid in a lot of ways and and it's a such a smart decision because it pays off so much in that final scene that you're talking about where they really enact this father son dynamic to its to its utmost. But I think a lot of that groundwork is is is actually laid more by Affleck than it is by Willis. Is is the on the noseness of Bay in this movie a detraction or a a a boon for for you guys? Because there's a lot of things. I was going to say before even.

46:32 Father Son dynamic. Yeah. Before I even answer that question, Brad, I like how you waited until now to be like, this is on the nose. Like we just talked about everything else Michael Bay's done in this movie. But this was the point where you're like, maybe a little much, Michael Bay. This guy's not much for subtlety, is he? Guys I. Don't know if you noticed, as a first time viewer I picked up on it immediately. Yeah, the father son dynamics are everywhere in this movie. Brad, we no we have a long standing running joke on the podcast about like. I was gonna say, wow, Bob likes Armageddon. I wonder. Why I'm always a sucker for the father son dynamics in movies. And Brad, you know Brad has a very rosy relationship with his father and so like they they don't affect him at all.

47:16 But anytime, like, you know, bridges get mended in a father son relationship, I'm like, Bob, some waterworks. Oh yeah, 100%. We needed we needed probably the game of catch on the asteroid between Affleck and Willis. Oh yeah. I mean, you almost did he. He throws the rock and it inspires him. We needed Bruce Willis to catch it on the other side of the rock, though. That's what we. Yeah, he. Just like kind of catches in his hand. He's like this feels important before we go to break. I want to talk about the other half of the parental and child figure thing, which is Liv Tyler, who I also think does a really great job in this movie. And she's an actress who has made a great career for herself, but I feel like never quite broke through in the early 2000s. You know, she, she plays Arwen in Lord of the Rings and then kind of doesn't fade into obscurity. But she pops up in a in a horror movie like in the early 2000 Tens that I I can't remember The Strangers. Is that what it's called?

48:12 You know, she's still working. I forgot how good she was. And it it takes away a little bit that like half of her scenes are set to songs being sung by her dad in real time. But I I still think that last moment of her weeping as Bruce Willis is talking to her is paired with perhaps my favorite shot in the whole movie. And it is a shot that makes no sense, realistically. But it's when, like the the TV transmission cuts out and she's like her hand is on the thing and then the camera dollies back to reveal like a whole wall of televisions that are gone, that have lost satellite feed. It's a. Compelling shot. It's. So good. And it it's BAE framing her in a really great way, but she also sells it, man. Yeah, I mean, the thing I knew about Liv Tyler before this, like, truly, I had only really seen her in Lord of the Rings, some of my favorite movies of all time, and maybe like a few other films.

49:10 And I I don't know, this is probably mean, but like the thing I knew about Liv Tyler, he said she kind of talked like this in every movie. Like, I just don't know if I've ever heard a more breathy actor in my life or actress. And in this movie. This is the first time I've watched her in something outside of Lord of the Rings where that voice makes sense as an elf, where I'm like, oh, she doesn't do that at all. Here. She takes everything really seriously. She is fiery and and just has this goal and this dream. And as as you know her character has this dream and she gets after it. I loved her in this movie.

49:52 I I thought she brought a lot of emotional depth to the character. That makes Bruce Willis's like stoicism feel more heartfelt, because you can tell that people actually love him and and like their responses to who he is at the darkest of moments. Tell you more about the character than Bruce Willis ever does, and and it sells the entire premise of him and who he is as the sacrificial hero. It's a tough role in a lot of ways because outside of the first scene where she is really like in charge, in that first scene when she's taking the the investors around and she's lecturing her father about how she's independent and all that, that's a really great performance by her in that scene. But the rest of it, like, is a lot of like looking worried and looking sad and and looking angry. And it's on the page.

50:47 I think there's not actually that much there. But she brings a lot to it. There's a lot of raw emotion, like many multiple different kinds of emotion in her performance. That I think is is really effective because you got these, you got these these nutty dudes, you know in that spaceship and in that on that asteroid really doing kind of like shtick, you know, for a lot of the movie and then her and to another extent Billy Bob, I think they grounded in in some real raw emotion. And by the way, I'm sorry to be a dude, but she is just unbelievably beautiful in this movie as well. She's so beautiful, in fact, that Michael Bay's like, how do I show off her body?

51:28 And then Ben Affleck walks up to him off screen and he's like, hey, you want some animal crackers? And he's like, Oh my God, I've got it. We're gonna make the weirdest, most awkward sex like foreplay scene of all time. So that scene and then the scene where they sing leaving on a jet plane are pretty infamous for being ridiculously corny and schmaltzy. The thing that I find funny about that animal cracker scene is the little bit of observational humor that they try to drop into it, where he starts doing this bit about how animal crackers aren't crackers, 'cause you can't put cheese on them. They're just trying to give Ben Affleck something funny to do. I think it speaks to the influence of like Seinfeld at this time in 1998 that they were just like, let's throw some Seinfeldian humor in here just to lie. With animal crackers, I I do love that the. Point where the scene wants to get serious again is that he has just shoved an animal cracker inside of her panties and she looks at him and says, Do you think anyone else in the world is doing this very same thing?

52:26 Like no, no they're not. No one's doing this, Liv Tyler. At at this point there's like, what, 5 billion people on the Earth, 5 1/2? I could confidently say. No, and he says, he says if they aren't, what are we trying to save? So he is on the record saying he is trying to save for people the right to put animal crackers in each other's under carpets. And on that note, Brad, I think it is time. For us to drink some whiskey, drink some. Whiskey. That's right. I need to cope with that fact. So what do you say we go try this down home Rye? I'm ready, man. Let's get to it. All right everybody. Today we are drinking some down home toasted barrel finish rye whiskey.

53:13 Bob, this is a 112 proof whiskey that was very difficult to find any information about. Incredibly difficult Brad. I I you know in my current job I work in digital marketing and so I do a lot of search engine optimization. You know, I I've tried to get people up the ranks of Google and boy oh boy. If if down home is hiring, let me know because folks, it is really hard to find information about this brand. I found a very helpful article on a website called The Bourbon Culture. And the first line of that article, the guy talks about how hard it was to find information on the brand. So like, he has done most of the work for us.

53:54 This is apparently a brand that was started out of whiskey thief distilling. They're located near Frankfort, KY. They distill their own stuff, but they decided to do a line of sourced product and they're calling that down home. Now what I've been able to piece together is that this particular product, because they have a different line, is MGP Rye. It didn't come from any local distillery or anything like that. It's MGP Rye, which means it's probably 95-5, but we're not entirely sure of the mash bill. We're not entirely sure of the age, but I've seen four to five years. All we know really is that it is a toasted barrel finish and that this company down home has a lot of customization options.

54:36 Like I was just looking at their their page on the Party Sources website. They sell at this big store in Kentucky called the Party Store and you can get different wax dips and everything else. So this is a bottle that's being sold at a premium price, but it is very small batch and you know we shall see if it commands the price for a reason. Brad. Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, Bob MGP 95.5 Rye is is well known for a reason. They're usually putting out really, really good whiskey. Enough to the point that, like, if someday I was in an old person's home and had lost my mind, but like certain things for my youth still stuck out, I feel like if I heard somebody say 95.5, I'd be like I'm GP Ryan, so tasty.

55:22 Wait, wait just one second. I This is completely off topic, but because we're talking Armageddon today and you're talking about memory loss, yes, we're not going to get back to this. But. But the plot point of he has space dementia, like it's just said and then thrown away and never brought back up again. Not like space amnesia. Not space, you know schizophrenia, space dementia, like what? What's going on? Yeah, naturally, Bob. It's what happens when you go out to space and your name is Steve Buscemi. You just simultaneously become brilliant 'cause I don't think he was brilliant. Before they left, he told everyone he was.

56:03 Brilliant, but he was, mostly. Just everyone. But yeah, he's mostly just a pervert, but all of a sudden he's brilliant and then he's crazy. Yes, and and crucially, still a pervert hashtag space space dementia. All right. Brad, as we dive into this, I want to say thank you very much for the trip down memory lane, because do you remember what type of bottle you gave me my little sample of this whiskey in? Oh, I do not. It is a Cracker Barrel Maple syrup. Bottle. Hey, there it is. This, folks. We discovered back in like season one that these tiny Maple syrup bottles from Cracker Barrel are just the perfect size for whiskey samples. And this was all we could do back then. We couldn't afford to just buy bottles on Amazon.

56:45 And so I appreciate the trip down memory lane. Brad. What? I remember you telling me that you you're like every time I go to Cracker Barrel now I ask for like 7 syrups. They're like, no wonder you have diabetes, man. All right, man, let's dive into this. I am drinking it live. You've tried it already, so why don't you hit us with your notes on the nose? Bob, this is a absolutely classic rye nose. There's rye, there's a a hint of mint. The dill comes through a little more strongly for me and it's got a nice fresh, like white frosting. Kind of a creamy white frosting that just is sugary and delicious and I really like this.

57:30 I gave it an 8.5 on the nose. I don't think there's anything wrong with this nose, but it makes me a little bit. I'm like, cautiously optimistic because you're right, it tips in more to like the sour notes that we get in rye sometimes. It's actually a little bit more yeasty than I'm used to, and I think that this might be a sign of that toasted barrel finish poking through Brad. I'm going to be 100% honest, I don't usually like toasted barrel stuff because I feel like it. It brings out all of the worst characteristics of the oak and and like pretty much every toasted barrel finish we've had, we've been like, oh, this would have been much better as a double oat product than than as a toasted oak finish. So I'm worried that some of these sour notes are not the rye, but they're actually that toasted oak. I'm going to give it A7, with the caveat that like, no, there's nothing wrong here, but it it portends bad things for me.

58:24 Bob, you're You score things wildly, man. Every time you give a score that you're a little iffy on, you're like, it's not actually what I'm experiencing. I'm just basing it off of like, feelings and vibes, man. Yeah, man. Oh man, I love doing this podcast with you. Oh, you want you want some notes on the taste, 'cause I just took a sip. Bring them. It's really good. It's so good. The toasted oak complements rye a lot better than it complements bourbon because it just it basically makes it taste like rye times 10. Like it just compounds the flavors, especially those minty and dill forward flavors. So it just it doesn't taste like a sour rye, it just tastes like like if you're not a fan of rye, this is not going to be for you because this is like as rye as rye gets, but in the flavors play really well together.

59:20 Man, I'm going to give this an 8.5 on the flavor. Yeah, I'm. I'm at a nine out of 10 on the palate. This is all the rye you want. Sweet mint dill comes through strong, the vanilla. There's cream cheese it the sweet flavors that it brings about aren't like specific. It's just a nice little foundation underneath the explosion of rye that you get here. Big, big fan. I think the finish comes down a little bit from where we were at on the on the pallet. It dissipates somewhat quickly for me. It almost goes from like a nice fresh vanilla bean and turns into like a vanilla extract flavor. It stays mint tea.

1:00:03 It jumps into the realm of dark kind of cacao chocolate area, which I like. It's a really solid finish that I'll give an 8 out of 10. Yeah. Dissipates is a really good term for this because it doesn't drop off a Cliff. But it almost, it kind of mimics the flavors on my tongue of like a mineral water. Like there's just a little bit of like, it's really refreshing. It's mouth watering. And then you do get some of that kind of mineral, you know, I don't know what the word is, minerality, I'll say it's, you know what I mean? Like, what's the word I? Think I think Bob has space dementia. I'm shocked that this is 112 proof, Brad, because there's absolutely no chest burn on the way down, which is, I mean, you know, it's a good thing.

1:00:45 It's a very smooth drinking whiskey. However, it kind of drops off. Yeah. And and that's OK, like it's a pleasant finish, it's just not a very long one. So I'm just going to give it a 6.5 on the finish. Balance wise, I personally think that this is incredibly well balanced. I'll give it an 8 1/2 here. You you get all of the flavors you want with just enough complexity to give it a high score, yeah. I'm going to give it an 8. I do think that the finish was a step down from the rest of the tasting experience. The nose was good, I was just cautiously optimistic. The flavor's really, really good here. I just think that this this could be a pretty dangerous, high proof whiskey because of how your body does not, does not fight against it at all.

1:01:32 Do you know what I mean? Like there's no chest burn, there's no wincing involved and it sounds like a great time and I'm sure it is for the first two pores and then you are just face down in the mud. So I'm gonna give this an 8 on balance. And Brad, what's that? Faced out in the mud. Probably. Brad, what's this selling for? I don't even know if it's sold in the state of Ohio. So in general, what would a bottle of this cost you? Yeah, the the best I could tell it's in the 85 to $100 range. So I said like $9095. I think at that price point this is like a seven.

1:02:13 I I think it's a decent value, not great there. There's just enough flavor going on here for me to say I would enjoy drinking this regularly. But I'll also say this, you can get MGPS at a lot of different places. So I don't know if like $9095 is the right price point for you. For me it's. It's a decent value. Yeah, I'm just going to give it, I don't know, a 5 1/2 on value. It's hand selected barrels. It's a really small batch. Rye is typically more expensive than bourbon. I get all that. It's just like 80 something dollars is a lot to ask and it's like 4 to 5 year old rye.

1:02:54 It's not like we're talking 10 year old rye here. So at that price it doesn't really distinguish itself in terms of competition from the market. So it's right in the middle there. I think a 5 1/2 is a really good place for this. Brad. I'm only coming out to a 35.5 on this one, and I will say that, like, I think that if we're just talking about taste of this thing, it is a significantly better whiskey than that. The value is really harming it in my estimation. Yeah, I I'd say so. I I think that your low nose score also doesn't didn't help. I'm coming to a 41 out of 50 Bob. I I was a very big fan of this. All right, Brad, that's taking us to an average of a 38.25. I actually think that's a really good score for this, because I don't know that I liked it quite enough to put it in that 40 out of 50 echelon.

1:03:48 It's a really, really good whiskey. I also just think that they're asking a little bit too much for a bottle here. Yeah, no, I I totally understand that. I I personally would recommend this. I think it's a solid pour, but if the price point's a little out of your range, go by Woodford double oat, I don't know, get like get something along those lines. That is going to be a spectacular pour. I was going to say this costs as much almost as a bottle of your beloved barrel seagrass. Yeah, and that's why barrel seagrass is a 10 out of 10 value. That was going to say like you still think this is a 7/7 and 1/2 value when you're comparing it to that rye. Yeah, I I think it's still maybe like 6 1/2 seven. Aha, right.

1:04:37 We might come down a tiny. Bit inching our way down here. All right, man, let's get back to talking about Armageddon with our friend Noah Gettel. What do you say? Let's get to it. All right, everybody that was down home toasted barrel finish a whiskey. That it is on the cusp of greatness, which which I I feel like is kind of where this movie is at for me. You know, I I wanted to make some clever statement about like they're yearning to to come back home and down home here in the Americana of Michael Bay. Yeah, that's good. Man, oh, come on. All right, Brad, I am resting on my laurels right now, perhaps dangerously so, but as of right now, I believe that your boy is 7 and two on the season at our next game, which we call 2 facts and a falsehood.

1:05:32 Brad is gonna try to stump your ball. Two are right and what is wrong? 2 facts and a falsehood. 2 Facts and a Falsehood is the part of the show where Brad presents me with three items about the making of this movie, all of which are presented as fact, one of which he has completely made-up, and it's my job to figure out which one that is. Brad correction, I am at 8:00 and 2:00 on the season. Oh my gosh. And I really am enjoying this strategy where we brought all of our guests in at the front end of the season to help me pad my stats so that when I'm actually on my own in the back half of the season, I can, you know, I can just plummet in the the rankings and still finish like 500. I was to say when you're like, oh, and nine for the last. Time.

1:06:20 As as like a as an NBA fan and and enjoying the MLB, it's always fun to look at the rankings and see like, oh like such as you know the Celtics are in first place but they're only six and four in the last 10 like it. It's always fun to look at the last 10 and I can't wait for you to be two and eight. Yeah, but you're also forgetting about when a team clinches their playoff berth and then they just don't care about the last 10 games of the season. So that's kind of where I'm feeling like I'm at now. Brad, humble me a bit with your two facts and a falsehood. Fact #1 The original script did not actually include the romantic subplot between AJ and Grace played by Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, and instead had more emphasis on Truman.

1:07:04 It was added the the romantic subplot after the success of a very small film known as Titanic with teenage girls. Fact #2. The New York street scene took four days to shoot. According to director Michael Bay, they had to design a system of flipping the cars so that they could flip them very close to the extras without actually hitting any of them. Fact #3, The Godzilla killing dog at the start of the movie was based on director Michael Bay's own experience, who said that he saw a dog in Los Angeles destroying a Godzilla doll and thought that the irony was just too perfect to not use in a script.

1:07:46 OK, so Noah, I am going to consult you today. Now here are the rules of my consultation. I charge by the hour. If we lose, I get 2 losses in the loss column because your your failure compounds upon me. And so if we win, I only get one victory. Yeah, it's harsh, but I think it makes for better audio to talk to you about it. Why? Yeah, that's the only reason I would even do this, because otherwise it seems like I have nothing to gain from helping you. I just want to bounce this. Off. We like.

1:08:26 We like to put our guests in a position where they have everything to lose. That. That's our stick. If you want to come back for a third time, you will get this right now. You know, last time we did this, I I LED you astray. I don't know if you remember that. OK, well then maybe I won't, maybe I won't consult you. I'm just going to say this. I'll say let me say let me say one thing, I was listening and as part of my job as guest is to listen and the the Titanic thing threw me a little bit because Titanic came out in December of 97 memory serves and this movie came out in the summer of 98. So I'm trying to figure out how they would have changed such a significant part of the movie in such a short period of time. I agree.

1:09:10 I think that one sounds very fake. I also think that three sounds at least a little bit fake. And I always took the Godzilla thing as kind of a fun shot that Bey was taking at Roland Emmerich because they were developing Godzilla at the same time this movie was coming out. Now whether that's the story, whether Bey just kind of said, Oh no, no, no, I put that in because I saw a dog doing that. I don't know, one in three stand out to me as the the potential falsehoods #2 seemed very, very realistic. It sounds like Michael Bay would be like, yeah, we really had problems not crushing extras with our cars. They just always get in the way, you know, Brad, I think I'm not gonna drag this out. I'm just gonna say that I think #1 is the falsehood, and I'll lock that in as my final answer here. Bob, as always, these are facts drawn from the IMDb trivia page, and fact number one is indeed true. This is your first loss invite, but I think you were like 9 and one at this point in the last 10. Yeah man.

1:10:22 It was eight and two, and now I am eight and three and Noah is joining us for the last time on film and whiskey. Oh wait, I'm eight and. Four, right. I got eight and four now. Yeah, you get 2 losses. Here's. So the one thing I will say is that a few of the trivia facts that I read said that one of the issues that BAE had with this film, as well as some of the actors was the, like fantastically rushed production schedule, that this was made like really tight. And so I like I know what you know infinitely more than I do about the world of film. But that would be the only thing I I read that might explain the Titanic kind of turn around time. Because the the fact also said like this was added somewhat late in the production schedule and a lot a lot of the romantic scenes were shot near the end of the. Production schedule, Yeah.

1:11:19 And maybe we're just talking about like one or two scenes, right? Maybe we're just talking about the Animal Crackers scene. I guess if that's the case, that is possible. He saw these. Real quick, before you go, can we shoot a scene with you and Liv? Like, Oh yeah, What? What's it gonna be? It's you. Know, don't worry about. It Animal crackers in her underwear? Yep. We don't have time to debate this one, guys. Let's just shoot. It you're under contract, man. Get on site. All right guys, let's let's pivot away from the animal crackers. We keep coming back to this like pulling us in like a like a Whirlpool here. Brad, I want to talk to you a little bit about the effects of this movie. So this is the third year in a row that we're doing a really heavily effects driven movie. I guess technically, even if you wanted to go back to True Lies, we've been on these big budget effects movies. I know Independence Day won the Oscar for visual effects. Men in Black did not because Titanic won. I can't recall if Armageddon wins the Oscar for visual effects this year, but I imagine that it was at least nominated. What I really noted this time around is how much of this is done practically.

1:12:26 Like the the surface of the asteroid is pretty much all practical and it's sometimes it looks a little shoddy with their weird stalactites and stuff. But even a lot of the, like spaceship floating in outer space and blowing up, like at the beginning of the movie where the the guy's fixing the satellite and then it blows up, it's really clear that they just kind of had a sound stage with a black background and then just filmed something blowing up on it. And I got to be honest, because Bae's cutting style is so rapid, it still holds up really, really well. Like I I thought that because so much of it was practical, there's not a lot for me to complain about with the visual effects here, you know, over 25 years later.

1:13:06 I think another reason why it works is because he knows when not to light things super well. And so many of the the effects happen when they're in space and the the ship is on a black background and the ship itself is kind of a dark Gray. And it's not this like bright, flashy, obvious CG, you know, early CG thing that's just doesn't look good. And I kind of felt that way about Independence Day, where you see this alien ship flying like over the desert that's like really bright, and it just makes it feel so obvious that it's fake, that it just works better in space where everything's dark. And I I I can't get away from this without saying it. It watching movies like this make me even more deeply appreciate 1977 Star Wars.

1:14:05 Like the the practical effects in Star Wars in my opinion, look almost better than what you have here. And it was 20 years earlier. So I I just, I always come back in amazement to what Lucasfilm was doing back then. I agree with that. I think I slightly disagree on the effects and how effective the effects are in this movie, but if they work for me. But part of the reason they work is that they occasionally do look shoddy. I think some of the CGI looks pretty shoddy, but then again, some of it looks shoddy today. Like a lot of it looks shoddy today. So I don't know that it's really much worse. But you know, some of the scenes where they're, you know, where they're jumping over the Canyon on the asteroid, for example, like it looks a little like a, you know, like a psychedelic, you know, nightmare.

1:14:53 And I don't know that that's on purpose. And then when they're on the asteroid doing the drilling like it is, it's so very clearly feels like a sound stage. And I like that about it. I mean, there's something about the combination of of reaching for the CGI and not always being able to stick the landing there. And then also just shooting this movie, like the same way they shot Alien movies in the 50s, just a bunch of dudes in in suits on a sound stage. I mean, there's something about that that feels almost nostalgic and charming and like, like these are despite all of this money and Michael Bay's enormous ego and all this stuff, it's just a bunch of guys wearing suits on the sound stage pretending to be in outer space. And I don't know.

1:15:37 I mean, I I I kind of feel like I'm arguing that, like every flaw in this movie is also part of its charms. So I'm losing my credibility here. But that that's how I feel about the that particular aspect. The Film and Whiskey podcast where critics come to lose their credibility. There's a moment, let's say real quick, just to Noah's point, Brad, there's a moment where the the big guy, Max is drilling. It's right before he dies and he hits a pocket of something and then there's an earthquake on top of it. They go, Oh my God, earthquake. The ground is splitting and it's very clear that they're on a sound stage and that they've designed some sort of rig where the the ground parts. And Bruce Willis, if you watch really closely, he kind of misses his mark because he's supposed to fall into the crevice and he kind of runs and then like jumps into the crevice to make it look like his leg has fallen in. And I like, to your point, Noah, I'm like, first of all just use a different take Michael Bay.

1:16:32 But also like there's something so tactile and charming about the fact that no, Bruce Willis's leg really did fall into a crevice. Like even though it was man made and and created on a sound stage we didn't have to CGI this thing And and I so appreciate that like there's doing this season Brad has made me really think about how much we've lost in the last 10 years where you know we talked about it last week with men in black. I don't know that they would even throw a bucket of bug guts on somebody today. They would CGI even that and it's like the the bug guts probably cost $10 and a couple packets of gelatin to make and and now he'll spend $100,000 to recreate that shot in the computer and it doesn't feel as real.

1:17:19 And so there is still something about even though there are cheesy elements to guys getting sucked out the front windshield of this clearly fake spaceship, it still feels more real than watching it get done in CG. Yeah, no, I dude, I from the time I was 14 or 15 watching like the Two Towers Fellowship return, Like I've always been an ardent defender of CG being used to kind of enhance the edges of a film, but using practical effects to achieve that that lived in feel that worlds need to have to be effective as movies.

1:18:03 But I think we all know that that's better. Like, I actually haven't seen Godzilla -1, but from what I hear, a big part of what people love about that movie is that it does use practical effects. I'm sure there's quite a bit of CGI as well in it, and it's about to win the Oscar for for Best Visual Effects. This year it's it's almost certainly going to win. And I feel like we go through this all the time with various movies. I mean that practical effects are still better because despite all the advances that have come in Computer Generated imagery, we we see it now and it's done cheaply, you know, and they're not. They cut corners wherever possible and it doesn't look great. And I think part of that is that some of that stuff is non union work and that there's there's a lot of reasons why they do CGI instead of practical effects. But anytime we see it, it stands out. Part of partly because it's unusual these days, but also partly just because it does feel more tactile, it feels more real, and it makes the film more immersive. I'm like curious, Noah, you especially would know the answer to this question better than probably Bob or I. But like, would the late 90s, early 2000s be kind of the peak of practical effects?

1:19:13 Because we've been practicing it since the inception of cinema and it feels like in the last 15 to 20 years we've relied so heavily on, on CGI. Do you feel like the art of practical effects has not been advanced in the last 20 years and therefore people are losing it like the like the average person making a movie from the director to you know, what whoever the lowest person on set is, we just don't do it as much anymore. So it's it's a muscle we haven't worked out in a while we're we're losing it. Does that make sense? Like, do you feel like that might be happening? I don't know that I am really the right person to answer that, to be honest with you, because I'm blockbusters, despite my my expertise in Armageddon, are not exactly my beat these days, to be honest with you.

1:20:03 But you know, I think it is notable that Godzilla -1 is like, you know, it's a Japanese team that made that movie. It's not an American team of visual effects people. So I think, I think there is some truth to that and this era was the era when CGI was getting. It was getting good enough to to be able to experiment with it. And this film did not win Best Visual Effects at the Oscars. What Dreams May Come won Best Visual Effects at the Oscars. And that is a movie that was entirely CGI. You know, I don't think there was any room for practical effects in that movie. So it's possible this was actually a turning point in which, you know, sort CGI sort of, yeah. Became the norm. Like, really somewhere around this, this time?

1:20:45 Well, I'm glad you say that Noah, because Brad, we're we're kind of about to take that shift ourselves because next week our film is episode one, The Phantom Menace. And I am going, I'm just a spoiler, I am going to all over the CG in that movie. It is incredible costuming, incredible makeup in that movie paired with very, very bad looking late 90s CGI. And and I think that from that point on, because then we're going to get into like, you know, fully CG animated films, We're going to watch Shrek, you know, we're going to get into all the Marvel stuff in the back half of the season. So I think this really is our last time to champion things that feel tactile because we're going, we're going deep in the uncanny valley here soon.

1:21:32 You know, and the Transformers movies are to me a really good example of of how it all goes wrong. Like you I I've only seen the first one. I think I might have seen one of the later ones, but that is something that should feel tactile. Those are toys that we played with growing up. You know, I mean, it's metal, it's steel. I mean, this is something that we should be able to hold in our hands and it just feels the complete opposite of that. So Bey got a test with CG just like everybody else. But yeah, Armageddon is that place where he's he's still using both of them and to fantastic effect. All right, guys. I think it is time for us to get to our last segment of the day, which we call, let's make it a double. Oh, near the end of the episode.

1:22:12 Oh, thanks listening to the film and whiskey show. Let's pair another film with this one, even if it's struggling. It's a final segment of the day. Now let's make it a double. Let's make it a double is the part of the show where we pick a movie to pair up with this one to make the perfect double feature. Brad has been teasing his to both Noah and myself since before we even started recording. He said he really did find the perfect double feature today. So the floor is yours, man. Take it away. Bob, this is 100% based off me seeing this film once in like maybe 2005 or 6 as a as a 15 year old. I'm going to pair this with the core, our Aaron Eckert, Stanley Tucci. I mean, like, I remember watching the Core and just thinking like this movie rules and maybe not in a great way, but it was just really cool as a 15 year old and as another disaster movie.

1:23:12 I I think the whole premise was like the the core has stopped spinning and they have to like drill into the core and detonate nukes to get it spinning again. Is that is that it? Oh yeah. Correct. There's always you. Need to go. You need to go watch the Yeah, this is America, everybody. How do we how do we fix something that's broken? Why nuke it, of course. So I think that the Nuke of It all demands that you watch Armageddon and the Core in one evening. You know, there's there's even a third entry in this trilogy of, like, awful. Nukes fix it all. There was a movie that came out like a year and a half ago called Moon Something Moonfall.

1:23:53 I think it was called and I think it had Halle Berry. I don't remember who was in it. I didn't see this movie. I I watched the like the Honest Trailer or something for it and I was like, that is immediately in the Armageddon and the core like subgenre of just preposterous space stuff. It was like, it looks amazing, Brad. I think The Core is a really fun movie. I also liked it when I first saw it, and I think I watched it again a couple years ago expecting it to just be total crap. It kind of held up for the same reason that this kind of holds up, which is that it's got good actors in it. It's Hilary Swank and Stanley Tucci and Aaron Eckhart. And The funny thing, the one thing I like about that movie is, you know, they're not in outer space, right? So they don't need to spend a lot of money on CGI or anything. They're just in this ship the whole time, and you kind of never see what's outside of it.

1:24:43 And you can tell that was definitely part of the appeal in getting this movie made. Stanley Tucci's Like when I just have to sit in a chair for three weeks. Like, yeah, I can sign me up please. Yeah, it's like if you show the outside of the ship, it's just dirt. Brad, I think I'm going to cut in before I I toss it over here to our guest because mine is kind of lame. I'm going to take the most obvious choice here, which is 1998's Deep Impact, a film that I I remember seeing in the theater. I saw a lot of disaster movies in the theater as a kid in the late 90s between, you know, this Deep Impact volcano, Dante's Peak, like just a truly great time for Earth murdering people.

1:25:27 And Deep Impact is, I don't know, man, it's probably a a quote, UN quote better film than this in terms of like it has more heft to it, It has more weight to it. It is a much more forgettable film than this though, because it doesn't take the swings that this movie does. But you do actually get to see a comet hit Earth and people have to figure out how to survive like half of the world being wiped out. It's like stuff gets real in Deep Impact. And also Morgan Freeman is the president. So like, if that's not enough of a recommendation, I don't know what to tell you. I'm going with Armageddon and Deep Impact. And now, Noah, now that I've done the lame, obvious one, you can kind of bring us home here. I'm going to partner Armageddon, the best movie about oil riggers, with the second best, which is There Will Be Blood. I genuinely think I have to.

1:26:25 Get turn my friend I. Genuinely think Armageddon is a little bit better than There Will Be Blood, but I just think, you know, you've got 2 movies about about oil riggers. They could not be more different. And you got one that is so 90s blockbuster, one that is so 2000s independent cinema. Actors Bruce Willis and Daniel Day Lewis could not be more different. I I love that these are two movies about people doing the same job, and the movie around them is just 1000% I I. Just really want to see the remakes with Bruce Willis as what's his face And There Will Be Blood and Daniel, Daniel. Plainview. As yes, Daniel Plainview and then Daniel Day Lewis. As whoever.

1:27:11 As Harry, yeah, But has to be doing, he has to be doing the Daniel Plainview voice, right? Like he's shoving Ben Affleck back on the elevator. I've abandoned my boy. I've abandoned my son. Oh, man. What a pairing, Noah. Thank you. So. Much for that. I didn't even know. I I didn't know I teed you up for that. Man, that was that was incredible, my friend. I have to say, this has been one of the most fun episodes of film and whiskey we have ever recorded. I I have no idea what the general public will think of this, Brad, but we're having a brat year. I don't care.

1:27:51 And we're gonna carry this goodwill into our final scores. And again, I will set myself up here to to fail so that you guys I I will crawl so you guys can run. I'm gonna give this a 7 1/2 Brad. It is like the filmmaking craft is like an 8 1/2 to a nine. The script, which we haven't even talked about, has writing credits for both Tony Gilroy and JJ Abrams on. It is like a four in terms of the dialogue, but like a a pretty good structural script. It's just like that first hour is really holding me back. I I had to go to bed last night, Brad. I started watching it, watched the first hour, turned it off and was like, dude, this movie's bad. I haven't watched this in such a long time. Am I going to have to come in and crap on Armageddon? Thankfully no.

1:28:43 But I can't go higher than a 7 1/2. Brad, where are you falling here? The wild thing is that in my research, for two facts and a falsehood, Bey himself has said like, the third act of this movie is garbage. I wish I could reshoot it. We were under so much pressure, like and I like. I hate to say it, Michael Bay, but I think you're wrong. Like this movie all comes together in the third act. I'm going to give it an 8 1/2 Bob. I think that this, I think this is the most fun and exhilarating 8 1/2 movie you will ever watch. Like it is not perfect. It's not quite that 9 out of 10 you're really approaching like peak cinema. But man oh man, this is just such a fun movie. I was glued to the screen through every minute of the 2 1/2 hours from the moment of Bruce Willis trying to shoot Ben Affleck to the moment where he's sending him up into his salvation and calling him Son.

1:29:44 I like. I am bought. In. All right, Noah. It's to you, man. It's a nine. I was going to say it was an 8 1/2, but then you know the observation about how this whole ordeal turned rockhound from a womanizer into, you know, probably Father of the Year, which I had, I had not. That had not occurred to me. That's what bumped it up, the consistency. This guy, Michael Bay, wants us all to be. He wants us to come out of this experience as better people. And I have to reward him for that because I think I, the three of us, I think we all are. Yeah, I'm a better person today than I was yesterday. I can't speak for you guys, but I'm killing it so. No, I we need you to get Michael Bay on this podcast so that we can thank him properly.

1:30:36 Like we'll send him a bottle of whiskey. We will thank him for making us better men. Michael Bay went to college, by the way, about 30 miles from me here in Connecticut. He went to Wesleyan, where a lot of other film makers went, including Joss Whedon and Lin Manuel Mirando went there as well. Maybe the next alumni weekend, I can go over there, I can snag him, drag him over to my laptop, and we can we can all get on the horn. Together, I'm ready. We'll watch ambulance just to be ready for him, you know. All right, so it is a 7 1/2 for me, it's an 8 1/2 from Brad. It is a 9 million from Noah Guttel. Thank you again so much Noah for joining us today. Once again, give us a plug for the book. Where can we find it, and what's the official St. date for the book? It's called Baseball.

1:31:20 The movie pub date is May 14th, but it is available for pre-order now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Bookshop and Target and all the places a person could buy a book in the year 2024. Yeah, and it guys. If you can't get enough of Noah Guttel on our podcast, you can go back and listen to our Gran Torino episode from a season ago, or you can wait a few months. He's going to be back on here. We're going to be talking more specifics on the book and just how much we love baseball as a film subject. So, Noah, thank you so much, man. It it has been truly a pleasure to have you on here. A pleasure for me as well, boys, anytime. All right, I've already spoiled next week's movie, but we are officially going back to Brad's favorite franchise and the bane of my existence, the Star Wars universe, to look at Episode one.

1:32:10 A truly God awful film that I do not want to talk about. So join us for episode one next week. But until then, I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And we'll see you next time.