Rapid Fire 1982 Pop Culture

Craig 0:03

You're listening to Basket Traffic.

Shawn 0:13

1982 Slumber Party Massacre, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Firefox, Clint Eastwood, Cat Peepee, Swamp Thing, ET, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Tron, Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan, Fast Times of Ridge Month, 48 Hours, Tootsie, Sophie's Choice, Gandhi, Europe Living Dangerously, Kona the Barbarian, Beastmaster, Friday the 13th, 3, 3D, Halloween 3, Season of the Witch, Rocky 3, Nightship, Dark Crystal, Missing The Verdict, Road Warrior, World According to Garp, my favorite year, Peter O'Toole's in that. Officer and a Gentleman, First Blood, Grease 2, Victor Victoria, Creep Show, Mega Force, Piranha, directed by James Cameron.

Craig 0:59

Shawn, Susie, have I ever told you of my trip to New York in 1982? It was so awesome, so memorable. It was late in the year.

Shawn 1:09

You were 10 years old.

Craig 1:10

Nine . They let me go places. And so I did. I went. It was like I was in mid-Manhattan. It was really cool, you know, the autumn leaves, you know, turning color. It was just really gorgeous.

Shawn 1:23

It's a beautiful place, New York, in the fall. Totally, totally.

Susie 1:26

Stunning.

Craig 1:27

And so um there I was, and I was thinking, you know what? Uh I heard there was a new release. Michael Jackson thriller.

Shawn 1:34

Yeah, it's a six studio album. That would have been a six studio album.

Craig 1:38

I went to this place. It's relatively new record store called Rock and Soul. It still exists today in Mid Manhattan. It's actually celebrated its 50th anniversary today in 2025. And so I got my hands, I got a new an album, an actual album. Yeah.

Shawn 1:55

Vinyl.

Craig 1:57

Yeah.

Shawn 1:57

What 1982 also would have been the start, just the start of Compact Disc.

Craig 2:03

That is right. Sony. That's right, released.

Shawn 2:06

So you remember the Laser Disc. Yeah. The laser disc, which was cutting edge technology. And hopefully one of your buddies had a laserdisc player. You'd go over there.

Susie 2:15

Replacing the beta video.

Shawn 2:18

Well, we all still, most of us had the VHS going, right? Let's be honest.

Craig 2:21

But yeah, totally. Thrill Thriller was an amazing album.

Shawn 2:24

I mean, like you came out of the record store, you got Thriller, and then you were mugged.

Craig 2:28

Yeah. That's right. Well, then I realized I had nothing to play it on.

Shawn 2:31

Did you moonwalk uh down to the subway station? That's right.

Craig 2:35

I I was a big Michael Jackson fan. You know what?

Shawn 2:37

All kidding aside, Thriller was like such an important album for me. Like it was massive. It was. It was like the greatest thing. I listened to that thing. I had, I think the the cassette tape. I must have listened. I mean till it I wore it out.

Susie 2:51

Yeah.

Craig 2:51

Yeah. It was huge. Well, and also helped me like work my way with with women, you know? Because you know, if a lot of that really at nine years old, dude. Yeah, and engage with the ladies, you know, kind of thing.

Shawn 3:03

Yeah, well, that's what Michael Jackson really did for men. He really brought their their masculine side out. The testosterone. It's like, hey man, hey man, hey, let's go get some girls.

Craig 3:16

Oh no, but he that the the the the titles are like, you know, you want to be starting something? Yeah. Yeah, that's all it was like, you know, it's like, yeah, or hey baby, be mine. So I'm like, yeah, or orch. Or when it wasn't going well, I was like, beat it.

Shawn 3:31

So you would have been because you're, you know, puberty is coming quite we're just around the corner there, starting to get hair in places you never had before. And the voice is going from Michael Jackson's voice to the voice you have now. Hi, how are you?

Susie 3:46

Yeah.

Craig 3:46

So then I eventually bought that on CD and played it over and over. Thriller was awesome.

Shawn 3:52

That's that's a true story.

Craig 3:54

Yeah, yeah, it was very, very true story.

Shawn 3:56

That's amazing. Yeah, you know, you didn't have to go to New York to get it, by the way. It was right here. Just so you know, you could have got it at Sam the Record Mound right down the street.

Susie 4:04

From uh AMB Sound. Yeah. Yeah, AMB Sound. And then we just played it locally. We didn't need to fly anywhere.

Craig 4:10

Well, before we get started, there's a couple things I wanted to uh start off with.

Shawn 4:13

And I've got something too.

Craig 4:15

Oh you go ahead. Okay.

Shawn 4:16

Uh okay, I'll go. Um what I wanted to say was uh we we changed the name of the podcast. And so I think that's something that we should uh acknowledge here. I mean, so we were uh first of all, this is uh kind of our unofficially, this is our last. This is it! We're out of here. I'm so happy right now. Oh my god, we made it 2025 finale. I feel like Nelson Mandela getting out of prison like on Robin Island right now. Oh my god, free at last! Brother. Oh God. Oh, brother. Anyways, it was tough, folks, but we're done. And this is it. I'm out of here.

Craig 4:56

Couple of months, we'll start season two.

Shawn 4:58

Hey, we haven't negotiated our contract yet, Susie or I. So nothing is in set in stone here, Craig. So let's just slow down a bit here. Talk to my agent. We'll get the lawyers in. But we did change the uh the podcast name. It used to be 80% there. Did sound a bit like a self-help show with that kind of title, didn't it? Well, it's funny because we're almost there.

Craig 5:18

Yeah, some people will talk said it sounded like it was a sports title, you know, because the the number 80. Uh but it also had other problems. Like, you know, people were saying, What's what what's your podcast called? And I said, you know, 80% there. And they're like, Well, okay. And so they type in naturally 8-0, but at that time I was I spelt it with letters only, and then and then you have the percentage symbol, and that throws in so either do you use the symbol or the word, and it was just causing problems for Apple or or just the search engines. Sure. It just wasn't and and the name just it worked for us at the time, but I think we decided.

Shawn 5:54

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I you know, it was the best name that we had at the time, I think. And it did sound a little bit like, you know, like I said, self-help. So we've gone from that to something that sounds like a porno site. So I think we made progress here. Because, you know, you got basket traffic, you got there's there's ass traffic, which is huge. Uh and then, you know, I said that to somebody who said, Oh, yeah, you know, it's called basket traffic. And they went, Oh, wow, what are you guys talking about? Because, you know, you hit hit them in the old bread basket, hit them in the old, right? So people are wondering, what the hell is this about? And it's a bit odd.

Craig 6:30

It is, but I kind of like that, you know. I think it works. And what I think and maybe another day we'll tell the people the story about where it came from. And it has a historical connection to it.

Shawn 6:41

Oh wow. Yeah, that's a cliffhanger. Keep them hanging on for that one next season.

Susie 6:45

Maybe season two countdown the days.

Craig 6:48

I just feel like I need to do a little call to action. If anyone's listening to this, press the follow button.

Shawn 6:54

There's a follow button?

The Fake Fan Mail Prank

Craig 6:55

Yeah, there's a follow button. Okay. Yeah. So press the follow button. Sean also hasn't talked to me about how he punked me. So Sean basically punked me with this fan mail. There's this option where you can create a link for people to connect to and then they can send a message to you, right? Yeah, right. And uh, I got this really, really interestingly strange message that Sean sent. And he's looking at me right now like as if he has no freaking clue about what I'm talking about.

Shawn 7:24

I I have no idea what you're talking about, but I I know I can see in your body language, this is probably about jealousy. This is probably this is like the band, you know, and John and Paul and Ringo, and and this is this always happens. Somebody likes and every group. This always happens. So, anyway.

Craig 7:43

Oh, okay, okay. Well, I'll just read to you to if it's not you, then I'll just read. I say it's it says this was back in uh in the summer here. Really enjoy your podcast. I think it would really benefit with more Sean. He's hilarious, and uh shoe-in for a best podcast host award. I think it's called a potty. You're so lucky to be working with him. Now that that part right there, I thought, okay, all right. This this this sounds like someone's a fan of Sean, and that's cool.

Shawn 8:15

Fair.

Craig 8:16

Okay, and then it kind of went weird, and this is where I was I probably was a little bit slow. It it follows with I don't want to call him a legend because that's so overused.

Shawn 8:27

It is overused.

Craig 8:28

So let's just say he's a hero.

Shawn 8:30

Oh, that's fair.

Craig 8:32

Please send me a signed eight by ten of him. Cheers. So why am I just hearing about this now?

Shawn 8:40

Because this person has been waiting for an eight by ten for how many weeks now? That is not good publicity for our fans or for anybody.

Susie 8:48

You decline a photo shoot.

Shawn 8:51

No, I have eight by tens in my car, like literally in my trunk of yourself that I can do it.

Craig 8:55

Like a deck of cards you can do.

Shawn 8:56

So, first thing I take from that is this is somebody that is obviously in the industry and probably quite successful and knows what they're talking about. And so uh thank you, first of all, for uh writing in. And um, I apologize for Craig right away because he's obviously threatened. And uh it wouldn't be the first time I've experienced this with people. Um, so welcome to show, biz.

Susie 9:22

When Craig read this out loud to me, I'm like, oh, yay, yay, Sean, yay, Sean. And I'm like, oh, Craig's not looking very happy. Oh, that's not true.

Shawn 9:35

Oh, so you were upset.

Craig 9:36

No, no, no, no, Susie, that is hey, hey, hey. You got jealous. Oh, so I was that's that's not true, Susie. Wow.

Susie 9:44

Just how I heard it doesn't mean that it's true.

Shawn 9:46

It's just how you interpreted it, which is usually truthful because you're pretty, you're pretty on the money with these kind of things. You're good at reading people.

Craig 9:55

No, uh what I was thinking was Craig, dig a hole.

Why 1982 Was Overloaded

Shawn 9:58

Here's a shovel.

Craig 10:00

Let's move on. Let's talk about 1982. Ah. All right, dude. All right. So our last episode, 1982. Uh yeah, this is something that we thought, hey, this would be fun to do. Do it, let's do a year. Yeah. Uh, I don't know if it's a wise thing. We we'll find out. We'll see how this goes. Yeah. Yeah. We're going with it. And and because you mentioned it, and I thought it was a a really cool year, uh, and until I realized, holy damn, the volume is massive. It's massive. The entered from the entertainment kind of side of things. Yeah.

Shawn 10:33

I couldn't believe it's crazy, isn't it?

Craig 10:35

The number it came into my head of movies that shape my life and naturally probably shape yours as well. Let's just throw out some right now. E.T., according to my notes here, has over gr grossed over 400 million bucks in the year.

Shawn 10:50

Well, it's the it's the biggest uh grossing movie uh of the 80s. So that decade. Yeah, and and look at the look at the other movies that came out.

Craig 10:58

Yeah, like Tootsie, Gandhi, An Officer and a Gentleman, Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist, First Blood, Blade Runner.

Shawn 11:08

Listen, I got all shirts of notes on this document. You're just blowing it through it like that.

Craig 11:11

And Rocky III. No, I just felt like I just needed to throw out some of these kind of crazy Okay, uh, the volume and I don't Tron's not even on here on this list. But it's on there.

Shawn 11:23

It deserves it's on that list.

Craig 11:25

Tron. Tron.

Susie 11:26

I didn't I don't think I watched as many movies as you guys did in the in the a in 82, but the music for me was so I listened on the walk home to an 1982 playlist and was just transported back to my childhood.

Shawn 11:42

I think I think the number one single is uh Dexie's Midnight Runner, and it's it's come on Eileen. Yep, right, which is such an iconic song.

Susie 11:51

Totally, so many.

Shawn 11:52

And then of course you said Thriller is I mean, how do you get a bigger album than that, right? Yeah. So I mean, there's so many uh things for musically, and then you've got like the Commodore 64 coming out. Yeah, you've got the start of MTV, hello, and you're speaking about, you know Well, Thriller, he did music videos for that.

Susie 12:12

Of course. So I would watch the music videos and then try and copy his dancing while singing along, watching it.

Shawn 12:19

Yeah, I mean, I mean, MTV changed changed everything. Yeah, it did. So, I mean, that's massive in itself. But yeah, 1982, like you said, it's crazy. And and so I think that it's sort of the golden age, it's kicks off. I mean, we had Star Wars in the 70s, which changed everything, of course, right? But I think the 80s really reaped the benefits of the 70s because the 70s movies blew up the studio system, and you had all these great autures. You know, you had Coppola and you had Scorsese and you had Spielberg and and De Palma and Lucas, right? And we got Star Wars and everything changes. Yeah. And then so the 80s sort of reap that, you know, the rewards of that, and you get all these great genre-driven movies. And I'm talking every genre is like is full that year. And you're so I think I spent the entire summer at the movie theaters. I must have waiting in line to go to see great films.

Craig 13:08

When we were at that age, uh most impressionable time.

Shawn 13:11

Like I just imprinting on you all of these.

Craig 13:15

Yeah. Absolutely. That's why that's why I'm kind of excited to talk about some of these movies and kind of how it kind of left an imprint and and the feelings I had about So well.

E.T. And Spielberg’s Emotional Core

Shawn 13:24

Let's start with the biggest one, like you said, is easy. Yeah, I mean, and like when I say it's the biggest grosser, I mean of the decade in the 80s. And they're going up against the Star Wars, the Indiana Jones, the Back to the Futures. It's the biggest grossing movie. And it wasn't even gonna be a movie. It was uh originally Columbia Pictures had asked Spielberg to do a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Oh, yeah. And so they had written another, he didn't want to do that, Spielberg. He didn't want to, he was done with that. So they wrote another um alien film called Dark Skies that was gonna be at Columbia Pictures. It was about a basically a farming community attacked by aliens, and so it was gonna be an action, sort of a horror movie in that regard. Anyways, it got put in development and it never happened, and so Spielberg moved on to do something else. And uh he uh they had written this script where during the attack there's an alien that sort of befriends a young boy in the movie, and he's an autistic boy. And so I think Spielberg found that really intriguing, that relationship. Right. So that got sort of stuck in turnaround, and years later he decided that's the the actual movie you wanted to make was about the boy and the alien.

Susie 14:32

Yeah.

Shawn 14:32

So he got you got a script writer named Melissa Matheson, Harrison Ford's girlfriend. Oh, no kidding. That was on the set for Indiana, you know, Rages of the Lost Ark.

Susie 14:41

Yeah.

Shawn 14:41

And they started writing A Boy's Life, which was going to become E.T. But Columbia Pictures still owned this script. So basically, uh Universal said, you know, we'll give you 5% of whatever E.T. makes. No kidding. I'll tell you what. Wow. Five percent of whatever E.T. made was more money than any movie Columbia Pictures put out in that decade. Wow. So E.T. is made, um, and it becomes, you know, it's it's a phenomenon. And I think it's the first movie I remember like crying and yeah, like it's a gut punch that movie because it's so much about abandonment and divorce and family splitting up and Susie and I rewatched it.

Susie 15:21

We rewatched it.

Craig 15:22

It's funny what you forget things that you forget when you were young. I didn't realize that they revealed E.T. right away. Yeah, there was no kind of mystery to it. They didn't want the mystery to be there to turn this into a horror movie. They wrong they wanted to get out of the gates this this alien creature that's lovable, like a teddy bear.

Shawn 15:44

Unrelatable, yeah.

Craig 15:48

Human like qualities and and so so that Elliot and and uh they both have abandonment issues in this movie.

Shawn 15:56

Obviously, Elliot's father is left, and and E.T.'s clan is left, so it's an automatic, you know, yeah relationship that begins.

Craig 16:05

My favorite scene is the shed scene, right? You got the corn crop field right behind it, the shed with the lighting, classic Spielberg stuff right there. And there's Elliot. He throws the ball into the shed, and the ball gets thrown out. Like, I oh just fucking sick.

Shawn 16:21

That's the thing about Spielberg movies, too, is that their families are so lived in and real, like like the living room's messy and it's like so relatable. Yeah, I think you watch that and you go, oh my god, I think we had that lamp and that table and that, right? It's like he's in that rotary phone. And it it's just you automatically are taken back to your childhood when you watch his movies like that. I mean, and on your bikes and come home when the lamps when the streetlights come on. Totally, yeah.

Susie 16:52

Latch key kids, come in, get a snack, feed yourself. Nobody's there watching you, nobody knows what you're doing. There's no cell phone.

Craig 16:58

But in the case of E.T., it's so funny because there's mom, you know, she's doing the dishes, and here's these like half-dozen boys who are just I think they're smoking.

Susie 17:07

Yeah, they were.

Craig 17:08

Yeah, you know, what would you say they were? Like Elliot is as young as what uh nine, eight, you know. Oh, I think he's like maybe something like that, right? And then he's got his older brothers are kind of 14, 15, you know. And what made me laugh was you you don't like boys aren't raised like that today. Like that, they're there a certain sense of kind of freedom and and just you know, when when there was like Elliot comes into the house, he's like, There's something out there, there's something out there. And the boys are like, All right, get the knives, and they're like, let's go figure this out.

Shawn 17:40

It was the good old days, the 80s.

Craig 17:42

It's not like the the mother was like, Okay, yeah, this is what we're no, it was like, Mom, stand back. You know, it was just funny. Which you just the the just even that what is it, 40 something years, how how quick that shifted. It gives me uh that sense of what I remember. Yeah, you know, I wasn't smoking at the you know the kitchen table, but just having that camaraderie of your friends around and you're just shooting the shit and you just you had that sense of freedom. I I that's where Spiel Spielberg can nail perfectly.

Poltergeist And Childhood Trauma

Shawn 18:14

He has the heart part of a movie, he can put that heart in that he has, and so E.T., I mean, it just bowls everything out of the water that year. Probably should have won Best Picture, I think, because I think it was the greatest film of that year in terms of its universal appeal and and how it just impacted everything. Pop culture and social society was everywhere. But just take this in mind Spielberg had two movies that came out within a week of each other. June 1982 is probably the greatest month for movies, especially for geeks of all time. That's all right. Because the week before E.T. comes out, we get the most traumatizing movie of my childhood. Little movie called Poltergeist. Oh my god, I rewatched that today. And that is produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Spielberg, and it would have been directed by Steven Spielberg, but he couldn't because of the union and him, he was working on ET at the time.

Craig 19:14

That is so interesting because I was watching it this morning.

Shawn 19:17

It feels like a Spielberg movie, exactly, and it looks like a Spielberg movie. All of it. You know, it's directed by a guy named Toby Hooper who directed the Chainsaw Massacre, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Wow. But you it's got Spielberg all over it with those long shots that come in real tight, and the and the lights and the but that is the most traumatizing movie for me as a kid with the clown. Come on. Yeah, clown and the tree and the static, and the it's got some of the best catchphrases. They're here.

Craig 19:46

The maggots coming out of the chicken, the the the guy who's ripping his face off.

Shawn 19:51

Uh yeah, the practical effects were amazing.

Craig 19:54

Yeah. And you and and when you're young too, it all is so believable because it was for that time cutting edge.

Susie 20:00

I don't think I was allowed to watch it until way later.

Shawn 20:02

I saw it in the theater, and it was so scary. Yeah. But it was great.

Craig 20:08

There was probably one other movie, and it's not 1982, but it was The Exorcist that was probably more scary because it was really psychological. But uh what poltergeist did for me was uh perpetually make me afraid of clowns, uh no doubt. Um and swimming pools, and swimming pools and uh closets and and a tree right outside your window.

Shawn 20:32

That's a Spielberg dream that that's right from Spielberg's nightmares as a kid. That tree could be. Is that right? Yeah, okay.

Craig 20:38

Yeah. I and you know, uh I ended up the it was all in French. So it was only I wasn't gonna pay for it, but uh it was only in French. So I'm listening to it. No, that was a thing, you know, because I see there you go.

Shawn 20:56

Just as creepy.

Craig 20:58

That's right.

Shawn 21:00

You know what, you know what I loved about poldergeist is the cool hippie smoke or weed smoking parents. I don't know if you remember. They're like rolling a joint in their bedroom and then the sun comes in and knocks on the door, and I'm like, these are the coolest parents I've ever met, dude.

Craig 21:14

Yeah, that was funny. Um I really liked the casting. Oh, god, yeah. The little blonde girl.

Shawn 21:22

She was supposed to be in E.T. and so not supposed to be, but she came out for casting for E.T. and Spielberg Sarr in the commissary and said she should be in poltergeist. She she's perfect for poltergeist. She was auditioning for Drew Barrymore's part in E.T.

Craig 21:35

She was perfect for that role.

Shawn 21:37

Um and of course, you know the the sadness around that movie that you know there was like a quote unquote curse, right? And so all the kids uh I think all most of the kids are gone. Okay, she passed away a few years after that. She didn't even make it make it to 10 years old or 12 years old.

Craig 21:53

No kidding.

Shawn 21:54

Oh, anyways, that's a way to bring it down, dude. But then they think. Of the kids died, the sister died, and she died, and so everybody started talking about this curse.

Craig 22:05

The other casting uh decision was the the the the the the very short woman who came in.

Shawn 22:12

This house is clean. There are many horrors in this house. Horrors, horrors.

Craig 22:23

She scared the shit out of me.

Shawn 22:26

Oh uh Yeah, there's lots of that. That that's so great, though, that they did that. I just love it.

Craig 22:31

Exactly. Totally. I I eccentric, crazy. Uh and then I watched a little bit of the remake of Poltergeist. No, this is not.

Shawn 22:39

Oh God, I'm not, I would never go there.

Craig 22:40

No, I just it doesn't work. It's it's not as good.

Shawn 22:44

Yeah, yeah.

Tron And Fear Of Computers

Craig 22:45

Now that I know that, that was another Spielberg thing. It just makes me just admire him so much more. Because at this point, we've had Close Encounters of the Third Kind a few years earlier. Then comes out Blade Runner, which you don't even want to touch, but I just want to say there's something interesting about there's a there's a theme in 1982, and it's probably not just 1982. And you mentioned earlier at the top of this episode about Commodore 64 coming out. And if you look at Tron, you look at a lot of these movies, there is this fear of computers. You know, Tron was about that. You know, this hacker gets sucked into this, you know, machine. In fact, Time magazine's cover in 1982 was uh machine of the year. So there was this really interesting obsession with all things computers and and the the dangers of them, right? Tron is was essentially that. You can you can go in there, you can die. Um, and and I I found Tron also equally groundbreaking. The color schemes, I don't even know how they technology they just started exactly how they did that kind of neon y kind of thing was so cool.

Shawn 23:54

It was huge, and the marketing for it was huge, too. Yeah, it was everywhere.

Craig 23:57

And and then they made hold the video games out of that, right? And uh because because you watched the movie, the video games felt more impactful, more real, like when you died. Because I remember the little bike things and there the lines, and you you had to make sure that you didn't get you know caught in a section which would lead to your death. You would have you always have to be one step ahead. Oh, geez, all that stuff was just so so crazy cool.

Shawn 24:23

Unlike the ET Atari game that was so bad because they rushed it out, yeah, that they buried uh the the urban legend is that they buried most of them in a landfill and then they found them years just to get them off the shelves, and they were so bad really because they rushed them out. They had no merchandise for E.T. the extraterrestrial until they realized we need merchandise for and they so they filled a 747 jet with merchandise and and like brought it over to North America. Oh my god. But, anyways, that's a story for another day. But what you're talking about is is sort of like uh to jump to another film really quickly is John Carpenter's The Thing, which is also this sort of uh paranoid uh monster movie where you don't know who them who the monster is. It could be your best buddy, it could be could be your coworker, it could be, and that was another real paranoid, delusional, sort of scary, you know, a conspiracy theory. It's basically about a virus that spreads and hits different people and turns them into this. Another great movie shot in British Columbia, one of the hardest shoots they say ever. And of course, it came out the same time as E.T.

Craig 25:28

First Blood.

Shawn 25:29

No, no, uh, the thing. Uh so John Carpenter's The Thing, which is a brilliant, it's one of the most iconic horror films of all time now, right? Like people love it, it's it's just a cult classic. But it came out the same time as E.T., two alien movies, right? So uh John Carpenter's coming back on an airplane and he comes into the airport, and all he sees is E.T. on the cover of every magazine, and he goes, Well, that's it for the movie. And of course, the thing did nothing at the box office because everybody was going to see the nice alien movie.

Susie 26:00

Yeah, right.

Shawn 26:01

So I always think about that. Yeah, yeah.

Craig 26:04

Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Shawn 26:05

Oh. Directed by Amy Heckerling and of course written by the famous Cameron Crow. And Cameron Crow, uh, I mean, I don't have to tell you, say anything. Jerry Maguire, almost famous. Cameron Crow went back to high school because he never finished high school. So he went back to high school to write this movie. So he went back to grade 12 and wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He was in his 20s. Oh. And nobody knew that he was he was doing this. Oh so they all just thought he was a kid. Yeah. It's kind of like 21 Jones Street. Uh-huh. He came back, he went to LA, went to one of the one of the high schools in LA and enrolled. Right. Yeah. And was went to all the dances, went to all the and he wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Susie 26:45

Oh my God.

Shawn 26:46

Isn't that amazing? And this movie is so incredible because it's about abortion and it's about fucking teenage sex. And it's like it's it's not what you think it is if you're going in.

Susie 26:58

Yeah.

Shawn 26:58

It it and spicole. Well, it's Sean Penn, our first introduction for most people to Sean Penn. And I thought that's that was Sean Penn.

Susie 27:07

Yeah.

Shawn 27:07

Hey, dude. Yeah. And then I'm like, oh, that's not Sean Penn. No. He's just that good an actor.

Susie 27:12

Yeah. Absolutely.

Craig 27:13

Going back to E.T., do you remember the days when at late at night, I think it was like two, three, two o'clock in the morning, uh, all broadcasting would end, and then it would turn sorry, my mistake. Yeah, poltergeist. Going back to poltergeists.

Shawn 27:26

And they'd play the national anthem.

Craig 27:28

And they exactly. And then you get the snow.

Shawn 27:30

Can you imagine a time without TV? From like, oh, we don't have TV from three in the morning.

Craig 27:36

Yeah, like five or six or something like that.

Shawn 27:38

That's so funny, huh? And no content.

Craig 27:40

Yeah. Nothing. It just goes shuts around.

Shawn 27:42

What a beautiful time.

Craig 27:43

Oh, I know. So simple. That's when that little girl is staring into that snow. And I just because that this is where this is really about memory lane for us, right? Going down and seeing how technology is starting to really influence kind of our world and our outlook on things.

Susie 28:02

Well, so much of it was unknown, the the technology that it was portrayed as this scary unknown thing. And you know, you didn't know what the computers were gonna do.

Shawn 28:12

Well, and you a couple of years later, you're gonna get war games, right? Which is exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. But that's another gear. Yeah. We won't get into that.

Craig 28:19

Well, the same thing, theme though, you know, the the the fear of computers evolving to the point where they are become a danger. I mean, right now we are dealing with that with AI, right? It's kind of interesting how you if if you don't look back in time, you you would you think myopically and you think, oh, okay, this is just happening now. Well, no, no. People have been afraid of these things for a long time. And and we kind of adapt to it anyway, right? Like, so maybe AI won't turn out to be this doomsday. Maybe it will, who knows, right? Time will tell. Well, exactly.

Star Trek II Saves The Franchise

Shawn 28:48

Sky speaking of technology, uh, let's just jump quickly to uh another movie that hopefully I think Craig this will excite Craig a bit. It had the biggest three-day opening um in movie history that year, because 1982 was the biggest um movie year for box office in 30 years. This this one opened the same day. We're talking about Blade Runner and all the the same day. And this is uh Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan. And so interestingly, I don't know if you know this or not, um, but Star Trek was done. The uh Star Trek The Motion Picture came out. It was one of the most expensive movies ever made. They thought it was gonna be Star Wars, they just thought, oh, it's gonna do what Star Wars did. Well, it didn't. Yeah, so it was basically done. And so they decided they were gonna do this movie, but they weren't gonna do it the same way. They what they did is they hired Paramount's TV crew to shoot this. Not a motion picture crew, but people that worked on television. They weren't even sure if it was gonna be released in theaters. It might have been a TV movie. Leonard Nimoy was not gonna come back. He refused to put the Spock ears on again. So he said no. The only reason they got him back was they worked out a deal where he could direct in the future the Star Trek movies, which he would go on to do.

Susie 29:59

Yeah.

Shawn 30:00

So this movie had everything going against it, right? I mean, so and it comes out and has the biggest three-day opening of any movie ever. Wow. And it just it kills at the box office. And you bring back Ricardo Montaban as con.

Craig 30:14

Yeah.

Shawn 30:15

And it's like the best episode of an old Star Trek television show ever, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. They killed Spock in the movie, yeah. And they got death threats for that. Oh man, people went fucking bonkers. You're out with signs saying, You kill Spock, we kill you. I mean, this is like damn. Yeah. Well, hey no, trackies aren't the most hey, whoa. Yeah, let's not get into that. Yeah, they'll be outside in five minutes. Yeah.

Craig 30:44

That was where they uh put that thing in the ear. That's right.

Shawn 30:47

The ear, the earworm or whatever that is. Bug.

Susie 30:51

Oh, yeah.

Craig 30:52

Yeah, that that was gross.

Susie 30:53

Yeah.

Shawn 30:53

So I thought I'd throw that out there, and that's written by somebody that wasn't a trackee. And so I think that's why it works so well. Is like they didn't know any of the mythology. They just wrote like a good movie, like a good plot, you know? And exactly. And that's what it was. I thought that was interesting to bring up as well. That's another that all these movies came out in two weeks of each other, which is June, which is what we're talking about.

Craig 31:12

And really, there's so much symmetry between that movie, Star Trek and Tootsie.

Shawn 31:18

I mean, there, you could you could I what am I watching? Tootsie or Star Trek here? I mean, what's like I mean, geez, Tootsie. Tootsie, I think it's the second biggest grossing movie of that year, Tootsie.

Craig 31:29

Yeah, I have down here 167 million gross U.S. cards.

Shawn 31:33

I I love Tootsie. I I love that movie. Me too. That cast uh is ensemble is unbelievable. Terry Garr and Bill Murray and Dabney Coleman, and yeah, it's just unbelievable. That's a good movie. I don't know if you can make Tootsie nowadays.

Craig 31:46

Uh, probably not. Probably not.

Shawn 31:47

Unless I had a different storyline, yeah.

Craig 31:51

Exactly.

Shawn 31:52

But um, yeah, Tootsie, and he was nominated. Like, look at the Oscar noms that year. You've got Dustin Hoffman, you've got Paul Newman, you have Jack Lemon, you have Peter O'Toole, and you've got Ben Kingsley. I mean, I mean that's insane to me. Those actors. Like, these are people, and then you've got Meryl Streep winning for Sophie's Choice. That's her first best actress win.

Craig 32:12

That's right. There's another movie.

Shawn 32:13

And you got Glenn Close with her first nomination for the world according to Garp. And then she would go on to be nominated six more times and she has still hasn't won. Oh. But I just find that interesting. But Tootsie go, Tootsie Go. I mean, that was the song. Apparently, Dustin Hoffman walked around for weeks and weeks around New York in drag, like becoming a woman. Yeah. And you could just see that because he's such a method guy, right?

First Blood And 80s Action Icons

Susie 32:36

Yeah. Yeah. I watched the I watched First Blood again.

Craig 32:40

I wish I didn't. Uh good, good uh segue there. Yeah.

Shawn 32:44

Um, we're going from drag to first blood. But it's a big movie, once again, shot just a couple hours away from where we're sitting right here.

Craig 32:53

Yeah, yeah. Hoped BC. That's right. Yeah.

Shawn 32:56

But it's is it Stallone's best movie in terms of like acting? I think it is. What? Oh, for sure. For acting. Like, like, like First Blood is. Have you seen it?

Craig 33:06

I just watched it.

Shawn 33:07

Okay. You're like, what?

Susie 33:09

How many movies did you watch?

Shawn 33:10

So you It was also in French. You think he's better in Rambo? It was also in French. He's gonna watch Rambo in Spanish tonight.

Susie 33:19

Yeah.

Shawn 33:19

Followed up.

Susie 33:20

Anything free.

Shawn 33:22

First Blood is about a Vietnam vet, correct? Coming back and sort of, you know.

Craig 33:26

It's it's just funny how you you think you remember things, uh, but you you don't quite get it right. I forgot who were the antagonists. I forgot it was like basically the police. It was the copy. And it was an endless, endless, you know, chase. Right. Um and and maybe that's because it's, you know, I've got kind of like Predator Arnold Schwarzenegger in my head, you know, movies too, where and he did Conan Bart the Barbarian the same year.

Shawn 33:49

That's right. So you got Sly and Conan starting their fucking 80s action run, dude.

Craig 33:56

Insane, isn't it?

Shawn 33:57

Yeah, but but First Blood is way more of a movie because the next one he does is uh like from First Blood is Rambo, which is so action over the top, like you know, like it's not even close. First Blood is is way subtler.

Craig 34:10

Oh, well, it's more of a story. It is, it is, and it ends, and it ends with him in tears. You can see here's a guy who's got PTSD.

Shawn 34:16

Originally, he killed himself in the book and the movie. The character John Rambo dies. Okay, of course, the studio said sequels coming, baby. That's right. So Lester Stallone is so quick. And let's not forget he's done Rocky III the same year.

Craig 34:31

That's right. So that is where that the that song Eye of the Tiger comes.

Shawn 34:38

MTV plays it every frickin' day, man. Yeah. Eye of the Tiger. Yeah, and so he's essentially Sloan is turning these characters into superheroes before we had Marvel. He's got John Rambo's gonna go on to become fucking Rambo, and then Rocky's beating Mr. T, Clubber Lang. Yeah, right. He's like, you know, beating up this guy. Mr. T just died, by the way, yesterday. I mean, we won't say the date and everything here, but but he just passed away, isn't that? Oh, I didn't know. Mr. T. Big huge 80s. Yeah, one of the biggest. But he was so intimidating and scary in Rocky III, right? Mr. T, or like this guy in this mohawk. Yeah, you know, it's like, holy shit, who's this guy? Yeah.

Craig 35:15

Eye of the Tiger. I mean Survivor. I can't think uh sorry, Survivor, yeah. I can't think of a song, another uh a pump you up song. An iconic anthem. Yeah, yeah.

Shawn 35:26

Totally anthems. It is the one of the biggest, certainly for film. You're right. I mean, uh, I can't think of another one either.

Craig 35:32

In 1982, did we have time to socialize? I mean, there are so that's what I mean.

Shawn 35:36

I spent the entire summer at the theater, literally. Yeah, crazy, you know, in my night rider shirt and my rugby pants. I think I had a K-Way strapped on. Do you remember a K-Way? That was the jacket that you you you you ever you belted around your everyone wanted the K-Way. I had multiple K Way.

Craig 35:53

You were not cool if you didn't have a K-Way. Yeah. And the and the little special snap.

Shawn 35:58

Yeah, that's what I mean, around your waist. It was kind of like a fanny pack that turned into a jacket. And it had a rainbow. I'm bringing them back.

Susie 36:04

Rainbow elastic.

48 Hrs And The Buddy Cop Boom

Shawn 36:06

I'm bringing them back. So you mentioned we get Stallone, we get uh we get Arnie. And we also you mentioned this earlier, but we also get the biggest star of the 80s comedically. We get Eddie Murphy for 48 hours coming. He's 19 years old coming from Saturday Night Live to shoot this movie, and he becomes an overnight when this movie comes out, he explodes on screen as the biggest star in the world. Yeah. Eddie Murphy. Yeah. So that's pretty significant too.

Craig 36:35

Well, it grossed more money than Poltergeist did. Yeah, I'm sure. In that year. And uh it actually just about identically it is identical to Star Trek The Wrath of Khan. So 48 hours, big hit. Huge.

Shawn 36:49

Yeah. And you know what? It starts off such a role in the 80s for these buddy comedy movies. You got Lethal Weapon comes out of this. Yeah. You got uh Rush Hour comes out of this, you got all of these cop buddy team ups because 48 hours is so successful.

Susie 37:04

Yeah.

Shawn 37:05

I mean, and that's directed by Walter Hill. And it it I can still watch that movie. It's it's racially charged on purpose. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to watch some of it, but it is uh it's entertaining as hell. You can't beat that.

Craig 37:16

Yeah, it was pretty a lot of these things were really, like you said earlier, like groundbreaking. Yeah, you know, like pushing art. Yeah, pushing the envelope. Uh you never have these movies now. Well, that's let's let's just talk about that for a second. Uh can we think of movies today that are you know, push that envelope?

Shawn 37:33

Um I think they're out there, but is is it something to do with the fact that we're not going out to the theater like and making a date, making an event out of it? Like we're not you know what I mean? Like we're sitting in our living rooms and we're streaming. Yeah. And it's just like so convenient. And it's like before you really had to commit if you're going to movies. Like you had to you had to line up, you had to line up multiple times, and you didn't even know if you're gonna get a ticket.

Susie 37:58

Yeah, right.

Craig 37:59

And the funny thing is is that you know, like my youngest daughter, she she still loves going to the movies. You know, they they still experience of going to the movies. I think it is the smell of the popcorn, the smell of the movie theater, all right.

Shawn 38:09

Yeah, the smell of urine. Oh, wait, that's yeah.

Craig 38:12

The disgusting bathrooms stuck to the floor. Oh, exactly.

Shawn 38:15

I love all that stuff. I'm kidding, but I love it all.

Craig 38:18

Yeah, exactly.

Shawn 38:19

Yeah, the other two don't no, they'd rather stream. She does, she they'd rather watch it on their phone.

Susie 38:24

Yeah, that's what really drives me nuts.

Shawn 38:26

Yeah.

Susie 38:27

We don't we have no competition for the big TV. They're like, no, you're gonna watch my room.

Shawn 38:31

I want to just really quickly add another film into this mix that I think is so massive and people probably don't remember it. And it's about um a New York Times article that uh a guy wrote about the New York City morgue and these guys working in the New York City morgue, and they were running a brothel out of it. They were basically pimps working at the New York City morgue, and they were running uh, you know, hookers out of there. And it's a great movie, and it it's called Night Shift. And it's very significant because it's uh the first studio movie for a guy named Ron Howard. Oh, yeah. And so it brings us Ron Howard and another guy that produced it with them called Brian Grazer. So Brian Grazer and Ron Howard did this little comedy, um, and it's quite an amazing comedy. It didn't do that well at the box office, it was marketed horribly. Nobody knew what to do with it. But it brings us these two guys that would go on to do Imagine Entertainment and bring us some of the best films and television shows of all time. It also, though, uh uh this movie also brings us an actor that we'd never seen before that would dominate the 80s as well in comedy, uh, an actor called Michael Keaton. Yeah. And so Michael would he's so good in this movie, and you see like pure comedy genius with him, and then he would, of course, go on to do all of all of the 80s movies, Mr. Mom and Beetlejuice and all that. It's funny, they weren't gonna make this movie, they weren't gonna let Ron do it. They said, Okay, I'll tell you what, Ron, we'll let you make this movie, but there's one one key thing to this. They said what? He said, uh, Henry Winkler has to star in it. Really? So, of course, they'd work together on Happy Days, and that was the tie-in. The Fonz. He had left Happy Days, Ron Howard, to become a director, and he wanted to be taken seriously. So he'd left Happy Days to be a director, and now they're telling him you gotta have the Fons in your movie. But Henry Winkler, of course, does this, and he is so unrecognizable. He's there's no Fonzy vibe at all. He plays this paranoid guy that's so worried about everything. And if you haven't seen Night Shift, watch Night Shift. It is a great 80s movie. It's also the start of uh uh an actress named Shelly Long's career. Shelly Long is so great. She's one of the prostitutes. It is just so out there, it's so funny and weird, and it's a movie that would never get made today.

Craig 40:45

Well, here's a sitcom question Shelly Long. This sitcom set in a Boston. Cheers. Oh what is cheers?

Shawn 40:53

You got and you had Family Ties in '82. You had Knight Rider, you had uh um um what's the Pierce Brosnan, Remington Steel, Remington Steel. You had St. Elsewhere with a little actor named Denzel Washington. Yeah. I mean, all these great.

Craig 41:07

I forgot about Remington Steel.

Susie 41:08

Wow, yeah.

Shawn 41:09

Remington, steel, steel, Remington.

Craig 41:12

Yeah. Here's another question. Uh my geekiness, my my technical geekiness. This sound system standard introduced in 1982 improved cinema audio fidelity.

Shawn 41:24

Is it the Dolby? No. Um Dolby Surround? Three letters. Oh, it's uh yeah, yeah. The thing at the beginning of the THX. THX. My my brain went south there. Sorry. And and I the audience is listening. Those were the best opening things. That was that was hair on the back of my neck standing out.

Craig 41:49

So all of these elements are coming together. Great filmmaking, great audio, and just that's what I'm talking about.

Shawn 42:00

That's what I'm saying. Public. Yeah. Going out. And sometimes it wasn't a great experience. Sometimes it was a terrible movie. Yeah.

Craig 42:06

You had a bat, but it was still memorable.

Shawn 42:10

Well, at least they didn't have a fucking cell phone. And they weren't um texting the whole movie and giving me the surface light that, like, I'm going, dude, you're distracting me. I can see that. Turn it fucking off. Yeah. Yeah.

Craig 42:21

Yeah. That's one of the reasons why I stopped going to the movie theater.

Shawn 42:25

Now, there was another great film, and maybe Susie liked this movie. I don't know, but um Love Lift Us Up Were We Blue. An officer and a Gentleman. I think it's the second or third highest grossing movie that year. Greg. It is. It's got to be on that list. I went 25 times. I thought you liked it. You wanted to be carried out of that theater by a guy. And didn't they have a friend's episode where he carried her out or something? In his uniform. In his uniform. It's so iconic that movie.

Craig 42:55

It just beat out Rocky III, 128, 129 million.

Shawn 42:59

So Lewis Gossett Jr., the drill sergeant, of course, he won the uh Best Supporting Actor Oscar for that. He's the first African American actor to win best supporting actor ever. And he's also the first black actor to win since Sidney Poitiers in the 60s. Wow. So that was a big night for African American actors and people everywhere. So that that that was a big movie. I just and that song, speaking of MTV, was another highly in rotation video that came on and on and on and on. Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warren's, of course. Huge. I think it won the Grammy too. It must have won the Grammy for that song.

Susie 43:35

Well, Joe Cocker's amazing.

Shawn 43:36

So I want to bring something up really quickly because there's so much to talk about. I don't want to leave this out because I think Craig, this is a whole thing, Craig could do a whole hour on this. The the um foreign language film award that year went to an incredible movie. Some people say it was the best movie of the year, and that's Das Boot, which was a German submarine movie. And at that time, it had the most nominations for a foreign uh language film. I think it was six or seven nominations, that one. That's worth bringing up. Um that's a great film.

Craig 44:06

In uh like I don't think it was like Criterion Edition.

Shawn 44:09

It's a German film, all subtitled, but you watched it in French. Which is gonna be weird. It's like German people speaking French.

Craig 44:17

Yeah. Nope. Uh that that was a movie you have to listen to in German. Uh I I bought that DVD.

Susie 44:24

But I I think back to the the experience part of the movies. I remember the THX at the beginning, and you're just like, you hear that, and then you're watching whatever movie you went into. And then when you leave as a group, and it's just like you're elated from seeing the movie, or you're sad, or you're all and it's just this I can't believe Spock died.

Shawn 44:45

And then the guy lining up for the next show is like, thanks, asshole.

Susie 44:48

Yeah. And but you know, you talk to people that you didn't know, you talk to people in the audience, talk to people on the way in, talk to people on the way out. Like it was such a different experience.

Shawn 44:57

Well, you weren't on your phone um texting somebody about the movie. Yeah. Oh, we just saw this. Here's my selfie with the poster. Yeah. You know what the other how about how about the beginning of like the restricted movie with the with the tiger in the jungle? Right? The lightning bolt. Yeah. God, I remember that so many times. And you're like, who sneak remember you could sneak into movies too? Oh, yeah. Did you ever sneak into a movie? Yeah. Craig, you're sweating right now. You never smoke. Yeah. You get just making it uncomfortable, huh?

Susie 45:21

You'd pay for the you'd pay for the D movie and then you'd sneak into the Disney film, and then you'd sneak into like, yeah, Halloween three or well, I remember that if you had a friend who paid, and then they would open up the back door.

Craig 45:33

The back door. Yeah. You could just open up a door. Yeah, you just open up a door. And you know, there's no alarm system. You just filter in.

Shawn 45:41

God, those were the days you could beat E, and it was okay. It's all right. So many movies. I mean, I I have uh a book full of stuff that I didn't get to. It's got literally two books in the two books in front of me. I also we didn't even cover, I mean, there were so many musicals that year, right? You had Victor Victoria, which I love with Julie Andrews and Robert Preston.

Susie 46:00

Yep.

Shawn 46:00

And then you have The Sun will come out tomorrow. Annie. You got Annie, which was massively, it's on that top 10, I'm sure. It's of the grossing. It is. I've got it on my Gandhi is. No, no, on the top 10 grossing, it is. And Best Little Whore House in Texas is on there too.

Craig 46:17

Yeah.

The Movie Theater As Social Life

Shawn 46:17

Uh so and there's one more I'm missing, but anyways. Oh, Greece too. Who can forget about Greece too? We're going bowling. We're going bowling. I mean, classic songs. So, I mean, there's so much. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. And that was the year that I think I'd already fallen in love with movies from, you know, Star Wars and Raiders of Lost Ark and all this stuff and Superman. But I think 82 really solidified my love affair with going to the theater. Nothing was more important. Yeah. Which I look back on now and think, wow, you really should have studied more.

Susie 46:54

We studied more. So we moved away from that movie. We moved away from Vancouver and we moved back the summer of 1982. And there was we moved back to the same house, and so therefore the same school, same friends. And we had just arrived from Toronto, and I was invited to a birthday party, and the birthday party was in the theater, or we were gonna go see a movie, and we were late. And so my mom, I didn't meet the group, and I show up, and everybody's like looking down, and I'd been gone for two and a half years, and it was just like this whole thing in the movie theater, and then no one can talk about me or with me because we're here to watch this movie, and it was just all together with your old friends, submersive. You just yeah, no, that's part of the memorable, like just so birthday movies.

Shawn 47:41

I that's that's my whole growing up was that's what you did. You went to the movies with your group of friends, yeah.

Susie 47:47

And it wasn't $700 to take your friends to a movie. No, that's true.

Shawn 47:51

It was not.

Susie 47:52

No.

Craig 47:53

Uh yeah, maybe maybe there's the uh an equivalency today. I don't know, for kid for younger kids. I hope there is because those are special moments when you're allowed to do those things and escape, and then you then you leave the move and you're you know, the vo those really geeky ones, you know, you talk about it for hours afterwards, right?

Shawn 48:09

Yeah, well, and that was like I said, that was June of 1982. If you can imagine all of those films in one month, and then you have the rest of the year, and there's so many great films we didn't even talk about. People do bring up another year, and maybe we'll go and do that sometime, and it's 1999. But uh 1982 is just the golden age for me of of just like you said, you know, 12 or 11 or 12 and and just imprinting these movies imprinting on you pop culturally, making you you know a lover of of of all things that come out in the theater.

Craig 48:40

And I think that's what's so neat about it because I don't think you know when you get older, those movies don't have the same impression. You just get older and things change.

Shawn 48:47

Yeah, no, that's that's fair. That's what happens.

Craig 48:49

So like every kid needs to have that experience, that that sense of wonderment and sense of awe tapping into all of these kind of emotions that connect with you that won't let go.

Shawn 49:00

And who did the voice for E.T. Deborah Winger? Love Little. Right? She's an elastic gentleman. She did the voice for E.T.

Susie 49:08

Voice for E.T. Elliot.

E.T. Ending And A Small Critique

Craig 49:10

Yeah. If I was to have a to critique E.T. Just a little bit, hear me out. It's the um design of E.T. I like the extendo head thing that's kind of neat. And I have no problem with the shape of the head with the big eyes. It adds a really kind of like pet-like thing, almost like teddy bearish kind of quality to it. But the thing didn't walk very well. Yeah.

Shawn 49:35

Well, it's 1982, Craig. You know, they're they're doing their best. And then there's the final scene there.

Craig 49:40

It would be all CGI today. Well, well, exactly. And the final scene there, and they've got this. I think they have a a small person in that um oh I'm sure to walk. And they're trying to, and he's trying to walk up the ramp, and it's just not working. And I just thought, oh boy.

Shawn 49:59

All right. Well, it's, you know, we'll we'll give your notes to Steven. And um I don't think it's locked. I don't think the picture's locked. I think you can still get those notes.

Craig 50:07

But my favorite line, and I don't know why this is, is at the very, very end, it's quite literally the last word spoken. It's when you could see Elliot. He's absolutely, you know, saddened by this loss. It's like you're losing your best friend. And we never even talked about how they became a part of himself, really. Yeah, literally like it and then disconnected. Exactly. And so he there's Elliot. He's in total tears, but acting, the actor was doing it beautifully. And then E.T.

Shawn 50:36

Henry Thomas. Henry Thomas.

Craig 50:38

E.T.'s finger, you know, starts glowing and points to his forehead and says to Elliot, I'll be right here. I thought, beautiful.

Susie 50:49

Yeah. Beautiful.

Shawn 50:50

Meaning the government is watching you. Right?

Susie 50:53

I will forever be.

Shawn 50:54

And then he's then he's tackled by ice because he's an illegal alien. That's right. Well they they they lock him up. And that's that's what happens. They build a wall around that thing so they can never come back.

Craig 51:05

Actually, on that point on the movie E.T., what I also uh forgot because I didn't notice this when I was younger, is the movie wasn't about, you know how they make government agents as the kind of evil. They didn't make those government agents evil. They they actually had this really compassion around this alien species that they were trying to keep it alive. And um it wasn't like you know, where you get more modern-day movies where you get those kind of like government entities that are the nefarious and doing dangerous things.

Shawn 51:34

I really cartoon-like almost.

Craig 51:35

Yeah, exactly. Unrealistic or maybe realistic, I don't know. But uh what I liked about in the movie E.T. is that there was the this kind of compassion component, which kind of kept to that space.

Shawn 51:46

Well, the lead guy, that guy you're talking about, Peter Coyote is the actor, and and he was visited by E.T. when he was a kid, and that's what his connection. Well, what can you say about 1982, right? I mean, there's so much, like I said, we could do another three, four hours on it. I didn't even get to talk about a whole book here, but uh it was a magical time.

Craig 52:06

And we can't go back other than Yes, we can.

Shawn 52:08

I have the DeLorean out front. Now, Back to the Future was 1985. Don't write in. I know it was 1985, but I have it, and I can go back to 1982 and I can line up in June and see all of these films again.

Susie 52:23

That'll be fun.

Craig 52:24

Well, while you're doing that, you won't fit in the DeLorean crate. You're too tall. Get France Ferdinand.

Shawn 52:32

Oh, you're gonna save his ass. Oh, wait a bring it back at the end of the season. Yeah!

Craig 52:38

Symmetry here, but I'm trying to stop World War I, you know.

Season Finale And Sign Off

Shawn 52:42

Yeah, and I just want to see Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Khan again. All right. All right, well. It was a great, great season, guys. Um we won't see you in a month or two, I guess.

Susie 52:53

Yeah, well, who knows?

Shawn 52:55

Yeah. Contracts will be my agent will call your agent. I'll miss you, Sean.

Susie 53:01

Yeah, we'll sure you will.

Shawn 53:02

And Susie, I see you. We can put the bed back down in here now and get this shit out of here. I know.

Craig 53:07

My daughter's being patient. She wants to get back into her room.

Susie 53:09

It's over! Can I sleep now?

Shawn 53:12

All right, guys. Great fun, great fun, great summer. And uh, we'll see y'all in a few months.

Susie 53:18

Yep.

Shawn 53:19

And uh after I get through my um rehab. I mean, no. Sorry, cut that out. Okay.

Susie 53:25

Take care, everybody, and don't forget to hit that follow button.

Craig 53:28

Oh, yeah, good call. Thank you.