Film: Vision Quest
Rated: R
Directed by: Harold Becker
Written by: Terry Davis (novel), Daryll Ponicsan (screenplay)
Tagline: All he needed was a lucky break. Then one day she moved in.
Starring: Matthew Modineas Louden Swain
                   Linda Fiorentino as Carla
                   Michael Schoeffling as Kutch
                   Ronny Cox as Louden’s Dad

By Rob R.

Pre-screening memories: My genetic makeup ensured that wrestling was never to be a sport in which I would excel, much less even consider. Cursed with legs even chickens found sad and shoulders that extended out just past my ears, my physique was not one that would easily intimidate opponents above the age of 7.

That did not stop me from appreciating the sport in all its incarnations. From superstars such as Jerry “The King” Lawler, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka to the local meets at the area high school.

I participated in team sports — a stint in baseball here, a little lacrosse there –  but there was always something about the individual drive and focus from the sport that interested me (I would later find an outlet to put this interest into practice in the form of long-distance running).

Louden Swain was the jock I wanted to be. There was an earnestness, a sense of wonder, a sweetness to him absent from the jock stereotypes that populated many of the teen-oriented films of decade.  There was a sandpaper-like edge of realism to the film under that glossy marketing of it being “Madonna’s first on-screen role,” (though a certain soft-core porno later released would prove this to be false).

The film prompted me to purchase the book on which it was based, only to find the pages held an altered version of what I witnessed on the screen. The book’s open-ended conclusion I actually found much more engaging, as it prompted me to fill in the blanks of Louden’s destiny.

New memories: Red Rider, why you never made it big in the US, and yet Stryper went platinum will remain a mystery to me. Their haunting “Lunatic Fringe” (see video below) served as Louden’s reoccurring theme song with its ghostly synthesizer, punctuated with driving, staccato power chords. It was also great to see Madonna in her slutty-looking early days, with more curves and arms that did not look as though they were forged by a blacksmith.

Music aside, I realized that my memories of the book superseded that of the film, and as good as the film still is, I liked the fact that Louden’s fate was one that I decided.

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Download the podcast here: ‘Vision Quest’ with its author Terry Davis

Or stay on the mat here and listen to it below:

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Our featured guest: Author Terry Davis

Terry Davis hit the ground running as an author and has since seldom slowed down, as a wrestling coach, college professor, columnist, biographer and motorcycle specialist.

Though retired from teaching, he is currently penning screenplays and contributes columns to his local paper.

His novel Vision Quest won immediate accolades, including author John Irving, who deemed it “The truest novel about growing up since ‘Catcher in the Rye.” Davis had much to say about the transition of his work from page to screen, as well as his time spent on the set of the film.

A big Natsukashi “thank you” to Mr. Davis for joining us and for creating a character that resonated with us for so many years.

Title: Westworld (1973)
Rated: PG
Director: Michael Crichton
Writer: Michael Crichton
Starring:  Yul Brynner as The Gunslinger
                     James Brolin as John Blane
                     Richard Benjamin as Peter Martin

By Gurn Blanston

Pre-screening memories: I first saw this movie at a matinee showing with my father in the mid 70’s. We had a tradition of going on Saturday afternoons and seeing films that my Mom and sister would not have enjoyed, The Four Musketeers, Scaramouche, The Pink Panther movies. I truly believe that this is the only Sci-Fi flick my Pop would admit to enjoying.

You see, he is a cowboy at heart. He has two 22-caliber pistols and a leather holster rig to carry them in, and took horseback riding lessons a few years back, just in case there was a sun set somewhere that might need riding into. So the idea of a resort where you could actually pretend to be a cowboy and you could even shoot people - well robots that looked like people - was hugely appealing to him. I admit that the idea was not unappealing to me either, although I was more interested is visiting Medievalworld and waving my sword at the kitchen wenches.

In the film, Richard Benjamin and James Brolin, who looks a lot like a young Josh Brolin, are two city slickers that head to a resort where they can play at being cowboys and drink, gunfight and carouse with a plethora of human-appearing robots and other guests; a shout out to Dick Van Patten who plays the meek banker turned homicidal gunslinger. There are three areas you can visit, Westworld, Medievalworld, and Romanorgyworld. I’m not sure why the Roman area didn’t attract a 13-year-old Gurn more then the Medieval one did, but I’ll work that out later with my therapist. Yul Brynner stars as the black clad gunslinger robot, the original Paranoid Android, and they all have a great time shooting him full of holes. Afterwards, they retire upstairs in the saloon with some robofloozys while Yul is carted back to the tech center to be repaired so that he can appear again to be shot up again the next day.

Similar storylines are transpiring in the other areas, but it turns out that the robots are a little pissed about the abuse and turn on the vacationers. Mayhem ensues as Yul tracks Benjamin and Bolin across the park attempting to even the score. Good wins in the end, unless you were pulling for the mechanical shootist, and the robots are controlled and eliminated, only to appear in the sequel Futureworld three years later. Michael Crichton wrote and directed Westworld, not the sequel though, and I remember it being my favorite Sci-Fi movie up until Star Wars came out and blew everything else away. I have fond memories of those Saturday afternoons with Dad, just the two of us seeing films together was very important to me at the time, and Westworld will always remain one of my favorites.

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Download the podcast: ‘Westworld’ featuring Jared Martin

…or, mosey over here to listen online:

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Our featured guest: Jared Martin

Jared was the man in command when all hell breaks loose in Westworld, perhaps it was his character’s preference of ordering lunch while the robots began their murderous rampage. Regardless, Jared continue to make an impression on viewers on television, starring in series such as Fantastic Journey, as “Lusty” Dusty Farlow in Dallas, and, Martin’s personal favorite, as the lead in the popular syndicated sci-fi series War of the Worlds as Dr. Harrison Blackwood.

Martin is the co-founder and creative director of the Big Picture Allience in Philadelphia, a non-profit youth development media program which fosters an appreciation of film in underserved communities.

Martin has many a story to share, and we were grateful to have him do so with us in this edition of Natsukashi.

Title: The Warriors (1979)
Rated: R
Directed by: Walter Hill
Written by: David Shaber and Walter Hill
                         Based on a novel by Sol Yurick
Starring: Michael Beck as Swan
                   James Remar as Ajax
                   David Patrick Kelly as Luther
                   Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Mercy
                   Roger Hill as Cyrus
Tagline: These are the Armies of the Night

By Gurn Blanston (with guest appearance by Scott from He-Shot-Cyrus, naturally!)

Pre-screening memories: For this particular podcast, we’ve amassed our own group of social deviants. Gurn Blanston, who remembers wanting desperately to be part of a gang in his youth (unfortunately, the math club just didn’t have the ‘edge’ he so longed for).

So he sought solace with Walter Hill’s cinematic ruffians, imagining himself wearing makeup and wielding a baseball bat — at least this would give him a reason to wear makeup socially. It was a film that afforded him the chance to live dangerously (if only vicariously through the lives of those cool cats on screen).

No Warriors podcast would be complete without our resident Warriors guru, Scott from He Shot Cyrus, to keep us on task. As a lifelong lover of all things Warriors related, Scott brought his cache of knowledge to the proceedings.

We were fortunate to be joined by an original cast member, Mr. Irwin Keyes, who played the cop who smacked the stuffing out of Ajax.

Together, we took a return trip to the mean streets of New York City and recalled not only Gurn’s and Scott’s memories of the film, but also of Irwin’s tales from being on the set where it all went down.

Can…you…dig…it?

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Our featured guest: Irwin KeyesIrwin plays the small but pivotal role of Bad Cop, who gets to smack some sense into Ajax after he gets a bit grabby. Irwin has carved quite a memorable niche for himself in film since ‘The Warriors,’ one of his earliest big-screen roles. Irwin is most remembered in TV pop culture for his reoccurring role in The Jeffersons, in which he uttered the phrase “Hi! Remember me?”

He has since balanced his career in both television, film and stage, with roles of shows such as Married with Children, Laverne and Shirley, Growing Pains and Thirtysomething.

Irwin has worked with filmmakers such as the Coen Brothers and Rob Zombie. His comical role as Weezy Joe in the formers’ film Intolerable Cruelty has been noted as one of the big screen’s best death scenes.

Most recently, Irwin starred in Wrestlemaniac, a film of which he is quite fond. You may also want to check out Irwin’s non-speaking lead performance in this video from Prozak, called “Good Enough.”

Come out and play-y-yay with Rob, Gurn, Scott and Irwin right here, or listen to the player below:

Title: Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)
Rated: R
Directed by: Simon Wincer
Written by: Don Michael Paul
Starring: Mickey Rourke as Harley Davidson
                   Don Johnson as The Marlboro Man
                   Daniel Baldwin as Alexander
                   Vanessa Williams as Lulu Daniels
                  Tom Sizemore as Chance Wilder
                   Jordan Lund as ‘The Stagecoach Driver’
Tagline: “When the going gets tough…the tough take the law into their own hands”

By Rob R.

Pre-screening memories: The ’50s had their Brando and Dean, the ’60s had their McQueen, the ’70s had Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, and, to a lesser extent, Chuck Norris (sorry, Norris nerds).

But once the ’80s bounced in, things changed. It was tough for a young lad on the scrawny side to envision himself as any particular big-screen action star. All of the big box-office heroes inflated to such bulbous sizes, there were no legal ways to replicate their physique. And besides, I really did not want the veins in my forearms to resemble garden hoses under my skin.

Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, Bosworth. These monsters of muscle paraded across the big screen like Macy’s Day floats. And for a kid who could barely hold a tether, it was all rather disheartening. It’s not to say that I did not enjoy these films, it’s just that I could never envision that my scrawny sack of skin could ever inflate to their levels of heroics.  (Sure, I had Dr. Jones and his archaeological adventures, but there were only three films of his released over the entire decade!)

These guys were loud and proud. All seething sinew and bulging biceps. Where were the svelte rebels? Where was the smoky mystique and normal physique of James Dean? The ornery playfulness of Reynolds? The normal human build of McQueen?

There was an actor emerging in this decade who seemed to rumble in like my cinematic savior. I first caught Mickey Rourke on HBO during a broadcast of Rumble Fish as the tortured Motorcycle Boy. He had but a few whispered lines, but each one mattered: “Blind terror in a fight can easily pass for courage.”

Yes, I thought. That’s me! I’m blinded by terror in fights! If he threw in a line about wetting one’s shorts, it would have fit to a ‘T.’

I loyally followed Rourke as the years progressed, though most of his films I had to sneak in late-night viewings of, like 9 ½ Weeks and Angel Heart. This was the guy responsible for the on-screen deflowering of the eldest Cosby kid! I’m sorry, but you do not get much cooler for a child of the era.

I can honestly say that I learned about international relations and poetry through his next films, Barfly, based on the life of street poet Charles Bukowski and his IRA assassin in A Prayer for the Dying. My devotion remained as his box-office dropped: the criminally underrated Homeboy (which he co-wrote, and featuring a killer Eric Clapton soundtrack), Walter Hill’s lovably grimy Johnny Handsome, the minor-but effective Desperate Hours, the sun-drenched sexcapades of  Wild Orchid (OK, perhaps even I cannot defend that one, but it still convinced me to buy the sexy soundtrack in the hopes that merely playing the CD for girls might get me laid. It didn’t.).

But for many, Rourke’s big-screen kiss-off was his role in Harley Davidson and Marlboro Man, which teamed him with Sonny Crockett.. er, Don Johnson in this wildly erratic mash-up of science-fiction, western, buddy flicks and motorcycle genres.

And for all the TNT Roadhouse devotees, you can have your Zen-spouting mullet master, give me Rourke and Johnson zipping down a desert highway on a hog and roughing up a gaggle of clichés dressed as bar patrons any day. I would call this a guilty pleasure, but I don’t even feel that guilty about my love for this film.

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Our featured guest: Jordan Lund: Star of stage and screens both big and small, Mr. Lund had one of the film’s most memorable lines (you’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear what that was!). Roles include such projects as Lonesome Dove, Doc Hollywood, The American President, Law and Order, Firefly, ER, and The Bucket List, among many, many others. We were very fortunate to snag Mr. Lund to join us for this episode and please visit his site, as well as go check him out on stage in California in Circus Theatricals’ presentation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, February 21 through April 26 at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles. (You can get tickets here.)

Mr. Lund has many a story to share about the filming of Harley Davidson, as well as reflections of some of his other memorable screen roles. Thanks, Mr. Lund, for your time and tales. We welcome you back any time you wish to join us!

You can hear us all hit the open road right here, or shift down a little on the throttle and listen to the podcast below.

Bachelor Party (1984)

Director: Neal Israel
Writers: Neal and Bob Israel (no pun intended… well, maybe by their parents)
Starring:        Tom Hanks – Rick Gassko
                      Tawney Kitaen – Debbie Thompson
                      Adrian Zmed – Jay O’Neil
                      Robert Prescott – Cole Whittier

Tagline: Shocking, Shameless, Sinful, Wicked. And the party hasn’t even started.

By: Gurn Blanston

The original appeal of this movie to me in 1984 would be obvious to anyone who knew me then, I wanted to be one of these guys. I wanted to go to this party. I wanted access to those Hollywood style hookers. The working girls in my hometown all looked like Ernest Borgnine in drag, so I’m told. I wouldn’t know that for a fact or anything cause I never went to a hooker and paid for her services, only to have her jump out of the car at the first light and make off with money it took weeks to earn……but I digress.

I saw this film with friends at the local dollar theater, which seems to be a pattern at this stage of my life, and we all left hoping to recreate this party at home the next time someone’s parents were out of town. It never happened, Dad, so don’t worry.

Tom Hanks plays the lovable doofus Rick, who is engaged to a rich girl named Debbie, played by Tawney Kitaen, who some of you may remember doing splits on the hood of a Camaro in the band Whitesnake’s video, I miss the 80’s. This is the pre-cocaine-abusing, husband-assaulting train wreck Tawney that we know and love; in this film, she is still hot.

Rick’s friends, namely Jay played by T.J. Hooker star Adrian Zmed, decide to throw him The bachelor party to end all parties at the local 5-star hotel. Debbie’s well-to-do parents and her uptight jock ex-boyfriend Cole, played to the tee by Robert Prescott, are not pleased with the match and decide that the bachelor party is a good time to break the two up.

First Cole re-routes two call girls intended for the bachelor party to the house of Debbie’s parents, where the woman are throwing her a shower. When they arrive and see a room full of well dressed woman they nod knowingly and one say’s, “so it’s that kind of party” and they begin to put on a girl-on-girl sex show for the mortified upper-class matrons. Good fun.

I only knew Tom Hanks before this movie as the tall guy from the “Bosom Buddies” TV series, but this flick made me a fan. From what I remember, he was the funniest thing in it, and could still come off as sincere when the scene called for it. This is not a great piece of cinematic art by any means, but it sure was fun to party vicariously with this group of misfits for a couple of hours.

Is Gurn still ready to Party after all these years? You can dowload the podcast here to find out or:

Tango & Cash (1989)
Rated: R
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
Written by: Randy Feldman
Starring :          Sylvester Stallone as Ray Tango
                           Kurt Russel as Gabe Cash
                           Teri Hatcher as Kiki Tango
                           Jack Palance as Yves Perret

Tagline: Two of L.A.’s top rival cops are going to work together… even if it kills them.

By Rob Rector

Pre-screening memories: It was moments before the dawn of a new decade. The crazy 80s were coming to a close, as was the career of one of the decade’s action stalwarts — Sylvester Stallone. For many growing up in the 80s, Stallone was the embodiment of manliness (however misguided that may have been). He was never as freakishly lumpy as Schwarzenegger and seemed as though he could easily be the cool older guy in the neighborhood who would let you peek at his firearm collection, pour over his stack of “Hustler’s” or perhaps let you sip a beer.

Sadly, there was no such neighbor in my little slice of suburbia. The closest thing we had was a gap-toothed guy who would watch us through his perpetually drawn blinds and smile menacingly and whose front yard was a graveyard of car parts that he would mow around until they were enveloped by vegetation.

Cinematically, Stallone was not one to go out with a whimper. He was going to go down swinging and show those new upstarts like Jeff Speakman and Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Brian Bosworth a thing or two about action.

And my friends and I were eager to watch. (For it was not too long after this that he would begin his trajectory downward with films like Rocky V, Oscar, Stop, or My Mom Will Shoot!, The Specialist and to the direct-to-video dustbin with films like D-Tox, Avenging Angelo and Shade.)

His latest was a pairing of him and Snake Plissken himself, Kurt Russel. They starred as two improbably named LAPD cops who “just can’t play by the rules.” Exactly the kind of cops we like on screen — just not in real life, as they usually end up on the wrong side of a video camera, bludgeoning away rights to random motorists.

While the plot itself left no actual bootprint on my brain, the script did drop some new vocabulary into our high school lexicon. Being the typical testosterone-saturated actioner, the expressions were both lewd and profane, but they were nonetheless influential. Being a male teen any new and creative euphemism or idiom or for intercourse was met with guffaws, a round of high-fives and a temporary admiration of one’s peers. (Of course, really any combination of a verb and noun could be inserted, Mad-Libs-style into the sentence “I’d like to ___________ her ___________” and, with the right emphasis on “her,” you’ve got yourself a new filth-filled expression.)

Forget the fact that none of us had really ever even performed said act.

So, when Sly refers to it as “bump uglies,” we knew we had a keeper.

The second expression we adopted was FUBAR. While new to us, it was actually one that originated during World War II as an acronym for F**ked Up Beyond All Recognition.

Other than that, I remember the two leads being oh-so-witty, able to launch a quip or a retort under the most extreme circumstances. And while the general plot escaped me (something with them being framed by someone and avenging something else). That, and the promise of manly men doing manly things with other manly, manly men in a mannish manner.

I was sure that revisiting the film would at least entertain on that level alone, right?

The answer is right here:

Fire and Ice (1983)

Rated: R
Director:          Ralph Bakshi
Screenplay:      Roy Thomas

                        Gerry Conway
Characters:      Frank Fazetta

                        Ralph Bakshi
Tagline: “Heroic Fantasy Adventure!”

By Gurn Blanston

Pre-screening memories: The animated fantasy epic Fire and Ice was released in 1983 at a time when I had just finished my fifth or so read through of “The Lord of The Rings” and was starting to move on to other sword and sorcery type books.  Eventually this would become a life-long love of sci-fi and fantasy literature. Sure, I had seen all the Star Wars movies, and was a diehard fan of Star Trek, but I was not an avid reader until after I graduated high school. God bless the public school system.

Along with reading fantasy and science fiction, I had truly begun to appreciate the art that was paired directly with it through book covers and magazines. Of the artists involved in this genre, Frank Frazetta certainly stood out, from his painting on the first Molly Hatchet album cover, to his ability to portray the pure physicality of your average over muscled barbarian. His true talent, in my hormone-clouded estimation, was his lusciously curved, scantily clad damsels and Amazon warriors.  Mmmmmmm….Art!

I did not see this movie in theaters, but at home on our state-of-the-art “Home Box Office” system. State-of-the-art meant a foot-long brown plastic box connected to the TV by 20 feet of cord with 14 buttons on it to select channels. If you switched the selector switch down you were able to view another 14 channels (mostly static).  I remember thinking: “What’s next, playing ping pong on my own TV?! Far out.”

As an aspiring artist with severely limited talent, I was blown away by the animation in this movie, which used the process of rotoscoping, in which scenes were shot in live-action and then traced onto animation cells.  I had seen this previously in “The Lord of The Rings” animated movies and thought that it was a great idea to help capture natural human movements realistically.

The action was a bit sparse, but I liked the basic, easy-to-follow, good-and-evil plot. I watched it several times, one of the advantages of having the space-age Home Box technology at my sweaty fingertips, (I watched “Last Tango in Paris” 47 times; I still can’t look at a stick of butter with out getting the shakes.) and then promptly forgot about it completely for 20 years.

Will a recent viewing of the film leave Gurn hot or cold?

Excalibur (1981)

Rated PG/R

Director: John Boorman
Written by: Thomas Malory (book), Rospo Pallenberg (screenplay)

Starring
Nigel Terry: King Arthur
Helen Mirren: Morgana
Nicol Williamson: Merlin

Tagline: No mortal could possess it! No kingdom could command it!

By Gurn Blanston

Past Memories: When this film was released in 1981 I was still one year away from a driver’s license. Which meant that any movie I saw had to be with my parents, or I had to arrange my own ride and money. Since they had no interest, and I had no ride or funding, I had to wait until 1982, when I had a license and the movie was playing at the local dollar theater, to see it.I went with several like minded friends, by like minded I mean bored and cheap, and we all pressed into the tiny theater with butter saturated bags of popcorn and Bacardi Rum laden soft drinks, (just because we were a bunch of Asteroid playing, Star Trek quoting geeks doesn’t mean we didn’t know how to party,. …which we didn’t) to watch the show.

What I remember most was the stylized portrayal of the knights and ladies, the grand matte painted castles, very flashy and clean, and how everyone seemed so polished and energetic. Forget the story, this film looked cool! The scene where the Lady of the Lake (or the moistened bim if you’re a Python fan) was stunning, and the sword itself made my hands itch to wield it, even though my massive 120 pound frame probably could not have lifted it. At the time we all assumed that this was historically accurate and that we had been educated as well as entertained. It’s not that we were stupid, just slightly tipsy. We ran around the parking lot afterwards engaging in pretend, mostly non-homosexual, sword fights and jousts.

The strength of Max von Sydow as Merlin, the allure of Genevieve Bujold as Guinevere, the pageantry and the spectacle all combined to make this the standard, in my mind, for all medieval era films I was to see for the next decade. Unfortunately, I now know that neither of these actors were actually in the film, and that it was also the first film for both Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson, neither of whom I remember being in it at all. Bacardi marred memories be damned, Mr. Von Sydow, you will always be Merlin to me.

New Memories?

Download: Episode IV: Excalibur.

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