Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the most meta podcast on the internets!
This week: did he pass the audition; bad grooming; sliding doors; poor impostor; toe tales; catfishing; learning to scrawl; art attack; the sweat science; rope-a-dopes; back to school days; ch-ch-cheque it out; secret source; meataphorical; sub-menus; s-more-gasbord; big sur-prices; organic chemsirty; restaurant break; let it wasabi; saltiness; rice is nice; livestock market; riled West; the problem with Pixar; too conceptual; paradise cost effective; stop it, sex pests; terrifying animated metaphysics; child scare; dream scenario; guest services; hell shock; a change for the better; clip service; the blame game; Charley and the Highly Efficient Chocolate Factory; bad copies; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; three more stooges; A.I. Pufnstuf; uncooperative learning; how I meta your mother; and finally, the origins of Hot Stuff.
Question of the Week: What movie scene scared you as a kid?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s your favourite Christmas special?
Thanks for listening.
Inspired by our conversation about Hokusai and his Great Wave prints, Stuart M. sent in a link to Japan-based printmaker David Bull’s YouTube channel, which you can find here.
He also sent links to two specific videos:
Sorry, you’ll have to follow this link to the other video Stuart sent along, as well as this one about Bull’s other career as a luthier.
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As a kid, I found the Child Catcher in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) very creepy. An internet search reveals the character is not in Ian Fleming’s original 1964 novel. It was added either by Roald Dahl who wrote a draft of the screenplay or by director Ken Hughes who did a total rewrite. I dunno, a government appointee whose job is luring children with candy then tricking them into a cage feels very Dahl-like to me, but the director claimed it was his idea. Fun Fact: he was also the one of the directors of spy spoof, Casino Royale (1967).
Casino Royale (1967), also weird and creepy…but not as bad as “Skidoo!”
Sneakers!
I’m in the middle of listening to #626 and two things come to mind: I used to give my father-in-law guff over how he’d salt his SALAD before taking a bite. But then I watched a friend of mine pour salt on his slice of PEPPERONI PIZZA prior to having a nosh. I’m sure the fact that both of them were smokers had a lot to do with it. Their poor taste buds gave up the ghost long ago, and these guys just needed to feel *some* sort of culinary sensation.
Secondly, I know I’ve seen all of the Toy Story movies and most (if not all) of the various shorts. But I can’t remember any mention of Santa Claus occurring in them. Was there ever a time when Mom was telling Andy and Molly about how Santa and his elves build toys for all of the good boys and girls, followed by either Woody or Buzz overhearing and reacting all like, “What? There’s some old man up at the North Pole who MADE US?!?” Followed by the inevitable bad decision for the toys to make the journey to the top of the world to meet him. Chaos and/or hilarity would undoubtedly ensue.
And that’s all I have to say about that. Until next time!
On a more serious note, something that also scared me as a kid was the news coverage of the October Crisis of 1970 which involved a separatist group that carried out bombings, kidnapping and killings in Quebec. I remember seeing photos of the suspects on my grandma’s TV set and wondering if they would try to kill us too. I’ve been thinking of that lately when I watch news reports out of Israel and Gaza.
I know we’ve covered this before but those damned apple trees in the 1939 “Wizard of Oz” terrified me so much, I had to watch that scene from behind a chair. The Wicked Witch was no problem, neither were her flying monkeys but those trees were the worst. According to my Mom, I was outside playing when a branch from one of our trees caught my jacket and snagged me. Thinking it was an apple tree from Oz, I flew out of the jacket, screaming and running, leaving my empty jacket hanging on the tree branch of a harmless tree!
Years later it was another Oz movie, Disney’s “Return to Oz” that terrified my daughter as a child. She claims the Wheelers in that movie traumatized her as a child and she’s never let me forget it.
I guess there is no place like home, because the fucking trees and Wheelers don’t attack you.
My all-time favorite Christmas special is the Rankin Bass “A Year Without a Santa Claus.” I have a big soft spot for Dick Shawn’s Snow Miser and George Irving’s Heat Miser, it’s almost like watching the Draganski brothers.
A close second is “Snuffy, the Elf Who Saved Christmas”, by Peeler Rose Productions starring Bobby Goldsboro. I may be biased on that one because I worked on it back in 1991! See here at the 22:40 mark:
https://youtu.be/yy_oyQcmuSk?t=1323
Seriously, is there such a thing as a bad Christmas Special? Surely not the “Star Wars Holiday Special!” Another all-time favorite and fever dream equivalent.
I’ll riding off on my Taun Taun now with a bag full of toys for the good Wookiees on Life Day!
Ho Ho Ho and May the Force Be With You!!
Until next time good Sneakers….
Bonjour (that’s how they great people in Australia, apparently).
The scene that scared me the most when I was a child was the final scene in the stranger danger movie they showed us in Grade 2 so I guess that movie really did the job it was intended to do. The music that makes me really nervous is the theme from the Thames broadcasting association as I always associate it with a scary show I would watch in the evening. I know they did more than scary shows but any time I hear that tune: shivers.
Favourite Christmas special has to be the Charlie Brown cartoon, but I love all of those cartoons: Frosty, Rudolph, the Little Drummer Boy, etc. I also like A Christmas Story but it usually gets turned off so I don’t often get to watch the whole show :(.
Oh crikey – in my formative moviegoing years, were there any movies that weren’t scary?
Going to see The Dark Crystal aged six was a great introduction to cinematic terror. Aside from the unsettling mise-en-scene of the swamp in which everything is eating everything else, aside from the various terrifyingly geriatric antagonists crumbling to dust, there were the gentle podlings quaking in fear and having their souls slurped out of the tops of their heads. You know – for kids!
Then the following year Krull doubled down, which alongside the rollicking fantasy had some genuinely disturbing and horrific imagery: perhaps the most intense scene being the the chap trying to escape the crystal spider before the sands of life fall through his fingers… I can still remember the terror in his eyes. Nothing like a bit of the ol’ fear of death to pep up a PG-rated movie.
Despite the surprising tone of horror in 80s kids films from ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ to ‘Return to Oz’, one scene really took the biscuit and gave me proper nightmares. I saw this damn thing once, forty years ago, and I still can’t shake it. Now, I grant you that there could be a way to make a jolly cartoony gag of this think – but it’s filmed with a chilly blue tone and overly dramatic lighting like an outtake from Hellraiser.
In a cinema advert that -I remind you-, must have played before a PG rated films, a man is playing a harp. A second man finds a CD player – revealing that the harpist was only pretending! Hmm, he thinks, I’ll get him for this!
Man 2 grabs the harp, jumps in the air and smashes the harp over the harpist’s head.
The musician stands still for a second before collapsing sideways – the harp has sliced him like a boiled egg, and the slices slide off one by one with a hideous schlupping sound. A closeup of the sliced head – now offset on the ground – has it still alive and delivering the payoff line via puppetry before a CD flies into his mouth. THE END.
And my favourite holiday special is Klaus.