Chelsea: Hello everyone and welcome to I Haven’t Seen That. I am Chelsea and I’m here with my dear friend Spencer. Hi Spencer. 

Spencer: Hi. 

Chelsea: How are you?

Spencer: I’m doing great, how are you?

Chelsea: I’m great. This is the podcast where we share our favorite movies with each other, um, in a very safe and shame free zone. This isn’t the podcast where we say, you haven’t seen Citizen Kane?

Spencer: you haven’t seen Citizen Kane?

Spencer: It’s a masterpiece.

Chelsea: a masterpiece. It

Spencer: It is a pillar of American cinema.

Chelsea: There’s a sli I don’t know. 

Spencer: There’s a take that goes on really, really, really long. gotta say it.

Chelsea: Uh, it’s not that. This is, this is not that podcast. We’re also not talking about Citizen Kane today.

Spencer: thank God,

Chelsea: We’re not talking, we’re not talking about sleds. Um, we’re getting just a little bit sillier than Citizen Kane, I’d say. It’s quite silly. We are talking about the film They Live. Now They Live is a 1988 film written and directed by one of my favorite filmmakers, John Carpenter. This film, I would say it transcends genres, it’s really hard to describe, it’s like a sci fi slash action slash horror slash social commentary, if you want to make it about that.

Chelsea: It also can just be very silly, really.

Spencer: yeah. Um,

Chelsea: And it stars Rowdy Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster, who has the most insanely gorgeous blue eyes I’ve ever seen.

Spencer: Oh, yeah, it was nuts. It was like there was a husky on

Chelsea: Yes! Beautiful, beautiful husky. Yes. Meg Foster, shout out. Our main character, who actually is not named in the film. So, in order to make talking about him far less annoying and confusing, I’m going to do just a little early behind the scenes fact.

Chelsea: Uh, his name is actually Nada. And we’ll get into why later on, but Nada is played by Roddy Piper. He’s a blue collar drifter looking for work in a period of economic downturn. He stumbles into a construction job in downtown Los Angeles and meets another man, Frank, who guides him to a camp for the unhoused.

Chelsea: They’re doing a little bit of mutual aid, cooking for each other, feeding each other. Uh, immediately when Nada shows up, They’re like, we could put you to work, help us. It’s kind of, he’s got tools, he’s got muscles, he’s a wrestling man. Uh, so it’s kind of nice, um, until it’s not. But, early on we see that the local television is Uh, being interrupted by some sort of mysterious signal carrying the warnings of this bearded conspiracy theorist who declares that the human race is being controlled by unseen forces.

Chelsea: Our hero stumbles upon a box of truth revealing sunglasses that reveal subliminal messages in the media to consume, reproduce, and conform. The glasses also happen to reveal that many people are actually aliens with school like faces.

Spencer: just love it

Chelsea: think I just love it because it is quite silly. Uh, it is, I mean, it’s like a silly sci fi movie if you want it to be and it’s like a deeper satirical film if you want it to be.

Spencer: It is crazy how it’s both.

Chelsea: Yeah, and it’s like a tight hour and a half. It’s amazing you don’t need to sit there for two and a half hours for a silly, silly movie. And Spencer, what I’m about to tell you is also very silly, but I would say That’s maybe our brand. Uh, we, we waver between silly and pretentious on this podcast.

Spencer: Those are the only two

Chelsea: The only two modes of I haven’t seen that. You know this already, but my absolute favorite part of this movie is the fight scene between Nada and Frank,

Spencer: Frank. It

Chelsea: with Nada screaming, Put the glasses on! It lasts so long. It lasts so long, and I have exactly how long it runs in my notes for the behind the scenes portion of our show.

Chelsea: But as soon as you think it’s over, they keep

Spencer: They keep going. It’s, it restarts like three times. And in my notes, I wrote, how long has this fight been going on?

Chelsea: And

Spencer: then I wrote it a second time. I didn’t copy and paste it. I wrote literally the exact same words. How long is this fight going on? Why is this fight scene going on so long?

Spencer: The fight scene is when I realized that the movie can be taken. As a silly movie in addition to the things that it is saying about society, etc because not a smashes the car window and then Frank gives him a pissed off look and Not a not a goes. I’m sorry, which I was not not expecting at all Just like the all the tension in the fight just like evaporated immediately because not a Didn’t want to break his friend’s car window.

Spencer: Yeah, I’m sorry. He’s gonna break his face And probably several ribs, but, um, yeah, not the car window. I was like, ah, okay, I see what John Carpenter’s doing here.

Chelsea: here.

Spencer: This is also, outside of Starman, the only John Carpenter movie that I’ve seen. So, so like his, his entire brand, uh, is, is completely unknown to me.

Chelsea: Spencer. I know. You haven’t seen The Thing? No.

Spencer: I haven’t seen that. I haven’t seen Any of that just star man, which is so unlike this

Chelsea: You haven’t seen Halloween? Spencer. We have a couple of movies to add to the list. The Thing is also one of my favorite movies.

Spencer: I, I know. Yeah.

Chelsea: Frank, uh, Keith David, he’s also in The Thing.

Spencer: Keith David should be in everything.

Chelsea: He should.

Spencer: I love Keith David.

Chelsea: He’s amazing. Kurt Russell is of the thing. He’s in a lot of John Carpenter movies, and I have some interesting things about, I’m just going to keep teasing all of the facts that I have at the behind the scenes portion.

Spencer: yeah, because like the making of this movie is just, is utterly mystifying to me. Because like you said, it’s so many things all at once. It was deeply confusing watching it for the very first time and like there are things and there’s like, oh, that’s what this is from That’s what that’s from the glasses obey the bubble gum line, and i’m sure i’ve seen you know the face of the ghouls Um before at some point, but also it was just so confusing Compared to literally any other movie that i’ve ever

Chelsea: Yeah, I don’t quite remember how I felt about the plot the first time I saw it. Besides just like, this is a rockin good time. But I can definitely see why watching it for the first time you’d be like, very confused. Yeah. Yeah. The

Spencer: the first 20 minutes of it, nothing weird happens. Really?

Chelsea: yeah.

Spencer: And it’s a long 20 minutes of, of Roddy just like walking through the streets of Los Angeles. Although I must say, this movie does do the thing that I love of movies from this time period, which is that if it’s set in a major city, like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Detroit, it is the ugliest.

Spencer: Version of that city you have ever seen even a comedy like Ghostbusters, New York looks fucking awful and grimy and grubby. It’s so great. It makes me so happy. That’s kind of what L. A. Looks like now in 2023, but it gets like power washed for filming. So this was actually In a lot of ways very comforting Like oh, it’s my city.

Chelsea: Oh, yeah!

Spencer: I also love that in the one of the first shots of the city when he’s walking into it You see a wells fargo building, but most of the letters are missing. So it just says well, well

Chelsea: No, that was one of the messages from, from the,

Spencer: I do

Chelsea: uh, I do love that about this era of movies, but 80s movies are just like a little bit silly.

Chelsea: But one thing that I love about this particular 80s movie is that I feel like normally when you see an action movie from the 80s, and we’re getting into spoiler territory here, the hero always lives.

Spencer: Yeah.

Chelsea: And they just completely threw that out the window. None of the, the good people live. Nada and Frank.

Chelsea: Dead. Done. Donezo. Uh, so it doesn’t end with the ghouls being beaten or like driven off the planet. It just ends with them kind of being revealed to the world by Mr. Generic, uh, and his, his dying middle finger. Yeah. Yeah. So, I always wonder, like, what happens next, right? Like, they’re just revealed. Also, one of the weirdest endings to a movie ever, besides what I just said, but, like, the woman is having sex with a ghoul, and it’s, like, revealed to her in the middle of it, and he’s just like, Hey, what’s wrong, baby?

Chelsea: Credits. Yeah. Like, that’s how we’re ending it?

Spencer: Yeah, it’s a great question because I was thinking about that too. And I cut I kind of feel like anything that John Carpenter did to answer the question of what happens next would kind of undercut everything that led up to it. Because if you start a revolution, start, you know, an anti capitalist revolution in a movie, I feel like Anything that you would see on screen would not feel realistic enough for dismantling what it is that everyone has suddenly realized.

Spencer: It would need to be like, decades long transformation, with or without violence. But, uh, the movie, the movie just sort of like, it martyrs him, in a way. It’s like, this is what our hero has done, as if it was an historical document.

Chelsea: Yes. This

Spencer: is, this is, this is what our hero did for us. And now, and now we must continue fighting in his name

Chelsea: Yeah. Fighting the ghouls.

Spencer: and not his name.

Spencer: He’s not a, not a great guy. I tell you what.

Chelsea: Sorry, I was half processing that joke and half thinking about how the end is like a little undercooked.

Spencer: Oh, sure. Well, like. So the one thing that didn’t need to happen was that Frank gets shot, or stabbed, or whatever it was. Like, shot with, yeah, like, seconds before the movie actually ends. I don’t even know if Nada realizes that he’s dead.

Chelsea: I don’t. Yeah. I don’t know if he does. Yeah.

Spencer: cause like, Holly’s there, but I don’t think she says, I shot your friend!

Chelsea: shot Frank.

Spencer: I did it!

Chelsea: My piercing blue eyes, I shot him right in the heart.

Spencer: I shot ICE out of my eyes!

Chelsea: I mean, maybe it can be assumed because she’s all of a sudden holding a gun and pointing it at him.

Chelsea: So maybe Nada just sort of assumes that Frank is dead, but

Spencer: We had, we had all this history together. Yeah, yeah. Remember when I kidnapped you and we had like a very brief conversation before the wall got blown in?

Spencer: Yeah, I

Chelsea: remember when you pushed me out of a window and I was completely fine? That

Spencer: was another thing that I wrote down in, in all caps. Oh yes, Frank absolutely did not have to die is in my notes, but um, also in all caps, how did he survive that fall? It was like 40 feet out of a window onto a very steep Embankment and then just sort of crashes onto some asphalt and then he runs away with like a mild limp

Chelsea: Which is so funny because I feel like after the fight between Nada and Frank they still sort of have some like battle wounds.

Chelsea: Which you also don’t normally see in movies where it’s just like, someone gets in a fight and then, you know. An hour later, they don’t have a single scratch or bruise, so it was like they kept That kind of realistic, but then, yes, he gets pushed out of a window and is completely fine. But I really, really appreciated that

Spencer: For as wacky and sci fi as this movie gets, there’s still only just like a very small handful of special effects shots. Like, all of it was done for real, in real locations, and seemingly with like one light sometimes. A lot was accomplished with, it seems

Chelsea: very little. There’s also a unintentional theme in the films that I’ve been choosing. I’m very sorry to keep picking movies with scary scenes in parking garages because Holly is kidnapped by Nada in a parking garage and it’s quite jarring. It is. Yeah, just the way he grabs her.

Chelsea: It’s very different from Candyman, where it’s just sort of like He’s way far away. I mean, it still is very spooky, but this one was just more like, he’s there.

Spencer: I actually felt more unsettled with that parking garage scene because Roddy Piper is such a big guy on a very real level.

Spencer: I was worried for the actor playing Holly, like, oh, he’s going to leave a mark on her wrist at the very least.

Chelsea: mean, yeah. I mean, he’s a wrestler. He is very Yeah. Roddy

Spencer: Piper’s a wrestler?

Chelsea: Oh, Spencer.

Spencer: What? What are you talking about?

Chelsea: fun things to tell you in the behind

Spencer: makes so much sense.

Spencer: He’s

Chelsea: a wrestler. Because

Spencer: he’s not an actor. No. What do you

Chelsea: do you mean he’s not an actor? I believed he was not

Spencer: was nada. The great character from literature, nada.

Chelsea: He is a wrestler, which is probably really explains how physically imposing

Spencer: Yes, he’s a big guy.

Chelsea: And so also explains a lot about the fight scene too. And just like the sheer amount of like things he picked up. Yes.

Spencer: and how much he was like being thrown around

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah.

Spencer: he, David, I think he’s like tall, but I don’t think he’s like wrestler tall,

Chelsea: No. No. Yeah. Roddy Piper just, he loves it. He loves being thrown around. He loves a prop. Yeah.

Spencer: That was madness. Should’ve

Chelsea: a steel chair in there. Just throw, just a steel chair comes flying in from somewhere in the alley.

Chelsea: Oh, thanks. Pffft. I also love the, this is a stark change, uh, I also love the like updated technology where they’re like, oh, you don’t need those sunglasses anymore. We have contacts. Yeah,

Spencer: they just put them in with, like, their dirty ass fingers. They’ve been wandering around the city beating the shit out of each other, and then they put their contacts in. They

Chelsea: They have each other’s blood on their fingers and they’re just like, boop, let me pop these in.

Spencer: Speaking of Ghostbusters earlier One of the props from Ghostbusters is the communication device that, uh, the ghouls use. The little black paddle thing with the, with the arms that come out the sides?

Chelsea: from Ghostbusters?

Chelsea: That’s from Ghostbusters.

Spencer: from Ghostbusters. Yeah,

Chelsea: Oh my gosh. It’s,

Spencer: uh, or, or maybe it’s just like a prop that lives at Warner Brothers or something, but it’s like, uh, yeah, it was used in the early scenes in the library.

Chelsea: That’s amazing. How fun. Yeah. What a fun little Easter egg, potentially. I don’t know if that’s on purpose, or just like, yeah, we got this thing lying around here.

Spencer: yeah, it lights up.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Spencer: Actually,

Chelsea: Another fun, actually, this is great, because another fun Easter egg is at the end of the film after Nada shoots the transmitter and the, uh, the ghouls, excuse me, are revealed, the camera cuts to that bar and there’s like the television set and there’s a movie critic saying, quote, all the sex and violence on the screen has gone too far for me.

Chelsea: I’m fed up with it. Filmmakers like George Romero and John Carpenter have to show some restraint. I loved that

Spencer: was so great. Put him in some other

Chelsea: yeah, very meta. Well, and, uh, that was true to life, John Carpenter got a lot of that. Like flack in real life of like, oh, all this violence and corrupting the youths

Spencer: moral panic of the, of the 80s, was it like part of that?

Chelsea: Basically, yeah

Spencer: yeah. How was this movie received at the time?

Chelsea: Well fine it so actually one of the Halloweens and I Forget which one I think it might be Halloween three, but it’s after John Carpenter is no longer involved with The Halloween franchise, it came out in like October something, 1988, and so they pushed back They Live, it was supposed to come out the same week, to not compete with it, but actually it opened like number one at the box office, uh, the week that it came out, which Roddy Piper has said several times, I am so surprised.

Spencer: was marveled.

Chelsea: marveled that it opened number one.

Spencer: he not a fan of the movie?

Chelsea: I think he was, he is unfortunately deceased now. He has only said pretty good things about it, except just like, I’m surprised. I don’t really know why he was surprised.

Spencer: I mean, probably. One

Chelsea: is kind of silly. I mean, probably. One thing I really love about this movie are the one liners.

Spencer: one

Chelsea: The one liners are so fun. So when Nada’s first He first gets the sunglasses and he’s in the supermarket. I just feel the writer’s trying to think of like rich people things to say. And so there’s someone that’s like, Did you go to so and so’s party? She served blue corn tortillas. It’s so dated.

Spencer: you believe it? She didn’t even go to Lamaze class.

Spencer: I said, for yourself and for the baby. Go! It’s so funny.

Chelsea: And then also at the supermarket, Nada tells one of the ghouls, You know, you look like your head fell in the cheese dip back in 1957.

Spencer: The cheese dip.

Chelsea: dip. The cheese

Spencer: Not just any cheese dip. The cheese dip. Yeah. In 1957. You! You’re real fucking ugly!

Spencer: Formaldehyde face!

Chelsea: Maldehyde Face! I just love too that he like turns to someone else who’s not a ghoul and he’s like, You, you’re okay. This bitch right here from Maldehyde Face.

Spencer: real fucking ugly. That didn’t even feel like it was part of the movie. People say that in real life. Cause it’s just not clever.

Spencer: That’s just like what you say when you’re upset.

Chelsea: Yeah. You’re real fucking

Spencer: fucking ugly. Oh my god.

Chelsea: Like pouring perfume on a pig.

Spencer: And then, you know, the bubblegum line, he got two words into that, and I was like, oh, this is where that’s from.

Chelsea: is where that’s from.

Chelsea: I know

Spencer: what this is. Yeah.

Chelsea: I, so before I even saw this movie, I heard that line. Sampled in a song. Yes, and so I didn’t know what it was from, but I thought it was so hilarious, so I would just say it all the time. And then I saw the movie and I was like, Oh, I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass.

Chelsea: And I’m all out of bubblegum.

Spencer: He’s got two things on his mind and the second one now occupies 100 percent of his mind.

Spencer: Which, like, that’s, that was also delightful because he said the line and immediately everyone in the bank just began shrieking. Yeah,

Chelsea: they’re like, oh my god, he’s out of bubblegum!

Spencer: Oh no!

Chelsea: I thought he was gonna come in here and chew bubblegum, but he’s really gonna kick our ass!

Spencer: told us what his objective is.

Chelsea: I also love, Frank is explaining how he just sort of like, lives his life and doesn’t really seem to pay much attention to society and politics and that kind of thing and he says, you know, he’s just, uh, in the middle of the road and Nada says, white lines in the middle of the road, that’s the worst place to drive.

Chelsea: Where did they come up with this stuff?

Spencer: david was having like a whole acting moment there Like imagine someone saying that to you in real life After you’ve opened up to them, it would be so irritating as the fight was happening.

Spencer: I was like, what, why is even, why is Frank even here? Why is he doing this? What beef could they possibly have? And then I re I thought for a second about, cause I had a lot of time. Actually, I thought about all of the. Uh, interactions that the two of them have had up to that point. And all that’s happened is that Nada said like really cryptic or kind of, you know, insulting or rude things.

Spencer: Like he’s just been sort of a dickhead. Yeah. This whole time. And of of course Frank’s pissed off at

Chelsea: Frank showed kindness to Nada from the beginning, and then Nada was just immediately weird, where he’s like, Uh, no, no, I don’t want to go to the camp with you. And he’s like, alright. And so, Frank just starts walking, and Nada’s just like, creepily following him.

Chelsea: Yeah. Like, Frank tried to be nice at the beginning, and yeah, Nada just was extremely rude and creepy, and, and yet they just keep, we keep meeting.

Spencer: Yeah. I’m normal. He’s a psychopath waiting to happen. That was the other thing. Like he put on the sunglasses and he became a monster.

Chelsea: Yes.

Spencer: Just yelling at people in public, calling somebody a formaldehyde face.

Chelsea: Fucking ugly. Fucking

Spencer: ugly. And then grabbing a whole bunch of guns and shooting up a bank, shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. Like, he can see who the ghouls are, but he, he’s using a shotgun.

Chelsea: really forgot how much his violence and anger Just escalates like he just goes zero to a hundred and he says at one point when Frank finally puts on the glasses and is like looking out the window, he’s like, don’t wear those too long.

Chelsea: It feels like a knife in your head. And I’m like, maybe that’s why he’s so angry. But like, take them off, take off the glasses.

Spencer: Have you been driven mad by the glasses? And it seems like it comes from out of nowhere. To because I can understand that he’s dissatisfied with his lot in life, having to drift from town to town and, you know, beg for a job day to day and he’s living in an encampment and also he has a wedding band on the entire time. So, like, does he have a family somewhere that he’s pining for or is unable to see in this just dreadful, dreary version of society?

Spencer: I can see that, but everything that he says is like, I don’t care. Yeah, I don’t know. I just, I just like to follow the

Chelsea: Yeah. He’s so incredibly nonchalant. Yeah. Until he puts on those sunglasses and then he just like turns into an, a monster. Yeah. Spencer. Chelsea. Do you have anything else you’d like to say about this film before we move into some of the behind the scenes fun facts?

Chelsea: I have a lot of them as I’ve been teasing this entire time. I’m so excited. The one thing though. Yes.

Spencer: I must say is that among the many things that I was not expecting this film to have, One of them was, was Keith David looking so hot in his little lavender tank top. Obviously the fight, you can, you can say like, ah, homoerotic, uh, uh, overtones,

Chelsea: Please kiss.

Spencer: All I cared about was just like, when’s Frank going to come

Chelsea: When is Frank going to come back in that lavender tank top? Yes. I’ve never seen someone rock that color better than

Spencer: Right. Yeah.

Chelsea: And in tank top form. Yes. That was very important. I’m glad you mentioned that.

Chelsea: Thank you. It would have been a crime if we didn’t say

Spencer: Thank you, Chelsea, for your

Chelsea: time. So let’s get into some of these behind the scenes, the making of facts. The idea for They Live came from a short story called Eight O’Clock in the Morning. It was written by Ray Nelson and was originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1963.

Chelsea: Unlike this film, the protagonist is actually named George Natta.

Spencer: So

Chelsea: So that’s where the name comes from. Ray Nelson and artist Bill Ray adopted it into a Comic published in Alien Encounters Comics Anthology in 1986. So just a couple years before the

Spencer: just a couple years before

Chelsea: Both. Uh, John Carpenter got the rights to both. Ah, got it. Yeah. Sort of the reason why He’s called Nada, is like he’s meant to be this everyman sort of thing, he’s no one and he’s everyone. Yeah. The original story, Ray Nelson’s original story, there are no sunglasses. George Nada is put into a trance by a stage hypnotist, and so when he awakens he realizes that the entire human race has been hypnotized, and that alien creatures are controlling humanity, and he only has until 8 o’clock in the morning to solve the problem.

Chelsea: I wrote down, I don’t know if you’re a wrestling man, I didn’t think you were, and you’re not because you didn’t know that he’s Rowdy Roddy Piper is his nickname, was his nickname. Uh, yeah, he was a wrestler in the formerly WWF, now called WWE, WWF at the time. His Exactly. Yes. Yes. He is a panda. Uh, he, his nicknames were Rowdy Roddy Piper and Hot Rod. And, uh, he’s considered to be one of the greatest heels of all time. So like a villain in wrestler speak. So John Carpenter wanted a real rugged man to play Nada. And he originally wanted Kurt Russell, who he’s worked with before, but because he’s worked with him so many times, The, his four films prior to this one starred Kurt Russell.

Chelsea: So I guess John Carpenter was just like, that’s too many Russells,

Spencer: Too

Chelsea: many Kurt Russells. So I’m going to get, uh, uh, someone who kind of maybe looks a little bit like Kurt Russell with the long flowing hair and, you know, yeah, or the rugged look. And so he saw Roddy Piper. At Wrestlemania 3 in 1987 and he was like that’s my guy.

Chelsea: That’s not a speaking of the WWF Vince McMahon He did not want Roddy Piper to do the film It’s unclear why he didn’t want him to do this film in particular But Vince McMahon told Roddy Piper that he would find him a different film at the same pay rate But Roddy Piper really wanted to do the film. So he ended up completely splitting with the WWF to do this film.

Chelsea: Yeah, he did. I don’t know if he went back to the WWF though. John Carpenter asked Roddy Piper, you know, why did you completely split from the WWF to do this film? And Roddy said that Vince McMahon is a control freak. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And so when he did get back into wrestling, he was. Like beloved because of this film in a lot of

Spencer: Yeah, and Vince McMahon is the greatest heel there ever was.

Chelsea: So Spencer we have talked about the wonderful line I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass and I’m all out of bubblegum.

Chelsea: That was written by Roddy Piper

Spencer: What?

Chelsea: Yeah, straight from Roddy Piper’s brain. Okay. Uh, he had written a line in his notebook of potential verbal bits during his wrestling

Spencer: wrestling.

Spencer: Oh! Oh! Okay! That’s so smart! Like, you have to add some depth to this guy who just like, goes Rambo all of a sudden. Yeah. So, you might as well make him, like, funny.

Chelsea: Yeah, he shared the He’s a showman. Yeah, exactly. He is a showman. He shared this, uh, notebook and this line with John Carpenter, and they were like, Yeah, that fits.

Spencer: Sounds about right. It’s about as believable as any of the other lines. Yeah. Yeah.

Chelsea: And, uh, he did end up using it in a wrestling match later on. Oh, okay. So he got good use out of it.

Chelsea: Yeah. Great line.

Spencer: I mean, that line has had so much mileage. I think I, I heard a reference to it, like, just this year.

Chelsea: Oh, really?

Spencer: like, a very non horror sort of situation.

Spencer: Yeah. It’s just like, Luke, I am your father. It’s just entered the

Chelsea: Yeah, it was in, like, Duke Nukem.

Spencer: Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Chelsea: I think it was slightly different.

Chelsea: I

Spencer: think it was shorter. I think I’ve usually heard, like, a shorter version because it is a bit of a mouthful.

Chelsea: Yeah. It’s a lot to say when you’re trying to rob a

Spencer: Yeah, it’s like you’re holding a shotgun and everybody’s like, Uh! Uh!

Chelsea: Everyone’s waiting. What is he gonna say?

Spencer: to say? What? What one

Chelsea: What one liner is he gonna say in here?

Spencer: is this man, this charismatic man in those dashing glasses, going to say? It’s

Chelsea: It’s very funny, Spencer, that you mentioned Nada’s wedding band. Yes. And you were very curious about if that had anything to do with the backstory. It doesn’t. She shows up! Roddy Piper was married at the time of this film and he refused to take his wedding band off.

Chelsea: So he just Left it so we can confirm he is not a method actor

Spencer: He coulda, like, during that fight scene, he, an accident coulda happened, he coulda gotten his ring, his finger ripped off. That’s true. How, how did he wrestle with that

Chelsea: I was just thinking that yeah, I don’t I don’t know Might

Spencer: so silly.

Chelsea: well have

Spencer: about this man before he showed up is that he might as well have just been birthed from a train, because he appears from behind one. Like, that’s how little we know.

Chelsea: Absolutely.

Spencer: Atchison Topekin Santa Fe freight train passes on by and whoop, there he is.

Chelsea: We know one awful story about his father,

Spencer: Oh yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yeah.

Chelsea: He has a father.

Spencer: Maybe his mother’s the trait.

Chelsea: We were talking earlier about Roddy Piper and whether he likes this film or not because he was very surprised that it opened at number one. We know now that wrestlers, like, kind of move into the movie business, the John Cenas and the Rocks of the world. Roddy Piper credits John Carpenter and himself, uh, for sort of jump starting this wrestler turned actor.

Chelsea: Migration, he says, quote, I was the first wrestler ever in the history of wrestling. To star in a major motion studio picture that became number one box office of the weekend. And that gave the itch to I don’t know how many wrestlers. And not one of them to this day has put out a quality picture like this.

Chelsea: And not one of them has had a number one hit like this.

Spencer: That sounds like it was written by Chad GPT. It is such a weird combination of words that almost like, it makes sense. It makes perfect sense what he’s saying, but it’s like, people don’t really talk like this.

Chelsea: We’ve talked about Keith David and how wonderful just he is. Um, John Carpenter also thought.

Chelsea: Keith David was wonderful, based on The Thing in 1982. Uh, so he wrote the role of Frank specifically for Keith David.

Spencer: my God.

Chelsea: that so nice? Yeah! I don’t know, the lavender tank top, I don’t know whose choice that was, but it was a great

Spencer: It’s a great one. I, a testament to the collaborative art form that is filmmaking.

Chelsea: yeah, not like

Spencer: But yeah, no, like nobody else in the movie got lovely little acting beats the way that Keith David did for Frank.

Chelsea: It’s so true.

Spencer: was really nice.

Chelsea: he really got to shine. John Carpenter called him a sidekick who could hold his own.

Spencer: Entirely true.

Chelsea: So true.

Spencer: Acting wise, obviously you’re, you’re dealing with what it is that Roddy Piper brings to the role, but there’s a lot more depth that I think could have been mined from like the realizations of what was going on because Keith David’s reaction to it, even though it was much briefer, was still had more, a lot more gravity to it.

Spencer: Like we spend a lot of time looking at Roddy Piper, just kind of like furrowing his brow and being a little confused and annoyed, almost like, ah, come on this obey. I’m annoyed. They live. Uh, again?

Chelsea: Kind of funny for a film called They Live, for everyone to die.

Spencer: You’re right. You’re so right. When you’re right, you’re right.

Chelsea: right. So, you also mentioned, uh, one Ronald Reagan earlier.

Spencer: The actor?

Chelsea: Yes, the actor. Yes. Who never got into politics ever, and what a life that would have been. That

Spencer: would have been ridiculous.

Chelsea: So, John Carpenter, uh,

Spencer: of Ronald Reagan, obviously.

Chelsea: huge Ronald Reagan fan, so he said, quote, the picture’s premise is that the Reagan revolution is run by aliens from another galaxy.

Chelsea: Free enterprisers from outer space have taken over the world and are exploiting Earth as if it’s a third world planet. As soon as they exhaust all of our resources, they’ll move on to another world. He also watched TV, as one does, and saw that everything we see is designed to sell us something. It’s all about wanting to buy something.

Chelsea: So that’s his inspiration. And so he, uh, instead of the hypnotist in the original short story, he thought of sunglasses as being the tool to seeing the truth.

Spencer: Ah, yes,

Chelsea: Uh, he also said that the truth is, quote, seen in black and white, it’s as if the aliens have colonized us. That means, of course, that Ted Turner is really a monster from outer space.

Spencer: God, that means, of course,

Chelsea: that’s exactly what I was thinking, John. Ted Turner really is a monster from outer

Spencer: from outer space. Uh, so

Chelsea: Uh, so yes, he, he very much has acknowledged that this film was a critique of Reaganomics. Uh, but, and I didn’t know this until researching this movie that. Over the years, especially recently, neo Nazi and white supremacist groups have been co opting the movie for their own purpose.

Chelsea: Yeah, I know.

Spencer: That’s not what it’s about, guys.

Chelsea: uh, it is very much not about that. Oh, you mean neo Nazis are misinterpreting media? Oh, never, Spencer. That would never

Spencer: Never that one. Yeah,

Chelsea: so they, they, they said that it’s an allegory for Jewish people controlling the world. And so John Carpenter went on Twitter in 2017 and said, quote, they live is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism.

Chelsea: It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is a slander and a lie.

Spencer: Oh, wow. Yeah. Great.

Chelsea: I’m very glad he cleared the air. Yeah. Yeah,

Spencer: Oh, my God. The worst

Chelsea: people in the world. Can

Spencer: Can’t we just have a silly movie?

Chelsea: We can have a silly movie because John Carpenter also said, quote, all of the aliens are members of the upper class, the rich, and they’re slowly exploiting the middle class and everybody’s becoming poorer.

Chelsea: It has kind of a theme and a message to it, but basically it’s an action film. So I just, I just love that he says exactly what we said earlier, which is like. Yeah, you can read into the subtext, or you can just be like, this movie is wild and silly.

Spencer: There’s aliens.

Chelsea: there’s some aliens there. Yeah, sure, there’s some commentary, but really it’s just, you know, a fight scene between two men screaming, put the glasses on.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Spencer: I WON’T PUT THE GLASSES ON!

Chelsea: Now, speaking of that fight.

Spencer: Oh, yes. Please tell me everything

Chelsea: fight. So, it was only supposed to last a mere 20 seconds. Wow. 20 seconds, that’s all.

Spencer: 20 minutes is what we got. Exactly. But

Chelsea: Roddy Piper, you know, who we know loves to fight, and Keith David just decided to fight it out for real. And they only faked the hits to the face and the groin, and they rehearsed this for three weeks, and John Carpenter was so impressed with this scene, he kept it all intact, and it’s five minutes and twenty seconds.

Chelsea: It feels like longer. It

Spencer: like a year. Yeah. I’m always so curious in like behind the scenes stories and movies.

Spencer: When they say that they were, the actors rehearsed this scene for three weeks. Like when, what, what was hap, what else was happening in those three

Chelsea: Yeah, how did they have the time and the money to just, like, pay them to, like Play fight for three weeks.

Spencer: they shoot that at the beginning of the movie?

Chelsea: I don’t understand.

Spencer: Because there are no scenes, really, where neither of them are in them. Right. Yeah.

Chelsea: The fight scene was very

Spencer: It was, oh, clearly, clearly, because like, the things I knew about this movie beforehand, it’s even less than Candyman. I knew the glasses, the stuff that you see with the glasses, and there is a fight scene that’s very long.

Spencer: Yeah. And it, well, obviously it exceeded all expectations, but It’s a cornerstone of the movie and I am so impressed. I’m so impressed that John Carpenter let it get that out of control.

Chelsea: And now, I love that you’ve seen this movie, Spencer, because it is one of my most I have these lines that I just say on cycle, uh, on repeat.

Chelsea: Uh, in my life and put the glasses on as one of them. Uh huh. So now when I say it, inevitably in front of you, you won’t be like, What are you talking about, Chelsea? You’ll be like, Ah, Roddy Piper. That’s right. I appreciate that you said ghouls earlier because that’s what John Carpenter calls

Spencer: Oh, okay.

Chelsea: And they often get called, uh, aliens, which I Probably make the mistake of doing two, but they’re kind of alien y. Uh, alien ghouls. Uh, so the ghouls, John Carpenter, he didn’t want them to look like the kind of like typical alien high tech creatures of other science fiction films. So he modeled them basically after walking rotting corpses.

Chelsea: So he thought since these, these ghouls are uh, corrupting humanity, they should look like. Corrupted human beings, essentially, which I thought was really cool. And I thought they were really cool looking.

Spencer: Really cool looking. Yeah. And you get the double whammy of like the very first visual of them with that guy at the newsstand and, and then when they’re in color, cause you don’t expect them to be blue.

Spencer: No,

Chelsea: not at all. Yeah,

Spencer: And just like the eyes are the most unsettling thing. They’re bugging out of their head, but also there’s this weird starburst thing going on in there that’s like illuminated from within maybe, or just really reflective. You see it a lot, but you don’t see it long enough to really understand what you’re looking

Chelsea: Right.

Spencer: That was the far end of like my pendulum swing watching this. Like, these ghouls are horrifying. And then at the other end it’s like, what the fuck is happening in this fight scene? Why is it taking so long?

Chelsea: me so long?

Chelsea: No,

Spencer: No. Yeah, it was incredible.

Chelsea: So a remake, or a sequel, or some sort of expansion from They Live has been in development hell for a really long time. Um, but very, very recent to this moment that we’re recording, in October 2023, producer Sandy King, said that a modern audience could see similarities in this movie of things going on in real life and said that some sort of expansion, I think is the word they used, would be announced shortly.

Chelsea: Yeah,

Spencer: Oh my

Chelsea: something is happening.

Spencer: that would be great. I don’t know if there was like a cultural impact of the movie when it came out of people, like took the message as intended the anti capitalist message.

Spencer: Um, but it would,

Chelsea: yeah. I mean,

Spencer: medium was a little silly as we’ve said. It was in a silly sandwich. No, no. It was an anti capitalist sandwich with silly bread.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Spencer: Um, but, um, that was one of the other things that really, really, really struck me was that the soup line and the, the employment bureau felt very pandemic y to me, just like lines of people waiting in extremely stressful, unpleasant conditions to get something and then getting nothing.

Spencer: The SWAT invasion of the encampment felt exactly like the destruction of the Occupy Wall Street, uh, encampment. Yeah,

Chelsea: Or just simply, I mean, in Los Angeles, we’ve seen so many encampments taken down people who are just trying to live their lives, uh, not harming anyone.

Chelsea: And there’s just, yeah. SWAT members coming in with weapons. Yeah. No, Sandy. I can’t see any parallels to,

Spencer: parallels

Chelsea: today’s world.

Spencer: Yeah, and absolutely everything that the bearded man on I’m looking at the IMDb page now bearded

Chelsea: man. Oh, is that what he’s actually named?

Spencer: Seems to be, yeah. Bearded man. Bearded man. Everything that he said is 100 percent true. That the ruling class is just sucking money out of the rest of society for their own gain and with no endgame in sight. Yeah.

Chelsea: 100%. We are still feeling the, uh, effects of Reaganomics today.

Spencer: I’m beginning to think it wasn’t a good idea. Really

Chelsea: So, with that potentially very exciting

Spencer: Yes.

Chelsea: I think that’s the end of They Live. That’s the end of They Live, they dead.

Spencer: They dead. Ha ha ha ha!

Chelsea: may be resurrected with the sequel.

Spencer: they may live to fight another day.

Chelsea: Live 2, Electric Boogaloo.

Spencer: yes, please. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Uh, next time, Chelsea, I am assigning you a little film. That’s one of my favorites. Chelsea, I have a question for

Chelsea: for you.

Spencer: Have you seen the Rocketeer?

Chelsea: Spencer, I haven’t seen that.

Spencer: Oh, oh. And as we always say on, I haven’t seen that

Chelsea: Bye podcast. Bye.

Spencer: podcast.