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FIRST BLOOD

SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY WILL DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

FIRST BLOOD (1982), a.k.a. Rambo I! Surely the best possible pick for TGTPTU’s Season 15 – Squib Season. An‘80s action flick, special forces, small town cops, a M60 machine rifle capable of firing 600 rounds a minute… Unless… Perhaps… Could it be the sequels changed the original movie, that actually the Rambo series starts not as the rah-rah patriotic killer of anonymous foreign brown peoples with knife, machine gun, and explosive-tipped arrows?

Affirmative. (Yes.)

After years in development hell trying to adapt an early 70s anti-war novel about a young returning soldier-drifter (perhaps even younger than pod host Thomas and season guest Jack) with PSTD from his time as an elite killer in Vietnam, the movie First Blood went through three production companies and eighteen screenplays--including pod fav and former 4x4 season director John Frankenheimer attached at one point and Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Steve McQueen (who liked the jailbreak+motorcycle chase), Eastwood, DeNiro, Nolte, and Michael Douglas all considered for the role--as a nearly a decade passed from the actions of the undeclared war in ‘Nam contemporary with the novel and the protagonist subsequently aged up in the movie’s contemporary Regan-era world. Other elements in adapting the book for the screen included giving Rambo a first name (John); omitting alternating storylines between Rambo and Sheriff Teasle; reducing the vet’s body count from intentional dozens killed in the forest and back in town to one confirmed death falling from a helicopter after John Rambo throws a rock (with three additional possible from a vehicle wreck and gunshot wound), and giving Rambo a good cry at the film’s end.

But while changes made, one thing unfortunate for the pod was maintained adapting the book into movie: Neither has blood squibs.

While a tree gets shot and a wall explodes in simulated gunfire, few people get plugged on screen in this action film, and those who do are sans exploded condoms of red liquid and juicy matter. Despite the franchise reputation to be parodied in pod fav Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), this initial entry in the Rambo film pentalogy is relatively bloodless. (Here might be a good place for a parenthetical on how this film was selected by bookworm Thomas who’s expressed subversive reservations about the violence inherent in this season of the pod.)

This ep: Jack returns to the pod, Thomas presents the book report, Ken postulates that shooting the picture during an unexpectedly cold Canadian autumn might be why the sequels take place in warmer climes, Ryan continues his disgusting habit of recommending other film podcasts, and Sidney Poitier’s Ghost Dad (1990) reenters the chat.

Note: Former presidential candidate Ross Perot’s involvement with Vietnam War POW/MIA in the 80s, playability reviews of the NES and arcade Rambo video games, and episode-by-episode recaps of the 1986 Saturday morning Rambo cartoon series were all cut for brevity.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY WILL DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

After five years, a ban has been lifted—momentarily. For this single episode, the pod’s ironclad rule against discussing a Quentin Tarantino film that has divided our hosts is broken. The director is set free. And Jack goes fugitive this week as TGTPTU discusses the all-so-deliciously-squibby DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012).

Set just a few years before the Civil War to allow Tarantino to have his favorite racial epithet spoken a stunning 110 times—yikes!—juicy bloody condoms burst all across the faux climax of this Neo-Spaghetti Western as Django (the “d” is silent, played by Jamie Foxx) takes his revenge on the Francophile plantation owner, phenology enthusiastic, and curator of the ahistorical bloodsport of Mandingo fighting viz. “Monsieur” Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) for the death of immigrant German dentist+bounty-hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) all lensed by regular QT collaborator Robert Richardson.

This ep, Ken takes issue with the treatment and ambiguity of sexual violence (not?) portrayed in the film, its lazy writing, and that the picture was made after and is not Inglorious Basterds; Thomas, who claims to be both a Boomer and German this episode, brings irrelevant and irreverent German Facts (an unused example: “‘Gesundheit’ is a German’s way of saying: How tall is your gay son?”); and Ryan violates the unspoken rule of keeping talk of Quentin Tarantino on the QT. At least all three hosts agree the triple-threat Actor+Writer+Director Tarantino is best as a just double threat.

So tune in for an episode that answers the age-old question: What if TGTPTU hosts finally take on Quentin Tarantino—and no one does an impression?

Next week Jack returns.

Content Warning: Django Unchained not merely contains but is brimming with a specific racial slur using a hard-r by characters of various races and classes as directed (and written) to do so by a White filmmaker. Django Unchained also contains, and glosses over, sexual violence.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

Send us a text

SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY WILL CELEBRATE THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. REAL WORLD VIOLENCE IS NOT TOLERATED AND IS RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT DISTURBS SOME LISTENERS. SQUIBS CAN BE ART

BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat
About the third night
They're invited to fight by a
Sub gun's rat-a-tat
Some day they'll go down together
They'll bury them side by side
To few, it will be grief, to the law a relief
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde

- Bonnie & Clyde - Serge Gainsbourg

All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend
(Me and my girlfriend)
Down to ride 'til the very end, is me and my boyfriend
(Me and my boyfriend, that's right)
All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend
(Me and my girlfriend, look for me)
Down to ride 'til the very end, is me and my boyfriend
(Me and my boyfriend, talk to 'em, B)

- '03 Bonnie & Clyde, Jay-Z, Beyoncé

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias