Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971)

Matt (00:00:51):

Hello and welcome to Load Bearing Beams. I’m Matt Stokes.

Laci (00:00:54):

And I’m Laci Roth.

Matt (00:00:55):

We are a married couple

Laci (00:00:57):

Together,

Matt (00:00:57):

Despite Laci having a different last name. Do you remember the first Christmas after we got married? I was going to your office’s Christmas party and they’re like, so who are you here to see? And I was like, Bruce Willis and diehard. I’m like, I’m here to see Laci Stokes. And they’re like, do you mean Laci Janero? I was like, you got to be fucking kidding me that, oh fucking California.

Laci (00:01:17):

I do remember that. And then that’s when they shot my boss. He was coked out of his mind.

Matt (00:01:22):

Wait, what? No,

Laci (00:01:23):

Those iix, the two.

Matt (00:01:25):

So yeah, what we’ve covered so far is we’re married and we have different last names even so because we’re very progressive now. This is our podcast where we talk about movies and stuff, but next week we’re off. Ho, ho ho. Merry Christmas. We have a machine gun so we won’t have an episode next week. Sorry folks.

Laci (00:01:45):

Sorry.

Matt (00:01:47):

But the week after that Laci

Laci (00:01:49):

Mail bag,

Matt (00:01:51):

We’ll be back with a vengeance

Laci (00:01:53):

People bag as I like to say.

Matt (00:01:57):

What?

Laci (00:01:58):

Why my gender?

Matt (00:01:59):

Why gender? Oh, okay. I got

Laci (00:02:01):

People bag

Matt (00:02:02):

Because people are male or male.

Laci (00:02:03):

Well, and it’s people size, so I’m assuming there’s a body in this male bagg visual you’ve got here. Anyway, we want to put a lot of people in this bag, so if you could get in with your questions, we’ll open it one at a time, let you out one at a time. Get a little breathing break, ask a question, pop you back in person bag.

Matt (00:02:20):

That’s right. Submit your questions on YouTube, on TikTok, on Twitter, wherever. We’ve got plenty but there’s still time.

Laci (00:02:25):

Send us your measurements. Unrelated.

Matt (00:02:28):

Anything you want to ask us? People have been asking inappropriate stuff

Laci (00:02:31):

And we love it.

Matt (00:02:32):

Yes.

Laci (00:02:33):

We may not answer it, but we love it.

Matt (00:02:35):

We’ll answer it privately though.

Laci (00:02:37):

That’s the same thing.

Matt (00:02:38):

Get a personalized letter from us.

Laci (00:02:40):

Oh, I see. I thought you mean you were just talking about it. Just us. We do that anyway.

Matt (00:02:45):

Yes. So what are we doing on this episode though? What are we doing?

Laci (00:02:48):

We’re going to talk some wonk. We are doing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a joint beam. This is a load bearing. Usually we discuss a movie from one of our childhoods that’s important to one of us. We’re trying to convince the other and hope that the other agrees. This time we have a mutual beam and no, it’s not because we’re tying it to the Wonka movie. That’s no, that’s marketing silliness.

Matt (00:03:16):

No, we would never coincide an episode with a thing in the zeitgeist. Have you seen the trailer? I meant to show you the trailers.

Laci (00:03:23):

I have not

Matt (00:03:24):

To this. Well maybe we’ll watch

Laci (00:03:25):

Them. Boy does that boy look wonky. I just say right off the bat I like his look much more already than the Johnny Depp version just because there’s no taking the Depp out of his look. Johnny Depp’s so associated with silly flip flu that it becomes, I feel like I’m looking at Johnny Depp dressed up where here I look like, I feel like I’m looking at a version of Willy Wonka maybe because I don’t know this actor too much yet.

Matt (00:03:57):

Yeah, you’re not a shallow may head

Laci (00:04:00):

Aite.

Matt (00:04:00):

No, you’re not a crustacean, but I’ll pull up the trailer just so you can watch it. We’ll get Laci’s live reaction on the air. They’re leaning heavy into a nostalgia for the 1971 movie, the one we’re going to talk about in visual iconography. It’s very much in line with that. They’re saying it’s not technically a prequel to that movie, but it clearly is. When this movie was announced a few years ago, I thought, who the fuck we’ve just reached? We’ve reached the pit. The pit of the earth.

Laci (00:04:29):

No, you want to know the pit They remade white men can’t jump.

Matt (00:04:32):

This came out.

Laci (00:04:34):

Exactly. It was straight to stream.

Matt (00:04:37):

Oh, well, okay.

Laci (00:04:39):

I listened to a review of it from people I respect and trust and it’s already a classic movie. If you’re not going to add something to it, make it enrich it. Just repeat it.

Matt (00:04:56):

That makes more sense to me. The mining of property of IP and saying what other stories can we tell from the Wonka verse? How did Willy Wonka get that way? I’m sure we’re going to find out he started with a different name,

Laci (00:05:09):

But if you’re going to redo it, then you better at least do it just as well and you sure as fuck better hope you do it even better somehow. But I just don’t know why you take something that’s something people really love and then make a less good version of it

Matt (00:05:23):

Because that’s the name of the game. Just remind people, Hey, I like that thing and now I must like this thing too. Yeah.

Laci (00:05:30):

Why are you showing me delicious ihop? I’m hungry. Oh, right Trailer.

Speaker 4 (00:05:35):

I’ve spent the past seven years traveling the world perfecting my craft.

Laci (00:05:38):

I already hate him. I already, you see I’m something of a magician. It’s the same music I’ve been listening to,

Matt (00:05:44):

But this is how you do it. You take the old theme and you make a sort of somber piano version, but

Laci (00:05:50):

It’s not, this is beat for beat.

Matt (00:05:52):

I know, but they’re producing it. When Jurassic World came out, they had the Jurassic Park theme.

Laci (00:05:56):

True.

Matt (00:05:59):

It should make everybody in the audience have all the feels

Laci (00:06:02):

Fine, but they zoomed in on something I just found moments ago that I also agree sets the mood seven years traveling the world perfecting my craft. That’s my favorite part of

Matt (00:06:18):

The, that got a little smile from Le. So what do you think of that?

Laci (00:06:22):

Okay. It’s not fair to search, it’s just not Gene Wilder just had this, a sparkle in it, a glint and something in his expression that let you know he was an onion. There are layers. You’re never going to totally get everything you want to know out of this man. And he’s got nothing but tricks up his sleeves. He just makes everything special and weird and mysterious in the best way and funny and the sarcasm. He’s, I don’t know, one of the best comedians to weaponize sarcasm. He’s just, they had to go super wacky with the last attempt at this because it needed to be something completely, not completely, but different enough. He’s too normal.

Matt (00:07:21):

Well, so I’ve never really liked Timothy Chalamet. I do kind of admire trying to, because we were talking about this before we started recording and just talking about Gene Wilder and how there’s, is there any other actor who’s like him at all?

Laci (00:07:35):

No,

Matt (00:07:35):

He’s so individual. So it is interesting that somebody would be trying to make a character in continuity with someone who becomes that person. So I kind of admire that. I was thinking, no, this people are going to the ip. The IP boom has gone bust. People don’t care anymore that just because a thing looks like a thing. They are, they used to,

Speaker 5 (00:07:58):

They’re

Matt (00:07:58):

Going to see it, but this was directed by Paul King who made the Paddington movies and now the reviews are good and so I’m thinking maybe this movie will be a big hit.

Laci (00:08:07):

I was just about to say maybe the trailer’s just not doing it justice. Maybe the trailer’s trying to hit on too many things that are going to remind me of Old Willy Wonka where I don’t really need that. I need to see what this actor’s bringing to the table and I want to see that his sidekick is someone who really gets to be developed and it’s not just someone there to be like, oh, look cute a kid or I don’t know. It seems very formulaic from looking at it and so maybe it will subvert our expectations.

Matt (00:08:45):

It being made by Paul King does make me think there might be something here. He did such a good job with the Paddington movies and people love those movies and they’re so unexpected for the source material. I don’t want to see this, but I’ll be happy. Be happy. I’ll be happy if there’s a hit movie. I want those theaters to do well. I want movies to not die, but I think this might have the right combination of people’s, the old people in the family will want to go see it at Christmas because they like the old movie. The young people like Timothy Chalamet and then some other people will like Paddington and then it’ll be a hit. We’ll see.

Laci (00:09:19):

I can already tell I like the mom and all I did was hear her smile and wave to her kid in the audience. She just looked just the right kind of weathered to fit the,

Matt (00:09:29):

What is your history with Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory? Do you remember seeing it for the first time or

Laci (00:09:35):

No,

Matt (00:09:36):

It’s just kind of one of those the things that’s always there,

Laci (00:09:38):

Always been right and in my head what I see when I think of Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory are the first fun place they go inside the factory, which is the room that’s edible with the Chocolate River. To me, that movie is that if I’m looking at it through kids’ eyes as an adult, I live and breathe for the Gene Wilder parts. I will always think of this movie fondly because it is so odd and it goes to dark places unexpectedly and it lets children be bad and irredeemable. I think that’s interesting. I don’t like the idea of the Angel Perfect boy, but it’s just there’s nothing else like it. So for that, it will always be worth watching once, I’m not sure what you want me to say. I like the magical world building of it all, but it’s always felt sinister to me in a way.

Matt (00:10:42):

I actually do remember seeing this for the first time I was in T one transitional first grade. That’s where they send you when you started kindergarten too early and you’re not old enough to go to first grade.

Laci (00:10:50):

They red shirt you.

Matt (00:10:52):

Yeah, they red shirt your first grade year watching this in a class and I remember, I just remember one of the other kids in the opening credits when you see all that beautiful chocolate being poured in the factory, I remember just some other kid in the class saying, this is a good movie.

Laci (00:11:08):

My first note is best opening credits ever. I love watching factory and production footage.

Matt (00:11:18):

It almost can’t be fucked up, but this is great. This looks beautiful. Watch

Laci (00:11:22):

The ribbons, the folding of it. It’s so satisfying.

Matt (00:11:25):

I watched the Tim Burton movie again to get ready for this podcast and the opening credits of that looked like fucking dog shit, CGI bullshit. And I thought, oh boy, this movie’s going to suck shit.

Laci (00:11:35):

So instead of pillowy chocolate folding and folding on itself, it’s just dog shit folding and folding on itself.

Matt (00:11:41):

Exactly. But we’ll get into that Tim Burton movie. So yes, I saw this many times as a child, always liked it. But then a funny thing happened when I was an adult. You and me and kid number one have watched this movie on occasion in our long lives and every time I get on my soapbox and I say, this movie totally runs out of gas when it gets to the chocolate factory and every time I wait to watch it and think, no, I’ll be swept away by the magic of it all and it never happens.

Laci (00:12:09):

Right.

Matt (00:12:10):

So did it happen this time? We’ll see what we do on the show is we record ahead of time our prediction for how we’re going to experience the movie. Do we think we’re going to like it this time? Let’s hear what Laci thought.

Laci (00:12:24):

So this is a mutual beam of ours and I have the problem of resetting. I only care about the chocolate factory parts, but Matt says that’s where the movie falls apart. He’s probably right. It probably dips. I love Gene Wilder. I don’t remember any of the Charlie parts being good, but I mean before, but that’s probably wrong. I just remember the last time we watched it thinking it gets slow in the second half. Yeah, excellent. Recording as usual by me under a bed with a flashlight is what that sounds like.

Matt (00:13:01):

I don’t want anyone to hear you.

Laci (00:13:03):

That’s my special thoughts.

Matt (00:13:04):

The people in our house will know we have a podcast. Okay, so you only remember the chocolate factory parts fondly. You thought the Charlie stuff was boring.

Laci (00:13:13):

Now remember is a strong word. I don’t know how to explain what these things are, but with lots of pictures passed before my eyes when you say the name of a movie and it’s only those parts. So yeah, I’m definitely deleting things.

Matt (00:13:29):

I was listening to our old episode about the Grinch just I was making, I’m in the process of putting every episode that we’ve done on YouTube just so it’ll be available

Laci (00:13:39):

There. Thank you for your hard work.

Matt (00:13:40):

Thank you. And so I listen to a certain section most of the time I don’t like listening to our old stuff, but this time Lazy got very animated about talking about how maybe she likes boring movies because she can forget about all the boring stuff and just remember the fun stuff.

Laci (00:13:53):

It’s lily padding

Matt (00:13:54):

Hopping from

Laci (00:13:56):

Pad to pad. I know there’s a part that I like that’s coming up so it’s worth the

Matt (00:13:59):

Weight.

Laci (00:14:01):

That’s the only explanation as to why. Also my thought I listened to it, but we cannot share it in a vacuum the way that it is. We will be crucified. People love the Grinch. People love Willy Wong, but it’s one of those clips where it’s like you need to hear the fuller discussion probably, or people are going to be like,

Matt (00:14:19):

Fuck you bring them all.

Laci (00:14:20):

I don’t know. I am not one to bring them on. No thank you.

Matt (00:14:24):

Stand by your stance. We are thoughtful and measured in people who put a lot of work into explaining ourselves.

Laci (00:14:32):

I still think I’m right, but I don’t feel like defending myself in text form and I also don’t feel like giving somebody the wrong impression of even if it’s a movie I love and it’s my movie, I still probably spend a lot of time saying more negative things than positive things, but that’s just because I’m trying to think deeply about stuff and trying to think of things I hadn’t maybe try to think of things that maybe haven’t been said yet about this very well tread movie. As you pick it apart, it sounds exactly like that these things aren’t meant to be stared at this close. That’s not fair. Like taking a magnifying glass to a painting or something. It’s like, don’t try to find an imperfection. I’m like, I’m just trying to find the interesting stuff to talk about.

Matt (00:15:17):

Well, the imperfection

Laci (00:15:18):

Get off my back.

Matt (00:15:20):

The imperfection finds me. I can’t help it try to watch the Grinch again.

Laci (00:15:24):

That’s my thought. When people say, how could you say this about this classic? I say, just watch it with fresh eyes. Watch it. But they end up watching it alone and I think that’s not fair. That’s not the point of this podcast. The point is to have to be able to rationalize its goodness to someone else sit down and watch it with an adult that has not seen it yet and then explain to them why it’s good at the end. That’s the only,

Matt (00:15:53):

And yeah, do you have something beyond? Well, I really like it. I really liked it a long time ago. I mean, I think both of us think nostalgia is bad. Nostalgia is poisonous.

Laci (00:16:01):

Calling something a nostalgia podcast doesn’t mean that we have a thought about whether it’s good or bad. It just means that we deal with the idea of nostalgia and what that can do to someone’s memory of a movie, what that can do with a marketing team who wants to try to create fool’s gold nostalgia and weaponize it against moviegoers. It’s the concept that our podcast is about not, oh, we love those things that make us feel.

Matt (00:16:31):

I think that nostalgia busting is more of a thing now than it was when we started our show in 2017.

Laci (00:16:36):

Yes, we invented it.

Matt (00:16:37):

We should have just been doing the podcast every week since 2017 and we’d have a thousand episodes by now and we could actually have a stranglehold on this industry on this very,

Laci (00:16:45):

That’s all we’ve ever wanted

Matt (00:16:46):

On this very niche thing of be honest with yourself about the things you like. It’s going to be hard with this movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that most people like and Laci and I agree is not good. There

Laci (00:16:57):

Are good parts, there are good things. There is something magic about it. But I will explain later that I think it is the power of Gene Wilder that makes me stop being interested in moments. Not because of him or something he’s doing wrong, but because of something he’s doing. Right.

Matt (00:17:16):

I love this take. I think it’s a little complicated and nuanced. You got to really listen to what she’s saying. Yeah, he’s so good that it makes the movie worse.

Laci (00:17:26):

He sucks the interest from everything around him. But there’s more than that and I will get into that.

Matt (00:17:32):

Here is my prediction.

Laci (00:17:33):

Give it to me.

Matt (00:17:35):

It’s one of my contrarian opinions that I’m proud of. I like to go about life saying actually the Tim Burton Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory movie that you hate. It’s actually better than the classic 1971 film. And I held to that conviction, but recently leading up to this episode, I reread the book by Rual Doll and thought boy, the same thing. I’ve always thought that story totally runs out of gas once they get to the chocolate factory,

Laci (00:18:06):

Leave it in the book.

Matt (00:18:07):

And I’m sure that’s the case with the Berg movie, but I’ve watched a bunch of Gene Wilder movies recently and I read Gene Wilder’s book and so I’m just thinking like Gene Wilder’s in this movie and he gives a big performance. It has to be good. How can it be bad? We shall see. He’s a treasure, one of the greatest to ever do it. It’s a big movie that he has a big part in. How bad can it be? My prediction is I will appreciate this movie more than I have in the past. No, I appreciated it less when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Tim Burton film came out in 2005, that was like at the beginning of people’s kind of getting over Johnny Depp after his comeback, after Pirates of the Caribbean. Now we’re like, okay, this bullshit,

Laci (00:18:51):

It worked against the movie.

Matt (00:18:54):

And I’m not saying he’s great. Even if you set aside that he’s a piece of shit as a person, I really, he’s really going for something. He’s making choices that I think the material calls for. I’m not saying he does a better job than Gene Wilder, but he makes way more sense in the movie and in the story that’s being told than in the 71 Gene Wilder version.

Laci (00:19:17):

Right? Because the things that are happening in the movie, the things that man has supposedly come up with decided to do, the way he decides to live his life in seclusion like that and the things he’s the mad scientist vibes of the things he’s able to conceive of and then create. He’s not only the big picture guy, the thinking guy. He’s executing it. He’s doing the science. You need somebody hard to talk to someone out of touch. Someone so smart and so eccentric and bizarre that they’re able to think of those things. But that person usually is not somebody who’s charismatic as hell and can just give you the one-liners. And Jeanie Wilder’s too cool.

Matt (00:20:08):

And I know that you’d say no, but he’s so weird. And yes, he is weird. But in the end he reveals it was all because I’m testing all of you and you won. And now I reveal myself as a wholesome and wonderful man

Laci (00:20:21):

Who has been alone for 20 years or whatever.

Matt (00:20:24):

But what the past 20 years of life on our earth have shown. We’ve had all these examples of Elon Musk’s of Donald Trump. I mean these weirdo business guys are weird as hell and have pathological inability to relate to other humans.

Laci (00:20:39):

The more money, the more assistance you’re given, the more needs, the more demands that are said yes to, the more yes men you have around you, the more unrelatable out of touch impossible to have a conversation with you become. And all Willy Wonka has in that movie are yes men it. He’s surrounded by people who do his bidding. That does not create a normal fucking person,

Matt (00:21:08):

Especially, it’s not just any business, but it’s the business senate on you and your name and everything’s branded with your name. It’s not just I’m the CEO of Comcast or whatever.

Laci (00:21:17):

And it’s a business for which you are the maverick of. You have redefined it. You are the undisputed best. You’re at the top. The only way for you to go is down. I’ll bet you are paranoid as fuck and isolated and strange. Then why are you so charming? Gene Wilder, maybe it always needed to be freak ass Johnny Destile,

Matt (00:21:43):

Who very specifically doesn’t like kids and

Laci (00:21:47):

Wait, the character or Johnny Depp

Matt (00:21:49):

The character Willy Wonka as played by Johnny Depp. He does not like these kids.

Laci (00:21:52):

I love that.

Matt (00:21:53):

It’s not a ploy as it is when Gene Wilder is,

Laci (00:21:56):

But Gene Wild Wilder also doesn’t like most of these kids.

Matt (00:21:59):

He doesn’t, but

Laci (00:22:01):

At the end he does have immense love for

Matt (00:22:04):

Yeah, I think at the end he’s just a normal nice guy.

Laci (00:22:07):

But wait, he’s a man full of paranoia and is constantly having to watch his back and it’s forced him to live alone for a long time. It’s only when Charlie gives him the everlasting gobs ever proving that he’s not going to then give it to Slug Worth. Does he have a huge smile? It’s not like, oh, I can drop the veil. Oh, Charlie, you’re not a piece of shit. I thought you were a piece of shit and now you’re the only non piece of shit I ever did meet. That’s

Matt (00:22:36):

And his definition of piece of shit is won’t, won’t betray my ability to make money.

Laci (00:22:41):

Charlie Buck, his fucking last name is Bucket Horrible Life. A life that Willy Wonka will never know. And it could have been made better just with the lifetime supply chocolate. He could have set up a shop and sold it. I mean, any of these things could have changed his life. So yeah, if you give him the shaft and you say, no, you broke a rule, you drank the fizzy whatever, and you float it around, you get no chocolate, then damn it, Charlie, sell that damn gobstopper. He’d be totally within his right.

Matt (00:23:16):

Yes. Yes. And a non sociopath would understand that would not say A child who’s going to betray my trade secret is evil, but would see, well, he’s a poor kid. Of course he’s going to try to make some money. Yes. All these negative things we’re saying, I do not prefer the Johnny Depp performance to the Gene Wilder performance, but I do. I can just see people saying you’re insane. You prefer the Tim Burton version as an adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Yes, as a functional movie. Yes. And as critique of weirdo maniacal capitalists.

Speaker 5 (00:23:48):

Yes.

Matt (00:23:49):

But Gene Wilder is great and we’ll talk about all of it coming up after this. It all begins with Rual Do. Is

Laci (00:24:06):

He problematic?

Matt (00:24:08):

Oh, is he?

Laci (00:24:09):

Okay.

Matt (00:24:10):

Well, we talked a lot about this on the Witches episode three years ago, which is where I learned the pronunciation of his name Love. Because every interview with him, and there are lots of them, starts off with him saying how you actually pronounce it.

Laci (00:24:25):

Who thought of the pronouncing feature on Google?

Matt (00:24:27):

He did. And first of all, I love doing this podcast. I do. We’ve had a lot of fun doing it, especially recently. It’s gotten a little bit of traction. These history segments are causing me to have a nervous breakdown

Laci (00:24:42):

Because the man’s losing sleep. You’re going five hours of sleep per day and that’s not good.

Matt (00:24:47):

And it’s just because the more people listen, the more I’m like, okay, I got to be correct. I got to cite my sources. I have to give credit. I have to. And with this set one in particular, there’s so many different strands to Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory. You have to cover Rual do. And then the history of the book and the history of the movie and the history of the people who made it. And there’s so much to talk about with Rual do because he’s a problematic guy. Yes. But he’s also a very interesting guy. And so many interesting things have been done with his books long after his death as recent as this year. So who is Rual dol? Well, he was born in 1916 in Cardiff Wales, and he was born to Norwegian parents, Norwegian immigrants. He’s named after the Norwegian Explorer Rual Ahmanson.

(00:25:39):

For this history, I am leaning heavily on Rual Doll, a biography by Jeremy Tre Lo from 1994, which is great. He hates doll and he’s undercutting. He’s like, Zo Doll said this, but of, and it’s very funny, but very informative. Also, there’s an authorized biography, much kinder to Dahl by Donald Sterk from 2010 called Storyteller. This was the one approved by the Rule Doll estate. And then there’s a book called Inside Charlie Charlie’s Chocolate Factory by Lucy Mangan. That was also very, very helpful. So those are the three sources I largely relied on to write all of this. So Rual dah, born in Cardiff in 1916. His parents are Norwegian. He spoke Norwegian as a first language. This Rual Dahl scholar, Catherine Keer from the University of South Carolina said in an interview that she said, I think DOL always felt like an outsider who was bullied into Britishness because he felt like a Norwegian. But he’s living in Britain and people, I only think of him as a British guy, but not even an Englishman, a Norwegian Welshman. So he was a fighter pilot for the RAF during the Second World War, professional writer after World War ii. Also wrote mainly for adults, articles, short fiction, and then lots of television scripts. And he married actress Patricia Neil. I didn’t know this. He was married to Patricia Neal in 1953. She won Best actress in 1963 for hud. Yeah,

Laci (00:27:10):

I have a hot take that this just reminded me of. I think this story and this idea is for adults, it seems like a kid movie, but it’s from the perspective of what it’s like to be an adult.

Matt (00:27:23):

Gene Wilder said he would talk about this movie a lot in interviews, and he said that adults don’t give kids enough credit to be able to understand the story. And when people freaked out about the movie when it first came out, he said, lots of mothers tutted it and it’s sort of moral ambiguities. They don’t give kids the credit for being able to understand this complex and sort of scary story.

Laci (00:27:46):

Yeah, you’ve given them too much realness. You’ve given them too many bad role models of children to be what they think would happen.

Matt (00:27:56):

I don’t know

Laci (00:27:56):

Who was being immoral.

Matt (00:27:57):

This is another thing that a world I’ve stumbled into reading all of this is the world of children’s publishing and the many different forces that work there. And I guess it

Laci (00:28:07):

Would’ve, oh, that makes sense. Been

Matt (00:28:08):

Crazier in the sixties of what values do these books teach? Are they worthy of including in our libraries.

Laci (00:28:15):

Oh wow. Okay. Alright. Sorry, I know you have a lot to get through. Go. Oh, James, the He is a dark fellow, isn’t he?

Matt (00:28:22):

Well, I mean, he’s a great writer of kids. It is children’s literature because the audience is intended for children, but it gives them the credit of knowing you want something dark and twisted.

Laci (00:28:33):

Got it.

Matt (00:28:34):

So his first children’s novel was called The Gremlins. It was from 1943, but he wouldn’t write another children’s novel until 1961.

Laci (00:28:41):

Any connection to the movie?

Matt (00:28:43):

No. No. Okay. No. But his experience as a fighter pilot gremlins, like the origin of Gremlins is they mess with the machines of airplanes.

Laci (00:28:53):

Are they real or are they elves?

Matt (00:28:55):

They’re like elves, but elves that have their origins thousands of years ago, mythology gremlins are like a 20th century invention. So yeah, he and Patricia Neal had five kids together starting in 1955.

Laci (00:29:09):

Look at him parenting from behind that bush.

Matt (00:29:13):

He was unhappy with the kids with the literature that he had to read his kids.

Laci (00:29:19):

I’m glad you finished the story since he wasn’t happy with his kids, with his

Matt (00:29:23):

Kids. No, I think doesn’t like them. I think if you read Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, I think you get the sense Ruel Doll likes his own kids and hates their fucking

Laci (00:29:31):

Friends, which Right. Oh yeah. And dealing with his, the other kids

Matt (00:29:35):

Parents,

Laci (00:29:37):

That’s the thing. They don’t tell you about being a parent. Is your kid’s going to friends? That’s cool. You’re going to have to deal with their fucking parents

Matt (00:29:46):

And you’re going to have to deal with just extra kids at your house. I watched Lethal Weapon a few weeks ago, and I hadn’t seen it in a long time, but I liked that Danny Glover, whenever he comes home, he has his own kids and they all have friends over at the house and he has to greet his own kids who he’s happy to see and then also deal with the other. And I thought, you don’t usually see that in movies, but that’s a thing that kids do.

Laci (00:30:07):

As an aside, there’s

Matt (00:30:08):

Lots of extra kids in your house because you have kids

Laci (00:30:10):

And certain houses just attract the extra kids.

Matt (00:30:13):

He writes James in the Giant Peach in 1961, and again, this is nearly 20 years after his last children’s book, and this is pretty, it’s pretty successful. So he starts to work on the follow-up on his next novel for children, and he submits a draft of a novel to his publisher. And the draft of the novel is called Charlie’s Chocolate Boy. And this read inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory by Lucy Mangan. This is where I got a lot of this information. She says, the setup to this version of the story is very similar to the final product, except that Charlie is a poor black boy and all the other golden ticket winners and there’s 10 winners altogether are white and a lot of the things are the same. You have the Whipple Scrums who later just become the Umba lumps. But the central conflict of this book is that Charlie, once he gets into the chocolate factory, accidentally gets encased in a chocolate mold because Willy Wonka makes life-sized chocolate boys and girls. And Charlie gets stuck in this chocolate mold and no one can hear him that he’s trapped in there and they ship him off to Willy Wonka’s house to wait for Willy Wonka’s son as an Easter present, because Willy Wonka’s married with a son and a wife and a house, and he foils a robbery and then Willy Wonka to reward him gives him a chocolate shop.

Speaker 5 (00:31:40):

Okay,

Matt (00:31:41):

So the Doll Scholar I mentioned earlier, Catherine Keyser, she said that for as racist as Royal Doll often is in his works, you could read this as a very sympathetic view of a black person because you have a black child being literally encased in a black stereotype. And that silencing him and trapping him and how interesting it is that he can have that kind of empathy, but is totally oblivious to his racist depictions of the Lums and all the other different stereotypes. And there are many

(00:32:17):

In his work, but his literary agent said, all right, I like this a lot, but you got to make Charlie White. So he did. Oh my God. Okay. 1964, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is published and it does very, very well in this edition. The Lumas are called African Pygmies. The illustrations showed them as black people, as clearly black people, black caricatures. And he did receive some criticism for this, especially when they announced that they were making a movie and he got in touch with the NAACP and they said they were very concerned about the African pygmy descriptions among lots of other very reasonable complaints. And he seemed very surprised, like, huh. It never even occurred to me that this was bad. But he did change. He removed the description of them as African Pygmies stopped describing their skin as black. Now, he described their skin as white for an addition that was published in 1972.

(00:33:16):

And it was that text, the one published in 1972 was the one was Standard Text until this year, because this year, okay, so this year, well, a few years ago, Netflix purchased the Rual Doll catalog. It was owned by his estate. They sold his catalog to Netflix. They formed an entity called the Rual Doll Story Company. And they’re basically going all in on his properties. But there is that issue of his books being super racist. I mean, I’ve read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator this week, which I had never read before, and that book is basically 90%. Let’s make fun of Asian people in the way they talk. So there’s the question, so what do we do? These books print money every year. This is an asset we have that we don’t have to do anything with, and it just makes us pure profit every year.

(00:34:08):

But if anybody looks into these books, they’ll see how not, okay. They are. So what do we do? So they go into all the books, well, not to all the books. They go into the most popular of his novels and remove insensitive language, but also make pretty big changes in additions. And for example, in the book, the Witches, he writes that witches are bald beneath their wigs. I mean, that’s what the original text said, but in the updates, there’s new texts that adds, of course, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So it’s like, here’s where I don’t want to sound like a weird reactionary, but this does make me a little uneasy of

Laci (00:34:54):

Yeah. Well, it makes it sound like if you’re still going to put his name on it, it makes it sound like he had no bad opinions and that bad opinions didn’t exist back when he would’ve written it. Right.

Matt (00:35:02):

Yeah, that’s true. I mean, yeah,

Laci (00:35:03):

Why should he get

Matt (00:35:04):

Sanitizing him? For sure. Why

Laci (00:35:06):

Did he get a redo? Right? That doesn’t like, oh, we just don’t want other people to see this. But they need to see that there’s a long history of

Matt (00:35:17):

Well, they meaning kids.

Laci (00:35:20):

Absolutely. Adults. Do you prove

Matt (00:35:22):

Well, because I think that the way to teach them that is in a classroom, yes. Learn about these things in context. I think there is something weird about just buying your kid a book to read for fun, and then they’re going to read a bunch of

Laci (00:35:35):

Yeah, but I guess you’d have to explain that. I would hope the parent would say, this is an old book and there are some old opinions, but okay. Yeah, it’s tricky because you just don’t want to give him a pass after he is already done damage.

Matt (00:35:50):

Yeah. This caused a big stir. And people are saying, Ru All Dolls gone woke. You can’t call a Justice GL isn’t fat anymore.

Laci (00:35:57):

Is he not dead?

Matt (00:35:58):

Oh, he died in 1990.

Laci (00:35:59):

So how the fuck is he going woke

Matt (00:36:02):

The publishing entity that makes hundreds of millions of dollars every year just from book sales and from adaptations.

Laci (00:36:08):

I just keep reading this headline you have up, which is Augustus gl No Longer Fat as Ron Rual Doll Goes pc since when is it not okay to have a fat person in a book?

Matt (00:36:20):

They literally remove the word fat.

Laci (00:36:22):

But that’s a word that fat people like to use. It describes what they are.

Matt (00:36:27):

I mean,

Laci (00:36:29):

I inclusivity, they don’t like it as an

Matt (00:36:30):

Insult consulting firm that I’m sure is totally above board that they hired to help them rewrite everything. Said, don’t use that word.

Laci (00:36:37):

Also, I mean, I understand there’s not a joint consensus among all people as to what words they like to use to describe them, but erasing it and not having any inclusion of people of different sizes also seems wrong.

Matt (00:36:50):

Oh yeah. No, that’s a good point. Yeah, it’ll just mean, yeah, there’ll be no depictions or representations at all.

Laci (00:36:57):

How about get rid of the fact that the only thing you ever say about that character is what he’s eating. And for him to stop eating, you could just change that.

Matt (00:37:06):

All of this is so weird. Obviously you’re allowed to do any of this. You can change whatever you want, should you change whatever you want. Should you really alter the meaning of the author’s intent when he’s no longer alive to tell you what he thinks of this? That’s where it gets weird. But you own the copyright, so you’re allowed to do whatever you want. Philip Pullman, the author of his dark materials, like said in a radio interview, he said, just let the books go out of print. And that’s kind of what I think is things do become no longer appropriate. Things change and that’s okay. That’s good. And if you want to read them, you should be able to, but read them in a scholarly context. I don’t know what to do, but I do like the idea of if this is no longer appropriate, then just people should just stop buying it.

Laci (00:37:59):

Well, and you just remove capitalism and then you no longer have a problem, then it’s just a cash crap. Just stop selling the books.

Matt (00:38:08):

But then’s it, say goodbye to hundreds of millions of dollars every year. And passive

Laci (00:38:12):

Income,

Matt (00:38:13):

You know what? You can make movies out of these books and remove the problematic things.

Laci (00:38:17):

And the books that still exist makes it more special and rare. Not that you have control what collectors sell them for, but at least it makes your IP more interesting.

Matt (00:38:31):

But it’s fascinating. I mean,

Laci (00:38:32):

They should have called me.

Matt (00:38:34):

You and I have sometimes we talk off the podcast.

Laci (00:38:37):

We

Matt (00:38:37):

Were talking about Taylor Taylor’s version and sort of had a debate about that.

Laci (00:38:43):

Talk about that.

Matt (00:38:43):

Yeah, we did. We talked about, because she rerecord, she’s in the process of rerecording all of her songs so that she owns the new

Laci (00:38:51):

Versions. Oh, that’s what that means.

Matt (00:38:53):

So that she can own her masters. And I said, this is good for labor, but maybe bad for art because I do want artists to own their own work.

Laci (00:39:04):

Absolutely.

Matt (00:39:05):

But in terms of like, well, what’s the real, if whatever real means, what’s the real version of the song?

Laci (00:39:12):

She gets the opportunity now to correct little things. If she wants to, she can whitewash herself or not whitewash, she can cleanse herself of some PE if she wants to, but the other stuff still exists and she’d only be highlighting and underlining things that she’s embarrassed about or think might be not kind of insensitive by changing them. She’s safer just to do it the same way again.

Matt (00:39:32):

She has, I think for the most part, has not changed anything in terms of lyrics. I think there was one lyric she changed, but it’s interesting to think about, well, I recorded, I did it this way, but I was younger and I’m smarter now, and I would do it this way this time. But it’s like if DaVinci decided I’m going to paint the Mona Lisa again, you won’t be able to tell the difference. I’m going to use all the same stuff

Laci (00:39:55):

He has every right to,

Matt (00:39:56):

I know he has a right to, but when you look at it, which would you say is the more authentic version of the thing? Because one is recorded at a time and place,

Laci (00:40:05):

That’s fine. But I think this is different. This is her getting to do what’s fair and getting to own what she’s made. And if she can get an exact copy and that’s what she wants to do, cool. But all the others still exist. It’s not like it’s going away because she’s redoing it.

Matt (00:40:22):

That to me is the key. If the other stuff still available, it’s why the George Lucas thing with the Star Wars movies is a crime, is that we don’t have access to the original cuts of the Star Wars movies.

Laci (00:40:35):

And it’s why you should collect physical media, because if you already have all of Taylor Swift’s albums and they’re not digital, or they are digital, but they’re on your computer, they’re not owned by something else, then you’re good.

Matt (00:40:48):

And there I like it there. It’s like a, Hey, it’s interesting to listen to a song recorded 15 years ago, then try to recreate it as faithfully as you can, but still notice something’s different. Okay, so that’s all. That’s Rule Doll. But he’ll come back.

Laci (00:41:02):

He always comes back.

Matt (00:41:03):

They’re going to make a movie out of this book. So we’re going to start with the history of the movie’s development with the most obvious place, which is Quaker Oats, which wants to launch a candy brand

Laci (00:41:13):

Pilgrims.

Matt (00:41:14):

So the Quaker Oats people have a chance meeting with producer David Waler, and he had already been interested in adapting the Chocolate Factory book. And they said, you know what? We want to get in on that. We’ll pay for the movie, we’ll pay for the production of the movie in exchange for the license to make Wonka products. So they do. So this movie is produced by the Quaker Oats Company, puts up $3 million,

Laci (00:41:38):

Is it in the credits?

Matt (00:41:40):

And they bring a board. I mean, this sounds weird, but this happens all the time.

Laci (00:41:45):

Sure. You need a producer.

Matt (00:41:46):

It’s what a producer is. Yeah. That’s what a producer is. Yeah. It’s just sometimes the production company won’t be called Quaker Oats,

Laci (00:41:52):

And the term producer is so

Matt (00:41:57):

Flexible.

Laci (00:41:58):

Exactly. So I’m sure this is a food manufacturing company, so I’m sure they can write it in the contract that they don’t get any creativity decision making. I mean, it’s a producer in that they get to sell these candy bars afterward, but they don’t get to dictate how the story is told, or I don’t know. You can still have art with producers. You need producers.

Matt (00:42:19):

Yeah. I mean really investors is what they are, but they’re the owners of the movie.

Laci (00:42:23):

It’s just usually not such a known brand. And yeah, it’s like two doors in a monkey production or one cat’s foot production. There’s always some, the production companies, they’re always funny. Like I’ve never heard of that. Never heard of that.

Matt (00:42:37):

Yeah. You usually just have to set up an LLC to make the movie. And so just, I dunno, come up with a name.

Laci (00:42:43):

So working title production company that really is one.

Matt (00:42:48):

So David Waler is the producer, and he frequently works with director Mel Stewart. They get hired to make this movie, and Rawal Dahl is brought aboard to write the screenplay to adapt his own novel.

(00:43:00):

So Mel Stewart is the director of the movie, and he directed a number of feature films in addition to Willy Wonka. But he had his most success making documentaries both before this movie and after what? He made a Kennedy assassination documentary called Four Days in November. I’ve seen it got an Oscar nomination, so that’s the most notable thing. But I looked at his feature credits and I didn’t recognize any of the titles. But yeah, they bring on Al Doll, but apparently Al Doll doesn’t actually turn in a real script. He turns in some stuff that says, well see this chapter of my book and then see that chapter of

Laci (00:43:34):

My book. Oh no.

Matt (00:43:36):

So they bring on a writer named David Seltzer to rewrite it without telling Doll. And then when Doll finds out about this, he’s not happy and Brew All Doll’s. Never happy with the adaptations of his work CR episode about the Witches and all the feud, how angry he was at Jim Henson.

Laci (00:43:55):

Okay. So there’s never been one adaptation. Would he have been around for James and Giant Peach that’ve been after

Matt (00:44:00):

No, he was dead. No. Yeah, Matilda was after he was dead. Fantastic. Mr. Fox, BFG. Yeah. What would he have been happy with?

Laci (00:44:08):

Well, I don’t know that he was, but, oh, you mean if we had to guess what’s the most close to the source material?

Matt (00:44:14):

That’s not what I was asking, but that’s a good question.

Laci (00:44:16):

I think Matilda’s probably too changed.

Matt (00:44:18):

Oh, he’d hate Matilda.

Laci (00:44:19):

He hated, and it’s too much Danny DeVito thing.

Matt (00:44:22):

I think that these books just, it’s hard to adapt them. They have a specific tone. They exist in a sort of magical realist world.

Laci (00:44:29):

You need the writer to paint things as you’re supposed to see them and know them and on screen. You just can’t have that control,

Matt (00:44:35):

Which is the problem with Willy Wonka is it is too realistic. Most of the time. It seems to be too grounded.

Laci (00:44:41):

Well, and he’s supposed to make a room full of a room that everything’s edible almost. I’ll bet that’s not even the book. I’ll bet the whole thing’s edible. But in the movie you have to say almost,

Matt (00:44:54):

I don’t know.

Laci (00:44:55):

But that’s an impossible thing to do. And all it does is make me look at everything in the room that’s not, and notice how many things are inflatable and beach ball things. It totally bothers me every time. That’s not a gummy bear. If Violet had caught that gummy bear falling out of the tree, it would’ve weighed her to the ground. She wouldn’t have gone, Ooh, gummy bear. It’s bullshit. I want to be this person for Halloween. I don’t know who this is.

Matt (00:45:22):

This is Joel Gray. You might know him as the father of Jennifer Gray. Oh. But he was the first choice to play Willy Wonka.

Laci (00:45:29):

I could see

Matt (00:45:29):

It the very next year. Instead of making Willy Wonka, he made the movie Cabaret and he won an Oscar for

Laci (00:45:35):

It. That’s what looks so familiar. That’s cabaret makeup right there, right?

Matt (00:45:39):

Yeah.

Laci (00:45:39):

The Rouge and the Lips.

Matt (00:45:41):

But he makes sense. He’s a singer and a dancer and a showman. But they said, we can’t hire him. He’s five foot five.

Laci (00:45:48):

All the children will be taller.

Matt (00:45:50):

He needs to tower over the kids. So

Laci (00:45:53):

You just can wear club kid shoes in that top hat. And he’s set.

Matt (00:45:56):

So yeah, they found Gene Wilder,

Laci (00:45:58):

Who’s

Matt (00:45:58):

Five foot 10,

Laci (00:45:59):

Who was hiding amongst all these men. Yeah. But Gene Wilder projects much bigger. And look at that hat. Was the hat in the story or did they write it in to give him height?

Matt (00:46:09):

I think it’s in the story.

Laci (00:46:11):

Augustus is tall.

Matt (00:46:13):

Oh, he’s

Laci (00:46:13):

Tall. He’s a grown ass man.

Matt (00:46:16):

They filmed this over the course of five months. So any of these kids who could have grown, that was another concern. If a kid has a growth spur, he’s going to be taller than Joel Gray.

Laci (00:46:23):

So his shorts used to be to his knees.

Matt (00:46:25):

These used to be reasonable shorts.

Laci (00:46:28):

Hey, I have one quick question. Violet’s outfit has always very much stood out to me, and she’s got a red belt. The red belt always has seemed very out of place. She seems kind of like a little soldier or something, that outfit. But wouldn’t you agree that that belt was solely placed there just so you could see it pop when she turns into the blueberry?

Matt (00:46:47):

Of course.

Laci (00:46:47):

Got it. Look at that picture.

Matt (00:46:50):

So Gene Wilder, let’s talk about Gene Wilder. I read his book, kiss Me Like a Stranger Over the weekend. It’s a great book. You should read it. He’s very candid, a very personal, and I really like how he was honest about how messy his marriage to Gilner Radner was and how sort of human and the disappointments, and then how tragic they were only together for a few years before she died of cancer.

Laci (00:47:15):

How old was she when

Matt (00:47:16):

She died? She was 43.

Laci (00:47:18):

Oh God.

Matt (00:47:18):

Yeah. Because when I told you he was married to her, you said, oh, I really admire him. You could be married to a comedian. So sort of

Laci (00:47:27):

Well, any comedian’s going to be someone hard to be married to. They’re going to have opinions, be creative, be in the time when they would’ve been together. It’s a more masculine trait being funny.

Matt (00:47:40):

But in the book, I mean, he talks about that. That did create difficulties and

Laci (00:47:43):

Well, can I bring this back to us? It’s like when you and I are around, it’s usually in a professional setting, but I’m just how I am. And you are always, and sex and fuck you.

Matt (00:48:00):

I’m a sex showman.

Laci (00:48:02):

I’m not a sex showman, but I talk about fucking a lot. No, I don’t. But anyway, people get the sense that I’m a lot because in public I’m turned to 11. That’s just the way I am. They don’t know that there’s other settings.

Matt (00:48:19):

But

Laci (00:48:19):

Don’t you get the comment from guys all the time,

Matt (00:48:23):

Women too.

Laci (00:48:24):

Oh fuck. Okay, tell me their names because fuck them.

Matt (00:48:27):

She’s like this all the time.

Laci (00:48:29):

Well that, yeah, but more the comment of like, I don’t know how you do it.

Matt (00:48:34):

Oh yeah,

Laci (00:48:34):

Yeah,

Matt (00:48:35):

Brother.

Laci (00:48:37):

Give the Those are the two.

Matt (00:48:39):

Yeah, it’s brother. No, I don’t know how you handle her

Laci (00:48:45):

Exactly. Because women need to be handled.

Matt (00:48:47):

Yeah, I guess with a leash is how I

Laci (00:48:49):

Handle it. Well, and that’s the thing. That’s why being a comedian and being married or being in a relationship, those things are hard because that is the opposite of a person of a woman who’s being controlled by her husband.

Matt (00:49:04):

And men, if you’re not okay with it, have a podcast. That’s what I say. No, actually the solution is go to therapy.

Laci (00:49:12):

Yes,

Matt (00:49:14):

Okay.

Laci (00:49:14):

Oh, and have a safe word like we do, but we can’t say it on the podcast. We actually use it. And I don’t want people to know what we’re doing

Matt (00:49:20):

To be clear, A safe word.

Laci (00:49:21):

Oh, sorry.

Matt (00:49:22):

Just in social settings. If Laci’s being a little extra, there’s just a little thing I can say

Laci (00:49:27):

Extra in a way that’s no longer fun for Matt. So he says the thing, and then I know it’s a loving reminder for me to make sure we both have a nice night. And I go, okay, it works

Matt (00:49:37):

Okay, sweetheart, you don’t need to be on this stage.

Laci (00:49:41):

No, that would piss me off if I’ve gone on it. I’ve already decided I do

Matt (00:49:44):

Need to be on this stage. We paid to see the Ramones. Okay, gene Wilder’s book. I bring it up because he was aware very early on that he was funny, but that it wasn’t immediately apparent what was funny about him. And he wanted to be in movies, but he knew that if he ever had to audition for anything, it wouldn’t work. The casting director wouldn’t get it. With just him standing in the room and saying funny things. They needed to see him in action.

Laci (00:50:18):

Look at his face.

Matt (00:50:20):

What a sweet baby. Gene Wilder born in. When was he born? I,

Laci (00:50:28):

1970.

Matt (00:50:29):

I don’t dunno. He was 37 years old when he made this movie. So he’s from Milwaukee. He was born Jerry Silverman. Gene Wilder is his stage name.

Speaker 5 (00:50:37):

He had

Matt (00:50:37):

To come up with a stage name very quickly. And he says in his book, he was asked, why’d you pick Gene? And he’s like, well, I remember this guy from when I was a kid. He was very nice and cool and his name was Jean. And the person he was saying this to said, well, also your mother’s name is Jean. I was like, oh yeah,

Laci (00:50:55):

It’s spelled GEAN.

Matt (00:50:58):

Probably. I, I listened to the book. I didn’t read

Laci (00:51:01):

It.

Matt (00:51:02):

I contend that listening is reading, but some people disagree, but you should listen to this book because Gene Wilder narrates it. You get to hear that wonderful voice for six hours.

Laci (00:51:10):

That’s soothing.

Matt (00:51:11):

So he knew he was funny, but he wanted to be taken seriously and he wanted to learn real acting or at least what he thought of as real acting. And he talks about his attitudes as a young man. And he didn’t, why didn’t I realize I’m funny. Just pursue that. That’s what I’m good at. But he wanted to be a real actor. And he studied the Stanislavsky system of method acting with Lee Strasberg, the famous teacher of the method in the 1960s. Do you understand what the method did in terms of

Laci (00:51:40):

I don’t

Matt (00:51:41):

Changing acting

Laci (00:51:43):

And I feel like, is it something to anchor you? It’s something a constant or something you’re adding to the character that’s physical. Because I think method acting is lots of things. It could be staying in character, even when you’re offset. It could be living as that person before the movie ever shoots.

Matt (00:51:59):

Yes, its all of those. It can

Laci (00:52:00):

Be putting cotton balls in your cheeks. If you’re the godfather guy, it can be eating because maybe eating helps you be more realistic and natural. Brad Pitt. So

Matt (00:52:11):

It’s

Laci (00:52:12):

Finding your

Matt (00:52:12):

Anger. Anger. It can be any of those things. But even more broadly, it’s just like up until, I don’t know, the 1950s acting was just, I don’t know, say the words and make your faces and stuff. You don’t think about it. You act. And the actor he keeps bringing up is Spencer Tracy. He’s like, obviously Spencer Tracy’s a great actor, but he never thought about why would the character do this in this moment?

Laci (00:52:34):

Building the character. When our kid was in the most recent play, there was a huge ensemble cast. It’s just the way the play worked. So there was very few people who were actually going to have speaking roles, but I loved how the directors made them understand how important it’s for them to develop that they are a background character, but to think of three passions, they need to think, anyway, that’s what this sounds like, right?

Matt (00:53:00):

Oh yes. Really develop it.

Laci (00:53:02):

What’s your why?

Matt (00:53:03):

Tie it into yourself. What can you connect this character’s emotion to your own emotion, create some sort of emotional connection, some vulnerability, and it will then come out in the performance. He is prominent in the New York stage theater scene of the 1960s, and he gets a leading role opposite. And in 1963, Anne Bancroft is coming off winning the best actress Oscar for the Miracle Worker. And in the future she will play Mrs. Robinson in the graduate.

Speaker 5 (00:53:35):

Oh wow.

Matt (00:53:37):

In this play together. And she says, come have coffee with me. I’m going to bring my boyfriend. His name is Mel Brooks. And they went on to be married and for a long time and are the best couple ever, maybe. So yeah, he meets Mel Brooks and Mel Brooks says, I’m working on a screenplay. Would you like to be in my movie? And he’s like, I sure would like to be in a movie. I never thought it would happen, but I’d love to be in the movie. And he says, because you’d be perfect for this character. In this movie I’m writing, it’s called Springtime for Hitler. And he’s like, okay, great. And Mel says, well keep your schedule open. And then he doesn’t hear from Mel Brooks again for three years.

Laci (00:54:11):

He kept it wide open

Matt (00:54:12):

And he, his never wanted to commit to anything like long term, like, well, what if Mel Brooks comes back with that great park he was offering me then, okay, 1967, he gets cast in a very small part in the movie Bonnie and Clyde, one of the great movies of this era. It’s his first film roll, and I showed this, this is only six minutes of the movie that he’s in, but I showed it to you. And it’s like he’s already got all of his traits, all of his characteristics, his screen persona is totally there.

Laci (00:54:45):

I mean, he came out of womb that way. It seems like these are all things, this is probably just the way he speaks, but he’s kind of leaning into what helps him appear on the stage.

Matt (00:54:55):

But I think one of the things the book does is show that is something he had to work on for a long time on stage in school, in classes. But in 1971, when he plays Willy Wonka, he’s 37. So when he’s playing Bonnie and Clyde, he’s 33. He’s lived a whole life to develop this screen persona, but he’s just, he’s amazing. In that movie. He jumps off the screen, and then shortly after that, Mel Brooks reappears, he says, Mel Brooks just showed up in his dressing room one day and he’s like, Hey, let’s go. And was acting like they had just spoken the day before, but they go and they make this movie. They have to call it The Producers. They don’t call it Springtime for Hitler. And I think that Gene Wilder and the Producers maybe is the funniest movie performance of all time.

Laci (00:55:42):

Oh, wow.

Matt (00:55:43):

Or let’s say top 10, I think. We’ll do the producers on this

Laci (00:55:46):

Show? Yeah, we should

Matt (00:55:47):

Soon, because I’d like to just spend more time with more time with him.

Laci (00:55:52):

And I have a guest in mind for that one.

Matt (00:55:54):

Okay.

Laci (00:55:56):

We’ll talk off air. Is it

Matt (00:55:57):

Gene Wilder?

Laci (00:55:58):

Oh my God, yes.

Matt (00:55:59):

He gets an Oscar nomination for the Producers. The movie’s not a big hit, but it gets a lot of critical praise, gets Oscar nominations, including Gene Wilder as nominated for best supporting Actor for a comedy,

Speaker 5 (00:56:10):

Which

Matt (00:56:10):

Was not a thing that happened all the time back then. So he makes a few more movies, and then they ask him if he wants to play Willy Wonka and the story he always tells in his book, and in every,

Laci (00:56:23):

I didn’t know this, but I knew this. You know what I’m saying?

Matt (00:56:27):

We have a gif of Willy Wonka tumbling Down.

Laci (00:56:29):

But what you’re about to say is exactly what I thought when I saw this in the movie.

Matt (00:56:34):

Okay, so you just say the quote then.

Laci (00:56:36):

I don’t want to,

Matt (00:56:36):

Okay. The story he always tells is that the director of the Willy Wonka movie, Mel Stewart, came to him and said, would you play Willy Wonka? And he reads the book and he says, I don’t know. Okay. I think I will play this character, but on one condition, you need to let me, when my character first appears on stage, I want to be, or on screen, I want to be walking with a cane and looking like I am disabled. I can’t walk on my own. And then my cane will get stuck in the ground and I will continue walking, but then I will fall down and then do a dramatic somersault and jump up and show my hands. And that’s the only condition under which I will do the movie. And the director’s like, well, I don’t get it. Why do you want to do that? And he said, because if I do this, no one will ever know after that if they can trust me or not. They will never actually know where I stand. And so the director didn’t understand it, but he let him do it, and

Laci (00:57:35):

It’s amazing.

Matt (00:57:37):

And when Gene Wilder died in 2016, and then his nephew disclosed that he had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a long time, even they didn’t publicly disclose it. And he said this in this statement, the decision to wait until this time to disclose the condition wasn’t vanity, but more so that the countless young children that would smile or call out to him, there’s Willy Wonka, would not have to be then exposed to an adult referencing illness or trouble and causing delight to travel, to worry, disappointment, or confusion. He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world end. Yeah. So it just didn’t want kids to see there’s Willy Wonka. Why is he walking like that? Why does he look so sick? Or why is he talking about being confused or having a

Laci (00:58:21):

Tough time? Or why doesn’t he know that he’s Willy Wonker or

Matt (00:58:23):

Something? Yeah. After Willy Wonka, he plays everything you ever want to know about Sex by Woody Allen. He’s the only good part of that movie. I don’t like that movie very much, but he convinces you that he’s in Love with a Goat, and then he has Blazing Saddles in Young Frankenstein, and then just way more hits than I remember. He was on a great run until the late eighties, but he had his movies with Richard Pryor, starting with Silver Streak. I watched Blazing Saddles again a few days ago, and it’s of the three Mel Brooks movies he did. That’s the one where he’s the least essential,

Speaker 5 (00:58:55):

But

Matt (00:58:57):

It’s an amazing movie with a great ensemble cast. But every second he’s on screen. You’re just enraptured by

Speaker 5 (00:59:02):

Him.

Matt (00:59:03):

Yeah. Yeah. The movie though is not a big hit. So no giant candy line for Quaker Oats, sorry.

Laci (00:59:12):

But they still love them oats.

Matt (00:59:13):

They do

Laci (00:59:14):

Okay. And he loves them goats. I just found that out.

Matt (00:59:17):

So not a big hit when it comes out, it’s a disappointment, but through TV viewings, it’s a wonderful life. Like The Wizard of Oz, it becomes a perennial classic,

Laci (00:59:26):

As you’ve said that I just realized how I saw it. That’s me. Of course, it wouldn’t have been someone put it in and played it. This would definitely be a movie I would’ve first seen on tv. And then no matter where you catch it, you just kind of watch it.

Matt (00:59:42):

And with Christmas vacation last week, if it’s not a movie you necessarily watch Beginning to End, maybe you don’t notice how

(00:59:52):

Soggy this movie is, how much it seems to drag, how once they get on the weird Steam Steampunk Chocolate Factory car, like this movie’s still going on, how maybe that’s the case. And I was trying to find out with It’s a Wonderful Life. The story is famous because the movie fell out of copyright, and as a result, every TV station in the world was allowed to just play it, and that’s how it became a hit. Was there something like that with this movie? No, it’s just people liked it on TV and VHS. Yeah, Rual. Alvo not happy, didn’t like this, didn’t like Gene Wilder, thought they got everything wrong. He was always unhappy with his adaptations. When authors complain and gripe about the films made out of their work, I’m usually on the side of the filmmaker. This is the movie. Your book is your book. They are two separate things, deal with it. But I do think he has a point about the movie kind of missing the zany spirit of the novel, but he did have to begrudgingly accept, okay, people like this movie and people really like Gene Wilder, and we like Gene Wilder too. He’s great in this movie, even if it doesn’t really make sense that he’s in this movie.

(01:01:05):

Yeah, agreed. So with that, we’re going to talk about the movie eventually. Folks, if we seem a little low energy

Laci (01:01:34):

Speak for yourself.

Matt (01:01:36):

There is Well

Laci (01:01:37):

Pow bam.

Matt (01:01:40):

I’m going to need to lean on the pow from you because we assigned ourselves 10 times the work to produce a well. We took a trip to Willy Wonka factory and we had to document that, and I’m sure everybody’s going to be appreciative of all our efforts.

Laci (01:01:54):

Absolutely. And I feel like we do need to put at the front of the video the part that is the video of this podcast that if you saw my TikTok promotions, making sure you understood how normal this episode would be, if you’re experiencing it on YouTube alone, then it in fact is just our normal episode. That’s a good point. Have no idea what the fuck we’re talking about. But we did upload the audio of our very unnormal segment, so if you’re on YouTube, you can listen to the audio.

Matt (01:02:27):

Just

Laci (01:02:27):

Imagine it’s meant to be audio only. Anyhow.

Matt (01:02:31):

But yeah, kind of running out of gas at the end of this year out of how much unnecessary work we assigned ourselves. So this movie is brought to us from the Good Folks at Paramount. You like ’em. Now, this floored me because I always think of the Willy Wonka movies as Warner Brothers. They’re inextricably linked in my mind, and I think that that’s largely because of the Snapper case that the original Willy Wonka movie came

Laci (01:02:56):

In. I’m so unburdened by these woes. I know not.

Matt (01:03:00):

But yeah, it was a Paramount, paramount production. And then they reverted back to Quaker Oats, who then sold the rights to Warner Brothers.

Laci (01:03:07):

Wait, paramount was Quaker Oats?

Matt (01:03:10):

No, no. Paramounts sold the movie rights. Or maybe Quaker Oats already had them, and Paramount was just the distributor. But Quaker Oats owned the movie. You can see in the opening credits copyright Quaker Oats, and then they sold it to Warner Brothers. Now here’s the crazy thing.

Laci (01:03:25):

Oh my God.

Matt (01:03:26):

Now a lot of this movie and a lot of what we’re going to discuss about this movie is watching this movie with your third eye open, you got to know what to look for. And I do

Laci (01:03:35):

What?

Matt (01:03:36):

When you watch this movie on Max, the Paramount logo show is up. And that’s interesting because it’s Warner Brothers streaming service. That’s nice of them to give the credit. But if you watch the Blu-ray or you watch the DVD, this Paramount logo will not show up. It will just be a Warner Brothers logo. It’ll be Bugs Bunny munching on a carrot straight into the chocolate factory. Wow. Yes,

Laci (01:03:55):

Because carrots dipped in chocolate.

Matt (01:03:57):

You got a

Laci (01:03:58):

Snack there, a national pastime.

Matt (01:04:00):

So Bill’s candy Shop Bill, I thought

Laci (01:04:03):

I know Bill. They couldn’t give him a wacky name like Gordon.

Matt (01:04:07):

I’ll tell you why. Third Eye

Laci (01:04:09):

Willy Wonka.

Matt (01:04:10):

I bet Willy Wonka opened this shop. I bet the bill is Bill Wonka and this guy, this bill, the Candy Cellar, he’s trying to play it cool. I’ve got all these great snacks. Here’s Slug Worth.

Laci (01:04:23):

Yes. And then Wonka.

Matt (01:04:25):

But yeah, he’s really

Laci (01:04:26):

Wonka

Matt (01:04:26):

Pushing that Wonka. All of my displays are Wonka. The kid’s like, why is Willy Wonka so great? Why does he make such great products? Please tell us. Well, you might as well ask why the dandelion, the flower in the moonlight? So I’m saying, this guy works for Willy Wonka.

Laci (01:04:41):

I’ve said it when we were watching the movie

Matt (01:04:43):

Show. That’s who I got it from. He is a show.

Laci (01:04:45):

This guy’s a pusher. It’s right by the fucking school. It’s the first place they go.

Matt (01:04:50):

I know the kids just pour out of there and run to this shop.

Laci (01:04:53):

They know where they’re going.

Matt (01:04:54):

Were you excited about Candy as a kid?

Laci (01:04:56):

Okay. You and me are severely different in this department. I’m sure I liked Candy. I do feel like the idea of Candy is really overplayed in sitcoms and shows and movies, and I’m thinking maybe that’s because I had no restraints on my diet. I was lucky we didn’t have a ton of stuff in our pantry, but if we had it, I could eat it whenever I wanted. There were no rules. And I’d say that’s lucky and unlucky, but maybe the allure of candy misses me because if we had candy, I was eating it whenever I wanted.

Matt (01:05:30):

Yeah, you might be right. But I really think this is just sort of a dated idea that comes like maybe before Snacks and homes were such a popular thing.

Laci (01:05:38):

It’s a reoccurring theme in Bob’s Burgers, how much the kids love Candy.

Matt (01:05:42):

But no, no, the trope being propagated by people who’ve just inherited it, but don’t actually observe it in kids. I don’t think kids have ever been, I mean, I don’t know, since the seventies have been going nuts for candy,

Laci (01:05:56):

Did you just come across a conspiracy? What if we’ve never really cared that much about candy? What if this has always just been commercially interjected until it becomes a thing?

Matt (01:06:07):

Yes. It’s like

Laci (01:06:08):

Adults like candy just as much as children.

Matt (01:06:10):

But it’s just like you just say it until it’s true. It’s like a kid in a candy store. A kid and candy store is as happy as a kid in

Laci (01:06:16):

Walmart

Matt (01:06:17):

Videos in Walmart.

Laci (01:06:18):

Yes, right. It’s as happy as an adult in a candy store.

Matt (01:06:22):

I also noticed there are no Walmarts or any big box stores, which I know were not as big in the seventies, but they existed. But everything is just small little local shops in this movie.

Laci (01:06:30):

It’s supposed to be a small little town that just, I guess is completely, was completely, there’ll be one big factory in a town, and that’s where all the blue collar jobs

Matt (01:06:40):

Come

Laci (01:06:40):

From.

Matt (01:06:41):

Sure. But I’m talking

Laci (01:06:41):

About, so one is a villain. You shut down his shit, got rid of all the jobs. There should be riots,

Matt (01:06:46):

But they show the whole world. The whole

Laci (01:06:49):

World. Oh, right.

Matt (01:06:51):

I can never see

Laci (01:06:52):

A

Matt (01:06:52):

Walmart. Okay.

Laci (01:06:54):

If I should dream, I should be able to see a Walmart in my

Matt (01:06:59):

Tangerine.

Laci (01:07:00):

Tangerine. Yep.

Matt (01:07:01):

This candy guy, this is Aubrey Woods playing Bill the Shop Keep, and he sings the song, the Candyman. The songs in this movie are by Leslie kus and Anthony newly,

Laci (01:07:11):

Does he ever say his name? We just assume it’s Bill because it’s Bill Candy’s

Matt (01:07:14):

Stuff. I’m just assuming it’s Bill. I think he is Bill in the credits

Laci (01:07:17):

Fine. He’s Bill and IMDB,

Matt (01:07:20):

Which comes from the credits.

Laci (01:07:22):

You come from the credit.

Matt (01:07:23):

Don’t tell him the Candy man. The song. Would the next year become a number one hit for Sammy Davis Jr.

Laci (01:07:30):

Oh,

Matt (01:07:31):

Does his song mention Willy Wonka? I wondered as I looked up the lyrics, now he just replaces Willy Wonka mix with the Candyman mix.

Laci (01:07:39):

Yeah, because he made it into a sexy song. Right?

Matt (01:07:42):

Yeah. His

Laci (01:07:42):

Candy is his dick.

Matt (01:07:43):

My grandfather, when he died a few years ago, the nursing home retirement. What’s the right way to say it?

Laci (01:07:51):

Well, is it the place you go right before you pass away or the place he lived for a while because he needed some assistance a

Matt (01:07:57):

While Assisted living.

Laci (01:07:58):

Assisted

Matt (01:07:58):

Living. Yes. They had me make a slideshow for him with the song The Candyman, because at this facility he was the Candyman. Just because he

Laci (01:08:08):

Right. No, because he always Right. It’s an ice breaker. You’re always going to have someone come say hi if they know your pockets are full of candy. I think it was smart.

Matt (01:08:16):

But this is how you know that this trope about candy comes from old people because old people fucking love candy.

Laci (01:08:22):

Well, how else do you get young people to keep talking to you and think you’re relevant? You’re the one that can purchase all the candy. You got the car and you’re just like, come here there. Give grandma Mo tr got a nice butter scotch.

Matt (01:08:34):

I guess so.

Laci (01:08:34):

I don’t know. Whatever candy greases the wheels.

Matt (01:08:39):

I got to tell you though, but

Laci (01:08:40):

Matt hates candy. I mean, anyone that listens to this podcast knows that.

Matt (01:08:43):

No, I know, but I don’t know if I’ve actually said this to you. The word candy when I was a kid couldn’t even say the word. I was too repulsed by it. And

Laci (01:08:52):

You don’t know the word origin.

Matt (01:08:53):

It creeped me out. It creeped me out just to read the word on the page. And I still do get a twinge of reaction. Like, oh, don’t say

Laci (01:08:59):

That. Alright, well, we both have this as a this. Wait, we didn’t start by. We did. It’s a joint beam. Did we already discuss? Fantastic. But you brought this upon yourself. I did not suggest this movie, so

Speaker 4 (01:09:12):

No,

Laci (01:09:13):

I know. Feel like you really kind of put me in a corner of having to abuse you with candy, though I did try to find

Matt (01:09:17):

A way you, I didn’t say anything about you doing

Laci (01:09:19):

Anything to me. I know, but I feel it coming. I can’t not talk about this movie without discussing candy words. And I feel like I’m going to get in trouble.

Matt (01:09:25):

Look how much I’m saying the word. I’ve confronted my demons. I’ve gotten past it. I have much more of a problem with gum. So that is a struggle for me in this movie.

Laci (01:09:33):

We will get there

Matt (01:09:33):

When the Loompa sing about how gum chewing is disgusting, and you should be murdered if

Laci (01:09:38):

You do it. You feel seen.

Matt (01:09:38):

I’m like, I agree. But when I had to make this Candy Man slideshow, I wasn’t that excited about the word coming up again and again, I just wanted to let everybody know.

Laci (01:09:49):

I’m glad we’re still in the, we really do get stuck on the first scene, don’t we? Charlie, Charlie

Matt (01:09:53):

Bucket, we meet Charlie Bucket, he’s played by you, Peter Ostrom, and this was his first and only film role. He was discovered doing community theater at age 12. They found him. They’re like, you might be good audition. He auditioned and then they came back in a while and they’re like, Hey, you got it. Move to Germany now for five months. You have 10 days. And he said he enjoyed the experience and he was offered a contract for Paramount, but he declined and he never acted again. And he became an equestrian veterinarian. And he did speak a lot about this movie until really the two thousands when the industry for it did you do something in a movie once kind of exploded. And now there’s cons and special features on DVDs and podcasts and stuff. So you can hear from him about it. But it’s got to be so weird too, to

Laci (01:10:44):

Absolutely bizarre

Matt (01:10:46):

To this thing that you did 50 years ago. Literally, I’m not that person who did that.

Laci (01:10:53):

Right. And just to have that many minutes in a row of, and I’ve never thought of this, but that many minutes of you in a row, your personality that you could watch, it’s like the younger version of yourself gets to live in a way that for us who did not have video cameras on us all the time growing up, we’ll never remember. That Part of it is just weird. My little personality walking around who I cannot relate to at all anymore,

Matt (01:11:17):

And I read this, there’ll be veterinary medicine journal articles about him. They’ll be titled Dr. Ostrom and The Chocolate Factory. It’s about his work with dairy cows and

Laci (01:11:29):

Stuff. It’s like he could have done himself a favor by at least doing two more movies that way. At least it was child actor and not just fucking Charlie Bucket. You’re only tied to this. That is interesting.

Matt (01:11:39):

But I think that movies need kids, but being a kid actor is not good for you. I think maybe if there was a labor law that says you can only do one. You can only do one movie, maybe that’d be good

Laci (01:11:52):

Until you are of age.

Matt (01:11:54):

Yeah.

Laci (01:11:54):

So you’ve really just got to hope you’ve picked the right project. Yeah,

Matt (01:11:56):

Exactly.

Laci (01:11:57):

That’s fucked.

Matt (01:11:58):

Yeah. When Gene Wilder died, I noticed a lot of headlines aggregating a quote from Peter, and the quote that he said was like, it’s like losing a parent. It’s going to happen. But once it happens, and what they ran with was Charlie Bucket actor like losing a parent, which is not what he said because he said no, they hadn’t spoken since 1971. But

Laci (01:12:25):

Did he not give him that factory

Matt (01:12:28):

Liar, horse factory? No. Yeah, this movie is filmed in Munich and they wanted to combine lots of different sort of cultures and languages and make it into a not real place. So it’s very clear German architecture, but people are speaking with American accents. There’s different kinds of money people are using.

Laci (01:12:48):

Yeah. It just feels like ye old village doesn’t seem to matter.

Matt (01:12:51):

Yeah, it’s a storybook. But Charlie runs by Mr. Willy Wonka factory, and he looks at it and then a tinker comes and says, A tinker

Laci (01:13:02):

Just a man with a cart full of hatchets. I know it’s a real profession, but Jesus. Ah, don’t look in that gate there child. What’s in there? There’s a crazy old man, no doubt here. A crazy old man. That’s what he said. And it was a weird way to start the

Matt (01:13:16):

Move. Yeah, I know. But it gets you now you know what you’re dealing with.

Laci (01:13:21):

It got me thinking. All right, so now we follow Charlie to his home, which is just the saddest little shack. Clearly understand he’s a boy with a dream. He seems to be happy go lucky, even though he doesn’t have much. And then the weirdest fricking reveal, maybe not the weirdest of the whole movie, but he’s got four grandparents in their sixties and early seventies who’ve all laid in one bed foot to nut or soup to, but to nut. But to nut for 20 years and just a way overworked mother making cabbage water for them. And

Matt (01:14:02):

Wait, that means they got in the bed in their forties.

Laci (01:14:04):

Exactly. Yes. My friend on TikTok named Dr. G McKee. He sent me a awesome fake trailer to Grandpa Joe, the untold story or whatever of just of him finding his golden ticket, his idea to pretend to be bedridden. And it’s like

Matt (01:14:25):

This. Oh yeah.

Laci (01:14:26):

It was awesome. Anyway,

Matt (01:14:28):

Yeah, there’s something going on. I mean, yeah, when he eventually gets out of the bed,

Laci (01:14:31):

He’s fine.

Matt (01:14:32):

They must’ve deleted the scene where the mother tries to stab him. So you could have gotten out of bed and gotten a job at any point.

Laci (01:14:38):

And all you old farts at some point could have stopped saying how they wish the boy’s father was alive. What about me? I’m doing a good job too. And I wrote down that they deleted the scenes where every night at 2:00 AM Grandpa Joe gets out of bed and does a little weird dancing strut around the home just to keep those muscles going.

Matt (01:15:01):

He’s got something going on. He also secretly gets a candy bar for Charlie.

Laci (01:15:05):

Yeah. How the

Matt (01:15:06):

Fuck did he get a courier to do it?

Laci (01:15:08):

Right. He knows. He just asked the woman the Can you go do another thing another, and I’m going to say it’s for me. Thanks.

Matt (01:15:15):

No, I know. I know you’re busy. I know you’re busy.

Laci (01:15:18):

I know you gave me this little coin to go get my pipe tobacco and you were going to go do that, but instead, I don’t to go do another thing and then I’m going to take full credit for that thing and I’m going to go to the factory. Mama. Alright, so this is when we see his very strong bond with Grandpa Joe, which they don’t explain why it’s that way. He completely ignores the other three old people in the bed. And I guess this is where they discuss that they’re are golden tickets. Is that right? Is this when we, they’re looking at something, Matt, in this picture you have here for me.

Matt (01:15:53):

No, this is him giving his coin for I want to pay for your tobacco from now on. And he’s like, oh, Charlie, I couldn’t possibly, I’ve got a card. Give it to me please. Because he’s fucking shaking right now. I need my

Laci (01:16:04):

Tobacco. Right. All right, so this was just to let us see Charlie’s home life and how hard he works and how giving he is and how he loves his family. But really he just loves Joe a lot.

Matt (01:16:17):

Joe is played by Jack Albertson, who was only 63. I mean, look at 63 year olds right now.

Laci (01:16:24):

I’m looking at one me,

Matt (01:16:27):

Don’t

Laci (01:16:27):

I look good for age.

Matt (01:16:29):

But yeah, he had won an Oscar a few years ago for a movie called The Subject Was Roses the following year. He’d be in the Poseidon Adventure. I think he’s very good in this movie.

Laci (01:16:38):

He’s very good,

Matt (01:16:38):

But he basically just vanishes once they get to the factory. Although not he’s there, but he’s just in the background doing, he’s

Laci (01:16:45):

A great wing man, but he is quite the instigator. He doesn’t seem to have parenting skills. He has buddy skills. I’m on the mom’s side the whole time. He just happens to end up being right. But he really does get Charlie’s hopes up

Matt (01:17:00):

The mom’s side in terms of,

Laci (01:17:02):

Dad, please don’t roll up. Charlie, please. I mean, Charlie was crush.

Matt (01:17:07):

He’s going to win all five for the truckers. She’s like, what are we going to

Laci (01:17:10):

Do with all those grandpa be alone in the factory with a man in his lumas?

Matt (01:17:14):

He wants it more. All you got to do is want things. I wonder how you ended up in that bed

Laci (01:17:19):

Wanting it.

Matt (01:17:20):

I wanted a certain

Laci (01:17:21):

Lifestyle

Matt (01:17:22):

Thing to inject. So yeah, the grandparents, the grandfather’s Joe and George, when I was a kid, I was like, those are my grandfather’s names.

Laci (01:17:30):

Did you try and get ’em in bed with you?

Matt (01:17:33):

All

Laci (01:17:33):

Of them at once?

Matt (01:17:34):

I did. Well, I

Laci (01:17:35):

Want to try something.

Matt (01:17:36):

It did sort of disturb me like intermixing your family’s like what set of grandparents are going to be happy being in bed together like that

Laci (01:17:46):

Don’t,

Matt (01:17:47):

And aren’t just constantly arguing and shitting on each other

Laci (01:17:49):

And well, and Forting and how many bedpans are there and bowel movements do those sink up.

Matt (01:17:57):

But this is a thing that it’s from the book and the book has a certain tone and it’s certain heightened reality when you depict it realistically. It’s like this is weird and sad,

Laci (01:18:08):

Weird. But the other three grandparents are clearly, they look much older than Grandpa Joe. So I don’t know. That helps me use them. And they all seem sleepier.

Matt (01:18:23):

Yeah, they

Laci (01:18:23):

Are sleepier than Sleepy Joe.

Matt (01:18:24):

When he gets out of the bed and starts dancing, none of them are like, maybe I should try. They’re just like,

Laci (01:18:29):

No, they let him do it. He’s always walking around at 2:00 AM Anyway, as long as,

Matt (01:18:32):

So Wonka mania sweeps the world,

Laci (01:18:35):

And I know it’s on purpose, but this first reporter, the one that’s going to interview Augustus is just standing right in front of a stag. So he’s got crazy antlers.

Matt (01:18:44):

Yeah. It’s like,

Laci (01:18:45):

It’s never since Twilight in the first twilight where Edward’s got a ble behind him. So he looks like an angel. An angel have a scene, but what is it supposed to mean?

Matt (01:18:56):

Oh no. It’s just funny. He

Laci (01:18:57):

Steered us.

Matt (01:18:58):

I think this movie, especially in the early parts is pretty funny. But it’s basically trying every single joke, every single parody it can throw at you.

Laci (01:19:07):

I was wondering if it was supposed to be like the town where it takes place. It’s like everyone in it is just a little off dairy and I know, but there are all over the world. So everyone in this world is just a little different. Quirkier, especially the teacher. Charlie’s teacher is quite the character. Alright, so now we are looking at Wonka mania. We’re looking at all the links. People are going to get all the bars that they can. The first ticket is found, and I mean they show the factory scene for how uch salt’s dad manages to get her a golden ticket, which has always driven me crazy. I always think about those ladies probably have blisters on their fingers doing the same repetitive emotion over and over and over again. Also, did they take that candy home to their families also, after they found the golden ticket? There’s no way they kept opening it, the rest of them. And they still had half of their boxes left in piles. And I’m thinking the other ticket could be in those boxes, ladies. And anyway, it’s like your job’s not over. All the tickets are found or all these boxes are open. I’m glad you found one Cindy.

Matt (01:20:23):

Mr. Turpentine is the teacher very, I always glommed onto this character because I like bad teachers. He doesn’t know how to calculate what percentage of a thousand. The number two is.

Laci (01:20:35):

It’s 2%.

Matt (01:20:36):

Well, it’s 0.2%. But he’s like, well how watch, and it’s not, it’s,

Laci (01:20:44):

It’s 2%,

Matt (01:20:46):

No, 2% of a thousand. No two is 2% of a hundred. So two is 0.2% of a thousand.

Laci (01:20:56):

I would’ve gotten an A in that class. He doesn’t know that.

Matt (01:21:00):

But he’s just one of these elements of, none of it really builds to anything other than there’s just a lot of silliness going on. There’s a of silly news broadcasts,

Laci (01:21:10):

A silly Willie

Matt (01:21:12):

Augustus’s father trying to eat the microphone. Augustus his mother. I didn’t realize that. It’s a joke that she’s dressed the way she is in Dul.

Laci (01:21:20):

She looks like a yodeler.

Matt (01:21:21):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But

Laci (01:21:23):

Every stereotype they can fit in. They

Matt (01:21:25):

Do. Yeah, exactly. But we also, the key character, we meet Slug Worth. He’s always on the scene when somebody gets a ticket and in the case of Verruca, he’s in that factory before the ticket is found.

Laci (01:21:36):

He really is. So it’s almost like Wonka knows where these tickets are going to be found. He knows where the boxes have been sent out. I’ve always felt this. It’s the same person who, it’s not like there’s, there’s been a big shipment. I’ll send my guy to that shipment. No, no, no,

Matt (01:21:52):

No. He knows he’s

Laci (01:21:53):

Everywhere.

Matt (01:21:53):

It’s predetermined. And he determined it.

Laci (01:21:56):

He snuck that in.

Matt (01:21:58):

Do you have a favorite of the kids? Of the other kids?

Laci (01:22:03):

Yeah.

Matt (01:22:04):

Yeah.

Laci (01:22:04):

I mean, she has the best song.

Matt (01:22:08):

Well, I mean of kids. She’s the only one who has a song,

Laci (01:22:11):

But she has the best song of the movie, I think.

Matt (01:22:14):

Yeah, she, she’s definitely the best. And she’s kind of a girl boss. Indeed. She’s kind of girl boss goals.

Laci (01:22:22):

And Violet is who you’re showing right now.

Matt (01:22:25):

And she is someone I’d like to erase from the timeline of movie history. Not her fault, but

Laci (01:22:30):

Just because of her gum.

Matt (01:22:31):

Yeah. Taking her gum out of her mouth and putting it our behind her ear.

Laci (01:22:34):

Yuck. And then, oh, Ophelia honey darling. Hi. What is her freaking name for? Fricking Hi Cordelia. Hi Cordelia. Honey. It always gives me the jeepers creepers when it’s a young girl, specifically young girls acting like they’re adult mom. Oh, hi honey Booby. I don’t know. There’s something very adult that she’s doing. It is an impression and it makes me go, Ugh.

Matt (01:23:02):

Well, yeah, yeah. Whether she says sweetheart or whatever word she says. Sweet, sweet,

Laci (01:23:06):

Dear. Poor little dear. Touch, touch, touch. She’s like,

Matt (01:23:09):

Her dad’s funny though.

Laci (01:23:10):

Well,

Matt (01:23:11):

She’s funny too. It’s

Laci (01:23:12):

They’re all funny.

Matt (01:23:13):

Yeah, they’re all good. They’re all funny.

Laci (01:23:15):

And I like that they’re equal opportunity offenders. There are American mike tv. It couldn’t be more stereotypical American with his guns and get out of the way. I’m a wild west man. Cowboys over here in America.

Matt (01:23:33):

Yeah. I didn’t pick up on until this viewing that they’re making a joke about Americans love getting guns as children

Laci (01:23:39):

And they think they’re cowboys. They think they’re still discovering American and taking things.

Matt (01:23:43):

But if we’re doing the five deadly sins of being a kid, so you’ve got gluttony and I guess you’ve got,

Laci (01:23:52):

There’s like five

Matt (01:23:52):

Greed slash Well, no, the great crime, the great horrible types of kid you can be, you can be gluttonous, you can be a brat, you can be a gum chewer, and you can be a kid who likes TV too much. These are the

Laci (01:24:09):

Why is gluttony something that’s bad about a kid?

Matt (01:24:12):

Well, I’m not saying it, but the idea of the story is these are four examples of bad behavior.

Laci (01:24:18):

Right? Right. If the Oompapa has made a song about it, it’s a thing that they don’t want to see in their next Chocolate Factory owner.

Matt (01:24:28):

So at least in the Tim Burton version, they try to update it and make it like she’s competitive. She’s too competitive and her mom’s hyper competitive. All she cares about is that’s in the remake.

Laci (01:24:39):

The two boys bring their mom. Okay, so in the remake, the mom comes with her.

Matt (01:24:43):

Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:24:43):

What

Laci (01:24:43):

You’re saying. Okay. Well, I mean I guess they do. Yeah, they do try to show the competitive nature, but they don’t, they need to give her one more opportunity to be competitive about something other than her gum chewing record, because she absolutely brings up that record several times. But it more seems like she’s passionate about gum, not about the record.

Matt (01:25:00):

And then when the alpa sing about what her crimes are, it’s that she choose gum. It’s not like you’re too concerned about winning, about owning the competition. And then they make Mike TV obsessed with video games and violence, but more than anything, he’s just a little asshole.

Laci (01:25:14):

He’s just a little asshole.

Matt (01:25:16):

Whereas in this movie, he’s kind of nothing.

Laci (01:25:19):

Once he gets to the chocolate factory, he’s nothing. Yeah.

Matt (01:25:21):

So then Charlie is a little upset. What does he have to be upset about? He’s, is it the cabbage stew and the fact that he has to work to support his family.

Laci (01:25:32):

Cabbage water.

Matt (01:25:33):

Cabbage water. And so he goes to visit his mom at work.

Laci (01:25:38):

I have always wondered the opening scene with the candy shop. Those kids are in there getting free candy. It’s not like get an admission, pay $5 admission and I’m going to pour candy all over you guys. And my fricking song that I’m doing.

Matt (01:25:51):

That’s true. He’s just giving it out.

Laci (01:25:53):

Car just could have gone fucking it. You wait for Bill to sing and you go in there because that man is pouring scoops of things.

Matt (01:26:00):

That’s true. He’s probably doing this every day.

Laci (01:26:01):

Every day. This guy loves, he loves candy. Yes. Right. He can’t get a liquor license because he is inappropriate with goats. I don’t know. But he can get that candy license

Matt (01:26:14):

Allegedly.

Laci (01:26:14):

Yeah. Not a big deal. Bill mc. They call him Billy the Kid Goats. He’s bad. No, black Philip what?

Matt (01:26:28):

From the witch?

Laci (01:26:30):

Go on. Oh. Oh, that’s the witch. Okay. That scene, I thought I made it up. All right. Yep.

Matt (01:26:36):

What scene

Laci (01:26:37):

With the goat and the possessed demon child that loves the goat. That is Satan is the goat Satan? I think so.

Matt (01:26:45):

He was an agent of Satan.

Laci (01:26:47):

Really?

Matt (01:26:48):

Really?

Laci (01:26:48):

He get you a policy.

Matt (01:26:49):

Yeah. So this song though,

Laci (01:26:51):

Okay, fucking cheer up Charlie. You don’t cheer up. Charlie is the cheer up Charlie of Willie Walkers. It

Matt (01:26:55):

Really is Eat feels like, like a song that got deleted from the theatrical cut that they then included as a special feature on the DVD. But no, this has always been part of the movie and it’s sucks. Okay. It does suck. I agree. It sucks. But try to explain to me what is the

Laci (01:27:15):

Mom doing?

Matt (01:27:16):

What is the story musical purpose of this song? What do we learn about it? How does it advance where the characters end up?

Laci (01:27:26):

I always thought of the song as being, is getting an opportunity to see how the mom feels about her circumstances, what that affects, what effect that has on her kid that she wishes he had a better life. But then I listened to the lyrics of it because preparing for the podcast and I’m overly critical when we’re watching things and it’s just like, Charlie, you’re being a bummer. Could you please put on a fake ass smile and not be just another problem on my list? Thank you so much. What do you have to be sad for?

Matt (01:27:54):

She says, your grin has always been my sunshine.

Laci (01:27:57):

Wow. Well, that’s his job. Make

Matt (01:27:59):

Mommy happy. So put your fucking grin back on Charlie,

Laci (01:28:02):

Get it on. Or I’m going to be cold and frosty

Matt (01:28:05):

To you up and Ato boy.

Laci (01:28:07):

Right. Just get your chin up. Get out there and work and work and work. And maybe grandpa will scoot over and you can lean in a bed one day. We’ll see,

Matt (01:28:18):

The song starts with like she says, you get blue, you get blue like everyone else but me and Grandpa Joe,

Laci (01:28:26):

We’ll get you through,

Matt (01:28:27):

Can make your troubles go away.

Laci (01:28:31):

What is she talking about? What is she right? That win. You didn’t do shit. I mean, you do everything for that family, but they live in a shack, so you’re not doing much. And I’m just kidding.

Matt (01:28:42):

No, I mean,

Laci (01:28:44):

Right. It seems like there’s going to be a thing.

Matt (01:28:46):

It’s not that that’s, that’s not my criticism of her momming. The criticism is’ that don’t make your child’s

Laci (01:28:52):

Responsible for your fucking mood

Matt (01:28:54):

For the way you feel. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Laci (01:28:57):

Suppress your feelings, Charlie. Pretend you’re happy for whoever is around you so that they still love you. That’s my best singing voice. It muster right now because everything triggers a cough.

Matt (01:29:10):

This is the second song in the movie, and it’s the first in 20 minutes since the opening. So you forgot. It’s a musical and it’s just a shitty song. It’s from a character who is not a character and it doesn’t teach you anything about your main character. He’s sad,

Laci (01:29:26):

Right? He’s sad. And it made me sad. I realized the mom spends a lot of time not in the frame. She’s just half face woman. It happens a bunch throughout the movie. It’s like, oh yeah, there’s a mom. Don’t pan too far over there.

Matt (01:29:42):

Grandpa, I wish I could take you to the factory with me.

Laci (01:29:46):

Tunnel vision. Right. Well, mom’s got to go do the was

Matt (01:29:50):

So more Wonka mania. We see an auction won by the Queen of England for the last box of Wonka bas in the United Kingdom. And we meet Mike tv. His sin is that he likes television too much and thinks he’s a cowboy and

Laci (01:30:08):

He’s rude to other people,

Matt (01:30:09):

I guess. Yeah. But I do. I like this movie so far is

Laci (01:30:15):

It’s got some gas

Matt (01:30:16):

Funny. Why can’t I talk? It’s sharp. It’s moving fast. It’s got these weird, there’s a dragnet parody where a cop, a serious cop, is interviewing a wife whose husband has been kidnapped. Refuse. They want your Wonka bars, Mrs. Whatever. They want your Wonka bars. Lemme think about it. And then there’s the thing where the fifth golden ticket has been found by a man in Paraguay, a gambling casino magnate.

Laci (01:30:46):

Why do you have to be the only person of color in this entire thing? Except for the Lumas who been

Matt (01:30:53):

Are orange,

Laci (01:30:54):

Who’ve been purchased and live at a factory and they don’t go out because we’ve never seen them before. So they don’t go to the movie theater and they don’t go spend their wages and they don’t marry

Matt (01:31:03):

Marry.

Laci (01:31:03):

And hopefully they’re all gay because they all seem to be dudes. So at least they could have some kind of social life

Matt (01:31:09):

And they need to be looked after. Once Willy Wonka is dead, it’s not like he can

Laci (01:31:13):

Looked after. Right? Don’t escape

Matt (01:31:16):

Or, Hey, I’ll leave my factory to you, my loyal workers. We’ll start an esop. You can all own shares in the company and run it yourselves.

Laci (01:31:23):

No, no, no. I need another, could be a

Matt (01:31:25):

Co-op.

Laci (01:31:25):

I need a white guy.

Matt (01:31:26):

Get run it my way. My

Laci (01:31:28):

Way. I need them young. It couldn’t be an adult. No, no, no. You see, I need to be able to groom. And then he plays with his mustache that he doesn’t have.

Matt (01:31:36):

He

Laci (01:31:36):

Plays with Papa Joe’s mustache. Papa Joe’s.

Matt (01:31:39):

Okay. They find out about this con artist who says he’s won the contest and Grandpa Joe is like, well, blah, blah, blah Charlie, he’s going to be so depressed. And they’re

Laci (01:31:49):

Like, let me tell him as su, he gets in.

Matt (01:31:51):

He really wants to tell him, no, Charlie,

Laci (01:31:52):

Your dreams are done.

Matt (01:31:53):

Charlie, they think Charlie’s asleep in the other room, but he’s awake here it all. And Grandpa Joe says, A boy’s got to have something to hope for in this world. I didn’t mention in my history that when Rural Doll wrote this book, it was in the aftermath of this really horrible episode with his infant who got a really bad brain injury that he ultimately did recover from, but it required tons of medical bills and seeing lots of doctors and weird medical devices and stuff. And I think that definitely influenced, I definitely see that informing the situation with these infirm grandparents who can’t get out of the bed. They both can’t contribute and probably cost money

Laci (01:32:31):

And feeling helpless to help your kid.

Matt (01:32:33):

Yes. So the desperate situation that just being in poverty and just trying to live your life and take care of your family

Laci (01:32:43):

Or just to be without resources for any specific reason. Because even him, a wealthy person at that time probably couldn’t afford if there’s not science to help your kid, there’s not

Matt (01:32:51):

Science. Charlie wins the contest.

Laci (01:32:55):

Contest. Good thing grandpa didn’t have an erection because that Rob’s not hiding anything. That little dressing gown.

Matt (01:33:02):

No, he can’t. He can’t.

Laci (01:33:03):

He can’t. Well, what else is he doing in bed all the time? I hope he’s at least jerking

Matt (01:33:09):

It. They’re sucking and fucking each other all

Laci (01:33:11):

Day. No nothing to do with them. He’s just definitely masturbating a lot. Right.

Matt (01:33:14):

Just him.

Laci (01:33:15):

They sleep a lot when the grandparents sleep. Grandpa gets deep. The meat. Yeah. I’m always impressed by how shiny and perfect the ticket is when Charlie takes it out and Charlie finds it on his own. And then the most realistic thing happens ever is the mob mentality ticket.

Matt (01:33:39):

Well, because he finds out actually that South American bastard was a con artist and he didn’t have a real golden ticket. The ticket’s still out there and Charlie finds a silver queen on the ground and he uses it to purchase a chocolate bar, a scrum MPT bar. And he eats it, wolfs it down, and Bill the shop keeps is like, ohm going to get a tummy ache. Don’t be so fast.

Laci (01:34:01):

Do you want me to rub it for you, Charlie? I’m Bill.

Matt (01:34:04):

And then Charlie’s like, you know what, I’ll have just one more for my grandpa, Joe.

Laci (01:34:09):

I’m going to make chocolate water.

Matt (01:34:11):

Yeah. This is like when you go to Wendy’s and you order two burgers, you’re like, my wife will also have,

Laci (01:34:18):

I would like

Matt (01:34:19):

My wife says, but watch this with your third eye and notice

Laci (01:34:23):

What

Matt (01:34:24):

Bill then turns around and he is like, okay, one of the classic Wonka bars and deliberately takes a certain bar and hands it to him.

Laci (01:34:29):

Yes.

Matt (01:34:30):

He knows that the ticket’s in there.

Laci (01:34:32):

He knows

Matt (01:34:32):

Son of a bitch.

Laci (01:34:33):

He’s been scouting out the right kind of kid. The other kids got it because they had the means to get it.

Matt (01:34:40):

That’s right. And when Wonka meets Charlie’s like, I read all about you in the papers

Laci (01:34:45):

At

Matt (01:34:45):

The newspapers though. He had a

Laci (01:34:47):

Dossier. He had one day before the chocolate factory opened. He finds the ticket the very next day, him and Grandpa Joe go. He’s the only kid to not be on the, and there certainly couldn’t have been a paper

Matt (01:34:59):

Slipped up. Wonka

Laci (01:35:00):

You’d done told on yourself.

Matt (01:35:02):

But when we watched this movie with our child when the child was maybe six, I remember them just when Charlie opens the chocolate bar and sees the ticket that the kid just stood up and fist pumped. Hell yeah. Because it is,

Laci (01:35:20):

It’s exciting.

Matt (01:35:21):

It is exciting. Yes.

Laci (01:35:22):

Very suspense open, very effective. I agree.

Matt (01:35:26):

Charlie runs home and gets confronted by slug worth in a tunnel and slug worth starts talking to him.

Laci (01:35:33):

And that part always scared the shit out of me as a kid because my mom always told me that that’s how I would die is by a man on the street. So if you see a man, you get off

Matt (01:35:44):

The street and if he’s a bald German,

Laci (01:35:45):

But he was in a tunnel, the advice that I was given, given it wouldn’t have worked. It wouldn’t worked. She didn’t say anything about tunnels. There’s the

Matt (01:35:52):

Tunnels and met. Hi. Hi, Mr. Slug. Jesus Christ, Mr. Slug Worth in very much, very clearly dubbed over performance.

Laci (01:36:03):

Oh,

Matt (01:36:04):

Well, the German guy just probably couldn’t speak good English.

Laci (01:36:09):

Why is he a German guy?

Matt (01:36:10):

Well, I don’t remember the actor’s name. But

Laci (01:36:12):

Also why is his I MD pitcher? Just Hitler?

Matt (01:36:16):

He probably, I don’t know, played him.

Laci (01:36:18):

But if you played Hitler once, should that be your IMDB pitcher?

Matt (01:36:21):

That’s not, I don’t think it’s the actor in charge of the IMDB page.

Laci (01:36:24):

But who and what are they saying? Is he a secret Nazi? Maybe

Matt (01:36:31):

You need to close your third.

Laci (01:36:32):

I’m going to close. It’s too

Matt (01:36:33):

Open. But what’s his name though?

Laci (01:36:36):

Gunther Meisner?

Matt (01:36:39):

Yeah. That guy can’t speak English. So the guy just watch it. You’ll see you put lip sync is all

Laci (01:36:46):

Off. Oh yeah. I thought it was going to make him creepy,

Matt (01:36:49):

But yeah, he’s like, I want to buy your gold. Well, no, he doesn’t want to buy the golden ticket. I want you to get a everlasting gobstopper.

Laci (01:36:55):

I’m going to pretend to be a small child to put my knees in my shoes and I want to walk.

Matt (01:36:59):

Remember the name Everlasting Gobstopper. And you’ll get good food for your family, good food, comfort for the rest of their lives, and also 10,000 of these dollar

Laci (01:37:09):

Dues.

Matt (01:37:11):

So Charlie runs home and of course at this point in the movie, you should be like, okay, sure. Or here, just take the golden ticket and I’ll take that money in the remake. They have Charlie saying to his family when he wins the golden ticket, but of course I’m not going to accept the prize. I’m going to sell it

Laci (01:37:27):

To

Matt (01:37:27):

Show what a good little boy he is.

Laci (01:37:28):

That makes more sense.

Matt (01:37:30):

And yeah, he runs in, tells his family, his grandpa. Joe gets out of the bed, look at me. Isn’t it a

Laci (01:37:38):

Miracle? Let me just try this for the first time ever. Oh, how do you use these things?

Matt (01:37:45):

Kind of tough. I’m thinking, I’m getting the hang of this.

Laci (01:37:48):

You pertained to be Ariel.

Matt (01:37:49):

She didn’t

Laci (01:37:49):

Actually Wait, is it like this? Is that how you use your legs?

Matt (01:37:56):

Yeah. Well, the remake, sorry to keep bringing up the remake, but the remake does have just him hearing about the golden ticket and springing out of bed and doing a jig, which is funny here. It’s like,

Laci (01:38:06):

Right. He’s pretending

Matt (01:38:06):

He struggles for a second and then he is like, wait a minute, I got it. And again, the mom starts punching him in the balls. So angry. You could have been helping you could have been pulling your weight. Old shit. And yeah, we get a little musical number. Jack Albertson, a good showman. It’s modest, but it’s charming and it’s in full frame in front of the camera. Both of them doing their dances. They’re cutting a million times.

Laci (01:38:32):

I always enjoy their relationship, even if it’s not the most healthy. Caregiver. Caretaker. Caretaker. Give me that relationship. I always like the grandpa. Even if I do think

Matt (01:38:48):

I do too. I meant to mention earlier when he got the courier to bring him a secret chocolate bar and they open it and then they have this hug that’s like, this is very sweet. They love each other, they really do, really get it. But Peter Ostrom sings like Pinocchio, next time you’re watching this movie, think of Pinocchio. Jesus

Laci (01:39:07):

Bad. It was beautiful. Roll route nine. Everybody. Look forward

Matt (01:39:13):

If you want to hear

Laci (01:39:14):

That vocal. Just that one. All right. So one of the most, I don’t know, is this the most iconic moment? I’ve always been obsessed with this. Not to pretend to be a person who can’t walk. Well thing, but Gene Wilder’s fall into a somet a fall assault. I tried to do this so many times as a kid. It’s hard. He does it so smooth. I thought it was like a stunt person, but to find out that No, he wrote this in like, I will be doing this, sir. That’s

Matt (01:39:52):

He figured out he could do this 15 years ago and he is like, someday

Laci (01:39:55):

I’m going to work this in. And here’s the moment. And this is the most exciting part of the whole movie. The most exciting part of anything you’ve been looking forward to is the moment right before you experience it. It could be anything.

Matt (01:40:09):

Oh yeah,

Laci (01:40:10):

Schrodinger’s cat is alive.

Matt (01:40:12):

Food is best right before you eat it.

Laci (01:40:15):

Trips are best when you’re on your way to them.

Matt (01:40:17):

Yes.

Laci (01:40:19):

Or when you can, you’re so close. You can spell ’em.

Matt (01:40:23):

This is good filmmaking. I mean, they really make you anticipate too. You’re seeing it all in all their faces. Like holy shit, what’s about to happen? And it is really great that it’s 40 minutes into the movie and Gene Wilder steps out of the doors and there he is on screen. You haven’t seen him at all in the movie. It’s not like it could have been Beetlejuice where you see cutaways to him around reading a newspaper.

Laci (01:40:47):

Right, right. Well, let’s see who got this ticket. Okay,

Matt (01:40:51):

The fourth golden ticket

Laci (01:40:52):

Found. But it makes sense. I mean, he’s supposed to be a mystery to us and it works. We don’t know any more about him than Charlie does. And I love his outfit. I fucking love it so much. I love the hat, everything. And I’m just as excited as they are as they all go walking in to, and I love the Little hut that just says Wonka right behind Billy Wonka. That’s yellow or whatever. Of course, that’s where the entrance is. It’s beautiful. It looks like a tiny little village in there. Anyway. Alright. And then it’s like the wind immediately goes out of their sails a little when they walk in and it’s just a boring room and really have to sign a very not okay contract that you can’t read, which I get it. Fun joke. But

Matt (01:41:35):

If you ever have to take your kid to a trampoline park, you’ll experience this exact thing. Your kid is desperate to get in there and they’re like, no, you have to go sign a waiver. And that waiver as long as shit.

Laci (01:41:44):

Right? Well, it’s like being on a cruise. They make you do the safety thing after you’re like, yeah, we’re about to cruise. We’re on the boat. And then they’re like, now go sit in there and learn how to use your,

Matt (01:41:53):

Now it’s time for a fire drill.

Laci (01:41:54):

How to learn to use your buoy. I’m like

Matt (01:41:58):

Buoy

Laci (01:41:59):

Bowie. Yeah. Cruises are really sad at the front. And then at the end, I’ve only ever been on one. It was great. In the middle except for the near divorce. But

Matt (01:42:10):

That’s for another podcast.

Laci (01:42:12):

Another podcast.

Matt (01:42:13):

But no, the end of a cruise is a thousand times sadder than the beginning

Laci (01:42:16):

Of Oh, that’s so bad. And it’s just harder. The disembark process

Matt (01:42:19):

Is just, it takes forever. You’re

Laci (01:42:21):

Exhaust your

Matt (01:42:22):

Fat. You’re like

Laci (01:42:24):

A hungover. You’re sitting on your luggage. Don’t ever get off a cruise with everybody. Stay. All right. So they sign their contract. The parents are not cool with it, but they’ve already come halfway way across the world and their kids are really excited. And so fuck it. Just sign

Matt (01:42:39):

It. Which I’m sure, yeah, this contract is legally enforceable that children are signing it. And under duress too, right? Yeah. Well, we get our first hints of the factory though, with weird tunnels and hallways and stuff that are oddly shaped. And what is this? Walk across some kind of fun house,

Laci (01:42:57):

Right? Because having fun, the hands take the hats and the little, and then, yeah, I can’t remember all

Matt (01:43:07):

The things. Mr. Wonka, the code to get into the chocolate room is you got to play a little thing

Laci (01:43:13):

And then the mom knows who it is.

Matt (01:43:14):

Well, the joke here, it’s very funny. She says Rock mount off, but it’s actually Mozart.

Laci (01:43:20):

What a tool.

Matt (01:43:22):

Mrs. Tv.

Laci (01:43:23):

And I’ve been filling that out on every exam I’ve ever taken since.

Matt (01:43:28):

Well, tell us about the chocolate room and what’s so good about it.

Laci (01:43:31):

Okay, so this is always, if you say this movie, this is what I picture. And it’s both the best thing I’ve ever seen and a really big letdown. For instance, he’s sitting in a bunch of hay right now, which clearly I can’t eat. And behind him, I’m looking at Willy Wonka. Everyone behind him are two lollipops, and those are clearly beach balls. So I’m both impressed by stuff and then completely left down over and over again. It is magical. I love the excitement. I love how everybody’s finding something they want. And the adults have now turned into children because everyone likes candy. I always think, where’s the peanut butter? Where’s the noot? This room is completely gummy, hard candy. Ew

(01:44:18):

And chocolate and cream. Cream. It’s all stuff that’s easy to show you in a big form. And then he, everything’s something you open and there’s something else inside of it. Just a big handful, a fudge. Or it’s like, that’s not how candy worked. And then I think Mike TV is trying to get something out of a tree and Willy Wonka hits it with his cane, and then all these little candies fall out. I’m like, cheating, cheating. The big candy should fall. I want to meet the big candy. This is bullshit. I can get little candy anywhere.

Matt (01:44:52):

That’s true.

Laci (01:44:53):

There’s all kinds of little things like that where it’s like normal candy, normal. Who gives a shit also, who is maintaining this room? Did you make this room for this specific purpose? And you’ll clean it up? Otherwise this is old ass disgusting fucking

Matt (01:45:05):

Candy. Yeah. I want to ask you this.

Laci (01:45:06):

Are there ants

Matt (01:45:11):

In the reality of the film? Obviously there’s the river and the waterfall and Mexican, the chocolate, whatever, but everything else, what’s the point? What’s the function? Because

Laci (01:45:20):

This is for,

Matt (01:45:20):

This seems it’s like it’s an etic attraction for visitors, but there are no visitors.

Laci (01:45:24):

No visitors. It was just for him. And also it would be impossible because you’ve got Beatrice over there shoving her entire fist into a mushroom and then going and then sucking her finger back in again. It would not be something you could keep up. It’d be so expensive. You’d have to completely redo the room after one group went in. It’s so unsanitary.

Matt (01:45:48):

Have I told my story about my trip to the Krispy Kreme factory?

Laci (01:45:52):

You have, but go ahead. I kind of forgot.

Matt (01:45:55):

Well, I just did exactly what you just suggested. They’re like, they give a plain donut to one kid and they’re like, all right, now just hold it in there and let the thing spin around and put chocolate on it. And they’re like, great. And then I had a donut. I had half eaten, so I just took it and dunked it into the thing.

Laci (01:46:12):

It’s disgusting, man.

Matt (01:46:14):

I didn’t realize what I was doing. And how old were you? I was 13. And they’re like, you fucking idiot. Hey. They’re like contaminated chocolate. Yeah. The tour person was like, I don’t think you should do that. It’s like double dipping now. I’m sure they just didn’t tell anybody and move.

Laci (01:46:30):

Well, yeah, whatcha going to do? I mean, what do you think they did with Augustus’s fucking skin flakes that are all up in this goddamn chocolate river? And the chocolate always bothered me when it’s coming down the waterfall, it’s clearly thin as water. There’s no thickness, there’s no rich rippling,

Matt (01:46:48):

No viscosity.

Laci (01:46:49):

For instance, the opening credits, they do such a good job of showing you the way chocolate actually

Speaker 5 (01:46:53):

Looks

Matt (01:46:54):

In

Laci (01:46:54):

The wild. So you can’t go trying to pass off this poop water as fucking chocolate. And then when Augustus falls into it, he’s coated like he would be in brown water, not in chocolate. What takes me out of it?

Matt (01:47:06):

I never thought of that. The opening credits. The opening credits. Are we not supposed to be seeing Wonka’s factory there? We’re just seeing a normal

Laci (01:47:13):

Factory. It’s just a normal factory. But yeah, it’s supposed to imply it. It’s supposed to get you excited for candy and feeling like a kid again. So I find the room iconic, overwhelming, underwhelming amazing and disappointing and then terrifying.

Matt (01:47:31):

It is all of that. Is it overwhelming and underwhelming, but in a nice way? Like

Laci (01:47:35):

It’s charming.

Matt (01:47:36):

It’s a compact little space and you can see kind of the factory, what are those called? The things on the ceiling with the

Laci (01:47:43):

Pipes.

Matt (01:47:44):

The pipes? No, the air ducts. And those are pipes. Babe, I called your paper. Okay babe.

Laci (01:47:50):

Okay babe. And if you think about it, it’s the only time that any of the guests get to run free and not be completely enraptured and having a monologue given to them by, they don’t know this, but they’re starting the tour with the happiest they’re going to be. And to me, I feel like that this should have always been how the tour ended. It doesn’t make sense to give you the funnest room first. It does for the movie.

Matt (01:48:15):

Yeah, you got to build to this. But he has all of this figured out. He’s playing us all like

Laci (01:48:20):

Suckers. He’s watching everybody in the wild right now figuring out the traits.

Matt (01:48:25):

Jean is doing that in the wild. People always group this movie in with the Wizard of Oz. And I think that because when you get to this room, the movie has in terms of color, then kind of drab, and now suddenly just the most bright, vibrant colors and it’s all in camera. And for that reason, like the Wizard of Oz, people will still, kids a hundred years from now will still watch this movie and it will look good. But this is also where you get the problem, which is now the only person who’s interesting is Gene Wilder. And there’s 15 other people on screen who don’t know what to do other than just go like,

Laci (01:49:06):

Gosh. And we’ve already experienced the kids, we’re all already annoyed with the kids. And even if you like Charlie, his sincereness and earnestness it, it’s one note. I mean, even our protagonist is kind of flat. I like Grandpa Joe more than I like Charlie. So it’s not like I’m rooting for Charlie. I’m not not. But all of the other characters are made to be so one dimensional that you are drawn and magnetized to someone who is naturally multifaceted, whether he wants to be or not. And that’s Gene Wilder. So I am in, if Gene thinks you’re dumb, I think you’re dumb if he thinks something’s funny, I think it’s funny if he thinks sarcasm is the right mode right now I’m feeling sarcastic. He makes me extra hate these children, and I want them to die and I want to just spend some time with Gene.

Matt (01:50:03):

But because of that, okay, so

Laci (01:50:05):

It starts to drag

Matt (01:50:07):

In fairytales. Often the protagonist is the most boring character. Snow White doesn’t do anything, but you are still experiencing the story through Snow White or through whoever the character is who is just an avatar for the audience and seeing everything through their perspective, seeing this wonderful world. Whereas Charlie, you don’t see this. His perspective, he’s gone. He’s disappeared even though he’s in frame. Do you feel like all of this is experienced through his eyes?

Laci (01:50:34):

No. There’s no sense of angering in that way. I feel like a sixth person. I’m not getting anyone’s exact experience. I mean, Charlie and Grandpa go fuck off, and then we get reconnected with them. Willy Wonka goes away, and then we get, you feel like you’re just a person walking around getting to experience parts of everything.

Matt (01:51:00):

But I think that the one you’re now relating to is Willy Wonka himself now. He suddenly feels like the center of everything. You’re on his side and hating these kids,

Laci (01:51:10):

And I want him to be impressed. I so badly want him to somebody. I want him to. Charlie, I feel like that good kid in class on the first day of school where you’re like, okay, Laci, you’re going to have to do it again. You’re going to have to prove to this teacher that you’re the best little child in this whole room, both because you are sweetheart and you’re very, very smart. Maybe you’ll even make them laugh this year. Who knows? It’s your year baby. And

Matt (01:51:33):

That’s if you could make Jean Wilder laugh.

Laci (01:51:36):

Oh my God, I always think about trying to make Will Faroh laugh? I think about it all the

Matt (01:51:41):

Time. All the time. Well, okay, now when I listen to podcasts, I think if I were there, could I say interesting stuff? Of

Laci (01:51:49):

Course, it’s I impossible not to. No, I’m not saying you could. I’m saying of course, you listen to podcasts, think people are funny and think, could I keep up in that room? I think the answer is yes, but it has a lot to do with, well, the people in that room, let me get a word in it’s chemistry. It’s not like someone with the most amazing comedy chops in the world isn’t funny if no one lets them in, so don’t worry.

Matt (01:52:16):

Okay. Okay. So Augustus dies. He ends up in the river and sucked into the pipes, and

Laci (01:52:22):

He would’ve drowned long before he got to the tube.

Matt (01:52:24):

Gene Wilder has a very good Gene Wilder freak out my chocolate. I’m hysterical and I’m wet, and yeah, this is, I’m hysterical. I’ve gotten mad. Yeah, it’s all downhill after this. This is

Laci (01:52:41):

Because now

Matt (01:52:42):

We know this is great, and the Tim Burton version does have Charlie at this point, after the Alpa sing their song, their personalized song for Augustus Loop. He’s like, how do they know to sing that song about Augustus? Again, this is all,

Laci (01:52:56):

All this, it’s all very weird. These are simple songs. Maybe they’ve just been looking through the bushes and this guy likes the food. Does he?

Matt (01:53:06):

The Wonka, they get on the boat. And so a couple of things are now starting to happen. Willy Wonka is now doing, he’s starting to speak in other languages and do his little pretentious little quotes from All I ask is a tall ship in a Star to say bye, right?

Laci (01:53:23):

He’s in a different movie or he’s not talking to anyone.

Matt (01:53:27):

I think a lot of this was improv by Wilder and it’s like, I guess he’s just trying to give something just something to do.

Laci (01:53:34):

It’s in the ring, right? It’s like wilder. Be zany. Okay, well, I can be

Matt (01:53:39):

Smart too. I

Laci (01:53:39):

Can be, I almost said swarming. I’m not going to say it this episode I just did. Yeah, I mean he’s charming and dazzling, but is he the right Wonka? Are you setting the right tone now? I’m scared for these people to get on this boat. I’m sure I’m supposed to be, but I think it’s supposed to be more fun than it is. And then I just remember being a kid and being like, what the fuck? What the fuck is this whole thing is just to, is it a gag so that at the very end you’d be like, we should stop. Let’s get off Cheerio.

Matt (01:54:17):

I mean, yes, it’s good that he’s but Jesus Christ fucking going nuts and screaming the fires of hell out bad. Stop the boat and then the lights come on. Stop this at once. But I think that a million cracked articles have been written like, dude, do you remember how fucked up that scene from Willy Wonk is where they’re in the boat and it is, he’s no one knows, I swear.

Laci (01:54:41):

But this is a song about Wonka, right? That’s what this is. This is a man that’s been in seclusion for a decade or more in this factory, just trying to be the very best candy guy, even though he already is the very best creator of weird candy sensations, and he’s trying to stay on the top and at the top is nothing but things, but the bottom, you can only get lower. And he’s secluded himself with a bunch of yes. Men who come to him by whistle. I mean doesn’t, they don’t even talk. They just sing songs. You don’t even know if they know English. You just know that they can sing songs and dance for him. And I’m sure he gets an ex existential crisis once every three days and he’s just like, what am I doing this for? Why am I making all this shit? I don’t get to talk to anybody.

Matt (01:55:33):

What does he say in the song to connect to that?

Laci (01:55:36):

He doesn’t know where he is going. He doesn’t know what it’s all for. He sees dark things. He sees the worst in, he is terrified at night. He’s surrounded himself by the things that make him happy and he’s not happy. He’s scared of dying. He’s scared of dying at age 37. So he’s brought in a new batch of children to take over. He’s a tortured

Matt (01:56:00):

Man. Maybe he got a diagnosis

Laci (01:56:02):

From terminal Dr. Lpa.

Matt (01:56:05):

Yeah, the other fucked up part. Do you remember how fucked up that is? Because they’re showing, they’re projecting images on the side of the tunnel, like a chicken being beheaded, A dog’s eyeball being cut open. A cop commits suicide. What? Robert Kennedy gets shot.

Laci (01:56:23):

Okay, shut

Matt (01:56:24):

Up. None of the other actors were aware of what Gene Wilder was going to do here. They didn’t tell, Hey, he’s going to go nuts and start shouting about hellfire and stuff.

Laci (01:56:32):

So these are all, I mean,

Matt (01:56:34):

These are genuine.

Laci (01:56:36):

Are we still in

Matt (01:56:37):

The movie? Am I going to get paid for this? Are we still acting? I’m going to call the guild, the inventing room. They enter and we have now the introduction of grandpa. He’s got to do something. So he just has a lot of one-liners watching to the God kick in the patch. One of the, I think verruca salt is like he’s absolutely bonkers. And Charlie’s like, is that bad the movie? It doesn’t know what to do with the kids and parents

Laci (01:57:06):

Is

Matt (01:57:06):

What I’m saying.

Laci (01:57:07):

It’s got visuals. It wants to show you some wacky shit. It wants Gene Wilder to be a wild eyed, crazy man, and it knows not what to do with itself.

Matt (01:57:17):

In the inventing room. They’re inventing a

Laci (01:57:19):

Gob stopper.

Matt (01:57:20):

Yes, yes. We learn about the gobstopper. This is going to be, remember that later. Set it aside. Put it in your pocket because it’s going to be important later. But he’s inventing a gum, and this is truly the most vile thing I can think about is a gum that tastes like food and

Laci (01:57:35):

Roast beef.

Matt (01:57:35):

The juices are running down your throat and you’re like, it’s, I’m eating.

Laci (01:57:38):

I want it so bad. I want tomato soup to be creamy writing down the back of my thing,

Matt (01:57:43):

Just not from gum, just from a pill or something.

Laci (01:57:46):

Oh, that’s weird.

Matt (01:57:47):

Or just like twitch my neurons.

Laci (01:57:49):

I think to be able to chew though, that’s why the gum is so ingenious. It would be weird to have a meal without chewing. It’s smart and delicious.

Matt (01:58:02):

Charlie asks his grandpa, because Violet is just going to take the gum and Mr. Wonka’s like, no, stop. Don’t take my gum. And Charlie’s like, why doesn’t she listen to Mr. Wonka grandpa? And he says, because she’s a net wet. But three minutes later, they break the rules for no reason,

Laci (01:58:17):

100%. Also, he puts them each in a room that’s going to tempt them for their individual issues. One of them is gum. So there’s a gum room. One of them is a glutton. So there’s everything you can eat and you’re allowed to do it in this room. There’s

Matt (01:58:33):

A cocaine room.

Laci (01:58:34):

Exactly.

Matt (01:58:34):

Yeah.

Laci (01:58:35):

There’s gold. Literally an animal that shoots gold out of its ass. So of course, Farah salt’s going to want that. And then the guy with the name TV wants to be on tv. I mean, he just puts them all. I don’t know why he thought, I bet Charlie likes to fly. I don’t fucking know. This kid lives in a bucket. What are we going?

Matt (01:58:53):

I think that he didn’t expect them to do that. I think that when he freaks out, he yells at them disappointed. He really is disappointed.

Laci (01:59:01):

I agree. I agree.

Matt (01:59:02):

But he’s like, this doesn’t make sense. You’re so well behaved. Why did you break the rules for no reason.

Laci (01:59:07):

And it wasn’t him. It was fucking grandpa.

Matt (01:59:09):

Yeah,

Laci (01:59:10):

Grandpa does it every time

Matt (01:59:11):

He needs a good kick in the pants,

Laci (01:59:12):

Get back in bed.

Matt (01:59:14):

My brother always says the line from this scene, he goes, or Violet’s like describing the, and a baked potato with sour cream. Elliot always says with sour cream,

Laci (01:59:28):

It’s the stupidest line. That’s my girl. She knows about toppings.

Matt (01:59:34):

Yeah. So grandpa and Charlie take the fizzy lifting drinks, and this is truly just like we need Charlie to have something to do. So he and Grandpa Joe could be onscreen by themselves for two minutes.

Laci (01:59:45):

And I will say that as a burber myself, I am always grossed out by the amount of burping it takes to get them down from the ceiling and the way that they’re burping sounds. And I just feel like they smell. I already think grandpa smells. I have an issue with smells.

Matt (02:00:02):

I think you think grandpa’s smell.

Laci (02:00:04):

He’s in bed all the time.

Matt (02:00:06):

Very, he

Laci (02:00:06):

Looks for all

Matt (02:00:07):

Grandpas. I’m saying.

Laci (02:00:08):

I understand. He looks for his slippers. And what do you see a bedpan? All I can think about is this man’s shit. They’re in a one horse open shack and whatever. They’re having a good time. He’s in a weird bubble room. That’s the other thing. I don’t know how much this movie costs to make, but there’s something so whimsical and expensive looking in parts and then cheap as shit. So it’s like, okay, so this is just a black dome and they’ve got bubbles. I know what

Matt (02:00:38):

Bubbles. Well, they’re being lifted on wires. I mean, some of it looks good. There are some shots that I think where they’re not being lifted, and they must’ve digitally removed the wires. I looked for the wires and I couldn’t find them.

Laci (02:00:49):

And we love the wire in this house,

Matt (02:00:52):

Devil down in the hole. But yeah, grandpa Joe is like, oh, it’s okay. We could break the rules. It doesn’t matter. This would be like you breaking a rule at a museum,

Laci (02:01:03):

Which I don’t.

Matt (02:01:04):

Yeah, you would never

Laci (02:01:06):

Fucking ever.

Matt (02:01:07):

The geese and the eggs, the gold and eggs. Tell us about ’em, Laci.

Laci (02:01:11):

Well, you’ve heard it before.

Matt (02:01:13):

Oh, okay. We have to follow the outline.

Laci (02:01:15):

This is another one that doesn’t follow the rule of physics. And I’m just saying you don’t have to, but it really takes me out of it. And I’d like to know in the newer one, are the eggs heavy because they’re big, giant, solid gold fucking eggs dropping out of these huge geese. And then Violet picks one up and Farah picks one up. She’s like, I’ve got a golden

Matt (02:01:37):

In the novel as the remake. And the remake was much more, just take everything from the

Laci (02:01:43):

Book. Yeah,

Matt (02:01:44):

It’s squirrels and nuts. It’s not geese and

Laci (02:01:46):

Eggs. Oh, so they’re not huge.

Matt (02:01:47):

Yeah.

Laci (02:01:48):

Okay. Well, this is the best musical number.

Matt (02:01:51):

It’s great. She’s great.

Laci (02:01:52):

She wants the whole world, and I love her

Matt (02:01:55):

And I don’t want to share

Laci (02:01:56):

It. I love that part. And her hair gets in her face and then she goes, I’m a pleasant girl. I

Matt (02:02:00):

Believe what’s great about that specific thing is yeah, it has her being evil and then transforming to good again without any cuts. She’s just standing in front of the

Laci (02:02:08):

Camera,

Matt (02:02:08):

Freaks out, and then moves her hair.

Laci (02:02:10):

What

Matt (02:02:11):

Time?

Laci (02:02:11):

What I just trying to say is

Matt (02:02:14):

I want a bean face. I

Laci (02:02:15):

Want all the beans.

Matt (02:02:17):

It’s fucking British people.

Laci (02:02:18):

Oh, they love their beans on toast and then it, she’s a bad egg. And then she goes down the garbage chute and hopefully she isn’t burn alive. And I always find it sweet. He’s the only parent that goes with his kid. That’s true. He’s the only, he dives in. He truly does love her. Doesn’t see anything wrong with her, knows that she’s really hard to please, but thinks it’s totally fine. And she’s the best, and I just really want to please her. I just think she’s the B’S tits and that’s, he’s a loving father. Just misguided. He’s misguided.

Matt (02:02:50):

But yes,

Laci (02:02:51):

He truly does love her.

Matt (02:02:52):

He’s parent goals and she’s girl boss goals.

Laci (02:02:54):

Okay.

Matt (02:02:54):

But then Grandpa Joe says, Mr. Salt finally got what he wanted. And Charlie’s like, what’s that? Grandpa Barca finally went first.

Laci (02:03:04):

What does that mean? What the fuck are you talking? What does that mean? He wants his kid to die,

Matt (02:03:10):

I guess, or wants her to come first. Ah, that’s what I thought. Just, ew,

Laci (02:03:18):

You made this so dark. I wanted that to be my thought in my head. That never came out.

Matt (02:03:23):

Yeah, but I knew you were thinking it. I know what your sick fuck mind works.

Laci (02:03:26):

You thought it.

Matt (02:03:28):

It’s of you.

Laci (02:03:29):

Anyway, okay. And then another a delightful machine that I want to sit on because here is an area where they make the foam and the consistency and the viscosity just right. They sit on the Wonka mobile for no reason at all, just because this is a man at his house with a lot of time on his hands making things. Most of them have no real purpose, but he wants to show somebody

Speaker 5 (02:03:53):

The

Laci (02:03:53):

Gold tickets were for him. He just like, I’ve made a lot of stuff. I need a crop of people to come in here and ooh and aw. Anyway, they get on it. I think it’s powered by beer.

Matt (02:04:03):

Yeah, by carbonation. And as Grandpa Joe says, got more gas in it than a politician.

Laci (02:04:09):

Grandpa Joe would know. He’s a man of the

Matt (02:04:11):

World. He says he’s just got one-liners for days.

Laci (02:04:15):

He really does.

Matt (02:04:15):

Grandpa, you crack me up like an egg. But this is the point. Every time I watch this movie, whoever I’m watching it with, meaning you because who else is going to be? I say, Hey, have you noticed that this movie’s still going? And then you say, God, you’re right, because just the energy is all gone.

Laci (02:04:32):

It’s

Matt (02:04:32):

Completely gone. You can’t believe how much time there is left.

Laci (02:04:35):

It’s just like, kill the last kid. Please kill the fucking kid Mike tv. You should have at least done them in order of who I care about. And Mike TV could have died first easily.

Matt (02:04:45):

He could. I guess the book was written in 1964. His name is T-T-E-E-E-A-V-E-T.

Laci (02:04:53):

It’s T-E-A-V-E.

Matt (02:04:54):

Okay. But I guess maybe in 64 people weren’t always calling television tv, so this was more of a joke. Do you realize his name is actually the thing you watch? I don’t know.

Laci (02:05:06):

Got it.

Matt (02:05:06):

I couldn’t find an answer on when people started saying tv.

Laci (02:05:10):

I also don’t understand how it’s a tv if it’s a completely open box and not just teleporting, but whatever. What kid would love something so much? I could really, really love Cannon Fire, but I don’t want to be a cannon ball. Get in a cannon and then be shot. This is stupid. You can love TV and not want to be pixelated.

Matt (02:05:31):

No, you’re so right. Because

Laci (02:05:33):

Doesn’t make sense.

Matt (02:05:35):

I want to be on TV versus I just love consuming TV are so different,

Laci (02:05:40):

And that’s a whole different thing from being shrunken forever. So I can fit in this size TV

Matt (02:05:47):

For

Laci (02:05:48):

A moment,

Matt (02:05:48):

But it is weird to just collapse those two things. I love watching tv. I’ve never expressed interest in wanting to be a performer.

Laci (02:05:54):

Right. I just really, right. I watch football every single Sunday. Now I’m on a football field. Pass it to me, Brie.

Matt (02:06:02):

Yeah, he should like this less.

Laci (02:06:04):

Yeah. What’s on Nothing. A fucking chocolate bar.

Matt (02:06:07):

Now I’m in the tv, but I want to watch the tv.

Laci (02:06:09):

Right? Where’s the little tiny tv? Inside this tv?

Matt (02:06:12):

In the book, this is where raw doll really grinds his ax because the MPA Lupa song about how kids who watch TV deserve death. It goes on and on and on and on and on. Why don’t you read a book instead?

Laci (02:06:26):

I’m a writer of books, by the way, in case you didn’t know.

Matt (02:06:29):

So yeah, the mother’s like, I can’t believe you did that thing to my child. You shrunk them and who knows what else? And he is like, dear mother, let’s not speak. Parting is such sweet sorrow fly, blah fly.

Laci (02:06:42):

I did feel like her and Grandpa Joe kind of had a vibe a couple times.

Matt (02:06:46):

I kind of thought so too. Like, Hey, okay, okay, Mr TV back in Arizona,

Laci (02:06:52):

Grandma in bed, he’s okay with, she could scoot over. She could scoot over. She can have the middle.

Matt (02:06:58):

Yeah. Mike TV’s gone and now there’s only Charlie left. And he is like, well, you won the contest. Right? But Mr. Wonka, he’s giving off weird vibes.

Laci (02:07:04):

What’s

Matt (02:07:04):

Going

Laci (02:07:05):

On? Also, since when was this a contest? They don’t all get there and they think they’re going to tour a chocolate factory that’s never going

Matt (02:07:15):

To see. Yeah, that’s true. I’m getting it mixed up with

Laci (02:07:16):

Them. Right. There’s never been any talk of a contest. It’s just they start dropping like flies.

Matt (02:07:23):

Yeah. Because in the remake, there’s also, there’s going to be a grand prize. So then the kids are like, I’m going to win that grand

Laci (02:07:27):

Prize. Got it.

Matt (02:07:29):

But he’s just like, well, what about my lifetime supply of chocolate?

Laci (02:07:32):

They’re all supposed to get that.

Matt (02:07:33):

Yeah, I know. But so they want to find Mr. Wonka. When’s that going to happen? And Mr. Wonka’s like, I don’t know. Bye. Goes into his office. So they follow him in

Laci (02:07:42):

No, that’s not what happens. He just goes in, he says nothing. He just says, bye. There’s the exit. And that’s when Charlie and the grandpa are like, what the hell? Let’s go ask him. And I’m like, what are they going to ask him? The chocolate’s just going to be in your mailbox. You’re going to get three bars a month for the rest of your life. That’s it. Anyway. And then that’s when he’s like, you get no chocolate, you shine the contract and just rum. LC.

Matt (02:08:08):

Oh. But crucially, his office is full of half things. Just that quirky. He’s a quirky, but yeah, he then says, you don’t get the chocolate. You broke the rules and then really unleashes on him. And this is,

Laci (02:08:20):

I think he is really upset.

Matt (02:08:21):

This is a good scene because this is just the three actors just acting with each other. And you see, this is him being honest. This is not him performing. He’s actually mad at Charlie.

Laci (02:08:32):

And

Matt (02:08:32):

Then

Laci (02:08:33):

Now I have to do this all again. And he’s clearly, he has to have been doing investigations into someone who was possibly going to be the person he wanted. You wouldn’t just chance it on a group of five kids. I mean, it just implies that he put a lot of work into Charlie that we didn’t see.

Matt (02:08:52):

He wanted someone who would do things his way. He told Charlie what to do, and then Charlie didn’t do it, but he

Laci (02:08:56):

Found them some way.

Matt (02:08:57):

Yeah, no, I agree. He blew it. I agree. Genuine anger. But then Charlie, grandpa, Joe’s like, and Charlie turns around and he gives the gobstopper back to Mr. Wonka,

Laci (02:09:11):

Which if there’s any way to prove loyalty, that was the way Charlie. Good move, dude.

Matt (02:09:15):

Yeah, it’s like

Laci (02:09:16):

That is it.

Matt (02:09:17):

If you went to Metallica in 2000 and said,

Laci (02:09:19):

Here Lars, here’s,

Matt (02:09:21):

I bought your CD from Target. I didn’t download it, sorry. And Wonka’s like, so shines a good deed to know Weary. He was

Laci (02:09:30):

Weary. That was a big day for him. He hadn’t been around people in a long time.

Matt (02:09:33):

So you’ve won Charlie, my God, you’ve won. Let’s get in this elevator, go up in town, see the town,

Laci (02:09:38):

And you couldn’t make a hole in your roof. Why was this needed? Why break the glass ceiling? None of you’re women, you know what I’m saying?

Matt (02:09:47):

Okay. So they’re flying through the sky and Grandpa Joe and Charlie are admiring their town and they’re like, look, our house, our school, it’s so pretty from up here. And the music sting is playing. And if you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. So it’s like the message here, guys, you already lived in Paradise.

Laci (02:10:03):

You just didn’t have any money. You’re all very hungry. You need to

Matt (02:10:05):

Appreciate it. But Willy Wonka, I could bequeath my holdings to my employees, but I don’t want to do that. I just want to find boss. They’re boss with them. They’re people. Yeah. This is by the way, how your boss thinks of you. If you’re listening,

Laci (02:10:19):

It’s not even boss employees,

Matt (02:10:22):

Owner,

Laci (02:10:22):

Owner and things that need to be watered and who will look after them. They’re just stupid little stupids. And our kid brought up a good point this morning on the way to school. It’s like, what other person who lives in a place starts every song with where they live? America. America. America. Right. Or humans. Humans. Humans can do, or the thing that they are, they live in, I thought they lived in a place called Uma and our S

Matt (02:10:52):

No, they’re from Lupa Land. They’re S

Laci (02:10:53):

Lupa Land. Okay. Right.

Matt (02:10:55):

No, but it stands. Yeah. Human, human, human. Say It ain’t so. I will not go human. Human.

Laci (02:11:04):

The person speaking is a human. Human. Yeah. Weird.

Matt (02:11:08):

The writer of the movie, the Ghost Writer, because World Dahl didn’t actually write it. He just said, read my book. He said he couldn’t find a good way to end the movie. What’s a good line to end this movie? And this movie’s really a fairytale, isn’t it? So he has Gene Wilder say like, don’t forget about the man who got everything he wanted. He lived happily ever after. It’s a shitty line. I hate it. I hate the last line of the, that’s what I’m saying. Here’s what I like about the remake. The remake. There’s no deception. Charlie wins. He didn’t do ally lifting hearings. Willy Wonka is like, great, you’re going to win my factory. Here we go. You just have to leave your family behind and come live in the factory. And Charlie’s like, well, I’m not going to do that. And then there’s 15 more minutes of the movie that then grow the relationship between these two characters and make them learn things from each other and it’s way more satisfying. And then eventually Willy Wonka has to accept, okay, yes, you can bring your grandparents and your shitty little house into my factory. And

Laci (02:12:04):

Your mom can get fucked

Matt (02:12:06):

Your parents too, because he is a mommy and a dad. Sorry. An artist has to learn. And you can feel the Tim Burton in it. An artist has to learn that. It’s cool to make flippity flu and spirals and stuff, but also what really counts as family. He just needed to watch the fast movies. So that’s the, that’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. What are your final thoughts?

Laci (02:12:44):

I do wish we could see maybe an Easter egg after all the credits are over of just what the kids look like after they went through their things. Violets just got loose skin. And

Matt (02:12:57):

That is in the book and the Tim Burton version.

Laci (02:12:59):

Oh,

Matt (02:13:00):

They see the kids walking out of the factory and they’re like, oh, bike TV’s really tall and spindly Now he’s like a Tim Burton drawing sort of.

Laci (02:13:09):

What does the guus look like? Just covered in shit.

Matt (02:13:11):

Just covered in shit. Yeah.

Laci (02:13:15):

And then Verruca what covered in squirrel Nuts.

Matt (02:13:18):

She’s like floppy. And she’s still blue, but she’s all empty.

Laci (02:13:22):

No, no.

Matt (02:13:23):

Oh, verruca. Yeah, I just covered in garbage.

Laci (02:13:24):

Covered in garbage. Okay. Alright. Final thoughts. This podcast is hard to make because we inevitably have to, if all we did was sit here and gush over movies, everyone already thinks they’re gems. That would be very boring. So I think it’s possible to both love and cherish something and be very critical of it. Hence our marriage. What? Just kidding. Yeah, so just don’t get it twisted. Folks. We still have big love in our hearts for almost every movie we do, including this one. It’s just, there’s shit. There’s shit with some shit and we just like to point it out.

Matt (02:14:07):

I don’t love parenthood.

Laci (02:14:08):

Oh my God. We know and

Matt (02:14:10):

I don’t love

Laci (02:14:10):

And that’s one of my movies.

Matt (02:14:12):

Jingle All the Way. I don’t love that

Laci (02:14:13):

One. Okay. No, I fucking hate that movie. I’m sorry. Sorry. People really push back on that one. Like why

Matt (02:14:18):

I love people.

Laci (02:14:19):

It’s people. Some of them are very smart people though. So maybe I am telling you that’s the whole reason for this podcast. If it hits you at a certain time in your youth, it is a load bearing beam. You can’t take it out of your house

Matt (02:14:34):

Otherwise you’ll collapse.

Laci (02:14:35):

It’s irrational, but it’s meaningful. So

Matt (02:14:39):

Star rating.

Laci (02:14:41):

Oh, I’m always surprised by this. Two and a half,

Matt (02:14:45):

Two and a half out of

Laci (02:14:47):

F.

Matt (02:14:47):

But you said that

Laci (02:14:48):

Shit. But would I put that in a letter box? Really? Would I cash that check? My right is asking three. Three. Just because I don’t want the riots.

Matt (02:15:01):

You said when we started that everyone should see it once.

Laci (02:15:06):

I think so.

Matt (02:15:06):

It’s not like I would say don’t see this movie. And I feel like Three Stars is the threshold for Do I recommend that you see this movie? I give it three stars as well for It’s a mess. It doesn’t work as a movie, but I do have, and I think that the Tim Burton movie works as a movie functions so much better. But I also am like, I need to get out of my idea that a story has to be a certain way, it has to have a certain structure, and you have to have an arc for the character starts in one place and ends in a different place and they have to cause the changes and stuff. Just because those things don’t happen in a movie doesn’t mean the movie’s bad. Nevertheless, this movie is shaggy and kind of boring and goes on for a long time. But there’s so much stuff in it. And more than anything, every Gene Wilder performance is a treasure

Laci (02:15:46):

It.

Matt (02:15:46):

Three stars.

Laci (02:15:47):

Three stars. Follow us

Matt (02:15:51):

All on

Laci (02:15:51):

YouTube at Load Bearing Beams Pod on Twitter at Load bearing Pod on

Matt (02:16:00):

Instagram.

Laci (02:16:01):

Instagram load bearing beams. And the most important place to follow is I run that account is TikTok at Load Bearing. Binge

Matt (02:16:11):

Speaking of ratings, go on iTunes and Spotify and give us a rating. Give us three stars,

Laci (02:16:15):

Family, friends, talkers, please go on Apple Podcasts and give us a review. Five stars. That’s just my little suggestion.

Matt (02:16:25):

Give us your honest opinion. Your

Laci (02:16:27):

Honest opinion of Five Stars, which

Matt (02:16:28):

Is going to be that it’s a Five star

Laci (02:16:29):

Podcast. And if you think that it’s less, then maybe you can go fuck yourself. But if you do like us, it really does help us out. If you go to Apple Podcasts and then you find our podcast and ask Cross Cross Girl, and then it’s quick, so on your phone and you hit, it’s easy and it’s worth it to start coming. We need to come up with some sort of merch where we send, anyone gives us a review. The first hundred we get, they’re getting a shirt,

Matt (02:16:56):

I think that’s called Bribery and it’s frowned

Laci (02:16:58):

Upon shit. Oh, scratch that. Reverse it. Delete, delete it. Anyway, we appreciate it.

Matt (02:17:06):

Yes, please. It would never occur to me to go review a podcast I love,

Laci (02:17:11):

But I’ve started doing

Matt (02:17:12):

It. But I should.

Laci (02:17:13):

Yeah, I’ve left like three this week.

Matt (02:17:16):

Yeah, so I’m on letterbox at Matt Stokes nine also Laci’s on Letterbox.

Laci (02:17:22):

Can you believe it? I’m not good at it yet.

Matt (02:17:24):

But you’re load bearing. Laci, I’m Matt Stokes nine. We are on Letterbox. The music on this show, there’s a little bit of stock music, but most of the music is original music, courtesy of Rural Route Nine. My band that I have with my friends, Wade Hemo, Patrick Pro, we made an album called The Joy of Averages. It’s pretty good. You can listen to it. It’s pretty good. It’s on music.

Laci (02:17:42):

Matt wrote, Matt wrote

Laci (02:17:43):

Most of it,

Matt (02:17:44):

10 out of 11 songs, and Laci appears as a guest vocal on one of the songs.

Laci (02:17:49):

You’ve heard some vocals on this podcast, so you can imagine.

Matt (02:17:52):

That’s it. Oh,

Laci (02:17:53):

That’s it.

Matt (02:17:53):

Also, Merry Christmas, happy Holidays. Oh, we love you. Oh,

Laci (02:17:58):

Okay. I love you. Bye.