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One last quote from that article. Shade was thrown.

Here's a Rolling Stone article with Chris Frantz from 2014.

I have watched this in parts several times this week, and realized several things. 1) I was wrong in commenting on the audience. I see and hear enough to know they are there but I do love the focus on the band. 2) Intermission happens after "Life During Wartime" (During wartime we all jog together!) I finally noticed that pretty much everyone changes outfits, not just Tina Weymouth. Not sure why that wasn't obvious to me before to me. 3) It's after the intermission that the movie loses the energy for me. In the first part it was raw energy, a band having fun. Once the video screens started flashing random words, then they turn out the lights and put a lamp on the stage, I started to tune out. The backup singer/dancers disappeared for a bit. For me they were a large part of the fun, interacting with the band.

Almost a year ago, I went to see the live show in Portland, OR with the film 222. I am a pretty regular listener of the podcast and have been really confused as to why this episode has never aired. I check in every week to see what the movie is and what it will be the following week so I am sure I didn't miss it. And I can find no information on why it never came out. I was even starting to think maybe I had imagined it, but I have the shirt from that show. Baby Fight! Anyone know why? Thank you!

Or as I heard Tom Segura called it in order to describe Doc Antle from Tiger King, a "flavor saver," which is how I will always refer to it as from now on. I think that's why they had Vinnie Jones make such a spectacle of loading the launchers onto the plane and his whole suppository speech to one of the hostages in front of Jackman, so as to very crapily incept the idea into his head for later. As for removing the funds after the fact, that was one of the three alternate endings to the movie, where when Halle Berry goes to confirm the money in the account, only to find it all gone, having been sent off to various charities by Jackman, in what I'm sure was another inspiration for Money Plane. Slight correction regarding Holly's teacher, when she asks about the mom Holly makes mention that she is stuck in traffic and will be there shortly and the teacher believes it but tells her she'll be inside if Holly needs anything. It's amazing that Hugh Jackman had a career after 2001 as after X-Men came out he did three films (Someone Like You, this, and Kate & Leopold) that all were critical misfires while the last two films barely broke even at the box office, which is a bit of the reason he was hired for this one as the reason Cusack and Kilmer weren't selected for the role was the creators of the movie felt that they "brought too much baggage" from their previous films and because Jackman really only had one big movie before this and it was a huge hit, he was a better option. His career was only saved by X-2 coming out in 2003, though he followed that up with Van Helsing and X-Men: Last Stand, so again it's amazing his career has been going strong for as long as it has. In regards to the bomb vests being worn and the damage done by one of them, Travolta is right in saying that they are the world's biggest Claymore mines as it follows the basic build of ball bearings packed around C4, but the damage was so underdone based on the description given. A standard Claymore has around a pound and a half of C4 packed into it and the steel balls are more in line with what is used in a BB gun, around 700 are put in to the mine, which are used as the force of the explosion causes them to deform into a shape akin to a .22 bullet as the steel the balls are made of are soft. Given the description used by Travolta of each vest containing 20 pounds of C4 and 15 pounds of stainless steel ball bearings, that four way intersection should really be a crater and those ball bearings should be tearing people to shreds five blocks over as the energy output has been multiplied 10 times over. The other thing about the vest is that when that first one goes off, how in the every loving fuck did at least not one more not get set off by accident inside the bank?! Having handled electric dog collars before, I know they have a hair trigger in order to be set off, and actually lost feeling in my arm for about 15 minutes after grabbing it off the ground by the battery, so the shockwave from that blast should have started a chain reaction. Hell even Jackman admits that the explosion did something to the bank's internet network which caused his trick to drain the bank accounts to happen an hour before he hoped it would, so those bombs should have popped one after another and leveled the city. As for why they went into the bank rather than just over the phone lines, I have to assume it was part of Travolta's over-complicated misdirection plan with hte actual Gabriel's body, because there is no other reason for them to put themselves in direct conflict with authorities when they really don't have to. Finally I get Berry's reasoning for going topless in order to get over her fear of on-screen nudity, as her next film was Monster's Ball where she had a fairly long and graphic sex scene with Billy Bob Thornton.

For those still wondering about Travolta's tie, Those were popular in the 70s. They're called "Kipper Ties".

The Monticello website actually has a fact check about how Thomas Jefferson never shot anyone on the White House lawn and that the only source for that rumor is this movie! It's now called the Rodney Cox myth. https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/execution-white-house-lawn

This movie was a crime against style. No one looked good. Travolta has that landing strip on his face, side highlights, AND A BERET . He goes on about how "clothes make the man" while he's out here looking like a Men's Warehouse reject. High Jackman is playing golf in a bright orange loincloth and has the shittiest earring I ever did see. Poor Halle Berry looks like THAT (IS a goddess not of this world) and they put her in the most God awful fabrics known to man. That blue blousey number?! Did the costume designer just hate everyone on set? I'm not even going to touch on the daughter's clothes

About Hugh Jackman's towel. (Which was a formative moment for young Elektra). I believe it is a sarong or a longyi, kind of what surfers wear--which is super in character for a hacker nerd. This was only Hugh Jackman's third American film. So if they had an ending like the Prestige, then it would've been the Prestige that copied Swordfish, I guess. (Except Prestige was based on a book that was published before this so it would've been Prestige copied by Swordfish which was copied by the Prestige.) Very meta. I remember very little of this movie but I have some memories of the press tour. It was all about how Halle Berry got paid extra to show her boobs. And I remember and interview with Hugh Jackman where he was very impressed by John Travolta's knowledge of food. Here is a disturbing video that I never got out of my head: ETA: the other thing. To Jason’s point that Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman seemed to know each other. ... they do. They just did X-Men together! And it was such a traumatic experience (see link) so maybe they are just relieved to see the other one survived and forgot to act. Quote: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/bryan-singers-traumatic-x-men-set-movie-created-a-monster-1305081

Presented without comment.

Why do they even bother to spread the stolen money evenly over 5 accounts? It would be understandable if they split it over hundreds of accounts, but $1.9 billion deposits are going to raise red flags just as quickly as a $9.5 billion lump sum.

This movie isn't really good with money. When Ginger gives the hacker the cash, we can clearly see there is only 4 packs of bills each marker $10,000, yet Ginger says it's $100,000. At the other extreme, in order for $400 million to grow to $9.5 billion in 15 years, it would have to collect interest at an average annual rate of 23%. If it grew at the actual rate of inflation, it would have ended out around $650 million.

Apparently Vinnie Jones was saved from serious injury in a stunt when Travolta convinced him to let a stuntman do it. Hey, how about if a stunt looks too dangerous, you recommend no one does it, not just the principal cast.

What exactly would Travolta's plan have been if Jackman doesn't use the rocket launcher to blow up the helicopter? It seems like he is gambling a lot on the fact that this hacker will not only get the idea to use a rocket launcher, but will have good enough aim to hit the helicopter. Furthermore, what exactly does Travolta gain by faking his death? If he has the wealth to be such a Master of Disguise (btw, does Travolta use Energico?) then it doesn't seem like it would matter if he was alive or dead because no one would recognize him. And the fact that Jackman is still alive and now against Travolta means that Don Cheadle and the FBI would likely either ask or force Jackman to hack back in and get the money back that Travolta stole.

Regarding Travolta's little bikini wax goatee. They were hip in the early 2000s, plenty of dudes had them, I called it the Nu-Metal goatee.

I think it is worth mentioning that the first person to die in this movie (William Mapother), right after that incredibly dumb monologue, is Tom Cruise’s first cousin. Best known as Dr. Ian Goodspeed from Lost.

During the episode the audience states that it opened during 9/11. It was actually released earlier as per the information on the IMDB: Opening Weekend USA: $18,145,632, 10 June 2001 And in the Trivia notes: The film was withdrawn from cinemas shortly after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001, due to a scene involving an exploding building.

I like that they released this today - which is Halle Berry's birthday!

Since they announced releasing Swordfish this week, I've been kind of dreading it. I expect a bunch of people over analyzing it (maybe not here but twitter or reddit or wherever) like any reference they make to Cheadle will be "WOW! THIS is what Cheadle was offended by?!?!?!" or "They must have cut something!!!!!! This isn't bad at all!!!!!" People made a mountain out of a complete non-issue as if Swordfish is atop the bad movie pantheon.

Episodes that they've recorded but haven't released are: 2:22, Abraxas, Holy Matrimony, The Visitor, and Governor Gabbi. Like Paul said in the Mini, they like to store them up in case they're unavailable due to filming. Back in the day, I want to say around Secret of the Ooze, there were times when they would go a month and a half without an episode. I like how they bottle episodes now. Regarding Swordfish, I've heard from three separate people in three separate places that it was due to working with Don Cheadle on Black Monday. They all said that during the Q&A at a live show that they wouldn't release it while he was still on the show. That being said, Paul sort of dismissed that idea on last week's mini so who knows? I'm inclined to think it was somewhere in the middle. It wasn't exactly forbidden by Cheadle, but more of a professional courtesy from Paul and maybe people read that as more dramatic than it actually was. If you follow them on Twitter, they seem to have a good rapport, and Cheadle definitely has a sense of humor. Besides, as I am currently watching Swordfish, Cheadle is far from the problem in that movie. I sincerely doubt any of their jokes were directed his way.

I love Casual Gods! HUGE St. Vincent fan too. (You can see me in the crowd shot on her MassEducation album liner notes (the piano version of Masseduction).) She's a modern Bowie imo. I went to the St. Vincent/Byrne tour and it was really fun. Maybe not spontaneous enough for my liking, it was highly choreographed and robotic. But when they broke into a couple of Talking Heads songs at the end, it was a revelation. Esp for those of us who never saw TH live. I went to a Byrne solo gig once ages ago too and I don't think he played any!

David Byrne is great but he gets too much credit in my mind. A lot of the songs on Fear Of Music and Remain In Light and Naked (and maybe others) came out of jams the band had. The music was organically a creation of the four of them together. Byrne might have pushed them in a direction occasionally but you could put that on Brian Eno as well. If Talking Heads broke up after More Songs About Buildings And Food, I think it could have been called Byrne's band. I don't think you could do that after Fear Of Music though. I think the True Stories soundtrack is easily Talking Heads worst album and I don't think it's a coincidence it's the one that is the most solo David Byrne. Basically, I think David Byrne is the Lennon and McCartney of Talking Heads. You can't have The Beatles without all four of their contributions. Same with Talking Heads.

To expand on my last point a little and just spew some more love onto David Byrne (yes I should give more credit to the band but from what I hear he was very controlling and things were usually always his call) is that he made music in a weird way like art. He was always hearing things and bringing them in. A new style he liked, a new instrument he heard, etc. he would find some way to bring it in, use it, and keep it Talking Heads. To the same degree we're not just watching musicians go out on stage and preform, there is a lot of thought put into costuming and movements and everything that just elevate it all to a certain degree. It always leaves me impress and visually tuned in when most concert films I easily find myself tuning out because you might as well just be listening to the music the visuals are not that important.

Bumping to bring back to the top. It should be done for no other reasons than the basketball scene and Ryder drinking with boxing gloves on.