Episode 149 - The Lawnmower Man: LIVE! (w/ Neil Casey, Emily Heller)

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, Neil Casey (Ghostbusters) and Emily Heller (Baby Geniuses) join Paul and Jason to discuss the 1992 science fiction action horror film The Lawnmower Man. They’ll talk about the Stephen King short story that the movie is based on, virtual reality sex, smart chimps, and much more.

 

 

 

Get yourself a BB-8 “What Is Its Mission?” T-shirt or Tote Bag over at http://howdidthisgetmade.bigcartel.com

Where to Find Jason, June & Paul:

Paul is in the new Nicolas Cage film “Army of One” available on VOD.

Paul’s new comedy Filthy Preppy Teen$ is now avail on the FullScreen and you can see June and Paul in their old show NTSF:SD:SUV:: on HULU. Paul also appears on Fresh off the Boat on ABC.

June stars in Grace and Frankie on Netflix, as well as Lady Dynamite alongside with Jason.

 

Jason can be seen in How to Be Single, Sleeping with Other People, and is still indeed in The Dictator.

[NathanGordon 1096]

Emily Heller!!!

 

Her podcast with Lisa Hanawalt (creator/artist, Bojack Horseman) is Baby Geniuses. I haven't listened to this episode yet but I'm just gonna give it a C+ right now. Emily is the best.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

ok, i haven't listened to the episode yet and this isn't strictly relevant to it but ... and i hope paul or someone sees this:

 

looking at the numbers and assuming the howdies are close ... if .. and this is a big if i know ... if the next mini and the next episode add up to more than 150 minutes .. then the total run time of the minis + movies + eps is going to reach the the 480 hour mark:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fNUxhVbJf9FOIHnE1yorJj383JS51T0cjF6XsaE8tA4/edit?usp=sharing

 

that's 20 full days of HDTGM gold ... how cool would it be if that happened on episode 150 and the howdies 2 ... not even a super intelligent VR Jeff Fahey could have planed that ... but maybe the evil genius that is Paul Scheer did!!! ... or it could be just a coincidence. anyway ... back to lawnmower man ....

[NathanGordon 1096]

Holy shit, 11 minutes in and this is my favorite episode.

 

One thing I didn't get about the movie is that Jobe seems way less powerful in VR. He can make phones ring? In real life he has crazy telepathic and telekinetic powers, he can create a swarm of CGI bees, he can even take people apart on some kind of atomic level or something. The VR world looks... like a screensaver.

 

How does his body disappear? WHY DOES HIS BODY DISAPPEAR?

[bella_008 188]

More of a question here is Jason's internet age wrong or did he just get mixed up because if he was born in 1972 he would have only been 27 when the Phantom Menace came out?

[NathanGordon 1096]

More of a question here is Jason's internet age wrong or did he just get mixed up because if he was born in 1972 he would have only been 27 when the Phantom Menace came out?

Yep, that sounds about right. He was probably just off by a few years, that was almost 20 years ago.

...

So, anyone know the answer to this puzzle?

 

[Atypical 74]

I read the short story in high school.

 

The only thing I remember was that the lawnmower mowed the lawn itself. While the lawnmower man followed nude behind it, on all fours, eating the grass it was cutting.

 

Or maybe I had dropped acid and read a John deer manual or something.

[ChunkStyle 1160]

Great episode. But I am afraid I have a slight bone to pick with Researcher Nate. Surely somewhere there must exist an article or interview with the story that the monkey escape scene happened to be filmed on National Take Your Kid to Work Day. And that scene was actually shot by the 2nd unit director's 9 year old. That is the only rational explanation, right?

[NutRumpus 23]

I haven't listened to the episode yet, but watching the movie made me wonder what VR was really like back then. Which led me to this PBS special from 1992 on virtual reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6CARe34Nxg. Kinda interesting!

[RyanSz 3140]

Holy shit, 11 minutes in and this is my favorite episode.

 

One thing I didn't get about the movie is that Jobe seems way less powerful in VR. He can make phones ring? In real life he has crazy telepathic and telekinetic powers, he can create a swarm of CGI bees, he can even take people apart on some kind of atomic level or something. The VR world looks... like a screensaver.

 

How does his body disappear? WHY DOES HIS BODY DISAPPEAR?

Well technically his body doesn't disappear as in the sequel, he is found after the explosion buried under the rubble, leading to having to have his legs amputated. I think they meant to portray him as more powerful online as he would have worldwide range at that point then, rather than the small area within that town. Also remember that at that point the internet wasn't anywhere near wireless and the number of things that were using it were very limited, but if a person picking up a phone could be taken over by Jobe, having access to all phones was a huge get for him.

 

I haven't listened to the episode yet, but watching the movie made me wonder what VR was really like back then. Which led me to this PBS special from 1992 on virtual reality: https://www.youtube....?v=u6CARe34Nxg. Kinda interesting!

While it is dated, that was what VR was back in the early 90s. I remember going to Great America where they had a VR game you could play for 10 minutes and the graphics were about the same level and the user friendliness wasn't the best, basically leaving your avatar to continually run into walls or shoot blindly.

 

What I want to point out was that the kid in this movie, Austin O'Brien, who has at least four HDTGM quality films to his credit (the two Lawnmower Man movies, Last Action Hero, and Prehysteria). All of these movies need to be done on the show because they are all next level crazy and O'Brien basically becomes a more unlikable character with each progressive movie. As for this movie's connections to the short story, the only things that connected it were Jobe's job, the mower that runs on its own, and the cops talking about how the abusive dad's remains were also in the birdbath. That's a Paul Hogan level of lazy plagiarism right there.

[Lukas Holmes 2287]

Now hearing the podcast and realizing just how molesty the movie was, I'm super glad June didn't participate in this one.

[RyanSz 3140]

 

So, anyone know the answer to this puzzle?

 

Yeah the puzzle so much wasn't finding the missing piece from the row above but more like an IQ/Mensa question where you have to figure out the pattern and find the next logical step. Even below you can see O, Q, P, which would make be believe R is the next square.

[DeeMoney 14]

I'm glad that someone in the audience brought up 'Flowers For Algernon'; this was basically a retake on that story but with a late 80s early 90s twist- you know with bullies and buns (sadly no roller blades though).

 

In regards to the VR sex scene, Jobe was able to read Marnie's mind and knew her sexual fantasies; he was going to use the VR to try and replicate them. However, unbeknownst to Jobe, the corporation had already altered the VR program by reinstating "batch 5", making it dangerous. This is why he let her be while she was stuck, and shocked that it hurt her- this is also why he turned violent at the end.

[NundercoverBrother 174]

I love this episode.

I feel like they could come back to re-review and not repeat the same details already discussed.

[BenViolette 33]

I was a huge Stephen King fan as a kid, especially of his short stories, so I made my mom take me to see this. All I remember thinking is that this movie had nothing to do with the short story. But I was a nerdy kid and was loving the whole cyberpunk CGI virtual reality stuff so much that I was too geeked out to care I loved this movie.

 

I did want to point out that there is ONE part taken directly from the short story. When the two cops are talking about finding the one man's genitals in the birdbath (I think that's what they say. But I also haven't seen this movie since it was in theaters). The same thing happened at the end of the short story.

[DeeMoney 14]

Yep, that sounds about right. He was probably just off by a few years, that was almost 20 years ago.

...

So, anyone know the answer to this puzzle?

 

The correct answer is the third pattern

[SevenDollarsWorthofHoobastank 226]

Was anyone else bothered by Jeff Fahey's lips? Because I couldn't NOT be bothered by those puffy, pink, moist protrusions.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

Correction: a listing of similar stories includes both Flowers and Algernon and Charly, but those are 2 versions of the same story! Charly is the movie adaptation of Flowers for Algernon (which exists in both short story and novel length). That's like saying that "Trucks" and "Maximum Overdrive" are 2 different Stephen King stories about trucks.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

I haven't listened to the episode yet, but watching the movie made me wonder what VR was really like back then. Which led me to this PBS special from 1992 on virtual reality: https://www.youtube....?v=u6CARe34Nxg. Kinda interesting!

 

From the same year, a news segment on VR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGEdWjLfeXY

"The kids that use our system say, 'I'm not going back to flatscreen after this!'"

 

A few years later into the 1990s, there was Nintendo's infamous Virtual Boy:

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

In 1991, there was the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Game", in which the end result of centuries of advances in video game graphics is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is12anYx2Qs

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

Nobody's mentioned the existence of a previous Lawnmower Man film. At 12 minutes, it doesn't have room for VR or any other extraneous additions, just a man who uses a lawn mower:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caKZdPlEu2U

[Cam Bert 8145]

First off let me say to all my American friends here I hope you had a good holiday and got nice and fat on some delicious turkey and sides.

 

Like Paul said they didn't cover nearly enough of this movie and there are lots of crazy things still to point out. However, I just want to go over one thing already mentioned and possibly ruin everybody's day as I think I have an answer to the crazy VR sex scene. The shocking and disturbing truth is that Marnie the widow was secretly into vore.

 

Vore, or voraephilia, is a sexual fetish in which a person has an erotic desire to be consumed by another person or creature. The majority of the time the desire is not to be eaten like cannibalism but rather consumed whole. Due to the fact that it is implausible in reality and the thing consuming the person is most often not human, this fetish is not uncommon in the furry community so google at your own risk. With all that in mind let's go back and look at the facts. When Jobe first reads Marnie's mind he states "he has "some strange fantasies." Then when the get to the VR gyroscopes before he sends her in he tells her "in here we can be anything we want to be" and takes a long knowing pause. Then before turning into some sort of creature he tells her "Nothing can hurt us in here. I know what you really want" at which point he begins to consume her. Given that Jobe actually seems to genuinely care for her we can assume he wasn't trying to hurt her. Rather given his actions and what he said it seems more likely he was merely trying to help her live out this secret fetish of hers. Given that she hadn't been taking the injections like Jobe the whole experience was probably too much for her to handle and she is left brain damaged.

[JeddtheJedi 1]

This year, the first MINDS film festival was held in Singapore. The Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore does a lot of good work, and there was a good selection of films on the theme of intellectual disability. The opening film was My Feral Heart, starring a man with Down's Syndrome as a character with Down's Syndrome, and the documentary Monica & David was also in the line-up. Perhaps the most mainstream film was I am Sam.

 

 

And for some reason, The Lawnmower Man was one of the selected films. The festival's site described it as "Probably the most socially thought-provoking science-fiction movie you will ever see".

[JonathanVik 37]

Did anyone else catch that before the priest died, he prayed and admitted to God that he molested boys? Something like that. He also admitted to quite a few other things as well. I guess in the eyes of the filmmakers, Catholic Priest = Child molester and hypocrite.

 

Anyone have any idea what the hell this is supposed to symbolize?

 

 

My best guess is that this is like Evangelion and the movie just throws in religious symbolism to look cool regardless of how much sense it actually makes.

[NathanGordon 1096]

Was anyone else bothered by Jeff Fahey's lips? Because I couldn't NOT be bothered by those puffy, pink, moist protrusions.

They are very meaty lips.