0:02

Congratulations, we made it to a

0:04

thousand new and upgrading supporters during

0:07

Greatest Gen Drive. You know what that means.

0:09

We're putting something from the bonus

0:11

feed into the main feed. Why?

0:14

Why would we do that? Because

0:16

we want non-supporters to

0:19

hear what they're missing out on, on that

0:21

bonus feed. Yeah, this is that kind of

0:23

first one's free drug dealer shit where we

0:25

give you a little taste.

0:28

This is a beloved episode from

0:31

back in the day when Adam

0:33

and I covered Hunt for Red

0:35

October in the bonus feed. It's

0:37

got an amazing Adam

0:39

Ragusea original soundtrack. And

0:43

yeah, this is a ton of fun. And

0:45

because we just crossed the threshold

0:47

of a thousand new upgrading and

0:49

boosting supporters in the MaxFun Drive,

0:52

we wanted to give this one away for free

0:54

to everyone as a thank you. If

0:57

you're feeling altruistic and you want to

0:59

support, we have more bonus content that

1:01

we would like to drop into main

1:04

feeds everywhere. So head

1:06

to maximumfun.org/join if this is

1:08

persuasive to you. But

1:10

this isn't a pitch, this is a thank you. So let's

1:12

get to the fun. Let's

1:14

get to the episode, huh? One of the

1:17

great episodes in the bonus feed about one

1:19

of our favorite movies, that

1:21

one for Red October. Here it is. We

1:27

make plans and then we

1:30

take dumps. We

1:36

make plans and

1:38

then we take

1:41

dumps. What's his plan?

1:43

His plan? His plan. Russians don't

1:45

take a dump sign. It's not a plan. Dump

1:47

without a plan. Dump without a plan. Dump

1:49

without a plan. The average risky son don't take a dump. Welcome

1:54

to the Greatest Generation, a

1:57

Red October podcast by a company called

2:00

Red October. a couple of guys who

2:02

are pretty excited to be doing a

2:04

Hunt for Red October podcast. I'm Ben

2:06

Harrison. I'm Adam Pranika. This

2:09

is one of a couple

2:11

of Max Fun Drive bonus episodes that

2:14

we promised if the network hit the

2:16

28,000 goal. And

2:20

boy, that was really exciting to see. Yeah,

2:23

if you're listening to this, it means you helped us

2:25

reach that goal or... I guess it was the 25,000

2:27

goal. Or

2:30

you've stolen the feed from someone, in

2:33

which case you're a bad person. Yeah. You

2:36

know, go ahead and finish the app. You've already

2:38

committed the crime, but you should just feel real

2:40

lousy while you're doing it. Yeah,

2:43

I hope you only achieve

2:45

medium enjoyment from this. Medium

2:49

enjoyment is really the most we can hope

2:51

for anyone who listens to any of our

2:53

episodes, I think. Yeah,

2:56

but if you stole the

2:58

feed, we want you

3:00

to not get the two percenters and stuff. Yeah.

3:04

Yeah, and I think why are we

3:06

doing submarine movies? Why are we

3:08

doing Hunt for Red October? I think it's simple.

3:11

I think the best Star Trek episodes and

3:13

movies are often the ones that most

3:15

resemble submarine movies. I think

3:18

that's true. And I don't know

3:20

why we constantly bring up Trims

3:22

and Titan Hunt for Red October on our show,

3:25

but I'd feel like

3:27

there are a million opportunities to

3:29

do it. And they're two very

3:32

beloved films to me. And Red

3:35

October has been in my

3:37

top three of movies for probably 20

3:39

years. It's

3:41

a real fave of mine. I

3:44

would argue that in a

3:47

Cola Wars style argument,

3:50

I think there are people who ride

3:52

especially hard for Crimson Titan, those who

3:54

ride harder for Hifro, as the

3:57

kids call it, hashtag HFRO.

4:00

if you're listening to this

4:02

app. And I think part of it

4:04

is like 1990 versus I think 95 for

4:09

Crimson Tide is a very specific

4:11

time to

4:14

a film viewer's life. And

4:16

I think that's what makes Crimson Tide

4:18

the more foundational sub movie, but it

4:21

made me, this

4:23

film was on CBS all the time in syndication. I

4:25

don't know if you remember watching it this way, but

4:27

I remember watching it for the first of

4:30

several times, having seen it broken

4:32

up by commercials. Whoa. And

4:35

I think that unfortunately

4:37

colored my initial feelings

4:40

about the film until I was able to follow up

4:42

and watch it later on a DVD. It

4:46

is not a movie that

4:48

is terribly well suited to a television

4:51

rerun. Not at all,

4:53

yeah. But yeah, I love this movie. I

4:56

would say if we're going to stick with

4:58

the Cola Wars metaphor, this is

5:00

the Mexican Coca Cola in

5:02

the glass bottle to the

5:05

Pepsi of Crimson Tide. Oh,

5:09

I think that's damning Crimson

5:11

Tide with

5:14

faint Cola praise. I'm

5:17

just saying Crimson Tide is a passable Cola, but

5:21

glass bottle Mexican Coke is the king

5:23

of Colas. It's the best in the

5:25

business. I'm gonna try as we

5:28

review this movie not to draw too many

5:30

comparisons between the two films, because that's not

5:32

fair. But I do think that there are

5:34

comparisons to be drawn in a number of

5:36

areas that may be fun to talk about.

5:38

Yeah, so do you want

5:40

to get into John

5:43

McTearnan's masterwork, The Hunt

5:45

for Red October, based on the Tom

5:47

Clancy novel of the same name? God,

5:50

it's just dad core

5:52

all the way down, isn't it? With

5:54

credits like that. What do you say

5:56

we do one show only about this

5:58

movie's end? Well,

6:01

yeah, we should. And I don't want

6:03

to do that before we say a

6:06

heartfelt thank you to all of the

6:09

Greatest Gen viewers and just Max Funsters

6:11

in general who pay to support the

6:13

shows that they love. You know, this

6:15

is showing up in more feeds than

6:17

just the Greatest Generation fans.

6:19

And if you saw this pop up

6:22

and gave it a listen, thank

6:24

you for being a

6:26

supporter of anything. Yeah,

6:29

yeah, it means a lot. And it keeps us

6:31

going. So thanks. We make plans

6:34

and then we take

6:36

stops. We make

6:39

plans and then we

6:41

take stops. This

6:44

movie has like

6:47

a sequence of opening sequences

6:49

that is kind of

6:51

bonkers to me. Like we got the

6:53

Red October going out to sea. We

6:55

get the super tight shot of Connery's

6:58

eyes and he just looks like a

7:00

fucking sea captain. Like he is perfect

7:02

in this role. I don't know how

7:04

Connery has lived a life of

7:06

leisure as a famous movie actor and

7:08

yet he looks as weather beaten as

7:11

somebody who's lived a life as like

7:13

a shrimp boat captain. Yeah, I

7:15

was just going to say he's got a face that belongs

7:17

in a box of fish sticks. Like

7:26

you could really set up base camp in

7:28

the folds under his eyes and then make

7:30

for the summit the following day.

7:32

Very crevasse that face. Yeah,

7:37

you find pitons

7:39

left by climbers in

7:41

the 50s in those crevasses. This

7:45

film establishes right away though

7:47

Ben by virtue of its

7:50

handling of effects work,

7:52

VFX work. It

7:54

really places it in its own time and I

7:58

think it's unfortunate because this is

8:00

a film that is better than its effects work.

8:03

And it's just being made at a time

8:05

that is like right on the cusp of

8:08

when good effects started happening

8:10

for military films especially. Yeah,

8:12

indeed. This

8:14

is ILM model

8:16

work. And there are particles in this movie

8:18

that you see more than once. Yeah. Like

8:21

whenever you're seeing the ship underwater,

8:24

like you'll see the same bubble go past

8:26

the screen like four times. Like

8:29

I don't know why it was so expensive

8:31

to make believable particle

8:33

effects back then, but it really was. Yeah,

8:36

and there's some, I

8:39

don't know if it's mat work or what,

8:41

but there's some scenes like on the conning

8:43

tower where the backgrounds are either

8:45

projected or the

8:49

mat work is just a little off looking.

8:52

There's parallaxing on

8:54

some of these shots of people, like close up

8:56

shots especially on the top of the conning towers.

8:59

Yeah. They don't quite match

9:01

up in your eyes the way that they

9:03

would in a film that came even five

9:05

or 10 years later. We also

9:07

established that this is a Russian ship

9:09

because it's Sam Neill and Sean Connery,

9:12

but they are speaking

9:14

Rusky. And the dialogue

9:16

in this like as

9:19

they are putting out to sea in

9:21

the polyarny inlet is not great.

9:24

George have a drink and have a risk of it. They're

9:27

just observing that it's cold and hard. What

9:29

does that mean? I

9:33

really love Sam Neill in this

9:35

movie, like just full stop, okay?

9:37

He's fucking great. It's easy to

9:39

forget a youthful Sam Neill in the

9:42

year 2018, you

9:44

know, thinking about the films that

9:46

you've seen over the course of your life,

9:48

maybe even beginning with Jurassic Park where he

9:50

was like peak mid-40s

9:53

in that movie or

9:56

40s portraying. Because he was

9:58

only three years after. this. Yeah, like

10:01

he is so youthful in this film

10:03

in a really fun way. So

10:05

I read that Harrison

10:08

Ford was offered the Jack Ryan role

10:10

in this movie and turned it down

10:12

and then he

10:14

was offered the Sam Neill role in

10:16

Jurassic Park and turned that down. What?

10:20

Yeah, like kind of kind of

10:22

amazing to think like I like

10:25

Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan a lot

10:27

but I like Alec

10:30

Baldwin's the best of anybody that's

10:32

played Jack Ryan. Sorry Ben

10:34

Affleck, I know you're a big fan. I did

10:37

not dislike

10:40

the Ben Affleck Jack Ryan film. That

10:42

was the Sum of All Fears? Yeah,

10:45

that was great. Set off a

10:47

nuclear bomb in a sporting

10:50

event. Yeah, we

10:52

get, I mean speaking of the title character,

10:54

we get a

10:56

real pre-blow to Alec Baldwin in this

10:59

film. Speaking of those that look especially

11:01

youthful, was he ever this young? Why

11:03

are you wearing a tux? It's

11:05

after six, what am I, a farmer?

11:07

He's so young and beautiful, it's amazing

11:09

and like his intro is, it seems

11:12

like entirely about setting

11:15

up a punchline at

11:17

the end of the movie. It's like him

11:20

departing London kind of in the middle of

11:22

the night. He says goodbye

11:24

to Dr. Crusher. Jack and I didn't have

11:27

a lifetime together, only a few short years.

11:29

Who's also in this movie

11:31

making it canonical trek. She's in

11:33

the film for like five seconds,

11:35

like wow. He must

11:37

have left some gates on the

11:39

cutting room floor, right? Yeah, yeah,

11:41

how tragic. I know and

11:44

yeah he lies to America stopping

11:48

midway to tell a flight

11:50

attendant that he can never sleep on

11:52

airplanes because he hates turbulence. Turbulence, solar

11:55

radiation heats the Earth's crust, warm air

11:57

rises cooler to sense turbulence. Jack

12:00

Ryan's kind of an idiot here. I mean,

12:02

he is a bookworm

12:05

military nerd, but even Jack Ryan

12:07

should know that turbulence is never

12:09

down to commercial aircraft in the

12:11

history of flying. Whatever,

12:15

Jack Ryan. Yeah, come on. And also,

12:17

the one thing you don't want to

12:19

do on a commercial aircraft is airplanes

12:22

play in a flight attendant. That's

12:24

a bad look. The drink service is going to stop

12:27

pretty quickly after that, I think. In

12:29

his defense, she is being kind of pushy with

12:31

the idea of him going to sleep. Yeah,

12:35

that's true. I don't want to be told to go

12:37

to sleep on a flight either. She's like, hey, why

12:39

don't you shut your eyes and stop reading? And

12:41

he pushes back and she

12:43

doubles down telling him

12:46

to go to sleep. This is a thing that

12:48

happens to Jack Ryan for the entire movie. He's

12:50

constantly being asked when the last time he slept

12:52

was by

12:54

both strangers and friends. The idea that he

12:57

could be this tired all

12:59

the time is troubling given the situation

13:03

he winds up having to grapple with in this

13:05

film. He gets picked

13:07

up at the airport and it's

13:09

kind of – the implication

13:11

at the airport is kind of like,

13:13

oh, he's in trouble. Did

13:16

you think that the movie was kind of trying to

13:18

head faint toward he's being picked up? Yeah,

13:21

I thought so. It's shot

13:23

especially paranoid, isn't it? You're

13:25

seeing establishing shots that show

13:27

people in crisp focus that

13:30

you'll never see again. Was

13:34

Jack Ryan a hugely popular novel

13:36

character at this point in history?

13:39

Did people know who and what he was? Oh,

13:42

yeah. I think if you're a

13:44

dad, you're reading Tom Clancy

13:47

books. And if you're reading Tom Clancy

13:49

books, you're reading about Jack Ryan. What's

13:51

his plan? His plan? His

13:53

plan. Russians don't take us up, sir. He

14:03

meets up with his buddy, Admiral

14:05

Greer, played by the amazing James

14:07

Earl Jones, who does

14:10

that thing where he knows a little

14:12

bit more than he's letting on. As

14:15

Jack Ryan like briefs him in the meeting, Jack

14:18

Ryan is bringing photos

14:20

obtained by British intelligence

14:22

of a Russian submarine that

14:25

we've already met. And it

14:27

has weird doors on it. What have you

14:29

stores those doors, sir, are

14:32

the problem. And the weird doors are a

14:34

big enough deal that he's flown in the

14:36

middle of the night to CIA headquarters to

14:38

meet. I guess like

14:41

his career like the deputy

14:43

director of the CIA at this

14:45

point. I think he

14:47

achieves that status in future Jack

14:50

Ryan films. It's not it's

14:53

not super clear what he is in

14:55

this film in terms of rank. What

14:57

he is most notably is the

15:00

platonic ideal of any boss one could

15:02

ever have. He is on

15:04

the one hand deserving of the

15:06

respect of someone of a higher

15:08

rank than you. He

15:11

also carries himself with the

15:14

aplomb and kindness

15:17

of a great mentor. And

15:19

also like they have a good enough relationship

15:21

that Greer has like been to

15:24

Alec Baldwin's like main

15:27

vacation home or whatever. Yeah,

15:31

they're vacation buds. Yeah, that's a

15:33

that's the kind of that's like a

15:36

real de Soto type boss situation. Yeah, at

15:38

the end of maybe his third flight in

15:40

two days, and I think this is this

15:42

is part of one of the threads that

15:44

I have a hard time grasping is how

15:46

many flights Jack Ryan takes in a 48

15:48

hour span. It's

15:51

like all the flights basically. This motherfucker has

15:53

Sky Miles coming out of his ass. He

15:57

meets up with a classic late age. early

16:00

90s, that guy and Jeffrey Jones. In

16:02

the opinion of this educator, Ferris is

16:04

not taking his academic growth seriously. Principal

16:07

Rooney to you and me. Not

16:09

a great real life person, TBH. A

16:12

terrible real life person. Yeah,

16:15

but God has seen a lot

16:17

of films in this era of Hollywood.

16:20

And he plays kind of an interesting character.

16:22

He's like, he's tech bud to

16:24

Jack Ryan who reviews some

16:27

of these pictures of this sub. We

16:30

think we'll never see him again in the film, but

16:32

then he pops up at the very end. Yeah,

16:35

he gets attached to

16:38

Greer's little operation.

16:41

He gets handcuffed to Greer like a

16:43

Halliburton suitcase. So

16:46

the doors are what Ryan

16:48

wants to show Principal

16:50

Rooney. And Rooney takes one look

16:53

at them and figures out that

16:55

they are a caterpillar drive, which

16:57

is a way to run a

16:59

submarine without having the propeller

17:02

noise of running a submarine.

17:04

So it's a nearly

17:07

silent propulsion system. They really built

17:09

this. This isn't a mock-up or

17:11

anything. And he has

17:14

this great dramatic speech where

17:16

he's got a leg injury.

17:18

So he takes his fake

17:20

leg and sets it up

17:22

on the pulled out floor of his

17:24

desk and says, I was 12. I

17:27

helped my daddy build a bomb shelter in

17:29

our basement because some cool parked a dozen

17:32

warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

17:36

This thing could park a couple of

17:38

hundred warheads off Washington and New York

17:40

and no one would know anything about

17:42

it till it was all over. I

17:44

love that. Like they set the stakes

17:46

so high so fast. Yeah, this film

17:48

does a pretty good job of jacking

17:50

up the tension right away. Another

17:53

thing it does a great job of

17:55

is introducing tons of characters. Like so

17:57

many characters get so much time. And

18:01

right around this point we get to we

18:03

cut to the USS attack sub Dallas and

18:05

we're hanging out in the

18:08

sonar room with Seaman

18:11

Beaumont and Seaman Jones and

18:13

the chief of the boat and Seaman

18:16

Jones is a played by Courtney

18:18

Vance a great role Teaching

18:21

Seaman Beaumont how to listen

18:24

for whales and this

18:26

is like a little moment of levity also

18:29

because It's like

18:31

it's about like a about what a

18:33

fancy lad Seaman Jones is Jonesy They're

18:36

kind of statler and Waldorfing around in

18:38

the sonar closet and I really like

18:40

that like they are Totally the odd

18:43

couple in there. Yeah is

18:45

a dot matrix printer really the kind of thing

18:47

you want in a sonar closet though Yeah,

18:49

that is a that is a loud printer.

18:51

That is very disruptive Con

18:57

Sonar I'm

19:00

hearing a series of clicks And

19:05

then a tearing sound That

19:09

printer is so loud it'll alert the Russians

19:11

to our presence. Oh Classifying

19:16

contact Hewlett Packard one

19:24

Con sonar perforation ramp This

19:28

is the USS Dallas and they're

19:31

an American attack sub in the

19:33

neighborhood of Where the

19:35

red October is putting to sea? so

19:39

There that's just a little

19:41

intro for them, but they will they will

19:44

become more and more Important

19:46

as the film goes on. Yeah,

19:48

there's I mean when we

19:50

do the cross-cutting later We're gonna go

19:52

from the Dallas to the red October

19:55

and back again And we should probably visit what's

19:57

happening to the red October at this point, which

19:59

is a fairly savage

20:01

neck break scene in

20:04

Ramius' quarters. Those

20:07

doors, sir, are the problem. What are

20:09

these doors? Doors. Doors. Engage

20:12

the Simon Cross. Open out the doors. We

20:14

take off, but first

20:17

we make fun. We

20:20

take off, but first

20:22

we make fun. There's

20:26

a political officer stationed on

20:28

the Red

20:31

October, who I guess is just

20:33

there, and his name is Ivan

20:35

Putin. Relax, I've got this. Putin's

20:37

going to make everything okay. He's

20:40

there to, I guess, just like,

20:42

ensure communist orthodoxy on

20:45

the Navy ship. How many agents did the

20:47

KGB put aboard my boat? Your boat, Captain.

20:49

Yes. This

20:51

vessel belongs to the people of the

20:54

Soviet Union. Ramius has a plan, and

20:56

Putin can't be involved, so they're

20:58

like, they're hanging out in

21:00

Ramius' quarters, and there's this,

21:03

like, incredibly flashy camera move,

21:05

where the camera flies in

21:07

toward Putin's mouth as he

21:09

reads a passage from the

21:11

book of Revelation, getting

21:14

really tight when he gets to the word

21:16

Armageddon, which is the same word in Russian

21:18

and English, and then when it pulls back

21:20

out, he's speaking English and not Russian. I

21:23

like this moment. Did you like it,

21:25

or was it too flashy? I fucking love this

21:27

moment. It is so weird. It is the only time

21:29

I've ever seen it done in a film. I don't

21:32

think it would work in most other

21:34

films, and this film, for some reason,

21:36

is perfect. So

21:39

many flashy things get ripped off from

21:41

films of the 90s, I'm really shocked

21:43

that this isn't one of them. What

21:45

would be another opportunity to even do

21:47

this, though? Yeah, I don't know. I

21:50

mean, you'd need to be pivoting

21:52

out of a foreign language subtitle

21:54

film in the way that

21:56

this one needs to. Yeah, because, you know,

21:58

we want to spend time with them. on this submarine

22:01

and we're dumb Americans, we don't want to be

22:03

sitting reading subtitles the entire time. What

22:05

happens here is one of the

22:07

moves in Ramius's most dangerous game

22:09

of chess. It's

22:12

always a game of chess with them, isn't it? This

22:15

chess move kills one

22:17

of the pawns, I guess. Or maybe this guy's

22:20

the bishop. I don't know what he'd be. But

22:24

it kicks off a series

22:26

of moves that Ramius

22:30

conducts that has to happen pretty fast because he

22:32

can't just keep a dead body and recorders for

22:34

long. It's also just

22:36

like a scene where it

22:38

kind of sets up stakes and then

22:40

completely brushes them aside. It kind

22:43

of looks like he's in there getting

22:45

in trouble for having a bible with

22:47

quotes from Robert Oppenheimer written into it.

22:50

And it looks like he's sympathetic to

22:52

some American way of thinking or whatever

22:54

and he's like, no, that was my

22:56

wife's book and I keep

23:00

it for sentimental reasons. This

23:03

scene to me was as tense as

23:05

any other scene in the film. You're so

23:07

blindsided because they build that tension and

23:09

it's all slight of hand. They're building

23:11

that tension and then when he kills

23:13

the dude, it's just out

23:17

of left field. You never see it coming.

23:19

It's a real R-rated death, too. He's sort

23:21

of gasping on the ground

23:23

before he dies. I'm going. You've got to follow. So

23:28

Ramius spills some tea and

23:31

then breaks the glass and sort of sets up a scene that

23:35

he can describe later to the doctor about

23:37

an accident that happened. It's

23:39

a good thing the doctor is Tim

23:43

Curry and not like a talented

23:45

forensic pathologist because this doesn't seem

23:48

like a super believable death. I

23:52

guess he's going to say like, oh yeah,

23:54

this guy slipped on some tea and he

23:56

died. Tim Curry sort of

23:59

has resting ideas. don't believe what you're telling

24:01

me face too in

24:03

a way that's very effective throughout the film.

24:05

He's a great presence. And one

24:07

of the things that he has given

24:09

to do is react to Ramias explaining

24:11

to the senior staff, I'm going to

24:14

take the political officer's missile key. So

24:16

I'll have the two missile keys. And

24:19

Tim Curry is the only person that speaks up

24:22

and goes like the point of having two keys

24:24

is so that we

24:26

can't just launch missiles because one

24:28

person has gone crazy. This

24:30

is most unnerving, Captain. You

24:33

might be familiar with this a few years from now.

24:37

This will factor in hugely

24:40

between Gene Hackman and Denzel

24:42

Washington. I

24:45

mean, you could even make a whole film about this

24:47

moment. Now this is going to

24:49

be a plot point. But

24:52

like, yeah, Tim Curry

24:54

is shitting bricks in this scene.

24:57

And he's like, well, I guess we just got to

24:59

go back home. And Ramias is like, nah,

25:01

dog, our, uh, our orders are

25:03

far too important to go home. This is

25:05

just one man. Like we're going to, we're

25:07

going to keep it going. And he's also

25:09

burned the original orders and replaced them with

25:11

fake orders that I guess he, I don't

25:14

know. Like, do you think he, uh, like

25:17

it's not, it's not an emergency action

25:19

message. They're not like breaking into a

25:21

plastic card container to verify

25:24

its authenticity or anything. Well,

25:27

I mean, in that the original

25:29

orders came from the box that

25:31

they needed both keys to open.

25:33

Yeah. Like there is that level

25:35

of double secrecy

25:38

and, and check audit

25:41

going on in order to get those out.

25:43

So I think that's what he's

25:45

betting on is that he's replacing them

25:47

after the box has been opened. So

25:49

they're believably, they seem more credible than they would

25:52

be if they just arrived on the scene without any

25:54

sort of check. It's an interesting

25:56

idea that they put like everybody in

25:58

the boat, seal it up and. send

26:00

them out to sea before anybody,

26:02

including the captain, knows what they're going to

26:04

be doing. Yeah, like, it's kind

26:06

of hard to pack for a trip if you

26:08

don't know where you're going or for how long.

26:10

Yeah, yeah, when those guys find out that he's

26:12

taking them to Havana, they should be bummed. Like,

26:15

ah, man, I didn't bring my swim trunks!

26:17

Right, exactly. That's the

26:20

main conflict in the film. Yeah, that's

26:22

what the Russian sailors are dealing with.

26:24

The mission that he tells his crew

26:27

they're doing is we're

26:29

going to do missile

26:32

drills like

26:50

parked off the shores of New

26:52

York, and then once we're done, we're going

26:54

to go to Havana and

26:56

bang some beautiful Cuban girls. Multiple

27:01

games of chess being played here. Speaking

27:05

of games of chess, Greer is

27:08

playing chess with... And

27:10

I'm not familiar with that word, Ben. What do

27:12

you keep saying? Hm,

27:14

chess? Right. Speaking

27:18

of games of chess... The

27:23

Jack Ryan Greer team head

27:26

to the White House to do, like,

27:28

a secret meeting

27:30

room briefing with the

27:33

Joint Chiefs of Staff and the

27:35

National Security Advisor and, like, the head

27:38

of the NSA, where Jack

27:40

Ryan gets kind of blindsided into

27:42

giving a briefing on what the

27:44

Red October is and who Ramius

27:47

is. And Jack

27:49

Ryan is actually a, like,

27:51

a Ramius expert. He wrote a

27:53

biography on him for the CIA.

27:56

I know Ramius, General. I actually met him

27:58

once at an embassy dinner. Have

28:00

you ever met Captain Rameus General? It's amazing to

28:02

think of a time in

28:04

history where like the only

28:06

picture available of a guy is like is

28:10

like a bad photocopy of Rameus standing

28:12

among a bunch of other people and

28:14

like it's a picture that was

28:16

clearly snapped by a spy of like a

28:18

bunch of pictures scattered on a desk because

28:20

you see some other corners

28:23

of other pictures in there. And

28:25

it's like a partial face. Yeah. Yeah.

28:29

They're just like, I guess

28:32

this is what the guy is.

28:34

And the big

28:36

revelation in this meeting is that

28:38

the NSA found out that

28:40

the political

28:43

directorate of Russian

28:46

submarines got a letter

28:48

from Rameus that morning, blew in a

28:50

call to the Kremlin, and then all

28:53

of Russia's navy went

28:55

after this fucking boat. Everything

28:59

Russia had to throw at

29:02

hunting down the Red October was

29:04

launched. I read that

29:06

they had a hell of a time green

29:09

lighting this film or getting it sold.

29:12

And part of the challenge

29:14

was briefly explaining the story.

29:17

This is the scene to me that

29:19

sells the movie, which is it's a

29:22

chase film. Yeah. It's a submarine chase

29:24

film specifically. And

29:26

that is very exciting. It's a chase

29:28

film that has like perfect stakes because

29:30

like the Russians are chasing from one

29:32

side, the Americans are chasing from the

29:34

other side. The captain

29:37

of the ship has like an

29:39

unknowable agenda and it is like

29:41

a total leap of faith that

29:44

Alec Baldwin knows what he's doing

29:46

here. But any

29:48

mistake at any point here

29:51

could lead to nuclear Holocaust,

29:53

right? Right. Are

29:55

birds crossing in midair? Yeah. The

29:57

opening crawl of this film. It

30:00

kind of implies that this is a

30:02

true story that the, you know, the

30:04

Russian and American governments denied that this

30:06

ever happened, but there were people that

30:08

suspected that this submarine was

30:10

actually recovered. Have you ever

30:12

heard about Project Azorian? No.

30:15

It was this crazy CIA mission

30:17

in the 70s where a Russian

30:19

nuclear sub sunk somewhere near Hawaii,

30:24

and like the CIA

30:26

paid Howard Hughes to build like

30:28

a giant boat with another giant

30:30

submersible boat inside of it so

30:32

that the Russians wouldn't see that

30:35

this boat existed, and then like

30:37

sail it out and try and like basically

30:40

like claw game the Russian sub off

30:42

the floor of the ocean. Fun.

30:45

And so like this, it had to be built

30:47

with like a morgue that could, you

30:50

know, accommodate the entire crew of

30:52

the Russian

30:54

sub. Had anyone who designed,

30:56

who had designed this boat ever played

30:58

the claw game? Because I'm just going

31:00

to say that no one wins the

31:02

claw game. Well yeah, and they didn't.

31:04

Like they clawed it and it was

31:06

like halfway up and it like broke

31:09

apart in the claw and fell to

31:11

the bottom of the ocean. If

31:14

they had a child in that

31:17

design meeting, I think that could have been

31:19

a predictable outcome. Guys, I'm

31:21

going to save you a bunch of quarters. Yeah,

31:24

like 400 billion quarters. How

31:27

much I'm going to save you. There's

31:29

a great episode of Stuff You Should

31:32

Know about that project that is

31:34

a lot of fun to listen to, and it is pretty

31:36

clear to me that a lot of

31:38

the DNA for this story comes from

31:41

Project Azorian. The

31:44

scene is great for its

31:47

nonverbal intimacy between Greer

31:49

and Ryan. Like

31:52

before the meeting, Ryan is pretty

31:54

terrified at the prospect of doing

31:57

a presentation with one minute notice.

32:00

And Greer's like, no, that's cool. We're going to

32:02

have someone run in your slides. Like the slides

32:04

are already made even. It's going to be great.

32:06

There's a guy with, get this, three overhead projectors.

32:11

And Ryan gets in there and he's

32:13

like, A, always, B, B, F, silence.

32:17

That's what the Strive does, always be silent.

32:21

One of the Joint Chiefs gets up to get

32:24

some coffee, and he says, coffee is for silent

32:26

people only. Fuck

32:29

you, that's my name. That's

32:32

the watch. This watch

32:34

is silent. It's

32:37

a sweet hand. You

32:39

wouldn't know what that's about. This watch costs more than

32:41

your life. There's

32:44

a great moment in the scene, though, where

32:46

Ryan gets a little too comfortable, and

32:50

Greer puts his hand on his arm. I

32:52

always love that moment. It's so

32:54

low key. And

32:56

Ryan does not get the hint that he should shut the

32:59

fuck up. It's great. What he

33:01

puts together is that this is all taking

33:03

place on the one year anniversary of Rameus'

33:06

wife's death. And to

33:09

Ryan, what that means is Rameus

33:13

is not out to get revenge.

33:17

He has lost all ties to leave

33:19

behind, and he may, in fact, be

33:22

defecting with this crazy boat that

33:24

is technologically way ahead of what

33:26

the United States is capable of

33:28

building. And he's hand assembled a

33:30

crew of people that he's familiar

33:32

with or that he has either

33:34

personal or professional relationships to. All

33:37

the officers are hand chosen. And

33:39

that's especially important because the idea

33:43

of a rogue submarine

33:45

captain is one thing because the

33:47

challenge, you can't just drive it

33:49

yourself is the problem. He

33:51

needs a crew. And luckily for

33:53

him, he has a crew that

33:55

ostensibly would do his bidding out

33:57

of loyalty. How long before Rameus?

34:00

could be in a position to fire missiles

34:02

at us. Four days.

34:05

All right, I'll brief the present. That'll be

34:08

all, gentlemen. And Pelt, the

34:10

National Security Advisor, you know,

34:12

like the NSA and

34:14

the Navy brass that are also in

34:16

the room are riding

34:19

for this guy has gone

34:21

crazy and is going to

34:23

shower the United States with

34:25

the nuclear payload that

34:27

his submarine has. But

34:29

Pelt is willing to keep an

34:31

open mind and to like hedge his bets a

34:33

little bit. And also

34:35

he just like opens up

34:37

to Ryan like, hey man, you're like totally expendable.

34:40

Why don't you go out there and see if

34:42

he can make contact with this ramiest guy. You

34:44

got three days if you can do

34:46

it. Great. I

34:48

love how transparent he is about, you know,

34:50

no one in here knows you and those

34:53

who do don't like you. So you're totally

34:55

ready for this. This

34:58

really starts the gag of every time

35:00

Alec Baldwin gets into another mode

35:03

of transportation going, Jack, you should have written

35:05

a memo. Right. Yeah.

35:08

And so commences his fourth

35:10

flight in two days. Yeah.

35:20

Back on the

35:22

red October, we

35:25

get to

35:27

know kind

35:30

of the

35:33

conspirators in this in this defection

35:43

plan, like Tim

35:45

Curry not involved. All the other

35:47

officers on the ship definitely

35:50

are. So like the chief engineer and

35:52

the head sonar guy

35:54

and and like all the guys

35:57

with epaulets are having

36:00

having dinner in the officers' quarters.

36:02

And it's clear that the majority

36:04

of the decision-making and strategizing about

36:06

how this is gonna go down

36:08

has been left to Ramias, and

36:10

these guys are not necessarily psyched

36:12

about the fact that he did

36:14

a murder to make this happen.

36:17

And Sam Neill really has to get

36:20

in there and defend Ramias. And

36:22

it's amazing, Sam Neill's a total

36:24

believer. He really is. Even though Ramias

36:26

didn't tell Sam Neill what he was

36:28

gonna do, he knows that Ramias

36:33

knows how to do this. Even

36:36

though the risks are high, he's

36:39

gonna be the best person to make

36:41

any of these decisions. They do a

36:43

good job of obscuring these guys' reasons

36:46

for wanting to be a part of this. And

36:50

Sam Neill's reasons are

36:53

only revealed a half an hour from

36:55

the end, really. And

36:58

I think if there's one main criticism I

37:00

have of the film is that I would like to see

37:02

more of that. I mean, there are, what,

37:05

a dozen people in this room? They

37:07

all have to be in lockstep about defecting,

37:11

and no one else

37:13

gets a reason to besides Sam Neill's character.

37:16

Yeah. And even the

37:18

Ramias character, the

37:21

idea that he has nothing to live for back in

37:23

Russia is basically the main

37:25

thing for him. Well,

37:28

it's that in that he thinks that the Red

37:30

October should never have been built. His

37:33

motivation happened when he found

37:36

out that the Russian Navy was building a war-starting

37:40

sub. Yeah,

37:42

but all boomers are war-fighting subs. This

37:45

is an opinion he could have had

37:47

20 years before this. I

37:49

guess so. And the idea

37:51

that this submarine can

37:54

nuke something with less

37:56

than two minutes warning is

37:59

pretty scary. Like it's very different from

38:01

we can launch from Cuba or we

38:03

can launch from, you know, we

38:06

can launch and come over the pole

38:08

and hit you. Like if there's no warning, it

38:11

makes a big difference. And I think that he

38:14

sees the red October as

38:16

a, you know, a

38:18

ratcheting up of the Cold War arms

38:21

race that he can't in good conscience

38:24

abide. There's nothing

38:26

mutual about how assured the destruction

38:28

is. It's too one-sided for him.

38:31

Yeah. So and,

38:34

you know, maybe like the other

38:37

thing that we learned in the Jack Ryan

38:39

briefing is that he's not Russian. He's like,

38:42

he might not be like totally bought

38:44

into the entire Soviet project.

38:48

As a project. Yeah. Back

38:50

on the Dallas. Oh, you

38:52

know who we haven't even talked

38:54

about yet is our buddy, Stellan

38:56

Skarsgard, Captain Tupolev. Which is

38:59

a great name. Like they mentioned he

39:01

is sort of from an

39:03

aristocratic family. Yeah. Tupolev

39:05

is named for the Tupolev family

39:08

of products, which is like an

39:10

aerospace and defense company in Russia.

39:12

Oh, really? Yeah. Dang.

39:15

I think he was originally who the

39:17

red October, like in the original real

39:19

orders, the red October was meant

39:21

to go rendezvous with

39:23

his submarine and, you

39:25

know, just run through some exercises

39:28

to test how good the

39:30

Caterpillar drive is. And

39:33

he's just been sitting there twiddling his thumbs

39:35

waiting for the red October. And they finally,

39:39

you know, receive a transmission that the

39:41

red October has gone rouge and all

39:43

of the Russian fleet is chasing after

39:46

it. And he

39:48

is like nothing excites him more

39:50

than the idea of going and killing

39:52

Ramias who trained him. I

39:57

love this character. Where are we going? going

40:00

to kill a friend here again. He's

40:02

full on upset by this deeply. And

40:05

he is a little too excited

40:07

about killing his mentor here. He's

40:10

like a perfect villain because he's

40:12

a sociopath or something where the

40:14

order comes to kill his mentor

40:17

and he's like great, best opportunity I've ever

40:19

had to test whether or not I have

40:22

become as good a captain as

40:24

he is. That is how I took it

40:26

almost exactly, but I also feel like he

40:28

wanted to win. The prize of

40:30

being the one to get him first. Like

40:33

with Raimius out of the way, you

40:36

could argue that Tupolev becomes the

40:39

most respected captain in the fleet. Right. Yeah,

40:42

he'd be a hero of the Soviet

40:44

people or whatever. He'd get the order

40:46

of Lenin. Yeah, that's

40:48

what you want. That's what you want. There's

40:51

probably no order of Lenin, right? It's like

40:53

just a big crowd of people and no

40:55

one's first in line, no one's last in

40:57

line. That's probably how that goes, right? Not

41:00

sure. That's quite how it works, Adam. I

41:06

love an order of Lenin and how

41:08

are the pancakes? Don't

41:10

put that up, man. Don't put that up, man.

41:12

Don't put that up, no, no, we don't. Don't

41:14

put that up, man. Don't put that up,

41:16

man. Don't put that up, man. Don't put

41:19

that up, man. Don't put that up, man.

41:21

Back on the Dallas, we're

41:24

back in the sonar closet with Jonesy. He's

41:27

trying to describe how

41:31

he was able to tag the Red October

41:34

because the Red October is almost impossible to

41:36

hear. He's like, you know, this

41:38

sonar computer, it keeps thinking it's

41:41

this volcanic activity because in

41:44

our database, that's the closest thing that

41:46

it sounds like. The SAPS software was

41:48

originally written to look for seismic events.

41:51

I think when it gets confused, it kind of

41:53

runs home to Momo. I'm

41:55

not following you, Jonesy. They initially pick

41:57

up the Red October coming out. of

42:00

Russian waters on screws,

42:03

but then it like, it

42:05

switches over to the caterpillar and

42:08

they think they've lost it, but Jonesy

42:10

has now kind of cracked the code

42:12

and not only has

42:14

he cracked the code, but he has like a pretty

42:16

good sense of where they were going. Jones

42:19

does that thing that we tried to discourage

42:21

people from doing to our show, which is

42:23

listening at a speed faster than it was

42:25

recorded. And

42:27

I just can't get with that. This is where

42:29

Jones kind of lost me as

42:32

a character. I don't like him after this. You

42:36

gotta listen to that sub sound at normal time,

42:38

Jones. You're just gonna miss the timing of the

42:40

jokes. Like I guess it makes sense if you're

42:42

listening to like a news submarine, but if you're

42:44

listening to a comedy submarine, like for example, the

42:46

Red October, it

42:49

is a emphatically worse experience.

42:53

Everyone knows that, Jones. And

42:56

the one thing that you can't do is tell

42:58

the captain of the Red October that

43:00

that's how you listen to their sub. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like

43:03

I guess like, you know, do whatever

43:05

you want or whatever, but don't tell

43:07

me about it. It just makes me

43:09

angry. Can

43:11

you imagine how angry Raimius would be if

43:13

he heard that's how Jones had

43:16

listened to his sub? Yeah,

43:18

I rate. He'd probably

43:20

break his neck in his crew quarters. Spill

43:26

tea all over him. Sir,

43:28

I'm sorry, listen to it. At

43:31

10 times speed. Relax,

43:39

Jonesy, you sold me. We start introducing more

43:41

and more ships to this scene, Ben, and

43:43

it's really fun. So in addition to the

43:46

other Russian sub, we have introduced

43:49

the Enterprise Aircraft Carrier where

43:53

Jack Ryan has arrived.

43:56

We also get to meet the captain of

43:58

the Enterprise, which is a familiar. a Star

44:00

Trek person, it's Daniel Davis. He's

44:04

the guy who played Moriarty in a bunch

44:06

of TNG episodes. A great Star Trek fat

44:08

guy. He almost

44:10

immediately, Jack Ryan arrives on the scene

44:12

and starts getting sold reverse mortgages from

44:15

Admiral Painter, who is like a version

44:21

of Fred Thompson that is maybe

44:23

peak Fred Thompson. Yeah, this

44:25

is the most Fred Thompson-y Fred Thompson

44:27

ever was, including the time Fred Thompson

44:29

ran for president. God. At

44:34

which point he tried to turn on all

44:36

of his Fred, you know, like if

44:39

Fred Thompson is an organ in a

44:41

church, when he ran for president, he

44:43

tried to flip every switch on that

44:45

organ. He

44:48

didn't quite get there, but in this scene, he fucking

44:50

does. I might argue that

44:52

Days of Thunder Fred Thompson is

44:55

like Fred Thompson put into

44:57

a beaker under,

45:00

above a burner, and then there's like

45:02

some tubes running to another beaker. Like,

45:04

it's utterly distilled, and it's probably too

45:07

powerful, that version of Fred Thompson. You

45:10

back him off a little bit, and you've

45:12

got the Fred Thompson here. It's like a,

45:14

he's like a balsamic reduction that just totally

45:16

overwhelms the plate in that movie. He's

45:19

balsamic Thompson, Ben. Yeah, yeah. This

45:22

is just a ride. You

45:26

just want to dip a crusty bread into him, and

45:29

enjoy some conversation. Yeah,

45:31

he's kind of the star of the theme song

45:34

of this podcast, in fact. I'm

45:36

sure some of our Navy

45:38

friends will reach out in response to this

45:40

comment slash question, but

45:42

very nicely appointed cabin for

45:45

the admiral here. A

45:47

lot of leather furniture. And

45:50

brewship vibes, aren't they? Is that

45:52

really how it is? Because

45:54

I thought that was great. Oh man,

45:57

I- I guess wiping up messes is easy.

46:00

with a leather chair on your aircraft

46:02

carrier. One

46:07

of the dynamics at play in this

46:09

scene is that Daniel Davis's Captain Davenport

46:12

is really salty with

46:15

Jack Ryan because Jack Ryan has

46:17

arrived wearing a Navy

46:19

uniform and Davenport

46:23

just doesn't truck with that. He doesn't

46:25

like somebody that's not really in the

46:27

Navy representing that they are.

46:30

But Ryan is there kind

46:32

of undercover. They

46:34

don't want people on the ship

46:37

to know that a CIA

46:39

guy dispatched by the National Security Advisor

46:41

is there taking a meeting with the

46:43

Admiral and the Captain. So this

46:46

is Admiral Greer's idea of a low profile.

46:48

That's up to you, Charlie, but you might

46:50

consider cutting the kid a little slack. It

46:53

is pretty cool to

46:55

see F-14s again in a movie. Have

46:59

we talked about the military history of

47:01

the F-14 Tomcat? I

47:04

don't believe we have, Adam. I

47:06

mean, there's a piece

47:08

of trivia about that plane that

47:11

I think is really interesting in

47:13

that it was the backbone for

47:15

the Navy for a long time. And

47:18

then we sold, and by we,

47:20

I mean the United States of America sold

47:22

F-14s to Iran. And

47:25

then as soon as the US and

47:27

Iran became enemies, we were like, we're

47:30

going to stop making F-14s and the

47:32

parts that are used for

47:34

servicing them. And

47:38

that is how basically they destroyed

47:40

the Iranian fighter jet fleet. They

47:43

stopped making spare parts. And

47:46

so in very short order, all

47:49

of the Iranian F-14s just started rusting

47:51

in the desert. Wow. Weird.

47:55

That is a bit like the cars. in

48:00

Cuba because like the blockade

48:03

prevented new cars from being brought there so they

48:05

just have old cars that they keep maintained.

48:10

It's such a cool plane. It's

48:12

as iconic as it gets. Yeah, I feel

48:15

like that's, if I think of

48:17

like Air Force fighter jet, I feel like that's what

48:19

I'm thinking about. Yeah. Yeah.

48:22

So a big portion of the middle

48:25

of this film is this

48:28

sequence about the Red October

48:30

running this series of canyons

48:33

underwater because the

48:36

Russians have really accurate maps

48:38

of the canyons and so

48:40

they could like,

48:42

they can run a submarine down

48:45

this, knowing when to turn just

48:47

by like dead reckoning

48:50

of their, or not by

48:52

dead reckoning, by like looking at their

48:54

compass and counting down the seconds and

48:56

knowing like how fast their props

48:58

are spinning. But Rameus has like

49:00

an almost superhuman ability to

49:03

know how far they can push

49:05

it past where the

49:07

turn is supposed to have been. Right.

49:11

And the only reason that we're

49:13

made to believe that he's not

49:15

totally insane in this moment is

49:17

because he's counting while moving his

49:20

lips. Yeah. He's

49:22

like doing the calculations in his head and

49:24

that's like, I think that that

49:26

only works because Connery sells

49:28

the shit out of it. This

49:31

is a great scene and a great

49:33

setup to the tension between the Helmsman

49:35

and Rameus that permeates the rest of

49:38

the film. I think this Helmsman

49:40

is low key, a great performance and

49:43

the tension between them is I think one of

49:46

the top tensions in the film. Yeah.

49:49

It's Slavin, right? The

49:52

guy that's most worried

49:54

about this situation. And

49:56

he's also the one that like really took

49:58

exception to the political. officer being murdered

50:01

and so he you know he's like

50:03

he's here for this this defection

50:07

scheme and agrees with

50:09

Ramias like his has heard Ramias

50:12

expound on his reasons for

50:14

doing so but is he does

50:17

not have the same confidence in Ramias that Sam

50:19

Neill does yeah I mean Sam

50:21

Neill is a couple of things in

50:23

this film he's super confident in Ramias

50:25

and he's got a hunger for rabbits

50:28

he wants to eat the rabbits in

50:33

a private moment with Ramias he talks about

50:35

how he wants to live in Montana and

50:38

marry a round wife get

50:40

a recreational vehicle his

50:43

I mean his fantasies

50:47

are are totally achievable

50:49

but yeah this seems like something that he

50:52

could that there's some viability and if he

50:54

were to make it to America what did

50:56

the seed do to you Sam Neill why

50:59

do you want to be so far away from it

51:01

there's no such thing as a sea rabbit I guess

51:03

show me where the sea touched you yeah

51:06

we on this doll yeah this is

51:08

a nice bit of exposition by him

51:10

though it's nice now it's

51:12

nice because we're more

51:14

than an hour into the film and you

51:16

aren't really sure outside of asking

51:19

for an asylum and an asylum may

51:21

be being granted like what is the

51:23

endgame after the endgame and it's the

51:25

Sam Neill character that is really

51:27

the only one to really paint that

51:29

picture right like

51:32

what the characters want needs

51:34

to be chewed on in this

51:36

film for this film to work and you know

51:38

I think this film does a great

51:40

job of that the McGuffin

51:42

device of the caterpillar

51:44

drive is like one

51:47

of the great like the

51:49

ratio between the technology and what we see

51:51

of the technology in terms of how fantastic

51:53

it might be Is so out

51:55

of balance like I Love the idea of

51:57

them talking about in the production meeting like.

52:00

What did it look like? Know man, you

52:02

don't understand. It's it's doors. He.

52:04

Says as yours ssl we as

52:06

the so. I

52:09

love that be would iowa more

52:11

like ethically to do that sister

52:13

prefer profile lawyers The talks. One.

52:28

One. Of.

52:41

The thing about these doors and the

52:43

sounds of they make his third set.

52:46

Is. That this information needs to be

52:48

conveyed to the Dallas and the only

52:50

way that can be done is in

52:52

person by Jack Ryan taking another. Nother.

52:55

Sort hot fly on really? One of

52:57

the were sterilized. Said

53:00

Jack. Ryan has has been chewing on

53:02

the question of why. Am

53:05

I right? Is Ramius trying to defectors,

53:07

eat nuts, and train a nuke? The

53:09

U S. And. What?

53:12

He hits on as he's like preparing

53:14

to fly out to the Dallas is.

53:17

Oh. Like of course is traded

53:19

effects. And not only is

53:21

he trying to defects, he's probably already

53:23

figured out how to play. He's not

53:25

defecting with his entire crew. His figured

53:27

out how to make his crew get

53:29

off the ship and. What? He's

53:31

figured out is it's a nuclear submarine

53:33

as he can make everybody believe that

53:35

there's like a reactor meltdown in progress

53:38

they will gladly get a sense. So

53:40

this said this a piss and he

53:42

has shown side. By. The use

53:44

of a vignettes of like him

53:47

bent over and a shared sour

53:49

life or allows a high manner

53:51

and then and then in a

53:53

bathroom saving when when like the

53:55

the exclamation point finally appears over

53:58

his head like he says. It

54:00

can out loud enough to want to get almost.

54:02

sure. Seems to me like Baldwin should have been

54:04

saving assess during the seen over the course of

54:06

like four hours. By

54:10

you know you save it and then it goes

54:12

back twice as thick. you don't at that. Oh,

54:14

that's an old wives' tale. visits. Having

54:18

seen Alec Baldwin's case, I think we

54:20

can say with a certain degree of

54:22

confidence that he had saved it many,

54:24

many times. It's almost

54:26

a character in this film. Specific: This

54:28

is. It says

54:30

oh, people don't realize that it's

54:33

actually Robin Williams his chest but

54:35

Alec Baldwin's head. So.

54:39

They are. They lighten up this helicopter. Sort

54:42

of a fun. Fun! Description of

54:44

how they need to get out there there

54:46

too far away to just send a captor.

54:49

And feel like they can do that responsibly with

54:51

the amount of fuel in the distance, the need

54:53

to go to the need to lighten up the

54:55

chopper. and then there's a point of no return

54:57

here. Where were you only have an a certain

54:59

amount of fuel to get out there and get

55:01

back? And so they're at the spot where they're

55:03

supposed to meet the Dallas and they don't see

55:06

the Dallas. And there's a tension between the pilot

55:08

and Jack Ryan about whether or not they need

55:10

to go back and missed. This begins a countdown

55:12

that's critical because. When they're dangling

55:14

to Gray and out of that out of

55:16

the tapper on top of the conning tower

55:18

of the submarine, they're running out of fuel

55:20

to make the trip back and so they

55:22

start to wins him back up into the

55:24

shopper. Yeah, the pilots are going like this

55:26

is going to be too hard and I

55:28

don't believe that this is actually going to

55:30

work. so bring back him. And

55:33

Zach fucking cuts his

55:35

strength. And. And goes into

55:37

what we are told is water

55:39

that is so hypothermic that he'll

55:41

be dead and four minutes they

55:43

get the rescue diverse. Take.

55:45

Grabbed him and pull him in. underwater

55:48

to as a matter of the static

55:50

electricity was really interesting to me yeah

55:52

is that just because it's a storm

55:55

or is that something the have to

55:57

deal with generally i wish i knew

55:59

that I don't know. They

56:02

say like the rotors are pushing down enough static

56:04

that if you like, if you're

56:06

not grounded when you grab

56:08

him, it could kill you

56:10

or whatever, right? Yeah. Great.

56:13

Yeah, and a guy gets shocked pretty badly. Yeah. I

56:16

think Bonks is noggin' on the side of the ship. They

56:20

have a diver in the water and they

56:22

get Ryan. And Ryan is so not hypothermic

56:24

that he's like quippy to the captain.

56:28

It's like, pleasure to come aboard, sir.

56:30

I have very few quibbles with this film, but

56:33

this is a main one for me. Like I

56:35

think you can portray Ryan. Like

56:38

you could portray him as becoming

56:40

more and more bedraggled for lack

56:43

of sleep and also hypothermia. I

56:45

mean, he doesn't look great. This is definitely the

56:48

worst he looks in the film. Sure,

56:50

but he's always sharp. And I think it

56:52

would have served the

56:55

story's tension better

56:57

if he were having a harder

56:59

time articulating his point because he

57:01

is so articulate throughout in making

57:03

the case to people who

57:06

aren't inclined to believe him that if

57:08

that were at some point a weakness, I

57:12

think I would be rooting for Jack

57:14

Ryan more. But as it is, he's

57:16

so great throughout

57:18

that like... I

57:21

feel like the film tries to make him

57:23

an underdog and they don't quite accomplish that

57:25

because he's so polished. Yeah,

57:27

it's kind of like the problem

57:31

with Raimius being impossibly

57:33

good at calculating the navigation.

57:38

It kind of makes our two main characters a little

57:41

bit of superheroes, which

57:44

maybe is less interesting than if they

57:46

were more flawed. That

57:49

hero wasn't really too much of a thing in 1990. No.

57:53

There's also something interesting about this scene because we've had

57:56

the scene with Pelt

57:58

and the Russian ambassador. and the

58:00

Russian ambassador says, oh yeah, Ramius

58:04

went bonkers bananas and intends

58:07

to attack

58:09

the United States with his nuclear vessel.

58:13

And so like... You

58:16

see, it's like a game of chess. You

58:20

mean chess? Chess.

58:23

So Baldwin is telling

58:25

Bartman Cuso his theory

58:27

of the situation, but it is coming like,

58:30

I mean, like immediately after Bartman

58:32

Cuso received an

58:34

emergency action message that seems to

58:36

contradict every point of what he's

58:38

saying. Can we just

58:40

have a moment here to comment on

58:42

the greatness of the name Bartman Cuso?

58:44

I wish I was named... I

58:47

would change my name to Bartman Cuso in a

58:49

heartbeat. It sounds... It's one

58:51

of those names that sounds overwritten,

58:53

like no one

58:56

exists in the world named Bartman Cuso.

58:58

If your name is Bartman Cuso, write in.

59:01

We'll send you like a natural Jaeger or

59:03

something, just for being great. I

59:06

feel like Tom Clancy was auditioning names for

59:08

characters, like his story outlining, he's writing character

59:10

names, and he's like, no one's going to

59:13

believe this, Bartman Cuso. I

59:15

don't know, like I'm going to flag this one to maybe

59:17

find and replace later. And he just left it. Do you

59:19

think maybe he was like, it's

59:22

a little bit of a stretch, but then he

59:24

imagined what it would sound like coming out of

59:26

Fred Thompson's mouth? Excuse me, sir. You're going to

59:28

have to sub off by yourself. Bartman Cuso's both.

59:30

And he's like, no, that actually sounds great. So

59:32

let's keep it. I'm only

59:34

going to keep this character name if

59:37

we can confirm Fred Thompson's casting

59:39

choice. If we can attach

59:41

Fred Thompson, not even to the

59:43

movie, to the book. Right.

59:47

They parenthetically add Fred

59:49

Thompson to the book,

59:51

Hunt for Red Octo Earth. In

59:55

the Tom Clancy universe, Fred Thompson

59:58

is Admiral Painter. Would

1:00:01

you watch an Admiral Painter movie? Like,

1:00:03

that's the sequel that we don't get

1:00:05

here. That would be nice, yeah. I'd

1:00:09

be curious to see that. I would

1:00:11

watch 90 minutes of

1:00:13

Admiral Painter just sitting in a

1:00:16

leather chair smoking cigarettes and reading

1:00:18

whatever books he has in his

1:00:20

admiral's quarters. Yeah, just

1:00:22

have some people come in and give him some

1:00:24

like, some decisions

1:00:27

to make, some issues to interact with, so

1:00:29

that he has an excuse to say stuff

1:00:31

out loud, but other than that... Other than

1:00:33

the full-street swatches that he either approves or

1:00:35

denies. I

1:00:38

don't think a taupe is the right thing for this room. Admiral

1:00:42

doesn't use a paint roller without a plan. So,

1:00:48

man, Q-Sew's got his marching orders, and it

1:00:51

is like, you know, he's the only

1:00:53

sub that's on to Rameus. Like, because

1:00:56

he has Jonesy, he's the only person

1:00:58

in the fleet who can actually track

1:01:01

the Red October. And they

1:01:03

can go sink the Red October right now,

1:01:05

and it is up to

1:01:07

Baldwin to ride

1:01:09

for this dude is

1:01:11

defecting, and we need to give him an

1:01:13

opportunity to do that. There's

1:01:15

a fun conflict, Rameus, happening here, right?

1:01:22

It's like the

1:01:24

United States military wants to take

1:01:26

the Red October intact, if possible.

1:01:30

The Russian military wants to

1:01:32

destroy that materiel to

1:01:35

prevent that from happening. But

1:01:37

they aren't totally sure that Rameus is

1:01:39

defecting, and so destroying the Red October

1:01:42

could be a good consequence

1:01:44

to what happens here. But

1:01:47

in doing that, they avoid

1:01:50

the great research opportunities that

1:01:52

the Red October presents. Right,

1:01:54

yeah. One of the things that Principal

1:01:57

Rooney told Alec Poldwin is that the

1:01:59

U.S. couldn't figure out how to build

1:02:01

a Caterpillar drive. And it gets compared

1:02:03

to Sputnik. The idea

1:02:06

that Russia has done something

1:02:08

that the United States can't do, is technologically

1:02:12

unable to do, is a

1:02:15

thing that really terrified people during the

1:02:17

Cold War. And that's the other

1:02:20

puzzle that has been running throughout, is how do

1:02:22

you get everybody off the boat, and how do

1:02:24

you do an inspection of

1:02:26

this super secret piece

1:02:28

of Russian state property without

1:02:31

the Russians using

1:02:33

that as a pretext

1:02:35

to attack? Without a

1:02:37

plan, without a plan, He

1:02:41

won't stand, Some

1:02:43

degree from outside. You

1:02:45

should have done that, I am. There's

1:02:49

this great moment where they

1:02:52

all stop and it's

1:02:54

because Jack Ryan

1:02:56

has correctly predicted a crazy Ivan,

1:02:58

which is when a Russian submarine

1:03:00

turns suddenly to see if there's

1:03:03

anybody riding in his wake. Has

1:03:06

he made any crazy Ivan? What's

1:03:08

the matter with that, Mike? The next one won't be

1:03:10

the starboard. Why? Because his last was to port? No,

1:03:12

because he always goes to starboard in the bottom half

1:03:14

of the hour. And there they are, it's the Dallas

1:03:16

and the Red October hanging out, like

1:03:19

pinging at each other and they

1:03:21

go up to periscope depth and

1:03:24

captain to captain transmit code with

1:03:27

each other. One ping only.

1:03:30

Captain, I just, give

1:03:32

me a ping for silly. One

1:03:35

ping only please. And it

1:03:37

is confirmed that Raimius is

1:03:39

not there to shoot missiles, he's there

1:03:42

for something else. What

1:03:45

the hell is this about? This is a pretty fun scene.

1:03:48

It seems so dangerous for two subs

1:03:51

to be this close also. Yeah,

1:03:53

like I love the, I love

1:03:56

that scene with the Russian ambassador where,

1:03:58

where Pelt is like don't

1:04:00

you see that having this many

1:04:03

ships in close proximity is inherently

1:04:05

dangerous? He's a little bit

1:04:07

of a southern lawyer about this, isn't he? Yeah,

1:04:10

he's like, now I'm a simple man, but,

1:04:13

um, uh, pursuant

1:04:15

to the US Navy

1:04:17

and Russia's proximity heretofore

1:04:20

the North Atlantic, as

1:04:25

a country man, I just see friction

1:04:28

as potentially, um, causing a fire,

1:04:30

if you will forgive the metaphor.

1:04:33

This is the famous scene though, right? Like the one

1:04:36

ping only. Like I don't know why he

1:04:38

needs to do the pings. They're doing

1:04:40

Morse code back and forth at each

1:04:42

other, but he signals affirmative by doing

1:04:45

one ping only, which leads to a

1:04:47

ton of tension in the control room

1:04:49

on the Red October because even

1:04:51

Sam Neill at this point is like, why

1:04:53

are we doing the sonar? That's gonna just

1:04:56

tell them where we are. I

1:04:59

feel like this is, uh, this

1:05:01

is production wagging the story dog

1:05:03

a little bit because, uh,

1:05:06

John McTiernan auditioned 500 different

1:05:08

ping sounds. Wow. And

1:05:12

I feel like once you get into the 200, 250 range,

1:05:14

I think you're committed to the idea.

1:05:19

Ben, I have a couple of these, uh, sonar

1:05:21

ping sounds that John McTiernan, uh, auditioned for

1:05:24

this scene and I thought it might play

1:05:26

a couple of them for you. Oh, that

1:05:28

sounds delightful. All right. Here's the

1:05:30

first one. And then

1:05:32

here's a, here's another one that they thought about. Very

1:05:44

interesting. And

1:05:47

then, uh, here's what they decided ultimately. Yeah,

1:05:52

that's the one, you know? Yeah, I think

1:05:54

of the three, I think that's probably the best.

1:05:56

Like when you start your Macintosh, you want it

1:05:58

to sound a certain way. Right. This

1:06:02

is when the Red

1:06:04

October, like, you

1:06:07

know, there's like significant eye

1:06:09

contact between Rameus and his

1:06:13

chief engineer, and suddenly

1:06:16

there's a radiation

1:06:19

alarm, and they

1:06:22

have to surface the ship. And they're like

1:06:24

loading the Russian sailors off

1:06:26

the ship. It's very

1:06:28

cumbersome because they have to go all the way

1:06:31

up through the con tower and then

1:06:33

down a ladder on the outside of it to get

1:06:35

to the deck of the ship. And

1:06:38

then I guess their

1:06:40

idea is that they're going to wait for the

1:06:42

Russian fleet to show up for rescue, or the

1:06:44

stated idea is that they're going to wait for

1:06:47

the Russian fleet to show

1:06:49

up for rescue. But

1:06:51

some of the officers are going to have to take shifts

1:06:53

down below decks where it is super

1:06:56

duper radioactive in order

1:06:58

to like keep the ship running. They

1:07:01

are very lucky that the US

1:07:04

frigate is the closest to, right? Yeah,

1:07:07

super duper. I've got to imagine this

1:07:09

film takes a very

1:07:12

terrifying turn if it is instead a

1:07:14

Russian ship on the surface that approaches.

1:07:16

Well, they say it's 20 hours later,

1:07:19

and also it is

1:07:21

revealed that Greer is on that

1:07:24

frigate. So presumably

1:07:26

the Dallas managed to get word to

1:07:29

Greer like what was going on. Yeah,

1:07:31

I mean Greer is no slouch in

1:07:34

the airline miles department. Yeah,

1:07:37

he got upgraded to Comfort Plus on the way out

1:07:39

there, which was great for him. And

1:07:42

because he bought the ticket, Principal Rooney

1:07:44

got the upgrade also. I have

1:07:46

dreamed about this. Which

1:07:49

is nice, you know? You like that companion fare.

1:07:51

That's good. I

1:07:53

like the show that the Americans

1:07:56

make of we're destroying the Red

1:07:58

October. go to

1:08:00

the trouble of taking a Seahawk

1:08:02

helicopter up off the deck of the

1:08:04

frigate, going out to like halfway between

1:08:07

the frigate and the Red October and

1:08:09

dropping a torpedo into the water so

1:08:11

that the, I guess

1:08:13

the sailors in the rescue rafts

1:08:16

can see it happening. It

1:08:18

seems like the most expensive way to

1:08:20

accomplish this goal. Like they

1:08:22

could have rolled the torpedo over the side

1:08:25

I think. Do frigates not have torpedo tubes?

1:08:27

Is that like... I

1:08:30

don't know. I don't know anything about boats. I

1:08:33

think if you have access to the

1:08:35

Navy support for this film, the way this

1:08:37

production did, I think you want to use

1:08:39

all the toys, right? This production had access

1:08:41

to the entire Navy, I'm pretty sure.

1:08:44

I really love that this film was like,

1:08:47

this film will do

1:08:49

for submariners what Top Gun

1:08:51

did for naval aviators. Yeah,

1:08:55

like they really believed that. They

1:08:57

set up recruiting tables in the

1:08:59

theaters when this

1:09:01

film came out. You know

1:09:03

what really helped the naval aviator

1:09:05

cause of Top Gun is that

1:09:07

Tom Cruise fucks. There

1:09:11

is no sexual component to Hunt for Red

1:09:13

October at all. You

1:09:15

mean if I sign up I can

1:09:17

hang out with Jonesy and Seaman Beaumont?

1:09:20

I mean I guess there was that scene

1:09:22

when they evacuate the crew to the Red

1:09:24

October and then they set up the volleyball

1:09:26

net on the deck there. That's

1:09:28

the most jackable I've ever seen, a bunch

1:09:31

of Russian sailors. I

1:09:33

mean the water may be cold, but that

1:09:35

game is super hot. And

1:09:40

so like this torpedo being in the water, Raimia

1:09:42

says to the doctor like, hey, I'm going to

1:09:44

take all the department heads from the boat, we're

1:09:46

going to get into the con and we're going

1:09:48

to scuttle the ship. And Tim

1:09:51

Curry is like, you're a

1:09:53

fucking baller. I just admire you

1:09:55

so much. All right, I

1:09:57

will not be joining you. And

1:10:01

it gets in the rafts with the guys. Maybe it's

1:10:03

just like you weren't invited anyway. We're locking the door

1:10:05

behind you like we did in the mess hall. Get

1:10:08

the fuck out of here. Tell

1:10:10

everybody in Moscow how great I am,

1:10:13

but goodbye. He's

1:10:15

like, he's the guy who can't come to the party

1:10:17

but was never invited to begin with. Oh,

1:10:22

I'm sorry, I can't make it. Yeah,

1:10:26

that's a shame, dude. We'll definitely

1:10:29

miss you. We

1:10:32

talked about

1:10:35

the world. We

1:10:38

talked about the world.

1:10:41

We talked about the

1:10:43

world. We just

1:10:45

did a failed to mention Chekhov's Rescue

1:10:47

sub that was revealed at the beginning

1:10:49

of the film. This is

1:10:52

one of the things that Principal Rooney is

1:10:54

working on in his early

1:10:56

retirement, is a

1:11:00

generic docking collar for a

1:11:02

tiny rescue submarine that can

1:11:05

mate with any submarine

1:11:08

and would enable people

1:11:11

to get off that submarine

1:11:13

underwater. It totally is like

1:11:15

sub non-binary. It

1:11:18

can attach itself to any flavor of sub or

1:11:20

all subs at the same time. It's

1:11:23

in the sub lifestyle, Ben. Yeah,

1:11:25

and it has a flared base

1:11:28

for safety. Sure. And

1:11:31

yeah, the brass of the

1:11:34

Dallas and Alec

1:11:36

Baldwin pile into this thing

1:11:39

and they putter over

1:11:41

to the red October. I

1:11:45

love that they knock on the door with a ball

1:11:47

peen hammer. Yeah, that's great. The

1:11:49

leap of faith of the Russian guy

1:11:51

who goes and opens up the hatch

1:11:55

when he is on a submerged

1:11:57

submarine. I

1:12:00

just hope that these Americans know what

1:12:02

they're doing with this generic docking collar.

1:12:06

But just in case we don't know what we're

1:12:08

doing with this collar, better bring a hammer. So

1:12:14

he opens the door and they all go down

1:12:16

and there's this kind of, it's almost like a

1:12:20

Western, the way they have this standoff.

1:12:22

And I think it's intentional because Raimius

1:12:24

has been concerned about running into a

1:12:27

buckaroo the entire time. And

1:12:29

Bart Mancuso has put a

1:12:31

sidearm in like a holster on his waist. So...

1:12:37

If you're gonna have, if you're

1:12:39

gonna cast for someone vaguely gunfighter-ish,

1:12:42

Scott Glenn's a great choice. Yeah, he

1:12:44

does have a little bit of a gunfighter-y vibe

1:12:46

in him. He has those

1:12:48

great glasses of

1:12:51

his era, like the giant

1:12:54

bifocal glasses. There's

1:12:56

something, like all

1:12:58

of the glasses in this movie are made out

1:13:00

of real glass, which

1:13:02

don't exist anymore. I've

1:13:05

never seen, in 20 years,

1:13:08

seen glasses for sale

1:13:10

that aren't just plastic lenses and plastic

1:13:12

frames. And all of these

1:13:14

guys have metal frame glasses with real glass

1:13:17

lenses in them. And they're

1:13:19

beautiful to look at. Yeah, they

1:13:21

really are. Yeah,

1:13:23

I mean, Scott Glenn has the

1:13:25

glasses of someone that drives a

1:13:27

windowless van. I mean, let's be

1:13:30

clear about that. That's another aspect

1:13:32

to his choice in frames. Yeah,

1:13:34

he's like... I mean, I

1:13:37

think he's red for Dahmer. I'm

1:13:39

almost positive he has. So,

1:13:44

attention breaks as Raimiis

1:13:48

presents the Red October to

1:13:50

the captain of the Dallas

1:13:53

Barman Kuzo. But

1:13:55

they don't get to enjoy

1:13:57

this moment of peaceful camaraderie.

1:13:59

between American and Russian for

1:14:01

long because the sound of a

1:14:04

torpedo whizzing by kind

1:14:07

of breaks the silence. Torpedo, the Americans

1:14:09

are shooting at us again. Pitch

1:14:11

is too high. The torpedoes

1:14:13

rush. That's a fun sound. I

1:14:16

feel like they spent a lot of time

1:14:18

on the sound effects for this film and

1:14:20

they were rewarded for it. Like the only

1:14:22

Academy Awards that this film received were for

1:14:25

sound design and effects. That's fucking

1:14:27

bullshit. If you had to nominate

1:14:29

one actor or supporting actor for

1:14:33

that sort of recognition, I think it's probably

1:14:35

Fred Thompson, right? Yeah, it

1:14:37

was a great best supporting role.

1:14:39

Yeah. I think you

1:14:41

can make a strong, serious case for Courtney B. Vance.

1:14:44

Yeah. James Earl Jones, I

1:14:46

think every time he's in anything, should

1:14:49

get it. But

1:14:51

I think oddly enough, like

1:14:53

fuck man, I don't think I nominate

1:14:55

Baldwin for this and I don't think I

1:14:57

nominate Connery. Like I think all of my

1:14:59

nominations would be supporting roles. This

1:15:02

didn't get nominated for best picture

1:15:04

this year, but the Godfather Part

1:15:06

III did. Oh

1:15:08

no. Yeah. Was that

1:15:10

like an ironic nomination?

1:15:14

I guess we'll nominate the Godfather

1:15:17

Part III or whatever. That's

1:15:19

really the Bartman Cuso name of Oscar

1:15:21

nominations right there. Oh man. They're not

1:15:23

gonna let me do this, right? Kevin

1:15:26

Costner won director over Scorsese

1:15:28

for Goodfellas. Maybe

1:15:31

this was just an off year for the awards. I

1:15:33

don't think- Is he Because of Wolves? Yeah,

1:15:35

Dances with Wolves. I

1:15:38

get that. Have you

1:15:40

watched Dances with Wolves lately? I

1:15:42

haven't watched it in a long time. It only

1:15:44

medium holds up. Like

1:15:47

I feel like this argument is not

1:15:49

original to me, but I feel like

1:15:51

a certain amount of weight to best

1:15:53

picture should be given towards what's

1:15:55

the movie that you're gonna watch 10 years from

1:15:58

now and still be blown away by. Right.

1:16:01

I think that's hard to tell at the time though.

1:16:03

I think we all thought that that's what

1:16:05

American beauty was and it just

1:16:08

seems impossibly dated and shitty now. Yeah.

1:16:12

Yeah. I don't

1:16:14

know. Well anyways, this sets up some

1:16:17

fun stuff because the kind of patchwork

1:16:19

of officers that are

1:16:22

here on the ship

1:16:24

now need to assemble a

1:16:27

fighting force to pilot the Red

1:16:29

October and figure out

1:16:31

a way to evade Tupolev long enough

1:16:33

for either the Americans to kill him

1:16:35

or them to figure out a way

1:16:37

to kill Tupolev. And

1:16:40

that means we've got Jonesy

1:16:42

on Sonar. We've got Alec

1:16:45

Baldwin at the helm, which

1:16:47

he is totally... It

1:16:50

doesn't know what any of the switches and knobs do.

1:16:52

I'm not an evil officer. I'm with the CIA. CIA.

1:16:56

And we have Bart Mancuso

1:16:58

and Captain Rameus kind of

1:17:00

co-captaining and Mancuso

1:17:02

really disagrees with the strategy that

1:17:05

Rameus is employing of closing the

1:17:07

gap between the Red

1:17:09

October and Tupolev's Alpha. Stay

1:17:12

right. Three,

1:17:14

one, five. Wait a minute. That's an industry,

1:17:16

you know. Different people and the immediacy of

1:17:18

having to just sit down in a chair

1:17:20

once the music stops. They need to

1:17:23

take positions in an attempt

1:17:26

to save their own lives here. And it does not matter if

1:17:28

it is not their ship. I thought this was a

1:17:30

really fun idea. It's a

1:17:32

fun idea. And this movie starts with

1:17:34

the tension so high and this scene

1:17:36

is so great at taking it

1:17:39

higher and higher and higher. We're

1:17:41

intercutting between the frigate, the Dallas,

1:17:43

the Red October, Tupolev's boat, the

1:17:45

sailors on the surface. And it's

1:17:48

Dr. Exposition on the surface, you

1:17:51

know, yelling like they're fighting the Americans. And

1:17:55

then the cook comes out and starts shooting into

1:17:57

the con. He's

1:18:00

clearly been like a

1:18:02

Russian KGB guy or something.

1:18:05

I mean, this is some real

1:18:07

under-seed shit. Yeah. Like no

1:18:09

one suspects the cook. No one suspects the

1:18:11

cook. And so Raimius and Baldwin

1:18:13

have to run into the missile

1:18:16

room to kill that guy, and shit

1:18:18

is tense. Like the Dallas can't shoot

1:18:20

at Tupolev's boat because that would be

1:18:22

an act of war. What

1:18:24

they can do is like swoop in and

1:18:27

try and distract the torpedoes a little bit

1:18:30

because Tupolev has taken all of the

1:18:32

safety rigging out of his

1:18:34

torpedoes and is just firing, firing

1:18:37

shots that are dangerous even to

1:18:39

himself. Tupolev

1:18:41

is smoking his cigarette like an

1:18:44

unhinged man. Like,

1:18:46

I feel like that's the direction you're giving

1:18:48

Skarsgard here. It's like, I know you may

1:18:50

or may not be a smoker, but really,

1:18:53

really take some heavy twitchy

1:18:55

drags off at this thing as you're

1:18:57

commanding this boat. Yeah. And

1:19:01

like Sam Neill

1:19:03

gets killed, expresses one

1:19:05

dying wish to have seen Montana.

1:19:08

Raimius takes a bullet in the shoulder. Alec

1:19:11

Baldwin is like crawling around on the

1:19:13

catwalks in the missile room, like doing

1:19:15

his best Connery impression, which is a

1:19:17

lot of fun. Some things

1:19:19

in here don't react like boats. Like

1:19:22

this scene maybe most of all made me think about

1:19:24

what it would have been like if Harrison Ford had

1:19:26

been in this role. Like

1:19:28

I don't think he can do his

1:19:30

best Fred Thompson impression and his best

1:19:32

Sean Connery impression. Like Alec

1:19:36

Baldwin is funny as Jack

1:19:38

Ryan. Yeah, he is. Yeah,

1:19:40

and that's one thing you can say about the

1:19:42

Ford Ryan is that he's not. No,

1:19:45

he's just like earnest and he's

1:19:47

a boy scout. Mm-hmm,

1:19:51

yeah. That

1:19:53

final showdown with the cook

1:19:56

where the cook has like, he's

1:19:58

essentially going to hot wire. Like

1:20:00

he's stealing a car, he's trying

1:20:02

to hotwire the nuclear bombs to

1:20:04

go off and just vaporize the

1:20:06

entire boat. And

1:20:09

he's like got the two wires

1:20:12

and he's like slowly bringing them together

1:20:14

when Alec Baldwin just like wastes him.

1:20:18

How are you only two wires

1:20:20

away from doing this? That seems

1:20:22

impossible. It

1:20:26

shouldn't be a hotwire situation. Every

1:20:28

movie with nuclear bombs gets to make up

1:20:31

all of the like security features on nuclear

1:20:33

bombs. I think the dirty little

1:20:35

secret of nuclear bombs is that the

1:20:37

security is garbage and that they probably

1:20:39

are hotwireable. Ramius admonishes

1:20:41

Jack Ryan about being careful with

1:20:43

his gunfire in this room. Why

1:20:46

doesn't the chef just shoot one

1:20:48

of the missiles? Yeah. If that's how easy

1:20:50

it's going to be to light one of these

1:20:52

things off, why fuck around with the wires? Maybe

1:20:54

he doesn't want to like shoot a missile and

1:20:56

then get killed by radiation before he

1:20:59

can actually destroy the ship or something. I

1:21:01

don't know. He's a

1:21:03

crazy person. Why do I have to head cannon this stuff?

1:21:10

I just did. I'm not asking you to do anything. We

1:21:12

make plans and then we take stops. We

1:21:21

make plans and

1:21:23

then we take

1:21:25

stops. The Dallas

1:21:28

comes in, they convince Tupolev's

1:21:31

torpedo to

1:21:34

follow them instead of the

1:21:36

Red October and then they go

1:21:38

for what's called an emergency blow, which was

1:21:40

my nickname in college

1:21:43

incidentally. This

1:21:45

is like one of the most exciting scenes in the

1:21:47

movie because they actually shot a fucking

1:21:50

huge nuclear sub just like

1:21:53

a cork popping out of the water. Emergency

1:21:57

blow really was like a last

1:21:59

ditch effort. to stop from being bullied, right,

1:22:01

Ben? Yeah,

1:22:03

exactly. And

1:22:08

they get the torpedo turned around,

1:22:10

and it winds up homing in

1:22:13

on Tupolev's boat. And

1:22:16

it explode underwater. And

1:22:20

the Russian sailors

1:22:22

and their life rafts on the surface

1:22:25

can make no conclusion, but that

1:22:27

the Red October was destroyed,

1:22:30

which is perfect cover, because the Americans get

1:22:32

to keep it. They get to

1:22:34

keep it and sail it to the East

1:22:37

Coast. Yeah, there's like one last scene with

1:22:39

the Russian ambassador. He's like, well, thank you

1:22:41

for helping us destroy the Red October. By

1:22:43

the way, not a super psyched to have

1:22:46

to bring this up right now, but another

1:22:48

one of our submarines is also missing. You've

1:22:52

lost another submarine? Of course, they're

1:22:54

speaking of Tupolev's boat. Yeah. And

1:22:58

then we cut to like at night

1:23:00

in a river inlet

1:23:02

in Maine, where up

1:23:05

on the con tower, Alec Baldwin

1:23:07

and Sean Connery are kind

1:23:11

of talking about what this all

1:23:13

meant and how Connery wants to

1:23:15

retire and get back to a

1:23:17

simple life with the quiet life

1:23:19

with Rambo. And

1:23:22

this definitely is like the worst effect in the

1:23:24

movie, by the way. Yeah,

1:23:27

there's some rim light happening

1:23:29

around Baldwin's face that

1:23:32

is not working. It's

1:23:34

also like I think

1:23:37

that what they were trying to do was

1:23:39

make it that his hair wasn't totally

1:23:42

obscuring the background. But like

1:23:44

the way they did the mat, his hair

1:23:46

is like half. Baldwin

1:23:49

specifically, his hair is like

1:23:52

is half opaque and half not. So

1:23:55

you can see the horizon right through

1:23:57

it. It's weird. It's

1:23:59

really weird. hold up to scrutiny. And

1:24:02

if you were to tell me that in this

1:24:04

film that it would be Alec

1:24:06

Baldwin's hair and not Sean Connery's hair

1:24:08

piece that didn't hold up to scrutiny,

1:24:11

that it would be Alec Baldwin's,

1:24:14

I would have taken that bit. I

1:24:18

noticed in the credits of this movie a

1:24:20

credit river sequence by the

1:24:22

Chandler group. The

1:24:26

Chandler group subsequently filed

1:24:28

for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992.

1:24:35

The other problem with this scene is that

1:24:38

the camera is racking focus back and forth

1:24:40

between Connery and Baldwin, but

1:24:43

the background stays tack sharp.

1:24:46

Yeah, that is a huge problem. It's

1:24:50

just a dead giveaway that it's two

1:24:53

different pieces of footage. And I don't

1:24:55

understand why it is so hard

1:24:58

for effects houses to remember to

1:25:01

put a blur on the

1:25:03

background when they're doing comps

1:25:05

like this. I see it all the fucking

1:25:07

time. And it's such a shame for such

1:25:10

a great movie to have the kind

1:25:12

of, I mean, this isn't the

1:25:14

last image in the movie, but

1:25:17

the kind of the image that you're left

1:25:19

with be this

1:25:21

bad an effect. Yeah, it's unfortunate.

1:25:25

The last image, obviously, is

1:25:27

Jack Ryan having no problem

1:25:29

catching 40 winks despite

1:25:31

being on a commercial jet back to London.

1:25:34

I guess he bought a first-class

1:25:37

airplane ticket for his bear. Maybe,

1:25:42

I mean, sometimes the airline will make you

1:25:44

buy a second ticket if they think you're,

1:25:46

you know, carrying on something that exceeds the,

1:25:49

I had to do that flying

1:25:52

from like, I think it

1:25:54

was flying from Dubai to Kano,

1:25:57

Nigeria, maybe. and

1:26:00

like the airline thought that

1:26:02

my carry-on was too heavy and I

1:26:04

had to buy an entire second ticket. It

1:26:07

was just like total extortion. It was like,

1:26:09

I can't not go because it's for work.

1:26:11

So I guess

1:26:13

I will buy this entire second ticket.

1:26:16

They gotcha. Yeah, fucking

1:26:19

bullshit, man. Wouldn't

1:26:21

you have ended this movie on the

1:26:23

conning tower of the Red October, especially

1:26:25

because of how insignificant

1:26:29

Jack Ryan's family is to this film

1:26:31

at all? But they did so much

1:26:33

setup about how he hates turbulence,

1:26:36

where the sun's warmth heats up

1:26:38

the Earth's crust, warm air rises,

1:26:40

cold air falls. I

1:26:42

don't care. I don't care about any of that. I

1:26:45

didn't think that was interesting enough to keep. Yeah,

1:26:48

like in a world, especially in

1:26:50

like this era of Hollywood, where

1:26:52

everything is cut for time, why

1:26:55

was that stuff so unfair? Yeah,

1:26:58

I don't know. I don't know.

1:27:01

I don't know either, but it's like- In the

1:27:03

television version of this film, as

1:27:05

soon as a single frame of Alec

1:27:08

Baldwin on the airplane next to the bear

1:27:10

comes on screen, they

1:27:13

do that thing- They squish it over to

1:27:15

the side and start running- They squish it and

1:27:17

then they fast play the credit. Yeah, promos

1:27:19

for the next show that's coming on. Yeah,

1:27:21

yeah. See,

1:27:24

you don't get that satisfaction, Vin, of

1:27:27

the conclusion to the film. Without a

1:27:30

plan, without a plan,

1:27:34

we don't ever

1:27:36

jump without a plan. Without

1:27:41

a plan, without

1:27:43

a plan, we

1:27:47

shall never jump without

1:27:49

a plan. Speaking

1:27:53

of relative feelings

1:27:55

of satisfaction, did you like this

1:27:58

movie? I fucking love this movie. It's

1:28:00

one of my faves of all time. I

1:28:03

found myself really pining to

1:28:05

see a 35mm print of this film.

1:28:10

I think it's beautiful. The

1:28:14

cinematography is not that flashy, but it

1:28:16

is gorgeous. It's

1:28:18

shot on beautiful anamorphic

1:28:21

lenses. All

1:28:23

of the sets are totally amazing. The

1:28:25

Dallas and the Red Octobers control

1:28:28

rooms are fucking

1:28:30

amazing and great looking.

1:28:34

I think it's a terrific movie. It's

1:28:36

just so much fun. It's

1:28:38

exactly what you want from a thriller. If

1:28:41

it's the movie version of a novel that

1:28:43

you buy at the airport and read all

1:28:45

of on a flight from LA to New

1:28:47

York, job accomplished.

1:28:51

How often do you return to this film? This

1:28:56

is a film I've owned in

1:28:58

every video format that

1:29:01

I've ever collected films in. I

1:29:04

owned it on VHS, I owned it on

1:29:06

DVD, and now I have it on digital

1:29:08

HD. I watch it at

1:29:11

least a couple of times a year. Wow, how

1:29:13

about that? I watched the Blu-ray

1:29:15

version of this film and then read some

1:29:18

Blu-ray reviews of it. I'm

1:29:21

with you on how good it looks. A

1:29:24

lot of people who are Blu-ray

1:29:26

enthusiasts did not enjoy the transfer

1:29:28

because John McTiernan uses a lot

1:29:30

of grain in his films. It's

1:29:33

a grainy film. That's

1:29:35

more of a style choice than it is a transfer choice.

1:29:42

I kind of don't

1:29:45

know as much about how 4K

1:29:48

works as I do about HD. If

1:29:53

they can and do ever tell

1:29:55

us any of this to 4K

1:29:57

HDR, I feel like that problem may be

1:30:00

goes away a little bit because I

1:30:02

think the problem is that it's like, you

1:30:05

know, it's a digital file. So it's

1:30:07

like it's essentially making a JPEG every

1:30:09

for every frame or or something

1:30:11

similar. And that artifacting is

1:30:14

totally confounded by film grain.

1:30:17

And if you if

1:30:20

you like take the next step up

1:30:22

in terms of like file size and

1:30:24

resolution, I feel like

1:30:26

a lot of that artifacting goes away

1:30:28

and it the grain appears to be

1:30:30

what it is. Yeah, I

1:30:33

like that about it. Like it's another unique

1:30:35

thing about the film that that places it

1:30:37

in its time. Yeah, yeah, I really

1:30:40

hope that they do at some

1:30:42

point make a really

1:30:44

high quality 4k transfer of this

1:30:46

because I think it deserves it. I

1:30:49

really like the movie too. And I hadn't seen it

1:30:51

in a long time. I will

1:30:53

say though, that

1:30:56

for popcorn submarine

1:30:58

movies Crimson Tide is my

1:31:00

movie. But I

1:31:02

really I mean, there's plenty to appreciate

1:31:04

about hunt for Red October. Notably,

1:31:07

the casting of

1:31:09

this film is fantastic. And just

1:31:11

the the satisfaction of watching something

1:31:13

in the greater Jack Ryan universe

1:31:16

is super enjoyable to

1:31:19

me. It's a it's a

1:31:21

fun time capsule in

1:31:24

terms of a submarine film and and

1:31:27

in what Alec Baldwin used to look like.

1:31:33

So I'm glad I had an excuse to watch it again.

1:31:36

I'm glad you did too, Adam. I

1:31:39

guess that leads me to a question though.

1:31:43

Hey, Adam, what's that been? Find

1:31:45

yourself a drunk Shimoda. I

1:31:50

certainly did, Ben. There is a

1:31:52

moment in the film fairly early

1:31:54

on as the Red October is

1:31:56

shoving off and and

1:31:58

Ramius is is sharing

1:32:01

his mission orders. He's

1:32:04

sharing his orders with the crew and we get to

1:32:07

do some cut arounds of the crew listening

1:32:09

to these orders. Ramius

1:32:12

talks about putting into port in

1:32:14

Cuba and all the beautiful Cuban

1:32:16

women there. And we cut

1:32:18

to the mess hall, where

1:32:21

in the mess hall, one of the guys

1:32:23

in the mess hall stands up and pantomimes

1:32:25

an hourglass figure. He's

1:32:29

like the virgin pretending that he's had

1:32:31

sex before. He's like, this

1:32:34

is what a woman is shaped like. And

1:32:37

does the thing before sitting down. Bag

1:32:39

of sand! That

1:32:42

guy was ridiculous. That

1:32:46

guy was very Shimoda in that moment. They

1:32:48

took that a few times and McCierd and

1:32:50

kept going just like, no, bigger,

1:32:52

have fun with it. Bigger, bigger.

1:32:55

You cannot be too big for this. Yeah,

1:33:00

yeah, that guy is my Shimoda. What about you,

1:33:02

Vin? Boy, I wrote a few options down. Did

1:33:07

you write down hourglass figure guy at

1:33:09

any point? Hourglass figure guy, I didn't

1:33:11

write down, but definitely considered writing him

1:33:13

down. Another guy I wrote down, but

1:33:15

I'm not gonna give my Shimoda to,

1:33:17

is the captain of

1:33:20

the rescue sub who like yells down

1:33:22

the portal. Hey, I think

1:33:24

somebody's shooting at us out here. That

1:33:26

guy was great. That guy was fucking great. Also,

1:33:29

he had a great take when he was told

1:33:31

to uncouple his rescue sub. He's like, well, where

1:33:33

am I supposed to go? That

1:33:36

guy didn't have a lot to do and

1:33:38

did everything with it. He's got the only

1:33:41

sub with windows. I would have loved a

1:33:43

cutaway to his perspective of the torpedoes going

1:33:45

in the water. Like

1:33:48

one whizzing by him. Yeah, it would

1:33:50

have been great. But

1:33:53

to me, like the character that is having

1:33:55

The most fun in this movie, or I guess

1:33:57

the actor that is having the most fun. This

1:34:00

movie is definitely Tim Curry.

1:34:02

like. Tic. Jim

1:34:04

Carrey as Doctor Petrov

1:34:06

is completely terrified and

1:34:08

every seen ads so

1:34:10

willing to. Let

1:34:12

like other people. dictators. Reality

1:34:15

like when. When

1:34:17

Ramius lies to him and says like

1:34:19

were going to get like me and

1:34:21

all these other guys who aren't really

1:34:23

necessary for the projects are gonna go

1:34:25

down into this irradiated submarine and scuttled

1:34:27

the ship. Is

1:34:30

like the Relief that watches watches

1:34:32

over Doctor Petrov in that moment

1:34:34

is so hilarious to me. Like.

1:34:38

Like he does is A. I have not

1:34:40

going to question that at all like thank

1:34:42

fuck it's not me and I am. I

1:34:44

am glad that you've given me like. Not

1:34:47

a not a plausible reality, but a

1:34:49

reality to live in. Tim.

1:34:52

Curry always looks like he's about to

1:34:54

cry. And that is he

1:34:56

is well suited to this moment. He's.

1:35:00

Fucking great. So for that reason Tim

1:35:02

Curry is my drugs from Oda. To.

1:35:06

Tell them I'll It's the end

1:35:08

of another exciting special donor bonus

1:35:10

episode of The Greatest Generation. I'm

1:35:12

a little sad to see it

1:35:14

go because the the to Submarine

1:35:16

movies that we do the most

1:35:18

of material about are now in

1:35:21

the cannon yet to buy their.

1:35:23

we Kinda done it without your

1:35:25

support And we, yeah we do

1:35:27

as ever. Appreciate

1:35:29

a very much. And I

1:35:31

guess we as we watch and enjoy more

1:35:33

submarine films I think you could there. Possibly.

1:35:36

Make the case for those. Go. Into

1:35:39

our donor feed. But I think that's one

1:35:41

of the fun things about the don't fetus.

1:35:43

it's It's sort of an experimental sandbox for

1:35:45

us to make weird. Class

1:35:48

I Canonical Gray, The sensors free

1:35:50

to listen to. Yeah, answer

1:35:52

in only go up and thinking like

1:35:54

Deep Space Nine feels less like a

1:35:57

sub than. The. as the

1:35:59

enterprise So yeah, it's more of a

1:36:01

rescue sub Yeah,

1:36:04

is there a rescue sub movie we could start

1:36:06

doing bits about Do

1:36:08

you think I? Feel

1:36:10

like I could have used 20 minutes

1:36:12

more movie here because I

1:36:15

wanted to see what happened to rameous I wanted to see

1:36:17

what happened to the sub. I

1:36:19

don't want to know what happens with with Ryan and

1:36:21

his in his teddy bear I want

1:36:23

to see the endgame or if there was

1:36:25

like a hot sex like Baldwin McFadden sex

1:36:27

scene That would have been great. I

1:36:30

would have loved to have seen that just like all

1:36:32

of that a totally gratuitous Congratulations sex

1:36:34

scene at the end of the movie Congrats,

1:36:37

that's some of the best sex. Yeah, I

1:36:40

mean I've never experienced it, but I've seen that movies

1:36:42

a couple of times No one's ever

1:36:44

been happy for me. So that's why Laughter Yeah,

1:36:55

plenty of plenty of people have been happy for you

1:36:57

Ben, but they've all had headaches Laughter That's

1:37:06

one of the many ways we are different Well

1:37:13

if if you'd like to discuss this episode Use

1:37:16

the hashtag greatest Jen on Twitter where Adam

1:37:18

is there is at cut for time. I'm

1:37:20

there at Benjamin R EHR

1:37:22

we've also got a sub hashtag

1:37:24

Hfro for if you're talking about

1:37:27

this special episode about you know,

1:37:29

hashtag one ping only I'm sure

1:37:31

would be Appreciated

1:37:33

get weird. Yeah, I think that uh You

1:37:36

know like we I think these bonus

1:37:39

episodes if they are worth something to you

1:37:41

and the show is worth something to you

1:37:44

Since you are here as a donor. I think

1:37:46

it helps us a lot when people say

1:37:49

how much they like the donor bonus

1:37:51

episodes specifically because That's

1:37:54

an encouragement for people who haven't taken

1:37:56

the leap yet. So yeah, You

1:37:58

know, do no obligation. You've already done

1:38:01

more than enough and we really appreciate

1:38:03

it better if he if you are

1:38:05

moved to to post about it and

1:38:07

air. And. Let us know what you thought

1:38:09

of this episode and I'm sure it would help other

1:38:12

people make the leap as well. As

1:38:14

hey a great big thanks to our

1:38:16

buddy. Adam the Goose reduce

1:38:18

yeah, Who May T Original theme

1:38:21

song for this one episode. super

1:38:23

special edition of the show. We'd

1:38:26

also like to thank The Dump

1:38:28

without a Plan Singers: Mercer University

1:38:30

Music Students: Clay Young, Peter Celts.

1:38:33

Jill. Turning and cameron rolling

1:38:35

was this treat as a

1:38:37

sign like says made for

1:38:39

special app and there are

1:38:42

you know it's to listen

1:38:44

to the whole thing as

1:38:46

we roll out on this

1:38:48

episode. And was there when

1:38:50

we that getting next time. And the donor

1:38:52

feed with a. Special.

1:38:54

Movies of our choice to be

1:38:57

determined. In another episode

1:38:59

of The Greatest Generation are several hours

1:39:01

as everything eventual a there's gonna be

1:39:03

that starts at five episodes that we

1:39:05

do with the with the flypast the

1:39:08

Big Crossover. Maybe they'll be

1:39:10

next. Similar. Cnn.

1:39:12

Respect. Sorcerer

1:39:50

or the. stores

1:39:53

to the divorce and asylum

1:40:00

We make fun, he takes

1:40:03

off, and then she

1:40:05

makes fun. We

1:40:14

make fun, we're always

1:40:17

on the fun. When

1:40:20

we talk, it's always

1:40:22

with the fun. We

1:40:30

make fun, it's always with the

1:40:32

fun. If

1:40:34

you ever think

1:40:37

we're talking, you

1:40:42

are the one that needs a

1:40:44

turn. Come come come, turn my

1:40:46

crazy eyes. We talk. We

1:40:49

talk about the plan, we talk about the

1:40:51

plan. We talk about the no-no, we don't

1:40:53

talk about the plan. We talk about the

1:40:55

plan, we talk about the plan. We

1:40:58

talk about the no-no, we don't talk about the plan.

1:41:01

Let's verify our range to talk. How

1:41:05

many things do you want? One

1:41:07

thing. How many things do you want?

1:41:10

One thing. Two

1:41:12

things. Three things. One

1:41:15

more. One thing only pays

1:41:17

for me. Are you sorry? Are

1:41:21

you really, really sorry? Give

1:41:25

me a ping, Vasili. One thing. I

1:41:27

got him. We talk

1:41:30

about, we talk about,

1:41:33

we don't talk about

1:41:36

the plan. We talk

1:41:38

about the plan, we

1:41:40

talk about the plan. We

1:41:55

talk about the plan. It

1:42:00

where you play the music and then you

1:42:02

have to sit down and a chair. Musical

1:42:04

chairs, Squeeze.

1:42:07

Do Not leave that and assess.

1:42:10

Oh my. Editing this specific. The.

1:42:13

Maximum Fun. A. Worker own

1:42:15

network of artist own shows

1:42:18

supported directly. By you.