Battlefield Earth w/ Rob Huebel (HDTGM Matinee)

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Speaker 8 Now it's time for

Speaker 9 how did this create? People gonna have a good time. Celebrate some failure, not just being a hater.
Cause you know you wonder. How did this create?

Speaker 10 Let's follow in the mediocrity of some bar art.

Speaker 9 Perhaps we'll find the answer to the question, how did this get made?

Speaker 12 Hello, people of Earth.

Speaker 14 Welcome to How Did This Get Made?

Speaker 16 This is the podcast where we try to make sense of the movies that make no sense.

Speaker 18 I'm Paul Shearer.

Speaker 16 You might know me as Andre from the TV show The League or from my star turn as Rango, the lovable old rest lizard in Rango.

Speaker 14 I am joined by Jason Manzukas, who you might recognize as Rafi from the league.

Speaker 19 What's going on, Jason?

Speaker 23 How are you, Paul?

Speaker 18 Very good.

Speaker 26 And of course, June, Diane, Rayfield, who you've seen on Party Down and Flight of the Concords, June.

Speaker 6 Hi, Paul.

Speaker 3 This is a movie we have today.

Speaker 27 I'd be fucking furious.

Speaker 28 Yes. I mean, we love it.

Speaker 29 Susan's go-to emotion is anger.

Speaker 6 No, this movie is enraged.

Speaker 32 It's warranted.

Speaker 33 I mean, this, you know, we love crappy movies, and I don't think there is one crappier than Battlefield Earth.

Speaker 14 It's like if Star Wars farted on the planet of the Apes, it would become this film.

Speaker 33 Here's the basic premise, and I had a hard time distilling it.

Speaker 30 Don't bother.

Speaker 27 Fuck this movie.

Speaker 21 The movie takes place in the year 3000.

Speaker 24 Earth has been conquered by aliens.

Speaker 35 Wait, is that true?

Speaker 36 It takes place in the year 3000.

Speaker 37 Oh, come on.

Speaker 38 The subtitle of the movie is.

Speaker 36 Now I'm even angrier that those fighter planes fly?

Speaker 35 Yeah. Oh, fuck you, movie.

Speaker 12 Well, we won't get too far.

Speaker 41 Basically, aliens have been taken over by, or aliens from the planet Cyclos have taken over the remaining humans left on Earth.

Speaker 19 One of the villagers who is still alive, living far away, is captured after being caught in an abandoned mall and brought to the human processing center in Denver where he meets Turo.

Speaker 48 When those fucking Chirons come up and it's like human processing center and then it's planet Cyclo.

Speaker 6 I was like

Speaker 35 really I need to know the

Speaker 33 you know what as I'm even explaining it it's it's a terrible idea. So basically a caveman is captured by an alien.

Speaker 14 The alien wants this caveman to mine gold for him so he can get back to his home planet. But guess what? It messes up for him.

Speaker 24 They steal gold from Fort Knox, steal nuclear weapons and Harrier jets, and blow up the aliens' mining operation.

Speaker 21 That's the basic principle.

Speaker 29 Why do the aliens need the gold?

Speaker 36 Why does gold hold value throughout the universe?

Speaker 41 Well, let's find out these questions.

Speaker 29 Universal currency is based on gold.

Speaker 6 It is not!

Speaker 53 No way!

Speaker 29 Every planet's currency is based on gold.

Speaker 33 Alright, well, let's just hear a clip from the movie.

Speaker 19 This is just to give you an idea of the movie. This is when Turl finds out he has to stay on planet Earth a little bit longer.

Speaker 56 I don't need to second guess the Home Office, but surely I could be of better service to the corporation. Home Office is well aware of your academic achievements and obvious talents.

Speaker 56 That's why we've decided not to keep you here for another five cycles.

Speaker 11 It's a joke.

Speaker 55 Oh, thank you, sir. I don't know if I could have kept my sanity to be here another five cycles.
We've decided to keep you here for another 50 cycles.

Speaker 55 Within this options for renewal, within this options for renewal, within this options for renewal.

Speaker 17 That is the movie. Now, here to help us make sense of this movie is our friend.

Speaker 14 You've heard him here on Earwolf, on a show called Mike Detective.

Speaker 15 You've seen him on Human Giant and on Children's Hospital.

Speaker 30 Please welcome Rob Hubel.

Speaker 57 Thank you. I'm leaving.

Speaker 6 No. I'm leaving.

Speaker 57 Now, this is why I'm leaving.

Speaker 6 Because I agree with Jason.

Speaker 57 I agreed to do this podcast before I I watched this movie and about three minutes into it I I wanted not only the that three minutes back I wanted the future time I was gonna give up back it's an hour and 57 minutes and there's nothing you can do sheer to get me back that time well I'll tell you this much it's an hour and 57 minutes but if the movie didn't have the slow-mo it would probably be about 45 there's more slow-mo in this movie why would you make the action scenes work so they had the only way to make the action scenes look good was to do them in slow-mo they look terrible Like anything that's supposed to be action-y, they cut to slow-mo.

Speaker 57 It's like, fuck this.

Speaker 54 If you like

Speaker 32 slow-motion horse scenes, then you will like this movie.

Speaker 54 I haven't seen more slow-motion horses.

Speaker 29 But that horse's journey was one of the most developed movies.

Speaker 63 I'll go out on a limb and say, best acting in the movie. That horse.

Speaker 6 Done by that horse.

Speaker 43 When he came running back into town.

Speaker 6 Into camp?

Speaker 30 Yeah, that was good. That was like, I was like, oh no, he did the right.

Speaker 28 How did he find his way back?

Speaker 57 Well, I couldn't, here's what I couldn't get over watching the movie.

Speaker 57 I couldn't feel worse for the costume people and the art director and the set build, because there's so much work that went into actually building like what that world.

Speaker 57 I mean, a lot of it is crappy CGI, but like all the costumes and like just those sets.

Speaker 30 Can you imagine?

Speaker 57 Can you imagine getting that fucking makeup every day?

Speaker 62 Every day to deliver lines that make no sense.

Speaker 30 Listen here, rat brain.

Speaker 43 You're skullbone is definitely a skullbone.

Speaker 29 Can we talk for one second about John Travolta's accent?

Speaker 6 What? Where would you place it?

Speaker 37 Which we could talk for one hour about John Travolta's accent.

Speaker 67 It changes from scene to scene.

Speaker 14 Sometimes it's colonial British or something like that.

Speaker 34 And then other times it's, oh, like, I mean, there's four or five distinct different voices.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 69 This, I wrote, like, I was writing notes as I was watching it.

Speaker 68 And, like, the first beat happened.

Speaker 63 And then

Speaker 27 in the course of the next scene, I just started writing, this movie instantly makes no sense I have no idea what any of these people are talking about and then I just wrote why did these actors take this job Forrest Whitaker is the only person who has come out and said I made a huge mistake is he really

Speaker 57 there's a long sequence where they let the man animals which again that's a fucking dumb name that's see that's the other problem I have is like the

Speaker 57 but the language is so unimaginative lazy they say words like vaporize like I'm gonna vaporize you Like, that's what a little kid would say.

Speaker 29 Although, there were some phrases, which was interesting to see, like, okay, in 3000, these are the phrases that stood the test of time.

Speaker 53 A piece of cake wasn't cake. Yeah, a piece of cake.

Speaker 6 Rats is always greener. Rats is always greener.

Speaker 37 Hey, let's get the hell out of here.

Speaker 53 Those phrases held up.

Speaker 2 Leverage.

Speaker 6 Leverage is used

Speaker 58 so many times in this movie.

Speaker 42 Leverage.

Speaker 6 They have that whole sequence.

Speaker 30 You got some leverage.

Speaker 57 They have that whole sequence where

Speaker 57 John Travolta wants to get leverage over

Speaker 57 the prisoner guy. So they let him go so that they will watch him eat his favorite food.

Speaker 2 Rats.

Speaker 57 Yeah, so that they can, so that they can figure out what the fucking guy's favorite food is and feed it to him as a treat.

Speaker 52 They talk about his favorite food.

Speaker 62 I wrote that down too, for like 15 minutes.

Speaker 46 That sequence that Cuba's talking about.

Speaker 68 And they're just going, see, that's his favorite.

Speaker 46 He could have chosen anything, but that is it.

Speaker 17 You're like, meanwhile, he couldn't have chosen anything. He's an abandoned warehouse.

Speaker 2 There's no food to be found.

Speaker 53 And it's like, he loves raw rat.

Speaker 14 This movie, i i looked it up on uh on online it cost 73 million dollars to make yes and who knows what they spent on advertising well here's the thing apparently there was a huge lawsuit because the company that made it inflated the budget by 40 million dollars so that 75 went to some french guy's pocket no really they lost a gigantic lawsuit i didn't do any research on this did scientology themselves have anything to do with the making of this movie l Ron Hubbard was supposed to direct this movie in 1985 when the book came out.

Speaker 6 Did he direct other movies?

Speaker 29 He directed like training videos for the church of Santa Claus.

Speaker 30 I'm not kidding.

Speaker 57 Just videos. Yeah.
Just training videos and pamphlets.

Speaker 21 And John Travolta was supposedly being the young man, the caveman.

Speaker 3 But then he aged out of that role and then took the role of Terrell.

Speaker 20 And did you notice that Kelly Preston is in the movie, too?

Speaker 2 What does she do?

Speaker 18 She's the bald, sexy woman with the big tongue who says the best line in the movie. She goes, I'm going to treat you like a baby on a straight diet of Frendango.

Speaker 9 that

Speaker 9 was

Speaker 6 what does that mean

Speaker 68 a straight diet of Frondango this entire alien race appears to come from a planet where like all they're ever taught is maniacal laughter like every single character has crazy broad laughter as a part of their everyday speech all the aliens have broad laughter and all the slaves have like tribal screams like no

Speaker 29 that's my favorite i love when they devolved into but they makes no sense.

Speaker 30 They're like, now we have to get out of here. We have to come up with a play.

Speaker 6 Wait a minute.

Speaker 36 Why do you sometimes grunt and sometimes speak perfect English?

Speaker 29 Here's why I actually do think that a lot of times they would sort of signal each other like this is when the revolt is going to begin by barking.

Speaker 29 And I think that was kind of a fuck you to the cyclones or whatever they were called.

Speaker 6 Cyclones.

Speaker 53 So you think we're

Speaker 29 man animals, like we'll show you.

Speaker 36 But the cyclones.

Speaker 6 And that's what it's like.

Speaker 59 One of the most amazing things is language.

Speaker 69 Yes.

Speaker 46 Everybody is speaking English, but they're meant to be speaking

Speaker 66 languages that the other cannot understand.

Speaker 49 Right, exactly.

Speaker 27 So inexplicably then, Barry Pepper, right?

Speaker 30 That's who we got to say.

Speaker 6 Yes, Barry Pepper.

Speaker 27 Barry Pepper has to go in and get like a fucking mind-meld, like a Matrix-style download of the cyclo language.

Speaker 2 Which is my favorite scene of the entire.

Speaker 30 Why does that happen? Okay, he has to.

Speaker 35 Why does that happen?

Speaker 29 Because they're trying to train him to go out and get the gold. Okay, well, here.

Speaker 57 They wanted him to go mine gold for them.

Speaker 51 Oh, my God.

Speaker 68 He's already proven to be the most resistant, strongest

Speaker 47 rebel in the whole thing.

Speaker 6 Let's give him more power.

Speaker 57 Why are you guys so against Scientology? That's what I want to say.

Speaker 57 I knew that you guys wouldn't even give it a chance and I want to talk to you guys about this.

Speaker 50 This character,

Speaker 19 this is my moment of the movie for me. This language machine is what they called it.

Speaker 25 I actually pulled a clip of it because I had to rewind it when I heard it.

Speaker 43 This is what the language machine sounds like.

Speaker 11 Excuse me, but I am your instructor, if you will forgive such arrogance, for I do not have the honor to be a cyclone.

Speaker 11 I am but a lowly Tinko language slave.

Speaker 11 As you are listening to me, I most likely do not exist.

Speaker 11 This is the dumbest thing.

Speaker 6 Well, that's like a hologram that shows up.

Speaker 57 It looks kind of like Jar Jar. Yeah, he's like, he's very low status, and he's like apologizing

Speaker 57 that they're not as good as the cyclos.

Speaker 57 but somehow he's going to teach them language.

Speaker 47 And then it just shoots into his brain anyway.

Speaker 57 They just shoot laser beams into his eyes.

Speaker 70 And then he learns like

Speaker 7 calculus and geometry.

Speaker 60 Geometry. And

Speaker 47 he's like, he goes back into his cage and he's telling the other slaves, like, this is a triangle.

Speaker 64 And they're like, whoo, what is it?

Speaker 60 He's like, it's the strongest thing in the universe.

Speaker 57 We thought you were going to help us get out of here. And he's like, this will help us get out of here.

Speaker 38 It's the craziest fucking gobbledygook nonsense.

Speaker 71 And I don't understand.

Speaker 62 Why give him this power?

Speaker 22 Why give...

Speaker 61 I'm like, well, he wants.

Speaker 52 I was so angry at this movie.

Speaker 15 I didn't understand this movie.

Speaker 19 I had to look on Wikipedia to understand what was happening because I was very confused.

Speaker 42 And so...

Speaker 57 Who directed this movie?

Speaker 19 Oh, I know they asked Quentin Tarantino, and he said no.

Speaker 68 I wish he had said yes.

Speaker 13 And then he was, it was.

Speaker 29 This was right after Pulp Fiction.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 25 And it was 2000, so it was a couple of years after.

Speaker 34 But then they got the assistant director of a Star Wars movie to direct it. Wow.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 34 Is that why they have those terrible dissolves between scenes, like the

Speaker 51 Star Wars?

Speaker 19 It looks like what you could do an iMovie on the Mac.

Speaker 6 It was like, what are the movies? It looks like my acting reel.

Speaker 59 If you've ever looked online at like Turkish Star Wars,

Speaker 60 or Hungarian Star Wars, those rip-off movies, this movie is 10 billion times worse and more complicated to understand.

Speaker 57 This reminded me of, you know what, Comic-Con, have you ever seen at Comic-Con where all of the Klingons get together and they have like they they put on that sort of like yes that sort of presentation where they're like talking back and forth.

Speaker 45 It's like a Klingon play.

Speaker 57 Yeah, yeah, and it's very over-theatrical and overdone, but way way better than this movie. Way better than this movie.

Speaker 33 I just love there's so many things wrong about this movie, too, because they're like, why are they even on Earth?

Speaker 19 They conquered human civilization in nine minutes, and now they're there to mine, but what are they mining against

Speaker 2 a shocking lack of um like at a certain point like barry pepper and the other rebels are like running around doing stuff yeah and there are no cyclos anywhere yes like the whole planet it has like about 15 cyclos well the cyclos only live in that glass facility right in denver yeah in denver where they have special oxygen but yet barry pepper needs to wear the special oxygen mask too i don't understand i just love that like even in in 3000 i guess there are sort of state lines where people know this is Denver, this is Kentucky.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Did you notice?

Speaker 57 Did you notice

Speaker 57 that one sequence where they go to Aspen?

Speaker 57 There's just a really rusty sign that says, Welcome, or thank you for visiting Aspen. It's where they're on top of that waterfall and they're about to jump off.

Speaker 57 And then right before they do, that spaceship flies up and they get out and they choke the guy and they throw that.

Speaker 6 There's also a lot of flying.

Speaker 7 They can't be able to fly.

Speaker 6 Humans can fly.

Speaker 57 There's a lot of bad green screen in this, also.

Speaker 6 There is?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 67 There's so much. I mean, seamless.

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Speaker 36 oh my gosh and the fact that I mean just the fact that he went to the library read a couple books about Fort Knox the White House and a secret military base underneath the world forth head they go to a library and he reads like he's looking at paper and then he turns it over and it's the Declaration of Independence which is not giving him clues to anything it is useless and it it doesn't even really pertain to what they're doing here.

Speaker 42 I mean, does it?

Speaker 17 I mean, is he...

Speaker 62 Guys, there is a sequence in this movie a thousand years from now where cavemen sit in a flight simulator at Fort Hood and learn to fly Harrier jets.

Speaker 70 And these men do.

Speaker 2 And these are cavemen who only a day before were literally grunting.

Speaker 36 They are wearing pelts for clothes.

Speaker 72 And then learn to expertly fly F-18s and then

Speaker 35 wage war.

Speaker 30 Exactly.

Speaker 58 They are a precision machine.

Speaker 52 Absolutely.

Speaker 36 It is flawless.

Speaker 38 It is, without a doubt, one of the most insane sequences I've ever seen.

Speaker 50 Barry Pepper is told after he tries his fight machine once, you make another mistake again and I'll smash your puny skull.

Speaker 54 And he's like, okay, then the next time he flew it, flawless. Like, oh, that was all it takes is some good threatening.

Speaker 57 Someone just yelling at you. June, let me ask you this because you're the only woman in the room.

Speaker 64 So far as you know.

Speaker 57 Were there any man animals that you were attracted to?

Speaker 29 Oh, that's a good question.

Speaker 57 Like, do you ever think what it would be like to be in a slave situation like that where you're with a bunch of man animals?

Speaker 29 Well, I do think that

Speaker 29 I was curious as to why they did all look like cavemen because this is not

Speaker 73 cave time. But they didn't.

Speaker 65 They were clean-shaven. They were well-kept.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 And also.

Speaker 57 It's just kind of long hair and sort of pelts.

Speaker 29 But also, like, if we are, if these are modern men and women, I mean, they're, they're way more modern than any of us. They're living in 2000.

Speaker 29 Why did all of the women in the movie, like when Kelly Preston, Kelly Preston was so excited to have a house? Yes. And then when the other cave girls are.

Speaker 22 Well, Kelly Preston's not a cave person.

Speaker 29 No, I know she's a cycle. But when the other cave girl found her cave boy and he said, you know, we're going to have children or something like that, her face lit up.

Speaker 29 It's like, their motivations are so old-timing.

Speaker 68 So crazy.

Speaker 59 Do you guys realize that there are two movies that we've done in which a person is carrying around a rough drawing of the person they love?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 46 Not a picture because there are no pictures.

Speaker 47 Exactly.

Speaker 61 But like,

Speaker 52 when the cavewoman is captured, she has a rough drawing of Barry Pepper.

Speaker 46 And that's how they identify that she must know him. Just like in stupid fucking Season of the Witch, right?

Speaker 63 And then also Season of the Witch, inexplicably, Ron Perlman and one of the guys guys in this one both say, let's get the hell out of here.

Speaker 36 As if like people in like

Speaker 6 people are cheering. Yeah.

Speaker 38 Like let's get the shit.

Speaker 29 They're timeless phrases.

Speaker 39 They are not timeless phrases.

Speaker 35 This movie is bullshit.

Speaker 57 Do you think Barry Pepper will ever do a movie where he runs around more?

Speaker 57 I mean, you could not have more scenes where there, I'm sure the director's like, okay, Barry, so I think you got the gist of it.

Speaker 57 You're going to go out there, you're going to run the fuck down the block, and then

Speaker 51 slow it down.

Speaker 57 Yeah, and then run down that block, and then run around that street.

Speaker 6 We're going to do it and then run back this street.

Speaker 12 We're going to blast debris at you at any corner.

Speaker 2 He's always getting debris.

Speaker 29 I love, though, when he was ready for the final battle, that hair went back in a ponytail.

Speaker 35 I was like, I got to run.

Speaker 6 Did anybody else notice that? I got to focus up here.

Speaker 60 Did anybody else notice that for about 10 minutes in the movie while he becomes the revolutionary leader, he has bangs?

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 62 He just, for some reason,

Speaker 6 bangs.

Speaker 57 He was doing another movie.

Speaker 57 He was definitely off-shooting

Speaker 37 that baseball. I also love

Speaker 29 during that final attack, in the middle of it, John Travolta says, someone calls in and says they're under attack while he's got, and he says, you're going to have to deal with them.

Speaker 29 I'm too busy for these kind of details.

Speaker 14 John Travolta is like, in this movie, John Travolta's character is like Darth Vader.

Speaker 34 If Darth Vader was like a personal trainer.

Speaker 36 Like, there is no, like, he's like, God, I can't deal with you, rat brain.

Speaker 2 Always drinking. They're always drinking.

Speaker 6 Always drinking glow in the dark beverages.

Speaker 6 They love glow-in-the-dark beverages.

Speaker 46 And his signature move is only throat grab.

Speaker 6 All he could do is grab somebody around the throat to lift them off the ground.

Speaker 57 This is just a small thing, but like very bad

Speaker 57 laser bullets that shoot a parameter. You know, like when people shoot each other with guns, like the laser beams, like fucking

Speaker 9 some fucking money.

Speaker 53 Yeah, they really should.

Speaker 14 When Forrest Whitaker got his hand cut off, and it's like, he just shot his hand, his hand disappeared, and Forrest Whitaker just looks at it for a long time.

Speaker 36 And at the end of the movie, when Travolta's arm gets blown off, I was like, do these people not have nerve endings in their arms?

Speaker 38 They have no, yeah. They have no.

Speaker 6 They literally just looked at it like, huh, that's not weird.

Speaker 30 Let me ask the group. My arm just got blown up by a ball.

Speaker 53 Jason, Leverage.

Speaker 6 Leverage.

Speaker 57 Let me ask the group this. I don't know if you guys normally talk about this on the podcast, but how difficult was it for you guys to masturbate to this?

Speaker 6 So easy. Very difficult.

Speaker 30 This is easy. This is so difficult.

Speaker 14 I like green things, and I like...

Speaker 9 I had no trouble at all.

Speaker 51 You like long dreadlocks?

Speaker 24 I love long dreadlocks. I love Rasta aliens.

Speaker 30 So this is easy.

Speaker 34 This is actually a home run for me in many ways.

Speaker 25 We've talked about a lot of great moments, but we're going to cut down to our biggest what the fuck moment.

Speaker 3 Here we go.

Speaker 76 This is our moment that I feel like we need to discuss. Every one of us, we may have a moment that really calls out to us as being just a moment that is crazy.

Speaker 43 For me, it was the fact that this entire race of cave people did not move more than a mile outside of their cave dwelling because there was a miniature golf course there.

Speaker 19 They were frightened by the dinosaur in the miniature golf course.

Speaker 50 That was it. That was the only thing keeping there.

Speaker 67 It was a dinosaur also covered in like moss.

Speaker 50 It was not intimidating at all.

Speaker 12 That was the block.

Speaker 67 Just a giant golf ball

Speaker 20 and a small dinosaur.

Speaker 14 And that was what kept all of humanity back at a base.

Speaker 29 Well, I don't know if we've talked about the breathe right strips.

Speaker 6 These were

Speaker 57 definitely the influence for that product.

Speaker 6 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 29 Why were they wearing them? Because they couldn't breathe.

Speaker 36 Who fucking knows?

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 71 All right.

Speaker 27 Honestly, who fucking knows?

Speaker 6 Jason, all right.

Speaker 62 This made me so angry.

Speaker 47 There's a line in the movie where somebody arrives on the planet and goes,

Speaker 60 I hate these puny, undersized planets.

Speaker 66 The gravity is so different.

Speaker 64 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 36 And that is a perfect line.

Speaker 47 It like, it makes no sense.

Speaker 64 And then all the cyclos are supposed to be like these big giant like 12 foot tall creatures and they're just wearing stilts and giant boots and they look the all of the special effects both digital and practical are fucking garbage terrible like cirque de Soleil looks more real when they do shit than this does you know I also love the misrepresentation of what the history of the world was you know like where the cyclos are like oh dogs were the leaders of this planet and they were much more amenable than these stupid men

Speaker 57 But they weren't good at manual labor.

Speaker 54 That was it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the dogs could do manual labor.

Speaker 65 And then, for some reason, how many dogs live in the nuclear holocaust, by the way, right?

Speaker 6 That's the other thing.

Speaker 36 Then, at a certain point, Travolta's like bonks his head in his office and is like, get a team in here to I want this ceiling different.

Speaker 52 And then, of course, the team that gets brought in is the exact people we've been following the whole time.

Speaker 28 So now, Barry Pepper, downloaded with the knowledge machine, can hang out in the office of Travolta unsupervised.

Speaker 12 and take all of his information to blackmail Forrest Whitaker.

Speaker 6 Why?

Speaker 35 Why would any of that happen?

Speaker 57 Because any plan needs a patsy, as Travolta explains to Forrest Whitaker in like a 10-minute scene.

Speaker 57 He records him with that fucking camera.

Speaker 59 By the way, isn't that Scientology recording you with a camera so that you can have leverage over Science?

Speaker 6 Isn't that like the knock-on head sculpt? Again,

Speaker 57 I want you guys to think about coming on board. I don't know what your aversion to this is.

Speaker 57 I also wanted to say one of my favorite scenes was when all the slaves were in prison and they have those hoses that shoot the slop into the trough. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 57 And then they all got into the fight because that one guy that was in prison was like, you know, no one eats until I eat. And then they said, no, that's bullshit.
We're not doing it.

Speaker 57 And so then Barry Pepper got in a fight and smashed his head into the slop trough and then was like, from now on, we all eat together.

Speaker 6 And they all, and then this little slave girl comes up and takes a little handful of slop and eats the slop.

Speaker 37 And the slop is coming out of this giant hose.

Speaker 14 It looks like when you're emptying out like a port-a-john, like just shit as it shoves out.

Speaker 26 I want to talk about this one thing I found out.

Speaker 25 Apparently, there was a toy of Turle that was released, 11-inch toy of Turl.

Speaker 3 And these are the lines that he was.

Speaker 57 That's the perfect size to go in your butt.

Speaker 24 These are the lines that when you pressed his chest, he would go, exterminate all man-animals at will.

Speaker 22 You wouldn't last one day at the academy.

Speaker 21 Man is an endangered species and rat bastard

Speaker 57 that's not a toy that you would want to give a child do they ever show the because i may have gotten drunk in the middle of this i don't i'm blacked out but do they ever show this academy that they keep referencing yeah there's one there is a shot where on the planet cyclo which just exists to show that the the leader has teleported back there Yes, yes.

Speaker 73 Wait, there was no reason for that.

Speaker 36 It was useless.

Speaker 50 They show, like, I was like, oh, yeah, I thought there was something was cut out.

Speaker 33 Basically, they show this whole teleportation scene.

Speaker 24 Their leader comes down, they have an overly wrought scene, and then he goes back, and that was it.

Speaker 50 He doesn't even say anything, right?

Speaker 24 When he goes back to the planet, yeah.

Speaker 47 It's just like, oh, I guess they got home safe.

Speaker 35 Yeah, that was it.

Speaker 68 That's literally, I felt like why it was done.

Speaker 27 It was like, oh, he's there now.

Speaker 41 So, and they blew up Planet Cyclos at the end?

Speaker 59 It seemed to be that there was a genocide at the end.

Speaker 50 Okay, because that was a crazy thing. How did they get to Planet Cyclos?

Speaker 73 They keep talking like, you know what we're going to do?

Speaker 60 We're going to go back and blow up their planet.

Speaker 68 How? What?

Speaker 63 Come on now, man.

Speaker 73 Yeah, they had to

Speaker 50 get there.

Speaker 65 It makes no sense.

Speaker 29 Guys, they've gone through flight simulators.

Speaker 6 They know how to do that.

Speaker 47 And Barry Pepper knows how to dismantle a nuclear bomb?

Speaker 61 Yeah.

Speaker 6 This is a guy. Is it a knowledge machine?

Speaker 65 Well, first of all, it was a language machine.

Speaker 12 So technically, by all intents and purposes, it only gave him the language, not the knowledge.

Speaker 60 No, it was knowledge because it taught him math and all that other stuff.

Speaker 6 Oh, you're right.

Speaker 47 That's why I think what they're doing.

Speaker 30 But

Speaker 24 yet they called it language machine.

Speaker 30 Yes, yes.

Speaker 21 So even though it taught him knowledge, it was called language machine.

Speaker 77 Your co-workers eating mystery leftovers.

Speaker 78 Again, but you, you respect your lunch break.

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Speaker 79 Oh, that's good.

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Speaker 57 Can you, I don't know how long this movie took to actually make. I'm imagining it probably.

Speaker 23 Five minutes.

Speaker 57 But I mean, you know, know, it would take months. It takes months to make a movie.
And so, can you imagine fucking waking up?

Speaker 57 Because you'd have to go there and get there so early to put on this makeup, put in those contact lenses that they're all wearing,

Speaker 57 get your fake teeth in.

Speaker 32 You're standing on stilts every day.

Speaker 57 Forced Whitaker for four months, for five months, whatever it was.

Speaker 57 They must fucking hate each other.

Speaker 51 Oh, my God.

Speaker 23 He must have blown a real head gasket.

Speaker 68 You're fired.

Speaker 29 I also think when you see movies like this, like we all know this was Travolta's pet project. And like, you know, he wasn't getting any direction at all.
Like, he was just unleashed on the set.

Speaker 6 Like, whatever you wanted to do.

Speaker 25 I heard that the food, the craft service on it was so bad that Travolta flew in his own chef and only served the actors from his own

Speaker 31 movie.

Speaker 48 There is a, not to endorse another podcast, but there is an episode of the NPR show, or the public radio show, The Business, in which she just interviews the guy that wrote this movie.

Speaker 19 Oh, who sent out an apology this year when the Razzies Razzies nominated him for being for the worst screenplay of the decade.

Speaker 25 This is Battlefield Earth. Worst screenplay of the decade.
And this guy came out and said, like, I'm sorry, I apologize.

Speaker 14 He couldn't write scripts anymore.

Speaker 25 He had to change his name on scripts to get them sold after this movie because he was just done in Hollywood.

Speaker 57 Unfortunately, he changed his name to Terrell, whatever, whatever.

Speaker 6 Terrell.

Speaker 30 Terrell.

Speaker 43 Oh, man.

Speaker 67 It is. There are so many.

Speaker 33 It's also one of those movies that spend a lot of time talking about business and politics.

Speaker 19 Like Like every boring scenes in all the Star Wars Wars, where it's like, oh, well,

Speaker 40 the Trade Federation must be very upset about the way.

Speaker 30 The home office won't be pleased.

Speaker 57 Oh, that's another thing. Everything,

Speaker 57 that's what they came up with for the term is the home office.

Speaker 47 It's got to be in the L.

Speaker 69 Ron Hubbard stuff, I assume.

Speaker 64 I've never read any of his books, but apparently it's the first one, right?

Speaker 29 It was supposed to be made

Speaker 24 too. This is the whole thing.

Speaker 21 This movie is based only on 436 pages of a thousand-page book and this is supposed to be the first of a trilogy. Yes, and

Speaker 28 you know what we're doing.

Speaker 20 And John Travolta recently said that second one is being worked out.

Speaker 63 We can only hope that M.

Speaker 48 Night Shyamalan directs the rest of the trilogy.

Speaker 31 Oh my god.

Speaker 57 That would be the best.

Speaker 57 I could masturbate.

Speaker 60 I would come and kill myself instantly.

Speaker 7 What was the...

Speaker 30 Oh, I love the other.

Speaker 33 The other term I liked too was.

Speaker 48 It was Last Airbender, not Season of the Witch, I just remembered.

Speaker 30 In which the person had the drawing of their family.

Speaker 2 but it could have worked in Season of the Witch.

Speaker 19 We don't want to be a bunch of arrogant greeners here, right, guys?

Speaker 6 What was that?

Speaker 6 The grass is always greener.

Speaker 68 That was their piece of cake.

Speaker 25 The cavemen refer to each other as arrogant greener.

Speaker 30 I do.

Speaker 71 Why do they keep saying piece of cake? I missed that. And then I was like, why do they keep saying piece of cake?

Speaker 73 They're not eating cake. No one's eating cake.

Speaker 38 What is cake?

Speaker 39 They don't have a concept of cake.

Speaker 73 It is the year 3000.

Speaker 72 But yet, I guess those Jets are all gassed up.

Speaker 68 Ready to fly.

Speaker 33 Jets are gassed up.

Speaker 14 Fort Knox is ready to go. White House burnt out and golf course is kind of disposed.

Speaker 36 But all the books are cool to read. Books are pretty great.
Books are pretty good.

Speaker 24 Books do not burn, even though they're made out of paper.

Speaker 38 The guns still work the fuck. It's 3,000.

Speaker 66 I had no idea that it was the year 3,000.

Speaker 29 So what did you think it was?

Speaker 46 I thought it was indeterminate,

Speaker 60 near catastrophic future.

Speaker 6 Isn't the full title Battlefield Earth?

Speaker 10 Yes, Dog of the Year Earth.

Speaker 57 When you click on it on Netflix, it says Battlefield Earth.

Speaker 6 I can't read.

Speaker 13 I do want to.

Speaker 32 If you guys, I'll play the clip of Travolta saying something in his language, which is English, and then making Barry Pepper translate it.

Speaker 25 Here we go.

Speaker 80 I graduated top marksman in my class, and I can kill any one of you at over a thousand paces. Tell them what I've said.
You try to run, you'll kill us.

Speaker 30 And then Travolta goes, That's it?

Speaker 58 And then Travolta, to prove his point, shoots a cow's leg off.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 14 Just a cow in the field.

Speaker 65 Also, why are there cows? Wasn't there a nuclear holocaust?

Speaker 42 There are cows just roaming around?

Speaker 31 Yeah. Oh, my God.

Speaker 64 This movie is infuriating.

Speaker 36 I half believe they were like, well, this is where we're going to shoot. Well, there are those cows over there.

Speaker 7 Let's shoot them.

Speaker 70 Well, let's keep them in here and maybe we'll see how the legs getting shot off.

Speaker 57 I wonder where this was filmed.

Speaker 18 It was Shine Canada, the most expensive production ever in Canada at that time.

Speaker 24 Really? Yes. Now,

Speaker 14 we always go to the audience to get a little bit of viewer mail.

Speaker 17 You Got Mail.

Speaker 43 And what?

Speaker 57 Hold on. Is that your song? That's your theme song.
For You Got Mail. For the Mail.

Speaker 26 You want to hear it again? I'll do it again.

Speaker 30 You Got Mail. There it is.
Pretty good, right?

Speaker 57 Who wrote that? We created it.

Speaker 6 We created it.

Speaker 57 We created that.

Speaker 6 That sounds very familiar.

Speaker 30 Catching on.

Speaker 25 The director of Battle Field Earth actually created that movie.

Speaker 2 He created that.

Speaker 18 Basically, this movie got the most Razzie nominations of all time.

Speaker 20 And so I said to to you guys, come up with another category that this can win in.

Speaker 34 Obviously, this one, worst actor, worst screenplay, worst director. Didn't win worst supporting actor.

Speaker 25 Forrest Whitaker escaped that one.

Speaker 15 But so I asked you guys to come up with your own worst of categories.

Speaker 76 And let's see.

Speaker 76 I'll give you an example here.

Speaker 57 Some of these are best of, also.

Speaker 25 Yeah, they can be best of, I guess. They can be best of.

Speaker 19 Here we go.

Speaker 24 Norman writes, worst eyes in any film, Forrest Whitaker.

Speaker 25 Worst eyes.

Speaker 20 He had these ugly yellow eyes.

Speaker 29 Marshall makes a good point. Best clean-shaven caveman.

Speaker 17 I see. I said that, yeah.
Sherry Pepper.

Speaker 2 He also had least explained use of gold as a plot device.

Speaker 57 Marshall also had most inebriated cinematographer.

Speaker 51 That's right.

Speaker 29 All the shots were on these weird

Speaker 23 tilted.

Speaker 57 It's always like that Dutch angle, which is just like the very first thing you would ever think to do with a camera.

Speaker 30 Like, oh, let's just turn it a little bit. I like this dude, Mike Morrison, right?

Speaker 69 It's best use of the noun leverage and then he's counted how many times people say it in the movie Travolta eight times Barry Pepper three times Forrest Whitaker two times like and there's got to be more right I mean that's I mean even that that's high looks like somebody found some leverage I've taught you well

Speaker 57 Bob Waters said that this is the worst choice of video editing software and because it was done on Microsoft PowerPoint.

Speaker 51 It really is.

Speaker 57 It's just like the fucking dumbest edits.

Speaker 15 Dumbest of all time.

Speaker 3 This one I think was again written by Norman.

Speaker 24 This is

Speaker 20 most informative public library goes to the Denver Public Library.

Speaker 14 They have information where the nuclear stockpile is and how to break into Fort Knox.

Speaker 29 Robin has best performance by nostrils. Barry Pepper's Nostrils.

Speaker 6 Battlefield Earth.

Speaker 30 They are pretty good.

Speaker 21 Battlefield Earth.

Speaker 18 Man, oh man.

Speaker 54 This was as bad as I heard it was.

Speaker 18 I saw it in the theater and I had forgotten how bad it was.

Speaker 6 Yes, I saw it. I saw this in the theater.

Speaker 46 What are you talking about?

Speaker 20 I was invited to a premiere of it in New York City, and I saw it in the theater, and I remember going, like, was that an event?

Speaker 57 Was that a Scientology event?

Speaker 18 Robert, we just had a bunch of great people got together and we just saw a movie.

Speaker 57 But I mean, were they, I'm asking you, were they all Scientologists?

Speaker 19 I don't know. Hey, look, I don't know who they are.
We just have a great time, and we took some stress tests out there.

Speaker 57 It sounds like you're covering up for the fact that they were all Scientologists. You mentioned a stress test.

Speaker 33 We took a stress test.

Speaker 25 I was really stressed out.

Speaker 19 And I went in there not liking the movie.

Speaker 25 And then after I left, I loved it.

Speaker 6 I thought it was great.

Speaker 57 So you saw this in the theater with a crowded room full of people?

Speaker 79 Yes.

Speaker 29 How was it received?

Speaker 23 Poorly.

Speaker 30 Yeah. Yeah, like very poorly.

Speaker 52 I don't fall asleep in movies.

Speaker 18 And I do remember falling asleep in the 25-minute long ending scene, which is like a bad version of the Star Wars trench fight scene.

Speaker 2 Terrible.

Speaker 3 Really, really terrible.

Speaker 20 Well, go watch this on Netflix Instant.

Speaker 34 It's two hours of your life that you'll never get back, but it's worth it for watching the curtain reveals, which is also, did we talk about the curtains?

Speaker 19 That curtains actually come in, so at the end of the movie, curtains close?

Speaker 6 And then credits go in. I love it.
I didn't get it that far.

Speaker 7 Curtains close.

Speaker 30 Like, oh, you're done watching this stage play.

Speaker 6 Stage play, little one.

Speaker 13 The small little stage play.

Speaker 23 Roll credits.

Speaker 41 Oh, man.

Speaker 13 Well, that has been How Did This Get Made, Battlefield Earth?

Speaker 15 Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 76 Big thanks to our engineer, Doug.

Speaker 19 You can follow the majority of us on Twitter.

Speaker 18 I'm at Paul Scheer, at Rob Hubel, at Miss June Diane.

Speaker 26 Jason is not on Twitter, but don't do it.

Speaker 6 I don't know. Don't do it.

Speaker 1 Do you want to plug anything?

Speaker 30 Not really. Okay, great.

Speaker 41 Check us next Monday for the next mini-episode.

Speaker 19 Thanks so much.

Speaker 15 Bye-bye.

Speaker 77 Your co-workers eating mystery leftovers.

Speaker 78 Again, but you, you respect your lunch break.

Speaker 79 Grab a new toasted pizza sandwich from Jimmy John's. Yeah, toast it.

Speaker 78 Try the Sicilian salami, capicolo, ham, rich marinara, gooey mozzarella, and oregano basil, all on golden French bread.

Speaker 78 Or go cheese mode with the three cheese, parmesan, provolo, and mozzarella, dripping with marinara and herbs. Hot, melty, seriously satisfying.

Speaker 77 Order one, Fronta, Jimmy John's new toasted pizza sandwiches.

Speaker 79 Oh, that's good.

Speaker 77 At participating locations for a limited time while supplies last.

Speaker 81 Adam Pally here, and I'm John Gabrich.

Speaker 82 We're a couple actors and best friends who you may know as the hosts of the TV show 1001 Places to Party Before You Die.

Speaker 81 Now, we're bringing you a comedic look at health and wellness with our new show, Staying Alive.

Speaker 82 We'll have guests like our friend, actor Jerry O'Connell, ketamine therapist Dr.

Speaker 81 Steven Radowitz, Paul Scheer, Ego Woda, Jillian Bell, Dr. Doolittle.

Speaker 81 Staying Alive with John Gabers and Adam Pally is out right now.

Speaker 82 Get them a week early and ad-free with SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts.