‘Rollerball’ (1975) With Bill Simmons and Brian Koppelman

This episode is supported by FX is the Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawk.

Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist/slash rare bookstore owner slash unofficial truth seeker who is always on the tail of his latest conspiracy.

This time, his most recent expose puts him head-to-head with the powerful family that rules Tulsa.

Meaning only one thing, he must be onto something big.

FX is the Lowdown premieres September 23rd on FX stream on Hulu.

The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where this guy has not been on in a long time, Brian Koppaman.

He's very busy.

He's making TV shows, movies.

What else are you doing?

You're doing a bunch of stuff.

You know, I'm just honestly returning your texts.

That takes up some time and it's fun.

You had a Knicks run?

You had a big Knicks run you to

divest yourself from emotionally after they beat my team, but then fell apart next round?

You had that?

You know, I didn't anticipate and I should have.

Because, you know what, we did this.

You already gave me, you basically told me what I saw you like two days before.

I was at your house two days before the Knicks lost or something, and you were like, Just so you know, this is ending now.

And I was like, What do you mean?

And you're like, It's gonna end now.

So, I

knew.

Well, you'll have Giannis, he'll be fine.

Uh, we are still doing one word movie month, and this is a movie you and I have talked about for a long time.

It's finally happening, 50-year anniversary of this movie coming out, I think, two months ago.

Rollerball is next.

In the not-too-distant future, wars will no longer exist, but there will be rollerball.

Imagine a world without nations.

A few of us making decisions on a global basis.

Controlled by corporations.

Sickness, their needs, and many luxuries.

A society that has abolished love

and hate, aggression and individuality.

and replaced them with the most fantastic entertainment of all time.

Televised to 2 billion hypnotized viewers.

It is more than a game.

It is Rollerball.

James Kahn, John Hausman, Rollerball, Great Ador.

This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by Prime.

You listen to this podcast for the movie talk.

So let's set the scene.

Our lead, tall, dark.

Stranded at the airport.

Hours of delays.

He's scrolled, strolled, and loitered by every overpriced snack stand.

But just when all hope seems lost, plot twist.

He remembers he has Prime, and without a whole library of free ebooks ready to read right from his device.

Cue the triumphant score, roll credits.

Free ebooks library.

It's on Prime.

Brian Koppelman, no player is greater than the game itself.

The message of rollerball, which we've now spent a half century unwinding and completely going in the opposite direction, not to mention all the other crazy things about this movie.

Unbelievable.

The individual, Bill,

is not the whole point of the game is that the individual is not better or more important and can't influence the game.

Disposable athletes.

It was the opposite of the player empowerment era.

Now we live in a world 50 years after this movie was made where Devin Booker is signing a $150 million two-year contract extension and Patrick Mahomes is making $500 million.

And there's so many fun sports elements to this.

This movie's been in my life my entire life, much like with you.

I'm sure you can't really even remember a life without a rollerball.

Are we going to talk later about when you saw this?

No, we can talk about it anytime you want.

I mean, this is the thing.

This was the first R-rated movie I got my dad to take me to wow I was nine years old 1975 so

because the commercial which I want to talk I'll talk about later and what is most watchable what most re-watchable but I remember I like from the moment the first commercial aired because

James Conn was Sonny and James Conn was Brian Piccolo and it was like him I was a pro wrestling fanatic And this looked like every, all those things just lined up.

And then you're just sitting there in the movie.

It was like a few years later, this other friend's dad took us to see Apocalypse Now, which is a terrible mistake.

But this also was like a real holy shit.

First R-rated movie in the theater.

I don't, I would love to tell you that I remember that, you know, the ticket taker looking at my dad, like, don't do that, but they didn't.

But I just remember holding my dad's hand, going in to see that movie,

and my mind was blown by it.

How did you remember?

I don't remember the first,

not in the theater.

At some point it was on cable,

probably like a lot of other people just got drawn into the games because there's three giant games in this movie.

And I don't know which one sucked me in, but over the years, just became the most rewatchable movie.

And the games are like basically an hour apart.

It's the first 10 minutes.

And then it's like right around the hour mark and then the last 15 minutes, obviously.

And it's really one of the great first sports movies.

It's, if you go through the lineage of it, it's the longest yard in 74.

It's Rollerball in 75.

It's Rocky and Bad News Bears in 76, Slapshot in 77, and we're off.

Like we're, we're just ripping off sports movies and classics.

And there's at least one good one year.

And this is, you know, an all-time sports movie for me.

And an all-time James Conn.

I can't wait to talk about.

Was he good in this movie?

Was he great?

Was he spotty?

It's all over the place.

But it's also a a paranoid the movie's also a paranoid thriller

oh good oh yeah in the whole parallax view three days of the condor whole world it's a network it's this movie so it what's so unbelievable to me about the the movie when you it's like it is like parallax view network it goes it's a year before network and if you think about what the movie's about it's it's as much yes it's totally um a sports movie but it's also a paranoid thriller in the shadow of fucking Watergate in Vietnam, man.

Right.

Well, and the

corporations

and these shadow, shadowy figures are taking over, and they're just going to drum out all the individuality that we have.

Listen, there's been a lot of science fiction movies over the years.

This

universe we go into,

there's pieces I like.

Like as I was growing up, I'm like, you know, this might not be bad if this is the future.

Just get together.

There's hot 70s babes everywhere.

There's weird parties where we get to set pine trees on fire.

And then there's a really violent sport that I could follow.

I might be okay.

Yeah, they make a really fascinating choice to show, like they only show these couple, like classes of people where life doesn't, you can tell that there's in the way that, you know, yeah,

at first, right, you're a kid watching and you're like, oh, look at that.

He, he gets his pick of women.

And then you realize, well, except the women have not only, they have no say in it.

They just get moved around like, not only like chess pieces like checkers but then also he doesn't even get to he's like i'd like to keep that one they're like no an executive wants an executive wants her and then shoop yeah sucked out of his house it's basically raya the the the dating app riah but you don't have choice in who you end up with um

look it's it's trying to say a whole bunch of things And we can get into all of them.

But I think ultimately the reason I love this movie so much is it invents this world, but it invents a a sport.

It just invents this sport.

This sport, it's hockey, it's football, it's roller derby.

There's some judo in there.

From scratch, the sport doesn't exist.

There's no pieces of it.

They're just kind of figuring it out on the fly.

And the sport becomes so convincing that

after this movie came out, they actually, the producers and Norman Jewis and the director got approached to be like, hey, let's do rollerball leagues.

And he was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

The whole point of this is the sport's too violent.

And this is where pro sports is going.

And we can have sports like this.

That's how realistic it was.

They use a heavy steel ball that

nobody could pick up.

I mean, and that kills you if

you get hit with it.

So, yeah,

it would have been tough to make it happen.

But of course, as a fucking 10-year-old, I mean, I would have,

let's go, let's watch it.

Because.

What's the difference between that and when you're watching pro wrestling?

And also, I'm sure, I know you've talked about this before,

but you know, I mean, there were three channels and one of them would sometimes have roller derby on right

well and then we would get we would get all those garbage sports on the weekends the trash sports superstars and yeah why couldn't

those why couldn't brian oldfield have played he could have he could have played rolling well he would have been great at it right we i really wish uh producer craig who by the way a rarity i don't know if this has ever happened before he declined his flex category and said i don't want to weigh in on this film until the end of the movie so i don't even know what that means but uh i wish producer Craig had been there in the 70s as we had all these ridiculous sports that they fed us because we had three networks.

We didn't have enough pro sports to go around.

Nobody had figured out any sort of scheduling.

And we would just battle network stars.

Every TV star in the universe was just competing against each other in these weird events.

And that was just what we grew up with.

But we watched them so closely, dude.

And they were all recorded and cut like probably months in advance.

Oh, yeah.

And now you'd know everything before

it happened.

You would know when it was happening.

Someone would have leaked a piece of it.

I mean, I'm sure you watched Unreal, and it's incredible how they're even planning.

We're not going to put this on TV, but we know social media will cash this.

But we were just like suckers sitting at home going, I hope Kyle Roat Jr.

is able to beat.

Gabe Capa would have been like, just beat Bob Conrad in the 100-yard dash, like doing a selfie.

Yeah, it would have ruined everything.

Yeah.

So roller derby was the sport that was on so was pro wrestling i remember watching the nasl and if if people are competing i was probably watching this seemed like an insanely great version of it i mean i don't even think craig uh could picture like what we had to eat when we were watching that like pizzas that were like a puck they weren't even like right that had like the pizza on the inside i mean

we were living like animals bill yeah we had stouffer's mac and cheese That was a big one.

Or those little Swanson turkey dinners.

Yeah, it was just spaghetti and meatballs whatever we're doing all right so

i think this movie's set maybe 45 to 50 years in the future what do you think they never really say but it's somewhere like 2018 2018 is officially yeah

okay because i had that in my notes and i wasn't i didn't feel 100

i think so and i i yeah i think you might be right I dug out the original, I dug out the short story that it was based on, too.

Oh, nice.

It doesn't say 2018, but it gives some context for it.

And it feels like it's probably set in that.

Yeah, so that's like 40 plus years in the future.

Free speech discouraged.

No more schooling.

Now we have conditioning.

Just about everybody making meager wages, but poverty is basically gone because everybody makes the same amount.

We have, I guess, controlled television.

We have weird food situations where there's just like envelopes.

I don't even know what's, I guess that's like pre-postmates.

There's no kids anywhere.

There's no kid in this entire movie.

There's no babies or kids.

I know they're having them, but we never see one, right?

Yeah, and you have to get, it's like you have to get permission to have kids.

That's in the story, but you can see in all those futuristic movies like that, it's very right because the resources are scarce and they want to control.

And so not everyone gets permission to have kids.

There's no dogs, there's no rescue dogs.

Like now, Rollerball would just be like Jonathan E has three dogs.

There's no last names, even.

Yeah, true.

True.

So anyway, Rollerball emerges

and it symbolizes the futility of individual achievement because people just die.

I can't wait to talk about the stats from this later, but just people routinely die.

Multiple people die in a game.

And yet here's our guy, Jonathan E.

played by James Kahn,

who's transcended the game.

What is he?

He's Brady crossed with Michael Jordan, crossed with Ali.

Is that what we're supposed to think?

10 years, just winning every year?

Yeah, Tiger Jordan Brady.

He's on that list.

never gets mentioned with the greats in my opinion i think jonathan but obviously as a kid that that stayed stayed with us also because everything james conn brought to it i mean you and i have talked about james conn when we did misery

yeah but then also when he died you had me come on the pod and we talked about um him on the pod i think and so but when you started already by asking what i mean what do you think of the performance i have i have a lot of thoughts on it so but what do you what how do you how does it hit you man?

I'm going to do my hottest take right now.

So, this is my CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford.

Hottest take award.

Of all the sports movies, this is my single favorite great one minute, terrible the next minute performance anyone's given.

It's there's entire scenes where he just seems checked out and he's just muttering his words and I have no idea what he's going for.

And then there's other scenes where he becomes Sonny Corleone as a rollerball player.

He's carrying the mystique and charisma of an A ⁇ list athlete perfectly.

And yet I don't really understand what he's doing with some of the, he's just kind of murdering his lines like this and seems kind of vaguely drugged out.

I don't really understand the performance, but I love it.

I really love it.

I love the performance.

First of all, I think it's important.

Like, if you think about it, he's the most credible.

Over and over when he did this, he was the most credible athlete like in movie in a movie when him and Reynolds.

I would say him or Burt Reynolds were the two where I actually felt athletically they could hang in any situation.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing in the gambler when he loses the basketball game because, like, you're so used to seeing James Conn win and be amazing at sports.

But also, in this, just the physical condition he came in at to do this movie, he basically has like that V-taper.

He looks like Roman Gabriel or something like that, the way he's built.

And it, right?

I mean, it's amazing how fucking you just don't question, because that's the first, we've talked about this a lot, like in life, too.

The moment you see an actor throw a ball and they can't really throw the ball or hit a tennis ball and they can't really hit it, it takes you right out of the movie.

And there's not a second of this when he's doing the sports.

Also, like the look in his eye when he's playing the sports and just,

you know, the entire like fucking capability.

And then

I have a slightly different take.

I think he's a guy who's been kind of asleep,

lulled into sleep by this world that he's been put in.

And that's why he's playing it that way.

I think you're right.

Come to life when he's playing the sport and don't ask questions and don't think about anything.

Your houses are delivered to you.

Women are delivered to you.

Money is delivered.

You have to get to the game and you have to be in game shape.

And that's basically all you have to do.

Well, what's your take on the white pill they give them?

Because that seems like at least part of why everybody seems a little zonked out.

Well, the executives take it to dream of being athletes and the athletes take it to dream of being executives right and i know it's like mdma before mdma probably

i i think it kind of just makes you

just kind of just makes you float right

and uh

and feel good

well this is like what we talked about after khan died like Just such an alpha.

Just the kind of when they, when we always talk about why don't we have like lead actors anymore?

You know, where are they?

Or we have pieces of these guys, but not 100% of them.

And, and I think back to Reynolds and Longest Yard and then in Deliverance and then Khan in this movie and him as Sonny Corleone.

Nobody pulled off the sleeveless white t-shirt, which we called 50 years ago the wife beater, no longer allowed to say that, but the sleeveless white t-shirt, he looked the best in it.

He just had the best shoulders and just always looked like he was about to either bring his gumar over or go outside and get in a fight in an alley with somebody.

He just, he always had it and he had it in this movie.

Just alpha all the time.

It's the show, yeah, the shoulders to hip ratio.

Nobody else had that.

But I also, I think, you know, it's funny.

You texted me and you were like, because I don't want to undersell this to people listening who don't know the movie.

You texted me.

It is like the most batshit insane.

There's no other movie really that's like this because it is half a sports movie and half a paranoid thriller.

And it's a dystopian movie.

And a science fiction movie.

It's a dystopian science fiction future that's supposed to telegraph what's going to happen in the world.

And in the middle of it is the greatest made-up sporting contest ever.

And so this, I think in the times, people didn't understand it.

It's actually,

I think it's a great movie and like a not just like super fun movie.

Like I think on reflection, it got so much shit right about, yes, who, whether the player, because the end the end of the movie does introduce the player empowerment era the whole point is they're trying to stop the player empowerment era yeah and the human empowerment era of people who are just workers because it's a worker revolt movie too and at the end the whole point is the individual can and i it is this movie is super fun you could get stoned and watch it or drunk and watch it but you could also watch it with like a class of philosophy majors and pencils and pens it That's what's so incredible about it.

It kind of can hit you wherever you are.

Yeah.

And

so usually when a movie like this works, they put so much thought into everything.

So I even think about this fake sport they created.

There are all these little wrinkles with it that are so fucking cool.

Like when the guys, when the guys are skating around in the pregame warm-ups and they all have their little gimmick, it's almost like the Warriors in the,

you know, in the gang, when each gang has their different gimmick, like the Tokyo team does this, and then the uh Houston team, they they have like they they swerve more, but they say of that, you have like, I really feel like they put thought into like, we're gonna have six skaters, there's a guy who scoops the ball up, and then there's three guys on motorcycles, and you're gonna see the rosters, and the lights are gonna go out if somebody got hurt, and there's gonna be subs and it's gonna move like a sporting event.

And you watch it and you're like, How the fuck did they come up with this?

They created a sport.

That's the other thing that's so amazing, the motorcycles.

Like when you were a kid and suddenly there were motorcycles mixing in and guys getting knocked off their motorcycles,

it was like one of the most,

first it's so fucking dark and brutal, but they, you know, they show you the bloodlust of the audience and you get caught up in it when you're in the movie theater.

And

yeah, I mean, you know.

Obviously that scene when the coach comes in, the specialist coach comes in to tell them about the Tokyo team and the players don't want to listen.

I mean, that is so much like the way you hear about players now not wanting to be coached sometimes, but also totally racist.

And the movie's super got a ton of that racist shit all through.

I did say that 50 years ago.

But like that moment when you were a kid in the theater at home watching the commercials.

And yeah, when the Tokyo team does that turn, that one move toward the center of the floor, you were just like, that, I got to see that.

Like anything i have to do to see that and everyone walked around imitate i mean didn't you walk i mean you just walked around trying to do that thing like that they do when they go low all right

it's so cool well it combines so many things we loved as kids right because you even you have like

like the the roller derby all these stupid sports that we were watching non-stop Then you have the uniforms.

Then you have like an easy, easy sport to follow.

It's like there's only a couple goals in every game, right?

So it's like a little like soccer cross, but then it has the violence of football, which is really what I think this movie.

I don't know if it's about the violence of football or the violence of sports in general, but now I think 50 years later, UFC is 25 years, 20 years away from being created.

The Power Slap League is 45 years from being created.

Football, by the time we get to the late 70s, there's that famous CBS montage of

the pregame show, and it's just guys getting nailed.

It's on YouTube every once in a while.

It's like,

it's the Brett Musberger.

And

each thing is just a football party getting demolished.

And this is what sports was kind of like, but nobody was putting in any perspective.

So I think that's what they're trying to say.

Yeah, well, I mean,

they're trying to say that the gladiator thing never went away.

It's never that far away, right?

That we'll always show up for the gladiators.

And we're always trying to find a way to kind of justify, like,

you know, blood sport.

And we are, right?

I watched, I mean,

I'm no better.

I watched USC1, literally watched USC1, two, and three.

I could tell you what those fights were like.

Like, we all locked in.

And that was the closest thing, was really close to rollerball.

I'm not sure you're going to talk about Norman Jewison, but when you said, oh, they really were careful.

I mean, one of the most fascinating director runs

because

This guy made absolute stone cold classics and then he missed wide, you know, and uh but was a great in the end a really really important filmmaker I mean I listen like I made Cincinnati Kid which as you can imagine real important to me that's 1965 yeah and he is almost a four decade run because he you know he has the Russians are coming the Russians are coming and he the night Thomas Crown affair and it's like wow this guy's doing great Then he has Fiddler in the Roof and Jesus Christ superstar back to back.

That's weird.

Rollerball, Fist, and Justice for All.

And then it just kind of keeps going.

Does Moonstruck?

He ends with the Hurricane in 1999.

He gets to have a hurricane as, like, you know, right there toward the end.

I mean, I'm wearing my Expo's hat as a little salute to Canadian Norman Jewison.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Important director.

I think it's fascinating.

that he thought people would be appalled by the violence in this movie.

And then they were like, yo, any interest in starting a Rollerball League?

And he's like, What's going on?

The ending in this movie is one of the better endings in a sports movie with

the dead silent crowd,

the ball goes in, and then Jonathan like skating faster and faster.

And the way they do it, the music,

some of the opera stuff they use.

And then the cut to, you know, the terrible, ineffective coach

suddenly chanting Jonathan with everybody.

Yeah, I agree.

Jonathan!

That's good, dude.

Yeah, it's a really perfect,

it is a perfect ending, but it leaves you, does that ending, did it always leave you feeling good?

Because the ending leaves me feeling

not a little bit,

I mean, you're so happy that Jonathan lived, but it's not like it's

everybody else is dead.

I love the ending and I'm in on Jonathan.

I think he's back for year 11.

It's like LeBron.

Jonathan, he's doing Instagram things over the summer.

Get ready for rollerball year 11.

I'm going to miss all of my teammates because they're all dead.

Hopefully I'll have other teammates.

Can we talk about the corporate autocracy?

So the population is now concentrated into six corporate global city-states.

transport, food, communication, housing, luxury, and energy.

And Houston's in the energy sector, which, and Hausman seems like he's he's the head of

all these people.

But basically, we learned the executive class rules all.

All the nations are bankrupt and gone.

It's just these six places.

And then I think each one has a rollerball team was my take.

I thought it's a strike.

It's not said super clearly, but it's my guess.

So if you, so transport, food, communication, housing, luxury, and energy, which one do you think New York was?

Because New York's the final team in the movie.

Maybe transportation.

Transportation.

Luxury, maybe,

because they also said there's a Rome-Pittsburgh game they mentioned.

So maybe the league has more than,

I don't know, we know of six cities.

So could Pittsburgh, New York, and Houston have been the three American cities?

And then we have Madrid, Tokyo.

You know, that's a big online argument.

That's a big online argument right now is what are the four major cities?

You know, that's a huge TikTok thing right now.

The four major New York Collector

major cities.

Yeah, people are really arguing about it.

So now you can introduce this into it that maybe there are just three.

Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh, New York Houston.

We've already solved this, guys.

And then Los Angeles just gets cut out completely and rollerball, apparently.

We have no LA team.

Hausman,

another guy we grew up with, his eyebrows.

I don't know if you got to watch this and a nice big HD TV.

His eyebrows are a supporting actor in the movie.

It's like anything I've ever seen.

I watched it on TV.

like i watched on a big tv screen uh yeah again i've watched it on computer too but i just watched it on the big screen thing that moment housman's whole career he never had a moment like when he enters the thing with the two girls you've never seen houseman he's usually like you know behind a desk teaching a law class or yeah

barking at somebody about business and then here he gets to in that same corporate thing but he's entering with just these you know these two courtesans because that's what they are in this movie they're courtesans and and uh i i thought that was i'm just picturing him doing the small, like when they said cut, I was thinking about when they said cut, you know, Houseman turning to them and just whatever that conversation.

Hey, ladies.

Yeah, what was that?

You know, because that party is one of the strangest scenes in any movie I've ever seen in my life.

I cannot absolutely wait to talk about it.

Houseman, James Mason,

James Mason,

it's been disallowed.

Like

just the distinct voices that we don't have guys like that anymore either.

Who's our distinct voice English actor guy in 2025?

Do we have one?

I think there are a couple of them.

I mean, we did.

Yeah, we have

a couple of them.

As good as Hausman?

Like, Hausman calls you and you're trying to convince him to be on your new TV show

and you would just be in awe the entire Zoom of every sentence he said.

Yeah, I mean, I guess Dame Judy Dench is probably like that person in a way.

If you think about it, she has that.

You know, it's

like from that point of view.

And yeah, most of the British actors now, they act in American accents so frequently.

So it doesn't feel like that, right?

They would add that guy to Americans

now.

How did you feel about the corporateocracy that they lay out now that we're in 2025 and we're being run by a bunch of corporations?

It's kind of weird.

I mean, literally, we're being run by like five corporations.

I mean, literally, there's not one person listening who wants to hear me talk about this.

We're going to move on then.

James Kahn, 1971, Brian Song, 72, The Godfather, 74, Freebie and the Bean, 74, The Gambler, 75 Funny Lady with

Barbara Streisand, 75 Rollerball.

That's all in five years.

The wheels come off a little bit, I think, for our guy, Jimmy.

There's some Playboy Mansions.

It's early cocaine era.

He started really living like Jonathan.

The IMDb gets rocky.

There's a brief comeback from 79 to 81 with Chapter 2 and Thief.

And then in 82, he's in Bolera with Bo Derrick and some movie called Kiss Me Goodbye.

Disappears for five years, stops acting.

And I think when people talk about who was the craziest during the cocaine era, he's always mentioned as a how is he still alive guy.

What's interesting about his movie career, he turned down the following movies.

French Connection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Close Encounters, Superman, and Kramer versus Kramer.

This guy, after Redford and maybe Newman, was the third call, I think.

And maybe Reynolds, maybe it was 3 HB.

Jack also, but Jack turned everything down.

Yeah, I think people knew not even to call Jack.

Yeah, but he was in that world, though, where he's just,

I mean, if he has two of those, his 70s are even more.

But then it's so great because he gets the amazing comeback then, right?

He gets his own TV series.

He gets misery.

I mean, it all turns around.

He does get a great sort of last bunch of years, I think, where he got to be James Kahn

again, and he got to watch his son become

a television star and all that stuff.

But yeah, the lost years of him and some, you know, then a bunch of unsavory guys hanging around at the Playboy Mansion, you know, trading, getting a hang with James Conn for Coke.

I agree.

It's a tough, it's a tough moment for the guy.

It's tough.

Have you ever, have you and Levine ever kicked the tires on a Playboy Mansion late 70s scripted series or no?

People have, yeah, that's for the next time we see you.

That's our one meeting with Oliver Stone.

I'll tell you another time.

Okay, that sounds good.

Oliver Stone wanted to make that Q Hefner.

It's one of those great ideas that'll never happen.

Yeah.

One other thing about Rollerball, I forgot to mention.

Jewison and the production designer, John Bachs, what a combo.

They designed the track.

They wanted it to be like a roulette wheel crossed with a pinball machine.

And they found this guy, Herbert Sherman, who had previously designed the track at the 72 Munich Olympics.

And they came up with that thing, which now, like when you watch the Summer Olympics, they have those Velodomes or whatever those are called.

It's a little like that.

Same thing where it's like on a slanted

Germany, right?

They built it in Germany.

Right.

And they filmed all the stuff.

They made it seem like it was different cities, but it wasn't.

It was so realistic.

They would play it between takes and on off things and the stunt people and people just making the movie, they're like, Hey, do you want to play a little rollerball for a half hour?

Like, it was so much fun to skate around.

And that was it.

Today, I was listening to a

behind-the-scenes thing that Norman Jewison and a few of these other guys talked on.

And one of them,

they said that the production designer, and then I, he was the production designer of Lawrence of Arabia.

So, he, that guy had done, you know, truly like incredible shit.

And this is the first movie ever that the stunt people people were credited on individually.

Right.

And they made sure of it because it was so hard.

Like, and James Kahn did a lot of his own stunts.

Well, when you watch it and you know, there's no CGI.

Yeah.

Half of the stunts, you're like, man, that looks like that guy got hurt.

You know how they did it.

Half the time, their heads just bouncing against the track.

Yeah, I found this thing this afternoon.

I'll send it to you of the behind the some behind the scenes footage that shows the like the ball getting released and where they were all standing.

But yeah, they released the ball, obviously.

And then, I mean, they did all that.

Like, yeah, there's no CGI.

Like a guy had to bend down and pick it up in his glove.

They really did that.

They really had the motorcycles and they really had the dudes behind the motorcycles.

Like they were

practical doing all that.

There's no steady cam back then either.

So I don't know how they filmed some of the camera stuff because the steady cam didn't come until the year later.

That's the other thing with this movie that now it seems like, oh, yeah, it makes sense.

They did this.

In 1975, they weren't making movies like this because you had the football scene, The Longest Yard, which we covered in previous watchables, and you had this, and it was like there was nothing like this in a movie theater before.

It was a little like the French Connection car chase and you know, these seminal moments in the 70s.

Yeah, you couldn't understand, I can't believe that happened.

Yeah, you can't understand how the hell

you can't really understand when you're watching it how the hell they shot some of these sequences.

Um, the not just the fights, but like when you know Moon Pie

has that little tough moment.

I mean, that's just incredible the way that they,

the way they shot it and the way that they staged it.

And you really feel it, you know.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, because we've taught, we did close encounters.

We've done JAWS, obviously.

There were these, how the hell did they do that moment that you had in the theater?

Because

you just had never seen anything like it.

Now I feel like that shit, in 2025, I don't think those exist anymore.

And we're just so conditioned to CGI and crazy stuff.

I can't remember the last time I sat in the theater.

That's what was so cool about F1.

When seeing that in the theater, it was like, wow, how'd they do this?

You know, like, how'd they film that crash like that?

And then you felt like you were in the race.

It was a rare time of having that excitement in the theater.

Yeah, have you seen that?

That's what's so crazy.

Have you seen that moment where Stallone is talking about

how he wouldn't consider

Michael B.

Jordan a real member of the Rocky family?

Oh, Oh, yeah, yeah.

Michael B.

Jordan told that story on my podcast, like 10 years ago.

Have you seen the clip?

I mean, there's a clip.

And I guess it was with Andrew.

It wasn't Andrew Tarver, right?

It was one of the, one of the, one of the spar, like one of the sparring partners.

But they, yeah, yeah.

I can't even believe 10 years ago that happened.

They would never, I mean, it's just, there's no.

No, they would have seen you at everything.

You mentioned William Harrison wrote Rollerball Murder in September 1973, Esquire.

They didn't didn't mention the sport that much,

but that's how this all got going.

Jivison got excited about it.

His goal was to show the sickness and insanity of contact sports and their allure.

Mission not accomplished.

Football became way bigger right after this movie, not because of the movie.

There's a United Artist things I just wanted to mention quickly, the production company that made this.

They were bought by a bigger company called Trans America in 1967.

They rolled off in the heat of the night, the graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Last Tango, Cuckoo's Nest, Rocky, rocky, annie hall, and then in 79, Rocky 2, Manhattan, Moonraker, and Black Stallion.

But then Heaven's Gate happened, which was immortalized in the final cut.

But they were on the cutting edge with some of these movies, including this one.

I almost felt like they were a little A24-ish, like taking crazy, crazy risks.

Like, I can't imagine anybody even greenlighting this movie.

Well, this is the 70s movies that people talk about.

I'm sure you know this, but he said it on my podcast for the first time.

And then I think he's talked about it on the thing he does with Avery.

But, you know, Quentin Tarantino is still saving this movie to watch.

Of all the 70s movies, this is the one that's like canonical that he's never seen.

And he's saving it.

And interesting.

That's like me and the big Lebowski.

Still haven't seen it.

Yeah, I don't understand it with Have.

I haven't owned it on 4K Blu-ray.

I'm just saving it.

Have your kids watched Lebowski?

I'm just saving it for the perfect day, and I'm going to dive into it and get really into it.

Oh, yeah.

You you got, I mean, yeah, you got to watch it.

But same thing, Quentin, for whatever reason, talks about the 70s more than anybody else, right?

Written all about the one he still hasn't watched Rollerball, he's still saving.

It's so weird because this combines so many different things of movies that he loves.

I know, I'd say, like a great alpha of star performance, like a weird sport, a weird world, a good director.

Uh, most critics were lukewarm on this movie.

It was a six-million dollar budget, made $30 million.

Vincent Canby, New York Times, Rollerball isn't a satire.

It's not funny at all.

And not being funny, it becomes instead frivolous.

He could fuck off.

Gene Siskel, two stars.

A movie in love with itself.

Vapid, pretentious, and arrogant.

Raj could not find a review, but he did give this movie three and a half stars.

But the review is not online.

James Kahn in 1977 rated all his films.

and rated Rollerball an eight out of 10, but said he couldn't do much with the character was his scouting report on himself.

So there you go.

We're going to take a break and then we're going to do most rewatchable scene.

This episode is brought to you by Prime.

Sure, we're called the rewatchables.

And yeah, we usually rewatch movies obsessively, but every now and then we trade screenplays for e-books.

Some moments just call for it, like when the credits roll and you're still in movie mode, but your watch list is empty.

Or when everyone says the original story is better than the movie and you got to see what the hype's about.

Prime gives you access to a whole library of free e-books so you can swap the rewatch for a reread or try something new.

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Most re-watchable scene.

The opening, everything, first 10 minutes, the opening credits with the music.

We get a little box toccata,

fugue and D minor.

I was practicing this.

I got to give a shit warm-ups.

I got to give a shout out because the most incredible thing, one of the most incredible things of my childhood was our friend Peter Zizo figured out how to play box Dakota and Fugu and D minor on electric guitar like Eddie Van Halen.

So shout out.

For real, it was incredible.

Yep.

We get pregame warm-ups, Houston, Madrid.

By the way, we forgot to mention they created the corporate national anthem for this, and it's pretty good.

It's crazy, though.

That's a crazy thing.

And it's an amazing moment.

Yep.

Agreed.

And then Jonathan has three goals.

We get to watch what the game is.

They do a nice job, some wide shots, close up, and it's like, what?

And by five minutes you understand everything and then we have jonathan scoring over and over again and then with moon pie i love this game moon pie what what are your moon pie thoughts played by john beck the swooper moon pie no

moon pie was the no mustache guy yeah but he's also the swooper right because he's the one who he they call him his position it's the only position that's stated in the movie is yeah swooper which is just because he comes swooping down from the top and knocks the guy off the motorcycle right he's like is he like a left tackle?

What is it?

That's his move, right?

His move is defensive end.

Yeah.

Well, then stay close to me.

Stay close.

You're right.

He's got to stay close.

Protects Jimmy Khan and then Khan.

A lot of charisma on Moon Pie.

So I got that one.

I got Jonathan's lecture to the team when Tuffy decides to make a run at him.

And we get C.

Khan in a sleeveless white t-shirt.

I have

the interview with Jonathan and his latest girlfriend with the stats guy when we find out most points in a game was 18.

The guy says, I'm a big stats guy.

This is 1975.

Like Bill James hadn't even written the baseball abstract yet.

So this might have been, this guy might have inspired Bill James for all we know.

Most velocity shot out for the ball was 120 miles an hour.

Most deaths, nine.

Caused by, yeah, this was for me the,

if you had a category that was like, you know, the money ball category for the greatest stat.

I mean, to me,

I've you know, the best sort of war kind of stat was that Jonathan had

nine deaths in a game.

So Jonathan had the record for most injuries caused by one guy, 13.

13, yeah, 13 injuries caused by one guy guy.

And then most deaths was nine.

Rome versus Pittsburgh.

What happened in that game?

Because they had penalties and they had all the old rules.

Rome, Pittsburgh, obviously a lot of bad blood.

The crazy futuristic party.

I wrote down, it's like eyes wide shut, crossed with ice storm crossed with the shining i don't know what's happening in this party uh they're shut they're screening jonathan's special retirement show but he doesn't actually retire they have like a prototype for a big ass plasma it's a it's about as big a tv as you've seen in a 70s movie uh people it's it are they escorts or is it like a call girl party is

This like a prototype for Heidi Florida in the 80s?

I think it's the scene that pulls back.

If you're watching that movie and you just are kind of going along thinking, oh, it looks like things are all right.

I think that's the scene that really shows you that you're living in one of those futures that is super fucked up and dark and that very few people have any rights at all.

And like not in the,

I think the point they're trying to make in that in that really so fucked, first of all, everybody's on these super designer drugs that probably were barely invented, some combination of Qualudes and Molly, and they're all taking them and passing them around and kind of drifting into this place you described James Kahn's performance as being.

But each of those women and men are just kind of describing that

the women were kind of shuttled to the men, kind of ordered to be with them.

And nobody...

Like you said, there's no kids, but I would say there's no love.

It's a world that almost

prescribed love, you know, gotten rid of love.

Because like, I think that's part of what you're supposed to feel in that scene.

Because if you think about it, even by the end, when Jonathan thinks and at first convinced himself he used to be in love, he realizes, no, that's not true either.

And I think that's part of what's going on in that scene.

And that one shot to the woman is just crying,

randomly crying, it's fucking insane.

And

it is one of the strangest scenes.

It goes on forever.

And like at first, you're like, this is going on four minutes too long.

But by the end of it, you're like, I think they might have earned it.

I think it might have been okay.

Like, I think they somehow.

Once we get outside shooting a fire gun at pine trees.

Oh my God, my life.

That's incredible.

That's terrific.

Then it suddenly becomes like this environmental movie, like where you're supposed to understand these people don't give a shit.

It's like it's like they say all this But what's different than the way someone would do that movie now is if someone would take a half hour to make a lecture About why these people are bad What's so great about this movie is it lets you just watch it and decide watch the movie.

Yeah, he's not lecturing at you You just see a cut to these like naked wild beautiful people or whatever and suddenly they have super weapons like you know a cartoon like a men in black level weapons like the little tiny you know and uh yeah we don't have those now no they don't exist now and you just just flick the thing and then whoosh, your trees go up.

It's crazy.

Totally crazy.

For me, the best scene.

Wait, we're not done yet.

I have a couple more.

But for that futuristic party, I'm adding a special category we don't give, get to give out very often.

The Mallory Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene?

Or in this case, did this movie need a sex scene?

You've already given me the hard R.

It's a rated R in 1975.

I just feel like this party could have been a little friskier.

Like, who's judging on the cover?

Norman Jewison.

We're not judging you.

It must have been.

Everyone's drinking and they're hanging and it's feeling very ice storm key party-ish.

And then we just, all of a sudden, we're shooting trees.

Yeah.

I think we missed out.

A couple more.

Tokyo versus Houston.

No penalties.

What a monkey wrench.

Can you imagine if the NFL is like AFC championship game?

no penalties?

We would be like, what?

But that's

because that's also the moment that, like, that's the toughest as a screen.

I'll just say,

screenwriting-wise,

that's the toughest moment in the movie is all John Hausman wants, and he's the most powerful man in the world.

Yes, there's these three people or four people you find out who are above him, but basically he is the acts out the wishes, right?

He is, he's the most powerful man in the universe.

And all he wants is to get Jonathan to quit playing the game.

And the whole movie is about, how do I convince Jonathan to quit?

I just, I'll do anything.

Jonathan, there's nothing you can't have.

And it's like one of those old jokes, nothing.

And then Jonathan looks at him and goes, okay,

but all I need is that my, I will quit.

I'll do everything you want.

I won't destabilize the entire world you built by proving the individual is the better.

I will quit.

All you have to do is put the rules back in the game.

And Hausen's like, well, I can't do that.

that's what we've already announced it we've already announced it you see if people can't have babies the women are ripped out of houses to go to other you can do anything you want you don't want to disappoint the fans

it's like bud selling calling that that game in whatever inning it's like you can do anything you want what inning was that where he just decided you can't keep going yeah he just stopped yeah they also were like one of the worst moves in yeah history of sports all the guy that's a great one that's a very good weak link for this movie i had one as well um

the tokyo versus houston i mentioned i I love the warm-up.

This game gets more and more violent, culminating in the Jonathan just gets pissed.

He starts wreaking havoc and they knock that one guy down and he drags the guy over to where the rollerball is getting released and the thing just nails his head.

It's like, oh my God.

That was the moment that nine-year-old me,

that very moment was the moment nine-year-old me was like, I might not belong in this movie theater.

You know that moment when you're not nine or ten, you're watching something that's above your grade?

I think above your life, I just remember that guy, that ball hitting that guy's head and killing him like that.

And you're just like, Jesus Christ.

That was me at the shining at age 10 when Scatman Cruthers took the axe.

I was like, what just what?

I like it.

You're like, I love that guy.

Well,

that's particularly cruel because he's the most lovable character in the history of cinema.

If you made a list of them, 10 most lovable characters in the history of cinema, Scatman Cruthers and The Shining shining is like number four yeah yeah it's terrible moment i agree horrible he has two naked lady paintings on each side of his bedroom and wherever the hell he lives i love that guy uh well and then tokyo vs houston we get the moon pie death which is just an absolute gut punch it's up there with for me i mean not everyone knows this movie but for me it's up there with goose and top gun and like some of the great side sunny getting shot at the toll booth like it's i just love movies i gotta be chris i gotta be chris with sean in this moment no no it's not it's not in that it's not in the movie those moments i love this movie

oh it's like they kill moon pie like don't kill moon pie i love moonpie hilarious you're not giving me goose goose is one of no i mean goose i could i could if you

if you talked a little bit more about goose's death i could cry right now like moon pie i can just moon pie's a murderer

they're all murderers all these dudes are murderers man they have no choice they're in a capital capitocracy what's it called no yeah they are in what cat capital yeah cat no it's k right yeah

no you're saying katocracy but no the other one is the cacistocracy which is the one where it's uh the entire thing is just rigged up like that yeah two more jonathan uh finally realizes ella the lady that he's loved forever that the whole thing's fraudulent she's trying to convince him come back and he erases his her videos that he always watches right in front of her good breakup uh mode adams wow

Wow.

Just looks fantastic.

But also gives you, yeah, that gives you a hint, though, that what James Khan is doing in the movie is what was asked of him because all those scenes,

everybody's kind of playing those scenes that way.

The only one who doesn't really is in that little world of that stuff, the only one who doesn't is, you know, his former player coach, who's now an executive, the guy he has the, you know, the meeting with.

He's constantly asking him, he's constantly asking him to get him information.

But everyone else plays the whole thing.

Like they're just slightly under being awake.

They're just not quite awake.

The final game, the last thing.

Houston versus New York.

I love, there's so many great things about this game.

I love when the game's going on, there's no penalties, and it's basically like there's only going to be one person alive at the end of this.

And then the coaches are getting mad about cheap shots.

It's like, this is a fight to the death where you can't be upset that somebody's got clotheslined.

They're not going to call anything.

There's no penalties.

do you do you have the um

the the you know best quote of the movie uh category coming up at all because well we can put it right here game yeah that's it right that's got to be i mean that's

meant to be a game ever

Because it's not a dialogue heavy film.

That's the line.

That to me, that's the number one line in the film.

Yeah.

well everyone goes down in the first period one of the great first periods

terrible game plan we get some strategy it's just jonathan he's already banged up got a guy and then his buddy with the motorcycle and there's a fire and they just it they basically buffalo bills it this is like watching josh allen against the chiefs like it's like you have everything it's fourth and one just get the first down they overthink it they do a one at a time thing and jonathan just demolishes them

You think it's like Pete Carroll level?

The Malcolm Butler play.

Yeah.

You have it.

It's two against one.

This is a rep.

Yeah.

The thing is, though, there's a great freeze frame in that when he kills the guy right up against the executives.

And

one of them, the younger one, has this look on his face that

he's in.

It's just what Norman Jewison was going for.

You can imagine spoke to that extra.

Like he said to the assistant director, like, okay, that guy sitting next to John Hausman is very important.

I need that guy to be awesome.

Like, we need somebody good in that seat.

That was like

my son

ringside for UFC when Taporia knocked out, knocked out the guy in the main event.

My son basically had that look on his face.

This is too good for a probably unanswerable question.

So I'm putting in here.

Is this the number one craziest sports movie, sporting event you could have gone to?

The Houston, New York rollerball finals,

no penalties.

There's only going to be one live, one, one, like, where would you have wanted to sit?

Would you want to have been, would you have been right on the glass or would you live a little further back in case a motorcycle guy went in?

Like, what would your move have been?

Where would you have wanted to sit?

Luxury box?

I don't think there's any.

I love this question.

This is like an amazing, a whole podcast.

You should do a whole podcast on this.

It's an incredible question.

This is a roundtable.

Get your good friends.

And this is the best.

Yeah.

I can't believe you've you've never done it.

It's amazing.

We've intermittently done pieces of it in Rewatchables.

Because to me, no, the Mr.

T fight, you got to go to Club or Lang.

Club or Lang is the fight.

If you could see anything,

think about what the buildup would have been to the Club or Lang rematch.

Like with me, just think about what you would have been feeling in the world

to go to that fight.

Well, you could do the Drago fight when the Russian crowd turns.

I think, honestly, Creed Balboa,

the second fight,

Rocky 2.

It's pretty good.

I was thinking, I remember doing this as a mailbag question a million years ago.

I think the natural Roy Hobbes hitting the game, Pennant winning Homer, and then knocking the lights out, I think would have been pretty good.

But Clubber Lane, because of what he said about Adrian and just how much he baited him in.

And I think if you were a Rocky fan, which you would have been as a kid, right?

And in real life,

i think it would have been like ali frazier times 10 like you just well none of these is the actual answer because i think we did answer this once it's the soccer game and victory sure

it's pale bicycle kick yeah the moral victory of winning but they call the goal back and then stallone stopping the penalty kick and then everyone escaping

it's it's a it's a sporting event mixed with the great escape so you go to the game you're under some sort of rule.

You actually get to escape.

I think that's the winner.

Okay.

I also would have wanted to be there for shoot versus Loud and Swain.

100%.

David and I have referenced that fucking movie and thing, like everything we've ever done.

Agreed with you.

Couldn't agree more.

Major League, those guys winning.

Frank Ducks, I think, beating Chung Lee in Bloodsport.

I mean, you know, a little darker, but I think it would have been cool to see.

I mean, and then you want to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's fight in the Bruce Lee movie.

If you're going there.

That would have been pretty amazing.

Yeah, they had no spectators for that, but I mean, I'm saying, wouldn't it have been great to be able to be there?

Costner, Perfect Game, and For Love of the Game,

Yankee Stadium.

You wish the movie was just one notch.

You wish the movie was one notch.

I still don't mind it.

Um, okay,

what's the most 1975 thing about this movie?

Sorry, we're really wrong, by the way.

Obviously, it's the fight in the gym between

the secret secret third Creed.

The secret fight between Apollo.

Creed Balboa fight.

I just, I just realized, right?

I mean, that's where you got.

And you tell your friends forever, you'd never stop talking about it.

Worst sporting event to go to from a movie, the million-dollar baby fight.

Wait, what?

Tough?

Oh, God.

It's horrible.

The worst thing ever.

The dad.

Can you imagine being like, ah, let's just go.

Let's get in our car.

No, but

it would have been worse than that.

But you know that I'm of the generation.

You were too young, but I watched the Boom Boom and Cini Dooku Kim in real time.

I watched it too.

CBS.

I watched it in real time.

I would swear, like, I'm not making it up.

I got because CBS during the day.

Yeah.

I'll never forget watching it.

I'll never forget trying to track because we couldn't.

This is another thing nobody can understand.

I'm sorry that we're old.

I'm old.

Like,

you didn't know what happened.

We couldn't track it till the newspapers.

Like, you would watch the news at night and hope they would tell you.

And then you had to wait to read the newspaper the next day.

And the next day, because it took two days, I think.

Like, you had to find that out like 48 hours later.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Most 1970 thing about this movie, I'm either going with the 70s babes, just the look of the women in this movie, which is very Charlie's Angels, first season three's company,

or that they thought in 1975 that the future would not have cell phones or the internet.

Because they kind of had that computer.

It was like the cloud, basically, which is what we have now, but they just didn't.

They felt like it was going to be in some, in water, in some sort of factory in Geneva.

And it's like, no, it's actually just going to be in the air they're i'm going to be talking to my friend coppelman right now on wi-fi i think it's i think it's uh i think it's that they let they let an actor hit a heavy bag with no with just his bear

nobody would let they let an actor who's not in a boxing movie hit a heavy bag

with nothing on his hand like everything we know now i if you saw a friend of yours hitting a heavy bag like we all go to the we all without something it's insane.

That's fully that's that's a great one, you know what?

That's a great answer.

I love it.

What's age the best?

The uh conceit of rollerball as a sport,

John Hausman as a villain with his crazy eyebrows.

He's got his

crystal thinking layer where he goes and is does Levine have that where you go to see Levine, he's just surrounded by crystals in an all-white room in general.

Like how white and light everything is is feels futuristic and fun to me.

The huge TVs I mentioned earlier, that's about as big of a TV as you've seen a movie.

Here's one.

Any moment in a movie where our hero is about to kill the last guy and does the thing where he holds the rock or the knife up and then decides, and they cut to the guy, the guy on the bottom, like right, like the bad boys, Sean Penn and S.I.

Morales cut.

but the guy doesn't kill him.

It's just a winner.

It wins every time.

Oh, what a movie you just referenced.

Thank you.

The best.

The exploding boom box.

Come on.

The exploding boom box in that movie.

One of the great.

The 70s track suits that

they're wearing.

Like, I feel like those should come back.

I'd wear them.

I'd wear them tomorrow.

I'm going to tell Craig to get one.

We mentioned the whey pills everyone took and whether this foreshadowed the mushrooms, Molly era that we're in now.

We never see kids.

We never see a downtown.

We never see a restaurant.

Even when they go downtown in Houston, it's just this amorphous like buildings.

And

I think this was just how they were able to shoot the future back then, but it also shaped my view of what the future was when I was a little kid.

Did you have that?

Were movies and TV shaped what you thought in your head the future was?

For me, it's just

light and buildings and kind of emptiness.

Yeah, it was all that stuff at the Jetsons.

Right, and flying cars.

That's what we thought, flying cars.

Oh, here's one:

Bartholomew, Hausman's character.

And Jonathan.

Parallels to Goodell and Brady in the Seattle Seahawks Patriots Super Bowl.

When they're trying to get Brady and he won anyway, came back.

Malcolm Butler wins it.

Jonathan.

I mean, look, Jonathan's going to say, and honestly, you can, Craig,

you can cut this out.

But I mean, no, for me, the future is presaged because when John Hausman says to those guys,

and it's great because you got to be paying attention, but he says, listen, we've decided nothing special is going to happen to Jonathan.

They make the decision they're not going to kill Jonathan.

They're going to let the game take its course.

And I was like, that must have been the conversation that Skipper and Iger had about you.

Oh, my God.

We're not going to leave that in.

We're not going to let any of that in.

I didn't know.

That's where you were going.

Yeah,

we're not going to let anything special.

Nothing special is going to happen to Bill.

We'll just let it take its own course.

He'll take himself out soon enough.

We don't have to take him.

That's amazing.

Oh, man.

I didn't know you were going there.

The 70s babes of this movie, Maude Adams, Pamela Hensley, and Barbara Trentham.

The big three.

So

tell me if you agree with this for WhatsApp the best.

Jewison said

the movie could be taken as a metaphor for the creative artists struggling against the corporate mediocrity of Hollywood and the executive think they're in.

Thoughts?

Sure.

I think so much of it, it aged.

I think what's so incredible is I love when you read the reviews and even Cisco.

Like, I think what aged the best, and it's always the thing, like the movie fucking aged the best.

The movie's so good.

And despite what maybe Craig's going to say at the end, the movie's so good that

as a whole, and it makes total sense to me that it wasn't in its, like in its time, it was kind of a modest hit, as you said, what it did.

You you said it did 30 on six

but but i don't think people understood like that it was actually trying to do that stuff it was actually trying to make someone think about something and it got so much right and like honestly that energy okay so i'm not gonna again like the politics no one wants me i'm not gonna talk about this but

David Foster Wallace making the years named after corporations and shit and people, you know, Venus with the year of Venus Williams.

This movie did all this stuff.

There's no doubt that all those writers who became like the huge writers in the 90s, they grew up watching movies like this and it influenced the way that they thought about the world.

And you just feel it.

So

I think the movie is what really lasted a long time.

Book censorship and history getting erased, sadly, is age the best.

When he's watching the old Maude Adams DVDs,

the music that's playing where it's like,

it's so good.

Great call.

I wouldn't have thought about that.

It's a great call.

Yes.

The violence of football over the next 50 years.

And then the last one, Dick Ember, calling a game has always aged the best.

Just Great Terror's voice.

Amazing.

Really missed that guy.

Amazing.

And

are you?

I think that

we can talk about the computer.

We got to give a little bit to that whole computer scene, but we can do that in the,

unfortunately, it's terrible because you named that award after

Teddy KGB, but we got to do that, the actor being in his own thing.

That was a, that's a compliment, though.

Oh, yeah, but I don't want to ever reference my own thing.

You know what I mean?

It's like,

don't be a jerk.

But no, but I'll say, Ralph Richardson, that guy, Sir Ralph Richardson, he's this legendary British, the first actor to be knighted in England is that guy.

Lawrence Olivier got knighted second after this fucking guy.

And it's true, like one was 1946, the other was 47.

And because that guy is in his own movie, and it's a great movie, the movie he's in.

Like he makes James Khan totally different.

Yeah, he's like in a Bond comedy.

Oh, yeah.

He is in a totally different,

he's on a talk show with Orson Welles.

Like, what is he?

He's in Citizen Kane.

What is he doing?

And he's like, it's his own.

Like, you could tell that guy was in a room.

He's like, knows he's going to be.

He's playing a guy who spends a lot of time alone.

Right.

And just as an act, like, thinking about what that guy did as an actor, he built like layers and layers and layers.

And then it's totally wrong for them.

It's amazing.

It's just amazing.

Perfection.

I agree with you.

Great shot, Gordo Awards.

So many options for most cinematic shot.

I really like when Jonathan scores that one goal against Tokyo and then the guys, the fans behind him through the window are yelling and he just bangs the bag.

Oh, yeah,

it just feels 70s hockey.

You mentioned Moon Pie's coma,

the coma shot when they lift the helmet up.

I think that's the best shot in the movie.

I think it's the one you mentioned.

But I think it's the one you mentioned before, the ball hitting the guy.

Okay.

I think the ball hitting the guy is like so, because

you just feel it.

It really is so effective because it stays with you for 50 years, dude.

Kid Cutty Pursuit of Happiness Award, Best Needle Drop.

The ending when the music kicks back in again.

It's just great.

Yeah,

you're like, someone's been watching some Stanley Kubrick for Brandon Jewson, you know?

Chess Rockwell, Brock Leonard's award, best character name.

Moon Pie is pretty great.

I need to bring that back.

And then Butch's Girlfriend Award for the week link of the film.

You mentioned yours.

Here's mine.

I just think the corporation either kills Jonathan or just kidnaps him to keep him out of the final game.

I don't think they go through this whole rigor morale trying to, oh,

we don't really don't want you to play.

Now we're going to change the rules to try to kill you.

Like, how about just killing him?

No, they're worried about it.

It's like, what happened with Jonathan?

Oh, Jonathan had a tragic accident on a horse.

But they're worried about Marty.

See, this is the thing.

Why the whole thing about the individual is they don't want to make him into a martyr.

So they can't.

How do people know?

He just died.

They control the news.

It's like, sad news, Jonathan's dead.

All right.

Oh, no.

I love that guy.

All right.

I can't argue with that.

It just feels like an easier way to do it than to rig the game with no rules.

And, you know, I mean, the other weak link is sending a terrible

in the context of the thing like i'm not saying the woman who played her was a terrible actress but the one the one girlfriend the blonde the blonde i mean they're just first of all it's like the whole beginning of the sharon stone schwarzenegger thing where she comes in there and he realizes she's turned she practically is gonna wheel and kick him like sharon stone did in total recall but uh that was pretty weak that scene and then when he almost you know jonathan almost really hurts her

i had that in what stage the worst that's not a great not a great moment yeah Yeah, that's in the What Stage the Worst.

You know, Longest Yard had a random domestic violence scene, too.

I just think it's the 70s.

I can't explain it.

We mentioned the super system memory pool, which now is just a cloud.

The Tokyo team, there's

some pretty apparent racist stuff with that.

This is, what, 32, 32 years after World War II?

Could still feel some of that.

In the 70s, we still

have to do it.

Yeah, we're still still doing that.

Still very, very rough.

The CTE issues with rollerball, I was thinking, would probably hilarious.

Probably not great.

Like an Outside the Lines, the Rollerball guys 20 years later, they're all.

You don't want Bod Lee looking at this.

Yeah, Bodley's like.

You do not want Bod Lee looking at this thing.

100%.

But the number one with Sage the Worst is that they remade this movie in 2002.

It's one of the worst movies ever.

I wrote about it for page two.

I think it was one of my better early page two pieces.

I like skewered it.

It's really awful.

John McTiernan made it, weirdly, which he made so many good movies.

It's really, really one of the worst.

To me, it's like Bad News Bears Go to Japan,

The Roller Ball Remake.

It's on a short list of the worst ones we've ever had.

Among the worst.

You know, I will, I've never, I watched 30 seconds of it, maybe 40 seconds of it, and never watched more than that.

Shut it off, wouldn't go to the theater because

why do the, you know, why, why are you?

Well, it also violates the rule of why are you remaking a movie that is still exceedingly awesomely re-watched.

It was 27 years after they made the original.

We're going to take one more break and then we're going to do

a couple more categories.

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Rated R under 17, not admitted without parent.

The Ruffalo Hanum Group and Nick Partridge Over Acting Award.

So you, it sounds like you're leaning toward the coach on this, but can I offer you Jonathan's ex-girlfriend shooting the fire gun?

With that crazy look on her face.

I mean, look, I think maybe nobody knew who they were.

They spent a lot of time on the stunts.

And maybe I bet you that Norman Jewson, great director, like I said, I mean, that guy made some really unbelievably important, great movies.

But my guess is that so much of his time was spent on making sure the gameplay was right that there wasn't a lot of energy in terms of making sure the performances were locked, you know, and that's hard.

It's really hard.

Do you have a flex category or we already did it?

I think my flex category would have been the KGB actor thing because that guy is so good.

I think that guy's in his own movie, but I think he's great.

Like, I think he's just in his own movie.

Okay.

And do you have a CR thinks Luke Wilson would have been Harrison Ford Hottest Take Award or no?

Because if you don't, we can move on.

I mean, the hottest take would just literally be that,

yeah, I have a cra have such a hot take that I think it will get me.

I think this movie is every

I think this movie is better than Parallax View.

I think it's more accurate.

I think it more accurately makes you feel what a paranoid thriller is supposed to make you feel because there's nothing else like it.

Parallax View is like a million different things.

And this movie, there's nothing else like it.

And it tackles, none of us are going to be in a situation where we're thought to have shot the thing and they're pinning a giant murder on it.

But all of us watch sports.

All of us interact with these corporations.

All of us have felt that feeling that the game was rigged and we don't quite know why or what was really going on in that game.

We'll never really learn what really happened.

And this movie makes you feel all that shit.

And so I think rollerball, and I think it's like LJ's four-point play.

And yeah, that was

who ordered that?

The second Knicks dig.

I was at the game, and it was so great.

Just perfect moment.

Continuation, pal.

We still haven't won a champion.

I don't know if you noticed, but we still haven't won a championship since I was seven.

It's been a while.

At least the team's good again.

I couldn't find any casting wood-ifs.

The best that guy award, so Moses Gunn plays Cleat and Moses Gunn, who was in shaft, but had a nice run in the 70s where he would be like in the streets of San Francisco.

And he just was around.

He was one of those guys.

So, shout out to him.

But to me, Moon Pie, because I didn't realize that Moon Pie did, I like forgot that he's the same guy who did all those episodes of Dallas.

Yeah, I couldn't.

He might be John Bett.

I mean, for Craig, he's Moon Pie.

We still don't know if Craig liked this movie, but he was in 60 episodes.

Yeah, you're right.

60 episodes of Dallas somehow.

I know.

dion waiters i think it's mode adams coming in hot yes coming in mode we just need you to shoot for two days we're just going to shoot you laughing and looking really hot and then we need you to do like three lines with but a special shout out i think you got to give a special shout out to the thankless it's like the i wish that the most thankless role the guy who has to come in the japanese guy that's i think because it's the tokyo team has to come in there and just get interrupted all he wants to do is share the science with them.

And it must be like having a meeting with, you know, Robert Kennedy.

And like, he just wants to tell them about the science and they don't want to, you know what I mean?

They don't want to hear about the science.

Recasting Couch Director City, can I offer you Gene Hackman as the Houston coach?

We just go up a level with Gene.

And then he gets a lot of more dialogue.

Nobody else could have played Jonathan.

Who else could have played Jonathan?

Burt Reynolds.

And I think James Kahn's a better choice.

Because James Kahn was smarter.

Like on screen, he read as smart.

smart.

You think he's smarter?

I think Burt could have done the athleticism and the swagger hero stuff.

He probably would have enjoyed getting physical with the ladies, having love scenes.

Could Redford have done it?

No.

Not a good enough, like not credible athletically, like as a violent athlete.

I don't think he's got that dark,

the snapping side.

Warren Beatty would have been interesting.

I don't know if he would have done it, but I think athletically, I think he could have done it.

That's a good call.

He's credible in heaven, can we?

You believe he can throw a football?

He could.

I think he was a good athlete.

Yeah.

All right.

Craig's flex category is here, but he's passing.

Craig's just a mystery man for this pod.

Half-fast earned research.

You mentioned they shot everything in Munich.

A bunch of opera in this movie, if you want to go check out the different songs.

Some of it's online.

Rollerball the video game, which I waited for for most of my video game playing life.

And it finally was supposed to happen in 1998, got delayed, and then the publisher went bankrupt.

I don't understand why we didn't have a rollerball video game.

I think it would have been amazing, and maybe there's still time.

Nobody died during the filming any of the stunts, but we did have some major injuries.

And then Devo saw this movie and ended up writing the Devo corporate anthem for their 1979 album.

Bill, somebody,

somebody,

somebody at Rockstar Games should just, there should be a moment in GTA.

And if it delays GTA by another two years, who's going to care?

But there should be a moment where you should walk into an arena.

Get to play rollerball in Grand Theft Auto.

You should walk into an arena and get to play rollerball.

Think about it.

That's the most logical thing.

It could be in GTA the next year.

It could be in the one that comes out right the month before I die.

That's when they could, you know what I mean?

For 30 years from now, they'll get that one in.

Apex Mountain, James Kahn.

It's right around here for him because Godfather's been a couple years.

He's in a movie with Barbara Streissey in the same year when she's probably the biggest female lead.

I think it's right around here.

The Gambler just came out.

He's making a bunch of movies and he has the wheels haven't come off yet.

So I would say maybe yes.

Okay.

Plus, he's argued well.

Can't argue.

Fake created sports in a sports movie.

I'm also going to say yes.

Unless you want to go dodgeball.

No, you're this is it.

Dick Emberg, no.

Dick Emberg in a movie.

Also, no, because he's better in Heaven Can Wait because you can see him.

Maude Adams, I she was in tattoo with Bruce Dern, which I think I might have seen when I was a teenager and don't remember that much of, but it's probably this.

She's a huge model, though.

This is the era where the 70s they would just grab a famous model and just throw them in a movie.

Norman Jewison, no.

It's probably in the heat of the night.

I mean, Cincinnati Kid, Hurricane.

No, no, no, you got to say Moonstruck because the Oscars and stuff.

It's got to be Moonstruck.

But I mean, that Poitier movie.

Yeah, it's a great movie.

Great, great, great, great, great movie.

Of course.

But later, I always think that the guy later in the career, I always think, like,

yes, but I always think a guy that had this happen when it comes back and it's moonstruck, like,

and everyone's celebrating this guy.

But that's a career highlight.

I'm talking more like, when did he have the most juice?

juice?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Probably late 60s.

Sure.

Yes.

Houston as a sports city.

Would you go here or would you go Hakeem Rockets?

The Jonathan E era.

Dan Pastorini and Earl Campbell.

Well, that's like right after Jonathan E.

John Beck.

It's clearly 60 episodes of Dallas.

John Hausman, no.

No.

Probably Paper Chase.

It's got to be.

Setting Pine Trees on Fire 100%.

And then just roller skating.

Roller skating, maybe.

Did we ever do better in a roller skating movie?

No.

No.

No,

this is the coolest it ever looked for sure.

All right.

Most important part of the podcast for you.

Cruise or Hanks for the lead.

It's Cruise and a Walk.

It's not even close.

It's not even close.

This would have been an amazing cruise movie.

No, no, but it's, but Hanks, if he wanted to do the dark turn, could play the Hausman role.

He'd be amazing because you'd believe that he cared about Jonathan.

Or how about young Hanks as Moon Pie?

Like 19 bosom buddies, Hanks.

He was all.

He was never the enforcer.

No, it's definitely Cruz.

Scorsese or Spielberg?

I mean, that says Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese.

I had that as well.

What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

Oh, this is great.

Probably younger Hausman?

He's in the corporateocracy.

Yeah, but well, would this have been one of those?

There's not really that showy, you know,

young Philip Sumer Hoppin, like, you know, in a heartache.

There's not like that flashy little moment where a guy comes in like that in this.

I don't know if there's a role for

PSH in this.

Picky nets.

So I had some questions about the rollerball penalties before they got rid of penalties.

Karate kicking the motorcycle guys

seems bad.

That's three minutes.

Headlock punch, okay.

Headlock punch with the spike punch to the the helmet seems fine.

Motorcycle guy knocking the other motorcycle guy from behind, like spinning him out, seems legal.

Um, I looked this up.

This was my internet research.

I looked it up.

I looked up what

rules, penalties, so the violence.

And you're right.

You're so on this.

It's the, you're completely on it.

These penalties only existed.

So all those things, you could do them all as long as it was in the course of the gameplay.

Oh, that's what they said, yeah.

When you're, I mean, I looked at it, when I looked at it, it sounds like Julisin came up with that at the 11th hour.

They're like, yo, what?

What's the difference in these penalties?

Like, ah, course of gameplay.

Course of the gameplay.

So, so that if instead, if, if, if, well, like, let's say right after Jonathan scores and you're resetting, the ball hasn't shot out yet, you went and uh spike punched a guy in the head,

then that's a penalty.

But if you spike punch a guy when he's about to score, we're good.

I think that's never said in the movie, and you're 100%

right.

Yeah, I needed a little more.

It's almost you needed the announcer to come in and like, as always, three minutes for that.

I just would have eaten it up.

All right.

So we have gambling in 1975.

We know it exists because they're putting the spreads out.

We've had football players.

There's been gambling scandals.

It just felt like an incredible misopportunity not to talk about lines at all during this movie.

And then it sent me down a rabbit hole thinking, like, who was favored in the last game?

They would have, like, Fandel would have had last man standing bets.

And I think Jonathan would probably have been the favorite, but it would have been like two to one.

You know, it would have been like those Tiger years where you could bet the field for a certain number.

Jonathan versus the field.

I would have just banged Jonathan, but then you could also make the case like they're just going to do everything they can to take him out.

I think there was no betting lines.

Dude, there's no betting lines because no one had any money.

The money was only the executives.

No one had money.

But there was probably like a

stealth poker game with the executives, and maybe they had a bookie.

I don't know.

There's a lot of gambling stuff that should have existed in this.

You had any pick and nits or do we cover everything?

No, we covered them.

Okay.

Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable.

Can we make the prestige TV case?

It's been 50 years.

I think that's a fair game.

And I do feel like there's some cool scripted series in here that I think would take added significance in the mid-2020s.

You know, they're making, I'm sure you know this because it was announced and stuff.

They're making,

you know, the William Gibson novel Neuromancer.

They're making that into a series.

That's that incredible futuristic thing.

If that works, whoever does that show could then just come right in here and do this.

I think the problem is the rollerball remake was so bad

that I think it scared everyone off the IP.

But let's bring him back.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treyo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Consworth, Daniel Plainbue, Long Legs, or Wilfred Brimley in the firm?

Do you have you can also throw in anyone else you want in this category?

You know, you bring up Enberg a couple times, but I just kept thinking how fun it would have been to just cut to Norm McDonald talking about this game.

We should throw Norm in the category.

Yeah, Norm belongs in the category.

He really does.

Because imagine Norm talking about when Moonpie, like the thing you just did about, oh, so when can you hit the Moon Pie in the head with the spice?

I mean, yeah, I just think that's a little bit, you know, I just think it would have been incredible.

Like Norm would be just top too much, too much individualism.

I think they would have just killed Norm.

So I had,

I'm adding John Kazale to the movie.

Oh.

Because of the sunny ties, but especially after

when Jonathan says no to Mr.

Bartholomew at the party and he comes back out, and then Kazale could come over and go, Johnny, you don't talk to a guy like Mr.

Bartholomew like that.

Awesome.

And then they do the don't go against the family.

But he could also be his character from the conversation just fits right in.

Yeah, just it's right in the time, it's in the Kazale, it's in the time frame, 75.

Imagine if instead of Maude Adams, and I agree,

what if it's Meryl walking into that room, 1975 Meryl?

Get both of them.

Imagine

how much better is that, Meryl, like her first movie.

Yeah, right after Annie, like 75 Merrill, right before that.

Yes, yeah.

Just one Oscar who gets it.

Production design.

Yeah,

I would have said stunts.

Is stunts an Oscar?

It is, right?

Now they're giving stunts awards and things, but they didn't for years.

Yeah, production design's good.

Probably unanswerable questions.

This one might be answerable.

Jonathan E's last name, I think it was was Evans, because at the Eyes Wide Shut party, one guy says to the other guy, Evans is out.

And I wonder if that means that's Jonathan Evans was his name.

What are others?

I've won.

I have one unanswerable question.

As if rollerball just keeps going over the next 50 years, how would advanced stats have changed rollerball?

Would people have thought Like with the three-point shot, like people firing from far away?

It's a heavy ball.

But could there have been like a Steph Curry that comes in who's like, this guy's like throwing it from basically the bottom of the track, he's completely changed rolling.

It would probably add up

because the thing is, because there were very limited substitutions, if you killed somebody, it's kind of as beneficial to the team as scoring a goal, to your team as scoring a goal.

So, so the advanced that would be murdering

murder plus points.

It would be like points plus

death, right?

Because plus,

you know, um, mauling someone till they're off the floor.

I think.

So, you think the money ball move, like Jonah Hill comes in and he's like, I've been looking at the motorcycle and it's just the complete inefficiency.

We're spending too much time getting the motorcycle, guys.

And what's what we really need, what was John Beck's role?

What was his thing?

Swooper?

Swooper.

Yeah, the swooper is actually the most important position in rollerball.

And we got to go all in and try to find better swoopers.

So sick.

I think,

yeah, for sure.

Then there's this little so my unanswerable question is there are two references in it that maybe they're robots

like in the oh the androids thing at the eyes yeah they're that they might all be androids and one says you know they're all made in detroit and the other says they're robots you hear these two lines and i and they're not but but you know you wonder if it's like the replicant thing like are they replicants or are they is it possible because now i didn't remember this this was i listened to some wacky podcast today and i wish i would credit them.

There's some guy who did some like deep dive into the meanings of rollerball.

It's crazy.

I'll send it to you.

I found it like two hours ago.

But the one thing is

he was talking about this possibility

of

them being robots and seem to have some

credible argument for it.

That had to do with when Jonathan is talking to Sir the computer guy.

I did not pick this up.

This guy on this podcast did.

I can't take any credit.

But he says that when he's talking to him, the guy says, I've seen you so many times before.

You've come so many times.

And the guy was like, because Jonathan doesn't know, because Jonathan's a fucking robot.

And every time he gets destroyed, they rebuild him back.

And then he comes to the point where he has this question at the end of his life cycle.

I have no idea if it's true, but I love it as a theory.

Well, how would that explain Moonpie being in a coma, being kept alive with no vital sense?

That is a flaw in the theory.

You've poked a great hole in it.

Oh, to prove to the players.

Oh, you know why?

So the players believe it.

The player doesn't know he's a robot.

My other unanswerable, do you think the Dolan family own the New York rollerball team?

That's the best.

Yeah,

I hope so.

Because then I hope they go, oh, and whatever.

We don't get to give this that often.

The Zuatne Award for what happened the next day.

So Jonathan survives.

I think we're probably forming a rollerball players union.

There's probably

Donald Fear or whoever.

Somebody's coming in and being like, we got to

get these guys some benefits.

Maybe some rules in place that you can't just wipe out the rules before the semifinals.

Does the sport exist?

Was that the last rollerball game ever?

I think Jonathan Jonathan maybe takes the whole society down.

That's it.

It's just complete chaos.

I think so.

Yeah.

The easiest answer ever for what piece of memorability would you want or not want from this movie?

I mean, it would have to be the jersey, right?

The number six orange jersey.

Like, what would be a better thing?

That plus the glove, a glove.

And the gloves?

And one of the motorcycles wouldn't be bad.

Like a bad.

Imagine in your garage.

Imagine if in your garage you had a rollerball banged up motorcycle.

That'd be, I mean, come on.

Pretty great.

The Coach Finn Stock Award for Best Life Lesson.

Corporate Society is an inevitability.

Quote from John Hasman.

Let's go with that.

What's your double feature choice?

Some Bruce Lee movie, Enter the Dragon.

Interesting.

Why?

Because of the era.

Like, just because I associate it with a time.

in like my life, basically.

Otherwise, it's network.

So I wrote down earlier, network's the other one that makes the most sense because one's about media one's about sports and entertainment like so network on the highbrow it's network and on the less highbrow i think it's enter the dragon what's yours

i like your paranoid movie thing i think that was fun i would have said longest yard just because like those are the first two great sports movies but i do like the idea of doing like three days of the condor or something and just is brian's song in your mind not a great sports movie

It is.

It's a TV movie, though.

Okay.

So it doesn't count.

I've seen it 20 times.

No, I know, but I'm thinking it doesn't count for that reason for you

i still think that's khan's best performance in any movie i should have done that as my hottest cake he's unbelievable is brian pickle yeah of course he is he's incredible that movie's well i mean again it's for dudes art i mean that movie's just about

yeah it's really old it's 55 years old uh who won the movie james conn

of course

All right, it's time.

Producer Craig coming in.

He's been dead silent.

I'm nervous.

I'm excited that Brian has no idea which way I'm going.

And he even thought that perhaps I was going the negative route.

I am not.

I can't believe this movie was just sitting here and no one told me about it.

What the hell?

I had heard of Rollerball.

I think it's a weird title and perhaps I had no idea what the movie was about.

I was transfixed by this movie.

I mean, this is a dystopian science fiction movie, disguised as a sports movie.

I think it should be considered like one of the greats.

This should be shown shown in film schools.

There is so much going on.

There's so much there.

It's basically gladiators fighting for public entertainment.

It's like, maybe it's a little heavy-handed.

It's so weird.

Jewison's making so many weird decisions.

It's aged incredibly.

I think the tree burning is like fascinating.

I thought, I think this desperately needs, I'm usually not this guy, but I think this desperately needs to be a television show.

Like Tony Gilroy turned Andor, like a Star Wars story about like, turned that into like a political story about fascism and imperialism or whatever.

He get him Rollerball next.

Like, I, I want something at that level for Rollerball.

Tony would crush it.

Tony would do an incredible job with this.

Yep.

I thought this movie was unbelievable.

Wow.

I'm so excited.

I was so worried that he didn't like it.

And I was like, you know, I feel like I know Craig well enough to know he probably likes this.

I couldn't look away.

It was, it was everything.

I want to watch it three more times.

I, I, it's almost, it was almost the first time ever I watched it twice before we recorded, just because I wanted to do it again.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, what was your most rewatchable scene?

Um,

I think the argument between is that Houseman and Khan, while the tree burning is happening, that going back and forth

is really electric.

And that whole party, I think the whole party scene is the most interesting part of the movie.

Uh, but also, I mean, the stunts are unbelievable.

I can't believe that they're doing that to these actors back then, these stunt court, uh, these stunt actors.

It's ridiculous.

Um,

yeah,

the music music at the top and the bottom, the box, I mean, the whole thing is just, it's so original and unique.

And it's like, I love when a director just has his hands all over something.

And if there's stuff that people don't like, I kind of don't care.

I'm like, at least he just did whatever the fuck he wanted.

So were you mad we waited seven years to do this movie?

I mean, I couldn't have been mad because I barely knew it existed.

But

there's a, I have a couple nits.

I will say.

Let's hear it.

Genuinely the worst jerseys and helmets I've ever seen in a sport.

Yeah, that was mid-70s, though.

I mean,

like, if you go back to that era, every we just lost the narrative with

the way stuff looked.

But that's what they thought jerseys would look like in 2008, 50 years in the future, and that's what they gave them.

It was just that this weird concept of Kopliman can attest.

Like, the font that we thought was going to be in the future was that specific, like, weird font, like, very, like, simplistic.

Horrible, horrible.

Terrible.

It looked like high school warm-up football jerseys.

It's terrible.

Yeah, that's a good call.

What else did you have?

None of the actual guys look like athletes.

They look like mechanics.

I mean, what are we doing here?

Like, these look like a bunch of normal dudes.

I guess James Conner is a little bit more than that.

You're making the J.J.

Reddick Bob Coozy argument.

These guys don't look like the premier athletes of the world in 2018.

I swear I had that written down and I forgot to say it.

I noticed that there's that shot in the locker room.

And there's like four guys who look like Louis C.K.

back there.

Like, I don't know what we're doing.

Well, but I wondered, did they do that because they couldn't get anybody to do rollerball?

Because then at one point, they have the weight training scene, and one guy is basically doing this 1984 gymnastics routine on the on the parallel bars.

But yet, all these guys look like plumbers, electricians, as Craig said.

So I don't know what they were going for with that.

Also, man, like back then, men just looked different.

James Conn in this movie was four years older than I am right now.

Was he really?

He's 35.

You could have told me he was 50.

100%.

22.

You could have given me any age.

I would have easily guessed 45.

Do you agree with me that nobody has ever looked better in a sleeveless white t-shirt than James Conn?

Like, it's something about his shoulders.

Men don't look like that anymore.

No.

No.

No, you know who looks like?

Sometimes you'll get the random little boy that looks like that.

You'll see like the three-year-old boy at a party that's built like James Conn.

What's that?

And then, but nobody ever ages into it.

I didn't anticipate this going there.

I was going to say, what three-year-old boy at a party are you seeing?

No, my son, when he was like three, kind of had one of those James Conn bodies for a little bit, but they have, you know what I mean?

Like those really muscly little kids.

Like they have like the T-build, like that beautiful.

We used to joke that my son looked like a 1760s blacksmith.

That's what he would just walk around.

He had this hard pot belly and was just walking around like Fred Flintstone.

I was going to make the joke that

we should do the Lloyd Howell Jr.

NFL PA for worst

league rep award for whoever the fuck was running.

Whoever was running rollerball.

That's a good one.

What'd you think of the 70s, babes?

Great.

Women don't look like that either, man.

But it's like a specific look, and I don't know what it was, but I know it's a, you know it when you see it kind of look.

Middle part, long feathery hair, kind of like coming out.

They look like Sharon Tate a little bit.

It's like this blue eyeshadow.

It's just a version.

It's a version of of of uh of of michelle pfeiffer's scarface thing which was laid yeah that was like the tail end of it yeah it's really charlie's angels like if you go you can click any mid 70s charlie's angels vegas three's company all the every it's just this look and then it just disappeared not sure what happened so

craig would you have played a rollerball video game absolutely I still would.

Yeah, this is some of the best IP nobody's taking.

It really is.

I have not seen the remake.

I won't watch it, but

it's been long enough.

I think somebody could revive this.

And it's so relevant now.

I mean,

man.

Rollerball Fantasy League would have been interesting.

Sure.

Imagine if you would add swoops.

You would have had assists.

You would have had goals.

You would have had takeouts.

Yeah.

I mean, Derrick Henry and Rollerball, unstoppable.

A problem is we only know one

player's name, really.

And the other guy's name we knew, he's dead.

So.

Right.

Yeah, that's like Roller Ball 3, where like the Rich Paul character comes in and trying to get everybody paid more.

All right, Craig, so happy you liked this movie.

This was produced by Craig, as always.

Thanks to Ronnick as well.

And thanks to Gahal for getting us on on the Zoom.

Thanks to Koppelman.

Great to see you.

It's been a couple of years for you in the Rewatchables.

So happy to be back.

Anything to plug?

Got any plugs?

No, stuff's coming.

Stuff's coming, you know, but nothing to talk about yet, but happy to be back for time number seven on their Rewatchables.

And we got to do quiz shows someday.

That's the one I'm holding out.

Yeah, you're doing it in L.A.

Yeah, I'll be there for it.

We'll do that together.

And then Rounders 2, I'm just going to be dead before it comes out.

I mean, you'll be in if there is, if it ever has, you know, as much about it as I do.

We've talked.

How many hours have you and I spent talking about it with Levine?

Every time we do a podcast, we mention it.

Enough time.

Craig's ready for it.

Let's.

Okay, we're all in.

All right.

Great to see you guys.

Thank you.

Great to see you guys.