[Patreon Preview] WWW Deep Cuts - August 2025

Hello and welcome back to your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how impossible it is to make one, let alone a good one, one, let alone your favorite podcast, full stop that just so happens to be about movies.

Very good.

I'm David Bowman.

I co-produce the show.

I edit, make music for it.

And today we're going to try a deep cut episode.

So to quickly lay out what the format will be, we're going to do three segments.

The first is going to share some corrections from this month.

some what went wrong wrongs, if you will.

Then we're going to go to revisit the August episodes, see if we can find a through line that ties them all together, whether it's through the themes of the movies or behind-the-scenes stories.

And lastly, we will go through some of the mailbag questions that you guys sent our way.

I am, of course, joined by your intrepid hosts, Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett.

Chris, Lizzie, how are you guys doing today?

I'm doing great, David.

And you know, I've really been racking what two to three brain cells I have left trying to connect our August movies, which are Killbill Volumes 1 and 2, Starship Troopers, Shawshank Redemption, and Bohemian Rhapsody.

But I think perhaps we have something to discuss there.

All right.

So, for the first section, I'm going to kick it to Chris, and he's going to give some corrections that we learned about after recording our episodes.

Since this is our first corrections corner, I'm going back a little further than August because there's a couple of interesting things that I wanted to share.

Oh, I don't want to know what I messed up.

You didn't mess up anything.

And a couple are actually just interesting tidbits that our audience sent us, questions that we had that we couldn't answer.

And the one that I find the most interesting was back in Hulk, why was Bruce Banner's name changed to David from Bruce for the 78 Incredible Hulk series?

Now, Kenneth Johnson has claimed two reasons.

One, he disliked comic books' tendency toward alliterative names, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Bruce Banner.

The full quote: A name like Bruce doesn't have the degree of adult intelligence that David has.

Who?

David.

David Banner is sold different, non-alliterative, not a comic book name, but Lou Ferrigno, as we discussed on the episode, told USA Today in 2008, CBS felt that the name Bruce sounded too gayish and they wanted David.

I thought it was the most absurd, ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.

End quote.

Now, we could not figure out why Bruce was considered a gay name at the time, especially I think you mentioned Bruce Springsteen.

It seems this all stemmed from the Johnny Carson show, in which Carson would frequently use the name Bruce to refer to gay men.

Now, I couldn't find the original sketch in which this was done, but I did find a clip of Carson interviewing George Carlin.

This was right after George Carlin was arrested in Wisconsin for saying his seven words you can't say on television.

And I'd like to play the clip for you guys really quickly.

Names are interesting.

We have an edict that came down, believe it or not, from upstairs.

We are not to use the word name Bruce

in connection with anything because if we we say a guy has a tendency uh that he, well, let us say he he glides a little bit,

would say Bruce.

Now, all of a sudden, do you believe that?

I mean, I know a lot of guys who skip, who are not named Bruce, more than I do, you know, I don't understand that at all.

Why that should become

a connotation for it.

So that is in reference to he consistently used the name Bruce to refer to effeminate male characters on his show.

And that's where it stemmed from, apparently.

And thank you to Jason Colavito and his Culture and Curiosity sub stack for a lot of great information on this issue.

So

mystery solved.

Not particularly funny, but interesting.

You would say there's no such thing as a gay-sounding name.

Just going to throw that out there.

Well, except the name Gaylord, but other than that,

but it literally sounds like gay.

Exactly.

That's right.

It sounds like gay.

Or Gayle.

There you go.

So why has there not been another

another hulk solo movie universal owns the rights to distribute any hulk solo films i believe this is a perpetual license the rights reverted to ziny on the 2008 hulk movie in 2023 but i think that was just the distribution license on just that movie On to Superman Lizzie, people pointed out there was a British Superman, Henry Cavill, when we say

Superman with Drew Levin.

I know, I know.

But what I will say is we were confused by how good Henry Cavill's teeth are.

Just kidding.

The Fantastic Four really.

I'm not convinced I wasn't making a joke in that moment about the fact Henry Cavill was British.

You might have been.

I was not.

I forgot about that.

I think I actually was intentionally doing that and did not make it clear enough.

And then

it went over my head.

A resident idiot, Chris, here.

The Fantastic Four, as many people...

pointed out, premiered before many, many, if not most, other Marvel characters, classic Marvel characters, including Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and were synonymous with the launch of the Marvel era in 1961.

So I got confused.

Marvel was founded in 1931, but by 51, it was known as Atlas Comics.

So Captain America debuted in 41, but the Marvel era, or the Marvel Age of Comics, as it's known, began in 61 with the Fantastic Four.

And then you get the Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Doctor Strange, X-Men.

And to be clear, apparently this was Marvel beating DC to the quote adult market.

And they featured flawed heroes, real-world conflicts, like they introduced communism in the Vietnam War, and pseudo-anti-heroes or unconventional heroes like The Hulk and The Thing, for example.

So, all due respect to Fantastic Four, and thank you to a couple listeners who pointed out that mistake.

Pirates of the Caribbean, really quickly, Walt Disney died three and a half months before the Pirates Ride opened at Disneyland.

They should have put him in the ride.

Tombstone.

String him up.

Tombstone was produced under the Hollywood Pictures banner, not Touchstone.

They ran parallel to one another for about a decade at Disney.

28 Days Later was released before Shaun of the Dead, but it did not directly lead to Shawn of the Dead because Shaun of the Dead had already been written at the time that 28 Days Later came out.

Okay.

Naomi Harris did not win for Moonlight.

She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

And the helicopter pilot at the end of the film is speaking Finnish, not English.

And he says, Will you send a helicopter in Finnish?

But I believe Lizzie stands by her interpretation of the ending.

I do stand by interpretation.

I don't care if that pilot is saying, will you send a helicopter?

I don't think they get them.

And you know what?

I think I'm going to be proven right by upcoming sequels.

Hot take.

In our Bohemian Rhapsody episode, I made mention of David O'Russell and George Clooney's famous or infamous physical altercation on the set of Three Kings.

We got a nice inside scoop message correction on this one.

It was not over Mr.

O'Russell's treatment of Spike Jones, but rather his treatment of an extra on the film.

He and George Clooney got into it.

I don't know if a punch was actually thrown, but throats were grabbed and a second AD had to physically separate the two of them.

In the bugs episode, I say bipodal.

It's bipedal.

That's what walking on two legs means.

So apologies for that.

Chris, just go ahead and use your two legs to walk yourself right out of here because you're fired.

I will, but Primer is correct.

So that covers our corrections for the summer.

Thank you, everybody who reached reached out, especially those of you who did so politely.

We appreciate it.

And we do always want to give you guys the most accurate information.

Chris, you actually missed a pretty big correction, which is that Mel Gibson is actually a really cool and nice guy.

And I should probably just shut the fuck up about

he threw an ashtray through my wall, and now I have to say I love him.

I love him.

Can't get enough.

All right.

Can't wait to work with him.

So for section two, where we try to connect the through line, I'm just going to read the episodes that we did this month.

I'll quickly just recap the episodes and talk briefly about some of the things that were discussed, just to jumpstart your memory.

First episode we covered was the Shawshank Redemption.

Keep that in.

The Shawshank Redemption or the Scrim Shank Reduction?

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to that.

The Shumshank Reduction, yeah.

The first episode that we covered this month was the Shawshank Redemption, and we talked about Rob Reiner's virtuousness handing the reins over to Frank Tarabont and allowing him to cast as he pleased.

We talked about the possible negative impact the name of the film had, as Morgan Freeman put it, the Hudsucker Reduction.

Yeah, yeah, classic.

And how that may have affected word-of-mouth marketing because people couldn't remember the name.

And we talked about the success that the film eventually achieved through video rental.

Second episode we covered was Killbills 1 and 2.

We talked about Tarantino and Thurman's shared conception of the film, his intention to make it one movie, and the physical harm that became of Thurman, perhaps unnecessarily because of the reckless insistence on her driving that car, probably without the due diligence to figure out whether that was safe in the first place.

Next film we covered was Starship Troopers.

We talked about Verhoeven's attempt to make a satire of fascism and potentially failed at making that clear enough so people really had an unclear sense of what the movie was trying to do and caused some tonal dissonance that may have really hurt the film.

We talked about how it is in the pantheon of the great CGI meets practical effects films of the 90s.

And we talked about casting, which was per Verhoven focused almost, I believe, more on the appearance of the characters than their suitability as actors for the roles.

Finally, we talked about Bohemian Rhapsody, where Sasha Baron Cohen and Peter Morgan originated the idea of the film and wanted to tell a more authentic story about Freddie Mercury, but were shut down by the band, by Brian May and Roger Taylor.

We also talked about Brian Singer's onboarding, despite his reputation for inappropriate behaviors, both personally and on set, with the actors and people he worked with.

And we talked about how Rami Malik's portrayal of Freddy may not have been to everybody's taste, but his commitment to the film and hard work may have been responsible for getting it across the finish line.

So I'll kick it to Chris and Lizzie to talk about some of the things that they see as through lines for these films.

Chris, can I?

By all means.

I see one very clear through line across all all four or five of these movies, depending on how you define Kill Bill volumes one and two, which is

the idea of getting out of an autter's way.

I think we see it happening often when we talk about that, it's discussed as a very good thing.

And I think we see that across this episode, well, across these episodes, we have Rob Reiner being more of a patron and really getting out of Frank Darabon's way for Shawshank, of trusting the autur, of giving them this kind of absolute power.

We see that go,

I think we see that in a lot of ways with Verhoeven as well.

And I think many of those are positive, although there are some potentially some negatives for him.

But then I think with Kill Bill volumes one and two and with Bohemian Rhapsody, we see the flip side of that coin.

We see

an autur who has been granted essentially absolute power on their sets.

With Quentin Tarantino, that power and that financial backing was coming from Harvey Weinstein, which obviously that's coming from a very dark place.

And when you have somebody who has that kind of creative control, you do get a lot of wonderful things.

You get to see that person's vision, which is very much what we got with Kill Bill volumes one and two, but you also get someone who has the ability to, you know,

insist upon and convince that Uma Thurmond drive that car when she should not have.

And as we discussed in that episode, he acknowledged that, you know, that was an enormous mistake.

But there, there is this sort of, there is this lack of oversight.

And I would love to kind of discuss like what makes that a good thing versus what makes that a bad thing.

Against in Bohemian Rhapsody, obviously, we see it was definitely a bad thing in terms of what Brian Singer was allowed to do over the course of his career and then also on that movie.

But my question to you guys: A, do you sort of agree in terms of this through line?

Did you have something else in mind?

But B,

like,

when is that kind of freedom a good thing?

And when do you think creatives need guardrails?

Great through line, Lizzie.

I

would separate it.

First of all, I wouldn't put Bohemian Rhapsody and Killbill in the same category for a couple of reasons.

But

in terms of the end product, no, of course not.

But even I, well, I would say

my instinct, my bias would be toward, I don't believe ultimately creative decisions should be made by committee.

I don't think it's a good idea.

I don't think it typically works well.

I think at the end of the day, you do need somebody who makes the call and then has to live with the call because that is the one way you will get consistency in tone and vision.

in a movie.

Now, that being said, that person, I think a good director needs to remain open to input from a whole host of people, and they need to be the filter through which that input is collated into a finished film.

So I think that giving

Tarantino complete creative control over the creative tone and direction of the movies is absolutely the right decision in the same way that giving Darabont complete creative control over the Shashink Redemption is the right decision.

Now it's up to Darabont to work with Freeman, et cetera, as we discussed, and to get the performances that he needs and figure out a way to do that.

What's interesting is, I don't think that Singer was given complete creative control over Bohemian Rhapsody in the sense that he was working, like Brian May was given a lot of input, for example, as we discussed.

That script was, I believe, it seems like pretty fully baked when it came to him.

Maybe I should redefine this.

It's not necessarily creative control, but it is control.

And I would say, like, leeway, right?

Leash.

Like, leash.

And I think the leash should be very long creatively, and I think it should be very short logistically.

And so I view it as the directors is responsible for the creative vision of the movie, but also responsible for the people that are working for them.

And you need to have mechanisms in place to prevent the pursuit of the creative from coming at the cost of the safety or working conditions of the people on set.

I think the failure of Sony with, it was Sony, right, with Bohemian Rhapsody?

No.

Well, no, it was 20th Century Fox eventually.

It was Sony at first.

I think that the failure with Fox on Bohemian Rhapsody is they offloaded the burden of dealing with Singer.

onto the cast and crew and effectively said, he's going to be your problem.

And we are, they may have, you know, they said, we're going to give you these rules, et cetera.

But there was nobody clearly on set that could check him in the way that he needed to be checked.

I mean, he just wasn't showing up to set, which is.

Well, and there never had been somebody who had been checking him.

And I think the, you know, the anonymous executive who talked about X-Men was right, where they were like, the first movie was a hit.

So we excused a lot of the behavior.

I'm paraphrasing.

And then the second movie was a hit.

And we continued to excuse the behavior.

And it, like, you know, it snowballed from there.

And I think that

there's so much good that can come from extending, as you're saying, creative control to people.

And that's something that we also talked about.

We haven't seen as much in recent years is taking a chance on people in the way that Rob Reiner did with Frank Darabont or Rob Reiner did with Christopher Guest, as we will discuss in a little bit in an upcoming episode on Spinal Tap.

But you're right that there has to be oversight when it comes to logistics and safety, and that that should not even be in the same category as creative control.

Yeah, I guess my take is just that you have auteurs or sort of domineering directors who are known for that kind of behavior, but it's respected because people know the people that they work with know that they have the best interest of the film and hopefully the best interest of the people involved in the film in mind.

And I think of people like Francis Ford Coppola, who he could be ridiculous, but there weren't too many egregious examples as far as I'm aware of him like putting people in harm's way.

I don't know.

Is that a bad example?

I think it depends on what you describe as harm's way.

Well, I guess I would say, you know, relative to people like William Friedkin.

And I guess my point is just that the extent to which people should be able to operate with folk control should ultimately be a factor of whether they have respect for the people that they're working with, not just the ability to create a box office head, which is, I think, what you guys were talking about.

And I think that the Brian Singer situation is just...

how things evolved with someone who was already problematic and a bit reckless.

And then you just see see him hit this low point.

And should it have taken him being able to work for that long for people to recognize?

No.

And all the things about his inappropriate behavior, should they have been red flags that prevented him or at least created some sort of intervention earlier on in the process?

Absolutely.

Which would have prevented, obviously, people from having a terrible time on that set,

but also wasting a ton of money.

I think we're all kind of hitting on the same thing.

And I think, Chris, you really, you hit the nail on the head that there's a difference between a creative leash and a logistical leash.

And it seems rare to come across an executive who is able to recognize that is the best use of your time, you know, giving this maybe very good creative note.

You know, like, do you need to put your stamp on something creatively or do you need to make a safe space?

for your creatives to be able to do their job.

And I would argue that a really good executive is able to do do the latter.

I agree.

Did you have a different through line in mind, Chris?

You know, all I had was I had to pull from kind of July and August together.

So our August films were kind of all adaptations.

I know Killbill Volumes 1 and 2 is not technically.

It's a bit of a spin-off.

It is.

And it's kind of a, you know, Lady Snowblood, like you said, adaptation a little bit.

And obviously, Starship Troopers is, Bohemian Rhapsody is, Shaw Shank Redemption is.

And we also covered a lot of true stories.

We covered the sound of music, we covered Braveheart, all that jazz.

And Pirates of the Caribbean is an adaptation, and Superman the movie is an adaptation.

And the two things that came to mind with me were, number one, what do movies owe to the truth?

And should the truth ever get in the way of a good story?

Which is open-ended to me.

And my answer would be the truth is always malleable if it is in service of getting at.

the feeling of something and as it really was.

And we discussed that with, you know, all that jazz may be factually less accurate than some of these other movies, but it feels like we get more at Bob Fosse than we get at Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

But bigger than that, as we were going through these movies, it was the question that I had was like, how should we discuss the personal and professional failings of the people both behind these movies and in these movies, right?

And so, for example, you have like Tarantino falling short by his own of his own standard, you know, by his own admission, and certainly Ruma Thurman's standard.

You have Brian Singer falling short of any standard for any job ever.

His job and also not being a president.

Exactly.

You have in Bohemian Rhapsody, I think, you're kind kind of falling short of

candidly, the standard of what a biopic should be, in my opinion, in terms of honoring the person.

And then we have with something like Braveheart, you know, Mel Gibson, nothing from the set.

There was no professional failing in terms of how he was behaving on set.

And yet there was a lot of behavior around the production or interviews that he gave that are informative to his perspective and therefore informative to the perspective of the person making the movie and the way that people are treated in the movie and the creative choices made in the movie.

And I think it's an evolving conversation for us, but to our audience,

the way that I see it is the most appropriate approach is to make sure that everything we're discussing is in some way providing a greater context for the movie that we're discussing.

And so there have been times, I think, when folks have said, well, why have you not talked about this person's failing on this front?

And the answer, I can say in a couple of instances, is, well, that thing happened.

Let's say Johnny Depp.

The Amber, her Johnny depp trial happened 15 years after pirates of the caribbean was released and it we can't look at it retroactively and apply those lessons necessarily to anything that happened on pirates of the caribbean on the other hand

i will say though

there have been cases where we have discussed like you're saying things that do happen in the future but it's when they are relevant to behavior that was happening on the set at the time had there been similar things about johnny depp during the production of that movie that we were talking about relevant to the story of that day, you know, of

that movie, we would absolutely have then covered what went on to happen in terms of the Amber Heard trial.

That wasn't the case with that.

And the point is, we're not always going to get it right.

And there are times where I look back on, especially earlier episodes, and think, man, we didn't get that right.

But we want to leave everything up because it's an evolving show and we hope to improve over time and we appreciate the feedback.

But that is,

I almost just wanted to bring it up just to express that is the goal.

The goal is to provide the full context, the story of these movies and all the good and all the bad that went into making them.

Not so you guys don't enjoy them.

So hopefully you appreciate them more because they were also made by so many more than just one person.

And they are so much more than one person's shortcomings at the end of the day.

Very quickly, briefly, there is one thing from Brave Heart that we got a very thoughtful email about that I did want to just briefly address in this episode.

I know I'm going a little bit farther back than August.

This is our first one of these, but someone wrote us in too.

To hear the rest of this episode and other bonus content like reviews and articles, please join us at patreon.com/slash whatwentwrong podcast.

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